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The Alternatives Mason: Building Alts Knowledge Brick by Brick | Episode 32| Gen X, Money & Harmony: A Wealth of Knowledge with Dr. Preston Cherry
15 Plays6 days ago
Join host Brittany Mason as she sits down with renowned wealth advisor and financial therapist, Dr. Preston D. Cherry, author of "Wealth in the Key of Life." Join us as we delve into the concept of financial harmony and discover how Generation X can navigate challenges while aligning their wealth with their life's purpose.
In this episode, Dr. Cherry, a proud member of Generation X, discusses the unique traits and hurdles faced by his generation, often dubbed the "forgotten generation." From growing up as latchkey kids to fostering resilience and skepticism, learn how these experiences influence their financial behaviors and retirement preparation.
Inspired by the harmonies of Stevie Wonder, Dr. Cherry advocates for a holistic view of wealth, emphasizing that money should be seen as a partner in life. The conversation also touches on the power of change. Dr. Cherry shares personal stories of transformation and encourages listeners that it’s never too late to rewrite their financial narrative.
Whether you identify as Gen X or belong to another generation, Dr. Cherry’s insights will inspire you to integrate your financial life with overall well-being.
Key Takeaways:
- Embrace resilience and tailor financial decisions to personal goals.
- View money as an ally in achieving a fulfilling life.
- Understand that life’s journey is non-linear; change is always possible.
- Explore private investments and alternative opportunities to diversify and grow your financial portfolio.
Don’t forget to subscribe for more thought-provoking episodes from "The Alternative Mason"!
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Transcript
Gen X's Resilience and Independence
00:00:00
Speaker
You got to go home when the street lights start coming on, when it's at desk, you know, that's your, that's your clock. Everybody, everybody that's from Gen X knows the rules. So what was understood doesn't have to be explained. So you had the latch key and you came home and you had this sense of resilience.
00:00:17
Speaker
I say this word and and it means a lot because now you carry that forward. to now, Brittany. And it's going to take a lot of resilience to really get through to retirement preparedness, through and to retirement preparedness right now, because Gen X is a little in trouble, even for high income folks who are serving concurrent, even for high income folks, they have they're worried about it. i mean, because they're they're thriving right now with their high incomes and they're saying, well, how can we
00:00:50
Speaker
you carry this lifestyle and all these responsibilities that we have right now into fund those and retirement.
Introduction to Dr. Preston D. Cherry
00:01:05
Speaker
Hello everyone. It Brittany Mason back to you with another episode of the alternative Mason. I'm very excited to have This guest on today, we have the Dr. Preston D. Cherry, and he is a wealth advisor, financial therapist, and author of Wealth in the Key of Life.
00:01:24
Speaker
He is a founder and CEO of Concurrent Wealth Management and Director of Financial Planning Program at UW-Green Bay. Dr. Cherry helps Gen X professionals align their wealth with their life through his philosophy of financial harmony. named a top 10 Investopedia Financial Advisor, recipient of the FPA Heart of Financial Planning Award, and Texas Tech Distinguished Aluminist, His insights appear in the New York Times, Forbes, Yahoo Finance, CNBC, and NASDAQ. He also publishes research in behavioral finance and financial psychology. I love it. i I know you are just a wealth of knowledge, so I'm just thrilled to have you on today and chat with you. yeah so your specialty is
00:02:11
Speaker
Gen X, which I feel as a generation, we say is kind of like the forgotten generation, the latchkey kids, you know, we talk so much about millennials and boomers and Gen X has kind of been like this generation that we have forgotten about, about, but there are very important pivotal points in your childhood that has really shaped the way that you invest in the way that you approach money matters. So I would love to just dive into that with you.
00:02:43
Speaker
Well, for sure. First of all, thank you for having ah having me on. You know, Gen X is for sure forgotten. i we We talk about this wealth transfer. We'll get to that in a minute yeah because it was transfer is not going to, they're not going to save Gen X. It's not going to save us. And I say Gen X and I say we, because I'm part of Gen X and this is why I'm passionate. and I'm passionate about it. I'm 46 going on 47. And there's a couple of traits that are aligned with Gen X and,
00:03:09
Speaker
you You said last key kids, how we grew up. we We had our keys around on our necks. We had the household keys. We came home from school and we had to unlock those, unlock the home.
00:03:20
Speaker
And when we came home, we had chores. You were taking care of everything on your own. so yeah For sure. For sure. I mean, and then these things were understood. um Somebody said the other day, was a great line. It said, what's understood doesn't have to be explained. Yeah.
00:03:34
Speaker
And so we were, well, we were raised differently. yeah We didn't have to be explained about what had to be done at the house,
Gen X's Financial Challenges and Resilience
00:03:40
Speaker
right? you You, you, you came home, you maybe had a brother or sister or a couple of them because we wrote, we rode the bus. there wasn't any dropping off at the front of the school with the long lines. Yeah. Yeah, very different school pickup and drop box. We didn't we didn't do all that. You rode your bikes and you know the the the meetup place was where everybody's bike was. And yeah, and you know, you got to go home when the street lights start coming on when it's at dusk. You know, that's your that's your clock.
00:04:08
Speaker
but Everybody that's from Gen X knows the rules. So what was understood doesn't have to be explained. So you had the last key and you came home and you had this sense of resilience.
00:04:19
Speaker
I say this word and and it means a lot because now you carry that forward. to now, Brittany. And it's going to take a lot of resilience to really get through to retirement preparedness, through and to retirement preparedness right now, because Gen X is a little in trouble, even for high income folks who are serving concurrent, even for high income folks, they have they're worried about it. i mean, because they're they're thriving right now with their high incomes.
00:04:49
Speaker
And they're saying, well, how can we but You carry this lifestyle and all these responsibilities that we have right now into and fund those in retirement because we're they're known as a sandwich generation as well.
00:05:04
Speaker
So what do you think creates this behind feeling for so many, even high income Gen X professionals? I mean, even the people in Gen X that are successful. I think that this is a very common feeling, even with a lot of millennials as well. this constant feeling of being behind. I mean, think about it. We have everything from we have everything from ah the housing market crash, and then we have all the interest rate mess, and then we have COVID. And there's just it's just been like one thing after another. I feel like it's like ah and a new global crisis every five years is what it has felt like. for the last few decades, I would say. um What do you think about that thought that we're behind? sure
00:05:53
Speaker
Sure. Every generation is not unique in having but four to five or seven year crises. I forgot what the book is, but every generation thinks they're unique about the past generation of going through something, right? That generation is not it's not something, right? Because we all have it we all have a name, the boomer generation, the greatest generation, the silent generation.
00:06:15
Speaker
And it's funny about Gen X because Gen X really just doesn't have a name. That's why we have Gen X. It's like, and we weren' what the heck is it? it' It is the in-between. You know why? It's because the Gen X is unique.
00:06:28
Speaker
in the in-betweenness, the the definition of switching from the the commander computers and to I learned typing.
00:06:39
Speaker
right It wasn't very different. Right. yeah it wasn't the it was It wasn't the true boom and click, but it was the peck it was the peck and search. And see, I'm technically millennials and I learned on a computer. So even that little distinction, it is very different. It's very different.
Adaptability to Digital Era
00:07:00
Speaker
yeah It's very different. I mean, the whole floppy disk, I mean, the big one that, you know, that went in and now you had to turn it down. Right. Right. I mean, so older millennials, even though, you know, no disrespect, but the older millennials, they want to align themselves with Gen X now. There's a lot of things. There are things. Yeah. There are a lot of things that I identify more with Gen X and see, I also hung out with older kids and older people all too, a lot. So I was very heavily influenced and and that way when I was younger.
00:07:31
Speaker
Right. So the Gen X went through a lot in that transition stage. I mean, socially, I talk about this in the book too. There's ah there's a chapter in there. There's one chapter specifically I dedicated at Gen X and you're you're talking about these defining events to them.
00:07:46
Speaker
you know, when we were young, we were closer to, in the eighties, we were closer to civil rights. than where we are now socially during the Cold War. So we were in the suburban neighborhoods all coming together, right? school districts and all that. You're talking about technology, the internet. I still know people that call it the internet. I do. I do too, actually. I do too.
00:08:13
Speaker
I do too. Right? I do too. Because it was a thing. There was no search engines. It was a card catalog, a quick story. And this all means
Early Financial Lessons from Dr. Cherry
00:08:25
Speaker
something. going get back to the to the money and retirement in a minute.
00:08:28
Speaker
And actually universities, we'll get to that in a minute too. Why it all matters to how Gen X handles their money and what they're going to be doing with their retirement later. But I went to school with my niece, she's 17. So she's about go to college.
00:08:42
Speaker
And she took me to her and middle school one time and she was like, oh yeah, Uncle Preston, come check out our library. So I was like, OK, so we went to the library and there was a card catalog to the side.
00:08:55
Speaker
And I was like, oh, yes, old school. Somebody's teaching you all the Dewey Decimal System and how to research up in here. I was like, all right, y'all get y'all are getting some facts. So I run over to the card catalog. like i was like, let me show you how your uncle used to do it. Right.
00:09:10
Speaker
And I pulled and I pulled out the the drawer, Brittany. It was empty. And they were like, no, Uncle Preston, they just used that as a decoration.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yes. She had pity on her Uncle Brittany. She was like, yeah, that's just decoration. Like it was a museum. That's so funny. And then she turned. And she turned over to the, to this pile of computers on a little rotation thing. It looked like a, a seasoning rack. And she goes, this is what we use now. This is a, we just take one out of here and we do.
00:09:45
Speaker
I was like, oh man, I feel so funny. So when I was in high school, I actually, I was part of the yearbook committee and the journalism the newsletter for, it's funny because i actually work on our company's newsletter now. So how funny is that these days I'm still building newsletters, but, um, I was in journalism class in high school and working on our, our newsletters. And I remember having to do some research on a specific story I was working on and Going to the library and pulling the way I would pull, you would pull out old, old newspaper articles and everything. If you wanted to look something up and I remember doing that in high school, like for a specific story I was working on a research paper I was working on. So yeah, so different. Now you can just go to chat GPT and type it in and just pull it up instantly. I mean, it's a very different world. Everything is so instant now.
00:10:38
Speaker
I'm really curious because your generation, the specifics that influenced your generation, do you have a specific memory as a child that really influenced your relationship to money the most?
00:10:53
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. yeah ah A defining moment. Yeah. All this matters too, because the resilience, right? The promise, and I'm gonna get to something specific far as an event, but the resilience, the skepticism is a characteristic of, of Gen X. yeah Feeling forgotten. The promise of education yeah is another, particularly the way the attitudes of universities are right now. The pendulum shift in parenting.
00:11:20
Speaker
Uh, so adult children is, is a big one right now because of that latchkey moment. in our lives. So when you talk, when you ask me about what's memorable, I have an 18 month old son, 18 month old son. A lot of my, a lot of my friends have 25, you know, 20, 25 year old children now, but their parenting styles are so different from what we came up with.
00:11:42
Speaker
And you'll see it. You're seeing a lot on Tik TOK and YouTube and all the social medias now, about how Gen X feels that pendulum shifted too much. yeah I saw something on Morningstar, a lot of these other things, they said the f FAFO parenting. And this is the thing, you know, the FAFO parenting. That's what it is. That's what title. What does that mean?
00:12:04
Speaker
It's the, the, uh, the, the, the bad word. Oh, And then AFO, right? yeah And find out. Parenting. and And because now they're trying to so swing it back to some of the ways that we had it in Gen X because the Gen Xers tried to shield so my much yeah and pay for everything.
00:12:27
Speaker
because they felt that we had last key, we had student debt, you know, student loan debt, Gen X has the most student loan debt and that it didn't give, the education didn't promise us, yeah didn't get us the higher tier jobs, you know, that maybe there was a middle corporate America tier ceiling.
00:12:46
Speaker
you know And so now you have this so swing to entrepreneurship, which they feel has stifled some of their high income areas and they've had to work extra hard. Now you have Gen X burnout. Right. So when you're asking me about those memories and I'm going to get to one that's personal because everybody has one, but when you're talking about the overall,
00:13:09
Speaker
Gen X memories, accumulatively when you're talking about Gen X burnout, resiliency, skepticism, latchkey, over-investing in their children, right? And parenting styles, right? All of these have line items to incomes, student debt that Gen X is still dealing with, even high income. Absolutely. These are all line items.
00:13:32
Speaker
that are stealing away from putting that retirement rate and having to yeah get it up to 25 and 30% so you can get those millions in retirement. Side note real quick, before I came to work at Bonnerian and do this, I was actually working at Rocket Mortgage. I was doing loan home loans and I had to deny a family a home because of their student loans. He was a doctor.
00:13:59
Speaker
He was a doctor and I had to deny them a home to move their family into because of their student loans. That was that just blew my mind. But yes, this is what people are dealing with every single day. People all across America are dealing with this every single day with student loans.
00:14:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Specifically you asked me, so let's talk about that. You asked me one. Uh, so, mean, there, there's several, man, damn. And then there was one when I was young, my dad, just two, i'll I'll give you two.
00:14:30
Speaker
There was one where my dad took me to collect money from a family member. when I was like six or seven or something like this, maybe five, me something like six. And it was one of my earliest memories memories ever, actually. I've got memories back to like four or three or four. But around six, we went to go collect money from a family member.
00:14:50
Speaker
And so my dad, he he's like, why do you keep telling this story? But it's a it's a good one. It was one of my cousins, but it was my older cousin, but I called him uncle. And my dad was like, you know, give me my MMS for money. dudada dada You owe me this, you owe me that. dah-dadada da And I was watching this and what it showed me years later, matters to a lot of people, which is, wow.
00:15:14
Speaker
um you You don't loan money to family members because it's not a loan. yeah It's not it's ah nine times out of 10, it's a gift. you're more than likely not to get it back, you know, and, and then ah going forward that becomes a ah attitude towards money or or value towards money, far as family lending, yeah you know, to, to that point and and how you do it because it triggers an emotion.
00:15:42
Speaker
And then also to like accountability with money in our family, here's a story that goes with that. My sister and I, we borrowed money from our parents, when we were little, It could be, Brittany, it was like $20 or something like that.
00:15:56
Speaker
Pops, he made us write a sentence. I owe dad $20 with 5% interest. And we had decided. Wow. So he taught you that early too then. like Like early. And then, yeah oh yeah, I mean, it was it was right off the bat. And then mom, ah she taught us a matching program and the parents taught us together like a matching program. So we we got an allowance and this was after the the the old school Gen X allowance program. And this was
00:16:28
Speaker
Well, uh, pops mom, do we, do we get an allowance? And they were like, well, w what do you mean allowance? We allow you to get the air conditioned. We allow you to live here. We put food on the table. yeah ah Right. Right. oh Right, right. So that was the first allowance. And then this see these young kids, they don't know about that. Right.
00:16:51
Speaker
Yeah. But then the second allowance was, OK, you know, you get grass cut and all stuff. Here's an allowance. And then we had this ledger and mom, she she was accounts payable and receivers specialist. And she used to she was like, OK, now, when you put money in the put some savings, you get your cash and then put twenty dollars in here and then we'll match it with five bucks or sir ten bucks.
00:17:14
Speaker
So that was our introduction to a 401k matching program. That's great that you had that. You know, so, so yeah. So those are a couple of memories about family boundaries, about lending, and then also saving and matching
Financial Harmony and Wealth Building
00:17:29
Speaker
early. yeah So, yeah. I mean, so tell me about financial harmony.
00:17:36
Speaker
Let's talk about that. Yeah, you know, Financial Harmony. The book went through an iteration process. And I'm not sure that there's an album right here, Songs in the Key of Life, Stevie Wonder. So it's one of my favorite albums all the time. And I collect records.
00:17:55
Speaker
And I got that from my mom and dad. So I was first born and my sister, she's a older millennial. We're very close. And when I was first born, I didn't go to sleep.
00:18:07
Speaker
to nursery rhymes. I went to sleep to R&B music. I love that. Yes, yes. Teddy Pendergrass, the OJs. You have good taste, I'm sure. Oh, yes. For sure.
00:18:23
Speaker
And there's a picture of of me as a baby next to my dad's and my mom's album collection. And so I used to go to sleep on that, not nursery rhymes. And then years later, i got my master's degree from tech in 2006, and then I got my master's degree in two thousand and six twenty two thousand twenty in 2020. And so when I got my master's degree, I was been begging for years to get that album collection.
00:18:48
Speaker
And he was like, no, no, no, no. no So 2006, after I graduated, i walked the stage. He comes outside. He says, come on outside and you know have a cigarette with your dad. And I didn't smoke, but he just wanted me to come outside. So then he said, open up your trunk.
00:19:03
Speaker
And so I opened up the trunk and the record collection was all in there. So that was my gift. i was I was surprised. I was surprised. I was crying and all this other stuff. My point about it is is that one of my favorite albums of all time, a top three, is Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder. And and the the album in and of itself is about journey.
00:19:21
Speaker
It's about journey of life. The songs are the the keys of life. It's in the music of life And they touch on all journeys, love, hate, disappointment, phases of life, all ah all of these aspects, the feelings and phases of life that you go through, having children, breakup, joy, accomplishment, society, everything. That's why if you saw Billboard albums lists of all time, this album is number one or any top three or five in any genre is because of the perfection of the themes and and the songwriting and and the and all that. So this is why this is my favorite album. it
00:20:00
Speaker
And that's why the book Wealth in the Key of Life is is named after that. Mr. Quincy Jones, who's since passed, watched the documentary on Netflix. He's done all genres of music, all genres of music, from scoring music, jazz, classical, obviously Michael Jackson, Thriller, everything.
00:20:18
Speaker
And he said 12 notes. Everybody has the same 12 notes. Yeah. yeah But you can you can create endless amounts of music with it. So with these two themes in mind, and then all the things that I've been through in life, and then also how I approach money with return on alignment is one of my themes is return on alignment, life and money line alignment, life and money alignment gives your money assignment.
00:20:43
Speaker
So you gotta, you gotta align your life and money such that you can give your money assignments. And now you're, now you can see where you want to put your money. energy. It is. It is. And that the financial strategies, however simple or complex,
00:21:00
Speaker
Then you get to give your money assignments in these areas. And this is what wealth and the key of life is about. And financial harmony specifically is about wealth, secured wellbeing.
00:21:14
Speaker
That is what financial harmony is and go find yours according to the life that you want to live. So do you have and and it do have do you have a formula? Is there a formula that you can just sum it up for us?
00:21:27
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. So these are the five permissions of wealth, five permissions of wealth. And it's like eating your peas. It's eating your peas.
00:21:38
Speaker
And this is the person who you are. And that's the identity. you Then this is the the person. And you have phase of life. The purpose. What's your purpose?
00:21:49
Speaker
This gives you fulfillment, your contentment. You also have your preferences. Everybody has different preferences. And then it all goes into your financial plan.
00:22:00
Speaker
And then that's how you prosper. So if the P's go into your prosperity. And these are the five permissions of wealth. that If you have that, then you have the permission to prosper in the way that you want to live. It's living your wealth your way.
00:22:18
Speaker
And oh all those domains and people get wealth and well-being misconstrued or they try to conflate them. And you see this a lot. True wealth means this.
00:22:29
Speaker
True wealth is I have more time relationships. I have more time or I have relationships with my family. I have relationships with my children or my spouse. I have experiences. You hear this a lot. I know you do. And this is true wealth.
00:22:46
Speaker
but That's not true wealth. Those are wellbeing domains. it iss very It's very important to distinguish the two. And this is why. Wealth is dollars. yeah well-being or domains.
00:23:00
Speaker
and And when you start conflating the two, then it it diminishes the importance of money. And people, they jump on me a lot and they say, well, you're persona you're personifying money.
00:23:12
Speaker
hey no wealth ah Dollars are important. Money is a partner, not just a tool. yeah but a tool A tool has no soul. Money is a partner in everything that you do.
00:23:26
Speaker
you like it Like it or not. yeah And then what do you trade for? You trade a piece of your soul, a piece of your person every day. You wake up, you sacrifice, you exchange.
00:23:40
Speaker
you're putting And this is why it's so personal. You know, it's because of what you put into it and then what you receive and then what you assign. yeah So that's why it's ah that's why it's a partner and not just a tool.
00:23:52
Speaker
Okay. And then when when you're talking about the domains of life, time, relationships, family, faith, material goods, services, whatever those those values, whatever you want to invest in, okay philanthropy, quality of life, lifestyle, whatever those domains. And I have a compass. It's called a financial harmony compass.
00:24:18
Speaker
Those areas, and you're investing in self. okay oh Those are domains, and those are very important. right. You have to feel more well, but you need dollars to do it.
00:24:32
Speaker
You need dollars to do it. Now you can be a hermit. You could be Mother Teresa and ah Martin Luther King or Gandhi and they died broke. But those are special people. yeah Do you need absolutely need money in order to, you know, have well-being optimization? No, but you're you're going to sacrifice your dollars to do it.
00:24:51
Speaker
Right. But if you're not that special, then most of everybody else, you need dollars. That's why it's called when you have PTO at work. What's PTO stand for? it's called It's called paid time off. It's called paid yeah time off. You have to buy that time. yeah You know?
00:25:10
Speaker
So yes, you may have a lot of time. It's like, oh I'm going to be an entrepreneur because because I can control my time. Well, you know there's a business running over there. Employees are doing or are buying that time or you have you invested money, you know, as such that that you have you bought that time. So that's that that's not true. Well, if that is dollars of wealth buying the time the of well-being.
00:25:37
Speaker
So this is why financial harmony is wealth secured well-being. by investing in the areas that, that you value most through those five permissions of wealth. I love that to simplify it like that. Where can we find your book? Where can we buy your book?
00:25:54
Speaker
Oh, it's everywhere. Amazon, the, uh, Barnes and Noble. So that's digitally. It's one of the few books and I'm thankful for this. That is one of the few books that is digital.
00:26:07
Speaker
It's on Kindle. So it has a voice. And hardback, the paperback is about to come out and it's been shelved a couple of places. I need an autographed copy, okay? I will send you one, no question. No question. I said I will do that. So one of the rare books that have all the formats. So I'm thankful for that.
00:26:28
Speaker
Well, congratulations on that. I know that is no easy thing to do. That is quite an accomplishment. i have a question about Gen X that the I would say, so Gen X that are more comfortable in their financial health.
Gen X's Rebellious Nature and Life Satisfaction
00:26:43
Speaker
um What are they doing differently, would you say? What are the markers that they are doing differently to allow them to live you know a little more comfortably than the rest, perhaps? And what can people do in their daily lives to reach that?
00:27:03
Speaker
Another attitude of Gen X is excuse my friends, but they're not giving a damn, you know, because that's just a characteristic of them is their, is their rebellious nature. And and that and it's that's a characteristic. So we talked about resilience and also kind of rebellion in this nature.
00:27:21
Speaker
And ah there's a lot of shoulds in life. It's like, where should we be? And they ask the questions too. Should we be further? Where should we be? And comparison is a thief of all joy yeah because everybody has a different journey.
00:27:35
Speaker
I share with folks quite bluntly, especially with Gen X because they they're the no BS generation. I'm like, look, you're going have what you're goingnna have. So let's just get settled with that. you know and And give yourself some grace, I tell Gen X. I say, give yourself some grace that you've been through all this.
00:27:52
Speaker
You've been through all your childhood, the resilience and all that. And you've been through the student loan debt. You've been through corporate America. You've been through having your own business and all these challenges. And you had the resilience here.
00:28:03
Speaker
Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Sure. You know, and, and even the folks that have the income and assets right now, we're talking about high-end current, they're like, man, we could have done a little bit more, but but give yourself a pat on back. You're going to end up what you end up with. All right.
00:28:18
Speaker
So resilience and, and stick to it in this and a little bit of rebellion of not, and use some of that rebellion to say, I'm going to rebel against the the shoulds. Okay.
00:28:29
Speaker
So that, that's number one, use some that attitude. Number two is life stage vitality. You're at their phase of life, health span versus lifespan.
00:28:40
Speaker
I share with Jax all the time. Look, you only get one go at this perfect time of life. There's no perfect, perfect. In these 40s, it's from like 45 to 60, but pretty much 45 to 55 in this decade.
00:28:56
Speaker
This is the perfect, quote unquote, perfect time of life. That's true. where your money, where your money's good, right? Your spirit is pretty good. your level of understanding of self and externally, you've been through a lot of stuff. Your marriage is probably good. If you're married out there, your children are probably healthy. Hopefully they may be out of the house, right? Your parents, you're, you're going to have to take care of them later. You know that right now they're somewhat good, but it's coming.
00:29:25
Speaker
Right. So it, so Worry when the worry is coming. You you only get these 10 years once. This is number two, where you're worrying about 75 and 85, but what you going be doing but at that time? You use these health span years right now, in particular, these 10 to enjoy your vitality right now, because you're not getting these back. And I'll say this as an example, I call them the Benjamin Button years.
00:29:59
Speaker
Remember in Benjamin Button, you i head one acrossing whoop where they cross yeah the one cross. And it was, they were dancing, yeah right? was was it It was, it was Blanchette and, and Brad Pitt, right? yeah They were dancing. She was dancing and they were in the ballet studio and they were looking in the mirror and they said, she said, we're meeting in the meadow finally meeting the middle.
00:30:25
Speaker
Right. We're meeting in the middle. You only get that once. Those are the two things that own your journey, give yourself some grace, be where you are and and then ah assign your money to where you are now.
00:30:41
Speaker
All right. Then use these years wisely. I mean, don't throw all away the way to future or anything like that. It's like you only live once type of thing. That's not what I'm saying. That's also another myth. I think that's number four. It's and not or. You don't have to set starve now to feed later.
00:30:55
Speaker
All right. But don't sacrifice so much right now during these 10 years to where you look back when you're 70 and say, ah, you know, we didn't get those years Right. So, well, that leads me to a great question then for people who may feel that they are behind and it is never too late to reinvent yourself. It is never too late to make a change and to change your path and change your destiny. I believe that we each wake up every day with a choice of how that's going to
Changing Financial Paths and Overcoming Setbacks
00:31:24
Speaker
go. yeah.
00:31:25
Speaker
I'm wondering in your own journey, have you ever had anything where you have had to, have you ever had to fully change the script on your path in an alternative way? And you've had to, you've had to really make an alternative plan, something that it was not the way you had planned an investment to go or your financial path to go. And you had to rewrite the script.
00:31:53
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it plays off. It says pun intended too, since we're in alternative ways.
00:32:00
Speaker
Yes. money doesn't always have Money doesn't always have to be a trial or trauma, you know? And I know that's got conflict and all this gets all the rage and meet and media and clicks and all that type of stuff. you know, there's a lot of good too. when you You can celebrate triumph as well.
00:32:20
Speaker
And so i'm I'm getting somewhere with this. I love alliteration. i love alliteration. And this is the four Ts that I'm talking about and they mean something. You go through trials sometimes in life.
00:32:31
Speaker
You also have milestone moments of triumph, right? And you can you can transform yourself, and like you mentioned here, and then you can also transition the next phases.
00:32:42
Speaker
yeah And so this is where the grace and the compassion is. When you transform yourself, you better understand, and then you get to go and live and prosper and live in abundance, right? And so this is the the continuum of life and where you do need resilience, you do need compassion, you do need understanding and you get to clear yourself. And this is why I have the, when i when I say you have your ah moment, you're I call them the six A's. this is the Admit where you are, the acknowledge how you feel about it so you can take action and then you get to align and then you get to aspire and then you get to achieve.
00:33:17
Speaker
but There's a process of that because if you always feel stuck, this is how you get to, un this you got to get you got to feel unstuck. And how do you do that? You have to clear the pallet. You got put some water in your mouth to swish it out. yeah You know, you got to clear the powder before you taste the next thing, you know?
00:33:34
Speaker
And so with the four Ts and then the six As, I call it the alignment sequence. And then you go, when you go through that, there's a process in order to to say, all right, now I'm ready.
00:33:45
Speaker
Now let's go, let's get through that. Let's process that so we can clear it. And then, all right, then now that as we're talking about financials, you know, now we can say getting rid of the shoulds, giving yourself grace, you've forgiven yourself, all this other stuff.
00:34:02
Speaker
Let's operate from here. all right. So what we didn't say, we didn't save as much as we thought maybe your Gen X or something like that. Okay. Well, the savings rate, it is what it is. it You wanted it to be 15%, but no, it's 25 now.
00:34:16
Speaker
It is what it is. What do we do about it? Because this is what we want to do. This is what we want to do with our life. So let's make it happen. right To answer your question, i wouldn't say everybody, but life is going to life.
00:34:29
Speaker
you don't have You don't have to wait for the thing and be like, oh, you know, something's going to happen. in Life is too good right now or whatever. And it doesn't have to be dramatic. they Look, things don't have to happen.
00:34:41
Speaker
Self-destruction doesn't have to happen. But life and challenges, are they're going to happen along the way. You know, it's not it's life is not linear. But yes, if something does come your way,
00:34:54
Speaker
It can be three days, three weeks, three months, three years. You don't know far as the process. yeah But when it does come, then this is the process to get through, yeah which is you do have some trial, then go ahead. And then this is the process of which I just mentioned.
00:35:12
Speaker
So on the opposite end, you can then say, okay, I'm allowed to transform myself and not be stuck and also not feel guilty or shame that either i did something to myself or the external world did something to me.
00:35:30
Speaker
i Give myself time to work through that and go on to the next thing. And if it does take more than three days, three three weeks, three months, three years, so be it. But that now it's my my my turn to go ahead and go to the next thing. Because for me, it it took seven years. Or excuse me, I call it the seven years of fog, which is in the book.
00:35:51
Speaker
And it cost me around about a million dollars if I added it all up of opportunity. And I had a decent career during that time. I didn't hurt anybody else or anything like that, but internal suffering and leaving stuff and leaving it on the table because I was working on my internal self and some of the decisions that I made during that time.
00:36:13
Speaker
If I went back, and healed a little bit better and sought help earlier and had some better well-being and prospered beyond my natural talent that i just survived on and all that invested more had better relationships all that yeah i and that cost me a million dollars i did the research oh man the what i could have showed us We all have them, but we, but you wouldn't be who you are and where you are now either. I'm sure there are very valuable lessons in there that you needed to learn and had to have. My mom calls them reasons for seasons and yes, and to your point, I have a global stage now. i have a thriving speaker business. I have a book. I have my practice. ah I have a wife that that I never thought I was going to meet during my PhD years. I have an 18 month old child who's healthy. My family's intact. And then people, the world is receiving what I'm i feel i'm assigned to help.
00:37:12
Speaker
you know so there's a reasons for that i love that exactly exactly one of my favorite quotes a reason a season or a lifetime you know certain things come into our lives for a reason a season or a lifetime all for all for something i know i only have you for a few more minutes i was wondering do you have any favorite types of alternatives that investors should be paying attention to is there anything we should be looking at specifically that you've had your eye on.
Investment Strategies and Personal Values
00:37:44
Speaker
Yes. Two things. I like liquid alts and I'll tell you which one is here in a minute, but I like liquid alts and also like private investments. Private investments are fun because people, and particularly those with a little extra money and they're looking for that story.
00:38:03
Speaker
What's next story. I'm maxing out the 401ks, my brokerage, we're putting money in there. They may even have a whole life policy because they've reached that stage or they, their equity comp, they have concentration there. Their portfolio looks good. So they've been buying off the shelf, probably in a discounted stock for as a stock a purchase plan or their RSUs are intact and all that. So their corporate portfolio is looking nice or they're business rich if they're business owners.
00:38:33
Speaker
They're heavily invested in their business. So we're talking about folks that have checked a lot of boxes here. Right. So they're saying, Well, what's next?
00:38:45
Speaker
Right? So that private investment, it's access, Brittany. Access to, say, Amazon's building all these warehouses everywhere. but you know But maybe it's not Amazon. Maybe it's another storage facility that you see. And you drive by on a highway, and you'd be like, what's that nondescript building right there on the on the side of the highway?
00:39:08
Speaker
Who's building those all over the the country in the world? I'm looking at one right now. Those come across my email box because I have relationships globally. What are these facilities? And I'm not just talking about you when you move your stuff and you got a store, a fishing box or something like that. You're talking about huge facilities like in Switzerland or Germany or Greenland or something like that.
00:39:30
Speaker
Right. so So these are, these are stories. These are private investment stories that have access to our farmland or right. Or, or energy, pipelines, or maybe it's ah alternative sources of energy. Maybe it's wind. i mean, the list is endless. Another popular one is sports. Yeah. We like those a lot.
00:39:52
Speaker
There's a lot going on. Yeah. We like those a lot. Sports deals, entertainment, they're micro gathering and movie movies and entertainment. And that wasn't heard of yeah decade ago, much less. yeah Right.
00:40:06
Speaker
So now when you see Steph Curry and all these folks making these little deals and stuff, and now yeah advisors are having access to these deals and they're fun. And also because you see.
00:40:18
Speaker
There's a lot of fun stuff. So I like private investment into these deals where there's an illiquidity premium. And then there's a story behind it too, because there's stories there and folks enjoy them. Folks that that have money to where you can do 500,000, maybe three quarters of million, maybe a million. and mean, you don't even need that much sometimes. Sometimes it's just a hundred grand, i just quote unquote. But for those high income folks, yeah a hundred grand or 200 grand, right? That's It's not nothing, but at the same time, they've satisfied all the other checkboxes and they're saying, OK, let me put two quarter a million here, half a million here.
00:40:51
Speaker
And then they're tied to private investments. So those are just a number of examples of global opportunities and also domestic opportunities that there stories to having access to private investment beyond the liquid market. Well, I could sit and talk to you all day so much, your wealth of knowledge, but I know you got to go, but is there anything that you would like to leave our listeners with any little nuggets that they can take away and dig deeper on later in their own time to learn? I appreciate the conversation really, because it lends to the conversation of self-reflection and owning your own journey journey and having the permission to prosper in the way that you want.
00:41:30
Speaker
And many folks, when we talk about feelings of finances, right? People ask me all the time, they're like, When are you going to get to the actual strategies, Dr. Cherry? What are you going to tell me about the backdoor Ross or the estate planning or the retirement accounts that I need to do this and all that?
00:41:51
Speaker
I could tell that all day long. But when I say life and money alignment gives your money assignment, at those five Ps, it's all in there. The purpose, the life phase, the person with the identity, your preferences, that goes all into your plan.
00:42:08
Speaker
You will see the stories in your statements, your financial plan statement, your credit card statements, your bank statements. yeah ah You will see it all in there. And you will also feel it.
00:42:19
Speaker
When you're in your life prosperity, will it's all in there. And those permissions, give yourself permission to live your wealth your way. And if you have that, we can't guarantee investment returns.
00:42:30
Speaker
But we can guarantee a return on Absolutely success. You will have success for sure. Yes. I thank you so much. I know you're very busy. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on today. i know that we have all learned a wealth of knowledge from you. i really have enjoyed this conversation. You're absolutely brilliant. And thank you so much, everyone who has tuned in to listen, to watch this podcast, be sure to pick up Dr. Preston Cherry's book. Wealth and the Key of Life. You can find it anywhere you find your favorite books to read. Thank you so much again for taking the time to tune in. We will see everyone next time on the next episode of The Alternative Mason. Thanks again. I'm Brittany Mason.
00:43:17
Speaker
The opinions expressed in this program are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or any specific security. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry.
00:43:32
Speaker
To determine which investments may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. Any past performance discussed during this program is no guarantee of future results. Any indices referenced for comparisons are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly.
00:43:47
Speaker
As always, please remember investing involves risk and possible loss of capital. Please seek advice from a licensed professional.