Ep 10 - Victoria Ferguson - On Money, Meaning, and Saying No to Budgets

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.

One of the reasons I wanted to invite Victoria on the show is because she truly embodies what it means to take a leap of faith, to put her own passion ahead of her own lucrative paycheck.

She made the bold move from a full-time role in traditional finance to becoming a full-time content creator, all in the service of your education and your empowerment.

As someone who prides themselves on being what I'd call a modern-day starving artist, aka a content creator, and an actual money expert, I think what Victoria's done is not just brave, it's brilliant.

Victoria Ferguson is a certified financial planner professional who's passionate about helping people take control of their finances with confidence.

She's worked with thousands of clients to build financial plans, grow their wealth, and make smarter money decisions.

Growing up, Victoria wanted to be a teacher and spent years in the performing arts world.

Becoming a content creator allows her to combine her love for educating and performing with personal finance.

Through podcasts, webinars, and social media, she makes financial literacy engaging and accessible for everyone.

In this conversation, we explore why budgets don't work, what exactly you need to do to find the right financial advice in a world of noise and nonsense, and Victoria offers a framework you can use starting today to make financial and life decisions.

So without further ado, a conversation with Victoria Ferguson.

What inspired you in the first place to get involved in this space?

What are some of the things that got you saying, I want to be a content creator on TikTok of all places.

Yeah, I think I lost my mind.

Growing up, I always wanted to be a teacher.

What I wanted for Christmas as a child was a projector and a whiteboard.

I was that kid that would force my little siblings to play school.

It was my favorite thing in the whole world.

I was eight and I was like, Mom, can I have a projector?

And they're like, You psycho.

Like, can you ask for Barbies and stuff?

And like, no, I would really like a projector.

Did you get one?

No,

because they're kind of like they're big and they're bulky.

And I didn't grow up with a ton of money.

So my parents were like, no, we can't afford that.

So a whiteboard from Costco did.

And I

loved just teaching and I loved education because for my own selfish reasons, it helps me really understand things.

I love the education piece.

I happened to go into finance because I didn't grow up with it.

I didn't know a lot about it.

And maybe that education instinct was like, hey, I want to understand this more.

So people aren't out there like I was having no idea what to do.

And I graduated with a degree in finance.

Theme of educating always came up for me.

And it was always my favorite thing.

It's why I love client meetings is because I get to teach all the time.

And so working through my career, I got to a point where I wanted to have a broader audience.

I worked with a lot of super high net worth business owners.

Millionaires stress about money just as much as anybody else.

I promise.

It's just a different kind of stress.

Could you go further with that idea?

Because I want people to understand more about where this anxiety surrounding money is coming from, even those who apparently have more than enough.

Any person, regardless of income, wealth, every single person wants to know the answer to, am I going to be okay?

You could have...

$100 million.

You can have $100.

That's why I love this work so much, because I get to help with that question.

And that is a universal experience.

Am I going to be okay?

Am I too blunt in just telling someone with $100 million, yes?

I think there's two ways I like to go about it.

One, there's the spreadsheet answer.

And two, there's the emotional piece to it.

Money is 100% emotional.

Because if it was a spreadsheet thing, we would have 80% less problems than we do now.

I've worked with some people who.

love the spreadsheet and the numbers, like engineers in particular, really like that.

And they find a lot of comfort in the, hey, I've run these projections for you.

I've stress tested your cash flow.

Here's the best case scenario, mid-case, worst case.

And I think in painting the picture of worst case scenario, stock market drops, you lose this source of income, social security goes away.

Everyone's so afraid of that.

I stress test with everything they're worried about.

And for some people, the spreadsheet answer is more comforting.

With other people, I just ask a ton of questions.

Where is this coming from for you?

And just try to meet them where they're at.

Cause you're not crazy.

Everybody wants to know if they're going to be okay.

And oftentimes what I found, even in working with different demographics, one that just popped into my mind because I can relate to it is children of immigrants.

My mom immigrated from the Philippines.

And I don't know if this is genetic, but I'm always just like.

I'm going to run out of money.

That's a big fear.

It usually stems from childhood, like a lot of things do.

And if they're really worried, I just try to meet them where they're at and try to ask a lot of questions.

Why does this come up for you?

Why do you feel this way?

And just validate it.

Yeah, of course, you're afraid that this is all kind of run out.

You're not crazy for thinking that.

So there's the logical piece and then

more so the emotional piece.

I also try to remind people, you're not alone because one of my biggest frustrations actually with money, and again, this is cliche.

We all know that there are very few spaces to talk about money, right?

You don't go to your neighbor's house and talk about money.

You don't go to school and talk about money.

You don't talk to your family that much about money.

And the single most awkward, terrible conversation you can have with a partner is about money, even though we know that obviously you need to have it.

But that's such a hard conversation to have.

So when you were a professional financial advisor, how much of your role would you say was managing money versus how much of your role was managing people's emotions and psychological wiring?

I was just going to say that, Tyler.

Like I am

way, way, way more a therapist than I am a certified financial planner professional.

Does that even come up in the curriculum?

Originally, no.

I can't remember how many sections the original CFP was, but when I took the CFP, I was the first testing group that they incorporated

a new section that was behavioral.

It made me really nervous because I was like, oh, gosh, are they going to fail us all?

Are they going to pass us all for this new section?

I love that they've done that because I think that's where the world of finance is going.

People have realized they want to have a confidant, somebody in their corner.

I worked with so many people where one spouse talks to me about their money way more than the other.

I did some research of all these things people would rather do than talk about money.

And it's like they'd rather stand in line at the DMV than talk about money.

They'd rather talk about their own demise,

help money.

They'd rather do public speaking than talk about money.

And so it's, it's honestly why I love what I do because you don't get very many spaces like this.

And it's why financial professionals will never go go away.

I'm not pretending any of us have like the answer to this, but I actually do want to know why it's taboo.

I get why sex is taboo.

I get why religion is taboo.

I get why politics is even taboo.

I don't actually think I understand

exactly where and how in our education system or social environment, we orchestrate this space where we say, by the way, shut up about money.

Why is it that nobody wants to talk about money?

I think a lot of it comes from a shame-based feeling in some way.

Debt, for instance, a lot of people have debt, whether that's student loan, credit cards or whatnot.

There's a lot of guilt and shame around that.

And even around income, if you make a low income, that feeling can come about.

But I've also met some millionaires who are kind of ashamed by how much they make.

I was just thinking that, is that the other day I connected with a couple that had $2 million.

And I could tell very quickly that they did not think they had done very well in their lives investing.

They were coming from a place of shame where they thought that by X point, they should have had more money.

So one of the first things I had to tell them wasn't just that you're not alone, but that look, I know that you guys don't talk to everybody about net worth, but I do talk to a lot of people about net worth.

And trust me, you're doing okay.

A lot of it is shame-based because they don't know what they don't know.

They don't know if they're doing it right.

Of course, you don't want to flaunt how much you make, but so we know.

Oh, it's this kind of funny dance people do.

I don't want to tell you how much I make, but I want to show it to you.

Like, you know, like, I want, and I don't blame people because it's a form of self-expression.

And of course, I'm not going to show you my brokerage account statement.

I'm not going to show you how I pay stuff.

Yet I am.

It's like, oh, we.

Like, where do you summer?

And I could not answer that question.

Where do I summer?

Dude, that was the first moment when I knew someone had more money than I would ever have in my life when they used the word summer in that fashion.

Summer as a verb?

Like, we are not in the same tax bracket.

Clearly somewhere that I do not, my friend, that's where I summer is somewhere where we call it summer.

We don't summer.

There's a lot of like shame-based feeling, whether, like, whether that's tied to your actual numbers or just insecurity around how little you really know about money.

They're worried about getting judged.

And again, doesn't matter what your pay stub is or how much is in your bank account.

Everyone will experience that.

And making more money will not solve that for you.

I know a lot of people think that, but it's not true.

Just to ask the question that I know people want to know is where do you go for good information and how do we separate noise from nonsense?

Because as you know and as I know and as anyone listening knows, there are so many people out there who appear to have a specific knowledge.

and come across as well spoken or articulate or entertaining.

And they're giving us this type of information.

And how can I figure out what information is good information and what information is garbage?

So the gold standard, the best way you can get financial advice hands down is going to be from a fee-only fiduciary and if they're a certified financial planner professional.

The reason for that is because it's one-on-one time with your primary care physician.

They know your background.

They know your situation.

They've tracked your numbers for years.

You have a relationship with them.

And so going to the doctor with a new health problem, they're going to be able to solve it specifically for you in the best way possible.

And hopefully,

you know, the way you pay them and incentives are aligned and they don't sell you products and whatnot.

So I was just going to ask, just because I know you and I know the language, but could you just unpack a little bit?

What does a fee-only financial planner mean?

So fee-only will be they do not make commission and they do not sell you products.

and what's really sad about the financial advising world 85 of financial advisors sell products and make commission there's only 15 of us out there who don't do that if you are going to work with an advisor be very very careful of the people who make commission and sell products i don't want to sell you a whole life policy when i don't believe in it myself So fee only, that just means your financial incentives are aligned.

They're not going to make any more or or less money depending on what you do.

And then fiduciary just means legally they have to put your interests before the financial advisor's interests and their business's interests.

And they can get in huge, huge, huge, huge trouble if they don't do that.

And then lastly, with CFP, that is the top designation a financial advisor can get in financial planning.

Let's say that I'm listening and I say, Victoria, got it.

I'm going to go work with a CFP.

But one of the the questions I get a lot is, well, how do I find a good CFP?

Because I'm sorry, but not all advisors, fiduciary or not, are created equal or have the same commitment to a craft or intellectual capacity or psychological underpinning to understand what you clearly have or didn't take the CFP exam when emotional economics and behavior was

part of the curriculum.

You can cross off a lot of things by finding somebody who doesn't sell you products or make commission.

If you find that you're probably doing pretty good so far, you can definitely get a vibe if they take the time to get to know you.

Good questions to ask them are, what's your approach to financial planning?

What's your approach to investing?

Like, are they more,

you know, short-term or are they long-term with their investing philosophy?

Having worked in the industry yourself, having met with a number of clients ranging in all sorts of different financial acumen, what are a couple questions that you would say if you're not asking an advisor this question or these couple questions before working with them, you're setting yourself up for a potential issue later on?

The first question, I know the people pleasers like myself would never ask this.

I would 100% ask, and I know it's uncomfortable, but I would a million percent ask, how do you get paid?

Because if they're like, oh, I sell this or I have a planning fee and then I have this thing called an AUM or assets under management fee.

That is so important to know because it does shape the advice they give.

So if you're going to ask them any question, I would ask them that.

Another question that I would ask is what kinds of clients do you typically work with?

I'll give you an example.

Before, I was working with a lot of people in their 30s and 40s who are business owners.

And then I've worked in other spaces where I work with people who have something called equity comp, restricted stock units or ISOs or NSOs.

Basically, there are so many things in the world of finance that we tend to specialize.

Or there's some planners who are really good at student loans.

I'm not that great at that.

Like if somebody's like, hey, help me pick a plan.

I'm just like, oh, go to studentplanner.org.

Like they're really great.

That's a really good question to ask is what's your specialty?

Who do you typically work with?

Because there are some CFPs who only work with people who are five years to retirement or in retirement.

I'm not good at that.

I don't know how to design a portfolio that's more dividend-based.

So if someone came to me and said, do you work with retirees?

I would be honest, this is not an area of my expertise, but I can get you to the right people.

If you're going to ask any questions, how are you paid?

And what kinds of people do you work with?

And then if you fit that kind of model, then great.

It might be a really great pair for you.

For any CFPs who are listening, if I could go back into this field at any point, and I got this advice when I first was in the field, but I did not take advantage of it.

And just like a business, the mistake that so many of these advisors make is trying to be everything to everyone.

Everything for everyone.

And

the world of money and finance is exponentially larger than any one person's skill set could ever comprehend.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

So many nuances.

So I knew there was one guy who worked near us who only would work with divorcees under the age of 40 who were looking at specifically divorce components of law and finance.

And at first, I'm going, man, like, that's a really specific subset.

He crushed it.

Yes.

He made so much money because there was never a doubt if you fit into that category.

That was where you went.

Nobody could compete with him because he had spent his time.

basically becoming an expert.

And this is actually kind of what I want to build on too, is that this term is thrown around a lot.

This term expert, right?

I see, I see money expert written on 99% of people's online profiles.

And I laugh because

I was a professional money manager, Victoria.

I do not consider myself even close to an expert, not even like, not even close.

What does it take to have expertise?

in this field.

What are some of the things that you think bring expertise to an advisor that would benefit someone going to work with them i think it's all niche in what you said i laugh because when a company i worked for for a little while we only worked with dental professionals i laugh because like that's all i ever did day in day out was dentists either dentists who owned their practice or multiple practices or were aspiring to be that so i got really good at reading profit and loss statement i got to the point where i was like how many chairs do you have okay your top line should be this.

I knew all the benchmarks.

I knew all these tax strategies specific for dental professionals who owned their business.

I couldn't do that like anywhere else.

Medical professionals, you go to your family care doctor, right?

For the general, and then they refer you to specialists.

Same thing in money.

There are no two financial situations that are the same.

So I also kind of laugh when it's like, I'm a money expert.

I'm like, really?

Well, because there's taxes, there's there's estate planning, there's insurance, there's even the basic for a long time.

I wasn't even working in the financial basics and budgeting and all of that.

So I'm like, I can't make you a budget.

I don't know how to do that anymore.

As you specialize, you lose knowledge because you don't train that muscle in other things that seem simple.

And no, I actually can't make a budget for you.

I had someone write to me and say, can you please make some content on budgets?

And I said, no, nothing I say is going to be of value.

Sure, I could make something up, but without a doubt, for everything that I can do well with investing, I do it equally poorly with budgeting.

I have never looked at my own income statements.

I have never looked at my own concept of a balance sheet beyond what my net worth is from time to time.

I don't budget money.

I just don't do it.

I don't spend anything.

I'm a minimalist, but I don't budget.

Like that's honestly one of the more frustrating things to me because then it makes us like hyper aware of

everything that's going out and everything that's coming in.

And I know my mind well enough to be like, that would drive me crazy.

This is a hot take, but I don't believe in budgeting.

I might get a lot of hate for this, but I liken it to dieting.

Can it be helpful?

Yeah.

It can be really helpful to get you on the right track and get you out of not so great situations.

But personally, I have never seen it work long term.

I have a lot of awareness around my money, but I don't budget it.

I don't believe in it.

And I'm not going to post content around it because I don't like it.

Returning for a moment to screening potential advisors, do you have any other words of wisdom as far as how people might go about the search process when everyone in their cousin appears to be calling themselves a financial advisor these days?

I know a lot of people don't know what they don't know.

So it's kind of hard to like tell you what to do.

But I think I would say meet with a minimum of three different people because you'll start to get a sense of personality.

Do you like your financial advisor?

Can you be friends with them?

Can you go get a coffee with them and just talk about life or whatever is important?

I compare it to dating.

Whenever someone asks me, well, how do I know if they're going to be a good advisor for me?

I say, it's the same way you know if someone's a good partner for you.

Go out to a cup of coffee.

But this is, it's interesting.

This goes back to your point about people pleasing, which is most people I know don't want to engage in interviewing potential advisors.

And I say, look, just like dating, I want you to find a list of five professionals with whom you might consider working.

And then I want you to have a coffee date with them and ask them whatever's on your mind and see if they make you laugh.

See if they make you cry.

See if they listen to you.

Do they listen to a word you're saying?

And I said, you will figure out more in that 10 minutes, just like with any professional than you would based on credentials, professionalism, et cetera.

Look at it as an interview.

And honestly, the good financial planners or advisors or they should be interviewing you too.

Go further with that because I think that's an idea a lot of listeners probably aren't as familiar with, but we obviously need to be.

I have turned down people where we don't jive.

I've turned down people who are all about real estate.

I don't align with that personally.

And so I don't think we're a great fit.

And I'll hand it off to somebody else.

Generally, the advisors who just take on everybody because they want to manage your money and they want to charge you an assets under management fee.

It's more likely that you're probably not going to be a good pair.

But at the end of the day, would you be excited to talk to them once a quarter just as a person?

What were some of the reasons that you would turn someone down?

I think the big one for me is if I got the sense that they wouldn't listen to me, because at that point, I don't feel good about charging you a fee if you're ultimately going to do your own thing.

I've turned down a lot of people in that space where I'm having an intro call and they are telling me

what they have and what they're going to do about it.

And I'm like.

Cool.

Like, what am I here for?

I never worked with someone unless I was like, I can add value here.

Either that or if personalities didn't match.

Like, I've had people where I'm like, oh, you fit exactly the type of like demographic of people I work with.

You're 30s to 40s, business owner, like mid-career, high earner.

I'm like, yeah, I deal with people like you all day long.

But if we didn't connect, or I'm just naturally a very chatty, bubbly person.

And if they didn't like that or whatnot, I'd be like, okay, like, would I be excited to chat with you four times a year?

No.

And that's

like, I'm not for everybody.

I get it.

And that's fine.

There's plenty of other CFPs who are just as qualified, if not more, who have different personalities.

I have a hard time working with negative Nancy, the doomsdayers.

I read one line the other day that might be my new favorite line when it comes to business owning.

Similar to the idea we were talking about before about choosing a niche, it was also choose your client very, very wisely.

Yeah.

Because

just as you said, it's easy to say, I want to take on everybody, right?

It satisfies the ego.

It fulfills my sense of self.

If people want to work with me, right?

Well, and honestly, I will vouch for people who are getting started in this business.

The way a lot of financial advisors are paid is a runway.

So my first job was a mid-size corporate private wealth management firm.

I had three years to replace my income.

So it's like 100% year one.

And then I think it was like 60% year two and then like 20%.

It drops massively.

So I don't, I really don't blame people in this business who are under that compensation model because they're like, I have to, or my, like, I'm not going to be able to feed myself or I'm not going to make it.

And it's why a lot of people drop out in the first two or three years because they're like, hey, this is impossible.

Like, I have to take on everybody.

Yeah.

And I guess we're, and we're all kind of recorrect what I said is it's not the advisors who are bad with that, but that incentive structure within itself to me is very problematic.

Right.

And I can even just what you're describing.

Like, I get it.

I get that the firms want to bring everybody's assets under their roof as quickly as possible.

Yeah.

But man, does it just emphasize this cutthroat, kill what you eat?

I just want to manage your money.

And back to your idea of what an advisor should be looking for with you.

You can't help but think all I want is your assets because that's how we're measuring one another's credibility here.

That's how we're managing status.

That's how we're managing promotions.

That's how we're managing if I actually get paid or not.

And I often reflect on this idea of making sure in life that we are, again, always measuring ourselves against the appropriate proxies.

And unfortunately, to me, so much of the asset management business is the only proxy that they care about is how many assets you have.

So if you had $50 million with me, of course I'm going to call you before my client with $5 million.

The way my career worked out and honestly with COVID hitting early on in my career, I never got to build that traditional private wealth management book, but I have seen it time and time again.

I was on a team of two or three other traditional financial advisors where that's what I was told to do.

You pick up these calls before this.

They get these emails before this.

They get the tickets to the baseball game, and these people don't.

And what I found is that it really screwed over the people who were on the bottom of their specific book, which they could be the top of somebody else's, right?

So that's why it's important to ask, like, who do you normally work with?

And I've oftentimes found too, people who aren't as high income earning or high net worth have a lot more questions.

Me helping them goes a lot further than somebody who's making hundreds of thousands of dollars who like really doesn't need to budget, but somebody making $50,000 might need to be a little bit more careful.

So that structure I am so passionately against because I think everybody deserves good financial advice and it shouldn't be tied to a freaking pay stub or a retire or 401k balance.

Back to what we were saying earlier.

Everybody stresses about money.

It doesn't matter how much you make or how much you have.

And our job is to alleviate that stress and get you to a place where you feel good.

Maybe not confident, but good.

So go further with that then, because

where we left the budget conversation was you and I both being completely sacrilegious to the world of personal finance.

If the budget is not the answer, right?

And you would say you want to offer some

long-term nuggets or some long-term wisdom to people from your time doing this.

What are some of the things you found that you'd say, look,

forget about the budget.

Let's throw that out the window.

But the following two or three things are crucial that you do, whether you work with a planner or not.

It's just these are some of the musts for you to feel better about your current situation.

Budgeting is a tactic.

It's not a framework or a first principle.

Throw the budget out the window.

A first principle is spend less than you make.

Everybody knows that, right?

Real estate investing, or crypto, or whatever you want to invest in comes from the first principle of you have to invest in order to get wealthy.

Those just kind of stem from the overarching first principle.

And a first principle is something that is true no matter what.

Like an object in motion stays in motion.

That's a first principle.

So, I

very much try to stay in that because you can't possibly go to social media and actually take specific advice.

So, what could be helpful instead is to think through first principles and frameworks and how to even know if something is the right move.

And the first step is to identify a problem.

Is the problem, oh, I want to make sure my kids can go to college.

Okay, that's a great problem to dive into versus saying, oh, honey, I saw this video online about a 529.

Maybe we should do it.

You jumped right to tactics.

Well, how do you want to support your child?

Financial is just a piece of that.

What does support look like?

How much control do you want over the money?

How do you want your child to use this?

Do you want it to go to them at 18 or 21?

Start with your specific problems and you're less likely to get trapped in things that you...

probably shouldn't even really care about.

And then second piece is understanding where you're at.

And this is what people do not want to do.

This is pulling out the statements.

This is understanding your income.

It's looking at the balance sheets.

Those are the two things that I always looked at.

What is your cash flow?

What's coming in and out?

Where is my money going and where is my money at?

That's just how much I make and where is it now.

Understanding those baseline benchmarks.

It's like going to the doctor and they take your blood pressure, they take your height, they take your weight, same kind of thing.

Defining the problem.

understanding where you're at and then you will be far better off going out and doing your research and seeing what what fits for you and then kind of moving forward with taking action and sticking with it.

But if you don't do those first two things, it's kind of like going to Costco really hungry and without a shopping list.

If I go to Costco without a shopping list and I am starving, number one, I'm going to put a crap to the stuff in my shopping cart that I don't need.

And I'm absolutely stopping at the food court and getting a hot dog and a lemonade.

And it's the same thing with how you go out and consume content, whether that is TikTok or YouTube.

Don't go to Costco hungry without a shopping list.

You might have just stumbled upon the greatest analogy of our time for personal finance.

I've never thought about it that way, but I want to confess something that over the last, over the last few weeks, I have gone shopping hungry, obviously against my and everyone else's better judgment of first principles.

Not only did I fill the cart with numerous delicious snacks and treats.

Gosh, they know what they're doing.

But I got home, Victoria, without a meal.

I found myself, I got home, I go, I didn't even buy the ingredients for one meal.

So that analogy is perfect because

I was identifying at the store all of these little cravings, all of these little wants, and I was exposed to all of these marketing tactics and the flashy chips and the

sour candy and it worked.

Sampling table.

You got it.

And I got home.

And although I had satisfied my hunger in that moment, moment, I hadn't come close to doing what I set out to do.

And the problem, the reason I went to the frickin store in the first place was to get ingredients for dinner and for the next week, which I did not do.

But getting back to this idea of the importance of establishing a framework or a process, if you will, did you ever find that people with whom you interacted weren't actually yet able to identify either the problem or the need themselves?

Now more than ever, ever, you can compare yourselves to other people and live in their lives via your phone.

You see into other people's lives.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

A lot of what's out there is just tactics.

And so then you almost stress about a problem you really don't even have.

I just talked to somebody, she was like, you know, I heard you're supposed to max out your 401k and you're supposed to max out your IRA.

And then I ran the projections and I was just like, hey, did you want to retire early?

You're on track to retire by 50.

And she's like, oh, well, no.

Okay.

So why are we doing this?

And basically, she kind of created this problem of, I know I should be doing this because that's what I hear all the time.

And I'm like,

but what do you actually value?

And we kind of figured out, oh, well, no, I actually would love to take trips while my body is young.

And I was like, you don't need to save this much.

We actually cut her retirement savings in half because she didn't need to be saving as much as she was.

And step one of this.

is where most people get in trouble.

It's really hard to define our own problems.

You go to a therapist because you don't really know your problems, right?

A good financial planner or financial advisor is always going to ask you about what you value, what's important to you.

A question that I love asking is, what are you grateful for?

Because that'll tell you what this person values and what's really, really important to them, what they want to do with their life.

And from that, your real quote unquote problems that you're trying to solve will arise.

But if you go to social media and then you suddenly are like, oh, I have a problem, you probably don't.

Social media is marketing 101.

They kind of put that problem on you.

If you're not investing in crypto, if you're not investing in real estate, blah, blah, blah, like you're not doing it right.

And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, like maybe I need to do that.

The best thing I can recommend here is literally start with a values exercise.

And I know that is so woo-woo.

And people are like, ooh, I don't need to know my values.

Most people don't know what they are.

Like you have three to five top ones in your life that pretty much never change.

Like a big one for me is security.

That will never go anywhere.

Then from there, I have different tactics.

Like I keep a bigger emergency fund because I'm a little nervous about stuff like that.

And in fact, I'll give you the best relationship advice ever.

I swear I've saved marriages with this one.

Do your own values exercise.

Have your partner do theirs and come together.

More times than not, they don't know.

I have yet to meet a couple that can name their spouses or their girlfriend partners.

top three to five values.

And they're just like, we've been married for this long.

I didn't even know.

And that makes so much sense why we fight over spending because spouse one wants to live in the moment and travel while they're young.

And spouse two is really nervous about, oh, this is why we fight about this stuff.

I'm like, yeah, you're welcome.

Saved you on some divorce feeds there.

I think that's a great exercise and an important one for anyone listening to perhaps try as well.

I do think it's easy to pivot slightly for you and me and anyone.

who has worked professionally with money to become more comfortable, obviously, talking about money.

But I'm wondering if I could put you on the spot for a minute and see if you might be willing to share what is your biggest fear when it comes to money and personal finance.

Security is a big one.

My emergency fund has saved me time and time again, whether that's a family emergency or I've had a couple medical situations that my emergency fund has saved me from.

I've been laid off before.

I personally went through a divorce and my emergency fund, like security and that value, like it's, it's saved me.

And I'm somebody that gets pretty freaked out if I get below a certain amount.

But what keeps me up at night is worrying about running out of cash, having to deplete a brokerage account or credit card debt, lowering my spending.

That doesn't scare me.

I'm a minimalist like you.

I can eat Costco chicken every day.

But other than that, not a lot else scares me.

Like stock market else doesn't scare me at all.

And when you have these moments of fear, as we all do, have you found any ways to get through the moments or transcend the insecurity that you might be willing to share with this audience?

Education around something.

For me, running the numbers, I am super new to being a content creator.

And so you don't have the brand deals yet and all of that to support you, but I know my timeline.

Like I know how long I can stretch this out for and I feel good about it.

I know where I am now.

I know where I'm going and I find a lot of comfort in that.

I know what to do with my hands.

I know what I'm supposed to be doing now.

And I think just having knowledge around where you are, where you're going and the things you need to do every single day to make that happen has relieved so much of my money stress.

And I really think it's the lack of knowledge and awareness around those things where people are like, I don't know what I'm doing.

I don't know if this is good or not.

And probably a big reason why people don't talk about money because they don't have any awareness or knowledge around that.

And I know I've told you this before, but one of the reasons I was initially interested in having this conversation is that I respect the heck out of anyone who takes a leap of faith out of the rat race to explore another way to live.

And I know that one of the reasons most people don't do that is out of fear, particularly as it pertains to money or potentially lack thereof.

So have you given yourself at this point a timeline for this endeavor or a point at which you will reevaluate if you're accomplishing what it was you thought you might accomplish?

Well, like we're gonna, we're gonna make it work.

And if plan A doesn't work, that's okay.

I trust myself and we'll, we'll figure out plan B.

I don't mean to interject, but just based on what you said, when you say, I'm gonna make it work and I'm gonna get there, where is there to you right now in your mind, if you were to go out a year and say, I've made it in this space where I want to make it, what would that look like to you?

Oh, my whole mission with this is just adding value and having fun.

And so made it is, I don't think that's a destination for me.

Obviously, there's the cash flow piece and you can't do this for free forever.

But honestly, if I can meet my just regular expenses, I'm somebody that can dial down a lot to make this work.

This is really important to me.

We've gone down in spending very significantly because I'm so committed to making this, but.

Made it, I don't know.

That's not a number for me.

That's not a level of engagement or followers.

I have a lot of fun with it.

I get a lot of fulfillment just learning from, oh, well, that video sucked and nobody liked it.

Like, what's wrong with that?

Or learning from other creators.

It's really not a destination for me, Tyler.

It's just more, again, there is the financial piece.

Like, you couldn't do this for free, right?

Like, we all have lives to live and whatnot.

So there's nobody seems to know that, by the way.

This is my, I will just gripe for one moment.

That's probably my favorite part.

of being a creator is the amount of people who believe that all the creators magically have some money tree for them.

So anytime that any type of monetary component comes in they claim that you're selling out and i go how do you think how do you think people do this i do this and i think we're actually getting a wave of this you don't see a ton of creators who've had professional experience because like why would you like why would i

in my right mind give up my financial planning salary to do this well because i'm really passionate about this i started this journey on my birthday it's probably hopefully one of the greatest birthday gifts i give myself.

And I'm committed to making it happen.

As long as I'm adding value to people and having fun, that's honestly all that matters to me.

Awesome.

Well, from one person going through the grind on a daily basis to another, I have no doubt that you are making it because the content's already exceptional.

And you're already probably helping many, many people.

The way I look at it, I could only win from this.

If it works out great.

And if not, great.

Then I had a really cool experience.

I have this new skill set.

And I wanted to give this a full shot, to be honest.

Awesome.

Thank you so much for taking the time to engage and to be here with us and sharing your expertise.

And I'm happy to call you an expert.

And I'm happy to have had you on the show as a genuine money expert.

Thank you so much for spending the time chatting through all this with us.

Thank you, Tyler.

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

If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to visit my website at tylergardner.com for even more helpful resources and insights.

And if you are interested in receiving some quick and actionable guidance each week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter where each Sunday I share three actionable financial ideas to help you take control of your money and investments.

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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.