Empowering Financial Freedom & Sustaining Health: Tanner Frigaard on Breaking the Wellness Cycle

Hey Fit & Frugal Tribe!

Are you stuck in a money trap?

Today I'm thrilled to bring you a conversation with the insightful Tanner Frigaard. Tanner isn't just a financial expert; he's a passionate advocate for financial literacy.

In our chat, Tanner highlights the crucial role of financial education in our lives. He explains how understanding basic financial concepts isn't just about money management – it's about creating a healthier, stress-free life.

Tanner and I delve into the X curve concept, discussing how many of us get trapped in a cycle of high expenses and low income.

But that's not all – we're also talking about the direct connection between financial health and physical health. Tanner points out how unhealthy financial habits can lead to stress and impact our well-being. He shares insights from his book, aimed at simplifying finance and guiding readers towards achieving their goals.

Tanner Frigaard has an impressive 8-year track record as a financial consultant, specializing in advising small to medium-sized businesses. He’s not just about numbers; Tanner is deeply committed to community service. He's a regular volunteer for housing projects in Mexico and actively supports charitable causes in Las Vegas.

On top of his professional and philanthropic pursuits, Tanner serves on the board of a non-profit focused on mental health, ensuring young people have access to the support they need. His blend of financial expertise, community involvement, and mental health advocacy defines his mission to create lasting positive impacts.

Key Takeaways:
Financial literacy is crucial for making informed decisions about money and improving financial well-being.
The connection between physical and financial health is significant, and positive changes in one area can positively impact the other.
Building healthy financial habits requires simplicity, discipline, and a long-term perspective.
Prioritizing saving and investing for the future is essential, even during challenging times.
The journey to financial well-being involves learning from past mistakes and sharing knowledge with others.

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Transcript

[TRANSCRIPT]

0:00:00 - (Tanner Frigaard): We drop ourselves in this lifestyle, and then we're miserable. I'm sure you've come across a few of them, but I've known ceos that they make great income, but they're spending ten grand a month on Amazon because they're so unhappy with their career. And then when the banks have too much money, they have to be insured, right? That's where the FDIC comes in. They're an insurance company that backs what you have in the bank.

0:00:26 - (Tanner Frigaard): So the difference is what they back. So they backed up to 250,000 per account, and they have up to 99 years to pay that back.

0:00:40 - (B): The FDIC.

0:00:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): So if they lose your money, they have 99 years to pay you back.

0:00:47 - (Tanner Frigaard): You get it back.

0:00:48 - (Tawni Nguyen): Since when is that a thing?

0:00:50 - (Tanner Frigaard): Since in the fine print, 38% of Americans currently can't handle more than a $2,000 disaster happening like an emergency.

0:01:00 - (Tawni Nguyen): Hey, guys. Welcome to the Fit and Frugal podcast. I am your host, Tawni Nguyen. You can find me on IG at Tawnisaurus. So today I'm here with my friend Tanner, who's going to introduce himself.

0:01:12 - (Tanner Frigaard): Tanner Frigaard, born and raised in Vegas, man. I'm second generation here in Vegas. I've been in the financial space for going on eight and a half years now. Been working in this space because really, I just wanted to start learning how to invest and get myself in a better financial spot. And I ended up finding a lot of little tricks that not only help me do that, but be able to.

0:01:34 - (D): Help pass those on.

0:01:36 - (Tanner Frigaard): I've always been entrepreneur ever since I was a kid. Started my first little business at eight, making little rice heaters. I know I had my own little sweatshop.

0:01:45 - (D): It's uncooked rice inside a tube of.

0:01:48 - (Tanner Frigaard): Fabric that I would scent with cinnamon. And with the cinnamon, it would make it smell like cinnamon rolls. Chocolate. Yeah, close. Yes. It's cinnamon rolls. So it made it smell the house, really smell good. But it was a heat pack, so it was flexible. You could put it on your neck or wherever you're hot, feet, hands cold, great for offices. So I was eight years old now and make between 300, $700 a month.

0:02:15 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah, just making those things out.

0:02:19 - (Tawni Nguyen): How did you come up with that.

0:02:20 - (B): Idea as a kid?

0:02:21 - (Tanner Frigaard): So my mom used to put uncooked rice in old socks, and she would heat it up so hot that it.

0:02:28 - (D): Would actually get burned.

0:02:30 - (Tanner Frigaard): And so what I got tired of smelling every morning at 05:00 a.m. Was burned rice. So I just wanted to fix this for me. And so I found that that was a lot of my transition into finance was I just like, fixing little things. I didn't see the big impact that it had as a whole, but it was just like, if I could just do this, then my life gets better. Right? And so it was really selfish of me, but I made the small improvement. My mom loved it, and we ended up selling them to all the daycare.

0:02:58 - (D): Kids because my mom ran daycare at the time.

0:03:01 - (Tawni Nguyen): You had me at rice because I'm asian, but I'm still processing.

0:03:04 - (Tanner Frigaard): Why you're carrying bags of rice with you for work.

0:03:10 - (Tawni Nguyen): Is it like impromptu cornhole?

0:03:13 - (Tanner Frigaard): Kind of.

0:03:14 - (Tawni Nguyen): Is it like that size?

0:03:15 - (Tanner Frigaard): No, you can make them that size. I used to make them as like a tube of fabric. So it was like twelve to 16 inches was our two sizes.

0:03:24 - (Tawni Nguyen): What was the main use for it?

0:03:25 - (E): What's the purpose? Just heat. Heat?

0:03:27 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah. So you're sitting there at your office.

0:03:29 - (D): And your desk and you're cold.

0:03:31 - (B): I've never heard of this concept.

0:03:33 - (Tanner Frigaard): Also women. What I found, I didn't know this, but I've had women come and tell me after. But they use them for their menstrual cycles as well to help reducing the cramping and everything else. So instead of a heat pad, they can just pop it in. Now, the nice trick is you can actually put it in the freezer for.

0:03:50 - (D): A little bit too, so you can.

0:03:52 - (Tanner Frigaard): Do a little hot and little cold.

0:03:53 - (D): It was a great little business venture at eight.

0:03:56 - (Tawni Nguyen): I love that we started this conversation with rice.

0:04:00 - (Tanner Frigaard): I love it, too. Cinnamon rice.

0:04:02 - (Tawni Nguyen): Bitches love rice.

0:04:04 - (Tanner Frigaard): Can't help what they love. Yeah.

0:04:06 - (Tawni Nguyen): So tell me the inspiration behind your book, because I think that's the last conversation we left off at.

0:04:10 - (B): Right.

0:04:11 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah. So we were talking. I really wanted to give people some tools that I didn't have that I kind of figured out along the path of helping more people by helping myself. And as far as, like, well, what's the best time to kind of go get a car and what is credit?

0:04:27 - (D): What is debit?

0:04:28 - (Tanner Frigaard): This thing that I really love is called the X curve. And what it talks about is how when we're younger, our responsibilities are high. We have kids, we're buying the house. Everything else younger.

0:04:41 - (Tawni Nguyen): Meaning 20 to 30.

0:04:43 - (B): Yeah.

0:04:43 - (Tanner Frigaard): Like younger age range, young adult. Right.

0:04:46 - (D): Getting into probably by the 40s, you're probably starting to transition.

0:04:51 - (Tanner Frigaard): So what this X curve does is in the beginning years, our aspects of life are high and our income is generally low.

0:05:00 - (D): You're just starting out first, kind of.

0:05:02 - (Tanner Frigaard): Kicking the tires of the new career, entry level jobs, maybe some mid management. And what's supposed to happen over time is your income generally increases but your expenses decrease. Right. Supposedly. So the kids move out. Right. That's a major expense.

0:05:20 - (D): Then we pay off the car, we.

0:05:22 - (Tanner Frigaard): Pay off the house. Right. I don't know if you ever grew up in the household that told you this, but they were like, pay off your house, go get a good job, go to school, get good grades, get a good job and then pay off your house. And when you live retired, then you'll live with less cost of living. That always sounded appealing to me until I found out, like, well, the tax code is still going to be the same.

0:05:44 - (Tanner Frigaard): So depending on how much income you have and where you're pulling, it determines what your actual income for retirement will be.

0:05:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, because I plan on having a higher income as I get older.

0:05:55 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yes.

0:05:55 - (Tawni Nguyen): Not having less expenses, not talking about like lifestyle inflation, but just generally speaking.

0:06:00 - (B): Is that I aim to get higher.

0:06:02 - (Tawni Nguyen): And higher net worth as I age, not the other way around to where I feel like people are more dependent on the social structure that's created around how money is looked at.

0:06:11 - (B): Right. Their perspective on who's going to take.

0:06:14 - (Tawni Nguyen): Care of them at an older age. Is it their kids or is it the government?

0:06:16 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yes.

0:06:17 - (B): Right.

0:06:18 - (Tanner Frigaard): So glad you brought that up because that's what the x curve talks about. So what was supposed to happen is what is it? Our liabilities decrease and our income increases.

0:06:30 - (E): Right.

0:06:30 - (Tanner Frigaard): So at the end you have that life, but what's happening now? And what you alluded to was instead of being an x, the lines are parallel. So your income and everything is staying usually low and your liabilities are staying high. And not because you're not making more money, but because instead of they're calling us a sandwich generation where our parents are usually moving back in with us while we're still taking care of our kids as well.

0:06:57 - (E): Right.

0:06:57 - (Tanner Frigaard): And so that what you're talking about, what you want to avoid. Yeah. Health care can be extremely expensive, especially the older and unhealthier we are. Right. So we start taking a look at, well, what is the long term care or assisted living care facility cost? And the average cost here in Nevada is between 6000 $8,000 a month. So for those family members, our parents, our grandparents that are getting older, do we have an extra eight to six grand a month to just put them into a facility that we would like.

0:07:27 - (D): Them to be in?

0:07:27 - (E): Yeah.

0:07:28 - (Tawni Nguyen): But you know what's funny is that I was at a conference last week and this guy out of Texas.

0:07:32 - (B): Low.

0:07:33 - (Tawni Nguyen): Something low buckman or something like that.

0:07:35 - (B): He runs assisted livings. Right. And memory care.

0:07:40 - (Tawni Nguyen): And he says that statistically, the money that you're spending, they actually only spend 1 hour per.

0:07:45 - (B): Yeah, per client.

0:07:47 - (Tawni Nguyen): So you're actually not really utilizing the fees that you're putting into these assisted living facilities anyways. So your elderly are not really actually being taken care of.

0:07:56 - (Tanner Frigaard): Correct.

0:07:56 - (B): And I feel like.

0:07:57 - (Tawni Nguyen): So where is that money going? It's because. That's why I feel like there's a.

0:08:00 - (B): Lot of investors that are going into.

0:08:02 - (Tawni Nguyen): The space thinking that it's a fast net cash flow is because it's $68,000.

0:08:07 - (B): Per month per bed, with an overhead.

0:08:11 - (Tawni Nguyen): Of 1 hour of care, of actual care.

0:08:14 - (B): So what's that all about?

0:08:17 - (Tanner Frigaard): So a lot of it goes into the actual medication costs and any additional equipment that would be needed and any specialties.

0:08:26 - (D): So depending on where they are, quality.

0:08:28 - (Tanner Frigaard): Of life wise, a lot of that's.

0:08:30 - (D): Going to play in.

0:08:34 - (E): Yeah.

0:08:35 - (Tawni Nguyen): No, that's a scam.

0:08:38 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah. Healthcare costs are increasing on average. I think it's like 20% a year. It's, like, insane.

0:08:44 - (Tawni Nguyen): And by health care, you mean like insurance costs or just cost like doctor visits?

0:08:49 - (D): Yes, just the cost as a whole. At least that's what we're kind of seeing.

0:08:54 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, because the way I kind of.

0:08:55 - (B): View my perspective on big pharma is just.

0:08:58 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's a continuous cycle of like a wheel almost, just to keep people sick.

0:09:03 - (E): Right.

0:09:03 - (Tawni Nguyen): Because they're feeding them different things and moving from how the sad american standard.

0:09:09 - (B): Diet, it's just how it moves from.

0:09:13 - (Tawni Nguyen): Agriculture into big pharma.

0:09:14 - (B): And it's just a pinball back and forth.

0:09:17 - (Tawni Nguyen): To me, that's just how they're cycling.

0:09:19 - (B): The money back and forth through the american diet. And what can we do about that? Well, not much.

0:09:25 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, because exercise is obviously one thing that we all know, and also eating right. So we didn't really put all of these things into place. At least I didn't until I started getting a little bit older because I.

0:09:38 - (D): Started realizing all the different.

0:09:40 - (Tanner Frigaard): Like, you start taking a look at the labels and you notice how high the sodium is, what types of ingredients.

0:09:46 - (Tawni Nguyen): Are in those 40 things, you can't even say.

0:09:49 - (B): Yeah, you're like, I don't even know.

0:09:51 - (Tanner Frigaard): And then you search it and you're like, this isn't even food.

0:09:54 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, it's preservative made out of dead animals to make the colors brighter. Therefore, it creates an addiction on your.

0:10:01 - (B): Palate because it creates a false sense.

0:10:04 - (Tawni Nguyen): Of dopamine to your brain. And that's why kids and adults are addicted to sugar. They're addicted to Coca Colas. Like all of these really high mass produced products that are super ultra processed.

0:10:13 - (B): Foods are the biggest thing that people.

0:10:16 - (Tawni Nguyen): Are addicted to without realizing they're addicted to their own food is because they're pumping so much into them and making them so appealing, like color. And they spend so much money on actually marketing these products, when realistically the substance is, there's not really much in them. Because if you're looking at a product that's made in Europe versus a product by the same company that's made here.

0:10:36 - (B): You look at the ingredients list, it's like three to four versus 16.

0:10:43 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah.

0:10:43 - (Tawni Nguyen): And half of them are preservatives and just chemicals that barely passes regulation by the FDA, which that's a different topic.

0:10:51 - (B): But it doesn't take a lot.

0:10:53 - (Tawni Nguyen): So even if it's saying, like, natural colorings or whatever, you don't know what that natural coloring is.

0:10:58 - (B): It's because it's only 30%.

0:11:00 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm making this up, not a stem, but you know what I'm saying. It's a very fine line in between what qualifies as real foods. And most people are going into those.

0:11:09 - (B): Middle aisle, and that's the aisles I.

0:11:12 - (Tawni Nguyen): Stay out of, because I shop the perimeter, right? Yeah, because that's where the whole foods, the actual nutrients, dense food that are unsexy, the grocery, like the produce and all of that stuff, all the green bypasses. Yeah.

0:11:23 - (E): Right.

0:11:23 - (B): And now they're trying to make real.

0:11:26 - (Tawni Nguyen): Foods less shiny and they're trying to.

0:11:28 - (B): Draw more attention to the middle section, which are pumped out, guess who? By the conglomerates, by the big corporations.

0:11:36 - (Tawni Nguyen): And the more they make money off.

0:11:38 - (B): Of how sick you are, the more.

0:11:39 - (Tawni Nguyen): Big pharma makes money of keeping you that way.

0:11:42 - (Tanner Frigaard): And what's scary to me is that there's been a lot of big investors.

0:11:46 - (D): Buying up a ton of farmland, and.

0:11:48 - (Tanner Frigaard): I'm sure you probably know a couple of them. And so what they're starting to do is artificially make those foods as well. Now, one of the things that always fascinated me was bananas. So, you know, the actual bananas we have now is an actual mutated form of what a banana used to be. The actual true flavor of a banana. If you know the Laffy taffy, that banana laffy taffy, that's the true essence of what the banana used to taste.

0:12:17 - (B): Like before it's genetically modified.

0:12:19 - (Tanner Frigaard): Before it was genetically modified.

0:12:20 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, I think they make it more aesthetic looking because corn and bananas are highly, highly mutated. Because natural, ancient corn, like, from Peru and Korea and all that stuff.

0:12:30 - (B): It doesn't look pretty like american corn.

0:12:32 - (Tawni Nguyen): To where it's all straight, it's all.

0:12:33 - (B): One color, and it's so unknown.

0:12:36 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like, they're like, oh, but it's real food. No, I stay out of corn and.

0:12:39 - (B): Grain fed animal products.

0:12:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): I guess that's what you would call it.

0:12:43 - (B): Because they're highly fed corn and all.

0:12:46 - (Tawni Nguyen): Of these things that are not made for human consumptions, because our body is not designed to break down gluten in that structure.

0:12:52 - (B): And that's why so many people are.

0:12:53 - (Tawni Nguyen): Sick and they have so many autoimmune diseases.

0:12:56 - (B): It's because of that.

0:12:57 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's like, just look at a simple banana. It doesn't even taste like that anymore. It just makes it look pretty.

0:13:03 - (B): And there's so much food waste and.

0:13:04 - (Tawni Nguyen): All of that stuff, too.

0:13:05 - (Tanner Frigaard): Exactly.

0:13:06 - (D): Because we're looking for bigger, right?

0:13:08 - (Tanner Frigaard): Look at the chickens. Look at everything.

0:13:10 - (D): All of it's getting more plump, and.

0:13:12 - (Tanner Frigaard): It'S not necessarily with the right ingredients. And so whatever they're ingesting, we end up ingesting. And so why I'm so big on this, on the health side, is because of how much it affects us financially, especially in the future. And that's where now, when we need the money, that's where a lot of.

0:13:29 - (D): Times, people are now stuck because 38%.

0:13:33 - (Tanner Frigaard): Of Americans currently can't handle more than.

0:13:36 - (D): A $2,000 disaster happening, like an emergency.

0:13:40 - (Tanner Frigaard): Without going to a credit card. And that's just keeping it in their.

0:13:44 - (Tawni Nguyen): Talking about, like, their emergency fund. Like, they're thinking.

0:13:46 - (Tanner Frigaard): Not even their emergency fund total. Yeah. If they had all four tires blow out at the same time or need to replace something, they would have to.

0:13:55 - (D): Go to a credit card to pay that cost.

0:13:59 - (B): That's the real statistic.

0:14:00 - (D): That's the real statistic.

0:14:03 - (Tanner Frigaard): Isn't that sad, dude, that is so sad.

0:14:06 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like, how did we get here?

0:14:07 - (D): As a society, not through good habits.

0:14:10 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah, but we know that, right? Because of all the sugar and all the fun, activities aren't usually what are most appropriate for us health wise, unless it's, like, a sports. But even then, look at all the injuries and everything else in the professional.

0:14:25 - (D): Sports, all the brain damage, everything else. How do you cover that?

0:14:29 - (Tawni Nguyen): But I think that's why the health.

0:14:32 - (B): Culture, it's been so mainstream.

0:14:35 - (Tawni Nguyen): But really it's not, because now it's glamorized as, like, a new media type of marketing. It's like, oh, you're bougie. If you're healthy, if you're drinking a green juice, you can afford it. Yeah, green juice is like $16.

0:14:46 - (Tanner Frigaard): Absolutely.

0:14:47 - (Tawni Nguyen): At Whole Foods, not a lot of people can afford it.

0:14:49 - (B): So now it's looking like health is.

0:14:52 - (Tawni Nguyen): Being looked at as, like, having a separate income bracket to be able to afford those foods to where, generally speaking, people should be eating whole foods to begin with. Not at whole foods, just whole foods. Whole Foods is really overrated, too.

0:15:04 - (B): Right.

0:15:04 - (Tawni Nguyen): So that's a great thing that you brought up, is that a lot of people actually can afford that is because they're watching tv and they're watching all.

0:15:11 - (B): Of these mass produced advertising that's telling.

0:15:14 - (Tawni Nguyen): You to eat really shitty food, eat captain crunch for breakfast. Do you even know what's in it? Do you know what's made out of?

0:15:21 - (Tanner Frigaard): As a kid, I never cared. It just tasted good.

0:15:25 - (Tawni Nguyen): But once I started making my own decisions and once I actually started making money, and I'm like, why do I feel like this?

0:15:31 - (B): And why do I feel like shit?

0:15:33 - (Tawni Nguyen): Right. It's because we're putting all of these toxins in our body, household products even.

0:15:38 - (Tanner Frigaard): And then we start wondering, well, with the chemical reaction, does that start going more into depression, anxiety? Now we're taking counter medication to counter those feelings that are mostly being ingested in us. By us, by our choice.

0:15:56 - (B): Yeah. So I feel like there's a lot.

0:15:58 - (Tawni Nguyen): Of ways to look at financial habits.

0:16:01 - (B): And health habits and how it. I wouldn't say it should auto correct.

0:16:06 - (Tawni Nguyen): Each other, but at the same time, if you're making more money, why are you putting worse things in your body?

0:16:11 - (B): Because wouldn't you think that to better.

0:16:13 - (Tawni Nguyen): Your quality of life, you need to one, of course, make more money to afford the kind of food that it takes for health. But it doesn't always have to be like that.

0:16:21 - (B): You can actually eat really healthy, marginally speaking, for much less than what you're currently doing.

0:16:29 - (Tanner Frigaard): Absolutely.

0:16:30 - (B): Just the fast food, all of these.

0:16:32 - (Tawni Nguyen): Uber eats, which most of it, it's like, service fees and all of this stuff, and you're still poisoning your body, but it comes down to convenience.

0:16:39 - (B): Like, people pay for time.

0:16:41 - (E): That's it.

0:16:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's not because they want to put that in their body, because they don't have time. It's because the culture is so focused.

0:16:48 - (B): On glamorizing, like, oh, work really hard.

0:16:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): But trash your body with, like, a pizza every single day. Let's start your morning with donuts and all of the sugar that keeps you addicted and wired for x amount of hours, and then you're coming down, you're crashing, and then you need to load up on really trashy carbs just to keep a fake sustainable type of energy to where it's not real sustained energy. Getting that from sunlight or having a natural circadian rhythm by going outside and going for a walk.

0:17:16 - (Tanner Frigaard): Absolutely.

0:17:16 - (Tawni Nguyen): That's the cure.

0:17:17 - (Tanner Frigaard): And even grounding. When I study massage, way back in my days, one of the things they always talked about was the grounding effects. And being able to even just 30 minutes of walking outside barefoot in the grass would help you recenter, your body's alignment and all that.

0:17:33 - (B): Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. It's something that I feel now in the last maybe decade or so, that's.

0:17:41 - (Tawni Nguyen): Kind of looked at as a toxic spirituality because they're like, oh, now we're bringing all this hippie dippy mishigaj back. But no, that's just the way nature.

0:17:50 - (B): Intended us is to be outside, hang out, ground, breathe, not dare to screen.

0:17:56 - (Tawni Nguyen): For like, 16 hours a day, trash our bodies with certain foods, come home and turn on the tv just to drown out whatever noise, you know what I'm saying? That comes from life dissatisfaction or lack of fulfillment or lack of meaningful purpose or vision, because people don't even know what they're working for, but they know that they have to work is because they have bills, they have all of these expenses that are stacking on to their life.

0:18:20 - (Tawni Nguyen): They don't know how they got there. It stems from health and financial habits, too, right?

0:18:25 - (Tanner Frigaard): Absolutely, yeah.

0:18:26 - (Tawni Nguyen): Was that your inspiration for writing this book? Those are some of the things you were suffering from.

0:18:31 - (Tanner Frigaard): It was. So that was definitely part of it. Another part was just a lack of information or now it seems like there's too much information, like, it's information overload and trying to find a simple place of like, hey, what are some of the just basics?

0:18:45 - (D): What are some of the things that.

0:18:47 - (Tanner Frigaard): I can do to help reduce my debts? Or how can I pay off my car a little bit faster, but without.

0:18:53 - (D): Having to pay more? And just, like, turning the script, if.

0:18:59 - (Tanner Frigaard): You would, even utilizing potentially interest only loans for houses when you're purchasing things. And so there's just different perspectives depending on what the ultimate goal is. That's really why I wanted to write this book, was just to bring education as far as the way I interpreted it and then give it to others, so then that way they can have.

0:19:23 - (D): That better quality of life.

0:19:24 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. And I feel like that's why we shared this platform, too. It's because a lot of the things.

0:19:28 - (B): That I know now that I'm well.

0:19:30 - (Tawni Nguyen): Educated in was the decisions that I didn't know how to make when I was younger. And I wasn't really driven by this type of mentality.

0:19:38 - (E): Right.

0:19:38 - (Tawni Nguyen): My mindset was all off. I was hanging out the wrong people. That was just after one thing, which is money.

0:19:43 - (B): They don't care about their health.

0:19:45 - (Tawni Nguyen): The culture I was in was all about drinking.

0:19:47 - (B): Drinking and making money.

0:19:48 - (Tawni Nguyen): To summarize, the most in my 20s.

0:19:50 - (B): Right.

0:19:50 - (Tanner Frigaard): Sounds a lot like Vegas.

0:19:51 - (B): Yeah.

0:19:52 - (Tawni Nguyen): But I moved here and I got a lot healthier than where I was.

0:19:55 - (Tanner Frigaard): That's so funny, right? It's hilarious when people tell me that they moved to Vegas and they actually changed their habits in a better way than where they were. I have a friend of mine, he was actually from Alaska and did the same thing. So it was just so.

0:20:09 - (B): Yeah, exactly like I thought I would.

0:20:11 - (Tawni Nguyen): Come here and then automatically people think you're going to become a gambler and drink and all that. So I came here. I'm in the best shape I've ever been in. I'm mentally so clear, financially more stable. And I stopped drinking like I'm sober now. It's just a really funny way to look at how your environment really shapes the decisions that you make.

0:20:29 - (B): Right.

0:20:29 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's because I was surrounding myself with people that does the same thing kind of every weekend. I didn't have any other time. I was on that grind, which I don't know what I was grinding for, but that fake grind, right.

0:20:40 - (B): That is money drinking.

0:20:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): Summarize the 20s.

0:20:43 - (Tanner Frigaard): We want to look the part instead of be the part. And that was one of the crazy things that I. Because I study the rich, and that was one of the biggest habits that I started creating early on that I'm very thankful for. And so during my studying of them, of the Warren Buffett's, of all these people who've achieved what I felt was success, especially in the money game. Right. One of the things that they were always talking about was making sure that.

0:21:09 - (D): You'Re not overextending yourself.

0:21:11 - (Tanner Frigaard): And I think a lot of times people do that to themselves. Not like intentionally, but it's usually with. Have you ever heard the saying, the road to hell is paid with good intentions?

0:21:25 - (Tawni Nguyen): No, but I like that.

0:21:26 - (Tanner Frigaard): No, to me, that's how we get into the financial game. It's like we paid the road with as best intentions as we can. But are we ending up where we want to?

0:21:39 - (D): Because the car breaks down.

0:21:40 - (E): Right.

0:21:40 - (Tanner Frigaard): And we're working a minimum wage job.

0:21:42 - (D): So what do we do? Well, I need a car because I.

0:21:45 - (Tanner Frigaard): Have to get to this place versus thinking of the alternatives. There's ride shares, there's buses. Now, I'm not saying to do that here in the city, because there are some cities I feel that are way better established on getting around town than us specifically. So I'm not saying that you can't have a car, that you shouldn't, but I'm saying putting those things in perspective.

0:22:06 - (D): As far as we build our life.

0:22:10 - (Tanner Frigaard): Based on the income that we surround ourselves with. So if we're making, let's say, $90,000 a year, but we're spending $95,000 a year, you're not in a better position than the guy who makes 25,000 and spends 20 of it. Right. You're both in the same spots. Right. It's just one has a little bit more. One has more stuff. And so we think that they're more successful because they have the bigger house, they have the more cars, but they're drowning in just as much, if not more debt.

0:22:40 - (Tanner Frigaard): They're keeping them up at night because they're like, if I lose my job.

0:22:43 - (D): I got one month of my expenses.

0:22:46 - (Tanner Frigaard): Taken care of, and then I'm screwed.

0:22:48 - (E): Yes.

0:22:50 - (Tawni Nguyen): And then I think that trade off in consumerism is just like, who's got the watch?

0:22:53 - (B): Who's got the belt?

0:22:55 - (Tawni Nguyen): Who looks like they have themselves together? Like, who's got their shit together?

0:22:58 - (B): Oh, just look at how they're dressed. Right. But a lot of the people that.

0:23:03 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm grateful for in my life, I would like to call them, like, I.

0:23:06 - (B): Would say minimal millionaires. Like, you would never be able to.

0:23:10 - (Tawni Nguyen): Tell their high net worth.

0:23:11 - (B): It's just they're very subtly dressed, don't.

0:23:14 - (Tawni Nguyen): Have flashy things, don't even talk about money in that way to where they have to show that they have money.

0:23:21 - (B): But you know what I'm saying? They keep their lifestyle very modern, easy, simple, less stuff.

0:23:27 - (Tawni Nguyen): And I think the stuff thing is what people are drowning in.

0:23:31 - (B): Yeah.

0:23:32 - (Tawni Nguyen): Why do you need that much stuff to begin with?

0:23:34 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah.

0:23:34 - (Tawni Nguyen): And I think that's when minimalism became a trend. But now people are chasing that trend to look like they're minimalist, but they're spending more money to look more minimal is because all the minimal trend costs.

0:23:47 - (B): More money, which is ironic how people can market anything to anyone. It's like, oh, do you want to.

0:23:55 - (Tawni Nguyen): Look like a minimalist? Like, you should buy this product because.

0:23:57 - (B): 180 will last you for whatever.

0:24:01 - (Tawni Nguyen): But they're still spending $80 on a shirt and do that five times. That's still $400.

0:24:06 - (Tanner Frigaard): Exactly. What if we shopped at Ross instead of Lulu?

0:24:08 - (E): Yeah.

0:24:09 - (Tanner Frigaard): Now, I'm not saying that Lulu isn't great. I love their stuff. At the same time, you can very easily dress how you would like on a budget.

0:24:20 - (B): Yeah, I think that should be a different segment.

0:24:24 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm going to give you $100.

0:24:26 - (Tanner Frigaard): How many outfits can you make out of yourself? Especially starting out when I was living the college, the college days where you're like top ramen, little Caesars pizza. You know how to finagle the system, right? I used to go to Fostos just to get like a bean cheese burrito. So it's like a fast food mexican restaurant.

0:24:49 - (B): Okay.

0:24:49 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah. So, like Roberto's, they're actually cousins in the same family, but faustos is more of my preference. I do love Roberto's, but fosters I have a special connection to because my grandfather.

0:25:00 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

0:25:00 - (D): So I used to go there when.

0:25:03 - (Tanner Frigaard): The bean cheese burrito were a dollar 25. I remember going to Costco every Friday to get a dollar 50 hot dog. And it comes with a drink. Now, again, that wasn't the healthier side of me, but it still puts it into perspective as far as you don't have to spend fifty dollars to one hundred dollars every single meal, even $30 every meal you're having and doing that three, four, five times a day.

0:25:26 - (B): Yeah, we can cut back on some.

0:25:28 - (Tanner Frigaard): Of those things, replenish them with something that's going to be a little bit better and healthier for us. So now what I do is I cut up celery and I have peanut.

0:25:36 - (D): Butter and celery, and that's a little snack in the afternoon.

0:25:39 - (Tanner Frigaard): And then you get, like, some chicken. There's so much things that you can do to be creative. But working it on a budget, too.

0:25:47 - (E): Yeah.

0:25:47 - (Tawni Nguyen): Now that you know what hot dogs.

0:25:49 - (Tanner Frigaard): Are made out of you, I don't.

0:25:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): Want to put that in your body. Right. It's not even about the money anymore. It's about your health. Because at the time, I get that.

0:25:56 - (B): It'S a financially sound decision made out of pure intentions of being frugal. It's because you got to work with the budget. But now that you don't have to fit a dollar 50 into your budget in there, you're like, why am I.

0:26:09 - (Tawni Nguyen): Putting this poison in my body? Nothing against Costco hot dogs. I don't think I've ever really had it. I'm not a hot dog person.

0:26:14 - (B): I don't like processed food.

0:26:16 - (Tawni Nguyen): But I understand the idea behind it.

0:26:18 - (B): Because it's much larger than spending like $10.

0:26:21 - (E): Exactly.

0:26:22 - (B): On like, a big Mac.

0:26:23 - (Tawni Nguyen): Maybe probably $10 now.

0:26:25 - (D): Probably, yeah.

0:26:26 - (Tanner Frigaard): And so one of the other things, so, like dressings on salads, I didn't realize how bad they were.

0:26:34 - (Tawni Nguyen): 500 calories. Yeah, it's insane.

0:26:36 - (Tanner Frigaard): And I'm like, why am I eating a salad? Should have just eaten a burger. If I'm going to suffer, I might as well not do it this way.

0:26:44 - (Tawni Nguyen): You know what's funny? That you brought up burgers. I try to eat more plant based.

0:26:48 - (B): Right?

0:26:48 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah.

0:26:48 - (Tawni Nguyen): But if I was to eat a burger, I would just eat a grass fed burger to where I know it's.

0:26:52 - (B): Just beef that's grass fed.

0:26:54 - (Tawni Nguyen): Rather than eating like, a beyond or an impossible burger, it's because, yes, I like plant based options and I like meat alternatives. But if you're really looking at the construct of how it's made. Yes. To synthesize in lab, we understand that. So with my diet, I try to.

0:27:08 - (B): Choose the values of what I'm eating that day.

0:27:11 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's like, am I more conscious about animals or am I conscious about my health? If you're looking at, like, an impossible burger or a beyond burger, there's just so many additives and there's so much things in it to where you shouldn't. I'll have it once in a while. But it's not like the main staple in my house.

0:27:27 - (B): Right.

0:27:28 - (Tawni Nguyen): Because I try to keep food as close to nature intended as possible.

0:27:31 - (B): Vegetables being vegetables.

0:27:33 - (Tawni Nguyen): There's no fillers, there's no things that keep it together.

0:27:37 - (B): There's no sucralose or anything like any.

0:27:40 - (Tawni Nguyen): Of these fake sugars. I'm going to eat meat.

0:27:42 - (B): It's got to be meat.

0:27:43 - (Tawni Nguyen): Shrimp should taste like shrimp, not something made in a lab. Right.

0:27:47 - (D): You don't want popcorn shrimp.

0:27:49 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's just covered in 30 types of flour and baked oil. Yeah. And even fast food, too, is not really oil. Like all these seed oils that you see, even tortillas, chips. There are some brands that now the seed oils, that's not even like soy or canola, and all these fake vegetable oils, like the seed oils, you know how it's like anti. It's very inflammatory to our health and it causes a lot of inflammation. Right?

0:28:15 - (D): Yes.

0:28:16 - (Tawni Nguyen): Another really bad one is cotton seed oil.

0:28:19 - (D): Oh, I haven't heard of that.

0:28:20 - (B): Yeah.

0:28:20 - (Tawni Nguyen): If you look into it and how cotton seed oil came about to where they were super refined from the cotton itself. And they didn't know what to do with the excess seeds. They refined it and they sold it as oil. And now it's being used in manufactured.

0:28:35 - (B): Cooking in ultra processed foods is because.

0:28:38 - (Tawni Nguyen): It'S the cheapest option.

0:28:40 - (B): So it's even worse than like corn.

0:28:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): Oil, which corn oil, you know, is like terrible, right?

0:28:44 - (D): Yeah.

0:28:44 - (Tanner Frigaard): Also I heard vegetable oil is terrible. Yeah.

0:28:47 - (Tawni Nguyen): Just because it has a word vegetable. No, it's super refined and it causes.

0:28:51 - (B): A lot of autoimmune diseases. Top three oil, I would say, like.

0:28:56 - (Tawni Nguyen): For me in my house, avocado oil, I use coconut oil and then I have olive oil.

0:29:00 - (E): That's it.

0:29:01 - (Tawni Nguyen): Keep it very clean, very simple. MCT is good too. It's like a medium triglyceride strand. So it's a little bit different than like pure fat coconut oil.

0:29:11 - (B): But that's what I keep in my house.

0:29:12 - (Tawni Nguyen): I don't overcomplicate. Like, diet shouldn't be really complicated. You shouldn't try to do too much to your diet. I think what a diet is, is removing things that are not supposed to.

0:29:22 - (B): Be in your body rather than putting your body through these unsustainable diet culture.

0:29:28 - (Tawni Nguyen): Things and having really unhealthy relationships with food.

0:29:32 - (D): Yes.

0:29:32 - (Tanner Frigaard): I think your diet is how I see a lot of people attack a.

0:29:37 - (D): Budget financially because the same word.

0:29:41 - (Tanner Frigaard): So diet is negative.

0:29:43 - (E): Right.

0:29:44 - (Tanner Frigaard): It has a negative context to it because people go, oh, I have to go without. I have to die without. Right? Die it, die without it. And the same thing with the budget. They hear a budget and they go, oh, well, then that means I'm not going to be able to go have fun anymore. That means I won't be able to buy the things I want. I'm going to just do that later. Where? Really? This is why in the book I talk about, let's talk about managing a.

0:30:12 - (D): Cash flow versus building a budget, even.

0:30:15 - (Tanner Frigaard): Though it's the same thing, it's a frame of mind that we shift. And I think it's the same thing for the diet. Instead of saying, I'm not going to eat a doughnut, I switch it and I say, I'm going to eat more celery, I'm going to eat more broccoli. Because now I'm not thinking about what I can't have, I'm thinking about the things I can have. That's how I build out, like a financial plan for people. And when I'm talking to them, I get that they need to have fun.

0:30:41 - (D): They need to have a vacation, they.

0:30:43 - (Tanner Frigaard): Need to be able to spend time, whatever that might be, whether it's for themselves or go and treat themselves a little bit. But at the same time, we need to be responsible. And we also know that the 10% rule of save 10% of your income each year.

0:31:01 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

0:31:01 - (B): Doesn't work.

0:31:02 - (Tanner Frigaard): It doesn't work.

0:31:02 - (Tawni Nguyen): 70, 515. Ten. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah.

0:31:05 - (Tanner Frigaard): Because even, like, even if you're saving 10% and you make 100 grand a year, it's going to take you ten years to save one year annual salary. But, you know, a scary statistic is if you got laid off and you make over 50,000. So 50,000 plus for every additional $10,000 you make and above 50,000, it historically takes you, on average, one extra month.

0:31:29 - (D): To find a job that's going to replace that income.

0:31:33 - (E): Okay?

0:31:34 - (D): So if you think about it and.

0:31:37 - (Tanner Frigaard): You'Re looking for a job that's going to pay 90,000, $100,000 a year, typically, on average, it's going to be about nine to ten months before you replace that income. Now, can it happen sooner? Absolutely. But especially depending on the industry and depending on what's going, you're trying to.

0:31:52 - (Tawni Nguyen): Do the same thing.

0:31:53 - (D): Yeah, a lot of changes.

0:31:56 - (Tanner Frigaard): Right. And so those are things that I think people see as a negative that could actually be so much more of a positive.

0:32:02 - (D): Even though we all know we got.

0:32:04 - (Tanner Frigaard): To exercise, we all know we got to go to the gym, but what.

0:32:07 - (D): Holds us back from actually doing it?

0:32:11 - (E): What do you think? I don't know.

0:32:13 - (Tanner Frigaard): I go every now. I feel weird.

0:32:16 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm like, no, I need to go.

0:32:18 - (Tanner Frigaard): I'll go every day. But I also have to trick myself.

0:32:21 - (D): Into getting in there.

0:32:22 - (Tanner Frigaard): And so one of my friends, he's a UFC fighter, and I was telling him, I was like, dude, I'm having a hard time building my habit getting back into the gym. I took some time off. I was at the gym every day at 04:00 a.m. To 05:00 a.m. And then Covid happened. And then I got super lazy, threw my routine off, everything, right. Couldn't go to the gym, started working out outside, but that was hit and miss.

0:32:44 - (Tanner Frigaard): So I got back on this track.

0:32:46 - (D): And one of the things I had.

0:32:47 - (Tanner Frigaard): To shift from my mind, and this might be a little extreme, especially for most people, but I had to tell myself mentally, it's like, if you don't.

0:32:53 - (D): Go to the gym today, you're going to die.

0:32:56 - (E): Okay.

0:32:57 - (Tanner Frigaard): And I had to shift it to be that extreme for me to realize that my health is that important, where if I don't do this, I won't.

0:33:07 - (D): Be around long enough to enjoy the.

0:33:11 - (Tanner Frigaard): Things I'm working so hard for.

0:33:12 - (Tawni Nguyen): That's such an extreme polarity way to think about it, though.

0:33:15 - (D): It is.

0:33:16 - (B): Because not to be, we're going to.

0:33:19 - (Tawni Nguyen): Die regardless if you go to the.

0:33:21 - (Tanner Frigaard): Gym or not, right?

0:33:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): You don't know that. It's a finite game that we're all playing by living. Right? And I don't think people understand that.

0:33:29 - (B): Construct of the longer you plan to be alive, the less you have, because.

0:33:36 - (Tawni Nguyen): You'Re selling yourself the idea that you actually have more time than you actually do. When that dash in between the day you're born and whenever that happens to be, not to be, like, morbid or anything, you actually don't know. So that concept of having bought time, everyone's on borrowed time.

0:33:52 - (D): We are.

0:33:53 - (Tawni Nguyen): So at the same time, you're earning all of these things by telling yourself.

0:33:56 - (B): Like, you have to go to the gym. Because what does that mean?

0:34:01 - (Tawni Nguyen): Is that going to create a more sustainable life for you? It should be sustainable habits, right? Not because most people, I think, go to the gym for aesthetic reasons.

0:34:08 - (B): They want to look good, but it.

0:34:11 - (Tawni Nguyen): Kind of starts from the inside, too. Like, if you feel good, you naturally will look good.

0:34:14 - (B): Because I feel like another way to.

0:34:18 - (Tawni Nguyen): Look at it is there's a lot of. I don't know. I can't speak for girls or guys, but there's a lot of people that seeks validation by posting on Instagram. But the more likes, the more they.

0:34:28 - (B): Feel that they're more socially accepted.

0:34:30 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like, damn, they look good. They've been working out. They want to show off their progress, right?

0:34:34 - (B): But at the same time, if you.

0:34:37 - (Tawni Nguyen): Walk by a mirror and then you can't give yourself that.

0:34:39 - (B): Like, you're doing all of that work, and for what?

0:34:44 - (Tawni Nguyen): The only person that should really matter is you. If you walk by a mirror, it's like, damn, I look good. I feel great today.

0:34:53 - (B): I think that's, like, the best validation that we can give ourselves.

0:34:58 - (Tawni Nguyen): We owe that to ourself. But most people go to the gym.

0:35:00 - (B): It's because they need others to validate themselves. Yes.

0:35:06 - (D): I love what you said there is.

0:35:07 - (Tanner Frigaard): Because I was reading a personal development book. I can't remember which one, but it talked about how we don't take anything to heart when it's said to us from someone else. We only accept it as truth is when we say it to ourselves.

0:35:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): The process of internalizing it.

0:35:24 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yes. So to me, that's been a big motivation for me is because I've never really enjoyed how I looked. And so that's where now that's my biggest passion in trying to get as.

0:35:37 - (D): Fit as I possibly can.

0:35:39 - (Tanner Frigaard): I mean, yes, it's self validation reasons, but I had this image of what I would look like in my head, and now I'm just, like, in the.

0:35:47 - (D): Spot physically and ready mentally to be.

0:35:51 - (Tanner Frigaard): Like, I'm ready for that. Yeah.

0:35:53 - (Tawni Nguyen): You want to be in the best shape of your life.

0:35:55 - (Tanner Frigaard): Exactly.

0:35:55 - (B): You deserve it. You know what I'm saying?

0:35:57 - (Tawni Nguyen): That's the mindset that everyone should be.

0:35:58 - (B): After, is that I want to be.

0:36:00 - (Tawni Nguyen): In the best shape is because I want to feel good, look good naked.

0:36:03 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yes.

0:36:04 - (Tawni Nguyen): I don't even feel like $100 shirt is going to cover you. If you're out of shape and you're not confident because of how you look, it's going to show regardless of what you dress it in, because what is it called? Like, the skin suit that we're all wearing. It's just a mask, just like anything else. Like girls like us, we can throw on our hair, we can do our makeup. But real confidence really, truly shows is how comfortable and how confident you can be in your own skin, with or.

0:36:29 - (B): Without makeup, with or without clothes.

0:36:31 - (Tawni Nguyen): That's a social construct, too, right?

0:36:33 - (E): Yes.

0:36:34 - (Tawni Nguyen): So I think a lot of that.

0:36:35 - (B): Lacks in this culture. It's not really acceptable to talk about. So I'm kind of glad we can.

0:36:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): Bring this up, too.

0:36:43 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah, no, I love it. Because even for me, I had to go to the extreme version and say, hey, if you don't go, you're going to die. But that was to then help me to build up my habit where I don't still have to have that same thought today, to still motivate me to go to the gym. But it also took me several weeks of building up that habit of every single day, getting back in there, where if I miss the morning, that means, guess what? You're doing it at night.

0:37:09 - (Tanner Frigaard): So then what sacrifices are you going to make? And that just teaches you more about life, too. Just like going to school. If you choose not to do your.

0:37:16 - (D): Homework and you show up to class the next day and it's due and.

0:37:21 - (Tanner Frigaard): You turn it in, it's blank, you're not going to get a very good grade.

0:37:24 - (E): Yeah.

0:37:25 - (Tawni Nguyen): Then you have to come up with some lie. Why? You can't do, you know, like someone hit my dog or whatever?

0:37:31 - (Tanner Frigaard): I actually had the excuse when I was working construction that my dog ate.

0:37:35 - (D): My check it literally happened.

0:37:37 - (Tanner Frigaard): I had a lab, black lab, still do. Her name is Jovi. She tore up my check and I had to bring it to my boss.

0:37:43 - (D): And have him replace it.

0:37:44 - (Tawni Nguyen): No way.

0:37:44 - (E): Crazy.

0:37:45 - (Tanner Frigaard): Super side story, but yeah, all the time. So one of the questions I ask myself in the book is, and this is a lot for parents, this section.

0:37:54 - (D): And it's asking, if we were to.

0:37:57 - (Tanner Frigaard): Put our finances on a report card.

0:38:00 - (D): And take a look at it, what grade would we have?

0:38:06 - (Tanner Frigaard): And that's one of the questions I want them to kind of sit and we'll actually have like a little calculation where they can add it all in and see what their financial report card is. But the same thing is like, if your kids were failing in school, how many semesters would you allow them to fail?

0:38:22 - (B): Yeah.

0:38:23 - (Tanner Frigaard): Before you start getting them back on track, before you start having to say, hey, we're going to have to sacrifice this over here to get this back on track. Right. And it could be time, it could be energy, it could be fun.

0:38:36 - (D): At the same time, is it because.

0:38:38 - (Tanner Frigaard): You don't love your kids that you want them to do better in school?

0:38:42 - (E): No.

0:38:43 - (Tawni Nguyen): You say finances.

0:38:44 - (B): Do you mean like personal finances, like the savings?

0:38:48 - (E): Yes.

0:38:49 - (Tanner Frigaard): Do we have an emergency fund? Do we have a foundation?

0:38:52 - (Tawni Nguyen): Spending money on, I think that's the most important.

0:38:54 - (Tanner Frigaard): Exactly. What is our debt? What's our debt to income ratio? The wealth formula as a whole is.

0:39:01 - (D): Money plus time plus or minus a return of investment.

0:39:06 - (Tanner Frigaard): So Roi, minus taxes equals wealth. So there's a lot of factors involved.

0:39:11 - (D): In there, but the main one is time.

0:39:14 - (E): Yeah.

0:39:15 - (Tanner Frigaard): So when are we going to get these things back on track?

0:39:19 - (D): Because the longer we wait, the longer.

0:39:22 - (Tanner Frigaard): That compound effect is going to negatively.

0:39:24 - (Tawni Nguyen): Affect us because the longer you sit in consumer debt, the higher the interest rate is going to get. And that's just going to compound over time.

0:39:31 - (B): You're going to dig yourself into a deeper hole.

0:39:35 - (Tawni Nguyen): But the sad truth is that the more people spend money on consumer debt is, the better the economy thrives because the banks make more money.

0:39:44 - (B): People don't really understand the concept of how banks make money.

0:39:48 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yes, that's a very interesting topic.

0:39:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): Right.

0:39:52 - (Tanner Frigaard): And so that's where a lot of what I do to help people and educate them is to start placing their money where the banks actually place their money.

0:40:01 - (E): Right.

0:40:01 - (Tanner Frigaard): And so there's a couple of different types of accounts that they use, but the banks, to go into the threshold of investing, the banks hold most of the assets. And then when the banks have too.

0:40:14 - (D): Much money, they have to be insured right.

0:40:16 - (Tanner Frigaard): That's where the FDIC comes in. They're an insurance company that backs what.

0:40:19 - (D): You have in the bank.

0:40:21 - (Tanner Frigaard): So the difference is what they back. So they back up to 250,000 per.

0:40:28 - (D): Account and they have up to 99 years to pay that back.

0:40:35 - (B): The FDIC. So if they lose your money, they have 99 years to pay you back.

0:40:42 - (E): You'll get it back.

0:40:43 - (B): Since when is that a thing?

0:40:45 - (Tanner Frigaard): Since in the fine print always been, shut the fuck out.

0:40:49 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm going to call my bankers today.

0:40:50 - (Tanner Frigaard): Call them up, say, hey, motherfucker. Is this true? Yes, and that's the sad truth. Now they are arguing on increasing that, especially with what's happening with a lot of the banks now and backing it into holding up to a million. But still, the 99 year rule is still going to be the same regardless, unless they put some changes into that that they haven't shown me and whatever it is. But when they have too many assets.

0:41:18 - (D): They have to be insured by an insurance company.

0:41:21 - (Tanner Frigaard): So those insurance companies are the second layer of protection. Do you know how much money the bank actually needs in reserves to lend?

0:41:29 - (D): You ever look that up?

0:41:30 - (Tanner Frigaard): I'm one of those weird people that just likes to look at weird stuff.

0:41:33 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's good that I have finance nerd friends because it's not a normal Tuesday.

0:41:37 - (B): For me to google this.

0:41:38 - (D): No, but it's a normal Friday night.

0:41:41 - (Tanner Frigaard): For me to be like, I wonder. So I looked it up and so it's 10%. So the bank has 10%. So you give the bank one dollars.

0:41:55 - (D): Can't talk. They will give you $10. They'll lend you.

0:41:59 - (Tanner Frigaard): Okay, so for every one dollars they.

0:42:01 - (D): Have in reserves, right. They'll lend ten, another nine.

0:42:07 - (E): Oh, wow.

0:42:07 - (D): Isn't that insane?

0:42:09 - (E): Yeah.

0:42:09 - (Tawni Nguyen): I don't keep a lot of money.

0:42:10 - (B): In the bank for other reasons.

0:42:12 - (Tanner Frigaard): Where they keep their money in insurance companies. The insurance companies, in order for them.

0:42:17 - (D): To leverage, they have to have higher reserves.

0:42:22 - (Tanner Frigaard): So typically it's about $4 to every.

0:42:25 - (D): One dollars that they're lending.

0:42:27 - (B): So for every dollar you give them.

0:42:29 - (Tawni Nguyen): They can lend four?

0:42:30 - (D): No.

0:42:30 - (Tanner Frigaard): So for every dollar they receive, they.

0:42:33 - (D): Have $4 in reserves that they lend.

0:42:36 - (Tanner Frigaard): So they lend on $1. Sorry, not they receive, but they lend on $1.

0:42:40 - (D): They have $4 in reserves.

0:42:47 - (Tanner Frigaard): Right?

0:42:48 - (E): Yeah.

0:42:48 - (Tanner Frigaard): So that's where the banks place their money. And now what happens to those insurance companies? What if they're insuring too many things?

0:42:56 - (D): Well, first, I've never known an insurance.

0:42:58 - (Tanner Frigaard): Company to go bankrupt, but let's say that hypothetically it did.

0:43:02 - (D): It happened right well, they're backed by what's referred to as a reinsurance company.

0:43:09 - (B): Is that a life insurance?

0:43:10 - (Tanner Frigaard): Kinda. So it's a reinsurance company is like the big of the big. There's nine too big to fail companies. Alliance, Aegon. Those are two examples of reinsurance companies where Aegon owns Transamerica, which is an insurance company, which is huge, which been.

0:43:28 - (Tawni Nguyen): Around for over 100 years. Can't fail.

0:43:30 - (B): Haven't failed.

0:43:31 - (Tanner Frigaard): One of the too big to fail. But Transamerica isn't too big to fail. Aegon is too big to fail. So if something happens to Transamerica, Aegon.

0:43:39 - (D): Is the one that goes and bails them out.

0:43:43 - (B): Oh, wow.

0:43:43 - (Tanner Frigaard): Right? Isn't that crazy? So that's what all of these insurance companies are also having as a stop.

0:43:49 - (D): Loss, if you would. So that's kind of the tier of investing, right?

0:43:55 - (Tanner Frigaard): And so people go, well, what's the foundation like? What do I build on? If that's what the banking system has, what should I have?

0:44:03 - (D): And so the first thing is a foundation of protection.

0:44:06 - (Tanner Frigaard): You got to make sure that you have some protection in place. Then you have your debts. Right. Let's pay off those debts. We need to have an emergency fund. Got to make sure that that's there. And then you start looking at investing. But what's happening nowadays is investing is the new shiny toy, and everybody who's.

0:44:25 - (D): Anyone wants to do it.

0:44:27 - (E): Right?

0:44:27 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

0:44:28 - (Tanner Frigaard): So some people are in the position, too. They have the foundation. Right. When you're building. Because to go back in my construction days, when I was building a building, we always had to start with the foundation. We didn't start with the roof and the walls and the furniture. And now you have the blueprints, now you have the architecture, now you still have the interior designer. So you know what's going to happen after.

0:44:48 - (Tanner Frigaard): But when they start that process, they start at the foundation. I think that's where most people stop, is they never build what they have, their financial future on a foundation of rock.

0:44:59 - (D): They're building it on sand.

0:45:01 - (Tanner Frigaard): And so they're surprised when the sand starts to sink or it starts to rain. And now your house is all offset and everything else, and they go, what the heck? My finances are all in order, or are not in order, and they're trying to duct tape the solution, right? And so that's where I really wanted to get into a spot and help people, is build the non duct tape version. But how to do it right.

0:45:28 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

0:45:29 - (Tanner Frigaard): I have a silly little alternate, or an old nursery rhyme called the three little pigs, I'm sure you're familiar with it.

0:45:38 - (Tawni Nguyen): Sure might have sounded.

0:45:42 - (Tanner Frigaard): I wasn't born here. So, the three little pigs, we have the house of straw, we have the house of sticks, and then we have the house of bricks. Now, in this story, it's the house of bricks that actually stays, right. The house of sticks and the house of straw get blown away from the big bad wolf. So my question becomes is if we're financially putting our things in order, are.

0:46:08 - (D): We the pig building it out of straw?

0:46:11 - (Tanner Frigaard): Trying to look the part, but go on all the vacations. We make good money, but we're spending it all. We slop something together and we go, no, everything's going to be fine because I'll always make this money. That's a big trap in Vegas, right? Especially in the servicing industry. You got busters making six figures here. Not to say, come here to Vegas, you're going to make six figures as a, you know, like incredible bartenders.

0:46:33 - (D): Very few of them don't.

0:46:34 - (Tanner Frigaard): Right? Yeah, so many of those aspects. Right. But then they don't own a house. They don't have retirement saved. They don't have investments. So why is this thing. It's because of the lifestyle that they're more accustomed to. They're paid to. Well, some of their incentives are they get a free drink or they can get some free gameplay or they get some free food. Right. And so they start associating more around those areas and it starts trapping them in them. I'm not saying all of it's bad.

0:47:05 - (D): But I'm saying don't just build your.

0:47:07 - (Tanner Frigaard): House with straw and sticks, but make sure you take the time to lay down those bricks. Because in the end, your financial future and your health are the two things that you're going to be keeping the long haul.

0:47:19 - (B): Yeah, I think this is what we talked about, too.

0:47:21 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's like, I'd rather build it slower but more stable. It comes down to relationships. It comes down to nurturing community with the right people, too, not just financially speaking.

0:47:31 - (B): Like how you said. I like the part where you said.

0:47:34 - (Tawni Nguyen): People, when they hear the word budget, it's always a lack of. It's because they can't do certain things.

0:47:38 - (B): But another way to frame it that.

0:47:40 - (Tawni Nguyen): I really like is most people, when they hear they have to do something.

0:47:43 - (B): That takes away their fun, if they.

0:47:46 - (Tawni Nguyen): Really shift the mindset into you actually having more control over your money. And I just tell them, like, a budget is actually you telling your money what to do, not you suffering from bad decisions that you do because you.

0:47:57 - (B): Think you're going to have more money.

0:47:59 - (Tanner Frigaard): And what's so funny to me is people. We trap ourselves in this lifestyle and then we're miserable. I'm sure you've come across a few.

0:48:07 - (D): Of them, but I've known ceos that they make great income, but they're spending.

0:48:14 - (Tanner Frigaard): Ten grand a month on Amazon because.

0:48:16 - (D): They'Re so unhappy with their career, but.

0:48:18 - (Tanner Frigaard): They can't get out of it and they can't go anywhere else because they're.

0:48:21 - (D): Living check to check, making a quarter.

0:48:24 - (Tanner Frigaard): Meal plus a year.

0:48:25 - (D): But in the end of the day, if we're not satisfied and we're not.

0:48:29 - (Tanner Frigaard): Happy, that's what I love what Gary talks about. It's not Gary, Vee. It's not really about how much money you're making, it's how much you're keeping.

0:48:39 - (D): But then also, are you happy and.

0:48:41 - (Tawni Nguyen): What you do with that money, too?

0:48:44 - (Tanner Frigaard): Are you serving others? Are you helping others? Or are you using it for yourself or your own desires, which masks the.

0:48:52 - (Tawni Nguyen): Void that you have within you? Like this pit, like this emptiness that most people slap a band aid over with vacations and luxury items and it looks good.

0:49:02 - (B): The social media culture, it's like a hit or miss.

0:49:05 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's neither black or white because you can never really tell how people are.

0:49:09 - (B): Really living their know, just because of.

0:49:11 - (Tawni Nguyen): The shiny things that they're keeping up with.

0:49:13 - (Tanner Frigaard): The Jones.

0:49:14 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. They're drenched in Louis Vuitton's and whatever brands. I'm sure there's a lot of these.

0:49:18 - (B): People that actually make. I have friends that make more than seven figures.

0:49:24 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like they're making multiple seven figures a.

0:49:25 - (B): Year and they're happy.

0:49:27 - (Tawni Nguyen): Right? They're flashy and that's just the way they are.

0:49:29 - (B): But I'm not really sure if they're happy.

0:49:33 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like, they're happy looking like they're making seven figures and they're like, oh, I have an eight, nine figure net worth. Everything is good.

0:49:39 - (B): But they're always talking about their relationship.

0:49:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): Failing and like, hey, I'm not happy. I don't spend time with my kids. I don't know if my wife's cheating on me. Can't tell is because it comes with.

0:49:51 - (B): A privileged mindset of, I can do.

0:49:54 - (Tawni Nguyen): More because I have the power, because I have more money.

0:49:56 - (E): Yes.

0:49:56 - (Tawni Nguyen): But I don't know if there's a lack of fulfillment somewhere in between.

0:50:00 - (D): A big one.

0:50:01 - (B): That's a big one, right?

0:50:02 - (D): I see that so often and so.

0:50:05 - (Tanner Frigaard): Many times when I'm sitting down with a married couple. What baffles my mind is they've never. Well, not never. Most of them have never communicated what their ideal retirement even looks like or.

0:50:18 - (Tawni Nguyen): What their lifestyle should look like.

0:50:19 - (D): What it should.

0:50:20 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah. Do they want a vacation home, or do they want to travel a little bit more? Do they want to set something up for the grandkids? Do they want to go build a ranch and have all the family shindings and fly everyone out each year? What does that look like for them? Is it just go get an rv and just go travel?

0:50:41 - (Tawni Nguyen): I think that's a hard conversation for people who recently started dating, and I think that's a conversation that needs to happen more, even though it's the most.

0:50:48 - (B): Hard, awkward, uncomfortable conversations.

0:50:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): Because even finances in general, even just as business, it's already hard to talk about, because people don't want to put.

0:50:58 - (B): A number to anything.

0:50:59 - (Tawni Nguyen): They don't want to be attached to.

0:51:00 - (B): Like a six figure income or a.

0:51:03 - (Tawni Nguyen): Five figure income, whatever that may look like. It's because they can't even bring it up.

0:51:07 - (B): If you're going to plan your life.

0:51:09 - (Tawni Nguyen): With this person, this person should know your spending habits.

0:51:12 - (B): This person should understand your psychology of.

0:51:15 - (Tawni Nguyen): Money, like, how you think about money, how you think about making money, how you think about earning money, saving money. How do you want your.

0:51:22 - (B): Like you said your retirement to look like?

0:51:23 - (Tawni Nguyen): And I don't think a retirement should be an age. It's never an age. It's always a number.

0:51:28 - (B): And I think the sexiest number, to.

0:51:30 - (Tawni Nguyen): Me is being able to retire at a certain amount, right?

0:51:33 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yes.

0:51:34 - (Tawni Nguyen): That's the sexiest number ever. It's like, hey, what does your retirement number look like?

0:51:37 - (B): And when.

0:51:39 - (Tanner Frigaard): So you say retirement number, I call it something else.

0:51:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): What do you call it?

0:51:42 - (Tanner Frigaard): I call it your financial independence number.

0:51:45 - (Tawni Nguyen): Or your fin number, for short.

0:51:46 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah.

0:51:47 - (B): Or fire.

0:51:48 - (Tawni Nguyen): Am I dyslexic?

0:51:49 - (Tanner Frigaard): F-I-N. It's okay. Yes. What your fin number is is your financial independence number. So, essentially, actuaries, now, they've decreased it a little bit. But if we just go off of the historic. It's called a 4% rule. So they say you can safely pull 4% out of your principal of your account. And if you pull 4% or less, there's a 76% chance you will not run out of money during your retirement years.

0:52:19 - (B): 76%.

0:52:20 - (Tanner Frigaard): 76. Okay, now, what happens if we pull 5%?

0:52:24 - (D): We pull 5% or more.

0:52:26 - (Tanner Frigaard): They say there's an 80% chance of you running out of money during your retirement years.

0:52:31 - (D): Okay, so 1% makes a big difference. Yeah, but if we put it into perspective.

0:52:37 - (Tanner Frigaard): Let's say you had a million dollars, right? You're pulling 4% out a year. That's $40,000 a year.

0:52:43 - (Tawni Nguyen): Some people can't live off of that, though.

0:52:45 - (Tanner Frigaard): Exactly.

0:52:45 - (B): They don't understand budget. They can spend that in a month.

0:52:49 - (Tawni Nguyen): Actually, I know people who spend that much a month.

0:52:51 - (Tanner Frigaard): Of course. Yeah.

0:52:52 - (D): So do I.

0:52:53 - (Tanner Frigaard): And at the same time, that's where we got to figure out, what is that fin number for them? What is that financial independence number? And so, like, a little trick of what I talk about in the book, but one of the things that we go over is you take 4% and you divide it by your annual income or your desired annual income, and it's going to tell you what that fin number is. So then you know exactly how much. Because if you needed 80 grand a year, well, then, you know you need 2 million set aside, because pulling 4% off of each one of those give you about 80 grand a year in income.

0:53:28 - (E): Yeah.

0:53:29 - (D): It's doable, right?

0:53:30 - (E): Yeah.

0:53:31 - (Tawni Nguyen): Depending on. I think that comes down to having a partner or not having a partner, too.

0:53:36 - (Tanner Frigaard): Exactly.

0:53:36 - (Tawni Nguyen): If you're on dual income, it's a little bit different depending on that person's lifestyle.

0:53:40 - (Tanner Frigaard): Absolutely.

0:53:41 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

0:53:41 - (Tanner Frigaard): And what if things change? What if we get something health wise or we have kids? What if the kids has something? Yeah, but what if we have a special kid, special needs? Then there's additional costs, different things that special care, special things that are involved. All of these things. Some of them we can plan for, some of them we can't.

0:54:03 - (D): But most people just overlook.

0:54:05 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

0:54:05 - (B): Because they always think that they're going.

0:54:08 - (Tawni Nguyen): To have that consistent income, whatever that.

0:54:10 - (B): May be, and they don't really plan.

0:54:12 - (Tawni Nguyen): For the contingents that actually happens with life.

0:54:15 - (B): Right. Like, what if you accidentally get pregnant.

0:54:17 - (Tawni Nguyen): Not someone up, you didn't plan for it.

0:54:18 - (D): No.

0:54:19 - (B): Now you got this. So I was reading somewhere, I think.

0:54:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): 18 years of raising a kid could.

0:54:24 - (B): Be like almost half a million dollars.

0:54:25 - (Tawni Nguyen): Or something like that.

0:54:26 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah. So by the time your kid reaches age 18, you've historically paid about a quarter million dollars, in some cases up to a million dollars, depending on per kid. Per kid, depending on private schooling and everything else. But that's just the basic necessities was.

0:54:44 - (D): The quarter mil, which was food, clothing.

0:54:48 - (Tanner Frigaard): We're talking basic needs.

0:54:51 - (B): Yeah.

0:54:52 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like no vacations.

0:54:54 - (Tanner Frigaard): Now, you can argue it and say, because I've heard other people do the argument, well, two people can live on the same cost as one. And. Okay, I can kind of see where some of that is as far as.

0:55:05 - (D): Like, housing, you share the house.

0:55:08 - (Tanner Frigaard): Usually you're upgrading, though, so you end up going from a smaller to then a bigger, which then increases that cost. Start having kids.

0:55:15 - (D): So it could work.

0:55:17 - (Tanner Frigaard): It could not work out. It just really depends on your lifestyle.

0:55:21 - (D): But that's where I know there's a.

0:55:22 - (Tanner Frigaard): Lot of sacrifices that people seen. I don't know if you've seen some of the stories on the news where the couple over in New York that they've saved half a million dollars because they're trying to buy their first house.

0:55:33 - (D): And they didn't want to get a loan.

0:55:36 - (Tanner Frigaard): So what they did was they sacrificed.

0:55:38 - (D): Having a car so that they could.

0:55:40 - (Tanner Frigaard): Save that monthly car payment. Because historically, the markets performed about 9.72% every ten years. So if you're taking a look at.

0:55:51 - (D): That as a whole, and you're investing.

0:55:54 - (Tanner Frigaard): You even 400, $500 a month, that can make into a huge difference. You're talking upwards of seven figure difference over the course of ten to 30 years, depending on when you started and depending on how the markets performed and everything else.

0:56:10 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm a little surprised that they save half a million just to pay it out in cash or what.

0:56:13 - (E): Yep. They're asian.

0:56:15 - (D): No, they weren't.

0:56:17 - (Tanner Frigaard): Oh, my God. It was a white couple.

0:56:20 - (Tawni Nguyen): That sounds like something like, how can I buy this building in cash.

0:56:25 - (D): Yes, but that's also a lot of.

0:56:27 - (Tanner Frigaard): Like, the Dave Ramsay method. Don't get into debt, don't buy anything. Don't have any of these extra riders on these policies.

0:56:35 - (Tawni Nguyen): He has real estate investments.

0:56:36 - (Tanner Frigaard): He does, but he has them all cash. Yeah, about a little over a 700 million net worth. Now. That's completely. He's bought everything cash.

0:56:45 - (D): It's never gone into debt.

0:56:47 - (Tanner Frigaard): I admire that, but it's taken him a lot longer than what I've seen some other people be able to within.

0:56:52 - (D): That same allotted time.

0:56:54 - (Tawni Nguyen): I think there was one year he did, like, a million in philanthropy, right. Of giving back, doing charitable work, and.

0:56:59 - (B): All that stuff too. I think that's a different level of.

0:57:01 - (Tawni Nguyen): Wealth that we all want to get to. It's creating legacy wealth.

0:57:04 - (Tanner Frigaard): But you also don't need to be there to still give back.

0:57:07 - (Tawni Nguyen): Oh, yeah, of course not a million dollars.

0:57:08 - (Tanner Frigaard): We talk a lot about that.

0:57:09 - (B): Yeah, we do a lot of philanthropy.

0:57:12 - (Tawni Nguyen): Work on the site, too.

0:57:13 - (B): And we're not pumping out an extra.

0:57:15 - (Tawni Nguyen): Mill a year into charitable causes. Not yet. That's the level we want to get to.

0:57:20 - (Tanner Frigaard): Absolutely.

0:57:21 - (Tawni Nguyen): Within the next few years.

0:57:23 - (Tanner Frigaard): But that attaches your fulfillment and purpose to that goal.

0:57:26 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'd rather make less money but feel.

0:57:27 - (B): Better about my life, which is exactly where I'm at. It's like, why are you going to.

0:57:31 - (Tawni Nguyen): Have more money in your bank account and be miserable and not want to wake up?

0:57:35 - (Tanner Frigaard): And that's what's so funny to me about the culture with our society right now, is especially on the dating side. I don't know if you've ever seen any of those clips of the women. Then they're asking, what type of guy do you want? And they're like, oh, I want him tall, dark, and handsome, and then I want him at a quarter mil to 750,000 a year in income, or I want him to make 700 grand a week. And it's just like, some of it's reasonable, and some of it might be unreasonable expectations for some of those things, but it's the culture of our mindset of what we've groomed this younger generation, especially with social media on the fake makers.

0:58:14 - (B): Right.

0:58:15 - (Tanner Frigaard): Where they just look the part, but then when things like, they're not actually financially stable. Exactly.

0:58:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. But I think a lot of that, it's also a double standard, too, is because women want to be treated as equal. I'm not saying this just because I'm.

0:58:28 - (B): A woman, but I'm hearing these women.

0:58:31 - (Tawni Nguyen): Expecting the men to have a really high income because they want to be courted. They want to be treated in the traditionalist route.

0:58:38 - (B): Right.

0:58:38 - (Tawni Nguyen): They want to be taken care of.

0:58:39 - (B): Which is a different method of looking.

0:58:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): At masculine energy and feminine energy and how that integrates into our societal expectations of one another. But they're not really making income either. But they don't want to be a housewife.

0:58:53 - (B): No, they're like, no, I want to.

0:58:54 - (Tawni Nguyen): Be seen as, like, a boss bitch and independent and all this stuff, but I want my man to make a million dollars. And it's like, how much do you make? No, he's going to make a million dollars, but you don't want to be a housewife. Like, how are you going to be a boss bitch?

0:59:06 - (Tanner Frigaard): Exactly. There's no trade off. They want their cake and they want to eat it, too, and I'm all.

0:59:11 - (D): For it, but at the same time.

0:59:14 - (Tanner Frigaard): It'S like some of these things you.

0:59:16 - (D): Got to set reasonable expectations on.

0:59:19 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. Not having such a weird double standards.

0:59:21 - (Tanner Frigaard): Of, yeah, I don't want anybody that opens the door for me, but I want them making half a million dollars a year and treat me right.

0:59:27 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, I want them to pay all my bills, but I don't want to be seen as soft.

0:59:30 - (Tanner Frigaard): But I don't want them going on any trips or doing any of this stuff without me. But at the same time, I want them to work so hard. It's interesting.

0:59:40 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. That's why it's interesting that you do financial planning for couples, too. How do they bring that financial topic to mind?

0:59:48 - (B): Like, hey, this is what I want my life to look at.

0:59:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): Look, like, right, in ten years. Because how I look at my life is one, three, 5710.

0:59:56 - (B): The basic scale.

0:59:59 - (Tawni Nguyen): I don't know if that's the x.

1:00:00 - (B): Curve or whatever, but I look at.

1:00:02 - (Tawni Nguyen): My finances and my goals, like, all of that kind of intertwining, like, this is where I want to be.

1:00:06 - (B): How do I get there faster? It's as simple as that.

1:00:10 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like, if I want to make this amount in three years, can I do it in two?

1:00:12 - (B): Can I do it in one?

1:00:14 - (D): It's communication, and that's where the breakdown.

1:00:17 - (Tanner Frigaard): Of where it comes in between couples is. A lot of times is they've never communicated that. They've never had this conversation because it.

1:00:25 - (D): Was just never really thought of.

1:00:28 - (Tanner Frigaard): It wasn't something our parents talked about. Our grandparents talked about, like, money isn't really something that people are like, here, let me help educate you on. That's not like MLM or something else, right? It's like, hey, I got a cookie.

1:00:44 - (D): But, yeah, finance is one of the.

1:00:48 - (Tanner Frigaard): It's kind of a taboo thing that.

1:00:50 - (D): Everybody gets the book, too. We all have the. It's called the tax rule. Like, tax bills.

1:00:58 - (B): You're talking about, like, IRS codes. Yeah, I've seen that book.

1:01:02 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah, it's like, literally, like, this thick. I'm not saying to go spend your Saturday and enjoy reading it, but I'm saying there is a game on how the rich keep getting richer and they build those laws to benefit them. Right. But what they're not doing is they're allowing everyone else to participate, too.

1:01:23 - (Tawni Nguyen): They just don't know it.

1:01:24 - (Tanner Frigaard): They just don't know what they don't know.

1:01:25 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

1:01:26 - (Tanner Frigaard): And that's really where. What I loved about your passion when we first met was, you just want to help people, and you want to help everyone. You want to help people that are like, what the heck to do to get where I want to go, but I want to go here. And you're like, let's do it. And I've always been that way, too, and that's why we've always connected. But, yeah, I think there's so many people that don't really take advantage of what is out there. Because they're spending so much time just in distractions around people, they probably shouldn't be hanging around, doing things that they don't find fulfillment in. If we were to just change up these habits, we'd have such a better quality of life.

1:02:03 - (Tawni Nguyen): You know, a lot of people, I feel like there's an attachment issue to old friends, right? And there's a lot of these things that I learned when I moved here.

1:02:11 - (B): It's like, yeah, you can have old.

1:02:13 - (Tawni Nguyen): Friends that's known you for decades or whatever, but you're not really evolving together. It's more like a boulder if you're hanging out. Sure. Like, you've known each other for a long time. It's nice to catch up as a human being. But if you're not really taking each.

1:02:25 - (B): Other to a new level, to different.

1:02:27 - (Tawni Nguyen): Places, having different conversations, you're hanging out with those people because you kind of feel that it's like, oh, they've been through stuff, but if they're in the same place, they're kind of holding you back.

1:02:36 - (B): You just don't want to admit that.

1:02:38 - (Tawni Nguyen): You have certain friends like that. If you're doing the same activity. Just like how I told you I stopped drinking. We can still hang out. I still hang out with you guys. I don't drink anymore like I used to.

1:02:46 - (E): Right?

1:02:47 - (B): What was it like around Christmas?

1:02:50 - (Tawni Nguyen): We were doing shots, and what, like, five months later? I'm like, hey, I've been, like, four months sober.

1:02:54 - (D): Yeah.

1:02:54 - (Tawni Nguyen): And it's really mind blowing how fast my life even changed when I just.

1:03:00 - (B): Got to know myself better.

1:03:02 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like, who am I without a drink? And I think that's the premise to understanding the self and going inward and reflecting on my own values? It's like, what am I truly bringing into my circle?

1:03:12 - (B): Am I just fun because I'm always.

1:03:14 - (Tawni Nguyen): Drinking, or am I actually a person.

1:03:16 - (B): Of value, that it's being of service.

1:03:20 - (Tawni Nguyen): To my friends and helping each other grow? And, like, hey, how can I help you today? How can I help you tomorrow? Who do you need to get in touch with so that you can better your business and vice versa?

1:03:30 - (B): And how do we get more people to understand what it is that we're.

1:03:35 - (Tawni Nguyen): Trying to do within our community just by being better humans to each other?

1:03:39 - (B): And that comes with me understanding my health.

1:03:43 - (Tawni Nguyen): Once I took my health a lot more serious, that's, like, my number one.

1:03:47 - (B): Priority, not other people.

1:03:49 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's actually me. It's like, if I'm not at my best, I don't think I'm producing at my best. I don't think I'm making clear decisions.

1:03:55 - (B): It comes with mental fatigue and all.

1:03:58 - (Tawni Nguyen): Of these things that were so foggy before and it's never been more clear.

1:04:02 - (B): It's because of how we're able to.

1:04:05 - (Tawni Nguyen): Share our platform with others.

1:04:06 - (B): Right?

1:04:07 - (E): Yeah.

1:04:08 - (B): I think that's really powerful evolution in our six months.

1:04:13 - (Tawni Nguyen): I love it since the conversation.

1:04:15 - (Tanner Frigaard): But friends have seasons in your life as know. So the question becomes, as you're transitioning into a new season, what do you have to.

1:04:24 - (D): It's called spring cleaning, right?

1:04:27 - (Tanner Frigaard): Love it. When do you have to spring clean your friends list? And I always get the joke on Facebook because they always talk about it.

1:04:34 - (D): And they're like, oh, I'm cleaning off.

1:04:36 - (Tanner Frigaard): All my friends list. Like, or comment on my post if you want to stay. And part of me just laughs and then the other part's like, man, I'm glad that they're taking the initiative to.

1:04:45 - (D): Kind of clean up some of the stuff that isn't serving them anymore and.

1:04:51 - (Tanner Frigaard): Keeping the people who want to stay connected. Connected, but allowing everyone else that opportunity to just be a leaf and fly.

1:04:59 - (B): You know what's funny is that when.

1:05:01 - (Tawni Nguyen): We were talking about friends doing the same activities, right? We didn't even realize we like certain hobbies is because we're always at networking events, we're always talking about real estate, we're always talking about finances and all that stuff. And I'm like, if you're really enjoying a hobby, for example, camping, you can find other friends. You don't have to do it with the same people.

1:05:19 - (B): Who's going to not really do anything for your life?

1:05:22 - (Tanner Frigaard): Absolutely.

1:05:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like, better people are going to come along as long as you. I call it life audits. You call it spring cleaning, which is probably a lot softer. My term is a little harsher. Life audits.

1:05:32 - (Tanner Frigaard): I do cash flow instead of budget.

1:05:35 - (Tawni Nguyen): A little bit more positive mine, it's like very stringent, I guess that word, right? It's just an audit. Like, where am I at financially, spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically.

1:05:46 - (B): And that's the categories how I break.

1:05:47 - (Tawni Nguyen): Down the pillars of my life.

1:05:49 - (B): And it's like, are these people that.

1:05:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm hanging out with benefiting me in any of these conversations?

1:05:54 - (B): You know what I'm saying? If I'm trying to stop drinking, we.

1:05:58 - (Tawni Nguyen): Can still hang out. But if you're forcing me to drink, I'm sorry.

1:06:01 - (B): I don't think we're going to be.

1:06:02 - (Tawni Nguyen): Seeing know each other much.

1:06:04 - (Tanner Frigaard): Or the only time we do see each other is when there's drinking, being involved, or we're going somewhere to do.

1:06:10 - (Tawni Nguyen): I call them the lit friends. I don't have any of those anymore. But every time I notice I looked at some of my circle back in Orange county, every time I hang out.

1:06:17 - (B): With them, I am shitfaced.

1:06:19 - (Tawni Nguyen): And the next day, I'm so unproductive. And they don't care that I have big meetings.

1:06:23 - (B): They don't really care about what it is.

1:06:25 - (Tawni Nguyen): They only care about the present moment. They only care about having fun. It's a Yolo life.

1:06:29 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah.

1:06:30 - (Tawni Nguyen): They only care that you have to get trash to prove that you're worthy, that you're still fun, that you can still drink. Because back then, they used to call me the tank. Like, I grew up with frat boys. I drank a lot. That was a badge of honor, right back then, before I realized I was just burnout. People pleasing really manipulative behaviors that we condition ourselves to be.

1:06:50 - (E): These.

1:06:50 - (B): I think more importantly, I asked myself.

1:06:54 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm like, do these people actually like me or do they like the curated.

1:06:57 - (B): Version of me when I'm intoxicated? Because that's not who I am.

1:07:02 - (Tawni Nguyen): But inauthenticity is what people resonate with is because it gives them the freedom and the permission to be their fake selves, too. It's because everyone doesn't really hang out without their mask. They always have to be this socially acceptable version of themselves. And it's just so fake. It's all ego.

1:07:17 - (B): It's all of these heavily masked things.

1:07:19 - (Tawni Nguyen): And they can't have a real conversation without a drink.

1:07:22 - (D): It's a tribe mentality.

1:07:24 - (Tanner Frigaard): Tim ferriss talks about this. He says that the tribe of mentors, if you've read, I have the book.

1:07:30 - (Tawni Nguyen): I got it for $3 at a goodwill or a salvation army.

1:07:34 - (Tanner Frigaard): I got you beat. I had a client buy one for me. I know.

1:07:38 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's like vistic. It's black and gold. It's so pretty good.

1:07:41 - (Tanner Frigaard): But he talks about how the tribe mentality and how back in the day when caveman times and all those aspects was if you were not like a hunter or gatherer, you didn't provide a value.

1:07:55 - (D): They kicked you out. When you got kicked out of society, that meant death.

1:08:03 - (B): Yeah, because you can't.

1:08:04 - (Tanner Frigaard): No one could take care of you. You can't watch your back and sleep at the same time. So a wild animal could get to you, et cetera. So even though we're in a more civilized society now, that tribe mindset is still there. So when we find a click of a group of people that we initially.

1:08:25 - (D): Click with, we feel that leaving them means death.

1:08:30 - (Tanner Frigaard): So what we do, even though we know now it's not like that, but the truth. Why is it so hard for us to cut off people that we know aren't serving ours?

1:08:40 - (B): I think that comes to the primitive.

1:08:43 - (Tawni Nguyen): Brain of the amygdala, is all stress responses.

1:08:47 - (B): It's where your trauma is stored.

1:08:49 - (Tawni Nguyen): And a lot of people don't really understand that is because I think another.

1:08:53 - (B): Thing that has a negative connotation, too, is therapy. You know what I'm saying? I'm not saying everyone needs therapy.

1:09:00 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm just saying everyone should go to therapy.

1:09:03 - (Tanner Frigaard): I'm a fan of therapy. I think everybody should. I've gone to therapy in the past, probably should go again. But at the same time, what it does is it's a lot of self reflection, and it makes it so you can escape the questions that you actually need to ask yourself. Like, who are you as a person? What do you really want to be known for? To go back into our morbid conversation, I actually wrote out my eulogy a.

1:09:29 - (D): Couple of years ago, and I backtracked.

1:09:32 - (Tanner Frigaard): It all the way to there, and I said, what do I want being said at my funeral? And then how do I backwards engineer that to make that my life?

1:09:41 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. Like, who do I want to be from this moment on?

1:09:44 - (B): And how do I want to leave.

1:09:45 - (Tawni Nguyen): An impact on others?

1:09:47 - (B): Right.

1:09:47 - (Tanner Frigaard): How do I want to be known?

1:09:48 - (E): Yeah.

1:09:48 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like, if I was to die tomorrow, what is my last conversations with people?

1:09:54 - (E): Yeah.

1:09:55 - (B): Damn, that's some dark shit.

1:09:57 - (Tanner Frigaard): It is. And what was crazy, especially with what was happening today that I spoke a little about, like, driving over here, that was what my thought was. Was like, what if I got to wake up tomorrow and I didn't get to hug my mom?

1:10:10 - (B): Yeah.

1:10:11 - (D): Like, wow. Going back into Gary Vee, he's, like, always talking about, like, he's like, you.

1:10:17 - (Tanner Frigaard): Want to shift your mindset. He's like, everything and everyone you love is gone.

1:10:21 - (E): Yes.

1:10:23 - (Tanner Frigaard): Now what?

1:10:24 - (Tawni Nguyen): And you never know when your last conversation with them is. I learned that the hard way. Sometimes you kind of look back and.

1:10:29 - (B): You'Re like, I wish I would have said this. And it puts me into a different.

1:10:33 - (Tawni Nguyen): Place of having more gratitude into my life about the people that's actually in my life, that actually cares about me, that wants better for me, even though.

1:10:40 - (B): They'Re not in my life physically, but.

1:10:43 - (Tawni Nguyen): They'Re doing a lot less damage than the people that were in my life.

1:10:46 - (B): With their physical presence.

1:10:48 - (Tawni Nguyen): But I don't think mentally, we were.

1:10:49 - (B): On the same wavelength of where we.

1:10:52 - (Tawni Nguyen): Needed to be as human beings. And it comes down to evolution, the.

1:10:55 - (B): Spring cleaning, all of the things of.

1:10:58 - (Tawni Nguyen): Having the right conversation with your friends.

1:11:00 - (B): And understanding what serves you and what.

1:11:03 - (Tawni Nguyen): Doesn'T because that's a really hard conversation too. I think the hardest honesty comes from actually being honest with yourself. And most people live in a lie of this delusion of like, no, my friends are good for me. They mean well. I'm like, when's the last time?

1:11:13 - (Tanner Frigaard): But it's not just friends. Sometimes it's family. Family is the cut my family out when I was starting my business for years because I couldn't mentally handle it.

1:11:23 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, this, you can't do that. Why are you doing this? Why aren't you doing it this way? It's very risky what you're doing.

1:11:31 - (Tanner Frigaard): And I grew up, I was the kid that was always told what they can't do and I always had to prove that I could. That's why even though I work my butt off, I saved up enough money to buy a house at 18 and then be able to take that, grow that from there. Yeah, you had to be able to be on that hustle. But it took me eight different businesses over twelve years to build up enough money as a kid, not just figuring it out on my own because that was pre, before YouTube was a thing and all that stuff.

1:12:05 - (Tanner Frigaard): We didn't have this library that we do now where you can just learn through others experiences. It was trial and error, but now being able to have that adjustment, oh, so beautiful. But yeah, knowing who to exit, know who to add in, just as importantly. And it doesn't necessarily mean that they have to physically be in your life, but it could be the people you're listening to, the meetings you attend and the books you read. Those are the three things that are most important.

1:12:33 - (Tanner Frigaard): You'd have a mentor that's a book. You could have a mentor that's a person.

1:12:37 - (B): Lewis house every day.

1:12:39 - (D): Exactly right.

1:12:41 - (Tanner Frigaard): I've been so very fortunate with the mentors that I've been blessed with in my life and I know I'm going to have so many more, but I'm always asking questions. I'm always trying to be around and trying to figure out, well, what do they know that could help me get to that next level? But even though I'm always thinking that, I'm also thinking what value can I bring into their life? Because why do they want me around if I'm not going to bring any value that's true. So how do I be at the best?

1:13:07 - (Tanner Frigaard): Me, I can. So I can present to them the most value.

1:13:11 - (E): Yeah.

1:13:12 - (B): And I think it goes back to the basics. Eat right, work out the two fundamentals.

1:13:19 - (Tawni Nguyen): That I think a lot of people kind of miss.

1:13:23 - (E): Right?

1:13:24 - (Tanner Frigaard): They do.

1:13:25 - (D): But it's the little impact because that.

1:13:27 - (Tanner Frigaard): Gets overlooked because they go, well, it can't just be that simple.

1:13:30 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like, I have to be on a diet. You don't really have to be on a diet.

1:13:32 - (E): No.

1:13:33 - (B): Have to build your life a little differently than you are now.

1:13:37 - (Tawni Nguyen): Instead of eating hot cheetos at 08:00 a.m. Eat a banana. Maybe it's genetics modified as hell, but eat a banana, right?

1:13:46 - (D): I love it.

1:13:48 - (E): Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

1:13:49 - (B): No, I can't wait to read your book.

1:13:52 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yeah, I'm excited.

1:13:53 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like, how big are you aiming it to be? Like 150 pages?

1:13:57 - (Tanner Frigaard): I'm thinking right around there for right now, I'm just. Right now just info, dumping it all that I've been able to acquire over these past few years and just putting it all in an easy to understand format. Because I think that's the most important part for people is, like, finance doesn't have to be difficult, even though we can get into alphas and betas of what things are that'll be in probably the next book.

1:14:20 - (Tanner Frigaard): But for this one, the intention is, how do I just get back on track and how do I achieve what I want?

1:14:26 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

1:14:26 - (B): I think for me, the first step.

1:14:28 - (Tawni Nguyen): To unfucking your finances and unfucking your.

1:14:31 - (B): Life is basically just simplifying what your.

1:14:35 - (Tawni Nguyen): Life needs to look like in that season that you're in, because a lot of people overcomplicate. I need to make all of these big choices. I'm like, you really don't. You just have to go back to basics.

1:14:44 - (B): Where am I fucking up? What pillar of life am I lacking? And start there.

1:14:50 - (Tawni Nguyen): Start small and start today.

1:14:51 - (B): I think that's the best advice that.

1:14:54 - (Tawni Nguyen): I've been given to myself, is because I tried to do too many things at once and all of it was falling apart. Like you said. The sand, right? Yes, I was trying to build on sand. I'm like, I'm fine. Everything's good. And then one day, house looks beautiful.

1:15:06 - (B): It looks good.

1:15:07 - (Tawni Nguyen): It looks amazing on the outside. And one day it just collapsed.

1:15:10 - (E): Right.

1:15:10 - (Tawni Nguyen): And once you go through that existential, mental, emotional pitfall of who you are as a human being, you're like, holy shit.

1:15:20 - (Tanner Frigaard): Exactly. Yeah. And then once you start getting there, then you start getting into the other sides. Right. Where all the uber wealthy people, they're not trying to build the wealth anymore.

1:15:30 - (D): They're trying to protect it.

1:15:32 - (Tanner Frigaard): Now the game changes. Now your real enemy becomes inflation and taxes. And how do we avoid and reduce and protect? So, in case somebody tries suing us, we have those layers of protection to.

1:15:47 - (D): Keep all of our wealth, to pass it on. Right.

1:15:50 - (Tanner Frigaard): And so that first step is what you're talking about. I agree 100%. We got to get our health on track. We get our health on track. You start slowly improving yourself. You start slowly improving every aspect of your life.

1:16:04 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. And then your financial decisions become better. You don't emotionally spend. You don't emotionally make impulsive decisions. I think I'm speaking on myself, too.

1:16:12 - (B): When my health wasn't going the right.

1:16:14 - (Tawni Nguyen): Way or whatever, I didn't realize how unhealthy I was until I started looking at other aspects, which is financially, it.

1:16:19 - (B): Was taking a really big hit because.

1:16:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): I was looking, I was like, why am I spending so much money on alcohol and bar tabs and hanging out with people who would never bail me out of jail? If that came down to it, I.

1:16:31 - (B): Never really had a circle, like a.

1:16:34 - (Tawni Nguyen): No questions asked kind of circle. I didn't really have the foundation of human connection.

1:16:39 - (B): Am I buying friends? What's going on? So, yeah, that was the painful lesson.

1:16:44 - (Tanner Frigaard): There's a lot of painful lessons we got to learn. But the nice thing is you're still way young enough to have learned them and to be able to help pass on that information.

1:16:54 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

1:16:55 - (B): Now I'm glad we're able to connect.

1:16:56 - (Tawni Nguyen): Today and kind of share this platform to bring that knowledge out because I.

1:17:00 - (B): Wish I talked to people like us.

1:17:02 - (Tawni Nguyen): When I was younger, maybe ten years ago, when I started making really bad decisions in my life because it compounded to a decade of where in the beginning of my. How it started falling apart. And now I'm back on track. I'm like, okay, I feel amazing.

1:17:15 - (E): Yeah.

1:17:15 - (Tawni Nguyen): So thanks for your time today. I just want to acknowledge you for being here.

1:17:19 - (Tanner Frigaard): Thank you.

1:17:19 - (Tawni Nguyen): And I want to actually put this on camera that I want to be the first to get a signed book.

1:17:23 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yes, absolutely. We're going to make that happen. There's proof. There's proof it's happening. I'll have a little quote right from there. Thank you. Before it gets published.

1:17:35 - (Tawni Nguyen): Thank you. Like, the first step is here.

1:17:37 - (Tanner Frigaard): Yes.

1:17:39 - (Tawni Nguyen): All right. Thanks for tuning into the fit and frugal podcast. You can find Tanner in the links below. My name is Tawny Wyn, and you can find me on ig at Tawnysaurus. Bye.