4 Best Ways To Protect Your Income Intentional Money Matters

 Make an intentional investment in yourself and I mean if you I think it's if you look at history Look at wages if you look at wealthy people versus non-wealthy people a lot of them have Made money through their skill set. I'll just put it that way and I would say majority of people that I know that I would be willing to trade places when it comes to What they're currently doing? They have made massive investments in themselves as it relates to time as it relates to coaching as it relates to learning different things And so I would make that a part of your investment strategy again not investment advice I just I hope it challenges the way that you think because a lot of times people think Investment and living and it's like what if you took a little bit of that investment or a little bit of that living and Intentionally invested into your ability to be more valuable knowing that that is going to have a compound effect in the future Hey everyone welcome back to another episode of better well podcast I'm here with Harry Stout and we are in a series called intentional money matters where we're going through a lot of Incredible segments that are eye-opening that are getting people to think differently We just got done talking about the cash flow killers for 2022 and that was one of my favorites because Again the ripple effect that we're going to see on all the things that are working against us are Pretty insane and in this episode We're going to talk about you being your greatest asset and and more importantly like how we can practically Protect and invest in ourselves because one of the Maybe upsides or silver lining to 2022 is there's so much opportunity There's so much opportunity to invest in yourself and so without further ado before we jump in to What we have to talk about today what does you being your greatest asset look like and we talk about you know Protecting it to investing in it. What does that look like practically before we get into Some of the points that you've done research on. Oh, yeah, I think you know it would went on again used to being Build your brand so that you could get it always build your professional brand as you go company to company over your career will work I think today it's making sure you have a skill set That you can sell yeah to get enough money to live the life that you want to live and I sounds rather simple But in many ways we've forgotten that Caleb so many people went to college and they got a degree and they can't find a job That gives them enough cash to live and let me tell you something. I would have loved to study History art and culture in college. I went to college to get a job and That's that was my objective because I had to but unfortunately I think today you need to too So I think it all starts with Getting the education necessary that's going to enable you To earn an income and I don't want I'm sorry for folks. I don't want to rain on your passion parade Yeah, but it could very well be that then you you study your passion on the side and maybe over time the passion becomes a side Gang or becomes a business that works for you, but you know You really need to get that education so that you can become employed and make money Not all skill sets are valued the same and and it's just one of those things that I think being practical You know, it's like how do you know something is you know valuable or not? Supply in demand so is there is there demand for the skill set that you're learning and then everything has a Supply in a man curve, you know a heart surgeon is valued a little bit higher than Someone who's a plumber it doesn't it doesn't mean that one is better than the other it means that When you look at the skill set we as a society value a heart surgeon and are willing to pay that person more for the services that they're providing and so Obviously it takes more time and energy is very hard to become a surgeon Versus other careers. So it's one of those things. There's trade-off But we have to be thinking in everything with value knowing that money follows value and and really skill sets are One of the things that we all have and really being able to audit that so I'm really excited that we're gonna be talking about this today Yeah, so Caleb if you build on what you said one of the things I say to folks is you know not everyone should go to college Yeah, I'm an advocate of professional occupational training and where I live plumbers do really well I mean the gentleman has a great business that does that does my work and he's a very bright man And he's got a great business and he employs a number of people. So I think either way you can go the you can go to the occupational route You can go you can go the educational route because fundamentally where do you get skills? You get skills through education and or you get skills through experience Right and what I used to do in my career was I always volunteered for all the crazy stuff So if they had a project and they wanted us to go I'll give you a great example When I was a younger man, I One of the projects I had was to try develop an HIV health insurance policy Well, so my employer sent me all around the country talking to the top HIV Specialists to see whether or not they thought we could do it and I can't we came up with the design Yeah, and ultimately what those doctors said was going to happen happen which would be that HIV would move from becoming a terrible illness to Acronic illness, which is what's happened over time But I always took the different assignment and why because you do you get introduced to different things you build different skills Different experiences now. I had an education that was a good education But those other experiences really helped and I think today companies are hiring skills Yeah And if you know a lot of companies saying you know, they don't does some doesn't matter so much if you got the college degree But do you have the skills? And I had a young gentleman on a mentoring call called me he's uh 19 years of age And his dad asked me to talk to him and he's got a great little software business going And he's he's told me what his business plan was what he was doing with the particulars were I called his dad back and said he's on a good track. He said what we he dropped out of school Harry he dropped out of school and I said well, I don't think that enters in this. I think he's fine He's got he's gonna do well and he was he was um organized focused he knew what he was going to do and so I felt really I said it was great and He's got a good little business, but so as you look at this You know, we all sit down with the problem. We've got to keep our income going our whole lives Unless you're a unless you're a trust baby or someone decides to give you a fortune at birth that you can live on the rest of your life We all need incomes and I think the problem that we have when we look at this Caleb We don't look it as we don't look at it on a life cycle basis We just look at it at different periods of time in our life So I think there are ways you need to look at it and different things you need to do So one of the things I've been a real advocate of Is there may be times in our careers where we have to reskill So when you look at this and what reskill would mean is I'm an airline pilot. I can't fly anymore What do I do? I mean, you know what what other career do I do? I take on do I go back for a year or two and get a graduate degree in a different subject Well, you know, what can I do do I become a data scientist which by the way is the only job in America Which I think guaranteed full employment is to become a data scientist because then we we can't create enough of them by the way Wow Interesting story, but we can't but that'd be a great story but reskilling you may have to reskill During your during your life. So as you look at this continuum of your entire working life and how you protect your income You might have to look objectively at what you're doing and say wait a minute is this long term You know, I'm producing I'm producing compact disk is this going to work on a long term? Maybe I need to look at something different and new So reskilling is an issue. I think the other the other issue which relates more to people who work is upskilling And I think a lot of times we forget about it, right? I mean, I've been an advocate. I've seen it different ways The the five hour rule you may have seen this written about where spend an hour a day for your five working days Improving your skill set and looking to grow the five hour rule I've always had the one hour rule a day. I do it seven days a week hour of reading what do I do to improve me? What do I do to improve my ability to deliver All the roles in my life But that upskilling today. I mean do I work on team skills? Do I work on collaboration? Do I work on project management? Should I work on different software languages? Should I What should I do should I improve my SEO skills? Should I improve my digital marketing skills all those things? So you you have this upskilling. I think you have to do your whole career Because the model that we've had in our country for education Even in college kind of goes back to post-World War II In the sense that we thought after people went to four years of college We give them a skill set that would last them their whole career And today Life on learning is so key right we we have to learn things On a life you have to keep learning all the time. Yeah, so So what's the difference between Reskilling and upskilling like I see them as similar is one like in the same vertical Like hey, I'm working in this job and I'm just gonna continue to improve and be more valuable at that job Versus the other re-skilling is just like hey no longer do I want to be doing this occupation? I got to learn a whole different skill. Yeah, yeah That's correct. That's the difference between the two if I'm a a wire Telephone operator versus a cell phone specialist You might want to take learn the skills necessary upskill it so you can then handle the cellular world from the analog world Yeah, and the difference between these two really gets around to who's gonna pay for it too Caleb And that's that's a real problem today now some companies Amazon Google I've read they they're putting money in upskilling so they're trying to help their people Who come in and work in the distribution warehouse? Let let them get different sets of skills so they could qualify for more technical and better jobs But if if you don't have anyone who's gonna pay for your upskilling or your re-skilling You're gonna have to pay for it if you want to increase your income over time So let's talk about practically how do you do that because I'm I'm a huge huge fan of investing in yourself I think it's one of the reasons why we're at where we're at as a company If you look at my audible you'll laugh. There's like you could scroll for a very long time I'm always reading love learning right now. I'm learning how to breathe I'm really investing in like man. How do I breathe to be more optimal? And it's it's an example I guess you could say of upskilling because um, you know the thesis I have is if I learn to be more effective in my health and other areas I'll be a better communicator I'll be a better leader. I'll be a better husband and that will translate What is a practical guide for somebody that wants to upskill or wants to re-skill any any wisdom that you have or advice that you can give them? Yeah, I do twofold. I think first off you have time So invest some of your valuable time and I think if you set away that hour a day and be disciplined about it It when I first started my career and and you'll laugh. I think you'll laugh at this one The big thing was to get into the office as early as possible To grab the Wall Street Journal as it was either off the rack or if it was dropped off in the lobby Read the Wall Street Journal and then summarize the key articles for the senior person you were working with and let him or her know That these five things happen that they should pay attention to So so you have time so today there's so many free things and we talk about personal finance We have this we have podcasts Websites all sorts of available content. So I think you have time you just need to focus on it Now I know it's hard for people with young children And so all that's difficult But you have to figure out a way to fit it in because you know We talk about cash flow and budgets income is as important as outflow So you want to increase that income. So I think that's number one The second thing I think for people need to do Caleb is they need to protect themselves a little bit By maybe putting a little bit away in their emergency fund And maybe it's a bigger amount to fund some personal training some experiences that they may want to do in a weekend Now they may want to go to a retreat of some sort They may want to take an online course. They may want to do that Now if I'm in a profession That looks like technology may change Yeah, I might want to have more money set aside because I may need to take a year off and re-skill To get qualified for a new job So I think the two things you can do Make maximum use of your time and then put some money away So that you can pay for either up-skilling or re-skilling yourself Yeah, I would say this and it's based on what you just said is Make an intentional investment in yourself and I mean if you I think it's if you look at history look at wages if you look at wealthy people versus non-wealthy people a lot of them have Made money through their skill set. I'll just put it that way and I would say majority of people that I know that I would be willing to trade places when it comes to what they're currently doing They have made massive investments in themselves as relates to time as relates to coaching as relates to learning different things And so I would make that a part of your investment strategy again not investment advice I just I hope it challenges the way that you think because a lot of times people think Investment and living and it's like what if you took a little bit of that investment or a little bit of that living and intentionally invested Into your ability to be more valuable knowing that that is going to have a compound effect in the future Oh, no, that's exactly right and when you think about what you just discussed Caleb Those those are actions that you control yeah So you have control or you have control over your time your invest you you can control though So upskilling and re-skilling are actions you you can take you have control over it now Let's go to a third concept or third point Suppose you're doing the upskilling and re-skilling but you get a chronic illness or a critical illness and you can't work Not your fault nothing you can control. It's just something that happened to you That's where I think people need to look at this and say look I better get some income protection in place Either and we I think you and I've had this conversation We we love calling it income protection insurance whereas the industry calls it disability insurance Okay, but you need to have some protection Now you might get that protection through work because a lot of companies offer you short-term and long-term disability But similar to corporate provided life insurance if you don't work there you don't have those benefits So yeah, you probably should have some long-term Income protection that you own individually. I mean you should own that as an individual policy So it stays with your whole career And I'll give you a great example of how this works I recommended that my team get long-term protection years ago And this is a true story one gentleman on the team Who I hadn't seen in a number of years called me about six years ago and thank me He said Harry I've just been diagnosed with an illness. I can't work any longer But guess what I get paid for the next eight years But I get paid from 57 to 65 Because of that policy you suggested that I buy Okay, and that was it was and it was I felt I really took me back and I remember yeah We did that I said look guys look. Okay, you got to get protection in place for your families and So I think having that long-term protection in place long-term income just income protection disability insurance I mean typically it cost about one to four percent of the benefit you're buying and again And this is not a segment on disability insurance But you can buy disability insurance for short periods of time for long periods of time You can buy various different benefits and so on but if you haven't looked at it You're more likely to become disabled than you are to die So you ought to take a look at it and find out if you've got protection somewhere But that's all part of the continuum because the key here is to keep your cash flow going your whole life Yeah, I I we agree the disability insurance is a horribly marketed like no one wants to be disabled But when you start looking at like how many people know of someone who's suffered and died from cancer or other things You start thinking like wow This this uh this net is maybe a little bit bigger than slipping on a sidewalk and becoming disabled And so highly encourage people look into that if you're wanting to know more information You can go to betterwall.com and schedule clarity call and we can put you in touch with our specialist Because it is something that again, we don't talk a ton about because it's not necessarily the most exciting thing to talk about But if you believe that you're your greatest asset and your ability to earn Income through your skill sets if that's important and you're you're relying on that There's an ability to ensure that cash flow Which is really powerful and um and so just echoing everything that you're saying and impressionably bringing up that point And in particular Caleb, you know someone younger just like life insurance if you buy it at younger ages, it's cheaper Yeah, and you just need to have it because I've seen people go through tough times I've seen people have life events take place that they didn't expect that all a lot of illnesses and so on But think about this so keep your skill you know get the right education yeah or experience Continue to if you have to re-skill re-skill if you have to upscale upskill upskill and then have insurance in place for the unexpected And and the last part which is I think America is just starting to awaken to this Is you still need income when you stop working? And that income just can't be social security So that's where retirement income retirement planning comes in and Taking a look at your whole of life and making sure that you're you're putting the things in place Don't you know we talk about that today where you have to have private savings to properly cover you for to help you generate the income you need when you stop working We've talked we haven't talked about in-depth, but annuities are there yeah cash value life insurance is fantastic That's a strategy that I I'm using now people don't understand it by the way they say what what is that? And I said well here's what I do and that's tax free Yeah, it's it's why you do it so and I know that with the end asset and the work that I mean it's it's there and it's a great strategy But these are all things that you need to do because you you're going to need income for your whole of life And people we're all regardless of COVID we are living longer Most young people today. I mean you're gonna live into your 90s And so that's the wonderful thing, but how do you pay for all those years of life and keep your lifestyle to yeah Because you don't want to lose that lifestyle So to me those are the four things that Caleb that you need to do To protect your greatest asset your income So if you're watching this on YouTube comment down below What do you resonate most with re-skill up-skill Ensuring your income or planning for a future income and it really is all based around You being your greatest asset producing cash flow now and in the future. I love this man. I You know this is one of my favorite topics Because when we're coaching people it's very very clear the people that are fulfilled and successful Know like know their worth internally and do everything they can to maximize that and I I just love that that's what you're talking about and is there any is there any final thoughts that you have as it relates to re-skilling up-skilling for texting future cash flow No, I mean I love the buzzline, you know save now live well later and and versus by now pay later Save you know save now and live well later and I think you have to look at your whole life because if you do And maybe you'll live less of a lifestyle when you're younger you'll live more of a lifestyle later on It will have a it'll have a fundamental effect on your life And it'll make your life up a much higher quality than if you had not I love it. All right. We'll leave it at that. I appreciate you being on Share this episode if you find this helpful if you find that this could really challenge someone that you know that maybe needs to re-skill or upskill Their life and again, we read all the comments I love and appreciate people taking time out of their day to Put what their biggest takeaway was as it relates to the segment. Thank you, Harry. You're welcome, Caleb