Planning for Peace Financially and Otherwise

In this episode, Jaclyn and Sam dive deep into creating intentional peace—financially and personally. Sam kicks things off by sharing insightful takeaways from recent podcast by Brian Buffini and Dr. John Delony. Jaclyn recounts a personal decision to resist Memorial Day sales, instead investing in crypto and stocks—highlighting the value of making mindful financial choices aligned with long-term goals. They discuss their aim to build diversified "all-weather portfolios," inspired by Tony Robbins’ book, Unshakeable, and share practical tips on saving and investing incrementally through user-friendly apps like Qapital. Lastly, they reveal their new routine of planning weekends on Fridays, balancing productivity with ample rest, and how this intentional approach has significantly improved their overall sense of peace.

Question for listeners: How can you plan for peace in your financial life and personal downtime? Remember, without intention, life tends to take over!

Books:

Unshakeable by Tony Robbins

Chapters

• 0:00 Planning for Peace Introduction
• 5:51 Creating Financial Margin
• 12:03 Living Below Our Means
• 22:43 Higher Dose Sponsor Break
• 25:53 Investment Diversification Strategies
• 32:36 Planning for Peaceful Weekends
• 38:34 Final Thoughts and Takeaways

Transcript

Hello hello and welcome to The Freq Show I'm Jaclyn Steele Thurmond this is my husband Sam Thurmond and today we are going to talk about planning for peace financially and Otherwise ooh so that may sound boring to you but it's actually not boring at all because we have lived on the opposite end of the spectrum for most of our adult lives haven't we yep yeah and I don't wanna do it anymore in fact before we started doing our podcast recordings today I was chatting with my friend Luba who she has been on the podcast too we're talking about motherhood and burnout and mom guilt but she was saying you know I'm making more money now than I ever have and I went to go buy this purse that I thought I wanted and I went into the store and they didn't have the color I wanted and then I was just like I don't know if I want the purse at all yeah and she's like I think what I want is to create memories with my family and like go on a trip and do other things yeah and I told her that and I think it's probably in the show notes that I'm supposed to share this in a couple of bullet points down but I'll just go for it okay last weekend was Memorial Day weekend and there are all of these sales on Memorial Day weekend right and I'm an interior designer and we have a beautiful home and much of it is unfinished isn't that so funny like here I am it's like kind of ironic I'm being hired to do all this beautiful interior design work that I love so much and yet our own home is not finished it's like a mechanic's car like their cars are usually the worst or so I've heard I've no idea our house is not the worst our house is gorgeous like the actual renovation is done it's just we don't have a sofa that we want our office doesn't have desks in it for both of us or bookshelves our son you know still sleeps in bed with us he doesn't have a room that's finished at all and so the house is beautiful thank you very much but we haven't furnished it because we have wanted to only buy things when we have or after we have built a really nice nest egg cause we're able to get by without them yeah well we bought a new house we bought a new car we renovated our home so our car was not new Sam it was two years old well three years old cost the amount that a new car should cost but agreed it's 2025 2023 that that you picked it anyway so do you want me to get in no but I forgot to get to the point of that whole thing there were all these sales for Memorial Day and I was going to get us two chairs for our office for podcasting because right now we podcast in our library that is also our dining room that's where I do most of my work too this room is amazing and I love it so much but to have all the podcast equipment in here is just throws my feng Shui off and also we have this beautiful live edge table but this bench is not comfortable and as we podcast here I'm pregnant I'm uncomfortable and then we're having guests come now to do the podcast and I want them to be comfortable so I was long story short

I was going to get us two beautiful lounge chairs for our office which at some point I will buy and they were heavily on sale and I was about to pull the trigger and then I said you know what I would rather in this moment even though right now I'm kind of regretting this decision because I'm uncomfortable in this moment I would rather take this money that I'm about to spend on these beautiful chairs and invest it and invest in my financial peace of mind and so that's what I did yeah and now we have some more crypto and some more stocks awesome I love that decision yeah I know you do I'm the I'm the one that's she's always sending me stuff or you're always sending me stuff that's like what do you think about this it's on sale it's 20% off and I'm like still cost $2,000 20% off you know that sort of thing Sam will wear the same holy underwear for like five years the other day haha I walked into the bathroom and I was like Sam this is so gross guys but it was so funny I was like Sam do you feel a draft he was reaching over his sink and he only had his underwear on and literally the whole backside of his underwear was fully open that had just somewhere between the two of us there's a happy medium that had just happened that day thank you very much I was a little too forceful pulling them up I saw the whole thing I like to call him lace underwear he calls his holy underwear lace underwear that's so gross and hilarious and I appreciate that you're not a big spender but I do end up buying you new underwear yeah fairly often because I'm like we can't do this it certainly gets to a point yeah you're too good looking and too wonderful to be wearing underwear that looks like that anyway okay get me back on track I feel like I had a latte this afternoon but all I did was eat an apple and have some cheese but I think there's caffeine in apples I think so it's hidden okay well I don't know how to steer this shit back from holy underwear but I oh summarize the podcast you listen to that's what I'm gonna do so I listen to a podcast the other day the Brian Buffini podcast if you've never heard of him he's I mean he's super successful very popular podcast but back in just a little backstory in in like 2019 2020 I heard Brian or Brian Biffini did a reading of as a man think and if you haven't read that book I would highly recommend it it's like a tiny little book but it's so good and Brian Biffini read the whole book on a podcast episode that's how short it is but I for like months I was just listening to that podcast on repeat on repeat on repeat and it was very influential but anyway so fast forward to today or a couple weeks ago I listened to a Brian Biffini podcast and he had a guy named Doctor John Deloney on there and what I'm sorry I'm just picturing walking into the bathroom and seeing your entire I can't hold it in I'm gonna cry it was the first thing I saw and it was the whole thing I mean was it that funny it was hilarious it was at night in the evening and we were getting ready for bed and so I'm sorry it's just so funny oh okay pull it together now your makeup's running I know okay you keep going I'll be back alright so anyway on this podcast episode with Doctor John Deloney I feel like I don't even know what we're doing here but he was being interviewed because he had just written a book and he wrote a book about anxiety and you know go listen to the podcast if you want the full story but the main takeaway that I had from that was he talked about building in margin or degum it he talked about planning for peace and how he and his wife plan for peace in their family financially with their time with their relationships across the board and the keyword from that was creating margin so I said it wrong it's planning for peace and you do that by creating margin whether you're out looking for a house and you go to the bank you go to the bank to see what you can qualify for the bank says well you can spend are we gonna have to start over no the bank says well you know you can you can will finance you up to you know a million dollar home well they take that and they cut it in half to create margin and they're like I'm trying to add value here and all people are thinking about is me with just front end underwear I'm so sorry OK keep going keep going I it's very hard to keep going I know I know OK I can stop I'm gonna take a breath okay you were talking about mortgages and what you can afford what you're prequalified for versus what you actually buy the examples that he gave was when he and his wife were looking for a home they went to the bank and the bank said you you're you can afford or we will finance you up to this amount and the so they said because they want to create margin in their life this is ridiculous all right why don't you just keep go you just you just stay over there and this will be a a 75% solo episode so they create margin in their life and that margin brings them peace because they aren't stressing they aren't maxing themselves out themselves out in every single way whether that's financially or again with their time or with relationships with their family they create space so in that space they can find peace and that just really really resonated with me and I think when Jaclyn was speaking to the example of the Memorial Day sale we had kind of had this conversation where I talked to her about this podcast and I think maybe it planted a seed I don't know I'll take credit for that are we gonna do solo or you coming back I was coming back I didn't know you really wanted me to leave I'm gonna keep it together I got it I got it OK roll on in here well I can't help it I'm very pregnant so  they create space they create margin in all aspects of life and they plan for that so they're not just going through life saying well I can we can afford this or the bank says we can afford this they're making sure that they create space and I mean it seems like you know you hear things and you know understand concepts but then when you hear somebody say it a different way it really resonates and it clicks and I mean it's no different than you know having a budget that budget is meant to put boundaries on what you're going to spend and then there's margin on the outside of that budget but I think if you think about applying that not just financially but in other aspects of your life it can be very beneficial and you can find peace in your life in that margin mm hmm well and I think you and I correct me if you feel differently much of our adult life together it was kind of like we will feel peace when and we didn't build or plan for peace we shot for the stars and took all of these risks and said okay well when that deal goes through or when we get here when we do this then we'll relax then we'll take a vacation then we will allow our nervous systems to reset yeah and this approach is just much more sustainable yeah well I think in business you know when you're starting a business different rules apply because a lot of times you have to just take a lot of risks and you're going to be stretched thin and there are going to be unexpected expenses and just things that you have to pay for so and I know I'm strictly speaking financially or coming at it from a financial aspect but you know just like there are different seasons in life I think as there are different applications in life so as you're building a business of course if you have a business that you that is sustainable that's producing what you want it to produce at that point it's a little easier to build in that margin but if you're growing a business you're kind of all in and there's gonna be a lot of risk that you have to take but I think not I don't want the only takeaway to be the financial aspect you know I think that time building margin in for time and for rest and inspiration too right yeah well yeah at peace leads to all that because it allows your mind to kind of settle down and when you're at peace of course when our backs against the wall we do what we have to do and that can be inspiring in and of itself but we talked about that on other podcast where you don't want to fall into like you have to have that in order to be productive yeah but in that in that space in that margin in that piece is where you can find that creativity because you are allowing yourself it's a new gear yeah you're allowing yourself to kind of stop and think and just have space it's kind of counter intuitive in our culture because we there's such a such pressure to go go go do do do be very very very productive all the time right and I love being productive it makes me feel great the problem is I get going sometimes and then I don't know when to stop and I'll find my mind is racing my thoughts are racing my heart is racing everything just gets off kilter and so this strategy has been so different to what we've done in the past and going back to the example of our house buying this house was a little bit of a stretch and then renovating it the way that we did was definitely a stretch and so when we moved in not furnishing everything felt like hey we got the house we got it done so proud of us but let's not continue to stretch stretch stretch let's do this as we can and just be so grateful for everything that we already have and if it's imperfect for now even though I'm an interior designer and sometimes it drives me crazy that's okay because what's most important is that I can sleep through the night and not wake up at 3:00am every single night like I used to and like you used to worrying about liquidity worrying about how we were gonna make the next month work worrying about credit card bills etcetera and so like you said this isn't just about peace financially but for me I think that has been the biggest source of my lack of peace was feeling like there was a lack of financial stability yeah well I think these thing this concept resonates so much because we have gone through those periods we've been on the opposite end of that where you know I could have kept the job that I had in 2,016 and we it made decent money and you know we had a house and everything that we needed and could have just clipped along at that pace and been comfortable financially but we would have sacrificed other aspects of our lives yeah so we chose to trade that and take more risks so we could have more control over our lives but in that process we went through the fire and experienced what have experienced what that actually feels like yeah and so being on the other end of that now looking back you know you don't wanna go back there so this really resonates and resonated with me because I think it's very important to take that approach and plan for peace and create margin was it worth it to you to go from that stability to where we are now yeah absolutely I mean don't get me wrong there were have been times where I've questioned that because it was so intense but being where we are now looking back looking at the freedom that the freedom that we do have as well as the growth that has taken place and what we know will come it's absolutely worth it and back to the last podcast episode it's all about who you're becoming in the process I was gonna say and I really love who you're becoming likewise and I love our lives yeah I know that we don't have everything figured out and there's still so much we wanna do but I'm excited to wake up every day yeah I love the work that I'm doing I love my interior design clients I love this podcast we're creating I love thefreqapp I like I feel so blessed that I get to spend so much of my time building things that I believe in and creating a home and a family environment that I truly enjoy right like I can't wait to hang out with you and Roman tonight mm hmm it's right it's the best yeah and I think one thing I want to say and I see in your notes that you have diversify here but it doesn't mean that there won't be a time where we put all the chips back on the table yeah you know what I mean that we that we don't push in but or that we don't buy the furniture forever it's not like we're gonna delay gratification for 10 years but we're just doing it in a way that feels wise I guess that would be the word for me is that I wanna make wise financial decisions yeah certainly you learn so that you can apply those learnings in the future as you progress but there will be times again when we take big risks and we put I won't say all the chips on the table but we put a lot of chips on the table but maybe this time it's not all the chips you know we keep some chips in reserve and what I think about when I think about that from a business aspect you know for a long time we were siloed when like this is how we make our money if we don't make our money this way then real estate we don't have yeah any other income coming in and now we've created the design business thefreqapp the commercial side of the business and we're and we're developing some other business and businesses and streams of income currently so in the future will be this is our margin like all of these other things are creating that margin to where hey if we wanna go you know buy this luxury home in Scottsdale and flip it we can push those chips in but we still have these on the on the margin that we can also rely on and have give us peace in that process and I would add to that too and if we wanna buy I don't know that we do but a big luxury home for ourselves we're also not taking that off the table but we only wanna do that when we can truly afford it we wanna live below our means so that eventually we can do anything we wanna do yeah and truly that's accurate yeah and I will further clarify truly affording it doesn't mean that we can get approved for it or we can make that loan payment every month and not worry lose money you know we're gonna have we're gonna still be making far more money than we're spending yes when we take on something like that and that applies to anything.

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I'm reading a book  that came out in like 2,017 right now by Tony Robbins called unshakable and I'm about halfway through but he's talking about the stock market and different investment bankers and mutual fund owners and how all of these fees are taking out you know your potential of your potential retirement account and people are just basically bastardizing the system excuse my language but he's also talking about diversification too so that you can become unshakable in your financial life and what Sam said just a few minutes ago is that last year we really really decided to diversify and it was June of last year specifically and it was when Villa Secreta our biggest project was on the market it had been on the market about a month we were paying something like $11,000 a month just to hold it and that didn't include our mortgage or the other mortgages that we were holding for other properties that we were working on and so we had all of this money flying out every single month and I looked at Sam and Sam looked at me and we were like we need to diversify we cannot have all of our eggs in one basket and I think the same goes to through if you look at it through a long term financial planning perspective is we love real estate we have a lot of our net worth in real estate right but we wanna have money in stocks we wanna have money in crypto we wanna have money elsewhere too so that no matter what happens around us we're not dependent on one specific thing or our retirement or our long term financial health isn't dependent on one specific thing we want to not spread ourselves super thin do it very wisely but have different eggs that we are nurturing and growing I think one thing too that I wanted to share with you guys and I've shared this before but I think you know just 10 years ago in fact somebody just asked me if you were 28 years old he's 28 he's like what advice would you have for your 28 year old self and I thought that was such a thoughtful question and I think we should especially since you're only 29 I'm 38 but I think we should do a whole podcast episode on that but this is what I would tell you financially is start investing money now obviously I'm not a financial planner but everything that I read about index funds and the s and P 500 if you are willing to put money into it and let it sit without taking it out over the next 30 years you are going to make an incredible profit because of compounding interest and I started looking at it initially like well I don't have a ton of money to invest this was I think I I took out a Roth IRA when I was 25 I don't have a ton of money to invest but I can put in $50 a month and as we've gotten older and more financially stable we have a little bit more money to invest but we still have a lot of our liquid cash held up in real estate at this point which isn't a bad thing not liquid yes sorry it's not liquid but I started going how do I get creative here with investing because twenty five bucks overtime adds up and so I got this app called Qapital with a Q and you link it to your debit card and it rounds up the nearest dollar and after you know a month or two we've got $400 in there $500 in there $700 in there and then I say to myself that money is strictly for reinvesting in the stock market and specifically in crypto or index funds for us again I'm not a financial planner but this makes investing so easy another thing that I like to do I'm sorry I have such a frog in my throat another thing I like to think about is hey there's this something that I really like and it's gonna cost $100 if I don't buy that I can take that hundred dollars and invest it and there's something that happens for me psychologically that makes me feel really good when I delay gratification that way and take that money and know that it's going to make money babies eventually and so I can spend that hundred dollars now and get instant gratification or I can delay gratification put it in some kind of index fund or crypto or whatever and watch it make money babies and that it just gives me such peace of mind so you know whether you have $25 or $250 or $250,000 I think thinking about it in that perspective and long term wealth has really changed me so yeah anything you wanna add on that part no I mean I think you covered it I think you're you either what is it you do the hard thing now and have it easy later or have it easy now and do the hard thing later but at some point you're gonna do the hard thing which it in my opinion is much better to do it early on would have been nice to if we had done it a lot earlier on but I know Roman we're doing it now Roman has a oh my mom brain is kicking in so hard now I'm just losing my words but Roman has an investment account that we started for him when he was like a year old and I can already see the compounding interest on that and he's only 3 it's amazing I'm gonna have to ask him for a loan yeah you can ask him for a loan so that's the first half of this podcast we're talking about planning for financial peace next we are going to talk about planning for physical peace and emotional peace something Sam and I started about a month ago oh that has just changed our weekends and brought us so much peace is planning for peaceful weekends so do you want to talk a little bit about what this looks like yeah so every Friday we have a sit down where you and I schedule not just the weekends we schedule out the whole next week coming week down to what we're going to have for dinner which surprisingly enough creates a lot of peace because you don't get to 5:00 5:30 and say what are we gonna make for dinner what's in the fridge for me I love it cause I love tag teaming with you because before it's all like powered by my mental battery and toward the end of pregnancy your mental battery just decreases and decreases and decreases you don't have to tell me hahaha men have it so easy but yeah so we plan out the whole week down to what we're eating for dinner who's gonna drop Roman off at school who's gonna pick him up what everybody has during the day workouts calls meetings when we're going to record the podcast prep for the podcast everything but one of the biggest returns that we've seen is not just planning out the weekdays but planning out the weekends because what for whatever reason you get through the week and then you hit the weekend and it feels like oh now I get to take a break but then when you're kind of just sitting around staring at each other not really knowing what to do I kind of feel like I get anxious because it's like I should be doing something or I you know I'm kind of bored or whatever Roman's bouncing off the walls but by planning out our weekends it kind of gives us purpose going into the weekend and you know when I was in my when I was in my teens and in my 20s I could sleep until noon and be perfectly fine but now that I'm in my 40s like I wanna have stuff to do I wanna get stuff done around the house I wanna you know go to church I wanna do all these different things and be productive during the weekend rest obviously plan time for rest for downtime during the weekend but at the same time hey we need to do this around the house or we want to do this around we want to start a garden so for a few weeks we planned out two

or three hours every weekend to start working on our garden and now we have a beautiful garden outside or whatever it's quite driving cause it's really hot here but the garden is beautiful yeah and we've been working on the garage gym and that's coming along and getting things cleared out so all these different projects that we plan and what's nice about it is wake up Saturday morning have a slow morning have your coffee have your quiet time but we know what we're gonna do that day so it's kind of it's just nice it's nice to have structure during a period of time where in the past I felt like I didn't want structure it's actually really nice to have that and for us to like come together and plan so we're on the same page I know well I mean it's not like you were planning well here's the thing I've always said Sam we need to plan I like to have a plan I wanna plan I wanna know when we're gonna do our vacations and when we're gonna do this and when we're gonna do that and he historically used to say like I need a break like just let me be but where I fell short was I didn't create time to plan with him and so we just never did it but this by sitting down with each other and going what do you have going next week what are your goals for the week where are we financially what do we wanna do this weekend I feel like you're about to say something I am but it has changed the efficiency of my week too yeah you know what I mean well from a frequency standpoint it puts us on the same wavelength it puts us on the same frequency and just you know Sam and I have shared a car for the last five years knowing when his appointments are and when I'm going to work out or when my appointments are it just gives such peace of mind because I don't have to constantly be checking in with him he doesn't have to constantly be checking in with me we check in with each other on a we do a deep dive once a week and then we are able to have so much peace of mind throughout the week because of that it makes me think of those videos that I see on Instagram where it's like it's like a the husband's point of view when he like goes to sit on the couch on the weekend and the second like his butt hits the couch the wife starts like yelling at him about stuff to do I think what planning out the weekend does is even though you're planning to do things it makes it more restful because it's like hey this is the time that we're doing things and this is the time that we're not doing things so I'm my butt's not gonna go on the couch during this window it's gonna go on the couch during this window and I don't even have to worry about it or think about it not that you're like harping at me on or anything I'm just saying it just it makes it easier for my myself too I don't think I'm a harpy or naggy wife outwardly but I know energetically there are times where I'm like but we should be doing something or do you realize we've got a countdown to this baby like we have stuff to do but this just eliminates all of that and it goes both ways too like there's stuff that I wanna do yeah that we haven't planned for so it's it just puts you on the same page so you know everybody can get the stuff done that they wanna get done and also have more peace when I'll tell her I'll call her back you know also the restful time is actual rest because we have both planned to rest during that time period and it's not me saying I wanna rest but I think she wants me to do this or vice versa yeah and think of how much we've gotten done in the last month because of that how much bread I've made I've been learning how to make homemade bread from freshly milled flour and this has allowed me that time too and not feeling guilty about it in any way shape or form just enjoying the process of learning to make bread and making these elaborate meals for us yeah if you follow me on Instagram you'll see that like my stories are basically a food account now but that alone too it's allowing me to explore other areas of creativity that I hadn't before yeah well I think just you know putting structure around the weekend makes everything more efficient you know it I think I used to look at it as like I don't want anything impeding on this time because I just want to chill out but when there's structure around it actually makes it more restful yeah oh I totally agree okay anything else you want to add to planning for peace financially and otherwise yeah well I think we kind of split the podcast up in two segments there but I think that's the point of it right the planning and having structure around your calendar and your family time and your to do list and all that sort of thing actually creates the margin in your time and that's all I'll add on that yeah and it's so powerful and for creative types like me and I think you're a creative type too initially the idea of structure can feel limiting but actually it's the structure that creates so much freedom so I wanna end with a question and my question for you guys is how can you plan for peace financially and otherwise cause I know that if we aren't intentional with our time and intentional with our planning life takes over and it's gonna get away from us so yup thank you for listening thank you for getting through my giggle fit and we will catch you in the next episode if you wanna buy me underwear I'll post my Venmo.

Thank you so much for listening to The Freq Show with Sam Thurmond and me, Jaclyn Steele Thurmond. We would love to connect with you via our website, beckonliving.com, and on social media 

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