Are you sick and tired of hearing the same old conventional financial advice? We feel you. We're fed up with those same old truisms that fall flat when you get into the unique opportunities and challenges of specific situations. This show is all about bringing you historic wisdom around wealth-building with practical insights on how to apply it to your journey. When conventional financial thinking doesn't get you where you want to go, you need wealth wisdom. Let's master wealth-building together.
(00:04): People are more stressed than ever today, especially about money and the economy. If you're ready to conquer financial stress and find sanity, we've got seven actions that are working for us. So keep listening to see what works for you. And if you could take some of the things that learned, worked for us to help you, that's gonna be awesome. Hey, I'm Brandon and welcome to the wealth wisdom financial podcast, episode 1 0 6, turning financial stress into financial sanity. Hey, I'm a Amanda. We chat with individuals and couples every day and we're seeing more and more of them share that they are stressed about all kinds of things. Inflation war, supply chains, job stability, and a highly uncertain macroeconomic future. Those are some bitter big words there. Just the future of the money system is UNSU at this point. So we thought we would put together a podcast episode where we share what we've learned and implemented in our own financial journeys and yes, and true wealth wisdom, financial style. This is rooted in historic wisdom. Today's podcast is gonna give you the juicy details of what we do for practically in our own journey to implement this historic wisdom. That's given us so much serenity, despite so much change and uncertainty about the future.
(01:32): Are you sick and tired of hearing the same old conventional financial advice? We feel you. We are too. I mean, we're fed up with the same old truisms that fall flat. You get into the unique opportunities and challenges of your specific situation. This show is all about bringing you historic wisdom around building wealth, with practical insights on how to apply it to your journey when conventional financial thinking, doesn't get you to where you, you need wealth wisdom. So let's master wealth building together. We're a little late in talking about stress. April was actually stress awareness month in the United States. I didn't know that very well until I was researching for this episode. So you probably missed it too. but I did find that there is this stress in America survey that they've been doing for years and years, where they just get a pulse on how stressed our Americans. And they conducted one in February of 2022 and the, they published the results in April during stress awareness month. And here's what they found. 87% of Americans are stressed due to rising inflation in the country. That's up from 59% in August of 2021. So that's like a pretty big increase and the number of people that are stressed particularly about inflation.
(02:59): Wow. That is huge. Yeah. And then if you just look about overall, they found 65% of Americans responded. They were stressed about money and the economy. That's the highest percentage of Americans that are stressed about money and the economy, and more than six years, which Brandon wanted me to say this? So this is 20, 22, 6 years ago. Would've been 2016. We're in an election cycle. Pretty big election year. Makes sense. People might be stressed about the future of, you know, the economy and money in general. This is not an election year. This is just 20, 22, right? Like, right. You would think we're, you know, gonna be not as stressed, but we're more stressed than we have been in the last six years since a pretty heated election year. That's serious. Yeah. I think that's interesting to think about and knowing like with some of the politics, the way it, it it's too increased stress sometimes. That's how votes happen. and like to know that we're not in that and our stress levels are higher than that is interesting.
(04:05): Yeah. And when I first saw those results and re researching this episode, even just reading those things, and maybe you're gonna experience, you've experienced this as I was talking about it, it seemed to increase my stress level, just thinking about my fellow Americans and how much stress they are going through. And of course, we hear this stress on almost a daily basis from the individuals that we work with, but also individually and as a couple, we're not immune from that stress either. I mean, after all we still buy groceries, we still have to fill up the gas tank on our car, just like the rest of Americans. You know, we still put on our pants, one leg at a time, you know, that we're, we could be just in that same boat experiencing way more stress. Yeah. So we thought we'd share some tactics that we use to reduce our financial stress and reduce being the keyword. A little stress is good. All right. You don't to the gym and not put weights on. Right. That's, that's part of what stress is. You, you kind of have a little stress to, to build again, a little stress is good. It keeps you sane and savvy, but extreme stress is not good.
(05:18): Right. And I like that gem analogy, Brandon, the idea that a little stress makes you stronger, more confident. We want you to have a little bit of stress, but not too much. So we're gonna share some ways to lower your stress. These might not reduce it entirely right. Or get rid of it entirely, but hopefully you'll see that they could reduce your stress just like they have ours. Yeah. So one of them, and I'm gonna start with, what's worked for us and I'm gonna start with a curse word. So don't don't Believe us. Yeah. Be ready. Editors to ma they might bleep us. You never know with this big curse word that I'm about to say, and it's actually the B word and Amanda hates the B word sometimes. Yeah. For the most part, you know, this curse word though starts again with the B and that curse word is budgeting uhoh. I said it and it might have been bleeped out. So I better say it again, budgeting . But the thing is, is that budgeting doesn't have to be a curse. It can be a blessing. And we found a software that practically has really helped us turn the budgeting into something that we actually enjoy and gives us life and totally reduces our stress. The software we've been using for like eight year now, it's called you need a budget or YAB for short, you need a budget. We'll put a link in the show notes. If you wanna check it out, you can try it out for free. And then if you like it, the link gets you an extra free month. It also gives us a free month, but we're gonna keep using it anyway. So we thought might as well give you a free month too.
(06:55): And again, that was just a joke. You, you know, Amanda does, like when I use this curse word usually, so you know, well, And why Brandon cuz you hate budgeting. We've done episodes in the past. About how much you hate budgeting. Why are you along for the ride with Y? Well, I not like to think about it is knowing exactly what our money is doing and being able to tell it what we need it to do. Right. And there's like rules to YAB that, that we like to follow. Yeah. Actually rule number one is give every dollar a job as a boss type person. Brandon loves giving the dollars jobs. Yeah, definitely. And also it helps us to cover the gap when there is like increased expenses and it also creates some cushion when there is something that happens, something that is out of our control. Yeah. Let me give you some practical examples here. So rule number two is embrace your two expenses. By following that rule, we already have money set aside for Christmas skips for December, which we're not gonna need right away, but it's smart to, you know, take the December budget that we're gonna spend on the holidays and divide it up each month so that when we get to December, it's ready to go. Now, when we see something like, oh, we're gonna have to spend more for filling up the gas tank. We're able to do rule number three with YAB, that's called roll with the punches. Maybe we're like, you know what? December's kind of far away. We might think of some ways to spend less this holiday season. Maybe some of the other thing of the strategies we're gonna share today to reduce our stress. We employ to, to make the holidays fun, but not end as much money, particularly, maybe number seven when we get there.
(08:44): And so we might say, well, let's go ahead and reduce our December, you know, holiday budget. And instead put that a little bit extra toward our gas, maybe an extra 10 bucks a month. We're gonna shift from one to the other. We're not gonna miss 120 bucks when it comes to December and we've got plenty of time to figure out maybe how we replace that. And so what I love about how yap does budgeting is, is way less restrictive. You're able and free to roll with the punches, that that way in their speak. I actually kind of hate the punch language. I I'm a pacifist a little bit. But that's not, I can't think of a better way to say when life punches you, you gotta be able to roll with the punch and get back to It. Well, and, and again, I might not want to cut Christmas might take it from, you know, I don't know some other part of the, the budget, right? Like, like Eating out. Yeah. Eating out or something. And I think that's that's for me. And then, you know, we'll get to another thing that helps us figure it out, but actually might not be at Christmas. So
(09:45): Go ahead there, Brandon, cuz we're about to start a fight and number two is what helps keep us from fighting. Yeah. So if we were in this position, which again, some everyone is right. At some point, especially when it comes to gas prices and things like that is we have regular money meetings, right. And this can happen with you. And, and your spouse, if you're, if you're married, if you're a business, running a business, doing the same thing, having those regular money meeting is really important. If you're single, you do it by yourself. Yeah. So being on the same page about what we want our money to do for us is important. And again, working through it, even if you're by yourself, reflecting on that and thinking about what you want it to do. So you're not just kind of going through life, have hazard you're, you're kind of thinking about it intentionally. So we I'm gonna jump in here cuz I can almost feel a lot of people's hearts go up into their throat, thinking about doing a muddy meeting with their significant other or even by themselves, even like looking at their money. And then if they do look, what do they do? How do, what do, how do they move to a better place? It feels like so much is out of our control. This is where Brandon and I have put together something. We call the still method S T I L L method. And it's actually more like a framework and agenda that you can bring to these money meetings to be very life giving and actually joy filled. And then we also recommend, totally brings whatever your vice is, right? Have some ice cream, have a latte wine, whatever it might be to help these many meetings be more enjoyable. And this might also be one of those things that causes a little bit of stress, but overall helps you qua a lot of stress by getting clear on what you want your money to be doing for you and aligning your money with those goals and those priorities. So you can download our still method. We actually, you can have a PDF you can bring to that meeting or, or, you know, look through yourself in the time that you carved for this. You can get it@stillmethoddotcomstillmethod.com. We'll put a link in the show notes as well.
(12:04): Yeah. And I, I would say, I can't like say for sure, put a stamp on it, but I bet you, if you did this as a married couple, a lot of reasons divorce happens is because of finances. Right. Not having that communication there. So I'm wondering long range if people who implement the still method, if it might save marriages, I don't know. I hope so. Yeah. So I, I think that definitely what we're onto could save a marriage, could save a business, could do a lot of things and that's why we're so passionate about it. So go to stone method.com and download that. And number three, I think could actually save a lot of marriages too. This tactic that's reduced our stress. Yeah. Having safe liquidity right. Much more than that thou thousand dollars emergency fund that some financial abundance or gurus say is you need to have a fi $1,000 emergency fund. Well, especially with the rise and inflation, a thousand dollars, doesn't get you very far. So having more than a thousand dollars emergency fund is important and making sure it's not at risk, right. That having it liquid and not at risk, that, that something could happen in Russia wall street, anywhere that would cause this money to go away, just evaporate. We want it to be safe and not at risk.
(13:33): And that this where we just like we have YAB for budgeting. We have the still method for our money meetings. We found a very powerful tool to help us have accessible cash. That's safe, but is still growing and growing better than a savings account or at least ours is currently right. That savings accounts are not you very much interest. And this tool's called bank on yourself, an amazing woman named Pamela yelling, coined that term. And we adopted this over eight years ago in our financial lives. And what's been amazing about it is that we can even leverage that liquidity, that cash value that builds up within bank, on yourself, where we don't lose the opportunity that those funds could grow into because we've leveraged them and spent them somewhere else. Well, it's not really our funds. There's a lot of details to it, but it, it means we're not like irresponsible. We're not gonna buy a Lamborghini. We bought a Subaru, right. But it does reduce our stress and give us a sense of more freedom. When we do spend the money, knowing that we're not giving up the growth potential of that money as well at the same time, if you wanna learn more about bank on yourselves, that's something we love to introduce folks to see if it's a good fit for them. Just reach out to us. You can schedule a meeting at grandmas wealth, wisdom.com/call, or just go to grandmas wealth, wisdom.com and click request a meeting that link is in every single show notes that we have.
(14:58): Yep. Yeah. Number Four, Number four, which again, leads to everything is leading, right? And this is smart debt using debt to keep our liquid is important. Right? So not just going all Dave Ramsey and getting rid of all debt because all debt is bad, but having some debt is good sometimes. Sometimes good. Yeah. Sometimes good. So we can have more liquidity or more growth in other areas. Yeah. So I mentioned that Subaru that we got not Lamborghini, just a plain old Subaru. We bought it used, we bought it just before the prices started increasing UN used cars because of whatever this chip shortage is or whatever, lack of supply good timing. But we'll be a hundred percent honest. We decided to go ahead, didn't use a car financing company. We're paying a loan interest on that. We were smart about it. We negotiated it. We put down a down payment, our interest rate, like all the things. But the awesome thing about it is that it gave us a lot more sanity because we're keeping our liquidity available, knowing that if there is a big change in the future, we wanna have cash available. Cuz that's often when folks make a lot of money. Now that's our personal choice. Everyone's gotta make your own choice. Yeah. But that kind of smart debt in keeping our liquidity available when we're, we think there's gonna be an opportunity to use it. That that's what really helps us to con our stress and increases our sanity.
(16:35): Yeah. And again, smart debt is like not just having everything on a consumer credit card and paying, you know, 20% interest or something. Right. Getting rid of some of that. So, and then next in this whole thing of reducing stress from a business perspective is this system called profit first. So profit first is amazing. If you have not, as a business owner heard about profit first, you should listen to the book reach out to us again. There's so many powerful ways that profit first is help us. And it's really about running the business with sanity and not actually reinvesting everything. This also feeds into our liquidity. So so many business owners are just keep reinvesting and they don't put again profit first or paying themselves first as a priority. So we have a video about combining both profit first and bank yourself together. If you go, it'll be in our show notes, but it's also on our YouTube channel and some videos about it or, or podcast episodes about it as well. But thinking about the profit first system has really helped us to run a profitable business that not just that we're feeding the monster of the business, but it's, it's kind of paying us back. It's it's, it's, it's paying us for our works.
(18:08): I, I gotta jump in here. You're getting a little long winded, Brandon. Yeah. practically speaking cuz we've been using profit first for several years in concept. And then when we officially adopted the system a few years back, it really, really transformed things by going all in on profit first, not just kind of half doing it at going through the book, making sure we were doing all the things that Mike talks about in the profit first book has really like helped us fight less about what do we do with the money in our business? How do we manage our cash flow? How much should we pay ourselves? Lots of different things that has reduced our stress, cuz we can just follow the system and we thought let's try it. Let's see if it works. Let's see how we're, you know what it would be like to follow the system for a year. And if it doesn't work, we can throw it out. But if it does reduce our stress, if it does give us more life, then let's use it and we haven't turned back. It's been amazing for us, particularly when we're trying to decide, do we spend money on X, Y, or Z in our business? Brandon would always say yes, I would always say no. Now we get to pull up our operating expense account and see how much is there and make a better, more informed decision. Yep.
(19:18): And it helps on now. So paying ourselves and all the other fun stuff, which is important, the sixth way of reducing stress is being open handed. And that means as much as we wanna have control of everything and EV all of that, we don't right. And so we wanna make sure that we're keeping, giving a priority and making sure that we are still doing that part. We're just stewards along way. It's really not ours. We're just, again, the stewards and, and making sure that we put some of that percentage into other things that are, are part of our lifestyle or part of serving, I guess. So what this really means is even with the uncertainty, even with inflation, we haven't touched our giving. We're giving the same amount percentage of our income goes there. And then we give a little extra above that. And that's been a really good reminder to us that we're aligning our money with our values. And it's also a good reminder that when there's a lot of uncertainty, when there's a lot of turmoil in the world, that's when more people are gonna need help. And our giving is actually gonna make a bigger difference right now and that, and, you know, altruism, isn't a hundred percent just about thinking of others. First. It makes us feel better when we're giving and we're keeping that a priority. And so it's not, it's not like this selfless thing in some ways, it's a selfish thing that we're able to think of all the good that our giving is continuing do in the world. That's much more needed right now than it was even three or four years ago.
(21:12): Exactly. I think that's, that's exactly right. Amanda, the next one is a hard one for me. And it's a hard one. If you're a business owner, This is my favorite one number seven. Yeah. And I think it's hard in our, our world right now because there's so much going. After our time, we have social media, we have everything wanting our attention and that's creating white space with our time. So being less busy, actually results in less stress, busy and stress tend to go together. So how do you create a lifestyle or business that has a little less stress is put some of those white spaces on the calendar. Like just as you put down meetings with clients, as you put down, driving the kids to all the activities or whatever, putting in that white space with your own time where you can have just white space, You might immediately think of, you know, white space. You could do some reading, some walking outdoors in nature, some meditation, whatever might help relieve your stress. But then financially speaking, what love about white space is that it gives us time to do some DIY projects where we spent more time, but that means we spent less money cuz we put our own blood, sweat and tears into it. Right. And that's really what I found financially speaking white space. Yeah. It gives me more clarity and where I wanna go helps me see different financial moves I can make blah, blah, blah. But ultimately it gives me the time to do some fun projects that I wanna do and not spend as much money on it. Cause I'm able, we're able to DIY it ourselves. Like some gardening Brandon's doing this year is our example there. Yeah. So now we wanna turn it to you, which one of these do you need more of, I'm gonna read through and don't pick all seven pick one that you're like, this is what I think could totally help me be less stressed and more sane financially and then test it out. See if it works. See if it brings you more happiness, more joy, less stress in your life. Okay. The first one, remember the curve word, budgeting, check out. Y app. You
(23:33): Said it again. I did. the second one money meetings, whether with your significant other, or if you're solely in charge of your finances, you make all the financial decisions on yourself. Just spending time looking and reflecting on your money, using the still method. Hopefully making more safe liquidity, money that's accessible and safe and ready to use. Maybe being smart about debt. The next time you're making a major purchase, weighing the, the pros and cons of paying cash or using debt. Or if you a bank on your self policy using a policy line, something like that, adopting profit first, or getting more on board with the full profit first system, if you already started to adopt and then open handedness, keeping your giving a priority, making sure that you're continuing to give to a world that needs it and using that to a reminders, self, that it's not really yours anyway. And then more white space with your time. How might having being less busy saying no to certain things that you feel like are obligations, but aren't really needed. Might free up your time to make some financial moves, save some money, increase your income, whatever that kind of looks like, or at least reduce your, your stress. Now there's lots of things you could do. You might be feeling overwhelmed and stressed with all the things you could do. Brandon's got a helpful tip to assist you in choosing which one and helping make sure you implement it so that you have that better life you're looking for. Yeah.
(25:02): It's again, the plug to the still method, right? That still method framework works. Right? So download still method.com, right? To get that little PDF, that's gonna help you figure out which way to go. What should work for you or will work right? As you're learning new information or coming up with fresh ideas, it difficult to decide what to carry through with. And when, so again, we've developed the filter to use when deciding how to move forward towards your goals and your dreams, financial and otherwise it can be used in all areas, not just in the financial side. It's a free gift for you waiting@stillmethod.com. So go download it today and start connecting with your center for an intentional financial life And then hit that subscribe button. We'll wait for you. Go ahead and go to still method.com. Get your download. Come back to us. Hit subscribe. Okay. Glad you did it. We're excited for you cuz next time we're gonna be talking about foolish financial advice that most Americans think are true, but they're not. Yeah. And there's quite a few of them. So until next time, keep building your financial confidence, right? And your financial wisdom. We hope you also live long and profit in personal life. And in business, the topics present in this podcast are for general information only, and not for the purpose of providing legal counseling or investment advice on such matters. Please consult a professional who knows your specific situation.
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