Ep 14 - Dan Brigham - On Faith, Finance, and First Principles

Hello, friends.

This is Tyler Gardner welcoming you to another episode of your Money Guide on the Side, where it is my job to simplify what seems complex, add nuance to what seems simple, and learn from and alongside some of the brightest minds in money, finance, and investing.

So, let's get started and get you one step closer to where you need to be.

My guest today is Dan Brigham, also known as Dan the Budget Man on Instagram and TikTok.

What initially drew me to Dan's content and his spirit of creating is that he's highly practical in his approach, and he is not selling you on, well, anything.

No courses, no paywalls, no subscription services, no nonsense.

Just financial literacy through the simplicity of note card math and his controversial series, Smart Guy vs.

Dumb Guy.

Additionally, Dan's story is one that many people can relate to.

He was over $100,000 in debt not too long ago and simply felt left behind.

By harnessing his natural capacity for grit and dedicating some time, well, a lot of time, to his own financial literacy, he was able to pay off his debt in just two years.

Not only that, but he now commits a great deal of time to helping others do the same.

His mission is to inspire people that they can, in fact, change their current course.

They can build wealth, and they can, with hard work, ultimately be financially free.

But, and perhaps this this is really what drew me to inviting him on the show, he does not want to hear excuses, and he believes that's truly one of the first things that needs to go.

So without further ado, a conversation with Dan Brigham about debt, Dave Ramsey, dealing with the daily grind that all of us have to face, and figuring out what success actually looks like.

We live in a world where everyone online these days is a guru or an expert or a money coach, and half of them are just shouting louder than the rest.

How do you think about earning trust and standing out without sounding like just another guy with a ring light and a Canva template?

In other words, how do you specifically build trust from an online and highly skeptical audience?

On the one hand, I posted this video over the weekend and it was about investing.

And when I talk about investing, I'm really just encouraging people to do it and

necessarily telling them what to do because there's other people that can tell them what to do, but more so just being like, hey, this is the value if you start doing it.

And I, so I posted it and it actually started to take off and do well.

And there's always one comment that might stand out to you.

And someone commented and was like, do you have your Series 7?

Yeah.

And I was like, oh, you maybe just obliterated my entire credibility for talking about this, you know?

And so I definitely feel like an imposter at that time.

And I've gotten very comfortable of just trying to tell people I'm not an expert on this.

And I think what people are craving oftentimes isn't necessarily the fact that I'm credible.

It's, I think that they feel like they can trust me because they've been following what I'm saying.

And I've provided this level of consistency that I can be trusted.

And these people are trusting you.

Then you need to have that integrity.

And rather than focusing on my credibility, I need to show my integrity.

And it's really hard to do that.

You can show your credibility immediately.

It takes a long time to show your integrity.

So I'm curious, how do you think about building that kind of trust in a space where so many people are performing expertise instead of embodying it?

The first part of that is what is your personal goal?

What is your agenda?

Because we do all have an agenda.

I don't sell a course.

It's one of my taglines.

So even if I wanted to, it's too late.

I I already said, I've already told everyone that I'm never going to do it.

So I've kind of like, oh, and trust me, once you say,

you better, you better stick to that.

Yeah.

If I just give a lot to people,

I trust that I'll get a lot back in return.

My mindset going into it was just give as much as you can.

The last part is that I've been trying to incorporate just being vulnerable about where I am.

Like I was the broke person doing dumb things.

And here are the things that I did to change.

The part where I feel like an imposter sometimes is actually just more the fact that I'm sharing things that I used to do more, but because I'm in a different stage of financial stability and because I'm in a different stage of where I'm building my wealth, I'm not doing the things that I did when I had $100,000 in debt.

Even though you may think that you don't always embody what you preach, One of the things that drew me to your content initially was actually your vulnerability.

I see very few finance voices who are willing to be truly vulnerable and honest with a mass audience.

So could you tell me a little bit about why you decided to open up and get vulnerable with a group of complete strangers on, of all places, social media?

It actually goes back before I even started creating content.

I started doing Dave Ramsey's FPU, leading a group through it.

Could you just share what FPU is?

Yeah, yeah.

Financial Peace University is a nine-week program that Dave Ramsey and his team has put together.

It takes you through his baby steps, which are basically the steps that you go through to get out of debt and become financially stable.

And I think it does a good job of just teaching some very basic financial literacy for people that maybe aren't money obsessed, but they want to improve their finances.

So we had multiple different groups.

For some reason, I got paired up with the group that was single 22 and 23 year olds.

So it was all people just

their first job at a college.

They have student loans.

They have car debt.

They are trying to figure out life, right?

Now, it would have have been really easy for me to just sit in this group and tell them all the things that they need to be doing all the time, but that's not really a great way to create discussion.

And so I was talking with one of my friends and I said, well, hey, what's the best way that I can get these people to start actually talking about real things going on in their life?

Because

in nine weeks, you are not going to get out of debt, but in nine weeks, you can change your mindset.

And the best way to do that is just to be real with other people and feel like you're not alone.

You don't always have something vulnerable that's related to finance.

And so when I initially was doing it, I was just talking more about anxiety.

I talked a little bit about when I went home to Vermont, how that can be challenging for me.

And

that doesn't stand out to everyone, right?

Like I've actually had people message me and they're like, stay in your lane, bro.

So it's like,

yeah, it backfires when you talk about finances.

And you're trying to help people understand financial literacy.

It's really hard not to come off like you're better than the person that you're talking to, which I don't feel like I am, but it's really hard to communicate that in video.

And so I'm curious, do you think about that when you're making your content all the time?

If so, tell me how you deal with that.

This was probably a pivot only a couple months ago, actually.

And I started to use the first person more and more.

And I remember seeing a couple clips, and I think this is familiar to most people, is that one of the age-old rules of conflict is when you're talking with another person to avoid using the second person pronoun, right?

You don't say you did this and you did this.

You phrase it in first person and say, well, I feel this way and I do X and here's how I respond, right?

So it doesn't come across as judgmental.

And I guess the English teacher in me always remembers that using the second person in writing is just ugly.

To say you in in anything just instantly points a finger and it makes someone feel whether they're judged or alienated or they should be doing something differently.

So I shifted to make 100% of my content into first person content where I just tell people what I do.

And that has had an impact on creating a space where I'm not telling other people what to do.

And just like you're saying, there will always be the people who chime in and say, well, why are you telling everyone to do X and Y?

And I say, I'm not.

Listen to the video.

video.

Yeah, there might be some implicit guidance there, right?

Especially coming from a place of potential authority.

But when I switched to using the first person pronoun, it meant a lot to me because creators like Ramsey do not.

And they do point the finger a lot and they do judge a lot.

And now I don't want to judge the judgers, if you will, but I do always want to create a space, just like you're saying, where it's, I don't care what you do.

I really don't.

I mean, I'm creating just to offer some type of guidance: here's how I've thought about things, here's what's worked for me in the past.

But if that's not what works for you, that's completely okay.

I'm not in this to be righteous, and I'm not in this to create a space where everyone all of a sudden thinks the way that I do.

I find that's been the easiest way to get past this space of judgment.

I know that I've hit on truth when I get a lot of negative feedback.

Right?

I know that something I've said has nudged people in a direction that they'd rather not be nudged in because they recognize at least a modicum of truth.

And I guess that's where the judgment comes in, right?

Is that where, you know, even though I'm not judging, I think that's what gets the negative reaction is that people kind of feel like, oh my gosh, like there might be a little truth here.

And if there is, that means that A, I might not be doing this perfectly.

B, the sacred cows in which I've believed for the last 20 years might not be as sacred as I thought they were.

I remind myself that it's way more comfortable to just say, that guy's delusional.

I'm okay.

I'm not doing anything wrong.

Well, and I've noticed you're not afraid in your own teaching to touch nerves.

And I mean that as a compliment.

So what are the topics you've found that tend to really get people reacting or even getting defensive?

Cars are a big one.

I always tell people not to normalize having car payments.

What is the biggest determinant of someone being able to become financially stable?

It's do they normalize having a car payment?

And then the next thing I tell people is you should get a side gig for a year and use that side gig to pay it off in the first year.

And then you'd have a paid off car for however many years.

And the pushback I always get is, I make $30 an hour.

Why do I need to get a side gig?

So it's kind of like, that's society's problem.

That's not me.

I'm not doing anything wrong.

So that one really strikes a chord with people.

And I just think it's because everyone has a car and no one wants to admit that they made a bad decision.

And beyond car payments or denormalizing car payments, what subjects make people dig their heels in the fastest?

And why do you think that is?

I really wanted to root what I talked about in biblical.

financial principles.

It's one of the things that actually stood out to me about Dave Ramsey.

I loved the way that he talked about God and money.

He really talks a lot about God will give onto us what he thinks that we can steward.

You know, if we're good stewards, God will trust us with more.

And

I started thinking a lot about that in my own life.

Even if I'm making enough money to afford a car payment, to afford all these luxurious things.

Am I being a good steward with this?

Or am I just being selfish?

I actually want to encourage people to be very generous with their money.

People complain about their society.

Well, guess who changes society?

People with money.

And I always try to explain to people that in these topics, I'm not saying that I'm right and you're wrong.

I don't want to push people away from God because they don't agree with my concept of money.

And I don't want to push people away from doing the right thing with money because they don't believe in God.

I posted something about prayer over the weekend and I got.

quite a few messages that were like, hey, I love your financial content, but like keep your religion to yourself.

Sometimes you think that something is not going to be a hot button issue when you talk about it.

And it ends up being the most controversial thing you've ever posted.

Absolutely.

Unfortunately, the truth is that you matter nothing to any of these people.

And we just have to accept that.

Going back to what your dog piece, like I have a dog.

And if I were to put up a post of them, I would be very hesitant because I'd say to myself, well, what value does this provide to them?

My wife is really tough on me about that.

It's helpful having a voice of reason who's been doing content for a long time to just kind of remind me that they owe you nothing.

And

everything that you do, you have to basically be serving those people.

If it doesn't serve them,

either they're going to just tune away from you or they're going to do what they're doing, which is like tell you to stay in your lane.

If we accept that last part as truth, that people like you and me, and I'll even extend that to creators in general, don't actually matter in the way that I think many creators want to matter, right?

Then, what does success look like for you?

And I struggle, I struggle with this daily.

I struggle to think about the end game or what is the goal of all of this.

It's really tough to not make that answer, ego.

There's going to be people where you're part of their their journey and you never even find out about.

But when you do, I think it's really embracing that.

I had a guy that I talked to maybe like a month ago and

he's in a pretty tough financial situation.

Those affirm and buy now pay laters, he had like four or five of those on top of, he did a debt consolidation.

So he had like one big lump.

Just all these things.

And when I sat down with him, the reality was that he didn't make enough enough money to pay for all of his bills and debt payments, let alone spend a dollar on anything that he wanted.

I followed up with him like last week.

It hit me hard.

I was just like, man, this kid's 25 years old.

And it's not that he makes bad income.

He's just in a bad situation.

And so I wanted to just let him know that there's somebody out there who's rooting for him to help hopefully keep him on track.

And

he got a side gig driving trucks on the weekend.

So he's going to be making $2,500 $2,500 more a month.

And he's already paid off one of the buy now pay later loans.

So he's already making that progress.

And the entire journey, I'm actually, I'd say less than 1%,

but like that stuff is incredibly rewarding.

Did you get a lot of purpose when you were teaching?

I don't know what grade you were teaching, but you said you were teaching.

Predominantly high school, predominantly high school students.

Did you get a lot of purpose out of that?

Tons.

But was it because they were right there and you got to follow along?

It was because I thrive on shared positive energy.

I think that I would tell, and I miss this dearly.

I really do.

I miss interacting with a number of people who are in a room together with a shared purpose.

I can't think of anything that I have found to date that gives me more lasting fulfillment than any amount of time where you just know a group of people have come together and shared something emotionally or intellectually

engaging and and lasting.

And it was usually surrounding literature.

This had nothing to do with personal finance.

So going back to your point about vulnerability and opening up with people and kind of alongside people.

But maybe it's it's like the segue for you to

that group of people.

There's opportunities for you to get that same sort of impact of getting a group of people together to be vulnerable.

And

the content creation is just your way of spreading the word to get those people slotted into that group.

Building a group is really tough.

You know, high school people are forced to go there, but just building something where people have their free time and they want to spend it doing that group is actually really tough.

And I think that you've done a really good job of building a large community where you probably

create something like that group.

I don't know what it would look like, but

I'm intrigued by finding that space.

And I think that's why I ask.

You know,

I don't ask what your definition of success is thinking that there's a set answer, obviously, for you or for anybody as much as I'm curious.

I'm very curious what would use attention for these days.

The goal of any good sales is get attention and direct it towards your product.

So it's one thing to get the attention, but then what if you don't know what your product is?

And similar to you, the very last thing I want to do is to create a product that is superficial or ego-driven or short-sighted, but rather something that really does hold water and has merit and lasting value.

But that end game is what I'm really interested in is what is driving all of it.

I think it's okay to have some ego involved.

Going back to your teacher example, hey, I get a lot of purpose out of creating this space.

Someone could argue, so your ego feels like you need to create this space and be the one that creates, like, you can make that argument for anything.

There's no selfless action.

For me personally, I do need to support myself financially, right?

Like I've got a kid on the way.

I've got a family.

As much as I'd love to do all this for free and not worry about money, like I am also a human that needs money.

So a world where I'd love to be able to fund my lifestyle off of this, not from a perspective of greed, but just sustaining, that motivates me to do this.

But then the reason why it motivates me is because I get way more purpose out of those small moments, out of hopefully inspiring people.

to be better with their money.

I've gotten a lot of purpose out of sharing my story with other people.

I want to shift gears for a second because I know you and I could talk about the why behind our work all day, but I'm also curious about the where.

You're in Austin, Texas, which has become this fascinating intersection of finance and media and creators.

I ask mostly because I'm envious being up here in forever Winterland, Vermont, but tell me a little bit about what the content creator scene looks like down there right now.

I have a friend who has a company, they have a program called Cut 30.

I didn't actually do it, but essentially it's like a 30-day boot camp.

I think it's 30 days.

I might be messing this up, but it's like a 30-day boot camp where you can learn to become a content creator, but it was basically a panel for creating systems and processes and ways to monetize your page.

Actually, it wasn't a great event for me personally, just because I have a process of making content and I don't want to monetize the way that they wanted to.

What were some of the things that they were proposing?

Was this, was this our common slate of

if you've never made content before, it was a great sort of introduction.

The stuff that I got out of it was just meeting other people who are doing that stuff.

And it's always nice to be able to connect with people who are like living that roller coaster of what it's like.

I'd say you and I are very fortunate.

Like, I mean, you've absolutely dominated the financial space, but even at my size, I feel like I've done something that very few have been able to get to.

And I, when I went to that event, I actually gained more gratitude for just how many people are grinding and like stuck, just not growing at all.

This seems to relate to money perfectly.

It's so easy to sit there and think that you suck,

to sit there and think that your content is garbage because there's someone better than you out there, because there's someone that through whatever metrics you're trying to find success, someone looks like they're doing it better or has put together a more curated newsletter or whatever it is.

And this is my long-winded way of saying, you brought up the word dominated to talk about my financial content.

I don't see that at all.

At all.

All I see are people who are, in my mind, dominating this space and doing it a thousand times better than I'm doing it.

And we have to be able to measure our performance and our standards versus ourselves and not fall into the finance trap that so many of us do of saying, look, even if you have a million dollars, well, wait a minute, now my neighbor's got two million.

And so it's just the equivalent of keeping up with the Joneses.

I'm changing what your goals are.

At one point, I just wanted to get out of debt and then I got out of debt and then I wanted to just have a house and then I wanted a bunch of houses.

We're all guilty of that.

It happens in health and wellness too, right?

Like a guy gets obsessed with going to the gym and just wants to lose weight.

And then he gets obsessed with being the biggest guy at the gym.

We're just wired to naturally

want more.

That's a good thing because it forces us to improve ourselves.

But gratitude is just such a struggle, which is why those walks in the morning I go and I pray.

I actually spend a bunch of time just focusing on what am I grateful for today.

And every day I have to tell myself something I'm grateful for because there's no way that I can't think of a single thing.

It's kind of helped me ground myself both in content creation, in my financial journey, with

my relationships with other people, kind of in every aspect of my life.

Every time I need a reminder of that, I always go back to the game of let's just say that right now you have a hundred million dollars or call it whatever amount of money you want.

What would you be doing with your time?

Back to the fact that I'm a raging introvert.

I feel like I've been able to do it very cheaply.

You know, walking my dogs for me is actually very fulfilling and it ends up being enough in a lot of ways.

All right.

So stepping away from me, my walks in the woods, et cetera, I'm curious, is there a belief or idea about money that you really wish more people understood?

There's basically two types of people.

One is the person that focuses on society's problems.

And then the other person says, okay, well, society has problems, but I can focus on the problems of my own life.

And you can't control society's problems.

Like the example would be, you could spend your whole life dedicated to trying to fix climate change.

And most likely, you as an individual person are not going to impact this.

And so the question is, do you spend more time thinking about inflation than you do on your own spending habits?

Do you call rich people evil, but you've never actually read a book on financial literacy?

And if you're 22 or 23 years old, it's probably one of the hardest times ever to actually get your finances together with the combination of the fact that you have a phone in your hand that knows exactly how to advertise to you and your dollar goes way less further than probably any other college grad.

But obsessing over that is not helping you get ahead.

You force everyone to focus on society.

Like what an ego that you must have to not think that you can't improve your own life at all.

If anyone from Gen Z is listening to this show, I am sure that the term boomer is echoing throughout their minds in reference to what you just said.

How old do you need to be to be a boomer?

Well, there are two ways that I think about it.

One is there's literal definition of it, and I'm lucky that I do not fall into the boomer category.

I am a millennial.

I'm an older millennial, but I am a millennial.

But I don't see boomer used in any way other than just referring to anybody that's preaching traditional nonsense versus

whatever the new wave is.

I understand the implications that if I'm going to say anything anti-crypto, I'll instantaneously be lumped in with every other boomer in the world who's telling you to keep your cash under your mattress.

I want to close by asking you to consider on the days when the work feels heavy and when the mission feels far away, what keeps you going?

Because I think this is clearly something that transcends the idea of being a creator or somebody working in media.

What's the thing, big or small, that pulls you forward even when you're tempted to hit pause and simply walk away?

I didn't really start posting on Instagram until October.

And pretty much out of the gate, I just started having a ton of success.

Very easy to stick with it when that's happening, but almost like too much too fast, where now

I still pretty good engagement.

I'm not growing as fast as I was then.

I was so used to this one speed that anything slower,

all the negative thoughts and all the doubt that I had in my mind is coming true.

And so the moments where I think about quitting are almost like to beat it to the punch and be like, okay, this thing is dying.

Before you guys fully reject me, I'm pulling out of this.

And you can't fire me.

I quit.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

So I think I deal with that quite a bit.

My wife is really good about just being like, one, your stuff is doing really well.

Two, you are going to at some point experience a down period of time.

And she is a little bit sassy with me.

She'll be like, and if you can't handle that, then maybe this isn't for you.

Sounds like that's a good partner right there.

That's fair.

You have to have a little bit of a thirst for pain.

And it's not like physical pain, but the videos that are going to do really well, everyone's going to be hating on you.

And then the only time where you're not going to be getting a lot of hate is when there's no voices at all.

And that's, I don't like, which one would you rather have?

The hate or nothing?

There's your book idea, the hate or nothing.

People think that they want to be famous.

People think that they want to be well-known.

And you just have to know the more famous that you get, the more hate that you get.

There's a direct correlation.

And if you just think about the most well-known people that you can name off the top of your head, every single one of them are hated.

You know, I mean, look at the president of the United States.

I was just about to say, yep.

I remind myself of that one every single time I'm feeling down is, does that comment compare to anything that has ever been said by the opposition about a president of the United States?

And not even close.

The moments where I think about quitting are actually never the harsh comments.

It's so tempting to say something mean, but I never think about quitting in those moments.

You hit upon something that is a valuable way to even kind of close out this conversation, though, and tie it all together is the reality of our need for relevance.

And I'll be the first to say, I absolutely get hurt when growth rates slow and you feel like, wait a minute, is this it?

And it's all done and everyone tells you to get off the stage.

And there is the comparison to debt that

you always want to be relevant somehow.

You want to be useful somehow.

You want to be offering something to somebody.

Sometimes you do all the right things and you still fail.

If you could leave people with one book that has influenced you the most, and I know you touched on Ramsey, I know you touched on biblical teachings.

One book or text that has kind of influenced your life more than any other that you might recommend for people to think about.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, the Bible is a great book.

You know, it's hard to recommend.

But from a Bible, I never heard that answer.

So that's great.

I love that one.

Yeah.

Go read the Bible, guys.

It's still in print.

It's still relevant.

From a financial literacy standpoint, it's rich Dad Poor Dad.

Yeah.

I don't actually love the book itself, but

it was the first financial book that I read where I just couldn't stop reading it because it was so well written.

And it actually just gave me more of a thirst for more good financial literacy books.

I love that you brought up Rich Dad Poor Dad because even though I don't necessarily love Kiyosaki, I do love the book.

And you're right.

Fun to read, Paige Turner, and anything that inspires financial literacy, fine by me.

It was one of the first books that really opened my eyes and got me reading more about money, mindset, possibility, etc.

And I'm hoping that this conversation leads some other people to not just be curious about financial literacy, but also your content, Dan.

I think you have a ton to offer and I'm really excited that we got the chance to chat today on this show.

Thanks for inviting me.

Honestly, when you reached out, I know I said that you're dominating the space, but I truly mean it.

I think you're personally probably my favorite creator when it comes to financial topics.

And I still learn a lot from your content, even as someone who obsesses over the topic.

So genuinely humbled, and I'll send you the 10 bucks that I paid you to say that

after the show.

But thank you.

It's been great, and I'll connect with you soon.

Sounds good.

Thanks for tuning in to your money guide on the side.

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Until next time, I'm Tyler Gardner, your money guide on the side, and I truly hope this episode got you one step closer to where you need to be.