Ageless with Jane McGarry

This week we are chatting with Derrick Kinney @derrickkinney, financial expert on side hustles, money mindsets and the one thing we absolutely should NOT spend our money on.

If you are 50+ woman and feeling lost in a debt or unfulfilled dreams due to finances, this episode is for you!

#AgelessPodcast #Over50 #MoneyMatters #FinancialConfidence #MidlifeMatters #RetirementReady #MoneyMindset #SecondAct #AgingWell #PodcastLife

Creators and Guests

Host
Jane McGarry
Good Morning Texas host, inspiring women 60 plus to fully live their purpose driven lives with faith & style. Loves: God, travel, fashion, color, food, interior design, and of course family.
Guest
Derrick Kinney
As America’s Financial Educator, Derrick is the common sense money and business expert often featured on popular podcasts, FOX News, Yahoo Finance, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC.

What is Ageless with Jane McGarry?

In a world that profits off of the youth and those trying to recapture it, I call B.S.

Every episode will bring expert guests, heartfelt advice, and down-to-earth conversations designed for women just like us—curious, open, and determined to live fully at every age. I’ll be asking the questions I want answers to for my own life, and offering a safe, supportive space for all of us to learn together.

I sincerely invite you to be among the very first to listen, subscribe, and join this vibrant new community of women redefining what it means to be “ageless.”

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Jane:

Like a lot of you, for the first time in my life, I'm not getting a paycheck. I am an entrepreneur. I'm out there on my own. And whether you've started a new business or you're a woman who now you're wanting to live off the retirement that you've accumulated all your life, the thing I find difficult is that we all want to do things. We all want to travel.

Jane:

We all want to maybe buy that cute new dress, but it all involves money. So, I've invited a really good friend of mine and an excellent money advisor. We used to use him all the time on Good Morning Texas, Derek Kenny. I haven't seen him in a while.

Derrick:

Thank you, Jane. What a pleasure to be with you. I got to tell you, we were talking offline. I really admire you on a couple of fronts because you've taken the bold steps to really help a lot of people. The work you're doing really matters.

Derrick:

So it's a real joy to be with you today.

Jane:

Oh, thank you. I appreciate that coming from you. I really, really appreciate that a lot. Well, I do. All of us women are out there.

Jane:

We're kind of like, How do I manage all this? How do I do all this? And having your finances not only in order, but hopefully growing them sounds really good to me. So talk about this. You said that you can go at age You said age doesn't matter if you're starting your finances, you're looking at it.

Jane:

So a woman who's 60 or 65 listening right now, she can get started now? And keep in mind, I don't want

Derrick:

to oversimplify this. Will the work be hard? Yes. Just like when you decide to launch a business or start something brand new on the outside or on TikTok or Instagram, it looks like it was overnight success. But we learned it takes, you know, years of overnights to have that overnight success.

Derrick:

So if you can understand that anytime you change something, it is going to be hard, it'll be challenging, but you are up for it if you manage your energy well and have some goals. And so what I would tell people is, there's a lot of stereotypes we want to put in a box and set it on the curb and let the garbage people take those away and out of our minds. The first one is 65 is the official retirement date. No. So many people are living longer, and what they find is they may not have enough money to be able to retire.

Derrick:

So what I tell people is hope is not lost. We then create what's called a phased in retirement and say, maybe at 65, you start easing back a bit, but maybe you work until 70 or 75, staying active and engaged with friends and so forth. And that buys you time to catch back up. One of the biggest shocking revelations that people have, Jane, and I was surprised by this too with my clients, is a lot of them wanted to retire, but they were retiring from something and not to something. And what they discovered was they missed out on the relationships and the challenges and feeling needed based on their expertise.

Derrick:

And so people who live longer tend to find that if they can stay with a company, possibly even in a part time role later on, it gives them the best of both worlds. They have flexibility and they have money coming in, but they have the freedom they want. So they're sort of living this mini retirement before a permanent retirement.

Jane:

Well, you know, as you and I were just talking about before we came on, one reason I'm doing what I'm doing right now is because I want to be involved. I want to be purposeful. I want to be useful for the next twenty or twenty five years of my life. And so I'm doing this thing on my own. But one thing I want to add before we get started on this map to being a very secure middle class person or even a millionaire at our age, I wanna talk about one thing I hear a lot from women, and that is, I'm not sure where to start here.

Jane:

I don't I I'm confused about what direction I should go. Do you have any tips on that? On a woman who's sitting there and she's like, you know, I wanna do something, but I'm not sure what it is at this point. And I need to earn a little money, frankly.

Derrick:

Yeah. So I like to make things very simple, Jane. You know that I like to take the complex ideas and make them easy to understand. So think of this like planning a trip. If you wanted to go to Greece, for example, you wouldn't just go to the airport and say, I want to book a flight today and go.

Derrick:

You would take moments and plan and prepare and get excited, ask the experts, what should I do? What should I avoid? So what you want to ask yourself, first of all, and by the way, this is the first step of the Millionaire Money Map, and that is set three goals, personal and financial, for things that you want in your life. So much of our lives, and especially women I find that the clients I work with and have worked with for many years, they often feel like they were told by someone else what they had to do. They were sort of living out someone else's expectation for their lives, and they weren't living their own goals and dreams.

Derrick:

And so when they begin to do that for the first time, they can feel fearful and worrisome, and I don't want to make a big mistake, and it causes them to live small when they really should be living big. The moment you finish listening to this great episode is on a note card or on the notes app on your phone. Literally get your favorite beverage, could be a cup of coffee, Topo Chico, glass of red wine, and write down what is it that you want. Not whatever people have said. Go ahead, Jane.

Jane:

So when you say, what is it you want? Let me ask you about that. Do you mean like in the big sense? Because I do. I've done this.

Jane:

I sat down and I said, Okay, what do I want? I want to live in my own home as long as I possibly can. I want to, at some point, have better access to my son who's in California. And I want to travel. So those are three priorities.

Jane:

Is that the kind of priorities you mean?

Derrick:

Yeah. So those, I would say, are more desires. But then what happens is, here's what I want. Then we've got to figure out just some simple steps to get there. So for example, if you say, hey, I want to go on a trip to see my son, well, then I need to plan out how long will it take to get there?

Derrick:

How much money will it take? And then what do I need to do to achieve that? But the key is to write it down. You know, think about this. If you were at the you know, watching the Olympics, do you think those Olympic athletes, they pick them, they select them, then the coaches says, hey.

Derrick:

Just go out there and do whatever you're gonna do, and let's just see what happens. Well, nobody does that. No Super Bowl team. No World Series team. No ladies volleyball team.

Derrick:

Whatever it is, there is a game plan, and there's goals they're visualizing and picturing as though they can see doing it right then. I typically do a goal in one of about five categories. So think about personal, health, spiritual, relationships, business goal, and a financial goal. You know, all of those are just individual pieces and categories. And it might be as simple as, I want to save $10,000 this year.

Derrick:

I want to pay off $7,500 on my Visa card. I want to be more intentional with friends. I want to lose 15 pounds, and here's what I'm going to do each week to do that. So once you do that, suddenly now there's this roadmap. And here's what psychologists tell us, Jane.

Derrick:

This is kind of crazy. Even if you just write down your goals once and shove them in your drawer and don't look at them for the whole year, you're 40, like 46% more likely to achieve the goals just because you wrote them down. That's the power of knowing what it is that you want.

Jane:

Okay. So that's step number one, is take those things. Sit down, like you said, with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee and write write down those three, five, seven, ten things that are really important to you for 2026. What do I want?

Derrick:

Yeah. I will say the more wine you drink, the bolder the goals get.

Jane:

I love that suggestion. Alright. We're gonna take a short break. We'll be right back. Story time.

Jane:

A few months ago, I was in California visiting my son. It was wonderful, but I had to come back early on a Sunday because my tooth was killing me. I mean, it hurt so bad. If I had come home, you know, it was bad. I was in the dentist chair the next morning, and by noon on Monday, it was fixed.

Jane:

The reason I'm telling you about that is because a lot of us our age did not grow up with the kind of dental care that everybody has now. We didn't brush our gums and stuff like that. So we have dental issues. And we know now that dental health is important because poor dental health leads to all kinds of other diseases. For the last, I'd say ten years, Mint Dentistry has taken care of my teeth.

Jane:

They've had to fix some problems, but I've had excellent, excellent care, cutting edge technology, really wonderful people who have taken care of me. And Mint Dentistry is a friend of ours. Mint Dentistry supports women. They support this podcast. So here's what I want you to do.

Jane:

I want you to take care of your dental health. Mint Dentistry will give you excellent service. Tell them, I sent you. Call Mint Dentistry. Get a checkup.

Jane:

Get those X rays. Take care of your beautiful smile and your beautiful teeth.

Derrick:

So I'll tell you a quick story, Song. I was meeting with a couple one time, and they were very frustrated because it seemed like their budget was always in a bad mood. That they cut down all the unnecessary expenses. They were living on rice and beans and made coffee at home. They did all the stuff that all the experts say, but they were still stretched.

Derrick:

And their problem wasn't a budget problem. It was they were thinking that if I could just lower this lid on my income and my expenses, they needed a sunroof. They needed a way to increase their income. So what I would tell people, Jane, is so much of culture today says just just don't spend. You cannot spend your way to success.

Derrick:

But people live lives where they're pissed off all the time. I can't have any joy in my life. I'm living on a rice and beans. I'm this is terrible. So instead, you gotta find a way to increase the income.

Derrick:

That's gonna be the best way. I mean, you wanna cut unnecessary subscriptions and those things, but find a way that even if it's a simple side hustle that generates an extra $500 a month, maybe a thousand dollars a month, you want to taste owning something of your own. Because one thing we've learned is, even in today's economy, people's jobs, think back to COVID, people's jobs can vanish of no fault of I their want people to have control and have ownership of their situation. They've worked too hard to not do that, but focusing more on the upside than just the downside can be more emotionally beneficial for many, many people. Is there

Jane:

a specific place that you recommend to look for a side hustle or any couple of good tips on where to look?

Derrick:

Well, here's where I would not look, and that is going back to school. Thinking that you've got to go back to school to get this advanced degree, this advanced certification, I've got to spend all this money. I call these low cost probes. I'll give you a quick example, Jane. I had I had a couple come in the office.

Derrick:

They said, Derek, we want to sell our our small house, we want to buy an RV. We're just going to travel the country. And they said, have you ever driven an RV? They said, well, no, but it looks pretty easy. I said, do this.

Derrick:

Take the weekend and rent the RV, then let's meet next weekend and tell me your experience. Okay. They came back and they said, Derek, they both shook my hand. Thank you for telling We us to rent didn't like the RV at all. That was terrible.

Derrick:

You just saved us from a huge mistake. And so what I would tell people is test things. And the way to do that is simply by asking people who care about you, Hey, I'm thinking about launching a side hustle. What would you suggest I do based on what I am good at? And let your kids, your close friends, your family tell you, and it might surprise you.

Derrick:

Or you can say, what is a problem that frustrates you on a regular basis? What store you go to? What product do you buy? What do you do? What service do you take advantage of?

Derrick:

And you say, if only it were this way or better, that might be a way for you to improve that. What I will tell you is there's story after story, especially women who reinvent themselves after their career, possibly a husband passes away, and now they're on their own. They're literally their back is against the wall and they're forced to figure And this when they do, when they begin to believe in themselves again, and they recognize I have value and people will pay me for that, it's life changing. I mean, I've seen it time and time again. Okay.

Jane:

So let me ask you a question on the, what what do I what do people ask me, for help with? Because that applies not only to someone who's employed, but for instance, an entrepreneur or a woman who's just trying to figure out right now, how do I become an entrepreneur? What is it that I can do? I don't wanna just do I'm retired, and I don't wanna just do nothing for the rest of my life, but I don't know how to earn money. What will people pay me for?

Jane:

So you're saying one good way to start that is to ask what is it people ask you for help with?

Derrick:

That's right. So and one of the things to do this is, you can ask, okay, you know, what does my family typically ask me to help with? You can ask your three best friends, hey, what do you feel like I'm good at? Good. And let them tell you.

Derrick:

Let them be your focus group. Because keep in mind, most women especially, they don't recognize their tremendous value that they offer to people. They tend to downplay it because it's sort of this motherly instinct that I have observed over many, many years. This is why I almost exclusively only hired women in my firm, especially women with kids, because they were hungry. They got out at 05:00 because they had to, they had to get home and do the stuff and go to the soccer game.

Derrick:

They were purpose driven women. That's what I like. And so when I when I say that, when you have a purpose, and you know, If I don't do this, here's what negative thing could happen. For example, if I've got a grandson, I want to help pay for their college, and I know if I don't get my financial act together, they may not be able to go, that's motivation. But asking other people what they see in you can be a way to remove the the humility blinders that you may be wearing and let them tell you, you know, you're really, really good at this, and you may not even know it.

Derrick:

It just comes off you so easily. It it happens all the time.

Jane:

How do you rebuild confidence after a setback? Because I know a lot of women face that issue, whether it's a divorce, maybe they were laid off, any number of things. And you've got to have confidence typically in order to be successful enough to earn money. How do you how do you rebuild that confidence in yourself financially?

Derrick:

Yeah. Let me tell you a really crazy story. So this was about ten years ago. I was in the office on a Saturday morning catching up, and I saw my voicemail light blinking. And a voice inside said, I needed to listen to that message.

Derrick:

And there was a frantic woman's voice, Jane, that said, Derek, Derek, I know it's Saturday. I hope you get this. They're about to send me to jail, and I don't know what to do. Please call me. Jane, has anybody ever called you with that message and said, hey.

Derrick:

They're about to send me to jail? No. This was a first for

Jane:

me as well. Thankfully. No. Thankfully.

Derrick:

So I knew this could not wait till Monday, so I called her back. I recognized her voice immediately. And I said, tell me what happened. She said, Derek, I got this letter in the mail, and it says that I didn't move money from my savings account to checking, the the check apparently pounced, and now they're gonna send me to jail. And so why do you think they're gonna send you to jail?

Derrick:

So she tells me the story. When she was seven years old, she overheard her dad take a phone call from a store owner. Her dad had gone to the store to buy school supplies for she and her sister, and he'd accidentally written a bad check. And the store owner said, I know you did that on purpose. I'm gonna send the cops to your house and send you to jail for writing a bad check.

Derrick:

So this woman who is now 55 years old, on the outside, a picture of success, but on the inside, this wilting flower, she thought, I make a mistake, if I write a bad check, they're gonna send me to jail. So I first of all, we're not gonna suit you up for for orange jumpsuits. You're you're not going to jail. But come in the office next week. Let's unpack what's happening here.

Derrick:

So we began to talk about her bad money beliefs. It was like this briefcase she was carrying that was full of bricks. It was weighting her down. And she told me the story about being seven years old. And what that did, Jane, it revealed to me why she wasn't making progress.

Derrick:

She would always complain, Derek, why was I passed over for that promotion? I'm the most qualified woman for that job. And she would never take my advice. It cost her money, not taking risk and so forth. And what she realized was she was holding herself back based on if I fail, then I am a failure financially.

Derrick:

Within three months of that conversation, she got a $20,000 raise, got promoted to vice president, and most importantly started taking my investment advice. But what happened was, she realized, oh my gosh, these have been like jeans shackled holding me back. And once she released those bad money beliefs and realized they were there, she she became a whole new woman. So what I say to someone right now thinking about, I've gotten divorced, I have had a spouse pass away, I just lost my job. And literally, you might feel like you're with an island all by yourself.

Derrick:

Just take a deep breath and realize that if it is to be, it is up to me. This is your moment. And we see this in athletics all the time. There's this critical moment where you have to make something happen. What I would tell a woman right now is write down what's at stake.

Derrick:

That if I don't have the courage or the boldness or take action right now, here's the negative, no good, very bad thing that could happen. It often motivates you to take action, but more importantly, find an accountability partner. Find another woman who believes in you that you can share your situation with because two people facing difficult things are far more likely to make progress than one all by themselves.

Jane:

This is just a little thank you from me for watching or listening to this podcast. I really appreciate you being here because if you weren't here, this wouldn't be possible. And if you just happened on the podcast and you're not a member of our ageless community, I'm inviting you to join us. We're a group of women, mostly over 50. 50.

Jane:

Maybe you're retired, maybe you're getting ready to retire, maybe you're widowed, or maybe you're a divorcee, or maybe you're just going through some changes in your life. You're an empty nester. All of us are looking forward to the next part of our lives, and we're working together to make our lives as meaningful and relevant as possible. Join our community. The email that I send out, which is how you join, that email address, there's a link to it in the show notes.

Jane:

I invite you to join us on this wonderful journey that we're on. So I was brought up, and I'm not saying there's a right or wrong year, but I was brought up. My, my parents always tithed. And then, you know, I got my own job, and I kind of forgot about all that. And over the past few years, I've gotten back into the habit of tithing.

Jane:

Now, my finances, I'm not making more money than I ever made in my life, but my finances are in better shape than they've ever been in my life. I don't know if it's the discipline of tithing or what, but you talk about generosity being an important part of the financial package.

Derrick:

Yeah. Well, first of all, I'm a big tither as well. And I I do believe on the spiritual side, I think God rewards that type of sacrifice. You know, I I jokingly will talk to people when I give a talk that if somebody came to you and said, I'm going to give you all this opportunity. Here's this great business deal.

Derrick:

And let's do a ninetyten split. And you're going to say, Okay, well, you keep 90 and give me 10, I would take that deal all the time. And that's really what tidying is. I mean, it's a way to give back to God. But but also, one of the things I like to talk about in the book is we find, actually psychology backs this up, that generous people tend to be happier people.

Derrick:

So let me tell you about a quick story. There there was a car company, Jane, who was promoting an ad for their cars, and they wanted focus groups to give them feedback. At one group, they asked them to talk about the response to the color of the car and the engine and the features and so forth. And then this other car, actually the other ad, by the way, that ad, not a whole lot of response there. But this other ad, they talked about how with every purchase of the car, a portion of the proceeds would go to support upcoming Olympic athletes.

Derrick:

And they measured how people's brains responded to each app. Well, the people watching this other car commercial, no no response there. But the one about the Olympic hopefuls, there was an emotion their brain registered. Get this. It was though they were looking into the eyes of someone they loved.

Derrick:

Now this is a freaking car commercial. I'm looking into the eyes of someone I love out of a car commercial. And what it showed was that we as humans have a natural affinity toward companies and products and services where there's a give back. And then what we also find is that professionals, advisors, entrepreneurs, business owners, realtors, whatever you may be, if you tie a cause to your business, we find that people have an elevated level of status when they work because with they're often busy. They feel like I don't have the time to give.

Derrick:

I want to work with a giver that I see in the community, and it makes them feel better. So what we find is I call this your generosity purpose, and I've taught this all over the country. This is how I built my financial planning firm to be one of the top in the country. I just had this crazy idea when I was younger. I took a $50 Amazon gift card for the teacher and a $25 Amazon gift card for the student.

Derrick:

And I began to give a teacher of the month award at my local high school. And I did this for a couple months. Well, a woman called me, and she said, Derek, we want to be your client and have you be our advisor. And I said, why? I was so young.

Derrick:

She said, It's because you care about what we care about. And that was the lesson. I didn't have to be the smartest or the best looking or have all the contacts. I just had to care about what the people I wanted to work with cared about. She and her husband became my first million dollar account that we picked up a lot of other clients just by recognizing students and teachers at the local high school.

Derrick:

So if you're a business owner right now, if you're a woman who is an entrepreneur, you are building your own business, having a cause you care about, it might be something where you recognize a female entrepreneur of the month, a first responder of the month, a a an active retiree of the month, a teacher of the month, a police officer of the month, business owner of the month, whatever it might be, you find something you're passionate about and then promote it, which I know sounds crazy, but people like to work with people who are givers. And what happens is and it's about my book that I wrote, Good Money Revolution. The more money you make, you as the motivation is, that means the more money I get to give, which motivates you to make more to then give more as well.

Jane:

I love that. And, you know, it's interesting because I'm thinking about various companies that I have a loyalty to, and those companies tend to be companies where I know that they do give. I like doing business with them. So that's a great lesson. By the way, you mentioned your book.

Jane:

What is your book? Where do people get it? I know, but where do people get it?

Derrick:

Yeah, yeah, it's called Good Honey Revolution. It was been a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller. It just hit a nerve and the nerve was giving people the the reason to go make a lot of money, and then be able to do more good with it. And it's helped a whole lot of people take away some of their bad money beliefs. You can buy it on Amazon or wherever you buy.

Derrick:

Great books.

Jane:

Thank you so much. It's great to see you today.

Derrick:

Great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Jane:

Thank you so much for subscribing and being part of the ageless community. I call it a community because this ageless with Jane McGarry is part of our community. We're gonna be taking girls trips together. We're gonna be doing a lot of fun things as part of this community. And without you, it's not possible.

Jane:

So thank you for being part of ageless with Jane McGarry. Have a great day.