Money on the Mind: Gus Kristoferson's Vision for Empowering Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners

Josh: Welcome to The Wealth and Yourself Podcast, where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. I’m your host, Josh St. Laurent. 

Today we’re joined by Gus Kristoferson, founder of Money on the Mind, LLC. Gus is a Certified Financial Planner as well as a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Gus is a financial planner and owner of Money on the Mind, a financial planning firm devoted to helping psychiatric nurse practitioners take charge of their finances so they can build the life they want. Gus, so glad you’re here.

Gus: Thanks, Josh. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Josh: Definitely. Yeah. I’ve been looking forward to this. Let’s kick it off. For anyone listening who isn’t familiar with you and what you do, can you tell us a little bit about your work and Money on the Mind?

Gus: Sure. I’ll take you back a little ways in terms of my own money story back all the way to 2008, if you don’t mind. My wife and I were getting ready to get married and she seemed super on top of her finances and in preparation for joining forces in terms of our money, she handed me “Personal Finance for Dummies.”

And I read that thing cover to cover and I was hooked. I decided this was awesome. I’d love to make a career out of personal finance and helping other people. Put these strategies into use for themselves to gain peace of mind around their money and set themselves on a path towards whatever sort of goals they want to achieve with their money.

That said, I had a liberal arts degree and a few years of working at a bakery, and so I didn’t exactly have the experience or the education that would naturally point me towards personal finance or financial planning. So I decided to go back and get my degree at Seattle U in Finance.

And so that’s what I did for the next couple of years, and then went to work in investment management for the next 10 years after graduating. And during that time my wife was called into Nursing. She decided that was what she wanted to do with her career, and so she went back to school and became a psychiatric nurse practitioner Just interacting with her classmates while she was in school and then her colleagues after coming out. I was always impressed by the drive and the determination and the devotion to their vocation and decided that as I was getting ready to launch Money on the Mind and come back to this kind of personal finance interest of mine and away from more institutional investment management. I decided that those psychiatric nurse practitioners were who I wanted to help in my firm.

Josh: Yeah. That’s really cool. I’m glad you went there and you kind of took us through the history of it. Can you tell us about the psychiatric nurse practitioner focus of your practice? I think that’s really cool.

I’m sure they have very specific needs unique to that profession. Can you talk to that and some of the challenges that they face?

Gus: If you’re not familiar with nurse practitioners, they are similar to physicians in that they are able to prescribe and in many states they’re able to work independently without oversight. But they have a different focus or a different kind of way of coming at things instead of having a medical background, they have a nursing background and so they are very like people first meeting clients and patients where they are taking the whole person into account and designing a plan of action that will get to the root of what’s going on in their lives that may be why they’re seeking out help.

So psychiatric nurse practitioners specifically deal with mental health issues, as you might imagine from the name. In Washington State, for example, it’s fairly straightforward to go out and hang a shingle as a psychiatric nurse practitioner. Nurse practitioners have full practice authority in Washington state, and so they can practice independent of a physician.They don’t need that type of oversight. 

And so they’re able to prescribe within their area of specialty. So psychiatric medications and medications that are kind of in that realm. And so those psych NPs have some issues that are pretty specific to them. They have to focus on potentially starting a business and all of the things that go along with small business ownership: 

Setting up business accounts, starting to think about taxation, thinking about how to obtain all the right insurance you need, both for your business and  health insurance, all those things that normally an employer would take care of, but as your own employer, that falls to you. Retirement planning and setting up a retirement plan for yourself so that you can save for your future. All of those things. 

And then, becoming a psych NP or any type of nurse practitioner requires an advanced degree. Oftentimes there is a substantial amount of student debt coming out of school. And so there are those wrinkles as well to look into what the best strategy is for tackling student loans.

Josh: Wow. I’m learning a lot already. Okay. So I didn’t realize that. So it’s not like a psychiatric nurse practitioner is necessarily an employee of a hospital per se. A lot of them are business owners and have all those additional challenges that come along with that. 

Can you talk a little bit about your background? I think that that’s fascinating too. I mean, you went back, you got a degree in finance, you’re a CFP, you’re a CFA. I know you’re part of the True Wealth process as well. Can you talk to how all of this education and training, how does that kind of culminate to step in and help nurse practitioners do a lot of the things that you talked about?

Gus: Yeah, so I’d say my initial interest was definitely in financial planning and personal finance. But when I was entering the profession, I did not have the confidence to go out and drum up business, talk to people, put myself out there and kind of on the line for all the recommendations I’m making and trying to get folks in the door to try and prove my value.

So I went the more investment management route. So that led me through Wells Fargo Private Bank and then to Parametric, which is a local investment manager here in Seattle. And along the way I got the chartered financial analyst designation, which is really aimed towards investments, part of personal finance.

That was my focus for a long time, the investments part, until I kind of got my feet under me in the profession and felt more confident in putting myself out there to other folks as a resource. But it took me a long time, I guess 10 years in investment management to feel like I was ready to take the leap.

So as I was thinking about doing that, I went through the Certified Financial Planner coursework and did all the examinations and the fortunately my investment management background counted as the experience portion of that. It was fairly straightforward to get the designation. Lots of education and the exam portion certainly, but I was kind of accustomed to doing that stuff through school.

Getting my Master’s, getting the CFA charter and then doing the CFP seemed like kind of more of the same, I guess. Coming out of that training, I felt like I was really well equipped to do the technical aspects of financial planning, putting together cash flow projections, together with a good asset allocation thinking about insurance and estate planning and taxation, all the elements of a comprehensive financial plan. 

But I wasn’t really, I didn’t feel like I had a good framework for actually doing financial planning and walking someone through that process and actually getting all of the inputs that you would need to create a good financial plan, because I’ve never done it before.

Aside from for myself. So I wanted to have a good process of getting to know my prospects and then showing the value that I could bring if they wanted to come on as a client of mine, and then getting to know them. At a deep level so that the plan can really reflect their vision of an ideal future.

So that’s where I sought out money quotient and the True Wealth planning process and went through the training with the folks over there to try to build myself a really strong financial planning discovery process and get to know my clients really well so that the plan is not just like, retire at 65 and do all the things that we’re kind of told to do, but may not actually fit what a person wants to do.

I feel like if you don’t take the time to go through a process of introspection, you get a generic financial plan. And I didn’t want to give my clients a generic financial plan. I don’t have a generic financial plan. My financial plan was all geared towards getting me to this point of being a financial planner and doing the work that I thought I would love to do.

And so I’d like to do that same sort of process for my own clients and get them, help them through a process of self-discovery and give them space to do that work and decide what they actually want to do, not what we’ve been told to do. I’m not sure if I actually answered your question.

Josh: Oh, that’s perfect. I’m like emphatically nodding over here, you know? I was very similar, that values based planning. I think you touched upon it a couple times. My financial plan—there was nothing cookie cutter about it, like my goal was to do this thing that I love.

And I think that’s a huge part of the true wealth process. Like helping people kind of discover those values or purpose in their life, you know, and for some people it can be a huge shift. So I love that you went down that path. I mean, you got kind of the technical aspects, right?

Between the CFP, CFA, Masters and then you’re over here with the values based planning human side, if you will. So I think that just creates sort of this great, well-rounded approach. I wanted to ask you about maybe like a success story. Or even if you want to weave in maybe some common things that you see from nurse practitioners who come to you.

Are there common things that you say, “Hey, these are the big three things that we have to tackle right away,” or any success stories that you can share from clients that you’ve met with?

Gus: I’d say a lot of folks come in kind of with something that they want to tackle right away. Most folks don’t wake up in the morning and think, gee, I really want to talk to a financial planner today and make a comprehensive financial plan and lay my money bare for a total stranger. And so here definitely are usually some pain points that are in place that are making someone seek out a financial planner.

And I’d say for those psych NPs who are in private practice or thinking about private practice kind of the cash flow and tax questions are kind of top of mind, just making sure that the business is supporting their lifestyle and that they can take as much as they need from the business to actually support what they want to do outside of work.

And then making sure that they are being smart on the tax front. If they have goals to set aside a certain amount of money, doing that in the most tax efficient way. Just setting all of that whole infrastructure up to be tax efficient and take advantage of the tax code because it’s written to incentivize certain behaviors.

And if those behaviors are what you want to do anyway, then you might as well take the tax incentive and go that route.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, no surprise there. I heard about taxes a few times. You know, you’re working with business owners. It is top of mind for most? Can you think of a scenario? Have you met with anyone who is just in a, you know, I’ll call it a predicament tax wise and you were able to put in place a few things, a few changes, let’s say in their practice that put them in a much better spot in that tax year.

Gus: I wouldn’t say I’ve had someone come in with a huge tax problem. I’d say, most folks just don’t know what they don’t know. There are definitely tax strategies that we have put in place that can make a big difference in terms of the ability to save for tomorrow while getting a tax break today.

So clients are really interested in a solo 401k set up because that allows them to defer taxes today while their income may be higher. Set aside some money for retirement and then potentially draw out of the solo 401K when their tax situation is more favorable. So I’d say that the solo 401k is a big thing folks are interested in because it just allows for so much more tax deferral relative to what you can get with many other retirement accounts or retirement plans.

Josh: Yeah, it’s so true. It’s like 10x what you can put in an IRA. A lot of people don’t even realize this. The solo 401K is a huge, powerful tool. I love that you brought that up. Let’s say I’m a nurse practitioner and I’m listening right now, and I’m saying, “Hey, this sounds great. I don’t understand my tax situation and maybe I need to go set up an appointment with Gus.”

What could they expect meeting with you? What does that process look like, for maybe the first meeting all the way through to, “hey, we’re in a much better position.”

Gus: Yeah. If someone would like an ongoing relationship with a thinking partner who’s able to help them to think about their taxes, and also think about how taxes fit into the broader scheme of their personal finances and their vision for what they want their life to look like over the long term, then our process starts with a get to know you call.

Then I can explain my process and see if my services will be a good value for them. And also whether the problems that they face are things that are in my wheelhouse because I want to be able to help the right kind of clients. And I want to be able to point folks to another practitioner who may be able to help them better if I’m not in a position to work with them as well as someone else.

So start with that call, get a sense of you know, what is going on with them, how I might be able to help them. And from there we go into the discovery process. So we use tools to get to know one another. Short surveys and things like that to get people thinking about the past money experiences that they’ve had and how those inform their money behaviors today. And then start thinking about going from that Point A to where they want to be in the future. So go through a deep visioning exercise of: 

What does an ideal future look like? What does your family life look like? What does your work, life look like? What does your recreation look like? Where do you want to live? 

All those aspects of life that have a money aspect, but don’t necessarily seem like what you would talk to a financial planner about. And all the while we’re also gathering all the financial data and all that good stuff so that we can do the quantitative aspects of financial planning to support the lifestyle that they envision for themselves.

So that process spans over several meetings after the intro call I’d say usually five meetings is how long it takes to go through the initial discovery and financial planning process. And once that wraps up, we go into implementation and a slower cadence of meetings. Those first meetings are usually over two to three months so that we can start chipping away at the pain points as soon as possible.

And then the meeting cadence slows way down to once every three to six months, depending on the complexity of the case and the number of action items we have coming out of that discovery process. So that’s what what the whole process kind of looks like. And I’m there pushing for folks to. Actually take action on the things that will move them forward towards the goals that they’ve set out in our discovery process.

Josh: Yeah, that’s great. So just kind of a recap for people listening: intro meeting: Am I the best fit? Am I the best person to help you? Tell me about what’s going on? Then a get to know you meeting and then from there it’s really mapping out their vision all the while doing the financial planning behind the scenes, but really trying to understand like, where do you want to get to? What’s your ideal life? Typically takes about five meetings. 

I think that’s great. I can’t tell you how many traditional financial planners, you know, I’ve asked the same question and it’s, dive right into statements and social security and all these things without even bothering to ask, you know, well, what do you want?

What is this ideal life that we’re moving towards? So I’m glad that you went there. I do wanna transition a little bit. So we’ve been talking a lot about Money on the Mind and your practice. I wanted to ask more about you and your journey as a business owner.

Typically like two different types of people listening here. It’s the people who want to build wealth or the people who are business owners, real estate investors. So I wanted to ask a little bit about like, what has that journey been like building your business? Obviously there’s an extra layer of complexity in our field with all the licensing and things.

So maybe you can walk us through that journey of, deciding to start the business, actually putting pen to paper and doing it. Like what has that been like, launching the business? You know, some of the hurdles along the way.

Gus: Yeah. I’d say I did a lot of my wealth building while I was still an employee. And so that put me in a really strong position to launch a business like Money on the Mind. A lot of financial planning businesses take several years to get off the ground and replace like a revenue or an income that you may have had prior to leaving your previous job.

And so I knew going into this that I had a solid runway of cash in the bank and investments that I could rely upon to make this transition. And I also have my spouse who’s continuing to work as a psychiatric nurse practitioner. So our household finances were really solid going into this decision.

I’m an avid podcast listener, so I’m happy to be on the guest side of things here. But a podcast was really what spurred me into making the leap from kind of a cushy corporate job into something that would be more aligned with my long-term vision of success. So I was listening to the Radical Personal Finance podcast on Fridays. The host has call-in episodes, kind of like talk radio, and one of the folks who called in I guess kind of a similar financial situation to what I was in prior to leaving my job. She had built up some substantial savings and wasn’t sure what to do next. And the host encouraged her to think quite a bit about what she wanted to do next because she kind of had retirement dialed in if she wanted to not save really any more going forward. And so she was at this inflection point where she could continue saving more, but without any real purpose. Or she could start doing some real self-reflection and figuring out what it was that she wanted to do. That really resonated with me. And so I kind of started that process.

I’ve been thinking about what I would want to do as a next step and had been thinking that I wanted to go back to what had brought me into finance in the first place, which was personal finance. but I also wanted to have a lot of flexibility and availability for my family. I have two young daughters. They’re six and three, and I read some sobering statistics about how much time you spend with your kids by the time they leave the house, I think you’ve spent like 95% of the time you’re going to spend with your kids, you’ve already spent with them. And so I really wanted to focus on being present for my family while also pursuing financial planning as a profession going forward.

So those two things kind of led me down the road of entrepreneurship because I had serious doubts about my ability to get as much flexibility as I wanted to in my work if I was an employee. I just didn’t think that that would be, kind of in keeping with the expectations of most workplaces. I started exploring the idea of entrepreneurship and opening a financial planning practice of my own.

I thought it would be challenging, but I didn’t think it would be as challenging as it has proven to be. Getting registered as an investment advisor in Washington State is pretty well known to be difficult in the industry and among compliance consultants. But I didn’t think it would be as hard as it wound up being.

It took I think about seven months to get registered. As an investment advisor who wanted to charge on some basis other than either straight up hourly or straight up assets under management. And so there were a lot of hurdles to getting registered and then since I’ve been registered there, I’ve come to appreciate how hard it actually is to connect with prospective clients. And so I’ve taken the approach of getting on social media quite a bit and trying to break into the community there of psychiatric nurse practitioners and nurse entrepreneurs. To just learn what’s going on, connect with folks in that community, and share a little bit of value as I can with my own posts.

And so that’s been the approach I’ve taken. But so far it’s yet to bear fruit, so I’m gonna continue plugging away. And now I’m in that kind of couple year period where these types of businesses just kind of grind along and can be a little bit demoralizing, but that’s just what compounding looks like at the beginning. It’s very slow going.

Josh: Totally, man, there’s a lot to unpack there. I love your story, first of all. That was really impactful and I think a lot of people can probably relate in this Post-COVID environment. I know I was right there with you too. I was in a corporate job, you know, wasn’t happy, saved up a pile of money, trying to figure out what was my next step.

And then you mentioned freedom of time. I’ve been hearing that more and more just with people that I’ve been talking to as well. You know, it’s the, the story is kind of, you know, yes, I want to maximize my money, but really the reason I wanna do this is I wanna spend more time with my kids. Or, you know, I have this dream lifestyle that seems unreachable. Can you help me get there? You know, I’ve been hearing more and more of that with younger folks. And I can absolutely resonate. You know, I went through a similar process. It is definitely a grind. 

I wanted to ask you about if there was a financial decision you made that helped make you successful. Maybe that was the stockpiling of cash, you know, back when you had a job. But you tell me, you know, was there a financial decision that you look back to that was like, man, good thing I did that.

Gus: Yeah. Another inflection point in our lives was when my wife came out of nurse practitioner school, so that was in 2018. And that was also when we learned about the financial independence community. So right as she came out of school and was about to start working and our income was about to jump substantially is when we learned about the financial independence community.

And prior to that saving more, investing more—it didn’t have anything that tugged at my heartstrings or like, there was nothing really motivating behind that. I always just thought that if I saved more, it would just be like a cushier retirement at, you know, whatever traditional retirement age.

And I didn’t really feel a strong connection with my 65 year old self. That didn’t really motivate me, but the FIRE movement, financial independence, when I learned that instead of stockpiling more and more money for my 65 year old self who was basically a stranger to me, I could stockpile more money and make investments for someone who is much closer to me.

And so that’s what we did. We took a large portion of my wife’s salary and started just piling it into our investment accounts. And we didn’t have a real plan for what our lifestyle would look like after we retired, but it at least was something that felt much closer to us than that 65 year old ever felt. 

So that was kind of the inflection point that I’d say, was really an important decision that we made to forego, you know, bumping up our lifestyle in 2018 and instead start saving aggressively towards financial independence, whatever that would wind up looking like. That also gave us the war chest for me when the time was right and I kind of got that little bug in my ear about returning to what I really wanted to do when I set out in finance. Then we were kind of ready from a financial standpoint to actually consider that.

Josh: Hmm. Yeah. You know what’s really cool about that is I think it’s completely reasonable to think, you know, maybe someone listening, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, may be in that same boat. Who says, well, geez, I’ve been thinking about this financial independence movement. You know, I’m making you know better money than I have in the past.

Gus and his wife have already gone down this path over the last 10 years. You know, they can kind of speed that journey up for me. I think what I really appreciate that about you and your practice is that you are working with a scenario you’re intimately familiar with you and your wife have been kind of living this psychiatric nurse practitioner, you know I don’t wanna say battle, but you’ve been dealing with the, the struggles of the business owner, the taxes, making all of these decisions.

And now you’re in a spot where you can help others along and kind of make that process easier for them. I kind of chose my niche in a similar way. You know, I’m a real estate investor, I’m a business owner. Those are the people I wanted to help. I always kind of scratch my head when, you know, I talk to someone who’s maybe 27 and they’re a retirement specialist.

You know, it’s like, well, how can you possibly put yourself in their shoes? So I think I really appreciate that about what you do. So I asked about the kind of good financial decision. 

I gotta ask about if there is a big financial mistake, that you look back and you say, that financial decision was not good. If I could go back and maybe do that differently, that would’ve put me in a better spot. Was there a big mistake that you learned from?

Gus: Yeah, I’d say when I went to college as an 18 year old, I had a very vague idea of what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be when I grew up. And so I just started and went to school and kind of drifted through that experience because that was kind of what was expected of me as a middle class person is like, you just go to college.

And back when I did that in the early two-thousands, parents—I don’t know if every parent said this—but my parents were of the mind that you just go and get a degree and then you come out and figure it out. Obviously they encouraged me to find something that I was interested in and pursue that ‘cause otherwise what else are you gonna do in college?

But I was not introspective before I went to college. I just went. Because that was what was expected of me, and that was definitely a big… I wouldn’t say it was a mistake because it opened a lot of doors for me, but if I had done it differently, it would’ve led to a much better outcome. Maybe I would’ve been interested in doing finance back when I went through the first time, and I could have made connections and started down this path, whatever, 15 years earlier. Instead of waiting as long as I did and getting my feet under me financially I could have come out when I was young and didn’t have any real financial responsibilities and just started right away building towards what eventually I realized that I wanted.

But I’d say that going to college without a firm plan for what I was trying to achieve out of that experience was a big mistake. Obviously a lot of good things came out of it, the way that I went about it was not ideal.

Josh: Sure. I’m sure a lot of people can relate to that. I know I can. You know, just being more intentional younger in life can make such a difference, especially when we talk about things like investing that extra 10 years of investing, you know, we’ve seen the charts, it just makes all the difference in the world to have that extra time.

There’s three questions that we ask every guest. The first one you already touched upon a little bit, but I’m gonna ask it in a slightly different way. So, what does living a wealthy life look like for you?

Gus: It looks like spending my time intentionally. That means designing my week to fit with how I want my life to look. So being able to drop my daughters at school and then and then come to work, come back home to work for a fairly short day and then going to pick my daughters up again. At the end of the day, being present for my wife and my girls is definitely, like the biggest part.

And then building a business that just supports that lifestyle family is first and foremost and building a business that supports that.

Josh: Definitely. If you only had a thousand dollars and were starting over. What would be the first thing you would do with that money?

Gus: I definitely invested in myself. I’d find a course in something that was interesting to me or else something that’s kind of more general that could apply to anyone like a marketing course, a sales course whether you’re a salesperson on your business card or not, everyone at some point has to sell themselves.

I think I take that thousand dollars and invest it in myself somehow. Probably through some sort of course or coaching, Just to get started I’m assuming if you have just a thousand dollars to your name, you probably have a lot of time to think about building what you want. So I’d take that thousand dollars, buy a ton of books, some courses, and get rolling.

Josh: Can never go wrong with books or personal development, that’s for sure. If you could give one message to someone working to gain financial freedom, who isn’t there yet, what would it be?

Gus: Take the time to think about what financial freedom looks like and what you want. To gain through having financial freedom. If you’ve already done that work and you’re kind of already set in that path I’d say just keep going. Find like-minded individuals who are going to help you. Stay on the path and not get distracted by the shiny objects on Instagram or wherever else you may spend some free time. Do those things. I’d say if you haven’t already figured out why you’re doing this path to financial independence, and if you’ve already done that, then find a community of like-minded people who will help you along the way.

Josh: Nailed it. Figure out your why. Figure out, what does financial freedom look like to you? And then surround yourself with good people who are gonna support you to get there. Couldn’t have said it better. Where can listeners find you online, Gus?

Gus: You can find me on LinkedIn, on Instagram. My website is MoneyOnTheMindFP.com. And. I’m always happy to chat with folks about what they’ve got going on. I’m a really big cheerleader for people designing a lifestyle that sounds great to them. And so I’m always happy to hear from people and provide my feedback, my encouragement, and just be a cheerleader for folks taking charge and doing what they want with their lives.

Josh: Awesome. We will put all of the applicable links in the show notes, so it’s easy to find Gus and you can connect with them there. This has been The Wealth and Yourself Podcast where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. Our guest today was Gus Kristoferson, founder of Money on the Mind.

We’ll see you next week, and thanks for listening.