November 13, 2025 • 9 mins
What drives your financial decisions?
Beneath every investment, purchase, or plan lies something deeper: your financial worldview. In this episode, Keith from Gimbal Financial reveals how understanding that worldview can transform the way you approach money, purpose, and life itself.
Using the metaphor of a gimbal—a tool that keeps a compass level no matter how turbulent the waters—Keith explains how clarity and stability come from aligning your financial choices with your personal values.
You’ll learn how to:
- Identify the beliefs shaping your money decisions
- Reframe your financial goals around wisdom and purpose
- Balance wealth-building with fulfillment, freedom, and generosity
This conversation isn’t about market trends or stock tips. It’s about discovering why you make the choices you do and how to make them wiser.
↳ Ready to align your wealth with your worldview?
Work with us at https://www.gimbalfinancial.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Keith (00:00):
Everybody has a financial worldview. And the more that
(00:04):
you, I think, put this into thereality of your decision grid, I
think you're gonna make betterdecisions as you go forward,
particularly about finances. Idon't know if you know what a
(00:37):
Gimbal is or not, but somepeople call it a gyroscope and a
number of things. It's moremodernly seen with social media
people with their cameras. It'sa gyroscope that holds something
level in spite of how you do it.
And Gimbal Financial wasestablished in 1997, and we
(00:59):
didn't start it with a name, westarted it with an affiliation
with an organization and thenrealized we need to name the
business in a marketing kind ofmanner. And for many, many
months we had been publishing anewsletter called The Anchor
with the idea that you are bestserved when you anchor your life
(01:20):
to things. And so we liked thatnautical name and thought, well,
let's look at a nauticaldictionary and that's where we
came up with the name GimbalFinancial. And so we've just
used that as a kind of a anchorto our business model as well. A
(01:42):
Gimbal, as you can see, it holdsthe compass level on this device
in spite of what's going on inthe world.
And that's what we see ourselvesas financial advisors as
leveling devices. We can't fixeverything, we can't do
everything, but we think thatour wisdom can add value to you.
(02:02):
And so years ago when thisoccurred, we hired a marketing
company and what they did isthey took the top view of the
gimbal and made that our logo.In case you ever see this logo
and you're wondering what it'sall about, the spaces are the
negative part of this photo. Sothe compass would be the yellow
(02:27):
here, but these black, or excuseme, blue lines coming here are
the parts of the gimbal thatallow the compass to stay level.
So that's our logo and theevolution of it. And what I
would say is that when you arethinking about a financial firm,
probably their worldview is abig deal. And mostly what we
(02:52):
present over time beyond ourfinancial ideas are these five
principles. We think you shouldthink differently. We think you
should buy wisdom in all theendeavors that matter to you,
like what you do, liveadventurously, and finally,
generosity wins.
So that's part of the Gimbal'sworldview. But I thought I would
just then take you a little bitto the idea of a worldview. And
(03:16):
we designed this worksheet,which we can attach to this to
help people think through what'sreally important to them. The
idea of a worldview is it's alens for which you view the
world, that the world makessense to you. And this idea came
(03:38):
to me because of an old saying,blessed are the peacemakers and
the peacekeepers in the world.
And we live in a time with a lotof divisiveness and
disagreements. And I think ifone identifies their worldview
reasonably well, then they canprobably find themselves less
divisive, less argumentative inlife. So the idea of this is
(03:58):
that you would come up with theideas that form your lens of
life. And a couple that I don'thave on here that maybe I've
used over time would be careerand hobbies. Those are things
that kind of drove my worldview.
Maybe as a teenager, my hobbiesdrove everything I did. And so,
(04:19):
then with the concept of thisworksheet, then you can
conceptually have some write inballots down here. You rank ones
that are important to you. Youdon't even have to include the
ones that are important to you.So for me, high up in that would
be my identity and my family,and then low in it would be
politics.
And I mentioned that one becausethat seems to be a divisive one.
(04:42):
But if my identity was high andI gave it a rank one, and how
strong conviction I have betweenzero and ten, I'm strongly
convicted, that'd be an eight ornine conviction on that. Family,
probably be two, and eight ornine conviction, which means I'm
going to focus my energy onthat. If I were to put politics
(05:02):
on my list of worldview, I mightput it at a 25 or something like
that, low priority, and maybe asix or seven conviction on that,
like I have strong opinions, butthey don't drive my worldview.
It's not the focus for which Ilook at life.
So then if you take that idea tothe next level, and that's what
I wanted to present to you iskind of how we think about that.
(05:24):
Everybody has a financialworldview. And the more that
you, I think, put this into thereality of your decision grid, I
think you're gonna make betterdecisions as you go forward,
particularly about finances. Andthis evolves with time when I
was a new hire in business, Ijust wanted to be a success. So
(05:46):
the money wasn't the highdriver, but the idea of making
my career high value was a bigdeal.
And so there's many ideas thatcan be in a financial worldview.
We put financial freedom, that'ssomething that some people have,
family time, risk avoidance, wesee older people like high up
(06:08):
there as risk avoidance. Andmaybe some people want to leave
a financial legacy, some moneyto the future generations, or
maybe you want to experiencelife. For me, I would probably
narrow that down and put travel.Travel has been a high value
financial thing that I wouldrank it probably very high on
this number, and give it astrong conviction.
(06:29):
I just booked a travel to Alaskain the winter this morning in
that thought process. Soexperience life, helping others
that could be through charity ortime, you could value free time.
We have a friend who over timedidn't want more money from his
employer, but every time theywere offered him a raise, he
(06:51):
said, could I get more time off?And so in his example, he really
appreciated that free time to dothe things that really mattered
to him. Simple living, man, themore complicated that you make
your life, my experience hasbeen, the more expensive it
gets, the less free time youhave.
It's just a vicious cycle, sothat could be part of your
(07:14):
financial worldview. Minimizingtaxes and sharing or things,
maximizing wealth. When I was inmy early twenties, conquering
the world would have been partof my financial worldview, I
really wanted to own everything.I wanted to be the Elon Musk or
the Bill Gates of the day. Oneof the things that I had to come
(07:34):
to grips with at one point washow much is enough, that would
have been a financial worldviewI was working through.
And then another one that'sreally been a big deal to me and
it's retirement. Retirement isreally been narrated to you via
marketing and financial servicesover the years. And it wasn't
(07:55):
really an idea until maybe alittle over a hundred years ago.
Most people had to work untilthey died basically. And so then
with the great depression andsocial security, and the
government getting involved, andthen big financial institutions
getting involved, the marketingover the last seventy five years
has made retirement almost aexpectation of reality that's
(08:20):
always gonna be there.
And so, like for me, I justredefined retirement a number of
years ago, probably about thetime we started Gimbal as doing
what I want to do. And thatredefinition helped me
prioritize some of these otherthings on the list there. So, I
present all this to you becausethere's just not a real simple
(08:41):
explanation of what you shoulddo with your finances. I think
if you would take the timepersonally, you and your spouse
to navigate through this andcreate a conversation with this,
I think it'll go great guns foryou to help think things
through. Like if you watch someof the recent immigrants in
America, family has really highvalue to them, and that there
(09:03):
are a lot of people that live ina single house today.
Well, that way of theirfinancial worldview enables them
to gain wealth quicker thanmaybe even people that have been
in America for a long time,because they haven't had their
worldview formulated by theadvertising and marketing of the
financial services industry. SoI encourage you to sit down,
(09:24):
think about this, talk about itwith those who are important to
you. And then if we can help youas you're navigating a financial
plan for the future, we would behonored to do so. Just give us a
call. And in the meantime, Ihope today's a great day and I
hope this helped up youraverage.
Everybody has a financial worldview. And the more that
(00:04):
you, I think, put this into thereality of your decision grid, I
think you're gonna make betterdecisions as you go forward,
particularly about finances. Idon't know if you know what a
(00:37):
Gimbal is or not, but somepeople call it a gyroscope and a
number of things. It's moremodernly seen with social media
people with their cameras. It'sa gyroscope that holds something
level in spite of how you do it.
And Gimbal Financial wasestablished in 1997, and we
(00:59):
didn't start it with a name, westarted it with an affiliation
with an organization and thenrealized we need to name the
business in a marketing kind ofmanner. And for many, many
months we had been publishing anewsletter called The Anchor
with the idea that you are bestserved when you anchor your life
(01:20):
to things. And so we liked thatnautical name and thought, well,
let's look at a nauticaldictionary and that's where we
came up with the name GimbalFinancial. And so we've just
used that as a kind of a anchorto our business model as well. A
(01:42):
Gimbal, as you can see, it holdsthe compass level on this device
in spite of what's going on inthe world.
And that's what we see ourselvesas financial advisors as
leveling devices. We can't fixeverything, we can't do
everything, but we think thatour wisdom can add value to you.
(02:02):
And so years ago when thisoccurred, we hired a marketing
company and what they did isthey took the top view of the
gimbal and made that our logo.In case you ever see this logo
and you're wondering what it'sall about, the spaces are the
negative part of this photo. Sothe compass would be the yellow
(02:27):
here, but these black, or excuseme, blue lines coming here are
the parts of the gimbal thatallow the compass to stay level.
So that's our logo and theevolution of it. And what I
would say is that when you arethinking about a financial firm,
probably their worldview is abig deal. And mostly what we
(02:52):
present over time beyond ourfinancial ideas are these five
principles. We think you shouldthink differently. We think you
should buy wisdom in all theendeavors that matter to you,
like what you do, liveadventurously, and finally,
generosity wins.
So that's part of the Gimbal'sworldview. But I thought I would
just then take you a little bitto the idea of a worldview. And
(03:16):
we designed this worksheet,which we can attach to this to
help people think through what'sreally important to them. The
idea of a worldview is it's alens for which you view the
world, that the world makessense to you. And this idea came
(03:38):
to me because of an old saying,blessed are the peacemakers and
the peacekeepers in the world.
And we live in a time with a lotof divisiveness and
disagreements. And I think ifone identifies their worldview
reasonably well, then they canprobably find themselves less
divisive, less argumentative inlife. So the idea of this is
(03:58):
that you would come up with theideas that form your lens of
life. And a couple that I don'thave on here that maybe I've
used over time would be careerand hobbies. Those are things
that kind of drove my worldview.
Maybe as a teenager, my hobbiesdrove everything I did. And so,
(04:19):
then with the concept of thisworksheet, then you can
conceptually have some write inballots down here. You rank ones
that are important to you. Youdon't even have to include the
ones that are important to you.So for me, high up in that would
be my identity and my family,and then low in it would be
politics.
And I mentioned that one becausethat seems to be a divisive one.
(04:42):
But if my identity was high andI gave it a rank one, and how
strong conviction I have betweenzero and ten, I'm strongly
convicted, that'd be an eight ornine conviction on that. Family,
probably be two, and eight ornine conviction, which means I'm
going to focus my energy onthat. If I were to put politics
(05:02):
on my list of worldview, I mightput it at a 25 or something like
that, low priority, and maybe asix or seven conviction on that,
like I have strong opinions, butthey don't drive my worldview.
It's not the focus for which Ilook at life.
So then if you take that idea tothe next level, and that's what
I wanted to present to you iskind of how we think about that.
(05:24):
Everybody has a financialworldview. And the more that
you, I think, put this into thereality of your decision grid, I
think you're gonna make betterdecisions as you go forward,
particularly about finances. Andthis evolves with time when I
was a new hire in business, Ijust wanted to be a success. So
(05:46):
the money wasn't the highdriver, but the idea of making
my career high value was a bigdeal.
And so there's many ideas thatcan be in a financial worldview.
We put financial freedom, that'ssomething that some people have,
family time, risk avoidance, wesee older people like high up
(06:08):
there as risk avoidance. Andmaybe some people want to leave
a financial legacy, some moneyto the future generations, or
maybe you want to experiencelife. For me, I would probably
narrow that down and put travel.Travel has been a high value
financial thing that I wouldrank it probably very high on
this number, and give it astrong conviction.
(06:29):
I just booked a travel to Alaskain the winter this morning in
that thought process. Soexperience life, helping others
that could be through charity ortime, you could value free time.
We have a friend who over timedidn't want more money from his
employer, but every time theywere offered him a raise, he
(06:51):
said, could I get more time off?And so in his example, he really
appreciated that free time to dothe things that really mattered
to him. Simple living, man, themore complicated that you make
your life, my experience hasbeen, the more expensive it
gets, the less free time youhave.
It's just a vicious cycle, sothat could be part of your
(07:14):
financial worldview. Minimizingtaxes and sharing or things,
maximizing wealth. When I was inmy early twenties, conquering
the world would have been partof my financial worldview, I
really wanted to own everything.I wanted to be the Elon Musk or
the Bill Gates of the day. Oneof the things that I had to come
(07:34):
to grips with at one point washow much is enough, that would
have been a financial worldviewI was working through.
And then another one that'sreally been a big deal to me and
it's retirement. Retirement isreally been narrated to you via
marketing and financial servicesover the years. And it wasn't
(07:55):
really an idea until maybe alittle over a hundred years ago.
Most people had to work untilthey died basically. And so then
with the great depression andsocial security, and the
government getting involved, andthen big financial institutions
getting involved, the marketingover the last seventy five years
has made retirement almost aexpectation of reality that's
(08:20):
always gonna be there.
And so, like for me, I justredefined retirement a number of
years ago, probably about thetime we started Gimbal as doing
what I want to do. And thatredefinition helped me
prioritize some of these otherthings on the list there. So, I
present all this to you becausethere's just not a real simple
(08:41):
explanation of what you shoulddo with your finances. I think
if you would take the timepersonally, you and your spouse
to navigate through this andcreate a conversation with this,
I think it'll go great guns foryou to help think things
through. Like if you watch someof the recent immigrants in
America, family has really highvalue to them, and that there
(09:03):
are a lot of people that live ina single house today.
Well, that way of theirfinancial worldview enables them
to gain wealth quicker thanmaybe even people that have been
in America for a long time,because they haven't had their
worldview formulated by theadvertising and marketing of the
financial services industry. SoI encourage you to sit down,
(09:24):
think about this, talk about itwith those who are important to
you. And then if we can help youas you're navigating a financial
plan for the future, we would behonored to do so. Just give us a
call. And in the meantime, Ihope today's a great day and I
hope this helped up youraverage.
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