Privacy Is Dead? DNA, Blockchain & Financial Transparency – Episode 664

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, welcome to the podcast. We’re going to be talking about privacy is dead. That’s a bold statement. And it’s actually getting backed up with something that kind of scared me. DNA sweeps. Did that one scare you too? Yeah. What do you think? This is interesting. There is a space that the Peter D. Mandus crowd curated where he says that you could shake somebody’s hand and get enough skin cells to actually get their DNA and that DNA can be sequenced for, it’s a hundred bucks, right? Yeah, it’s like nothing. Yeah, and I have heard the privacy is dead mantra for quite some time and I welcome it because to me that brings all the bad guys out into the light.

[00:59] I know some people get concerned about that. And like all things in this space, there’s some legitimacy to being concerned and we need to take a look at things carefully and we need to possibly back up and redo and etc. And yet the arena of privacy being dead can be a helpful thing for so many of us because, as stated, it brings the bad guys out into the light where they can no longer be bad guys and hide behind the long list of things that they hide behind. And so this is such a space again to be curious about to really just be open minded about to be aware of to help our children and grandchildren around and watch and see what becomes of it because we know that good can become from it. It is a space where good can prevail.

[01:58] Absolutely. I want to take we framed privacy and privacy is dead. And we’re talking so broad in the way that DNA can be assessed and analyzed for a hundred dollars. And then we’ve got all of the tracking that happens online. We’ve got tracking in the physical world. Now I want to shift this conversation into the financial world. And here’s the reason why. So we often get families that realize the principle of garbage in garbage out. So if you give a coach, an advisor, a helper that’s going through finances, if you give them bad information or not enough information, they can’t paint a good picture. And it also is like it’s like giving up everything. Talk to us from that that coaching perspective, because that’s where I want to take this privacy conversation.

[02:56] I’ll tell you very specific story. We have had in the past. I’ll be as generic as I can with this. A client that had legitimate concerns about providing us financial data of much specificity. And I understood I knew why. I understood his emotional perspective. I understand stood the numerical perspective on it. And I was OK with it for a period of time. So we started the work anyway. We dove in. We rolled up our sleeves and we started to help and look at the various things that needed to be looked at as it related to his finances. But at some point I became really frustrated because my hands were tied. I was not able to help him to the degree that I wanted to help him because I was dealing with partial information.

[03:51] And so because of the block chain, it’s funny that word doesn’t show up in the media as much as I think it should. But because of the block chain, I believe that in time we can do a better job of being confident about the people that we are choosing to share our private information with. Because we know that it can be protected or that it can only be for a limited period of time. Because that’s how I would have chosen to work with this guy is look, let me see all of it, but only let me see it for a couple of weeks so that I can learn what I need to learn. And he can remove account numbers and things like that. I wasn’t asking for that information anyway. But if I didn’t have some additional data about some of the various elements of his personal finances, I literally was stuck.

[04:50] My hands were tied. Or worse, I would have been coaching him down an incorrect path because I thought money was this way and it was that way. And so I believe that because of where I know the block chain can go and the limiters that we can put on it, Once we get over the hump of realizing that privacy is dead, we can come back around to what we want, which is privacy is important to me to share with you for a period of time so that I can get your wisdom. Well, I like that. So let’s take into account the privacy is dead. And you’ve talked about the block chain. We’ve talked about getting all of the information. How two sides of this, which is an advisor, a coach, a helper, and a family, meaning parents or grandparents or children having conversation

[05:52] because that’s one privacy on the family front and having all parties aligned. It’s actually a difficult conversation as a parent to say, Hey, this is what the finances really look like. And then it’s a difficult conversation with a coach and advisor, a helper to say, this is what the finances look like. How do you navigate? It’s done in layers, I believe, because when you first start the conversation. So literally, if somebody calls me and I’ve never met them, I’m asking five to seven questions about their personal finances. I want to know income. I want to know net worth. I want to know if they have liquid money like savings account. I want to know if they’re adding to that account. And I want to know if maybe if they’re prepaying their mortgage, maybe if they’re funding a 401k.

[06:37] That’s six questions right now. And I might have a seventh wills trust LLCs companies, that kind of thing. Seven questions. Ten minutes. That’s all I need. Super high level. I can get ranges if that’s more comfortable for somebody. So that’s a layer, right? The family situation is the same. When your kids are call it seven years old and you want to have a conversation with them about, say, a vacation fund. So here’s a fun thing families can do. Everybody drinks water for 30 days. No coke, no coffee, no sports drinks, nothing. All the money that we normally spend on that we put in the vacation fund. And that gives us money to fill in the blank. Maybe buy extra drinks when we’re on vacation. Or depending on how much money it is, maybe it’s we five.

[07:23] We fly first class instead of coach. Whatever it is that the family wants to spend money on. That’s one layer. But then the second layer is maybe it’s the second meeting with me, right? Now I’m asking about life insurance. I’m asking about their stock portfolio versus their bond portfolio versus their investment real estate. It’s a second layer. They can still be high level. Okay. With the family situation. Now we’re talking about a monthly budget. Maybe it doesn’t need detail, but maybe that our kids are 10 and 12 years old. And they can understand, look, it takes us five grand to get through the month or 10 grand or eight million, whatever the numbers are. It doesn’t really matter. That’s a second layer.

[08:01] And maybe that’s not your choice for a second layer. Maybe you just choose to say here’s our grocery money for the month. Four hundred, a thousand, whatever your numbers are for grocery money. And then maybe the third later is the total monthly, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Just layer upon layer that you can share when you are comfortable based on that relationship. So good. I’m not going to push back, but I’m going to give context to our listeners of one thing. You’ll all notice that Kim used soft drinks as an example. And she didn’t say cutting out ice cream because we both know that’s not something she’d be willing to do it. But that’s a big sacrifice there. Okay. We’ve all heard the episodes.

[08:46] Everybody’s got their thing. Okay. But you mentioned something at the beginning on layer one when you’re talking with a coach and advisor or someone like that, which is you’re asking a small handful of questions, net worth or whatever that would be. What came to me was they may think that they have those numbers correct, but they might not. That’s okay. Would you say most of the time people are very accurate or would you say moderately accurate? It depends on the question. Some numbers are easy, but it cracks me up when you ask those questions and they’re well aware that they’re talking to a financial coach. And some of them have the numbers readily available so that they can be very accurate.

[09:38] Some of them are like, I probably should have known that. Like I should have prepared a little bit, but I don’t have it and it’s X, which is fine. Usually that first conversation, it’s close enough. But it is very funny to figure out what things seem absolutely normal to me that I think everybody should just know off the top of their head. Even something like gross income. Like a lot of people know what lands in their checking account every two weeks or what have you. And they might know a little bit more, but what that gross so that you would call net income. But a lot of people don’t know what gross income is. You just don’t remember unless they’re just depends on the industry or they’re just they’ve looked it up or they’re just naturally wired that way.

[10:22] So it is interesting to me the accuracy and lack thereof of the information sometimes. But usually if we can get in the ballpark, that’s sufficient again for that layer. When you get into those second and third layers, you must have the accuracy. Otherwise, it is absolutely garbage and garbage back out. Yeah, very good point. So the privacy is dead. The context that we now have is that we’re going to use a layering context. And so for listeners with your family members is your having conversations, maybe adults having conversations with senior parents. Or it’s a married couple having conversations with kids or grandkids. We know the layers now. And when you’re talking with someone about your finances, you have the layers and you realize that, yes, the more you share, the better information you have.

[11:21] And also realize that the more that you share and the clearer the picture, the more a coach and advisor can help you. Without that, you’re guessing. And guessing is just not a lot of fun in the finance world. It’s fun in other areas, but not with finance stuff. Have you seen the same? Agreed. And it’s a time waster. Guessing is a time waster. When I think back to the client whose story I told at the beginning, it’s frustrating because of the time that has been wasted with us having wrong information. Because we did guess. We extrapolated some of the information that he gave us and tried to figure it out. And that was just a waste of time. And it really didn’t serve us or him well. Yeah. All right.

[12:11] For any of you listeners, if you’re looking to get some more clarity, be it on the financial front that you’re trying to get some clarity and figure out those layers, you know where to reach out. Hello. Prosperity thinkers.com. If you’re trying to figure it out with a family and you’re saying, hey, like I have a difficult situation, how should I navigate this? Don’t hesitate. Send an email. Hello at prosperity thinkers.com. Thank you for listening to the prosperity podcast to take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit prosperity thinkers.com.