Here is the full transcript of social entrepreneur Mo Hasan’s talk titled “Why Most People Fail At Financial Planning! It’s Not What You Think!” at TEDxAshburnSalon 2017 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi, I’m Mo Hasan and I have the privilege of tonight having the opportunity to teach you about what has people stopped in their life and what has them not achieved the financial success that they want in their life. Just a quick show of hands, have you taken any steps in your life to forward your financial plan? Either starting a budget, saving money in an IRA, a 401k, a work plan? Sure, most of us have taken some sort of step.
Now the next question for you, you don’t have to raise your hand for, are you financially secure right now? Are you wealthy? And in this time if the answer is yes, fantastic, congratulations and well done. And if the answer is no, you have a lot of company, not just in this room, but you have company all over the United States and all over the world.
The Financial Problem
So what’s happening in the world? Why is it that we have perfectly intelligent, hardworking people unable to achieve the retirement that they want and the financial goals that they want? Well, I’d like you to consider that maybe we’re trying to solve a problem in a way that doesn’t really make sense. Maybe we don’t even understand what the problem is.
Well, let’s take a look at what’s actually happening out there, what’s happening in the marketplace with the young people that are still in college right now. According to Sallie Mae, half of them are going to have $5,000 of just credit card debt before they graduate from college. And a third of them have well over $10,000 of credit card debt. That’s not including car loans, student loans, or anything else of that sort.
Financial Struggles
So we’ve got young people literally coming into life with a high amount of revolving credit card debt. Well, what about everyone else that’s out there? Well, gosh, two thirds of Americans would struggle to come up with $1,000 for an emergency. Do you think that there’s some emergencies you might experience in life that’d be at least $1,000?
Yeah, like a car breaking down or maybe something related to health and wellness. My future father-in-law recently found out that he was diagnosed with hepatitis C, a curable illness that takes only three months to cure, and it only takes 90 days worth of pills. But at $1,000 of pill per day, it can be devastating to most families. Fortunately, he had health insurance, which significantly reduced the cost.
But what would a $90,000 medical bill do to your family? You see, oftentimes we believe, well, maybe if I just made more income, then life will be okay. Well, it turns out 70% of US citizens, regardless of income, are living paycheck to paycheck. So even when you see people driving nice cars, working very, very nice jobs and earning a lot of money, the vast majority of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck.
The Real Problem
So what’s going on here? Why is it that most people are struggling financially? The issue is we’ve been trying to solve the wrong problem all along. We’ve been trying to just make a lot of money and create financial wealth.
But the reality is most of us have no idea what money even is or what it means to create wealth. So I’d rather assert to you that if you think about the future, what is security? Will the government give you security? Well, as it turns out, according to the Social Security Administration, by the year 2033, the Social Security Administration’s trust fund starts to go broke.
That means if you’re 46 years old today, by the time you’re 62, the earliest you’re eligible to start collecting Social Security, not all the money will be there. So what do we do? What have we been chasing that’s not right? Well, maybe we’ve just been playing the wrong game in the world.
Sustainable Happiness
Maybe we’ve just been trying to make money instead of trying to focus on creating sustainable happiness. You see, I assert that the entire purpose of financial planning or retirement planning or whatever you call it, the whole point of it is to create sustainable happiness. And what I mean by that is that you’re not just happy right now. You didn’t just make a little bit of money, but that you’ll be happy and you’ll be okay and your family will be okay, regardless of the economy.
Whether the housing market or the stock market goes up or down, your family will not only be okay, but you’ll be able to thrive. You’ll be able to survive at a very high level. And what about you could be incident-proof and you could be accident-proof and you could be illness-proof, that no matter what happened, you could have complete and utter financial security. I invite you to consider that that’s the point of financial planning, is to create that type of happiness in your life, to take care of you, your family, and everything that’s important to you.
A New Approach
So how do we get there? How do we get there to a place where we can actually create this level of sustainable happiness, that we can create financial abundance in our lives? Well, it’s got to start off by looking at what are the areas in your life that make you happy? And would it be a good idea for us to examine a little bit about who we are before we figure out how to solve the problem?
Doesn’t that just make sense? So I invite you to consider a new way for you to look at yourself. And let’s now look at the four elements that make up me and that make up you and that make up all of us.
First, let’s talk about what we’re used to, what we can point to, which is our physical body.
The Physical Self
We have our physical bodies in this room. You can point to your body, right? And it exists in mass, it exists in space and time, and it exists in a universe that we call the physical universe, one that we can measure, one that we can see, one that we can point to with the objects in the room. So if you’re going to live a long time and you’re going to be financially successful, might it make sense to take care of your physical body so that you’re around to enjoy it?
Because what’s the point of having a whole lot of money if you’re fat, sick and nearly dead? Or you make a whole lot of money, you retire just to die within a couple of years. And unfortunately, this is a very common occurrence. So we have to take care of and look at in our financial planning that we have to take care of our physical self.
The Emotional Self
But we also exist as a series of emotions, as a series of contiguous, of nonstop, one right after the other, a series of emotional states. We’re happy, we’re sad, we’re bored, we’re excited, we’re intrigued. We are, as human beings, a series of emotional states. So point to that in the room.
Where are you with your emotional state? Can you find it? Is it on the floor? Is it on the ceiling?
The Spiritual World
Is it on the screen? We can see evidence of it. Maybe you’re happy, you can point to your smile. But that emotional state that exists actually exists in what we refer to as the spiritual world.
But this isn’t a conversation about religion. But this is a conversation about we need language to describe the things that exist that are not in the physical world. And so anything that doesn’t have mass, that we can’t measure in space, time and distance, we are going to consider exists in the spiritual world. So our emotions are one thing that exists in the spiritual world.
The Intellectual Self
But there’s more. What about your intelligence? The sum of all things that you know. Point to that in the room.
Where’s the sum of everything that you’ve learned? Where’s the sum of all of your errors, all of your mistakes? Everything that you’ve learned, everything that you’ve mastered, every mistake that you’ve made, that exists somewhere too. And that’s also in the spiritual world.
Emotions and Money
And when we combine the two, has anyone here ever had an emotion around money? Have you ever been stressed when the bank account’s been a little bit low? Or when the debt balance gets a little high? Or been a little excited when the bank balance gets a little high?
So we all experience emotions around money. And do you think what you know about money affects how much you get to have of it? Do you think if you’re ignorant about money, you get to be wealthy? Absolutely not.
The Spiritual Self
So your intelligence and your emotional state play a huge part in your money. But you see, that’s not the only way you exist. It’s not just your physical, your emotional, your intellect. You also exist as energy.
You see, you’ve got a body, right? And you’ve got energy that animates your body. Or else you’d be a bag of dead meat and bones. And the energy that animates our body, let’s call that the spirit. It’s what gives us life. It’s what animates us. And aren’t there things in the universe that work through our spirit? Think of your purest self.
Think about the things that you love. Think about all the things that are good about you. All of those things are your spiritual self. And so your spiritual self also plays a purpose in the world.
Do you think that those people in this world who are fulfilling on their true purpose, are they happier than those that are not? What do you think? Are they happier than the drones that are going through just trying to collect another paycheck one week after another? So there’s something to be said for honoring all of the parts of you to ensure that your financial plan includes everything.
The Nature of Money
Because there’s things for us to solve in the spirit and things for us to solve in our emotions, our intellect and our physical body. So we still have the money problem to solve. Well, there’s a really good question. What is money?
Is money something that exists in the physical world? Is it the dollar bills that we’ve exchanged when we were children back and forth? What is money? Is it the ones and zeros you see on your computer screen or the app?
But rather money is something that exists in the spiritual world. And what money is, money is just an idea. Money is just an idea backed in confidence. So that when I give you a dollar, you have the confidence that that dollar can be exchanged for something else of equal value.
The Energy of Money
And how do we convey confidence from one place to another? You think about a credit card, right? When you pay here at this place or any other venue, you simply give them a piece of plastic. You’re no longer exchanging dollars in that sense.
But the vendor, they have confidence that your credit card is worth something. And the bank, they have confidence that the other bank is going to give them money. And so it goes round and around and around that money exists as an idea. And what we’re actually transferring is that confidence.
Solving the Money Problem
And the way we transfer that energy is literally by transferring energy. And you see, we’ve been trying to solve the money problem all wrong all along. We’ve been trying to solve the money problem in the physical universe. So therefore, to solve the spiritual issue of money, we have to find the source of the problem.
And this is where the good news comes in. See, in the spiritual world, problems are much easier to solve than they are in the physical world. In the spiritual world, when you want to get from point A to point B, it’s actually a lot easier because all of your problems, all of your problems, every single one of them, all manifested, all came from one particular place. And all of your problems are simply the manifestation of your indecision.
The Power of Decision
You see, all of your money problems exist because you, at some point in time, and maybe more than once, had a someday conversation. I’ll take care of my budget someday. I’ll write that will someday. I’ll start learning about mutual funds someday.
I’ll start retirement planning someday. I’ll sit down with a wife or the husband and we’ll both get caught up someday. You see, all of the problems in your life are literally just a manifestation of your indecision. So if that’s the case, if what indecision is keeping you from getting to the other side, how do you think you could solve that problem?
What do you think? You could make a decision. Hot diggity, it’s literally that simple. You could make a decision.
Because in every aspect of life, everywhere you sit on the fence, you create problems. So why not make a decision? Why not choose a new viewpoint from which you can operate in life? I’m talking about decisions you make in the spiritual world that alter the rest of your life.
The Power of Love
Please raise your hand if you’ve ever been in love. If you’ve ever been in love and been in a loving relationship and a long-term relationship. So before you fell in love with that person, you were probably already busy, right? You had a lot, a lot of stuff to do.
You had friends, you were busy with work. All of a sudden you fall in love with this person. You declare that you’re going to spend time with them. And now your schedule is completely free.
Spiritual Decisions
Like you’ve been able to completely and utterly reorganize your universe because of this new truth, because you made a spiritual decision. You see, that is the power of making a spiritual decision. Because for most people, long before they buy a house together, they get married or they have babies or whatever order you do all of that, long before all of that, you typically made a spiritual decision to be with that person. And then the physical universe simply caught up.
I invite you to consider that the decision you make in money is absolutely no different. So what are your choices? What can you decide about money that would have you manifest financial success and wealth? Well, let’s start by making it very, very easy.
Three Financial Choices
We’ll start with three simple choices. All three choices will get you to retirement. There’s no right answer. There’s no wrong answer.
It’s literally up to you to pick. Are you ready? Are you ready for the easiest choice you’re ever going to make? And that the end result of this choice is you will be financially successful.
Choice 1: The Minimum
Well, here it goes. Choice number one, you do the minimum. You literally do the minimum. And what that means is you fill out all of your paperwork properly.
If you have an employer who does the 401k match or a thrift savings plan or any type of employer matching contributions, take advantage of it. If you need insurance for your family, buy some insurance. Just do the bare minimum and you will reach retirement. Now, will you be rich?
No, probably not. Now, here’s the thing. If you ended up with a life incident that cost you a quarter million, half a million dollars, could you survive that incident? That’s a whole other story.
Choice 2: Hire a Team
So that’s option number one. And if you don’t want to think about money, by all means, choose this and you’ll at least get to retirement. Option number two is that you decide to hire a team. You realize there’s a lot to learn about money and you say, you know what, I could use a little bit of help.
Maybe I need some financial planners, some tax advisors, some accountants. I need some people on my team that are actually going to be able to do the thing to manage the money. But in order for you to do that, you need some education so that you don’t get taken advantage of. And to get that education so that you can hire a team, what you have to do is you become qualified so that you can qualify the people that you’re hiring.
Financial Education
And this normally is about a three to six month education process. This requires you to learn the minimums about how mutual funds work. What is the GDP? How does the economy work?
How does insurance work? You literally go through and learn the minimum things, the basics of all of those areas of finance. So when you go hire the experts, no one takes advantage of you. You will be able to hire the experts because you now know what there is to know.
The Pitfalls of Hiring Experts
What’s very common is a lot of people who go out to hire a team. They end up being swayed by yummy steak dinners and pretty offices. And then there’s a few of us out there. We kind of look at the universe and go, how in the world am I not financially successful?
Choice 3: Be the Bank
What is going on here? And I’m willing to do whatever it takes. I’m willing to learn. I’m willing to grow.
And I’m willing to be 100% responsible for my money. And so therefore, I’m going to choose option number three. And option number three is a spiritual decision where you say, now I’m going to take a new viewpoint in the world. But now I’m going to take the viewpoint that I will no longer be a consumer, but I would rather take the viewpoint and be a bank.
Banks vs. Consumers
Why did I say that in option number three, you have to take a viewpoint of being the bank versus being the consumer? Because in the world of money, who’s winning consumers or the banks? You tell me. Like the banks are winning like 100% of the time, right?
The banks are winning. If consumers are winning, most people would be rich. But most banks are rich. See, in the world, we have a ton of education out there.
The Power of Viewpoint
A ton of education is available. So you need a filter by which you can look at the education. And the filter is your viewpoint. It is the position that you choose to apply in the world, to plant your flag down in the ground and say, this is who I am.
So when you take option number three, you make the spiritual decision that who you are right now is financially successful. And who you are right now is to be 100% responsible for your economy. So that no matter what happens, no matter what goes wrong, you are responsible. There’s no more complaining and everything in your life can be solved through your own education.
The Banker’s Perspective
You see, bankers ask very, very different questions. So the education bankers get is very, very different. So when you choose option three, that that is the way you’re going to live your life and you make that decision instantly and you take on that viewpoint, your entire universe transforms around you. The resources that you need, the people that are important to you are all going to show up.
Starting Your Financial Journey
So where do you get started? First, you have to choose to make a spiritual decision. And if you choose option three, here’s what life looks like. Life looks like studying for the rest of your life, but only until you die.
Don’t worry about it. Okay. You’re only going to learn until you die. And the first year you’re going to learn all the fundamentals.
Specialization and Self-Discovery
In the second year, you’re going to specialize in something. And what you’re going to specialize is not just an investment strategy and an investment tool or an investment product. You’re also going to specialize in you. You’re going to learn how to unlock your mind.
You’re going to learn how to unlock your ability to learn so that you can learn faster, harder, and better than you’ve ever learned before. And in the third year, you become a mentee. You get coaching and you get professionals. You get people with mastery and you learn from them.
The Path to Financial Security
And after you’ve learned, after you’ve committed those three years to being a student, only then do you start investing your money. You’ll find that because you got education, because you increased your emotional intelligence, you’ll find that your returns will grow. Your risk will drop and you will create financial security in your life and you will be able to create sustainable happiness for the rest of your life. Thank you.