Episode: 328 - Financial Freedom Unlocked: Todd Polke's Strategies for Wealth Creation
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Are you tired of feeling stuck in the endless loop of working hard yet not achieving the financial freedom you desire? It’s a common struggle, but there is a way out. With the insights of wealth strategist Todd Polke, you can learn proven systems and mindset shifts to break free from living paycheck to paycheck and start on a path toward lasting wealth.
The Power of Mindset Shifts
Todd Polke, with years of experience, emphasizes that wealth is not just about money but also about the psychology and mindset behind it. From a burnt-out personal trainer living through a financial struggle, Todd transformed his life by learning to invest and letting his money work for him. His journey began with a simple real estate investment that shifted his perspective on wealth creation.
One of Todd’s core teachings is that wealth creation requires a change in mindset. Breaking free from societal norms and the expectations of those around us is crucial. Start by visualizing where you want to be in the future and allow that vision to guide your life decisions. Focus on building small, consistent habits that normalize wealth creation rather than just working to pay bills.
Creating Your Financial Ecosystem
Todd shares that we often unconsciously set our ecosystem to support who we currently are. By consciously designing our environment to support who we aim to become, we can fast-track our financial success. This involves being intentional about the people we surround ourselves with and the influences we allow in our lives.
Developing Financial Discipline
Achieving financial freedom involves discipline. Begin with small steps. For example, if saving 10% of your income feels daunting, start with 1% and gradually increase it. The key is to get into the habit of saving and investing, however small, which will gradually build confidence and momentum.
Decision-Making Framework
Todd outlines a decision-making framework to help in financial choices:
Alignment: Ensure the decision aligns with your values.
Potential: Assess the potential return on investment.
Risk: Consider the risks involved.
Opportunity Cost: Evaluate the cost of not choosing an alternative option.
This framework is not only applicable to financial decisions but also to various life choices.
Finding Your Purpose
Finding a purpose or vision can feel overwhelming. Todd advises starting with what you currently know and taking steps toward that. With each step, growth and learning will provide more clarity. Keep your goals flexible and allow your purpose to evolve as you do.
Conclusion
Every journey towards financial liberation begins with a shift in mindset and continues with consistent, disciplined actions. By integrating these strategies into your life, you can begin to break free from financial constraints and build a legacy that outlives you. Take control of your financial destiny, and start small - every step forward counts.
For those looking to deepen their understanding, Todd Polke's resources can guide you further on your journey to financial independence. Join the community of like-minded individuals committed to financial growth and see how a shift in perspective can lead to profound changes in your financial and personal life.
Resources Mentioned
Connect with Todd Polke: www.toddpolke.com
The Totally Awesome Debt Freedom Planner https://www.debtfreedad.com/planner
To learn how to take the stress out of your finances so you can breathe again, follow this link: https://www.debtfreedad.com/lwp-masterclass-opt-in-page-podcast
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Transcript
Brad Nelson:
Hey, so are you tired of feeling stuck in the middle? You're working hard but never quite reaching the financial freedom that you crave. Today, we are diving into how you can break free from that cycle with the help of a wealth strategist, todd Polke. Now, with years of experience, todd knows what it takes to shift your mindset, accelerate your financial growth and build lasting wealth. Now Todd is here to share some proven systems and some mindset shifts that can help you stop living paycheck to paycheck and start creating a legacy that outlives you. Stay tuned.
Announcer:
You're listening to the Debt-Free Dad Podcast with Brad Nelson. Brad and his co-hosts experience the anxiety of living paycheck to paycheck before learning the fundamentals of financial success. They are now on a mission to empower regular people to pay off their debt for good and enjoy happier, less stressful lives. Keep listening for inspirational interviews, tips, tricks and practical advice to gain financial freedom.
Brad Nelson:
Hey guys, welcome to gain financial freedom. Hey guys, welcome to today's show. I am Brad Nelson, founder of Debt-Free Dad. I paid off about $45,000 of debt. I've been debt-free now for more than 12 years and I've also been fortunate to help thousands of other people save and pay off tens of millions of dollars with the work that we do here at Debt-Free Dad. Now, after listening to this episode, if you're ready to take things to the next level, you're ready to break free from living paycheck to paycheck. You want to reduce financial stress, you want to build your savings and finally pay off your debt for good. But, you know, maybe you're not really quite sure where to get started. We've created some incredible free resources here at Debt Free Dad to help you get there, and I'll be sharing some details about how you get started with those later on in today's episode. So hey, Todd, welcome to the Debt-Free Dad podcast. So glad that you're joining us here today, man.
Todd Polke:
Super appreciative dude. Nice early one for me over here, but I'm happy to be here with you.
Brad Nelson:
Yeah, you're all the way in Australia. It's crazy the time zone difference, like you're already on the next day from where we're at right now, which is crazy.
Todd Polke:
Yeah, correct, maybe the only thing in Australia that we might be ahead of you guys with it. But hey, like, if we've got one thing, that's a good thing, right, yeah?
Brad Nelson:
awesome, so can you share a little bit? You're now an expert in helping people build wealth and really helping them reach their financial dreams, but can you tell us a little bit about yourself, like, how did you get into that work and even for you, have you always been good with money? Or is this something that was a gift to you and you started teaching people? Or what's your history with it?
Todd Polke:
Yeah no, I got into this world from a pain. There's no other two ways to put it right. I was a burned out personal trainer in my very late teens, got out of school, didn't do very well out of it, graduated the wrong end of average, went into personal training, and health and well-being and sport has always been my favorite place to be, and I did the whole thing of well, let's just work as hard as we possibly can to try and get ahead in life, and I thought that was my only rule that I should be following, and so I was getting up at four in the morning, I was going until about midnight the following day, just thinking that working hard was just going to help me get ahead with everything, and I wound up breaking myself by about the age of 20. Broke my body, wound up in hospital, broke my health, broke my relationships. I had no personal life, and then the one thing that I thought was that was supposed to be working really well, which is my finance. I had to look at my bank account. I realized I was still broke there and I thought this shit's broken. There's got to be a better way than this system that I'm following right now and that just set me on a pathway of studying and trying to learn from successful people, and I learned this beautiful thing is that profits are better than wages.
Todd Polke:
The late Jim Rowan coined that phrase. It got me into the world of investing and I wound up buying my first property deal at about the age of 20 years old. I scrimped together and saved together and got a cheap little two-bedroom place here over in Australia, made more in that one property deal than my entire year's income. Personal training, working 17 hours a day, 50 weeks of the year for the year on end and breaking my back every single day. I just had this moment where, oh, wow, okay, here's where my money is actually working harder for me than I'm working for my money. What a concept. And that was over 20 years ago now, and from that moment I just fell in love with the world of investing, where I just began teaching. I'm a teacher of heart and God in the world of teaching people how to build portfolios to create freedom in their life. So, mate, that's my story in a very big nutshell.
Brad Nelson:
Yeah, and that's awesome, and I think there's a lot of people out there that are probably stuck or feeling stuck. You know, like you went through your life at a very young age, I too, went through this experience. Unfortunately, I wasn't 20. I was more like 29, 30. I wish it would have been 10 years earlier.
Todd Polke:
Yeah, get pain. Nice and early mate. I just thought that was the right way to go. Right, Right, right, I wish it would have.
Brad Nelson:
I mean, 10 years is a long time. I could have made some more headway. But if I look at my own journey even you said it, you know you look at everything and everything just feels kind of broken and I feel like there's a lot of people who feel stuck. What do do you feel in working with people and helping people? What are some common mindset traps that keep people from seeing the potential of, like you said, real estate investing or just investing in general, or just getting out of debt or just improving your finances? What holds most people back, you think? Do you know what?
Todd Polke:
I think you've touched on possibly the key thing right there. I believe that wealth has almost as much to do with psychology and mindset as it does with actually some practical tips and some practical tactics that you can take and deploy and we can understand why. Right, you know our entire lives from the moment we're born, with the education system and society and our parents who are just doing the best they can with what they know, and we're just railroaded into this life of where we're just supposed to work to pay the bills and become functioning cogs in economic will of society and with recent times, with inflation and I know it's the same in the us, it has been the cost of living in australia, you know everyone's just the squeeze is on in a big, big way now yeah and so we're programmed our entire lives to go and I've literally just finished.
Todd Polke:
My book is about to be published, called escape the middle, right, and the whole point is is that our entire lives we're programmed to this middle type of living and, um, you know, when we get into that level of psychology and living in that space, sometimes it can feel really difficult to kind of break it right, because this is what we've been doing for decades of our life, potentially right, right, you know, one of the biggest things for me is that when I work with investors and work with people in terms of shifting this is number one you've got to get it clear on where you want to be going in the future.
Todd Polke:
Right, because you've got to create a picture you know further than where you are right now, more than where you are right now. So you have a North Star that you can put up in the sky and that can help guide your decisions and guide your direction in your entire life. And then one of the biggest things about shifting psychology is not about you're just going to take a magic pill and everything's going to change overnight. It's really all about well, what are one or two small habits that I can really begin working on right now that are normalizing wealth creation in my life as opposed to normalizing just work to pay the bills in my life, and that's one of the big psychology shifts. Without going super deep on it, one of the big psychology shifts that I've found has helped most people that I've ever worked with.
Brad Nelson:
Yeah, for sure. I feel like that's where I, in my experience working with a lot of people and helping them end paycheck to paycheck living, is. A lot of us are stuck in that Like this is all I've known, this is all I've known growing up, this is all my friends and family do, this is all my coworkers do. So how did you or what do you recommend to help people challenge that and break through that? Because it is a hard thing to separate yourself from, even while getting out of debt. That was something I struggled with, was kind of falling back to my old ways while everybody else is doing this, like, why should I be any different? It took some time and some practice and, honestly, some failures in trying to get out of debt to learn, like I really have got to go against what most people are doing.
Todd Polke:
Yeah, it's so true, and you've got to be willing to let people down. And when I say that, it scares a lot of people, because human beings' connection is something which is so critical and so important to us. But we have to be prepared to let people down, and what I mean by that it's not about letting them down physically, but it's it's letting them down based on the expectations they have of you, of how you're supposed to behave and who you're supposed to be. You know anyone that's listening in on this type of podcast, like listening to you right now, like they're obviously at some level, they're committed to a certain level of personal growth. They're committed to a certain level.
Todd Polke:
I want to become more than what I am right now, and sometimes it may feel like, hey, I just need to get out of a bit of debt, or I need to do this because it's really painful right now. But as we go through that journey of getting out of debt, we actually become a different person in the meantime because, all of a sudden, we actually tap into these resources, this level of awareness that we never had before, one of the things that I have no way to substantiate this, but I heard this really early on and I thought this was just such a beautiful frame of thinking about life was that every single day, we walk past seven opportunities that could turn us into a millionaire. We walked past seven opportunities that could turn us into a millionaire. Now I have no way to substantiate that. But what if you were looking at life from that lens? What if you were looking from life that there is an opportunity that's sitting out there? But because of our level of programming, we've just got some blinkers on in our life right now that we're not recognizing. What if we could actually start taking those blinkers off to see really what's out there in the different types of opportunities? But you're right, it can be really difficult because everyone and everything around us is keeping us in this mode.
Todd Polke:
You know, one of the things I always talk about is shifting your ecosystem right. We will unconsciously, subconsciously, set up our ecosystem around us to support who we currently are. I'll say that again We'll unconsciously set up our ecosystem around us to support who we currently are. But you're not going to create a brand new level of result if you keep with the same level of thinking and you'll never out-earn yourself. And so one of the biggest things we've got to focus on doing is that we set this target, and so one of the biggest things we've got to focus on doing is that we set this target. Then we've got to decide who do we need to become the quality person in order to create this level of result.
Todd Polke:
And then how can I design my ecosystem around me to support who I'm becoming into the future to create this different level result, and that could be simple things like a vision board. It could be having a debt funnel that you're constantly ticking off as you're kind of achieving your certain levels, even if it's $5 a week, whatever it is, or maybe it's a. I used to set an alarm on my phone. It used to just come up and say are you being busy or are you being productive? And so it'd interrupt my pattern every 90 minutes in my life just to make sure that I'm still playing my life at a different level that I've chosen to be.
Brad Nelson:
Yeah, yeah, and you're so right. I mean it's that old saying of you know you're the average of what the seven people you surround yourself with right, I love that you brought that up. That ecosystem, subconsciously you're creating that and it does A lot of times. When it comes to financial issues, financial challenges, we don't understand that subconscious, our mindset, our money beliefs. They really can hold us back and, like you said, you almost get this tunnel vision where you can't really see outside. And you'd mentioned these seven opportunities that you could become a millionaire. But I mean you get this tunnel vision so much it's hard to kind of see outside of what the potential is actually out there.
Todd Polke:
Yeah, yeah, it's so true. And sometimes we have to create that break in what our version of reality was, ourselves and how we're going to actively put ourselves in a different environment that's going to expose us to different things in life. You know, when I was 21, like I used to wander around some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Australia, in a certain place in the Gold Coast, and I would go door knocking and my door knocking would be would just be hey, do you? Can I have five minutes of your time? I just wanted to ask some questions around how you got to where you are and like I was just purposely putting myself in a different environment so I could actually shift my entire level of conditioning, because if I kept playing in the same level of conditioning, I just knew I was going to keep getting the same result.
Todd Polke:
And I can tell you now it felt really scary to go and do that the first few times. It was weird, but what I really found is that you know what? There were so many successful people who were just willing to have a conversation with me and we can sometimes get in our head that we're going to get rejected or things like that, but you know what Every successful person has always had a hand up along the way in their life in some way, shape or form, and how they're willing to help is absolutely phenomenal. So you know, when you can intentionally put yourself in an environment to break that conditioning, you can really kind of fast forward your success really really rapidly doing that.
Brad Nelson:
Yeah, I'm just interested in asking those individuals did you find anything that was like some radical thing that they did to be able to get there, or was it some basic? Things and consistency, like what were the things that got them there?
Todd Polke:
Yeah, dude, like that question is key because a lot of people are always looking for the silver bullet, aren't they? Yeah right, how can I get my silver bullet? How can I get my? You know the one trick pony that's going to do everything for me and solve all my problems. You know, people spend decades of their life getting themselves into a certain position and then just want it to change overnight. That's just get rich. Quick thinking. It's short term thinking and short-term thinking sacrifices long-term results.
Todd Polke:
I always relate it back to my health and fitness background. People get themselves to a certain position in their health and physicality and wellness and level of energy they have, and then they often look for shortcuts. And they look for shortcuts by going on radical diets or and they get on this yo-yo style dieting thing. And the problem with diet is that you know, apart from the first three letters, a die and people relate that to it, right. But the problem with a diet is that there's a start and a finish point, right, and you know people finish a diet and then they'll go and celebrate by eating some crap or you know, doing something they shouldn't be doing.
Todd Polke:
Where the lifestyle just showing up, doing the basics consistently, is where the success is won. It's not the big, crazy, outrageous leaps, it's just well. How can I do small, seemingly insignificant things on a consistent basis over a long period of time and they stack up, and stack up and stack up and eventually they avalanche to this thing called wealth and success, right and freedom, or debt free, or more time with the kids, or legacy you want to leave, and you know, the most beautiful thing about knowing any of that is just simply because it's about the small things. It means that anybody can do it. I truly have that belief and you'll know that as well working with all the people you do. You just got to put one foot in front of the other and just start. How do you?
Brad Nelson:
fight against, though. Where we are in a society is everything is get it. Now you mentioned the diet and fitness industry. You look at get out of debt products heck, even the apps like Amazon and all the stuff that you can buy on your phones. Like everything is, I can get it today or tomorrow. I don't even have to go to the grocery store anymore, I don't have to go get my own food. Everything is like instantaneous. And I think sometimes, when we start talking about health and fitness, getting out of debt, sometimes, when we start talking about health and fitness, getting out of debt, improving your overall life, building wealth, that doesn't happen overnight. So how would you, in your experience in working with people, how do you get them over that hump of thinking like this is going to take time, and there's nothing wrong with that, and I think sometimes we're so conditioned to be like if.
Todd Polke:
I don't fix my life in 30 days, I'm a failure, right, right, this is what we always talk about that wealth is a marathon. It's not a sprint, and we know that. But you're so right, we're so used to getting everything now and deliveries within hours and like just everything's at our fingertips that it's made our attention spans incredibly small, but also our patience in terms of taking these small steps over time. One of the things I always talk to my students about is that you're never going to create financial freedom without some financial discipline. Discipline, for a lot of people, can feel like a pathway to freedom, right. Discipline equals freedom. Right, it's not discipline equals prison. Discipline equals freedom. But it's a muscle that we have to start exercising as well, right?
Todd Polke:
What my experience has shown me now is that it's all about recording the small wins, right, and it's the momentum. Momentum is such a powerful force in life and that when we can actually start seeing some progressive wins, even if they're the smallest, tiniest things, you know, we talk about saving. Like we know, the common dogma is that you should save 10% of your income or 20% of your income. It's a common dogma, we're taught, but sometimes people aren't in a position to save that and they go well. Todd, you don't understand. Things are super tight. I've got debt, I've got this. I just can't save 10% and I go great, no issues. Why don't we start with 1%? And if you can't start with 1%, then I would just say you know a bit of tough love, to be quite frank. Okay, let's take a little bit of a closer look at what you're committed to in life. Are you committed to staying where you are? Are you committed to creating something different for yourself and your family and start with 1%? And then, month number two, go to 2%, month number three go to 3%. Now, month number four, go to 4% and start creating the habit of actually saving and investing in yourself.
Todd Polke:
And there's some magical things that happen. Like you would have seen it in all that you do. There's an energy to money, right as soon as you actually start making the choice and the decision that you're going to invest in yourself and that you are worth more and that it is possible for you and you can actually save. Even if it's five dollars a week or whatever it is, there's an energy to that money that, all of a sudden, that your money has a purpose, it has a place to be working for you in your life. And then it starts opening up, because money loves to be valued, it loves order, love, structure, loves to be valued. And it starts opening up your awareness to what else is possible.
Todd Polke:
And, um, you get into the habit of actually normalizing. I keep telling this normalized wealth creation, right. Normalized financial freedom yeah, we spend enough time normalizing work to pay the bills. That's a shit strategy, pure and simple, right. Um, but there's better strategies out there. And if we can start normalizing that and recording the wins because then we get those little mini endorphin hits on the way, step-by-step and knowing that we're actually achieving and succeeding- yeah, I mean this is the formula for building confidence.
Brad Nelson:
And when you're just getting started you don't have a lot of confidence, but the only way to get there is, like you said, start with 1%. If you can't do 10%, start with something small and that result builds confidence. You keep doing it, it keeps building confidence and, like you said, it grows. This tremendous amount of momentum and, yeah, love that Quick question for you. I was poking around on your social media channels a little bit and on one of the videos you were talking through about how, when you're looking at an investment, you take your clients through like a funnel process and making a good financial decision on whether the investment is a good option or if it's a bad option. I'm assuming this funnel process works for a lot of different types of decisions you want to make Correct. Well, like, can you walk us through a little bit of what that looks like so people can learn, like, how do I know if I'm making a good financial decision for myself?
Todd Polke:
Yeah, and you know what's interesting about that is that it's all about becoming a better quality decision maker. I'm convinced, absolutely convinced, that success in anything is all about making better quality decisions, and so if we can start learning how to become a better financial decision maker, then it's inevitable where our life is going to wind up, and if we can keep leveling up that decision-making framework and process that we use, it can really radically change our world, right? And so what I'm going to talk about here is I talk, this is a decision-making framework, right, and it's just as true for wealth and financial wellbeing as it is for making good decisions in business or relationships or things like that, and it's really just a very core framework that we can actually filter a decision through. You know, the first thing to me is all about alignment, right, and whenever I have a decision in my life to make, whether that's investment decision or whether that's you know, I'm going to do this with my kids, or whether that's a pathway for business or whatever it is the very first thing to me is all about alignment. Is this decision I'm about to make in alignment with my value system or is it not? If it's not in alignment with my value system. It goes against my values. I'm an out. It doesn't matter how much money I'd make, it doesn't matter what it would bring, I'm just out. I'm a big believer in values based investing and values based decision making, because otherwise that's my sleep and night factor, right, right. And the other big question is is this question taking me closer towards my outcomes or further away towards my outcomes? And so if it doesn't pass those, my decision is done, I'm out, I'm sorted, right. That's why I won't really invest in things that destroy the planet like as much as I possibly can, because that's a value. Won't really invest in things that destroy the planet like as much as I possibly can, because that's a value system of mine. In conservation, right, and so I just want to invest in things that contribute to that cause. That I don't believe in, right, I'm a big believer in that.
Todd Polke:
So the first thing is all about alignment. The second thing is potential. What's my potential return on investment on this right? And that return on investment could be hey, am I going to pay down some debt or I'm going to make my first investment? Right? There's a return on investment on each of those right. Well, the return on investment if I pay down debt, is going to equal this much, the return on investment versus making this investment is going to equal this much and is the potential actually worth the decision? And once again, if it's not, then you already know you're done, you're out right. Because sometimes we make these decisions without thinking about the outcomes and we realize, well, you know, I probably could have made a better decision there, or even by doing nothing would have left me in a better spot. So I think about potential, so alignment potential.
Todd Polke:
The next thing I always think about is risk, right, so am I comfortable with the potential risk based on the return I can potentially make? So always think about those risks in the first order and second order decisions and consequences that can wind up making. And if the risk is too high versus the reward, then I already know that again, not a great decision to be making. And then, finally, is opportunity cost. Right when I sit there and I go, okay, well, if I make this decision over here, then potentially it's gonna uh, there's an I or I could have done this opportunity over here then there's an opportunity cost to not actually being able to take advantage of that and sometimes that can be the most expensive opportunity uh cost that we can have, like, for example, making the decision to invest versus not. The opportunity cost for later on is huge.
Todd Polke:
You know the bill always comes due. Making the decision to invest or not invest, the bill comes to. You either pay it up front or you pay it down the track somewhere. So you know when I think about decision making. How do we become better quality financial decision makers? Is it a lot more values? Is it going to get me my outcome? Is the potential worth making the decision at all? What's the risk involved in it? Is that a reasonable risk I'm willing to take? And if I make the decision, it means I can't do this other thing. And what's the opportunity cost associated to that? And it's a super simple framework that you can run it through there within a couple of minutes and decision made, because people sometimes spend a lot of time just going back and forth and back and forth about decisions and it's taking just way too long for them and making no decision at all.
Brad Nelson:
Yeah, and I love this, and you can apply that framework to so many different areas in your financial life, whether it be buying a car or making a purchase. I think it is so simple if you're starting to use it Now. You mentioned vision. You mentioned things about goals. Obviously, this framework kind of pairs really well with something like that, and obviously a lot of people who live paycheck to paycheck including myself at one time I was just kind of winging it, flying by the seat of my pants, didn't really have any sort of clear direction as to where I'm going, Any advice, like anything to help someone with, because that's a big question what's your vision or what's your purpose or what is it that you want out of life? Anything that you could suggest to help people try to figure that out.
Todd Polke:
Yeah, I went through this journey quite hard, to be honest, and I probably made it much harder on myself than I really needed to ever be. Probably about, oh, I'm 41 now, so probably about when I was about 10 years ago, I was having a bit of a crisis, right, and my crisis was all about what am I here to do in the world? What am I here to do in the planet? What's my reason for being? What's my purpose, what's my mission? What's the big cosmic thing that I'm here to do? And I was asking these questions, and big questions to ask, right, and I sent myself crazy for years trying to figure this out, thinking that I needed to have it all perfectly figured out before I could take some steps forward. I got to this point and I had a bit of an epiphany at that time. Is that you know what it's okay not to know exactly what it is. When I'm ready and when the world is ready, more is going to reveal itself. But what's the closest thing that I know that it's supposed to be right now? And why don't I just start taking a step towards that direction? And here's what I realized is that, as I began to take steps towards that direction. I became a different person because I started having different experiences. I had different learnings. I grew as a person and as I grew and I learned some more things, my awareness began to open up. And as my awareness began to open up, I began to recognize different things that I wasn't seeing before. I was seeing through a different lens. And so then I'd ask the same question again Okay, maybe I don't know exactly what it is now, but what's the closest? I know that it is. And then I zigzag back the other way, and so I started moving towards that direction, and this is what success success is like. It's very seldom. Is it this linear journey where we just go oh, I know exactly what I'm here to do, I know how to get there, I know what's going on like and that's, we're just going to do this and there's not going to be any problems, right? It's always going to be this zigzagging process and be okay with taking some wrong directions, and I set myself crazy trying to figure this out for a little period of time. That's talking about some big things, right, but what if we just bring it down to some things that we want in life, right? What if we just talk about.
Todd Polke:
I want my kids to be able to understand money. I want to give my kids a financial education, because that's something that's really important. What are your values telling you? You want more time with your family. You want to be able to give back at another level, whether that's to a cause you believe in or to the planet or some people you care about.
Todd Polke:
Maybe you're just sick to death of your job and to you it's just about. I just want some more time, I want some more choice. I want to feel more free. I want to feel like I have a little bit more control and you can just come down to some absolute basics around. What do you want to create for your life?
Todd Polke:
Right, and if we can just start actually getting ourselves towards, moving towards that direction, right, because most people live at the financial waterline, where they're treading water financially and the water keeps lapping above the eyes and we're spluttering and we can't breathe sometimes and sometimes it's hard to lift our head above the waterline to see something bigger than ourselves than where we are right now.
Todd Polke:
And as soon as we can actually start putting some firm feet on a nice, solid financial foundation. I can tell you right now, and you know this, it just lifts your head above the financial waterline. You can see so much further than what you could see before. So I would just say be okay with not knowing everything, but what's something that you can begin working on and just start on that and just know that as you go down that journey, more is going to open up. You're going to become more, you're going to grow more, you're going to see more, and as you do that, the clarity that you gain for what, that ultimate thing for you is just going to open up at a deeper level as well.
Brad Nelson:
Yeah, so good, Todd. This has been awesome. Where can people learn more about you? Now, you mentioned you have a book and obviously you've got a website. Where can listeners learn more about you?
Todd Polke:
Yeah, absolutely. My book is being launched in Australia in all the major bookstores over here. Then we're going to be launching in the US very soon after, kind of three to four months after, but it's called Escape the Middle. It's on Amazon. You can get that on pre-orders right now in US, also in Australia.
Todd Polke:
Now it is really an escape plan out of this middle type of living, middle income, middle earning, middle happiness, middle time, middle freedom, middle health. How can we create an escape plan for the future on that? And so that's a place that people can go. But you know what? One of the biggest places I run a free Facebook community called the Wealth Dojo, and it's called the Wealth Dojo. I've got a martial arts background so I couldn't help myself. But it's called the Wealth Dojo because dojo actually means place of learning, place of practice. That's what it means. And so we run a free Facebook community. It's called the Wealth Dojo, and it's just a place where other people who want to learn how to invest, how to take control of their finances, we just come and hang out. I offer a whole lot of free resources and tools and things like that for people to be able to take part of. So love for people to be in the group Absolutely free, and it's just there to add value.
Brad Nelson:
Awesome, todd. Thanks so much for being here, man, sharing some wisdom. It's been great to have you on and a lot of what you talk about. It's just great to have a different viewpoint and so good to have you. Thanks so much.
Todd Polke:
I really appreciate it. Thanks, man, thanks for all that you do.
Brad Nelson:
All right, guys, if you're ready to break free from living paycheck to paycheck, you want to reduce financial stress, you want to build savings and finally pay off your debt for good. But again, maybe you're not sure where to get started. Don't worry, we've got you covered here at Debt Free Dad, simplify my Money is sent to you every single Sunday to your email. Simplify your Money is your step-by-step roadmap to better financial control, and you're also going to learn easy to follow strategies to help you manage your money effectively Stress-free money decisions that are going to help you simplify your financial life with proven tips that actually work for regular, normal, everyday people, and you're also going to gain the tools and the confidence to tackle your financial goals head on. If you want to sign up for Simplify my Money, click on the link. At the bad things that may be, let's talk about debt.
Announcer:
Let's talk about debt. Tune into Debt Free, dad, tune into Debt Free.
Brad Nelson:
Dad. All right, guys. That sound means it's time for the celebrations of the show, and today we are kicking off with Holly. Holly says I'm getting some unexpected money from a CRA, so I am going to add $500 straight to my emergency fund, which is incredible, holly. And she adds I am also adding to my sinking funds for a summer trip that I have planned. Holly, great planning, great budgeting. Win, awesome job, jamie.
Brad Nelson:
Jamie says I have my $1,000 emergency fund and I have not had to go through the drive-through to get coffee in the last month because of better planning. Jamie, awesome wins, congratulations to you and Vanessa. Over $1,000 is in my emergency fund and I paid an extra $1,000 to my next debt. Had to push the goal back a little bit on another card I was paying off because of a $530 emergency vet visit, but I will be getting that next debt paid off here mid -month next month, which is awesome. Vanessa, congratulations to you. And, as always, guys, congratulations to all of you guys who are taking a stand for your financial life and you're wanting better. Hey, we get that. Getting out of debt it's not easy but with our help and hopefully with your consistency and discipline, we promise you guys, this will be some of the best work that you guys do in your entire life. Hey, thanks for joining us on today's show and we will see you guys on the next episode.
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