Why Your Financial Plan Should Be as Unique as Your Life

The best financial plans start with who you are and the life you want to live.

On this episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Mike Milligan, CFP and author of The One of a Kind Financial Plan Book about how to build a personalized financial plan and retirement strategy that aligns your money, values, and relationships with the life you want to live.

Takeaways

🔹 One-of-a-kind lives deserve one-of-a-kind financial plans.
 🔹 Retirement Chi is what you want your money to do. 
 🔹 A clear retirement vision includes health, community, and impact.
 🔹 Understanding your past money experiences helps shape future decisions.
 🔹 Diversification applies to life purpose as much as financial risk.
 🔹 Community and relationships are powerful predictors of happiness and longevity.
 🔹 Financial planning should align money with who you are and how you want to live.

Tony’s Take: Financial planning works best when it starts with purpose. When we define what matters, build a vision for our lives, and align money with our values, our plan becomes more than numbers. It becomes a guide for living well.

Connect with Mike Milligan, CFP:

• Instagram (1.oak Financial): https://www.instagram.com/1oakfinancial/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemilligancfp/
• Website: https://www.mikemilligan.com/ 
• 1.oak Financial Website: https://1oakfinancial.com/

Podcast:

• Ideas By Mike: https://www.youtube.com/@1.oakfinancial

Resources mentioned:

• 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation By Andrew Sorkin (Amazon)

Bio: 

Mike Milligan is a purpose-driven financial advisor, educator, and entrepreneur, whose career began in his family’s small business as a boy in North Carolina. Today,

Mike is the founder of Ideas By Mike, and 1.oak Financial, and a leading voice in client-centered, impact-driven financial planning world.

He holds the Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) and Accredited Investment Fiduciary®credentials and has helped thousands of clients make sense of their wealth, extend their well-being, and live out their goals authentically. Mike uses active listening, health-focused strategies, and decades of expertise to turn financial jargon into actionable steps. His belief in financial wellness comes from real life—helping both clients and students design plans that support their one of a kind lives.

Mike’s teaching style focuses on clarity, empathy, and fun. Students and clients alike benefit from his ability to translate complex strategies into everyday solutions.

Through workshops, courses, and speaking events, Mike continues to inspire others to make a real impact, both financially and personally.

☕ Support the Get Ready Movement.

If these conversations help you think differently about money or prepare for life’s what-ifs, your support helps expand financial readiness education and keep this work accessible.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

What does it mean to retire well? Welcome back to Get Ready Before Life Happens. Today I'm joined by Mike Milligan, author of the One of a Kind Financial Plan book. Mike, welcome to Get Ready Before Life Happens.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Tony, I'm I'm glad to I'm glad to be here. And uh congratulations on the the great new name for your podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Well, thanks. Uh appreciate it. Uh hopefully people are liking it. So, you know, let's jump in. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your origin story and how did it lead to you to the concept of retirement chi?

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Yeah, so I am um I am originally from a little town in North Carolina that uh that town um has not produced a lot in its life. It's just like small town America, but it has produced some really, really strong financial folks. Uh two of the two of the top 50 certified financial planners is recognized by the industry of comfort there. And I've been lucky enough to be one of them. But I I think it's because of like I got this early start on business. When I was 11 years old, my uh my grandmother and grandfather uh had a life event where my grandfather could no longer work. He was the sole breadwinner of the family, but he um was injured, eventually was diagnosed with cancer, passed away. He had provided for the income for the family um forever. And my grandmother had to start a business out of desperation. She was 64 years old. Um and uh she started selling collared sandwiches uh to people around the community, and then eventually started selling dessert cakes. But uh her sales staff and her operations team uh consisted of uh me, her 11-year-old grandson. Um a lot of times my aunts, uncles, and my mother even would come over late at night to help, but they were all working full-time jobs. And so she became an entrepreneur, not because she wanted to, she wanted to be a wife. She wanted to be um she wanted to be a mother and a grandmother, she wanted to stay married, but life took this spin, this this dramatic spin for her and forced her into uh to innovate through desperation. But I got to witness it. Um I got to sell these sandwiches with her. I get to count the money, and I got to help her open bank accounts and store money aside. And uh from 11 until I graduated from high school, um, I went to work. I mean, I went to school, I played baseball, and I sold collared sandwiches. That's what I that's all I did. And um uh it led me, I but I loved the money aspect of it. I loved what I I loved seeing what money could do. It paid my grandmother's bills. I would see her, I would see her, we would go out uh with a cooler full of these collared sandwiches, and uh I didn't know the stress. I mean I know the stress that she went through now, but we'd go through and sell and we'd be done. We'd have the money, and then we'd on the way home, she said we gotta make a stop, and it was to Bell Atlantic to pay the phone bill that was four months late. Uh I didn't know that stress uh that she had, but now I see, like in retrospect, 40 years later, like what she was living through. She was living through absolute hell, the loss of her loss of her spouse, uh bill collectors calling in, and uh, and she made it. Um she has been uh she's become my eternal business coach. I always ask myself, I've studied some of the best business coaches out there, uh, the most successful innovators in the entrepreneurial space. We sometimes forget that Jeff Bezos was an entrepreneur. I mean, he runs one of the largest companies in the world now. We forget that uh we forget that Elon Musk was once an entrepreneur. You know, we forget that Larry Ellison, entrepreneur, that just so happens they build these multi, multi, multi-billion, soon-to-be trillion dollar companies. Uh, but they started as entrepreneurs, they started in garages. And so I've I've read their stories, right? But I and I I gained knowledge from them, but then I also uh also think back what my what my grandmother did. And that's how I began. So I, you know, fast forward to today, um 30 years academic and professional experience helping people. I founded a company called One Oak Financial, where One Oak stands for one of a kind. Uh, we literally help people build one-of-a-kind financial plans because they live a one-of-a-kind life. And my work spans across advising clients, teaching personal financial planning at the university level, and I've created a media that makes planning feel practical and human from the one-of-a-kind financial show to the ideas by mic podcasts and to my books that I write. Uh, I've written the book called The One of a Kind Financial Plan. And I've also written a book called Retirement Chi, which you asked about. Uh, Retirement Chi for me is the vision or job description of what your life would be when you work less. See, we all, Tony, we all in our jobs, whether or not you're an engineer or a doctor or a you know, you're the manager of a retail store, you're a um, you know, whatever your job has been, you knew going into the job every day what you would do at that job. Uh retirement should be the same. Like you should know when you wake up on a random Tuesday what are you doing today. You should know on a Saturday what you're doing, you should know on a Monday, because if you don't, then retirement just become becomes this endless string of Saturdays where there's nothing to do and you get lost. So retirement chi is about uh building a vision for retirement, building inner peace, being where you are. The chi stands for community health and impact, and you create a vision for each of those, and then you move forward, knowing that the rest of your life is about making an impact, but also fulfilling your retirement chi, having the best possible health you have, best relationships you can have, and then seeing the work of retirement be um be impactful on things that you are most passionate about.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Well, that that's awesome. And it it's interesting when you talk about your grandmother, is that we do learn so much in life from the people who are part of our lives, but they're the ones who actually in some cases do things that are even more memorable or more impactful than you know, that's not to downplay what Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have built by any means, but it's it's very different. Uh, those are not necessarily always applicable to all of us.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Well, yeah, because it's hard to relate to billionaires. Right. Then they have not always been billionaires. But like the interesting thing about like, even like the get ready movement that you've put together is um is that it's about financial readiness and financial literacy and reshaping how we think about money. But for most of us, money is something that is has been uh that has been caught through experience of others, then taught along the way. And we and we we come to this intersection in life and that we have to go back and think about like what are our first memories of money. I have a clear, um, a clear vision of what my first memory of money was. It's because I do money all day, every day. But until until somebody really thinks back and looks in their past and says, what's my first memory of money? What did that mean to me? And then how did that imprint on my life? And then see the constant journeys on that imprinted um uh experience we had with it, how that's impacted your decisions, it's hard to be, it's hard to kind of move forward and create your own path for money. It's hard to, it's hard to understand like uh a concept of money and what it is. And it's so it's so important that whether uh for some people it could be like their first memory of money was having to take a grandparent to a nursing home and mom and dad crying because they didn't have money to pay for it. It could be others that they went out to dinner with their family and always drank water, right? They everybody else, it could be that they remember their best friend in second grade coming home and bragging about going to Disney World and how that was the sixth time they went and they they've never they never got to go, right? There's all these there's all these uh money scripts that are in us that until you until you really go back and visit your first memory of money and see how that played out over time, it's hard to to move forward in like your own personal journey with money.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Yeah, money stories are so important, and you know, sometimes we do overlook them or not talk about them, but those early experiences do impact every financial decision we make, and they're always there in the back of our mind. You know, the the example that it's home with me is my grandfather went bankrupt during the Great Depression. Now I wasn't alive during the Great Depression, but I grew up with that story and knowing that. So it's something that I always have in the back of my mind is like he he owned a couple laundry mats and he lost his business, like so many other people in the Great Depression. So it's like it's imprinted on me like, okay, things could go really bad no matter how much planning and preparation I have, and that's always something that's going to impact me. I know that it's not necessarily a realistic uh concern, but it's still there in the background.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

The the you know, the Great Depression was 97 years ago, or at least that's when it started. It lasted longer than that. We have uh we have lost the generation that can remind us of the stories. Uh and in history will repeat itself at some point. The United States and all of its uh all of its greatness, right? What its innovation, its people, will experience a severe economic downturn like that again in the future. And so because but right now is there's many people who have not heard the stories and the tales. Like you are, you remember the stories in your family of like what happened to your granddad. Um uh Andrew Sorkin just wrote a book called 1929 and it's coming come out. Andrew Sorkin is uh, I think he's on CBS, he's a commentator. I think that's where he is. Don't don't that may not be a hundred percent factual, but he did write the book 1929, and it talks about what led up to the Great Depression. Um if you're going to if you're going to get ready, right, for what comes in the future, you have to dig, you have to go back and learn from the past. And uh not and it's not only so it's your money scripts, but it's also like what's repeated itself because that's why we have things like today, like asset allocation and diversification and emergency funds, and it's not because of it, it's not because we don't all want higher returns. We all want higher returns. But what happens if we wake up one day and the stock market's down 40% and then within six months is down another 50? Right? That would be that'd be catastrophic for people. Um, so that's why I mean like if if folks are really looking toward the future, learning from the past is a great indicator. And um, and it's also uh for our legacy, it's important that we keep stories pushing forward, like your story about your granddad in the Great Depression. More people need to hear that. Right? Because um, especially business owners, by the way, because like uh like your granddad probably put everything he had, not only his time, but all of his energy and his investment back into the laundromat. He didn't, he didn't uh he didn't diversify where he was putting money. And that's that's true of most small business owners, most entrepreneurs. They continue to reinvest because they see the real return. They see what it does to impact their livelihood. And why should I diversify? Because I can put $1,000 into the business and it turns into $3,000. Why wouldn't I continue to do that? I can't put $1,000 in the stock market and in 60 days it'd be $3,000. Why don't I keep doing? But it's still, you have to diversify. You have to, you have to spread out the risk because if something were to happen, then you know it's gonna be hard to it's gonna it's gonna be hard to go home and tell the family that I I risk it all. I risk, I risk all of our future on the business.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Well, you know, it comes back to that simple saying, don't put all your eggs in one basket. I mean, that says it all right there. Yes, it does. So, you know, let's talk about retirement chi a little bit more. Um, how is it different from traditional retirement planning?

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Um, so I wrote, I wrote the book, The One of a Kind Financial Plan, and in there it has a chapter about retirement chi. But in the in the framework of like people reading that book, that's where most people want to hear me talk more, is about that one chapter. They have like zeroed in on that one chapter and said, How is it now? How's it different? Well, first of all, like financial planning has um gotten away from what it should be. It's uh it's a personal financial plan. And some in one way, most ways, most companies have commoditized financial plan. They've made the same financial plan available for everybody. And then AI, artificial intelligence, is uh out there now. People are going into chat and they're putting in, say, build me a financial plan. And the interesting thing about chat's financial plan is everybody who's 56 years old and is married with two kids, they're getting the same exact financial plan. It's one size fits all. Um, the like the one-of-a-kind financial plan is there to get you to realize the things that cost you the most in life: taxes, not having a written retirement income plan, having too much risk in retirement in your investments, not having an end-of-life long-term care plan, and not having a legacy plan that means you would have a probateable estate. But retirement chi is the difference in this. Because after you answer the question, why is money important to you? Like, why is money important? Well, what do you want money to do? Why do you why did you save it? Um, what is its purpose in your life? Because money is not the end all, it is the tool that's there to help you be who you are meant to be. But so after you identify that, why is money important, then what then retirement chi, this is what makes it truly a difference. It's about you. Right? Um, a software engineer at uh Google, for instance, and they probably have thousands of software engineers at Google's, right? They're all doing the same thing. They're keeping the Google engine up and going. All right. Um a financial plan that does the exact same thing for everybody, and unfortunately, that's where we've come in this world, right? Everybody has a 401, everybody wants to get their mortgage paid off, everybody's going to have Social Security. Well, Social Security, having a 401k and having your mortgage paid off is not a financial plan, it's an outcome. A financial plan is how do I replace the income I'm making in my current job so that I can work less? A financial plan is how do I save money so that my my my grandson, Daniel, can go to college tax-free if he chooses, or have the money available to start something when he's 18 years old. How a financial plan answers questions that are deeply personal. Uh, and that's that's that's what retirement chi is different. Retirement chi is your vision statement for your community. Those are the people you want to interact with, the people you love, the people that bring you in that bring you energy. So, how do you spend time with your community? How do you focus on your health before it becomes your focus? So, what does that mean that you play pickleball or walk 10,000 steps a day or eat more salads or go to the doctor more? What what is that health plan for you? And then finally, what is your impact? Because if you are with people you love in community, if you have a good grasp on your health, well, then let's focus on what you could do to make an impact. Because people who are over 50 years old, and I turned that this year, what I've realized, I didn't know this until I got to the eve of being 50. But people that are over 50 have a lot of wisdom. And they they didn't all of a sudden wake up when they're 50 and get smart. What they did, what they have is they have these life life experiences that where they have learned things, they've they've uh they've they've read books, they've lived life, they've seen how they've seen how not to treat people, they've seen where real needs are. And like the impact when you're just just because you're retired does not mean you're dead. And you still have this ability to make a tremendous impact. There's uh the the potential to make the world a better place. Um there's a specific type of potent potential that uh that uh one of the, I think Albert Einstein created like that, you know, like equal and opposite reactions, right? Newton's laws of physics, equals opposite reaction. It's called it's called potential. So like when something hits each other, it's the kinetic, it's going back the opposite way. The interesting thing about the potential that lies with retirees and influence, the potential to make the world a better place comes from the wisdom that lies in the knowledge of people that are not dead yet, that can tell stories, that can guide the future, that can help people fail less because they failed before. And that's where I think when you when you have a retirement chi, a vision on community health and impact, uh you could build a retirement plan that is all about your one-of-a-kind life.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

I I love that because you know, for me, it always comes back to it's called personal finance because it should be personal. We've we've definitely gotten away from that with cookie-cutter financial plans and cookie-cutter financial advice. Everybody should pay uh, you know, whatever, you know. You know, sometimes it's like even debt, it's like debt can be good in certain circumstances if it's managed correctly. That, you know, there's not always a hard and fast rule. Uh, one of the things I want to make sure we cover is the importance of community. It's something that you talk about. Is why is community such a powerful predictor of happiness and longevity?

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Yeah, that's a great, that's a great question. I mean, it's and it's such a deeply rooted personal question, by the way, too. Because happiness is so subjective, right? There's there's people who have it all who are unhappy, and people that have nothing who have the biggest smile on their face. And so it's hard to answer a question with so much subjectivity attached to it. I I do know this, right? That um money should always be a conversation. It should never be, and it that conversation should never end. It should never be a lecture. It should never be something that people speak down to you about. It should be a conversation that we as each other um have. And I know Tony, you've said that many times on your podcast, that you in your, I think in your teachings too, you've said that you know you found the best planning meetings feel more like good radio than a compliance review. Right. And that's unfortunately advisors have forgotten that, right? And many of those people that we trust in the industry um treat like a meeting, a financial plan like a box that you know you're trying to get the you know, trying to get the SEC approval on, the securities and exchange commission's approval, not the client's approval on. And um so I mean there they just I think if you as a conversation, define happiness for what it is and move forward, you you can you You you could feel confident that uh that your life can be fulfilled.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Yeah, I I think that's important when you say that defining happiness is because we all have a different dream of what retirement looks like for us, but yet, you know, we're following the same rules. You know, are we going to have 4% that we pull out in retirement? But that's not necessarily something that's relevant for us. And the other thing, just super quick, is you know, I hearken back to what you were saying about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. And it doesn't seem like there would ever be enough money that would satisfy either one of them, that would that would make them happy, that there's an endpoint where they would say, wow, you know, I'm happy, I'm satisfied.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Well, I would love to interview Elon Musk, like on my podcast, or if you ever get to interview Elon Musk on your podcast, I'd love for you to ask him this question. Because this is a question I would ask. I would say, Elon, if um if I can guarantee you another 20 years of living, would you give everything you have away? If I could guarantee that, that you're at a minimum you're gonna live 20 more years, would you give every dollar you have away? And I think his answer would be yes. Because I think I don't care if you have you know half a trillion dollars or five cent to your name, the one of the most anxious, filling moments of our life is getting near the end of our life and not knowing when the last day is gonna be. I think people want certainty, they want guarantees in life. And like if you offer the richest person in the world a certainty that they're gonna live to a certain age, I mean, like he would negotiate with you. Don't get me wrong. Like if you had the power, he would say, How about 50 years? How about a hundred years, right? But he would negotiate. I mean, it's but it it is it is interesting. Like wealth is uh wealth is as much a mindset as it is a number on a spreadsheet.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Yeah, I I love that. Wealth is a mindset as much as a number. Um, and I think we tend to forget that is you know, and you said it is you know, just to repeat it, is that you don't need a lot of money to be happy, is you need enough money to be enough uh for you to take care of what you want to take care of.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

It it is, right? And so like uh taking care of uh taking care of our family, our friends, our neighbors, uh helping people get ready, right, for what's to come in the future is is important, right? There's uh the future is spotless. I don't know if you've ever said this before, you've ever heard anybody say this before, but the future is spotless. It's the only thing in our life without a spot because our past has a lot of blemishes on it, our present. We're not uh we always end the day with things on our to-do list. Always. We never we're never satisfied we do. But the future is spotless. The interesting thing about the future is uh it's just are we gonna be there or not? Um my wife and I live in San Juan, Puerto Rico now. Um and that's uh that's not for everybody. Um we love the tropical air, we love the ocean, we love the people that we've met, we love the food, we love the energy of the island, but it's we know it's not for everybody. But just the other night we're walking back from dinner, and I just got this um I got this notion that you know, like I told my wife, everybody that we're gonna walk past on the street, and there were a lot of people out. Everybody we walk back past on the street, we all have something in common, is we're all gonna die. But the sidewalk is still gonna be here. Right. And and I I posed the question is it fair that the sidewalk still gets to be here, but we living, breathing creatures are going to move on? And it's uh it's one of those questions that is unanswerable, right? Because it's just the truth. Somebody else is gonna be walking that sidewalk. The thing is, like from here to there, from from the time between we have now and the time we get there, what can we do to live a really fulfilling life? What can we do to live up to our unique, one-of-a-kind life? How can we plan? How can we escape one size fits all, same, same, same answers to different questions that financial services firm gives? And again, I'll say that again. You ask a different question. Everybody that's listening to this will ask some of the biggest financial companies in the world a different question because you're trying to make it about you, but they give the same answer, no matter what the question is. And uh it's time to break free the get ready movement, the one-of-a-kind financial plan movement. Uh, there's a lot of people in the market today that are here to help you with the what-ifs in life. You know, what if you lose your job? What if you, you know, what if you pass away early? What if you don't, what if you run out of money? What if inflation goes to 10%? What if the stock market goes down 50%? There's a lot of people to answer those what-ifs. And every time you get a what-if question answered, stress and anxiety go down. And uh, and one of the things is is when you talk to a one-size-fits-all cookie cutter financial service company, uh, we call those companies okay financial, by the way. You're just okay. Okay, financial, okay financial. Those companies um will give you the same answer. Well, that's not gonna happen. I mean, it's sure, sure it can happen, but it's not going to happen. But that brings no comfort at all to people. Work with work with professionals that have work with people that have your same ethos that you feel trustworthy with, that same hat to have your same horizon on life, same viewpoints of life. And work with people that in the end help reduce fear and anxiety and make you feel more comfortable about what the future holds.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

I love that. And you know, that that is something I urge people, you know, to work some with somebody you're aligned with. If you're not aligned with somebody, it's gonna be hard to get good advice from them, or not necessarily good advice, but the advice that's right for you is probably the better way to put it. Um, so Mike, to start to wrap up is I have what's called the get ready hot take trio. And news are three quick questions that I ask all of my guests. The first one is what's one retirement planning myth you're trying to break?

SPEAKER_01 28:28

Taxes don't go down in retirement. It's just a lie, folks. You know, in order for your tax rate to go down, you had to do some very deep planning in order to make that happen. And most people don't do that. Most people defer taxes into the future, but folks, your taxes, unless you plan for it, or unless you're willing to live on a significantly you're willing to you're willing to downsize your life, create a significantly uh less expensive life, taxes do not go down in retirement.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

I love it. That's that's a great myth to break. So, Mike, let's get out the time machine for a minute. If you go back in time, knowing what you know now about money, what advice would you give yourself?

SPEAKER_01 29:16

I mean, I I mean, obviously the things that come to mind first is buy Amazon stock under a dollar and buy as much of it. There you go. Buy by buy Bitcoin when it was 10 cents. Or I mean, they got all these things, right? But the thing about that question is if you had a time machine and you go back, it's it's I I think I'd made better decisions on like, and and I don't think it would be about money, I think it would be more about relationships, right? Spend more time like with my grandmother, for instance, uh, or my brother who passed away when he was 41 years old. I think that would be like if I could go back, if I could, if I could write a letter to my younger self, it would be relationships greater than money, not the other way around. It's don't pursue money at the cost of relationships.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

I I I love that. And I I think that's something, you know, you hear from everyone that they're 90 years old and nobody goes, boy, I wish I'd worked more and spent less time with my family. You know?

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Nobody on their deathbed ever says, nobody on their deathbed says, Man, I wish I'd have bought more stock. Nobody. Nobody says, Man, I wish I would have taken a bigger stand. I wish I'd have taken more deductions on my tax return. Man, people always want um, people always want what's um they they they they always want more experiences than anything else.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Definitely. Although you made me laugh about Amazon, is I always think back to you. I had a friend who was very high on Amazon when they were first starting out, and I kept saying, they're never gonna make it as an online bookstore. That's right, you know, that's a crazy concept. And uh yeah, I guess Jeff Bezos proved us a little bit wrong on that one.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

He did. He would 100% did.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

So the last question is what's your number one tip to change the way we think about retirement?

SPEAKER_01 31:20

Um I the number one tip I give is until you know why money's important to you and you know how to build a vision for yourself, um retirement is a guess. Because if you don't if you don't know if you don't know what you're putting everything in place for, um if you don't have the hard conversations with a spouse if you're married or with yourself if you're an individual, if you don't have the conversations like uh and get like an a great feel for what you're gonna be in retirement, who you're gonna be, what you want to be, then um then retirement is in itself just a fairy tale land that uh although Disney World is nice, right? It's a great place to visit, people are happy, it's not a great place to live, right? So I I think in retirement you have to get real with yourself. Why, why is money important to you and what is your vision for what retirement is? And uh and then and when you build that, like and especially especially if you can't articulate those two things, because if you have like an investment manager or a financial planner or an insurance person helping you with your money, and they can't, they don't know why money's important and what your vision is, then you're getting the same thing that every one of their clients is getting. You're not getting anything customized, you're not getting anything unique. You're getting the status quo. You're getting up, you're getting a Big Mac when what you really want is a Wagyu beef burger. And so, and we all we all like those. We all like customized food better than we like status quo food, same that everybody gets. So, but just make sure your retirement, your finances line up with who you are as a person. The financial planning is about you, and then you're ready to kind of move forward.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

I I love that. Line up with who you are as a person. I'm just making a note on that uh because I I I think that is very powerful. Um, so Mike, where can people learn more about you, your firm, and pick up a copy of the one of a kind finan the one of a kind financial plan book.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

Yeah, we'll start there because that's easy. Uh Amazon, our friend Jeff Bezos created this little cell book. We're just gonna make him a little richer today. Right, we're gonna make him a little bit richer. And I'm I'm fine with that, right? Because the distribution is a whole lot easier than to find it other ways. But you can just go on to Amazon.com and search either my name, Mike Milligan, and you'll find or the one of a kind financial plan. And uh when you when you see that, you're gonna see uh 20 plus reviews, almost a five-star rating, uh, a couple uh think of chapters there. And then I'd love for people to read it after you read it, um, or buy a couple copies for family. Then you can uh reach out to me one of two ways at mikemilligan.com, just my name, M-I-K-E-M-I-L-L-I-G-A-N.com, mikemilligan.com, or our company is one oak financial. One oak stands for one of a kind, but the website is the number one oakfinancial.com. And you'll uh as soon as you hit that website, you'll realize that we are different. So uh whether or not you buy the book and read it, whether or not you go to Mike Milligan to learn more about like my coaching and planning courses that I teach at Old Dominion University, or you go to our financial website. I just want all of your listeners to know, Tony, that they are one of a kind. They are unique. And if they don't feel that way, they are, and they need a financial plan that reflects that.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

I love that. I love that. And so for everybody watching and listening, as always, if you have access to the show notes, there will be links uh to Mike's book as well as to his website and social media profiles. Uh, so you can go to the show notes for those links. Mike, thanks for joining us on Get Ready Before Life Happens.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

It was an absolute joy, joy, Tony. And I, you know, good luck to you and everybody who's your listeners in this whole get ready movement that you're putting out in front of them.

SPEAKER_00 35:30

Well, thank you. Appreciate it. And as always, thank you everybody for tuning in to this episode of Get Ready Before Life Happens. If you learned something today to change the way you think about retirement, please be sure to subscribe and to share this episode with a friend. You can also go to my website at Tony Stewart.com to join the Get Ready Movement, get access to my newsletter and a whole bunch of resources. Until next time, let's change the way we think about money.