SuccessQuest Podcast

Jacob and Kalob discuss how to become financially successful. It’s important to make small simple choices that lead to wealth and prosperity.

Financial Success

• While financial success isn’t the ultimate goal, it is an important part of a successful life.
• Riches vs. Wealth: Someone who is rich has a lot of money and luxurious items. Having wealth is being in a position where your living costs are sustainable. 

Million Dollar Choices

• Million Dollar Choices - Scott Marsh “How can you save a million dollars by making a simple decision? A Million Dollar Choice© is a decision to save money that you only have to make once that will eventually help you obtain a million dollars in your retirement plan. By making the right choice about your house, business, automobiles, healthcare and other items today, you can invest the money saved and watch it become a million dollars by the time you retire. Million Dollar Decisions© are so powerful because they are available to every person, whatever their stage in life.”

Millionaire Mindset

• “You don’t rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training. That’s why we train so hard.” - Anonymous Navy Seal
• Time is worth more than money
• Ask what and how questions. Find solutions.
• Be confident and positive. 
• What’s your why? Clarify your vision. 

Automate your money

• I Will Teach You to Be Rich. - Ramit Sethi
• Make your money work for you instead of working for your money.
• Guilt Free Money. When you’ve taken care of everything else, you can enjoy the money that’s left over.
• Spend money on things that bring you joy and value. 

Saving and Investing

• Saving money is important. 
• Eventually, you need to put your money to work and make it grow. 
• Interest can be your best friend or worst enemy. 
• EARN interest. Don’t pay interest. 

Get out of debt

• As fast as possible
• 11 Ways to Get Out of Debt Faster (we mentioned the snowball method in the podcast)

Where should my money go?

• 50/30/20 Rule
• 50% of your income goes to your needs
• 30% of your income goes to your wants
• 20% of your income goes to your savings
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
• It’s also good to add charitable donations.

Being a Business Owner

• While owning a business is a great way to become financially independent and successful, they aren’t required. 
• You can be financially successful working a “normal” 9-5 job. 

Jacob Links:

• Jacob’s Website
• Jacob’s LinkedIn
• Jacob's Twitter: @jacob_m_harmon

Kalob Links:

• Kalob’s LinkedIn

SuccessQuest Links:

• Website
• Blog
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter: @MySuccessQuest

Kalob: Hey there, welcome back to the SQHQ with another episode of SuccessQuest. I'm Kalob Valle 

Jacob: and I'm Jacob Harmon 

Kalob: and on today's episode. We are going to jump into discussing the successes of life and today's topic Financial. This one is going to be a doozy. So buckle up because we have a lot to cover and we have certainly talked about a lot of stereotypes associated with being financially successful in the past in a couple of our other podcasts. But today we want to cover exactly what it means to be financially stable or free how to take steps to achieving it and how to break down those stereotypes. So we have a lot of talk about pay attention. It's going to be great. 

Jacob: Absolutely and something that we've mentioned a lot is the success is not just about being rich or just about being wealthy, but that doesn't mean that being rich is a bad thing or being wealthy is a bad thing, especially if the reason you're pursuing wealth and riches is to help make the world a better place. There's nothing wrong with having that desire. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be. Financially stable, so even though we've told you a hundred times in the past that it's not just about that today. We're going to talk about how you can work towards Financial stability because it will help you make a better impact in the world.

Kalob: I love that. I like what Jacob refers to because we were talking about that in our first podcast a lot about financial stability. You don't need it to be happy. You don't need to be rich you don't need to be with it's not one of the foundations of success, but it's an incredible addition. If you have it. Now, you have the opportunity to help other people including yourself and your family and those aren't bad things. So becoming rich becoming wealthy if you do it with the right intentions, it's fantastic. But what's the difference between being rich and being wealthy being rich? It's just that you know, like immediately you start thinking of who is the Scrooge McDuck? Yeah, you start thinking about his mounds and hordes of billions of gold coins that he has towards way stored away and his kids who are just loving all of it and it's actually really funny series, but that's what you think about you. Just think of someone who's overwhelmingly. Like just has tons of money. Like they have the yacht's they have their own private planes that's being rich, you know that's being in the 1% now being wealthy is a little bit different. It's a different type of concept because it's a little bit more realistic for I'm going to give you an example. This is the only way I can explain it. My wife and I were fine. We're obviously making enough to get by month to month.  But wealthiness is that if she were to lose her job. That's somehow through some sort of passive income. We would be receiving the enough money in order to get by month to month and hopefully forever. I mean, that's the goal. So if you become wealthy somehow, you've generated income that allows you to sustain your living costs for the rest of the time you're living. That's the main difference between wealth and being rich, but also, what's the goal? What should the goal be? I mean realistically I've been thinking about this. There's so many things we can do to obtain wealth in our life. And that's what we're going to be talking about. You can live financially Successful by simply learning how to save invest become Frugal all of which were going to discuss throughout this. 

Jacob: During my time at BYU. I took a course on personal finance and my professor was Scott Marsh who is a financial advisor and also Professor BYU and he taught something in that course that honestly changed my life and changed my perspective on money and how to build wealth and something that he taught. It was called making a million dollar choice. And a million-dollar choice is a simple choice that you make now to eventually have a million dollars at retirement. So for example, if you decide instead of buying lunch every day, I'm going to pack a lunch and take it to work. Let's say that can save you five dollars a day, right? So that's a hundred and fifty dollars a month, right? So if you put that hundred and fifty dollars a month into your 401k and your employer matches that 401k.  that turns into 300 dollars a month that you're putting into an investment now over the course of your lifetime that investment is going to grow and it's going to cure interest and by the time you retire. That $5.00 a day has turned into a million dollars. That's what he called a million-dollar Choice a simple choice that you make that is worth a million dollars. Now how many different choices could we make in our lives Kalob mentioned being Frugal packing a lunch every day is a simple choice anyone can save five dollars a day. Anyone can do that. And that's a Hewitt can make a huge difference in your life. So think right now I'm gonna give you just a little bit or pause the podcast if you need a little more time to think but write down four or five different million-dollar Choice ideas different things that you can do to save just a little extra money and put that money towards an investment, especially if you have a 401K with your employer. Put it towards there because then you get the match but put it somewhere where it can grow and it can become a lot more. 

Kalob: I really like this concept of frugality because it really can be the biggest difference and and there's such simple choices that you can make something that I was actually just barely going to tell Jacob about was that when my wife and I first got married. Oh my gosh. Okay my job. I was working as a mental health. Worker in Bountiful, Utah and I was making like 12 bucks an hour and my wife she was working for some guy in Provo. And I mean she was making like 15 bucks an hour, but it wasn't a consistent like schedule. So, I mean she wasn't making that much and she was also trying to be a waitress which is also not consistent. So, I mean we did not have a lot of money and we've got back from our honeymoon. We spent tons of my we went to Cancun Mexico is fantastic. We got back to our apartment and we looked at her bank account no savings. And we had a little over 60 dollars in our checking account. We just barely paid rent. And I mean that was all we had we didn't have we didn't have internet in our house. I mean we didn't have a TV we didn't have a couch or a table. It was fantastic and it's funny because in that situation that can either be a positive experience or a negative experience and but because my wife and I have such a Frugal mindset. That was nothing like we looked at that situation where like, oh my gosh 60 bucks. Okay, that's fine. We're just not going to go out to eat at all this month, you know, it's easy for us to make those choices. And now looking at where we are. We have a large amount of savings and a fairly good checking's account, you know, this we started with basically nothing at the beginning of our marriage, but because we understand how to make those simple choices and made a huge impact on our marriage and. Our financial side of life which kind of brings me into the the next point that I want to talk about which is the mindset the millionaire mindset before I jump right into what is a millionaire mindset. I want to I want to short quote. It says people don't just rise to the occasion. They fall to their highest level of preparation. Now, I really enjoy that quote because if my wife and I hadn't been prepared to live. Frugally, it would have been very difficult. Like people don't just change overnight. You have to prepare yourself over a long period of time you have to make smaller decisions in order for you to get to a point where you can be, you know. Yeah. I'm you can say you're Frugal now, so I want to talk about a little bit about what the millionaire mindset is. And I wrote down a couple of things first is understanding that time is worth more than money. I think that's really cool. Because I think back to a story this guy was telling me like he was he was like, how much do you make at your job? You're like 12 bucks an hour. He was okay. If you had to go to your boss and you were to give you just run into the office and slap down $12 on the your boss's desk and ask them for an hour of your time back. Could they give it to you?  No. Okay. Well what happened? What if you slap down $50 on their desk? I just want an hour of my time back that I gave to you. They couldn't give it back to you. Not for a hundred. Not for $1,000. It's crazy. But time is your most valuable asset. That's how millionaires think. It's you don't do things that aren't worth your time, which may include spending a lot of time on social media. You know, it's you focus on things that are important you have priorities and you set them in front of other things because you know that your time is worth something another way millionaires think is they don't ask why as much as they asked what and how questions their solution. They're constantly looking for solutions to things instead of complaining about things like man. Why didn't I win the lottery instead? They're asking what can I do to double the amount of money I have right now or how can I go out and make $1 into $2, you know, this is how they're thinking they're thinking constantly on how to progress instead of sitting down and complaining which I think is fantastic. Another thing is protecting their confidence. In order to become successful, you have to have a high level of positivity and confidence in your life, which is hard to maintain which is why we recommend that you you have great resources in your lives to keep you motivated and inspired just like our podcasts and blogs and and incredible books these things help you keep your confidence as well as teach you ways to improve your confidence and to eliminate things that are negatively affecting you in your life. The last thing that I wanted to share because there's so many things like Millionaire Mind sets. If you want to have a millionaire mindset. There's a lot of things you can do and I think we can talk about this in a future podcast, honestly, or maybe I'll write it down in the blog my next blog. But the last thing I wanted to share is clarifying your vision. You have to understand your why what's what's your greatest source of motivation in your life when you wake up in the morning? Why do you go to your job? What does all that for? Is it so you can come home and watch TV? Or is it so you can take care of your kids? It's so you can watch over your mom or dad. Is it because you want to get through college? What is that exactly is your why and understanding your vision is a huge part of becoming financially stable. You have to have a clear goal set in place and then go for it. You have to work harder than you ever had. It's not nothing. There's no such thing as becoming rich quick. 

Jacob: So you got to work hard. So I heard about this book that's called. I will teach you to be rich. It's by remit. Sethe I probably pronounce that wrong. I am so sorry, but in this book he outlines specific things that we can do to make our money work for us instead of us working for our money. And one of the things that really stood out to me was this idea of making our money automated in the book he talks about when we get our paycheck. We should automatically have that money do things. A portion of it should go to savings a portion of it should go to Investments. Our bills should automatically be paying themselves. And then after all that's done, if you look into your bank account the money that's left over is what he calls guilt-free money. It's money that you can spend its money that you know, you already taken care of everything else so you can spend it and you can enjoy it because. What's the purpose of money right the purpose is so that we can we can enjoy things in this life. And I also want to make it clear that it's not bad to purchase stuff. Kalob was talking about being Frugal which is important. But there's also certain things that bring you Joy the bring you value that are worth putting money into otherwise, what's the purpose of having it? Right pleasure, you know. Yeah and I'll be the first to tell you I spend way too much money. On technology. I have kind of this little addiction to to really nice technological products. I like Apple products and guess what financially they're probably not the best option. I could get a cheaper phone than the phone I have in my pocket, right? But it's something that I enjoy and it's something that brings value to me and I don't think that it's a bad thing to spend a little bit of money on what matters to you maybe to you. The most important thing is going on a nice vacation. Do it save up and do it. Enjoy your money. But at the same time we have to be careful. To save money where we can and make our money work for us instead of against us. 

Kalob: It's all about planning. It really is. Like if you have a good plan every month for when you get money, you can spend it immediately and you can know exactly where it's going. So when you have that leftover money, you can feel good about that. I love that. So yeah, listen to Jacob go take that vacation go by that little guilty pleasure if you have the means to do, so if you have a good plan set in place don't feel bad about spending money. It's not a bad thing, but it is also worthwhile talking about investing money as well. Investing money is incredibly important because not only the saving money is great. Right you're going to put in a bank account and you're going to you're going to keep it there for emergencies but money sitting there can also suck sometimes if you have a lot of money sitting there it's doing nothing for you and maybe many of you are the same you wonder man. That's instead of 5,000 in savings. I wish I had. How is it that I could get 10,000 and maybe some of you don't try investing your money because it's a little riskier. It's a little scary. Let me share with you some of the things that I do to increase money kind of on the side, you know, you don't have to have a second job in order to get a couple hundred bucks here and there to do things you love. In fact, you can start off with 20 50 bucks. One thing that I did for a long time in high school when I worked I worked for call centers and I worked selling products door-to-door, which was not fun honestly, but I had a savings account I had money. And one of the things I love to do to invest some of that extra money that I had was take 50 bucks and go and purchase some used product. Usually it was a gaming console. I would buy one negotiate it really cheap and then go back online and sell it the same day for. Maybe 50 bucks more I think in that timeframe PS PlayStation 3s were a big thing that I was buying and selling it was you could easily buy one for a hundred bucks and you could sell it for $150 or you bought a 450 you could sell it for 200 people were buying within the range of 150 to 250. So I mean as long as you waited, you could double your money easily. I learned this concept for my dad and my uncle they these guys are people who have bought and sold cars. I mean, it's fun the thing the little things you can do on the side to make money. I actually learned this the other day too. Apparently the majority of the items at the dollar store are worth more than dollar. You know that random. Okay, so if you were to go to the Dollar Store and you would pull out your phone. And just look up the items at the dollar store how much they're selling for on eBay. You could find them the majority of the items. There are worth more and you could be making a couple extra bucks 10 20 bucks on the side just from purchasing items from the dollar store and selling them on the side. It's amazing the little things you can be doing. To invest your money and make it grow and I think that's an important aspect of being financially free or being financially stable and successful is learning how to make money grow work make it work for you.

Jacob: And interest can be your best friend or it can be your worst. Enemy Okay, so. Interest is something that you always want to be working for you. If it's in some sort of investment where you're earning interest that's amazing. If you have debt where you are paying interest you want to get out of that debt as fast as possible. There's a lot of different programs out there that teach people how to get out of debt. One of the ones that I've heard that makes sense to me. Is you look at all of the debts that you have the might be credit card bills car loans, whatever they are. And you see what's the one that you can pay off first? Right, then. What you'll do is you will pay your minimum payments on everything except for that one and you'll pay it off as fast as you can so you put all the extra money you have towards that one. Once it's paid off. Then you roll all that money over to pay off the next one and then the next one and then the next one and once all of your debts are paid off. You you're free, you're free from interest and you always want to get out of debt as fast as possible. We've talked a lot about being able to spend money on our wants. and investing and saving but what's the rule I mean, is there is there a rule and. I think that honestly everybody situation is a little different but the general rule of thumb something that you kind of want to guide yourself with is a rule called the 50 30 20 Rule and this is something that Elizabeth Warren popularized in her book all you're worth the ultimate lifetime money plan and basically the rule states that 50% of your money should go towards your needs write your mortgage your groceries the things that you need to survive. It's kind of like Maslow's. Hierarchy of needs if you've ever heard of that where the most important thing is is the stuff that you have to have to survive. Right? So 50% of your income should go to that 30% of your income should go to your wants these are things like shopping dining out Hobbies maybe going on a vacation then 20% of your income should go towards saving and investing personally. I would probably make that third category a little higher. I'd cut a little bit into my wants and I'm probably I'd probably swap those and do 50% needs 30 percent savings investing 20% wants but that's just because the way my brain works is I like to save for the future and I'm okay taking a little hit now. I'm okay not having to do not getting something that I want in order to so that I can have something in the future, but the important thing is that you make a plan. Sit down and make a budget think about how much money you're making how much money you're spending. Hopefully you're making more than your spending if you're not figure that out because that's number one. You never want to spend more money than you're making and figure out how you can start saving and investing and growing your money and make it work for you.

Kalob: I love that. It really is just about having that consistent plan in your life that 50 30 20 rule is a great foundation for just being able to. Know how to spend your money Jacob and I were talking about this before we got into the podcast. We actually were thinking that there should be an extra section in there for charitable donations because we believe that what you give you get somehow in this universe Karma call it whatever you want the things you give to people somehow comes back to you all the time tenfold even sometimes. It's important that you're looking out to others in your community and trying to build a positive environment and it really honestly effects you may be even more mentally and psychologically then we realize but donating to two Charities and and giving. I'm not saying going give the homeless, you know, 20 30 bucks, but I think it's fantastic when I see people going out to Smith's and making little bundles that they're going to give to the homeless or they go and volunteer at shelters and stuff. All those things are part of being financially stable as well. Because if you want to increase your wealth and income it sounds weird but donating and giving to charity. We'll help you on that path. It creates that mindset. It's going to it just happens. I can't tell you there's so much. There's too many stories in this world to ignore this type of exercise in your life. You can look it up. I know I have seen millionaires billionaires tell me incredible stories about how when they gave they received an incredible amount in return and it maybe it wasn't immediately obviously over time, but that person would remember it or someone would remember or see that action and it always came back to help. Then the benefit them in the future. So charitable donations. Think about that. Think about the last time you went out and did something for charity. I want to talk about actually right now to owning a business is being financially successful as part of that having to own a business being a business owner now, I love this topic because. The United States man, that's the American dream like coming to America and starting something your own Journey being your own boss and getting paid to do something you love that's fantastic. And if I'm not mistaken, the United States is one of the leading countries in the world for starting businesses. And obviously we hear the statistics to about how many businesses fail every year. I mean it's a hard thing. So I want to I want to clarify you don't have to have a business to be financially. Successful businesses are fantastic. And if you are an entrepreneur at heart follow that do something you love start a business do a side hustle. All those things are so cool and fun and important but. You can be just as financially successful with your regular day job with your nine to five job. This is this is something that I can't I absolutely cannot stand I go on Facebook sometimes or I attend seminars and conventions and I see people or videos telling me that I cannot. Get to a financially stable point in my life without being a part of the new e-commerce business or being a part of Shopify or learning how to sell things on Amazon or have to start a business have to be in the real estate have to do this have to do that and it kills me because the majority of the time to they're making fun of people who have nine to five jobs. They're like, wow. Do you hate your 9 to 5. I hated my nine-to-five to and it's the worst and you can't become successful without getting rid of it and that is so not true right now. I wouldn't consider myself incredibly. I'm not wealthy obviously, but I think I'm pretty close. I'm much closer to financially successful than a lot of other people in this world because I just have simple Concepts in mind about being Frugal about saving money about slowly investing money. I'm not spending more than I'm making and every month. We're saving money into our savings account that puts you on the path to being financially successful and I don't own an e-commerce business and I mean SuccessQuest we're not making any money right now. Yeah, we're trying to create an environment where people can learn and grow and yeah, but you don't have to have a business to be financially successful do what makes you happy if you are happy at your 9 to 5 job stick with it. Don't fall all the crap that people are telling you all the time financial success comes more from. Creativity and all the things that we've already talked about right now like saving and frugality.  But if you do want to start a business, oh my gosh, we're going to have a whole new podcast about that stuff because businesses are incredible and Utah for example where the state where we live. It's in the top five states in America for starting a business. It's like one of the best in short. You don't need to have a business in order to become financially stable. 

Jacob: Something else that I would just add to that really quick. Kalob is. You can do both if you have an item. I mean in my case, I'm at a 9 to 5 job. I have an actual job that I'm working 40 hours a week and SuccessQuest is my is my hobby. It's my side hustle. It's something that the that I'm doing while I have a stable income because that way I can take care of my family. I can start saving and investing while SuccessQuest gets up and off the ground eventually we want SuccessQuest to to make some money, right? I mean, we want it to be a successful business, but it takes time. And so if you have a great idea don't necessarily go quit your job today, just so you can build that idea, but think about it keep planning work on it and eventually. It might get to the point where you can go quit your job, but we don't want to we don't want to tell you guys to to go make decisions that is going to actually hurt you rather than help you. 

Kalob: Honestly there's a lot of things that can be said about becoming financially successful. We really are just touching the cream of the crop. Like there's there's a lot more underneath. I like the whole Iceberg. I'm sure you guys are familiar with the iceberg analogy where this is the tip of the iceberg and. There is so much more under the water and it's so deep and we will talk about this in future podcasts, but we are so thankful for you guys listening. We want to challenge you to figure out your financial plan, you know, if you don't have one already make one if you don't know how to make one. Send us a message through social media find us and we would love to talk to you guys about how to make a financial plan based off of some of the things that we've already talked about reach out to us. We really do want to have more communication with our listeners and we are more than eager to help you guys out where we're not experts but I think having someone there kind of as a moderator. Can help a lot. So anyways, I want to thank you guys again for listening. It's been a blast. I know this is probably one of our longer podcasts you guys are Troopers. So thanks again for listening to this SuccessQuest podcast, and we hope to. See you guys next time have a skill set.

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