The 5 Types of Wealth (And Why Money Is Only One Fifth)

All at once? Yep.

I am doing well. And again, to be a repeat guest, I feel honored and I'm excited to be talking with you today. Yeah,

So there's a great book out there right now, and I encourage all of your listeners to read it. He's a great author. But this book is called The Five Types of Wealth by Salil Bloom. And in the five forms of wealth, you have financial, you have your time wealth, your physical health, your mental health, and your social health. And if somebody said, Justin, If you're building a house around wealth, what would be the foundation? I would say your time is at the bottom. And that's the foundation to the house you're trying to build. Because if you lose a minute today, I can never get you that minute back. If you lose a dollar today, I can show you how to make three tomorrow. But your time wealth is one thing that I think we all overlook. And that was the line that my mother always used to say. I don't buy green bananas because I don't know if I'm going to be around tomorrow to enjoy them. I think that is so critical when we're talking to people about building true wealth. Finance is only one fifth of that pie. And it's a big piece because money allows us to have flexibility and freedom. But money is just a tool that we're all trying to use in a better form so that we can go and maximize our time. our physical health, our mental health, and our social health.

so funny. It's so funny that you mentioned that. I just got done watching the movie Nine to Five because it seems like it's playing now that Dolly Parton, you know, has. on to the other side. And it's a great movie for those that have not watched that movie. But I'll share a personal story with you and the reason that I do what I do. I shared it a little bit last time, but I lost a parent earlier in life. My mother pre-deceased even her parents, medical malpractice. I won't get into the entire story, but my mother was really wise beyond her years and she had a lot of great expressions. And either that or she was a good plagiarizer. You know, Oscar Wilde said never let the truth get in the way of a great story. But to put this in perspective, she told me one time I was working a job and anybody that follows me can look at my LinkedIn and I'm not going to throw anything or anyone under the bus. But I was working jobs that really did not fulfill me, but they paid a paycheck. But I really didn't like the person that I was. I wasn't helping people in the capacity that I wanted my legacy to be when I made it to the upper room. And I really had to evaluate that. And one of the last conversations that I had with my mother, she looked at me and she said, Justin, it is better to be disliked for the person that you are than to be loved for the person that you're not. And she said, if you're wasting time working a career, living a life that everybody else is jealous of, but you can't stand, you're already in the coffin before you actually have a coffin built. And that really opened my eyes.

So I pivoted even in my own career and said, I'm going to take a chance on Justin Chastain. I'm going to go and build my own practice. And knowing that the first few years were going to be the struggle bus on that one fifth of financial wealth, but I knew that I was going to do something and I was going to build something great. And you know what I realized along the way? When I put everything in perspective, without my time, without being able to spend the moments of my life doing the things that I want to do, money was really irrelevant. And a great analogy to this would be, Tiffany, if I came to you and I said, I'm going to give you $100 million right now, but tomorrow, here's the catch, but tomorrow you don't wake up. Would you take that deal? And the answer to that probably is no. Okay, well, that means that tomorrow to you is worth more than $100 million. But we get in this mindset to say, oh, life is a grind. Let's just build this career and make loads of money. But a lot of the careers, especially in the United States, we're having chronic health problems. We're not outliving our parents. Or if we are, we're on more medications than ever. Well, there goes your four forms of wealth from your time, your physical health, your mental health, and your social circle that are out the window. Okay, so you've got this stockpile of money, but you can't enjoy it. What are you going to do with it? And that was a real-life moment of awakening for me to say, I've got to really start putting my time, my physical health, mental, social, in perspective and just understand that money is just a tool that gets me to all these other cool goals. And you hear it so much at the water cooler at work. On a Tuesday, how's your Tuesday going? Just waiting on Friday. Well, if the only days you enjoy during the week are Friday and Saturday, because let's face it, if you hate your job, Sunday, you're hating all day about Monday. If you're only happy two sevenths out of the week, I don't know if that's a life we'll live. And putting all of that in perspective where you can reach your financial goals and still have all of the pieces that we've talked about in perspective, that's true wealth. It's not just money, I promise you.

A thousand percent. And I'll go back into my personal story. I was working at a bank out of one of the Carolinas. I'm not going to give everything too much away. And I was working myself ragged. We had a lot of turnover going on, and it was just not a good situation. And I was not getting a lot of sleep. I was not feeling motivated that I was doing the right thing for my clients. And I got put in the hospital, and they thought that I was having a heart attack. And I was in my 30s at the time, and I was like, this is my wake-up call. This is for sure. my wake-up call. And I also thought about this too. I was eating right. I've always been big into working out and maintaining your health. And in the United States, it's not an easy thing to maintain. And this could be a whole other episode on our nutrition in the United States. But also the mindset that we're ingraining in people, oh, you don't need sleep. You can sleep when you're dead. All of these phrases that are not making a ton of sense. You need rest. You need physical exercise. You need your physical health monitored by a doctor, a nutritionist, these kind of things to keep in check. And in my spending plan or budget, whatever you choose to call it, a decent amount is spent towards health, on food, on my gym, those type of things, because I look at that as my investment in myself. But when you're working in an environment that doesn't encourage that and the grind is real, let me just say something to you on this. And I did have this conversation on an exit interview with one of my previous bosses. And they were talking about a notice. And my boss was saying, well, you know, we really wanted you to work more than a two-week notice. And then here was my rebuttal to that. When I was in the hospital, how many people actually called to see if I was doing okay? The next week, you wanted me back on the road. Number two, if you were planning on firing me, would you give me a two-week notice? And I'll say this, there was a non-answer, which everybody has the right to plead the fifth. I'm not going to do my best version of Dave Chappelle, right? But we can all plead the fifth. But the fifth and playing the fifth is an answer. A non-answer is an answer. And I knew in that moment I had to be in the captain's seat of my physical health. And the one thing that I don't think a lot of men do well, especially, and you can hear it in my accent, it's not the microphone. In my head, I sound like James Earl Jones, but I understand I come across like my mother had a rendezvous with Larry, the cable guy. You know, when we're thinking of this, my mental health was at capacity. And I didn't feel like I had anywhere to turn or talk to or, I mean, I had people in my corner asking me, hey, are you okay? But I didn't feel confident I really need to have a deeper conversation with people. And I'd had a lot of loss in my life from my mom and a lot of other things going on. I was living away from my... dad and he was going through some health issues. I was taking care of my mother's parents and my dad was doing the best he could. It was a very stressful time in my life. But the doctor that was in the ER with me at that moment said, and he was one of the first practitioners to ever ask this, and he really saved my life in a lot more ways than he ever realized. He said, what's going on in your life? day to day and just take a few minutes to talk to me about that. And we spent the next 30 minutes, which is unheard of in the U. S., talking about the stress I had going on personally with my family's health, the stress that I was under. And then I was in a job that I absolutely despised. And he walked me through that. And that led me to a journey of I need to focus more on my mental health. And I'm a big proponent of journaling or taking time each morning, even today in my own practice. The first thing I do when my feet hit the ground is I give gratitude that I'm up, I'm breathing air, I'm seeing a light, and there's not a tunnel at the end of it. The best part of waking up is not Folgers in your cup. It's knowing that you're not deceased. And I have another day to make a day positive. And I get up and I walk my dog. I take the time to breathe the fresh air. before I get right into cranking up a computer and checking an email. And that mental break in capacity has done wonders to my physical health and also appreciative and appreciating my time health. And it's been a long journey, and I'm still not perfect. But you have to put those things in perspective. It has to be a priority.

Again, we think of social wealth as, oh, I have a lot of friends on Facebook or Instagram or MySpace. Now, if I had to go by my social health on MySpace, Tom doesn't even communicate with me anymore. I might not be that socially healthy. But really what social health is, it's not how big your circle is. It is knowing that you have a purpose in the arena that you perform. I see this a lot. I do a lot of what we call red zone retirement income planning because in planning, there's two sides. There's accumulation and distribution. But people that are 10 to 15 years on either side of retirement, either pre-retirement or post-retirement, that phase of life. has an opportunity to be really exciting when we're thinking about all the places we're going to travel and the trips. But there's also, unfortunately, a little bit of a downside where we are looking at some losses. Loss of a spouse, loss of friends, family. It's also a time of downsizing personally and physical things, houses. You're losing maybe some of your driving ability, these kinds of things. And if we don't have social circles outside of just our immediate family, we need social circles that a workforce group, a friend group. It might be you playing pickleball or if your knees or hips won't allow you to do something, maybe you go and play cards with people. Maybe you crochet. Maybe you have a nonprofit that you're a part of. But having social networking groups. And the data and the studies are out, and it's extremely clear that people that remain socially active and have multiple conversations with different groups. So your brain is in different modes. Maybe I'm having a work conversation. Maybe I'm having a nonprofit conversation or just a hobby conversation. My brain needs that switch and those changes. It slows down the progression of a lot of cognitive issues such as Alzheimer's or dementia. People that isolate themselves, and it's very easy to do as we get older, I just want to be in my house and that's it. I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to do anything. These are the people that we generally see a speeding up of the process of Alzheimer's and dementia. Having circles of influence are... more important probably even in retirement and as we age than it is earlier in life. Because if you think about it, Tiffany, earlier in life, we're thrown into these circles by either our parents, school systems, maybe you're in college. But as we get away from that, those groups break apart just because of natural progression of life. So we have to reinvent those circles. And sometimes people say, Nope, I'm just going to, this is the way life is. I just want to be more to myself. And it's good to be independent. It's good to be okay with being independent. But don't neglect social circles. And I know people have different feelings on this, like even with assisted living or skilled facility situations. But I can tell you, if you go to one of those community homes, what we see is there is an element of health being reinforced mentally and physically from the physical therapy that you get, but also the extracurricular activities that you get in these homes that you're not going to get by just living in your house when that time comes. So make sure that you're focused on social circles. And honestly, I think breaking away from social media is a healthy thing. and reinforcing the physical aspects of these social circles.

That is the misconception that estate planning is only for people that go above the estate or gift planning tax. And we're not going to get in the weeds of that. But estate planning, Tiffany, can be something as simple. You have a 401k at work. Is your beneficiaries updated on that retirement account? Because that contract law supersedes any will law. A lot of people have this. I have a will, so I won't need to go through probate. That's not true. Wills do not bypass probate. Wills tell the probate court how to distribute assets back to probate or state laws if there's anything that could be different, that you wanted the assets to be passed differently. So I would tell anybody, regardless of the assets that you have, and I'm talking financial assets here, the easiest way to do this is make sure all of your beneficiaries on any major financial contracts such as insurance,401ks, IRAs, Roth IRAs, checking accounts, savings accounts, bank accounts. If I'm missing anything, account financial. Make sure the beneficiary is updated. In my practice, one thing that I have seen, and I'll use my example. When my mother passed, we told my father, My brother and I were the contingent beneficiaries on a lot of the accounts, but I said now that she's deceased, we need to make sure that my brother and I are the beneficiaries. Just because we don't want any confusion or if something came up and we didn't have a death certificate handy, we didn't want the hassle of having to go through all of it because it's not just financial. Think of the emotion that you're bringing back up when you're going through something like that. It's not fun. And I talk about this a lot even on my podcast. where grief is not something that you just get over. It's something that you learn to move forward with. But Mother's Day, birthdays, anniversaries, it feels real. And you don't want the heartache of grief on top of having to worry about something as stupid as money. And I'm not saying money is irrelevant. I just say, let's take the sting out of money here and focus on first things first. If we have a strong estate plan by doing those basic things, which, by the way, updating your beneficiary doesn't cost you a dime. There's no money you give to an attorney. It is free to do other than your time. But every time that you're enrolling in your work benefit or you're meeting with your financial planner or if you're self-managing, please, Put something on your calendar to update beneficiaries because I use the example of my mother. But for those of you that have been married a few times, and again, that's a pretty common thing. You don't want an ex-spouse being the next in line. I mean, unless you do. But if you want it to go to your children or somebody else other than that, if an ex-spouse is a beneficiary, remember contract law. supersedes will law. And people just don't understand that. So I always say put reminders on there. And this is estate planning. You don't have to have a financial planner or even an attorney in the room to be doing estate planning. And you do not have to have a million dollars for it to be important. Any amount of money that you have, you need to make sure goes to the right people. And the simplest way to do that is updating beneficiaries.

I would say that you have to be willing to ask yourself, what is a life well lived? Just looking at the financial aspect of it is only going to tell me a certain piece. And let me break it down into an example. If somebody comes to me and just says, I want to be Scrooge McDuck, and I just want to have so much money that I have a swimming pool made out of gold coins and dive in it every day. At the end of your life, if you don't have things that you want to do, whether that's giving to charity, whether that is going on trips, whether that is doing things with your family, building businesses, whatever it is, what is your money going to do at the end of your life? Okay, so you die with $30 million, $10 million, $1 million in the bank. Well, you know what, Tiffany? I've never seen a Wells Fargo truck attached to a Hearst. And the reality is that, again, money is a powerful tool. I have a slogan that I say all the time, and I think people probably don't take it the correct way. But I say when life happens, if I've done my job well, I don't want you having to worry about something as stupid as money. Because if you were given only a few moments to live, ask me if money is even a top 100 that pops into your mind. I guarantee you your children did. I guarantee your family did. I guarantee business. All these other things did. Money was not, it wasn't, oh my gosh, I need to make another million dollars. Money is just going to be the tool that allows you to maximize your best version of yourself. And when people ask me, Justin, well, how do you know if you've accomplished true wealth? I'll say this, when money has a positive impact on your life and the people that you love, that is true wealth. And as I said, Is it a very important tool? Yes, because when you don't have enough, Tiffany, you come from a very limited mindset. There's a different thought process. How do I reduce my taxes versus how do I keep my power on? And those are two very real conversations. But always be careful what you wish for, because don't just assume that the person making a million dollars a year is any more or less happy or unhappy than you. As you brought up earlier, Making the most money you ever did in your life, but at what cost? You were miserable. And we can always reduce income. I'd rather be in that seat, that latter part. But having the ability to navigate what true wealth is puts you in a calm version because there's multiple money mindsets. But it puts you in a state of calmness. So now that we can rationally direct where we want our money to do. And that's what I encourage everybody. So many times people wait for their dollar to give them a job. You need to be in the city to give your dollar a job. You're the captain. And that comes from starting small and learning fast, not being perfect. I've made a lot of mistakes with my money. But as I said, If I make a mistake with my money, I can correct it. I can make more money. If I keep wasting my time, I keep neglecting my physical health, my mental health, and my social circles, what good will my money be? And that's where I come from. If your mindset's not there, then just telling somebody, okay, I'll make you another million, well, the day the market goes south, That person's going to fire me because all they're worried about is how much money they have in their account. And I'll leave it with one final section. When we're talking about retirement planning, I said there was an accumulation stage. Here's the other mindset shift I think people don't think through, Tiffany. When you go from saving money during your working career, well, there's got to be a point on the backside of that that we're spending money, doing things with it. That's a mindset shift. And it gets more complicated from taxes and everything else like that. But we need to get into a mindset shift of, okay, hey, I've saved for this, but I also need to start traveling. I need to start doing. Because much like my mom, if you're just waiting on a retirement date, like 62 or 65, that's the target dates here in America,67 for full retirement age. What if you never get that opportunity? My mother died at 62, but she was six from 58 to 62. And she would always say, Justin, the only thing golden in your golden year is your urine. Enjoy it now. So shifting the mindset that, yeah, you need to save some and have a plan, and I'm a big proponent of that. But you also need to learn to spend it, too, on the things that you value.

So anybody can reach out to me at my personal email. That's Justin at parallelfinancial. com. Or they can check out my YouTube channel, which is Well Advised Wealth on YouTube. And of course, Well Advised Wealth on Apple Play and Spotify.

You do the same. And again, I know we're kind of off air. And I'm going to return the favor too. When I get to episode 10, I'm looking to have a guest. So I'll reach out to you on the website. be a form, but I'll let you know about that so you can promote your book. And I'm excited. I'm going to order a copy of it myself.

So much. I appreciate it.