Transitioning from a WE Economy to a ME Economy – Episode 168

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, 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 today. And today we’re going to be kind of having a conversation. This is a continuation of a conversation that Kim and I were just having and we decided to share it with you all. And it’s the transition from a we economy to a me economy. And I would just want to give you some background on this. There’s a guy that wrote a book, I don’t remember the author’s name, but it’s a

[00:53] brand new book that just came out by the name of Tribe. They’re shooting the movie for it now. And basically what it is, is it’s studying the effects of a soldier who functions very much in a we environment when they are on active duty. And they actually have to have special transitioning because there isn’t that feeling of somebody is there to support me and protect my back. I’m there to support everybody else. I now have to function for me instead of we. It goes on to say that the internet has contributed a lot of things and different things to that. But what we specifically want to look at is in terms of the economy and especially looking at the millennials, I have to say I’ve never seen more of a me generation.

[01:51] So anyway, long introduction, but welcome, Kim. Thank you, Todd. Always happy to join in on a discussion when the word economy gets used because I’ve called individuals personal finances, their own personal economy forever. It just is a word that works. And so when we take a look at something called the silver economy, like for the elder generation or like you were using the words, the we economy and the me economy or your personal economy or whatever, my ears perk up and I’m interested. And I don’t know why I’ve been interested with economies and monies probably was because I started milking cows at fourth grade and my dad had me keep track of all the money we sold the milk and we had to pay for the cows grain and we

[02:41] just treated it like a little business. And I actually saved enough money from that that I was able to put myself through school. But literally, I think from that time, fourth grade on, I’ve been interested And because I had a jobs, if you can call milking cows twice a day, a job, I had money as a child and as a teenager and whatnot. So it was something that always played a role. And when we transitioned the use of the word economy to a larger realm, like how you how you’re functioning in your community, which is how I’m interpreting the we versus me thing. I really feel strongly that both aspects are good. So if you just look at the me economy, you know, whether we’re transitioning in or out or whatever, let’s just talk about these economies for a minute.

[03:29] If you look at the me economy, which to me says I’m interested in myself and my own situation, et cetera, that’s a good thing. Like we need to be more self-interested. We need as a society, in my opinion, to step up and take some responsibility for our own personal finances. And if that requires a little bit of extra learning, or if it requires a few extra phone calls or an extra book, or maybe a little less TV and a little more reading or watching YouTube information that is going to help you learn rather than just miscellaneous entertainment, then that’s a good thing for this quote me economy that you’re using. And there’s nothing wrong with being self-interested in that. I was just talking with a client of ours today.

[04:18] He’s in his thirties and he’s single and he admits he’ll probably never get married. It’s just kind of not his thing. And he was saying, you know, what am I going to do with this death benefit? I have no interest in it. And I said, for the life insurance, the death benefit right now for you is essentially just playing the role of protecting your cash value from taxes. However, as listeners of our podcast know, we have an article called permission to spend. And that article specifically talks about how you as an individual can spend your death benefit while you’re living. And I can’t think of a better example of a me economy thought process, because it’s selfish, but in a good way, in a, in a self-interested,

[05:08] self-responsibility way, rather than in a selfish, not so good way. Is that making some sense? It makes total sense. And I think that, you know, when we list what our assets are, our primary asset, I guess you would say is our ability to take care of ourselves and to earn an income. And by protecting that asset, regardless of your marital status or whatever, um, only makes sense because, you know, a 30 year old healthy male is not have the same options as a 45 year old, just after a stroke type person. Right. Absolutely. Well, and you’ve opened the door to the health side of the we versus me as well, um, that I want to bring up, but let’s tackle the we a little bit first because regardless of how much an individual is paying attention to

[06:11] their own finances, I still firmly believe that we can get the best results in our lives when we give and giving first is an attitude. It’s a mindset that I have had for a long, long, long time. It came really, I have to give my mom credit because when we, my sister and I would go out to a party or out to have fun or whatever, rather than saying have a good time, she would say, give a good time, like go and give, go provide a good time. And, you know, of course at the time as a teenager, I’m sure I just rolled my eyes like, yeah, whatever, mom, but I know that it was something that deep down inside stock and that I always seek to give first. And when you look at the people in our society that are getting good

[07:07] results, they do have a me economy focus. They take care of their finances. They take care of their health, but then they also have a very we economy focus because they’re giving, they’re providing, they’re using open source platforms as an example, you know, our podcast here, Todd, that you and I do, we give as much as we possibly can on this podcast and provide as much information as we can in our books and other things that we do for our clients are to be as open sourced as possible. And when you look out at, you know, as an example, Tony Robbins just did a whole huge video series for free to try to help people. And there are other individuals in our society that I would consider are doing good things and they’re doing it in an open source platform

[07:53] kind of way so that others can benefit from it. And to me, that’s a we economy. Agreed? I would absolutely agree. And I would think that, you know, by bringing the focus off of yourself so much and constantly worrying about getting my share, that giving lowers the stress level. And we were also just talking about the effects of stress. They’re now able to study stress at the DNA level and your DNA actually frays on the ends, depending upon the duration, mostly it’s duration that counts more than anything. Not that you have one, all of us have stressful events, but if you are in a continuous stressful event, like, you know, continuously dealing with a sick relative for years or caregivers, things like that, that

[08:48] this DNA keeps fraying and your body has the chemicals to repair it. But only so many times. So literally by focusing on me too much, you could actually be detrimentally harming yourself is the way I understand it. Absolutely. I think when you focus too much on either one is probably how we’re ending up going to line this out is that there needs to be a balance between the two because your health is so important. And if you don’t focus on your health and you can’t help others, but then if that’s all you focus on, then you can’t help others. So it does need to be a balance. And we’re learning so much more about individuals and ways that they can have positive impacts on their health. And then as I’ve indicated, when, when your health is good, you’re

[09:37] able to help others, you’re able to be more outward looking. And yet, if you go too far in the other direction and all you’re doing is helping others all the time, you’re not paying attention to your own health, then that’s not going to work either. So the balance of course, is there for each person to find and for each family to find, you know, some families I think could argue that they’ve found a way that works for them. And then another family would look at that and say, Oh my gosh, that would never work for us. So isn’t that the beauty of living in America? I think interestingly enough, I think you could even say that’s the beauty of living in this world as the cultures of one country seems to

[10:20] be so directly impacting the cultures of the other. I think we’ve kind of created this huge blending effect. That’s amazing. Absolutely. And in a good way, you’re right, because we learn from others and we get good ideas on some very different approaches to all kinds of things in life and sometimes we can learn what not to do as well. So that’s equally beneficial. So if you’re sitting across the table from a millennial right now, which you can define whatever a millennial is, if you would, and you were, you know, going in that there’s going to be this me mentality that may cause them to get stressed out, what would be some tips that you would give them to help them have less stress and more success?

[11:09] Oh, that’s a great question. So always to begin with gratitude. And when anybody of any age can begin with gratitude, it enables them to be on the lookout for good things. And regardless of what age people are, but I think particularly kids that are younger and they’re just starting to come into their own and they’re getting their heads up a little bit and starting to see a little bit of things going on outside their circle and then a little bit more and then a little bit more, a little bit more as they get older, beginning with gratitude enables them to focus on the good that is going on in their lives and not be constantly focused on the bad or the things that they don’t have. And I’ve got to tell you, we just came back from an

[11:59] event that was advisors and there are two or three advisors in this group that are literal age 20, 19, 21, 25. And these guys, they happen to all be guys are amazing. They’re doing incredible things. They’re giving first. They are grateful. In fact, my husband, Todd, and I made a presentation at it with the Truth Concept Software and they absolutely loved it and we’re coming up and thanking us for it. So the advice to begin with gratitude, I think, is so helpful. And then also to pay attention to the things that matter, like health, like learning, so important to realize that just because we’re done with our education doesn’t mean that we’re done with our learning and that if we can always be

[12:51] seeking to learn, then we get value out of that. And I have to admit, I personally have to work on that because as an example, this is an event that we’ve attended for a long time and so, you know, I’ve got some experience. I’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s really easy for me to fall into the, oh, you know, I know all this. I don’t need to learn anything here, but I get, oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? I get, I don’t know. I get negative if I’m not seeking to learn. If I fall into the trap of, oh, I know all this. I don’t need to listen to these people, et cetera. Then I don’t have as good a time at the event. Whereas if I just set all that aside, who cares that I’ve been doing this for 27 years, I can still learn.

[13:38] Then I have a good time at the event. Well, the material may be the same, but you’re different. Very well said. And the clients that we’re helping are different and the perspective in the economy worldwide is different. There’s always things that are different. I mean, you know, we mentioned on one of our last podcasts, the Bible’s been being read for a long time. And as far as I know, there’s been nothing new added in quite some time. All right. Well, listen, I, I, I’ve enjoyed our conversation today. Hopefully our listeners got something out of this. If you have any more questions or anything. Also, we have a gift for our listeners. We haven’t mentioned in a couple of podcasts now, right, Kim?

[14:20] Absolutely. So the financial planning has failed book is only available on partners. Number four, prosperity.com slash ebook. You cannot get it on Amazon. We’d love to get it into your hands. There’s an audio version. There’s the physical PDF immediate download version. Again, that’s partners. Number four, prosperity.com slash ebook. And then if people have questions, a case study they’d like us to cover on the podcast, you name it. The email for that is hello at partners. Number four, prosperity.com. Yep. Super. I, we are getting a huge response to people that, uh, really like listening to real life stories. So, I mean, if you want to, you know, we’re not going to use your name or anything like that.

[15:09] If you want your situation openly discussed and get some tips from directly from Kim Butler, then I would encourage you to take advantage of her kind offer of doing that. Again, this is the no BS money guy for the prosperity podcast. Thanks so much to Kim Butler and we’ll see y’all soon. Thank you for listening to the prosperity podcast to take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit us at partners for prosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.