Jed Collins | Your Money Vehicle

Dr. Kevin Rindal | Vimocity

---

RESOURCES

• Book: Your Money Vehicle by Jed Collins

• Book: Fourth and Goal by Jed Collins
  

What's one mistake that you see over and over again? Too big of a house, too big of a car. The goal is to see money as the vehicle taking you somewhere.

What is the most important financial habit someone can build today? If you cannot tell me how much you spend each month, we got a problem, because you don't have a plan, you just have financial stress.

Your future and freedom is the one thing you cannot take a loan for. If you don't care about future you, I have tough news for you. Nobody does.

My guest today is Jed Collins, former NFL fullback, Amazon bestselling author, and certified financial planner. Despite being an accounting major at Washington State, he was unprepared for the financial questions that came with his first NFL paycheck. That gap became his mission.

Well, Jed, I'm so excited to talk more about, uh, what you're doing with these NFL teams. But before we do that, let's talk about your career as an NFL athlete, the Fullback of Finance. Walk us through your experience and your career.

So I got to chase the dream. Coming out of college, I was not a highly sought-after, first-round kind of caliber player. I always like to tell people my greatest claim to fame is that I run a five flat 40, a 5.03, 5.07.

And I still went on to the, the land of monsters and, and earned my role and spot. The humility is a big piece of my journey, knowing who I am and what I am not. In football, at the very least, there are two players on every field. There are artists who you give the ball to and get to watch, you know, paint the canvas with their, their athleticism, and there are tough guys who create space for the artist.

At the NFL level, I was more the tough guy, and going, transitioning from linebacker, tight end in college to a lead blocking fullback, I had to adopt more of that persona, and my character's name was Jedzilla. He was the guy who could go onto the field and deliver the blow, be the hammer, not the nail, and truly turn into this character that normal Jed or, or everyday Jed wasn't.

And I challenge a lot of people in their lives, have that alter ego, name them, know how to find them, try to know how to control them, and learning who that person needs to be to go get the job done. And as I look at surviving seven years as an undrafted no-name player, I knew every moment I was on the field, every time I made a roster, a guy who got paid a lot more money and had a lot more invested into him was not on that field, was not on that roster.

So I took that responsibility as I have to always prove that confidence, trust, and value sequence, and that was truly the, the desperation, but really the hunger that allowed me to compete even though I was a step slow. That hunger allowed me to be two steps ahead at all times Jed, you're, you are very vocal about your experience in the NFL.

You're cut 12 times, and that takes a re- tremendous amount of- Tremendous ... uh, just grit to be able to continue to bounce back up, to take rejection, to show up again, try out, and it has to be grounded in that greater belief that you belong there. Uh, can you tell us, like, how that shaped your identity of how you saw yourself and how you got through some of those times and the rejection?

Kevin, I am a great failure A lot of people are gonna hesitate. You even chuckle. Not many people are gonna introduce themselves as a great failure, but I truly see this as my greatest skill. Um, going back to my childhood, my dad created a game called King for a Day, and despite my football background, we were a basketball family, and I'm the youngest of three brothers.

In the backyard, we played basketball over and over and over again until there was always a victor and a king for that day. And now that king got to boss the other brothers around, go take out the trash, get me a drink of water. You know, there's chores we gotta do. The king got to be in control. And I remember very vividly the, the two days that I won King for a Day, uh, and knowing I'm probably not gonna be king for tomorrow, so be a gracious king today and be a little nicer to my brothers.

But that idea that I started to go out on our court, played King for a Day a thousand times and only won twice, I knew I was gonna lose. They were bigger than me, they were stronger than me, they were better than me. I knew winning King for a Day wasn't-- could not be my measurement, and so I started to shift and change what my objective was on a day-to-day basis.

It was no longer walk off the court as king, it was could I get another bucket? Could I get another stop? Could Jed improve today despite the outcome maybe not being in my way? And I looked at that framework and that mindset of the outcome doesn't determine my attitude. The result doesn't determine how I prepare or what my effort is gonna be on a day-to-day basis.

I control certain things, and that fail word is a knee-jerk reaction to so many people. In today's society with social media, we are terrified of failing because everybody's gonna know it. I flip that word on its head and I say FAIL is my first attempt in learning, F-A-I-L, first attempt in learning. And I really look at failing as just that, my first attempt.

And if we look at it even deeper, if I can learn from a failure, we know knowledge is power. Well, failure is feedback, feedback is knowledge, and knowledge is power. I have now become more strong because of my failures. And so it is just a, a framing and a perspective. I had a coach call me Freddy Krueger 'cause he said, "Jed, you just don't die.

You've been cut a dozen times. You just-- We, we can't get rid of you." But it all comes back to that idea of being a great failure. And although nobody wants to stake their claim and say, uh, as an entrepreneur, we fail every day. As a father, as a husband, I fail more often than I would like But I don't see it as the end.

Failure is never the end. Failure is just your first attempt, and as long as you learn from it, you just grew more powerful and stronger, and you get to come back tomorrow, beat Freddy Krueger, don't die, survive, and keep competing. You entered the NFL, you're an accounting major, and you still walked into the league totally unprepared.

What did that experience teach you about the gap between earning money and then knowing how to use it? As I'd started to get educated and I'd identify how the wealthy handle their money, what they're supposed to be doing for it, they look at a paycheck very differently. And the, the mindset I tried to frame was, I'm not just working for money, my money is starting to work for me.

And they look... Wealthy people look at a paycheck like an employee. They don't look for it, what is it gonna give me? It is where and how is it working for me? Um, and so I got humbled in that locker room looking around and saying, "If I don't know these answers, I gotta believe most of these guys who grew up in the football and sports world I did, they don't have it either."

Uh, and that's really what challenged me to go and start going to bookstores and finding those Suze Ormans and Dave Ramseys and, and Kiyosakis, uh, and really identify a new introduction to the language of money and truly making money your employee as my pillar and as my passion. And so s- you know, you work with tons of NFL teams, I think over 20 NFL teams right now, and so you're walking into these locker rooms, uh, on a regular basis.

H- what percentage of people do you think in those locker rooms actually know how to manage their money? So the conversation has drastically changed in the last five to 10 years. Uh, 10 years ago, the majority are guys like me. We were that spender. I mean, I... And I didn't blow my first paychecks. I bought an engagement ring, but I did spend every dime of my first paycheck on that engagement ring.

Now, 18 years later, she's still around, great investment, and that's really what I've come to accept. Most of the athletes today, and most of people getting these checks, we've, we've been scared straight to some degree to know it's, you know, don't just go frivolously spend on a nice new car or some kind of jewelry, but we are still spending.

As an athlete, you have a season, and everything revolves around that season. Anything beyond, you kind of forget or put off. Where I wanna start shifting people's mindsets is to be able to see the, the connectivity between them today and future them. If you don't care about future you, I have tough news for you.

Nobody does. The government doesn't. Even the company you work for or with isn't going to hold your future as a priority. And so the first thing that we have to accept is if I don't care about future me, nobody is taking care of that person. And the frame I try to shift in the, the athlete or the individual's mind is we have to start thinking in decades, not days.

We gotta start looking at what this paycheck can do for us, not this Thursday buying a car or this Thursday going out for dinner. It's how many Thursdays is this gonna provide for us over the next decades? And a lot of people go, "Well, Jed, I'm not worried about decades ahead." And I come back to that question, "If you're not, who is?"

So as we look at this n- education and knowledge today, this is maybe not the first generation, but this is entering that first evolution of I have to see myself as a walking, talking, breathing brand and business owner. Doesn't matter who I work for or where I work, I have to take care of my company, which I am the founder and CEO of.

People say, "Oh, well, Jed, you're an actual entrepreneur." We are all founders and CEOs. You may be contracting, you may be working your company into another element, but you have to start to identify the business of you is gonna be here today, and it's gonna be here in 10 years, and it's gonna be here even beyond your retirement days.

So where do we start to frame and prioritize that mindset, and how do we start to educate ourselves to speaking like the business that we are? Vimocity is more than training. It's a safety and readiness platform trusted by companies to keep their field professionals strong, healthy, and ready for the job.

Now we're launching something new, the Work Ready Community. It's the first online community built exclusively for field employees, a place to connect, learn, and lead the future of our industry. Join us and be part of the movement

You know, in the NFL, you're around people who've been athletes their entire life, and then they go through a, an experience of, you know, it's the end of their career, and- Yeah ... they kind of get lost in, in that. But I think, you know, speaking to the people, the men and women who listen to this podcast, they're in the trades.

They may be a gas worker, a lineman, a construction worker, and sometimes our identity is so wrapped up into what we do versus who we are. What is-- have your learnings been as it relates to identity, especially with professional sports? It is such a challenge because we get, uh, we get donned this jock athlete i- you know, identification at 10 years old, and some of us get to play the child's game up until 30.

But like you just said, lineman on the field, lineman in the work, you become identified with what your career is. And what I want people to start to see is, again, themselves as that business, and this is where w- I work with business athletes in the professional realm, in the professional area. With your members and with this audience, they are still business athletes.

Oh boy, howdy, do they go through a physical toll each and every day. But it comes back to that first idea is as your identity, you are not what you do, you are the boss. You choose who you are, what your brand stands for. Now, these careers are true careers. People going into technology are not going into careers anymore.

They're getting jobs for a brief amount of time before the world changes and becau- before their job becomes obsolete. Your audience has a, "I'm gonna do this for 20 or 30 years." But I don't want them to see, "This is all I do." I want them to begin to see themselves, "Well, now I am a business owner. So now once I have mastered this skill," and a beautiful frame between success and mastery.

Success is the young people in the workforce that walk in and are like, "I can do this once." Mastery is, "I know I can come in any day, any time, any environment, and get the job done. I have mastered this skill." You get to talk to and see the rise and the change from success, I can do it, to mastery, I know I can do it every time.

I look and really want the identification to become, I am a master of my skill, but I am also a master of my domain. I am the boss of my business and my career. I choose this is what I'm doing today. In two years, in 10 years, what I do might change, but who I am does not have to change. I continue to be in control of the ship.

Now, that is really hard for an athlete who is told, "Well, actually, you gotta get off and go start a whole new identification." I always say if, you know, you ran into a doctor who spent 20 years building their doctorate and then told them they couldn't be a doctor again, they would be lost, too. So the, the feeling of insecurity and the feeling of a little bit of misunderstanding of what direction is very common But the core needs to come back to, "I've always been the boss.

I've always chosen it. I chose to give my talents and skills to this company or to this place. I am still in control." And the identification becomes me as the brand, me as the business owner, and not me as this task somebody hired me to accomplish. That is success. Mastery is believing in the skills and the discipline and the personality of who is able to do the task So Jed, we have another guest, uh, who's been on the show a couple times n- named Justin Asbill, and one of, uh, the projects that he did for his PhD dissertation looked at the trades, and it looked at, uh, 14 warning signs of, uh, people experiencing stress or potentially being at high risk of suicide.

And financial stress was one of the to- number one things that, uh, sh- kept showing up over and over again in the over 3,000 people that were surveyed. Why does financial stress continue to come up as, like, the number one thing that people experience when it, as it relates to stress in their life? And how do some of these principles from, uh, Money Vehicle apply to the people in the trades?

So number one, I wanna call out the term Money Vehicle. The goal is to see money as the vehicle taking you somewhere. So often we get lost, and money is the objective. Money is not the objective. It's a million dollars. Great. What does that million dollars represent to you? What do you believe you can do, not do, go enjoy with the money?

The money takes you somewhere. The money is not the goal. And I will call out, we, I work with tons of high school, college students, but a student to me is just anybody who wants to speak the language. Your audience, myself, we did not get this knowledge growing up in school. School does not teach us this.

They teach us to be an employee, which is again, why I'm trying to get them to understand what being a business is. But the quickest way to frame is, again, looking at your paycheck and looking at where your dollars are going to work for you. If you're listening, I would, I would challenge you to look at whatever paycheck you're making.

I like round numbers. Let's choose $100,000. That's a lot of money, and as you said, many of the listeners are making more than that. Some are trying to strive for that, but easy round number to start with. I'm making $100,000. You have four choices. In that 100,000, or use your paycheck if it's 72,000, if it's 48,000, you have 100% of your paycheck.

What percentage today are you putting towards your future? That's saving and investing. We're gonna circle back to what the difference there is. You have one choice, which is gonna go to your future. That second choice is going to be how much do you give? Now, a lot of people look at me and go, "Jed, I'm early in my career," or, "I'm focusing on retirement.

I'm not giving anything away." And I say, "Well, what about Christmas? What about birthdays? What about vacations? What about this?" Give is much more than just a philanthropic charitable donation. Your faith can be give, your family can be give, your friends can be give. How much of your paycheck, maybe it's only 1% today, maybe it's 10% if you tithe and belong to a church, how much is going to be given?

So if my future is a choice, then I have give. Next, we obviously always gotta account for that tax category. What percentage of my paycheck is gonna go towards taxes? A big dec- decider here is, am I a W-2 employee that works for a company? Am a, am I a 1099 contractor, that I am a company that I contract with a, a, an employee?

So looking at how much that tax percentage is, we quickly land then on our last and fourth choice of, of what we're living on. What is the day-to-day burn and spend? And so real quickly we see what that financial stress is, because most people get their paycheck, that $100,000, and they go, "Well, rent is three grand, and then I gotta go do this, and then I gotta go do that, and quickly I've spent...

All right, I'm spending $7,000 a month." And then they turn around and go, "Oh, shoot, I gotta go pay taxes. Oh, snap, I never got to that future thing." We have to s- change the way we're looking at our money. So as I receive it, how do I reduce financial stress? The same way if I showed up to your office, uh, out in the field, uh, fixing, changing, improving whatever, I would be stressed out of my mind because I don't know what the heck I'm doing.

I don't know what the start is. I don't know what the end is. I would be totally stressed and lost. That's how people approach their money. "I don't know where I'm trying to go. What's the end? What are you talking about, the end? I'm gonna work for the next 100 years." Start, I start with what I get paid with.

So as we look at how do we reduce that financial stress, it's taking that breath, taking a step back, and saying, "Here's 100% of my paycheck. 10%, 20% is gonna go to future me." Now, I mentioned there's a difference between saving and investing. The biggest mindset shift between saving and investing is that word risk, and people don't understand that.

"Well, saving is in a bank, it's not making you money." Not true. Banks, credit unions, they pay you money to put your money in a savings account. Now, they only pay you two, three, 4%, and people don't feel like that's making them anything because of inflation and because of the general rise, and we aim for a 3% inflation.

We've been in some crazy worlds the last couple years where, shoot, gas just shot up 28% in inflation, so we know that's why saving is not gonna be able to get us to the destination we want. If you want a hot take, here it is. Nobody today can save their way to wealth 50 years ago, my p- my parents' generation used to say, "Get a good job, put it in a savings account, you're fine for the rest of your life," because they were earning a higher percentage and inflation was just not as pungent as it is today.

You cannot save your way to wealth. You have to s- take this risk of investing and make your money go to work for you. So when I say I have in my high-yield savings account a savings, that's protected from risk. That is my cushion to life. Then I have to accept investing, no matter what it is and no matter what that person tells you about how guaranteed or proven or risk-free it is, anytime your money goes to work for you, it is at risk.

But that risk is what you accept because you want the higher reward. You want the return. So if I don't want that 3% from a savings account, I want 10% from the market, I gotta accept that some days that market's gonna go down. So the first objective is how much do I want to look at decades over today? How much do I wanna put towards future me, saving first and then investing once I'm capable of taking that risk on?

Then you look at that give and you say, who or what? As professional athletes, NFL players, NBA players, their biggest struggle is we made it, and my goal is to identify who is we? The, y- at your draft party, there was 47 people behind you. Are all of them making it? Are you gonna support all of those journeys?

That is not necessarily your audience's first problem, but generosity and love is a bigger challenge today than we give it credit for. We look at who has helped us and the obligation that we owe them and return them something. So framing out who and what and shrinking down the list of who is, who and what we're gonna give to.

The tax question is probably the one we want to negotiate and discuss the biggest, because most of these, your listeners today are business owners, 1099 contractors, who have the luxury of saying, "As the business owner, I get to look at what I wanna spend before it gets taxed." As a W2 employee, I make money, I get taxed, and then I spend what's over.

As a business owner, I make money, I spend money, and then I tax what is left over. Everybody gets so hot, hot and puffy about Amazon not paying taxes. That's because they're spending it all before it falls into taxable income. And I think one of the biggest misnomers or misunderstandings is everybody gets a paycheck and goes, "All right, Jed, I've, I've learned that's my gross paycheck."

Then all the things are taken out, and then I take home my net paycheck. As a business owner, we do not even real- really understand or get introduced to between gross and net is this new term called taxable income. Not all your money is gonna go through the tax sequence. Not all of them goes through the progressive income tax code.

Not even all of them goes to FICA and self-employment, things like that. So how do we look at gross income, that number we thought we were gonna make, and how much is gonna fall into that taxable environment? As a business owner, my goal is to make that second number the smallest it can be, and I'm not saying go spend all of your paycheck, but I am saying see yourself as the business and the CEO and the boss now and start to look at where are my dollars going and can I spend them before I have tax taken out?

Because again, make, spend, then tax. So if I can spend them on my business, I do not have to tax those dollars, immediate savings there. So my tax percentage is vastly different from a W2. I don't have a lot of control outside of s- my standard deduction and my 401. To business owner, well, snap, now I'm paying rent.

Well, that's a home office deduction. Now I'm doing, you know, traveling for my company. Well, that gas, that's a business expense, should not be taxed. So I try to get people to really reframe and see which percentage. And then the number one number you need to know in any financial plan, again, I come from wealth management, I work with people all the time.

If you cannot tell me to about $100 ballpark how much you spend each month, we got a problem because you don't have a plan, you just have financial stress. Those most stressed out people are the ones who have never calculated what I call your burn rate, and that is the number that goes out the door each and every month.

And it's not to feel guilty about like, "Oh, I'm spending $6,000 a month." Once you have a plan, the stress goes down because you're a system now. And what we can depend on systems is what goes in, we know what's gonna come out. Now we look at that $6,000 a month I'm living on as part of my plan and part of my system, but the stress comes from I have no idea where I'm going, what my future holds, or who is gonna take care of that person.

I don't speak the language of taxes, and I can't really understand how people-- Some people are paying none, and some people are paying so much. And then that month-to-month burn rate is just I, I, I saw it, I like it, I want it, I bought it. You know? And there's songs now, "I, I want it, I bought it." That consumer spender mindset we have to remove ourselves.

Spend money when it's within your framework, but have that number. That biggest, most important number is what am I spending on a month-to-month basis because that's gonna build out the rest of my plan. So how do I reduce stress? I build a system, and I speak the language, and I start to understand my inputs determine my outputs And just to double-click on that, I think there's a temptation, you know, if you don't have a plan, if you don't have a framework, you get to the end of the month and it's like there's no money there.

Yep. And so then you immediately go to, "Well, I guess I better pick up more overtime," or, "I better work this storm-" Yeah ... or, "I better do this or that." And- Work harder. E- exactly. And so why is it, like, just having a bigger shovel not necessarily the solution? Because it, it seems like people can just continue to work more, work more, work more, but then they're just in the same spot.

Can you, uh, just explain a little bit more of your thoughts on that? I think, um... And I'm gonna go with the, the cathedral example. Uh, you, you walk down a road, and this is gonna be perfect for your audience, and there's three people building a, uh, building bricks. And you ask the first person, "What are you doing?"

He goes, "Look, I'm obviously building a brick." Okay, and you walk a little further and you ask the second person, "Well, what are you doing?" "Well, we're building this wall, so I have to make all these bricks to get this wall up because it's part of the structure." And then you walk down a little bit further and you ask the third person, "Well, what are you doing?"

"I'm building a cathedral. This brick right here is gonna go into that wall and, ultimately, this is going to paint one of the most beautiful, historic pictures." And you look at the terms and the words purpose, identity, fulfillment. What we were talking about earlier about seeing who we are, not what you do, "I build bricks," but it's how and where you are going.

"I'm building a cathedral." And so as you look at your framing of- What is the bigger shovel? Well, maybe the bigger shovel wasn't even needed because, terrible example, I'm building a pool, and we got to the point where the pool was deep enough, it was wide enough, but I had no idea what the depth and the width was supposed to be, so I just kept digging.

And I'm working as hard as I can, and it never seems like I'm getting anywhere because I'm just digging a bigger hole, and that's not what the objective was. I gotta find what my cathedral is. I gotta see where I'm supposed to be going so I know when do I have to work harder and smarter, and when can I start to taper off?

If you go through your job and you are fully dependent on this singular income, you are a slave to whoever is paying that. And I, I don't use that term lightly, and I don't want people to get... But you are dependent and cannot disobey or disagree. You go away, your plan breaks, you're in trouble. Why the future person is so important is once I have $10,000, $100,000 invested working for me, maybe it's a rental property, maybe it's a lot of different things, now I'm not singularly dependent on that income.

Now my stress is again reduced because I know I got a little something coming in on the side. And so as I go through my career, I continue to prioritize that future to build up the second. Maybe there's a third in the future. Now I can look at what I'm doing and say, "Hey, I'm helping them build a cathedral.

What if I wanted to go build my own? Now I have sources that are gonna support me when I take on that leap of faith." So if somebody's driving home right now and they're thinking, "Man, I'm caught in that cycle where I'm living paycheck to paycheck. I feel like I just have to try to outwork my money, you know, leaving," and it's, it's almost like you've got a leaky boat and it's like- Yeah

how do I get this water out fast enough? What, what is the first step somebody can do practically to start to change their behavior, change the outcome, and start to get things on track? Step one is that burn rate. If you don't know your burn rate, you don't have a plan, and you are gonna be stressed and lost for until you do.

It's... And again, I don't need, and a lot of tools and technology, AI today, honestly, you can upload your bank statements into a tool and say, "Tell me where I'm spending, how much I'm spending, and where I can save." Use technology where you can. But give me a ballpark number, $5,000. Hey, at the end of the month, I needed another 300 bucks.

Okay, so maybe my number is 5,500. Or at the end of the month, it was, I spent 4,700. Cool, now you got 300 to go live on and enjoy. That's the beauty of the system. Those dollars were designated for today. Finding that burn rate is number one. Then most of the people I get to work with are so excited. They've seen social media.

They've seen the TikTok. I gotta start investing. Before we get there, we have to cushion your plan. We have to build some kind of barrier to remove the risk and the stress. Because if I save my first 10,000 and immediately invest it, well, that 10,000 has risk on it, and now if it goes down and I need it, I just lost money.

We don't want your plan to be full of risk. We want to remove risk as we build it out. So the first risk we're gonna remove is measuring your burn rate. The second one is that savings account. Doesn't have to be years of money, but it should be six to twelve months of your burn rate, which is why it's personal.

If I have a $5,000 spend, okay, that's 30 grand or so in there. Now, if I only spend $2,000 a month, I don't need that much. So it is a personal cushion Then as we do look at kind of stepping into the investment world, it's strategically what type of investment account do we want to go for? The first type is gonna be a brokerage account.

This is the introductory one because it is liquid. I can put money into this account and pull money out of that account as I need. So the risk and the stress of, oh, I'm not allowed to touch these dollars for years isn't there. Now, the downfall of a brokerage account is you are taxed twice. You're taxed as you contribute, and you're taxed on the growth, to which many people say, "Well, I don't want the stress and the risk of taxes.

How do I remove that?" That's where we get to tax-advantaged accounts. But I don't want the individual to say, "I have to invest today before I have my cushion," or, "I have to go put it into a 401or Roth account before I have my time set up." Because the, the liquidity in your brokerage, you may need for a car, a house, an engagement ring, a vacation.

You may need it for life. The dollars you start to put into a tax-advantaged account, I want you to say, "These are my decades dollars. I don't need these for twenty, thirty years. I'm gonna let them go to work uninterrupted," because we're not gonna pull out of our future. We're never gonna borrow. 401loans is a big question.

We're never gonna borrow from our future, because your future and freedom is the one thing you cannot take a loan for. I can take a loan to buy a car, buy a house, get an education. I can take a loan for a lot of different things. Nobody is gonna let me take a loan to walk into my freedom years and no longer work, so let's not borrow from that person.

So as we look at the stepping stone, it's A, I have to have my burn rate measurement. With that, you should understand a little bit high level of the tax calculation. B, I gotta have that savings protection from risk on my plan. C, now I have the brokerage account to allow me to introduce to start investing, and I'm gonna tell you a trick here to use your brokerage account as your ultimate system and, and cash management tool.

And then I can take on both the risk of investing as well as give investments the timeframe it needs in a tax advantage account, pre-tax or post-tax. If we want, we can dive into the difference. But now I look at those dollars and go, "I know they're not gonna be touched for twenty years." I know in two years it's-- they're gonna be down.

I hope they're down. Why? Because as I buy in, those are buying opportunities, and over time, decades, not days, now I understand my risk is being reduced because I'm being rewarded for the risk I'm taking on Uh, compound interest is, what did Einstein say? One of the seventh wonder or- Eighth, eighth wonder of the world

eighth wonder of the world. I'm getting, getting confused on my numbers here. The eighth wonder of the world. Uh-huh. But, you know, there are some people who may be in their 50s, and starting in your 50s is very different than- Yeah ... starting when you're 20. What would you say to that person who may be 50, and they've had, you know, a series of tough times?

Uh, you talk about- Yeah ... FAIL, First Attempt In Learning. Yeah. How can people step away from, from that and still make decisions that are gonna set them up for a f- good future? So number one, just on the compound interest thought, uh, one of the fun little tricks is called the rule of seventy-two. So if you take seventy-two and divide it by whatever investment return you can make, that's how long it will take your money to double.

So let's say a ten percent interest return, seventy-two divided by ten is about seven point two years. It will take seven point two years for my money to double at a ten percent return. That's again, why we need to take on the risk of in-investing, because that rule of seventy-two, if I go to that savings account at three percent, it's twenty-four years.

Check my math there, but seventy-two divided by three is in the twenties. So we need the risk to get the higher return. The person that's sitting in their fifties, I got good news and I got bad news, and it's kind of the same statement, so prepare yourself. The fifty-year-old today is gonna see a hundred.

That's not something we've ever said in our generations past, but the reality on average, people are just living older. Why companies got away from pension systems is 'cause people weren't passing at eighty-two, eighty-five when they were expected to. We're living into our nineties. So if I look at fifty today and go, "Ooh, I'm a little bit behind," change your frame.

Again, this is, this is the next phase and period of your life. You no longer have a timetable of, oh, I'm only working for ten, fifteen, twenty years. You now have an investment horizon of fifty years. So from that perspective, again, we do have the time to begin this investment strategy. Now, as you look at the risk you wanna take on, as you look at what type of investment you wanna put it into, that's up to you.

But the goal then has to be, "Okay, I'm age fifty today. I've been through some mistakes. I've understood where I wanted to change." Step one, maybe my burn rate is gonna be a little lower than possibly I wanted it to be because I gotta make up for some lost time, but it still starts with that first step of identifying your burn rate.

And then as you start to get into your savings and your investment accounts and you say, "All right, I need to make up for lost time. I have to be comfortable taking on more risk." That means maybe I am more invested in stocks and equities than perhaps the average fifty-five-year-old who's starting to shift into bonds and get a little more comf- or not comfortable, but a little more risk-averse and conservative.

Maybe I keep the pedal to the metal a little bit longer to keep that interest percentage higher for the rule of seventy-two to do its work But don't look at age 50 and go, "I lost the game." You are at halftime of your game. Long-term horizon, you still have a lot of, uh, uh, investing to do. And as we look at now changing, as you start to speak it, you're no longer just gonna be how hard can I work the next 10 years to save?

You're gonna start saying, how hard can I work the next 10 years, and then how hard can my money work for me? And that's gonna give you a massive advantage. Jed, a lot of people are listening to this, and they're probably thinking, "Man, there's a lot here, and it feels overwhelming." So how can people think about, you know, potentially hiring a, a financial advisor to be on their team- Mm-hmm

so that they have somebody who can help guide them? And how could reading books like Your Money Vehicle and Fourth and Goal help them have better literacy around, uh, these concepts? Just again, connecting to that professional athlete e-element. We watch film every day. We reflect and learn from our good and mostly our bad.

One of the biggest curses in a, in a athlete's mindset is I, I made 10 plays. I made one error and nine good ones. I focus on the one bad mistake. So watch film of your career. Reflect on where you are, what you're doing, how you can improve it, and the stories you're gaining from it. That self-reflection of how do I improve and then how do I communicate what it is I'm doing?

How do I go find a financial advisor? I wanna introduce you to a term, and I use a, a story, the, the restaurant example, so bear with me. You walk into a restaurant, and the server comes up to you and says, "Hey, there's a salad, there's a fish, and a steak. Which do you want?" And you look at the person, and you say, "Uh, you know, I, I don't know.

You're, you're the expert here. Which one should I choose?" They look at it and say, "The fish. Go with the fish. It's on the menu. You should go with the fish." You order the fish, but you were never told that before the rounds, the chef actually grabbed the servers and said, "Hey, the fish is starting to turn. If we can sell fish, let's push the fish.

I'll actually give you a dollar for every plate of fish that you sell today." Nobody told you that. That was behind the scenes. It was on the menu. It was suitable for you to eat today. That is where the financial advisory world of the past was. If it's on the menu, I can push any product, regardless if it serves me more than you.

Entering this term called fiduciary. You walk into that same restaurant, the server walks up, but now as a fiduciary server, you look at them and say, "Salad, fish, steak. I don't know. Which one should I choose?" "Well, the fish is actually starting to go, so let's stay away from the fish today. As I walked up, you said you had a pretty big burger for lunch, and so dinner, following that up with a steak may not be the best.

Let's go with salad for you. That's your best decision today is to go with the salad tonight." That fiduciary standard is what says, "I have to put your best interest above my own. Even though I'm gonna make money on the fish, it is in your best interest to choose the salad today." So the question number one, you ask anybody who wants to talk to you about money, "Why or why not are you my fiduciary?"

Meaning I am a legal liability to put your best interest first. Second question is, "How do you get paid?" Are you gonna charge me on assets? Are you gonna make money on commission on products? Are you gonna do it in some different kind of way? You explain to me how you get paid in this relationship. I know you're providing a service.

I know that's gonna come at a cost, but I also wanna understand where and how it fits in. The third element is why are you a fiduciary? What exactly are your services? In today's world, if you talk to somebody and they go, "I'm a best investor in the world, you're gonna make more money than the people down the street," investments is no longer something you can stand on.

Nobody in the world is gonna say, "I guarantee I'm gonna beat the market and beat all my competitors every year for the next decade." Literally, nobody will do that. Warren Buffett actually competed against hedge fund managers, the S&P against every hedge fund, and guess what? The S&P won 92% anyway. So as you look at what are your services, it has to go beyond investing.

I want you to invest my portfolio. I want you to put my money to work, but what about that tax question that keeps coming up? Are there strategies I can do there? Insurance. Have you looked at my insurance? Have you helped me? I'm about to buy a car. Are you gonna be the one I can talk to about buying this car?

Estate planning. Do I need a will? Do I need a trust? When do those come into play? All of the different elements of your money, so when you ask that third one of what services do you provide, it's really identifying that second one. I'm gonna pay you. Let-- tell me how much I need to go through and be able to ident- to, to use your services Now, all this is being said in 2026 when we're in this weird age and era of what exactly is artificial intelligence?

I am not saying to use this to replace your advisor, to replace your accountant, or replace anyone. I'm saying you today need to have your first conversation with an AI tool. Simply asking it, "I have $100,000. How should I invest it? I just made $100,000 income. How much am I gonna be taxed?" Getting a first place to start a conversation so when you do go talk to the human or you do go in to try to make it, you have something to base it on.

Do not take it as gospel. Do not take it as, hey, this knows all and does all and it's perfect. Nothing is perfect, but it is a pleasant way to start the conversation. You no longer need to start with talking to a professional and paying 200, 500, whatever an hour. You can start the conversation and get going, and then as you see my issues, my questions, my problems, now I do need to go get that expert advice, but this is the era and it's the dawning of a new era.

This is the conversation we must begin to have. Jed, let's go ahead and move to the myth-busting section. Myth number one: If I make more money, my financial problems will go away. There's a great book called The Wealth Ladder that is out there, and it starts talking about different tiers of wealth. Making more money is gonna solve all of your problems until you get to a certain tier on the wealth ladder.

I would say 1 million to 10 million. Up to a 1 million, it's gonna solve a lot of your concerns, your fears, and your issues. Now that I have a million dollars, how do I protect it? And that is the biggest shift in your financial life is, "Oh, I gotta create, I gotta earn, I gotta create, I gotta earn, I gotta create, I gotta earn."

And then one day you go, "Well, snap." Now it's a bigger question of how do I protect and guard what I have as opposed to trying to double or triple it again. So yes, to the poverty line, to the beginning, money will solve some problems. If your problems are not money problems, they are identification, they are fulfillment, they are love, they are a lot, money is never gonna solve those.

But as you look at the financial questions, once I enter a certain rung of the wealth ladder, my problems are gonna change from create to protect, and that's a difference in, in what our stresses are. The next myth: I will figure it out later. Right now, I just need to focus on working. I love this one. The, the greatest, I saw it on a chiropractor's wall is, "It will go away."

Words that you, you will be condemned by It is a, a, a missing of your greatest advantage. Every young person, I'm young at 50, I'm young at 25, I'm young at 18. Every person has one advantage over Warren Buffett that he would trade every dollar of his wealth for: time. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.

The second best time is today. So do not worry about where you are in your journey. Do not worry about how far somebody else is. You drive your money vehicle. You choose where you want it to end up and how you drive it. So set it, solidify, solidify and set in your plan, "This is where I want to go, and this is how I'm gonna start getting there."

Today is the be- yesterday or 20 years ago was the best day. The second best day is to start today. Use your advantage as an investor as well as just an individual. Use time to make your paycheck go to work for you, and exponentially, it will change your life. So Jed, let's move to some rapid-fire questions.

So what is the most important financial habit someone can build today? So starting today. I call it a portfolio paycheck, and again, don't get lost on the term portfolio. If I was gonna build a habit today, I would not have my contractor, employee, whomever is paying me pay me in my checking account. I would try to have it directly go into my brokerage account because psychologically, seeing money stack up in a checking account forces me to wanna go spend it.

It also removes one step from our goal, which is: How am I gonna start investing some of these dollars? So I want to build my wealth in my brokerage and then again in those tax advantage accounts as we fill them up, but the centerpiece and the hub is the brokerage account. Why it's called the portfolio paycheck is my family and I still live on this thought.

Here is where our wealth is building. We pay ourselves not on my income, not on what, "Oh, you're a million dollar athlete. You're gonna live on a million dollars a year?" No. You live on the burn rate you choose. Don't live on your income. Live on your lifestyle. Set the paycheck into your brokerage account, control your burn, and send yourself on the first of every month into your checking account the lifestyle you wanna live.

That's the portfolio paycheck system. It decides your entire year of cash management with one automated decision in a brokerage account. What's one mistake that you see over and over again? Too big of a house, too big of a car. Everybody sees it as a status symbol today where you ... I wish more people would look at the car I'm gonna buy in five years, 15 years, 25 years is always gonna go up.

Everybody wants to go, "Oh, look at this, these sweet new wheels." I don't care. It's supposed to get you to and from work, and the reality is you just exchanged two years on the end of your career for this nicer, bigger, faster car. So looking at it and saying, "I don't wanna live the lifestyle that social media is telling me.

I wanna live on my burn and my lifestyle because I know where my plan is going." It is much easier for somebody to say, "I am driving a, a Ford instead of a BMW because I wanna retire five years earlier." Now you have a purpose. Now you're building your cathedral. Now you know why. It's much easier to drive that car.

And again, Ford's a great car. I drive a Ford Explorer. I'm not bashing on Ford. But from a premium luxury perspective, "Oh, I want the BMW because my friends, and it's gonna look cool, and it's gonna do all these things," you just exchanged your time for that image. Rent or buy? How long do you wanna use it? If it's a car and each, every two years you want a new nice fancy car, what's coming out?

Rent. Lease it. Lease it as long as you can. If you're like me and are like, "I wanna one day not have a car note and be able to own it and ride it into the dirt," which I'm doing with my Ford Explorer, buy it. Housing, how long are you gonna be there? If you're not gonna be there for longer than five years, rent.

The exchange from taxes, from a transaction, from all of it, I tell pro athletes all the time, "Oh, great, you have a couple million dollars? Does not make sense for you to buy a home because you're not gonna be here in three years. You're not gonna be here in five years." So it's, again, comes back to that investing question, what is the timetable?

If I'm a car person and I want nice new cars, lease them. If I'm a house person and this is my forever home, I'm gonna be here for 10 plus years, or I'm gonna be here for eight years and then turn it into a rental property but I want a long-term view of it, that's when I start to buy. What is your timetable is gonna decide rent versus buy, and then you start to play into good versus bad debt and what kind of debt can we get to buy and own it.

Person stressed out about money right now, what do you want them to hear?

I want you to hear that this is a moment in the game. This is not the end of the game. This is perhaps the moment the game changes and shifts and starts to be more in your control. And as you wake up tomorrow, you start to identify money is a part of my life. Money is not everything. A great question I was asked was, uh, "If I, if I offered you a million dollars, would you take it?"

Absolutely, I'm not an idiot. "Now, for that million dollars, you don't get to wake up tomorrow." Well, I don't want the million dollars. "Well, then tomorrow is worth a million dollars." The mindset shift of perspective. Right now, I'm struggling with my money, but I have my health, I have my family, I have my career, I have my identification, I have purpose.

Start to see the pieces to the puzzle and look at money as something that you can take ownership and control of, but you cannot do it until you start taking ownership and control of. If that day starts today from you listening to this, number one, it will have fulfilled my passion and my mission. It will have been worth Kevin's time.

But number two, it will have said, "Today is just a play or a piece or a moment in my game. My game is not over. It is not being decided. Even at 50 years old, I'm only at halftime. I got a lot of time for, for this language to start working for me Jed, for the workforce athletes listening right now, driving home, finishing their shift, sitting in the break room with five minutes to think, if they only take away three things from this conversation, what th- should they be?

Become a great failure. Don't fear that word. Welcome that word. Anybody who has achieved success has failed over and over and over again. Failure is not the end, it is the first attempt in learning. Number two, identify that burn rate. If you walk away and say, "I know how much money I'm spending each month," it will control and decide the rest of your plan because it builds your cushion.

It will also decide your freedom. We didn't even get that far into it, but that burn rate is the number one number you need to know. By all means, you do not have a financial plan until you can tell me your burn rate. And number three is start to identify yourself as a business. You don't just go work for a company, you are a company.

I don't care what you do. "I, well, I'm a barista at Starbucks." Great. You are the brand. That person that shows up, that pr- uh, that personality that comes out, the attitude, the effort, all of that is part of the brand and the business you are building as the business of you. See yourself as the business owner.

Understand that what you do is a mastery, is a great, is a skill. Who you are is gonna stay with you for the rest of your life. That person may change, and that skill may change, but looking at the business of you and continue to invest, how do I both mentally, physically, socially continue to grow my business?

I wish more people would see themselves and that investment in themselves as the priority, because even the $10,000 I wanna save in my 401, $10,000 invested in my future is always gonna pay me bigger dividends than any financial investment I could make Well, I wanna leave our guests with a few thoughts.

Financial literacy is not just personal finance topic, it's a job performance topic, and it's a safety topic, it's a leadership topic, and it's every person in our workforce has earned the right to have this conversation. And so Jed, thank you for bringing this work to our audience. Thank you for, uh, your inspiration of, uh, persistence through failure and just getting up and doing it over and over again.

And, uh, we also thank you for bringing these concepts related to financial literacy to the Work Ready community. Uh, I think we're all better for it. So Jed, where can people, uh, turn to find, uh, more about you and, uh, about your books? Jedidiahcollins.com. Yourmoneyvehicle.com will take you to the financial education.

That is gonna be the collaboration we get to share. I would not be a good entrepreneur if I didn't share my new book came out last week, it's called Fourth and Goal. It is my daily journal from year seven in the NFL. What mental breaks, what mental challenges, how I overcame the day-to-day grind, and just some really cool stories of teammates I got to be around.

If you wanna start capturing your story, Fourth and Goal is a great tool. If you wanna start controlling your paycheck, Money Vehicle is a great tool. Either of them, jedidiahcollins.com, yourmoneyvehicle.com. But thank you for listening. Hopefully, it added to your day, and truly, it gave me my fulfillment of, uh, what this life's mission and purpose is, so appreciate the opportunity.

Jed, amazing. I so enjoyed the time. And for those listening, until next time, remember to take care of yourself, take care of your people, and stay work ready. Thanks so much