The Books Kim and Todd Are Reading – Episode 160

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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, best-selling 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 our co-host and best-selling financial author, Kim Butler, with us. And today we’re going to be talking about the books that Kim and I are reading. Mostly, Kim’s probably going to be the biggest contributor on this. Kim is one of these people that probably watches little to no television, but is constantly feeding her mind with books, and it’s amazing how that constant mental

[00:54] nutrition is the word we used before, pays off in a lot of ways that sometimes you see them immediately, and sometimes it’s six months or three years down the road till something that you read clicks and benefits you, isn’t it, Kim? Very, very true. And I so appreciate your use of the word mental nutrition. I’ve given you credit for that in numerous conversations in the last month or so. And I also just heard that Teresa, so a lot of our clients know Teresa as our paperwork person, she and her husband are doing something cool this year. They decided to take away 10 things and add 10 things for their lives, and in particular in the evenings. And they don’t have children, so that makes it a little easier.

[01:42] They do have a dog though, but one of the things that she’s taking away is TV watching, and one of the things she’s adding is book reading. And it’s just so important. And a lot of people are readers or listeners, that counts too. You know, you can listen to books and that works. But there’s something about a book that develops a thought more thoroughly than a blog post or, of course, than a TV show or numerous other types of mental nutrition that we would pursue. So I am super, super grateful to have books. I typically read them on my Kindle. My Kindle is on my phone. I’ve got a Samsung Note, so we’re talking about a, what is that, two by maybe four inch screen. I absolutely love it. But I actually have here on my physical desk right now, four or five books that

[02:33] are physical books that either were sent to me or somebody handed to me. And I’ve loved them and I wanted to share them with everybody. But Todd, why don’t you go first? What’s the book that you’re bringing to the table for today? Super. Well, first, I’d just like to mention that I bought one of the first Kindles that ever came out, and I love the concept of Kindle. And I currently have it on my iPad. But no matter how hard I’ve tried and I’ve spent the last 10 years trying, there is nothing like the feel of a physical book in my hand. And I finally gave in and most of the books that I read now, I want to write in the margins. I want to highlight and I still buy physical books. Interesting. But you know that about yourself.

[03:21] So that’s awesome. Yeah, it just, I know for some reason, it’s just, there’s something beautiful about a book. So the book I’m reading right now is called Jump, J-U-M-P. And it’s by Steve Harvey, who, as you know, is a, he’s a comedian and different things like that. And he talks basically about how you have to take that step. There’s, you know, there’s no parachute. You don’t know, you don’t know if you have a parachute. You don’t know if it’s going to open, but you have to take that step towards what you want when you’re called to do so regardless of where you end up. And unless you’re willing to take that jump, you will never get where you’re trying to go. I love it. That’s such a true, true statement.

[04:14] And boy is our prosperity economics movement evidence of that. We just had to step out there and begin and learn as we go. And, you know, there’s so much in our life that is tried to be planned. Financial planning, life planning, you hear that word all the time. And I think jump is a much better word than plan. Of course, I use the word strategy a lot too. But our, our world is really just moving too fast right now for planning to be done, you know, maybe a month or two out, even a quarter. But beyond that, jump is the word. Yep. The subtitle is take the leap of faith to achieve your life of abundance. I love it. Sounds great. I’ll have to grab it. One of the things that I do when I hear about a book is I’ll grab the sample on my Kindle.

[05:10] And that’s my reminder to check that book out. And then if I’m more thoroughly interested in it, I’ll buy it. And if I’m not, onward we go. Yeah. Isn’t that a nice service that you can kind of scan it and make a decision without having to make a purchase? A lot of times if I’m sitting in an airport, I’ll pick out 50 books and just stack them up, you know, the free samples. And then when I get a chance, I’ll go through it and read them and then just make my decision that later. But yeah, that’s awesome. Well, all right, Kim, well it’s your turn. So the first one that I want to throw out is called The Other Side of the Coin. And the subtitle is mortgages 12 truths about home buying you’ll never learn from a bank.

[05:55] And this is by one of the prosperity economics advisors, Will Duffy. Will lives in Colorado and this is a great little book, very short, I’m thinking 89 pages. And it talks about mortgages very, very thoroughly. In fact, from a little different perspective than our Busting the Interest Rate Lies book. So a lot of people know we’ve got books out there on Amazon. Busting the Interest Rate Lies goes through the mortgages thoroughly. But this one, as the title suggests, The Other Side of the Coin definitely looks at it from a little bit different perspective. And I thought that was a great job by Will. That’s actually his second book and something that I would recommend people grab. Of course, all the books that we’re talking about are on Amazon.

[06:41] And we’ll make sure that we get some help getting the links to these books. So that if you want to go back to the show notes of the podcast, you’ll be able to click on them and head straight into Amazon and grab either the audio version if it’s available or the physical copy, as Todd is saying that he likes so much. Super. Can you give us one example from that book that surprised you or taught you something? So let me just grab a page here. Chapter four is cash versus finance. And it is so true that there are so many people that think that cash is truly the best way to buy a home. And again, we cover this in the Busting Interest Rate Lies book. But I like the perspective that Will brings to it.

[07:33] And he’s reminding people about opportunity costs. So if you pay cash for home, and this is true also if you put more down on a home, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s an investment rental property or a home that you want to live in, your own cash has a cost. And people forget that or don’t even know it. So the opportunity cost of your own cash can be literally measured by the interest rate that your best investment is operating at. Now, in the Interest Rate Lies book, we just use a simple four or five percent. Will also uses a very conservative interest rate. But if you have an investment that you know about that, let’s say, earns eight percent, then extra cash against your current mortgage or as a down payment for a new mortgage

[08:26] literally has a cost of eight percent. Because that extra cash is going against that probably three or four percent mortgage instead of into the eight percent investment. So that’s what opportunity cost is, and Will does a great job of going over it. For a practical note for our listeners, if you have not yet taken advantage of that Affordable Home Care Act, pretty much everyone, regardless of credit, as long as you’ve made however many house payments, 11 out of the last 12 house payments on time, including rental property now, qualifies for an automatic refinance. And I know that I’m surprised I run into people every day that are still paying six and a half, seven percent on their mortgages

[09:16] when they could have an automatic reduction to the last one I saw was three and seven eights. Interesting. So that’s something maybe we need to talk a little bit more about for people at another time. Affordable, say it again. It’s the Affordable Home Care Act. It was actually passed by George Bush before he left office and it’s been expanded by Obama. And basically what happens is this, you can’t cash out your appraised value does not matter. You reduce down to the current interest rate. And the reason that the banks will do this is that once the bank puts you through this process, the government backs the loan. So in the event of a future default, the government is now guaranteeing the loan. So the bank wins, the homeowner wins.

[10:07] And if you think about it, if you save three hundred dollars a month on your mortgage, you’re either going to do what? Spend it or save it. And either way, it boosts the economy. So it makes sense for everybody. Yep. Love it. Great info. And where would you suggest that people go for getting that kind of help? Do they need to go to their regular mortgage broker or you need to go back through the bank that you’re with? Okay, cool. Very good. All right. So the next book that I have is a disconnect from the financial world and it’s called The Noticer. It’s by Andy Andrews and he’s a very well-known author. Often, I guess you could say in the Christian circle, but even if that’s not your bailiwick,

[10:55] this author, Andy Andrews, is an inspiration. So the current book that I finished sometime in the last 12 months or so is called The Noticer. All of his books are very, very good. And this is a story. It’s very impactful. It draws you in right away about a guy named Jones and how he notices things. The subtitle is sometimes all a person needs is a little perspective. And it is a great reminder about noticing things and noticing what’s important and a little bit of a slow down and smell the roses environment, which I have to admit, sometimes it doesn’t work for me, but there are some really good suggestions. Like I said, it’s a really good story. It’s a short read, 165 pages, lots of white space, great little book

[11:49] and great author. I really recommend him, Andy Andrews. The book’s called The Noticer. Awesome. I recently kind of had some downtime health-wise and have really had some time to sit back and notice just that things going on around me. And it’s interesting. I wrote a list of things that I noticed while I was sitting still. So this, but I’ve got to get this book. I’m interested. I love it. Yep. That’s great. And that’s a good thing to do any time of the year, whether it’s downtime for health or downtime for a break vacation, what have you, a super helpful strategy, smart on your part. Super what’s next success for teens. This is real teens talk about using the slight edge. So the slight edge was a book,

[12:43] a business book written. Let me see if I can get that author here in a minute. And it is this book. Now the success for teens that I’m talking about is by the editors of the success foundation. And what they did is pull some summary things from this book, the slight edge, sorry, that as I said, was a business book and apply it to a teenager’s life. And of course, teenagers these days are absolutely considered in the social realm to be all the way up to age 30. The longevity that we’re experiencing in our lives right now, the normal life expectancy being a hundred, the various commentators, I guess you would say, are using the term teenager all the way up to age 30. Now, of course, I’m sure our society will

[13:36] come up with a different word for them. But it is so important to help young children, young, even adults, you could say, get a handle on their mental capacity. And we talk about mental nutrition, the mental capacity, the ability to use their mind to do amazing things in their life. In fact, the chapter I just slipped open chapter eight, make your dreams come true. And okay, some people could roll their eyes about dreams, but just like your jump book, dreams are what set us up for opportunity. They’re different than goals. They’re not with a timeframe. Typically, they’re just out there opportunities that we think about. But there are some specific mental things that you can actually work on. A dream board is an

[14:25] example is one thing this guy suggests. So this book is a really helpful. I enjoyed it. I mean, I’m certainly not a teenager. It’s 147 pages. Again, it’s success for teens, real teens talk about using the slight edge by the editors of the success foundation. And a lot of the things that the success foundation puts out are fabulous. But this one was given to me by Sherry. So thank you for that. And I loved it. And of course, shared it with my kids as well. Super. Any others to add? Yeah, as we wrap up here, I’ve got a book called essentialism. It’s the disciplined pursuit of less by Greg McCowen, M-C-K-E-O-W-N. I hope I’m pronouncing his name right. And it’s the title says it all it’s essentialism, the pursuit of less

[15:21] was a helpful book. The subtitle, I guess could be you’re defined by what you say no to. And we’ve talked about that before. More than what you say yes to. So essentialism is just helping you determine what’s essential in your life. And saying no to everything else, including some of the things that society tells us are essential, you know, we need to define what’s essential for ourselves, not for anybody else. And then the last one I absolutely loved a little bit more back on the business side of things. It’s called the end of average, how we succeed in a world that values sameness. The author is Todd Rose, R-O-S-E. So it’s the end of average how we succeed in a world that values sameness. And he talks a lot about the trophy

[16:13] generation where everybody gets a trophy no matter whether they want or not and the negative impacts of that. And how we can now really get into the strengths that are on the opposite ends of average. In other words, if average is in the middle, we have some real strengths and then of course people have some real weaknesses and what to do to delegate out those weaknesses, what to do to really focus on your strengths. And it’s a real help you live up to your potential type of book. It’s really helped me consistently have some statistics about various things that are thought to be average. He tells story after story after story to support the statistics. It was a very interesting read and something, in fact,

[17:05] my father-in-law who’s a big book reader but doesn’t really like business books, he enjoyed the book as well. And from a business perspective, it helped me realize the importance of treating clients differently. You can’t just have an average client of treating our children differently. You can’t just average out your kids or any relationship really. So all good books that I loved and we’re just so grateful for the ability to have books. Many of our listeners know we’ve got a fifth book on Amazon now called Busting the Life Insurance Lies. Its audio version will be available here at the early part of February. The physical book is on Amazon now and of course on Kindle. So here’s to books. Well, Kim, before we leave, why don’t you give a book away since we’re talking about books?

[17:55] Oh, that’s right. I always forget that the one book that many people are interested in from us is not on Amazon. It is only available at partners number four, prosperity.com slash ebook. It’s called Financial Planning Has Failed. And it’s also a fairly short read, but it’s packed with information, statistics about the history of financial planning, the value of jumping. We didn’t use that term, but of thinking differently about your finances and of helping you learn about alternatives for a place to store cash, alternatives for the growth of your money and alternatives for creating income. So that’s Financial Planning Has Failed, available at partners number four, prosperity.com slash ebook. And there’s an audio version as well.

[18:53] And I know a third of you stopped listening when she said packed with statistics. So it is a wonderful story as well. Yes. And in fact, it even tells my story. That’s not something that I put out there very much. I don’t necessarily like to talk about myself, but this one tells my story. Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Kim. Thanks to our listeners. Again, we love getting your questions and your comments at, I believe it’s hello at partners number four prosperity.com. Correct. That’s our podcast email. So send us your questions and we’ll answer them on the show. Awesome. Thanks so much. And we’ll see y’all again real soon. Thank you for listening to the prosperity podcast to take control of your money and

[19:41] 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.