Frankie and D: Living in the NOW (#75) — Transcript
Updated: Oct 26
THE PICTURE OF WEALTH · EPISODE 75
Frankie Barnet joins Dustin Serviss for a conversation about living now while planning for the future. They explore retirement, ambition, teaching children about money and looking at familiar goals from a different angle.
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This transcript was generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability. It may contain transcription or speaker-attribution errors. Refer to the recording for exact wording.
Chapters
[00:00:00] Frankie’s questions about money and wealth
[00:03:55] Saving every experience for retirement
[00:10:05] A lesson from fighter-plane training
[00:15:19] Looking at the trajectory of your business
[00:20:57] Intentional living and information inputs
[00:27:14] The Power of Intention and financial goals
[00:32:37] How expenses creep upward
[00:36:57] Can an amount of money remove all stress?
[00:42:05] Tom Deans and family wealth conversations
Guest & resources
Related episodes
Transcript
[00:00:00] Frankie Barnet: I mean, I have more questions about, like, money and wealth, which as an art person, you're never supposed to say excites you, but it definitely in... It interests. I I mean, I think, we have no choice but to be interested in it, and that could be a positive or negative thing.
[00:00:19] Show announcer: Welcome to the Picture of Wealth, a podcast all about living more of your life now yet being responsible for your future. Lifestyle experimenter, wealth scientist, and financial coach, Dustin Service, shares life hacks, wealth tips, and interviews successful entrepreneurs on how they're thriving in happiness, purpose, and prosperity.
[00:00:41] Dustin Serviss: Frankie Barnett, thank you for coming on the show. You are an author, an amazing writer for multiple, things. You got a kick ass attitude towards betterment. And although, you know, you're art focused, I have a huge respect for you in, in the work you do and have done to date, and I'm excited to go on this, journey that we don't know, where it will go. But we are talking about being three feet from gold. And what that means for everyone, the book, Think and Grow Rich, is a book written by Napoleon Hill. He references a miner who is digging. He stops because he can't find anything. He gives up.
[00:01:20] Dustin Serviss: Someone else comes into that hole later, goes a little bit in a different direction, and strikes a massive gold vein. And that... You know, three feet from gold references that. And how I'm tying that into wealth and lifestyle today is, you know, we are on a track. We're going a certain direction, and we might be hitting a roadblock. We might be stumbling along and being, thinking we're gonna give up, and maybe it's an investment. Maybe it's trying to find a house to live in, which is extremely hard in this time. And maybe we just need to spin the lens a bit and take a deep breath back up and look at it. So, Frankie, I...
[00:01:54] Dustin Serviss: I'm gonna give you the floor to to... We've... We're gonna put our boxing gloves on and let you, fire away with your questions because you're a a a great researcher. And I'm I'm excited to have you on the show today, so thanks for coming on.
[00:02:07] Frankie Barnet: Awesome. Well, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here too, and I think that's the first time anyone has ever told me they have a kick ass attitude to life or however you put it.
[00:02:18] Dustin Serviss: Towards betterment. Yep.
[00:02:19] Frankie Barnet: Towards betterment. I would love I would love to think that I that I have that, but I do have a tendency towards being a little pessimistic. So...
[00:02:27] Dustin Serviss: We'll change that. I didn't do
[00:02:29] Frankie Barnet: it. Yeah. Yeah. So I I wanted to start with asking you, because that... As I was saying before a little bit, I kind of I was doing the research about this this little anecdote that you just, told about the the miner digging for... Mining for gold. I think I got two two different senses of of what that could mean. The the first being a little bit about what you described in a more literal sense. Someone is working really hard, is looking for that gold. They come against... Come up against an obstacle, and and they they give up, not knowing that they were unbelievably close to finding their success.
[00:03:15] Frankie Barnet: And then when I when I was just reading some of your notes that you wrote to me, you talked about it more in terms of... I think you mentioned that, you know, helping your your clients find, you know, find a new house or or find the money to to go on vacation or to, what did you say? You said building a pool at the... At their house.
[00:03:38] Dustin Serviss: I did say that. That was before. Yeah.
[00:03:40] Frankie Barnet: So I'm I'm interested just in the idea that when we're putting ourselves in this scenario, gold doesn't have to be literally money. It could be something else in our lives. Is that is that sort of what you meant by by that?
[00:03:55] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. I think... So you you bring up something, that I never thought of was the the experience. So, you know, people are... You know, what I see... And it's starting to shift now, but I I see a lot of people living a life where the gold happens in retirement. So you sacrifice your whole life. So their whole life, I envision this person going through life with a vision of the gold, whether that's a trip, an experience, a pool in your house, or whatever your thing is. And literally on the other side of the road that you're going on, there's like, that stuff is right there. You just need to reach over and grab it.
[00:04:35] Dustin Serviss: And if you did reach over and grab it, it wouldn't take you that far off course that you would be so irresponsible for the future. And I think, I recently did a... I've built a webinar and the premise is I went on this certain experience. It cost a fair bit of money. But at the time, I rationalized it like it's a once in a lifetime thing. So it's not gonna be forever. But I talk about... I'm literally in an airplane, and it's a fighter plane experience. And I can see the reflection of myself in the cockpit as we're, like, taxing out to the runway. And I'm, like, looking at myself going, do I deserve this? Like, can I actually afford this?
[00:05:20] Dustin Serviss: Is this good use of money? Is this, like, should I have done this? I... Like, you know, so I'm still rest... Even though I'm excited, I'm literally right there and not present because I'm so worried about old beliefs that, like, this might affect me when I'm sixty. And so, that kind of three feet from gold analogy, I think, when people are going through life and they've ingrained it in themselves that they've gotta live a certain way, they've got to save a certain way. They've got to put money in a certain way. And no deviating is wrong. And the only way to get that unpacked is to understand your surroundings.
[00:06:06] Dustin Serviss: And I think a lot of entrepreneurs that we work with, a lot of people listening would probably resonate where it's, I'm busy. I'm busy. I got my blinders on. I'm hard charging. I'm like, I wanna increase my revenue by this much. I wanna add this many staff. I wanna buy a building. I wanna do whatever. And you really... If you just take a look back, you probably could do that thing. You probably could take a day off. You probably could put the pool in. But if you don't have someone, you don't have a professional to help you sort of lay that out, it can be something that just gets kicked down the road.
[00:06:38] Dustin Serviss: And next thing you know, you're sixty and you still haven't done it. And I don't want to get too carried away because people know sort of my premise of like, you get to sixty, you get to sixty three and pass away. And yet you've got lots of money in the bank. And so it was all... And that isn't everyone's story, but it's definitely a real scenario that, you know, I wanna protect people from. So is that is that kind of what you were you were seeing in your research?
[00:07:07] Frankie Barnet: Definitely. I I do wanna ask you what you were doing in the fighter jet. Is this a vacation?
[00:07:15] Dustin Serviss: It was, it was right before COVID. It's in Phoenix. It's a it's a fighter pilot like experience. So you're in base... You're not in a fighter... Like an f eighteen or something. You're in a plane that is called, an extra three hundred l. And this plane reacts and acts as close as you can get to a fighter jet without being an eighteen million dollar fighter jet. So this experience, you've got a pilot behind you. You're in a jet or in a it's a prop plane, you've got all the controls and you've got buttons on it that you can shoot a laser. And if you hit the other plane where there's another guy who's paid and
[00:07:55] Dustin Serviss: an instructor, and you dogfight and you fight each other-
[00:07:58] Frankie Barnet: In the air.
[00:07:59] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. So it's... Yeah, so if you think about how much you pay for how much time you're in the experience, there's a lot of head scratching around that. But I've told that story and relived that experience a number of times in the last three years that the cost per story teller is very low. And that's, I think, something of value that a pool, it's same thing. So just to close off the story, just so everyone kind of gets the context, you taxi out in the runway, you fly, you take off, and it's in the airport in Phoenix, the Mesa airport, where it's actually the Air Force is... There's a training base there for a lot of choppers and planes.
[00:08:46] Dustin Serviss: So there is big helicopters, big planes coming in military, and you're taking off literally beside the other, your opponent, if you will. And you fly out over the desert, and then they do missions where you chase each other. And then you try and... The only way when you're in a firefight is to pull your plane in a tighter circle than the other person. Because if you can't, if you're chasing each other, if you just fly straight, you can get behind them and shoot them. If you pull loops and hard turns, and you can pull harder than the other person, they can never actually get what they call angles
[00:09:30] Dustin Serviss: on you to get the guns in front of the other plane and shoot. So when you drive, you go into the gunfire. So it's quite taxing on your body. They call it g's or g force, where, you know, they do a series of tests as... Like, it's like a... On a roller coaster. When you go way up over the thing, you get negative g's. And when you come down and you hit the bottom, that's the full Gs, which is the weight of your body times, I can't remember the ratio, but it's a lot. And so it fatigues you. So when you're pulling, you're almost blacking out trying to get away, or you're trying to
[00:10:05] Dustin Serviss: pull harder than the other person so you could shoot them, but you get tired and so you let off. And so that's a way to get away. If you're in front and you're getting shot at, the only way is to keep pulling a tighter circle and outlast your opponent, which to be super truthful, I wasn't very good at it.
[00:10:23] Frankie Barnet: That's what I was going to ask of you
[00:10:25] Dustin Serviss: guys. Yeah. So out of eight dog fights, I only won two. And this guy was an IT guy from Toronto. And I just thought, you know, when I was standing in the base, you know, I had an army shirt on. It was all macho. And I definitely had some humbling, humbling thoughts by the end. So yeah, you fight chasing each other, you fight straight on. So you come straight at each other, then you flip and you try and get behind each other. And then, so after that's all over, they come on the radio and they're like, Yeah, part of your package is an Acrobat package. So I'm already almost pretty green. I haven't got sick, right? I didn't get sick.
[00:11:07] Dustin Serviss: But I felt like I wanted to go back to base. And she goes, Yeah, now we've got another fifteen minutes of Acrobat. So that's literally like they do these knife edge where they get the plane spinning flat. They'll spin it over. And so by the time that was over, I was definitely done. So again, I would tie it back to, sometimes in life, you have to look at what you're spending or the experience and say, you know, is this is this who I am? Is this something, you know, every year for for x amount of years, we've tried to do one thing that's like that. Car racing, skydiving, different things. And, that's, like, it... It's it's life.
[00:11:51] Dustin Serviss: And it's, it's something that's important. And so I won't have an extra few grand when I'm sixty five. So thanks for asking. Well, I haven't lived extra, so I'm feeling pumped now. I'm ready. I'm ready.
[00:12:04] Frankie Barnet: That's awesome. So I guess coming back to to what you were saying before about trying to encourage, your clients and leading by example by doing... Just being able to enjoy their lives more. I'm curious about if and how that can be a struggle for people. I recently... I was just, like, scrolling through Instagram, and I think because I've been doing this work for for Lawyers Financial and writing more about finances, I started getting all these ads from, like
[00:12:35] Dustin Serviss: Oh, yeah.
[00:12:36] Frankie Barnet: Motivational speakers who are, like, billionaires.
[00:12:39] Dustin Serviss: Is it working?
[00:12:41] Frankie Barnet: And... But it it was interesting. This guy said it's easier to make your second million dollars than your first million dollars because by the time you make your million... Your first million, you've already become a person who is capable of doing that. I mean, you've already developed the the discipline and the habits and the work ethic that make that possible. And I'm wondering and I'm thinking about maybe clients of yours who who have done that work on themselves to to be able to achieve whatever... Achieve success. And does that ever become an impediment to the other side of what you're
[00:13:22] Frankie Barnet: talking about in terms of taking time off or stepping back? Is that something people struggle with?
[00:13:30] Dustin Serviss: I I think so. Did you answer the first question? Yes. I think that's true in a few things. Like, once the numbers are bigger, you know, if you're making, twenty percent return on one hundred grand, that's twenty grand. If you're making one hundred percent or twenty percent return on a million, that's two hundred.
[00:13:48] Frankie Barnet: Right.
[00:13:48] Dustin Serviss: So as the numbers get bigger, if you can keep the returns the same, then you're gonna have acceleration in the wealth. I'll kind of address, I think, what you're saying, and then maybe you can clean up the question. But what I think happens as a business owner, you come out of the gate, and all you're trying to do is survive. So you're trying to survive. And then you go through a stage where you are in sustain mode. And then you kind of have success mode, and then you have significance mode. And once you sort of got the ball rolling, it's hard to unpack the survival mode that you came in with.
[00:14:40] Dustin Serviss: Because I see it with older clients, I see it with family members who are older. You just never know when something bad might happen. And in the world today that we live in, there's no shortage of negative news and sort of pessimism around everything. So if you can't clear that, you combine that with the survival mentality, and you have this thing where it's like, there's never enough, and it's hard to turn off the gas. Because what if it goes back to when you weren't a business owner and you were struggling in that? And so that's a big fear. I'm a probability person. I took engineering in school. I look at like...
[00:15:19] Dustin Serviss: If you've been successful for twenty years at... So you've been in business for twenty years, you've been successful for thirteen straight years, and you're getting more connections. More connections equals more opportunity starts to show up. The likelihood of you all of a sudden just off a cliff and needing to be in survival mode is probably low probability versus the same trajectory. Now, if you think of the same trajectory on either side of that line, you could have a really good year, or you could have a really shit year. And so as long as you're sort of staying in that and you're managing your risk
[00:16:01] Dustin Serviss: well with the help of somebody or just with the help of your own perspective and sort of going, what is my stress test? In my business, what are the things that are front and center that could impact this business? Worst case for business owner probably is you're in debt and you have no business. Or you die. I guess that might be worse. But low probability things. So, you know, managing your risk. You bring up an interesting point of... I did a podcast about three episodes ago about decumulation. So someone who builds up their asset, their business, their whole life, they go in, the key works in the door, they open it, they see the secretary,
[00:16:47] Dustin Serviss: they see their staff. That's their identity. And when you sell the business, you all of a sudden exchange value that was in this business for money that's in your bank account. And the key doesn't work in the door. Mhmm. So you are now just a guy. And my father references it like, when he retired, he was quite surprised that literally when you walk down the first hole of the golf course, you got your little foursome of people you maybe know or know, but someone doesn't know you says, Well, what do you do? Or my dad would ask him, What do you do? And I'm a this, I'm a that. And he'd ask him, Well, what do you do? And he'd say, Oh, I'm retired.
[00:17:26] Dustin Serviss: It was like a wall. It was like that was the end of the conversation. People's interest is low. So I could have encouraged him to rejig that story in what he's saying to himself. I'm retired. It's like, No, I'm into this. I used to work. Now I'm into this. And so it's just how you position it, I think, you need to be mindful of. But for a lot of people, that is a scary moment where you've got this pot of money that before you used to go into the business, and it would spit you out a salary or a dividend every year. And now all of a sudden, you got this money. So how do you actually spend it? And people really struggle with it. They really,
[00:18:09] Dustin Serviss: you know, struggle with it. And so that's why I'm super passionate about catching people when they're forty
[00:18:14] Frankie Barnet: Mhmm.
[00:18:15] Dustin Serviss: And trying to help, you know, build a mindset that you're ready for that. Or you're ready and willing to maybe sell some of the company before you're going to retire. And then you're still kind of in the mix and maybe only work two days a week. And some businesses, I know it doesn't work. But you know, if you're a professional doctor, dentist, lawyer, you could go to two days a week. And say you make eighty thousand dollars with those two days a week or you work six months, you know, if the projects in your job allow for that. That I think is a more interesting approach because you're getting the lifestyle. You're still kind of in the mix.
[00:18:56] Dustin Serviss: A big part of retirees is you lose social collisions, you know, unless you got a massive hobby network. But for a lot of people, you know, at your business, you're talking to suppliers, you're talking to staff, you're talking to other business owners that are part of your groups. So you got this kind of synergy and you're kind of getting a pulse on things. Once you sell your business, if you aren't mindful of staying in the pulse, you can create a bit of social awkwardness. So you got all the money in the world, but yet your life isn't as potential as it could be. And that, I think, is... I I wanna... I want...
[00:19:34] Dustin Serviss: I don't want that to happen to the people that work with me that are younger, for sure.
[00:19:38] Frankie Barnet: Right. I mean, you need... A person needs to feel they have a place in society, and I would imagine, especially with retirement. I mean, we know why people retire. They're reaching, you know, not... Not like the end is, you know, tomorrow, but they are reaching the end of their lives. And I can imagine that it's a terrible feeling to just...
[00:19:59] Dustin Serviss: Yeah.
[00:19:59] Frankie Barnet: To to know... You not only no longer have, you know, or may feel like you have a place or have a role in society, but to feel like it's because, you know, your time is up. Mhmm.
[00:20:14] Dustin Serviss: And and, you know, there's a lot of self sabotage. I think other than a health... You know, unforeseen health issue, being mindful of what you say to yourself is super important, which I already touched on. But say, you know, I'm too old. I can't do that. You know, all those kind of limiting thoughts, I'm sure some days you feel like absolute dog shit and are sore and there's different things. As a forty year old, older people listening like, Oh, service, you have no freaking clue. I get that. But you've got an intentional way of living is available to most people. Okay. You know, setting your intent, you know, that's a huge part of Think
[00:20:57] Dustin Serviss: and Grow Rich is intentional living. And I'm going off on a tangent now, but I I was with some people yesterday in Kelowna and different sort of social media, listening to the videos that were being played. And I was thinking in my head just quietly, I didn't say anything. But did you really go look for that information? Did you really go look for that news thing that's talking to you right now on your phone? And the answer's no. People are scrolling and something's in their face, and it's giving them influence in their brain. Yet, their goals... I knew all these people. Their goals are way fucking different. Their goals are over here, yet
[00:21:42] Dustin Serviss: they're bathing their mind in something that is... Has no direct positive impact on their goals.
[00:21:51] Frankie Barnet: You mean just, like, kinda like scrolling through really negative, sensational headlines? Or...
[00:21:57] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. Your social media. Whatever the the topic, you can insert whatever topic you want that's negative. And some of them weren't even that topical news negative. It was just interesting to see someone be consumed for five minutes on something that... We're all waiting for something and on something... Again, I know it's not important to them. But the way we are programmed right now, there's a lot of autopilot just sort of happening. And that is something that happens near retirement. You are the product of the five kind of closest people around you. If the people around you as you enter retirement or are thinking of selling
[00:22:41] Dustin Serviss: your business are active, nourish their mind with the right things, believe, Maybe I'll just work a little bit. Or maybe I'll success the business seventy five percent to my daughter. And I'll work twenty five percent. So I'm still at... If that's what other people are around you are talking about, that's what you will be like. If you are around people who are negative and really in tune with a lot of health ailments, and that's sort of the cornerstone of the conversation, that is what will leak into your life. And, again, I I could be way off, but I just think our minds are powerful, and our minds are still powerful at age sixty plus.
[00:23:20] Frankie Barnet: No. I agree with you. I... And I'm I'm curious about... And you'll tell me if this is somewhere you don't wanna go, but I'm curious about the the mind... The mindset stuff. Because as we were talking about before, it's something everyone has encountered, you know, the idea of thinking positively, envision your goals, do your affirmations, to the point that for someone like me who's a cynic, I'm always just like, I've heard that before. It's like, it's bogus. Even though it's, like, well, I've never done it. But I just feel like because I've heard it so many times, I can assume that it doesn't work, that it's, whatever, like, new agey.
[00:24:04] Frankie Barnet: I mean, whatever you wanna call it. So I'm wondering, like, for for you, like, have you just always been a used to... Like, a really positive minded person, or is it something you had to work on? And and how how do you do that?
[00:24:20] Dustin Serviss: I would say... So the first thing that popped in my mind was, Tim Ferris was... I mean, he wrote the four hour work week, and he has a podcast too. But he used to prescribe to saying, if I can't materially quantify something within like a day or, say, a reasonable timeline, and if I'm not going to do anything about it or I can't significantly change the direction of whatever, I'm literally going to crumple it up, and I'm just going to throw it away, and I'm not even going to think about it anymore. So in today's society, that is more... It's been around forever, but it's now in our face more, especially with COVID.
[00:25:05] Dustin Serviss: Conspiracy theorists, cynics, all those stories. If you take that analogy, it's like, Well, I can't research that enough to get the answer in the next twenty four hours. Mhmm. Then I'm not even... I... I'm just... It goes in and out. It doesn't become part of my ethos. And some people say, well, that's... You're not up to speed with current events. It's like, what? Yeah. I'm aware of them, but I know that I can't do anything about it. I know that I can't figure out the actual truth. Because again, you got the media, you got all these dark websites that do the fact check and all of a sudden. It's like, great, great.
[00:25:46] Dustin Serviss: But honestly, my goals are spend more time in my acreage with my children. My goals are do a hell of a job for clients and spend an extra five minutes with them on the phone to figure out what's actually important to them. Those are goals that are written down in a sheet. And I will pull those out regularly and go, Okay, this is my true north. And I'm aware of stuff happening, but it isn't. I'm very mindful when I... I even noticed this morning. So I have Facebook, but I don't usually have the app on my phone. And I had to post something on the marketplace to sell something. And so I go on there every once in a while and check if
[00:26:29] Dustin Serviss: there's any messages. People ask me about what I'm selling. And so this morning, it was like habit from old days. Click on the app, start scrolling. And I'm a motorsports guy. So most of my stuff is motorsports and different things. And it's like, I don't need to follow-up on, I don't need to know that. I had sat down at my desk. And so just old habits. And so I had to like, oh, close it. Get on the computer and started doing more research on what we were gonna talk about today. And it's just, that's just one little moment. That happens, you know, people can look up how much you touch your phone in a day. It's it's it's shocking.
[00:27:11] Frankie Barnet: Horrifying. Yeah.
[00:27:14] Dustin Serviss: So, yeah, I I think it's it's not a natural thing. It's something that it's worked on. It's something that, you know, Wayne Dyer was was one of the first motivational CDs that that I ever got. He wrote a book called The Power of Intention. I think he's actually passed away, but he... You know, it was like around when The Secret came out. And he was like, he watched that movie. He's like, Write a check for a million dollars, put it on your ceiling and stare at every night. It's like, That's a bit hokey. But Wayne took that. He actually had his book out before, but he took it to a whole new level of what is intention? And setting a course.
[00:27:50] Dustin Serviss: And again, you can get the book. It's another classic, like Think and Grow Rich. But it takes to another level of just like you just seeing it or writing, you know, I want a million dollars doesn't mean you get it. So it's like how to intentional be focused on it. Yeah. One thing that I forgot to mention. You'd asked about as you get older, the second million happens easier. And I think one thing that I see in my wealthy and high net worth families is the connections that they have. I touched on it, but I didn't really expand on it. Is when you are connected to more people and more open to connecting, you have a better chance for good luck.
[00:28:37] Dustin Serviss: And a number of my clients, and I see it in even a couple of my friends, they really seem to be lucky. There's just something pops up or there's a piece of real estate that's not going to be listed. Do you want it? Yeah, I want it. There's just these little luck things. And the more... You know, I've done a number... Read a number of books on luck and how it works and, you know, if it can be actually quantified. But a lot of that is as you get older, you have more connections.
[00:29:04] Frankie Barnet: Right.
[00:29:05] Dustin Serviss: You have more connections in business, and and, you know, you have more opportunity. So that's just being around longer. Usually, you can be wealthier if you're still... So kind of a good, maybe a good bookend for three feet from gold that you know, you... We all want stuff now, right now. And usually, we can get it. Especially if you got a bit of money, you can usually get it. But the best stuff might just need a bit more patience than you're used to, and it will be that much more rewarding.
[00:29:39] Frankie Barnet: Right. Cool.
[00:29:41] Dustin Serviss: Any final final questions? What's
[00:29:44] Frankie Barnet: Well, I
[00:29:45] Dustin Serviss: Give the listeners a a snapshot of what what you're up to, Frankie, because I know that I did a lot of talking, and we're gonna do a number of more episodes. But, what's got you excited in the in the art space?
[00:29:59] Frankie Barnet: What's got me excited? I mean, I have more questions about, like, money and wealth, which as an art person, you're never supposed to say excites you, but it definitely in... It interests. I I mean, I think, we have no choice but to be interested in it, and that could be a positive or negative thing. But, I mean, I think what I wanna ask you, and it's, like, another... I don't know, like, philosophical question. And it just, like, thinking for me, like, my whole life, money has been... When I think about growing up, and we were always fine, nothing bad happened because of money. Like, we weren't evicted. We...
[00:30:42] Frankie Barnet: I I didn't have any lack of anything. We went on nice vacations. But, you know, my memories of my parents fighting, it was always about money. If there was stress in the house, it was always because of money. And again, both my parents had professional jobs. We were fine. Today, my husband and I fight. It's about money. Even when we think we're not fighting about money, if we break it down later, it's about money. And again, we're fine. We've always been fine. Obviously, it would be nice to have more. It'd be nice to do more stuff. But we're okay, but I think there's this belief that once, you know, once he gets this promotion,
[00:31:24] Frankie Barnet: everything will be okay. Once I start this new job, then we'll be able to relax, and this won't be a stress anymore. So I'm wondering... I am curious from your experience working with your your clients who may have enough money for it to be managed professionally, does... Is that stress still there?
[00:31:45] Dustin Serviss: Oh, wow. Now this is... Now we're getting to the meet. Thank you, for sharing that and having the bravery to to share that because that I could... I would just tell you my own experience. My wife and I, you know, have been together for... We're married for twelve years and together for almost twenty. So, you know, there's a very short break early on in our relationship. But at the same time, when we met, my business was much different than it was today. And so same thing. I would be telling her, Hey, when I get this many clients, things are going to be better. Things are... But the watermark of expenses, you know,
[00:32:33] Dustin Serviss: I I think there's actually a term for us called lifestyle creep where you have
[00:32:36] Frankie Barnet: Right.
[00:32:37] Dustin Serviss: Okay. This creep of your your expense. And you're just like, what you justify. You know, right now, you might justify going to Canadian Tire or or some department store and spending eighty dollars, and you don't even But
[00:32:49] Frankie Barnet: you know what? This came up before when you were describing... You're you're describing you and the fighter jet saying, like, how do I deserve this? It's literally us every time we order takeout. We're like Right. We don't deserve this. If we order this, like, sixty dollar takeout meal, we're never gonna be able to afford to have kids. Like, this is the
[00:33:09] Dustin Serviss: end of life. So, yeah, you definitely have, belief gristle, in some way. But I talked about it before and maybe we've talked about it in past interviews for articles, but the BAM or your bare ass minimum expenses, a lot of people don't ever figure that out. Not a lot of women want a budget. No one wants to be told how much they can spend, which is fine. But it's super important to be aware of like right now, how much comes in and how much goes out. And so if you do that, that's a pretty simple exercise. You can look back. My wife and I pull out three months of visa statements, and we lay them out the table, and we just point.
[00:33:54] Dustin Serviss: And it's a safe environment. You're not allowed to get mad at each other, but it's like, okay, well, that's where the money goes. Is that in line with my values and my goals?
[00:34:04] Frankie Barnet: Uh-huh.
[00:34:05] Dustin Serviss: You know, I explained, you know, when we moved to this property, I had to buy a lot of tools, hand tools, saws, different things. That was not the kind of money that you normally would spend in a year. So all of a sudden, it's like, oh, God, like, you spend another eight eighty dollars at whatever for this. But you know, we have work to do here and the work that's being done ups the value of the property. Plus, from twenty ten, every year I wrote own an acreage. So that is a goal that I know wasn't a flash in the pan. It was something that I just like. I grew up on one as a kid and it was like, that's how I'd love to raise my children.
[00:34:44] Dustin Serviss: So I think, you know, if as long as, you know, if the eating takeout is less stress for you to cook the meal or him.
[00:34:54] Frankie Barnet: Right.
[00:34:55] Dustin Serviss: And it's a goal that you guys, you know, lead busy Easterner type lifestyles, then having that time together is gonna keep your marriage good and you can find that justification, then it... That's a very cheap meal. Right. You know? So it's just looking at it and going, okay. Like, is is the spending in line with our goals? And and then you can just move on from it.
[00:35:23] Frankie Barnet: Exactly. Okay.
[00:35:26] Dustin Serviss: And, you know, again, on that topic, one of the things I think that's that's... That you might not even realize is that your parents probably ingrained in you at some point. It's like you need a certain amount of money at a certain age. And so you better sacrifice a lot to this and you get it and then you feel secure. If you look at like, I know you guys are both like kinda healthy kind of people and and conscious of what you eat. You might say, well, maybe I'm not gonna retire at sixty five. Maybe I'll retire at seventy. Mhmm. So if... You know, before... You know, every investment adviser is gonna tell you need to start investing sooner
[00:36:04] Dustin Serviss: because they want the fees. But the reality is if you didn't start till you're forty five, yeah, you could have grown it and compounded it longer. And and, yes, the math would show you that you should have started investing at thirty. But you know what? If you work till seventy or to say, hey, you know, we're gonna buy healthier food. We're gonna... You know, I I would say in my own thing, my gym membership is important to me. My gym membership is not a ten dollar a month place that's in a hole in a mall. It's a place that I, like, consciously think that I hope that I'm I'm keeping my body right so that my
[00:36:43] Dustin Serviss: insurance premiums are cheaper when I'm older or I'm not needing treatment like that. Who knows? You you never know. But that's just a different way of of sort of viewing spending.
[00:36:55] Frankie Barnet: Right. Does that
[00:36:56] Dustin Serviss: kinda help?
[00:36:57] Frankie Barnet: Yeah. No. I mean, I don't... I know this is, like, such a ridiculous question, but I have it in my head and I wanna ask you. Like, it's like, so is there an exact amount of money that you need to have to never be stressed about money again?
[00:37:15] Dustin Serviss: That's a that's a big one. So in very, very simple terms, once you know your BAM, you know how much you spend.
[00:37:26] Frankie Barnet: Right.
[00:37:26] Dustin Serviss: So if you know how much you spend, let's say you spend forty thousand a year. Okay? So... And who who knows if you can live on forty? But say that you can't. So forty thousand in your bank account every month, then you say, yeah. You know, like, three thousand five hundred a month is what what I spent. If you have a million dollars in some sort of investment that gets four percent average return, nevermind tax to make it complex, but a million dollars times four percent is forty thousand. So if you had a million dollars invested and got four percent and say you didn't have to pay tax, that would be your forty thousand to spend.
[00:38:07] Dustin Serviss: So for some people, that million dollars stays invested. For the rest of time, they take forty thousand and the million stays intact.
[00:38:15] Frankie Barnet: Mhmm.
[00:38:17] Dustin Serviss: If you said, well, I need sixty thousand and you're only getting a four percent return, you're gonna start to erode the million dollars. But that million dollars might erode down to zero when you're like eighty five. And so you go, okay. Like that's a very rough calculation. For other people, they'll use leverage and they have more comfort in getting a big loan and buying, say, a fourplex. And so you get a big loan. If the numbers work, like right now real estate's so expensive, it's hard to make it really cash flow a lot. But say you get a loan, you collect rent from your four renters, and
[00:39:00] Dustin Serviss: you take whatever's extra above your mortgage payment and taxes and whatever else. And so some people will say, well, that's that's enough. So it's it's not the market you have to always use. But in real simple terms, everyone is so different for their spending. And more than ever before, I see younger generations holding in the back of their head what their parents have. And I don't love that planning strategy, but it's starting... Like, I've seen it more in the last six months than I have in my whole seventeen years career, where parents are actually cutting one hundred grand checks, two hundred grand, fifty grand, and just
[00:39:44] Dustin Serviss: saying, Hey, kid, do something responsible with this. If you have a mortgage, pay it down. If you want to go back to school, go back to school and take the next year off. And so that's a new thing. Because before I would beat people up and say like, You can't rely on your parents. It's not responsible. But if I'm able to get to the parents and say, Hey, listen, like I've built your plan, the likelihood of you running out of money in these three scenarios, ugly, bad, good, is very low. You've got real estate, you've got stocks, you've got cash in the bank, you've got Bitcoin, you've got a business.
[00:40:26] Dustin Serviss: For all of that to go to zero, the whole world is going to be in we're all gonna... It's gonna be an even playing field for everybody. You're not gonna be, you know, the odd one out. So if that's the case, we could say, well, instead of like you giving money to your kids when you're eighty nine and your kids are sixty, why not give it to them now when they're forty when they really could... You know, that could materially change their life if all of a sudden you have a mortgage and then you don't. Mhmm. So that... Like, that planning is is very important. And and it...
[00:41:00] Dustin Serviss: Many families won't engage in that conversation with me or a collaborative between all the generations, but some will. And the ones that will, I believe, pay less tax in the end. They don't screw up their kids because they always get told like, Oh, I don't wanna fuck up my kids. If I give them money, they're gonna be entitled little bastards. Well, that... When they're forty and you already know that they've already established a life and, you know, they were... Then that might be some old belief, Crystal, too that can be let go of.
[00:41:31] Frankie Barnet: I mean, I... I'm curious when you say that's something some people don't like talking about with you. Like, is that something you encounter a lot that, like, fam... Like, family stuff is off limits? People aren't comfortable
[00:41:46] Dustin Serviss: The classic one is, like, the will. You know? Yeah. We're just going through some family stuff right now, and, some stuff's in place and some stuff's not. The stuff that's not in place is quite messy. And all of a sudden, people who are totally amicable are not. Preston Pysh (3one thirty three): Right.
[00:42:05] Frankie Barnet: Bill Nygren
[00:42:05] Dustin Serviss: (3one thirty four): And you're talking dollars. So again, there's a guy that I've had in the podcast before. He's a great... He's my book mentor, Tom Deans, Doctor. Tom Deans. He wrote a book called Every Family's Business. And he gave a presentation to eighty business owner families that I have. And he brought out his actual will out of his briefcase, ink signature on it. And he said, This is actually my will. And a lot of people were like, Oh, where's he going with us? He said, How many of you carry your real will in your briefcase? And it was a lot of father son, mother daughter, family businesses.
[00:42:47] Dustin Serviss: And so, you know, you know, he's like, if they are brave enough, who would actually show their, you know, children their will? It's like, nobody puts up their hands. Whether they're all asleep and wasn't listening, I don't know. But the point he was making is that people generations above us, the will was a big secret.
[00:43:04] Frankie Barnet: Right.
[00:43:05] Dustin Serviss: And I don't wanna tell them what they're getting because that'd be bad. That'll change the dynamic. But
[00:43:10] Frankie Barnet: Or or they'll murder me.
[00:43:12] Dustin Serviss: Well... Yeah. Or that... You know, it's like, if that's not the case, then obviously, it would screw up the dynamic if we showed them. But what I see is quite the opposite. And I think it's all about case by case basis. If your kids are seventeen, then maybe you don't tell them. If they're twenty nine, they're a lawyer or they're a professional or they're a marketer or they're like somebody that has actually been to school incompetent, then you can share them. And what I often encourage clients to do is say, Hey, why don't you take... Their kids are twenty eight, twenty nine. They can't buy a house.
[00:43:53] Dustin Serviss: Especially in Kelowna, it's like your average house price is a million. Where does a twenty eight year old have four hundred thousand to put down? And they've been working at an eighty grand a year job. It just doesn't happen. So why not help your child buy a duplex? So maybe you could buy a duplex for... Maybe in it's a not as chic part of town, but buy a duplex for a million or at one point two. Make one side rent it out, and help put the down payment down for your adult child on the other side. And then, you know, you've got some responsibility, and maybe at some point, you forgive the money you gave them for the down payment and say,
[00:44:34] Dustin Serviss: don't worry about it. Mhmm. But you're teaching them, you know, how to how to manage assets. And that's that's not being taught right now. And with the... With a... With an advisor or with a professional, and some openness, you know, you need to tell someone or a professional, like, my net worth is fourteen million. And that advisor goes, well, you spend twenty grand a month, like, you're not gonna run out of money Mhmm. Even at a zero percent return. So why don't we be a little more strategic? You could use a little more real estate in your overall portfolio. Permanent life insurance, there's a strategy where parent
[00:45:12] Dustin Serviss: can take out a policy or grandparent can take out a policy on a child. Parent who has lots of money puts a lot of money into the life insurance policy. It builds up equity. And when the the parent or grandparent dies, the ownership of the policy transfers to the child who the policy's on
[00:45:38] Frankie Barnet: Mhmm.
[00:45:38] Dustin Serviss: Tax free. So when you're like... It's called the cascading strategy where you cascade the wealth down with no tax. And, again, that that... You can't pass real estate or stocks on hand to hand to a child without tax on the adult... The the parent's estate. So a lot... Like, a lot of wealthy families will say, we're wealthy. Why do we need life insurance? You don't need life insurance. You use life insurance or you want it as a strategy. It's just a numbers in and out and a tax thing. So that's a good... You kind of got into a good point there that I haven't talked about in a while. Okay. I think we're good.
[00:46:28] Frankie Barnet: You're okay, cool.
[00:46:29] Dustin Serviss: Yeah, thank you very much for being on the show, Frankie. And I feel like I was on your show. So I think we should do this again. Yeah. I think I think we, we'll come up with a cool name. And for anyone listening, we still have six more episodes, on various topics. And, and I look forward to... For you guys to get to know Frankie as well. Thank you.
[00:46:54] Frankie Barnet: --.
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