Finance Management Strategies - Patrick Town

On this episode we will be taking about money, or more importantly how to maximize its growth potential through adopting sensible lifestyle and finance management planning strategies.

Whether you’re a first term apprentice, a seasoned carpenter or someone nearing retirement age it’s never too early or too late to learn how to better secure a solid financial future for yourself and your family.

To help us do this, I have invited, Patrick Town the Executive Director of Union Home Plus a Seattle based company dedicated to ensuring Washington state union employees have access to the safest, most cost-effective resources to buy, sell or finance their home.

Joining us as well is Johnny Flavin, owner, founder and principal advisor from Aspire Capitol, also based in Seattle. Johnny’s company is committed to helping individuals, plan, manage and work towards their financial goals.

As we know, a pre-pandemic boom in construction led many, especially those new to the trades, to develop a false sense of security when it came to steady employment and the seemingly never-ending stream of cash it provided. 

This dream state changed quickly into a horrible nightmare for many, when they saw their hours slashed were laid off or even had their entire industry shut down, as in the case of our Trade Show brothers and sisters.

This recent experience illustrates how quickly circumstances can change and why being without a solid financial plan, which focuses on long, short, and mid-range budgeting goals is not an option.

This episode is packed full of simple and straight forward information to help you take ownership of your financial future and empower you to take action.

Show Notes

Union Home Plus Website
https://unionhomeplus.org/

Aspire Capitol Advisors
https://investwithaspire.com//

Qualstar Credit Union Finance Tools Page
https://www.qualstarcu.com/tips-and-tools/calculators

Union Home Plus
Union Home Plus helps union members save money when they buy, sell, or finance their home.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Patrick Town: 0:00

My name is Patrick Brown. I'm the executive director of union home plus, and I've got grit

Johnny Flavin: 0:04

Hi, my name is Johnny Flavin. I'm the owner, founder and principal advisor at Aspire Capital Advisors, and I've got grit

Joe Cadwell: 0:23

Welcome to another episode of Grit Northwest. I'm Joe Cadwell, the writer, producer and host of the show. On this episode we will be talking about money or more importantly, how to maximize its growth potential through adopting sensible lifestyle and finance management planning strategies. Whether you're a first term apprentice, a seasoned carpenter, or someone nearing retirement age, it's never too early or too late to learn how to better secure a solid financial future for yourself and your family. To help us do this, I've invited Patrick Towne, the executive director of union home plus, a Seattle based company dedicated to ensuring Washington State union employees have access to the safest most cost effective resources to buy, sell or finance their home. Joining us as well as Johnny Flavin owner, founder and principal advisor from Aspire capital. Also based in Seattle, Johnny's company is committed to helping individuals plan manage and work towards their financial goals, as we know are pre pandemic boom and construction led many especially those new to the trades to develop a false sense of security when it came to steady employment and the seemingly never ending stream of cash who provided the stream state change quickly in a horrible nightmare for many when they saw their hours slashed were laid off or even had their entire industry shut down as in the case of our trade show brothers and sisters. This reason, experience illustrates how quickly circumstances can change and why being without a solid financial plan which focuses on long short and mid range budget and goals is simply not an option. This episode is packed full of simple straightforward information to help you take ownership of your financial future and empower you to take action. Be sure to check the show notes at the end of the episode. There you will find hyperlinks to the various budgeting and financial planning tools discussed, as well as information that dives deeper into the subject. And now on to the show. Patrick town john Flavin Welcome to the show Hey, happy to have you guys on the show today. It's I'm really excited to to bring who you are and what you do to my listeners. And why don't we start with Patrick, who are you? And what do you do, sir,

Patrick Town: 2:26

I am the founder and executive director of union homeplus. Union homeplus is the only voluntary employee benefit for housing for union members in the country. While we founded about 18 and a half years ago, we hope 1000s of our local union members in the States, and we provide financial wellness education, real estate and mortgage financial support, tremendous discounts and community engagement via our nonprofit module.

Joe Cadwell: 2:51

I'll thank you very much. And John Flavin.

Johnny Flavin: 2:54

Thank you so much. Yeah, so I'm Johnny Flavin. And so I'm the founder and principal advisor at Aspire Capital Advisors. And so what we do is partner with people like Patrick town and other great people in the community to provide education. We're a fee only financial advisory firm, meaning that we don't do any work based on commissions or anything like that. And one of the big things that we love to do are exactly podcasts and things like this, and really kind of educate people about finances and how to improve their lives and get that financial wellness going for them. And, you know, get really excited about doing stuff like this. And so Joe, thank you very much for having me on the show today.

Joe Cadwell: 3:34

Thank you so much for being on the show. And both of you fellows, you're working out of the Washington State, is that correct? Correct. Correct. All right. And I've asked you to come on to talk about financial literacy finance management, within a focus on people just getting started off in the trades are apprentices and people that are maybe first second term and odd in the construction industry. And who would like to start the conversation about how someone that is brand new to the to making some livable wages right out the gate and having some stability in their life? How should they handle that flush of income that's coming their way?

Johnny Flavin: 4:12

So Joe, I think the biggest thing is this and I'm going to throw this out there is that people a lot of times, especially when it comes to financial planning and financial wellness, their biggest mistake is that they think you know what, I'm making this great money right now and all this kind of stuff and you know, I'm young and I'm making big bucks and I'm you know, buying whatever I want to buy and I'll just I'll do my financial wellness and financial planning when I'm 5060 years old and I'll deal with it then. biggest mistake ever. The line that I love to steal I'm gonna steal is from from Nike. So hopefully Nikes not listening in and we get you know, I'm probably gonna get some copyright lawsuit or something like that. But I'm a firm believer in Justin, just do it. Do it now and do it furious and do it now. Now it doesn't have to be complicated doesn't have to take over your whole life. But just do it and what I mean by that, and obviously, we're going to talk about different things in the program today. But the most important thing is that address these things, for example, like we'll talk a little bit about, you know, doing a budget, you know, figuring out, you know, getting your debt under control, things like that. Um, and, and so what I tell people that, you know, get into the trades, and they're making great money all of a sudden, and everything like that, all right, let's take a look at, Hey, your budget is important, hey, you know, what all that that that credit card debt that you have, that is that is important to deal with, hey, you know, what, you know, saving money into the, you know, to the, to the union plan, or an outside Roth IRA, or whatever that is, these are important things that you should not put off and say, Well, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna deal with that when I'm 5560 years old, absolutely not deal with it now. And and that is the absolute best and biggest thing that you can humanly do now, don't get me wrong. Obviously, we can, you know, for people that are 50 and 60 years old, that are getting closer to retirement, the same principles is apply as far as taking care of debt and all that stuff. But I guess, you know, definitely for people that are getting into the trades, especially, let's take care of these things. Now. Let's have these conversations now. And let's have this financial wellness done now. And not, you know, 2030 years down the road from now.

Joe Cadwell: 6:22

That sounds like great advice, john, for sure. So for the average apprentice, I know at the training center, Eric, workout that we address it in our intro class, we talk about it just very, very briefly, we have a lot of things going on during the the first week of intro, and we sort of gloss over it. So we haven't spent ourselves a lot of time investing into financial literacy for our apprentices. So where would they turn to get that information?

Johnny Flavin: 6:49

So there's, there's a lot of great resources out there. And you know, obviously, I mean, the first kind of easy answer to that question is, you know, you can go online, things like that. What's interesting is this is a lot of people don't realize that sometimes there's free financial budgeting tools and stuff, because one of the things obviously, that I'm going to touch on, and I know this is kind of generic, all the financial planners tell you this, but you know, have some sort of budget, but it actually truly is important. But I'll just use a really easy example, the BCU as an example, I believe, as a budgeting tool, the key thing is doing it and so so there's a lot of good resources out there.

Joe Cadwell: 7:24

For those listeners that aren't familiar with be ECU and I am going to include myself with in that group, what is BCU?

Johnny Flavin: 7:32

Oh, my apologies. It's the big local credit, Boeing employees credit union. So just you know, a lot of people do their banking there. So like, you know, so for example, like Chase Bank, it's just, it's just a local credit union. So a lot of a lot of credit unions and things like that might you know, where you do your banking, sometimes provide free budgeting tools. So that's, you know, and then and then also, and this is where I was saying, like, there's some online tools like that are called like mint, and just for the record, um, that means not definitely not the only one out there, it's just kind of one of the bigger names, but there's a lot of great, just free online budgeting tools that you can find. Now, just to be clear, be careful on this because obviously, there's always going to be the up sale where they want you to buy the super ultra deluxe version, and all that kind of stuff. But you don't need that, you know, if you're getting started off and your life is simple, and you don't have 25 different rental homes and stuff like that simple, direct, easy to be able to track your money, that's what you need. And whether you got that through the credit union, or through, you know, software online or through a financial planner. That's, that's what you need.

Joe Cadwell: 8:41

So considering the average age of our apprentices or 20s is about 27 years old, may or may not have a family may or may not have kids, what are some basic budgeting standards that you can think of that they would need to address first before planning for anything else?

Johnny Flavin: 9:01

So I think one of the bait the very first the first groundwork is figure out where are you at start like figuring out that starting point because most people and once again, I know this is a very cliche thing to say and stuff like that, but you know, people don't plan to fail or assuming people don't you know, you know, a plan to fail they fail to plan and so what that means is that you got to have some sort of starting point where am I at? Like what you know, what what what are my debts who do I owe money to things like that literally sit down, you know, you know, open a bottle of beer or wine or whiskey or whatever, whatever it is that you like to drink or water what I've heard sparkling water, I don't care, you know, and sit down. And I don't care if you even just take you know, I talked about all that stuff online. I don't care if you even just take a pad of yellow paper and figure out where you're at me Like, Hey, who do I owe money to? I've got these three credit cards, you know, I owe this. I've got you know, I now I can participate in the, you know, Union retirement plan. Do I have outside accounts going on? Oh, you know what, I started this Roth IRA, you know, at the bank or something like that, figure out where you're at? And because what that does, is once you figure out this base of where the heck am I right now, at this point in time in my life? Now we can build on that we can answer all these other questions like, oh, okay, well, you have it listed here that you have three different credit cards, and they're at these different interest rates, and then I can start talking to them about, you know, what we want to attack that credit card that has the highest interest rate first or whatever debt, you know, whether it's college debt, or whatever debt it is, we want to attack that first and not pay off the smallest balance, we want to attack that first. And so so one of the things that we want to make sure that we do is have that base, and make sure that we can actually say, Hey, listen, you know what, let's attack that, then oh, by the way, you have this Roth, hey, do we want to add extra money each month to the Roth, hey, you know, what, let's talk about, you know, the, the, you know, you know, saving that what's called discretionary income, you know, now that you're making this great money, you're making$5,000 a month, but your your budget says you only really need, you know, 4000 a month, where's that extra $1,000 going? Okay, great, I know, you're not going to want to save all of it. But let's come up with a budget. And let's figure out, let's say, four or 500 bucks, so that put that money away for the future. And you can take the other four or 500 bucks, and you can go blow it on something, I don't care what you do with it. But we've started with that baseline, you know, got a base in place. And then now we can build on that, you know, because you've done that we can build the you know, take care of the budget, take care of the savings, take care of those future things that we want to take a look at, and go from there. And this is one of the things to Patrick's credit, you know, this is where when we teach these financial wellness classes, you know, we talk about things like this, and you know, how people can, alright, what are some important things in financial wellness that I should be looking at, for the future? And how do I do this and everything.

Joe Cadwell: 12:17

And Patrick, and speaking about those financial wellness classes, this is something that union home plus puts together for union members, I understand.

Patrick Town: 12:28

That's correct. One of the pillars of our organization is and the foundation for every one is financial wellness, education, learning how to move themselves forward financially. So every participant in local has access to our online webinars, we normally over the last 20 years have done the live, which is wonderful participation, that's not our world in longer. And the information is more urgent now than ever to get out there to our to our brothers and sisters. So we actually schedule and set and align our courses, per the structure that is best for that particular local, you know, carpenters have got 28,000 roughly members in a multi state area. Whereas I've got IBEW that might have 6000, in a localized area, each organization, these local is going to have their own their best process. And we dovetail in, these are not these are not sales courses, these are free financial information, the cost of local nothing, it cost the member nothing, it's just about being able to present the information out there. So they know that it's available. And as I, as I kind of alluded to earlier, and you'll see this in the coming weeks, we're going to be going to some very short 10 to 12 minute seminars. So we can give very high valued high level information that is actionable for our members, without having them try to redo their schedule, or try to fit it between their ears when they've worked all day long for 12 hours, and they just don't have the bandwidth. And so those will be coming out. And we'll be sharing that information. So watch for that.

Joe Cadwell: 13:57

So all this information will be available at the union homes plus dot o r g website. That is

Patrick Town: 14:03

correct. And with our participating locals, that information is on their website. Washington Building Trades Council has our logo and link on their homepage. There's a variety of locals that that we've worked with for a lot of years. And so the advantage that any participate local has is they can tailor it for their members that is best for them. And the level of engagement that it creates has been one of our most successful responses to the financial education. But what is doing most intrinsically, is providing confidence to people where they had doubt, right. And so a lot of these young folks that we talk with and meet you can see their faces light up like a Christmas tree when they go wow, I get it. Okay, okay, so I can't do this. I don't you know, everyone thinks that you know, financial wellness and financial planning, for example should always come to you when you've got money. Well, that's how you get money is by working diligently and getting a plan from a planner to create that wealth and and i Johnny hit it right on the head, the most important thing is do something I really don't care. And I know Johnny feels the same way I was$25 a week is $25. It didn't evaporate in a beer Stein, or, you know, on gas on a long drive, right. And so by doing that, you're beginning to form habits. And those habits are what keep you in the game consistently. And that's been the the best, most successful way for a lot of our younger apprentices to find themselves in a stable position faster than probably any other demographic profile group in the state of Washington.

Johnny Flavin: 15:32

I think what you know, Patrick's talking about there, that is, you know, talking about doesn't matter, you know, what age you're at, and people don't realize that it really is like doing that now, because of the fact that and then to Patrick's point, you know, a lot of people don't realize, you know, but by doing these financial wellness, and these planning and things, you know, people might be like, well, I can't afford to buy a house until I'm, you know, 50 years old or whatever, no, actually, if you sit down and do this financial wellness, you figure out how to do this, you know, you know, purchasing that home, literally might be within the next year, you know, so so that's why, you know, doing these types of things are so important. And, and to Patrick's point as well, I'm going to use a quick funny anecdotal story. I have a buddy of mine, and this is literally when probably like, you were saying, the average age is about 27, or whatever. I think we were literally about 2627 years old. I had a buddy of mine, we made some bet over over a girl and and, and so anyway, so so I want 100, I want $100 from him. He literally mailed me a check for $100. And I told him, I said, You know what, I'm not going to take your money, even though I want the baton, you know, now you owe me some beers. But I'm not going to take your money. And I took his 100 bucks, I opened him up a Roth IRA. And I said, you know, what I'm going to do is and I mean, obviously, I got his permission to do it. But I said, I'm going to take the bank information from this check. And we're going to start saving 100 bucks a month for you just just putting away 100 bucks a month. And guess what? Now Now to be fair, I got him to increase it a little bit, you know, here and there over the years, he's got like, 150 grand in that account now, simply simply because simply because it's you know, led to Patrick's point, he just got started and he put money in there. And then you know, he increased it a little bit, you know, when he got pay raises and stuff like that. But all because of the fact that he just got started early, put the money in there, and everything like that. So So I So the moral of the story is either one of two things either start early and save early, like Patrick was saying, or make bets with Johnny Flavin and and then you know, and and I may or may not put your money into a savings account for you.

Joe Cadwell: 17:45

That's that's a great story, for sure, john, and something I wish I would have met you when I was 26 or 27. Because it honestly took me a while it took me until I got into my early 30s to really start looking at a long term strategy as far as my as far as my financial management and wellness. And I'm so glad that I met my wife because I give her a ton of credit for having the discipline and the the forethought for you know, making us as as successful and comfortable as we are now which is great. I also owe a big part of it to the hard work and tenacity I had in my particular craft as a commercial diver. And the structure that the union provided for me the livable wages right out the gate, the benefits, medical benefits for myself and my family, the safer working conditions that kept me on the job longer. And all of those things, and I know along the way, you know, I had seasonality in my my work, there were feast and famine times. So how can you talk to our listeners about that? How would you prepare for, you know, the boom years, and then some of those bust years or boom months bust months.

Johnny Flavin: 18:50

So when we start talking about saving, you know, and to Patrick's credit, they're you know, whether you're saving 1000 bucks a month, or 25 bucks a month, or whatever that number might be, you kind of come up with Think about it this way, there's kind of three buckets that you can come up with. So let's just for easy numbers, you know, I was saying like, you know, someone who's making five$6,000 a month, and they actually, you know, had an extra 1000 bucks a month, you know, extra that they didn't you know, that they could save. And just to be clear, I know everyone's different. Our budgets are different, it might be 100 bucks a month, it might be 1000 bucks a month, it might be $2,000 a month, but whatever it is, is we always tell people, there's kind of when you first get started, there's three buckets that you should take a look at. So short term, mid term, long term. And so short term bucket and this is kind of the answer your question Joe about like, hey, when things kind of go crazy, and like, you know, they're, you know, it's seasonal and like, you know, I might be off for a couple of months or something like that. And I know some of the you know, unions are obviously very good about making sure people are taking care of you know, during when times are slow, but still I know that that doesn't always cover everything. So that first short term bucket, so kind of a At this way, I've got 1000 bucks. And let's just say, you know, once again, I know everyone's budgets different, but I got 1000 bucks. And I have a short term bucket, mid term bucket, long term bucket, my short term bucket is that emergency money for exactly what you were asking about Joe. And so the generic financial planning thing that you hear a lot is that that first bucket should have about usually three to six months worth of income or a basic expenses covered. And when I say basic expenses, I'm not talking about you going to Vegas with your buddies or girlfriends or anything like that. I'm talking basic expenses, like gas in the car food on the table, the rent or mortgages, paid things like that basic expenses. So you figure out what are your basic expenses, okay? But basic expenses are $3,000. All right, so you take $3,000, and let's say you want to do five months, that's, you know, 15 grand. So you figure out what these buckets are, the midterm bucket might be, Hey, you know what, I want to purchase a house in two years, or you know, what, I need to buy another car in three or four years, or whatever it is, or, you know, whatever that midterm thing is, and then long term is typically retirement that and that bucket, there's no, there's no limit to because obviously, we can have, we might want to have as much money as possible for retirement. So that bucket doesn't really have a, you know, that could be $10 million. So, so anyway, so where I'm going with this is, so I've got this $1,000 a month. And instead of putting the money into all into one bucket, what I do is I just split it into three, so I put you know, you know, obviously Well, I guess this, this wasn't the best example 1000 because it doesn't divide evenly by three. But, but, but anyway, you take you take that 1000 bucks a month, you know, and you take that whatever it is $333, you know, you know, a month, and I put a piece of into my short term bucket, I put a piece of it into my mid term bucket, I put a piece of it into my long term bucket. And as those the first bucket fills up, so now let's just say, you know, a year or two from now I've got my emergency fund, you know, the to answer your question, Joe. But hey, what do I do during those bad times, I've got that emergency fund bucket filled to where it needs to be, you know, my example was 15 grand, you know what I stop, and then now I take that 1000 bucks a month, I split it between the next two buckets, you know, no 505 100. And then once I get my midterm bucket filled, you know, then I go all to that last bucket, now everything's going to the, you know, to the, to the long term bucket. Now, obviously, things change, I might have to dip into a bucket, so you just kind of start filling them up again. But everybody has short term, mid term, long term goals. And so that's where you can figure out, Okay, great, I did that budget, and I've got this extra 1000 bucks a month. And now I know how I'm going to divide it up by three, fill up my three buckets. And as one bucket fills up, I put it to the other two. And if two buckets fill up, I put it to the one bucket. And that's how I can build that long term plan and address exactly what you're saying. Because everybody should have that, you know, that short term bucket and just, I'm just going to take take that answer one step further, that short term bucket just for the record. That is you put that in? Well, you know, in some sort of savings account or money market at the bank, your your emergency money is not the money that you're buying Tesla or GameStop, or any of those, you know, you know, you know, high flying stocks with that just uh, you know, let it sit in the bankers credit union, collecting dust, it's paying point 00 nothing right now, but it's money so that when you have that difficult month or two, that you can actually touch it and pull it out. And and actually, you know, have it the other two buckets, you can invest, you know, for example, like, you know, the, the midterm bucket, maybe moderately, and then the last the long term bucket, the retirement that can be more aggressive. But anyway, that's kind of the the way we look at is like, there's three buckets and your question like, hey, how do we, you know, what should I have, you know, for these difficult times is that short term emergency fund bucket.

Patrick Town: 24:16

So I just want to edify one of his points, because we all just got educated in the last 1213 months, about numbers, the need for an emergency bucket, right. And we had countless brothers and sisters, whose transactions came to a screeching halt when they refer load. Right, and they weren't prepared for it, hence, this massive stimulus program that we have taken place right now. And so I think they get a little bit of a shock. But the upside to that is it gave everybody a bit more available discipline, to start doing these things. And where we come through it, you know, home plus is to make sure that you've got some structure to the decisions that you make, you know, you have to protect yourself, you know, that, yes, the sky could fall it hadn't before it's going to happen again. The question is, what's your position and I know that one of the Alright, not the arguments. But one of the concerns that a lot of people have is well, you know, I'm still trying to get caught up from the nest that we just went through for this last year, our savings is down, you know, kids, new schools closed are needed right now we don't really have it. That's where the discipline becomes most important. Because when you start doing that you're going back and refilling those habits that will carry you through the good times, we have some amazing good times ahead of us, right? We're coming out of this thing, Fast and Furious. And so just I think that's the most important takeaway from this is to to start those funds in it again, I want to say the same thing Johnny does $100 a month, right? So 33 bucks in each bucket. But it's $33 that what did you need 100 bucks for six months ago, when if you were furloughed, or unemployed, right? Or didn't get you unemployment check. 100 bucks becomes like 1000 or 10,000. To some families.

Joe Cadwell: 25:54

I like the word you use there, Patrick, that discipline that's needed, because it definitely sounds like if I'm, if I'm understanding correctly, you know, we, whatever you do, you got to do something, you got to have a plan, you got to be disciplined about it in order to make this plan work. And it seems there's a lot of personal accountability that is required to make this happen. And again, without the plan without having the education to know truly, what is your responsibility for your financial solvency, you need a plan. And this is why it's so great to have folks like you on who can kind of set the tone for what the expectations are.

Patrick Town: 26:31

Well, thank you. And, you know, one of the most important things for people to embrace it and not be be self conscious about is, you know, here's the simple reality, you're going to spend the same amount of time and the same amount of money to either Excel financially or to fail financially. Right. And so where the discipline comes into play, you're not going to do it on your own, we know that, but that's kind of why we're here, right? There are those who maybe need a bit more accountability, a bit more help. And that's fine. The resources and tools we can make available. We you know, with with adequate communication, where people are aware of them, they can engage them. And the rest of it is really about providing updates, our world moves so fast now that having a review with your with your planner or with your local once a year is simply not enough, the world's gonna change every single week, sometimes every month, and a quarterly review, touch base, a phone call will be adjusted on the plan looking at the market is called the back is it going? Is it regressing and so all these things will help will will affect how you move forward and what you do. And that's where again, that's where the adequate planning is. And then the great thing about Johnny's education and planning techniques is that these are things that you you wake up to in the morning, and you have to pay attention to you Don't forget about them. And it's not a set it and forget it kind of financial world. But this is something that you have to require that requires you to manage it. When when you understand where you are, and understand where you want to be or need to be. The plan put in place kind of becomes automatic. All that matters is is engaging the habit, the habits, and the discipline to do it. And even if you have a month where you know what, I don't have 1000 bucks this month, Johnny, fine, make it 10. Don't stop the habit, right? Get keep that part of it going, and you'll never get caught behind

Joe Cadwell: 28:21

what it sounds like. Fantastic advice. Gentlemen, this has been a great conversation. If our listeners want to know more about where to turn what their first step is in taking control of their financial future. Where would they turn?

Patrick Town: 28:35

Well, I'll jump in first, and not to cut off Johnny. But as our as our financial wellness director. He's going to be available to chat with folks on an as needed basis. When it comes to providing the courses and classes we'll arrange that with each individual local. But I think the starting point might one might be to understand what you're going home plus is all about, right? You're gonna have home plus.org you'll get the foundation of what we do and understand the financial benefits. We are the only you know the best way to look at this. We are the only voluntary Employee Benefit Plan in this particular lane in the United States were the only company or an organization licensed in the state of Washington by deify to administer plan. And what is the plan? Well, it's the same as your medical and your dental in your life. Right next to that is the most valuable asset and highest liability you have which is your home. So we're able to help more union members with below market rates, lower fees and the financial wellness education so that everybody gets the same opportunity to create wealth. You know, our home used to be just just the American dream. It was it wasn't really a rite of passage as much as it was you got you got married yet, but I actually got had kids. Now we know from the world that we live in is changed. It's where someone's security is their dignity. It may be where they school, their children. It's that place in the world that takes on a much broader meeting. We focus Our benefit platform just on on union members housing. And by doing that, no one's been able to come close, we create opportunities for folks that would not be available outside of our program. And you know, when it comes to, to happen, those that didn't need every transaction, direct phones and engaged with the member with a nonprofit, so we're not paying back to humanity, we are the community, we are brothers and sisters. And so I think organizations need to work in concert with the community, and everybody is gains the same level of opportunity and support that those that might be more available have available to them in some other venue, right, or like a big box bank or whatever. So that would be my best bet. Union homeplus.org Johnny?

Johnny Flavin: 30:48

Yeah, no, I was just gonna say, you know, that's, that's really the answer. Because that way, you know, you know, Patrick and I work together with that, and that's the best way to get a hold of both of us is, you know, really everyone needs to go to that website. And that, you know, you know, you know, contact us through that, you know, that way makes life super simple and easy and everything like that.

Joe Cadwell: 31:09

Well, you heard it right there union home plus dot o RG. If you're a listener, and you're in the Pacific Northwest, be sure to visit the union home plus website for more information. Again, gentlemen, this has been a great conversation. I look forward to having you back on the show sometime. All right. I

Unknown: 31:25

look forward to it. That sounds

Johnny Flavin: 31:27

great. I'm gonna work on you know, some some better jokes and things like that. You know what I mean? belanja

Patrick Town: 31:33

goes off. Try to find one or two. How's that?

Johnny Flavin: 31:36

Right. There we go. Yeah. And I don't think of more good stories about how I swindled my friends out of money into sin to saving money. You know what I'm saying?

Joe Cadwell: 31:44

I like it. I'm looking forward to those. Alright guys. Well, you have a great day and we'll talk to you soon. All right. Thanks, Joe.

Unknown: 31:51

Take care.

Joe Cadwell: 31:53

My guest today have been Patrick town from union home plus and Johnny Flavin from Aspire capital. Find out more about the various budgeting and financial planning tools discussed or to dig deeper into the topic. Be sure to check out the show notes for this episode, or visit the Grit Northwest website at build n w dot orgy forward slash podcast. Well, that wraps up this edition of Grit Northwest. If you liked today's show, be sure to hit the subscribe button so you won't miss an episode. Grit Northwest is available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. We're also available on the web at build nw.org forward slash podcast. for up to the minute content follow Grit Northwest on Twitter. interested in hearing more programs like this. If so visit labor Radio network.org. There you'll find over 80 union and labor specific shows designed to educate and empower you to take charge of your future. As always, thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to share the show with anyone you think may benefit from it. And until next time, this is Joe Cadwell reminding you to work safe, work smart and stay union strong