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SMNTY Interviews: Paco de Leon · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stephane.
0:07
Speaker 1: Never told your production of iHeart Radio, and y'all, I
0:19
Speaker 1: don't know. We told you at the very beginning of
0:21
Speaker 1: the year we're going to bring in more interviews and
0:23
Speaker 1: more amazing conversations, and we are getting to do that
0:25
Speaker 1: again today and we're so excited to have Paco da Leon.
0:28
Speaker 1: Can you introduce yourself to our listeners. Hi, I am
0:31
Speaker 1: so happy to be here. My name is Paco de
0:34
Speaker 1: Leon and I'm a personal finance expert and author and
0:37
Speaker 1: illustrator and I've had lots of different jobs in financial
0:42
Speaker 1: services and it all kind of collapsed and led me
0:46
Speaker 1: to where I am now, where I do stuff like this.
0:48
Speaker 1: I go on the Internet and I talk to people
0:51
Speaker 1: about money, and really my goal is to help people
0:54
Speaker 1: feel less weird about it, and I do that through
0:58
Speaker 1: financial literacy. So edgy keating you on some of the topics,
1:02
Speaker 1: trying to make things just more digestible and understandable. But
1:05
Speaker 1: I also love, love, love talking about why we're so
1:09
Speaker 1: weird about money, like what's going on in our feelings
1:12
Speaker 1: and like let's dig in. And you know, I'm having
1:16
Speaker 1: a great time and I'm so excited to keep doing
1:19
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. I'm so excited to chat money with you, folks. Yes,
1:22
Speaker 1: and we're so excited to talk with you about it
1:24
Speaker 1: because you dig into some things and perspectives that I
1:27
Speaker 1: didn't really think about. As a social worker, we talk
1:30
Speaker 1: about a lot of trauma issues and related to our
1:34
Speaker 1: stress and our feelings and sickness and our body, but
1:37
Speaker 1: we don't really talk about it. I've never really correlated
1:40
Speaker 1: it to financial stress and financial thought processes. So looking
1:45
Speaker 1: into what you are doing, I'm like, yeah, oh my god,
1:47
Speaker 1: of course this should go hand in hand. So I'm
1:50
Speaker 1: so excited that we get to dig into this in
1:52
Speaker 1: this perspective and you're bringing out the conversation about yeah,
1:56
Speaker 1: let's stop, let's be weird and talk about why it's
1:58
Speaker 1: weird and then normal. So I'm excited to see what
2:03
Speaker 1: you have done and when you continue to do so.
2:05
Speaker 1: Thank you for being on Thanks for having me first
2:08
Speaker 1: and foremost. I would keep saying that because I get
2:10
Speaker 1: really excited when we get to have someone who was
2:13
Speaker 1: so good at something that I'm in awe. I'm like, yes,
2:16
Speaker 1: let me absorb all of your knowledge. I'm flattered you
2:20
Speaker 1: shouldn't be because you're amazing that that's what you shouldn't
2:23
Speaker 1: be flatter you should be like, yeah, that's right, Hell yeah.
2:27
Speaker 1: But yes, you've been in the financial industry for a while,
2:30
Speaker 1: and I know you took a big chance and leap
2:32
Speaker 1: stepping out of that world into a space of teaching
2:35
Speaker 1: and mentoring people who may not understand or as you say,
2:38
Speaker 1: feel weird about money and finances, including starting the group
2:42
Speaker 1: Hell Yeah Group. Can you tell us about your group
2:45
Speaker 1: and what made you go that route? Yeah? So the
2:48
Speaker 1: Hell Yeah Group really does two things. The first thing
2:51
Speaker 1: we do is literally what you're experiencing right now, Like
2:53
Speaker 1: I make content, and that content ranges right every week,
2:57
Speaker 1: I put out a weekly email newsletter called a Nerd Letter,
3:01
Speaker 1: and I have just started a podcast called Weird Finance.
3:06
Speaker 1: We're on the same record label, so to speak with iHeart,
3:08
Speaker 1: So I'm doing that, and you know, I've written blog
3:12
Speaker 1: posts and I participate aggressively on Instagram when it comes
3:15
Speaker 1: to making content. So we make content. And the other
3:18
Speaker 1: piece is I run a bookkeeping agency, and so my
3:22
Speaker 1: company runs the bookkeeping and accounting for production companies mainly,
3:26
Speaker 1: but we also do it for marketing companies. We do
3:29
Speaker 1: it for interior design firms, event production companies, so any
3:33
Speaker 1: kind of business that has multiple clients and multiple jobs
3:36
Speaker 1: and just like lots of money moving through and it's creative.
3:41
Speaker 1: That's where the space that we plan. And yeah, I mean,
3:44
Speaker 1: so how did I get here? Well, I was a
3:46
Speaker 1: financial planner. I was an associate financial planner in Los
3:51
Speaker 1: Angeles and it felt fancy and my ego was stroked.
3:54
Speaker 1: Let me tell you, because I was in this building,
3:57
Speaker 1: midweel share, Marble lobby, beautiful, right. I was like, I'm
4:02
Speaker 1: smart and the world thinks I'm smart, and I've made it.
4:04
Speaker 1: So I'm working my way up at this financial planning firm,
4:08
Speaker 1: and you know, my boss is working with like a
4:11
Speaker 1: lot of Hollywood behind the camera executives. Everybody's like a
4:18
Speaker 1: VP in Hollywood is one of the things I learned.
4:20
Speaker 1: So a lot of vps and then a lot of agents,
4:23
Speaker 1: and so I'm like sitting at the table, I'm like
4:25
Speaker 1: literally rolling calls with my boss. You know, I'm on
4:28
Speaker 1: them on every call. He's he's talking people through all
4:31
Speaker 1: these complex ideas right there, He's coaching agents on Okay,
4:37
Speaker 1: what's the strategy to earn more money. How are we
4:40
Speaker 1: going to go to CIAA and argue that you need
4:41
Speaker 1: to be paid more or okay, oh crap, your marriage
4:45
Speaker 1: is falling apart. How you kind of have to take
4:48
Speaker 1: meetings with a bunch of the top attorneys in Los
4:51
Speaker 1: Angeles because once you do that, then your partner can't
4:54
Speaker 1: go to those people. And so like that's how you
4:56
Speaker 1: kind of play defense on that. So I'm like learning
4:59
Speaker 1: all these little tid it's and I feel like what
5:02
Speaker 1: a lot of marginalized people I recognize, feels like when
5:05
Speaker 1: you get this like little slice of privilege, right when
5:07
Speaker 1: you get your foot in the door and then you
5:09
Speaker 1: just throw your body through it into the room, right
5:12
Speaker 1: and you're sitting at the table, you're like, oh god,
5:15
Speaker 1: I'm grateful and everything, but like, maybe there's other people
5:19
Speaker 1: in the world, like all of my friends who are
5:21
Speaker 1: you know, creative professionals who have no idea how this
5:27
Speaker 1: world works and they can't afford us. That was the
5:31
Speaker 1: craziest revelation. So I eventually, you know, had an existential
5:37
Speaker 1: crisis like we all do, and I thought, how can
5:40
Speaker 1: I take what I've learned and put a roof over
5:44
Speaker 1: my head and food in my belly, but also help
5:47
Speaker 1: the people who need help the most? Can I can
5:51
Speaker 1: I help them without replicating this business model? And that
5:55
Speaker 1: business model was you have to have a million dollars
5:58
Speaker 1: to invest with me. Otherwise get out of here. I'm
6:00
Speaker 1: not going to help you. I'm not going to talk
6:01
Speaker 1: to you. Is there a way to do that? And
6:03
Speaker 1: so the Hell Yeah group was honestly just an experiment,
6:07
Speaker 1: and it continues to be an experiment. Right. The hypotheses is,
6:11
Speaker 1: you know, how can I help the most people? How
6:13
Speaker 1: can I shout the loudest and make this accessible and
6:17
Speaker 1: not a complete bore and help people help themselves. I
6:22
Speaker 1: love that and I love that aspect of like pulling
6:24
Speaker 1: people up with you and not just being the only one,
6:27
Speaker 1: because we've seen so many conversations and so many people
6:30
Speaker 1: who do not understand just because they got that opportunity
6:34
Speaker 1: that they're the only one. So there's a cap for
6:36
Speaker 1: one or two people. And that's what happens when we
6:38
Speaker 1: have marginalized groups being pitted against each other, which is
6:41
Speaker 1: all uplifting white supremacy and the patriarch and all of that.
6:44
Speaker 1: You know, we always go down that road. But we
6:46
Speaker 1: love hearing about how you look back and like, no,
6:49
Speaker 1: I need to make sure that this is available for everyone,
6:53
Speaker 1: because it's so rare to have that moment of realizing
6:57
Speaker 1: it's more than me, and we need to make this
7:00
Speaker 1: a feasible thing. That's rare. That's sorry, I'm sorry, that's
7:11
Speaker 1: that's kind of what I do. Welcome to the show.
7:14
Speaker 1: Got it now? I know? Now, I've managed my expectations.
7:17
Speaker 1: It's not you're prepared. Now, you're prepared. You know what?
7:21
Speaker 1: And yeah, I'm digging into your site. It had a
7:23
Speaker 1: lot of amazing articles. I know you right for finary
7:26
Speaker 1: twenty nine um, and I have a lot of good
7:28
Speaker 1: advice on there. UM. Something that you wrote that was
7:31
Speaker 1: really fascinating to me. You wrote clinical levels of depression
7:34
Speaker 1: and anxiety or unhealthy coping mechanism behaviors can develop like
7:38
Speaker 1: overspending and going into debt or taking big financial risks
7:41
Speaker 1: to counteract feeling numb, which honestly made so much sense
7:46
Speaker 1: as you said it, but I would have never connected
7:49
Speaker 1: it because again, like I said, I kind of would
7:51
Speaker 1: do one extreme or the other, and because I do
7:53
Speaker 1: the emotional and trauma level, I didn't really think about
7:57
Speaker 1: the downfall of finances and how it can go into it.
8:00
Speaker 1: Can you talk about that and how overspending and going
8:02
Speaker 1: into debt can be an outcome of depression, anxiety or
8:05
Speaker 1: unhealthy coping. Yeah, I mean the thing about our financial
8:09
Speaker 1: behaviors is, I'm not sure why exactly. We think that
8:14
Speaker 1: they exist in some kind of a silo, right, Like
8:17
Speaker 1: we think something clicks in our brain and then we're
8:19
Speaker 1: going to deal with our money in a rational way,
8:22
Speaker 1: even if we're like wiling out in other areas of
8:24
Speaker 1: our life. Right. So, I think it's really important to
8:27
Speaker 1: realize that so much of who we are and how
8:29
Speaker 1: we behave is really interconnected. So you know, if you
8:33
Speaker 1: grew up in an abusive household, emotional or physical, you
8:38
Speaker 1: might have issues with boundaries. And those issues of boundaries, Sure,
8:41
Speaker 1: they can look like you hate saying no to your
8:44
Speaker 1: friends when they want to go out, But then when
8:46
Speaker 1: you like double click on that, it's like you hate
8:48
Speaker 1: saying no to your friends when they want to go out,
8:51
Speaker 1: so you overspend, right, And then maybe it extends even further.
8:55
Speaker 1: When you're out and you're dining out or going somewhere,
8:59
Speaker 1: you don't speak up because again you don't you're letting
9:02
Speaker 1: your boundaries get violated. So you don't say, oh, that
9:06
Speaker 1: restaurant is a little pricey for me, it's out of
9:08
Speaker 1: my budget. Maybe you pick up the tab, or you
9:12
Speaker 1: pay for more than you've had, right instead of asking
9:15
Speaker 1: can we can we instead of splitting the check equally,
9:17
Speaker 1: because I only had a salad and some bread, can
9:21
Speaker 1: I just pay for my share? Right? So there's all
9:24
Speaker 1: these different ways that we see this through line between
9:28
Speaker 1: how we were shaped as adorable young humans and how
9:33
Speaker 1: we behave with money in the future. And I think
9:36
Speaker 1: I really believe that part of the experience of being
9:40
Speaker 1: a human being on planet Earth is to uncover who
9:43
Speaker 1: you are. It's to allow yourself to become the person
9:47
Speaker 1: that you're meant to be. And part of that process
9:50
Speaker 1: is painful. It's revisiting some of the things. You know,
9:53
Speaker 1: the seeds that were planted, and those could be you know,
9:56
Speaker 1: traumatic seeds, big tea and or little tea trauma. But
10:01
Speaker 1: to discover that and to honor that that's part of
10:05
Speaker 1: your story and that's who you are. That I think
10:08
Speaker 1: is the first step in being able to take power
10:10
Speaker 1: back and to kind of alchimize it and to turn
10:13
Speaker 1: it into something that's not just useful to you, but
10:16
Speaker 1: it's useful to other people. And like, I've been there.
10:19
Speaker 1: I was an under earner for many years. I was
10:22
Speaker 1: a broke financial planner, if you can even wrap your
10:24
Speaker 1: head around like the cognitive dissonance of that. And it
10:29
Speaker 1: was painful, Like it was really painful to sit in
10:32
Speaker 1: front of people who went to Harvard and they have
10:34
Speaker 1: a five million dollar house and they're killing it, and
10:37
Speaker 1: then they're walking me through their ten million dollar house
10:39
Speaker 1: in Beverly Hills, and to be like, I rode my
10:42
Speaker 1: bike here to the job, and then I took a
10:44
Speaker 1: bird bath in the lobby because I can't afford gas. Right,
10:50
Speaker 1: But I let that pain become something else. I let
10:53
Speaker 1: it alcimize and I let it change me, and I
10:56
Speaker 1: let it give me a perspective. There's no way I'm
10:58
Speaker 1: the only one if I have a finance degree and
11:01
Speaker 1: an econ miner, and I'm struggling obviously knowing that the
11:05
Speaker 1: crap is not the one thing that's gonna make me
11:07
Speaker 1: change my behavior with finance. It's all these ways that
11:11
Speaker 1: I've been programmed. It's all these internalizations of narratives, right,
11:15
Speaker 1: talk about the patriarchy and talk about the wage gap.
11:18
Speaker 1: I really internalized the crap out of those things, and
11:21
Speaker 1: I believed I just wasn't worth as much as someone else. Yeah,
11:25
Speaker 1: now I'm bumming you out, Samantha Hey. Equal opportunity a reality.
11:31
Speaker 1: This is how I internalize all the things of like, yes,
11:33
Speaker 1: give me the truth and then I'll just cry about
11:35
Speaker 1: it later. It's fun times here. Something else you talked
11:41
Speaker 1: about was the window of tolerance. Can you explain that
11:45
Speaker 1: for us? Yeah, So there's this psychiatrist by the name
11:48
Speaker 1: of Daniel J. Siegel, and he coined the term the
11:52
Speaker 1: window of tolerance. And I learned about this actually when
11:56
Speaker 1: I took a course, an online course called the Trauma
11:59
Speaker 1: of Money. There. It's put on by Shantal Chapman and
12:03
Speaker 1: Hero I'm gonna say here, last name wrong, so I'm
12:06
Speaker 1: not going to say it, but they're the ones who
12:08
Speaker 1: exposed me to this. So the window of tolerance is
12:11
Speaker 1: a tool created by this psychiatrist to kind of help
12:15
Speaker 1: you evaluate where you are at in terms of your state.
12:20
Speaker 1: And what that means is So the window of tolerance
12:24
Speaker 1: is a scale from one to ten, and you know,
12:28
Speaker 1: the extremes will say the window is actually four to
12:32
Speaker 1: seven and then one to three and then eight to ten.
12:35
Speaker 1: Those are extremes. You always want to be in that
12:38
Speaker 1: window because when you're in that window, you are able
12:42
Speaker 1: to deal with life's ups and downs in a normal,
12:45
Speaker 1: healthy way. Right, Like somebody acts like a dick to
12:49
Speaker 1: you at the grocery store and then you don't like
12:51
Speaker 1: slap them, you know what I mean, You're able to
12:53
Speaker 1: just like take a deep breath and be like, you're
12:55
Speaker 1: bumming me out, dude, whatever it is, I know it's
12:58
Speaker 1: not me, right, Like, that's being in your window of tolerance.
13:01
Speaker 1: When you're outside of your window of tolerance, you're either
13:03
Speaker 1: like super hyper or you're super like numbed out. So
13:07
Speaker 1: let's put this in the context of money, right, So
13:09
Speaker 1: when you're outside of your window, you might feel really
13:12
Speaker 1: really anxious, and that could look like that could look
13:15
Speaker 1: like just feeling frantic, right, like emailing your account in
13:18
Speaker 1: four times in a row instead of just like taking
13:20
Speaker 1: a pause collecting everything you need to collect or downloading
13:24
Speaker 1: like three budgeting apps and just like toggling back and
13:26
Speaker 1: forth and frantically trying to be productive or like get
13:30
Speaker 1: something done. But you're so anxious, right, And the other
13:34
Speaker 1: end of that spectrum is kind of what we talked about,
13:38
Speaker 1: is like the behavior is more kind of checking out,
13:41
Speaker 1: numbing out, like ignoring, kind of like being an ostrich
13:43
Speaker 1: putting your head in the sand. And I mean that's
13:46
Speaker 1: like never looking at your bank accounts, never like not
13:49
Speaker 1: even knowing what your credit card balance is. Yeah, just
13:53
Speaker 1: being withdrawn. And so the way that I talk about
13:56
Speaker 1: the window of tolerance is, well, it's really important to
14:00
Speaker 1: understand where you are when you're making big financial decisions,
14:04
Speaker 1: because if you're outside of your window of tolerance, you're
14:07
Speaker 1: actually you're not just not equipped to make a decision.
14:11
Speaker 1: And I love this analogy that I always make. It's like,
14:14
Speaker 1: when you go to the grocery store hungry, I promise you,
14:18
Speaker 1: because you know we've all done this right, you're gonna
14:21
Speaker 1: just make bad decisions. You're gonna buy, like, you know,
14:24
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars worth of things that can't even be
14:26
Speaker 1: made into a dinner that night. Right. And So in
14:31
Speaker 1: the same way that you should like eat a granola
14:33
Speaker 1: bar before you go to the grocery store, you should
14:36
Speaker 1: evaluate where am I in my window of tolerance right
14:39
Speaker 1: now before I call Bank of America to ask them
14:43
Speaker 1: to lower my interest rate, and if I'm outside of
14:45
Speaker 1: the window, what do I need to do to get
14:47
Speaker 1: into it right? And it depending on where you're at,
14:49
Speaker 1: you will do different things. If you're feeling hyper, maybe
14:52
Speaker 1: you need to like pet your dog a bunch and
14:54
Speaker 1: then take three deep breaths. If you're feeling with drawn,
14:57
Speaker 1: maybe you need to like jump up and down and
14:59
Speaker 1: blast Beyonce album while you're like fist pumping. So that's
15:02
Speaker 1: the wind of torrents. Okay, have you been spying on me? Why?
15:05
Speaker 1: Why would you do this? Why would you call me
15:06
Speaker 1: out like this? You feel it shacks just a little bit,
15:10
Speaker 1: But that's okay, that's okay. I like it. We loved
15:27
Speaker 1: of seeing all of these real life applications when you
15:30
Speaker 1: bring out these analogies and let us know, like this
15:32
Speaker 1: is what it is, and we, again, like I said,
15:34
Speaker 1: relate too well to them. It's kind of like, oh,
15:37
Speaker 1: having that moment of realization of like, oh, this is
15:39
Speaker 1: a thing. This I'm not alone obviously because you talk
15:42
Speaker 1: about it, so it can't be just me, thank goodness.
15:45
Speaker 1: But the reality is these are things that have a
15:47
Speaker 1: lot of effect on our lives and how we move
15:50
Speaker 1: forward in our lives, especially when knowing that money does
15:53
Speaker 1: rule quite a bit of it. You don't want it to,
15:55
Speaker 1: but it does, and it does affect how you may
15:59
Speaker 1: feel that day or the big decisions that you need
16:01
Speaker 1: to make, whether it's buying a car, buying a house,
16:04
Speaker 1: not buying a car, not buying a house. There's so
16:06
Speaker 1: many things to add to that, and understanding that level
16:11
Speaker 1: of that window of tolerance, as well as the trauma
16:13
Speaker 1: and then your reactions to it. It's so beneficial. But
16:17
Speaker 1: again it's not talked about enough. And I think this
16:20
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with just the awkwardness and
16:22
Speaker 1: the taboo of finances, which you talk a lot about
16:25
Speaker 1: and you're going to talk more about. I'm really excited
16:27
Speaker 1: about the podcast, and you've talked about in your book.
16:30
Speaker 1: And as someone who has struggled until recently, and I
16:34
Speaker 1: mean recently because we've talked about this a lot, we
16:36
Speaker 1: know in social work you don't get a lot of money.
16:38
Speaker 1: I thought I was doing this for the people, but
16:40
Speaker 1: then really wearing myself down and realizing, oh, I need
16:43
Speaker 1: to overcompensate by having two other jobs, and it felt
16:47
Speaker 1: embarrassing to have to do all these things. And again
16:50
Speaker 1: I had a hard time not seeing it as taboo
16:54
Speaker 1: or not seeing it as a shameful thing or just
16:56
Speaker 1: too weird and too honestly like awkward to bring up.
17:00
Speaker 1: And in your books and in your conversations that you have,
17:04
Speaker 1: you give advice on how to go beyond that. So
17:07
Speaker 1: what advice do you give to those who are trying
17:09
Speaker 1: to confront those taboos? And why do you think this
17:12
Speaker 1: is important? Oh? Wow, that is a loaded question. We
17:15
Speaker 1: keep being all day talking about that. Let's go, I'm ready, okay.
17:21
Speaker 1: I think there's one overarching theme that we can all
17:26
Speaker 1: relate to when it comes to why we don't talk
17:28
Speaker 1: about money, and we can see it just in we
17:32
Speaker 1: can see it probably a lot in our families. There
17:35
Speaker 1: are people who I talk to who are like, Nope,
17:36
Speaker 1: me and my family, my parents always talk to me
17:38
Speaker 1: about money at the dinner table. We like talked about
17:41
Speaker 1: we just talked about money. The great majority of people
17:44
Speaker 1: that I've spoken with, they it's just not something they
17:46
Speaker 1: spoke about with their parents. Like I remember, maybe when
17:49
Speaker 1: I was like in junior high, I one day asked
17:51
Speaker 1: my mom how much money she made. She told me
17:54
Speaker 1: at the time, but I could feel energetically she was like,
17:57
Speaker 1: why is my kid asking me how much money I make?
18:00
Speaker 1: It just wasn't It's not encouraged, I think within families,
18:03
Speaker 1: and then you see that like in society at large,
18:07
Speaker 1: Like if you walk to somebody, you walked up to
18:09
Speaker 1: somebody at a dinner party and you were like, so
18:12
Speaker 1: it's tax it's tax season right now. Right. So let's
18:14
Speaker 1: say you go to a dinner party next weekend and
18:16
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, it's tax season. Did you file your taxes?
18:19
Speaker 1: Like how much did you make last year? People will
18:21
Speaker 1: be like, what is your deal? That's weird and I
18:24
Speaker 1: don't want to answer that, right, And so there's another
18:27
Speaker 1: way that that's reinforced, and to me, the weirdest way
18:31
Speaker 1: that this gets reinforced. And we're breaking, we're slowly chipping
18:34
Speaker 1: away at this, Like legislation has been passed in New
18:37
Speaker 1: York and Los Angeles where I think this is going
18:39
Speaker 1: to change. But in the workplace, of all the places,
18:43
Speaker 1: we don't talk about money, which is crazy because we're
18:46
Speaker 1: we like, you know, pack our lunch and then we
18:48
Speaker 1: go to the office and then we're just like hi
18:50
Speaker 1: coworker friends, Hello, da da dada. We're not there. I mean,
18:54
Speaker 1: of course we're there. Because our jobs can be meaningful,
18:57
Speaker 1: like you were mentioning, Samantha, but at the end of
19:00
Speaker 1: the day, if they didn't pay us, we wouldn't go there,
19:03
Speaker 1: we wouldn't do the work. And so like that's very
19:06
Speaker 1: clear and direct. But then we're not allowed to talk
19:08
Speaker 1: about it with one another. We're not allowed to be like, hey,
19:11
Speaker 1: how much are you getting paid? Or hey, let's all
19:15
Speaker 1: band together and be like this guy takes ninety percent,
19:20
Speaker 1: just take eighty percent and give us a little, you
19:22
Speaker 1: know what I mean. There's just it's not encouraged. And
19:25
Speaker 1: so I think it's like this this tinge over how
19:30
Speaker 1: we behave with money, is that in all these areas
19:34
Speaker 1: it is a big, fat no no to talk about money. Right,
19:37
Speaker 1: So Nowvius at the stage, how do we deal with this?
19:40
Speaker 1: I think we start talking about money, and we could
19:43
Speaker 1: do this in a lot of ways, in ways that
19:46
Speaker 1: you in relationships where you feel safe, like close friendships, family,
19:51
Speaker 1: you can start to just say, hey, listen, I've realized
19:55
Speaker 1: that I've felt weird about talking about money, and I
20:00
Speaker 1: would like to start having more open conversations. I was
20:05
Speaker 1: wondering if maybe you felt that way, and if you'd
20:09
Speaker 1: like to participate and you know, we don't have to
20:11
Speaker 1: get like, you know, fully naked. But you could just
20:14
Speaker 1: start to say things like what do you love spending
20:17
Speaker 1: money on? Like what's your favorite thing to spend money on?
20:20
Speaker 1: And you could you know, that's one way to start
20:22
Speaker 1: the conversation. Or you could say, you know, if if
20:26
Speaker 1: you didn't have to care about your paycheck, you know,
20:29
Speaker 1: what work would you do and why do you value that?
20:32
Speaker 1: So positioning the conversation not just around like how much
20:36
Speaker 1: is in your bank account, but more like what do
20:38
Speaker 1: you value in the world and how do you joyfully
20:43
Speaker 1: interact with money? I think is like a nice putting
20:45
Speaker 1: your toe into the talking about money waters. I like that.
20:49
Speaker 1: And of course wait listening to weird finance, Yes, obviously
20:54
Speaker 1: obviously wish we will get to. But first we want
20:57
Speaker 1: to talk about something else you did. Because you've done
20:59
Speaker 1: so many things, you also wrote a book congratulations, Yeah,
21:04
Speaker 1: thank you no easy feed, called Finance for the People.
21:08
Speaker 1: Can you talk about the book and why you decided
21:11
Speaker 1: to write it? Yeah? I wrote the book because I
21:15
Speaker 1: knew that if I didn't, I would regret it. I
21:20
Speaker 1: think about my younger self like I think about fifteen
21:23
Speaker 1: year old Paco and I think about eighty year old Poco,
21:26
Speaker 1: and when I make decisions, I go to them and
21:28
Speaker 1: I'm like, guys, game plan are we? Like? Do you
21:31
Speaker 1: think this is a cool fifteen year old Paco? Is
21:33
Speaker 1: your mind blown that current Poco is doing this great?
21:36
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it. Then I go to eighty
21:38
Speaker 1: year old Paco and I'm like, girl, do you need
21:41
Speaker 1: to look back at this and know that you made it?
21:43
Speaker 1: And she's like, of course. And then so that's That's
21:46
Speaker 1: kind of how I frame a lot of my decisions
21:48
Speaker 1: career wise. But that's not the question. The question is
21:51
Speaker 1: why did I write the book? I mean, I felt
21:53
Speaker 1: the book is a community service in my opinion, and like,
21:57
Speaker 1: let me tell you, a book is kind of a
22:00
Speaker 1: lottery ticket in terms of money. You know, people are
22:04
Speaker 1: not these days. There are people, of course who sell
22:07
Speaker 1: a million books and they get really rich, but the
22:10
Speaker 1: great majority of people who are writing books, it's kind
22:13
Speaker 1: of like a really painful marketing thing, right, It's like
22:17
Speaker 1: a way to get your foot in the door. And
22:19
Speaker 1: so even though it required so much excavation and so
22:23
Speaker 1: much energy, I really just needed to create a resource
22:27
Speaker 1: for people that felt like there are no resources for me.
22:32
Speaker 1: The only people talking about this are just weird. They're
22:35
Speaker 1: doing it in such a guilty, weird you know, talking
22:39
Speaker 1: about hell and stuff kind of a way, and like
22:41
Speaker 1: that's just not my jam, you know. So I just
22:43
Speaker 1: wanted to bring the vibes when talking about money, and yeah,
22:48
Speaker 1: I just really wanted to help people. And if I
22:50
Speaker 1: would not have written it, if I thought, Okay, there's
22:53
Speaker 1: a good book out there that I could refer people too.
22:55
Speaker 1: So when I think about my own financial planning journey
22:57
Speaker 1: when I went to school, I wish that this book
22:59
Speaker 1: had existed. And also, like part like a big kernel
23:03
Speaker 1: of truth is uh too many people were annoying me
23:07
Speaker 1: with their questions and I thought, okay, if I just
23:10
Speaker 1: put them all in a manual. And so now like
23:15
Speaker 1: this is so messed up. But some like random people
23:17
Speaker 1: who are like acquaintances, they'll they'll reach out and be like, hey,
23:20
Speaker 1: can you tell me about how I get started investing?
23:23
Speaker 1: And I'll be like chapter fifteen, bro, I love you.
23:26
Speaker 1: Chapter fifteen. Oh no, because we're going to be asking
23:33
Speaker 1: specific things that you wrote in the perfect This is
23:36
Speaker 1: great because it's going to be perfect. It's good. It's
23:40
Speaker 1: a perfect setup, right for people to dig in more.
23:43
Speaker 1: We just don't give a preview for our listeners so
23:46
Speaker 1: that you have to go and buy the book and
23:47
Speaker 1: understand this is really needed and it is. There's so
23:50
Speaker 1: much good information and as well as exercises to break
23:54
Speaker 1: down the taboos finance, debt, and wealth in this. I
23:57
Speaker 1: really enjoyed that as full as illustrations. Amazing, you did that, right,
24:01
Speaker 1: I did. Yeah, thank you, it's so good. Thank you.
24:04
Speaker 1: But for so many of us who grew up with boomers, again,
24:08
Speaker 1: money was something that was thought of as private and
24:10
Speaker 1: impolite to talk about. And you correlate that with the
24:13
Speaker 1: basis of trauma as we talked about earlier, which again
24:16
Speaker 1: makes sense. How did you come to this correlation. Why
24:18
Speaker 1: do you think it's important to address the trauma in
24:21
Speaker 1: relation to finance and why do you think it needs
24:24
Speaker 1: to be broken down about? And I know the answer,
24:27
Speaker 1: but I want you to say it in like in
24:28
Speaker 1: the way that is an exercise for us to have
24:31
Speaker 1: tangible solutions. Okay. Yeah. I kept seeing that people were
24:37
Speaker 1: not acting in their best interest when it came to money,
24:40
Speaker 1: and that was curious to me. So I would go,
24:43
Speaker 1: what's going on there, Okay, what's the common denominator. One
24:46
Speaker 1: of the other things that I thought was really interesting
24:49
Speaker 1: was you could think it didn't matter how much money
24:51
Speaker 1: people made, right, even people who were making just barely
24:55
Speaker 1: enough to get by, and people who were making a
24:57
Speaker 1: million dollars tons of money, they struggled with the same thing, Right,
25:02
Speaker 1: why are you not acting in your best interest? And
25:05
Speaker 1: I struggled with it too. Again, the cognitive dissonance of
25:08
Speaker 1: having a finance degree, having an economics minor, being in
25:12
Speaker 1: a financial planning firm where I'm an associate financial planner,
25:15
Speaker 1: and being like, what, I'm really struggling with my finances
25:20
Speaker 1: in a very rudimentary, elementary way, Like I'm just not
25:23
Speaker 1: earning enough, and I can't get myself to negotiate, I
25:26
Speaker 1: can't get myself to speak up and stand up for myself,
25:31
Speaker 1: and I'm like caught in this chaotic kind of whirlwind
25:35
Speaker 1: of everything feels unsafe and everything feels uncertain. And it
25:42
Speaker 1: took me a while, but you know, I'm from California.
25:44
Speaker 1: This is a very California answer. I started meditating somewhere
25:48
Speaker 1: between twenty ten and twenty thirteen. I can't really remember
25:51
Speaker 1: when the practice was like full on, but I started
25:55
Speaker 1: playing around with it because I had heard about a
25:58
Speaker 1: lot of successful people doing it, and I was like, ah,
26:02
Speaker 1: it seems like it's free and you just sit there,
26:04
Speaker 1: So let me just see what this is all about.
26:07
Speaker 1: And the power of meditation is it allows you to
26:12
Speaker 1: not be so attached to every thought you think. And
26:15
Speaker 1: I think our society has a big problem with this,
26:19
Speaker 1: where somebody believes something and then they think that is
26:22
Speaker 1: who they are. It doesn't have to be. It could
26:24
Speaker 1: just be like your current perspective on the picture of
26:29
Speaker 1: life and all the players, and you can change. You
26:32
Speaker 1: can change, You can look at things from new angles.
26:35
Speaker 1: You can pretend to be another person in the story
26:37
Speaker 1: and look at that perspective, and you can see how,
26:40
Speaker 1: like in a big, big way, that would make society
26:43
Speaker 1: a better place. But on a smaller level too, it
26:45
Speaker 1: helps us just not feel so attached to the pain, right,
26:49
Speaker 1: the things that have happened to me, the way that
26:51
Speaker 1: I have been mistreated, and the injustices. Yes they're real,
26:57
Speaker 1: but let's not identify too closely to them, because once
27:00
Speaker 1: you do that, I think it's then hard again. You
27:02
Speaker 1: have these blinders on it, and then it's really hard
27:04
Speaker 1: to try to come at life and solutions from other angles,
27:08
Speaker 1: and yeah, being able to do that was the first
27:11
Speaker 1: step for me, because then I wasn't so activated. Every
27:13
Speaker 1: time I looked back on these very traumatic experiences, these
27:16
Speaker 1: very traumatic events, I could kind of look at them
27:19
Speaker 1: with a sense of awe and wonder and be like, huh,
27:22
Speaker 1: that's interesting that the way that I grew up where
27:24
Speaker 1: I felt like everything was a little chaotic and I
27:29
Speaker 1: never felt entirely safe because I went to thirteen years
27:32
Speaker 1: of Catholic school and they told me that if you're gay,
27:36
Speaker 1: you're real, real, you're messed up at your core, kid,
27:38
Speaker 1: And I never felt like I could share who I was,
27:41
Speaker 1: and I never thought I could be who I was.
27:44
Speaker 1: That's really interesting that that is bleeding into I can't
27:47
Speaker 1: ask for what I want because once I say I
27:50
Speaker 1: need more money, man, you're gonna fire me, or my
27:53
Speaker 1: livelihood's going to be taken away, or we're not going
27:56
Speaker 1: to be cool anymore. This good relationship I have with
27:58
Speaker 1: my boss, it's going to be killed. Right. So I
28:01
Speaker 1: had to learn how to address how to even look
28:05
Speaker 1: at those core wounds in a way that I wasn't
28:08
Speaker 1: just going to have a breakdown and just spiral out.
28:10
Speaker 1: And I really credit meditation to helping me do that.
28:13
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Yeah, no, you do write a lot about
28:17
Speaker 1: that articles as well. And yeah, kind of going back
28:20
Speaker 1: to because I added to so many questions, why do
28:22
Speaker 1: you feel like tangible exercises like meditation and like these
28:26
Speaker 1: exercises that you put in the book at the end,
28:29
Speaker 1: Why do you think that's important for us to undo
28:31
Speaker 1: some of that? So exercises are important because you know,
28:35
Speaker 1: if you've spent any time exploring the world of self help,
28:39
Speaker 1: pretty much everybody not pretty much everybody, but a lot
28:42
Speaker 1: of people kind of point to this. And I've already
28:44
Speaker 1: pointed to this, this concept, this idea that the state
28:47
Speaker 1: you're in really matters, Right, And we can look at
28:51
Speaker 1: this from different angles, Right, we can look at this
28:53
Speaker 1: from like a biological perspective and say, like your nervous system,
28:57
Speaker 1: how you have to learn how to regulate your nervous system,
29:00
Speaker 1: because if you don't, you're in a constant state of stress.
29:03
Speaker 1: When you're in a constant state of stress, you're making
29:06
Speaker 1: decisions again that are not based in a cognition. You're
29:11
Speaker 1: just reacting. You're having this stress response. You're always kind
29:14
Speaker 1: of like you know about to burst, and that's just
29:16
Speaker 1: that's no way to live with your money, and that's
29:18
Speaker 1: no way to live in general. Right. It's like you
29:21
Speaker 1: you're not showing up as your best partner in your partnerships.
29:24
Speaker 1: You're not showing up. You're just not showing up as
29:27
Speaker 1: your best version of yourself. And that's a disservice to you,
29:29
Speaker 1: that's a disservice to everybody around you. So these tangible exercises,
29:32
Speaker 1: they help you recognize that we have the power to
29:35
Speaker 1: change our feelings, which is insane in the moment. We
29:40
Speaker 1: have the power to change our feelings, and in the
29:42
Speaker 1: long term we can teach our brain how to lean
29:47
Speaker 1: towards other tendencies. Right, And so now we're looking at
29:50
Speaker 1: this from like a neurological, neurobiological perspective, right. So the
29:55
Speaker 1: exercises are ways to kind of click in and to
29:59
Speaker 1: snap you out of the state that you're in. And
30:02
Speaker 1: they're also tools. There are tools that have worked for
30:05
Speaker 1: other people, and finding the tool for you is what's important.
30:10
Speaker 1: And so I want to expose these tools to people.
30:14
Speaker 1: For some people, sitting quietly will work for other people
30:17
Speaker 1: they have to take a walk. Somebody else might really
30:19
Speaker 1: want to just like stare at trees for fifteen minutes.
30:22
Speaker 1: But the point is you have to find tools, like yeah,
30:28
Speaker 1: there's it's really fascinating that humanity, human beings, we use
30:32
Speaker 1: tools all the time. I'm using a pen or using
30:34
Speaker 1: a computer, but we have these kind of internal like
30:37
Speaker 1: control sea tools that we can use. We just more.
30:40
Speaker 1: I think more people need to normalize and talk about it.
30:42
Speaker 1: And as a side note, I did I loved your
30:44
Speaker 1: opened ended questions at the end and having people really
30:47
Speaker 1: think through a lot of things, whether it was being
30:50
Speaker 1: about grateful or how you thought about dead. It was
30:52
Speaker 1: such a great way to wrap up that chapter. To
30:55
Speaker 1: take what you have are you written and then apply
30:58
Speaker 1: it to ourselves. So fantastic job about thank you? And
31:02
Speaker 1: can I also put a button on that and say that,
31:04
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people learn by just absorbing information,
31:08
Speaker 1: Like I love to just put a book on like
31:11
Speaker 1: two speed and just jam it into my brain. Not
31:14
Speaker 1: everybody's like that, you know, Like my partner is not
31:17
Speaker 1: like that. She needs to mechanically grab a thing and
31:20
Speaker 1: then kind of work through something and then she understands
31:23
Speaker 1: the process and the tools, the exercises. It's a way
31:25
Speaker 1: for those people to dig in and to actually go
31:28
Speaker 1: through the process themselves, so it really sticks. Yes, we're
31:31
Speaker 1: all about that too. Yes, I love it perfect. Something
31:47
Speaker 1: else that you talk about is social media and the
31:51
Speaker 1: exportation of social media, and we talked about that a
31:54
Speaker 1: lot too on this show, especially how social media often
31:58
Speaker 1: targets young girls and women's with a and marketings and
32:01
Speaker 1: all the dangers inherent in that and that can be
32:06
Speaker 1: unrealistic expectations or just greedy corporations. What have you noticed
32:12
Speaker 1: as industries. As these industries continue to grow, what advice
32:16
Speaker 1: do you give to those who may be perhaps easily
32:19
Speaker 1: influenced or just like media literacy, maybe if they've been
32:22
Speaker 1: scammed before through social media. One of those who gets
32:25
Speaker 1: is easily influence. I'm like, oh, that looks fun, let
32:28
Speaker 1: me buy that. So that I think there's a bunch
32:31
Speaker 1: of different ways that we can approach this question. There's
32:34
Speaker 1: let's do one that's practical, and then we'll do one
32:37
Speaker 1: that's a little bit more feely. So practical advice for
32:40
Speaker 1: navigating the fact that you have a tiny mechanical electronic
32:45
Speaker 1: billboard that knows with artificial intelligence that knows you probably
32:51
Speaker 1: better than you know yourself, and what you want and
32:53
Speaker 1: what you desire. It makes you feel bad because you're
32:57
Speaker 1: comparing yourself to others, right, It's part of the whole
33:00
Speaker 1: deal of social media. You're scrolling, you're seeing how other
33:02
Speaker 1: people are living, and you feel bad. You feel bad,
33:04
Speaker 1: You feel bad, and then oh, guess what, if you
33:07
Speaker 1: buy this, you will feel good. That's what's going on there.
33:10
Speaker 1: They make you feel bad and they make you feel good.
33:13
Speaker 1: This is how selling works. Just think about an infomercial.
33:16
Speaker 1: The infomercial in your mind's eye. Visualize an infomercial. It's
33:20
Speaker 1: always like black and white and somebody's struggling with something stupid,
33:24
Speaker 1: like coiling a hose, and it's like all dramatized, right,
33:27
Speaker 1: and they're like, are you struggling with coiling a hose?
33:30
Speaker 1: That's them agitating it. They're saying, you have a problem, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain,
33:34
Speaker 1: And then it turns to color and they're like, we
33:36
Speaker 1: have a solution for your pain. Social media is doing
33:39
Speaker 1: the same thing, right. They're making you feel pain and
33:41
Speaker 1: then they're saying, we'll take the pain away if you
33:43
Speaker 1: buy this sweater. So practically one of the ways you
33:47
Speaker 1: can combat this without being like completely withdrawn from society
33:51
Speaker 1: is setting up a buy list, and it's exactly what
33:54
Speaker 1: it sounds like. It is a list where you put
33:57
Speaker 1: things that you want to buy on and the thing
34:00
Speaker 1: that you like specifically. It's when a social media advertisement
34:04
Speaker 1: is trying to get you to buy something. That's when
34:06
Speaker 1: you would put that thing on a by list because
34:08
Speaker 1: it's impulsive, right, and you put it on the buy list,
34:12
Speaker 1: and you make your list cute like, you can organize
34:15
Speaker 1: it however you want. You can add little thumbnails, you
34:17
Speaker 1: can really be like, you can write about it, be
34:20
Speaker 1: like I want this sweater because this is the kind
34:22
Speaker 1: of person. It's going to make me feel like I'm
34:24
Speaker 1: going to become, like enjoy your by list and then
34:26
Speaker 1: put up a rule. And you know your rule is,
34:29
Speaker 1: I'm not going to buy anything on the buy list
34:32
Speaker 1: until it's been on the list for at least twenty
34:34
Speaker 1: four hours or you might say forty eight hours, or
34:36
Speaker 1: you might say one week. And the reason why this
34:39
Speaker 1: bya list works is because the experience of shopping, not
34:45
Speaker 1: just the buying, creates like a dopamine response, like it
34:50
Speaker 1: feels good, right. Dopamine is this drug of desire, end
34:54
Speaker 1: of like feel goodiness, right, and the experience of shopping
34:59
Speaker 1: the am I going to buy it? Am I not
35:01
Speaker 1: going to buy? What size? Do I want? Everything that
35:04
Speaker 1: leads up to the actual transaction that you're getting dopamine.
35:08
Speaker 1: So this is a way for you to still get
35:10
Speaker 1: that feel good feeling without actually having to pay. The
35:14
Speaker 1: other thing that's less practical when it comes to navigating
35:17
Speaker 1: social media is and I already talked about this earlier,
35:22
Speaker 1: is we really have to know ourselves, and we really
35:26
Speaker 1: have to know who we are and what we want,
35:29
Speaker 1: and we have to take actions in our lives that
35:33
Speaker 1: allow us to build self confidence and to feel confident
35:36
Speaker 1: in ourselves and to feel unapologetic. If you're a weirdo
35:40
Speaker 1: or you really like math. I don't know why I
35:43
Speaker 1: said that, like because people think that's nerdy. I guess whatever.
35:46
Speaker 1: If you do something in your life that society wants
35:49
Speaker 1: to put you down for, but you know you're not
35:50
Speaker 1: hurting anyone and just switch you're into allow yourself to
35:54
Speaker 1: do that thing and to build confidence. And for me,
35:56
Speaker 1: at least, that's what I see a correlation between people
35:59
Speaker 1: who who take action in their lives regularly and build
36:02
Speaker 1: that confidence and their ability to be like, I don't
36:06
Speaker 1: need to feel pushed to do what other people are
36:11
Speaker 1: doing and to put myself in debt or to overspend
36:14
Speaker 1: or to buy a thing that I don't need, because
36:16
Speaker 1: I'm confident in my weird self. And that's it. That's
36:19
Speaker 1: the vibe. That's a good vibe. I like that vibe.
36:24
Speaker 1: Try that violence, though, I will. Okay, So we're about
36:28
Speaker 1: to go down a little darker road again. This is
36:30
Speaker 1: my thing. I apologize, But when it comes to finance,
36:33
Speaker 1: we can't talk about it without talking about some of
36:35
Speaker 1: the dark past and dark history of it, and even
36:38
Speaker 1: just the dark indications of it today, such as things
36:41
Speaker 1: like credit scores and high risk loans that often target
36:45
Speaker 1: and penalize those who live from paycheck to paycheck. These
36:48
Speaker 1: people are often already marginalized people due to their monetary
36:52
Speaker 1: stance or any of those abilities to get the better
36:55
Speaker 1: jobs or whatnot, not being able to go to college,
36:57
Speaker 1: not being able to get the loan, all of those things.
37:00
Speaker 1: And as someone who has worked behind the scenes in
37:03
Speaker 1: the finance world, what have you witnessed when it comes
37:05
Speaker 1: to the predatory practices behind financial companies like this? Oh?
37:09
Speaker 1: You want stories, is what you want? I do, let's go. Okay.
37:14
Speaker 1: So when I was graduating college, the last two years
37:19
Speaker 1: I worked as a debt collector for a very big bank,
37:22
Speaker 1: and actually I felt not terrible working that job because
37:28
Speaker 1: people were coming to me or I was reaching out
37:30
Speaker 1: to people and they were saying, I'm struggling, and I
37:33
Speaker 1: would say more than half seventy five percent even maybe
37:35
Speaker 1: even more. They were just you know, it was an
37:38
Speaker 1: oversight or it was you know, some kind of unexpected expense.
37:42
Speaker 1: It wasn't something crazy like one time a guy hit
37:46
Speaker 1: a deer or two times in a month and that's
37:48
Speaker 1: why he had to deal with that. And I was like,
37:50
Speaker 1: I've from California. I never heard that. But it was
37:52
Speaker 1: a job after that that was really crazy. I went
37:55
Speaker 1: to a job farer in college and I spoke to
37:59
Speaker 1: this guy who's the manager for a firm that no
38:02
Speaker 1: longer is around, so I maybe I could talk about it.
38:06
Speaker 1: Hopefully nobody sues me or anything. But the firm was
38:09
Speaker 1: called Wells Fargo Financial, and it's like some subsidiary of
38:13
Speaker 1: Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo is a regional bank that mostly
38:17
Speaker 1: exists in the West, and if you just Google like
38:21
Speaker 1: Wells Fargo, and like there's a lot of articles about
38:25
Speaker 1: how crappy they were to their customers. So I'm like,
38:28
Speaker 1: you know, twenty one, don't really know anything. This guy
38:30
Speaker 1: sells me the job. And so this is summer of
38:34
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, right after the housing crisis, or
38:37
Speaker 1: as we're kind of heating up and the asses falling
38:40
Speaker 1: out of the housing market, and everyone's sort of waking
38:44
Speaker 1: up and realizing rotro we let like all these people
38:50
Speaker 1: get mortgages that they shouldn't have gotten. And the big
38:54
Speaker 1: reason why is because we just believed what the sales
38:58
Speaker 1: guy who was trying to sell them the thing, right,
39:00
Speaker 1: the loan, We just believed what he's put down on
39:02
Speaker 1: the application and right, so like if I was going
39:06
Speaker 1: to go, you know, buy a house, the guy who
39:10
Speaker 1: was trying to sell me that loan because he gets
39:13
Speaker 1: a commission, would you know, would ask me like how
39:16
Speaker 1: much money do you make and kind of massage it
39:18
Speaker 1: so that I would write, we could agree on a
39:20
Speaker 1: number that would get me a proof of the loan,
39:22
Speaker 1: and then ultimately I couldn't afford the loan because it
39:25
Speaker 1: was a lie. Right. It's an extreme example, but it
39:28
Speaker 1: was happening, Like if you watch the Big Short, they
39:30
Speaker 1: talk all about that. So I got this job, and
39:33
Speaker 1: the first three weeks of the job, you just sit
39:35
Speaker 1: on a computer and you do training. It's so boring.
39:38
Speaker 1: You put on your headphones, and then the bank walks
39:41
Speaker 1: you through all this training, anti money laundering training, how
39:44
Speaker 1: to use the software, da da da da da. And
39:46
Speaker 1: I remember kind of like pulling off my headphones and
39:48
Speaker 1: listening to my coworkers talk. And in the first three
39:51
Speaker 1: weeks it's all these people who are cold calling, and
39:54
Speaker 1: they're speaking to people who barely speak English, who are elderly.
39:57
Speaker 1: They're trying to encourage them to take a line of
40:00
Speaker 1: credit where they would refinance a car that is paid off,
40:04
Speaker 1: which is a depreciating asset, which means it loses its
40:07
Speaker 1: value over time, and there's no makes no sense to
40:10
Speaker 1: leverage to take out more debt with that collateral and
40:15
Speaker 1: so and then you know, when they couldn't make the sell,
40:17
Speaker 1: they would bring in the manager, the guy who sold
40:19
Speaker 1: me this damn job, and he would try to push
40:21
Speaker 1: push push, And so after sitting there for three weeks,
40:25
Speaker 1: I had to quit that job because I was like, Wow,
40:28
Speaker 1: you guys told me this was a different job, first
40:31
Speaker 1: of all, not cold calling. Second of all, not selling
40:34
Speaker 1: dogs to old people, so that I don't have a
40:39
Speaker 1: lot of stories like that, because as soon as I
40:41
Speaker 1: feel like this is mad sketchy, I just bounced. M M. Yeah,
40:48
Speaker 1: that's horrendous. It makes me think about what happens oftentimes
40:51
Speaker 1: with the elderly who even today is getting called by
40:54
Speaker 1: people will will buy your house for this amount of
40:56
Speaker 1: cash and not realizing what's happening. And it's so ugly
41:00
Speaker 1: to see that this practice is okay somehow, right, Yeah,
41:04
Speaker 1: it's rough out there. Well, speaking of how do you
41:12
Speaker 1: think that people who are being preyed upon can best
41:16
Speaker 1: protect themselves from these things? I think it's really important
41:19
Speaker 1: to realize and recognize that you shouldn't ask a barber
41:23
Speaker 1: if you need a haircut. And what I mean by
41:26
Speaker 1: that ultimately is we are driven by incentives. If I
41:30
Speaker 1: could just back up a little bit and say, those
41:33
Speaker 1: people working at Wells Fargo Financial and all the stuff
41:36
Speaker 1: that happened in two thousand and eight and what led
41:38
Speaker 1: up to it, those people were acting within a system,
41:42
Speaker 1: and that system was rewarding bad behavior. So it's less
41:46
Speaker 1: about this one individual was a jerk. Yes, while that
41:50
Speaker 1: might be true, what was happening is you have these
41:52
Speaker 1: people that are incentivized to behave badly. And so I
41:57
Speaker 1: think once you plug that into your head and you
42:00
Speaker 1: recognize that, that's how you should view some of these interactions, Like,
42:04
Speaker 1: are these people being incentivized to sell me a loan
42:08
Speaker 1: or a financial product because they get paid and that's
42:11
Speaker 1: the only way they get paid. If that's the case,
42:15
Speaker 1: then maybe I should get a second opinion, or maybe
42:18
Speaker 1: I should try to find somebody who's not selling me
42:23
Speaker 1: based on that incentive. Right, So, first understanding incentives, I
42:27
Speaker 1: think is a really good perspective kind of parcel to that.
42:30
Speaker 1: The way that I always think about lending and financial products,
42:34
Speaker 1: I think, how can I be screwed? Here? What is
42:37
Speaker 1: the most I could be screwed? And I try to
42:42
Speaker 1: ask questions around that. So, particularly with lending and loans.
42:45
Speaker 1: In my book, I think I have at least ten questions,
42:48
Speaker 1: maybe there's fifteen that I've listed out that can help
42:51
Speaker 1: guide you with navigating whether a product is right for you.
42:56
Speaker 1: And then particularly I just want to say this with
42:58
Speaker 1: insurance because we see this a lot with insurance. Insurance
43:02
Speaker 1: is a tool to protect against loss, and it is
43:05
Speaker 1: not a tool for gaining. Very rarely are people in
43:09
Speaker 1: a position where they're using where they should be using
43:12
Speaker 1: insurance for gaining. I mean, I'm you know, I'm going
43:15
Speaker 1: to say, you just shouldn't be. It's a it's a
43:17
Speaker 1: tool to protect against loss and not for gaining. So
43:20
Speaker 1: if anyone is ever trying to come at you and
43:22
Speaker 1: you're not like super super super wealthy and you need
43:25
Speaker 1: to find ways to jam money into places because you
43:28
Speaker 1: have you know, it's so much going on and you
43:29
Speaker 1: have tax issues, if they're like, you should buy this
43:32
Speaker 1: insurance product, and here's how it's beneficial. Remember it's you
43:36
Speaker 1: don't buy insurance to benefit. You buy insurance so that
43:38
Speaker 1: you don't lose as much if something crazy happens. Yeah,
43:43
Speaker 1: I know in your book you talk a lot about that,
43:44
Speaker 1: and it was really really important to listen to its like, oh,
43:47
Speaker 1: things that I need because I'm very confused by insurance
43:50
Speaker 1: already saying, especially since it varies in different states, right, say,
43:55
Speaker 1: it's confusing. Can I just say something that about insurance
43:58
Speaker 1: that I think is really like I think why it's
44:01
Speaker 1: confusing because like when I say this in the book
44:03
Speaker 1: when you go to the store, Like if you sit
44:05
Speaker 1: down at a restaurant and you buy a tuna sandwich,
44:07
Speaker 1: you you're gonna eat the tuna sandwich. It's gonna appear
44:09
Speaker 1: in front of you. If you buy insurance, you hope
44:12
Speaker 1: you never ever have to be calling in a claim.
44:14
Speaker 1: It's like one of those weird things where it's just
44:16
Speaker 1: even the product itself is it's vague and it's not
44:19
Speaker 1: like a thing. It's very bizarre, it is. I was
44:24
Speaker 1: thinking about that with like house insurance, I like house
44:26
Speaker 1: burns or whatever. It's so difficult to go through the
44:29
Speaker 1: hoops and then you think you've knew what you were
44:31
Speaker 1: getting and you really don't totally. I do want to
44:47
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more because, especially when we talk
44:49
Speaker 1: about praetorian abuse of practices, We've talked up previously before
44:53
Speaker 1: on the show about financial abuse and how it's often
44:56
Speaker 1: used to keep those who are in domestic violence situations
45:00
Speaker 1: an abusive situations from being able to leave those dangerous situations.
45:04
Speaker 1: And one thing that seemed kind of obvious but doesn't
45:06
Speaker 1: get talked a lot about enough about is how the system,
45:09
Speaker 1: when I say the system of the patriarchy in itself
45:12
Speaker 1: created a structure of power through I would say, tradition,
45:15
Speaker 1: traditional gender roles as a way to keep women in
45:18
Speaker 1: marginalized communities in these oppressive situations. And dig into your book,
45:22
Speaker 1: you do talk a little bit about the system as
45:24
Speaker 1: it was set up and in your studies, what have
45:28
Speaker 1: you seen that continues to hold that type of structure
45:30
Speaker 1: up today? And how do we as a society do
45:33
Speaker 1: you think try to break it down when it comes
45:35
Speaker 1: to debt and finance. Man, if I really knew the
45:38
Speaker 1: answer to this, I would be the president of the world.
45:41
Speaker 1: So you just lead with that, Oh gosh, how do
45:46
Speaker 1: we as individuals fight against a system that has been
45:51
Speaker 1: created for us to not have power? I think there's
45:54
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways I think we can do
45:56
Speaker 1: things individually. One of the reasons why I tell the
46:02
Speaker 1: history of a lot of things when it comes to
46:04
Speaker 1: finance is because I think it's important for people to
46:08
Speaker 1: realize some of this stuff is not that old. Like
46:12
Speaker 1: four one case came out in the nineteen seventies. Credit
46:15
Speaker 1: cards were, you know, like in the fifties. Credit scores
46:21
Speaker 1: not that old. And one of the things I think
46:25
Speaker 1: that we're struggling with so much is the fact that
46:28
Speaker 1: like our grandmothers couldn't have bank accounts and credit cards,
46:34
Speaker 1: and our mothers our mothers when they were really little,
46:39
Speaker 1: like that's how it was, and you know what I mean.
46:42
Speaker 1: So women are just starting to in the grand scheme
46:46
Speaker 1: of things, are just starting to get money. And so
46:49
Speaker 1: I think time, I think over time, as you know,
46:53
Speaker 1: future generations are born into a society where they don't
46:58
Speaker 1: need to have their dad help them get a credit
47:01
Speaker 1: card and their mom didn't either. I think that's really
47:05
Speaker 1: what's going to change things. I think understanding the power
47:09
Speaker 1: and the value of people within a community, I think
47:11
Speaker 1: is also another way to kind of I don't want
47:13
Speaker 1: to say dismantle, but at least throw a wrench into
47:16
Speaker 1: the gears of the system right where you instead of
47:20
Speaker 1: like allowing the financialization and the hyper individualization of everything
47:24
Speaker 1: overtake you where you're dedicating so much of your time
47:27
Speaker 1: and everything to the almighty dollar invests, give your time
47:34
Speaker 1: and your energy into community as much as you can.
47:36
Speaker 1: Because again, once I know that is stuff out there,
47:39
Speaker 1: but I think that's also one weird, interesting way to
47:42
Speaker 1: kind of subvert power. And you know, higher women pay
47:48
Speaker 1: women pay them what you pay a man. Hire people
47:53
Speaker 1: of color right, pay them what you would pay a
47:55
Speaker 1: white person. You know, higher trans people, pay them what
48:00
Speaker 1: you would base this person. You know, there's ways within
48:03
Speaker 1: the system, I think where we can exercise our power.
48:06
Speaker 1: I wish I had, you know, a magic wand and
48:09
Speaker 1: a better answer for you. Well, you know you. You
48:11
Speaker 1: make the statement, and I think it shows to a
48:13
Speaker 1: lot of who you are as you say, I want
48:15
Speaker 1: to have power because I don't want it willed it
48:17
Speaker 1: over me becoming empowered in a society that doesn't want
48:21
Speaker 1: me to be empowered. It's one of the most one
48:22
Speaker 1: of the single most radical actions I can take. And
48:25
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that look into what that is,
48:29
Speaker 1: the turning the power to empowerment and how you use
48:32
Speaker 1: that obviously in this book and the podcast for others
48:34
Speaker 1: to come along with you. So I think, even if
48:37
Speaker 1: you don't have the answers, you definitely have taken steps
48:39
Speaker 1: to really break that down. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
48:43
Speaker 1: It's it's it's really my pleasure. I feel like such
48:47
Speaker 1: a call to help people and to just talk about it.
48:50
Speaker 1: I have a gift. The gift is that I can
48:55
Speaker 1: talk about money. I can make people feel really at
48:58
Speaker 1: ease when it comes to conversations with money, and I
49:01
Speaker 1: know that's what made me good in all these financial
49:04
Speaker 1: services jobs, is what made me a good collector. I
49:07
Speaker 1: didn't I made somebody feel comfortable and seen and I
49:09
Speaker 1: was empathetic, and I'm just so happy. I'm so glad
49:13
Speaker 1: that technology exists and I can do this on a
49:15
Speaker 1: larger platform. I can speak to more people, and that
49:18
Speaker 1: I can help people feel better. It's what if I
49:23
Speaker 1: didn't do that with that gift? What a way. So
49:26
Speaker 1: I'm thank you for having me on the show and
49:29
Speaker 1: thank you for helping me amplify my message. Yeah, well,
49:32
Speaker 1: speaking of you do have a podcast coming out about finance,
49:38
Speaker 1: specifically Weird Finance, as we've been talking about alluding to
49:42
Speaker 1: this whole time. Can you tell our listeners about it. Yeah,
49:45
Speaker 1: Weird Finance is a podcast that is trying to help
49:49
Speaker 1: people feel less weird about money, one conversation at a time.
49:53
Speaker 1: And I'm going to be speaking to experts in the field.
49:56
Speaker 1: So I'll talk to financial planners, I'll talk to attorneys
50:00
Speaker 1: that specialize in estate planning. I'll try to speak to
50:05
Speaker 1: insurance people to help us understand insurance. But I'm not
50:09
Speaker 1: just going to limit these conversations to professionals. I want
50:13
Speaker 1: to talk to people who are navigating this system, and
50:15
Speaker 1: specifically I'm speaking to entrepreneurs and freelancers. Then the reason
50:20
Speaker 1: why I'm choosing that group of people is because they're
50:23
Speaker 1: in this system where they have to do everything. They
50:26
Speaker 1: have to understand how to price themselves right, how to
50:29
Speaker 1: charge a certain rate, and how they arrived to that rate.
50:32
Speaker 1: They have to have the conversation, make the sale, they
50:35
Speaker 1: have to do the invoicing, and so I think that
50:37
Speaker 1: they have a unique and you know, it's such a
50:40
Speaker 1: different perspective about money and they're forced to confront it
50:43
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. They think about risk differently, and
50:47
Speaker 1: so I'm going to ask supernosy questions. You know whoever
50:49
Speaker 1: will tell me, you know, how much they made or
50:55
Speaker 1: you know, what are some of the things that they've
50:57
Speaker 1: struggled with, what were their financial funds. I'm definitely going
51:01
Speaker 1: to try to get some financial confessions on air. But
51:05
Speaker 1: it's all in the name of of releasing this idea
51:09
Speaker 1: that we can't talk about money, releasing this idea that
51:12
Speaker 1: it's taboo, and I think the more you hear people
51:16
Speaker 1: talking about it, the more comfortable we're all going to be,
51:19
Speaker 1: and in a high tide, all boats rise, and I think,
51:23
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just trying to help people navigate the system,
51:25
Speaker 1: feel better about their finances, and make a little bit
51:28
Speaker 1: of progress every week. And we did get kind of
51:30
Speaker 1: like a tease from your producer or super producer Ramsay,
51:34
Speaker 1: who let us know that you don't have some a
51:36
Speaker 1: typical guests, yes, as well as the typical, Like I
51:39
Speaker 1: think we heard something about I don't know, financial kink,
51:42
Speaker 1: maybe some therapy. Like I was like, what is all
51:44
Speaker 1: of this? That's amazing, So it's not your typical definitely
51:48
Speaker 1: not financial information. I spoke with a financial dominatrix and
51:52
Speaker 1: a financial astrologer and we're really I mean, when I
51:56
Speaker 1: say weird, it's weird because we're weird about it. It's
51:59
Speaker 1: weird because as money is weird. We all just have
52:03
Speaker 1: this society wide delusion that this thing is valuable, you know,
52:08
Speaker 1: and how you can double click on certain kind of
52:11
Speaker 1: aspects of the world of finance and see that it's
52:15
Speaker 1: a lot weirder than what meets the eye. And I'm
52:17
Speaker 1: just the more I get into my career, the more
52:21
Speaker 1: I realize I don't know anything, and I'm curious, and
52:25
Speaker 1: I'm going to play the role for the listener of
52:28
Speaker 1: asking dumb questions. So I hope everybody enjoys hearing me
52:32
Speaker 1: ask them questions and explore the world of money. Yeah,
52:36
Speaker 1: because obviously, as you can tell, I need all of
52:38
Speaker 1: the straightforward basic answers. I got you, But I also
52:41
Speaker 1: like of love being entertained. So this is amazing, you know.
52:47
Speaker 1: And for those who are venturing on trying to make
52:49
Speaker 1: smart financial decisions, what basic advice would you give them?
52:54
Speaker 1: So we already talked about the state that you're in.
52:56
Speaker 1: That's really important. So starting to recognize how you feel
53:00
Speaker 1: when you're interacting with your money, when you're looking at
53:03
Speaker 1: your statements, when you are interacting with authority figures like
53:06
Speaker 1: your accountant, how are you like? How do you feel
53:09
Speaker 1: in your body? One other really practical thing that I
53:12
Speaker 1: think everybody can do is this idea of splitting the check.
53:16
Speaker 1: We've all gone out to dinner with friends, We've all
53:18
Speaker 1: split the check, right, We split it up between whoever
53:22
Speaker 1: we're having dinner with. I want to encourage people to
53:24
Speaker 1: do that with their paycheck. And what I mean by
53:27
Speaker 1: that is thinking about splitting your paycheck into three broad categories.
53:31
Speaker 1: Your essentials, which I call your bills in life, your
53:33
Speaker 1: non essentials, which I call your fun and bs, and
53:36
Speaker 1: your things for your future self, which I call your
53:38
Speaker 1: future and goals. When you think about your spending in
53:41
Speaker 1: this really broad context, I think it allows you to
53:44
Speaker 1: kind of feel a little bit lighter and freer and
53:46
Speaker 1: you're not so like zoned in on like every single
53:49
Speaker 1: line item. And when I say split the check, I
53:51
Speaker 1: mean literally split the check. You split up your essential
53:55
Speaker 1: finances and your non essential finances into two separate checking accounts.
54:00
Speaker 1: Wall you know, Okay, I'm taking care of my essentials.
54:02
Speaker 1: I'm putting money from my future everything in this other
54:05
Speaker 1: fun in bas checking account. If I wanted to buy
54:07
Speaker 1: a hundred pieces with it, I could buy a hundred
54:09
Speaker 1: pizzas with it, like it's free to spend. And I
54:12
Speaker 1: think that again kind of shifts the relationship from oh no,
54:17
Speaker 1: can I spend this money? To how would I like
54:19
Speaker 1: to spend this money? So you go from scarcity to
54:22
Speaker 1: more abundance, And that is great advice. And honestly, we
54:25
Speaker 1: had more questions for you, but we're going a bit long,
54:29
Speaker 1: so we'll stop it here, but we can always check
54:32
Speaker 1: out the podcast or have you back? Could be the name? Yeah,
54:36
Speaker 1: totally Donny did. Yes, thank you so much for joining us.
54:41
Speaker 1: Aware can the good listeners find you? You can follow
54:45
Speaker 1: me on Instagram at the hell yag Group. I also
54:47
Speaker 1: put out a weekly email newsletter called the nerd Letter,
54:50
Speaker 1: and you can sign up if you go to the
54:53
Speaker 1: hell yagroup dot com. Awesome. And also, you have a podcast,
54:57
Speaker 1: this comes out. Your podcast will be out out, um,
55:01
Speaker 1: so you can find that Weird Finance's coming out February nineteenth.
55:06
Speaker 1: I think that's it. Yeah, wherever you get your podcasts, yes,
55:10
Speaker 1: go check that out. Listeners. Thank you again so much
55:12
Speaker 1: for joining us, Paco. We hope that we can count
55:14
Speaker 1: you as a friend. Thank you. Yeah. Like I said,
55:16
Speaker 1: we've got so many more questions. We need you to
55:18
Speaker 1: come onto our show. Tell us what to do with
55:20
Speaker 1: our money that we don't have. Yeah, I'm superdown. Yeah,
55:23
Speaker 1: let's do this again. I mean it feels like again
55:26
Speaker 1: we could do this for hours, So I'm happy to
55:28
Speaker 1: come back and chat with the chat with you folks.
55:31
Speaker 1: Maybe we can get some like a listener generated questions
55:34
Speaker 1: and kind of go from there. Yeah. Good idea. All right, well,
55:39
Speaker 1: schedule out of date in the meantime, listeners. If you'd
55:43
Speaker 1: like to contact us, you can our emails Stephanie your
55:45
Speaker 1: mom stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us
55:47
Speaker 1: on Twitter at most of podcast, or on Instagram and
55:50
Speaker 1: TikTok at stuff I Never Told You. Thanks. It's always
55:52
Speaker 1: to our super producer Christina. Thank you, Christina, and thanks
55:55
Speaker 1: to you for listening. Stepanor Told re ssproduction of I
55:57
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For a podcast from my Heart Radio, you
55:59
Speaker 1: can check out there radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
56:01
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H