Afford Anything - Buy the Damn Guac, with Jamila Souffrant

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

#478: Ever skipped that extra drink, pricey cheese, or a night out for the sake of your wallet? If this feels familiar, then you’ll appreciate today’s episode with Jamila Souffrant. Jamila is a Certified Financial Education Instructor, podcast host, and author, guiding us on making savvy choices to save while still having fun. Jamila explores the power of understanding our ""why not,"" staying motivated on our financial paths, shaping a success-bound mindset, and posing THREE crucial self-assessment questions for goal alignment. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode478 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does guacamole have to do with financial independence? What's the distinction between financial independence versus financial freedom? What costs do you truly need? Which ones are mandatory? Which ones are discretionary? Which ones are fixed? Which ones are variable? How do we wrap our heads around the complicated notions of managing our money and ultimately reaching financial freedom? Here to talk about all of that today is Jamila Sufront, the host of Journey to Launch, one of the most popular personal finance and financial independence podcasts. She is also a certified financial education instructor. Did I get that right?

You did. Excellent. Certified financial education instructor and formerly worked at MetLife, where she managed millions of dollars worth of real estate assets. Welcome to the Afford Anything. podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything but not everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else, and that doesn't just apply to your money. That applies to your time, your focus, your attention, your energy, to any limited resource that you need to manage. And that

opens up two questions. First, what matters most? And second, how do you make decisions accordingly? Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice. And that's what this podcast is here to explore and facilitate. I'm Paula Pant, the host of this show, and we will dive right in with this conversation. Hi, Jamila. Hi, Paula. It's great to have you here. Thank you for coming. It's an honor. So thank you for having me. Absolutely. So let's kick off with what does guacamole have to do with financial independence? When I first started my journey to financial independence, and I'll know we'll get more into that background, I was focused on the numbers a lot. And I was focused on how much I can save invest and that involved cutting back in areas, which meant cutting out things that I actually enjoyed

doing. And while I made significant progress in the beginning of my journey, saving and investing tons of money, at a point I realized when I went out, you know, I was thinking too much about enjoying something very simple and very worth it. But I would spend minutes, you know, agonizing on, oh, should I buy the guacamole? It's $10 or $12. And as I started going further into my journey, I made a decision and I've been making those decisions ever since that I want to order the guacamole. Right. I want to be able to enjoy the journey. It's not just about getting to the number.

And so when I thought about how to relay that for other people where they could be engaged in the conversation, you know, like you as a podcaster, you'll have people who never really consider the idea of financial independence until you say it or they hear you talk about it. So I'm like, how can I break it down to what I call guac levels in my book, your journey to financial freedom. And I figured that if we can get people to understand the lifestyle choices in a simple but silly guac level of range that I have from one to five, it can help them make more intentional decisions on how they want to live their lives. And the cost and tradeoff is going to cost them in order to live that quack level lifestyle they want. The guac. So it's like

going to Chipotle and being like, I get that guac is extra. I want it. Yes. Let's go through guac levels one through five. What is level one? Okay. So, and by the way, if you don't like guac, because I have a friend who hates guacamole and avocados, and I'm just like, all right, replace it with something else, maybe wine, cheese, any other thing that you may like. But the guacques levels range from one to five. Gwok level one is your most frugal, basic way of thinking of spending. So you would never buy guacamole at a restaurant. It will never be worth it. You would make it at home. You wouldn't probably even buy it at the store. Right. So it's very, very, very, frugal. Right. And guac level five is the most extravagant. And so that is where you, I joke around,

you'd have a guac factory. You have a chef that makes you guacamole at your whim. And so it's the most expensive way to look at, you know, on the spectrum of spending. And then you have the levels in between. So walk level one, two, three, four, five. And as you travel up the guac levels, the more money you would spend. And then that equates to how much you need to reach financial independence. So it's sort of like lean fire, fat fire, in a sense. Yeah. And what strikes me when I hear it is that guac level seems largely psychological or behavioral rather than means tested, right? There are some people who have credit card debt, but they still get the guacamole at Chipotle. There are some people who have way, way more than they would ever reasonably spend

and they still won't let themselves get the guacamole. Yeah. And you know, it's also, it's It's not a, your guac level, actually, there's the overall guac level life you live. And then you can actually be a guac level one in certain areas of your life and more of a guac level four in other areas. So for example, you may be a person like me. I may be considered cheap when it comes to certain things, you know, maybe buying clothes or certain items I just don't care that much about. Right.

And so maybe I'm more like guac level two. It's not that big a deal. But maybe for vacations or doing things for my kids, I'm more of a guac level four. Right. And so there isn't a little distinction. and the interesting thing I think for people and what I want to bring out is when you can identify your guac level. And, you know, there are different points. Like, what is your true desired level and lifestyle that you want to live?

And are you currently living it? Some people, like what I was doing in the beginning, I changed what I wanted my quack level to be so that I could reach my desired financial goals. And so I lived more like a quack level one and two. But that wasn't sustainable because really deep inside, I wanted to be more quack level three and four. It can lend and let you understand why maybe the journey has been difficult or you haven't been able to get on board with cutting back in the way you want. And it doesn't make anything right or wrong.

There's no right or wrong quack level. Right. Really, you mean, there are people who live a guack level one and love it. They wouldn't choose anything else. It's fine. Yeah. And so the important thing is, are you living a guac level that you enjoy? And if you're not, are you doing it as a means to get to another level in your financial journey?

And are you living a guac level that you can afford, which is keeping you stuck earlier in what I call the journeyer stages of your journey where you can't progress in the way you want? Actually, let's go to those stages because you've got five stages of the financial independence journey or financial freedom journey. Actually, before we even go to those stages, what is the distinction as you see it between financial independence and financial freedom? Yes. So financial independence is the way that you talk about it, how we talk about it in the fire community. It is the amount that you have that you don't need to work ever again actively for buddy. You can live off of your investments, which I know that when people first hear that, it sounds amazing, but also, wow, that's a very audacious goal to meet. Right. And financial freedom is not for me tied to a number. It's a feeling, it's options, it's flexibility. So you can have financial freedom. freedom without being a millionaire, without having your FI number reached, but still being in debt. It's your ability to make choices from a more empowered space. So, you know, the fact that you can pay your debt, even if you can't pay above it, you've experienced a level of financial freedom someone else doesn't have or your ability to go out with friends on the fly, right, and kind of

outside your budget. That's a level of freedom. So I say you can experience freedom on your way of financial independence. Again, it goes back to that distinction between what's psychological and what sort of means tested. It sounds as though FI is maybe a bit more means tested. It's having 25 times your annual expenses in the way that you define it. And financial freedom is more psychological, that feeling of freedom. Right. I needed to be clear about how I would use it because I know people use it interchangeably. Even I sometimes still do because it's so easy to be interchanged. And I just, from my experience so far in the journey, and I think more people will get on board with this journey to financial independence if they could understand and realize

that freedom could be achieved on the journey, too. So let's talk about the journey. You break out five different stages of the journey, starting from explorer and going all the way through cadet, aviator, commander, and captain. Walk us through these five stages. Right. The reason why I broke it down into stages was because I wanted to meet people where they were. When I first started listening to podcasts like yours and starting my journey, I just, this big number, this big goal was amazing. But I realized so many people while I thought I could reach it and I was going to attempt it, that I knew that if they heard this, they'd say, well, what about me? Like I'm starting from a place where I have a lot of debt. So I said, the journey to financial independence is a marathon. Right.

How do we break it out into sprints within sprints, within sprints, within sprints. And based on my experience, all the people I've interviewed, the people who have reached financial independence, I broke it down into five stages. So the five stages go like this. The first stage is called the explorer stage, the explorer journey or stage. That is the stage in which you are working on becoming financially stable. So you can't pay your expenses or maybe your even minimum debt payments without going into the red, without having maybe to lead on credit cards.

And sure your goal or mission in this stage is, to become financially stable. Once you're financially stable, the next stage is called the cadet stage. That is the debt freedom stage, getting out of debt. And I usually just include consumer debt in this stage because, as we know, mortgages and student loans can be enormous. And for someone to spend, you know, all their decades in that stage can just feel just overwhelming. So really just consumer debt, credit cards, or any debt you want to include in that stage.

Right. The high interest debt that really weighs over your head. Right. So your goal in that stage is to get rid of that. consumer debt. Once you do that, you can move to the third stage. That's the Aviator stage. This stage is where you're working on financial security. So now you can decide where your money goes because you paid off the consumer debt. So you can decide and ramp up your investments and build up your assets because you want to reach financial security. In this stage, you can even

decide, you know, I actually want to spend more in discretionary spending and not as much on building assets. Once you come to a place where you are financially secure, again, it's going to be different for everyone. You can move to the next stage, which is called the commander stage. It's the work flexible stage. That's the stage I'm currently in. And it means that work becomes flexible. You have not reached a point where you never have to work again, but you have enough where you can take a break, quit your job, maybe, you know, start a family, become an entrepreneur and try something different. You have more options. You have more flexibility and work is flexible. And the fifth and final stage is the captain stage. That is where you've reached the mountain top. You've reached

financial independence and you don't need to work anymore. That's an interesting distinction. So the fourth stage is work flexible and the fifth is work optional. Yeah. Yeah. And financial independence for many, I think it's a, it's a privilege journey, quite honestly, meaning in order to get to that point, not only do you need to have things working in your favor, the income, you know, being able to manage your expenses, but that can be a harder goal to reach for the majority of the population, you know, based on all the circumstances. I truly believe that this level four, journey level four, the commander stage is a stage everyone can reach. So maybe not where you never have to work again, but you can walk away from a job or a partner or person that is not healthy or sustaining to your joy. Right.

and giving you more flexibility. And so that's why it's like, yes, I'm encouraging everyone to embark upon the full journey, but realizing that they get the benefits on the way. Right. So it can be a journey to financial freedom or to financial independence, right? But in that sense, everyone can reach financial freedom, that sense of freedom to be able to make choices that have some flexibility. And, you know, the thing about it is it's, to me, a fail-proof goal.

because while you are setting your sights on this big, you know, goal, I call it the moon goal, right? You're shooting for the moon. Maybe you calculated that you needed your FI number to be $1 million or $2 million based on your lifestyle and your Gwack level. And you say, okay, I want to reach this in 10 years or 15 years. Right. And then, you know, you go on the journey, you do all the things. And then in 10 or 15 years, instead of having that million, you have, let's say, 400,000 or 500,000. Is that really a failure?

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Donate today at camh.ca slash giving Tuesday. You talked about income and you outlined here kind of six components, income being one of them that a person really needs to grapple with as they are starting this journey towards financial freedom or financial independence, work flexibility or work optionality. Income is one, expenses, liabilities, mindset, and habits. Let's start with the first four, the four tangible ones, your income, your expenses, your assets, your liabilities. Depending on where people are, I've often, at least anecdotally, either their struggle is, they feel as though the struggle is on the income side or they feel as though the struggle is on the expense side. First of all, how do you make a good assessment, a person listening?

How would they make a good assessment about that within themselves? Yeah. So what you're referring to is what I call in the book, the FI formula, and there are components to it. And I think at the very basic level, we understand that, or you want people to understand that their income minus their expenses leaves money, hopefully left over where that's where they reach their financial goals. And, you know, I realize that for a lot of people, like, it's more, it's more involved. than that. Like people know they maybe should budget or be more savvy with certain things and they

just don't do it for whatever reason, right? And so why is that? There are what I call tangible components and then intangible components. Things you can really measure and are action-oriented. So they are increasing your income, optimizing your expenses, increasing your assets and paying down your liabilities. And those are part of the components of the formula. Right. They're quantifiable. Yes, you can like literally sit down right now and like open the accounts and write those numbers down of those things. And then there are two intangible components that make the tangible possible and sustainable. And that's your mindset and your habits. Right.

And so many times we want to start at the doing, the work. Like we want to make more. You want to like spend less and do all the things because, you know, you want to take action when the work really starts within. Like it is the, it's how we feel about ourselves, out of our environment. our ability to achieve our goals, and then what we do every day to help us get there. So for a person, you know, you're thinking and reflecting on where they are currently and what's been maybe preventing them from moving through now, what they know are the journey or stages.

You know, it's really assessing what is happening here. Why can I get ahead? And some of it may be circumstances outside of your control. I make a lot of allowances for life. Right. Because life happened to me too. I wanted to have having kids and having. more flexibility mattered more than the money. So, you know, if it took me longer to reach financial

independence, that was fine. And so outside of the things you can't control, what are you noticing as patterns or why can't you reach whatever goals you set for yourself? And some people truly have an income problem. Like if you sit down and you look at your expenses and you're doing the best you can and, you know, a lot of people are doing the best they can. But yeah, wages could typically, you know, you know, be low if they're not making enough and maybe they have a lot of responsibility. then it is a journey of trying to increase your income. That's more important than trying to get your expenses to zero when you probably are doing the best you can there.

And then some people can have an expenses issue where they don't have any control or around how they spend. The interesting thing about the stages, so, you know, I talked about the earlier stages, the Explorer stage and the Cadet stage, all these stages. You know, you can make a lot of money and still be in the Explorer stage. It's not based on necessarily your income. but the person who is making a lot of money and they don't have an income problem can leapfrog or get through these stages faster than a person who truly has an income problem.

So it is important to realize what the gaps are, what is missing or where you are falling short, not in a negative way. I always like to be positive in this, but because if you do have an income problem or all the tangible problems, it's most likely stemming from one of the intangible. issues outside of the things that you cannot control. So, you know, if you cannot earn more, is it a mindset thing where you deep down you don't think you deserve to earn more? You haven't put yourself in a position to earn more, right? Like it's taking some accountability for what has happened. Also, though, giving yourself grace for the things that you couldn't have possibly, you know, known when you were in college and people kind of push credit cards on you and all these things. Going back to how sometimes people with a very high income can be in the explorer stage, right, that very first stage, what I'm hearing is high income is itself not sufficient to pull you through this journey.

But it does help, you know, if you have it. Yeah. What would you say to the people who are listening who are currently struggling with an income problem? Like I'm thinking about my protege, Lindsay, from the documentary Get Smart with Money. She was a very hard worker, but she just didn't make very much, right? She was a server. She lived on tips. She made about 50,000 a year, right, living in Austin, Texas.

What would you say to somebody like Lindsay? Right. These stages that I talked about, they take time to go through. Yeah. So someone who can maybe change their outlook and mindset and habits and have great income, like I said, can leap forward maybe quickly through them. someone like maybe Lindsay who they have an income problem, their circumstances that are outside their control in a way where they're not earning as much as they can,

but they've been trying, is realizing that this is not going to be an overnight change. Right. That, you know, when we talk about the components and working on the components to get you to your goal, fixing or increasing your income can take months or years and it can take time. And so if it's not happening right away or you haven't figured, out what your thing is yet, that's okay. So I think the expectation also has to be realistic

depending on what you have going for you, what your privileges are or what your detriments are or what is not going well for you. Ultimately, it's about having grace for yourself if you are at a lower income and having patience. And then, you know, doing some work, obviously and making sure whatever time it takes and, you know, you're going to have to try and test a lot of things that you're not, when things don't work, when you're not making the income right away, that you're not just giving up. I'll go back a little bit. My origin story in a way speaks to someone more like a Lindsay or someone, even that doesn't have as much money. And that's really through my mom. My mom immigrated here from the island of Jamaica. And she had me

at 20 years old. So she had me pretty young and she was a single mom. And I was born in Jamaica, she had to leave me behind. Like many immigrants do coming, you know, to this land to try to better better themselves. And she literally came here with nothing. And she, for a long time, you know, she had to work through and put herself in a better position to try to have this foundation that she's created where I now had a better start than she did. And so she didn't come here and make money, you know, quickly or overnight. It took her years. It took decades. So go through and get her associates and then finally get her bachelors and then, you know, her master's. And so I think that it really is a long game.

But I think it's more how the person feels within that long game or the marathon. And so many people just don't feel good for a good reason about that. Right. And it's encouraging them and showing them other people who have done something that they can relate to and aspire to be. How do you stay motivated throughout that long game? You know, so I think about what's your why and your why not. You know, people, we talk about the why.

Like, why are you doing what you doing? For me, my why and my why not are my kids. And each time that I got pregnant or we expanded our family, it pushed me further and it gave me intensity to reach this goal. So I was commuting from Brooklyn to New Jersey. And, you know, it was an hour in my 20s. So I was fine with that because, you know, I didn't have much to do anyway after work. So if it took me an hour to get home, fine. Then traffic patterns change and got married.

And we started a family. And so now I'm thinking, like, I don't want it to take now an hour and a half like to get home where I'm going to get home. where I'm going to get home at seven, eight o'clock every night. And then when am I going to see my kids or husband? You know, so for me, I was so motivated to be able to quit my job. And I set myself on a seven-year timeline when I thought out about the fire movement. That was my motivation then to leave my job and start journey to launch eventually and do all these things. But, you know, my motivation now is still that.

It's not as intense because I've reached a place of comfort, which by the way, you know, it's like a gift and a curse. Like having that commute and the job I didn't love put a fire in me where I was much more intense. And I, you know, was making much more external progress. Now I'm a bit more comfortable. It's not a bad thing, but, you know, I've slowed up a bit. Right. But I'm still motivated on my journey.

I still want to reach financial independence because while I love doing what I do, I would love to if someone called me or, you know, I had a podcast to put out and I really don't feel like doing it. still be in integrity, not just like bail on people, but to say, you know what, I just, it's just not feeling it right now. I don't want to take a few months off. And I could do that now, but I mean really do it from a place of I never really have to work again. So that's what motivates me is thinking about staying true to what I see as financial independence, even though I do have freedom now and flexibility to know that I would love complete freedom from anything and anyone and feeling obligated to make any money. When you set that seven,

year goal, right? You decided you didn't want to have that hour to half long commute. And so you set a seven year goal. What did you do? What was the first thing that you did in order to put yourself on the path to that goal? What happened during those seven years? Yeah. So I explained the beginning part of my journey. I was an observer of and consumer of content to learn the strategies. This is where my commute became my... Oh, educational. Yeah. I really believe everything that we've done and the things that we viewed as obstacles or

annoyances has really become stepping stones to where we get to as the next level. Right. Because if it weren't for my commute and strenuous job and all this, wouldn't have been motivated as much to seek out financial independence. And if it weren't for my long commute, I wouldn't have had all the time to listen to all the podcasts that I used to listen to on one and a half speed. Your podcast was one of them, by the way,

learning and listening and immersing myself in this world. And so that's where the mindset came in for me. Like I already had a can-do mindset based on seeing what my mom was able to do. But it really, the immersing myself in this world and listening to various people with various starting points and incomes and backgrounds say to myself, you know what? This teacher just, you know, has a million dollar portfolio. why can I do that?

You know, I make good income. My husband makes good income. What's the, we can do better. And so a big part of the beginning when I first heard about financial independence was just observing. And then I think like a lot of people do, you know, you want to like put your, you want to like raise your hand and say something. Yeah. You want to have a conversation or add to the conversation, which is where a journey to launch came in. And so I started as a blog and then did the podcast.

And it was at that point. I wanted to share what I was doing. I was applying the things I was learning. So, wow, my husband as a teacher, he can invest in two pre-tax retirement accounts. So 457 and a 403B. Let's do that. I can max out my retirement account. Let's do that.

Backdoor Roth IRAs. You know, we can't directly contribute, but we can do that. And so I was learning all these cool things that I never knew before and sharing that. And that's, in that two-year period when we were really intense, we were able to save and invest $169,000. paid off our consumer debt and made like significant progress. Then getting pregnant with my third, starting journey to launch by then, maybe was, you know, a couple of years in, but realized that there was an opportunity to pursue financial independence in a different way.

Before I thought I had to work in this job and, you know, guaranteed income, quote, and just save and invest half of it and just bear through it. It's only like, I think at that point, maybe five years left. Like, you can do it. Right. And I was like, no, I cannot. I can't. At this point, I knew I was going to have three kids to this commute, journey to launch

on the side, which was doing well. It wasn't making money, but it was growing in the sense of people finding me and connecting. And then this job that was pretty intense. Right. And so I came to the decision that I need to set myself up to where I can quit this job and pursue financial independence in a way where if it takes long, that's okay because I've benefited from the freedom that financial independence would give me, meaning I can create my own schedule, I can spend more time with my kids or be there for pickup

and drop off. We don't have to have two parents who have to go outside the home to work, even though I'm still working, but it makes it so much easier for everything that we were doing. And so my idea of how I would reach financial independence changed because it was no longer about this reaching it as fast as possible. It was about how do I enjoy it and make it sustainable. And if it takes me longer, if the business doesn't do well, that's fine. But also, what if it's faster? Because the business does so well. Right. So it sounds to me as though you made the conscious decision to stay in that fourth stage, the stage of work flexibility for a longer period of time rather than just like toughing it out in that previous stage so that you could

hop scotch over to work optionality. Right. And also if we had a lower Gwok level lifestyle, we would be financially independent if we had a one or two or desired to do that. Right. We don't. Right. We're leaning actually more into spending money and especially, you know, my kids are nine, seven, and five. We live in New York City. And my husband, like he is great, but he's not as He's not sitting around doing budgets with me or into it as much, right? Right. He's like if you had two partners that were like, yeah, yeah. And I'm not even into it as much in terms of like ticking and tying all the numbers.

You know, my perspective has changed so much. So for me, if we had a lower guack level lifestyle or if we were willing to make changes like move to somewhere low cost, we'd reach our financial independence goals. But I don't want to do that. He doesn't want to do that. And we're enjoying the way our life looks now. So I think that's also a big part of it too. We know you love the thought of a vacation to Europe,

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I mean, first, should the focus be on paying off liabilities or accumulating assets when there's a trade-off between the two? Yes. So I am not one of those people who believes you should be completely out of debt before you invest. I think just the way your investments compound, you need the time. And so you might not be able to do as much if you're in debt because I still recognize recommend aggressively getting out of debt as fast as possible, of course, along whatever timeline you've set, but you should be investing. When I talk to people who listen to my stuff or

our followers, they say, okay, I'm more in like the cadet stage. I have a lot of debt. This has been an issue for me. And so what do I do? Should I invest still? Or, you know, it might take me two years, but then I have to really live at a Gwock level one or two versus if I make it take longer. for most people debt while they can manage it, like they think they can manage it and just keep it. Like, why not? Is that once you get out of that stage, you have so much more flexibility and you can direct your income where to go.

And that feels good. You know, I talk about like tethers. Like, you know, we have all these financial tethers on, you know, if we're keeping in theme with my brand, like with your rocket that's launching. And you want your rocket to be light as possible. And you want to be able to be flexible as possible in case your mind changes about something. So let's just say you're listening and you, like, all of a sudden, you don't like your job, maybe this boss or coworkers or your mind changes about something.

If you're able to become financially flexible and you got rid of debt and you, it's no longer necessarily an issue for you, you can make quicker decisions or bigger decisions versus, I have this debt that I'm obligated to pay or these fixed expenses that are so huge. And so I can't quit this job. Like I have to work in it for a few more years. So I just like to tell people to get ahead of that. Like before you come up where your back is against the wall and you have to make a decision, start to manage and think about what you want your debt payoff journey to look like.

Right. And you talked about fixed expenses. So let's go into that because there's a distinction between fixed versus variable expenses. And it often gets conflated with mandatory versus discretionary. spending so much of the time in personal finance conversations, I hear people use fixed expenses and mandatory expenses interchangeably. But in fact, they're actually quite different. Yeah. I mean, you can have fixed and mandatory and fix and non-mandatory expenses. Like, it's really important to take a good look at your overall finances, right? And like,

look at the categories. And so, you know, the assessment when people are starting their journey is like, Okay, so how much am I spending? Right? That's the basis of getting your budget together and writing the categories out. And of course, we have the mandatory things that are usually fixed that we have to pay like rent or mortgage. And then we, you know, we go down the line and we write them all out. And so I know typically we'll say in the personal finance space, you know, look at the non, the discretionary stuff and see what you can cut out because, you know, it's more important to focus on the mandatory. But also like some of your mandatory fixed expenses can also be reduced.

Right. Maybe not initially right away, but and maybe takes more effort. Like, you know, telling someone just sell your home or move is not as easy of a decision to make. Right. Like some people can make those choices. I have a friend. She can change jobs, move cities like that. And so she's been able to do a lot of amazing things with her finances because of that.

Someone like me, despite having this can-do attitude, I really am slow to make changes like that. That's why I stayed at my job so long. Even despite the commute, I love, I love routine. I like being comfortable. Right. And so looking at expenses in that way is really breaking down just because something is fixed doesn't mean it can't be reduced or changed. But you also have to be realistic with your ability to make big changes like that. Right.

Right. And that almost reminds me of a different use of the term fixed, which is a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. Yeah. Yeah. I think, again, the mindset and habits, but the mindset, I think is the key piece here. to this entire conversation, to the ability to reach financial independence. Because if you don't believe that you can, then why would you even start? You have to have some sort of inkling or belief in yourself that something else can be possible. So with a fix and growth mindset, you know,

and I see it definitely, it's in my face every day having kids and they're now playing sports and seeing, you know, the difference in their behavior or attitude on whether it's on the court or what their abilities are if they think they can't do something versus they think they can. I'm like, okay, how do I instill what the mindset that I, my mom was able to give me and I developed, how can I give that to my children, you know, where they don't take on their failures as a part of their armor? You know, it's just an event that happened that they can learn from. or how can they look at their success or their hard work as the carrot, not necessarily the end result. My kids, you know, they're taking tests and doing all this stuff now. And my son, he was having a hard time studying.

So he was giving up. He kind of had a bad attitude about it. And so, you know, I told him, you know, let's keep going because you do have a test on this. And then he started to get excited and I was ready to be done. And he was like, let's keep going. And he was excited to study. And I said, there it is. I was like, that's what I want.

Like, I don't actually care if you don't do well on this test because I know that you're putting in the work to get better. You're putting in the effort. And I think that's in general with our journeys, is that we don't always know what the end will look like. Things are going to happen. Put us maybe back journey or stages or off course. But we can mark our effort. And so having a growth mindset to help prepare ourselves. for what we can not always prepare ourselves for is essential to staying on the journey.

What can a person do if they recognize that they want to adopt a mindset that's more conducive to success, but they know that their natural tendency is to fall into these modalities of thinking that are a little, you know, eore. Yeah. Yeah. look at your life currently and what you've been able to accomplish. Not necessarily, don't compare it against, you know, someone else and you're like, well, that's not an accomplishment. But if you're listening to this or watching this, you accomplish something, right? And so look for evidence of you succeeding at something through effort.

Most people have succeeded from childhood to doing something as an adult, right? Like, there are things my kids cannot do now that I know they will be able to do as an effort. adult. I also say do some low stakes things to help boost your confidence in yourself. So for me, one of the things that I did was I, you know, I was taking gym classes. And I usually didn't like go into the step class because I thought the steps just look too complicated. Right. And I was like, oh, you know, I'm just going to look too silly. And I was like, you know what? Let me just try it. And the first day, like I could not like get it. Yeah. But I said to myself, okay, a win is just throwing back up. And not feeling too embarrassed.

that you can't do this. Like, who cares? And after a few weeks, I was getting some of the steps that in the beginning, I had no clue how to do. And it just was reinforcement that here's something low stakes that you do. And I think as adults, you know, kids go through it every day. They're trying. They're learning something new.

I think as adults, we get into routines and we stop that. So we come against a challenge. It's easier to just to just not do it versus putting ourselves in positions where we are challenging ourselves, making it low stakes. and making it almost like, you know, something you can achieve, something simple that you can go through and then give yourself credit for it to boost your mindset. You know, in addition to mindset, the two force multipliers, one is mindset, the other is habits. What kind of habits would a person ideally be building? There are the things we do every day that we don't know or don't consider as habits just because it's so routine.

You know, brushing our teeth, it's a habit. So when it comes to our money, right, there are things. that depending on your journey or stage, you may have to develop as habits, maybe more than someone further along. So for example, if you are in the explorer or cadet stage, you very well need to have a habit of budgeting because you want to be able to direct your money

to get you out of these stages so that you can, you know, have more flexibility and options in your life at the later stages. And so a budget for people is a habit, whether it is, you know, pen and paper or Google sheets, or an app, I think is extremely important. And it's not just enough to have a budget, right? It's to create a habit around your budget. So it's not enough to create it that one time. But what is your habit on going back and reconciling and seeing if you did what you said you do and helping it inform you to make

decisions moving forward, right? And so I know people sometimes struggle with that habit. Like, okay, I made my budget, but I haven't been following it. So how do you check in and make the habit of checking your budget or having that conversation with your partner in getting or sticking to a budget. You know, automating things. So the good thing about money is a lot of things now can be automated. So, you know, this habit of saving and investing. I know someone who said they actually like the feeling of clicking and doing it manually. And, you know, it makes them feel really good. And I was like, okay, that's, that's great as long as you keep doing it. But you can automate the habit of directly sending that money into your investment account or to your saving account where you

don't have to think about that habit as much. Right. So, you know, I'd say those are like the very important ones, the basics for people, the budgeting habit and then reconciling the budget and sticking to it and then the saving and investing habit. Right. Are there any habits that you think are overrated? I know I'm going to seem like I'm contradicting myself.

Okay. Because budgeting, yeah. Well, very important, like I said, I think depending on your personality type, your journey your stage because you might need a bit more guardrails in place to help you so that you can move forward. My personality, right, in the beginning, because I wanted to leave my job and I was so intense, I checked my budget every day. Right. It's very important because I was like, I need all this, I need this money so I can quit. Right. Today, the commander Jamila versus the cadet Jamila is different about a budget. I feel fine about that. I don't tick and tie every number. I don't want to

sit down and look at a budget every day. And so for me, personally, the budget is overrated. But that is a individual decision based on my preference. And because I am not so far along on my journey, because you can be far along in your journey and fall off because you don't have certain things in place, but because I've set up another system or a system that works, we're still hitting our investing goals and we're still able to live the life we want to live. And so that's the signal for me that we're doing okay. And so for a lot of people, I actually think, I hope that that gives some light at the end of the tunnel because not everyone likes to budget. And so when they think about having to start this journey and the first thing they have to do is budget and tick and tie numbers, they're like, I don't want to do that.

And I'm here to say, you don't have to do it forever. You know, and some people love it. I have people who make a lot of money and are financially independent and they still tick and tie every number. but they get joy out of that. Right. So that's where your personality and what you need that would depend on that. But it's really something that you can choose to almost as like a tool.

You learned it. You know how to do it, but you can choose if you want to apply it to your finances and to your journey at a certain point. Right. So it sounds to me as though when you're in the earlier stages of financial freedom, when you're in the explorer stage or the cadet stage,

that's a time when perhaps it's necessary. And when you're in the later stages, when you're already work flexible or work optional. At that point, it becomes budget optional as well. Yeah. More things become optional. But yeah. Nice.

Now, a big theme of what we've been talking about is tying together your financial goals with your life goals. And I know you took inspiration from a man by the name of George Kinder who asked three very critical questions when it comes to clarifying those life goals. Can you describe that? Yes. The questions that George Kinder asked people to think about are and helps them see, like, how far off, you know, of their life goals are they living? If taking money kind of out of the equation is the first question is ask yourself, if you did have all the money and financial security you wanted, what would you be doing? Like, what would be different about your life? Like hypothetically, if money was not, if you had unlimited money.

Yes. That's a fun exercise. It is very fun. Yeah. The world is your oyster. All the guacam. Molly. Yes, exactly. And then the second question is, like, say you went to the doctor and you only had five to 10 years left to live. How, what would you differently? And so even the first question talks more about your lifestyle. Like, what do you want your, like, because it's asking you, what do you want your life to look like without the, the barrier of not having money? And so the second question now gives you more of a time constraint of you only have five or 10 years left to live. What would you do differently, like, in your lifestyle? And then the third question is, you know, if you went to the doctor and they said you only had, I think it was 24 hours left to live,

what would you have regretted that you didn't do or what would you want to do? But really, like, it's the regrets. What did you wish you did? And I think, you know, thinking about it in that way really brings to a head, I think a conflict that a lot of us have is that, you know, we need to work or at least have money to pay for our basic necessities and also to fund like a life that we love and we enjoy. And so what does that look like and what have we not been doing, right? What's that internal dream that we may have let die out or push aside because, you know,

we need to be practical and we have a mortgage and kids now. Right. For anyone going through that exercise, it gives them some pause to see, okay, so now that I'm on my journey intentionally, what can I pull from those answers to have a more complete or full life? Right. With the second and third question, which are time limited, in those questions, is money hypothetically also limited? Are you living within your current means? Yeah, I think so. I think that's the way he phrased it. And I'm sure one of your listeners will correct me from wrong. But I think that's also from what I remember in the book and the reference. Like money, I think for the 24 hour you didn't have like I don't think it was even brought up, which is interesting because it shows you like how little money matters at the end or when you have continued. the time. It also shows you why time is the most valuable resource. Right. Because, you know, money,

they print money. Yeah, exactly. But time, you don't, you don't get that back. Yeah. Based on, as people go through and reflect on the way that they would answer those questions, you know, what would you do with unlimited money? What would you do with highly limited time? Right? Those are fundamentally those questions. As people go through and reflect on those, they then come up with, you know, list of values of priorities and those values and priorities get translated into goals. Some of these, I know you characterize as lead domino goals and the other ones are gap goals. Can you explain the difference between the two? So this ties back to the FI formula that we talked about earlier, where you know, you have your income minus your expenses equals this gap. So there should be

something left over. And I do differentiate between your mandatory and discretionary expenses in this formula so that you can you can really optimize the gap and then choose what you do with the money left over. So you can choose to now look at your financial goals of buying assets or building up assets and then reducing liabilities and then discretionary expenses. So when we're thinking about our financial goals, they typically fall into the categories of we want to pay down debt. We want to save for, you know, something we want to do like a trip. And then we want to buy assets or invest. And so I consider those the gap goals, meaning they happen like in the gap in the formula.

But those goals are possible because of the domino lead goals, which are your income goals and expense goals. So the other goals don't really happen unless you work on your income and or expenses. How else will you get the money to accomplish those other goals that the gap goals? Right. And so you can have, you know, just an income goal. But just having an income goal without tying it to a gap goal can put you on a cycle where you don't know your enough point. Because at this point, you want to earn money just for the sake of earning money. But what are you earning money for?

Are you earning it because you want to buy a nice car? Or are you earning more because you want to pay down this debt faster? Or you want to have X amount in your investment accounts by, you know, at the end of a couple of years? Right. And so knowing kind of what the gap goal is and how it ties back to the domino goal, that lead goal that helps make all the goals possible also helps you figure out what that enough point is. Right, right. So income and expenses are those lead dominoes. Yeah.

And then the gap goals are really the why. They kind of answer that question of, all right, what am I making money for? Or what am I cutting back? Why am I cutting back? Right, because when you're not thinking about it in this way or consciously, you just, you mean, you may be working harder than you need to. Right. Or putting more effort than necessary because really if you took a full picture and look at everything, it's like you're actually not that far off from your goals, but you just haven't set this intention and understood what was enough for you. And then, you know, you're doing too much now.

Speaking of unlimited money and highly limited time, we are coming to the end of our time. Are there any things that you want to emphasize, any concepts that I haven't asked about? What would you like to leave this community with? Yeah, you know, I want to share just an antidote or experiment that I referenced in the book because I thought it was so powerful when I first heard it. And I thought it really, I hope, gives some motivation and inspiration to someone listening. who kind of feels like they should be further along or doing something, things should be working faster for them.

So there was this a biosphere experiment where in a, like, you know, in a biodome, they recreated the environment. And basically it was just trees and, you know, bushes and just all this things. It was like the largest biosphere. I forgot what state it's in. But in the biosphere experiment, the biodome, they had an issue with the trees because in this biodome there's no wind. So the trees grew and they grew fast.

They never grew to maturity. They always fell over because what helps trees be strong is stress wood. Right. Stresswood is developed through wind. And because the trees never experienced wind, they grew faster, but they also died or fell over before they reached their full potential. And so when I first heard that I'm like, that is so, that is so like the journey of so of all of us where we want things to be faster and don't understand why things. are happening and like this is not working out. But whatever is making you grow slower is often making you grow stronger and ensuring that you reach your full potential. So I just want to leave people

with that hopefully motivating fact or at least story. Right. The headwinds make you grow stronger. That makes total sense to me. I grow plants indoors. You know, like my apartment is just full of plants. Oh, you need to come teach me because all my plants like they're dying. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. But one of the things that I do is if I can see that a plant is a little bit weak, I will point a fan at it. And I'll just, you know, I'll point a fan at a plant to strengthen it, right? Because I know that that little bit of wind is going to help it grow strong. So, you know, that absolutely makes sense. A hurricane will blow it over. But the right amount of wind resistance, the right amount of headwinds, actually make it grow much stronger than it otherwise would have. Wow. Wow. Beautiful story. Thank you for sharing that. Well, thank you for spending this time with us. Where can people find you and where can they find your book? Yeah, so my book, Your Journey to Financial Freedom, a step-by-step guide to achieving wealth and happiness. It is available everywhere right now, hopefully, when you're listening

to this and you can go to your journey to financial freedom.com to see all the places you can buy it. I have a free course that I'm giving out for everyone who buys a hard copy, but you can get it on Amazon, bookshop.org to support your local bookstores, Barnes & Noble's Target everywhere. And then you can follow me at Journey to Launch. I'm there on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, even TikTok, although I'm not there as much. And say hi. Nice. Nice. Fantastic.

Great. Well, thank you. Thank you. I do want to say, Paula. Thank you for being also a light for me. when I first started my journey. You were one of the voices that stood out and I saw what was possible

by listening and following your work. So it's a pleasure to be sitting here with you today. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Jamila. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Number one, you know that age-old debate of whether it's better to pay off debt versus invest?

It's true that the weight of debt can feel crushing and many people, for emotional reasons, want to get rid of their debt right away. They want it eradicated. Jamila takes a position on this debate. She is opposed to rushing to pay off your debt. And she explains why. I am not one of those people who believes you should be completely out of debt before you invest. I think just the way your investments compound, you need the time.

And so you might not be able to do as much if you're in debt because I still recommend aggressively getting out of debt as fast as possible, of course, along whatever timeline you've set, but you should be investing. So to be clear, Jamila does recommend aggressively paying off your debt, but she doesn't believe that you need to be debt-free in order to invest. And so in that age-old debate of should I pay off debt versus invest, you don't necessarily need to pay off your debt as a precursor to investing. Key takeaway, number two.

Many of us want to reach financial independence or reach financial freedom, but we feel stuck. And sometimes this can be attributed to mindset. Jamila talks about the importance of having a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset and why this is absolutely critical as a building block in your journey towards building wealth. She also shares a mental process that can help you develop. a growth mindset. The mindset, I think, is the key piece here to this entire conversation, to the ability to reach financial independence.

Because if you don't believe that you can, then why would you even start? You have to have some sort of inkling or belief in yourself that something else can be possible. She also recommends looking back at your life for evidence of times that you've grown, times that you've succeeded, times that you've done well, that evidence can help anchor the mindset that you want to develop. Look at your life currently and what you've been able to accomplish. Not necessarily, don't compare it against someone else and you're like, well, that's not an accomplishment. But if you're listening to this or watching this, you'll accomplish something, right?

And so look for evidence of you succeeding at something through effort. So that is the second key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three is a three-parter. There are three questions that Jamila recommends you ask yourself if you want to decide to figure out if you are on the right path in your life. The first question is ask yourself if you did have all the money and the money. financial security you wanted, what would you be doing? Then the second question is, like, say, you went to the doctor and you only had five to 10 years left to live, how, what would you differently? And then the third question is, if you went to the doctor and they said you only had,

I think it was 24 hours left to live, what would you have regretted that you didn't do? Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Jamila Sufront, a certified financial education instructor, the host of the Journey to Launch podcast, and the author of a great book called Your Journey to Financial Freedom. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Jamila. Please share your feedback, your comments, your questions, what resonated with you, share it with this community. There are a number of ways that you can do that. If you're listening on Spotify, there's a section on Spotify where you can record what you hear. thought of each specific episode. So open up Spotify and leave a comment on this episode in Spotify

to talk about what you thought of it. If you're not on Spotify or if you are and you want more ways to connect with the community, go to afford anything.com slash community. This is our community. It lives on a platform called Mighty Networks, which is outside of all other social media. It's not a Facebook group. It's not, you know, you're not going to get distracted by social media. It's a community that lives on its own where you can connect with other like-minded people who are in similar situations. Maybe you want to talk to people about New Year's goals or about getting out of debt or about retirement or about sending your kids to college or sending yourself to college. Whatever it is that you want to discuss, there are people in this community who are just like you,

who are going through the same types of things that you're going through. And it's just a great place for support absolutely free. Affordanithingthing.com slash community. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pantt. This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I'll catch you in the next episode.