Let’s see what we’ve got in the old mailbag. today. Today’s letter comes to us from Little Jimmy in Peoria. Thanks for the letter, little Jimmy, let’s see what we have here. Hey, George Gee, is it better to give or to receive? Oh, that’s an age old question. And a good one, though, Jimmy, thank you so much. For the letter, is it better to give than to receive? My answer? Will Jimmy is this? I believe you presented me with a false dichotomy situation, where you’re asking me to choose between two things. One, I don’t really believe that it’s necessary, therefore, I reject your question. I’m still going to answer it. Of course, why can’t? Why must these things giving and receiving be mutually exclusive? Can’t we have or do both of these things? I think it’s possible that I know it’s possible. I know that you do, too. All kidding aside little Jimmy, I appreciate the question. I think it’s an important one. So let’s spend some time thinking and talking about it. I believe it’s possible to have both a heart of gold and a pocket full of gold. Sometimes those things do seem to be mutually exclusive that rich people are they heartless the 1%. They don’t care about anybody except, or anything except for money, and profit companies, all they care about is profit. That’s sometimes that’s certainly true. Or a lot of time, it’s probably true. But for you, and I think it’s really possible, I think it’s possible to do both. So because it’s good to think of others. But it’s also really good to think of yourself too. I think that here’s the key, kind of the linchpin to all of this, from my humble perspective, being self sacrificing is a good and positive thing, so long as you’re self reliant. Being self sacrificing is good, so long as you are self reliant. You’d be the kindest person in the absolute world. But if you’re broke, and you rely on others, then you are too. If you rely on other people to meet your needs, your basic needs all of them, then I think it’s a bad thing. So what is it bad to think of other people? Well, it’s bad when you’re only thinking of others. You’re constantly looking out and never looking in. I think that that’s a really negative thing as well, when you’re only thinking about other people prevents you from looking at yourself. When we deflect, we project onto others, which we certainly all do from time to time, I think that that’s a negative thing. When you’re so concerned, and affected by what somebody or everybody else is doing, then I think that that’s a really, really bad thing as well. And certainly think social media has made this a lot worse, a lot more pervasive, used to just try to keep up with the Joneses because they lived next door, but now we’re keeping up with everybody. And if we focus and fixate only on others, instead of focusing on ourselves, that’s obviously not a positive thing, also, so when you Stop minding your business and start mining everybody else’s business, that’s a problem. Also, when is it bad to think only of yourself plenty of times, nobody likes selfish people. So here’s another false dichotomy sort of in the line of this, should I practice hedonism, or asceticism? Well, first and foremost, what are those things? Well, he didn’t ism is the theory that pleasure and the sense of satisfaction or desire is the highest good and proper aim of human life. That’s interesting. I don’t know if anybody really believes Of course, there’s plenty people that believe that what am I talking about? asceticism is the opposite. It’s the severe self discipline and avoidance of all that stuff. All indulgences. A lot of time it’s, it goes hand in hand with some kind of a religious practice or belief. So either of those self correct. Isn’t there a middle ground? That’s kind of a fundamental thing here. too hot, too cold. What we’re looking for is just right. Turns out like most golden books, like most childhood stories, Goldilocks was right. We don’t want too hot. We don’t want too cold. We just want to find just right. We want to find that just right. You ever think to yourself, What should I be doing in this situation? Hopefully you do. Do you ever find yourself thinking, I wonder what this other person would do in this situation? What would Steve do? What would Stacy do? What would Jesus do? It’s a natural, very, very human thing to do. But I advocate, you stop taking anybody else’s word for it. It’s not to say you shouldn’t learn and benefit from other people’s experience and wisdom. I’m not saying that at all. But mentally, it’s just important that you make up your own mind. I think it’s really important, maybe now more than ever, to understand and to really know ourselves, to examine our lives, to seek to live that examined life, to really understand what we’re all about, to know what you think, to know what matters to you to know your values, and put your values to work in your life. So myth, figuring out what matters to me, what’s most important to me? And then how do I live by these sounds easy, does hard. I think that there’s three really important concepts to know yourself. I think that number one is knowing ourselves. So it’s understanding what I think what knowing my core values to understand what I believe to be true, to be really clear on what I want, and to prioritize things. Number two is we have to mind our own business, need to stop worrying so much about what everybody else is doing. And put our blinders on, to focus on what we need to do in service of those things that we want. And then three, and maybe this should be one, but not in any particular order to put and to pay ourselves first, pay to put ourselves first, you’ve heard that before you’ve heard, pay yourself. First, it’s the golden rule of personal finance. If you’re in the habit of paying everybody else, first, you will get to the end of the month, and there will be no money left over for you. Too often, you will get to about three quarters of the way, two thirds of the way through the month, you’ll get a long way through the month, and you will run out of money you will have more month than money you will be living paycheck to paycheck, you will be broke, it will be an unhappy place, lousy place to be. So same thing goes for every other aspect of our health, certainly our financial health, we got to pay ourselves first put our family, our loved ones ahead of everybody else exactly where they should be. We also need to prioritize our mental health, our physical health, the health of our relationships, and our loved ones and our spiritual health as well. So we need to put those things first. Otherwise, for showing up less than we ought to be the world needs you at or as close to 100% operating optimally in every aspect of life that you possibly can. I don’t know, there’s gonna be some days, lots of days where you’re not feeling good. You’re not feeling totally like doing it. We still do it anyway. But what do I need to do to make sure that I am physically strong, mentally strong, emotionally strong, financially strong. That’s really what I’m interested in talking to you about today. So that we can be selfless. But to be selfless, we need to be selfish, self reliant, so that we’re in a position to actually help other people. Okay, so how do we do it? How do we strike that balance and find our just right? Well, Thomas Sol, famously and wisely said that there are no solutions. There are only trade offs. One of the truest things I’ve ever heard, what should I do right now? Well, it’s not a right or wrong. You are making a trade off every time you say yes to one thing, you’re saying no to everything else. Why? No, it’s such a powerful thing. You say no to things, you still have everything else available to you. I mean, fundamentally, we have these really valuable resources. I think that our mvrs, our most valuable resources are our time, our attention, our energy, and our money. And we must be good stewards of those things. We’re never going to get it perfect. I’m not advocating or suggesting that you even try to be perfect, just that you’re thoughtful, and mindful, and intentional, and some other thralls because when we do that, I think we’re gonna get a little bit closer to what we actually want. So you need to get yours, right? So no solutions, only trade offs, keeping in mind what is most important to me getting those right. So I don’t want to put my values on you. I want you to know what your values are, and then put them to work in your life. In order to do that. You need to know what those values are. You need to know what matters to you. Oh, yeah, I do. I do. I do. Well, I don’t know if that’s true or not. I don’t know, if you do.

I know that took me a really long time to dislodge my head from where it was to really look around and to think about what what was really key and most important to me. So, intellectually, I’ve known about the importance of goal setting for a long time, probably since I was 10 years old, took me till I was 35, to actually sit down and put pen to paper, and to write them all down. So now, I’m 10 years into it, and everybody was right, the verdict is end goal setting is really, really important. So not just gonna tell you to set goals, because that’s not super helpful, I want to tell you about the six different areas that I focus on. And I think about when I go through a process like this, want to think about what’s most important to me, I think about family. So maybe you want to start a family, and maybe you want a better relationship with your folks or your kids or your partner, whatever that might be. What are your priorities for your family? Number two is community. So I believe that life is the sum of our interactions with other people. So beyond your immediate family, that’s where your community is. So these are the things that you enjoy doing. These are the associations and the groups and your religious groups and whatever it might be, that you’re affiliated with. So how can you better serve your community? Better, promote, nurture, foster all these things? Third, is your financial and your work? So career and financials? What are your priorities there? Next is personal development. Number four, personal development. So what do you want to learn just for the sake of learning not because you have to for your work or anything like that, maybe you want to learn a language, that’s what’s going on in my household right now is, we’ve got people learning French, we’ve got people learning Spanish, and we have wonderful apps such right at our fingertips. And obviously, through the wonder that is internet, things like YouTube, and all that, you can literally learn anything, and you can do probably just about free, well being, you know, talking about making sure that we’re strong, and we are self reliant, going back to that, you know, I need to make sure that my physical health is I’m as strong as I can be, or as I want to be, then emotionally, mentally, all these things that I’m, well, I’m healthy. And then from a peace of mind standpoint, I would like to be able to sleep like a baby. Because when my baby is sleeping, she seems to really be in a joint to really enjoy it to get a lot out of it, I would like that. And that’s what peace of mind gives us. It allows us to put her head on the pillow at night and to sleep soundly, or at least as sound as we can as grownups with expectations and responsibilities and all that. So what’s going on what you want on what you believe and what matters. That’s your baseline. Now I know. Now I can go about minding my own business, because that’s my business. I know what I want. I know what matters. I know what must be done in service of what matters. Now from there, I want to be consistent. I want to consistently assess, reassess, rebalance, reallocate? Are you familiar with the investment concept of asset allocation, and then rebalancing. So let’s just be really, really, really, really straightforward that 50% of your money is let’s use 6040 60% of your investments are in stocks. 40% are in bonds. So equities, fixed income. Well, what’s going to happen over time, as markets change and things change is, one is going to go up and one is going to go down, making your portfolio no longer correctly balanced. So let’s say the stock market does really well, too, all of a sudden, of your portfolio 70% of its now in stocks, bringing down 30% of the value to your fixed income or your bonds. So in this circumstance, if we had automatic rebalancing, we’d sell off 10% of the equities of the stocks and buy the bots. So we would rebalance back to 6040. All right. So same thing goes with your weight and your diet and your relationships and your exercise routines, and everything else it is super easy for things to get out of balance. I’m supposed to have a 34 inch waist, I’m supposed to weigh around this much. And this is not a conversation about body composition or makeup. Because I get that just your weight is not necessarily your standard that you should be paying attention to if you’re a healthy person. We all intellectually understand that. The point is this. If I am focused on the fact that I should have a 34 inch waist and all The sudden my pants aren’t fitting very well, because I’ve gained weights and I’ve got a 35 inch waist. That is the alarm bell that says I need to rebalance my portfolio. And in this example, my diet, my exercise routine, my stress, my sleep, all of these things, to bring my waist back to whatever number of inches your waist ought to be. What I know for sure is this, it’s a lot easier to lose five pounds than it is 50. I know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So staying on top of things will help you course correct a lot easier versus just letting it go. I know it’s way easier to pay off $1,000 bill than it is a $10,000 bill. I find myself in credit card debt, it’s easier to get out of 1000 bucks versus 10,000. Again, not rocket science, but hopefully just kind of understand. It’s how we frame and how we think about these things. When we know ourselves. And we understand what’s most important to us. I think that that’s the right kind of selfishness. Because I’ve invested have taken the time to be positioning myself to be selfless, doing what matters in service of what matters is the right kind of selfish, making yourself strong positions you to help the person next to you get their oxygen mask on. Because I bet there’s plenty people in your life who are struggling who haven’t gotten the memo on this, just like I hadn’t. You know, I learned like you, I learned lessons the hard way. Sometimes Sometimes as I get older, I can actually learn from other people and viewing and observing, oh, look, this, this happened to somebody else. And they did this. So maybe, just maybe I should do that. Also, though, fundamentally, you know, none of us have time. It’s one of my favorite quotes I don’t even know who don’t necessarily attribute it to. Buddha is said to have said it. The trouble is you think you have time. Fundamentally, we have one crack at this, this be in life, want to make the best decisions that I can based on what’s important to me. And here’s the thing, it’s not a game of perfect we need to loot leave room to make dumb decisions to make poor money choices. So like when I use cream, as I will, probably on Friday or Saturday. I’m not going to beat myself up over it. Because I leave wiggle room. I’m not an I’m not a practice, sir. I do not believe in asceticism. I like to do nice things. I like to eat good food. I like to eff off every once in a while. So I need to make sure that I’m positioning myself for success, not setting myself up for failure by trying to create some kind of a plan that there’s no way I’m ever going to stick to it’s just not going to work. So in terms of our finances, we need to build that into our budgeting so that there is a little bit of wiggle room so that I’m going to actually have a budget that’s that’s going to work. So here’s one final thought. Alexander Solzhenitsyn souls in hexion in the Gulag Archipelago. archipelago, said, the line between good and evil runs not through States nor between classes, nor between political parties, but right through every human heart. So the good stuff, the bad stuff, too hot, too cold. It’s all right inside of me, that’s all right inside of you. fallibility is a feature, not a bug. screwing up, making dumb decisions is part of our nature instead of fighting against it, planned for it, build some wiggle room, into your budget, into your diet, into your time management, into your life, all of these things to assist you in your journey, your process, however you want to think about it, you can access our goals course, our values course both for free at money alignment, academy.com/courses find those there. And you can also get a copy of the purpose book there for free too. And that will walk you through everything, a lot of what I’ve been talking about, it’ll talk talk about goals and values but also beliefs, purpose and habits as well. That’s fundamentally what I’m talking about. And the more we can be thoughtful of these things, and align all those things and get them to be congruent and moving in the right direction. This that another thing, the better off will be two things can be true at the same time. You can have a heart of gold and a pocket full of gold and that is what I want for you if that is what you want for yourself. Do you just want a pocket full of gold and not a heart full of gold? That’s great. You do that to your heart full of gold, no pocket full of gold fine.

I made my case you take it you leave it only a friendly reminder there’s never going to be anybody more interested in your financial success than you are so act accordingly