Becoming Financially Optimistic #129

to our lives, obviously financial, but other areas as well. Yeah, man, I'm really looking forward to talking about optimism here because I myself have a pretty strong bent towards optimism. But before we get to that, I wanted to mention an article I just saw recently, and basically it said that Americans spend more on their lunch than folks in Britain do. I thought it was interesting that our lunches cost more

when we go out to eat. For some reason, lunchtime fare is more expensive here than it is across the Pond. I don't know exactly why that is. They gave a couple of reasons in that article for why they think that's the case. But what do you think about that? Like, why do we spend so much on lunch here in

this country? Yeah, man, really fascinating article. Further down in there, they were talking about how it's not because you know, like it's more expensive to make that lunch, to make that sandwich over in the UK, but basically it's just due to different market conditions, whether that be because we're

used to tipping here in the States. Specifically, they're comparing those sandwiches in New York versus in London, and I guess New Yorkers are just used to tipping more and so they kind of factor that into the cost for a sandwich. But really, man, one of the most fascinating things that stood out to me was the fact that oftentimes restaurants will sometimes charge more at lunch than they do at dinner, and that's because of that business lunch time rush, just like an airline can charge more for

business travelers. They're just not price conscious. But yeah, they're not price conscious. They know that no matter what, they're just gonna go ahead and get that lunch. And I'm just so happy that I'm not part of that crowd. I hate not having an option, right, like, if you know you have to go. But I guess if it's maybe on the company and somebody else is kind of footing the dime, I'm not going to be as concerned,

I guess, but maybe I would be. Who knows. Yeah, Well, I mean, I think we should treat our employer's money kind of as we do our own. But I think a lot of people don't have that mindset, and I think a lot of people do spend more money just because it's a company credit card or something like that. Right.

But the thing that it made me think reading that article was that whether you're a listener in Great Britain or whether you are a listener here in the United States, even if it's cheaper to get your lunch out in Britain, I would still say you should pack your lunch most of the time. If you can make it a habit to pack your lunch, bring it to work four out of five days a week. I pretty much do it five out of five. That there's the very rare occasion that I'll eat lunch out, but for the most part,

I'm eating lunch at my desk. That is a huge money saver. I don't even think if you're used to eating out for lunch, maybe you haven't even thought about it as kind of one of those places that you can cut back in your budget. But it's actually gonna have a substantial effect if you think about how much money you're actually spending every day. And one thing in particular, my friend Len he writes an article every year. In fact,

this year it's his eleventh edition of this. He analyzes the annual cost of ten popular brown bags sandwiches that you can take to work or pack for your kids. I love that he does that. He factors in the cost per serving, the change in price from from last year for the sandwiches and these ingredients, so it's kind of just a neat thing. Will post a link to it in the show notes. But basically, pack your lunch.

Even if prices have gone up on the price of peanut butter and jelly, that's not that big of a deal really, when you're considering cutting back from buying your lunch every single day or most days, yeah, or I think what might even be a better option, man, is leftovers. I think leftovers are so underrated. It's a way that you can waste less food, save money. It's just a couple of minutes in the microwave or that toast raven. You get yourself a hot, delicious meal that you can

relive all over again. I personally am a huge fan of leftovers. It's a good call, man, I like that. Yeah, more leftovers, more bringing your lunch, less eating out. There are multiple different ways to avoid that expensive lunch option. Like on Friday's, for instance, there is a food truck. They bring a different food truck to our work every single Friday, very tempting. Literally, I've never done it, and if I wanted to, I think at some point I will.

If it was a craft beard. Lunch trucks set your mouth, I wouldn't get any work done the rest of the day, that's for sure. But like in particular, there's this one running around town that's like a main lobster truck, and next time that comes, I'm gonna drop the eighteen dollars for a lobster roll. I'm gonna do it. Yeah, oh yeah, no,

eighteen dollars. Seriously, probably it's like legit, main, what's not going to be that much, dude, all right, whatever it is, I'm going to drop it on that because that sounds good to me. Lobster roll here in Atlanta. I'm gonna guess nine fifty what No way, if it's a jet Maine, lobster's gonna cost way more. Seriously, Yeah, man, I cannot afford to eat out for lunch. That is like the one time I'm going to do it. But I'll spend nine on a beer, but not on some lobster. I'm

actually not a huge fan of lobster. I would much rather have a crab. To me, crab tastes way better than lobster. Crabs a little sweeter, Yeah, sweet and so good. I think I prefer lobster though. All right, but let's get onto the beer that we're having on the show today, Matt. We're drinking Caramel Machiatto stout by Old bust Head Brewing Company. Yeah. This beer was donated to us by my in laws

while they're up in Virginia for a wedding. So thanks to them, and I'm looking forward to diving into how this beer tastes at the end of the show. Are right, buddy, me too, Now onto this subject at hand. Words, Yeah, we're discussing optimism. Sorry I jumped the gun there. Well, It's one of my favorite subjects. I think optimism is so beneficial to people and and most people have negative

money scripts floating around in their head. Their their pessimism hurts their current view of money and and also their future of financial well being. Well, how can we combat that? I think the answer is financial optimism. When we're pessimistic about the current state of money affairs in our life, it leads us to in action. It freezes us up, we find it hard to change things, we stay put. It ends up creating a cycle that secures pessimism for

the long term. So I think today on the show, we have to discuss this idea of optimism and how it can have massive ramifications on how we handle money

in our lives. Yeah, man, and I can't help but to think of investing as the perfect example, right, Like you might think we don't have hardly any money to invest, and so you don't You think it's not going to make any difference at all if you start investing now, But man, it does make a difference, right, Like those small amounts add up over time, and then even beyond that, it has a lot to do with just the discipline

of doing the deed. Right, like doing the dang thing and actually investing that money, no matter how small, that's gonna help move you forward. So you gotta look on the bright side of things and not be pessimistic about it. Completely agree, But aside from the financial implications, optimists overall tend to live longer lives than pessimists. Take that pessimist and you know, based on the way that you know you responded when you heard that sentence like that might

actually tell you which way you tend to lean. I'm sure pestimists are probably like, no, they don't, that's yes, I don't believe that, whereas optimists are like, oh yeah, I always thought that that makes sense. And so if we live a life a bit more optimistically, it will lead to a longer and healthier life for us. So it's not even just about doing better with our money. The implications are much much larger. Yeah, and we're gonna talk a lot about optimism as a whole today, but

but also particularly the financial effects of optimism. Well, basically, I think the more optimistic we can be about our finances, the less taboo there is around money. You're more likely to look for help, to ask for help, optimists tend to make progress. They're getting things done, They're not necessarily striving for perfection. I think sometimes pessimism can stem out of this need for perfection and you're never gonna reach

that status. Well, if I can't save ten in my four oh one, k, I'm not I'm not gonna save anything, And that's pessimism rearing a totally head. The optimist is able to say, you know what, I was able to get the ball rolling. I'm gonna take that as a win. I'm gonna put that as a check mark in the column of I'm getting my finances together. Statistically, there is a direct correlation of our level of optimism and then the health of our finances. I think it's fascinating and

this is all great news for the actual optimists. Your beaming right now, Yeah, but what if that's just not how you are wired. You might be asking yourself, like, how much control do I actually have over my optimism? Well, the answer is it's more than you think. Science shows that only about twenty of our optimism is biologically determined, is determined biogenetics. Seventy of it is up to us. So we actually have a lot of room to make

changes in our life. So even if you have some of those natural or tendencies, you still have a lot of control over the level of optimism in your life. Optimism, in our opinion, will will lead us to try more things, to be more daring and more than anything, optimism forces us to focus away from the things that we can't control. It's easy to kind of fixate on those things, the things that we don't have any say over, But optimism says, you know what, I'm not going to think about those things.

I'm gonna try to focus on the things that are actually in that locus of control that I can make changes to and have a positive effect on my life. Which makes me think obviously of Stephen Covey's book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, where he talks about you have your circles of concern, and then within that circle of concern, you have your circle or sphere of influence.

And the idea is that we are going to focus on the things that we have actual control over, that we can have influence over, and that we're not wasting our time and energy just spinning our tires trying to change the things that we can't control. You know, the trick is being able to identify the difference between the things that we're concerned about and the things that we have full control over. All right, Matt, we've got more

to say about optimism. We've got some physical ways that we want to discuss that you can actually start to implement optimism into your life. But first we need to kind of change the way on mind works in regards to optimism, and we'll get into that right after the break. All right, Joe, we are back for the break, and let's talk about our brains. Like you mentioned, we need to mentally change our approach to our finances by working

towards becoming more optimistic. If we are continually looking at things through the lens of what might just go wrong, then it'll have a negative effects on our ability to save, in our ability to invest for the future. So let's make sure we're taking steps to combats our mental roadblocks to financial optimism with these steps. Yeah, all right, let's

get into it. So, first things first, if you want to become more optimistic, and what we're saying here is that that's something we should strive for, the first step towards becoming more optimistic is assessing the current reality on the ground. So what do you tend towards if you're a person that's kind of apt to pessimism. We just talked about of your optimism. Pessimism level is basically predetermined based on your biology. If you know that about yourself, well,

knowing is key. If you see that as a struggle, well it's something that you can fight against, but you have to know that that's the case first and foremost before you can actually start to tackle the issue head on. So, Joe, that totally reminds me of an email that we received recently. He quoted G I Joe where he says that knowing is half the battle. Because that's totally a G I Joe quote, And I don't know if you remember that

from the early nineties. I don't. I totally played with G I Joe's but I do not never watch G I Joe. No, I think I think I did some, but I definitely don't remember that quote from my gosh. That was like it was at the end or the beginning, I can't remember, but it was sort of like the little moral lesson where the soldiers are like they're walking along and two kids are fighting on the basketball court and they talk about like what you should do instead,

and knowing is half the battle. You remember, maybe like ten years ago when the g I Joe re Dub videos came out. Those are pretty funny. That was really funny. But I mean I mentioned that because knowing is half the battle. Like knowing in this case is being aware.

And in our culture, a lot of times we're often so rewarded for just doing and going going going right, like to just do things without really thinking about them, and taking that time to pause and to think about why we're doing things and having that self awareness I think is a really important step. So I'm just gonna have to agree with you and say I think that's great advice. Well, and I think too, there is generally just kind of a pessimistic tone around us. In the

news and the things we read. There is often a chicken little the skuy is following sort of mentality. And not that there aren't issues, not that there aren't problems in the world that we live in, but when you step back and think about it and you read somebody like Stephen Pinker, and you see, wait a second, the world is actually overall getting a lot better, and human life is is flourishing, and for the most part, the the trajectory is is going in a solid direction despite

all the difficulties that we face. I mean, I think it's easy to become pessimistic if we're living in the daily news cycle and we we have to kind of step back and assess the reality on the ground, and I think that helps us become more optimist. Yeah, what's at the center of that is just to make sure that you're not dwelling on the negative. Right. So, for example, when your budget just doesn't look, you know, quite as clean as you hope to would at the end of

the month, don't beat yourself up about it. That can be maybe motivation instead to kick more. But next month, it can be hard to stay a beat when negative things happen. And we aren't saying just to deny reality, right, but having a plan to move forward when those unexpected expenses arise, especially mentally, that's just incredibly helpful. Yeah. Man.

For example, if you look at some stats on what a person needs to save for their kid to go to college one jillion dollars, it seems like that it totally, totally does. There's been some rumblings about this in our Facebook group, people have questions about how much money do I actually need to be saving for my kids college? And we've talked about that way back in the day. I'm sure we'll talk more about plans in the future.

But when you look at the stats and it's like, you need to save three thousand dollars for your kids college for each kid, by the way, right and right, and you've got four of them, so so basically you're screwed, and so we're your kids. Oh sweet daughter, have you ever thought about taking up plumbing because because plumbers are

going to rule the world. Yeah, that's a side note, but yeah, basically, yeah, when you look at those numbers, it'll make your eyes glaze over because it's basically an impossibility for ninety eight percent of us to fully fund

our kids college. But if you dwell on the negative, if you if you dwell on the fact that there's no way that we can fully fund college for our kids, there's no way you can fully fund college for four kids at that sort of rate, with those sort of projections, There's no way I can do that for three kids. And so the pessimistic take would be to say I'm not even get started like, there's no way, so I'm

not going to tackle the problem. The optimistic side would say, I'm pretty sure I can take a big chunk out of that. I'm pretty sure I can make progress and help my kid out in this endeavor, even though there is no silver bullet and I'm not going to solve

the problem completely. And that's just kind of a mental shift, or basically, you have to decide not to dwell on the negative when you see absurd things like that, you know in print, Yeah, there's a lot of room within that gray area, right, It's not either a, oh, they're totally not going to go to college or be I'm going to be able to fully fund their college and they are. There's a lot of room there in between for either state schools, for local community colleges, for scholarships.

And we just joked about this, but trade school like that's a real possibility for a lot of folks. There are a lot of amazing jobs out there where folks can learn a trade and make an incredible living by doing that. It makes me think too of kind of commercials that we're running years back for certain investment companies. I honestly don't even remember who but it was kind

of that what's your retirement number? And you would see these numbers from people you know that that this company was saying, you need one point seven million dollars to retire, and there are all these just immense numbers floating around and for a lot of people, that's gonna put the kai bosh on you even considering saving for retirement, Like that's probably pretty disheartening for a lot of folks. Yeah, it's like, oh, well, I'm never gonna get there, so

I shouldn't even start. And and so I think certainly things we've see in the media, things we see in marketing can kind of lead us to a pessimistic point of view. But what we have to do is we have to turn that out in its head and we have to say, you know what, that's ridiculous and or is something that I can do. It's just gonna look a little different. And on the note of staying positive, right and not dwelling on the negative, it's also important

that we learn from our mistakes. We're not defined by our past money mistakes. By letting those mistakes rule our financial life moving forward, that's just a recipe for failure. Optimists. Instead learn from those mistakes, and they tend to view those mistakes instead as fuel for you know, like that optimistic fire that will burn eternal. Yeah, completely, man. You can let a mistake ruin you, or you can let

a mistake drive you towards accomplishing bigger things. Another really important thing we need to consider as we attempt to become more optimistic and therefore boosting our chances of financial success is controlling the inputs that we allow into our lives. We ultimately create our own realities. In so many ways, our attitudes can determine the opportunities that we get or don't get, and it can also determine how we view

what happens to us. Do we have this like no pain, no gain mentality or are we daunted at every setback? And what are the things that we're letting influence our mood. If we spend a lot of time like we mentioned, watching the news, scouring social media, it's easy to become more pessimistic. It's easy to think that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, or we just don't have the things that we need, even though those things

aren't needs. But we saw him on social media and we feel like they are now, and we feel like our life is lacking. So much of the pessimism that we experience comes from comparison. So cutting back on those negative inputs in a major way can provide a really helpful boost to our optimism levels. And Matt, that actually reminds me of this book I reading My Girls at Night,

a Pete the Cat book. But this Pete the Cat Book is about Pete and these magic sunglasses, and Pete things that these magic sunglasses are are what's making his day better. The fact that you know, his friend gave me these sunglasses and it was like, okay, cool, now everything is better when I'm wearing these sunglasses. But then the sunglasses break and it takes somebody else telling Pete that it wasn't the sunglasses, man, it's the way he

looks at the World's his outlook. It's his attitude. And I feel a little lame given like a children's book refere here, But man, it's so true, like it's made this big impact that my girls and I talked about it a lot. But it's not the sunglasses. It's it's really it's your outlook on the world and what happens to you. You can choose to view it in a pessimistic way, or you can choose to view it in

an optimistic way. So, on this note of controlling our inputs, we've had awesome feedback from dozens of listeners via email, VR Facebook group about really cool ways that they have been able to take control of their finances and make a change. And so I feel like one thing that we can do is provide positive input for everyone out there. And so, Matt, let's here a couple of listeners success stories really quick. How do you feel about that? Yeah? Man? We got an email from Maggie and she is who

sent us old Toffy for last week's episode. We talked about that beer and she said that I have an almost two year old and I worked full time for more than a year after he was born. It was nuts listening to how the money really helped me to see the lights and convince myself that working part time and taking a huge pay cut was actually possible. I now worked ten to five nine months the year and it's been great. I love my extra time with my son.

Instead of leaving the house at five am before he even wakes up, we now go on early morning nature walks, we eat breakfast together, and we have a standing date to watch the trash and recycling get picked up on Thursdays. It's so awesome. We are living the life. Without how the money, I'd still be working forty hours a week year round, would be significantly less happy and would probably be in worse financial shape despite making more money. Man, Joel,

what's an incredible story. I'm so glad that Maggie included that when she emailed us, And a big reason for that is because her optimism, her ideal life does not look like maybe what it would to a lot of other people. Write like a standing date to watch the trash truck pull up. That's so little boy stuff, which gets me excited about our little boys growing up. Exactly exactly like I hear that. I know the sort of

feeling that she's referring to. And it's just these little small things in life that are not glamorous by any means. It's not at all a status and bowl, but it's something that means the world to her and that that means the world to her son, and in this case, that is all that matters. Yeah, it's not some all inclusive vacation. It's not some fancy steak dinner. It's those little things. And yeah, that gets me fired up. Hearing people that have been able to take control and make

a positive impact on their finances. It makes me more optimistic about what I can do, which is why we're sharing these stories. So another one that I saw recently in our Facebook group was from listener Richard, and he said, well, how to money, family. I did it. A huge thank you to this community and my close friends and family

for being as supportive as you are. In four months, I dropped this high interest credit card from a balance of to zero dollars, utilizing a variety of methods found in the podcast in the group, cutting costs, being mindful of spending habits, and I even transfer two thousand to a new zero percent card that's being paid off over the next year. For those of you still on your way,

you can do it. So I love man. It's this virtuous cycle of building others up and letting them know that they can do it too, that they can make changes to their life. And I don't know how long Richard was sitting on that debt. I don't know if it was years or if it was just months, but usually it takes it takes years to build up to that level of debt. But the fact that he tackled it in months, that he got rid of it, and

encouraging others that they can follow suit. Man, those are the kind of positive inputs I want to put into my life because it motivates me to to work even harder and it reminds me of the truth that I do have this element of control over my life that sometimes we think we don't. So, yeah, big props to Richard, and thanks for sharing your story in the Facebook group. Man. Yeah, so we're sharing those stories with you to act as an encouragement and hopefully that is a way that you

are able to boost your optimism. Yeah. And if Richard can do it, trust me, anybody can do it. Okay, And so we're gonna talk more about some different ways that you can increase the amount of optimism that you have in your life. But first a quick break. Alrighty,

then we're back and we're talking about optimism today. We just talked about a few ways you can kind of shift things up mentally in order to increase your level of optimism, which has a direct impact on your finances, but they are also just kind of some physical things that you can make happen that you can boost in order to do the same in order to increase that optimismal level. It might not come naturally to you, but there are some tangible things that you can implement in

order to cultivate financial optimism in your life. And that's what we're going to talk about or right now. Yeah, And I think it's just so important man, that we are talking about the physical side of things, because we could just totally stay in our own heads and say, you've got to control your inputs, you need to think more positively, and you can beat yourself up over not

thinking positively enough exactly, but that only gets you so far. Right, Like, we're holistic beings and we are influenced by the physical environment around us. We're influenced by the physical actions that we take. And so it's important, yeah, that we talk now about the physical side of things. And so let's talk quickly about goals. Right If you're not working towards something specific, it could be tough to be hopeful about

your future. We want you to think about it. You need to set some achievable goals and then it's helpful if you actually write them down to constantly remind yourself of what it is that you're striving after. When you're just working without a purpose, that's drudgery. That's what feels like fruitless labor, and that is what we're trying to avoid. So speaking of those goals and continually reminding yourself of them. Matt I heard an interview recently with tight end Tony Gonzalez.

He used to play for our Atlanta Falcons. He was literally the best tight end in all of football ever, Like there's no one, there's never been anyone better at the position. He'd the best. Yeah, he was fantastic. And what he would do, actually, I found this fascinating. Early in the week before a football game, he would write himself a letter and he would say exactly what he wanted out of that upcoming football game. That's pretty sweet. And he was like, I want two touchdowns, I want

like twelve catches, blah blah blah. But he would he would write this in depth letter about what he was hoping for this next week's game, and he would read it every day that week before practice, and he gave a lot of credence to kind of putting that goal in front of him and seeing it every single day. It was this kind of a motional and physical response to increase his optimism level to thinking that he could even potentially achieve that goal. So, I don't know, I

just thought that was really cool and super cool. Man. That's that's really awesome. Actually, it makes me want to write down everything and read everything back to myself, right, yeah, I think the more we do write things down, and that's something honestly I'm not terribly good at and I want to get better at, because I do see that as a way of of helping boost my optimism level and helping me actually achieve the things that I that

I set out to achieve. And part of setting those goals is to dedicate the actual time to thinking about your goals. It can be as straightforward as knocking out that small amount of credit card debt that's maybe been hanging around for forever, two larger things like your mission

statement or even more ambitious pursuits. But give yourself the time to dream, even though it might be countercultural to sort of quote unquote waste that time, right Like we don't give ourselves enough time to be creative to to waste, to come up with creative solutions to problems that we're faced with, and a lot of times, you know, this

goes back to my month earlier. But like we are just doing things without thinking about them, and when we actually give ourselves a little bit of time and some additional mental energy, I'm pretty sure everyone would see some massive benefits from that. Yeah, how come our best ideas come in the shower because typically it's the only time we give ourselves the space to let our brains wander. But there are other ways that we can implement that into our lives too. Another thing that we need to

do is to plan it out. It's easier to be optimistic when you have a list of achievable, daily, weekly, and monthly items that are on a schedule. Having planned action items will act as a deadline that will get you crossing items off of that list, and that in and of itself boost level of optimism. For example, make it a goal to figure out one way to save money every month. You might feel so good that you

try to make it a weekly habit. Shop your cell phone bill one month, then do the same for your insurance, then tweet at your internet provider to see if you can lessen your internet bill, Like if you can do one of those every month, every time you knock down one of those dominoes and increase you see your level

of saving. You make a move to positively impact your finances, it's only going to help you in that next attempt, right, and you're gonna feel unstoppable pretty shortly because every time you put a goal down on paper, you're able to cross it off the list because you made it happen until Another way that you can be unstoppably optimistic is by charting your progress. It's hard not to feel optimistic when you can see your gains on paper. And sometimes

that can be difficult to do with your finances. But maybe for you that's you know, your spreadsheets and Excel. But it can be as simple as a bar graph that you color in as you make progress, or even a gratitude journal is a great way to do this right. This allows you to track and be thankful for things that are non number related, just words. It doesn't have to be numbers, it can just be words that you're

thankful for. Yeah. Another thing, Matt, that I think holds people back and we kind of briefly mentioned this early on with the g I. Joe quote is a lack of knowledge can can lead us towards pessimism. If we don't know the next action step, if we don't know how to tackle the rut we're in, then that can take our brains down kind of a dark, twisty path of pessimism. We've got this fear of taking the wrong step, and that can in some ways be oddly healthy if

you don't have the proper knowledge. But for instance, like an episode one nineteen, we talked about the power of investing yourself. It's all about boosting your human capital. Keep listening to podcasts like How the Money, find other great podcasts out there that can help you boost your level of knowledge. Knowledge is kind of power right. Read books on personal finance. We interviewed a bunch of amazing people. Christie Shinn wrote this book Quit Like a Millionaire. Grant

Sabatier wrote a book called Financial Freedom. A guy that we haven't interviewed yet but we will one of these days, Jail Collins, we will. We totally will. Simple Path to Wealth. I mean, there are all these great books out there. What will link to some of those in the show notes, but the smarter you can get, the more knowledgeable you can get, that drastically increases your levels of optimism. Yeah, not only does it increase your optimism, man, but this

just straight up gives you more confidence as well. Another thing to do is to seek advice. You'll gain a certain amount of optimism just by talking about money with your friends and family. We talk about that all the time, like just knocking down that taboo talking about money. But an even better way to improve your outlook is by asking for advice from others who are crushing it financially, or even getting some financial counseling. But for ways that

you can improve your financial knowledge by asking around. I feel like even just asking for advice, submitting a question for an ask htm episode, which you can easily do it how to money dot com slash ask. Even just submitting a question asking somebody something is this step towards optimism. It's saying, you know what, I believe that somebody has that knowledge out there that can benefit me. All I gotta do is ask. So I think it's just fascinating how how even asking the question is this step in

the right direction towards increasing your optimism. And sometimes it's not even about the knowledge that you would receive, but it's just the fact that you are willing to accept new information right Like that you're open to learning and open to improving. Like that says a lot about an individual. Yeah, no doubt. Another important step to increasing your optimism is to celebrate. Find ways to reinforce good financial behavior with rewards.

It doesn't have to cost a ton of money, or really any money at all, but but you can give yourself a tangible reward when you succeed or make progress. I think sometimes it can be drudgery as we're attempting to pay off debt, as we're trying to start saving for the future, and if we're not rewarding ourselves, it can be really easy to let pessimism overtake us and think that, well, this debt, it's never gonna go away, it's going to be an albatross around my neck for forever.

But when you celebrate the small winds along the way, it removes some of that pessimistic vibe and it allows you to see the progress that you're actually making, which is a huge motivator as as you move forward. So I think celebrating wins is a great step to take towards becoming more optimistic. Man. That's so good for me to here personally, because a lot of times I know I can forego the celebration and instead just continue working

on towards my next goal. Yeah, if you never enjoy the fruit of your labor, if you never celebrate the winds, whatever you're trying to accomplish, can instead of feeling like an awesome thing that you're tackling, you can feel like drudgery. But one of the last things that we do want to mention Joel, is that optimism alone can't save you. Right. There's a difference between a good case of solid optimism and having your head stuck in the sand about the

realities around you. But even as you assess the current state that you're in, seeing the good that currently exists, and seeking to implement positive steps towards making beneficial change, well, that will have it a profound impact on you. If you say you can't, well guess what you won't. But if you think you can and you're willing to give it a try, if you're open to it, really cool things will start to happen. Yeah, man, In my mind,

optimism kind of equals resilience. It's knowing that you have the power to make moves, however small, to improve your situation. And Matt, When I think about optimism like that, it actually kind of makes me think about this This young girl I know named Gracey, And when she was born, she was born with cancer that everybody said that she wasn't going to live very long. She wasn't gonna live past a year old, for sure, is what is what the doctor said. And and now she's she's in high school.

She's basically lived this life of resilience where she's overcome obstacles that people said she never would And does she have struggles, Yeah, is her life difficult, of course. But when I see someone like Gracy, it just reminds me that there are so many things in this life that are achievable that people around us and that even our

own brains are gonna tell us aren't possible. But if we will harness an optimistic spirit, if we will implement optimism into our brains and into our physical reality a little bit more in in in particular in regards to our finances, I really truly believe it has a massive impact on how quickly we can achieve the goals that we've set out and ultimately whether or not we're going to achieve them at all many times. So, yeah, optimism

equals resilience, and you want to become more resilient. You want to become more optimistic, and that in and of itself is going to have major ramifications on on how your finances look. Nice, man, that's so good. Thanks for sharing that, dude. Yeah, Man, Gracie super inspirational makes me more optimistic about the things that that I can accomplish

and and that the people around me can accomplish. It makes me want to be more optimistic for the folks that I come in contact with and the little listeners on this podcast, be optimistic about the things that we can achieve. Man. And also, I am thankful to be sitting here with you talking about finances, talking about money while drinking a delicious beer. On this episode, we had Caramel Machiatto stout and this is my old bust Head brewing company, donated to the show by my in laws

Mono and Pop Joel. What were your thoughts on this beer? Man? This was totally a dessert stout, which is totally We had this like nice kind of sweetness, vanilla sweetness. It had like a little bit of an assaulted caramel vibe, which is my wife's like favorite flavor of ice cream. So she would totally dig his beer. She's probably gonna upset. She wasn't here tonight. So yeah, I thought it was

really good for for me. Typically, I like stout sit a little more like coffee you roasted dark chocolate kind of notes. This one had more sweet notes, but super interesting, very unique, and it hit the nail on the head man for Kramel Machiatto Stount. I mean, I love it when what you see on the label is like, that is exactly what you're drinking. Yeah, yeah, perfectly reflects what you got inside the bottle. Yeah, it did say it was brewed with coffee, but you didn't get much of

that sort of bitter roasted nous. More so you get that vanilla, like you said, and it almost had like a crembrole a sort of flavor to it. I'm with you and the fact that it was a dessert beer and I was reading on the bottle it said that it's refreshing in the summer and decadent in the winter, and I totally agree though about it being refreshing because it wasn't too thick and syrupy. A lot of times the stouts like this can get really overwhelming when it

comes to their viscosity. But this was super easy to drink and it was very delicious. So I'm glad we got to share this one on the podcast. Dude, agreed, my friend. All Right, Matt, that's gonna do it for this episode. Hopefully, this was an encouraging episode. I know honestly, just having this conversation with you was encouraging to me. It makes me want to get after it a little bit more. It makes me want to be more optimistic in my dealings with those around me, because I think

optimism can be contagious. Yeah. I couldn't agree more, dude, all right. Yeah, And so for show notes for this episode, you can find those pretty easily on our website at how to money dot com. And if you found this episode and our podcasts in general helpful and you enjoyed it, we would love for you to subscribe, rate, and review wherever it is that you listen to your podcasts. Alright, buddy, Until next time, Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out, Insane in the membrane