176 joe saul sehy 176 joe saul sehy
Podcast 176

176: Confessions, Mistakes and Insights from Former Financial Advisor Joe Saul-Sehy

Joe Saul-Sehy is the creator and co-host of The Stacking Benjamins Podcast and the Money With Friends podcast, a CNBC contributor, a speaker, and a coach. He’s been a financial advisor, a brand ambassador, and a media spokesperson.

Joe struggled with credit card debt, student loans, and failing to plan for retirement, as well as issues with the IRS – and worked through all of it, carving out a new career for himself along the way.

Today, Joe joins the podcast to talk about how his experience as a financial advisor informs his work as a coach and podcaster, what an effective planning framework looks like, and the big mistakes that people make when they consume financial advice and put it into practice.

In this podcast interview, you’ll learn:

  • What Joe did after the COVID-19 pandemic derailed his life and travel plans for the indefinite future.
  • Why Joe believes that 95-98% of what financial advisors do can be done by their clients – and why it’s the 2-5% that makes all the difference and adds so much value.
  • Why Joe thinks relationships matter much more than whether an advisor works on fees or by commission – and why taking action is the most important thing of all.
  • Joe’s favorite savings hack – and how to effectively divorce your paycheck from your lifestyle.
  • How Joe sees the difference between meaning and purpose.

Inspiring Quote:

  • “Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and they underestimate what they can do in two or three decades.” – Tony Robbins

Interview Resources:

Disclosure:

Offer valid in the 50 United States and the District of Columbia, to first-time requestors. During the offer period, receive one (1) in-stock book per request. Limit (1) book per week per household. Limit three (3) books total each calendar year, between January 1 and December 31. Offer valid while supplies last. Howard Bailey Financial, Inc. reserves the right to cancel, terminate or modify this offer at any time. Void where restricted or otherwise prohibited.

Read Full Transcript

[INTERVIEW]


Casey Weade: Joe, welcome to the podcast.

Joe Saul-Sehy: I’m so happy. I feel like I finally made it. I’m here with Casey. I made to Fort Wayne. As you know, I grew up in Kalamazoo. So, I’m a big K-Wings fan. So, I think I’m not supposed to talk to you because you’re a Comets fan. But, yeah, I’m glad to be here.

Casey Weade: I’m excited to have you. And I love that you’re from Detroit. And I was so excited, I said, “Oh, great,” we can actually do this live, we can get together, we can have a roundtable. Usually, we have to do it over Zoom like this. And then, well, we can do it face to face and come to find out you had some pretty major and drastic life changes that happened here recently.

Joe Saul-Sehy: I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everything’s just fine because I do what you do. And thank you for the introduction, by the way. I interviewed these cool people. And when I started on this journey as a podcaster, I would have never thought that I would actually say to Cheryl, my wife… I would say, she was looking for a new opportunity. And she was looking all over the United States. And she has this profession where she can work six months at a time and just do these little things.

And we’re at the point now where we choose jobs not for money anymore. We’ve made plenty of money. We’ve made some good decisions after initially being just a dumpster fire with our finances. But things have been really good. So, now, we have the flexibility, Casey, to go anywhere, do whatever we want.

So, here’s the goal. Cheryl loves what she does. She works with kids. And she was going to go six months, this little town in Arizona. And it was just a short-term gig. They were going to give us a house. They were going to give us another car. So, we were going to sell our cars, have an estate sale, sell all of our stuff, sell our house, I would have never thought about this before. And it’s funny because when I told Cheryl I was thinking about this, she’s like, “This is crazy.”

And then two days later, she said, “I can’t stop thinking about it,” because really, if you think about it, to talk philosophically like you do a lot. What is stuff? It’s just stuff, right? I mean, it just is. Anyway, so, we sold our house. We scheduled the estate sale. We are going to move to Arizona for six months. And after that, by the way, in December of this year, I got us a house in Bali to rent for a month, while Cheryl takes a month off, look for the next opportunity. There were going to be six months someplace else where she’d work. I can podcast from anywhere. And then, we were going to go to Portugal for a month and live there.

Well, we’ve got the house sold. We have the estate sale scheduled. I’m going to help her move into Arizona and come back and clean out the house and do the estate sale and all that. And the car is literally loaded. All we’re waiting for, Casey, is this one phone call that says it’s time to come. And the guy calls, I remember we’re in the car, we’re excited. The call comes like, okay, we’re going to go home and pack up the rest. He goes, “Nope, the job’s gone.” Because of COVID, the job’s completely gone. And we went, “Oh, crap.”

Because now, I don’t have a house anymore. I don’t have… I still had my stuff. But anyway, so she then just… once again, flexibility is a nice thing and it takes some time to build that. It took us a long time to build that. But we had the flexibility to be okay with that. And so, now we’re in the middle of looking for another opportunity. We had an estate sale, we didn’t sell as much of our stuff as we thought. I ended up having to have a small storage unit. I’m really kind of disappointed because I still deal on some stuff.

Casey Weade: You’re trying to get rid of everything.

Joe Saul-Sehy: I was trying to get rid of everything. Well, there’s a few pictures and there’s keepsakes, but I thought that was enough that it could go in my mother-in-law’s basement. I thought that we’d have enough that it’d be just a few boxes of the stuff. But yeah, we had the estate sale and then sadly, our closing was two days later. So, I only had two days to just box it up and deal with it.

But anyway, I have a small storage unit now and we’re looking for the next opportunity. So, for the next few months, because wherever my wife works, she has to get licensed for her job. While she’s exploring and interviewing in these different places right now, I met my co-host, OG’s house in Dallas. It was last week and this week. Next week, I will be in Texarkana taking care of a friend’s dog while they are in Oregon. So, I’m living at their house. They have a swimming pool, so that’s going to be awesome. And then, a week after that, I’m in Cleveland, Ohio with my sister for a week. And then, I think we’re going to rent a house in Vermont, we were just talking about that this morning, for the month of August.

Casey Weade: I think one of the funny things is you always kick off your podcast. I mean, for those of you that don’t know and you have listened to Stacking Benjamins, I mean the podcast gets kicked off as it’s live from Joe’s mother’s basement and that was a joke, I think, for the most part. Now, you really are working on people’s basements.

Joe Saul-Sehy: It was not a joke. No, I’m kidding. We’ve been saying lately, the joke now, we’re on the Westwood One network and the guy in charge of Westwood One, when I told him about this, he goes, “Oh crap, what’s going to happen to the basement?” I said, “No, the new joke now, Casey, is the basement goes wherever I go. So, this week it’s live from Joe’s mom’s basement in Dallas, Texas. Next week, it’s live from Joe’s mom’s basement in Texarkana, Texas. Week after that, it’ll be live from Joe’s mom’s basement in Cleveland, Ohio, and then live from Joe’s mom’s basement in Burlington, Vermont, or wherever the hell we end up. Who knows? Live in Joe’s mom’s basement in Bali, Indonesia.

Casey Weade: This would be a dream retirement for some. I think some see someone like you going, well, I get to spend six months here, six months there. We’re going to have a month in Bali and go, wow, I would never be able to afford that. However, before we got started, you shared that it is actually cost savings. You’re actually going to be spending less living the way that you’re living now. So, is that really the case? Share with us how you’re actually saving funds and is this something that anyone can do?

Joe Saul-Sehy: Well, short term, it certainly is a saving because I’m living with somebody else who’s paying the rent. So, yes, OG is paying the mortgage. I’m in Dallas. It’s like 99 degrees right now as we’re doing this, and he’s paying the air conditioning bill. So, I’m saving a ton of money doing this right now.

Long term, it depends on the type of job you have. My wife has a job. She’s a pediatrician. For the six months at a time deal, she loves working with kids. And people that know her case, you call her the baby whisperer because you hand her a crying baby, we’ve been married 27 years, you hand her a crying baby, the baby stops crying. And as I mentioned, she just loves it.

And so, we thought that going every six months, that would give us a few things. We’d always have some of the big costs covered, health care. We’d have lodging covered. We’d have an extra car, so we could downsize from two cars to one. I don’t think everybody can do that. I think though everybody does have the ability to look at your situation and say, “What are the things that I need to change?” And for us, it was a few things, even without that, like I could podcast. If she decided she didn’t want to work, I could still podcast anywhere, so I could go anywhere.

I can also find cheap lodging like Bali. The expensive thing about Bali, which sounds incredibly expensive, was getting there. The house that we’re renting in Bali is $1400. It’s completely furnished. It has its own pool. It’s 400 yards from the beach. It’s tiny, but it’s beautiful. There’s only two of us though, and it’s two bedrooms. And I was going to use one bedroom for podcasting, the other bedroom for us to stay at. But Casey, if you want to come join us for a week, come on to Bali. But it’s $1400.

Getting there, that ticket was expensive. But if we stay for a long period of time, you can live in Bali incredibly cheap. It’s the same thing when we looked at Portugal for this time next year, hopefully, this COVID stuff’s gone. But if I can be in Portugal this time, and we looked at Greece as another example. Man, there were some beautiful places for $1200 a month where you stay. So, if you decide you’re staying for three months, four months, and you amortize the cost of that airplane ride over a long period of time, it can be pretty cost effective.

Casey Weade: Yeah. And we’ve been doing this for years. My dad, he loves traveling and he’s the guy that’s in Florida for a few months. He’s in North Carolina for a few months. He lives in Mexico for a few months. And we’ve always done it. We’ve been using HomeAway, Airbnb, Vrbo. Vrbo was like the first one. And we did Vrbo everywhere that we went and dad was the master of getting the deal.

He would put together an e-mail and it would be a stock e-mail. He’d copy it in 10 different places and say, “Hey, we’re really struggling,” or “This is our budget and we want to get a good price. Would you be willing to accept this?” And you’d be surprised by how good a deal you can get if you just ask.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Isn’t it amazing? You see these people that are confrontational about stuff and I have to say this, it’s funny because not only did I sell my house, I also sold a rental house that we own. I just wanted to be liquid. I’m not a great landlord. I think real estate can be great for people. Not great for me. It’s great if it’s a rip, but I’m not handy at all. And I, frankly just, yeah, not for me.

So, I gave my renter a great deal. He bought the house. He and I have had a great relationship. He’s been my renter for eight years completely. And also, by the way, he needed the price to be lower on the house. So, he and I agreed that he’s going to pay me the rest of what he owes me for the house six months from now, and it was because of the fact that we work together.

The people that bought my house, I kind of hope they’re watching, their realtor was such a jerk and made it so, just beating against each other, that I play complete hardball. I hated that transaction, every second of it. Financially, I came out much, much better because I feel like at the end, she did much worse by her client by not doing that. But I feel like we’re all human, and if you tell people, “Hey, this is my budget. I have a family of Acts. Here’s what I want to do.” People, I don’t know, I like working with people I like, don’t you?

Casey Weade: Yeah. I think that’s the most important thing. And you were sharing when you got started here, I mean, you were an advisor for, what, 16 years?

Joe Saul-Sehy: I was, yes.

Casey Weade: You were a financial advisor for 16 years. And I think the experience you have, as a financial advisor, really bled into what you do today, doing the podcast, doing the interviews. I wonder if you found the best parts of being a financial advisor and you just carry those over and created yourself a whole new career in kind of this job optional life that you’re living today.

Joe Saul-Sehy: The answer is absolutely. I liked being a financial advisor. The relationships that I did not like were when somebody wanted to delegate their stuff, but they didn’t want to understand it. I really enjoy financial literacy. I like it when I could teach somebody, when I was their advisor, if I got hit by a truck, that they were better off because they could make better decisions, even though I wasn’t still in their corner. But I really was turned off by relationships where people just want it, “No, no, no, Joe, you handle it.”

And then, invariably, every strategy, something goes wrong at one point or another. I was trying to teach my clients that, that something’s going to go wrong. And when it goes wrong, if you understand the mechanisms, we can then fix it. And that’s the cool thing. If we understand what we’re doing, we can fix it. But I would have some clients that would not care about the mechanisms.

One guy even told me, Casey, he said, “The reason I like having you is I like having somebody to kick.” It was exactly what he said. And that right there is why he did not like that particular relationship, like, no, no, no, no thanks. But you know what? I think that’s because for people like you and I, we appreciate teaching people how this works and making them do a better job.

And for me, there’s some advisors out there, and I don’t know if you want to get into this too much or not to think, No, no, no, I’m going to take it all because if I don’t make this seem like magic, you’re going to let me go. If you realize how easy this is, the mechanisms of what you do, you’re going to fire me. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. The thing is, I’d say, 95% to 98% of what I did, and probably, Casey, what you do, our client can do on their own.

But it’s that last 2% to 5%, which usually is by the way, teaching people that nothing is the right thing to do or teaching people to hide money from themselves are things that you really need a good coach for, like, you need somebody in your corner who can be a steady hand like back in March to say no, no, no, we’re not selling today. What are you talking about? The world’s going to hell. No, we’re not selling today.

Casey Weade: We’re buying. Yeah.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yeah, right. And people look at you like you’re crazy. What do you mean we’re buying? I’m glad I’m not a financial advisor anymore, but even as a podcaster, somebody wrote to me after one of our shows in March, saying the world is on fire, and you and OG are acting like everything’s fine. Usually, we don’t talk about those on the show because I find it that when we talk about negativity, people then share more negativity because they know that I’m listening.

But in this particular case, we even told our audience, we said, “No, no, no, no, the world is fine. The world is fine.” Ten years from now, everything’s going to be, “Isn’t the world fine today right now?” “Oh, hell, no, it isn’t,” which means this is the worst time to make financial moves. It’s a horrible time to make financial moves. If you set yourself up correctly, you don’t respond to this. You already have a plan. If you don’t have a plan, then you go get one, right?

Casey Weade: Yeah. I wonder if you have this issue. So, you’re in a unique position now. You were an advisor. Now, you’re not. So, you can kind of say whatever you want, especially about your previous career and the experiences that you had there. One of the articles I did a while back, we did a podcast on it, was Confessions of a Financial Advisor, some of the mistakes that advisors make as they get started. And I just don’t want to talk about the mistakes, I just want to talk about the really good stuff, the things that they did right. What were some of the biggest mistakes that you made as a financial advisor?

Joe Saul-Sehy: Wow, that’s great. So, early in my career, very early in my career, I said over and over to people because I was new, I said that, I remember, this was in response to something that actually Suze Orman said. Suze Orman said that you need to hire an advisor who’s been around for at least five years, probably closer to 10. And I said, “That is ridiculous.” I have a few people tell me that. I’m like, No, no, no, that’s your… I have been an advisor two years, I was rocking.

Casey Weade: It has to be ridiculous at that point,

Joe Saul-Sehy: Things were going really well in my career. I’m like, No, no, no, that’s great. I have all these licenses, I have all this education, I have all this stuff. Well, in hindsight, that was all wrong because I didn’t have enough… Sure, I had the licenses, I knew what to do, book learning wise, but there’s something about having been through it and having an advisor who’s been through it with people. I mean, how many people have you helped retire, Casey?

Casey Weade: Right. I mean, we’re probably in the thousands at this point.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yes. And for anybody listening to this or hanging out with us watching, you want to retire once, right? So how great is it to have somebody who’s done this a thousand times, who goes, No, no, no, that’s bad. But you got to have somebody who’s five years, probably closer to 10, so that was a mistake because I was all over the place with that one. The second thing was…

Casey Weade: And I could interject, I think there’s a lot of risks with a new advisor. And I mean, a new advisor needs money. I think that’s the biggest risk with a new advisor. As a new advisor, they need your business. I think that was one of the biggest mistakes I made. I took on a lot of clients that weren’t a good fit. They didn’t buy in my philosophy, our philosophy. They wanted things that they really shouldn’t have in the first place, but you deliver it. You give the client what you want and you’re willing to just bend over backwards to be agreeable. You want an advisor that’s going to argue with you.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yes.

Casey Weade: And I say that, I mean, not overly confrontational, but an advisor has to be willing to confront an issue.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yeah. An advisor has to not really care if they get your business or not. I mean, very frankly, they want your business, they like working with you, but I have very much now a Gordon Ramsay personality, which I didn’t use to have, where you know what? And what’s funny is I remember when that change, when I didn’t need my client as much as they needed me, and I remember changing and just going, “Yeah, I don’t care. Yeah, go away.”

And I remember when that happened, by the way, Casey, what’s funny is, is it then people started chasing me, people started chasing my advice. They wanted to hire me because they could I’m no! This is the most whacked out thing in the world, you shouldn’t do it. I don’t want to be involved with it. Please go away. And people go, “Oh, please, let me be your client.” You need somebody who’s a little like that. But they also had to be like you and to your point, I did the same thing.

I had a client. This is another mistake. Early in my career, I was with a company that really like permanent life insurance a lot, I mean, a lot all the time. And by the way, permanent life insurance is not the devil that a lot of people think that it is. Permanent life insurance is fantastic in a lot of situations, but I was putting square pegs in round holes, triangular pegs in round holes, octagonal pegs in round holes, like if you get in my office, I was talking permanent life insurance with every single person. “Oh, you have no dependents, no debt, no, nothing? You got a billion dollars? Permanent life insurance fits.” Yeah, I would find a way.

And it was because and actually, it’s funny because I asked one of my training managers about that because in the early 90s, it was a sales organization more than financial advisory business. And he said something that was very important. He said, “The best thing you could do for your clients is to be here five years from now.” And this is when I was new. If you’re not here five years from now, they have lost their advisor, they have to be transitioned to a new one, it’s going to be difficult for them. The best thing for you to do, and this is hard, do something that’s 90% correct, that you can get behind enough, that you can do it for now, hope you don’t do irreparable damage, and change it later.

Casey Weade: There’s a risk of a new advisor.

Joe Saul-Sehy: That’s the new advisor right there.

Casey Weade: Joe, let’s take a backstep here for a minute. You talked about teaching and this love for teaching. You really desperately want people to understand what they’re getting, what they’re buying, what their plan is, and that has been a lifelong addiction of mine. And it’s created some problems, right? I’d say I want you to… people don’t necessarily want to know, like you said.

Joe Saul-Sehy: It drives me crazy.

Casey Weade: Most people don’t want to know everything that I know and I want them to know everything that I know. I’ve had other advisors criticized me, say, “Why did you need to spend six hours with Casey before you went into plan?” Like, you could have done that in an hour or two, but there’s no need to spend that much time with someone, but I need them to understand what I know.

I guess there’s two sides to this one. What do you tell people to say, I don’t want to know all that stuff? How do you get them to a point where they actually desire that knowledge to actually understand their plan, understand what they’re doing with their money? And how do you simplify those concepts as an advisor so that it’s not overwhelming?

Joe Saul-Sehy: The first question, I think, is incredibly difficult. And if I had picked that lock, I would probably still be an advisor. But to some degree, I can’t make somebody want to know, the whole thing that my mom says about leading the horse to water, you can’t make him drink. It was so frustrating, somebody didn’t want to know. And you try to impress upon them is so important. And not like, Yeah, but it just bores me. And I would say it isn’t about this thing.

And I said, there’s a mistake with money nerds and now, I’ve gone from, by the way, being a financial advisor where a large degree of people didn’t care, to now, I’m in financial nerdery camp where 70% of our audience, these nerds that can’t get enough of it, they want to know every single little thing. So, my audience flip flopped when I went to financial media, but the thing that I tried to impress upon people is that all money is the fuel.

And now, I still try to impress it upon people. I’m like, stop being so obsessed with money because it’s just a fuel for these dreams. Stop trying to spend so much time saving, one-tenth of 1% on your fees. Fees are important thing, but fees are not the dragon. The dragon is you don’t save any money. That’s the dragon. I have met by the way since I moved into financial media, and I know this wasn’t the question, so many Baroque professors, people that know everything about everything, and they can tell me about why this fund is cheaper than this fund, which makes it better. And this whole idea that cheaper is better drives me crazy.

And then, you have a conversation at one of our meetups about how much money they saved, and they haven’t. They haven’t saved a dime. I mean, who cares what the… I have met so many people that are in the crappiest products ever, but they saved a bunch of money, and they’re still millionaires. They’re still millionaires.

Casey Weade: And I’ll say I hate variable annuities. I’ve got this one I audited the other day. It has a five-and-a-half percent annual fee.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Oh, my…

Casey Weade: They still made a ridiculous amount of money. I mean, they’ll save. That’s money, they’re still growing. It’s not saying, “Hey, this is a great product by any means.” But I think along with your point, even in that position, like it’s hard to show, Yes, this is a bad product because, well, yeah, but I made a bunch of money in it.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. But you got to save into it first, right?

Casey Weade: Yeah, it’s just getting started. That it’s not the starting point.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Absolutely. Well, we always talk about dragons that you’re fighting, like you’re a knight out there fighting. And fees are an important dragon, but it’s not the number one dragon by a longshot. And yet, in financial media, and I think it’s partly because a lot of people in financial media don’t understand stuff, and it’s easy discussion. They always go fee, fee, fee, fee, fee, fee, fee.

Back to your question about simplifying concepts, that was really important for me because the concept has to be simplified, so that you understand. I think for that, you start with a concept I learned in teaching which is efficacy. You start off by showing people the top of the mountain. Here’s what we’re trying to achieve. We’re trying to achieve XYZ. This is where we’re going to be when we’re done.

So, to get there, we have a couple of routes up this mountain. We can go this way or we can go this way. And I like this way because of XYZ. And then, very simply, here’s how it works. And then, I know that people, in our head, we’re storytellers, right? I mean, this is what I love about podcast is that we can tell stories about what we’re doing and people learn so much from stories. So, when it came to diversification, how mutual fund works, I’d always use like a French pane window.

And let’s say that your house has two windows. You have one window that’s a single pane. You’ve another window that’s a French pane with those wood slats, maybe it’s nine different things. And it’s not one of those ones my parents had, where it’s a plastic insert, you take it out, and then you wash it. It’s just really one pane behind it. It actually is. We have the cheap bridge bay windows, so it’s not one of those.

But if your kids out back and throws a ball through the first window, you got to replace the whole thing, where if they throw a ball through the French pane window, you just got to replace one pane which is why, that’s what a mutual fund does or an exchange traded fund is if something happens to one single thing, it’s not all broken, you’re going to be okay. And by the way, there’s a whole team that fixes that for you and you know you had to fix it. And so, using that type of imagery and trying to find imagery around concepts that might be confusing, like exchange traded fund, net asset value, like all this stuff, forget about it. Just talk about French pane windows, and I found it was better.

Casey Weade: Right. It’s a story about diversification, and I like it. We’re going to have to start using that.

Joe Saul-Sehy: You don’t even have to quote me.

Casey Weade: Yeah. You said something about fee. We’re talking about fees, compensation. You talked about media major, the talking heads, always drilling on fees is the most important element. And I think you’re seeing the same thing in financial services today when it comes to just the person you’re working with, what it’s costing, you’ve got fee-only advisors that say, “I’m the best because I have no conflicts of interest, I’m fee only.” And then, you’ve got commission-based advisors saying, “Well, you need me. This is going to cost you less over the long term.” You’ve got fee-based advisors like us that have a blend of both worlds, right?

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yeah.

Casey Weade: And I think people want to know what’s best. Is the fee-only guy the best? Is the commission guy the best? The fee-based guy the best? Is there someone that’s truly conflict-free? And you want to talk about finding an advisor, I think this is an important element.

Joe Saul-Sehy: It is an important element. And my favorite book on this, by the way, where my opinion really comes from is called The Truth About Money by Ric Edelman, who you know Ric Edelman, but a lot of listeners may not… I love that book, by the way, because it’s very even handed. I feel like a lot of books have an axe to grind. Ric Edelman certainly has an axe to grind, but he’s very even handed. He’s incredibly, when he talks about this.

What’s interesting about this conflict is that when it comes to a fee-only advisor, fee-only advisor is fantastic because you get 100% objective advice. Hopefully, he doesn’t have any products in the game that, well, they can’t get a commission from any product. The one thing that a fee-only advisor wants to do is give you this unvarnished advice, do this, do this, do this. The problem that Ric explains though, with a fee-only advisor is that at the end of that, they go bye-bye and they don’t care if you implement, which is the most important part of the plan. The most important part of the plan is whether you implement.

Now, you can say and it is true that they want you to renew the fee. I mean, they want the fee to continue. So, they want to have an ongoing relationship with somebody. Marketing is the hardest part of the job as a financial advisor. So, having somebody that wants to continually pay the fee is that, when he looks at commission-only advisors, there was a study done and I’m not going to get it, but it’s in this book. I know exactly where to look if I had the book in front of me.

So, in The Truth About Money, he talks about how there was a study done about fee-only and commission-only advisors. And commission-only advisors will do something that’s maybe 92% correct, might not be the optimal thing for you. However, the implementation rate of the client is much, much higher. You actually do something because that person’s harassing you, which by the way is annoying and whatever, but you actually implement the plan. And when you think about the importances, the quality of advice doesn’t matter if you do nothing.

So, if you can find an advisor that helps you avoid doing nothing, this is where I come down. I had commissioned-only people that I knew and you probably do too, Casey, that are friends of yours that I would send my mom to. You hear all the time, don’t hire commission-only people. I know people who are commission only. I would send my mom to them all. I know fee-only advisors who are flippin’ idiots, just complete moron. So, directionally, more fee, fewer commission, yep. I like that. However, I think it’s much more about the relationship, and it’s who relationship wise is going to help me make sure that I actually do something.

Casey Weade: Take action.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Because doing something is the key to the entire plan.

Casey Weade: Yeah. Well, and that kind of brings me back to a discussion that you had on one of the podcasts I listened that you put out there was called Top Five Reasons Annuities Don’t Stink. You kind of kicked off that discussion with compensation, talking about compensation, and one of the problems with annuities is the compensation. There are annuities out there today that are still probably in that 7% to 8% range. There’s annuities that are in that 2% or 3% range. I mean, there’s a wide range of compensation. And you’d said, 7%, that is crazy, that’s a huge commission.

And as I listened to it, I thought 7%, what’s the difference between 7% over 10 years and 1% a year on a growing asset for 10 years? And I see a conflict of interest there. I mean, and I’ll tell… yeah, I’m going to make more money if we manage those assets at 1% a year for the next 10 or 20 years than if we put it in an annuity and make 5%, 6%, 7%. I wanted to have that discussion with you and see what your thoughts were.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Oh, man, we get to nerd out a little bit here. I actually like the 1% better. The reason I like the 1% better is, yeah, it’s going to be more expensive over time, it will. But I like the fact that you and I are on the same page. I like the fact that I’m being paid a portion of this, I get paid to pay attention over time. I don’t get paid a huge amount up front. And then, I don’t have to talk to you ever again. I had to change it to the 7%. So, I prefer if you’re going to pay somebody, let’s find as many ways for you and I to be on the same team as possible.

By the way, we still do that with our podcast, I mean, it’s funny, even in the podcasting world. So, we have sponsors for our show, right? That’s how I make money now. But our podcasts, the way I make more money is more people listen to my show. So, if I continue to put out a good product that people want to listen to for long periods of time and we grow our audience, advertisers will pay me more money. I, by the way, don’t do that for advertisers. I do that for me because I always want to be focused on the most important thing, which is making sure that I’m putting out something that’s quality.

And if your advisor is interested in putting out something that people want to have in their corner for a long period of time, frankly, who cares what it costs? We have a lot of discussions about cost without discussions about what you get. Price doesn’t matter until you find out what the value is. Then, price very much matters. Somebody has a very, very low-cost product and you never get anywhere using it, that’s ridiculous.

However, if you can show me an 8% commission on a product that blows away my goal, the market, I get this weird standard deviation thing where it’s high returns, no risk, I get there really quick, which by the way, guys, doesn’t exist. But let’s say that it did, if I could get that, but I had to pay a third of the return to get that, I’m paying it. I’m definitely paying it.

Casey Weade: Some people will complain about fees and go, “Hey, I’d really like a hedge fund. I hear they’re doing really well.” 2 and 20, now we’re talking serious fees. And you’ll have people with hundreds of millions of dollars paying 2% a year with 20% of the annual gains over a certain level. I mean, that’s a big fee, but they’re willing to pay it because people need to be price conscious. I believe they need to be value driven.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Absolutely. Yes. Start with what am I going to get? And then, what do I pay for that? And then, make the decision about whether it’s a high fee or not.

Casey Weade: And you said, the problem with annuities isn’t, and correct me if I say this wrong or state this wrong, but you said the problem isn’t the tool. It’s just another product, just another tool. Annuities have their benefits, they have their place. And this is something my dad told me years ago, he said the problem with annuities is the people that sell them, not the product themselves. It’s that it used to just be insurance salespeople that used annuities. And it was kind of like the life insurance discussion you had a moment ago that, “Yeah, we’re just everything.” Everybody needs an annuity. Everybody needs a life insurance policy, and whatever that tool is, it’s right for everyone.

And I feel like the best is a blend of both worlds where you have an advisor that, okay, I do need some guaranteed income, they can offer that tool. But I want that fee-only approach as well to managing my at-risk assets, someone that’s going to maybe pay a financial planning fee alongside that for years into the future, someone that’s going to continue to be there for me. And if I put all of my money with them in this one product, then yeah, they don’t have to come back. But if they’re building a comprehensive plan, I feel like that’s different.

Joe Saul-Sehy: I think it’s completely different. And listen, the big thing to think about, is it process driven? Is it product driven or is it process driven? Because if it’s process driven, Casey, you might decide that we need a guaranteed stream of income that we cannot leave. If the process tells us that that’s the best thing, then my client and I can agree that that’s the best thing. But if I have somebody who sells annuities that comes to my door and they’re an expert in product, I’m not interested, man, because it doesn’t matter what the problem is. If he sells snow tires, it doesn’t matter the climate, I’m getting some snow tires.

Casey Weade: Right. I like that process driven. And people will ask that question, how do I know I’m getting the best advice, unbiased advice? How do I know that I’m getting the best of all these worlds or doing the right thing? Well, if they don’t have a planning process, then how would you ever know?

Joe Saul-Sehy: You would never know.

Casey Weade: But I want people to understand what a planning process is. Can you define a planning process or a planning framework for the audience?

Joe Saul-Sehy: Sure. Well, from where I sit, and you may disagree with this, but from where I sit, you’ve an advisor who starts off with, “Where are you trying to go?” A book that I didn’t think was important when I first read it, and anybody who’s a fan of ours is going to roll their eyes because they know exactly where the hell I’m going, because I quote this book all the time. But, Casey, when I read it, I didn’t think it was that important. And it’s funny because over the last 30 years, I quote this book nonstop.

And do yourself a favor and read Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. And it is so important, especially when it comes to your financial life to begin with the end in mind. And if your advisor doesn’t start off with, “Where do you want to go?” Where do you want to go? And they start talking about products, well, how the hell do we know where that’s going to get you?

And I’ll give you, I think that every process for me comes down to, “Here’s a goal I’m trying to get to.” And then, there’s an equation to reach that goal. And this isn’t in the whole financial planning process, but the process of reaching the goal is this. It’s an equation of Casey needs to save X number of dollars times Y return to equal a goal. I mean, it is actually very simple. That’s it.

And so, process wise, I believe then you start playing with those numbers. You take a look at those numbers, let’s say that you need to save $5 to reach your goal. I know a lot of goals that are five bucks, maybe not. But you need five bucks to reach your goal and you need an 8% rate of return. Well, that gives us a few things. I don’t like talking about risk tolerance just out of the gate, like these 401(k) quizzes that talk about risk. Risk for what?

There’s a lot of people very safely, never reaching any goal. So, we need to know an exchange for this. So, we start off with 8% now, but a couple things that gives us. Number one, we take this field of investments. It’s this big. For people who’s listening to this, I’ve got my hands far apart. And then, we narrow it to this narrow range of investment. So, the cool thing is we start off with a rate of return that we know we need to reach the goal. It makes the job of choosing investments easier because instead of freaking out that I don’t know everything about everything, you don’t have to. You just have to know enough about this little sliver of investments that historically have done what you’re trying to do now. And now, you just got to be an expert in those few instead of the whole range. I like that.

But the second thing is, I look at those investments, and I go, “Yeah, those are over my head. I can’t take that out. I can’t sleep at night.” Okay, now we can lower the risk, let’s say 6%. But when we do that, now we have to change one of the other variables because what I see is in a lot of discussions, people will say, “Well, I don’t like 8% investments. Once it gets 8%, that’s too risky. Let’s go to 6%.” And they do that. But when you do that, what happens? You have to either save more money, you have to change that $5 to maybe $7 to reach your goal, or you have to change the goal. You have to lower the goal, push the goal back, you have to do some change.

So, this idea, another Stephen Covey’s ideas, when you pick up one end of the stick, you also pick up the other end. And the key for us always is in the process. If I make this move, if I buy this investment, what’s the other end of the stick? What’s the volatility that comes with it? What’s the chance that I might not reach my goal? And then, there’s obviously a process of reaching all that.

Then, on top of that, then finally, I like milestones. I love milestones because you talk to a 28-year-old today about, “Hey, it’s going to cost you $4 million to get where you want to go when you retire.” This 28-year-old goes, “I got 12,000 bucks, how do I get there?” But if I tell them, you just need this year to go from 12,000 to 17,000. That’s what we need to do. And you will reach 4 million if we do this little thing. I love that one-year thing, where I can look just a year forward and go, “We’re going to get this big shiny thing if we just make this little move today.” And it reduces all of this friction and freak out of a man that seems like a lot of elephant I have to chew, instead I get to do it just one bite at a time.

Casey Weade: I don’t know if you know Darren Hardy. It’s The Compound Effect.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yes, yeah, yeah.

Casey Weade: It is compound interest, but it’s compound effect. And in your own life, not just your financial life, but paying attention to those little things you’re doing every single day or every year in this respect.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Sure. Yeah, yeah. But what is that, there’s a Tony Robbins’ quote about that, too, about people overestimate what they can do in a… I’m going to get that wrong, but it’s the same thing. Same stuff.

Casey Weade: They overestimate what they can accomplish in a year, underestimate what they can accomplish in 10 years.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yes, exactly.

Casey Weade: I think that’s it.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Casey Weade: Well, I didn’t think we were going to spend the whole podcast talking about how to consume financial advice, but I guess that’s kind of where we ended up. But I think it’s really good stuff because it’s really valuable. And this is what a lot of people want to know. And so, let’s look at it from the client perspective. How do people go wrong when it comes to consuming financial advice? What are some of the biggest mistakes?

Joe Saul-Sehy: Man, that’s a tough one. When it comes to financial advice, I think we don’t spend enough time looking at the point of view that the financial advice comes from. So, I’ll give you an example. We consume financial pornography, in other words, CNBC, Fox Business, which is total financial pornography. It is just we sit there and we watch it. We watch Cramer go, bam, bam, bam, it all looks so fun and all this stuff. But I’ll give you an example. We were talking about just earlier today, which is somebody comes on CNBC, and they talk about there’s never been a better time than now to buy gold.

I mean, look at, Casey, how bad the markets are, look at how the economy is faltering. If things get even worse, gold which has already had a great run, gold is just going to get better. You really, really, really need to own gold. And you then start questioning, you’re like, man, I need to own gold. That sounds great. Of course, it all makes sense, for two reasons. Number one, the only person who comes on CNBC or Fox Business to say that is a gold fund manager, somebody that sells gold. So, if you’re consuming advice, you want to know the point of view the person peddling the advice.

The second thing is they are gold fund manager. So, of course, they want you to buy it, but they also know how to get you to buy it. So, they know all these things that are truths about… there’s nothing I said that’s untrue. And gold does perform well at uncertain times, but it doesn’t mean you go put 100% of your portfolio in gold. Maybe you put a little bit of your portfolio in gold. Maybe that makes sense. And you probably do it more in an ETF format than putting gold bars under your bed, where your nephew who’s broke, goes and steals them later. You just don’t do that.

So, I think understanding the point of view of what you’re reading or what you’re watching is super important right now. A mentor of mine said once, Casey, he said that every discussion is a cube. And your goal is not to understand your side of the cube, it’s to understand the other person’s side. Like, you’re staring at one side of the cube, I’m staring at the other, my whole goal is to understand your side of the cube. If I understand your side of the cube, we’re going to communicate much better. And I think we need to do that when we’re consuming media.

Casey Weade: That’s good. I haven’t heard that one before. So, thank you for that. Now, there’s a couple things that I wanted to make sure I got to before we run out of time, and one in particular was your favorite savings hack. I was so excited when I read this. And let’s see if this really is your favorite savings hack. So, what’s your favorite savings hack?

Joe Saul-Sehy: Is it tip yourself?

Casey Weade: Automatic paychecks. Kind of the same.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yes.

Casey Weade: I think that’s the same thing, right?

Joe Saul-Sehy: It totally is. So, what I like is make everything automatic as much as possible, anything I can do to hide money from myself. I’m a guy, by the way, that’s the opposite of most people. I know studies have been done that show that if you have a card, you’re much more likely to spend money and spend more money. That’s not me. I do not like to take out my card. But dude, if I got 10 bucks in my wallet, it is gone. It’s absolutely gone.

So, I found because I have a spender personality that I hide money from myself. And so, if I can automatically move money into a savings, so this is how I would always use direct deposit. Direct deposit my whole paycheck into a savings account and then figure out how much of that I need to move that to a checking account where I can get at it. And the big aha there is two things, I’m automatically saving money first and then using what I spend. Most people turn that around, they say, “I’m going to save what’s left.” It never works, never ever works. Always save first and then move money.

But the second thing it does, it divorces your paycheck from your lifestyle. The amount you make doesn’t need to have as much correlation with your lifestyle as you think it does. When you put everything in savings and decide how much of this am I going to live on, all the sudden you’re having much better conversations. I’m going to live on whatever the hell number I want as long as it’s much lower than whatever’s going into my savings account.

And for a lot of people, we’re naturally frugal. You start thinking about, do I really want to spend money on cable TV? Do I want to really spend money on having a landline at home? Do I really want to spend money on these meals that I pay extra for to come to my house? Do I need to go out to dinner that much to have fun? I think during COVID, by the way, especially now, a lot of us have figured out that, I like cooking, man. I like cooking. I like cooking at home.

Casey Weade: I used to love cooking until COVID. Now, I’m sick of cooking.

Joe Saul-Sehy: I have to tell you, so in Michigan when they first opened up, they opened up on a Monday. I was in a restaurant Tuesday at noon, Cheryl, my spouse, and I. And she said, “Is it weird that I’m getting emotional that I’m sitting in a restaurant?” Dude, we were so damn happy. We were so happy to be back in a restaurant.

Casey Weade: Yeah, that’s great. Well, so I think I might have taken your automatic paychecks to a whole new level. And the bank thought I was crazy. I think this is very applicable for retirees, those that are living on a fixed income. My wife definitely thought I was crazy. So, I was doing this before we got married. And before we get married, then I merged the systems and I say, “Hey, this is how we do things.” It was a super envelope system. And so, I had, like, I’ve always had 13, 15 accounts at the bank, and the bank would be like, “You have more accounts here than anyone else.” And there’s like a dollar in this one, there’s $52 in this one, but I have…

Joe Saul-Sehy: But if it’s Wells Fargo… not to cut you up, but if it’s Wells Fargo, they got a huge spiff for you having so many accounts.

Casey Weade: Oh, yeah. I mean, I don’t know if they were upset about it, but I had one direct fixed income went into one account, and then I had one account for gas, one for groceries, one for investing, one for emergency savings, and we had a debit card for each and every one. So, we had a Rolodex of debit cards that would not work if you tried to swipe them and there wasn’t anything in the account.

Joe Saul-Sehy: That’s awesome.

Casey Weade: And I’ve tried to train other people to do that. So, when I saw what you did, I just don’t know how to budget. It goes in and then I spend it, like, well, try this. And they think it’s a little nuts.

Joe Saul-Sehy: But I’ll tell you this in your defense, Casey, it might be nuts to set it up at first. But after it’s set up, it’s automatic, and that’s the thing about these is it takes…

Casey Weade: So easy.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Take 20 more minutes on day one, and it will make your life so much easier. With budgets, one thing I really, really, really like though, I think far more important than a budget is just discussions. And the biggest thing for my marriage was a weekly money meeting that we either do over pancakes or wine depending on what time of day it is, and you can guess which time of day is which. But it usually was either Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon. We have twins when they were growing up. It was always around whatever the heck’s going on with our kids. But we would keep it really light, 20 minutes, we did a lot. It was every week and all of a sudden, our money fights went away because we were having this money discussion once a week for 20 minutes. It was great.

Casey Weade: It’s amazing. We’ll meet couples that will come in after 35 years of marriage and they have never talked about financial goals. And to me, I guess, from the worlds that we come from, that’s just so foreign. I just couldn’t believe it. My parents got divorced the same year that we got married, and it was largely because of money reasons. It was the lack of discussion around money that happened in the household, that was a big reason for the divorce. I said, “I’m not going to let that happen. We’re going to talk about this stuff all the time.”

Joe Saul-Sehy: Can we nerd out about one more thing about that, Casey?

Casey Weade: Please.

Joe Saul-Sehy: I have to tell you, and this may be a little inappropriate, there were times where we were having this breakthrough because people like you said, it never had the money discussion for 35 years. We would have such a good discussion that I felt like Barry White because I felt like people were going home and having great sex that night. You could just see the connection on people who are just, and I’m walking out I’m like, I think I made a love connection today. It was good. I didn’t charge them any extra for that.

Casey Weade: Yeah. I mean, that is a really important role of a financial advisor is kind of help through those negotiations and ask really good questions. I truly believe that. So, Joe, you’re kind of a strange guy so…

Joe Saul-Sehy: Thank you.

Casey Weade: What’s the strangest personal financial practice that you currently employ or maybe have it best?

Joe Saul-Sehy: Strangest financial practice that I…

Casey Weade: Preferably one that you don’t even want to talk about.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yeah, you know what? I mean, really, and Cheryl will tell you this, I’m the one person who prefers to never have any money on me, like never ever have any money on me. I just know myself well enough that I’m not like, my co-host carries around $100 bill all the time and he always says, he’s like, “Well, what if you’re in the middle of nowhere and you’ve got nothing?” I’m like, “I have a brain. I’ll figure it out.” If I have 100 bucks, I’m telling you in a day I won’t have 100 bucks. So, I always carry no money.

And that’s just a lesson of hard knocks and the fact that I was a disaster with money when I started out and everything is individual in creating these systems for yourself. So, for me, I’d say people think that’s pretty weird. People will say, “Here, take this cash.” I’m like, “Hand it to Cheryl.” “But you’re the finance guy, are you really telling me…”

Casey Weade: Yeah, but I can’t handle money.

Joe Saul-Sehy: I know, right? Like, “You’re the finance guy. How come I can’t hand you 10 bucks?” I’m like, “Because I know me. Hand it to her. Do not hand me money. It will be gone.”

Casey Weade: That’s good. But I remember a few years ago, I went to a parking lot and I went up, I parked in the parking lot. Parking lot shut me in. And then, I go to pay at the booth, and she says, “I need cash,” and “I don’t have cash.” So, well, “What did your mom teach you about money?” I didn’t even think. I guess we’re all supposed to carry cash all the time, but it’s just not, it just doesn’t come naturally to me.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Oh, that’s so funny. I did have one time, I took clients, this is a related topic. I don’t carry cash, and I’d actually taken my credit card out of my wallet, my last meeting of the night before I was taking clients to dinner. And luckily, I still have my debit card. Well, my dad had just bought… This is a long story, but he had just bought a refrigerator from me and he had had stuff bounced and it turned out and I didn’t know this, but his check to me had bounced overdrawing my account, which is maybe the only time that I can remember, yeah, yeah, my account… I’ve been really bad with money, but an overdrawn account when I was a financial advisor is not something that happened.

But anyway, so, all I have was my debit card. I’m at this expensive restaurant with my clients. And I realized that when I got to the restaurant, I’m like, “Oh, but I got my debit card, I’m good. We were going to be fine.” And the waiter comes, I put down my debit card in the thing, and he goes away. We had just an excellent dinner. And the waiter comes back, and you know how sometimes they try to like, get your attention that it’s like, “Excuse me.” Well, I couldn’t take a hint. I couldn’t take a hint at all. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I say, “What are you trying to say?” And the guy’s like, “Ah, your card was declined. I ran it three times. Your credit card was declined.”

I’m supposed to be a financial planner, and I had a dinner with them and my card was declined. So, I had to politely ask my client if they could pay for dinner for the three of us. And then, the next day, I wrote them a check and I found out that night what had gone wrong, and my dad felt awful, but, anyway.

Casey Weade: That’s good. All right. So, we’ve got time for one last philosophical question for you. What does meaning and purpose mean to you? And I’m also kind of curious, I’ve struggled with discerning the difference between meaning and purpose, so maybe you see those two things as the same, maybe you don’t. I’d love to hear your feedback on that, and what it means to you personally.

Joe Saul-Sehy: I mean, the first thing I think of, Casey, when I hear those two words is that meaning is the why, but purpose is the action behind it. My purpose drives me toward my meaning. And that’s gotten more important to me as I’ve gotten older. In fact, it’s funny, last year, I pay for coaching, and I like having good coaches in my corner, and I had a coach that really broke through a wall with me last year by talking about meaning and purpose.

And I realized how important it is for me, not for other people, to be a trustworthy guy, that’s going to be somebody who they can look toward and can be kind of a light when it comes to doing better with their money. And no matter what it is, to be completely honest and open with people about what good money habits look like, and be open and honest about the crappy things that I used to do with the money.

And so, my purpose then is to be a light and always be somebody who walks this line that other people can follow. The meaning of that then is this idea of financial literacy is better for all of us. I mean, there’s more meaning. That is the meaning.

Casey Weade: Yeah. I agree with that. That’s how I see the difference between purpose and meaning. I think some might find it interesting that you pay for a coach. And people are afraid to pay a fee to a financial advisor, you kind of hit on this in previous discussions. But if they come from a different world, maybe, I mean, some of the most successful business owners in the world, they have business coaches. Almost the most successful people in the world, they all have coaches. Olympic athletes, they have coaches.

And I, myself, I’ve got a business coach, I’ve got a family coach, I’ve got a golf coach, I’ve got a financial advisor. And I pay all of these people, and it continues to make me better. How do we carry that over to individuals that are maybe afraid to get a financial coach, because maybe they’ve never had a coach before? They’ve never had a coach outside of maybe a sports coach.

Joe Saul-Sehy: I think that it is ludicrous. And once again, I spend a good amount of my time in social media sites because of what I do and it drives me… It is soul crushing to be on Facebook all day. It is horrible.

Casey Weade: I never had Facebook and now, it’s a requirement.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yes, it is so painful. But the one thing that I continually have to remind people in Facebook, I think it’s ludicrous to want to cheapen your life. I think if you start off once again, with the end in mind, it is to live this greater life. And I want to live a greater life. Why am I going to spend not days or weeks, but years reinventing the wheel and screwing stuff up that somebody screwed up before me, and they can show me how not to do that?

So, no matter what it is, I want to surround myself with smart people. That doesn’t mean you need a licensed person in your corner, I would generally argue for that as somebody that was one and knows what people go through. But I want somebody with experience who’s been there. I want to be the dumbest person in the room. And it’s funny, the smartest people I know all say that. I try to surround myself with people that are smarter than me.

And I also know that I have a unique ability to do a couple things really well. And if something’s not my unique ability, why would I surround myself with people where there it is their unique ability, so that I end up getting all of the benefits? And what’s funny is if I get good at interviewing those people, which I have, even though I’m paying this inordinate amount of money, we talked about starting with value, why do I get richer all the time? I pay coaches all this money.

Casey Weade: And people will spend 100,000 a year to be part of Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yes.

Casey Weade: Or 25,000, right?

Joe Saul-Sehy: It’s so funny you say Strategic Coach. So, I’m in Strategic Coach. My co-host is doing Strategic Coach out in the other room as we speak. He’s on a Strategic Coach call right now. I mean, that’s one organization. It’s a crapload of money. It’s such a huge amount of money. And my life has changed so much because of Strategic Coach. It is so good.

Casey Weade: You kind of see the value. I mean, it’s all about value, again.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yes.

Casey Weade: Price is what you pay and value is what you receive. And it’s okay to pay a big fee if you’re getting a big value.

Joe Saul-Sehy: And I want to think about where I get my advice from. It’s funny because we have a Facebook group for Stacking Benjamins. But I often say, I’m like, the people that hang out online in a Facebook group all day dispensing advice for free, what’s the value behind that? Don’t get me wrong, we got good people in our Facebook group, and there’s good people online, but there’s also just a bunch of crap.

There’s another Facebook group that’s a financial Facebook group that I won’t get into it. It’s this huge group. And there was somebody in there who is saying, “Is it just me? Or am I the only one who stops by the car dealership because they have free coffee every morning?” Why do you want to cheapen your life that way? Like, why do I want to think that my life is so unimportant that I want free coffee that I’m ripping off a car deal? I mean don’t get me wrong, the car dealer doesn’t care that you’re ripping them off. But really, you’ve no intention of buying a car. You really in your soul, you’re ripping somebody off. Why do I want my life to be a rip-off?

There was another person who was saying, “Gatorade is too expensive. How do I make my own Gatorade for my kid’s soccer game?” Stop living that way. Like, don’t get me wrong. This is about being frugal. If you enjoy making Gatorade, my God, make as much as you possibly can.

Casey Weade: It’s about the purpose of money.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Absolutely.

Casey Weade: We lose touch with what the purpose of money is because sometimes, it’s very convenient. Say, for some retirees, maybe it’s a mortgage thing, say, “Well, if I don’t pay off my mortgage, I can invest more money,” and “I’m only 3% mortgage and I can get 6.” Yeah, but you’re thinking about it, right?

Joe Saul-Sehy: Yes.

Casey Weade: You’re spending time thinking about it. So, just pay it off. Get rid of it. Some people want it, they’re like, “Wow, maybe I should get a rental home in Florida, so I can rent it when I’m not there, and then, I can go down and live with it.” But you could just rent and then you wouldn’t have the hassle, yeah, but the cost is too much. But you can afford it, I mean, that’s what the money was for.

Joe Saul-Sehy: I know. Start with the end in mind.

Casey Weade: Well, Joe, let’s just drop the mic. That was good.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Sorry, we couldn’t nerd out together. I feel horrible that we had no nerd time.

Casey Weade: You know, I wasn’t sure we’d have anything to talk about and I think we could have talked about… I think we could have carried this on for a couple more hours. So hopefully, we get a chance to do this again. Thank you so much for joining us.

Joe Saul-Sehy: Amen. Thank you so much for having me. That was a load of fun. And I love what you do. It’s such an inspiration and, yeah, great stuff, my friend.

Casey Weade: Yeah, thanks. Until next time.

[END]