Hey guys, this is Craig. And this is Adrian. And you are listening to Cash Talk. You can find us on Instagram at the Adrian Hall at Financial Fowler at Cash Talk Podcast and you can email us at cashtalkpodcast at gmail.com.
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All right, thanks. Here's the show. So I know, Adrian, you've been through a little bit of a debt pay off journey in the past. And I know that you've been in different parts of your life where you've had maybe a really tight budget because of low income or high expenses or whatever it may be.
But have you ever found yourself in a position where you've been really tight with your money, you've been really scripting yourself about discretionary spending, things like that. Always worried about where the next bill is going to have the next bill is going to get paid. Have you ever gone from a situation like that to a situation where all of a sudden maybe the income has increased a little bit and you go for a few months, maybe even a year or multiple years where you've definitely improved your financial situation because you've increased your income. And then you realize that you are still living in such a way that, let me rephrase that, you're still living in a way that you're trying to protect the bottom line like you were when you were having cash flow issues and things like that.
Have you ever found yourself in a position where you've had a mindset that says, am I going to be able to pay the next bill when that's not necessarily the biggest issue because you've grown since then? Have you noticed a change in your mindset like that before where you've had to say, okay, well, wow, I need to stop worrying about paying bills. I need to start worrying about setting goals for saving, things like that. It's a little bit of a thought shift, but have you ever experienced that before?
Yeah. I am living that. So it's a weird thing. I think, okay, so the root of your question I feel like is poverty mindset where it's like, for so long, your job in life is just to get by.
That's all you're doing. It's just one week to another bare minimums, maybe a little bit of fluffish, you get it, a little bit of like leisure as you get it, but majority you're working to pay bills and survive. And when I was in a lot of debt, that's where I lived. Like the starting point for me getting out of a $6,000 debt was when I recognized there were two events.
One was when my dog who was 13 years old passed away, we stopped paying for his medicine and I was like, holy crap, I have money in my budget again. And then I kind of thought about why I'm wishing my dogs demise so that I could have more money to do other stuff. But then, so that was January and then by like April, East Tennessee gets lots of bad weather. And I remember thinking if there was a hail storm on this particular day, Jay's parked outside at his job.
I'm parked outside at my job. We couldn't afford an insurance deductible on both cars at the same time if they got damaged in hail. It was like either or. And that made me realize like how razor thin I was living because our deductible was right much.
It was like $250. It wasn't very much. And that's what light bulb me to say. All right.
Cool. So, years, years paying off debt, learning my mistakes, building financial habits. I wouldn't fall back into the habits I was in before because that's the key. It's like so much more than just going to the gym.
You have to make sure that you're also doing everything else. You have to make sure that you're dieting and exercising, staying on a schedule and a regimen and not just, oop, I got the result and I can go back and get in line for that big burger. That's not how it works. So, when the years went by and I got to that point where like, I remember milestones.
I remember the first time my paycheck hit and I didn't notice it. Like the first time it was just a day and not counting down until payday. I remember the first time I had over like $5,000 in savings that didn't have anything due. I remember the first time that we made a major purchase and all we did was say, which one do we want, not who has it the cheapest?
Well, what if we gave up this particular feature to get what we want? It was no what do we want? Let's just go get it. I remember all those things.
But that doesn't shake all the years of struggle. Like transparent comment, if you know me in person, don't hold this against me. I have worked on my finances for six straight years, six straight years 365 days plus the week, leap year, all that good stuff. And this year, 2020, like that tax year was the first year that I ever earned over $100,000 in my whole life ever.
Prior to that, the most was about $42,000 period. And when you go from one to the other, you don't shake the mentality before. So I still to this day struggle with that and I've balanced with that where I've got like no debt. My bills are paid.
My savings is they're like my bills are so automated to the point that I only just kind of double check to make sure they got paid. I'm not even managing it anymore. But it doesn't negate the fact that my brain still goes to the, but what if something happens smoke? What if this comes up?
What if that comes up? Like I feel like on one hand, it's a good quality to have. You always want to remember where you were financially so you don't get comfortable and slip back. But at the same time, it's kind of toxic.
Like you have to step away. You have to recognize you are better. The world's not always crashing around you anymore. And just like breathe.
You worked for this moment. So just breathe, you know? Right. Yeah.
So this issue, because, you know, I can definitely say I've experienced this to a certain degree, just in the shift from my days of working in restaurants, you know, working shift to shift, you know, off of tips to now working in financial services industry where, you know, I still have uncomfortable feelings surrounding my own personal finances because of what my income works. And I still have personal growth that goes on. Obviously, I still learn things about my own personal finances and, you know, how to be more efficient. One thing that, you know, I think that we do a lot of times is we sell ourselves short a lot of times and that can become a toxic hindrance to ourselves.
And so I think, you know, the biggest thing that I would want to stress to people is don't let the poverty mentality become a hindrance to your own progress. And this is where I think this is a good example of this happening. So I run it. So this is actually, this is a perfect example.
I run this all the time. I really, really, really like helping people that in my job, I like helping people that normally wouldn't reach out to a financial advisor or financial planner. A lot of the times that happens in the setting of working with a 401K retirement planning participant. That's maybe they, you know, work for a company that sponsors their retirement planning and gives them a benefit of, you know, working with an advisor and a few companies that work with that do that.
So I work with these participants, right? They're not high income workers. Sometimes they're blue color workers that have, you know, worked in the same place their whole career and have been a really good job with raising kids, raising a whole family. But they've never really thought about retirement saving.
It's, you know, all their finances come from a frame of paying the bills, putting food on the table, that type of thing. So when I start helping someone think about saving for retirement, there's always the question, well, what if I need that money, right? What if I need that next week to cover, you know, some groceries or something, you know, next month? The water heater goes bad or something like that.
That is a, is a worry that comes from the poverty mindset. And I help people with this all the time. The way that we can come at that is to start slowly building the emergency funds so you don't have to worry about that, right? So we talk about that many times.
I'm not going to talk about an emergency fund right now, but getting people past the point of, I don't know, I really am worried about saving this money for the future because I might need it for an emergency next week is, is a, is a thought shift. And it's, it's hard to get out of that poverty mindset into a proactive, prepared for the future mindset. And I think sometimes it doesn't happen overnight. I mean, I think that I even struggle with this myself, even as a young guy that is in the, I'll say, beginning years of my career growth, I still have an issue thinking about man, I want to save this money on a monthly basis going back into my own retirement accounts, but shoot, I don't know what my income's going to look like next month.
So I might have a short, a low voucher or something like that, and I have a slow month. I really hope I don't miss that contribution, right? And so it's something that I deal with as well. It doesn't happen overnight, but I do try to encourage people, you know, hey, get out of that mentality.
Don't hinder yourself and continue working for the future. You know, how does that work? There are lots of steps, but, you know, I think that that that's the biggest caution is allowing your own mindset to keep you from doing things and accomplishing goals that you want to accomplish. And that's tricky.
I know that's like kind of a can of worms there. But I do deal with that in my work day all the time. Have you ever talked to anybody like that and maybe like the purchasing process? I'm sure you probably have.
Oh, yeah. So I have a saying, I always like to say to myself, but I'm going to share it today. I don't know how many times I say in my head, you should just get out of your own way. Like I say it to myself, Adrian Hall, I say it to others in my head where the solution, the idea, the mentality, whatever it might be, it's right there.
Like this is what you do, which are so stuck on this pattern of events that you will stand in your way of getting what you want. An example that happened, which I won't use name, I won't be too descriptive because like they're in my peripheral. They reached out wanting to buy a house and I don't know them. They're just like Facebook friends.
I was like, Oh, fantastic. You have what you need to do. I can't tell you what your situation is like until I can see it. So it's some information online.
I'll check it out and see what's going on. They applied. Their credit wasn't there. Like job time looked fine, income looked fine.
They had some past issues where there's medical bills because in the world we live in, health care is one of those things that's wildly expensive for no reason. So they had medical bills. They'd been missing payments on their car. It was paid current, but not always.
So all these little things had their credit score kind of low. And speaking from survival mentality myself, because ironically enough, I'm going to like sidebar and I'll come back to the story. The day that we're recording on is two, no, nine years and two days after the day Jane I bought our second car together, when I say second car, I mean, when we first started dating, we had one car that car was mine. He didn't have a driver's license.
So I helped him get a driver's license. I taught him how to drive. And then we had one car between the two of us. We applied for, I don't know how many different loans.
We tried different down payments, different cars by her pay-her-lots could not get one. And eventually we got one. And it was because I am a person naturally where if somebody tells me, no, I don't just say, OK, thanks. I kind of ask myself, what do I need you to make that?
No, yes, like not what I need to say, not what, you know, what's standing in my way. But more what do I need to do so that next time I'm in this situation, it is not a no, it is a yes. And I figured out in that situation, it was because I had very limited credit. And I was looking at these cars that didn't have a lot of equity.
So lenders didn't know me financially. They didn't know if I was going to make any payments because I didn't have any credit. But what they did know is I was looking at a $5,000 car and wanted to buy it for $5,000 and get a loan for $5,000. So if I never made one payment, they were out $5,000 plus any recovery cost.
And then instead of auction, it's not going to sell for $5,000, it's going to sell for two or three. So really, they're out thousands of dollars. So I got a car that was it has some mechanical issues that we dealt with. But because of that, it was a lot cheaper and it was easier to get financed and we drove that around for a little while.
And that was like a catalyst moment in my head of probably the first time I recognized survival mentality and how to get out of it when I was like, Oh, OK, so I do. If I do this and I work on this, then this will get me this item, which isn't exactly what I want, but it's at least the right direction. Anyway, back on topic. So this person who, you know, they have some credit issues, they want to buy a house.
And I let them know because I'm not I'm not the lender that says, you're denied. Sorry, bye. I feel like what I just said is how I operate my business. If you're not ready, I'll teach you how to get ready.
I'll let you know. This is what you should work on. Maybe it's your job time. Maybe it's a down payment.
Maybe it's the fact that you've not held jobs consistently. Maybe it's your credit. Maybe it's too much debt. I'll let you know specific what to work on.
So you know what to do. And that's why I did in this case, I was like, Hey, it's your credit. It's literally just the score. The minimum is here and you were here.
So if you take these actions, it will get you there. And I sent that email out and I carried on with my morning. 15 minutes later, I got a Facebook message and it was like, Hey, so I was had to see. We didn't get approved.
And I was like, yeah, well, it's not too pretty good email. You know, just check it out. Let me know. Get any questions.
And the person started to like debate almost. It was like the survival mentality, the poverty mindset of, well, what if I did this? What if I did that? What if I did this?
I really need somewhere to go? What if I did this? And I'm like, Hey, hey, this is the minimum. Like, well, I have a down payment.
I know this is the minimum. Like listen to the words I am telling you. It is not your job time. It is not your credit or your your down payment.
It's not what's on your credit. It is the fact that your score is just not at this point. That's it. Nothing more.
Nothing less than I told you what to do. And I remember even saying, Hey, read the email again. Like she made the comment that it takes years to rebuild your credit. And I was like, Girl, read what I said again.
Fourth sentence said it could take 30 to 45 days. It's not that hard. And at a certain point for business sake, I just got to say, all right, I've given you what I can give you. I got to move on.
So read again. I'm here if you have questions or concerns, but if not, take care. Good luck. And I got another few email replies back being like, you know, I wish I would have known this before.
I really need somewhere to go. This sucks. All right. Great.
Have a good day. Bye. And all I could think sitting in my chair was you were so focused on getting the yes or the no that you missed how to get how to get the yes, like I told you how to get to where you want to go just because it's not tomorrow. And I mean, I even mentioned 90 days from now, you're going to wish you started today.
Like I get it. It's freaking sucks. You were hoping for this answer. You're hoping for this outcome.
You didn't get it. But if you do nothing. You will get nothing. You've got to start somewhere.
You have to get out of your own way. And that is like, I don't I don't fault anybody for thinking that because I think that way a lot. But I have to recognize sometimes it's not me doing that. It's fight or flight.
It's like the animalistic quality inside of us where all you're trying to do is just make it by and it feels like the world around you is stopping you. So you're trying to figure out do you fight back or do you run and hide and put your head in the Santa pretend none of this ever happened? But sometimes the answer is neither. The answer is like, instead of running away or yelling and screaming, the answer is to just listen, whether it's listen to yourself, listen to professionals around you, listen to loved ones, listen to family and friends, listen to your own budget.
It's just it's tough. But then again, I mean, I also feel like, I mean, you may or may not agree, but I also feel when I was in like deeper throws of poverty mindset, it was because I was close to poverty. It was a sense of trauma almost where a $200 bill could throw me off for months, months and months and months could throw off every goal. I had and I would be nowhere near it.
And gas prices going up because suddenly mean that now I won't be able to buy enough groceries or like a common thing that people sometimes forget about us when you've been unemployed for a while and you get a job somewhere, you got to usually get a uniform for that job. A lot of companies make you pay for it yourself. Then you're driving to and from work, funding like, funneling the gas in your car every day to and from work plus any lunches, breakfast, all that stuff for a week, two weeks, three weeks before you get your first paycheck to reimburse yourself. It is hard to survive.
But I got on one hand. I get it on the other hand. I remember struggling and my life mission was to get as far away from that day as possible. Like everything I do is to get as far away from that day as possible because I don't want to go back to couch surfing.
I don't want to go back to selling stuff to buy food. I want to be solid and that involves getting out of my own damn way sometimes. Right. Yeah.
No, I've definitely been there. One thing that you said that I really can relate to is the thing that your prospect or potential client said about rebuilding their credit and about the timeline. It's like, oh my gosh, I can take years to rebuild your credit or increase your credit score or whatever. I think how often do we find ourselves in a position where we feel like the progress we need to make is just a mountain that's insurmountable.
And in the part of the mindset, I think most people find themselves in a position where they look at the things they need to do and the progress they need to make. And they're just like, oh, that's just not going to work. I'm going to have to find some trick to get around it or find some way to negate that problem or that issue without actually dealing with it. Right.
And I think that's because we just really are so discouraged that we don't see that with just a little bit of form of momentum, a little for progress. Increasing your credit score or paying off some smaller debts or starting to get some of them on your student loan payments or whatever. Things start to look up quicker than you ever think they would. I think I've experienced that.
And it's just like the credit score thing. Once you start realizing that proactive steps in a positive direction, they really do they really do make an impact on your credit score and it happens quicker than you might think. So I think that's one thing. It's just so unique about the poverty mindset.
And that is when you're there, the path to getting out of the mindset looks way worse than it might actually be or maybe maybe looks way longer or way seeper. But, you know, after you take the first couple steps, a lot of times you find yourself a little bit of confidence and, you know, there is a thought shift that happens over time. But that's one thing, you know, just have a little bit of faith to, you know, step out into an uncomfortable feeling, I guess, and start making practice steps to work. Working on these types of things instead of finding a quick way around the issue, maybe it's better to just be uncomfortable and confront it.
I know that I found myself in that position before where I'm like, man, I keep ignoring this, but I'm just going to go ahead and, you know, grip my teeth in front of the issue head on and, you know, see if there's a way that I can't get through this. And so I hope that would get people confidence just to say, yeah, that that hill that you have to climb may look really, really see, but it may not be as bad as it looks. And, you know, once you get started, you might feel a little more equipped to climb. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's maybe, you know, what that lady was feeling like with the credit score is just, man, it just seems like such a huge battle.
I don't know how that could ever be fixed in 45 days. There's no way I know you're telling me, but man, I just don't think that can happen. You know, and I think that's part of that poverty mindset. I think that's exactly what's going on.
I think so. One thing I do on my Instagram from day one, all it's ever been is my financial journey. I started it when I was three months into paying off all of my debt. So that was like the end of 2016, beginning in 2017.
It's been a few years. And I did it for two reasons. One, because nobody around me would hold me accountable to my own goals. So I figured if I set it out loud, then it'll be one of those awkward conversations people will ask me about, be like, Hey, so yeah, I saw that you did this.
And I have to be like, yeah, no, I failed. Or yeah, I did. It's amazing. I did it for that, the accountability, but also because it's an archive.
I can go back and like I always try to write present tenses when it happened, how it happened, what I did, how I feel about it. And looking back over time, I can scroll to like any year, 2017, 18, 19, see where I was, see what goals I was trying to hit. And a lot of times like it felt impossible then, but I'm reading it today from a point of it being done. And I'm looking back and I'm like, at that time, it felt like I couldn't do it.
And now it's already done and I forgot I did it. I forgot what it felt like. And it really, it's like a double reward. Like A, you get the goal, but B, you also get to prove to yourself again.
Yeah, you did it even when you thought you couldn't do it. But a prime example for me is, OK, so disclosure, we have like Loki have a big interest in retirement. You and I both. And so I don't want to be the retirement show.
But I was 23 years old, give or take when I first started to learn about 401ks and retirement and all these different things. And I remember thinking, OK, this is pretty cool. I guess it's also really far away. I'm I'm in my early twenties.
I'm supposed to retire at what it was 62 and then it was 65. I think nowadays we're saying 67. So decades away. But I also believe in getting my whole compensation package.
So when the company said, well, pay you a certain amount, if you put a certain amount, then I was like, all right, I'm getting all your money. You're going to deposit it right behind me every pay period. This is what we're going to do. And I did that.
And I remember when I first hit $5,000 and first hit $10,000 and I was like, all right, this is pretty sweet. Like I have more money, my 401k, then I have to my name because that was my 401k was building at the time when I couldn't afford those deductibles on that car, like that $250 deductible. And I had like $8,000 in my 401k and I recognized to my own self a survival mentality standpoint. Like, OK, cool.
This is how this works. And if things really go sideways, I do have that money. I could take it out if I needed to. I got to do my best not to.
But ultimately, it's not as scary as it feels. I'm only taking it out of my paycheck like 80 bucks at a time, whatever it was. And then I slowly started to ratchet up a little bit more when I get a raise and I got like a 4% raise at work. I put two or 3% of my 401k and I bring the 1% home.
And like Jay, for an example, did not prioritize this 401k the way that I did. He did not. He very much, we both had survival mentality. He was more focused on the day.
I was focused on the year. So it didn't take long before I doubled. Like I went over a double what he had in his and then I went over triple what he had in his and I started to really get some ground on him. And I was like, all right, buddy, we got to do something about this one.
Like you're going to have to catch up because I'm going to retire on a beach. And either you're going to have to be able to afford it with me or I can't retire. Cause I've been divorced, you go to the beach and I've split everything in half and that's bad. So you got to catch up.
But I've been working on that since I was 23 years old. I'm 30 years old. As of now, seven years later, I finally hit six figures in that account and that's freaking sweet. But also there was a time and like, I know, because I've record of it.
There was a time when I thought having 25,000 of my 401k was never going to happen. Like maybe when I was in my late 30s, late 40s, something like that, because nobody around me had it either. I think that's the bigger thing about this mentality is it's not just you as a person. It's also smart to look around and look at your circumstances and sometimes recognize that maybe you are the first person you know of in your situation.
You are the first person who's self-employed, the first person who got out of debt, the first person who created a business or tried to put some money aside or didn't have to, you know, just simply survive. I mean, my own father had two kids when he was in high school. So his twenties versus my twenties where I had no kids, very different from each other. Doesn't make one more valid than the other.
But it does make your support system, you know, the things that they offer, their advice they offer a little bit different because it's not the same, you know? Right. No, I mean, yeah, I think we've covered, you know, a lot, but ultimately that is totally true. I mean, if you are the first person accomplishing something, you know, whether it be making some good progress in your 401k savings or maybe your first time in your family, someone's going to college or first time home ownership or a family, you know, it's really, it's really easy to find yourself comparing, you know, comparing yourself to others.
But just remember, you know, it's really important to remember where you are, what progress you've made and keep that, you know, frame properly. Because I think that almost anybody can have something to be proud of in their own progress with their finances. It just may look different than the person that's in them. But, you know, I think the biggest thing is being aware of your mindset and how that affects your progress and, you know, just always trying to remember to be conscious of that.
So I don't know if I had much more to add on this one. Do we have anything else that we need to cover? I'm going to quote myself from earlier. More of the story, make sure you're out of your own way.
Like, make sure to focus on what you want, even if it seems impossible, even if it seems far away. Stop telling yourself, no, stop saying to yourself before you ever take your first step. Sorry, I can't do it too hard. You don't know that you've not even tried.
Get out of your own way, like specify what you want, write down what you want, understand how your mindset, your like the way that you were raised, the world that you live in doesn't mean that that that's how you have to be. You can be whatever you want to be. You just have to be willing to go for it, you know, that's all I got. Right, no, don't get your own way, don't show yourself a foot.
Get your fish out of your mouth. Yeah, exactly. That's the world's story. That's exactly it.