Focus on Money: Balancing Priorities between Family, Business, and Financial Discipline

In Today's episode of #TheAmberStittShow, I have the honor of having my business partner back to discuss how he Focuses on His Money. Welcome back Scott!

In this episode, I asked Scott for his insight no how he has dealt with the challenges of prioritizing family and business obligations while striving for financial success. 

Scott shares his experiences and perspectives on the delicate balance between personal and professional commitments. 

He emphasizes the importance of planning and making conscious choices to achieve desired goals. 

Amber highlights the often-unspoken feelings of parental guilt and the desire to provide a certain lifestyle for one's family. 

We dive deeper into the behavior of money and the need for discipline in managing finances - especially with our children. Scott draws an analogy between money and a mischievous child, highlighting the significance of staying focused and creating a pattern of financial discipline very early on.

Tune in to gain valuable insights on aligning priorities, making deliberate financial decisions, and maintaining control over your money!

Thank you for listening!

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Scott Directly: 281-770-8080
Amber Directly: 480-707-2771
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Transcript

Amber Stitt  00:08

Welcome back to The Amber Stitt Show. We have Scott Nelson-Archer here talking about focusing on money, and we're gonna focus on money. And with a little more fun way to view money, we're gonna go down to the family level here. So, we're gonna talk about some financial literacy, or lack thereof, and just some fun tools to implement in the home. So, Scott, welcome back. Thanks for being here.

Scott Nelson-Archer  00:29

Thanks for having me.

Amber Stitt 00:30

So, you know, I have, at this point in time, a four-year-old and I'm trying to develop different work habits within her chores. It might be making her bed, or shredding paper, which scares my husband because of the shredder finger combination, but we've been training her, so having her realize, you know, "Hey, Mom," you heard her maybe today, say, "I want to buy some Paw Patrol socks," and have to tell there's no money in the bank, yet, you haven't done your chores. So, we're trying to implement some of that fun, but seeing that, you know, you just can't get things for free. There's no free lunch, as they say. So going back in time for you, I love hearing you talk about your kids. You've had some pretty unique strategies with your wife on, I mean, this is a while ago, so I don't know if they feel about the same way I feel about it, but you wrote out some things and I want to do this on the show because things can be pretty serious when we talk about money, the economy, but if we can have fun with our family and teach them responsibility. I mean, it's really up to us. If we haven't tried, you know, to help them along their way, we can't be surprised at some of the outcomes where they transition out.

Scott Nelson-Archer  01:35

Understanding the value of money is really important. And you know, if they just are given money all the time, and they're able to just waste it, then they don't maybe respect it as much as it should be respected.

Amber Stitt  01:45

And you're a successful business owner, and they could have whatever they want, I suppose. But you haven't made that always be a thing, but you are very gracious with the people you care about, that are deserving. So, I know that you are charitable, sometimes in certain aspects.

Scott Nelson-Archer  01:59

Absolutely. I always believe people, you know, get what you deserve. And, you know, we often think about that from a negative connotation, but I look at it from a positive connotation, you know, lobster tail, and you work and you put in the hours and you go above and beyond, you know, that can be rewarded in a lot of different ways. You know, certainly, verbal rewards are great, you know, "at a girl, at a boy, it's all good," you know, "really appreciate it," and people need that. But it's also nice for a business owner to build. So, you know, what, there have been some really good things going on in here. And, you know, the reality is, you're telling me about your life going on and your washing machine just went out -- You know what? How about the washing machine just shows up there on Saturday, or, you know, or your stove, or, you know, putting in a driveway, or a bar, you know, there's a lot of different ways to reward that need. So, we always try to look at that.

Amber Stitt  02:48

So, it's not always monetary. I know that you've helped people to, I mean, I've heard of storms and trees and leaves and neighbors, and I know that you're usually working on the weekends in some capacity, whether it's at a desk or not.

Scott Nelson-Archer  02:59

Yeah, there's, there seems to always be a need of some nature and my wife has, you know, God bless her. She's got the ability to find out what that need is and make sure that we volunteer to help, so...

Amber Stitt  03:10

So, your "honey do list" extends to the neighborhood.

Scott Nelson-Archer  03:14

Yeah, we keep a couple of chainsaws gassed up and ready to go at all times.

Amber Stitt  03:19

It's not just you. She's out there.

Scott Nelson-Archer  03:20

It's not just me, she's out there, too. She will guilt me into she did this last weekend working on a project and, "Oh, Scott, you know, you don't need to do anything. It's Sunday afternoon and you worked all day yesterday and it's all fine. But you know, I'm out here doing this." And I look over and I'm like, "Okay, I can't really sit here on my tail and watch some TV and do nothing while she's out there."

Amber Stitt  03:40

So, quality time.

Scott Nelson-Archer  03:44

Or, master manipulator.

Amber Stitt  03:47

Subtle mental tricks, ninja tricks,

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Amber Stitt  05:07

Going back to some takeaways for growing families, I think there was a strategy about paying rent in a very interesting fashion. So, do you mind sharing that?

Scott Nelson-Archer  05:17

Sure, yep, we've never believed in allowance, you know, allowance to me kind of sounds like welfare. And, you know, it's out there, and I know it. And, you know, if that's what you choose to do, that's fine. But we always believed in, you know, if you work, you get paid, and if you go to work, you know, you earn an hour’s wage, you know, you're in the sales business and you sell a car, you're gonna get, you know, $1 amount given to you. So, what we did was all the chores that we wanted to influence the engagement, we allocate a monetary value to, so you know, you pick up your own plate, put it in the sink, you know, at four years old, it's worth a dime.

Amber Stitt  05:54

I see, so, also even down to clearing the table?

Scott Nelson-Archer  05:56

Clearing the table, making your bed, getting your laundry into the hamper, if they're not old enough to wash your own clothes, take the dog outside and brush them, you know, whatever. Every little thing. And so, what we usually did is we figured out how to allocate as much as two times their age, in money, based on different chores, and sometimes they may have to do 15, or 20 chores to get there. Because, you know, I mean, I'm not gonna give you $1 for putting them cup from the counter to the sink. But, you know, we always made sure there was stuff to do, go sweep out the garage, or go pick up a bag of pine cones out front, you know, doesn't really matter. So, we did that, and good or bad, and they weren't necessarily always happy with it, but we charged them rent, it was rent, because we all have fixed expenses in our life, whether it's the utility bill, the food bill, a mortgage, or rent, you know, whatever it is, you've got expenses that come out prior to you getting spend your money. And so, we wanted to instill that, you know, there's hardcore expenses that come out no matter who you are, where you're at in life. And so, you needed to earn that hurdle rate, that dollar amount, before you can move on to how can I go spend this stuff on, you know, socks, like your daughter asked this morning, right?

Amber Stitt  07:05

I don't think my daughter is going to be happy that we had this conversation because it sounds like I'm a little lax, and there should be something on the fridge. How did you keep a menu of these things so that they know?

Scott Nelson-Archer  07:16

It was a whiteboard with checkmarks. You know, and God bless my wife kept up with it really well.

Amber Stitt  07:22

I don't know that my husband can keep up with this, he can barely lock the dogs in the kennel to not feel guilty. So, I have to work on that. But again, we've talked about being different and how that's so important. So sometimes there's maybe it's good that I'm a little more rigid, he's a little bit more relaxed and could be...

Scott Nelson-Archer  07:38

It's a complimentary issue there. And truthfully, when we told the kids all along, yep, here's your rent, the reality is, it's going into an account for you, we're going to do you know, it's going into an account for you, we're going to match it, you know, these are gonna be for the big things, you know, you want to do a summer abroad in college, you decide you want to buy a different car, but these are the things that are gonna be saved and set aside, and they're not, you can't touch them. It's not, "Oh, I really want a new outfit that happens to be super expensive or a new stereo system." That's not in play. That's what your money above and beyond the rent number was.

Amber Stitt  08:14

So, Scott, those are great tips. And I feel like, I feel you've shared a couple more with me. But really, I think the takeaway here is the menu, and really, almost associating that every time you do something good, there's a value to that. And that mental, it's almost like I refer to "Atomic Habits" a little bit. But sometimes you can't see those little tiny changes making a difference. They equate it to, say, flying on a plane. And if that precise measurement just changes slightly, you might end up in a different city. But it doesn't feel like that when you're going up in the air. That little change. 

Scott Nelson-Archer  08:44

Yeah, the slight adjustments. And that's an analogy I often use, you know, if you don't go in and do periodic checks, whether it's what your family, with relationships, with business, if you take off from Miami, and you're heading to Seattle, and you never look at the compass, you never look at the readings. You're probably on the west coast. But it may not be where you want to be.

Amber Stitt  09:03

I was just listening to a podcast on the way down the Tucson. McConaughey was one talking about his book, he talks about how if your relationships are like accounts, some of them might go in the red and it might just have to sometimes because you're traveling and you're busy working gets in the way, but then you have to go back and get it out of the red. And a lot of times a lot of the successful people will say usually our friends might get the backseat a bit when it comes to success and having a dial into family and then business, too. So that makes me think of that, you know, paying attention to that.

Scott Nelson-Archer  09:33

Well, you have to prioritize, right? You never want to put your family second, but sometimes from a business perspective, you know, I didn't have the ability to be at every single soccer practice, or every single soccer game, or gymnastics meet. I tried, but there are, you know, business obligations I need to complete in order to be able to afford paying for all that soccer, or gymnastics meets, or whatever it is. There's living life, and there's paying for life and you kind of have to have both.

Amber Stitt  09:56

I think if we talk about mom guilt, I don't know if there's a pang of dad guilt, but that is probably those feelings of I wish I could, but I can't. I think of a lot of people. We feel it, we don't talk about it. I think all of us go through some variation of that. But just as part of the deal, do you want to provide a certain lifestyle for your family?

Scott Nelson-Archer  10:12

Yeah, absolutely. You know, you all get an idea of what you're looking for. And you know, what you really want, what happens I find most often, is that people don't understand what it takes to get there, or they don't do any planning on, "OK, if I want to be able to get to x, or whatever that is, you know, I want to have, you know, 20 hours a week to just time with my family." Okay, well, what else can you do in your life to be able to cut back on that in order to reallocate that time, if you're trying to build wealth, or you're trying to get..., you know, a certain, you know, buy a car, or a certain house? Or whatever it is, though, are you the planning to meet that goal? Otherwise, it's just an idea. It's not a plan. And you have to back into both of those.

Amber Stitt  10:51

That makes me think about when we talked in our first episode about just consistency in the process, then we make the money, and what do you do with that money? I know we've talked about people that want to show others their wealth, I feel that a lot of times when people are super successful, they can choose where to be economic, I think you do a good job of that, you know, and then spend where maybe you should not, but not always and not for anyone, but yourself and your family.  Do you have anything to share about maybe lessons learned, or what you've seen when you look at just how the behavior of money can change people? Have you ever dealt with maybe spending something you shouldn't? Have you learned from it? Because I know you're very good with, we'll just say being resourceful and economical. You flew Frontier! But I think people should have more habits that you instill versus...it's like the Rich Dad Poor Dad analogies, you know, but what are we doing it for? We're doing it for ultimately, maybe you were single for yourself, or your family, a lot of people do for others and spend...

Scott Nelson-Archer  11:48

I have a tendency to kind of think money is like a poorly behaved child, okay, it will find trouble. And it will find a way out of doing what it should be doing, which is staying disciplined, staying focused, and on task. And what I mean by that, you know, if you've worked hard, and you've got excess money, and you're not being disciplined with the way you allocate it, and the way you make it go to work for you, it will find a way to be spent on new shoes, new cars, new watches, new boats, all kinds of stuff that are fun, exciting and enjoyable, and I get it. But if at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is, you know, save money, build assets, and create a behavioral pattern of being disciplined with that, then, you know, you need to take that all the way to how you handle your money, because it will find a way out of your pocket, if you don't find a way to control it.

Amber Stitt  12:41

Yeah, I mean, going back to your personality type, you have to be aware of the blind spots that some of your talents can bring along for the ride so that you can manage money. Looking at personality building that consistency, again. And I think that's like, "nothing good happens after midnight," I suppose that could be for a person, or money, right? I want to go out the door. I love that analogy about money, Scott. So, with the pathways, I'm always trying to find a way to bring some resilience to the obstacles that people are going to face in life. And I feel like the way you're talking about money, the way we've embraced money differently even in the last 10 years in my household, not that we're ignoring what's going on in the economy, but we can feel less pain, when we have those behaviors that you're mentioning, you really dial it in and respect that you have the money that you've worked hard for, but then you manage it. The human behaviors that we all have, can really help us be resilient when we hit an obstacle and there will be obstacles, would you agree...

Scott Nelson-Archer  13:34

100%, you'll always be facing something. And, you know, oftentimes, what I find any more is that for us, we don't necessarily face obstacles, personally, we have friends, we have family, we have employees that do. And being disciplined, having it all set and structured in a manner that we do, it then gives us an opportunity to step in and help fix something, help save something, and just take some of the pain away. I think that's important. And it's part of the charitable side of things. You always want to make sure that you've got the ability to take care of yourself, but you don't have to be you know, greedy about it. You know, you don't have to make sure that everything goes to you, you know, there's a lot of good feelings by spending time and resources, you know, helping others, and it's just kind of the right thing to do, in my opinion. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Amber Stitt  14:22

It is a perfect place to end this segment. So, for the audience, hopefully, you'll have some takeaways there to implement in the home or have some fun with or maybe even for your partner. We all can use a little reminder here and there to manage our money better. Okay, so we're gonna dive in more about money and habits and risk in our next episodes. So, thanks so much, Scott. 

Closing Outro  14:46

Thank you for joining us on today's episode of The Amber Stitt Show. For more information about podcasts, books, articles, and more, please visit me at AmberStitt.com. Until next week, enjoy your journey at home, and at work. Thank you for listening!