July 30, 2025 • 53 mins
Ashlee [00:00:00]:
What unique financial challenges do first responders face compared to general public sometimes? Or is there a reason why we see it so much in our office?
Jennifer [00:00:09]:
Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Jennifer.
Ashlee [00:00:12]:
And I'm Ashlee.
Jennifer [00:00:14]:
And it's my turn to say we have a super special guest today. I am so excited about our guest, Brian Box, who I got to meet an awesome, I don't know, Brian, what we would call that just a meeting of the minds here in the Texas area. And so, Brian, I'm going to give it to you and introduce our listeners. Tell us about you.
Brian Box [00:00:33]:
Yeah, my name is Brian Box. I am a financial advisor with Financial cop, which is based out of Frisco, Texas. And since we're going to talk about finances, got to lead off with a little bit of a disclaimer here so that all your listeners know that what I'm saying is an opinion. But I'll go over that real quick. The views expressed are for informational purposes only and are not designed to advise you on how to handle anything specific to your finances, nor will listening to our advice guarantee your financial success. Opinions expressed are subject to change without notice and do not take into account your specific financial situation and or needs. Discussions in this show should not be construed as specific recommendations or investment advice. Always consult with your investment professional before making important investment decisions.
Brian Box [00:01:23]:
Advisory services offered through Retirement Plan Advisors, llc, a federally registered investment advisor. RPA and Financial cop, LLC are not affiliated with that out of the way.
Jennifer [00:01:36]:
Appreciate that letting us know.
Brian Box [00:01:38]:
So a little bit about me. I graduated from Texas A and M in 1994 and obtained my commission in the United States army as a second lieutenant. I went off to San Antonio, Texas to do my Officer Basic course as a Medical Service Corps officer. Spent five months there. It was pretty, a pretty hectic time in my life because I graduated on a Friday, got commissioned on a Saturday and got married the following Saturday. So, and then two weeks, two weeks later started active duty. So did that for, for five months in San Antonio. Then I went off to flight school in Fort Rucker, Alabama, which is in southeast Alabama, went to flight school, graduated flight school, got assigned to the medical evacuation unit there at Fort Rucker, Alabama.
Brian Box [00:02:22]:
And over the next almost five, four and a half years, I jumped from different unit to unit at Fort Rucker doing different flying assignments and then went off to Germany. Came back from Germany, had a little expense, paid vacation to Kosovo for a few months, came back to Fort Hood, Texas, and then I got to take a extended deployment to a place that has a Lot of sand. And so I spent a little bit of time in Kuwait and Iraq and went as far as Baghdad and did medical evacuation during the initial push during the war starting in 2003. During that time, I really, I gotta say, one of the probably biggest parts of my life was going to the desert. I mean it was, it was one of those life experiences that you thought would just be horrible, but actually turned out to be a really cool experience. We been in a medical service corps unit. I mean we evacuated casualties off the battlefield. That was our mission.
Brian Box [00:03:22]:
And there was a lot of, a lot of job satisfaction to doing that. Went back to Fort Hood, decided it was time to watch my kiddos grow up. I'd spent about 10 years in the army and I found the Carrollton, Texas Police Department, which is one of the suburbs on the north side of the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. And spent 15 years in, in, in Carrollton as a, as a police officer. I did just about everything you could do as a, as an officer except for be a K9 officer and a full time detective. We were a small smaller department. So a lot of opportunities to do different things as additional duties, not full time duties. So I was a motorcycle cop, I was a commercial vehicle inspector, I was on our honor guard, I was a SWAT team member, I was an explosive breacher on SWAT on our SWAT team.
Brian Box [00:04:08]:
Started our technology program because I was a pilot brought into it. So that was kind of the officer side. But then I decided it was time to promote. So I promoted to sergeant, spent a little bit of time on the patrol, then went became the training coordinator which is ironically where I met my now current boss. Once I met him, I was looking for a financial advisor. My parents lived in Houston, I was using theirs. Both my parents passed away and I was, that's a four and a half hour drive and zoom and streaming audio wasn't as
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(00:00):
What unique financial challengesdo first responders face
compared to general public sometimes?
Or is there a reason why we see it so much in our office?
Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Jennifer.
And I'm Ashley. And it's my turn to say we have
a super special guest today. I am so excited about our guest,
Brian Box, who I got to meet an awesome.
(00:22):
I don't know, Brian, what we would call that just a meeting
of the minds here in the Texas area.
And so Brian, I'm going to give it to you and introduce our
listeners. Tell us about you.
Yeah, my name is Brian Box. I am a financial advisor with
Financial Cop, which is based out of Frisco, TX.
And since we're going to talk about finances, you got to lead
off with a little bit of a disclaimer here so that all your
(00:44):
listeners know that what I'm saying is an opinion.
But I'll go over that real quick.
The views expressed are for informational purposes only and
are not designed to advise you on how to handle anything
specific to your finances. Nor will listening to our advice
guarantee your financial success.
Opinions expressed are subject to change without notice and do
(01:06):
not take into account your specific financial situation and
or needs. Discussions in this show should
not be construed as specific recommendations or investment
advice. Always consult with your
investment professional before making important investment
decisions. Advisory services offered
through Retirement Plan Advisors, LLCA, Federally
(01:28):
registered investment advisor, RPA, and Financial Cop LLC are
not affiliated. With that out of the way,
appreciate. That letting us.
Know so a little bit about me. I I graduated from Texas A&M in
1994 and obtained my Commission in the United States Army as a
Second Lieutenant. I went off to San Antonio, TX to
(01:51):
do my Officer Basic course as a Medical Service Corps officer.
Spent five months there and it was pretty a pretty hectic time
in my life because I graduated on a Friday, got commissioned on
a Saturday and got married the following Saturday.
So and then two weeks, 2 weeks later started active duty.
So did that for for five months in San Antonio.
Then I went off to flight schoolin Fort Rucker, AL which is in
(02:14):
southeast Alabama and went to flight schools, graduated flight
school, got assigned to the medical evacuation unit there at
Fort Rucker, AL. And over the next almost five, 4
1/2 years I I've jumped from different unit to unit at Fort
Rucker doing different flying assignments and then went off to
Germany. Came back from Germany, had a
(02:35):
little expense paid vacation to Kosovo for a few months, came
back to Fort Hood, TX. And then I got to take a
extended deployment to a place that has a lot of sand.
And so I spent a little bit of time in Kuwait and, and, and
Iraq and went as far as Baghdad and did medical evacuation
(02:56):
during the initial push during the, during the war starting in
2003. During that time, I, I really, I
got to say one of the probably biggest parts of my life was the
going to the desert. I mean, it was, it was one of
those life experiences that you thought would just be horrible,
but actually turned out to be a really cool experience.
We been in a medical Service Corps unit, me.
(03:19):
We evacuated casualties off the battlefield.
That was our mission and there was a lot of a lot of job
satisfaction to doing that. Went back to Fort Hood, decided
it was time to watch my kiddos grow up.
I'd spent about 10 years in the Army and I found the Carrollton,
TX Police Department, which is one of the suburbs on the north
side of the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex and spent 15 years in
(03:40):
the in in Carrollton as a as a police officer.
I did just about everything you could do as a as an officer
except for be AK-9 officer and full time detective.
We were a small, smaller department.
So a lot of opportunities to do different things as additional
duties, not full time duties. So I was a motorcycle cop, I was
a commercial vehicle and inspector.
(04:02):
I was on our honor go heard. I was a SWAT team member.
I was an explosive breacher on SWAT on our SWAT team started
our technology program because Iwas a pilot, brought drones into
it. So that was kind of the the
officer side. Then I decided it was time to
promote, so I promoted to Sergeant, spent a little bit of
time on the patrol, then went became the training coordinator,
which is ironically where I met my now current boss.
(04:25):
Once I met him, I was looking for a financial advisor.
My parents lived in Houston and I was using theirs.
Both my parents passed away. I was, that's a four and a half
hour drive and Zoom and streaming audio wasn't as big of
a thing. So started talking with Nick and
Nick became my advisor and he was just starting out the
starting out the company. So this is probably 20/17/2018
(04:49):
getting the company going and one of his, I'm one of his
single digit first clients. So I was happy at the Police
Department, but this opportunitypresented itself to go back to
flying. So I went to Nick and I says,
hey, can I do this with my pension?
And so I was going to have an earlier pension.
I was going to leave it 15 yearsand count my military time and
(05:10):
be able to obtain my pension. So we came up with this plan and
he said, Brian, you just, you know, you, you deployed to the
desert. He said you can do anything you
put your mind to for 18 months. Because I was looking to go to
the airlines to go fly for the regional airlines.
They were bringing in a lot of the helicopter guys.
They were figuring out that if they can just teach us not to
(05:31):
hover at the end of the runway and just keep flying the
airplane to the ground. We were, we were pretty, pretty
solid pilots. And so I, I did that.
I went to work for Envoy Air, which is based here in Irving
near Dallas Fort Worth Airport. Everything was going great.
So I retired in May of 2019 and we all know what happened in
March of 2020. That pretty much threw a
(05:51):
complete monkey rich in my plansbecause the plan was for me to
take my pension, but I was goingto take about a 50% pay cut and
pay. And so this now marked the
second time that I had taken a pay cut during a career change
that 18 months now was looking more like it was going to be
longer than 18 months. So I kind of I was getting close
(06:14):
to getting furloughed. I was 140 people away from being
furloughed. And so here I am got two kids in
college, got a wife. I'm, you know, the primary
breadwinner at the time and I'm like, you know, this isn't the,
this isn't looking too good. So the, the, with all the
military training and all the law enforcement training, I kind
of went into panic mode, called Nick up on my going, what am I
(06:36):
going to do? Started looking at a kind of a
financial coaching program that most people have probably heard
about. Nick says, well, I got a
different idea for you there. Have you ever thought of being a
financial advisor like one? No, I do not.
Never. I'm not the numbers guy.
Yeah, I said, remember, I'm the SWAT guy.
I take, you know, square pegs and I fit them into round holes.
(06:58):
So. But he told me.
He said, yeah, he said, think about it.
He said, you know, of all peoplewhy I think you're qualified to
do is because we put you on a plan to take that major pay cut
to live well within your means for 18 months.
Because that's when I would probably upgrade to captain,
which would put me right back toabout where I was at the Police
Department. And I said, OK, well, came home,
(07:20):
talked to my wife about it, and we decided to know this is a
pretty good opportunity. Let's go ahead and give it a
shot. And the best part is he said,
you can keep staying at the airlines.
You can do this part time. He said, the business is
growing. We need he said, and that's how
he started. His chief at his department
said, hey, you're teaching this class.
I want you to start teaching this to the recruits.
And then he saw how this now wasbecoming a career path change
(07:43):
for my boss. And he said, you know, do it
part time. Well, Nick told me the same
thing. He says it worked for me.
I'm I'm willing to let you work part time.
So I did it part time and I was getting fed up with the recovery
of COVID from the at the airlineside of it and started looking
for other options, which then got me back into the helicopter
world. And I went to work for APHI Air
(08:05):
Medical, which is a medical helicopter company, is based out
of Phoenix. And we had a, a base here at the
Denton hospital, which is about 15 minutes from my house.
So 25 years I've gone full circle.
I'm now back flying helicopters,working with the a nurse and a
medic loving life. The jokes always been between
(08:26):
first responders is you know that the cops are jealous of the
firemen and the firemen are jealous of the cops and or you
know, it's always that back and.Forth Yeah, the beef.
It's a it's and if you're in a department like I was, we had a
good beef with our fire department.
So we always had this great working relationship.
But everybody at the Police Department says, Brian, how do
you I like working at Phi. Am I going?
(08:47):
Well, it's pretty cool. I said, you know, I get to sit
around, you know, once my job's done getting aircraft ready, I
searched the Internet. I take a nap, I go eat, I do
whatever I want to do. I said, So all the jokes about
that we tell about the firemen. I'm basically a fireman now
because I'm now driving the ambulance and I do my tasks that
(09:08):
I've got to do at work. And then whenever I have my
downtime, I do whatever I want to do.
So so I was working a week on week off schedule.
It was, it was great. Worked a week of days, a week of
nights. And then I was doing financial
advising at the same time. But in reality, I was doing 2
full time jobs. And Nick kept saying hey, we're
growing, we're growing, we're growing.
(09:30):
He says I need you. And so I finally took the leap.
This July will be two years thatI've been full time with him.
And this past April was four years that I've been part time,
you know, so total time as a as a financial advisor now full
time working for financial cop out of the Fort Worth office.
(09:51):
That is amazing, all of that. I'm like so blown away.
Thank you first and foremost foreverything that you have done
and continue to do. Thank you.
Absolutely, absolutely. Jennifer, were you chiming in?
I see you. No, I I'm glad you didn't leave
anything out, Brian. You know, we kind of started
with what LED you to doing, you know, finance and then first
(10:13):
responders, and I think your resume is a good example of how
that happened. But talk a little bit about
obviously some life things kind of drove you in that direction,
but what interests you about thefinancial aspects of that kind
of change in your career? I wouldn't say it was a
struggle. It was.
It was hard seeing myself doing it.
(10:33):
Math is not my strong point. Numbers are not my strong point.
Really. I found that the connection was
is I'm a people person. You know, my we we joke and say
our pastor at church asked yearsago asked, he said, you talk
about fears and they said peoplethere are people that scared to
death of speaking in public and there's people that are scared
(10:54):
of going to the dentist. He says, so if you had the
choice to stand in front of 1000people and talk or go to the
dentist, what would you do? And my wife said meeting like on
I'll go to the dentist. And I turned around and looked
at the guy behind me and said, what's the topic?
And so, you know, So what it didwas it it got me specifically
in, in this realm because we do focus on working with first
responders. We work with other people as
(11:16):
well, families and, and friends of first responders that ask for
our assistance. But it was getting me back close
to the people that I enjoyed being around and that kind of
that taken care of. I mean, I've been an officer in
the military which I had to takecare of my troops then as a, as
an officer taking care of the public, but then as a
supervisor, taking care of the, the officers that were I was
(11:37):
responsible for. And one thing I did leave out of
my history is I had been a volunteer fireman and an EMT in
the past. So I have this history of public
service and public safety. And again, this just was an
opportunity to get me back around the people that I, I
enjoyed being around because oneof the things I learned at the
airlines was quality of life. That was one of the big phrases.
(12:00):
You know what bases you're basedout of?
Do you commute? Do you live in base?
All those types of the things. Well, because of COVID, I really
didn't have the quality of life.I really wasn't looking forward
to going to work. But once I was there and flying,
I was, I was happy. I didn't mind the three or four
day trips, but I just didn't have that personal connection
with people because I was flyingwith a different captain just
(12:21):
about every time that I flew, different flight attendants and
so there was really no consistency there.
This job was that opportunity tofill that void that I didn't
have when I was at the airlines that I had.
I was back around people with like minded ideas, understood
the struggles that they were dealing with because I've been
in those same situations. And then just the finance piece
(12:43):
was just, I think just the mechanism that allowed me to to
do that. I will say that the test was not
easy, but obviously I passed it.Say you did it.
Yeah. So I did it.
And so now I'm just it again. It's just sometimes it's really,
it's like a social event going to work because I get to talk to
people from other departments about different things that
they're doing and, you know. Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, well, I was a motorcycle cop whenever I was a
(13:05):
brand new officer. And then I'd promote, you know,
so just there, there's so much connectivity regardless of what
the agency is. And then from the fireside, I
can talk about the, you know, well, I was in a medical unit.
I understand the medical side ofit.
It just it gave me that opportunity to get back around
people and that I enjoyed being around.
Yeah, I have to be a therapist for a second.
It sounds like you really know yourself.
Like know like people is important to me and asking
(13:29):
yourselves a question about quality of life.
I love that. OK, I also.
Love how it circles back around to like connection, right?
In every topic that we have kindof brought on here, everybody
listens because we connect, right?
And so that's a beautiful way toto do that.
And I'm really excited because for Jennifer and myself, like
seeing so many first responders and specializing in it, the
(13:51):
financial aspect of it is something that comes up a lot
like whether it be the individual that I'm seeing or
even like couples counseling, like families, right?
Like that financial piece is always there.
And so I'm really excited to learn from you today and to see
kind of, you know, like to learn.
Because I'm like, I be like I. Need more information on all of
(14:12):
this. Well, one of the things that we
were kind of wondering is what unique financial challenges do
first responders face compared to general public sometimes or
is there a reason why we see it so much in our office?
You know, the, the one thing that I would say that that first
responders have that a lot of other folks don't have is they
don't have almost a built in overtime mechanism.
(14:34):
They have the opportunity to work overtime jobs and not have
to go out and learn a new task or learn something to do and get
a part time job that's not related to their career path
there. There are programs now that the
departments are using to where they post all the overtime jobs.
You go up and you sign up for these overtime jobs.
And because I'm back as a reserve at my Police Department
after five years of retirement, again, maybe because I enjoy
(14:57):
being around the people that I was around, I'm on that list.
I mean, I don't participate in it, but I'm on it.
And I see all these jobs that are coming up and it's like
going these these guys are making, you know, 50-60,
sometimes $80.00 an hour to do an overtime job.
And they're just out there. So they've got a tool when it
comes to the financial world to get themselves in a better
position. But the struggle is, is are they
(15:19):
truly using that tool to the best way that they can on the
civilian side, they just don't have the opportunity.
They have to go out and find a secondary job, you know, and on
their time off, they've got to now go learn something new or do
something new and maybe not makethe money that they really could
that the first responders had that opportunity for.
I appreciate that and that makesa lot of sense.
(15:40):
And I know a lot of officers, they work their butt offs and
those overtime opportunities. So what are some of the common
financial concerns or goals of first responders when they come
to you? We have a slide that we use in
our class. We talk about, you know, the
title of it is why is it important to talk about
financial planning or Wellness when we're talking about first
(16:03):
responders. And one of the, the biggest
things are, is that first responder, just the job itself
is inherently stressful because of the situations you're dealing
with, whether you're the police or fireside, just the situations
that you're dealing with, the danger that's associated with
it, the hours that you're dealing with.
So that's adding already a stress to the job itself.
(16:24):
So that's putting a struggle on them, you know, at work and then
also when they take it home. But because of that, just look
at some National Statistics, about 50% of marriages now are
ending in divorce. Well, when you when when you
throw in the first responder side, that number tends to bump
up somewhere between 60 and 75, depend upon what source you look
(16:47):
at. And so now you take that higher
level of stress, the higher potential for divorce.
And now let's throw the financial piece in it.
And I don't know the statistic on it, but I've always heard
finances is one of the biggest reasons for divorce because it's
causing the most stress in the household.
(17:08):
And so we see it a lot, you know, a lot of, a lot of people
are just struggling with managing their funds and their,
their finances and it's just causing extra undue stress.
And so when I teach my class there, we all teach very similar
the very similar topics during our class, but we have our own
little spin on it. I tend to lean in and focus more
(17:28):
on the Wellness side of it more than the planning side of it,
because if you take care of the Wellness part of it, the
planning is going to fall in place.
Can you define what like the financial Wellness is for
people? So when we look at it, we, we
don't want to live, you know, paycheck to paycheck.
You know, there's some of the stats that we talked about that,
(17:49):
you know, 80% of people couldn't, you know, are living
paycheck to paycheck. They, they don't have anything
extra at the end of the month orthey're short at the end of the
month. Not, I mean, again, going back
to the stress part, that just adds extra stress to it.
But then it goes into that overtime extra duty cycle is
that I've got more going out than I have coming in.
(18:11):
So now I have to go out and workmore so that I can cover the
shortage. But now I'm taking away from
time with family or I teach a lot of recruits.
And I have a picture of that I put up on the screen of this is
the, the, the Academy graduationstarter pack.
And it's a, it's a picture of a new vehicle.
It's a picture of a gun, tattoos, you know, just
(18:33):
whatever. But you buy that, you know,
these, especially these young officers, they're getting things
that they have a, a paycheck that they've never had before.
And these, these officers are getting paid well.
And so they go out and buy all these toys, then they don't have
enough money to pay for it, so they have to work overtime.
And now they don't get to enjoy the toys that they bought
because they're always working overtime.
(18:55):
So it becomes this vicious cyclethat they, they, they can't get
out of. And sometimes they just get
stuck and then they, they have to reach out.
And and that's what we try to try to do with the first
responders that we work with, istry to break that cycle so that
they can at least start moving in a positive direction with
their finances so that we can work on what is it, make sure
(19:15):
stress level come down at least it, you know, from the financial
piece of it. And how they can enjoy the
things that they're doing or spend the money that they're
making on doing fun stuff instead of constantly having to
pay somebody else for things that you're not getting to use.
Yeah. I definitely have seen that with
clients. And it sounds like you might be
kind of a marriage counselor too, Brian.
Is that something that's happening?
(19:37):
Well, and we always joke in the law enforcement world that, you
know, yeah, when you get your license to be a peace officer,
you pretty much got a you're you're in a class of, you know,
financial or or not financial, but marriage counseling one O 1
because of the disturbances thatyou go to.
And yeah, so it's you do a little bit of all of it.
Well, and how do you balance that because I definitely have
(20:01):
seen first responders who are about putting the food on the
table and are taking those overtime.
Positions I think with a lot of integrity of saying like this is
about providing for my family and then what that does cost at
times in terms of badly hearing about relationships the end and
(20:23):
my partner was never home. They were always picking up
overtime or they work these crazy hours and that loneliness
for a spouse. Is there some, I don't use the
word advice, but what are your thoughts about that or if you
see something like that that shows up in your financial
planning? So when we sit down with folks,
we run through basically an interrogation of, of their
(20:45):
finances because I, I need to know all the details just like I
need to know what happened on the family disturbance call or
what the fire department needs to know when they show up on a
cardiac call. They need to know all the
details that go to it. And So what we have to try to do
a lot of times is we got to stopthe bleeding, leaning towards
the fireside of it, but it, it works for us as well.
(21:05):
I mean, we've got to stop the bleeding.
We got to find the source of what the problem is.
And then once we can figure thatout, then we can start working
on skills and techniques to slowthe bleeding or to stop the
bleeding altogether. And then to start repairing the
wounds. We like to sit down and do a
couple of meetings with prospective clients.
We asked them, do you First off,do you do a budget?
(21:28):
And nine out of nine out of 10 times, the answer is I usually
get a chuckle. I, I don't, I don't get a yes or
no. I just get a laugh.
So I get that. No, I don't, I don't do that.
Or I get the, I know about wheremy money's going, but I don't
know exactly how much I'm spending.
And so the first step and everything that we do with folks
(21:49):
is we've got to get a budget established.
We've got to figure out what's coming in, what's going about.
That's your greatest wealth building tool that you have is
the budget. Everything goes in and through
the budget and it's going to allow you to accomplish the
goals that you have financially and and personally and
professionally just because you you now have a path figuring out
(22:10):
that budget, telling them sit down with a piece of paper and
pull out your a joke and say bank statement.
So I date myself, but pull up your computer and see where did
I spend all my money this month?They find out that man, I eat
out a lot or I spend a lot of money on stuff that I really
don't need. So it it's about building that
first strategy of we've got to figure out how to stop the
(22:33):
bleeding using that budget and then building from there.
I'm just like soaking this all in because I'm thinking about,
you know, another big thing we talk about a lot on this show is
a family aspect of it. And it's like a child of a first
responder. I saw my dad kind of go through
these exact things, especially when my parents got divorced.
Was that like, he worked? I almost didn't see him for days
(22:53):
on end because he would be working all this overtime to try
to kind of overcompensate for now being alone in the house and
taking care of kids and, you know, like having to do that by
himself. And so it's very interesting to
me just that notion of of all that kind of like that family
dynamic playing an impact on thefinancial aspect of everything.
(23:15):
It, it does. And it's funny because I, I go
through like I did at the very beginning.
I in my, my class, I show the here's me in the Army and then I
progressed to the Police Department.
I went through there. But my last slide is a picture
of my parents and I tell them I said that this is where we learn
a lot of our, our skills or lackof skills.
I'm an only child. I grew up.
(23:36):
I, I was very blessed. I did not have to take any
student loans. Mom and dad was able to
basically fund me going through college.
I didn't want for much I didn't do like kids do now to where
they're playing baseball and soccer and all these other I, I,
I had to pick one and it, it waskind of the big things was
baseball or Boy Scouts and I picked baseball and I stuck with
(23:58):
it and that's all I ever did. But then after my mom got sick
and got diagnosed with cancer, she actually did what we what we
can, we can talk about here in alittle while of a of a tool that
we use. But she wrote down everything on
a piece of paper because my dad was the go to work guy.
He worked shift work. He was wasn't in wasn't a first
responder, but he worked shift work.
(24:19):
And so he went to work, he made money, he came home, he took
care of things around the house,but he had zero clue about the
finances of what went on with the house.
Well, mom passes away and now dad has no clue.
I'm now jumping in because my dad was not technologically
advanced at all. And so figuring out how to to
(24:39):
get their bills paid. What I learned was mom and dad
had a lot of debt. And I now know that that was
probably one of the stressors that I just felt in the house on
top of the fact that my dad worked shift work.
And you know, that was hard on him.
But just that financial stuff islike, man, they had so many
credit cards because they were from that era where credit cards
(25:01):
first started coming out. And hey, do this, do this, do
this. And it's like, I mean, I could
go to just about any store and pull out a card for that store
out of mom and dad's wallet. Instead of maybe having one card
and doing it all on one. They fell victim to the
marketing tool that came out talking about using credit
cards, using that as that dynamic, the the being gone and,
(25:23):
you know, not being not being present.
If we can find ways of having people where they don't have to
work as much and they can actually be at home, maybe the
marriage situations will be a lot better.
So. Well, and I think that you're
right. I mean, we had a side
conversation about that. I think that, you know, we, we
(25:43):
do what we know. And I, I think being really
transparent, I, I'm glad that for you, Brian, you just sensed
that there was some stress. Like I had definitely heard
stress about finances and maybe two people that raised me
weren't on the same page about finances.
And we take that information andwhen we're young and that can
(26:04):
really be our road map. I'll say for me, I know in
getting married, it's like, I don't want to fight about money.
I don't want to fight about money.
I don't want to fight about money.
So let's not talk about money. Well, that's not, that's not,
that doesn't work. No, let me tell everybody that
does not work. And what it really does is that
you have to kind of have some ofthose hard conversations.
(26:24):
And some of that is what do I know about money?
Where did I learn about money? I learned that money equals
conflict. Well, I don't want conflict.
So I'm not going to deal with that.
And and it's not that it's let'swalk through this, let's talk
about it, let's be on the same page.
I do love the aspect and I thinkit's opposites attract that
there's a spender and there's a saver and you guys, yes, which
(26:48):
one I am. But it's also about, well, let's
have compromise in that we shouldn't, we shouldn't save
every single penny and not enjoyanything in the present.
And we shouldn't blow it all right now so we don't have
anything on a rainy day. It's trying to find that
balance. And so when you're having those
conversations, besides the budget, which is great, but even
(27:09):
coming to talk about a budget, how do you work through maybe
some of those conflicts if there's a spender and a saver?
And that happens quite often, you know, and for various
reasons, you know, they, they didn't have anything growing up
and now they've got money that they could spend and now they
want to buy the things that theynever had when they were growing
up, right? That, I mean, that's very
common. A lot of times it's also 2
(27:31):
income families and I, I see a lot of 22 income families that
are result. They've come together after a
divorce. And so now they, they're keeping
their finances separate because they got burned in the past.
And so they're very cautious with their money.
But the biggest thing about all of it when we're trying to sort
through that is I'm not telling you not, not to have fun and not
(27:53):
to spend money. But we got to deal with the
bigger issue right now, which a lot of time is that consumer
debt, because we're paying so much money and interest right
now on credit cards and and car loans that it's going to be hard
for you to truly enjoy what you want to do in the future unless
we can address what's currently right here.
And so a lot of times we'll tellthem, hey, this is not going to
(28:15):
be easy. This is this is going to be
something that's going to take discipline.
It's not going to happen overnight, but I'll tell them
there are videos that you can goonto YouTube and you can watch
about people that are, you know,saying, Hey, we were 180,000 in
debt and in 18 months for now debt free.
Well, the reason they did that is because they sat down, they
(28:35):
looked at what their spending habits were.
They changed their spending habits.
They became very disciplined, started that might it's a change
of mindset is what is the need and what does it want?
Right, you know, and so I want anew vehicle.
I don't need one, but I want one, but I don't, but then I
also then turn around and go, but I also don't want another
(28:56):
car payment because my vehicle'spaid for it.
You know, it's, it's a lot of times it's like coaching and we
do a lot of that with, with our prospective clients.
I mean, they may never, they maynot even be a client for 10 or
15 years, but they're, they needcoaching.
They need somebody to, to show them the tools that they did
either didn't learn growing up or that they, you know, they
(29:18):
need to be reinvigorated. Maybe somebody just to kind of
hold them accountable because I'll tell them I can go as an
advisor or a coach to you. I can either go very little
pressure. I can go extremely hard
pressure. And I can be calling you every
month saying, hey, tell me aboutwhat you're doing.
But usually what happens is somewhere in between is you know
(29:38):
what we what we'll give them theplan and we'll say, here's what
we recommend that you do. And we'll give them, we'll look
at all their finances and say, OK, well, you've got money in
savings. Why don't you pay off one of the
credit cards? That's one less debt that you
have to worry about. You know, we try to build in
that debt snowball mentality of put your, your debts in lion
from the, the smallest balance all the way up to the highest.
(30:00):
Don't worry about what the monthly payment is and dump
everything you can towards that smallest one.
Then you get rid of it. And then our, our human brain
likes that Atta boy or Atta girland says, hey, now we've
succeeded. Well, now we just take that
money, we roll it into the next one and we just keep doing that
and it's that snowball effect. It just keeps getting bigger and
bigger. And that's how these folks are,
you know, 880, two, $100,000 in debt and then at 18 months are
(30:23):
out of debt. But they made a big sacrifice on
we're not going to go out and eat all the time.
We're not buying new cars, we'renot going on vacations.
We're covering the needs that weneed to take care of and not
much else. But on the budget thing for
those spenders and savers mentality, when I was going
through this, I was not a budgeter when I first started
(30:45):
working with Nick. I mean, and I, and my excuse was
one that was very common. I'm covering all my expenses.
I, I really don't need a budget,but Nick got me on a budget.
We used an online tool. It's a very basic, simple tool.
It's focuses on budget. And he said, so here's what I
need you to do. I need you to create two extra
(31:06):
lines in your budget from something that you don't already
have. And I'm like, what's that?
He goes, I need you to create a Brian allowance and a Melissa
allowance. He says, so dedicate a little
bit of money for you and a little bit of money for your
wife. And that's free to spend.
However, as long as you've covered your bills, use that to
spend whatever. But if you factor it into your
budget, you don't feel guilty about spending it.
(31:29):
And, and on the budget things, alot of people just think of
budgets like it's a, it's a dirty word.
You know, I don't say that word around me.
But in reality is if you do it consistently and get focused on
it and, and really stick to it to find out you can spend,
actually spend more money with less guilt.
The example I always use is if you budget $500.00 for going out
(31:50):
to eat the end of the month, you've only spent 350 bucks out
of your budget and there's no other big need.
Why don't you go out and have a really nice dinner?
Yeah, because you budgeted for it so right.
I'm loving this. This is amazing.
And what my brain keeps going back to is like just so the
education piece, right? Like I often like it goes back
(32:12):
to that too of just not being informed, right.
And I hear, I heard you say earlier in the show that you
guys you speak at, did you say at the Academy?
I teach most of the academies here locally.
There's a couple of regional academies.
So we get to talk to a lot of different departments and
sheriff's departments. And, you know, every once in a
while we'll have a fire department firefighter in there
that's going to get become an arson investigator.
(32:34):
But yeah, so that's what I I tend to teach a lot, but we
teach all the chiefs of police in the state of Texas has gone
through the class. This, this was Nick's, this was
Nick's baby when he first, this is what started the company was
the teaching side of it. And if I counted the numbers
right, I believe between me and Mike, who's one of our other
advisors and Nick, 24 states, I think Nick's been to most of
(32:59):
them. Mike and I tend to stay a little
bit more local. The joke was always that Nick
flies more than I do whenever I was a pilot because he was
traveling so much. I think we're over 40,000.
The last number I heard over 40,000 first responders or first
responder families that have satthrough this version of our 4
hour class. It may only be a 2 hour class
(33:19):
kind of condensed, but our classis designed to be a four hour
class. And I mean, it's the educational
piece because you don't know what you don't know.
And the tips that we're going through in our class is the how
to get to where you want to be. You know, if you don't have a
plan, it's just a wish. And so if you can figure out
where you want to be, we'll helpyou figure out a plan to do
(33:40):
that. And we're, we were all
instructors in, in the Police Department.
And so we have that heart of a teacher.
And so we like to sit down and, and tell folks if there's any
questions, if we're, whether we're managing money for you or
not, drill us on those questions.
And if we don't know the answer to the question, we're going to
go dig it up and find it becauseit's education for us as well.
(34:01):
But we want you to understand why we want you to do the things
that we're doing, because if youdon't know what the purpose
behind it is, you're probably not going to follow through with
it. Yeah, absolutely.
I love that heart of a teacher. That's beautiful.
So this is something I don't understand at all and maybe and
maybe people in a pension systemunderstand it more than I do.
(34:23):
What are conversations that you have around pensions and 1st
responders? The state of Texas has several
different versions of pensions. A lot of the cities have a
municipal retirement system. The the school district has the
teachers retirement system, but their school resource officers
sometimes will, you know, they're the ISD.
Police departments fall underneath those.
(34:46):
The county and the sheriff's departments have a county
pension system. And then cities like Fort Worth
and Dallas have their own, you know, pension.
Some of those larger cities havetheir own pensions.
One thing that we always tell folks is that this is the one
job that you're never going to get fired from.
So if you meet the requirements of your pension, you're always
going to have this amount or this paycheck coming in at the
(35:06):
end of the month. The ultimate goal is, is when
you retire that you have enough money in your pension to cover
your expenses. But a lot of times that's not
the true case. The pensions are not they,
they're not designed to fully replace your income.
And then some of the departmentshave opted out of Social
Security and have gone with someother investment tools to to
(35:28):
replace that as a secondary way of doing it.
We look at that pension and say is it going to be enough?
Well, for one way that it's definitely probably not going to
be enough as if you're carrying all this extra debt.
So the ultimate goal is, is to be what we consider consumer
debt free, which is anything other than your mortgage.
All that's gone. Those are all depreciating value
(35:50):
and depreciating asset type expenses.
And if you can get out of your mortgage and have it paid off by
the time you retire, you might be able to live on your pension.
But the problem is, is that you might have to stay 20253035
years. And if you're like me, starting
at 33 and 30 years, I don't knowif I'd want to be a street cop,
(36:12):
you know, at 63 years of age. I know there's guys that do it,
yeah, and, and girls that do it.But man, it's, that's a long
career of all the stresses that we've talked about, just the the
stuff that you see. So the pension is definitely a
great tool and a lot of a lot offirst responders, they'll
retire, draw their pension and do like me and they'll go off to
(36:32):
another career. Well, the, the beautiful goal of
that is, is if that other job ispaying you the same or better
and you've got extra money and we'll use that to pay off any
debt that they still have once their debts done building up
their savings. So they have that emergency
fund. If something comes up, I can do
it. I believe the statistic right
now is about 66% of the people in the United States could not
(36:54):
afford to go and pull $1000 cashout for an emergency.
We'll walk them through buildingup that emergency fund.
Now they're debt free. They got that emergency fund.
Use that, that pension check that you get.
Let's just start building additional wealth through your
retirement so you can help supplement your second job that
you your second career path thatyou've chosen.
Yeah, I think retirement's a really big thing for us in this
(37:17):
world. And even yes, on this podcast, a
lot of our first responders are are talking about retirement and
what that looks like. And how do you, you know, like
what is there anything that you say to people in terms of first
responder world like even in theAcademy, right, but like
thinking about retirement in ways to set themselves up
successfully for that? Yeah, I tell them, I said it
(37:38):
doesn't matter if you are starting today or you're
retiring tomorrow. It's never too late to start
planning for the future. Especially what I try to hit
with those young guys and girls in The Academy Is OK, this is
the first big boy, big girl check that you've maybe ever had
and I'll do that. You know the compounding
interest discussion. Do you realize that if you were
(37:58):
to put X number of dollars in and we show them some scenarios
that if you were to take, I think one of the scenarios is
about a 200 and something dollarcar interest payment that you
would have been making if you would have invested that from
age 18 to 65, it comes out to like $3.7 million.
Oh. My gosh.
Now, that's a long period of time, but if you got $3.7
(38:21):
million, I think you could probably go buy whatever car you
wanted. You can go whatever vacation you
want to go on. But yeah, we just have to steal
it at the very beginning. Hey, if if you will just get the
discipline established early in your career to where this is now
becomes, you know, it, it's you just do it.
You don't even think about it. Money comes out, it goes to your
retirement. Don't even think about it.
(38:43):
Down the road is where you're really going to reap the
benefits of. But for those folks that are,
you know, towards the end of their career, they'll come to us
and they'll ask us, Hey, I wanted to, I do a lot of this
is, hey, I just want to see where I'm at when it comes to
retirement. Because what I'll do with them
is I'll take their pension projection and I'll take their
current pay stub and we'll do a apples to apples comparison.
(39:05):
We'll go in there and we'll take, OK, this is what you're,
you're currently paying and get what you're currently getting
paid. But we'll start taking out all
the things that you would not becontributing to anymore, making
the assumption that you're just going to retire and not work at
all. We're going to take out your
retirement contribution to your pension.
We're going to take out the police association fund.
You're going to take out your different little things, your
(39:26):
Social Security, your Medicare, all those, all those deductions
that's going to lower your and now give you that adjusted
income. Now I can compare it to your
pension and then I'll run some numbers and I'll tell them, say,
OK, with your current pension that you're looking at based on
your current adjusted income, you're going to be making
whatever percentage of your income.
So that means one of two things.Either you're going to have to
(39:48):
reduce your standard of living in retirement, which I don't
think you want to do, or you've got to go find a job that at
least brings home this amount ofmoney to keep you at the same
point that you are right now. And so with the debt
elimination, you know, that allows them to have a little
more freedom. Of whether or not it's time for
them to retire and some of them will look at it because five
(40:09):
years will make a huge difference on what their pension
is. They may look at it and go, OK,
well, I can honestly work another five years and I'm going
to work really hard to get rid of what little debt I have left.
Then I know that when it comes time to retire because at least
in the, the municipal retirementsystem, I can have them run
projections as far out anything more than a couple years isn't
going to be exact. But I mean, it's going to give
(40:31):
a, give a good litmus test of can I do this or not Helps him
make the decision. Man, maybe I need, I need to
stay a little bit longer or hey,I'm in a pretty decent spot and
I've got this, I've been workingin criminal investigations and
I'm specialized in this. And there's this outside
civilian company that is kind ofbeen, you know, courting me to,
(40:51):
to come work for him. I got a friend that's starting
up, wants me to come work with the business that he's at.
What we'll do those type of analysis to, to figure out, hey,
is now the time to retire? Do we need to stay a little bit
longer? That's awesome.
I was a young person once and got a class like yours, Brian
and I did not listen. Man.
I could have had those millions by now, but I was.
(41:12):
Sitting here like oh boy on this.
I need to get on this like for real, right?
It just opens up so many right When you said that, I'm like.
Oh my gosh, Yep, Yep. If the earlier you start, the
better off you're going to be. But again, it's never too late
to start. No, I've got my act together now
but my 20s, what a wash. But so tell me in terms of this
(41:38):
work, like tell me some of like the impact and as a people
person who enjoys connections, can you talk a little bit about
one of those real successes of getting to see people come and
take your class and and unlike me, follow your directions.
You know, because, because I've only been doing it, haven't been
doing it full time for less thantwo years.
(41:59):
I don't have one big success story.
It's like going that's my go to story of like this is the person
that I completely turned them around.
But I've had a lot of little ones and I had one just the
other day. My agency has me to come back
because I teach all the academies in the Metroplex.
Well, that's where the officers from my department go to.
So they got the class there, butthen they come back to the
(42:21):
department. They do six weeks worth of in
service, but we're also hiring lateral officers so they don't
have to go through the Academy. So the trainer guys are saying,
hey, can you come in and teach this class again?
Well, I had the guys the other day in class and one of them,
two of them were from the Academy class and he had to ask
me some questions after class and he goes, hey, you know, paid
off the car. How am I going?
There you go. So it's those little success
(42:42):
stories because I mean, you could tell he was you felt good
about it. You know it's.
Like I've. Got, I've got this burden
because I tell people, I said, you know, I, I never carried a
lot of consumer debt. I wasn't one of those $200,000
in debt kind of guys, but I just, I had a couple car
payments and you know, little balance on a credit card, but I
had to get rid of all of it. I said.
But when I wrote that last checkfor that last car payment and
(43:06):
there was a $4000 check and wrote it, I felt like somebody
lifted a building off of me because now it's like the only
thing I have to worry about now is my monthly expenses and my
mortgage. And so it gave me a lot more
freedom. But yeah, I've had had several
of those folks from the academies do that.
But probably the bigger piece ofit, too, is that guys and girls
that are close to retirement been eligible.
(43:26):
They're beyond the eligibility. So now they're they're just
trying to figure out is now a good time.
And then you sit down with them and go, you know, you're almost
at that point to where you're almost paid paying the city to
come to work. And they're like going really?
I'm like going, yeah, you can actually retire now.
I'm not going full. That's great.
And so they start looking at it going.
I love the job, but I'm just tired of getting up at 4:00 in
(43:47):
the morning to be on day shift at 6:00, you know, So it's a
it's little things like that. It's just those little, little
small victories that are probably the, the cool part
about it because you know, that you had a piece in giving them
the direction to, to get to where they're going.
Or when I sit down, we do annualmeetings with folks and I going
my first question with them is, you know, hey, how are things
(44:08):
going on? What are the updates?
Let's talk about how things are going.
And they said, you know, hey, wehad a little hiccup because, you
know, really cool thing called life happened.
And so we had to address that issue.
But we got right back on it. We're right back the following
the plan because that's how we write our plan.
Do step one, move to Step 2. When Step 2 is done, move to
Step 3. But if something happens in the
(44:28):
mix, go back to the previous step or go back to that.
You had to take on debt. All right, well, we talked about
throwing everything towards the debt and getting ready to OK,
well, I had to buy a car. I didn't have enough money saved
up to pay cash for it, but I hadto take a loan.
All right, well, we did it once before, let's do it again.
Your car payments $400.00 a month.
Let's make a $800 car payment toit.
Let's work a little bit of that extra overtime.
(44:50):
Now we're going to do it for a short period of time to get you
back to where you're now debt free and you're now back into
that wealth building stage. Flexibility happens and it's
nice when you see those people that have embraced it and said,
you know, I can see myself down the road.
We'll ask him at the class who got into this job to be a
millionaire and I'll have him stand up and I'll say if you
(45:10):
thought you got in this career to become a millionaire,
continue standing in and everybody sits down because they
don't think they're going to be a millionaire.
I said, but think about a 20 year career and how much money
is going from the HR department to finance through your
paycheck. You could be a millionaire.
It's your spending habits that are going to allow you to be
that millionaire down the road. So when they embrace that and
(45:30):
they finally realize, I can see what you're talking about.
It makes sense now that light bulb moment comes on and then
they just continue driving towards it.
It's it's that's, that's the cool part about it.
Well, and I feel very fortunate how, I mean, I don't help people
with finances by any means, but have had clients in really dark
places, stressful places and finance being a part of that,
(45:52):
working with people who have thefinancial stress.
And again, I don't help them with their finances, but when
they get to that place of like, Oh my goodness, I finally got
out of that debt or I paid my last car payment.
I love celebrating that with clients.
So that has to be so rewarding and a part of your job for sure.
Can you just go one more time interms of what you guys offer?
(46:14):
We do teach at the academies, teach a lot of local
departments. And I've gone and done some roll
call briefings, you know, just alittle 1520 minute thing with
officers that I've met throughout the years that are
now supervisors. And they're like going, I run
into them someplace and they go,hey, you know, we can't afford
the budget doesn't allow us to pay you guys to come do it.
I said, can you come do this? I'm like, yeah, I'm out, Come to
a 1520 minute roll call briefingwith you and just kind of do a
(46:38):
very condensed version of what we do.
But we have an online Academy that is basically, we've, we've
taken it and created what we call the 8 phases of financial
training and what those steps are.
It's, it's very, it's, it's pretty simple.
It starts out with budgeting, building, and then Step 2 is
building a temporary emergency fund.
Then we go to the debt snowball,getting rid of the consumer
(46:59):
debt, then build up now a fully funded emergency fund.
Once we're debt free, now we start really getting hard and
heavy on investing for future retirement goals, saving up and
investing for the future or vacations or cars or college,
those types of things. The biggest one is paying off
the mortgage. That's usually the last step in
the process. And then the last one is just
(47:21):
building wealth like crazy. So that's a technique that we be
that we use. That's kind of the path that we
write our plans in is to go through those steps in that way.
So Nick is gone and has done ourvirtual Academy, which are these
eight steps and he's done them in 20-30 minute segments.
And then we're, we're looking ateven adding on additional ones
(47:41):
to talking about Will and estateplanning, which is one of the
very first things which I probably probably should have
started this out. And for your listeners, if you
don't have a will and the, the living will document, I highly
encourage you to do it. A lot of police associations do
it. A lot of the fire associations
don't. But I mean, it's a basic will is
(48:01):
in the grand scheme of thing is relatively inexpensive.
But I would much rather you makedecisions for your family and
not the courts making decisions for what's going to happen with
your. Listen, I am not a first
responder and I have a will and a state.
I think if you're a parent, you should have those things.
I feel very fortunate that I, I don't know who intervened to
(48:24):
make that happen. I I think that's great advice.
Not just in Texas, but I mean, again, like I said, Nick has
traveled to and and Mike has been out of state.
I'm going to a couple places later on this year, but we'll
actually come to the department departmental budget as part of
their, you know, their training for the year.
And then they just work with ourdirector of client relations to
(48:44):
figure out what's the pricing for us to come up there and
actually teach a class. But another resource that is out
there is police, Police 21 Academy and Fire one Academy, a
lot of departments and are paying for these resources and,
and our financial class is on that platform.
So it's out there. We recently became a national
(49:06):
business partner with the Fraternal Order of Police on the
national level. So we're doing a lot of the FOP
conferences, either state or regional or national
conferences, going and teaching our class and, and doing, doing
basically what I'm doing at the Academy.
We're just doing it on a, on a bigger scale, you know,
nationally. So a lot of resources that are
(49:27):
out there and, you know, we'll, you know, for the, for the show
notes, we'll, we'll definitely, you know, give our social media
links that they can, any of the listeners can listen, can look
out, reach out to and on Facebook, Instagram and just our
website alone to get some additional information on the if
that's something that their department might be interested
in. Absolutely.
I think that's great informationand I'm glad you're willing to
share it with. Us yes, thank you so much.
(49:50):
I think I've I'm even like I have all these notes and ideas
in my head already too. I'm like, this is such powerful
things that we need to talk about.
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Brian, is there anything else? Yeah, I was going to say one
thing talking about the website,we do have tool that I was
selling that like my mom used. She just she just wrote
everything out. But we call it the legacy go
(50:11):
back and it's a it's a 16 page PDF.
I think it's 16 pages that you can go through and it's a lot of
departments already do this, at least on the police side of, you
know, if you're injured in the line of duty or you're killed in
the lot of duty, who do we notify?
And you know, who is your companion officer and what type
of for your, for your service? Do you want to be in uniform?
Are you a veteran? All, all of those types of
(50:32):
things that go into that. But we've created one on our
side as well. And it starts out with a cover
letter of what's the intent and purpose of it.
And it goes through and it lists, you know, this is where
my will and estate planning documents are.
These are all of my bank accounts and my passwords and,
you know, account numbers and balances and, you know, it's
anything that you want to put inthere.
(50:53):
But on just about every one of our pages, there's a, a yellow
little rectangle at the bottom that says like, you know,
financial cop legacy go bag. You can click on it and download
it for free. We're not going to spam people.
We're not going to sell your e-mail address.
That's good to know. But but it's a tool that's out
there and it just gives your family something if like the
(51:14):
situation that I was in, you know, had I not had that, I
would probably still be looking for money.
And my mom passed away over 15 years ago.
I'd probably still be looking for stuff for her to have bill
collectors calling me going, hey, are y'all going to pay
this? So it is a tool that's out
there. And then just just information
of what we can provide. And even though we're Texas
based, I've got clients in, I'vegot a client North Dakota,
(51:35):
Wisconsin, Florida and in Indiana.
Take Hoosiers as clients. Our ultimate mission, I mean,
more of a concept so much than something that's written down.
Our ultimate goal is that every first responder nationwide is
going to be able to retire when they want to stay around at the
job, if they love the job, but not stick around because they
(51:58):
have to because they're not in afinancial position to be able to
retire. So that's our ultimate goal.
Our goal is to take care of first responders.
That's our passion. If we can help anyone out,
that's what we're here for. It makes me so happy that I was
able to corner you and make you come on this podcast, I mean.
You're just so knowledgeable andgood like and it's just so heart
warming. This is exactly like I.
(52:18):
Oh, this is horrible. People who love this population
and will do anything, you know, like you do it in this aspect,
but you're also a first responder, you know what I mean?
So like it's incredible and we're so I'm so thankful that
you're here today. Yeah, you know, I'm, I'm a I'm a
big believer in things happen for reason.
And Jennifer, you and I were both not on social media and
(52:39):
ended up at the wrong location for the training that day.
Yes. You know, and it happened for a
reason. Exactly.
It was meant to be. Well, thank you so much for your
time and I'm excited for our listeners to follow up if they
have questions and things like that to reach out to Financial
Cop, then Ashley, you want to take us away.
Absolutely, Brian, thank you so much again.
(53:01):
And we will post the things thatwe can on our social media and
help spread the word. We just like to always end with
our famous line is that when thecall hits home, Jennifer and I
are always here for you guys. So thank you so much.
What unique financial challengesdo first responders face
compared to general public sometimes?
Or is there a reason why we see it so much in our office?
Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Jennifer.
And I'm Ashley. And it's my turn to say we have
a super special guest today. I am so excited about our guest,
Brian Box, who I got to meet an awesome.
(00:22):
I don't know, Brian, what we would call that just a meeting
of the minds here in the Texas area.
And so Brian, I'm going to give it to you and introduce our
listeners. Tell us about you.
Yeah, my name is Brian Box. I am a financial advisor with
Financial Cop, which is based out of Frisco, TX.
And since we're going to talk about finances, you got to lead
off with a little bit of a disclaimer here so that all your
(00:44):
listeners know that what I'm saying is an opinion.
But I'll go over that real quick.
The views expressed are for informational purposes only and
are not designed to advise you on how to handle anything
specific to your finances. Nor will listening to our advice
guarantee your financial success.
Opinions expressed are subject to change without notice and do
(01:06):
not take into account your specific financial situation and
or needs. Discussions in this show should
not be construed as specific recommendations or investment
advice. Always consult with your
investment professional before making important investment
decisions. Advisory services offered
through Retirement Plan Advisors, LLCA, Federally
(01:28):
registered investment advisor, RPA, and Financial Cop LLC are
not affiliated. With that out of the way,
appreciate. That letting us.
Know so a little bit about me. I I graduated from Texas A&M in
1994 and obtained my Commission in the United States Army as a
Second Lieutenant. I went off to San Antonio, TX to
(01:51):
do my Officer Basic course as a Medical Service Corps officer.
Spent five months there and it was pretty a pretty hectic time
in my life because I graduated on a Friday, got commissioned on
a Saturday and got married the following Saturday.
So and then two weeks, 2 weeks later started active duty.
So did that for for five months in San Antonio.
Then I went off to flight schoolin Fort Rucker, AL which is in
(02:14):
southeast Alabama and went to flight schools, graduated flight
school, got assigned to the medical evacuation unit there at
Fort Rucker, AL. And over the next almost five, 4
1/2 years I I've jumped from different unit to unit at Fort
Rucker doing different flying assignments and then went off to
Germany. Came back from Germany, had a
(02:35):
little expense paid vacation to Kosovo for a few months, came
back to Fort Hood, TX. And then I got to take a
extended deployment to a place that has a lot of sand.
And so I spent a little bit of time in Kuwait and, and, and
Iraq and went as far as Baghdad and did medical evacuation
(02:56):
during the initial push during the, during the war starting in
2003. During that time, I, I really, I
got to say one of the probably biggest parts of my life was the
going to the desert. I mean, it was, it was one of
those life experiences that you thought would just be horrible,
but actually turned out to be a really cool experience.
We been in a medical Service Corps unit, me.
(03:19):
We evacuated casualties off the battlefield.
That was our mission and there was a lot of a lot of job
satisfaction to doing that. Went back to Fort Hood, decided
it was time to watch my kiddos grow up.
I'd spent about 10 years in the Army and I found the Carrollton,
TX Police Department, which is one of the suburbs on the north
side of the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex and spent 15 years in
(03:40):
the in in Carrollton as a as a police officer.
I did just about everything you could do as a as an officer
except for be AK-9 officer and full time detective.
We were a small, smaller department.
So a lot of opportunities to do different things as additional
duties, not full time duties. So I was a motorcycle cop, I was
a commercial vehicle and inspector.
(04:02):
I was on our honor go heard. I was a SWAT team member.
I was an explosive breacher on SWAT on our SWAT team started
our technology program because Iwas a pilot, brought drones into
it. So that was kind of the the
officer side. Then I decided it was time to
promote, so I promoted to Sergeant, spent a little bit of
time on the patrol, then went became the training coordinator,
which is ironically where I met my now current boss.
(04:25):
Once I met him, I was looking for a financial advisor.
My parents lived in Houston and I was using theirs.
Both my parents passed away. I was, that's a four and a half
hour drive and Zoom and streaming audio wasn't as big of
a thing. So started talking with Nick and
Nick became my advisor and he was just starting out the
starting out the company. So this is probably 20/17/2018
(04:49):
getting the company going and one of his, I'm one of his
single digit first clients. So I was happy at the Police
Department, but this opportunitypresented itself to go back to
flying. So I went to Nick and I says,
hey, can I do this with my pension?
And so I was going to have an earlier pension.
I was going to leave it 15 yearsand count my military time and
(05:10):
be able to obtain my pension. So we came up with this plan and
he said, Brian, you just, you know, you, you deployed to the
desert. He said you can do anything you
put your mind to for 18 months. Because I was looking to go to
the airlines to go fly for the regional airlines.
They were bringing in a lot of the helicopter guys.
They were figuring out that if they can just teach us not to
(05:31):
hover at the end of the runway and just keep flying the
airplane to the ground. We were, we were pretty, pretty
solid pilots. And so I, I did that.
I went to work for Envoy Air, which is based here in Irving
near Dallas Fort Worth Airport. Everything was going great.
So I retired in May of 2019 and we all know what happened in
March of 2020. That pretty much threw a
(05:51):
complete monkey rich in my plansbecause the plan was for me to
take my pension, but I was goingto take about a 50% pay cut and
pay. And so this now marked the
second time that I had taken a pay cut during a career change
that 18 months now was looking more like it was going to be
longer than 18 months. So I kind of I was getting close
(06:14):
to getting furloughed. I was 140 people away from being
furloughed. And so here I am got two kids in
college, got a wife. I'm, you know, the primary
breadwinner at the time and I'm like, you know, this isn't the,
this isn't looking too good. So the, the, with all the
military training and all the law enforcement training, I kind
of went into panic mode, called Nick up on my going, what am I
(06:36):
going to do? Started looking at a kind of a
financial coaching program that most people have probably heard
about. Nick says, well, I got a
different idea for you there. Have you ever thought of being a
financial advisor like one? No, I do not.
Never. I'm not the numbers guy.
Yeah, I said, remember, I'm the SWAT guy.
I take, you know, square pegs and I fit them into round holes.
(06:58):
So. But he told me.
He said, yeah, he said, think about it.
He said, you know, of all peoplewhy I think you're qualified to
do is because we put you on a plan to take that major pay cut
to live well within your means for 18 months.
Because that's when I would probably upgrade to captain,
which would put me right back toabout where I was at the Police
Department. And I said, OK, well, came home,
(07:20):
talked to my wife about it, and we decided to know this is a
pretty good opportunity. Let's go ahead and give it a
shot. And the best part is he said,
you can keep staying at the airlines.
You can do this part time. He said, the business is
growing. We need he said, and that's how
he started. His chief at his department
said, hey, you're teaching this class.
I want you to start teaching this to the recruits.
And then he saw how this now wasbecoming a career path change
(07:43):
for my boss. And he said, you know, do it
part time. Well, Nick told me the same
thing. He says it worked for me.
I'm I'm willing to let you work part time.
So I did it part time and I was getting fed up with the recovery
of COVID from the at the airlineside of it and started looking
for other options, which then got me back into the helicopter
world. And I went to work for APHI Air
(08:05):
Medical, which is a medical helicopter company, is based out
of Phoenix. And we had a, a base here at the
Denton hospital, which is about 15 minutes from my house.
So 25 years I've gone full circle.
I'm now back flying helicopters,working with the a nurse and a
medic loving life. The jokes always been between
(08:26):
first responders is you know that the cops are jealous of the
firemen and the firemen are jealous of the cops and or you
know, it's always that back and.Forth Yeah, the beef.
It's a it's and if you're in a department like I was, we had a
good beef with our fire department.
So we always had this great working relationship.
But everybody at the Police Department says, Brian, how do
you I like working at Phi. Am I going?
(08:47):
Well, it's pretty cool. I said, you know, I get to sit
around, you know, once my job's done getting aircraft ready, I
searched the Internet. I take a nap, I go eat, I do
whatever I want to do. I said, So all the jokes about
that we tell about the firemen. I'm basically a fireman now
because I'm now driving the ambulance and I do my tasks that
(09:08):
I've got to do at work. And then whenever I have my
downtime, I do whatever I want to do.
So so I was working a week on week off schedule.
It was, it was great. Worked a week of days, a week of
nights. And then I was doing financial
advising at the same time. But in reality, I was doing 2
full time jobs. And Nick kept saying hey, we're
growing, we're growing, we're growing.
(09:30):
He says I need you. And so I finally took the leap.
This July will be two years thatI've been full time with him.
And this past April was four years that I've been part time,
you know, so total time as a as a financial advisor now full
time working for financial cop out of the Fort Worth office.
(09:51):
That is amazing, all of that. I'm like so blown away.
Thank you first and foremost foreverything that you have done
and continue to do. Thank you.
Absolutely, absolutely. Jennifer, were you chiming in?
I see you. No, I I'm glad you didn't leave
anything out, Brian. You know, we kind of started
with what LED you to doing, you know, finance and then first
(10:13):
responders, and I think your resume is a good example of how
that happened. But talk a little bit about
obviously some life things kind of drove you in that direction,
but what interests you about thefinancial aspects of that kind
of change in your career? I wouldn't say it was a
struggle. It was.
It was hard seeing myself doing it.
(10:33):
Math is not my strong point. Numbers are not my strong point.
Really. I found that the connection was
is I'm a people person. You know, my we we joke and say
our pastor at church asked yearsago asked, he said, you talk
about fears and they said peoplethere are people that scared to
death of speaking in public and there's people that are scared
(10:54):
of going to the dentist. He says, so if you had the
choice to stand in front of 1000people and talk or go to the
dentist, what would you do? And my wife said meeting like on
I'll go to the dentist. And I turned around and looked
at the guy behind me and said, what's the topic?
And so, you know, So what it didwas it it got me specifically
in, in this realm because we do focus on working with first
responders. We work with other people as
(11:16):
well, families and, and friends of first responders that ask for
our assistance. But it was getting me back close
to the people that I enjoyed being around and that kind of
that taken care of. I mean, I've been an officer in
the military which I had to takecare of my troops then as a, as
an officer taking care of the public, but then as a
supervisor, taking care of the, the officers that were I was
(11:37):
responsible for. And one thing I did leave out of
my history is I had been a volunteer fireman and an EMT in
the past. So I have this history of public
service and public safety. And again, this just was an
opportunity to get me back around the people that I, I
enjoyed being around because oneof the things I learned at the
airlines was quality of life. That was one of the big phrases.
(12:00):
You know what bases you're basedout of?
Do you commute? Do you live in base?
All those types of the things. Well, because of COVID, I really
didn't have the quality of life.I really wasn't looking forward
to going to work. But once I was there and flying,
I was, I was happy. I didn't mind the three or four
day trips, but I just didn't have that personal connection
with people because I was flyingwith a different captain just
(12:21):
about every time that I flew, different flight attendants and
so there was really no consistency there.
This job was that opportunity tofill that void that I didn't
have when I was at the airlines that I had.
I was back around people with like minded ideas, understood
the struggles that they were dealing with because I've been
in those same situations. And then just the finance piece
(12:43):
was just, I think just the mechanism that allowed me to to
do that. I will say that the test was not
easy, but obviously I passed it.Say you did it.
Yeah. So I did it.
And so now I'm just it again. It's just sometimes it's really,
it's like a social event going to work because I get to talk to
people from other departments about different things that
they're doing and, you know. Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, well, I was a motorcycle cop whenever I was a
(13:05):
brand new officer. And then I'd promote, you know,
so just there, there's so much connectivity regardless of what
the agency is. And then from the fireside, I
can talk about the, you know, well, I was in a medical unit.
I understand the medical side ofit.
It just it gave me that opportunity to get back around
people and that I enjoyed being around.
Yeah, I have to be a therapist for a second.
It sounds like you really know yourself.
Like know like people is important to me and asking
(13:29):
yourselves a question about quality of life.
I love that. OK, I also.
Love how it circles back around to like connection, right?
In every topic that we have kindof brought on here, everybody
listens because we connect, right?
And so that's a beautiful way toto do that.
And I'm really excited because for Jennifer and myself, like
seeing so many first responders and specializing in it, the
(13:51):
financial aspect of it is something that comes up a lot
like whether it be the individual that I'm seeing or
even like couples counseling, like families, right?
Like that financial piece is always there.
And so I'm really excited to learn from you today and to see
kind of, you know, like to learn.
Because I'm like, I be like I. Need more information on all of
(14:12):
this. Well, one of the things that we
were kind of wondering is what unique financial challenges do
first responders face compared to general public sometimes or
is there a reason why we see it so much in our office?
You know, the, the one thing that I would say that that first
responders have that a lot of other folks don't have is they
don't have almost a built in overtime mechanism.
(14:34):
They have the opportunity to work overtime jobs and not have
to go out and learn a new task or learn something to do and get
a part time job that's not related to their career path
there. There are programs now that the
departments are using to where they post all the overtime jobs.
You go up and you sign up for these overtime jobs.
And because I'm back as a reserve at my Police Department
after five years of retirement, again, maybe because I enjoy
(14:57):
being around the people that I was around, I'm on that list.
I mean, I don't participate in it, but I'm on it.
And I see all these jobs that are coming up and it's like
going these these guys are making, you know, 50-60,
sometimes $80.00 an hour to do an overtime job.
And they're just out there. So they've got a tool when it
comes to the financial world to get themselves in a better
position. But the struggle is, is are they
(15:19):
truly using that tool to the best way that they can on the
civilian side, they just don't have the opportunity.
They have to go out and find a secondary job, you know, and on
their time off, they've got to now go learn something new or do
something new and maybe not makethe money that they really could
that the first responders had that opportunity for.
I appreciate that and that makesa lot of sense.
(15:40):
And I know a lot of officers, they work their butt offs and
those overtime opportunities. So what are some of the common
financial concerns or goals of first responders when they come
to you? We have a slide that we use in
our class. We talk about, you know, the
title of it is why is it important to talk about
financial planning or Wellness when we're talking about first
(16:03):
responders. And one of the, the biggest
things are, is that first responder, just the job itself
is inherently stressful because of the situations you're dealing
with, whether you're the police or fireside, just the situations
that you're dealing with, the danger that's associated with
it, the hours that you're dealing with.
So that's adding already a stress to the job itself.
(16:24):
So that's putting a struggle on them, you know, at work and then
also when they take it home. But because of that, just look
at some National Statistics, about 50% of marriages now are
ending in divorce. Well, when you when when you
throw in the first responder side, that number tends to bump
up somewhere between 60 and 75, depend upon what source you look
(16:47):
at. And so now you take that higher
level of stress, the higher potential for divorce.
And now let's throw the financial piece in it.
And I don't know the statistic on it, but I've always heard
finances is one of the biggest reasons for divorce because it's
causing the most stress in the household.
(17:08):
And so we see it a lot, you know, a lot of, a lot of people
are just struggling with managing their funds and their,
their finances and it's just causing extra undue stress.
And so when I teach my class there, we all teach very similar
the very similar topics during our class, but we have our own
little spin on it. I tend to lean in and focus more
(17:28):
on the Wellness side of it more than the planning side of it,
because if you take care of the Wellness part of it, the
planning is going to fall in place.
Can you define what like the financial Wellness is for
people? So when we look at it, we, we
don't want to live, you know, paycheck to paycheck.
You know, there's some of the stats that we talked about that,
(17:49):
you know, 80% of people couldn't, you know, are living
paycheck to paycheck. They, they don't have anything
extra at the end of the month orthey're short at the end of the
month. Not, I mean, again, going back
to the stress part, that just adds extra stress to it.
But then it goes into that overtime extra duty cycle is
that I've got more going out than I have coming in.
(18:11):
So now I have to go out and workmore so that I can cover the
shortage. But now I'm taking away from
time with family or I teach a lot of recruits.
And I have a picture of that I put up on the screen of this is
the, the, the Academy graduationstarter pack.
And it's a, it's a picture of a new vehicle.
It's a picture of a gun, tattoos, you know, just
(18:33):
whatever. But you buy that, you know,
these, especially these young officers, they're getting things
that they have a, a paycheck that they've never had before.
And these, these officers are getting paid well.
And so they go out and buy all these toys, then they don't have
enough money to pay for it, so they have to work overtime.
And now they don't get to enjoy the toys that they bought
because they're always working overtime.
(18:55):
So it becomes this vicious cyclethat they, they, they can't get
out of. And sometimes they just get
stuck and then they, they have to reach out.
And and that's what we try to try to do with the first
responders that we work with, istry to break that cycle so that
they can at least start moving in a positive direction with
their finances so that we can work on what is it, make sure
(19:15):
stress level come down at least it, you know, from the financial
piece of it. And how they can enjoy the
things that they're doing or spend the money that they're
making on doing fun stuff instead of constantly having to
pay somebody else for things that you're not getting to use.
Yeah. I definitely have seen that with
clients. And it sounds like you might be
kind of a marriage counselor too, Brian.
Is that something that's happening?
(19:37):
Well, and we always joke in the law enforcement world that, you
know, yeah, when you get your license to be a peace officer,
you pretty much got a you're you're in a class of, you know,
financial or or not financial, but marriage counseling one O 1
because of the disturbances thatyou go to.
And yeah, so it's you do a little bit of all of it.
Well, and how do you balance that because I definitely have
(20:01):
seen first responders who are about putting the food on the
table and are taking those overtime.
Positions I think with a lot of integrity of saying like this is
about providing for my family and then what that does cost at
times in terms of badly hearing about relationships the end and
(20:23):
my partner was never home. They were always picking up
overtime or they work these crazy hours and that loneliness
for a spouse. Is there some, I don't use the
word advice, but what are your thoughts about that or if you
see something like that that shows up in your financial
planning? So when we sit down with folks,
we run through basically an interrogation of, of their
(20:45):
finances because I, I need to know all the details just like I
need to know what happened on the family disturbance call or
what the fire department needs to know when they show up on a
cardiac call. They need to know all the
details that go to it. And So what we have to try to do
a lot of times is we got to stopthe bleeding, leaning towards
the fireside of it, but it, it works for us as well.
(21:05):
I mean, we've got to stop the bleeding.
We got to find the source of what the problem is.
And then once we can figure thatout, then we can start working
on skills and techniques to slowthe bleeding or to stop the
bleeding altogether. And then to start repairing the
wounds. We like to sit down and do a
couple of meetings with prospective clients.
We asked them, do you First off,do you do a budget?
(21:28):
And nine out of nine out of 10 times, the answer is I usually
get a chuckle. I, I don't, I don't get a yes or
no. I just get a laugh.
So I get that. No, I don't, I don't do that.
Or I get the, I know about wheremy money's going, but I don't
know exactly how much I'm spending.
And so the first step and everything that we do with folks
(21:49):
is we've got to get a budget established.
We've got to figure out what's coming in, what's going about.
That's your greatest wealth building tool that you have is
the budget. Everything goes in and through
the budget and it's going to allow you to accomplish the
goals that you have financially and and personally and
professionally just because you you now have a path figuring out
(22:10):
that budget, telling them sit down with a piece of paper and
pull out your a joke and say bank statement.
So I date myself, but pull up your computer and see where did
I spend all my money this month?They find out that man, I eat
out a lot or I spend a lot of money on stuff that I really
don't need. So it it's about building that
first strategy of we've got to figure out how to stop the
(22:33):
bleeding using that budget and then building from there.
I'm just like soaking this all in because I'm thinking about,
you know, another big thing we talk about a lot on this show is
a family aspect of it. And it's like a child of a first
responder. I saw my dad kind of go through
these exact things, especially when my parents got divorced.
Was that like, he worked? I almost didn't see him for days
(22:53):
on end because he would be working all this overtime to try
to kind of overcompensate for now being alone in the house and
taking care of kids and, you know, like having to do that by
himself. And so it's very interesting to
me just that notion of of all that kind of like that family
dynamic playing an impact on thefinancial aspect of everything.
(23:15):
It, it does. And it's funny because I, I go
through like I did at the very beginning.
I in my, my class, I show the here's me in the Army and then I
progressed to the Police Department.
I went through there. But my last slide is a picture
of my parents and I tell them I said that this is where we learn
a lot of our, our skills or lackof skills.
I'm an only child. I grew up.
(23:36):
I, I was very blessed. I did not have to take any
student loans. Mom and dad was able to
basically fund me going through college.
I didn't want for much I didn't do like kids do now to where
they're playing baseball and soccer and all these other I, I,
I had to pick one and it, it waskind of the big things was
baseball or Boy Scouts and I picked baseball and I stuck with
(23:58):
it and that's all I ever did. But then after my mom got sick
and got diagnosed with cancer, she actually did what we what we
can, we can talk about here in alittle while of a of a tool that
we use. But she wrote down everything on
a piece of paper because my dad was the go to work guy.
He worked shift work. He was wasn't in wasn't a first
responder, but he worked shift work.
(24:19):
And so he went to work, he made money, he came home, he took
care of things around the house,but he had zero clue about the
finances of what went on with the house.
Well, mom passes away and now dad has no clue.
I'm now jumping in because my dad was not technologically
advanced at all. And so figuring out how to to
(24:39):
get their bills paid. What I learned was mom and dad
had a lot of debt. And I now know that that was
probably one of the stressors that I just felt in the house on
top of the fact that my dad worked shift work.
And you know, that was hard on him.
But just that financial stuff islike, man, they had so many
credit cards because they were from that era where credit cards
(25:01):
first started coming out. And hey, do this, do this, do
this. And it's like, I mean, I could
go to just about any store and pull out a card for that store
out of mom and dad's wallet. Instead of maybe having one card
and doing it all on one. They fell victim to the
marketing tool that came out talking about using credit
cards, using that as that dynamic, the the being gone and,
(25:23):
you know, not being not being present.
If we can find ways of having people where they don't have to
work as much and they can actually be at home, maybe the
marriage situations will be a lot better.
So. Well, and I think that you're
right. I mean, we had a side
conversation about that. I think that, you know, we, we
(25:43):
do what we know. And I, I think being really
transparent, I, I'm glad that for you, Brian, you just sensed
that there was some stress. Like I had definitely heard
stress about finances and maybe two people that raised me
weren't on the same page about finances.
And we take that information andwhen we're young and that can
(26:04):
really be our road map. I'll say for me, I know in
getting married, it's like, I don't want to fight about money.
I don't want to fight about money.
I don't want to fight about money.
So let's not talk about money. Well, that's not, that's not,
that doesn't work. No, let me tell everybody that
does not work. And what it really does is that
you have to kind of have some ofthose hard conversations.
(26:24):
And some of that is what do I know about money?
Where did I learn about money? I learned that money equals
conflict. Well, I don't want conflict.
So I'm not going to deal with that.
And and it's not that it's let'swalk through this, let's talk
about it, let's be on the same page.
I do love the aspect and I thinkit's opposites attract that
there's a spender and there's a saver and you guys, yes, which
(26:48):
one I am. But it's also about, well, let's
have compromise in that we shouldn't, we shouldn't save
every single penny and not enjoyanything in the present.
And we shouldn't blow it all right now so we don't have
anything on a rainy day. It's trying to find that
balance. And so when you're having those
conversations, besides the budget, which is great, but even
(27:09):
coming to talk about a budget, how do you work through maybe
some of those conflicts if there's a spender and a saver?
And that happens quite often, you know, and for various
reasons, you know, they, they didn't have anything growing up
and now they've got money that they could spend and now they
want to buy the things that theynever had when they were growing
up, right? That, I mean, that's very
common. A lot of times it's also 2
(27:31):
income families and I, I see a lot of 22 income families that
are result. They've come together after a
divorce. And so now they, they're keeping
their finances separate because they got burned in the past.
And so they're very cautious with their money.
But the biggest thing about all of it when we're trying to sort
through that is I'm not telling you not, not to have fun and not
(27:53):
to spend money. But we got to deal with the
bigger issue right now, which a lot of time is that consumer
debt, because we're paying so much money and interest right
now on credit cards and and car loans that it's going to be hard
for you to truly enjoy what you want to do in the future unless
we can address what's currently right here.
And so a lot of times we'll tellthem, hey, this is not going to
(28:15):
be easy. This is this is going to be
something that's going to take discipline.
It's not going to happen overnight, but I'll tell them
there are videos that you can goonto YouTube and you can watch
about people that are, you know,saying, Hey, we were 180,000 in
debt and in 18 months for now debt free.
Well, the reason they did that is because they sat down, they
(28:35):
looked at what their spending habits were.
They changed their spending habits.
They became very disciplined, started that might it's a change
of mindset is what is the need and what does it want?
Right, you know, and so I want anew vehicle.
I don't need one, but I want one, but I don't, but then I
also then turn around and go, but I also don't want another
(28:56):
car payment because my vehicle'spaid for it.
You know, it's, it's a lot of times it's like coaching and we
do a lot of that with, with our prospective clients.
I mean, they may never, they maynot even be a client for 10 or
15 years, but they're, they needcoaching.
They need somebody to, to show them the tools that they did
either didn't learn growing up or that they, you know, they
(29:18):
need to be reinvigorated. Maybe somebody just to kind of
hold them accountable because I'll tell them I can go as an
advisor or a coach to you. I can either go very little
pressure. I can go extremely hard
pressure. And I can be calling you every
month saying, hey, tell me aboutwhat you're doing.
But usually what happens is somewhere in between is you know
(29:38):
what we what we'll give them theplan and we'll say, here's what
we recommend that you do. And we'll give them, we'll look
at all their finances and say, OK, well, you've got money in
savings. Why don't you pay off one of the
credit cards? That's one less debt that you
have to worry about. You know, we try to build in
that debt snowball mentality of put your, your debts in lion
from the, the smallest balance all the way up to the highest.
(30:00):
Don't worry about what the monthly payment is and dump
everything you can towards that smallest one.
Then you get rid of it. And then our, our human brain
likes that Atta boy or Atta girland says, hey, now we've
succeeded. Well, now we just take that
money, we roll it into the next one and we just keep doing that
and it's that snowball effect. It just keeps getting bigger and
bigger. And that's how these folks are,
you know, 880, two, $100,000 in debt and then at 18 months are
(30:23):
out of debt. But they made a big sacrifice on
we're not going to go out and eat all the time.
We're not buying new cars, we'renot going on vacations.
We're covering the needs that weneed to take care of and not
much else. But on the budget thing for
those spenders and savers mentality, when I was going
through this, I was not a budgeter when I first started
(30:45):
working with Nick. I mean, and I, and my excuse was
one that was very common. I'm covering all my expenses.
I, I really don't need a budget,but Nick got me on a budget.
We used an online tool. It's a very basic, simple tool.
It's focuses on budget. And he said, so here's what I
need you to do. I need you to create two extra
(31:06):
lines in your budget from something that you don't already
have. And I'm like, what's that?
He goes, I need you to create a Brian allowance and a Melissa
allowance. He says, so dedicate a little
bit of money for you and a little bit of money for your
wife. And that's free to spend.
However, as long as you've covered your bills, use that to
spend whatever. But if you factor it into your
budget, you don't feel guilty about spending it.
(31:29):
And, and on the budget things, alot of people just think of
budgets like it's a, it's a dirty word.
You know, I don't say that word around me.
But in reality is if you do it consistently and get focused on
it and, and really stick to it to find out you can spend,
actually spend more money with less guilt.
The example I always use is if you budget $500.00 for going out
(31:50):
to eat the end of the month, you've only spent 350 bucks out
of your budget and there's no other big need.
Why don't you go out and have a really nice dinner?
Yeah, because you budgeted for it so right.
I'm loving this. This is amazing.
And what my brain keeps going back to is like just so the
education piece, right? Like I often like it goes back
(32:12):
to that too of just not being informed, right.
And I hear, I heard you say earlier in the show that you
guys you speak at, did you say at the Academy?
I teach most of the academies here locally.
There's a couple of regional academies.
So we get to talk to a lot of different departments and
sheriff's departments. And, you know, every once in a
while we'll have a fire department firefighter in there
that's going to get become an arson investigator.
(32:34):
But yeah, so that's what I I tend to teach a lot, but we
teach all the chiefs of police in the state of Texas has gone
through the class. This, this was Nick's, this was
Nick's baby when he first, this is what started the company was
the teaching side of it. And if I counted the numbers
right, I believe between me and Mike, who's one of our other
advisors and Nick, 24 states, I think Nick's been to most of
(32:59):
them. Mike and I tend to stay a little
bit more local. The joke was always that Nick
flies more than I do whenever I was a pilot because he was
traveling so much. I think we're over 40,000.
The last number I heard over 40,000 first responders or first
responder families that have satthrough this version of our 4
hour class. It may only be a 2 hour class
(33:19):
kind of condensed, but our classis designed to be a four hour
class. And I mean, it's the educational
piece because you don't know what you don't know.
And the tips that we're going through in our class is the how
to get to where you want to be. You know, if you don't have a
plan, it's just a wish. And so if you can figure out
where you want to be, we'll helpyou figure out a plan to do
(33:40):
that. And we're, we were all
instructors in, in the Police Department.
And so we have that heart of a teacher.
And so we like to sit down and, and tell folks if there's any
questions, if we're, whether we're managing money for you or
not, drill us on those questions.
And if we don't know the answer to the question, we're going to
go dig it up and find it becauseit's education for us as well.
(34:01):
But we want you to understand why we want you to do the things
that we're doing, because if youdon't know what the purpose
behind it is, you're probably not going to follow through with
it. Yeah, absolutely.
I love that heart of a teacher. That's beautiful.
So this is something I don't understand at all and maybe and
maybe people in a pension systemunderstand it more than I do.
(34:23):
What are conversations that you have around pensions and 1st
responders? The state of Texas has several
different versions of pensions. A lot of the cities have a
municipal retirement system. The the school district has the
teachers retirement system, but their school resource officers
sometimes will, you know, they're the ISD.
Police departments fall underneath those.
(34:46):
The county and the sheriff's departments have a county
pension system. And then cities like Fort Worth
and Dallas have their own, you know, pension.
Some of those larger cities havetheir own pensions.
One thing that we always tell folks is that this is the one
job that you're never going to get fired from.
So if you meet the requirements of your pension, you're always
going to have this amount or this paycheck coming in at the
(35:06):
end of the month. The ultimate goal is, is when
you retire that you have enough money in your pension to cover
your expenses. But a lot of times that's not
the true case. The pensions are not they,
they're not designed to fully replace your income.
And then some of the departmentshave opted out of Social
Security and have gone with someother investment tools to to
(35:28):
replace that as a secondary way of doing it.
We look at that pension and say is it going to be enough?
Well, for one way that it's definitely probably not going to
be enough as if you're carrying all this extra debt.
So the ultimate goal is, is to be what we consider consumer
debt free, which is anything other than your mortgage.
All that's gone. Those are all depreciating value
(35:50):
and depreciating asset type expenses.
And if you can get out of your mortgage and have it paid off by
the time you retire, you might be able to live on your pension.
But the problem is, is that you might have to stay 20253035
years. And if you're like me, starting
at 33 and 30 years, I don't knowif I'd want to be a street cop,
(36:12):
you know, at 63 years of age. I know there's guys that do it,
yeah, and, and girls that do it.But man, it's, that's a long
career of all the stresses that we've talked about, just the the
stuff that you see. So the pension is definitely a
great tool and a lot of a lot offirst responders, they'll
retire, draw their pension and do like me and they'll go off to
(36:32):
another career. Well, the, the beautiful goal of
that is, is if that other job ispaying you the same or better
and you've got extra money and we'll use that to pay off any
debt that they still have once their debts done building up
their savings. So they have that emergency
fund. If something comes up, I can do
it. I believe the statistic right
now is about 66% of the people in the United States could not
(36:54):
afford to go and pull $1000 cashout for an emergency.
We'll walk them through buildingup that emergency fund.
Now they're debt free. They got that emergency fund.
Use that, that pension check that you get.
Let's just start building additional wealth through your
retirement so you can help supplement your second job that
you your second career path thatyou've chosen.
Yeah, I think retirement's a really big thing for us in this
(37:17):
world. And even yes, on this podcast, a
lot of our first responders are are talking about retirement and
what that looks like. And how do you, you know, like
what is there anything that you say to people in terms of first
responder world like even in theAcademy, right, but like
thinking about retirement in ways to set themselves up
successfully for that? Yeah, I tell them, I said it
(37:38):
doesn't matter if you are starting today or you're
retiring tomorrow. It's never too late to start
planning for the future. Especially what I try to hit
with those young guys and girls in The Academy Is OK, this is
the first big boy, big girl check that you've maybe ever had
and I'll do that. You know the compounding
interest discussion. Do you realize that if you were
(37:58):
to put X number of dollars in and we show them some scenarios
that if you were to take, I think one of the scenarios is
about a 200 and something dollarcar interest payment that you
would have been making if you would have invested that from
age 18 to 65, it comes out to like $3.7 million.
Oh. My gosh.
Now, that's a long period of time, but if you got $3.7
(38:21):
million, I think you could probably go buy whatever car you
wanted. You can go whatever vacation you
want to go on. But yeah, we just have to steal
it at the very beginning. Hey, if if you will just get the
discipline established early in your career to where this is now
becomes, you know, it, it's you just do it.
You don't even think about it. Money comes out, it goes to your
retirement. Don't even think about it.
(38:43):
Down the road is where you're really going to reap the
benefits of. But for those folks that are,
you know, towards the end of their career, they'll come to us
and they'll ask us, Hey, I wanted to, I do a lot of this
is, hey, I just want to see where I'm at when it comes to
retirement. Because what I'll do with them
is I'll take their pension projection and I'll take their
current pay stub and we'll do a apples to apples comparison.
(39:05):
We'll go in there and we'll take, OK, this is what you're,
you're currently paying and get what you're currently getting
paid. But we'll start taking out all
the things that you would not becontributing to anymore, making
the assumption that you're just going to retire and not work at
all. We're going to take out your
retirement contribution to your pension.
We're going to take out the police association fund.
You're going to take out your different little things, your
(39:26):
Social Security, your Medicare, all those, all those deductions
that's going to lower your and now give you that adjusted
income. Now I can compare it to your
pension and then I'll run some numbers and I'll tell them, say,
OK, with your current pension that you're looking at based on
your current adjusted income, you're going to be making
whatever percentage of your income.
So that means one of two things.Either you're going to have to
(39:48):
reduce your standard of living in retirement, which I don't
think you want to do, or you've got to go find a job that at
least brings home this amount ofmoney to keep you at the same
point that you are right now. And so with the debt
elimination, you know, that allows them to have a little
more freedom. Of whether or not it's time for
them to retire and some of them will look at it because five
(40:09):
years will make a huge difference on what their pension
is. They may look at it and go, OK,
well, I can honestly work another five years and I'm going
to work really hard to get rid of what little debt I have left.
Then I know that when it comes time to retire because at least
in the, the municipal retirementsystem, I can have them run
projections as far out anything more than a couple years isn't
going to be exact. But I mean, it's going to give
(40:31):
a, give a good litmus test of can I do this or not Helps him
make the decision. Man, maybe I need, I need to
stay a little bit longer or hey,I'm in a pretty decent spot and
I've got this, I've been workingin criminal investigations and
I'm specialized in this. And there's this outside
civilian company that is kind ofbeen, you know, courting me to,
(40:51):
to come work for him. I got a friend that's starting
up, wants me to come work with the business that he's at.
What we'll do those type of analysis to, to figure out, hey,
is now the time to retire? Do we need to stay a little bit
longer? That's awesome.
I was a young person once and got a class like yours, Brian
and I did not listen. Man.
I could have had those millions by now, but I was.
(41:12):
Sitting here like oh boy on this.
I need to get on this like for real, right?
It just opens up so many right When you said that, I'm like.
Oh my gosh, Yep, Yep. If the earlier you start, the
better off you're going to be. But again, it's never too late
to start. No, I've got my act together now
but my 20s, what a wash. But so tell me in terms of this
(41:38):
work, like tell me some of like the impact and as a people
person who enjoys connections, can you talk a little bit about
one of those real successes of getting to see people come and
take your class and and unlike me, follow your directions.
You know, because, because I've only been doing it, haven't been
doing it full time for less thantwo years.
(41:59):
I don't have one big success story.
It's like going that's my go to story of like this is the person
that I completely turned them around.
But I've had a lot of little ones and I had one just the
other day. My agency has me to come back
because I teach all the academies in the Metroplex.
Well, that's where the officers from my department go to.
So they got the class there, butthen they come back to the
(42:21):
department. They do six weeks worth of in
service, but we're also hiring lateral officers so they don't
have to go through the Academy. So the trainer guys are saying,
hey, can you come in and teach this class again?
Well, I had the guys the other day in class and one of them,
two of them were from the Academy class and he had to ask
me some questions after class and he goes, hey, you know, paid
off the car. How am I going?
There you go. So it's those little success
(42:42):
stories because I mean, you could tell he was you felt good
about it. You know it's.
Like I've. Got, I've got this burden
because I tell people, I said, you know, I, I never carried a
lot of consumer debt. I wasn't one of those $200,000
in debt kind of guys, but I just, I had a couple car
payments and you know, little balance on a credit card, but I
had to get rid of all of it. I said.
But when I wrote that last checkfor that last car payment and
(43:06):
there was a $4000 check and wrote it, I felt like somebody
lifted a building off of me because now it's like the only
thing I have to worry about now is my monthly expenses and my
mortgage. And so it gave me a lot more
freedom. But yeah, I've had had several
of those folks from the academies do that.
But probably the bigger piece ofit, too, is that guys and girls
that are close to retirement been eligible.
(43:26):
They're beyond the eligibility. So now they're they're just
trying to figure out is now a good time.
And then you sit down with them and go, you know, you're almost
at that point to where you're almost paid paying the city to
come to work. And they're like going really?
I'm like going, yeah, you can actually retire now.
I'm not going full. That's great.
And so they start looking at it going.
I love the job, but I'm just tired of getting up at 4:00 in
(43:47):
the morning to be on day shift at 6:00, you know, So it's a
it's little things like that. It's just those little, little
small victories that are probably the, the cool part
about it because you know, that you had a piece in giving them
the direction to, to get to where they're going.
Or when I sit down, we do annualmeetings with folks and I going
my first question with them is, you know, hey, how are things
(44:08):
going on? What are the updates?
Let's talk about how things are going.
And they said, you know, hey, wehad a little hiccup because, you
know, really cool thing called life happened.
And so we had to address that issue.
But we got right back on it. We're right back the following
the plan because that's how we write our plan.
Do step one, move to Step 2. When Step 2 is done, move to
Step 3. But if something happens in the
(44:28):
mix, go back to the previous step or go back to that.
You had to take on debt. All right, well, we talked about
throwing everything towards the debt and getting ready to OK,
well, I had to buy a car. I didn't have enough money saved
up to pay cash for it, but I hadto take a loan.
All right, well, we did it once before, let's do it again.
Your car payments $400.00 a month.
Let's make a $800 car payment toit.
Let's work a little bit of that extra overtime.
(44:50):
Now we're going to do it for a short period of time to get you
back to where you're now debt free and you're now back into
that wealth building stage. Flexibility happens and it's
nice when you see those people that have embraced it and said,
you know, I can see myself down the road.
We'll ask him at the class who got into this job to be a
millionaire and I'll have him stand up and I'll say if you
(45:10):
thought you got in this career to become a millionaire,
continue standing in and everybody sits down because they
don't think they're going to be a millionaire.
I said, but think about a 20 year career and how much money
is going from the HR department to finance through your
paycheck. You could be a millionaire.
It's your spending habits that are going to allow you to be
that millionaire down the road. So when they embrace that and
(45:30):
they finally realize, I can see what you're talking about.
It makes sense now that light bulb moment comes on and then
they just continue driving towards it.
It's it's that's, that's the cool part about it.
Well, and I feel very fortunate how, I mean, I don't help people
with finances by any means, but have had clients in really dark
places, stressful places and finance being a part of that,
(45:52):
working with people who have thefinancial stress.
And again, I don't help them with their finances, but when
they get to that place of like, Oh my goodness, I finally got
out of that debt or I paid my last car payment.
I love celebrating that with clients.
So that has to be so rewarding and a part of your job for sure.
Can you just go one more time interms of what you guys offer?
(46:14):
We do teach at the academies, teach a lot of local
departments. And I've gone and done some roll
call briefings, you know, just alittle 1520 minute thing with
officers that I've met throughout the years that are
now supervisors. And they're like going, I run
into them someplace and they go,hey, you know, we can't afford
the budget doesn't allow us to pay you guys to come do it.
I said, can you come do this? I'm like, yeah, I'm out, Come to
a 1520 minute roll call briefingwith you and just kind of do a
(46:38):
very condensed version of what we do.
But we have an online Academy that is basically, we've, we've
taken it and created what we call the 8 phases of financial
training and what those steps are.
It's, it's very, it's, it's pretty simple.
It starts out with budgeting, building, and then Step 2 is
building a temporary emergency fund.
Then we go to the debt snowball,getting rid of the consumer
(46:59):
debt, then build up now a fully funded emergency fund.
Once we're debt free, now we start really getting hard and
heavy on investing for future retirement goals, saving up and
investing for the future or vacations or cars or college,
those types of things. The biggest one is paying off
the mortgage. That's usually the last step in
the process. And then the last one is just
(47:21):
building wealth like crazy. So that's a technique that we be
that we use. That's kind of the path that we
write our plans in is to go through those steps in that way.
So Nick is gone and has done ourvirtual Academy, which are these
eight steps and he's done them in 20-30 minute segments.
And then we're, we're looking ateven adding on additional ones
(47:41):
to talking about Will and estateplanning, which is one of the
very first things which I probably probably should have
started this out. And for your listeners, if you
don't have a will and the, the living will document, I highly
encourage you to do it. A lot of police associations do
it. A lot of the fire associations
don't. But I mean, it's a basic will is
(48:01):
in the grand scheme of thing is relatively inexpensive.
But I would much rather you makedecisions for your family and
not the courts making decisions for what's going to happen with
your. Listen, I am not a first
responder and I have a will and a state.
I think if you're a parent, you should have those things.
I feel very fortunate that I, I don't know who intervened to
(48:24):
make that happen. I I think that's great advice.
Not just in Texas, but I mean, again, like I said, Nick has
traveled to and and Mike has been out of state.
I'm going to a couple places later on this year, but we'll
actually come to the department departmental budget as part of
their, you know, their training for the year.
And then they just work with ourdirector of client relations to
(48:44):
figure out what's the pricing for us to come up there and
actually teach a class. But another resource that is out
there is police, Police 21 Academy and Fire one Academy, a
lot of departments and are paying for these resources and,
and our financial class is on that platform.
So it's out there. We recently became a national
(49:06):
business partner with the Fraternal Order of Police on the
national level. So we're doing a lot of the FOP
conferences, either state or regional or national
conferences, going and teaching our class and, and doing, doing
basically what I'm doing at the Academy.
We're just doing it on a, on a bigger scale, you know,
nationally. So a lot of resources that are
(49:27):
out there and, you know, we'll, you know, for the, for the show
notes, we'll, we'll definitely, you know, give our social media
links that they can, any of the listeners can listen, can look
out, reach out to and on Facebook, Instagram and just our
website alone to get some additional information on the if
that's something that their department might be interested
in. Absolutely.
I think that's great informationand I'm glad you're willing to
share it with. Us yes, thank you so much.
(49:50):
I think I've I'm even like I have all these notes and ideas
in my head already too. I'm like, this is such powerful
things that we need to talk about.
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Brian, is there anything else? Yeah, I was going to say one
thing talking about the website,we do have tool that I was
selling that like my mom used. She just she just wrote
everything out. But we call it the legacy go
(50:11):
back and it's a it's a 16 page PDF.
I think it's 16 pages that you can go through and it's a lot of
departments already do this, at least on the police side of, you
know, if you're injured in the line of duty or you're killed in
the lot of duty, who do we notify?
And you know, who is your companion officer and what type
of for your, for your service? Do you want to be in uniform?
Are you a veteran? All, all of those types of
(50:32):
things that go into that. But we've created one on our
side as well. And it starts out with a cover
letter of what's the intent and purpose of it.
And it goes through and it lists, you know, this is where
my will and estate planning documents are.
These are all of my bank accounts and my passwords and,
you know, account numbers and balances and, you know, it's
anything that you want to put inthere.
(50:53):
But on just about every one of our pages, there's a, a yellow
little rectangle at the bottom that says like, you know,
financial cop legacy go bag. You can click on it and download
it for free. We're not going to spam people.
We're not going to sell your e-mail address.
That's good to know. But but it's a tool that's out
there and it just gives your family something if like the
(51:14):
situation that I was in, you know, had I not had that, I
would probably still be looking for money.
And my mom passed away over 15 years ago.
I'd probably still be looking for stuff for her to have bill
collectors calling me going, hey, are y'all going to pay
this? So it is a tool that's out
there. And then just just information
of what we can provide. And even though we're Texas
based, I've got clients in, I'vegot a client North Dakota,
(51:35):
Wisconsin, Florida and in Indiana.
Take Hoosiers as clients. Our ultimate mission, I mean,
more of a concept so much than something that's written down.
Our ultimate goal is that every first responder nationwide is
going to be able to retire when they want to stay around at the
job, if they love the job, but not stick around because they
(51:58):
have to because they're not in afinancial position to be able to
retire. So that's our ultimate goal.
Our goal is to take care of first responders.
That's our passion. If we can help anyone out,
that's what we're here for. It makes me so happy that I was
able to corner you and make you come on this podcast, I mean.
You're just so knowledgeable andgood like and it's just so heart
warming. This is exactly like I.
(52:18):
Oh, this is horrible. People who love this population
and will do anything, you know, like you do it in this aspect,
but you're also a first responder, you know what I mean?
So like it's incredible and we're so I'm so thankful that
you're here today. Yeah, you know, I'm, I'm a I'm a
big believer in things happen for reason.
And Jennifer, you and I were both not on social media and
(52:39):
ended up at the wrong location for the training that day.
Yes. You know, and it happened for a
reason. Exactly.
It was meant to be. Well, thank you so much for your
time and I'm excited for our listeners to follow up if they
have questions and things like that to reach out to Financial
Cop, then Ashley, you want to take us away.
Absolutely, Brian, thank you so much again.
(53:01):
And we will post the things thatwe can on our social media and
help spread the word. We just like to always end with
our famous line is that when thecall hits home, Jennifer and I
are always here for you guys. So thank you so much.
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