Today on the Book More Show, we're talking with Tim & Pat Ash, Divorce Attorneys and Financial Advisors from Farmington Hills, Michigan, about their latest book Debt B Gone.
I love speaking with people who want to write a book that helps people, and it's even more engaging when it's based on a personal experience.
Tim & Pat created their framework to help people see debt differently. Based on their journey of financial freedom, it's a process that's helped many clients change their lives, and they saw the opportunity to start many more conversations using a book to introduce the approach.
It's the perfect example of the 'Name it and claim it' type of book we often talk about, and a great conversation demonstrating how a personal connection can build rapport with potential clients, leading to a lifetime relationship.
The Debt B Gone website is launching in the coming weeks, so Keep an eye on DebtBGone.org to watch this approach develop.
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TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Bookmore show. It's Sue Bell here, and today joined by Tim and Pat Ash Guys, great to see you. Thanks for making time to be here. Yeah, well, thank you.
Tim: Thank you for inviting us.
Stuart: No problem. So do you guys work together, based out of Michigan financial and lawyers and financial advice to the same clients?
Pat: Yeah, not at the same time by trade. We're Tim as a lawyer. Yes.
Stuart: Okay, so that's an interesting dynamic. I think most of the other podcasts we've done have just been with individual authors rather than people who have written together. Don't stop by giving people a bit more of a background on how you guys got started, how the practice came together and the two elements of it.
Tim: First of all, my name is Tim Ash and I have been a lawyer for a little over 30 years now and I'm just pretty much in the area of divorce and family law.
So where this debt begone book came about is really out of our own relationship, patty and I. We were going through life. She was a marketing executive for AT&T yellow page portion and her career kind of came to an end and our reality started crashing, in that we had really saved enough money and we haven't planned properly for retirement because we were too busy living paycheck to paycheck, and so that's where I think our life took a turn and we started to explore why it is that we were living paycheck to paycheck and we ran into various people along the way and various needs and so forth, but one of the things was the Dave Ramsey plan taught us to budget and to work together as a couple, and then, through Stan and some other people on the insurance side, taught us about a whole life policy that can literally be used to help us reduce our debts and reduce our savings, and that's where, in about 2018, we came up with the idea of debt begone, our book that's just being published now.
Pat: Let me get it. Tim had mentioned Dave Ramsey. What we just you know what we thought very hard about is the Dave Ramsey program is great, you get out of debt, but what do you have at the end? You have nothing.
Stuart: So your debt starts again.
Pat: So what we had, that's when we went to explore other options and the options of using an insurance chassis to have people save their money and pay out their debts. But at the end, because of an insurance chassis, there's money there for them to use. So that's kind of so. We invested it in our own life, we took it about our own life and started doing that, and now we just want to teach others Because you've had that success, you've experienced it, you've lived through it yourself.
Stuart: So it gives such a real experience to want to be able to share with other people. And then, of course, the professional skills to be able to actually help them, not just suggest to a friend that it would be a good thing to do, but there's tools and resources. You've got to facilitate it for people. While I'm thinking, let me get a cover of the book just up on screen here for anyone who's watching along. There we go, the cover. I love the cover because it's such a it's. I want to say it's uplifting for people just listening. It has a balloon. It's a higher balloon on the cover itself, but it's. It's really uplifting.
This idea of whole life and I'm not sure whether so my background is in the IT side of financial services in the UK my past career years ago so it's an area that I've always been interested in. But having worked for the last 10 years with people in the US, the idea of using whole life as a facility, as a well building tool, is something that I'm not familiar with. So I'm not sure whether it's just the products aren't the same coming from the UK, or whether it's a technique that's just not available, but that as an idea, it definitely seems to be less familiar to people rather than more familiar to people. So do you find that in talking to people, this is really the so in the seed of an idea? It's kind of explaining what it?
is not just something that people know about and you're just offering it to people on it.
Pat: What it is, how it can benefit your life, how it can benefit your portfolio and again, that be gone the products and services that we use to do this. There's a few insurance companies that offer a product that is completely designed for a high rate of return, so that you can then take that money, borrow it from yourself and pay your debts
Tim: Right. Here's why I'm excited to be here. His 90 minute book is so fantastic, because this is such a new idea. We are now able to tell it by way of a story. Through Patty and I, through our own struggles, we take a little bit of a different turn, but we basically we were in a position in our marriage that we were ready to draw up divorce papers. We did go eventually to bankruptcy to get a fresh start. We've been through a lot of things to get where we're at, but realizing that this whole life policy and this idea of getting rid of debt is more transformative, you have to change your mind. You have to really think differently. So the idea of a story in a book that 90 minute books could help us to draw out is just. It's a fantastic way to plant the seed of a new idea, and I do think this is a new idea.
Stuart: Right, we also refer to the best day books. They're kind of setting the scene for something that people might not know about. It's the opportunity to, in a slightly longer format than just a quick conversation or a page on a website, allows you to get into the details and really starts to build rapport.
Pat: The concept of this. That's really what we call bank on yourself. The concept of banking on yourself has been around a long time, so we took that concept and embellished it with a story. Obviously, like Tim said, we have experienced it, but we embellished it, put characters in it so that you, the reader, can see the happy results of the subject, not just off sitting there and telling them it'll work for them. They can read it, they can see it, they can reflect on it, rather than just a person sitting there trying to represent something.
Stuart: Right. It's such an interesting insight, isn't it? Because, as you say, you could tell someone the same story being sat in front of them. But to a certain degree, particularly if you don't have a rapport yet with them, if they're new to your world, it does feel like people have got their defenses up a little bit. They're expecting to be sold to back, put them on the back foot, whereas consuming something in their own environment.
Even the idea of kind of like the subliminal authority of a book. That's not necessarily what we're trying to go primarily, but there's definitely a subliminal element to it, subconscious elements. It's a third party vetted body that made sure that these words are on a page and therefore I think they're received in a better way. The idea of writing a book in the first place isn't necessarily something that everyone jumps to. Was that a thought that you'd had for a while, or had you seen other people do something similar?
Tim: We had through our travels of learning about finances through the insurance industry read your family bank and Larry McLean was a big influence on us, on you know this is a great product. Why aren't more people doing it? And so, as we implemented that in our own life and got rid of our own, you know, credit card debt, and now we're managing our debt in a way that we never would have thought of. And so it's to me the biggest factor of going back and looking at why we got into financial trouble. It's not because of how much money we made. We made a lot of money, but we continued to focus on the. Now, you know we didn't look at oh, we should save X amount of dollars every month because it'd be good to have savings. Savings, just it wasn't valued to us.
And now we look at savings as a big value, a big portion of our Dollar amount. We commit two thousand dollars every month to our savings plan through our family bank or bank on myself, whatever you want to call it. But this idea that you hold this money in then and then you can borrow from it is very powerful. But you still have to get rid of that mentality of she was if I want something. Can I afford it? If that's not the right question to ask, it's really do you need it? Do you really want it? The consequences of what it might provide in your family If you were to come become unemployed or your paycheck should go down or inflation should go up those are the kind of concerns that you should be asking. People don't, and that's why they end up living as the way we did Paycheck to paycheck.
Stuart: Yeah, it's just go ahead. I'm sorry. Oh, so I was just gonna say quickly it is an interesting insight, isn't it? Because it's not necessarily that. It's a the mechanism for making it work. It isn't necessarily Just a tool or a silver box, a silver bullet product. It's a change in mindsets. Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
Pat: That's where it has to start if you can't put a budget together and make savings your priority I mean, your government gets so much You're tithing then should be next and then your savings should be that you should be paying yourself.
Right then we deal with the lifestyle and what we can do. And if you look at someone's lifestyle, they say, well, where am I going to get the $2,000? We're going to get the $500. To do that, I'm strapped. We involve a debt coach. So once they sign on to the concept of wanting to learn, we assign them a debt coach and that debt coach helps them look at where they're spending money, where they're wasting money. Maybe it's Overdraft on checks, maybe it's they're paying double the amount to a visa card because they want to get ahead. Whatever it is, we take a look at that. We find the funds within their own they're on economy and then we apply those funds to the savings that. That becomes their savings.
Tim: It is sorry to go for it.
I'm just gonna say, as patty's talking about this, the book within it is debt elimination university, and debt elimination university is a five week course which Focuses on first saving your money, knowing what you're, knowing your money, knowing where it goes every month, and then applying that money to Basically taking your savings and applying it to your bank and then watching your bank as it eliminates your debts.
And then, after your debts are over, you can then see where you borrow from yourself Instead of an emergency going to visa. Those three classes are kind of the what I'd call the substantive part of the class, of the teaching. But then the last two are about your Transforming your mind, thinking differently, understanding that you don't have to have it now, or you don't have to keep up with the Joneses, or you need to forgive yourself or some people. You just need to love yourself. Stop, you know, with these comfort type things that you're doing, just Change the perspective of how you look at your life. And then the last class is about hope and vision and gratitude and living your life in a different, transformed way. So it's a part substantive and then it's part transformative through your mind, and I think both of those elements are really important because it does create the full picture.
Stuart: I mean a bandaid over clearing some debts, like you say. It's not necessarily going to be a long-term solution If you get to the end and then you just start the cycle again. Those elements there within the book. It was in relatively straightforward as you were thinking about creating it, what to include and what not to include, or was the sum back and forth on kind of how much is enough to to Share the message and they're not turned into a kind of the next great American novel which would still be on the shelf and not helping anyone, I think the more of the struggle was Because we've taken a website, created classes.
Tim: Patty and I filmed ourselves through these classes that actually you know now I threw the book but now you can go on the website and now it was like, are we going to charge for the classes? Are we going to? You know, this is something that is being done. We're like no, we decided a hard decision was we want to give this away. We want people to just be able to put in this code, you know, a promo code free and be able to go in and look at these classes and get the forms and get the ideology and that way they can figure out themselves. Because it's a process.
You may be willing to do one aspect of it but not another, and if you're not doing all the transformative things, then you're really not ready to, let's say, go out and get a whole life policy, because if you're not going to save money, if you don't save money like every month regularly, if that's not part of your plan yet, then you're not ready. You need to get used to that plan. So the website, the book and different things that we're doing are all about trying to give people an idea of whether they really want to move into this type of life or not. Because I could tell you you want to. You want to move into the life. It's a beautiful thing for us not to worry about debt anymore. I mean, it's just freeing.
Pat: Well, and that's the debt coach too is a very specific and very important part of this process, because that debt coach becomes your coach and you tell them what your issues are and that you can't. You know, and that's that debt coach. So, like we talked about, look at their current economy and figure out how they can actually put themselves into a savings position.
Stuart: That's it Interesting way of thinking about it, because you have not only the opportunity to share the knowledge with people through the book and the free course to get them to that first stage, highlighting the importance of the debt coach the fact that it's a difficult thing to do yourself because you've maybe got 20 or 30 years of habit and experience gets you to this place. The likelihood of just reading something or completing something and then switching into a different mindset is quite, quite a challenge. So I can imagine that debt coach and the elements outside of or in between the pages the things aren't necessarily immediately talked about or, if you were trying to do yourself, not immediately written on a list. I imagine those are some of the things that can be the game changer that gets people to thinking about the whole thing in a different way. Do you get much feedback from people in that way to say that the coaching element was really the thing that set them on the right path?
Pat: I would say yes, that is definitely where the rubber meets the road.
Tim: Yes, I think, as we sat down and we met with people along the way, the hardest part is they're not really ready to consistently put savings forward and put it first place, and so that's kind of why our first class is savings is the key. If you can't save money consistently, then you can't get out of paycheck to paycheck living. You're going to continue to increase your debt and your money will be worth less in your economy. It's just a reality. You want to face that reality. We're willing to face it with you. We've done it. We want to help them to come and to be free, and to do that. It isn't. We're working and so this is not a second job for us. This is a desire to want everybody to become debt-free, to have savings, to realize how important savings are and to live financially in a way that it doesn't control their genes anymore. That's the big thing. That was the big thing for us.
Pat: Well, the way we put our program together is at 65, we want everything paid off our office building and our home. Most people don't retire because they still have a mortgage and their retirement won't cover what they need with that house. So they end up selling their house or moving in with their children or getting something smaller that they think they can afford. But those are all reactive things that happen in your life. If you plan and be proactive, those things will never be part of the conversation, because you've now set yourself up to pay your debt, and then debt includes your mortgage.
Stuart: There's those elements of future Stuart and future Tim and future Paddy, being stuck because of past, our own past actions or not really thinking enough ahead. It's kind of overestimating the short term and underestimating the long term. For our parents, absolutely no for Veil and everywhere. Our daughter's 18, she's just working at her first job and we were just submitting some taxes for the first time this year. I was saying to check out with the employer because they might do a pension matching scheme. So you're not going to miss the two or 3% today.
But starting at 18, fortunately I was in a position to have a corporate job relatively early on. So for 10 years or so I was getting some pension funding going in there. But for the next 10 years it wasn't what I was thinking about. I was kind of going out on my own and not really I can't even justify by saying didn't have the funds, didn't have the funds but didn't have the foresight to continue that. So now in later years thinking okay, well, there was a good 10 years and now probably a 10 year gap and then thinking about catching up. So the people that you're helping I'm guessing it's more people who are in mid to later life because they're coming to it from having your experience, a good life, living life, not necessarily thinking about the future, building up some debts. So is that mainly the clients, so people who are in the second half rather than the first half, or do you get younger people as well?
Pat: Well, we work with both and let me give you an example of the younger people.
We've got children coming out of debt with college debts, I'm sorry, coming out of college with a lot of debt. I worked with one gentleman who went to a local private college, came out with $150,000 in student loans. Most of them are written on his parents, because a student can only take so much out. So we set up a plan, devised a plan to pay his debt off first and then he'll pay his parents debt off as he goes along. So as he accumulates enough, he takes one of those loans, he pays it and then what he was paying on that loan now he puts it back into his bank to accumulate again and then he can pay the next one off. So that's kind of how it works. So, and again, it's a long process that takes more than this to explain what you do with your money, but ultimately he should be out of debt in eight years where some of these people, some of these we have a doctor that's got a $300,000 student loan. I mean, they're carrying a house payment with them and they don't have to be.
Stuart: Yeah, it's such an interesting option that seems to be so universally applicable. There's more people that this can help than less, but it's something that so few people are aware of. I'm the last person to be a conspiracy theorist, but it definitely makes you question why, what it is about, the way that society is set up, and I don't know whether I don't think there is a room for the people rubbing their hands together and thinking how can we keep this a secret from people? I definitely think there is. An amount of people get overwhelmed and just bury their head in the sand, either intentionally or not, and just live day to day and don't want to think about it, because either it's too overwhelming or confusing.
Pat: They're living their life, they're raising their kids, they're buying bigger houses, they're buying cars. So if we can catch people early to your point, if we could catch them in their 20s and 30s and they're already probably already have a mortgage, they probably already have two car apartments, they probably have student loans, they probably go right on that, relied on that visa to do whatever it had to be done because they're strapped with children. If we can catch them early and change their mindset early, that would be great.
Stuart: That would be great.
Pat: But to the flip side of it is yes, we get, especially with the family law practice, we get people that are going okay, I have to take half my debt Now, I just had to sell my house, whatever they. Now, what do I do? And that's where we say okay, now there's a way you can eliminate these debts, there's a way that you can start your own retirement or your own path so that you because even now you split your retirement you know, dad got half, mom got half. So we get people off stages of life and for all reasons.
Stuart: So that second group is there ever a situation where it's I don't want to say too late, but is there? Well, I guess yeah, is there ever a situation where it is too late? Does this approach require a certain amount of time and just the practicalities of it? I mean, it's, it's at least a period of time, or is there always an option? Or is sometimes that option just well, we can make it less bad?
Tim: Well, if you're, I was speaking to a lady who was in her later sixties and she called about because she was receiving some alimony and her alimony was going to be up in another less than a year, and so she was living on this alimony and I said, well, you know what else? You know what other retirement savings or things do you have? And she didn't have anything. She was living in a house, so the house had value, but she then had an equity loan on the house because she ran into some areas of debt. And then she had a credit card with some, I remember, but it's somewhere under 10 grand. And now it's like, okay, she's getting this $2,000 or so in alimony. What's she going to do? I don't know that. I have an answer for that. I mean, she hasn't saved. She's going to get social security, which is going to replace her alimony, maybe. But people who don't have retirement savings and who haven't made a plan, I don't think you can make a plan for them when they get to 60, 70, 80 years old.
Pat: People start to plan when they run out of money, as opposed to you plan being not run out of money. That's the problem, right.
Stuart: It's the critic dealing with the critical issues, not with the planning ahead. So if there's no runway in terms of time and funds, this isn't a great money out of nowhere For the people who are worried that they've missed the boat and left it a little bit too long. I'm guessing that there's a pretty broad middle ground, from late 30s to 50s maybe, where there is an opportunity to make a difference.
Pat: There are definitely people that we can say I'm sorry, I can't help you because in Tim's situation person didn't work. There was no life that they created for themselves. They lived off of what they were getting. It's gone.
Tim: I think the answer there is that area where this type of thing can make a difference. It's the passion that drives Patty and I to say, hey, we were in this situation. Luckily, we did save some 401k money, we did do some things right, but we didn't end up in bankruptcy. So we understand how we did things wrong as well. So if there's any way we could pass that on to other people that are coming up in the 20s, 30s or certainly by 40s, because we did that 50. We started at really 50 is when Patty was separated from her company and we really realized we'd made a lot of mistakes and eventually started really focusing on what can we do to think differently. It wasn't easy, but now I'm so grateful that we did and now we just want to share that.
Stuart: Yeah kind of our passion and that group in the middle. So there's the young people at this end who've got all the time in the world to make some choices and start small. Even if they start small, just thinking ahead, you've got time on your hands. There's people at the under end of the spectrum that have the ship sailed a little bit. Unfortunately, the time is maybe there's just not enough runway, but this pretty broad middle from 30s to 50s. I imagine that there's a lot of people in that area that you can help in a lot of different situations. Where here's the idea that's been communicated in the book. But if that idea resonates at all, now you guys are bringing in the expertise to say, ok, well, this person, this would be their correct plan and this person would be another correct plan. Exactly, is that what you see? Quite a lot that kind of.
Pat: That's where the debt coach comes in, because they can see all the elements and their job is to do the best program for what the client needs, not what they need with the client needs.
Tim: It is also a reason why we took our age back to in our mid 40s in the book, because that's where we could have really made some really good different changes in our life if we would have taken our own advice right now.
Pat: You can answer your point some of the characteristics that we're looking for. Obviously we want them employed. They should have exponentially. There should be debt and mortgages always something that's good to demonstrate how quickly you can get out of debt and pay your mortgage.
Stuart: Right, which again isn't what people are thinking. They think in terms of 30 years and it just always being a payment there. So presenting the options with something that's easy for people to understand, but in a very different framework, must make quite a difference.
Pat: One of the beautiful things is that when they do borrow from themselves, that money is tax free. Right Borrowing tax free. They can pay up their debts tax free.
Stuart: Right.
Pat: So and then obviously, they can either choose to pay themselves back or they can choose not to, but depending on where they're at in life.
Stuart: And that must give quite an amplifying effect. So not only do you have the access to the money in the first place a very different interest rate from borrowing on credit cards but the debt free element of it must kind of amplify the fact that sorry tax free money, that tax money that you're saving, can then be reinvested and make the part even bigger. There's really some synergies to it. Yeah, you guys are up in Michigan, right? Yes, and most of the clients you deal with locally, or are you expanding further field?
Tim: Mostly it's local at this point.
Pat: Yeah. But the book will go to anybody, so we'll help anybody Right. We just have to have a debt coach that's licensed in that state, which is not a problem. Right, yes we can help anybody in any state, but yet to start this process and to get it rolling, we're focusing on Michigan and that's what we say, that to people all the time.
Stuart: This idea of kind of 50 mile famous. If you're going to expend any effort and energy into sharing the message, it's not that you're going to turn away out of state people and say sorry, we can't, the doors are closed. But the effort to get the ball rolling makes so much sense to do it locally, even in terms of just the narrative and the stories and the experience and the frame of references talking to people who are within that local area. Just the conversations that you have with people are going to be more connected because you're physically there as well.
Pat: Well, if you affect one, you can affect many, you know, and that's so we're going to look to, you know, our church as an example. How can we introduce us to our congregation? Those are the types of face to faces that we anticipate, but we certainly online campaign that will start once this book is published is, you know, obviously another way for us to try to reach people that we can't touch physically.
Stuart: Yeah, so that rolls into kind of the cult action on the book and the back cover and what ideally you'd want people to do next after receiving it, either from an online campaign or a friend, referring them for the best value for them and the useful way that you can help. Someone gets a copy of the book. What's the best first step for them to take next?
Tim: And next step is to contact a debt coach, to engage a debt coach, and then go through the pages of the book with, you know, the debt elimination program, each class doing the homework. I would also engage at the same time with the computer, because the classes help not just on the pages. Maybe read the book first and say, well, I'm interested or I'm not. Then maybe take the next step and go to the computer classes and maybe understand a little bit more. You know, at some point, though, that debt Coach is going to have to be pivotal. If you really want to make real change in your life, you're going to have to have somebody that comes alongside of you, help you financially, transfer form your mind.
Stuart: And I guess that's both from like the knowledge and the encouragement, but also the accountability. It's difficult to break your own habits without.
Pat: Absolutely that debt coach. You know the intention is to have that debt coach stay with you until all your debts are paid off.
Stuart: Right.
Pat: So to help you focus on what you should pay off, first things of that nature. So they'll stay with you until you're out of debt.
Stuart: Which builds a relationship and more of a rapport and get to know your person.
Pat: Yeah, it's hard, and at that point that debt coach can figure out what else that client might need. Right, the first and foremost, you cannot retire if you're carrying a bunch of debt. Right, you just can't Poor planning. So you know you got to start somewhere and get rid of your debt, and then we'll start focusing on the other stuff.
Tim: Right and see I go different. I go no, you have to learn how to save money first. If you don't have any money to save, then I don't know how you can even begin to pay your debts, because it's only going to come back to you.
Pat: I kind of said that, with savings being a given, Wow, savings is never a given.
Tim: It's in our country. It's like people save less than 5% of their income and that's even generous to say that. Right, there's a lot of them. They don't save, they just have a negative position. If they need money, the card breaks down, they go to Visa or at consolidation or something along those lines. It's no that you've got to be able to set aside. How much money do you want to save every month and then make a 10-year commitment to that? You know, I understand things happen and maybe, but you're totally willing to make a 30-year commitment on your house. What the heck's the problem with making a 10-year commitment on your savings? Right, it's a mindset. And people, they just don't have that money. They don't pay $600 for the car for seven years, $600, but tell them they have to save $600 for 10 years and they totally freak out.
Stuart: Yeah, like I said, that mindset change. You were talking about the videos that you recorded. Do you both record videos as part of the program?
Pat: Yes, yes, yeah.
Stuart: I think that's an interesting dynamic that it brings even in the approach that you were just talking about a couple of seconds ago, a very slightly different approach to really the same thing. But the fact that there are the two of you, you're going to resonate with people in different ways or people are going to pick up on the different points. I think that's an advantage over just an individual right in the book. It's just their perspective.
Pat: Yeah, you read people and you figure out. You know, tim, I think this person is better with you, or Patty, I think you should talk to them. You just read their body language or dynamics, what they're made of, and then you figure out how you want to approach them. But definitely, I mean, what do we say? The average American can't even afford a $400 emergency.
Tim: Right, but it's scary, isn't it? Yes, the thing is, we realized, in talking to people, though, people are different stages and they'll sit here and they'll tell you oh yeah, I'm ready to do this, but then, when it comes right down to it, they're not. Or maybe they do it for a year and then they, you know, and that doesn't do any of us any good. I mean, this has got to be a win-win. You've got to really want to transform. If you don't keep going through the classes until you get it, or until you really desire that you want to, you might read the book and go well, that was an interesting story, and I think I really I like what Tim and Patty are doing, but it's not for me. Okay, that's fine. Or you could say well, I'm interested in this, I'll take the next step and I'll sign up for the classes. Or maybe you're so enthusiastic about it, you do the book and you sign up for the classes and you get the dead coach. You get the whole thing and you try to figure out what else can.
I know, and that's the person that we're kind of looking for you want to really help someone who really wants to help themselves.
Stuart: And, as you say, you don't know what stage people are at and often I guess they don't know what stage they're at. So at least by reaching people at the top of the funnel, at the beginning of their thought process even if it takes them a year or two to get to the point that they're ready to work with you at least you've started that conversation and given some that can value and the opportunity to stay in touch until they are ready to go and hopefully at that point they're fully engaged and ready to jump on and make those choices to have a different outcome and I think it's exactly about planning the seed.
Tim: That's what you do you plant the seed, you wait. We fully expect that this is a new concept or it's an old concept that's bringing in a new way, whatever way you look at it. But we're saying, okay, we're not here, we're not living on this, we're not making a. You know, we're not looking at making money on this, we're looking to form lives. That's what we want to do. So if it takes two or three years to get where people catch on, but it's like fire, though, once something catches on right it takes off Right, it goes and goes fast.
Stuart: That's what we're excited looking at, that we're seeing a lot of transformed lives.
Tim: We're seeing American people who are, and we're seeing the debt. You know that. What's the calculation of debt? Now, we want to see that go down overall. We want to see people saving money not 5%, but maybe 15%, you know, let's see that number. That'd be a great number to see. So that's what is exciting.
Pat: And when you put it into perspective and we use pie charts to show people what their reality is. And the reality is that what over what would we say? 41% is generally lifestyle, a little over 30s debt.
Stuart: I mean so?
Pat: that slice of savings is so small it hardly shows up. So you know, when they see how they're living and they see what they should be doing, then they start to. But like Jim said, you can take a horse to water but you cannot make them drink.
Tim: They have to decide.
Pat: They have to decide. This is a personal decision.
Tim: And that's what the book and our website, that's what you know. We don't want to force anybody to do anything, but we want to give everybody a good idea of what they could be in life, how free, how financially free and otherwise they could be free to make better decisions in their lives. Free to, you know, enjoy things that they never thought of before. You know that kind of thing.
Stuart: And the psychological freedom like you started off by saying to free up from that baggage, that overhead, of having that constant worry all the time is life changing.
Pat: Oh yeah, it is so joyful to be able to take a breath and know that I don't have the debt that I had, and it's so joyful to know, at 65, I'm going to have a choice Do I want to retire or not?
Stuart: Because my house is paid for. So if I you know if I can.
Pat: There's so many more options open to you if you don't have debt.
Stuart: Yeah, yeah.
Pat: That opens up the options of everybody to be.
Stuart: So, again, super appreciate the time coming on. It's so. It's been really enjoyable the last couple of episodes I've done speaking with people who are clearly passionate about what they do. You can kind of see it and feel it coming through, not only in the books that we're helping people write but in the conversations that we have here. So where's the best place for people to find out more, as they're listening to this and want to kind of jump on board or just see what you're doing, where's the best place for them to go?
Tim: It would be a go to our W dot debt B, just a B, not B, e, b goneorg, that be goneorg. It's the best way to get information on our website, and so forth.
Stuart: Perfect. Well, I'll make sure there's a link to this in the show notes and the and the web page that goes along with it. So as people are listening, they can just click on the show notes on their podcast player or a lot of people go to the website, so we'll make sure there are links there and the cover of the book. As I say, it's one of my favorites because it's a lot brighter than the others and it really kind of communicates that uplifting opportunity.
Pat: You're free. Freedom You're free.
Stuart: Right, my grandparents lived in Bristol when I was a kid in the UK and there's a big Bristol balloon festival, so it's it's personally resonating.
For that reason, I just want to say thanks again for your time. It's been a real pleasure to go through the process and it's really exciting to see the book come to fruition and get out there. One of the other things that's also exciting for us on this side is we're obviously we've done a thousand books with people now, so we see people go through the process and some people do more and some people do less and like with your clients not everyone's ready or they've come and joined the program. They're not always ready to go all the way through, but the fact that you've got a program that's built around it, there's a framework within the book. There's the introduction with the idea, there's the online courses that helps people even more, your videos and then the service itself, that holistic approach, so that wherever people are, they can come and board the train and there'll be something waiting for them. So, yeah, highly recommend everyone going over to debtbegonorg and then check out what Tim and Pat have done.
Pat: Thank you.
Stuart: No problem. Thank you guys, really appreciate it. Everyone thanks for listening. Again, as I say, if you're looking on the podcast player, then head over to the website to just make sure that you get the show notes and we will catch everyone in the next one. Thank you.