The Money Advantage – Simple, Fun and Doable. Rachel Marshall and Bruce Wehner

Bob: [00:01:00] Welcome to another episode of Money You Should Ask. I’m your host, Bob Wheeler. And in this episode, we’re going to explore, question, examine, converse, dig deep, expose, laugh and cry about the money beliefs, money blocks, and life challenges of our next guest. Turn up the volume, listen, learn and laugh.

Well today, our next guests are Rachel Marshall and Bruce Wehner from The Money Advantage, a team of financial freedom architects for wealth creators. Rachel is the co-founder chief financial educator and content strategist for The Money Advantage, where she is known for making money, simple, fun, and doable.

She’s currently writing a book about her near death experience and how it became the springboard for her family’s multi general legacy. It’s a mouthful. Let me just say it again. She’s currently writing a book about her near death experience and how it became the springboard for her. Family’s multi-generational legacy of more than money.

Bruce is the lead advisor and chief cashflow strategist of The Money Advantage where he designs and communicates the individualized solutions that help their clients increase cashflow and financial control. Bruce leans on his experience as an educator and varsity head coach, lifelong entrepreneur, and real estate investor. Bruce and Rachel are also the cohosts of The Money Advantage podcast, the popular business and personal finance show. Bruce and Rachel, thank you so much for joining us,

Rachel: [00:01:28] Awesome, Bob, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Bruce: [00:01:32] Thanks Bob.

Bob: [00:01:33] So I have to ask you is money really simple, fun, and doable. And if it is, why aren’t more folks doing it and having fun.

Rachel: [00:01:42] Oh my goodness. That is the best question of all time. I’m going to say yes, money is simple, fun and doable. I think we just have so many things that we think about that can be overwhelming.

And I do not need to say them because everyone already knows. So simple, fun and doable. Let’s be in control and have as much cashflow as possible. If we just remember those two words that kind of summarizes everything that helps somebody do things right and build financial freedom.

Bob: [00:02:10] And what about the people that are sitting there saying, “yeah, well, I don’t have a lot of money, so I can’t get to simple, fun and doable. I can’t build wealth because there’s just not that much. I’m just going to have to wait for another lifetime or wait the lottery.

Bruce: [00:02:22] I think as I looked at your previous guests, which were, were fantastic by the way. I think people get in their own ways and they have this, they have this idea of how their life is supposed to be.

And, and we’re in a McDonald’s drive through type of mentality, now. It has to happen now. And what people don’t realize is most successful people have delayed gratification and they have lived well below their means. To obtain that. And they, unfortunately, our mindset is, is that we have to actually be envious of those people and oh, they must have gotten lucky to get in that position.

They don’t, they don’t see the delayed gratification of living out of their car or are living on ramen noodles or so on…  I’m not talking about for the rest of your life, but I’m talking about delaying that gratification. How many times do we see? And I have this with my own financial advisory clients, you know, something doesn’t go well in their life.

I had one lady that went through a divorce and before I talked to her just a week later, she had already bought an $80,000 car. Because she said she was feeling bad and she thought she deserved it. And so these are the things that go through our minds all the time. So I think that is one of the things that when Rachel says it’s simple, fun, and doable, it’s simple because it’s, it’s really about cashflow in cashflow out.

It’s fun if you allow it to be fun with your mindset, and if you do the simple and the fun. That it’s very doable because you, you are actually reaching the goals that you want to reach by keeping them simple and doable.

Rachel: [00:04:11] Yeah. And I’ll just add real quick on that. I was reading the other day. I was trying to think who I heard this from, but they said it’s hard to struggle.

Or they said it’s hard to become successful. You have to go through hard things in order to become successful. But they said it’s even harder to struggle. That was the, that was the line. And it was Craig Ballantine. And it was, it really struck me because I think so many times we say, you know, it’s too hard to figure out how to build a successful business.

It’s too hard to figure out how to 10 X my income. I mean, that sounds like astronomical. Sometimes it’s too hard to figure out how to save more of my money. It’s too hard to do these things, but what’s harder. Is living a sucky, terrible life because we’re struggling. So it’s all a mindset.

Bob: [00:04:54] Yeah, absolutely.

I think so many of us life is moving so fast. It doesn’t make sense that if I slow down, I actually move forward. That’s true. It’s like, no, no, no. I have to keep spinning. And, and we’re, we’re, we may be moving fast, but we’re not maybe moving efficiently. So true. I’m curious for both of you. When did you learn delayed gratification?

Did that start in childhood or did that come later? Because this is, this is a real big thing. And of course, I always love to talk about the Stanford marshmallow study when you talk about delayed gratification. And I don’t even like marshmallows, that much.

Rachel: [00:05:29] Same.

Bruce: [00:05:30] I’ll take both of yours.. I love them.

Bob: [00:05:31] So, what would you say?

Rachel: [00:05:33] Yeah, so I would say for me, I grew up in a house that we didn’t necessarily have a lot, but we didn’t have not that much either. And I didn’t really think anything about money, to be honest, I just grew up thinking, well, you know, I’m going to marry somebody who will handle everything and I’ll just not really have to think about it.

I did marry someone, then we’re in a situation where I’m like, Oh, well, he didn’t solve all the problems. It wasn’t like, oh, just getting married, fixed everything. Oh, I probably should think about this a little bit more and oh, by the way, what I want out of life is way bigger than where I’m at right now.

And I need to take personal responsibility. I think delayed gratification. I mean, I grew up on a farm. I, we raised horses. I was a barrel raced and did a lot of stuff on the farm and you have to have something that you’re working towards. With a long-term perspective. And so even though it wasn’t entrepreneurship at a young age, necessarily, it was this idea that I have to work for something.

And if I really want to win, and if I want to go to state and I want to win it state, which I never did, but I did go to state and forage and I had like the eighth place ribbon and I was so excited, but if you’re going to do something and reach a milestone, you have to go through the training and the stuff that nobody sees, which is super boring and

not, there’s no applause, there’s no fanfare. And I think that’s where I learned that piece.

Bruce: [00:06:56] So delayed gratification for me, Bob, I think started when I first got my first real job at age 12. Now, now people would cringe now people would cringe, but in 1975, that wasn’t that big of a deal. And I, and I grew up in a small town.

And what I, what I realized, I also grew up in a German family that you could not find a non German on my family tree. And so Germans are not the, you know, the most you know, caring people are so caring. So there were my dad, did, he never talked to me about money. Matter of fact, it was like this big taboo.

He, you know, I remember being chastised asking him how much he paid for his car. And, you know, at a young age and he, he told me don’t you ever ask people what they pay for things don’t you ever ask people what they make, you know, and I, and I was at a youngster I’m like, that doesn’t make any sense to me because how am I going to know how to buy a car that well, it just so happened.

Then that was about at age nine. And that at age 12, I started working for a Chevrolet dealership and I started working, just cleaning the floors and then I just kept doing more and more. Well, all of a sudden I’m making Rachel cringe on this, but I’m making a dollar an hour and then, you know, but, but when you’re that age in the seventies and you’re working all the time and going to school and playing sports, you have no time to spend money.

And I also think that’s another thing that people, they don’t develop their own, their good hobbies or good pasttimes. And so their way of pastime is spending money. And th, and that’s, and they’re just getting that instant gratification. And so I learned at the, see my checking account actually grow and it was like fun.

It was like, it was like trying to make it grow to even bigger heights and bigger heights and bigger heights. And then I got a dollar, going to a dollar 25 an hour, and I was really rolling in the money then. And so, and it was such a, it’s such a really good feeling, a sense of accomplishment. And that’s the other thing I think people lose out on when they don’t really set these kind of visions for their money, is they get, there’s a satisfaction that I have more money this month that I had the last month.

What they normally do is they fall into these habits. So, oh, I get my paycheck. I spend it now I’ve got to figure out how I’m going to make it to my next paycheck. And so they feel bad about it. Every time they wake up. Well, they need a flip the script on that and make it a game that, oh, it’s all right to just save money, save money, save money, save money.

And that’s gratifying. They don’t believe it’s gratifying, but it is gratifying.

Rachel: [00:09:41] You know Bruce, that reminds me that I always watched my piggy bank, this little canister. It was like something, I think I wrote some label around it and it was like Rachel’s money or something. And I just remember stuffing money in there and never spending it.

And then I got married and I think, you know, people have saver or spender, natural tendencies. There’s people who love to spend money and they spend it at a drop of a hat. And there’s people who just are like you, Bruce saving, saving, saving. Well, what’s interesting. It’s also relative. I was a saver until I met my husband who was like a really saver.

So then I was, I was the spender. And so you have to figure out how to navigate this and figure out, okay, well, I want to spend money but I can do it with this abundance perspective, not the scarcity and frustration of all the things I can’t have, but how can I create the ability to enjoy life.

Bruce: [00:10:28] And Bob, I don’t know how many of your listeners, you know, our, the United States economy is, is bombarding you along with our government to spend, spend, spend, and then, you know, but I think that’s a personal responsibility to say, oh, well, you know, I’m getting all these advertisements, I’m getting all of this.

You know, it’s not my fault. I actually think it is your fault. You know, it’s, it’s a personal responsibility. If you want your life to change, you need to change it. What Rachel was saying earlier, it’s hard to struggle with money. But it’s also hard to do delayed gratification and save money. You just got to pick your hard and, and that’s the big thing that people aren’t really willing to do is to pick they’re hard because they are both hard.

But once you get that flywheel going. And move it down the highway, then things get a lot easier.

Bob: [00:11:21] Yeah, it’s sort of like pay now or pay later. So if you, if you put in the hard work, now you get to play later. Instead of having to continue the struggle that just seems to amplify. Now I’m curious, Rachel, you said something that I think you might still have some of your clients come in and say, which is, I’m going to marry a rich man.

How, because I think this is still really prevalent. I grew up in the south and I still see this in young women, young girls, where that is still the normative for a lot of people that women should just actually just go find somebody else to solve the problems, which you obviously discovered doesn’t always work.

Can you speak to that a little bit?

Rachel: [00:12:01] Yeah. Yeah. That’s a really insightful question. And I think it’s unfortunate that in some way that anyone would think I can’t fix things for myself, I need to go find somebody else to solve my problems. And honestly, I mean, that’s challenging for the person who is now being tasked with fixing what you can’t figure out on your own.

And I mean, unless you’re hiring a coach, which their their responsibility then is to help you see what you can’t see, but if you’re just. Struggling and struggling and struggling and expecting everyone else to pick up the slack for you. That’s a really challenging position. You’re not going to have good relationships in that regard.

And so what’s really interesting is I would say if you are a specifically, if you’re a young woman listening, I would encourage you to figure out what your strengths are, figure out what you’re good at. There are so many unique abilities inside of every single person and we all have extreme potential. I mean, infinite potential, really, when you think about it and

it’s way more rewarding to figure out who you are and what your wiring is and what makes up who you are. So you can really leverage your unique ability because honestly, no amount of money that’s given to you by someone else will ever make you satisfied the way that you really want to feel. The way you want to feel is accomplished and that you are thriving in life.

And somebody just writing you a let’s even say it’s a $10 million check. That’s not going to fix the problems inside of you. If you haven’t figured out how to create it for yourself. And honestly, this, I mean, this is a huge jump, but this is actually going over into the book I’m writing, which I almost died about two years ago.

I delivered my second daughter and had major complications right afterwards, and ended up in surgery, ended up in the ICU, only 24 hours and miraculously, I just healed very quickly. It was a clotting problem. And don’t know why I’m forgetting the word when you bleed and stuff. Won’t stop bleeding… hemorrhaging.

So yes, so, and problem with my the clamping of my uterus. So what happened though, is coming out of that, I realized how my life was not a guarantee. It wasn’t like, oh, I’m just going to go through the motions and I’m going to wake up when I’m, you know, 105, which I’m planning to live at least that long.

I want to go skydiving when I turn a hundred. But, but thinking about I’m not guaranteed all of this time in the future to make a difference. And what I really realized is now I lost my train of thought here. I was trying to go back right before I talked about my book. I was talking about thriving.

Bob: [00:14:30] Being your unique self.

Rachel: [00:14:31] Yes. So what we’re talking about in what I’m talking about in the book, though, is that if you want to pass on a legacy to your kids, you can’t do that. Just buy a gift. You can’t just say, I’m going to create all this wealth. I’m going to hand you this money. And then you’re going to magically become some responsible steward of this money and thrive in life and pass on this knowledge and wisdom and principles of wealth to the next generation.

It’s really more about developing the character that’s needed to create wealth. So just some interesting thoughts there.

Bob: [00:15:01] Absolutely. And this is for both of you in, in talking about that, where we’ve got these goals, right? And if you look at a chart, we say, we’re here. We want to get there. And that there, that final there, is actually our last breath and I’m not sure that I want to get there.

Immediately. I want to actually enjoy all the pieces in between. And I think for a lot of people, I think we, we get confused that like we’re trying to get to that end journey, the end of the journey. And, and when you get to the end of the journey, you have to get off the ride. And for me, I want to freaking stay on the ride for as long as possible.

And I want to go around three more times. Can you speak to that in terms of, with people that come in that you work with

Bruce: [00:15:45] One of the things that we, we try to get people to realize is that there, there isn’t, there isn’t a goal of retirement. I mean, that, that is not our philosophy. Our philosophy is you should be living the life that you want to live right now, not sometime in the future, but you know, I’m in the financial services industry.

Our industry has ingrained that into people for the last 40 years, really? Basically since 1979, when the 401k was first, when first came out. And so, there’s this idea that you’ve got to, you’ve got to, you know, be difficult. Life has to be hard, hard, hard, hard, and then you reached this goal and all of a sudden life gets great.

And we’re gonna say it. And we’re saying, why not design your life to be great now? And then you can just continue to work or do whatever your passion is, as long as you, as long as you’re able to do it. And then that way you have positive thoughts, your entire life.

Rachel: [00:16:55] Yeah. It’s interesting. Cause it might almost sound like we’re contradicting ourselves in some ways.

I mean, you could say, well, you need delayed gratification and yes, you absolutely do. But the reason is not so you can climb up a mountain, get to some, some point have enough money and then drain off that money in interest and live off into the sunset in retirement. The real goal is to say, when I said cashflow and control, I’ll kind of come back to that here.

What we want is to have as much cashflow now as possible. Cashflow is the amount of money you’re not spending. So that’s income minus expenses. That’s the gap between the two you in accounting and taxes, you know, all about that number. The problem is for most people it’s really skinny and there is no gap and we need more of a gap.

You need more that your, that you’re saving, that’s coming over into that delayed gratification. I’m not living fully up to my means, but the deal is though that you want to turn that cash or that capital from saving into cashflow by having cash flowing assets. So you want to be investing in things that produce income

that’s not, I’m just going to go work harder. I’m just going to go, you know, I’m working 40 hours a week. I’m just going to go work 80 hours a week and get a second full-time job. And then I’m going to have no life at all. And it’s just going to be this grind and hustle. That’s not the way. It’s really about figuring out how to work in your unique ability and work smarter and develop more systems and more efficiency and handing off the task.

I’m learning this personally in my own life right now, handing off the tasks that are not at my earning level, that I’m wasting time doing, that they could be $2 an hour tasks where I need to be focusing my attention on what’s more high priority. That’s actually gonna move the needle in the business. So it’s really.

There’s not an end point. It’s about saying, how can I increase my cashflow now and continue to increase my cashflow and that stream of income doesn’t have to end. It doesn’t have to say, well, I’m only gonna earn cashflow from these, this portfolio of real estate properties until I turn 91. And then I’m out of money.

No, it’s not about projecting that end point where you’re out of money. We want to say, how do you have as much money that you’re creating as possible, enjoying everything along the way, and having as much to pass on into legacy as possible.

Bob: [00:18:56] Yeah, it’s you know, one of the things for me as you were talking about that I’m starting to work on these ‘to don’t lists’ right.

Don’t spend every penny that I make. Don’t take that last piece of pie. Don’t spend more than you make, right? Because I think right, for most of us it’s you know, I watched this great motivational speech and what athletes don’t do to be successful. You know, they don’t party all night before a big game and that maybe if we actually

take a positive out of the to-don’t list of all the ways that we can keep ourselves from sabotaging. So that we can actually have this life as we live it, instead of feeling like this grudgery, begrudgery, getting to this place we’re supposed to magically be happy overnight. It’s not going to happen.

Bruce: [00:19:44] When you get to my age and you’ve been around enough people that have actually tried that, and it didn’t happen,

they die before it. They die shortly after it. It’s, it’s really kind of sad. And we’re not, when we’re talking about delayed gratification we are talking about not living your, yes, we’re talking about living the life fullest today, but the delayed gratification is picking things that really are not that gratifying to buy, you know, like, well, if you’ve got one, if you have one good hoodie that you wear out in cool weather, why do you need four or five?

That’s not a scarcity mindset that just makes perfect logical sense. And then along the way, we would like to encourage you to try to find other multiple streams of income. That’s where you increase the cashflow from your investments. I’ve seen people talk about it like this, you know, if, if something costs a thousand dollars and it’s, it’s 25% off, you didn’t save $250.

You, you actually spent $750. So, if you could take that thousand dollars and put it into some kind of investment that makes you 150 or $250 a year, then you flip the script on the entire thing. Now you’ve just delayed that. And in three years you can actually buy that thing that you were going to buy, you know, three years ago, but you bought it from an asset and not your income and that’s, and that’s, you know, the most famous person who espouses this is Robert Kiyosaki and but a lot of people, but a lot of people aren’t necessarily into.

You know, tenants and toilets, you know, and, and doing that themselves. But the great thing about our free market economy is there’s a lot of ways that you can get that nowadays without actually having your hands at a toilet or talking to a tenant because there’s, there’s turnkey investments. There’s syndication, there’s real estate investment trusts.

There’s all these other vehicles now that you can get into that you don’t actually have to own the cash flowing property directly. And those are just things that aren’t exposed to the general public you know, and that, those are the things that we’re just trying to expose more people to.

Bob: [00:22:00] And do you work with people that only have a net worth of $5 million or more do you, oh, you know, you’ve got a hundred thousand.

We might give you the time of day. What, how does that work for you?

Rachel: [00:22:12] I oh, so what I was just going to say is if you are a independent thinker, that’s the most valuable skill you can have because you will be able to create wealth. With what other people might say is not as much as they had. It’s not about really how much money you have.

It’s about how efficient you are being with that money. It’s about how much you’re keeping of what you make. Now, granted, if you are in a position right now with no income source or you’re, you know, crumbling in the burden of debt right now, well, there might be other things that you need, you might need to figure out how to

provide more value so that you can earn more income and be in a position of leveraging your capabilities more so that you can increase your income. But if you’re in a position where you’re making a good income, you’re saving, you’re keeping as much of the money you make as possible, then it’s time to protect that money.

And then it’s time to say, how do we take that money that we’ve protected and turn it into more?

Bruce: [00:23:06] Yeah. Yeah. Bob, the short answer is no, we don’t have any, does that mean that we will spend our time with you one-on-one if you’re not to a certain level. We’re not, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna claim that, but w, but we have re we have produced a lot of content, much like yourself that people can dive into.

And actually for, for nothing, they can just go into our YouTube channel or go into themoneyadvantage.com and they can look at this content and they can work through these issues that they have along with maybe some of the other coaches you have. Brought onto your podcast and they can get to where they’re actually cash flowing because once they actually cashflow, then…

Rachel: [00:23:50] Meaning you’re saving, saving a good chunk of your money a month. At least we would say at least a thousand or 30% of your income, that’s kind of a target.

Bruce: [00:23:58] Then you can actually be exposed to some of this other stuff. But until you get to that, you’re going to have to do, you’re going to have to do some of the work on your own.

And, and, and I know Rachel, I don’t even remember who we were talking to that says, Hey, you don’t deserve to get your your wealth in order, unless you actually will do the work. And that’s the problem with this all the time is people say, they think there’s a magic bullet out there. You know, I’m just going to read this one thing.

It’s going to take me 30 minutes. I’m going to read it. And all my problems are going to be solved. You can,

Rachel: [00:24:32] I’m going to hand my money over to somebody else who I think is smarter than me. Who’s going to make all this magic happen for me. Instead of taking the risk.

Bruce: [00:24:37] Once we see somebody that has done, done the work, and they’ve gotten to a positive cashflow position. Then we start feeding them, you know, more things to do and more things to do and so on and so forth. And I think that I actually think anybody that doesn’t do it that way is actually enabling a person much like an addict because spending money is an addiction.

Bob: [00:25:02] For sure.

Rachel: [00:25:03] Yeah, it is. And actually I’ll, I’ll share something real quick on this. It’s a story from my life, but I think it will really highlight the point. We kind of started the show talking about saving and how Bruce you were, you were almost in that maniacal way of like let’s celebrate the savings.

I mean, people probably think we’re totally weird, but I love celebrating savings too.

Bob: [00:25:19] Yeah, me too.

Rachel: [00:25:19] I think what’s interesting though, is you’ll find that the people who truly are successful, have that it’s either a trait or it’s something they learned to do. And what’s really interesting though, is that you can be an excellent saver and still not make financial progress. And the reason, I mean, Kiyosaki will tell you, he says savers are, what does he say, losers, but the

Bob: [00:25:42] Investors are winners. Yeah. Something like that.

Rachel: [00:25:44] An idea in that is okay, well, I have this much money per month. I can save it or I can spend, or I can invest it. Like, if I’m not going to spend the money, what am I going to do with it? So if you’re in a position of saying, well, I could save it and earn 0.06% at the bank, or I could say that, so …

Bob: [00:26:00] that says a lot, that’s, right now. That’s a lot.

Rachel: [00:26:03] Zero zero, zero two. I don’t even know, but it’s, it’s pathetic. So we can save and earn barely nothing. Or we can invest. Well, what’s the risk of investing there’s potential risk because we could lose money if we’re taking risk, that we are not having knowledge and control in that area.

So, but people think, oh, I just need to invest so that I skip over the saving part because saving gets me nowhere. I heard the best analogy I’ve heard, is, it’s like, if my money is my army, saving is kind of like having half my army asleep. When I need them to be fighting. And, and so people don’t want to think, oh, well, let me take my money out of commission.

Let me just put it in a position where there’s no rate of return. So my husband and I are saving, we were first married. We both had jobs and W2 income. And at the time we were very much living below our means. I was saving almost my entire paycheck and we were living on his and we had an apartment and we were…

The problem was though we were super scarcity minded. So we were like, okay, this is around 2008 ish. And we’re looking at how terrible the economy is right now, how everything, the housing bubble was crashing. There was just so many issues and so many problems and we’re thinking, okay, Is this like hyperinflation, are we turning to?

I mean, we’re not on the gold standard anymore. We’re concerned about the American dollar. I mean, we were deep in so that we were saying, well, we’re going to put all of our money in gold and silver. And I have no shame in saying this now because it ended up being good and bad. I mean, we thought we were making a great decision.

We said, okay, well, we’re going to put our money here and we’re going to hold it. And that way. It’s not going to lose value. It’s super safe. Now it was, the problem is there’s three pieces of safety, liquidity, and growth. And you need all three. As much as you can get. And so we could have probably kept some in gold and silver.

That was a great investment. The problem was we thought this is just savings and we discounted the value of liquidity. So then we started business. I quit working. I’m a stay at home mom and super naive ly said, Hey, I’m home all day long. What better do I have to do besides start a business? I’m not going to have any time.

A baby’s easy. I was like, nevermind. But we started our business. We needed capital for the business. And now we’re coming into about 2011. And what we had sunk into gold and silver was now half the value and we needed cash to be able to fund the business and fund all the things with the business expense, the baby expense, my income reduced.

My husband goes through sequenced ration. His income reduces. It was not a pretty sight. We were not saving during that time. We had a lot of challenges, but what we learned was we need to be liquid. Even if we’re thinking, well savings. just in the bank is not where we want to be. We need a way to be liquid.

And that’s where we started looking and saying, how can we find another place to store cash that is available for investing, that’s safe, liquid and growing. And so that’s where we found infinite banking.

Bob: [00:28:50] And I think that is so important. Even like right now, having some liquidity, not locking everything so that you can’t touch it.

You know, I had a guy going into retirement and his financial advisor convinced him to put all of it in a REIT. That then got locked. And so he couldn’t touch his money and all, every single dollar, except a little bit was all in this REIT that was tied up for two years. And, and he didn’t understand the importance of being able to actually access the money until they couldn’t.

Yeah. So let me ask you this, and I know we’re starting to get towards the end and that we’ll jump into our fast five in a second, but I want to ask, and maybe I’ll throw this to Bruce or both of you, but you know, life is good. You’re doing the infinite banking. Your life is good. Why help all these other people?

Why care? Like, why don’t you just focus on yourselves and just like live the good life and let everybody else just figure it out. Why do you do what you do?

Rachel: [00:29:46] Hmm, and that is that as deep.

Bruce: [00:29:48] And, you know, I, I I’ll try to try to simplify this, is it’s kinda corny, but we were all talking about this and our mental health now. It’s, it’s a purpose that you have in life. And yeah, we, we have a successful business and I have other successful investments and so on and so forth. And I realized that, you know, when I get up in the morning, I’m anxious to get up and get going and do something. That hasn’t always been like that in my life, but now that’s way it is.

And if you can, if you can actually bring that value to other people, they appreciate it and they pass it onto the next person, the next person, the next person. Now, Bob, I might be, had this pollyannic kind of vision, but as a teacher because I came out of the educational world, I could see that children and some of my players were stressed out about money when you would talk to them.

And so they couldn’t, they couldn’t focus, they couldn’t learn. And I figured that, you know, if I could take that and solve some of that problems and then the family problems at home would actually get better. And there’s a family problems at home get better. Societal problems would get better and so on and so forth.

It’s like, it’s like the ripple effect. When you throw something in a pond, it just goes out. And so it’s, I, I don’t get it as much a pleasure watching my savings account grow like I did as a 12 year old, but I sure get a lot of pleasure when somebody finally gets it and feels good about the decisions that they’re making about money.

So that’s, that’s my fairly short answer.

Rachel: [00:31:24] Absolutely. I second a thousand percent of that.

Bob: [00:31:28] Yeah, I think I do, you know, I think so much time is spent on stress around money. And, and it takes us out of the rest of life often, because we’re so busy. Just wondering if we’re going to make it to the next day financially that there’s not a lot of room for  funor joy or planning anything.

Because it’s a big stress, you know, and I do think for people listening out there again, it’s not about, do I have a million dollars in my bank account or $2 million in my bank account. It’s about how am I living life to the fullest, with what I do have,

Rachel: [00:32:00]  Yes.

Bob: [00:32:01] And learning to be grateful for the fact that I can even do what I do.

Bruce: [00:32:06] Hey, Bob preparation, you know, I was, I was listening to some of your other podcasts. And I think it was your, one of your guests says people don’t focus enough on what they have. They always focus on what they don’t have. And I think if when people are just grateful for what they have, then they will actually have a lot less stress instead of trying to, you know, it’s the old thing as we were growing up, you know, it’s like the keeping up with the Joneses next door. And the, and the Joneses are probably in worse financial shape than you are.

They just look like they’re in better shape.

Bob: [00:32:38] I didn’t even like the Jones-es.

Rachel: [00:32:41] Yeah. Interesting. I mean, it completely, all comes down to gratitude and where you’re focusing your attention. The real truth is you can make all the money in the world and never be happy or  you can have nothing and be totally happy.

So I’ve heard there’s the science of success and the art of what is it called? Fulfillment. That’s what it’s called. The science of success and the art of fulfilment.. And there, it really comes down to there’s systems that you can put in place to build success, but success doesn’t make you happy. And ultimately we all just really want to be happy.

That is an art.

Bob: [00:33:19] Absolutely. And I was just thinking, as you were saying all that, I think if you’ve got delayed gratification and gratitude, you have a lot of abundance.

Rachel: [00:33:28] Yes, you do.

Bob: [00:33:30] It just, it just all goes hand in hand. Well, we are at the fast five, so I am going to throw out some questions. You can you can pass these back and forth or just feel, feel free to jump in for both of you.

What’s the most expensive Spencer thing you’ve ever bought that you did not meet your expectations.

Rachel: [00:33:46] I’ll say the gold and silver, I should have saved the story. So that was a very expensive. We thought it was going to be the thing that was around for 20 years and we were never going to touch it. Never tap into it. Never need to use it. Never need to spend it.

Bruce: [00:33:58] Mine was probably a guitar electric guitar and an amplifier.

Because I used to play guitar when I was very young and then I gave it up when I went to college, cause I was so busy. And then I thought about 10 years ago I was going to get back into it. So I bought this guitar and an amplifier and I started messing with it. I’m like, I’m still too busy to mess with this.

So it’s sitting in my basement.

Bob: [00:34:23] What’s a favorite childhood memory around money that you love.

Rachel: [00:34:28] My parents got me that, well, they got the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I was about an eighth grade. They said, read this. And now granted, this was all, we were all learning together, but then they got the Cashflow Game and that started me, the rat race game.

And that was really something that I am so thankful for.

Bob: [00:34:48] That’s awesome. My sister’s kids did that and they said that that was a game changer for them as adults now.

Bruce: [00:34:53] So Bob, I think, I don’t know how old you are, but I think you’re close to my age. So what I was working for this Chevrolet dealership and I’m in I’m in Missouri, it’s 95 degrees out, no air conditioning.

It’s 75% humidity. It’s hotter than heck. And you know, I’m like 13 years old and I finally got up the courage to go over to the Coke machine. Where I put the money in and I pull out the glass bottle of Coke and pop that Coke open. And you take that sip that you bought with your own money. And it’s just like, it was the greatest, I mean, it’s just like the greatest thing I ever bought in my life.

And it was so delicious and refreshing and it was, I bought it, you know, so that’s the story.

Bob: [00:35:38] That’s so awesome. And for me, if there’s a little bit of ice slush in the bottom of that glass bottle, Huh, bonus points.

Bruce: [00:35:46] Absolutely.

Bob: [00:35:47] I know what you’re talking about. What do you love to do in your spare time? That doesn’t cost any money?

Rachel: [00:35:54] I’ll just say a quick, I love going to the beach. I love hiking and we do a lot of both.

Bruce: [00:36:00] I, I like to read, but not, I don’t like to read fiction. I like to read history, science and anything in, in, in the financial services industry.

Bob: [00:36:14] No, no, fantasy books and Star Wars and all that. Alright. Alright. Is there one thing that you’ve always dreamed up, but haven’t yet found the courage to go after?

Bruce: [00:36:22] I actually want to purchase some real estate in another country. But I’m, I don’t even trust our own government. And I think we have, and we have one of the least corrupt governments in the world, which is sad.

So I, I worry about these places that, Rachel and I have been fortunate because we’ve had this podcast for a while and people are gracious enough to come on. And we’ve had people that sell real estate in other countries and so forth. And I want to pull the trigger, but. I just, I just can’t

Bob: [00:36:56] Makes sense.

Rachel: [00:36:57] Yeah. So I’ll tag onto the other countries. I have this crazy dream to go travel the world for a whole year with the kids. And that would be absolutely insane. So anyway, not, don’t have the courage to do it yet, but I want to do it.

Bob: [00:37:12] All right. Well, we’re putting it out there. They’re going to happen. They’re going to happen. All right. Last final question. Do you budget when you go grocery shopping?

Rachel: [00:37:19] Yes. And no, we use mint.com. We know how much we spend on a monthly basis for groceries and we make a list and we stay with our list, which means, I’m not budgeting, I don’t have a calculator. I’m not counting up the dollar amount, but I do be, I’m able to go check mint.com afterwards, find out where we’re headed.

And should we, can we buy these extra things or should we not? So, yes. Cool.

Bob: [00:37:45] And you stick to the list?

Rachel: [00:37:47] I do stick to the list. And usually, this is funny, but division of labor has been different in our family than most people would expect. So for the longest time I made the list, I did the meal planning.

I do the cooking, but my husband would do the shopping. So I would send Lucas to the store and he was amazing and not buying extra stuff. So that really kept us to, to the plan. But ultimately we just found that as long as we don’t impulse buy,

Bob: [00:38:09] Yeah,

Rachel: [00:38:09] For the most part, or if we keep that to a minimum, then we’re really good.

So I just plan everything in advance, planning for me helps.

Bob: [00:38:17] It does help.

Bruce: [00:38:18] Short answer is no. But I do keep track of everything I spend every month. And, and, and how and where the money flows. I, I check my accounts, every account that I have every day. And I think that helps people be aware of where their money’s flowing.

I don’t like the word budget. And if people know us, I like the word. I like the phrase cash flow awareness. You have to be aware of where your cash is going. And I actually, although my wife is becoming much greater cook, she’s a great baker. I’m actually the primary cook in our household. And so, so I, I do all the I do all the, I do all the purchasing and Bob, I use that time.

You were talking about things that don’t cost things. I actually love to cook and create. So I use that time. I actually do what a lot of people probably say you shouldn’t do. I walk around the grocery store thinking about combinations to actually create a meal for the next few days. So I actually enjoy going to a grocery store and just letting go and think,

oh, that would go well with that. Oh, I’m going to make that. Or, or I, I think I w, I have a new thing to do with that. And so I, I do it after the fact.

Bob: [00:39:37] Well, well, probably because you’re German, you have that an extra added bonus of being very strict on the stuff anyway. So you’re probably not gonna overspend, even if you’re getting to be crazy.

Bruce: [00:39:47] That was ingrained. That was ingrained. Absolutely.

Bob: [00:39:50] That’s ingrained.

Rachel: [00:39:51] The meal planning, when I actually do it, involves a lot of Pinterest browsing first and then the meal planning when I actually have time to do so. And so, Bruce, all you need is the Pinterest account. Then you’ll do the same thing. Just planning before you leave. So I did the same thing, just online,

Bob: [00:40:08] We’re at our M and M moment money and motivation. Can you give us a practical, financial tip or a piece of wealth wisdom that you personally have used? That’s helped you?

Rachel: [00:40:18] Yes. And maybe I should have saved this one too. I would say, make sure you’re thinking outside the box.

Don’t just listen to what you’re told. Don’t just do what everyone else is doing. Frankly, the status quo is not getting where you ultimately want to go. And if you want to be successful, if you want to build wealth, if you want to have cashflow, if you want to feel in control, feel good about your money, leave a legacy for your kids, teach them about money and how to create it.

You really need to be in a position of thinking outside the box. And so. Focus on doing your own learning, invest in yourself first by building your knowledge.

Bruce: [00:40:52] Yeah, my, I’ve already taught, you have to, you have to know where your money’s flowing. You have to be aware of your money and I’m telling you, yes.

I only do my my total awareness once a month, but I check every single day. It doesn’t take that long to check. And I’m talking about all the different, the investment accounts, the, your, your savings accounts, your insurances, you know, if you, if you’re using a credit card, you know, check those accounts over and over and over.

I you know, I don’t check my mortgage account every day, but you got to check these accounts because there’s not only are, is it help you with your awareness, but errors happen all the time. I just got a alert. And I just found out my, my wife spent, you know, a certain amount on the credit card. I don’t do those alerts because I’m trying to keep tabs of her.

I I’m doing those alerts because you have to be responsible and, and react when something goes wrong and you have to not just close the door and pretend it never happened.

Bob: [00:41:58] Absolutely. No, absolutely. I just found that my mortgage company has $ 6,000 extra dollars for my property taxes,

Bruce: [00:42:04] Great example.

Bob: [00:42:05] That they’ve had since November. And I called them and they were like, oh, we eventually would have figured it out. Did you want that back? I’m like, yeah, cut me a check now.

Rachel: [00:42:16] Like, I don’t want to give you an interest free loan to use my money for who knows how long,

Bruce: [00:42:20] right? Bob? Here’s it. Here’s another example. You know, just starting out. My wife and I were married and had our first mortgage.

I accidentally set my mortgage check to the electric company and my electric, my electric bill to the mortgage company. Well, the mortgage company right away told me the electric company. This is a little disturbing. It was actually cashed by the electric company and the bank. So now my, my $30 a month bill was paid by a 750, this was 1986.

So I mean, my mortgage was $750. So I call it, I called the lending company and they said well, we can just keep it and then you’ll have a credit. You know, going forward. I said, I said, no, no, I, what I want the money back. And then, you know, of course they were like, well, oh, well then we’re going to have to go to special accounting and we’re going to have to do this and that.

And I’m like, yeah, but I want it back. So I had a similar experience with a mortgage company and electric company.

Rachel: [00:43:19] Oh, my goodness.

Bob: [00:43:20] Well, yeah, they want to make you feel bad so they don’t have to actually work. Like give me my money. I’m a nice guy. Put it in my account right now. Not that nice.

Rachel: [00:43:30] Should’ve been a red flag. This is way too much money. What is he doing?

Bob: [00:43:35] Yeah. And that’s what the, oh yeah. We eventually would have figured. Yeah. Well, I already figured it out. I’ve been waiting. Yes. You know, you have to be, you know, and that’s one of the things that you guys both talked about. Being proactive, not being the victim. I could have sat and waited another six months and waited for that to happen.

But if you’re looking at your accounts, if you’re getting out there taking a look, getting conscious about your spending and your saving and your silver and like focusing on that mindset and really working to spend less than you make so that you can actually have a great experience in life throughout your life instead of on your last breath. Which isn’t quite as enjoyable.

Rachel: [00:44:13] Can I say something real quick?

Bob: [00:44:15] Yeah.

Rachel: [00:44:15] Spending less than you make. Isn’t always cutting your personal lifestyle. And I think somebody listening might need to hear this. Sometimes it’s the way we pay for our mortgage. It’s the way we pay credit card debt. It’s the way we pay our taxes. If you’re in business, there are so many tax breaks.

You’re probably not aware of, well you are. If you’re talking with this guy, with Bob, because he does know them, but realize that sometimes there’s money leaks flowing out of your control that are not actually improving your life at all. And it might have to do with how you’re paying taxes and debt, and maybe even other things in your financial life.

So don’t always just assume that you’re spending too much going out to eat.

Bob: [00:44:54] And I, and I will just say there are a lot of ways to have a lot of fun and have great life experiences that don’t cost any money. You can go hiking, you can go to the beach. You know, I remember when I didn’t have a lot of money and I was doing a lot of comedy and sketch comedy and aluminum foil was the best costume maker thing in the world.

Right. You know, I’m like I had more fun making costumes with aluminum foil and felt that I did going out and spending, a couple hundred bucks on a costume, so you can get creative. And I think when you have the ability to put money aside, you can get creative with the money that you do have, and actually not even spend some of it.

So, but again, reinforcing delayed gratification, really realizing that life can be amazing and abundant without blowing through every dime and creating tons of debt. Like it’s so possible. And I so appreciate the two of you coming on today. It’s just been so fun and I appreciate the honesty. Where can people find you online and social media?

Rachel: [00:45:54] Oh, awesome. Thanks for asking. So you can go to themoneyadvantage.com and everything is there. It’s accessible. You can download a guide to infinite banking that we just briefly touched on today. If you’re interested in finding out more about that, mostly how to increase your returns on investments.

How to have money that you’re saving better. And then also, if you are trying to find us, you can also go to Facebook. We’re on Facebook, The Money Advantage. You can also go to LinkedIn, Bruce and I are both there. The Money Advantage is as well. You can find us on Instagram. We are having a very pitiful following on Instagram.

YouTube is actually pretty cool. So go to YouTube and look up The Money Advantage. That’s probably our best social media connection, but absolutely you can find us there.

Bob: [00:46:36] Great. Well, we’ll definitely put all that in the notes so people can find you and learn about all that you do. And to our listeners, please, don’t forget to share the love. Like, follow and share on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, search for Money You Should Ask all one word.

Follow this podcast on your favorite podcast player, or visit Spotify and search for Money You Should Ask or click on the link in the description. If you’re watching this episode on YouTube, don’t forget to like comment and subscribe. For more tips tools, or to learn how to have a healthy relationship with money,

visit themoneynerve.com. That’s nerve, not nerd. I’m a money nerd, but find your money nerve. Rachel, Bruce, thank you so much. I so appreciate it.

Bruce: [00:47:12] Thank you Bob.

Rachel: [00:47:13] Awesome. Thank you so much, Bob. It’s been great.