Chasing Financial Freedom

Flip the Script: Financial "Recipes" That Can Free Up to $13K Monthly With Gordon Stein

June 08, 2022 Ryan DeMent Season 4 Episode 11
Chasing Financial Freedom
Flip the Script: Financial "Recipes" That Can Free Up to $13K Monthly With Gordon Stein
Show Notes Transcript

Special Guest: Gordon Stein

You want to achieve Financial Freedom, but don't know where to start.

Achieving Financial Freedom feels impossible for most people. They think that they have to give up the things they love, or that budgeting is the key to success.

On this episode of Chasing Financial Freedom Podcast, Gordon Stein will show you how to free up hundreds or even thousands of dollars each month with minimal effort and minimal sacrifice. You can keep enjoying the things you love without having to budget or give them up. That extra money can go towards paying down debt or increasing your monthly investment contributions for accelerated wealth building and Financial Freedom.

Gordon's New Book: CashFlow Cookbook

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Gordon on Chasing Financial Freedom


[00:00:00] Ryan: Hey guys, Ryan DeMent from Chasing Financial Freedom Podcast. I hope you guys are having a great day today. I have a special guest on Gordon Stein, Gordon. Welcome to the show. 

[00:00:11] Gordon: It's good to be here, Ryan. Thanks so much. 

[00:00:14] Ryan: You are welcome. So we've had some prior conversations about your book and some of the things that you're doing in the financial space.

[00:00:21] Ryan: And I'm very intrigued because a lot of our listeners are unfortunately struggling with some finances in their lives and I wanted to bring you on. So I'm lucky and thankful that you're on. Could you give the listeners a little bit of a background of who you are before we jump into that?

[00:00:37] Gordon: Yeah, sure. Brian, I spent about 35 years in the high tech industry, sales marketing, and operations executive, and did all those kinds of things. And often I had large teams reporting to me and often they were quite a bit younger and probably the most common conversation they wanted to get into is, Hey, how do you build wealth?

[00:00:55] Gordon: How do you not live paycheck to paycheck? How do I get ahead financially? How [00:01:00] do I not worry about my finances? So I had that kind of brewing in my head for quite a while. And then on a parallel track to that, I discovered this little financial hack of how to get car washes for free. That's a big deal, it saved me about $25 a month.

[00:01:15] Gordon: I just thought I was curious, cuz it was no more difficult than, the regular way of buying gas and getting car washes. And then not long after that, I discovered this way to dramatically slash the cost of my home alarm monitor. I thought this is interesting. Here's $50 a month, not a lot of money again, but minimal effort, minimal sacrifice.

[00:01:34] Gordon: And it got me curious. So the next two years I'd built out this list of these ideas and by the time it was all done, it was $13,000 of monthly savings ideas, minimal effort. Minimal sacrifice. There's no putting tin foil in your windows. There's no driving to four grocery stores to save on this and that there's no key coupon putting it's things that you or I would do, Ryan.

[00:01:55] Gordon: And they're also simple. And the savings are so big. People could take that money, [00:02:00] pay down their debt or invest, and that's how cash flow cookbook came to be. 

[00:02:05] Ryan: That is great. I gotta ask, let's talk about the car wash. Cause I worked as in a car wash for many years as a teenager. I wanna hear the tack.

[00:02:13] Ryan: That's an interesting hack. 

[00:02:15] Gordon: And some of these work in different countries, so my native C's actually Canada. I live in Cleveland, Ohio now, but when I was in Canada one of the petroleum resellers there. Had a thing called the speed pass and it was a little donga that you put in your key chain, when you wanna pay for your gas, you just touch it to the pump, but it was connected to your credit card and connected to their point.

[00:02:35] Gordon: And originally somebody had told me about the idea of, this so extra card and you track your points on the website and you fill in a form. I just thought I'm not doing all that for $25, but then I got outta the speed pass. And I thought, this is just so slick, cuz it's easier to pay for your gas, touching the little thing, the little Don go to the pump than it is to take out your card in January and with your gloves off and all that sort of thing.

[00:02:57] Gordon: So I thought this was just so cool. So [00:03:00] that one was just a gas retailer hack. It works well in Canada, doesn't really work as well. From what I can see in the us, the points programs, aren't enough to give you, enough car washes, but there's lots and lots more ideas that work great in the us.

[00:03:14] Ryan: It's amazing. You say points and people get a credit card just for the points and they end up, I read an article maybe last month or the month before in the wall street journal. Somewhere in the realm of almost a billion miles or billion points are wasted every year because people did not spend their points from their credit cards.

[00:03:32] Ryan: And I'm thinking you went out and spend all that money to get those points, but then you didn't use them. And then now you're carrying a balance on your credit card. 

[00:03:39] Gordon: People leave an astonishing number of vacation days behind every year in their companies. And that one will . Yes. I pride myself on having never missed a vacation.

[00:03:49] Ryan: I gotta ask. Is there any stats on that? How many people leave vacation days on the table? Because I've heard some crazy numbers, but I'd be curious. 

[00:03:58] Gordon: It's geez. I just put it in the new edition [00:04:00] of the book. I don't have it at my fingertips, but it's huge. It's massive. 

[00:04:06] Ryan: It's crazy. Anyhow, let's I could go down a rabbit hole with some of this stuff, and this is why I'm intrigued by what you're doing.

[00:04:12] Ryan: So why don't talk about a little bit about your history in finance and then. Let's start talking about some hacks and people can start using, and maybe a little bit of a teaser on the book of things that we can do on a daily basis that can help us save money without, breaking our arm or breaking our neck to get it done.

[00:04:29] Ryan: Yeah. 

[00:04:29] Gordon: Great. So maybe we can just organize our thinking, the book cashflow cookbook, it's set up in six sections and it goes by major spending categories. So housing, transportation. Food and drink household lifestyle and financial. And they're interesting cuz they're so dynamic. I spent two years researching all the ideas for the book and the book, the original book came out in 2017 and as I'm rewriting it now for the us additional deal, the 1st of June 22 and there's ones that I missed [00:05:00] entirely.

[00:05:00] Gordon: And in fact, one of the most lucrative ones of all was one that. Just came into now. So as I came into the us what, I didn't realize your credit rating doesn't get carried across the country. So I had no credit rating. I couldn't get a credit card for $300. I'd have $300 on deposit at the bank. what was interesting about it?

[00:05:19] Gordon: I thought, are you kidding me? It was just crazy to me, but. What was interesting about is it got me learning about credit scores and what I didn't realize is the incredible impact they have on all kinds of areas. I think most people miss it. So even people who, have some money, they've got a great, paycheck or a small business coming in.

[00:05:35] Gordon: They've got earnings coming from their spouse. They may or may not fuss over what is my credit rating. What numbers it out right now, but the impacts are remarkable. The swing and total interest cost on a, of a loan, depending on your credit rating could swing about 70%. So you could have two identical people, identical, everything.

[00:05:54] Gordon: They buy the identical pickup truck or whatever it is. One's paying 70% more interest than the other one, [00:06:00] cuz he doesn't have a great credit. And similarly your car insurance goes up dramatically. It might go up about 30 or 40% more. And your house insurance was up 30 or 40% more. So this hidden thing called the credit rating.

[00:06:13] Gordon: Most of us don't even give it any thought whatsoever. It could be swinging your monthly finances easily by a thousand dollars or more getting wasted, cuz you haven't been dialed into your credit rating. Easy thing to monitor and pretty easy to fix. And 

[00:06:27] Ryan: It's astounding how many people don't understand the credit system.

[00:06:31] Ryan: And unfortunately, some people and a lot of our listeners do this. They live in this world of a secondary credit market to where here in the states, we call it, buy here, pay here, or sled lots, where you go buy a car there. And they charge you almost usually rates. Yes. And like you said, 70% more, or they go to payday loans or they're going to places where they're comfortable in obtaining credit.

[00:06:56] Ryan: But when they try to come into a banking environment, [00:07:00] as I call bankable, they cannot do that. And. They continue this process over and over again, and they don't get outta that cycle. So how can some of those hacks and some of the things that you're talking about in your book start helping our listeners be able to get out of that situation that they're currently in.

[00:07:18] Gordon: That's a great question. People often say what's the first step. What do you do? And a lot of personal finance writers will say, establish emergency fund or start a budget or whatever, that's not exciting. And I don't think it motivates people to do those things. In fact, I don't know anyone who enjoys budgeting.

[00:07:32] Gordon: It's a good way to, oh, no one. I think it's I think the place to start is with a bill. So most of us. 10 or 12, regular recurring monthly bills that we pay the house insurance, car, insurance, life insurances, property taxes, cell phone bills, all this stuff. Every single one of those can be lowered.

[00:07:50] Gordon: And there's no screaming. There's no yelling. There's no, fancy trickier or anything else. You can pretty much pick one and going lower it. So in my book, I go through in [00:08:00] detail, cashflow cookbook goes through 60 different. Kinds of these financial recipes or hacks. So a real simple example take anyone at all, take car insurance.

[00:08:10] Gordon: So you can go to an independent insurance broker that carries lots of different car insurance companies. And he'll do the comparison for you and a way you go. My bet is my strong bets are gonna save some money. You can also use some of these online comparison tools. There's all kinds of them out there.

[00:08:27] Gordon: And I did the exercise myself with my data. The swing was $319 from the lowest monthly, from the lowest monthly premium to the highest monthly premium. Wow. It took away 10 minutes to enter my car and drive our data. Boom. There it is. So there's car insurance. You can do the same thing on your house insurance, your cell phone bills, cashflow cookbook allowed exactly how to do each ones of these things.

[00:08:51] Gordon: And I would say virtually everyone, if they put in even an hour, they're gonna find 1, 2, 3 or more hundred dollars a month and it keeps on. [00:09:00] So there is, I think, a place to start, you can free up that cash. What to do with the cash depends on your situation. If you're up to hearing credit card debt, great.

[00:09:08] Gordon: Use the incremental cash to pay that debt down. And you get to the point where you get over this hump and now the money starts working for you. Rather when you're back in the kind of place you're talking about, that money is pulling you backwards. So I think everybody can get that turned around and move to a better place.

[00:09:26] Ryan: So starting with bills that your reoccurring bills is that kind, I'm not saying it's universal, cuz I'm not trying to put everybody into the same place from your book. Is that typically where most people start or from your experience of looking at these bills and saying, okay, what can I do to trim this?

[00:09:43] Ryan: Trim that cost wherever you wanna say that. But then the piece there is, how does that translate to that? Person's bottom line, because some people like me, I like instant gratification. So if I had credit card debt I do come, I do agree with some of the things that Dave Ramsey does. I [00:10:00] pay off the smallest balance first and work my way forward.

[00:10:02] Ryan: I know I might pay some more interest, but that's just me instant gratification. Is that kind of an approach, what you would take with bills or how do you, let's say I've got a gas bill, electric bill. What else can you have a cable bill or internet bill? How do you look at those and say, okay, I take one over the other.

[00:10:19] Ryan: Is there any type of rhyme or reason? 

[00:10:22] Gordon: I don't think there needs to be. I think you can pick anyone at all. I think the car insurance and house insurance one is an interesting one. It's an easy one to start, cuz there's so many comparison engines out there. So if you can just Google it, but I'll have some of those set up on the ingredients section of cash flow, cookbook.com, but you can pretty much pick one and I'll guarantee you put a little bit of FOD and a little bit of an.

[00:10:43] Gordon: Might take you 10 or 15 minutes, or, if it's about a cell phone bill, you can use some of these cell phone bill comparison engines, and then, yeah, you're gonna have to call your cell phone company. A lot of people say, oh, I don't wanna do that. That's gonna take an hour. The average American spends three hours a day watching TV.

[00:10:58] Gordon: If you could set the [00:11:00] remote down for one week and go after all of these bills, that gives you 20 hours on average. And in 20 hours, you can go through all of your bills and I'll bet you'll find a hundred dollars, $200 a month in pretty much all of them. And that's 

[00:11:15] Ryan: a great, or even put down your cell phone.

[00:11:18] Ryan: There's the other time saver 

[00:11:20] Gordon: your cell phone and lay down your mouse as well. Yes. And and then you go through these things and, you work through them one by one. And the key thing is right away, you take that money. And you do something productive with it, get it out of your checking account, increase your car loan payment, increase your mortgage payment.

[00:11:38] Gordon: Or if you got credit card debt, that's a great place to start. Get the stuff paid down, and get to the point where you're paying it off every month in full. And then once you get to that point where the debt's under control, now you want to give that next chunk of money to your financial advisor.

[00:11:51] Gordon: For your 401k or whatever is the best thing for you and get that part growing and then the money's working for you. So that's the path. 

[00:11:58] Ryan: Does your book talk about [00:12:00] once you start getting that money saved in those let's call it utility bills or your insurance bills. How do you prioritize taking that savings or that money and put it towards.

[00:12:11] Ryan: Or being able to get yourself in a better financial situation. 

[00:12:14] Gordon: Yeah. It would depend a bit on the individual situation, right? It's a great question. So for people with credit card debt, typically at 20 22, 20 4%, I don't know if any investment, I don't know if anything they could do with their money.

[00:12:27] Gordon: That's gonna be better for them than paying that off. So even if you have, know, if you had, if you're carrying a $10,000 balance, which is easy to do, it might be $3,000. Or so on three different cards, it's doesn't look that bad if you're carrying $10,000, at 22%, that's $2,200 a year in interest, like literally down the drain.

[00:12:47] Gordon: So that's usually the biggest priority. If you're in that situation, it can get a little bit more complicated if you've got lower interest rate debt versus, investing something in the stock market. And that's a place where I might go to a financial advisor or an account. For [00:13:00] specific situation, but any use of it, whether it's gonna go into your investments or paying down debt is going to be better than wasting it and spending too much on all of these bills, not much is a for sure.

[00:13:13] Ryan: So we've started cutting back on our bills and saving on some of our daily or monthly bills. Where do we start layering ourselves in the next step, in the actual book and understanding how can we continue to save more money and find wins for us to get us healthy on the financial side and get outta 

[00:13:31] Gordon: debt.

[00:13:31] Gordon: Yeah, that's great. To recap, I call it broil a bill, cuz it's the cash flow cookbook. There's lots of cooking puns in there. We're gonna grind the bill down. We're gonna apply it to something productive and get it out of our hands. So it's not available sloshing around in the checkbook, in, in our checking account.

[00:13:45] Gordon: Once you do that, then there's other things that we can look at that aren't these sort of monthly recurring things. When you think about, gas bill cell phone bill, give you a quick example. So I take some prescription pills cholesterol lowering drugs, probably the most popular drug in [00:14:00] America.

[00:14:00] Gordon: And I went into the drug store right by the doctor's office. And, the pills are $107 a month. Wow. For the rest of my life, $107. Isn't a huge sum of money, but that's a big deal if you're gonna be paying that every month for the rest of your life. So I said to the pharmacist, these are a little expensive.

[00:14:16] Gordon: And she said, oh why don't you get our drug card? Turns out the drug card, $20 a year, the pills dropped $62. I thought, wow, it's a bit of a drop. And then I was bragging about this brilliance of the drug card to my brother-in-law over dinner one night. He said no. He says you wanna go with one of these online pharmacies?

[00:14:34] Gordon: So I checked out the one he recommended same pills, $13 a month. So I did a little bit more digging, different online pharmacy, and that's where I buy them. Now, $7 a month delivered to my house. I don't even drive. I don't use the gas. I don't even drive to. Drugstore. So there's another example. This stuff is absolutely everywhere.

[00:14:53] Gordon: So once you get that core block of bills, the one that you see probably on preauthorized checking every month, then what you'll [00:15:00] find in the book is every other thing that you buy, there's just a smarter slicker way of doing it. And if you use that, the prescription drug example, it's actually easier.

[00:15:09] Gordon: I don't have to drive to the drug. They come right to my house, how they can send them, you think the postage would be $7 a month just to get them here, but I'm not arguing with it. So there's a big difference right there. 

[00:15:19] Ryan: I did. I did see this and I can't remember the name of it. I saw an article last week or the week before mark Cuban has an online pharmacy that he started and he basically cut out the middleman.

[00:15:29] Ryan: And I don't know if that's the same one you're talking about or not, but I went to the website and I just looked at some basic pills that most people take. And I think it was in the same realm of cholesterol or I don't know, diabetes, medicine, whatever. And it was amazing how affordable it was for individuals, but that kind of circles me back to what I wanted to say earlier.

[00:15:51] Ryan: All these things that you're talking about, it does take some effort and time and putting that cell phone down or turning the television off. [00:16:00] Anything in the book or anything that you can suggest about having people, putting that extra time in or putting the time in, if they truly want to be out of debt or they want to get themselves in a better financial situation to put the effort in 

[00:16:14] Gordon: it.

[00:16:14] Gordon: It's a great question. So I think there's two answers to it. First of all I think it, gamification, when you talk about that, immediate gratification, When you follow one of these steps and you drop your car insurance bill, let's say by a hundred dollars, that's a big deal. You look at that and you say, whoa, I did that.

[00:16:29] Gordon: That's gonna motivate people to go after the next one after the next one. The other thing that's interesting is in cash flow cookbook with each of these financial recipes, we talk about an example for a, what I call a Hardy serving and a light serving. So a Hardy serving, let's see, you've got a family of five.

[00:16:45] Gordon: Maybe they got. Home and a cottage and two vehicles, cell phones, what have you, teenagers? So their bills are gonna be much higher than the single person. So we have a light serving. So then we do a work example in each of them. And then what's really interesting is we show those savings and what it's worth to [00:17:00] you, if you a month, and then what's worth to you invested a 7% for 10 years, 20 years and 30 years.

[00:17:06] Gordon: And that's where you start to realize how big this thing is. So something that might seem relatively. Innocuous, if it's over let's say 20 years, the number's 573 times the monthly amount. So if you could save a hundred dollars a month invested at 7% for 20 years, you're gonna have $57,300. So these numbers jerk quickly.

[00:17:33] Gordon: Yeah, really does. And this is this whole notion. Exponential growth, Einstein called it the eighth miracle of the world. So that's where it really gets exciting. And when you think about your retirement, you make a few of these moves, minimal effort, minimal sacrifice. If I can lower my gas bill or my electricity bill or my current bill, I haven't changed my lifestyle, not one bit.

[00:17:55] Gordon: And yet now I'm really starting to build a wealth. And that's the whole idea behind cashflow cookbook. [00:18:00]

[00:18:01] Ryan: That's great. And you outline it so people can visually see it and understand that there's an end result there for them as long as they follow through. And I think that's the biggest piece is executing following through and making sure that you get yourself to the finish line and you're outlining all those things in all in one piece.

[00:18:18] Ryan: So I'm motivated. I'm ready to sign up. great. So we've got our bills. We're starting to pay down our. Where do we go next? 

[00:18:29] Gordon: Pay down your debt or increase your investment. I think the next thing to do is to chart out what I call your wealth and wealth to me is just the difference of what you own minus what you owe.

[00:18:40] Gordon: So you can do it on the back of a cocktail nap and you can make an Excel spreadsheet. There's lots of apps. That'll do this sort of thing. And really all you're gonna do is you're gonna list out. Your home, your vehicles, anything that actually is worth real money. You have a hard time selling your old furniture, so I wouldn't, or your clothing, whatever it doesn't count.

[00:18:58] Gordon: How is your [00:19:00] 401k balance, your cars, et cetera, et cetera. What's all that stuff worth right now. That's the top part. You add that up and that's everything that you own. And then below that you put everything that you owe. Here's I'm outta my mortgage, my credit cards, my home equity line of credit, whatever.

[00:19:14] Gordon: And the total of what I owe. And you subtract the two and that's your wealth. Some people call it net worth. I don't like that because hopefully our worth is more than just our money. But if you do that and you say, Hey, where am I here right now? We're recording this late April, where do I sit right now in April?

[00:19:30] Gordon: And I think it's a great idea for people to do that every month for a year. And what they're gonna see is you forces you to go. You know what happened to our credit cards? If they go up or down since last time I did it or our car loan's gone down, I dunno, but our car's depreciated. Oh, but housing's gone up a little bit and so on.

[00:19:46] Gordon: So you can start to see where this thing's going, because if you wanna get wealthy, you have to track your wealth. If I wanna lose weight, I gotta see how much I weigh every day. So it's exactly the same principle. And people start to take a look at now, when you do that, you've got a [00:20:00] couple things happening mentally.

[00:20:02] Gordon: You're looking at every bill very differently, cuz you're saying, hang on. That's not a given up. My car insurance is this much. Or my cell phones that much, all of these things could be changed down. And the other thing you're thinking about is, Hey, what's happening with my wealth or our wealth. If you're part of a.

[00:20:19] Gordon: And when you look at the number, every decision changes. So you want to have a new car as a great example. So if you just think about a monthly budget, you're gonna say to the car salesman, oh, my monthly budget is $550. So that's great. He's gonna put you in a $96,000 vehicle. Yep. With a loan period of, Nine years long.

[00:20:39] Gordon: And so it'll fit your budget, but it's not doing great things. Wealth wise. Cause that insur, that, that interest is really pulling you backwards. So you wanna think about the wealth and you wanna make your decisions on what's it gonna do to your wealth? 

[00:20:51] Ryan: Wealth is a huge deal, at least for, everywhere.

[00:20:54] Ryan: Every everyone wants to have money and it's all about money. Again, I go back to the I have to go backwards. [00:21:00] We tend to not wanna do the work for the things that we want. And wealth is not an easy thing to actually obtain, but what you're explaining and showing to us, if you're watching on video that it can be accomplished with time, effort and persistence.

[00:21:16] Ryan: But the other thing I like is the budgeting and looking or not budgeting, but looking at. Your wealth on a monthly basis to understand what you're doing. Because I think when you see your credit cards your lo auto loans or your mortgage or whatever the case. You're gonna actually see that you might have some spending in there that's unnecessary that you potentially could save it, which is not very hard to do.

[00:21:36] Ryan: Or maybe you're saying, Hey, I need to cut down on this credit card debt because it's just killing me and I could be using that money somewhere else because I found an opportunity to invest in whatever it is, but laying it out, showing them visually and giving 'em a roadmap is key. And I think could actually.

[00:21:54] Ryan: Help a lot of people overcome that. Lack of effort as all. All I gotta say is because if you don't want it, no one [00:22:00] else can do it for you. 

[00:22:01] Gordon: The nice thing is the effort's small and there's no part of the book where I'm saying, Hey, you've gotta give up this or give up that. I'm just saying, here's the numbers.

[00:22:09] Gordon: Here's a whole bunch of things that won't change your lifestyle at all. Now there's some in there that might change your lifestyle, but I show you, Hey, here's the numbers that are involved. It can be massive, I think that's the key part of it. The book starts off when we look over the shoulder of this couple and they, Eric and ke.

[00:22:25] Gordon: And they start making these financial discoveries and they go through all of these steps that we're talking about. And you're looking over their shoulder and they're doing well. They both have, good income coming in and all that, but they're not getting ahead. They're still living paycheck to paycheck.

[00:22:38] Gordon: They got a couple of kids and it's pretty typical kind of household. Then they make one move and they save on a bill and they make another move and then they get it invested and they pay off their credit cards, but they do it all without any effort, any sacrifice. So when the reader. Looks over their shoulder.

[00:22:52] Gordon: The conclusion is, Hey, I could do that. Hey, that doesn't look hard. Hey, why don't we do that? We can do that. But then what happens to Eric and Keisha as they [00:23:00] go through all of these steps and they're 30 years old, they free up a million and a half of wealth for their retirement. And wow, that makes you look at it and you go, wow, you're really cuz the power is right there and you are using the power of money for you instead of having it working against you.

[00:23:20] Gordon: Then we go that's for them. That's over 35 years. They're pardon me? They're 35 years old. And this goes up to when they're 65. Okay. To make the changes, they free up the cash, they get the money working for them. 

[00:23:31] Ryan: That's amazing. So were they skeptical at first with the whole process? Or how did they become part of the book and how did you how'd they get selected?

[00:23:40] Gordon: So they're not a real couple. They're a they're of a composium. So when I'm speaking all the time, so when I talk to audience members, I listen to the questions people have, people email me, I talk to people all the time, and this is a pretty typical scenario where they're. They're making ends meet, but they're not actually getting ahead.

[00:23:57] Gordon: So the whole idea is that you [00:24:00] watch them as a couple, make these discoveries. The discoveries are the main themes of the book, the kind of things we're talking about right now, Ryan. And so they start to see this thing happen. You're watch, we're watching over their shoulders saying, whoa, so that's the idea behind it.

[00:24:14] Ryan: I like it. I like it. So we're building wealth. We're keeping an eye on it. Where do we go next? Within the book and in the journey? 

[00:24:22] Gordon: I think that's really it. And then I think once you, you follow these kinds of steps, you're freeing up the wealth, you're starting to get a sense of what's happening. And then you're really just in, in maintenance mode, you're gonna carry on.

[00:24:33] Gordon: And then the question is, what do you wanna do with the incremental money? Some people say I don't want money. I don't care about fancy cars, but maybe they want to go build a school in Nigeria. Or maybe they wanna, leave the high paying job that they hate to go work in the family business, or maybe they want to get you off and do a sabbatical with their kids and do some traveling or they wanna retire early.

[00:24:53] Gordon: So everybody's goals are different, but to do that, you need some wealth and that gives you choices and opportunities. [00:25:00]

[00:25:00] Ryan: So on the wealth piece, once they start freeing up that capital and they start seeing that coming in, you talked about going to see a financial advisor or a CPA. Are there vehicles that you share or discuss in the book to maybe have people maybe they don't want to go to a financial advisor, maybe they wanna do some on their own.

[00:25:20] Ryan: Is that suggested or do you suggest working with a professional. 

[00:25:24] Gordon: I think, and I've looked at this for years. It's just my opinion. I think people are better off in general with a financial advisor. If you look at the stats, what you find out is that if you look at funds exchange, traded funds, mutual funds, the numbers tell us over and over again, that the people who invest in those funds, they earn less than the funds do.

[00:25:45] Gordon: Which doesn't make any sense. And the reason is that people will take a look at the current situations in the Ukraine as an example, and they say, Ooh, this is a scary international ban. I think I'm just gonna get out for a little while. I'm gonna outsmart the market. I'm gonna sit out till things get better.

[00:25:59] Gordon: And of course, what [00:26:00] happens is things eventually, always do get better. The market takes off and now they're gonna buy back in at a higher price. And I think if nothing else, the financial advisor has a hand in between you and making some of these kinds of decisions. So the numbers tell us that you're further ahead.

[00:26:16] Gordon: Some people will say hang on the financial advisor, he's making he, or she's making 1% or one and a quarter percent. And indeed that adds up to a lot of money over time. I think you have to compare it against you being on your own, making your own decisions, pulling out of the market. When it looks scary, trying to get back in again, you're probably gonna do more damage.

[00:26:36] Gordon: Then you get, as it gets more complex too. Maybe you have a 401k, you've got a Roth IRA and there's a company employee stock purchase plan. And yet you've got a mortgage debt and you've got car loans. And so now. What do you do? How do you allocate things? What's the right amount of bonds or equities or people are talking crypto.

[00:26:52] Gordon: And so the thing starts to get really complex really quickly. I think if you're a young person, you could just put your money into an [00:27:00] exchange, traded equity fund, as an example, some diversification. As you get older, I think it gets more complicated. You have more at stake. And I think that's where there's real value to a professional financial advisor.

[00:27:12] Ryan: Having a professional handle. It is gonna definitely help you cuz in the long run you wanna preserve that nest egg and be able to grow it. And as you said, getting older. We we tend to have different needs and we wanna make sure that we're not losing it. So I like that. The other thing that I wanted to ask about is, and I know we're jumping ahead a little bit and going back and forth cuz sure.

[00:27:32] Ryan: I don't have enough. I don't have coffee me today, so I need more. 

[00:27:34] Gordon: It's your show or you want, 

[00:27:36] Ryan: oh, I like to have fun with it. The, you already have the Canadian version of the book out it's been out since 2017, correct? Yes. Yeah. Okay. The new book for the United States is coming out when, 

[00:27:50] Gordon: 1st of June, 2022.

[00:27:53] Ryan: Okay. So this is early April and we've already talked about that. So that'll be great. My question to you is it the [00:28:00] same concept that you did in Canada? Just with a twist for the United States? 

[00:28:04] Gordon: The Canadian one through went through seven inter seven iterations, seven printings of the book.

[00:28:09] Gordon: I got new ideas. I modernized it. I added to it. Made it more and more powerful. The us one is pretty much a rewrite. I rewrote the entire front matter to do this sort of more of a story where we can watch over the shoulder this couple. So that's all brand new, the preface, the introduction. And what I now call part one, which is the banquet and the banquet in the sense that we're gonna see the whole thing.

[00:28:30] Gordon: We're gonna see the whole process and this couple's gonna show us and they're gonna discover things. So there's no tell we're just gonna watch and see if it fits for us. And my bet is, you're gonna say, wow, I love this then. Then it's a bit more like the original version, cuz then we cut people loose into all of these recipes.

[00:28:46] Gordon: So Eric and Keisha, they. Try a few things. They play with their car insurance. They do some things. They, have a nifty way of paying off their credit cards. Eric gets a raise and what's he gonna do with that? And so all of these things play. [00:29:00] But the reader may say, Hey, that's not applicable to me. I don't have a car or wait a minute.

[00:29:04] Gordon: I'm mired in debt. They didn't have a lot of debt and that's all great because that's why we're gonna kick into the recipes where we're gonna go through every aspect of your life and look for different ways of doing it. So those things are different. The other thing that's different is There's a number of things that are different between the two countries.

[00:29:20] Gordon: As one example in Canada, there's a thing called mortgage life insurance, which you really don't have here. When you get a mortgage in Canada, the banks will push and say, Hey, you wanna protect your love one, let's get life insurance on the mortgage. It's quite a bit more expensive than just getting term insurance.

[00:29:36] Gordon: And as you can imagine, as you pay off that mortgage, you have less and less protection. Cause the mortgage gets paid down. They just pay off the balance. A similar term life policy would keep you protected. So that is a nifty idea for Canadians, not really relevant here in the us, but in the us. Given our medical system here, there's considerable areas for savings there.

[00:29:56] Gordon: That's a really big deal. The prescription drugs is a really big deal here. So [00:30:00] that's that too is quite a bit different. And the whole credit rating thing. Is, I'd say equally important in both countries. I didn't realize that for the Canadian one. I'm gonna go back and add that now. So there's a lot of learnings as we went here, there's also a lot more I would say in general, there's more ways to save here.

[00:30:17] Gordon: There's bigger differences from the top price to the bottom price. I would also say in the us there's many more powerful comparison engines to look at cell phone plans and to, compare all of these kinds of things. I think it's a powerful book for Canada. I think it's even more powerful here in the us.

[00:30:33] Ryan: I'm looking forward to it, so I will definitely be somebody that will purchase it and read it. Great. And I'd love to have you come back on after all this goes live and really dig into the book a little bit more and understand what else we can talk about. Cause I know this is an overview conversation and help people understand, what you've written and how you're trying to help.

[00:30:52] Ryan: 'em. But I think there's more to be said in a little more of a deeper dive. Yeah. Love 

[00:30:57] Gordon: to do that. We can go into any of the [00:31:00] individual sections. And some of the things are a lot less obvious ones that you wouldn't think of, everybody's all about, oh, what about the latte? Is the latte too expensive, like coffee, whatever.

[00:31:08] Gordon: And there's certainly a story there, but there's a lot of other ones that are really interesting things like clothing. Where you can have an easy 75% savings without changing your wardrobe at all. So there's a lots more to talk about. I'd love to get into them with you. 

[00:31:21] Ryan: Awesome. I thank you for coming on today, but before we do that, I think we need to understand since we're recording this early.

[00:31:29] Ryan: where would people buy the book once it's launched? 

[00:31:33] Gordon: So a great place to start is on cashflow cookbook.com. I've got about 60 blog posts up there with all kinds of ideas. Most of 'em aren't even in the book and that's all free. People can get started there. Lots of interesting content on cashflow, cookbook.com.

[00:31:46] Gordon: If they want to get the actual book eventually it's gonna be on the site, but to start, you can certainly get it on Amazon. Canadian edition is up right now. By the time this is released, Ryan, they'll be able to get the us edition on amazon.com or Amazon [00:32:00] anywhere in the world. It's getting released. And the book will be up right there at Kindle edition.

[00:32:04] Gordon: So you can read it on your laptop or your iPad or whatever. And of course, a hard copy paper back. 

[00:32:10] Ryan: That'll be great. I'm looking forward to it, Gordon. I thank you for coming on today. It's been a pleasure and I'm, I will sure will talk in the future because I'd love to have you back on and discuss in more detail of the book, cuz I'm excited about it.

[00:32:23] Gordon: Oh, fabulous. Love to come back as well. And thank you so much. You got a fabulous podcast. 

[00:32:27] Ryan: Thank you, sir. Have a good one and I'll talk 

[00:32:29] Gordon: to you soon. All right. You bet. Thanks. Bye. Bye.