Speaker 1: Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel Matt. Today we're
Speaker 1: talking about cultivating a wealthy mindset with Shunk Savedra. That's right.
Speaker 2: Our guest today is a financial coach. She's the founder
Speaker 2: of the site Save My Sense and she's now the
Speaker 2: author of the book Wealth Is a Mindset, which was
Speaker 2: recently published, and Seung Savedra. She lives at the intersection
Speaker 2: of mental health, Joel and financial wealth. Little let's try
Speaker 2: to rhyme a little bit there, but she uses her
Speaker 2: own experiences like achieving financial independence by the age of
Speaker 2: thirty one, by the way, which is amazing, in order
Speaker 2: to help others to achieve their own financial goals and
Speaker 2: really like not just their financial goals, but their overall
Speaker 2: life goals. As I am, I'm pretty sure that Hung
Speaker 2: would agree that simply having more money like that isn't
Speaker 2: the goal in and of itself, but rather it's a
Speaker 2: means to an end. That's how we talk about it
Speaker 2: here on the show, and we're pumped to get into
Speaker 2: everything related to personal finance today. Seang, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for taking the time to speak with us today.
Speaker 3: Matt and Joel, I am so excited to be here.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: We're excited too, Sean, and so much ground to cover.
Speaker 1: But first question, we got to get out of the way.
Speaker 1: What's your craft beer equivalent? What do you like to Splurgeohn?
Speaker 1: I mean, we know Matt just said you achieved financial
Speaker 1: independence by the age of thirty one, so you're saving,
Speaker 1: investing for your future. But what do you explore John? Simultaneously?
Speaker 3: I know you guys wanted me to say wet food
Speaker 3: for my cats. Unfortunately that is not my splurge. My splurge,
Speaker 3: which actually doesn't even cost all that much money, it's
Speaker 3: more time and effort, is lay flat business class seats
Speaker 3: on leisure flights with my husband.
Speaker 1: I've still never done that. That sounds amazing.
Speaker 2: I've never done it. Okay, So time and effort and
Speaker 2: one of these days, yeah, we'll be able to make
Speaker 2: it happen.
Speaker 1: How do you pull it off?
Speaker 3: We use points and miles, so where those people who
Speaker 3: you know rack up points using credit card bonus sign ups,
Speaker 3: and then you just wait for the right opportunity to
Speaker 3: book them, usually about a year in advance.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: How many more miles does it take to get the
Speaker 1: live flat seat, let's say going to Europe or something
Speaker 1: like that, versus how many miles does it take to
Speaker 1: sit in the back of the plane where Matt nice it.
Speaker 3: Typically, I mean it's going to vary by airline and
Speaker 3: the way the day price it. But yeah, usually it's
Speaker 3: like three to four times more. But if you're able
Speaker 3: to find sweet spots, that's the thing. Like, the way
Speaker 3: that they work is that some airlines price it higher
Speaker 3: for regions that are more higher demand than others. And
Speaker 3: so for example, this is an interesting one. We used
Speaker 3: to do this thing where we flew Turkish airlines through
Speaker 3: a code share with United to go from mainland US
Speaker 3: to Hawaii because it's not a popular route for Turkish airlines,
Speaker 3: but it's a popular route for Americans. Turkish airlines prices
Speaker 3: is at a very low rate. And that's how you
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 1: Very cool, Okay, I swear you turned this into a
Speaker 1: travel hacker.
Speaker 2: So we've plenty to talk about travel hacking.
Speaker 3: But how much secret secrets of the rich travels?
Speaker 2: How many of your of that points a cruel process
Speaker 2: has to do with you, has to do with like
Speaker 2: your business, the fact that you are self employed, you've
Speaker 2: got your own company versus personal spending.
Speaker 3: You can do a completely off of personal spending. That
Speaker 3: being said, it's not that we spend a lot, it's
Speaker 3: actually that we give a lot. We basically route most
Speaker 3: of our charitable giving through our credit cards in chunks
Speaker 3: at a time, and that's how we're largely able to
Speaker 3: meet those minimum spends of you know, a couple of
Speaker 3: thousand dollars to get the high sign up points. That
Speaker 3: being said, yes, I also use business credit cards for that.
Speaker 3: But actually my husband would say, hey, Sean, are you
Speaker 3: going to meet this amount of business spend in this
Speaker 3: time from I'm actually like, no, I run a pretty
Speaker 3: low cost business.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry show you say that you had an abundant
Speaker 2: supply of ambition, and we've kind of dug into your
Speaker 2: story a little bit. It seems like an understatement because
Speaker 2: you graduated from Harvard with an economics degree. Shortly thereafter
Speaker 2: you got a consulting gig, but then on top of
Speaker 2: that you still launched a photography business on the side.
Speaker 2: Is the way it makes some additional money.
Speaker 1: I guess it drives you like, like why.
Speaker 2: Were you going after all of these multiple options all
Speaker 2: at once as opposed to I don't know, like especially
Speaker 2: given your I guess the pedigree. It seems like someone
Speaker 2: like you would sort of double down on the thing
Speaker 2: that would allow most folks to move the needle in
Speaker 2: a significant way. But I want to, I guess I
Speaker 2: want to kind of get a peek into your your
Speaker 2: thought process.
Speaker 3: There probably driven by two emotions, one being revenge and
Speaker 3: the other one being curiosity. I guess is that an emotion.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure revenge. I actually talk about this in
Speaker 3: the beginning the introduction of my book. I was heavily
Speaker 3: bullied throughout middle school and high school for being a nerd,
Speaker 3: and I was like, you know what, it's time for
Speaker 3: the revenge of the nerd. So I was just on
Speaker 3: this blazing path in my early twenties to say, I'm
Speaker 3: going to prove all those high school bullies wrong by
Speaker 3: just being freaking accomplished. And it's so silly to think
Speaker 3: about it now because I'm thirty nine. Now, I'm like,
Speaker 3: who were my high school bullies? I don't remember their names.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to even find them then to show them, Hey,
Speaker 3: Shum made it. But that was the first driving emotion,
Speaker 3: and then curiosity and management consulting. It's a great job,
Speaker 3: but in the beginning, when you're that first your analyst,
Speaker 3: it is pretty much a research slog, like you're doing
Speaker 3: the worst kind of grut to work. And a lot
Speaker 3: of it is just doing a lot of googling and
Speaker 3: cleaning data. And I had a creative side to me,
Speaker 3: and I had no outlet for it. Fortunately I had
Speaker 3: enough photography training. I'm like, well, let's just try to
Speaker 3: run a photography business. I really don't know how that
Speaker 3: came to my mind as like the way to solve
Speaker 3: my boredom, but that was what I decided to do,
Speaker 3: and that thing, hoe fully actually became a huge cornerstone
Speaker 3: of my ability to build wealth because I didn't spend
Speaker 3: a cent from that business, just invested everything from it.
Speaker 1: Wow. Well, and you and Matt have that in common.
Speaker 1: That was a long time photographer's wife.
Speaker 2: And I launched it, yeah, back in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: so azing. Unlike you, I didn't go to Harvard, I
Speaker 2: didn't have this consulting gig. Is that we definitely were
Speaker 2: spending the money that we're making. Well, still, we were
Speaker 2: able to start investing at a pretty yngly Some people call.
Speaker 1: Uga the Harvard of the South right exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was a blast, I mean, had a
Speaker 2: ton of fun doing it.
Speaker 1: Sean, how big did that business get? And was it
Speaker 1: tough to balance having a full time job that seems
Speaker 1: like it was somewhat demanding with a side household that
Speaker 1: it seems like it became a little unruly at times too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was working, I mean at times ninety hours
Speaker 3: a week because sixty to seventy dedicated to my full
Speaker 3: time job, and then the remaining which is mostly late
Speaker 3: nights and weekends, dedicated to photography. I was being published national,
Speaker 3: like I was known, Like some people would pay for
Speaker 3: me to fly to photograph their weddings, and I was
Speaker 3: just like, I don't know how I got through that,
Speaker 3: Probably just by sheer stamina of being young. I think
Speaker 3: that's really the best way to describe it.
Speaker 1: If you're talking to someone now who says, seize your story,
Speaker 1: they see financial independence at thirty one, there may be
Speaker 1: on the cusp of starting a career. Would you recommend
Speaker 1: that strategy or that's a tough thing too, right? It
Speaker 1: is because you go through something so arduous and it
Speaker 1: got you where you want it to be. But it
Speaker 1: also it didn't have it didn't come without downsides correct.
Speaker 3: I missed out the vast majority of my five year
Speaker 3: college reunion, which is a fun one because that's the
Speaker 3: one where you party in the most, because I was
Speaker 3: photographing two weddings that same weekend and I just could
Speaker 3: not do it. And I did over time, even though
Speaker 3: it changed. I had a clear reason why I wanted
Speaker 3: to do this. First it was just make as much
Speaker 3: money as freaking possible, and then reason eventually evolved to
Speaker 3: do it now. Have financial freedom now so that when
Speaker 3: things get harder, you can pull back. And because I
Speaker 3: was committed to those reasons, understanding that it comes at
Speaker 3: certain costs, and I weigh those pros and cons and
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm willing to do this, I went for it.
Speaker 3: And when people read my story, I'm not saying this
Speaker 3: has to be for everyone. I'm just saying, hey, take
Speaker 3: what you want from it, and learn from how over
Speaker 3: time I understood the mental health is a huge part
Speaker 3: of this, and at the very least, make your mental
Speaker 3: health front and center whenever you decide to pursue something
Speaker 3: like this.
Speaker 2: Totally, it's not surprising that you, like I feel like
Speaker 2: you were taking a very research based, analytical approach to frontloading.
Speaker 1: The sacrifice like this.
Speaker 2: So going back to photography, like you know, you mentioned
Speaker 2: how like y'all weren't touching that money at all when
Speaker 2: you got married.
Speaker 1: You also chose to live off of the lower of your.
Speaker 2: Two incomes, which I think, I think to most folks
Speaker 2: sounds pretty radical. Was this also to essentially be able
Speaker 2: to give you and your husband for y'all to have
Speaker 2: more options down the road?
Speaker 3: Ah? Yeah. I actually credit him for the idea, because
Speaker 3: that was not mine. He had been very influenced with
Speaker 3: a lot of readings, particularly this one book by Elizabeth
Speaker 3: Warren where it detailed how the two income trapped Today,
Speaker 3: it's actually harder for families with two incomes today to
Speaker 3: live at the same standard living than several decades ago.
Speaker 3: Cause of living has just risen significantly. He noted, Look,
Speaker 3: the reality is you are a female. You can't change that,
Speaker 3: not really. And the moment you become pregnant, the moment
Speaker 3: you become a mother to a young child, it's going
Speaker 3: to affect your career. It's going to affect your ability
Speaker 3: to really push that career. So what if we kind
Speaker 3: of head off that fear of loss of income or
Speaker 3: loss of career trajectory by just securing it now when
Speaker 3: we don't have kids. Best way to do it, the
Speaker 3: easiest way to mathematically approximate it is we live off
Speaker 3: of one income today, so that in the future, if
Speaker 3: one of us does not earn income, we wouldn't be
Speaker 3: that financially affected.
Speaker 1: Yes, like you don't have to change a thing then,
Speaker 1: because you're used to just the one income. And yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some extra expenses having that baby, but you've also
Speaker 1: funneled aside that income for so long that you can
Speaker 1: tap into some of those resources when or if you
Speaker 1: decided to stop working. Exactly why do you think nobody
Speaker 1: does that? Shun? I mean, it feels like it's incredibly
Speaker 1: countercultural to have that money flowing in and then to
Speaker 1: say we're not spending a time of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's not really celebrated, it's not sexy, it's
Speaker 3: not made for Instagram for example. And also, I think
Speaker 3: that most of the conversations that I entered in business
Speaker 3: school going to women's you know, women's NBA panels and
Speaker 3: all those corporate panels, is they're trying to encourage you
Speaker 3: to try to figure out to make it as both
Speaker 3: a working person and also as a mom's young children,
Speaker 3: they're like, you can still make it work. And what
Speaker 3: my husband and I are saying is, let's be real,
Speaker 3: it's not going to be the same. And I don't
Speaker 3: think most people want to confront that reality. They want
Speaker 3: to ignore it or use more money to solve for it,
Speaker 3: whereas we're saying, we're not using more money to at
Speaker 3: that time to solve for it. We're building up the
Speaker 3: financial base now. But again that comes with a sacrifice
Speaker 3: of not being able to party or travel or eat
Speaker 3: out as much as our NBA counterparts and just leading
Speaker 3: more of a quiet, frugal life.
Speaker 2: How much of that do you think has to do
Speaker 2: with your happiness now? Like literally Jill and I were
Speaker 2: having a conversation this morning as we're walking to go
Speaker 2: get some coffee. But how when you shift your expectations
Speaker 2: for what you are looking for in life, Like so,
Speaker 2: you know, we did the quote unquote smart things when
Speaker 2: we were younger, we started investing, but because of that,
Speaker 2: it meant that there wasn't i don't know, like a
Speaker 2: super high bar as to what like to the degree
Speaker 2: of partying that we should have been doing. And so
Speaker 2: then you move on in life and you enter into
Speaker 2: a new stage, and the fact that we're not doing
Speaker 2: those things. It's like we've sort of set our expectations
Speaker 2: back in our twenties of what we want our lives
Speaker 2: to look like. Therefore, like right now we both feel
Speaker 2: incredibly blessed, incredibly happy.
Speaker 1: These are the salad days.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you feel that way regards I mean, just
Speaker 2: because of the fact that you and your husband, that
Speaker 2: y'all set yourselves up for so many different options like that.
Speaker 3: I mean, who gets to claim that she can basically
Speaker 3: nap anytime she wants school?
Speaker 2: That's pretty nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is literally my day. I sometimes choose to
Speaker 3: nap on top of.
Speaker 1: That financial independence, you can nap whenever you want. That's
Speaker 1: great branding.
Speaker 3: No nap whenever you want. I also, I was in
Speaker 3: a very corporate culture for many years and work for
Speaker 3: two fortune five hundred corporate companies, and you cannot be
Speaker 3: your authentic self when you're high up in corporate. You
Speaker 3: serve shareholders, you report to the c suite. You have
Speaker 3: to walk, talk, and act a certain way in order
Speaker 3: for you to maintain job security. And that also comes
Speaker 3: with I mean literally there's email chains for someone sayce,
Speaker 3: you have to keep track of fifty people that just
Speaker 3: you know, that's a lot of work. And I walked
Speaker 3: away from that because I was like, I'm kind of
Speaker 3: sick and tired of it, and I don't need to
Speaker 3: do it, and that takes away so much weight off
Speaker 3: of my shoulders. Every day. I started noticing I left
Speaker 3: corporate middle of twenty twenty three after having my second child,
Speaker 3: that I was just like, I was starting to just
Speaker 3: be happy again in the morning, looking forward to waking up,
Speaker 3: driving down with narrowive thought on my mind, no stress,
Speaker 3: no pressure other than okay, let's make sure my kids
Speaker 3: don't off themselves. That's also a challenge, but it's a
Speaker 3: different set of challenges that is incredibly fulfilling for me.
Speaker 3: And I don't feel like I'm giving away the best
Speaker 3: time of my life to somebody who doesn't really deserve it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great, Okay. To get there, though, you had
Speaker 1: to not only have the two incomes and live on
Speaker 1: just one of them. You had to then, I guess,
Speaker 1: dial back, the expenses significantly compared to your peers who
Speaker 1: were in similar positions. The New York Post ended up
Speaker 1: calling you the millennial cheap skate. I'm like, what lengths
Speaker 1: were you going to to reduce expenses? And maybe what
Speaker 1: are some of the more odd ones, because those are
Speaker 1: always fun to go over, the things that people mostly
Speaker 1: aren't thinking about.
Speaker 3: I think I was in such a bubble with my
Speaker 3: husband that it didn't occur to me how weird we were.
Speaker 3: And I'm not sure if this is even weird, So
Speaker 3: I'll just talk the top things that really moved the needle.
Speaker 3: Number one, we got into a rent stabilized apartment, which
Speaker 3: is clutch because your rent doesn't really go up, but
Speaker 3: it's below market rent. I think relative to our peers,
Speaker 3: we were probably saving two maybe three thousand dollars a month,
Speaker 3: relative different as day we're paying. But Grant sed the
Speaker 3: department is ramshackle, the toilet often breaks, and there was
Speaker 3: a two burner stove, no prep space. You know, it's
Speaker 3: missing some key skeleton bones. And then another one, which
Speaker 3: I think most New Yorkers can relate to, is no
Speaker 3: car ownership. Now I live in Sound in California, you
Speaker 3: cannot get anywhere without a car. It's actually very significant
Speaker 3: part of your budget because it's paying for the car
Speaker 3: and the gas. If you have a gas car, the
Speaker 3: insurance which always goes up, and the maintenance when the
Speaker 3: car starts to break down, not to mention registration fees,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. So those are number one, and
Speaker 3: number two is housing and transportation. Number three came down
Speaker 3: to our daily food. Both my husband and I worked
Speaker 3: jobs where they would compass food at night if we
Speaker 3: work past a certain hour, which we almost always did
Speaker 3: at that point, so we were smart about which restaurants
Speaker 3: we ordered from such that it would give us enough
Speaker 3: for leftovers the next day, so no need to pack lunch.
Speaker 3: So basically Monday the Friday eight very spends very little
Speaker 3: on groceries. As I mentioned earlier in the podcast, we
Speaker 3: used a lot of points and miles to travel at
Speaker 3: that time, not lay flat seats. This is normal economy.
Speaker 3: And you know, at that time was still okay to
Speaker 3: crash at friend's houses and not get a weird look
Speaker 3: because we offered the same then clothing that we rarely
Speaker 3: bought clothing, and when I did, I did it off
Speaker 3: of sample sales clothing swaps of my friends consignment. Poshmark
Speaker 3: had just started, so it's buying on Poshmark and eBay.
Speaker 3: And also like by virtue of having a tiny apartment
Speaker 3: it was four hundred and twenty square feet. You just
Speaker 3: can't own a.
Speaker 1: Lot of things, a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, So I mean I borrowed like hiking gear
Speaker 3: a bar from a friend who hiked a lot. Sometimes
Speaker 3: I would just go without some things like hey do
Speaker 3: I really need to have this or can something else
Speaker 3: be used instead? And you just learned to live off
Speaker 3: of very little throughout, So it's hard to say what
Speaker 3: really moved a needil. I think it was literally just
Speaker 3: like look at every spending category in our life and
Speaker 3: ask ourselves what is it that we're truly trying to
Speaker 3: get at and can we get at that with a
Speaker 3: relatively low cost.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it sounds like sounds like you addressed everything.
Speaker 2: I mean literally starting with the biggest ones, right housing,
Speaker 2: then transportation that you address, food, you address clothing, Like
Speaker 2: these are all the spending categories, and so if you
Speaker 2: have if you're challenging yourself in some way in each
Speaker 2: one of those categories, you're going to see a massive
Speaker 2: savings rate. And it's fascinating too. I mean, like I
Speaker 2: hear you saying, like talking through all these areas of
Speaker 2: life and It tells me that you've got to be
Speaker 2: on the same page as your husband. You said that
Speaker 2: you give him credit with you know, hey, we're only
Speaker 2: going to live on one of our incomes. Were you
Speaker 2: looking for that or were you did you find yourself
Speaker 2: naturally drawn to that, because it almost sounds like he
Speaker 2: may have been the original fire convert, like maybe he
Speaker 2: kind of came across it. Correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 2: But I'm curious if you how important you think that
Speaker 2: is to have a partner who's fully on board like that.
Speaker 3: I think you need to have one hundred percent trust
Speaker 3: in your partner should you choose to marry them. And
Speaker 3: even though at the time I couldn't really see what
Speaker 3: was ahead, partially because I was still like, well, I
Speaker 3: don't know, I think we keep working, it wasn't We
Speaker 3: weren't going for fire. We were going for financial security
Speaker 3: in the event of having a child. So that's very different.
Speaker 3: And I later learned that we were doing things that
Speaker 3: the fire community was doing, and I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: I didn't know that this is called fire. And at
Speaker 3: first I did fight against it because I had not
Speaker 3: resolved a lot of my own issues related to friendship
Speaker 3: and mental health and things like that. So in the
Speaker 3: process of me fighting the budget and trying to make
Speaker 3: it work because I earnestly wanted us to have a
Speaker 3: good marriage and I wanted to make the budget work,
Speaker 3: but I was the one that was spending over budget
Speaker 3: for several months. That's how I came to realize this
Speaker 3: had nothing to do with my math skills, with my
Speaker 3: budgeting skills, which I was already pretty good at, but
Speaker 3: everything to do with my attitude and where I was
Speaker 3: deriving joy and meeting from. And once I realized that
Speaker 3: that was the root cause and I started addressing that,
Speaker 3: we were able to align much more quickly going forward
Speaker 3: on our financial goals.
Speaker 1: You guys had some disagreements along the way, right, That's
Speaker 1: kind of what you're hinting at too. What were those
Speaker 1: conversations like when you're talking about savings rate and the
Speaker 1: ideal savings rate, where to pair back, what the budget
Speaker 1: should look like? Because I love that you point out
Speaker 1: kind of the change that needs to happen and what
Speaker 1: brings you meaning. But there is also the reality too
Speaker 1: that you might say, I don't know a seventy percent
Speaker 1: savings rate. Do we actually need to hit.
Speaker 3: That I definitely challenged it because I wanted to quote
Speaker 3: unquote enjoy more life. Now I was the more social
Speaker 3: one in the relationship. I wanted to see my friends
Speaker 3: more often, and I felt restricted by the budget. There
Speaker 3: were networking events that I gave up on because I
Speaker 3: was like, the registration fee is too much for my
Speaker 3: networking budget for that month. And the main kind of
Speaker 3: argument between us was I thought I had had a
Speaker 3: much longer career to go, and I thought that we
Speaker 3: could just continue to make more money and enjoy a
Speaker 3: little bit more. And he was looking ahead at the
Speaker 3: reality of being a parent a young child, and he's thinking,
Speaker 3: you know, that might not be the case, and it
Speaker 3: is actually very meaningful to dedicate the young years towards
Speaker 3: focusing on your children instead of the career. But obviously,
Speaker 3: because neither of us were parents at the time, it
Speaker 3: was really hard to understand what that actually meant. But
Speaker 3: over time our other friends began having kids, I kind
Speaker 3: of saw that happen, and also I was able to
Speaker 3: fulfill my own social desires without having to splurge on
Speaker 3: eating out with my friends like that. I just figured
Speaker 3: that out problem, solved it, and we came closer to
Speaker 3: sharing the same vision of what is the freedom that
Speaker 3: we're truly working towards. And I finally learned over time
Speaker 3: that joy, that freedom is not going to come from
Speaker 3: a career. It's not going to come from fancy food
Speaker 3: and nice clothing. It's truly the freedom to do whatever
Speaker 3: the heck you wanted to do.
Speaker 2: Like nap, I'm curious just to get super practical here.
Speaker 2: I think I heard you say something about a career
Speaker 2: networking budget. Did you have an actual line item for that?
Speaker 2: And like, I mean, how specific how to the penny
Speaker 2: did you get with your monthly budgets.
Speaker 3: Yes, at the time, we were very specific in like
Speaker 3: we had a line budget for food at home versus
Speaker 3: food outside and entertainment and clothing and all of that.
Speaker 3: Networking was important because we met a business school, you're
Speaker 3: taught just innately how to network. So, for example, he
Speaker 3: had a membership to a men's networking group. For me,
Speaker 3: it was more one off events in different topics of
Speaker 3: career things that I was interested in, and for the
Speaker 3: most part it fit our budget. It was just that
Speaker 3: every now and then an NBA oriented event would get
Speaker 3: a bit fit and I was like, oops, that is
Speaker 3: a little bit outside of my budget. And at that time,
Speaker 3: the reason why it was so specific was primarily directed
Speaker 3: at me, the person who overspent the budget. It was
Speaker 3: just like, Okay, if you have a hard time, then
Speaker 3: we're going to put boundaries on each category to try
Speaker 3: to guide it. As I got better and better at
Speaker 3: lowering my spending and also being happy with it, eventually
Speaker 3: we moved to the system that we have now, which
Speaker 3: is which is called the Trilling twelvemonth metric. In any
Speaker 3: at any point in time, we average out our monthly
Speaker 3: spending over the last twelve months, which kind of smooths
Speaker 3: out seasonality like one time event, you know, Christmas for example,
Speaker 3: and we take a look and now we're like wow.
Speaker 3: Over the last eleven to twelve years of marriage, our
Speaker 3: Trilling twelve month metric basically it grows in line with inflation.
Speaker 3: Like obviously, as inflation changes, the cost go up. And
Speaker 3: the main changes are when we add a child to
Speaker 3: our family. We're now going on to three children by
Speaker 3: the end of this year. Oh correct, and thank you.
Speaker 3: Otherwise it's been pretty steady, Betty. And so because of that,
Speaker 3: over this decade plus of working together on our finances,
Speaker 3: We're no longer netpicking each thing anymore. And I don't
Speaker 3: think at this point of marriage you should be. If
Speaker 3: you are aligning, you work out those disagreements early on,
Speaker 3: and you come to it with an open minded approach
Speaker 3: of saying, my spouse isn't against me, it's work for
Speaker 3: each other. It's just we have different approaches. Eventually it's
Speaker 3: going to get easier.
Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, we've got a lot more we want
Speaker 1: to get to with you, Sean, specifically talking about saving
Speaker 1: money and household finances with kids. We'll talk about that
Speaker 1: stuff with you right after this.
Speaker 2: Right, we are back from the break again speaking with
Speaker 2: Sean Savedra and Sean, you mentioned this just a second ago.
Speaker 2: You touched on how like a few years ago is
Speaker 2: when you left Corporate America and you made that decision.
Speaker 2: But it sounds like you that there's sort of like
Speaker 2: the like a near death experience that was a part
Speaker 2: of that. And you know, you're talking about your kids
Speaker 2: and everything here. Talk to us about the birth of
Speaker 2: your second child and how that, I guess seemed like
Speaker 2: it allowed you to reevaluate some things in life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, things seemed fairly normal leading up to you know,
Speaker 3: the do date and everything, and the labor and delivery
Speaker 3: was actually better compared to my first so nothing seemed
Speaker 3: out of the ordinary other than I had a cold.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, just no, just sneezing a lot.
Speaker 3: Two days after arriving home, I had so much trouble breathing.
Speaker 3: One of my kids had an inhaler at the point
Speaker 3: I just started to borrow with his and inhaler and
Speaker 3: self medicating do not recommend, and overnight I started just
Speaker 3: wheezing so much. I got up. I was telling my
Speaker 3: husband I can barely breathe. He grabs our oximeter, because
Speaker 3: you know, everybody since COVID has an up blood alximitar
Speaker 3: measured it. He's like, you're at ninety. That does not
Speaker 3: sound right, and so he rushed me to the hospital.
Speaker 3: As it turned out, I had an asthma attack. I
Speaker 3: had adult onset asthma. I had no idea that this
Speaker 3: was me, and people weren't quite sure either at first,
Speaker 3: because I had recently just delivered. So people are like
Speaker 3: trying to rule out pulmonary embolism and scarier sounding hard
Speaker 3: issues that I don't know what they're called. But I
Speaker 3: was put in the ICU for a day and I
Speaker 3: was like, am I dying? Why am I in the ICU?
Speaker 3: Like I just don't have a good sense of like
Speaker 3: you know how bad it is because I was also
Speaker 3: asleep most of the time, and I think I freaked
Speaker 3: out the moment that I heard some patience room across
Speaker 3: from me there were Buddhist chants coming out of it,
Speaker 3: and later on the nurse told me they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: last rites for their religion.
Speaker 1: I was freaked out.
Speaker 3: I was like, Oh my gosh, people die in the ICU.
Speaker 3: Don't let that be me. I want to go home,
Speaker 3: want to be with my new boor I want to
Speaker 3: be with my family. And that was when I was like,
Speaker 3: if I if I want to die today, would I
Speaker 3: be proud of what I did in my life? And
Speaker 3: the answer was no, I want to do something different.
Speaker 3: And I only briefly shared Denie the birth announcement with
Speaker 3: my corporate team. My boss reblocked it to the rest
Speaker 3: of the team. She misspelled my son's name, and she
Speaker 3: didn't she like completely brushed off the fact, like she
Speaker 3: didn't even personally acknowledge to me. Oh my goodness, you
Speaker 3: are the ice you. I hope you're Okay, there was
Speaker 3: none of that In personal I was like, is this
Speaker 3: even somebody I really want to spend my time with
Speaker 3: going forward? Like eight hours a day?
Speaker 2: Not really?
Speaker 3: So say Ara sent in my resignation.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, and that those events in our lives will
Speaker 1: crystallize things, will help us see look at the past
Speaker 1: and then look towards the future, and said, do we
Speaker 1: do we want to continue along this trajectory. I'm curious too, though,
Speaker 1: like when you add kids, you've got two, you're adding
Speaker 1: a third. It changes your expenses, yes, and it also
Speaker 1: changes maybe some of the wealth goals that you're shooting for,
Speaker 1: especially and I'm curious to hear your take on this too.
Speaker 1: When people say, oh, it's going to cost three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to raise a kid, that's before you even
Speaker 1: pay for college. One do you think that's the reality?
Speaker 1: And two? How has expanding your family maybe changed some
Speaker 1: of those financial goals.
Speaker 3: Both my husband and I made the conscious choice to
Speaker 3: continue working even after hitting our original fire number because
Speaker 3: that original fire number was for the two of us,
Speaker 3: but were like, that's just the two of us and
Speaker 3: does not include children. So for several years afterwards, we
Speaker 3: were still socking away money, so our network continued to grow. Then,
Speaker 3: recognizing that one of the most expensive things that you
Speaker 3: would have to pay for yourself out of pocket if
Speaker 3: both of us became unemployed, as healthcare, he made the
Speaker 3: conscious choice to take a job that met a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of lifestyle needs, like it's not a
Speaker 3: super crazy job, he can work remotely, and it came
Speaker 3: with fantastic healthcare. And so that's sort of the conscious
Speaker 3: choice that he made. And also he wasn't as driven
Speaker 3: to retire early as I was. So I think those
Speaker 3: are the two main things that we took care of financially.
Speaker 3: Is we worked a little bit longer to build up
Speaker 3: a larger nest egg which can be used to pay
Speaker 3: for children's college as well. And then the one of
Speaker 3: the larger ongoing costs, being healthcare, is secured by him
Speaker 3: still working. Now that being said, and I do a
Speaker 3: lot of forecasts for my private coaching clients who also
Speaker 3: have children. I think there's essentially two decisions that can
Speaker 3: really change your budget for your child. One is do
Speaker 3: you wish to send them to private school from K
Speaker 3: to twelve? And then the second is how much of
Speaker 3: their college fund do you wish to fund. For most people,
Speaker 3: I would say, look, public school is an option, and
Speaker 3: it does save you a lot of money, especially if
Speaker 3: you have multiple children to send them to public school
Speaker 3: K to twelve. Then second, I tell most parents, take
Speaker 3: care of your own retirement before you fund a very
Speaker 3: large college fund, because by the time your children go
Speaker 3: to college, you are much closer to retirement than your
Speaker 3: children are to themselves retiring and saving up for all
Speaker 3: of that. So don't feel guilty that you have to
Speaker 3: put your own retirement as a priority over funding and
Speaker 3: making sure your kids don't end up caring student loans,
Speaker 3: because there's a lot of things that can happen that
Speaker 3: can lead to your children paying off loans pretty early.
Speaker 2: Something I'm hearing you speak to is that it's like
Speaker 2: you and your husband both have taken a more practical
Speaker 2: approach to your careers and sort of some of these
Speaker 2: like huge life decisions that you typically make in life.
Speaker 2: And you've got a chapter in the book talking about
Speaker 2: your identity not being tied up in your work, and
Speaker 2: I hear that played out here by the decision that
Speaker 2: is like that you said that he made. It sounds
Speaker 2: like he took a less prestigious job, but maybe that
Speaker 2: he was able to do that because he had less
Speaker 2: of his identity tied up into that. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, you're able to garner all these additional benefits
Speaker 2: like amazing flexibility, being able to work from home, awesome
Speaker 2: health care benefits. Do you think that too many folks
Speaker 2: are pursuing something I've heard folks talk about this, like
Speaker 2: where it's like, oh, I want to pursue the job
Speaker 2: that I want to be able to tell people that
Speaker 2: I have, like where I can state a certain title,
Speaker 2: and they're not thinking about the life that it gains
Speaker 2: you as much as we should be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I don't know how college commencement speeches go
Speaker 3: these days, but I am so tired of all of
Speaker 3: those commencement speeches. During the time that I graduated from college.
Speaker 3: Was just like pursue what you love, shoot for the moon,
Speaker 3: and then you'll land among the stars or something like that.
Speaker 3: Because these are often given by celebrities and CEOs who
Speaker 3: were the exception. They're the exception, not the rule. Yes,
Speaker 3: they made it by following what they loved, but the
Speaker 3: vast majority of the college graduates they're speaking to are
Speaker 3: never going to get to that goal, and it's irresponsible
Speaker 3: to put out that as the main piece of advice,
Speaker 3: whereas I'm much more practical. I'm like, do something that
Speaker 3: you're good enough at that you can tolerate that, pay
Speaker 3: the bills, and then figure out what you want to
Speaker 3: do after that. But if you can't even cover your bills,
Speaker 3: you're in for a lifetime of angst and worry. That
Speaker 3: is just not worth it.
Speaker 1: I'm curious to talk about the intersection of mental health
Speaker 1: and finances too, showing that seems like something that you've
Speaker 1: really thought long and hard about. And you've said that
Speaker 1: most money experts they don't talk about mental health and money,
Speaker 1: that that maybe is a little taboo or just something
Speaker 1: that's left on the table. It does seem like we're
Speaker 1: seeing that dam begin to break a little bit. What
Speaker 1: tack do you take when talking about the intersection of
Speaker 1: our money and our brains.
Speaker 3: I often have people who are deep in credit card
Speaker 3: debt or are just really struggling with money come to
Speaker 3: me and the phrase they use is I'm bad with money.
Speaker 3: It kind of implies that either they weren't educated or
Speaker 3: they're not managing their finance as well. And that's why
Speaker 3: they're seeing the money problems that they're seeing today. I
Speaker 3: change that completely by saying, if you feel like you're
Speaker 3: struggling with money, it's indicative of a deeper issue that
Speaker 3: is usually not related to money at all, and everything
Speaker 3: to do with your mental health and how you got here.
Speaker 3: So the money problems are just the symptom the real disease.
Speaker 3: The real issue is something deeper, usually related to mental health,
Speaker 3: and I found in my coaching almost always is related
Speaker 3: to some form of depression, anxiety, or build up of
Speaker 3: trauma from childhood. The thing is, there's just not enough
Speaker 3: funding for any scientific research to really make that case.
Speaker 3: I looked into PUBMIT, I started looking for scientific evidence
Speaker 3: to back up what I intuitively understood from my years
Speaker 3: of coaching. It just wasn't there. There were bits and pieces,
Speaker 3: and so in the research from my book, I cobbled
Speaker 3: together what I felt were the best set of scientific
Speaker 3: studies that could blend together the story. But I acknowledge
Speaker 3: that it's still imperfect. But that's the premise of how
Speaker 3: I coach now, which is, let me understand how you
Speaker 3: grew up around money, how was it normalized or not,
Speaker 3: and then were there any really traumatic experiences that you
Speaker 3: went through both as a child and now some of
Speaker 3: that could include divorce, loss of a loved one, a
Speaker 3: really bad time at work, and those can actually explain
Speaker 3: so much of your behaviors today. And then by addressing
Speaker 3: the root of those events and experiences, then we can
Speaker 3: actually change people's behaviors and change their money over time.
Speaker 2: In your coaching. And not to oversimplify things like I
Speaker 2: doubt it is this clear cut, but do more of
Speaker 2: your clients approach their problems and just how they handle
Speaker 2: their money with an abundance mindset versus folks who come
Speaker 2: in with more of a scarcity mindset? Do you see
Speaker 2: more of one or the other? And I'm curious if
Speaker 2: you if you think one of those mindsets is more
Speaker 2: challenging than the other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, say mostly scarcity, because if people had abundance mindset,
Speaker 3: they're probably actually quite successful because that's what the mindset does,
Speaker 3: and so they wouldn't need my help all that much.
Speaker 3: So probably I come from a biased opinion that I
Speaker 3: see more scarcity mindset, and I think, you know, it's
Speaker 3: never going to be perfect, but I think it's helpful
Speaker 3: for people to have the experience that I have of
Speaker 3: seeing hundreds and hundreds of people's real numbers to be like, Okay,
Speaker 3: some of this makes sense and some of it is
Speaker 3: a little bit out of bounds, and here's like what
Speaker 3: we can start doing to change things. And then also
Speaker 3: I then personalize my analysis based on like. For I'll
Speaker 3: just give a very broad example. If somebody grew up
Speaker 3: with seeing one of their parents lose a lot of
Speaker 3: money on the stock market, it's called availability bias. They're
Speaker 3: going to grow up thinking, Okay, I'm going to lose
Speaker 3: money on a stock market if I invest in it,
Speaker 3: and they're much more likely to avoid investing because they
Speaker 3: saw such a salient example of a failing And that's
Speaker 3: scarcity mindset, because you overamplify one negative event, whereas it's
Speaker 3: scarce in abundance mindset. You kind of have to fight
Speaker 3: that childhood tendency and be like, yes, I saw something
Speaker 3: really really bad happen, but I'm going to look at
Speaker 3: the data and convince myself that the vast majority of
Speaker 3: time that bad thing is not going to happen. And
Speaker 3: that's very hard for somebody to learn that firsthand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it takes time, I feel like for people,
Speaker 1: especially to something that happen in childhood those things. Trying
Speaker 1: to unwrite the script that gets written is a multi
Speaker 1: year long process, and it takes a lot of intentionality,
Speaker 1: and if you're not being intentional, that script stays around
Speaker 1: an awful long time. It just doesn't get undone by itself.
Speaker 1: Part of it is mindset. But then there are also
Speaker 1: ingrained habits that people develop when it comes to how
Speaker 1: they handle money, especially when it comes to reckless use
Speaker 1: of money. So how do you help people work through
Speaker 1: changing those those habits maybe that they've gotten accustomed to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a client who has she admitted herself
Speaker 3: she has a makeup problem. She said, I have a
Speaker 3: lot of makeup. I never use it up. But I
Speaker 3: was like, okay, tell me about it. How did this
Speaker 3: come about? Well, as it turns out, two things. One,
Speaker 3: her mother plays an outside uh put a lot of
Speaker 3: emphasis on looking esthetically pleasing as a value growing up.
Speaker 3: And two, her mom always told her always go to
Speaker 3: the sale section, but she misinterpreted as a child of
Speaker 3: when there's a sale, go buy something. So you can
Speaker 3: notice how that got miscommunicated, and so she would always
Speaker 3: be shopping makeup sales. And so once I made that connection.
Speaker 3: I was like, Okay, there's a misinterpretation of something that
Speaker 3: your mom said over and over and over to you,
Speaker 3: like literally your brain interpreted as a rule. So we're
Speaker 3: gonna undo that rule. Where I actually said, you know,
Speaker 3: she has to unsubscribe from all sale emails from her
Speaker 3: favorite makeup retailers and brands, and then she's going to
Speaker 3: use up her makeup stash before she buys something new.
Speaker 3: And that's just a microcosm of little tweaks that I
Speaker 3: do to help people recognize how their habits have formed overtime.
Speaker 1: Kind of like emptying that pantry before you get back
Speaker 1: to the grocery store.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, you give great examples too throughout your book,
Speaker 2: like you're kind of highlighting just the trigger action reward mechanism.
Speaker 2: And you quote friend of the show Charles Douhig in
Speaker 2: your book, oh as well, he's a yeah, y'all are
Speaker 2: both able to highlight how it is that we are
Speaker 2: responding to the stimulus around us that sometimes we just
Speaker 2: end up becoming our own worst enemies as we thought
Speaker 2: our own progress shun. We've got more to get to.
Speaker 2: We're gonna yeah, maybe after the break we'll get to
Speaker 2: the American dream and whether or not you think that's
Speaker 2: still possible today. We'll get to that and more right
Speaker 2: after this.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back from the break, still talking with
Speaker 1: shunks of adra, talking about cultivating a wealthy mindset, and
Speaker 1: just so much good information already. Sean, I'm curious to like,
Speaker 1: we talked about maybe your early adult life, but we
Speaker 1: didn't really go back into your childhood and you ended
Speaker 1: up you actually lived the first few years of your
Speaker 1: life in China. I am so curious how did that
Speaker 1: experience and the influence of your parents impact your frugality
Speaker 1: and those early years of marriage, because, like we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, the impact of our family of origin, It's
Speaker 1: like it matters in how we think about and how
Speaker 1: we relate to money.
Speaker 3: It's so funny, you guys asked this because a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks ago, I visited Boston, Massachusetts as part of
Speaker 3: my book tour, and I got booked for a private
Speaker 3: corporate event. That corporation happened to be in the town
Speaker 3: and my parents and I grew up in when we
Speaker 3: immigrated to the US. It was Lexington, Massachusetts, and going
Speaker 3: back there, Wow, I brought back all the nostalgia, Like
Speaker 3: I was trying to relive it in writing my book,
Speaker 3: like being there makes a huge difference, And I realized
Speaker 3: that as a child, you don't have a lot of
Speaker 3: context for how you grew up unless your parents chose
Speaker 3: to tell you. But you don't. And when we were
Speaker 3: in Lexington at the time, we lived literally like the
Speaker 3: last street before I would no longer qualify for the
Speaker 3: school district. We had one of the smallest houses, one
Speaker 3: of the smallest plots, and I remember my parents did
Speaker 3: everything like they did all the yardwork. My mom did
Speaker 3: so much housework. My parents drove the ugliest, tiniest cars possible,
Speaker 3: and it was a very frugal light.
Speaker 2: Including the green car. You document that in your book
Speaker 2: how your dad was able to get the sale or
Speaker 2: get to get a massive discount because you got the
Speaker 2: ugly green car. My dad used to drive a yellow
Speaker 2: Subaru so called the bruceban.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'll see that bright green once a year driving
Speaker 3: around here. I'll put out to my husband, like, that's
Speaker 3: the color of that car, because you never see it.
Speaker 3: But the thing is, my parents did influenced me so
Speaker 3: strongly through that in two ways. One they normalized frugality
Speaker 3: as something not to be ashamed of, like my parents
Speaker 3: did things with great attitude, Like they were just like, look,
Speaker 3: you just gotta work hard towards what you wanted. Now,
Speaker 3: I didn't know what they wanted, but I saw the
Speaker 3: work really hard. And then the second thing was, which
Speaker 3: is a little bit more misinformed on my end, I
Speaker 3: literally thought we were the poorest people because my parents'
Speaker 3: way of approaching things to seem so frugal compared to
Speaker 3: what I was able to observe every now and then
Speaker 3: from my friend's parents, which wasn't much. And it wasn't
Speaker 3: until much later in life when my parents trusted that
Speaker 3: I actually was responsible with money and they started revealing
Speaker 3: a little bit more of why they did all that.
Speaker 3: It blew my mind, like several instances, one that they
Speaker 3: actually had enough saved to pay me full ride to
Speaker 3: any school that I wanted. That was not an expectation
Speaker 3: that I had, So I was like, where did this
Speaker 3: come from? My dad said, that's investing. That's like what
Speaker 3: we've been doing the last several years. And then later
Speaker 3: on when my parents did choose to share their estate
Speaker 3: planning stuff with me, and I was like, holy cow,
Speaker 3: they have way more money than I ever thought that
Speaker 3: they did when I realized that was what they were
Speaker 3: working towards and that this actually is how you build wealth.
Speaker 3: It's just that as a child, I didn't know that
Speaker 3: that was what it was.
Speaker 1: So you said, that's how you build wealth.
Speaker 2: Do you think that that's a good strategy for how
Speaker 2: you should raise your kids as well? I'm curious if
Speaker 2: you feel similarly, I guess in how it is that
Speaker 2: you and your husband are going to raise your kids.
Speaker 2: Do you think that them essentially, like withholding that information
Speaker 2: is a part of what allowed you to thrive and
Speaker 2: to be ambitious and to go out there to create
Speaker 2: your own thing.
Speaker 3: My friends, especially those of those of my friends who
Speaker 3: grew up similarly as I did in immigrant Asian American households,
Speaker 3: they're like, oh my goodness, Sean, your parents are so Asian,
Speaker 3: because it is a very common Asian parenting tactic to
Speaker 3: you know, withold information, be really strict on children, and
Speaker 3: then like boom, something good happens at the end. But
Speaker 3: you're like, what the heck they what did they just
Speaker 3: put me through? So I would say less emotional, no,
Speaker 3: mantimulation is my hope. But I do see the point
Speaker 3: because there is a phrase in Chinese food worth Sunday
Speaker 3: which means wealth is not going to go beyond three generations.
Speaker 3: The wisdom in that phrase is saying families that are
Speaker 3: wealthy are eventually going to turn poor again because the
Speaker 3: habits and the mindset is the hardest part to teach,
Speaker 3: and if the wealthy parents then give everything to their children,
Speaker 3: those children are not going to understand the value of
Speaker 3: the work ethic that it takes to get there. So
Speaker 3: my husband and I are trying to walk a finer
Speaker 3: balance between not giving its every little thing that our
Speaker 3: children want, but also giving them a you know, a
Speaker 3: well life that focuses on their health, focus on their education,
Speaker 3: while still making it very hopefully very important for them
Speaker 3: to see that it takes work. And I think for
Speaker 3: that reason, we actually both don't outsource all that much
Speaker 3: household work, like our children see us grocery shopping, vacuuming
Speaker 3: the house, washing the dishes. We could easily outsource all
Speaker 3: of this, but we actually made a conscious choice to
Speaker 3: make household work very visible from an early age so
Speaker 3: that our children't understand there's some things that you just
Speaker 3: have to do in order for life to happen and
Speaker 3: that's just part of adult team Sean.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's more pessimism about the American dream
Speaker 1: these days, and I feel like I'm talking to someone
Speaker 1: who's achieved the American dream. How would you respond to
Speaker 1: people who think that it doesn't exist or that it's
Speaker 1: impossible to achieve.
Speaker 3: Wealth is coded, and it's your job to break the code.
Speaker 3: So my parents and I, we were not born into wealth, right,
Speaker 3: but we did whatever we could, both my parents, whose
Speaker 3: English is not as good as mine, as well as myself.
Speaker 3: Where you study how wealthy people think and work and
Speaker 3: you just do your best to break into it. Now,
Speaker 3: do I think I've hit a ceiling at some point
Speaker 3: in my corporate career. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know,
Speaker 3: because I didn't stick around long enough to find out.
Speaker 3: But I do think that believing that there is a
Speaker 3: lot to do on my end to try to figure
Speaker 3: out is kind of what kept me going. I'm also
Speaker 3: not as bought into the idea that a house is
Speaker 3: a sign that you've made it. I think that there's
Speaker 3: a lot of problems with the real estate industry in
Speaker 3: the US, and I think that people can just as
Speaker 3: easily build wealth through stock ownership, business ownership instead of
Speaker 3: real estate ownership, so I'm not tied to what your asset,
Speaker 3: your income generating asset, needs to look like. But at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, I would say, look, there
Speaker 3: are going to be things that you're always not going
Speaker 3: to have control over. You can't control the kind of
Speaker 3: family you were born into. You can't control, you know,
Speaker 3: certain demographic aspects that you know people might hire you
Speaker 3: based on. But you can control your attitude and how
Speaker 3: you choose to work within within the confines of the
Speaker 3: set of circumstances you've been given. And that's what I
Speaker 3: focus on.
Speaker 2: Very cool talk about your faith, Sean, because you touch
Speaker 2: on yeah, your faith, you talk, you touch on God.
Speaker 2: I'm curious as to how much that impacts how it
Speaker 2: is that you handle your money, because, like I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess depending on your background, Like Joel and I
Speaker 2: have conversations and we're like man like, sometimes it doesn't
Speaker 2: really enter the equation at all. But but then when
Speaker 2: you like take a step back, you realize that, like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is kind of propelling or creating like a backstop
Speaker 2: to how I see so much in the world, or
Speaker 2: how I treat people, or how I I don't know
Speaker 2: just like I guess what I believe the future holds
Speaker 2: for us. But yeah, I'm curious for you. How does
Speaker 2: it impact how how you handle your money? You already
Speaker 2: mentioned I guess you're generous spirit there at the beginning
Speaker 2: of the episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess. Throughout the podcast, one thing I didn't
Speaker 3: really say was a goal was to get filthy rich,
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of that has to do
Speaker 3: with my faith. Being rich is not the goal. It's
Speaker 3: the freedom that comes with being financially responsible that we
Speaker 3: were pursuing and an additional layer to our faith because
Speaker 3: I have spoken on handles with Christians for their life,
Speaker 3: But how can you reconcile being wealthy with what the
Speaker 3: Bible says? And I was like, no, the Bible never
Speaker 3: says money is bad. It says worship of money is bad.
Speaker 3: And money is actually one of the most frequently mentioned
Speaker 3: concepts in the Bible because God recognizes that it is
Speaker 3: one of the most seductive sources of power out there.
Speaker 3: And so my husband and I we both believe that
Speaker 3: we are God's portfolio managers. He chose to give us
Speaker 3: some amount of income, some amount of well, some amount
Speaker 3: of resources, and it is our job to give to
Speaker 3: God the greatest return, which is not necessarily financial return.
Speaker 3: But I think a delicate balance between making sure that
Speaker 3: the money is invested because the Parable of the Ten
Speaker 3: Talents talks about that, and also making sure that the
Speaker 3: way we choose to spend our money follows God's values
Speaker 3: and principles.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Thanks, thanks for sharing that.
Speaker 2: Well, not no Joe's gonna take his money and go
Speaker 2: bury in the ground.
Speaker 1: Right, that would be the opposite Matt, of what we're
Speaker 1: taught in that passage. No, Sean, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us. We really appreciate it. Where can our
Speaker 1: listeners find out more about you, what you're up to
Speaker 1: and your new book? Awesome?
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I'm on Instagram and YouTube under save my Sense all
Speaker 3: one word, and you can also find me at my
Speaker 3: website savemsense dot com.
Speaker 1: Very cool.
Speaker 2: We'll make sure to link to all that in the
Speaker 2: show notes. Sean, thanks so much for joining us today.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I have a fantastic week, all.
Speaker 1: Right, Matt. That was a great combo. Love Seun and
Speaker 1: her outlook on life songs of Vadra. Yeah, just and
Speaker 1: her history is just a really producing one. And to
Speaker 1: turn bullying into this like monstrosity per you know, financial
Speaker 1: independence building mindset is is pretty cool. So what was
Speaker 1: your big takeaway from this episode?
Speaker 2: Well, well, I hope she wasn't bullied because her parents
Speaker 2: were taken the frugal path, you know, but like, honestly,
Speaker 2: it doesn't make fun of you for anything, you know,
Speaker 2: And then like, well maybe maybe I should make that
Speaker 2: my takeaway. The fact that her parents made frugality normal,
Speaker 2: you know, like like they talked about it, it was a part,
Speaker 2: it was their lifestyle. It's something that they did together.
Speaker 2: I liked how she even her and her husband have
Speaker 2: like said that they want to intentionally do things in
Speaker 2: their day to day lives to demonstrate with their kids
Speaker 2: that like no, no, no, no, you don't have a
Speaker 2: silver spoon in your mouth or anything like that. These
Speaker 2: are things that you were going to do and that
Speaker 2: you were going to see us doing. And I just
Speaker 2: I don't know that really resonates me. It resonates with me.
Speaker 1: Even if you can afford to outsource it, that's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, intentionally choosing not to in order to instill certain values.
Speaker 2: It's it's kind of like embracing the suck, like embracing
Speaker 2: the fact that there are hard things that we're going
Speaker 2: to do in life. In this case, these are things
Speaker 2: that we can avoid doing. But it sort of sets
Speaker 2: the expectation of, well, no matter what, there are going
Speaker 2: to be hard things, and so the better that we
Speaker 2: can I think, overcome those things. While we have an
Speaker 2: option to to not necessarily go through these things, right
Speaker 2: like you can.
Speaker 1: Pay to avoid all of that.
Speaker 2: I think it's only going to make you even more
Speaker 2: resilient and capable of handling the things that where there
Speaker 2: isn't an option to.
Speaker 1: Sidestep those those hardships. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of a roundabout take away from me,
Speaker 2: what about.
Speaker 1: You, I'm gonna piggyback on that and say on the
Speaker 1: freak gality note when shown at the beginning of the episode,
Speaker 1: she's essentially outlining her intense resourcefulness. And I think in
Speaker 1: a world where it is so knee jerk easy to
Speaker 1: get almost anything we want whenever we want it, whether
Speaker 1: that means just an Amazon purchase, even if we have
Speaker 1: the money, because ah yeah, I think I need that,
Speaker 1: let me just you know, one click to buy or
Speaker 1: whether that is buy now, pay later, because like I
Speaker 1: want the thing, I don't have the money, But let
Speaker 1: me sign up for easy payments to get that thing now,
Speaker 1: even though man, I really should wait and save up
Speaker 1: to buy the thing. I want that resourcefulness, I think
Speaker 1: is it's something that's lacking more and more. It's like
Speaker 1: a muscle that's atrophied. And we could use some of that.
Speaker 1: And Shung had it in spades, and it was like whatever,
Speaker 1: not everybody can get a run controlled apartment, right, But
Speaker 1: then she highlights a bunch of other things that anybody
Speaker 1: can do, right borrowing hiking equipment from a friend. And
Speaker 1: I think we could all stand to increase our resourcefulness
Speaker 1: and to maybe do a Google search before we buy
Speaker 1: something like I don't know, is there a tool rental
Speaker 1: thing instead of me buying this tool from home depail
Speaker 1: or loaves. There are all sorts of ways to reduce
Speaker 1: our expenses, and part of it just takes a little
Speaker 1: bit of like curiosity and elbow grease.
Speaker 2: I love it, man, all right. The beer you and
Speaker 2: I enjoyed today was called a Three Headed Monster, which
Speaker 2: is an Imperial red Ale by New Realm Brewing Company
Speaker 2: here in Atlanta. Would you think I.
Speaker 1: Liked it more than I thought I was going to?
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally delicious.
Speaker 1: I have not had like an imperial red in a
Speaker 1: long time. And I was like, oh, this is this
Speaker 1: is like hoppy, uh this is it's big and it's unique.
Speaker 1: So I really flavorful though. Yeah, I was like, oh man,
Speaker 1: I have It's been so long stuff had this style.
Speaker 1: I used to I remember enjoying this style. I thought
Speaker 1: maybe I'd grown past it, but no, I still love
Speaker 1: this one.
Speaker 2: What is ocillions is what I'm thinking of. That's a
Speaker 2: red ale that doesn't count. That doesn't that's not a
Speaker 2: red ale, like that is a fake red ale. This
Speaker 2: is a collide with Sam Adams and has is that
Speaker 2: how you say that as? I have no idea, but
Speaker 2: maybe they are a hop purveyor perhaps that's their their
Speaker 2: little symbol there. But you know what this tastes like
Speaker 2: to me? With this reminded me of Bell's Hopslam back
Speaker 2: in the day because I had a lot of hot
Speaker 2: flavor going on. It almost had this honey like sweetness,
Speaker 2: and yeah, just reminded me of some of those those
Speaker 2: good old days when you would seek out a fresh
Speaker 2: drop of hop slam. You'd like, line up, line up
Speaker 2: a package door, They'll get you some of that.
Speaker 1: One of those first annual drops that people would be
Speaker 1: like hungering for, and Bell's I don't know if based
Speaker 1: on making caps. I'm pretty sure it's.
Speaker 2: Just it's just not an in demand like it used
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 1: A bunch of beers that used to be so hot
Speaker 1: are now just you know, hanging out on store shelves
Speaker 1: these days.
Speaker 2: So yeah, So if that's one that you remember being delicious,
Speaker 2: look for a three headed monster, guessing that you'll enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but uh, all right, wrap it up, let's do
Speaker 1: it all right. That's it for this episode.
Speaker 2: Find show notes up on the website at howdomoney dot com.
Speaker 2: That's gonna be it, buddy, So until next time, best
Speaker 2: Friends Out, Best Friends Out,