75. Wealth without children? w/ Dr. Jay Zigmont | Ekabo Home: Season 2 Episode 24 | FULL EPISODE | Financial Freedom Mastermind Podcast

My name is Niyi Adewole, host of the Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Group, and I'm super excited to be joining you here today with Dr. Jay Zigmont, who is a PhD and certified financial planner, a life and business coach who specializes in financial planning for those who are child free or permanently childless.

While most financial advice treats parenthood as a default, Dr. J has created a life and financial planning system that centers around the unique needs of those whose futures do not include kids. Dr. Jay I appreciate you for joining us tonight. Hey, thanks for having me on. Absolutely. And I know that our audience is gonna be excited to kind of dig into this, and I am too. Just even the, the title of it, right?

Child Free Wealth and kind of your whole persona has, has really pulled this thing together. And so how did you even get into this work? What were you doing before you moved into kind of coaching others through this? Yeah, so my wife and I are both. PhDs and were child free. And my background was actually in adult learning and coaching, you know, executive coaching, career coaching, life coaching, financial coaching, all that.

And what you find out is by the way, people pay more for financial coaching than life coaching. Just kinda how it works. And I went to become a C F P and never once was there a mention in any of the literature of being child free. And I kinda like started on this path of saying like, are me and my wife weird? Now by the way, we are weird. Two PhDs in the same house is automatically weird. It's just is.

But like we're we weird in general, and come to find out, a recent study on Michigan found that about 25% of their population is child free or permanently child bus. So we're talking about 25% of the US that. The financial literature just ignores and just like treats like everybody else. And that's interesting to me at least. Absolutely, absolutely. And that's a big figure, right?

It's not something that we think about because when you see the quote unquote, you know, American Dream, it's always the white picket fans, you know, two, three kids and kind of the single family house. But it's true, there's a lot of people that do not want to go down that kind of standard pathway. And, and how can we help those individuals still achieve their version of that dream? Absolutely.

I call it, you know, flipping the life script and saying, Hey, the standard life script says you get married, have kids, you have blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm going, okay. Being child free means you can rethink two and a half kids a house and a white pick offense. It's just different life and it's not bad. It's not good, it's just different. True, true.

And to that point, when you talk about, even from a financial picture, most of the, the people out there are kind of coaching us through, Hey, here's how you do a 5 29 plan and here's how you kind of save for kids. But how does not factoring in that piece change up your finances? Like what do you need to think about and how were you kind of shifting the focus there? Yeah, it changes just about everything, and we don't have enough time for that. But, you know, let's, let's start at the end.

And the reality check is most child free folks don't have a goal of passing on money to another generation, so they can embrace, there's a book called Die with Zero saying, Hey, I'm gonna spend and give my money across my life, which completely changes the trajectory of your net worth. Y you know, if you think about it, most of the stuff the standard literature says, yep, you just keep saving, saving, saving. That way you can pass it on and you retire and you do your thing.

Child free folks get a different choice. The way we say it is, living a life of child free wealth means you have the time, money and freedom to do what you enjoy doesn't mean you're automatically rich. Like not having kids isn't like money just come down from up above the actual numbers. If you look at net worth of adults, over 55, single childless women are the, the top winner, but only like a couple grand over fathers.

So like, it's not even enough for statistically to make a difference, but part of that's because. Growing a giant net worth is not a goal. True, true. I didn't even think about it like that. When we talk about quote unquote generational wealth, it really is about saving as much as you can and kind of passing that thing down. But this does shift that goal a bit. But let me ask you this, and this is kind of a hard hitting question. Who takes care of you when you get older, right?

Because that's one of the things that, you know, you kind of have kids and things of that nature for. And I get this question every time, and I have a kinda love hate thing going on with this question. You know, I hate it because of what it implies, but I love it because it gives you opportunity to have finances. But here's the, here's the, here's the data in adults. Over 55 is per the US census. They looked at what percentage, any support from their family financially.

They found that for childless adults, 2.5% get any financial support from their family. So that's like nothing. In the same subset, they looked at adults over 55 in the US of parents, 1.5% got any support from their family. So when people ask the question, well, who's gonna take care of you when you're older? What I don't like about the question is that implies that you're expecting others to take care of you.

Usually your kids interest enough child free folks tend to be the ones that are expect to take care of their parents cuz you get the, well, you don't have kids. So you can take care of mom type routine. But that's all. Assumptions that, let's be real. It's not true. I mean, I worked as a paramedic, came out of healthcare and academia, and if you walk into a nursing home, you go and see how many people are getting visited by their family. It is besides the holiday, it is a sad, sad situation.

So the difference is, as child free people, we know we have to handle it. And my goal with my clients is by your mid forties to have a plan for your long-term care. You know what? Parents need to do the same thing. Because if you don't, you're gonna have a Medicaid home or you know, that's where elder abuse comes in and people spending your money. That's a hundred percent true. It almost helps that you're eliminating kind of that that thing that you have in the back of your mind.

It's almost like I forget the full saying, but the one army general who's like, Hey, we're gonna go into this war and we're gonna burn the ships. Right? He didn't give a second option. So now you have to go forward, right? And so you can fight with a little bit more energy cuz you know there's no option for retreat. On the same token, it's almost like when you, you talk about even like social security benefits, right?

I, I'm of the thought that it's probably not gonna be there by the time I retire. Mm-hmm. And, and by the time most of us retire. But the fact that it's still, quote unquote there right now, kind of lets you take it easy in certain categories where if they just said, Hey, It's not gonna be there now. You know, you've gotta go do it on your own. So I, I like that thinking kind of, Hey let me get it on my own. And then if any family help comes in, that's just an added bonus. Absolutely.

And, and that's probably what everybody should do. The problem is long-term care is stupid, expensive. So give you some numbers. It right now in the US for one year in a skilled nursing facility, it's $108,000 a year. It's cheaper to live on a cruise ship. Year-round. Men will spend 2.2 years in long-term care in women 3.7 years. So do the math on that. That is huge numbers. And that's today dollars. Now you, that's growing at 5% compound inflation.

I'm 45. If I'm going into care at 40 years, that's could be a million dollars. And if you don't have a plan for it, what you're, what's gonna happen is you're gonna have on Medicaid, cuz Medicare does not cover long-term care. And again, on Medicaid you have to spend through everything you got. That's not a good plan to me. That's crazy. That's cra. So what do you recommend for those folks? Like what type of things are you pushing them toward to prepare?

To take care of themselves when the time comes. Yeah, I mean, reality check is when you get to kind of mid forties, you need to decide if you're gonna pay for your own long-term care or not. There's kind of a general rule. It's, and, and it's rough, but you know, if you got about half million dollars in assets to about 3 million, you can afford long-term care insurance. If you got less than half million, you're gonna up put Medicaid.

If you got more than 3 million, you probably can pay for it out of pocket, but you have to set aside the money just for that. And that's one of those things. So if you wanna set aside the money, if it's just you, you know you're a man 2.2 years, you gotta set aside about quarter million dollars right now and make sure it grows by more than 5% every year to be comfortable. And that's on average.

Well, if you've got any history of dementia, Alzheimer's, all that in your family, it's gonna be a whole lot more expensive. Yeah. No, that's crazy. That's crazy. And it's one of those things that it, it's, it's, you definitely gotta start planning for that future now. It's very easy to kind of put that off and put it off. Say, Hey, I'm good today, good today. But if you don't start investing today, it's not gonna snowball in this something that can help you tomorrow.

So I know that me and a lot of the people within this group are fans of things like hsa, right? Health spending accounts where you can put aside money when you're healthy and have it kind of compound over time and be able to be used later in life. Is that one of the things that you look into as well, or, or is it more like, Hey, let's invest in 401ks, things of that nature that'll kind of grow.

So h is great cause of the triple tax benefit, but do the math, you know, as a single person, you put, you know, little, you know, three and a half thousand, $3,600, something like that away, that's a long way between 3,600 bucks and $108,000 a year. All right? So you'd have to be saving for a long time. That's, that's the problem. If you're, if you're gonna put aside the money, yeah, we can do the tax planning. I mean, my argument with people is always investing could be very easy.

Tax planning is a challenge and figuring that out for you is gonna make a difference. I think one of the challenges with long-term care is nobody can tell me when you are gonna need it. So that's actually where I tend to have people at least price out long-term care insurance to pass the risk to someone else. And there's some tax benefits depending on how you do it. True, true. Do you mind diving into some of those tax benefits? Because this is something that I never actually kind of focused on.

Right. I used to work in the healthcare space for a company. It's a Fortune 500 healthcare company, and we had those options, right, for the long-term care. But, you know, being young in the career, you just kind of skip over that piece. You're like, ah, I think I'm good on that. But can you describe some of the benefits that you can get from that, you know, from a tax perspective?

I, I think, you know, look at it this way, if you use your hsa, you can actually use your HSA to pay premiums for long-term care. Not to certain, certain limits, but just go with it in general. So that is, that is a bonus. But the other part of it is, so if I buy a insurance product, and I don't like insurance in general, I'm, I'm an advice only financial planner. I don't sell any products, so I can bash insurance if I want, you know, I'm not making money on long-term care or anything.

I don't make any money on that. But if I buy that product, that benefit is coming out tax free. You know, I'm, I'm buying an insurance. It's growing effectively because you can actually get a compound rider on it and then it comes out tax free. If I put that in my brokerage account and then I'm gonna use it to pay my long-term care, I gotta pay taxes on it. My 401k, same thing. Just a question of when I'm paying taxes. So there is a balancing act that occurs there, and it's a question of risk.

Do you wanna keep, you know, a half million dollar risk of long-term care or not? And I think that the even scarier one, if you really think it through, is who's gonna pay for your parents' long-term care? Are you okay with them being in a not so nice home? Or are you gonna just ignore them? Or are you gonna pay for it yourself now? Huge money. Now that being said, when you had that opportunity to buy long-term care 20 years ago or 10 years ago, that was a whole lot better.

Cheaper prices probably should have done that, but nothing we can do to go back in time. This is true, this is true. But you can take lessons from back then and realize it's only gonna get more expensive and start now. And so you mentioned something a little bit earlier that you're an advice only certified financial planner. How does that compare to kind of the, the normal CFPs that we kind of see out in the world that are different products, things of that nature? What makes you different?

Yeah. So the difference is with an advice only financial planner, you pay either on an hourly retainer basis or a project. I happen to have a monthly subscription or hourly options, but I still, nothing, just my time. And if you go to like an a u M advisor, they're charging you a percentage of your assets. Well, if you're gonna try to die, die with zero. And their goal is to grow your assets. There's actually a conflict there. So with an advice only you pay me just like you would your cpa.

Pay me when you need me, get rid of me when you don't. That's the difference. And I think what happens is people think about, you know, oh, I'm just gonna give them my ass. They're gonna manage, no, that's one option. That's just one of many. And what I'm finding is, especially with the younger generations, they don't wanna be paying 1% of their assets for the rest of their life. For them to, I don't know, babysit 'em. You know?

Rather, I would rather focus on helping people learn how to do it themselves. Get 'em in a good place. They go off and they come back when they need me. You know, I charge $500 a month. That's my monthly subscription. The way I say it is, if you're not getting $500 value, I want you to fire me. That's it. I love that. I love that because a lot of, even when you look at insurance and things of that nature, a lot of it's tied to like dollars coming into certain products. Like, Hey, I need you.

I need to push you toward this way so that I can get a commission on this, and hey, I need to move your assets into this stock so that I can get a commission on this. So the fact that you're actually giving out real advice, The only benefit and the main benefit to the client is actually being able to grow their wealth and kind of see what works best for them. There's no products involved, is is a major benefit. And so, and, and lemme give you an example of this.

So for child free folks, life insurance is not a really a big deal. You know, cuz. Who gonna pass it to, like, if you're single? Well, there's nobody to pass it to. And if you're, and a couple you both work, probably don't need life insurance. But if you go in the insurance, you know, I, I had somebody from my podcast and they went to buy insurance. They were looking for disability insurance. That's actually more important for child free folks. And they walked out with six life insurance quotes.

Why? Because the, the person they met with makes a commission. Selling life insurance makes nothing on disability. This is the, the reality check. You know, unfortunately, anyone out there can call themselves a financial advisor. There's no regulations on that, and you could just be selling insurance and calling yourself a financial advisor. Do you have the the client's best interest in your mind? I don't know.

I mean, he'd be like going to your doctor and he gets a cutback for every, you know, script he puts out. I wouldn't go to that doctor. No, no, and that's a great analogy. It's true. It's true. And just for, for a little bit of context, right? Cause I know that you advise a lot of individuals, you have your podcast, you've written books, which is pretty incredible. But taking it back a little bit and switching gears I read a story that you made a million at 21 and then it was all gone by 25.

Do you mind digging into some of those details? Nah. And kind of what happened here? Okay, so I'm gonna age myself now cause I'm getting old, but, you know, this is late nineties, the.com world. I actually my, my father still to this day thinks I'm crazy at 18. I, I put my resume out on one of those weird sites that has resumes on him and the nineties. That was surprising, you know, and this guy called me and offered me a job down in New York City.

I went, actually worked for a couple.com firms before the.com bust. One on one. I p o made my first million my time. I was 21. Here's the thing, you give a million dollars to a 21 year old, I'm gonna do some dumb stuff with it. Like I, I can, I'm only admit it, you know? Yeah. I, I paid off some of my parents' house, my, my sister's school. I did some good stuff with it. I also bought a Hummer.

Now I'm not talking the new ones, like I'm talking original Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hummer, you know, like, you know, in cash. So, so it wasn't electric, right? No, I'm talking the real old school, like the military, they painted over and called it a civilian, you know, that was fun. You know, I joke about it, but it's true. Earned it by 21. Spent it by time, 25. And part of that was just my family. I grew up broke, never learned how to manage money.

The only thing they taught me in high school was how to balance a checkbook, which is a giant waste of time. You know, in hindsight, probably a lot of things I should have learned and could have. But you know what? Nothing you can do. The only thing I can do now is help people learn these mistakes before they make 'em. You know? And I have people come to me and like, oh, I'm worried I'm gonna be judged, you know, by a C F P or whatever.

I'm like, dude, if you can beat my mistakes, go right ahead. Like, and, and most people are like, oh, I don't think I can. All right, well then we're all good. You know, we all do stupid stuff. We pay the stupid tax and move forward. Absolutely. And I'm sure that helped you kind of on your journey of understanding even what to do with your money. So coming out of that, what was some of the first things that you did to start growing your wealth and kind of building your empire?

Yeah, I actually coming out of that, I went to school, so I didn't go to college. At 18, I went to work and I didn't come back to school until about mid twenties, and I went from no degree to a PhD in five and a half years. I finished my bachelor's in nine months and the entire thing cost me less than $9,000. Now that sounds crazy, but it's possible. It's still possible now it's just I was working as a medic at the time, busting my butt because I wanted to learn how to help people learn.

Now, I'll be honest, it wasn't about finance at the time, it was about healthcare and a few other things. And I went into healthcare and you find out in healthcare that everything in healthcare is about finance. It's kind of one of those like rude awakenings. You go there to help patients, but you realize, no, it's about finance. And I was like, oh, I say this isn't probably for me.

And it, it's one of those kind of winding pasts and from a personal standpoint, you know, so I married my wife and the aha moment was we actually paid off her car. And I went, you can pay off a car. Like I didn't realize it, like we just paid monthly and just because I was one of those people that was getting a new car every two years or 18 months and just rolling it over and the payment all looked the same, I was like, wow, you could pay off a car.

Then I started looking at some of the, you know, the Dave Ramsey of the world of, you know, how do you get outta debt and all that. Well, I can learn this financial stuff that I don't know. And that's, it sounds very simple, but people like myself, you know, look at, you know, kind of head down, just ignoring what's going around head in the sand saying, yeah, I'll never get out of debt on, get outta debt. And all of a sudden everything else looks good.

You know, you, I, I joke, but making the second million is a little harder than the first one was, cuz the first one just happened in an I P L. That's okay. But here's the thing, the second one's not gonna disappear. You know, the second one, now I'm gonna do some good, mis good stuff rather than making mistakes. And my hope now is just that I can help people learn how to do this stuff in a safe environment where they go, yep, I messed up.

And I go, yep, okay, here's how we fix it, and we can just move forward and make those improvements. I mean, the way they say it is in finance, 80% of your success is related to your behaviors, your, your thoughts and your mindsets around money. 20% is the actual numbers. But you know what? If you go online, most people are talking about the numbers. If you go to most financial planner, they're talking about the numbers. No, I'm talking about the behaviors.

You know, when I meet with people, I meet with 'em every month. We meet for an hour, we work on one or two things on shifting their mindset around money, shifting their approach to it, you know? For child free folks, forget fire, you know, financial, retire early. They don't care about that. They wanna do what we call file financial independence, live early. It's a dimmer switch for work. Cause that right get getting that right balance movement, that's all mindset shift.

And at the same time, I have to like unprogram all the standard life script that says you gotta do this, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. And make a plan that fits them. And it's a challenge to get clients to that thing, but it, it is so rewarding when you can see somebody go, all right, I'm gonna take control of my money. I'm gonna change my mindset, and I'm gonna grow. Wow. No, that's incredible. That's kind of what we're all about, right?

Which is being able to, like you said, live early, whether you're looking to retire early, quote unquote, or just downgrade a bit from the hustle and bustle every single day at the W2 to where you gotta work overtime and all this other stuff and really be able to enjoy life. Cause we only get one on this earth. And so to that point, when you're mentoring and kind of coaching these clients, on average, how long does it take? How many sessions, how many months for somebody to reach that epiphany?

Like, Hey, okay, I need to make some changes here. It's funny, I have two groups, let's call it that. I ask the people that are with me that are six, seven months and I have people that are with me forever, and the most amazing ones are the people. You know, mid thirties, mid forties, got a little bit of money, no debt. We go through their numbers and I, and they're like, Hey, I'd love to do X, Y, Z, whatever it is in they're life.

And I'll go through their numbers and I'm like, cool, let's do it. They're like, huh? And I, one of my cos she's, she works with me, Brie, she's actually started tracking how many people I tell to quit their job. Because like, if you're miserable, you know, my, one of my standard things is, okay, you, you get a hundred grand for that job and you're miserable. So what you just told me is for a hundred grand, you're willing to be miserable. And they'll go, well, no, that's not what I mean.

I'm like, well, that's what you're doing. And we'll make the change. And what I find is it takes two or three months before they even realize, you know that, oh yeah, you know what? Maybe I am okay financially. Then the aha moment hits and then I'm like, okay, what do you wanna do with it? And then like there's this moment of, ah, I don't know, cuz you run out of like script. You know, the script says you go to work, you put in your 40 hours, you retire, all, all that stuff.

What do you really wanna do with your life? What do you wanna be when you grow up? It has nothing to do with age. It's just kind of what do you wanna, what do you wanna do within the next 40 years of your life? And it's like, well, I never realized I had an option. All right, let's dig in. And that's that moment that makes that shift. I had somebody who couple, both working. She was working at a state job pension, been there for a decade. Nice, stable job, but not really going anywhere.

Ends up taking a sabbatical, take six months off, find herself in that time period, she writes her first novel and now she's working on getting it published. She's happier than she's ever been in life. Now is she gonna make money as author? I have no clue. Like seriously, as authors, you either make no money or a whole lot. There's nowhere in between and, but she's happier than ever.

That's the shift that it takes to get there, and I think my personal belief is, A lot of us need somebody on the outside to kick you in the butt to do that. You know, I joke that I, I go back and forth putting, pat me on the back and kick you in the butt. But I have no problem giving that tough love of like, listen, you're not happy. Change something. People are like, well, but I can't. Well, no, you can if you want to. No, I love it. I love it.

And you're right, people do need that encouragement and no, it's it's almost like when you were talking about that and talking about the journey that people go through. I was listening to another podcast recently and they talked about survival mode. And all of us not even realizing, at least most people on this earth that day to day, you're kind of in survival mode. Hey, how do I get these bills paid? Hey, how do I, you know, save up for that next vacation?

Hey, how do I do this, do that, and things of that nature. But being able to connect with you and start to build to where you have a reserve, to where you have things taken care of so that you can get outta survival mode and really start to answer the question, Hey, what would I do if I didn't have to, you know, work 24 7 to kind of pay for the bills and the lifestyle? That's, that's a hard one to answer.

Like even when you were asking that just now, it's like, man, I still constantly battle with that. I know, you know, at a high level, Hey, what I want my days to look like, but I couldn't, I couldn't answer in a concise sentence. Well, it, it, the way I look at it, survival mode, we call it the rent and ramen phase. When you're trust making enough money to cover rent and ramen, you're right, you're in survival mode.

But then what happens is your mindset is stuck in rent and ramen and you're like, oh, I gotta struggle. I gotta struggle. And there's, there's this thing called middle class work ethic, middle class guilt, protesting, work ethic. They're all like messing with our head. You know, my parents always said, you know, whatever you do, be the best at it. Well, it's hard to be the best and cut back work halftime, you know, like it's, it's so you have to reprogram yourself.

But once you get out of the rent and ramen stage is, then what do you want to do? The problem is what people do then is if they don't feel comfortable getting outta the rent and ramen stage, they just up their rent or their housing or whatever else, or now they upgrade their ramen and then they're still in the same struggle. You know, I've had people where I go, listen, sell that house you're in, downsize the half, and then quit your job. And they're like, what?

I need this job to keep this house. I'm like, yes you do. You know what you can do instead? Move. And they're like, well, but, but, but, but what you, if you're gonna be happier, do you need a a 10,000 square foot house? I have had some people with some big houses and I'm like, no, you don't. It's two of you. Downsize, move somewhere. You know, I got people move other countries, whatever. Get a better quality of life and be happy. I call it Marie coning your life.

Get rid of the things that don't bring your joy and do more of the things that do. It sounds so simple, but it is a tug of war. We appreciate the work that you're doing, Dr. J, and we're gonna be opening this up to the rest of the group who here soon to ask questions and things of that nature. But I have one more question before we do so.

That is, what are some of the goals that you're working on this year with your organization and other projects that you're working on that our audience could help you with? Yeah, so right now I spend half my time talking with child free people about finance and half my time talking with financial people about being child free. And here's the big one, and if you happen to, to know with someone, you can definitely help. August 1st is International Child Free Day.

People don't know that exists, but it's just like Mother's Day. Father's Day. Turns out there's Child Free Day. It's the 50th year originally it was called Non-Parents Day, and for August 1st, we are actually sponsoring a billboard in Times Square to celebrate what it's like to be child free. So we're doing that partially as an awareness just to be like, Hey, the day exists.

But also just to go, you know what, to all the child free people out there, you're being heard, you're being seen, you're being part of it. So right now I'm actually on the, the PR kick and all that, you know, trying to, so if you happen to work for a TV station, you know, wanna do something now, but like, we're trying to get the word out there because it's one of those groups that I hate to say, but it's still okay to judge. You know, I, I live in Mississippi. In Mississippi, in a postal world.

It is not cool to be child free. I get people judging me all day long. Well, you know what? Maybe if we all said, got a point, said, Hey, all your first child free day. Yeah, I was jokingly, I, I was talking to the people that maintain child free day and I said, you know what our goal really should be? Goal should be you go into cvs, you go to the Hallmark card section, and there's a card that says Happy Child Free Day. Now that sounds silly, but that means a lot to people.

And it's 25% of the us. That's the thing. It's not a small group. To give you an idea that the, the Michigan study, the same one found 7.8% were L G B T, so we're triple the size, but nobody knows. We we're like, you know, I have people like hush tones, icho free too. I'm like, no, we should be able to be proud and be like, yep, child free. I'm not saying anyone should or shouldn't have kids. I'm not making any judgements. I'm just saying from me. Kids aren't in the picture and that's okay.

No, that is fair. That's an awesome goal and I'm hoping that somebody listening can help with that and kind of push that forward for the August 1st. But we're gonna open this up to other individuals to join. Please feel free to join via the chat and or hit the live call in to ask any questions of Dr. Jay. And aj, welcome to the call, man. Hey, what's going on guys? How y'all doing? Super good. Solid. You got any questions for Dr. J?

I mean, yeah, I feel like I can ask a quite a few different questions. I know the piece where you talked about you making, you know, a million dollars at the age of 21. That was definitely something that was like really interesting and crazy just to hear that. And I know a million dollars was worth a lot more at that timeframe, you know, the late, late nineties and the early two thousands.

So it's safe to say you were rolling in it at that age, but obviously, you know, things happened, but you learned from it. So I think that helped you become the man that you are today.

But you talked about a lot and like I said, I, I do have a few different questions, but I think the first one is You know, you talked about you know, just having an overall control of your financial picture and about like 80% is your behaviors and then the 20% is more of like the numbers, which I definitely I resonate with that and I, I definitely understand that and I kind of, I definitely agree with that.

It definitely is about your mindset, but what do you say to the folks who have the behaviors down pack, but they may not necessarily be seeing the. Financial progress that they desire. Okay. You talking about yourself, aj, I gotta call you out on it. Yes. Okay. What progress aren't you making?

Well, okay, so if we're talking about me specifically, I don't necessarily, I probably wouldn't wanna say that I'm not making financial progress, but it's definitely coming like very slow, which, you know, especially, you know, with the investments that I have, you know, especially in real estate, maybe it's just probably practicing a little more patience.

That's my guess, but maybe I would like to hear your take on it because I kind of would want to figure out what's like a realistic picture for, and I also probably have to define, you know, what I truly believe is financial success to me a little more. So kinda wanna hear your thoughts on that. Yep. So keep in mind the hardest thing is to get to zero net worth everything you own, minus everything you owe. Zero means you broke even. That's the hard one.

Getting from zero to a hundred is a little harder. I mean, a little easier than than that. And then getting from a hundred to a million is actually just time. Mm-hmm. Now, Let me ask you a question, aj, since you, you, you go in. By the way, I should have warned you. I'm very direct, so if you're gonna dig in, I'm gonna dig in with you. How many goals do you have right now? I'm not good at writing them down.

I probably have 'em all up here, so I don't know a specific number, but probably quite a few. Okay. That's part of the problem. Pick one goal and be good at it. When you get to that goal, get to the next one. See, what happens is when people say they're not making progress, what I find is they're often doing a shotgun approach. They're doing 10 things at once and hope one of 'em sticks. The reality check is do one, get good at it, then go to the next one.

The problem is, we're not wired that way. You know, we need to find that one. Two goals to aim at and. You should be able to recite those at gunpoint like, these are my absolute goals. This is what I'm working on this now, this is where I'm going. And then keep that until you get there. Or like it blows up. Now if it blows up, you learn from it and you move forward. But if I said, aj, what's your one goal? What do you wanna achieve in the next year and a half? What is it?

The next year and a half I want to be able to pay down. Definitely I talked, I talked to my wife about this, but we definitely wanna chop away at our debt for sure. So we've talked about that. If you ask me a year and a half, that's definitely something I've talked about. Cool. What are you willing to sell or do to, to do that? Let's see. I don't know.

Pretty much, I mean, whatever it takes obviously you'd have to look at my full financial picture, but I did recently just buy more real estate doing a house hack in particular. So I've done that to mm-hmm. Offset my monthly mortgage payment. I am in a nicer home, but, you know, it's still a sacrifice because I'm sharing walls with someone else. They're in the basement, but that's something I'm actively doing. But I'm always looking for ways to improve, right?

So if there's anything else I can do I'm looking for ways to, you know, to kind of answer your question. Like do whatever it takes in order to reach that goal. So, so remember getting outta debt is not something you're gonna do with investing. Paying down that debt is an investment. So if I pay off a credit card, I get a 20% tax free, risk free return. Not gonna beat that in any investment, right? That's a mindset shift. And the question becomes, what are you willing to do it?

So have you locked your credit cards yet? Have I What? Locked your credit cards. So you can't use them? No. Right? That's your first step. Mm-hmm. So this is where I talk about that. Behaviors and mindset. Mm-hmm. If you wanna get outta debt, you have to make debt. Not a choice. If you lock your credit card so you can't use them, guess what you're gonna do better.

Cuz here's the thing, if you're trying to pay off your debt and you're still taking out more debt, you're filling a bucket with a hole in it. Right. Lock your credit cards first. Then set a goal and say, Hey, this is how much I'm gonna pay every month towards the debt. If you say, I'm gonna pay off the debt with what's left over at the end of the month, you're gonna pay nothing. Right? But you have to start with locking the credit cards. They go, well, but then how do I pay my bills? Guess what?

Get on our budget and pay 'em. Right? Go to prepay debit cards. Go to a different way. And what happens is all of these things add up. If your number one goal is get outta debt in the next 18 months. Cool. That's where everything goes. Nothing else is a priority except getting outta debt. You know? That's the hard part is cuz we want more, but you have to get debt to get to the next step. Exactly. Yeah. And to that point go ahead. You're spot on when, go ahead. You're spot on.

When you talk about that, I can tell you Sure. When I was in when I just got outta college, I, I got an opportunity to work at the healthcare company and they moved me to Chicago. And let me just say, Chicago's an awesome city, alright? It's not the best when you don't have money like that. So I was spending just about everything going out each weekend. And I'd wake up, you know, in the morning and I'd look at my credit card statement, like, hold up, how'd I spend X amount?

And so even then, what I started to do was actually just take out cash mm-hmm. And leave my card at home. That cut down tremendously. You know, if you bring out cash, once the cash is gone, it's like, all right, hey, go. Gotta get outta here. Right? Type of deal. And so it helped tremendously. So I like what you're talking about, which is focusing in on one thing, but it brings up a question. I see there's a couple of questions in chat and a couple other questions too.

Are you in the Dave Ramsey boat or the Grant Cardone boat or somewhere in between when you, when it talks about, Getting outta debt versus buying investments that over a 10 year period could grow tremendously. Here's my thing. I'm, I'm a no debt person in general, but here's the thing. I don't care which plan you follow as long as you follow one. You can't follow Cardone and Ramsey at the same time, but people do this, they get advice on the internet and, and mixed recipes.

Yeah. I joke that you're making a brownie and brisket at the same time. You can't, if you're gonna go to the Cardone, 10 x, do it, but then don't get, try to get out of debt. He would smack you for that. Okay? You can't mix them. I happen to think, no, that's the way to go. I happen to think if you're gonna do real estate buying cash, but that's my philosophy. That doesn't mean it has to be yours. Whatever recipe you follow, you have to follow just one.

That's the challenge is we get like into like, oh, this one looks better. Ooh, this, you know, you're gonna get nothing done. Pick one and stick to it. True. True. And we got two questions in the chat. One is around the disability insurance. So disability insurance being important to child free couples was new for me. How can you leverage disability insurance as a child free couple? I think two things. One, keep in mind that 32.1% of childless people or child free will never be married.

Large percentage are single Now, they might have a couple but not legally married. If you're single and you get injured, injured, you're screwed. Social Security disability pays, you know, like a thousand dollars a year. It's, it's a little more than that. A thousand dollars a month. It's a little, a little more than that, but it, it's very little. So if you don't have disability insurance, you're outta luck. And people go, well, I'm young. I'm, I'm fi Yeah. And then you trip and fall.

Next thing you know, you can't work. Or, you know, you had a stroke. It's more of protecting your wealth, because look at it this way, you know, if you're in your thirties or forties and you're disabled and you can't work for the next. 25 years of your life, until you can go full Social security, you're not gonna have much of a life. That disability insurance has to be there, and if you're gonna run your own business, you need to get your own disability policy, which is gonna cost money.

The way to save money on that, by the way, is to find the national association of something that you can be a member of and get a group policy that tends to be cheaper. But, but look at it this way. If you don't have that disability insurance, can you live for the rest of your life without the income? The answer's yes. Cool, but most people are gonna say, hold on. That's a different argument. That's true. That's a hundred percent true.

And we got a a lot more coming in, but wanna kick it over to Dwayne? How you doing man? Welcome. Hey guys, how y'all doing? Hey Dr. Jay. How you doing? Good. I obviously did not get the memo on which shirt to wear today. No problem. But yeah. To you I was listening to you earlier, you were saying that I might mis misquote this, but you said 2.5% of Of people who don't have kids, you said they get taken care of, but people who do have kids, only 1.5 of them get taken care of in their older age.

Yep. Parents get less financial support than child free folks. Okay. So I'm kind of like a, I like statistics a little bit, but cuz I'm from the Caribbean and I'm ju interested to know if, do you have demographics? Is that like Americans or is that because where I'm from usually like, I feel as if. A hefty percent of the culture is by the time your parents is a certain age, they're, they're living with you. They're in the upstairs of the house, you know?

So I just wanted to know if you had I guess, demographics on that particular statistic. Yeah, I, I just put it in the chat. It's a US statistic from census. So here's the thing, you are right. Culture matters on this. So we were, I was having a great conversation with somebody from India and in their culture, you just live in the family compound and you know, kids and. But when you don't have kids, it completely destroys the whole system. Okay? Now that's a reality check in the us.

Unfortunately, even with cultural components, it's not great care that you're getting. And if you need money, you might be on your own. Gotcha. We, we in the US do a terrible job of taking care of our elderly folks and people go, oh, the boomers are gonna pass down money Bs because the boomers are gonna pay for their healthcare, is what they're gonna be doing. Gotcha. All right. Thank you. It's true. It's true. No. Shifting gears. Desmond, welcome. Hey man. What's up? How's it going? Super good.

Did you have any questions for our guy, Dr. J? Yeah, Dr. J first, thanks so much for, you know, what you shared. It was definitely super helpful and super insightful. I think I had, I did have one question. In terms of kind of supercharging and I think on the, kind of, on the Grant Cardone mindset and kind of, you know supercharging and, and, and, and really kind of 10 xing the wealth, right? And not even necessarily related to real estate but just, you know, kind of really going. Going forward.

Right. And progressing your wealth. Right. What strategies do you suggest, aside from kinda what we've talked, talked about today for child free folks, whether they be, you know, single or married whatever it might be, do you have any kind of ideas there on how to really, you know, even for younger folks, jump in right. Headfirst and, and go forward? Yeah, I think my take on it is I, I flip the script a little bit. So what I say to child free folks is first, figure out what life you wanna live.

Then figure out your finances, then figure out your taxes. What happens is in, in the 10 x mindset, your goal is more money, more numbers. But here's the thing, all the data says when you get to the big numbers, it doesn't make you happier. Now the scoreboard has run up. You're happy about that. But then what? And that's why I challenge people to say, okay, rather than investing, I'm just gonna pick on real estate cuz that's where we are. Rather than investing in real estate.

Real estate is an option for child free people, not a, not a requirement. And if you're gonna rent out a place, we can have a separate discussion on buying a REIT versus property. We can, we can discuss that. But here's the thing. What about investing in yourself instead? So Desmond, I'm gonna pick on you like I picked on AJ and I and I do it with love. Desmond, what's the thing you need to invest in yourself today on. The thing I need to invest myself and myself today on.

Well, not even related to wealth or real estate or anything is stop biting my nails, man. My girlfriend gets on me so much. That's one thing I need to invest on. So I've got the nail bite like fingernail polish on. So, you know, I'm trying to invest in myself. That's the first start, right? It's definitely got me a couple of times. That's, you know, wealth aside.

But in terms of, you know, maybe real estate or, you know, on that aspect, I'd say Putting the fear aside, right, and not being scared on, you know, reaching out to more landlords. Right. So I'm trying to grow in like the air, Airbnb and arbitrage. I've talked about it a little, a little bit. I've got one set up and it's going, it's. Going decently. It's, it's running though. It's, it's, it's up and running. And now I'm trying to, you know, 10 x that and move that forward.

And I want to not be, you know, hesitant and not get too comfortable or get too stagnant in just having the one. Right. So maybe that's one way I could kind of challenge myself or at least invest in, you know, something I've got going on now. And that's where I would argue what you just told me was what you need to invest in is building your own confidence. Mm-hmm. Lowering your stress cuz by meals and stress go together. Now the question is then who can help you?

And there, you know, there's a variety of people who can help you on that. But here's the thing, investing in that today will have a better outcome 10 years from now than investing in another property. Yeah. The way I say it is everybody needs three people in their life. They need a, a therapist to look back, a spiritual person to look up and a coach to look forward. And at different points in your life, you need different ones of those or combos of it.

And whichever one of those three you like working with, you need the other one. Because you know, if you love working on the therapy side, you need a coach. You love one of the coach, you need a therapy, you know, whatever it is. But you could work on your mindset, your life, your approach. And the result then would be you have no fear to reach out to landlords or others. You'd have embraced it.

Yeah. If you, if you, if you treat, you know, we medical if rather than treating the symptoms, we treat the disease nail bitings a symptom. The disease is stress, confidence. Okay. So you ask me how you 10 x it, fix that first. The rest will be easy. I'm trying. It's tough. I'm trying, but No, I hear you though. Thank you. Well, hold on, Desmond. You're trying, but who's helping you? My girlfriend's been helping me. She, she's gonna girlfriend doesn't help back in my hand. All right.

Here, here's the, here's the answer. The way we say in coaching is you cannot coach or be coached by anyone you've seen naked or they've seen you naked. So no family, no girlfriends, no. Cause you know, you hear it differently. That's funny. Okay, I hear you. I hear you. Okay. Yeah. When you, when you get into these mastermind groups, they're great. The hard part is then you don't get the personal, you know, kick in the butt you may need.

That's why I talk about that mindset around money is so much more important. It's like building a house with a crappy foundation if you don't get your mind mindset right. Yeah, for sure. True, true. Thank you. A hundred percent true. No, and what you said actually kind of brings you back when you talk about like learning skills and kind of building that piece. Mark Kean said it best. He said, Hey, if you can learn how to sell, you'll always have a job. And I took that to heart years ago.

And so like one of my first jobs was Cutco sales. Like not door to door knife sales. Right. And I did that so I can get into the corporations and things of that nature down the road. And now that's a skill I have forever. Like they say, Hey, cold call. It's like, dude, I can do that all day. Right? It's fine. But back then it wasn't fine. Right? But you learn that skill and it kind of carries with you for. Forever. We have another question in the chat.

So, and this is something I do by the way, so take it easy on me, Dr. No, I'm good. But so you would not suggest using credit cards and then paying it off at the end of the month to get the points. Alright, so, so here, lemme talk about the points game for a second. Two different parts. If you're in debt, you don't play the points game, you're paying for the damn points. That being said, I, you know, my wife and I, she flew to China free, you know, on points and I've played the game.

Here's how I do it. I pay off my credit cards every week. Cuz here's the thing, if you're paying it off every week, you'll see what you spent. Wait till the end of the month. That's when you get in trouble. Now, by the way, there's a couple of credit card companies that won't let you pay every week. That annoys me, but I always have a zero balance. Yeah, fine. But then don't pay the annual fees for the points either cuz you're buying the points again.

You know, you see all these travel hacking, all that, and you do the math. And the question I want you to get to is the return on hassle, is the return there? I don't know. That's kind of the, the balance there. I'm okay. Here's the thing, the, the analogy I make is, so I always struggle with my weight just is if I buy a bag of Doritos, I'm down in the bag of Doritos. So guess what? I don't buy the bag of Doritos. If you have trouble with debt, you don't use credit cards.

Once you got a good handle on it, you can pay it off every week, fine. Here's the thing, if you're gonna do that, if you're gonna go down that path, I actually prefer you set a budget, put it on a prepaid debit card, and then like put it on Amazon. Amazon's my bad habit, like I don't I just order way too much in Amazon and I'm in the middle of nowhere Mississippi, so it takes a couple of days to get the packages and I'll some show up and I have no clue what's in it. That's a bad sign.

But you can put a prepaid debit card on Amazon. And just like the Chicago example, when you run outta money, you're done buying credit card keeps running up. I get people, well, I bought my toilet paper on Amazon. It's all groceries. No it's not. You bought a whole bunch of other crap that you don't need. It's kinda like the people that say, oh, I bought it at Costco, but you also bought a kayak there. Okay. Costco is not groceries. If you bought a kayak. No, that's fair.

And that is how many you were laughing cause I hit you a little too hard on that one. The Amazon piece. I mean, I'm looking at two boxes over here that need to return. So, Hey, the Amazon piece is definitely, it's definitely me. But, but no any, any other questions for Dr. J from the chat and or from anybody that's on live? It sounded like he had to get a little something off his chest with that one.

You know what I, I've realized a long time ago that money, the, the way you can make money accessible to people is humor, humility, and vulnerability. If you can be like, Hey, I screw up too, and here's what I've learned, it makes it there. You get too preachy on it. People start turning out. For sure. I agree with you a hundred percent. So I got, especially when it comes to the credit card stuff, like really, I don't, I don't play around with that too much.

And when I said debt earlier I was more so speaking in terms of student loan debt the credit cards, I use them like cash. I know you said you pay them off weekly. Funny thing, I, I actually pay them off daily. So like, as soon as I spend them, I have a spreadsheet and I literally go and pay it like it's cash. So I spend $7 at. The grocery store grabbing like, you know, some vegetables or something, I boom, go to the spreadsheet. I'm, I'm literally paying that off cash.

So but I definitely agree with you. So the credit stuff is definitely can get you with the interest rates and everything. It can get you in a lot of trouble. On the student loans. And keep in mind for anyone watching this swear in July of 2023, it could have changed like tomorrow. AJ the answer for you, if you haven't gotten in there, you need to get enrolled in the REPAY program with the new SAVE program.

Okay. The new program, the way that program works is it stops interest from growing on your student loans, which is just like awesome. And right now it's got a phase, but. In the end, your undergrad loans will be 5% of your discretionary income. Your graduates will be up to 10, but what you can do then is play some games. This is when you leverage like your four, your traditional 401k to put money away, lowers down your income.

It'll lower down your income payment and depending on how much student loan you have, it's, it's forgiven in 20, 25 years. Downside is that comes with a tax bill at the end, but the way I'm looking at it now is if you're in that save program, That's taken care of. Now you, you've just agreed to pay it off for 20 years, but the interest isn't growing. So if you change your mind later, you can be like, yeah, I just sold this house. I made a whole bunch of money.

Lemme just get rid of this loan and get rid of it. But this new save program, gotta get enrolled in that. How do you where do you go to for that? Is that that website? That's pretty good. Hold on. I, I'll get you the link as we're talking. So what, The, they haven't put out the full details, but they're like, Hey, if you get in a repay program, we'll get you in the save one in a second. No. How come? That's pretty incredible. So you have to, you know, it's a weird math equation.

They take percentage of. Discretionary income, all that fun stuff. How many people in the family? But the bottom line is because the interest stops get in the program. And even if you gotta pay a higher payment, cause you got a high income, the interest has stopped. Yeah. That interest is a killer. True. That with student loans being six, 7% interest, that's gonna double every 10 years-ish. Dr. J we have two more questions in the chat for you. And then we will wrap it up.

But the first question is Dr. J I am totally at the at the point where I know that no job can really make me rich, but I am also trying to do as many things possible, hoping the door stays open to reach my 10 year goal. How do you advise making money without taking loans? If you don't have a tech product to sell family inheritance real estate look like the easy way out, which is to take bank loans. Yeah. So the first thing is you gotta get real on how much money you really need.

That's one of those kind of like, when people say, rich or I need money, I go, uhhuh to what and what are you willing to do for it? Because that's the, that's the second part of the question. You say, Hey, I don't have tech, blah, blah, blah. Well then learn. So give you an example of this. In my local community, they launched a bootcamp for adults over 21 to become coders in, I think it's like whatever, six, eight weeks, something like that.

Completely paid for by the government free certification to become a coder bootcamp. You say, well, I don't have tech. You can go learn. That's where I'm arguing about investing in yourself. Time, effort, whatever you need to do to do that. The question is, do you need to skill up to do that? Yeah. So people go to real estate cause they say, well, I understand real estate. Well, the thing about real estate to keep in mind is that the debt from real estate, you're taking on more risk.

Just, you just are, and as long as real estate keeps going up, you're, you're okay. I mean, I'm good with that. But here's the thing, it doesn't always go up and some weird stuff might happen in the area you're serving. All of a sudden you're in a hot place and then the local, whatever, Amazon moves out of there. I'm just gonna keep picking on Amazon and all of a sudden, ho home values plummet or, you know, I, I lived in the Northeast and we had some areas that got hit by storms bad enough.

The insurance company like, yep, I'll replace the house once, but I'll never replace it again. What did that just do to the home value? Cratered It. So those things happen without your control. When you take out the loans for real estate, you're passing on some of the risks to the, to the bank, but you're also taking on you. That's the hard part, is putting a number around that risk. It's almost impossible. So the question is, if you want in 10 year goals, okay, what do I need to learn?

What do I need to grow so that I can do that? Start a business, start a job, whatever it is. What my recommendation to people is go find somebody you wanna be. Ask them how they got there and ask 'em if they would do it again. Don't be surprised when they tell you no. Like if you ask, if you ask a medical doctor, Hey, would you do it again?

They'll say no. They would go be like a PA and make just almost as much money with half the schooling, you know, and half the, and they'll have Mel, no malpractice or any of that. Go find that person and make them your mentor. Learn how to do it. Go, you know, go do the, go, do the, the, the stuff you don't wanna do. Go make 'em the coffee forever and, and learn how to do it and keep going. That's the hard part is, you know, getting past these roadblocks.

Cuz what you, what you got in the, in the, the chat is you said, Hey, I don't have tech, I don't have family enters. You can't change the family inheritance. But, but I don't have tech. Okay, well let's learn. You wanna go sell a tech product? Go ahead. You wanna go sell downloads? You wanna be an influencer? I don't care. Learn. And then be the best at it. That's powerful. That's powerful. And that's the key, literally. There's a book called so Good They Can't Ignore You. Right?

And it's all about what you just said. Being the best at whatever occupation you're doing to the point where you know you're in that top 20% and you're able to really kind of make that high income. Let, let me give you one example. I know we're gonna please mess up time, but one of my favorite, so I was selling for a while, I had a maple syrup farm. Why? Because I just was. My midlife crisis, so selling firewood.

This guy comes pick up firewood, and I look at his truck, he's got a welding truck, and I was talking to him like, what do you do? What he does is he just goes site to site and welds, dumpsters, doesn't have to be pretty, just has to be watertight, but he just goes site to site. Doing that, he, he explained to me he cannot find enough people to do the job. He's out there busting his butt. He's making 200 grand a year welding dumpsters. Why? Because nobody wants to do it.

It's that old, dirty job routine, but he just goes place to place in place. You can learn that skill, you can do that. And by the way, he's trying to find employees to help, you know? Then he can, you know, essentially franchise it out. But brilliant. Find something nobody wants to do, be the best at it. He welds, dumpsters and makes huge money. You never would've thought of that, but every time you walk around, you're gonna see a dumpster. Now it's got a hole. He's the one fixing it.

It's true, it's true. And more and more we're moving into all this brain work. So like anything you can do physically, like plumber, electrician, heck my landscaper, he, he cuts. So, and Jay, I don't think we talked about this at the top, but I own a management company that manages about 20 short term rentals around metro Atlanta. And the landscaper that cuts all these, makes multiple six figures each year. Now it's a lot. It's crazy.

But he's, he's running around all the time, but he's doing it. He's definitely doing it. If you're willing to work hard, you can make money. Now, I'm not saying it's easy, not at all the, the difference between success and failure, and this is kind of cliche, but go with it, is if you fail, get back up and do it again. And the faster you get up determines your success, make mistakes, learn from 'em, pay the stupid tax move forward. So I only have one skill. My skill is in learning.

Now I happen to be able to help people learn. You know, learn myself. I can learn just about anything. That means if the environment changes, you know, AI takes over. Okay, I'll learn something else. Do something else. On average, people in this room will have about seven significant career changes in their life. The one thing that'll help you through all seven, learn how to learn. Learn how you learn. Learn. Learn how to get up and keep go going. Dr. Jay, that's a word, man.

That's a word that we're gonna, we're gonna end this on, and I just wanna ask how can people get in contact with you for coaching to get your books and really to learn more about Child Free Wealth? Yep. So I'm boring. Child free wealth.com. Instagram Child Free Wealth. We've also got the Child Free Wealth podcast. Happy to help you.

If you have questions, you can always send me an email and, I, I, I just though I live by the Zig Ziglar of you can have everything, every, everything in life you want and just help enough other people get what they want. I just like, all right, lemme go help a whole lot of people. And you know what? It'll come around, so don't be afraid to reach out. Yeah, no. Thank you so much for spending your evening with us.

We truly appreciate it, and we look forward to hearing more about this child free wealth. And I'll definitely be checking out the podcast as well as the book here. Very soon. Thanks Dr. Jake. Thanks for having me. Thank you.