Joey Loss 0:01
Chris Eckols, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Chris Eckols 0:03
Hey, Joey, thanks for having me.

Joey Loss 0:05
So for, you know, you and I know each other for multiple ways now. We've spent some time together. But for listeners who have no idea who Chris Eccles is, can you tell us, you know, a little bit about yourself and how you come to do what you do today?

Chris Eckols 0:19
Well, I do a lot, and I can't really tell you how I ended up here, but through many years of working with people, trying to guide people's careers in leadership positions,

Chris Eckols 0:31
there's always a couple commonalities across all of us, and that is we think we've got it figured out and we don't. And I think that's how you and I met, actually was in a men's group at the church. A couple guys who don't have it figured out who walked into a room trying to gel with others in our situation.

Joey Loss 0:43
Yeah.

Chris Eckols 0:51
And based on some of those circles that I've developed, I start meeting people like you, and then I might know somebody else who. Gosh, you know, I really do wish I could find somebody who's got a biblical or a Christian sense to help me with some finances, whatever. Like, oh, I know this guy named Joey. And so what really happens is I become a connector across a lot of different circles and a lot of different types of people. And so that is how I have found myself here.

Joey Loss 1:19
Got it. And so now, I mean, I know you as a business person. You run, you know, you're a big player in a. In a business that does a lot of. A lot of business. And. But then, you know, one of your passion projects, which I know you're very committed to, is money coaching. And so how did you find your way to the money coaching piece?

Chris Eckols 1:41
Again, a lot of that was through leadership development. You know, when you do, let's say, a quarterly review with an employee and you find out, you know, where they are, you start trying to pick apart people's motivations for why they work or why they're trying to excel or why they don't. And you have somebody who says, who's really hungry to advance. Why? Well, I need to make more money. Okay, well, is making more money the thing, or is there an undertone, you know, retirement goals or just wanting to live a little different or whatever. It always seems to go back to these money things.

Chris Eckols 2:23
When an employee has an accident on the job and you start to peel the onion and you find out they're worried about their kid who has been sick and they don't have Money for whatever. You start to realize that money is a focal point to all of us for some reason or another. And I just saw this need I'm a fan of. I went to a Crown Financial Ministry deal years ago with a group of people, and I got certified financial master training with Dave Ramsey. I listen to Dave Ramsey. Like it or believe in it or not, there are some people who just don't have any idea about the fundamentals that are going to keep us moving towards retirement and giving us certain types of freedom. And so that's what I talk about.

Joey Loss 3:14
Yeah, well, I mean, whether you love him or hate him, Dave Ramsey is a master marketer because I see him almost every day in my feed, just naturally because of, you know, completely words that are a part of my life as a financial planner.

Chris Eckols 3:28
Right. And, you know, I mean, but he really does unpack the basics, the very basics, you know, spend on or live on less than you make and, you know, save and, and these are all he. Yes, he's a master marketer, but these are all biblical principles. You go back, you, if you, if you have 10 pieces of silver, you take one and you set it aside, you save it, and you, you, you invest this piece of silver and whatever. So it goes way, way back. And I think that other marketers, influencers, TikToker’s, Instagrammers, all that other stuff are presenting these images of how to manage money, and they're just not real. They're just not real. They don't apply to what we're all struggling with.

Joey Loss 4:14
I love that, and I completely agree. I have a bit of a grandiose banner on the Wealth Unplugged podcast thing, and it says exploring money, strategy and meaning. And the reason that I say that is because I just don't think you can have sustainable practices around money if it, if, if it's not connected to something bigger. And I think that's what you pointed to when you were having the employment conversations where, you know, I've been the employee in that situation where in my 20s, I was just like, I'm not making enough money. Well, there's a 90% waiting to. I'm just not putting all the pieces of my life together in a way that means enough to me to feel good when I go to work, because I don't know what the work means in the context of those other things. That's really what I'm saying. But I'm just, It's easiest to say, well, If I had 10,000 more dollars, you know, it would solve all this feeling.

Chris Eckols 4:56
Right, right.

Chris Eckols 5:05
It doesn't. It just. It changes. It just changes the goalpost. And that might be a management thing. It might be a. How you value it. It might be.

Chris Eckols 5:17
There's a whole bunch of different scorecards. But what I found most of the time is most of us, and this could probably get me banned, whatever, from the world. But most of us do make enough money. But how we're allocating those dollars is what changes everything. A couple years ago, one of the young kids here at the beach making 50,000 bucks a year, no debt, drives an old Camry, and he was just happy as a clam. And I then, probably a couple days later, was riding bicycles in Ponte Vedra with a guy, and he's like, well, I just hope to get to the point where I can fund my 401k. And I look down, and he's riding what I believe was an 8 to $10,000 bicycle. And I'm thinking, okay, 8 to $10,000 bicycle. 1% of the cost of that bicycle could go into a 401. 80 to 100 bucks, and you could be funding your 401k. So the answer on either of those was

Chris Eckols 6:17
the amount of money that comes in wasn't the issue. Right. This guy thought that he couldn't fund his 401k because he didn't. What, I don't know, make enough. I don't know. It wasn't a priority. So that really is the difference. Making more money is pretty. Not saying easy, but it can be done. But what you do with it, if that doesn't change, then that extra $10,000 doesn't matter. 10,100, it doesn't matter. That's. That's not the relevant piece.

Joey Loss 6:43
I completely agree. Yeah, and that's just such a. I get what you're saying. It's dangerous territory because it just says, you know, you get what you get. That's not really where it's coming from. It's more. There's no other useful way than to look at your current reality as if you have enough. And if you had enough and you voted with your dollars in a way that perfectly matched the meaning that you want to ascribe to different parts of your life, how would you then divide the money? And that's using what's true today to its maximum potential. And then at the same time, you can also be positioning yourself. Maybe 5% of it goes to increasing credentials or things that further your income potential in the future. But I completely agree with that framing, and I understand how if wielded improperly, vocally, you can definitely get yourself into trouble. But I understand the spirit of what you're saying.

Chris Eckols 7:34
Yeah. And I just said that because that was sort of the light bulb moment where

Chris Eckols 7:39
even I had thought, like, you know, okay, if I could just get, you know, bump my income by this much, then everything would be different. And. But that was kind of that light. Light bulb moment with two very different people living three miles apart from each other, I might add, and going, wait a minute. Some of this is a perspective issue. Some of it really is. And there's two words that I think we could interchange. One is more and one is enough.

Chris Eckols 8:08
And I think about it with so many different things. My weight. Okay. I go to a restaurant, like, I want one more. Instead, I can say, I think that's enough. That would change my entire physical body if I could change those two words. And I think the same is through spiritual and through finance and through so many other different things.

Joey Loss 8:30
Yeah. And I think the hard part of that is, you know, any one time you say, this is enough, you will not notice a lick of difference in the outcomes of your life.

Chris Eckols 8:40
What matters is we're not geared to recognize enough. We're not.

Joey Loss 8:44
It takes thousands of iterations of saying it's enough.

Chris Eckols 8:47
Every single square inch that you see has a marketing message that says, you don't have enough. Bigger house. This bank is going to be better than that one. This drink is going to be better than that one. This is better. Here, hurry up. Go here. It's a limited time. Like, no, it's not. It's enough. It really is.

Joey Loss 9:04
Yeah.

Joey Loss 9:06
And so I think we've answered the question sort of, why is money behavior so important? Do you have any more to add? I mean, I think we've created some general. Some good atmospheric context for that because it's.

Chris Eckols 9:18
Because it is a thread that holds everything else together. Yes, it really is. That's why I think it's important to talk about.

Joey Loss 9:25
Yeah. And money behavior charts the path. You know, you've got a thousand different paths you can't see in front of you. And what, you know, how you interact with each of those extra biscuits you say no to is determines the weight path of your future.

Chris Eckols 9:33
Right.

Chris Eckols 9:41
It does. Yeah. You're pulling your portfolio has weight, and so do you, you know.

Joey Loss 9:46
Yeah. Yeah.

Joey Loss 9:48
So. So I think we've started to define, you know, what. What really is wealth? Like, it's such a, you know. Well, to your point, the marketing stuff tells us wealth is the $130,000 top trim car that you can now finance for eight years at 0%. Right. What a good deal.

Joey Loss 10:08
But what really is wealth in maybe some biblical sense or just broadly in your view?

Chris Eckols 10:16
I think my perspective on that question probably has changed dramatically over the last couple years. I think wealth is an exact equal to freedom. So it's not the number of commas on the portfolio. It is, do you have enough to be able to make choices for yourself?

Chris Eckols 10:43
If you can't make choices, then you're not free. And I think wealth and freedom are very close together. So if you just using an example,

Chris Eckols 10:54
you've got an employable skill, let's say you're a nurse, and let's say you've got six months to a year of living expenses socked away,

Chris Eckols 11:05
all those other kind of pieces that we kind of talk about. And then one day you say, man, I really would like to move to New England. And you can do that. You can pick up, you can go, you can reinvent yourself because you've got some of those cushions in the background. Whereas if you're a paycheck to paycheck person, and the, the difference of 37 hours at work this week or being able to get an hour of overtime, getting to 41, if those are the, if those, if that very small difference makes an impact in your life, you don't have the freedom to say, I'm ready to reinvent myself or I'm ready to relocate, or I'm ready to get married or buy the boat or whatever. By the boat is a metaphor that I use quite a bit. But I think the wealth is the freedom piece. I really think it is, is to make choices with your time.

Joey Loss 12:04
Yeah. And that's really because that's what we're doing.

Chris Eckols 12:06
That's what we're doing. Right. Strive as wealth. I don't know about your firm, but I think about financial advisors in general. Their job is to make sure that when I get to be 65 or whatever year it is whenever I retire, that I've got the freedom to do the things that I want to do in retirement, whether it's golf or fish or fly or, or whatever it is, that's about freedom. It's. It's not about a number. In my opinion, the number is relevant, but it's not the relevant thing. That is not wealth in my mind.

Joey Loss 12:29
Right.

Joey Loss 12:36
The money itself is just a. The representation that we all have decided represents, you know, our ability to exchange around these things that matter to us. You know, if we have kids, we want to buy Them toys, we exchange a certain amount of money to give our kids the experience of the toy. If we want to travel, you know, $10,000 a year in retirement, that becomes a factor, a qualitative factor that we then back into when we're saying, what is that number that gets you to where you need to be?

Chris Eckols 13:05
But that represents freedom. It represents freedom to say, I'm going to be gone for a month. I'll see y' all later. Somebody mow my yard. That to me. That to me is wealth. I mean, because I'm sure, you know, people who make more money in a year than I probably do in a decade, and they're not free to make choices for themselves because they're so tied and anchored to that thing. So it's not the amount that's in the account. It really isn't. But anyway, so that's the answer to the question. I think wealth is freedom. So what's my freedom number? I don't know. When you have paid for cars and no credit card debt whatsoever, no student loans, and your paycheck is all yours except for maybe the roof over your head, you know, insurance, you've got some of those things. But if your overhead is $12,000 a month, it's very different. If you can get to the position where your overhead is $4,000 a month, you've got. I wouldn't say wealth, but you certainly have freedom, for sure. It just changes everything. Yeah, that's the way I look at it. And it's different than I looked at it a couple years ago.

Joey Loss 13:06
Exactly.

Joey Loss 14:14
And all of this circles, you know, from a financial planning angle. At the end of the day, you know, a lot of what we're talking about is the. The spending piece really. You know, like, we, we've. We've said that it's not so useful in the first tier exercise to say, oh, if I just had 5,000 more dollars, that's. That's not going to solve the problems. If your spending is aligned with what truly matters to you and you're building yourself the moat, it's the. It sounds like you can buy flexibility, you can buy time, you can buy these things that increase the sense of agency in directing, you know, kind of making yourself feel like the director of your life in a greater way, which makes the experience of everything else feel different.

Chris Eckols 14:53
Agency is such a. Is such a fantastic word, agency and freedom. Yeah, isn't it? And, you know, and we don't just.

Chris Eckols 15:03
We talk about money, but we're also talking about spending your time spending Your energy, spending your effort, spending your money. They're all finite resources. And it's like, okay, this is how much I've got. This is how much time in the day I've got. What do I do with it? This is how much money I've got. What do I do with it? This is how I think. And my brain only works for six hours a day, and then it shuts off and all I can think about is, I don't know, Netflix and Cheetos. What am I going to spend my time on? And, but, but they're all together, but. Right. This, the spending is a metaphor for a lot of different things.

Joey Loss 15:40
Right? No, I like that. And, and to your point about overhead, you know that, that the spending piece is really what drives how much you need. When you have that, when you're trying to figure out that number, you know, certainly can if you've eliminated $5,000 of ongoing spending because your mortgage is paid off. And these other things are, you know, dealt with. You, you, you drive cars that are acceptable to you instead of cars that you think make your neighbors envious. And, but they keep you safe. They get you from A to B. And, and, you know, everybody's going to have different values. For example, my brother has excellent money behavior overall. But his one thing is he just loves classic cars and they're expensive, but he doesn't drink. He doesn't do any of these other things. And for him to participate in that one thing is freedom. That makes him feel like he's got agency over his life. He's got enough. He's doing okay. He's, he's certainly saving enough money in other places. And, you know, even as a planner, I've seen a lot of different things, but at first I was like, really? You're going to spend that much in a car? And honestly, it works. And it gives him the sense that he wants. And he doesn't do it on vacations. He doesn't do these other things that matter to a lot of other people. And so I think one of the challenges that I find in financial planning is people come in asking for that number. They want to have a conversation that's this deep and it's all numbers. And what I try to challenge them to do, which you have to kind of read the room, how fast can you do this or can you do it at all? Is to get them to think about some of these other concepts you've talked about. And I think when I know those conversations are extremely important, and we're just not cracking the code on having them ourselves. That's when I turn to a money coach like yourself and I say, hey, like, here's the situation. Here's why I think it matters. But you're the expert. Why don't you have a conversation with them and see what happens?

Chris Eckols 17:36
Yeah, the.

Chris Eckols 17:39
I was invited to a friend's office, he's a wealth advisor as well, and just started talking about, I don't know, just numbers in general, just type of. It wasn't a sales thing. It was just kind of a conversation. And, and behind him there was, you know, glossy picture of, There was a Learjet, and there's a glossy picture of a tiki hut in a beach and, you know, a bunch of different photos. And it just dawned on me that what, what he needs to do for me is highly predicated on which one of those pictures I'm identifying with. Right. Because, I mean, I can get a, I can get a place on the water not very far from here for about 100,000 bucks, pull out. I'm talking, like, inside, right? And if that's my retirement view, it's very different than the Learjet view where I'm taking private flights to, you know, Santa Barbara for whatever. Right. They're very different. But that's what you're talking about is really kind of opening up. Say, where, where do you want to, where do you want to be? Where do you want to go? And I think your brother's a great example too. Like, you know, I, I, I saw this morning a, a, A nice cobalt blue 68 Corvette stingray. And I was like,

Chris Eckols 18:53
one time, not long ago, I would have seen that as. Who is that? That's amazing. And now I look at it and go, I could do that. I don't want to, but I could. Right. And it really is just depending on where you want to go. Like, what's that destination? We don't. And for you, that's. The piece is kind of pick those people apart. What do you want to do? How aggressive do we need to be for you to, I don't know, whichever, you know, whatever that scenario is.

Joey Loss 19:23
Yeah. And, and it's funny, you know, some people have a sense, I think everybody's got some sense of this.

Chris Eckols 19:30
They do.

Joey Loss 19:31
It's, it's, it's so much harder for some people to talk about it, though, especially to a financial advisor and.

Chris Eckols 19:37
Correct.

Joey Loss 19:40
Because I think they're worried about. Well, let's, let's talk about one thing first. So one thing I've noticed is the people who have the type of money behaviors. Right. The saving behavior is kind of a conservative mindset about the income that they have, the way that they handle it, they tend to end up with more than enough for what they represent as their goals in retirement. On the other hand, you have people who live in like 20% delusion land for most of their working career, maybe more. Maybe I'm being gracious of 20%. But then they get and they say, okay, I think I'm getting ready to retire in three years. And from our perspective, it's kind of like with what.

Joey Loss 20:22
So people know what they want, but the people that are in the conservative territory, I think that sometimes they have a hard time articulating what they really want because they're already telling themselves no. So you have people on the. Because that's exactly the type of behavior that got them in that position in the first place. And then you have people on the other end who are already telling themselves, I deserve this. I've worked so long for so, like so hard for so long. And you know all these things. But it's not necessarily. Neither of them are coming from like a centralized spiritual examination of their life. And the spending thing that you talked about, how do they want to spend their time? Who do they want to be with? Where do they want to be? You know, what do they want to feel like about choices and food and.

Chris Eckols 21:08
Yeah, that's such a great open up. As soon as you said delusion land, it made me think, and I don't know who this is. So you have to. I'll have to. I'll send you the reference later on, but one of the Fortune 100 CEOs, lots of money, lots of influence, all that kind of stuff, said, this isn't what I want. And he bought himself a farm and he basically moves dirt. He moves dirt from one end to the other. He digs holes, he fixes fences or whatever. And so he was this, this iconic success person and he was in 20% delusion land. Right. He was working and working and working and working to achieve something that he didn't want. Vice versa. You have people who work and work and work and work and don't articulate what they want until that later time. So he's older, he's 65, what, years old or whatever before he made that honesty switch. Right. And for people who don't have this identified, if you work until you're 60 years old and say, oh, what I really want to do in retirement is this. And this to your point, you're like with what you've, you've. You've been in delusion land long enough to think that it's just going to miracle itself or you're going to inherit or whatever. It doesn't work like that.

Chris Eckols 22:25
But you said that. I was thinking about the guy. What do you do now? I was like, I kind of move dirt. He rides his tractor around and that's what he, what he wanted. So I think the planning piece and the money behavior and that, you've just got to, you do have to be honest with yourself. And sometimes it's really hard to be honest when, again, we talked about posturing very early, you know, prior to us recording. I'm posturing for you. I'm this and this and I'm this type of success and this is what I want to do when in reality I don't.

Joey Loss 22:56
We've got a. We've had some experience with clients that. I haven't said this out loud, but I think of them as like cash flow mavericks, right? Like, no, no parachute. And the worst thing that can happen for them is that it works out like twice, you know, like, because you're never ever getting them off that, that wavelength again. And to give an example of who these people are, it might be someone who's built a business from the ground up, right? Like just total raw bootstrapping, built something awesome. And it seems impossible that they built it, they sell it for five, six, seven million dollars. They go buy a boat, a house, all these, I mean, it's gone in a flash, right? And all of a sudden they're like, okay, well I'm going to go do it again. And the thing that they miss is there's years in there where they're making several hundred thousand dollars a year maybe, and they're not. They're just spending up to the limit because all the time they're going from like limitless to so limited. Limitless to so limited. And, you know, these are a fairly rare case. But I think there's something there to unpack maybe for you that

Joey Loss 24:03
listeners might find interesting. It's so hard to

Joey Loss 24:08
help these people reorient the way they think. And, and you don't want to create like a constrained mindset, but when there's this abundance mindset that has no breaks, I mean, Chris, what do we do with that?

Chris Eckols 24:2
Yeah. Boom. And. But yeah, that's, that's. I like that. Cash flow mavericks. That's.

Chris Eckols 24:31
Yeah. I don't know how to answer that because really we can't put our brakes on their Propensity to succeed or whatever. But I can certainly, I can tell you in this seat that I'm sitting in, you know, we survived Covid, and our best year ever was three years ago. And better than that was two years ago and this last year. And it's.

Chris Eckols 24:59
I'm not fearful or hesitant, but I realize that it can go the other way pretty quickly. And so I'm cautious with what we do next. I wouldn't call myself a cash flow maverick. I'm very thankful for what has happened. But I also recognize that without that previous inner conversation, the wealth and the freedom basis, you know, catch net, without that in place, then what I'm doing or the way that the current environment is, can become very, very dangerous, like you said, because you can do it again and again, but the one time that you don't, instead of bouncing, you splatter. Right?

Chris Eckols 25:42
Yeah. I don't know if that was a question, but it does make me. It certainly does make me think because success is fleeting. It. Have you seen that? Have you seen the deal with. It's like Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, all these guys around the table, and they're like, hey, man, our careers are fantastic. And one of them said, yeah, but this too shall pass. And then they're talking about the low times when, you know, the

Chris Eckols 26:06
Screen Actors Guild and all this other. There are strikes, all this other kind of stuff. They're like, well, you know, this too shall pass. And so I believe whether you're in a pit, it'll pass. But if you're on this high road of success, cash flow maverick, the parachute always opens. It will. Until it doesn't. Can you survive the impact?

Joey Loss 26:26
Right. I think just as I was listening to you explain the answer, like, from your perspective, it sounds like you already, like you're doing some of the exercises that you would do with someone in this position, which are. You're framing it around, you know, what really matters to you? Do you have the things to cover those bases no matter what? And so it almost sounds like from that answer that the, the remedy doesn't change. Right. Like, at the end of the day, whether you're a cash flow maverick or you're extremely conservative by nature, at the end of the day, we want to match the way your dollars behave to, you know, or the way you vote with your dollars to what truly matters to you. And if we fail to do that, we'll fail to get the outcome that you want.

Chris Eckols 27:08
Yeah, and I'm, I think the way that I look at And I was, I had a military background. So there are some things that you do that if they don't go right, there is no recovery at all. Right, right. There are some very permanent decisions you can make when you're talking about lives and assets and things like that. And I think some of that is translated to where I sit in business and finances. And that is, if it stops tomorrow, what happens?

Chris Eckols 27:38
Going back to some of the basics, term life. If Joey stops tomorrow, like the absolute stop, can things continue Right. Without him? Term life insurance in this business, if the client disappears tomorrow, is there enough reserves to survive? Right. Again, overhead. If you've got a massive overhead, a massive debt load as a business owner or a person, and you know, CSX just cut 5% of their executives four days ago. Imagine if you're that person, do you have the cushion, can you bounce or do you splatter? But I think of it like that. If this stops tomorrow, what happens? So when I am setting aside reserves,

Chris Eckols 28:28
if I'm setting aside cash, if I'm purchasing inventory, all that other kind of stuff, you really look at that holistically and go, okay, if everything stops tomorrow, can we survive the situation that we are creating today? Personal finance is the same way. It's exactly the same way.

Joey Loss 28:47
And yeah, you almost have to start with the negative questions to earn your right to talk about the positive questions.

Chris Eckols 28:55
It's a contrarian viewpoint and I do have a contrarian view of a lot of things. But you do have to ask those questions. You know, it's, it's, it's important. What is, can we survive the worst case scenario?

Chris Eckols 29:11
What is the likely worst case scenario? Like, I'll give you an example for. I've got vehicles all over, all over basically half the eastern half of the country. What happens if a transmission blows out in Fort Lauderdale

Chris Eckols 29:27
and my guy lives in Jacksonville? What do I do? Well, that was kind of not the worst case scenario, but it's a scenario. It happened. And I said fix the transmission, replace it, it's 10,000 bucks. Okay? Because we put those things in place for those, you know, the emergency fund that we talk about. Right. What's the most likely emergency that I would have with one of my vehicles? It blows up. Okay, can I get a new one? Yes. Do I have cash reserves to do so? Yes. Not an emergency. It just, it's just part of the flow. And so we set those, we set that framework early and then we build on it, and then we're going to go back and call that wealth because it is Freedom to go. Dang. 10 grand for a transmission, really? Okay, fix it. When do I get my car back? Changes everything. Changes everything.

Joey Loss 30:20
Yeah. That's interesting. I'm like imagining

Joey Loss 30:24
sort of like two pyramids where the points are on top of each, you know, touching in the middle. And it's like the bottoms are, you know, it's Maslow's hierarchy, just all survival type elements. And then, you know, you cover the term insurance. What if somebody dies? What if somebody's disabled? Which people don't think about disability, but it's much more common than death, obviously. And maybe it's not forever, but it's a few years. Does your family have the capacity, either through disability policy or through cash to cover that situation? And I think, you know, one of the things that I think about when I think about a emergency fund, like a cash emergency fund or high yield savings or money market or something like that is if you're in the middle of your career and you lose your job, how much time do you want to pick the right next job? Because when you don't have that option, you pick the first thing that comes and it's probably not the best one.

Chris Eckols 31:19
Which, which goes back to the question of freedom. Do you have the freedom to say no to the first crappy offer? If you don't have freedom, if you don't have wealth, again, it's not a number. If you don't have that, then you're not free to make those decisions. Right? Offer me, offer me a crappy job. I'm not going to take a crappy job. Right. I'm just not going to.

Joey Loss 31:23
Yeah.

Joey Loss 31:38
Yeah.

Joey Loss 31:45
And then the irony is, like, people, you know, there's so much going on in an interview for a job that, that, that plays a role in how you show up. Like, if it's known that you're interviewing as much as they are interviewing because financially your house is in order and you're just deciding, is this where I want to commit my talents and my time and my energies and thoughts for, you know, x amount of time each week that shows up so differently and so much more confidently. I just think it drives not only your ability to make decisions, but the outcomes themselves.

Chris Eckols 32:19
Yeah. If you can walk into a room and the answer is no, if you can accept that, then you walk into a room very differently. Talking about the interview like, gosh, I need these people to say yes, please, please, please. You walk very differently than if you walk into a room and say like, you've got a problem. I'm here to solve Your problem. If this works, great. If not, that's fine. I'm going to go somewhere else or nowhere else or, you know, it's, it's completely different.

Joey Loss 32:51
For, for some reason it keeps coming up. This. You ever seen Christmas Vacation?

Chris Eckols 32:55
Oh, I can, I can, I can sit here and do the whole thing. The.

Joey Loss 32:58
Yeah, yeah. How he buys the pool before the, before the money's out.

Chris Eckols 33:02
Your hopes.

Joey Loss 33:05
It's just a classic, like, getting ahead of the horse thing.

Chris Eckols 33:08
Yeah. And you see how freaked out he was. He was completely freaked out.

Joey Loss 33:13
Yeah. That whole movie.

Chris Eckols 33:15
And. Yeah. And you know, it's funny that that brings me to a modern scenario where I, I, I purchased a, A used car for my parents about three months ago. They're in Houston. They're going to drive here. I'm like, dad, it's time to upgrade the car. And he's like, well, I don't know, maybe next year. I'm like, you're 75 years old. Buy the boat. We're doing it now. And so I wrote a check for this used car. It wasn't a tremendous amount of money, but the dealer didn't cash a check for, like, probably 40 days. And I'm like, are you guys going to cash this check? Did you lose it? And I'm thinking that the opposite of Clark. He wrote the check where there weren't funds. He's freaking out, like, oh, okay. And so when the Jelly of the Month club came, he lost his mind. Right. And I was on the other side going, why aren't these people cashing this check? You know, it's just really, really strange. Completely different mindset. Yeah, Right. Same thing. Waiting for the check to clear the. But the reason was 180 out. My dad does look like Clark Griswold, though. Yeah, so it's funny.

Joey Loss 34:16
Yeah.

Joey Loss 34:19
He.

Joey Loss 34:22
All right, so let's get a little granular here and look at, you know, if somebody, let's say somebody's in a position, which I think this is a lot of people, where they just feel like they are where they are, and there's probably something more that they could be doing. Let's say they're at 60 satisfaction with work. They don't. They know they have a good job on paper. They know it gives them a good income, but they don't. They just don't feel super duper about anything. You know, they don't feel like they have the full hand on the reins of agency. They don't feel like they're building meaningful flexibility or if they're saving Money, they don't really know what it's connected to. Where should they start? And trying to create some system here.

Chris Eckols 35:05
Wow,

Chris Eckols 35:08
okay, A couple fold. Because this really is a career. This is a career question.

Chris Eckols 35:15
But you can't make career moves without some of that freedom. We keep going back to. So if. If you're pretty sure you're not satisfied, why are you not satisfied? Here's. That's the question. Is it a toxic environment? Is it not quite paying enough? Is it just not where you want to work? There's a hundred different. There's a hundred different reasons. Right. And I would write the questions down. Why? What makes my work satisfying? What is it about this job that I'm just not grooving on? What could be different that would change my perspective radically. Right. And you put those things in writing and then it changes how you look at work.

Chris Eckols 36:04
That would be kind of the first thing. But as you're going through this dive, you've got to make yourself again some freedom so that you can make a transition. If you do get the answers to those questions or if an opportunity comes up. So it's twofold. Identify what it is about the work, how it is, what would make it different, and then start preparing to make a transition. So if the thing that would make it different is that you, I don't know, have another license in that field or another certificate or, or whatever it is, you start putting away that money, you do that for a year, and let's say you go get another welding type. You know, Tulsa School of Welding is down the street. If you could only Tig Weld, then you would make the extra 10 bucks an hour that would make work better. Then you have to do both of those things, right? Save up, prepare to fix the questions. Does that make any sense?

Joey Loss 37:00
It does. I mean, you're talking about taking inventory, really understanding the fact.

Chris Eckols 37:04
Yeah, that's. That's a really good way of putting it completely.

Joey Loss 37:08
And yeah, I think something that came to mind as you were talking about that is one of the patterns I've noticed. That's super easy. This is just a human nature thing is we get very sure in a way of how we feel about the inventory, but we don't know exactly what it is. But we can make a decision based on just how we feel about what we think is true right now. And let's say it's, I'm going to quit this job because I'm going to go find a better one. Well, two months into spending down your savings, you kind of Revert to exactly how you were when you took that last job in the first place, Right.

Chris Eckols 37:41
Where you're like, well, the cycle repeats for sure.

Joey Loss 37:44
And so instead of saying, I'm going to take a job that answers these questions that I knew to be true as I left, you, get back to a place of. I just. I'm going to feel a lot better than I do at that moment. By having income again, you're just. It's like you've rewound back to an infantile version of your prior problems and you're just going to solve that one again and then guess where you'll be a year from then. Taking inventory again? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Eckols 38:10
Yeah, hopefully.

Chris Eckols 38:13
Inventory is important first. I agree with that. You kind of do. You do both ways.

Chris Eckols 38:21
Because these decisions can't be made. Like they say, like, get the boat close enough to the dock so that when you jump, you actually hit the dock. And so sometimes it's patience, sometimes it's. There's a hundred different reasons for dissatisfaction or whatever it is. But in some of it, Joey, I'm going to be honest with you, is that we compare ourselves so much to so many other people that we can be in such a great place, yet we're dissatisfied where we are because we're looking at the next person or the neighbor or the Instagram or all these other things. I'm not blaming social media, but, you know, Pastor Joby 1122 says, you know, comparison is a thief of joy, but it is also the deliverer of such grace. And if you are comparing yourself to people who are up here, super happy car, all this other stuff, then even if you're in a great place, you can almost pull misery down on yourself. And if you're in a workplace and you're looking at people who are struggling to get where you are, that might be just a paradigm shift to take you from a 60% satisfaction in your work to a 90%.

Chris Eckols 39:35
It changes a lot. So be very careful what we're comparing ourselves to when we're thinking about position, positional authority, jobs aspirate, all that kind of stuff.

Joey Loss 39:47
So it almost sounds like before acting on the inventory, make sure that you've really cleaned it up and know what's there. Because sometimes it's. It's just a lens issue.

Chris Eckols 39:57
Is it your want, or are you looking at it through somebody else's perspective?

Joey Loss 40:02
Yeah. Is it. Is your dad saying your job's not good enough in your head? You know, is that what's happening? Or is it. Yeah, you know, a conversation with your spouse that, you know, this is what I really want to do. And you just kind of need to reframe the weighting of your joy. And it's not a money thing or.

Chris Eckols 40:18
You know, two happiest people I know, one of them works at Trader Joe's and one works at Birds Unlimited.

Chris Eckols 40:25
And it's. It's not. It's not the money. It's not the what they. They just have a different perspective and a different viewpoint. And so I. I think it's important to. To keep that lens. Make sure it's your lens. Right. If I looked at it through yours, then we would just be disconnected. It doesn't make any sense. But most. I wouldn't say most people, but very broadly, I think a lot of people, man, they land a good job and they're miserable six months later because they're looking at somebody over there or their friend who just got a better job or whatever.

Joey Loss 41:00
There was a. Did you ever see that happiness index study where it's like, if you make over this amount of money, the market on happiness.

Chris Eckols 41:07
Yep, yep, yep. It's a law of diminishing returns, right? Right.

Joey Loss 41:10
Yes. And it was like, at the time, it was 70,000. And, you know, post Covid inflation, it's probably like 100 or something now. But it basically said when they. When they adjust for all other variables, you know, your happiness basically stops rising in a material way with each extra dollar earned beyond, let's say, 100,000 today. And so to your point about it's not the money, you know, a massive statistical analysis says it's not the money. And so what is it? You know, that. And I think that's the question we all have to answer is what do we want? What do we really want? And is the way that we're spending reflective of that, or is it reflective of all this noise, Our neighbors, you know, with a nicer car, our co workers that are doing this and what.

Chris Eckols 41:33
Right.

Chris Eckols 41:42
Right.

Chris Eckols 41:59
And I challenged everybody that listens to this podcast to go write it down. What is it that I want out of my life?

Chris Eckols 42:12
Question mark and sit there and marinate on that question. It is one of the most difficult questions there is to answer because you've got little children, you've got a spouse, you've got an employer that has goals and aspirations for you, you've got your parents that you want to please, and all this stuff. And not very often do we sit down and write about that. That's an exercise that will uncover a lot about you personally. If you allow yourself to do it. I'd say it's one of the most difficult questions to actually answer for yourself.

Joey Loss 42:49
And to prove how true that is. I think my favorite piece of wisdom that I've gathered from doing this work and working with people who are retiring and have settled into retirement is that question doesn't stop when the job goes away. In fact, it probably kicks up. Because even if you didn't love your job, there was some element of purpose that you derived from showing up and doing what you did every day. And when that's gone and your kids are grown and they're on doing their own things and nobody really needs you anymore, you're just there and maybe you've got the financial questions, you've got the house, you have literally an amazing boat.

Chris Eckols 43:25
Yeah, your Instagram set. You're set.

Joey Loss 43:29
Yeah, your Instagram rocks, right? There's nothing left. Like, you still have that question. What is it? What. What matters? And if you don't think that informs the money, you know, that is so much true.

Chris Eckols 43:40
I mean, if you, if you dive into the rabbit hole about the fire movement, you know, financially independent, retire early. You've got people who, you know, amass millions of bucks. They can live off the residuals, and after about eight months of, you know, being 48 years old, not needing to work, they go out of their ever loving mind and they go back into the workforce. Because you've got to have that purpose in that place.

Joey Loss 44:06
Yeah, gotta have it. And I know for me, I talk with my wife all the time, like, if we hit financial independence, I'm just gonna blow right past it because I just don't. I would not do well doing nothing, you know, And I. I think most people are that to a degree.

Chris Eckols 44:21
I would go nuts. You think about all these people with, you know, bajillions of dollars. Michael Jackson, remember? And he's buying, like monkey bones and putting Ferris wheels in his front yard. And I was like, if you had unlimited amounts of money and unlimited people taking care of you and every whim was just a snap of a finger, I would just. I would be out of control.

Joey Loss 44:40
Yeah, I need a dragon to slay. If I don't have. If I don't have one, I become the dragon, you know? Oh, yeah. And I can. It just isn't good, you know? And

Chris Eckols 44:47
Yeah.

Joey Loss 44:54
that's something that I feel like if I had to pin, like, what was. What did I learn as I turned 30? It was like, I need a mission. I need other people to be responsible for. I need

Joey Loss 45:08
Some sense of belonging to things greater than myself. And if I'm financially independent in a beautiful house, sitting there, you know, on my boat by myself with nothing to do, it's probably one of the worst places I could be compared to where I am now, where I wake up in the morning, I've got kids to take care of and they're loud and. Is it pleasant all the time? No, but it's purposeful. And that helps drive everything else that I do in a positive way.

Chris Eckols 45:24
Yeah.

Chris Eckols 45:31
Yeah. And that is the question or that is the answer you should be looking for as a financial planner. Like, where do you want it? What do you want to be? What do you want to do? Because retired fishing, that doesn't. It doesn't last, you know?

Joey Loss 45:51
Yeah, I can. I mean, I'd love to fish more than I do, but there's still a cat.

Chris Eckols 45:56
That's great. That's great. Then you have something to work for. You have something to work toward. Right, that's. That's. That's the point. You have something to work toward. Okay, I want a little more of this in my life. What has to change? What must be true for me to, I don't know, go fishing on a Tuesday morning, figure out that question? Yeah, let me know. I'm chartering a boat in February on Intercoastal, so let me know.

Chris Eckols 46:22
But, you know, but you can't do that every. Every day, every week. Yeah, I can do it. I can do it once every six months for four hours. Yeah, right. But we also limit ourselves. We don't allow ourselves to do stuff like that. I'm not talking about necessarily charting a boat or whatever, but just allowing ourselves, like, to. To. To work and, you know, I just experiencing, like, we. We live in Jacksonville, Florida. It's beautiful. There's so much stuff to do, but we don't allow ourselves to do it, so. Joey, this is. This is sick and twisted. I work 1.1 miles from the beach and I haven't walked there in eight months.

Chris Eckols 46:57
Like, well,

Chris Eckols 47:00
so I need more of that in my life. So let me figure out what needs to be true to give myself that time.

Joey Loss 47:08
I. We live. We were worse. So we live six houses from the water.

Chris Eckols 47:13
You're worse. Oh, so you live there?

Joey Loss 47:16
We live right there. And we moved in June and for the first three weeks, all the time. Right. Like, oh, look at our life. This is amazing. You know, I'm so grateful and fortunate to be here. And then, you know, it was kind of the end of the pregnancy for John, my Son who was born in September, and then it was right after the pregnancy, so we didn't do anything. So we kind of have an excuse. But it was like right around post Christmas, you know, sitting there in the post vacation kind of low. Or post holiday low. And I was like, I live at the beach. I'm an idiot. I haven't been there in four months. You know, like, what a. What a ridiculous thing. And so now we've. I've restructured my routine. But, you know, even outside of money, I think all these principles you're laying out apply. Right. Like now I walk on the beach at five in the morning with a weighted backpack at. For you at like six days a week. Five days a week. If I can do it. First of all, it's the only time I know I can be there because the kids are pretty good at sleeping at that hour.

Chris Eckols 47:43
Right.

Chris Eckols 48:14
Yeah. You've turned a corner. I can tell. I can tell by the look on your face you've gotten some sleep. Yeah. Yeah.

Joey Loss 48:19
Yeah, we're there.

Joey Loss 48:22
Well, Chris, I. This has been an awesome conversation. I knew it would be, and I think possibly the greatest takeaway if I were to try and sum it in my head, I'm going to come back and listen again. But is that taking inventory and really understanding what's true about what you want versus what's true about your life today is this first step of anything, whether they're working with a money coach, a financial Planner, or they're DIYing, you know, listening to Ramsey and other tools. And if you really understand what's true inside and out, you've given yourself the first set of tools to make some change.

Chris Eckols 49:02
Yeah. The words that popped out was agency and freedom. So we do have agency in what our future is going to look like. And maybe that is taking inventory, maybe that is quietly saving so you can make a launch into something else. We do have some control. There's so many narratives that says you can't get ahead. The interest rates are keeping you from a house. All these other things are happening to you, and that's not true. They're happening. Right. And you have agency to figure out how to. How that applies to you. And then the freedom part just. Just really resonates as well. I mean, I think, you know, the wealth equals freedom. That is kind of my takeaway. Like, okay, that's what this is all about. It's having freedom to make choices. If I wanted to quit my job and go work part time at GATE three days a week, I could do that right? I've got the freedom to do that. And I'm not saying me, but I'm just using that as an example. So, yeah, agency and freedom are what we're looking for.

Joey Loss 50:10
Chris, if any listener wants to connect with you or sort of follow what you're doing, where might they find you?

Chris Eckols 50:16
You can go to accessiblemoneycoach.com

Chris Eckols 50:21
accessible meaning if you need to meet at the beach, that's where I'll meet you. If you're. If you're a multi millionaire and you're confused or if you're scratching by with 40,000 bucks, I'll meet you where you are.

Chris Eckols 50:35
I am located in Jacksonville beach and I'm not a feed. I'm not a. I'm not a. I don't sell any products whatsoever. There's not going to be a sales pitch. This is really about making sure or asking you the correct questions so you can identify your own behavior so you can have some of that agency. But accessiblemoneycoach.com do not judge me on my website making abilities. I tried that myself because. And probably improved that a little bit, but that's where you find me.

Joey Loss 51:05
I always tell people if the website sucks, they're probably really good at what they do. That's what I found.

Chris Eckols 51:10
Hey, I like that. I like that.

Joey Loss 51:12
As the accounting website, beware, you know.

Chris Eckols 51:14
Yeah, exactly. Yep.

Joey Loss 51:17
All right, awesome. Well, Chris, thank you for your time. I'm going to put a link to your, to your website in the show notes. If nothing else, people can get, you know, contact info from there about how to have that conversation with you if they choose to.

Chris Eckols 51:30
Sounds great. All right, Joey, thank you very much for the invitation. I hope to see you on a Thursday night coming soon.

Joey Loss 51:36
Yeah, you will. All right, take care.

Chris Eckols 51:37
You too.