Your Generosity Purpose & The Eternal Economy w/Derrick Kinney

We've done one other episode about generosity. You're going to get into that, I know, but it is so important and fundamental to both of us. I would say core value or secondary core value for both of us, and we don't talk about it enough, yeah, either on this podcast or even just in a larger setting and within the financial world. So I'm so pleased to have Derek here to give us his perspective and share how we all can be aimed at this a bit more in

the things that we're already doing with the finances. Absolutely, But first, this episode is brought to you by a public service announcement from your Thermostat. Your Thermostat wants you to know that not much unlike yourself, she is doing her best. It's a hundred degrees outside and you want your thousand square feet of storage to feel like the penguin exhibit at the zoo. Come on, you can see

how unnatural that is. She understands you are warm, but she wants you to understand that there are still several months left of summer, and good luck getting an h VAC professional out here this time of year if the A C unit blows, So be kind to your thermostat. And if you need a few ideas for how to do that, you can pick up our free Modern Frugal Living e book at Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash e book. There over two hundred ways to save money,

including many for your electric bill. That's Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash e book. Love that kind to you. She is assassin, She's going to tell us how to take care of her though. So like Jill said, we do have another episode on generosity if you want to cue that up for later. That is episode one thirty

six Intentional Generosity. And then we also have a few other interviews that are favorites that you might like, So episode two hundred How to Get Stacked with Joe Saulcihi and Emily Guy Burkin and episode one our Best Money

Hacks with Lisa Rowan. So this episode is definitely near and dear to Jill and my heart because generosity is super important to us and a big reason why we try to control our spending and lower our expenses so that we have more time and money to be able to give and serve in the places that are important to us. And Derek just did a really great job of how we can almost use generosity not just to

serve others, but to serve ourselves, which is great. And so he believes like money is not bad and good people should have more of it, and so he's the CEO of the Good Money Framework and host of the Good Money Podcast. He's got a new book out talking all about this stuff, and so without further ado, let's get into it. Derek, Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. We are so happy to have you here. Well, Jen

and Jill, thank you for having me. I know that you take really good care of your audience, and to put me in front of them means a lot. So I'm honored to be with you today. Thank you for that. Thank you. That's a nice intro. I think that's a new one for us. We're so thrilled to have you here, and certainly to hear the perspective of someone who comes from financial knowledge being able to talk to regular people about finances and your whole aim and goal with it

is really amazing. So we're excited to bring your message to our audience. Thank you. I appreciate that. So to kick it off, Derek, I am curious to hear about this concept of generosity purpose that you talk about and how it can relate to us making more money. Yeah, let me tell you a story. So a gentleman named Dave came into my office a couple of years back, and I could tell by his body language something was wrong.

And he began to tell me about the business he had started, but he no longer felt like he was motivated to go into the office. He enjoyed making money, but he began to wonder is there more to just making money in his life? And he built the business with his kids. I mean, it was a very successful business, and for some reason, the words just shot out of my mouth, is there a cause that you care about?

And I imagined Dave in the moment because he his eyes were biggest saucers, and he just was perplexed by the question, and I said, is there something that you really care about? And he began to tell me a story that when he and his family went overseas, they went to a village and the guide that was with them talked about how this village needed a schoolhouse built and the lack of education was holding back this entire area.

And he remembered exchanging a glance with his wife back and forth as if to say, wouldn't it be cool to fund that school. Now they got back to the States, life got busy, the business family, et cetera. But my question brought that back to him, and I said, what if you did this for the next six months day, you set a sales goal and you took half of that increase and used that to fund the school. Well, he pondered that a bed and we exchanged some more small talk and he left the office. He comes back

in three months later, noticeably different. He looks younger, he looks invigorated, he looks excited about his job. And I said, Dave, the difference between you now and three months ago is striking. What happened? He said there? At first I was skeptical about what you said about this whole generosity purpose as you call it, setting the goal to make more money to give more money. But I said, I didn't have

anything to lose. So he called each of his clients and let them know going forward, the company's generosity purpose was to take a small portion of their profits and help fund this school. Clients got excited. He got to reinvigorate it to generate more business, and he said, we're now making more money and we're actually giving more, but

we're still making more. And the point of all that was is it taught me a lesson that if you're a business owner right now and you feel like your product or service has been commoditized, that people can buy it from anybody. When people see you as a generous person, as a giver, they have more trust in you, they like you more, and they're often willing to pay you more money to buy your product. Concern us. But for

those people listening to you aren't a business owner. If you just want to be remotivated to go make more money and use it for good. Pick out a cause that you care about, maybe it's an injustice in the world. Are wrong? You want to write something you might have seen as a child growing up, but you felt like,

do I have enough money to make a difference. I want to give you permission to re engage that internal conversation and use the cause that's important to you to go make more money and not just to build up your bank account, but to use some of it to really make an impact in the world. That's awesome. I I feel like sometimes when we are trying to talk about making more money in our jobs, and and so

often we don't want to get greedy. We don't want to be those people that are like evil with money, and we don't often think about how much more generous you can be and how much more you can fuel the passions that you love by making more in what

you do for forty hours a week. And so I love that you've like nailed this down to like and you've named it the generosity purpose well, and it's so important because if you think about a struggle that I had, and that was many years ago, I really wrestled with giving money because the concept of my mind was if I give money, that's taking my hard earned dollars and I give it to an organization, that means I lose

and they win. It was a lose win situation. Now, I didn't feel bad about it, because I enjoyed giving money to the cause, but I was still sacrificing giving

something up for them to gain something. And what I wanted to do was just appeal to people's almost selfish nature of look, what if we could reverse that and say, pick out a cause you care about and use that to make more money, and then you're giving more money, which when your customers and clients see that, even your community sees that, they want to do more business with you. So it's always this now perpetual way to keep making more money and doing more good. So there's really no

limit to it. It's just a matter of how you think about it and getting over the hurdle of how people feel about me, or what will they say when I propose my generosity purpose to them and what research tells us. I'll give you a quick example. One of the ladies I quote in my book that her name is Bibokalandro and she does a lot in terms of speaking to companies about giving, and she told me a

story about Derek. When you watch a commercial and it involves giving, maybe it's saved the whales, help clean up the ocean. Let's let's stop hunger. It causes this reaction in your brain that's similar to looking into the eyes of the person you love now. I mean, that is so cool to think about that our brains respond to

giving in such a favorable way. So what what IF taught me was that if you're thinking about a new way, especially post COVID, to launch your business or to think about your money, attaching a cause could be one of the most powerful decisions you ever make. Mm hmm. It sounds like you are a big help to Dave. This this Dave over here who represents a lot of other days, not his real name name, but at that it's a true story. Yes, that's amazing, Derek, What do you think

it is about? What do you think is so powerful about connecting money with purpose? Why do you think that propels us so much more than anything else? You know, when you think about like one of your favorite movies, you know, one of mine is a movie called Brave Heart. There's a lot of movies out there, but it's it's sort of this movie where a character at the end of his life reflects back on I wish I would have had more meaning and fulfillment while I was living,

not as I was preparing to die. Okay, So this whole concept that I think the culture teaches us is, you know, live your life, and when you die, that's when your legacy occurs. That's when any money you've saved up that you want to give to a cause or

your family takes place. You know, what I want to do is let short circuit that and say, how would you feel if every single day when your head hit the pillow at night, that you were paid when you were worth, that you added maximum value to all those around you, be your customers or your trusted relationships, family, friends,

et cetera, and you felt fulfilled. You know, you think about like males, those hierarchy of needs starts off with the basics of you know, paraphrase in here pork and beans, rice, and we get to the stake and then we get to the ultimate fulfillment. And I think people in their mind have been taught where they've they've watched this example growing up that you've got to pay your dues. You know, there's the haves and the have nots, and our family or the have nots, and if we have more money,

then we could do more in the world. And there's this scarcity mentality and it's real and people have seen it and they lived their life into it. But it really bothers me at a deep level. And it's just not that people may be held back by what someone told them that they're bad with money. Because you made a really bad decision with money, it shows and you're really bad. You'll never get paid more than what you're making right now. All of these are beliefs that we

take on and I really wanted to dispel those. Take a bigger racer on their white board of their brain, and let's begin to recraft this story about how can I listening right now have fulfillment and meaning. And what I find is, you know, I like money, and money is like a game to me. And I think a lot of people, if they're honest, like money as well. But it's sort of in that forbidden fruit category of I don't talk about sex, religion, politics. Now we're gonna

put money over there as well. That kind of hang out. And if we can begin to have a dialogue about money and the good it can do, I think it's a very empowering conversation for every family in America right now. I appreciate the permission that you're giving here, Derek, with connecting greater purpose to what you do. I come from a social work background, and so throughout my career up to this point, many people will say how amazing that must be to have such fulfillment and purpose and the

work that you do. And there was something just I never liked how that sat. I mean, I'm grateful in some ways, they're like acknowledging and it's it's a version of gratitude for what I've set my hands to, but it also lacked that recognition of what other people might be setting their hands to and the purpose behind that as well. That it's not just unless you're a teacher, a doctor, or social worker, then just forget about it. You don't give back to the world. And this kind

of opening up our mindset and perspective too. We could be setting our hands to anything and where we can find purpose in that, whether it's directly in the work or peripheral to the work. With the finances can afford for you, there's purpose in all of it. We're all needed. And so this this perspective shift, this mindset shift of do what you're doing, do what you're good at. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, but find purpose in it, find your why, connect to generosity and giving back and

and keep going. I think it's it's creating so much freedom and permission in this message. You know, I really like that because one thing that I found is that money flows where value goes. And if you're adding immense value to pupils lives, you can't help but attract more money. You know, if you can identify the pain points people have.

For example, if you're a mom or dad listening right now, when your son or daughter is struggling in school, there's a pain point, and if you can find a way to help them, just ease that pain out of them, and you can help walk alongside them. Well, now you're adding value and you've built up trust, which could lead to a good money conversation down the road because you added value to them first, and that often comes back around. But for people listening to may wonder how can I

grow my business? How can I make more money? It's all about adding and value. And I want to tell you a quick story about that because so I came into the office on a Saturday morning to catch up on some things, and I saw the voicemail like blinking, and I had to make a quick decision. Should I press the button and basically go down a different path I had have planned on, or just keep working and catch that message on Monday. But there was a voice inside me that said, Derek, you need to listen to

this message right now. I pressed the button, and to my surprise, I heard a woman's fear and anger coming through this phone and leaving me a message. He said, Derek, you have to call me back immediately. I bounced a check I wrote at the store, and they're going to take me to jail. Well, if you can imagine, I've never heard anybody say that before. So I quickly called her back and I said, first of all, tell me

about the check. She said, well, I forgot to move money from savings to checking when I wrote the check. I got the letter in the mail then on sufficient funds letter from the bank, and now I'm going to go to jail. I said, okay, first of all, all called Monday with you to the bank. Will make sure the money is taken care of, will take care of the bounced check. But why in the world are you thinking you're going to go to jail? So she begins, She begins to tell me a story that when she

was seven years old. Keep in mind, she's fifty five years old right now, she overheard her dad receive a phone call from the store owner that he had just bought some school supplies and so forth for her and her siblings, and he had accidentally bounced a check. And the owner said, because you bounced a check, I'm gonna send the cops to your house and have you arrested and hold off to jail. So this seven year old girl lived her entire life thinking, if you screw up,

you're gonna go to jail. Well, that moment gave me such insight into her because we had worked together for the past fifteen years. But many times is I would recommend invest when ideas to her, she would balk at it. She wouldn't do them because there was some hesitancy that I couldn't put my finger on. And most times and made quite a bit of money had she said yes.

And what she realized and I realized, was she had held a false belief for almost fifty years that held her back at her job, from making more money, from getting the race you wanted. And I suspect people listening right now, if they're honest, they might have heard someone say to them, hey, you're not good with money, or because of a mistake someone else made. If you make that same mistake, then you're doomed not to make any money. So I just want to tell people right now, let's

make the baggage you been lighter. You know, when you fly, they only allow a certain amount of weight on the airplane. Let's use that same approach with your money. Let's keep it light. Maybe what fits in a little a little pouch on your waist, and the other money passed has already passed. We need to let that go today. Oh my gosh, so much good stuff already. There is such

a everybody has some kind of baggage with money. And I think that that's such a great like shift to think like you can't take all the baggage with you, like, let's let go of some of it. And and I think one of the ways you do let go of some of it is like learning like more you know truth and reality about money. You have so many great things you talk about in your book, but something you talk about is kind of teaching your money to make more money? Can you kind of tell us how to

do that? Because I think it will help us even if we want to be more generous with what we have, like learning this might help us give us the freedom to do that. Yeah, So what I would say to that is I encourage people to live their life like they own it, not like they're renting it from someone else. Now, what do I mean by that? What that means is that so many people think they go to a job in the morning, they come home and night, and then they press repeat the next day. And that goes on

Monday through Friday. You you savor the weekends, and then the Sunday about four o'clock you're like, oh no, the process is going to start all over again. You know, what I encourage people to do is have a plan for their money. And better than that, in simple terms, think of yourself as the CEO of your money. You know, if you were the CEO of a money and I suspect several people are listening to this great podcast, to our CEOs, you have a plan for your money, a

plan for your people, a plan for your processes. There's always a plan you're working for, and so you can know before each dollar is earned where it's going to go. You're a lot more motivated to make more dollars because you feel in control of the money you make. And I know that people listening work really really hard for their money. Some people at a job they despise, they're simply doing it because they have to provide for their family, provide for themselves. And my heart goes out to all

of those people listening that are in that situation. But what I want to do is I want to give you some control. And the way to do that is to think about not only a cause you care about, but how can you earmark each dollar toward the biggest pain point that you have financially. Is it to pay down medical debt? Is it to pay off a student loan? Is it to save for retirement? Is it to help your niece or nephew go to one semester of community college?

I mean, whatever that is. Begin to identify that, write that down on a sticky note, and that becomes a sole purpose for you of how can I direct dollars to an area that will help impact my life and the people's lives around you? What I don't want to do is I don't want people's lives to be on an autopilot and they suddenly wake up at age sixty sixty five and wonder what the heck happened. I mean, whatever age you're at right now, I just believe we're

cold at this moment. We happen to be born at this moment in time to have the greatest impact on other people. You know, we're simply big potential extractors. That's how I think of myself as a dad, is I look at my four kids and my wife, and we have a family meeting every year to talk about our goals. We put some soft music in the background and we write down a business goal, of personal goal, of financial goal,

of spiritual goal, all those things. And then most importantly, we write down, when I achieve these goals, how will I feel? Because I want to attach an emotion to the action of achieving those goals. So my daughter might write down I will feel confident. My son may write down I will feel accomplished. My other daughter might right,

I will feel on top of the world. I mean, whatever that is that emotion that you can think about and really get down to your soul of how much I want to experience that can drive you to keep achieving those goals. And it all starts with telling each dollar that you make where it's going to go before

you make it. And what I find is people tend to make better financial decisions because they recognize, for example, if I'm gonna buy a twelve dollar T shirt and let's say somebody listening makes ten dollars an hour, oh my gosh, I've got to work an hour and a half just to buy that T shirt. Is it worth an hour and a half of my time to buy that shirt? If not, I'm not going to buy it.

So you begin to put the value how long it took you to earn the money versus the value of getting that item, and sometimes it can help you save money and make better financial decisions. Uh. This going back to mindset again. If there's We've got a few threads throughout our podcasts in the last four plus years, and certainly mindset is one of them. And it's so still refreshing to hear another person describing this in your own way,

in your own unique perspective. Derek of We've got to we've got to act like and take on the perspective of being the CEO of our of not just our finances, our entire lives, but certainly our finances, and if that were the case, how would that impact the decisions that we make. I also love this very tangible tip and tool of being able to sit down, whether individually or as a couple or as a family, to identify whole

person goals. Again, it's not just finances, it's all aspects of who we are that recognizes that we are thinking emotive beings. We don't just have thoughts, we don't just have actions, we don't just have emotions, we have all of them. And you're really providing something like a low hanging fruit for our audience to grab onto, something that we can do that is recognizing that piece and engaging all aspects of who we are to be able to get after some of these financial goals to help our

money make more money. It's fantastic. I really appreciate what you've highlighted here, and Derek, you're so excellent with illustrations and metaphor and story. And one of the other things that you talk about are these money levers, these three money levers that everyone needs to know about can you say more regarding that? Yeah, So here in Arleyton, Texas is one of my favorite roller coasters. It's called the Titan roller Coaster. It's got this steep incline and then

this huge drop. And as I did some more research, I realized the roller coasters, like other amusement park rides, really have levers that sort of operate them. And you wonder, you know, here's a young kid controlling this big, massive machinery. But it got me thinking how in our minds there's really just a few different levels that if we press them the right way, in the right order, we can get some pretty big results. And the first one is save more, Like well, I call, I'll just read them

off here. Save more, crush your debt, and earn more. And what happened was, this was back in two thousand nine, is I would track my net worth and I think of my net worth page like a report card for adults. If you know, we no longer lose the citizenship grades and the graded pe and lunch, which I tend to fail those as well. It's all about how are you

doing with your money? And it doesn't lie. It simply tells you here's how much I owe minus what I uh, what I own minus what I owe, and here's the number. It's very straightforward. And this one year, my net worth really jumped off the page and I tracked it back to three different things. One was, instead of just saving money, which is a great thing to do, you know, I think about saving like those medieval castles back in the day. They have a moat that was sort of helped protect

them from the marauders of the day. Anybody who was attacked had to sludge through the water around the castle to get to the castle. And so cash reserves are like that. They protect you, they've provide in case of emergencies. The problem, though, is so many people think that saving by itself is the key. And what I find is you need to be a savvy saver. And what that means is you want to have enough money, maybe six months worth of committed living expenses for those things that

may come up. The air conditioner goes out, you need to get the car fixed, a surprise bill. But then the other dollars let's still keep but fairly liquid. But let's invest those dollars in places where consumers are spending money. I called this the focus group principle, and that is I'll often ask my kids, hey, what are the products and services that you enjoy using most right now? And they'll say, and I love my shoes, or I love

this brand or my phone. And my guess is that if they like that brand a million plus other kids like the same brands as well, that's probably a good place that took dribble some money into. Because we know where consumers go, stocks tend to follow pretty closely. So my point there is, don't just sock it all into checking or savings, because you're gonna have money, but it's not gonna be working as hard for you as you work for it it. Now, the next thing is called

crushed your debt. And I want to tell you a quick story when I launched my podcast. And by the way, this is why I respect your podcast so much because you've got so many reviews, so many listeners. It takes a lot to build a successful podcast. So my hat goes off to both of you, ladies. And what I wanted to do was the World Series was coming to Arlington. This was about a year and a half ago and it was the first time to have a neutral site because of COVID regulations and so forth. So I bought

tickets for myself, my daughter, and her boyfriend. But then I realized, Okay, Derek, I need to make a goal with myself, and that is I need to get a certain number of listeners to my podcast and if I don't do that, I can't go to the World Series. And these tickets were not cheap. The stakes are high

for you, Derek, the stakes were super high. And what I realized was, you know, I don't want to get emotionally here, but there's moments in my life where when you have to put your back against the wall and you have to lean in and you have to make it happen. You find a way to make it happen. All the nervousness, all the worry, anything holding you back. It's sort of like if my son needed an emergency operation, that I would I would do everything possible to make

that happen. I mean, you know that is as as listeners and parents listening right now. And so that was my my have to And so the day before the World Series we hit our goal. I mean I was singularly focused for about two weeks. Game was on, We've got to make this thing happen, and so I would encourage people to take their debt as seriously as that. And there's a couple of ways to do this. One one of my favorite methods is called the capturing keep method.

So let's say that you have a commoditized expense. It's your homeowners insurance, automobile insurance. Here in Texas, we can choose our electricity provider. I mean, whatever expenses you you have that other companies provide almost the same one, but it's just a cost difference. Call them up and let them know, Look, I'm considering changing providers. Is there any type of a new customer discount or any kind of a discount you can give me to keep my business.

Nine of the time they always come back with, you know what, there is a way we found to save you bucks, fifty bucks a month, whatever it may be. Now, what most people do is they've taken the effort to get the savings, but they typically then redirected to something else they want and suddenly the new truck appears, the driveway, the new computer, the new phone. We've all done it, but now we want to keep the money and put it towards your number one financial pain point, which in

my case was at the time paying down my house. Okay, I had a good interest rate two point seven five. It was I fought hard for it, but I took that savings and without having to think about it every month, put that toward my mortgage payment. Ended up paying it off about eight years early, all because I didn't want to spend the money without me knowing it the decision.

Just like we talked about being the CEO of your dollars, the money automatically went to that pain point without me having to think about, Boy, do I buy something fun lat tonight with my wife or put it towards the goal that I had. And then the last one is earn more money. Many people listening right now are facing a job where they've got a fixed salary. But one thing the Great resignation has taught us is everybody is

a free agent. And that's how employers should really think about their team right now, because they're getting job offers all the time, in some cases ten twenty dollars more to jump ship. The caution I would give your listeners, though, is be very careful about taking the cash and forgetting the culture. You know, think about what you like about your job, and if you like being there, if you like your boss, your team, and I want to give you a strategy here, and that is, don't just bang

on your boss's door and demand the raise. You might get it because they realize how much it would take to replace you and so forth. You want to ask yourself three questions. How can I increase sales in my comp me right now? How can I reduce costs? And

how can I help grow the business. Whether you are the secretary, the administrative assistant, you're in sales, your mid level manager, you're the VP of the company, the bottom line is when you can add value to the company, value comes back to you in the form of making more money. And a quick story, I'll tell you about Debbie. So. Debbie came in the office several years ago and she was feeling frustrated. She had joined a startup firm, was excited and so forth. But a year and a half later,

she felt overlooked, underappreciated, and not listen to. She said, Derek, I really want to change jobs. But I told her, I said, before you do that, let's see if we can play a game here and try to find a way for you to make more money because she liked the culture where she was at. So she was an administrative assistant supporting the CEO of the company, and the CEO was the person who took care of all the sales for all the clients, and it felt very overwhelmed.

So we came up with a strategy to talk to the CEO and we said, look, why don't you take the bottom quarter of your clients and give them to Debbie. She would get licensed to be able to serve them. That would give you twenty five percent more capacity to help grow the business and it would let Debbie than have an opportunity to grow the relationships with these clients

and make more money. Her boss was so impressed with this, gave her a five thousand dollar raise just for the initiative, and she negotiated a percentage of increase whenever she got from those new clients. And then she went further to say, you know, there's only two sales people in the company, and she pitched the CEO on what if you empowered the entire company that if they refer a sales lead to the sales team the results in business, then you

give that employee who gave the referral a bonus. Well, suddenly, now the CEO had a sales force of about fifty people because they all had a vest in interest in being successful. So what that lesson is is you can bang on the bosses do or demand the raise because Mike Spensis have gone up and cost more to send my kids to private school. They don't really care. They don't care about your expenses. They care about the business

expenses and growing the business. And if you can tune into this favorite radio station w I I f M, which is what's in it for me? It's your boss's favorite radio station, and listen to it loudly, you can then appeal to what's going to help them make more money, and you're almost guaranteed to make more money and better yet feel more appreciated doing it. And Daddy, well done. Daddy. Mabbie was a rock star. I mean, we're collecting them all today and dad, you know here Daddie comes into

the office and she was down. You know, she was like, Derek, I want to be my resume. But what I find and it's proving itself out years later. People are jumping ship right now for jobs and they pay them double their salary percent more because people are wanting to get that talent, but they get there and they realize, Man, the culture here sucks. I don't even like working here now I'm grappling with I make more money, kind of

go back to my old job. So I would just assess where your feet all right, now, that's where the opportunity may be the biggest for you today. Yeah, we do love job hopping and we talk about it all the time. I love you calling it a free agent because that is a perfect way to look at it. But yeah, you do have to look at company culture and even benefits, and there's not It's not either or it's either I, you know, I stay and I don't get raises, or I leave and I get that percentage

raise that I'm looking for. There's always a third option, and it's always We're always trying to look for the third option when it comes to frugality too, because we feel like frugality is the true third option. And it's just like that with making money too. We always thinking, well, you can do this or I can do that, and those are my choices, but there's always a third, fourth, fifth option. Um, And I love how you you know, promote the creativity to try to find that third option.

It's not the most convenient, but it's not the most inconvenient. It's just another way you just have to think a little bit harder, for a little bit longer to get those creative juices flowing and think of maybe something that you don't think is possible. But you never know if it's possible unless you try it, unless you pitch it. And I just I love that, and I hope I think they're gonna be a ton of people that go back and listen to this episode twice because there's like

just so so so much good stuff in it. Well, I'll tell you a story to kind of piggyback on that. I mentioned the roller coaster a few minutes ago, and one of the desires I had was I wanted to be able to hold my hands up on the roller coast or the entire ride. So going up this big incline, there's about three seconds that was holding me back and just gripping me with fear. And know what I began to realize was and this is gonna sound a little bit more of it, but I want to just let

you through my thoughts. I began to realize, Okay, first of all, I'm buckled in really securely, and when you're leaning down, like I said, there's a moment you feel like you're gonna fall out. But I realized I'm buckled in. There's a harness, and I realized even if I did fall out, I would actually die pretty quickly, and so there wouldn't be a whole lot of issue there. But I realized the odds of me dying and slopping out

are so low it's worth the risk. And so what I did is I just recognized, Okay, in the next three seconds, when I go up this thing, I made the decision at the bottom and not at the top, because at the top is where the fear is the highest. At the bottom fear is the lowest. And I held my hands up. And at this point my son was there, his buddies were there, and I was like, I told him, okay,

I'm gonna keep my hands up. Now there's some accountability, and I don't want to be the weeny adult on the ride who who you know, who doesn't crush it like they say they're gonna do. And going down, I was like, oh my gosh. After three seconds and I held my hands up the rest of the ride. I held my hands up on almost all the roller coasters. That because I had to go into this ugly fear that I had to face. That sounds so mild, but it was three seconds of horror for me, and I

came out feeling so much better. And I say all that because there may be something holding you back right now. You know, many people may think, Derek, it would take a lot of courage for me to approach my boss about making more money. Well, here's what I would tell you. The guaranteed a way for you not to make more money is to keep doing exactly what you're doing right now, and so until the pain is great. The change does

not occur. Until the pain is great. The change does not occur until your back is against the wall and you're in a crisis moment, either for your family or your friends or a cause you care about. Let that drive you in the bottom line is this is a this is a conversation that you will never look bad it when you talk to your boss about Look, I love working here, I want to make more money, and I've come up with three strategies to help the business

make more money. Your boss will always take that meeting. You will never look bad by helping the business do better. And one thing I would just mention there may be people listening that they might be a teacher, a cop,

a firefighter, a pilot. You know, there's certain occupation classes where even if you're the best, if you're the teacher that every parent wants their kid to have, your the teacher of the year, you can't go to your principle's office, being on the door and say, look, I want more money. There's a pay range based on seniority, based on experience, all that kind of stuff. So what you're gonna have to look at is the side hustle. You mentioned that

third option. It's notmbly your third, fourth, or fifth option, And people ask how do I start a side hustle? You know what I would do is just ask yourself one question. What is the question most people ask you on a day to day basis to help them solve? Is that, boy, how can I manage students who aren't very good with their behavior? Or how can I open this spreadsheet quicker? Or how can I write an email or whatever whatever whatever may be. Start with where you're

adding value right now? Because that's your focus group. Those are people who know you, like you, trust you, who want to help you, and if you're adding value to them and they're telling you, that's the feedback. Boy, this really helped me. Now you have a business model you could charge for and grow it organically. So that's how I like to start side hustles as what problem and my soul being right now in people's lives. So if you're a teacher, a cop, of firefighter, you could change

jobs and make more money elsewhere. But my guess is you're in that job because your heart is there and your passion is there. And I know you're tired tonight from serving so many people. But if you want to make more money, if you if you don't make the change, you're not going to get any any change in your money.

You've got to make those changes right now. So, Derek, I just wanted to thank you so much for identifying those people on the peripheral or who find themselves in non traditional or traditional work environments and just the freedom and permission and mindset shift that is necessary to think outside the box, identify that third way, recognize that if we have these financial goals that we want to get after it is available to us if we can tap

into some community collaboration and our own creativity and finding purpose and allowing that to drive us. It's a beautiful thing that you've identified. And I just have gratitude for what you've spoken to our audience and for the one final question that we have for this main portion of our interview with you. You talk about an eternal economy and how we need to be investing in that. Can

you say more? Yeah. So one of the parts of my book, it's actually chapter thirty six, the very last chapter, and it talks about this whole concept of do I give money now versus waiting until I have more money to give later. And this is a very common analysis that economists make, and they talk about this time value

of money. So let's say you've got a thousand dollars and you say yourself, well, I could give a thousand dollars today, but if I wait for ten years and it grows by five ten percent a year, that might be ten thousand dollars. Think of the impact I could have then, Or maybe I should wait till I die to really bequest or give this money to these organizations. You know what I want to do is I want to flip that thinking upside down and say, the present value of money when it comes to giving to the

causes you care about, is always greater than the future value. Well, that makes no sense to mathematicians or economs. I want to tell you why. It's because of the return on impact that you can have. For example, and I let you just let you use both of you in a in a non charitable way. If you both waited ten years and say, you know what, we want to grow email list or I want to grow the business first,

then we'll launch a podcast. There'll be ten years worth of impact of people who need your work about frugality that missed out. I mean they would not have a better life because you wouldn't have launched this podcast. By the same token, if I decide not to give money to a cause I care about, let's say it's helping provide clean drinking water, well, then for ten years or whatever that time is, I would wait. There's people's lives who are going to miss out on clean water because

I didn't give right now. Now. Is there a way to balance both, Well, of course there is. But I want to tell people that may have thought up to this point, I've only got five dollars, I've got twenty hundred dollars. What can I do that five dollars can breathe life into somebody, It can express belief into someone, it can help extract the potential they've got to help change the world, and all of those things add up. So my point is, you think about the eternal economy.

Started giving now, making part of your practice that you have, and as you make more money, you're already in the house, but with the small and as the dollar amounts increase, it's automatically that groove in your brain that you've already carved out, just to keep doing more of it, and you'll find again, I'd like to go back to what's in it for me. You'll have that daily fulfillment that you're making an impact even if you're living a hand

amount right now. If you took five dollars and gave it in the time it took to give the five dollars, you are in control of that five dollars and you get to determine the good you can do with it. That's a powerful emotion to take on and say, boy, that felt really good. It would feel even better if that was twenty dollars or a hundred dollars or more. What can I now do to go make more money where I'm at, to experience more of that feeling and make more of that impact. I like that consideration of

return on investment and return on impact. So for wherever we find ourselves, whether we're really financially minded or generosity minded or others minded, there's room for us to find ourselves within this narrative and what's going to work for us? What's our why to connect to that to get at

some of these action steps towards these goals. Yeah, And I feel like we often talk a lot about like charity organizations and other you know, professional philanthropic things, But like Jill, I know you do this all the time. You just have like a people fund in your budget to like make an impact with people you see in front of you who have a need. And if you only have five twenty dollars a month, how much more impactful is it to use that on the people in

your community? And so you can feel even better about it because it's like, oh, my five dollars is going to get just like lost in a sea of donations. But you can have like just buying a coffee for somebody who looks like they're having a bad day, or or something like really meaningful like that. And all the while doing this, you're building this habit of generosity because what you do with little is what you will do

with a lot. And so we have to we can't just like wait until certain times like Okay, once I make this, then I will be generous. Like it's a habit that you have to build. And we talk about habits all the time. Building this habit of generosity is no different. I could not agree with you more. And what I want to do is I hope that this conversation puts this within reach of people to say, oh, I thought as a bad money belief, I didn't know I had that I had to have a lot of

money to make an impact. And I want to press the reset button. All successful press the reset button often. And let's join us here as we press that and think of a new way to think that look going forward, My past has passed, it's in the review. We're looking through the windshield, and how do we change our lives to be what we wanted to be me ultimately not to get too philosophical here. We all get one life on this earth, and if we want to make the impact,

we want start now. You know, small steps in the right direction are better than fast steps without a plane. And we want to make sure that we're on the right path and that this, I believe is the key to do it. Speaking of identifying something that we can do right now in the present, investing having impact. And we've talked about Dave and Debrah, but there's someone missing we need to talk about here. It's just missing from this conversation for sure. Bill the week. That's right, it's

time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Bills Buffalo Bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week. We we don't correct our mistakes on this podcast, Derek. Every week we invite a listener or a guest to share with us their bill, and we know you've got a good one. Can you share it with us? So actually,

if I can, I'm gonna share two bills. One I actually shared earlier, which was finding a way to pay my mortgage down quicker, and I called on that bill was able to capture those costs and then put it toward that particular bill, which saved me quite a bit of money. But I want to talk about a different bill and go down a different direction here. So a friend of mine named Bill very appropriately invited me to

a Dallas Cowboys game last season. And what he did was he parked at the very edge of the parking lot and we walked a long way into the game. Okay, it took quite a while, and I began thinking why did we park there? Well, then as we left the game and we walked to the car, we were literally out in one, two, three turns. We were already escaping

the parking lot. Madness. What it, Tommy, was, if you put in the time and the work on the front end, it makes the back end a whole lot easier because we often remember how the event ended then how it started. My wife and I went to a concert one time and it was this muddy field where they had this concert. It took us four hours to escape the parking lot. The concert was great, but there was always a stigma with it afterwards, like yeah, it was good, but that

parking issue really dampened it. When Bill parked at the edge of the parking lot. It gave the entire day just a bow to say, plan ahead, and you really reap the rewards on the back end. Got friends stories. It's amazing so much there, I mean we got we got double billed and that I liked that double bill. Yeah,

I liked that one. Well, if you all who are listening want to submit a bill, if your bill friend as a future thinker and it involves metaphors that can be translated into other parts of your life and become lifelong lessons, or you just you know, you've got a dollar bill. It doesn't matter, We'll take it all. Visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com, slash bill, leave us your bill, and now it's time for my wound poop. I always love to see the faces of our guests whenever we

do that. It's joy myself here. Who knows what net what comes next? Right right? I think this is a vulnerable, vulnerable part of the show where our podcast manager Goldie has given us a question to answer and we will all answer the same question, and it's what would you do if you had all the money you needed in the world, and so I liked the caveat of all the money you needed in the world. Um, and as our guest Derek, you can go first. Well, I mean, at first, it would feel good to have all the

money I needed. But how I'm wired is I think back in this moment two key decisions I've made. It's

always putting myself in a created dependency situation. And so what I would probably do is I would give a large portion of the money away to create enough driving me or a gap that would cause me to keep wanting to make more of it, just because even back when I was a kid, that's what drove me to kind of break out of this middle life middle middle you know, middlife thing that I had, and even growing the middle class, all those pieces were just things that

money wasn't motivated was a game for me, and knowing how to play by the rules and help other people make more of it, help me make more. So that that's what I would do with that. I love that answer. I have all the money in the world, but I'm going to give it all away so that I created problem so that I can solve that problem. Because I'm

still alive and I want to doose things. But if you're not like learning, you're not growing, and things that don't I mean this is also more things that are not growing are dead like so like yeah, I mean, it's just it's so wise. I mean, I hate to put words in your mouth, but to me, this lands at one of the core fundamental issues with the Fire movement.

I'm not trying to speak for you. This is just my take on it that when you get to that point of I have all that I need, this idea of now, I'm just going to sit back and relax. I know many choose to not do that, but it's for that very reason. We're still living, breathing creatures who need purpose and we're gonna need to identify something to

do with our time, energy, resource, attention. And so I think you're just identifying that, Like it doesn't matter if money is no object, that doesn't change the core of who you are and your own needs for growth and purpose. Yeah, Jill, how are you going to follow that one up? It's it's really similar. And I love this question because I was recently talking about this with somebody of seeing greater success, particularly financially in our lives with the things that both

myself and my husband has said our hands to. We've received some questions from folks of of well, what what will you do if, like you don't have to work, if money is no object? What would you do? And it has been a question in my mind of what what are my desires? So much of my life has been spent around working because I have to, because I have to pay the bills I have to and to realize I'm not quite there yet, but I'm on that

cusp where it's it's a valid question. I'm so grateful for that, and frugality is a lot of why I'm finding myself here. But similarly, I have to set my hands to something that I view as purposeful. I think it'd be really amazing to not have to do some of the things that you know might not be as enjoyable to me. But I know that I wouldn't be able to just sit around soaking up the sun and eating tasty treats. I would need to be helping others. I would need to be so I think it would

create for me freedom. I'd need to find some sort of purpose. It give me more time for my creative outlets. I'd probably garden a lot more, I'd probably go voting a lot more, But I would still need a regular structure and routine where I'm giving back to others. Of course, I would love the opportunity like take all of my friends and family on like an amazing vacation. But beyond that, I definitely need to be a value. I need to be solving problems. I need to be creative, I need

to be helping others. So I'm not certain all that much would change in my life. I think I like the way we live. I want to continue to live simply. It would just create more opportunity for growth and care of those around me. What about you, Jen, I love that um So similarly, I mean, I feel identically about the fire movement because I always want to be doing something. I am not happy unless I'm creating, And so I think, and this is maybe just fresh and this is this

is like a theoretical answer. Maybe, but we for the past six months have been like shopping for an investment property and hopefully by the time this comes out that everything is. I mean, we had to change our strategy several times because the in St. Petersburg, the housing market is just it's it's insane, like it's gone past crazy and chaotic, and it's almost like to the point where I think it's unjust how expensive things are here and like regular people like just cannot afford to rent or buy.

And so I think I would I would take money and try to solve the affordable housing problem that we have in Sant Petersburg, Florida. I think that would be my definition of enough. If I could, like had enough money to like beat out these like cash investors from around the country who are like buying up our city, I would like just buy all the places and like sell them at what people can afford and rent them

at what people can afford. So good, Derek, Thank you so much for joining us in this conversation, sharing your perspective, tangible tools, tips, things for us to latch onto and run with and find our own way in the midst of it. If people want to hear more from you, where can they get that? Well, you can go to actually good Money chapters dot com and we've set up a special promotion to download the first five chapters for free.

So good Money Chapters dot com for the book Good Money Revolution and Instagram is really the crowd favorite to Derek T. Kinney, and we posted daily videos on how people can make more money, do more good, and add more value to people's lives. And let me just say, Jen and Jill, I have really enjoyed this conversation. I can see why your listeners tune in every single week. Thanks for having me. It was an honor to be with you today. Thanks for being here and putting up

with all of our yelling. Thank you so much, stick around. It was great. I loved it. Thank you you see what a great what a great guy. Yeah, what a great interview, and so much. I love the interviews where we have so many takeaways, more to think about, new vernacular to be using, new focuses, processing prompts. You know me, I'm a social worker. I know. I just want to keep processing and reflecting and this was really helpful for that.

So I'm so grateful. Thanks Derek for coming on our show, and we hope all of you got something out of this interview as well. Thank you all so much for listening. And as many of you know, we do have a private community where we do monthly money challenges and offer accountability groups. More of that community, we want to congratulate

one of our members for a big win. This comes from Brittany and she shared that one of her real life friends just asked if she could help her start a budget and she posted a picture of the text message and it was so great. So congrats Brittany. One of the big things that we're proponents of is learn the stuff so that you can teach others in your community, because we're not going to be able to get to everyone. You know, we're one podcast and we're not for everyone,

not everyone's cup of tea. So if you can learn this stuff and then be honest and open and sharing what you're learning, what you're struggling with, that gives other people permission to learn and struggle to So thank you Brittany for being open and honest. You're inspiration to our community and also one of the leaders of our open

accountability groups. Britney is awesome. And if you all listening to us, want to check out our monthly challenge community had too Frequent Friends podcast dot com slash club to see what challenge we have upcoming for you all. It's so fun. Yes, all right, we'll see you guys next week. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni. So this airs after fourth of July. How do you feel about fireworks? I love them, Yeah, tell me about tell me about

fireworks for you. I like watching them. I think they're pretty. My favorite is the willow I call it the willow tree. Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. It's white and it's twinkly and it's ex bansive and then it fades away and it looks kind of like it blows in the wind. And that's what I like, you know what. Speaking of fireworks, my birthday was is always in August,

that's how birthdays work. This is my past birthday. Eric and I went to a really lovely charcouterie dinner and then walked by the water because we live in Florida now and this is just our backyard, and sat on the sea wall of Tampa Bay and this dolphin came and like visited me. Dolphins around here love to just kind of swim along the sea wall, which is so fun.

So my feet were literally dangling over because it is a lawless land and there are no fences and you can just sit on the edge of the sea wall and hope you don't fall in and that you can swim if you do so. I'm sitting on the edge, feet dangling. This dolphin comes by, swims underneath me, move, goes about ten ft down, turns around and comes back, kind of turning and looking. It's eyeball up at me, goes another ten feet down to my left, turns around

and comes back. I kid you not. It did that for about five to seven minutes, just back and forth and back and forth under my feet, like saying hello and happy birthday. Then the sun sets. That was stunning. Cotton candy sunsets around this place. Fireworks August twenty one. It was it's the summertime, but it's not the fourth of July August. Fireworks going on over the water, and I had to pay for none of that. Yeah, well you're welcome. Yeah fireworks, love it. Happy birthday,