Health, Wealth, and Happiness with Keegan Harris

More and more I hear and read about people wanting to attain financial independence and retire early aka FIRE. Even though the acronym FIRE is pretty cheesy I love the idea of financial independence. But is it really as attainable as many make it out to be? In this episode I’m going to break down what financial independence really is, how one might go about attaining financial independence, and if it is attainable how you can do it earlier in life as opposed to later in life. Also, as a side note I’m going to abbreviate financial independence to findie. Financial independence takes too long to say and write plus findie is much more fun to say.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to leave your 9 to 5 job and still have money coming in so you could do whatever you wanted to do? I think this would be pretty amazing! This is what being findie could offer you. Findie means that your investments are bringing in more income than you have for expenses. Therefore, at the end of the month, for example, you have more money than the start of the month even after you pay for your expenses. Finance geeks might argue on specifics but that’s what financial independence is to me. The greatest thing about findie is that it gives you the freedom from not being tied down for 40 plus hours per week working at your J.O.B. Can you imagine all the things you could do if you didn’t have to punch in and out of a time clock all week! You could travel the world, start a business selling your favorite crafts, be involved in a community outreach program, you could even have time to mow your yard before the yard waste bin is picked up! Crazy! I know! It sounds too good to be true, but is it? For some people findie is an attainable goal, but for others, they will likely never attain findie – they won’t even get close.

So, how does one go about attaining findie? In short, you can get there by taking one of two paths. You either have to win Powerball or you have to work hard and be smart with your money. The latter is much more likely something that you can do, so that’s the option I would choose if I were you. However, winning Powerball sounds like it would be pretty fun.

So what does working hard and being smart with your money entail? Let’s break this down. If our goal is to attain enough monthly income from our investments to cover our expenses, then we first need to accumulate a certain amount of wealth. This is where working hard comes into play. If you’re like nearly everyone you’ve started out with almost nothing. Maybe now you have a good education and you’re working at a steady job. That’s good. That’s where a lot of people are. What you need to do know is figure out how to maximize your income. You need to ask yourself, “What can I be doing to earn more money?” Maybe you can pick up some overtime. Maybe you can get a side job. Or maybe you can go to a trade school or higher education that will allow you to move into a job that pays twice as much as your current job. The goal here is to figure out how to bring in more money so you can maximize the amount of money you can contribute to your investments. Ok, so that’s the working hard aspect. You have to work hard to earn as much as you can – got it.

The next aspect of becoming findie is being smart with your money. So, you’ve got the good job, you’ve been putting in overtime, and you’re doing everything in your power to maximize your earn potential. Perfect. A lot of people make it this far. But, where 97% of people fail at attaining findie is the next part – figuring out how to keep the money that they ...

Have you ever felt like you’re not as far financially as you should be considering how much money you make? If you have, then you’re in the same boat that the rest of us have been in. One of the forces that drives me to be disciplined with my money is this exact feeling. There have been lots of times in the past that I have felt frustrated with myself that I wasn’t doing a very good job building wealth, given the income that I had at the time. When I took a hard look at the things that I was doing, I found that I had fallen in what I’ll call financial pitfalls. In this podcast episode I’m going to share with you some financial pitfalls that I have either found myself caught in or have seen others caught in. My hope is that sharing these pitfalls with you will help you to avoid them and will help you build a strong financial future. If you want to build wealth, I think it’s just as important to avoid doing the wrong things as it is doing the right things.

The 1st pitfall that I’ve seen people fall into is believing that they don’t make enough money to build wealth. I heard a story recently of a wealthy man who has done really well financially. The man has a beautiful home on several acres in a desired part of town. This older gentleman has several rentals properties and he’s clearly winning with money. The interesting part of this guy’s story isn’t that he’s doing well financially, lots of people do well financially. The interesting part of this guy’s story is that he never made more than 20 dollars per hour. He just saved little by little over the years. When he saw an opportunity, he purchased rental properties. The moral of the story is that you don’t need to be making a lot of money to build wealth. Consistently contributing to investments when you’re young can build a substantial chunk of wealth that you can use for income later in life. The trick is to invest often and invest as high of a percentage of your monthly income as you can. It’s not uncommon for me to work with people in their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s who are invested 40% to 50% of their net monthly income.

The 2nd pitfall that I see keeping people from building wealth is that they spend more than they make. Spending more than we make can cause us to rack up a lot of debt. The most common debt that I see people fall back on consistently is credit card debt. When money gets tight, it’s easy to put our purchases on credit cards, which causes money to be even tighter next month because now we have an even higher credit card bill than we did this month. When I see people who are headed for financial trouble one of biggest signs that they are in trouble is that they’re racking up a lot of debt on their credit cards. Debt can be a trap where we spend and spend and spend and all of this spending adds to our debt. Eventually the debt payments catch up with us and completely overwhelmed us. What I’ve seen happen with most people is that they eventually hit a wall and say to themselves, “I’m tired of having this debt and I’m going to do something about it.” A fire is lit under them and they start to work to get their debt paid off. The turning point from over spending and racking up debt to deciding to pay off debt and then start building wealth is an interesting change in direction. Have you experience this before? Why did you change the path that you were headed on? I’ve personally seen many people on the path towards financial destruction but manage to stop, turn around, and start working their way out of the financial mess that they got themselves into. They eventually start to build wealth.

I find that in life I become good at things that I focus my time and resources on and that I’m not so good at things that I don’t focus my time and resources on. This is something that sounds obvious, but for some reason I’ve had to relearn this concept several times over throughout live. There are so many things that I want to do and be good at but the fact of the matter is that I don’t have time and resources to focus on them all, let alone, be good at them all. So, how do we know what to focus on and what to not focus on? That’s what I’m going to talk about in this episode.

I really struggle with focus. My struggle mostly comes in two different ways. For one, I focus on the wrong things, which are things that really aren’t that important to me. You know those squirrel moments when you get distracted by something shiny and entertaining. “Oh look, my friend just bought a new toy and I’d sure like to have a new toy like that.” Those squirrel moments seem to get me all the time and take my focus away from the things that matter most to me. Also, when I do get focused on something, I’m really bad about finding balance in life. It seems like when it comes to focus, I’m all or nothing. I either have a lot of focus in a particular area of life or I have no focus. I’m not very good at juggling a lot of different things. When I’m focused on sometime like training for a triathlon, or competing in a diet competition, or when it’s hunting season, I’m really focused on that particular thing but then I don’t focus enough time on other important things like paying attention to relationships, my faith, and my personal finances. I know focus means focus, but it seems like sometimes I over focus and this could hurt me in other areas of life that are important to me.

What you focus on is completely up to you and therefore what you become best at is completely up to you. The great thing about the freedom that we enjoy is that we get to decide what we spend time on. We get to decide what we’re good at and what we do with our time and resources. So, why does it seem like we’re “too busy” all the time to do the things that we want to do? There are many things that I love doing that I would like to do more of. Things like hunting, fishing, cycling, hiking, making stuff, and the list goes on and on, and this is where I get into trouble. For what I will call a season of my life, I’ll be more focused on one area of my life. For example, during the fall, it’s hunting season. I spend several weekends tromping around the woods, looking like Elmer Fud, looking for a volunteer for dinner. I think it’s fun to pursue the things in life that I enjoy doing, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, for me, when I’m hunting so much, I often loose sight of the other things that are going on in my life. Like relationships that are very important to me. Recently, when I was in a competition to lose weight, I was really focused on losing weight. I was working out in the mornings and in the evenings, I was prepping food, and different thoughts about how I was doing weight wise were constantly on my mind. Many of my conversations with other people involved something about how I was working on losing weight. During this time, sure, I was successful at losing weight, but I was failing at other areas of life. I was so focused on losing weight that I lost focus on other things that are also important to me. This was one of the more recent times that I relearned how much focus affect my life.

Just as a quick exercise, let’s break down the daily time spent on various things for a typical person.

I love to be lucky and I consider myself a lucky person. There are countless times in my life where something has really good has happened to me that made me think, “I am so lucky”. But, what is luck? Is it something that we can make more of? Well, I believe that we can make more luck in our lives and that is what this episode is going to be about.

What if you were so lucky that you just happened to land the job of your dreams? What if you were so lucky that you acquired an impressive amount of wealth? What if you were so lucky that you married the person that was way out of your league? What if I told you that you could create your own luck? That would sound great, right?

Who doesn’t like to be lucky? No one! We all like to be lucky. I’ll take any amount of luck that I can get! I think there’s a way to bring even more luck in our lives, or, at least, build a life that makes it seem like we have more luck. What if luck was simply a word that some people use to describe other people who are intentional about reaching their goals? What if you realized that you didn’t need luck to get what you wanted but instead you simply needed a plan and to take action on that plan? Would your world be different if you knew that you could have just about anything that you want to have, not because you were lucky, but because you were intentional about getting it?

A very successful CFO once told me that if you want to be successful you have to work hard so that whenever an opportunity presents itself, you’ll be ready to seize it. If you’re sitting on a couch at home doing nothing important, how are you going to achieve anything? If you’re out there busting your tail, getting things done, meeting people, and developing new skills, of course you’re going to be presented with opportunities. So, with this idea that we can make our own success, in a way we also make our own luck. If becoming successful is equal to being lucky and we know by making plans and taking action, that we can become successful, then by that same principal, we can become lucky.

There is a quote that’s been attributed to different people over the years and has different variations. The gist of the quote goes like this, “I’m a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I have.” Isn’t this true! Haven’t you found this to be true in your own life? When you’ve worked hard, were you not rewarded for your hard work?

Let’s look at a scenario that demonstrates how we can confuse success for luck.

A guy named Sam is working very hard at his job. He has been with his employer for seven years now. He’s always on time, he helps his co-workers, he has a great attitude, and he’s very knowledgeable when it comes to his job.

One day, Sam’s boss announces that he’s going to retire. Upper management needs to find a replacement for Sam’s boss and upper management decides that Sam is man for the job. Sam is great with people, he knows how to do most of the jobs in the department because he’s been there for a good amount of time and he’s always been open to learning new things. Some of Sam’s coworkers are a little miffed at Sam because they’ve been with the company longer than Sam. However, these other workers never took the time to learn other jobs within the department, they were the types that did the bare minimum to get their jobs done. They never really helped anyone else in the department, because they figured they weren’t getting paid to do someone else’s job. Sam is really happy about his promotion. This promotion came with a nice raise that Sam and his family will rea...

Hey guys! In this post I’m going to talk about my recent experience with weight loss, the basic weight loss principles that have helped me, and also tricks that I’ve been using to shed the pounds. First, I want to let you guys know that I’m not a weight loss expert. But I want to share some things with you guys that have helped me lose weight. This subject is something that I’m really interested in right now because for the last couple years I haven’t been really paying attention to what I was eating and how often I was exercising. I was focused on other areas of life and during this time, I gained some unwanted weight. I would say that I’ve been a fairly slender person most of my life. However, over the last couple years I’ve gotten a little pudgy, I would have considered myself skinny-fat. What I mean by skinny-fat is that I’ve never been someone who put on a lot of muscle mass. I’ve always been good at cardio type exercises and endurance training because it’s just the body type that I’ve had. Having this body type has helped me to “hide” body fat pretty easily because I haven’t really been a big bulky type of person. When I gain fat it’s usually around my mid-section. Recently, I noticed that I had gained more weight than I would like to admit. My wife who is a personal trainer and who has studied nutrition, measured my body fat percentage by the pinching method. This can be a pretty uncomfortable way to calculate your bodyfat percentage but in my opinion getting pinched can be one of the most accurate ways to measure body fat. I knew that I was the fattest that I’ve ever been and sure enough the fat pinch measurement proved it. I was over 21% body fat, which is very high for me. Just two years ago I was around 16%. Seeing that my body fat percentage was so high was an eye opener. It really woke me up and gave me the sense that I needed to do something about it.

Just last month, in January, the company that I work for put on a biggest loser challenge that started, from the time of this recording, about 6 and a half weeks ago. Knowing that I was the fattest that I have ever been I thought it would be a good idea to enter the challenge as a motivator to help me lose weight. So far, in the last 6 weeks or so, I’ve been able to lose about 15 pounds. I know that’s not a lot of weight to some people, but I’ve been able to really tell that I’ve lost weight, and it has felt like a significant amount to me.  I hope to lose even more before the challenge ends in about 5 weeks from now. At the end of the challenge I’ll have my wife do another body fat percentage measurement to see how much overall bodyfat that I lost.

So, lets jump into the things that I’ve learned over the last couple months that have helped me burn off the pounds. The biggest key to fat loss is regularly having a  calorie deficit. What this means is that you burn more calories during the day than you consume. One way of thinking about it is calories out versus calories in. The latest fad diet doesn’t really matter. The only way any weight loss/fat loss diet is going to work is if you have a calorie deficit. If you have more calories come in from consuming food than went out your body from expending energy, then it’s simple, your body is going to store those extra calories as fat. On the other hand, if your body burns more calories than you consumed, then your body will need to burn fat in order to make up for the lack of consumed calories.

Let’s consider for a moment the burning calories part of that equation for a second. Your body burns calories just being alive.

Have you realized yet that the things that you think about eventually come to pass? Your thoughts are an incredible force that shapes your life. I know this sounds almost whimsical, but it’s true. There have been several times in my life where I thought of certain things and eventually those things became real in my life. Consider this idea just on a small scale. Maybe during the day you think about what sounds good for dinner, “Hmm… getting some teriyaki chicken for dinner sounds good.” So, then while you’re out running errands you pick up some teriyaki chicken that you later eat for dinner. First, you thought about it. Then, you created an opportunity to do it. Then, you followed through on the opportunity. Then finally, you ate teriyaki chicken for dinner. Your initial thought of what to have for dinner became a reality. This is just a small, simple example, but this same concept happens in all areas of your life – where you work, who you marry, what your hobbies will be. Your thoughts dictate your life and the circumstances that you find yourself in. Your thoughts determine your health, wealth, and happiness.

This is how I believe that this whole thought to reality process works. We have a thought in our mind. It’s something that we desire to do or something that we want to have. If we want whatever it is that we’re thinking about bad enough, we’ll work to get it. That means the next step after thinking about something is taking action towards getting it. If that thing we’re thinking about is something small, like getting a glass of water, then we’ll simply do that action of getting a glass of water. If the thing that we’re thinking about is difficult to get, we’ll think of a plan to get to that thing, and then we’ll take action on that plan.

A really great book that talks about this thought to reality concept is the book As A Man Thinketh by James Allen. This book is a classic and was written back in 1902. Its principals have stood the test of time because they are true. One of the first statements that the book make’s is “As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them.” What the author is saying here is that acts originate from your thoughts and this points to the importance of thinking about the future and the things that you want to do and the person that you want to become.

Back in my college days I had a dream of someday getting a specific motorcycle. I even put a picture of this of motorcycle that I wanted up on my wall in my dorm room. At the time, buying this motorcycle was way out of reality for me. I was a broke college kid with hardly any savings to speak of so there was no way of buying this motorcycle at the time. About 8 years later I found the picture of the motorcycle that I had hung on my dorm room wall and realized that the almost exact motorcycle was sitting in my garage. It took time but eventually I was able to get that motorcycle. Buying that motorcycle was a thought that I had carried around in the back of my mind for years and years and eventually I made that thought become a reality.

Here’s another example of how my thoughts created my reality. Many years ago, when I worked in construction industry, I was thinking a lot about what it would be like to work in the finance industry. I found that I really enjoyed finance, I enjoyed budgeting, and learning about how investments worked. There came a time in my life where I needed to look for better opportunities in employment and in st...

If I was a rich guy handing out money and I asked a person if they wanted a million dollars, do you think they would say yes or no? My guess is that they would say yes. I mean, who doesn’t want a million dollars? Just think of everything that you could do with a million dollars. Or, consider this for a second, the average annual return on the S&P 500 since its inception has been more than 10%, so a 7% return shouldn’t be that unreasonable. This would mean if you had a million dollars and you were able to get a return of 7% per year, you would essentially be making $70,000 per year. And what is it that you would be doing to make $70,000? Nothing, except letting your money set in a mutual fund. In other words, your money would be working for you so you don’t have to work for money. Well, you might say “That would be great if I had a million dollars, but I don’t. So, what use is that information to me?” Well in this post, I’m going to share with you steps to save a million dollars. I’m going to tell you the things that you need to do in order to be a long-term wealth builder. By sharing these steps with you my hope is first that you realize that even though a million dollars is a lot of money, you can save a million dollars. My second hope is that you actually start saving. Most Americans these days are living paycheck to paycheck and have very little if anything saved.

So, you might be wondering to yourself “Who are you to give advice about saving a million dollars? Have you saved a million dollars?” And the answer to that question is no. I haven’t saved a million dollars, yet. But, I am using these steps to work towards my financial goals. And guess what, they’re working for me! So, that’s how I know they work, because I’m putting them into practice right now. I not only have experience with these steps to save but I have also seen others use these steps to save as well. As someone who works in the finance industry, I’ve had the opportunity to look deep into successful people’s finances. I’ve worked with numerous folks who had a net worth over a million dollars and I’ve been able to see how they’ve grown such a large chunk of wealth. And you know what, if I had to sum up how they did it, I would say they did it slow and steady. They did it by having a plan. None of these people accidentally found a million dollars in their bank account. They were intentional about saving and they were diligent over a long period of time about putting money away. Alright, lets look at the steps to save a million dollars.

Step one: The first thing that you need to do is to create a budget also known as a spending plan. There are lots of free budgets that you can download off the internet. Find one that works the best for you. If you’re an Excel nerd like me then you can just make your own which is what I’ve done. The biggest reason to create a budget is so you know where your money is going. A ton of people live paycheck to paycheck and I think this is because they don’t manage their money well. A budget helps us to manage our money so that we can be intentional about where our money is going. See, there’s that word intentional again. Hmmmm sounds like we’re on the right track. The second biggest reason to start living on a budget is to give yourself a pay raise. That’s right, you’re going to give yourself a raise by living on a budget. When people start living on a budget, they realized they’re spending money on things that they don’t really need. They are able to avoid spending money on these things in the future and this leaves the person with more money at ...

I realized recently that I have never met someone who was both successful and a pessimist. All of the successful people I have met are largely an optimist and I have come to the conclusion on why this is so. At first, this finding wasn’t that intriguing to me. It almost seemed obvious and irrelevant when my brain came this discovery. However, once I did some self-reflecting I realized that this is incredibly important to me and it should be to you too. I want to be someone who achieves success in many different areas of my life and I’m sure that you are too. So, I think it’s important that we live free of unnecessary pessimism and this is why:

* Pessimists see problems but not opportunities. I often hear pessimists complain about problems and very seldom do they discuss solutions. When we encounter a problem we should view it as an opportunity. Actually, problems present several opportunities. By taking on a problem you are opening yourself up for learning. After you figure out the problem you might have learned something that will help you in a future endeavor. This knowledge could eventually help get you a promotion at work, help you land that next client, and could benefit you in an unexpected way. Solving problems could help you to gain very valuable skills. Being a problem solver is someone who is an optimist and someone who can see the opportunities within problems. Opportunists are the types of people that we want on our team.

* Pessimists have a negative attitude. Let me start this off with: a negative attitude gets you nowhere! If you know me then you know how important I think it is to have a great attitude. I grew up with a dad that instilled in me how important this is. He is one of the hardest working people I know and he has always had that positive “can-do” attitude. Being around someone who has a negative attitude is terrible for you and your team. A negative attitude communicates a lack of confidence, a lack of enthusiasm, and a lack of willpower and you don’t want any part of these characteristics for you or your team. If you have someone with a negative attitude on your team, you need to do something about it, RIGHT NOW! I’ve seen companies seriously damaged by a single person with a negative attitude. The worst part about a negative attitude is that it’s infectious and if it isn’t dealt with immediately it will destroy morale, confidence, and your desire to win. If you’re the one with the negative attitude you need to make a commitment to yourself that you’re going to change!

* Pessimists make poor leaders. I’ve seen leaders whose pessimism came in the form of complaining. It seemed like they complained about everything. The complaining brought down the whole team and severely dampened the team’s overall performance. If you’re a leader that complains I can assure you it’s keeping your team from reaching their top performance. And if your team is performing poorly, I highly doubt that you’re going to be up for any promotions anytime soon. Leaders need to have a positive outlook and I’m not saying the outlook needs to be unrealistic or fake. A leader can be “real” and be positive even in the presence of challenging situations. When times get tough leaders look for the silver lining and focus their team’s attention on that.

I urge you my friends, be intentional about being an optimist and your goals will be ever closer. Stay away from pessimists because their pessimism can sneak into your life like a sickness. By being a pessimist, you’ll be blind to opportunity,

In this episode I would like to welcome back Dary Reed. Dary is going to talk to us about intentional leadership and what it means. Dary is the Founder of Assets LLC. He is an expert in leadership and a Personal Effectiveness Coach. If you’re interested in learning more about Dary and the services that he provides, his website is assetsllc.org. Dary is also offering a workshop in Yakima, Washington called The Art of Intentional Leadership November 13th from 9am to 4pm at the Holiday Inn. If you’re interested in this event or other services that Dary offers, you can get his contact information from his website, assetsllc.org.

Here are just a couple of my favorite quotes from Dary in this episode.

“Intentional leadership is a series of skills sets that you practice, practice, practice, and that you implement every single day.”

“To know is not enough. Knowledge is not power. We say that all the time… The application of knowledge is power.”

In this episode I had the pleasure of talking with my friend Jose Gonzalez about the book The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olson. In our conversation we discuss what the slight edge is and how you can use it to reach your goals. This is one of the most motivating books I’ve ever read. I’m so thankful that Jose shared this book with me. If you get a chance, I highly recommend reading this book. I know that it will inspire you just like it did for me.

Here are a few topics that we discuss:

1. What the slight edge is.

2. How it can reshape your life.

3. Why it’s important to make the slight edge a habit.

4. How attitude plays into the slight edge and to your overall success in life.

5. 3 steps to reach your dreams.