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But we, we say you don’t want your finances just running you. You don’t have to accept what you’re, how you’re spending or how you’re saving. Like, do you want to just do it in a mindful way so that you feel like you’re in control of your choices.
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Think you can’t build wealth because your financial life is messy late or just not enough. Well, get ready to break your brain because today’s guests have lived every chapter of that story.Welcome to living outso fabulously,
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where we talk about real imperfect money journeys and the strategies that help modern families build wealth, purpose, and freedom. From convertibles in their 20s to skipping retirement in the 30s, the duo behind Out and Around and Modern Family Finance, Jenny and Lisa Dessals are here to spill their money stories. Welcome to the show, Jenny and Lisa. Thanks for having us. So you own and manage.your own advisory firm, um, for from early for early retirees or financial independence seekers, what are three pivotal financial strategies you recommend based on the work that your firm does, Modern Family Finance.
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So, you know, we work primarily with modern families of all shapes and sizes, kind of in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. So they’re typically earning good.Comes at the height of their earning potential, but what we say is like the number one principle, it doesn’t matter whether you’re earning a million dollars or $100,000 or less, it is all about cash flow. So how much are you bringing in and where is it going out? And um, so that’s, I would say strategy number one is just knowing where your money goes. Um, and
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most people knowhow much they’re bringing in, they could tell you how much your salary is, and most people do not know how much is going out.
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Um, and the ratio we love to focus on is, um, I mean, you can call it many things, uh, we call it the financial independence ratio, but it’s essentially how much, um, liquid network you have, so that means all of your money minus your house, um, is over, uh, that’s the numerator and the denominator is what your uh annual expenses are, and that just tells you how many years that your money could cover you.Um, and so that’s often a aha moment for folks because they might be earning lots of money, but they haven’t actually built that much wealth or the opposite. They actually don’t have that much money and feel poor because of their income, but actually they have a lot of assets. Um, so that’s one principle. Um, I think the second principle that we work with clients, um,It’s actually around tax planning, so we all say taxes are, if you’re thinking about, um, again, we’re working typically with high earners in the Bay Area, uh, San Francisco Bay Area, taxes are your biggest expense, um, over your lifetime for most people. And so being and most.So many people are like, well, it is what it is, and that’s true, and we’re not trying to avoid taxes. Taxes are important, uh, but our goal is to help folks, um, reduce their lifetime tax, uh, burden and to be able to realize those taxes at the lowest rate. Um,
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and I guess,yeah, I think maybe a third would be your, your saving ratio. So that’s also, I think as, you know.People have been told different stories throughout their lifetime, you know, the same 10%, but for some people, you know, they, they might not understand the trade-offs of like, if you save a higher percentage of your income, maybe was a trade off in terms of, you had mentioned like an earlier financial independence point. And so, um, you know, just educate people what their savings ratio is is also probably another aha moment, um, and people can kind of then figure out if the trade-off is worth it for them.To try to save more to accelerate their their independence earlier.
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Yeah, I love it, thank you for sharing all that. I’m curious, just with the work that you do, do you find that clients tend to be good at one of those and like miserable at the rest, like nobody’s like really good at the entire trifecta, like, I’m great at cash flow, but I’m miserable at saving and investing it, or I’m I’m great at saving and investing, I just can’t make the money.
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Yeah, I mean, I think, see, you know, investing is, we didn’t talk about investing yet, but investing is a very important part, but I, I find that people tend to get over um focused on which fund and which security and which whatever, um, and underfocused on the primary question of is how much should you be leaving in cash, um, versus investments. And so I think it’s like, OK, wait, I have this investment portfolio and I’m really focused on optimizing that, butBy the way, I also have like all this chunk sitting in cash that I’m not putting to work and or I’m failing to use all the tools that I have to reduce my taxes, right? So it’s kind of like, I feel like people tend to overfocus on one of those things and not necessarily look at it all. Um, so yeah, so I mean, we try to help bring a lot together.
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It could be a lot for any one person to manage the finances of a household. Um, so whether or not, you know.You might be good at it, but we all need to kind of at least a friend or a spouse or someone to kind of second guess our numbers, run some checks, just make, I think, more mindful decisions of also the, you know, uh, what we, we say you don’t want your finances just running you, you don’t have to accept what you’re how you’re spending or how you’re saving, like you want to just do it in a mindful way so that you feel like you’re in control of your choices.
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Yeah, I, I definitely agree with that. It’s uh it’s nobody likes to feel like their budget is uh a monkey on their back, right, or their financial goals are monkeys on their back. So folks, if you’re just tuning in, this is living not so fabulously, where we mix real money wisdom with a whole lot of community. Today’s guests, Jenny and Lisa does all are champions of LGBTQ financial wellness. They are also the creators of Out and around.So I want to get a little personal here. We’re gonna talk about your, uh, your, your personal stories that we mentioned in the at the very beginning. Uh, Jenny, you admitted um to making a very common mistake that people in their twenties do. You bought a sexy car. You mind sharing a little bit about that with us?
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Yeah, I mean, I grew up in an Asian American household and so I think there was money was treated both as like a source of scarcity, like you had to try to accumulate as much as you possibly could to secure yourself. um, and it was also treated as a status symbol. Uh, so it was always, you know, when I got my first job and got my real first paycheck, I was like, I want to get a fancy car. SoYeah, I bought the, um, I bought a little BMW convertible. Um, it was white and I think Lisa, who is a social worker, we were already dating at the time, she was pretty appalled to be seen driving it because did not fit her image of who she was. Um, but I mean, I, in hindsight, I’m glad I made that, I guess, if you will, a mistake in the sense that it got out of my system. I really quickly realized I’m like, this does nothing for me. And basically our cars have progressively gotten worse over time, eating like less sexy over time.So, you know, it just doesn’t, it didn’t, uh.It didn’t matter um to me as much, um, so
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yeah, I mean there’s, you know, that’s not a judgment like, yeah, I mean it’s not a judgment like hard people, yeah, so it’s like as a fun purchase, but it was a burden to take care of. It was ongoing expenses, I mean.There are lots of things that we enjoy spending our money on, um, that other people might think are extravagant, like, you know, we, we, we travel quite a bit, like that’s kind of where we put our money where where other people are like, they don’t want to travel, they want to stay at home and they love their cars. Um, so it’s just about trying to figure out, again, mindfully does this, is this gonna bring me lasting joy, um.Yeah.
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John and I have uh jokingly said this to some of our friends that um we eat the 80/20 rule. 80% of our food is pretty boring, so that we can once in a while go out for a fabulous meal.So, uh, Lisa, I’m gonna turn the turn the attention to you. Um, you have shared that you, you could have didn’t fund your retirement, um, at least not until you were in your 30s, and I’m just curious, um, that’s a very common thing for folks today. Um, do you want to share some of the experience of why that happened? Maybe what was going on and how do you feel about it in hindsight?
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Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I went right out of college and I, I volunteered, um, for 2.5 years as a social worker in South America. I think I earned $50 a month. Um, I did a program kind of similar to the Peace Corps. So it just wasn’t like, I think Jenny and I were quite opposites where Jenny’s like, how can I super fund my 401k and.To be honest, I actually grew up in a pretty middle class, like a very middle class family. I was like a scholarship kid, but I always had the basics, and my parents were a teacher and the IRS worker, they had pensions, so that’s really what I knew and went into, um.So, I mean, I just think, you know, a huge part of it is just education. Um, I think I would have, I was like a sensible responsible person. I just, it’s just not what my friends were talking about, you know, we were, it was not a topic of importance in our 20s or our 30s, you know, we’re saving the world, we were not caring about salaries, you know, we, um, you know, I just wasn’t making the conscious decision uh to not save. um I was just trying to make it, um.And so I think there would have been some things, I don’t think I would would have regretted, uh.Becoming a social worker, but I might have just, you know, thought, uh, I need a few more years to like live with my family to kind of like build some savings or, you know, there there are certain decisions like I did buy, I did buy a car like I but maybe I could have a best but I don’t know, there’s some decisions that like I I could have simplified and made some trade off so that even though I had a lower income, uh, I could have at least hit some better markers in terms of like.What could have um gotten me started earlier, cause as we all know, the earlier you start, um, the, you know, the, the better.Your future goes. I mean, that’s not to say that you can’t, you know, that’s for everything, right? It’s for health exercise, it’s overwhelming, but start wherever you can start today, uh, but yeah, sure, I think uh education would have been a key for me.
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Yeah, that that’s definitely true. We’re gonna hold that thought for a second here, we’ll be right back after a quick break, folks.So welcome back to Living now so fabulously, but we’re back talking with Jenny and Lisa does also, the power duo behind Modern Family Finance and the film out and around.So you mentioned earlier, Lisa, this love of travel, um, and so I think that that has taken you on quite a journey. You’ve traveled, you travel specifically to 15 countries to create a documentary called Out and Around, where you say that you met the supergays who are doing extraordinary things around the world, and you did, you did a TED talk about your experience that has had over a million views.Um, what was the most surprising discovery that you made during this experience of actually traveling to these countries and meeting and interacting with these super gays?
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Yeah, I mean, so we traveled to Asia, Africa, and South America. We were really looking um to to developing countries to to interview people of color, um, and I think the surprising thing was like how similar we were, like, well, you know, it felt like we were busy and almost extended family.Uh, we had a lot of similar experiences as gay people, as queer people, um, and then the other thing that was just surprising was like just, um, how they were beating the odds and, you know, how they were, how courageous they were, uh, you know, in a lot of places thathad a lot fewer privileges than we had in the states. Uh, so that was just super inspiring. um, and we were, you know, we were meeting people, we were trying to connect them as well. Um, and it just felt like a very strong tie.
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Mm.Yeah, I, I, I have, um, uh, I’ve shared this before growing up in a, in a religion that is all that was very um.INon-traditional from the rest of the world, you were in a very closed community, it felt kind of similar that would, you know, I would go to places in California and I would walk into the church and the people there would automatically accept me. And after I left that religion and I met, yeah I was involved in the queer community, I felt very much the same that it seemed like I can go anywhere and I’m gonna meet other queer people and they’re gonna just be the same, which is kind of nice.Um, one other question for you about this particular experience. You mentioned that, um, going to countries where people have a lot less lot less privileges. Oftentimes I’m going to assume that they have a lot less financial privileges. Did that inform or reframe any of your thinking maybe around what is enough?
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Yeah, I mean, I think, uh, you know, there’s that Harvard study that talks about, um, you know, happiness in in what creates happiness in your life and, and the answer is relationships, like, you know, when they take out socio economic status and look at people, you know, 50 years of research, um, so yeah, I mean, I think there are, you know, asAs we become more and more isolated in the states, you know, there are other, you know, countries are, you know, people are not working from home on their personal computers, like doing these like, um, you know, white collar jobs like and and there’s a lot of community in in in different areas that, you know, because they need each other, right? Um and so there’s we lived very simply for that year, uh, we’ve looked very simply in different times in our lives andYou know, our happiness level has haven’t hasn’t changed drastically, uh, based on where we live and what we have. So we’re always asking ourselves, you know, because we want to live a sustainable life too. We don’t want to beYou know, working ourselves to death either or or sacrificing our health for for wealth. uh, so it’s it’s a really important thing to know when when is enough enough.
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Yeah, I think that is a really important question. I think too few of us asked that question, is this enough or or when is it enough? Um, in light of what we see going on, um, in the world, especially here in the US of this shift towards the right, do you think that your documentary would be different today if you made it?
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I mean, yeah, you have to think for sure, like as a, we had for first of all, we had so much um corporate support from Jenny’s former employer, like that was like the the age of, you know,
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DEI everything.
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Yeah, like, you know, we, we’ve seen from some financial support to make the film from the the uh employer LGBT group, um.So just, you know, I mean that’s like, you know, a golden age of DEI they, you know, they support Jenny with the year to to to make the film and take a sabbatical from her work.It’s kind of hard to imagine today, though I would hope, you know, there, you know, no one has gone away, we’re still we’re still working, we’re still there and, you know, a little bit quieter than before, um, so yeah, I think it would be different.
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I thinkDEI now kind of has this connotation like that it has little to no value or at least little to no value to the masses, so I’m curious.Um,What value do you think your documentary provided to the masses, to, uh, not only to the LGBTQ plus community but to society as a whole that umBut not necessarily not just help, uh, you know, or GDP uh or um the corporate bottom line, but would actually make people just better citizens and and and and workers.
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Uh, I mean, I, I, as in making this film, we’ve had a chance to show in a lot of places, um, you know, like in in kind of corporate settings and as well as school settings and youth settings and whatnot, um, and I think one of the things that stood out to be most, it was actually my own workplace, we screened part of the film.And um in our film, we traveled to South Asia and um you know, we, I worked at this tech company, there are a lot of South Asian engineers and whatnot just employees there and um you know, it was, and anyways.One of my colleagues, you know, I didn’t know her personally, but she, she worked at the company. She came up to me afterwards, she was, you know, middle aged South Asian woman, and she was just like, you know, I, and she, she obviously was like not someone born in the US she was somebody who came, who had moved here, most likely for work, and she just told, she said that that this really changed her mind about her kids. She said that she had only gotten comfortable with the idea of her kids potentially marrying a non-sal Asian.And she’s like, and she’s like, and now she’s like, oh, now I’m like, would I be OK if my kid, um, you know, was, uh, you know, gay or or anything else, right? And so she was very, I think that was why one of like, oh, this was worth it moments and I think, you know, she wouldn’t, she was the kind of person never would have walked into an LGBT film festival to watch this thing. It was just that it was, she was forced to sit through it cause it was in a woman’s, it was at a woman’s whatever group at work, right? And so I thinkYou know, you can keep preaching to the choir, or you can like, I guess this film allowed us to kind of feel a little bit outside of that too, um, so that was really cool. I think that’s what DI does because it’s in the workplace, so kind of there are people who you kind of have potentially more reach um in a different way.
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Yeah, you know, it is, you actually said the phrase, um, and I’m gonna quote, I think it’s a salt and pepper song, free your mind. No, I’m sorry. It’s in, in, in vogue. Thank you, thank you. Right, free your mind and the rest will follow. And I, I think that that’s something that a lot of people in America and around the world are working on right now is how do I free my mind from the cultural norms that have trapped us in this.We have to live our lives a certain way, we have to make a certain amount of money. You can only do these kinds of things in your life, and I think that that that is giving people the freedom to choose passion projects, to choose to become an entrepreneur because they always wanted to do something for themselves or to choose to say.I don’t want to work 40 to 50 hours a week. I’d rather figure out a way, how can I work 25 or 30 hours a week and spend that extra time with my kids. But I think that that kind of really to me sums up what you guys have shared with us today is this whole idea of freeing your mind, freeing yourself from these grips of society to say, I can go out and pursue what I want to pursue.
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Yeah, traveling abroad and I mean people of different cultures will really do that to you because they can, you know, we, we lived in Taiwan, you know, that had, you know, universal health care, and everyone had universal health care. You don’t have to worry about, you don’t have to worry about your job, um, you know, we were we lived in Switzerland for 3 years.Super common to work part time both doctors work part time, they want their summer vacations, you know, like, um, so and then when we traveled abroad, like, you know, there’s just different ways of living and so, you know, I mean not all of us can just travel abroad, but there are certainly lots of documentaries on on different lifestyles and ways that you can kind ofYou know, learn, you don’t have to come up with a solution. They’re love other people. Well, I figured out, yes, so I figured out different ways, uh, but it does take a lot of courage to think outside the box.
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So one of my favorite parts and things that we should all take part in is when Liso talked about mentorship. Whether you’re a mentor or a mentee, you both end up learning something, especially when we’re talking about money.
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Yeah, and many of us forget about the power of our mindset and how our money works and how we use our money. That’s why we like to recommend Morgan Hall’s book, The Psychology of Money, because it helps us understand how to reframe our mindset as well as understand who we truly are and our mindset’s ability for us to succeed.Thanks for tuning in.
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If you have questions or guest suggestions, just email us at yfpodcast@yahoo Inc.com. If you like what you see, scan the QR code to follow Yahoo Finance podcasts and more for more videos and expert insights. And
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if you’relooking for advice for your future money, head over to decoding Retirement on Yahoo Finance. And until next time,
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stay fabulous.
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This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.