March 12, 2025 • 52 mins
Living on one partner’s income, stepping away from corporate America, firing up a serious side hustle… these are just a few of the topics we’re discussing with our guest today. Shang Saavedra is a financial coach, founder of the site Save My Cents, and now author of the new book “Wealth is a Mindset.” Shang lives at the intersection of mental health and financial wealth, and she uses her own personal experiences, like achieving financial independence by the age of 31, to help others to achieve their own financial goals. We discuss ambition, living in NYC, making sacrifices for a better future, and plenty more during our episode today!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel Matt. Today we're
talking about cultivating a wealthy mindset with Shunk Savedra. That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Our guest today is a financial coach. She's the founder
of the site Save My Sense and she's now the
author of the book Wealth Is a Mindset, which was
recently published, and Seung Savedra. She lives at the intersection
of mental health, Joel and financial wealth. Little let's try
to rhyme a little bit there, but she uses her
own experiences like achieving financial independence by the age of
(00:49):
thirty one, by the way, which is amazing, in order
to help others to achieve their own financial goals and
really like not just their financial goals, but their overall
life goals. As I am, I'm pretty sure that Hung
would agree that simply having more money like that isn't
the goal in and of itself, but rather it's a
means to an end. That's how we talk about it
(01:09):
here on the show, and we're pumped to get into
everything related to personal finance today. Seang, thank you so
much for taking the time to speak with us today.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Matt and Joel, I am so excited to be here.
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
We're excited too, Sean, and so much ground to cover.
But first question, we got to get out of the way.
What's your craft beer equivalent? What do you like to Splurgeohn?
I mean, we know Matt just said you achieved financial
independence by the age of thirty one, so you're saving,
investing for your future. But what do you explore John? Simultaneously?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I know you guys wanted me to say wet food
for my cats. Unfortunately that is not my splurge. My splurge,
which actually doesn't even cost all that much money, it's
more time and effort, is lay flat business class seats
on leisure flights with my husband.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I've still never done that. That sounds amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I've never done it. Okay, So time and effort and
one of these days, yeah, we'll be able to make
it happen.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
How do you pull it off?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
We use points and miles, so where those people who
you know rack up points using credit card bonus sign ups,
and then you just wait for the right opportunity to
book them, usually about a year in advance.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
How many more miles does it take to get the
live flat seat, let's say going to Europe or something
like that, versus how many miles does it take to
sit in the back of the plane where Matt nice it.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Typically, I mean it's going to vary by airline and
the way the day price it. But yeah, usually it's
like three to four times more. But if you're able
to find sweet spots, that's the thing. Like, the way
that they work is that some airlines price it higher
for regions that are more higher demand than others. And
so for example, this is an interesting one. We used
(02:46):
to do this thing where we flew Turkish airlines through
a code share with United to go from mainland US
to Hawaii because it's not a popular route for Turkish airlines,
but it's a popular route for Americans. Turkish airlines prices
is at a very low rate. And that's how you
do it.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Very cool, Okay, I swear you turned this into a
travel hacker.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
So we've plenty to talk about travel hacking.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
But how much secret secrets of the rich travels?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
How many of your of that points a cruel process
has to do with you, has to do with like
your business, the fact that you are self employed, you've
got your own company versus personal spending.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
You can do a completely off of personal spending. That
being said, it's not that we spend a lot, it's
actually that we give a lot. We basically route most
of our charitable giving through our credit cards in chunks
at a time, and that's how we're largely able to
meet those minimum spends of you know, a couple of
thousand dollars to get the high sign up points. That
(03:46):
being said, yes, I also use business credit cards for that.
But actually my husband would say, hey, Sean, are you
going to meet this amount of business spend in this
time from I'm actually like, no, I run a pretty
low cost business.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I'm sorry show you say that you had an abundant
supply of ambition, and we've kind of dug into your
story a little bit. It seems like an understatement because
you graduated from Harvard with an economics degree. Shortly thereafter
you got a consulting gig, but then on top of
that you still launched a photography business on the side.
(04:20):
Is the way it makes some additional money.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
I guess it drives you like, like why.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Were you going after all of these multiple options all
at once as opposed to I don't know, like especially
given your I guess the pedigree. It seems like someone
like you would sort of double down on the thing
that would allow most folks to move the needle in
a significant way. But I want to, I guess I
want to kind of get a peek into your your
thought process.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
There probably driven by two emotions, one being revenge and
the other one being curiosity. I guess is that an emotion.
I'm not sure revenge. I actually talk about this in
the beginning the introduction of my book. I was heavily
bullied throughout middle school and high school for being a nerd,
and I was like, you know what, it's time for
(05:03):
the revenge of the nerd. So I was just on
this blazing path in my early twenties to say, I'm
going to prove all those high school bullies wrong by
just being freaking accomplished. And it's so silly to think
about it now because I'm thirty nine. Now, I'm like,
who were my high school bullies? I don't remember their names.
I'm not going to even find them then to show them, Hey,
Shum made it. But that was the first driving emotion,
(05:27):
and then curiosity and management consulting. It's a great job,
but in the beginning, when you're that first your analyst,
it is pretty much a research slog, like you're doing
the worst kind of grut to work. And a lot
of it is just doing a lot of googling and
cleaning data. And I had a creative side to me,
and I had no outlet for it. Fortunately I had
(05:48):
enough photography training. I'm like, well, let's just try to
run a photography business. I really don't know how that
came to my mind as like the way to solve
my boredom, but that was what I decided to do,
and that thing, hoe fully actually became a huge cornerstone
of my ability to build wealth because I didn't spend
a cent from that business, just invested everything from it.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Wow. Well, and you and Matt have that in common.
That was a long time photographer's wife.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
And I launched it, yeah, back in two thousand and seven,
so azing. Unlike you, I didn't go to Harvard, I
didn't have this consulting gig. Is that we definitely were
spending the money that we're making. Well, still, we were
able to start investing at a pretty yngly Some people call.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Uga the Harvard of the South right exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, And it was a blast, I mean, had a
ton of fun doing it.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Sean, how big did that business get? And was it
tough to balance having a full time job that seems
like it was somewhat demanding with a side household that
it seems like it became a little unruly at times too.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yeah. I was working, I mean at times ninety hours
a week because sixty to seventy dedicated to my full
time job, and then the remaining which is mostly late
nights and weekends, dedicated to photography. I was being published national,
like I was known, Like some people would pay for
me to fly to photograph their weddings, and I was
just like, I don't know how I got through that,
(07:08):
Probably just by sheer stamina of being young. I think
that's really the best way to describe it.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
If you're talking to someone now who says, seize your story,
they see financial independence at thirty one, there may be
on the cusp of starting a career. Would you recommend
that strategy or that's a tough thing too, right? It
is because you go through something so arduous and it
got you where you want it to be. But it
also it didn't have it didn't come without downsides correct.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
I missed out the vast majority of my five year
college reunion, which is a fun one because that's the
one where you party in the most, because I was
photographing two weddings that same weekend and I just could
not do it. And I did over time, even though
it changed. I had a clear reason why I wanted
to do this. First it was just make as much
money as freaking possible, and then reason eventually evolved to
(08:02):
do it now. Have financial freedom now so that when
things get harder, you can pull back. And because I
was committed to those reasons, understanding that it comes at
certain costs, and I weigh those pros and cons and
I'm like, I'm willing to do this, I went for it.
And when people read my story, I'm not saying this
(08:24):
has to be for everyone. I'm just saying, hey, take
what you want from it, and learn from how over
time I understood the mental health is a huge part
of this, and at the very least, make your mental
health front and center whenever you decide to pursue something
like this.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Totally, it's not surprising that you, like I feel like
you were taking a very research based, analytical approach to frontloading.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
The sacrifice like this.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So going back to photography, like you know, you mentioned
how like y'all weren't touching that money at all when
you got married.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
You also chose to live off of the lower of your.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Two incomes, which I think, I think to most folks
sounds pretty radical. Was this also to essentially be able
to give you and your husband for y'all to have
more options down the road?
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Ah? Yeah. I actually credit him for the idea, because
that was not mine. He had been very influenced with
a lot of readings, particularly this one book by Elizabeth
Warren where it detailed how the two income trapped Today,
it's actually harder for families with two incomes today to
live at the same standard living than several decades ago.
(09:30):
Cause of living has just risen significantly. He noted, Look,
the reality is you are a female. You can't change that,
not really. And the moment you become pregnant, the moment
you become a mother to a young child, it's going
to affect your career. It's going to affect your ability
to really push that career. So what if we kind
(09:51):
of head off that fear of loss of income or
loss of career trajectory by just securing it now when
we don't have kids. Best way to do it, the
easiest way to mathematically approximate it is we live off
of one income today, so that in the future, if
one of us does not earn income, we wouldn't be
(10:11):
that financially affected.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yes, like you don't have to change a thing then,
because you're used to just the one income. And yeah,
there's some extra expenses having that baby, but you've also
funneled aside that income for so long that you can
tap into some of those resources when or if you
decided to stop working. Exactly why do you think nobody
does that? Shun? I mean, it feels like it's incredibly
(10:35):
countercultural to have that money flowing in and then to
say we're not spending a time of it.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yeah, well it's not really celebrated, it's not sexy, it's
not made for Instagram for example. And also, I think
that most of the conversations that I entered in business
school going to women's you know, women's NBA panels and
all those corporate panels, is they're trying to encourage you
(11:01):
to try to figure out to make it as both
a working person and also as a mom's young children,
they're like, you can still make it work. And what
my husband and I are saying is, let's be real,
it's not going to be the same. And I don't
think most people want to confront that reality. They want
to ignore it or use more money to solve for it,
(11:23):
whereas we're saying, we're not using more money to at
that time to solve for it. We're building up the
financial base now. But again that comes with a sacrifice
of not being able to party or travel or eat
out as much as our NBA counterparts and just leading
more of a quiet, frugal life.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
How much of that do you think has to do
with your happiness now? Like literally Jill and I were
having a conversation this morning as we're walking to go
get some coffee. But how when you shift your expectations
for what you are looking for in life, Like so,
you know, we did the quote unquote smart things when
we were younger, we started investing, but because of that,
it meant that there wasn't i don't know, like a
(12:01):
super high bar as to what like to the degree
of partying that we should have been doing. And so
then you move on in life and you enter into
a new stage, and the fact that we're not doing
those things. It's like we've sort of set our expectations
back in our twenties of what we want our lives
to look like. Therefore, like right now we both feel
incredibly blessed, incredibly happy.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
These are the salad days.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Yeah, do you feel that way regards I mean, just
because of the fact that you and your husband, that
y'all set yourselves up for so many different options like that.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I mean, who gets to claim that she can basically
nap anytime she wants school?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
That's pretty nice.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Yeah, that is literally my day. I sometimes choose to
nap on top of.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
That financial independence, you can nap whenever you want. That's
great branding.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
No nap whenever you want. I also, I was in
a very corporate culture for many years and work for
two fortune five hundred corporate companies, and you cannot be
your authentic self when you're high up in corporate. You
serve shareholders, you report to the c suite. You have
to walk, talk, and act a certain way in order
(13:06):
for you to maintain job security. And that also comes
with I mean literally there's email chains for someone sayce,
you have to keep track of fifty people that just
you know, that's a lot of work. And I walked
away from that because I was like, I'm kind of
sick and tired of it, and I don't need to
do it, and that takes away so much weight off
of my shoulders. Every day. I started noticing I left
(13:29):
corporate middle of twenty twenty three after having my second child,
that I was just like, I was starting to just
be happy again in the morning, looking forward to waking up,
driving down with narrowive thought on my mind, no stress,
no pressure other than okay, let's make sure my kids
don't off themselves. That's also a challenge, but it's a
different set of challenges that is incredibly fulfilling for me.
(13:53):
And I don't feel like I'm giving away the best
time of my life to somebody who doesn't really deserve it.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, that's great, Okay. To get there, though, you had
to not only have the two incomes and live on
just one of them. You had to then, I guess,
dial back, the expenses significantly compared to your peers who
were in similar positions. The New York Post ended up
calling you the millennial cheap skate. I'm like, what lengths
were you going to to reduce expenses? And maybe what
(14:23):
are some of the more odd ones, because those are
always fun to go over, the things that people mostly
aren't thinking about.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
I think I was in such a bubble with my
husband that it didn't occur to me how weird we were.
And I'm not sure if this is even weird, So
I'll just talk the top things that really moved the needle.
Number one, we got into a rent stabilized apartment, which
is clutch because your rent doesn't really go up, but
it's below market rent. I think relative to our peers,
(14:50):
we were probably saving two maybe three thousand dollars a month,
relative different as day we're paying. But Grant sed the
department is ramshackle, the toilet often breaks, and there was
a two burner stove, no prep space. You know, it's
missing some key skeleton bones. And then another one, which
(15:12):
I think most New Yorkers can relate to, is no
car ownership. Now I live in Sound in California, you
cannot get anywhere without a car. It's actually very significant
part of your budget because it's paying for the car
and the gas. If you have a gas car, the
insurance which always goes up, and the maintenance when the
car starts to break down, not to mention registration fees,
et cetera, et cetera. So those are number one, and
(15:33):
number two is housing and transportation. Number three came down
to our daily food. Both my husband and I worked
jobs where they would compass food at night if we
work past a certain hour, which we almost always did
at that point, so we were smart about which restaurants
we ordered from such that it would give us enough
for leftovers the next day, so no need to pack lunch.
So basically Monday the Friday eight very spends very little
(15:58):
on groceries. As I mentioned earlier in the podcast, we
used a lot of points and miles to travel at
that time, not lay flat seats. This is normal economy.
And you know, at that time was still okay to
crash at friend's houses and not get a weird look
because we offered the same then clothing that we rarely
bought clothing, and when I did, I did it off
(16:20):
of sample sales clothing swaps of my friends consignment. Poshmark
had just started, so it's buying on Poshmark and eBay.
And also like by virtue of having a tiny apartment
it was four hundred and twenty square feet. You just
can't own a.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Lot of things, a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yeah yeah, So I mean I borrowed like hiking gear
a bar from a friend who hiked a lot. Sometimes
I would just go without some things like hey do
I really need to have this or can something else
be used instead? And you just learned to live off
of very little throughout, So it's hard to say what
really moved a needil. I think it was literally just
(16:59):
like look at every spending category in our life and
ask ourselves what is it that we're truly trying to
get at and can we get at that with a
relatively low cost.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Well, I mean it sounds like sounds like you addressed everything.
I mean literally starting with the biggest ones, right housing,
then transportation that you address, food, you address clothing, Like
these are all the spending categories, and so if you
have if you're challenging yourself in some way in each
one of those categories, you're going to see a massive
savings rate. And it's fascinating too. I mean, like I
hear you saying, like talking through all these areas of
(17:31):
life and It tells me that you've got to be
on the same page as your husband. You said that
you give him credit with you know, hey, we're only
going to live on one of our incomes. Were you
looking for that or were you did you find yourself
naturally drawn to that, because it almost sounds like he
may have been the original fire convert, like maybe he
kind of came across it. Correct me if I'm wrong,
But I'm curious if you how important you think that
(17:53):
is to have a partner who's fully on board like that.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I think you need to have one hundred percent trust
in your partner should you choose to marry them. And
even though at the time I couldn't really see what
was ahead, partially because I was still like, well, I
don't know, I think we keep working, it wasn't We
weren't going for fire. We were going for financial security
in the event of having a child. So that's very different.
And I later learned that we were doing things that
(18:18):
the fire community was doing, and I was like, oh, okay,
I didn't know that this is called fire. And at
first I did fight against it because I had not
resolved a lot of my own issues related to friendship
and mental health and things like that. So in the
process of me fighting the budget and trying to make
it work because I earnestly wanted us to have a
(18:39):
good marriage and I wanted to make the budget work,
but I was the one that was spending over budget
for several months. That's how I came to realize this
had nothing to do with my math skills, with my
budgeting skills, which I was already pretty good at, but
everything to do with my attitude and where I was
deriving joy and meeting from. And once I realized that
(19:00):
that was the root cause and I started addressing that,
we were able to align much more quickly going forward
on our financial goals.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
You guys had some disagreements along the way, right, That's
kind of what you're hinting at too. What were those
conversations like when you're talking about savings rate and the
ideal savings rate, where to pair back, what the budget
should look like? Because I love that you point out
kind of the change that needs to happen and what
brings you meaning. But there is also the reality too
(19:29):
that you might say, I don't know a seventy percent
savings rate. Do we actually need to hit.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
That I definitely challenged it because I wanted to quote
unquote enjoy more life. Now I was the more social
one in the relationship. I wanted to see my friends
more often, and I felt restricted by the budget. There
were networking events that I gave up on because I
was like, the registration fee is too much for my
networking budget for that month. And the main kind of
(19:57):
argument between us was I thought I had had a
much longer career to go, and I thought that we
could just continue to make more money and enjoy a
little bit more. And he was looking ahead at the
reality of being a parent a young child, and he's thinking,
you know, that might not be the case, and it
is actually very meaningful to dedicate the young years towards
(20:19):
focusing on your children instead of the career. But obviously,
because neither of us were parents at the time, it
was really hard to understand what that actually meant. But
over time our other friends began having kids, I kind
of saw that happen, and also I was able to
fulfill my own social desires without having to splurge on
(20:40):
eating out with my friends like that. I just figured
that out problem, solved it, and we came closer to
sharing the same vision of what is the freedom that
we're truly working towards. And I finally learned over time
that joy, that freedom is not going to come from
a career. It's not going to come from fancy food
and nice clothing. It's truly the freedom to do whatever
(21:03):
the heck you wanted to do.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Like nap, I'm curious just to get super practical here.
I think I heard you say something about a career
networking budget. Did you have an actual line item for that?
And like, I mean, how specific how to the penny
did you get with your monthly budgets.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Yes, at the time, we were very specific in like
we had a line budget for food at home versus
food outside and entertainment and clothing and all of that.
Networking was important because we met a business school, you're
taught just innately how to network. So, for example, he
(21:41):
had a membership to a men's networking group. For me,
it was more one off events in different topics of
career things that I was interested in, and for the
most part it fit our budget. It was just that
every now and then an NBA oriented event would get
a bit fit and I was like, oops, that is
a little bit outside of my budget. And at that time,
(22:05):
the reason why it was so specific was primarily directed
at me, the person who overspent the budget. It was
just like, Okay, if you have a hard time, then
we're going to put boundaries on each category to try
to guide it. As I got better and better at
lowering my spending and also being happy with it, eventually
(22:25):
we moved to the system that we have now, which
is which is called the Trilling twelvemonth metric. In any
at any point in time, we average out our monthly
spending over the last twelve months, which kind of smooths
out seasonality like one time event, you know, Christmas for example,
and we take a look and now we're like wow.
(22:45):
Over the last eleven to twelve years of marriage, our
Trilling twelve month metric basically it grows in line with inflation.
Like obviously, as inflation changes, the cost go up. And
the main changes are when we add a child to
our family. We're now going on to three children by
the end of this year. Oh correct, and thank you.
(23:05):
Otherwise it's been pretty steady, Betty. And so because of that,
over this decade plus of working together on our finances,
We're no longer netpicking each thing anymore. And I don't
think at this point of marriage you should be. If
you are aligning, you work out those disagreements early on,
and you come to it with an open minded approach
(23:29):
of saying, my spouse isn't against me, it's work for
each other. It's just we have different approaches. Eventually it's
going to get easier.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
That's great. Yeah, we've got a lot more we want
to get to with you, Sean, specifically talking about saving
money and household finances with kids. We'll talk about that
stuff with you right after this.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Right, we are back from the break again speaking with
Sean Savedra and Sean, you mentioned this just a second ago.
You touched on how like a few years ago is
when you left Corporate America and you made that decision.
But it sounds like you that there's sort of like
the like a near death experience that was a part
of that. And you know, you're talking about your kids
and everything here. Talk to us about the birth of
(24:16):
your second child and how that, I guess seemed like
it allowed you to reevaluate some things in life.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah, things seemed fairly normal leading up to you know,
the do date and everything, and the labor and delivery
was actually better compared to my first so nothing seemed
out of the ordinary other than I had a cold.
I was like, oh, just no, just sneezing a lot.
Two days after arriving home, I had so much trouble breathing.
(24:43):
One of my kids had an inhaler at the point
I just started to borrow with his and inhaler and
self medicating do not recommend, and overnight I started just
wheezing so much. I got up. I was telling my
husband I can barely breathe. He grabs our oximeter, because
you know, everybody since COVID has an up blood alximitar
measured it. He's like, you're at ninety. That does not
(25:04):
sound right, and so he rushed me to the hospital.
As it turned out, I had an asthma attack. I
had adult onset asthma. I had no idea that this
was me, and people weren't quite sure either at first,
because I had recently just delivered. So people are like
trying to rule out pulmonary embolism and scarier sounding hard
(25:25):
issues that I don't know what they're called. But I
was put in the ICU for a day and I
was like, am I dying? Why am I in the ICU?
Like I just don't have a good sense of like
you know how bad it is because I was also
asleep most of the time, and I think I freaked
out the moment that I heard some patience room across
(25:45):
from me there were Buddhist chants coming out of it,
and later on the nurse told me they're like, oh, yeah,
last rites for their religion.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
I was freaked out.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
I was like, Oh my gosh, people die in the ICU.
Don't let that be me. I want to go home,
want to be with my new boor I want to
be with my family. And that was when I was like,
if I if I want to die today, would I
be proud of what I did in my life? And
the answer was no, I want to do something different.
And I only briefly shared Denie the birth announcement with
(26:15):
my corporate team. My boss reblocked it to the rest
of the team. She misspelled my son's name, and she
didn't she like completely brushed off the fact, like she
didn't even personally acknowledge to me. Oh my goodness, you
are the ice you. I hope you're Okay, there was
none of that In personal I was like, is this
even somebody I really want to spend my time with
going forward? Like eight hours a day?
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Not really?
Speaker 3 (26:37):
So say Ara sent in my resignation.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Wow. Yeah, and that those events in our lives will
crystallize things, will help us see look at the past
and then look towards the future, and said, do we
do we want to continue along this trajectory. I'm curious too, though,
like when you add kids, you've got two, you're adding
a third. It changes your expenses, yes, and it also
changes maybe some of the wealth goals that you're shooting for,
(27:02):
especially and I'm curious to hear your take on this too.
When people say, oh, it's going to cost three hundred
thousand dollars to raise a kid, that's before you even
pay for college. One do you think that's the reality?
And two? How has expanding your family maybe changed some
of those financial goals.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Both my husband and I made the conscious choice to
continue working even after hitting our original fire number because
that original fire number was for the two of us,
but were like, that's just the two of us and
does not include children. So for several years afterwards, we
were still socking away money, so our network continued to grow. Then,
recognizing that one of the most expensive things that you
would have to pay for yourself out of pocket if
(27:35):
both of us became unemployed, as healthcare, he made the
conscious choice to take a job that met a lot
of a lot of lifestyle needs, like it's not a
super crazy job, he can work remotely, and it came
with fantastic healthcare. And so that's sort of the conscious
choice that he made. And also he wasn't as driven
(27:57):
to retire early as I was. So I think those
are the two main things that we took care of financially.
Is we worked a little bit longer to build up
a larger nest egg which can be used to pay
for children's college as well. And then the one of
the larger ongoing costs, being healthcare, is secured by him
still working. Now that being said, and I do a
(28:18):
lot of forecasts for my private coaching clients who also
have children. I think there's essentially two decisions that can
really change your budget for your child. One is do
you wish to send them to private school from K
to twelve? And then the second is how much of
their college fund do you wish to fund. For most people,
(28:40):
I would say, look, public school is an option, and
it does save you a lot of money, especially if
you have multiple children to send them to public school
K to twelve. Then second, I tell most parents, take
care of your own retirement before you fund a very
large college fund, because by the time your children go
(29:01):
to college, you are much closer to retirement than your
children are to themselves retiring and saving up for all
of that. So don't feel guilty that you have to
put your own retirement as a priority over funding and
making sure your kids don't end up caring student loans,
because there's a lot of things that can happen that
(29:22):
can lead to your children paying off loans pretty early.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Something I'm hearing you speak to is that it's like
you and your husband both have taken a more practical
approach to your careers and sort of some of these
like huge life decisions that you typically make in life.
And you've got a chapter in the book talking about
your identity not being tied up in your work, and
I hear that played out here by the decision that
is like that you said that he made. It sounds
(29:46):
like he took a less prestigious job, but maybe that
he was able to do that because he had less
of his identity tied up into that. But at the
same time, you're able to garner all these additional benefits
like amazing flexibility, being able to work from home, awesome
health care benefits. Do you think that too many folks
are pursuing something I've heard folks talk about this, like
where it's like, oh, I want to pursue the job
(30:07):
that I want to be able to tell people that
I have, like where I can state a certain title,
and they're not thinking about the life that it gains
you as much as we should be.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Yeah, And I don't know how college commencement speeches go
these days, but I am so tired of all of
those commencement speeches. During the time that I graduated from college.
Was just like pursue what you love, shoot for the moon,
and then you'll land among the stars or something like that.
Because these are often given by celebrities and CEOs who
were the exception. They're the exception, not the rule. Yes,
(30:39):
they made it by following what they loved, but the
vast majority of the college graduates they're speaking to are
never going to get to that goal, and it's irresponsible
to put out that as the main piece of advice,
whereas I'm much more practical. I'm like, do something that
you're good enough at that you can tolerate that, pay
the bills, and then figure out what you want to
(31:01):
do after that. But if you can't even cover your bills,
you're in for a lifetime of angst and worry. That
is just not worth it.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
I'm curious to talk about the intersection of mental health
and finances too, showing that seems like something that you've
really thought long and hard about. And you've said that
most money experts they don't talk about mental health and money,
that that maybe is a little taboo or just something
that's left on the table. It does seem like we're
seeing that dam begin to break a little bit. What
(31:31):
tack do you take when talking about the intersection of
our money and our brains.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
I often have people who are deep in credit card
debt or are just really struggling with money come to
me and the phrase they use is I'm bad with money.
It kind of implies that either they weren't educated or
they're not managing their finance as well. And that's why
they're seeing the money problems that they're seeing today. I
(31:58):
change that completely by saying, if you feel like you're
struggling with money, it's indicative of a deeper issue that
is usually not related to money at all, and everything
to do with your mental health and how you got here.
So the money problems are just the symptom the real disease.
The real issue is something deeper, usually related to mental health,
(32:21):
and I found in my coaching almost always is related
to some form of depression, anxiety, or build up of
trauma from childhood. The thing is, there's just not enough
funding for any scientific research to really make that case.
I looked into PUBMIT, I started looking for scientific evidence
to back up what I intuitively understood from my years
(32:42):
of coaching. It just wasn't there. There were bits and pieces,
and so in the research from my book, I cobbled
together what I felt were the best set of scientific
studies that could blend together the story. But I acknowledge
that it's still imperfect. But that's the premise of how
I coach now, which is, let me understand how you
(33:04):
grew up around money, how was it normalized or not,
and then were there any really traumatic experiences that you
went through both as a child and now some of
that could include divorce, loss of a loved one, a
really bad time at work, and those can actually explain
so much of your behaviors today. And then by addressing
(33:27):
the root of those events and experiences, then we can
actually change people's behaviors and change their money over time.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
In your coaching. And not to oversimplify things like I
doubt it is this clear cut, but do more of
your clients approach their problems and just how they handle
their money with an abundance mindset versus folks who come
in with more of a scarcity mindset? Do you see
more of one or the other? And I'm curious if
you if you think one of those mindsets is more
(33:57):
challenging than the other.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Yeah, say mostly scarcity, because if people had abundance mindset,
they're probably actually quite successful because that's what the mindset does,
and so they wouldn't need my help all that much.
So probably I come from a biased opinion that I
see more scarcity mindset, and I think, you know, it's
(34:18):
never going to be perfect, but I think it's helpful
for people to have the experience that I have of
seeing hundreds and hundreds of people's real numbers to be like, Okay,
some of this makes sense and some of it is
a little bit out of bounds, and here's like what
we can start doing to change things. And then also
I then personalize my analysis based on like. For I'll
(34:42):
just give a very broad example. If somebody grew up
with seeing one of their parents lose a lot of
money on the stock market, it's called availability bias. They're
going to grow up thinking, Okay, I'm going to lose
money on a stock market if I invest in it,
and they're much more likely to avoid investing because they
saw such a salient example of a failing And that's
(35:05):
scarcity mindset, because you overamplify one negative event, whereas it's
scarce in abundance mindset. You kind of have to fight
that childhood tendency and be like, yes, I saw something
really really bad happen, but I'm going to look at
the data and convince myself that the vast majority of
time that bad thing is not going to happen. And
(35:25):
that's very hard for somebody to learn that firsthand.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Yeah, Yeah, it takes time, I feel like for people,
especially to something that happen in childhood those things. Trying
to unwrite the script that gets written is a multi
year long process, and it takes a lot of intentionality,
and if you're not being intentional, that script stays around
an awful long time. It just doesn't get undone by itself.
Part of it is mindset. But then there are also
(35:51):
ingrained habits that people develop when it comes to how
they handle money, especially when it comes to reckless use
of money. So how do you help people work through
changing those those habits maybe that they've gotten accustomed to.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Yeah, I have a client who has she admitted herself
she has a makeup problem. She said, I have a
lot of makeup. I never use it up. But I
was like, okay, tell me about it. How did this
come about? Well, as it turns out, two things. One,
her mother plays an outside uh put a lot of
emphasis on looking esthetically pleasing as a value growing up.
(36:26):
And two, her mom always told her always go to
the sale section, but she misinterpreted as a child of
when there's a sale, go buy something. So you can
notice how that got miscommunicated, and so she would always
be shopping makeup sales. And so once I made that connection.
I was like, Okay, there's a misinterpretation of something that
your mom said over and over and over to you,
(36:47):
like literally your brain interpreted as a rule. So we're
gonna undo that rule. Where I actually said, you know,
she has to unsubscribe from all sale emails from her
favorite makeup retailers and brands, and then she's going to
use up her makeup stash before she buys something new.
And that's just a microcosm of little tweaks that I
(37:10):
do to help people recognize how their habits have formed overtime.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Kind of like emptying that pantry before you get back
to the grocery store.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yes, yeah, you give great examples too throughout your book,
like you're kind of highlighting just the trigger action reward mechanism.
And you quote friend of the show Charles Douhig in
your book, oh as well, he's a yeah, y'all are
both able to highlight how it is that we are
responding to the stimulus around us that sometimes we just
end up becoming our own worst enemies as we thought
our own progress shun. We've got more to get to.
(37:39):
We're gonna yeah, maybe after the break we'll get to
the American dream and whether or not you think that's
still possible today. We'll get to that and more right
after this.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
All right, we're back from the break, still talking with
shunks of adra, talking about cultivating a wealthy mindset, and
just so much good information already. Sean, I'm curious to like,
we talked about maybe your early adult life, but we
didn't really go back into your childhood and you ended
up you actually lived the first few years of your
life in China. I am so curious how did that
(38:19):
experience and the influence of your parents impact your frugality
and those early years of marriage, because, like we're talking
about here, the impact of our family of origin, It's
like it matters in how we think about and how
we relate to money.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
It's so funny, you guys asked this because a couple
of weeks ago, I visited Boston, Massachusetts as part of
my book tour, and I got booked for a private
corporate event. That corporation happened to be in the town
and my parents and I grew up in when we
immigrated to the US. It was Lexington, Massachusetts, and going
(38:55):
back there, Wow, I brought back all the nostalgia, Like
I was trying to relive it in writing my book,
like being there makes a huge difference, And I realized
that as a child, you don't have a lot of
context for how you grew up unless your parents chose
to tell you. But you don't. And when we were
in Lexington at the time, we lived literally like the
(39:16):
last street before I would no longer qualify for the
school district. We had one of the smallest houses, one
of the smallest plots, and I remember my parents did
everything like they did all the yardwork. My mom did
so much housework. My parents drove the ugliest, tiniest cars possible,
and it was a very frugal light.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Including the green car. You document that in your book
how your dad was able to get the sale or
get to get a massive discount because you got the
ugly green car. My dad used to drive a yellow
Subaru so called the bruceban.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Maybe I'll see that bright green once a year driving
around here. I'll put out to my husband, like, that's
the color of that car, because you never see it.
But the thing is, my parents did influenced me so
strongly through that in two ways. One they normalized frugality
as something not to be ashamed of, like my parents
(40:11):
did things with great attitude, Like they were just like, look,
you just gotta work hard towards what you wanted. Now,
I didn't know what they wanted, but I saw the
work really hard. And then the second thing was, which
is a little bit more misinformed on my end, I
literally thought we were the poorest people because my parents'
way of approaching things to seem so frugal compared to
(40:34):
what I was able to observe every now and then
from my friend's parents, which wasn't much. And it wasn't
until much later in life when my parents trusted that
I actually was responsible with money and they started revealing
a little bit more of why they did all that.
It blew my mind, like several instances, one that they
actually had enough saved to pay me full ride to
(40:56):
any school that I wanted. That was not an expectation
that I had, So I was like, where did this
come from? My dad said, that's investing. That's like what
we've been doing the last several years. And then later
on when my parents did choose to share their estate
planning stuff with me, and I was like, holy cow,
they have way more money than I ever thought that
(41:17):
they did when I realized that was what they were
working towards and that this actually is how you build wealth.
It's just that as a child, I didn't know that
that was what it was.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
So you said, that's how you build wealth.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Do you think that that's a good strategy for how
you should raise your kids as well? I'm curious if
you feel similarly, I guess in how it is that
you and your husband are going to raise your kids.
Do you think that them essentially, like withholding that information
is a part of what allowed you to thrive and
to be ambitious and to go out there to create
your own thing.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
My friends, especially those of those of my friends who
grew up similarly as I did in immigrant Asian American households,
they're like, oh my goodness, Sean, your parents are so Asian,
because it is a very common Asian parenting tactic to
you know, withold information, be really strict on children, and
then like boom, something good happens at the end. But
you're like, what the heck they what did they just
(42:11):
put me through? So I would say less emotional, no,
mantimulation is my hope. But I do see the point
because there is a phrase in Chinese food worth Sunday
which means wealth is not going to go beyond three generations.
The wisdom in that phrase is saying families that are
(42:33):
wealthy are eventually going to turn poor again because the
habits and the mindset is the hardest part to teach,
and if the wealthy parents then give everything to their children,
those children are not going to understand the value of
the work ethic that it takes to get there. So
my husband and I are trying to walk a finer
balance between not giving its every little thing that our
(42:54):
children want, but also giving them a you know, a
well life that focuses on their health, focus on their education,
while still making it very hopefully very important for them
to see that it takes work. And I think for
that reason, we actually both don't outsource all that much
household work, like our children see us grocery shopping, vacuuming
(43:17):
the house, washing the dishes. We could easily outsource all
of this, but we actually made a conscious choice to
make household work very visible from an early age so
that our children't understand there's some things that you just
have to do in order for life to happen and
that's just part of adult team Sean.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
I feel like there's more pessimism about the American dream
these days, and I feel like I'm talking to someone
who's achieved the American dream. How would you respond to
people who think that it doesn't exist or that it's
impossible to achieve.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
Wealth is coded, and it's your job to break the code.
So my parents and I, we were not born into wealth, right,
but we did whatever we could, both my parents, whose
English is not as good as mine, as well as myself.
Where you study how wealthy people think and work and
you just do your best to break into it. Now,
(44:13):
do I think I've hit a ceiling at some point
in my corporate career. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know,
because I didn't stick around long enough to find out.
But I do think that believing that there is a
lot to do on my end to try to figure
out is kind of what kept me going. I'm also
not as bought into the idea that a house is
(44:35):
a sign that you've made it. I think that there's
a lot of problems with the real estate industry in
the US, and I think that people can just as
easily build wealth through stock ownership, business ownership instead of
real estate ownership, so I'm not tied to what your asset,
your income generating asset, needs to look like. But at
(44:56):
the end of the day, I would say, look, there
are going to be things that you're always not going
to have control over. You can't control the kind of
family you were born into. You can't control, you know,
certain demographic aspects that you know people might hire you
based on. But you can control your attitude and how
(45:16):
you choose to work within within the confines of the
set of circumstances you've been given. And that's what I
focus on.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Very cool talk about your faith, Sean, because you touch
on yeah, your faith, you talk, you touch on God.
I'm curious as to how much that impacts how it
is that you handle your money, because, like I mean,
I guess depending on your background, Like Joel and I
have conversations and we're like man like, sometimes it doesn't
really enter the equation at all. But but then when
you like take a step back, you realize that, like, oh,
(45:44):
this is kind of propelling or creating like a backstop
to how I see so much in the world, or
how I treat people, or how I I don't know
just like I guess what I believe the future holds
for us. But yeah, I'm curious for you. How does
it impact how how you handle your money? You already
mentioned I guess you're generous spirit there at the beginning
of the episode.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
Yeah, I guess. Throughout the podcast, one thing I didn't
really say was a goal was to get filthy rich,
And I think a lot of that has to do
with my faith. Being rich is not the goal. It's
the freedom that comes with being financially responsible that we
were pursuing and an additional layer to our faith because
(46:24):
I have spoken on handles with Christians for their life,
But how can you reconcile being wealthy with what the
Bible says? And I was like, no, the Bible never
says money is bad. It says worship of money is bad.
And money is actually one of the most frequently mentioned
concepts in the Bible because God recognizes that it is
one of the most seductive sources of power out there.
(46:47):
And so my husband and I we both believe that
we are God's portfolio managers. He chose to give us
some amount of income, some amount of well, some amount
of resources, and it is our job to give to
God the greatest return, which is not necessarily financial return.
But I think a delicate balance between making sure that
(47:07):
the money is invested because the Parable of the Ten
Talents talks about that, and also making sure that the
way we choose to spend our money follows God's values
and principles.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah. Thanks, thanks for sharing that.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Well, not no Joe's gonna take his money and go
bury in the ground.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Right, that would be the opposite Matt, of what we're
taught in that passage. No, Sean, thank you so much
for joining us. We really appreciate it. Where can our
listeners find out more about you, what you're up to
and your new book? Awesome?
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
I'm on Instagram and YouTube under save my Sense all
one word, and you can also find me at my
website savemsense dot com.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
We'll make sure to link to all that in the
show notes. Sean, thanks so much for joining us today.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Thank you so much. I have a fantastic week, all.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Right, Matt. That was a great combo. Love Seun and
her outlook on life songs of Vadra. Yeah, just and
her history is just a really producing one. And to
turn bullying into this like monstrosity per you know, financial
independence building mindset is is pretty cool. So what was
your big takeaway from this episode?
Speaker 2 (48:17):
Well, well, I hope she wasn't bullied because her parents
were taken the frugal path, you know, but like, honestly,
it doesn't make fun of you for anything, you know,
And then like, well maybe maybe I should make that
my takeaway. The fact that her parents made frugality normal,
you know, like like they talked about it, it was a part,
it was their lifestyle. It's something that they did together.
I liked how she even her and her husband have
(48:37):
like said that they want to intentionally do things in
their day to day lives to demonstrate with their kids
that like no, no, no, no, you don't have a
silver spoon in your mouth or anything like that. These
are things that you were going to do and that
you were going to see us doing. And I just
I don't know that really resonates me. It resonates with me.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Even if you can afford to outsource it, that's.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah, intentionally choosing not to in order to instill certain values.
It's it's kind of like embracing the suck, like embracing
the fact that there are hard things that we're going
to do in life. In this case, these are things
that we can avoid doing. But it sort of sets
the expectation of, well, no matter what, there are going
to be hard things, and so the better that we
can I think, overcome those things. While we have an
option to to not necessarily go through these things, right
(49:16):
like you can.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Pay to avoid all of that.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
I think it's only going to make you even more
resilient and capable of handling the things that where there
isn't an option to.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Sidestep those those hardships. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
Yeah, it's kind of a roundabout take away from me,
what about.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
You, I'm gonna piggyback on that and say on the
freak gality note when shown at the beginning of the episode,
she's essentially outlining her intense resourcefulness. And I think in
a world where it is so knee jerk easy to
get almost anything we want whenever we want it, whether
that means just an Amazon purchase, even if we have
the money, because ah yeah, I think I need that,
(49:50):
let me just you know, one click to buy or
whether that is buy now, pay later, because like I
want the thing, I don't have the money, But let
me sign up for easy payments to get that thing now,
even though man, I really should wait and save up
to buy the thing. I want that resourcefulness, I think
is it's something that's lacking more and more. It's like
a muscle that's atrophied. And we could use some of that.
(50:12):
And Shung had it in spades, and it was like whatever,
not everybody can get a run controlled apartment, right, But
then she highlights a bunch of other things that anybody
can do, right borrowing hiking equipment from a friend. And
I think we could all stand to increase our resourcefulness
and to maybe do a Google search before we buy
(50:33):
something like I don't know, is there a tool rental
thing instead of me buying this tool from home depail
or loaves. There are all sorts of ways to reduce
our expenses, and part of it just takes a little
bit of like curiosity and elbow grease.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
I love it, man, all right. The beer you and
I enjoyed today was called a Three Headed Monster, which
is an Imperial red Ale by New Realm Brewing Company
here in Atlanta. Would you think I.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
Liked it more than I thought I was going to?
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yeah, totally delicious.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
I have not had like an imperial red in a
long time. And I was like, oh, this is this
is like hoppy, uh this is it's big and it's unique.
So I really flavorful though. Yeah, I was like, oh man,
I have It's been so long stuff had this style.
I used to I remember enjoying this style. I thought
maybe I'd grown past it, but no, I still love
this one.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
What is ocillions is what I'm thinking of. That's a
red ale that doesn't count. That doesn't that's not a
red ale, like that is a fake red ale. This
is a collide with Sam Adams and has is that
how you say that as? I have no idea, but
maybe they are a hop purveyor perhaps that's their their
little symbol there. But you know what this tastes like
to me? With this reminded me of Bell's Hopslam back
(51:39):
in the day because I had a lot of hot
flavor going on. It almost had this honey like sweetness,
and yeah, just reminded me of some of those those
good old days when you would seek out a fresh
drop of hop slam. You'd like, line up, line up
a package door, They'll get you some of that.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
One of those first annual drops that people would be
like hungering for, and Bell's I don't know if based
on making caps. I'm pretty sure it's.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
Just it's just not an in demand like it used
to be.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
A bunch of beers that used to be so hot
are now just you know, hanging out on store shelves
these days.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
So yeah, So if that's one that you remember being delicious,
look for a three headed monster, guessing that you'll enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
Yeah, but uh, all right, wrap it up, let's do
it all right. That's it for this episode.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Find show notes up on the website at howdomoney dot com.
That's gonna be it, buddy, So until next time, best
Friends Out, Best Friends Out,
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel Matt. Today we're
talking about cultivating a wealthy mindset with Shunk Savedra. That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Our guest today is a financial coach. She's the founder
of the site Save My Sense and she's now the
author of the book Wealth Is a Mindset, which was
recently published, and Seung Savedra. She lives at the intersection
of mental health, Joel and financial wealth. Little let's try
to rhyme a little bit there, but she uses her
own experiences like achieving financial independence by the age of
(00:49):
thirty one, by the way, which is amazing, in order
to help others to achieve their own financial goals and
really like not just their financial goals, but their overall
life goals. As I am, I'm pretty sure that Hung
would agree that simply having more money like that isn't
the goal in and of itself, but rather it's a
means to an end. That's how we talk about it
(01:09):
here on the show, and we're pumped to get into
everything related to personal finance today. Seang, thank you so
much for taking the time to speak with us today.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Matt and Joel, I am so excited to be here.
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
We're excited too, Sean, and so much ground to cover.
But first question, we got to get out of the way.
What's your craft beer equivalent? What do you like to Splurgeohn?
I mean, we know Matt just said you achieved financial
independence by the age of thirty one, so you're saving,
investing for your future. But what do you explore John? Simultaneously?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I know you guys wanted me to say wet food
for my cats. Unfortunately that is not my splurge. My splurge,
which actually doesn't even cost all that much money, it's
more time and effort, is lay flat business class seats
on leisure flights with my husband.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I've still never done that. That sounds amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I've never done it. Okay, So time and effort and
one of these days, yeah, we'll be able to make
it happen.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
How do you pull it off?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
We use points and miles, so where those people who
you know rack up points using credit card bonus sign ups,
and then you just wait for the right opportunity to
book them, usually about a year in advance.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
How many more miles does it take to get the
live flat seat, let's say going to Europe or something
like that, versus how many miles does it take to
sit in the back of the plane where Matt nice it.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Typically, I mean it's going to vary by airline and
the way the day price it. But yeah, usually it's
like three to four times more. But if you're able
to find sweet spots, that's the thing. Like, the way
that they work is that some airlines price it higher
for regions that are more higher demand than others. And
so for example, this is an interesting one. We used
(02:46):
to do this thing where we flew Turkish airlines through
a code share with United to go from mainland US
to Hawaii because it's not a popular route for Turkish airlines,
but it's a popular route for Americans. Turkish airlines prices
is at a very low rate. And that's how you
do it.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Very cool, Okay, I swear you turned this into a
travel hacker.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
So we've plenty to talk about travel hacking.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
But how much secret secrets of the rich travels?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
How many of your of that points a cruel process
has to do with you, has to do with like
your business, the fact that you are self employed, you've
got your own company versus personal spending.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
You can do a completely off of personal spending. That
being said, it's not that we spend a lot, it's
actually that we give a lot. We basically route most
of our charitable giving through our credit cards in chunks
at a time, and that's how we're largely able to
meet those minimum spends of you know, a couple of
thousand dollars to get the high sign up points. That
(03:46):
being said, yes, I also use business credit cards for that.
But actually my husband would say, hey, Sean, are you
going to meet this amount of business spend in this
time from I'm actually like, no, I run a pretty
low cost business.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I'm sorry show you say that you had an abundant
supply of ambition, and we've kind of dug into your
story a little bit. It seems like an understatement because
you graduated from Harvard with an economics degree. Shortly thereafter
you got a consulting gig, but then on top of
that you still launched a photography business on the side.
(04:20):
Is the way it makes some additional money.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
I guess it drives you like, like why.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Were you going after all of these multiple options all
at once as opposed to I don't know, like especially
given your I guess the pedigree. It seems like someone
like you would sort of double down on the thing
that would allow most folks to move the needle in
a significant way. But I want to, I guess I
want to kind of get a peek into your your
thought process.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
There probably driven by two emotions, one being revenge and
the other one being curiosity. I guess is that an emotion.
I'm not sure revenge. I actually talk about this in
the beginning the introduction of my book. I was heavily
bullied throughout middle school and high school for being a nerd,
and I was like, you know what, it's time for
(05:03):
the revenge of the nerd. So I was just on
this blazing path in my early twenties to say, I'm
going to prove all those high school bullies wrong by
just being freaking accomplished. And it's so silly to think
about it now because I'm thirty nine. Now, I'm like,
who were my high school bullies? I don't remember their names.
I'm not going to even find them then to show them, Hey,
Shum made it. But that was the first driving emotion,
(05:27):
and then curiosity and management consulting. It's a great job,
but in the beginning, when you're that first your analyst,
it is pretty much a research slog, like you're doing
the worst kind of grut to work. And a lot
of it is just doing a lot of googling and
cleaning data. And I had a creative side to me,
and I had no outlet for it. Fortunately I had
(05:48):
enough photography training. I'm like, well, let's just try to
run a photography business. I really don't know how that
came to my mind as like the way to solve
my boredom, but that was what I decided to do,
and that thing, hoe fully actually became a huge cornerstone
of my ability to build wealth because I didn't spend
a cent from that business, just invested everything from it.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Wow. Well, and you and Matt have that in common.
That was a long time photographer's wife.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
And I launched it, yeah, back in two thousand and seven,
so azing. Unlike you, I didn't go to Harvard, I
didn't have this consulting gig. Is that we definitely were
spending the money that we're making. Well, still, we were
able to start investing at a pretty yngly Some people call.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Uga the Harvard of the South right exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, And it was a blast, I mean, had a
ton of fun doing it.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Sean, how big did that business get? And was it
tough to balance having a full time job that seems
like it was somewhat demanding with a side household that
it seems like it became a little unruly at times too.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yeah. I was working, I mean at times ninety hours
a week because sixty to seventy dedicated to my full
time job, and then the remaining which is mostly late
nights and weekends, dedicated to photography. I was being published national,
like I was known, Like some people would pay for
me to fly to photograph their weddings, and I was
just like, I don't know how I got through that,
(07:08):
Probably just by sheer stamina of being young. I think
that's really the best way to describe it.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
If you're talking to someone now who says, seize your story,
they see financial independence at thirty one, there may be
on the cusp of starting a career. Would you recommend
that strategy or that's a tough thing too, right? It
is because you go through something so arduous and it
got you where you want it to be. But it
also it didn't have it didn't come without downsides correct.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
I missed out the vast majority of my five year
college reunion, which is a fun one because that's the
one where you party in the most, because I was
photographing two weddings that same weekend and I just could
not do it. And I did over time, even though
it changed. I had a clear reason why I wanted
to do this. First it was just make as much
money as freaking possible, and then reason eventually evolved to
(08:02):
do it now. Have financial freedom now so that when
things get harder, you can pull back. And because I
was committed to those reasons, understanding that it comes at
certain costs, and I weigh those pros and cons and
I'm like, I'm willing to do this, I went for it.
And when people read my story, I'm not saying this
(08:24):
has to be for everyone. I'm just saying, hey, take
what you want from it, and learn from how over
time I understood the mental health is a huge part
of this, and at the very least, make your mental
health front and center whenever you decide to pursue something
like this.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Totally, it's not surprising that you, like I feel like
you were taking a very research based, analytical approach to frontloading.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
The sacrifice like this.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So going back to photography, like you know, you mentioned
how like y'all weren't touching that money at all when
you got married.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
You also chose to live off of the lower of your.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Two incomes, which I think, I think to most folks
sounds pretty radical. Was this also to essentially be able
to give you and your husband for y'all to have
more options down the road?
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Ah? Yeah. I actually credit him for the idea, because
that was not mine. He had been very influenced with
a lot of readings, particularly this one book by Elizabeth
Warren where it detailed how the two income trapped Today,
it's actually harder for families with two incomes today to
live at the same standard living than several decades ago.
(09:30):
Cause of living has just risen significantly. He noted, Look,
the reality is you are a female. You can't change that,
not really. And the moment you become pregnant, the moment
you become a mother to a young child, it's going
to affect your career. It's going to affect your ability
to really push that career. So what if we kind
(09:51):
of head off that fear of loss of income or
loss of career trajectory by just securing it now when
we don't have kids. Best way to do it, the
easiest way to mathematically approximate it is we live off
of one income today, so that in the future, if
one of us does not earn income, we wouldn't be
(10:11):
that financially affected.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yes, like you don't have to change a thing then,
because you're used to just the one income. And yeah,
there's some extra expenses having that baby, but you've also
funneled aside that income for so long that you can
tap into some of those resources when or if you
decided to stop working. Exactly why do you think nobody
does that? Shun? I mean, it feels like it's incredibly
(10:35):
countercultural to have that money flowing in and then to
say we're not spending a time of it.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yeah, well it's not really celebrated, it's not sexy, it's
not made for Instagram for example. And also, I think
that most of the conversations that I entered in business
school going to women's you know, women's NBA panels and
all those corporate panels, is they're trying to encourage you
(11:01):
to try to figure out to make it as both
a working person and also as a mom's young children,
they're like, you can still make it work. And what
my husband and I are saying is, let's be real,
it's not going to be the same. And I don't
think most people want to confront that reality. They want
to ignore it or use more money to solve for it,
(11:23):
whereas we're saying, we're not using more money to at
that time to solve for it. We're building up the
financial base now. But again that comes with a sacrifice
of not being able to party or travel or eat
out as much as our NBA counterparts and just leading
more of a quiet, frugal life.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
How much of that do you think has to do
with your happiness now? Like literally Jill and I were
having a conversation this morning as we're walking to go
get some coffee. But how when you shift your expectations
for what you are looking for in life, Like so,
you know, we did the quote unquote smart things when
we were younger, we started investing, but because of that,
it meant that there wasn't i don't know, like a
(12:01):
super high bar as to what like to the degree
of partying that we should have been doing. And so
then you move on in life and you enter into
a new stage, and the fact that we're not doing
those things. It's like we've sort of set our expectations
back in our twenties of what we want our lives
to look like. Therefore, like right now we both feel
incredibly blessed, incredibly happy.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
These are the salad days.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Yeah, do you feel that way regards I mean, just
because of the fact that you and your husband, that
y'all set yourselves up for so many different options like that.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I mean, who gets to claim that she can basically
nap anytime she wants school?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
That's pretty nice.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Yeah, that is literally my day. I sometimes choose to
nap on top of.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
That financial independence, you can nap whenever you want. That's
great branding.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
No nap whenever you want. I also, I was in
a very corporate culture for many years and work for
two fortune five hundred corporate companies, and you cannot be
your authentic self when you're high up in corporate. You
serve shareholders, you report to the c suite. You have
to walk, talk, and act a certain way in order
(13:06):
for you to maintain job security. And that also comes
with I mean literally there's email chains for someone sayce,
you have to keep track of fifty people that just
you know, that's a lot of work. And I walked
away from that because I was like, I'm kind of
sick and tired of it, and I don't need to
do it, and that takes away so much weight off
of my shoulders. Every day. I started noticing I left
(13:29):
corporate middle of twenty twenty three after having my second child,
that I was just like, I was starting to just
be happy again in the morning, looking forward to waking up,
driving down with narrowive thought on my mind, no stress,
no pressure other than okay, let's make sure my kids
don't off themselves. That's also a challenge, but it's a
different set of challenges that is incredibly fulfilling for me.
(13:53):
And I don't feel like I'm giving away the best
time of my life to somebody who doesn't really deserve it.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, that's great, Okay. To get there, though, you had
to not only have the two incomes and live on
just one of them. You had to then, I guess,
dial back, the expenses significantly compared to your peers who
were in similar positions. The New York Post ended up
calling you the millennial cheap skate. I'm like, what lengths
were you going to to reduce expenses? And maybe what
(14:23):
are some of the more odd ones, because those are
always fun to go over, the things that people mostly
aren't thinking about.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
I think I was in such a bubble with my
husband that it didn't occur to me how weird we were.
And I'm not sure if this is even weird, So
I'll just talk the top things that really moved the needle.
Number one, we got into a rent stabilized apartment, which
is clutch because your rent doesn't really go up, but
it's below market rent. I think relative to our peers,
(14:50):
we were probably saving two maybe three thousand dollars a month,
relative different as day we're paying. But Grant sed the
department is ramshackle, the toilet often breaks, and there was
a two burner stove, no prep space. You know, it's
missing some key skeleton bones. And then another one, which
(15:12):
I think most New Yorkers can relate to, is no
car ownership. Now I live in Sound in California, you
cannot get anywhere without a car. It's actually very significant
part of your budget because it's paying for the car
and the gas. If you have a gas car, the
insurance which always goes up, and the maintenance when the
car starts to break down, not to mention registration fees,
et cetera, et cetera. So those are number one, and
(15:33):
number two is housing and transportation. Number three came down
to our daily food. Both my husband and I worked
jobs where they would compass food at night if we
work past a certain hour, which we almost always did
at that point, so we were smart about which restaurants
we ordered from such that it would give us enough
for leftovers the next day, so no need to pack lunch.
So basically Monday the Friday eight very spends very little
(15:58):
on groceries. As I mentioned earlier in the podcast, we
used a lot of points and miles to travel at
that time, not lay flat seats. This is normal economy.
And you know, at that time was still okay to
crash at friend's houses and not get a weird look
because we offered the same then clothing that we rarely
bought clothing, and when I did, I did it off
(16:20):
of sample sales clothing swaps of my friends consignment. Poshmark
had just started, so it's buying on Poshmark and eBay.
And also like by virtue of having a tiny apartment
it was four hundred and twenty square feet. You just
can't own a.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Lot of things, a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yeah yeah, So I mean I borrowed like hiking gear
a bar from a friend who hiked a lot. Sometimes
I would just go without some things like hey do
I really need to have this or can something else
be used instead? And you just learned to live off
of very little throughout, So it's hard to say what
really moved a needil. I think it was literally just
(16:59):
like look at every spending category in our life and
ask ourselves what is it that we're truly trying to
get at and can we get at that with a
relatively low cost.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Well, I mean it sounds like sounds like you addressed everything.
I mean literally starting with the biggest ones, right housing,
then transportation that you address, food, you address clothing, Like
these are all the spending categories, and so if you
have if you're challenging yourself in some way in each
one of those categories, you're going to see a massive
savings rate. And it's fascinating too. I mean, like I
hear you saying, like talking through all these areas of
(17:31):
life and It tells me that you've got to be
on the same page as your husband. You said that
you give him credit with you know, hey, we're only
going to live on one of our incomes. Were you
looking for that or were you did you find yourself
naturally drawn to that, because it almost sounds like he
may have been the original fire convert, like maybe he
kind of came across it. Correct me if I'm wrong,
But I'm curious if you how important you think that
(17:53):
is to have a partner who's fully on board like that.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I think you need to have one hundred percent trust
in your partner should you choose to marry them. And
even though at the time I couldn't really see what
was ahead, partially because I was still like, well, I
don't know, I think we keep working, it wasn't We
weren't going for fire. We were going for financial security
in the event of having a child. So that's very different.
And I later learned that we were doing things that
(18:18):
the fire community was doing, and I was like, oh, okay,
I didn't know that this is called fire. And at
first I did fight against it because I had not
resolved a lot of my own issues related to friendship
and mental health and things like that. So in the
process of me fighting the budget and trying to make
it work because I earnestly wanted us to have a
(18:39):
good marriage and I wanted to make the budget work,
but I was the one that was spending over budget
for several months. That's how I came to realize this
had nothing to do with my math skills, with my
budgeting skills, which I was already pretty good at, but
everything to do with my attitude and where I was
deriving joy and meeting from. And once I realized that
(19:00):
that was the root cause and I started addressing that,
we were able to align much more quickly going forward
on our financial goals.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
You guys had some disagreements along the way, right, That's
kind of what you're hinting at too. What were those
conversations like when you're talking about savings rate and the
ideal savings rate, where to pair back, what the budget
should look like? Because I love that you point out
kind of the change that needs to happen and what
brings you meaning. But there is also the reality too
(19:29):
that you might say, I don't know a seventy percent
savings rate. Do we actually need to hit.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
That I definitely challenged it because I wanted to quote
unquote enjoy more life. Now I was the more social
one in the relationship. I wanted to see my friends
more often, and I felt restricted by the budget. There
were networking events that I gave up on because I
was like, the registration fee is too much for my
networking budget for that month. And the main kind of
(19:57):
argument between us was I thought I had had a
much longer career to go, and I thought that we
could just continue to make more money and enjoy a
little bit more. And he was looking ahead at the
reality of being a parent a young child, and he's thinking,
you know, that might not be the case, and it
is actually very meaningful to dedicate the young years towards
(20:19):
focusing on your children instead of the career. But obviously,
because neither of us were parents at the time, it
was really hard to understand what that actually meant. But
over time our other friends began having kids, I kind
of saw that happen, and also I was able to
fulfill my own social desires without having to splurge on
(20:40):
eating out with my friends like that. I just figured
that out problem, solved it, and we came closer to
sharing the same vision of what is the freedom that
we're truly working towards. And I finally learned over time
that joy, that freedom is not going to come from
a career. It's not going to come from fancy food
and nice clothing. It's truly the freedom to do whatever
(21:03):
the heck you wanted to do.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Like nap, I'm curious just to get super practical here.
I think I heard you say something about a career
networking budget. Did you have an actual line item for that?
And like, I mean, how specific how to the penny
did you get with your monthly budgets.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Yes, at the time, we were very specific in like
we had a line budget for food at home versus
food outside and entertainment and clothing and all of that.
Networking was important because we met a business school, you're
taught just innately how to network. So, for example, he
(21:41):
had a membership to a men's networking group. For me,
it was more one off events in different topics of
career things that I was interested in, and for the
most part it fit our budget. It was just that
every now and then an NBA oriented event would get
a bit fit and I was like, oops, that is
a little bit outside of my budget. And at that time,
(22:05):
the reason why it was so specific was primarily directed
at me, the person who overspent the budget. It was
just like, Okay, if you have a hard time, then
we're going to put boundaries on each category to try
to guide it. As I got better and better at
lowering my spending and also being happy with it, eventually
(22:25):
we moved to the system that we have now, which
is which is called the Trilling twelvemonth metric. In any
at any point in time, we average out our monthly
spending over the last twelve months, which kind of smooths
out seasonality like one time event, you know, Christmas for example,
and we take a look and now we're like wow.
(22:45):
Over the last eleven to twelve years of marriage, our
Trilling twelve month metric basically it grows in line with inflation.
Like obviously, as inflation changes, the cost go up. And
the main changes are when we add a child to
our family. We're now going on to three children by
the end of this year. Oh correct, and thank you.
(23:05):
Otherwise it's been pretty steady, Betty. And so because of that,
over this decade plus of working together on our finances,
We're no longer netpicking each thing anymore. And I don't
think at this point of marriage you should be. If
you are aligning, you work out those disagreements early on,
and you come to it with an open minded approach
(23:29):
of saying, my spouse isn't against me, it's work for
each other. It's just we have different approaches. Eventually it's
going to get easier.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
That's great. Yeah, we've got a lot more we want
to get to with you, Sean, specifically talking about saving
money and household finances with kids. We'll talk about that
stuff with you right after this.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Right, we are back from the break again speaking with
Sean Savedra and Sean, you mentioned this just a second ago.
You touched on how like a few years ago is
when you left Corporate America and you made that decision.
But it sounds like you that there's sort of like
the like a near death experience that was a part
of that. And you know, you're talking about your kids
and everything here. Talk to us about the birth of
(24:16):
your second child and how that, I guess seemed like
it allowed you to reevaluate some things in life.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah, things seemed fairly normal leading up to you know,
the do date and everything, and the labor and delivery
was actually better compared to my first so nothing seemed
out of the ordinary other than I had a cold.
I was like, oh, just no, just sneezing a lot.
Two days after arriving home, I had so much trouble breathing.
(24:43):
One of my kids had an inhaler at the point
I just started to borrow with his and inhaler and
self medicating do not recommend, and overnight I started just
wheezing so much. I got up. I was telling my
husband I can barely breathe. He grabs our oximeter, because
you know, everybody since COVID has an up blood alximitar
measured it. He's like, you're at ninety. That does not
(25:04):
sound right, and so he rushed me to the hospital.
As it turned out, I had an asthma attack. I
had adult onset asthma. I had no idea that this
was me, and people weren't quite sure either at first,
because I had recently just delivered. So people are like
trying to rule out pulmonary embolism and scarier sounding hard
(25:25):
issues that I don't know what they're called. But I
was put in the ICU for a day and I
was like, am I dying? Why am I in the ICU?
Like I just don't have a good sense of like
you know how bad it is because I was also
asleep most of the time, and I think I freaked
out the moment that I heard some patience room across
(25:45):
from me there were Buddhist chants coming out of it,
and later on the nurse told me they're like, oh, yeah,
last rites for their religion.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
I was freaked out.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
I was like, Oh my gosh, people die in the ICU.
Don't let that be me. I want to go home,
want to be with my new boor I want to
be with my family. And that was when I was like,
if I if I want to die today, would I
be proud of what I did in my life? And
the answer was no, I want to do something different.
And I only briefly shared Denie the birth announcement with
(26:15):
my corporate team. My boss reblocked it to the rest
of the team. She misspelled my son's name, and she
didn't she like completely brushed off the fact, like she
didn't even personally acknowledge to me. Oh my goodness, you
are the ice you. I hope you're Okay, there was
none of that In personal I was like, is this
even somebody I really want to spend my time with
going forward? Like eight hours a day?
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Not really?
Speaker 3 (26:37):
So say Ara sent in my resignation.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Wow. Yeah, and that those events in our lives will
crystallize things, will help us see look at the past
and then look towards the future, and said, do we
do we want to continue along this trajectory. I'm curious too, though,
like when you add kids, you've got two, you're adding
a third. It changes your expenses, yes, and it also
changes maybe some of the wealth goals that you're shooting for,
(27:02):
especially and I'm curious to hear your take on this too.
When people say, oh, it's going to cost three hundred
thousand dollars to raise a kid, that's before you even
pay for college. One do you think that's the reality?
And two? How has expanding your family maybe changed some
of those financial goals.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Both my husband and I made the conscious choice to
continue working even after hitting our original fire number because
that original fire number was for the two of us,
but were like, that's just the two of us and
does not include children. So for several years afterwards, we
were still socking away money, so our network continued to grow. Then,
recognizing that one of the most expensive things that you
would have to pay for yourself out of pocket if
(27:35):
both of us became unemployed, as healthcare, he made the
conscious choice to take a job that met a lot
of a lot of lifestyle needs, like it's not a
super crazy job, he can work remotely, and it came
with fantastic healthcare. And so that's sort of the conscious
choice that he made. And also he wasn't as driven
(27:57):
to retire early as I was. So I think those
are the two main things that we took care of financially.
Is we worked a little bit longer to build up
a larger nest egg which can be used to pay
for children's college as well. And then the one of
the larger ongoing costs, being healthcare, is secured by him
still working. Now that being said, and I do a
(28:18):
lot of forecasts for my private coaching clients who also
have children. I think there's essentially two decisions that can
really change your budget for your child. One is do
you wish to send them to private school from K
to twelve? And then the second is how much of
their college fund do you wish to fund. For most people,
(28:40):
I would say, look, public school is an option, and
it does save you a lot of money, especially if
you have multiple children to send them to public school
K to twelve. Then second, I tell most parents, take
care of your own retirement before you fund a very
large college fund, because by the time your children go
(29:01):
to college, you are much closer to retirement than your
children are to themselves retiring and saving up for all
of that. So don't feel guilty that you have to
put your own retirement as a priority over funding and
making sure your kids don't end up caring student loans,
because there's a lot of things that can happen that
(29:22):
can lead to your children paying off loans pretty early.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Something I'm hearing you speak to is that it's like
you and your husband both have taken a more practical
approach to your careers and sort of some of these
like huge life decisions that you typically make in life.
And you've got a chapter in the book talking about
your identity not being tied up in your work, and
I hear that played out here by the decision that
is like that you said that he made. It sounds
(29:46):
like he took a less prestigious job, but maybe that
he was able to do that because he had less
of his identity tied up into that. But at the
same time, you're able to garner all these additional benefits
like amazing flexibility, being able to work from home, awesome
health care benefits. Do you think that too many folks
are pursuing something I've heard folks talk about this, like
where it's like, oh, I want to pursue the job
(30:07):
that I want to be able to tell people that
I have, like where I can state a certain title,
and they're not thinking about the life that it gains
you as much as we should be.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Yeah, And I don't know how college commencement speeches go
these days, but I am so tired of all of
those commencement speeches. During the time that I graduated from college.
Was just like pursue what you love, shoot for the moon,
and then you'll land among the stars or something like that.
Because these are often given by celebrities and CEOs who
were the exception. They're the exception, not the rule. Yes,
(30:39):
they made it by following what they loved, but the
vast majority of the college graduates they're speaking to are
never going to get to that goal, and it's irresponsible
to put out that as the main piece of advice,
whereas I'm much more practical. I'm like, do something that
you're good enough at that you can tolerate that, pay
the bills, and then figure out what you want to
(31:01):
do after that. But if you can't even cover your bills,
you're in for a lifetime of angst and worry. That
is just not worth it.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
I'm curious to talk about the intersection of mental health
and finances too, showing that seems like something that you've
really thought long and hard about. And you've said that
most money experts they don't talk about mental health and money,
that that maybe is a little taboo or just something
that's left on the table. It does seem like we're
seeing that dam begin to break a little bit. What
(31:31):
tack do you take when talking about the intersection of
our money and our brains.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
I often have people who are deep in credit card
debt or are just really struggling with money come to
me and the phrase they use is I'm bad with money.
It kind of implies that either they weren't educated or
they're not managing their finance as well. And that's why
they're seeing the money problems that they're seeing today. I
(31:58):
change that completely by saying, if you feel like you're
struggling with money, it's indicative of a deeper issue that
is usually not related to money at all, and everything
to do with your mental health and how you got here.
So the money problems are just the symptom the real disease.
The real issue is something deeper, usually related to mental health,
(32:21):
and I found in my coaching almost always is related
to some form of depression, anxiety, or build up of
trauma from childhood. The thing is, there's just not enough
funding for any scientific research to really make that case.
I looked into PUBMIT, I started looking for scientific evidence
to back up what I intuitively understood from my years
(32:42):
of coaching. It just wasn't there. There were bits and pieces,
and so in the research from my book, I cobbled
together what I felt were the best set of scientific
studies that could blend together the story. But I acknowledge
that it's still imperfect. But that's the premise of how
I coach now, which is, let me understand how you
(33:04):
grew up around money, how was it normalized or not,
and then were there any really traumatic experiences that you
went through both as a child and now some of
that could include divorce, loss of a loved one, a
really bad time at work, and those can actually explain
so much of your behaviors today. And then by addressing
(33:27):
the root of those events and experiences, then we can
actually change people's behaviors and change their money over time.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
In your coaching. And not to oversimplify things like I
doubt it is this clear cut, but do more of
your clients approach their problems and just how they handle
their money with an abundance mindset versus folks who come
in with more of a scarcity mindset? Do you see
more of one or the other? And I'm curious if
you if you think one of those mindsets is more
(33:57):
challenging than the other.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Yeah, say mostly scarcity, because if people had abundance mindset,
they're probably actually quite successful because that's what the mindset does,
and so they wouldn't need my help all that much.
So probably I come from a biased opinion that I
see more scarcity mindset, and I think, you know, it's
(34:18):
never going to be perfect, but I think it's helpful
for people to have the experience that I have of
seeing hundreds and hundreds of people's real numbers to be like, Okay,
some of this makes sense and some of it is
a little bit out of bounds, and here's like what
we can start doing to change things. And then also
I then personalize my analysis based on like. For I'll
(34:42):
just give a very broad example. If somebody grew up
with seeing one of their parents lose a lot of
money on the stock market, it's called availability bias. They're
going to grow up thinking, Okay, I'm going to lose
money on a stock market if I invest in it,
and they're much more likely to avoid investing because they
saw such a salient example of a failing And that's
(35:05):
scarcity mindset, because you overamplify one negative event, whereas it's
scarce in abundance mindset. You kind of have to fight
that childhood tendency and be like, yes, I saw something
really really bad happen, but I'm going to look at
the data and convince myself that the vast majority of
time that bad thing is not going to happen. And
(35:25):
that's very hard for somebody to learn that firsthand.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Yeah, Yeah, it takes time, I feel like for people,
especially to something that happen in childhood those things. Trying
to unwrite the script that gets written is a multi
year long process, and it takes a lot of intentionality,
and if you're not being intentional, that script stays around
an awful long time. It just doesn't get undone by itself.
Part of it is mindset. But then there are also
(35:51):
ingrained habits that people develop when it comes to how
they handle money, especially when it comes to reckless use
of money. So how do you help people work through
changing those those habits maybe that they've gotten accustomed to.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Yeah, I have a client who has she admitted herself
she has a makeup problem. She said, I have a
lot of makeup. I never use it up. But I
was like, okay, tell me about it. How did this
come about? Well, as it turns out, two things. One,
her mother plays an outside uh put a lot of
emphasis on looking esthetically pleasing as a value growing up.
(36:26):
And two, her mom always told her always go to
the sale section, but she misinterpreted as a child of
when there's a sale, go buy something. So you can
notice how that got miscommunicated, and so she would always
be shopping makeup sales. And so once I made that connection.
I was like, Okay, there's a misinterpretation of something that
your mom said over and over and over to you,
(36:47):
like literally your brain interpreted as a rule. So we're
gonna undo that rule. Where I actually said, you know,
she has to unsubscribe from all sale emails from her
favorite makeup retailers and brands, and then she's going to
use up her makeup stash before she buys something new.
And that's just a microcosm of little tweaks that I
(37:10):
do to help people recognize how their habits have formed overtime.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Kind of like emptying that pantry before you get back
to the grocery store.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yes, yeah, you give great examples too throughout your book,
like you're kind of highlighting just the trigger action reward mechanism.
And you quote friend of the show Charles Douhig in
your book, oh as well, he's a yeah, y'all are
both able to highlight how it is that we are
responding to the stimulus around us that sometimes we just
end up becoming our own worst enemies as we thought
our own progress shun. We've got more to get to.
(37:39):
We're gonna yeah, maybe after the break we'll get to
the American dream and whether or not you think that's
still possible today. We'll get to that and more right
after this.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
All right, we're back from the break, still talking with
shunks of adra, talking about cultivating a wealthy mindset, and
just so much good information already. Sean, I'm curious to like,
we talked about maybe your early adult life, but we
didn't really go back into your childhood and you ended
up you actually lived the first few years of your
life in China. I am so curious how did that
(38:19):
experience and the influence of your parents impact your frugality
and those early years of marriage, because, like we're talking
about here, the impact of our family of origin, It's
like it matters in how we think about and how
we relate to money.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
It's so funny, you guys asked this because a couple
of weeks ago, I visited Boston, Massachusetts as part of
my book tour, and I got booked for a private
corporate event. That corporation happened to be in the town
and my parents and I grew up in when we
immigrated to the US. It was Lexington, Massachusetts, and going
(38:55):
back there, Wow, I brought back all the nostalgia, Like
I was trying to relive it in writing my book,
like being there makes a huge difference, And I realized
that as a child, you don't have a lot of
context for how you grew up unless your parents chose
to tell you. But you don't. And when we were
in Lexington at the time, we lived literally like the
(39:16):
last street before I would no longer qualify for the
school district. We had one of the smallest houses, one
of the smallest plots, and I remember my parents did
everything like they did all the yardwork. My mom did
so much housework. My parents drove the ugliest, tiniest cars possible,
and it was a very frugal light.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Including the green car. You document that in your book
how your dad was able to get the sale or
get to get a massive discount because you got the
ugly green car. My dad used to drive a yellow
Subaru so called the bruceban.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Maybe I'll see that bright green once a year driving
around here. I'll put out to my husband, like, that's
the color of that car, because you never see it.
But the thing is, my parents did influenced me so
strongly through that in two ways. One they normalized frugality
as something not to be ashamed of, like my parents
(40:11):
did things with great attitude, Like they were just like, look,
you just gotta work hard towards what you wanted. Now,
I didn't know what they wanted, but I saw the
work really hard. And then the second thing was, which
is a little bit more misinformed on my end, I
literally thought we were the poorest people because my parents'
way of approaching things to seem so frugal compared to
(40:34):
what I was able to observe every now and then
from my friend's parents, which wasn't much. And it wasn't
until much later in life when my parents trusted that
I actually was responsible with money and they started revealing
a little bit more of why they did all that.
It blew my mind, like several instances, one that they
actually had enough saved to pay me full ride to
(40:56):
any school that I wanted. That was not an expectation
that I had, So I was like, where did this
come from? My dad said, that's investing. That's like what
we've been doing the last several years. And then later
on when my parents did choose to share their estate
planning stuff with me, and I was like, holy cow,
they have way more money than I ever thought that
(41:17):
they did when I realized that was what they were
working towards and that this actually is how you build wealth.
It's just that as a child, I didn't know that
that was what it was.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
So you said, that's how you build wealth.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Do you think that that's a good strategy for how
you should raise your kids as well? I'm curious if
you feel similarly, I guess in how it is that
you and your husband are going to raise your kids.
Do you think that them essentially, like withholding that information
is a part of what allowed you to thrive and
to be ambitious and to go out there to create
your own thing.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
My friends, especially those of those of my friends who
grew up similarly as I did in immigrant Asian American households,
they're like, oh my goodness, Sean, your parents are so Asian,
because it is a very common Asian parenting tactic to
you know, withold information, be really strict on children, and
then like boom, something good happens at the end. But
you're like, what the heck they what did they just
(42:11):
put me through? So I would say less emotional, no,
mantimulation is my hope. But I do see the point
because there is a phrase in Chinese food worth Sunday
which means wealth is not going to go beyond three generations.
The wisdom in that phrase is saying families that are
(42:33):
wealthy are eventually going to turn poor again because the
habits and the mindset is the hardest part to teach,
and if the wealthy parents then give everything to their children,
those children are not going to understand the value of
the work ethic that it takes to get there. So
my husband and I are trying to walk a finer
balance between not giving its every little thing that our
(42:54):
children want, but also giving them a you know, a
well life that focuses on their health, focus on their education,
while still making it very hopefully very important for them
to see that it takes work. And I think for
that reason, we actually both don't outsource all that much
household work, like our children see us grocery shopping, vacuuming
(43:17):
the house, washing the dishes. We could easily outsource all
of this, but we actually made a conscious choice to
make household work very visible from an early age so
that our children't understand there's some things that you just
have to do in order for life to happen and
that's just part of adult team Sean.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
I feel like there's more pessimism about the American dream
these days, and I feel like I'm talking to someone
who's achieved the American dream. How would you respond to
people who think that it doesn't exist or that it's
impossible to achieve.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
Wealth is coded, and it's your job to break the code.
So my parents and I, we were not born into wealth, right,
but we did whatever we could, both my parents, whose
English is not as good as mine, as well as myself.
Where you study how wealthy people think and work and
you just do your best to break into it. Now,
(44:13):
do I think I've hit a ceiling at some point
in my corporate career. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know,
because I didn't stick around long enough to find out.
But I do think that believing that there is a
lot to do on my end to try to figure
out is kind of what kept me going. I'm also
not as bought into the idea that a house is
(44:35):
a sign that you've made it. I think that there's
a lot of problems with the real estate industry in
the US, and I think that people can just as
easily build wealth through stock ownership, business ownership instead of
real estate ownership, so I'm not tied to what your asset,
your income generating asset, needs to look like. But at
(44:56):
the end of the day, I would say, look, there
are going to be things that you're always not going
to have control over. You can't control the kind of
family you were born into. You can't control, you know,
certain demographic aspects that you know people might hire you
based on. But you can control your attitude and how
(45:16):
you choose to work within within the confines of the
set of circumstances you've been given. And that's what I
focus on.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Very cool talk about your faith, Sean, because you touch
on yeah, your faith, you talk, you touch on God.
I'm curious as to how much that impacts how it
is that you handle your money, because, like I mean,
I guess depending on your background, Like Joel and I
have conversations and we're like man like, sometimes it doesn't
really enter the equation at all. But but then when
you like take a step back, you realize that, like, oh,
(45:44):
this is kind of propelling or creating like a backstop
to how I see so much in the world, or
how I treat people, or how I I don't know
just like I guess what I believe the future holds
for us. But yeah, I'm curious for you. How does
it impact how how you handle your money? You already
mentioned I guess you're generous spirit there at the beginning
of the episode.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
Yeah, I guess. Throughout the podcast, one thing I didn't
really say was a goal was to get filthy rich,
And I think a lot of that has to do
with my faith. Being rich is not the goal. It's
the freedom that comes with being financially responsible that we
were pursuing and an additional layer to our faith because
(46:24):
I have spoken on handles with Christians for their life,
But how can you reconcile being wealthy with what the
Bible says? And I was like, no, the Bible never
says money is bad. It says worship of money is bad.
And money is actually one of the most frequently mentioned
concepts in the Bible because God recognizes that it is
one of the most seductive sources of power out there.
(46:47):
And so my husband and I we both believe that
we are God's portfolio managers. He chose to give us
some amount of income, some amount of well, some amount
of resources, and it is our job to give to
God the greatest return, which is not necessarily financial return.
But I think a delicate balance between making sure that
(47:07):
the money is invested because the Parable of the Ten
Talents talks about that, and also making sure that the
way we choose to spend our money follows God's values
and principles.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah. Thanks, thanks for sharing that.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Well, not no Joe's gonna take his money and go
bury in the ground.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Right, that would be the opposite Matt, of what we're
taught in that passage. No, Sean, thank you so much
for joining us. We really appreciate it. Where can our
listeners find out more about you, what you're up to
and your new book? Awesome?
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
I'm on Instagram and YouTube under save my Sense all
one word, and you can also find me at my
website savemsense dot com.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
We'll make sure to link to all that in the
show notes. Sean, thanks so much for joining us today.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Thank you so much. I have a fantastic week, all.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Right, Matt. That was a great combo. Love Seun and
her outlook on life songs of Vadra. Yeah, just and
her history is just a really producing one. And to
turn bullying into this like monstrosity per you know, financial
independence building mindset is is pretty cool. So what was
your big takeaway from this episode?
Speaker 2 (48:17):
Well, well, I hope she wasn't bullied because her parents
were taken the frugal path, you know, but like, honestly,
it doesn't make fun of you for anything, you know,
And then like, well maybe maybe I should make that
my takeaway. The fact that her parents made frugality normal,
you know, like like they talked about it, it was a part,
it was their lifestyle. It's something that they did together.
I liked how she even her and her husband have
(48:37):
like said that they want to intentionally do things in
their day to day lives to demonstrate with their kids
that like no, no, no, no, you don't have a
silver spoon in your mouth or anything like that. These
are things that you were going to do and that
you were going to see us doing. And I just
I don't know that really resonates me. It resonates with me.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Even if you can afford to outsource it, that's.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah, intentionally choosing not to in order to instill certain values.
It's it's kind of like embracing the suck, like embracing
the fact that there are hard things that we're going
to do in life. In this case, these are things
that we can avoid doing. But it sort of sets
the expectation of, well, no matter what, there are going
to be hard things, and so the better that we
can I think, overcome those things. While we have an
option to to not necessarily go through these things, right
(49:16):
like you can.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Pay to avoid all of that.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
I think it's only going to make you even more
resilient and capable of handling the things that where there
isn't an option to.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Sidestep those those hardships. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
Yeah, it's kind of a roundabout take away from me,
what about.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
You, I'm gonna piggyback on that and say on the
freak gality note when shown at the beginning of the episode,
she's essentially outlining her intense resourcefulness. And I think in
a world where it is so knee jerk easy to
get almost anything we want whenever we want it, whether
that means just an Amazon purchase, even if we have
the money, because ah yeah, I think I need that,
(49:50):
let me just you know, one click to buy or
whether that is buy now, pay later, because like I
want the thing, I don't have the money, But let
me sign up for easy payments to get that thing now,
even though man, I really should wait and save up
to buy the thing. I want that resourcefulness, I think
is it's something that's lacking more and more. It's like
a muscle that's atrophied. And we could use some of that.
(50:12):
And Shung had it in spades, and it was like whatever,
not everybody can get a run controlled apartment, right, But
then she highlights a bunch of other things that anybody
can do, right borrowing hiking equipment from a friend. And
I think we could all stand to increase our resourcefulness
and to maybe do a Google search before we buy
(50:33):
something like I don't know, is there a tool rental
thing instead of me buying this tool from home depail
or loaves. There are all sorts of ways to reduce
our expenses, and part of it just takes a little
bit of like curiosity and elbow grease.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
I love it, man, all right. The beer you and
I enjoyed today was called a Three Headed Monster, which
is an Imperial red Ale by New Realm Brewing Company
here in Atlanta. Would you think I.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
Liked it more than I thought I was going to?
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yeah, totally delicious.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
I have not had like an imperial red in a
long time. And I was like, oh, this is this
is like hoppy, uh this is it's big and it's unique.
So I really flavorful though. Yeah, I was like, oh man,
I have It's been so long stuff had this style.
I used to I remember enjoying this style. I thought
maybe I'd grown past it, but no, I still love
this one.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
What is ocillions is what I'm thinking of. That's a
red ale that doesn't count. That doesn't that's not a
red ale, like that is a fake red ale. This
is a collide with Sam Adams and has is that
how you say that as? I have no idea, but
maybe they are a hop purveyor perhaps that's their their
little symbol there. But you know what this tastes like
to me? With this reminded me of Bell's Hopslam back
(51:39):
in the day because I had a lot of hot
flavor going on. It almost had this honey like sweetness,
and yeah, just reminded me of some of those those
good old days when you would seek out a fresh
drop of hop slam. You'd like, line up, line up
a package door, They'll get you some of that.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
One of those first annual drops that people would be
like hungering for, and Bell's I don't know if based
on making caps. I'm pretty sure it's.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
Just it's just not an in demand like it used
to be.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
A bunch of beers that used to be so hot
are now just you know, hanging out on store shelves
these days.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
So yeah, So if that's one that you remember being delicious,
look for a three headed monster, guessing that you'll enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
Yeah, but uh, all right, wrap it up, let's do
it all right. That's it for this episode.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Find show notes up on the website at howdomoney dot com.
That's gonna be it, buddy, So until next time, best
Friends Out, Best Friends Out,
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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