What would your life look like if you actually used the money you spent years saving? In this episode, Tommy and John break down the idea of “flexing your money muscles” and why those muscles can mean tightening your spending or giving yourself permission to enjoy more. You’ll learn how habits, confidence, and values shape our decisions, and why many people struggle to spend even when they can afford to.
Listen in as Tommy and John explore why enjoyment often feels reckless, how worst-case thinking derails financial confidence, and why a good financial plan should reduce fear — not increase guilt. You’ll also hear how to build money habits that grow stronger over time, including giving back, spending intentionally, balancing risks, and aligning your dollars with what you actually value.
Listen to the full episode here:
What you will learn:
- How giving back strengthens your community and your well-being. (2:45)
- Simple tools and strategies to help you navigate different life phases. (7:45)
- How to make money decisions that align with your personal values. (15:30)
- Why many people struggle to enjoy their money—and how to change that. (22:00)
- How to stop defaulting to financial worst-case scenarios. (29:00)
- How to balance the risk of overspending with the risk of saving too much. (33:10)
- Why starting small—whether giving, investing, or treating yourself—creates momentum. (38:30)
Ideas Worth Sharing:
- “People don’t flex the money muscle for enjoyment because they don’t have a financial plan or they don’t feel confident in what they’re doing. So if you don’t have a plan or you don’t feel confident, the easy answer is to save more and spend less.” – Mason & Associates
- “Do we focus on the catastrophe scenario and then find ourselves later in life having gone through all this undue hardship to prepare for it and not getting to live our best life? Or do we focus on a more realistic one and try to balance things, flex all the muscles of preparing for realistic problems, having insurance where we can insure things against catastrophe-type scenarios, and moving forward with some confidence?” – Mason & Associates
- “Start small, start now. That could be with charitable giving, investments, or splurging on something.” – Mason & Associates
Resources from this episode:
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Read the Transcript Below:
Congratulations for taking ownership of your financial plan by tuning into the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast, hosted by Mason & Associates, financial advisors with over three decades of experience serving you.
John Mason: Welcome, Tommy, to the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast.
Tommy Blackburn: John, it’s always great doing these with you. Thank you for kicking us off and taking time to do these and I hope, thank you to our audience for joining us for another episode. We hope it’s valuable and appreciate you hanging with us.
John Mason: So today’s November 3rd, 2025, second episode of the day. This should launch either in December, January timeframe, so depending on the release, Tommy. Thank you to our clients for a phenomenal 2025. We’re excited to kick off 2026. Podcast audience, YouTube viewers, thank you for being on this journey with us for however long we’ve been doing it many years now. And we’re excited to conclude 2025. And then right into 2026, heading into that strong as well. So a lot of positive momentum at Mason & Associates. By the time this airs, we should have hired our associate planner. Our Virginia Tech recruiting and give-back trip was awesome.
So a lot of positive stuff to share. Excited about Christmas with the kids and some time off. So lot of good stuff, Tommy.
Tommy Blackburn: It is and probably, actually very appropriate what we’re thinking about or what we’re planning on discussing today, as we approach the end of the year and the beginning of the year.
It’s kind of a time of reflection. Think about values, think about where we want to focus ourself and our resources. I think it all aligns very well with what we’ve got teed up as our topic.
John Mason: I think it does too. And this is November 3rd. By the time this airs, I certainly hope that the government shutdown is over and that people are getting paid.
And as I reflect on how excited we are for the holidays, I also, depending on when this launches, just wanna acknowledge that we know that for some of our audience and not many of our clients, but many of our audience could be impacted by this and struggling and not getting paid and Christmas and Thanksgiving and stuff may be a little bit harder than it has been.
My plan, because we’ve recently started attending a local church, they’re doing a Thanksgiving turkey and ham drive. And I asked the director of that over the weekend, Tommy, I haven’t even told you this yet. I was like, “How many turkeys can I buy?” Like, “Can I buy a hundred turkeys, 200 turkeys?” I don’t even know what a turkey costs, by the way.
I think it’s like a dollar a pound or if they’re on sale. But I’m just trying to think like, what is useful and how can I help. And that’s one thing that I feel pretty passionate about. So I may be going to buy some turkeys. I don’t know if you want to go with me and buy some turkeys, but it seems like it’s gonna be a harder Thanksgiving and harder holiday season for a lot of people. There’s a lot of people out there doing a lot of good to make it easier. I know this church also does like a toy thing where parents can come in and they can do shopping for toys and Christmas gifts. So, that’s my plan.
One, I think our charitable giving through our time is important, but also it feels good to be doing some of the toys and some of the food stuff this year.
Tommy Blackburn: 100%. Yeah, happy to support and get involved in all of those. Don’t think I’ve ever have a problem with making sure people can eat and enjoy a good meal.
Seems like almost like the least we can do to help. There’s also the whole concept, which we’re not trying to solve for right now of teach a man to fish. So we do want to help, but we also wanna hopefully contribute to longer-term solutions. But the toys thing, I think that’s great too. Children, if we can help them have happy holidays as well, and even through, we don’t have to do it through this, but Banks Mountain, who we partner with quite a bit. Rachel actually runs a thing called Tara’s Children’s Trust, which as for a very long time, been about providing both school clothes and supplies to those in need, as well as helping with like Christmas gifts around this time of year.
So that’s one we could potentially look at as well. All of that, just to support what you’re saying, yeah. Completely on it. And thank you for addressing what federal folks are going through right now with the shutdown and the continued, I don’t know, seesawing that goes on in the government this year and probably will continue to go on.
Our hearts certainly go out to you and we do intend or hope to record an episode. Hopefully, the shutdown will be resolved by then. But it’s probably not gonna be the last shutdown, so it is something that we want to have a topic on as well, just kind of positioning yourself or planning to the best you can ahead of those.
John Mason: I wanna acknowledge for our audience too, because maybe you’ve been wondering like, “Why haven’t these guys done a government shutdown episode yet?” And one of the things we struggle with, because we’re financial planners first, and we do this content creation second is one, it’s end of year tax planning and we’re working with clients almost every day, finalizing the year really strong, but two, this is going, it are the longest or second longest government shutdown ever, and you can look back at the stats on how long this has lasted before.
We release episodes every two weeks, and we typically record in advance. So it’s been a hard topic for us to think about recording because by the time we record it and launch it, the shutdown could have been over.
So, just want you to know, it’s not like we’ve been holed up somewhere, not aware of what’s going on, but through our content creation, we have to be a little more strategic about making sure that when it’s released, it’s still relevant. And this has been just a thing that continues to drag on and it’s been frankly upsetting to us and for many ways, but it’s also hard to think about content creation and trying to do these videos when you don’t know how long it’s going to last.
Thank you for telling me about Rachel. I wanna get more information on that. The episode today is something along the lines of like flex your money muscles, Tommy. And as we were preparing for this, I think it’s just important that we had this upfront discussion so that we don’t seem completely out of touch with reality, right?
So, as we talk about flexing your money muscles, what that means is we’re gonna unpack a lot of things, getting comfortable with spending, changing your spending habits, enjoying the dollars that you saved. And at the same time, we have to acknowledge that there are other people on the spectrum right now that need to flex different types of muscles. They need to flex the I need to save more muscle, or I need to cut my spending muscle. So the flexing of your money muscles can go both ways. It can go with tightening the belt and tightening the things and reducing consumption and reducing risk. Or it can go the opposite direction. Spend more, enjoy more, take on additional risk.
So it can go both directions, which we didn’t even talk about that before we hit the record button, so hopefully we’re doing okay.
Tommy Blackburn: No, this is great. As I think about it too, some of it’s like strategy of knowing when to use certain tools and when to have certain mindsets and when to flex certain muscles, right?
So you’ve got all these muscles in your body, and a lot of times, particularly in today’s lifestyle, being in an office for most of us, you may use certain muscles quite a bit and then you go and you do some type of sport and it’s some muscle you hadn’t so hadn’t used in forever, and you feel it. And so the point is we’ve got all these muscles and trying to, I think, exercise all of them and not get so caught up.
The risk, as I think we’ll talk about today, is that we can flex muscles too much, where we kind of forget how to use the other muscles. And so bringing those back in, and so one of those could be for many of us throughout our early lives and careers, it’s that tightening you talk about and of saving and these mindsets and values.
And maybe it’s trying to distinguish like, where are the real values there. But try not to get like so caught up in it either that you can allow yourself to exercise those other muscles. As we’ve also said before, for many people, we see clients. What was a strength throughout your entire career of saving, being diligent can become a weakness in retirement because you have to flip the switch to all of a sudden decumulating or using your assets, for what you saved for, perhaps part of today’s conversation, I believe, too, is that we don’t have to always wait till retirement either.
In fact, we probably shouldn’t. So it should be, hopefully, a really fine and thoughtful conversation.
John Mason: Well, you and I both enjoy, maybe me a little bit more than you, but we both have a doctor that we enjoy seeing, that is, I don’t know if we would say concierge medicine, but certainly more concierge than the typical doctor.
If, audience, you follow something like Peter Attia or any of these other people out there, Medicine 3.0. Tommy and I do enjoy a little bit of trying to be more proactive in our health. And a lot of times in these health podcasts, Tommy, they talk about the need to work out today in your 30s, 40s, and 50s, so that when you get to your marginal decade.
Your 80s or 90s, which we’re all gonna have that last marginal decade where we don’t physically exist that well, like we’re limited in our ability to do things because you start losing muscle mass, you start losing the ability to recover, you start losing cognitive ability, physical function, and if you start from a higher baseline, you’re still gonna go down this decline.
But you’ll at least have that a little bit better in the marginal decade if we start at a higher thing. So the genesis of this episode was like kind of thinking about from a health perspective, but flexing your money muscles. And they talk about how, physically, if you don’t use your muscles, they begin to atrophy.
You begin to get to a point where you lose the ability to use those muscles. So think about–I met a guy the other day that had carpal tunnel surgery. I don’t know what the recovery is, Tommy, but it wasn’t that long. It was like a couple weeks, maybe, and the guy had to go to physical therapy to learn how to reuse his hand.
Now he’s used his hand every day of his life for 55 years or however long it’s been, and he loses use of his hand for two or three weeks, and we’ve gotta go to a physical therapist to relearn how to use that. That’s how fast you can atrophy. That’s how fast you can lose the ability to function. So think about your money muscles are the same way. If you’re not actively using them and flexing them and practicing, you’re going to lose the ability to do some of this over time, whether it’s tightening or spending or anything in between. So that’s kind of the genesis, I think, of this episode as well as some of the head trash or mental issues that we have, around our own spending and we’ll, I think we’re gonna talk about that too,
Tommy Blackburn: As an aside or an anecdote. I was thinking I’ve had a similar experience myself when I broke my pinky a few years ago, back around the time I was starting here working with you. And, yeah, so I had to have surgery for them to fix it and reattach a ligament or so, I forget what it was, but it did involve surgery. And so I lost use. And then I remember going through physical therapy just to get all of that back. And I think is that the joints or ligaments get so tight. And I’ll never forget one of the nurses or physical therapists saying, “I’m gonna crank you,” like, that was the word, I’m gonna crank you. And it was like taking, ’cause it had been held straight as it was repairing itself.
And so it was getting this motion back and her just taking the pinky and like collapsing it and me about jumping out of the chair, ’cause it was so painful and it’s, that was something minor, you think about the scheme of things, but to your point, I have lived that so I can certainly relate. It’s a good anecdote.
John Mason: Well, I woke up three days ago, could barely walk. And I’m exaggerating a little bit, but it’s like I had like all this pain in my hips. I’m like, “What is happening?” Well, I hadn’t done any physical activity in like 10 or 14 days because of travel and things that were going on. So I’m like, feel like paralyzed almost, and I’m like, “Okay, so I need to get in the gym.” So then I went to the gym, had a good leg day, woke up the next day, couldn’t walk for a different reason, but my hip feels better. So it, again, it’s just important that you’re constantly pushing yourself, both physically, mentally, so flexing those muscles.
Tommy, I think that where we should start here is that we would like to reflect, audience, a little bit on what’s going on with our family. And my son is five, almost six. We have him his own little bank account. We talk about spending and it occurred to me that he has no problem spending his allowance and his money and he also has zero problem spending my money or me and my spouse’s money, the family’s money.
It’s like, well, that’s very interesting. Like, he doesn’t really care about saving, he doesn’t really care about investing and he is just completely almost reckless with spending at this point. And now my job as a parent is to coach him out of that, tell him, teach him about values, teaching him about saving and investing and interest and compounding and all of these things.
And at 30, almost 38 years old, Tommy, we went to Virginia Tech a week or two ago, and we’re in the bookstore. We’re Virginia Tech alumni. We run a successful financial planning firm. You didn’t even look in the store, like you refuse to even look.
Tommy Blackburn: I was wondering if you were gonna call me out. Yeah.
John Mason: You refuse to even look. I picked out this green hoodie that I thought looked really cool. It was $140. I’m like, it went right back on the shelf. And audience, this is not me being boastful about my own finances, but I make good income and I’ve never had more money than I have right now because I’ve been doing all the right things for the last 15 years, and I’ve almost never been more tight with my money, at least as it results, or at least as it relates to physical or like tangible things that you can like reach out and touch.
I’ve almost never been more tight with that and I’m relating more to clients now, Tommy, at 38, who at 22 I would’ve been like, “Just buy the hoodie.” At 38, I’m like, I understand why you don’t value that.
Tommy Blackburn: Yeah. And I think my family, we have similar conversations, me and my spouse, like say, “Just because I can, should I?” Like, I understand that this is not material, but it gets back to what do I value?
Does it seem like it’s good? And that same trip, John, you’re right. I figured, I was wondering if you were gonna say something. “Tommy didn’t even bother looking at anything ’cause he wasn’t gonna be happy with the prices.” Same trip that you and I went and had some great meals together and we spent some money on those meals and we, I don’t think we questioned it at all. Not that we were completely unaware, but that was more of an experience. One, we have to eat. And then two is enjoying each other’s company, thinking about what we’re doing for the day and the business long term. So hopefully, that draws somewhat of a value consideration there.
Like, do I, that was an experience, us eating, having a meal together, whereas, “Yeah, I like these hoodies and these Hawaiians.” They’ve got that Virginia Tech hoodie I keep eyeing in there, but I’m just like, I’m not gonna pay $150 for a Hawaiian that I’m pretty sure I can go find it on Amazon probably for 50 bucks, right? Like, it’s just, there’s just some part of you that just can’t, and listen, I think it’s a value thing.
John Mason: It’s the values, it’s the principle. Like, I don’t even think, and audience, you can judge us if you want for this. Like, I don’t think we’ve really looked at the price of the pork chop that we had that one night.
I don’t think we looked at that or the cocktail. But you know, for the hoodie, the first thing I did was pull out the price tag to see how much it cost, right? So it is a values or an experience conversation. So, as we go down this path, Tommy, and this is not like a very technical episode, but it’s more like philosophical or soft skills, is that over the next 65 years, we’re gonna train our children to not spend money and to save money.
And we’ve been, I know clients have done that. I know our audience is actively doing that. And then we, as financial planners, like I think, and we’ll pick on Ken for a second, he’s like, “I’ve already baked this into your financial plan, and you want a car, you can have a new car.” And it’s like, but people that’s–maybe they don’t want that.
Yeah, maybe like we try to champion or encourage people to spend their money and we’re like, “You can turn left on the airplane, or you can buy that really nice suit,” or whatever it is, but they’re like, “John, I don’t need it or want it.” And it’s like, wow, we spent all this time getting through all these hard phases of life.
We’ve done all the right things. We’ve saved, we’ve invested, we’ve kept our expenses low, and now we’re at the point where we can do all the things we’ve always wanted to do, yet we have the least amount of desire to spend money than we’ve ever had our entire life. What a, I mean, crazy comes to mind, like what?
Not that our clients are crazy, but like. It just seems wrong. It seems wrong that we have less desire, less time, less physical health to enjoy all of this stuff after we’ve worked so hard to get here.
Tommy Blackburn: And it is a journey, right? And so I think we’ve acknowledged nobody’s gonna change their stripes overnight.
So even when we talk with clients of saying, “Hey, go spend and enjoy.” It’s not the last time we’re gonna have this conversation because it’s gonna take repetition and you getting comfortable to begin to loosen the grip a little bit on allowing yourself to enjoy some things. Sometimes, we get in our own way.
Maybe I need to step back and realize, like, “When am I at the Virginia Tech bookstore again?” And if you just want it like you should. And you can’t afford it. You’ve saved, you’ve done the things you’re supposed to do. Maybe allow yourself to get the hoodie, John, and Tommy, get that Hawaiian that you think you would like.
But it’s also, yeah, it’s a struggle. So hopefully, maybe the audience here is we have a little bit of a struggle ourselves. We have to deal with here of where my values really in aligning my money with my values. I do value my time. And so maybe that’s where I need to step back and think. You should–the least you’re gonna spend all this time to go find a better-priced hoodie. Or should you just take the 30 seconds and buy the hoodie and move on with your life? Maybe that’s the reflection that you and I need to have. Maybe it’s not that hard to pull up Amazon, either. So, some things to think through here, but it comes back to values.
I also think about, John, ’cause we’re philosophically thinking through this. We have to teach our children to be responsible, value money. Different muscles. Sometimes you have to survive. And I think a lot of times, unfortunately, we have survival lessons that stick with us when we should be trying to thrive later in life.
And so we were talking with our marketing officer, I guess you would call it, Zoe from Perfectly Planned and talking about like just even eating meals where many of us have come from backgrounds of precious resources went into this meal, and you gotta eat all of it.
And then it’s like, well, that, maybe that’s not, maybe that was true at a certain point in our journey, but we’re at a different point now where actually it would be better for our health if we bought the expensive pork chop and if we just ate what we needed to, instead of feeling like we have to eat every bite.
So it’s a lot to think through and train and untrain yourself and knowing when are certain things appropriate. So I think about the young families and you go through these struggles, which built character to a degree. I guess I’m thinking, John, for us, perhaps if we are fortunate enough to have, you know, watch our kids have families, maybe that’s where we can add value to of just like, “Hey, I know you’re at a point in your career, money is not that great yet.” Or something along those lines. Like, “Let us take away some of that. Let us pay for the vacation, the family vacation. Let us see you see this money help y’all.” Maybe there’s an improvement around the house because, yeah, we’ve gotten to this point. We’re retired and you got money you’re not willing to spend.
So maybe you can look on yourself, but perhaps you can look at your family and see that if they’re responsible, this could help them quite a bit, and you get to see them enjoy it.
John Mason: I think the reason people don’t, two reasons people don’t flex their money muscles for specifically enjoyment purposes, and that’s, audience, where we want to focus mostly on this episode, is the enjoyment piece of it. One is, I think it feels reckless, Tommy, where people just feel like it’s not prudent or it’s reckless, or they’re lighting their money on fire. They can eat a cheeseburger at McDonald’s, or they can go to Circa 1918 and get a cheeseburger that’s five times more expensive.
And it’s like, is there any value in that? Well, yeah, that cheeseburger at Circa is much better, but it feels reckless to spend that kind of money. It feels reckless to buy the same hoodie with a screen-printed logo on it, for double or triple the cost. I think the other reason people don’t flex the money muscle for enjoyment is that they don’t have a financial plan slash they don’t feel confident in what they’re doing. So if you don’t have a plan or you don’t feel confident, the easy answer is to save more and spend less, save more, spend less, keep pumping money into investments. Or like many of our clients, until they met us, they think, “Well, I’m not gonna take any distributions for my investments until I have to,” which used to be 70 and a half RMDs, then they got bumped to 72, then 73.
People listening to this podcast could be age 75. So you retire at 57 or 62, whatever it is, from the government, and we’re just gonna not take any distributions now until we’re 75. Why? Is it because you’re scared? Because you want to have more, you’re not confident in the plan that you’ve built. And what ends up happening is we’re not flexing the money muscles. We’re not learning to spend that money. We’re not enjoying that money. And I think that’s what hopefully a good financial planning team could do for you. Recently, I met with a client who, they’ve been retired now for at least three years, maybe closer to five.
And they’ve been living very well. Well, two clients actually, that have been retired for a long time. Both of them live very well. Both of them live very comfortably. Both of them have everything they need based on social security and pensions. Zero distributions from the portfolio since retirement. One client just inherited a million or a million five on top of the million that they already have.
Tommy, the question I had for them is like, “Okay, where do you plan to spend an extra hundred grand next year?” And they looked at me like I had three heads and the conversation went something like this. It was like, “Well, what’s the point of all of this? Why do you have the money? Like, do you just want to see it grow? Does it give you like excitement to see the balance grow every year? Or do we have something else in mind?” And there was a lot to unpack with this client. They were like, “Well, we want to do something for the grandkid, but we don’t wanna make the other grandparent jealous or we wanna do something for our son or daughter, but we don’t want her to be offended or him to be offended that we just built this for them, or we just gave them that money or they won’t accept it.
And then this particular client also said, “For the last five years, I’m gonna travel, travel, travel when this happens.” Well, that happened. Now she’s got a grandbaby. “Now I’ll travel, travel, travel, or I’ll spend, spend, spend after the grandbaby reaches a certain age.” And I just looked at him, I said, “You’re never gonna do anything, are you? There’s always going to be something that prevents you from doing this isn’t there?” And it wasn’t meant to be mean, but it was meant to like really push back on this, Tommy, and say like, what are we doing when there’s a 70 to a hundred thousand dollars that we could be doing something with, charitable, friends, family, and to just sit on It just feels like not the right answer.
Tommy Blackburn: Well, yeah, I feel like you’re essentially telling them, “I’ve seen this movie before.” It’s a different reason, but it’s always, and an excuse is not the right way to put it, but you’re gonna continue to put off delay. And so maybe let’s take a moment to reflect and think about what do we actually want and how do we make it, how do we take action?
Or is there really no purpose behind these funds, I guess, is a question, which it seems like we can always find a purpose, whether it’s to enjoy, to help others, what could fulfill us. So yeah, I think it’s good because it’s a little uncomfortable to sometimes really stop and face those questions.
John Mason: It is, and it was just, it’s eye-opening to me how important our job is. And one of the things that I tried to encourage with this particular family was I was like, “Well, maybe let’s have a family meeting with your son or daughter and let’s kind of show them what you have.” Which I know to a lot of the audience could be taboo.
It’s like, “Well, we don’t talk about finances. We don’t do that.” Well, in this particular case, what if we showed son or daughter that you have two and a half million dollars? What if we showed son or daughter that you don’t owe anything on anything? What if we showed them that one day, if we don’t spend any of this money, they’re going to inherit 3, 4, 5, $10 million, whatever it ends up being, and that will have been after they made it through the hard part in their life.
Maybe we can have a family meeting to get son or daughter comfortable accepting. Now you, they did a great thing. They raised a successful human who doesn’t want anybody else’s money. Job well done. Like you crushed it and good on the son or daughter for not being dependent on mom and dad. But also, if you’re going to get it one day, there’s, let’s try to get comfortable with receiving some of it now.
Tommy Blackburn: Yeah, having a conversation seems like a really good way to begin going about that and holding each other accountable, responsible. I don’t wanna see you just go frivolously waste this, but here are some things that could be helpful and maybe some ways we hold each other accountable. And to your point about they’re gonna get it one day, when I was on a trip a couple years ago, I met a family from Canada and the dad, we were out, this was in Antigua. And he was swimming nearby us and asked us where we had got these little Amazon floats that are actually very convenient to travel with. And we gave them to him because we were getting ready to leave.
They were still there. It seemed like they could enjoy it. He said his, I think spouse, couldn’t swim that well, so it’d be helpful for her. So it was like this fun conversation and, but anyway, I was like, “So you have your kids with you?” He’s like, “Yeah.” And I think they were college-age or post-college, his daughters.
And we were just talking. He’s like, “It’s the saying of they can get it with a warm hand or a cold hand.” And he is like, “I figure I might as well be a warm hand.” I thought it was like such an insightful way to put it, at that belief that, maybe I took longer to tell that story than I should have, but ultimately his philosophy was, I can see we can enjoy this together and I can get to see it. Not that life should be all about vacations, but just, I really appreciated the sentiment.
John Mason: Well, I love the warm hand concept and so this is going, hopefully, audience, you’re enjoying the content ’cause it’s kind of just free flowing here.
But, you know, at Virginia Tech, one of the kids, one of the students asked like, social security maybe isn’t gonna pay benefits, or the world’s gonna change, or the world’s gonna end. And the question that the particular student asked, Tommy, was, “Should we model in the financial plan a scenario where the couple gets $0 from social security?”
And we said, “No, you should not do that.” And then the student teacher asked, “Why?” And we said, “Because that’s not helpful. All that’s going to do is show them that they’re never going to be able to retire, and that life stinks.”
Tommy Blackburn: You’re gonna scare them to death.
John Mason: You’re gonna scare them into inaction or no action. It’s not helpful. Now, if you wanna model all social security, maybe a cut to social security, something that’s still attainable, like Dave Ramsey even says this too. He is like, and we disagree with some of his math, but a 4% or 5% withdrawal rate, Dave Ramsey argues, is too low because what that means is most people will never be able to retire if they only have a 4% withdrawal rate.
So he tries to show people the light in that if they take 7% or 8%, all of a sudden retirement seems more attainable. The long way to get to the point here is you, as the audience, you as a client, you, as a retiree, can always model in a doomsday scenario, and there’s always a doomsday scenario that could bankrupt you.
I don’t know what they are necessarily, and as bulletproof as we think many of our clients are, there’s probably still scenarios out there that we could draw up, Armageddon type events that ruin a good financial plan.
Tommy Blackburn: But the probability
John Mason: You do have to take a little bit of risk and just say like, “What are the chances of that happening? And if it does. We lost. Okay. We did our best.” But it wasn’t reckless. It wasn’t without good information. And I think sometimes when people won’t spend their money, they get hung up on all these what ifs and they, and it almost becomes an unproductive worry.
Tommy Blackburn: That’s a good point. And I was thinking, I think very much similar lines of the probability of these catastrophes happening is very low to spend all this time focusing on it.
And we’ll make adjustments if we find ourselves hitting down those catastrophes, we’ll do our best to make adjustments. But the flip side is, the probability is that’s not gonna happen, and that we’re gonna over save and we’re gonna have all, you know, more resources than we need.
So do we focus on the catastrophe scenario and then find ourselves later in life having gone through all this undue hardship to prepare for it, and not getting to live our best life? Or do we focus on a more realistic one and try to balance things, flex all the muscles of preparing for realistic problems, having insurance where we can insure things against catastrophe type scenarios and moving forward with some confidence and yeah, ’cause I just as, John, as you described that, you just think, and I think that was our point to the student. One, you scare them half to death, but like that person is going to forego so much of enjoyment of life, fulfillment of life if they go down “I’m preparing for the catastrophe” scenario versus the realistic one.
John Mason: And on graphical format, and we’re probably not gonna be good enough to throw this in the YouTube video, but you run a Monte Carlo simulation or something that shows how much people, or how much money somebody will have when they pass away and they have a confidence, like one standard deviation, two, or three.
And then they’ll show you that middle line, and it’s typically up and into the right. So it typically means you’re dying with more money than when you started. And then on that cone, there’s a scenario where you run out of money. And there’s also a scenario where you started with 2 million and died with 20 million.
We would argue that the risk of running out of money is as substantial as a risk of dying with $20 million, right? Like, you underspent, you underutilized, you did without for so long. Like the dispersion of results is so big in a really good, in our opinion, financial plan. We’re trying to bring that dispersion down where the assets are flat or maybe slightly going up, but hopefully, not in a situation where we have these gigantic range of outcomes that led to either running out of money or leaving so much on the table.
So there’s a lot of risk both ways. Another client, we’ve mentioned to them, they said, “John, we don’t need anything, so we don’t, we’re not gonna take any portfolio distributions.” And I said, “Well, just to be clear, if, Tommy, “you base a hundred percent of your distributions from your portfolio on need, you will never take any distributions from your portfolio. So as long as we’re both clear that’s what you’re saying to me, I’ll get off my soapbox here. We don’t have to talk about it anymore. And, but if you’re basing it on need, our clients have all of their needs met by pensions and social, which frees up the portfolio to be discretionary. But if we’re only basing things on need, then you don’t need one, two, $3 million in investments to retire. You could have done without all of that.”
Tommy Blackburn: Yep. And we try our best and we have our own demons we personally have to fight. But I am thinking of a few clients, John, where, yeah, pension, strong income, strong guaranteed income. And one of them I remember went on a cruise recently, which is great ’cause they are traveling, they’re doing things, they recently bought like a recreational vehicle to hopefully go across country and enjoy some stuff, but I think they went on a cruise and they’re like, “We stayed in…” And I get it. The cost is, it is quite impressive sometimes the delta and the cost between like the economy cabin on the cruise versus the concierge cabin.
But I’ve just, they couldn’t bring themselves to pay for the nicer cabin, and I really do think they would’ve enjoyed that cruise a lot more. I know, I get it. And I’m not, we struggle with this too. Then you have to have our own struggles about what’s valuable. What else could we use the money for?
But in this situation, yep, needs are met. We got incredible portfolio discretionary. It’s like you should have, I kind of really wish we would’ve pushed you a little bit harder just to go on the nicer cabin, ’cause I think you would’ve had a much better experience. another one of their family members got a golf cart recently and it’s funny, that conversation, ’cause it’s like, “This is frivolous, like I don’t need this, but I’ve got it to put around a neighborhood on and it wasn’t a good use of money,” but some would argue.
But it’s also just like, just zoom out, look at your situation, your needs are covered. Have a little fun. Both of them I think do a lot about fulfillment, though, so I will give them credit, a lot of credit for that. They’re involved in organizations in their community and their families, the young members of their families are trying to help them.
But at the same time, it’s just, you couldn’t, you can’t bring yourself to splurge a little bit, to make this experience more memorable. You think about how many more of these experiences might you have left. None of us are promised tomorrow.
John Mason: That’s absolutely right. And one of my favorite RV YouTube channels is Keep Your Daydream.
And they have a saying that says, “Start small. Start now.” And I know we’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but their whole idea is like if you want to go camping and create memories and you only have money for a tent, go tent camping, and then when you can afford an RV, get an RV or a travel trailer or something that you can tow with your current vehicle.
When you can upgrade the vehicle, then you upgrade your vehicle. When you can upgrade the tow, the trailer, you upgrade the trailer, but you start small, start now. The analysis paralysis is my dream RV cost 150,000 and I need this truck and I’m just not gonna do anything until I can afford to do all of that and delaying all of the experiences and all of the time where you could have been doing something, you could have started small, started now and started making memories. The same is true with your money muscles is that we need to start small and start now. So recently, I became aware of a situation where somebody wanted to increase their charitable giving.
And they were having a lot of questions or concerns because they wanted to make sure the money was going to good use. They wanted to make sure that they knew where their resources were going, but then they were like about to hit the donate button and they just couldn’t bring themselves to do it. They were like, “What’s the right number? How do I calculate it?” They were all in their head and they just picked $25, and it was such a genius thing. I’ll give this person credit because the first $25 in charitable giving was probably the hardest $25 that person will ever give, and within a month or two, they’ll probably increase their charitable giving to $50, and then by the end of the year, they’ll probably increase it to something else.
But it was starting, that initial, just start to see the money going out to something that you genuinely care about. That initial part was infinitely harder than any increase will be from then on out. And I think that’s what people miss, Tommy, is that starting small and just getting some positive, I mean, Dave Ramsey will say it with the debt snowball method, pay off your lowest debt first, so you feel good, and it starts building on each other.
So start small, start now. That could be with charitable giving, or it could just be like, next time you’re traveling, pay to go into the Delta Lounge. Maybe you’re not ready to do the first class ticket yet, but pay to go to the lounge or something like splurge on dessert. Like this other client recently, like they were in the office, which we don’t do a lot of, I booked the reservation for them that night at my favorite restaurant, and I prepped them. I said, “You’re going tonight to this restaurant?” ‘Cause they said they were going out to dinner and we said, well, you’re not going to Costco tonight. So I booked the reservation for them and I said, “Let me know if you need a distribution after you see the bill.”
Tommy Blackburn: Yeah, because it’s probably so minor too from like the bigger picture, whatever that bill was, but that’s great. I love that you helped them get that momentum going. I think you’re absolutely right. The initial momentum, getting that ball rolling, kind of takes a little bit of most effort. Thinking about don’t let perfect get in the way of good enough is another of just, “Hey, start small, start with $25. Start somewhere.” Don’t get so worked up about the perfect, just start making progress and it’ll probably the momentum will most likely continue. So I think that is great. We talked about it a bit today. Well, one thing that comes to mind is you and I have chatted about previously, like it’s not a decision that will continue to beat you down, and sometimes when we’re facing decisions of, it’s like the analysis paralysis, but it’s like, “Hey, this is a one-time cost.”
So even if it turns out that it was a bad decision, it only hurt me once to have made this bad decision versus that some decisions are reoccurring and will continue to harm you for some time or cause cost. Those ones we certainly need to be more thoughtful about, almost like the episode we just did with estate planning and I even was reflecting in between episodes, John, of our style of financial planning by and large, which goes with our estate planning thoughts is, and also this value of money muscle, flexing those muscles, is a lot of times it’s not–ot’s flexibility and it’s not irrevocable type things. A lot of times it is just, “Hey, these things aren’t gonna continue. You’ll have the ability to change directions.”
And I think hopefully that’s freeing some, too, even as you think about things. So even when we’re thinking about buying a hoodie, that decision was only gonna hurt you for one moment. It wasn’t gonna continue to hurt you. But I guess you gotta also think about your larger values that you have there.
I think a lot of research to what we’ve been hitting on is like what’s fulfilling to you? Charitable, being charitable, I think, is something that they find, research has shown, and what we see anecdotally, very fulfilling to people. They get a lot of value out of seeing either giving to other people or giving to charities and also experiences.
Experiences over material. Good. Not that we don’t enjoy our luxury items from time to time, but the experiences are probably what you’re gonna remember; that’s where you seem to get more bang for your buck as well.
John Mason: So, audience, it should be completely clear when we say flex your money muscle, it doesn’t mean make other people feel bad about what you have versus what they have.
It doesn’t mean go buy the flashiest clothes. It doesn’t mean do anything other than align your spending with your values and allow yourself to be comfortable spending money and using your resources for things that you believe are very important. Now, for some of you, it could be material goods. Maybe you have a Rolex. That’s cool. I’m not gonna judge you if you have a Rolex. But the idea of flexing isn’t to make somebody else feel bad for what you have versus what they don’t have. So whatever you value, like, I really wanted this $300 pullover yesterday that I saw at the golf Pro shop, but I then I’m thinking about eating a cheeseburger and squirting ketchup all over it.
And I’m like, “Well, that would not be a good use of $300.” So I don’t judge somebody that wears that. Maybe they’re just more clean at eating than I am, so I’m gonna spend my money a different way. Me, personally, some charitable concerns that I have, and I know we wanna wrap this up soon, is that we donate to charity, but then you think about, or you hear about all of the scams that are out there.
Well, this charity doesn’t give the money here, or this charity doesn’t donate enough, or this person took advantage of that person, or you donated to the food bank, but then a millionaire walked through there and picked up a Thanksgiving Turkey, and it’s like, I can’t change any of that. I can’t really change what’s gonna happen with Social Security.
I can’t really change that there are bad people that are going to the food pantry. I can’t really change any of these things. That doesn’t have to, I can’t let that impact my entire behavior. Thinking that there’s always somebody out there, some bad person, so therefore I should not do, or I can’t do or I won’t do, because there’s one bad person out of the other 150 that went through that actually needed help.
And I think that’s similar, we wrote down more money equals more problems, more time, idle hands equals more problems and more anxiety. All this to be said, I think you can convince yourself not to do a lot of things based on the scammers or the bad stories or the political environment or the wars that are going on in the world.
There’s always gonna be a reason not to donate. There’s always gonna be a reason not to spend. There’s always gonna be a reason to be more conservative. Eventually, we kinda have to like knock down those barriers. I think, Tommy, and just say, like Mike said, for a long time, if it’s gonna be, it’s up to me. And what that means is like we just have to do, we just have to be okay doing it and the end result is gonna be the end result.
Tommy Blackburn: Don’t let perfect get in the way a good enough. Don’t manage to the exception is what was coming to my mind as you were saying it. Yep. There are bad actors and things that are gonna irritate us, but that we can’t control.
Don’t devote all your time to the small probabilities. It’s the same thing of what if social security is non-existent? That seems to be such a small probability, almost just why don’t waste your limited amount of time focusing on that.
John Mason: So, audience, we’re financial planners first. We do this content creation second. Tommy, I wanna hear any, closing thoughts that you have as we wrap this up. But again, big thank you to you, to our team, to our outsource team, to our clients, to our audience. Phenomenal 2025. As we head into 2026, we hope everybody has a great Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, good start to the new year, depending on when this launches.
Audience, we’ve said this before, things are what they seem at Mason & Associates. We’re here to support, empower, educate, and motivate you, our audience, to make positive changes in your financial plan, as well as our clients, to make positive changes in their financial plan. And if the call to action for me is obviously New Year’s resolution would be do something productive with your life, whatever that may be.
But if you’re not feeling supported and empowered and educated throughout your financial planning decisions, if you’re feeling like, you know, if your financial planner’s not on your top five speed dial, that shows you that we used to have speed dials, Tommy, when we grew up, if they’re not top five on your speed dial or on your iPhone favorites, then you probably, or maybe you want to consider that you don’t have that advocate, you don’t have the quarterback, you don’t have the person who’s advising in all aspects of your life.
If every time you have a financial consideration, you’re going to Reddit or your next-door neighbor rather than your financial planner, these are all signs that maybe we need to upgrade or enhance or ask for a higher level of service.
So, going into 2026, let’s be educated. Let’s be empowered. Let’s know the things that we need to do in our financial plan to succeed and also liberate ourself to enjoy some of the things that we can enjoy at this point in our life. And Tommy, I know I’m taking up a lot of time, but, audience, if again, if you’re impacted by the government shutdown, we know that this is hard. We know that this is probably not the episode that you wanted to listen to in the middle of turmoil and hard times, so thank you for tuning into the end. We know it’s going to get better. We’ll be here producing this content on the other side of this.
If you have questions or concerns, we do offer introductory phone calls. Typically, we like to say like those are for people who need to be or want to be qualified clients of Mason & Associates. But if you feel like you have nowhere else to turn, you know, introductory phone call and then we would just ask for a nice Google review or podcast review or something, whatever we can do to help, questions to MasonFP@masonllc.net, or drop them in the comments or YouTube section.
Tommy Blackburn: Thanks, John. It’s been another great episode. Fun recording these, you’ve covered it very well. Very well said. So no need for me to piggyback on it.
John Mason: Alright, dude, well, we’ll see you on the next episode of the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast.
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