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.
(00:21): Hot everybody. This is Harold Green, upright financial group. And it's time to stop going. What you hate. It is a fabulous day here in Honolulu, Hawaii. I don't know where you're listening to me from, but man, it's just such a beautiful day here and I hope wherever you are are listening to this, I hope it's a beautiful day for you as well. And as always, I'm super excited to be sharing today's show with you folks, but I'm also a little bit nervous and I'll, and I'll share it with you. Why? Because what I'm about to share with you, I think is one of their major reasons why people can't get to where they really want to be financially in life. And so I want to talk to you about what I have deemed as the financial identity crisis. That's right. The financial identity crisis.
(01:20): It's so many people, you know, the they're having a hard time identifying in life right now with who they are, who they want to be. You know what it is that they should or should not be doing. It's just, it's just hard. And one of the things I heard the other day, and this is, this is, I never thought about it like this, but people love stability for the most part. And when it don't have stability in their lives, it can create an identity crisis. It can create some sort of confusion. So I want to get into today's show identity, crisis, or financial identity crisis, and, and just kind of help shed some light on this. So are you ready? 1, 2, 3. Let's get it. All right. So there are so many financial strategies out there. I mean, it's enough to give you a headache, right?
(02:16): I'm gonna just kind of go down the list and name some of them, but, but I'm gonna start with this. You, you have to identify the level of wealth you want to have in your life. You have to identify that you have to sit down and say, I want this much wealth in my life. And here's why I want this much wealth in my life. You could even say, I need this much wealth in my life. And here's why I need this much wealth in my life. And you can just start from there because until you identify the why you're always going to be confused. So you're gonna either be committed to obtaining what you just said you wanted, or you're gonna be confused and where there's confusion. There's a lot of bad things going on. The Bible talks about it, where there's confusion. There's every evil work.
(03:17): Confus is not a positive thing. It's never positive to be confused. Imagine this how's your day. Oh man. It's it's, I'm so confused, but you know what? It's just awesome because I'm confused. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I don't know where the hell I'm going, but that's okay. I just want to be confused and just live. And my confusion who says that nobody says anything like that ever, but a lot of people are confused. They don't know what they want. They don't know how much wealth they need in their life. And that's why 95% of the people in this country, in the United States of America, 95% retire, either broke or their retirement is inadequately funded. 95%. What's going on with the other 5%. Well, we're not gonna talk about them today, but the 95%, I guarantee you, they have some kind of financial identity crisis.
(04:15): They just cannot get it together. So let's talk a little about some of the strategies out there that you, you folks have probably heard of. You probably heard me talk about some of them. And one of 'em I'll talk about is bank on yourself. That's a financial strategy out there, and I'm just gonna give you some tidbits on what, what it is. You know, bank on yourself is the system where, you know, you become your own banker and it's all this and predicated on you not paying interest to an outside entity. And it's about you recapturing the interest. You would've paid to an outside entity and you're garnering the power of that interest. And you're building wealth for yourself. I'll admit it is a very slow and tedious process to operate the bank on your self system. It takes years, if not decades, and it's slow, it's methodical and you have to be committed to that process or else you're gonna lose a lot of money in things like surrender charges and life insurance policies, or you can get into the wrong kind of a life insurance policy and or the life insurance policy could be set up the wrong way.
(05:27): And it just be a horrible thing. And so that's a strategy. There's a lot of pros to the strategy. There's a lot of cons to the strategy, but if you start it, you gotta be committed to it. There is the fire strategy, ally, independent retire, early, something like that, that strategy's all predicated on. Pretty much paying off all your debt, living really meager investing everything you have paying off debt. And then hopefully by the time you're 40 or so, you can walk away with all your debt paid off and then have enough income coming in every month to kind of live, you know, an okay life. Because I, I don't. Yeah, I haven't heard them talking about living a substantially amazing life. It doesn't provide you enough to make a big difference in terms of giving, being philanthropic, because it's the, it's only predicated getting you outta your job and then having enough to kind of live a, a certain kind of life until the day you die.
(06:25): There is pros and cons to that. Some of the people, you know, they retire very, very early, but then yet they don't really have, you know, they don't really have a purpose after that. They get bored or gold is energy with no purpose and no direction because they they've arrived. They've hit their stride and that's that's it. But if you start something like that, you gotta be committed to it 100%. Otherwise you're gonna be confused about what you're doing. There's the tars methodology. Tars is one of those systems where you keep buying estate and then you keep paying off one piece of property. Then using the rental income to pay off the other piece of property. You know, you're floating credit cards for a long period of time. You're using lines of credits and different things like that. All to end up paying off all the debt on the property so that now you have income for the rest of your life coming from real estate.
(07:17): That's a strategy, right? I know people who implement that strategy. They're happy with that strategy. A lot of times people are implementing strategies that line up with their belief systems. That's a big one. And here's the problem that I have with that. A lot of times when people sit down and set these things up, that's great, but where these things tend to fail every single time. If they're not done properly, I guarantee you I've seen it time and time again. When a problem arises financially that the strategy can't handle, it becomes a disaster. I'll give you an example. So many people wanna send their kids off to college, but they're in a strategy such as paying off all their debt. Now they don't have money to send their kids to college. And so the kids can't go for whatever reason, primarily cuz they don't have money.
(08:13): Cuz it's sitting in the house or people put everything they can into their 401k because they're primary objective is to retire. Something comes up financially, guess where the money is. It's sitting inside the 401k and they have access to it. But they are subject to limitations in regards to how much they can pull out. So the system, they either end up not fulfilling the obligation to help the kids go to college or they crash the system, take the money, take the penalties and pay for the education. I've seen this done time and time again. When people come into my office and they are inadequately prepared to handle things that come up, something comes up with a house. Something comes up with a health situation. Their financial strategy is incapable of penning land because they didn't think through all of these things. And I asked them every single time, well what would happen here?
(09:04): Did you guys not think about this? And they said, no, we're not thinking about this at the time. Well, didn't your advisor help you think these things through? No, they never brought that stuff up. You know, we were just trying to like get this. And I said, well, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's like building a house, right? You go, you get the designs drawn. Then you get the permit. Then you hire the, you know, you hire the contractors, get the permit, whatever the process is. And then you begin to build right based on the blueprint. That's how that all goes. And you think about everything that can and happen to that house, right? Fire, hurricanes, floods, all of that. You take all of that into consideration when you're building your financial system or you are adopting a financial strategy. And a lot of times people don't do that.
(09:50): Another reason why I see their financial strategies fail is because they went into this thing, looking for what I call the magic bullet, right? Oh my God, this thing sounds so awesome. Oh my God, this is gonna solve all my problems. Boom. Right? The magic bullet and the problem with the magic bullet is there's always a better magic bullet around the corner. I call that the next best thing syndrome. There are people out there that are all always looking for the next best thing. And that's why I'm so careful with my rapid retired program, not to pump it up and hype it up so much that I get people so excited about the thought of retiring early. And I get people to fall in love with the idea of retiring early because after a while that the phage man motivation, fades motivation is not long lasting motivation, fades, and you're gonna have to constantly be pumped up and pumped up and pumped up again.
(10:45): And that's what I ran into before with clients, I would have to constantly encourage them constantly just kind of like hold their hand constant. It's gonna be okay. We can do this constantly because motivation from the very beginning was not lasting. And so when you're in these kinds of systems, you have to watch off that. You have to make sure you're not just hopping from one bandwagon to another, another looking for the next best thing. And another reason why I see these strategies fail is because people they go where their friends recommend. They and mean this is a crazy thing, but you know, people can be influenced all the time. I see it all the time. You know, why did you start this strategy? Well, you know, my friend, Johnny, you know, he said it was awesome and Johnny was doing it. Johnny was having success.
(11:29): Well, how long was Johnny doing it? Three weeks, a month, a year, 10 years, shoot. You don't just jump on something because Johnny's doing it right. It has to make sense to you and your family. And it has to cover all of your objectives and your goals because you have to sit down and understand what your financial identity is. Otherwise you're gonna have that financial identity crisis. And that's why people have these, what they call midlife crisis. I, I mean, I've, I've seen some of that. You know, that's where people just go blow up stuff because they've been sacrificing sacrificing for 30 years and all of a sudden they go do something crazy. Financially. You have to have these kind of heart desires and things like that, but built into your plan so that you don't feel cheated. You don't feel like you've been sacrificing and struggling and waiting for the magic day where you know, when this day comes, boom, I'm gonna do this right.
(12:22): When this day comes, boom, I'm gonna do that. Sometimes you get kind of disillusioned along the way and you begin to fall into these identity crisis. You have to learn how to enjoy life every single day. Well yet planning, responsibly and acting responsibly for tomorrow. You gotta enjoy life today, right? You want to travel, build the stuff into your strategy, make sure your strategy can handle all the things that you are desiring based on your financial identity, because either you're gonna be committed to it or you are going to be confused. And when you're confused, that's when you are prone to making the most horrible financial decisions you can ever imagine. So how do you beat this stuff? Number one, sit down and map out and commit to what your financial identity is. If you want to be you wealthy, then set that strategy up, commit to it and be on your way.
(13:19): Right? Don't look to the left. Don't look to the right. Don't look at the next best thing that comes out. Oh, crypto's hot. I better jump on crypto. This is hot. I better jump on that. No, if that is your strategy. Yes. But if you're like dabbling and you know, fooling around, you could be wasting momentum, right? Because breakthrough comes when you have been committed to something and committed to something and committed to it. And boom, why I call all of a sudden, boom is almost like magic happens, right? It's not magic. You have just been committed and dedicated to your process. And that's what I about my rapid retired system. It is a process. And what it does is it weeds out the people that are looking for the magic bullet because they won't commit to everything that they need to do in the program.
(14:07): Right. They'll do some of the stuff some of the time, but they won't do all of the stuff all of the time. And that's why we have problems. And that's why it doesn't work. And then it's all rapid retired. Doesn't work. Oh my God, it's not for me because people don't understand that sometimes their needs and their desires can change. And when you find that happening, you have to sit down and revamp your strategy. Right. Sometimes you have to change strategy and that's okay, but you don't just change it because you know things, aren't going your way here and there, right. It has to be something fundamentally wrong with the program before you just up and change it because you're looking for the next best thing, sit down and understand and just trust me, it's gonna work right. Map out your financial identity. And some people they'll challenge me and say, well, Harold, God doesn't want me to be rich.
(14:58): I'm like, well, that's on you, right? That's like me saying I had off a key to turn the door, you know, to unlock the door and get in the car and turn the ignition and drive it at me saying something stupid like, oh God doesn't want me driving this car. I mean, you got the keys. I mean, that's on you. And I tell people that all the time, don't say stuff like that. God doesn't want me rich all because you can't figure out how to make it happen. All because you don't understand what you need to do to commit to a process, right? It's not on God, it's on you. It's on me. Right? He says, beloved. I wish above all things that you be in good health and prosper, even as your soul prosperous, right. Being good health and prosper. Even as your soul prospers, he wants you prospering in all areas.
(15:46): Mine will emotion financially, every single area. But if you're here, if you're confused and you're having that at identity crisis, then yeah, it's gonna be hard to believe something like that. I find people making those excuses all the time because they're unwilling to commit either you're gonna commit or you are going to be confused. So here's what I'm gonna offer you today. And I, same thing. I always offer an opportunity to sit down with me and talk to me, click in the show notes. It's gonna on my scale schedule and let's map out what your financial identity is going to be. And then let's develop a plan of action and let's commit to that and let's make it happen. And let's win because too many people are losing. It's time to win. So thank you very much for allowing me to share this show with you day. And until next time everybody 1, 2, 3, let's get it.
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