Simplify Your Savings with Currence – Episode 498

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, welcome to the podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about an innovation in new technology. This is a way that we’ll be able to track your finances, optimize your finances, and there’s going to be some other incredible reasons why you should use it. So Kim, what is it that we’re talking about today? Well, this is so fun to bring to the world because we’ve been talking about it for about a year. About three months ago, I think we did a podcast on what we call the Cash App, because we didn’t actually know what its name was going to be. And the development team finally decided on the name and we have launched it. So if you are a listener of ours, if you are a client of ours, if you are a

[00:47] prospect of ours, if you are in our circle in any way, or if you would like to invite somebody in to our circle in any way, the word is current, C-R-R-E-N-C-E. It is an app plus an account. And Spencer, do you know about Profit First for Businesses? I do. Yes. It’s an entire methodology. Exactly. It’s a methodology. So beautiful. And I didn’t pay you to say that. Well, current is a methodology of Profit First for Personal. And with all credit to Mike McCullough, do you know how to pronounce Mike’s last name? I don’t. It’s one of those hard last names. So with all credit to Profit First, you know, this is not connected with Profit First or anything else and all credit to Mike and all of his good

[01:44] work that he does there with businesses. Currents is a methodology to help you control your cashflow. And the way to control cashflow is to pay yourself first. And we have all heard this since the beginning of time, right? Your grandmother did this. Your grandmother suggested that you do this, but it’s really hard. And so current is an invitation only app. So like an app on a cell phone. It’s not a web portal. It’s an app on a cell phone plus an account, but that’s not really where the value is, it is the structure that the app plus the account creates for you. So Spencer, would you care to take a guess as to what the structure is or the methodology? If I am guessing and it’s the same thread, everything has to go into one

[02:42] place and then from that, I would imagine you have the orchestration where it will leave, and I’m not using the word planned, but scheduled and intentional. There you go. Much better words. So yes, all income goes into the current’s account. It is the place that collects your earned income, your investment income, your bonuses, your extra money that you get when social security stops taking money out of your paycheck. If you earn more than what is it? 160,000 this year, I think it is the place that when your 401ks get tapped out towards the end of the year, your current account will collect all those income streams. And then, as you so wisely said, you schedule a certain amount of money to go out of the current’s account into your regular checking account that pays

[03:44] the bills. Now, most of us know what our burn rate is, if you will, you know, it’s the amount of money that we know that we need to earn to pay all the bills. It’s not what we consider income. It’s just, this is the amount of money that we need to pay all the bills. One number, right? This is not a budgeting exercise. This is, I need three grand to live on or 30 grand to live on every month or, you know, 300 grand. Like whatever the numbers are, it doesn’t really matter. That is then scheduled either once a month or twice a month to go into your checking account and you then pay all the bills from your checking account, just like you always have. There is one additional distinction that is really valuable.

[04:29] And this is inside the Currents app, there will be an identification of dollars that are removed from the checking account for capital building. Right? Because I know when I look at my expenses out of my checking account, well, some of them are, you know, food and clothes, et cetera. Others are things like my life insurance premiums and my paid up additions writers that I add to my life insurance policies. Well, those are capital flows. They’re not technically expenses. Number one, I could stop them almost any time if my life insurance policies are old enough. Number two, they’re building an asset, right? They’re not an expense. Clear so far? Yes, definitely. I do have a follow-up question, but I think we’ll get to it.

[05:13] I’m happy to be interrupted. Okay. Perfect. So the bookkeeping and accounting nerd in me has a follow-up question, which is this is on the personal side. This isn’t the business because that word just crept between my ears of commingling and I wanted to make sure that that is not happening. Correct. So this is personal only right now. Later this year, we will have some LLC capability coming in. This is not for business right now. This is just for personal. So let’s use an example of a more simple situation, not like yours and mine with 1400 different LLCs. Let’s just use the guy that earns an income. And maybe he has a wife that earns an income too. So it can be a joint account. All income gets paid into the current’s account.

[06:01] And then, you know, let’s say that’s totaling $100,000, just easy math. And let’s say that they say, look, I need 5K a month to live. So the 100K would be net income. The 5K a month to live is $60,000 a year, obviously. 5K times 12, 60K. It’s that 40K difference that currents is going to start to work with and collect. Now don’t be overly concerned with the numbers. It, yours could be a thousand dollar difference. It really doesn’t matter, but it is the order of operations that matter. That totally makes sense. So what’s the goal? So everyone’s going to have a goal for this. Does that mean that some people will have a goal towards savings and then it then steps them towards a goal of investing or is it a goal of retirement,

[06:50] even though we don’t want to use the R word? Like, what does that look like? So the first goal is your target emergency fund. Now you might have some other emergency funds, that’s fine. But the current’s account does earn interest. And so the account, which you as the owner of the account control it. I do not, I do not move money. I cannot have access to the account. It’s not mine at all. I can only invite you in. However, what I can do is set your target emergency fund number. And so with each client that I am helping this structure with, I ask them, what’s your target emergency fund number? Five grand, 50 grand, a hundred billion dollars. It doesn’t matter. Whatever number they give me, that’s the first goal.

[07:40] Clear? Absolutely. So I have a question for you. Is that a worthy objective? I would say that accomplishing that alone is helpful, but it’s not enough. Exactly. And that’s where we come into the second goal. So then we’re going to build up the reservoir. So your current’s account is a reservoir beyond the target. And maybe it’s just a little bit at a time. You know, maybe it’s a couple hundred dollars here and there, or maybe it’s three or four grand a month of extra money that so often just gets eaten. And I mean, eaten literally, like it just goes into extra food or it just goes into extra play, or it just goes into frittered away stuff that we’re not even overly conscious about. And so that money gets collected.

[08:37] It gets saved in the space of the current’s reservoir, earning an interest for our next goal. Now what’s our next goal? Well, we want an opportunity fund, right? So for your younger family that really hasn’t built up anything, maybe it’s a $10,000 opportunity fund, a $50,000 opportunity fund, whatever the numbers are, that’s the next goal. As soon as that amount is built up, then it gets pulled because we’re going to make a choice. We’re going to say, okay, we have 10 grand or 50 grand or whatever the number is, we want to make a choice to pull that money and invest. Or maybe we want to make a choice to pull that money and go on a family experience like your family does so often. That is pretty awesome.

[09:17] So does it set up, we’ll call it staged accounts. So you’ve got the emergency fund built and then you’ve hit your number, whatever that is, your six months, 12 months, whatever those numbers are, now it says, okay, money’s moved over to this account. Let’s start working on the next. Is that how it works? No, it’s all going to be in the one reservoir and the target is literally right on your cell phone. So you have an app that controls this information. It gives you amazing free cashflow data that is yours, that you control the only you can see. And inside the cell phone’s app, you’re going to see up, hit my target. Okay. Let’s work towards the next thing. And the app is going to be improved as we go.

[10:02] So what you’ve just brought up is a really good idea. Maybe we need another number that we’re shooting for, but the fact is you’re $10,000 over target or you’re 20,000 or $50,000 over target. So that’s kind of the number. Now we go invest or spend your choice, but it’s a conscious choice instead of just letting it happen. This is so awesome. You know, you, you said one thing in here, what makes it incredible, which is this you’ve been methodical about it. You get your emergency fund, your opportunity fund, you’re going through for the families that I know that do this, cause you and I’ve talked with families forever. Once you have set money aside and you know that that’s for an opportunity,

[10:44] it’s surprising that you find the opportunities, the families that don’t do this, they never find the opportunities. And the only thing that happens is time continues to pass by with the opportunities. It’s so true. And so developing the structure, automating it, right? That’s another thing you and I’ve been working on constantly. How can we automate our businesses? Well, let’s automate this aspect of our family’s cash flows. And then from there make conscious choices instead of unconscious choices. In fact, truly, if I had to summarize what the current app plus account does, it shifts unconscious spending to unconscious savings. Ooh, that’s awesome. That is really good. A couple of final questions.

[11:40] Is currents treated like a bank or what does that look like so that this can all operate and move around? Yeah. So this is a FDIC insured checking account at Thread Bank in Nashville, Tennessee, it’s a hundred year old bank. It earns interest, you know, between two and 3%. It’s not important. You’re not going to keep tons of money there forever. And it enables you to automatically deposit payroll, automatically deposit investment income, that kind of thing. Again, just at the personal level right now. And then equally important, automatically transfer those scheduled baseline numbers to your regular checking account where you pay all your bills from. That’s not going to change. You don’t have to move anything else.

[12:26] And then it gives you the good free cashflow information because what we’re trying to do is free up even more cashflow. I love it. This is awesome. So for anyone interested, they are going to use the keyword currents, C-U-R-R-E-N-C-E, correct? Correct. Okay. And it’s for iPhone, also Android? Absolutely. Wow. Okay. That’s pretty easy. I’ve been in the software world before, and I know that anytime there’s friction, that means a person says, no, I tried to find the friction and all these. And it’s like, okay, this is pretty easy. This is good. Yay. So yes, please reach out to me on email using our hello at prosperity thinkers email that we have reserved for our podcast listeners. And obviously I will have your email because you’re emailing us and I

[13:22] need your cell phone because it’s easiest to send you an invite via text to your cell phone. And just for what it’s worth, it comes from a 6 2 0 area code, phone number, not my normal minus three area code that people might be used to. And it is by invitation only, as I said, and once you’re inside the app, so you’re going to download the app. You’re going to go in and set up your account. So yes, it’s going to ask for social security numbers, addresses, et cetera, your account, you control it. I don’t inside the app under the connect button. You can actually refer others. And so I am committed to getting every 20 to 30 year old person that is in my sphere of influence on this app. Cause we all know that us 50 year olds, you know, maybe our habits

[14:16] are a little harder to change. That’s fine. But the 20 and 30 year olds, my son sat down. He had it open set up funded auto income deposited within eight minutes. All right. All right. That’s pretty convincing. So, uh, we’re not saying to skip YNAB, but we are and go to currents and give it a try. Perfect. Well, thank you, Kim. And for all of you listeners again, hello at prosperity thinkers.com keyword currents, you’re good to go. Thank you for listening to the prosperity podcast to take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit prosperity thinkers.com.