The Get Ready Money Podcast
The Get Ready! Money Podcast with Tony Steuer features insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Listen each week to catch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests aimed at demystifying the complexities of finance, so you can build healthy habits that ACTUALLY work.
Each episode will leave you with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. Tony’s podcast is perfect for listeners seeking to get ready, be prepared, and transform their financial future.
The Tony Steuer Podcast is one of the 20 Best Literacy Podcasts. The best podcasts about Literacy from thousands of podcasts on the web ranked by traffic, social media followers, domain authority & freshness.
The Get Ready Money Podcast
Start Your Financial Freedom Journey NOW with your Money Vehicle Featuring Jedidiah Collins
On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Jedidiah Collins, author, Founder and CEO of Money Vehicle about changing the way we think about money and why it’s a vehicle for our financial journey.
In this episode we discussed:
- Why education without action fails.
- What is a CFP?
- Stop worrying about the world sees in you, think about what you see in yourself.
- If we can change the way we see money, we can change our future.
- Questions are your framework for financial success.
Jedidiah Collins has gone from NFL Player to Certified Financial Planner® in pursuit of empowering 1 million high school students to speak money. Author of best-selling Your Money Vehicle and Professor of Personal Finances, Jed then became the founder of EdTech company Money Vehicle. Money Vehicle delivers a Roadmap for educators and a License for students to Drive Financial Literacy.
Connect with Jedidiah Collins, CFP®:
Website: https://jedidiahcollins.com
Money Vehicle Website: https://yourmoneyvehicle.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jedidiah-collins/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fullbackoffinance
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jedidiahcollins8198
Book:
Your Money Vehicle: How to Begin Driving to Financial Freedom! (Amazon). https://amzn.to/4djUIbv
Mentioned this episode:
Number 1 resource - The Founders Podcast - biographies https://www.founderspodcast.com
Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger by Charles T. Munger (Amazon) https://amzn.to/3ZgYj6F
The Get Ready Money Podcast and its guests do not provide investment advice. All content is for educational purposes. Guest opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Get Ready Money Podcast and Tony Steuer.
Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Catch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work, Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast changing the way we think about money. I'm pleased to be joined today by Jed Collins. Jed is the founder and CEO of Money Vehicle. In this episode, we'll be discussing Jed's insights on how we change the way we think about money and our financial journey. Jed, welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast. Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3:Tony, pleasure to be here. As we know, we are part of this community around financial ambassadors and financial empowerment. Really appreciate the opportunity to share my message in the money vehicle movement and truly, brother, I know you and I are just beginning our collaboration, so thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I'm excited for this conversation. I mean, you're doing some great work, so you know let's share that with the audience. What, what are you doing? What is your origin story?
Speaker 3:Wow. My origin story truly has to go back about 15 years. I walked into the National Football League as an NFL player and got that first paycheck and really was humbled in how little I understood the language of money. Now I was an accounting major. I grew up in Orange County, california, around people with money, but my family and really nobody around me had ever spoken that language of how to handle a paycheck, let alone how to make it go to work for you. And so I began, as many did back then, went to the Borders bookstores, got the famous gurus and went down the personal finance aisle and just started consuming. And that question kept coming back to me of you know, am I the big dumb jock that just didn't understand this? Or where was the class that I missed? Why didn't they teach me this subject? And as I continue to strive to be my first student, I became a certified financial planner and, as my purview and as my you know kind of search continued, I really couldn't find that high school curriculum or that high school class that was teaching you what to do with your first paycheck. And so, as I got a little more familiar and confident in the subject, I went out and started teaching myself. I would go to high schools, colleges, community colleges really anybody who would let me in the door, and this was during my off seasons playing in the NFL. So as I walked in, I kept trying to get students to understand these. Maybe I would call them level two, level three concepts and ideas. How do you get a 19 year old to open and invest in a 401k or a Roth IRA when they don't even understand? One, what to invest in? Two, the time value of money. Three, the tax efficiencies. And so I began to look at backing up and creating this curriculum, and about a decade ago, I started actually writing and developing the money vehicle curriculum.
Speaker 3:And as I left the game of football, I walked into wealth management as a CFP. I was in a good career, great promise, I will say, a much better income than a founder of a financial literacy company. But I continued down that path, learning both what do wealth managers think, believe and do on a daily basis? How do they make an impact and help? Do they make an impact and help? But also, how was I going to go and continue to help the audience that I was passionate about, which was people at the beginning of their journey not necessarily the wealth management client, I like to say landing the nice plane.
Speaker 3:And so, as we began, I was really adamant about the confusions and the intimidation that money presented to so many and I asked myself how do I explain, how do I translate, how do I build an analogy that would allow people to address this subject of money on a more tangible and digestible basis? And so the vehicle concept began to form. The stories we use to translate and the stories and analogies we use to kind of bring the subject matter to life began to develop as I was going in and out of these workshops that I was delivering and finally I got confident enough. I was publishing my first book Money Vehicle, your Money Vehicle and I went in, I talked to my mentors and the people that I was working with and I said you know, this is where my heart is, and not that I was unsatisfied in my career, but it was just where do I want to be in 10 years?
Speaker 3:I want to be somebody who pursued that dream, pursued a goal, and it was about 2018 when somebody at one of those workshops came up to me and asked Jed, you're great. In person, I learned a lot how are you going to reach a million students? And it was that question that I went home and really spiraled around and came to realize come 2020, I needed to jump out, start my own business and really build an education technology company that could scale to a million students. And so, 15 years after my journey began, money Vehicle is a nationwide education technology company and we're delivering a complete financial literacy curriculum into high schools that align to state and national standards and is a semester, semester long program that really is unrivaled in the space today, based on the idea, it is all organically created and it's the most comprehensive curriculum out there.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Well, that's quite the journey, you know. One thing just to start off with, as I always try to get terms clarified for the audience, is what is a CFP?
Speaker 3:try to get terms clarified for the audiences. What is a CFP? That's a great one. So certified financial planner, so a CFP is somebody who looks at a family and a personal financial plan and considers themselves I don't want to say an expert in everything, but they have a fundamental understanding of all concepts in the world of personal finance and they lean on expertise to go beyond that inch layer. If we need to go deep dive in taxes or estate planning, we go get a CPA, a certified public accountant, or an attorney. A CFP, to use a football reference, is kind of like the quarterback. He connects and contributes to a lot of different pieces. He doesn't do it all himself. Everybody has their specific and specialty, but the CFP is that person who should be able to sit down, talk you through the beginnings, the intricacies of a plan and, most importantly, the destination of that plan.
Speaker 2:Well, that's awesome and for people watching and listening. I've had on other CFPs, so you've heard CFPs talk and there's a reason why, as Jed points out, CFPs are professionals in the financial planning community, just like a CPA is. I'm a charter life fund writer in life insurance space, so it's always good to talk to people who know what they're talking about.
Speaker 3:And so to add in there another term and I get to work with a lot of professional athletes one term around this financial advisor lane that I love to introduce them to is the idea of a fiduciary and it's a funny word.
Speaker 3:I always love to have a room kind of repeat back to me fiduciary, and it's a funny word. I always love to have a room kind of repeat back to me fiduciary. But as we look at it, the concept of what a fiduciary is, especially in personal finance, is such a paramount realization when you understand that this professional, whatever piece of information that they are going to be your kind of point of contact for, this professional has a legal liability to put your interest above their own. And so as we look a lot in the financial atmosphere, most products have a tendency to be sold and not necessarily bought. And as you look at that fiduciary standard, you really get to see an understanding that the financial world is in a shift and a change over the last 10 years and in the next 10 years where we need to identify the difference between a sale and the difference between a need. And a fiduciary, at least theoretically and at a base level, is meant to be somebody who addresses needs and is not trying to just sell.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That's a great definition and in thinking about you know, I often come back to the medical world and you know how people look at it. When they walk into a doctor, you know the doctor doesn't try to sell them a procedure. Well, hopefully the doctor doesn't try to sell them a procedure.
Speaker 2:You know, usually the doctor listens to what the patient comes in, the symptoms, and then help them find the right solution to satisfy those symptoms. So I think looking for a fiduciary is really important. Of course, there's some really important things we can get into, like you know what was your Madden score, things like that. We probably need to stick with financial literacy. So you know, tell us a little bit more about Money Vehicle. You know what are you currently working on there?
Speaker 3:So this is what's really neat we actually are just publishing the Spanish version of our textbook. We've had it virtually being delivered for a year or so but to be able to print and send out to the masses, here is a complete curriculum, translated by hand, for Spanish speakers. As I mentioned, my goal was to go into communities that did not normally have this conversation and you look at that community. We want to empower them to speak this language. So we're really excited and proud of that new development. As we look at a standalone curriculum, one thing that our educators have really appreciated is we go beyond just having a textbook, which a textbook's great. We have an entire video library that covers that textbook. We have a workbook that covers that entire curriculum. But where we really pride ourselves is in our teacher resources. We are providing an entire curriculum for educators that says, from your syllabus and lesson plans and pacing guides all the way to the final assessment. You're going to have a handheld guide throughout your entire semester, saving you tons of time throughout that semester to do what you do best, which is not necessarily create curriculum but really connect and engage with the students, and so we're really building out we have a lot of these resources where it's in-class delivery, slide-by-slide conversations, group projects, atmospheres that are meant to bring this conversation around money to life in a classroom, and the greatest thing we have seen is the development of our character project. So this is capstone project. That goes throughout the entire program. There are 12 pillars of money vehicle, 12 stops in our money vehicle. We call it the first mile of money as our curriculum. Each of those stops represents not just a part of a physical car, building into the analogy around a vehicle and building out this financial plan where your cash management is the steering wheel, the investments is the engine, building in it to that tangible story, but then going a step further and saying not only are you getting educated in this program, you're being empowered to take actions.
Speaker 3:And so the greatest thing our students are giving us feedback on is this character project where how do you make a financial literacy subject interesting and engaging to a 17, 18 year old? You make it about them. So they create a character, they create a person that they see themselves as, they create a fictitious version. But throughout those 12 stops in their money vehicle, they are going to research and apply the knowledge they're learning in the chapter to show that action. And so you're not just going through a banking chapter. You're going to go find that bank or credit union account that your character would need to go open. Same with a credit card, same with an index fund, same with an insurance policy policy. We don't want you to just be able to recite or regurgitate what a premium and a deductible are. We want you to go find a real life scenario where it says this character's 18.
Speaker 3:They're now driving a car. They need car insurance. Who are you getting that insurance through? What questions are you asking that insurance company and be able to explain to me how this fits in their financial plan? And I think that engagement style of what we're trying to do is really one of the most the biggest driving factors of Money Vehicle is. We try to make it easy for the educator and engaging for the student. And you hear in those resources we're making it easier. You hear in things like our character project, we're making it more engaging.
Speaker 2:Well, that's awesome and you said something in there. I mean, you said a lot of great things, but I think something that's really key is asking questions, and I think that is the key to the financial education is helping to empowering people, is to help them be able to ask questions. I really want to emphasize that because to me, that's what I heard is at the core of the money. Vehicles, not only teenagers, and I think everybody is more interested in themselves than in everything else. Nobody wants to watch a video on 401ks, I mean, let's face it. So you know, putting people in this role where they can start to visualize themselves, I love it. I think that's really important.
Speaker 3:I say all the time money vehicle doesn't give you a fish. We teach you how to fish those questions, tony, that you just pointed out. Those are your guidelines, your frameworks. I cannot tell the masses specifically what credit card to go open, why? Because personal finance is personal. I can empower you with the questions to ask to make sure you get to the right card. That is really what we're trying to do. We are not prescribing as we were talking about that doctor kind of analogy we're not prescribing anything. We are giving you the keys to your money vehicle. We're giving you the owner's manual guide and allowing you to go on this journey and be able to confidently and comfortably have the conversation around money.
Speaker 3:So many people don't ask the question because they're embarrassed, and so what we want to be able to say is it doesn't matter if it's cybersecurity and it's a message you just got, or it's the time value of money and it's trying to understand this foreign concept. What questions should you be asking? And to take it one step further, tony, each chapter has family questions. Our students go home whether you're 18, 28 or 38, have a conversation at the dinner table amongst your family and understand where our history in this subject has been where we are today and really, how can we educate and empower one another through the question atmosphere? So I love that call out.
Speaker 2:That's awesome and you know I think you said something too that's really powerful, and I've heard this from Derek Wesley, who have recorded some shows with you, and I know Derek.
Speaker 3:Yeah, shout out, great guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know what Derek said is the same thing as you is that he's found that his curriculum for kids is something that's helped the whole family become financially literate. So I think recognizing that is that using this youth tool can help some adults who are not financially literate, as we expect the kids to become financially literate, but if the parents aren't financially literate, it's going to be really hard for the kids to continue learning at home. So that's awesome that you're bridging that. So, jed, you know you're a little passionate about this is why do you think financial preparedness is important?
Speaker 2:What's really driving the passion?
Speaker 3:I ask superintendents, directors of curriculum, what is the one thing every one of your graduates will have in common? And while there may be other answers to this question, one thing I guarantee they all have in common is a paycheck. And so I look at the struggles, the anxiety this generation, these 15 to 25 year olds today, are being declared the anxiety generation to 25 year olds today, are being declared the anxiety generation. The biggest impactor of that is the fear and the concept of I don't know if I'm going to be able to ever retire. I don't know where my financial plan is today. Do I get to buy a house, let alone buy a car? I look at personal finance and financial literacy and my goal in this mission of money vehicle is to create the conversation, but one of our objectives is for students to understand and see that money should not be the focal point in the goal. Money Vehicle is an analogy in itself where we want you to see money as a tool, as a verb, as a vehicle that takes you somewhere. You really need to be able to understand that money is only as good as the person using it, and we have for too long foregone empowering people to use it in the right way. And when we use the acronym use USE we mean understand, strategize and be efficient with their money. So my passion comes from looking at myself and the fears and the concerns and anxiety it gave me, and looking at the world and identifying this issue that I was fortunate to start with a bigger paycheck. But, as we know, the size of the paycheck is not always the problem. Yes, it is great to get a raise, yes, it is good to make more money, but there are millionaires who are going broke. So the paycheck is not the problem, it's the person. And so if we can empower people to see and understand money, is that vehicle I get to use and drive it the way I want it to be. I really think we're going to change the world. And I say that and people say, jed, change the world. You're going to change the world. And I say that and people say, jed, change the world. You're going to change the world of financial literacy.
Speaker 3:Tony, my objective is to not literally go out and change a million people tomorrow. My objective tomorrow is to find one student and have them understand this language, have them change a behavior, because education without action fails, especially in financial literacy. So if we can get them to change the behavior, showing us that they truly understand this language, then we can change one world. And if we can change one world at a time, we're going to get this trend. We see the national movement around financial literacy becoming mandated in 30 plus states now. Not too long ago, in 2020, we were at three or four states. Now we're at 37. That is proof and evidence of something that for 20, 30 years I know this because everybody has told me finally they're teaching money in school. I wish I would have been taught money in school. My passion comes from that idea. If we can change the way people see money, the way we're talking about money differently which, tony, you and I connect on we can change their futures and that's something that you know again.
Speaker 3:10 years ago, people told me I was crazy. Five years ago, I started a company doing this. Three months after I started it, the pandemic hit and took away most of my income as a public speaker. I continue down this path today, knowing I can always go back to wealth management. Can't necessarily go play in the NFL anymore I accept that one but I can always go back into wealth management and have a great income and a job.
Speaker 3:This is something I feel called to do because it is something that everybody agrees should be done, but there has to be the leader, the person that's willing to sacrifice and say I'll go through the hard parts Dealing with hundreds of high schools is a struggle, but I'll go through that.
Speaker 3:Having person after person poking holes and telling you your vision, your dream, is wrong, is extremely challenging. At times. I sit in this chair right here and think I'm crazy. Why am I crazy? To think I can change the world, but, as we know from Steve Jobs and a lot of others, to think I can change the world, but, as we know from Steve Jobs and a lot of others, it's often the crazy ones that end up doing it. So the passion comes from seeing the impact, knowing our program actually is changing people's lives, and then seeing it from a teacher and saying thank you for not only saving time throughout a semester, but also providing me to look in front of my classroom and say this is a topic and a subject that you're going to learn and interact with every day after you leave this campus, and hopefully we can get those seniors to sit up and listen for a little bit longer.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, because high school seniors are totally into this kind of stuff Comes back to that character project.
Speaker 3:They don't. If you say here is the most important concept about money, I will teach you. If it's coming from me, they don't care. If it's about how do you take compound interest and put it to Tony at 19,. Now, all of a sudden I'm interested because it's about me. We really had to flip the script, flip the classroom and really humble ourselves into saying it doesn't matter if it's Bill Gates delivering the lecture. We don't learn by lectures anymore. We learn by short, digestible, silly videos and then we learn by application. And that's where money vehicle is kind of changing the conversation around financial literacy is. We have the curriculum built for how students learn today.
Speaker 2:Well, that's awesome, and I think that's how people learn overall, and probably they've always learned, is you know? I mean, education for a long time has been about just memorizing things, and that really doesn't help, I think. So that's awesome. I love the applicability and we're seeing it with other people who are having success in the financial education movement. So, jed, what basic money concept do you wish people knew?
Speaker 3:And how much time do we got?
Speaker 2:This is more of the speed round.
Speaker 3:Yes, this is the speed round. So you know, first and foremost, I steal one more from my NFL days than from my financial or CFP days. It's most over. Now. Can you begin to evaluate and value what you want most over what you want now?
Speaker 3:In Money Vehicle, we changed the term delayed gratification to prioritized gratification. As an athlete, I didn't get up at 5 am and go work out because I was always excited about it, but I wanted to be the best physical specimen I could be and I valued that over that extra 30 minutes or hour of sleep, and I've valued that over that extra 30 minutes or hour of sleep. When I look at my money, yeah, it is fun to go out and do that thing. It is nice to have another pair of shoes, it is. You always have something you want right now. But can you value what you want most over what you want right now?
Speaker 3:So, from a behavioral perspective, that leans into why we have a chapter around goal setting, which we use the acronym RICH, r-i-c-h Reachable, individual, controllable and Happy Goals, our version of the SMART goals. But as you look at those, those are not long-term mega money, millionaire goals. Those are. Can I set a goal to learn something this week? That's a rich goal. Can I learn how to stop doing a habit this month? That's a rich goal. Can I start something today that will come to fruition one year from now? That's a rich goal. And so if we can look at what do I want most, by setting my goals and prioritizing what I want most, I'm able to look at the things and the activities of today and say I'm not sacrificing, I'm prioritizing.
Speaker 2:That's awesome and I think you know what I'm getting from you and you know we've been talking about is changing the mind frame, the you know the framework, and that's that's what you're doing here, because I think that's where it's going to get. Different for people is because, you know, because we've been trying to do the same thing for so long and talking about money and it hasn't been effective. But this is the kind of stuff because this is how people think and how people approach things.
Speaker 3:To add on to that, because so much of financial literacy is, can I get somebody to understand compound interest? And that's such a tough thing, because what does compound interest need? What is the exponential differentiator in the time value of money formula? It's time and it takes time and the one thing you don't want to tell a student today is hey, in 30 years it's going to pay off. But if you really break that down and start to ask yourself, well, how long do you see money? That's a question that I began to ask students and just to hear the reaction was, today, like I've never thought about money beyond today. That's compound interest, that's time value of money.
Speaker 3:If you have a mindset where you're a spendor and you live in that day-to-day timeframe, that's your perspective of money. If I'm now saving up and it's maybe a few months down the road, maybe even a year out, and I'm a saver mindset, that is amazing and that is an important first stop. But as we understand today, with inflation, with just a million other things going on in our world, saving is no longer going to be enough. A generation ago, with pensions, with social security, you may have been able to save your way to retirement. This generation is not going to save their way to retirement.
Speaker 3:Even with the amazing 5% interest in bank accounts and credit union accounts today, you still see inflation wiping away some of that growth. So we have to start looking at money through a longer term horizon and that's where we go from spend or to save, or to invest, or and what I began to realize when I was starting to learn this money concept is investors look at money through a decade time horizon. A stock market cycle is 10 years. If you want the average return, you gotta give it a decade to get that. And so I do challenge and start to see and say maybe not. Do you understand? Compound interest in 30 years is gonna be, but are you a spender, a saver or an investor? How long do you see money? That is again a behavioral shift in a mindset change that we really need to play up in students today.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's so important it made me think automatically of Warren Buffett. When he's asked about their estimated holding period and he says forever for their investments. I mean, you can't beat that, so I love it.
Speaker 3:There's just so much you can learn from Warren and it is truly a testament to his character. And I was actually just reading an article about why we won't see another Warren Buffett, and the one word it boiled down to was greed. And Warren Buffett ran a hedge fund without charging hedge fund fees for 50 years, passing so much of his. He would be worth 10 times what he is worth today if he had charged, like other typical hedge funds, and instead he wanted to see the pass through of his investors to become millionaires with him. And why we won't see another Warren Buffett is I just don't think there are enough people who are that brilliant, that patient and that altruistic at the same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and able to have a partner. And you know we have to give a shout out to Charlie Munder also. Rest in peace. Yeah, and able to have a partner. And you know we have to give a shout out to Charlie.
Speaker 3:Munger also Rest in peace.
Speaker 2:Yeah, rest in peace, because for people who really know Warren Buffett, it's about you know, it's always about the team and he had a partner, charlie Munger, who people know about, who know about Warren Buffett. But if you haven't really thought about what Berkshire Hathaway did, I would recommend going out and checking out Poor Charlie's Almanac, charlie Munger's book, to go along with that, and I'll put that in the show notes. So, jed is what is one habit that people can change when it comes to their money? What's something simple they can do.
Speaker 3:So something simple. You know we can go from taking what I call a present choice, something that you were going to go spend on today, and simply just shifting it into the future. Maybe I was going to go buy that hundred dollar pair of shoes, but instead I'm prioritizing my future. I'm going to take that hundred dollars, I'm going to put it into an investment account and as we start to look at kind of the habits people can begin, the most tangible one that we try to teach our students is our investment philosophy at Money Vehicle be average index. I love we actually have t-shirts that say be average index and I love when people stop me and go. That's clever. Never or nowhere else in your life will I challenge somebody to be average, but in investing again, watching paint dry is not fun but it works. In investing, if we can take the average of the market simply by participating, we are going to be better ahead, and that is the concept.
Speaker 3:So many students today are lost by social media in trying to beat the market. I wish they can have the confidence and the comfortability to be able to look at this really intimidating subject of investing and say I don't need to be smarter than everybody on Wall Street. I don't need to beat smarter than everybody on Wall Street. I don't need to beat this new guru on social media who got 1700 percent return in two weeks. All I have to do is be average. I have to participate and remember it's not timing the market, it's time in the market, and so one of the biggest behaviors would be be average.
Speaker 3:Start your investment journey using these index funds. Can you build out from there? Can you go level two? Can we get into rental properties? And if you want to get crazy derivatives and all these other, sure, but your first step in the investment field and the investment world for a beginner is simply using these index funds, these tools, looking at the S&P 500, looking at the Russell 2000 or 3000 and saying I'm pretty confident.
Speaker 3:Those people in all of those businesses working as hard as they can to make a profit, make a product they're going to maintain, on average or in its entirety, an advantage over whatever it is that I thought I could do on my own. That is something I'm willing to bet on. And so when people ask me, hey, you don't own NVIDIA, or you don't own Apple or Fang or any of these, I go yeah, I do. It's a smaller share, but I do own them all, I love to say.
Speaker 3:In 2009, after my rookie year, I started diving in and I became an investor In 2011,. I got to this concept and mindset of I'm not going to beat the market, I don't have the time, I don't have the talent and I really don't have the want to. So I tell people when I go into NFL locker rooms I go, guys. I started really investing in 2011. I haven't checked the market since, haven't had to, but everybody tells me it's up since then. That's the beauty of being in an index and being able to look and understand at what this action can do and change, when you don't have to stress and worry about it each and every day can do and change when you don't have to stress and worry about it each and every day.
Speaker 2:No, that's great advice, and I think you said something that people oftentimes miss is the time and the talent to be able to do it is you know I was talking to my son about this with a stock market is you know? You're going up against people who this is what they do all day. This is what they do. They've trained for it their whole lives and they're really the best in the world at it and you're trying to beat them at their own game. It'd be like you going out there I'm a basketball player, so I have more basketball analogies but you're having a three-point contest with an NBA player. You're not going to be able to beat them.
Speaker 3:That's what they do, you can make a shot, that's what they've trained their whole lives. Yeah, you will not win overall, absolutely.
Speaker 3:I think that's a great analogy and the idea of like can you make one or two or three 100%? Are you going to beat Steph Curry? No, because that's what that guy does a thousand times a day and I think that is such a big lesson for you and I love that you share that mindset is just take the the road, then you can get into. Well, I know more about this thing how? Because I've been studying it for three years. I've been looking at this market for five years. Now you do have an advantage Tomorrow. I have students endlessly. What do you think about this stock? Or what do you think about that? Can you tell me what their 10K report says? No, then the conversation's over. Like, I don't know and you don't know either. So we can move on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's awesome, we're 100% aligned on that. So you know because this is a big thing, especially, you know, with you coming from pro sports is what money myth are you trying to break?
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, I love this one. So I was just in two NFL rooms this week working with the rookies and I get to stand in front of them all and tell them congratulations, you're rich. Is that your goal? Rich rookie does not have the ring or the mindset that you think it does, and so we work through. Average rookie now is making a million dollars. Tony has 22. That's a lot of money, but here's how we break it down. Okay, million dollars, let's take 40% out for taxes. That's a big, big chunk. Now we got to look at our future. So we're going to save 300,000. That's 30%. That's an amazing savings rate. We're already at $700,000 gone. So now we're living and seeing 300 grand.
Speaker 3:Where most professional athletes today are going broke is not in the fancy cars, jewelry or houses. It's in their families. Most pro athletes are going broke today because of the idea we made it. Pro athletes are going broke today because of the idea we made it. So we got to take some of that dollars and put a yes list together around who we are going to give money to and who we are not. But we start to break these things down and we start to work through them and I start to ask them what are you going to live on? Where's your rent, where's your food? Where's this, where's that? And it ends up that they spend about $12,000 a month. Not ridiculous when you're making a million dollars, that sounds amazing, 12,000, you're doing frugal living.
Speaker 3:But the biggest myth I want them to see is rich rookie makes a million dollars. What does wealth look like? Wealth is how many years I don't have to worry about money beyond this year. So, like I said, a million dollars saving 300,000, you tell anyone that they're going to give you a thumbs up and say you're doing the right thing, you're living the right way. If I live on 140, $150,000 a year, that's two years of wealth. I made a million dollars. I have two years of wealth.
Speaker 3:So the biggest myth I'm trying to get them to see and understand is that burn rate, that number that they are. $12,000 doesn't feel like a lot. Today is one. The only guarantee I can give you in life that number is going to go up throughout the next 30 years for you. So if you think $12,000 is the top of your, in a year, two years, it's going to be 15,000. You get married, you got a kid, you got a lot of mouths. It's going to be 20,000. And now we're starting to see the difference between rich and wealth. And rich rookie doesn't have the same ring. When you start to understand the idea of the NFL and the NFL, dream is measured in decades, not days. Dream is measured in decades, not days. And so as we break that myth of what rich means and is to understanding what wealth is, we start to get them to see decades, not days, and really how much that million dollars is going to go to changing their lives.
Speaker 2:I love that advice and I think that's applicable for anyone is to understand your burn rate, how much you're going through each month, because we we tend to not think about that and you know we get into lifestyle creep and everything else, and I imagine in the NFL there's a lot of lifestyle creep, you know, and there's expectations. You know you're an NFL rookie, so you're expected probably to show up in a certain way and the guy next to you is making $20 million a year and has been for the last four or five years.
Speaker 3:It is really, really a struggle and hard to maintain a different mindset and to maintain a piece that is not competing with the quote-unquote Joneses.
Speaker 2:Or the quarterbacks. I can't believe some of those contracts. A couple of the receivers, like CV Receivers.
Speaker 3:I mean, I walk in and now a good left tackle good left tackle is making 18 million dollars a year and I just go, oh man, that was like that's more than Brett Favre was making. You know, like he was the guy. It's just. It's incredible. The game is getting bigger and he was the guy. It's incredible, the game is getting bigger. The NFL is doing an amazing job and I'll give credit to the NFL Players Association. They are trying to fight for the players as well as empower the players. Part to do with this. But really the mindset shift of the professional athlete today is no longer, you know, I'm just this player, it's, I'm a businessman, I'm a business in and of myself, I'm a business and it's been really neat to see that mindset change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome and we could talk about. You know, because I was watching the Michael Jordan movie and you know about how he built the business. I think he's worth what two and a half billion dollars now and he got paid pretty much nothing as a player. You know that he made all this money off of running it as a business and the Michael Jordan brand. So, jed, you know real quick, before we start to wrap up, let's get out the time machine real quick. What is the advice that you would give your younger self, let's say your rookie self, if you could go back in time knowing what you know now about money?
Speaker 3:Advice I would give myself today, honestly, two pieces. One would be a little bit more around um, not being my own worst critic with social media, and I was at the beginning of this social media movement it feels like everybody's watching and you feel like everything you do is under a magnifying and you're so worried about the other people's perceptions of you and I would just go back and tell my younger self nobody's watching like you and even in social media land, like you are three seconds and a thumb flick away from being forgotten. So stop worrying so much about what the world you what you think the world sees in you. Look more in the mirror and start worrying a lot more about what you see in yourself. And I think that mental health, mental awareness today is under a huge, huge rise. Financial literacy is probably going to be the biggest change of the last five and the next five years, but I really think mental health is going to be a huge kind of evolution in our world today, just based on what we see and ask ourselves From a financial perspective. I'm going to steal exactly what you just referenced.
Speaker 3:I tell people all the time you want your financial plan to go up in flames, don't control your burn rate and if you can understand that lifestyle that you want is what is building everything else in your plan. My desired lifestyle today, the lifestyle I want to live when I consider myself financially free all of that is depicted and the one of the few things about money I do control is my burn rate is what I choose to spend and put out the door. Once you make a commitment to rent or mortgage, that gets a little less controllable, but it's still your choice and so, as I look at it and I've done a good job of it I've always said I don't ever want to go backwards. I always want to continue to rise and my burn rate I got a wife, I got two girls like my burn rate's not gonna go down in the next decade.
Speaker 3:I have to understand that, but as long as I have it under control, that burn rate will show you, obviously, what your savings capacity and rate will be. It will show you how you should be invested, because a lot of people look at their investment portfolio and think how can I get the highest returns when they should be able to see it and say, well, how am I mitigating some risk? What if I need money in a year or two and it's in these big investments that I can't pull it out of. That's a big problem and it's based on your burn rate and then, as I mentioned before, that burn rate is going to show you what your freedom and your lifestyle looks like when you're quote unquote retired. So I would just hyper focus people on what is the desired lifestyle I want to get to, what's the lifestyle I'm at today and, ultimately, what do I prioritize in that lifestyle and am I willing to continue to put what I value most over what I value now and controlling that burn?
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That's great advice. So, to start to wrap up is what is your favorite, number one money resource, whether it's a podcast, book, newsletter, newsletter app or website? What would you say is your number one go to?
Speaker 3:number one go-to. My number one go-to today would probably be I mean, honestly, the algorithms know you so well. I just go on any of my social media or Google find it Google and I get podcasts and things popped up. I'll give a shout out. I'm listening. Again, I'm a founder and I'm an entrepreneur and I think a lot of people hype up and love the entrepreneurial life. One I had somebody ate the other day Tell me, man, what you do sounds so fun. There is zero fun in what I'm doing today. It is so damn hard.
Speaker 3:But there's a podcast called founders and if anybody does want to be a entrepreneur, the Founders Podcast. He has 350 episodes now. It's all biographies on people who have started something incredible, and so for me it's not necessarily financial, but it is financial because it's somebody trying to take that leap, do something. You have to be crazy to start your own business. You have to be crazy because you your own business. You have to be crazy because you see something that nobody else sees and typically we call that person crazy. And so Founders Podcast has been almost therapeutic for me because it doesn't hide the struggle and it really talks to people through. Whatever great company you see today. They've eaten dirt for 10, 20 years to get where they are and I think it's just a good reminder to be able to see that.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That's awesome and for everybody watching and listening, I'll have a link in the show notes that. So, jed, what is your number one tip on changing the way we think about money?
Speaker 3:So the synthesis of the money vehicle program is in our last chapter and we challenge people and say, if you want a vehicle that's going to be more efficient, you make it a hybrid vehicle. How do you make your money vehicle more efficient? You're going to make it a tax advantaged account. Today, as a young professional, we are trying to call out and create a million Roth IRA accounts. 401k accounts are amazing. Roth 401k accounts are great as well.
Speaker 3:But the idea of on my own in an individual retirement account, I understand the concept of a Roth advantage. I know I'm in my lowest tax bracket today. I know I have the longest investment horizon in front of me and because of those two reasons, a Roth account is a massive mindset shift and change. When I look at being average and putting my money in an index fund inside of a Roth IRA, I can start with $50, $500, or $5,000. It doesn't matter what you're starting with. Again, it matters how long you have to put those dollars to work. And if you can understand the concept that you will never pay taxes again in a Roth account and you're starting as an investor at 18, 22, 25, looking at the next 60 plus years of your life, that is a tremendous advantage and I really, really empower we're trying to empower people to back into understanding how big of an advantage and a tool that is. And so if I could call anyone and say, do this one action, it would be opening a Roth IRA.
Speaker 2:That is awesome, and it doesn't matter what you start with. It's about getting started. That is awesome advice. So, Jed, where can people find out more about you? Where can they follow you? Where can they learn about Money Vehicle?
Speaker 3:Yourmoneyvehiclecom If you find a high school that is in need of curriculum true, through and through complete curriculum. We are in schools nationwide. We are statewide throughout Louisiana and Alabama because of a partnership with the New Orleans Saints who dat, we are going and we're already in 25 plus states. If you want to follow me and follow kind of the money vehicle movement, my hashtag or my profile is fullbackoffinance. I take the mindset I learned as a fullback, the knowledge and education I have as a certified financial planner, and what we're trying to do is combine those two passions of mine money and mindset into truly making this language more conversational and understandable for everyone. But your Money Vehicle, the Money Vehicle Movement. We have a podcast, we have blogs, we have resources, but truly we are seeing the impact and the change from the curriculum. So we hope somebody checks it out, somebody follows up and says, hey, I live in Nebraska and I have a school district that needs this, bring it on.
Speaker 2:That's awesome and for everybody watching and listening. As always, there will be links to Jed's social media profiles, to the your Money Vehicle website, as well as to Jed's book, which we didn't really get a chance to talk too much about. So, jed, thanks very much for joining us on the Get Ready Money podcast.
Speaker 3:Tony, you are in the army of financial empowers. I'm glad to be next to you. Thank you for the opportunity and glad to be next to you. Thank you for the opportunity and looking forward to listening to this.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, appreciate all the insights and I appreciate everyone, as always, for tuning in to this episode of the Get Ready Money podcast. If you learned something today to change the way you think about money, please be sure to share with a friend and to subscribe Until next time let's change the way we think about money. Please be sure to share with a friend and to subscribe Until next time let's change the way we think about money. Thank you.
