Well, as you can imagine a lot of work and Time went into putting the prudent money project together. I think we've been working on it for a little over two years now, all this recording, and gathering information to bring you a set of courses that will teach you everything you need to know about money. And as we go through the courses, there are items that we talked about, over and over again, kind of repetitive in order for you to have a better chance to learn it. As I was going through the information and kind of finishing it all up and we're on the last day of shooting, I got to thinking that there's one piece of information that really stands out as the most important. In fact, I want to suggest if you don't get this, the rest of the information really doesn't matter. it's that important and it's values and money.

Now, we talked a little bit about values throughout some of the spending plan courses and that sort of thing, but I thought it would be makes sense to take time to really focus in on what I call the five keys have money and values so that you have a really good understanding of it. And they can lay that foundation for you. Just bear in mind one thing, that if you don't get this, the chances of financial success long term, the probability lowers quite a bit. So it's very important that you get it. Let's start off with the key number one, where we spend money shows us what we value when we're time where we spend money shows us what we value. This is important to understand because if you go to your bank account statements, open those up, open up your credit card statement, you're going to find out where you're spending money.

But most importantly, what you're going to see is what you value where where you are spending money is what you value. Now, if you go through and categorize all your spending, add it all up and look at it as a percentage of your overall income on a monthly basis. Then you're really going to see this is what I truly value in spending money. Now you may not know that you value it, but that's where your money goes. Either intention or unintentionally, which we'll talk about. I shared this story on another teaching course.

But I thought it'd be worthwhile to share it again, a doctor, his wife came in and see me one time, and it was real frustrated. And he says to me, he goes, Bob, look, we make good money. But at the end of the month, I'm always struggling until the next paycheck, with the kind of money that we make. This shouldn't be the case, I need to know why. And so it's a great idea what I want you to do, I want you and this is not a budgeting exercise, because you know, I'm not a big fan of budgets. I'm more of a fan of spending plans.

But what I want you to do is to go back for two months, and track where you're spending money, total it up, come back and see me. So two months later, sure enough, they come in and I noticed a little bit different change of character, the doctor and his wife were they look almost embarrassed. They were kind of dejected, kind of sad, and they sat down I thought, Boy, this ought to be good. So he goes he looks at me is as serious as possible. I can remember this as if it were yesterday. He said Bob We spend over $2,000 a month eating out.

And I go, Okay, now you understand we spend over $2,000 a month just eating out. And I looked at him, so that's great. So what's the problem and he looked at me as if I was losing my mind. I said, Now let me explain to you why I say That's great. That's what you value. It's not a good or bad or right or wrong.

It is what you value, embrace it. Now, if you're not happy with it, if there's kind of a value conflict in there, maybe you're prioritizing, eating out a little higher than you want to amongst your other values, but that's what you value. And I think if you go I've been I've been through this exercise with many couples before and to where they're really spending money and they're shocked as to where the money goes. I think a lot of times we play fair, what I call fantasy budgeting. We spend money and hope there's enough money to cover it at the end of the month, and then we repeat and start over again. And that is no way to have success.

With finance, let's go The second key, you make decisions based on your hierarchy of values. Without a hierarchy of values in place, money flows to what feels good. This is also critical to understand, as I said, where we spend money is where we it shows us what we value in life. And what I find is I mean, everybody's doing it. But the problem is they're not they don't have a hierarchy or a priority of values in place, that acts as a decision model for every decision that they have to make with money. So if you know that these five things are important to me, then this is how I'm going to allocate money.

And this is where it's going to go. It's a powerful concept. And as far as arranging where money goes, now, if you don't have that, what you tend to do is you tend to go to the other model of unintentional spending, unintentional values, excuse me, intentional spinning, but unintentional values, and you just spend money, what feels good now That's gonna take you down a lot of different roads, what feels good, what feels good one day may not feel good the next day you go to something else that feels good, and you're just kind of spending money, you might be saving some money for retirement, you could actually add a third column that's unintentional and intentional, which I'll talk about here in just a second. Where Yeah, it's a priority. But really, we're not treating it like an unemploy and a priority. So it's on both sides.

Let's just go back to the doctor for a second look at this model from unintentional values versus intentional values. eating out is obviously a very important value to the doctor and his wife, and then maybe savings for retirement, giving in tithing college funding, then general consumer spending, maybe that's the top five, I'm just kind of came up with those categories. But if he took if he really was true to himself, his wife would sit down and say, well, what's really important? Well, they got they've got two kids getting close to college funding age. They've really not done any planning. They have some money.

He said back, but probably not enough. And so they say, you know what is so much more important to us that make college funding the first thing now, one of the things I talk about in this in the videos is that we all go through seasons of life, except in and during those seasons of life, determine exactly what the most, the highest your highest intention, your highest priority is. As you go through that season, then your priorities change, you might be in the season of getting out of debt. Once you get out of debt, of course, your priority is going to change, you're going to shift other things you may be through the season of kids, and what they cost in college and private schools or sports, whatever it might be. And you might put the priority on them. And the one of the things I always say is embrace your values because they are your values.

There's no good bad right or wrong, they're your values. Now if you're unhappy with that, if you feel a little conflict, then you've got a values conflict you need to fix that. In priority of those. Those of But those values is what will fix that. Now, let me I always kind of pick a pick on eating out because I know in my family if we're not careful, that's exactly what we do we eat out and spend a lot of money eating out, they could go to other places and go into other priorities. Let's face it, we all enjoy eating out.

It's easy, it's quick, we don't have to clean up we don't have to eat or the food that we cook that we're getting tired of. it's enjoyable. And like I said, there's no cleanup that goes around to who doesn't like eating out. But it might be good that that's not such a priority anymore. Maybe it's you know, we'll deal with our own cooking we'll deal with the cleaning up the inconvenience, to allocate some of that money to go elsewhere. And make sure that that it's getting its top priority.

What's been interesting to to go through as I've done all these teaching courses, I don't even know how many hours we're talking about, but it's been a lot of ours, as you know, on this project, is that I have to take a step back and go okay. Am I doing what I'm teaching? And so yeah, I've got values. But if I if I had to be completely transparent about my own values, I thought, I've got to get this tightened up. And I gotta tell you, I've gone through the process. And I was even thinking this morning as I was coming to the studio, that I need to even tighten it up some more.

But I have a real set family values list now with your finances. And I gotta tell you, it changes the way I spend money. It makes me look at things a lot differently. It puts a pause in between the reaction and fulfilling that reaction of spending money. You know, when you go into Best Buy store and you see all the electronics, you want to spend money right away. There's going to be something in there that says, Wait a minute, is this really the most important, best use of money right now?

Probably not. It puts that distance between the impulse and the decision. And that's what the priority of higher values does for you. Let's go to key number three, your value always determines your outcomes, your values, always determine the outcomes, this is probably the most important. Well, actually, they're all important. This is one of them a little bit more important things for you to know.

And let's go back to the unintentional values versus intentional values. So I want to pose a question, would you write and this could be a this, this question could be, could be asked out of any area of your life. Now, we're just talking about finances, but it could be of your job, your career goals, whatever it might be, but we're talking about finances. Let me ask you this. Do you want to secure your outcome, being intentional about getting there or unintentional about getting there? If you're unintentional, you're doing what feels good.

And let me tell you, when it goes to what feels good, there's a lot of different roads that you can go to and you're going to get what you're going to get. And I gotta tell you, that's a low probability of that, that value you think that you think that you have, if you're intentional about going down that road, there's only one road now, you may shift in values and shift roads. But if you're going, if you're focusing in on that value, then you're going down that road. Let me give you a good example of this. And this is for I don't have data for this, but I'm just going to guess 90% of America that says that they have retirement goals and the studies will will back this up, then the vast majority of Americans are not ready for retirement. I'm talking people in their 40s in their 50s.

The vast majority of people are not ready for their retirement. And so what instead, here's what ends up happening if you kind of play the game, yo, yeah, report. Retirement Planning is very important to me. And I've had these conversations many times. And so what ends up happening is that you go in an in between space, you go from intentional and unintentional, to unintentional intentional, if that makes sense. You're intentional about about retirement, so you're saving money, but you're going about it unintentionally, because you don't really have a game plan.

You see when it comes right down to It's not a it's not only about saving money as pop culture, finance, what have you believe, which is wrong, you can't save your way to retirement. There's other components that go into it. And I talk a lot about pop culture, financial, why I believe it's a flawed set of theories when it comes to money while you need to think in you use your mind to get to look at other areas of finance and thought, to get there to get to retirement, you not only have to save, you have to invest, you have to have a goal of a rate of return that you're going to make on your money. You have to have a way to protect against risk because the market doesn't always go up. We cover all this on the the courses, and then you have to have a way of tracking.

And most people are not that intentional about retirement planning. So is it really a high intention to dig that goes along on your hierarchy of priorities? Probably not. There's probably other things that are sneaking up above it and knowingly that you're spending your time, your money and your resources towards. And so retirement planning once again, a very good example of what is happening in America today. And of course, a lot of that blame on pop culture finance, because they will make you believe that if you just say 15%, you're set for retirement.

Not true. takes a lot more. You might be you might not be but wouldn't you want to know, at any given time, you should be able to say and this is the intentional setter of priorities and values. I want to retire at age 65 I want to have this amount of money in savings to art to satisfy my goal. I want to take out X amount of dollars each month. It's gonna take me 30 years.

Now, I don't know many people who can do that. But that's being very intentional and direct about setting values and achieving them. key number four, your values elevate the motivation to succeed. Values fuel motivation, I strong enough Why? Let's go back to the retirement example. It takes a change of habits and a change of direction, to go through all those different elements of being successful or with retirement.

I could stand here for another hour and talk about the psychology of why people don't do that, and why they avoid it. But there it takes a change of habits. And that's really, you know, we if we're unintentional about our values, what feels good drives the day, it's not hard to go down what feels good. It's easy. If you really want to be intentional, and if you really want to be successful with your outcomes, then you've got to do you got to have good habits. You got to change.

You look at where you are, and go, Well, I can't use the same habits that have gotten me to where I am today because I don't want to I'm not happy where I am today. I want to be someplace else that change your habits. And that takes a lot of strength and character it takes to get out of the box. You know this, that's one of the things I was looking at my priorities, and I would say, my priorities, our priorities as a family. And I thought to myself, wow, if I really want to achieve this one, I got to get out of my box, I got to get out of my comfort zone. And so I got to tell you that being that intentional about it is so much easier to get out of my comfort zone.

And therefore, I feel like I'm achieving my values. But it takes a lot to, to, to achieve. values have to be a part of your everyday life. It's not it's not one, it's one thing to sit down on a piece of paper piece of paper and write them down. But it's another thing to live it out on a day to day basis. I had an author on the approved money radio show, I was I was interviewing about a great book and he said he starts talking about values.

And he said, you know, Bobby goes, these are my values when you just just list them off. And it wasn't Hey, I'm on a book tour. I got her memorizes to look good because wrote about it. It's nothing like that he you could tell the passion in his voice. He goes in every year I sit down and reevaluate, am I climbing up the wrong wall? Am I focusing on the wrong values?

Do I need to tweak these values? Do I need to I need to do something different. And this guy is living it day in and day out. That is the way that you are intentional about realizing what's most important to you about money. The third one, imagination makes your values come alive. See it, feel it, experience it.

Dr. Joseph Murphy a great quote from him once he said that the imagination is God's workshop. And imagination is where these values are born, where these ideas every idea starts in the imagination. And you got to be able to imagine the end results you got to be able to feel it. You got to be able to attach strong emotions to it, you got to focus on it. That will keep you on that road of intention when it comes to realizing your values. key number five true values benefit others.

Now we'll talk a little bit about this from the standpoint of being single versus being married. Obviously, if you're married, you have other people to think of. But I know a lot of people who don't think of others, and they're their family. And they're just kind of one of these things where you know what this is what I'm going to do, this is about me, this is about my values, this is about what I want. And then my family will just come and kind of come along the side, because if I'm happy, I know they're gonna be happy. You may know some people like this.

I think it's kind of a meaningless existence. But hey, if it works, it works, right? Or maybe it doesn't work. And it can be all about you. And what ends up happening if you're married, by the way you beat your spouse down with this year after year after year after year, and finally go, Hey, whatever, I'm gonna be happy. They're not happy, because this isn't benefiting both the way that they both.

So when you get married, it's all about taking those family values and bringing them together and into To one that shared value, and that's so very important that it benefits others. And the other thing too, is that if you talk I talk about values or fuel for motivation to succeed, benefiting others brings in the fuel for motivation. And it could be single, if you're single, you could be thinking about yourself hoarding money spending money, I gotta tell you, at the end of the day, it'll be meaningless. In fact, it will, it will steer you off into the road of unintentional values really quick. It's all it's important to have meaning and you have to develop meaning by creating a y that you're doing it that benefits others that makes that makes the world a better place because you are in it. And giving back.

As I said, at the very beginning, values to me are found additional peace. You can go through the course there's a lot of information in there and we talk about life insurance planning, we talked about college planning, we talked about, oh gosh, we talked about how to buy a car, and we talked about retirement planning. We talked about investment planning, we talked about it Everything, obviously there's there's a ton of information in it, you'll get educated, I feel pretty confident, because we've spent a lot of time doing this. And I think the information is good. If you'll take it and be a success, that's up to you. If you take it to be a success, you'll have to learn this.

So what I what I would suggest is recommend is to go back and really get this idea of values because I want to go back to the question, you have a choice today to go down the road of unintentional values, which any road will get you there, because it just about feels good or are you depending your future on intentional values, and a game plan that produces goals, and to get exactly where you want and what's important for you and your family. It's your choice.