Busting Money Myths and Bridging the Gap with “Measure-Back” Savings Behavior with Kim Butler – Bonus Episode 565

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Hi everyone. I am extremely excited for the opportunity to speak with Kim Butler. She is one of my mentors. She has really changed my trajectory when it comes to the way I think about money, the way I think about math, the way I think about living life. And I’m super excited to introduce you to her today. Kim has been in the financial industry for an extremely long time. She’s someone that Robert Kiyosaki recommends. She’s someone that Tom Willwright recommends. She’s someone that Gary Gunderson recommends. She’s written 10 books. She has dedicated her whole life to bringing the value of whole life insurance to the world, not just through her own business, but through training,

[00:50] other agents and other advisors. She’s a giver and I’m super excited to bring and introduce you to her today so you can get to know her and feel of her passion for finance and passion for getting the truth around money, around math out to the world. Thank you, Kim, for being here. I’m really grateful for your time and sharing your time with our audience today. Absolutely, Justin. It is a delight to do. And I’m honored that you were curious and that your community is open-minded to learning. I am super excited because you have just recently, you’ve written 10 books. You have a new one coming out called Busting the Budgeting Lies. And that’s why I wanted to bring you on so you can promote that book and

[01:31] explain what is the value of that book and why are you calling budgeting lying, because I think that’s going to throw some people off. And I think it’s just a good opportunity for you to explain your, your expertise in this area so that people can want to go buy your book. Well, thank you for that. You know, that is such a great question. Why are we calling budgeting lying? And like so much of our lives, as it relates to our personal finance, math has nothing to do with it. No, we know that math has a direct relation to personal finance, yet our lives rarely have a direct relation to that man. I mean, just think about it. All types of personal finance try to involve math in the discussion. Maybe it’s how long do you want to work?

[02:21] What age are you going to retire? If you had died yesterday, what needs to happen? You know, these are all typical medical equations that we can calculate. And the math is correct. It has nothing to do with our daily life. And there is no more extreme example of this than budgeting because we have, well, every human being on this earth that cares about their personal finance has sat down and mathematically puted a budget, right? Money in, total money out. It could be green. In other words, there’s money left over. Could be red, green. There’s nothing left over, but it doesn’t matter. In the next 30 days, that mathematical equation rarely happens. And so the mathematical equation is a budget and what happens is not that.

[03:12] And that’s why I call it a lie. Yeah, I really like that. Cause that resonates really well with me. Cause that was, I used to be a school teacher and as a school teacher, obviously I’m doing what you just said. You’re trying to keep the money in the money out, but life is too fluid. There’s too many events and activities that happen at all times. And here’s what happens, or at least in my experience in my life is when the fluidity happens and some life events happen, increases the expanding, you feel guilty and you feel like upset and you feel like you’re on this treadmill that keeps you never getting ahead. It gives people the idea that they’re never going to get ahead of it. They start giving up and they start not caring as much and they start

[03:52] being reckless and they start not doing what they should be and not leaving an impact changes the wrong idea. And so I really think you’re onto something, even though probably pushes people, catches people off guard by saying it’s lying. I think there’s some truth to it. Well, and you’re so accurate in that life is fluid. That was a great term that you used there. And so what are we going to do? Like what’s the solution? I’m so anxious to get there in our conversation, but let me be quiet and you can ask some more questions so that we really lay the groundwork for this conversation. Yeah. So that’s a, that’s a great bridge. So we, you’ve mentioned that, okay, mathematically we can calculate it out,

[04:32] but the react, the chance of that hitting is pretty low. It’s maybe one month we’ll hit it and the next month, not the next month, not the next month we hit it, but it’s so up and down and crazy in your book. You’re, you explain this principle and then you go over, you’re going to, you go over four myths of here’s what’s wrong. So what, what, one of those myths is something that you’d like to highlight that kind of plays off of what we just talked about. I think really the best one and they’re, they’re all good, which is why they’re in the book and quick gratitude to Elizabeth Hagenlofer who helped us look onto the shelves, but the idea that saving first is going to work. I mean, people really don’t think that that’s true in today’s world.

[05:19] We were recording this in 2024 and we hope that people are listening to it in 2034 and 2044. And the fact is way back in the 1920 people saved first. People didn’t try to budget back then. And it’s maybe because there were no computers or were no calculators even. I’m not sure about that exactly, but I know there were no computers. And so we have today things that we think are going to be helpful to us. But the fact is they’re harming us and that is the computer or the calculator or the app or whatever it is. So again, the saving first, saving as a verb really work. And we think about saving as a noun. And, you know, you mentioned Robert Kiyosaki earlier. He even talks about savers or losers.

[06:14] And yet if you go a little bit deeper, you know, he’s great for his sound. He’s talking about people that only store their money in savings as a noun. You’re a teacher, right? You understand that the word save can also be a verb. And that’s not what he’s talking about. And it is what I’m speaking about when we talk about the myth of does saving first, saving as a verb first work. And it does, and we know this. I’ve seen it in my own life. I’ve seen it in many, many clients’ lives. When I know back in the 1920s, that was the method that people used to get ahead. And I love that because our work out in the marketplace was very, very traditional. And the 1920s, obviously a long time ago were a period of tradition.

[07:10] And the tradition back then was that you save first, save as a verb. So I really, I think that’s really powerful and I know that people can resonate with that. I know that people have heard them before, because people have heard things like pay yourself first or make yourself your first and best. I think that’s where it stops in a lot of people’s lines because they don’t know how to actually do that. Like what are the mechanics behind it? So can you give the insight into what you talk in your book on how to do that, because I think that’s more important than those soundbites because soundbites sound sexy, sound extraordinary, but if you don’t know how to do it, then no one ever takes action.

[07:47] Very well said. So let me just tell a little personal story from me. So in fourth grade, my parents got me a milk cow, like for real, a dairy cow that I milked every day. And they taught me, and my parents were teachers, by the way, they taught me to save first. And so that’s what I did. That’s what my grandpa did. Like it was in the conversation in our home. And so fourth grade, seventh grade, 11th grade all through. And so I worked for college. That was the habit that I had inside my tiny little business of milking the cows, selling the milk, breeding the cows, selling the calves. You know, I was involved in four age. Whole space became very, very real to me. Well, fast forward to 1988. I’ve graduated from college.

[08:40] I met my first job, which was out of space. And now computers are just starting to come into our lives and people were starting this idea of budgeting at a more computerized level. I guess apps didn’t exist, but you know, there was a way to easily calculate the math. And I saw all these people that were trying to budget and they never had any money in their savings account. And it was because budgeting trying to measure forward. But I had already had, even though I was 22 years old, straight out of college, I had already had a long period of time in my life where I saved first, because that’s what I was taught to do and I had earned some decent money through that period of time, selling the milk and doing all that.

[09:29] And so I absolutely positively knew what worked and while I didn’t have life expenses as a fourth grader, I had expenses for buying the cows and buying the hay and taking them to the player and all that. So I knew what incomes were. I knew what expenses were. I knew the job that saving first did. And so because of that, literally for all of my adult life, I have always just saved first. So you asked for mechanics. The way that I did that in my adult life, barely early on was learning about whole life insurance as a product and premiums that we pay into whole life and premium is a tricky word in this space, because we tend to think of premium as like a car insurance or home insurance premium,

[10:17] which is all spent, but in whole life insurance, premium, the definition of premium is that it builds cash value. It builds the ad set called whole life. Maybe not in the first year or two, but as soon as you get past that in the policy, all of your premiums are building cash value. And so that is the way that I saved first for the first, probably 20 years of my adult life is literally just by paying premiums now with some pen to positions too, but recently I saved first by paying the premiums on those whole life insurance. And Justin, I will admit to you, I didn’t really know what I was doing in the early stages. I was just following what seemed to be the space for what community that I was in.

[11:05] But over time I could see that it flat out worked. And so honestly, I just kept doing it. I really liked that. That was the, that was not the answer I was expecting you to give, because that wasn’t what you gave in your book, but that was an extraordinary answer because I think it gives people options. They don’t, there’s not a one size option, but you can choose or even combine options to help them really maximize this. But you’re, you’re choosing to deliberately pay premium into a guaranteed product that’s going to last your entire life with liquidity and opportunity. Now, are you wanting to discuss, or do you want people to read the book to learn what is the option now that the technology is in place

[11:47] that potentially can enhance this? I love want capability. So our lives today are so spoils oriented. We have these apps and our health exists on these apps, our personal finance exists on these apps, our schedules exist on these apps, our email and the list is just endless. And I’ll admit I’m not a super oriented towards my cell phone kind of person. In fact, I really resisted getting the smartphone. I had the whole Motorola flip phone for a long, long time. Never the less I got on board and it is so helpful when there is an app that now not budgeting apps, not the myriad of apps out there that try to organize your personal finances in a look forward way. There is one that I’m aware of that drives that savings behavior.

[12:49] What measures backwards. And that’s a very key point that we talk about in the book. The way to get results. And this came from Dan Sullivan at strategic codes to measure backwards. Let me give a personal health example, if I may, and then we can talk about the monetary. Does that work? Nope. Okay. So I had my children within a year of each other. So two kids urinate days, 20 pounds on top of 20 pounds on a pretty small frame. So honestly, I wanted to lose some weight. Well, if every day I was looking at, and you brought this up very early in our conversation today, if every day I was looking at how much weight I’ve still wanted to lose, I would feel very defeated, very frustrated. I would not feel like I was making progress at all.

[13:41] Instead, if I looked backward at the progress I had made, the weight that I had lost already, then that was very motivating to me. And I was able to lose that extra pregnancy weight very quickly and efficiently without a lot of mental anguish that you hear so many people have as it relates to their health. Okay. So the difference was measuring backwards, looking back at the progress I had made and measuring that instead of looking forward to where I wanted to be and measuring that. Dan Sullivan refers to that as a gap. There’s a gap between where I am and where I want to be. Well, our money’s no different. And so with the app that we’ll talk about the name and how to get it and all that here in a minute, with the app that exists

[14:33] today now, it drives savings that enables us to measure backwards about the progress that we have made instead of trying to figure out forwards, which is what budgeting is. This app is so much more inspirational. It’s so much more momentum building. It’s so much more focused on the positive. And these are things that we need in our lives squarely around all areas of our life, but very specifically around the area of personal finance. Because as you said so well, when you open up our conversation, if you are feeling frustrated with your personal finance, you just want to give up and like literally not work on it anymore. And we know that’s No, I really appreciate that story. The looking backwards is powerful.

[15:27] It’s powerful in money. It’s powerful in health. It’s powerful in relationships. And I hope that people can take that lesson. If they’re not going to take anything else, but take that lesson as a way to measure your progress instead of always looking at how far the gap is, look backwards at how far you’ve come because that’s really a big deal. So now let’s dive in as we wrap up here. What is the app called? How do people access it? And why do you love it so much? What’s the big reason you’re seeing as the reason you like it so much? So the app is called Currents. It’s a made up word. C-U-R-R-E-N-C-E, Currents. And it is available by invitation only. So for your community of listeners, you as a listener will want to reach

[16:13] out to Justin in order to be invited in the app does not cost anything for the app itself, there are some bank charges and whatnot, because the app is connected to an account. And again, by invitation only. So you can go to the website and look at it. The website is actually Live Currents, L-I-B-E-C-U-R-R-E-N-C-E. And Justin, I’m sure you’ll put that website in the show notes, but frankly, I don’t encourage people necessarily to go to the website except to just watch the little video that’s there because the value is getting properly introduced, not only so that you’ve got the full benefits of the app, but that you fully understand the structure, the structure of that app plus the account, it’s going to drive behavior.

[17:08] And one of the biggest differences in that, in addition to what we’ve talked about about measuring backwards is that you as the owner of the app, you’re in complete control of the account, are going to choose how much to spend. Most budgeting, even the save first approach focuses on trying to save and chooses a percentage or a dollar figure to save, right? Like we’ve all been told, save 10% of your income, save 20% of your income, whatever the numbers are. Well, with the NNN, in order to drive the save first in bio, you choose how much you’re going to spend. And what that does is it flips the equation and causes the save first behavior to occur. So it’s a structure there. An app plus an account, it’s going to drive savings behavior,

[18:07] help you measure backwards and most importantly of all, give you a lot of confidence around your cashflow and cashflow confidence is something that most human beings want. So it doesn’t matter if you’re straight on the school and your capability is small or you’re in your later years and your capability is large or you’re in what most people call retirement period of time. When you might not think about cashflow as much, or you might not want to think about cashflow as much, it doesn’t really matter where you are in your life, the ability to drive that savings behavior, have a structure that does it automatically and have the support that the structure provides along with somebody like Justin to help guide you through getting it

[19:00] set up and automated is invaluable. And there are already thousands of people, the app has a couple of different iterations, there are already thousands of people on the two different versions of it that are seeing the benefits and gaining massive progress, sometimes within an incredibly short period of time, just because of the help that the app provides. And in our Busting Wedge It Inwise book, we’ll talk about the app a little bit more and explain some of the psychology behind it. I really liked how you said it, it flips the script. You’re looking backwards, it’s saving first, you’re choosing what to spend, not choosing a percentage. And it goes really back to the beginning, how if you’re on that,

[19:44] where you’re discouraged about budgeting and you’re never getting ahead or you’re on that treadmill and you have the feelings of giving up. When you have your cashflow working for you on the other side of the spectrum, now all of a sudden you’re empowered and you start thinking bigger, what impact can I make? What more could I do? Can I start a business? Can I help more people? Like it’s completely opposite psychologically. The difference is when cashflow is working versus not and budgeting oftentimes doesn’t let cashflow work and currents oftentimes gives people the permission to make cashflow work, which changes their whole trajectory. So I’ve seen that firsthand with people we’ve worked with, with myself.

[20:22] I thought that was a good dichotomy between our whole conversation today that it ended there is that it’s empowering to have structure and system around cashflow versus the budgeting, which doesn’t give you that. Really well said. Yeah. It is so important that human beings have positivity in our lives, a sense of control, coordination as much as possible so that we can be focused on those other things that truly matter way more. You know, what’s interesting also is that cashflow issues don’t go away. They literally just get bigger zeros on, you know, that guidance make a hundred grand a year. It’s got a certain level of cashflow issues. Well, the guy that’s making a million dollars here has a different level,

[21:07] but they’re still cashflow issues and the guy that’s making a billion dollars has different cashflow issues. They’re all just zeros. And so for every person out there, the peace of mind, the sense of productivity with amazing, positive possibilities that occur and cashflow is controlled are so fun to watch. And I would say for the average person, you know, average income, average household environment, the current structure can make up to a two to three million dollar difference in that person’s, that family’s assets base over a lifetime. That’s incredible. No, that is extraordinary. And that, I mean, that’s for people that are, people don’t think that far ahead, they have a hard time visualizing and capturing it, but

[22:01] that’s a massive amount of difference when it comes to the life you’re going to live a two to three billion dollar difference is going to be a lot more comfortable, a little bit more under control. You’re not going to feel as panicked. It’s, it’s, it’s why you can call it life changing just because it is, it changes the way you live because you have so much more. So I appreciate you choosing to be here today. Can you let our audience know where can they sign this book? And if they want to contact you, what, they want more information from you. They want to learn about the community you’ve built. They want to learn more about the plethora of content you’ve created. How do they find you? How do they find a book?

[22:35] Where do they get ahold of you? Well, thank you for asking. The book is on Amazon as a Kindle version and as a pay for bank and also as an audible version. So I read the audio that’s there for that book. And as you have so kindly mentioned, there are a lot of other books that I have on Amazon. All of them have all three of those versions. I always really encourage people to think about how they learn best. Some people like to watch videos. Some people like to listen to audio and some people like to read. And so the thing that I’m looking in most forward to is when AI has progressed to the place where I can feed it. One of my books and it’ll create a video of that book. Right. In the meantime, I’m on every social channel that you can think of.

[23:23] So YouTube’s got a variety of videos that people prefer to learn that way. Um, there’s my own prosperity thinkers websites. I have a LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I think I’m leaving on Tik TOK. So pick your poison. Awesome. Well, I would like if you could leave just one last words of wisdom before we close. I think the audience you’re speaking to are intelligent people. They have found success. They almost all of them own businesses, but oftentimes they struggle with personal finance. They, they, they, they can’t quite get it right. They don’t know they’re making all this money, but it still feels like something is wrong. Is there any advice you have for that person on how do you move forward?

[24:05] What’s the next step to start getting that right? Because they can really, because of how much money they’re making, because of how innovative they are, because of how impactful they are, they can really dominate that space and really be comfortable with it, but they feel like it’s this wall that they can’t quite get over. How can they burst through that wall? I have a very specific story from yesterday at my strategic coach attendance, so dance 11 strategic coach I’ve attended for a long, long time. One of the entrepreneurs there said, I have a million dollar business and a $10 body, and what he meant was he wasn’t spending any time, money, effort or focus on having his body, his physical self be as good as his business.

[24:53] And that is the issue around our personal finance. We have million dollar businesses and $10 personal financial balance sheet, income statement, you know, list of insurance, wills trust, medical directives, fill in the blank. We’ve literally spent $10 worth of time, money and effort on that. So I believe the best thing a business owner can do is walk out a period of time, a couple hours a month would probably do the job and dedicate some time, energy, money, get help, right? When we need help, we get a coach and dedicate that effort to their personal finances so that their personal balance sheet and their personal income statement can look as good as their business balance sheet and their business income

[25:45] statement. Awesome. That was an excellent, I think that’s an extraordinary end. Everyone, please follow Kim. She is a wealth of knowledge. She’s extraordinary. You can find her everywhere. Just Google her name and you’ll find her. Appreciate you, Kim, and thank you. You’re welcome. It’s a joy. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit ProsperityThinkers.com.