From Scratch to Strategy: The Small Money Moves That Change Everything

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Welcome to to Ask Good Questions Podcasts, broadcasting live every Wednesday, six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at w four cy dot com. This week and every week, we will reach for a higher purpose in money and life, as well as a focus on health and wellness. Now, let's join your hosts, Vanita Bell Anderson as together we start with Asking Good Questions.

1:00 Hey, welcome to the Ask Good Questions podcast. I'm your host, Anita bell Anderson, and today we have a fantastic show. We're going to be talking about some very important information around you know, actually people coming to the US getting started with nothing and it's just a very inspiring story. So with that, I would like to invite to the podcast stage Cecil Williams. Awesome, very much. I know this is going to be great. Actually, before I do my little intro of him, when when we met, the immediate thing that I thought was he reminds me of Alexander Hamilton. And if any of you, I have loved reading about you know, historical just the books and everything out there about how the United States got started is really fascinating. And Alexander Hamilton is a young man that came to the United States with nothing, And so when I'm hearing Cecil's story, I went, oh, he's just like that. You know, Alexander Hamilton fought in the Revolutionary War.

2:10 He actually was the one that was the main instigator behind getting the US Treasury going, if you can believe that anyway, So with that we have our modern day Alexander Hamilton. His name is Cecil Williams. He's the founder of Semi Fly Money and a financial accountability coach. I know that he's actually working on a CFP professional designation, isn't that right? Yes? Yeah, cool? And he helps professionals and families bring structure and clarity to their finances, which is something of interest in most people out there. He didn't start with a massive portfolio. He started with just twenty dollars a month ten years ago, and a commitment to consistency. This is going to be important today. You're going to hear that time and again. Over time, he built real systems around investing, cash flow, and long term planning that helped him grow wealth by his first home and create investing strategies for his family and his clients. That's why you know, when you see something like this, it's like, Wow, this is an exceptional person. You know, to start from nothing. So what makes him different is his focus on structure over income, helping families and people stop feeling behind, simplifying their money hence the name of his company, and building confidence with investing.

3:41 If you've ever felt like you make good money but you don't feel in control of it, then this conversation is for you, So welcome, Secel. Anything to add to that. Thank you, Benita a large shoes to fill by liking me to Alexander Hamilton, so hopefully I could put those shoes. But I'm honored for that. But I appreciate that. Thank you very much. But you've said it all so I'm ready when you are. So, well, let's start out. Where did you come from? Where did where did you come from? When you when you first came to the United States. So I migrated from the Gambia. That's why I finished high school by way up Sara Leone, which is where I was born. Did that when I turned eighteen and moved from Gambia, West Africa to California. So went straight to California.

4:36 Yeah wow, what a big change? Yes? Massive? So what did starting from scratch look like for you? So for me, I think I moved here as an international student, went straight to California, six thousand miles away. My parents thought I was nuts, But my primary aim was to get an education. So at that point, I don't think like myself like most people are, not thinking about anything else but to focus on school. I mean that was my primary aim, and money and all these things. You don't get to understand that until it starts hitting you.

5:17 Where most people say at the age of eighteen you become an adult. But to be honest, when you're moving from your parents home to all of a sudden you're by yourself, it doesn't quite hit you until the responsibilities of an adult start coming in and you're like, oh, wow, I have to be an adult now. So I think that was kind of a drastic change for me. But my initial focus was just education, get a degree. When you start getting hungry, or you need to wash your clothes, or you need to get around someplace, the reality kind of hits home. Huh, yes, getting around like a car all that stuff.

5:58 But yes, well, what was happening in your life to start investing? Basically, twenty dollars you felt like you had twenty dollars a month. So I mean, and that would fast forward past college and you start working. And I think for me around that time, realistically and honestly, I was making good money. I was working in a consulting job, traveling, but at the same time, my mistakes kept piling up. So because you have this quest as a young man to succeed in life, you start making decisions that follow. You're following the crowd. Your friends say, hey, let's do this, let's invest in here, so day trading. I think, finally what kind of like broke the camels back. I ended up in what I would call a real estate Ponzi scheme where I was a victim of it and we lost collectively.

6:52 I believe me and three of my friends maybe collectively lost over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And I was like, okay, yo to me, young and working so hard for money and to lose it all just because you're not well educated and informed about financial principles and things of that nature. It was heartbreaking and I said to myself, Okay, I can't keep going down that route. So that's when the twenty dollars a month idea started. And it started with like Acorns, which is a robo investing app where I'm like, okay, if I put this money in here and make certain decisions or answer certain questions, and I don't have to touch it and I don't have to worry about how it grows. I mean, I had to educate myself about investing truly and how it worked, and I thought that was the easiest way for me to autinate the process. Where I remove my emotions from the decision. Then it doesn't mean it completely removes them, because the stock market would always be emotion driven for a lot of people because these things go up and down.

7:52 But if you choose to just ignore the noise, and focus on what's happening. Then it'll eventually pan out of all it works, it works out. Yeah. That that is why many years ago now, I you know, because I've been more than twenty five years now, I've been in this industry, and many many years ago, I really started focusing on financial education because I saw exactly all the things you were talking about, all the mistakes people thought and did, and I really started focusing on diversification and teaching all of those principles. So what did you have to unlearn if you're if you you know, realize no day trading and all this, you know, Ponzi schemes, all those things don't work. What did you have to unlearn about money?

8:40 Then? I think a few things. I think first and foremost that the financial it's a financial system. It's that in itself is a skill like any other that you have to master. And I had to learn that obviously, more money doesn't fit your problems because a lot of people just thought, meaning that case I was young, making a lot of money, you just think you can throw it out anyway and you can keep multiplying it. I had to unlearn that I need. I mean, most people think I need to figure it out first before I get started. And when it came to the investing, you can almost see that's what I was trying to figure out, thinking if I went down that route and did it myself, just do all these things, you would figure it out and you would get going. And I think most importantly, I had to learn that being good with money is about discipline set of structure. What I mean by that is most people just think you can be disciplined at what you do sports athletes, but with everything you need some level of structure, which is something we would get into a lot today. And with that structure, you force yourself to be disciplined with it. Right.

9:52 Well, so what was the first really small money move Was it that really helped creative movement? Was it just automating twenty dollars a month? Was that it? Yeah, that's where the shift really happened for me. I mean, I think so from a child, I've been good, very good at saving. So maybe the first shift happened when I was much younger, And I always say I saved about the equivalent of about one hundred dollars and it gave my parents some money to buy me, specifically a shoot, I wanted that. They probably wouldn't have bought for me because they would have said it was too expensive. So that was a long time ago in that savings and they always say you can't save your way to well. So the real shift happened with that twenty dollars and putting it away, and it was small. So if you fast forward to ten years now in the future, when you look at twenty dollars, just twenty dollars a month growing to twenty thousand dollars.

10:48 I know for most people they look at it like, oh, twenty thousand dollars, but it's just twenty dollars a month. If you think about it, that's all I put So when you see that compounding effect, I tell people, so, imagine in your position now, which primarily the people I work with high earners, Imagine if it was two fifty a month, five hundred a month, one thousand dollars a month over the next ten years, how much that would be. So I think that's the shift that happened for me. But when you see that growing over time, it motivated me to say, Okay, this is simple and I can keep doing this rather than trying to tinker with the system and experiment and keep having missteps.

11:29 Right, I mean, it wasn't really the dollar amount. I think what you're saying, it's the structure, it's the discipline it's making and even beyond that, it's like getting is making a decision. Yes, it's really what you were doing. What if you were looking back now, all of those mistakes you made, what would you wish somebody would have told you and said no this or don't do that. What what do you wish people would have said somebody would have told you? I think, looking back now, what I wish someone would have told me, because I think what most people told me when I came, don't get a credit card. The reality is most young people are going to regardless of what you say. But what I wish someone would have told me quite early on in the system is track your money or it will disappear. So learn about budgeting very early on. It doesn't matter how small that tracking system starts, but most importantly, start with small amounts invested, because back then, or if you say ten years from even when I started that twenty dollars, so you would have been a twenty year span. If I started with twenty dollars. Even then, that money would have grown to much much more than what I know. And I think automating as much as you can, because automation doesn't need will power. Once you put it in, it keeps doing it and you don't have to remind yourself to do that.

12:54 So I think that's what I wish someone would have told me. Then right, well, let's talk a little bit more about structure. So I agree with you that I don't think people struggle because they don't earn enough. It's not how much you earn, it's how much you keep, and so they struggle because they lack structure. So in your mind, what do you mean when you're saying structure. Yeah, so I say structure, And this is something I've been very adamant about, and I'll prefers this to say. Okay, first, in today's economy, it's not as black and white as most people would like to say. Oh, I income of a structure. But if you earn a good amount of money, it's important to tell your money where to go before it disappears. That's simply what structure is. It's nothing complicated.

13:49 You create a plan, you have a system, and your money has a rhythm which follows every single month. That's simply what structure is in this case. So why do you think high earners then so often fil behind or they're just disorganized and just you know, why do you think that happens? Simple, they don't have a system in place. And when you don't have a system in place, you have money leaks. The system creates a routine for you. So I have what I call EDS. So it's the system I created, which is I call a semi five money framework. It's ed SI. It's an acronym for e earn, which most adults do. We go to work, we earn an income that I can't control. That's up to the individual. But then there is the D which is for debt. Most Americans, the statistics show have high levels of debt or some level of debt. And then the S is the savings, and then the I is an investment. So it's like a money flow by which you create some level of accountability and a plan for your money. I think most people just don't have a system in place, and therefore they keep having these leaks. When it comes to money and where it goes, they don't know where it goes.

15:08 It disappears essentially. Do you think that people have money blind spots? Oh yes, I think especially when people start making good money, and good money doesn't mean you're making a crazy amount of money. But for us, we were all at that stage where we went from college making minimum wage to now you graduate and you're being paid much more. Or an example would be going from residency making for fifty thousand to all of a sudden becoming a physician. You get five of your salary, so you're making good money, but the money increases, but the plan is not there. They don't have a clan for what happens to their money.

15:49 High income. Yeah, I've been there, done that. Yeah, exactly. No system in business for most people, it's just co mingling their funds, make business account, personal account, all that stuff, and I think most importantly not being consistent with reviewing what you have you have to auditor. Yeah. Yeah, well if somebody's income went up tomorrow, I think that sometimes there's stress just stays the same. Yeah, I mean I think the reason that happens. Again, I will say, no system, more stress. If you don't have a system, if you don't create structure around your money, you will always be stressed out, the anxiety will always be there because you know in the back of your mind there is something you need to be taken care of that you're not taking care of. So when you don't put systems in place, your mind is always going to wander around when is this due? Because a quick example I'll give you is I spoke to a young gentleman who said, I'm very stressed out. I can't tell my wife what's going on. I need your help. I need to fix it. So I said, okay, tell me how much you make. Do you have a budget. He said, I don't have a budget, And I said, well, what do you mean by you don't have a budget? Like He's like, I just write things down on paper, so I don't know when bills are due. When they take things out of my account. My bank cast sometimes remind

17:21 me with a notification or a phone call to let me know that my account is an overdraft for me to put that money. So he had absolutely no system in place, kept creating daily anxiety. So imagine going thirty days where maybe fifteen or twenty of those days things like that are constantly happening. You're in disarray. Yeah, yeah, So let's okay. So like, you know, I'm sure you tell people you know that, well, part of this is helping them like calm down and get a structure. So what is a well structured financial life going to look like? So well structured financial system starts just decisions feel clear and you're not overwhelmed. So it starts with you know exactly what bills are being covered and what's left for you to use. That's just a budget. Now most people call it a spending plan. It's just a fancy word for you to remove the anxiety from the word budget.

18:18 But you're not guessing. Your money already has a plan and you're investing, but you're doing that automatically in the background. And then you have a simple weekly check in that is not constant stress. So once a week you kind of check everything, you review, and then every month you kind of look at the big picture. I started calling it cash flow. It's the same thing, yeah, because sometimes like budget gets to be like this bad, you know, a dirty word. You know. It's like I don't want to you know, because so many people, so many of my clients, geez, I can just remember over the years, you know, just oh my gosh, people hate it doing a budget, but it's like if they think, like what you're talking about or cash flow just cash in, cash out, and it's like maybe I can think of it in those.

19:09 I mean, Robert Kiyosaki has the game the cash Flow Quadrant, which is like a framework and it's teaching you about your money. So I think when you reframe your mind to using softer words, it's much easier than maybe the B word because a lot of people are just scared of that. How do you feel, I mean, you call yourself a financial accountability coach, so how is that different from a regular traditional financial planner? So I always say financial planners go through a rigorous system to get there, but they give advice. Advice tells you what to do accountability make sure it gets done. And I always give the example to this is a financial advisor will treat you like an adult, because that's what you are. A financial accountability You will have empathy to understand that you might not have had the upbringing, the systems and everything in place because society didn't give it to us. I mean, we went to school and not one of our classes said money one on one.

20:11 Not one of our classes say personal finance one on one, and we came being adults. HR gave you everything and say this is your fall one kg. Just click here, do this. So people were telling us what to do, but nobody was holding us accountable like our parents were when we were zero to eighteen. Now as an adult, they say, hey, just figure it out. You have all the foundations, you just figure it out yourself. So I think that's what an accountability coach in my case, and hence I specifically put the word accountability in front of coach. I help make sure it gets done. It's not handholding like a child, but I just help you put some some level of system and structure in place, and then with that you've built habits and you're able to continue to do for yourself.

20:59 Now, I tell a lot of stories from all of my experience with different clients, and one of the worst was, like, y'all, that came into my office. She was going through a divorce and she handed me a paper bag. She went like this and handed this paper bag to me, and it had her statements in it, and it was like it was like, oh, she couldn't wait to get rid of it. But to me, it's an example of My next question for you is why do you think people avoid looking at their numbers? What? Why do they do that? People just you're anxious about what you can't control. Yeah, and if you can't put some level of control. And when I use the word control, not to be very rigid, but if you can't put some level of control, I mean if you raise your kids and you know so.

21:52 An example would be as simple as this. When your kids are within the confines of your house, you know exactly what they're doing, so you're at these But when you let them at thirteen go to a party or sleepover, you have anxiety because you don't know what they're doing, even though you might have given them the right foundation, told them everything. That's exactly what it is. When it comes to your money. There's a lot of anxiety when you don't have systems around it. People fear and then I think because of that it leads to continuous procrastination. But also I do think there's some level of sabotage, self sabotage that will have within them just based on their values around money.

22:35 Yes, so one thing I did. I've got three daughters and they all got when they turned thirteen they got a checkbook, and so I started teaching them by having them earn money, and then they paid for their school expenses. And another thing we did which was a lot of work for us parents, but we did a vending machine business nice and the girls learned how to. I mean, so when they left for college, I felt like they had a little bit of a foundation to get started. So, I know, you have kids, yeah, and how old are they right now? They're pretty young six and nineteen months. So my is already asking about things. Really, I mean, he has a piggybank which he puts money in, so we started there.

23:27 But yes, they're pretty young for now. But soon the six year old will start learning about some very basic principles when it comes to how money works. Awesome, that'll be. That'll be so cool. They're they're gonna be lucky kids, yes, because when they grow up, they're gonna be They're gonna they're gonna be way ahead of the game. Yes, definitely, I'll make sure of that. Well, what do you think accountability looks like? You know, if you if you want to try to remin of people feeling like shame and guilt and all that kind of stuff, especially for listeners who feel like, oh I didn't get started and I'm late. You know, what do you think about how to have accountability without being feeling guilty.

24:17 That's a great question for the listeners listening. So I think most importantly you have to lead with empathy. And in my situation, a lot of what I do is driven by experience. So it's driven by the mistakes, it's driven by the trials and tribulations. So I'm not coming from a place of judgment. If you're going through it and explaining it to me, it's probably happened to me or I've experienced it, So you want to lead with empathy. Now, you also want to make sure you let them understand that we're going to be focused on one thing and then when we create a plan, like I said the ed S, we're not just going to do everything all at once. We focus and then we're most importantly going to celebrate those small wins and celebrate them consistently. Because the mind is it's psychologically, it needs reinforcement. So if you were waiting for long periods of time to celebrate, then you're going to feel defeated. But if you're celebrating, probably if you. For instance, I'm working with a client currently and we did a walk through of what it took to make their first trade, and I did it with her and I kind of got distracted. It was a zoom call, and while my head was down, I noticed she was doing it, and then I just heard her saying I did it, and we celebrated. But you could hear the excitement and the happy in her voice

25:48 because we celebrated that win. And then when we got on a call about a week later, she says, I've done that thing you told me to do again, which was placed more trades, and you'd be so proud of me. And in my mind, I'm thinking you would be so proud of you because this is to benefit you. So I think that's the most important thing. When so people understand it's empathy, We create a focus, and then we celebrate those small wings consistently. Right. So, I think that in most cases, people are really driven by habits. I feel like, you know, I have a lot of habits. I try to make sure that those habits are positive, uplifting habits. But what's one habit that you think people should be doing to remain consistent.

26:34 Follow the blueprint? You've created. So now, obviously for most people that will say, well, how do I create that blueprint? That's you can kind of say that's where someone like me comes in, whether it's or whether it's your YouTube university. Just to make sure you have a budget, I always implore people that's where money starts. You have to audit yourself and you have to understand what's coming in and what's going out. So once you start that process of documenting what comes in and what goes out, you have to keep following that because the breadcrumbs will tell you exactly what's happening. You can't be afraid of that because that's always going to be the starting point. Would you say that that's how you help people track progress, then, I mean, because again I want this to be empowering.

27:24 I want this to be encouraging for people and not discouraging. So I think for people looking to track progress, I want you to understand that if you can see progress, you will stay consistent. It goes back to my twenty dollars start. It was automated I put it and to give encouragement. However, you want to see long term that twenty dollars by the time my kids will reach the age of forty would be almost a million dollars. So, like I mentioned, six year, one year. So now I get your mind to think, like, oh my god, it's just twenty dollars a month. So if you can see it, then you will stay consistent and you just need to follow the roadmap. You need to just stay consistent and understand that it will happen as long as you stay on track to what you're doing. Now, give yourself grace.

28:15 There are going to be times that you forget to do things. You don't beat yourself up about it. You pick it up from the next month. For instance, my wife and I have monthly meetings. We have weekly checkings, but we have monthly meetings. We were supposed to have one this Sunday, but she had to work, so we missed that meeting. But we're just going to have a quick check in. Now we're in the first of the month, so we'd have to wait till the end of the month. We're not going to wait till then. We have these weekly checkings to still make sure we're still on track to what we're doing. So communicate with yourself, communicate with your partners, just to make sure that you're on the right track and give yourself grace. We're human, we make mistakes, but just stay at it.

28:56 Yeah yeah, just pick yourself up and keep on going. Yeah, well we have you know, this time always goes so fast. We have about fifteen minutes left. So I want to focus on some systems. Yes, let's talk about some simple systems that listeners can start today. So let's say if someone can only do one thing this month to reduce money stress, what are you going to tell. Give every dollar job before it disappears. We've talked about it earlier, but that's most importantly. One thing that you could do, which is easy. Now you can say, well, how do I get to do that? A simple way is create separate accounts for everything money flow, So what comes in comes in one account. That's something simple you can really do. Because some people have a checking account and everything comes into that. So you create a checking account that everything comes in. You create let's say an expense account where it could just be specifically bills go out, something that could be for savings, and then something for investment.

30:01 Then you have these buckets where specifically things go in and you're able to see them so you know you're making progress rather than everything comes in one, everything starts going out one, and you are confused as to when things go out when things come in. But most importantly, give every dollar a job before it disappears. Right, Yeah, many years ago, I learned, Oh, if you paid monthly, like for car insurance or life insurance or something like that, there's like a monthly fee tacked on. And so if you just save and have a savings like I have a savings account for life insurance, the premium that I pay once a year because the cheapest way to pay it is annually. But before I learned that, you know, I'd have this three thousand dollars bill that would come up and I'd go, oh, of course, you know.

30:55 And so that was when I was much younger than I was, like before I started getting a clue about this. Example is what your bank does with your property taxes or insurance. They put it on ESCRO, so they literally just save it for you every month and they pay once a year. And that's that. You don't think about it and it happens without stress or worry. Yeah. Absolutely, So what would you say, is your minimum effective cash flow set up something simple that still works for real life. What do you think? So, like I said, the separate income account, bill account, spending account, savings and investing. If you create those separate things.

31:38 And I say this because it's worked for me. It worked for me, and then I got married and my wife and I had to put everything together, and everything was coming out of this one account. So even though I was someone who was used to systems and everything, now putting two together just completely confused me all over again. And you start having this anxiety. And I said, you know what, I have to have the same system that I've put in place for me for us. So now we both get to know that it's the same thing, income account, bill account, spending account. Then you have your savings and investing. Simple. Well, I bet you she appreciated that because a lot of times, a lot of times that doesn't happen, a lot of times a spender will marry a savor. Yes, and then it can cause friction because you've got different ideas about how to deal with money. That's another conversation. Yes, So well, so if we have some if we have a beginner here who feels intimidated and is like, oh, I don't know how to do that. What's the easiest on ramp that builds confidence fast? What would you say to that?

32:53 So for beginners, especially if you think about investing, I tell beginners to start with robo investing audo investing simply because it's a starting point. It lets you see what happens without you having to figure out the mechanics of what happens behind the scene. Because a lot of people want to start, then they say, hey, teach me how to do this, So they open their account, they do all these things, and then they start investing in stocks that people told them. A friend says, hey buy this, buy that, do this, do that. They buy it, loses money, they lose interest, and they never do it again. But it's for your future. So if you do these robo advisors like Acorn's Betterment, you still get the same results, which is what you wanted, growth without having to think about how it happens. So I highly encourage people to look into auto investing or robo investing, which is a start, and then as time goes on, when you start seeing the compounding effect, you can learn why that's happening.

33:59 Right. I probably have a little bit of a different take on it. But at the same time, what I also teach people is diversification and to not have everything in one thing, and so that's one of the things that we have taken. We do a lot of academically globally diversified accounts, so sometimes that people don't have an advisor to do that with. Sometimes they'll use index funds. So there's kind of a principle behind that of diversifying widely, because if you spread a wide net, then you're then if something crashes.

34:40 The whole thing with robo investing is it actually invests specifically only in index funds and etf so it gives you gification and it would probably invest in no more than four so that way it goes. So for instance, it'll go latge cap stocks, small and a national medium, so it gives you good diversification and you don't have to start saying I want Apple, I want in video, I want this, So it really does that for you. That's why I said it's a good start where it gets you to your goal and if you become more curious, then you can learn as time goes on. Because of these platforms that I mentioned, send you emails that are breaking simple things down for you for you to understand whilst it's working in the background, so you're not the tinker like me that was day trading and trying to figure it out myself in the early pages.

35:35 Yeah, the problem, one of the problems I've seen with people with day trading is they'll invest in things that they have a bias of familiarity bias where they're familiar with something and they don't really know they don't really know what would be the best thing. And so yeah, I really try to get people not to do day training because because there's just some red flags that come up all the time. Do you have some decision rules that you teach clients so that because sometimes I mean I've seen people who like what I call decision fatigue. Yes, they just it's just overwhelming. So do you have some decision rules that you help teach to clients.

36:23 Yeah, I mean, so the phrase is just really decide once and you keep it, you eliminate fatigue. In this case. Now, to decide once, I have what I call the three c's mindset. There's clarity, confidence, and consistency. You first have to click clarity around why you're doing what you're doing. So simple is why am I investing? It could be I want to retire, I want to buy a home, I'm doing this for my kids. Then you have your clarity as to why you're doing it. Confidence will just come from taking action, opening that account, setting things up. As you're doing you're building confidence. As it's growing, you're building confidence. Consistency is doing it every month, whether it's automatic or if you choose to actually put your time and effort into figuring it out, it's still creating a system.

37:13 Putting it on your calendar on the fifth of every month is when I will do this. So you have to create some level of consistency as to how you're going to do things every month every year for it to compound. So the three c's mindset and once you decide, once automate it and move on. Wow. You know, I hope that we have people that are going to take some action on these things because it makes such a big, huge difference. So if you could give listeners a thirty day from scratch to strategy challenge, what and you broke it down like every week? Yeah, what would the weekly steps be?

37:59 So I'll have something that I call the cash method, which will make it easy for you. Think cash, think money, So it's cash. First is clarity. Week one, you're going to list all your accounts, like we talked about income, expenses. You're going to know your real numbers in one place. That's what you do in the first week and nothing more. Week two is accountability. You're going to set ten to fifteen minutes every week to check in and track your spending and follow your plan that you created in week one. Then in week three you're going to add some level of structure to what you're doing. You're going to set up your money flow. Now we're just set these things up where income goes into the bill account, the bill account goes into expenses, savings, and investing. Once you set up those accounts, you're going to separate everything, and we talked about it, assign every dollar a job. That's what you do in week three. Week four is the h the habits. You're going to automate your bills, your savings, you're investing, and you will make your first investment in this case because we've kind of put everything in place, and then you're going to just stay consistent. So clarity, accountability, structure, habits, cash, as they say, cash rules everything around me. So you're going to just stick with that in week four and you should have a system whereinby after thirty days, you have put something around your financial life or money and you just repeat that. You put that and repeat every month.

39:31 Twelve months go by, and the years go by, and you're going to thank yourself. For it, and you're going to go, WHOA, how about that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, absolutely well. Now, one thing I always say during these episodes is that on my website, on the Ask Good Questions podcast dot com website, I have a place and also I have a place on my Benita Bell Anderson website where I have just downloads and like a play for people to find out more about you, because I think that you have like there's some free tools. Do you want to talk about that real briefly, about the tools that you have for people.

40:15 Yes. So if listeners go to my website which is see Me Fly Money, So see me Fly is spelled CIMI f li money dot com and you forward slash resources. So within there, I have a lot of free resources for people who just want to get started, nothing complex, just the basics, and I keep adding resources. I'll be adding some more resources in there, like a budget template for people that want to get started. But when it comes to investing, the five steps you need to take if you want to invest for your kids, if you want to invest for yourself, just a lot of good resources that are going to be there that would help you get started. Or it's a starting point for a lot of people and it's good information.

41:00 Awesome, Well we will do that. We will make sure that that is there for people to find you if they're accessing and finding that pathway to find you from today's episode, and so anything else to add to this whole system that I hope people take very seriously. Yes, I mean I hope people take it seriously. But at the same time, just understand you're doing this for your future, you're doing this for yourself. Enjoy the process. It's not something that's supposed to Initially there would be a lot of friction, but once you create the systems and you automate everything, life will be good. So life is good. Just enjoy the process and don't stress out too much about it, and just understand why you're doing this, and it's to create freedom, time, freedom most importantly. I know people talk about these things, but it's possible once you release the stress of some of the things that cause it. And in this case, for a lot of us adults, money is a big stressor Yeah. Yeah.

41:59 One thing I've always told people is that if your money's in chaos, typically the rest of your life is in chaos. Right, And if you've got your money handled, then it just seems like everything else flows a lot easier. Yes, definitely, that justice is. A thing, you know, you just got to realize that. Man, start with getting your money under control, and then go out and do the things that will be purposeful for you, that'll have meaning for you. Definitely. Yes, Yeah, it's just so important. So with that, our time is up. Can you believe it? I mean, it always goes so fast, but today.

42:46 We went fast. But I enjoyed it, and hopefully the listeners enjoyed it. But they most importantly took nuggets from it that they would go and implementing their lives and make for better lives for themselves and their families. Yes, so, thank you so much, Cecil for joining me today, and thank you so much for joining us on the Ask Good Questions podcast. We will see you next time. Thank you. Today's episode is over. But we did ask good questions again, didn't. You don't miss out as we broadcast live every Wednesday, six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at w fourcy dot com. Joined Nina Bellanerson next week for more conversations with experts on finances, retirement, behavioral finance issues, health and wellness, and Moore. Until then, remember to ask good questions