090 - Summit 05 - Use Your Things Rather than Letting Them Use You with Wade Galt

Now what I want to do is focus on the next piece that we're doing here, which has to do with helping you use your things without being used, and so probably what you're going to see if you haven't already figured out, there's been very intentional structure to how we've set up today. And what I've looked to do is, as I've mentioned, I'm taking you to this framework that I've done before that I know is effective. But I wanted to get more voices, better voices, deeper voices, not deeper voices like this or like this, but deeper, deeper voices.

It's a sugar thing. And so we're going to focus on is if you look at all the things you have, I'm going to suggest to you that you have some assets. Some things are liabilities of summer time wasters. We want to do is just as we reference in this last talk, was look at how do we have more of our things, be things that we really want in our life. And so I'm going to give you a really quick, simple definition here.

And I'm going to say that from a lifestyle and wealth perspective, assets make you money, they make you happy, or they make your life better. One of those three. So forget the textbook definition of an asset. If it doesn't make you money, make you happy or make make your life better. From a lifestyle standpoint, I'm going to suggest that's not an asset. Time wasters cost you time and give you no benefit in return. And then liabilities cost you money, happiness or quality of life.

That might also cost you time as well. And so what I want you to think about is and this will be an exercise, you can sort of get in the mindset for it now, and you'll probably do the follow up to it as you go on is to think about there's these different dimensions to your life now. Different coaches and authors will identify different ones. So not everybody agrees upon the exact which ones they are. But, you know, there's different parts of our life in my case, identify spirituality, not so much religion per say of any brand, but just our connection with the divine nature of the universe.

If you believe in that, I happen to our connection with family, romance, friends, health fund, finance, career growth and giving. And so in each of these areas of our life, there are certain things that an asset, for example, is going to make these better. They're going to do something that helps us improve parts of our life. A time waster is going to do nothing for us and a liability is going to take away from us.

And that's the way this is kind of mentioned. You're trying to put math on this. Yes, because sometimes it can be very difficult to make a decision on. Preferences, do I like strawberry ice cream? Vanilla ice cream? Do I like this or like that? Do I like this dessert? Well, my kids will hear me say sometimes, which I think I learned from my dad as well. That's tasty, but it's not tasty enough for me to want the calories.

So I'll have a different dessert. That's the sugary or whatnot. It's really kind of is it really worth it? And so when you look at all the things you have, there's a simple way you can do this. And there's a tool that's in your workbook that's going to help you look at certain things and see where do they fall on this continuum for you. So it's an asset. Every time you put a plus, that's can be a plus one zero zero and the negative is minus one.

And so, for example, if I had an oversize car, I might say, well, that doesn't do anything for the spiritual dimension of my life. It helps my family get from point A to point B. It does nothing for my romance, my friends, my health. It sometimes helps with fun because we get to go someplace on big trips, but it costs too much. It hurts my finance. And so overall, that's a one that's probably somewhere in the time waster area.

It's not that great of a situation. Now, one of my things, this is, you know, we all share about things that are weird to me. One of the sexiest things in the world is a paid off car. I love keeping cars are one of our cars when I was 15 years old. And because to me, just I can do something else with that money every month that I'm not paying roughly five hundred dollars between a car payment and Insurance, I can do that, do something different with that money, or I can simply choose not to work those hours that I would have to work in order to make that money.

So debt free car, at least in Wade world, is a pretty cool thing. Education, is it always valuable? Well, if we don't use it, but we paid for it, well, then maybe it's not quite so valuable because maybe it's not affecting our spiritual dimension, our family, our romance, our friends and our health. But it's taken away from our fund because we did it half way or part way or maybe we did even worse.

Maybe we did the work but never implemented it. So it's against unused or unimplemented in that way. So that can be something that could be a negative things. It's costing you time. It's costing you different parts of your life. But nothing came back from it versus where you, let's say, use an education, something that you learn. And then as a final example, let's say an overpriced house. And again, I'm using by definition, the word overpriced, not a house in general, an overpriced house.

We'd say, yeah, there's you know. It's kind of helping the family that we have a place to live, but it's not helping the family. Some having to work too hard and too many hours to pay for it. So if you take this, at least conceptually, this mathematical view of the world, then what you could do. As you could go through and identify five things that are really costly to you and what I'm going to ask you to do and I'm asking you to put this in the chat's will pause a second here is if you write down in the chat, type in the chat one thing that you know.

Is a liability to you now, this doesn't mean you cannot afford it, you might say Wade the liability is this thing that I have to take care of it. I've got to wash it. I've got to you know, it's it's fragile. It requires a lot of high maintenance. I really don't use it. If you'd put it in the chat, what's one thing that, for whatever reason, is a possession, but it's a liability for you.

OK, thank you for sharing that, Danny. Definitely. If your health's not where you want it to be, that definitely can be something that could be better. Here you go. Running yet. Boom, 15 year old car. I love it. So what I want you to think about is that as you're doing this. That sometimes it's going to be a physical item sometimes, and this this is where this kind of overlaps with your time, sometimes it might be a commitment, but very often it might be sticking with things.

Right now, in the sense of the material world, it might be something that simply takes a lot of time. That just extra for me. Yeah, excess weight Debbie Ford me as a viable player. What? I'm carrying excess weight. And not only am I slower and am I more likely to lose to the youngsters, which is not so good. But I'm also just it's harder on my body. It's tougher on me. I have less energy to do the things I want to do.

And so for a lot of people I know, as you know, as you go deeper into this conversation of health, it becomes important to realize. You know what a big deal that is for you and being able to have the energy and Al Mega to your point about covid, I know a lot of people, you know, we're still trying to figure out certain things, but I think so much of the research has at least supported the generic sense that the better health you're in, in general, just from a general sense of.

Yes, are you do you have energy? Are you eating good stuff or are you getting a decent amount of exercise that that's going to help you better versus people that maybe perhaps haven't done that as well. So a lot of variables there. So thank you for sharing there. So now so if that's your those your liabilities, then the next thing would be, well, what are your time wasters? And this is where, again, sometimes this is tough to check on for me.

I've I consider anything that I don't need to do. Is something that's it's kind of it's almost a fault, I'm almost too big as if I'm some really famous person, like you can't use my time because I'm so famous, but I don't like wasting time. So for me, maybe wash a car once every two to three months. I don't know if I have to if it's dirty. I mean, I have hygiene, but I don't want to wash my car.

And that's not a knock. If somebody loves washing their car and they take care of it, great. That's just not something I love to do. So time wasters sometimes are things that they're not costing you money per say, but you're having to maintain them. You're having to keep them up. There's a quote from Henry David Thoreau, from his book, Walden, where he said. And I'm paraphrasing that it'd be better was it better to be suckled by wolves, to be raised or raised by wolves than to be given a whole lot of stuff by somebody that you have to take care of?

He's like, that's so it's almost like an imposition on somebody that they would, you know, make you take care of that. And then finally, there are your assets, so your assets and again, if it's in a physical sense. So a paid off car, again, could be an asset, a paid off home or a home. That's a reasonable investment, a rent contract at a reasonable investment. Again, so many of these things, if you take the idea in and I know Tim Ferriss really hammered this idea home in his book The Four Hour Work Week, the idea of enjoying things without having to own them.

He said, look, if you want to you know, you want to drive a Lamborghini, great rental Lamborghini for a day or for a few hours, it's going to cost a heck of a lot more than buying one. And if you're never going to be able to afford one, are you going to work that hard? Then that might be the way to do it. So you can have valuable assets, things that just work for you. And this is where, you know, Rebecca's point about, you know, it might not be something that sparks join you at the table I'm using right now that's holding my computer.

I've had for 20 plus years. And I keep it somewhat out of nostalgia, but it works. It's an asset. So and again, right now, we're not talking about relationships as assets that'll be in a. In a different conversation, but just in general, looking at what are the things that contribute to the overall situation and then anything else that you invest a lot of time with. So there might be certain things that you invest your time in and they're not lower Hyomin or you're not sure until Wade.

If I spend, you know, your house should be on one of these lists or wherever your residences or whatever you pay, whether it's rent, whether you own it or not. And of course, you know, maybe you own it, maybe you own it with the bank, maybe you outright own it. You know, one of those things. And so usually any sort of long term financial commitment that you're not really loving falls into this category.

You know, the the whole scene of a boat owners two happiest days is the day they buy the boat in the day they sell the boat. And usually that's because when they buy the boat, they're using the boat a lot. And so it is an asset. And then later towards the end, before they can really get rid of the boat, they're not using it. And so that leads that situation where it's really an unused asset. So it's really just kind of a waste.

And so as you do this work, what you're going to find is. You're going to find this sense of. There's a lot of things you don't need to buy. There's a lot of things you don't need to do. There are a lot of purchasing errors or mistakes that you don't need to repeat. You can simply kind of have your stuff in order. You can have your stuff ready and you can be investing in things that are good for you that add to quality of life, but don't take away from it.

And so in order to improve the effectiveness of these three things, I'm going to suggest that, number one, you increase your assets by investing more in them and similar things. So anybody who's made poor decisions in the real estate or stock market knows that a house or a stock can certainly be a liability. If you buy the wrong ones at the wrong times, that's a liability. That's not an asset, even though technically by some definitions of financial definitions, it's an asset.

But that's losing money. That's a liability. So whatever it is and, you know, in a more sort of. You know, I was about to say metaphysical sense, but in a tangible way, you are an asset. So investing in you, your education, you're investing your time in you if you're here, a lot of times you invest in your money. I've personally invested over six figures in my education over the last 20 years. I know so many people who've done that as well.

Not that they invest my education, but the awesome they've invested in their own educations. Ideally, with time wasters, you either want to eliminate them or you can convert them, you might say, well, how can I convert a time waster? Well, it could be that you simply say, OK, I'm going to start using it more. So it's something that I know I wasn't I was putting all this maintenance time into my boat and I was only using it once every 12 months while I'm putting in the same maintenance.

But now I'm using it once a month or twice a month. Now it's turned into an asset simply by the way I manage it or the way I handle it. And then same thing with liabilities and usually liabilities. Sometimes are easier just to let go of and this is the tougher part, think of a bad stock that just keeps going down and there's the voice in his head that says, oh, but at some point it's going to go up.

Let's wait. Let's hold on to that. Let's let's have more pain. Let's have more sorrow. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. You know, sometimes it's like, no, it didn't work out. It's just it's like a bad thing. You have to hold on to it. If and when you're still dating or when you were dating, you didn't have to, like, hang on to every bad relationship and keep in touch with them and check in with them.

The whole idea of the break was so you could just both move on. So that's you know, that can be a good thing. So in order to optimize your things, what I'm gonna suggest you do is with the piece of this for optimizing as you write down what the thing is. In this case, it's an oversize car and you appraise it. You don't have to do the appraisal part. I find it helpful if you're not really a numbers person, you might say now it doesn't really matter for some people.

It helps them really identify which of the ones they need to look at and look at. Do I eliminate or convert this because theoretically you'd be doing one of those things. And then if you convert it, what would I do? Well, I'm going to not totally convert it, but I'm going to still have a car. I need a car. I mean, a smaller and more economical car. And then at least it would be a five.

And what's my target? It I gonna do that within 30 days. So this is your action guide for you to start filling out for yourself. If I have an overpriced home, I said, wow, this is really just hurting me. It's in the negative side because it's taken up so much of my time. Again, Wade want to convert that and say, well, Wade for real estate prices to change or let's say you were looking to to it was overpriced in a sense, you possibly buying it and you can say, well, I'm not going to buy that new overpriced home.

Excuse me, I said the wrong nerd's you not buying the new overpriced home is what we're looking at here and say, OK, well, I'm going to wait two years. I'm going wait till real estate prices drop. Because if I buy that new home, the home I want right now, it's overpriced. And so it's just going to cost me so much more in time and money that I'd rather not do that. And again, really, I know you've got, I'm sure, some good, solid ideas on that for me.

Definitely. I've heard so many people say what you invest in your home, you know, you can be house poor, can so impact a different part of your life. And so then when you do this for yourself, you can find five to ten things that you can take action on and make happen in your life. And so that's really your action plan to take action on this. And then the other part to this, I'm just going to introduce this here is a concept is once you've done this, then I'm going to suggest that you start looking at this strategy of moving towards mastery and you're not going to get there right away.

But you start doing this. And the way you would do this is to say, OK, if I'm going to optimize my life outside of work, my relationships, my time, my money, my things, what I want to be able to do. As I want to be able to create a situation where I am getting more the way I'd like it to be, so, for example, when my house in my car is easily afforded in my monthly cash flow to allow for my desired lifestyle, that's something I want to do.

When do I want to do this? I want to do the job to do this. Yes, once my target date, such and such a date. And what's my status on this now? I'm going to give you 10 ideas and then there's a forum where you can create your own. So that's number one. Second, keep vehicles multiple years, many years to minimize ownership costs. Third, less than one hour a week servicing or maintaining items other than, let's say, dishes or laundry, unless you hire somebody to do that, but not spend a lot of time having to care for physical items, items and clothing not used within the past 12 months are given away.

So there's that saying if you put something in a box and you go back to your lady stuff and use the stuff, unless it's a memory or something, maybe you can let it go. You probably don't need it. It might cost you more in storage space than it does to simply let it go. Five wait two weeks before purchasing any item that is new to you or an impulse purchase, that's an end of a significant amount. I'm not saying if you see the new flavor of Tic TAC, you know, maybe you might be able afford that.

But for bigger ones that you might want to be aware of that no storage units outside the home and then having a garage that's accessible if you have a garage, depending where you live in the world. A storage students outside of the home, you're basically paying, unless there's a specific reason for it, that's, you know, we'll use there's always a reason, but that might be something where you're simply tossing away money that you could have kept patiently purchasing items, expensive items at an ideal time.

So, for example, a Black Friday holiday sales, if you know you're going to get something and you know that this company or one of those sales once in a while, great. Then just have the money ready when the Black Friday deal comes, whatever the time is, or the Memorial Day sale or Fourth of July or whatever, it might be great. That's the time to do that. Definitely all of your photos and important computer data securely and automatically backed up online.

That's a big one, the peace of mind with that as somebody who's lived in Lima, Peru, and moved around us at different times. Whenever I just had my business and didn't have it backed up, I remember once I took a trip and I had it on a 10 Devi Adea oh gosh, a passport drive back at home and whatnot. But it wasn't backed up online. And I just thought, well, gosh, what if I lose my laptop and my and something happens at the house or something gets stolen versus having it online, knowing it's there, then the ability that having the ability to evacuate your home in an emergency situation with your precious items.

So things like photos are very precious items that you would want to take with you if something happened. I live in Florida, so it's hurricanes. They take a little longer to arrive, but sometimes people have to make that decision. If a hurricane is coming to think, I might not ever see this house again. What are the things I'm going to bring with me and knowing what those are and having that be light and easy to pack and then, you know, minimizing your environmental waste, just having a situation where you're not having to add to the waste for a lot of reasons, but just having it be that you're spending less money on the packaging and the other materials that goes with that.

So once you see that, you can create your own master milestone's for that and see what that would look like for you to tackle.