Money Mastery for Wellness Professionals: enabling you to bank on yourself.

Why you should listen to this episode of Making it Real

You love your job in the wellness sector, but you sometimes struggle with all the work that goes into running your own business and the particular financial pressures involved. You find yourself thinking, 'should I be investing more?' or 'how can I get clear on my money goals?'. We've listened, and we've invited Sarry Ibrahim, a Financial Planner and member of the Bank on Yourself organization, to sit down with Kiki to talk about how you can master your finances and bank on yourself.

What steps can you take to manage your finances as an entrepreneur...

For Sarry, the main priority when planning your finances is to define your objectives first, to understand the function of money for you, your life, and your business.

"People have different reasons for money at different times of their lives. As an entrepreneur, you'll likely have two areas of focus.

One is to create money for your personal life and, the other is to make money in your business. Many entrepreneurs focus on making money, but you need to think about what you're doing with the money you are making. This is where your objectives are crucial."

Whether you want to grab a journal or your iPad, the fundamental step is to ask yourself a set of questions.

• What does the word retirement mean to you?
• What does money mean to you?
• What does liquidity mean to you?
• How much money will I need for this dream to happen?

It's all about identifying what those definitions are for you to help clarify the objectives for your business.

For Sarry, the practice of goal setting is not something to do once a year or once a quarter but every day.

I ask myself every single day, ‘what are my goals of running this business?’

Because I want to embed the answer into my subconscious.

The reasons why you’re running your business become something you believe in, and you’re more likely to achieve that goal because you have your eye on that ball.”

— Sarry Ibrahim, Founder & Financial Advisor

Liquidity is the name of the game

As a business owner, you want to access money at any time to pay your bills, staff, and so on. This can be a struggle if your revenue is unpredictable, so having cash on hand is essential.

This is where the 'Bank on Yourself Method' comes into play...

Sarry first became aware of the Bank on Yourself Method in a book by Pamela Yellen.

The premise encourages us to step away from volatile investments and stop chasing high returns to grow predictable wealth and still have liquidity for our business.

Here’s an example from the podcast:

Take the cash value in the policy for instance. The cash value grows like a savings account; it earns dividends and interest and grows at a pretty decent rate of around 6% every year. You can borrow against this for your business or other places, even plan for retirement. You can use the cash for whatever you want. So the bank on yourself strategy essentially uses cash value life insurance to grow cash reserves to grow your wealth.

You can do this at any age, for any purpose. It will give you that liquidity in your future and for your business as well.

So should you be a spender or a saver?

Most of us want to do both, spend in our everyday lives, and save for those rainy days. Sarry's point of view is: do both.

"When you apply the bank on yourself strategy, you can do both - spend and save because it's not an either-or approach. You could save first and then leverage your savings to spend on whatever it is that you want to spend on."  

The best approach is to save first. There's an interesting stat that I came across that said, on average, 60% of Americans don't have $1,000 in a bank account, and it's not necessarily an income problem; it's more of a savings problem.

We all have our money directly deposited in our bank, and there is the temptation or necessity to spend it right away. We have debit cards, credit cards; we can pay at the touch of our watches or phones. As our money is so accessible, it makes it easy to spend.

So, what can you do to save?

Sarry suggests adding some barriers around you and your money. Allocate a certain percentage of your earnings to another account somewhere else, somewhere you don't have easy access to it. If you have to look for it to spend it, it encourages you to think if the purchase is necessary or if the money is serving you better in your account.

Top tips if you’re interested in investing

1. Always do your homework.
2. Talk to an investment advisor.
3. Do your research and write a list of questions that you'll need answers on (What's my return? What's the fee structure? What are the tax implications? How easy is it to get my money out)
4. Understand the risks and be cautious

The podcast is full of examples from Sarry about investing, including his thoughts on cryptocurrency and resources that you're going to want to check out.

Before we wrap up, here's one common myth around wealth and investing that Sarry just has to bust...

People think the news and the media, people think this is the central hub of information. It’s not

The news and media are influenced by large companies (think hedge funds and large banks and Wallstreet), whose interests and objectives might not be aligned with yours.

You need to build your own hub of information. There’s a ton of podcasts and YouTube channels and books.

It’s these sources that will help you to grow unbiased knowledge of the best approach for you.

— Sarry Ibrahim, Founder & Financial Advisor

So get familiar with first having the ability to hold on to your money, keep it, grow it, and then after that invest.

How you can connect with Sarry

You can find him through his website and he has kindly said that if you reach out he will send you a free copy of the book Becoming Your Own Banker by Nelson Nash. You can also book an appointment to speak to him or one of his team.

So please do get in touch.

Enjoy the episode!

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