Financial Regulation: Building Wealth from Calm, Clarity & Values

What if financial planning wasn’t about chasing a number—but about designing a life that actually feels aligned?

In this episode of The FitZen Project, I’m joined by Mike Milligan, author, Certified Financial Planner®, and Founder of 1 Oak Financial—a firm dedicated to helping pre-retirees and new retirees build intentional, values-driven financial futures.

As part of the FitZen Regulation Series, this conversation explores financial regulation through the lens of conscious leadership. Mike challenges the traditional obsession with “Return on Investment” and instead introduces a more grounded, human approach he calls “Return on Life.”

We talk about money as energy, clarity, and stewardship—and how financial decisions are deeply influenced by the nervous system, self-trust, and personal values. Rather than chasing a generic number or timeline, Mike shares how to design a financial plan that supports your unique life purpose, seasons, and capacity.

In this episode, we explore:

• Financial regulation and why calm creates better money decisions
• The shift from Return on Investment to Return on Life
• Money as energy management, not j

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Mike Milligan Journey: From Struggles to Success
• 6:21 Embracing Opportunities: The Power of Mentorship
• 8:35 Building a Financial Firm: Lessons from the Ground Up
• 14:14 Educating the Next Generation: Financial Literacy for All
• 22:18 The Importance of Financial Planning: Strategies for Success
• 32:32 Creating a Culture of Care: Leadership and Team Dynamics
• 40:26 Navigating Financial Relationships: When to Seek a Second Opinion
• 45:38 Accessible Financial Education: Courses and Community Engagement

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:02

Hello and welcome. Welcome back to the FitsIn Project. Or if this is your first time visiting, welcome to the FitsIn Project. I hope you come on in, grab yourself a drink, maybe a cup of coffee, and enjoy some conversations that we are going to be having today. The Fits in Project, where we love talking about yoga, mindset, and energy management. This is all creators and conscious leaders. So I know you're in the right place, and you know you are too. But today is super cool because I'm interviewing Mike Milligan. He is the founder of One Oak Financial, and he wrote the book One of a Kind Life. He is such an awesome guy. You'll love the conversation. And he's going to give us some tips and tricks on how to stay conscious with our monies as we move into our new year, our blank slate, our blank canvas, so he says within the podcast. So I know you're going to love our conversation. It's absolutely needed for this time of year. It's needed for every season of life. This is a conversation that is timeless. Let's put it, let's leave it at that. So without further ado, welcome Mike. All right, Mike, we're here. Remember when I was talking to you, what was it, two weeks ago or so?

SPEAKER_00: 1:36

Yeah, I was walking in Puerto Rico on the streets of Avenue Ashford.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40

Yeah, just having a good day. Got rained on.

SPEAKER_00: 1:43

I was a little behind, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:48

I would love for you to take us through a journey, the Mike Milligan journey.

SPEAKER_00: 1:52

I mean, truth be told, I'm an author, a podcast host, an adjunct lecturer. I have founded uh uh um eight-figure financial planning firm, and yet I failed English my senior year in high school my last quarter there.

SPEAKER_01: 2:11

No way. Did you just like not care or did you try?

SPEAKER_00: 2:15

A little bit of senioritis, but it was also a little bit of entitlement. I was not, I'm not very good with the English language, just based off where I where I grew up. It's ironic because I'm also learning Spanish now. I'm not even good at English. But the interesting part of all that is I really just that little story I tell is because I came from what most people would say is nothing, right? We didn't have we didn't have bank accounts or 401ks or IRAs. And here I am managing people with$100 million,$150 million, putting deals together that are 10 figures, writing a book that's an Amazon bestseller, teaching people about personal financial planning, principles and ethics of financial planning, helping the next generation move to become certified financial planners. It's all, it's not a joke. It's just like my I feel like my story is a story of you could do anything. And I don't even think my story is more than just an average story when it's all said and done. I mean, I'm not Elon Musk, I'm not Jeff Bezos, I'm not Steve Jobs, I'm not Mark Zuckerberg, I'm just a guy that has been able to tell good stories and and I work hard. I mean, I work really hard, Rachel. And part of that work is uh is to help people live a one-of-a-kind life. It's something that I believe in. I feel like I live it, and I want other people to to just stop and relax and realize that this is this is something special that we're doing on earth. I mean, it's we we have a we have a place that no other species, no other living thing has. We control our future, we control our destiny. For the most part, we're not being hunted for food. We are at the top of the species and we control like where we are. If your situation is bad, change it. If you if you don't have enough money, work harder. If you don't feel like you have opportunity, find a mentor. If you don't know something about money, take a course, right? It's just the greatest time to live, and we as a people have the greatest opportunity to be whoever we want to be.

SPEAKER_01: 4:25

Gosh. Okay. Podcast is over. That was awesome. No, that was it is not over. I really loved every single bit of that. So yeah, resonate with that 100%.

SPEAKER_00: 4:37

It is, I mean, that's a message that has just become clearer and clearer to me. You know, we're recording this right at the end of the year, and people are reflecting on what their year was like and what their year is to come, and it's a blank slate. I mean, there's there's nothing in 2026 that you can't have, you can't do, and you can't become. I follow this guy, Alex Ramosi, who, you know, he's the hundred billion dollar guy, right? Acquisition.com. I think a lot of people out there follow him and Layla's journey of like being broke in 2017 to now be worth nine figures, right? Nine years later. And uh he, I just read one of his posts that he takes the last two weeks of the year off. And one of the things he does is he just dreams. He plans and he dreams. And he finds that one thing that he wants to do in the next year that's just going to be transformative. Now, he can do that, right, because he has a hundred million dollars. Right. He's not, you know, unless there's a bunch of smoke and mirrors there, he doesn't have a mortgage that is suffocating or credit card debt that's out of control, or, you know, more days in the month than money in the checking account. He doesn't, he doesn't live like that, but he did in the past. And uh, and I mean he he is a success story. And there's just there's a lot of them out there. And like what we all need is just more inspiration around us, right? We need to get our circle full of people who have done what we want to do. And when we do that, we can uh we can then overcome about anything.

SPEAKER_01: 6:16

Yes, buddy, absolutely. I feel that in my soul. Uh this year specifically, 2025, joined mentorship for the very first time that I've ever done that. And it was, it has been a life changer for me in and of itself. I mean, that's why I have this podcast, it's why I'm now like confident in my fits in yoga and how to run retreats. Like I've never did that before. And now, like, put me as a keynote. I got you. You know what I mean? Yeah, I do believe that we have this unique gift and this power to really manage our energy and where we're going with it. I mean, 2026 is like you said, it's a clean slate.

SPEAKER_00: 7:03

Right. And it's and it's and it's uh when you when you come into it with a clean mind, clean thought, a clean blank paper, and you lay out what you want to do, uh, you have to be bold in what you want to do also. Like for some people, being bold is gonna be I'm in$75,000 in credit card debt and I'm gonna pay it off and only make$60,000 a year, right? I'm gonna find a way to do this. That's a bold declaration. You know, where there's a will, there's a way, there's a process to everything. And it you sometimes just have to get really disciplined in order to be there. A disciplined life does not mean you're not having fun. It means that it means that you find fun out there because you've taken care of what needs to be taken care of. So it's uh it's almost like the practice of yoga, right?

SPEAKER_01: 7:51

Yeah. Very much, very much so. So you've got this uh one of a kind financial firm. You're one oak. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 8:00

All right.

SPEAKER_01: 8:01

Yeah. So what how did you even arrive here? And you know, you said you came from what most people would consider nothing. What was the tipping point for you to turn your success story into a success story?

SPEAKER_00: 8:16

I mean, I tell the story of my grandmother so often. Like when I was 11, her the love of her life got cancer. He was also the breadwinner. She stayed at home, she raised kids, she cooked dinners, made sure everybody was well fed, cleaned the house, raised grandkids. She was the one going to pick us up from school, take us two places. That cancer diagnosis changed her life uh in a in a way that she did not want. In her world, they would have lived into their 90s together. Uh, but her world was shattered because when she was 64, she was suddenly alone in life. Uh, and so she had to do what she had to make money for herself. She became an entrepreneur on innovation. I just happened to go along that journey with her because she needed somebody to help her sell the collared sandwiches that she was going to make a living off of. She needed somebody to help her count money. She needed a partner. She needed somebody who would who would uh encourage her in the bad times, pay her bills with her. Right. I remember just being in the car with her where we would go sell collared sandwiches and we would stop at Bell Atlantic on the way and pay the phone bill. That was three months late. I remember doing the same thing where we paid the electric bill. That was a couple months late. And she was like, Yeah, it's good. Let's go do that tomorrow. Right. And so I learned what an entrepreneur was. I did not know how to spell that word, but I learned what it was. I learned that it involved hustle. I learned it involved that you sell something with love and you treat people with respect. And uh, I just kind of continued that on and I went to college, got a bachelor's degree and a master's degree. First one in my family to get both. I turned that into a Wall Street bank banking job. I turned where I was a wealth management associate. Like, I mean, I came from nothing, right? And my first, my first job when I was 23 year old, 23 years old is I was managing a portfolio of$760 million for two major cities in the United States. Like I had I had no clue. I mean, those are just numbers on the paper, right? I have no idea. I I don't know what that money is. Like I still don't feel like I know what that money is, but I was managing it. And uh I just I learned by being in those banks what's uh what banking was, like who it benefits. I learned that client stories get lost, right, in systems and in account numbers. I feel like their dreams get pushed down in favor of fees and profits, and uh decided in 20 uh 13 to go independent, right? To be to be an independent voice in the industry to help clients, to take the clients who did not mind going on that journey with me. I think of like Steve and Doug and Valerie and Maureen and Orchid and take these people who took a chance on me when I decided to go independent. And when I went independent, um they just asked why and who are we gonna work with? They trusted me enough to now we manage a firm that's got, you know, we work with an investment manager that's got over four billion dollars of investments. You know, we manage on a daily basis, you know, nine figures for clients. But the thing that I really enjoy about who I am today is that I get about as much joy out of educating people, seeing the people who don't know what a 401k is or an IRA, they don't know what a mutual fund is, they don't know what, you know, life insurance or disability insurance, they don't know that their budget should have some percentages tied to it. I love seeing people, the aha moments of financial planning. And I uh because so many people, and uh Rachel, you probably even heard of this like in your mastermind. And when you get a community, communities that always talk about growth, they always talk about upmarket. They always like, how can we get to that next level of client? But anytime that you upmarket, you are leaving behind people that really need the help. And the reason you're leaving them behind is because they can't afford your services. They can't, they can't get you where you want to be. And uh, I have just been so blessed over almost 30 years of my academic and professional life that my firm, One Oak Financial, upmarkets, right? We, I'm not gonna say that the One Oak Financial doesn't work with people who have a hundred and plus million dollars, that people who have multiple millions of dollars, because we do. But me personally, I want to educate people who are just getting started, right? That's why I teach at a university. That's why I have my personal financial planning class. That's why I wrote the book, The One of a Kind Financial Plan, because I want to make it approachable for people. I want people to understand that uh they don't have to settle for something. They have these opportunities because I want them one day to take themselves up market and be so desirable to these big firms that they could say no to them. I don't need you. I did this on my own, right? This is this is my success. And you don't get to profit off the success I have. Right. I I I did this. That's that's really what wakes me up and gets me out of bed every day, dude.

SPEAKER_01: 13:28

That is so cool. I mean, you're wanting to give back to like the uneducated in such a this isn't just like someone who is already in their masters or has everything like money situated where they know X, Y, and Z already, but you're bringing it down to a level to actually make a difference and an impact on, let's face it, less more than 50% of Americans, really. I mean, you can really make an impact on such a vulnerable topic, too.

SPEAKER_00: 14:02

There was a there was a book that was made popular, I think, around like 2002 or 2001. It was called The Billionaire Next Door. And it talked about like what billionaires in America look like. They drove old F-150s, they saved slow, they invested in their company 401k plan, they paid off their mortgage, and they didn't look like doctors and lawyers and Wall Street bankers and all this, right? They didn't, they didn't fly private jets. You know, now if you want to see what a millionaire looks like, go to Instagram or TikTok and see people faking like they're millionaires. But the interesting thing about that millionaire next door, the stats have shifted dramatically, right? The the number of millionaires who do not have high school degrees has gone to very low single digits. So, like education now equates wealth. There's a lot of people who, I mean, if you didn't graduate high school, like if you didn't graduate high school 40 years ago, you could have a very good job. Carpenter, electrician, apprentice role, right? You build stuff. You build, you save, you have a house, things go up in value, you become a millionaire. Now those folks are left behind. High school degrees only less than like 3% of people who only have a high student school degree or millionaires, bachelor's degree less than like 27%. You know, it's the people with master's and postdoctorate and advanced certifications. Those are where the millionaires go. But the reason they're millionaires is because they've had education along the way. They understand about time value of money and compounding and automating the discipline of automation of saving, dollar cost averaging. You understand how to the difference between investing and saving. You understand that, you know, the biggest risk to your money while you're earning it and saving it is things like getting in a car wreck, you know, having a house burn down, losing your job temporarily because of a disability. That's what robs kind of people of their wealth while they're building it, is these emergencies that can be planned for, but you have to be educated on how to plan for them. You take a little bit of money today to protect what you're building for the future. That's where that's where I want to make sure people understand that they have they have a place that they can go, a safe place they can go that's that's not taught at like a master's or a doctorate level. It's common sense financial planning that's taught. That's why I do the the educate program, the personal financial planning as part of my everyday work.

SPEAKER_01: 16:35

Yeah. That makes I mean that makes it accessible to your average person. I know when I started out, I worked with uh, or I still have my same financial planner, but I worked with him about 11 years ago, I think is when we started together. And I had I was able to give him like$25 a month. And that was it. But he put it in this portfolio that now I give over$500 a month to, like for these specific things. And it's just growing, growing, growing. And now I have a second thing for my son for if something were to happen and how that went. But I would have never known that. Like starting something so small, how it can turn into something so big, where it does make a total shift in perspective. Like he said, if you have an emergency that robs you of your wealth.

SPEAKER_00: 17:33

Albert Einstein says the eighth wonder of the world is compound interest. Because if you look at it like, you know, an eight percent return over 10 years means that your money is going to double, a little bit more than double. Like if you really know the rule of 72, it doubles like in year nine. But by year 20, you get almost two and a half doubles. By year 30, on an 8% return, you're you've gotten almost four doubles. And by year 40, you've gotten almost five, right? The way money, the way money moves, the longer you have money invested, the way longer you leave it for the future, the bigger the numbers go. The the hard the hardest the hardest number to get is uh Tom Hegan is also a friend of mine. He wrote a book called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. And he says that there's two there's two things that prevent people from being millionaires. He says it's divorce and car loans.

SPEAKER_01: 18:29

Divorce and car loans.

SPEAKER_00: 18:30

He said, because a car is a depreciating asset that when you pay make the loan, by the time you get the car paid off, the asset's worth almost nothing. And because it's worth almost nothing, that means you got to buy something else. He said so he always pays for cars and cash. And that's become more of a more of a uh more of a philosophy over the last five or ten years.

SPEAKER_01: 18:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 18:51

That's why use car prices have stayed so high. But it's become more of a philosophy. And people are are buying more into that now than what they did before. But uh, and then he just he he then shows the math between becoming a millionaire. And like one of the things that we ask our clients is if they started at zero or they're in the personal financial planning class and they're in their 20s, even 30s, and they say I want to be a millionaire. We're like, how many? Like, how many millions do you want? I mean, I can show you how to get there. I can show you how much you have to save or you have to invest. I can show you how to get to three, four, five. Because it's a math, it's just a math problem. That's all it is. And then it's the discipline of actually putting money aside. That's what's lost today in the financial planning side. It's it's how can I get money? How can I, how can I keep money from Uncle Sam? I mean, taxes are the biggest expense you're ever going to pay in your life, but if you're investing with that sole purpose in mind to save taxes, you end up leaving wealth on the table. It's a balancing approach between both of 'em.

SPEAKER_01: 19:52

That's yeah. What would you advise for like a first day person? I mean, is there even any Help. Let's say you're in your 40s. Is there any hope in in your financial wealth?

SPEAKER_00: 20:05

Well, the best time to plant an apple tree was 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_01: 20:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 20:08

The next best time is today. Like if you want fruit, like if you want something to happen in your life, you have to get busy making it happen. And if you and if you didn't plant that tree 20 years ago, but you still want to make apple pies in the future, you got to plant that tree. Or you're going to be buying those forever, right? You're going to be buying apples forever. And apples that you buy are more expensive than apples that you grow. So it is the same thing with money. Like if you're going to, if you're going to rent your whole life, you're paying somebody else's debt off, right? If you're going to, if you're going to, there's nothing wrong with working for somebody over your life. But if you're not proactively pushing for yourself to get raises, I mean, I have 21 employees in my company and like annual, our annual reviews are somewhat stressful for everybody because I tell everybody, you know, tell me what you're worth, tell me what you accomplished to advocate for yourself. Because, and then, and then among the team, advocate for yourself among the team, because we're in a revenue generating business together. And if that person is not generating their revenue, that means you're not getting paid, also. So if you're a support person, get them revenue generating more. And so we have this or we have this culture in our company where we're open and honest about what we make because everybody profits off the gross revenue. Not many companies have that. We have all of our employees and they're our employees have friends who say, When can I come work with your company? Because there's an energy and there's a there's a vibrancy to what we do because everybody is bought in. We just we're going through a budget time in our company right now and everybody is saying, man, why are we spending on this or that? Because what they see is if we spend that dollar, we can't give it out in salaries. So there's a there's an equal, but they also see if we spend this dollar, we can make two more dollars. And by making that extra dollar, now we have that out for our company. But I would tell people that are just starting out, if you don't have money saved, but you still have years of income left, your greatest asset is your ability to make money. And uh then just don't live off all of it. Find a budget, cut, right? Things that are not there. I'm not telling you not to go on vacation. Maybe you don't fly first class when you go on vacation. Maybe instead of going to Disney World, you go to heroins or right or Busch Gardens. Maybe instead of going on a 12-day cruise, you go on a five-day cruise, right?

SPEAKER_01: 22:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:31

You can make it fun. Maybe instead of going on a vacation, you do a stay staycation. Maybe you live in a town and you don't even know the history of your town. Go to history of town. I remember my kids were young. We we did kind of a stay vacation, staycation where every day, like within two or three miles, we went out and found the most interesting thing. We found the world's largest frying pan. It was about three hours from our house. And my kids just thought it was the coolest thing. We drove like three hours, had a picnic lunch, buy the world's largest frying pan. Insane, right? But but the kids, they were they were three, seven, and eleven. They thought it was the coolest thing in the world, right? And they're like, what are we doing tomorrow? Right. And it was, you know, and it cost us gas money.

SPEAKER_01: 23:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 23:10

And it was uh it was a really cool thing to do.

SPEAKER_01: 23:12

That's super fun tips. I have a uh friend, he runs his own insurance company, and he's super um savvy, money savvy, and he spreads these little nuggets like this across his social media all the time. But that was one of the things. It was like you're not broke all the time, you're just spending beyond your means, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 23:32

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 23:33

Tailor back a little bit.

SPEAKER_00: 23:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 23:37

So with your thing too, you also mentioned within your corporate culture that you've got going on, there's a little bit there of some conscious leadership skills as well, right? And you want to talk into more of that piece?

SPEAKER_00: 23:52

I do tell my comp the people of my company that there's not a job any of you do that I haven't done before. And it's true, like everybody who's been hired is kind of an evolution of me like cutting myself up to do what's been done, but I want them to do it better than I ever did it. And uh, I do believe that people come first as a leader. If you can't love the people you work with and you genuinely care about their growth, their future, I mean, as a financial professional, right? The easiest thing I could do is just say, here's a retirement account, good luck. Or I could meet with them every quarter and say, this is what the growth you need to do. And it takes 15 minutes, 20 people, right? It's a lot of time, it's five hours. But if I can't treat them right with their financial plan, first of all, do I have the right to ask anybody else to be my client? From a from a leadership standpoint, I genuinely, if I educate the community, I should also be educating my employees. So everybody in my company has taken the personal financial planning class, right? That's though everybody has read the one of a kind financial planning book. Everybody engages on like the podcast and all social media and the education tools that we put out, we collaborate on that. Um, and then we always slow down and we try to do what's right for the clients as if they were my grandmother, my first client. You know, for me personally, they didn't they didn't know Granny Elizabeth, but they know her through me. If I see, you know, Deborah walking in and she has a retirement income need, and I I want to get to know her like I knew Granny Elizabeth in a way that says, Well, I think you need 4,300. You think you only need 3,000, I think you need 4,300 because I think you need to spoil yourself a little bit. You know, I think you do need to travel because I know from history, I know from doing this for 30 years, that 15 years from now, your world's gonna really slow down. If you're still living, right? You're not gonna be able to go do this stuff. Go do it now because time will ultimately slow you down. And so, like, we just try to treat people like they're our clients. And so my team is an offshoot of me. They hear me talk, we do joke a lot, we uh but they all have goals and dreams. Like Eric, who's based in Wisconsin, he wants to provide the next, like a really great life for his kids and Melissa, his wife. And uh Marcus down in Midland has got he's got some, you know, he's got some college athletes coming through high school right now. They're just not college athletes yet, right? They're they're in development to be college athletes. He was a NCA basketball champion himself, but so his kids have the genes to go do this. So I want him to have the ability to go watch them play basketball at two o'clock on a Tuesday. You know, that that meeting that you would have had is not as important as seeing AJ on the basketball court against Odessa High School. Go go watch that. You know, when it's like when Liz's kids, Hayes, you know, the daycare calls because he's got the crud again, right? Go go pick Hayes up. Put him on the Zoom call. Our clients love seeing Hayes on Zoom calls, right? Let's let's let's let's create this. Let's call we have a culture of people first. We used to say family first, but then when you get to be so big, right? I don't know everybody intimately and deeply in the company, like I did like maybe the first three, four, five people in the company. I don't have time to like go out for everybody's birthday and do that. So it's people first, right? We're gonna make sure people are treated with respect and dignity and that they know that their goals are valued. Then then we're gonna take care of our clients next, just like we would Grady Elizabeth.

SPEAKER_01: 27:15

That's so cool. I mean, the fact that you even know some of your kids or some of your people's kids' names is really awesome and the sports teams that they play on. But I think that is amazing.

SPEAKER_00: 27:30

We we we we also we also love dogs in our company. And uh we all I think I think seven or eight of us have rescue dogs. And the numbers grow, and I think we have a couple cat people. We have we kind of like uh I think Caitlin got, or I think actually Kelsey got her dog first from a rescue, and then Caitlin got Biddy, and it was just the greatest thing for Caitlin. And Biddy is a dog that comes in the office and runs around. We just found out today, like we got a rescue dog. It's our third dog. We just found out today what she actually is. Like we did a DNA test to find out what she is, and she's like 31% this and 26% this. And it's kind of crazy to see what like what your dog is, but that's fun, man.

SPEAKER_01: 28:10

So do you have like a formula that you would advise? Like if someone's saving, let's say, what do you do? Uh formula like five percent would be towards your life insurance or your fund money is 10%. What would be great? I just wanted to take a minute to give a little pause. So in the show notes, you're gonna see a few things. There's some things I'm affiliated with, as far as like yoga clothes or yoga mat and or uh memberships to other mentors, but there's also something that I'm providing you for free that I created myself that can help you set up your own financial goals or your own new year plans, or it is something as small as getting through a day, and it is starting with tiny steps and moving into bigger directions. And that's basically how all of this works. I would love for you to dive in to the show notes and pick out the fits into prioritize quadric. That is something that I made that will help you identify how you're spending your time, where you want to spend your time, and then identify the little changes in between that you can make to drop what no longer serves you to move into how you actually want to be spending your time. And it's just tiny little micro movements that you can make if you follow the quadrant all the way through. It's a simple PDF that we can email to you when you ask for it and sign up for it. It's automatically subscribing you to my newsletter as well, so you kind of get a two-fur, which is awesome. The newsletter is so much fun, it's a way for me to personally connect to my community, it's my voice, and it's a way for you to also reply back to me personally. And we can have conversation through email, or if you are wanting to be part of the podcast and be part of the show, it's also a way for you to connect with me that way. So, either way, take a second, pause, go down to the show notes, look for the fits in quadrant, and get one for yourself today so you can start making the big changes that you envision for yourself for the years and days and moments to come.

SPEAKER_00: 30:25

Let's break it down, let's break it down a little bit further than that first before we stalk about saving. Let's go like to like your budget, but you always have to pay yourself first. Yeah. You know, not to get religious, right? Because, you know, you probably have people who are deep in their faith here listening, people that are not. But some people would say you give to your church first, right? But I just say you pay yourself first. So you pay your future self what you're worth. And so that number is typically between 10 and 15%. And that's what you save. Now that savings could go toward the purchase of a new home, you know, it could go toward, you know, your retirement. It could go toward buying a second home, buying that RV, buying a boat, right? But you save, pay yourself first, pay your future self first. Then we all have fixed expenses. So fixed expenses is like the mortgage payment or the rent. They're all the same, right? Same thing every month. Fixed expenses should be no more than like 45 or 50% of your income. And then you have the variable expenses, like going out to eat, right? All the all the vacation money, gift giving, things like that, 25% of your money, then you leave yourself a margin of 10 to 15%. I think my numbers are right there. Uh, but it's somewhere in the 100% range there. 10 to 15% margin. That margin is saving for an emergency fund, right? If like your water here goes out paying for it with cash and not credit, you need new tires on your car, being able to afford it without debt. And then once you have that kind of foundational in place, have a budget in place, then you attack your debts. So your debt that is not like long-term fixed debt, like a mortgage. So you want to pay off credit cards and car loans and personal loans and student loans, right? Stuff that doesn't add assets to you. And uh a couple methods to do that. You use the avalanche method or the snowball method. One was made famous by Dave Ramsey, one was made famous by Susie Orman. It doesn't matter which one you do. Their math on them is routinely about the same. And if people say that one's better than the other, you know, it's just it's it's the same thing, right? One is more of a psychological play, one is uh uh is more practical to like economics pay the highest interest off first, one is like see see the number of debt holders you have good, just pay your debt off. And then once you get most of your debt paid off now, we can talk about saving and where you save. And and on the saving part, don't give up free money. So, like if you have a company K plan or you're a federal employee with a thrift savings plan and you put in like thrift savings plan, federal employees, friends. If you put 5% in, you get a 5% match. So if you put in anything less than 5%, you're giving away free money. So take the free money, folks. That's a hundred percent return on your money if you if you've got a good plan. So take the free money, and then from there, you start playing like, okay, what what would I need access to? Like, do I need money for like college savings? Like, because I've got a kid going to school. Do I need money for you know retirement like in the next five years? And then and then you have to play defense, right? So you asked about is there any money to go to insurance? Defense is insurance, right? Here we are at the end of the football season, right? And I'm I may talk to some of your audience right now, they may just hear me say sports ball, but right, like the Pittsburgh Steelers are on the customer made the playoffs have no idea if they're gonna do it, right? But their offense was not good this past Sunday. Their defense was really good and they lost. When the offense and the defense are both good, that's a winning formula. And so insurance is defense. Insurance is not about building assets and never it, I mean, like there's a lot of people who say buy whole life insurance for cash value growth. And that's just not, I mean, yes, you could do some of that, right? Small portions. But that, you know, if if the whole life insurance is the only life insurance you got, and you have two people in your household and one of them passes away, the death benefit on the whole life whole life is not going to replace the income that's needed. So you have to, you have to have like a plan in place for like what happens if a member of our family is suddenly not there, right? How do we replace that income? But you're four times more likely not to die prematurely. You're four times likely to become disabled. But I've got this story. I've had this client, his name was uh, his name was Sean, and he was 35 years old. He was an engineer, he loved to ride bicycles. Uh, this happened in 2008. He uh he and his wife were in the office, and uh we were putting the defense in place, the insurance in place. And one thing was a disability income policy. And he's like, Mike, I just do not want to pay$110 for something that's never gonna happen. I'm healthy, I'm not gonna become disabled, whatever. And dang it, Rachel, if nine months later a car didn't hit him when he was riding his bicycle. It hit him. I mean, it wasn't his fault, right? The car was negligent, but he was out of work for 22 months and he didn't have disability insurance. They had to put, they had to put an equity line on their house, they had to take money out of their 401k, right? His wife, right, had to go work part-time when he was recovering from surgery, and the mom had to move from Connecticut to help take care of the kids all because he didn't want to pay a little over$100 a month.

SPEAKER_01: 35:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 35:39

And so you put defense in place for things that can potentially happen. I mean, nobody likes to put pay their homeowner's insurance on their on their house. Nobody likes to make that payment. Not at all.

SPEAKER_01: 35:52

But I'm really happy when I need a new roof.

SPEAKER_00: 35:54

Right. Or there's a fire, right? Nobody likes to pay their car insurance, but man, if an uninsured motorist hits you, you're gonna be so freaking glad you had it. And that's why you have to look at like the insurance side. Like, so your original question was how much do you put toward insurance? Like if you saved how much insurance, you put to defense the amount that you need to protect your biggest asset. Your biggest asset is your ability to earn income. By far and away, the younger you are, the biggest asset is your ability to earn income. So you protect that first, by the way, with as few dollars as possible. You protect that first, and then you save the rest for growth, especially if you have a long time. And uh, and that's like what a financial planner would look at is they'd look at all aspects of that from the budget to what you save to the defensive insurance to the retirement plan, to the investment plan to long-term care and then your legacy. I mean, more people right now are out here walking around without a will and a trust than they are with a will. And that is ultimately one of the biggest, it's the easiest, one of the easiest things to get right now, which is paper. I mean, they're out there everywhere. They're on the internet, right? They're not advocating for somebody to do it themselves, but you can, right? And all you need is to have it notarized and witnessed. Then you got a will, which would help you avoid like a minor child going into child protective custody. It helps potentially asset stay outside of probate. There's a lot of positives to having that in place. Most people just forget to do it.

unknown: 37:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 37:23

Yeah. Makes total sense. If you are wanting, so let's say someone has a financial planner and they've been doing this stuff for themselves for years, but they don't really understand like where is their money going to.

SPEAKER_00: 37:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 37:36

Is that uh would it be time for them to either evaluate who they're actually working with or is it easy to transfer financial planners? That's kind of a twofold question.

SPEAKER_00: 37:47

It's it's actually really easy to do that. A fiduciary financial planner, somebody who has your interest best at heart, doesn't mean that when you go to the new planner, they're gonna tear everything down and redo it, right? But education is just as important as product and in the solutions that are there. Like if you can't, if you get a statement in the mail from a company like Edward Jones or Fidelity or Charles Schwab or wherever, and you don't and you don't know how to read it, right? You you you probably need to find a new person because either your financial person has outgrown you. If they're not spending the time explaining what you have, they've either out you they have outgrown you or they're too focused on new business development, right? They're they're focused on bringing additional revenue in, increasing their lifestyle. Um it's so it's easy to switch, but it's also good to get a second opinion. Uh if you were suddenly, if you walked into your doctor and you never presented, right, that you had heart issues, right? And your general practitioner said, you know, I'm really concerned about you that you're gonna have a heart attack. Well, what are you? Are you gonna walk out of there and say, okay, I'll just live life? Or are you gonna go see a cardiologist? Right? You could go see a cardiologist, probably at their recommendation. And then if that cardiologist gives you alternate views, it's like, yeah, I don't see the problem here, you're probably gonna see another cardiologist. Same thing with finances. I mean, people just don't people don't want to talk about money, Rachel, because they're scared to talk about it. They're scared, do I have enough? Is it in the right place? Did I make a mistake? And uh, if anybody ever feel tip makes you or anybody listening to this feel like you have made a mistake with your money, you need to get in the safe space to talk, to be educated first, and then to be told like what you have and let and let help you understand it. And then if it makes sense to make some adjustments, then you make them with understanding of what you're doing, not blind faith in somebody who uh has not done a good job of explaining what you have.

SPEAKER_01: 39:50

Yeah. That makes total sense too. I mean, uh it is a it's a huge vulnerability, so it does bring up a a safety conversation. Conversation. I mean, you can only run at the rate that your nervous system is gonna let you. And that's with conversations as well. Money is such a thing, like it's people's lifeline, you know? It is a lifeline. The only real lifeline that we have to be able to sustain our freedoms and joys in life, anything, you know? So yeah, you're working with um people's heart and soul, so to speak. Right. You have like as far as like the key, is there an actual key other than like the education piece? And I feel like you've made that quite clear. Like, that's so accessible to people, not only with your book, but you mentioned two other authors just now, but also with your course. Is that a course you have to have a college degree for or you have to be enrolled in college? Or what is your course?

SPEAKER_00: 40:52

No, I actually it's uh called personal financial planning. We do it on a uh platform called School, S-K-O-O-L.

SPEAKER_01: 41:00

I love that platform.

SPEAKER_00: 41:01

Yeah. The reason I do it on that pro all that platform is because I can then see how people progress in the course. It's a pre-recorded course. There is uh there's a community, like a forum where you can ask questions, and and my team of coaches will answer those questions or we'll give you an opportunity to meet with our coaches. The other part that I love about that is uh about being old school is we often put additional courses in there from time to time. So, like at the end of the year, we put like a gift giving strategy guide in there, like how to how to fund a 529 plan, how to fund a child's brokerage account, how to use like a family payroll system like for 1099 people. So we put different courses inside of the program too. So people could see we put uh courses in there about tax planning. Now when the federal government was going through all of their doge and fork in the road, we put courses in there uh in 2025 about like how to make a decision, right? About whether or not to take the federal program or not. And then uh when the one big beautiful bill came out this year, the tax change in 2025, we put uh like a one-hour course in there for people to see the membership in the course for to maintain a membership in the personal financial planning side, it's nine dollars a month. I mean, we're not huge, right, to stay in the community. Or you can just buy the course and have access to the community for 90 days. So it's nine dollars a month plus the course is$199. But then like the$9 a month allows you to get in there and hear when other courses come up, right? And get access to the free ones, the commentary. And it's uh and it's a closed community. It's not open to anybody to see, right? It's only for the members. And uh it's uh it's a great, it's a great tool that uh like I moderate, I pop in there a couple times a week, I read what's going on. If I see a pattern going in the questions, I'll create a video that I'll post and say, hey, look, uh we've got nine questions the last week about you know tariffs. And I just want to give you give you a quick history lesson on what tariffs are. It's awesome. Comment below if you you have other information.

SPEAKER_01: 43:18

Yeah, there's so many platforms or different communities, I want to say not platforms, but on school. School, if no one knows about it, is one of my favorite places to hang out. Like I've got I'm in an expansion group and a mentorship group there, and this would be awesome. There's another one that uh just released on a different podcast the other day where God was going through what he's got going on, and it's just such a cool space, even if you're a creator. So I just want to put that out there. Too bad I'm not an affiliate, but it would be great if I was. Well, this is so awesome, Mike. I really appreciate you giving this knowledge dump to us. And how is this accessible? How accessible is it? Do you need to make like an appointment? And what does it look like if someone was gonna come to your group and be like, here's all my money?

SPEAKER_00: 44:10

Easiest. So the easiest thing to do is to go to mikemilligan.com, just M-I-K-E-M-I-L-L-I-G-A-N.com. There's uh you'll see like my personal philosophy on there educate, coach, and plan. And if you want to be part of the educate, like the coursework, just send us a message and we'll get you the details on the community. If you want to become, you want, if you want like that second opinion, like that deep dive in your personal finances to where you know you want to see like what One Oak Financial could do for you, click on there, click content. Tell us, tell us by the way, when you submit that that you heard us from Rachel's show. We would love to give her that feedback that her listeners are taking action. But yeah, those are that's the best way to connect. If you if you want more information on YouTube, right? My YouTube channel is uh money mic unmuted at money mic unmuted. Money, money mic, I'm money mic and unmuted. I just talk, right? There's there's little there's little small things on there. Like I give like a daily little podcast. There's like so like Rachel's and my podcast will show up on there when I show up on a guest, like I'll put a clip on there and give you the give my folks the link back to Rachel's podcast. But this has been great. You know, when we started this, Rachel, we just said, Hey, we're just gonna start talking and then we'll start the podcast at some point. I mean, I are you ready to start the podcast now?

SPEAKER_01: 45:34

Oh, right, yeah, I think so. I think this is such a good one. I'm gonna put it all out there. Oh man. I am glad though that I pressed record when I press it because I just had a feeling because we were just gonna flow right into it.

SPEAKER_00: 45:46

Right. Well, from our first from our first conversation together, I just realized that we would have great conversations.

SPEAKER_01: 45:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 45:54

That's been that's been proven here. I hope your listeners liked it a lot.

SPEAKER_01: 45:58

This is such a topic that I'm 10 out of 10 interested in too. And I'm also like definitely gonna reach out to your all's group because I would like a second opinion. Not that I don't like the guy that I've got because I love him. I think he's great, love his family, all the things, but I just want to see what I see. So curiosity for me.

SPEAKER_00: 46:17

One of the interesting things that maybe we could come back and record again is we could just do a data dump on taxes because taxes are the biggest expense we're all going to pay. And especially if you have entrepreneurs as listeners, right? There are so many things in the tax code that just kind of get left out. And unfortunately, CPAs are historians when it comes to tax preparation, because they take your documents afterwards, after the year has passed, and you give them to them, they put them on another historical document, they tell you if you either owe or get some money back. The tax planning is something you do in the year that you're in. So as we're kind of approaching 2026, if you've never done tax planning before, we could we could give a lot of details around like tax planning, the things that like small business owners and individuals could do.

SPEAKER_01: 47:06

We should do that. When is the biggest tax revamp? Would that be like September?

SPEAKER_00: 47:12

I mean, like the best time to plan taxes is January, February for the year you're in, not like not like as you're doing your return for the previous year. Like do tax planning January, February, March, because you have the whole year right to really benefit from it. So like one of the I'll drop a tease, but like if you're a small business owner, there's this little section of the IRS code called the Savannah or little known part of the code called the Savannah rule. The Savannah rule allows you to use your home up to 14 times a year as a rental and it be tax-free. It was created because down in Savannah, Georgia, they have this little golf tournament every year called the Masters. And there's not a ton of hotels down there. So people leave Savannah the week before and the week after the Masters, and golfers come and rent the house. And so when they rent the house, that's tax-free income to the homeowner. But but because that can happen in Savannah, we as business owners can rent our home out for retreats, for business meetings, for events, right? We we rented our home out last year for a wedding, of all things, right? Because we live on the river. So, you know, they used our backyard for nine hours for a wedding. That was a family friend, but they used it. And instead of paying the country club a lot of money, they paid us some of it, and they saved money and had a beautiful event, right? And we got that money tax-free.

SPEAKER_01: 48:38

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00: 48:39

It is cool.

SPEAKER_01: 48:40

I'm getting married in 2026, so that's a new idea.

SPEAKER_00: 48:45

Congratulations. Does does the other person know does the other person know they're getting married too?

SPEAKER_01: 48:50

They do. Oh yeah. Better know.

SPEAKER_00: 48:52

Is that a is that a bike drop on your podcast? Did your audience know that?

SPEAKER_01: 48:56

Yes, they know it. There was a whole episode about the engagement with him, and we did the whole episode together. Well, thank you so much, Mike. This was really cool. Yeah, I'm totally down for part two tax season come coming up. That would be great. I just love having guys like Mike Milligan on the FitSin project. And it's not even guys, it's more of his message, it's more of what he has to offer for this world. He breaks down financial planning without the fear piece. And he just is such a genuine, easy-going guy to talk to. And he also understands that money isn't just math, it's nervous system work, it's getting clarity and calm as wealth rises and understanding like how to treat that and move forward with it once you receive it. He fits beautifully into the Fitzin' Project because he doesn't just talk with the numbers, but he, as you can tell, talks the values, the intention, the legacy, and the grounded decision making. So Mike was awesome, a super amazing fit for the Fits and Project, and I love having him. It's one of the series for January to open up intentionally with 2026 because he brought in the financial aspect of how we can start really thinking about our lives. Like we're thinking about our lives and financials, we're thinking about our lives and health. And next deep next week, we're gonna meet Dr. Dematia. She is a dietitian and she's amazing. So I'm loving bringing on these awesome guests, absolutely worth it. It has been such an honor and a journey hosting. And I hope you went back and listened to last week's two with Deepak Chari and how he helps you identify how just biofeedback and how your voice can communicate with your body and your nervous system. And he has an offer right now that can help you kind of get back into some regulation of your own self. So if you haven't checked out his podcast, go check that out. But also stay tuned for next week because we're moving into the health part. So we've moved from our nervous system and regulating with emotional health. We've gone into the financial part of it with Mike today. We're moving into the nourishment part with the body, energy, and sustainability. And then after next week, I've got one more sweet surprise for the month of January. And I hope you stay tuned and listen in. Alright, let's bring this episode in and seal it with an um together. I want you to know that you are your most important project. Namaste.