Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of the Chicks on the Right
podcast where we talk to our friend and sponsor of
the show, Zach Abraham from Bulwart Capital Management. And Zach,
I'm sure you've noticed, because we have two We've actually
talked about this on other podcasts, that there's this whole
trad wife new movement. There's this new recognition that a
lot of people would love to revert back to mad
Men era where it's a guy going out and earning
a living and the wife stays home and with the kids,
And a lot of people now are looking at that
as the revised American dream instead of the whole dual
income family. So what do you make of this revival
of this new of this way of living? And how
as a financial planner would you tell people in this
economy that it's doable? Like what can they do to
make it doable?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I was telling you guys a soft screen.
I have an interesting perspective. So first of all, I
want to be careful when I'm talking about this. I
know not everybody will be able to do this. I
understand that. I'll just kind of tell you my my walkthrough,
my original goal, my first professional goal, and My wife
has an MBA, so she's the smarter of the two
of us, and but she wasn't her passion growing up.
She had a scholarship to school for opera singing for college,
and so that's really cool. Yeah, she's a heck of
a musician, so her passion. But we were both she
got an MBA and so we were both working in
the financial industry. Well, I wanted to manage money since
I was like seven, right, So I was like Alex P. Keaton.
People are always joking calling me Alex P. Keaton, you know,
because I loved Ronald Reagan and I want to talk
about stocks.
Speaker 1: So I've got to say that is like you were
a weird kid. Amazing but also so unusual.
Speaker 3: We went in friends, we haven't totally been friends.
Speaker 2: Well, thank god I had some athletic ability, because I've
always thought like if I didn't, I would have been
like a complete nerds stuck in the corner, you know. Yeah.
So but my first goal, and I'll kind of give
you the I'll kind of give you the genesis of this.
I did not grow up in a family like this.
Both my parents were. But my first goal was a
I knew that I was an industry, in an industry
where if I did well, we would be able to
support a single family. But B the other biggest issue
was I My career was what I always wanted to do, right,
It wasn't my wife's. And she was the higher earner
for us in the beginning, and so she spent a
lot of time doing jaw, a job that she didn't like.
And my goal was, Okay, if you'll get me through
the early stages, hopefully by your mid thirties, if not earlier,
you'll have the choice. You can work if you want to,
if you're passionate about something, just because it felt unfair, right,
we both went to work. But I loved what I did.
She didn't, you know, so I'm pursuing my dreams. She's
not right. And so the other part of it was this,
I didn't want our house serving two masters, right, meaning
if both people are working for a job outside of
the home, right, for different companies, then by definition, both
people have to answer to somebody outside of the home right,
And if only one of us had to A, we
could actually raise our own kids, which kind of seemed
like a bonus to me. But B, if if that
wasn't my wife's passion, then she'd have the space to
find it, you know what I mean? Yeah, And so
that was but that those were the kind of the
biggest goals is I didn't want to have this scenario
where the other party was selfish, right, like, meaning I
hated the idea of both of us getting a home
at six point thirty. That I have so much respect
for two working spouses. It's so freaking hard, and I
just tip my cap to them raising kids like I, yeah,
nothing but respect. I am not speaking down to anybody
or calling anybody out, but I will say this, I
don't think I know we've prioritized the wrong things. Okay,
we've talked about this on the show before. Kay. Malcolm
Gladwell talked about this in his book. Up to a
certain point, money does make you more happy. After that point,
when the basic needs are met, it has incredibly diminishing returns, right,
and having somebody in your house, having at least one
of you that does not answer to a voice outside
of the home, having one of you there with your
children every single day when they get home, that to me,
has got an incredible value that may not show up
in your four one or on your net worth statement.
But it will show up on your net worth statement,
I believe years down the road. Yeah, you know what
I mean, it doesn't.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have it doesn't actually even have to be traditional.
Like we're we're older parents, my husband and I. But
I've noticed even in the past two years since my
husband has been retired and I'm the one working full time,
I love it. I love our life right now because
we still have a daughter that is in school. She's
a school age kid, and he does a lot of
the heavy lifting with the not just with her, because
we both raise her. Obviously I work at home, so
it's I mean, it is a total blessing or life.
But when it comes to like driving her and doing
activities and stuff like that, he does. He pulls most
of the weight there and it takes a little bit
of the pressure off me to have to like do
the driving and stuff like that, so I can enjoy
the job that Like you said, you love your job,
I love my job, and he didn't necessarily love his job,
you know, So it's.
Speaker 1: One of that.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, it's not even like a gender thing.
I think for having one person, You're right, serve that
master and then the other person not it really I
kind of I hear what you're saying. It's just like
for me, it's maybe not traditional, but but I hear that.
I hear what you're saying.
Speaker 2: And and and you work a job, both you and
Miriam work a job. But you guys work for yourselves. Yeah,
you're still not answering.
Speaker 1: Very lucky, right, so we are? What do you what
do you tell people say that you're say that you
are financially advising maybe a fresh grad and they just
got their first job, their new their newlyweds, and the say,
it's the guy just for traditionalchild wife purposes and he
just got a job making sixty grand, right as they
want nothing more than to just make that sixty grand
serve both of them stretch. What do you tell them?
How do you tell them from a financial perspective, like
is the only answer that you're just gonna be in
a it's the bitsy apart, like where what are some
practical strategies that they can use to make that money
go as far as it needs to go?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And where can they sacrifice because you're gonna have
to sacrifice.
Speaker 2: Right for sure? Yeah? Yeah, So first of all, this
might be the most unpopular part of my answer, But
first of all, I would sit the young man down
and say, listen, you chose to get married. Hey, are
you gonna have kids?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, it's your job to take care of your family, period,
end of story. And I'm not a perfect person. I'm
far far from it. But when my wife and I
made that jump and she quit her job while doing this,
I was cleaning people's decks to make sure that our
family could so we could figure it out. Right. So
I would look at him and go, your if your
goal is to work forty hours a week and make
sixty thousand dollars, what are you doing getting married? Right?
Your job now is to take care of your family
and your children. Your job is to provide space for
your wife to pursue her interests. If that means you
got to work on the weekends. If that means you
got to push seventy eighty hours a week, which I
did for ten years, Okay, that's what you got to do.
But don't sit around. That is your purpose as a man.
It wasn't to sit at home and to play video
games and to online bet okay, it was to get
off your backside and go make space and carve out
a place for your family. And maybe I'm not saying
everybody's going to manage money or everybody's going to get rich,
but everybody can go work their tail off at work.
They can do some community colleges on the classes on
the side to increase their ability to get hired for
different jobs. You got truck drivers for FedEx making one
hundred and seventy thousand dollars a year. Yeah, if you're
willing to work, the money is out there, it is.
But when I sit the other thing I tell that
guy is, do you want to see your wife look
at you in a completely different way that gives you
purpose and meaning. Go out and let her see you
busting your backside for your family. You want to feel
truly appreciated and purpose filled. Let your kids see you
getting up at four point thirty in the morning to
bust your backside for your family. Then control. Then that's
the making money part of it. The other part of
it is we got to re establish your family priorities.
Maybe having a Louis Vuitton purse isn't the most important thing, right,
Maybe having a Cadillac Escalade, which costs more than your
annual salary. Isn't a good idea, right, you know what
I mean? Go by? How about you go buy an
eight year old, nine year old Toyota Sequoya or a
Honda Pilot. Right. I told the story I built bulwark
driving a two thousand and one Ford Focus with two
hundred thousand miles on it hatchback too. It wasn't even
a cool one.
Speaker 1: That wasn't even a cool one.
Speaker 2: But you know now, I will also say it isn't easy, Okay.
I am so freaking glad that that period of my
life is over it for now. Right, God's got his
own plans, so you know, maybe I'd have to go
through it again. But if I do, I know the
game plan. And you know, it's amazing to me when
you are purposeful in life and you set a goal,
and if the goal is for one person to work
and the other person to stay home, you can figure
it out. It's not impossible. Right. I hope it's coming back.
Speaker 3: I really do hope it's coming back, because I look
at like my grandparents' generation. My grandpa had three jobs.
He had three jobs, that's just what they did. And
my grandma didn't work. I mean, look, I look back,
that was their generation. I hope that this. I hope
it starts coming back. I do, I really do, because
there's something to be said. You're right, because there's something
to be said for men who do that. I think
that you're right. I think that they're looked at differently.
I think that they feel differently about themselves. I think
that they are different. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh man, Yeah, the pride I felt when my wife
was finally able to quit her job and I'm a
bunch of coworkers at work told her, you'll be back.
We've seen this before. She has not been back. Has
not been back. Praise God, Praise God. A lot of
good things broke our way outside of just us. But
I look at young people and I'm just like, man, wit, like,
there's this. If you want to accomplish good things in life,
you need to accept the fact that there's going to
be an eight to ten year period of lost time.
Speaker 3: Right, pain, grinding pain, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It is, but but front that pain right right. Taking
that pain at thirty is so much easier than doing
it at fifty or forty. Right, front hold that pain
and just work your tail off and do not live
this consumption based life, right, Like, you look at most
these people, A lot of these people out there could
probably do it now, right, just not with their spending practices.
Speaker 1: Right right, they're spending like the government.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well yeah, no, right, and no they are
they're running deficits. It's called a credit card, right, It's
some basic idea and you just don't need it, it's
not And I look, and again, I'm not trying to
be a hypocrite. I've got a beautiful life, and I
with that have come a lot of different luxuries that
I didn't think I'd be able to afford. But they're
minimal expenses. They're meaningless now. And that's when you wait
to do those things, you know what I mean? Yeah,
And there's still like you know, I still own one watch,
you know, it's not even nothing crazy, right, Like I
still buy I bought a new car for myself. It
was two years old with twenty thousand miles on it, right, Like,
just because once you start realizing how trivial and stupid
it all is, you're just like, yeah, I could get
a new one for an extra fifty grand, or I
could say fifty grand and have the exact same experience
exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: So it's all that I feel like you're I feel
like you're a tough love financial planner, which is which
is what some people really really need. And certainly if
they don't have a financial planner, they should be looking
at possibly checking you out. How can they do that?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, that was what we call an
all pro transition.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: So she's the best.
Speaker 2: That's a segue.
Speaker 3: Thank you, She's she's going to write a book on it.
I'm convinced.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, if you ever want to get a
side hustle rounding up some money and managing some clients,
let me know. We're moving over. But yeah, No. Easy
way to get a hold of us is go to
our website Boardcapitalmanagement dot com. We've got a webinar coming up.
I believe that May twenty May twenty second. Yeah, this
week of this month we walk through our process how
we do all of our stuff. You can find us
on YouTube. Know Your Risk Podcast. We do a daily
podcast summarizing everything economic, political, and market driven that happened
that day. Pretty easy to find is Google. Yeah, Know
your Risk Radio, Know your Risk Podcast, and we're all
over the place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, what I like best about your firm
is that you guys are communicative always. You know, you
know we're clients too, But I mean, I'm just saying like,
that's one of the things I really love about you guys.
Just putting that out there.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we'll definitely.
Speaker 3: Calling you guys, call ZAC.
Speaker 2: That's right, yek you. Thank you, ladies, appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Investment Advisory services offered through TREK Financial loc and SEC
Registered Investment Advisor. The opinions expressed in this programmer for
general informational purposes only, and are not intended to provide
specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on any
specific security. Any references to performance of security so it
thought to be materially accurate and actual performance may different.
Investments involve risk and are not guaranteed. Past performance doesn't
guarantee future results. TRAK twenty fourth three zero weak