The Financial Services Industry Isn’t Serving YOU – Bonus Episode 528 

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Jim Clouke here on the Beach Money Podcast. I hope everybody is doing fantastic. Here on the podcast, we talk about ways to increase your lifestyle. Maybe do something you haven’t done before with beach money. And on the program today, I’m really excited because we’ve got Kim Butler. Hey Kim, how are you? Very fine, Jim. So glad we’re getting to talk and welcome to Jordan’s community. It is so great to have you here. Prosperity thinkers. I like the thinkers in it. And of course I love people who are prosperous, okay? Tell me a little bit about how you help people. Oh, happy to. And prosperity definitely goes with beach money. So it’s a good combo. And that is a rebranded name for us,

[00:55] which since you just brought up the thinking idea, I couldn’t believe prosperity thinkers.com was available just about three years ago. I think we rebranded for another 30 years. So I’ve been helping people to answer your question with their personal finances for over 30 years and totally ready to go for another 30. And we do it in three very specific ways. We like to simplify savings. And I’m sure we’ll come back to that. We like to automate assets and we like to install faith in finances. Yeah, that’s good. Hey, before we get into all this though, I’m really excited about who you are and the way you live because we live kind of similarly, but I have different pets than you. I’ve got a dog and I’ve got some chickens.

[01:48] Tell everyone a little bit about your unique pets. Well, we have alpacas. So if you happen to be watching the video, this is an alpaca. Yes, they really are this fuzzy. They’re amazingly soft. We have about 16 of them. We share them once a year and get their fiber. It’s not called wool. Wool is for sheep. Alpaca fiber is turned into yarn and I crochet scarves for our clients. So that is so unique, Kim. How would anyone ever forget you if they’re your client because they have an alpaca scarf, right? Correct, yes. And it is definitely a heirloom quality. The fiber is known for lasting that long and it is really a unique gift, obviously, but it’s so fun because our work is very generational. We help families move generational thinking

[02:52] as well as generational wealth from generation to generation to generation. And I’m just talking regular families. We’re not in the high net worth space. We help regular people move their values and their thinking and their dollars from generation to generation and that alpaca scarf can go with. I like that a lot. And you said something that’s key, values, our values, the way we think. Money, and I love the topic of finances, money doesn’t have to be a subject we don’t wanna talk about. A lot of people don’t wanna talk about it. People don’t wanna talk about things, Kim, that they’re not familiar with, that they don’t feel comfortable with. And a lot of people don’t wanna talk about retirement

[03:41] or saving, life insurance. God forbid, I don’t wanna talk about death, right? So they don’t talk about those things. I think that what you do is fantastic because you help people understand what they really need to do. And I believe you take the fear out of it, don’t you? Yeah, thank you for picking up on that. It is so necessary to have the conversations. And you’re right, they’re hard to have. And so if I can remove the fear, if I can give some talking points, of course, today’s world, we have apps, right? So I’ve got apps that I recommend to people that help them and help their kids and help their grandkids. It’s a real joy to work in the space and let that potentially problematic arena bubble to the top and just get dealt with.

[04:31] Absolutely. So I don’t know if you follow this, but we’ve heard, all of us have heard this forever, pay yourself first, okay? Does that ring true in what you do to help people, right, to set that money aside first? So when we hear that, what does that mean? Well, it means that you should choose the savings act. So savings is a verb and turn that into savings as a noun, like in a savings account first. And what most people do is they are trying to budget and they’re trying to figure out what they’re gonna spend and savings is at the end of the list. So when you pay yourself first, savings becomes the first action that you do with earned income. And so we have a structure that facilitates that

[05:24] and this allows us to simplify savings. And the structure is an app plus an account and it’s for adults and it drives that savings behavior and it literally turns unconscious spending into unconscious savings. Could you say that you should really tax yourself because when you get taxed, let’s say it’s income tax, which sometimes comes at the end of the year, but if you’re really doing it properly, especially as an employee, a W-2 income owner, you’re getting payroll tax now. Right. The FICA, you can’t take home the $10 that you made because the government takes it upfront. They ask your employer to do it for you. If you’re self-employed, just be careful, I tell you. But in any case, you’re supposed to set that aside.

[06:17] Would you suggest like another 10% maybe for savings? Well, here’s the fun thing. 10% is a great starting place and our clients that are inside this structure have an average percent saved of 38. 38% of their income is the average percent saved for the people that are on this structure. It doesn’t happen overnight, of course, but it’s so motivating and so momentum building that it really drives that savings behavior and then that creates financial freedom because there’s so much peace of mind that exists when you have savings as a noun and that savings as a verb is what’s driving it. It’s really nice to have wealth, whatever you consider wealth or at least savings, some money, some equity, call it whatever you want.

[07:13] Greenback’s in the bank. It’s nice to have that when things come up because as my financial advisor’s been telling me for 20 years, something’s gonna happen, something. He’s even seen people having to bail their kids out of jail. So it’s nice to have it. And even though we put it in these different buckets, you can often get to it now with the buckets for retirement and you could pay it back or whatever, but it’s really nice to do that. And there are so many people in our country, we’re so prosperous in this country, aren’t we? But there’s so many people who make a lot of money and they don’t save it. And I’m not talking about investing because people say, I invest my money. I said, look, unless you’re Warren Buffett,

[08:00] you’re really not an investor. Let’s just call it savings and go out investing if you want, but you’re probably not an active investor. You’re putting money away and it’s kind of doing its own thing with people who are watching it, right? In theory. I have a quick, funny story. Two physicians making over $2 million total, zero savings. And they said, we can’t, like we don’t have any extra money. Oh God. Yeah. How many houses do they have? They make multiple. Yeah, the story’s long. Oh goodness. Within a couple months, they had $40,000 saved and they literally didn’t know where it came from. And they’ve been trying to save for months. Yeah. And so, you know, it’s about education. I spend a lot of time on my personal me,

[08:53] meaning I exercise and I eat better now than I used to and I do something else that’s really critical that a lot of people don’t think of and that’s sleep. A lot of people say, well, I’ll sleep when I’m dead and I tell them if they don’t sleep, now they will be dead. And so it’s interesting because we were talking a few moments ago about reverse engineering. In other words, let’s start with savings and then let’s go to the expenses later. So if you don’t have enough money for that car because the balances and savings, oh, well, I guess you don’t get that car. I do the same thing with sleep. Eight hours of sleep and whatever’s left over gets broken up. And I want everyone to understand that these are all very important things

[09:33] and need to do the same thing with your finances. But so many people are broke. They’re tired, literally. They’re sick because they don’t eat well. And it’s a disaster. I have a question. This is a little off beat but let me ask you this question, Kim. Do you find that people who don’t have money saved are more stressed and not as healthy? Cause I would think that would follow. Oh gosh, yes. Because if you don’t have an emergency opportunity fund and notice I’m using both words. We don’t wanna just have an emergency fund cause that’s all our brains are thinking about. But if we have an emergency opportunity fund there is so much peace of mind that occurs because if we lose a job or have a child in jail

[10:17] or have an opportunity, let’s turn it around. What about you need to build up dollars to invest the really good investments or lump sums. How are you gonna get from zero to a hundred K or whatever the minimum of your favorite investment is you gotta have that savings. And so, yes, it provides so much peace of mind which provides health, better sleep at night then better habits the next day. We are so bad to ourselves. We’re human and I’ve read this before a number of times we much rather do things that are pleasurable than things that are not. And that seems pretty obvious. But we wanna do all the fun stuff. We wanna go on vacation and buy the big houses and the latest car and the shoes and the belts

[11:03] and the blouses, whatever we, right? Handbags, that’s a big one, right? $3,000 handbag, oh my goodness. I don’t have a $3,000 handbag. I actually don’t even have any handbags. But it’s incredible because people sometimes need to feed certain things. And a lot of it I believe is actually all of it is psychological. It’s all up here. It’s all a mental thing. Some people need to feed themselves with gifts. But I think we need to reprogram, right? We need to reprogram. We need to get off of that. And we’re not talking about saving 80% of the dollar that comes in, but a number that will begin to grow. And then in my case, I got to a point, Kim, where I didn’t have to worry about saving as much because I had a bigger nut, if you will.

[11:53] And then that starts to throw money off. Well, that’s the concept of beach money, right? Is that you have dollars that are moving and flowing. I love the whole analogy with the ocean that are serving you instead of the other way around. Absolutely. It’s a drug money. And it should be really used well. And the whole idea of beach money, like you were saying, is to not have a drought, right? We’re thinking about the water. It should continuously be flowing. And I want everyone to understand. You don’t need to be bringing in $100,000 a month in income. You could be bringing 10,000 or 3,000 in. It’s relative to how you spend. Some people could be considered wealthy, even though they may only have 150,000 in the bank,

[12:48] but if they’re only spending a couple thousand dollars a month and have a small income, compared to what Kim had mentioned, these two individuals, they’re making how much? How many millions? Two million total for the family. Two million for the family annually. Yeah. And didn’t have anything. No. They’re not as wealthy as the other person I just mentioned. Right. It’s incredible. They have a rich income, that’s what they have, but they’re not wealthy. And so the whole discussion of beach money, to me is more than money, is a state of peace. Yeah. Freedom right now. Yep. And that’s really where the second part comes along because automating assets sounds great. Like, well, how could I do that?

[13:37] And there are products that have existed for centuries that are very boring. They’re not investments at all, but they are assets that grow automatically. And my favorite product is called a whole life policy. And before you shut the podcast off, it is the foundation for beach money because for beach money to occur, which is cashflow oriented, we’ve got to have that emergency fund first, the opportunity fund the second. And that begs the question, well, where are we gonna store that opportunity fund? It grows better than at banks and it’s private. FYI, everybody, all of Kim’s information is gonna be listed in the notes of this podcast. So you’re gonna be able to reach her and she’s going to provide us with great links

[14:27] as well in here. So you’re gonna be able to get everything you want. Can you help people all over the country? Yes, all over the country and in all states of personal finance. It’s actually one of the joys that I have about my practice is I can literally go on the phone call with that couple each earning a million, turn around and talk to somebody making 75 grand a year. And as you said, sometimes the person making 75 grand a year has more efficiency in their finances than the couple million dollar per year income family. So it doesn’t matter to me, I’m happy to help. I do all my work over the phone and the web. I’ve worked from home forever and ever. And it’s a joy to be able to help people.

[15:12] Again, simplify the savings. We got to start there, automate the assets and then that’s what’s gonna install faith in the finances. It’s not that complicated, Kim. No, it’s not. It’s really a mindset. I’ve done many things in my life that I didn’t know I could accomplish, but I set out to do it. Cause you really have to set out to do it. You have to say, I’m going to do this. I’ve seen other people do it and I’m gonna do it. And I’ve done that everything from fitness to weight loss, to finances. And then once you start doing it, you look at other people saying, ah, why can’t they do it? I did it, right? I mean, and then you start like almost looking at them like they’re foolish. Like, wait a second,

[15:57] how come you’re not living this beach money lifestyle? And most people don’t though. Most people don’t. But most people can become multimillionaires if they want to. Dave Ramsey is a personal friend of mine. I’ve known Dave for a long time. He will tell people if you put just a little bit aside every month from the time you’re 25 or 35 until you’re 65 or 75, you will have millions of dollars. Now, I will say that Dave is pretty generous with the returns over time, but he’s done it. But in any case, it’s still substantial. Don’t you agree, Kim? If you put just $10,000 a year away for 40 years, wouldn’t that be substantial in almost any type of vehicle? It just requires automation. Meaning having that money taken out of your paycheck

[16:55] like you never had it. Like I said, taxes, right? Like FICA, it’s like you can’t touch it anyway. And I’ve done that over time. And at first, sometimes it feels a little uncomfortable. It’s like I just took a pay decrease. But it’s fun when the statements come in over time and you’re like, how did we amass this much with all these zeros? I remember I told my wife years ago, hey, you should start contributing to your company plan at work. Because she hadn’t been. And I’m like, this is what I’m doing. You should do it too. She accumulated tremendous dollars over time and we didn’t feel it. Well, the value too of not only retirement dollars, but outside of retirement plan dollars and having those monies be freer.

[17:51] Because as we know, the retirement plan dollars have an age associated with them and other penalties and that kind of thing. And so it’s super valuable to build another asset in addition to that. And if you automate it and then you automate the growth, it becomes, you said it well, really fairly simple to do. I think part of the reason people don’t like talking about finances is that many people that are from the financial world make things overly complex. I don’t know whether that’s an effort to impress people or confuse people or what have you. But we work hard to make it simple, put it back on their side of the table so that they can understand it, control it, work with it. And then it enables them to be a prosperity thinker

[18:41] and to develop the beach money in a way, like I said, that serves them. Similar to, I would think, a personal trainer or a nutritionist, someone who understands where you need to be and they put you on a system, on a path, right? That’s well said. Yeah, like any other coach. Kim Butler, thank you so much for joining me today here on the Beach Money Podcast. I really appreciate it. This has been awesome. It was a joy to do. I appreciate you as well and good work for Jordan and his community and all the good work they’re doing. Absolutely. Kim’s information is located in the description of this podcast. So there’s no excuse not to reach out to her. Once again, Kim, thank you so much for joining me today.

[19:27] Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit ProsperityThinkers.com.