[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.

[00:00:37] Dylan Bain: It’s 2009, and I’m talking to a man that I met during one of my internships in college. I had gone to work in a factory in this small town in Illinois, and the gentleman had just been laid off. It was a shock to the entire community because this company in this factory had been there for over a hundred years, and one of their biggest, most proud bullet points to talk about was how they had never done a layoff in the entire history of the company. In this town, this is all that it had going for it. With the shutdown of this factory and all of those jobs being moved to Mexico, my friend was watching the community that he had grown up in, the place where his father had worked, the place where his grandfather had worked, was suddenly gone. And there was a hole left in the middle of that community. That was now going to collapse in on itself.

[00:01:28] What was so notable to me, though, is how sympathetic to the company this man was. He kept saying things like, well they got to stay competitive. Times are tough. It’s a rational decision for them. And at the same time, he was judging himself so harshly for not having good savings in this financial situation, and that he had spent so much money on trying to live his life in the way that he saw fit. And at the same time, feeling bad for this company and how they had fallen on hard times.

[00:01:58] And I’m starting to struggle when I turned to him and I said, hey man, you know that the company was still profitable, right? You know that this company was still doing really, really good, despite what they want to say. They didn’t have to move the factory to Mexico. And he looks at me and he says, that’s not important. I need to take responsibility.

[00:02:24] And ladies and gentlemen, I tell that story because we live in a time right now where we’re seeing more and more companies announce that they’re going to lay people off in the same press report that they’re announcing that they’re having record breaking profits. And rightfully or wrongfully, there are a lot of people who are starting to ask the question of, well hold on a second, if you’re having record breaking profits, if your employees have really come through for you and generated all this money, why are you laying them off?

[00:02:51] The whole idea of this capitalistic system is that if the company does well, then the employees should do well. That the growth in the company will be shared with everybody, thus creating a just society where hard work is rewarded. And now people are starting to question that more and more. Which brings us to an interesting conundrum of, where is the intersection between ethics and finances?

[00:03:14] Because at first blush, they don’t seem related. However, they are related because from time immemorial, we have looked at commerce and the people who are in it with some trepidation, and at the same time have held ourselves to a standard that we might not be applying to other people. Money in our society— and has been true for all of civilization— has been considered a measure of value. Now that’s not exactly what we would have called it in Rome, but even when we have phrases like, wow, that’s a guy who’s worth his salt, they’re referring to it, that that guy’s worth his paycheck. That’s literally what the phrase entails, because in the Roman system, people were paid in salt if they weren’t paid in gold.

[00:03:58] Money is considered this measure of value. This is where we get the idea that if you are making a whole lot of money, or that you are blessed with material wealth, that you’re somehow more worthy than somebody who isn’t. And people who do not have material wealth, for some strange reason, are just that way because they’re somehow morally depraved, even if we couldn’t tell you what that depravity is. And this is about as true as it’s not, because money can be considered a measure of value. But it’s not always. Sometimes it’s a measure of extraction. It’s a measure of how much you’re able to pull out of a person, a system, or a situation without adding things of value back to that same system that you are extracting from. This is an extractive thing rather than an actual closed loop.

[00:04:40] We also conflate ethics and finances because so often, money and the use of money are judged harshly. And this is where we get into the idea where we have this constant back and forth in American society when you see somebody driving a really fancy car and you say, well, that was a waste of money. And on the other hand, well people are rational economic actors who act in their own self-interest, so therefore this was a rational purchase.

[00:05:07] We judge this, and we judge it within others, and we judge it with ourselves. We judge it when we see somebody buying organic food because, oh my God, how bougie are they? And we see it when people are buying nothing but ground beef, because now they’re just cheap. This is where you see people who— and when I was on food stamps, this was certainly something I saw all the time. We get up to the register, and we get out the WIC checks, and we’re having to do an individual transaction for every single one of the checks, depending on who was at the tiller that day. And people were judging us for buying this can of beans versus another different type of cans of beans, and looking at us as if we were some sort of subhuman for the money that we were spending in the grocery store.

[00:05:51] We use money as a measurement in all sorts of ways that are not economic, and I think in this current time, particularly here in an election year, we’re asking a lot of questions suddenly. With the advent of AI that’s coming in, and we’re looking at our society which is creaking our norms and our institutions within society, are starting to be tested in ways that we’re not so certain they’re going to survive. We’re starting to ask ourselves some serious questions about everything we’re looking at, aren’t we?

[00:06:22] And you’ve heard it said a number of different times. We went through in a pandemic in which we know that co-morbidities such as obesity and high blood pressure made the disease worse, but not once did we have anybody who actually works in the system of food and health itself suggest that maybe we should start thinking about how to become more healthy as a society. It was all about the drugs and the pharmacology and the interventions, and never about, well, do we actually go back and address the food system that is actively making us sick?

[00:06:58] And a financial system is no different in this. When you start looking at the financial system and the economic system, that part of it, we start asking some questions of, well, is this ethical? Is this not ethical? Do we even get to have the say in that?

[00:07:12] So I’m going to start off by just kind of laying some groundwork, because the personal systems that we have and the larger capital S systems that we’re part of, they have some similar things as to when they’re ethical versus not. So I’m going to give you Dylan’s version of what an ethical system is.

[00:07:30] An ethical system is one in which you are free to exchange in the system in a non-coercive manner. What that means is that you are free to enter the system, you’re free to participate in the system. No one is forcing you, directly or indirectly, into having to play that game. That is to say that, if you don’t want to sell your labor, ,you don’t have to. You have a free exchange. And if somebody wants your labor, they can incentivize you through a variety of different things that are in your benefit.

[00:07:59] Again, this goes back to the non-coercive. Yes, they could round you all up, put you in shackles, and whip you until you started doing the thing, but they could also pay you to do the thing, which is theoretically what our society is set up for.

[00:08:11] So an ethical system has to allow all the players to have a choice. And an actual real choice. Not the choice of the idea of like, oh, well you could not pay for your medical care. Yeah, you’re going to die, but you have a choice. You have freedom. No, no, no. That’s not an ethical system. It’s one in which you’re able to interact with it. with no coercion acting upon you.

[00:08:37] Number two in an ethical system is that money is exchanged for things and services of value. And this is critical. Because when you look at this, if you look at the lifestyle of a company. The life cycle of that company means that in the beginning, they’re going to grow and grow and grow and grow and grow. That’s the whole growth phase here. They get VC capital. That’s growth at any expense. And this is a period of time in which they’re paying employees really, really well. The employees are getting paid, they’re hiring a lot, there’s a lot of resources. These companies are great places to work. Let me think about what it was to work for Google in the beginning. Or what it was to work for Amazon in the beginning. Or in the heyday, right after Apple came out with the iPod. And you know, they just started exploding on the market scene and then they came out with the iPhone. You know, Apple was the best place in the world to work. Everybody wanted to go to work there because the companies were creating things of value. Google Search was becoming an amazing thing. The iPhone revolutionized, well, everything. Killed entire industries, but revolutionized them at the same time. They were creating something of value versus extraction.

[00:09:48] And an ethical system creates a win-win. One of the best parts about capitalism in its ideal state is that it is the economic system in which all players in that system, theoretically, can walk away in a win-win. Somebody who shows up to the market with sheep, and they’re looking for cloth, can exchange sheep for cloth, and now both parties are better off. That’s a win-win. That’s what we want. I have a job that’s fulfilling, that pays me enough that I can live my life. They get my labor and my excellent work, and I get a life that is really worth living and fulfilling. Win-win. That’s what we look for. Juxtapose that to a non-ethical system.

[00:10:26] Now, a non-ethical system is one in which you are forced either directly or indirectly to participate whether you like it or not. So I would argue that when you look around and you see the homeless crisis, we see a sign of dysfunction. Remember: success leaves clues, dysfunction does too. So if you have a system that’s producing homeless people, there is an implicit threat that either you participate in the system, or that’s where you end up. That is a form of indirect coercion. You’re being coerced into having to do these things. When your health care and your ability to continue to function in society is tied to your job, this creates something that economists call job lock. You no longer have a fully voluntary exchange because you’re having to make calculations well beyond the economics ones.

[00:11:15] The second part of a non-ethical system is when money is a sign of extraction. Let’s go back to Google. Let’s go back to Apple. We can talk about Spotify right now because they fall into this category. All of these companies, particularly Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and of course, Spotify, have all announced layoffs. And what’s notable about those companies is they’ve had some of the absolute best quarters they’ve ever had. And so why is it, according to Google— this is according to Google in their press releases— Google stated why they were doing layoffs, because they want to be able to meet “their ambitious targets.”

[00:11:55] That is to say, that they have set themselves revenue targets. More specifically, they’ve set themselves profit targets. And if you can’t create value to create more revenue, what you do is you start to extract by reducing your expenses. And so what they’re doing now is they’re trying to squeeze their employees. They have stopped creating things of value and have started to squeeze more and more out of their employees. This is starting the cycle of extraction.

[00:12:20] And this is what the difference is. In the beginning, Google’s making a lot of money. The exchange is voluntary. People want to go to work for it. They’re creating something of value for the market. The market is rewarding them. The employees are getting rewarded along with them. This is how a good system works. They start to get to a point where they no longer are interested in creating value because creating value is hard. And so now they start to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze.

[00:12:45] One of the things that you can go look up if you don’t believe me, is the process of something called enshittification. Enshittification being, when a platform, also known as platform decay by the way, a platform starts to die after they’ve run out of places where they think they can continue to add value. We see this with Instagram. We’ve seen this with TikTok. This has happened to YouTube. This has happened to Google Search. If you use any of those platforms, you see where these platforms are decaying. And now when you see the parent companies are starting to lay people off, what they’re trying to do is continue to “grow”, but they’re not growing by adding more value. They’re growing by extracting both from their customers and from their employees.

[00:13:24] When you start extracting, you create a zero sum game. An ethical system might have a win-win, but an unethical system is, if I win, you have to lose. Zero sum. Everyone else’s gain is someone else’s loss. And there are plenty of people who will defend American commerce and say, well, no, hold on a second. We live in the best system in the world. I would argue we don’t because some cases, particularly in entrepreneurial cases, there’s a lot of win-win. And I think that stuff is great. And there’s a lot of extraction. That stuff I think isn’t great.

[00:13:59] And so when we’re sitting here in this time and the space, it’s worth our while to look around and start asking ourselves, is this truly a free exchange or am I being forced directly or indirectly? Are they making their money by an exchange of value by providing the market, something that it didn’t have before that was better than the thing they had before? Or are they just extracting, just kind of skimming right off the top of other people’s production, whether directly or indirectly?

[00:14:28] I’ve talked at length in some other podcasts on this show about the idea of economic rent. An example of an economic rent is I buy a single family resident home, I then rent it out to “what the market will bear.” So I have this thing that the only value that I add is the fact that it’s available for rent, but then I take more than it actually costs and that difference is economic rents. So when Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations was talking about a free market economy, free in his mind didn’t mean free of regulation and government interference. It meant free of rent-seeking. That is to say, free of extraction.

[00:15:06] And instead of extraction, we had a market that was creating value. When we start looking around at where we’re at in society and where we’re at personally, this becomes a big thing, because the role of values in our money decisions are huge. And if we’re looking at it, when we create our own personal systems— think about it. When you’re dealing with your wife or your kids, are you creating a system where there’s a free exchange that’s non-coercive, where everyone’s adding something of value and creates win-wins for everyone down the line? Or are you trying to force somebody, indirectly or directly, to extract from them in a way that when you win, they have to lose?

[00:15:49] And as we talk a little bit further down the role of values and money decisions, let’s just make a distinction here between what is the System, capital S, the economy as a broader term, versus our personal systems, which are how we run our households.

[00:16:05] So on the system-side, when we look at what are the values in these money decisions— system-wide, you need to understand that our system is an anti-human system. Our system is meant to extract from you. It wasn’t always that way, but it is now.

[00:16:20] And so on a broader basis, we don’t actually try to add things of value. We try to extract from you. We don’t want to fix the food system because somebody is making a bunch of money off the fact that they don’t use legacy greens. They’re using GMOs that are better for the machines that are actually poisoning the end users as a humans. And instead of actually fixing that problem, we insert a middleman who creates gluten-free bread. Or we have a health gym. Or a pharmaceutical option. We have all of these different middlemen who have inserted themselves in the system for the sole purpose of being able to extract, extract, extract from the dysfunction caused by the root thing.

[00:17:03] And when you understand that, you need to start looking at how do you, I work in the system for my own interest? Because the system is playing a zero sum game, which means if you’re not playing for you, or you’re trying to play cooperatively, that system will use you. Another way to put it— this is going back to my Fiscally Savage days— another way to put it is you want to use the system before the system uses you. And there are plenty of people who say, well, I don’t want to be one of those moochers.

[00:17:30] My brother and sister in finance, the system is already mooching off of you. It’s— you don’t— you didn’t make the system. You’re not responsible for creating large scale societal changes. But you do need to understand that you need to work in your own interests.

[00:17:46] And so to that I say, when you’re looking at the bigger system, take your PTO days. Take your sick days. Don’t get caught in the idea when somebody comes to you and says, well, you can’t leave. I know they’re going to pay you 15 percent more at the new company, but think about your team. You’re going to leave your team in a lurch. That’s when you have to turn to them and say. To be this close to the bone staffing was a management decision and I’m not management. I know exactly how that went through. I had to go through an entire evolution of thought and understanding because I was raised with the idea that you work hard.

[00:18:24] And the story at the top of the show— I did an internship. It was a plastic mold factory in Spring Grove, Illinois, and I was hired because every so many years they had to vacuum the ceiling and get all the plastic dust off the top before it started falling down on the employees and into the machines. And I went out there and there were good, hardworking Americans out there. You know, the salt of the earth type of people. And during company orientation, they talked about how they were a family, and how they were really focused on making sure that they were adding value into the market, and also that they were creating lives for their employees. My grandfather worked for that company for almost 40 years. He got the gold watch at retirement, a literal gold watch.

[00:19:08] But that didn’t matter when they started making the case to send all of those jobs to Mexico, despite the fact that they were still profitable, even in the depths of the Great Recession. Did they think twice about the families that they were going to lay off and how things were going to be affecting that community? And if they did, I will be willing to bet you that their accountants and their consultants sat down and showed them the bottom line, and made them feel so much better with the eight or nine figure payout that they were going to get to do this. You should not be going back to your corporation and saying, well, I got to sacrifice because then they’re going to notice. They won’t.

[00:19:43] If your team is understaffed, it wasn’t your decision. And I say frequently that you have to know the rules. The game— you’re playing a game. The game has rules and it behooves you to understand those rules and play well. So understand this: you can show up to your job every single day and add a ton of value into the system. You can take pride in your work. You can look at it and say, I’m the best there is. And your job will still lay you off the second it’s in their best interest. Without a second thought. If you were hit by a car, they’d have your desk cleaned out by the end of the day, and your job posted by the end of the afternoon. Understand that part of the rules of the game that we’re playing right now is that they’re extracting from you. And we don’t have to like that, but it’s still true.

[00:20:26] And if that’s the big system— and that sounds kind of bleak, let’s talk about the personal one. Because the personal one is where you have so much more control over what’s going on. And in that personal system that you create, one of the first things you can do is to ask yourself, what is my financial vision? What am I building here? What am I— why do I do the things that I do? What’s in it for the greater picture of my life? And then you sit down, and you look at your ins and your outs, you look at all the money coming in, all the money going out, you create a budget. And you understand that if that budget is done right, it’s a statement of your values.

[00:21:02] My wife and I were still learning how to do this process, we were still trying to figure this out. That budget, I looked at it, I was— we spend more money on education for our girls than any other line item. We were paying more in daycare for rents. And she looked at me and she said, well, that sounds about right. Because our girls are worth it. And yes, they are. So I don’t feel bad about doing that. And I didn’t complain about the daycare costs that I had because I made that choice. Because it was a statement of my values, and providing for my kids was something in my values.

[00:21:38] I also had to understand that my spending was a reflection of my priorities. The money that went out the door was a vote for that thing every single time. And I looked at it and I said, well, we’re buying at the cheapest groceries possible. Do we not care about the food that we’re putting into our bodies? Or do we not care about the food culture we’re creating for our kids? Do we want our kids to believe that food comes out of a bag? Or not? And understanding that there’s sacrifices there. So if our priorities are to raise our kids, to have a good relationship with food, then we have to have a good relationship with food, and our spending has to reflect that.

[00:22:14] But ladies and gentlemen, there’s a lot of focus on the spending as a reflection of values and priorities, and it is. But your income is as well. What you do for a living and how you are working to increase your income is also a reflection of your priorities. And of the two, cutting expenses or increasing income, increasing income is the easier of the two and the one that will have the bigger impact on your life. When I was teaching, I went back and I said, there’s just no way I’m ever going to make it as a teacher.

[00:22:46] Well, I don’t have a spending problem. I’m already cut everything to the bone. I have an income problem. I’m not making enough money. And if my priorities are to provide for my wife and my kids, if my priorities are to be able to provide them with a life that is full of opportunity, then I got to change what I’m doing to make money. And that’s what led me going back to graduate school, getting my CPA, becoming an auditor, and eventually working my way to where I am today. In five years, I increased my income by $97,000. That was a priority, and my income reflected that priority. Where I was putting my effort, where I was putting my attention, what I was focused on, what I was building.

[00:23:25] Because at the end of the day, I wanted to have a house with a yard where my kids could play with a ball while I grilled steaks and my wife walked up to me and said, honey, I love what we built. I bought that house on March 1st, 2020. And I’m sitting in this— in that house right now recording this podcast.

[00:23:41] Your spending is a reflection of your priorities, but your income is too. And if you’re working in a job that’s extracting from you, but you don’t like going in there, and they guilt trip you into putting in extra hours that they’re not paying you extra for, then you are prioritizing them, allowing them to extract from you at the expense of yourself and your family.

[00:24:01] And my question to you, my brother and sister in finance, is how much longer are you going to let that go on before you start asking some serious questions until you prioritize yourself and your family’s opportunities?

[00:24:16] In your personal system, understand that savings is stored energy. It’s stored time. No matter what we’re doing, we’re exchanging time for money. And I can go on a rant about how passive income is no different, but understand that for every dollar saved is stored potential. When I show you a $100 bill, it’s not a $100 bill. It could be all sorts of things. It could be groceries. It could be a meal out. It could be a pair of shoes. It could be apps on your cell phone. It could be yarn for your kittens. I don’t know.

[00:24:49] Because it’s endless. Because it’s stored energy. It’s potential. And that potential can be used to your benefit. All of this comes together, ladies and gentlemen, because I want to be able to offer you a case in which it makes sense to create an ethical financial system for yourself. Now, as I said, the big ass system, the overarching economy that we work in, we don’t have direct control over. Although I wish we did. And we should all be having the conversation here during election year as to what we can do to make this system more ethical.

[00:25:24] But on your personal level, you can start today. You can start looking at my creating a system in which it is a free exchange. It’s not coercive. Are we all adding value into the system? And is my system creating win-wins? And when you do that, it’s not easy, it’s just worth it. Because when you do that, the benefits of having an ethical financial approach is that your decisions become easier.

[00:25:45] Is this the thing that serves me? Am I trying to be sneaky? Because if I’m trying to be sneaky, I’m not going to do it. If I wouldn’t want to explain in simple terms to my kids how I made this money, I don’t want to make the money. If I look at it and go, yeah, I know I can get this person to sign on the dotted line. And they’re going to enter the sales contract that’s really good for me, but now I know it’s not great for them. And I say, you know what? I’m not doing that. Your decisions become easy. They become so much more clear because you know what to do. I’m going to follow the ethical way. If this isn’t win-win, I’m not interested.

[00:26:18] And because your decisions are easier, your boundaries suddenly become clear. And I’ve seen this even just with food I’m not eating that. Why not? Because it’s not within what I’m doing — I’m not going to win if I eat that burger from McDonald’s. I’m not going to win if I continue to get everything out of a bag.

[00:26:39] My boundaries become clear. I’m not going to spend money on that fried chicken sandwich because I don’t go to fast food anymore. My spending is a reflection of my priorities. My priorities are to make myself healthier. So therefore, I spend my money in these other ways. And when your decisions are easier, and your boundaries are clearer, it turns out that lowers the stress on the humans in the system, and the humans suddenly become healthier.

[00:27:06] At the end of the day, ladies and gentlemen, that’s what we want, to be happy, healthy, and wise. We want to be able to interact with this world in a way that is a win-win for us, that we can really just enjoy the nectar of life. And the people around us are enriched by our presence. And I would argue that that starts with getting your financial house in order in an ethical way.

[00:27:32] To start looking at your budget to state some of the values, your spending and income as a reflection of your priorities, your savings and stored energy to make your decisions easier, your boundaries clearer, and the humans healthier. And I know exactly how that feels.

[00:27:47] Because while I was reinventing my life, I got to a point where it’s three o’clock in the morning, and I’m sitting there eating my lunch at my client’s site and it’s the third night in a row I’ve done that. Tired, miss my wife, my kids. But I can’t leave because we’re so short staffed. And I called my friend and he said to me, Dylan, where is your loyalty to your family? You have all this loyalty to a billion dollar company that doesn’t even know your name. They chose to keep you so understaffed, not you. You bear no responsibility to that company or the people you leave behind.

[00:28:27] And so I did, three weeks later. I left. And I was happier for it. I slept better. I’m suddenly working less than 100 hours. I was only working 40. It was great. It’s making more money. Had a boss I really enjoyed and trusted, somebody that I felt had my back. Every aspect of my life got better. Because I looked at it and said, I’m no longer going to be extracted from.

[00:28:49] Ladies and gentlemen, I want to create a world where we’re no longer extracting from each other or from the system, and the system is not extracting from us, but instead, we’re focused on how we create value.

[00:29:00] Outro: 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.