The Truth About Money

How do your beliefs about money decide whether you build wealth?

Richard Lowe: Hello, this is Richard Lowe with the Leaders and Their Stories podcast. I’m here with Joel Salomon, and we’re going to discuss his best-selling book, The Nine Money Rules Millionaires Use. He’s also a certified trainer and prosperity coach, so we’ve got a whole gamut of things to talk about.

Joel, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?

How do you go from actuary to professional money manager?

Joel Salomon: Thank you, Richard, so much for having me here today. It’s my honor and truly a pleasure. I am a prosperity coach. I teach people the truth about money, and I have a long history in the financial services industry.

I started my career as an actuary. Richard, I don’t know if you know the difference between an actuary and an accountant. They say an actuary looks at his feet when he talks to you, and an accountant looks at your feet when they talk.

Richard Lowe: Okay.

Joel Salomon: Yeah, thank you for laughing. That was my first joke. FSA, by the way, stands for Fellow of the Society of Actuaries. I went through all the exams, and my work was really boring. I was like, man, if I have to do this the rest of my life, I may just shoot myself.

So I had a lot of fun on the evenings and weekends picking stocks. And I said, man, if I could align my hobby and my career, it wouldn’t be work. It’d be fun.

I reached out to many actuaries on Wall Street, and I got a consensus: don’t change your day job, you’ve got the best job in the country.

In fact, the actuary was on the cover of Forbes magazine in 1993 as the best job in the United States. And I didn’t want to do the job other people thought was best.

So I finally found one actuary who was on Wall Street, and he gave me his path. I followed it, mostly. Fifteen years later, I became a professional money manager. Today I’d love for people to take my long road and turn it into their shortcut, from my lessons learned.

So I’m living my dream. I got a job at Citigroup, a very small bank. You may have heard of it.

Richard Lowe: I’ve heard of it.

Joel Salomon: At the time they had 400,000 employees when I joined. After I left, they had 300,000. I joined in 2008. You may remember.

Richard Lowe: So you left and everybody else left in protest, right?

Joel Salomon: I don’t know if you remember 2008. It was not the best year in the stock market.

Richard Lowe: Oh, what happened in 2008? No, I didn’t know what happened.

Joel Salomon: Yeah, the financial crisis. The market was down 40%. Financial companies were down 57%. And I did manage to make a little bit of money for the Citigroup shareholders that year. They gave me more money to manage the next year, and I did even better, and they gave me even more money.

I might actually still be there today, but there was a law that said banks can’t own hedge funds, and so we were all laid off. That actually gave me the kick in the butt to start my own company.

So I started my own fund, Salomor. By the way, Salomor is named after my daughters: LAUR for Lauren, MOR for Morgan. I swear they were just born yesterday, but they’re 22 and 20.

Are stock options really risk-free?

Joel Salomon: So I started my own fund and was doing really well four years in. I went to a personal development course, and there was a guy standing on stage lying to 200 people, telling them there’s only one way to get rich. And of course, that’s stock options.

Richard Lowe: Of course.

Joel Salomon: He said, you don’t need much time, you don’t need much money, this is how the rich people get rich. Options are essentially risk-free. And I was sick to my stomach.

Day two of the conference, people knew I was a professional money manager, and they were tapping me on the shoulder. Joel, does this make sense? Are options really risk-free?

So I was polite. I waited for him to be done. He was speaking for one hour as a guest speaker. We went outside the auditorium, and I told them, please don’t do this.

I went home that night and I couldn’t sleep. I realized that if I could ever get up the courage to speak on a stage, because my biggest fear at the time was public speaking, I could tell people the truth about money, not lie to them, and be of service as well.

So I commuted into Manhattan and sent an email to my investors giving them their money back. I was shutting down my fund. I’d figured out my true purpose.

Can you have both a meaningful career and financial security?

Richard Lowe: Nice. That’s a very interesting story. Thank you. And you’ve written a book.

Joel Salomon: Yes. My latest book, Your Path to Purpose and Prosperity, is really about the story I just told you, from my perspective. I teamed up with a purpose coach, Jackie Roberge, to write it, because we truly believe that life doesn’t require a trade-off between meaningful contribution and financial well-being.

I think most people believe it does. You know, the whole struggling actor syndrome or struggling artist syndrome: well, if I’m an artist, I have to struggle. But that’s a limiting belief. There are millions and millions of artists making millions and millions of dollars. So it’s a perspective.

Jackie approaches the question through purpose coaching: self-awareness, values, intuition and service. I approach it from prosperity coaching: financial beliefs, which can be limiting or empowering, practical wealth-building strategies, and the possibility of becoming financially free.

When should you start saving for retirement?

Richard Lowe: That’s nice. Now that I’m past retirement age, I never did retire, because I started my own business. I know the importance of focusing on finances when you’re younger, and I didn’t.

Fortunately, I had a 401(k) from the company I worked for, and when I left, I managed to live off it for many years and then use it to help me start my business. But I learned the hard way.

You should start your retirement planning early, like in your 20s. You don’t have to do much. Put 100 bucks a month in the bank to begin with. At least you’ve got the habit, and then raise it as you get more money. And always do it. Never make an excuse, beyond life-threatening stuff, obviously.

And don’t withdraw from it. It’s not intended to be your rainy day fund. It’s your retirement fund.

Joel Salomon: Yeah, I completely agree. I think Einstein said the eighth wonder of the world is compound interest.

Richard Lowe: Yes.

Joel Salomon: My daughter Lauren just graduated from Syracuse University, and she’s working in Manhattan at PNC Bank, 22 years old. I told her to sock away as much as she can. In the 401(k), put in the amount where you get the 100% match, and then invest the rest as you want to.

I think she gets a 3 or 4% match, which is basically a 100% return on your money. So you’ve got to put that in, because you’re guaranteed a 100% return. And then invest in other things you’re interested in and excited about.

She loves stocks, so we talk a lot about different types of stocks. In the book, Your Path to Purpose and Prosperity, I have my whole process, so anybody who wants to learn how to invest in stocks has all of that in there.

What I teach is, don’t do something because somebody’s pushing you to do it. The guy up on stage was pushing people to invest in stock options.

Out of the 200 people in the room, probably three were going to get rich using stock options, if that. The other 197 were going to get rich other ways: their business, real estate, maybe crypto, maybe vending machines.

So I teach to you. You tell me what you’re interested in and excited about. If you want to learn about real estate, I’ll teach you that. If you want to learn about crypto, I’ll teach you that. But you have to come in with the belief and the desire to learn about it.

Is it worth joining a startup advisory board for equity?

Richard Lowe: Something I’ve been pursuing lately: I’ve realized I’m very, very technical. I mean, I’m a writer, but I have 33 years in tech, and I know a lot about everything. So I’m going to some of these startups and offering myself as an advisor, to be added to the advisory board in exchange for stock.

It’s not worth a lot now, and it probably won’t be, but they need four hours a month of somebody to ask questions. What if we do that? What if we do this? What’s the downside? How do we make sure this is legal? I know all that stuff.

So initially I don’t make any money. I spend a few hours, and maybe at some point they become a real company, making money instead of whatever they’re living off now, and I’ve got stock options I can cash out. It’s relatively effortless for me, and it’s a win-win for everybody.

Should cybersecurity report to IT?

Richard Lowe: I really love giving advice. One of them asked me how they should handle cybersecurity. I said the first thing you want to do in cybersecurity is make sure your cybersecurity person is C-level and is on the board.

They asked why I’d want him on the board. Because he needs to be able to override everybody. He needs to be at the board level, and the same with your AI person, and your privacy person if that’s important to you. Put those on the board too, because then they have some weight.

Joel Salomon: Yeah.

Richard Lowe: And never, ever have any of those three report to IT. They’re not IT functions. They’re their own function. If they report to IT, they lose, because there are other projects that always need to be done, and people get taken from them.

They don’t have the authority, and they need the authority to override. If they’re within IT, the head of IT can say, no, we’re going to do this instead, this is more important. But if you have them on the board, they’ve got some weight, and they can make decisions.

Of course, they’re not the decision maker, but at least they’re equal with all the other board members. And AI is one of those that needs to be there now. Free advice for everybody right there. That’s the kind of thing I’ll say on these boards.

The advantage of an advisory role is that I don’t have any fiduciary responsibilities. I’m an advisor who’s been paid in stock.

Joel Salomon: Yeah, I’ve also been asked to advise a fund that’s looking to invest in insurance companies. I’m a former insurance company investor. As I mentioned, FSA means actuary, so most of my investing has been in insurance, because actuaries know the balance sheets of insurance companies pretty well.

These guys were interested in a particular trade, and I have a background in reading the regulatory statements of insurance companies, so I could guide them to where things are and whether it makes sense.

I would just caution you about how much time you want to spend as an advisor. If they’re asking you to spend 30, 40, 50 hours, at some point you have to say, look, my time is valuable, and I need to get paid for it.

Richard Lowe: The contracts I’ve been writing say four to six hours, and anything over that is paid at a certain rate. We have a meeting once a week, we chat, it’s fine. It doesn’t take a lot of my time, and I have a good time.

If they need more, they hire me as a consultant at that point. They know me, they trust me, and it’ll probably lead to some consulting. They’ve already said they could use me here and there and everywhere else. It’s working out really well.

It’s new for me. I’ve never even considered stock in my entire life, but now I am. It’s an effortless way to get my toe wet, see what it is, and then maybe become a billionaire in the stock market. I don’t even know what I’d do with a billion dollars.

Joel Salomon: Well, a lot of people have limiting beliefs about having a lot of money. What I teach my clients is, how cool would it be to have $10 million?

Even if you didn’t need more than one, you could give 9 million away, create a foundation, or give to your favorite charity, and you’d be doing more good in the world.

So that’s what my clients and I do. We do some visualization and some vision boarding, because what if things go really, really well?

When my TEDx talk came out in April 2023, I was giving people my QR code at networking events. Hey, it’s a free talk. Just watch it. Maybe it can help. Who knows? I was really excited, because I’d worked on it for probably 18 months.

I gave the QR code to one woman, and she said to me, I don’t need that. And I’m like, well, okay, just curious, why? And she said, well, I don’t care about money.

I did a whole video series on this, because what I believe is, if you don’t care about something, it doesn’t want to hang out with you. Money is just energy.

Think of money as your friend. If you said to a friend, I don’t care about you, how much are they going to hang out with you? They’re going to find other friends.

So I think it’s important to care. I’m not saying be greedy. I’m saying care about it, because if you don’t, it’s not going to hang out with you.

And why not create more abundance in your life and the lives of your loved ones? Why not create a legacy for your family so they can do more good in the world?

Richard Lowe: It’s sure a lot easier to survive with a few bucks in your pocket than without them.

Joel Salomon: Money creates choices.

Richard Lowe: Yeah, that’s very true. And I learned a lot from my parents, because they did the opposite. They struggled their entire lives. They owned a business, a wildlife gallery and gift shop, and my dad was an artist. And they kept saying it was a failure. They were all stressed out.

And I was thinking, they bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of inventory every year. They had a house. They raised two kids. They lived in Lake Arrowhead, a touristy town.

And they’re complaining that they’re always on the edge. They just weren’t managing their money right. They’ve passed away now, but they just weren’t managing it right.

Joel Salomon: Right.

Richard Lowe: And they were always stressed, so stressed they were giving themselves health problems. I got to look at their finances afterward, and they hadn’t paid the IRS in God knows how long. Property taxes going back 10 years, unpaid. It’s like, okay, you’re making your own stress here.

These things steamroll. They’re like an avalanche. You don’t pay this bill, and another one is due next month, and you don’t pay that one. Then you’ve got three or four bills, and it gets bigger and bigger. Then you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul to pay off some of those loans.

And before you know it, the Ponzi scheme falls apart, and you don’t have any money anymore, because it’s all going to credit or interest.

When is using a credit card a good idea?

Joel Salomon: Yeah, that’s the biggest thing. I just did a short video for somebody’s community called Is Credit Good or Bad? There’s a really negative connotation to credit, which I understand, and it makes sense, because a lot of people are borrowing money on their credit card and then going on vacation.

Richard Lowe: Or Disneyland. I just saw a video series on people who go to Disneyland and spend $30,000 each trip, and they go three times a year, until they can’t charge anything more on their credit card. How could you spend $30,000 on a trip to Disneyland? Why would you do that?

Joel Salomon: Right. Especially if you’re not getting a return on the investment. Look, if you’re an influencer and you’re making $90,000 from the videos when you go, then great. But if it’s just a cost and you’re charging it and then paying 25% interest on it, that’s a very bad use of credit.

I gave an example in The Nine Money Rules Millionaires Use, and I think in Your Path to Purpose and Prosperity as well.

In 2008 there was a guy at Citigroup in the office right next to mine. At the end of November or early December, he came into my office and asked, so what are you doing?

And I said, well, we’re making money this year. We’re taking the risk down, so we know we’re going to be positive for the year.

He said, no, no, what are you doing with your personal money? I said I was managing it very carefully. And he said, well, I just maxed out all my credit cards.

I’m like, what? He said, I’m borrowing on everything I possibly can, because things are going to go one of two ways. Either the financial system collapses in the next six weeks, or we’re going to recover. And if we recover, I’m going to make 10 times my money.

Nine months later, he had made about five times his money. He borrowed $200,000 on his credit cards, made a million, and paid back the 200,000, so he had $800,000. Look, that’s a good use of credit. If you can borrow at 20% and make 80% or 100%, that’s a very good use of credit.

But most people aren’t borrowing on their credit cards and making a 20, 50 or 100% return. So for most people, credit is bad, because they’re not looking at what they’re going to earn on the money they’re borrowing.

Is insurance an investment?

Richard Lowe: When my wife was sick and finally passed away, I was stuck with several hundred thousand dollars on my credit card from the medical bills. I managed to negotiate it down to under $10,000, but at the time that was still a lot of money to have on a credit card, with several other problems.

So there are times when you have to use credit, because you need to do what you need to do. But it was very uncomfortable for a few years pulling out of that hole, plus all the grief on top of it. That was 20 years ago.

Fortunately, I had insurance, and that’s one of the things I’ve found: insurance is a good investment. It really is an investment, because you’re investing in risk. Do you want to take this risk or not?

I don’t buy insurance on TVs. A big screen costs 300 bucks now. I’m not going to pay 50 bucks to insure it. If it breaks, I buy a new one.

But I do get insurance on my car, because if I hit something, I need my car. I consider it an investment in my own well-being and the risks that are part of life.

But you have to manage that too. How much risk do you want to pay for? My homeowner’s insurance has the standard property coverage, but it also has living expenses.

I’m in Florida, so if there’s a hurricane or something, it covers me in a hotel or another apartment for six months. If there’s a disaster, I want to be put up somewhere.

Joel Salomon: Right, very important. Being practical is very important. And having a dream is important too, believing in where the business is going and where your investments are going.

So what we talk about is overcoming the fear, the doubt and the limiting beliefs that can interfere with a person’s willingness to earn, receive, retain and grow money.

Richard Lowe: And what I do is write books to help people deliver their message to their audience the way they want it delivered. That’s my dream. I just love it. I love taking your voice, putting it in a book, and having you look at it and go, yeah, that’s my voice.

And then you show it to other people, and they go, yeah, this sounds like you and has all your information. That’s such a rush, to be able to do that over and over again for half a dozen clients and half a dozen books per year. Just keep that squirrel cage going.

What is a financial freedom number?

Joel Salomon: The cycle going, yeah. So in Your Path to Purpose and Prosperity, Jackie goes through all the purpose material, and I go through the prosperity. We have a philosophical foundation we created called the creating prosperity process, and there are three pieces to it.

The first is being aware and assessing where you are right now: defining what financial freedom means to you. For me, it means doing what I love with the ones I love, for as much or as little time as I want, where I want to do it.

Which, by the way, is all over the globe, because I can coach people just like this. That gives me the freedom to travel.

So the first step is really the financial freedom number. It’s in the book too, so you can fill out your financial freedom number.

And for anybody watching or listening to this podcast, I do a complimentary financial fear to financial freedom breakthrough call. Fill out the financial freedom survey in the book, jump on my calendar, and we’ll get on a call.

How do childhood beliefs about money affect you as an adult?

Joel Salomon: That call examines your beliefs, like the way you talked about your parents. Growing up is a big part of your beliefs. Whether you know it or not, you learned through osmosis from your parents how they lived with money: savings, investing, risk tolerance, wealth beliefs.

All of that came in, whether you know it or not, and unless you’ve reprogrammed yourself, you still have those beliefs from age seven.

Richard Lowe: I’ve spent a lot of effort finding those things and, where I can, changing them. Sometimes they’re hard to confront. You get into that: that’s not me. Where did it come from?

I don’t care, that’s not me. And then I realize it’s something my mom said or my dad said, or something my dad did, and I don’t want to do that.

They were always tight with money, always. And my dad would use credit to get my mom out of depression, because of the dopamine response. He’d buy a lot on credit. And I used to do the same thing, not anymore, buying a lot on credit to get myself out of depression.

Joel Salomon: Yeah.

Richard Lowe: And I don’t do that anymore, because I found that’s what Dad was doing. He was buying her a new couch or antiques or whatever it was, so at least temporarily she wasn’t depressed.

Joel Salomon: To make her happy. Yeah, I get it. Completely get that. And that created some behaviors.

I was brought up with: we can’t afford that. Money doesn’t grow on trees. That’s too expensive. You’ve got to work really, really hard to be rich and successful. Or my favorite: Joel, we’re not shareholders of the Long Island Lighting Company, shut that light off. Just fear-based scarcity thinking.

I think 99% of the population is brought up that way. It didn’t serve me, and it doesn’t serve them. And then the question is, what do you associate money with?

My parents fought about money. There was one fight I remember when I was 10 or 11, my mom left the house, and I thought she wasn’t coming back. She did.

So what do you associate money with? Anxiety, arguments and scarcity, or generosity, safety and possibility? Most people are looking at the former. The goal is to identify the inherited assumptions and then shift them into something more positive, a higher vibration.

What are the money personality types?

Joel Salomon: The other thing we do in the book is the whole money personality type survey, so you can figure out your money personality type. There are seven different tendencies, and the acronym is Sugar Pie.

S stands for splurger, U is unconscious, G is greedy, A is the accumulator or saver, and then there’s the protectionist, the investor and the egotist.

By the way, Richard, these names are provocative to sell books. And you don’t have just one. You’re pieces of all of them. The protectionist is like the extreme saver, the person who puts the money under the mattress.

Joel Salomon: So we have people fill out the survey, and then you can see where you are on the spectrum.

I’ve done this with hundreds and hundreds of people over the last five years, and sometimes it’s surprising. Oh, wait, I’m the unconscious one? Oh, yeah, that’s true, I don’t really look at my bank account much.

Or you’ve got the protectionist, who’s scared of putting their money in a savings account at the bank.

Richard Lowe: Right.

Joel Salomon: So that’s phase one, the awareness and the assessment. Phase two is transforming the beliefs we found and making them more empowering.

Like I say, we don’t have to go back to 1995 and debug every line of code from that time. We just instill the empowering beliefs. You don’t need to know every single old one.

A lot of people have these thoughts going on in their heads all day: that’s too expensive, I can’t afford that. It’s a tape that plays from parents or teachers or peers.

I have a really powerful phrase in the book to keep you from going down the rabbit hole: stop, cancel, clear, get the fear out of here.

Stop, cancel, clear, get the fear out of here. You can use the other F word. I won’t judge.

Richard Lowe: On a related subject, you were talking about beliefs instilled by your parents. I had a nasty one, not related to money, just as an example.

I got upset when people said they loved me. I actually got upset, and I worked it backward, and I realized that every time my dad said he loved me, he would hit me.

Joel Salomon: Oh.

Richard Lowe: He would say, I’m doing this because I love you. It’s no wonder that got implanted. And once I found it, it was gone. It was like, yeah, that’s what happened. Love got associated with pain.

Joel Salomon: Yeah.

Richard Lowe: Fortunately, I didn’t carry that forward. But it did make it difficult to be in relationships.

And there are lots of these about money. We’ll never have enough money. We can’t be rich. Rich people are awful people. Those are some.

Joel Salomon: Rich people are criminals. If I’m a spiritual soul, I should be okay with just getting by.

Richard Lowe: God will protect us. God will make sure we have what we need. It’s all part of God’s plan. There was all that stuff. I don’t think God wants people to be poor. I think God wants people to succeed and be happy.

Joel Salomon: I believe prosperity is your birthright.

Richard Lowe: Yeah, but you can throw it away.

Joel Salomon: Absolutely, yeah.

Richard Lowe: So all of these things, literally all of them, I think, are embedded in your childhood. They come forward from your parents, and it’s your job as a thinking being not to pass them forward to your children.

That means you have to know what they are, and you stop yourself. You go, wait, where did that come from? And it usually comes to mind right away. Oh, yeah, my dad used to give my mom stuff so she wouldn’t be depressed. That’s what I’m doing.

Should you diversify your investments?

Joel Salomon: Yeah, makes sense. So I went through the first two phases of the creating prosperity process. The third phase translates the mindset work into two practical tracks: the investing track and the business track.

People watching this are probably mostly on the business track. So we talk about offers, pricing, referrals, the basics of sales and marketing, having an aligned sales conversation, and revenue-generating activities.

Obviously the book is just the start of how to grow the business, and if you want a lot more detail, we can get on calls.

The idea is figuring out which direction. You can do both. If you’re excited about investing, go that path. If you’re excited about business, take that path. I’m obviously excited about both, so I do both.

And rule number nine of The Nine Money Rules is don’t diversify. What that means is don’t put your money into a thousand different things. Be more concentrated, five to ten. I’m okay with having multiple passive incomes. That’s awesome. I’m not saying have one, but I’m saying don’t have 30.

Richard Lowe: Right. You can only do what you can do.

Joel Salomon: What I say is, where focus goes, energy flows. So you want to be more focused, on two, three, five things, rather than a hundred things.

Richard Lowe: Yep. Well, we’re getting near the end of the show. Do you have anything you’d like to say to our listeners before we hang up?

Joel Salomon: I’d like to end with hashtag doubt the doubt. Have faith in the dream. Don’t have faith in your doubt.

Richard Lowe: Of course.

Joel Salomon: If you’re in business, it’s not going to be absolute flow, more flow every month. You’re going to have to deal with the ups and downs. So when there’s not so much flow, have faith in the dream. Don’t give up.

Richard Lowe: Exactly. I agree. Well, thank you for coming on the show. This has been Leaders and Their Stories. I’m Richard Lowe, and I usually have two or three of these a week, so stay tuned. There’ll be more, and we’ll have some equally fascinating guests. Thank you very much.

Joel Salomon: Thanks, Richard.

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