Personal Mission Statements with $Pro Scott Rieckens #054

to our listeners, but this is all about Yeah. So this is a new show that we're putting out once a week, and we thought it would be really interesting to bring together some of the finest personal finance minds from around the nation and some of them around the world, to to bring onto the show to discuss the topic that they're passionate about, that they're an expert on, and then you and I were going to kind of unpack some of the things that they have to share with

our audience. I think it's just gonna be a really neat, interesting, kind of different way to get a super relevant personal finance topic out there for our listeners. But before we get to that, Matt, I want to tell you about a historical event that I had never known existed until just the other day. Yeah, so you dropped this down and I have never heard of it either, so I'm excited to hear man. Okay, So, there was this thing called the London beer Flood of eighteen fourteen, we talked

about beer on our show. We drink a beer on our show, and I just thought, London beer flood, that's something I have to tell everyone about. Just I didn't know anything about it until recently. And so it happened in eighteen fourteen in London, and there was I gathered that from the title, right, the London beer flood. And so there was a huge vat that had a hundred and thirty five thousand imperial gallons of beer ruptured and it caused all the other vats of beer in the

same building to also rupture. Domino effect, right, Yes, so there were over three hundred and twenty three thousand imperial gallons of beer that gushed into the streets. It was a true tidal wave of beer that destroyed homes, crumbled walls, and actually killed multiple people. Uh. Yeah, beer should not be used for death. Let mean, come on, if that's how you're gonna go, though, that's a good point, right, that's a good point. If I was going to go,

I would choose beer flood. But but yeah, sadly people were were killed in the flood back in fourteen. But just kind of a crazy thing to think about that stuff like that happened back then and it was a different time and obviously just huge bats of beer just randomly rupturing at times, and it's just an interesting story.

I thought, Yeah, I love that. Man. It sounds like it's sort of a made up thing, right, like you hear like small town is getting engulfed by whatever it is that they that one small town happens to make. And uh, but I love that this is a real thing that happened. But I want to know, is what exactly is an imperial gallon. That's a good question. I

don't know either. I know that just mean British, like it must like a British gallon, but I know that an imperial pint is twenty ounces versus an American point, which is sixteen ounces. I was shut up. So it was actually more than that. I'm imagining that it was

more than a regular gallon. But I'm sure one of our listeners knows, and they'll shoot us an email and and tell us that's right, because our listeners pay attention, and we've had multiple folks actually message us about this program man called every Kid in a Park, which is this fantastic program with the National Park Service where every fourth grader gets a free pass to go to national parks for an entire year, and not just the kid,

but their entire family. And so this is in response to our episode where we did taking advantage of free stuff and we talked about getting into national parks, how there are certain days in the year where you get in for free. But you and I, I I guess we just weren't pretty overlooked. Yeah. I didn't know about this. Man, I don't have a fourth grader yet, so we didn't know. And so a couple of our listeners wrote in and

they were like, you dummies, how did you Yeah? So, yeah, we really appreciate anytime we miss something or there's valuable information for the rest of the audience that we didn't get to. We'd love to hear your input. We'd love for you to reach out to us, because then we

can let everybody know. So, now, everybody listening, if you have a fourth grader, or you have a younger kid who's going to be a fourth grader one of these days, start making plans, make plans to go visit a bunch of national parks that year, because you get in for free for all three sixty five calendar days of the year while your kids a fourth grader. Ye, man, and I got three kids, which means that for three years, we're gonna be able to go to all the parks

for free. And I was joking that in we got plans and one other. I don't know. You could tell me whether this is cheaper, frugal or not. But what if my youngest when she gets to fourth grade, what if I just continually hold her back so that we can keep going to national parks for free every year. Frugal or cheap? Yeah, cheap, I would I would say dishonest as well. Okay, all right, I'll avoid that then.

And there are hundreds of national parks out there. Do you have a favorite of all the ones that you've been to? All Right? So, if I had to pick one national park, favorite one that I've been to, that's a tough question because they're all so unique. Yeah, there's so many, and I've only been a few. But my favorite at this point in my life has to be Glacier National Park. Dude, Yeah, Glacier Glaciers very nice. Mine

is Yosemite even there twice. Now, my question for you is when your oldest is in fourth grade and you start going to the parks, are you gonna go straight to Glacier? Like, are you the kind of guy that goes to your favorite and it's all sort of downhill from there or do you kind of like to build up to it and sort of say the best for last.

So I do have a problem with when I travel, if I've gone somewhere before, I want to go back and do the same things that I enjoyed, so so that that's definitely like my bent um and I love exploring new things, but if I'm anywhere in the vicinity, I'm going to choose something that I've done before that I if I absolutely loved it, so try to like challenge myself to do something else. But I there are so many national parks that I haven't been to that

I don't think I would have any trouble. I mean, I want to go to Yellowstone, I want to go to Joshua Tree. They are all these racial parts that I haven't even visited. So I would definitely like Glacier is last on my list for a while. I'd love to go back someday, but but it's probably like twentieth on the list right right, do let's take a how the money trip to uh Joshua Tree, because I've never been there either, and that's that places awesome I'm in.

It's awesome in the pictures, that's all I know. So yeah, right right, Well I mentioned that because I I'm kind of the slow burn kind of guy, and so so I think I'm gonna make my family go to like all the smaller, crappier national parks and they're gonna be like, why are we here? And I'll say, oh, there's a reason, and you know, we got to build up before we get to the Pinnacle National Park, at least my favorite. So because you can't handle it yet exactly, you're just

gonna waste our time. It's not gonna nearly mean nearly as much to you if you've only been to like the best places. Yeah. I don't know what that says about me, but that's just sort of how I see things. And so I don't know, we might end up going to some of the crappier national parks before we get to the really nice ones. That being said, there aren't that many crappy national parks, man, They're they're all good. Have you been Have you been to Alcatraz. I have

been to Alcatraz, really, yeah, I've never been there. It's I think it's technically a national park though, you know. And I didn't really want to go to Alcatraz when I was in San France, but I'm so glad I did. It was fascinating. Sean Connery is the rock. That's all I could pick. Go truly the whole time with Sean Connery. All right, Matt, onto the beer that we're drinking today, Highland Brewing Cold Mountain Winter Warmer. Yeah, technically it says

legendary spiced Ale. This beer was actually donated to us by our friends Clark and Nancy up in Asheville, North Carolina. They were kind of enough to, yeah, hook us up with one of these over Thanksgiving. Actually, we were up there visiting, and you know, Clark was my first introduction to sort of real estate. He was getting into real estate. They moved into a triplex right when I had finished graduating college, and so Clark hired me to do a lot of work around his house and getting the place

fixed up. So I created them with my sort of introduction to real estate and specifically house hacking. Oh man, it's something else. Too. They do a camping trip over the summer, and we need to talk about that because they get a bunch of friends together and last year, over the fourth of July they got the sweet campsite, super cheap vacation. Kids are running around in the woods. What do you think? Does that sound a little too

a little too wild and free? Well, you know how I like my all inclusive vacations, Matt, right now, totally kidding, No, camping sounds so much better than an all inclusive I'm I'm totally I totally be down with a camping trip with good friends. Yeah, I mean it. So let's dive into this beer. What do you think? Yeah, I just took a sip, Matt and cold Mountain Man. It's kind of a tradition in Nashville. This beer gets released every year and it's one of the quickest sellers. This period.

Doesn't last on store shelves very long because everyone looks forward to it. And that's because it's so interesting and it's so the word I'm gonna use distinct nice man. My ward will be chewy, and we will share more of our thoughts on this beer at the end of this episode. All Right, Matt, but let's get onto the topic at hand, and we're talking about creating a personal mission statement. And this is the first episode of what we hope to be a weekly episode featuring a different

money pro. And most of these people that we're going to be featuring are either our friends or kind of heroes in the money space, people that we look up

to and we appreciate their thoughtfulness about money. And Scott Rickens, He's gonna be the first money pro that we have on and in each of these episodes, we're gonna bring them on for five minutes to talk about one subject that they're super passionate about, and then you and I will kind of break it down, right, we'll give our thoughts on kind of what they brought to the table.

And so I'm really excited. I think this is gonna be like just a really fun way to tackle really interesting and diverse subjects that that other people are really passionate about. And Scott so he is a film producer, he's a director, filmmaker, and he's had Emmy nominated stuff. He does commercial work with Wired with Taylor Guitars. He's all been to that filmmaking stuff, right, which resonates with

me right as a photographer. But what we're specifically going to talk about is his journey with Fire, which is financial independence retire early. Yeah, and Scott stumbled onto this movement not too long ago, just a few years ago,

and it completely changed his life. It up ended his life and in a good way though, right, And so ever since Scott discovered the idea of financial independence, it's changed the way he looks at life really, and that led him to creating a full length documentary called Playing with Fire, as well as a book by the same name, and he's about to come out with a podcast as well. So Scott has been hard at work ever since kind

of figuring out that financial independence could change lives. And what I love too about what Scott's doing is in the movie and in the book, Scott's really just documenting exactly how it has changed his family. So there's so many people blogging, writing, talking about the tenants of financial independence, and Matt right, we talked about some of those right year on the show. We try at the same time

to talk about how it's affecting our lives. And Scott his book that you and I both devoured very quickly, is amazing because it reads more like a diary. You're seeing the emotions, You're seeing the way that the idea of financial independence affected his relationship with his wife, his young daughter, his family as a whole, and the changes that it led them to make, and then the financial and lifestyle changes that they decided to make based on

discovering those tenants. So the book, it's called Playing with Fire. It is out now, so you can I mean you can buy that right now, which is awesome. It's kind of cool that something that a friend of ours wrote that you can buy and read. And the documentary that

you mentioned, it'll be out soon. I don't think there's a specific date yet, but you can go to Playing with Fire dot c o and you can learn all about the documentary there, you can learn all about the book, or you can just go straight to Amazon and buy it. But yeah, I love what you said about it being sort of a diary, right. It's about their personal journey,

their discovery of fire and financial independence. One of the things he said in the book was that he's not looking to set a standard or what fires should be, but to basically do their part to get people talking about money in our everyday lives. And that totally resonated with me because obviously that's what we like to do, right, Like, big reason that we have this podcast is because we like talking about money. We wanted to be part of

our our daily conversation. It needs to be something that is a common topic, not something that you only talk about with HR when you're deciding how much you know you're gonna set aside towards your four ohn k. It needs to be something we talk about with our friends

and with our families. Yeah, Matt, And when reading his book, one of my favorite things it stuck out to me just instantly, it leapt off the page was Scott's passion when he talked about creating a personal mission statement, and that seemed to change his life in a major way, actually putting pen to paper and coming up with a personal mission statement of his own. And it's been kind of a guiding light for him and for his family.

And and Matt, you and I, based on based on Scot's advice, we've created our own personal mission statements that will share later in the show too. Yeah, that's right. I'm just excited for Scott to share his his wisdom with with our listeners and with us. Yeah, too often in life, right, it's like we're just sleepwalking. You know. Life is sort of more whatever is happening to us, versus proactively taking control and feeling like you have a

say in the direction of your future. And so Scott's here to change that with his approach to creating uh that personal mission statement? All right, Matt, So I'm excited about this first Money Pro episode with Scott Rickens. We're gonna get five minutes with him and then you and I will unpack his wisdom right after this break. Okay, it's time now to hear from Scott Rickens, and he's

gonna talk about creating a personal mission statement. Hi, gents, Scott Rickens coming at you here from Bend, Oregon, and I just cracked a crux fermentation project. Fresh Hop I p A. Gets his name Fresh Hops because they pick these hops the same day they brew them for maximum freshness. It's delicious, all right. Being an entrepreneur, I've drafted many mission statements for various companies that I've started or been

a part of over the years. They're useful to guide you and to know where you're heading as a team or as a business. But somehow I had never created one for myself, so I'd love to share my thoughts on the personal mission statement. I was first introduced this concept through Get Rich Slowly as jd. Roth. His post titled how to write a Personal Mission Statement breaks down four steps you can use to get started here. They are,

what are my lifetime goals? How would I like to spend the next five years, how would I live if I knew I'd be dead in six months? And my most important goals? And we'll review this list in a minute, but right now, let's talk about why you would do this. It helps defind what you're trying to accomplish and why you've chosen this pursuit. And I feel this is incredibly helpful if you're on a path to financial freedom, fire,

or really any path you find yourself on. It gives you tools to use in the beginning, middle, and end of whatever journey you're embarking on. Knowing your what will help see the strengths you possess and by default, the weaknesses you'll need to account for. Knowing where your weaknesses lie is a strength. Knowing your why helps define where you're heading and how to make decisions to stay on course. Think of it as a filter for choices, and this

framework will help you define your goals more clearly. And when you're focused and you know your goals, it's easier to start, stay on track, and be prepared when an opportunity arises. So when I sat down to do the exercise, I used a few of j D's suggestions and added a few of my own. Here's my recommended approach to reaching your personal mission statement. First, what are my top five most favorite things to do? Two? What are my top traits or qualities that are repeatedly noticed by my

close circles? Three? How would I like to spend the next five years? Four? How would I live if I knew I'd be dead in six months? And finally, what are my most important goals to achieve in my lifetime? And I found it helpful to pull from the answers I had generated to formulate the following equation. So it starts out with what's your superpower plus who you're creating it for plus what's your desired outcome? And that will culminate an equal your first draft of your personal mission statement.

So I thought i'd give you an example of my personal mission statement to help you if you end up doing this exercise, and I quote, I want to be present for those who love me and rely on me. I want to live a rich, happy and fulfilled life and empower others to do the same. Now j D adds a disc alimor in that blog, and I quote, your mission statement isn't permanent. As your priorities and tastes change, and as new opportunities present themselves, your mission will adopt

and grow end quote. I plan to revisit this mission statement once a year. Taylor and I have a journal we write in every year during our anniversary where we answer a series of questions about the previous year. We hope our daughter will find value in our answers to help guide her through the later years. I plan to

add this personal mission statement exercise to that tradition. Once you get comfortable with your mission statement, it's also helpful to run a SWAT or Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats analysis. What are your greatest strengths, What are your largest weaknesses? What opportunities are available to you or are you not taking advantage of but should be? What threats currently exist

to prevent you from reaching your goal? This type of clarity will immediately put you in a far better position and to set your trajectory in an intentional direction, and in my experience, the positive effects are immediate. So I highly recommend rocking this exercise to get clear about your direction and your future. This will help you be more efficient with your time and provides focus on what you want and how to get there. All right, thanks for

letting me ramble. You guys are doing a killer job. Keep up the good work, all right, Matt. First thing we have to note is way to go Scott for knowing your audience, because drinking a beer on this show gets you mad. Points. Yeah, that's how we do it. And I think he wanted to uh kind of join us in spirit. So he fits in nicely here, doesn't he.

All right, let's get into the nitty gritty. I love what Scott said about approaching life like you approach a business, because typically businesses, they set out to be successful, and anybody who wants to start a successful business comes up with a business plan a way of doing things, and they're taken seriously because of that. But it's just not too often that we do that with our own lives. Sometimes we drift. We move away from the things that

are meaningful to us. We don't apply ourselves towards things that actually bring meaning in our lives. And it's not because we don't want to. It's not for a lack of desire, but it is for a lack of intentionality, I think, And I think Scott made that point really nicely. I couldn't agree more that aspect about being intentional with your life. Me naturally, I tend not to be intentional, and so to hear that, like, I know that this

is something I need to hear. I know that I need to be more intentional with my life because a lot of times I do sort of float through life. I tend to just accept whatever sort of comes next. I think it's just my personality. But sometimes I wonder too if it has to do with our schooling, like education, because like for years, right, like we go through life not having to make the next step intentionally. You just get to go to the next grade. And the same

thing even with college. Sometimes like you graduated high school and what's the next step. It's like, oh, by default, you're gonna go to undergrad and so for you know, over twenty years of our life. We're trained and not really think about the next steps. That's how I feel, at least. The first thing I thought of when you said that is kind of the way we watch videos now,

whether it's YouTube or Netflix. There's auto play, so the next video just happens, and you know what, most of us don't do anything to stop, and and so you go from episode two, episode three, episode four, and by the time you're done with it, you realize you just spent two and a half hours, and then it's time for bad. And I feel like that's the way so

many of us go through life. We can all probably relate to having done that with Netflix at one point, or YouTube or whatever and just getting lost in a slew of cat videos or breaking bad. And for me, it's more breaking bad. But it's gonna be one or the other. You know, you can't fallow anywhere else on the spectrum and just one or the other. There is no way between. But we can all identify that that and that is truly how we live life. Sometimes that the next thing hits us and we don't know how

to respond. We don't know what to say no to, and we don't know what to say yes to. There's just not much intentionality because we don't have a clear mission statement about what we want to accomplish. And Matt, for I don't know about for you, but but for me, just hearing how much this meant is got and then setting aside some time to do it myself it meant a lot. Thinking about what really matters to me, what do I want my life to look like? And creating

that mission statement for myself was just a meaningful experience. Yeah, And so one of the reasons I think is because creating a personal mission statement answers the why, and you have to have that in order to stay on track and be prepared. So there's so much power, right and writing things down. When you write things down to become more concrete, like you can physically see them. And so having a mission statement does all those things. That provides

clarity and it just kind of gives you more direction. Yeah, Knowing dear why kind of helps to inform your what. And then when you know what you're going to do, you've just kind of created a filter that, like I was talking about just a second ago, helps you decide whether or not to say yes or no. Two things that pop up in your life. And I don't know about you, Matt, but I tend to be a people pleaser. I tend to say yes to more things than I should.

And whether that's grabbing drinks with a friend and not getting something done that I know I need to do, or spending time with somebody else that I know needs me, it's just easy for me to say yes and become less focused. And a personal mission statement can actually, I feel like, help help us to say yes to the right things, no to the wrong things, and just live a more focused and intentional life altogether. Yeah, I love what you said. There is is to say yes to

the right things. Right. It's not that you're gonna say yes less often, but you're just gonna make sure that you're saying yes to the things that actually matter. When you sit down at the end of the day, you think, Okay, should I have actually done that? Was that a waste of time? Well, you know, may not have been a waste of time, but there may have been other things that you know you value more when you give it

some thought. Like I know there's things that I do often where it's not necessarily a bad thing, but there are better things, and there are things that I know that I should spend my time on instead. But like you said, it's easy to get distracted right a stage in our life where there's just lots of things pulling on us. We have lots of sort of distractions and additional responsibilities and things that we could take part in that again aren't necessarily bad. But what are we gonna

say yes to? What are we gonna say no to? It sort of automates that decision making process. It's like you're creating a miss gene that you have these things that happened in life, and you can kind of enter into the machine and kind of crank it, and then the machine tells you yes or no, wait, like a magic eight ball, exactly like a magic feel good. Okay, that's actually what my mission statement is based on the magic eight ball statements. Good minds of weaves you board

even better. But this is a machine that you've created, right, and that I mean, that's what we're referring to, referring to the personal mission statement. And so I love that it helps us to create a process and a mechanism for decision making to make sure that we stay focused on the things that we actually care about. All right, Matt, So right off of the break, let's get to exactly how to formulate your personal mission statement and guess what

we're going to share ours as well. All right, Joel, Let's go ahead now and run through Scott's five questions. And these are there to guide us along in order to help us to get started thinking about our own personal mission statements. And so let you answer the questions.

This doesn't, you know, automatically mean that you have a mission statement, but hopefully you'll identify a common thread and this helps us to prioritize and to sort of actively identify what it is that we care about the most, sort of distills down to like a few things that we know that our priorities for us, And some of these questions that we're asking ourselves in this process are existential questions. There are questions that cause us to do

a lot of soul searching. And this could take you hours. This could take you a long time to think through some of these questions and to really do some soul searching to figure out what your priorities are, what you derive meaning from in life. These are difficult things to wrestle with. So I just want to prepare people for that ahead of time. And the first question is the one of the simpler ones actually, but it is what are my top five favorite things to do? And I

love that. In the book that Scott wrote, he talked about how this exercise doing that with his wife actually helped get get them on board with the idea of

pursuing financial independence much more quickly. It turned out when his I did this exercise, none of the things that she wrote down had anything to do with with having a lot of money, and the same thing was true for him, and I think because of this exercise, they were both able to say, let's look at the things that are meaningful to us, and because of our pursuit of a consumeristic lifestyle, we're actually missing out on opportunities to partake in these things that we say that we love.

And that was an inspirational moment for them and it was kind of a moment that spurred them on. I feel like that conversation, that exercise of writing down their five favorite things to do, and I feel like that is helpful for any of us because I know that when I did this, my favorite things to do are also free or cheap, don't cost a lot of money, right, Joe, would you put down as uh some of your favorite things? Did you put a drinking beer? Well, that definitely made

the list. I feel like I had to stick that on there, just sort of like a token thing. I'm like, well, I do like doing that, certainly, but yeah, but I think even that usually that's around owned friendship, it's around people that I care about, and so yeah, for me, honestly,

so much of it comes down to relationships. I think that's what most of us will likely find doing this exercise, that that so much of what we value comes down to relationships, and actually our consumeristic tendencies cause us to work more to earn more money to perpetuate the cycle. And if we could pump the brakes on all of that, we would realize that we might actually be able to make some different choices and prioritize the things that we actually say matter when we do an exercise like this.

And the next question that Scott mentioned was to ask yourself, what are my top traits the best qualities that are noticed by my close friends, and those are my circle, which is an awesome question to ask yourself because oftentimes we can be blind to the different qualities and the

talents that we possess. Personally, I have a hard time assessing myself because maybe I don't know who I am, And sometimes personality quizzes and things like that, when you're answering for yourself, it could be kind of tricky, It can be difficult. Yeah, I have the same problem. I have to ask Emily when I'm taking a quiz like that, because it is I feel like so much easier to see other people that you're close to, and so much

harder to recognize your own gifts or abilities. And so when someone else can call something out in you that is there that you might be a little bit self conscious of or even ashamed of, I feel like sometimes we grow up with things and something that is actually an asset or a gift. Maybe at some point we were growing up, we were shamed by someone because of it, and it's something that we don't recognize in ourselves as

being a gift. And so when someone else can call that out and say that is good about you, it's meaningful and it draws us out of ourselves. And so I think doing this exercise and involving other people, asking a close friend, someone you trust and saying, hey, what is it? What are my best attributes? What are my best qualities? And how how do you think I can best use those? Those are great questions to ask from

people that you care about. Man, And again, I want to mention to the I mean, the whole reason right that we're asking these questions is to help give ourselves guidance. It's not like by answering every single one of these questions that you can then just sort of line all these words up and all of a sudden boom, that's your mission statement. The idea is to think through what

your priorities are. And when you know what your priorities are, that helps to direct you and how you spend your money, how you save and like what are you saving for? Like these are all the things that inform the why. That's what a personal mission statement is. But sort of at a higher level in this episode, we're not only talking about money. We're kind of stepping back a little bit and talking about like an individual as a whole.

But do you know, keep these things in mind when it comes to personal finances and your money, the things that you're pursuing and that will help you to make decisions when it comes to what you're spending your money on. Yeah, man, I feel like these these next questions kind of are a little more rubber meets the road, like the last couple were a little more touchy feely, which I think is important to do as well. But the next question is how do I want to spend the next five

years of my life? And that's an important question too, because you know, we talked about investing for the long term and that's great, but looking at what you can accomplish in the next five years can change how you allocate your money now and also leads you to prioritize investing potentially in yourself as opposed to investing in the stock market. That's something we talk about from time to time. There's so much emphasis black and white in investing ten

percent of what you make in the stock market. And you and I were all about investing for the long term, but there are times too where you want to back

that off. If over the next five years you want to see a small business of your own flourish and take off, that might mean saving more right now and investing less, and that's okay, But doing this exercise kind of helps you formulate a game plan of what you want your next five years still, like that's gonna make changes not only to how you act but also where

you put your cash. Yeah, man, for me personally, like on this question, like a lot of the common themes and sort of terms that rose to the top involved my family, you know, my kids, my wife, but also there's a lot of words that sort of evolved around, like autonomy and flexibility. And it kind of became really clear to me that, man, these are things that that I value as a business owner. There are things that I kind of currently have in some ways. There are

things I don't have in other ways. Right, Like there's certain days that I have to be at certain places and it's incredibly strict, But in a lot of ways, I have a lot of flexibility. I have a lot of autonomy, and that's something that I see rising to the top that sort of directs how I want to pursue things specifically in the next five years. That's awesome, dude,

It's such a useful exercise. And then the next question that Scott prompts us to ask ourselves is how would I live if I knew I'd be dead in six months? And I mean, that's kind of a show stopper right there, right that question is going to prompt us to do I think a few things. The five year question is a little bit of a longer view, and six months is like, Okay, hey, I really don't have that much time left. What are the things that matter the most

to me? Because I think obviously if we only had six months to live, it would radically change the way that we handle our finances. I think most of us would probably stop contributing to a four O one k I a any sort of retirement account like right now, I'm not exactly sure if that one's perfectly like applicable to the finances, right, but is that yeah, you would just probably like light all your money on fire and just burn it all and enjoy it. I tell you what,

I would stop aging craft beers. I would drink them all. But what it does do, though, man, is it shines a light on the things that are truly important, because if you only have six months to live, you don't have time, right, and you don't have time to build a business exactly like. It really helps you focus on

people in relationships, I think even more so. Yes, Yeah, and it puts an emphasis on those things and allows you to keep those things in mind, right, Like, don't lose sight of these things, because if you only had six months left, like, these are the things that really matter. So in the process of building these other things that that you are trying to pursue in the next six years, like the reason that you're doing them is for the

six month things. Exactly, Matt, Exactly. I think it's easy to get caught up in your five year plan and forget those really important things that you would focus on if you only had six months to live. It kind of helps you create a balance of being able to prioritize both at the same time. And that's kind of what I love about this exercise. It's helping you look at both term and short term and incorporating them both.

So for me, meaningful work is super crucial autonomy, like you mentioned, that's really important to me, but also a time with my wife and my kids and my parents and people that I love, my friends, my community those things are all important too. And so while I'm pursuing meaningful work, if my family, my kids, my community get lost in the shuffle, I feel like at that point I've lost sight of the end goal. And I've lost sight of that thing that I would spend all my

time doing if I only had six months left. Yeah, man, I love that. You know, so much of what we talk about does involve balance, and it sort of feels like this non answer to say that, like, well, it all depends, but really this is no different Like you have to maintain that balance. You have to have a healthy view towards both in order to live a healthy life now. And so let's let's move on to his last question, which was what are my most important goals

to achieve in a lifetime. Some of these, dude, might actually be easily accomplished within a year, but others might take a decade or a lifetime. But you know, thinking through those lifetime goals can help you sort of directs, uh, and to help you to take the baby steps you need to take now to make sure that you are

headed in the right direction. Yeah. I love this too, because when you write those down, some of them might be quite a ways away, but you can start taking some of those small steps in order to head in that direction right now. And if it's a big, audacious goal that's hard to achieve in all likelihood, you do need to start right now, making small changes in order to make sure that you prioritize the path to get there.

So if your goal has become a mediocre podcaster, you might be there already, right, um, But if you want to achieve, but if you want to become really good at it, it's probably gonna take a lot more work and putting in a lot more hours of actually doing it. Right. So that's one example. Yeah, Well another example too, and this maybe goes back a little bit to the if

you're dead in six months question. But I'm just realizing this now, which is a lot of times that our work and the things that we do day to day are sort of the means to the end. And in a lot of times, the end is our family, the relationships that we keep kind of going back to. That's what's important. And and when we lose sight of that, right, the means becomes the end. Our work and the pursuit

of money or status that becomes the goal. And we don't even realize that we're not enjoying the end that we actually sought out to to seek and that we're trying to achieve. Alright, Matt, So, in particular because Scott is part of the fire movement financial independence, retire early. I have a question for you, So, if you had five million dollars in the bank right now, would you retire?

And what would your life look like? Okay, man, So, theoretically, based on the things that you know by answering these questions that I think I value, I think I would be pretty satisfied with focusing on my family, like focusing on my wife and my kids and developing those relationships and the relationships with my friends in my community. I think a part of me would miss work, right, like the actual tangible physical nature of work and providing value

to others around me. But I guess theoretically, what's most important in the oldly role that I can play here on earth that nobody else can play is a father to my children. There's no other father that they could have, right, And the same thing to my wife, like I am her husband, Like there's nobody else that is that is her husband. I don't know, at least theoretically right, Like you tell me, like what I quit work if I won like five million dollars, I think I'd probably go crazy.

So you mentioned existential earlier. Yeah, we're getting into some pretty big questions unlike we normally do. We don't normally do this, no, I know, right, Yeah, this is a slight detour, but I like it though. I'll share my mission statement first and hit it. I want to live a rich life now in the areas that matter most. I want to be present for my family and friends, prioritizing relationships over things. I also desire to serve others

and help them find meaning and purpose. That's mine, Nice, dude, I love it. That's freaking awesome. All right, So let's go with yours, all right, man, here's mine. I want to live a brave life full of adventure, creativity, and service that prioritizes my family as well as my community by using body as much as my mind in order to leave a legacy of generosity and love, which you think. That's great, dude, I have the word legacy in there. Yeah.

I feel like, especially having children, a legacy is something that you kind of start to think about just a little bit more, and you want to leave something not just for yourself, like the way you want to live, but you want to lose. You want to live in a way that other people would be energized to follow.

And I feel like that actually lends, at the same time kind of more gravity to everything that we that we do, the choices that we make, because other people are looking and watching, and we want those people to feel like energized and encouraged to live a rich life as well. Yeah, man, thanks, I appreciate that. What's really cool about a mission statement too is that it can change. Do you and I both spent some time, We spent

a few hours on these this past week. Did you talk with Emily about about yours trying to like help

shape it a little bit? You know, I didn't on this because of the fact that it was a personal mission statement, and and although obviously my life involves her life to a large extent, and we have talked about, like I said, my personal qualities and gifts, and she has been so helpful for me, and that I spent time really doing this alone, which I felt to be really really helpful, And I can't wait to take this to her and for us both to kind of say, Okay,

how does this fit into potentially a greater family mission statement. I started to talk to Kate about this and it started to evolve more into sort of like a family mission statement, like what do we do? Not only me and her, but like what as the children? Like what do you know? What do the girls do? But yeah, our goal with this episode was to, like you personally, like how is this going to mark you know, and direct your life as an individual? When it comes to

how does it direct your time? The things that you pursue and obviously you know what you spend your money on as well. Our priorities change. There's things that maybe we don't even think about. That's kind of what's so awesome about it is it's this alive, sort of flexible thing that gives us direction now. But at the same time, it's not so rigid and it's not so set in stone that it doesn't allow us to change and evolve

over time. Yeah. I mean I if it changes week to week, then you probably didn't do the exercise very well, like right, I would say, But if it changes year to year in small bits and pieces or full sentences

change completely, I think that's okay. So I think it's actually probably a really good exercise to go back to your mission statement once a year, and that can kind of again help reinforce as you make tweaks, as you change that the things that you say yes and no to the ways that you prioritize spending now versus saving for the future, and some of these questions, man, I feel like they're really helpful in saying, Okay, do I max out my four own K this year because I

have the ability, or do I say no, I'm going to prioritize investing myself and prioritize working a little bit less so that I can prioritize some of these family and community things that I want to be engaged in. And a personal mission statement is so good at helping us do that. And I just love how kind of how Scott kind of let us in this exercise, and we will in the show notes have all these steps kind of laid out for you so that you can go through them one by one and create your own

personal mission statement. And we really do think that when it comes down to brass tacks, it's gonna help you think through your finances, help think through how you allocate your money really well too. All right, Joel Man, let's get back to this beer. It is currently while we're recording this cold is all get out outside here in Atlanta. It's freaking January man, it's cold. Yeah, it's extremely cold, so it feels very appropriate to have this cold Mountain

winter warmer style beer. It's delicious. So your word was distinct You wanna explain that? Yeah, you know what I love is a beer that tastes unlike any other beer I've had before, and this beer was really distinct in that way. It it really is its own style. It has kind of some elements of like a Belgian quad with some of those notes going on, like I feel it like a fig raisiny kind of thing going on, but then some of the spice that they include in

the beer gives it something completely its own. It's unique and it's also lighter in body at the same time. So yeah, just a really interesting beer. Highland is kind of one of the o g craft brewers. I've been drinking their beers for years. Yeah, I was gonna say, I remember the Gaelic Ale well like years and years and years ago, and this is I feel like one of the best ones they make. So really excited to be able to have a Cold Mountain this year. It's

so good. Yeah. Man, So my word was chewy, and I completely resonate with you when you mentioned like that dried fruit, that nuttiness to it. There's a dried sort of figgy fruity flavor to it, and it just has this multi backbone to it. Drinks real smooth. For me, it was more of sort of that chewy, sort of nutty nuttiness with with that dried fruit. Very delicious. Huge things to Clark and Nancy for donating this beer to

the show. All right, Matt, So, instead of a final thoughts like we usually do with our topics, I feel like this episode it's appropriate, our first money pro episode with Scott Rickens. It's really appropriate for us to kind of finish this one up with a really with a quote from him from his book that I feel like ties this whole concept together really well. Will you read it for us? Yeah? Man, well, I'll preface it right.

And so Scott's whole book in a documentary, it's all about fire financial independence, and then specifically on our show for us, he's talking about mission statement. This right here, it brings the two together and it helps us to sort of reframe our finances, personal finance and lights of a personal mission statement. And so towards the end of the book, Scott said that fire is not about saving every last penny and trying to reach retirement as soon

as humanly possible. It's about building a lifestyle that aligns with your larger life purpose even while you are still working. Retirement isn't the answer to every problem with fire. It's just a natural outcome of aligning your values with your choices. And I love that, man. I feel like it's it sums up what he discovered, which was his new personal mission statement. Obviously that had a direct impact on his finances.

Where they chose to live right because they moved from a high cost of living city, and the things that they're going to pursue with the rest of their life. All right, that's it. You can find some show notes up on our website at how to money dot com, including some more information where you can find Scott's book

in that new movie that's coming out soon. If this podcast has been helpful to you, Matt and I would love to hear from you, and the best way to do that is to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps not only Matt and I to get better at what we're doing, but it also helps other people that are interested in personal finance, find out about this show, and don't forget to subscribe while you're there until next time. Best Friends out, Best Friends Out,