From Tipped Income to Retirement: A Guide to Managing Fluctuating Income"

Are you struggling with managing your finances while working in the service industry? Look no further than Barbara Sloan's book, "Tipped: The Life Change Guide to Financial Freedom for the Service Industry Employees." 

This episode features an interview with Barbara Sloan.  Barbara joins us with a background in the service industry, construction and working for a Wall Street Investing firm. 

The conversation covers topics such as Barbara's background, her transition into the construction industry, and her advice for managing fluctuating income in the service industry. Barbara shares that she wrote a book to help people in the tipped industry manage their finances better. The book covers topics such as tracking income and expenses, emergency funds, retirement planning, and mindset. Floyd and Barbara also discuss the importance of financial literacy and simplifying investing for people.

In this episode of the Really Simple Investing podcast, Barbara shares her experiences working in the service industry and the lack of financial education available to workers. She emphasizes the importance of tracking income and expenses, and suggests looking to how businesses manage their finances for guidance.

But it's not just about managing day-to-day finances. Barbara also covers retirement planning and the benefits of tax-advantaged accounts like IRAs and brokerage accounts. She encourages people to prioritize their own financial well-being and shift their mindset to that of a saver or investor.

Beyond finances, Barbara's book covers topics like boundaries, environment, and mindset. She believes that it's possible to have a great life while doing what you love and retiring early.

If you're looking for a comprehensive guide to managing your finances and career in the service industry, be sure to check out Barbara's book, available in paperback, Kindle, and hardcover on Amazon. And you can learn all about it in the podcast. 

Writing a book to help tipped industry workers [00:03:49] Barbara discusses what inspired her to write a book to help people in the tipped industry manage their finances better.

Barbara Sloan, 00:06:59, "you can't budget your way out of poverty".

Paid Time Off and Emergency Fund [00:09:07] Barbara talks about the lack of paid time off in the service industry and the importance of setting up an emergency fund.

Retirement Planning [00:12:07] Barbara emphasizes the need for retirement planning in the service industry and discusses the different types of retirement accounts available, including brokerage accounts and IRAs.

Barbara Sloan, 00:13:58 "I think a lot of people lose out on hope when they think about retirement and the way that I try to remind people to have hope that you can achieve a retirement on a low and middle income is the fact that you don't have to invest what somebody who earns six figures has to invest in order to maintain your lifestyle."

Creating a Common Language for Investing [00:18:00] Barbara discusses how financial services use jargon to intimidate people and how she uses analogies to make investing accessible.

Investing in Index Funds [00:20:02] Floyd and Barbara discuss the benefits of passive index funds, including Warren Buffet's recommendation to invest in the S&P stock fund.

Barbara's Book as a Career and Financial Guide [00:25:10] Floyd and Barbara discuss how her book is more than just a financial guide, but also a career guide and a roadmap to lifestyle design.

Planning for a Great Life Doing What You Love [00:26:11] Barbara talks about how her book can help people plan for a great life while doing what they love, even if it means staying in the service

Learn how to make investing simple for anyone and get on a path toward wealth.

Transcript

Floyd (00:00:08) - Welcome to the really Simple Investing podcast where you can learn from others how to be a successful investor. We bring you investors, authors, and experts, and investing to help you learn more about how you can invest in some really simple ways if you want to be a successful investor. Join us every week for the interview.

Floyd  (00:00:30) - I'm your host, Floyd  Saunders. And today we have as our guest, Barbara Sloan, among other things, she's an author. Uh, she has a background of working in the tip industry, restaurants and that sort of stuff. And then wrote a book specifically for helping people that work in the tip industry. I thought that was very interesting. I worked my way through college working in restaurants, so I kind of know a little bit about what that's like and how difficult it can be to make ends meet when you're depending upon tips. I'm sure Barbara has some of her own experiences that she might want to share with us on that. So welcome to the show, Barbara.

Barbara (00:01:05) - Hi Floyd. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to chat.

Floyd  (00:01:08) - I guess you started out with, uh, basically very little, right? You were homeless for a while.

Barbara (00:01:13) - Yeah, so most people, I like to kind of start where I'm at now and kind of work backwards. When people meet me today, they mostly know me as someone who owns and operates a construction company here in the heart of Manhattan. And what they don't know is that I spent 20 years working often in tandem, but sometimes instead of in the service industry. And so for me, that work started in high school. I had a bunch of jobs, like many high schoolers. Um, and one of the jobs that I worked was at an a and w I'm not sure if people are familiar with it, but it's like a brute beer hotdog. Mm-hmm.  car hop style waitressing gig. 

Floyd (00:01:47) - Roller skates?

Barbara (00:01:48) - Our, our place had roller skates. The pavement was, so, there were so many potholes because they were transitioning to a different location. It was not a safe place to roller skate. So they didn't mandate it.

Floyd (00:02:01) - And from there you went on to, uh, work in other aspects of the, of the restaurant industry. Right.

Barbara (00:02:07) - So I'm, most of my experience in the tip industry is in bars, clubs, and restaurants. I mean, you name it, if it was in a bar, a club or a restaurant, I probably, I probably worked there.

Floyd (00:02:17) - And there's lots of places like that in New York to work. Right.

Barbara (00:02:19) - . Yeah. But I worked all over the country. I worked in Detroit. Oh yeah. I worked in Detroit, I worked in Los Angeles, I worked in Las Vegas, I worked in Boston. I worked in new, I mean, seriously, I worked all over the country.

Floyd (00:02:30) - And so then at some point you transitioned into the construction industry, right?

Barbara (00:02:34) - So I got started in construction. Um, and this is also my foray into the service industry. When I was 19, my dad passed away and I, I bought the house that I grew up in for twice the price that it was sold for a hundred percent financed. And then I spent the next year maxing out over 10 credit cards to kind of like work through my grief of losing a parent mm-hmm. . And, um, I put myself in a really terrible financial situation. But, so that was kind of my exposure to construction initially, but to kind of get around all of the debt that I had, I started picking up all of these cash positions. So I was a, you know, I was working these waitressing jobs, these bartending jobs, answering Craigslist ads for anything that paid cash mm-hmm.  And then when I got established in a city, I would kind of try to find a construction job as well. I worked in new construction development, um, historical preservation, utility contracting. I mean, again, same thing with construction. I've worked throughout the entire industry.

Floyd (00:03:39) - Wow. And, and so what sparked you to want to write a book about helping people that work in the tipped industry to be more effective at managing their money?

Barbara (00:03:49) - I would say one of the big pivotal moments was in 2013, I moved to New York City with, and I got two jobs. The first job I got was working nights at a place called Coyote Ugly. And I'm not sure if people know what that is, but it's a bar where you sing and dance on the bar. It's a really saucy time. 

And I worked on Wall Street for an unregulated market that was selling, selling loan products. Very much the ugly side of financial services. And I lasted there about six months. But that, that was a real education for me. I learned a lot about the markets, I learned about financial services. Um, but I left there and I got a job working at a construction company. It's actually the construction company that I now own. But I was tasked with setting up an HR department, um, and to run the accounting and finance side.And I had never had HR before, so I had no idea what a 401K was, what paid time off policy meant, what an HR person did, and seeing all of these safety nets that employers were putting in place for people. And then on the other side, I was working with these really high net worth clients, having conversations with them about their budgets and how they thought about money. It was sort of like that aha moment where I was like, oh, it's these systems and this mindset that is keeping people in my industry from building wealth. And like right from that, it just sort of kept gnawing at me that like, you know, this advice was not getting out to people who didn't have access to these benefits.

Floyd (00:05:18) - Right. It, it's really difficult when you're working in the service industry and you're struggling to make ends meet. I mean, you're basically low income, minimum wage to figure out how you can step out of that. Right. And, and so what do you do when you have a somebody that you're talking with? Or what do you talk about in your book about how to step up from that kind of subsistence, uh, day-to-day paycheck to paycheck living and think about your financial future more?

Barbara (00:05:48) - Yeah, I think for me that was the hardest part about writing this book was knowing that I couldn't help everybody. Like you can't budget your way out of of poverty. And I know that I, I, you know, I was homeless for a period of time. Um, we were low and middle income at different points in my upbringing. And you can't, you can't budget your way out of that. There's no amount of like strategic moving. You have to be able to make more money. We can approach it from a do a lot of different ways in the coaching practice. In, in the book. I definitely start with the income side of the equation because for a lot of people in this industry, it's not an income problem. And it's not until you realize how much income you're actually making, that you realize the possibility for that money and, and, and realize exactly how much you have. For a lot of people when you're not tracking your income, you're not aware of what it can do for you. And it's the same way when people are, you know, most of Americans don't detail and track their expenses, and so they're not always often aware of how much they're spending. Right. But it's the same for people who don't, who work on a fluctuating income or maybe don't have that mandate to track their incomes. I would start with the income equation. 

Floyd (00:06:59) - What does that income equation look like? Uh, from the standpoint of, I work in the tip industry, a lot of my money is ca I put it in the bank, I put it in a savings account, I put it in a sock and my drawer, I spend it for groceries. How do you help people understand how to handle that cash a little bit better?

Barbara (00:07:19) - I mean, the first thing I do is empathize. Like, it's, it's a lot harder for you to budget and manage your financial lifestyle, right? With that fluctuating coming with part of it coming in cash. Right. It's, it's harder, but it's all, it's more important because of that. It's all the more important. The other thing I remind people is that every single business in this country doesn't have the same amount of income coming in every, any two months in a row. And yet they manage to operate their business and they manage to pay their expenses. And so what we do is we look often at what those businesses do, and we have to mirror that. So I'm lucky to be married to somebody who's also, um, in financial services. She does financial planning and analysis. She just took her company public. And when I talk to her about what the big companies do, they look for trends.

Barbara (00:08:08) - They set targets, and then they look back and see how close they were to those targets. And they make adjustments. Right. And you have to do the same thing when you're living on a fluctuating income. You have to look for trends. There's always trends. So, and that's why tracking is so important on the income side. Whether, if you're at a club, for instance, I worked at a lot of clubs, summers are typically slower. And now that depends on where you're, where you're working. But for the most part, sporting events are go to be slower. When you're in a club environment, if you're a waitress and you have access to a patio, your summers are go to be busy. You may have holiday seasonality. And so it's within getting control of those trends, knowing when you're go to have seasons of excess and when you're go to have seasons of maybe slower, slower portions of your income mm-hmm. . And once you start to see those trends, you can start to make a plan.

Floyd (00:08:58) - So you're then basically budgeting for the slow periods and identifying where you have that excess cash, and then what do you Want to  do with that excess cash? Right.

Barbara (00:09:07) - Exactly. One of my favorite benefits to talk about is paid time off, because most Americans get, on average 20 days of paid time off every year. That's a whole month for people in this industry. Like we wonder why so many people quit and burn out. It's because they have no paid time off. Even if they're living in a state that mandates paid time off, such as New York cash flow wise, you in this industry, you do not see a paid day off because first of all, you don't get tips as a paid paid day off. You're getting, um, the sub minimum wage, which most, most people don't know this, but if you're working in a tipped establishment that's $2 and 13 cents an hour federally, which is, it's horrifying. So let multiply that by eight hours, you're getting a $16 check for a paid day off. Then you add in the complexity of the fact that a lot of your tips are calculated automatically.

Barbara (00:09:58) - And so you're taxed on those. And so cashflow-wise, you can get a $0 check at the end of the week, even with the paid day off. What I tell people in the tipped industry is like, if you have that holiday season, let's say at the end of the year and your December, you're able to pull in an extra thousand dollars because of the generosity around holidays and the, you know, the more people that you're seeing around the holidays, make 10 envelopes, put a hundred dollars in each of those envelopes there, you have 10 paid days off for your next calendar year. So th those are some of the, the tricks and tips that we kind of do to strategize, to kind of recreate some of those traditional financial safety nets, uh, that, that you need to put in place in order to protect yourself and to stay in this industry.

Floyd (00:10:39) - Now obviously, you know, if you're working in this industry and your income is variable and you have a situation where you know, you want to plan for your future, at some point you don't Want to work in that industry because of, you know, the stress of it, the physical aspect of it, and you want to get into something that's a little bit more comfortable, maybe even higher pay. Um, maybe you're a college student and you're working in the service industry and you Want to get past that point of, you know, what do I do after college? But you have to understand a little bit more about financial literacy than, you know, putting a hundred dollars in 10 envelopes, uh, you know, what is the next step.

Barbara (00:11:18) - The income side, the paid time off, those are all starting places. Right. And then the other thing I really like to talk about in the beginning is an emergency fund. Because in this industry, there's a power imbalance when you're waiting on somebody, if you can't be reliant on their specific tip in order to pay your bills, otherwise you're not go to be able to keep yourself safe. And so we really talk early, early on about how to set up an emergency fund for yourself. Those are sort of the basic and starter conversations for people, whether it's in the book or in the 1 0 1. You know, you, nobody's go to turn their financial life around overnight, especially if you're lower middle income. Absolutely. It's Absolut going to, it's going to take time and you need to be patient and you need to do things that aren't very sexy, like setting up that emergency fund, like putting like paid time off and maybe some small insurances in place over time.

Barbara (00:12:07) - But as you get more comfortable in those safety nets get in place, then we can talk about the things like retirement, which is super, super important for people in this industry. We just talked about the fact that a lot of them aren't tracking their income, which means that they aren't claiming all of their income. Mm-hmm. . And when you're not claiming all of your income, you're not on the receiving end of some of the biggest financial safety nets, unemployment, social security, majority of currently retired service industry professionals rely solely on social security. That is an ouch, absolutely terrifying statistic. Especially it is, we realize the fact that in 2020 the average social security check was less than $20,000. And that's for people who claim their income in full

Floyd (00:12:51) - $20,000 for the year.

Barbara (00:12:53) - For the year. Yes.

Floyd (00:12:54) - That's less, less than $2,000 a month.

Barbara (00:12:58) - And, and that's again, for people who claim their income in full, which this industry, that's not typically what, what's happening mm-hmm. . And so retirement becomes a really important conversation really early on because you absolutely have to have it. And most people in this industry think that they're excluded from this because they don't have access to a 401k. They don't have access to a 457, a 403, any of these things. One of the first things we talk about is the fact that a retirement account is just called a retirement account because it's tax advantage. You can use any account to retire with, you can use a high yield savings account to retire with if, if that's what you need to mm-hmm. , but you also have access to something called an ira. You also have access to something called a brokerage account, which oftentimes people in my industry really prefer a brokerage account, even if it's not tax advantage, because they like that they have access to it. So, you know, it may not be the most tax advantage long term, but it's often a great place for them to start as that brokerage account. And that ira, the other thing I like, oh, sorry, go ahead.

Floyd (00:13:58) - I was just go to say, and these days it's much easier to put money into a brokerage account because the account minimums have dropped dramatically because the financial services industry wants to compete for all of those kinds of customers. And they have, they're also competing against, you know, these, uh, financial apps that you can get on your phone or, or robo-advisor, which some of those robo-advisors, you know, you can start with five bucks. Right?

Barbara (00:14:24) - Absolutely. And you can buy fractional shares now, which is just, it's this, the system has really improved a lot. And I'm like, I love to see people take advantage of those perks. Now the other thing I was go to say is that I think a lot of people lose out on hope when it, when they think about retirement. And the way that I try to remind people to have hope that you can achieve a retirement on a low and middle income is the fact that you don't have to re, you don't have to invest what somebody who earns six figures has to invest in order to maintain your lifestyle. Those people who are earning six figures and spending six figures have to invest for a six-figure retirement. if you're a lower middle income earner, you do not have to invest that you can invest less money and still have a comfortable retirement at your level of spending. A big part of this is just reminding people that it's possible for you.

Floyd (00:15:16) - Right. And now in your book tip for the service industry employees, uh, do you also talk about to take advantage of compound interest?

Barbara (00:15:23) - Yeah, absolutely. I have a whole chapter called Pay Your Sexy Self First. And it's all about getting in early and putting yourself first. That mindset shift is so important for people in the industry who are constantly used to serving somebody. Mm-hmm. , putting somebody else first. Right? I can't tell you how many shifts I worked where I didn't go to the bathroom because I was rushing around taking care of other people. I didn't have a sip of water because I was just so focused on my guests and their experience that I didn't even, I, I wasn't even taking care of my most basic needs. Right. And so you have to really do that mindset shift of like, pay yourself first. You're go to need time to let your money work for you. So yeah, that's a huge, huge part of the conversation. 

Floyd (00:16:04) – At This point, I just Want to take a quick break. We're go to come back and continue our conversation with Barbara Sloan. We're go to find out a little bit more about her book Tipped. So let's just take this break and we'll be right back. 

We'll be right back with more great ideas for investing and building your financial security. If you're seriously interested in building your wealth, join us every week on the really Simple Investing podcast and check out our website@reallysimpleinvesting.com. 

You'll find more great podcast, our blog on investing and some great books from Floyd Saunders books like Investing for Beginners and Fight a Path to Wealth. Sign up for our newsletter so you don't miss listening to our guests and learn even more about the simple things you can do to become a successful investor. You're listening to the really simple investing podcast and now more investing ideas as we continue our interview. 

Floyd: We are back. This is Floyd Saunders. We are with Barbara Sloan. She's the author of Tipped and she's worked in the services industry for a good part of her life. She's now a business owner of a construction company, but she still coaches people that work in the services industry on how to make their money work for them. And if you can't get a coaching section with Barbara, you can at least buy a book, right?

Barbara (00:17:20) - Yeah. Yep. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, I do available

Floyd (00:17:22) - On Amazon and everything, right?

Barbara (00:17:24) - Yep. Paperback, Kindle hard cover, it's all available on Amazon. You can just type in tipped or tipped book.

Floyd (00:17:30) - We were talking a little bit about, you know, getting your money kind of set up so that you have this idea of paying yourself first and putting some money aside for retirement and making sure that you're taking advantage of compound interests. What else do you help people with in your coaching practice and in the book?

Barbara (00:17:45) - Yeah, I mean, I think going back to the investment thing we were talking about in general, is that like financial services does a really good job of using a lot of jargon to gate keep people as far as understanding the basics of personal finances. Yeah.

Floyd (00:18:00) - It's its own jargon, its own language. Yeah.

Barbara (00:18:02) - Its own language. And so I think a lot of people in this industry, you know, they get really intimidated by the jargon. They get really intimidated by the fact that they don't, they're never go to know all of this stuff. And so a big part of teaching people about investing is finding that common language. So in my book, my, my investing chapter is probably one of my favorites because the entire thing is an analogy to being at the bar. If you understand what it's like to be at a bar by the end of this chapter, you are go to understand investing. I often say that investing is exactly like wine. You can get way into wine. You can get, you can get so into wine, you can talk about tannins and body and region and mouthfeel and notes. And I mean, you can get so deep into wine, but you don't have to get that deep into wine in order to have a great wine experience. And the same is true for investing. You can get so deep, you can go into calls and puts and Forex and bell curves, and you can get so deep into investing, but you don't have to in order to have a really successful investing experience. And so I think it's really important to, to remind people that there are levels and there are different ways of to go about investing, right. And there's some very easy ways to go about investing.

Floyd (00:19:15) - Yeah, absolutely. And that's what really simple investing, you know, my, my Frame is all about, um, I think one of the basic things is that, you know, passive index funds, which are easy to get invested into, you know, even Warren Buffet has said, look, for me, the a if I was go to tell the average investor what to do, I would say go to Vanguard, buy the s and p stock fund and let the money sit there for the rest of your career. And it'll grow, you know, it'll get seven or 8% a year. And that's a pretty good rate of return actually, you know, over, over time, over averages. Do, do you talk about that at all with people in terms of, you know, should you put your money here? Should you put your money there? Should I buy a mutual fund? Should I go into stocks? Should I stay away from bonds? What do you talk to people about? I know you're not a financial advisor, but you probably give them some guidance and direction, right?

Barbara (00:20:02) - Yeah, absolutely. I'm, I'm, I'm not, I'm not, I like to tell people I'm not credentialed at, at all. Bartenders give great advice. They don't give tax legal or financial advice though, but they do give great advice. And my advice is mm-hmm. . Yeah, I love Vanguard. I love index funds. I love a long buy and hold strategy for people in this industry. You already have the volatility side with your income. Mm-hmm. , you already have a lot of volatility in your life. And so you want that investing portion of your life to be very easy, to be very simple, to be very steady. And there's nothing more steady than just buying the whole market, setting it for getting it and riding the ride.

Floyd (00:20:38) - And what do you do for people that have the fear? Oh my goodness, the stock market is crashing. The f the the s and p index has gone down 20% last year. So I pull my money out now I'm, I'm at risk. What do you, what do you, you know, I'm sure people call you up and, and ask you those kind of questions from time to time, right?

 Barbara (00:20:55) - Yeah. I think for a lot of people in this industry, they don't have basic financial literacy. And they're also often coming with a scarcity mindset to the table, right? They didn't have strong financial foundation or financial examples set for them early on. Most of our behavior around money is cemented by the time we're the age seven mm-hmm. . We learn all of that really early on. And so with a scarcity mindset, you can't invest until you feel secure. You're go to be so scared to let that money out of, out of your hands, especially if you don't understand it. So I have a couple of free tricks that I like to talk about with people as far as like reducing that scarcity mindset and building that more of an abundance mindset. The first I like to do is give people a mantra. It's a free way for you to build an abundance mindset. Mm-hmm. , my favorite mantra when I was working in the service industry was, money comes easily and frequently, and I would say it before every shift. It has to be true, but it has to be in the realm of possibility. And it was true. I did make money every single day. It did come to me easily and frequently. The second thing I, that's the

Floyd (00:21:59) - Whole thing of affirmations, right?

Barbara (00:22:01) - Absolutely. Absolutely. The second part is building an identity. If you have saved, you're a saver. If you have invested, you are an investor, you're not broke, you're in a wealth building stage. Mm-hmm. , our language is as big of a resource as our money, our time, our attention. And so I think communicating well about where we are is, is an important part of building a better identity with money.

Floyd (00:22:29) - So a big part of your book tip is about creating that mindset and having the right frame of mind so that you can take advantage of your money and actually feel comfortable about investing it in some really simple ways for the long term without taking unnecessary risk.

Barbara (00:22:48) - Exactly. And you see that a lot in the club atmospheres. You get a lot of finance, you know, finance bros coming into the clubs, giving hot stock tips. And yeah, you just have to, just like any of us who listen to financial media, you have to tune out the noise.

Floyd (00:23:02) - Talk to me a little bit more about the, the rest of the book. What else do you cover in the book that's important for people to know that might want them to cause them to like go to Amazon and order tomorrow?

Barbara (00:23:14) - I, I, I really like to talk about boundaries and environment as well. So like, we, we hit on the, we hit on the book is kind of a, a sandwich. So in the beginning we start with all the things that you don't get in this industry. We lay out all the bad things, and then we talk about boundaries and environments. Then we get into the financial pillars, and then we round it out with a bunch of mindset stuff for boundaries and environment. Every industry that you're in is go to have hazards. I work in another industry that has a lot of hazards, construction, and what I found interesting about the hazards in construction is that often you're trained, there's an organization called osha. Mm-hmm.  and OSHA came and trained the workforce, and with that, they reduced the number of workplace injuries and workplace deaths. Right?

Barbara (00:23:58) - And so that was my goal in writing this book, was I wanted to educate the workforce and change the industry from within, and also help them with some of those hazards that are in place that they don't get training around. So some of those hazards include things like the general public, you're dealing with the general public every single day. They can chip away at your confidence. They can, you know, ruin your day. They, you know, they can, there's, there's, there's a lot of things that the general public, when they have immediate access to you can do. And so teaching you how to utilize that resource and put boundaries in place to protect yourself is an important part of succeeding in this job long term. Another part is the constant exposure to alcohol and other substances, right? Mm-hmm. , you are, especially bars, clubs, and restaurants. You are constantly watching people having fun with drinks, eating good food around drinks, um, you know, just having a general good time all the time, all the time drinks. And you have to be aware of the fact that that is a constant influence, right? You are selling these things all the time, and sometimes you become the ultimate consumer. And so that's something that you have to really be aware of mm-hmm. To know how to protect yourself.

Floyd (00:25:10) - So this book is more than just a book about, here's a couple of tips on how to put your money away for the future. It's really setting yourself up with the right frame of mind and the reference points to manage that money and to manage the expectations around that money so that you're more successful. Is that a fair statement?

Barbara (00:25:31) - Yeah, I think it's a, it's both a career guide and a financial guide. It's a roadmap to how to, I, I like to think of it as lifestyle design. I, I belong to a bunch of, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the fire community mm-hmm. , um, but I belong to a bunch of fire meetups. And I am always so interested when we're always talking about like sequence of return risk, right? Which is the first five years after you retire, um, when you're most concerned about what the market's doing and whether or not you are likely to run out of money in your retirement account. All right? And so whenever we're talking about sequence of return risk, people are always like, oh, I'll go back to work. I'll, I'll get a job for a few years. And I'm always like, what would you do?

Barbara (00:26:11) - And people are always like, I would go back to waiting tables. I would bartend, I would be a barista. And I'm always like, why? And people are like, that was the best job that I ever had. I had so much fun. I loved connecting with people. I loved raising the energy of the establishment. I like that I got quick access to cash. I like that. I got a back into my income number, all of these positives. And I'm like, what if we just, what if we just had a great life while doing what we loved? What if we could plan for that? Right? And so I was like, why don't I just write the book book that I wish I had had at 20 at 20. Mm-hmm. , if I had known everything in this book, I could have stayed in this industry, had the time of my life and retired early. Mm-hmm.

Floyd (00:26:52) - . Well, it sounds to me like anybody that's working in the tip industry wants to get Barbara Sloan's book tipped, and that's available on Amazon and a bunch of other places. And it's been a real pleasure talking with you today, Barbara. Um, at some point in the future, I'd like to come back and maybe dig into some of these other aspects that you talked about in your book, especially the frame of mind piece, because affirmations is also very important. But it's been a pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you so much, Floyd .

Barbara (00:27:19) - Thank you so much for this chat. I really enjoyed it.

Floyd (00:27:21) - Thank you for joining us for the really Simple Investing podcast. Every week we bring you fresh ideas for investing and really simple ways to invest and build for your financial security. Be sure and hit the like button, subscribe. Follow us on social media channels and tell your friends. And if you'd like to be a guest on really simple investing, just go to the contact page on our website and send us an inquiry. Thanks. We appreciate our audience so much.