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Welcome to The Legacy Investor Podcast, where we talk money, investing, business, and what it means to leave a legacy for generations to come. Hosted by Cameron Philgreen, this show dives deep into the intersection of entrepreneurship, investing, and legacy-building, all while keeping God at the center. Whether you're a seasoned investor or just starting out, you'll discover how to align your financial journey with your faith, grow wealth with integrity, and create a lasting impact for generations to come. Join in, as we explore practical strategies, real-world stories, and timeless biblical principles to help you honor God in every step of your journey.
What's up, guys? Awesome show ahead for you with Joey Ruffalo. He's a certified financial planner, but also a disciple, you could say, of Dave Ramsey. And I would say, man, if you are listening to this and you're like, I don't have any debt, I'm financially free, I have multiple rental properties, this probably isn't the show for you. But if you are straddled in debt all the way up to, hey, I just have this debt I really want to pay off or Hey, I'm really struggling to budget or I'm struggling to steward my money well. I think you should really listen to this one. There's tons of great nuggets. And Joey, he's a coach and very well-spoken and great at breaking things down and making them simple for you. And so if you want to get more financially free today and be a better steward of your money, this is the show for you. So let's bring on Joey Ruffalo. Welcome to The Legacy Investor with Cameron Pilgrim. Joey Ruffalo, welcome to the Legacy Investor, man. How we doing? I'm doing great. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me on. All right. Let's catch us up to speed on your story. I mean, we were talking off air. You got a lot going. You got the podcast. You got consulting, coaching. Joey Ruffalo is the man to talk to about all things financial health. So walk us through just your story from debt to prosperity and everything in between. So it started back when I was about... i'd say i was 18. you know i had a high school job here and there i didn't work much in high school my parents were like focused on your studies focused on your sports whatever i wasn't going anywhere with any of those so um i had a job here and there but when i went to college i moved from new jersey to california when i was 18 about three days after graduation to go to school out there i live with a cousin get residency and then transfer to ucla that was my that was my goal that was where i was going to go and i started working at mcdonald's like every person probably has at one point in their life i would imagine uh some type of fast food job right so i worked at mcdonald's and i worked there a week and basically You know, you sit down with them and they're like, oh, we're going to put you in the management school in a couple months. You're going to be running this. You're going to be doing that. I'm like, I'm 18. I don't really want to do that. It's not my career. I just want a job. Okay, so I'm working the front desk. I'm working the register, doing the fries, learning everything around it, right? First weekend comes and I go home and I look at the list of when I'm working and I don't see my name on the calendar for like two days. I'm like, oh, wow, I get the weekend off. Great. This is weird because I'm new, but I get the weekend off fine. i go home cameron and then saturday morning about eight o'clock the phone rings and i'm like sleeping i pick up the phone i'm half groggy and it's uh it's my manager at mcdonald's asking me where i'm at and uh i said okay um what do you mean i'm here you're like oh you're supposed to be at work i said no i'm not my name's not on the calendar and they said uh yes it is it's right here it says uh john uh eight to three i'm like first of all my name's not john it's joey and that's why my name's not on there she's like well you should have known and come in and i said how am i supposed to know that you wrote you wrote john and meant it to be joey how am i supposed to know that So I said, you know what, if you can't, this is what I told her. I said, if you can't respect me enough to know my name, I don't need to work there. And I quit. And that's when I realized I never wanted to work for anybody else in my life. Because the management experience that I had being managed was horrible. It's like, if you don't have the decency to know your employees' names, how can you manage them effectively? How can you motivate us to do good at our jobs if you don't have the respect and even know my name yeah so i was like if i'm gonna be somebody if i'm gonna manage people if i'm gonna be an employer that's not how i'm gonna be yeah so i decided i was gonna be self-employed manage myself after that yeah yeah yeah so i went to uh went to college and then basically when i was finishing up my wife and i started pet sitting and dog walking. We live in California, like I said, San Francisco area. We do pet sitting and dog walking at the time and that blew up for us as a business. Nice. We were doing it full time. That was 2003. By 2007, we had about nine independent contractors working for us. We were doing it full time. And then the recession hit and most people started working from home and didn't need us to come anymore. and our we had to let everybody go and our salary dropped from a nice six-figure salary down to a low low five-figure salary and uh yeah that was it was rough as they say yeah it was rough um the biggest mistake i made camera was that i in order to impress people that I didn't know with the things that I had and to impress my family that, hey, I made the right decision to not go to grad school. I made the right decision to not go to law school, et cetera, et cetera. I had to impress them with what I was doing. So yeah, I'm picking up dog poop. I'm walking dogs. I'm scooping cat boxes, but I'm making a nice, I'm making nice money at it, but still looks at it like, oh, you're just picking up dog poop. Yeah, but I'm driving a new car. I'm taking vacations all the time. I'm going to nice restaurants. I'm living it up. And then when it all went away, guess what? I still was living it up because I didn't want to realize I made a mistake. Yeah. So that's how we got into $370,000 in debt pretty quickly. Dang. All right. How'd you scrape your way out of that? Well, it was one of those things where you realize there's an issue. I came home one weekend and it was a Friday after we were doing our work and there was three notices on our door. Hmm. power was turned off our water was turned off and we had a three-day notice to pay our rent or get out all the same weekend it was a three-day weekend brutal so luckily i had a garden hose that was long enough to reach the community faucet running up a flight of stairs and through our window into our bedroom take a nice cold hose shower oh man or uh yeah that's rock bottom right there man that's quite the picture wow yeah when i'm standing under it realizing going yeah i think i'm the problem wow how do i fix this yeah it was probably not too long after that i was driving home and i heard uh dave ramsey on the radio for the first time and he was talking to a caller about creditors and he was telling her how to act with them yell at them call them names hang up on them and I'm like whoa no because I need to work with these people and they're harassing me but I need to be nice to them because you know they I need to work with them and he was just like yeah they're scum I was like well it's kind of refreshing to hear somebody else who's kind of dealt with this no a little bit more than I do on the subject but i come home cameron that day and i tell my wife i said look um i know you're looking for something new to listen to on the radio while you're driving around and the political talk and this talk and that talk is all getting old by him he's christian he's from the south he's a little funny he's got an accent it's different that was my way of telling her we had a problem and if she listened to it she might realize hey we have a problem we want to fix it yes thank you for bringing it up i didn't have to bring it up i came home the next day and had forgotten that i told her about this show to listen to i walk in the room it's dark she's got a a light on in the corner she's reading a book and she's like hey i listened to that show today and i was like what show oh they that that guy dave something i was like okay And after work, I went to the library and I got all those books. She had a stack of books and I signed this up for his class. Nice. And I first thought was, I don't know how we're going to pay the $199 for the class. We didn't have anything. Yeah. And made it work, got into the class and went through it, got it, followed the plan. And about two and a half years later, we paid everything off. Yeah. And that was through I called myself the side hustle king for a while because I was doing everything under the sun. This was like we were mystery shopping. We were couponing. The show was Extreme Couponers. We were right up there with them. We were doing everything we could to save money. What was your sanity like during that time, your marriage, your family? During the time we were going broke or basically broke, myself, I think I insulated it enough for my wife. to this day i think she knew everything was going on but just didn't let me know she knew everything was going on to make me figure it out and come to her with the question um as you know i don't want to get too top too off topic but maybe it's a man decision to go you know protect his family and i needed to be the one to bring it up yeah and i was i was not strong enough at that point to admit that i was failing um but i didn't sleep for probably a good year and a half at all like really through the night we had two cars that were on the verge of getting repoed and every night i'd hear like a big truck coming through our complex and i'm like cars getting towed i'd wake up and look out the window Do I have to rush downstairs and grab stuff out of the car so I can at least try to go to work tomorrow with something? Yeah. We kept my wife. This is a funny one. We kept my wife's car in the garage for a year. Didn't drive it. Brand new car. Just because you're afraid to get in a repo? They can't get into the garage if it's closed. The repo. We left it in the garage as backup just the case yeah yeah so it was it was rough it was rough but once getting coming out of it making a game of it to try to figure out how much we could pay off in one day how much we can make deliver an uber how much we can make doing yeah that was that was actually a fun part of it for us yeah yeah all right so what what advice would you give yourself or somebody out there that has three hundred thousand dollars of debt right now no way out of it you know obviously we could tell them hey go listen to dave ramsey take the class do stuff but give us like know just a quick one or two minutes hey here's here's kind of what we did that was really helpful first i'll challenge your notion of somebody saying there's no way out of it there's always a way out of it you just have to have the right plan we didn't have a plan once we had a plan it was easy to follow so somebody's everybody's plan is going to look a little different Somebody's plan might be Dave Ramsey's debt snowball, pay off their debt smallest to largest and just go beans and rice, rice and beans, scorched earth. Somebody else's plan might be like, you know, I still want to have a vacation here and there. May not be as extravagant, but I still got to live life the way I can. For us, that was kind of what we did. And we found alternatives to it. Like we did mystery shopping. mystery shopping allowed us to eat out at restaurants and get paid for it to go on a vacation and get paid for it yeah finding things to have some semblance of life but still not be not be so overburdened by the situation we were in and then also realizing that there's no quick fix i mean there is it's a long-term process you didn't just wander into debt you can't just wander out you got to have a strategic plan to get out of it and the first thing i tell everybody that comes to me is it's a budget and the budget is permission to spend it's not a restriction But my core thing I tell people, Cameron, is the budget is the foundation upon which your financial house is built. You got to know where your money's going. Otherwise, it's going to end up somewhere else and you're going to be broke. And you can't build your financial future on quicksand. Yeah. Or QuickBooks. No one build your financial future in QuickBooks, please. Use something else. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. That's just my opinion. I do not like QuickBooks, but hey, sorry. You're good. So you strike me as like, you have a very humble demeanor. Like, I don't know, you just seem like to be walking in a lot of humility. But back in the day when you felt this desire to, show off possessions, vacations, whatever. What did you learn about ego in that time? And what advice would you give people like me, 20s and 30s that might get sucked into that trap? Check your ego out the door. I think that's the most common thing probably people hear. It's a very common phrase. I think it's humbling. to go through a situation I mean everybody thinks we're invincible when we're that young like I can get through this I'm fine um but I think it's uh you don't know at all and that's the other thing that says you don't know at all and it's always always learn always be learning um of different methods so I I went through the Dave Ramsey when I got out when I got out of debt And I decided I wanted to help others. Like I didn't know what that meant. So I wanted to be a certified financial planner or the CFP. So I just said, I don't know what the, I don't know how I can help people, but I think that's the most logical situation. I'm going to be a financial advisor. And in that process, I'm going to help people budget and I'm going to help people invest and I'm going to follow the baby steps with them. And so I went through the Ramsey coaching program when I found that to be a Ramsey coach and I was like, okay, I can start coaching people, but I still wanted to learn more. So I went and got my certificate in financial planning and then I got an MBA in financial planning, all towards the process of being a CFP. And in my last class before graduation, I took a behavioral finance course. And that completely changed my perspective on how I could help people. It was right where I wanted to be. It was the intersection of psychology and money management and coaching, really getting to the root cause of people, why they spend how they spend, what are their money scripts, how can we fix it, what's all that about? And I realized for me, and honestly, I've come to this realization recently, is I would have been a pretty okay financial planner, but I'm a pretty darn kick-ass coach. Just because I know if the market dropped by a penny, I'd be up all night thinking, oh my God, I lost my clients a few bucks today. What's going on? I wouldn't sleep. Yeah. from the coaching perspective and finding all those minute wins and goals that we found along the way for people, man, that's my wheelhouse. I love that. That's awesome. What are the most common, like you said, you studied behavioral psychology and behind spending and finances. What are the most common behaviors you see that need to be corrected? That maybe someone listening is like, oh, that's totally me. I find a lot around emotional spending. We find this comfort and there's emotional eating and there's emotional spending. When something goes bad, you grab a tub of ice cream and then you wonder why you're 300 pounds sometimes. You wonder, something bad happens and you go on Amazon and you just click, click, click, or you go buy something at the store and you feel good about yourself in that moment and then you wonder why you're in debt. So I think the emotional aspect of it, what I like to tell clients, the biggest takeaway is if you feel like you're having an emotional moment and you want to spend, give it 24 hours. If you still want it after 24 hours, buy it. But what's going to happen in 24 hours is going to end up returning it because they bought it and then 24 hours later don't want it, they return it and it's a big hassle. So don't buy it. Just wait 24 hours on those purchases. And honestly, Cameron, what I've found in a lot of my work with clients is it's not just in the money space that they're having these issues. It's in the relationship space. It's in the work space. It's relationships to themselves and then money as well. Maybe even with their spiritual self. How they're acting in one space is how they're acting in all of them. So what we like to do is work with the whole self. A lot of times what I end up doing is finding the easier quick fix of those five things to work on and then relaying how we worked on that to the other areas. I'll give you a quick example if that's okay. Yeah. So I had a client one time who was, uh, having issues in a lot of those spaces, came to me for money issues. And as we're digging deeper, it was somebody who was at a job for three or four months. They had a previous job, they were out for six months. They were at six months before that. They had job hop a lot. And come to find out that when things got stressful at work, the first thing they would do was quit and go find another job and not work through the problem. And some of those issues were warranted, but some were just like, The way my boss talked to me today, I don't appreciate that, so I quit. Just little things like that. So we decided, hey, you know what? This next job that you're at, you're going to stay there. I don't care what happens, unless it's extremely egregious, you're going to stay there and we're going to work through those issues of why you're leaving. So when you feel like you need to leave, let's work through that and stay and let's find how we can communicate with our boss or coworkers, whatever. Ended up staying at the job for four years. before getting a better offer somewhere else and in that process we found that these emotional triggers of why they would leave at certain points was also why they left relationships why they would overspend and why they weren't connecting with their faith anymore so we took what worked here and applied it to those other areas to get them out of the past so when they'd see those triggers coming up in their months their spending habits or in a relationship like the first red flag they're gone and the red flag to them was like maybe a a slightly lighter shade of green for everybody else like it still worked for everybody else but for them it was a giant red flag and so okay well let's see wow what maybe the second one is and then relationships started to last longer and yeah it affects every area around everything yeah exactly wow so it's not just money sometimes it's how we react with everything else is we just apply to certain things How do you react to pressure? I mean, that could tell you a lot about somebody. How do they react to pressure? How do you react when you have to run a couple more miles than you're used to, or when you have to lift a little heavier than you're used to? Is that fun and exciting and invigorating or do you just want to quit and give up? That's interesting, man. I love it. How do you, Joey, define financial freedom? I know I kind of understand the Dave Ramsey way. I know he's a controversial guy. Personally, I believe in using debt as a tool. He's like no debt ever. Where are you at on the debt or no debt at all spectrum? And and why I'll just ask that first, before we get to financial freedom, because I think sometimes, yeah, a lot of people have a different definition of financial freedom, but I kind of want to hear real quick from Joey. Like, what do you think of debt these days? So I think in my personal situation, my personal case, I don't like a lot of debt. For me, it's the risk factor for me. Being self-employed, a lot of times not knowing where my next check is going to come from in six months, I don't want to carry a lot of risk with me. So I like to be able to be the financial freedom of it is knowing that, okay, I'm going to be fine. I have things planned out. I don't have to worry about payments or other things can get applied differently. I can start growing wealth as opposed to giving it to the bank or whatever. I do see debt as a tool. And as somebody, like I was saying earlier, who went through not just the Dave Ramsey training program, but also traditional financial courses and programs and financial advisor training, you know, I could see where debt can be a tool when used properly. When is it a good tool? Well, obviously a mortgage is debt, right? You're gonna buy a house, you're gonna have debt. And that is the one debt that Dave Ramsey is okay with is having a mortgage because financially owning a home is probably better than renting long term with increase in home prices and appreciation and inflation and things like that. That's fine. I think there's some aspects of debt through creative financing. One of the things, it's not really... debt per se, but it's the indexed universal life funds that are out there. It's basically like a life insurance policy. Oh, you differ from Dave Ramsey on that. He hates those things. That's probably the one thing that I would be okay with. I love term policies. I preach term policies all day long. But if you had extra income to spend putting in something like that would allow you to sort of... Do you want to explain for the audience what exactly it is? I'll do my best because I'm a little, I know enough. It's basically your, it's a whole life policy that you put in and invest in the index fund only. So it grows, but it acts like a bank in a sense. So you can pull money out of that, use it, pay it back, but there's no, there's no, um, fees or taxes when you pull it out. You can use that money to invest in other things and then grow it back up. But you still have your policy. You actually pay yourself interest. You basically become your own banker. Exactly. You become your own bank. Now, a lot of these things, Cameron, are... I would put on the... sophisticated side of finance, right? And the Dave Ramsey is the basic side of finance. So 85 to 90% of people are going to fall in that basic category. And if you want to go to that sophisticated side, it's great, but have an understanding of it. So it's okay to roll into that territory, but have an understanding of it. And if you don't understand, find somebody that can help you. Don't try to do it alone. That's where people get into trouble. Yeah, that's good, man. What, what, what time? Or what's the point where someone goes from basic to advanced? And, and like, what once you're at that point? What do you encourage people to actually invest in once they have like a little extra cash a little bit extra to, to put away? And at what point is that? Yeah, I think it goes, you know, it goes back to the day, I want to say it goes back to the day Ramsey basics, right? And I think from from what he has laid out, and I don't want this to sound like an infomercial for Dave, but what he's got laid out as far as the basic finances, making sure your monthly expenses are covered, making sure you have enough in the bank stored away for an emergency fund, three to six months. Everybody's basic about that, whether it's Dave or money guys or whoever, they're always talking about three to six months of emergency fund. So that's taken care of. You have no debt because if you're paying 22% interest to a credit card, in in payments i'd rather pay i really try to grow that money in the market it doesn't make any sense right in that aspect if you got kids making sure their college is taken care of as much as possible try to pay off your home as quickly as you can it's okay to carry a mortgage debt if you want for a while but try to pay off as quickly as you can because again it's that's interest that's going out we'll talk about this whole concept around the mortgage interest and whether you should pay it off or invest it Because the market's higher than your mortgage right now. Yeah, that's true. But once you get to that point where like, okay, all my basics are covered. I'm fine. I got enough of the bank. Kids are taken care of. I have peace of mind with insurance coverage. And now I got those extra money. Now you're still having fun with it. Now, maybe I could be a little riskier in the market and invest in a little bit of things that I wasn't sure of. Maybe I could throw some... What are those things? Is it real estate, crypto, stocks? What are you all about? Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head with all those. There's definitely... The riskier one I'd say is crypto. I just don't, me personally, I don't understand it. I know it's very volatile. So it's something that I probably wouldn't do or advise my clients for just because we just don't know enough there. But in a sense though, that, and even maybe say individual stocks versus mutual funds, having a small portion of your portfolio dedicated to that, maybe for fun investing, That's fine. But if you're going to have 90% of your investments in one stock or single stocks, as opposed to say mutual funds, now you traded that risk, right? So if you have mutual funds, let's say, you know, mutual funds are two to 300 companies in one fund. And so if one guy tanks one day, you're kind of insulated from the other 199. If you have everything in one stock and that stock tanks, well, you lost your shirt. So maybe having a little, maybe having 10% of your portfolio designated for, uh international stocks that are you're not sure of that are volatile crypto single stocks things like that that's that's great that's fine it's part of this diversification of yourself not putting all your eggs in one basket kind of philosophy But real estate's great. Real estate's a great way to increase income, to get more property. Obviously, you're going to get appreciation on the value. If you have rental properties, you're going to get some income there. Yeah, there's write-offs and benefits to having property, different areas. So yeah, that's definitely a good option as well. Love it. Joey, at what point, what does financial freedom mean to you? And at what point does someone reach that? Yeah, I think we were talking about that a little bit. I think for me, financial freedom is, again, just making sure that all of your bills are covered. I'm free to do whatever I want to do. I'm not beholden to anybody. I can wake up today and go, hey, I'm going to drive down to Florida and go to Disney World tomorrow. And that's financial freedom to me. For you, and I'm just curious for the definition, this doesn't have to apply for everybody. Everyone kind of has their own definition. But would you say... You can do those things and you're not beholden even to a job. You don't even have an employer. Is that what you're saying? Well, you're going to have to get your money somehow, I guess, unless you've invested so well in those other things we talked about and you're doing fine. But I think the ability to be able to walk away from a job if you wanted to or do whatever you wanted to do, start a career, a passion project, that's financial freedom. um definitely for sure like if you if you're working a nine to five and you want to do podcasting for a living you got enough money saved up that you can live a year off of it while you're building a new business because remember whatever you're doing as a hobby has to become a business at some point to sustain you then uh go for it man that's that's that's financial freedom but financial freedom is only fleeting you know if we get to a point where I say hey I have the financial freedom now to quit my job and do what I want to do And a year later, I burn through my money. Well, I don't have financial freedom anymore. Yeah, that's not freedom. It's in the moment I was financially free, but what's the long-term prospects of that? So I think that's something to look at. Yeah, I think it's interesting how so many people have a different thing that comes to mind when they hear financial freedom. I think where there's a huge spectrum, it's just like one of those terms or one of those phrases we've come up with that gets tossed around a lot. And everyone has something different that comes to mind. Because for me, financial freedom, is I don't have to wake up and work. I can literally, I can go years. I can go five years and not work. Or at least most of my income is passive. Maybe there's like five or 10% is active. There's probably a lot of people that wouldn't even consider that to be financial freedom. They're like, it has to be completely passive. You can... travel the world and do whatever you want. If you can't, then that's not financial freedom. And it sounds like we kind of have different definitions. I just can't imagine all the people listening to this that probably have a different definition for that. And I just think it's interesting. Yeah. That's a great point. That's a great point. And that's something when I'm sitting down with clients initially, it's like, you know, one of the early sessions we do is we do a goal planning session. And what are your goals? And I have each person in the couple write down their goals separately and don't tell each other. And you sit down and go, the husband's goal is, I want to retire on a beach in Hawaii and surf all day. And the wife's like, I just want to be around my grandkids on a rocking porch close by. And it's like, well, you guys have two definitions of what you want to do in life at the end. So let's figure out a way to make that work. Get Hawaii half the time and visit the grandkids in Hawaii or whatever works. But being on the same page for that. So that financial freedom for everybody is a little bit different. know trying to try to find out what that definition is and making it work for them is is a pat amount right dang let that be a call to action for today like if you like go home to your spouse and let's talk about this tonight on the couch what is our goal like what what do you want to be doing in 10 years and 20 years and 30 years talk through those things and make sure you're on the same page i know my wife and i talk about that a lot and we I've come, we're on the same page now, but we weren't for a long time. Like she, she's more of the, like, you know, I want to slow down and I'm, I'm more like, I want to, I want to just run full speed until I'm dead pretty much. Uh, and anyway, so we're on it. We're in a good place now where we've met in the middle of those two things. Hey, Joey, I, I want to ask you, how does, it sounds like you're a believer in Jesus. How does God connect with you? our finances how does he relate with our finances can we should we even bring god into our finances what do you think about this it's a very good question i'm i'm probably the least qualified to answer this this answer question for you because i'm still i'm still finding my way myself yeah yeah um there's two ways we thought obviously through more secular way of training through maybe Dave Ramsey or some other like Ron Blue there's a bunch of other companies that are out there that more biblically based where you are steward of God's money and God owns it all and he's having you manage it for him and how you manage it is you know you manage it well or don't So realizing that you don't own it, it's not yours. You have to manage it for somebody else kind of changes your mindset of, I have to be careful with this because it's not mine. Right. If I ask you, Hey Cameron, can you, can you watch my dog for me this weekend? You're going to take extra good care of my dog. Yes. As opposed to maybe your own dog who you might be like, ah, he can, he can eat a little bit later on. He's not hungry yet. I tell you to feed him at four, you're feeding him at four. You may be feeding him a little earlier it's not yours you want to make sure you do a good job for me but changes the mindset of thinking around it I'm also trained in the non-secular ways through traditional education through financial training programs that I know like you know that aspect of finances as well but I still go back to the stewardship aspect of finances I still go back to the borrower, slave to the lender, in the house of the wise or choice food and stores. That's the emergency fund aspect of it. And I started, I have it actually right next to me on my desk here because I'm starting it in a couple of days. I like to start things fresh at the beginning of the year. I got this book a couple of months ago, but I haven't started it yet because it's one of those like once a day things. And I'm like, I'll wait till January 1st to start. But it's this handbook to leadership. And basically it's a 52 week, five day a week aspect of how to be a better leader. And then there's basically a lot of, there's some stuff on finances and empowerment and encouragement and healthy relationships and things like that. But there's definitely aspects of Bible and faith to realize that. I need to either be better connected with myself, better connected with him, to be better connected with the world around me. Part of the world around me is finances. So I think there's a good... Like I said, I'm still learning. I'm having those conversations with myself and my guests that teach me along the way. Yeah, that's why I'm on here too, having conversations, learning from people. It's like we're having coffee. We're out to lunch, me and Joey, and I'm learning from you, and the audience gets to learn from you too, man. It's awesome. Part of the reason we call this the legacy investor is because we're building a legacy for our family and for the Lord. And so what does leaving a legacy mean for you, however you want to answer that? Yeah. Interesting one, Cameron. So my wife and I don't have any children. So we don't have a direct legacy there. We have some nieces and nephews. We have some friends and family who have children that we kind of gravitate towards as taking a special interest in what we're going to do with our stuff when it's gone. Like, who's getting my baseball card collection? Who's getting my movie posters? Who's getting that stuff? I'll make sure it's in the right spot. But as far as legacy for me, it's one of those things as we've gotten older and we've had some health crisis in our family. My wife went through a major surgery about a year and a half ago where we didn't know if she was going to make it or not. Still has to deal with some health stuff going forward for the rest of her life. But it gives you a new perspective on things. What you want to leave when you're gone. Who do you want to be remembered as? And I had... realization of something around the time my dad passed in 2022 i'd never heard this before and when i bring it up some people have some people have it the concept of the dash have you are you familiar with this no no okay so it's like a poem or a short story and basically when you go to somebody's tombstone you see their birthday and their death date there's a passion in the middle yeah and the question is what do you do with your dash What did you do at your dash? We know when you were born. We know when you died. We have the three sentences on the tombstone. What did you do at that time in the middle? That's important. Learning that and living that and hearing that really changed my perspective on what I'm doing while I'm here. The legacy that I try to leave or want to leave is one of one of goodness, one of kindness, one of upliftness, one of community and spirit and empowerment, and one that just gave a voice to people who needed it at the time they needed it, and maybe just gave a helping hand from here to there, and realized, like, if I can do it, you can do it, and maybe just spread that around. That's so good. One thing I want to be remembered for is that. Yeah. That's awesome, man. Yeah. You reminded me of a couple things during this show, but one is, you know, a lot of people have probably seen this, but I'm going to say it anyway, is Francis Chan and Jonathan Bakluta has done this too. They have this rope that's like 300 feet long. It reaches up. You can't even see it up in the auditorium. And they pull it out to here and there's like a tiny little red mark on this rope that's like infinitely long. And he's like, this little red mark that's one centimeter wide, that's your life. And the rest of this rope is eternity. And he's like, this is such a small portion of time that we have. What are you going to do in this little dash, as you put it, in this little dash that is going to affect all of eternity? And just how important is the way we live now is going to affect eternity? eternity for us if you you know are a believer in jesus and anyway the other thing i that you mentioned that reminded me of a story just real quick is my dad we used to have this bunny and my wife adored this bunny and one time we went out of town or something and we left it with my parents in their basement which is like a finished basement but it was in the basement and uh At one point, it was a really windy day, and the door to the basement opened. And my dad went down, I don't know, it was like 3 or 4 in the morning, and the basement door was open. He slammed it shut. Four hours later, he wakes up or whatever, and he can't find the rabbit in the basement. And he said it was one of the worst few hours of his life looking around his pretty big basement with a lot of stuff in this workroom. And he said it was one of the worst times of his life because he was not a good steward. of the rabbit and he thought he had lost it and my wife was crying and all that you know it was and then like and then like a couple hours later he was like i have the rabbit i see the rabbit i saw it it was behind something you know he found it but can you imagine it's like seeing i'm sorry i'm not i'm not meaning to over spiritualize this episode it's just like imagine seeing jesus face to face you know in front of the lord whenever you die which we're all gonna die you're all gonna You're all going to face him someday. What if you had lost the rabbit? Imagine having to break that news to him. I did not steward what you gave me well. But imagine if you can go to him and say, hey, your rabbit's good. It's still alive. I stewarded it well. And let that be said of us, both as children of God and also as stewards of money and of resources and of assets that are not ours. Anyway, I just had that revelation since you brought up the pet thing. That was so good, man. Thank you. Thanks for coming on. I know you've written two books. I know you have a coaching program. Tell us about JR Financial Coaching and everything you got going on so that people can find you. Yeah, so I do financial coaching through JR Financial Coaching, which is my financial coaching practice. I also do small business coaching, helping businesses double or triple their revenue or profit. without additional marketing or ad spend. It's something that I've developed over the years. I've written two books. One is called Transformation Within. I'm an author in that book. It was my first foray. And then I have a second book here. I had it here somewhere. It's called An eBay Seller's Guide to Financial Planning. It was my first solo book. It's kind of a niche book on helping resellers turn a hobby into a full-on business using financial planning techniques. It's good for anybody really, because there's a lot of stuff in there about cash flow planning, taxes, investments, insurance, for any kind of small business, but it's kind of e-commerce heavy. I'm working on one right now. I'll show the audience right here. It's kind of a little teaser there, Cameron. It's called, this isn't the title anymore, but this is what it is. It's not called Breaking Free from Debt anymore. It's called something else, but we'll tease that for later. I'm editing it right now. So you go through here, you see all my head marks and everything where I'm rewriting it for a second draft. That should be out soon. It's more of my journey, my story about getting out of debt and tips and things that I use and stuff I've learned over the years of coaching. And then we have a new space around the radio show. It's called the Prosperity Lounge. That's the radio show and podcast that I do weekly. We drop episodes now Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Fridays we do a live stream on YouTube. As well, Monday and Wednesday, we do a live premiere. So we're in the chat. And then afterwards, we do a live takeaway episode as well, sometimes with the guests as the co-host for that night. So that's a great place to go as the YouTube channel for the Prosperity Lounge. But we have a free community as well. Prosperity Lounge community, you can join that. Go to prosperitylounge.com. You can use promo code radio. You get a free guide. It's my free eight-step action guide to stop living paycheck to paycheck. You get that free in your email box just for joining the community. Love it. A whole bunch of resources in there, a way to connect with other people. It's all free. Just get in there and check it out and then have some fun. And then we can connect and do some coaching and one-to-ones and just learn and make each other better. amazing man thank you for the value you're putting out into the world and for your kindness and for coming on this show man and uh guys go listen to the prosperity lounge with joey ruffalo his podcast and hop into his community buy his books and thank you joey for coming on man appreciate you thanks for having me i really appreciate the time here Guys, thank you so much for tuning into this episode of The Legacy Investor. Hey, if you want to help us grow and support us, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. That really helps a lot. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, Cameron Filgreen. It's still new and growing, but I am going to start posting on there more regularly. Follow me on Instagram at Cameron underscore Filgreen. If you know someone who should be on this podcast, Go fill out the form on my website. It's CameronPhilGreen.com slash podcast. Fill out the form there. I'd love to have more guests on this podcast. It's been a blast. And music is by Eric Lopez Villaverde. Reach out to him for all your music needs. On Instagram, he's Eric Lopez Villaverde. Hope you guys have a great day and thank you for tuning in. Bye-bye.