[00:00:00] Intro: We’re saying goodbye to the rigid numbers and strict budgets, and putting relationships back at the heart of personal finance. This is more than a podcast, it’s an invitation to reimagine your money story and journey with us through a landscape of intuitive strategies and abundance. Join a community that nurtures transformative financial mindsets.

[00:00:25] Welcome to Intuitive Finance. I’m your host, Dylan Bain.

[00:00:36] Dylan Bain: I’ve just sat down on my desk and I’ve got to get some work done. But before I do that, I think I’m going to just take a moment and take a quick spin through Facebook, because I want to see what people have posted. And I always love clicking on the Memories tab because I love to be able to see what I posted in the past. Like, what was past Dylan concerned about? And I see a post from 15 years ago. And it says, “I know the hardest part of leaving is leaving the people. Thank you to all my coworkers who made these last two years good ones. It is you that I will truly miss.” and I’m shocked. This is what I had posted on December 9th, 2008 as I was leaving the Marquette University Department of Public Safety. I had been a security guard there for two years, and in those two years I had met a lot of really good people, worked a lot of third shift hours, had dealt with more than my share of drunk college students.

[00:01:38] And I’m suddenly struggling because it was 15 years ago, and it was 2008. And if you remember, 2008, not exactly a great time. And I’m thinking about who I was when I made that post. I’m walking out of the Department of Public Safety. I mean, hung up my uniform and badge. Turned it all in, all the trappings of authority that the university had given me. And I’m thinking about how much that man had no idea what was coming to him.

[00:02:08] Because right after I made that post, I finished the last of my finals for my education master’s and I got on a plane to go visit my fiancé in Taiwan. Fiancé would eventually become my wife. And six months after that, I finished up my student teaching and I took a job in Taiwan and left the state of Wisconsin where I had been born and raised, where my family has been for four generations, where I have so much street cred in Kenosha, they put my family’s name on the signs. And I have not lived in that state since. And I’ve had 13 addresses across two countries and three US states. I learned Chinese. I got married. I had two kids. I quit teaching. I went back to school and got my second master’s degree. I earned my CPA. I got a job at one of the largest accounting firms in the world. I increased my income by over $97,000. I nearly got divorced. I bought a house. I found out that my stoic persona was a lie because I have a heart beating in my chest. I learned how to publicly speak. I competed in storytelling competitions and won not once, not twice, but three times. I started two podcasts, I created a business, I joined several men’s groups, and so much more.

[00:03:25] And that young man leaving that job 15 years ago had no idea any of that was coming. No, he was walking out with the idea that he was going to become a teacher, and he was going to impact lives. He was going to change the world. He was going to leave it better than he found it. One student, one lesson at a time. He was so optimistic, so idealistic, so full, so ready to just take on the world. And I’m sitting there thinking about what would I say to that young man if I could go back in time and meet him as he walks out those doors onto 16th Street, and I could just run into him and say, “Hey Dylan.” What would I even say to him?

[00:04:15] I know that that young man who left that job at Marquette would not recognize the man I have become. He would look at me and have no conception that he could even turn into what I’ve become, let alone that he’s just started his very first step in that direction. He wouldn’t recognize me at all. In fact, where I’m at now would be so foreign to him that he couldn’t even — he couldn’t see it from where he was standing because he knows he’s gonna go visit his fiancee in Taiwan, but that’s just gonna be a quick couple of weeks stay before he starts his student teaching. And then he’s going to come back and she’s going to come back to Milwaukee, and he’s going to get a job at one of the Catholic schools in Milwaukee, and she’s going to come back and she’s going to get a job as an engineer, and we’re going to have kids and stay in Milwaukee, and we’re going to live and die our whole life in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And there it was six months later, I left. And I haven’t lived there since.

[00:05:12] So what would I say to the young man? There’s so much I wish I could tell him. I wish I could say to him that he’s loved. It took me years — almost 13 years from that day, actually — to learn that I needed that. I needed to feel like I was loved. I want to tell him that he matters. I want to tell him that despite all this shit that’s going to happen, it’s going to come with a lot of achievement too, and that he’s going to be okay. That he’s the best bet that he will ever make, and that every time he chooses himself, every time he goes in on his dreams and he puts forth the effort on what matters to him, it turns out in spades. That the mistakes that he makes are when he listens to what other people want him to be doing or what they want for him. That the mistakes that he’s going to make, he’s going to make honestly because he’s lacking tools. He’s lacking words. He’s lacking a lot of context. I would tell the young man that he’s more than his production, that he matters, that he’s a human being. He has a heart in his chest. He has his own hopes and his own dreams. He’s more than his production.

[00:06:17] But the number one thing I would say to him is that I’ve got his back. That I’m there for him. That this is going to be hard. The next 15 years are going to be some of the hardest and most glorious that you could ever imagine. You’re going to experience things. You’re going to suffer defeats. That people will whisper about in the corners of those dark places in life. I’ve got your back. And I tell this because this day after Christmas, because it’s time of reflection. I always find that this time of year is really hallowed for me. We joke in the industry, in the audit industry, that this is the one week of the year that we don’t have anything to do, and no one wants us to do anything either. Because between Christmas and New Year’s, it’s just dead in the corporate world. And so we basically get time off.

[00:07:09] And I’ve always taken that time for reflection, to look at the year that’s passed. Because the holidays are how we mark time. How many Christmases have we had? How many Christmases do we have left? It’s a time to reflect on the year that’s coming. What’s in front of me? What are the challenges? What are the glories? What are the goals? What are the hopes? What are the dreams? What are the fears that are coming with this year, whether we like it or not? Because none of us can stand in front of the march of time. We can’t turn it back. We can’t stop it. We can’t halt it. We can only move forward through it. And reflection is so important. This podcast has been about finances. I started off with Fiscally Savage and this year I’ve rebranded, and I rebranded into Intuitive Finance. Why did I do that? I wanted to make a more holistic invitation for people to look at their finances. It’s a context I know very, very intimately because it was finances that drove me to go back to school and get my education masters that put me at the job at the Department of Public Safety in the first place. That’s what did it. It was finances, the entire mortgage industry, which I worked in.

[00:08:24] My company was one of the very first to go under and I found myself unemployed, went back to the place that I managed their motor pool as an undergrad and said, “Hey, I need a job.” and they said, well, congratulations, you got one. And if I worked for the university, it made my school free. So I would work at night, I would teach during the mornings, I’d sleep through the afternoons, and I’d take classes at night, just in time to arm up and go back out on patrol. But it gave me a salary and health insurance and free tuition, so two years didn’t seem like a bad deal. But when I graduated, it was — when I finished my student teaching, it was ’09, and Milwaukee was having a hiring freeze. In fact, nowhere in any of the states that I had an education license were hiring. And so I moved to Taiwan to take a job. My options were stay in Milwaukee and be unemployed, or move over to Taiwan and have a job. So I did that.

[00:09:12] Finances were a thing that drove me. It’s the thing that I understand most. It’s what made me quit my teaching job. I was never going to make it. The numbers were never going to be enough. And that was just a reality of the situation. I realized I couldn’t budget my way out of poverty. I had to earn my way out of poverty. That I didn’t have an expense problem, I had an income problem. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what drove me. Through two and a half years of graduate school into the Big Four public accounting world, which is notoriously difficult for the long hours and shitty pay and horrible clients and even worse partners that you have to deal with. But it’s a stepping stone because I wanted the big paycheck. Well, I got it now. And so when I’m reflecting on these things… Why did I rebrand this podcast from Fiscally Savage to Intuitive Finance? It’s because I wanted to make an invitation because I truly believe that when people budget, they’re engaging in an act of rebellion. They’re making themselves stand up. They’re looking at an anti-human society that wants to extract from them and saying, no, thank you. I’m not playing that game anymore.

[00:10:15] And so what I’ve looked at over this year, my business has grown. I’ve had more coaching clients this year than I ever have. I ran my first men’s retreat this year. I’ve grown in the practice of men’s work and working with men. And I’ve started doing coaching for men to help men find their hearts, find their heads, find the balls and use all three to create a life that they desire to live. To find the adventure, to live, the battle to fight, and the beauty to rescue, that’s something I’ve become really good at because I did it. Because 15 years ago, that young man who walked out of the Department of Public Safety, he didn’t know, but man, he had just signed up for the fight of his life. And it was going to be an adventure. And thankfully, I had already found the beauty, and I had put a ring on it, and I would make it official about a year later.

[00:11:05] It was incredible, and I want that for everyone who listens to this podcast. But I’m also looking forward to the year ahead and realizing that as I’ve evolved in my practice, I want holistic prosperity for everybody. I want to be able to create brotherhoods and communities where we are engaged in being the most human that we possibly can. Having the experiences where we feel like we’re sucking the marrow out of life and drinking the nectar that we so righteously deserve by earning it through intentionality, intentional focus, practice, practice, practice. That’s what I think is coming in the year ahead is, you know, it’s an election year and there’s going to be a lot of shittiness there. There’s gonna be a lot of fear. There’s gonna be a lot of things said. There’s going to be a lot of people at each other’s throats. And to me, all that’s irrelevant because that’s not what the humans are doing. That’s what the corporations want. That’s what the anti-human society wants. They want us to all be focused on all this other crap.

[00:12:04] But to me, it’s all distraction. How is that helping the humans flourish? I was doom scrolling through another account, helping me move forward. Is paying attention to the circus that has become Twitter helping me tuck my kids into bed? Is finding the next woman shaking her ass on Instagram helping me love my wife more? I don’t think so. And yet this is the society we live in. And I look forward to the year that’s coming and thinking, well, how do I participate in this because I can’t end it, can’t change it, but I got to find a way through it. And I think that we can do that.

[00:12:42] The importance of reflection, ladies and gentlemen, is because it brings so much self-awareness. Where you’re going, where you need work, and how much you’ve grown. When I look back and that 15-year-old boy — and that’s really what I was walking out of the Department of Public Safety is, I wouldn’t say that that was a young — it was a young man. It was more of a boy. And where was he going? He didn’t know. Because he knew he wasn’t self-reflective. He was just kind of winging it from moment to moment, opportunity to opportunity.

[00:13:11] I think about where I’m going now, and I want to believe I’ve got a better idea. I’ve sat down. I’m more intentional. I know that I’m growing this business. I know that I want to grow this podcast. I know that I want to get my message out there. I know that I want to stand on stage and do speaking events. I know that I want to be part of the solution to what I think ails us, which is that we’re being extracted from by an anti-human society that only wants to strip mine us of our value for its own benefit. I want to find a solution to that. And I want to help others do too. But I have to be self-aware of where I’m going and where I need work. I have a lot of development. I have to think this through. I know one of the things that if I could go back to that young man 15 years ago and say to him is, don’t give up your health. Like yes, you’re going to have to spend a lot of hours to go through graduate school again to get your MBA because that’s the fastest way you’re getting your CPA. And when you get into the Big Four, it’s just — you’re going to work an ungodly amount of hours. An 80-hour work week will be a standard for you, and you need to take care of your health.

[00:14:14] Because I can look at myself now and I can look at my body and how much weight I’ve put on and say like, yeah, that needs work. I sacrificed my body to increase my income by $97,000. That is the truth. And to be able to look at that and be aware of that and say, yeah, that’s a place Dylan needs work. I’m not angry about it. I’m not reproachful about it. And I’m already 45 pounds down so far this year. I look at next year and be like, yeah, I want to hit my goal weight. I want to finally get down. That would make my total weight loss more than a hundred pounds. Great. That’s where I’m going to look back at how much I’ve grown.

[00:14:51] My marriage was on the rocks. We weren’t doing well, like divorce became a great thing. And I’ve told the story in the podcast before, I had this vision that drove me out of teaching and into the public accounting world, which was a house with a yard where my kids were playing with a green ball while I’m grilling steaks of food I couldn’t afford, while my wife walks up to me and says, honey, I love what we built. And I did it, ladies and gentlemen, I did it over two-and-a-half years? Longer than that. I didn’t — it was like five years. I did it, bought the house. And a month after we bought the house, I realized I’m probably getting divorced. She ain’t happy and I ain’t happy. And we are at each other’s throats, and dear God, I don’t know how I got here.

[00:15:33] Well, again, now looking back at it because of reflection, I know how I got there. I focused on the one thing and forgot about everything else. And I thought she was on board, but I never did explain to her that I — there was a house at the end of this. And so when I bought the house and she wasn’t happy, I was resentful. And so was she. And so when I was reflecting on that year — and that was the end of 2020, we had plenty of stuff going on at that point too — having to look back and go, yeah, this ain’t going well. And in the upcoming year, I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but I know I need to do different. So I have a vague idea that it’s gonna be in this direction.

[00:16:09] And of course, what happened in 2021? Well, I found a group and I went to one of their events. I found Traver Boehm’s book Man UNcivilized. I looked him up on Instagram. He’s having an event. Had no idea what was going to happen. I just signed up on a whim. Fuck it. I can’t possibly — it can’t get any worse. I’m already living the worst case scenario. So I signed up for the event, went, and it changed my life. I discovered I had a heart and that that’s what was missing in my marriage. I didn’t know if I could save it, but damn it, I was going to give it a one heartfelt try because I was going to stop thinking of everything as a battle, and start seeing the humans in the system.

[00:16:48] And things are better. So much better. My wife is very fond of saying that the man who went up to that event didn’t come home. Instead, the man who came home was the man she started dating. And how did I get there? Self-awareness. How did I get to self-awareness? Reflection. Sitting down and taking the time, and making the space to figure out what I need, where I’m going, and setting a goal and planning for the future. In the case of going out in 2021 and saying, I don’t know where I’m going, but I know my goal is to walk out of this year a completely different man. And I don’t know what that means, but I’m just going to get in action. I’m going to start just walking in that general direction, which is what I did. But because I had a goal, because I had planned for the future, because I was self-aware of what was going on, it made it really easy. Just vaguely go in that direction of change. Whatever that means.

[00:17:40] Find people who are going in the same direction. I joined a couple of men’s groups, and it was transformative. But I set the goal. Why did I set the goal? Because I reflected and I figured out where I was and where I wanted to go. That reflection of looking back and spending time with where I’ve been and where I’m going. And looking at the trajectory and saying, do I want to keep going the trajectory, or do I want to take a right angle and go in a different way?

[00:18:05] Reflection also gives you an opportunity to emotionally process and create closure for yourself. Because you can turn around and look and go, my God, how far have I come? And one of the things that happened to that young man 15 years ago is, when I went to Taiwan, I had a friend and I said to the friend, hey, I own a house. I said, Hey, I need you to shovel the walk if it snows. And she said, yeah don’t worry, I got you covered. And it snowed while I was gone. I was gone for four weeks. And I came home and I had several tickets from the city of Milwaukee for not shoveling my walk.

[00:18:42] And they had brought over Bobcat, and the Bobcat had scraped off the walk for me. And my mortgage company called me and said, we noticed you got a couple of tickets. We have determined that you haven’t been taking care of the property and we’re foreclosing. I said, foreclosing? I’ve never missed a mortgage payment. What the hell? They said, doesn’t matter. You sign paperwork saying you take care of the property. These tickets, because of this unshoveled walk, is a definite sign that you’re not taking care of the property, so we’re foreclosing. It was 2009, TARP had just been passed — that’s the Trouble Asset Relief Package — or Program, or whatever the P was. And the banks were trying to wipe off weird mortgages off their balance sheets, of which I had one. An interest-only mortgage. So it was a nonstandard product. So I was getting screwed by that. He didn’t know that when he walked out of the Department of Public Safety. So I had to go through that. That was part of the shit he didn’t know was coming. And so I had to look at that and go, look how far I’ve come.

[00:19:41] How far have I come from getting down to my last penny, jumping on a plane, going to Taiwan, knowing that when I come back, the house that I’ve purchased, it’s not going to be there anymore. Banks can take it away. To sitting in the house that I have a lot of equity in and sitting on a emergency fund that can handle that if something were to happen like that again. That’s a huge turnaround. It’s taken me 15 years, but it’s a huge turnaround.

[00:20:08] Look at everything I’ve accomplished. I mean, I went back to graduate school at age 35. Nobody told me that this was a good plan. Everyone told me that I was crazy to leave my stable teaching job and go back to school and get a CPA, and that none of the Big Four accounting firms — none of them would consider me because I was too old. Everybody told me that. And I decided I was going to be so good they couldn’t ignore me, and I got job offers from not one, not two, but all four of the Big Four. I’ve accomplished a lot. I went from making less than $40,000 a year as a teacher in Flagstaff, Arizona with no health insurance for my wife and kids, and increasing that number by over $97,000.

[00:20:51] And that’s not even counting my wife’s income. As we got her through her own school, got her PhD, went to work in the public — publicly traded power utilities. She’s now working as a consultant and a sought-after expert in her field. What have we accomplished? And just let that sink in. I get to be proud of that. I get to hold on to that.

[00:21:15] But I also need to emotionally process what I left behind. My students. Not a single day goes by that I don’t think about my students. How they’re doing. Did I have an impact? Did I accomplish what I set out to do 15 years ago? Did I make an impact and did I leave the world a better place? Did I leave them better than when I found them? God, I hope so. And I miss that. I miss the classroom. I miss my students. Every day. And so this is the time of reflection, and to reflect on I left that behind and that I miss it.

[00:21:48] I also left behind a lot of the optimism and hope that that young man 15 years ago had. I miss that too. I have to emotionally work through the grief that goes with that. And I have to look at what I broke along the way. I smashed and grabbed my way through a lot of things. Going back to graduate school, being top of my class out of my MBA program, getting my CPA, getting the job of the Big Four. Like, those are feathers in my cap. Despite all the odds, I did it. And yet, shattered large sections of my marriage, damaged my relationship with my kids, missed an entire year of their lives. I broke some stuff along the way. And as I go forward, I’m going to have to acknowledge that. I can never go back, I can only go forward.

[00:22:33] So we’re using reflection, this chance to address what needs addressing, to be able to go back and look at what’s happened and where we’re going, and give us an opportunity to address what needs to be addressed.

[00:22:45] I know this upcoming year for me, my weight is top of the list of things that I need to address. I need to address it from a place of love, because you know what? A place of resentment and anger and fear — yeah, those don’t work. That’s dirty fuel, and it doesn’t burn as long as I need it to burn. But self-love? I think I can make that happen. I have to reflect and go back and say, what didn’t work? How many times have you tried losing weight, Dylan? Yeah well, they all came from a place of spite. I don’t think spite works here, so I have to do something different. It’s a chance to address what needs addressing and you do it through reflection.

[00:23:20] But here’s my invitation to every single one of you that’s listening if you’ve stayed with me this long. I’m going to invite you to name your year. It’s a practice I learned from Traver Boehm when I went out to his event in 2021. So, name your year. Give it a theme, give it a direction. Well, 2023 for me has been the year of emancipation. It was the year in which I emancipated myself from all of the stories that I’ve been carrying along to hold me back from growing this business, from losing weight, from being the father and husband that I want to be. I need to emancipate myself from a lot of stories that I’ve carried forward and over this last year that has been my focus. It’s the year of emancipation. And now that I’ve been successful, I look forward to 2024 because that will be the year of apotheosis. That will be the year of achievement, of glorious, glorious achievement where I’m going to 10X every success I’ve had in 2023, I’m going to do it 10 times more in 2024, and I’m going to allow myself to have that. If that means I fly too close to the sun and like, Icarus fall, then so be it. I’d rather experience that than never know what it feels like.

[00:24:31] So I’d invite you to name your year. Sit down and look. 2024 is the year of what for you? Is it the year of glory? Is it the year of breaking the chains of freedom? Is it the year in which you finally buy that car? Is it the year you get your financial house in order? What is it for you?

[00:24:52] When I did my reflection, after seeing that Facebook post, I sat down and I wrote a letter to my younger self. And I don’t write things very often, but I wrote a letter to my younger self, and I told him everything I wish I could tell him. That I have his back, that he’s loved, that he matters, that he’s more than his production, that it’ll all be okay in the end even when it feels like it won’t. And then I thought to myself, man, if I could just go back 15 years, what could I really do? And I kind of chuckled to myself because my biggest fear would be that I’d screwed up and I wouldn’t get my children. Wouldn’t have my beautiful daughters.

[00:25:29] But it also occurred to me, though, what does 90-year-old Dylan need? When I’m 90 years old, what will I wish I could say to myself right now? I want to go back 15 years to be able to talk to the young man but — or even just wake up and be 15 years younger. To go back to 2008. Man, what an opportunity. But here’s the thing. To 90-year-old Dylan, I just woke up younger. I’m 41 again. Hooray. What an amazing opportunity to be able to go forward and create an amazing life for 90-year-old Dylan. The oldest guy, weightlifting at the gym and practicing jujitsu. And on his 90th birthday, he gets to roll through every single person at the jujitsu academy. How cool would that be?

[00:26:19] That’s what we have right now, ladies and gentlemen. We have an opportunity to create the 90-year-old versions of ourselves. Congratulations, we woke up today younger than 90. We’ve gone back in time from that person’s perspective. I’d invite you to name your year ,because 2024 for me, it’s the year of apotheosis.

[00:26:39] What is 2024 the year for you?

[00:26:44] Thanks for listening. The conversation doesn’t end here. Please share the show with friends and make sure you keep up with all the latest updates on Instagram and Threads @TheDylanBain, and dive deeper into the world of finance with me at DylanBain.com where you’ll find insights, resources, and strategies to reimagine your money story.