Negotiating Financial Freedom

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W four WN Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsement for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W four WN Radio. Its employees are affiliates. Any questions or common should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W four WN Radio. This is Beyond Confidence with your host w Park. Do you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do you want to live your legacy and achieve your personal, professional, and financial goals? Well? Coming up on dvparks Beyond Confidence, you will hear real stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers who have stepped into discomfort, shattered their status quo, and are living the life they want. You will learn how relationships are the key to achieving your aspirations and financial goals.

0:52 Moving your career business forward does not have to happen at the expense of your personal or family life, or vice versa. Learn more at www dot divpork dot com and you can connect with Divant contact dants divpark dot com. This is beyond confidence and now here's your host, Divpark. Good morning listeners. It is wonderful to be here with y'all. It is Tuesday morning and just beautiful morning. It's sunny, so being in North Carolina, I will share with you we are very fortunate to have four different seasons, and it's been cold and it's so surprising. I was just talking with one of my friends. She lives in Wisconsin, and I was telling her, oh, it's forty degrees here and it was probably or it was I don't know, twenty five. I forget the exact temperature that we had, and she said, it is minus over here. So what I want to talk about here today is it's about a perspective as to what is it. What is it that makes a life good, beautiful, full of life, full of joy, or bad? So technically there's nothing bad or good.

2:17 Things are just as they are. So when I heard from my friend was in Wisconsin, and I'm like, hmmm, it's summer over here, and that said, we are having beautiful temperatures this week and it's sunny, beautiful day, so why not it is just amazing to be here and I get to be with you. So for those of you who have got our books Expert to Influencer or the Entrepreneur's Garden, thank you because not only you're investing in yourself where you can make your life gorgeous and beautiful and bring meaning to it, you're also helping other entrepreneurs because we do share part of the proceeds with Kywa dot org so and we always talk about kind of circle keeping that going. So today we are going to be talking about financial freedom, negotiating financial freedom, and now what is financial freedom? Let me ask you this.

3:36 For every person, the financial freedom will be different. Now you may be asking, all right, via you're sharing, what does it mean to you? For me, what it means is that it's not just about freedom with money. It's about the freedom of time. It's about having that relationship with money that it's okay, yes, you deserve to earn money, you deserve to have that financial freedom. You can say yes to the money. Yes. So it's about the relationship with the money. And the key over there is that money is not good or bad. It's what you do with it. It's how you think about it. Because a lot of people will say, oh, money, money is the root of all evils. And here's what I'll say. It's the choices of human beings that makes it good or bad.

4:44 That's what I can tell you. And we did have a guest who was going to join us. We've reached out, not sure if they will be able to join it or not. People's lives can be tough sometimes, you know, it happens that we will still be talking about financial freedom. So what I want to share with you is the financial freedom I want to talk to you about from my book The Entrepreneur's Garden, because I do talk about there are like, you know, nine relationships, and in that the one relationship that I talk about is relationship with money.

5:26 And why am I talking about the relationship with money? You'll be like, Okay, what does money and I have to do about the relationship. So that's why I kind of shared that story about the temperatures, then how do I feel as far as the temperature is concerned? So it was like, how I was looking at it, what is my relationship with life? So money is no different. So what I want to share with you, it's like I'm going to read something from my book. Money provides you the freedom to live the lifestyle you desire so that you can serve others, and it's important to do so with a humble spirit and make a positive impact.

6:16 And the chapter starts out with a little over two months went by when I received this email from D. I'm thrilled to hear that you've made such great strides with your time relationship. It gives me joy to know that you have become excellent with using your time visely and even carving out some personal space for yourself. I was especially interested in your account of attracting more potential clients who are in tune with your values. I believe that comes from optimizing your efforts of knowing yourself better and managing your time wisely while continue to leverage your existing strengths. So I just want to like talk about like, you know, what is that email? So the book is set where there is this character D who is fast forward.

7:15 So what I did was this is when I wrote that book, I fast forwarded my life like twenty five thirty years D who's retired and is helping other people, and she is working with a young entrepreneur and mentoring and then the men. The young entrepreneur has worked through her relationship with time and now she is into relationship with money. And what happens is that she is getting clients because she has realized I'm not going to go into relationship with time today. We're going to talk about relationship with money. Now let's look at in terms of relationship with money. What happens is that there are the objections and what are the objections to money? When things are not going your way? The first thing when the things are not going your way is like, we have the beliefs, and here's what I'm going to share with you.

8:22 Think about a thermostat. Going back to the temperature. So when you have a thermostat in your house, let's say you put in the temperature at seventy degrees. So whenever the temperature goes high in the summer time, then your ac will kick in and bring the temperature down to seventy degrees. Now if it is winter time, if the temperature is forty or fifty, the heater will kick in and bring it to seventy degrees. So similarly, we have a temperature thermostat within our mind, arts and brains, and how does that happen, because think about it, when you were a child. As a child, we are exposed to our parents, to our teachers, to friends, and we are learning, we are conditioning ourselves like okay, what works. And as a result, what happens is that your brain conditioning happens.

9:26 So you've developed some beliefs, and especially, let's say if you're coming from a family where money was tight, then it's always like, okay, what happens now if the money is tight, you've got to spend wisely. You could be coming from a family where the money was not a problem and then like, okay, it's all right to spend money. So what is happening is that you're building these one or two or three beliefs with themselves, and these beliefs will last you for the rest of your life. And as a result, what happens is what happens is that those beliefs will be guiding your entire lives and they will be directing the decisions you make, the choices you make, and actions you take. So our guests have joined us and welcome doctor Bob. Good morning, Good morning. So we were just now talking about what does the relationship look like with the money, and how the beliefs can be formed and conditioned based on the exposure when we are children.

10:56 And that said, it's so important to break those beliefs. Share with us, how do you see your relationship with money? Well, thank you for having me. I excuse my tardiness. I had some technical difficulties, but I did catch what you said about the thermo set and I really love that. Right, the temperature is so hot outside, but it's up to us to control the thermometer, right, And in our beliefs, it's really up to us to control our mindset, you know, those sits and inches between our brain. It's us and we have to have that positive mindset. And I'm a university professor and I talked talk about money with students all the time, and and sometimes they don't like to bring up the fact about money. Sometimes they feel ashamed that they don't have a lot of money, so they just don't want to talk about it, or they think that they can't make money or they don't deserve to have the money. But you know, a lot of it.

11:57 So much is that mindset. You know, that positive mindset we know and we see it now in life and politics, and the weather. Bad things happen, but it's up to us to control that thermostat. As you said, you make it positive thing, and absolutely, yeah, yeah. And I definitely you know, you reminded me of being a student. Like while I was a student, those were some of my happiest days. I didn't have money, and sometimes you know, I was I was like doing ta ship and I think so I was doing another job as well. And sometimes I still remember, like, you know, when I was in California, there was like a college junior I don't know if it is still there or not.

12:46 This was in nineteen nineties, and they used to have a dollar salad. So sometimes the money was so tired. I was just going to have that salad for a dollar and yet an army so I'll be like, yeah, I only spend that. So it kind of like comes back to our mindset. So I know you have been through some rough times, and so tell us, like, you know, what happened with you during the two thousand and eight economic crisis. I remember two thousand and eight like it was yesterday because it really did change my life. A little bit of a background about myself is I've been married for twenty four years. But the blended family. So my wife had two kids, had I had four, so we blended six kids.

13:35 Wow, nice, wonderful. Yeah. In two thousand and eight we had all the kids. We had bought a house that wasn't her house from my house. It was a neutral house, and everything was good. I had a good job as a director of information technology. And then in two thousand and eight, when we had the great recession, basted into started in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, ANDed in two thousand and nine, but I lost my job. My company went through a merger, was brought up by another company, and I fully expected, as director of it, to move with you with the new company. They interviewed me multiple times, and as it turned out, they didn't take any of the employees. They only took our technology and our customers. So I lost.

14:22 So I lost my job. And there I was standing there talking to my wife and the companies were not hiring at the time, said you know, it made me feel the worst I've ever found in my life. What am I going to do? I've got six kids, I don't have a job, I don't have any prospects lined up and and I told my wife, then, you know what, I'm never going to depend on one income stream in my life or one job is if something happens to that, then then we you know, we've lost so much. So it was a it was a rough rough time for us. We also had some investments that went bad because we'd had rental homes and the people that were renting their homes they had the same situation, so they went they couldn't pay me. So it was just domino domino effect.

15:17 But my wife gave me confidence. She said, it's okay, we'll figure it out. And we did and it left. It led me to the best job in my life, which I am now as a professor and now teaching kids about learning about financial freedom and to my book called Achieving Financial Freedom because I'm always teaching them about need to have multiple streams to income, don't have all you eggs in one basket. I teach them about the stock markets, diversifying and mindset. Going back to what you said, the most important thing, we just we've got a brain that's amazing that can figure things out. And it we think the cup is how full it is, but it's empty it is as well. But it's just it's to us to choose. So I recovered some two thousand and eight and I'm doing well, getting ready to retire in a few years. But it was tough.

16:16 Yeah, no, I think so during that two thousand and eight nobody was left untouched. We were not either and experienced a lot of things during that time. That said, you learned from it. Sometimes what happens is that when wins are not blowing our way, and like you know, you're caught in a hurricane of life or hurricane of external conditions that are not optimal to your survival, it's important to figure out what could be done. And you learned your lesson. Not only that, you're taking that lesson and giving back to other people and especially students. Right, they are the leaders of us tomorrow. Yes, so as our listeners are listening, so they you mentioned it's several different streams of income. So for let's say anybody general, like you know, somebody who's working in the corporate or as an entrepreneur, how can they even kind of think about moving to create those different streams of income and achieving that financial freedom.

17:25 Sure, well, everybody to have everybody has hobbies and everybody has skills. And the most important thing is, you know, for young people to creating is to create skills. And we have to think about adding value to everything we do, whether it's a product or service, or maybe in your classes or maybe starting your own business. It's all about adding value where you become needed. And if you can do that in multiple streams, you can do that in different activities. You can start building wealth throughout these different activities. The ways that I like to build well the best that most people do. If you look at all the millionaires and even some billionaires, they all they all have land and property and and and houses and businesses because there's only so much land, there's only so much good land, and everybody has to live someplace, so properly. Properly in rental income is always a great investment for the long term.

18:31 And other investments are just learning how to get started investing. In the stock market, last year, the Standards and p which is how we how we measure the market how well it's doing, was up by over twenty three percent. If you just have your money not being invested and in the bank making a half a percent or maybe maybe four percent the most at an online bank you're losing all that opportunity. So by just taking the steps to learning how to invest in the markets, you have the possibility of creating that income stream as well. Now the market, it's just basically all these different companies. The S and P is made up of five hundred companies.

19:18 They're all doing trying to do the same thing. They're trying to push their products and services and add value to the customers. So you have all these different businesses trying to grow their businesses. So what we do is we just I just tell people to start with investing in the S and P and learn how to learn how to trade, learn technical analysis, and learn about income statements and cash flow and balance sheets, which is not very hard. But if they focus on learning new skills all the time, then they're going to they're going to grow and they're how these opportunities.

19:59 And that makes sense. So let's say if there is a new new investor, So what would be some of your life lessons that you have learned that you would tell them, Like, you know, like playing with paper money and also having the mindset about the ups and downs. What might be some of. Those Okay, well, there's always gonna be ups and downs, just just as we live our life every day. So you have to get to start small, and you can definitely start with paper money. You can start trading and then watching the watching paper money, which it looks like you're really investing, but it's it's not. It's paper money, and you start learning technical analysis or you well, let me back up, because there's many different types of traders, right Those are day traders, which is almost it's a little bit risky. It's it's almost like like gambling, so I don't commend day trading. But there's swing trading, which is more like betting on companies that have some new event momentum that's going their way, new laws and regulations that are going to be coming their way, a lot of growth opportunities. There's swing trading, which I do like, which is from one day to maybe six months, and then there's long term investing, which you definitely want to do some long term investings. They both of those type of investments require different types of skills in the investing market.

21:32 The swin trading is more technical analysis. You're looking for those swings and you're reading the charts, and the long term the long term trading is an investment where you're finding the good companies, the Apples, the Microsofts, and the Teslas, the Googles we call them right now they've been the last year, they were the Magnificent Seven. These good companies that you know are going to be around for the long term. And when they go down and value because of the different valuations in the market, it's okay because we're using something called dollar cost averaging, and dollar cost averaging says, hey, every two weeks when I get paid, I'm going to even if the stock went down, I know it's a good company. I'm going to just invest a little bit more and then you bring down the cost of your investments there. So then one more key thing is technology is so great. You know, find find companies that have really good technology. When I mentioned in the Magnificent Seven, the things that they all have in common is they all use technology very well. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon.

22:44 They're all about technology because once you build it, you can expand it worldwide. So when you're looking for companies, make sure they have good technology and they're not limited there. But there's so many there's so many opportunities, but start small because you have to be able to sleep at night with your investments, and they will go down, they will go down. But yeah, and I. Like what you said about that long term too. So it's it's almost building confidence that you know, you start out small, see how you're doing, and also looking at your capacity, like you know, the tolerance level. I always kind of call it, like coming from a science background, you know, it's the plus minus errors. So okay, so if like you know, what's your tolerance level? Ooh, like if the market goes up, like you know, you're not going to be able to sleep at night, or if the market goes down, then again you're not sleeping at night.

23:41 So not relying on it completely, but thinking about it as the additional stream of income, yes, and building for the long term. So for the long term, like you know, sometimes the financial planners will suggest that, like you know, you can go in for a little bit of a risk because like if you know, especially with the four oh one K, if your company's matching the four o one K, then you can take that risk, like because you cannot take it out for twenty thirty years anyway. Yeah, and if your company does have a four oh one K, I always help people definitely invest in your four oh one k. That's where you start because your company.

24:28 Most companies will match it between three and even eight percent, so they're match your funds. And that's free money that you need to be taking. Not free money, it's it's coming through your employment, but it's money that will go into your savings account, your investments, your retirement. So you need to be in there. And a lot of people they join a company and they and they hear about it, but they don't know what is this, you know, a four one K thing and what's this matching thing, and they don't that they don't take the time to really investigate and the losing out on a great opportunity. So absolutely, now that's definitely a good point, you know, look out for, like you know, just kind of sitting down if you especially if you're joining a new job or even if you're transitioning, you're joining a new company, it's important to look at all the benefits that you have because that those are in addition to what you're being paid, and then making sure that you're putting them to work for you. And as you mentioned that so in one gale, so you know, there are different options that companies provide how can people make selections out of that, because sometimes you may not have the best of the best options.

25:41 What would you recent, Well, you're correct, you're very limited with the number of options that you have your four one K and normally your your company was working with for example, Fidelity, which is one of the biggest investment houses. They work together to come up with probably between eight and fifth team different types of investments and so you for example, if if you not that you are, but if you were wanting to invest in bitcoin in the in the blockchain, that's not something that is going to be in your four one K, So you're you're limited. The most common thing that people have access to is they have investments that are based upon your age and when you're going to retire, and within those investments they handle that for you. It could be a mix of international funds, you growth funds, UH and different types of stocks.

26:41 So that is the place to start, you know, based you know, based upon your age two to invest in one of those funds. But I would do what I would do first if you're new with one of these accounts one of these investment brokers like Fidelity, is call them up. They have excell customer service. You call them up and you have a conversation. Say, hey, I'm twenty five, I'm thirty, I'm just new to investing. What do you recommend? How you know, each fund with the company is a little bit different, so I can't get into the details of the other those months, but have a conversation with your broker and then you start to learn how to manage that, and you start to watch it, and then if you want to, you can also have your own individual accounts as well, you create your own I would say, Wroth.

27:31 I love the Wrath. Right now we can younger, you can. You can put in about seven thousand, five hundred into a wrath. If you're older, it's eight thousand, okay, so seven thousand, five hundred for the younger people. And you mentioned ten thousand for older people, eight thousand, eight thousand, eight thousand for older people. And is there like an income limit, because sometimes what happens is like you cannot contribute to ROD if you're over an income liment. There's no no, there's no there's no limit to age. And what's great about the Wrath for those we haven't heard about it is everything you put in all the investments that grow after that, and let's say you let's say you matched what the SMP was twenty three point five percent. That's all tax free money. It's all tax free money. And that is huge different from you four oh one K because when you're four to one K, when you reach a certain age around seventy two, you have to pull a certain percentage about four percent out of your four to one K or three percent out of your four to one K, and then you start getting taxed on it a percentamous government is going to make sure they get their taxes out of it. So you invest it tax free. You're not paying money into it.

28:50 You're not paying taxes when it goes into your four to one K, but you paint it when you're pulling it out in a wrath. You're paying taxes up front, but all your investments grow and you're not paying any taxes on the investment. So I definitely recommend a Wroth account. Yeah, now that's very powerful. I really had liked what you had said earlier. Is that call up the brokerage, talk to people, you know, take that time to invest in yourself. So another question that comes to my mind is there like an income limit. So let's say somebody is making hundred thousand, somebody may be making two hundred thousand, and especially in the data scientist and a lot of coders and a lot of software engineers make somewhere you went up to three hundred or four hundred thousand dollars.

29:35 And even more so, is there a limit where you can not put in wrath as far as the income limit is concerned. No, there's not an income limit. However, you can only put in so much wroth every year, so depending on your age. But it's not based upon income. It's based upon how much you can put into the wrath. Okay, so let's say if I'm making three hundred thousand dollars, I could still contribute seven five hundred absolutely twenty. Yes, yes, and if I. Were remember to do that, to do that every year, just keep doing it every year.

30:16 Awesome And yeah, like you said, it grows. So some really great tips, and very quickly, if you could, like let's say you've talked about the young ones, and now what are some of the myths about the retirement and if you could just kind of touch upon that quickly, because we are nearing to the end of the show, and. Sure that's a big one. Well yeah, okay, So there's what we have got the baby boomers. Right now, I'm a baby boomer, so I'll retire in a few years. But the baby boomers retire at eleven thousand people per day, right. And it's an opportunity for young people too, because a lot of these baby boomers have small businesses that the younger people can take over. But the problem with the baby boomers and the retirement is most of them did not take the time to prepare as much as they should have, and only about thirty eight percent of them will have enough money to last them and throughout their retirement. Why. Well, when Social Security was first created, people were retiring back in nineteen thirty five under Rosevelt, they retired at sixty five years old, right, and maybe lived to their sixty seven.

31:34 Right now, I'm you know, I'll be sixty eight, I'll probably retire at seventy, and I'll probably live till I'm ninety five. So people are living a good twenty five years longer. So it's not you don't need your retirement to last for three to five years longer, you need to last for twenty five years longer because we got you know, we live in much cleaner envirel we've got good healthcare, we've got biological drugs, people are exercising more, the work has changed where it's not so dangerous, and so all these reasons why we're living so much longer. And but what the good side about that is people are retiring healthy and they can do things, and.

32:21 So it's more money. So yeah, well it's a myth to think, oh I'm retired, I'm done with working. No, no, no, you're going to need that. You're going to need income coming in. But do to the things that you want to do, that you enjoy to do. And because so much, so many things that you can do even after retirement. You don't have to you don't have to stop working. You're healthy, why. You know, Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. Yeah. And also like if you look at the Social Security they say, like, you know, you can take it at sixty seven, so and also you get a whole lot more if you get it at seventy. So that's also something to key be kicking.

33:04 It's actually it's a huge difference. It's eight percent more per year if you wait till seventy. So that's twenty four percent for the rest of your life. So if you're healthy, right, it's a good consideration to think about taking your retirement at seventy rather than sixty seven because it's it's twenty four percent more for the rest of your life. So that's definitely something to consider. Absolutely. So what I'm hearing is that it's well and good retire, but like plan it out and also just that even just because you're retired doesn't mean you could not do some you know, part time work or have that business or something. So having some sort of stream of income, am I hearing right?

33:50 You are correct, you have to plan it out, but you also have to be flexible. Flexible because as we were talking about, before life does happen, right, we don't know. Yeah, there's so many different variables, but we have to just how can we make the best of this situation and how do. We account for some unexpected illness or it can be you know, the economy or whatever it is. So just kind of keeping that in mind as you retire. So we have covered a broad spectrum today. Thank you for sharing your insights, So do share with us. Where can people connect with you? Where can people get your book and.

34:34 Sure, so I've got a couple of books that are on Amazon right now, Achieving Financial Freedom, which teaches people how to how to invest in, how to get started, and how to fix your social security. And then I've got Retirement Reimagined, which is a brand new book which will be out there within within a couple of months. I'm working through some publishers right now. And that is about what we were just talking about, is we imagine how your retirement's going to be and what you can do and how to invest in your retirement ages. People can reach me through my email. It's just my name Rameirez r Ami are easy dot Bob at gmail dot com.

35:19 I think I've had that for like thirty five forty years, so but I've got multiple email addresses, but that's the easiest way is if you remember my name, and you can also find me on LinkedIn under doctor Robert Ramirez, so multiple ways to find me. Maybe give your guests my phone number if I can sit. I always do free consulting the first time and my phone number six sixty one six six one nine one six four zero seven three. Fantastic. In any last words that you would like to share with your audience.

36:00 Stay positive that mindset. I just kind of have to circle around you. You know we can, it's our decision. And i'd love your example about the thermostat temperature outside is that hot that we can control with the thermostat, we can control what happens and what we do and what we do with that information. Keep learning, yeah. Keep learning, Yes, that is the key because what we don't know, what we don't know is so much that and as you keep learning, and I want to bring back to what you had mentioned is keep building the new skills, keeping that positivity and being open to possibilities, and you will achieve a life with financial freedom as we talked about today, and reach out to doctor Bob and he is to kind of help you and support you.

37:02 So thank you doctor Bob for joining us, and thank you wonderful audience, because without you the show would not be possible. And I really appreciate you reaching out to me, sharing what's on your heart how we can support you. You all are the best, and thank you one for making the show technically possible. Be well and take care until next time. Thank you for being part of Beyond Confidence. With your host d V Park, we hope you have learned more about how to start living the life you want. Each week on Beyond Confidence, you hear stories of real people who've experienced growth by overcoming their fears and building meaningful relationships. During Beyond Confidence, Va Park shares what happened to her when she stepped out of her comfort zone to work directly with people across the globe. She not only coaches people how to form hard connections, but also transform relationships to mutually beneficial partnerships as they strive to live the life they want. If you are ready to live the life you want and leverage your stress, learn more at www dot wpark dot com and you can connect with w ants contact at dwpark dot com. We look forward to you're joining us next week