Financial H.A.B.I.T.S.

Audio Transcription

All right. Thrive nation. Welcome back to another exciting edition of the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download. And on today’s show we have a special guest, Paul Hood. How are you, sir?

I am amazing. Clay, how are you this morning?

Uh, I am. I’m excited. I, I will tell you that I’m excited to talk about today’s show because I don’t think that a lot of people take the time to sit down and think about their financial habits.

No

chip, could you read the definition of what a habit is for people out there that, I mean we all say the word habit, but what is the textbook definition of the word habit? Habit.

A definition, settled tendency or usual manner of behaviour and acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary.

So I’m going to contrast two kinds of habits out there. And then Paul, I’d like for you to break it down. According to the Federal Reserve, they did a study where they, where they sat down in the survey, the average American family and the Federal Reserve, uh, discovered that 40 percent of United States adults said they would not be able to cover a $400 emergency at all, the big camp, that there’s no way to cover it. And that again, it’s a little over 40 percent of the American population cannot cover a $400 expense. Scary. If you think about that, that that’s, that’s not great, right? I also know people though that grew up poor or grew up with very limited financial resources who have, uh, as a default learned to save a set percentage of their income who are now very, very wealthy, but they’ve never had a job that was a high earning job. I know a lot of people who were in their forties and fifties right now who’ve never earned a high income, but they’re very well off because their default setting is to save money a pole. You work with thousands of clients all over the world. Can you talk about the, the, at the habits of the average client that you meet with for the first time before they begin their, uh, their mentorship from you and your team?

That’s sure. Can Clay. There’s one word that really describes most people in this area and it’s drifting. The, they just kind of get along. They just go along. They, what are they gonna Watch on TV tonight. They don’t really think about their future in clay. I love, you know, I love quotes and I, I apologize, I can’t remember where I got this quote. It’s probably from you, but it says people don’t decide their futures. They decide their habits and their habits decide their future. And uh, we, we try to help people to actually think about where they’re going to go and like you say, we have clients all over the country and, and clay, I’m excited to announce it. The great firm of Elliot Dozer and Helen actually joined forces with us and now they’re underneath the hood and associates umbrella. And so we’ve got a lot more people to work with and a lot more great staff to bring to the table for our existing client.

Double listeners out there what that means when you have teamed up with another firm, what does that mean?

Well, it’s, you know, you can call it a merger, you can call it an acquisition. This farm is a great from here in Tulsa and, and has a long history and there are two partners, mark and Rebecca saw what we were doing and we’re excited about what they could, what we could bring to their clients because they recognize that, that most accountants are reactive by nature. They’re just kind of putting together a product I want to, uh,

just researched where that quote came from and actually came from a guy named f, m Alexander, and he was an Australian actor who developed the Alexander Technique, which is an educational process said to recognize and overcome reactive habitual limitations and move and make movement and thinking for it.

Oh, that’s pretty good. That ties in really well. Works. Those works. Good. Impressive. So if you’re out there right now, all right. And you are saying, financially, I am not where I want to be. Then we’re going to walk you through the financial habits that you need to begin to implement in your own life to achieve the financial success that you want to attain. Now, again, they’re a. The word habits is spelled, uh, traditionally, and the English language, most people say h a, b I t, s, h a, b I t, s, get out a pen, get a pad, take some notes in. Here we go. Let’s go with the h. h, have a default setting to automatically set to save a set percentage of your income. Have a default setting automatically save a set percentage of your income. Someone saying, I didn’t write that down.

Have a default setting to automatically save a set percentage of your income. Uh, David Bach, the nine time New York Times bestselling author of the automatic millionaire and smart women finish rich once wrote, remember, inspiration unused is merely entertainment. To get new results, you need to take new actions. So Paul, let’s start with this age. Let’s say I’m listening right now, today. And I have decided, okay, I’m going to save a set percentage of my income, whether I use hoods, cpas, or some other accounting firm. How do I, what does the process look like for saving a set percentage of my income,

what clay? It’s kind of funny because we are creatures of habits and we also, um, just tend to spend what we, what we put in our pocket or goes into our checkbooks or whatever. And so we try to teach our clients that you spend, you save before you spend instead of spend before you save. And so Warren Buffet actually teaches people to do that. And so we try to figure out a percentage between three and 10 percent that that comes out of their paycheck, out of their business, gross income, and it automatically goes into an investment vehicle, whatever that vehicle is. And that way we can harness the power of compound interest. We can harness the power of concepts like a Qa, how to take advantage of the stock market’s up and downs just because of, of automatic savings. And you set it, you forget it. And all of a sudden you look and you say, oh my gosh, look how much we’ve done. Look what we’ve done.

I would like to give an example. Um, yesterday I opened my mail, I get mail sent to my house. I never looked at it because my wife does. And I noticed there was some mail from Edward Jones, Edward Edward. I know that guy. If anybody out there is not familiar with Edward Jones, they are a financial planning organization. And I thought, you know what, Edward Jones, I should, I should this an investment company, I have a automatic Rickard, basically savings I do with them. I should look at the account balance. So I opened it up and there you go. I’m like, there is a lot of money. That’s great. I’ll put that in the trash move on. And I, I remember making a decision as a young 20 year old, you know, that’s right. Twenty one, 22. I’m just going to save a set percentage. So Paul, talk to you about the mechanics. If I walk into your office today and I say, okay, I really want to save. Let’s just say 10 percent of my income or for fight, let’s just say five percent. Okay, I’m going to save five percent of my income. What do the mechanics look like? It does. It. Does it just automatically get withdrawn from a checking account? What kind of paperwork do we need to fill out? How does that work? If I want to automate the saving of even three to five percent?

Well it’s, it’s kind of a, a process of a, um, a seance and we kind of grow grass lighting candles. No, no, no. Yeah, that kind of music playing goat heads, you know, not go to St. Okay, sorry. We put cowboy hats on. So, you know, we, we just, we just grabbed, which is basically if you’ve got a checkbook or checking account, we set up an automatic link to an investment account and we have, we use a institutional money managers. We don’t use retail level. A mutual funds, like a lot of people do the, the way we invest basically a super wealthy people invest this way and and us normal people normally don’t have access to them, but we have access to institutional third party money managers that, that do a lot of the backdoor investing, have a lot of your retail outlets and so we just set it up and it goes into an investment account and it’s, you get dollar cost averaging.

It buys in if the, if the investment world is hi, Yay. Or investments or high if it’s low. Yeah. We buy things on sale. Do they get to, do people get to choose how aggressive they want to be or like how does that work? Yes. We uh, one of the advantages we and, and again, I, you know, I think if you do something, whether you do it with us or just do something, it doesn’t really matter. Of course I’m a little partial to what we do, a little bit, a little biased, but the reason is, is because we don’t use the cookie cutter approach. Uh, I got tired of walking in and seeing clients investment portfolios and tell to tell them, but 80 percent of what their holdings are just by them saying there what entity they work with, what retail and see whether there were eight or 80 and so yeah, you really should be very specially designed for, for you as a person, what are your goals is very goals based oriented and so you may have a goal to buy a house, you may have a goal for college fund and you may have a goal for retirement and all of those, depending on timing, should be at a different level of, of risk.

But if I sign up with you and you start saving, I do. I have to call you every week and say, hey, take some money out. How do I just went into the mechanics of putting actual money into an account because I know there’s somebody out there. He’s like, what does that look like? I mean, do I have to call you every week and say, hey, take money out, or can you just do it for me? How does that work?

No, you’re welcome to play just to say hi, but typically we just set up an ach, just a link between your investment account and your bank account and it’s drafted automatically. The best way to do it. It’s a. You just set it and forget it. You. You never had it, and then like say you have those fun moments when you go to the mail and open the envelope and see how much money you got.

I just don’t know if the listeners out there and get this idea. I just, if you’ll just automate the savings one time you’ll never think about it again, like it will just happen and then all of a sudden you go, what the crap. People are singing. Happy Birthday to you. You’re 30. There you go. What the crap

crazy thing is people have no problem automating debt. No, that’s easy to put it out there. Apple and apple, itunes stuff. It gets my phone saving. I need money to more gigs. Clay, you know Clayton, what gigs on the cloud? Some more gigs. People think they have to have money before they can start savings, but I don’t care if it’s 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, $500 a month doing something, start something, build center. The better right

h, the habit again, h is have a default setting to automatically save a set percentage of your income. And if David Bach, we’re here the nine time New York Times bestselling author, he would say, remember, inspiration unused is merely entertainment. To get new results, you need to take new actions now, a h, a, a act today to find an accountant who can meet who you can meet with monthly to prevent drifting. Act today to find an accountant who can meet with you monthly to prevent drifting. Now, a lot of people say, what do you mean by drifting? Will? Paul alluded to it earlier, but what happens is a lot of people make excuses, right? They said, well, now’s not a good time headed into the holidays. I probably shouldn’t do it before Thanksgiving and we’re busy. Start January. That’ll be David Bach, the best selling author who could not be here today, but who has been on a previous.

He has been on a previous show. He did say, whenever someone tells me she is a procrastinator or he is a procrastinator, I respond by asking them, did you eat this week? Of course, the personal answer, yes. The fact is no one procrastinates all the time. You may be. You may be well what you may be as selective, a selective procrastinator, which means that if something is important enough like eating, you are perfectly capable of taking care of it right away. Ooh, so right now a lot of people don’t see it as a sense of urgency to book and appointment with an accountant and I, I’m really not interested as to whether you and I meet Paul means this. I mean this. We all need this. We do believe that hood cpas can help you, but objectively, I’m just saying to you, I don’t care who you meet with as much as I. We both care that you meet with somebody on a monthly basis who will sit down with you and make sure that you’re not drifting. So you have to have an automatic recurring appointment. You’ve got a bucket time. Paul, why do you need to meet with an accountant or some sort of accountability partner who’s going to look at you and say, Hey, what are you doing? Everybody?

What client success is not that complicated? It just has to be intentional in the. The part that most people leave out is the measuring part and you know, I don’t care if you’re trying to lose weight or what it is if you’re trying to lose weight or get in shape. If you don’t step on that scale and measure your results, you don’t know whether you’re on path to be successful and you don’t know whether you need to make an adjustment. And by the way, clay, we’re talking about me as an accountant, as other accountants. Um, I happened to be the prettiest accountant in town, at least that’s what my mom says. No,

real quick. Um, I, I did, uh, speak to your, your wife before the show and this isn’t the official Paul Hood Soundtrack Song.

Yeah.

Paul, this is Paul Hood on the Paul Hood. Look under the hood and

if you’re looking for from America, most beautiful man in American with humble man, just call

one 900 foot thick, thick. Okay. Back to you. You guys it.

I’m going to change the name, phone number right there it is. But you do, you do have to figure out there. You do have to meet with clay on a monthly basis because the deal is, is again, people drift and they just are, you know, people say it another way, you blank and six months has gone by. If you don’t have somebody that you’re accountable to, if you, whether it’s a personal trainer at the gym or a proactive accountant like us at Hood Cpas, you’re not going to measure your results. And so you have to have that meeting, that prescheduled meeting. Do you remember a Mr Rogers? I do, I have a shirt that says it’s all good in the hood. Really good.

He has something. He goes, oh, it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. A Beautiful Day in the neighborhood, which should be mine. Now. The thing is, I don’t know, is every single show started out the same and you’re going, that’s cool. That’s cool. I get a Texas. He gets in there, he changes his shoes. He hangs up his jacket. The whole deal. Well, we don’t know. Is it fred rogers committed to weighing 143 pounds and he always weighed 143 pounds to his entire life. How did he know? He looked at the scale every single day and I will just say, and I chop has a hot take on this. Everybody I know who is successful knows how much money is in the bank. It’s almost like if you’re not successful, you almost trick yourself into not wanting to know how much you ever did. You have an even hotter.

Take your hand up there and warm. It’s warm. I just wanted to say that, you know, under Paul’s model, like finances change, right? Laws changed everything changed and meeting with somebody 12 times a year, you have $12. That’s pretty good. That’s not that much. That’s enough to keep you educated and then you’re going on the right path. Let, let me, let me give the listeners an example. And Paul, I don’t want, I’m not going to paint you into a corner and ask you for the specific numbers today. Bring it. But um, the year was 2005, 2005. And I remember that I had some money saved and uh, uh, some profit from the business and I was looking at the end of the year and I thought, you know what? I talked to an accountant and they said, hey, you know, you can write off half of your trip. So my wife and I went on a cruise where we discussed the new direction of the company and different things, but you can write off half of the, I believe the airfare to get there. And then also half of the entertainment, the experience itself. Now the law has changed recently with the Donald trump tax cuts were, I believe although many taxes went down, your ability to write off a entertainment or travel spending has changed. Am I correct in that?

Yeah, you’re correct. Now I’m a good accountant. Like cpas can figure out other ways to write those things off, whether you call it a, um, seminars or continuing education. But yeah, the, the new tax law has a lot of things that are going in different directions and there’s people that, that. And we’re doing a annual meetings with our clients right now to discuss the effect of the tax law. But yeah, meals, entertainment, travel, that’s a lot of. One of the main areas that changed. Another big area, clay is if you, if you’re an employee that you know, so you have a job, but you travel a lot. Like you’re say you’re a welder

or traveling yodeler

yogurt. Yeah. Your in there called a unreimbursed employee business expenses are no longer deductible. And so again, you need to have a strategy to overcome that. If as you know, kind of like you say, we measure the results so that we can change our plan. If you don’t know these things, you state of Oklahoma just came out this year. Most people don’t know this. They limited the standard or the itemized deductions that somebody can take to $14,000. So people that have gambling, you know, they have. You can deduct your gambling losses up to winnings in the state of Oklahoma. That’s limited to 14,000.

Wait a minute. You can, you can write off your gambling losses up who? Gambling winnings, sir. You always have been my investment strategy. That’s great. Investment Strategies. We really are beginning to. I would call them on the ground floor. I’m about 14,000 in the hole, but at any moment I could hear the magical Ding, Ding, Ding. This is what it’s going to sound like to me, but I just keep doing it over and over. It’s on. But you get the free drinks to saving money and then I can write it off. It makes sense. The secondhand smoke is, you know, just all the oil and I love it. I love the ladies who used to be younger or older who is still dressing like their scantily clad. I love there’s a combination. They are something to awesome. That chap and then you have somebody in the late forties who’s dressed in like the 18, but they shouldn’t be.

I liked that. I liked to smoke. I liked the, I liked the whole deal. I like the guy with a stoma who’s got the little oxygen mask on. There’s something about a casino to me that never gets old. I love chicken strips. They serve it. I made it and the thing is for $14,000 of copious a investment in casinos, I’m able to get it. I, I call it a VIP card and I’m huge. Donna knows me. Donna, what’s up? Big shout out to Diana. Also, I want to point out a little casino strategy. If anybody out there who wants to start a casino, what you want to do is you want to erect a large metal building, uh, in a, in a remote town, and you put the word casino on it next to a gas station. She started with the trailer first and then anybody who is a degenerate will immediately pull over and play the slot machine and then eventually more people will play and then you begin to build a larger metal building and then all of a sudden you want a book.

Anybody who is popular in the eighties as a band, so you would want to get like following up in their poison, poison a def Leppard, pour some sugar on me and you want to do the whole, that’s like a total. That would be huge right now. Uh, anybody like if you will get that Barry manilow right now, he will be huge. Uh, anybody who was quasi huge, like a digital underground, like the humpty dance. All right, stop what you’re doing because I’m about to ruin any of those things. That’s how you do it. Convince is no longer with motley crew, but he will come play a show. Then you want to erect a very large hotel, like a spier. Alright, well you get like a mini rooms, many floors and all of a sudden you begin. All of a sudden you become like a palace. And then you want to get a little bus that drops, it drops off the old people there.

The whole deal is I got I, I have this on lockdown. I just don’t have any land or the money yet, but my $14,000 quickly turnaround. Hey Clay, I just had this. I don’t know who that clay is, but you can continue to say this, the sponsors of this show, nor hood and associates, Cpas endorsed that kind of fun. You’re judgmental, Paul. I swear. Okay, so we’re moving on now. So habits, financial habits, be build a budget based upon reality. Not wishful thinking. Dave Ramsey, the New York Times best selling author nationally syndicated radio show host Henry now, and the personal financial planning expert says a budget is telling your money where to

go instead of wondering where it went. This is what I see. There was a young woman in one of the businesses that I was consulting with. This would be about four or five years back who had earned about 75 grand a year ish. And I know this because I’m working with the client. The client leaves the meeting and she says, I have a question for you because you kind of seemed like you know what you’re doing with your finances. I don’t know why I’m always like upside down while I start looking. As she starts asking me about a financial planning and I said, how much money do you make a year? Can we talk about that? She goes, yeah, I make about $75,000 a year. Well, I said, can we stop right there? She said, well, if you make $75,000 a year, you really only make about 45,000 a year and we need to make sure that you understand that.

So you need to start saying out loud and other people in anyone who asks, I keep about $45,000 a year. Right? Because you need a budget upon that because after taxes you do not have $75,000 of disposable income. Yet, the people who are selling you a house or the auto dealerships, anybody out there who’s selling you something, they will approve you for consumer debt from two to like buy a new TV or a car based upon $75,000 to buy the new home. But you don’t have that. Paul, can you explain the danger of consumer debt and also the importance of being aware of how much money you actually keep.

Absolutely. Consumer debt. I’m not. I am actually, uh, I, I’m not against debt. Uh, I am very much for debt is good debt, a business building debt, debt that creates income, debt that allows you to use the Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, poor dad type debt. Consumer debt is horrible. Uh, it’s the concept of, of we all know compound interest in you can make compound interest work for you or against you. And consumer debt is buying things you can afford right now. And so somebody else’s financing you end up playing two and three times. Uh, uh, what, what the value of what you buy. I got a good story that, that, that will hit on this right here. My wife and I, when we were 22, 23, we got married. We, uh, we paid it off. We put our, our, our honeymoon on a credit card and we paid it off the minute we got back.

But it was like, oh, this sucks. We’re paying a few thousand dollars for something we did a month ago. Yeah, you can do that with you. You got to go get that new refrigerator that you touch it. There’s a quote here from Jack Welch, legendary business leader grew ge by 4,000 percent. He says, face reality as it is not as it was or as you wish it to be. One of the very first things that we do because we don’t just, we talked to people, they come in even it’s just an individual to do a tax return, a little two or $300 tax return. And we talked to them about their financial future. And one of the very first meetings we have with a client that wants to be proactive, that wants to know their numbers, that wants to create an actual real budget and know where their money’s going and tell it where it’s going is to bring in a 12 months where the bank stomach statements 12 months for the credit card statements.

And so we don’t start with the money they make. We start with the money they spend and then work backwards and say, all right, we’ll let the power of a budget is, is actually holding yourself accountable. Okay, we, we’d budgeted, we’re going to spend $400 this month on entertainment and eating out what’s the 20th of the month and we fifth of the month and we’ve spent it all. Guess what? We’re not eating out or going to a movie the rest of the month. Yeah, it’s mean, you know, but you got to be very intentional, very deliberate to, to actually design your plan

as we’re talking about financial habits. Again, the word habits is h a, B I t s. So I want to, I want to make sure we have time to get into the its all right, so h stands for make sure you have a default setting to automatically save a set percentage of your income. A act today to find an accountant who can meet with you monthly to prevent drifting. Be Build a budget based upon reality. I implement the budget by looking at your finances on a weekly basis. For Sake of time, I just want to make sure we put this in your calendar today. Book a weekly time with yourself to look at your finances and to make sure you’re not drifting teeth. Throw out large wasteful maintenance required items as soon as possible. I know a lot of people that have a vacation home they never go to. They have a boat, they never used to have a car they never drive. It requires insurance maintenance. Get rid of those expensive maintenance items. Pump.

Do Kids fall at that? That can get rid of your kids.

They cost a lot of the reasons that I left my family to live outside of the casino. There’s a nice ditch over there where he’s very safe from tornadoes. My 30 year old. The reason why, the reason why white left is because each one of my children, uh, who was in the thirties was uh, you know, I just, I was tired of the maintenance, you know, they’ll live in on the couch. So I thought I’m not going to pay the mortgage to teach to even woman’s company. Less sunk costs, right? So I defaulted on my mortgage.

So those are not hidden costs. Those are right out there in your face.

Okay? Now the next, the s s spend less than you make by avoiding consumer debt like the plague. Dave Ramsey writes, we buy things we don’t need with money. We don’t have to impress people. We don’t like Pow Paul, break it down. What is consumer debt? Just give us a few examples of the kinds of things we should not be buying with. Debt.

Consumer debt is going to the furniture store and you know, the zero interest for 12 months or let’s, let’s get that. Or buying that fridge at Lowe’s, you know, on, on credit, on time. You know, you can get that $2,000, $5,000 refrigerator and it’s only 50 bucks a month or those add up and clay. This may not be popular, but one of the things at least I teach my kids and anybody that listened is the first 10 percent of your income I believe in tithing. The Bible says, God says, test me on this. Yeah, fine. I’ll test him tithing. Ten percent second, 10 percent goes to savings. You live on 70 to 80 percent of what you bring home, not what you say you make. What you bring home and and consumer debt is what’s gonna get you a is is what’s going to mess up your playing delay gratification.

Figure out when you can actually buy that $2,000 refrigerator that you don’t have to schedule out on payments and so be very, very diligent and very, very intentional. Schedule your free consultation today with Paul Hood and the Paul Hood team at Hood Cpas Dotcom. Again, go to [inaudible] dot com and when you schedule your first hour of power, you’re free at one hour consultation. They’re going to give you a copy of Warren Buffett’s only authorized biography. The book is called Snowball get the book and the one hour consultation today and hoods, Cpas.com, and now without any further ado, I sometimes like to end a look under the hood with a boom. Can we do it? Paul? Are you ready? Let’s do it. Here we go. Three, two, one. Boom.