Ep 256 - The 3 Acts of Your Financial Life

Hey, everybody. Flipping Danny and Ben here. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome to another episode of our podcast. And our podcast is called Freedom through Passive Income. That's right. We have our special guest Ben here again with us. He was in town, so he joined us for a couple podcasts. And so this episode, this one is called, let's see if I can get it, the three acts of your financial life.

Yes. And thank you, Ben, for kind of coming up with this again series of podcasts to help us as we're kind of talking to everybody, because we'll say something and you'll think of an idea and be like, oh, we should just talk about this. And so Ben is here again to kind of host the podcast. And we're going to be here just having a cup of Joe and chatting with Ben and having fun and hopefully sharing some value.

Yeah, well, it's great to be here again. And Three acts of life. The genesis of this was a quote I heard from Jim Rohn. He was a kind of a business speaker, philosopher several decades back in which he talked about. He says, when I was in my 20s, I was very clear about where I was in life, and I happened to be in my 20s as he was telling this story in retrospect, that he was in his 40s or 50s at that time. And I thought, what does that mean, knowing exactly where you are in life? And so we're going to talk a little bit about today, about the backdrop of your financial life and making sure that each of us know what part of life that we're in and how it works. With CS Lewis was a writer again in the 20th century, and he talked a little bit about the value of looking at your life and finding patterns in different levels, relationships. It could be work wise, it could be family wise. So when you look back on your life, do you find patterns that kind of help you say, okay, we're here in this life, so therefore we need to be doing this or that.

If you look back at my life, my life was pretty much up until about 10 or 15 years ago, a big hot mess.

So you want me to answer?

Well, I mean, you said that about the 20s, and I'm like, ooh, I don't even. Hell, I don't even remember half of my 20s. So, you know, it's just. Yeah, so go ahead, Danny.

Yeah, I would say that it was hard to. I was a very next step person. It was hard to see into the future. Right. I knew that we wanted to be successful, we wanted to make money, be able to retire Early. And I say that being 50 years old right now. Right. I knew what the next step of what we wanted. I didn't know how to get there. And it was a repeat of that process of continually trying to get down that road, not knowing when we were going to get there. And we continued to age as we went, not even honestly realizing it to some extent. You know, we just. We landed on 50 and went, whoa, you know what happened?

I'm still 26.

So, yeah, I think it was very, very difficult for us to wrap our heads around it. We only focused on the next step. And I don't know if that's something that everybody does, but it certainly was. Our strategy was just focus on what's in front of us, put your blinders on, try to get to what you think is your end destination, and deal with the challenges as they come.

And I think a lot of people live their life next step at a time.

Yeah.

And it's natural because we start off during our school days with a group of other students, and we are doing the next step, the next grade with junior high to high school and perhaps higher education. So the track is put out in front of us. And then we get onto the next step of relationship in marriage and having kids. We talk about work and moving up the ladder and work. And usually by 30 or the early 30s, we start to run out of these. First time. First, you know, like, almost like opening up presents on Christmas morning. And then you open up and you're like, okay, wait a minute, I'm out of presents. What happens next? So what we want to talk a little bit about, and this is probably especially true on the cruise ship, because so many people in cruise ship living, which you did, and my wife and I did, there's this life now which is exciting and we're seeing the world and we're having fun. And it's very low expense because the ship gives us housing and food. But there was always this in the back of everybody's mind, whether they're in the music side or the art side. What happens after we get off the ship?

Yes.

And it was this looming question. So some people are taking courses that are just thinking or they're having conversations during their time when they're off the ship, you know, for several months. What are we going to do next? So we want to talk a little bit today about this idea of the three acts of life so that we have a better sense of where we are in life. And some of you that are listening have a very clear sense of where you are in life and you have acted accordingly and wisely. And you're enjoying some in the field of real estate, you've made some great real estate investments that are paying off. And so for others that are listening, it's been quite a challenge like it was for us certainly earlier parts of our life. So there's three acts that we want to talk about. Financially, if you think back on your life, relationship wise or whatever, you might categorize your life a little bit differently. But with the acts of life, it goes with this. The first act is coming of age. In coming of age, this is just the years of growing up, junior high, high school, higher education. And if anybody ever asks you, you know, sometimes if you have a child or a grandchild, maybe a nephew or niece that says, why am I in school? What is this?

I never ask that question.

And the answer is, one answer you can give them is it's to prepare you for life. It's to prepare you for life in a general sense, but more specifically, it's to prepare you for work. When you have this broad education, you can kind of see what the arena is. You can start to see yourself as you relate with these different areas of education. It helps point you in the direction of what you're going to do for work for that. So that's the first area is coming of age. And again, that's junior high, high school, perhaps it's higher education, but it's up to the point where you're starting to live on your own and, you know, care for yourself and provide for yourself. The second act is what we call the great adult adventure.

That's what I've been on.

And this is 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. Typically during this time, your earning power is growing, but also your time commitments are growing. Your life becomes more complex. You're dealing with family and work. During this time, you are also wanting to spread your wings a little bit. So for listeners who are and viewers who are in their 30s, 40s and 50s, it's good to remember that you are in smack dab in the middle of this great adult adventure. This is the main show.

Yes.

There's no okay, soon we're going to move on to the next the main show. This is it and the clock's ticking.

Yes.

So, but if you're caught up in the step by step thinking, sometimes it's like, you know, if your parents, you're watching your kids start to go through the same steps of growing up in junior high and high school. So you're you're kind of stepping, by stepping in your parenting just as you experienced as a child for that. So that's the second adult adventure, the great adult adventures, act two. And generally by the 50s, you start into a transition and you get into the 60s and beyond, which is act three. And that's after the adult adventure. And during this time you have more time, you have less earning skills. More time, less earning skills, less income possibilities generally. Now, there may be exceptions to this and hopefully you're exceptions to this and we're exceptions to this where some of your most productive years might be in your 60s and even through your 70s. But generally speaking, 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s are the times in which you have the most possibilities, you have the most earning power, the most brain power, you have the most ambition. Would you agree with that?

Those 3x100% agree with that?

Absolutely. And moving to Florida, that Florida should be called after the adventure because most of the towns down there are 55 and over and whatever. It's like they should call Florida the swan song state, you know, because that's where everyone goes, you know, after their. Once they've gotten to the third act. We just got there early. But no, this is, I love this.

Yeah. And I agree with that. I think once we moved to Florida, there was a, I think Once we hit 50, there was a shift change for us. And I don't know what that was, the magic of the number. But there was a, hey, we knew that we were going to be building, building, building, but we kind of thought at 50 we would have landed. And if we haven't landed yet, we got to get serious, serious fast. And so we had a real physical like kind of evaluation of where we were when we hit 50 to go, did we make it? Did we achieve the things that we set out to do during those earning years and do we want to stop? And moving to Florida was a mind shift change because now we've got this big pool in our backyard, we've got this nice house, we're working out of the house. And it kind of said, hey, you have achieved what you wanted to achieve. Look what you have. Settle down. This is the part where you can be ambitious, but you also get to.

Enjoy, right, get to save her life. So if you're interested in the academic, you know, if you're kind of resistant Again, when you're 30s, 40s, 50s, you're in the prime of your earnings and it's easy to say, no, I'm going to feel this way, you know, I'm into my 40s now and I still feel great. I still have energy. I'm going to feel this way in my 50s, 60s, and maybe through my 70s. And that hopefully is true, but it may not necessarily be true. So from an academic approach, if you want an explanation about some of this processes, a good book to look at is Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks. He's very insightful on the change from second act to third act. And on our next podcast when we come back, we'll talk a little bit about some lessons that we can take away. Some of the key takeaways for these three acts of life.

Perfect. Well, we hope that you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you're heading over to our website freedomcapitalinvestments.com to join the investor club. Also make sure you're checking us out on all the social medias as well because Ben and the gang are on there. So make sure you can ask them. You can ask them any questions or have any requests or whatnot. But we like to end all of our episodes with Invest Smart, Live Happy. Bye everybody. Nothing on the show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions and information on the show are not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit and loss.

Sam.