Unlocking Financial Freedom with Dan Ockey

Wondering how to break free from your financial struggles and take control of your money? Join me as I sit down with Dan Ockey, co-founder of Centsei, a financial coaching company that helps people escape bad money habits and build wealth. In our candid conversation, we draw from his personal journey from a debt-ridden past to financial freedom, revealing strategies that could help you face your own financial challenges no matter your current situation.

From discussing the financial challenges faced by different types of individuals and couples, to unraveling the concept of free cash flow and its role in financial advancement, this episode is a treasure trove of wisdom. We also explore the power of identifying and questioning your money scripts, a crucial step in realigning your beliefs about money and self-worth. Whether you're a single parent striving for financial stability, a big earner struggling to save, or a couple aiming at joint financial goals, you'll gain valuable insights to fuel your journey towards financial freedom.

But we don't stop at just discussing. Prepare to learn about practical tools like Mint.com that can give you a clear view of your spending habits, and how Dan's coaching service, Centsei, can help you make wiser money decisions. This episode isn't just about managing your money; it's about creating a healthy mindset and relationship with it. So, are you ready to reframe your financial narrative and set achievable financial goals? Tune in and start your journey towards financial freedom today! Let's dive in!

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Today's Guest: Dan Ockey

Dan Ockey, the Co-Founder of Centsei, a financial coaching company. Dan and his wife, Kay, founded Centsei after facing their own personal finance struggles, which nearly led to the end of their marriage. They now lead a team of financial coaches and have helped over 1400 individuals and couples regain control of their finances and find financial peace.

Dan and Kay live in Charlotte NC, with their 3 children, and spend as much time together outside as a family as possible.

Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships

Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 200,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.

Website: www.kimberlybeamholmes.com

Thanks for listening!

Connect on Instagram: @kimberlybeamholmes

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

Talking about money is either something people love or something people really don't love. But today I love the conversation that I had with Dan Oakey. Dan Oakey is the co-founder of a company called Sensei and he helps people with their finances. They're a financial coaching company and really strive to help people break out of debt, break out of bad money habits, build wealth and honestly find financial freedom. Today's conversation was super interesting. I haven't done a conversation yet on the podcast about finances and about money, so this one was definitely a new one, but Dan was fantastic.

Speaker 1: 1:12

We talked about three specific types of people, so be sure you listen to the whole thing. The first type of person that we talk about in the podcast and how they can change their money behaviors is the person who spends all of their money as soon as they get it and struggles to make ends meet on a month-to-month basis. So we talked through that. The second type of person we talk through is the single parent or the person who's really struggling and not bringing in much money financially, or the money that they do bring in goes to necessities and things that they absolutely need to do, and so what can you do if you feel like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place and just can't find any movement forward.

Speaker 1: 1:51

We talk about that, and then we talk about the person or the couple, who is the married couple, who's not necessarily struggling to make ends meet, and maybe they have a couple of hundred bucks, maybe 500 or a thousand bucks overflow every month. What can they do? How can they align with using that money to get to the goals that they want for their marriage and for their wealth building in the future? Amazing episode, let's dive in. I am super excited to have Dan Oki with me today and we're going to be talking about everyone's favorite and least favorite subject, which is money, and I've never talked about money honestly on the podcast before, so I'm glad that you're here with me, dan.

Speaker 2: 2:33

Ever. You've never had a money guest before.

Speaker 1: 2:35

No, I don't think that I have.

Speaker 2: 2:38

You're the first I'm on it, especially being on this podcast. That's fantastic.

Speaker 1: 2:42

That's it. That's it. Well, you and your wife, you were in a company called Sensei and you help people to make better money decisions. We're going to get into all of that, but how did you and your wife even get into doing this? What was kind of your personal journey with finances and financial struggles throughout your marriage?

Speaker 2: 3:02

Well, we started off on a really rocky foot. So I was. The truth was is when my wife and I were dating, I was living a lie. I was running a separate digital marketing agency and I was giving off the appearance that I was doing very well, and the problem was it was nothing could have been further from the truth. I was actually living off of credit cards. I was using other credit cards to pay off credit cards to keep up an appearance to be somebody that I wasn't.

Speaker 2: 3:34

And, yes, my company was making money, but nowhere near what I was trying to show. And so when I was dating my wife and she thought that she it's a good thing she didn't marry me for my money, or she would have left me a long time ago, is she kind of had this different thought and it really wasn't. Until three weeks before our wedding she kind of sat me down and said, hey, like do you have any debt? And I did have some debt. I had put myself, I was on track to go about 40 grand in debt within a year and I had I had already put myself in about 20 grand of credit card debt and it was not going to change. Nothing was going to change. I was on that spiral.

Speaker 2: 4:17

And so she she asked me how much debt I had and I didn't know, and so I had to go look it all up and figure it out and it was the first time I saw the number of 20 grand in debt, and that's you know. We've now seen there's people who have a lot more debt than 20 grand, but at the time, as newly starting out the relationship, it was kind of intimidating and she didn't really realize the extent of. It was not because I was. You know, it wasn't just student loans or something like that, it was, it was behavior based and it was a problem and my mindset was a huge problem.

Speaker 1: 4:51

Yeah. So I can, I can imagine especially if you don't have a plan of how to get out of it like that debt was coming from the money you were trying to make to support the family. So it's that had to have been a scary place for your wife to be coming into it.

Speaker 2: 5:10

I mean from her position, she's about to agree to spend her life with the guy who is not. I'm not going to be able to provide if I keep this up, and but you know she said, all right, let's figure this out after we get married. And we had a wonderful wedding and a couple of weeks after that she sat me down and said the word I least wanted to hear, which was budget. And I was not open. I was not open to it and I put up a fight and I didn't want to change. And she felt stressed because she felt like, hey, we're married, now we got to start saving for a house and kids and you know all this stuff. We got to pay off your debt.

Speaker 2: 5:49

And she was a saver, daughter of accountant and you know, grew up listening to Dave Ramsey in the car, and so you know I I had 20 grand of the worst type of debt, you know, the worst type of financial situation you could have. So we we argued the first three to four months pretty bitterly about money and it was frustrating. It was, it was, it was tense, it felt like is this even going to work? And one after one particular very stressful argument, I slammed the door and walked out and on that walk I realized I asked myself and it's like, is my, are my money, beliefs worth my marriage? And in that moment I realized no, I'm willing to change, but I don't know what to do. No one's ever sat me down and showed me how to manage money.

Speaker 2: 6:44

No one's ever taught me how to make a plan. No one's ever shown me how to actually budget. I don't want to have the stress about this or think about this all the time, but I know something needs to change. I just don't know what to do. So we went on a road trip, put it all on credit cards to a friend's wedding and at that wedding we met someone there who was very you know. They were an older couple and they were successful and they were happy and it was like you know, we would love to be this couple in 30 years. And we said what did you? What have you done? You know, how did you figure this out? What did you do?

Speaker 2: 7:19

And they said a couple of things that really stuck with me. The first was just because you're an adult doesn't mean you know how to manage money. It's a skill you have to learn and develop and practice. And that was almost like it relieves some tension for me, because I just had this expectation that I should just know how to do this and I did. The second thing they said is you need to go learn. If it's a skill you can learn. You, just like you've learned how to do everything else in your life. You can learn how to do money. Where do we start? And you know most people recommend Dave Ramsey when it comes to budgeting that stuff. That's what they told us.

Speaker 2: 7:50

So we downloaded the book, listened to it on the way home and right there in a napkin in our car, we built out a plan to pay off our debt in two years and we were excited about it. And we got to work and as we started going through the process of trying to budget and trying to it just, it became frustrating. It felt like I don't want to create a new budget every month. I was like I want to spend the least amount of time thinking about managing money as possible and the most amount of time making progress. So how do we do this?

Speaker 2: 8:18

So we started to read other financial books. We started to ask our friends who's the most successful person you know, who's kept their marriage and their family intact, and can we interview them? And we learned from them and we kind of started to piece out something this word called systems and basically recognize that it was more than budgeting. It was the automation, it was how you tracked, it was how you decided what goals to pursue and we developed the system that we started to implement from reading all these books and interviewing people took good pieces oh, that's good, let's take that, let's use that piece. And six months later we were debt free.

Speaker 1: 8:56

Wow, like a year and a half ahead of schedule.

Speaker 2: 8:59

Yes.

Speaker 1: 9:00

Wow, that's amazing.

Speaker 2: 9:02

Thank you. And then we were finishing our college degrees at the time as well, and so we realized that, you know, while this was awesome and we had this great system that worked for us, we didn't ever intended to go teach it to other people. It wasn't something we were like, right, let's go start a company. But that is how we learned. The system that we now teach our clients was just from spending a lot of time and painstaking effort to figure it out, and it worked. It worked really well.

Speaker 1: 9:40

With the clients that you've worked with. What do you believe are the top three things? Arbitrary number, it can be however many you want, but the top three things that people when they come to you or when they're struggling with their finances, why? What are the things that have gotten them there and what is keeping them stuck?

Speaker 2: 9:58

It's a great question. I've learned that most people are not waking up every day saying how do I make my life financially harder? Everybody is doing that if they are stopped Not consciously.

Speaker 2: 10:12

Yeah, I haven't met them. They're not consciously making that decision, not consciously, right, and basically what I've found is it's just nobody's shown them what to do, instead, how to intentionally and proactively be on top of it. And so most people are. They're practicing to make sure my bills are paid budget, and so they get their money, they pay all their bills, they go have some fun, but there's no clear erection. They're not actually trying to go anywhere. They don't have a system to get anywhere, and so the number one thing I think we see is just that people start making more money. They kind of hit. They get to a point where they get a new job. They think that this is going to change everything and it doesn't. And they say what's going on? Why are we not progressing? We're paying our bills, we're not being irresponsible. What is happening? And it's just that most people don't have a system. They don't have a system to achieve goals and make progress, and we've found that financial peace is financial progress.

Speaker 2: 11:07

When you're moving aligned especially in a marriage with your partner towards a goal, you feel financial peace because you know you're going somewhere, and you're going somewhere that matters. So that would be the first thing is just unconscious lack of proactivity? No, no, you're not. You don't know what to do, so you're not doing it. You don't know what you don't know. It's not based out of you being a bad person or bad with money, it's just you don't know what to do. Instead, you're doing the best you can. Yeah, do you have any thoughts on that? What have you seen? You know, I'm sure you've seen, in the marriages that you help, kind of a similar, a similar pattern of just like well in with marriage problems in general or relationship problems in general or health problems in general.

Speaker 1: 11:52

Yes, I, I would 100% agree with that. Most people don't do anything because they don't know what to do, and it's overwhelming to even know where to start or who to listen to or who to trust. And when you and I spoke you know a couple probably a couple of months ago now, even in just setting up for this podcast, I had mentioned to you, you know, at marriage helper, when we work with marriages, we don't really get into the finance part of it, like that's that's one of the things they fight about, but it's so not the main, the main core issue. It's just a symptom of feeling disrespected or unloved or unappreciated. Right, because that's that's especially in marriage. I think that's one of the the. It's kind of that I can't think of the word. I haven't clearly haven't had enough coffee yet today. But when we like, when my work, what I do, is just a symbol of what I'm spending my time on, right, the only thing that I bring in from the work that I do is a representation of what I'm investing my life in in order to support my family and our future goals. And so when we fight about money, it's typically not just the money we're fighting about, it's the respect of my time and our future and our goals, and the misalignment of that, like you were saying, tend I, from my perspective tends to be really what the core issue is, and money is just one of the things that you end up fighting about with that.

Speaker 1: 13:23

Now, that being said, every when you were, when you were talking, I was specifically thinking about two specific types of people, and I was thinking about the people who they just stay in debt. Like it's kind of I love salespeople and this isn't a knock on salespeople, but like the salesperson who's like, has a great month in sales and ends up spending it all on a new truck or a new house, or he's like constantly or she's constantly just spending more and staying in debt, like they can never get ahead because they have broken systems, even though that's not what they think. And then I'm thinking of the complete opposite situation where there's like a single mom or a single dad, a newly single parent, who, due to no choice of their own, in most situations, like cannot seem to get ahead because life is hard for them and they have to, you know, in order to work, they have to have childcare, but you have to pay for childcare. And so I'm thinking of those two specific types of situations and then I think you know there's a third we can. We can, we can address in there after those two. So I would like for you to kind of speak to those two different situations.

Speaker 1: 14:38

And then I think the third one is just like the couple who's not doing anything proactive and they're just kind of letting their money manage them instead of them managing their money. So if we think about those three kind of avatars, like those three kind of prototypes of people, then what would you say? Starting with the person who just like, continues to try and keep up, keep up with the Joneses? Where would you even encourage this person to start if what you're saying is, you know, the first problem most people have is they just don't know what to do. So where would you recommend this person start in order to no longer have to live paycheck by paycheck?

Speaker 2: 15:16

Absolutely. And this is and the first avatar again is the salesperson who gets, who get the big commission check, spends it all but finds himself still in the debt.

Speaker 1: 15:24

And it doesn't even have to be a salesperson, right? But like any of the person who's just like oh, I have this money now, and so I want to go get all of this stuff that I've always wanted, but I couldn't afford, but now I can, but then it's like every paycheck they're starting back at zero.

Speaker 2: 15:38

Totally. Yeah, this is really really common. So the first, the person and this wasn't a salesperson, but we just had a client who paid up 115 grand of debt in a year and they were. They were this person. They were a pilot who was. They would get a big bonus every year and they would rack up credit card debt the whole year. That bonus would come in and knock it out. Well then they he, he needed a job change, he was getting burned out from flying, and so he switched to a bank, but the habits stayed, so there was no bonus coming and his income was cut it by into a third of what it was. So they racked up 115 grand a debt and no bonus. Nothing was going to, nothing was going to come. There was nothing coming to save them. I'm going to save them this time.

Speaker 2: 16:27

So this is, I think, an example of that first avatar, and what we did is they just there wasn't somebody to say, there was nobody to keep them accountable. So that helps a ton, but just giving people like that a visibility into actually seeing the numbers of where the money's going, because it's typically not just buying big things. It's a combination of the eating out and the Amazon packages that show up. None of those things are bad, but they just don't have any clue of what those numbers actually are. And so when they get a system in place and they can start to actually see I'm spending $3,000 a month on eating out, seriously and that, and do I really value that? Do I actually truly care about that or do I value being able to sleep at night? And the answer becomes clearly you know what? I don't want to spend three grand a month on restaurants. It's not something you can. If you want to, you can rack up the credit card points. He's going to come stop you. But if you really don't value that and you see the number, all of a sudden, intrinsically that person will start to say, huh, maybe I'm going to not go out to eat three times this week like I normally would. Maybe I'm just going to go one time.

Speaker 2: 17:42

And that's where the change starts to happen. Then they see that change starting to happen. They say, okay, here's how we get, here's what our cash flow is. We need to get to a break-even point so we can just maintain our bills. When you start to get control over your situation, you start to realize you are not at the whims of your emotions or your desires and that you can have control and still get what you want. Because there tends to be a belief with these people and also, I would add on this is people who grew up with not a lot of money and families that have not a lot of money. Often when they get a lot of money, they start spending it not everyone, but some of them do. There's a realization once you have a system in place that I can be in control and still get things that I love and value and be responsible at the same time, and when that clicks, all of a sudden things take off, like it did for this couple.

Speaker 1: 18:34

So what I heard you say was the first part of this is put some kind of measurement system in place to where you can see what you're spending your money on. So how do you recommend people do that other than just going into their bank account and scrolling through a month and you know it's? How do you even like categorize that? Because if it's hard, people aren't going to do it. So how do you recommend people even start grouping things so that they can see where they're spending their money?

Speaker 2: 19:04

Great question. If you try to do your bank accounts and credit cards, it's going to be overwhelming and you're not going to do it. So I recommend a tool like Winab or Mintcom. Mint is free, winab is not. I recommend most people start with Mint because it's free. It's least complicated.

Speaker 2: 19:19

Winab kind of has their own methodology, but get into Mintcom and it'll connect all your credit cards, all your bank accounts and most people have either used or heard of Mint. But it'll just start giving you some base categories to start grouping things together and that will start to give you an image of where things go. And so that's the first thing we do with our clients is we do it for them. We just go into Mint, set things up and they're like here's where all your money went this month. They're like holy cow. I have never known this, or maybe I knew it for a couple months, but we haven't stuck with it.

Speaker 2: 19:54

So Mintcom is the easiest way to do it in my opinion, and it's worth. I don't recommend most people. When they get in, they try to go like I'm going to do this whole year. That's going to be overwhelming, you're not going to do it, most people won't do it, so just start with this month. Just see where your money went from the current month that you're in and just start there, and that alone is going to be very revealing.

Speaker 1: 20:20

Yeah, yeah, okay. So Mintcom, it's secure, it's safe, it's easy to use.

Speaker 2: 20:25

Bankrate security, so the same security that your bank uses. That's awesome.

Speaker 1: 20:30

Okay, that's awesome and you can start with that for free and we'll get into this later but your financial coaches that you have and that service you offer, they'll actually help the client get set up in Mint so that they can see everything that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 20:46

That's really awesome. That's awesome. Second call that's all built out Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 20:50

Yeah, and then you mentioned something called cash flow. So after you get those measurements set up which is important because you can't change what you don't measure you mentioned this word called cash flow, like you need to break even on your cash flow. So for people who may not know what that means, what does that mean?

Speaker 2: 21:05

Great question. So one of the unique things that we developed that we haven't found anywhere else is we developed a budgeting method called the CAP budgeting system, and I'm getting through a lot of terms but I promise I'll explain it. So, basically, the way that you get ahead is free cash flow, and free cash flow for people who aren't familiar with the term is the money that you have after all expenses. It's after everything that you set aside for and use, and so what we do is we try to optimize so you see clearly what your free cash flow is every month. We just call it flow, but that flow is the money that you can use to progress. And so once you know I've got $200 every month, I've got $1,000 every month, I'm negative $800 every month it becomes very clear.

Speaker 2: 21:58

You actually have an idea of how long it's going to take you to where you want to get to, or that you need to make changes to just be breakeven, so you're not going backwards every month. And so free cash flow, again, is a simple definition. It's the money you have left over after all of your bills, and if you don't crack, it's really hard to know what that number is, because we think that we're going to know. But in the busyness of life and paychecks every two weeks, we never really sit down month over month and say this was my free cash flow for October or January, we just don't know. And so when you can actually see that number and track it, you can start to use it. And when you can start to use it, you can start to get ahead.

Speaker 1: 22:43

Yeah, okay, great. So it's getting a and this is your direct deposit, deposits, commissions, like any kind of money that you have coming into you, you're putting at that top and then you're subtracting all your expenses from it, and then the goal is to figure out what that flow number is, which is either going to be, hopefully, a positive, but it may be a negative.

Speaker 2: 23:05

Exactly. And what a lot of people don't do when they do this calculation is you have your regularly recurring monthly expenses groceries, rent, mortgage utilities, gas for your vehicle, all that stuff that's going to have insurance, yeah. But you have something else that we often forget about and we often call these unexpected expenses. These are birthdays, these are Christmases, this is random travels, but if we really think about it, birthdays happen every year, every Christmas happens every year. Our car is going to need some repair or tires or registration every single year, and so if we just take some time also to think about those expenses and plan in advance, then we can say I'm going to need for birthdays and Christmas and travel this year, I'm going to need $1,200 this year.

Speaker 2: 23:54

That's a very low amount, but I'm just using for simple math. Then I'm going to divide that number by 12. And I'm going to include in my budget setting aside $100 every month for those things, so that when they happen, there's no surprise, I have the money already sitting aside in a separate account ready to be deployed. And so the combination that's called short-term savings. And so the combination of short-term savings plus my regular gas, health insurance, mortgage, rent utilities that combined is called my cap because I've capped the amount of money I need to spend to live. And when I know that number say it's $5,000 a month I know that everything on top of my cap is my flow, because and so that allows me to be prepared for unexpected expenses, because I've set aside and I'm in control. I know what I'm going to need to spend on my regular month and now I can also, now I can focus on increasing my flow and harnessing that to actually get ahead.

Speaker 1: 24:58

Let's talk a little bit more and I know I'm getting a bit into the weeds on this, but so you're taking are you using mintcom for people to understand where their money is going in each category, and then that, and then so that's kind of your starting point. Then you see what the flow is at the end and if it's negative, then you're going backwards into the kind of categories and getting each person to look at where can you cut? So, if it's that negative $800. So then the math question here is where are you going to cut $800 from this in order to break even?

Speaker 2: 25:37

And that's the first goal Formic yes, if you're breaking, if you're negative, the number one goal is to get to break even. It doesn't matter about focusing on paying off debt if you're negative, right. So yes, kimberly, you're negative, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 25:51

I want to come back to this, especially when we get into the single mom example or single parent example, but before we do, there was a third thing that you said in talking and thinking about the person who is just kind of spending, and maybe some of why they're spending is because of pride or ego, or it's feeding their self-worth in some way. And you said this concept of self-talk, like saying to yourself different things, because maybe what we're saying to ourselves right now is if I have that, I'll be happy, or if I have that, then it'll show that I've succeeded in life, or whatever it might be. So what are some things that you would encourage, even just like quick mantras or self-talk statements that people could say to themselves to realign their belief about money and their self-worth and those being separate?

Speaker 2: 26:44

Yeah. So you're basically saying we all have a story we're telling ourselves about money.

Speaker 1: 26:50

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:50

It's 100%. So this is something we do also with our clients is we analyze the money scripts that we have grown up with and the things that we're thinking about and the scripts that we have, and we've often found that we all have a lot of shoulds. There's I should do this, I should have that, I should buy this and those can be harmful because they now set a standard that if we fail to reach, we're now a failure. And so, if we can focus on just stating things, we found that the best way is just to revert to the truth and reality. It's helpful to have a third party walk you through this, but, for example, I need to have a Tesla because I really like it and want one, but it'll also signify that I'm financially successful, and the truth of that is, yes, having a nice Tesla and a nice car will. It will make people think that you're doing well and will it truly satisfy. Is it truly the truth? Am I really actually a financial piece? Am I really on a strong foundation? And the answer is it's not that you can't have that nice thing, it's more of how do you want to truly get it. And so these scripts that we're telling ourselves, the stories that we're telling ourselves. It's really helpful to write them down, and especially when you talk to somebody about money, they can start to point those out. I see you here's one, and this is something I've seen a lot.

Speaker 2: 28:30

This may be separate from the example you gave, but there was a client who felt like they always had to ask their spouse for permission to buy things, and so the story they told themselves was I can't buy something unless my partner approves. And that became challenging because the partner would be like, yeah, go buy it, that's fine, I don't care. And the partner who was needed the approval would get frustrated because she was wanting her partner's approval of her financial purchases. And when we dug a little deeper, we realized that her parents had approved. She had gone to her parents every time she had made a buying decision growing up, and so she hadn't learned how to make a buying decision on her own. She needed somebody else's approval, and so we talked through that and she was able to overcome that.

Speaker 2: 29:24

But I think one of the basically the mantra that I would say is when you tell yourself, when you find yourself thinking something again and again, I need this to be happy. Once I finally get there, it'll finally be all right. A simple question is is this is that really true? And to journal on it, to write it out, why do I think this is true? To talk it through with somebody else? A lot of the reason we develop these money scripts is because we never actually express them to somebody else. They're just being on repeat in our head. So that was a long answer, maybe, to your question. But what's really true? Whenever you have, when you start finding yourself repeating a mantra to yourself again and again, is that really reality?

Speaker 1: 30:11

I love that. I love that there's so many things about your process and what you're saying that I it's a lot like in the health space. So, even talking about you know when people want to lose weight or feel better or feel healthier, it's like one of the key ways you start is by just tracking what you're currently eating. And that goes back to what you were saying with like, just start what you're currently spending, see where you currently are. Like, just start with what you're currently eating, how much you're currently moving, do an assessment of where you are and then from there you know, we can go into building new habits and trying new things.

Speaker 1: 30:51

But where people always get stuck is going to be mentally, because they have these narratives and these stories around certain things about how they can or they can't or they should or you know whatever. And that's just such a key, a key part. And I love the question of is that really true? And that's very cognitively behavioral based Is that really true? Because the majority of the time, the answer is no, it's not really true. It's not really true, but it takes a lot of courage to get there.

Speaker 2: 31:23

I don't mean to take us off topic, but you've mentioned health coaching a lot. I know you're involved in that space in a lot of ways. It is interesting to see the overlap and you know when you're helping your clients mentally or in their health goals, what have you seen that's worked.

Speaker 1: 31:47

So I'm interviewing you.

Speaker 2: 31:52

I'm genuinely curious.

Speaker 1: 31:54

I'm an open book. Yeah, it's a lot of times that actually, I would say the first, the first part that most people in their own day to day life don't consider is what are your goals? And not just what do you want to happen? Like, because a lot of people will say, well, I want to lose 10 pounds, I want to lose 20 pounds, whatever, and it's like great, but why? Why do you want to do that? What is your deeper, underlying motivation there? Because if people can't get clear on that and I'm sure you see this as well like if you're not clear on the bigger, why then any obstacle is going to throw you off course. But if you are clear on the deep, why that like really matters to you, then even when we look at just like setting goals and I don't know if you know this or not, but I'm doing my, my PhD right now, and a huge part of my PhD is on goal attainment and there is one type of motivation that has the highest rate of success in a person achieving their goal and it's intrinsic motivation. And intrinsic motivation is simply I'm doing this because I want to, because I want to, not because someone else is telling me I need to, or making me do it, or because I feel like I should do it. It's because I truly want to.

Speaker 1: 33:18

And so, at the end of the day, most people really don't want to lose weight. You think you do, but you think you do because you feel like you should. What they want is they want to be, they want to feel better, they want to sleep better, they want to play with their kids, they want to X like, they want something way deeper. And so if you get clear on the why, then the what becomes more achievable. And so, instead of it feeling like, oh, I have to, you know, I have to track everything I've eaten for for the past week, instead of it feeling like a burden, if they're clear on their why, then it's like well, this is just going to help me get to the why and they see how it's part of the bigger path, and so that's what. That's the first thing I would say, like helping people get clear on their why is the number one first thing to do.

Speaker 2: 34:10

I'm so glad I asked. That is awesome and yeah, I mean that overlap is. It seems like, especially as you get, as you're studying this, it seems like that goes beyond health and fitness money.

Speaker 1: 34:25

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 34:26

And it's anything.

Speaker 1: 34:28

It's yeah, anything, everything.

Speaker 2: 34:30

Yeah, absolutely Wonderful. Thanks for sharing that. I'm taking this over here.

Speaker 1: 34:36

Thanks for thanks for asking.

Speaker 2: 34:37

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 34:38

Let's. Let's talk about the single parent or the person who is just financially struggling. Yeah, and like they don't have the bonuses coming in. They don't. They don't have these things and they're in this like between a rock and a hard place. Is the process the same for them, or would there be anything you would change about it?

Speaker 2: 35:00

Great question. So I I was meeting with one of these clients yesterday. He's a single father. He has, you know, he has an alimony payment of, and child support payment of, $2,700 a month and so his base monthly expenses as a single father are, you know, basically a hundred grand a year. And that is a big burden to carry when you're doing everything on your own, yeah, and you're trying to juggle with, you know, taking the kids some days and having them somewhere to go. It's just. It's just harder. It is, it is legitimately harder.

Speaker 2: 35:33

So the first thing that I would say is different about the process is we have to recognize that if you're a single parent or you're doing things on your own, that you are playing a different game than other people and it's okay, and that you shouldn't have to expect yourself to be like everyone else. It's a different game, you're playing with different cards. Even so, it doesn't mean that you can't get ahead and it doesn't mean you can't use systems to better yourself. The hard thing is it just means you may have to be more patient because you don't have a spouse running the game with you and you often have dependents and other and other difficulties. That is making the game harder for you to play, and so the first thing I would just say is is give yourself some empathy, and if you often feel yourself looking to others and comparing yourself, it's it's.

Speaker 2: 36:29

It's not going to help, because they're playing with different cards, and so that would be the fair thing, and I see you, and we are working to continue to develop, to support those people, because you're amazing, they're amazing, they're amazing people, for sure.

Speaker 2: 36:45

The second aspect of this that I often see with single parents is because they are playing with different cards and because they're doing things they often I often, we've often see a need for them to try to make up for what they feel they are lacking financially, and so often single parents tend to have higher expenses in certain categories than a typical family would, and this is anecdotal I don't have studies on this. This is just what we've observed from our 1400 clients is there's more extracurriculars, there's more activity spending and some there's more eating out because you're trying to survive and just make sure that you can feed your kids and family. You're more tired, and so it. It's really helpful, though, to recognize that the system is still going to help. There was a single mother that we worked with, and she was just so tired and exhausted that when we started tracking, she didn't realize she was spending $400 a month on subscriptions she wasn't using anymore. Wow, an extra $400 a month is life changing.

Speaker 1: 37:54

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 37:55

And so the system is still going to work, it's just it's a little bit slower. It needs more empathy and it needs a little bit more accountability, because you don't have a partner there running the race with you. And so your question was how would I change the system? The principles are the same. The way we run the race is more involvement.

Speaker 1: 38:18

It's the tortoise, not the hare.

Speaker 2: 38:20

Right, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 38:21

Yeah, I can totally see that and you know, this is the one I'm really thinking. I mean, even in the talk about the single dad, right, the alimony payment right, there is almost $36,000 a year, like that's just for the alimony payment. That could be someone's house payment and you know all the things. So it is, it's harder, and where was I going with that? There was a point that I wanted to make. They're trying to be there for their kids as well.

Speaker 1: 38:53

Like they're trying to work and be present and make sure that the kids are emotionally taking care of you know, physically taking care of all of those things. And you're right, you can imagine not having any help and then getting home and you're having to cook dinner and like you just want to go out to eat. So definitely there's empathy there, but I also this is what I'm going to say I also can imagine that these are some of the people that you get to that negative, like if they have a negative in their cash flow, a lot of it is probably necessary and they just can't. And I'm all and I'm even more specifically thinking about, like the mom who wasn't in the workforce, has to start at an entry level position and cannot make ends meet.

Speaker 2: 39:39

Yes, yes, and I think if you're one of those people I would say and your finances is tough right now, you know not to get emotional, but it's not your fault, it's not, you're doing everything, keep going. Yeah, the those people you're amazing for what you're doing and you're doing everything you can. We have seen time and time again that if you can get systems in place and some structure the game, the race is slower, but you can, you can, and often it comes down to also having conversations with your children, who you love more than anything. We've seen this to be a huge win.

Speaker 2: 40:21

There was another single mother I was talking to this week. She, her daughter, is a sophomore, a junior in high school and college is starting to come up and they're having all these talks. Well, the single mother it does not make sense for the single mother to put herself 200 grand in her daughter's family. It does not. It would. That's a burden on the mother. The mother should not carry. Also, the daughter shouldn't go into should go into as little student loan debt as possible.

Speaker 2: 40:50

And so they had a conversation about what could really be done and the daughter of her own choosing went and got a job, and so that that goes conversations. If you can have a system in place and you can have clarity as a single parent and you can have real conversations with your children, even if they're at a younger age, and just say, look, this is what, this is what mom or dad can do at this time and we're going to work together and this is what we're trying to do, and you can involve your children, it can. The children want to help you, they want to support you. They often just don't know, because sometimes you don't know, and so if you can work together, you don't have to share every little detail. But if you can have those open conversations, it makes things. It can make things easier.

Speaker 1: 41:37

I 100% agree with that. When, when I went to college, it was in 2008, which was, you know, the last recession timeframe 2008, 2009. And my first year in college along with that happening economically, my parents had a huge change in they in in where they were so, and so I feel like I need to give listeners context, because marriage helper has been around. What we do at marriage helper has been around for 24 years, but we have not always been called marriage helper. We actually started that under that brand in 2012.

Speaker 1: 42:20

And so before 2012, it my dad had. Actually he had started a nonprofit back in the early tooth, late nineties, early 2000s and it was right before that recession happened that he left that nonprofit to go and do the thing. So they wanted to go in a different direction and he actually started a new company to continue doing marriage work and anyway it was called something else. All of this to say so my family went from making I mean, my dad was making in the decent six, six figures that year in 2007 to the next year, my parents brought in $16,000.

Speaker 1: 42:58

Oh my gosh that was an income like well below poverty level and I was off at college and they were struggling. My mom had to re, you know, refinance the house. She was just like calling creditors day after day, crying with them on the phone of like, please don't take our home. I mean, it was a very hard time for my parents and they were open. I'm thankful that they were open with me about it because, you know, I went to college thinking they were going to pay for my school and immediately when this started happening, I was like, no, I will, I let me figure this out.

Speaker 1: 43:33

And I was 18 years old and I took that on myself. But I was actually eligible for way more grants, not even just loans, but like grants because of their situation that they wouldn't have to pay back, that you know, or certain loans that would just fall on me. But I was able to get them at a way lesser rate because you know, and so it actually ended up working out well. And but, like, from the time I was 18 on, I made the decision of I'm not going to take any more help from y'all, Like I want you to get through. This time I can be self-sufficient, even though I'm in college.

Speaker 1: 44:09

So, and that was a huge change for me and I think not until you said that and you know, as I'm processing it with you right now, I don't think I would have learned about money in the same way. And you know, I'm thinking about family members I have who are like in their in their early to mid twenties and still living at home and never had a job. And I'm just looking at that and I'm like I was literally like married, managing my own budget and getting out of debt at 23 and 24 years old and how, how much of a difference that's made in my life because my parents didn't try to hide that from me has been incredibly, incredibly helpful. And, yeah, thanks for thanks for making me realize that.

Speaker 2: 44:57

It was wonderful to watch that process happen. That is an amazing story and it sounds like it's really benefited you, like just as life's gone on. Because you, there was intrinsic motivation I'm never going to take. I'm not going to take your support anymore, not because I don't love you, but I see the situation and two it for it. You took on accountability and responsibility that has rippled and bled and compounded into where you are now, which is just, I think. I think sometimes we're afraid to burden our children with things, and I'm I'm a younger parent. I have three, three kids. So I won't pretend I know everything about parenting, but the I continually see that if we allow our children, once we're empowered financially, and we allow and we talk openly with our children, they, they crave some responsibility, they want to help. They just don't know how to or what to do all the time.

Speaker 1: 45:48

Right, Right, but you would be amazed, I mean, even if the kids are young, like just even having the conversations and it I can't remember who said this, but I heard someone say when they were going through like a difficult time financially, even with their younger kids, just having the conversation of like hey, you know, we're not going to be going out to eat as much right now. We're going through a hard time. And in this story, in this book it was some book I was reading and like the daughter went up and got her piggy bank and brought it down and was like here's how I can contribute. So it just helps the kids to realize like every time you say no, we can't go to Chick-fil-A, or no, we can't, you're not going to do that right now, At least they can get in on that. Why? Why are we doing this? How are we going to work together as a family to turn it around? And I think that's really powerful.

Speaker 2: 46:36

Absolutely I think. I think there's a lot of growth that can happen for the family and in those difficult, hard times.

Speaker 1: 46:42

I agree. Well, let's talk about the last kind of avatar, which is the married couple who they're not spending all their money. You know, they're not in crazy debt, but they just don't really have a plan of where they're going. So what we talked about so far, just as a recap, is get on something like mintcom look at how you're currently spending your money, look at what your current cash flow is. So let's say that this couple has $500,000 a month overflow, like they have it extra. So then what do you start? Well, also before I, two questions and one. First of all, are you recommending that people budget by like an envelope system, like how are you making it easy for people to make sure they're not overspending? And then the second part of that is if they do have this over, an abundance in their flow, then what are they doing with it?

Speaker 2: 47:40

Great question. So three questions here how to budget. If they do have flow, what do they do? And also, they don't have a plan. What are they? I guess those are kind of two and one. Let me make sure I get all those, so I'm going to answer them. The last one first, which is basically I found with most married couples who are making the bills, making sure the bills are paid, but don't really have a plan that really going anywhere. It goes back to what you said is where, what do you want? Where do you want to be?

Speaker 2: 48:11

I found from the couples we've worked with that most of them actually want the same thing in the end. They want peace of mind, they want to be on the same page. They typically have a dream of some kind of house or traveling. All the time they agree on the same end destination. Their disagreements come on how to get there, and so the most powerful thing you can do is help them build a roadmap. Here are the step by step things that need to happen to reach your end destination, and when a couple can see all of their values. This spouse wants to pay off debt. This spouse wants a higher emergency savings. This spouse wants to invest. This spouse wants to start a business, and when you can line those out on a roadmap one by one and say, first we're going to do this, then we're going to do this, oftentimes it unites the couple and they can actually progress. And I found that roadmap almost always this end destination is the same. They want the same thing in the end. They just disagree how to get there. The roadmap solves that.

Speaker 2: 49:26

Your other question of how do you budget? So we don't do an envelope system. I mentioned it before. We do the cap budget system. If my personal experience, the last thing I want to do is go create a new budget every month because I just don't have the time or the bandwidth or desire, and so what we do is, with the cap budget system, we're optimizing for flow. So if I know what my monthly expenses are and I'm tracking those in Mint, and I know what my short-term savings are, and I'm tracking that in Mint and I'm setting that aside money every month, I have my flow number. And so we have found the best way to quote unquote manage the money or budget is something called a weekly financial check-in, and this may sound crazy because I just said monthly is too hard.

Speaker 2: 50:16

But we found that a 20-minute money conversation every week. You sit down, you go over Mint, you see where are we at. Are we within the categories and the amounts we wanted to spend? How much flow do we have? Let's put that towards. Whatever we're working towards. Let's make sure on the same page. How are you feeling emotionally? How am I feeling emotionally? What are the upcoming expenses over the next three weeks to three months?

Speaker 2: 50:36

If we can just take 20 to 30 minutes and categorize everything, make sure it's all organized, mow our financial lawn for the week, we're going to be on the same page and then we don't have to think about money again till next week. And it just helps so much. It prevents the washing dishes conversations. Hey, what's this $200 at Amazon? What is this $30? A chick flight? I'm washing dishes. I'm not ready to have this conversation, but if you can, sunday mornings or Sunday nights, just sit down and go over things together, it keeps you in line with your cap, with the amounts you said you wanted to spend. It helps make sure that your flow is actually going where it needs to go and it makes sure you're not overspending. And so the people who do the weekly financial check-in, single salesperson or couple. That is how you make sure your money gets managed. It doesn't just happen, you have to do it. That, combined with the cap, combined with mint, combined with the roadmap, is part of the system that makes people progress.

Speaker 1: 51:41

Love it. I absolutely love it. One last question. I've been asked this question three times in the past month and I know my answer. Pretty sure I know your answer, but we're going to see Good couples combine their finances 100% yes 100%. Yes, why?

Speaker 2: 52:07

When we get married, we, you know, we combine everything. We're sleeping in the same bed, we're in the same house, we've combined our lives, and money is a tool we use to enact goodness and provide for our family and our marriage and our life. If we don't, if we can't, share that, how can we expect to grow together? How can we expect to make progress together?

Speaker 2: 52:27

Now, I I understand there's certain situations where, if you're in the middle of you know a spouse leaving you or taking money, that may be a that may be a different conversation, but if your marriage is good right now, combine the finances. It's only going to help. It's only going to make you go faster. It's only going to unify you guys. It really is. It's going to make things easier. You're going to have everything in the same place. It's going to reduce friction. It's going to reduce reimbursing each other for stuff. Guys, I promise you, if you combine your finances and I am sure Kimberly's can attest to this as well it's. It just makes life easier, it unifies things, it forces you to have important conversations and, most importantly, you will grow together in ways you just can't when things are separate.

Speaker 1: 53:13

I absolutely agree, and you said it way better than probably my responses. When I've been asked the past three times, I'm like yeah, why, why wouldn't you? Absolutely, in fact, actually this is the more negative way to look at it, but it's true. It makes it harder to divorce.

Speaker 2: 53:34

Yeah, it does.

Speaker 1: 53:36

And that's not the reason like you shouldn't do it for that reason. But when we look at what can keep couples together during the hard times and make them pause before making very detrimental life choices, then the more you join together, the better it is for just keeping the marriage together and pausing before making rash decisions, and it's like less ability to lie and hide things and there's transparency and trust and honesty Like there's absolutely Don't sound like good things for a marriage. Yeah, all of that sounds beautiful.

Speaker 2: 54:16

I love your, I love that point and I just think, like, if I'm really in my marriage because I want this to last forever, if I really, if that's really my desire, then I would want to do everything to unify.

Speaker 1: 54:28

Right.

Speaker 2: 54:29

And that is a key element to that, in my opinion, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 54:34

Dan. This has been a great conversation. I'm glad I had a conversation about finances for the first time. Where can people find more about Sensei and the overview of how y'all work? And actually I was shocked when Daniel, when Dan, when Dan and I, when Dan and I talked a couple of again, like probably a month or two ago now, and he told me about how Sensei works and their pricing, I was like that's an amazing offer, a really amazing offer just in terms of what all you can do for people in your guarantees along with it. So I definitely want to make sure that you I would recommend it to anyone looking for someone to help them get out of a financial rut or to have better financial systems. So please tell us more about how people can get started with that.

Speaker 2: 55:22

Thank you, yeah, absolutely so. You know, trusting somebody to come into your financial life can be a big decision. We understand that. We want to make it as easy and smooth as possible.

Speaker 2: 55:32

So if you really just want to see what we're all about our website, sensei Financial C-E-M-T-S-E-I financialcom we have a free budgeting class where we kind of outline our whole system on that and you can go in, you can watch that class, see if you like us, see if we're not freaking out too much, and then, if you want, from there you can do a free consultation with one of our Sensei trained financial coaches who will go through your situation, talk about how the system will help you, and then you know we guarantee results, we guarantee that you will make more than the cost of the program or your money back, and we also recognize when you're in a financial pickle you don't have $10,000 to spend on a program and we're not anywhere close to that.

Speaker 2: 56:11

But we break the payments up over a long period of time with the guarantees to remove the risk and make sure you can get ahead, and so we're really trying. Our end goal is truly to help households and marriages and single parents and salespeople and all of the all, everybody get financial piece by using systems that work so that they can progress, build the lives that they're meant to live and be good stewards, and so if that, if that's what you'd like, we'd love to help you.

Speaker 1: 56:39

Absolutely y'all. They guarantee results. That's one of the crazy parts of it to me, and at least a couple of months ago, when I asked him how many, how many times have you had to refund people, he said so far we never have, which means they've made amazing things happen to the people that they've worked with. So love that he's doing this, love that you and your team are doing this, since a more definitely linked to all of those things in the show notes, so that people can go and find out more about how to get started in saving money and building wealth and not having to worry about finances for the rest of their life. Pretty sure everyone would love to have that.

Speaker 2: 57:17

Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. Thank you so much for your time today, Dan.

Speaker 1: 57:20

It was great to be with you. Kimberly, thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1: 57:25

Here are my key takeaways from today's episode with Dan Oakey. The first one is that there's really a three step process to changing the way that you interact and engage with your money or your behaviors around your money, and the first one is to start with just a overview, kind of an audit, of your current financial spending habits. So don't even change anything, just sign up for something like mintcom or whatever you feel comfortable with using and see what your money habits have been over the past week, over the past month, and just start there. You're just getting an audit, you're just taking inventory. The next thing that we do from there is you go through those expenses and you look and see is there a place that you can cut? Are there things that you're spending money on you didn't even know you were spending money on? And try and find some of those quick ones Early on. What can you slash out? What are the $400 in subscriptions that you may not even use, that you can cancel and have $400 more dollars in your pocket? And what you're really trying to do is optimize to getting to at least a break even with your cash flow every month, but ideally to where you're actually bringing in more money at the end of the month. So you're after what you bring in and what you spend money. There's still money left over and that is a real key here.

Speaker 1: 58:48

And, of course, I know in this episode we've definitely talked more about the person getting started with this and this isn't really in depth how to invest your money for the maximum wealth building and tactics like that. This is something that's accessible for every single person and actually I would even encourage every person. Even if you have 401ks that are fully funded every month and you're investing in stocks and Bitcoin and real estate or whatever it is, even if you feel like you're more advanced, I still encourage you to go back to the basics every once in a while. It's actually encouraged me to go back through and get on board with my husband and just kind of go back through and do an audit of what are we currently spending money on, because I feel like many times it's when you're actually doing well financially that you're probably wasting more money financially, even if you feel like you have some left over every month and you're meeting your wealth goals. Well, how much more could you be if you did an audit of where you are?

Speaker 1: 59:46

And then the third and final takeaway, which is one of my favorites, is looking at how you are talking to yourself about money and what that money means to you. When you put your self-esteem and your self-worth in things like how much money you bring in or how much money you make or the things that you are able to buy, you're always going to feel empty. It's never going to truly be fulfilling. So look at the narratives and the story that you have internally about money and how money makes you feel and really assess whether it's healthy or not, and then start saying some more positive things to yourself, like your worth is not in what you do, your worth is not in what you have and your worth is not in what you make. You are worthy because you live, because you breathe, because you exist, because God loves you and made you in his image. That's why you're worthy, not because of money.

Speaker 1: 1:00:41

Money is simply a tool to help us to do great things in the world and to have a bigger impact. And yes, there's parts of it about saving up and meeting some wealth goals, but one of my favorite books, my favorite book, the Bible, says that the more that we store up treasures for ourselves here on earth. It's just where moth and rust decay it. It's much better to store up the treasures for ourselves in heaven, where there's going to be a much bigger impact, and not just in heaven. But what that really means is by doing good things here, to make more of an impact on helping others and helping people and doing things that make a difference in the world. That's way more satisfying than chasing a paycheck every other week.

Speaker 1: 1:01:27

That's my encouragement for you this week, and check out Dan and his team at Sensei. You want help in this financial coaching. Love his service. What he does and the fact that there's a guarantee is fantastic. Other than that, please share this episode with a friend who may need it. It's one of the best ways that you can help spread the podcast as well as leaving a five star review. Always love seeing your reviews and even if it's not five stars, I love seeing your honest reviews wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next week, stay strong.