Frank & Paul Get Schooled

SPEAKERS
Bento Lobo, Paul Harvey, Frank Butler

Frank Butler  00:17
Hello Busybodies, welcome to another episode of the Busyness Paradox. I'm Frank Butler here with Paul Harvey.

Paul Harvey  00:23
Good day, Frank.

Frank Butler  00:25
And on today's episode, we're actually going to go back to a previous episode and talking about the “Masters of Busyness Administration.” Now, Paul, you want to give us a little recap?

Paul Harvey  00:36
Sure, Frank. Masters of Busyness Administration's proven to be one of our more popular episodes. And, like any good popular thing, sparked a little bit of discussion and controversy maybe. And, by way of quick recap, the whole thing stemmed from about four words that were uttered by Elon Musk from Tesla, referring to the MBA-ization of corporate America. And the media really went to town with that. And honestly, I think we weren't quite aware of just how much the reporting on this quote had expanded beyond what Elon Musk actually said. But basically, he said that a lot of the focus in corporate America on busywork - lots of meetings and PowerPoints, and an overemphasis on the numbers, as opposed to focusing on creating quality products and services - he attributed to, at least in part, the MBA-ization of America. So we kind of ran with that in the episode. And in doing so we talked about how a number of MBA programs have a an emphasis on finance and accounting and analytics as well, and discussed the possibility that maybe there was a correlation there. That there was a large emphasis in MBA programs on the numbers, because there's a lot of student demand for those specializations. And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the graduates of those programs are very numbers focused, potentially to the detriment of other things that are obviously important. Of product and service quality, of management techniques and strategy, your thing [referring to Frank]

Frank Butler  02:27
Yeah. And I think off of that as well, some of the stuff that we've actually seen in corporate too, right?

Paul Harvey  02:33
Yes, our own observations

Frank Butler  02:34
Bob Lutz’ book, the Car Guys Versus Bean Counters, one of my favorites that I love to read, it does talk about that focus on how the numbers can sometimes overwhelm the consumer side, or the customer satisfaction side of things. And that was one of the things that Bob Lutz, it even says he complained about MBAs as well. So we see this as a phenomenon that continues to go on. And I think for both Paul and I, as we are on the management side of the house, in the College of Business, we both sort of latched on to that a little bit. And as Paul had mentioned, because it was popular, it did have some elements that were potentially worth being attacked, in a sense. And I don't mean that in a negative way, just more along the lines of we weren't necessarily sharing the full dynamics of what things could mean to give every side a good perspective either. Which is why we have our special guest on today.

Paul Harvey  03:30
I think we were inadvertently more harsh on finance, in particular as a field of study and as a field of practice than we intended to be. And I say that as a person with a finance degree myself, who, and I think I speak for both of us holds nothing against those who are employed in the finance industry in any way, shape, or form. It's merely the potential to become overly focused on any aspect of the business world, right yet finance, be it policies and procedures, be it accounting, be it…

Frank Butler  04:01
Human resources,

Paul Harvey  04:01
…the technology side, you get too far down any rabbit hole, you start making bad decisions, right. But we did pick on finance, perhaps more than we intended to.

Frank Butler  04:11
Yeah, I think that's probably accurate, as we probably went up to finance a little bit more than we normally would have anything else. And so with that, I'd like to actually introduce our guest. We have Dr. Bento Lobo on he's the department head of finance and economics, the UC foundation professor and first Tennessee bank distinguished professor of finance here at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. We're happy that Bento is a listener and to actually have him here as a guest on a show. Also, I wanted to actually mention he just recently had a new study published, Chattanooga has been in the news in the past, we were the first cities to offer gigabit fiber optic internet. And he just recently published a study that showed that that fiber optic impact in our community in Hamilton County Chattanooga actually had a 2.7 billion dollar impact of the past decade. And on top of that it created over 9500 jobs. So that's a really amazing report and a lot of great news about the power that technology can have on an economy. And so Bento, congratulations on getting that out there. That is a heck of a work of art.

Bento Lobo  05:17
Thank you guys

Frank Butler  05:18
Bento, It's great to have you on, we appreciate you taking some time out of your busy day. I know as a department head, you get pulled in many different directions. And so taking this opportunity to sort of speak with us, we really do appreciate it.

Bento Lobo    05:31
Yeah. Hey, it's a pleasure to be on your podcast. And thank you for inviting me. I did enjoy that. That particular episode. And, you know, I like to get back with Frank, a little bit in the hallway. So we did that. But the couple of points here, I think, you know, first of all, the spillover from MBA demand for finance, concentrations of courses, could be spilling into corporate cultures in terms of ultra focus on dollars and cents. I don't know that might be a bit of a stretch, maybe a tenuous argument. It's a possibility. I don't deny it. But primarily because the field of finance and the skill set that finance inculcates in you. The field is very wide, right? corporate finance is one piece of it, but the vast majority of finance practitioners actually are in financial services. Right. And in other aspects of the industry, commercial banking, investment banking, private equity, hedge funds, whatever you might, you know, there's a whole variety of them. The role in in a corporation is clearly important. But that's not the sole domain of finance as a discipline. Right? So people may have been seeking that skill set, which I think personally, makes sense, because they consider that a value proposition for them. It gives them vertical mobility. And they just see that as an enhancement to their overall bag of tools. You know, some of that evolves over time, data analytics is the hot thing now. But finance has always been hot, right? I mean, because that worldview, and you know, I can launch into my introductory finance points that I make with my students here. But above all, it, it develops in you a lateral vision, right, it allows you to see the world broadly, and then connect the dots. Right? If there's a butterfly that stirs in Thailand, why does it affect us here in North America? Right? What is the connection? How does this financial globalization thing work? Right, and it matters to every one of us, although we pay attention to it at different levels, right? But if it's not our job, maybe we don't dwell on it. But every single one of us is a finance manager in our own right. Right. When we run our own homes, and we run our own lives, we are finance managers. Right? I always tell that to students. I mean, whether you major in finance or not, doesn't matter. The point is, you are a finance manager. Right? And at the household level, dollars and cents matter. Right, I agree at the corporate level, I understand that there's a whole bunch of other competing needs and values that we need to attend to. But for most people, you know, especially as you go down the income rank, rung, you know, the dollars and cents, you have to make it count, you have to make it balance, if you will, right. So that's one aspect to it. I don't want to talk too much. But, you know, the other point I make to students, is that finance, as a discipline has elements of both an art and a science. You know, you can teach the science in class. And you can give examples of the artfulness of Finance. But it's never easy to teach an art, right? I mean, that's something that's in your gut. And the greater passion and interest you bring to the to the subject, the more you'll develop that, but there's an art form to finance. Right. And as we as we grapple with the issues of which projects to take on, how to finance them, how to deal with the owners, right? Should we return money to the owners, or should we keep it within the firm? These are all fundamental corporate decisions, all geared toward maximizing the value of the firm. Right? And so this emanates in the realm of Finance. Right? And so we have A worldview, we have a way to think about stuff. And it's a framework that people can benefit from having. That's just my two cents on that.

Paul Harvey  10:12
I do want to clarify that we meant no offense to the field of Finance. I do have an undergraduate degree in finance myself, and I'm an absolute finance nerd when it comes to my own. I view investment as much a hobby as plan for wealth management and retirement. One related question to both of your points. Well, let me back up a little bit. My kind of assumption going into that episode may have been colored a little bit by the finance curriculum that I went through as an undergraduate, I felt that I was mostly exposed to what I would call corporate level finance, in that it was topics that were kind of above or outside the realm of household finance, things like valuing bonds and valuing companies and that kind of stuff that you're probably not going to do with personal finance, I always kind of wish that there had been more of an emphasis on personal finance in my program. I'm curious if...was my assumption off on that? Is that something -

Bento Lobo    11:24
Oh, no, no, I think you raise an excellent point. Because when we teach it at the principal's level, and even at the intermediate level, you we are obliged to offer the tenets of finance, right the principles of finance, and much of that developed in the corporate finance sphere. And, to a certain extent in the wealth management sphere. So at the heart of finance, in my view, is valuation. How we value things. And you can think of it in terms of application in a couple of ways, right? One is how do we compute and determine value of any asset? Any asset that be cash flow generating asset or a non cash flow generating asset like Bitcoin, for example? Right? Or artwork, right? So how do we evaluate we have a framework to think about that. But then the other piece about valuation is how do you add value to a farm to a venture to something right. And this concept is focused on value, you know, cuts across just about anything that you would do, right, in a corporate sphere, at a personal level. So we don't use these terms, necessarily. But we are wired to think that way. And the discipline gives you a framework to sort of put all those things together, you know, how do you think about risk in the context of an investment? Where does that play in? How does that factor and we have these elegant, discounted cash flow models that help us to understand, well, that play plays a role, you know, how the cyclicality of the economy matters to how you fund the farm. Right? When, in downturns, where rates are trending lower, you know, you want to debt finance, right? At other times, when rates are trending higher, you might find greater value in equity, and so on. I mean, there's all these mix of debt and equity, the capital structure decision, right? A lot of us think about, I mean, at the personal level, we think about it if I need to finance a car or a home, you know, when's a good time to refinance? When's a good time to borrow, right? I mean, we all make these choices. But it all stems from that broad framework that we have come to understand in the discipline. Now, I didn't take any offense. Yes, by the way, just for the record by anything that you said, You know, I think the point you were making was a very valid point. But I think it was a partial point. And I just wanted to add to that discussion, by pointing out that there are other aspects to why to the discipline, but also to why people might pursue the discipline, right? I think at the undergraduate level, we would encourage kids to take as many different classes as possible, expose yourself to all these, take an anthropology class, take a creative arts class, take this that you know, but when you get to the Masters level, you're now looking to augment your tool belt, right? You want to build your skill set in a certain way, whether it be through analytics, programming, whether it be finance, whatever the case might be. And so I think there's value to that, personally, right? And what you do with it is a different matter. But that's kind of I think there's value to that a priori, right when you when you walk into that decision.

Paul Harvey  14:48
I do agree and in my own personal finance, understanding those concepts of diversification and debt versus equity and all that certainly has been helpful for me, so you're right, there are those parallels there.

Frank Butler  15:02
That's the one of the things that you know, what we keep hearing. And we're, you know, we have a lens of looking at this from sort of management perspective, whereas Paul's more on the human, you know, person side of it, I'm more in that corporate strategy side. So we look more at the firm sort of as the level. And one of the things that we hear though a lot, especially in that, I guess, in that leadership or management world is we hear a lot of these executives who go after the finance. And really, in particular, the example that I was going with in that episode was Bob Lutz was going after the finance guys in the in General Motors at the time, because they would dictate how much you could have an angle on a windshield or in a dashboard or something like that. And it would affect the ability to, to have a design language that could appeal to a customer, right? It was really limiting and handcuffing design, and really allowing the company to, I think, pursue the benefits of the customer like creating customer satisfaction. And there's plenty of examples, Ford had it with their RFP process for a while where they were pushing the pennies down harder and harder. I know what's going on and some other businesses, and what ultimately happens is that they chase the penny so hard, but he almost make it harder for them to sell product again in the future. Because it's all about dropping those costs, trying to get those profits, so they can then redistribute them to the right to that right.

Bento Lobo    16:24
No, I appreciated that point. I do want to make a point that's related to your point is that, you know, the average Joe, anyone out there frequently cannot distinguish between finance and accounting, they tend to think those two disciplines are the same thing. Right? And they're not, they're not. And even at corporate levels, you know, controllers tend to be CPAs. That is their role, that is what they do, right. And so a lot of that comes down, you know, into this space, so to speak, I would argue that that's a waste of a finance person to be doing that stuff, because that's not their skill set. Right, the skill set here comes in making financing decisions, in making dividend decisions, making investment choices, right, and putting that all together toward increasing the value of the farm. And so I think to a certain extent, there's that little overlap or you know, that people tend to think about as Oh, that's the finance guy saying dollars and cents, but probably hits us more likely. And accounting guy was saying that's as far as we can go, you know, and rightly so. Because they're working in their within their parameters, and so on, so forth. So a lot of the broader point that you were making is, you know, an ultra focus on something at the expense of something else. That's a leadership issue. That's a culture issue. In my mind, I could be wrong. You guys are the management gurus. But it seems to me like that's the mindset that has to come from the top and say, This is what we value. And this is what we don't want to be doing.

Paul Harvey  18:07
Yeah, I think to your earlier point, you have to take in all these different perspectives, you need the finance guy at the table, you need the accounting person, and you need it and you need. Yeah, getting too far into any one of these avenues, leads to problems, right, pay no attention to the nickels and dimes is going to be a problem. Yeah, probably a bigger problem.

Bento Lobo   18:27
I mean, take the case of an M&A. I mean, if you if you're going to merge and acquire somebody, you need that finance skill set at the table. You know, that is that is not something you would delegate to somebody else, you do need the accountant there. You do need a legal person there. But you need that finance mindset. So and that's, that's a classic example of valuation, right? So whether we talk about a domestic Corporation are a multinational, I mean, when you go multinational, the canvas effect explodes all of a sudden, right? So there's even more issues to consider and the lateral vision, lateral thinking synergistic viewpoint of how things are going to evolve. All of that is what finance talks about this forward looking by nature. Right, by nature, it's forward looking. So it's fraught with risk, danger and like, fraught with error, you know? So the way that we can think about the future is really what, what were the big bucks are?

Paul Harvey  19:33
And I do think it's true. They sometimes say finance is the language of business. Point, I think it gives you the it's probably the mindset that's most closely aligned with what business actually is.

Bento Lobo    19:45
And I think, you know, commonly a lot of these concepts are misunderstood. And people need to understand that you know, when you think of business is bad and it comes at the cost of some Main Street, Wall Street. All that kind of, you know, that stuff, somebody needs to unpack that and say, you know, me, Wall Street doesn't exist without mainstream? You know, there is this, they're joined at the hips. And if you want to make a change, you got to make a cultural change. But this is not a war of Main Street versus Wall Street, you know, and we've been through that multiple times GameStop. Maybe this episode might be a smaller manifestation of the bigger thing that we watched in 2008 2009.

Paul Harvey  20:32
I think you're right.

Bento  Lobo   20:33
So anyhow, that's where I -

Frank Butler  20:36
I've been, I think that's something that's important for everybody understand, that's why I think it was great to have you help share that, because you certainly have that expertise in that area that, well, I have a pretty good grasp on finance. It's not my area of expertise. But I feel like I have to understand what those numbers mean, and such in the accounting and finance and but again, that's why we have experts in it. Having gone through multiple m&a myself. Yeah. Back in my corporate days, I wasn't the guy coming up with the valuations, I was the guy assessing the strategic fit the fit in the cultures of the organizations, making sure that it was something that we would be able to integrate, and what right need to integrate. But again, there was no finance person and the accounting people who were figuring out the dollars and cents of it.

Bento Lobo   21:21
Well, I'll tell you, I'll add one more point here really quickly. I mean, for the finance person, it's not merely about the dollars and cents, it's about the story. And you have to be able to tell the story to justify the dollars and the numbers you come up with. If you don't have a story, you don't you know, your that that's where your assumptions lie in the story. And if your story is, is undeveloped, you have no credibility in, you know, when you put your numbers out, there's a there's a quaint term for this. Now, Robert Shiller has called it narrative economics, which is basically, you need to be able to talk about, and, you know, damodaran, at NYU, and other people like that have said this for years. Any number you use in finance, you have to tell a story behind it. If you're going to use a number for risk, the required rate of return in this country? What is the story behind it? Why are you using that number? You know, if you're making assumptions about how cash flows are going to behave in the future? Why? What is the story behind it, you have to have a worldview to be successful at finance. And that's a skill set that is hard to come by. That's the art form of Finance. Right? There's some science to finance as well. Right? And people feel that maybe they lack some of that, and that's why they come to consume that it's cool. You know? So that's where I

Frank Butler  22:46
I was gonna say, that sounds like the art right, being able to tell a narrative is that is that ability to interpret it in a way that makes sense that others are gonna go Oh, yeah, that makes sense. And it can be, it can hold up to I guess, you know, criticism, right? And that's like, Oh, I just made this up out of thin air. It's, there's an actual story behind it, which does actually dovetail a lot into sort of what I talked about, quite often strategy, same thing. We have a lot of science with the tools, but there's a lot of art to it, as well. And that's some of that is that idea of being able to create the narrative, for example, for the big pictures, like what are we trying to accomplish in the next 10 2030 years? But then, you know, slice that down to what are we planning on doing the next three to five, so we can start getting the ship at least going in that that direction.

Bento Lobo    23:35
I agree. I agree. 

Frank Butler  23:37
Again, I really do appreciate your time Bento I, and a pleasure, this is perfect to help our listeners actually understand sort of that bigger element to it. And to really, I think, make sure that we are covering all the perspectives so that way others might listen to Oh, you know, if they got triggered by the same thing or something like that, and I don't mean that in a negative way. This is our way of being able to circle back 

Bento Lobo    24:00
And there's probably gonna be people who would disagree with some things I have to say and that's fine. That's why you guys around right? The next episode of your

Frank Butler  24:08
Exactly, we’ll field it, we'll talk about it you know, we're always happy to hear others’ perspectives, which is something we do actually welcome from our audience because it especially at least on the in, it sounds like in the finance world to more so than like accounting where it's much more cut and dry. But for our side of the world, DOB and management strategy side, it is very different based on different people's experiences and different cultures and you know, different people's backgrounds. And so it is not a one size fits all. So that's why I think this is why we do this. So this will be a fun one to put together and get out there so others can listen to this.

Bento  Lobo   24:48
Thank you guys, been a pleasure. Thank you. Bye bye,

Paul Harvey  24:52
Bye. Well, certainly enjoyable to have not a contrary opinion, but you know, a broader opinion than We initially had in the episode, so appreciate Dr. Lobo being a part of the show. And if there's anyone else out there that you would like us to have on the show, let us know. Yeah, well, we can't make any promises, we can promise that we will probably fail. But we will try to get anyone who you might want to hear from. And anyone who can help us provide a broader understanding and a broader perspective. So much the better. You know, one thing that he mentioned, that we talked about briefly, that it's a little bit outside the scope of our normal topic, but I really do wish there was more emphasis on personal finance education. In the US. I don't know how we compare to other countries, but I can't, we can't be any, they can't be any worse than us. You know, there's so many smart people. people I know, with PhDs who don't know, the first thing about investment retirement don't have like a 401k 403 B, or whatever the equivalent is, because they just to them, it's just well, that means there's like $300, less than my paycheck each time, I don't like that, you know, just completely. And don't even get me into the shenanigans of mortgages, and that people get themselves into people get very educated, but they don't know much about personal finance at all, it's almost the opposite of Elon Musk's observation, where sometimes in the corporate world, there's too much focus on the numbers. Sometimes in our personal lives, we're just completely ignorant of the numbers, we have no appreciation for how investments compound how interest that we're paying compounds, just absolutely nothing. So I would love to see more of that in your grade school, high school, somewhere in the curriculum of American education. It shouldn't just be the finance majors who are getting a taste of that stuff.

Frank Butler  27:01
Right? It's funny, because I was literally having this conversation the other day about this very thing is that there's very, there's a lot of people out there, and oftentimes, it's those who are more socioeconomically disadvantaged, right, those who are not as wealthy are not making as much money, the challenges, they don't understand the money, right. So they're easier to take advantage of, with these kinds of programs ever. It's like, you know, buy here, rent here, buy here, pay here actually happened that my wife and I were in the car together. And there was a car in front of us that had Buy Here Pay Here sticker on the back. And my first thought was like those poor souls because I know for a fact they're paying outrageous, outrageous 10 grand for a couch over five years or something here, right? It's terrible, because interest rates, they don't understand them partially. But it's all they can do, because they know that they can afford what they're getting. But they don't realize how badly they're just getting killed in that process. And part of it's just because their credits not going to be that great, or they don't know, the first thing about credit, you know, they might have not been paying bills, or they might have been one of those that have missed payments or been evicted a couple times. I mean, it happens, right. But I think a large part of that's because people don't necessarily understand one how to really match those finances are managed this finances, right, they get a paycheck. And instead of maybe saving it sometimes, like what little bit they can they go out and blow it on a PlayStation. You can't blame them for doing that. But if you don't understand sort of the compound interest rates or other facets of things of just basic financial literacy, it's really easy to get yourself behind the eight ball so fast.

Paul Harvey  28:39
And even if you're able to stay ahead of the eight ball, you can still deprive yourself of so much right there was an ad once I don't remember what product they're advertising. But it started off as if it was going to be a car ad for like a luxury car. And you and I are both kind of into cars. So we mean, we mean no insult anyone who spends a lot of money on cars, because cars are cool. But say it's like a $70,000 Lexus or something out of this tire all the benefits of this. And then the Add switches and says or that would have been $240,000 by the time you retire if you'd invested it in, you know, a conservative, even at whatever. Reasonable interest rates very

Frank Butler  29:19
Low, actually low low. 

Paul Harvey  29:21
Yeah. Depending on the timeframe. But I mean, that was 20 something years ago, I saw that ad but it sticks with me because I could just see so many people getting slapped upside the head by that message like oh my god, really? Because so many people are just like, well, what would the monthly payment on that be? Alright, let's do it. Right? Never mind. How much am I actually going to be paying out of pocket? By the time my five year whatever loan is up? Nowhere near the level of thinking of what would that have been worth if I'd put that in a tax advantaged retirement account instead of a disposable asset, right? 

Frank Butler  29:55
No, I agree. I mean, it's one of the things I always talk about is like the car is one of Your least valuable well not valuable, it's actually one of your least productive assets you will own. You spend the most money afford outside of the house. And it's one that you use the least right, you're in your house more your car, you're the average person uses a car for no more than two hours a day. And if you think about that, that means that for 22 hours out of the day, your car sits there, and you're paying big money to actually have it depreciate basically, in your driveway. And that's not including all the other fees that come with it, such as your insurance, or the tags, and all of that plus the wear and tear, blah, blah, blah, insurance. So it's really not a great productive asset for you 

Paul Harvey  30:40
Unless you make a living with your vehicle.

Frank Butler  30:43
Right. And going down that line. It's one of those that you have to have a vehicle, those kinds of things, I think, I use it as a discussion of when we talk about maybe the shift and how car ownership will occur in the future, largely because of these sort of self-driving vehicles. If you're not going to be driving it, if you're not going to be paying attention to it. Why do you care, it'll be more of an appliance that you're not really going to care that much about. At some point, it might be a long time because of the cultural elements. But neither here nor there.

Paul Harvey  31:12
Well, it'll be weird to look back and say, Oh, my God, like I used to spend 20% of my income on one of these things. And now it's just an appliance, like you said that, you know, I reserve one when necessary, and I pay this much for and that's it like, yep, why did I ever fork over this gigantic portion of my income

Frank Butler  31:30
For something that depreciates you know, at least real estate appreciates, in some way, although it doesn't generate cash flows. I know there's people who have arguments against owning a house, because it's not cash flow generating,

Paul Harvey  31:39
And it sucks every free hour of your life away, but yeah 

Frank Butler  31:42
[laughs] Neither here nor there. This isn't a finance show directly. But at the same time, you know that well, this is a little bit of a diversion from typically what we get into in the Busyness Paradox, we still think it's really important, because these things still matter. When you talk about, you know, job satisfaction, for example, your ability to be happy at home, or to be able to afford your lifestyle, or whatever that lifestyle might be an understanding what your finances are, and being able to save for retirement, all these sorts of things do overlap with your productivity at work.

Paul Harvey  32:16
It's really not a lot of fun to bust your hump at your job and be a success and hand over your entire paycheck to various creditors and bill collectors and that kind of thing. Yeah, it's hard to really enjoy your work if that's where all the money you're in goes.

Frank Butler  32:32
Right. And on top of that, too, you know, I think so many people don't understand the mysteries of your credit report, right, your credit score. And that's one that I try to tell people a lot. One of the things that I've always, that I've figured out in time, I guess, is that your credit score dictates the cost of your living, the worst your credit score is, the more expensive your lifestyle is, which is kind of not great, right? Thinking about it's often the people who have bad credit scores have made bad financial decisions at some point. And they're the ones who continually pay for that consequence for years and years. So, again, I think it goes back to what Paul is saying and what I completely agree with, we need to push financial literacy much earlier into the educational development, and not so much for this. So that idea of making it something that you need to understand finance, and then making bad decisions about finance with regards to business or something like that, and cutting corners or accounting or whatever it might be more along the lines of two maybe helping people be able to budget and understand their incomes and spending and maybe sometimes create a sense of delayed gratification, so they can save up for things and make themselves happier, and have a much better lifestyle. I mean, I think this all ties back to you know, another thing that while not directly on the Busyness Paradox, this discussion, finance, but the number one reason people get divorced is because of finance, and the finances, right? So if you're thinking about it from that angle to that all bleeds into your work life as well, if you're unhappy at home, you're going to struggle at work. If you're unhappy at work, you're going to struggle at home. But if you're really dealing with financial issues at home, that's not going to get any better when you go to work because you know, your paychecks only going to provide so much

Paul Harvey  34:18
And you know what else this relates to that we have mentioned a time or two before this structure. The key to a good credit score and to financial self-sufficiency is structure. I'm a big fan of the why NAB you need a budget, app and program. Yep. That's kind of what it does. It forces you to structure your, your spending. And by almost by default, it puts you into a mode of thinking where you're planning ahead and structuring and budgeting for future expenses. That's what at its core, that's kind of what finance is, right? It's deciding where to put the money. You don't need a degree to do that. But you do just need basic information. And you can get this information yourself just fine. You can read books, Dave Ramsey does a whole bunch of courses. I'm a fan of the Bogle heads stuff, books that they do. There's ways to self-educate. But how many people are doing that? You know, if we just gave people just the basics, some point in the educational system, there'd be so much less of this. And we'd see people with more structure in their financial lives and seeing the benefits of it. 

Frank Butler  35:33
Yeah, I think so. I mean, and you got to find what works for you. For example, you mentioned Dave Ramsey, I'm not a huge fan of Dave Ramsey's no debt kind of idea altogether. I mean, I think there's some good debt aspects out there yet, especially right now, at the same time, he does have some great points that he does make. There's also a subreddit out there, it's, I think it's personal, our personal finance, they actually, if you go to their website, for the subreddit, they actually have a budgeting spreadsheet up that you can use as a template to help you outline your expenses and such, it's really good, where you can ask questions, because even like Dave Ramsey, for example, you might not actually have the literacy enough to understand what he's trying to say, even though they do a very good job of conveying things. But I think going to something like that can actually give you some real world sort of things to work with, to help you plan out what you're doing and figure out where your money is going in and out. And then taking that idea and helping you create structure to either repair credit score, or just to better understand what goes on, I think something else to think about Clark Howard's another person who's a finance guru sort of aspect on TV, he really talks a lot about checking your credit scores once a year, you get to do that for free, free credit. hours. Yeah, yep. And so all of these things are just tools out there that not enough people know about. And I think that's something again, sort of off topic, but really does align with the overall theme of what we cover in the Busyness Paradox, which is that notion of structure, and how structure? I mean, cuz Think about it, right? You start getting behind on payments and stuff. Think about how much busy work you're creating for yourself. Just to think about trying to get out of that

Paul Harvey  37:19
You're dodging phone calls from debt collection agencies, like, suddenly that's taken up your time. How productive is that? 

Frank Butler  37:27
Or just trying to like stressing out about how are you going to pay those bills and hiding under the covers or just having anxiety attacks and go to the doctor. I mean, there's all sorts of negative repercussions about

Paul Harvey  37:36
Or getting a side job, right, which is oftentimes the first...the right thing to do, but it's probably not what you want to do. You're just working more to pay for things that you've already consumed. Yuck.

Frank Butler  37:49
Yuck. I agree. So anyway, we thank you guys for listening. Hopefully, you take some of this to heart. And we'd love to hear from you guys as Paul said, we really do want to hear more of these kinds of things. If there's something that kind of got you a little bit and you were like, um, tell us about it. We want to know more about it. If you have a guest you want us to bring on? Let's do it. We're going to try our best to do so we want to really make this show something that is going to help you guys out and helps us out

Paul Harvey  38:20
And us too  

Frank Butler  38:20
Because it makes us see the world different too. I think Paul and I've had a lot of sort of epiphanies as we've gone along. 

Paul Harvey  38:25
Oh, yeah

Frank Butler  38:26
Just doing this already. And I think we can all grow together in that sense.

Paul Harvey  38:29
Well said, your turn to drop the mic, Frank. I did on the last MBA episode.

Frank Butler  38:35
Let me let me drop the mic. I'm out.

Frank Butler  38:42
Alright, yay. I think we're done

Paul Harvey  38:44
Yeah I think we're done. The Busyness Paradox is distributed by Paul Harvey and Frank Butler. Our theme music is adapted from its business time by Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie. Our production manager is just Wuntaek. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and we'd love to hear from you. Please send questions, comments or ideas for future episode topics to input at busynessparadox.com, or find us on Twitter. Also, be sure to visit our website Busyness Paradox calm, to read our blog posts and for links to the articles and other resources mentioned in today's show. Finally, please take a moment to rate and follow or subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, I Heart Radio, Google podcasts for your preferred podcast provider.

Transcribed by Otter.ai