Understanding Financial Literacy and the Power of Side Hustles with Vince Shorb

Speaker 2: 0:11

Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for joining us. Our goal is to help you connect to real people who found success turning their side hustle into a main hustle, and we hope you can too. I'm Adam Kaler. I'm joined by Kyle Stevy, my co-host. Let's get started, all right. Welcome back everybody to the Side Hustle City podcast today, special guest Vince Shore. Vince, how are you doing? I'm good to be here. Great Thanks for having me, thanks for being on the show. So you know we just I spent you know I talked about a little bit before the show here. I spent a couple of days at a partner company of ours and we were talking to the interns just giving them a little advice on, you know, life and hey, once you get done here, you're going to go into the real world, you're going to get, you know, you're going to graduate college, you're going to, you know, probably want to spend all your money that you make. I told them more money, more problems, like the more money you make, the more money you want to. You think you can spend right, and then something happens like a recession which we're kind of moving into right now, and then you wonder what happened? All my money? And you're here to essentially just give us a little breakdown on on on how to act when it comes to finance and you know, maybe some of the demystify, some of the issues people have with money.

Speaker 3: 1:27

And see all the points you made are right on target and it's always interesting. You know, when people earn more, they spend more than just things we see all the time. Yeah, I took over 20,000 applications from coaching the mortgage side over my life and you think these people look like they're in a great financial situation. They get nice house, some nice cars. Then you open up under the hood, right, you see what's on the back end of their finances, their credit, their lack of a money, Emergency savings, and data typically shows you know people out there 40 to 60% of people, just depending on the survey you're looking at would have a lot of problems coming up with even $1,000. And I think when it's in the good times, you need to be like that squirrel, like you said, socking things away. You know we have so many risk potentials out there, right, we saw with COVID right, that was a big eye-opener for a lot of people that you know we're prepared for some basic things on a couple of months laid off and other more serious issues, but it's epidemic and we really our message is really preparing people so they don't feel in a situation where they can't sleep at night, where they're worried about how their next food bill is going to be paid or their housing expense, so they can enjoy a little of what life's about and relax a bit and pursue those other things in life.

Speaker 2: 2:46

Yeah, and I know a little bit, just as somebody who's. You know we grew up in poverty. We didn't have a whole lot. You know money was a big deal. You know when you don't have it, you know you're always thinking about it, worried about it, and you know I made it a point of mine. You know, hey, one of these days, if I ever get some money, I'm going to learn how to use it. Learn how to use it best, learn how to invest it. Be smart about money. You know I don't have 15 years of financial services experience like you do. I mean you've helped 20,000 people. I mean it's amazing, you know, having people like you on the show. It really benefits, you know, all of our listeners. It benefits me. I learned from everybody that's on this show. But I mean this is something that you know. I know it's super important. Don't even. You can't even start a business. You can't even I mean you can't even start making a budget for your. You've got to understand finance Like there's. You can't take risk in this world, especially in America, and go and try to become an entrepreneur until you know at least the basics of finance. How does money work? You know how do I set. You know how do I? You know you've got to get conservative with money. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, there's going to be upsides. There's going to be downsides. You're going to have cash flow issues, god forbid. You start hiring employees Now. You're responsible for their livelihoods. I don't want to work for somebody who doesn't know how to manage money. I mean, that's just basic right and you owe it to your company. You owe it to your family. You owe it to the families of the people that work for you to understand what's going on and unfortunately, vince, they don't teach us stuff in schools.

Speaker 3: 4:24

They don't and it's sad. And if you would look at how kids are raised, starting young, because a lot of what we see with adults is behavioral, that starts habits as kids, right, we see advertisers targeting kids with these messages. We see schools not teaching it. We see these influencers promoting this lifestyle, which is great for them. They can afford it. The average person can't. So there's always a feeling of trying to keep up with the Joneses, right. And for those younger listeners, keep it up with the Joneses, I mean keep it up with your neighbors and the people you feel are peers. And today our peer group, with social media so far, has expanded so greatly and this often carries from the personal side of things to that business side. So I know what the entrepreneurs we work with. We see bad habits on their personal side, either with credit or budgeting. Those are the same skill sets and abilities you need to manage business. If you think it's challenging to manage your personal finances, imagine when it's five employees, 10 employees, you know, $10,000 a month, subscriptions, office expense, et cetera. It's the same skill set just amplified. And I agree with you completely as business owners, you have a duty for those people around you. So we need to start to think back to that childhood. What are those behaviors? How do I manage my money? How can I tweak my behavior so I'm a better steward, so I can take better care of people around me?

Speaker 2: 5:48

That's right. That's right, and I just you could probably talk to this, speak to this. I just heard the other day, and I just looked it up here now, that Americans are getting into more credit card debt. Interest rates went through the roof. People had a lot of stuff during COVID. They may have took off work, they may have left their job completely. You know they were relying on the government for those little $300 checks they were doling out. And now this headline on CNBC here says Americans owe nearly $1 trillion in credit card debt. This isn't just all debt, this is just the credit card debt, and there's a breakdown on this article by HP. If you want to go, look at this on the CNBC site. You know, just look up. You know personal credit card debt for Americans, but the average American carries $5,700 over $5,700 in credit card debt right now, and people between 40 and 49, my age group carry over $7,600 in credit card debt. And this has just been going up and up and up and I feel like it's the folks that you know. They were living high on the hog before you know, when everything was going good and the money was getting handed out and money was plentiful and it was cheap, credit debt was cheap, but now those 0% credit cards are turning into 24% credit cards.

Speaker 3: 7:02

Right, Very true. And if we add in just student loan debt at the $1.7 trillion mark as well, now we're at the $2.7 trillion. We add in auto debt and other debt that's depreciating assets or no assets, we got a major problem on our hand. And again it goes back to what we're not teaching at school, goes back to habits, consumerism. But the beauty is there's so much information out there shows like yours, people teaching in different venues and things like that. There's ways to learn and oftentimes we find people's motivation to learn is either one of two things Is either something very positive, like I want to buy a home, I want to invest, I want to do something positive or something negative right, hey, I'm going to get evicted, I just lost my job. So we find the motivation to learn is really at these two extremes. What I always encourage people to do is have a plan. Very few people have a plan less than a third from the data I saw from a Gallup poll a Charles Schwab survey, I believe it was have a financial plan laid out. And when you don't have a plan, what are you going to educate yourself on? It's like what am I? I have a plan, then I can figure out what I need to educate myself on. If I'm not going to buy a home for 10 years, maybe I don't have to educate myself on that now, but I may need to learn about credit, improving my credit, saving money. So the basics A plan always can guide our learning, especially with adults. For those younger it's often just preparing for those upcoming life events, but as an adult, we have so access to so much information. Create a plan and then decide on what education you need now, what you need to learn and master to get to that next level.

Speaker 2: 8:49

That's right. That's right. And, guys, if you don't know this, if you've never started to side us before and you've never turned that into like a real business, if you've just got a nine to five job they're paying you a W-2, you can budget, you can plan. It's not that hard, it's really easy. Once your life gets as complicated as mine and you've got rental property sometimes people pay their rent, sometimes they don't You've got, you know, variable projects that come through. You know I own an ad agency, so not everybody's on a fixed retainer. Sometimes I get it. You know, tomorrow I could get a $10,000 website project. You know, I don't know. It becomes so much more complicated when you don't know where the money's coming from and you have to go out there and hustle and grind to get every job right. And that's just going to happen. It's going to be harder and harder and harder if and I don't want to, you know dissuade people from starting a side hustle because it's great, the finance. You know, the freedom is great of it, but it's going to get much more complicated. If you think it's hard to budget now, just wait until you start you. Maybe your wife starts her own side hustle If you break away from that nine to five world. It's going to get more challenging.

Speaker 3: 10:38

Yeah, man, I love the whole concept of the show the side hustle simply because you know, if we look at the data you shared before, the average person about $5,700 a debt, $40 to $49,. I believe you said you know, if you get a side hustle that pays $500 a month, right, well, that's a year you can pay down that debt, right. So things like this that can be add on where you can say, hey, I'm going to really put some focus down, I'm going to pay off debt, I love my job, I love what I do. They won't give me a raise right now. There are other opportunities for you. Or, hey, I'm working hard, I paid off my debt, but I just don't have enough to say for a down payment. There's opportunities through side hustles and other things that aren't major disruptors to your life. It's just something to add on to really enhance and help you work faster toward those end goals.

Speaker 2: 11:26

That's right. And, vince, I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say, you're kind of like me and you're probably enjoy being cheap Like I. Actually it's a challenge for me. I'm like, let me see how cheap I can be this month and it's frugality, right, it's a good word for it. You know people say, oh, you're being cheap, whatever. I just think there's some people who are kind of made for this. They're kind of made to budget. They're kind of made we get excited about how much money we saved and we're able to invest last month. But there's a lot of people that aren't made for that and it takes a lot for them to be able to overcome the consumerism that is prevalent in this country. This entire country is built on consumerism and you're hit with messages and I own an ad agency. I know I'm I'm guilty of putting these messages out here. You're constantly being hit with buy this, buy this. Oh, you need this new thing, you, your life needs to be more convenient. They are hitting on all the psychological triggers that make you want to purchase something, even when you go in the store where products are all that stuff. You're constantly being hit with this stuff and it can be a challenge, and working with a professional, working with someone who can, who can be an accountability partner for you, is very important, I think.

Speaker 3: 12:52

I agree, and that's you know. We train coaches and educators and our coaches are working with people one on one, and that was always a big challenge is to switch their behaviors from the you know their temptation all around ads, which you mentioned consumerism, it's all around. So oftentimes, when people are like that, what they have them focus on is their major expenses where they live, their car and taxes of some cases. But a lot of people most people, are about the 30% of their income goes to their housing. Right, that's a major expense. Do you need that housing or can you tailor that back? You know, shaving 10% off a housing expense can go a long way toward being able to enjoy those other things. Maybe you don't want to give up in your daily life. Cars I see the most ridiculous cars out there. When I drive through neighborhoods I'm like this does not look like a neighborhood that should have a escalated Mercedes and a Hummer. Right, it's the. And even when I go to colleges to talk, I see the nicest cars. Meanwhile at school I drove like a beat up green truck, just bad. But yeah, even today I buy old used cars, I mean the outdated models. I don't see a purpose in it for me personally, right, it's never earned me. Business has never done anything for me but be an expense. So I had to agree. I am frugal in those senses housing and car expenses and so forth. I might do like. You know, we can pick our battles on what we like to splurge on. I have once I like that nice meal out or that vacation. I'm sure you do as well. But for those people that are having problems that say, hey, I can't stick to my budget, tackle the big boys first. Right, look at your housing expense, look at your car expense, see how you can reduce those and still live maybe more of that lifestyle you want. But you got to save first. You got to find a way to save. Otherwise, when that money runs out, another COVID hits. Who knows what's going to happen in the future? You're going to completely miss out on that lifestyle. You're going to have to completely change and you're going to have a lot more worry associated with it. So a lot of our culture are trying to paint hey, here's the positives, here's the negatives. Right? Either encourage them you know we can encourage with the carrot or a whip, right? So the carrot is the positive things we're working toward and the whip is those things we're scared of as people. And you can do this on yourself. You know for your listeners, if you feel like hey, I just can't stay motivated, can reflect on the things that you want and the things that you just are scared of.

Speaker 2: 15:26

Well, vince, I'm going to change your life here. Your car is about to become an asset for you. So I've been using Turro. So I it's actually part of this podcast I went out and bought a new car and I put it as a Genesis GV80. So it's not a cheap payment but it's a really nice car. I live close to the airport so I can deliver it to business people when they come into town, which is key for what I'm doing, the strategy I'm using for Turro. But Turro is like the Airbnb of cars, right. So I, literally right before I got on this podcast with you, somebody booked my car and I got to meet her tomorrow at my building and she's going to pick it up and take it down to Nashville. But three days 517, 518, 517.95, I'm looking at it now and just to take my car until Sunday and pick drops it off. So Friday to Sunday, you know, after fees and all that other stuff, that's half my payment, right? So last month I think it was like $2,500 I made rent my car out. Somebody took it to it for, you know, seven days or whatever. But you know, I mean it's a way to if you already spent money on that expensive car. If you've already got that car, you don't have a beater to drive around. It's an option, right? It's an option Like you rent this thing out for a week, pay for your car for the whole month. And there's other people that use different strategies. They'll go out and get, say, an old. Actually, the hot car right now, I think in Ohio that makes the most sense, is a Maserati Ghibli. So there's $100,000 new car. But if you buy it two or three years later it drops all the way down to $30,000. But people still think it's a really fancy car, so they're willing to pay $150,000. $200 a day to rent this car out. And here you are with another car, a nice car that you could rent out. And then if you've got something else, like I've got a Silverado, I got an old 2007 Silverado. I had that car ever since CS7. Like that's been my car, right, I can always drive that thing around. Doesn't bother me any, you know, as long as I'm getting this car payment paid down. But there are things now side hustles, like Turro, like Airbnb, where you can rent out a room in your house that can help you reduce some of these biggest expenses in your life your house, your rent, like you said, 40%, 30%, 40%. That is your biggest expense in your life outside of maybe a kid. You know You've got that problem. Then you've got your car, which is probably next, unless you've got these crazy student loans. Maybe that's third, maybe the student loans are second. I don't know. Maybe you're a doctor, your student loans are definitely second. They might even be first at that point. But there are things out here that you can investigate to bring down those monthly expenses and then take that extra money, put that aside for a nest egg. But it requires people to actually dig in and look for these things that could be opportunities for them to make, earn extra income, save some money, invest that for a rainy day, because you do not want to be in a position where we hit a recession all of a sudden and Vince, I'm sure you're talking to people right now that this is. We hit a wall. People were living high on the hog three, four, six months ago and it just this interest rate stuff. It happened quick and the economy is slowing down and we hope we have a soft landing. People listening probably don't know the difference. You know soft and hard landing, but we're hoping for a soft landing right now.

Speaker 3: 18:56

Yeah, fingers crossed, and yeah, you make great points with all those. I actually had a conversation about the tour and I love the concept. I was talking with a person about it and they said, well, I don't want to do all that work. I'm like, how much do you get paid Right Hourly? And like you pick up, drop off and you have to clean it. I think that's all you really need to do. Inspection initially, it's like do you make? You know? I forget whether they're like you know 500 less, use $500. Do you make that $500? How long does that take you? Oh, a week, okay, well, here you go. Right, yeah, I'm not sure, but I consider that more on the passive income side than really active, where you're having to drive a Uber or something, where you're active to earn every dollar.

Speaker 2: 19:36

Exactly yes.

Speaker 3: 19:39

So I think opportunities like that are great because time is your biggest commodity. If you're doing side hustles that require your time and attention all the time, that's fine, but there's a limit to that amount, right? So if you're doing these other things that are more passive, that require a finite amount of time and you can earn more over, you know that you can benefit from that time advantage. Renting a room out, you know when you go on vacation and renting your place out, all those things can help to offset costs. And I'm doing a. I'm turning the place, I'm doing some rehab into a place I just bought. I'm going to turn it into Airbnb with the only goal to pay for my trips. I'm put up online when I want to go. I'm going to pay for at least the hotel and I can enjoy it, and it's kind of a hopefully a net zero by the end of the trip.

Speaker 2: 20:29

That's right. Well, my wife and I we're. We bought a pre-construction condo in Miami and I talk about it every once a while on here and my friends are probably tired of hearing about it because it's been under construction for the last three years. But whenever you buy one of these units you're buying them probably 20 to 30% below market because it's pre-construction right. The developers are motivated to sell units because if they don't sell a pre-sell enough of them, the bank's not going to give them the debt financing as part of the capital stack. So they have to sell these units. So you go in there. Usually you know you have to come up with 50%, at least in Miami, and that's to keep kind of the 3% people out of there. Like the people that only got 3% to put down, they're not that invested in it. They need people who are fully invested. So you have to put 50% down. But you got about two years to put that down because there's tranches right. Every time they hit a milestone you put a little bit more money down. But these units that they're building now down there I mean half the building's, probably a hotel, the other half's owner units. But the hotel will manage these units for you for 25%, and it used to be 50%. These condo tells. In places like Brickle, which is a really nice part of Miami, they were doing these condo tells where essentially you only get access to your unit for 30 days or 60 days or whatever it is, and then you have to give it to the hotel the rest of the time. Well, the new units they're building, these are fully Airbnb, no rental restrictions. You can rent it one day, you can live in it another day, you can do whatever you want, but the Airbnb it's paying for it. I mean the average rent down there. You know, if you wanted to rent it out, regulars like $3,500, $4,600 a month downtown Miami. If you want to do Airbnb, you're looking at maybe $400 on average a day and you can rent it out 70% of the time. I mean, why wouldn't you do that? And now you've got a unit that you own in downtown Miami, say Brickle, one of these, windwood, which is another you know up and coming area in Miami. But I mean the rental is paying for the unit, very similar to what you're talking about. I mean it's assets, right, assets. These things are making you money while you're asleep. It does not require your time. It requires a little bit of time. Right, you're signed a deal, but you know there's things out there that people could be doing that they're just not thinking about. And it's amazing what's out there now, these options, so many of them, were not available to people 20, 30 years ago. They just weren't. And people act like we still live in those times. But you're not going to get wealthy. You're not going to get over the hump with a nine to five job. You're going to be essentially a wage slave until you, you know, get that gold watch when you turn 65 and you can finally get that Social Security you've been paying it to. But you need assets. You need assets and you need to investigate what is out there and you need to understand just the basics of money. And this is one of those things Time. You only have so much of it. You need to multiply yourself somehow, unless you have employees. If you don't have employees, you got to get assets Agreed.

Speaker 3: 23:33

And I would say there's so many investments out there, I always try to narrow people down early on and try to master at least one. If you love real estate, you'll find a thing there. Maybe you want to do Airbnb. I love pre-construction. We did a lot of that in the mid 2000s. There's different techniques, strategies owning just rental properties, flipping properties, rehabbing. Probably if you're good with your hands, you like that. Flip properties. There's a lot of opportunities out there. With every opportunity there's risk. So I just tell people whatever you're going to do and as a full-time hustle or a side hustle, you need to take the time to master that, to understand the risk, the potential gains, how it fits into your overall plan and all that is the next level. But you need that foundation first Minimal debt, the good credit and so forth. Even if you're going to do the Turo I see a lot of the exotic car rentals where you buy an exotic car and the same same. I think Turo might do those exotic car rentals as well. You need to understand cars, you need to understand maintenance, you need to understand the cost involved. I'm always shocked at when people go in still to the state, go in to buy a car and car salesmen know this. They go in to buy a car they have kicking tires. Okay, what's your budget? Okay, it's $600 a month. They're not talking about insurance, taxes, registry, all those other things that they'll experience. So car salesmen selling them that $600 a month payment and they realize, oh, I forgot about insurance. And these are adults that have bought two, three, four cars and even with in my mortgage days, when I'd refinance people, they'd be on their fifth, sixth refinance they still didn't understand the process. And knowing that, those aspects of the process, if you're going in the car game or the real estate game or maybe invest in other type of investment game, you need to take the time to master that and have your foundation in place. You're going to be the only one that you should be trusting fully, because there's people trying to sell you things. You need to be able to ask good questions and understand hey, they're trying to sell me this. It may not make sense for my situation because my goals are here. They're going to know your situation better than anybody else. Unless you're hiring an independent person, a coach, an educator, independent, not trying to sell you anything. It's really upon you to master those topics so you're in minimized risk and maximize upside potential.

Speaker 2: 26:03

That's right. That's right. I don't think people understand who they're listening to right now, like you've been in USA Today. Motley Fawn will blow your head up, but NBC News, american Banker, washington Post, business Insider, cnbc, a Nerd Wallet, nasdaq MarketWatch, I mean it goes on and on 401k, specialist Financial Advisor, like the list goes on. What made you want to get into this? What have you learned along your own financial journey that led you to this point where now you're helping other people?

Speaker 3: 26:37

I think it started young. I was always so watch my dad and my grandfather always interested in investing. I bought my first property at 19 years old, my next one at 20. I still am selling here in a few weeks. Here's put on Market Lease and I just always had that interest in investing. But I made mistakes when I started. That was the sexy stuff, right, investing, growth, businesses, real estate. I did a study the credit budgeting. It doesn't sound as exciting, but it's really the foundation. I messed up, got myself behind the eight ball gun, to trouble for many years, worry, sleepless nights, all that. So I got into financial services because I want to help people. Right, I want to help people avoid that. In my last seven years or so was in the mortgage side of things and I would love helping people. I loved it. They come in you have a lot of debt, have some equity in their home. They're wanting to refinance high rate. I would pay off all their debt. Get them into a nice clean loan. I would show them on a spreadsheet I don't work out their budget on a spreadsheet You're saving 2,500 a month. Put that in savings. You're good, you're golden. I get really excited and inspired, especially when I first started, but then five months, six months later. Hey, I need another 50 grand. Well, what happened? We had a plan you should be up 24 grand this year just on the amount of savings I have. Oh, yeah, got a bow, went on vacation. Okay, one more time, let's do this 50 grand more. Okay, what happened six, eight months later? Another thing, and at that time prices were obviously going up, so it was like a bank account for them and even though I was getting paid on that, I never wanted to see them do that I would work in, and so I felt like I was putting a bandaid on people and it was frustrating. And some of the stories you hear where people are getting evicted while they're on the phone with you hey, I need help. You should have called me a month ago. Or guys like you know the worker factory that are crying on the phone begging for money. It was heavy stuff, man. I never get stressed about my personal things, but during my last few years I was sleepless nights because I'm like how am I gonna help this guy? What can I do? So I need a break. Went up to my parents up in Montana and my mom said when you're younger, you always were upset that they didn't teach financial literacy in school. That's right. So from that point on, just left everything I was doing on the mortgage side and focused on financial education with a focus on youth, teens and young adults, cause I wanted people to avoid the mistakes I did. I also had the successes I did early on and we've since grown to serve all ages, kids through adults. But that was really the inspiration, what brought me here, and the goal is to help people proactively do it. It's much easier to walk around a pitfall than is to climb out of a deep hole, right, so I want to do that, but I know a lot of people in those deep holes and, hey, there's support here for you. There's a path. It might take some hard work and may take some extra effort, but you can get there. I just want everybody having a good night's sleep, know what, hey, their family's protected, knowing they can pursue opportunities, and know that they can be, in case that COVID happens or something else, they can be that contributing member of their society, of their neighborhood, of their friends and family, work where they can lend that to support to other people.

Speaker 2: 29:55

I love it. I mean, what is wrong with the schools? What's going on there? These states, it's nuts that they just don't teach personal finance. I mean, here's the thing. I mean, I've run for state rep and I was in the running for mayor here in Cincinnati. And the states want to attract businesses right, they want to attract people. They want their states to thrive economically right, it's really hard to get somebody to move from a place like California to Ohio, for example. Right, you would think states would want to teach financial literacy so that the people who currently live in the state could prosper and create businesses and hire other people. And it's just not. Unless you're personally motivated as a young person, like you were, like I was to do better, it just doesn't happen. Like you're not going to, you're not probably going to grow up to be an entrepreneur, you know, and it sucks because you would think the states would want to see that happen for people, right?

Speaker 3: 31:08

You would think you know I have my own conspiracy theories behind why they don't but the facts are. For the last 100 years we've been teaching the same subjects. We actually pulled up report cards. From 1920 till today it's been math, english, social studies or social science and science. Right, that's the four core subjects Back then. These have the religion classes and so forth, but the core four fundamental classes are the same. We have computers now. Second, these high school level subjects aren't used by anybody in the real world to make money. Science less than 6% of people utilize that to earn income In high school level. Math less than 25%. It's closer than less than 10% that really even need it, but 25% just expanding it to be very conservative. Social science less than 16%. So they're teaching useless subjects. Financial literacy, entrepreneurship, career planning benefit 100% of students and they're failing to teach that. Even the states that and I'm always kind of the negative person in the financial education space because everybody always claps when a state enacts, like Florida did, a half credit requirement to graduate Everybody's clapping. I'm like that sucks right. There's these grading systems for states. Financial literacy Everybody has like a ABCD rating system. If we looked at them and we say every state absolutely fails, they failed to meet even the basic education standards required by other subjects. What are some of the basic education standards Funding qualified educators actually know what they're teaching right. Oh my God, yeah, curriculum that's not just random topics that are thrown in, that are focused on outcomes, testing requirements, standalone class rigor. Like you would. Anything Sun's quoted in this Forbes article where everybody's clapping this one state, african state, oh great, it's showing them a momentum of financial education. I said it's not doing anything. Imagine trying to speak in Spanish after one half a semester of that. You can't do it. And with money you and I know we've experienced this behavioral. It's not just one plus one equals two. No, every kid in the class has different experience, different socioeconomic background, different habits, different behaviors, different goals, different plans, and we need to address that and I'd say that's the most important topic we need to teach. When I say financial literacy, I mean also not only money management, but entrepreneurship and career planning, because you need money coming in to be able to manage something. Right. That's right. That needs to be taught in school so that we're producing these kids that can go out and actually move out before they're 40, right, and we see it with the boomerang kids going to college coming back with the parents of 30, 40. Most parents are still feeding their kids money after they're 18 years old. It's time to clip their wings and to clip their wings, we need to make sure they get the education required to do so.

Speaker 2: 34:04

When. It's funny, I'm from Cincinnati here in Vivec Ramaswamy who's running for president right now. He's. I've been following him because he's from Cincinnati and he's from the West Side, so that's my side. And his parents were immigrants. They had to come here with nothing and figure out how to do something. He started several multi-billion dollar companies. A hardworking guy came from nothing and went to Harvard and a bunch of other great schools and yeah, I think guy's worth like $600 million now. So he's running and he's talking about the schools and he's saying you're unionized. What are you unionized against? Like you're funded by the state. Like it's not like you have some like boss, that there's some evil corporate greedy boss person like there was back in the day who's telling you you have to work all these extra late hours and everything. Your boss is just the state. You're getting this money, no matter what. Are you actually unionized against being held accountable? Is that what you're unionized against? Because it seems like for years these schools, especially inner city schools I mean luckily I went to a performing arts school in the city and now I own an ad agency, right, so I mean it worked for me, but it was a specialized school, one of two schools in the public school system here that is a magnet school, is the other ones for smart kids and the other one I went to is for creative kids. But those largely do well the students that come out of there. But the other ones are just a complete failure. It seems like, and it's been like that for years. I don't think I could remember a time when people that were coming out of those schools were doing well. I mean, you have every once in a while you have an outlier, but most of these people I mean they feel, you know, stuck. They don't, they don't graduate. A lot of them. They they're not motivated to stay in school. They're not learning anything. It's really engaging them and if they do get out of school they don't know what in the world they want to be. They don't want to be scientists, they don't want to be whatever they're. They're, they're looking for something, but nobody ever told them hey, here are the things that you can be when you graduate. If I grew up in the hood like I did, there's like five things you think you can be. If you don't see it and most of the people around you are on public assistance or they're on whatever you don't like okay, maybe I'm a professional public assistance taker, or maybe I'm a drug dealer, or maybe I become a rapper, or maybe I'm a football player. Like, what are the chances you're going to become any of those things, right? Nobody teaches kids how to be an accountant. Nobody teaches kids that's even an option for them. Nobody teaches that. I mean, you think, maybe doctor? I don't know how to become a doctor. Really, I got to go to school for that. I I sucked at school. You know what else is there, you know there's so many professions out there. But people that live in kind of one of these situations where they don't have a large network, they're not exposed to different career paths, they're just not. You know, it's a you're, you're limited to even the understanding. I mean, just teach that in schools. At least teach them the options, like, maybe do a personality test and say, hey, you're very analytical. This personality test showed us, maybe you should go into this career. Or wow, you're really creative. Maybe you should go into this career. That's not happening. We're just not teaching these kids stuff. We're teaching them stuff they don't care about and stuff they don't plan on ever using. And the big thing is finance. That's if they could just come out of school understanding how money works, how our system works. You live in a world we live in America. This is pure individualistic capitalism 100%.

Speaker 3: 37:43

Yeah, people die to get here because of the opportunity every day. Yes, they're taking these little raps from unknown places, we know, but they're taking raps willing to die for the opportunity. We need to start teaching our kids hey, you have opportunity here. Yes, you might be in an area where that's, you know, socioeconomic, economically low, but we need to expose them. There's an interesting study. They surveyed kids in China about what they want to be in kids in America. This came out about a month ago. Kids in China list the top five is like astrophysicists, astronaut not making these up, chemical something, but they're all like impressive, like wow, they're thinking this America YouTube was number one athlete entertainer and the only one on there that wasn't like kind of these fringe type of. You know, good luck if you make a YouTube star, but you need a backup. Right Was teacher and we were talking to our advisory board and we were like why is that? And the conclusion we came up with was well, that's the only other profession the mass of these students are exposed to. So, introducing these concepts, I remember my buddy a good buddy, shane. In school we called him by his last name. I won't throw him under the bus. He would never recognize if I called him Shane, but that was his first name and you know he was two years held back in high school because he kind of passed English, math, science. He just could not. We all helped him graduate by cheating from all that, but he just needed the paper right. I don't even care Morally, I want to help this guy.

Speaker 2: 39:16

That's right.

Speaker 3: 39:16

He was a genius when it came to cars and working on it. He had this old Chevy something. I'm not too good with cars, but he rebuilt the body, took apart the whole engine, rebuilt the thing from scratch. On Dimes who's just picking up and picking up pieces from the auto shop, all this. He rebuilt it right. He's an impressive guy. He felt so beat down. We had to help him with that. Hey, dude, don't worry about that, you're not going to go this route. Yeah, get that your paper. You're not going to go there, I'll go to the cars. But you know he was so beat down. He felt like such a loser because he couldn't pass a class right. And you know, fortunately we have guys, I think, kind of joke around with each other about that. But he, you know, he moved on and I think he got into that the whole car thing after he graduated. We lost contact shortly thereafter but again he was a few years behind there. But he was so beat down because he'll never use science in his life. You never know what's pie used for Some circle thing. I never needed it. I spent weeks on it. What's the purest table elements? I don't care. I know I'm drinking, you know water and green tea, that's. I don't care. Photosynthesis I'll watch a Discovery Channel if I'm interested. They're teaching these concepts. It makes absolutely no difference in our lives. We'll never use it in any profession, unless you're an engineer or something else which you need it. But make those electives for those people, like you said, that are analytical. For those other people that are more just going to get in jobs sales, marketing, other things help give them another pass so they don't have to waste their time with useless information. Money, entrepreneurship those other things are really critical to 100% of people that graduate.

Speaker 2: 40:57

That's awesome. That's awesome. That's 100% true, everything you said. It's just amazing that you know, we know, everybody seems to know, everybody talks about it but nothing ever changes. And it's amazing that this is the situation. And I mean, yeah, like you mentioned, I mean there's people coming into this country for the opportunity and when they get here, they take advantage of the opportunity. Jeff Bezos' dad was a Syrian immigrant. Elon Musk's dad, you know, is from South Africa. You know all these people. Steve Jobs, his dad was a Syrian immigrant. You know these guys are saying look where I came from. I came from a place where this wasn't possible. I'm going to do what I can for my family to put my kids in a position where they can become successful. And it's that, you know, that first generation that comes over. They're the ones who have to. You know, fight and claw tooth and nail to just get anything to happen, because America's expensive, it's not cheap to live here. But the kids, they have the opportunity. They're the ones who end up being the entrepreneur. You know the big entrepreneurs hit it big, take advantage of what's happening, because they hear the stories about the old country. They hear about the stories of, you know, being persecuted and not being able to do what you can do in America, and they actually take advantage. It's just we're not teaching the kids here that same stuff, right? I mean, it's just like you're in America already. Good for you, you go work for somebody.

Speaker 3: 42:22

Yeah, I think you know we have American problems. You know we work in all of them. We have people in 60 countries teaching with our certification and you know it's. You know we did a thing in Pakistan years ago, but we had a sense of team of surveyors over there. Nobody could really read so they had to do it in person and they were going to these little villages where if they needed money they'd go to their tribal leader. If they couldn't pay their tribal leader, then the kids would go work for them, right? So kind of enslavement condition. If their goat or any of their livestock, and mainly goats, if they had a goat and it died, a couple goats died, that's their entire future, right? So the consequences globally are our death. Yeah, here in the States we're arguing about the stupidest stuff. When we have a serious problem, I put a financial wellness at the top of the problems. That. That one of the top problems that the country is facing today. Instead, we're arguing about dumb stuff and we're ignoring the fact that this next generation is inadequately prepared. They're soft, they're not ready for the real world and we need to prepare them so they can, you know, carry this great, you know, thing that's been going on in the future. And we actually put out standards for policymakers, because all these financial literacy bills come out Again, everybody claps but it's just random. So we put out standards for policymakers. They gave them 12 clear bullet points. Here's what needs to be in the bill and the reason we did that is over the years last decade or so we had over a dozen different people from house representatives, the state legislatures and so forth reach out saying will you support our bill? Right, and we'd read it and we'd say, no, but here's our notes, right, you can add those. And we just gather that and we publish these standards for them. But we really want to elevate this. So, again, these kids are able to be self-sufficient. You alluded to something earlier and you said it actually directly. You said that's the foundation Personal, the individual's financial strength contributes to community financial strength, which contributes to national financial strength, and you know the US is one of the biggest givers internationally. So I think it only strengthens the entire world. We can make the change. It's time now that the school systems adopt quality financial education programming. And you know again, people like you shows like yours, and how your advocate too for this is always needed because you're reaching the masses right and I encourage everybody to get involved when you're looking at voting. So for the encourage those people you like to support financial literacy in their schools.

Speaker 2: 44:57

That's right. That's right. Well, vince, we're on the same page here. I think anybody who understands money, understands, you know, has started a company, understands how tough that is. You know, put in the work to learn things. We get it. We know it needs to change. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people out there who have no idea what's happening to them and it's sad. But I feel like it's our responsibility as people who do know, you know, who see behind the curtain, that it's our responsibility to let other people know, and I'm so glad you were able to come on the podcast today. This has been great. Talk a little bit about, real quick, how people get ahold of you. You know how do they reach out to the National Financial Educators Council. Who are the people that you want to talk to?

Speaker 3: 45:42

Yeah, thanks for that. And really we want to talk to anybody that's passionate about bringing this to their community, whether they want to educate, whether they want to coach or whether they just want to be an advocate and say, hey, I believe in this. So we work with a lot of financial professionals, a lot of colleges, schools, nonprofits, faith based groups. Really it's a very diverse group that we serve. So I might be on the phone with a retiree that just has a passion for one second. Next, it's a big corporation. I'm what's bringing in for workplace wellness. So really, if you have a passion for this, if you want to enhance your community's financial wellness, we're open to talk to you. Financial educators council dot org. Financial educators council dot org is where you can reach us, and my personal LinkedIn is Vince shoreb sh orb. I'm on LinkedIn, so look forward to connecting with you. But I love your show, love what you're about. You know these tips and strategies are given it. You know, for some people it might just be two, five, $100, $1000 a month. It makes a huge difference. Other people may take it much further away, but I love what your show is about and I really appreciate you have me on every dollar counts, vince, that's right.

Speaker 2: 46:48

I appreciate it and thank you for your time I know it's valuable. And get back to doing that good work you do.

Speaker 3: 46:55

Thanks, I appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 46:56

Thank you. Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of side hustle city. Well, you've heard from our guests. Now let's hear from you. Join our community on Facebook, side hustle city. It's a group where people share ideas, share their inspirational stories and motivate each other to be successful and turn their side hustle into their main hustle. We'll see you there and we'll see you next week on the show. Thank you.