MARK WILLIS CHALLENGES YOU TO BANK ON YOURSELF

When I was a kid I would often accompany my parents on Saturdays to a store that was both a grocery and department store, a bit like Costco is today. Sometimes my father would give me some cash and I would hotfoot it to the toy section to grab one of the latest models of these miniature cars called Hot Wheels. I was obsessed with building my collection. I would make my purchase and then was faced with the immediate question that I realize now was a precursor to similar questions I would ask as an adult.

What do I do with what's left? 

Most often I would go straight to the jewelry counter and purchase with what change I had some cheap piece of costume jewelry for my Mom. I don't know why this was my pattern and perhaps there are deeper aspects and another set of questions. The point is that I had choices each time:

Give what was left back to my father;

Make this purchase for my Mom,

Save it for another day. 

Which do you think would have been the smartest?  How you answer that question has a lot to do with your philosophy about this thing we call Money. The Saturday trips to the store with my parents helped form my lifelong relationship with money, along with observing how they spent and spoke about money in our household. And, like a lot of people, my relationship with money is strained at best. 

Today's guest, Mark Willis, takes a stand against the many commonly held myths about money. In fact, Mark, a certified financial planner and the founder and principal in his own firm Lake Growth Financial, is a paradigm breaker. He is the host of the popular financial podcast, Not Your Average Financial Podcast, in which explores and challenges widely held as fact ideas about finances. 

In today's conversation, Mark offers a counterintuitive approach to our relationship with money. He challenges whether a house is an asset or a liability, whether it's smarter to defer taxes to retirement, and even the sacred cow of 401(k) as the best place to park our money for retirement. He questions the worship of "financial gurus and money personalities" on network television and social media who prescribe mainstream money views without question. 

But Mark is no heartless bean-counter. He starts each relationship with prospective clients with a deep examination of that client's fears, concerns, and history with money. He even tells us that financial conversations, if done right, "should feel like those best late-night conversations about life." 

Today's conversation is a wide-ranging and enlightening look into the work of a heart-based financial planner whose central tenet is a Bank On Yourself philosophy that puts the most value into our own deeply held desires about money in our lives rather than following the herd. So hold on. You’re probably going to get uncomfortable because this conversation strikes at the heart of how our core beliefs about money are really core beliefs about our lives. 

Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Mark Willis.

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Bank on Yourself principles and founder Pamela Yellen

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