Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
Fri, 14 Mar 2025
Michael Sakraida isn’t here to tell you to cut lattes or max out your 401(k)—he’s here to flip the script on wealth and happiness. In Money, Balance and Joy, he argues that real financial success isn’t just about money—it’s about balancing cash, time, and social wealth. Along the way, he takes jabs at Wall Street, risk tolerance surveys, and what he calls the “Financial Media Smut Club.” If you’re tired of boring money advice, this episode delivers hard truths with a side of humor. Part Two.Key Highlights of Our Interview:Financial Independence: More Than Just a Paycheck—It’s About Legacy“True financial independence isn’t about working for money; it’s about working for joy. And when you’re gone, it’s the legacy—both financial and non-financial—that really counts.”When ‘Aggressive’ Turns ‘Anxious’: The Flawed World of Risk Tolerance Tests“Advisors tick the ‘aggressive’ box, but when the market drops, those same clients can flip out. The problem? Risk tolerance tests don’t dig into the emotional reality behind investing. They aren’t built to handle the emotional rollercoaster of real-life investing.”Financial Media Smut Club: Why Most Advice Misses the Mark“Too many financial articles focus on clickbait rather than offering real, actionable insights. The problem? Writers often don’t understand what they’re talking about.”The Problem with Financial Influencers: Why They Should Be Regulated or Shut Down“If financial advisors need compliance approval for every email, why do these so-called financial influencers get a free pass to spread advice with zero oversight?”Financial Advisors: If You’re Not Asking These Three Questions, You’re Doing It Wrong“Before any numbers come into play, financial advisors should be addressing the emotions tied to wealth: how you got it, what you want to do with it, and your past experiences with Wall Street.”_____________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Michael Sakraida______________________--Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.10 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.130,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today. --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.12 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>140,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: How can balancing different types of wealth lead to happiness?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist humility for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today, I'm chatting with Michael Secreta, the insightful money philosopher and author of the book titled Money, Balance, and Joy.
Michael dives into the philosophy of financial wellbeing, showing that money alone isn't the golden ticket to happiness. He talks about the need for a balanced ecosystem, which includes monetary wealth, time wealth, and social wealth. explaining that total fulfillment comes when all three work together.
Chapter 2: What is the emotional side of financial planning?
He also takes on Wall Street, the financial media, and financial influencers, pointing out how they often miss the emotional side of financial planning. from risk tolerance questionnaires that don't account for real-life feelings to the misleading advice all over social media. Michael gives a candid and refreshing take. He also shares practical advice on how we can reclaim control of our finances
Build meaningful legacy and manage life's financial curveballs with confidence. You use the word control. In the media, they don't often use the word control. Instead, they like to use the term financial independence or financial freedom. What should I take on financial independence or freedom? In the last season, episode 7, I had a debate with my friend Gargan.
who is building software to help millennials achieve financial independence. Personally, I don't buy into it. I think human nature always keeps us chasing new desires. So we're never truly independent. What's your raw take on financial independence from a personal perspective?
Chapter 3: What is Michael Sakraida's view on financial independence?
For me, financial independence is where you don't have to work, but you still work because you get a lot out of it. You're not doing it for the paycheck, you're doing it for the enjoyment. Yes, there happens to be a paycheck that comes along, but if all of a sudden there's a pandemic or your company goes out of business, or just for health reasons, you can no longer work,
You don't have to worry about paying the bills. You don't have to worry about having money to leave, have that financial legacy. Independent wealth is both being able to leave a financial legacy, but also a non-financial legacy. That the non-financial legacies is important, if not more important than the financial legacy. To me, you die and you have $20,000 left in the bank.
To me, it's not financial independence. That's just being lucky that you didn't outlive your money.
In another episode, actually it's episode five in season one, I spoke with another friend, my classmate from Yale, Katie Curry, about how our risk tolerance changes as we get older, especially when it comes to career moves. We were both risk analysts for financial institutions, so we know it's not an easy concept to understand and to practice.
Now, when it comes to personal wealth management, how do you explain risk and tolerance of risk to individuals in a way that's easy to understand and embrace?
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Chapter 4: How should risk tolerance be handled in wealth management?
I think the whole risk tolerance, how that's handled by the wealth management industry is awful. They have a new client, do a risk tolerance questionnaire, just 10 or so questions. Voila, you're conservative, you're moderate, you're aggressive, and that's how we're going to manage your portfolio. That's as much a CYA approach.
that the compliance wants to do, but they're not explaining what this means. If you're a conservative person, if the market goes down, say 10%, where 15% to your investment, your overall worth on paper goes down 10 or 15%, you're going to be more upset, more stressed, maybe even unable to sleep at night than the moderate risk person.
but they don't explain, okay, here's what this means for you in terms of achieving your financial goal, your financial legacy that you want to have. I did an analysis on data provided to me by a financial firm that over a 32 year period, if you're that moderate risk person, The advisor has to say to you, you're less likely, statistically, to reach your financial goal.
I had clients like this when I worked directly. They were super wealthy. They had generational problems. For them, to be conservative didn't matter. But other clients I had that were in that accumulation phase, being conservative or moderate does matter.
The advisor needs to have that conversation in very simple terms, not financial advisor speak, not behavioral finance speak, but again, about their emotions. You need to then say, are you okay with this? Some people say, yeah, I just want to be conservative. Yeah, I want to be moderate. But others say, no, I'm not okay. How am I going to have this type of legacy?
Some advisors do this, and I got this idea, frankly, from an advisor. And when I first heard it years ago, I was like, of course you should do this. So what he does is they say, no, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to work together. It's not going to happen overnight, but it's going to get you further out on that risk tolerance continuum.
So that you're going to go from conservative, say, to a moderate, and then eventually down to aggressive. Now, this is only the client wants to do that. And again, with the client understanding this isn't, you can't snap your fingers and have this change happen overnight. So the other problem with the whole risk tolerance is that it's, the questions are taken at a point in time
and a point in time with the economy and with the markets. So you're going to have people that, oh yeah, I'm aggressive after the market's been up and a long bull market creates a lot of aggressive investors. And so now all of a sudden the market goes down even 10, 15%. And some of these aggressive people, their whole risk tolerance just changed. They're flipping out. They're upset.
What should I do? I should sell. I should sell everything. Dive into the bunker and wait till the bombs stop going off. So the advisors, though, oh, Al's aggressive. I don't need to call him. I don't need to check in on him.
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Chapter 5: What are the challenges with financial influencers?
First of all, with them, they should either be licensed and regulated like financial advisors or put out of business is my opinion. The regulators, I don't care what is being regulated, are awful. with handling new technology. So all they see is it's this cool technology, social media, and these people providing some help.
And it's different than a financial advisor's charging a fee or getting commissions and all. They're just awful with it. But you look at Bitcoin and all that, there's still no regulation on that. It just dropped the ball with that. So if I'm on Instagram,
And I have these testimonials from people who did my coaching and they saved X amount of money and say, oh, this person, they save an average of 5,000 a year and increase their income by an average of 20,000 a year. And the FTC, which they're doing, knocks on my door, says, oh, we saw this posting. We need to see all this. We need to see who did this, what each person's result was.
And if not, then you get a nice fine from the FTC. No one's doing that with these people. whatever, internet influencers. So if I have to worry about what I say and get in trouble or I get in trouble, if a financial advisor has to worry about what they say and do and show any conflicts of interest, for example, then I don't get it. I don't get why all these financial influencers...
are just allowed to do what they do. So that's maybe not an answer you want to hear, but this is serious stuff. This is serious stuff with people's money. This is their livelihood. There's a reason the Balfour guy, whatever the Wolf of wall street guy, which was a real life person was put out of business. that they were stealing money from people.
There's a reason advisors and broker-dealers have compliance people, to make sure that everything is done. An advisor cannot even send out a mass email without compliance reviewing it, filing it, and when they get audited, gonna see, okay, they have to see all that. This is my opinion. I don't care if there's some good advice out there. I don't care if there's good intentions out there.
All I know is There's a lot of bad actors. There's a lot of stupid people. You talk about the financial media, how you'll read an article and kind of scratch your head. And that the advice in my book, I call some of them the financial media smut club. They just focus on tantalizing things that get you excited, but really aren't good advice. And a lot of these people are
They don't know what they're writing about. A recent article I read on restaurants with inflation. So the financial writer was talking about how expensive everything is for these restaurants. They have to charge more. The financial reporter said, I don't know why that would still be an issue because inflation's down. Inflation's not down. The inflation rate is down.
And so either that reporter knows that they're lying or that reporter has no clue what they're writing about. I remember there was an article years ago, there's an article in the wall street journal. The author completely missed the point. The article was about if you have a windfall and you're going to buy bonds, what do you buy? It's all corporate bonds, treasuries.
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