Helping People Make The Most With Their Money – Episode 261

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[00:04] 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. Hello listeners and welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about money and the way that you look at money. Kim Butler, are you there with me? I am, Spencer. Thank you. Well, it’s wonderful to be speaking and as we were talking before we hit that We’re saying, wow, this is going to be a fun topic because, you know, when we talk about money you can read books, you can listen to mentors, you can talk to family members. But one thing that you’re always doing is getting a different and perhaps a bigger

[00:51] perspective. And so as our listeners are here putting on their earbuds or tuning in the car, I think they would love to see how does Kim view money? And then we’re going to dive into some actionable things that will help them out. Sounds great. Well, it’s interesting. I actually don’t think about money in a philosophical perspective very often because I’m always in the trenches. I’m helping people make the most use of their money. And yet I am definitely one of those people that from a very, very early age was very conscious of money and what it could do. And I think everybody can admit that at least one philosophical perspective of money is its action, its results, its good work that it does.

[01:46] And I am an absolute big believer in I think there’s maybe even somebody famous has said something to this effect that money isn’t good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Money isn’t good or bad, but action makes it so. And you can take someone that was stingy and miserly and not very generous and grateful and give them a lot of money and they can still be stingy and miserly and not very grateful. And then, of course, we all know the opposite of somebody that doesn’t have a lot of can be amazingly generous and grateful and full of the sense of what money can do. And so it’s as you’re forcing me to think about this a little bit, it’s something that I think is super important to make a conscious choice of.

[02:48] So as an example, one of the things that our family has decided to make a really conscious choice of is a little saying that we have and we call it the House of Both. And so not only money decisions do we try to do both, in other words, instead of either or, oh, you know, we could do this or we could do that. We always ask the question, how could we do both? And so I think that’s a really important perspective or philosophical framework for money. And then to go back to my beginnings, if you will, and a lot of our listeners know, and at fourth grade, my dad gave me a milk cow, like a dairy cow, as in milk the cow, sell the milk that our family didn’t drink and earn money for it. And so because of that, plus the fact that I was involved in 4-H and I had to

[03:41] keep good records about the amount of milk sold, the amount of money made, the cost of the goods, which is a really critical thing. So often, kids get involved in some little business and the parents are basically floating the cost of the goods and the kids are not involved in how much grain does the cow eat and how much alfalfa hay do you have to buy? And my dad didn’t go so far as like charging me rent in the barn or anything, but he certainly could have. And so I was very involved in the complete A to Z aspect of this milk cow business. And this is fourth and fifth grade and then all the way up to high school. I should make it a note that when my sister and I graduated, my dad got rid of the cows, no more milkers, no more cows, right?

[04:30] No more lessons. Well said. Because of that, I think I had an early understanding that money could do good work and I always had money available. And my parents were teachers. As a family, we were extremely careful with our money. We had the farm, but it was not really a moneymaker so much per se. For them, it was more of a tax write-off. But it enabled me to grow up with a perspective around money that said, okay, you’ve got to be careful with it. But if there’s things that you want to do, you can make it happen. Just work a little bit more, develop a little more value out in the marketplace and then get the money to then go do what you want to do. Nothing was ever handed to me. I worked for every single penny that I had.

[05:26] And as you can imagine, getting up and milking a cow in the morning before school, before doing my hair, all the important things when you’re in high school, as an example, was a very much lesson just in itself in that with work, money can come. And then with money, you can go do things. I got to go on trips. I got to go away to school. I got to graduate from school with very little debt. All those kinds of things play a role. And so I’m very, very grateful for that. Does that help? It does help. As you’ve mentioned before on the podcast, having worked on the farm instilled a lot of principles and values inside of you. And for me, every summer when I was a kid, I would work on my grandparents farm during the time it wasn’t the most fun.

[06:13] I will I will not even be deceiving and say that I enjoyed every moment of it, but there were many moments I did looking back. I’m so glad that I were worked and did that back breaking labor because I was able to learn so much. My mom came from a family of 10 kids. My dad came from a family of seven. So as well, we learned that principle of being frugal, of being respectful of our work. Now, for me, when I think of how do I view money, the word that I think of is freedom and a really valuable analogy that I have with money is something that my friend Chris taught me. And he said it in a very easy statement, which is money is the WD 40 of life. And and that’s that’s easy to understand. Yes, the grease that keeps things going.

[07:07] Yeah. And I have to admit, I love WD 40. Just so you’ll know, I have a can in the barn. That’s mine because like the guys always take my stuff. And so I hide my WD 40 can so, you know, money can can be that it can. It really can be that WD 40 for us. Now, there are some simple ways to look at money. And this is what I’m teaching my kids. And we’d love to hear your feedback because you have a child that just graduated college, so older that my oldest son will be turning 12 very soon. And he’s starting to learn about money. And I’m teaching him more and more principles. And he just fixed up a lawnmower that he got on. It was actually in our garbage collection days. And how it works in our city is they pick up all this bulk trash.

[07:57] And he saw a lawnmower and said, Dad, I think I can fix this. And it’s OK. Well, we’ll at home and it’s your job. So he fixed the lawnmower, cleaned it up, and he put it on the classifieds and he made $50 and this sold love it day of. And so he does that. And then this last weekend, he says to me, Dad, I really want to go ride my bike and get some lunch at a restaurant down the street. I said, well, you can do that. That’s probably going to cost you about eight dollars. He goes, OK, well, what if I don’t get a drink? So, well, then it might be about five. OK, I said, so are you willing to spend 10 percent of the money you made on a burger when you could go in the fridge and get something for free?

[08:40] He goes, no, I guess not. So with an older son, tell us what kind of principles are you now teaching him as he enters the work world? Well, the most important is to save. And it’s just such a boring concept. And yet it just does absolute wonders. And sweet, Robbie, as he heads off into being employed June 5th. So a funny story about Robbie, who just graduated from college, as you said a few weeks ago, we’re making plans for him to come visit us. And he says, well, now that I am employed, should I just go ahead and get my own ticket? And I said, yes, absolutely. But you don’t start your job till June 5th. So I’ll go ahead and get this one. And it was a fun back and forth because we’ve done everything we can

[09:36] to shift the responsibility of handling money over to the kids. So much so that they absolutely know that their first job with their money is to save, is to pay themselves first. And it’s such an awesome thing with a child coming out of college or high school or, you know, whatever, where they are used to living on nothing, having basically no resources. And now, all of a sudden, it doesn’t really matter what income they’re earning. It’s a lot more than what they had. And so for him to begin the habit of savings now, when it’s so easy for a kid like that to save 20 percent of their income. And, you know, he’s going to get into this job that’s going to want him to fund his 401K. And so, OK, yeah, he can do that up to the match level.

[10:34] He and I’ve talked about that before. And he specifically said, look, my employer is talking to me about this 401K, and I know that you’re not a big fan of them, but they have this match. And like, I’d like to hear your perspective. And I said, yeah, absolutely. Do it up to the match level. But not to the max level, MAX. And more important is that you have liquid savings that right now should just go to a credit union or a bank where they’re just going to start to be built up. And then, of course, Robbie already owns his whole life policy and he’ll probably buy another whole life policy as he progresses. And so that is just the absolute most important first step is to get that savings started, because what that does

[11:17] and this is another really important aspect about money that I want to put out there is, and use the word freedom, it gives him flexibility as well. In other words, six months from now, if he doesn’t like his job, which happens, I’m guessing he probably will. But there’s kids that get into a job and then they just realize, holy cow, this is not for me. If they’ve got savings, then they have flexibility. And there’s nothing more important than loving your work. And if you get yourself all tied up into a job with expenses that are so high that you’re not able to save, then you end up really being stuck in that job. And that’s really, really sad to see. That is. You know, that’s wonderful advice

[12:00] to be teaching someone about savings. So money is not the root of all evil. Money is the freedom, the flexibility. It’s a vehicle. That’s all it is. And it’s actually, you know, relatively new for our society to think as entrepreneurs versus employees of going in and X amount of dollars I’m going to get per hour. Whereas because you own a business, you have to look at it as value. Is that how you distinguish it versus the per hour figure? Absolutely. And I love the idea of giving value first and then having money or resources could be other things. Given to you. And if we go into all of our quote work, whatever it is, it could be volunteer work. It could be literal work. It could be part-time work, whatever it is.

[12:53] If we go into our work with a give first attitude, then we’re going to be remunerated. And it isn’t always at that time. It isn’t always immediate. It isn’t always obvious. But I think that’s a really important perspective and philosophy to adopt is that whole give first attitude. And it’s something that I have really from my mom who used to tell me all the time when I was heading out to something rather than saying, have a good time, she would say, give a good time. And, you know, of course, as a high schooler, I rolled my eyes at that, but I’ve since adopted it as a philosophy and I think it applies to money as well. Wonderful concept there, give a good time. So how about this for our listeners out there,

[13:39] give a good money. So when you’re doing anything where money is being interacted, respect the money that you have. When you’re earning that money, then give a good money. Give a good labor, a good service. And if you happen to be self-employed, well then give good value. And the wonderful thing, and this goes back to what you’ve taught with strategic coach is that there are several things that we can do to stack the value. In relationships, meaning the value, we can create educational products for our clients. We can be available for resources. We can make our team stronger. So there’s a lot of value. Other things other than the dollar bill that creates value and creates money down the pipeline.

[14:24] Yeah, and I would really encourage people to take a minute to think about their own philosophy about money. I mean, your question was a great one. If you can get clear on your values as they relate to you as an individual and extend it out to your family and even beyond that on occasion, then money should align with those values. And as an example, something else that we’ve really worked on with the kids is to spend money on experiences as opposed to spend money on things. But when money is necessary to be spent on things to really pay attention to the quality of those things. And something that my parents taught me when I was getting my first apartment was if you are gonna sleep on it, sit on it or walk on it,

[15:19] you should get as high a quality as you can. So like beds, chairs, flooring, but things like lamps and tables and one could argue about this, but other things that you’re not sitting on, sleeping on or walking on, you can go a little bit less expensive. And that’s been a really fun thing to see play out. In addition to that, my husband is a eight implementer on the Colby profile. He’s six, three, three, eight. And that means he’s very into his tools and he’s also very into quality. And I have really shifted my work with spending money on things when I need to spend money on things. We too try to buy more experiences than we do things. But when we do need to spend money on things, we really, Todd has taught me

[16:07] to really focus on quality. It’s absolutely more expensive the first time around, but then there isn’t a second time around. You don’t have to buy it again because it broke. And I think that’s a really cool thing that is an example of your values playing out in what you’re doing with your money. What a great way to wrap that up. I think that all of our listeners can inherently know where they should be putting the most focus and where they should be buying value. One of the other key pieces that I want to pull from the conversation is, as you mentioned, when Robbie’s now entering into the workforce, he’s disciplined to save 20%. And then he had one other resource or tool that’s gonna help him to do that.

[16:54] And that’s the life insurance policy. So maybe if you can explain to our listeners how they could get in touch with you and what other things they can do so they can view money more properly, that’d be great. Absolutely. So we are happy to help people understand how the life insurance policy is a forced savings. That’s essentially what it is. The savings account with a bill attached to it. And us human beings, me included, need that discipline. And so if you’re curious about that, you want to learn a little bit more about how that might work, please reach out to us. And the best email for our podcast listeners is hello at partners, number four, prosperity.com. And if you’re not quite ready for an email yet,

[17:37] you might go to Amazon and grab our book, Live Your Life Insurance. It’s available as a physical book, an Amazon Kindle book, as well as an audio book. Live Your Life Insurance. It’s by myself, Kim Butler, and should be pretty easy to find on Amazon. And again, that’s a great primer on using your life insurance as a savings account. Thank you, Kim. And thank you listeners for spending some time with us again today. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.