Episode 264- From Hoarding Money To Enjoying Money & My Financial Freedom Evolution

Jamila Souffrant 0:02

So the book is about maximizing your life enjoyment and not maximizing your wealth. And I think those two go hand in hand. I've learned this on my journey, how important it is to focus not just on hoarding money, which I feel like in the beginning I did, it was more like, let me save and invest as much as possible, but at the detriment of living life in the now. And I realized really early on that that's not what I wanted. I didn't want to just save and invest blindly. And then in the meantime, not enjoying my life.

Intro 0:37

Welcome to the journey to launch podcast with your host jameelah. So frogs as a money expert who rocks her car, she helps brave juniors like you get out of debt, save, invest and build real Whoa. Join her on the journey to launch to financial freedom 4321.

Jamila Souffrant 1:11

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If you want the episode show notes for this episode, go to journey to launch comm or click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode. In the show notes. You'll get the transcribed version of the conversation, the links that we mentioned and so much more. Also, whether you are in OG journeyer, or brand new to the podcast, I've created a free jumpstart guide to help you on your financial freedom journey. It includes the top episodes so listen to stages to go through to reach financial freedom, resources and so much more. You can go to journey to launch calm slash jumpstart to get your guide right now.Okay, let's hop into the episode.

Hey, hey, hey journeyers Welcome to the journey to launch Podcast. I'm so excited that you are taking the time out to be with me today. No matter where you are in the world. I'm wishing you all the love and resources that you need to have the life you love. And this week's episode, it's going to be a solo episode. So it's just going to be me talking. So if you're totally new to this show, be prepared, you're going to hear my internal thoughts and takeaways and concepts and personal journey. I know if you're a longtime listener, if you've been listening for a while you sometimes love these episodes. So here you go. Now I'm going to be talking about the book die with zero. I actually interviewed the author Bill Perkins on episode 262. I don't think you need to listen to that episode first. But it will be a good compliment to listen after this. And it's not necessarily just about the book, but I wanted to share some takeaways that I wasn't able to really share on the interview or in the interview with Bill because when I interview people, you know, I really want them to talk. I am bringing them on for their point of view and perspective. But this book has been so impactful so far, in how I've changed things in my journey and reinforce things that I've already believed that I thought you know what, I want to share this with the journey years. Because what good is it if you're only maybe seeing the finished product of my journey, which sometimes you see, right? Like, you know, I'm sharing that I save this much or I was able to do this in my business. But what happens along the way, the journey that's the most interesting part, as I really try to share how my thoughts evolve over time. And again, if you listen from the beginning like first episode, you'll see how my investing and spending philosophies and actions have changed. Throughout the course of recording this podcast and having journey to launch, I'll talk more about that in a bit. But die with zero is the book that Bill Perkins wrote sub title is getting all you want from your money and your life. And at first, I'll be honest, when I saw Bill's book, I think I saw it on Instagram or Twitter, like someone was tweeting about it. And the title really stood out to me, because die was zero. What does that mean? So my initial take on it was, is he saying that basically, you are to die with no money left behind? And I gotta admit, I thought that was very selfish. I was like, taken aback like, What do you mean die with zero, we can't die with zero, we got generations to help, we got children to feed, you know, we're trying to create generational wealth. And that was my first initial reaction. But here's a quality that I have, that's helpful. And maybe you notice it in yourself. And if you don't have this quality, I think it's really important to, to have, but it's being tolerant of ideas that you may not take to, or believe at first. And I feel like even though my initial first look at book title, and by the way, I didn't know enough about the book to have the judgment that I did. But how many of us make just snap judgments like we see a title, we see a statement, and we just write it off, and we move on. And I've always believed that if something catches my attention, good or bad, as long as it's not harmful, I'm not saying stick around for like harmful things and read harmful things that really disrupt your mental and emotional well being like racist things. I'm not saying do that. But there, there may be things that you see on your timeline, or your opinions that friends or family members have. And you don't necessarily always agree with them. But I've always been of the opinion that I'm open to listen and learn. And with that, I said to myself, well, you know what, let me not just write off this book, because when I have not read it, I don't know exactly what it means. Even though I don't necessarily like the initial reaction I have from it, maybe there's a nugget here, I need to follow. Because I also believe that if something makes you uncomfortable, it's it's a signal that you should dig back the layers and see what's going on there. And I started to see other people talk about this book, because my initial reaction again, was, is he saying that we as people, you know, individual should have no money when we die. And how can that be, especially being a black woman, hearing all the statistics that we hear, knowing the realities of people of color and black people about how much little wealth we have, and that we're being taught now that we need this, we need to step up. So we have more to give our children and our children's children. For me, that's why I kind of hit it hit a nerve. But as I started to give it some more thought, and then as I got the book, so I eventually bought the book, obviously, I read the book, and now have interviewed bill, I totally get where he's coming from, with his book and with his philosophy. And so what Bill is saying is that it's about strategically spending down your money and giving it away in a way where your dependents are able to use it while it's the prime of their life. And you can fully enjoy your money. And if you want to give it to them earlier, they can fully enjoy it in ways that it's really helpful. So the book is about maximizing your life enjoyment, and not maximizing your wealth. And I think those two go hand in hand, I've learned this on my journey, how important it is to focus not just on hoarding money, which I feel like in the beginning, I did, it was more like, let me save and invest as much as possible, but at the detriment of living life in the now. And I realized really early on that that's not what I wanted. I didn't want to just save and invest blindly. And then in the meantime, not enjoying my life. So basically, this is what Bill is saying. And I'm going to get into basically what I did in my personal life, my finances, what how this book helped inspire me to make some changes, or encouraged and solidified the way I already thought. I'm just going to go back just a little bit about my beginning journey in financial independence. Maybe you know this story already, but if not, just bear with me for a couple of minutes. So I first started along this path with the idea that I would have to save and invest as much as possible in order to reach this goal of financial independence where I wouldn't have to work actively ever again. And because I had a job that was a six figure job that provided a great salary. It was really just focused on how much can we save and invest as a family. And we did that for the first few years and it was great, except for I was going a family I had a crazy commute. Now this business on the side plus a full time job, and I just could not do it all it was it was draining. I realized really quickly that this was not the life I wanted to lead, I didn't care how much money I was going to be able to save and invest in the short term. I didn't care how much money I was making, if it meant that my quality of life was less than what it meant I couldn't even spend time with my kids. At this point, I had two kids, I was pregnant with my third when I made the decision, that I wasn't gonna go back to work if I could avoid it. And if that meant cutting back on saving and investing, because now we're gonna have to rely on my husband's income. And hopefully, this business is, you know, gonna make money one day, but not right away, you got to build that journey to launch. I mean, I just knew that it was worth it. Whatever money I was gonna walk away from, it was worth it. And I also felt as I was going on the path that I didn't want to cut out certain things from my lifestyle in my life in order to achieve this grand vision of financial independence. How could I achieve this in a more balanced approach? How could I save and invest for the future, because I don't want to work in terms of like, forever or feel obligated to work forever. But I also want to take family vacations, and one day, I may want a nicer car. And I want to do certain things with my kids and have them have the experiences and go on vacation. So how do we make that happen? So I was already on that path. Before I read this book, I was already making those changes in terms of being able to say, it's a balanced approach of seeing spending now and saving and investing for the future. But Bill's book really helped solidify that I was on the right path. And so here are some of the things that I've done. And again, I want to say that this is really not just about spending all your money in a way that it's just mindlessly spending. Or that you're not thinking about other generations or your children. In fact, it's totally different. So we're gonna get into that. But one of the first things after reading this book that I did is I got serious about hiring a financial planner and tax firm to help me with my finances. Because I was doing it all myself. I mean, my husband, you know, he's involved, he's around, but in terms of like leading the ship, that was me. And I actually had a friend who said something, and they didn't mean any harm by it. But I told them that I hired a financial planner, to kind of help me do things. And they were just like, why do you need a financial planner? You're like a financial, quote, unquote, expert, aren't you? Like, why do you need someone else. And I was like, Well, you know, like, doctors have doctors that they go to, if you're a doctor, you don't operate on yourself. And to be quite honest, like, I don't know everything about finances, like let's keep it real. I don't know everything about insurance. I don't know everything about taxes. I know enough, I know enough that it's gotten to us to where we've gotten to. But I also know when to employ help, I want to have people who are smarter than me, who actually know the laws, who can help maximize the income that we have in our current wealth. And I didn't want to do it alone anymore. And so it felt really good to have a committee almost like someone, I can go to a team that has my back, and our back as a family in terms of the goals we want to achieve. And so I did end up hiring a financial planner or tax firm, they also helped me with my business finances, and they are very familiar with the concept of financial independence, which is really important for me, because so many financial planners and tax firms like they do not understand this concept, or believe in it at all. And they have this antiquated way of thinking about wealth and working until you're 65. And I needed the people who are going to be my team. To understand that no, we want options. I want to see what it looks like if we both my husband, I want to retire at 5055. Maybe not maybe we retire at 60. But I need you to understand that this is the lifestyle we're looking to have and achieve one day, tell me how we can get that done. And it was really nice because again, I was getting to the point where our assets are growing. Our net worth is increasing journey to launch is making more money. And I felt like it's time to step it up. You know, I always say you gotta you got to act as if you want to be a millionaire. You want to one day be called by Oprah. You know, I have vision. I envision Oprah calling my name one day and I'm not gonna wait until that happens to get my act together. I think I talked about this about being prepared. Like being prepared for the opportunities that are going to come your way it's not an if it's just a win. And if that is the case of I'm planning to have massive wealth. I'm not going to wait until I have that said well have, you know, the massive wealth, the millions to get help, I'm going to get help where it matters now, because here are the places in which we can save and be optimized with our finances. So the book itself helped me do that. Because one of the things that he says in this book is that it's important just to understand, like, what are you saving and investing for? Do you understand that, and I have my own calculators. And I know, you know, just forecasting out how much if we save and invest and you know, putting in the risk that can occur over time, I know about how much we'll have. But I want to, I want to, I want to confirm this with other people. Because I don't know about you. But I think my mind is pretty bright. But I love talking to others who again, are brighter than me, who actually not just brighter than me, that probably didn't sound that great, not brighter than me, but you don't say, you know, smarter in certain areas. And when we're talking about over saving and investing, what he's saying is, what if there's all these things you want to do in your life, in your current life, and you don't do it, because you think you have to say, to get to this goal that you're trying to achieve. And then you get to the end of your life, and you're looking back and you regret not spending your money. And for a bit I thought who would ever regret having more money? Does anyone ever when they're on their deathbed, that they have a million more than they needed. And at my first thought, like when I first started this journey was no, you can never have enough, right? You can always pass it down to your kids. Like it's always going to be useful. But when you really think about it, yes, you can regret having quote unquote, too much. Because if you've sacrificed your quality of life, in the meantime, you know, then what good is it. And so it was just really important to get a sense of how we were doing financially to get confirmation, just kind of have some checks and balances with someone else, some accountability, that we could get help with our finances. And I'll tell you this, hiring them has been a great decision, you know, in terms of like, they do our taxes, too. So we've been given tax strategies and business strategies to help offset taxes, where we've saved 1000s of dollars, or have gained information where we're getting a comprehensive financial plan. And quite frankly, it's not just me, like I have enough on my plate already, you know, and so it's really nice to just have someone else taking, helping me take the lead in this situation. Also, the other thing is that, and I know, for some people, you're at the point maybe where you don't think you need a financial planner, you're not ready totally fine. Like I'm still all about DIY up to a certain extent, I think doing it yourself is important, because, therefore you understand what's going on. It's like, you know, you take your car to a mechanic, but if you know how the car works, you can have a more collaborative relationship with the mechanic versus the mechanic telling you something that's not true, and you not knowing what's going on. And that's kind of how I feel with having a financial planner. And so it's still important to be involved with your finances, you can still do a lot, they don't invest on our behalf, I'm still I still believe in index funds. And I'm still actually learning some more things about tax strategies with that, and investing strategies. But you should definitely still be involved. Even if you hire someone, and you don't need millions to hire someone, you don't need millions or you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars in network to get the expert help that you need. It's more about finding alignment with a person that's going to listen to you that you feel good with that you can ask all the questions because no question is dumb. And that can help you move forward on your journey. So yeah, that wasn't one of the things that we did. Like I read the book. And I was like, You know what, I'm tired of doing this on my own. Because I don't want to get to the end and say we had so much money like we could have took that trip to Bali, we could have bought that car, we could have did all these things. But I'm thinking here that we didn't have enough and we didn't get to do that. So that was one of the things that we did. The second thing this is more about the way we spend money or are spending our money. Because with the book, dying with zero means being just strategic and intentional with how you're spending your money. Because if you are right now at the point of your life where you are doing okay, and I know there's different journeyer stages, there are different levels where you can be and so if you're familiar with journey or stages or not, just quickly to go through it. I have five generic stages that you go through to reach financial independence. There is the first stage which is getting to financial security, like you need to get to a point in which you can pay for your living expenses and be in control of your money. Level two, the cadet stage is getting out of debt. So after you become stable, you can then work on getting out of consumer debt. Stage three is about financial security, here's where you're investing in building financial security. Stage four is about the commander stage. So you reach a level of financial security. And now you have work flexibility, you can choose what you want to do for work, which is the stage I'm in level five, stage five is complete, financial independent, the captain stage. And so depending on where you are, within the journey, or stages, kind of can allow you to figure out how you could spend the additional money you have after you've covered your baseline expenses and are investing to a point in which you can reach your level of financial freedom and independence. And so it was really important for us to figure out what is that for us, like, now that we are saving and investing? What shot threshold to get to our financial goals and the timeline that we want to hit? But then what do we do with that extra money? Because there are things we want to do and not just looking at investing and saving first, as I typically do. But what about lifestyle goals first, so if we want to spend money on something that's important to us, so for now, right now, that means redoing our basement, then if that impacts how much we can save and invest? Is that okay? And how does that impact us in the future, when I take it back to quitting my job, when we when I made the decision to quit my job, we had to change course, in the way we saved and invested for about a year and a half, maybe two years, we were not able to save and invest as aggressively as we did. When I had my corporate income, we totally put that on pause to save up cash reserves and fpu funds to kind of pull down on top cover our expenses. But we really changed our mind frame. Now, mathematically, someone may have looked at if we ran numbers and said, Well, you're walking away from being able to save over like $100,000, you know, save and invest, I should say, invest $100,000, to just save and take this risk to leave your job. Mathematically that may not have made sense. But I'm at the point where math is no longer the deciding factor in what I'm doing in my life anymore. It is literally the enjoyment level. And most of us can get to this place where after we do the basic math, after you get out of level two. And even in level two, I'm not saying you can't have fun and you know has the all be about math and paying off debt. But after you get out of stage two, paying off your debt, there has to be a balanced now of it's not only about optimizing for money. And so I didn't care about the math anymore. It was about if we have to spend more money on things we want now, how can we make that happen? What needs to change? Does it mean we need to spend less in another place? Does that mean for a little bit we invest less? Does that mean we make more money? What does that mean in order for us to have the desired lifestyle. And so it really caused me to ask us as a family to think about where we want to spend our money. And it's funny because even with the financial planners, they are still optimizing for efficient taxes, right? Like they want us to save on taxes. So they're always going to kind of push us to invest as much as possible. And I remember in a meeting, I'm just like, really do we have to invest that much because we want to do this. So here I am someone who was all about saving and investing as much as possible, pushing back and saying, You know what, I'm fine. If we are not 100% optimized on taxes, if we're 95%, because you know what? Taking this vacation, redoing this basement is more important to us than saving $3,000 on taxes. And so we came to that point where we're saying, what do we want to spend our money on? And what are our priorities. And so one of some of our priorities have been redoing our basement, which I'm so excited about. Because we had the space in the basement where the whole basement, and it was not being used because my aunt had moved out. She was helping with the kids. But we now have the space back. And I was saying to myself, like we can now do something with it. Like, we're a family of five. And by New York standards, Brooklyn standards, we have a decent sized home. But this is now another extension that we can use as a home. And let's make it beautiful. Let's spend money in making it nice. And it's funny because I always I never feel like I'm an adult. Like I'm just like, how am I 39 This makes no sense. I know some of you are shocked. I know. I look like I'm 22. But sometimes I'm like alright Jamila, you're an adult. And instead of always pushing off adult things because I always say to myself, Oh, when I'm older, like when I'm more mature, I'll care about those things. But one of the things that I've always cared about for the most part is where I live like maybe not so much the car right now but it was always like okay, I want to live somewhere where it's feels good. And so almost doing the basement over and having like an adult alt space and we have a, there's gonna be a little kid area too. But being able to have an office and having it be nice like not saying, okay, when I'm older, like I have the house of my dreams, I'm older now. Like, I want the house of my dreams now, I want my forever like, of course, if we became like millionaire millionaires, we can think about what housing looks like. But for now, this is it. This is possibly our forever home. And let's make it that. So if we have to spend money in order to make it that in order for me to have a beautiful office and space in which I can create, record a podcast properly, and not in like my kitchen, or you should see my setup right now it looks ridiculous. Like, I want that. I deserve that. So let's see how we can spend the money to get that to happen. So that was like one of the major things eventually we do want to do our back yard. That might be a next year is project. But also it was like, Okay, how do we spend more money, even on the everyday things to help give us time and energy back. So does that mean vesting less and saving less, because now we're putting this money towards a babysitter? Vacations, you know what, I'm fine with that, because that means our quality of life improves. So some of the things that we've been spending more money on and allocating a budget for is a babysitter. And she's been so lovely. She's actually moving on soon, so may have to find someone else. But in the meantime, having her has been amazing, even if it was only for a few months, having the sense of someone else. And she was a teacher. So she's so good with the kids in terms of doing their homework, and tutoring, my oldest son on certain things and my patience level. Listen, I'm not a teacher. So having someone being able to step in and do the things that I don't want to do, like bake pizza from scratch baked cookies, like was a mazing worth every penny food delivery. So the other thing I don't like doing is cooking, cooking is not my ministry, not my jam. And it will always be a struggle about cooking my husband like during the pandemic, he learned to make a few dishes. He's pretty good at that. But it's not consistent in both of us. We don't have a love for it. But we also have we have three kids, it's not just like when we were single, just the two of us, we figure it out every day. And I feel so guilty because like, it'd be like, what food What are you gonna eat today, chicken nuggets, you know, which is fine, like chicken nuggets, frozen pizza, still, they're still in the freezer, we still do that. But I didn't want to want to have to worry about what the family was going to eat. So luckily, we did find a family friend who cooks for us, and she delivers meals on Monday. So we have a batch of meals that last us a few days, where it's just so much time alleviated from me trying to figure out what to cook, but to also just like, the emotional like guilt that I felt from that feeding my children healthy meals, or at least you know, they don't eat it, that's their problem, but it's on their plate that they have a balanced meal, mostly every night. And so that to me is worth every penny that we put aside to do that. So the food delivery, I started posting that on Jamila souffrant, just like, you know, showing that we were doing this and had so many women and people reach out that said, Why are you in Splunk? How do you where do you get that food? How you doing that? And you you're inspiring me to do that, because I don't have time to cook. I'm a busy mom working. And so they were asking me like thoughts and where to find someone. And I always say this, like, ask around your neighborhood. Like I know food is like a definitely an interesting thing. Because you don't want your food prepared by people you trust, obviously. But you know, if you are within a church community, actually church community X family friend, because there might be someone that loves to cook. And like literally people love to cook like I don't get it, but I get you know, you get it and you love it that you do that. And just someone that wants to do that, right. And so if you can pay them extra money to cook you a few meals, and maybe it's not like every day, but just like at least one meal a week or two meals you don't have to worry about will help you so much. So I would say again, look at you know your community. So if you're involved within a church community, even if you have kids, right, like there's such a network of moms that you can ask them or if they know someone, but or a restaurant. So the local restaurant we were in Brooklyn, so we have a lot of Jamaican restaurants or Korean restaurants over here, maybe catering and not like big meals, but like at least for like two nights can be something where you go to your favorite like walking takeout restaurant, and but it's like a more home cook restaurant that you can get some food from so just ideas because I really felt that this was such a big change for us over the last few months. And I will say this even though I'm not cooking the food. I'm still plating it because it's not coming in place. Right? We don't we're not at that level yet. We can hire a chef that comes in and gives us our meals like in the plates But now when I'm taking out the meals for the kids, even for my husband, is still an act of love and takes time. Because everyone likes something different or want something a little different from what we've been delivered, I still have to heat it up. And so it's, it's eliminates a lot of time, but it still takes kind of like that last step. And you can't tell me that I didn't like cook this meal, because I still feel like it's such an act of love when I'm sharing out their food. So if you're also worried about that, in my opinion, it did not impact me that I didn't cook the meal, because I was still giving it to them and providing it. Okay, vacations, another thing that we are prioritizing. We know that, you know, the world has been closed for a bit. And it's still somewhat close, but it's opening. And we want to travel, we want to go places with our kids, just my husband and I, we want to go on solo trips. And so how do we pick this back into our lives? How do we make it a priority in our budget. So we're really excited about like things we have planned, and seeing old friends and just like living our lives more openly and enjoying the money we have. And then the last thing I'd say that we are prioritizing in terms of spending, our kid activities and family experiences. Now the one thing that I've always thank my mom for, like, like, I know that it's made me who I am, is that she's always prioritized experiences and activities. Even though you know, I didn't have the latest sneakers and clothes, she found her last to put me into gymnastics and swimming classes. And having those experiences shaped me to who I am. So when it comes to my kids, and I have three of them, okay, I want them to have that, you know, so they're in sports, they're in swim, you're doing things and, and I don't want it to be where we say, oh, we can't do that. Because we want to, you know, save. And it's funny, because that's probably not the right way to say it, we want to save. But when I think about investing in our kids, I want to be able to do both, I want to be able to put money into their 529. And they're in taxable accounts. But I also want to invest in them now. Because I know that I was invested in. And I didn't have a 529 account, I didn't have an investment account. But that money that was poured into me and it doesn't have to be a lot of money, by the way. But the time, I would say maybe it's more accurate to say not just the money, but the time and care that my mom poured into me was important. And she didn't even have like she didn't have as much as the time or the money that I have now. But she made it happen. She She budget, maybe she didn't understand what budgeting meant in terms of the book sense. But she made sure even though she was a single mom, that she would take me to the library every week, and we'd get books like she made she she put that as a priority. And so when I think about investing in my kids, how am I going to be able to do that? How am I going to be able to make sure I have the time and the money in certain aspects to do those things. So whether that means me paying someone to cook food for us, or to babysit, and she takes them to, to the library, or it's getting things off my plate, like even having an assistant which one day I hope to hire like a family assistant, so that I am not running around, and I have more energy to do things with them. That to me is money well spent, and is an investment in them. Because then I'm a happier person, and a happier mom and I can pour more into them. So how do we spend more money today, that still is an investment in our future because it's pouring into the foundation of us as individuals and as a family. Because I don't want to look back when I'm 75 and say, wow, you know, it's nice, we have all these millions, but that we didn't take those family vacations, you know, like, I don't want to do that. Okay, the other thing that we've done, we definitely feel like it solidified the way I thought already from reading the book die with zero, from Bill Perkins was how we give our kids money or when we give our kids money At what ages. So remember when I said in the beginning of this, my first instinct or thought was like, What is he saying you don't leave any money to your kids like what? And what he's really saying and he had a really good point in the book he makes is that he there was a mom, she was a single mom. She had gotten divorced I think and she was struggling with her kids, you know, raising them. And she needed like money. So she was working a lot. Eventually, like you know, they did okay, they grew up, the kids grew up, she grew up and her parents died. So the single mom her parents died and left her money and but now the single mom was maybe like maybe in her 60s or 70s. I forgot the age. And she was appreciative that her parents left her money, but she thought back like wow Like the money, even if I only got a fraction of that, let's just say she was like a million dollars, which is amazing. And now she's 6570. She was saying that if she would have gotten in her 30s, when she was struggling with her children, even just like 50,000 100,000, that would have made the world of difference for her. And that is what he means by or Bill Perkins means by like dying with zero, it means like, when do you how can you give your kids money, when they can use it, when it matters to them the most. And that's how I'm thinking now, that's how we are thinking now. And how can we give our kids money short, if there is money left over, which we still hope happens, they still have a great, you know, little nest egg. But if we live natural lives, by the time let's say, I don't know what, naturally the ages that you die, but let's just say we live to 100, our kids would then be around 7065, I think if I'm doing the math, right. And so they saw me and they said that little life left in them. But imagine, like, if we were able to help them out earlier in life, I go back to my mom again, my mom really didn't have a lot. But she did help me when it came to putting down the first 10% of my condo that I bought at 22. I was gonna say this, like, give her her props, because she didn't have it. But she saved she took it was like literally probably most of her savings. And she gave me a portion of the first 10% of the downpayment, I don't think I've ever been able to buy that property, that condo if she would not have helped me. And she gave it to me, it was not alone, she gave it to me. And this is again, a single mom that had me at 20 years old, immigrated from Jamaica with nothing. And she was able to give her adult daughter when it was time for me to, to start a life for myself some money to help me. And I think about how that has been the best investment decision, life decision that I made so early on, because it gave me such a head start to have this property, I still own it, I still rent it out, I it's something that I want to be able to pass down to my kids, maybe they can live there one day, I mean, it is a studio, so they're gonna have to take turns or just share the space and spider it. But wow, I want to be able to do that for my kids. And so I think about we think about how can we start to set up ways to give them money now, do we give them maybe when they graduate college, or when they're 25 years old, $25,000 each, and they can do what they want with that, start a business, buy a home. And then maybe again, when they're 35, give them another $50,000 where they maybe they're starting a family, maybe they have a family. And this allows them to do other things, or maybe they're starting businesses in their 30s. That is how I'm thinking about a legacy for my kids, not giving them money only when they're 75. But how can we give them and gift them money earlier. And truth be told as much as some people like kind of hate on the fact that people get helped by their parents. This is what we're working towards. This is the generational wealth that we are working towards. And so if I can help my kids, I'm going to do that just like my mom helped me. Like, isn't that the point? And so it really had me thinking and has us thinking, what are ways in which we can save and invest and accounts for them, that they are set up for success and have head starts. Okay, the last thing I'm going to share about kind of what this book did for me is more from a creative lens. i Right now I'm writing a book, I can't believe I'm like saying that, but it's true. Your girl is writing a book, my book won't be out until 2024. Because I'm going to traditionally publish route. I talked about this in a previous episode and on my social media, your girl got a book deal. And it's really important for me, like when I read books like this, and other books that really are thought changers or that create change in a person's life. I'm thinking to myself, How do I write a book like this? Obviously, it's not gonna be the same book. But I'm thinking about this is the kind of impact I want. I don't want to write a book that someone just like, picks up it looks good, you open it and just like what is this? I've heard this all before. And this did nothing for me.

I want it to impact lives. And I love as a creator as a business owner. So oftentimes I get asked Jimmy, like what do you think sets journey to launch apart from maybe other podcasts? Or how do you think you've grown to where you've grown? And it's really because I not only care like I truly do care about what the content I put out, I almost care to the extent that it puts a lot of pressure on like, what I do and and I get all these like thoughts about It's not good enough. But what drives me is to create meaningful work. And it's funny because it's not just me, like I've seen other people talk about this book and how it's changed the way they view things. And I'm not, it doesn't have to be like a become a different person from reading it, I would love that too. But it's more about Wow, this made me think about something in a different way. This challenged my assumption and made me go, ah, and most importantly, it made me do something different. I actually took action. And so as a creator, as a writer, you know, as I'm writing my book, now, it's really guiding me just not this book. But any book that's impactful, a perennial seller, something that's going to last, that is what I'm thinking about. That's what is what's inspiring me as I write my own book, so I like to look at things and deconstruct them as Okay, so what made this book so impactful? Why did a lot of people who read it, or it seems to have read it, say that they're changing the way they're investing and saving, right? And that's kind of what I want to do. And so it's a tall order, like, you know, like, it's a lot to fulfill like to think you can change the world with the book. But I truly think, hopefully, if you've listened to this podcast, so you're just listening for the first time, you do find concepts, whether it's from a guest or from me, that help plant a seed that you water, and that changes your life. It's possible, it happened for me. I'm just really inspired now, to create good work, to flush out my ideas to make it in a way that it's accessible. And I'm excited about what's to come. So yes, writing my book, stay on, stay on the lookout, you know, we have a ways to go. But I'll be sharing more about that process. So I hope you enjoyed this solo episode. If you want to listen to the complete episode with Bill Perkins, who wrote the book die with zero, you can listen to episode 262. I'd love to hear your takeaways, your feedback, you know, did you read the book yet? If so, has it? Did it change anything for you? Maybe it did, maybe it didn't? And then even from what I just shared with you did anything resonate? What are you doing or thinking about when it comes to life enjoyment? And your money? How are you finding that balance? I would love to know, I'm at journey to launch on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. You can tag me I always love seeing when you're listening and putting on your stories or on your main feed. Really, it makes my day because oftentimes again, I always say like I'm talking to myself in this microphone. Anyone out there? And when I see that you're out there, it's like yes. All right to me, let's keep going. So thanks for always sharing the podcast sharing with your family and friends, especially if something resonated with you. I'd love to see it. Also don't forget you can go to journey to launch comm join my email list. That's where you can really stay up to date with the latest going on. You can go to journey to launch comm slash join that should allow you to hop on my email list and then keep in touch

don't forget you can get the episode show notes for this episode by going to journey to launch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this and you can still grab your jumpstart guide for free to help you on your journey to financial freedom by going to journey to launch comm slash Jumpstart. If you want to support me and the podcast and love the free content and information that you get here, here are four ways that you can support me in the show. One, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, whether that's Apple podcasts, that purple app on your phone, your Android device, YouTube, Spotify, wherever it is that you happen to listen, just subscribe so you are not missing an episode. And if you're happening to listen to this in Apple podcasts, rate review and subscribe there. I appreciate and read every single review number to follow me on my social media accounts. I'm at journey to launch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And I love love love interacting with journeyers. They're three support and check out the sponsors of this show. If you hear something that interests you, sponsors are the main ways we keep the podcast lights on here. So show them some love for supporting your girl for and last but not least, share this episode this podcast with a friend or family member or co worker so that we can spread the message of Journey to launch. Alright, that's it until next week, keep on journeying journeyers