January 23, 2025 • 59 mins
New year, new me! Ever felt like "It Must Be Nice" when you see other hunters take to the field out of state? Dirk has a great conversation with financial adviser Jeff Bynum about how to afford those out of state hunts that you feel like they are just out of reach.
Financial Outfitters Group: https://www.finoutfitters.com/
Jeff Bynum and Financial Outfitters Group offers Investment Advisory Services through Coho Advisory Services, LLC (CAS), a registered investment adviser. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through Coho Financial Group, LLC (CFG) and individually licensed and appointed agents. This platform is solely for informational purposes and is not offering advisory services or sales of securities. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
And we're back with another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast.
I'm Dirk Durham and this week's guest is somebody I've
got to know over the last few years and really
enjoy his company. The first time I met this guy,
he kept tagging me on Instagram with these ridiculous videos.
(00:36):
There's these freaking weird redneck videos. He'd kept on tagging
me and sending me in my dms. He was sliding
into my DMS with these ridiculous damn redneck videos. I'm like,
who the hell is this crazy bastard. He's like weird
as can be. Like I thought, Man, this guy is
redneck as they come. And then fast forward quite a
(00:59):
while before I actually got to meet you and get
to know you, and he's not quite as redneck as
he seemed in his posts and his things he sent me. So,
uh my good buddy, Jeff bid him, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thank you. It's good. Good to see you, Derek. I
miss you, man. It's you know, it's been a minute
since we've gotten some FaceTime in together. And you know,
we we've traveled all across the country together. We've definitely
had a few moments, if you will and so I
missed some of those days, but it's good to see you.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, I mean we we spent like, I don't know,
six or seven weekends in a row for like four
years together. We went to these elkshamp elk shaped camps,
and I got to teach folks how to call elk
and and how to hunt elk and and Jeff he
(01:54):
put in his two cents there too, But he also
tried to tell people how to be a better with
their money. I guess you could say kind of life
kind of a life coach if you will.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, it's it's funny how much money impacts your life.
And uh and and so it's you know, the Olk
shape camps. Uh I still happening, kind of a new
version of them, and and uh excited for that. But
you know, that was a lot of trial and error
on how those went. And we had some amazing experiences,
(02:28):
got to meet tons of great people. Uh. Some of
my fondest memories. I don't miss some of those early
morning Texas drives. You know where We're running across the
state of Texas at three am, and I think all
of us have had too much dairy. Uh. You know
that cramped in a small car. It wasn't good, but
it's a lot of fun memories.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, those we had some good times. Good times you
weren't kind of you know, I will say, you're such
a good sport. You're always kind of the butt of
the butt of a joke of some kind. Full disclosure,
Jeff is a ginger. He is a redheaded fella, and
we take full advantage of that. You know, his own
his own humility, he will he will jump right on
(03:11):
that bandwagon too and just take the shots and kind
of add a little bit to it for us.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
So, yeah, you know, I believe I'm gonna go to heaven,
but I'm not sure how that's gonna work as a
solace ginger. So we'll figure it out when we get there.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
So, yeah, you have to work really hard and find
a soul before it's before your time comes for Saint
calls your name. Well, hey, Matt, we haven't got to
talk much about ELK season twenty twenty four. How'd you do?
Did you do? Did you slay the beast or did
the beast lay you?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Boy? It's a twenty twenty four felt like a failure
to me until I got beyond it and looked back
and I did not kill an elk in twenty twenty four.
And I am I am not near as good of
el kunture as the people that I often get to
hang out with, yourself included, but I can get I
(04:04):
get the job done most years, and I got my
buckcacked this year. But it was I think my season.
The highlight of my season actually has nothing to do
with elk hunting, you know. I I for those of
you that are parents, have two kids and daughters, want
to get done with this podcast. She's in driver's ed
fourteen years old and I gotta go take her driving
(04:26):
after this. Yeah, I know it's scary. My son is eleven,
gonna be twelve here soon. And I've always tried to
be involved in as much as possible in their worlds.
And I'd coached their spring baseball season and it was amazing, phenomenal,
awesome experience. You know, it was really good for me
(04:47):
and my son. There were some challenging moments. I think
we both cried probably at several points throughout the season,
and you know, I like there were several times where
I had to come to him and apologize because I'm like,
oh my coaching sucked there, especially as a father. And
and so when it got to the fall, we signed
up for football and I show up to football practice
(05:09):
the first day to drop him off, and it's all
the coaches from baseball and they're they're looking at me
and they're like, dude, what are you doing. I'm like,
what do you mean? You're good with these boys? Why
are you not out here? And they they pressured me
into signing up to be an assistant coach on his
sixth grade football team. And I played football in high school,
but not a lot of experience since then other than
(05:30):
being a football fan. And it you know, there was
thirty two boys on that team, and we went this
is our third season, so last two seasons. They went
undefeated season before that, and so they've lost one game
in three seasons. And so it was, uh, it was
(05:50):
five days a week, games on Saturday, and all the
way through September and most of October. And so I
committed to that, and it was a massive sacrifice for
my ELK season. I had Idaho tags, I had Montana tags.
I had all this ambition on what I was going
to do, and the truth is I probably spent less
(06:14):
time elk hunting in twenty twenty four than I have
any year in the last probably ten. And if I
get the opportunity to coach his football again that time
with my son being able to build that depth of
relationship with him and work with him in that way,
I will trade that for an elk every single year.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Yeah, well, congrats, good job, dad, because that's you can't
get those years back, right, you know you've got way
more elk hunting years in front of you than you
got time with your kids at home. So good job,
good job.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
I will say that that's the frustration of the season.
BJ my right hand, BJ Cable amazing dude. Loved the
guy killed his first bowl this year, his first elk
went out there, did it solo, did it the right
way North Idaho. I mean, you know what this area
is like, Dirk. You know how hard it is to
get into elkap here, especially after they're decimated by wolves.
(07:10):
But M and I were out a couple of times
and the one day, I think it was the nineteenth
September nineteenth, we get into a drainage and there were
six bowls bugling, and I mean it was it was
awesome and worked one bowl, got busted, headed for the
next bowl. He was he was kind of headed to
the bedroom, probably in his bedroom, and we kept him talking,
kept him talking. We're working through and brush. We're about
(07:33):
two hundred yards out and I'm just these tag alders
and spruce trees everywhere. You're just climbing through this North
Idaho br USh, trying to get within, get close, and
a blue spruce branch came and swung and whacked me
straight across my eyeballs and it ended up like I
couldn't open my eyes for probably a solid hour. Finally
(07:55):
we were able to pry my eyes open. We looked
in my one hole eye was solid a shot and
go to the trauma center. You know. BJ had to
hold my hand out of the woods. Yeah, it was.
If you would have stumbled on us in that moment,
you would have had some questions on what was going
on in the North Idaho woods. Crying with tears in
my eyes and BJ's holding my hand.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Oh is this a proposal?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah, but dang it, no it was. It was a
good season and my freezers, I'm down to sixty pounds
of elk meat, so I'm taking elk donations. If anybody's
needs some freezer space. Uh, no at all. Honestly, I
think I'm going to go try to kill a buffalo
here pretty soon stock up the freezer.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So nice. Nice, So, Jeff, I kind of touched on
it lightly that you kind of talked a little bit
about people's financial decisions and whatnot. The elk shaped camps. Uh,
tell the tell the listeners what you do for a
living well.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
I am a financial advisor of financial planning. I'm the
founder of a kind of a boutique firm, Financial Fitters Group,
that I started in twenty fifteen. And so I am.
You know, I started this practice, this firm with the
intention of changing the hunting industry. And you know, I
fast forward to today. I had no idea how this
(09:14):
was going to go. As a matter of fact, most
people told me it would not. Most people said that
demographics of hunters does not make sense to work and
as a financial advisor, and I says, well, I'm either
going to do this or I'll get out of the
industry and go do something honest, like build houses or whatever.
I don't know, but so I started Financial Offerers Group
beginn at twenty fifteen, and you know, you fast forward
(09:36):
to today. I get to help all kinds of amazing
people across the country thinks through everyday life decisions, how
to buy cars, retirement insurances, send kids to college, start businesses,
invest in real estate. You know, I just I get
you know you kind of said life coach. The reality
is a lot of what I do is life coaching
(09:58):
and helping people navigate the financial side of decision making
is just the reward of that is something I never
imagined I'd be able to be in a position to receive.
It's been phenomenal watching people create businesses and do all
kinds of amazing things in their life.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah. Yeah, I kind of like I kind of compare
you this for say, you're kind of like a doctor, right,
Doctors kind of give you advice you never want to hear. Hey,
don't don't eat those donuts, don't drink those beers, don't
don't don't do eat celery, do do more setups. And
(10:44):
I feel like you kind of have that kind of
advice too. It's like, hey, don't can Hey Jeff, what
do you think I'm gonna go buy a twenty twenty
four Duramax And you're like, no, you can do whatever
you want, but no, don't do that. I feel like
you have you're kind of that same kind of person,
you know, you're trying to keep people's finances healthy.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, well, I think you know. The way society has
taught people to make financial decisions is often backwards, you know.
It's it's kind of the shoe first, aim later approach
to financial decision making, and a lot of what we
hear often told always do this, you know, And there's
(11:23):
all these financial I'm gonna air quote financial entertainers, and
they give out this blanket advice that people accept wholesale,
and they buy into these myths, these financial myths, and
they don't find out that they're on a path that
they don't want to be in until five, ten, twenty
years down the raided twenty years later, when they've created
(11:44):
some sort of unintended consequence in their life. So a
lot of my role, in my relationship, in my client's
lives is helping them look at these different paths they
could take so they can make whatever decision is right
for their family and they don't wake up somewhere they
don't want to be.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Right now, you talked about what we're kind of taught
from a long time ago, like you know, do this
with your money, don't do that with your money, and
and over the time and listen to you you speak
at these different venues. It's really made me think, like, wow,
I've got to rethink things a little bit from what
I was taught and it really kind of makes sense.
(12:20):
But let's rewind a little bit, do you You you
always give an impactful speech at ELK shape camps and
kind of told about where you came from and how
you got to where you are today, and it always
like really sunk into me. Is like it was kind
of a vulnerable speech too, so I always really enjoyed it.
Can you can you give that?
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah? Yeah? Let me How I even ended up in
this role? It's, uh, you know, it's a story that
on paper looks like a lot of failure, but in
reality it's you know, you could have given me a
blank sheet of paper and I never could have drawn
out this this life that I get to live now.
And so I mean, I I grew up in a
poda little farmtown with more dairy cows than people, grew
(13:05):
up in a very poor household, broken household. You know,
I went my mom went through several step dads that
you know, I was the classic Ginger if you will,
you know, a redheaded step child. And you know, by
the time I got to high school, I was not
on a very good path in life. And you know,
(13:25):
this was early nineties, and I sat down with my
high school counselor and they told me I didn't need
to worry about taking a second language because I'd never
go to college. And so I kind of just wrote
off the traditional approach that we were all told to
take at that time in life and got out of school.
The good news of growing up so poor as I
(13:45):
learned how to work really hard if I wanted something.
So I got into the construction industry, started working my
way up through the construction trades, and I ended up
going on a vacation in Seattle, met my wife, and
then I never came home. I said, Hey, I'm staying here,
like in work construction here and yeah, and I started
(14:07):
my own construction company. At twenty five. My wife graduated
from SPU the degree in interior design. She started her
own here, her own interior design practice, and we were
making a lot of money, more money than our families
had ever made. This was kind of the heyday of
the real estate market pre two thousand and eight, and
we got we decided that we wanted to be smart
(14:27):
with money, so we went out and got a couple
of financial advisors, and most of their advice revolved around
real estate, which makes sense because it was an insurance
salesman and a mortgage broker that we're our financial advisors,
and so they had us take out a million dollars
in debt in two thousand and seven, and they told
us that we'll never lose if we do this, And
(14:48):
we bought investment properties in Seattle in two thousand and
seven and woke up about a year later in the
middle of two thousand and eight where all of our income, assets,
my abilities, cash flow, like everything in our life was
tied to the real estate market, and we lost everything
we owned, had to go through bankruptcy, ended up moving
(15:11):
into my in law's basement with my nine month old
baby girl, my daughter, and that sucked. That that was
not fun. Don't don't move into your in law's basement,
that's all. That's not a place you want to find
yourself in life. And so you know, at twenty eight,
that's what I was when that while that happened, I
(15:35):
made it my mission to make sure that this was
never going to happen again to me in my life.
And so I started going to the different financial institutions
out there, all of the ones that people see on
every street corner, you know, and all over the place,
and I heard a lot of the same thing. It
give us this much money, we'll get you this much
rate of return, and here's where you're going to be
in thirty years. And and to me, I knew I'd
(15:57):
already heard this. This is that it was not financial planning.
That was just a sales pitch. And through that process,
I realized that the financial services industry, and this is
whether we were talking about investment advice or insurance planning,
or benefits from an employer, or taxes or mortgage real estate,
like all of these different products or services that we
(16:17):
need in our lives are all being provided to us
through a sales process, and no one has taken the
time to say, let's make sure that all of this
fits together so that you don't wake up somewhere like
how I woke up in two thousand and eight and
I realized had someone helped me make decisions different than
I did it. Had someone looked out for my best interest,
(16:40):
I would have never made the decisions I had. I
would have never taken out a million dollars. I had
no business whatsoever taken out that type of debt in
two thousand and seven. I didn't have the right liquidity,
I didn't have good protection, Like I was essentially kind
of a wreck, just making a ton of money, and
so I saw an opportunity to go help people avoid
(17:01):
making the mistakes I made. So I took off the
car hearts and put on a suit and tie, which
you know, fast forward to twenty fifteen, I ended up
moving my family to Texas. God bless Texas. I love Texas.
They just don't have much public lands or all hunting there, unfortunately.
But it was down in Texas, and it was still
it was still suit and tie sales goals, and you know,
(17:24):
I just and I just I was fed up with it.
I was fed up with this world and the pressure
that this industry puts on most advisors to perform. And
I was going to leave the industry. And that's when
I I can't remember what book I was reading, but
you know, one of these inspirational books to pursue your
dreams and all that stuff. And I was like, I'm
gonna go work in the hunting industry. And that's why
(17:44):
I quickly realized I wouldn't be able to provide for
my family if I did. It's you don't get into
the hunting industry to to to make a ton of money.
Like that's that's the reality. It is a modest life.
But for me, what I saw there was people. I
saw people that were similar to me. I saw people
that were salt of the earth, that were blue collar,
(18:06):
that had a what I would say is a natural
distrust for the financial services world. And I thought, you know,
if if there was one group of people that I
could go out and help succeed in life, these were
my people. And so I sat down with my firm
that I was with then and I told them that.
And that's when they're like, yeah, you're gonna fail, You'll
(18:26):
be out of the industry. There's not enough money in it,
blah blah blah. It's as well, I'm gonna do this
my way or not. And uh, you know here we
are today.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah, well, I think you've been doing a good job.
And I think You've helped a lot of people, including me,
and uh, you know, I think you're living the dream.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Well, uh what you what's publicly you see there there.
I still have challenges myself, you know, we all do.
I got a I got a gut kick last week.
It was, you know, being business for yourself, especially as
a financial advisor's hard. And you know I'm an all transparency.
I had a I had some message me that they
didn't have a good experience in planning, and for me,
(19:06):
it crushed me. It still hurts, like I you know,
I almost postponed this podcast because it's torn me up
so bad. And it wasn't that they didn't like my advice.
It was that their experience was bad. And so and
I'm analyzing that, I'm looking at that. I'm always trying
to grow and figure out, Okay, how do I have
the most impact inside of people's lives. And you know,
thankfullest person as a friend and you know help helping me.
(19:28):
See so, I'm still growing and evolving. Our firm is
still growing and evolving. We've got some exciting things happening
that that we're gonna be able to support clients. But yeah,
it's been it's been a constant uh climb, uphill, steep
grade and a yah, NonStop. Lakes are burning.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
So yeah, I think that's a common thing with entrepreneurs, right,
It's you just about the time you think I can
take a deep breath and it's like, oh what about this,
and it's like it's a grind. I haven't. I know
a lot of entrepreneurs and I just don't know any
of them that have you know, every days of ten,
right you know. Yeah, it's it's a lot of hard
(20:08):
work and dedication and late nights and grind. So yeah,
now you well, I'm a circle back here. You mentioned real.
I mean you just dropped the subtle hint early in
the conversation. You said, Montana ELK tag. Yeah, must be nice. Yeah, yeah,
(20:30):
it must be nice to get one of those tags.
I mean you know that. I'm just gonna say it, Jeff,
I didn't get a Montana tag last year, and I
you got mine, and you didn't probably even hunt on
it that much. So I will have a little animassie
towards you. Yeah, we got it, Like you've had a
(20:51):
I think you've had more ELK tags in Montana in
the last three years than I have. So yeah, we
really need to talk about how you're getting tags.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I mean, you know, somebody, do you know I wish
it worked that way, Man, I would be kissing, but no,
I've you know, I've gotten I've gotten lucky, and you
know I've it.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
It didn't start this way, that's for sure. You know.
My first out of state hunt that I went on
was in twenty fourteen to Wyoming. That's that bowl there.
That bowl's also Wyoming, But you know it, it is
something that I looked at and said, you know, I
would like this to be a normal part of my life.
And it took a lot of a lot of years
(21:32):
and adjustments and shifts and how I manage my finances
and to be able to afford to be able to
hunt several states a year or at least another state
a year. So in drawing tags is a big part
of that as well.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Yeah, Yeah, it's tougher every year. Yeah. The first time
I ever got it out of state, it was it
was Wyoming and after and I shot a nice six point.
(22:07):
When I get back to work, one of the guys
there that always had had something to say, He's like,
it must be nice until he's getting getting paid too
much money around here. It's like, all right, well, first off,
I know that guy made a lot more money than
me because he'd worked there a lot longer he was.
And also it's sometimes you know, what what are you affording?
(22:31):
What other luxuries are you affording through the year? What
are you wasting your money on versus putting that money
towards going hunting out of state?
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Right?
Speaker 1 (22:41):
I can think of it a lot of things, but
you know, he just kind of adds up, right.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, it's you know, and this is a big part
of what I hope people take away from this message
is that we need to think about our decision making different.
And I'm going to tie this into wealth And this
wasn't actually this was an elk shaped camp that I
that I figured out how to pointingly say how I
(23:07):
felt about wealth creation. Derek, you came to some of
the Texas camps with us, right the at the Iron
Game Ranch. Amazing amazing ranch, beautiful high fence. Uh, every
exotic animal that was there, you know, every bass in
the pond was five plus plant pounds. You know, it
was there. Their cabins we were staying at or nicer
(23:29):
than most people's homes, and so it was one of
these mornings that that before camp started, and oftentimes I'd
done this where I'll get up in the morning and
have coffee, let's go walk around doing a little bit
of preying before camp and you know, for everything that's
going to be happening and everybody's message and all that stuff.
And this ranch was owned by one of the founders
(23:52):
of PayPal, and I never actually met him. I think
Dan had met him a few times. I don't know
the guy's name. But that morning, it was a little
bit dark, and I could as I was walking, I
could see into their house and his private chef was
cooking and breakfast. And I remember thinking to myself, you know,
this guy, when he wakes up in the morning, there's
not anybody that tells him how he has to spend
(24:14):
his time that day. He is in complete control of
his time, right And as I thought about that, meditated
on it, and I realized that that is that is
what we are all actually seeking in life. Is that
is the greatest measurement of wealth. You know, I've had money,
I've lost money, I've made money. Money is replaceable, but
(24:35):
the time that we have in this life, our time
here on earth is irreplaceable. It is our most precious resource.
And for me it clicked with my messaging to my
client tele the people that I work with, is that
we've been taught that how much money we have, how
big our retirement account is, how big our bank account,
(24:58):
our boat, our twenty four duromats, whatever it maybe represents
our wealth, when the reality is our ability to control
our time should be how we measure our wealth, which
which trickles into how we are making financial decisions. And
if controlling our time is the most precious resource that
(25:19):
we have, it means that we need to be making
decisions different than what society, what generations before us, have done.
What is often said from financial advisors, I oftentimes talk
people out of putting money into vehicles or products or
environments where I get paid to do. I talk myself
out of paychecks because I want them to be in
(25:40):
a position to control how control their time. And so
you know, the must be nice. You know, yeah, it
is nice. It is nice to be able to go
hunt other states. But it's not accidental. It's not because
I got lucky, it's not it's none of that. It's
because I've made decison is intentionally different than what I
(26:03):
think most people have to create this level of capacity
to control my time in my life.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Uh, if you could say, if you
could give us five things, it sounds like.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
The cover of Cosmo magazine five best practices to make
your Man Happy.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
I mean, so give me five if you want. Okay,
let's give me five things that our listeners can do
to if they have a goal of wanting to go
hunt out of state or have or maybe just hunting
in state. Maybe it's just a struggle even to be
able to get to go hunting you're in your home state.
(26:48):
What are five things they can do? Maybe that's too many,
but what are some things folks can do to set
themselves up good to like not take away from their
every day either living and their family and you know
all those things are important retirement stuff. How can they
still participate in those things yet put some money away
(27:10):
for for sure hunting for a fun, fun time.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Well, let me let me start with addressing something that
you mentioned there, and that is hunting taking away from
your family. If hunting is taking away from your family,
if hunting is building resentment between you and your spouse,
You're doing it wrong. Like, that's just straight up. Hunting
is if you're a hunter, it is core to your
(27:36):
DNA and like and I and that's that's how I
look at hunting in my life, Like there are a
few human activities that are core to who I am
as hunting, Uh, hunting is I love gardening and one
of them is between me and my wife. And that's
about it. And those are those are the core human
activities that are part of that are gettingrained in us
in our DNA. And so hunting should not be something
(27:57):
that is a liability in your relationship. You know, you
go back throughout time and you look at the hieroglyphs
on walls and like those are celebrations of hunting stories,
and that's how that should be in our in our life.
But the problem is we're self as human beings oftentimes
and oftentimes we are poor managing our finances and we
don't financially prepare. It's hey, we're going hunting, which means
(28:20):
something else is not happening in our life that should
be happening. And so first, if if that is you,
if you felt that, and I've felt this, I've seen
this in my own life. Like, everything I'm talking about
are things that I have made, these.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Mistakes, right, we've all been there.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah. Yeah. So on the practical side of things, if
there is something that is that important to you, you
should have a hunt budget. Like it's not it's not complicated. Uh,
you know, there's there's a lot of different budgeting techniques
out there, but the practically there should be a bank
account at your bank. At least create a structure a
(28:58):
location that you and your wife can see together that
you know that money that's in this environment is earmarked
and its sole purpose is to produce this experience activity
in your life. And so for you know, at the
very minimum, set up a bank account at your bank,
(29:20):
have it labeled your Hunt budget, and have a conversation
with your spouse about what type of money you would
like to spend, where those dollars are coming from in
your life, and is it appropriate to spend as much
as you're hoping to.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Now, we can't let her see that money, like, okay,
I think they call I believe they call that mad money. Well,
because when she finds it, she canna be mad.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
And this is where if if, that is where the
conversation stopped. You've you've failed, misery because at the end
of the day, you know, stereotypical, like most of us men,
this is our thing. There are a lot of amazing,
badass women hunters out there, mad respect for you, most
of them out hunt me. But for the most part,
(30:12):
this is us. And maybe we take our kids every
now and then, but we have to recognize how important
hunting is to us as well as recognize that there's
something in our wife's lives that is just as important.
And so if you're setting up your hunt budget and
not your wife's whatever version of hunting is for her budget,
(30:33):
you've failed. Like I tell everybody, you will go on
more hunts if you set up your wife's hunt budget
first rather than yours. That will pay dividends in a
lot of ways. And so it's not just it's not
just hey, here's what I'm gonna spend. Take it or
leave it, babe. This is let's talk about our lives.
(30:53):
Let's talk about what's important to us. Let's talk about
things that are not really creating value. And this was
a big one that I had to kind of go
through this exact same process when my children were young.
Once I moved out of my in laws basement and
uh back, you know, back in normal life and living
under one roof. I snowboarded all the time, I mountain biked,
(31:14):
I salmon fished. I did all of these things that
required money and time for me, and I couldn't afford
all of those things. And so I looked at my
life and I recognized the most important activity that that
I can do that I want my children to experience
is hunting. It had the most impact in my life.
It's what I and And so I carved almost all
(31:37):
of that other stuff out of my life and focused
my time and energy into one space. And ironically, I
started killing more ouk when I did that too. So
it's surprising what happens when you get intentional and focus
your time, energy and money. And so that that's that
will be the like foundationally, everybody should have a hunt budget,
(32:00):
unless you're one of those people that make so much
money that if you spend twenty thirty forty thousand dollars
a year and your family doesn't even notice, it doesn't
even hurt you at all, Like, good for you. That
is nice. That be really nice.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
That must be nice.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
It must be nice.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
How come you looked at me like that, Yeah, I
don't have that kind of money. And I think, you know,
like I think a lot of like a lot of
wives too. You know, maybe maybe they haven't found their
version of hunting. You know, maybe they haven't found an
act life activity that they enjoy or passionate about because
a lot of them they're so you know, busy and
(32:41):
invested into raising children, right. You know a lot of
these moms are just they don't allow themselves or don't
have a fun out, you know, something they can go
do that's that's really fun. And maybe we just have
to get you know, we have to kind of advocate
for them to find something and help them find it
and nurture that that thing. You know, maybe maybe you
(33:06):
if they're a little bit on the fence on this
thing because of you know, maybe they don't get to
go have any fun, be like, Okay, here's what we're
gonna do. We're gonna split this this mad money right
down the middle, and half will go into my hunting
fund and half's gonna go into your fund to do
X y Z. Maybe that's a weekend away with their girlfriends.
Maybe it's a day at the spa or it's some
(33:28):
little spoiled thing whatever they're into. Maybe it's a piece
of jewelry, whatever, they're really into it. So it's like,
all right, we're gonna do this together. And and as
as I build mine, you're gonna build yours. And we're
gonna you know, we wanted this to be fair. I
feel like that it would be a huge and then
also uh full transparency. Uh man. A lot of a
(33:49):
lot of guys get slack a lot of flak when
they want to go hunt and they're like, oh, yeah,
I told my wife last week I'm going hunting next week,
and she was mad. She didn't want me to go,
and she's about ready to burn the house down and
mad about it. And we've talked about this before in
our camps that you know, back to that being intentional,
(34:09):
planning ahead, being full fully transparent with your wife or
significant other, that you know, this is my intentions for fall,
this is the time I want to do it, this
is how much it's gonna cost, and this is what
I'm doing to make that all happen. So yes, now
I'm going to you know, opera shows on Saturday night
(34:31):
in the middle of summer that I never really would
have ever done. Or I'm taking a trip to Mexico
or whatever whatever she's into. Like, you're building those hall
pass points. You know, absolutely hate a lot of the
things they love, but you used to have to grin
and bear it and shut your fat mouth and go
enjoy it and try to make it enjoyable for them.
That way, you can be like, yeah, I'll do all
(34:53):
this stuff and then you know, and I'm gonna I
want to do this hunt in season. If you can
kind of tee all that up ahead of time, it
kind of softens it a little bit. You know, they
still may not like it that much when you're gone,
but it'll it'll still be like, Okay, well yeah he
did do all those things. I mean, you don't want
to rub it in their face, but they know that
you've been intentional to get to the point where you
could have little leeway too.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Yeah. And it's I think a lot of this, you know,
is what Elk Shape camps have turned into. It's it's
how to develop a level of self discipline, you know,
fueled by your passion for hunting. And you know, tremendous
(35:35):
respect for Dan, He's he's a wild man, I've never
I don't know anybody who works as hard as he does.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
He is.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
I mean, there's been multiple nights in Dirk. You and
I both know where camp gets done. We may be,
you know, sitting down talking about the day and enjoying
a barley pop, if you will. And Dan is still
working away and you know his his passion for elk hunting.
He kind of figured out how and it makes total
(36:02):
sense how to take that passion and use that to
stay focused every area in our life. And I would
say the first area you need to focus is your spouse.
If your priorities are out of line, if they feel
whether it's turkey hunting or whitetail hunting or meal ear, elk,
whatever it is, but if they're not your priority, they're
gonna look at what your priority is and they're gonna
(36:23):
be resentful towards it. And so you know, just the
basic bank account with her name on it labeled whatever
her activity is, family vacation. That's ninety percent of really
what women are looking for is just to go spend
time as a family, whatever it may be. That communicates
(36:44):
to them that they are the priority. And pretty soon
what happens over time is you know, similar to what
I know Jessica does for you, Derek, and my wife
does for me, is when it's elk season, Like my
wife tells me, don't come home without killing something, you know,
and they are excited for us. They're thrilled they see
us going out and you know, killing ourselves on this
(37:06):
mountain and accomplishing goals in our lives. And there there
are biggest fans, and it hasn't always been that way.
And so you know, if if you can look in
the mirror and you know, like, hey, this is a
liability in my life, it may be time to start
looking at how to reposition that in your world so
that hunting can be an asset rather than a liability
(37:27):
in your relationship in your life.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Absolutely. Absolutely, something I always talk about is when you're
trying to figure out how you're gonna afford hunting and stuff.
We go through our day to day life and sometimes
we just kind of get on autopilot and we just
do our thing, like, Okay, on the way to work today,
I'm gonna stop by the gas station. I'm gonna get
(37:51):
you know, a breakfast sandwich and some coffee, and I'm
gonna spend twelve to fifteen bucks on that, right. So
there there's a simple thing, one simple thing a person
can cut to out of their day to day life.
And let's just talk about that or vices, cutting vices
from your life. Typically, a vice is an unhealthy practice,
(38:14):
you know, whether you're using tobacco or maybe it's alcohol,
whatever your vice or your jam or wherever it is,
if you could cut that out, if you just start
looking at dollar insents, it's like, okay, i'd buy a
thirty pack of beer every week. How much is a
thirty pack of beer? That's twenty bucks. Let's say I
depend on what kind you drink. Let's just say it's
about twenty bucks. Fifty two weeks in a year times
(38:37):
twenty bucks, that adds up a lot. Yeah, and that's
just that's just beer. Well, guess what beer? What else
is bad? Beer's bad for the budget, Well, beller's bad
for the belly.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yeah, you know my vice is thankfully you know, I
don't mind a beer every now and then, but it
is it's not alcohol. It's good food. I mean, my
office since the above a brewery with great food. So
I walked out my office down the stairs and it's
not the beerer that tempts me. It's you know, it's
it's the buffalo sandwich that they've got down there and
(39:12):
so and you're exactly right, like these are things that
even I have to practice and intentionally tell myself no
in this space because it is not supporting my ambition.
I can I can drop twenty five bucks a day
on lunch and and it. I mean, I've gone through
seasons of life and I and I get through that season,
I'm like, man, I'm ten pounds everything I want to
(39:34):
be and I hate this. I yo, Yo, every year
I've spent you know a lot of money that you know,
I realistically is not hurting my family today, but it's
just not in alignment with my ambition on who I'm
called to be.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
And and so forgetting that's gone, it's yea god, yeah,
And I'll tell.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
You it's not easier to drop ten pounds the older
you get.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
No, absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Oh right now, right about? But you know, I think
that overall, you know, if we go back to the
hunting out of state, you know that that is something
that people I hear people talk about like, oh if
I could only like you can't you can do this.
It is not impossible to go on and out of
(40:20):
stake up out of state elk hunt. It's not that expensive.
A few thousand dollars and covers all of it. Most
people with the right amount of time can come up
with that money. And there's lots of resources to hey,
what's this going to cost? All that type of stuff,
But you know, set up a hunt budget and start
systematically saving towards your goal. And I you know when
(40:45):
I when I first start working with clients, especially young
clients that don't have a lot of savings capacity, I
connect savings the same as I do weightlifting. Like if
you hadn't lifted weights before, you're new to weightlifting, and
you walk in the gym, you don't walk up to
the squat rack and see what your pr is. You
walk up to the squat rack and then you grab
a PBC bar and you see if you can get
(41:06):
your butt to the ground, like you see if you
can even make the movement like ooh right, my hamstrings
allow me to get level with the ground. And eventually
then you start doing the bar and then you add weight,
and you add weight and you add weight. And so
for those of you that have never had a hunt
budget that are just beginning this adventure. Want to course
(41:27):
correct how hunting is impacting your life. Start with the movement.
Just perfect the movement. Set up the financial structure, perfect
the movement. Even if it's just twenty five bucks a paycheck,
you can always add weight to the bar. And once
you're at that spot, that self discipline leads to other
areas of your life. And at the end of the day,
(41:47):
if you want to be someone that has the capacity
to hunt out of state consistently, that means that you
have to align your life with that and you have
to make financial decisions that look very differ than society.
And that will be my first like the first big
thing there is. Like if you are making decisions that
look the same as everybody else, you're going to be
(42:09):
producing the same result. And oftentimes, you know, if you
if you look at the kids getting out of college today,
to get out of college, get their first job, Better
go buy that new bmw uh you know, and then oh,
I've got a new job that I better sign up
for my four oh one K and start funding my retirement.
These things like you're gonna you're gonna end up in
(42:31):
the same spot as everybody else. You have to do
things different, and so your overall financial health if you
focus on your overall financial health, you focus on and
I'll talk through some of these things that I that
I see people make these mistakes every day and they
don't realize it because they're doing what people with society
has told them to do. But if if you are
(42:53):
financially healthy and you are liquid, you have savings, you
have emergency funds, you have different types of money in
your life, guess what You're going to go on more
l cuts. It's it's not going to be a big
deal to spend three grand every year or five grand
every year, or start mixing in a buffalo hunt and
went on a mountain lion hut last year. Like these
things just show up the healthier your financial life is.
(43:16):
That makes sense.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Yeah, yeah, Another thing as you were kind of talking
that out, I was thinking about a friend of mine
told me one time what they do to help save
money is they're like, you know, oh, it's the weekend,
(43:38):
we want to go out. We want to go out
on the town. We want to go out to nice
dinner and whatever. And I mean that you can shoot
a hundred dollars bill right in the face going out
on the town. You know that that or more right?
And what they would do is they would they would
write themselves a check out of their checking account and
deposit it into their save into their savings account for
(43:59):
that amount of money, and they would stay home. And uh,
as a guy, if if you were to do that. So, okay, honey,
we're not going out of town. What we're gonna do.
I'm gonna cook dinner tonight for you. What I'm gonna
make your favorite thing. Don't ask her what she wants,
because you're gonna sit there for forty five minutes like,
I don't know what do you want? I don't know, well,
what do you want? Just just just say, hey, I'm
(44:20):
gonna make you your favorite thing whatever that is. Her
favorite thing is whatever you cook. Usually she doesn't.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
To cook it, especially if you're doing the dishes afterwards.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
And then you you deposit that, you know, half in
her account half in your account. Man. Just just little
things like creative ways to like put some money away
into something good instead of just throwing it down a hole.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, yeah, well, there's there's lots of good things that
can be financial holes as well, and so if we
if if we go a little broader as far as
your financial health, there are a few decisions that I
see people make consistently that create a ripple impact throughout
their life that if they understood, they probably would have
(45:04):
made the decision different. And so one of those first
ones is your home. You know, it's I'm not saying
home ownership is bad by any means, but I hear
almost every single day your home is your asset, a
greatest asset. A home is an asset. And the problem
I have with that is when we look at the
baby Boomer generation, you know, the majority of them, there
(45:28):
was a massive shift pre Baby Boomer to the Baby
Boomer generation as far as what people were doing financially,
and you know, the baby Boomers were taught like home
ownership is the quickest way to creating wealth, and your
home is your greatest asset and all of this. And
now as we see that generation retiring, the majority of
them have a home may or may not be paid off.
(45:49):
And unfortunately it's turned out to be true for them
that their home is their greatest asset. And you have
to ask yourself, how much income is your home produced
for you? In retirement, that's nothing. Matter of fact, even
if your home is paid off, it will only always
require income from you. And so by no means here,
don't hear me say the home ownership is bad. But
(46:12):
it's not uncommon that when you are entering the home
ownership space that you sit down with mortgage brokers, real
estate agents, and it's easy to get approved for what's
called a debt to income ratio, essentially how much of
your income is required to be paying for the mortgage
on this home. And people are committing twenty five, thirty
(46:34):
thirty five percent of their income. The million dollars I
took out in two thousand and seven was about a
fifty five percent debt to income ratio for me. And
so like, trust me, I've been there. I made these mistakes.
But when what happens when you go down that path
and your home is your greatest asset and you feel
(46:57):
society's pressure, we got to own a home, we gotta
do this, Like all of a sudden, you've made a
decision that does not leave you financial capacity to have
flexibility in life. You know, I wholeheartedly believe that the
best wealth building strategies that exist out there are going
to be strategies that show up inside of your life,
opportunities that come from the people that you surround yourself with,
(47:22):
your community, your network, whether that means walking away from
a good job and starting a business, whether it means,
you know, buying the old Ladies farm that your family
has always been friends with, whatever it may be. But
the greatest wealth building strategies are not something that is
going to come from your retirement account. It's not to
come from a fancy insurance policy or anything like that.
(47:43):
It's going to come from you taking a risk that
you have the ability to control inside of your own life,
having the financial capacity to take that risk, and starting
a business, becoming a real estate investor one of those things.
But if you have thirty percent of your income going
just to pay for the roof over your head, you
(48:04):
do not leave yourself the financial capacity to accumulate enough money,
let alone go l hunting, but to take advantage of
those opportunities when they show up. And you know, most
of us here probably have seen some opportunities come and
go in our lifetime that we can look back on
and say, man, if I only could have done this
at that time, my life would look different today. And
(48:26):
that's a big part of the message that I hope
that people are hearing here is like, let's start making
decisions different so that we don't have to be the
person that looks back and you know, day dreams about
taking advantage of opportunities that have come by. That you
have the financial capacity that you to go el coming,
but you also have the financial capacity to walk away
(48:46):
from steady income, start your own job, to to you know,
be a real estate investor, all of those things. And
most of those decisions tied directly back to how much
of your income is going to pay that mortgage and so,
and it's hard like today's world, this isn't a this
isn't an easy solution. You know, I generally encourage people
(49:10):
not to have any more than fifteen percent of their
gross income going to cover their housing expenses. And this
applies towards renting too. So you know, simple math, if
you're making one hundred thousand dollars a year gross, fifteen
percent is fifteen thousand, divide that by twelve, that's twelve
fifty a month. Like you shouldn't be spending more than
twelve to fifty a month, and that is your that
(49:30):
is your target, that is your goal of where you
want to be. It's an ideal, it's not doesn't always
work out that way, but that's what you want to
aim towards. Because when you get to that spot, all
of this sudden You now have the capacity to not
only take advantage of the match in your four oh
one K, but now you can pay off that truck loan,
(49:51):
you can get out a student loan debt, you can
have a savings account, you can have an emergency fund,
you can have mid term money, you can you have
the financial opacity to be prepared to make decisions that
lead to a different life than most. And I will
tell you that is nice being in that position.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
Yeah, yeah, I like you said, you know, I've I
think we've all seen like that, that those opportunities come
and go, and it's like like nowadays, I look back
and like, man, remember back when houses were this much
money and property was that much money, And man, if
I could have afforded to buy that property and then
you know, done something with it, you know, build storage
(50:30):
sheds or sit on it for ten years and then
and then dump it and make a whole bunch of money. Man,
I could have made a lot of money. But but
like you said, you know, when you're when you're when
you're at that twenty five percent, thirty five percent whatever
debt income on your on your home, sometimes you just
do not have that luxury having that extra money to
throw around. You're not able to save anything and put
(50:52):
it away.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
So house rich, cash poor. Yeah, it's an awful spot
to be there, really is.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
You get to enjoy a lot of nice steakhadations when
you know a situation you went on vacation, you oh,
we had a staycation. I mowed lawn and shovel dog
crap out of the yard. It was great.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
Yeah. Well, the other big one that I often see is, uh,
and this sounds counterintuitive, but people being too aggressive and
funding their retirement. You know, iras four o one case
are good. We need those financial tools, but we really
need to understand actually how those tools work. It's not
just hey, the S and P has done X y
(51:32):
Z for thirty years. You know, let's do a linear
math equation. That is not the way investments work. And
we need four oh one case. We need iras. Those
are an important part of our overall financial profile. But
good example, just talking to a client that we would
all know right before this meeting, and you know, we're
(51:54):
talking about how much is appropriate to put in this
four oh one K and he's only contributing enough to
receive the match, which is exactly what I recommend for
the majority of people is contribute up to the match,
get that free money. But any money beyond the match
has to be money that you very carefully think about
and make sure is this the best use of these dollars.
(52:17):
Those dollars are essentially in that environment in the thirty years,
however long it is that you have retirement and you
know they're at risk or paying fees and taxes on
those eventually somewhere along the way, they're kind of not
part of your life until you're at least fifty nine
and a half. And so if you want to have
(52:38):
the financial capacity to do other things in life, anything
beyond the match is money that you really need to
think is this the best location to do this or
should these dollars be part of my life today?
Speaker 1 (52:52):
Yeah, that's really good because in essence, you're basically taking
those dollars out of play, you're taking them off the table,
putting them in something you don't get to play with
for a long time. Whereas back to those opportunities, if
you're putting that extra money into some opportunity fund that
may fund your next project. Let's say, Okay, now I'm
(53:13):
able to become an entrepreneur if that's your dream or
or whatever, to take advantage of this next next thing
that comes along.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
So yeah, I love that. Absolutely, it makes sense, you know.
And so and let me say this. You know, I
have to read my disclosure at the end of this podcast,
but you know, I'm a financial advisor. None of this advice,
none of this stuff that I'm talking about should be
listeners out there. You don't take this as financial advice.
(53:41):
Financial advice needs to be given on an individual basis.
These are just ideas, thoughts, things that I've seen that
have had impacts for other people. Whether or not these
are the right decisions for you, it's between you and
your financial advisor or financial planner. But you know, just
like medicine, you know, it's weird your people think of
the medical world and they you know, they think of
(54:03):
adults versus kids, Like you're not going to receive the
same prescription. It may be the same drug, but the
dosage looks different. Money is no different than that. The
dosage here needs to be individually applied. And so if
nothing else, I hope that you know, the listeners here
are getting some ideas and thoughts, maybe a little bit
of a different perspective than what they traditionally hear from
(54:25):
this space, and so they maybe they questioned a little
bit deeper and start looking at kind of what's going
on in their own life and take some action so
they can get some more of those non resident out
of state text.
Speaker 1 (54:36):
Oh yeah, heck, yeah, Well man, it's been good having
me on the podcast and catching up with you. I
feel like, you know, we've got past the new year,
the new year knew me thing, but I think it's
still well, how many weeks are we into the year now?
Speaker 2 (54:54):
Three?
Speaker 1 (54:56):
Yeah? Like how many of us raise your hand if
you already fell off your goals? Okay, we'll just get
back on that horse and keep riding and dang it.
But I thought it'd be a good time of year,
you know. I think that's uh, finances and try and hunting,
trying to figure out your your tags and stuff for
the year. That's in everyone's mind right now. It's like,
how the heck am I going to afford it? Maybe
(55:16):
I can't afford it this year, but man, if I
start now next year this time, I'll definitely build a
afford that you know, must be nice hunt somewhere cool.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
Yeah, well, start now, because five years from now you're
gonna be happy. You did, you know? And and uh,
your financial life impacts every aspect of your life. And
so it's just as important as as exercise or nutrition
or faith. This is this is an important part of
your world. And and so start making the movement. Start
(55:46):
with reps, even if there's not a lot of weight
on the bar, and add weight as capacity increases.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Yeah, you talked to a lot of couples too, you know,
relationships and and a common theme is what strains a
couple's relations and ship is finances. Right, you know, there's
always like some kind of a rift. There's things aren't
going good in your finances. A lot of times things
aren't going good with your marriage either, and it's really
hard to get along and nobody wants that, dang it. Yeah, man,
(56:13):
we're just becoming life coaches in this episode.
Speaker 2 (56:20):
Oh man, No, it's uh, You're not wrong though, you
know you want to want to talk about an expensive
hobby and try divorce. That's at that's really you know,
I have never made that mistake, and yeah and so
and it happens. I mean, lets talk to a client
yesterday that you know it's it's going to cost him
(56:42):
hundreds of thousands of dollars to get divorced. And it's
just it's heartbreaking. I'm a big fan of marriage and
working things out. And you know, it's any anybody's been married.
I think we've got eighteen years here of this fall
and they know it's not all it's not all uh
peaches and cream, it's it's all. So so it's the
hardest adventure I've ever been on and and the most rewarding.
(57:05):
And yes, your finances have an impact on that, and
so take it serious.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
In the words of the Tiger King, you may never
financially recover from it. Big fan. I'm waiting for Tiger
King two to come out. I wonder if Trump's gonna
like pardon him and get him out of there and
then we can get part two of Tiger King.
Speaker 5 (57:32):
Oh mans right here on the podcast. Oh boy, Well
thanks again, Jeff, you need any closing thoughts or you
said you have to read your disclaimer.
Speaker 2 (57:45):
Yeah, yeah, I've got a disclosure all ready, but I'll
just I'll just say I hope that I hope people
are encouraged from this. It is absolutely possible to go
out there and be going on this level of hunts.
You know, there's there's lots of resources out there for
people to learn about the points system, and you know
what it costs to go on these hunts, all of that,
but start today, like you're not going to get there
(58:06):
if you don't start today with at least the movement.
And as far as disclosures go, Investment advisory services are
offered through co HO. I am a representative of Coho
Advisory Services. Nothing I've given into this podcast is considered
investment advice. This is solely for informational purposes. Please talk
(58:30):
to your advisor about anything that I've talked about here today.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
Awesome, awesome, Well, good luck this next fall. And I
hope your your son's football team carries on the winning streak.
I know Sandpoint's got a strong football program all the
way through high school, so good job.
Speaker 2 (58:48):
It's impressive. It's a great community. We love it, blessed
to be here for sure.
Speaker 1 (58:53):
All right, we'll catch you up again later Thanks
Speaker 5 (58:55):
Derek, Thanks no
And we're back with another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast.
I'm Dirk Durham and this week's guest is somebody I've
got to know over the last few years and really
enjoy his company. The first time I met this guy,
he kept tagging me on Instagram with these ridiculous videos.
(00:36):
There's these freaking weird redneck videos. He'd kept on tagging
me and sending me in my dms. He was sliding
into my DMS with these ridiculous damn redneck videos. I'm like,
who the hell is this crazy bastard. He's like weird
as can be. Like I thought, Man, this guy is
redneck as they come. And then fast forward quite a
(00:59):
while before I actually got to meet you and get
to know you, and he's not quite as redneck as
he seemed in his posts and his things he sent me. So,
uh my good buddy, Jeff bid him, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thank you. It's good. Good to see you, Derek. I
miss you, man. It's you know, it's been a minute
since we've gotten some FaceTime in together. And you know,
we we've traveled all across the country together. We've definitely
had a few moments, if you will and so I
missed some of those days, but it's good to see you.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, I mean we we spent like, I don't know,
six or seven weekends in a row for like four
years together. We went to these elkshamp elk shaped camps,
and I got to teach folks how to call elk
and and how to hunt elk and and Jeff he
(01:54):
put in his two cents there too, But he also
tried to tell people how to be a better with
their money. I guess you could say kind of life
kind of a life coach if you will.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, it's it's funny how much money impacts your life.
And uh and and so it's you know, the Olk
shape camps. Uh I still happening, kind of a new
version of them, and and uh excited for that. But
you know, that was a lot of trial and error
on how those went. And we had some amazing experiences,
(02:28):
got to meet tons of great people. Uh. Some of
my fondest memories. I don't miss some of those early
morning Texas drives. You know where We're running across the
state of Texas at three am, and I think all
of us have had too much dairy. Uh. You know
that cramped in a small car. It wasn't good, but
it's a lot of fun memories.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, those we had some good times. Good times you
weren't kind of you know, I will say, you're such
a good sport. You're always kind of the butt of
the butt of a joke of some kind. Full disclosure,
Jeff is a ginger. He is a redheaded fella, and
we take full advantage of that. You know, his own
his own humility, he will he will jump right on
(03:11):
that bandwagon too and just take the shots and kind
of add a little bit to it for us.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
So, yeah, you know, I believe I'm gonna go to heaven,
but I'm not sure how that's gonna work as a
solace ginger. So we'll figure it out when we get there.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
So, yeah, you have to work really hard and find
a soul before it's before your time comes for Saint
calls your name. Well, hey, Matt, we haven't got to
talk much about ELK season twenty twenty four. How'd you do?
Did you do? Did you slay the beast or did
the beast lay you?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Boy? It's a twenty twenty four felt like a failure
to me until I got beyond it and looked back
and I did not kill an elk in twenty twenty four.
And I am I am not near as good of
el kunture as the people that I often get to
hang out with, yourself included, but I can get I
(04:04):
get the job done most years, and I got my
buckcacked this year. But it was I think my season.
The highlight of my season actually has nothing to do
with elk hunting, you know. I I for those of
you that are parents, have two kids and daughters, want
to get done with this podcast. She's in driver's ed
fourteen years old and I gotta go take her driving
(04:26):
after this. Yeah, I know it's scary. My son is eleven,
gonna be twelve here soon. And I've always tried to
be involved in as much as possible in their worlds.
And I'd coached their spring baseball season and it was amazing, phenomenal,
awesome experience. You know, it was really good for me
(04:47):
and my son. There were some challenging moments. I think
we both cried probably at several points throughout the season,
and you know, I like there were several times where
I had to come to him and apologize because I'm like,
oh my coaching sucked there, especially as a father. And
and so when it got to the fall, we signed
up for football and I show up to football practice
(05:09):
the first day to drop him off, and it's all
the coaches from baseball and they're they're looking at me
and they're like, dude, what are you doing. I'm like,
what do you mean? You're good with these boys? Why
are you not out here? And they they pressured me
into signing up to be an assistant coach on his
sixth grade football team. And I played football in high school,
but not a lot of experience since then other than
(05:30):
being a football fan. And it you know, there was
thirty two boys on that team, and we went this
is our third season, so last two seasons. They went
undefeated season before that, and so they've lost one game
in three seasons. And so it was, uh, it was
(05:50):
five days a week, games on Saturday, and all the
way through September and most of October. And so I
committed to that, and it was a massive sacrifice for
my ELK season. I had Idaho tags, I had Montana tags.
I had all this ambition on what I was going
to do, and the truth is I probably spent less
(06:14):
time elk hunting in twenty twenty four than I have
any year in the last probably ten. And if I
get the opportunity to coach his football again that time
with my son being able to build that depth of
relationship with him and work with him in that way,
I will trade that for an elk every single year.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Yeah, well, congrats, good job, dad, because that's you can't
get those years back, right, you know you've got way
more elk hunting years in front of you than you
got time with your kids at home. So good job,
good job.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
I will say that that's the frustration of the season.
BJ my right hand, BJ Cable amazing dude. Loved the
guy killed his first bowl this year, his first elk
went out there, did it solo, did it the right
way North Idaho. I mean, you know what this area
is like, Dirk. You know how hard it is to
get into elkap here, especially after they're decimated by wolves.
(07:10):
But M and I were out a couple of times
and the one day, I think it was the nineteenth
September nineteenth, we get into a drainage and there were
six bowls bugling, and I mean it was it was
awesome and worked one bowl, got busted, headed for the
next bowl. He was he was kind of headed to
the bedroom, probably in his bedroom, and we kept him talking,
kept him talking. We're working through and brush. We're about
(07:33):
two hundred yards out and I'm just these tag alders
and spruce trees everywhere. You're just climbing through this North
Idaho br USh, trying to get within, get close, and
a blue spruce branch came and swung and whacked me
straight across my eyeballs and it ended up like I
couldn't open my eyes for probably a solid hour. Finally
(07:55):
we were able to pry my eyes open. We looked
in my one hole eye was solid a shot and
go to the trauma center. You know. BJ had to
hold my hand out of the woods. Yeah, it was.
If you would have stumbled on us in that moment,
you would have had some questions on what was going
on in the North Idaho woods. Crying with tears in
my eyes and BJ's holding my hand.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Oh is this a proposal?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah, but dang it, no it was. It was a
good season and my freezers, I'm down to sixty pounds
of elk meat, so I'm taking elk donations. If anybody's
needs some freezer space. Uh, no at all. Honestly, I
think I'm going to go try to kill a buffalo
here pretty soon stock up the freezer.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So nice. Nice, So, Jeff, I kind of touched on
it lightly that you kind of talked a little bit
about people's financial decisions and whatnot. The elk shaped camps. Uh,
tell the tell the listeners what you do for a
living well.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
I am a financial advisor of financial planning. I'm the
founder of a kind of a boutique firm, Financial Fitters Group,
that I started in twenty fifteen. And so I am.
You know, I started this practice, this firm with the
intention of changing the hunting industry. And you know, I
fast forward to today. I had no idea how this
(09:14):
was going to go. As a matter of fact, most
people told me it would not. Most people said that
demographics of hunters does not make sense to work and
as a financial advisor, and I says, well, I'm either
going to do this or I'll get out of the
industry and go do something honest, like build houses or whatever.
I don't know, but so I started Financial Offerers Group
beginn at twenty fifteen, and you know, you fast forward
(09:36):
to today. I get to help all kinds of amazing
people across the country thinks through everyday life decisions, how
to buy cars, retirement insurances, send kids to college, start businesses,
invest in real estate. You know, I just I get
you know you kind of said life coach. The reality
is a lot of what I do is life coaching
(09:58):
and helping people navigate the financial side of decision making
is just the reward of that is something I never
imagined I'd be able to be in a position to receive.
It's been phenomenal watching people create businesses and do all
kinds of amazing things in their life.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah. Yeah, I kind of like I kind of compare
you this for say, you're kind of like a doctor, right,
Doctors kind of give you advice you never want to hear. Hey,
don't don't eat those donuts, don't drink those beers, don't
don't don't do eat celery, do do more setups. And
(10:44):
I feel like you kind of have that kind of
advice too. It's like, hey, don't can Hey Jeff, what
do you think I'm gonna go buy a twenty twenty
four Duramax And you're like, no, you can do whatever
you want, but no, don't do that. I feel like
you have you're kind of that same kind of person,
you know, you're trying to keep people's finances healthy.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, well, I think you know. The way society has
taught people to make financial decisions is often backwards, you know.
It's it's kind of the shoe first, aim later approach
to financial decision making, and a lot of what we
hear often told always do this, you know, And there's
(11:23):
all these financial I'm gonna air quote financial entertainers, and
they give out this blanket advice that people accept wholesale,
and they buy into these myths, these financial myths, and
they don't find out that they're on a path that
they don't want to be in until five, ten, twenty
years down the raided twenty years later, when they've created
(11:44):
some sort of unintended consequence in their life. So a
lot of my role, in my relationship, in my client's
lives is helping them look at these different paths they
could take so they can make whatever decision is right
for their family and they don't wake up somewhere they
don't want to be.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Right now, you talked about what we're kind of taught
from a long time ago, like you know, do this
with your money, don't do that with your money, and
and over the time and listen to you you speak
at these different venues. It's really made me think, like, wow,
I've got to rethink things a little bit from what
I was taught and it really kind of makes sense.
(12:20):
But let's rewind a little bit, do you You you
always give an impactful speech at ELK shape camps and
kind of told about where you came from and how
you got to where you are today, and it always
like really sunk into me. Is like it was kind
of a vulnerable speech too, so I always really enjoyed it.
Can you can you give that?
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah? Yeah? Let me How I even ended up in
this role? It's, uh, you know, it's a story that
on paper looks like a lot of failure, but in
reality it's you know, you could have given me a
blank sheet of paper and I never could have drawn
out this this life that I get to live now.
And so I mean, I I grew up in a
poda little farmtown with more dairy cows than people, grew
(13:05):
up in a very poor household, broken household. You know,
I went my mom went through several step dads that
you know, I was the classic Ginger if you will,
you know, a redheaded step child. And you know, by
the time I got to high school, I was not
on a very good path in life. And you know,
(13:25):
this was early nineties, and I sat down with my
high school counselor and they told me I didn't need
to worry about taking a second language because I'd never
go to college. And so I kind of just wrote
off the traditional approach that we were all told to
take at that time in life and got out of school.
The good news of growing up so poor as I
(13:45):
learned how to work really hard if I wanted something.
So I got into the construction industry, started working my
way up through the construction trades, and I ended up
going on a vacation in Seattle, met my wife, and
then I never came home. I said, Hey, I'm staying here,
like in work construction here and yeah, and I started
(14:07):
my own construction company. At twenty five. My wife graduated
from SPU the degree in interior design. She started her
own here, her own interior design practice, and we were
making a lot of money, more money than our families
had ever made. This was kind of the heyday of
the real estate market pre two thousand and eight, and
we got we decided that we wanted to be smart
(14:27):
with money, so we went out and got a couple
of financial advisors, and most of their advice revolved around
real estate, which makes sense because it was an insurance
salesman and a mortgage broker that we're our financial advisors,
and so they had us take out a million dollars
in debt in two thousand and seven, and they told
us that we'll never lose if we do this, And
(14:48):
we bought investment properties in Seattle in two thousand and
seven and woke up about a year later in the
middle of two thousand and eight where all of our income, assets,
my abilities, cash flow, like everything in our life was
tied to the real estate market, and we lost everything
we owned, had to go through bankruptcy, ended up moving
(15:11):
into my in law's basement with my nine month old
baby girl, my daughter, and that sucked. That that was
not fun. Don't don't move into your in law's basement,
that's all. That's not a place you want to find
yourself in life. And so you know, at twenty eight,
that's what I was when that while that happened, I
(15:35):
made it my mission to make sure that this was
never going to happen again to me in my life.
And so I started going to the different financial institutions
out there, all of the ones that people see on
every street corner, you know, and all over the place,
and I heard a lot of the same thing. It
give us this much money, we'll get you this much
rate of return, and here's where you're going to be
in thirty years. And and to me, I knew I'd
(15:57):
already heard this. This is that it was not financial planning.
That was just a sales pitch. And through that process,
I realized that the financial services industry, and this is
whether we were talking about investment advice or insurance planning,
or benefits from an employer, or taxes or mortgage real estate,
like all of these different products or services that we
(16:17):
need in our lives are all being provided to us
through a sales process, and no one has taken the
time to say, let's make sure that all of this
fits together so that you don't wake up somewhere like
how I woke up in two thousand and eight and
I realized had someone helped me make decisions different than
I did it. Had someone looked out for my best interest,
(16:40):
I would have never made the decisions I had. I
would have never taken out a million dollars. I had
no business whatsoever taken out that type of debt in
two thousand and seven. I didn't have the right liquidity,
I didn't have good protection, Like I was essentially kind
of a wreck, just making a ton of money, and
so I saw an opportunity to go help people avoid
(17:01):
making the mistakes I made. So I took off the
car hearts and put on a suit and tie, which
you know, fast forward to twenty fifteen, I ended up
moving my family to Texas. God bless Texas. I love Texas.
They just don't have much public lands or all hunting there, unfortunately.
But it was down in Texas, and it was still
it was still suit and tie sales goals, and you know,
(17:24):
I just and I just I was fed up with it.
I was fed up with this world and the pressure
that this industry puts on most advisors to perform. And
I was going to leave the industry. And that's when
I I can't remember what book I was reading, but
you know, one of these inspirational books to pursue your
dreams and all that stuff. And I was like, I'm
gonna go work in the hunting industry. And that's why
(17:44):
I quickly realized I wouldn't be able to provide for
my family if I did. It's you don't get into
the hunting industry to to to make a ton of money.
Like that's that's the reality. It is a modest life.
But for me, what I saw there was people. I
saw people that were similar to me. I saw people
that were salt of the earth, that were blue collar,
(18:06):
that had a what I would say is a natural
distrust for the financial services world. And I thought, you know,
if if there was one group of people that I
could go out and help succeed in life, these were
my people. And so I sat down with my firm
that I was with then and I told them that.
And that's when they're like, yeah, you're gonna fail, You'll
(18:26):
be out of the industry. There's not enough money in it,
blah blah blah. It's as well, I'm gonna do this
my way or not. And uh, you know here we
are today.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah, well, I think you've been doing a good job.
And I think You've helped a lot of people, including me,
and uh, you know, I think you're living the dream.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Well, uh what you what's publicly you see there there.
I still have challenges myself, you know, we all do.
I got a I got a gut kick last week.
It was, you know, being business for yourself, especially as
a financial advisor's hard. And you know I'm an all transparency.
I had a I had some message me that they
didn't have a good experience in planning, and for me,
(19:06):
it crushed me. It still hurts, like I you know,
I almost postponed this podcast because it's torn me up
so bad. And it wasn't that they didn't like my advice.
It was that their experience was bad. And so and
I'm analyzing that, I'm looking at that. I'm always trying
to grow and figure out, Okay, how do I have
the most impact inside of people's lives. And you know,
thankfullest person as a friend and you know help helping me.
(19:28):
See so, I'm still growing and evolving. Our firm is
still growing and evolving. We've got some exciting things happening
that that we're gonna be able to support clients. But yeah,
it's been it's been a constant uh climb, uphill, steep
grade and a yah, NonStop. Lakes are burning.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
So yeah, I think that's a common thing with entrepreneurs, right,
It's you just about the time you think I can
take a deep breath and it's like, oh what about this,
and it's like it's a grind. I haven't. I know
a lot of entrepreneurs and I just don't know any
of them that have you know, every days of ten,
right you know. Yeah, it's it's a lot of hard
(20:08):
work and dedication and late nights and grind. So yeah,
now you well, I'm a circle back here. You mentioned real.
I mean you just dropped the subtle hint early in
the conversation. You said, Montana ELK tag. Yeah, must be nice. Yeah, yeah,
(20:30):
it must be nice to get one of those tags.
I mean you know that. I'm just gonna say it, Jeff,
I didn't get a Montana tag last year, and I
you got mine, and you didn't probably even hunt on
it that much. So I will have a little animassie
towards you. Yeah, we got it, Like you've had a
(20:51):
I think you've had more ELK tags in Montana in
the last three years than I have. So yeah, we
really need to talk about how you're getting tags.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I mean, you know, somebody, do you know I wish
it worked that way, Man, I would be kissing, but no,
I've you know, I've gotten I've gotten lucky, and you
know I've it.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
It didn't start this way, that's for sure. You know.
My first out of state hunt that I went on
was in twenty fourteen to Wyoming. That's that bowl there.
That bowl's also Wyoming, But you know it, it is
something that I looked at and said, you know, I
would like this to be a normal part of my life.
And it took a lot of a lot of years
(21:32):
and adjustments and shifts and how I manage my finances
and to be able to afford to be able to
hunt several states a year or at least another state
a year. So in drawing tags is a big part
of that as well.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Yeah, Yeah, it's tougher every year. Yeah. The first time
I ever got it out of state, it was it
was Wyoming and after and I shot a nice six point.
(22:07):
When I get back to work, one of the guys
there that always had had something to say, He's like,
it must be nice until he's getting getting paid too
much money around here. It's like, all right, well, first off,
I know that guy made a lot more money than
me because he'd worked there a lot longer he was.
And also it's sometimes you know, what what are you affording?
(22:31):
What other luxuries are you affording through the year? What
are you wasting your money on versus putting that money
towards going hunting out of state?
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Right?
Speaker 1 (22:41):
I can think of it a lot of things, but
you know, he just kind of adds up, right.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, it's you know, and this is a big part
of what I hope people take away from this message
is that we need to think about our decision making different.
And I'm going to tie this into wealth And this
wasn't actually this was an elk shaped camp that I
that I figured out how to pointingly say how I
(23:07):
felt about wealth creation. Derek, you came to some of
the Texas camps with us, right the at the Iron
Game Ranch. Amazing amazing ranch, beautiful high fence. Uh, every
exotic animal that was there, you know, every bass in
the pond was five plus plant pounds. You know, it
was there. Their cabins we were staying at or nicer
(23:29):
than most people's homes, and so it was one of
these mornings that that before camp started, and oftentimes I'd
done this where I'll get up in the morning and
have coffee, let's go walk around doing a little bit
of preying before camp and you know, for everything that's
going to be happening and everybody's message and all that stuff.
And this ranch was owned by one of the founders
(23:52):
of PayPal, and I never actually met him. I think
Dan had met him a few times. I don't know
the guy's name. But that morning, it was a little
bit dark, and I could as I was walking, I
could see into their house and his private chef was
cooking and breakfast. And I remember thinking to myself, you know,
this guy, when he wakes up in the morning, there's
not anybody that tells him how he has to spend
(24:14):
his time that day. He is in complete control of
his time, right And as I thought about that, meditated
on it, and I realized that that is that is
what we are all actually seeking in life. Is that
is the greatest measurement of wealth. You know, I've had money,
I've lost money, I've made money. Money is replaceable, but
(24:35):
the time that we have in this life, our time
here on earth is irreplaceable. It is our most precious resource.
And for me it clicked with my messaging to my
client tele the people that I work with, is that
we've been taught that how much money we have, how
big our retirement account is, how big our bank account,
(24:58):
our boat, our twenty four duromats, whatever it maybe represents
our wealth, when the reality is our ability to control
our time should be how we measure our wealth, which
which trickles into how we are making financial decisions. And
if controlling our time is the most precious resource that
(25:19):
we have, it means that we need to be making
decisions different than what society, what generations before us, have done.
What is often said from financial advisors, I oftentimes talk
people out of putting money into vehicles or products or
environments where I get paid to do. I talk myself
out of paychecks because I want them to be in
(25:40):
a position to control how control their time. And so
you know, the must be nice. You know, yeah, it
is nice. It is nice to be able to go
hunt other states. But it's not accidental. It's not because
I got lucky, it's not it's none of that. It's
because I've made decison is intentionally different than what I
(26:03):
think most people have to create this level of capacity
to control my time in my life.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Uh, if you could say, if you
could give us five things, it sounds like.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
The cover of Cosmo magazine five best practices to make
your Man Happy.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
I mean, so give me five if you want. Okay,
let's give me five things that our listeners can do
to if they have a goal of wanting to go
hunt out of state or have or maybe just hunting
in state. Maybe it's just a struggle even to be
able to get to go hunting you're in your home state.
(26:48):
What are five things they can do? Maybe that's too many,
but what are some things folks can do to set
themselves up good to like not take away from their
every day either living and their family and you know
all those things are important retirement stuff. How can they
still participate in those things yet put some money away
(27:10):
for for sure hunting for a fun, fun time.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Well, let me let me start with addressing something that
you mentioned there, and that is hunting taking away from
your family. If hunting is taking away from your family,
if hunting is building resentment between you and your spouse,
You're doing it wrong. Like, that's just straight up. Hunting
is if you're a hunter, it is core to your
(27:36):
DNA and like and I and that's that's how I
look at hunting in my life, Like there are a
few human activities that are core to who I am
as hunting, Uh, hunting is I love gardening and one
of them is between me and my wife. And that's
about it. And those are those are the core human
activities that are part of that are gettingrained in us
in our DNA. And so hunting should not be something
(27:57):
that is a liability in your relationship. You know, you
go back throughout time and you look at the hieroglyphs
on walls and like those are celebrations of hunting stories,
and that's how that should be in our in our life.
But the problem is we're self as human beings oftentimes
and oftentimes we are poor managing our finances and we
don't financially prepare. It's hey, we're going hunting, which means
(28:20):
something else is not happening in our life that should
be happening. And so first, if if that is you,
if you felt that, and I've felt this, I've seen
this in my own life. Like, everything I'm talking about
are things that I have made, these.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Mistakes, right, we've all been there.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah. Yeah. So on the practical side of things, if
there is something that is that important to you, you
should have a hunt budget. Like it's not it's not complicated. Uh,
you know, there's there's a lot of different budgeting techniques
out there, but the practically there should be a bank
account at your bank. At least create a structure a
(28:58):
location that you and your wife can see together that
you know that money that's in this environment is earmarked
and its sole purpose is to produce this experience activity
in your life. And so for you know, at the
very minimum, set up a bank account at your bank,
(29:20):
have it labeled your Hunt budget, and have a conversation
with your spouse about what type of money you would
like to spend, where those dollars are coming from in
your life, and is it appropriate to spend as much
as you're hoping to.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Now, we can't let her see that money, like, okay,
I think they call I believe they call that mad money. Well,
because when she finds it, she canna be mad.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
And this is where if if, that is where the
conversation stopped. You've you've failed, misery because at the end
of the day, you know, stereotypical, like most of us men,
this is our thing. There are a lot of amazing,
badass women hunters out there, mad respect for you, most
of them out hunt me. But for the most part,
(30:12):
this is us. And maybe we take our kids every
now and then, but we have to recognize how important
hunting is to us as well as recognize that there's
something in our wife's lives that is just as important.
And so if you're setting up your hunt budget and
not your wife's whatever version of hunting is for her budget,
(30:33):
you've failed. Like I tell everybody, you will go on
more hunts if you set up your wife's hunt budget
first rather than yours. That will pay dividends in a
lot of ways. And so it's not just it's not
just hey, here's what I'm gonna spend. Take it or
leave it, babe. This is let's talk about our lives.
(30:53):
Let's talk about what's important to us. Let's talk about
things that are not really creating value. And this was
a big one that I had to kind of go
through this exact same process when my children were young.
Once I moved out of my in laws basement and
uh back, you know, back in normal life and living
under one roof. I snowboarded all the time, I mountain biked,
(31:14):
I salmon fished. I did all of these things that
required money and time for me, and I couldn't afford
all of those things. And so I looked at my
life and I recognized the most important activity that that
I can do that I want my children to experience
is hunting. It had the most impact in my life.
It's what I and And so I carved almost all
(31:37):
of that other stuff out of my life and focused
my time and energy into one space. And ironically, I
started killing more ouk when I did that too. So
it's surprising what happens when you get intentional and focus
your time, energy and money. And so that that's that
will be the like foundationally, everybody should have a hunt budget,
(32:00):
unless you're one of those people that make so much
money that if you spend twenty thirty forty thousand dollars
a year and your family doesn't even notice, it doesn't
even hurt you at all, Like, good for you. That
is nice. That be really nice.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
That must be nice.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
It must be nice.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
How come you looked at me like that, Yeah, I
don't have that kind of money. And I think, you know,
like I think a lot of like a lot of
wives too. You know, maybe maybe they haven't found their
version of hunting. You know, maybe they haven't found an
act life activity that they enjoy or passionate about because
a lot of them they're so you know, busy and
(32:41):
invested into raising children, right. You know a lot of
these moms are just they don't allow themselves or don't
have a fun out, you know, something they can go
do that's that's really fun. And maybe we just have
to get you know, we have to kind of advocate
for them to find something and help them find it
and nurture that that thing. You know, maybe maybe you
(33:06):
if they're a little bit on the fence on this
thing because of you know, maybe they don't get to
go have any fun, be like, Okay, here's what we're
gonna do. We're gonna split this this mad money right
down the middle, and half will go into my hunting
fund and half's gonna go into your fund to do
X y Z. Maybe that's a weekend away with their girlfriends.
Maybe it's a day at the spa or it's some
(33:28):
little spoiled thing whatever they're into. Maybe it's a piece
of jewelry, whatever, they're really into it. So it's like,
all right, we're gonna do this together. And and as
as I build mine, you're gonna build yours. And we're
gonna you know, we wanted this to be fair. I
feel like that it would be a huge and then
also uh full transparency. Uh man. A lot of a
(33:49):
lot of guys get slack a lot of flak when
they want to go hunt and they're like, oh, yeah,
I told my wife last week I'm going hunting next week,
and she was mad. She didn't want me to go,
and she's about ready to burn the house down and
mad about it. And we've talked about this before in
our camps that you know, back to that being intentional,
(34:09):
planning ahead, being full fully transparent with your wife or
significant other, that you know, this is my intentions for fall,
this is the time I want to do it, this
is how much it's gonna cost, and this is what
I'm doing to make that all happen. So yes, now
I'm going to you know, opera shows on Saturday night
(34:31):
in the middle of summer that I never really would
have ever done. Or I'm taking a trip to Mexico
or whatever whatever she's into. Like, you're building those hall
pass points. You know, absolutely hate a lot of the
things they love, but you used to have to grin
and bear it and shut your fat mouth and go
enjoy it and try to make it enjoyable for them.
That way, you can be like, yeah, I'll do all
(34:53):
this stuff and then you know, and I'm gonna I
want to do this hunt in season. If you can
kind of tee all that up ahead of time, it
kind of softens it a little bit. You know, they
still may not like it that much when you're gone,
but it'll it'll still be like, Okay, well yeah he
did do all those things. I mean, you don't want
to rub it in their face, but they know that
you've been intentional to get to the point where you
could have little leeway too.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Yeah. And it's I think a lot of this, you know,
is what Elk Shape camps have turned into. It's it's
how to develop a level of self discipline, you know,
fueled by your passion for hunting. And you know, tremendous
(35:35):
respect for Dan, He's he's a wild man, I've never
I don't know anybody who works as hard as he does.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
He is.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
I mean, there's been multiple nights in Dirk. You and
I both know where camp gets done. We may be,
you know, sitting down talking about the day and enjoying
a barley pop, if you will. And Dan is still
working away and you know his his passion for elk hunting.
He kind of figured out how and it makes total
(36:02):
sense how to take that passion and use that to
stay focused every area in our life. And I would
say the first area you need to focus is your spouse.
If your priorities are out of line, if they feel
whether it's turkey hunting or whitetail hunting or meal ear, elk,
whatever it is, but if they're not your priority, they're
gonna look at what your priority is and they're gonna
(36:23):
be resentful towards it. And so you know, just the
basic bank account with her name on it labeled whatever
her activity is, family vacation. That's ninety percent of really
what women are looking for is just to go spend
time as a family, whatever it may be. That communicates
(36:44):
to them that they are the priority. And pretty soon
what happens over time is you know, similar to what
I know Jessica does for you, Derek, and my wife
does for me, is when it's elk season, Like my
wife tells me, don't come home without killing something, you know,
and they are excited for us. They're thrilled they see
us going out and you know, killing ourselves on this
(37:06):
mountain and accomplishing goals in our lives. And there there
are biggest fans, and it hasn't always been that way.
And so you know, if if you can look in
the mirror and you know, like, hey, this is a
liability in my life, it may be time to start
looking at how to reposition that in your world so
that hunting can be an asset rather than a liability
(37:27):
in your relationship in your life.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Absolutely. Absolutely, something I always talk about is when you're
trying to figure out how you're gonna afford hunting and stuff.
We go through our day to day life and sometimes
we just kind of get on autopilot and we just
do our thing, like, Okay, on the way to work today,
I'm gonna stop by the gas station. I'm gonna get
(37:51):
you know, a breakfast sandwich and some coffee, and I'm
gonna spend twelve to fifteen bucks on that, right. So
there there's a simple thing, one simple thing a person
can cut to out of their day to day life.
And let's just talk about that or vices, cutting vices
from your life. Typically, a vice is an unhealthy practice,
(38:14):
you know, whether you're using tobacco or maybe it's alcohol,
whatever your vice or your jam or wherever it is,
if you could cut that out, if you just start
looking at dollar insents, it's like, okay, i'd buy a
thirty pack of beer every week. How much is a
thirty pack of beer? That's twenty bucks. Let's say I
depend on what kind you drink. Let's just say it's
about twenty bucks. Fifty two weeks in a year times
(38:37):
twenty bucks, that adds up a lot. Yeah, and that's
just that's just beer. Well, guess what beer? What else
is bad? Beer's bad for the budget, Well, beller's bad
for the belly.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yeah, you know my vice is thankfully you know, I
don't mind a beer every now and then, but it
is it's not alcohol. It's good food. I mean, my
office since the above a brewery with great food. So
I walked out my office down the stairs and it's
not the beerer that tempts me. It's you know, it's
it's the buffalo sandwich that they've got down there and
(39:12):
so and you're exactly right, like these are things that
even I have to practice and intentionally tell myself no
in this space because it is not supporting my ambition.
I can I can drop twenty five bucks a day
on lunch and and it. I mean, I've gone through
seasons of life and I and I get through that season,
I'm like, man, I'm ten pounds everything I want to
(39:34):
be and I hate this. I yo, Yo, every year
I've spent you know a lot of money that you know,
I realistically is not hurting my family today, but it's
just not in alignment with my ambition on who I'm
called to be.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
And and so forgetting that's gone, it's yea god, yeah,
And I'll tell.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
You it's not easier to drop ten pounds the older
you get.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
No, absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Oh right now, right about? But you know, I think
that overall, you know, if we go back to the
hunting out of state, you know that that is something
that people I hear people talk about like, oh if
I could only like you can't you can do this.
It is not impossible to go on and out of
(40:20):
stake up out of state elk hunt. It's not that expensive.
A few thousand dollars and covers all of it. Most
people with the right amount of time can come up
with that money. And there's lots of resources to hey,
what's this going to cost? All that type of stuff,
But you know, set up a hunt budget and start
systematically saving towards your goal. And I you know when
(40:45):
I when I first start working with clients, especially young
clients that don't have a lot of savings capacity, I
connect savings the same as I do weightlifting. Like if
you hadn't lifted weights before, you're new to weightlifting, and
you walk in the gym, you don't walk up to
the squat rack and see what your pr is. You
walk up to the squat rack and then you grab
a PBC bar and you see if you can get
(41:06):
your butt to the ground, like you see if you
can even make the movement like ooh right, my hamstrings
allow me to get level with the ground. And eventually
then you start doing the bar and then you add weight,
and you add weight and you add weight. And so
for those of you that have never had a hunt
budget that are just beginning this adventure. Want to course
(41:27):
correct how hunting is impacting your life. Start with the movement.
Just perfect the movement. Set up the financial structure, perfect
the movement. Even if it's just twenty five bucks a paycheck,
you can always add weight to the bar. And once
you're at that spot, that self discipline leads to other
areas of your life. And at the end of the day,
(41:47):
if you want to be someone that has the capacity
to hunt out of state consistently, that means that you
have to align your life with that and you have
to make financial decisions that look very differ than society.
And that will be my first like the first big
thing there is. Like if you are making decisions that
look the same as everybody else, you're going to be
(42:09):
producing the same result. And oftentimes, you know, if you
if you look at the kids getting out of college today,
to get out of college, get their first job, Better
go buy that new bmw uh you know, and then oh,
I've got a new job that I better sign up
for my four oh one K and start funding my retirement.
These things like you're gonna you're gonna end up in
(42:31):
the same spot as everybody else. You have to do
things different, and so your overall financial health if you
focus on your overall financial health, you focus on and
I'll talk through some of these things that I that
I see people make these mistakes every day and they
don't realize it because they're doing what people with society
has told them to do. But if if you are
(42:53):
financially healthy and you are liquid, you have savings, you
have emergency funds, you have different types of money in
your life, guess what You're going to go on more
l cuts. It's it's not going to be a big
deal to spend three grand every year or five grand
every year, or start mixing in a buffalo hunt and
went on a mountain lion hut last year. Like these
things just show up the healthier your financial life is.
(43:16):
That makes sense.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Yeah, yeah, Another thing as you were kind of talking
that out, I was thinking about a friend of mine
told me one time what they do to help save
money is they're like, you know, oh, it's the weekend,
(43:38):
we want to go out. We want to go out
on the town. We want to go out to nice
dinner and whatever. And I mean that you can shoot
a hundred dollars bill right in the face going out
on the town. You know that that or more right?
And what they would do is they would they would
write themselves a check out of their checking account and
deposit it into their save into their savings account for
(43:59):
that amount of money, and they would stay home. And uh,
as a guy, if if you were to do that. So, okay, honey,
we're not going out of town. What we're gonna do.
I'm gonna cook dinner tonight for you. What I'm gonna
make your favorite thing. Don't ask her what she wants,
because you're gonna sit there for forty five minutes like,
I don't know what do you want? I don't know, well,
what do you want? Just just just say, hey, I'm
(44:20):
gonna make you your favorite thing whatever that is. Her
favorite thing is whatever you cook. Usually she doesn't.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
To cook it, especially if you're doing the dishes afterwards.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
And then you you deposit that, you know, half in
her account half in your account. Man. Just just little
things like creative ways to like put some money away
into something good instead of just throwing it down a hole.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, yeah, well, there's there's lots of good things that
can be financial holes as well, and so if we
if if we go a little broader as far as
your financial health, there are a few decisions that I
see people make consistently that create a ripple impact throughout
their life that if they understood, they probably would have
(45:04):
made the decision different. And so one of those first
ones is your home. You know, it's I'm not saying
home ownership is bad by any means, but I hear
almost every single day your home is your asset, a
greatest asset. A home is an asset. And the problem
I have with that is when we look at the
baby Boomer generation, you know, the majority of them, there
(45:28):
was a massive shift pre Baby Boomer to the Baby
Boomer generation as far as what people were doing financially,
and you know, the baby Boomers were taught like home
ownership is the quickest way to creating wealth, and your
home is your greatest asset and all of this. And
now as we see that generation retiring, the majority of
them have a home may or may not be paid off.
(45:49):
And unfortunately it's turned out to be true for them
that their home is their greatest asset. And you have
to ask yourself, how much income is your home produced
for you? In retirement, that's nothing. Matter of fact, even
if your home is paid off, it will only always
require income from you. And so by no means here,
don't hear me say the home ownership is bad. But
(46:12):
it's not uncommon that when you are entering the home
ownership space that you sit down with mortgage brokers, real
estate agents, and it's easy to get approved for what's
called a debt to income ratio, essentially how much of
your income is required to be paying for the mortgage
on this home. And people are committing twenty five, thirty
(46:34):
thirty five percent of their income. The million dollars I
took out in two thousand and seven was about a
fifty five percent debt to income ratio for me. And
so like, trust me, I've been there. I made these mistakes.
But when what happens when you go down that path
and your home is your greatest asset and you feel
(46:57):
society's pressure, we got to own a home, we gotta
do this, Like all of a sudden, you've made a
decision that does not leave you financial capacity to have
flexibility in life. You know, I wholeheartedly believe that the
best wealth building strategies that exist out there are going
to be strategies that show up inside of your life,
opportunities that come from the people that you surround yourself with,
(47:22):
your community, your network, whether that means walking away from
a good job and starting a business, whether it means,
you know, buying the old Ladies farm that your family
has always been friends with, whatever it may be. But
the greatest wealth building strategies are not something that is
going to come from your retirement account. It's not to
come from a fancy insurance policy or anything like that.
(47:43):
It's going to come from you taking a risk that
you have the ability to control inside of your own life,
having the financial capacity to take that risk, and starting
a business, becoming a real estate investor one of those things.
But if you have thirty percent of your income going
just to pay for the roof over your head, you
(48:04):
do not leave yourself the financial capacity to accumulate enough money,
let alone go l hunting, but to take advantage of
those opportunities when they show up. And you know, most
of us here probably have seen some opportunities come and
go in our lifetime that we can look back on
and say, man, if I only could have done this
at that time, my life would look different today. And
(48:26):
that's a big part of the message that I hope
that people are hearing here is like, let's start making
decisions different so that we don't have to be the
person that looks back and you know, day dreams about
taking advantage of opportunities that have come by. That you
have the financial capacity that you to go el coming,
but you also have the financial capacity to walk away
(48:46):
from steady income, start your own job, to to you know,
be a real estate investor, all of those things. And
most of those decisions tied directly back to how much
of your income is going to pay that mortgage and so,
and it's hard like today's world, this isn't a this
isn't an easy solution. You know, I generally encourage people
(49:10):
not to have any more than fifteen percent of their
gross income going to cover their housing expenses. And this
applies towards renting too. So you know, simple math, if
you're making one hundred thousand dollars a year gross, fifteen
percent is fifteen thousand, divide that by twelve, that's twelve
fifty a month. Like you shouldn't be spending more than
twelve to fifty a month, and that is your that
(49:30):
is your target, that is your goal of where you
want to be. It's an ideal, it's not doesn't always
work out that way, but that's what you want to
aim towards. Because when you get to that spot, all
of this sudden You now have the capacity to not
only take advantage of the match in your four oh
one K, but now you can pay off that truck loan,
(49:51):
you can get out a student loan debt, you can
have a savings account, you can have an emergency fund,
you can have mid term money, you can you have
the financial opacity to be prepared to make decisions that
lead to a different life than most. And I will
tell you that is nice being in that position.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
Yeah, yeah, I like you said, you know, I've I
think we've all seen like that, that those opportunities come
and go, and it's like like nowadays, I look back
and like, man, remember back when houses were this much
money and property was that much money, And man, if
I could have afforded to buy that property and then
you know, done something with it, you know, build storage
(50:30):
sheds or sit on it for ten years and then
and then dump it and make a whole bunch of money. Man,
I could have made a lot of money. But but
like you said, you know, when you're when you're when
you're at that twenty five percent, thirty five percent whatever
debt income on your on your home, sometimes you just
do not have that luxury having that extra money to
throw around. You're not able to save anything and put
(50:52):
it away.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
So house rich, cash poor. Yeah, it's an awful spot
to be there, really is.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
You get to enjoy a lot of nice steakhadations when
you know a situation you went on vacation, you oh,
we had a staycation. I mowed lawn and shovel dog
crap out of the yard. It was great.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
Yeah. Well, the other big one that I often see is, uh,
and this sounds counterintuitive, but people being too aggressive and
funding their retirement. You know, iras four o one case
are good. We need those financial tools, but we really
need to understand actually how those tools work. It's not
just hey, the S and P has done X y
(51:32):
Z for thirty years. You know, let's do a linear
math equation. That is not the way investments work. And
we need four oh one case. We need iras. Those
are an important part of our overall financial profile. But
good example, just talking to a client that we would
all know right before this meeting, and you know, we're
(51:54):
talking about how much is appropriate to put in this
four oh one K and he's only contributing enough to
receive the match, which is exactly what I recommend for
the majority of people is contribute up to the match,
get that free money. But any money beyond the match
has to be money that you very carefully think about
and make sure is this the best use of these dollars.
(52:17):
Those dollars are essentially in that environment in the thirty years,
however long it is that you have retirement and you
know they're at risk or paying fees and taxes on
those eventually somewhere along the way, they're kind of not
part of your life until you're at least fifty nine
and a half. And so if you want to have
(52:38):
the financial capacity to do other things in life, anything
beyond the match is money that you really need to
think is this the best location to do this or
should these dollars be part of my life today?
Speaker 1 (52:52):
Yeah, that's really good because in essence, you're basically taking
those dollars out of play, you're taking them off the table,
putting them in something you don't get to play with
for a long time. Whereas back to those opportunities, if
you're putting that extra money into some opportunity fund that
may fund your next project. Let's say, Okay, now I'm
(53:13):
able to become an entrepreneur if that's your dream or
or whatever, to take advantage of this next next thing
that comes along.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
So yeah, I love that. Absolutely, it makes sense, you know.
And so and let me say this. You know, I
have to read my disclosure at the end of this podcast,
but you know, I'm a financial advisor. None of this advice,
none of this stuff that I'm talking about should be
listeners out there. You don't take this as financial advice.
(53:41):
Financial advice needs to be given on an individual basis.
These are just ideas, thoughts, things that I've seen that
have had impacts for other people. Whether or not these
are the right decisions for you, it's between you and
your financial advisor or financial planner. But you know, just
like medicine, you know, it's weird your people think of
the medical world and they you know, they think of
(54:03):
adults versus kids, Like you're not going to receive the
same prescription. It may be the same drug, but the
dosage looks different. Money is no different than that. The
dosage here needs to be individually applied. And so if
nothing else, I hope that you know, the listeners here
are getting some ideas and thoughts, maybe a little bit
of a different perspective than what they traditionally hear from
(54:25):
this space, and so they maybe they questioned a little
bit deeper and start looking at kind of what's going
on in their own life and take some action so
they can get some more of those non resident out
of state text.
Speaker 1 (54:36):
Oh yeah, heck, yeah, Well man, it's been good having
me on the podcast and catching up with you. I
feel like, you know, we've got past the new year,
the new year knew me thing, but I think it's
still well, how many weeks are we into the year now?
Speaker 2 (54:54):
Three?
Speaker 1 (54:56):
Yeah? Like how many of us raise your hand if
you already fell off your goals? Okay, we'll just get
back on that horse and keep riding and dang it.
But I thought it'd be a good time of year,
you know. I think that's uh, finances and try and hunting,
trying to figure out your your tags and stuff for
the year. That's in everyone's mind right now. It's like,
how the heck am I going to afford it? Maybe
(55:16):
I can't afford it this year, but man, if I
start now next year this time, I'll definitely build a
afford that you know, must be nice hunt somewhere cool.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
Yeah, well, start now, because five years from now you're
gonna be happy. You did, you know? And and uh,
your financial life impacts every aspect of your life. And
so it's just as important as as exercise or nutrition
or faith. This is this is an important part of
your world. And and so start making the movement. Start
(55:46):
with reps, even if there's not a lot of weight
on the bar, and add weight as capacity increases.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Yeah, you talked to a lot of couples too, you know,
relationships and and a common theme is what strains a
couple's relations and ship is finances. Right, you know, there's
always like some kind of a rift. There's things aren't
going good in your finances. A lot of times things
aren't going good with your marriage either, and it's really
hard to get along and nobody wants that, dang it. Yeah, man,
(56:13):
we're just becoming life coaches in this episode.
Speaker 2 (56:20):
Oh man, No, it's uh, You're not wrong though, you
know you want to want to talk about an expensive
hobby and try divorce. That's at that's really you know,
I have never made that mistake, and yeah and so
and it happens. I mean, lets talk to a client
yesterday that you know it's it's going to cost him
(56:42):
hundreds of thousands of dollars to get divorced. And it's
just it's heartbreaking. I'm a big fan of marriage and
working things out. And you know, it's any anybody's been married.
I think we've got eighteen years here of this fall
and they know it's not all it's not all uh
peaches and cream, it's it's all. So so it's the
hardest adventure I've ever been on and and the most rewarding.
(57:05):
And yes, your finances have an impact on that, and
so take it serious.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
In the words of the Tiger King, you may never
financially recover from it. Big fan. I'm waiting for Tiger
King two to come out. I wonder if Trump's gonna
like pardon him and get him out of there and
then we can get part two of Tiger King.
Speaker 5 (57:32):
Oh mans right here on the podcast. Oh boy, Well
thanks again, Jeff, you need any closing thoughts or you
said you have to read your disclaimer.
Speaker 2 (57:45):
Yeah, yeah, I've got a disclosure all ready, but I'll
just I'll just say I hope that I hope people
are encouraged from this. It is absolutely possible to go
out there and be going on this level of hunts.
You know, there's there's lots of resources out there for
people to learn about the points system, and you know
what it costs to go on these hunts, all of that,
but start today, like you're not going to get there
(58:06):
if you don't start today with at least the movement.
And as far as disclosures go, Investment advisory services are
offered through co HO. I am a representative of Coho
Advisory Services. Nothing I've given into this podcast is considered
investment advice. This is solely for informational purposes. Please talk
(58:30):
to your advisor about anything that I've talked about here today.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
Awesome, awesome, Well, good luck this next fall. And I
hope your your son's football team carries on the winning streak.
I know Sandpoint's got a strong football program all the
way through high school, so good job.
Speaker 2 (58:48):
It's impressive. It's a great community. We love it, blessed
to be here for sure.
Speaker 1 (58:53):
All right, we'll catch you up again later Thanks
Speaker 5 (58:55):
Derek, Thanks no
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