From Debt to Independence: A Journey with Dylan Bain

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Curious
Ulsterman podcast, the podcastdesigned to equip you with the
tools and wisdom you need tothrive as an adult.
And in today's episode I haverepeat guest on the show, dylan
Bain.
And in today's episode wediscuss the topic of debt.
We also discuss how there's nosuch thing as good or bad debt,
how past traumas affect yourfinancial decision making, and

(00:31):
we also discuss how to pay offwhatever debt you do have
quickly and efficiently.
But without further ado, hereis today's episode on debt with
Dylan Bain.
Dylan Bain, welcome back to theshow, brother.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
What's up, Johnny?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Hello, and the reason for today's conversation.
It wasn't even supposed tohappen.
Really, you were expecting youwere going to be coming on in a
few weeks time, but I shared apost on my Instagram story.
I looked at it and I'm like,well, it sounds good and it
looks pretty as an Instagrampost.
I'll share it.
It might be useful informationto somebody.
And not two minutes later, Ireceived a message from your

(01:08):
good self going ah, there's alot.
There's a lot wrong with thispost.
It's not outright wrong, but itneeds a lot more context than
you obviously explained it.
That post was about debt, whichis this very vague monster I
would describe it as, especiallyif you're an 18 year old.
It's this behemoth that youknow is coming, but it's

(01:29):
unavoidable.
There's no training to dealwith it.
I removed that post and went.
Well, actually, if that caughtme, how many other people was it
catching out?
So hence why we've invited youback on the show today to
educate us and give us a bit offinancial literacy, at least
within this, within the minutiaof debt.
So take it away.
What, what, what's from yourperspective, define debt, so to

(01:54):
speak?
Because to me, it's just thisbig, scary monster that we all
have to wrestle with eventually.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Well, okay.
So so right off the bat no, wedon't right Like.
Right off the bat, there'salready a societal expectation
and, of course, I could besitting here, you know, feeling
in conspiracy theory about debtand societal expectation all day
long, but the reality is thatwe all expect debt, but we don't
need necessarily debt.
Okay, but it makes a lot ofsense if you have companies that

(02:24):
are going to collect 14%interest on whatever debt you
have.
They want you to have debt.
And there's a lot of and we'llget into why.
There's a lot of reasons whypeople want you to have debt.
But let's just level set rightthere that, out of the box, the
expectation that you have,you're bringing into this
conversation, is I need to havedebt, it's going to happen.
It's like the weather.
There's nothing I can do tostop it, and nothing's further

(02:46):
from the truth.
You know now.
You know there's a.
There's a huge question as towhether or not it's feasible to
accomplish your goals in thetimeframes without debt.
There's a question of you know,how can I leverage debt to my
advantage?
But whether or not you need it,let's just start there.
You don't necessarily need it,okay.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
No, that's fantastic.
You've already kind of blown mymind because, for context, the
reason I said that debt isunavoidable is I'm I am in the
fortunate position to own ahouse.
I don't own it outright,obviously it's.
I'm paying a mortgage on it,but I know that's not a position

(03:27):
a lot of people in my age groupare in.
It's a nice problem to have.
I have a mortgage to pay, but Ifeel like you touched on it
there briefly about societalexpectation.
You know you are expected atsome point to settle down to get
the wife, the kids, the whitepicket fence and own a house.
Now, unless you are in anextremely fortunate position and

(03:49):
wealthy and can just buy thehouse outright or build your own
.
Fair play to you, but that'sfrom at least my experience and
the majority of the people Iknow.
We don't have that luxury, sowe have to go to the bank to get
a mortgage to that that was theangle I was approaching from.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Yeah, and I have a mortgage on my house too.
Right, like, let's just levelset that like I'm not living a
debt free life because I have amortgage and I live in a high
cost of living area here in theUnited States.
But let's be honest that thatwas a choice we made.
Oh, 100%.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah, right Like that's.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
There's a huge difference between saying, well,
this was unavoidable, I had tohave a mortgage, versus man, I
could have modified a van andgone and lived in that yeah,
100%.
You know, if you talk abouthaving a wife and kids, like,
there are people here in theUnited States right now who have
bought school buses and have,you know, a husband, a wife and
two kids living in a school busseeing the United States.

(04:41):
So there are options like butlet's just, let's keep our
sovereignty well in hand whilewe have this conversation 100%.
So your, your Instagram postwas basically saying that
there's this idea of good debtand bad debt 100%.
And in that that's what Ireacted to, because let's just
be, let's.
You asked me to define debt, solet's just define debt

(05:04):
Technically speaking, debt issomebody who loans you money
that you are expected to pay atsome future time, plus a premium
called interest.
Okay.
Or to put it another way, debtis somebody laying claim to your
future production in life inexchange for money.

(05:25):
Now, oh right, okay, those are.
So I gave you technicaldefinitions.
You take an accounting class,you do a finance class.
That's what they're going totell you.
It's money we give now with theexpectation of paying in the
future with a premium calledinterest.
But in reality, money is whatyou exchange pieces of your only
non-renewable resource time toget.

(05:47):
And so if you are sitting thereand saying, well, I'm going to
take money now, that moneyrepresents pieces of time,
pieces of your life, thatthey're giving to you now, that
you have to give them in thefuture, so they have secured a
claim on your future life andproduction, that's true for a
mortgage company.
That's true for a car loan,that's true for a student loan,

(06:08):
it doesn't matter.
That's what that is.
And when you start to thinkabout that type of thing, you
have, you have a, you have aseparate.
Now suddenly one sounds okay,that that sounds reasonable.
The other goes well, hold on asecond.
My life is mine to live, not ifyou're in debt.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Right, not if you're in debt.
That's very, that's very true.
Yeah, very, very true.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
I mean stop and think about what in your situation.
You, you know you have amortgage, I have a mortgage.
I don't believe you're married,but I have a wife and two kids
and a roommate.
Okay, I can't get up and walkaway.
So that debt.
Not only does the debt shackleme down, because I can't just
cancel my lease and go movesomeplace else.
If I had to move, I got tovacate the house, I got to get

(06:50):
it sold.
If it doesn't sell, I got topay a mortgage plus rent
someplace else.
There's a big risk in evenhaving a house.
You know, economically I'veI've tied myself to the Denver
metro area here in the UnitedStates and I'm fucked if I got
to go someplace else.
I'm sorry, I don't know if Ican swear on this.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
No, no, it's a.
It's an easy, easy goingpodcast.
There's an when I, when I postthe episode, it's like does this
episode contain explicitlanguage?
Yes, and about 90% of mine endup doing so, so crack on.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
Yeah.
So I mean, that's the thing tounderstand.
And when you looked at thisgood debt, bad debt thing,
mortgage debt, was considered tobe quote unquote good debt.
Well, no, it's not, it's stilldebt.
So really, the way I should sayis there's horrible debt and
not as horrible debt, becausehonestly, if we want to have the

(07:42):
maximum amount of freedom andsovereignty.
You and I both need to pay offour damn mortgages so that we
have the flexibility to actuallylive our lives for whatever
might come Right.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, that that changes everything, like that.
I'm a little bit stunned thereI use that word, that when you
say horrible debt and lesshorrible debt.
I've just, I've just neverheard it that way and I I'm
trying to like empathize andimagine if I was 18 and heard
that suddenly it's like, well, Idon't know, from your

(08:13):
perspective, what would youadvise an 18 year old?
What would you advise an 18year old or someone who's just
entering adulthood, who has, isgetting this perspective?
But you know they want to go touniversity, they're obviously
going to have to get studentloans and debt If, like, they're
eventually going to probablywant to own their own place,

(08:34):
they're probably eventuallygoing to want to have wife, kids
, all that kind of thing.
It's.
It just seems to be in astrange way that if you want to
live the average life, like haveyour fun, certainly when you're
young, and then settle down,then it seems like it seems like
debt is unavoidable, which yousaid.
Obviously it is avoidable, butI don't know, it's almost.

(08:57):
I was thinking about thisbefore the episode.
It almost seems like you'refunneled into it and today by by
society I'm not, I don't meanthat society is.
There's some sort of secretmeeting right, how are we going
to get all the kids into debt?

Speaker 3 (09:10):
But you know that's not true, that means all right.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
okay, I'm like the collar worms.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, no, no, no See, like, like my biggest thing is
is I, I despise conspiracytheory.
Okay, and, and when it comesdown to conspiracy theory, like,
I just feel like this idea like, oh my God, if, if we all wear
a mask, then pretty soon we'reall going to be, you know,
slaves in a boat somewhere, orwhatever.
Yeah, yeah.
Nonsense.
Big claims, like big claims,require big evidence.

(09:38):
Oh yeah, okay.
But when it comes to creditcards and debt, it turns out
that there is big evidence,correct?
Like let me give you a goodexample, okay, of the conspiracy
to try to put people into debt.
When I got to university, thefirst thing I learned about
money is that money does notgrow on trees, but credit cards
do.
Okay, so, I showed up touniversity and the first day

(10:01):
that I was there there wasCitibank, there was US bank.
You know, visa had their.
They had tents set up aroundcampus offering credit card
applications to freshmen.
On the very first day that mostof these people had ever lived
separate from their parents,they're getting the opportunity
to put themselves into debt for24 and a half percent interest.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
No that run away with haste.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
Right.
So now you're now you're goingto handle your handing the
opportunity.
You know they don't have cashright Now, but you're handing
them a credit card to an 18 yearold who is now going through a
huge emotional trauma and movingout of your house, out of your
parents' house.
Is a home emotional trauma?
Right, it's, it's a necessaryone, but it it still weighs on
you.
So you hand them a credit card.

(10:48):
They're going to go out andparty and now they're going to,
and they don't ever have toemotionally lose the cash of
actually giving up the cash andwatching that cash stack dwindle
down.
They just forever can swipethat card.
And I was one of those kids andyou know what, when I hit my
credit limit, did they call meand say hey, dylan, you know you
hit that credit limit.
Oh, hell, no, they just raiseda credit limit.

(11:09):
By the time I was done with myfreshman year, they had given me
a $25,000 credit limit on acredit card.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
That's insane.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
It's it is insane, but it also is good business.
If you're in the business oftrying to collect interest rates
, which is how those companiesmake their money right, then
naive 18 year olds is the bestthing you could possibly go
after.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
Because it's almost predatory in a way, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (11:37):
Well, and then, of course, what's part of the sales
pitch with that?
Well, you want to get thiscredit card so you can establish
credit.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
I was.
You took the words out of mymouth.
That was going to be theliterally the next thing.
Surely this isn't good for yourlongterm credit score.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
Well, but they sell it to you that way, right?
So so, when you're 18 years old, just understand that, like,
like people, you are a fat,happy goose and those wolves are
coming for you, and then it'sgoing to be with that, it's
going to be with everything,what.
You know what the most commonpurchase for people to make out
of university is?
I don't know the number onemost common purchase.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
My mouth is too short .

Speaker 3 (12:14):
It's a new car, of course.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Of course.
Yeah, so here you got here yougot some kids.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
You know at that point you're what 22?
Yeah.
You're coming out of universityand you think to yourself well,
I'm now an adult, I got my firstadult job.
It's some low paying shit jobsomewhere, right, but you got it
at a college and you think II'm going to treat myself and
get myself a car.
And they buy a new car, likeforgetting that new cars are

(12:43):
horrible investments.
Oh yeah, 100%.
But like, stop and think aboutthat for a second.
I like if I were to go buy anew car right now, my new car
would exceed the largest I'veever paid for any student loans
ever.
Wow, okay.
Right, so your typical car inthe United States is coming with
.
I think the average is about375 a month for a depreciating

(13:07):
asset that 90% of the time isgoing to be doing absolutely
nothing.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, yeah, actually, when you think about it that
way yeah, that's, that's insane.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
Well, and so you stop , and you know, stop and go back
.
So what advice would I give toan 18 year old?
The first is don't don't have acredit card, Like, just just
don't do it.
You can establish credit later.
Right yeah.
You can always establish creditlater, and if you really want to
establish credit, just ask yourparents to make you an
authorized user on the card,because then you get their
credit.
So if your parents have beenresponsible with their credit,

(13:37):
just get an authorized user ontheir card.
That entire credit history isnow going to come over to you
and so you know, if you're 18years old, your parents don't
even have to give you a card.
You don't even have the optionto spend on it, but you can do
that.
So you could be 18 years oldwith 25 years of credit history
right out of the box.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
That is very handy.
I wish I knew that.

Speaker 3 (13:58):
Right.
So if the argument is we needto establish credit, there's
that.
Here's another way that peoplecan establish credit right, and
credit card companies won't tellthis.
If you have a cell phone bill,like I have Verizon Wireless and
I've had Verizon Wireless foryears at this point, but you can
call them and ask them hey, canyou please report my payment
activity to the credit bureau?

(14:19):
And they will.
And now, if you've paid yourcell phone bill on time, now you
, without ever having to take onany debt, you now have a credit
history, and a good one at that.
And you can do that with waterbills, you can do that with all
sorts of stuff that doesn'tnormally show up in a credit
report.
So the argument of trying toestablish credit is just bonkers

(14:40):
right out of the box.
So, as an 18 year old,understand that establishing
credit is not necessarily ascritical as everyone tells you
it is.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
Yeah, that's so interesting because I've never
owned a credit card and mycredit score is touchwood, for
now, outstanding, because youknow exactly that I, until I
owned my, my first property, itwas my, my phone bill.
You know that was probably thebiggest expense I really had.
And then, certainly, once I gotmy mortgage and I've, you know,

(15:12):
never missed a mortgage paymenttouchwood again.
But yeah, that's that built upmy credit score and you know it
got to the point where at 20year, I was thinking about
getting a credit card and then Ithought about it as, like, I've
gotten this far without it.
I don't really feel the needfor one.
Personally, I think that'scertain something we could

(15:34):
probably have you on again to Iknow we're haven't even finished
this episode and talking abouthaving you back on again but
maybe to do a whole episodededicated to just credit cards
and just that whole philosophy,because, like, we could talk all
day probably about that.
But within the scope of thisconversation about, about debt,

(15:56):
we've covered quite a lot andsuch a short amount of time and
I feel like that, although we'vedefined it and we've said that
you don't have to get into debt,but there is societal pressure
watch out for these traps withdebt, though I'm with the
concept of good on bad debt.
Sorry, horrible and lesshorrible debt.

(16:18):
Thank you, yeah, and even withthat, do you still?
Is there any way that a youngperson, 18 up to uni age could
leverage debt to their advantagein any way?
Or is it just?
You know, this is just going tobe a thing of life that you
just have to grin and bear,unfortunately.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
So the first thing I'll say and I've said this on
this podcast before you have tounderstand that we're talking
about personal finance, andpersonal finance is always more
personal than it is finance.
Okay, yeah.
So, flat out the gate, if you're18 years old, understand that
as you stepped into adulthood,you're carrying a whole bunch of
shit with you.
You don't know it, you don'twant to know it, you don't want

(17:01):
to look at it, but there's goingto be some shit in your past
and how, what happened with yourparents, even if your parents
were great parents, and that'sgoing to carry through into your
financial world.
And when I do financialcoaching, nine times out of 10,
it ends up in life coaching,which I actually just started a
life coaching business.
Because of that.
You know, and it's becausepeople will you know.
For example, you know if yourparents say well, I can't afford

(17:25):
that, we can't afford this,right, and I've heard that.
I've been at the store and I'veheard parents say, you know, the
kid says I want a candy bar,right, okay?
So what's going on there?
Psychologically speaking, thekid's excited about the candy
bar.
His brain wants the sugar, sothat you know he's being awarded
for it.
He thinks he's going to theperson that who is his provider,
right, his parents and going Iwant this candy bar.

(17:46):
And the parents go don't putthat down, we can't afford that.
Now, first off, that we can'tafford.
That is bullshit.
We all know that that'sbullshit because I guarantee you
can go through that cart andfind other stuff that they can
afford, that they probablyshouldn't afford.
But from a kid's perspective.
Now they suddenly have a,they're built in a scarcity

(18:09):
mindset my provider cannotprovide because we don't have
enough money.
Okay, that's going to set youup.
So I'm using this as an examplebecause I've seen it a lot.
But when you come as an 18years old and they hand you a
credit card, you now haveinfinite access to avoid
scarcity.
You're going to start runningaway from that previous trauma

(18:29):
and everybody has it, myselfincluded my parent.
I grew up very privileged and Istill had it right.
So understand, when you're 18years old, that these people who
are peddling debt, they knowthis and they're going to use it
to their advantage.
So take some time to understandhow your own relationship with
money works.
If you grew up in a place wherewe didn't have a whole lot of

(18:52):
money, you're going to have someeffects that you're going to
have to work through.
Now that's a harder lift.
So let's go to something alittle bit easier.
How do you, how do we in yourplace you deal with societal
expectations.
I don't use student loans as anexample, right?
The United States student loansare horrible, horrible.
It's a racket.

(19:13):
Okay, so you have to startdoing a cost benefit analysis.
Right, you need to startthinking about your life in a
couple of different ways Ifyou're going to go take student
loans, and this is a, I think,the prime example.
This is where people say thatstudent loans are quote unquote
good debt.
They're defining good debt asdebt I can use to make me more

(19:38):
money than the debt I incurred.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
Yes, yeah, that's exactly the way I've always
thought about it.

Speaker 3 (19:43):
Exactly Now, as a CPA , as a certified public
accountant, and I work in thecorporate world there are times
where I would make apresentation to the board saying
this is debt that we can'tafford not to take on.
Okay, I do make that statementprofessionally.
After I have had an entire armyof financial and now analysts
and accountants that havecrunched the numbers in every

(20:05):
possible conceivable way toleverage all that expertise,
that I'm sitting there with areport that gives me a 75%
chance that this is going towork out.
Yeah.
The average human does not haveaccess to those resources.
No, Right.
So now let's go back to thestudent loans example.
If I just make a blanketstatement, student loans are

(20:25):
good debt.
Why wouldn't you want more ofwhat you think is good?
Oh crap yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Man, that's like a war.
It's like a war of words, isn'tit?
It's very tactical how it'sused.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
The whole thing is Go read a credit card agreement.
You'll agree with me by the endof it.
This whole thing is like gooddebt is a marketing term.
Why are you at university toget a degree, to go pursue
whatever, right?
Whether it's your dreams I wantto be a great artist, or you
know, in my case, I just wentbecause I wanted money.

(20:57):
Right, I took on student debtto get my CPA.
I make far more than my studentdebt right.
For me, it was the quoteunquote good debt.
No, it was a necessary evil,right.
Because what ends up happeningis you get kids who go into
university and they say well,you know it's good debt.
So then they feel good abouthowever much they take.

(21:18):
By the end of it they end upwith $100,000 in debt in a
degree that they can't use toget a job.
Yeah, 100%.
So now they've mortgaged theirfuture for nothing.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Do you see how that works?
Yeah, it's pretty.
It's almost, dare I say, a bitscary.
It's like when you're 18, italmost feels like unless you
have someone, perhaps likeyourself, with people's best
interests at heart that they'realmost like lamps of the
slaughter.
It's almost like a factorychurning thing of you know,

(21:56):
here's a young, naive people andwe're going to bag them for
life and teach them that, or atleast a plant.
That's either credit cards aregood and then, once they're in,
they're in.
You know that.
So I'm like, I'm quite I'm gladI managed to avoid that
particular financial trap, butit's straight out of the,

(22:17):
straight out of school.
18 year old, or even your 18year old self, what would you?

Speaker 3 (22:24):
say to them what's your plan?
Oh, that would be, that wouldbe what it.
What's your plan?
Yeah.
And let me give you a greatexample.
This is not somebody straightout of university, but I'll get
the whole story.
So I you know my financialcoaching practice.
I live and die by referrals.
Well, a friend, a guy I did acoach, a coaching session with.

(22:46):
I helped him and his wife digout of almost a quarter of a
million dollars in debt.
Oh, wow, he.
He recommended, he recommendedme to this other woman who then
paid for my sessions on behalfof her son.
Okay, and I sat down with himand he had his undergraduate
degree was in, I think,broadcasting or something like
that.
Right, but he had decided thathe, you know, he wasn't, he

(23:09):
wasn't getting any money, he was, he didn't have a good job, he
could barely afford to pay astudent payments.
And so he had decided to goback to school and get a
master's of fine arts and MFA,and she had decided.
His mother had decided that shewasn't going to stop him
because she didn't think shecould convince him, but she
could pay for me to try toconvince him.
And so we sat down and thefirst thing I asked him with was

(23:33):
and then what?
You go get this MFA.
And then what?
Well, it'll help me be morecompetitive in the job market.
Okay, who has the job you want?
How did they get there?
Does this MFA really help youor does it just put you further
in debt?
And the answer, of course, isit just puts them further in
debt.
The, you know, to get amaster's of fine arts and I'm

(23:55):
not shitting on the arts by anyextent, I'm just being realistic
about what this is Right.
Your masters of fine arts andand universities know this, so
they they offer all thesecertificates which are not
actually great in the job market.
They offer all these master'sdegrees, you know, on the
promise that it's going to helpyou get a job, and that's
bullshit, you know.

(24:16):
And so this guy's going to goback and incur another, you know
$60,000 in student debt that hecan't discharge in bankruptcy
on a degree that isn't going toput him any further up the
Starbucks chain than he iscurrently.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
So I don't need to laugh, folks.
I I'm not looking down onanyone on Starbucks or if you're
in the arts.
That was just.
It's funny and it's true,though, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (24:38):
Well, but he, he was like well, but I mean, this is
good debt, I use it to makemoney, and I was like your
previous debt isn't making moneyright now either.
So if you're 18 years old andyou're going to school, you know
my question to you would bewhat's your plan?
Well, I'm going to go studypsychology.
This is the one that makes mego bonkers.
Do you know how many psychologydegrees universities
manufacture on a daily and ayearly basis?

(24:59):
It's huge.
You know how much you know.
At the average, starting to getsalary for someone with an
undergrad wouldn't psychology is$25,000.
Yeah.
Why?
Because almost all of them gowork at Starbucks.
Yeah.
Or or equivalent.
And so if I got a student who'sjust come out of, you know,
just starting a university, andthey're going to encourage

(25:20):
student debt, then they're goingto go into psychology.
I'm going to ask them what'stheir plan, if their plan is,
since I'm going to finish thisundergrad and then I'm going to
do master's degree and then I'mgoing to get my PhD so that I
can actually practice as apsychologist.
Yeah.
If their answer is anythingother than that, the answer is
don't go to university.
You haven't figured it out yet.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Go do something else.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
I think my, oh sorry, you have a plan, yeah, no yeah
100%.
Well, I think my brotheraccidentally did that.
He strapped the bat, did notwant to go to university and
then decided, actually it wouldbe better if he did go to
university.
And, to be fair to him, nowhe's a design engineer and you

(26:04):
know, manufacturing customforklift trucks for this big
company, so in that case itworked out better for him.
You know, he he did stick astep back and think what did he
want to do?
And, you know, got his ass intogear, worked hard and nice
didn't.
Quite a good job.
Unfortunately, there's a lot ofpeople who, I feel like, go
through the motions because it'swhat's expected of them to go

(26:25):
through school, unless you'regoing to go into your trade.
Go through school, go touniversity, get a job, have your
fun, finish uni, settle down,get the house, and it's like
something you know.
You've got a mortgage and thenyou've got your student loan
debt and it's just, and thenyou'll probably have debt from
your car and then you'll havedebt from, you know, here, there
and everywhere.
It's just, it seems like it'sjust.

(26:49):
It just seems like it's likeit's this quite insidious
monster, quite frankly.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
Well, it's just, it's a societal expectation.
Okay, no, let me, let me youknow.
Try to unpack that psychologyhere for a second.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, please.
You're very good at this.
You keep reading my mind.
I'm going to go to what I wantto ask you next.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
So, so, let's just let's.
I pulled up the Instagram postthat you had, right.
I went and found the originalwhere it came from, yeah, cause
you did pull it down.
So examples of good debt aremortgage debt, education,
business ownership and investingslash loans.
Yes.
Okay, let's just stop and thinkabout this.
The investing, the investingloan.
Okay, let's just talk about howthat goes.

(27:29):
What I do, what you do withthat, is you're going to take
that loan, I get it fromwherever, and I then go and buy
assets that I consider to be aninvestment, whether it's real
estate, stocks, bonds,cryptocurrency, whatever.
The bet you're making is thatthat asset's going to appreciate
more than the loan will, andthis is called margin.

(27:53):
Okay, when you especially ifyou're doing it in stocks if you
have the Robinhood app andyou're trading stocks and you're
getting game stop for becauseyou're on Reddit and they're all
telling you to go all in andhave diamond hands on whatever
stock, robinhood makes it reallyeasy for you to buy in margin,
and that's great, because, ifyou stop and think about it, if
the stock does explode, youbought more of it on margin.
The stock went up with a loanstate static, and so you make

(28:17):
boo-ku bucks, and there arepeople who do that.
I know people who have donethat.
I know people who aremillionaires because of that.
I also know far, far, far morepeople who are in bankruptcy
because of it.
Yeah.
Okay, and so you know, this getsyou know other phrases to hear
you got to spend money to makemoney.
Right, I'm leveraging.
No, you're, you're, you know?

(28:38):
The next next statement peoplesay is I'm leveraged to the
eyeballs.
Um, you know, and that's wherethis, this happens because the
payoff could be huge.
But, what they don't tell youis this is a high risk, you know
high return type of thing, butbecause it's high risk, so few
of us are actually going to makeit.
We as humans tend tooverestimate our abilities and

(28:59):
underestimate our risks, andit's it's a huge problem.
Let me give you another greatexample.
If somebody's kind of saying,well, I took out a loan to buy
Bitcoin, you know, what I hearis, I took out a loan to buy
lottery tickets.
Oh, if you hit it, it's goingto be huge.
But how?
What's your chances of hittingit?
Pretty, pretty small.

(29:20):
And let me let me just put thisinto perspective Right,
everybody, people buy lotterytickets.
It's the stupidest thing in theworld.
On average, the average lotteryticket you got to remember
there's a huge payoff for oneticket and nothing for
everything else.
So we're talking about wasweird, average, weird math, but
the average return is 70 centson the dollar.
If you want to buy a lotteryticket, just give me the dollar,
I'll give you 80 cents andyou're ahead.

(29:41):
Yeah, right, and this works forboth of us, you know.
So why not?
Oh, because they want thechance for the big payoff,
because they saw that guy with15 seconds on the evening news
of oh, I just had this lifechanging amount of money, I got
a million dollars, blah, blah,blah.
But the, what they don't see orwhat they don't calculate for,
is that what we're all lookingat?
The one success who gets 15seconds?

(30:01):
If we gave 15 seconds toeverybody who failed in that
same experiment, you'd have towatch TV continuously for 25
years.
Oh, wow.
And stop and think about that.
Those numbers for a second, 15seconds for every failure,
calculates out to about 25 yearsfor every single lottery.

(30:22):
And the reason I'm bringingthis up is that we're not
talking about the library, we'retalking about loans, we're
talking about good debt, quoteunquote.
Well, that's because we all seethe guy who succeeded.
We don't see the guy who failed, and there's a ton of them.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
One of the other things about.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
Instagram stories.
Exactly who gets on Instagramand be like, yeah, I just lost
my house and I'm homeless now,Like nobody does that and the
algorithm doesn't choose thatperson because it doesn't get a
bunch of clicks, Right.
So we, you know, between socialmedia, the evening news, your,
your, your information feeds arecurated, whether it no matter
who you are, and it's not goingto pick the losers, you know.

(31:03):
The another thing that they sayon this good debt thing is
business ownership.
Oh, I got to take out a bigbusiness loan.
You know that 70% of all smallbusinesses fold within 12 months
.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Oh, I was not aware of that statistic.
No, oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:17):
The ones who succeed do really really well, but 70%
of them will fold within thefirst year.
You know, the number one reasonthey fold in the first year is
they are over leveraged.
Oh right, they have too muchdebt.
These people launched abusiness and they ended up
having to make debt paymentsthat cut into their profits.
They couldn't reinvest in thebusiness and they failed because
of it.
Yeah, yeah, and again.

(31:41):
We don't see that.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Yeah, because it's not algorithmically pleasing.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
And those people don't go on motivational
speaking tours to schools andthose people don't get held up
by your parents as somebody togo look for.
You know, and I can look at it,even in my own life, like you
know, I have one uncle who he'sjust started business after
business after business and allof them have failed, and he's a
serial entrepreneur, is what hesays.
You know he makes enough moneyto keep himself going but he's

(32:09):
never hit it big.
Then I got my cousin whostarted one business and he's
like, yeah, everyone's juststarted business.
Well, he got lucky Right Likehe got.
He was at the right place atthe right time and you know, he
started his business right afterthe great recession.
So getting a bunch ofconstruction equipment was cheap
because everybody was sellingit.
Like you can't reproduce thatenvironment.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
No.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
You know, but everyone puts looks at my cousin
was like, well, he did it.
Well, I was like, yeah, he didit, but he also did it with cash
.
He also had an entire.
You know he had my, my father,who is you know, I kind of call
him a jack accountant becausehe's not really an accountant
but he does all the bookkeepingand he's really good at it.
You know he had his father whohad been working for 60 years in
the construction trades.

(32:50):
You know it wasn't the sametype of thing.
But if we're looking at gooddebt, you know the bank is
sitting there.
How does the bank get paid withthe amount of money they loan
you?
So they're sitting there andthey're saying like, oh, this is
good debt, take more, take more, take more.
And they're just damningbusiness after business after
business.
Yeah.
Schools are doing the same thing.

(33:11):
You come in and they say thisis good debt, you're investing
in your future, you know?
And they, they sell you thisglitz and glam.
It's not a thing.
And then what do?
What do 18 year old where are18 year olds typically go for
advice?
Their parents?

Speaker 2 (33:23):
and school teachers.
Yeah, uh-huh.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
And how do you think their, their financial pictures
look Probably not great.
And, of course, are they goingto sit there and go Johnny,
don't be like me, don't take onthat debt, don't sign it for
their credit card, don't you'relike?
No, everyone believes thatthey're good.
So they look at it and they gowell, this is normal to me and I
turned out okay.
So you go, johnny, you go right, like that's what they say, and

(33:48):
the banks, of course, have comeinto it.
So the psychology here is thatpeople, you're getting bad
advice every single place youlook and these people are
confirming how you feel about it.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah, that's so.
That's so interesting.
So, from our conversations sofar, at the moment the two
biggest things that people cantake away is what's your plan
and what trauma are you bringingto your financial game?
Really, I think that's the twomajor things that you need to

(34:22):
ask yourself what is your plan?
And, as that example you usedearlier, what?
Even if you did grow up in afantastic home with parents
there's no perfect parents, youknow what I mean we're all
slightly screwed up in a smallway one way or another, and
that's okay.
But if we were to round it offto a nice free number, apart

(34:45):
from what's your plan, deal withyour trauma, ideally through
therapy, so that it doesn'taffect your financial game.
Is there anything else, anyother advice you would give to
an 18 year old or someone comingout of university to deal with
those societal expectations, todeal with this insidious monster

(35:06):
that is debt?

Speaker 3 (35:07):
Yeah, I mean, it's a hard one because it's really
ethereal to say like, oh, justunderstand that you've got
something in your past that'scontinuing to make decisions for
you without your consent.
That's hard, you know, I'malmost 40 at this point and you
know I'm just now, you know, inthe last couple of years going
oh yeah, yeah, I really wasn'tover that thing, yeah, and I

(35:32):
think, for 18 years old, likeyou, either you get.
You get.
You know generally two types,right?
The people who are going toreplicate their parents' lives,
right?
Or the people who've decidedthat they're nothing like their
parents and totally independentbecause they do everything
exactly the opposite, right, Imean, when it comes to debt.
So, like, we gave the etherealones.

(35:53):
Like, have a plan.
Like, if you're going to school, for you know where you have a
high probability of getting ajob and you know what the
starting salary is going to be.
Like the debt is a means to anend, right, but it's not good.
Like let's not say it's good.
You know, when you're buyingthe house, don't think that the
mortgage debt is good.
We had an entire financial crashin 2008 because people, an
entire generation of people,thought this.

(36:14):
The other thing that you can dois you can start actually
educating yourself as to howthis stuff works.
You know, as you put it, as youput it out there, you know it's
it's a big thing, it's a beast,it's just a societal
expectation.
Not a lot of people are goingto figure this out before it's
too late, so let's just you knowwhat are some things you can
know.
Number one you know I alreadygave you a mentality.

(36:36):
Understand that debt is amortgage of your future life,
okay.
Number two, I'd say understandthat the people giving you debt
do not have your best interestsat heart and they get paid by
how much to give you Right,which is where the good debt
thing comes in, because whywouldn't you want to have more
what you think is good?
And then, number three read theterms.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yeah, 100%.
Read the terms.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Let me give you a great example of what I mean by
read the terms Okay, and, andfor an 18 year old, you know
they're going to think interestrate.
And they've heard the term APR.
I don't know if that's a thingin the UK.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
It is yeah, I knew a percent interest rate.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yeah, okay, so do you know the difference?

Speaker 2 (37:15):
No.

Speaker 3 (37:17):
They're not the same thing.
Okay, they're not the samething, and it's really important
.
And interest rate is the amountof money that you spend on the
money you borrowed.
Yeah, okay, an annualpercentage rate is what the
interest rate would be if wecounted all the fees as interest
payments.
Oh, right, okay, let me giveyou an example.

(37:41):
When you bought your house, ifyou pull out your mortgage
documents I don't know Again,I'm speaking from a US context
but if I pull my mortgage outand I look at my closing
statement, it'll have myinterest rate at the top, and
then right next to it would haveAPR and the APR is slightly
higher, right, right.
And what they're doing isthey're calculating the
appraisal fee, the inspectionfee, the title fee, the closing

(38:03):
fee, all those fees, into thisand then saying if this was
interest payments, what is yourreal interest rate over the
length of this loan?
Okay, where this is tricky isthat for credit cards, there
isn't a startup cost.
I don't have to get anappraisal on my unsecured line
of credit, right?
So they're the same number, butfor a car they won't be Right.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
See what I'm saying yeah, and for a house they won't
be.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
And why is that important?
Because if your interest rateand your APR are very different
numbers, it means that they madeall their money by screwing you
on fees.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
Oh, right, okay.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
So a great in this hat.
This became law in the 80sbecause what they were doing was
to say, oh yeah, this is a 1%interest loan.
And people are like, oh, I mean, you have to remember early 80s
, the interest rates in theUnited States were 17% to buy a
house, so 1% loan, oh, that'sgreat.
But what they didn't tell youis that they had a origination

(39:04):
fee for the loan.
That was like 40% of the loanthat you had to pay up front.
They were just prepaying theinterest.
Yeah.
Right, it's a bit sketchy, butand so?
So where do we see this a lot,right?
So a 15-year-old need to beaware of this.
Well, buying a car for one.
If you go and you buy a usedcar, this is where they'll get
you.
But payday loans I don't knowwhat it is in the UK, but like

(39:29):
payday loan stores here in theUnited States, what it is you
take your paycheck in and yousay, here's what my paycheck is,
but the next one hasn't come,and they give you a loan and
they don't charge you interest.
They charge you a fee, right?
So if you're making a thousandbucks, they're going to charge
you a fee.
And they say, well, the fee isjust going to be a hundred bucks
, well, that's a 10% interestrate.

(39:50):
And then they're going tocharge you fees on top of that,
and the interest rate on apayday loan might be 10%, but
then the APR is actually like40% or 60%.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
I've seen some, I know when they were advertised
on the TV pre-COVID, you'd seethe extra small writing at the
bottom of the screen this is a1,000% APR loan on whatever you
buy or whatever you take.
I'm like, yeah, you're madnessif you're absolutely crazy, if
you've even thought about takingthat out.
But some people did.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
Oh, but here's the thing they're praying in
desperation, Right?
Here's a very realisticscenario for an 18-year-old.
You get to college, you get acredit card right.
Those bills start piling up.
So you get another credit cardright.
You pay a minimum payment tothe first credit card and you
get a second credit card andthen you hit the limit on that
and they finally cut you offright.
So within a year, you're$50,000 in debt.

(40:46):
Yeah Right.
Now your student loans arekicking in at the end of
graduation.
So at the end of graduation,you get all these student loan
payments plus your credit cardpayments.
You're paying at 17% interest.
And you get that first job andit doesn't quite go as far as
you think it should.
Yeah, Right.
And now you're desperatebecause you're getting squeezed.
And so where do you go?
I just need a little extramoney to get to the end of the

(41:10):
month.
I got to hold some ends, right,I got to hold some ends.
And they go down there and theythink, oh, it's going to be
fine, I just need to do this onetime, Right, and it's never one
time, it's not designed to beone time.
So from an 18-year-oldperspective, we're getting into
the psychology again.
But like, read your terms.
Understand how this stuff works.

(41:30):
Understand that peopleunderstand what amortization is.
What is amortization?
Well, it's the payments overtime.
Understand the different.
When you get a mortgage, you'renot paying it all up front, but
they give you what's called anamortization table.
That's what your payments are,and in the beginning you're

(41:50):
going to pay a lot of interest.
Why?
Because in the beginning youhave a lot of principal and if
you don't understand the wordsprincipal and interest, that's a
good place you to start.
Principal is the amount ofmoney you took out in the
beginning.
Interest is the amount of moneyyou pay for the privilege of
having that money.
Right, it's the same thing withyou.
Understand how capitalizationworks.
If you have an unsubsidizedstudent loan, you take that out

(42:13):
your freshman year.
They're like, oh, I'm notpaying on it, but the interest
might be capitalizing and whatthat means is you owe them
interest, but they allow it toincrease the loan balance, so
they don't charge it to you.
They just took their loan andmade it bigger and then they
charge interest on that new,bigger loan that they then
attack onto the loan and then itgets a little bigger and

(42:36):
they're going to do that everymonth.
And if you take out a loan for$10,000 when you're a freshman,
your very first year at uni, forfour years it capitalizes and
by the end of it that $10,000loan is something like $15,000
to $17,000.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
Yeah, that's insane.
It's so baffling to me that wejust let kids loose into the
world with none of thisinformation.
It's like go and figure it outfor yourselves and by the time
they have figured it out,they've made a literary of
financial mistakes or they're intoo deep, before they know it,

(43:14):
into some sort of financial debtwhich they then need to get a
job.
They hate to pay off the debtthat they weren't aware of, that
they could have avoidedentirely.
So I've actually got twoquestions.
The first one, actually, I'dwant to ask is what would be
your tips for paying off debtfaster and more efficiently?

(43:37):
So what else?
Your student loans, carpayments, whatever If you're a
student and it's all a bitoverwhelming at this point that
you realize crap I'm in aminimum wage job and I've,
through an experience in nothaving any financial literacy,
have accrued a lot of debt, aspeople do.

(43:58):
What's the best way to pay thatoff in your opinion, or a good
place to start?

Speaker 3 (44:03):
Well, the best, the only place to start, is to stop
the bleeding, right?
Okay, you got to stop thebleeding, you got to stop it,
and that's going to come throughbudgeting.
If you've never made a budget,you can go to fiscallysavagecom
slash tools.
There's a free budget templatein there that my website's still
up and there's a balance sheetin there.

(44:26):
But you have to stop thebleeding.
You have to have a budget.
You have to start looking atthis.
Budgets are not a poor person'stool.
Okay, I hear this all the time.
I'm not poor, I don't need tobudget.
Well, you're going to be poorif you don't.
So you get to choose.
Choose your heart, right, andI've heard people well, I make
enough money, I don't have tobudget.
Yeah, well, you're not aswealthy as you could be because

(44:46):
you don't budget.
Okay, yeah, I'm between my wifeand I right now.
I'm making more money than Iever have in my life and I
budget and I'm anal, retentiveabout it.
But I've also watched my net,my net worth, triple in the last
two years, so take that forwhat it's worth.
So that's step one.

(45:07):
If you're going to need to paydown debt, you need to budget.
Okay, you need to budget.
You need to start and let melet me say this as as a
financial coach and as a CPAevery one of your audience
listening has complete blankcheck to screw up budgeting
repeatedly for six months.
But just try for six months.
There is no God given reasonwhy you should know how to make

(45:29):
a budget out of the box.
We're human beings.
We're meant to chase down deerand sit around campfires and
hang out with other humans doingthings humans do.
We are not meant to budget.
Okay, but it's a, it's part ofreality.
So anyone who starts thisprocess, they're going to screw
it up and as long as I want tobudgeting topic budgets are
living, living documents.

(45:49):
You need a new budget for everysingle month, okay.
It's not a set it and forget it.
Every month it's a new budgetwhen you get to.
You know we're getting.
We're at the end of Septemberat the time of this recording.
You know, next weekend my wifeand I will be sitting down.
We will be making a budget forOctober.
Well, why do I do that?
Because in October I know I'vegot expenses.
I got Halloween, I got kids, Igot costumes.

(46:11):
November's budget is going tohave to include Thanksgiving
dinner here in the United Statesand December, of course, we
have Christmas right.
Those, those three months aregoing to be different budgets.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
Yeah, I'm quite liberating as well, Isn't it?
It's, it's, it's the thatpermission, so to speak, to fail
to take messy action, that ifyou screw up a budget it's not
the end of the world.
At least you tried.

Speaker 3 (46:35):
Well, you got to fail fast, fail frequently and fail
forward.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
Oh, that's a great snipper.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
Right, like you know, like you're not going to get it
perfect the first time.
The, the, the, the name of thegame is to stop making your old
mistakes and start making newones.
You know so if you're, ifyou're in debt.
And if you give me an example, Ihad a, I had a couple.
They came to me for a financialcoaching and we went through
and I did the whole thing whereI set up the personal balance
sheet let's figure out your networth, let's figure out what

(47:03):
your picture is and they were ahalf million dollars in debt, oh
my goodness.
And and the point in which Istarted getting scared was when
the wife looked at it and wentwow, we're doing a lot better
than I thought we were.
Holy shit, when did you thinkyou were?
Wow.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
I cringed a little when he said half a million
dollars in debt.
I think I'd weep, oh she was.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
they were so happy they thought they were at least
a million deep.
Oh, and I was like what are you?
Wow, yeah.
And so I was like, no, like, ifyou went out of this, like you
have to start a budget and theyhad high income jobs, right?
There's another great exampleWell, they, they made enough
money they needed to budget.
Well, yeah, then they ended uphalf a million dollars in debt

(47:47):
but they screwed up their budget.
I mean, they were, they had ahard time learning it for about
six months because they had tounlearn and this is probably
step number two unlearn all theshit that you brought forward.
Yeah, right, the idea is ascarcity, the idea that they
couldn't say no to their son,the idea that if they, their son
was ever disappointed, thatthey were bad parents, you know,
so on and so forth.
You know, and you had, you know, they struggled at it.

(48:09):
And then you know, I've beenworking with them for about 18
months and now they're sittingthere saying you know, I, I live
a life where I have a lot lessstress.
Yeah.
They're almost done paying offthat debt after 18 months.
But it had to.
You know we had to startbudgeting.
And number two, we had to dealwith the psychology.
I did a lot of psychologicalcoaching, right, yeah?
So it seems weird Like, oh, westopped the bleeding and get a

(48:32):
budget.
Now you're telling me to go totherapy.
Yeah, I am.
You know, hire a financialcoach, hire somebody who can
help you through this andunderstand you're not alone.
There's a thousand people atlike I can point you, I can walk
down the street and be like,yeah, that person, I can walk
through the, the, the parkinglot of a grocery store and
probably tell you half thatperson's story based upon the

(48:54):
how their car looks.
Yeah, you know it's a Bentleywith all the crap in the front
seat.
It's the, the, the liftedpickup truck, when the guy's
walking out with shoes he hasn't, you know, he's been wearing
for two years.
And then number three, you knowso.
So we've got.
You know.
You got to look at yourpsychology.
You know you got.
You got a budget is number one.
Number two you got to look atyour psychology.
And then that psychology pieceleads to number three.

(49:17):
Okay, and this is where peoplewill get really angry at me
because I recommend this butwhat you need to do is take all
your debts do not look at thepayments, look at the principal
and line them all up fromsmallest to largest and pay off
the smallest one first.
Oh, okay.

(49:39):
Okay, and and here's wherepeople will help me.
Well, but you're not looking atinterest payments.
You're right, I'm not.
But you're not looking at howmuch money I spend over time.
You're already up to youreyeballs in debt.
We have that ship sailed, okay,yeah, okay, you're not
considering, you know, you'renot considering what the debt
was for.
Maybe it was good debt.
I've been over that, we've beenover this.

(49:59):
Yeah Right, you start off withthe smallest one for one very
simple reason it's a quick win.
You're hacking your psychology.
You want to see it win.
If you, if you looked at yourlargest debt say it was $50,000
in credit card debt and you'relike I'm going to pay it off
first, you're it has.
It has more staying power thanyou do.
Okay, you're going to be payingit off.

(50:20):
You're going to feel likeyou're going to make no progress
and you're going to quit.
Yeah.
But if you pay off that firstone and then we have a credit
card, cutting party right andI've done this with clients you
line them up, we're paying offthat first one.
First they come on the zoomcall, they show me their balance
is zero.
We close the account onlinetogether and then we get out of
scissors and we cut up the cardand we have this big celebration

(50:41):
.
I put on music, we dance aroundlike it's huge, and now they
want that second win.
So they go get it Right.
And then they get to say nowthey, now they've done it twice,
and by the third time theirattitude goes from I'm buried
under debt to I'm coming for you.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
Oh, that's really good.

Speaker 3 (51:01):
Yeah, you know.
So people will sit in.
Here's the problem.
There's tons of people outthere will sit there and go.
We'll get a debt.
Call the consolidation loan.
Just put it in a secondmortgage.
Fuck off with that.
Yeah, pay off what you got.
You don't want to put in asecond mortgage.
You don't want to put yourhouse at risk because of your
bad spending habits in the past.
Yeah.
Right, if that consolidationloan.

(51:22):
Go look at the APR on a debtconsolidation loan.
This goes back to understandinghow it works.
Yeah, but the easiest way tonot have to pay off your debt is
to not have it in the firstplace.
Don't go buy a new car.
Don't go buy a new car.
Go buy a used car.
It works just as fine.
What do you need the car for?
Just to get from point A topoint B.
Do, regardless of what peoplewill tell you, your car is not

(51:45):
an expression of who you are asa person, right, it's an
expression of how you live yourlife.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
Yeah, that's a huge difference.
Oh yeah, there are someabsolutely fantastic quotes in
there.
There were so many I'd want togo over again, but I did say I
had two questions.
The second question I wanted toask was if you're 18 or coming

(52:14):
out of university.
Of course they can check outyour podcast at Fiscally Savage.
And something I would like tochat about at the end is you're
now starting a life coachingthing at the end or you're
starting a life coaching podcastmovement, whatever at the very
end of the podcast?
I think that would help peopletoo.

(52:34):
What I want to ask is whatresources are available to kids,
uni students, that they cancheck out by themselves.
Is there any really goodchannels on YouTube you'd
recommend?
Is there a good book you wouldrecommend?
Is there a personality, asigned financial personality

(52:55):
online that you would recommend?
Because obviously they cancheck out your stuff, but when
they've exhausted all yourepisodes and they can't exactly
just call you up on the Zoomcall, no, but they can't book an
appointment with me, there yougo.
We can talk about that as well.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
Right, if you go to Fiscally Savage and you'd be
fair, you already kind of letthe cat out of the bag.
The podcast I've stopped, okay,and I'm transitioning into more
of a life coaching standpoint.
We'll get into that in a littlebit.
But you can go toFiscallySavagecom and sign up
for a consultation and you can.
Those range from severaldifferent things, everything

(53:33):
from people just like I'mthinking about buying a car,
talking me through the carbuying process, to I'm applying
for a job.
I do job coaching to helppeople apply for jobs and stuff
like that.
So obviously I'm going to pointto myself because I'm
self-interested, but if you'relooking for so, there's a couple
of people.
First off, dave Ramsey is ahuge resource.

(53:54):
I think in his podcast and onhis show he's kind of gotten.
I think he's lost his way alittle bit because he's spending
more time branching aboutpolitics than he is about
finances.
But his book, the Total MoneyMakeover, is foundational,
foundational very strong word,yeah.
Just go get it, go read it andthen read it again and on your

(54:16):
eighth time reading it, you'llstart to get it.
So I think that he is a greatresource.
Chris Hogan's Retired Inspiredis another book because he
really goes like.
The reason I like Chris Hogan'sbook is that he really goes
into why are we doing this?
Like, once you hit financialindependence, what are you going
to do?
Right?

(54:37):
And in my case, like you know,I already know what I want to do
.
Right, I have a visionstatement for myself and I know
that money is the way I'm goingto get there and I'm really
motivated to do it Right.
And so I'm looking at and going.
You know I want to be able tobe donating $2,000 a month to
charity, right?
Yeah, I know I want tohomestead my land.
I know I want to have chickensand goats and take my daughter

(54:58):
on horseback rides and stufflike that.
Like those are things that Iwant.
I want to be able to go out andserve the community and help
foster stronger men in thisworld.
Those are things you know, butI need money to do it all.
So Chris Hogan's RetiredInspired, dave Ramsey's Total
Money Makeover and then theother thing that I would say is
that, like, find people who areheading in the same direction.

(55:18):
You think you want to go, okay,and the warning I'll put on top
of that is to say if it'sreally exciting, it's probably
not where you want to be.
So if they're telling you likeyeah, let's go out, and then you
get the Ferrari, like how do weget alone for like no, no,
those people are bad, don't know.
But choose Fi.
So, as in, choose financialindependence, choose Fi.

(55:39):
Those guys on that show aregreat, Right, they're going to.
They talk you through justfinancial independence, what it
means, how you get there.
I've learned a ton from them,and so those would be my three
go-tos Dave Ramsey's Total MoneyMakeover, Chris Hogan's Retired
Inspired and the Choose Fipodcast and all of their
associated stuff.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Fantastic.
I'll be checking out some ofthose as well.
Just a note for the listenersif this is your first ever
episode or you haven't checkedout season one, dylan did do our
most popular episode of alltime how to do well in a job
interview so do check that oneout.
And in season two he also diddo a very popular episode on how

(56:20):
to professionally network.
So go and check that out aswell, and I've no doubt this
episode is going to be just aspopular as the other two.
It might be like my perfecttrio of best performing episodes
, no doubt, but that's allreally good.
Something I do want to veryquickly touch upon before we end

(56:40):
the episode is and we weretalking about this before the
show that when we were talkingabout professional networking
and that second episode you did,you talked about, obviously,
the professional side of gettinga job and building your network
, but then that naturallytransferred to life coaching

(57:02):
skills and that naturallytransferred to the psychology of
why you want this and how toessentially be the best you can
be.
And I feel like this is soclosely tied as well with what
you've been saying throughoutthe entire episode from the
financial perspective, in aweird way, your financial

(57:23):
situation, from what I'vegathered, appears to be the
symptom and what's theunderlying cause in much in the
same way the psychology of thechild having a scarcity mindset
or whatever.
How, from a dare I say it,you're not a life coach
perspective, what advice wouldyou have in general terms for

(57:48):
these 18-year-olds or universitystudents who, quite frankly,
don't have life figured out?
And I don't have, I'm notclaiming to have life figured
out- I'm not either.
I just have more experience inweighing it A lot of the life
coaching stuff that you've done.
What do you think would be thebest advice you could impart

(58:10):
upon a young man or woman?

Speaker 3 (58:13):
Well, I guess the first question is do you want me
to tell the story I told youbefore we hit record.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
Yeah, yeah, crack on Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
So I mean, let's just get the sound bite of what's
the best advice.
Personal finance is morepersonal than it is finance 100%
.
Your trauma is making decisionsfor you without your consent,
and I don't care who you are.
You could have had perfectparents they don't exist, but

(58:43):
you could have had the bestparents.
But you don't have perfectsituations.
You don't have perfectscenarios.
You don't have perfectcircumstances.
It's just the way it is.
When it comes to your money orcomes to life, your trauma, your
unresolved trauma, is drivingthe bus and it's driving the bus
away.
If you are somebody who's hadseveral relationships and

(59:04):
they've all failed in the exactsame way, guess what?
The common denominator was you,and it was probably not even
you making those decisions.
It was probably a scared littleboy or girl inside of you that
had some experience you have yetto help them through.
Money is one of those thingspeople don't like to talk about
it.
You don't ask somebody howtheir sex life is.

(59:25):
You don't ask them how what'stheir net worth?
Some people are weird and theytalk about it.
Some people get in groups anddo it together.
I know people who havebudgeting groups and I know
swingers.
But when you touch on people'smoney, you're touching on their
life.
It's the resources that theyuse to live their life, which
means it's intimate, okay, andit's scary.
And their parents did ahorseshit job teaching them how

(59:46):
to be good lovers, how to begood partners, and they did a
horseshit job teaching them howto be good financial beings.
Okay, I wouldn't have a sidejob doing life coaching or
financial coaching if they had,okay, and the story that I told.
So let's just now ground thisinto something real.

(01:00:06):
The story I told Jonathanbefore we hit record.
I had this couple and I never,ever, under any circumstances,
will financially coach one sideof a marriage, because all I do
is create a divorce.
Okay, for all the Afromentioned reasons, right,
they're both bringing in theirown shit into this relationship,

(01:00:26):
but I'm sitting with thehusband and wife and we're
halfway through the session.
I charged $250 an hour and Ijust called the time out and
said hey, what's going on here?
You guys are not connectedtogether.
And I suddenly transitionedfrom financial coach into
relationship coach.
They had had an argument abouttheir budget, they had led to
these other things, and nowthey're yelling at each other

(01:00:47):
and she doesn't think she loveshim anymore and blah, blah, blah
.
Like wow, okay, we go into theend of the hour and I say, look,
you know I don't work for free.
You know what.
We can schedule another time oryou can give me money now.
He just texted me the money.
He just sent it to me Like noquestions asked, just here's an
extra $250.
And so I'm like, okay, well,now I'm into this and I kicked

(01:01:07):
her out so I could just talk tothe guy.
And you know, from the contextclues, I was kind of like I
think I know where this is going.
So I just asked him.
I was like, look, man, do youfuck your wife or you just have
sex with her?
We started off talking yeah, westarted off talking about his
budget, and now we're talkingabout this and you know, in
retrospect it's it's one ofthese things where, like, that's

(01:01:29):
a natural transition, right,you know that that's actually
not that unexpected that weended up there from talking
about this other intimate thingthat him and his wife have a
hard time connecting on, youknow.
And what was the problem?
She's expecting him to lead,she wants a clear vision.
She wants him to paint it out,she wants to help him bring it

(01:01:49):
into being.
That's what she wanted from him.
And you guess what?
It was the same in the bedroom,right?
So, you know, I gave himhomework and I told him, like,
hey, here's how this is going togo.
Next time you're intimate, likethis is what I recommend.
Like, who went through thewhole thing?
I brought her in, I talked toher just by herself and went
through the whole relationshipcoaching.
I said, okay, I'm going tofollow up with you in a couple
of days, we'll see how it goes.

(01:02:10):
And I text them and said, hey,how's it going?
And they just sent me 500 bucksand said they wanted another
session.
There you go.
So.
So I transitioned.
But here's the thing, jonathan,almost 90% of my financial
coaching clients have becomelife coaching clients.
It's because when we starttalking about financing, like,

(01:02:31):
stop and think about this from abudget perspective I start
looking at my budget.
Then I start realizing my foodoh, I don't want to eat out.
It's really expensive.
So I'm going to, but I don'tknow how to cook.
Okay, now I have to have aconversation about cooking.
Now we're going to have aconversation about food and what
is emotionally satisfying forthem.
And then again we just wentright back to the emotions,
didn't we?
What's emotionally satisfyingfor them?

(01:02:52):
What feeds them, what nourishesthem on a food?
Oh, and then, by the way, theirhealthcare costs with all these
prescription drugs.
That's out of control.
So, you know, if you lost alittle weight, maybe.
And now we're talking aboutfitness, aren't we?
Now we're talking about?
So we went from finance to foodto fitness.
Now, now I start sitting theresaying like, okay, we're having
a lot of streaming services andwe have, we have Bleed here

(01:03:12):
elsewhere.
How about some friends?
Oh right, what are you doing toconnect with friends?
Oh, I don't know.
That's why I have Netflix.
Oh, yeah, so you're usingNetflix to numb yourself when
you come home.
And if we cut that out, we cankeep that money for ourselves
and you get a betterrelationship.
You can start fosteringrelationships with other
like-minded people, okay, sosuddenly we go from friends and

(01:03:36):
they meet a girl.
Now we're in a fucking Right.
Yeah.
So, like this is not like whenyou start touching on the money,
you're going to touch oneverything else.
Yeah, and having the courageand the grace and there I say it
the professional help to helpyou navigate that space is

(01:03:57):
critical, which is why I startedthe life, I'm starting the life
coaching business yeah, becauseI'm having a bigger impact
there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Yeah, 100%.
Man, I'm excited for you.
I must admit, when we startedchatting earlier, it was the
last thing I expected to hear,but I'm really happy for you and
, like you know, super stokedfor your success and all the
future success you're going tohave.
And I'm afraid that's probablygoing to be at the end of the

(01:04:27):
episode.
But, man, I just want to saythank you so much for coming on
again.
Like every time you come on, Ialways leave this episode, these
episodes, smarter than I began.
So well, definitely, like Isaid, I'd love to have you on at
least once a season.
Just, you know, for the amountof wisdom you can bring in, both
financial and, well, now inlife.

(01:04:49):
So, yeah, I really doappreciate you as a guest and,
you know, at this point I thinkyou're coaching all the members
of the curious Ulsterman podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
So thanks so thank you very much, Dylan.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's always a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Yeah, before we do sign off, where else can the
audience find all your content?
I know you mentioned FiscallySavage and that.
Is there anything else thatthey can direct them towards?

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
Well, right now we got Fiscally Savagecom.
I just started off my financialor my life coaching business
will be called Savage Firelightand you can find me on Instagram
at at Savage Firelight.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
Right, fantastic, and I'll link that in the show
notes as well.
But once again, dylan, thankyou so much.
Thank you.
There you go, folks.
That was today's episode ondebt with repeat guest Dylan
Bain.
I hope you got a lot of valueout of today's episode and, if
you did, please do considersubscribing to the podcast and

(01:05:47):
giving us a five star readingand review on Apple.
That would be reallyappreciated If you would like to
stay up to date with morefuture content from the Curious
Ulsterman, you can find us onall the socials at Facebook,
twitter, instagram, tiktok andYouTube all the Curious
Ulsterman.
If you would please consider aone time or recurring donation
to the podcast to support theshow, that would also be really

(01:06:11):
appreciated, and we'd like tothank you if you have listened
in for the first time today anda big shout out to our repeat
listeners in Colorado, london,bradford, manchester, portland
and Maine, california and SouthKorea.
I hope to see you all nextweek's episode folks, but until
then I wish you all the best.
Bye for now.

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