Financial Fitness w/ Matt Barnes

In this conversation, we speak with Matt Barnes, who shares his journey from coaching to financial fitness, particularly focusing on the unique financial challenges faced by law enforcement officers. Matt discusses the importance of building a positive culture and leadership within organizations, the financial fitness framework he developed, and the significance of addressing stress related to finances. He emphasizes the need for mentorship in the law enforcement community and the role of faith in personal and financial growth.

Takeaways:

• Culture is crucial in any organization, especially in sports and law enforcement.
• Planning and periodization are essential for success in high-pressure environments.
• Financial stress is a leading cause of anxiety and health issues in America.
• Many first responders lack financial education and support.
• Creating a financial fitness framework can help individuals manage their money better.
• Understanding cash flow is key to budgeting effectively.
• Retirement planning should start early in a law enforcement career.
• Finding purpose after retirement is essential for mental health.

Website: Financial Fitness 

Matt Barnes

Transcript

Vernon Phillips (00:01.35)

All right, welcome back to Critical Aspects of Law Enforcement. I'm your host, Vernon Phillips. And today on the show, we've got Matt Barnes with us. And Matt is with Financial Fitness. So I'm going turn it over to Matt and just let him kind of give an overview of who he is, kind of his background and kind of how he got to where he is now with Financial Fitness. So Matt, go ahead. I appreciate it.

Matt Barnes (00:23.5)

Yes, sir. Good to be here, Vern. Appreciate the time. Yeah. Long story. I'm not exactly sure where to start, but I'll give you, as my grandma and grandpa called it, the reader's digest version. So I originally got into the workforce as a teacher. have a master's degree in education. I taught high school for almost 15 years and got tired of dealing with those kids and decided I had a knack for coaching. And I was a soccer coach.

In high school, I started at the kind of ground level coaching, you know, youth kids and club kids in high school. And, then I dove into the college ranks and had some opportunities to coach all over the country at different universities. And, I made a name for myself, kind of turning around really underperforming programs quickly and getting them up to championship type levels. We did that really well. had a great career there. I had a, another opportunity to get into the semi-professional ranks where we took a small team from Midland, Texas to a national championship game. Then I got the call up, one of the few Americans that's coached a foreign national team. I was a head coach for a small country called Turks and Caicos. And I took them through some of the FIFA qualifying matches that the country went through and incredible experience for me. They were ranked tied for last place in the FIFA rankings.

FIFA sponsors about 210 countries in the world. We were tied for 209th and amazing experience. So I got to coach my first international match in Cuba on live TV and amazing experience with those guys. We won a qualifying match, a big one and got them off of the bottom of the world rankings. Amazing time there. And then I got this really cool call up to work in professional soccer or football as they call it in Europe.

A group of investors bought a small club in Denmark. were some of the minority owners for the gold state warriors and a variety of other investors. I started commuting at that point from Texas to Denmark. And I transitioned from being a head coach into a general manager. And what happened over there, Vern, is I started answering to a board of directors with a billionaire and multimillionaires. And I started going, man, these guys look at money a lot differently than the rest of us do.

Matt Barnes (02:43.886)

We started a little program in Europe called our futures program and started recognizing, Hey, a lot of these young, talented kids are coming in. We're giving them big paychecks. then shockingly, they're not managing your money and their lives really well. So we started, we started doing that. And I correlate that often to what we're doing in our academies. A lot of these kids are coming out of the academy. We're handing them big paychecks with, uh, uh, you know, no instructions about what to do with it. And then shock that they mismanaged their money in their financial lives. So the program in Europe was amazing. I worked for a small club called FC Helsinger. COVID hit. I couldn't get to Denmark for nine months. For the first time in my life, I lost my job and decided that I probably made enough mistakes in my life with money that that qualified me to go help people in their lives. have a passion for teaching and coaching.

came back to the states and started financial fitness. And it's just been an incredible journey, what we've been able to build. As you know, law enforcement can be hard to get into, but we're in now and it's been hard to slow down if I'm being honest, but incredible journey and thankful to be here today.

Vernon Phillips (03:59.036)

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I appreciate you sharing that because I mean, there's obviously you've got a lot of experience in there, you know, just teaching and coaching and mentoring others and kind of before we jump into, you know, what it looks like in the law enforcement realm with finances and, you know, how that gets muddled sometimes. And when you still when you look back at your career, you know, doing the coaching and everything, what are you know, what are three of the most significant things that you learned throughout that time that you'd want to just pass on to other people.

Matt Barnes (04:33.326)

That's an interesting question. think I would start with, you know, I think it's in the sports world. Everybody wants to talk tactics and technique and all the things about the sport. I think the higher level you get, real you realize that it's culture that matters. What type of culture are you building everywhere you land? So that was the first thing is just making sure that we're able to build an incredible culture and had some ways that we wanted to build culture. What are expectations? What's the language we use? How do we treat each other? Are people free to be themselves and express themselves? So I think culture has been something we really focused on. The other thing that we got into when we got to a higher level is something called periodization.

And periodization is the planning of all things, even the little details. And I think that's where a lot of people get really blown away by what it takes to work at the highest level. It's so much work. There's so much planning, even going down to what happens inside of every single minute inside of a training session. And then we start talking about the, you know, even the details about the workload that we put on our guys. This guy's workload cannot be like this guy's here. And we.

We relate that back to law enforcement too. I've always asked the questions and we're sitting in briefings. don't we know as a watch commander, I should have an idea where every one of those guys is at physically, mentally, tactically, as we would call it. But we probably put a lot of work into that space. And then look, I think we always said a couple of phrases. Number one, not too high, not too low. I think it's a really important thing that I tell myself all the time when things are going really well in your life.

Yeah, be excited about it, but remember there's something that could happen right around the corner that can change that. And when things aren't going well in your life, not too low, look right around the corner is something really good. So even some of those simple concepts like not too high, not too low has been something we've carried through our coaching years and even carried into today. Just stay steady Eddie. And remember there's, there's always something good around the corner.

Vernon Phillips (06:50.012)

Yeah. And how do you think that those principles can transition into working in law enforcement and providing the service that you guys are providing right now?

Matt Barnes (07:00.696)

Well, if I start with culture, it's been interesting. We've been in so many organizations now that you can almost fill a culture. And I was just talking to somebody about it today. It's not even something like tactical that you can touch. When we walk into an organization now, we can just tell, hey, do people love working here? Do they like it? there a feeling of positivity? there leadership that cares about them? Are they just checking boxes?

And it's been interesting, Vern, because we're at a point with our business now that we can kind of pick and choose and be a little more selective about who we work with. And I'm really looking for those organizations that want to help their people. I'm looking for leadership that cares, that listens to their, you know, listens to their employees. I, we want to work with places that are really trying to go, how do we take our workforce, our, our police force, our law enforcement group and make them elite? How can we be the best at what we do?

That's what I tried to do in professional sports, college sports. So there's a lot of organizations out there doing that now. So I always go back to culture because it's just something that we can feel everywhere we go. And, you know, we have plenty of examples of places that have have great culture and other places that don't. But I'm going to go back to just leadership and culture and how much do they legitimately care for their people? Because in this peer support and wellness space, you have to, especially in this profession.

Vernon Phillips (08:26.44)

Yeah, I think it's important and I'm glad that you guys focus in on that or kind of key in on that because when you take care of your people, the more resources you provide them, the more that you're investing in them and you're helping them develop not only individually as an officer or whatever position they hold in that agency, but also as an individual outside of the agency because as much as you invest in them inside the agency,

Right. That's going to in turn then overflow into their home life as well. Right. So I mean you you taking things about you know taking care of your physical your mental your emotional and spiritual health. Right. And then in that obviously is being financially fit as well. I mean that directly spills over into the home life. You know so when you are actually diving in and you're you're taking that deep dive and you're saying hey we're going to invest in our people we're going to develop our people not just because you know

Matt Barnes (08:58.702)

100%.

Vernon Phillips (09:23.686)

We want them to serve us better, but we want them to be better individuals for themselves because if they're operating at a higher level because they're well, then they're going to interact with the community at a higher level, at a level that the interactions are going to be just more pleasant in nature because they're just a well-rounded, balanced individual. And one of those things is definitely obviously the finance portion of it.

So when we start looking at law enforcement and just the talk of finances, because we talk a lot about the physical, right? We talk a lot about the mental now. We're starting to dive into the emotional. I'd like to see more conversations on the spiritual aspect, right? Because I feel like that's kind of something that's kind of starting to take a backseat because some of these other things have kind of, it's just that kind of revolving door or whatever, like whatever's kind of going on or whatever's the hot button topic. But we start looking at finance. What are some of the major issues you see in the law, in law enforcement, working with these different agencies and departments? What are some of the main things that you see come up that you're like, hey, this is what we see time and time again, and we can fix this doing this.

Matt Barnes (10:49.954)

Yeah, it's, well, we see, we see trends and we see it all the time. So that's really where our businesses come is once we got into this space, we had to start realizing what are we seeing come across our desk every single day. Right. so we kind of come back to that and correlate that to how we operate. we've created what we call the financial fitness first five.

I do this inside of my presentation more at organizations, but we really came up with five core ideas that we want to address because we feel like it'll help every family out there, every individual in this space. And if I back it up a little bit further, Vern, keep asking, why aren't we talking money in this space? I'll show you the statistics. Stress is the biggest killer in America.

Chronic stress is linked to six of the leading causes of death. And by far the biggest stress in our lives is money. 73 % of Americans right now say that money is by far the biggest stress in their lives. So if we're dealing with a bunch of humans that are stressed, that are chronically stressed, then why aren't we talking money? I keep asking peer support teams. And what we're seeing across coast to coast, as you know, is this is coming back as the number one or number two highest requests from organizations. Our people are asking for help here and they want holistic help. So what we've really done is just sat down and created a system. We have a system of three meetings and inside those meetings, we think there's some, we call our foundation, but we start with the financial fitness first five. Number one, we call it securing your six.

Right? How are you protecting your family with the right types of life insurances? And I, don't like the life insurance industry. think a lot of organizations bring in life insurance guy and he's, you know, slapping life insurance at everybody, but it should be part of your game plan. should be part of your, part of your financial life. What, what type of insurance is right for this guy isn't right for this guy and how much do we have? And so we do a lot of education on that, but also this living trust thing, that's part of secure your six. I still cannot believe that every.

Matt Barnes (13:06.998)

First responder in America isn't required to have a living trust. And we do a lot of education on that. So that's part of what we call securing your six. And we do education on that and even some long-term care. know, people are having to solve for healthcare post retirement. And we talk about that. The second thing we talk about is rapid response fund. I think it's so important that every first responder, every American has an emergency fund.

Right? We already know we have a big credit problem. So we know if you have a family, a spouse, a car, a pet, a home, a job, you're going to have an emergency. And when that emergency happens, if you don't have cash to go to, you're going to be in more credit, more credit problems. So rapid response fund is something we talk a lot about. We do it every single family. We tier that for people. The first goal is to get a thousand dollars inside of a rapid response fund. Second tier.

We want people to work towards 5,000. And ultimately I want every individual, every first responder to have three months of living expenses inside their rapid response funds. So that's the second thing that we go out and see because, you know, 76 % of Americans don't even have one month of living expenses saved. That's a crazy stat to me. 63 % of Americans can't even cover a $500 a month emergency. So that's number two. The third is what we call bossing your budget.

We know budgets don't really work for most people, don't want to do spreadsheets and all that. But we think it's important to know your cash flow. You have to know what's coming in and where it goes every month. So we have a simple way of doing that. We do a one month, 30 day glance at your budget. We call bossing your budget. And inside of that, we're able to find some trends. Where's all your money going? And we find a lot here. We found a deputy that was spending $900 a month on energy, drink and chew.

We found another officer that, you know, she was making 150,000 a year and said, Matt, I live paycheck to paycheck and I don't know why. Well, we did a, a budget, uh, boss, your budget on her. And we found out she went out to eat 27 times that month and an average of $24 a meal. So we're looking for things like that, just so people can recognize, Hey, here's what's actually coming in and here's where it's going every month. And that in my opinion, helps us create habits.

Matt Barnes (15:24.686)

Because if I can get people to create habits and good habits in their lives, I know I can help them build a better life. The fourth is what we call detain your debt. Debt's a huge problem. In fact, it's the first problem I talk about in my presentation because look, Americans just crossed over a record $1 trillion of credit card debt. You know, the average debt load in California and in Florida, by the way, is about $9,000 per person in Florida.

Vernon Phillips (15:52.616)

You

Matt Barnes (15:53.615)

You look at a $9,000 of credit card debt, that person's probably paying $250 a month or more in a minimum payment just to keep that credit card alive. We show people what 250 bucks a month will do for their invested the right way, what it'll do for their financial life. So we really try to, in this space, we see so much emotional spending.

Vernon Phillips (16:06.022)

Yeah, at 30%.

Matt Barnes (16:20.93)

that we have visuals now called detaining your debt, putting credit cards behind bars. We even have a sticker that we've developed for our chronic abusers of credit cards. have to put a sticker on their credit card that it's got a little like picture of me, a digital version, reminding themselves that they're robbing themselves every time they spend that. So debt loads big inside of that debt load vehicle debt. Vern, we have something that we call monster truck madness. We, we do a lot of education on.

It's going back to that kid coming out of Academy now. Boy, I'm going to get my first big paycheck. I deserve a new truck. I'm going to go buy that monster truck. And it's setting so many people back. We just had a client that's paying, 1,650 bucks a month for a new Ford Bronco. Those are things that'll kill your financial lives really, really quick. So getting your debt, talk about a lot. And then the final one is what we call exercising your money. What are you doing with your money?

Vernon Phillips (17:08.494)

Yeah.

Matt Barnes (17:17.068)

Like, are you, you what are you consuming with your money? How are you spending it? Do you have goals and dreams? Are we working towards, you know, things that are positive and create cashflow in your life? Or are you spending it on stuff and consuming things that you don't need? We have a special program, our wants versus needs challenge that we pass out to a lot of families. And then finally, you know, the other thing, Vern, we have to, we've been forced to talk about is overtime.

So, you we see a lot of overtime abuse so much so that we started a program called OTSOP, Overtime Standard Operating Procedure. And inside OTSOP, we're working on, you know, if you're our client, if you're going to work overtime, that overtime has to meet the three B's. And the three B's are number one, it can't be part of your core budget, way too many first responders building a lifestyle that counts on overtime. need X amount of time, know, money or X amount of overtime each month to, know, keep my lifestyle. and that doesn't work. It crashes a lot of first responders that access to that money and dependent, the dependency on it. so it's not part of your core budget. We do like the fact that you have access to time and a half to overtime but we want big purpose. That's the second B. If you're going to work over time, I want that money to have big purpose. And what do I mean by big purpose? I'm talking about paying off that debt load that you have. I'm talking about maybe taking your family on a vacation that you need. Maybe it's taking your spouse away for the weekend because you've been working so much over time, or maybe it's for a second property so we can generate more income for you in retirement. That big purpose is huge for us.

And we're even starting a retreat next year. We'll teach first responders to use some of their overtime to come into a retreat that helps them with their spouse become better versions of themselves. We're really excited about releasing that next year. But overtime has been another area. And then that third B, look, if it's not part of your budget and you have big purpose for that money, you're going to have buy-in from your family, which I think is really, really important because we hear it all the time. I would rather have you, than the money.

Matt Barnes (19:28.406)

And I don't like hearing that from families. So we think that buy-in from the family, okay, well now the family's talked about this. We know why mom or dad's out there working really hard because we're going on this family vacation or it gives purpose behind being gone from the home more. So we really feel like this is helping in the family unit at least really save and pull together some families. Just because we're talking about it, we have a plan for it and we address this every single day.

Vernon Phillips (19:29.148)

Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Barnes (19:54.765)

So that's a financial fitness first five, and we're going to take those kind of five core ideas. We're going to rate everybody where they're at on them, green light or red light. And then we build a personalized game plan around those for families and individuals, just to make sure they're, they're really, really dialed in in every one of those areas. Cause that in itself brings the stress level way down, which you, you kind of talked about earlier. if my stress level is down and the people we work with, they're going to be a, they're going to be a better.

They're going to be a better cop. They're going to be a better fireman. They're going to be a better first responder, better dad, better wife, better husband, better friend. That stress is a killer and we feel like addressing that stress really, really helps a lot of families.

Vernon Phillips (20:40.198)

Yeah, I mean, those are huge. think that most people can, you talked about the monster truck madness. mean, you could go to so many different agencies, whether it's people who are driving there or they, for whatever reason, they have to drive their POV and you see a lot of trucks, you see lot of brand new cars.

You come out of the academy and you start making, you know, 60, 70, $80,000 a year, depending on where you're at. And, you know, if you're a 20, 21 year old kid, and I say kid, you know, if a young adult has a lot of money to you, right? And like you said, I mean, we haven't done, you know, a great job of, you know, giving them those tools and those tips like, hey, look, you're going to be looking at you know, have an X amount of You need to be financially wise with it moving forward. I I can remember, you know, being 18, 19, you know, and starting to work full time in jobs that paid a little bit better money. And, you know, people telling me, hey, look, start putting money away. You know, make sure that you're, you know, you're not doing a lot of credit and things like that. But at that time in my life, you know, was I really, was I really paying attention to that?

You know, it wasn't until you get a little older and you make a lot of bad decisions, you know, that you're like, man, I probably shouldn't have done that. probably shouldn't have bought that. I probably shouldn't have, you know, financed this and, you know, hey, it's okay. I'll get it now and I'll pay for it the credit card, you know, and I'll pay it off as soon as the bill comes in. But what happens? Something else comes up and you're like, all right, well, I'm just going to make the minimum.

And then next thing you know, three years later, you're still making the minimum, right? And you probably don't even have the object that you bought, that you had to have right then and there. So I think a lot of it is, you see that where they come out and they're like, man, hey, I've got this, I'm independent now, I've got this money and I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna do this. And so we see.

Matt Barnes (22:56.462)

Yeah, we talk a lot about it and that's why I'm pretty passionate about. have, work with a bunch of academies and going in there and just getting those guys and gals on the, on the right foot. We're, we're, um, vehicles are killing us. I'll tell you, people are just overspending on vehicles and it's, the young kid that goes, well, I can afford the payment. Well, what about the tags? What about the upkeep? What about the insurance? All of a sudden, you know, you're spending $2,000 a month on a vehicle and it's just, it's gotten out of control. we.

We say it all the time, buy slightly used, drive it into the ground, save the difference. And that's one of our core themes that we teach. But vehicle debt, it's real and it's big in the first responders space.

Vernon Phillips (23:38.716)

Yeah, you know, I was just having this conversation the other day with my wife and we were talking about, you know, her vehicle and I was talking about, let's, you know, let's, get rid of my truck and we'll take your car and we'll get you into something different. And, and, she's like, she's like, yeah, but she's like, I like, you know, I like my car, you know, it runs fine. She's like, I don't, she's like, you know, she's like, you seem to feel like you need to get me into something different. Cause you know, like that's, you want to do that for me. She's like, but I'm, I'm okay.

Right, so she drives a 2014 Honda Odyssey. You know, for that year, right, it was the elite. it's, you know, it's got all the bells and whistles for 2014, but 2014 was 11 years ago, right? And it's got 207,000 miles on it. But, you know, it, it, it runs good. I mean, we just put a new battery in it a couple of months ago, put new tires on it. But I mean, you know, you keep the oil changed and I mean, the kids, I mean, inside the kids have

Matt Barnes (24:22.978)

Yes.

Vernon Phillips (24:36.968)

You know, it's always a wreck, right? mean, there's just always stuff in there, but yeah, you go through cleaning up, know, and it looks good. It still runs good. And she's like, look, I'm okay. All right. And, you know, a couple of years ago, I went and, you know, got myself a, I don't want to say new to me truck, but, you know, I just couldn't, I couldn't go out and buy, you know, a Ram 2500 and spend, you know, 80, $90,000. just, I couldn't.

Like to me, just, that's just, for one, I don't feel that that's financially responsible, right? Cause that's going to cost you what, $1,200 a month if you're lucky. So I went and I bought a 2012 Ram 2500, right? And it's like 18,000, 19,000, something like that. it's significantly cheaper. Yeah, it's not a 2025.

We write, but it serves the same purpose. You know, I can still do everything I need to do with it. and it costs you significantly less. mean, you and you talk about this in your presentation where you're like, Hey, look, you can buy this and you can pay $1,200 a month, or you could buy a couple of years older. and you you could pay significantly less. but even, even with that, even, you know, if I go back to that, there's sometimes even buying that I'm like, man, you know,

I probably could have made a better choice just in that way or I could have just, you know, five or six grand, 10 grand and just been done with it. But of course, you know, I bought it in 20.

Vernon Phillips (26:22.792)

2022, so I think the used market was still pretty like, I mean, they were squeaking out as much money as they could for used vehicles. mean, they were, I mean, I remember looking at vehicles thinking, how in the world, know, this thing is, you know, eight to 10 years old and it's got over 100,000 miles on it and you're still asking $30,000 for this thing. But that's where the used market was at that time. but you know, even,

Matt Barnes (26:33.07)

Yeah.

Vernon Phillips (26:51.898)

I can tell you I'm so much happier that I went ahead and I said, you know what? I'm okay with buying something that's eight to 10 years older, right? It's got a hundred thousand miles on it. It is in good shape, still runs. mean, shoot, they don't, if you look at the, Ram 2500s between, you know, like the newer style, but then also the classic, there's not really much change, you know in the body style in the last couple of years. There's some things that are identifiably different, but I mean, I can still do what I need to do with my 2012 that, you a lot of people can do with their 2025s. it doesn't cost me nearly as much as it would. and I was just talking to my brother a couple of weeks ago and he owns a high-end custom

Matt Barnes (27:30.478)

That's right. It's not killing your financial life either.

Vernon Phillips (27:46.098)

Carpenter business construction company up in Syracuse. So they get a lot of like really, you know, high, high dollar clients and they were looking to get a new truck for the company. And so he said they were starting to look at, you know, F-150s and he said they were looking at paying, you know, upwards of $70,000 for an F-150, right? And he's just like, man, what, you know, so he starts doing the math and everything, but then he can get into,

You know, like a base model 2500 for the same price, you know, and it's, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but as far as the truck itself, right, it's more truck for the same amount of money. Um, you know, and obviously that's a business expense and there's all of that, but even that I'm just like, you know, you, uh, 1500, you're, paying, you know, 60, $70,000 a year or, or not a year, but for the truck itself, it's.

Matt Barnes (28:43.758)

Yeah. And you add in finance and it's even more than that. So it's insane what vehicles are costing. Look, there's a point where, you know, guys and gals can go out and afford a new vehicle comfortably. But for a lot of us, it's not making a lot of sense to spend. Well, you saw my presentation, the one we show in the presentation, $75,000 new vehicle. It's not that uncommon. yeah, it's a vehicle that's killing a lot of people.

Vernon Phillips (28:44.314)

It's wild. Yeah.

Vernon Phillips (29:14.332)

Yeah, so when you come in to an agency, to department, you kind of, hey, you go through your presentation and what you guys offer and what it looks like. If somebody was to reach out and say, hey, look, yeah, I'd definitely like to have a sit down. What does that look like? Can you kind of walk us through that process of what that would look like? What kind of the things you discuss and how you'd help them get back on track?

Matt Barnes (29:36.792)

Sure.

Matt Barnes (29:40.621)

Yeah, great question. Well, first of all, the presentation we do is really educational. I said from day one, I'm not going to go in and talk about product. I'm not going to go in and tell everybody I'm the guy to solve all your problems. I want people to look at the core problems, punch some holes in their financial life, and get them busy, kickstart them, get them moving in the right direction. But I will tell you it's been incredible from a business owner standpoint.

Our typical post presentation, our return of cards is usually around 70 % burn. So seven out of 10 people that we're presenting to is saying, yeah, I would like some help in this space. You know, we just onboarded Clovis police department. think we presented to about 130 people, 90 of them turned in cards to meet with us. So those numbers just keep coming back like that. People are saying, I want help. And I'll tell you what we do. I, in this business, the more

Simple, I make finances, the more work we get, which tells me that people just want, they wanna talk about money, they wanna meet somebody face to face, and they want simple solutions to their financial problems. And that's what we do. So after we do a presentation, people that wanna meet with us are gonna just give us a simple interest card. We set up a meeting with them, and we have a series of three meetings. The first one is called a snapshot.

In that snapshot, we ask them a bunch of questions. We talk about things that aren't even numbers based, right? A of things about how they grew up, how they look at money, how they treat money. And then we get into three columns. The first column, we talk to them about their income and their debt load. I keep things simple. Even on our worksheet that they get a copy of, they get a stoplight, red, yellow, and green. If they have a red light,

We need to stop and work on their debt load. Now, if they get a yellow light, we can proceed cautiously. If they have a green light, which we get some of those too, great job on your debt load. A middle column where we could dive into is how are you protecting your family and your assets? We talked about the emergency savings fund and the right types of life insurance. And what are you doing to protect your future with your pension and your deferred comp?

Matt Barnes (31:57.805)

And then the third column, talk about investing in your future. You know, do you have your, your, your emergency savings? Do you have your goals and dreams account? lot of us start, stop dreaming and stop working towards goals in the next two to 10 years. So how do we build an account with that money? What, you know, what does that look like? And then that retirement in that retirement pool that we want to make sure, you know, we need to be working towards, you know, some different buckets and pools of money in retirement. talk about kids and.

You know, if they have kids, how are we saving and discussing money with kids? But that's all part of what we call our snapshot. We just want to create a one page, simple financial snapshot. Now, after that, we create their second meeting and that's just a game plan meeting. We're coming into the game plan and delivering a personalized game plan for them. And then people are like, Hey, we love that plan. We need to make some adjustments and

Or some people might be like, Hey, I'm really good. I'm going to work with somebody else, but we don't charge for those meetings. don't charge clients for those meetings. I think it's really important that we made that promise when we got into this space and we've stuck to it. and then the third meeting is well, like an annual review. That's what the industry likes to call it. I call it coffee with coach. that's a program I started when I was coaching. you start learning that, we all have great tactics and we know the game really well, but.

How can I separate myself from other head coaches? And that's by getting to know my players. And if I'm sitting behind a desk all the time and coming from a power position, it's hard to get to know people. So I started a program probably about 15 years ago when I was coaching called Coffee with Coach. And I would give everybody on my team a tag. And anytime they wanted to turn in that coupon they would schedule a coffee with me. I buy the coffee, they pick where we meet and they pick the topics we talk about. And I can't tell you how deep that went. People creating conversations. They can talk about soccer. They can talk about their position of the team. They can talk about their girlfriend and their, their, I don't care what we talk about, but it's just creating that, that I'm here for you. I want to listen to you on to get to know you better. And I can't tell you what that did for my relationship with my players.

Matt Barnes (34:13.718)

On our teams. So we've created that same feeling around our business. So that annual checkup now becomes a coffee with coach and we sit down and talk to families and individuals. Hey, what's important to you? How are you doing with your game plan? How are you doing with your money mindset? You know, one of the things we, we talk about actionable words. we talk about how do you think, how do you speak, what do you consume and how do you move? So those four things are big in my world. How do you think about money?

What are you saying about money? What kind of conversations are you having? We call that speaking. What are you consuming with your money? What are you purchasing with that money? Is it good for you? Is it bad for you? And then how are you moving your money? Are you exercising it? Are you strengthening it? Are you growing it? So those are all things that come around that third meeting down the road where we do a coffee with coach. But it's simple. It's very effective.

And I think one of the things about law enforcement is just kind of giving them a kick in the butt. A lot of those guys just, they know they need to do it. They put it off, put it off. So I think that's what we're good at. We listen to them. We build a game plan based on their needs and let's go. We go to work. I think that's what separates us from a lot of people. The simplicity. And I think the coach in me helps too, if I'm being honest with you, Vernon, I can talk to a lot of guys and tell them, Hey, you know, pardon my French, but you need a kick in the butt. We need to take care of this. You're going to fall off a financial cliff.

I think in this space, people respect that. Give us the truth, right? And the fiduciary part of me says, you know, I have to do what's right for you, not what's right for my pocketbook. So there's a lot of times too that, you know, we're doing things for free. We don't make money off of, and that's okay too. We're here to serve people and that's really important to me.

Vernon Phillips (35:54.438)

Yeah, and I think that's important. I I like the coffee with coach and I might steal that and, you know, adapt it a little bit to work for me. Just giving you the heads up on that. So hopefully it's not trademarked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not. I'm just letting you know, hey, just in case it is trademarked.

Matt Barnes (36:09.166)

I'm not asking, you're just telling me you're gonna steal it.

Well, perfect. It's a, it is, we have trademarked it. You can use it, Vern. I love it. We share it. We just shared it with the chief of police in Clovis. And I just think it's a really awesome way to connect with people at a deep level. And if you're in a leadership position, I really think it's an awesome tool. So we, we just turn that into a business tool now and sit down with people and just talk about what.

Vernon Phillips (36:27.4)

UGH

Vernon Phillips (36:42.792)

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Um, but I think that's, I think it's what people want. I just want to be able to sit down with somebody who's not going to speak over their head. Right. And he's not going to give them a bunch of formulas and, know, and, and, know, you know, X squared minus whatever, whatever, whatever, like this, like, Hey, let's just sit down. Let's just plain talk to me where you see issues. What can I do? How can I move forward? Right. And like you said, is it.

Matt Barnes (37:08.898)

That's That's 100 % it. We say it all the time. Nobody wants to sit down with the guy at the bank that talks over our head. I don't, and people call me crazy, Vern, but I don't even allow my staff to wear suits and ties. We're wearing tactical gear when we speak, right? Like that's important to me. want to, I want to, I want to be with the people in those seats out there. They need to know that. I'm blue collar. I own my company. I'm passionate about it.

Vernon Phillips (37:12.614)

Yeah, you say it

Matt Barnes (37:37.998)

and it really does set us apart because nobody wants to be lectured. Nobody wants that education. They just want to know, Hey, can you guys help me solve the biggest stress in my life? Let's sit down and talk about that. That's what we do every day.

Vernon Phillips (37:51.92)

Yeah, and I think that's important. know, and I don't know if you get this question, but I think there's probably people that are wondering like, okay, so this is where you are, you you teach finance, you coach other people in making good decisions. And you said it yourself earlier that, hey, look, I've made enough financially bad decisions in my life, right? You know, when you look back at yourself, you're just the history of where you're at now, you know,

How much of those decisions have really like upset, you know your world where you're like, man I don't know how I'm gonna recover from this but you did Does that make sense?

Matt Barnes (38:30.766)

Yeah, I think so. I think great coaches. You ever noticed that some of the greatest players don't make great coaches in the professional sports world? I think it's similar here. I've always thought, well, would you like to sit down with a guy from Harvard and who's never had to worry about money and has 14 master's degrees in finance? Or would you rather sit down with a guy like Matt Barnes that

You know, I was in so much debt. listened to Dave Ramsey's program. I followed a cash envelope system for a year. I dug myself out of debt and I'll teach you how to do that too. I think that's what people are looking for. I lost a home. I've made some really bad financial decisions, but through that I've learned it's part of that, what we call V.ME, just becoming the better version of yourself.

I think that's what people are looking for. I wanna know somebody that's been through it. I wanna talk to somebody that when I'm talking to you about digging yourself out of debt, I know what it feels like. It's not me lecturing, this is what I actually did. We've created programs like our Once Versus Needs Challenge. A lot of families are just like, we don't know where our money goes every month. Well, don't want fancy spreadsheets. I want your family to join the Once Versus Needs Challenge.

So that's where we have three months of a program where you sit down with your family and everything you purchase is either a want or a need. And we figure out how to get rid of the wants and recognize how much cash that can generate in our life. Why did I build that program? Because I do that program. I had to, I've done it with my own kids. And so now we've just turned that into a tool that, you know, is helping a lot of families in that way. So I think it's authentic and

Vernon Phillips (40:11.944)

Yeah.

Matt Barnes (40:22.068)

I think it's what a lot of people are looking for. But it's just us. It's what we've committed to, and it seems to be working.

Vernon Phillips (40:32.092)

Yeah, no, that's awesome. And I think that's what people want somebody that's relatable, right? They want somebody that they know, like, that they can relate to that knows what it feels like to be at that, you know, like just your wits end. Like, I don't know what, like, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Like, I don't know what I'm going to do, you know, next week. You know, and we've all been there, right? We've all been there where something in your life is transparent. mean, I remember, you know, I've had my power turned off, right? Before I was married and I have to call my fiance who lives, you know, 500 miles away and like, hey, you know, the power's off. I don't have the money to turn it back on because I don't get paid until two more days, right? So then, you know, she's paying to have my power turned back on from 500 miles away, right? Because she's the saver and historically I'm the spender.

Right. So, you know, throughout our marriage, like we've learned to wear it like we both have have dialed that back right to where, you know, she's not so much, you know, the tight fisted like she was, which isn't a bad thing. But sometimes that can cause some friction in the marriage. Right. When you've got somebody who's who's really tight fisted, but then you have somebody who's just really open handed, who's just like, oh, yeah, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going do this. But when you kind of work that out and you have those conversations and you come to, you know, come in like, okay, yes, we need to be tight fisted on some things. We need to be saving money. We need to be doing these things. But there are some times where, you know, we do kind of need to, to loosen the grip a little bit, right? Once we get to that place where we can, because you know, there's, it comes back to kind of, you know, the, idea of like, well, what's that idle, right? I mean, the, the, the idle in your life is spending money, right? Or

The idol in your life becomes holding on to the money so much that you, you know, you don't do anything. So it's, it's kind of, it's when you get to that place, right? Where you have the ability to, to have that balance, but

Matt Barnes (42:42.606)

Yeah, that balance comes in the form of relationships. It's been really interesting. One of the questions we ask is when you look in the mirror, what do you see a spender or a saver? Vern, about 70 % of the couples we meet with, we have a saver and a spender in the same family. And guess what? You you brought up God earlier and God, you know, opposites attract, but we see this all the time. And what we know is that, if I have a saver and a saver in the same family, got to, those guys are doing great. I got to teach them how to.

Vernon Phillips (42:46.421)

yeah.

Matt Barnes (43:12.29)

Do some other things with money and maybe loosen up and build some goals and dreams. If we have a spender and a spender, I already know I gotta go work on debt load and getting them to save more, but most seven out of 10 are a spender and a saver, which brings that really nice balance. We got one person saying, save, save, save. The other one's like, yeah, but I wanna live a little bit. So when we have these conversations, we can find that balance in that relationship. I say it all the time. I feel more like a counselor than a.

Vernon Phillips (43:21.533)

Yeah.

Matt Barnes (43:42.207)

Financial, you know, advisor expert all the time, but we'd see that all the time. And, you know, some families, it's like, how do we get out of debt? Some families, it's like, we have a lot of, a lot of you guys make great money and are have a lot of money. We just don't know what to do with it. Or how do we transition this giant deferred comp? We have, we have a ton of, you know, we have a ton of clients now with a million dollars plus in deferred comp. What do we do with that? That's a big chunk of money that hasn't been taxed yet. Right? So we have those problems.

Vernon Phillips (43:44.838)

Yeah.

Matt Barnes (44:11.33)

But it's all over the board, but you're exactly right. I think that balance and if you're doing life with somebody in the financial world, getting them both kind of on the same page and heading in the same direction is an awesome part of my job that we love. But you're right. It's finding that balance.

Vernon Phillips (44:24.252)

Yeah. Yep. And probably when you look at it statistically, the spender is probably the youngest of their family and the saver is probably the oldest from their family. Right. It's that firstborn lastborn thing that you see that often, you know, kind of ties into relationships and how things work and, know, who's more responsible, who's not more responsible. And that's a conversation that we could get into and chase. Yeah, that can go all over the place.

Matt Barnes (44:56.13)

That can go all over the place. We ask another question, like how is money treated when you're growing up? How does that affect how you look at manage money today? So we get the guy that comes in and says, well, we never had money. Mom and dad never talked about money. So I just spend it all now. I buy everything we never had. And we get other people come in and say, money was so stressful when I was young. I don't want to feel that stress in my life. So I've done that exact opposite of how I grew up. So we see a lot of it out there, but I'll tell you what, we don't talk about that money mindset often enough. And I think we carry a lot of baggage from, from growing up in this space without even realizing.

Vernon Phillips (45:39.068)

Yeah, yeah. So as we kind of start to wind down here, what is one piece of advice that you would give to those new, well, I take that back. How about, what is a piece of advice that you give those that are just coming into the law enforcement profession, right? They're just starting out their career. They're getting ready to make good money. What is one piece of advice you'd give to them? But then on the other side of that,

What's one piece of advice that you'd give to those who are getting ready to retire, right? They're stepping out of the career. They're stepping into that next stage of life. And maybe they haven't been good with finances. Maybe they have been, but just in general.

Matt Barnes (46:24.216)

For the young guy, not everybody has access to courses like this. For those young guys, you need to attach with an old guy. I don't think we have enough old guys in the departments, right? They used to grab them by the back of the neck and walk them into HR and say, sign here, you're putting money into deferred comp, you're gonna do this. And if not, we're gonna take you out to the bike rack.

So I would say, listen to the old, find somebody that's been around the block that's going to tell you all this stuff. The old guys that are getting ready to retire, they know all this stuff, Vern. They've already made the mistakes. They already can tell you all about deferred comp and some of the pitfalls along the way. So that would be my first thing is, you know, find a mentor in this space. There's a lot of guys willing to share their story out there if you don't have access to a group like us, to an education.

The guys moving into retirement, I would say this, almost not even financially, the stats aren't good for retirement. We know a lot of first responders because of that chronic stress, they're not lasting a long time in retirement. So it's kind of twofold. I would tell peer support groups, go connect with your retirees. We're working with a couple groups now that are bringing retirees in. It's one of the things I hate about law enforcement is like, hey, you retired, thanks for your service. Good luck out there. These guys grind 30 years and serving their community and all of sudden they're just lost. There's nothing there for them. So I would say to peer support groups, man, grab those guys, get them involved, bring them in and do things with them, make them feel the love, because that's gonna create the longevity. And for the guys that are moving into retirement.

You know, find something you're passionate about. Keep doing things. I think it's important that people keep their brains going and find something they're passionate about with a side gig or giving back to the community. Most of y'all have great pensions and if you manage your pension right, you'll be fine. If you have deferred comp, we don't have to touch that for a while. We can double that. So there's plenty of money for you out there, but you know, I think living beneath your means is important.

Matt Barnes (48:36.974)

But I think the most important thing is finding some purpose after you retire. Because a lot of you guys retire at 50, 55, 57, and you lose your purpose.

Vernon Phillips (48:49.042)

Yeah, and I think that's huge. And that's something that I try to remember to plug in all the time is like, look, if law enforcement is your calling, that's great. That's what you feel your purpose is. That's great. But find something else. Find another purpose outside of that. Because when the door closes, if that's what you've invested your entire life in, where are you going to be? Right? You're going to be lost, kind of wander around like, well, now what do I do? What's my purpose? So yes, you have to invest into something else. You have to have another plan, another purpose. absolutely. yeah.

Matt Barnes (49:20.896)

And we've made that our mission. Vern, just hired a retired law enforcement officer, retired Friday. He's coming onto our team. He loves this space, loves helping people. I just interviewed a retired firefighter. So, you know, there's a lot of people out there that you could be helping even in my own company. I'm looking for guys that want purpose. I want to keep helping other people in this space. So yeah, find something to do. Get out there and get busy.

Vernon Phillips (49:48.658)

Yeah. And then, but lastly, before we wrap up, as you look back over your life and kind of where you're at now, how much has your faith played a role in that to where you're at today?

Matt Barnes (50:01.359)

Massive. think I grew up in a family that did a lot of church. Almost six nights a week, I was exposed to that a lot when I grew up. I got away from it. And now once I hit my fifties, I'm a father, I'm raising eight year old daughter and a 12 year old son. And I want them to do things right. I want them to have guidance.

You know, I came from a personal Bible study this afternoon, straight from Bible study over here. And I'm not shy about talking about it anymore, Vern. I'm a believer. I want to be the best version of myself. And I don't think there's really any other way than realizing that, you know, God's laid out a really amazing plan for all of us. And if you trust Him and you trust the path,

His hands have been on everything in my life. I'm realizing that more the older I get. His hands have been all over this business and I'm thankful every day for the life I've been given and it's played a huge role, especially as I get a little bit older.

Vernon Phillips (51:14.492)

Yeah, that's awesome. appreciate your willingness to share that. Because obviously, I'm a believer and that's something that's really important in my life. Obviously with my position and what I do. But I look at law enforcement, I look at the first responder committee, mean, just in general. Just having that peace that I get from my relationship with Christ. I don't know how individuals work in the law enforcement space, work in the first responder space and don't have that relationship. Right? Because that's a huge resilience factor for those who do know Christ the Lord. Man, that's just, there's so much more to that than people really give credit to. And that's why I said earlier, like, I think we do a really good job talking about the physical, talking about the mental, the emotional. But I feel like in the last you know, several years that that spiritual component's kind of taken the backseat to where I don't know if it's because we're, know, people are shy or people are kind of like, I don't want to get in trouble. I don't want to kind of cross that, boundary. But I mean, you know, but if you're in a position to where like that's part of what you, what you do, or that's, that's been woven into what you're doing and what you're offering, you know, the results that come from that are so much better.

And just the overall health and the balance it doesn't mean the life is gonna be sunshine and rainbows, right? Because that's not what it says. That's not what we're told it in Scripture But it gives us the ability to have something to find rest in right and to have that resilience and to be like hey Yeah, this is tough, but I know in the end This isn't gonna matter anyway, right

But so I appreciate you sharing that and I think that's huge. Yeah.

Matt Barnes (53:10.21)

But doing the right thing is better matter. And that's how I've built my business, you know? Doing the right thing matters.

Vernon Phillips (53:19.656)

Yep. So if somebody wants to reach out and get in contact with, you know, yourself or financial, you know, financial fitness, what is, what's the best way to do that?

Matt Barnes (53:28.632)

Yeah, our website is up, gofinancialfitness.com. So G-O-gofinancialfitness.com. They can reach out to me directly, Matt, at gofinancialfitness.com. And we're not even shy about giving out our phone numbers. If somebody needs some help, my personal cell number, area code 661-319-8026. And we'll be there to be there with our crew and our team to help you out if you have some needs or if you just have some questions or if you're doing great and want to turn it up a notch, we'll show up to help people. So thank you.

Vernon Phillips (54:05.244)

Awesome. And I'll plug all that information, the show notes. But Matt, I appreciate you coming on. I appreciate you taking the time just to talk and have a conversation and just share your wisdom and your insight on this.

Matt Barnes (54:12.654)

Yes, sir.

Matt Barnes (54:19.107)

Thank you so much. And I appreciate the opportunity to thanks so much for him. All right. We'll talk.

Vernon Phillips (54:22.556)

Yes, sir.