Generational Knowledge And The Foundation of Wealth With Dr. Joaquin Wallace

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 Dr. Joaquin Wallace. Dr. Wallace has over 20 years of experience in education, advocacy, and financial services.

He’s passionate about empowering individuals, families, and communities to achieve their goals and break out of the cycle of poverty. He is an adjunct professor at Golden Gate University, teaching public policy analysis, leadership, and coaching courses. He is also a voiceover artist, a speaker, an author, and an investment advisor representative.

Dr. Wallace, so glad you’re here. 

Dr. Wallace: Appreciate it. Thank you for having me as well. Looking forward to it.

Josh: Likewise. So, let’s just kick it off with, for anyone listening who isn’t familiar with you, can you tell us about you and your work, including background in non profit work?

Dr. Wallace: Yeah. Born and raised in Oakland, California. Graduated from Oakland Tech in 1983. That was many moons ago. You can tell by the gray. Fifty eight years of age this year. Actually, 9-11 is my birthday. So that’s a day that no one would ever forget that day, right? And my birthday. I have a Bachelor’s in Economics.

I have a Master’s in Marketing. A Doctorate in Public Policy at Golden Gate University. an athlete coming out of high school went to Cal State Fullerton, finished off at San Francisco State University as a baseball player. 1987, I was the first African American ever to work in the San Francisco Giants front office, which was an extraordinary event.

Had a lot of stories with that as well. From there I got into coaching high school basketball in 2002 2003. Became the head coach of the San Francisco State Women’s Program in 2005-2014. And then I decided I wanted to get into broadcasting, so I do a lot of broadcasting as well.

Sometime you may see me on the State Warriors, Santa Cruz Warriors Network. I do a lot of their stuff as well as a color analyst. I work for Stanford on the WCC as well. But during that time you know, I had a nonprofit organization, which was pretty much kind of how I started everything in 1997 to 2003.

It was a welfare to work program. It was generated from the personal responsibility of work act president Bill Clinton at that time. And it was geared around taking individuals from Subsidy and providing them opportunity to gain full employment. And the difference between our program was a 12 week program, which focused on interpersonal skills and hard skills.

Hard skills were the completed applications and the interpersonal skills with the soft skills of the 12 week program. We had a contract with the Alameda County social services. we started off with 100, 000 in 1997, 1998. when the program was stopped, when we cut the program off, if you will, because of the change of government, if you will We amassed up to 3 million in terms of government funding.

We put a lot of individuals to work. Who was able to impact the tax rate in California as well. Well, Oakland, California, Alameda County, which was a positive. Won tons of awards from that as well. from there… I was in 2003, got into coaching and then that was the end of that. Right?

And so that was the end of us. Okay. No more nonprofit work. and then what happened, it was like the mafia, they bring you back in. Right? So after I started coaching in 2014, had an opportunity to work for a company called Operation Hope. Which I do now as a nonprofit organization. I do like a financial well being coach for that organization itself, but also I’m an advisor for Prudential and I started that journey in 2014 and which is great because I’ve been there actually 2017 is great.

I’ve been there. six years now. in the industry since 2014 and that’s pretty much fuel my passion for financial planning and providing services for those who are. Not heard, if you will, the black and brown communities itself, but overall, you know, my client base, if you will, my portfolio of clients is not just african americans.

It’s a wide base of clients. So what I’ve learned during this process is that there’s a lot of individuals who are out there who. Has financial anxiety, if you will. I’m looking. I mean, you’re in the business. You’re a CFP. So you know exactly what I’m talking about. And they’re not planning. And you know, as John wouldn’t say, you know, failure to plan is planning to fail.

And so what I’ve learned during that time is that there was a lot of education that’s needed. And so this platform I’m pretty much on now, which is basically saying reimagining financial literacy through education and purpose. And what I mean by that, an opportunity to look at financial literacy itself because financial literacy is a linear process.

And I firmly believe, as you know, as a CFP, it’s more of a holistic circular model, if you will. And so I’ve been really focused on teaching that getting that information out there and trying to provide a pathway with the model that I created kind of showcases that.

Josh: The reach and the impact that you had is incredible and I’m impressed by all the different hats that you’ve kind of worn along the way. I did want to dive into your most recent blog post. I understand you’re writing a second book, you know, about that topic. Can you tell us about Generational Wealth Begins With Generational Knowledge and what that means to you?

Dr. Wallace: Yeah, but so basically you hear a lot oftentimes the buzzwords you hear nowadays is financial literacy and generational wealth. And I firmly believe that you can’t achieve. Generational wealth, but I having generational knowledge and that generational knowledge goes back from, in my opinion, from the beginning in your internal and external ecosystem, which is my model that we’re going to speak about later on, but for the most part, there’s a lot of individuals that speaking about generational wealth.

However, without having generational knowledge, it’s virtually impossible to get generational wealth and generational knowledge can be as easy as a state planning, which is important. Thank you. numbers are astronomical. How many people don’t have an estate plan? Insurance is important, right? Long term care is important. All of the things you need to have in terms of achieving generational wealth we don’t have. And so oftentimes we’ve seen, we’ve heard about, you know, celebrities, if you will, the celebrities we hear about because that’s on front street, but we know a lot of individuals who aren’t celebrities go through the same thing. Prince Aretha Franklin chatted with Bozeman, all of these individuals passed away, but they didn’t have their estate plan in place.

Therefore, they weren’t able to transfer their generational wealth, which is creating your financial footprint. So my stance is, is that yes, we can get to generational wealth. But we have to have generational knowledge, which begins. In the beginning, which I feel is stage one, which is my internal and external ecosystem, which we’re going to talk about.

Josh: Yeah. It’s so true. And it’s a topic that a lot of people shy away from. I mean, I can tell from my work as a CFP, a lot of people don’t want to talk about the will or the trust or the long term care. It’s sort of a taboo topic. So I’m glad that we’re talking about it. You mentioned in the blog post that you wrote the power of early experiences and the impact that has on financial literacy and financial beliefs.

Can you speak to that and why it’s so important?

Dr. Wallace: Yeah. So in stage one of our model, which is basically say the, your, internal and external ecosystem is so important. my internal ecosystem, I labeled as walls in, that’s all the information that you achieve and attain while you’re in the home from your parents, for those who are responsible for your welfare.

Then you have. Externally, that’s what you see outside. And if you combine both of those two under the umbrella of Maslow’s five hierarchy of needs. Which is extremely important because you have your innate needs, which we all need to achieve, but the top need is your self actualization, but then you have safety, social self esteem and self actualization.

And so from that perspective alone, culturally, if you’re not able to achieve your innate needs, that’s going to cause some serious internal strife, if you will, a lot of concerns, though, so to speak. And so it’s important, but one thing that you mentioned is the fact that speaking about finances is taboo in the homes. It’s like something that no one talks about. We kind of skirt over it if you will. And so what happens is as you get older, you’re not prepared or familiar to even talk about those topics itself. And you find within the model that we’re gonna speak about is that it doesn’t matter where you’re at in terms of your age or your current situation.

You’re on one of those stages in the model. And the first important stage is your internal and external ecosystem. So if there is no conversation, To me, it’s virtually impossible to get to generational wealth to some degree, because some people can get there and I had a conversation and spoke with the group last week. Tons of millionaires was the San Francisco economic round table. We talked about the model itself and had individuals that were 85 years of age. And she said, you know what? I’m still on stage one. Now she has achieved. financially a lot, but she still harbors a lot of the non communication and some of the trauma anxiety that happened in stage one of the model itself.

Josh: Yeah, that’s crazy to think about and I’m thinking of my own experience going through the financial therapy curriculum. I had to do a lot of this self work from my own past and I made the mistake of thinking, well, since it was never talked about, I don’t have this trauma, but that was sort of a trauma in itself.

I didn’t interact with money until I got a job. You know, as a child, it was so hidden and sheltered and that in itself, the lack of communication can lead to other issues. Can you talk about the influence those internal and external ecosystems have? What kind of impacts do they have? What do you commonly see happening, you know, inside the home as well as outside?

Dr. Wallace: Yeah, oftentimes inside the home again, that lack of communication. Right? And so think of it this way, your first fiduciaries, if you will, is your parents, right? there’s no communication from a childhood, you may see them working hard. You may see you may struggle. You may see your parents working two or three jobs.

what you also see, too, is within a situation where there is Financial stress in the home, you see parents arguing and that impacts your kid’s childhood as well, too, because you’re watching that as a child growing up. Right? And so when you’re watching that as a child, you’re going to have stress in regards to that.

And then if you look at the externally, we have been told what success is. Right. So we walk out our doors. That’s what we see as success, whether it’s the Jordans, whether it’s having expensive clothes, materialistic objects and things of that nature. That’s what society is saying to us. That’s successful, right?

 when you’re in the house, you have walls in. You have with this thing, what I call learned helplessness, learn hopelessness, right? You come in a situation where you have that scenario, then you walk outside, then you have the social economics that you have to deal with in terms of neighborhoods and things of that nature.

If you go back to Maslow’s five hierarchy needs again, innate needs are important. Safety is important. Social is extremely important. Self self actualization. So when you walk outside, that’s what you see. So if you’re in an environment where your safety is, challenged, oftentimes if your innate needs are not being met, and then you’re in an environment socially where that’s what you see in terms of being successful, and then you move to self esteem, you’re aspiring to get to a point where you view as success.

However, we know that isn’t the route to success. But what we’ve learned is the fact of the matter is, that’s what we see. And that’s what we, We deem as successful and it starts inside in terms of your internal ecosystem walls in.

Josh: Yes, I love that. And I remember in your blog post, you had written about some of the monikers that are so common, like money doesn’t grow on trees or robbing Peter to pay Paul. Can you talk to that a little bit? Because I hear that, you know, in almost every meeting, someone will come with their own sort of ingrained saying that maybe their parents passed down.

Dr. Wallace: Yeah, absolutely. Because those are the things that you remember. So unbeknownst to you, you carry those throughout your life. And I found myself. Well, my children, if you will, saying some of the same things, you know, the, one of the ones that’s the funniest one that I didn’t mention is the one that you say, “I’m so broke, I can’t pay attention.”

Right. And so, these are common phrases that are being used and every culture uses some sort of colloquium, if you will, that they kind of address in terms of not having resources, right. Because it comes down to resources. We really look at it.

And so those types of monikers carry on. Right. And so as a child, you remember those, and then when you get older, you repeat the same thing. kind of a perpetual cycle that continues to move on and move on. Somebody has to break that cycle. unfortunately you have to be in a position to understand that there is an issue.

Right. And then move and try to get the, you have to acquiesce if you will, and try to go out and get some. Conversate, just get some help, talk about it. And that’s the one thing that we know trauma is something that we don’t talk about, right? And financial trauma is something we really don’t talk about.

Because that’s something, say a situation where people don’t want to be transparent about their finances. Because as you know, money is a very emotional subject. Extremely emotional. And we know based on your CFP and I’m going through the process of being a CFP as well, we know that a large portion of our decisions are irrational decisions when it comes to money, simply because it’s an emotional attachment.

Josh: For sure. And, I can’t help but think about money scripts and sort of that concept going hand in hand with this. And I think a lot of people sort of overlook these money beliefs and, and sort of brush it off as maybe not so important. Do you think of this as maybe a driving factor sometimes as a limiting belief that’s in the way of someone building wealth?

Dr. Wallace: Yeah, absolutely. Because if it’s short term, you know, most people who are financially stressed one of the things that they are always looking to do is to get rich. Right. And you hear it all the time, right? You know, get rich or die trying, right?

I mean, you hear that it’s in songs, if you will, I was speaking to a client last week and I asked her, I said, what do you want? And she really couldn’t define what she wanted, but it was basically being financially well being. And so after she was going through her definitions, if you will, I said, listen, from now on, someone asked you that question.

Your response is you want financial well being. You want to be in a position where your financial well being she said, I never thought of that because I said to her financial well being basically says you’re in a position, right? You’re financially free. If you will, you’re able to do the things you want to do without any stress. And you’re able to absorb any major financial crisis. That’s what financial freedom means. Financial well being. And I said, two people are different in regards to their definition of what financial well being is. So, and that’s why I say that, you know, financial literacy is not a linear model.

It’s an organic model and I firmly believe that if you take a look at it from that perspective, you can help clients more and then the clients have a better understanding of what they’re trying to accomplish because your financial wellbeing may be different from my financial wellbeing. I said to her, listen, some people’s financial wellbeing is literally living on a boat.

that’s their financial wellbeing. I mean, they’re comfortable. They’re financially solvent. They can do the things they want to do. They’re not changing their lifestyle. That’s their financial wellbeing. But then you have another person who financial wellbeing who may say, Hey, I want to have a million dollar house. I’m going to be able to travel the world. I want to be able to do X, Y, and Z. Two different perspectives. But at the end of the day, financial wellbeing is where you want to be because that’s longevity. That’s sustainability versus. Rich is temporary. And we see that oftentimes when people win the lottery, when they inherit a lot of money with the saying 70 percent of all people who inherit money are broke within one year, right?

Because they’re so focused and fixated on becoming rich versus becoming financial wellbeing, which is totally different. and to me, that money script is ingrained from day one, from your internal and external ecosystem.

Josh: I love that you brought that up. It’s such an important part of the work that we do. I mean, I spend sometimes 60, 90 minutes upfront talking about nothing but the goal. To your point, without that, you can’t really move forward in the financial planning process. How does this tie into your seven stage generational wealth model?

Dr. Wallace: That’s a great question. So let’s look at the model itself. So stage one of the model basically is your internal and external ecosystem. your internal external ecosystem moves you to stage two, which is your financial genetic code. And you’re denying it. Your financial genetic code is a byproduct of financial trauma. And financial anxiety. So it kind of splits into two from their financial genetic code moves to stage three, which is reprogramming your financial genetic code. That’s what you and I do, right? So we, we, we meet with our clients.

We reprogram, we go back to the money script back to day one, in terms of external, external ecosystem. We go through trauma and anxiety because many people don’t know that they have trauma and anxiety. In terms of finances anyway, so we have to reprogram the financial genetic code, then stage four, which is financial edification. And so financial edification moves into two parts. One is financial literacy and the other is financial inclusion. Now we know the importance of financial literacy. But even more important is financial inclusion, taking advantage of the opportunities at work, retirement plans, insurance programs, investing passive income, purchasing homes and things of that nature, right?

That’s a byproduct of literacy because you have to have some literacy. In terms of having solid credit, saving money, having budgeting, if you will, for the most part, most of us are working. Right? So while we’re working, I know for a fact before I became a financial advisor, I struggled in regards to financial inclusion.

Right? Because I didn’t take advantage of those retirement vehicles that are out there. And so that between financial literacy and inclusion, that’s where you come up with financial edification for edification is basically the knowledge, the growth morally and spiritually growing, so to speak, and then you move to financial wellbeing, which is stage five.

That’s what we’re all trying to get to. We talked about that earlier. Stage five financial wellbeing. We have to make sure that we have the ability to not change your lifestyle. And that’s so important, right? Especially when you get to retirement, when you have your soft landing, if you will, but it’s so important in stage five, when you look at the financial wellbeing for financial wellbeing, we go to stage six, which is generational knowledge.

Once you have all of that, you get to generational knowledge and that’s creating your financial footprint. Which is stage seven, you and I, we will never be able to really bask in the generational wealth because it’s not for us. It’s for our beneficiaries. However, our goal is to get to stage five.

Financial well being versus becoming rich. If we get financial well being. Then we’ve done the things that we needed to do. But again, it’s a byproduct of stage four, which is so important. Financial literacy coupled with financial inclusion. I know you have met a lot of clients. I’ve met with a lot of clients who’ve worked for 20 or 30 years and they come to you and say, Hey, listen, I’m going to roll over my 401k or 403b 457 deferred account, whatever the case may be.

I want to roll this over, but I only have 500, 000 in this, but I’ve been working 30 years. Why is this? And when you, when you examine it, one of the questions is they really didn’t take advantage of the financial inclusion. They really didn’t take advantage of the information. As you notice, most people, I predict probably don’t know, don’t have a hard number, but I would say 80 to 90 percent of the people who participate in a retirement plan at their job only do it because someone said to do it. They don’t have any knowledge on what they’re doing. They don’t know their risk tolerance profile. They don’t know the investments they’re in. I mean, you have individuals who’ve been working 30 years, have been in a bond portfolio. I mean, it’s like, okay, how could you actually grow this? But again, that’s because when we look at stage one, your internal external ecosystem, you never really understood about money anyway.

Therefore, when you get a job, that’s not top of mind, that’s not of a concern to you. And that’s why I say stage five is so important, but we have to go back to stage one. Right. And so the question would be, so what about those people who are, you know, at the retirement age, 50, 55, looking for a soft landing, if you will.

Yes. I mean, they’re at a point now where you have to kind of mitigate and try to help them to have a great retirement, but those individuals that, you know, are between 28 and 45, as you know, in the financial planning model is that’s your most accumulation phase. Those are the individuals.

If you get to them early enough. They can make the change to get to generational wealth by having generational knowledge. That’s a very, very important group that this model really focused on as well.

Josh: I’m really liking this model. I’m picturing a staircase in my mind. Is it fair to say that it would be, I don’t want to say impossible, but very difficult for someone to move to the next stage of the model without first doing some work in the earlier stages?

Dr. Wallace: Absolutely. But as I mentioned earlier, it’s a circular model. And so what happens is it doesn’t matter your age. It doesn’t matter about that because at some point everybody is going to touch one of those stages. Yeah. Yeah. So if you’re 55, looking to retire, well, one of the things that we know is stressful is retirement.

So you have anxiety and you have some trauma. The anxiety is what am I going to do next? The trauma may come from your childhood, remembering how it was when you were a kid, another example for you. So I’m working with another client. She’s 38 years of age. Her parents are financially well off.

And we were talking going through the model itself. And she said, you know, I never really thought that I had trauma, but her trauma basically is that her parents used money instead of love. And so if you go back to Maslow’s five hierarchy of needs. Your innate needs love is one of the, one of the basic innate needs.

And she says the only thing that she wanted in her life was their parents to give her love. So with that being said, she has a totally skewed view in regards to money. She doesn’t value money because she looks at money as a tool. She says that she’s more depressed, if you will, when she has money versus when she doesn’t have money.

And her parents gives her money all the time. And she’s like, I only think I want it in my life. And so if you look at that scenario, can be a financial prisoner too, because now you’re reliant in those who are your fiduciaries, as I said earlier, right? Those individuals are responsible for your welfare.

They have the ability to dictate. How you’re going to have your relationship with money. And in this case for her, she looks as money as a tool versus as an opportunity. And, you know, money with the does provide for you as opportunity. If you use it correctly,

Josh: I can’t help but think, I’m, I’ve always been fascinated by these scenarios that sort of manifest themselves. you’ll meet with a client and maybe they’ve been an extremely hard worker, very good saver their entire career, never invested a penny because they have this belief that, you know, Banks are evil or insurance companies are evil or whatever it may be.

And it’s so interesting to me how these different situations sort of manifest themselves throughout life. Maybe it’s an inheritance that triggers, you know, one of these beliefs. I think the question I want to ask is how can someone identify some of these beliefs or scripts that they’re holding onto that they may or may not even know about. 

Dr. Wallace: I believe the way that you have to uncover that is that you have to be transparent and you have to be willing to communicate. You know, the one thing that we know in this business is that, you know, again, money is a very emotional topic. And for the most part, people don’t like to talk about money whatsoever.

They talk about anything else. They talk about their health. They can talk about their travel, their trips. anything else but money, right? Because that’s kind of like the sacred grounds. I don’t need you to know anything about my financial situation, so to speak. But in order to move forward, you have to be able to trust and acquiesce and capitulate to allow someone to give you guidance.

And if you look at the people that are successful. They have someone that’s managing their money. The people that aren’t successful don’t have anyone managing their money. I mean, they may become lucky. I mean, we’re talking about a small, minute few, but for the most part, the aggregate total. In terms of a macro environment, we know that more people are less successful without having someone that manage their money.

But you have to feel comfortable. For one, you have to vet that individual referrals are great, but you have to do your due diligence. But for the most part, you have to allow yourself to be taught, to be coached. and, and I always say, you know, Kobe Bryant had a coach. You know, Michael Jordan had a coach.

You know, Messier has a coach, you know, you have to be coached in life. And for the most part, people in regards to their finances don’t want to be coached, right? It’s a perpetual cycle.

Josh: I’m glad you went there. That was a big growth period for me in my grad school work. Understanding and realizing that I need a financial advisor myself. You know, I kind of had this belief before, well I’m a financial advisor, I don’t need one. Sort of that concept of a doctor treating themselves or a lawyer representing themselves.

silly when you think about it, but that external… perspective. Someone else saying, okay, listen to what you’re saying right now. Does that tie into what you said a minute ago? Like having that third party to sit back and give you objective advice and coaching, I think is invaluable. Can’t be understated.

Dr. Wallace: Let me add something to that. tell people, I was financially illiterate. you know, I’m helping people investments, if you will, trying to give them, guide them on what they need to do, but I was financially illiterate, you know, and I had to go back and look at my internal and external ecosystem, go through the, stage two, my financial genetic code, you know, stage three, reprogramming my financial genetic code, you know, and I found myself that I’m in that model.

I’m still in that model. I haven’t been removed from that model because there’s a lot of things externally and internally I grew up in around. Right. And so it’s shaped a lot of things that I didn’t take advantage of, and I’m making you an example of one, when I left San Francisco state as a head coach I participated in our 403 B plan.

I didn’t even know what a 403 B plan was. I know that I signed. So it goes back to my 90 percent of people really don’t know what they’re doing. They just do it. Someone says you can do it. And so that’s what I did. And then when I left nine, 10 years later, I had 30, 000 in my account. And I was like, why is this the case?

Because I never really understood it. I didn’t understand the power of it, but that was a by-product of me understanding that we’re feeling that I needed all the money from my paycheck. And as you know, if you basically participate 10%, then that’s 10 percent less. So I always use a round number of a thousand.

And so if I say, Hey, listen, I’m going to participate 10%. That means I’m going to get 900 versus a thousand dollars basically. And I needed all my money, not understanding that’s a deferred growth tax deferred. Building retirement, didn’t think along those lines. And so when it came for me to retire, when I was cashing out my policy, well, you know, my 403B, I had 30, 000.

I said, well, how is this the case? I’ve been working there 9, 10 years, right? But in my internal and external ecosystem, I didn’t understand the power of compounding interest. One, I didn’t understand the power of tax deferred growth. So all those things are important that I didn’t understand. And so when it came to retire, I was, my financial anxiety and trauma was realistic to me.

So that’s why I say my literacy level was low in terms of saving, in terms of credit, all the things that you need to do I didn’t do because my internal and external ecosystem was not on par because that never was spoken in my home and externally, I didn’t see that. So there was no one communicating on that level.

And I just did what someone told me to do versus really going in and, trying to understand it and looking at it as a long term and investments, investing in myself and things of that nature.

Josh: Now if someone’s listening and they’re really resonating with what you’re saying, you know, maybe they have a four or three B of their own or they’ve just gone through some of these hurdles themselves. What would you suggest for them? What would be their first step?

Dr. Wallace: You know, I tell people all the time, listen, one of the things you need to do. First get your quarterly statements for one. You need to know exactly what that looks like. You need to know what your investments are. You need to know your risk tolerance. And you can do the simple one, 100 minus your age.

That gives you an idea. I mean, it’s simple, but it gives you an idea. It’s better than nothing, right? I mean, so that’s something you could do. There’s another one I use, which is called Torta T O R T A. T is for time. O is for objective. R is for risk. T is for tax. A is for age. And I say, if you go through that, you kind of get an idea of, you know, what your risk tolerance is.

And then from there, you always want to look at what the portfolio objectives are. That’s so important because that objective may not meet your objective. Right? And it goes back to individuals who may be in a bond portfolio, 20, 30 years of age when they have a, have a long runway, you want to be as aggressive as possible at least to try to tackle inflation, right?

You always want to outpace inflation and you have a long runway and meet with someone, the third party administrator. You know, go to those events, ask questions and determine, you know, what can you actually put into your retirement plan? Is it 10%, 15%? Are you going to take full advantage of it?

We don’t know that, but based upon your income, what you’re bringing in. But for the most part, you need to be a student and have a true understanding, take charge of your retirement because no one else is. Right. And so if you do that, it at least gets you an opportunity to, and I’ll go back to, you know, in terms of the African American community itself, we’ve been at a disadvantage.

We know the red, black and brown communities. We know that. But one thing that I would say, the one area that you can kind of level the playing field. If you take advantage of the retirement programs at your job, that’s not racist, because you have two people doing the same thing, but one person may do it more aggressively than the other person.

Well, that comes back to your internal and external ecosystem. You know, what did you learn? What’s your financial anxiety? Have you spoken to someone? What’s your financial literacy, your edification looking like? So those are opportunities that are there, but you have to be willing. To go outside, talk to someone, get a better understanding and what are your long term goals?

Josh: Yeah, I think that’s huge. Are there resources that you point people towards? I know you mentioned, you know, hey, work with a financial advisor, work with a financial coach. I think that’s a no brainer for just about anybody. Are there other resources that you frequently recommend to people who want to self educate and maybe just do some reading about, you know, what is a 403B?

What are some investments out there? Maybe someone’s listening and says, I don’t even know what a bond portfolio is. Where would they start?

Dr. Wallace: There’s a lot of good information on YouTube. I mean, there really is. And Google, you can Google a lot of information and go to YouTube itself. And I think you need to, you can, right, buy books, but can, it can speak over your head, right? Because I mean, it is what it is. If you’re not really.

Too familiar with it. This is like foreign topic, right? But for the most part, gather as much information as you can, which is important. Be a student. And then when you go in and meet with those individuals, you have questions that you can ask. Because you’re somewhat educated, right? Which is important versus going in.

I don’t know anything. No, you need to know something when you go in, because then you can understand what that doesn’t make sense. So that does make sense. And it allows you to give you a blueprint or a game plan to get to where you need to get to. But again, I think it really comes down Josh to the fact that you have to know the difference between financial well being and being rich.

If you understand the difference between the two, then it’ll chart you on a path. It would create a GPS, a roadmap to success, because then you know that my financial wellbeing may be not the same as this person’s financial wellbeing.

Josh: Yeah, it’s so important. And I wanted to ask you about, you’re writing your second book, you know, I’d imagine you’re going to talk about the seven stage generational wealth model in the book. What else can people expect from the book?

Dr. Wallace: I think it’s going to open up a lot of eyes. I think it’s going to allow me to do that. It’s going to be a healing process. It’s going to allow you to take a look at it from internally. Because again, as you mentioned earlier, a lot of our financial decisions. Are based upon our childhood are based upon our internal and external ecosystem.

And we carry that baggage throughout our lives. it’s, not a mystery. You talked about the fact that people don’t want to invest in the banks because they don’t trust banks, but They have to understand that the FDI insures, $250,000, right? I mean, those are the things that we don’t understand.

You know, we have a lot of people that are unbanked. You know, I have clients in the beginning that had all their money and they’re safe at home. And or in their drawer because they don’t trust the banking system itself. But you have to understand it’s not there to lose your money, right? I mean, it’s important to understand that, right?

Again, FDIC insured. It’s the reason why that’s the case, right? you have to understand that there are vehicles that are out there, but again, you have to Acquiesce. You have to capitulate. You have to be willing to learn. You have to be a sponge and take feedback.

But most importantly, you have to ask questions. It’s so important to ask questions.

Josh: Absolutely. I want to pivot a little bit. I know when I was preparing for this interview, I saw that you’re a voiceover artist. So I had to ask, you know, when you write your book, do you think you will record the audiobook version of it yourself?

Dr. Wallace: Well, with AI, I don’t have to write, you know actually someone asked me that yesterday, would you be willing to do your own voiceover for your own book? yeah, I would. I mean, that’s definitely something that I would do. Doing the voiceover work is not as easy as people think for one, especially when you do long narratives such as that, because you have to go back and edit, do it over again and make sure your voice is the same.

It’s a lot to doing those type of books. It takes hours and hours and hours to do. So I will have to have some serious time on my hands. Which I don’t have that time right now to dedicate towards that. So that’s why I guess I’ll just use a voice recognition with AI and just have them to do it,

Josh: Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. I want to transition. I try to ask everyone the same three questions towards the end of the show. So the first one is what does living a wealthy life look like for you?

Dr. Wallace: For myself, it’s a situation where I can get to financial wellbeing, right? So we’ll go back to my model itself. You know, I want to be in a position where I don’t have any financial stress. Most importantly, I want to have a soft landing in my retirement. I don’t want to have to change my lifestyle and I would love to be in a situation where I can handle any financial burden, immediate burden by having liquidity to be able to do so.

And if I can do that, then I’m okay, because I’m in a position where I’m financially healthy. I’m able to absorb any financial crisis. I don’t change my lifestyle. And I can do the things I want to do without having any financial stress. That doesn’t mean money. It’s a barometer. It changes for each individual, but if I can get to that point, I’ll be happy.

Josh: I like the language you use around money, you know, financially healthy, financial well being. I think it’s actually clearer to understand, you know, definitions like that versus someone saying, hey, I want to be rich. You know, well, what does that actually mean to you? so I’m glad you use that kind of verbiage.

If you could give one message to someone working to gain financial freedom who isn’t there yet, what would the message be?

Dr. Wallace: I would say open research and have a plan. I mentioned, John wouldn’t say without a plan, have to have a plan, right? Failure to plan is planning to fail. And so having a plan, knowing exactly what I want to do and knowing what your financial well being is, again, it comes back to that.

What is your financial well being? What does it mean for you? And then once you can determine that and identify that, then you take the steps towards getting there. And if you could do that, I think that you will be happy in the long run, especially if you have a long runway between 28 and 45. I mean, you have an extremely long runway to be able to accomplish those goals.

Josh: Absolutely. Yeah, having a plan is so key and writing it down I think is one thing that I was missing in my younger years of life. you know, I would be able to verbally articulate my plan, but I had nothing on paper to actually go back and say, am I on track for this plan? So I love that. Last question.

If you only had a thousand dollars and you’re starting over, let’s say, you’re fresh out of college, you’re starting over with a thousand dollars. What would be the first thing you do with that money?

Dr. Wallace: Oh, man, it depends. The easiest thing to say is go buy stock, right? Go buy something. But we know that’s not always the answer. Right? What I would do again, I would go back to what am I trying to accomplish? And then once I’m able to do that, I would take the steps.

Now I will probably purchase something. Don’t know what it would be, but it will be something, it may be an insurance policy. I don’t know, but it’s going to be something that’s going to give me some longevity. Not anything, short and quick. It has to be long Jeff because I’m more into the fundamentals.

I know you are as well because the fundamentals don’t lie. So it’d be something long term. But I probably would take some money and meet with a financial advisor. I probably would take some and meet with a planner. And say, Hey, listen, this is what I’m trying to accomplish. in terms of my financial wellbeing.

Here’s my goals. Here’s my objectives. Chart me a path to help me get there, because at least at that point, I have something written down, something I could follow because the thousand dollars could be gone tomorrow by me making a bad decision, as we mentioned earlier, it’s emotionally driven, irrational decision making anyway.

Therefore, if I pay someone to sit down. Provide a plan of action for me, create a GPS, then it’ll allow me to get to that goal. And that’s probably one of the first things I would do today. If I can find someone, I can hire you out. It depends on what your fees are, right? But hire someone out to actually do that.

And I think that would provide me the road map to get there.

Josh: That’s one of my favorite answers so far. I mean, sit down with someone, help them co create a plan with you. I mean, it gives you not only the written plan, but also an accountability partner to say, here’s what you’re going to do. And here’s when you’ll do it by having a point of contact you can go do to ask questions.

So I love that answer. Is there anything I haven’t asked you to talk about? Want to say that I overlooked or missed? The floor is yours.

Dr. Wallace: No, it’s been outstanding. I think that again these conversations need to be had. It’s therapy for me and you being in the business itself, you see it from the same lens, two different lenses, but we’re trying to accomplish the same goals for our clients. And so I think that from that perspective, again, I do believe that one of the areas is that we have to look at each person as their own entity versus a macro, a linear way of teaching financial literacy. And so I think once we’re able to uncover that. You know, look at it from that perspective. I think my model that I’ve created is going to be able to help a lot of individuals such as yourselves.

it just gives you a roadmap. It gives you an opportunity and the beauty of it all, Josh, is when I sit down with my clients. We have the model in front of us and we go through it. And then once I’m concluded with them, I do my write up summary. I send them the information basically on what we spoke about and we’re able to highlight the models.

Okay, you’re on stage one. We need to get you to stage two. I’ll fill you in stage three based on these answers. We’re at stage four. We need to get you more inclusion based on these answers, right? And so it gives them a true roadmap. It gives me a true roadmap. it’s a situation where it allows them to see it right in front of them.

And then they can make changes. And one of the comments always is. Man, I need to have my kids do this. I need to have, you know, more people need to know about this. I didn’t understand this, you know, how you’re able to use this model to kind of define who I am. And so I’m really excited about it.

It’s going to be something that you’re going to hear about in more detail, I do believe in particular when the book hits probably by the end of the year. Well, no later than the first quarter of next year.

Josh: I think it’s going to be extremely impactful for the book, you know, for the people listening. I think this has been really great. So I just, I appreciate you being here. I don’t want to overlook for the listeners who want to track you down, how do they find you online?

Dr. Wallace: Yeah. So they go to drjwallace.com. You can schedule an appointment there. My blogs would be on there as well. As I mentioned, I wrote my first blog. I’m going to try to write a blog once every month. If I’m lucky to write to, to a month, it depends on what my, personal schedule looks like.

But writing is therapy for me. it’s a way I can kind of just express my thoughts, if you will, in terms of the reimagining financial literacy through education and purpose Generational Wealth Begins With Generational Knowledge. And so, I’ve seen it kind of have a snowball effect.

People are really embracing the idea. I’m doing more public speaking about it as well. And I’m excited about where it’s going. It’s a fun process right now because at the end of the day, you know, I wanted to leave footprints while I’m here. And I do believe that, this model will be something people are going to talk about and reference long after I’m here.

Josh: I think you’re absolutely right. I’m excited to read the book. Thank you for being here for making the time. I’m going to wrap, this has been The Wealth In Yourself Podcast where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. Our guest today was Dr. Joaquin Wallace, professor, author, speaker, voiceover artist, and investment advisor. We’ll see you next week and thanks for listening.