PP 626: Going for the Goose with Natali Morris
“You don’t want a nest egg, you want a goose. You want to buy a goose that lays eggs every month. You don’t want a nest egg. A nest egg will depreciate.” – Natali Morris
Natali Morris and her husband worked for the news, but decided they didn’t want to be dependent on their jobs. They taught themselves to invest in performing assets, and began investing in real estate. Now they teach others to invest in real estate, as well as teach families to empower their finances through the Financial Freedom Academy.
Listen as Natali and Kim Sutton talk about a smarter way to invest, why our finances need to be a team project and more!
Highlights:
06:16 Financial lessons from Kim’s parents
12:17 How to support your significant other with healthy conversations about money
19:41 Deciding together
23:56 Shrinking your life
36:10 Every family is a business
39:25 What is your freedom number?
Resources – Natali Morris
How to Pay Off Your Mortgage in Five Years
Worthy by Nancy Levin
Audio Technica ATR 2100
Blog – “Forget the Nest Egg”
Inspirational Quotes:
“You can’t have one person who builds wealth and another person who’s not involved.” – Natali Morris
“Wealthy families who just have money but no wealth of knowledge or experience or family value, that wealth usually only lasts one of two generations.” – Natali Morris
“It’s been a hard few years of training ourselves not to spend it just because we have it.” – Kim Sutton
“What we had to do was learn to work as a team and say, ‘What are your strengths? You take care of that.’ and ‘What are my strengths? I’ll take care of that.” – Natali Morris
“How little can you shrink your life? You can only shrink to a certain extent and then are you living at all?” – Natali Morris
“What does the government want you to do? Any government. It doesn’t matter if it’s a blue or red government. The government wants you to invest in infrastructure in your country. So, start a business, pay employees, grow the economy. That’s what they want you to do. Anyone who works a paycheck job, you’re just a cog in the wheel.” – Natali Morris
“He’s (Trump’s) capitalizing on the fact that most people don’t understand that. So you can throw around a high net worth number. That doesn’t mean you’ve made it or had it.” – Natali Morris
“I’ve been trying to teach him that the size of our house doesn’t reflect the type of people that we are. The type of car that we drive doesn’t reflect the type of people that we are.” – Kim Sutton
“65% of the American population couldn’t come up with $1000 if they needed to.” – Natali Morris
“For the most part, people will get the liability and live their life paying off the liability that’s not even a cash-flow.” – Natali Morris
“What’s easy to do is easier not to do.” – Natali Morris
About Natali Morris:
Natali Morris is a former network news anchor turned personal finance educator and motivator. Her specialties include personal finance, business, and technology.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION – NATALI MORRIS:
Kim Sutton: Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. This is your host, Kim Sutton, and today I am thrilled to introduce our guest, Natali Morris.
Natalie is a writer and broadcaster with a focus on personal finance, and I have to tell you that just in the pre chat, I was having bloopers… already you can hear in my voice that the kids have brought home their fair share of germs to Mom and Dad after starting school, and I think that some of these germs have impacted my ability to sleep… and I don’t get sleep.
It could do that to Natali… You’re a mom.
Natali Morris: Yeah.
Kim Sutton: They’re going to school could impact my ability to sleep. But it’s my ability to speak.
But Natali, I am so thrilled that you are here. Thank you so much for joining us. And I’d love if you would share a little bit more of your background because I know it’s quite exciting. You’ve done quite a lot and, and I’m just ready to dive in.
Natali Morris: All right, yes, I have three kids. So I know this well. My youngest is about to turn three and my oldest is nine. So yeah it’s like…
Actually, my daughter recently got a fever. She had a pretty high fever. And I thought, Oh my gosh, we’re all gonna get it. And then it didn’t go around the house and I was like, Huh, what’s what’s that about? Cuz I just, I’m not used to it. It’s usually around the corner.
Kim Sutton: Right, isn’t it?
Natali Morris: So, I should play the lotto or something because that just doesn’t happen. Anyway, so yes, I am…
I used to be a TV news anchor, and my husband and I left our jobs in the middle of the teens. I guess I left around 2015, and he left in 2017.
Natali Morris: And in the meantime, while we were working for the news, we had decided that we didn’t want to be dependent on our news jobs. So what we did was teach ourselves to invest in performing assets, which means we wanted to own things that paid us a regular salary, so that we didn’t need the salary and news.
Natali Morris: So what we did was decide to invest in real estate. That became our our thing, right? Our performing asset of choice, but now we teach other people how to do that.
So if you are interested in investing in real estate, we can teach you all the right ways to do it, because we started by doing it all the wrong ways. But we also teach families then to empower themselves when it comes to finances, so that even if you’re not interested in real estate, we can teach you to still build wealth, learn to invest in assets that perform, and learn to free yourself from the paycheck life.
Natali Morris: So we do it bit by bit. We do have the investing in real estate podcast and YouTube channel, which do really well, but then we also have what we call the Financial Freedom Academy, where we teach families to work together to understand where they’re both coming from when it comes to money and learn to play to your strengths, and then find a way to free yourself from your mortgage and your day job. And we teach it as teamwork.
Natali Morris: So that’s what we’re focused on. now.
We also have a book called… I always forget the name of my own book.
Kim Sutton: Oh my gosh, that is so something I would do.
Natali Morris: It’s like… It’s too many words “How to Pay Off Your Mortgage in Five Years” or less, or “How to Pay Off Your Mortgage in Five Years.” It’s wait… Anyway, if you Google it and Amazon, in Amazon, you will find the name of the book, but it is essentially a way to empower yourself. So that your mortgage is no longer unfamiliar to you.
Natali Morris: There are all sorts of ways that you can liberate yourself from this albatross that, you know, deadweight that lives on your back, that makes you feel like you need to sustain a certain lifestyle and a certain job and all of that.
Natali Morris: Most people just don’t understand the anatomy of a mortgage. And they don’t know what their choices are. But that’s actually the case for most personal finances, that people don’t understand it enough. And they throw their hands up and say, I don’t get it, I’m just gonna make a good living and pay the bills and, you know, live this way. And that’s an expensive way to live.
Natali Morris: And so we want to break it down to make it fun, to make it accessible and to make it something that you can do together. Because one thing that I don’t understand, and I’m sorry for going on this tangent…
Kim Sutton: No worries. I am absolutely loving it.
Natali Morris: One thing I don’t get is these Bravo shows where it’s like wealthy woman who spends the money of successful man. I don’t think that exists. You can’t have one person who builds wealth and another person who’s not involved. It’s very rare, actually.
Natali Morris: My estate lawyer wrote a book called Entrusted where he talks about how wealthy people pass down wealth not just in terms of money, but in terms of their values, and wealthy families who just have money but no wealth of knowledge or experience or family values, usually only that wealth only lasts one or two generations. It does not pass down like the Vanderbilts.
Natali Morris: The Vanderbilts are actually a great example of wealth that did not pass down. They were like, you know, who someone we think of now that’s multi million dollar rich like the Sultan of Brunei, right? They were like mega rich and that wealth I think only went one or two generations down because they partied away like the Gatsbys, and they didn’t teach their children anything about wealth.
Natali Morris: So my… My approach to wealth is very holistic. I like to write about how to teach your children about wealth, how to work as a family about wealth, how to understand wealth, not just emotionally, but also very practically how to, you know, count your eggs so you know what life you’re you’re aiming at.
Kim Sutton: I am so fascinated by this conversation, because and I’ve never gotten into specifics but listeners, you know, I’m very transparent and advanced apologies to my parents.
My parents divorced when I was three, and my dad was always very well off and my mom always struggled. But I… Again, apologies to my parents, but I think my dad got very comfortable.
Natali Morris: Yeah.
Kim Sutton: And he was a Chief Financial Officer at a chemical company, and this was 80s 90s. I’m just trying to think when that all went down. It was right around when I graduated college in 2001. But he, from what I know and I was never really involved in what he did at work because I was mostly raised by my mom, he was doing all the financial work in like a ledger book or giving it to his assistants to put into the computer. I don’t know if he had a computer on his desk to be totally honest.
Kim Sutton: When I went back to visit them in 2013, or 14, I think that was the first time that I ever saw my dad on a computer. And I looked at him. And I said, “Dad, do you need help with that?” He… He just looked at me, puzzled. He’s like, “What do you mean?“, and I said, “I’ve never seen you on a computer before.”
But what I was gonna say was, he lost his job. And, and he, it was really hard for him. You know, this is like, early 2000s to get another job in accounting. not really knowing how to use the computer. And in the end, he went from making a half million a year to bankrupt.
Kim Sutton: And yeah, and but we were never really thought about money. From what I saw, I was never really taught about money and then living with my mom who was struggling, I learned other lessons like… I would see her get big chunks of money and then spend it. You know, “We just got paid. Let’s go out to dinner.” Well, how about, “We just got paid and let’s be responsible and maybe put a little bit of savings aside or emergency fund.”
Kim Sutton: And that is what carry with me into adulthood. And my husband and I have done that ourselves. You know, all the tax refund just came thousands of dollars. Let’s just buy some stuff we don’t need and looking right, it’s like, oh, we’re getting out of that now. But it’s it’s been a hard few years of training ourselves not to spend it just because we have it.
Natali Morris: But that’s very common. So there’s no use in Monday morning quarterbacking yourself when it comes to money. I think a lot of people take it so personally, and we have this, I think mentality that someone with money is virtuous or a good person or like a better person than you because you don’t have money, right? It’s not true.
Natali Morris: And so we are not taught personal finance, in our primary education in the US. In fact, most countries don’t do that. And that’s, you know, maybe they just don’t know how or maybe I don’t have a theory on why I know when it came to personal finance, all I needed to do when I graduated high school was balance a checkbook, but I was raised by an entrepreneur.
(Transcription still being cleaned up. Thanks for checking it out!)
Natali Morris: My father and my mother were were a good team. They divorced when I was in my early 20s. So they it wasn’t necessarily a good marriage, but they were a good business partnership. So they understood that when money comes in, you should use it to buy an asset that continues to cash flow, instead of sinking into a liability that you never see again. And so that was ingrained. My sister and I really young, my father started his business in the late 70s. And then around the late 80s, when I was I want to say like, you know, how old was I in the late 80s 10 or 11. He made me start to keep balance sheets on the brand new microsoft excel at the time. And so he always taught me how to count what I have, and understand where my money is going. So it wasn’t a new concept for me. Why this was hard, though, was when I got married. I’m taking my set of financial values and then marrying someone with his own set of financial values. And we come at this from very different angles. We have different viewpoints on things I noticed, because I am kind of a shrewd person about money. I don’t like waste. I am able to count things. You know, my father once he took me to he was buying this apartment complex complex from a guy who was was selling it he was just a tired landlord. And the guy says come over and we’ll show you how I run my books. And my father’s like Natalie, I want you to see this. So we went to this guy’s house. I’m from the East Bay Area. So I think he lived in Oakland, this guy, or Berkeley, and we show up at his house and the the this nice lady who is his wife, these retirees shows me her notebooks, which is like, you know, grid paper she kept with a ruler. It’s like, this tenant paid on this day. This is the expense we had for this. And they worked as a team and it was a very formative lesson for me. That husband and wife can work together and play to their strengths. If they are on the same page. Unfortunately, most of the time we get married and we don’t feel like that. I remember my husband he would say something like, I’d like to have a boat one day and I would get so mad about it. I was like what do we need a boat for a boats a liability? What’s why would you want that right? And I just didn’t understand and I didn’t realize that when I’m responding to him. I’m responding in a very unconscious way. I’m sort of exacerbating he’s his existing limiting beliefs about money. And so not only in the financial freedom Academy, can we teach you to, you know, buy assets, learn to leverage what you’ve got in order to make that money support you, but also how to support each other as well. Because again, when I was responding to my husband in this way, I was just like pouring salt in the cuts of his limiting beliefs about money making him more anxiety. So when I say something like, we can’t afford that, I don’t mean we’re unsafe, or we can’t, you know, we can’t afford a boat, therefore, we can’t afford the kids but that’s what he hears. And so we had to learn to understand each other in order. That’s one of the, you know, one of the biggest things what, you hear this all the time, right? The biggest things people fight about in their marriage or relationship is money, right? And there’s reason for that. It’s because we don’t know how to Speak each other’s language, you know. So we do these exercises for the first half of the Academy where we try and get you to understand what those limiting beliefs are, and understand how to approach your partner a little bit better. You don’t have to have a partner, you definitely can do it as a single person. And we’ve also had some people do it with their kids, their teenage kids, which I think is awesome. But then only then can you really realize what are our shared goals? What are our shared strengths? You know, how can I make sure I’m not saying I don’t always have an unconscious reaction to my husband because he pisses me off.
And that’s me.
Your husband to mine?
But I try a lot of times I you know, I hear like when he’s
when he suggests something that I think is clearly stupid.
I try really hard to say, okay, or we could think of it this way instead of that is clearly stupid and wasteful and not needed.
Okay, so full disclosure, my husband and I are going through a period right now where we’re having to learn how to communicate better. And well, I don’t
that at that stage, it never ends.
Well, you Yeah.
I think that is marriage.
Oh, see, we were for the first five years, we were one of those couples that would just make other couples sick. Right, like we always got along. But as kids grow, and I don’t mean to blame it on the kids, but as the kids grow and push us both push both of our buttons in different ways, then, you know, we’ve had to learn to evolve as both parents and as his life partners, right and, and there’s been a little bit of growth, but there were, there was a period last fall and the kids, if you can hear them, they chose to become involved in this whole conversation. There was a period last fall where I was looking at what do we need in our household in Come in order to like, what do I need to bring in basically, because I’m the primary breadwinner to cover the minimum household expenses plus a little bit, you know, cuz there’s always going to be little things that come up or things that we want to do. So what’s the budget? And then what do I need for business? And I said to him one day, I said, What? What do you think that it costs us to run our house on a monthly basis? And he said, Oh, no, maybe like $2,000. I said, Oh, wow. Okay, we need to have a talk. I was like, it costs us at least 4000 a month. Now keep in mind I’m not in California or New York. I’m in Ohio, cost of living is much lower here. So for a family of seven on a monthly basis, 4000 is the minimum that we need, which when you think about it really isn’t that much to get by. And it just blew his mind.
Yeah, so so you’re what you’re saying then is he didn’t know like he was completely Yeah. Yeah, he wasn’t involved, which is pretty common, right? That one person just sort of takes it all on. And the other person doesn’t really get that involved. Right.
Yeah. And it’s been a point of stress. And I’m wondering if you see this in your, in your students and clients as well, because I don’t want to be the one that takes it all on, because some days, I feel like I have so much other stuff to do. But we just know that that’s it. And I’m fully aware that remembering to pay the utilities is not at all his strong point. Yeah. Right. He laid down for a nap yesterday afternoon and accidentally slipped right through picking up our kindergartener from school. So, you know, I realized that I just need to put the reminders in my calendar, but because it’s out of sight, it’s also out of mind how much we need.
Right? Yeah. But you know, that’s one of the things about my husband and I is, if I, you know, I’m usually pretty good with the spreadsheets and if there’s something that I need to keep track of, I make a spread And then I try and explain it to him. And he’s like, Okay, alright, I got that. But if I share it with him as a shared spreadsheet, he’ll go in and mess up all my formulas and, you know, not use, like, the currency for, you know, for any kind of field or format the fee, and I’m like, What are you doing? And so I realized that’s not for him. That’s not his, you know, that’s not what he’s about. But he likes to, you know, and look for investments in real estate he likes to create, he builds podcasts and blogs and YouTube channels and like, he’s very successful that way. Those are things I’m not going to do. I’m not good at it. I don’t like to listen to podcasts about marketing myself. I don’t like to learn about online advertising and that kind of thing. I don’t want to. And so if he put that in my hands, we’d be equally screwed. And so what we had to do was learn to work as a team and say, What are your strengths? You take care of that? What are my strengths, I’ll take care. Hear that now we have to meet pretty regularly. But we live together and we work together we see each other 24 hours a day. But we don’t have to, you know, take things on that are not our strengths. And I think, again, for most couples, and what I hear a lot is something fairly patronizing is like, well, the wife, she pays all the bills and the husband, you know, he, he does any of the investments, right, like the stock accounts and 401 K’s he does that. And then the wife just pays the bills. And then you’re relegating one person in your house to like a secretary, right? And women are worth way more than that. Obviously, if you’re the main breadwinner, you’re worth a ton. And so if that’s your worth in terms of your paycheck, it should also be your worth in terms of your household. Like we like to even think of ourselves as sea level executives. Like I’m the Chief Financial Officer. He’s the chief executive officer. He has more ideas that he can implement and I’m The bean counter can tell him what we can do, what we can’t do, and then how we build from there. So you have to relegate inside of your house who does what? And then you decide a lot of times, because he’s such an ideas person who listened to someone on a podcast, and someone gives him a great idea when it comes to investing, like, use your IRA or your 401k, whatever, whatever, kind of, like, unorthodox type thing, and he’ll be like, listen to this, and see if you think we can do it. And so it’s me who will then read the book or, you know, interview that person or, you know, go on so I’m like, the bean counter, like I said, in the trenches, moving the money around making the decisions, doing the research, he’s the ideas person, we do decide together. But you know,
again to ask that because if you don’t decide together there could be that point of resentment. If one person is crying hearing No. So I love that.
Yes, yeah. And you know, it’s not a perfect situation, but we know how to make this work like today, we were talking about investment over lunch. And it’s an investment that’s not going well. And I was telling him, you know, I, you know, I didn’t want to do this one, and he’s like, I don’t I don’t need to hear it. And I was like, I had to just
fit it in there. But okay.
Not saying we’re perfect. That’s something that Do you know how hard it is to not say I told you so when something goes wrong.
Yeah, I’m not a saint. I know absolutely. How hard it is. Sorry. I do want to. I know there’s, you know, a lot that goes into finance, getting finance. Let me try this one more time getting finances in order and having really great conversations and getting a plan set up. Actually, I don’t really know because we still are going through the trenches ourselves. But where does mindset come in for you?
Well, it’s a big part of it. And one of the reasons that I launched myself in To this career because I had my second baby, and I wanted to go back to working in the news. And I just it wasn’t working out for me the jobs that I was offered were like, around the clock kind of jobs and I didn’t want to leave my daughter at the time, and my toddler son. And so I thought, Well, okay, I don’t have a paycheck coming in anymore. I was used to being this six figure news anchor and now I have nothing and it’s just my husband who’s working. And I was very proud at the time of like, keeping our finances separate and not asking him for anything and and then it came to the point where I just couldn’t do that anymore because I wasn’t working. And so I remember saying to myself one day, if I’m not going to have a regular paycheck coming in that says Natalie Morris and the pay to line me we had one but it said Clayton Morris and so okay, if there’s no Natalie Morris paycheck, then I’m going to learn how to use the money we’ve got now build it and be so good with our resources that that’s equal to a paycheck job. And so I went to the library and read as many books as I could on personal finance, I, you know, started to make spreadsheets I started to and so really, at the time, this was on Pinterest was really starting to get popular. And so you know, I would do this stuff, but then at night, I would surf around Pinterest, and I felt a very visceral reaction to what was being pushed towards me on Pinterest, which was like how to frost a cupcake. How to Buy your groceries for $10 a week how to budget How to Have you know, and I felt like the cupcake part there’s nothing wrong with it right? I’m not a baker, but that’s that’s fine. But but the type of I felt like it was all pandering towards a mindset of like, you’re not the breadwinner. Darlene you stay home and frost the cupcakes and let him go and then you make sure that you spend as little on your grocery budget as possible. So it was all about shrinking your money your life because you have no more paycheck in your name. You’re living on a paycheck that says his name or her name, whatever partner You are right. And so therefore, you’re worth less. So you go to Target and you spend less, buy detergent in bulk, even if it’s the poisonous kind, so that you’re spending so little that it’s nominal, right, make yourself shrink and shrink and shrink, and I hated it. And I thought this is not how a woman who has been successful in her career and now is running her home, should relegate herself to an assistant, someone who just budgets, pays the bills on the passports, I did not want that. And I saw at that time that I had a choice. Either I’m going to build wealth with my husband learn how to do that. Or I’m going to shrink into someone who is extreme couponing and shrinks our lives and how little Can you shrink your life, you can only shrink to a certain extent and then are you living at all? Right? I did not want to worry about what detergent I was buying. I want the one that’s non toxic. And you know what those cost more? And I don’t want to have a conversation with myself about whether or not I’m worth it. Or will Clayton say something about it? Will he say, well, you’re spending too much on detergent or whatever, like, we’ve never even had this conversation, but I was having it with myself when I go to the store, like, maybe I shouldn’t buy the organic one. Maybe I’m not worth it. Maybe he won’t like it. Right? Everybody has this devil on their left shoulder that tells them all kinds of crap. When they make every purchase, any purchase you make. You are having ego thoughts about it. And so you have to learn to get those in check and say, Yes, I want this. I know why. It’s a prudent decision, right? All of these reasons, but it has to start with how you approach finances and we have a we have a module in the financial freedom Academy about how to Identify and bust through your limiting beliefs when it comes to money.
Oh, I absolutely love that. Have you read worthy by Nancy Levin?
No, but I know the book.
Okay. She blew open doors for me. I just had to say that because when I was in my first marriage, he made it abundantly clear to me that he made the money and I did not have permission to touch it. Oh, my goodness. Well, he paid for my car so he could take the car, the keys away anytime he wanted. He paid for the internet. Like I had a business at this point. He paid for the internet so he could just firewall me at any point. And my cell phone and I was doing my part. I was taking care of the kids and keeping the house in order and making dinner and all that stuff. But because I wasn’t financially contributing in the major role, or in the major way that he was. I was not entitled or worthy anymore. And that’s BS. It completely is. No, I completely I agree. And that’s one of the things that she discusses in the book. And for any stay at me. I’m just gonna pinpoint stay at home moms here, but my husband is the Manny. Essentially.
Yeah.
I just had to throw this out there for our listeners and for you as well, Natalie, if you’ve heard the kids, it’s like that BBC moment when the mom was in the well, she wasn’t actually in the bathroom. I don’t know if you ever actually heard she was actually video taping with her phone, the dad when he was being broadcasted, because for some reason, they couldn’t record it any other way. But I think when the kids were just screaming, I think he’s occupied. You can insert your own idea here. So they’re running wild. But you know, he’s the Manny. And it’s
louder in your head. Believe me. Okay, good. I know exactly how this feels. I’ve had it many times. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I anchored shows with my with my infant son and a carrier at my feet.
Shout out to Audio Technica for their ATR 2100 microphone because it doesn’t pick up a lot of the background noise. But anyway, he he is essentially the Manny and he has his own moment of unworthiness. But, but we’re a partnership. It comes in Yeah. And it’s ours. It’s not mine just because it was paid to me for the work I did. It’s ours. And for the stay at home moms or or the the Manny’s, is there a word for stay? Like a stay at home dads, you know, you are still worthy. You’re so worthy. It’s a partnership. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Yeah. But there’s all kinds of, you know,
it’s not just Pinterest, right? If you if you watch any commercial during the Super Bowl that has to do with finances, if you watch golf on the weekends, all of those, you know, fine Man’s commercials are some guy who’s close to retirement. And he’s explaining it to his wife like, Hey, honey, we’ve made it we can, we can do this now, right, assuming that somebody else it like is in charge and not the lady. Not that, you know, she’s like, Oh, you go back to your pottery class, Honey, you’re not involved in this. And again, I really don’t think you can build generational wealth. With just one person working. It’s not as easy as just like one person makes a big paycheck, because when there is a big paycheck, there’s a big tax bill, you both have to be involved. One of the main ways we teach people to build wealth together is to start a small business inside of their families so that they lower their tax rate. You can’t do that with just one person. I think that’s why these shows are so sensational. It’s like this idea that if I had a husband that was just so rich and gave me unlimited access to the checking account, then I’d be fine. You’re not Find those people are not going to pass down their wealth.
It’s a misnomer. Hey there my friend, I hope you’re enjoying this episode of the positive productivity podcast. I wanted to take a quick moment to invite you to join the work smarter not harder challenge over the course of 30 days these free yes free short videos will teach you a few the systems and strategies I set up in my business so I can get away from my computer and back to the people I love. I invite you to sign up now at work smarter not harder. challenge.com again, you can sign up at work smarter, not harder. challenge.com Okay, I don’t mean to get political here. But do you think the Trump’s are doing a good job on that?
On Which part
do you I know he’s had his ups and downs. He’s gone bankrupt. I mean, he
do you do you think he’s Setting his kids up for success.
Um,
I don’t want to comment on what kind of success they’re aiming for. I also think that a lot of times, my husband knows Trump because he was at Fox. And so I do know a little bit about, you know, his sort of business philosophy. I will say this. The 2018 tax plan was really good for my husband and I because we are entrepreneurs and we are real estate investors, and so you can see where his values lie. And so anybody who is a W two employee is going to have a harder time with this than someone who is entrepreneurial. Now, already the tax laws were written like that. Now even more so. So you are more favored, because what does the government wants you to do? any government doesn’t matter if it’s a blue or a red government. The government wants you To invest in infrastructure in our in your country. So start a business pay employees, right, like grow the economy. That’s what they want you to do anybody who’s working as a paycheck job, you’re just a cog in the wheel. And so when governments are hurting, the lowest hanging fruit is to reach into your paycheck because they already have an in on that, right? entrepreneurs, the government is partnering with you to grow the country. So you get tax benefits. Trump knows that. And so that’s why the 2018 tax law came out and really benefited people like me who are entrepreneurial, who want to invest in real estate who want to grow the economy, who are putting more in, right. And so, for that reason, I do think I’m not going to say if it’s good or bad, because there’s a lot of people who it won’t be good for, but it’s good for me, because I understand these values of the government. Huh,
thank you. And I just want to say to listeners, just because Trump’s mentioned on this episode does not mean that we are going one way or another, it was just a general question. Because I have been watching him over time. I’ve always been I mean, I, I remember my first time going to New York City when I was in fifth grade and visiting the Trump Tower and I was just in all but going back and I’m not saying this directly about Trump. I love how it was said earlier that just because you have a lot of money does not mean you’re a better person. And I’ve seen that in my in my place here as an entrepreneur as well. I mean, I’ve worked with seven figure plus clients who were incredible and I’ve worked with the seven figure plus clients who were very far from incredible.
Right One of the things that bothered me the most about his campaign, though, was this idea. I’ve made a lot of money therefore I am worthy, right. And and I just don’t think that that is a good message, no matter who you are right? Oh, I’ve made so much money. And he like to throw around this number of his net worth, which is something we teach you to do in the financial freedom Academy, but it’s not really worth much. So he’s saying, I have a my net worth is $50 million. That does not mean, I don’t remember the number here, let’s just pretend that’s it. That doesn’t mean he has $50 million. It means that he owns a certain amount of assets, but he owes a certain amount on them. If he sold them all off and paid off his debt. The end result would be this but it does not mean he has that right. And so he was capitalizing on the fact that most people don’t understand that so you can throw around a high net worth number that doesn’t mean you’ve ever made it or had it. Right. And so, for those reasons, I I don’t like the idea of like Trump as a successful person because of money. If you want to talk about his politics, That’s something else. But I think that that’s very damaging. Because it right another time, because it makes people think like, you know, oh, this idea of if you’re wealthy, you’re successful, therefore, you’re good, or therefore you’re worthy of the presidency or anything like that. And I don’t think you should evaluate him on that. I don’t think you should evaluate any candidate on that. And and so, so that’s, that’s my, that’s my caveat there. And the politics I’ll leave out of it, but I wouldn’t want that to trickle down to someone. And because I think that what happens in a lot of ways is he becomes this caricature of like the monopoly guy, right? And then you and then that becomes something that like, people who are living a harder life who are living paycheck to paycheck think, Wow, if only that would be great, right? And then they think less about themselves. And that powerlessness is very damaging for the country. And so if, you know, if you if you get rid of that get rid of like what you think this person has accomplished because of a net worth, and then evaluate on a different basis, then we’re, then we’re in a better place as a country. I love
it. And I completely agree. I was just curious because I mean, earlier, you talked about the vanderbilts how the wealth wasn’t passed on. It will be fascinating because, you know, we’ll see it happen in our lifetimes. What happens and if it continues, but I would love to know when in the financial freedom Academy Are you working with a lot of entrepreneurs or, or not, or, you know, a mix of non entrepreneurial individuals and families.
It’s more fam more families. It is a 10 part online course. And you also get access to our Facebook group, and then we help sort of, not advise is not the word but encourage and inspire and help, you know direct other people with their decision making and the inside of their family. And so what we like to think is that every family is a business. And it is whether you like it or not, you might not find that romantic but you know what else is not romantic fighting about money or being told you can’t use the internet because you don’t pay for it? Right? So. So we want to inspire everybody to build wealth inside of their family with the same dedication that they put inside of their career. Because I noticed that in my career, I always had goals. I always wanted to learn a new skill. I always had to work with other people as a team, but I was not employing those skills inside of our family wealth building until like I said, that turnaround day when I realized I don’t have a paycheck anymore. They’re like the money’s gone. I’m gonna have to talk to Clayton about this
My, my 13 year old son, and I’ve been picking on him a little bit lately, I don’t mean picking on him in a bad way. But pointing him out here on the podcast. He is popular. I’ll just put it that way. And his friends live all throughout town. We live in a in a very modest neighborhood ranches. And as a popular kid, sometimes he sees you know that these really huge houses that some of his friends are in, and then he, you know, hours. And I I’ve been trying to teach him that the size of our house doesn’t reflect the type of people that we are. The type of car that we drive doesn’t reflect the type of people that we are. And we were having another one of these conversations, it was actually a really good conversation the other day, and we were driving down the road and I thought I had remembered hearing at one point that two out of three Americans and I would love to know if you know, a more accurate number are in some type of financial. I don’t want to say struggle, but they’re not in the best place that they could be. And it could be a lot more than that. So I told them look, look up and down our street, you know, two out of every three houses on our street is are having to work on finances in some way, because they’re also could be scary. Do you know, is there a more accurate number than that?
Recently, my husband was reading me a study about how I think it’s like 65% of the American population couldn’t come up with $1,000 if they needed to. So yeah, you know, the thing is, as we really started to put together the financial freedom Academy, as we started to build wealth inside of our family, we realized now we lived in a pretty big house. And in a wealthy neighborhood, in one of the highest tax states in the country, we were in New Jersey, and we sent our kids to a pretty expensive Private schools. So we were living a really expensive life. And we looked around and we realized most of these people are living these expensive lives on debt. They don’t own this stuff. They just have to make a paycheck big enough to support the debt service for these things. This house this car, this tuition, right? And that is not wealth. So we teach people to identify what is their freedom number, what do you need to live the life you really want to live based on your budget and your goals? And then how can you get there not just with your paycheck? How do you free yourself from liabilities because the thing is that most people have these, you know, they have the house, they have the car, all of those things, but they also have the house payment and the car payments. So those things are not really theirs. And those liabilities are expensive. Your liability is just you know what you owe on that thing? Well, accounting basic accounting, accounting 101 t You what happens when you have a liability that’s attached to something that does not cash flow? Well, that’s your house, your car, you don’t make money on those things, right? So an accountant, if you’re running a business would say, either you sell that thing, or you pay off the liability. That’s not how the family business works. For the most part, people will get the liability and then live their whole life paying off this liability attached to something that does not even cash flow. So your house is not even an asset. Your car is not an asset. People think it is like oh, my house is appreciating, that’s not good finance. appreciation is one single transaction, you will not be able to live off of that. We’re talking about buying things that stream cash, not buy things that just give you one lump sum of cash, right, you don’t want a nest egg. You want a goose you want to buy a goose that lays eggs every month. You don’t want to a nest egg. A nest egg will depreciate So what I’m saying is that most people, yes, that might be fine, you drive around a better neighborhood or I put better in quotes, but you can’t see me. So just know that I did that. Maybe you drive around to more impressive neighborhood or you see people with more impressive cars. And you can say, yes, that’s not their real worth. But you can also say, These people have invested in things that are not assets. And maybe you’re impressed, impressed with them, because it looks kind of fun. But you know what, look at what they have to pay every month to live like that. And it’s, it’s not freedom at all these things, own them. And so you know, my husband and I, we did build enough wealth inside of our house that we can afford a different lifestyle. We actually now we live in Europe, we decided we didn’t want that big house in that big tuition bill. And we decided to like take our kids on this adventure and live abroad, and we live off of our performing assets in the United States that pay us every month because we don’t want to be Heavy with liabilities and that’s how most people are. And once you open your eyes to that, it’s not really that impressive anymore.
Oh my gosh, I can so see that. The same son. I’m not going to name the entrepreneur but he said to me one day he says mama ain’t gonna be as successful as that guy. And this person will often get on, you’ll see video ads where he’s showing off like his 10 cars. Like, that’s not what I’m going for. And I love how you just brought that up. And I just want to repeat something that you just said, you don’t want a nest egg. You want a goose. I love that. I love that. So where can you I have a
I have a blog post called forget the nest egg. Think about the nest goose it’s on Natalie Morris calm. So just Google or
I will put it in the show notes like it.
Yeah, okay, good. Yeah. It’s a big mindset shift that I think once you start to change your thought about it, you realize My gosh, all my money is going into a liability. That liability does not cash flow. I’m just treading water like even if you are okay, I automate a little bit of money into a savings account. That’s not it, you know, like that’s not wealth building you, you have to change it go out and look for a nest goose, not a nest egg. It doesn’t have to be real estate. It could be horses farming, buy a bakery, whatever. But if you’re just treading water your paycheck going into liabilities that do not cash flow. You are not building wealth.
Natalie Wait, where can people go to learn more about your program you and connect with you?
Okay, so financial freedom Academy comm is our academy. It’s Clayton and myself and we teach you all of these ways to change your mindset and build wealth. Morris Invest is our real estate investing website where We can teach you the ins and outs of investing in real estate again, because if you do it wrong, it can be very expensive. So we want to teach you to do it right right out of the gate. We also have a YouTube channel called Morris Invest. We have a podcast called investing in real estate with Clayton Morris. It’s mostly Clayton’s podcast, I’m only on once a week. And then our book is called How to pay off your mortgage in five years. And again, it helps you to realize your home is not a performing asset. I don’t want to just live my life having to pay for this home. What do I do now? How do I empower myself and you have far more options than you think when it comes to your mortgage and we just want to empower people in that way.
Thank you for what you’re doing on behalf of me and every other family who needs you. So thank you. It’s my pleasure. listeners, I want you to head on over to the KIM sutton.com forward slash p p six to six and leave a comment down below the show notes. letting us know what one action you’re going to start taking today because in my opinion, there’s one action that you can start taking today, you might not be able to buy a farm, but there’s something small that you can do.
Do you? Yes.
Yeah, you can invest in a farm. There’s so many ways. We have people say, Well, I don’t have money, how do I get started? There are ways. And one thing that I had to break myself up was thinking that finance was just like, Oh, this is the way the guys in the commercials say it is it’s not. You have to be creative. You have to get into the driver’s seat. Surround yourself with people who are investing in assets that, you know, it’s it really does favor the creative.
Thank you so much for coming on today. Like you’ve just got me thinking, you’ve got me thinking a lot right now. And I can’t good. I can’t even put a complete sentence together about that. Because, yeah, that’s how my brain works.
No problem. Well, I appreciate that you say said that.
Yeah, you’re you’re welcome, Natalie. I would love to have a parting piece of advice or a golden nugget for our listeners because like, I feel like we already got one out of the out of the goose. But just one more.
Yeah. So you know, when it comes time to these things I know it seems overwhelming to think, Oh, I have to learn about where this money is there. I’ll have to understand this, or I’ll have to read my statement that comes from my 401k. And I can’t do that, right. Just take it one thing at a time, one little thing at a time. And my favorite quote comes from Jim Rohn, who used to be the motivational speaker. He’s passed now but his work lives on. And my favorite thing when I when I find something like this, where I’m like, Oh, I could succeed at this, but that seems overwhelming. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to read that book. I don’t want to try that new thing. Jim Rohn used to say what’s easy to do is easier not to do. And so yes, you don’t have to do that thing. You don’t have to Read the book, right? You don’t have to. But what if you do that that’s the thing that pushes people over the edge to a bigger and better life is the people who’d like pick up the clues in life. And you can do it. It’s easier not to it’s easier to scroll through Instagram and watch your TV shows. But you can write, it’s easier not to, but it’s easy to do it as well.
