Dave Won: Money and Emotions

What if the emotional baggage from your childhood could influence your financial decisions as an adult? Join us this week as we uncover this connection with Dave Won, certified money coach and founder of Budget Captain. By sharing his personal story, Dave reveals how growing up in a financially troubled household shaped his approach to money management and led to a profound moment of reckoning: a panic attack triggered by buying his first home. We explore how our upbringing can shape our financial behaviors, often manifesting as irrational fears and anxiety around money. Dave's story teaches you how recognizing these emotional roots can help you face financial challenges and improve your overall well-being.

Our conversation goes beyond personal anecdotes to examine the broader theme of financial wellness, where true freedom is defined by emotional health rather than just monetary wealth. We delve into the complexities of money as a flowing energy and discuss how generational narratives can inadvertently dictate our financial choices. Dave's journey offers valuable lessons on overcoming ingrained fears and embracing new opportunities, whether it's the fear of spending savings or the struggle of facing significant financial decisions. Tune in for a heartfelt discussion that aims to inspire you to confront your financial fears and rewrite the narrative of your financial journey.

Guest Bio:

Dave Won is a TED Speaker, Certified Money Coach (CMC)®, and the Founder & CEO of Budget Captain®, a holistic financial wellness company. Dave has been recognized as a global Top 30 subject matter expert by The Outlier Project.

From conferences and summits to the corporate workplace, Dave has been empowering people to achieve emotional freedom first so they can experience true financial freedom. His approach is unique in that he believes the root cause of financial stress is emotional and behavioral, which cannot be solved with practical solutions.

He is a former Air Force Captain with a decorated military career that includes work supporting the Air Force One along with an overseas tour. He is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and earned his MBA from Indiana University. He has been featured by TEDx, ABC, EBN, Military Media and the Air Force

Connect with Dave:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/davewon?trk=public_post_feed-actor-name

Connect with Theresa and Ivana:

Theresa, True Strategy Consultants: tsc-consultants.com
LinkedIn @treeconti, Insta @tscconsultants

Ivana, Courageous Being: courageousbeing.com
LinkedIn @ivipol, Insta @courbeing

SITP team, Step Into The Pivot: stepintothepivot.com
LinkedIn @step-into-the-pivot, YouTube @StepIntoThePivot

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody and welcome to this week's episode
of Step Into the Pivot.
Thank you again for joining us,and today we have Dave Wan with
us.
So, Dave, we really appreciateyou being here to tell your
story.
So thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Thank you so much for having me.
I am super pumped to have agreat conversation with you two.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Awesome.
So just to give you a littlebit of Dave's background and
then I'll let even jump right inhere.
But Dave is actually our firstguest who has a TED Talk, so you
may want to check that out.
He's a certified money coach.
He's the founder and CEO ofBudget Captain, which is a
holistic financial wellnesscompany.
So I know we've had some priorconversations about that, but

(00:41):
let me let Ivana go into alittle more depth and kind of
get us kicked off here.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Thank you, teresa.
Hi, dave, so great to have youhere and so cool to be going
into kind of like a micro levelconversation with you, because
we met when Teresa and I were inthe audience listening to you
speak, and so our firstexperience of you was really, as
you know, as the public speakerthat you are and what you were

(01:08):
doing is really connecting somepretty amazing points about.
You know how emotions and moneynot a conversation that people
have every day physicalexperiences, spiritual
experiences and again, how thatimpacts everything that we do,
and then how it comes out in ourfinances and our financial

(01:30):
experiences.
So it was really amazing thefact that you were able to braid
together these different topicsthat normally folks don't
really talk about it at the sametime, and you shared some
information about yourbackground and what influenced
you, and so we would love it ifyou shared a few of these you
know gems with our listeners too.

(01:52):
So, without further ado, tellus pick one, pick one, pick many
, but tell us about life events,major pivots, that you would
highlight as the ones thatshaped you the most.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Oh, absolutely so.
I grew up in a family whereboth my parents were immigrants
of South Korea and while mybrother and I were growing up in
the household, my parentsstruggled a lot and they fought
a lot about a lot of differentthings, to include finances, and

(02:29):
there was a lot of hardshipsthat we experienced growing up.
My parents went months withoutbeing able to pay a rent.
Their credit card debt was 4xtheir pre-tax income Over
$100,000 credit card debt on$35,000 income.

(02:49):
They also had four failedbusinesses.
We noticed all this during ourearly years.
Then in college, to cap it allout, my parents declared
bankruptcy.
It was the second time I'veever heard my mom cry.

(03:09):
And to avoid what my parentswent through, I, after college,
budgeted like a madman and Ikept track of all my expenses
and my income like a crazyperson.
And so I did all that and mybank account would show some

(03:30):
money that I was saving overtime and I'm like look at me,
I'm saving some money.
Look at that, look on paper,everything looked fine, but in
the background I still had somereally odd emotions and feelings
.
I could not really explain andI'm going to go over two of them
the money that I was savingduring that time period, I was

(03:56):
scared of spending it, andduring my 20s I was scared to
contribute to my 401k and Ididn't put a single penny
towards my 401k.
I actually had that moneydiverted to the savings account,
and so I'm not really sure whythat happened, what was going on

(04:19):
.
But six years after I graduatedcollege, I bought my first house
, and two days after I bought myfirst house, I suffered this
massive panic attack and itcompletely just paralyzed me for
several months.
And once I was able to kind ofget back on track and take a

(04:40):
look back, I realized that therewas a lot of repressed and
underdressed emotions that wereunder the surface that ended up
coming up above the surfaceduring this time period, and a
lot of that was fear, and I wasable to connect the.

(05:03):
I was making the right, logical, rational and practical
financial decisions, like savingmoney and buying a house at a
really good time.
Like why was I strugglingdespite making these decisions?
And it was all rooted in myupbringing and a lot of those

(05:27):
subconscious and deep rootedemotions ended up coming up
above the surface, and that'swhen my life started to change.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yeah.
So you know I loved a lot ofthe things you said because I
think a lot of us really dealwith a lot of those right Like
that whole upbringing thing.
So you know, I think I've toldthe story about my husband.
My husband has had a very hardtime with money because he grew
up in a family that never hadany right Like, and so then it's
a whole different thing.
And, like me, I grew up in ahouse where my parents got

(05:58):
divorced when I was 16.
So I was clearly old enough toknow what was going on.
But that was a time rightBecause I'm older that women did
not even have credit in theirname, like that didn't change
until the seventies.
I mean, you know.
So my mom, when she was marriedto my dad originally, like
nothing was in her name, shedidn't, her name wasn't on the

(06:19):
mortgage, her name wasn't on thecars or she had no credit.
So when she left my dad and hadthis right, it was a different
conversation and I love that.
It's totally true that we'rebringing to light that some of
that really comes from where ourupbringing came from, right,
like absolutely that flowsthrough and you have to figure

(06:42):
out how to make that work.
The other thing, dave, that yousaid that I really caught onto
was that then you were afraid tospend it.
Right, your panic attack wasbecause you had just spent all
your savings, and that's a crazything too.
They talk about that whenpeople go into retirement that
they've spent all this timesaving and now's the time for
them to spend it and they don'twant to spend it or can't spend

(07:03):
it or whatever's holding themback.
Can you just talk, like, what'syour thought about some of
those before we kind of get toour next question, Because those
all really struck me.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah, um, there's a reason why.
There's a deep reason why we dowhat we do.
Like if you take a look at aniceberg, the tip of the iceberg
is what you could see and what'son paper, but what's below the
surface is all the deep rootedemotions, feelings, behaviors,

(07:37):
past experiences, influences.
All those things contribute towhat you see above the surface.
And so, for me, if somebody isa saver but they are scared of
spending it, I think.
By the way, I think saving andspending are both really good

(07:58):
things, but also really badthings.
One of the popular moneypersonality questions out there
which I'm not a fan of, but it'sout there is are you a saver or
a spender?
And somebody will be like well,I'm a saver, saver or a spender
?
And somebody will be like well,I'm a saver, I'm a spender.
And I think when you ask thatquestion, it's implied that one

(08:20):
is good and the other is bad,and I actually think both are
good, but both could be bad.
So what's more important thanthe action itself is the emotion
that is driving that action.
So if you're saving out of aunhealthy emotion like fear of
running out, fear of the unknown, your spending habit is also

(08:42):
going to be the same way.
So what's the point of savingall this money, like I was on
track to save all this money ifI didn't, if I did not take a
new trajectory.
But let's say I saved all thismoney from college and I had
millions of dollars in the banklet's say, $3 million in the
bank and now I'm 65 years oldand I could just turn a light

(09:03):
switch on and start spendingwith freedom.
I don't think that's freedom.
I don't think freedom isdetermined by how much money you
have.
I think emotional freedom andbeing able to have that
emotional health is moreimportant than the, than the,
the number itself, um.
So there's a reason why that'shappening and I think it's

(09:25):
important to understand whatthat reason is, because if you
don't, then that reason is goingto reappear in other areas in
your life.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Absolutely.
I love the way you said thatfor sure, you know, and and that
that's totally true, eventhough were you going to say
something there?

Speaker 3 (09:41):
I was going to ask you a question, dave, so I
completely agree with you.
One of the ways in which I talkabout this is, I would say,
like when people ask some ofthese questions about like, is
this a good idea?
Is this a good idea?
It depends.
It depends on what's runningunderneath it and there is no

(10:03):
formula.
Sometimes saving is a fantasticidea, sometimes spending is a
fantastic idea.
You're also speaking into thenotion that you know, money is
energy.
Energy likes to be moving andit needs to be exchanged and it
has to flow and sometimes thatmeans that it sits somewhere for
a while, but healthily, andthen it leaves and then it comes
back and it's.
You know that kind of amovement and I'm wondering,
thinking about you know whatyou've shared with us in advance

(10:23):
, as we were like prepping alittle bit.
You've had many revelations andthey've had to do with your
mental health, emotional healthand wellness in general.
Can we test it out here forright, this minute?
Tell us, what do you now thinkor understand?
You were telling yourself inthat moment when you were so,

(10:45):
you had the major spend happen,you were able to afford it.
You had put everything in placeto really do it wisely and with
discernment and for all intentsand purposes, you were doing
the right thing by yourcircumstances, and yet there was
the panic attack.
Sounds to me like you mighthave been scaring yourself, with

(11:07):
some thinking that you may havebeen as you mentioned.
You know, rooted from thoselike childhood experiences, that
you may have been sort of likestepping into a certain
narrative or, you know, tellingyourself a story about what was
going on.
Can you tell us, I mean, anyrevelations you've had about
what that would have been like,very specific?

Speaker 2 (11:28):
I have.
I have a couple that I couldkind of allude to.
Some these thoughts werecompletely irrational, but these
were real thoughts that weregoing on in my head and even
though those thoughts werecompletely irrational, my brain
took them as real threats uh,even though they were not real.
So a couple, a couple ofthoughts that were going through
my head Um, I bought a house inColorado Springs for 314,000

(11:50):
bucks.
I mean, okay, fast forward.
Many years later I ended upselling it for like $550,000 or
$560,000.
So looking back, I'm like thatwas a really great decision from
2016.
But during that time I thought,okay, what if this house goes
from $314,000 to $200,000?

(12:11):
And then I have to sell thishouse and now I'm a hundred
thousand dollars in debt.
And how do I pay off this debt?
And you just go down thatstream of thought.
And when I bought the house, myhope was it was a five bedroom
house.
I was single at that time.
Five bedroom house, 3000 squarefeet, like why do I need a
house that big?
But I don't know, I don't knowwhy, but I did it anyways.

(12:32):
And, um, I'm like I'm going tofill this place up with other
other guys that could live thereand they could pay me rent and
dah, dah, dah, dah dah.
Oh, that never happened.
And now I was like spendingmore money than I thought I was
going to spend, because Ithought the roommates were going
to subsidize, subsidize that.
That didn't happen, so moremoney was coming out of my bank

(12:54):
account.
I also had a lot of space inthe house and I thought I need
to build this place up andfurnish it, because what if
people come to my house and theysee that it's an empty house
and what are they going to think?
Is Dave not able to affordthese things?

(13:15):
And so propping up that imagewas also part of the deal.
And so all these little, allthese thoughts and stories,
especially the home price thing,my parents used to always think
worst case scenario and thatreally crippled them to making a
decision when I was growing up,and so my parents never bought
a house.
They never owned a house untilway later.

(13:36):
But growing up it was alwaysworst case scenario and because
of that, like, no decision wasever made and I subconsciously
made an agreement to adopt thatinto my own life and that was my
thought process for almosteverything and to include my
home purchase.
This could have been like me atthe altar with my wife trying

(13:57):
to get married.
I could have freaked out, or Icould have freaked out in other
situations.
It just happened to be rightwhen I bought the house.
So those are like the fewthoughts that I had in my mind.
That caused a lot of fear and Ihave not shared this.
But I actually listed my houseback in the market two weeks
after I closed.
I wanted to run away from it.

(14:19):
I wanted to run away from thatfear and I thought moving into
and my plan was to sell thehouse and move into a one
bedroom apartment where I'm likeI'm cozier in this, I feel
cozier in this like smallerspace, which was what I was used
to.
But what I was doing is I wasrunning away from fear.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
I wasn't trying to make a rational or logical
decision, but a lot of us runaway from fear, like we don't
take that risk right Becausewe're so afraid.
And I get that sometimes youhave to be cautious, but there's
a difference between beingcautious and being just

(14:56):
downright afraid of taking therisk and turning the other
direction.
The fact that you listed yourhouse again two weeks after you
bought it is huge.
I mean that's-.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
And I'm so thankful that nobody bought it because it
forced me to live through myexperiences.
So it forced me to live throughlike, okay, I need to figure
this out.
And it took me.
I had no roadmap, I had noblueprint to follow.
It was me over the next sixyears trying to figure this out
and I thought why am I feelingthis way?
Why am I so freaked out aboutit?
And then I started to make hardline connections to my past and

(15:31):
I'm like, oh, this is what'scausing me financial stress.
It's not the money itself, it'sall these experiences and
emotions that are come, are, arereappearing from from my
upbringing.
And then I looked around me andI thought, holy crap,
everybody's going through this,but it just looks different and
you can fill in this, you canfill in the blanks for everybody
and their own uniqueexperiences.

(15:52):
But but this is mine.
So you could remove house andput a line right there.
You could remove all theseother things and put a line
right there, and a lot of peoplecould fill in their own,
whatever, and the sentence wouldstill flow.
And that's when my pivot, or myawakening, happened.

(16:13):
It was the sum total of allthese experiences just coming
together and the light bulb justwent off in my head.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Having a baby is a risk, Buying a house is a risk,
like all those kinds of things.
So it's really very the factthat you'll talk about that and
bring that to light for somepeople I think is really awesome

(16:43):
.
So thank you for sharing that.
For sure, Even I'm sure youhave something to add here.
So why don't you do that beforewe get to our last question?

Speaker 3 (16:50):
I just wanted to say that I am thinking about how
wonderful it is that your houseis now really full, dave, and
you know there is there could beuse of for all the five rooms,
right, because you've got twolittle ones, one on the way.
You're wonderful, you knowwonderful family life, just
effervescence, bubbling, and wewere chatting about that as we

(17:12):
were, you know, starting torecord.
So I just wanted to kind ofspoiler alert for our listeners.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Dave's house is full and he didn't quite fill up all
five bedrooms, but he fills up.
You know he's in the process offilling up bedroom four, so for
sure.
All right, Dave.
So let's go to our very lastquestion.
That's what we ask all of ourguests.
So how is this big life event,a pivot, a step forward, right?

(17:39):
What's your ultimate thoughtprocess about that?

Speaker 2 (17:44):
I kind of alluded to it earlier, but once I started
to realize that, oh my goodness,like everybody says, to budget
your money, choose the rightinvestments, make sure you spend
less than you make and eventhough I was doing all that, I
still felt stressed.
And so, now that I've had anunderstanding of why I was

(18:08):
stressed, I then looked aroundme and then I realized that this
was everybody else's problem aswell.
So, moving forward, I said okay, well, how do I solve this
problem?
And I've been on a journey tosolve that problem.
And in order to be on a journeyand follow and be on a straight

(18:31):
path somewhere, you need avision.
And it took some time for me tocome up with a vision statement,
but I had to be very clear onwhat that vision statement was.
And my vision statement is Iwant to help people achieve
emotional freedom first, whichis not an absence of emotion.

(18:53):
Freedom first, which is not anabsence of emotion, but being
able to release the emotionalanchor that's holding them back,
so that way they couldexperience true financial
freedom.
That is my vision, and themission are the steps I'm going

(19:13):
to take to get there.
So, moving forward, I said okay, how am I going to achieve this
vision, and my vision isliterally for every person in
this world, every corner of theearth.
And how am I going to get toget there?
And that, as an entrepreneur.
It's not a straight path, butit's.
You got to test some things out, iterate.
Your messaging is different,your audience is different, but

(19:36):
it's.
You got to test some things out, iterate.
Your messaging is different,your audience is different.
But how am I going to get there?
And so, so, yeah, so now I'mbringing this message to the
stage, speaking, working withdifferent teams in corporate
America and getting my messageout.
There is the goal, so, so, onceI was able to make that
realization and make the pivot,moving forward.
That's what it looks like.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Talking about it is so important right?
Sharing the story and talkingabout it is really what it boils
down to.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah, and I have my own unique story.
I have the stories of peoplethat I've interacted with.
I used to do one-on-onecoaching way back in the day,
and I know those stories as well.
I don't know everybody's story,and so I really want to go out
there and hear other stories aswell, because people it's
everything is nuanced.
There's, no, there's no, uh,here's the.

(20:32):
Here is the exact steps youneed to take to get better or
whatever.
Everybody's situation isnuanced and so, you know, I have
a open heart and open mind andI want to go out there and learn
as much as I can, because I I'mtaking what I've learned so far
up to this point and sharingthat with other people.
But as I continue on thisjourney, I'm going to learn

(20:52):
other things as well, and so I'm, I'm, I'm a sponge.
I'm going to grab all that andcontinue to.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
You know, go on this journey with with confidence and
compassion Beautiful, and withthe knack for inspiring others
to do the same.
Thank you for motivating us tolook at what's underneath our
own.
You know thoughts and beliefsand emotions when it comes to
money and finance and reallywonderful to hear you, so you

(21:21):
know, openly share about thefact that, like you say, you
know, there is no, it's nuancedand there is no formula, but you
know, following um, having a.
I love the invitation to have avision, to be really clear on
what it is that you're doing andwhy you're doing it, and I love
that.
You also, you know, highlightthat you are a student for life
and, in my experience, that'swhat makes a really good teacher

(21:43):
.
Thank you for being here withus today, dave.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, this was.
This was super exciting.
I am so glad to have had thisconversation with you too, and
thanks for having me here.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
Thank you, dave.
We really appreciate you beinghere sharing your story, such a
great story.
Money is such a personal thingbut it's something that we have
to deal with every single day,so really appreciate that.
Really happy to have you hereand have the connection with you
.
Thank you to everybody wholistened this week and we will
see you next week.
And just a reminder if you havea pivot step into