Shake it off Leadership: Betsy Cerulo

So, you also talk about financial health in this chapter, and that’s not a subject that a lot of people want to talk about. They talk about leadership all day long. They gave me a talk about their leadership. They can talk about finances all day long cause I’m talking about their finances. 

What do you? Want people to understand and grasp their financial health? 

It’s all connected, so if you’re in some type of leadership role and you’re wanting to set good examples, it’s not smart.  I’ve seen this before many times, if your company is not doing well, it’s not smart to go out and buy a high-end luxury car brand new car as you’re either laying off people or you’re not being generous with your staff, and here you come rolling up and I would be stunned when some of my colleagues over the years would do that. 

I was in a peer advisory group where you were talking about some not-so-good things that don’t match so you have to be careful with how you portray yourself with your team if you are out there spending a lot of money, so is that a poison you need to unpick, or you’re addicted to shopping, I certainly have a lot of stuff in our house. 

There became a point where I said, OK, this won’t work so. I think I think you just must take a look at where you put your money because that’s important. You know, if you want to have healthy company, have healthy money practices in your personal life, you know you want to have healthy practices in your personal life. Make sure those practices are healthy. And fair and equitable in your company. 

It’s all connected. 

Oh, I fully agree. When I was still in the Navy, we got to a point early in our 20s where credit cards became a problem and I think this happens to a lot of young people. I’m not a fan of the blame game, but I think I feel like so many families just don’t talk about that sort of thing. You leave a house, and the house has been created and built and filled full of stuff. But it took 30 years to accumulate that stuff. And when you leave the nest, you go and you try to build something based on example, whatever that looks like so you remember how many times you went out to eat in a week.

You remember how you know. What kind of things? You buy at the grocery store, and you look at the prices and you’re like I can’t afford anything more than Rahman, but if they lie to themselves and they say I can swipe this and just make a monthly payment eventually that thing gets larger than you can repay. 

I know on college campuses this happened to me.

Credit card companies show up with their tables because we are victims, and there’s not always the guidance for that. But you know, one of the things that I tell our kids over the years and what I tell other young people is that you might want certain things that you see. 

Those of us who are established have but remember took a lot of years to have that I didn’t come right out of the box with what you think you see. 

I had to go without and make sacrifices to get to that point. But you know, we’re in a world where everything is immediate and sometimes people judge their success on what? You have, I mean look at social media. What people put on social media to make it seems like all they have. 

Never tells the whole story

No, Nope, you’re lacking somewhere else. 

What you don’t hear is that more than 80% of millionaires are the first generation. What you don’t hear is the average millionaire, who never earned more than $75,000 in a year invested in it built up over time what you don’t see on Instagram is the fact that they rented a set, specifically for a photoshoot that day to make it look like what it is.

What you don’t see is the average millionaire drives a 6-year-old car that never costs that much in the first place. There are too many people out there trying to look at the part without being the part. And I couldn’t understand why they might feel that way. But that doesn’t get them to the goal we worked on. 

We got ourselves in debt and worked our way out of debt. Paid it off, spent a good decade helping other people with their finances, and then we were coming up on the end of my Navy career. I knew I’d be taking a pay cut, right? Going down and our focus was to make sure that everything in our land was in order. And the vehicles we had were paid off. We bought vehicles. We placed the ones we had within a certain amount of time. To ensure they were paid off when I retired just specifically so that person wouldn’t be there. 

So, we’re living right now. You know me. My wife had brain surgery. She’s not working well, no. She just started. She’s there today. Today she’s there. Just got back, but it’s been. It’s been 4 1/2 months since she worked. 

And my paycheck went down to less than half of what it was with all the extra benefits have coming in. But if we hadn’t taken the time to position ourselves to do that, we’ve got a healthy checking in more than healthy savings and I’m more than a healthy investment plan and all took time to get to the point of where it is, and I made.

I don’t know if you notice I made a boatload of mistakes. Tons of mistakes. There was a point in our lives where if I saw it in my checking account, I was like I’m they’ll spend it on some whatever crap I remember my wife taking our son to the grocery store or whatever, and he’d come back with a little car.

Right? 

And it was cute a couple of times. And I was like babe, he’s got like a whole thing full of these cars. She said, well, I just feel bad you don’t have this stuff that we had this then there’s like I was like I understand you feel that way we have enough. He has enough because currently what we’re teaching is that every time he goes out, he gets to get something. 

Yeah, yeah. 

And that’s not what we’re trying to reinforce. What we’re trying to do, and I remember when he got a little bit older, and he was asking about toys and I looked at him it’s like “look buddy, we can buy anything and everything at the store if we wanted to. Is that going to make your life any better? Is it going to make you feel any better? Because you’re going to play with this stuff for two days and never touch it again, right? So, what is here really has a value that you want to put your money into?”

He was like. “Huh, like we can get anything?”

“I mean we can. I’m like do you want it? What things do a friend have? Do you want to try it? See if it’s worth it.” 

He’s like, “huh? That’s interesting. Like I do have a friend that has that. He went over and tried it. He’s like, yeah. I’m so glad we didn’t buy it. It was fun for 10 minutes and after that it sucked.”

Yeah, yeah, well, you know interesting concept because we would do that over the years with cars like. So, if there was a certain car that we thought would be kind of interesting to have, or so we would rent that car when we go on vacation and then be like, oh, that’s a piece of junk. And because you like you, you know you try it out first. 

It’s prudent and I, especially through COVID all the issues with people buying cars and then or you could get cars and now people are starting to get smart about used cars. So, when I would bring my car in for maintenance. Hey, you want me to sell you a car? 

Like no. We’ll give you a top-up. No, I’m happy with mine’s paid off and I take care of it. No, thanks. 

Yeah, I get the same. 

I bought a GMC Sierra several years ago for 23,000. Paid it off and put another 40,000 miles on there as they called me. We’ll give you 31. 1000 for this truck now and I’m like I like the dollar amount. But then I have to go get a new one I don’t want. Another payment I don’t want another like what am I going to replace? 

Right? 

With the market, where is I? Like I can’t do it. Plus, my truck is great. Yeah, driving it right now on my Rd. Trip like why would I? What’s the? What’s the benefit like oh, you can get a $60,000 truck? It’s not twice as good as the truck that I have. 

Well, you know at. The beginning of COVID. I felt like I had bought a new car because there was a long time. I didn’t go anywhere, so I got in the car at one point I’m like. Where’s that? And so? It was kind of funny. 

Gosh, I have a new car. 

I’ll go ahead with this thing with he’s got a motorcycle he’s got an auto shop. He’s got a bunch of stuff. He’s like, “I got the itch, I won’t like a new bike.”

I was like “do you want a new bike or is there a thing or two you could do to your current motorcycle that you get that feeling of a new bike?”

He took off the fenders in the gas tank and repainted them. He went and bought a fancy new seat and then he made a Sissy bar. Sissy Bar goes off like the back axle and goes up and makes a big loop or it’s there are a couple of different designs and he hand fabricated one of those. And painted it.  

You put it together. It cost him like. 300 dollars, he had a whole new bike, a whole new vibe. A whole new feel, and he felt great, right? 

My wife wanted granite countertops. I understand the allure of granite countertops or whatever. The problem is, we just don’t have this money line around. Maybe we have 75 square feet of countertop in the kitchen. I’m not dropping it was like 100 bucks a square foot or more. I’m like I’m not doing it. She found a cool paint system where she would lay down, urethane and sponge paint this stuff on, and then seal it. It looks amazing. Amazing no one knows unless we tell him. No one knows it’s painted ’cause it looks. 

Ridiculous. 

Wow, 150 bucks. You know what? I mean. That’s fabulous, that is fabulous. 

Are you looking for a new thing or are you looking for a new feeling?  Right? What is it that you’re searching for? What is it that you’re looking for? 

We have certainly done a lot of repurposing in the House. 

We also chopped remnants for marble countertops, you know if we swapped out some countertops, you won’t believe how much money you save like when I watch HDTV. My wife and the people who love granite countertops look at each other like come on, are you that stupid? 

So, people don’t know what you have to feel. 

There are other ways to do it, right? They maintain them and reseal them.