Speaker 1: Hey, Hey, vafam, it's Mandy here and I cannot wait
Speaker 1: to introduce you to this week's guest. If y'all don't
Speaker 1: know about my new friends, Julian and Kirsten Saunders, let
Speaker 1: me tell you a little bit about them. They are
Speaker 1: the Atlanta based yes my hometown, I love it, Atlanta
Speaker 1: based co creators of the popular lifestyle blog and brand
Speaker 1: Rich and Regular. They come with so much experience, y'all.
Speaker 1: They paid off two hundred thousand dollars of debt in
Speaker 1: just five years, and after they did that, they actually
Speaker 1: walked away from their careers in the hospitality and marketing
Speaker 1: marketing industries and quit before the age of forty. Since then,
Speaker 1: they launched their popular web series called Money on the Table,
Speaker 1: which use guys can check out at Richregular dot com,
Speaker 1: and they also host their our podcast, Brother and Sister.
Speaker 1: They host the Rich and Regular podcast, which you can
Speaker 1: check out right after you listen to this one. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's your assignment. Go check out Rich and Regular and Kirsten,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining Brown Ambition.
Speaker 2: You so much here.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm excited, so y'all wrote an entire The reason
Speaker 1: we're talking today, I mean There's been so many reasons
Speaker 1: to have y'all on, but this is a very special
Speaker 1: episode because y'all are launching your first book, right Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: they call cashing out. Call it yet the book Baby,
Speaker 1: we called cashing out Win the Wealth Game by walking Away.
Speaker 1: When I saw this title, I was like, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: like this is my time, this is my favorite. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about quidding. Yeah, yes, And I was just saying, like,
Speaker 1: as a couple, as a married couple, you guys also
Speaker 1: share a son named Bo. What a beautiful, cute little name.
Speaker 1: I'm just amazed because my husband and I feel like
Speaker 1: we cannot do the dishes together, we can't clean the
Speaker 1: house together without getting into some kind of philosophical debate
Speaker 1: about how to do it. And y'all wrote an entire
Speaker 1: book together. What was that like? As husband and wife?
Speaker 3: It was challenging. It was a slow start.
Speaker 4: Originally, we tried to write it together, like every chapter,
Speaker 4: kind of sitting together and writing, and that process took
Speaker 4: entirely too long, and then we.
Speaker 3: Broke it up. Like you write a chapter, I write
Speaker 3: a chapter.
Speaker 4: But we have very different voices and we have very
Speaker 4: different perspectives, and so a lot of the work was
Speaker 4: trying to find the shared voice and then figure out
Speaker 4: kind of how to get all the chapters done.
Speaker 3: But all in all, it was a good experience.
Speaker 4: It was just there's not a lot of co authors
Speaker 4: out there, so it was just a bunch of trial
Speaker 4: and error in us trying to figure out.
Speaker 3: What works for us.
Speaker 1: Well, there's co authors then, but it's not. I can't
Speaker 1: think of a married couple that i've interview who's written
Speaker 1: a book together. That's such a different dynamic. It's one
Speaker 1: thing when you've hired a ghost writer or someone to
Speaker 1: kind of download your thoughts and then they're going to
Speaker 1: kind of put it in your voice and whatnot. But
Speaker 1: I mean, congrats, So what made you, guys for your
Speaker 1: first book want to write this book in particular?
Speaker 2: You know, there are so many reasons why. I'll just
Speaker 2: give you one of the more recent ones. And this
Speaker 2: is not that recent, but it was like a couple
Speaker 2: months ago. I remember sitting in the doctor's office taking
Speaker 2: my mom to the doctor, and I remember waiting in
Speaker 2: the waiting room and there was an older gentleman, a
Speaker 2: black man. He might've been around sixty five years old,
Speaker 2: and we were in the thick of writing the book
Speaker 2: at that process, but I had already kind of thought
Speaker 2: about it, and he was sitting there reading Rich Dad,
Speaker 2: Poor Dad, and I was reminded because I hadn't thought
Speaker 2: about the book in a really long time, but I
Speaker 2: was reminded that that book was still relevant and that
Speaker 2: it was a cultural reference point for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: Like when they think money books is like literally one
Speaker 2: of the first ones that they think about. And I
Speaker 2: was just thinking about that. I was thinking about the
Speaker 2: moment that we are in, not just in terms of
Speaker 2: the Great Recession, but also you know what's been coined
Speaker 2: as a social reckoning or just this great a sense
Speaker 2: of awareness in terms of representation, and I felt like
Speaker 2: we deserved something like that. I felt like I could
Speaker 2: have used something like that leading up to the early
Speaker 2: stages of our corporate career. I think Churrisen feels the
Speaker 2: same way. And so we know the power of telling
Speaker 2: our stories and people seeing themselves and hearing it in
Speaker 2: our own voice, and we just knew that that was
Speaker 2: something that when we enjoyed doing and we're really passionate about,
Speaker 2: and so we were willing to undertake this process and
Speaker 2: we're grateful that we were able to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so together y'all paid off two hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: of debt. And you did that prior to leaving your jobs, right,
Speaker 1: so clearly working like having a nine to five was instrumental.
Speaker 1: And you guys building you know, your wealth and able
Speaker 1: to pay off that debt. What was your strategy there?
Speaker 1: Was it just you know, every extra dollar we are
Speaker 1: going to be putting toward this debt. And like what
Speaker 1: kinds of debt were they as a couple that y'all
Speaker 1: were tackling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a combination.
Speaker 4: The lion's share of the two hundred thousand was our mortgage,
Speaker 4: but it was also car notes, student loan, tax debt,
Speaker 4: credit card.
Speaker 3: Pretty much, any kind of debt was yeah, I might
Speaker 3: be forgetting that.
Speaker 2: Yeah you said that tax debt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you include so you paid off your whole house?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did, which sounds crazy given be.
Speaker 4: Done in georgiown right, we had a ten thousand and
Speaker 4: eight priced house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh okay, it would get the discount post housing
Speaker 1: market crash, I hope, yeah right, yeah, okay, but I
Speaker 1: start a bunch of different types.
Speaker 4: Paying off our debt as giving ourselves a raise.
Speaker 3: We had two choices.
Speaker 4: You could either kind of go hard at work and
Speaker 4: try to make more money and get all the extra
Speaker 4: responsibility that comes with that, which we did, but we
Speaker 4: also spent just as much energy time strategic thinking and
Speaker 4: conversation around the idea that if we paid off our debt,
Speaker 4: if we could just get rid of a couple of
Speaker 4: these expenses, you're talking about a couple extra thousand dollars
Speaker 4: every single month, And in order to make that leap
Speaker 4: in the job market, you would have either had to
Speaker 4: pivot out of your career choice, out of our career
Speaker 4: choice and into another company, or take on an extraordinary
Speaker 4: amount of responsibility. And so we looked at paying off
Speaker 4: debt as a lifestyle choice for us, and that's how
Speaker 4: we tackled it. As soon as the money would come
Speaker 4: in through our every bi weeekly paychecks, we would shave
Speaker 4: off the top and we did a little bit of
Speaker 4: everything in terms of methodology. Did the envelope system, we
Speaker 4: did the avalanche method, we did the snowball method, we
Speaker 4: did zero based budgeting, and we tried everything, and they
Speaker 4: worked in different periods of our lives, and we just
Speaker 4: kept trying until eventually it was it was gone.
Speaker 1: And you were raising because your son is about as
Speaker 1: old as it took you to pay off that debt.
Speaker 3: Well, he was born.
Speaker 4: He was born in the last quarter, so he was
Speaker 4: born in twenty seventeen, and then we finished paying off
Speaker 4: the debt the same in.
Speaker 3: The year after.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so when you were so, were you guys making
Speaker 1: big career moves to increase your income to help you
Speaker 1: paid on that debt? Was that one of the strategies
Speaker 1: that you used for.
Speaker 2: More sopha Kissen And it was interesting because we tackled
Speaker 2: that as a team as well, and so as we
Speaker 2: were looking at upward mobility, we both had a shot.
Speaker 2: But she had a much better shot at getting that
Speaker 2: big raise. I was much more interested in learning and
Speaker 2: developing skills that I knew I could use outside of
Speaker 2: the workforce. And so while we were tagged teaming debt,
Speaker 2: even after we paid off the debt, it was like,
Speaker 2: all right, how do we still continue to squeeze as
Speaker 2: much juice as we can out of this job, but
Speaker 2: also recognize that there's an endpoint and we need to
Speaker 2: make sure that we're setting ourselves up to pivot out
Speaker 2: of that successfully. And so at that point. With respect
Speaker 2: to my job, I was handling it, but I wasn't
Speaker 2: going as hard as I was in prior years. I
Speaker 2: wasn't necessarily gunning for a promotion, which felt really good
Speaker 2: because at that point we'd already you know, paid off
Speaker 2: our debt, and when you start thinking about, like, what's
Speaker 2: the real value in getting a job, it kind of
Speaker 2: felt like that added responsibility was going to take away
Speaker 2: from my at home life, It was going to take
Speaker 2: away from my ability to build something outside of that
Speaker 2: nine to five. And so at that point I was
Speaker 2: much more interested in our real estate portfolio in this new,
Speaker 2: greater world of content creation, which for us was very
Speaker 2: new at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, Kirsten, what did that look like for you?
Speaker 1: Going for promotion or did you quit for a new
Speaker 1: opportunity that paid you a lot more?
Speaker 3: It was going for promotions. I did quit right before
Speaker 3: I went from Eternity.
Speaker 4: Leave, but I ultimately did not because they gave me
Speaker 4: a raise to keep me.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it was a series of promotions.
Speaker 4: I had found a section of the company that had
Speaker 4: very specific skill sets and required a lot of institutional
Speaker 4: and experiential knowledge, and so I just kind of dedicated
Speaker 4: myself to an area of the business and gradually moved
Speaker 4: up the more that it grew.
Speaker 3: But it was good.
Speaker 4: It was good until it wasn't, which is typically how
Speaker 4: these things go. I was promoted quite a bit and
Speaker 4: then a reorg hit, which is pretty common in corporate America.
Speaker 4: We talk about this in the book, that the average
Speaker 4: tenure of a CEO these days is about five years.
Speaker 4: And so when you think about, and I'm sure some
Speaker 4: of the listeners have experienced this, how disruptive reorganizations can be,
Speaker 4: especially if you're in a place where you like your boss,
Speaker 4: you like your team, you like your workload, and then
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, everything changes.
Speaker 3: And that's what happened with me.
Speaker 4: I liked where I was, and then all of a
Speaker 4: sudden we got shifted and the priorities changed and I
Speaker 4: needed to be and places, and I needed to support
Speaker 4: China and Europe, and so I was taking four am
Speaker 4: calls and seven pm calls and it just wasn't sustainable
Speaker 4: for me. I felt like I had learned everything that
Speaker 4: I needed to learn from the job and it was
Speaker 4: time to cash out.
Speaker 1: All right, So you both, but you're was your plan
Speaker 1: eventually to walk away the same way, Julian, Like you
Speaker 1: kind of knew, okay, I'm going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: heading on this entrepreneurial path. Were you kind of just
Speaker 1: waiting for the right moment, Kirsten.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The plan was to hit a number in our bank
Speaker 4: account or in our investment portfolio before we walked away,
Speaker 4: and we were on track to hit that probably mid
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one. This was, of course, before we knew
Speaker 4: there was a global pandemic coming, but we were on
Speaker 4: track to hit it mid last year, and I.
Speaker 3: Had started to feel the pressure to.
Speaker 4: Leave, or the decision to leave, by the end of
Speaker 4: twenty nineteen, so about two years ahead of schedule. But
Speaker 4: we already had our business going, and so the question
Speaker 4: was did I think I could make up for lost
Speaker 4: time or at least get back a sense of quality
Speaker 4: of life if I focused on this through twenty you know,
Speaker 4: for the next couple of years. And so that's that
Speaker 4: was kind of the catalyst of leaving.
Speaker 1: So you were definitely part of the great reshuffling, the
Speaker 1: Great resignation. I quit of twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: Three weeks before the pandemic started, and it was.
Speaker 1: The whole trendsetter.
Speaker 4: The start of the start of what they're calling the
Speaker 4: Great resignation. I'm wondering is if like the initial round
Speaker 4: of furloughs where everybody was just kind of laid off
Speaker 4: versus actually leaving on their own. I think I was
Speaker 4: ahead of that curve of people just being like, you know,
Speaker 4: f this, I'm going to figure it out on my own.
Speaker 1: Well that's the thing, Like they talk about the great resignation,
Speaker 1: but if you were approaching your career, I feel like
Speaker 1: the correct way we you should be looking to leave
Speaker 1: or move up and move around, you know, through your career.
Speaker 1: So people act like, oh, it's a great resignation of trend.
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, people are always going to be quitting,
Speaker 1: which means we have job security. Kristen Julian and I like, okay,
Speaker 1: people are always going to need some guidance when it
Speaker 1: comes to their career. So I don't feel at all
Speaker 1: like even my business as a career coach, like there's
Speaker 1: going to come a time when it's going to dry up.
Speaker 1: People are not going to be making career transitions, you know,
Speaker 1: and getting to that place of being stalled. Nah, y'all
Speaker 1: talk about something that's really interesting, the fifteen year career
Speaker 1: and sort of how people can or should prioritize their
Speaker 1: goals through each stage of their career so that they
Speaker 1: can quit an under fifteen years. Is that right? Can
Speaker 1: y'all talk about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So the fifteen year career was really just trying to
Speaker 4: disrupt the construct that a lot of us have that
Speaker 4: careers are this lifelong pursuit that you just continue to
Speaker 4: work on it and it's a huge part of your identity, like.
Speaker 3: You lead with your career, which you do who you are, and.
Speaker 4: So the fifteen year career is actually encouraging people to
Speaker 4: look at careers as a phase in your life the
Speaker 4: same way we look at K through twelve education or
Speaker 4: a bachelor's degree or an advanced degree if you if
Speaker 4: you're a doctor or a lawyer, where in a stated
Speaker 4: period of time, you're there to accomplish a goal and
Speaker 4: then you're there to move on and that could be
Speaker 4: to another career, or it could be to early retirement
Speaker 4: or entrepreneurship. But we bring it up into three phases.
Speaker 4: The first five years, if you have debt, it's really
Speaker 4: about continuing to live frugally and treat that debt as
Speaker 4: an emergency and pay it down. The second five years
Speaker 4: is really about skill acquisition, like Julian was saying, acquiring
Speaker 4: skills that are valuable in a market outside of just
Speaker 4: your employer. And then the last five years is really
Speaker 4: trying to figure out how to monetize those skills and
Speaker 4: move on and actually translate them into capital, into actual dollars,
Speaker 4: and then ramp up your investments while you're doing that.
Speaker 4: And so the idea is that after fifteen years, you know,
Speaker 4: you should be able to check the box and say
Speaker 4: I'm good here, and you might continue. You could decide
Speaker 4: that you want to stay in the latter phase because
Speaker 4: you are enjoying making great money and having a skill
Speaker 4: that's in demand. Or again you can decide to cash
Speaker 4: out and just kind of do what you want to do.
Speaker 3: With your time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is also assuming that you're investing along
Speaker 2: the way right correct.
Speaker 3: In addition important part YEA.
Speaker 2: And doing all all those things, you're building an investment
Speaker 2: portfolio or or whatever it is right. It could be
Speaker 2: sitting in a brokerage account. It could be that you're
Speaker 2: focusing on funding your retirement account up front, but you're
Speaker 2: ideally putting yourself in a position so that at the
Speaker 2: end of this period, you have an option to Heresin's point.
Speaker 2: You don't have to walk away and go sit pinicolatas.
Speaker 2: You may have the option to do that, but you
Speaker 2: could decide to transition and focus on being you know,
Speaker 2: the president of the HOA or someone that does something
Speaker 2: in your county or whatever it is, any number of
Speaker 2: things that you could do to fill your time outside
Speaker 2: of just.
Speaker 1: Please don't Why is that the dream?
Speaker 4: Say that?
Speaker 2: Because imagine a world where more of us are actually
Speaker 2: able to do that job effectively.
Speaker 1: So you know, maybe I just can't think of the
Speaker 1: more scum of the earth than like HOA presidents. Why
Speaker 1: are they so problematic? Sorry, you distracted me.
Speaker 5: You distracted me back getting back to your point, Juliet,
Speaker 5: It's funny because that when you talk about the fifteen
Speaker 5: year stage, I think I'm in like year eleven of
Speaker 5: my career post college and wait, how old am I?
Speaker 1: I'm trying it's more than eleven years. It's like twelve
Speaker 1: or thirteen. But anyway, and it has sort of lined
Speaker 1: up in that I didn't approach it, you know, systematically
Speaker 1: that but I'm kind of like, oh, I'm in that
Speaker 1: I was in the past five years acquiring all these
Speaker 1: skills and then now I'm on my own, like you
Speaker 1: guys are monetizing them and creating this entrepreneur you know,
Speaker 1: entrepreneurship journey for myself. So yeah, I definitely, I mean
Speaker 1: and would endorse that. And Julian and I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you. So what were some I know you
Speaker 1: mentioned blogging, YouTube, video editing, you know, I'm sure those
Speaker 1: types of skills, but what other skills were you leaning
Speaker 1: on or looking to build that? And you said real
Speaker 1: estate too, So can you talk about some of those
Speaker 1: skills that you were acquiring so that set yourself up
Speaker 1: so that rich and regular could be, you know, y'all's
Speaker 1: primary source of income.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 2: So the primary skill that I was focused on building
Speaker 2: was around marketing and branding. Part of that was because
Speaker 2: that's what I studied in college. But I learned very
Speaker 2: quickly how to make ideas grow, how to curate ideas,
Speaker 2: how to communicate them. And so I spent that last
Speaker 2: three maybe four years of my career sort of a
Speaker 2: part of that organization focusing more so on learning, Right,
Speaker 2: It wasn't about trying to get the skill set or
Speaker 2: the job that I knew was going to help me
Speaker 2: get a promotion. It was about what are the skills
Speaker 2: that I can learn dealing with agencies, learning the fundamentals
Speaker 2: of building a brand from people who've done it with
Speaker 2: world class brands, Understanding the data, all of those things,
Speaker 2: creative storytelling to your point about videos and photography, like
Speaker 2: all of that kind of stuff, and even influencer marketing.
Speaker 2: And it's actually a tiny part of our book, and
Speaker 2: it was one of the things that really made me say, actually,
Speaker 2: I think I could do this was because at that
Speaker 2: earlier stage, it was like year seven for me, seven
Speaker 2: out of the ten. Was the company that I was
Speaker 2: working for decided to test out this little thing call
Speaker 2: influencer marketing. And I was like, I don't know, but
Speaker 2: I remember cutting a really check to cover this thing.
Speaker 2: And long story short, we paid a guy like ten
Speaker 2: thousand dollars to take a vacation with his kids, eat
Speaker 2: at a restaurant, and basically just go have a good
Speaker 2: time because it was a hospitality company. And every now
Speaker 2: and then, just for motivation, I go to his website
Speaker 2: because it's like a really old school website and it
Speaker 2: still has a ticker on it, and it's like one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty seven page views, and so for me
Speaker 2: it was like motivation. It's like, oh wow, this guy
Speaker 2: was able to do something incredible. He's not a celebrity,
Speaker 2: but it was just very intriguing for me. And so
Speaker 2: all of those skills and points in that particular story
Speaker 2: was enough for me to say, Okay, as I'm thinking
Speaker 2: about my own quality of life, do I believe that
Speaker 2: if I stepped outside of this world that is very
Speaker 2: comfortable and familiar, that I'd be able to figure it out?
Speaker 2: And the answer was yes, because I'd acquired enough of
Speaker 2: those skills that I knew that I could do some
Speaker 2: of these things on my own.
Speaker 1: I love that, and that's such a good message for
Speaker 1: anyone working nine to five and feeling like even if
Speaker 1: you feel like you don't have tons of career progress there,
Speaker 1: you still have access to other people and like free
Speaker 1: education if you're willing to chat with people and find
Speaker 1: out about them. And that's what I call it being entrepreneurial,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of moving within your within your zone
Speaker 1: at work, and what can you take advantage of There's
Speaker 1: there's intellectual property there that people have that they can
Speaker 1: share with you, and you can really learn and leverage
Speaker 1: that and I think that was so I mean, so
Speaker 1: smart of you and so wise, and not enough people
Speaker 1: working day to day think to actually like check in
Speaker 1: with such and such, even if you're in product you know,
Speaker 1: or check in with the marketing team or advertising or
Speaker 1: whatever you know, or if you're in vice versa, you're
Speaker 1: in your marketing to check in with the product team
Speaker 1: how to build a product, a physical or digital product,
Speaker 1: and how all that works while you've got the free access.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I was just gonna say it was a huge
Speaker 2: aha moment for me because I'd had to get over
Speaker 2: the hump that you can't learn about something just because
Speaker 2: you aren't in that role.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: I had to give myself permission to say, actually, you
Speaker 2: can learn about whatever you want now. It's quite honestly
Speaker 2: a little difficult to do in certain roles and in
Speaker 2: certain companies. Some companies are better than others. But I
Speaker 2: was able to navigate that and extract as much value
Speaker 2: from that experience. Even though some of the things that
Speaker 2: I was doing, like wasn't being well received. Didn't mean
Speaker 2: that it wasn't good work. Didn't mean that that presentation
Speaker 2: or that idea wasn't feasible. It's just because it wasn't
Speaker 2: accepted at work. And so once I flipped that switch,
Speaker 2: and I realized I can take these same skill sets
Speaker 2: and storytelling and managing campaigns and just apply it to
Speaker 2: things outside of my job. And really at that point,
Speaker 2: it's just about trying to find a willing a customer
Speaker 2: that's willing to pay you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can we pivot and talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: y'all's investment strategy because you mentioned investing. Y'all sound like
Speaker 1: y'all are in real estate a little bit, maybe a
Speaker 1: lot of bit? You can you were okay, talk to
Speaker 1: me about your investing strategy because I know that's also
Speaker 1: a key part of the book. It's not just about
Speaker 1: using your career lever but in wealth building, but it's
Speaker 1: also like how do we accelerate that through anting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So we used to be real estate investors. We
Speaker 4: had a very small portfolio of two rental properties. Yeah,
Speaker 4: two rental properties in our primary residents, so three houses
Speaker 4: all together, and we liquidated those in twenty nineteen and
Speaker 4: twenty twenty to focus more so on digital entrepreneurship in
Speaker 4: other types of investing.
Speaker 3: And so today because.
Speaker 1: It was just a lot of work, like bandwidth wise.
Speaker 2: Not really we had a management company that managed those
Speaker 2: things for us in terms of the day to day,
Speaker 2: but quite honestly, we had something to compare the work too, right,
Speaker 2: And again I kind of felt as if, at the time,
Speaker 2: or leading up to that point, we were really subscribing
Speaker 2: to what I now consider a very traditional path to
Speaker 2: building wealth. You've got stock markets in real estate. But
Speaker 2: once we became introduced to digital entrepreneurship and we had
Speaker 2: something to compare it to, and it was like the
Speaker 2: money that we were making in you know, let's say
Speaker 2: a month just based off of brand campaigns by far
Speaker 2: eclipse the value that we were earning on our rental property.
Speaker 2: And that's not to say that rental properties are bad,
Speaker 2: but the particular properties that we have, while they were good,
Speaker 2: it just wasn't necessarily worth the squeeze, I mean, and
Speaker 2: there was still a lot of work to do, even
Speaker 2: though we had a middleman, a management company, and they
Speaker 2: earned their ten percent because they certainly made my life easier.
Speaker 2: But even still, when we combine the work, the paperwork,
Speaker 2: the follow up, the back and forth, and just the
Speaker 2: sense of tension that you have when you own a
Speaker 2: physical property and know that somebody is in it. After
Speaker 2: a while, once we had that compared to all of
Speaker 2: the other things that we've done, we realized, actually, we
Speaker 2: just don't really want to do this anymore, and so
Speaker 2: we made the decision to say, you know what, let's
Speaker 2: invest in digital entrepreneurship. And that's kind of where we
Speaker 2: are now, like focusing on the creator economy. We have
Speaker 2: a new education and tech platform that we're in the
Speaker 2: process of building out. We have this book, we have
Speaker 2: all these other things. We just enjoy it and it
Speaker 2: just you know, there's there's something too, like the value
Speaker 2: in it aside from its profitability, but like we enjoy
Speaker 2: it a lot more than we do being a landlord.
Speaker 1: Which gotcha. I love that perspective. I think that's so
Speaker 1: smart too. I mean, for people who maybe don't have
Speaker 1: a digital brand to focus on it, it can make
Speaker 1: sense to have that extra However, much you know on
Speaker 1: top that you're getting from your renters. So what so,
Speaker 1: now that you've you've liquidated your real estate properties, are
Speaker 1: y'all are you about to tell me that you're into
Speaker 1: like crypto and NFT? Are you a boring investor like
Speaker 1: me with your index funds? What's what's inside your accounts.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about We do dabble a little bit in crypto,
Speaker 4: but it's just a dabble. It ain't it ain't a
Speaker 4: substantial amount of our portfolio.
Speaker 3: But we're die.
Speaker 4: Hard index fund investors. We're DIY investors, and we love
Speaker 4: index funds. We get the simplest path to wealth shout
Speaker 4: out to Jail Collins, and we invest heavily in index funds.
Speaker 4: We also front loaded our traditional retirement so we no
Speaker 4: longer put a substantial amount of money in our traditional
Speaker 4: retirement accounts, our four one k's, and we just invest
Speaker 4: through taxable accounts like brokerage is.
Speaker 3: We do have some tax advantage accounts.
Speaker 4: We have an HSA and we have a ur SEP
Speaker 4: four one k which is for entrepreneurs. But for the
Speaker 4: most part, we are done investing for our traditional retirement
Speaker 4: life after sixty five. We're just gonna let the money
Speaker 4: that's there sit and we're just focused on kind of
Speaker 4: building that bridge fund in between now and then.
Speaker 1: So do y'all mind if I asked that question how
Speaker 1: much what was your goal? You said you mentioned a
Speaker 1: number goal that you had for you know, walking away
Speaker 1: from nine to five life. What was that goal?
Speaker 4: I think at the time it was like one point
Speaker 4: two million something like that. This was before so this
Speaker 4: is the challenge with creating a five number or north star,
Speaker 4: and before you've had a chance to like fully live
Speaker 4: your life. At that time, it was before we had
Speaker 4: had our son when we created that number, and it
Speaker 4: was before we started to financially support or at least
Speaker 4: assist Julian's mom, who is financially insecure and needs a
Speaker 4: subsidy every month essentially to afford to live. She lives
Speaker 4: off of Social Security. That amount is well below the
Speaker 4: poverty line, and so in order to give her the
Speaker 4: quality of life that we think she deserves, we have
Speaker 4: to help. And so when we created that number, it
Speaker 4: didn't include any of that stuff. It just kind of
Speaker 4: took our expenses as to dinks, double income, no kids,
Speaker 4: and expanded at times twenty five years or whatever the
Speaker 4: formula is. And so when we started realizing that it
Speaker 4: was very difficult to stick to a number because life
Speaker 4: is still evolving and changing and we had decisions around
Speaker 4: childcare and education that we still need to make, we
Speaker 4: just then started focusing on an overall income strategy, with
Speaker 4: investments obviously propping up the total value of our portfolio.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that I think our number was somewhere around
Speaker 3: the million dollar ballpark.
Speaker 1: Well, so you guys't. It wasn't a we're going to
Speaker 1: go live on a beach number and never make another cent.
Speaker 1: Obviously you are. You remind me a lot. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of our rich journey, your counterparts in Portugal. I feel
Speaker 1: like you guys are their power couple in the finance space.
Speaker 1: But like obviously they were able to retire by forty,
Speaker 1: but they ain't sitting on their hands. They're running a
Speaker 1: huge multimedia brand just like you guys are. So that's
Speaker 1: a source of income. So you may not need to
Speaker 1: hit that million because you know you've got that money
Speaker 1: coming in and you guys are your own.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the part movement that I don't that
Speaker 2: I think gets a little cloudy, but I understand why
Speaker 2: because when people are first introduced to it, they're introduced
Speaker 2: to it in their very traditional sense. But back to
Speaker 2: your point, income is the secret there, and especially when
Speaker 2: you are comfortable and you have a pretty good sustainable
Speaker 2: source of income and you know what it takes to
Speaker 2: create that income. When you have that as an option,
Speaker 2: you have so many other options in terms of what
Speaker 2: you're willing to do in exchange for money and certainly
Speaker 2: what you're willing to do in exchange all your time.
Speaker 2: And I think for us, that's really what we want
Speaker 2: for most people, we want to just give us more options.
Speaker 2: And I would say specifically people of color who work
Speaker 2: in traditional corporate environments, because we find that they're very
Speaker 2: focused on that one way of getting a job is
Speaker 2: really getting the next promotion. And it was like, that
Speaker 2: is one way, and it's a popular way, and there
Speaker 2: are certainly tons of tools and things that you can
Speaker 2: do to get that, but we just want to make
Speaker 2: sure that they're aware of some of these other things
Speaker 2: that I think might be able to one give them
Speaker 2: an opportunity to earn more income, but to just have
Speaker 2: a better quality of life in the process. Not always,
Speaker 2: but at least we want to make sure that they're
Speaker 2: aware of that.
Speaker 1: It's about creating professional and financial resiliency, having additional income
Speaker 1: streams beyond just year nine to five. I mean, like
Speaker 1: I've been laid off before. We just had these huge
Speaker 1: layoffs from better dot com. Three thousand people lost their
Speaker 1: jobs just a couple of weeks ago. I mean all
Speaker 1: sorts of plate peloton. You hear these like headline making layoffs.
Speaker 1: No job is secure, Like it's just bs. No job
Speaker 1: is secure. And what I love about it is when
Speaker 1: you have other skills Like I always had brown ambition,
Speaker 1: for example, and it wasn't necessarily able to replace my income,
Speaker 1: but it was something like when I went independent last summer,
Speaker 1: it gave me a sense of structure, like at least
Speaker 1: every week, I'm going to do BA and I'm going
Speaker 1: to figure out mandy money, you know, as I go along.
Speaker 1: And I love also and maybe you guys talk about
Speaker 1: this as well, helping people figure out what kind of
Speaker 1: skills they can leverage as a consultant, you know, to
Speaker 1: actually work independently and getting work outside of your nine
Speaker 1: to five? Was that important for you too, Kirsten? I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, Julian, you know you were building these skill sets.
Speaker 1: What sort of skills have you taken from your previous
Speaker 1: work through your nine to five and sort of applied
Speaker 1: to y'all's business.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So my previous work was on the product side of
Speaker 4: the business, and it was kind of connecting our call
Speaker 4: centers with our technology department, and so I got a
Speaker 4: ton of experience in B to B relationships and partnerships,
Speaker 4: as well as real time conversations, customer service and incentives,
Speaker 4: and so I think what I've learned from that is
Speaker 4: just how to position a offer or an idea as
Speaker 4: something that people actually want and get them to take action,
Speaker 4: and that's what we've applied to our business. I can
Speaker 4: understand that saving money is not the sexiest idea in
Speaker 4: the world. Index funds certainly are not the sexiest investment.
Speaker 4: If you look on anybody for yourself, I love, you
Speaker 4: got to learn how to make a problem sexy, and
Speaker 4: you got to learn how to get people excited about
Speaker 4: something that is fairly simple and understand to understand. I
Speaker 4: think a lot of times we assume that it has
Speaker 4: to be difficult to understand in order to be valuable,
Speaker 4: or it has to be expensive in order to be valuable.
Speaker 4: And in the case of investing and becoming a millionaire,
Speaker 4: the solutions are actually pretty straightforward, and what it requires
Speaker 4: is just a discipline and a commitment and maybe a
Speaker 4: different social path, a different type of community to encourage
Speaker 4: you to do the thing that you already know how
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a quick break BA fam I
Speaker 1: will be right back with more from my conversation with
Speaker 1: the delightful Julia and Kirsten Saunders from Rich and Regular.
Speaker 1: All right, da fam, we are back. I am back
Speaker 1: with my guest today, Julian and Kirsten Saunders, husband and
Speaker 1: wife and the power couple behind the brand Rich and Regular.
Speaker 1: There's a real difference between people who get the knowledge
Speaker 1: and those who take action on the knowledge. And the
Speaker 1: more that I do my work, I get I feel
Speaker 1: like how teachers must feel when you look at a
Speaker 1: student and you're like, but you got all the information,
Speaker 1: you still didn't study or you didn't take that. You
Speaker 1: don't like what's going on and having to release that.
Speaker 1: But but that is why there will always be, you know,
Speaker 1: an audience for people like you guys too, I mean,
Speaker 1: because the people who want to do and take action,
Speaker 1: like they will rise to the top, you know. And
Speaker 1: it's that inertia that is killing so so many people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I feel like as much as we want to,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys have this too, but
Speaker 1: I just want to like fix people's inertia. Like you
Speaker 1: can do it and like motivate, but you can't. You
Speaker 1: can't save or like push everyone. They kind of have
Speaker 1: to reach whatever rock bottom or whatever you know, moment
Speaker 1: in time.
Speaker 2: As a treative entrepreneur, that is really what what inspires me.
Speaker 2: It's how to move the people to your point in
Speaker 2: terms of inertia, It's like, how do I move them?
Speaker 2: How do I get them to care more today than
Speaker 2: they did yesterday? And I think one of the things
Speaker 2: that we try to do is actually to lead less
Speaker 2: with education. I think there's still not enough, but I
Speaker 2: think more often than not, people are trying to lead
Speaker 2: with education under the assumption that they're not doing these
Speaker 2: things because they don't know better. And I think the
Speaker 2: reality is there's significant percentage of people who actually do
Speaker 2: know better, but they're simply choosing to do otherwise. And
Speaker 2: so for us, as frustrating as it can be, that
Speaker 2: is the creative challenge is how do we inspire them?
Speaker 2: How do we move them? How do we get their attention?
Speaker 2: How do we break into the spaces where they are
Speaker 2: paying attention and help them understand why this particular message
Speaker 2: or these tactics are applicable to them? And so we do.
Speaker 2: One of the things that we live by is really
Speaker 2: aiming for the heart and not the head, and so
Speaker 2: you're not going to get a lot of stats and data.
Speaker 2: While we we have those things that we're ready to
Speaker 2: shoot them out, but I'm much more interested in helping
Speaker 2: people think about the fact that their parents may be aging,
Speaker 2: and whether or not they want to spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time being with their parents without having to ask
Speaker 2: someone for some time off, or whether or not they
Speaker 2: want the opportunity to really nurture a relationship between their
Speaker 2: aging parents and their children and give them an opportunity
Speaker 2: to be grandparents in a way that maybe your grandparents
Speaker 2: didn't have to be to you, or to recognize what's
Speaker 2: happening in the larger landscape in terms of gosh, women's
Speaker 2: rights or you know, wealth and equality, and say, you know,
Speaker 2: your skill set as a product designer could be so
Speaker 2: useful for this nonprofit organization, or your public speaking skills
Speaker 2: you know that you're using right now to motivate the
Speaker 2: call center. Imagine if you applied that to you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to say eah your way, but a
Speaker 2: different a different part of the world of your local
Speaker 2: community where impact may not necessarily be the find by
Speaker 2: you know, clicks on a website or dollars that are
Speaker 2: made and so for us, that's really what drives us
Speaker 2: is to just help people connect those dots between wealth
Speaker 2: and like sort of broader social and cultural causes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, something earlier that you guys touched on and even
Speaker 1: just now is that multi generational support, supporting family, supporting
Speaker 1: aging parents, and for black and brown families, it's just
Speaker 1: more likely that we are going to be in a
Speaker 1: position where we need and it takes a village, and
Speaker 1: we need to support and uplift some family members. And
Speaker 1: we got a question to we do a Friday episode
Speaker 1: be a Q and A, And we got a question
Speaker 1: from a listener that got lots and lots of comments
Speaker 1: on IG about just that it was basically a partner
Speaker 1: who was upset or questioning whether or not she should
Speaker 1: continue to allow her partner to subsidize his mother's income.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like you guys are in that situation.
Speaker 1: So can you talk a little bit about what helped
Speaker 1: you guys have that conversation and kind of approach your
Speaker 1: I mean, you have your family unit, right, but what
Speaker 1: happens when you have family beyond your little unit who
Speaker 1: may need support and as a couple, any any advice
Speaker 1: for couples who were in that situation on how they
Speaker 1: can approach it and think about it so that you
Speaker 1: can kind of get to some kind of compromise and
Speaker 1: it's not so contentious.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a work in progress. It's something that
Speaker 2: you know, started with me because my mom is the
Speaker 2: one that we're from them, that we're supporting that were
Speaker 2: financially supporting. I saw it coming. And for me, even
Speaker 2: as as when I was working my traditional job, that
Speaker 2: was in part what motivated me to always push for
Speaker 2: that job because I knew not only did I just
Speaker 2: want to make more, because I wanted a better quality
Speaker 2: of life. I could see, you know, in sense the
Speaker 2: bank accounts sort of dwindling on her side, and so
Speaker 2: I knew that at any point I was going to
Speaker 2: have to step in. And so it really mattered to
Speaker 2: me when I didn't get a job that I felt
Speaker 2: that I was qualified for it, because I was like, nah,
Speaker 2: this is you know, the stakes are a lot higher
Speaker 2: for me. And so there was that, and even when
Speaker 2: we met for the first time, it was some then
Speaker 2: that came up. We sort of, you know, our first
Speaker 2: conversation about money actually led to our first argument but
Speaker 2: that was part of the baggage, you know, looking back,
Speaker 2: that was part of the baggage that I was carrying, right,
Speaker 2: part of the reasons why I was so tight with money,
Speaker 2: because there were all of these these these sources of
Speaker 2: tension that I was thinking about, not only just growing
Speaker 2: up in poverty in New York, but also knowing that, like, gosh,
Speaker 2: you know, if we're going to go out and ball
Speaker 2: out tonight, I'm going to feel really bad if I
Speaker 2: get the phone call from my mom tomorrow knowing that
Speaker 2: she needed two hundred or three hundred dollars for something.
Speaker 2: And so all of those little things sort of factored
Speaker 2: into the way that I managed my career. It bled
Speaker 2: into how we managed our relationship, and so it really
Speaker 2: just started with having conversations. One having sick conversations with myself. Two,
Speaker 2: finding the courage to talk about money to my mom,
Speaker 2: who was an elder and also has to overcome, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of these generational differences, like teaching her that it's
Speaker 2: okay to be vulner to share these things, to admit
Speaker 2: that you're struggling, don't wait until the last second. You
Speaker 2: know that it doesn't matter what happens. We're going to
Speaker 2: be here to support you. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 2: by we, I mean me and my wife. And so
Speaker 2: you don't just have to tell me. You can tell
Speaker 2: either one of us if I'm not there. So it
Speaker 2: took it, honestly, like it took seven years just to
Speaker 2: get her comfortable with realizing that we're a team and
Speaker 2: you're going to be taking yes, yes, to get her
Speaker 2: on board. But yeah, like it was just slowly peeling away.
Speaker 2: And even after we made progress, we realize that, you know,
Speaker 2: she goes back into her own world, and so we
Speaker 2: have to invite her back into this world where we're
Speaker 2: a team. You know, she's not really accustomed to a
Speaker 2: village support and so it's it's it's been interesting, but
Speaker 2: I'm grateful, you know, Caresten's on board and it's been
Speaker 2: it's been helpful. But we got to keep talking and
Speaker 2: try to make talking about it fun or funny because
Speaker 2: I've that that helps a lot too, and mention it to.
Speaker 1: You you'll amount, Oh, sorry.
Speaker 4: No, I was just going to say, mention it to
Speaker 4: your friends, like it is something that I think according
Speaker 4: to the data, forty eight percent of Americans over forty
Speaker 4: are dealing with and so You're likely not alone if
Speaker 4: you are feeling the pressure or your spouse is feeling
Speaker 4: the pressure and you're not aligned on what the approach
Speaker 4: should be. It's something that we're all going through. And
Speaker 4: this is the consequence of companies not thinking about retirement.
Speaker 4: They kind of pass that responsibility onto the employee after
Speaker 4: they got rid of pensions, and so messages like saving
Speaker 4: and all of it, Like, you're going to experience a
Speaker 4: generation that didn't necessarily do what they were supposed to
Speaker 4: do because their parents were taking care of in their retirements.
Speaker 4: And so it's something that we're all collectively as a
Speaker 4: society going to deal with. In some circles has already
Speaker 4: been called a crisis, and others it's just kind of
Speaker 4: like this weird social dynamic that we're managing as individual families.
Speaker 4: But I'd encourage people to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think it's you said you saw it coming, Julian,
Speaker 1: and I think some of us out you know, you
Speaker 1: may see it coming in your own quiet way. And
Speaker 1: maybe you're the spouse, and I feel like if you're
Speaker 1: the if you're the actual daughter or son or you know, child,
Speaker 1: it may be harder for you to see your parents
Speaker 1: in that vulnerable position. Sometimes it's like the out the
Speaker 1: other spouse, who can kind of who maybe sees it coming?
Speaker 1: And how do you even broach that subject? Like are
Speaker 1: we going to talk about this? You know, Grandpa seems
Speaker 1: a little unhealthy. What's going to happen if grandma's alone?
Speaker 1: And what are we going to do? Like my husband
Speaker 1: and I, I know I'm stuck in New York. I
Speaker 1: want to go back to Georgia for Stacy Abrams and
Speaker 1: other reasons. But you know his parents are here, and
Speaker 1: you know they are They are similar to your mom, Julian,
Speaker 1: just on a fixed income right now, and it is nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, right, work really hard and you got nothing
Speaker 1: and we're just starting to have that conversation. So did
Speaker 1: y'all kind of create here's how much she needs her
Speaker 1: so much more comfortable as a stipend each month or
Speaker 1: as a you know, contribution on a monthly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was a pretty all hands on
Speaker 2: deck situation, just getting all the documents in order, creating
Speaker 2: a formal budget for her for the very first time,
Speaker 2: putting her basically on a spending plan, helping her even
Speaker 2: as you.
Speaker 6: Went all the way everything, giving her a general timeline
Speaker 6: in terms of this is how many years you have
Speaker 6: reevaluating her investment strategy because she had a financial advisor
Speaker 6: that you know, again she had pennies in there, so
Speaker 6: he wasn't really looking.
Speaker 2: At, you know, her account with any sense of real care,
Speaker 2: and so looking at that stuff and say, you're seventy
Speaker 2: years old, there's no real reason for you to be
Speaker 2: invested in these kinds of things. You should be drawing
Speaker 2: down and so, you know, just helping her get to
Speaker 2: that point was really really helpful, and even taking the
Speaker 2: step further, which was the big one, and helping her
Speaker 2: realize that a significant percentage of the world that she
Speaker 2: had amass was all in her home, which she really
Speaker 2: couldn't necessarily access and so and really afford right, and
Speaker 2: so getting her to a point where she felt like
Speaker 2: selling the home was actually the best thing for her,
Speaker 2: so that she could downsize have more cash that she
Speaker 2: could actually use to do other things travel see her
Speaker 2: friends cover for her medicine. Like it was the first
Speaker 2: time anyone I think it ever really intervened on that level.
Speaker 2: Because she's also single and all of these other reasons.
Speaker 2: She was not a college graduate, and so it was
Speaker 2: it was I felt more than anything proud that we
Speaker 2: were able to actually help and even now like proud
Speaker 2: that we're able to give her a quality of life.
Speaker 2: We wound her, you know, less than half a mile
Speaker 2: away from where we are now, so she can see.
Speaker 1: She's down in atl you're from. She was she in
Speaker 1: New York before.
Speaker 4: No, she was in she was another suburb, suburb of Atlanta,
Speaker 4: but she was living in senior housing, which was subsidized
Speaker 4: by the government, which is how she was able to
Speaker 4: afford it. But when COVID hit, they obviously canceled all
Speaker 4: of the interactions between seniors, so a lot of the
Speaker 4: she had moved there for weren't available. And then seeing
Speaker 4: you know, ambulances every week was just doing a number
Speaker 4: on her mental health.
Speaker 3: And so we realized, yeah, we realized it.
Speaker 4: Probably it's either not the right senior community for her,
Speaker 4: she needs something a little more active, she's you know,
Speaker 4: a little spicy, or she wasn't ready for senior housing yet.
Speaker 3: And so we started.
Speaker 4: We moved her to a standard apartment, which is obviously
Speaker 4: not subsidized by the government, and in the neighborhood that
Speaker 4: we live in expensive it's a luxury apartment that has
Speaker 4: the amenities she needed, like an elevator and covered parking
Speaker 4: and access to a grocery store within walking distance. And
Speaker 4: so yeah, that decision. Going back to your point about
Speaker 4: a monthly stipend, our stipend has increased over time. We
Speaker 4: now spend about fifteen hundred dollars a month on just
Speaker 4: making sure that she's comfortable. And I don't know that
Speaker 4: it won't increase again. Her rent just went up again
Speaker 4: like everybody else's this year, and so we'll see how
Speaker 4: it progresses and what decisions we need to make. But
Speaker 4: we treated the same way we would if we had
Speaker 4: had a second child and needed childcare. Where it's just
Speaker 4: it's a responsibility. You figure out how to cover it.
Speaker 4: You get creative, and you find community that offers resources
Speaker 4: and solutions that you might not have thought of because
Speaker 4: they've already been through it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I look to you guys with such respect
Speaker 1: and also as like goals because to be able to
Speaker 1: support our parents and we have a young son too,
Speaker 1: and just feel like everyone's good. That seems like a
Speaker 1: beautiful place to be in. And I mean it's pressure, right,
Speaker 1: it's pressure, and you got to keep those gears going
Speaker 1: and keep the business going and all that. So I
Speaker 1: just I see you acknowledge that pressure, but I also
Speaker 1: am just I applaud you for that. It's thank you
Speaker 1: to be really proud of.
Speaker 2: I appreciate the realistic applause.
Speaker 1: I know y'all tired, because, like you know, I don't.
Speaker 2: Know that that tension ever really goes away. But at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, you know, they're getting older.
Speaker 2: And so as I think about how I would want
Speaker 2: to spend this last chapter, like knowing that she's nearby,
Speaker 2: knowing that we can on any day be able to
Speaker 2: be there for her, and knowing that you know, our son,
Speaker 2: who you know will be five next month, has the
Speaker 2: type of relationship with his grandparents that we just never had.
Speaker 2: Is really powerful. And so you know, I remember having
Speaker 2: a conversation with someone about what to do with the money,
Speaker 2: because I'll be I'll be completely honest. At first, I
Speaker 2: was hesitant. Kirsten was the one that was really much
Speaker 2: more willing to take this approach. I was much more
Speaker 2: mindful of what else we could do with that money,
Speaker 2: right I was looking at it from an investing standpoint,
Speaker 2: But looking back, I think it is one of the
Speaker 2: best decisions we've ever made. And so you know, and
Speaker 2: again it's part of the tension, right you don't you
Speaker 2: don't you know, you pay attention to what that money
Speaker 2: could do, but at the end of the day, there's
Speaker 2: some things you just can't put a price on. And
Speaker 2: you know, we've got a lot of memories, a lot
Speaker 2: of memories, and that's that's that's awesome.
Speaker 1: She got you in the heart, just like you said,
Speaker 1: got it you to think about your heart. It's why
Speaker 1: they call it personal finance, right, you're right. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: obsessed too much about try and do things the right way.
Speaker 1: On paper, you know, giving fifteen hundred dollars away sounds
Speaker 1: like not the best strategy, but when you see what
Speaker 1: you get in return, yeah, absolutely, it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: That's why I think it's so important for people like
Speaker 1: y'all and even myself to be doing this work because
Speaker 1: we come with that perspective of understanding, yeah, that it's
Speaker 1: not just about dollars and cents and like what's on
Speaker 1: a calculator at the end of the day, exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean people that is not forever, like unless she
Speaker 4: lives to be seven hundred like a sea turtle like there.
Speaker 1: Will be terrible to think that, but it's true, Like
Speaker 1: you know, like this is oh, she's not listening right.
Speaker 4: Knock on wood, obviously wishing her along prosperous life, but again,
Speaker 4: thinking of you, of your life and seasons, thinking about
Speaker 4: your financial situation in seasons has been more beneficial for
Speaker 4: me than creating this plan that I apply pressure to
Speaker 4: stick to. And I don't pivot ever, you know, I
Speaker 4: don't consider the variables to change course not ideal, particularly
Speaker 4: for people of color and women of color.
Speaker 1: Can I ask y'all really quickly? I know we are
Speaker 1: approaching the end, but we get this question all the time,
Speaker 1: and I know everyone's approach is a little bit different.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to your son and investing and
Speaker 1: saving for him, what's do you have a strategy there
Speaker 1: or kind of a path that you're on right now
Speaker 1: for this season as a five year old? For him, I.
Speaker 2: Look forward to employing him this year. I think he
Speaker 2: deserves it. We certainly post enough pictures and reels of
Speaker 2: him on Instagram for him to be a really key
Speaker 2: model at this point. And so there's that we have
Speaker 2: our five to two nine account. But yeah, I think
Speaker 2: more than anything. I'm genuinely looking forward to, you know,
Speaker 2: opening a custodial ira this year and paying him off
Speaker 2: of you know, the payroll of the business and being
Speaker 2: able to help him build wealth because again, you know,
Speaker 2: I didn't start earning money until I was fifteen or
Speaker 2: sixteen years old, and I was like fifty dollars a
Speaker 2: week or something like that. And so to be able
Speaker 2: to give him a head start, I think is is
Speaker 2: really powerful. And again, like that combined with the type
Speaker 2: of perspective that he will have on family or even
Speaker 2: just parents, like having active parents that are able to
Speaker 2: bring him on business chips with him. Like, I think
Speaker 2: his upbringing and his perspective on the world will be
Speaker 2: so different, and it won't just be because he has
Speaker 2: a pot of money that's been working or growing in
Speaker 2: the background. It'll be all of those things combined so that.
Speaker 1: You seem a different way to be successful than like
Speaker 1: our traditional dad goes to work from nine to five,
Speaker 1: I see him before bedtime kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yeah, Well.
Speaker 1: Thank y'all so much. Wait, Kristen, were you going to
Speaker 1: se Kristen, were you going to say something.
Speaker 3: On the point, But I think we landed it.
Speaker 1: So stuck the landing. I love it. Thank y'all so
Speaker 1: so much for joining Broad Ambition. It's been such a
Speaker 1: delightful conversation. I can't say enough. Congratulations again. In on
Speaker 1: the new book, y'all go out and buy it. Is
Speaker 1: it out yet? Is it when? It publishing?
Speaker 3: June fourteenth?
Speaker 1: June fourteenth, Okay, y'all got some time, but you can
Speaker 1: probably pre order it right.
Speaker 4: We'll put order audiobooka hardcover, kindle ebook, any types of
Speaker 4: forms you can pre order.
Speaker 1: Buy copies for your friends, your friends, friends, your mama,
Speaker 1: your daddy, whatever. Cashing out Win the Wealth Game by
Speaker 1: Walking Away by Julian and Kirsten Saunders, the founders of
Speaker 1: Rich and Regular and go check out their podcast, Go
Speaker 1: check out their YouTube series and their ig at the
Speaker 1: It's called at the Table, Money on the Table, Money
Speaker 1: on the Table, something by the Table. I got it
Speaker 1: all right. Can't thank y'all enough for joining brown Envision.
Speaker 1: Thank y'all, take take care, Thank you, thank you so much,