Do you ever feel like life’s a constant uphill climb? Join Wade Reed as he takes a breather amidst the rugged beauty of his favorite mountain bike trails to share some powerful insights on overcoming overwhelm. From the chaos of balancing family schedules to navigating the unexpected twists of financial decisions, Wade dives into how embracing temporary imbalance can lead to long-term growth and clarity. Discover how letting go of the “good” can make room for the “great” in both your life and your wallet. Tune in to this reflective episode and learn how nature’s lessons can help you find equilibrium in your financial journey.
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Overcoming Overwhelm And Finding Balance To Navigate Life’s Financial Challenges
It’s a little bit different content. I’m out in nature. I’ve completed most of my mountain bike rides for the evening, and it’s one of my favorite places. I live in a little town, not far from some mountains. I get to ride directly from my home up to some trails and do a ride that’s got a lot of technical climbing, some fun descending, some flow and some jumps. It’s my happy place. It’s one of the things I do to escape from the day-to-day responsibilities of life and sometimes the overwhelm that happens.
Overwhelm
In this episode, I want to talk about the idea of overwhelm. Don’t we all universally experience overwhelm pretty regularly? There are different times of the day when we might feel overwhelmed. There are different times of the year, so perhaps you might have a busier season in business. You might have a busier time and season with kids in athletics. We got through a season that was crazy busy. The spring season was soccer.
We had four games every Saturday for six weeks, and then we had some end-of-school-year stuff. My wife, in particular, who manages our household, was super busy managing all of that schedule. I had my business responsibilities. I have been traveling a little bit lately to do some weekend training, as well as be a vendor at some events and provide some services to train people to understand how money works, what money is, and how to manage it effectively.
When it comes to overwhelm, particularly with money, it’s usually a function of the overwhelm of life, having chosen to too many good things. In fact, sometimes, we take on so many good things that we can’t do the best things. That comes back to priority. Overwhelming is typically a function of having too many good things in our life, too many opportunities that we need to choose the ones that are the best suited for us, and oftentimes, we let go of something.
What might that look like? We might have an expense, like a subscription. I’ll give you a case in point. We had a Disney subscription for many years and it came up for renewal. I thought, “We probably spend too much time enjoying shows on the Disney+ subscription.” We’re letting that go for a while. That opens up time, space and money for something else. It could sit in the bank. It could be waiting for the right opportunity. It could possibly be a renewal of that subscription or something else. It’s money that’s been allocated for entertainment, rejuvenation and family time. Those are high values for me, but there’s not the right thing right now. There’s too much of a good thing.
Often overwhelm comes into play with regard to maybe a new job or new business responsibility. Perhaps you have more money coming in than you ever have, and that’s a bit overwhelming. What do I do with it all? I’ve got now so much money. I’m getting hit up for all these investment opportunities, such as, “Do I even make any of these investments? How do I know which one’s the right one to do?” That can be overwhelming.
Maybe you’ve taken on a new business partner. Maybe you’re losing a business partner. Maybe you’re taking on an associate. Maybe you’re taking on a new team member. Maybe you’re adding a marketing agency. Maybe you’re adding a new technology. I know these are all things that I’ve experienced in recent times that have been quite overwhelming and challenging.
The only thing I can come back to is vision. My vision for the future is bright. I have every reason to be hopeful for a bright future. This Earth is so full. You see behind me this mountain range. You may be hearing the birds tripping a little bit. We’ve got some beautiful green foliage. We’ve got a sunset happening. I’m going to flip this around. Those of you who are on video can see through this tree here. We’ve got a sunset about to happen. We’ve got off in the distance.
That’s the Great Salt Lake. It’s the dry part of the Great Salt Lake. That mountain range over there is Antelope Island. It’s this little island where there’s some hiking and biking over there. There’s literally some bison that live over there. On the other side of that is the huge Great Salt Lake. Nature teaches a lot of lessons about how to deal with overwhelm.
When nature is overwhelmed, things thin out, fires happen, combustion takes place to clear out forests, maybe a dam burst, water flows out, goes somewhere else and allows something else to thrive. What we might think is harmful to us, like some mishap, is a necessary situation to allow for something new to come into our lives. I invite you to think about that with. If you’re feeling somewhat overwhelmed, what good thing do you need to let go of?
I’m going to give you one more example. In 2018, my wife was rear-ended in an automobile accident. She was at a stoplight, and some kid was texting. She thought the light had turned green. I think it had, but traffic hadn’t started moving. This kid plowed into my wife. We had all our kids in the car. They were at a stop, maybe starting to get moving. She ended up with a concussion that was pretty severe. It took about three years of recovery. During those years, she was a very high-capacity woman. She can handle many things, many people, relationships, schedules, and responsibilities, but she wasn’t able to do it all. She literally didn’t have the mental capacity due to this concussion.
We had to let go of some things. I had to take on a few things. One of the things we let go of is we had some laying hens, some chickens, and a coop in our backyard. It was one of those things. We had about ten. It wasn’t that big of a flock, but it was one of those things we had to say no to because our kids had many other things that were good. That was one thing we could let go of. As it turned out, the family that we sent the flock to had had about ten chickens killed by a fox. They had a bigger homestead. We only have about 1/3 of an acre. These guys had multiple acres. They were raising hens and loved to have laid hands for the fresh eggs.
We were able to pass on our flock to somebody else who had lost their flock. Our decision to let go of something opened up to fill a need that somebody else had. Sometimes, when you’re overwhelmed, when you say no to something, it not only opens up space for you to have more time to think, to take care of the other things that are more important, but it also gives somebody else an opportunity to take that on that are better capable or maybe looking for that opportunity. Learning to say no is one of the most important skills when it comes to money.
Learning to say no is one of the most important skills when it comes to money.
I’ve got a client right now who is getting his what we call family banking strategy set up. What that is is a very specifically designed whole life insurance policy. The policy is designed primarily as a savings vehicle, and we have $10,000 a year of funding that goes into the policy. Think of it like a savings vehicle. You’ve got $10,000 a year that you’re putting in there. $7,000 of that or more becomes cash value right away. It comes along with this permanent death benefit. That’s going to be there when he passes away.
For generational wealth, planning is an interesting tool for that. It provides short-term income protection, asset protection and tax-free growth. It’s on the cusp of completing this transaction, and it’s a pretty substantial transaction. The gentleman’s got a new business, and he was a partner. His partner died, so he took over the business and now has all the responsibility, all the revenue, and all the profit that comes with that. He has way more cash than he is used to, and he is out of the woodwork. They’re a part of this mastermind that I’m a part of. They’ve got people all the time saying, “Invest with me.” He’s overwhelmed by making these decisions of, “Where do I invest my money?”
He hasn’t yet learned how to say no. He’s like, “This one sounds good. It’s a 20% return. This one sounds good. It’s a 30% return. This one sounds good. For example, it’s a potential 1,000%, multimillion-dollar return out of $100,000. Some beverage company that’s going to go public at some point, it’s supposed to be worth $100 million plus in the next year to two years. There’s this pie-in-the-sky opportunity that has no founding. They’re just opportunities.
In the absence of clarity around our purpose in life and the vision for our future and the priority of our money, we will succumb to other people’s vision and other people’s priorities. That’s part of overwhelm, too. The overwhelm of not knowing the right thing to do. In the absence of knowing the right thing to do, it’s okay to do nothing.
It’s perfectly okay to sit on your cash, let it be in the bank and enjoy it. It’s a receipt for the work you’ve done, the effort you’ve put in, the value you’ve created, and the problems you have solved. Be okay sitting on tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions of dollars of cash. Have it in a high yield savings.
Some of the biggest banks and businesses I’ve ever come across, and you look at their balance sheets, they’ve got billions of dollars in cash, typically in CDs, treasury bonds, TBI, high cash value, life insurance policies, these things are earning somewhere between 3% and 5%. It’s perfectly okay to do what wealthy organizations, well-run banks, finance institutions, and wealthy individuals do and they sit on a lot of cash.
Balance
If you feel like you have to deploy your cash all the time to always be invested, you don’t. I give you permission not to have to have your money invested all the time to have it “working for you.” It can work in the context of providing safety and protection and waiting for the right opportunity. I had one more thought before I wrapped this one up.
Right over here is a stopping spot. There’s this trail. You come down a descent and then you curve your way back up in here and it’s a little bit of a resting spot at the end of a trail. I was sitting there a few minutes ago before I decided to turn on this camera. I stopped. I put my foot down. I put one pedal up and I’m trying to hold my position and something was off.
I couldn’t quite hold my position. I released my brakes and I started rolling back a little bit and finally found a point of equilibrium where the bike stopped moving backwards because it was on a little bit of a downward grade. It slid backwards. My front tire turned slightly. It found its equilibrium and balance.
As I’m sitting there finding equilibrium, I had this thought come to me. That’s a lot like our lives. We look for some balance.
In my experience, balance is pretty much temporary. There’s a moment of equilibrium. We might sit there for a period of time, and then we tip over. A wind catches us an opportunity, and a comment throws us off. In my household, we have water issues. Out of the blue, we have silly water issues. Water in a rainstorm got into a window well, and then it came down into the basement and flooded my daughter’s bedroom, and it’s finally going to get put back together. She’ll finally be back to her normal space. It created an opportunity to clean up a wall that had had some damage before and replace a window sill replace a window.
Balance is temporary.
All things that I wanted to do but didn’t have the motivation to do until this thing occurred. That was out of my control. That was a godwink. I’ve heard that term lately, godwink, serendipitous thing or a coincidence. I don’t know. I feel like sometimes those things are little, even tender mercies from God. Things that he says, “I know you’ve been wanting to do this. I know you’re not going to do it of your own free will. I’m going to push things along. I’m going to use nature to push things along.”
Water damage forced our hand, and we got an update on that part of the house that needed to be done. Balance is temporary. We’ll sit without water damage for a long period of time, and then suddenly something occurs. Another water issue from rain or from an internal thing and appliances. It’s been weird in our household. That’s been one of the things that’s caused change for us. For other people, it’s natural disasters. The same client I was talking about earlier had some major wind damage. A major storm showed up all around their neighborhood, trees and power lines were down. They have to leave their home, go to a hotel for a period of time and disrupt their lives. I’m sure fun happened.
New memories, things that they’ll remember the rest of their life because of that, then they’ll move on. A new equilibrium will be found in a new way of doing things. With this new income that they have, they’ll find some new equilibrium in terms of their spending and their investing they will lose some money, no doubt. Some business changes will take place and maybe they’ll increase their income even more. Anyway, I’m full of thinking tonight. Bear with me on that.
Thanks for joining me for this different episode, being in a place of nature and a contemplative mindset. One of my core beliefs is that we are conscious creators, that we were endowed with a God-given faculty to imagine and create what we can believe and not believe and achieve, but what we can imagine and believe we can achieve. I believe that God will support us in that. I believe wholeheartedly that when we ask, we will receive. When we seek, when we knock, the door will be opened. We have to be willing to do that work.
We have to be willing to think and ask and then accept the open door. When the door opens, you have to walk through the door. There’s effort. Effort is good. It gives us something to strive for and it energizes us. It creates new opportunities for change and progress. In the end here, I find a recognition that balance is temporary and that’s okay. In your financial lives, there’s a temporary balance in the spending that takes place, and something new comes up. We need to have a good system where there are funds and cash available to deal with uncertainties and opportunities. I’ll leave that with you. Thanks for joining me on this episode. We’ll catch you soon.