Hi everybody, welcome back to Healthy, Happy, Wise, Wealthy. I have with us today Al
Zdenek with Cake Club app. I'm so excited for that.
We also have our season 2 sponsor. I want to mention
they also— I'm going to say Mindiii, M-I-N-D-I-I-I,
4 I's. They are an IT company that's been in business for
about 15 years in India. They also build apps for businesses.
So kind of like Al did, he took his wisdom and built an app. They
can do that for you too. Okay, that's their little intro. So,
Al, thank you so much for coming on. Um, do you mind if
I kind of just read a little introduction about you from your LinkedIn? You have
such a good bio on there. No, please go ahead, and I will tell you
it's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, thank you so much.
So, I mean, Al, I mean, your, your LinkedIn bio says, my
mission is to strive to be a positive, powerful, successful influence in your life
and an advocate for you to live the life you want to You Want Now:
Achieve Your Financial Freedom in the Timeframe You Want and for the Future.
And you've been an entrepreneur and a leader in wealth management industry for more than
40 years. You're a personal financial specialist, a
certified public accountant, the author of the best-selling book Master Your Cash Flow:
The Key to Grow and Retain Wealth, which is in Forbes Books,
and Master Your Business Cash Flow: Grow the Company You Love, Live the Life You
Want Now, which is also Forbes Books. And you've founded many businesses.
So one of these is, is my Traust Sollus Wealth Management. Did I say that
right? Traust Sollus, but it's close. Okay,
so that was way back in 1982, uh, you did that and, um,
you sold that to— it was sold to Mercer Advisors in
2018. And so you recently co-founded
Servat. Well, it's called Servat, but, uh, basically it's
known as Cake Club. And so it's, it's the creator of the Cake Club App
at cakeclubapp.com and on the Apple
Store. That's awesome. So we're going to talk about that today,
but you also founded, uh, Tyrus Pictures, which is a feature
film production company. That's super fun. Yeah, we did that just
recently last fall, and, uh, I'm working with an LA attorney in the
entertainment field and a French, uh, screenwriter, and,
uh, we're having fun with that. So thank you. And you've been in all kinds
of publications— Forbes, Yahoo Finance, Fox Business, US World
News and Report, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, US Today.
And you've enjoyed, you've also lectured many organizations across the USA. You're on the
board of directors for the Somerset Medical Center in Somerset, New Jersey,
the board of directors of New Jersey Society of CPAs, board of trustees
of the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston.
And you have an, you are an elected office of
councilman, the police commissioner of your town. That's in the past, yes. Yes,
I was, and I was like on the council of Flemington, New Jersey, and I
was also a police commissioner for about 8 years. Oh my gosh,
so you have so many interests— writing, traveling, wine, cooking, reading,
genealogy, appreciation of art, supporting charitable
causes, an inner city scholarship fund for New York City,
an enthusiastic mentor, and I didn't know this, you're an
aspiring concert pianist. That's right. I
decided to take it up about 8 years ago. It's going to be a long
route for me. I'm hoping to get to Carnegie Hall, but I think I'm going
to have to rent the hall. That's awesome. And,
um, you and your wife live in Miami and Paris, both going back and
forth. So it's been, and it sounds like in a lot of ways,
a beautiful life. So I've been very fortunate.
Thank you. Yeah. So Al, you have done
wealth management planning for your career
with people, and one of the main tenets that you
use is not use a budget but use a spending
plan. So why is that? Why is that
better? Well, whenever you say budget to a person,
they sort of cringe or they, they don't like it. I mean, who
likes budget? Because it's restrictive. You're, you know, they feel
restrictive. You're about to tell me what I can't spend. So,
what we do is I say, well, let's not talk about budgeting. Let's talk about
a spending plan. Now, all I'm doing is reframing it.
But the thing is, when you reframe it, you're saying, okay, I want your input.
You can make the choices for this. I'm not going to tell you what the
budget is. You're going to make up a spending plan. And so, we get
people that eventually, you know, they get really involved in this.
And the thing is, when you do that also, there's a way to also
approach it because everyone is different. You can have what I call
a quick and dirty spending plan. Like, just look at the end of the
month— what came in, what went out, are you positive or not, you're
satisfied. Fine. If you're negative, you can go back and look at some
things and maybe have to make adjustments, but it's quick and dirty.
Because along with being told what to do and restrictive,
people think it takes too much time and it's boring. So
if you do it quick and dirty, 5, 10, 15 minutes at the end of
the month. They'd like that. But a second choice
of 3 choices is you can do something in between. Pick
maybe like, uh, 5 or 8 spending categories, like fixed
expenses— rent, car, whatever— uh,
other expenses, discretionary expenses, things that I have
choices, I have control— entertainment, travel,
whatever. And then just have it go into those 5 or 8 buckets.
And by the way, try to automate it. Like again, with the Cake Club
app, if you put in your, uh, if you give us your information, which is
very secure, uh, it'll go from your checking account or your credit cards, and
all your spending will go right into these categories.
So it's all already done for you. So you can look at it at the
end of the month or during the month and see if you're on, on spending
plan or not. And then finally, there's a third choice which very
few people choose. You get QuickBooks, you, you
record every expense, you have this big report with 30 lines in
it. The only people that like that are accountants and engineers,
and their spouses hate it. So we never do it.
So, so yes, our approach is that. Yeah, that's,
that seems so wise, um, because yeah, like, other— you don't want every
day to feel like tax day, you know. So yeah, you know,
pins in yourself. Oh my God, I have to look at this. Yeah,
yeah, that makes so much sense. So tell me how the Cake
Club app— and you can go to cakeclubapp.com
for the website, and that kind of goes through everything, and then there is an
app for your phone. How did that come about?
Well, again, I was in the business for a long time, and I sold my
firm in 2018, and
I worked for them a couple years, but then I get out of the business
and Uh, you know, my mission in the business was to
always help people make better financial decisions, live the life they
want along the way, and get to financial freedom in the time frame they wanted.
Yeah. And so I sold the company and I left the company, but my mission
didn't end. You know, I found out I still wanted people— I want to contribute
to people that way. So I started writing articles for LinkedIn,
uh, and posts or whatever, and got, you know, I, I mentor some
people. But then this, uh, this young man, his name is
Amin Boroomand. He's the CEO of Cake Club. He called me
up one day about a little less than 2 years ago, and he wanted to
meet in New York City. I, I lived in New York at the time, and,
uh, we went out for lunch. He was very enthusiastic. He's
a PhD data scientist, um, and he
said, what struck me is that by the time I got out of school— because
he went to, you know, undergrad, graduate, another graduate school
for his PhD— So, he said, by the time I got done, I get out
and he says, I don't know how to make any financial decisions. I don't know
how to even like, do I lease or buy a car? Do I
lease or buy a house or whatever? And he said, and I found out all
my other colleagues were the same way. So, he said, there's a lack of
financial education. So, he read my books, he read my
articles and he wanted to sit down. He said, Al, I want to start an
app. I want to create an app. That helps thousands, tens
of thousands, millions of people, you know, make better
financial decisions and live the life they want,
but also have financial freedom in the timeframe they want. So, I
was impressed with his passion. So, I said, "Well, why don't we do it together?"
So, we started Cake Club and we made a Cake Club because we
think that financial decisions should be as easy as a slice of
cake and maybe have to bake your spending plan. We can use a
lot of analogies and things that, that around
baking. We started that and we now have a basic
financial, we have a basic budgeting app. And part of that app is
where if you put in your credit card information, not your personal information, just the
card you have, there's GPS assigned to this so
that if you go into a store around where your phone
is, it'll tell you what card to use for the, for the
best cash rewards or miles or whatever. So it's our way of
finding cash now immediately for you, right? And, uh,
we're doing that. And in the future, what we're doing right now, we're intensely
working, is we're going to have— if you go to the website,
uh, cakeclubapp.com, you'll notice at the bottom right-hand part
of the screen, every, every screen, there's a sort of round little icon.
If you click on that, another little sub, uh, sub-sheet comes
up and it's, it's Ask Albert, and
you can type in whatever question you want. We have some sample questions, uh,
financial questions, and I'll answer you like I would have done it based on my
books, my articles, and my career. So it's not, it's not just
this chatbot out there, it's actually our
AI-owned, uh, AI intelligence that's basically,
that it's answering the questions as I would. And what we want to do is
put that on the phone because we think especially with many and generations
today, if they're out and about somewhere and they have a question, they want to
be able to have that and not have to go to their laptop. We're doing
that. We're going to add some things on taxes, some things on investment as we
go along. And, uh, so, uh, I
continue my mission. I love that. I— when I, when
I see the Cake Club app, I think of have your cake and eat it
too. Have your cake and eat it too. Great, great. Yes.
Yeah, but it also, you know, it is, it really is when you don't have
the, the, you know, we aren't, we aren't really in
our education system really taught good
financial management. But also then in life, you know, there can be
big hiccups. And I know you've, you've been very honest
and as our talks before about, you know, you had a big hiccup too.
And, and so you've, you lived through some stuff and not
when you don't have control of your money, that's when it feels
so, uh, tense and, um, like, am I going to
survive? And frightening. Yeah. And I've been
there. You're right. I mean, I know what it's like to have your last dollars
in the bank. I know what it's like to have mortgage payments that are coming
up, and I had two kids. And, you know, I, I know it's like to
almost lose your house. Uh, I was there, and, and I was
there because Even though I was a CPA and a tax person,
I would never knew finance. I knew those narrow parts of
finance. And so I made a lot of cash flow management decisions, uh, that
were poor, uh, and I almost paid the price for it. But I was
lucky. Um, I started asking people for help. This one particular
person, Darrell Cain out of Dallas, he by that time in
the '80s was probably the most successful CPA financial planning
company. Flew down to see him. I said, Darryl, I want to know everything you
know. And now, initially when I saw him, by the way, I wanted just the
process so I could sell it to my accounting firm. But he said,
Al, it doesn't work that way. Do you have a
financial plan? I said, me? Oh, I do my clients'
tax returns first. I do mine in October. I'll do my plan later. He said,
no, no, no, no. He said, for you to understand how people feel, you must
do your plan. He sat down with me to do a plan, and I was
in bad financial shape. But when he did it, I
didn't realize how really bad it was until I saw it on paper. And
I thought to myself, I'm going to have to work like this for the rest
of my life, 70s, 80s. I said, my God. He said, now you know
how people feel when they're in bad financial shape, when they're hopeless, or they don't
know what to do. He said, now I'm going to show you how to
handle it. So he showed me a different way. Way of looking at finance,
what we call cash-oriented
approach. They're basically where you looked at things to look for
cash flow all the time and not necessarily working harder.
So, like around debt, around so many other things, taxes.
So, he taught me. And so, when I saw him, I was in my early
to mid-30s. I put together a plan that I wanted to be
financially independent or financially free by age 50.. And
by using those principles, I got there by age 48.
I was so thrilled what he did. He changed my life. I
thought to myself, I had never changed a person's life with a better
tax return or a better accounting report, but I can change a person's
life with this. So I went back, redid my whole firm
to where it was a wealth management company. And that, that's how we did
this. And that's why I do the work I still do today.
That's such a beautiful story. I love that. I feel like there's so
many times, like even the one, uh, our podcast from
last week was all about, um, it
was more, it was about divorce. So of course all
these financial, uh, bombs drop on you with that. And so if you can,
if you can just get, you know, take your emotions down to the
level where you're— you can really like look at things without the shame, without the
fear, without all that stuff. It becomes a lot
more manageable. So I, I really appreciate that, like, just,
you know, that you're so forthcoming and going, I've lived
life and it wasn't working, you know, that this part wasn't working, and now I
found a way where it's going to be helpful to people. I love that. Well,
I think you, you probably heard this, people want to know who you are before
they want to know what you what you have to offer them or what
you know. I found when sitting with people over the years that
they do come in. I mean, I've sat with people who are in the verge
of bankruptcy. I've sat with people that are very wealthy, who cash flow is
out of hand. They don't know what to do. And they feel ashamed. They feel
like they should be able to handle this. They're
smart people. And there's a shame to it. And so you have to show
them you've been there. Because you know what it
feels like, you know. And, um, and I think that's, uh, I think
because of that, now they can tell you everything. They can be honest about
it and whatever, and it helps them. So, um,
so I learned that a long time ago, and I want people to know that.
I mean, I— it's my way of contributing to people, you know. I, I'm
not this know-it-all expert or whatever. Like most people, or everyone
in the world, you learn through knocks, you learn through
failures. And you want to share your failures. That's how you
learn. Yeah, for sure. We're all just people making it through this
world, for sure. Right. You know, and it worked
for you. Now, you know, it turned around and
it's worked. So, um, so for a cash flow
with the app, how does the app help people kind of figure
out where their cash is at and come to
some sense of where it's going and that kind of thing? How does that help
people? Well, keep in mind, again, basically it's a basic—
right now, basic budgeting or spending
plan app. And so we give people a choice, quick
and dirty, only a few categories, or a full
budgeting on how to like start looking at what you're spending. You know,
it all begins like if you want to make financial decisions, you have to look
at, well, where am I now? It's like planning a
trip. If you're planning a trip, you have to know where the beginning, middle, and
end is. So, so let's say— and most people don't really know, most
people are scared to know sometimes— but just by finding out quick
and dirty what came in for the month, what's there, at least it's
a start. Yeah. And then if you see that, you know, you're in the red,
well then you go back and see, well, what did I do? If it's in
the black, that's, that's great. So, that's a start. Once
you know that, then you say, "Okay, now, where do I want to
go?" So, maybe you have some short-term needs, like you want an
emergency fund. Let's say because you don't— you're cash-strapped and you want to at least
have a month or 2 or 3 expenses in case you lose your job, whatever.
Well, that's the first thing you do is you concentrate on saving for that. Make
sure you're all safe. Now, let's say you're doing that,
but now maybe a bonus comes in, a tax refund. You get
a raise, a new job, so there's more money. Then you say,
okay, now what do I really want in 5 or 10 years or more,
right? And then you can start making choices that way. Do I want a vacation
home? This is where I want to live. But then, especially if you're a little
older, like Gen Zers are looking at short-term things, 3 to 5,
10 years. You know, you spend— you take 30 years for them, they think that's,
that's forever. Um, uh, when you get to some millennials who are in
their 40s, they see 50 coming soon and 60 doesn't look
as far as it used to be.
Yeah, your Gen Xs are already around there, and then
of course your Boomers are in their, in their 70s and whatever.
But, uh, so you have to see where people are. But once— but
it all begins what's coming in and what's going out so that
you have the choices, or as you put your spending
plan or your life plan together, you know, that, you know, you start
to have, you start to make better financial choices. Yeah. And
you feel probably better because you have some sense
of control. So, um, what do you find? I know there's on the
website, there's just different things for different generations. So what are, what
are the Gen Zs like? What are they? Or should we start with
Gen X? Let's start with Gen X. I'm Gen X.
What are— we're the Xs. We're just like, we don't even have a name. It's
just like disease. You're between boomers and millennials, you know, you know, and it's
sort of— you're a mixture because you— some of you cross over to
each category. Uh, you know, the Gen Xers were people who really didn't save
a lot. They were into other things in their life. They were
helping people. There was things they weren't there. Now, now they're getting a little
more serious. Now they're saying, you know, I got to get my act
together. So, so basically, uh, so it's really neat to deal
with Gen Xers because they're malleable now. See,
sometimes when you're— when Gen Xers were younger, forget it, they weren't
going to say— you can't tell them to do that, you know. But, but,
but it's different for them now. So, uh, so, so you have to
understand that's where they are, and the period they're in is that they're
still decent amount of time to really affect their life to how they
want to retire or be financially free. And keep in mind,
freedom is different for everyone, you know, different levels of income and
wealth. So, but now, now they're more interested
in it. Millennials,
uh, basically, um, they're, they're, they're basically, uh, you know, they're in
their early 40s. And again, like I said before,
50, they're almost— they're looking at 50s. It's a little closer than it was. And
60 is not that far away. So, they're getting more serious. And millennials tend to
be a little more serious, more serious from
what I can see. When you
get to Gen Zers, Gen Zers are really
different. You know, it's really funny. Every
generation has somewhat the same issues. It's how they approach it and when
they do it. Everyone wants to have some financial
freedom. Everyone wants to have a home or something. There's something around finance they
all want. But it's how they want it and how they're looking at it and
in what time frame. From my gift from
Gen Zers,
they've seen Millennials and Gen Zers
screw up, or their parents are from that. So they are
affected somewhat. They also see a few things. Some of them were young
when they lived through the Great Recession in 2008. They lived
through COVID. There's things that have really interrupted them and
their lives. Yeah, I think they're, I think they're a little more fearful, a little
more distrustful. I think they're actually a little more saving-oriented. They're a
little more responsible. When I say that, they want to
be responsible. They want to know more things. They want to know how to make
better financial decisions. They want better education,
but But their trust level is not very
high. They wanna make sure whoever's telling them this knows what they're talking
about, is not gonna be these salespeople, like, "Give me your money, I'll
invest it." I have an awful lot of respect for Gen
Z. I mentor a few of them, and they're
really responsible people. Yeah, and they've
really seen so much— I mean, we've all seen so much change come down in
terms of, You know, when I was taught by my mother how to
do financial management, it was how to manage your checkbook, you know,
which is a really pretty straightforward coming in, going
out, coming in, going out. Nobody has a checkbook anymore. I don't have a
checkbook either. So, you know, like, so keeping
track of that coming in, going out, coming in, going
out is, can be a little bit more challenging.
Also, like when we were young— On the other hand,
they're very automated. They're very computer and whatever and
phone automated. Like we struggle with sometimes paying things. They just
pay things. I mean, they're amazing with how they
use electronics today that we're still getting used to or keeping
up with. Yeah, that too. I remember, you know, this is
probably a decade ago, but my son got a check and he just took a
picture of it and deposited in the bank and, you know, through an app on
his phone. And I had not started doing that yet. So it was like, why
is this not in there? You know, stuff like that. But, you know,
it has evolved over time for
sure. Yeah. So if a millennial, I know, you know, there's, there's
ways to like, so if there's just, if you're looking at your spending and there's
not enough money coming in, how
do you like, there's just, and maybe, you know, some
of it nowadays too, you know, the cost of living has
gone up significantly since, you know,
2019 through COVID, just housing has gone up. So
how do we, how do we bridge the gap for people who are really
struggling with bringing in enough money to kind of COVID some
of those things? Well, again, going back
to finding what's coming in and going out first, seeing if there's
like any waste in there. Do you have too many
subscriptions, cable channels you're not using, other things like that, right? And try to
get more lean there. And then maybe if you're saving but it's
still not enough to what you want to do, well, maybe you have to look
at the other side, which is income. So, where
do you work? Are you giving to
your 401(k)? Is your paycheck enough to cover everything? Let's say it's
not, or let's say it's not enough where you want to
save more. When was the last time you asked for a raise? And by the
way, some of these things can be difficult. You tell a person, they may not
want to do that. Or what's the future at your
job? Like, I have a millennial— I'm sorry, I have a Gen Zer right now.
He wants to be— he's 23. He's on his
own almost. His parents are subsidizing a little bit, and his main thing over
the next 3 years is to be completely free of his
parents because he doesn't want to bother them. He doesn't want to be a burden
to them and he wants to be free of them. So that's a
short-term plan. So I had him, I advised him, why don't you go talk to
your employer and say, well, for one thing, what does that mean? How much
is your, what's your spending plan for that? How much do you need to make
that happen? So he knows that now. He knows what he gets paid. He knows
there's a gap. I said, you might want to sit down with your employer and
say, look, I love being with your job, uh, you know, I love the
company, I want to— I'm gonna— my whole career is here, but what do I
look like in advancement or whatever over the next 2 or
3 years? And he said— and I said, that kind of conversation might give you
an idea whether that's going to be solid
for you. But even if it doesn't, maybe you'd like to— maybe you still want
to stay there and, and grow with them. So maybe look at some
side gigs, whether it's working part-time for one
of the transportation services— Lyft,
Uber, DoorDash— or maybe because a lot of Gen Zers have these talents
today with computers, start a side gig where
you help put up websites or you be a personal
assistant or, or help people. I mean, we all use, we all use
some of these people to a certain
extent.? And then maybe at your current job, what kind of
skills can you learn to get higher advancement? Or maybe you have to
leave your job. But the thing is you don't know until you know
what the gap is and what you have to do. So, it all
begins again back to your spending plan. But there are ways. It's
just not like— sometimes people get into what I
call seesaw thinking. Seesaw, right? If I
want that, I can't have that. If I do this, I
can't have that. Like, for example, I buy the car I want, I can't— I'm
not gonna be able to save. Um, if I, if I, if
I save too much, I can't— I, you know, I, I
can't have my lattes. I tell people, you
know, instead of thinking like that, think, why
can't you have both. Why can't you have your
lattes and save? Why can't you have your car and save? You know,
get into that mindset because, as we talked about a little bit
the last time, the mind's very powerful.
It'll tell you what you can and cannot do, even
if it's unreasonable. Our mind's 24/7. So, it tells
you, no, you can't have that. No, you can't spend that. You'll never have that
in your lifetime. We had these ungenerous conversations. Reframe
it like I reframed from budget to spending plan. Reframe
like, okay, instead of seesaw, have both. And then, then if you, if
you have a thought that way, then how do you do it? You may need
to get help from that. You may need to sit down with a financial planner.
You may need to sit down with someone who
has financial capabilities. But the thing is, once you know the basics, what
comes in and out, you can start to take action. If
you want to. Yeah, this is your plan, is your life. You
make the choices. Yeah. And, you know, I feel like you're touching on— it's just
kind of like when you're— there's so many— there's options
and there's possibilities. And so, you know, when we are really stuck
in fear and anxiety, that our whole
system tends to, you know, retract into— we're not, we're not
seeing the possibilities, we're not seeing the options, we're not seeing that
we have options. So I love how you're kind of— and
using the word reframing, you know, we can do this
and we can do that also. So touches
on a couple conversations I've had recently with like, what are you— what are your—
what's your— what are your— what's going through your head all the
time? What's your internal conversation you're
having with yourself? So if it is filled with the thought
of possibility, that's gonna— that's gonna like it's going to affect finances
and every other part of your life. So, but by the way, that's
a really great question when you're working with someone. I
don't care what profession, but I was in finance. Like, you, you say something
to a person and you see them thinking, you say, well, how's that
landing for you? What's going through your head? What are you thinking right now?
You know, because, you know, it'd be amazing. It's amazing to get the
feedback, but, but they like the fact you're asking it because you're interested in what
they're thinking. You're listening. But But, but, you
know, again, internal. Communications and external,
extremely important. Yeah, for sure. And it is a world, you know, especially we live
in now of, I think, of excess, that there's just always everything you can
purchase and buy and always the next thing.
I've thought, you know, in my family, the, the boomers are the
ones that were just, and they still are
today, they're so
frugal. So frugal. And I do think that's, that's just, that's a thought. I
think for Gen Zs who look, they look at boomers as being
like people who life was easy. It was easy to get a job, easy to
get a house, da da da. But
that's, I never, I never saw
them having excess. And that was without lattes, without a computer,
without a cell phone. Like all the things that weren't even in
the world yet. So, they drank black
coffee, you know, my family. I think that that was basically because they were raised
by the greatest generation who went through the Great Depression. Yeah.
I mean, you were always reminded of the Great
Depression. And so, your parents are always, "Debt is bad. Don't do
this. You know, watch your spending." You're reminded of
that. By the way, you did have part of
that generation rebel in the '60s, right? I don't want to hear it,
Dad and Mom. So you had that part too. But
I think it's like one generation keeps on
affecting the others. Again, Gen Zers today will look at
millennials and Gen Xers and say, I don't want to wind up
like them too. We're always harsher to the previous
generations for some reason. But, but I get what you mean
about the frugality. We're more practical, more, you know, you have to
have a reason for— they almost look at us like we're not
fun, we're not free, you know. I guarantee you, even though
I'm a boomer, I'm very free. But, uh,
but no, I, I can. Get where people think
that. Yeah, well, and it's just like, uh, you can't, like, you
can't hold generations right now side by side because our experience in
the world because of how it's changed with, um, you
know, technology and whatnot, is so
dramatically different, um, that we, we've just seen the world change very fast and that
it does affect money, uh, for sure.
Definitely. Yeah. So what are some of the common questions people ask?
So on the— I love this so much that that chat box
on the website or on the app has, you.
Cakenow, ask, ask Albert. Yeah, well, it's gonna be
on the phone later. We're doing it now, but it.
Is on the laptop. Okay, so on the website.
So what are some common questions.
That people ask? Well, so one, I'll give you some normal, then
I'll give you some wild ones.
Okay. Now the normal one is
like, look, I I'm X years old, I'm earning this
amount of money, I have a choice of paying down credit card
debt, my car loan, or my student debt. Which should
I do first? What's the primary— what's the priority I should
have? That's one. And or else, like, you
know, I'm barely saving enough. What kind of options do I have? Again,
that's a gig or or
income part. Or, look, I'm just beginning. I don't know
nothing about finance. What should I be reading? What can I be doing
to learn more? We'll have some questions like
that. One sort of off-the-wall question, it
was kind of actually scary and frightening, was this
one person said, I'm 20-something years old.
I see no way I can— get out of this, whatever.
I'm thinking of suicide. What should I do? So how
the— how the— how my— how I answered was that, for one
thing, if you're thinking of that, you call up suicide hotline, because
I can't do anything with you if you're not alive. But if you're alive,
I can help
you. Yeah. So, but, uh, you get questions like that. Uh, it's a
lot. You get a lot of, uh, tales of struggle
or being frightened or what do I do next. But,
and then you get again, when you tell what's like, going back to
the one where what's my priority? Should I be paying down
credit card debt, student debt, or saving? What should I do
first? You know, I'm always one to basically say, well, look,
let's start with emergency funds.
Like, you know, what can you do? Do you have any extra money to put
aside for the next month or two to where you can build up about a
month of expenses in case you get laid off, in case you have an emergency.
Because so you're reliant. So, because I think people, if they have
that, there's now there's a sense of security. There's more sense that they
have some choices. And then I always go into debt and say, well, if you
have student or credit card, let's talk about maybe there's a way
to restructure that so that you wind up with— so You
are paying less payments per month, but
you're saving more. And then keep in mind that again,
with our site, and that we have where we talk about compounding,
we talk about tax effects, because these things are
very important when you finally are saving money to understand
those. And we want people to save money as soon as possible.
We're sort of contrarian thinkers around that. I'm not
a big thing. I'm not a big person on you pay off your debt as
soon as possible. I think you restructure it or, or get to where
it's better debt. There's bad debt and good debt, but there's ways
to get there to basically— that's going to help you
possibly save more. Yeah, I love that. And I, I really
do like— I, I lived in the same town as a
very famous, uh, financial, um, it was
Dave Ramsey. Oh, Dave Ramsey. Yeah. Yeah, so
going through his stuff, it is— he's very much more, you're gonna do this and
you're gonna do this, and this is what you're gonna do. And
that does create this sense of. I don't think I like that.
Well, people like choices. Like, what do you want to do? These are
your choices. And I respect Dave Ramsey, but
I also think he— I don't agree with him around debt. He's a—
he— a lot of people like Suze Orman or Dave Ramsey are like
pay off your debt first and save. I don't agree with that. I think you
have to get emergency funds first, and then you have to
ask yourself, like, what major corporation is
debt-free? Is Warren Buffett debt-free? No. Is it—
what, what major billionaire is debt-free? No, no, they have debt,
and their companies have debt, because they know they use
debt to build wealth, to build value,
right? And, uh, And so, you know, you have to learn to
use debt smarter, right? So, for example, I'll give you an example because I'm
just— we're talking about— we're talking theory here. So, let's say you have
$10,000 in credit card debt. And let's say you
have to pay $500 a month on this. And, you
know, and so you can't save. You say you can't save. So, I
always tell people, well, first thing is that if you wanted to, you
can play the credit card game of going to zero
financing. Saving some money that way. But another way is to call the credit card
company and say, look, I'm having— I'm struggling, um, I, I
can't pay the 24% interest. Can we come to an agreement to
where maybe for like a year I pay zero interest, or you bring it down
to 5% or 6% or something? Or this is what I can only spend, that's
what I'm going to spend with you. How can we make that
work? So let's say— and let's say they're cooperative, maybe you have—
you can negotiate down to where it's $250 a month. Well, now you're saving $250
a month or $3,000 a year. Yeah. And if you
have a 401k at work and you can put that money in there, you get
a match from the employer, plus your taxes are lower. So you can end up
saving like $4,000 or $5,000 a year from that, that one
thing. But let's say the credit card says, oh, forget it. Well, there's ways
to get credit card companies, uh, attention. Uh,
stop paying them. Now again, that affects your credit rating
temporarily, but the thing is you'll get their attention. Then they'll negotiate, or
eventually you can even hire— there are attorneys or groups out there that basically
will negotiate for you. That, that's one way to do it.
Another way is, um, and again, this may be a harder thing for some people,
but, uh, go to a bank. If you have— if you have a
small business especially, or you have relationships with a bank Ask
for an interest-only loan. Say I want an interest-only loan for
the next 3 years. All right. And let's say the
interest rates are like 7%. So what,
that's what, $700 a year. So divided by 12, that's what,
$60 a month. So you were spending $500 a month. Now you're only
down to $60. So you're spending, you're saving
$440 a month or over $5,000 a year. And so you
can quickly get that emergency fund up. You can quickly give to your 401(k). You
can start building wealth. Now, yeah, you had that
$10,000 left to pay, but if you— if you're earning— if you're
saving $5,000 a year and then you're saving a 401(k) and
getting a match and saving taxes, maybe you're saving 6
or 7. In 3 years, you'll have
$18,000 of saving or $21,000. You had this debt of $10,000. But
now you have $21,000. Yeah, see, you're
getting to where you're safer. There's clarity.
You're, you know, it's safer if you have money. People have zero—
people who have zero debt and zero cash are very unsafe. They have
an emergency or something comes up, what can they do, right? If
people have some debt and cash, they always have options. Now
you can also do what I did. Um, well, there's
other options too. You may go to your parents, you may not like that,
and say, look, $10,000 and I'll give you
10% interest for like 3 years. So you think, my God,
10%, you know, you can get rates low. But the thing is, you
need to get cash flow.
So 10% of $10,000 is $1,000. That's about
what, $80 a month. So you're
saving $420 a month. It's the same thing. You have more than enough either
to pay them off to where you'll have
something net, or you can't— you say, can I keep on doing it? By the
way, I, I've done the same thing. I had a $20,000—
3— over 3 credit cards and loans. I ended up saving
about $1,000 a month, saved in taxes, saved,
uh, in a 401k. I was even saving because of that. I
was saving up to $15,000, $18,000 a year. In
3 years, I had over $50,000 for
the same $20,000. Well, I still have that note. I had
never paid that note off because if something's working for you and you
keep on earning, getting cash, and you're taking
advantage of compounding, you know, so, so you see how like now again, I
respect Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman, but But look, see,
you can really solve a short-term cash flow and emergency
fund problem for a person by showing them not necessarily
how to pay off their debt, how to have good debt, how to make
it work for you to have cash flow. So that, that's how
we think in. A more contrarian way.
I love that. That's so great. So when you get
the Cake Club app on your phone,
You're going to put in your, your bank account if you want to, any credit
cards, and that, and that will kind of basically help you just keep
track of everything a little bit easier. Is that kind of the main, one. Of
the main goals? There's two functions of our app right now. There's
the spending plan or the, or the budgeting app where you put in your credit,
actual credit card numbers and your bank accounts and
all your transactions daily. Will show up
and they'll automatically go to these, to the
budget categories you want. Okay. Now we have one where
we will actually put them into categories, but then you can, you can change that
to whatever you want. Okay. That's one way. So you can see at the end
of the month what came in total and what went
out. Okay. So that's one way. Uh, the other way is that again,
because we're cash-oriented, we're always trying to find cash. Is that
something we found very quickly to put on is what we
call cash rewards. So all you do is you don't even have to input your
actual credit card numbers, just tell us what credit cards you have. Like, do
you have a Citi, Citibank, Silver or Gold
or something? And then
our internal operations will know what that is. And what it'll do, if you have
3 or 4 cards is that when you go into
a store, you know, you go into your app and it'll tell you which one
to put in, in order, which one to use to get the
most points for, for either cash reward dollars for
cash rewards or points for
travel or, or miles. Yeah, that's
so cool. So it's just kind of like it helps you. It's kind of
like your brain, um, without having to spend so
much energy inputting everything into QuickBooks or whatever else you're going to
use. It's kind of right there on the. App is how I'm hearing that.
Well, no, it's right. It's to make it easier because again, when you come to
a spending plan or a budget, you know, people don't want to sit there
and input the stuff. So automate it. Automate as much as
you can because, you know, and but all you're doing
is getting clarity. You're getting where you are. You're getting your starting points where you
are so you can make better decisions. That's our, that's
our main thing right now. Then, of course, we're adding the AI and
we're adding eventually some things around taxes, investment as
we go along. By the way, one thing we're doing, because, you know, I've written
two books, Master Your Cash Flow. We are going to have a Master Your Cash
Flow, another book, Master Your Cash Flow. We haven't gotten the real title. It's going
to come out in June yet, but it's around Cake Club. Maybe it'll
be something like Master Your Cash Flow. Master your cash
flow via using Cake Club, or, or use Cake Club and have your cake
and eat it too. Or something like that.
Yeah, however you slice that cake, you can eat— slice it,
still have it,
still eat it. Analogies. So, you know, I
know you've counseled people over the years. When people— if someone comes to you
and they are kind of in a level of stress that, that borders
on maybe terror, or we're not going to make it. Like, what are some of
the things you do to just kind of help them through that
emotional state, to get through so they can
start looking at, you know, their situation a different way?
For one thing, you listen. You don't
make them wrong because they have their own point of view, right? There's no wrong
on how you feel, your perspective. You say, well, why do you feel
that way? They may say, I have all these credit cards, I can't
make my payments, whatever. You listen. And
when you listen, you get an idea of who they are, what kind of resources
they have, and how maybe to take the conversation. Give
you an example. I had a couple, they were in
their early 60s. They just lived through the 2008 recession.
They lost almost everything.
They were retired. She was 62, he was
63. They lost almost everything. They did have
a paid-for house. They were— they had— they thought they
have to work forever, just have to work. They had no
idea how they could possibly retire. So I listened,
and they were frightened. They were, you
know, basically in tears, but I saw how
to help them. So when I helped them, I said this,
I said, look, I can get you there to where maybe you can retire
in 5 years. Now, this is after doing work, right? But this is
what you might have to do. These are your
choices. One choice, very important choice, is you must
sell your house. And they had a decent amount of equity in that house. I
said, you must sell your house and now rent after
that because you have too much equity in there. And let's put
that to work. Yeah. So we started where that could be invested and
they would rent and they got a very nice townhouse for a very
nice rent. And then I said, and then I said,
especially the husband, I said, you're going to have to work for another 5 years.
And actually, I got him a job. I talked to another person. There was
a local hospital, the one I was on the board of. He got a job
there. So, I said, "He got a job with
his pay." And then, and they lived, you know, they didn't live an
extravagant life. And she worked part-time. They were able to save
enough over 5 years to actually retire when
he. Was 68 and she was 67. Oh, that's
beautiful. Now, there's another one too, a lot more affluent. These people were not as
affluent, but I sat with a couple. This shows you whether you're
wealthy or have affluence or not, you face the same issues.
They had some of the same issues.
His wife was 72. He was 80. They
had a beautiful penthouse apartment in New York City. He at one
time was the president of a major corporation
20 years before. But bad decisions, the market, whatever,
they were running out of money. And he was
very concerned because, you know, he saw a shorter lifespan for himself, but he was
very concerned about his wife. So,
and they had a few issues around their portfolio,
whatever. So I said, I can help you. Oh, by the way, they were at
a point in life where there was deferred maintenance on
the apartment. They couldn't do that. They quit all travel. They quit all entertainment. And
they used to be, used to entertain or belong to
a couple of societies. So, and now they were just in what
I call, they were just waiting to die. It's
terrible. So I said, I can help you with everything. I
can restore everything you had, your cash flow. And so
what it did again, what we did this time, they had their penthouse was
almost all paid off. We borrowed
heavily against it. Right. And because of the interest rates and all that, I think
we were able to give them tax deductions. They saved a lot of taxes. We
took the money, put into a very good portfolio, as well as the money
they had left. He had a small pension, and we were
able to restore their cash flow they had before, and,
and to where his wife would be, would be okay up
to age 100. Oh, wow. But by the way, he died at 90. By the
way, they became close friends and they were just
a lovely couple. But the thing is, they restored it to
where they could entertain, they could take
vacations, whatever. And she's still alive. He's passed away, but, and
she's still fine. She's still fine. See, it's
never too late. It's never too late to take some action. That does not mean
it has to be action that you might like. Like, you know,
you may not like to sell your house, or there's always some way to do
it. There's always some way to help people, I think, if
they want to be helped. But people have to understand that
it begins with— it's your life, you know. What you want is to
work with someone who gives you choices, not tells you what to do,
because, you know, I don't think— I don't believe in that. Give you choices, like,
if you did this, this could happen, you could have this. What do you
want to do? And so if
you have choices, I will tell you, I think no matter where you are in
life, I've dealt with people that had almost nothing in their
40s or 50s, and then they're, they're fine now. But you
may have to do things that you didn't do before, but
it's your choice. No one's going to care about your money and life more
than you will. Whoever you're using, the financial planner, investment advisor, you're
going to care more about your money than they do. Just
always understand that. So unless you're involved or somehow, you know, be
an advocate for yourself, um, you know, you're not—
you may not get as much out of, uh, your work
life and your assets or your. Wealth as much as
you can. Yeah, I love that. Well, I have a question for you now that
I know that you have this creative side too. I don't I
knew that before. Um, and you know, I am— before moving to Reno a couple
years ago, I was in Atlanta and pursuing acting as
a career, which if you're an actor, you know, you can't make all your
money on that. Or maybe any of your money on that. Maybe you
might just, you know, it might turn out to be you made $10 this year
from, you know, after your expenses. Uh, so
you rely on different things that aren't necessarily career-based, and
a lot of people do gig work or restaurant work or
something like that. So for people that are pursuing like something like that
where it is a creative career, have you worked with people like that? And then
they're doing the work, and is there specific like thoughts you
have. For that on— well, again, I, I
haven't worked with many, uh, actors, but there's
one in LA I've worked with her and her
husband, and, uh, and she came close a couple times to get on series, and
she has You know, she has part-time things, and you're right, and she
knows she couldn't survive on this. But,
uh, she, she turned to teaching, and
she was very successful. Yeah, she's very successful
being a teacher or having a school. So you
do that, um, you know, uh, you know,
coaching. There's a lot of acting people because I, I think they're
much more sensitive and they communicate better. Yeah, coaches
are natural for them. And, and, um, I'll tell you a
story about a coach, tell you how creative you can be with this. So I
had a coach, he was, he was actually coaching other actors
and other top executives, and, uh, he was— his
book was full, you know, uh, and, uh, and he was earning decent— he was
earning good money, but his life was just terrible. He was traveling
all the time. He said, now I can't live this way. And
I said, okay, uh, I've looked at your— I looked at what you have. I
said, uh, double your fee immediately. Now
he was charging $2,500 a day for this, and which was even cheap
at that time. Uh, and I said, charge $5,000. And he looked at me, he
says, I can't do that, everyone will leave me.
I said, are you getting referrals? I said, do you have any spare time? Are
you getting referrals? Yes. Then I said, I tell you what, let's do it
this way. Anyone who's new, you charge double. If
everyone else is saying, let's try that. So he found
that no one argued. So he eventually charged
double everyone else. So he doubled his fee, he
doubled his income, no more time working just
by doing that. Eventually I got him to like triple and get him up to
$10,000 a day. Yeah. So, so, so the thing is, keep in mind, a lot
of people— and I think actors, it's a sort of double-edged sword when they do
this— they're, they're, uh, they're, uh, I don't know
what it is. Uh, by the way, it's not them also, it's just psychologists
and other, other people in that sensitive field, or whether they use
their senses a lot. They, they don't have enough
confidence in charging. They're terrible. They're terrible in charging
fees and terrible negotiating. So you teach them that, and
just by simple that, like, and so you
help them that way. And sometimes, you know, keep in mind, you want people to
change immediately, but you can't change people. You have to take them
slowly through things. You have to listen, be patient,
give them alternatives. Like, if they can't double side, start
low, try things, right?
So I've learned that with especially people people, it's very
important to know who you're talking to,
if they're relationship-oriented, Type A personality, this or that, because, you
know, you want to, you want to have them, you want to get to where
you're listening in that way, but you're
speaking that way, you know, you're speaking that way, so, you know, they're listening, it's
going to land for them better. But I
find that, um, by knowing that, I, you can, you can deal with how to
do this and be more sensitive and/or not be sensitive if that's the case.
I mean, like engineers and
accountants are like, you give
them facts. Salespeople are all Mr. and Mrs.
Personality. So, you know, right? Then you
have professions, whether it's acting, whether it's a psychologist,
or maybe the soft professions where You've
got to be empathetic, well, more empathetic. You have to be empathetic
everywhere, but more empathy and get into their world and
listen to them and listen to their feelings and then say, well, this doesn't work
for you. Give them choices. I think the worst thing you can do to anyone,
I don't care any of those personalities, just say, no, this is what you
must do. I remember having another wealth advisor tell me one time, he just told
the person, you got to cut your spending
in half. I said, what did they do? He said, they, they didn't— they love—
they left me. I would too. You kidding? That's
not an answer, you know. Yeah, you have to work with people, get to know
them and see what works for them. But you have to let them know—
I always work— I always go through what I call the ground rules with people.
You have to let them know that I have responsibilities, but
you do too. And your responsibility is— this is your plan, it's not mine. You
got to show up. If you say you're going to do something, you do it.
If you allow me to say something you don't understand, you got to stop and
say, 'I don't understand.' You know, you've got to be responsible. You got to show
up in your plan. Again, nobody's going to care more about your life and
money than you do. Yeah, I love that.
Yeah, and even beyond, you know, acting, I know I lived in Nashville, so
I know the songwriters, and I did some of that in the— and then I
have a daughter who's a dancer, and it's like, so all these creative
professions where you're you know, you can teach some lessons, you can do some teaching,
or you have to just have something else that you're doing
that can be flexible. It's kind of, you know, so I feel
like that is, um, and, uh, it's tough. It's a tough field. So,
oh, I think, I think you're right. I think, you know, you're lucky if 1
or 2 or 3% can, can, uh, can they, they
can really earn. You can really have a career from it earning and not have
to work somewhere else. But. But again, there's always options.
Like, I, again, not me, I just know these three
from a mutual friend, three actors. They got together
and scraped a little money together and started their own little, like,
one of those, like, street, street vendors, you
know, like the sandwich shop or whatever, but on the street in New York City.
You ever seen them? Right? They started that.
And they actually eventually had two or three of them. And they were making more
money from that than anything else. But see, you
just find something else. Yeah, another creative
idea. I love that. I love that a lot. And I
do think probably creatives sometimes are underestimating their ability
to own a business and be a business
owner. And, you know, I was taught when I first worked for my—
one of my first bosses, He was a manager and
I was a regional manager. And we were talking about how to run
a region. He said, Al, always remember, there's always a
person, there's always a place, there's always a way to get
it done. Just start listing. If you don't think, if you can't think of anything,
just start listing a possibility. Just start listing them. Make them
up. Make them crazy. I can do this. I can do that. He said, you'll
find— or ask other people. I have this problem. What can I do?
You'll find a way. Yeah. And I do think, because I've, you
know, I've been the business owner too, that's like, man, I'm
this, I, the, this online store that I did, it's so, it was so out
there. I didn't know anyone who was trying to do it. And I did start
with someone, but then he left. And, um, I, the,
the key in my opinion is that you're not an
island to yourself, that you're actually going out and, and
finding the right help. And, and, you know, like, like this app can be that.
It can be the financial help. But you're reading the books, you're
looking for the people, you're, you're, you keep
searching for a community, uh, that actually. Does have the answers
for you, right? And, and you said all the right things. You said
like a good partner. If you don't have a good partner, get rid of the
person, you know, and go get another partner. I mean, I, I know
what having bad partners, it helped me— it hurt me a lot on
some of my companies. But there's, you know, but there's always a
way. There's— I can't— I'm a very positive person, and I think—
but you just have to be positive, like, I'm going to solve this. And then,
and then if you don't know, ask. Keep on asking people, I have
this problem, you know. You'll have someone come out and help.
Yeah, I agree. I've been
saying in the last year, the answer is
at hand. Because it seems like that, seems like there is no— there's just
been a, a lot of, um, gates that's hard to
get through. So, but it does help you, it does help your mind to go,
and I'm just like looking around, the answer is at hand, the answer is at
hand. And somehow it does turn your, um. Well, into a different
place. I have a thing, the universe will offer it somewhere
along the way, somewhere the answer will come if you're patient
and ask whenever. By the way, as a business owner, or just if you're
not a business owner, you're an executive or
you work for someone, always have around people that—
always have good people around you. A good
accountant, good insurance person, a good banker, whatever you need. If you have
business, you'll have more, more needs,
maybe a good attorney. I call— get yourself a
championship team of experts. By the way, not the most expensive, the ones that return
phone calls, the one that care about you, the one that gives good advice.
They're always there, they're timely, their work
is good. You know, bad, bad, uh,
poor professionals or poor team people, uh, will cost you
money all the time. You have a good set of people you can
always go to. Again, it's another resource
for you to answer questions or answer things that you're finding
problems, you're finding difficult to answer yourself.
Yeah, that's very good advice. So, uh, remind
us of the, the books that you have. So I, I think it would be
a great idea for people to just read your books, get the
app. The app is, um, $80 a year, is that right? What it
is, it's $10
a
month. You can get, um Uh, you know, the name escapes me right now, and
I apologize for this, but we have, uh, there's a—
you can input this, this password. If you do that, you'll
get 3 free months. If you go to— for your listeners, if you go to
the app right now, we'll give you a free month. Okay. All
right. So, and so you, and you can find the
app at, you know, um cakeclubapp.com on
the Apple Store, uh, or if you're not sure about that, go to the website
and we'll guide you there. But as far
as my, my books, um, and my books, by the way, are
written in very layman terms.
There's no legal things, legalese, and there's a lot of
good examples in them. But there's two of them: Master Your Cash Flow, The
Key to Grow— I'm sorry, The Key to Grow and
Retain Your Wealth, And then the second one is Master Your Business Cash
Flow: Grow the Company You Love, Live the
Life You Want Now. And then our new one coming out, we're going to come
out with one in June, and it's going to be something like Master Your
Cash Flow, maybe, uh, Have Your Cake and Eat
it Too. I love it. I love it. Well, thank
you so much, Al. And, uh, if people want to, you know, learn more,
they. Can go to
cakeclubapp.com. And then if they want to learn more about me personally, you
can go to
al@alzdenek.com also. Okay. Or you go to my LinkedIn, you know, you can find out
how to connect with me if you want to. See my post or
something. Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you, Al. I appreciate you so much, and, um, you
have such a beautiful heart for helping people and such great
advice and wisdom. So thank you for coming on and. Enjoy the rest of
your day. I appreciate it, Mary. Thank you for having me. Yeah, bye-bye.