Can People With Mental Health Challenges Build Wealth?

[Music] brought to you by the Every Dollar app. Start budgeting for free today. So, I was wondering, I know this is a bit of a generalized question, but I was wondering if you had any advice or tips for listeners who feel limited in their potential due to issues due to issues, excuse me, with mental health. Tell me more. All right. So, I'm just give you a little bit of background. I'm not in a deep financial hole or anything like that, but there is a bit of family history. Part of it is addiction. Part of it is mental health. Um, my mother had depression and anxiety. My father gambling addict. Great parents at the end of the day. Very fantastic parents. They did a good job. But family history there that just kind of caused disruptions in my childhood and then into adulthood. On my personal end, my mother passed away in 2017. When that happened, I received an inheritance obviously and I just was not smart with it the way I needed to be. instead of investing it, instead of using that to catapult myself into a stable future, I ended up spending it. I still think about those mistakes to this day. And now I'm in a situation, I'm approaching 30. I would like to be able to start a family, have financial stability, all these different things. But those past failures combined with the family history really just kind of put a damper on those thoughts. So, it's hard to have long-term motivation. Do you do you have mental health diagnostics? Have you been diagnosed with emotional or mental health disorders? Yeah. So, when I was younger, I was diagnosed um Asperger syndrome. Now, that's changed since then. Obviously, they got rid of that diagnosis. So, I think it's just all I mean, outside of that, there's definitely a little bit of anxiety and things of that nature. So, given what I mean, just the two seconds you just unpacked your 30 seconds, you unpacked your childhood. Um, what I would love to tell you is it sounds like for the last 25, 27, 28 years, you've been surviving. And congratulations, you made it. Did you do something dumb with money? Yes, we all do. And the only thing you can do anything about is what comes happen what happens next. And so, let me ask you something. any time you sit down and you think about blowing all that money, has that ever have you ever been able to figure out how to get some of that money back and deposit it into your checking account? Um, so I mean like in terms of the money that's already gone, like I do think about just how could I have been smarter with it and like in the present day, how can I budget my money? How can I make sure that money set aside for emergencies for a future? So in those avenues I'm doing well. I do have money saved up. I have a 401k. I have a Roth IRA. Good. And you don't have a mental health diagnosis. No. I mean, so what you are is like a normal 30-year-old person. Yeah. That made a mistake once with money. You don't have any limiting factors. In fact, you've climbed, you scratched and clawed your way out of a pretty hellacious childhood to get here. Thank you for that. Um, yeah. Sounds like you're sounds like you're pretty strong to me. You're a lot stronger than you think you are. I I if I were you, I would go sit down with somebody and get some get retested just to clear your mind. I don't want you googling I have some sort of diagnostic or some sort of self-limiting factor. Yeah, there's not John, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of any um the environmental, but no uh uh physical uh inherited u you know, if your dad's an addict, it doesn't make you an addict. No, but you can you can grow up in a pretty traumatic situation. I know, but that's an environment. That's what I mean. That's why you get to decide what happens next. Yeah. Yeah. So, Grant, what do you think you're doing wrong right now? I think right now it's just um I don't think that I'm branching out on my own and being independent enough. So I'm living with my dad now. We both kind of need each other. Him, you know, I think I'm helping him financially, he's helping me emotionally. So we're a good team, but it's Do you need emotional support right now, Grant? Um not through a therapist. I've tried those in the past. I'm just a little I I don't want to say cynical, but doubtful maybe. And it's just like a little tough to kind of Okay. So, if you don't want to, how does your addict father support you as a 30-year-old emotionally? Well, emotionally, it's just that as you could tell just from this brief phone call, there's a lot of self-doubt there, and he does try to be as encouraging as possible. You know, this time a year ago, I was originally an operations manager for a shipping company, and I did really well. And just, you know, some wear and tear emotionally, physically, I ended up losing that job, and that really rocked my confidence. He ended up being the person there that just got me through that. He got you through or or he said, "I believe in you. You can do it. And by the way, I need you to pay the electric bill and the light bill. Can I borrow $100?" Yeah. It wasn't the uh it wasn't the electric bill necessarily. We were So, the original plan when I moved in with him was Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. We're going to get We're going to get all sideways. Here's the deal. I don't understand what you're asking. How can I How can I help? Cuz here's the deal. You don't want professional help because you're cynical of it. You don't want to get rediagnosed because but you do want to diagnose yourself. You don't want to get away from some of this toxic behavior that you grew up with, yet you want to live with your dad. You you want to be secure with money as a 30-year-old, yet you still feel compelled to fund his life. All these are choices you're allowed to make. You're a grown adult. But I'm trying to walk you through each one of them and saying where they're not in alignment with what you're telling me you want your life to look like. And so, how can I help? Absolutely. How can I help? I think it's just I I guess how can I how can I branch away and become independent? Move away. Get a job and move away. Branch away and become independent. Get a get a one-bedroom apartment and say, "Dad, in two months, I'm going to be out here on my own because it's time for me to be a 30-year-old man all by myself." And by the way, confidence doesn't come from someone saying, "I believe in you." Confidence comes from actually accomplishing something. That's right. And yes, a muscle that's built. We need people to pick us up when we fall. And that's awesome. And then we got to go take the next step. Yeah, that's confidence. That's where you get confidence. I want you to go get some quick wins. Get some wins that make you feel good. That make you say, "I did this. I accomplished something. I accomplished something. I rented an apartment. I got four jobs. I piled up some cash. I work a lot. I'm good with people." and and start to build some confidence around these things because you've red you've you've set your identity up as the child of a depressed mother and and an addict father and destined to follow in their tracks and you are not destined to follow in their tracks. You are destined to make a choice as to whether you will follow in their tracks and you can't say I I I need some help. I want some guidance but I don't want to take help and I don't want to take guidance. Those two things are incompatible together. So e either you have the courage and the humility to say I don't know how to do what what comes next. I'm going to go sit down with a professional. I'm going to go talk to a an investment professional. I'm going to go talk to a mental health professional. I'm going to talk to somebody to walk me through this. Cool. Or I'm just going to keep staying in the same situation. At the end of the day, um I I'll give you a quote from my friend Michael Easter. Do something do something that is different from the situation you're in right now. Otherwise, everything will stay the same except it will degrade. It will it will slowly um decompose underneath you. Yeah. Those continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. That's what the 12stepers say and they're quoting Edison when they said that. So, or Einstein, one of the two, I can't remember which, but either one. So, yeah, it's um yeah, the the So, when I went broke, Grant, I got the and lost everything. I also lost a lot of my confidence and I'm a brand new dad and a husband and I'm obviously lousy at all of it cuz the water and the electricity got cut off in the house that my children lived in. not exactly a non-toxic environment, you know, and so then I get to decide somewhere in the following months, am I a bankrupt guy who is useless or am I a guy who made some mistakes and went bankrupt? Those are two different sets of identities. And I had to make that conscious. I had to make that decision consciously as an act of my will. And um by the way u my parents went bankrupt when I was a kid. So uh does that mean it's always destined for my children then to go bankrupt? Is that a is this like a DNA thing? Well crap no. You get to choose what happens. You get to choose not to do the stupid stuff that causes bankruptcy. And so you know in the following 35 years I've become a multi multi-millionaire choosing not to do the stupid stuff that caused me to file bankruptcy. And because I'm not defined by that, it's something that happened, something that I did, but it's not who I am. And that's a different thing. It's not who I am based on my parents. And it's not who I am based on my failure. Because failure is is a momentary thing. I found something that didn't work, and I changed it. Went to something that does work. It's a definition of wisdom. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your