10 Things We Learn From Our TV Dads – Episode 215

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[00:03] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your hosts, bestselling author, Kim D.H. Butler and No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Prosperity Podcast. This is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Once again, we have bestselling financial author Kim Butler with us as our co-host today. And how are you, Kim? Wonderful. Thanks for asking. Totally looking forward to having a little chat about TV, which I never even watch TV. So this should be interesting. Super. Well, we’re talking about an article that just came out in June of 2017. And it was an article in what’s called the Penny Hoarder.

[00:56] And it’s the 10 things that we learned from our TV dad. 10 pieces of sound money advice we learned from our favorite TV dads. So we’re going to kind of look at that and see how Kim feels and agrees or disagrees with them as they may be. You ready? Sounds great. Yep. All right. Number one, Mike Brady from the Brady Bunch. I’m assuming you remember him. I remember the Brady Bunch music. Is Mike the dad? Well, of course you said that. Okay, I’m ready. What’s he say? Them who don’t look sometimes gets took. Okay, he’s saying them who don’t look sometimes gets took. Is there like any set up for that? Any elaboration? I think in this in a particular context of this show, it was around used cars. But I think the message is due diligence.

[01:54] Ah, very cool. Well, I’m going to agree with that one. Of course, I am definitely a fan of buying very nice used cars. But the larger picture there, as you said, and thank you for setting the context, always helpful. Due diligence is an interesting one. You know, we recommend to our clients that they use the seven principles of prosperity as a opportunity filter to look at investments. And yet, obviously, a used car or any car is not an investment. When we’re digging in and figuring out if an investment is good, Tom will write actually our favorite CPA has a great line. Yeah, every investment is good. Is it good for you? And so I know my husband Todd and I have had experience with as an example, investment

[02:45] real estate that wasn’t good for us. It required way too much hands on management, even though we had a management company. And then we have other investment real estate that’s very, very passive and we just write a check and then we get checks and works great for cash flow. So for each person, I think you have to have a lot of self knowledge when you’re doing due diligence on things. You have to really know what you’re looking for. That’s not easy. And sometimes that means a little bit of trial and error, which of course is why we’re such big believers and go slow and start small. But yeah, look, look and don’t get took. I like it. And the second thing I would add to that is if the information is easy, it’s probably marketing.

[03:27] Yes, so well said. And and we should bring in Todd Langford’s favorite quote of if it sounds too good to be true, just dig a little deeper. Because a lot of things sound too good to be true when they first start out. I mean, think of our cell phones and Internet today, et cetera, et cetera, when you first heard about them. And yet it is very important that you dig a little deeper. So dig past the marketing, right? Super. We’re going to switch over to Homer Simpson now. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Simpsons. Are you? No, not really. A guy with a yellow head, maybe. I don’t know. OK. It’s a cartoon character, more for the dark crowd than the kid crowd. So let’s see here. His advice is, son, if you really want something in this life,

[04:17] you have to work for it. Now, quiet. They’re about to announce the lottery number. Hmm. Like you said, appropriate for the dark side. So, you know, it is interesting. I I actually like the message of you have to work for it. And I know there’s a lot of times when we can get things that. We may be earned at another space, but now all of a sudden it appears like we’re getting something for nothing. But I think that’s probably one of the biggest myths out there that you can get something for nothing. And I think working for things is a huge value. It’s why I don’t like the idea of retirement. It just implies that you can just kick back and do nothing in life. And we know the people that continue to work for things.

[05:09] And I don’t mean material things here, things in terms of ideas, work for opportunities, work for experiences, et cetera. They always seem to be happier because they’re putting more into life. So if work is what you define, then find work that you love and put more into life so that you can continue to get out of life all that it has. And, yeah, scrap the lottery. I’d like to get your opinion on this as well. They use this as an example. It says instead of buying lottery tickets every week, you should funnel that money into something like stash dot com. This is a link app to your checking account that will automatically periodically ask you to put a few bucks in from your account each week. And the purpose of this particular one is to accumulate it in the stock market.

[06:02] But I mean, I guess you could accumulate it for everyone to do. Yeah, that’s kind of interesting. So stash dot com is popping up on your cell phone saying, hey, feed me a little bit. And we all know that the people that save money do so and they do it well when they form a habit around it. So if you can’t form a habit around it, like pay yourself on the 15th of every month or maybe twice a month or whatever, then that sounds like a great way to just get some dollars saved. It is so amazing how we’re so good at buying our five dollar Starbucks and our, you know, 20 dollar or whatever it is that we really don’t need. And we’re not so good at saving as a society. And it’s just because we’re out of habit.

[06:46] Maybe stash would be a good way and kind of a fun way to get started. Our next one comes from Tony Soprano from The Sopranos, which is one of my favorite shows, but favorite TV mobster dad actually wrote leadership soprano style, how to become a more effective boss, mafia style. His advice is buy land, AJ, because God ain’t making no more of it. Interesting. Well, I’m not a big fan of land because it has no cash flow. The idea of dirt is appealing, of course, to many people. And we certainly own plenty of it, but it’s because it’s attached to our farm. And you’re typical by this piece of property and wait five, ten, twenty years for the city or the town or whatever is going to catch up with it

[07:40] that would enable you to put a building on it that is usually what you’re going to get cash flow from when you actually run the numbers. I think in most cases for most people, that is not going to be an effective investment at all. Now, obviously exceptions or some people where land is a perfect thing for them. That’s fine. Maybe they know something about a particular area, freeways coming in or something like that. General rule of thumb, I wouldn’t touch it. I’m going to have to totally disagree with that one, although I might read the book. That would be for some entertaining reading, I’m sure. Yeah, but yes. Next one is Danny Clutter of Full House, which I’m not familiar with that show. Where would I be without Danny Clutter’s weekly words of wisdom on Full House?

[08:24] Lost, I tell you. Here’s one of his best known pieces of advice. You have to move on in life. Well, I like that one very much. Yes, I’m very much a forward moving and thinking person myself. When I run across somebody that’s very past based, I’m sad for them. There’s nothing wrong with learning from our past. There’s nothing wrong with maybe attending a reunion every now and then, maybe looking at some things in your past to figure out a way to go forward. But as everybody’s aware, the earth keeps turning, the world moves on, whatever little saying you want to use. And moving forward in your own life, very, very important from both good and bad. A lot of times I think good things happen and we want to stay in that space.

[09:12] And yet, what’s another cliche, but ships aren’t made for stay in the harbor. Let’s get out there, move forward and create more good and more value in the world or find a way to dig out of whatever negative experience we are dealing with and go forward with joy and expectancy and seeking opportunity. That’s what we want to be doing. Moving on. And one of the things mentioned in this article is using the app declutter as a way to get some of your old stuff out of your way to let room for new. Oh, I love that. Don’t know the app personally, but whatever you need to do to declutter, whether it’s that app or Marie Kwon Do’s book, Spark of Joy, I just think there’s so much joy in decluttering. I just personally took four bags of clothes to the goodwill myself.

[10:12] And it’s just a necessary thing on a constant basis. And not only clothes, but things that are in our lives, things that are taking up the countertops, etc. Another project I’ve been going through recently is the books. I have just saved massive, massive numbers of books. And we were going to do this big library thing and chose not to. And of course, all my books now are on my Kindle. So I’m keeping the really important ones, but just moving those on and letting somebody else benefit from them is such a valuable skill. Like it was said well in the article, it makes room for new. So if you need help in that area, find a certified clutter organizer, garage cleaner, router, whatever it takes to get the work done.

[11:07] All right. Now we’re going to move to Ward Cleaver. Of course, everybody remembers Leave It to Beaver. And Ward Cleaver says when you make a mistake, admit it. If you don’t, you will only make matters worse. And before I turn this over to you, I want to tell you that they’ve actually taken this as a way to look at your credit. And I guess there’s an app called Clarity Money that is actually used to negotiate bills down on your behalf. But they’re interpreting this as one of the things to say is, you know, if you spent more than you can afford to spend, admit it and take whatever steps are necessary, whether it be renegotiate an interest rate or something to try to, even though it may negatively impact your credit for the short term,

[11:55] get back in alignment with what you know you should be. That’s fabulous. I’m very pleased to hear that. The app is very interesting. For one thing, we’ve got a blog post in the written form on our blog right now about some credit cleanup strategies. And I wasn’t aware of that one. It’s so amazing what’s out there these days. But I love the admit it. And there’s just so much good that can happen. You know, if you’re feeling guilty about it, admitting it and finding your way out of it, getting the help that you need is a fabulous strategy to remove the challenges and the hassle from that for you. I think it’s awesome suggestion in terms of what it does for you mentally and then consequently financially to do that.

[12:42] And we’ve all made financial mistakes and obviously other types as well. But you’re back to the other one. You’re not going to move forward if you don’t admit it. And when you do admit it, then you’re opening the door for help and progress and learning and all the good things. There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes. I mean, that’s a good way to learn. But owning up to those mistakes, I think, is a fabulous suggestion. All right. Our next one is Louie CK from the TV show Louie. And I must admit, I am not familiar with this one either. Let’s see. The only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don’t look into your neighbor’s bowl to make sure you have as much as them.

[13:33] Now, that’s an interesting twist. I’m assuming he’s a dog. I think he’s a dog in this show, by the way. Oh, that’s funny. All right. So rather than keeping up with the Joneses, you’re making sure that the Joneses have enough to take care of themselves. Yes, that’s fabulous. And I think we could even take that one step further and make sure that you have enough in your own bowl first. There’s such a temptation to be focused on measuring ourselves against others when we need to just work on making our own situation as efficient as possible, which actually brings up an interesting financial planning point. I was just on the phone with a client last week and they were asking just incessantly needing to have a number to save for

[14:18] as it related to educating their children who are like six years old, give or take, and also a certain amount to shoot for for retirement. And I counsel them to make the goal focused on what you can control. You absolutely cannot control how much money you’re going to have for education or retirement, but you can control how much you’re going to save every month or every week or however you want to look at it. And so it’s so much more efficient and so much more effective. If we can focus on what we can control, put money away today based on our best ability to do that. Now, if you really want a goal, make that goal to be to save 20 to 30 percent of your income today. Don’t make the goal, oh, I need to have 100 grand or 300 grand or whatever it is for education

[15:05] or, you know, obviously even bigger numbers for retirement. So that’s a very valuable piece of advice that I’ve learned over time is it’s just so much easier to make the goals about what you can control, about what you can actually do rather than some far off thing about how much is in your neighbor’s account or how much a particular app on the internet says you should have or any other thing that a human being would suggest. Just focus on what you can do. Our next TV dad is Philip Banks, which is from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I have seen this a few times. He could be a little gruff and his advice is being a joker is what’s gotten you into trouble. You may think it’s cool to be on the streets when you’re 17,

[15:55] but when you’re my age, it’s a waste. And he’s specifically addressing a topic he calls adulting. And adulting is saving money for a rainy day, starting an emergency fund. Huh, like A-D-U-L-T-I-N-G? Adulting? Yep, adulting. That’s the term he’s addressing, adulting. It’s so close to something you would think I’d have a negative connotation, but it just means being responsible. That’s kind of cool. I like it. Well, and of course, as you’ve indicated, the underlying message there is an emergency. And of course, we like it to be called an emergency slash opportunity fund. And that is, that’s a fabulous responsible thing to do. I’m just forever proud of my daughter when she got her second job. Hey, mom, do I have to save 10% from this check too?

[16:45] Yes, absolutely. Saving money is a benefit in so many ways. It just provides you the ability to handle emergencies, number one, without having to call your parents, and number two, to take advantage of opportunities. And that’s, I think, where a lot of people get stuck is they wanna save for emergencies, but that gets really boring really fast. And so they don’t do anything. When instead, if they focused on switching gears and saving money for opportunities, then it would be exciting again, because it’s way more exciting to save for a trip to Thailand or save for a sailboat or something that’s important to you than it is to save for this quote rainy day. And frankly, if people just got after it

[17:30] and got their savings for a rainy day done, their emergency fund, if you will, then they would have it done. And then they could switch their focus, same account, same strategy, same habits, same app, like we mentioned earlier, but just keep going. And the older people get, I find, the more money they wanna have in their emergency opportunity fund. All right, Ned Stark is from The Game of Thrones, which is a really popular, I think it’s a movie series out now. I read these books. There’s just tons of books out there on this. Ed Stark quotes, I’m partial to the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. And he goes on to explain its importance for the financial area, I guess, is winter is coming.

[18:22] In the winter, we must protect ourselves by looking after one another. And he does this by considering buying a life insurance policy, which could be useful for paying off your funeral, your mortgage car loans, if you finally find yourself on the wrong end of a red wedding, which red wedding was everybody got killed. I see. Wow. Well, hallelujah. This is a public space where somebody’s actually recommending that people buy life insurance. We gotta be grateful for that. I wouldn’t have them use the money to pay off the mortgage, but everything else is super accurate there. That’s fabulous that that’s being brought up. It amazes me how many times I’ll see the top 10 financial recommendations or whatever,

[19:08] and life insurance is rarely even mentioned. Of course, who knows what type he’s talking about. That’s secondary in this case, but while I’ve got the floor, I guess I’ll just go ahead and say that we love term insurance. Buy some term insurance. That’s awesome. And then also take a look at using whole life insurance that you would have as a portion of your death benefit as your emergency opportunity fund. So let’s say that 10 to 15 times your income is going to be what your human life value is. So human life value is the maximum amount of life insurance that you would want on your life. And most insurance companies use a rule of thumb of 10 to 15, sometimes even up to 20 or 30, depending on your age

[19:55] and depending also on whether you own businesses, et cetera. And so let’s just use easy numbers. Let’s say that’s a million dollars and you decide that you can have a little bit of capability to buy whole life insurance for your emergency opportunity fund. So we would do 100,000 or 200,000 or 300,000 in whole life. And then the remainder, seven, eight, or 900,000 in term insurance. That’s a great strategy for people to get the best of both worlds, to have their life insured at a proper amount. And yet at the same time still be building monies in the form of cash value for their emergency opportunity fund. But way to go games of thrones for bringing it up. Next one is from Walter White of Breaking Bad,

[20:41] which I know is a show you’ve never seen. Correct. But it is quite an interesting show. It is about a high school teacher who gets diagnosed with cancer and doesn’t know how he’s going to prepare for his family. So he becomes one of the largest methamphetamine suppliers in the world. Oh, you are kidding me. Nope, that’s the show. All right. So we’ll just ignore that. What’s his advice? Good heavens. You can have anything you want if you’re willing to work for it. Just reach for the stars and never let go. I should have told you that a long time ago. And when you write an angry letter, hold on to it for a day. You might not feel the same in the morning and never invest in a new friend’s restaurant.

[21:23] Never. Interesting. All right. So there’s some good things in there. Let’s just do a little positive focus on the guy’s message. First is, of course, work for what you want. That’s very, very good. Second is, hold on to angry letters. That’s very, very wise. I’ve forgotten the rest. But anyway, never invest in a friend’s restaurant. Yes. Yeah, that’s well said as well. Well said. So yeah, it’s interesting how often we feel like, oh, well, this isn’t important or I can let this go or what have you. But if something is important to you, don’t let it go. I mean, it’s just evidence to me in many, many ways. I see lots of businesses and movements and things that people really care about are given up on just right before they were

[22:22] about to turn the corner or maybe not, but they’re just given up on. And that’s sad. So yeah, if something’s important to you, stick with it. We’ve done that within our own situation inside the prosperity economics movement. And it’s hard. You’re developing new language. You’re developing an event. Nobody’s attended. You’re trying to define yourself out in the marketplace. I’ve absolutely wanted to give up, but I’ve gone back to what is most important to me and that’s to help as many people as possible. And I know that within a movement where each one of our own firm’s individual brands can be stronger, we’re going to have a lot of benefit. You have No BS Money Guy. I have Partners for Prosperity.

[23:04] There’s other people out there that have their individual firms. But if we’re all part of a prosperity economics movement, then we can have more progress. We can get more done. We can have a bigger, wider voice and a longer reach. And so we keep going. And I’ll admit, sometimes that’s super tough, like to the point of tears tough. But I think we are at a phase two already within four years, which is awesome. And we’re really looking forward in the next couple of years to make the movement even more beneficial for our clients. It’s very beneficial for financial advisors right now. But we’re really interested in getting this out there to our clients and helping them more. And this podcast is part of that.

[23:48] Chad Moses Super. Well, our last and final one is Don Draper from Mad Men, which I don’t know if you’ve ever had a chance to see that, but this is basically the inside story of advertising and marketing and about how people are manipulated. But his bit of wisdom that he wants to leave is change is neither good or bad. It simply is. Yeah, I like that. Change is neither good or bad. It simply is. And don’t we need to always be dealing with change, especially in today’s world? So find a way to make it work for you. And sometimes that’s as simple as just asking the question, well, what’s staying the same and focusing on that. I’m a favor of change. I love change. I’m always moving forward, seeking new things, change is great with me.

[24:39] But I realize that’s not the case for everybody. So if you are struggling with that, first of all, see what you can do to adopt that change orientation. And if not, then focus on what’s staying the same and let the rest of it sort of fritter about you. There was a scene in a movie I just saw recently that the chaos, how did he say it? The chaos can’t get to you if you just stay focused on what you want or something like that. So the chaos is around you, not in you. It was something like that. It was a great quote and just a good reminder to be centered and be grounded and do what you need to do every morning, whether it’s working with the Bible or something else inspiring to have your mindset

[25:24] be grounded so that you can go forward and deal with all the change that’s happening and still pick and choose the important things for you to stay focused on. Super. And again, before we leave, I just want to mention that this all came from the June 15th, 2017 edition of thepennyhoarder.com. If anybody wants to check out any of the other kind of stuff they got in there, they got some cool stuff in there. And Kim, I know you always like to give a gift before you leave. Absolutely. So we have an audio book that’s available to our podcast listeners called Financial Planning Has Failed and is at partners4prosperity.com and that’s slash ebook. Partners4prosperity.com slash ebook. Super. Well, this is No BS Money Guy Todd Strobel.

[26:16] Special thanks to our listeners. We look forward to getting more and more of your questions and have some more fun every day. Thanks a lot. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partners4prosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.