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Ever wish you had a mentor to help you become who you were meant to be? Crystal Ware is redefining what it means to become your best self, in business, life, and love and sharing everything she she knows to get YOU there faster.
Are you stuck? Feel like you are meant for more but not sure how to breakthrough? Every week, we will explore all of your questions on building a path to true happiness, achieving success and creating our dream life. Brick by brick, we will work through the issues and mindsets that keep us stuck, dive into finding our passion and how to take ACTION. Clarity (vision) + Confidence (Owning your worth) + Courage (to live life on your own terms and become your own CEO) propels you to your destiny. And the good news it: its all within you!
Each week, host, Crystal Ware, will bring you all of the practical wisdom to grow every aspect of your career and life including mindset, vision, goal planning, social media management, financial acumen and so much more. You'll also meet top business leaders, entrepreneurs, mompreneurers and innovative thinkers who invested in themselves and found their way success and happiness by leading on their own terms.
You were made for more, so start living like it today. Join us as we take action, grow together, and get inspired to reach for your dreams.
00:02 - Crystal Ware
Welcome to the Get Clear with Crystal Wear podcast, the place where we get clear on our goals, own our worth and learn to be the CEOs of our own lives. I'm your host, crystal Wear, lawyer and former Fortune 500 corporate leader who found the confidence to say goodbye to a lucrative career and start my own business. Now I'm opening up the playbook and sharing everything I've learned to get you there faster. It may not be easy, but it will always be worth it because you are made for more. So put on your big girl pants, jump on board and let's reach for the stars. Are you ready to get clear? Welcome back to Get Clear with Crystal Wear. I cannot wait to dive into the topic Today.
I know that people are looking for happiness and joy and freedom, and we often talk about money and that is kind of the goal. That's what we're always reaching to more money, more financial resources, more ability and what we really want. You know there are some of us who really want material goods. Maybe we were raised with not having a lot, maybe we didn't get new clothes, and so material positions are important to us, but most of us, what most of us are truly looking for is freedom Freedom to use our time the way we want, freedom to make the choices in the lifestyle that we want to lead, within reason at least, and we often look towards money as the end all be all, but it's really financial freedom. And if we want financial freedom, we have to cut against the grain because people the statistics out there are staggering.
The average consumer debt, including credit cards and loans, is 38,000 per person per capita, which would put it out of a husband and a wife. A wife and a wife, whatever your situation, is significant. Other two people in a household 75,000 in debt. The average debt to income ratio is around 80%. What does debt to income ratio mean? It means that people are spending 80% of their gross monthly income towards debt payments, towards a house, loan, car loans, credit card payments. What other other debt they may have, leaving only 20%, thank you, to build up savings, investments or otherwise.
Live on, that is crazy, folks. How did we get here? It's partially driven by our consumer environment where more is more and you need to keep up with the Joneses, you need to keep up with your neighbors, you need to get the new shoes, the new car, the new clothes, all of the things we need. A bigger house. We need more, more, more, and really what we are seeing is an epidemic of debt, unhappiness, work and hustle culture, because we need to fuel the beast, we need to fuel the machine and what we really want is the freedom to live on our own terms.
And Jocko Willink is a retired Navy SEAL who has become pretty famous for his podcasts, for his books, for all the great insights that he has to share with us, and one of the things that he says that I routinely talk about with my kids, with my spouse, is discipline equals freedom. And if we take this to heart and we live by it and we soak in it and bask in it and bring all of what that means to us the discipline equals freedom we will actually be able to see, and do and live the way that we want. That doesn't mean that we can't have fun, that doesn't mean that we can't splurge, but first we have to do the things that we have to do before the things that we want to do, and that is where the true discipline comes from. So how are you gonna craft this life, how are you gonna create this life? How are you gonna build up the freedom that you're seeking the financial freedom by being debt-free and living below your means. It really is that simple.
It doesn't mean that we don't have debt, that some debt isn't a healthy debt, but honestly, until like the 1920s so like about a hundred years that we didn't see that debt was really a thing at all. Before that, most people were paying cash for a house, building it themselves, not taking loans out from the bank. I mean, it's really only been in the last 100 years where this has become a thing and then in the last 80 years where student loan debt and debt for consumer goods, all this other credit card debt grew and grew and grew. So these are all like new things that we're dealing with as people, and it may only be what we've lived in, what our generation, our parents' generation, our grandparents have lived in, but truly, in the grand scheme of things, this is a new phenomenon and we have to figure out a way to get away from it, to stop wanting what other people have to live below our means, to be better than the average. I mean, how are you gonna get ahead to create financial freedom if you only have 20% of your spending left to save, to grow, to invest, to live the life that you wanna live.
I just wanna pause and say thank you to all the amazing people tuning in and making this show a success and to share some exciting scoop. I am opening up, for the first time ever, one-on-one coaching. We have two options available the Executive Edge Two Week Program and the Career Catalyst Six Week Program, which will use my proprietary Earn it framework. If you're ready to propel your professional journey, crush your salary goals or need someone to coach you through a big career decision, let's conquer it together. Limited spots for unlimited empowerment. Links to sign up will be in the show notes and in the link tree on my Instagram and LinkedIn site. See you there.
We need to find a way to break free of debt, and living below our means does not mean that we cannot grow into higher earnings, into higher living okay, but it means that at every point along the trajectory we need to be living below our means. If you have $1,000 of income a week, you should be living on 700. That gives you a gap of 300 to be able to invest, to grow and to become free. We can't do that if we are servicing our debt and when we look at companies to invest in when we look at cash ratios and we look at debt to revenue. These are all indicators that we're judging and basing a company's performance and ability to keep performing on, and if companies, on average, were operating with an 80% debt to income ratio, they would be floundering. Our economy would be floundering. Yet somehow this is acceptable for us at large and we're not going to win.
This is not going to be a winning strategy, so you have to ask yourself what are your real goals in life? What are you trying to achieve? What does freedom look like for you? To find that for you, does it mean you want to be able to go on any vacation that you want to go on? Does it mean that if tomorrow you are unhappy with your boss or your company or your circumstances, that you could walk away from them with literally not a second thought? Does it mean that you want to be able to support your parents in retirement or that you want to support other family members? Does it mean that you want to have $100 million and really be wealthy and splashing out in every way? What is freedom for you? And when you define what freedom is for you, then you can create the goals that surround that, but the two points that I will come back to over and over and over and over and over again, because it's such an issue for Americans holding us back, keeping us locked into work and situations that we do not want to be in. And this affects women largely over men, even. Okay, because this is what we see in women that don't leave relationships that are abusive, or women that are unhappy or feeling unloved or with a spouse that is cheating on them. The reason is because they don't feel financially secure.
And how could you feel financially secure if you're walking around with a load of debt around your neck and your spouse's neck? How can you get out from under that? How can you start fresh? How can you start new? It becomes a point where it feels completely daunting and overwhelming. So you need to find a way to be debt-free. Now one could argue that there is a certain amount of debt, like a home or a car, that, on paper, maybe makes sense. That's totally up to you. But walking around with $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 of credit card debt because you cannot stop buying shoes or new clothes or buying, going out to restaurants too frequently or doing whatever else that you're doing with your money. Those are things that you can change, and it does not mean that your life has to change or be unhappy. There are ways to live within your means and below your means and still enjoy.
Believe me, I grew up in a lower middle class family where at times, we were paycheck to paycheck. I think I had a absolutely phenomenal childhood that I had so many fun experiences, but I didn't fly on a plane until I was 15 or 16 years old. Going on a school trip. We took driving trips to Florida, to Colorado, to Oklahoma, long driving trips because that was what was in the budget for us. I think my parents scrimped and saved for a year for us to go to Disney World when I was 17 years old, but it didn't hurt my childhood. My parents understood what it was like to have some debt early on in their relationship, to lose a job and not be able to make it economically, and that shaped what they did and how they taught me, and I am ever, ever, ever so thankful for that, because I have kept that close to my heart and I have lived well below my needs in order to have the future and the life that I want to have, and that's to be free, to be free to be me, to be free to follow my passion, to be free to take risks and opportunities when they are presented to me and not be burdened by this debt weighing me down and hindering my future.
It also comes into play when we think about investing and the compounding effect. Okay, how can we be investing for our future if we are paying out 80 cents to the dollar on debt repayment? That leaves us with such a little amount? And this is how credit card debt gets spiraled out of control. Because you have 10 grand, then you have 20 grand, then you're not buying, maybe you're not able to buy all your grocery needs, like things that you really need, and then you use your credit card for things that you need not things that you want, but things that you need because you are spending so much of your free money paying debt. It is the absolute opposite of where we're trying to go.
So it's not about making more money to make more money. It's about making more money so that we can get free, so we can live the life that we want to leave and feel contentment and happiness and joy and independence, because a sense of independence is so important to us as humans. There's so many psychological effects and studies done on this, and when we are stuck in the rat race, that's the opposite of being free and independent and it's not a good feeling and it taints our subconscious and it taints how we move through life. So I know when you're talking about money, when you're talking about income which are all so important right, those move the needle too. What you're really thinking about is how you can become financially free. How can you live the life you want, which is based on financial freedom at the end of the day, and this is how Get rid of your debt, live below your means. There are many people out there that can talk about that, that can educate you on that. I am happy to have conversations with people on how I've done that and how I've seen other people do it and how I've coached people on that, but there are free resources everywhere on the internet.
I just urge people to get clear on what it is you want in life. What does freedom look like for you? What do you need financially to reach the level of financial freedom and then build backwards from there? Create the plan. You can do it. People have dug themselves out of holes with a million dollars in debt. Okay, I have seen it and you can do it If you need to embrace frugality for a few years, make some sacrifices, educate yourself on literacy, start a side hustle, reach out to your community, whatever you need to do, but you need to get there.
You need to be better than average by a long shot, because right now, average is so bad. It is hurting our society as a whole, and the people getting rich are banks and big companies off of our debt. We need to break the cycle and we need to move forward and find a way to reach financial freedom by being content with where we are, by ignoring all the advertisements and consumer things pushing us towards buy, buy, buy, consume, consume, consume and being happy to be with our friends, our family, and having freedom the three Fs. Is there anything more beautiful than that? So what can I do to help you guys?
What else do you wanna hear about? Let me know, send me comments, send me any topics, anything along this route or anything else around money, getting clear on your goals, how to build your career. They all go together right. That is the life that we wanna leave, and each lever can change the direction in which we're going. But for today, that's what I wanna leave you with how to get financially free to create the life that you love. Do the things that you love and not be burdened Until next time. Keep getting clear, keep moving forward, keep progressing, and I'll see you, guys, next time. Click the link in the show notes and join thousands of others making their dreams a reality. Whether you are just embarking on the journey or well on your way, the Worthful newsletter has something for you. See you next week.