135. Shawn Patt | Mind Your Own Money

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to our personal development podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, we interview one of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In today's episode, we have the pleasure to interview Shawn Patt, author of Mind Your Own Money. Shawn is a certified private wealth advisor with nearly 20 years of experience working at RBC Wealth Management, Morgan Stanley, and UBS Financial Services. He's now the CEO of Atala Financial, which is dedicated to providing the education, tools, and guidance needed to solve life's enduring financial challenges. Shawn is also a professor at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, Teaching personal finance, and he is an advisor to the Student Investment Fund there, helping elite students manage a portion of the UCLA Foundation. In this episode, you'll learn why it's important to budget, why you need to get over your fears of money, and a glimpse into Sean's book. If you're struggling with finances, this is a great place to start. We also talked about why Sean utilized AI to help him write his book, and how he believes it'll help more people accomplish their goals. Now get ready to learn and enjoy this incredible conversation with. Sean Patz.

Sean, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you feeling today?

I'm feeling great, Nick. Thanks for having me on today.

Yeah, Luke and I are excited to interview you. So I'd like to kick off our interview in an interesting spot. This is a first for the Book Thinkers Podcast. I'd like to read something out of your acknowledgments and then I'd like to chat about it for a few minutes, pun intended here, as you'll see in a minute. Quote, I must disclose that I have utilized the capabilities of OpenAI's language model ChatGPT-4 in this endeavor. It served as an instrumental role, or it served an instrumental role, acting as a catalyst in helping me articulate my thoughts and ideas more effectively. This advanced tool significantly enriched the content of this book. So I think you're the first author that we've had on the podcast that has stated in the beginning of the book that they leveraged artificial intelligence to improve their content. So let's dive into it. Why'd you decide to make that decision and what were some of the more useful elements of ChatGPT?

So my personal skill set in my life, I've always been really good at math analysis, problem solving, but writing in English was always my big weakness. And High school, my mom would sit with me at the computer for 2 hours helping me go sentence by sentence and try to articulate the thoughts. But I've always been a good communicator outside of just the, the writing side. Even when I went, was in UCLA for undergrad, I would purposely choose courses that did not have papers. It just— writing is just something that I abhor. And so When ChatGPT came along, for me, it was like filling in this, my biggest weakness, right? Now I could use it as a tool to write effectively. And I had never dreamed I'd ever be able to write a book. It would take me a year or 2 to really articulate my thoughts and make it sound good. And then ChatGPT came along and This is a true story. My son actually gave me a concussion. My brain was scrambled for a few days. And when I started getting clarity, my first thought was, wow, I could actually write a textbook now. So I teach personal finance at UCLA. And for that course, I've always used journal articles and readings from here and there because I've never found a good enough textbook. So I started using ChatGPT to write a textbook for that course and wrote about a 300-page book that will be, is up on Amazon now. But when I had people start giving me feedback, I realized it was too high level for the average person. So I'm like, all right, ChatGPT, let's simplify this. So I took my outline and I said, let's make this more age appropriate for the average young adult, not the high-level UCLA student. And then it focused more on jobs, banking, shopping, and credit issues that are really gonna affect young people. And because I had ChatGPT, I started writing Mind Your Own Money on June 20th and I had it on Amazon on June 29th. Took me 9 days for a poor writer to get it up and published. And so I'm, my undergrad major is actually cognitive science. So I understand AI well, and I think that's part of why I've been able to really leverage it. And so I really got in, had to really get into the copyright issues, right? What is going on here? If I'm gonna put a book out there and represent it as mine, do I own it? And that's the thing with the ChatGPT, it creates things, creates content one word at a time. So it truly is unique. And then as long as you disclose that you used AI, they assign the copyrights to you. So they have no claim on the work. So it's truly mine.

I have a follow-up question. I, we have a lot of authors in our audience naturally, and I'm sure a lot of them are scared. I mean, they make their full-time income through their writing, through their books and the complementary products and services that are attached to the books, things like coaching, consulting, speaking, etc. And so I think at first when I heard, okay, people are writing and uploading books through Amazon KDP leveraging ChatGPT, it seemed a little inauthentic. That's the way that it was portrayed, at least to me. But then when I hear you talk about being a poor writer, having stronger math skills, being a cognitive science guy, and then leveraging a tool to help fill that gap so that you can share something that can genuinely impact people. on a young professional, young adult level, it's like, that's a no-brainer and it feels authentic, it feels real, it feels really useful. And it's not like you're gaming a system, you're taking advantage of the technology that's available to you. So would you position it that way as well?

100%, right? So what I failed to mention was I've always been a voracious reader, right? So I know what good language sounds like when I read it and I'm a good editor. But I'm just, wasn't good on the content creation side. And one message I'd have for good authors, use this tool and it's gonna be able to take your stuff to the next level because I've, I come across a bunch of scenarios now where people want me to help them to write books and I just, I don't have the, the time in my life. And I try to explain to these people that I, if, for example, the, the woman who in my chiropractor's office, she wants to do a book on hypnotherapy. I don't know your business. I don't know that content. I can't create a book around it. You can. So really, it's a tool that writers can take to the next level and it is extremely authentic, right? Great use case. You can make your mother and father cry on Father's Day with a really heartfelt message written by ChatGPT, but is personalized to them that nobody else could create. So I'm a full believer in leverage this because it allows you to do things you could never do.

That's such an interesting take because there's so much controversy around whether AI is a good thing or a bad thing. And I've always looked at it as this thing that can help us be better. And I think it's so cool that somebody like you has done that and you're a great example of that. I wanna back up just a little bit though. You know, you, you graduate high school, you get into college. Why did you choose to get into personal finance?

So kind of luck or kind of right place, right time. So I started out in, out of UCLA in, in the technology field for a digital video company, and I got laid off and I was just looking for a job. And so I found a spot in personal finance. But so I started at UBS managing people's investments and started doing quite well. And then I went to business school and that's where I got my formal education because up until that point, my only economic background was learned through Google. That was how I learned portfolio theory. In 2002, we built ETF portfolios. And again, I just learned this all through Google. And then in business school, that's where I really fell in love with teaching, right? Because whatever, what I, I TA'd 12 classes while I was in business school and I was working full-time. And of all the things I was doing in my life, the teaching was really what provided the most satisfaction because for anyone who's ever done it, it's the most rewarding feeling, right? Making clients a lot of money, they're grateful, but it's can't compare to actually helping someone. So I almost left a career in wealth management to try to become a teacher and really push personal finance. But I decided to stay in the business and just teach on the side. And it was fortuitous. I was at the right place, right time. And the dean at the business school at UCLA said, oh, you want a class? Yes. And One thing led to another, and then I have a personal finance class on Zoom at UCLA, and it's kind of what I always dreamed of.

Wow, that's incredible. I'm curious too, you know, you've, it seems like you've learned a lot alternative to college, outside of college. So what are your thoughts around people that should go to college versus shouldn't go to college? It's a hot, kind of a hot topic right now where a lot of people are saying, oh, college is useless, but then there's a whole other team of people that are saying college is the most useful thing that you can do. So what is your opinion around that since you've— seems like you've kind of put your foot in both worlds?

No, it's a great point because one of the slides in my personal finance class is we go over, right, the cost of an education, but also the disparity of incomes between someone who has college degree, master's degree, or less. And also how fast they're growing and really focus on kind of where the market's moving. So I think in a lot of ways, a lot of the top jobs, getting a college degree is your old high school degree. Checks the box that you're not gonna get the interview with that next level employer unless you do that. A lot of your top finance jobs can only be had out of undergrad through on-campus recruiting at certain schools. And I didn't make the system, but it's kind of where it is. But I don't think anyone fully needs a college degree. I think the AI revolution that we're still in the infancy, right? It's fascinating. I don't know if you've seen the stats, but usage from May to July dropped 26% on ChatGPT. It's dropping because people haven't fully figured out how to leverage it. But once it does, The shift in the labor market is going to be so dramatic. It's all those careers where it was focused on a repetitious thing, right? Doing something over and over like an attorney, like a computer programmer. Those jobs won't go away. We just won't need as many of them, right? Because one person can now do the work of 10, right? I can write a letter of recommendation in 5 minutes that used to take me 2 hours. So I think it's— so I'm— and that's why in my courses I've shifted the deliverables so that it can't be gamed by ChatGPT. But I encourage my students to use it, right? Use it everywhere possible in the right ways, because this is your future. There's— I won't name the schools, but there's higher-ranked schools than UCLA in California that are not allowing their students to use it. They're handicapping them, right? So 5 years from now, they're going to be well behind and they're not going to be able to come up with as many business ideas leveraging the technology because you didn't let them use it. So the college question is a huge, huge issue, right? Especially as the costs get out of control, right? And that's why one of the chapters in the book is focusing on college education and figuring out the way to get there because If you use the right tax tools, you cut the cost in half. It's still a lot, but at least it won't choke you when you get out of school because that's the biggest concern I have with students and loans is picking the wrong career, right? They're too focused on having to get that high-paying job because their monthly debt service is so high because they got a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt.

So speaking to college students, how do you as a finance guy, like what is your, What is your advice to them when they are choosing a degree? Is it, do you, do you have any like opinions about that of where directions they should go in college?

So, uh, there's 2 sides to that. One, because it's extremely personal, right? I don't believe anyone should do anything solely for money-motivated purposes, right? It doesn't lead to the great outcomes. But at the same time, look up the careers and how much money they make so you have a good idea on What that, what, how much money you're going to make there. And is that a lifestyle that you can actually handle? Right? Go in with open eyes. Too many people just blindly think, oh, I want to do this. And right. And they don't even like, wait, how much money do you make? Because they're not doing the after-tax calculation. Or the first thing I make students do is a budget, right? I make them download every charge they've spent for a year, put it into a spreadsheet and categorize it. Right? It takes hours. It's time intensive, but they learn so much about themselves, right? Because that's really the first step of, right? Got to know what your life costs to know if you can afford to be a teacher, right? My life, I can't afford to just be a teacher. I have to have my day job too.

Great advice. So I'm curious too, you know, you talk about budgeting and budgeting is such a, for some reason, it's just such a difficult thing for so many people to do. Why do you think that is? And what can people do? Like, what are some actions that they can take to start getting themselves to doing a budget? Because I know in my life, I've had times where I haven't had a budget and it is very easy to overspend if you don't have that. So what are, what's some advice around that that you have?

No matter how much money you make, have a budget right now. And a lot of people, it's the dirty B word. They don't want to do it, right? Why? Right? Because we're humans. Right? It gets us right back in our lizard brain and gets us fearful. And it's really a fear thing.

It's—

we're scared to know what our life costs. We're scared to know where we spend money. We're scared to know how much we spend per month in online subscriptions or clothing, right? So it's easier not to look at the details, right? It's easy. I've— so I remember one student came up to me after the first week of class. And his parent— he was still on the same account as his parents, right? All the spending going through one account. And he came up and said, I can't figure out what my spending are. There's too many charges involved. I can't do it. But because the other half of the assignment is they have to create a budget for the next 2 months and track it. And he told me, I can create a perfect budget. I'll be right on. He spent 15 minutes trying to argue with me, and I'm— and I knew it was just coming from fear. So I am— nope, nope. Held his feet to the fire. And it was great because that, after the next week, he came up to me after class and was grateful, right? Thank me because he learned so much about himself. And really, right, the most important thing is just get into the weeds, right? Look at what you do. And really kind of be self-aware and kind of, it's this fear part where we're just, we're not acting rational. And that's what keeps people from doing a budget, right? I mean, that's the thing with personal finance. Everything I teach is out there. When, before I actually had a class at UCLA, I was doing volunteer seminars with undergrads just to try and teach. And I found it wasn't getting good results because I couldn't hold their feet to the fire. I couldn't make them do assignments and do things, and especially a budget one. Some would do it, but people don't want to do it. And it's, and it's not just young people, right? I've had a— I remember early in my career, I had a woman yell at me because I said you can't spend more than $25,000 a month. She only had like $6 million. I forgot the number, but she was really upset and and pissed at me. So again, it's whatever the budget, whatever, however much money you make, you need to have a budget. It's important.

I'm curious, do you think that college, because this book, a young adult, I guess let's start there. What do you consider to be a young adult? Do you want to give an age range on that?

I'd say call it 16 to 35.

Okay, perfect. So I'm curious, that helps with my question. Is college the right age to start thinking about personal finance, or should it be sooner than that? Because I imagine a 16-year-old might not have separated bank accounts and a whole bunch of expenses to build a budget around, although I think the foundation is very important. And I'm constantly shocked that the US public education system doesn't provide more opportunity to learn about personal finance. So what are your thoughts on that?

No, everything needs to be age appropriate. So after I finished business school, the first place I started volunteer teaching was at Venice High School and I'd go there once a week and was teaching them some stuff. And if you start talking about investing to someone who's in high school, right, and doesn't know where they're gonna go, it's pointless. So what's critical is catering the content towards the age appropriateness. Right? So that's why Mind Your Own Money was catered towards, call it someone 16, 17 years old, right? Is intelligent enough to learn all these right principles, right? Because we don't focus on investing in options and discounted cash flows. It's more about kind of that age appropriate. So we're actually working on doing a book drive and donating books to a lot of local high schools. Because again, author copies are cheap and it's more important to get this out there. But I believe it starts even earlier, right? I think so. My kids are 5 and 7 and I'm trying to not teach these same lessons but earlier, more fundamental ones. I've got another ChatGPT book down the road when I find a children's publisher who can do a board book. Right, on lessons for kids that are 8 years old for personal finance because it's never too soon to start teaching your kids. And I think one of the biggest challenges is families not teaching their kids and not communicating. And sometimes the wealthier families are worse about teaching and communicating than the ones that don't have it.

I'm curious. I have 3 kids of my own. My oldest is about to turn 7, my youngest is 2, and I have a 5-year-old as well. So with them, I've tried to start having open conversations about money, but I'm not a finance guy, so I don't really know how to approach it. So what would be your advice to a young parent that's looking to teach their children some things? Like, what are some of the lessons that I should be teaching these young kids?

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Right. So what one of the first ones, right? And it's kind of hard to figure out what age to do it, right? Is trying to figure out how to put the purchase decision in their hands where they can figure out what is the value of something and just learn that inner, that exchange process, right? So kind of the earlier you can to get them on, right? When they have some level of their own money and they're going to the store and buying it for themselves, right? You want them to see something they can't afford. That's the great thing, because then we'll, we'll come back when you have more money. That, that stuff is, is really helpful. Earning money, right? That's my, my 7-year-old. She's— we've got her started on starting to do some chores around the house, right? That way she can just kind of get some money into her pocket and Trying to figure out a way to teach delayed gratification in kids where, again, you can afford it, but it's so helpful if they have to come back at a later point and get it. So it's lemonade stands are great, right? Because again, just teaching, trying to figure out ways for business, like for them to learn business and the exchange of one thing or another and how they, how do people make money? And we have those conversations a lot with my kids as far as whether someone provides a service or it's a product. And so just kind of, again, it's just being open and communicative with them on it. That'd be my advice. And hopefully I'll have the next book coming out down the road.

I can't wait. I will be first in line for it for sure. And that makes me feel kind of good because that's basically like the conversations that we're having with our kids too when we're in Target or whatever and they see a toy that they want. You know, we have those open conversations about, okay, well, how can we actually make this affordable for you? So I appreciate your advice, Nick. I saw that you might have a question.

Yeah, I was just going to tell a quick story. When I was very young, my parents had a small kind of beach cottage a few hours from our home, and on the strip where that beach was, there was an arcade. And so our parents, my parents tried to teach me how to earn money so that we could go play at the arcade. And I used to draw pictures of turtles and other like ocean life and try to sell them to friends and family and neighbors and stuff for a quarter so that I could go play. And building those foundations of money, I think, was very important for me because like we've talked about, personal finance and the basics, the foundation of it, it's not typically taught at school. It's taught in the home. And so, if you grow up in a poor or middle-class family, you might learn poor or middle-class money management habits. If you grow up in a rich family, you're a little bit better off sometimes, not with everything.

Hey. This is one point, right? I want to make sure people know it's actually flip-flopped. Interesting. A lot of the times it's harder to teach the right lessons in a wealthy family, but the people from the younger middle class, right, that can't afford those things, it's actually easier for them to pick it up. It's really warped. And that's why for a lot of clients, I end up psychologist and helping with them and their kids because It's not, it's harder to teach them, right?

Right.

If you're driving a Ferrari and your kid wants a BMW for their 16th birthday, it's hard to say no, right? So again, so again, it's from what I've seen, it's kind of, it's the parents are the, and the family dynamic is the most important thing. But it's, I'll just, my argument would be it's not going to be directly along kind of those paths because I didn't learn any finance from my family, right? When I got out of undergrad, I ruined my credit. It took me years to recover, right? So I kind of had to get a lot of real lumps learned in life from making mistakes. I mean, I had a 550 credit score at one point, but I worked back and got it back. And fortunately I was able to do that. But that was one of the reasons I want to put this book out there is so that People don't make the same mistakes I did because not everybody can recover the, the way I was able to.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. It reminds me of a conversation we had maybe 2 years ago on this podcast with somebody that did grow up in one of those extremely wealthy families, and he said it ruined him. And he cited some statistic, I can't recall it perfectly, but it was something like intense drug use is almost twice as likely in a rich family environment than it is in a poor family environment. And so sometimes you're right, we do get those things backwards.

I want to give you one proverb that I learned that really encapsulates this, right? Because it's human nature. It's an ancient Chinese one, rice paddies to rice paddies, right? Because what they found was in 3 generations, the family would go from the rice paddy where they're working hard every day and they Come up with a great invention and become wealthy. They move to the city, right? Their kids are brought up in the city and never had to work in a rice paddy, so they don't have the same work ethic. And then their kids will end up blowing through all the money and they'll end up right back in the rice paddies. So it's, it's kind of human nature thing. It's, it's fascinating.

Yeah, I love that. Like one family works hard and starts to earn, the next family generation lives nice and spends that money, and the third one's back where they started. So yeah, I love that. I was going to lead into the fundamentals, the basics. You start off this book by talking about the history of money and defining some of the most basic terms of financial literacy. So if I was to ask you, what is money? How do you define money? I mean, most people, they use it every single day. They talk about it. They don't even know how to define it.

So my view on money, right, is some people say money's evil. No, right? Money is, we need it for civilization, right? My belief is money is the value, is you being compensated for the value you provide to the world, right? So if you provide a service to someone, they pay you money and that's the store of exchange, right? That's your medium of how you're transacting. When you go to the store and you use your money, you exchange your money, you're extracting value from the world, right? So I believe money is kind of the value and when you earn it by providing value to the world, right? And you take the world's value when you, when you spend money.

What do you think are some of the, like, I don't know, common problems that you see arise in financial situations, like in a middle-class family? Like, what are some of the common problems that, that you see that maybe if you talk about it, people could avoid?

Oh, well, the, the first one is just being the ostrich, right? And not just being real with what, where your life is and what's going on, right? And, and, and the second piece is most people really don't learn enough To take advantage of all the things in our life that can make life cheaper, right? So for example, right, some people will tell you, don't use credit cards, stay away from them, right? I would make the case that if you're using a 2% cashback rewards card, everything in your life is 2% cheaper if you're using a credit card. Again, but a lot of people are scared of that, and so they don't Really go that level, and then you can get even more educated. There's a lot of other shopping platforms like price.com's a company I'm on the board on where you can get even more cash back beyond that two percent. So if I start getting my whole life five percent cheaper, how does that make my budget look? That's great, right? Maybe I can put that whole five percent into a tax-deferred plan and reduce my taxable income today. So there's kind of the more people learn, right? The more a that middle class family can can make it to the upper class, really if they just stick to the fundamentals and do the right things, right? It's kind of first book I read when I started my career was Millionaire Next Door. Sure, you guys have read it, and it's the principles hold. It's kind of know yourself, don't overspend. And learn every avenue that's available to help you, right? And there's tons out there. And again, the internet is filled with all of them, right? You just got to make sure you use them because I believe a good tax advisor is far more valuable than a good financial advisor.

Do you have any tips for people that are— I don't know, we talked about the fear a little bit. Do you have any tips for people or that you use with your clients who are afraid to like look At their finances?

So fortunately for me, most of my clients who have become wealthy are in that mode where they don't spend, right? They're that millionaire next door. So they're not the type that are scared of it, right? Because onboarding with clients, I go over spending and I kind of make them look at it. And if I have a client who won't look at their spending, I don't want to work with them. Right? Just not worth, worth my time. I don't typically don't work with athletes. Why? Because they tend to spend everything and they don't, that they don't really want to look at it granularly. But really it's, it's getting in the weeds, right? Putting the numbers down on paper and, right? And it's, don't be afraid, right? That's the biggest thing is trying to get out of that fear zone. And if you need someone to help you hire an advisor. right, who can help you go through those details. A lot of time a good financial advisor is like a therapist, right? They're helping you through those details because humans aren't— we're not robots. We have emotions, we have feelings. So let's see, was it what I missed the other part of the question or?

No, no, that was great. You answered. Thank you. Yeah.

And earlier we started the conversation around artificial intelligence and how the the price of a lot of these white-collar services, lawyers, financial advisors might fall through the floor. And that's because tools will become available over the next few years that will help automate much of what used to be manual and repetitive. So Atala Tools, tell us a little bit about this platform and some of the functions that will become available over the next few years for people who want to take this book and the books that you're writing And they want to get involved, they want to start to build a budget, things like that.

So, uh, Atala Tools was created, uh, out of my personal finance course. So I started teaching, uh, the class in 2020, and I was going looking through the web trying to find the best tools to teach, um, to show how to do a debt-to-income ratio, right? Compare leasing versus buying cars and all the different components of personal finance, and I realized that most of them were missing key components. There were a couple, like one or two things on each of them that just made it incomplete. Like for example, if you're calculating a debt-to-income ratio and you don't include a line item for other, for other debt service you have, you won't actually come up with a number that's going to be useful to know whether you qualify for a bank's financing. So I started putting all these spreadsheets together just as kind of the core of what my class is because it has budgeting, spending analysis, but it also, the crown jewel of it is the students create a 60-year financial plan where they're mapping out everything, right? How much money they'll make, how much they'll pay in taxes, how much they'll spend, when they'll buy a house, when they'll have kids. Putting it out into a 60-year plan and making the math all work together. This is similar to the financial plans I do for my clients. They pay me a good amount of money to do. I make the students do it for themselves. And so I built all these spreadsheets. And then in my, in my personal finance class, I had a really bright UCLA undergrad who wanted to start a business venture. So he's a programmer. He's done 3 internships at Google already. And so we got together and he's got the skills and outsourcing to build this financial platform where really our vision is it's going to be a platform where people can come and learn the proper financial education and then provide them with all the tools needed To map out their whole financial life, every single core component of personal finance. We've got a tool on our platform to help you make an informed decision. So you're looking at buying an investment piece of real estate, right? You don't have to create your own spreadsheet pro forma on our platform. You can plug in the essential inputs, build a ten-year pro forma, and then do the right sensitivity analysis so you can really make. the proper trade-off decisions, because investing is about uncertainty. Nobody knows for sure what's going to happen. So you need to kind of understand what you're getting into. So for someone who doesn't have all their assets at Morgan Stanley, RBC, or one of my prior firms, but they've got a lot of investments spread all over the world, whether it's private real estate, private equity, you name it. They can really kind of come to this platform and put it, put their whole life together.

That's amazing, man. I could have used a tool like that years ago. So I'm excited that there's somebody out there building it out. Nick, we're coming on to around 40 minutes now. Is there anything else that you wanted to cover or look at?

I have a couple more questions I can ask, but Yeah, I wanted to touch on one more subject also from the beginning of your book. You talk a little bit about the emergence, the recent emergence of electronic money.

Hmm.

And, you know, I think that in the United States, sometimes we think about, for most of us, maybe 95 to 100% of our cash or our liquid, you know, our ability to become liquid is all virtual. And like, the thought of all of that just disappearing overnight in some catastrophe is pretty scary. So it's not really— I don't know, it's just kind of a scary subject. And I wanted to have you talk about that for a couple of minutes and maybe put some minds at ease or amplify the fear. I don't know what direction the conversation would go.

We could probably do a whole podcast on this topic, but Really, right? What is, right, the core of money, right? It's IOU obligations by somebody, right? Is there a world, and is there a world where money could disappear? Theoretically, I doubt the powers that be will let it happen. But really, when you think about your cash, your money, any value you have, you have to think in terms of who's on the other side. Right? That's why a big pet peeve of all these people who had millions of cash uninsured at Silicon Valley Bank and these other places. It's unconscionable, right? There's no reason in this day and age anybody should have any cash that doesn't have some sort of promise or trust on the other side. I believe people put far too much faith and trust into FDIC. The FDIC is a private company. They're not a— the government. There's an implied promise by the US government to cover FDIC in case banks go under. But if you look at the reserves of the FDIC, they have nowhere near enough money to handle any real catastrophe. That's why they bailed out our banks in 2008. Which is why they bailed out our banks this year, because FDIC— forget the uninsured balances, the insured balances— FDIC doesn't have enough. I think it's somewhere around $29 billion total in their reserves to cover it. So a lot of people— so do I trust FDIC? Somewhat. Do I trust the US government the most? Right? So I don't, I don't have clients keep cash balances. We buy Treasury bonds because they're direct obligations of the federal government. There's a lot of talk of foreign governments trying to displace the US dollar. I don't believe the world trusts any other government more than they trust the US, even though they don't trust the US. So in some ways, we're the prettiest pig. Right? Nobody really trusts these currencies and Right? And that's why everyone's pushing towards Bitcoin and all the other, these other ones, which again, those can just disappear on you. Right? Again, if you lose, the only safe way to hold crypto is in a cold storage wallet, because if it's on an exchange, right, we saw those go under and then your cash goes to zero. We can handle investments going to zero. Cash should never go to zero. So it's, that's currencies is always an ongoing concern. So For anyone who's really paranoid of the system collapsing and money going away, I would probably buy some real gold, physical, not paper. But it's just an insurance policy in my opinion.

Yeah. Well, I appreciate that answer and maybe we will have a longer discussion on those subjects as more books continue to come out and we have you on the show again. But like Luke mentioned, we're trying to keep the show under 45 minutes these days, so I'll pass it to Luke for the final question or questions and we'll get wrapped up.

All right. This is the last question that I love to ask all our guests. And that is, you cease to exist, all the information that you put out, your books, your teachings, your courses, everything disappears, but you're allowed to leave the world with one single piece of advice. What would it be?

It's actually one of my favorite quotes. Fate is the result of choices you make. Right? Really, you can do anything in your life that you want to, right? And whatever you choose now will affect your future, right? Choices have consequences. But so if you make the right choices, you'll continue to improve your life. Again, I doesn't— we can't control what we've done in the past. But if you continue to make wrong choices, You're gonna continue to ruin your life. So we do have a role to play in our life.

So great. I love that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna remember that. I'm gonna actually put that quote up somewhere. I love it. All right. So for our listeners who are looking to learn a little bit more about you, where can they go and what can they do?

So we've got a LinkedIn profile, we've got an Instagram page that we're getting up and running. Mind Your Own Money is on Amazon. We've got Kindle, paperback, and hardcover. I just got up and published the next, the higher-level book, which is going to be the textbook for my class in the fall. So that's called The Wealth Compass: Your Guide to Financial Prosperity. So that's up on Amazon as well. And that's where you can find me.

All right. Well, perfect. Thank you so much for coming on today, Shawn. We've had a great time getting to know you and learning a little bit more about finances.

All right. Thanks, guys. Talk soon.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. It would mean the world to us if you could write a review and share this episode with a few of your friends. I mean, these books truly have the power to change people's lives, and by reviewing or sharing our podcast, you're helping us make an impact. If you have any recommendations for future guests or any constructive feedback for us on how we can improve our show, please feel free to submit a form on our website, www.bookthinkers.com, or send us a direct message on Instagram @bookthinkers. With that, I am signing off, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Don't forget, go read something.