Do you hate the thought of working past 55 or 60? Do you hate not being able to live the life you deserve today? Do you hate not knowing what your financial future looks like? It's time to stop doing what you hate, here's your host, Mr. Harold Green.
(00:20): Hi everybody. This is Howard green of Brightree financial group, and it's time to stop doing what you hate. Hopefully you're having a pretty fantastic, amazing day. I'm excited to share with you guys today as always. And I just want to kind of get into something today that you folks have probably heard this a zillion times, but it's one of the hardest things to make come true in your life. But, you know, before I get into today's show, I want to give a shout out to some, some people in my life. Some, some ladies in my life that have been pretty instrumental in my upbringing and helping me develop my, my thought process and just, just thinking differently than, than everybody else. And, you know, the first one is to my mom because when I grew up, she told me, she said, you know, I want you to make something of yourself.
(01:18): The reason I don't let you do what everybody else do is because there's something in you. And you're, you're better, not better than everybody else, but you know, you have some things inside of you that I see that makes you, you know, pretty special in so many words, that's what my mom was telling me. And she really wanted me to make something of myself. And so she was very strict. There was a lot of things she didn't allow me to do. You know, a lot of people, she did not allow me to hang around with. And so it was pretty rough growing up when I saw my friends going out, having girlfriends and all this stuff. And my mom's like, I'm your girlfriend, you know, you know, this homework is your girlfriend. You know, this part-time job is your girlfriend. You know, in other words, she said it, she was saying that, keep your focus on, on other things.
(02:07): And, you know, there's plenty of time to date. There's plenty of time to do all that stuff, but she really just wanted me to, you know, to get my head on on, right. And then the next one is my aunt gasoline. She was very instrumental in my life as well. And then, you know, mother, auntie, aunt Diane, you know, she, she was one of the managers at burger king and, you know, on my 16th birthday B worked it out so that I could, you know, start working at burger king with her. And so they had a little birthday party for me that morning when I turned 16, I think I had just gotten my first car, a 1976 Dodge duster with a slant B6 broom broom. And it was, it was pretty exciting. So drove my car to work 16 years of age. And you know, it was just exciting for me.
(02:54): And she always had a different way of thinking, and we're a little bit of a weird way of thinking, you know, just kind of the way she's all things. And so, you know, I adopted a lot of that and, and, and, you know, it just kind of made me kind of who I am right now. And then the next person is my wife. And this is exciting because you know, my wife and I we've, we've seen a lot of things. We've been through a lot of things. We we've been a lot of places done a lot of things. And when we were first dating, we were in this little HomeStore, little trinkets and things like household goods, store, little small store. And, you know, we were in there and we were looking at picking out salt shakers, like when we get our first apartment or do we want everything to look like?
(03:35): And so we were dreamers all the way from back then. And I told my wife one day, I said, you know, well, she's my girlfriend at the time. And so, you know, I said I was getting married and I see two kids. I see a little boy that's standing beside me and I see a little girl that's sitting on my shoulder. So the boy was older and then the dot the girl was younger. So, and we're at McDonald's and, and I kid you not one day, I think we were at McDonald's and my daughter was on my shoulders and my son was beside me he's he was four. And she was I think it was five and she was one. So they're four years apart. And I told my wife and say, remember, I told you when we were dating, we're going to have a boy and a girl, the boys going to be older, and the girl's going to be young.
(04:14): And she said, I remember that dream. And we just kind of stood there. And it was kind of like a surreal moment ordering those French fries and chicken nuggets and McDonald's man. And so the title of today's show is dream big, think big plan, big, do big. I'm going to say that again. Dream big, think big plan, big and do big. And that just kind of been my whole model throughout my life is you gotta dream big. If you're going to dream dream big. And I want to say that if you're not dreaming big for yourself, man, at it, at least dream big for others. And I want to get into this thing about, about dreaming and about thinking bigger than where you are right now. And this is a little bit of a challenging show due to the fact that everyone always says, yeah, I am dreaming big.
(05:05): I am thinking big. But when you sit down and you analyze what you were actually thinking, you analyze what you're actually dreaming. A lot of times, it's too small. It's too small for all of the things that you want to accomplish in life. The way you probably think right now, maybe a little too small, or it could be a lot small than, than what you need to be. And I'm going to put this out there and say, I think a lot of times when it comes to dreaming big and thinking big planning, big and doing big, the reason why people think small, do small and dream small. And all of that is because of this one thing. It's human nature for a lot of us. And it's the, the innate ability like to be selfish, like self preservation, security, comfort, protecting myself, you know, worrying about myself, taking care of myself.
(05:59): What's good for me. What's in it for me, what's in my best interest, you know, how do I, you know, get my life set up the way I want. And when you begin to think selfish like that, it's really hard to think. Big. I have never met a person that thinks big that is selfish. And I hear a lot of this stuff. Well, you got to take care of yourself first before you can take care of anyone else. Yes. That's very important. But if you were a big thinker in a big picture, thinking person you'll understand that because that's part of the entire big picture, but yeah, you take care of yourself, but it doesn't take all day to take care of yourself. Right? You know, you do your routine, you eat right. You do help you stop. You go to the gym, like you put in the time you run, walk, swim, golf, or whatever it might be to keep yourself physically fit.
(06:44): But at the same time, you're working on your mind. And a lot of successful people that I know are big thinkers. They're they think outside of the box, they think visionary, legendary status. And I'm trying to get that way. I'm trying to go that route. And this week I made this one huge decision that I've been thinking about making for years. And it was one of those things where I've been working like six days a week or so for the last six, seven years or whatnot. And some Saturdays I take off, but not that many. And even if I am technically off on a Saturday, I'm still doing work-related stuff. So I made a major decision to change my hours here in the office to Monday through Friday by appointment only. And then on Saturdays, in certain situations when clients have emergencies or things that can't fit during the week, then of course I'll, I'll work to help them on a Saturday if it comes to that.
(07:37): But all of these years, I had been thinking too small when it came time to managing my time and managing my, my resources. I had been thinking too small. So recently we brought more people on board and it's all part of the bigger picture in terms of getting things off of my plate, that I can delegate to someone else that can become pretty great at that. And I don't have to do everything all the time. And I've kind of noticed myself pulling back a little bit, pulling back a little bit on the things that I can let other people do, and then work on expanding my mind or going to expanding my mind to think bigger than the way I think right now, when it comes to my kids, thinking bigger, when it comes to my relationship with my wife, thinking bigger and just analyzing it, we talked about making that a stop start chart.
(08:24): Like what are the, some of the things that you need to stop? And then what are some of the things that you can start to replace that I had been doing a lot of that self reflection this week and just looking at a lot of things. And, you know, I was reading in the Bible where it was talking about, you know, there's things that you want to do, but you're preventing yourself from doing them for whatever different reason. And it was like, okay, so what is it that I want to do? What is it that I want to do? And why can't I do it? What's holding me back from accomplishing all the things in life that I want to accomplish. And it was kind of like, well, there's money, the issue, all right, check that off. No, money's not the issue then what is it?
(09:02): What is it? What is it? And what it was was my small minded, self controlling or control, controlling compulsive obsessing issue. And one of the things that you have to do, if you want to become a big thinker, you can't obsess anymore. You have to stop obsessing over the small stuff, obsessing over the little bitty minion type details that are just not really all that important. You know, a lot of times we w we want to try to control every single aspect of every single moment of every single day of our life. And the truth is, is that some things are simply out of our control. And I've learned that you need to control what you can control, but then things that are out of your control that are up to other people to make decisions, to take care of their, the situation itself. You got to let that go and then work on the bigger picture, work on the bigger things, work on the bigger vision.
(09:56): And when it comes to your finances, here's kind of like what I want to talk about when you sit down and you analyze what you have going on, where are you at right now? If you were to look at your financial plan and say, okay, am I on track? Am I above track? Or am I below track? So in the air traffic control world, it's like, okay, they have this thing called the glide path. So when a plane is coming into land, either they're on glide path, they're above glide path, they're below glide path. And so what we'd have to do as final approach controllers is basically tell the plane. All right. So you're above glide path coming down, coming down on glide path, on glide path, coming down, going below glide path below glide path, and then coming up, coming up like th that's the phrase that you use when you're controlling a plane and you're telling a pilot that's flying you know, 30, 40, 50, a hundred million dollar piece of equipment, where are they are in relationship to where they're supposed to be in order to hit that plane at a certain speed.
(10:58): And they have to catch a certain wire at a certain time, because if they don't, they're going to just bolt off the end of that ship. And if they're not, if they don't have the right speed to carry them through those wires, and it can be a very disastrous thing where they actually skip wires and not hit the throttle, and then they're falling off the front of the ship, because once that plane hits a certain angle and it doesn't have the right speed, then it's in trouble. So they have to be coming down on a certain angle. They have to have a certain amount of rust and power. And then if they miss those wires on that ship, they can just hit the throttle and take off and have enough angle to get back up in the air. Cause if not, they'll stall the engines and boom, you know, again, 30, 40, 50, $60 million, even more, a piece of equipment is going over the side of that ship.
(11:41): And that's not a site that is not something that you want to see. And so let's look at where you are right now. So here's a couple of different rule of thumbs. And I know we're talking about thinking big and dreaming big, but we got to start with the basics. A lot of times people ask me, Harold, how much money should I have for a rainy day fund? And I used to say three to six months of income, but now my thinking is a year and a half to two years worth of money in cash reserves. For what particular reason? Well, just in case you got to retool and switch gears, it takes anybody 18 months. They come proficient at something new. You just don't jump into something new and get up to speed on it in six months. So for example, you lose your job.
(12:26): You're probably going to go through a little bit of a depression or whatever it might be. You'll take some time off. You'll think about it. You take that three months to do that. The next three months, you're looking for another job. Hopefully you will find a job in three months. So now there we are six months out. And so now basically the next 18 months, you're getting proficient in your job or how many of our months that is you have to give yourself room to breathe. And if you don't have that saved away somewhere to some, in some kind of plan, then you really need to think about your cash reserve system. Right. And what I say about cash reserves is they gotta be adequate accessible after tax in all ways there. So don't think three to six months, don't think six months to a year think, think two years or more, right?
(13:10): Think bigger than what you hear in the media. Think bigger than what you hear in the news. Because what if you're a reserve system there it's two years of income. What if you take that and start a business that you know, it's going to work right away and boom, you're off to the races. So you got to think bigger in regards to that. Well, Harold, how much money do I need to retire? I heard the rule of thumb of a million dollars. If I had a million dollars, I'm good to go. Well, again, it just kind of depends on what kind of life you want to have. If you want to just live in your little world and just have enough to take care of you and yourself and not do anything bigger than that, then yeah. A million dollars might work, but you got to find somewhere to live on that.
(13:48): Maybe Florida, maybe, you know, Idaho, you got to think about these things. And if you want to do volunteerism and you want to support different missions and different outreaches and things that are going to happen in the world, you need to have money for that. That stuff is not cheap, right? When it comes to your lifestyle, what kind of lifestyle do you want to have? How do you think about your life? Do you envision yourself having a big life or do you envision yourself having a small life again, if you're not going to think big for yourself, think big for others. And that's a very important thing. Money is very important, but it's not just for you. It's to be a blessing to the people that are around you it's to, to make change happen in the world. Positive change. That is not all those weird stuff that we see going on right now.
(14:33): There's people with billions of dollars making the world weird. They have a warped sense of, of life and a warped sense of reality. It is so distorted. And a lot of times they're doing things that just kind of go against human nature, right? I'm not going to get into that too much, but you want to be able to affect positive change on the world. And the only way you're going to be able to do that is by thinking bigger. Of course, you want to make sure your life is squared away. Of course you want to make sure your plan is squared away, but then what's on top of that, right? Is it charity work? Is it think about the change and the difference that you want to make in the world? And then think about how much money it's going to take to do that.
(15:11): Yes. We look at rates of returns in your portfolios. And if we get three to 4% a year, you'll never run out of money per se, or you get 5% a year, but that's just a selfish thing. How much do you want to give? How much of that money, how big do you want that pot to grow? So we can start to chop some off and do different things with the money. Right? That's very important. So we got to start thinking big picture when it comes to your financial plan. So again, dream big, think big plan, big, do big. We want to do big things. Every, everybody wants to feel the sense of accomplishment when they accomplish something great, but it all starts with the thinking and the dreaming, right? And like I said before, if you're not going to dream big, wake up and leave that to somebody else.
(15:58): But here's what I want to do. I want to sit down with you and talk about your plan. I want to talk about where you folks are at whether or not you're on that glide path that you're coming down. You're going above. You're about to crash. I want to take a look at what you got going on, and I want to talk to you about your thinking, where is it, right? Where do you see yourself? Can you see it? Can you see your dreams coming true? And then we got to look at your plan and we've got to look at the way you think. And we got to look at who you're getting advice from and all of these different types of things to make sure you are going from where you are right now to where you really want to be. So I want you to click on my show notes and then get on my calendar.
(16:35): We'll have a conversation for free just to talk. And then if you want me to analyze all your stuff, that's 375 bucks an hour because I don't work for free. You used to work for free, but you know what? I was thinking too small. I was thinking too small. Like only if I do this for free, you know, it's, you know, it's a better chance the person will become a client and they'll like me and everybody likes getting someone for free. And then I'm adding value to them. And it's like, no, but I'm robbing from myself. I'm robbing from myself all the time and effort, all the money I spent to get educated on finances, all the hell that I went through to pass all these different exams to the bill, this company, to study the investments. Like I am literally robbing from myself. That was a small form of thinking that I did.
(17:14): So eventually at 3 75 an hour may go to a thousand dollars a dollar, but you know what? If you're not a client yet, and you want to take a look at some things and you want me to analyze your stuff, go ahead and do it now while it's pretty cheap. Eventually it's not going to be 3 75. It's going to go higher. But for now, I'm going to leave that alone. But yeah man, like, you know, my schedule, I'm excited to talk to you folks and to really help you out. So again, I want you to challenge yourself in your thinking. I want you to challenge yourself in your planning. I want you to challenge yourself when you're doing and if you gotta to do it, you got to do a big, all right, so next time everybody. 1, 2, 3, let's get it.
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