Latest / Hustle Rebels: Burnout Recovery for Over-Achievers / From Burnout to Financial Freedom: His Client Paid Off a 30-Year Mortgage in 8 Months — Here's How | Dr. Howard Polansky

Transcript

From Burnout to Financial Freedom: His Client Paid Off a 30-Year Mortgage in 8 Months — Here's How | Dr. Howard Polansky · Hustle Rebels: Burnout Recovery for Over-Achievers

0:00
SPEAKER_01: I am miserable.
0:00
SPEAKER_01: I am hating my life.
0:02
SPEAKER_01: I am hating my practice.
0:03
SPEAKER_01: I just want nothing to do with anything.
0:06
SPEAKER_01: And I just blurred out maybe the person that needs to be fired is me.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: And Renee, when I tell you that the entire restaurant went silent, it was the weirdest, most uncanny thing.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: And the only word I heard back was, yes, you are the person that needs to be fired.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: Then the next question I had in my head was, if my practice doubled its revenue tomorrow, would that make me happy?
0:33
SPEAKER_01: And the immediate answer back was no.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: And it was at that moment I was like, I need to solve my practice.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what life is going to look like moving forward, but I knew that this part of it was done.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: You just heard from Dr.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: Howard Polansky.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: Howard started his career as a dentist, first with the U.S.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: Navy, and then his private practice in Austin, Texas.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: But a life-changing event in 2018 made him walk away from dentistry entirely and find a different way to create impact in the world.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: The new path became clear when the first person he helped took a 30-year mortgage and paid it off in eight months.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: Howard is our first ever Toolbox Tuesday partner.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: Toolbox Tuesday is where we bring in vetted experts and resources to help you actually build a life outside of the hustle.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: And Howard is a perfect one to kick things off.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: He now works with families and business owners using a simple financial system to dramatically reduce debt on mortgages, business loans, car payments, student loans, and credit cards without changing your lifestyle, helping you keep more money in your pocket every month and achieve your dreams faster.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, his goal is to help you become your own CFO, a cash flow optimizer.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: When you chat with Howard, be sure to tell him you heard about him through Hustle Rebels.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: Go to financiallyled.com or text Howard directly at 512-608-1020.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: All this information will also be in the description show notes.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: And now that we've gotten your attention on money, let's hear more from Howard himself.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: This is Hustle Rebels, a podcast for people who know how to grind but are starting to question the cost.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm Renee, and here we talk about success, burnout, and nervous system regulation without glorifying exhaustion or sacrificing your health, relationships, or your sense of self, and without pretending ambition is the problem.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: So today we're going to talk about how someone walks away from one version of success, what most people misunderstand about money, and how becoming your own CFO, cash flow optimizer, how it can change your own future.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: So, Howard, welcome to Hustle Rebels.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: And I would love for you to, in your own words, say where you're coming from and a little bit more about yourself as well.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, appreciate it, Renee.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: My name is Dr.
3:37
SPEAKER_01: Howard Polanski.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: I currently live in Austin, Texas.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: I am coming up on my 20th anniversary of that, which is kind of scary.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: From a family perspective, I've got my partner, Nicole.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: We've been together for about 10 years.
3:55
SPEAKER_01: And as a blended family, we've got four boys.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: Nicole's got two boys at the time of this recording, 29 and 26.
4:04
SPEAKER_01: And my two biological boys are 20 and 17.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: Nice.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: So let's start with you being a previous dentist, right?
4:13
SPEAKER_00: So on paper, that sounds like a career many people would chase and then ultimately retire from.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: But what made you realize that that wasn't the right fit for you?
4:22
SPEAKER_01: Well, it was a long time coming, but I'll get to the moment first and then we can travel back in time.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: When I knew things just weren't right, was, or I just call it the two by four moment in people's lives.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: It was Sunday morning, Memorial Day weekend, 2018.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: Jaden, my older son, is 12 years old at the time.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm sitting next to his bed.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: He realizes I'm there, and he says, Dad, his voice is barely above a whisper.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, buddy.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: I lean over the bed.
4:55
SPEAKER_01: I put my ear over his mouth to make sure I can hear him.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: And he says three words I'll never forget.
5:02
SPEAKER_01: Am I dying?
5:03
SPEAKER_01: 12 days earlier, Jaden came home with a stomachache.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: Three days after the stomach ache, we're in the ICU at the children's hospital having emergency surgery.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: It was appendicitis that turned septic.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: 29 days in the hospital, 19 of them in the ICU, eight straight days of sedation because he went to the operating room five times.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: After they take the tube out of his throat, they give him methadone and morphine to bring him down from the drugs he was on.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: So imagine your child looks like a heroin addict coming down from a high.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: And the very first question they will only ask you are those three words.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: Am I dying?
5:47
SPEAKER_01: My first breath was, did I hear him correctly?
5:50
SPEAKER_01: My second breath was, do not lose it right now.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: I look him in the eyes, I tell him, No, you're not dying.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: You've had prayers from thousands of people all around the world, and you're going to be just fine.
6:00
SPEAKER_01: He looks at me, he knows I'm telling him the truth.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: He closes his eyes to get more rest.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: I walk outside the room and I broke.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: I was already miserable.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: And I know we'll go through that part of the journey, but I was taking it out on everyone around me.
6:16
SPEAKER_01: But when I broke, Renee, only one thought seared into my mind.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: If life is this fragile and I'm unhappy with the path that I'm on, burn the ships.
6:27
SPEAKER_01: It's over.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: And that's what I did on the floor of that hospital.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: Act one of my life was done.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: That is a definitely a powerful two by four moment.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: And I actually have never really considered it as calling it a two by four moment, but I like that.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: Leading up to that, we can kind of rewind it a little bit.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: When were you starting to realize, man, I can't keep pushing myself like this?
6:52
SPEAKER_00: And then you had obviously that two by four moment.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if I have to be really truly honest with myself, it was probably when I was in dental school.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: And not only was it in dental school, it was probably a month into dental school where I was already trying to calculate when I could retire.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: So if that's not a clue for someone who might be listening to this, to say, if I'm already trying to think of the exit plan, then you're on the wrong path.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: It's just that up until that moment in my life, I was really just leading with my head.
7:33
SPEAKER_01: It was just all logic in terms of what is supposed to be the next right decision in terms of what society says.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: And so that's what I did is that growing up, and again, I'm not I'm not here laying blame.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: It's a that's not it at all.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: I chose a path, and this is the path that got us to have this conversation today.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: So I don't go back in terms of what ifs.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: It's just the path that I chose.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: But I do remember growing up in that my parents' friends, and they meant it from the kindest of intentions, in terms of Howard's going to be a great doctor one day.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: He's going to be a great doctor one day.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: And then I got to college and I was like, when did I ever choose to become a doctor?
8:15
SPEAKER_01: And so I started to have this first mini crisis between sophomore and junior year of college.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: And I go to the career center and I'm looking through books that are this big, you know, three to four inches, eight to ten volumes of it, just trying to like, what other careers are there out there?
8:32
SPEAKER_01: And you have to remember, this was the start of the internet.
8:35
SPEAKER_01: So it was like, we're not talking about YouTube, we're not talking like we're back to usenet groups, Renee.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean, like, this is old school.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: And I came down to it, it was gonna be one of two careers.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: It was either dentistry, because that was healthcare like, but not in medicine, because I didn't really like the way that medicine was turning into, or it was becoming an actuary.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: And I'm just gonna define what an actuary is because probably most people have no idea what that is.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: This is someone who is so good with mathematics and calculations that they are used by insurance companies to determine when do you die so that they know how to price life insurance premiums correctly.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: All right.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: So if that does not tell you how my brain works in terms of how I got into what I do now, then nothing will.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: Now I can understand how you got into where you did.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: That makes more sense.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, numbers have always come easy to me, but yeah, these were the two tasks that I was thinking of.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: But again, it was all logic-based, it was all in terms of what was up here, and I'm pointing to my heart.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't in terms of what really is lighting up my soul.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: I just never even listened to it.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, how much do you think was part of the burnout versus you just searching for a deeper purpose or a deeper meaning to your life?
10:03
SPEAKER_01: Oh, a tremendous amount of it was burnout just because, again, this was the path that I chose.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: And there was a part of me that was just this struggle of, well, just keep doing it.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: It's what society thinks is the right thing that you should do.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: You have doctor in front of your name.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: And I would just joke with patients, Renee.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I would tell people, you know what the difference is between you and me?
10:28
SPEAKER_01: I was just stupid enough to keep going in school.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: That was it.
10:32
SPEAKER_01: Like, I could care less in terms of the doctor thing, honestly.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: It just wasn't that it didn't satisfy my ego at all.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: But it was just one of those that, like, in order to be able to practice, I never had to have doctor in front of my name.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: But the burnout, there, there's a couple different ways to explain the burnout.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: You've probably heard of the 10,000-hour rule.
10:55
SPEAKER_01: It sounds familiar.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: There is a certain skill that you're doing and you've put in 10,000 hours or more, then at that point you should be a master at that skill.
11:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: I I can't remember who was the author and kind of figured all that out.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter.
11:11
SPEAKER_01: But when people explain, like, how could you have left dentistry?
11:14
SPEAKER_01: I said, you know, the 10,000 hour rule.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Yeah, it's like I've put in my 10,000 hours, and at best, I was average, which isn't bad in terms of dentistry.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, it's still a good quality dentist, but like I was never going to get to the elite level in terms of just beautiful work, beautiful craftsmanship, everything was going right.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: It's like it was still a struggle every day, and from a clinical perspective, it just didn't like, yeah, I knew how to do some things by kind of rote memory, but there was still a whole bunch of conscious competence that I had to use, and it was just a drain.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: That's part one.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: Part two of this is that I would get to my own practice as soon as I step through the door in the morning, I was exhausted.
12:02
SPEAKER_01: So it's like that's the other thing to listen to in terms of your intuition.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: It's like if you are doing something where you are drained by the end of the day, I'm not saying that there's times that it's not hard in terms of what you do, but if you can find a job, if you can find a career where you walk in and when you walk out at the end of the day, you've got more energy.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: That's your calling.
12:26
SPEAKER_01: That is your unique ability.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: Just lean into that.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: Because for me, it's kind of like spreadsheets.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: For someone else, it might be dog walking.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: And like, if you just got so much energy because you're dog walking, then keep doing it.
12:41
SPEAKER_01: That's just your unique gift.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: So that was part two of it.
12:46
SPEAKER_01: But the third part, and this is a story that I rarely share.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: So I sold the practice.
12:52
SPEAKER_01: The thing happened in May of 2018 with my son, sold my practice in July.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: It was October, November 2017.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: And I'm with Nicole at a restaurant.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: That Renee, it was so loud in there.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: We were sitting next to each other, and you could barely have a conversation.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: She was on my left shoulder, and you could barely hear each other.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: It was that loud.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: And I am just depressed.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: I am miserable.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: I am hating my life.
13:21
SPEAKER_01: I am hating my practice.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: I just want nothing to do with anything.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: And I just blurred out maybe the person that needs to be fired is me.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: And Renee, when I tell you that the entire restaurant went silent, it was the weirdest, most uncanny thing.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: And the only word I heard back was yes.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: Like, yes, you are the person that needs to be fired.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: And then the next question I had in my head was if my practice doubled its revenue tomorrow, would that make me happy?
13:54
SPEAKER_01: And the immediate answer back was no.
13:56
SPEAKER_01: And it was at that moment I was like, I need to sell my practice.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what life is going to look like moving forward, but I knew that this part of it was done.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: That's so interesting.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: You had you said so many great things.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: I was like processing through all of the things I wanted to take note of.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: And I'm probably even going to forget the majority of them, but the biggest one is I wanted to mention the signs of the burnout.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people skip over them because we don't, as hustlers, you just think you need to push through, right?
14:32
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people, you touched on one thing that I want to make sure people are listening to, is if you are already waking up for your job exhausted, and you get into your car and you're like, I don't even want to go to my job because I'm already too tired to even work this day.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: That is a strong indication that something needs to change.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, that is a very strong indication that something within your job, within your occupation, within your career needs to change.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: And I think people forget that.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: The other thing is the loudness.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: I can relate to that because I had a really interesting experience when I was in my brain spotting training.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm a brain spotting practitioner.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: And when we were doing our training, we had to practice on each other.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: And I had a very similar experience.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: It was so bizarre and it's very difficult to explain.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: It was like the whole room was just getting louder and louder and louder as I was processing through what I was doing.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, it was like silence, and I got my answer to whatever I was processing through.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: It is really interesting how burnout and stress can, I guess, kind of a manipulation of our mind and our thoughts, and how it's like the auditory response.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: It would be a really interesting thing to do some research based off of how that can affect it.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you shared that because I feel like that's something that might make you feel like you're going crazy, right?
16:01
SPEAKER_00: But I feel like that's something that probably a lot of people have experienced before.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: What was the moment where you were just like, I can't keep doing this the same way anymore?
16:12
SPEAKER_00: I need to change, and this is what I'm going to do now.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: And then obviously you became cash optimizing and helping people in the way that you're doing now.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: But when was that pivot?
16:23
SPEAKER_01: So November in that restaurant, everything just goes silent.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: The practices for sale, and then when everything happened with Jaden, that was the moment of I will literally just burn my practice down.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: I just don't care at this point.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: It was nice to be able to sell it, you know, recoup some investment from it, blah, blah, blah.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: But the next year, like when I finally walked away from dentistry, the next year was torture.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: It was torture just because I had now the identity is stripped in terms of, and someone else, so what do you do?
17:02
SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, I do nothing.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was just this weird, like, I didn't know what to tell anyone.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: And that silence was deafening because the the scariest place to sit, Renee, is just with your own thoughts.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: But I also, there was also a part of me that understood in terms of like the stress of everything around dentistry.
17:27
SPEAKER_01: Not only are you in healthcare, not only are you a doctor, but now you're running a business.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: So you've really got like two different hats that you're wearing.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: I just needed for my nervous system to be able to calm down again and get back to some sort of baseline.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: And with that space, eventually something would come up that would fill the space because in any sort of vacuum, there's stuff that wants to move into there.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: The question just became what is going to fill that space that I didn't want anything to just fill the space because I was just a miserable bastard in one career.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to jump into now another career and be a miserable bastard again.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: Can I give myself the grace?
18:12
SPEAKER_01: And did I have the finances set up appropriately that I can give myself space to see what arises and then what aligns with what's going on in my heart this time?
18:26
SPEAKER_01: And if it matches my head, fantastic, but at least listen to my heart and use that as a guide.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: And so scary as hell.
18:35
SPEAKER_01: I can imagine really was.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, because it was like Nicole would come home and she's just like, So, what'd you do today?
18:46
SPEAKER_01: Just read and chill.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Yeah, because I didn't know what else to do.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: And it's probably one of the more contentious times of our relationship, and I could understand.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: It's like she owns two Palladios Pilates studios here in Austin, so she's out all day, and I'm just sitting on my ass, and I had no idea what to do with myself.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: So, which is you know, just not usual when you are in your early 40s, it was just it was just a weird time.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: And at that point, you didn't have necessarily a plan of what you wanted to do, correct?
19:22
SPEAKER_00: You didn't know how we wanted to help people.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: How did this come about with the cash flow optimization?
19:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: So the way that this happens, so in the transition of getting out of dentistry, I'm sitting with another dentist over lunch, and he asked me the obvious question of how are you walking away?
19:41
SPEAKER_01: Now, Renee, for people to kind of understand what was behind that question, there's kind of two layers to this.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: Layer number one is the amount of debt that someone takes on to become a dentist is just stupid.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: All right.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: To put this in context of why I mean stupid, is the two most expensive dental schools as we're recording this is NYU and University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: And they tell the incoming class for the next four years, expect to take out$800,000 in student loans.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: That is wild.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: That's just for the four years of dental school.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm not talking college.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm not talking if you want to specialize, because that's going to be anywhere from two to six more years after that.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: I'm not talking in terms of buying into a practice or starting a practice or a house or cars or your spouse and all of their loans.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: Just those four years.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: That is so wild.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: For the average dental school right now, it's closer to about$400,000.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: Still a crap ton.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
20:49
SPEAKER_01: So that was part one of the question.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: Part two of the question, which I didn't know until he mentioned it a couple of years later, this dentist was going through a double divorce.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: I usually question is well, I know what a divorce is.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: What's a double divorce?
21:04
SPEAKER_01: Not only was he getting divorced from his wife, his wife was also a dentist and owned the practice 50-50.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no, double mammy.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: So he had money bleeding out of every orifice imaginable.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: And I make one dumb comment to him.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: I said, I kind of figured out how to make money move.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: He gives me that Scooby-Doo look.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: I tried to explain what I was doing that day.
21:31
SPEAKER_01: I just didn't do a good job.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: And a few weeks later, I get the next statement in the mail for my house payment.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: I take a picture of it.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: I send it to him literally as a joke.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Hey, take a look at this.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: My house payment was$24.19.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: And all he can write back is, I see it.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: I still don't understand what you're doing.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm buying a condo next month.
21:56
SPEAKER_01: Will you teach me?
21:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, he paid off that condo in eight.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Months instead of 30 years.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: And so he tells his business partner, I tell a friend of mine what happened.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: They become the next two people I help.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: And now I listen to my heart instead of my head.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: And it says, This is the way that you're supposed to help people.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: It's not dentistry, it's teaching people what I call the new rules of finance and the system around it so that they can get to their freedom sooner.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: Renee, however, you define freedom for yourself, that's not for me to judge, not for me to explain it to you.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: But whatever it is for you, how do you just get there faster than what you thought was the traditional way?
22:44
SPEAKER_00: That is so interesting.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of people are grinding harder just to stay afloat, right?
22:51
SPEAKER_00: So how do you think that the hustle culture gets it wrong about money then if we're just constantly trying to grind harder to get that freedom to stay afloat?
23:00
SPEAKER_00: When in reality, we're just probably just above minimum.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, no, there's a better way.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: And I call it the financial hamster wheel.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: So the way that we are taught is I make X amount of dollars a week, a month, whatever it is.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: I make X amount of dollars a month.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: I want the next widget, service, product, and it costs Y.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: Does Y fit within my budget of X?
23:30
SPEAKER_01: That's usually the way that people do it because people are trained in terms of thinking of payments.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: Does this$400 payment fit within my$10,000 budget?
23:40
SPEAKER_01: Yes or no?
23:40
SPEAKER_01: And you start to consider all of the other payments that you have: house, cars, student loans.
23:47
SPEAKER_01: If you're a business owner, the business loan that you took out, the equipment loan, and it goes on and on and on.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: And so what ends up happening is you start to feel stuck, you start to feel stress, and you feel like you have no flexibility or no wiggle room because now you've stacked on all of these fixed debt payments in your life where you're just like, I can't breathe.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: And so the only way that I know how to do this is jump higher or earn more money.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: But think about the flip side of this.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: What if there was a way to get rid of those fixed debt payments in a strategic fashion?
24:26
SPEAKER_01: So instead of having to jump over a six-foot bar, we bring it down to five feet, then four and a half, then four, then three.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: To finally we bring this down that all you have to do is just walk over.
24:38
SPEAKER_01: That's the other way to play the game.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: It's just not as sexy to do that, but it makes life a whole lot easier if you've got a$24 house payment versus a two, three, four, five thousand dollar monthly payment.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, they do say that the more you make, the more you spend, right?
24:55
SPEAKER_00: So you think that if you're making$100,000 that you can afford that much more stuff.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: But if you can get that back down, you're right, it is a lot less sexy to have less payments.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: But uh you said that basically people need to make less income than they think to be happy, right?
25:14
SPEAKER_00: So how can you explain that?
25:16
SPEAKER_00: Because in our brains, especially in this economy, people are like, I need to make X, Y, and Z in order to afford to live comfortably.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: So what is this model that you're utilizing?
25:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so people initially think that what I'm saying is, oh, you're just taking Dave Ramsey and putting your own twist on it.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: The answer is no.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: The Dave Ramsey model, and look, I'm not here to poo-poo on Dave Ramsey, I'm not here to poo-poo on Susie Orman.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: They're also talking to the 90% who do not understand that their income needs to be greater than their expenses on a consistent basis.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: But when you flip the script and you're in the top 10, 15, even 20%, you understand the basics.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
26:03
SPEAKER_01: You understand that your income needs to be greater than expenses.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: You more than likely have an emergency fund.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: You more than likely have been putting away in retirement accounts, but it still just feels like I'm running on this hamster wheel.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: And so there is an efficient way to be able to get rid of those payments out of your life sooner.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: And this is the way that I teach it.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: Now, the weird part is that we're utilizing something called the line of credit, which is another debt tool, but we're utilizing it in a way that it becomes a weapon against your other debt.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: And so once you can start to see the math and realize that with a line of credit being open-ended, that's the whole key to this, is that now you can put all of your money into the line of credit and then take out what you need to live, versus let's just use a mortgage, since most people are familiar with that.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: When you make the payment, it's a one-way street.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: The money goes in, you can't get the money back out.
27:05
SPEAKER_01: And Renee, do you find any irony in that a mortgage and an amortization table have the same root word, M-O-R-T, as mortuary and mortician?
27:18
SPEAKER_01: The system is set up for you to make payments until the day you die, or you're going to die trying.
27:24
SPEAKER_01: But if you really were to sit down and budget out your normal monthly existence, just see how much of this is associated with fixed debt payments and how much of it variable or discretionary.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: Since most of my clients are dentists, and I know these numbers are going to sound higher, but you'll get the point of this.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: The average dentist spends approximately$17,000 per month to live.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: But of the$17,000, roughly$7,000 of that is associated with debt between house, cars, and student loans.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: So imagine if this was you spending$17,000 or you had the debt gone and now it's down to$10.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: And that$10,000 is all variable expenses.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: It's all in terms of how do you want to live.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: Makes life far easier in terms of having to jump over a$10,000 bar versus a$17,000 bar.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: So how long does this usually take for someone to implement if they were to do this line of credit?
28:35
SPEAKER_01: Good question.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: The answer slightly, the answer I have to say is kind of it depends.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: The first thing is that do we have any sort of assets that we can use as collateral to be able to get a line of credit?
28:50
SPEAKER_01: So the most common example is a home equity line of credit.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: If someone has been living in a house for a while, let's just say since 2020, and I'm just making up numbers here, but let's say that you purchased a house for$300,000.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: Now the mortgage is down to$250, but now your house is worth$700,000.
29:14
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of equity that's trapped in that house.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: And so what we want to do is be able to break open some of that equity to be actually be as accessible cash.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: And once we have that in place, that's when we can start to play this game in terms of, oh, I've got this car that has a debt on it.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: I can move that into the line of credit, lower my payment, now increase this cash flow, and then we play the game through the line of credit and we can pay off the car much faster.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: I know I just said a lot of words really quick, but we can kind of use numbers if you'd like to model an example of what I mean.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, one thing that I want to mention too, that you had shown me earlier is we can provide people their own debt calculator, right?
30:03
SPEAKER_00: That is something that's going to be a great tool that we'll mention later too, but it'll be in the show notes because I think that that's going to be a really great tangible way for people to be able to put their own personal numbers into.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: But we could definitely utilize some numbers as well if you want to go through some simple terminology or put it into some layman's terms.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: Because I know that my brain sometimes I hear this shit and I'm just like, oh my God, I don't even know what's going on.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: But I would love for you if you can explain it in a very simple manner as well.
30:34
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: So let's pretend that we have a car.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
30:38
SPEAKER_01: It's a$400 payment.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: It's at a 0% interest rate.
30:43
SPEAKER_01: We still had$12,000 left on the car.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: So in that case, there's 30 monthly payments to go,$12,000 divided by$400.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: But we also have a line of credit in place.
30:55
SPEAKER_01: The line of credit, let's just say it's$25,000 or$30,000 in size.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: And if we utilize the line of credit, it's at a 10% interest rate.
31:05
SPEAKER_01: So in this example, we're going to move that balance of$12,000 onto the line of credit.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: So what happens?
31:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's two things that happen.
31:16
SPEAKER_01: Number one, the$400 payment goes away.
31:20
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
31:21
SPEAKER_01: It's now poof, it's gone.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: We quote unquote paid off the loan.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: But now the alarm bells are going off in people's heads.
31:31
SPEAKER_01: My payment was at a 0% interest rate.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: Now I moved this balance onto the line of credit.
31:39
SPEAKER_01: Now I will be paying interest and it's at a high interest rate.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: Why would I do this?
31:47
SPEAKER_01: The reason why is because you don't pay an interest rate.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: You pay a payment.
31:54
SPEAKER_01: And so what I mean by that, Renee, is that just because your car was at a 0% interest rate does not mean it's a$0 payment.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: There's still an outflow of cash every 30 days.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: But when we utilize a line of credit, the only thing that you owe is just the interest that's accrued over those 30 days.
32:18
SPEAKER_01: And so a$12,000 balance that stays$12,000 for 30 straight days at a 10% interest rate, the only thing you would owe is$100.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: And so let me ask you, if it was a tight month for whatever reason, which would be easier to pay?
32:37
SPEAKER_01: $400 or$100?
32:40
SPEAKER_01: Definitely the$100.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: Right.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: And so just by doing this, we've now increased our cash flow$300.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: All right.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: Then stage two, and this is where a podcast is not good for this, is well, we've got this$12,000 balance.
32:57
SPEAKER_01: How do we pay this off?
32:59
SPEAKER_01: That I could teach people later.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: But hopefully, just using those numbers gives people the mindset shift to say, oh, yeah, it's not about the interest rate.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: It's literally in terms of how much money is going out.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: And is there a way to shift how much money is required to go out?
33:22
SPEAKER_01: This is how we do it.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: And then you're just saving the amount that you have to expend during that particular month.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: Now it's making sense.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: The real thing is that with a line of credit being an open-ended tool, is that we can utilize all of our income to help minimize actually how much debt we're paying and pay that off far faster.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: But that's the last thing.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: So sorry, what's your question now?
33:48
SPEAKER_00: No, well, I'm just curious with the insurance, so it's increasing the 10% interest rate because people get so sucked in, you know, say it is the car payment and they get into the 0% interest rate, or especially like credit cards, right?
34:03
SPEAKER_00: They say you get the 0% APR for 12 months, 15 months, then you have the variable for God knows how long, and you get sucked into that.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: What would you say to people that are like, well, now you have that 10% interest rate, that's going to tack on a certain amount of money if you don't pay that off.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: So, where could this potentially go wrong?
34:24
SPEAKER_00: And how would you explain that to someone?
34:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, where this goes wrong, and this is part of how I help people because I do the whole analysis for free, because I don't want this being used in the wrong hands.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: All right.
34:40
SPEAKER_01: So there's four major risks to this, Renee.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: Number one is you have to have the cash flow.
34:45
SPEAKER_01: If income is not greater than expenses on a consistent basis, this does not work.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: Period.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: End of story, it's just math.
34:53
SPEAKER_01: Number two, people freak out about the interest rate.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: But I can just share and show example after example, it's not about the interest rate, it's about the actual payment that goes out.
35:06
SPEAKER_01: Number three, people get concerned.
35:09
SPEAKER_01: I thought 20 years ago now, I thought they were closing lines of credit everywhere when it was the great financial crisis.
35:16
SPEAKER_01: The answer is, yeah, not really.
35:19
SPEAKER_01: See, people were only hearing the headlines from Mace Bank and Hell's Cargo and Crank of America and Crapol One.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: Why?
35:29
SPEAKER_01: Because they're the mega banks.
35:31
SPEAKER_01: They are going to be the ones that get the headlines, which is why I don't like working with them.
35:36
SPEAKER_01: I prefer to work with regional banks, community banks, credit unions.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: Number one, they're your neighbors.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: They know what's going on in the local economy.
35:45
SPEAKER_01: And number two, I've spoken to enough of those bankers over time to know that as long as you are being a good steward of your line, they left you alone.
35:56
SPEAKER_01: But now we get to the biggest fear that I have in terms of sharing this, and that is consumer behavior, that you raid the piggy bank.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: And so I've got an acquaintance, and I use that term very, very loosely.
36:10
SPEAKER_01: At one point, the husband was part of the watch of the month club, and they had a car lease payment of$1,300 a month.
36:19
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: They were renting the car, they didn't even purchase it.
36:23
SPEAKER_01: Now the family does just fine.
36:25
SPEAKER_01: I could care less what they do, but if you got them in a corner and you ask them, why are you spending on some of this stuff?
36:32
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't take long to get to the truth.
36:34
SPEAKER_01: To impress our circle of friends.
36:37
SPEAKER_01: See, the problem with that is that there is no end game to that.
36:41
SPEAKER_01: So if I showed this couple the system, they would start it, they'd raid the piggy bank, they'd come back to me and say, Howard, this doesn't work.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: I just look at them and say, No, you're just an idiot.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: You're an idiot that happens to make a lot of money, but you're still an idiot.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: And so you know you better than I know you.
36:59
SPEAKER_01: And if this idea of now having access to a giant wad of cash, your next thought is, well, I'm gonna go buy my next Lamborghini, or I'm gonna go buy my first Lamborghini, this is not for you.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: You are going to destroy how the system should work.
37:15
SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna respect it.
37:17
SPEAKER_01: And yes, you can get in serious trouble if you don't have a modicum of discipline in terms of utilizing this.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's definitely a great word of wisdom for sure.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: You need to know how to spend your money wisely and not want to keep up with the Joneses, I suppose.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: And I'm also not wanting people to live as paupers either.
37:42
SPEAKER_01: Okay, because we've only got one life.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: I have had clients have that have had heart attacks and strokes, and I'm just like, oh my God, and that's the wake up call.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: And I have unfortunately had to get better at it, and thankfully it's only two people.
38:00
SPEAKER_01: Some that tell me, in terms of like, yeah, my brother-in-law who's got a gambling problem, I've got to help them.
38:07
SPEAKER_01: And oh, by the way, did I tell you about the back taxes that I owe?
38:11
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, no, if I knew about that, we would have never started this because this is gonna go very badly very quickly.
38:20
SPEAKER_01: But I've also had to take my own advice in terms of saying, don't delay.
38:27
SPEAKER_01: So I have one of those, it was a big trip.
38:30
SPEAKER_01: It was a huge investment.
38:32
SPEAKER_01: A year and a half ago, the four of us, my two boys and Nicole and I, we went to Japan for two weeks.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: I was stationed in Japan.
38:39
SPEAKER_01: My son that got sick, he was born in Japan.
38:42
SPEAKER_01: It was my goal.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: It was the one thing on my bucket list was that I get him back to Japan so he can see where he was born.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: Was it an investment?
38:50
SPEAKER_01: Hell yeah, it was.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: Was it worth every penny?
38:54
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
38:55
SPEAKER_01: And did I know how to pay myself back?
38:58
SPEAKER_01: That this was not a big deal in terms of what the cost was.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:02
SPEAKER_01: And so I have had clients that have been able to retire because of this.
39:09
SPEAKER_01: I had one, it wasn't even a client.
39:12
SPEAKER_01: I just showed him in terms of how to utilize the line of credit.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: He bought a lake house that his family can use.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: He thought he was going to do that in 20 years from now, and he's able to do it now while all of his kids are still young.
39:26
SPEAKER_01: That's the point.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: So you're teaching people how to not only get rid of their debt, but utilizing the system in their favor so that they can utilize what they are making in a proper manner to spend it in the proper way.
39:40
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
39:40
SPEAKER_01: Because everyone's got opportunities and everyone has dreams.
39:44
SPEAKER_01: And why do we need to delay and delay and delay when there is a way of being able to use this system in a respectable, proper fashion?
39:54
SPEAKER_01: This is why you're working so hard.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: Right.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: Now, if someone owns a business but feels financially stressed all the time, where would you recommend for them to start?
40:04
SPEAKER_01: If they own a business, the first thing to try and do is get a business line of credit.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: The most common one is based upon your revenue.
40:12
SPEAKER_01: The rule of thumb is 10% of your annual revenue.
40:15
SPEAKER_01: So if you are a million-dollar business, you should be able to get a hundred thousand dollar business line of credit.
40:22
SPEAKER_01: Relatively straightforward.
40:24
SPEAKER_01: The other type is a business line of credit secured by real estate if you actually own the building.
40:31
SPEAKER_01: But the first version is the more common of the two.
40:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh, great.
40:37
SPEAKER_00: Now, what should also people watch out for if they're starting to hear some flashy financial promises online?
40:44
SPEAKER_01: One, question the source.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: Always question the source.
40:48
SPEAKER_01: Number two, even with what I do, the nice part is I can always back it up with math in terms of how this works.
40:56
SPEAKER_01: I don't tell anyone personally, Renee, in terms of where to invest their money.
41:01
SPEAKER_01: The reason why is that there is a chance of loss, and I'm trying to do something where mathematically I know that there's no loss.
41:10
SPEAKER_01: That's not to say that if you were a client of mine and we started it, then you lost your job.
41:17
SPEAKER_01: I could not know that.
41:19
SPEAKER_01: But it's one of those things, as long as life is moving forward, and usually on a day by day or week by week, usually people don't have massive traumatic events that happen.
41:30
SPEAKER_01: Then the math is the math.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: And so that's why I love what I do is that like I can back it up with literally addition and subtraction.
41:38
SPEAKER_01: I can't tell you, oh, invest this money here and it's going to go up 20%.
41:43
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea if it is, or you're going to lose all of it.
41:46
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
41:48
SPEAKER_01: So that's why you'll have that calculator in terms of the resource page, but just have people reach out to me.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: I've no problem talking to anyone in terms of sharing this concept and seeing if it's going to work for them, that I can do all of that literally ahead of time and map things out to say, yeah, this makes sense for you or it does not.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: And at that point, it's your choice.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: Now, if listeners are like, wow, I really love what Howard has to say, but you wanted to tell them one thing to remember from this conversation, what would that be?
42:23
SPEAKER_01: Spending only five minutes per week, I can help families and business owners reclaim two to ten thousand dollars monthly by fixing these money leaks that we're talking about without having to change your lifestyle.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
42:40
SPEAKER_00: I feel like everyone should jump on that opportunity.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: It's like I I mean, I'm just gonna be completely frank.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: I feel like everyone in this economy right now is just bitching about how they need to make more money and they need to find more money.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I can't go a day without hearing someone complain about the gas prices, right?
43:01
SPEAKER_00: And they're leaking money.
43:03
SPEAKER_00: But then you'd hear the way that they're spending money at the same time.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: We are not taught how to spend our money properly.
43:12
SPEAKER_00: And it takes someone like you that just sat down with a bunch of numbers and is like, wait, there's a better way of doing this that we're not just hemorrhaging dollar bills to people that frankly are just making money off of us hemorrhaging dollar bills.
43:28
SPEAKER_00: Do you have any final thoughts that you want to say?
43:31
SPEAKER_01: You'll have the calculator there.
43:32
SPEAKER_01: If you want, you can go to financially led.com.
43:37
SPEAKER_01: In some way, shape, or form, you'll be able to find me or just reach out to Renee and she knows how to get in touch with me.
43:44
SPEAKER_01: But this was an honor.
43:46
SPEAKER_01: And if there is anyone from your community that needs help, I mean, this is what I was here on this planet to do.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
43:53
SPEAKER_00: Well, Howard, this has been a really strong conversation.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate your honesty, you talking about your pivot in your life.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: And the reminder that success isn't just about what you earn, it's also about the freedom that you create.
44:05
SPEAKER_00: And I really appreciate that you've stepped out of your life of what you were building with your dentistry.
44:11
SPEAKER_00: And now you're helping people create that freedom as well.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: So if anyone is listening and you want to connect with Howard, everything that he has talked about is going to be in the show notes, especially the cash flow quiz and the debt calculator that we are going to put in there as well.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: You'll have all of those links available for you.
44:30
SPEAKER_00: So if this episode gave you something very valuable, you can do two things, which is subscribe to Hustle Rebels so you don't miss any upcoming episodes.
44:39
SPEAKER_00: And you can share this with someone who needs to hear it as well.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: So I want to appreciate Howard for being here with the toolbox.
44:46
SPEAKER_00: And until next time, you can question the grind, protect your peace, help find some financial freedom, and build some success that doesn't cost you your soul.
44:55
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Howard.
44:56
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Renee.