Turning Pain Into Purpose: My Journey to Financial Security (Live Keynote)

SPEAKER_01 0:33

He's a passionate guy, he's got a lot of interest, and I'm not gonna go on for too long. No reason for me to be long-winded. Let's go ahead and uh give Darren a round of applause and have him get started. Alright.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Alright, alright. Um I sound good. I sound good? Yeah, yeah. All right, everyone hearing me?

SPEAKER_02 0:58

A little closer to the microphone.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Okay, perfect. Perfect. All right. Oh, it's like in podcast, Mike. Perfect. All right. Excuse me. All right, you guys. Thank you guys for having me. Um for those who do not know me, my name is Darren Harvey. Um, I've been a member here at the Silicon Valley Council of the Blind for a year. Um my year anniversary was actually last month. So um, yeah. Made it a year, made it a year. And um, it's been uh such a joy to get to know you guys. Um just being a board member is I do conduct the member spotlight interviews. So I've had uh great joy, like I said earlier, to just get to know everybody and know their background and back and their stories. And that's helped me personally in my journey, not only as a young man, but just with my blindness. Um, you know, for those who don't know, I do have glaucoma and um I am low vision, legally blind, and I'm going blind over time.

unknown 1:57

We know you appreciate persistent. That's what he was saying, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Yes. Appreciate, persist you guys. So um, so I've gotten to know you guys, but I think it was important at some point for you guys to kind of know, you know, just a little bit more about me. Just a little bit more. I'm not just one of the youngest members here. Um, I do a lot of other things. So well, David, I hope to make it to your age one day. So um so one of the many things I'm passionate about and kind of what I do for my career is I am into finances. I'm a financial coach and educator, and I am obsessed about personal finance, particularly about financial security. And everybody, regardless of age, kind of understands the importance of finances and being good with your personal finances. So I'm not gonna talk too much about why that's important. Oh god, I got loud. But um, I'm gonna talk more about why I'm well obsessed with it. I am, you know, admittedly obsessed with personal finances. Um, to the point where I actually started my own nonprofit and it actually launched this week and launched on Monday. Um, so my nonprofit went live and it's called Financial State of Minds. Now, the mission at Financial State of Minds is to bring financial literacy and education to communities who are disadvantaged so they can have access to these resources and kind of have a one-stop shop to where if they need to learn about personal finance or anything to do with money, they can come here whether it's virtually or in person, and I can provide those services. And I've been doing that for a little bit, for a little bit already, but the nonprofit aims to expand beyond that. So um I normally do like one-on-one coaching sessions, but with the nonprofit, I want to do workshops, we're gonna do group cohorts, we're gonna do virtual seminars, um, and of course, public speaking because I like to talk. And also, I want to continue my podcast. I do have a personal finance podcast where I talk all about finances and you know, continue with building resources to make sure that finances is as easy to understand and accessible to everybody as much as possible. But again, not here to talk about why finances is so important. I think you guys all know that. I want to tell you guys more about me, about why and what led me to being obsessed with personal finance. So, if you guys don't mind, I'm gonna take you all the way back to the year 1990. That was the year I was born. So for me, that was the beginning. For a lot of you guys, maybe not so much, but so um I'm originally from Hayward, and um I was lucky enough to be born in with my mom and dad around in my life, and I had an older and I have an older brother. And I um you know grew up in Hayward. And I grew up in a four-bedroom, two and a half bath house in a quiet little neighborhood um around the Chabot College area, if you guys know that area. And um, yeah, I had a good life. Um, to the point where I would admittedly tell you guys, um, I was spoiled. Kind of a spoiled, not bratty spoiled, but I was a bit spoiled growing up. Um, very comfortable life. If we had to talk about social economic class, I would be a middle class background, and you can even argue a little bit I might be upper middle class. Um, we were very comfortable financially. So again, very lucky to have my parents, but I want to put a spotlight on my father right now. Now, I want to ask you guys my first question. Who here likes sports, any type of sports? Anyone here like sports?

unknown 6:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Yeah. That's right. Oh, I heard baseball, Rob, but is that you? That's right. Well, Rob, you may not know this, but my father was a baseball coach for Little League. And he was my baseball coach. He was my coach, mine and my brother's coach for Little League. So I have a lot of great memories of my father, me, and my brother playing catch. And you know, just imagine little old Darren just running around, and he had a little league mitt in one hand, and you know, we just play catch, you know. You catch. Sometimes you don't always catch the ball, but you're gonna throw it, right? You're gonna pick it back up and throw. You're gonna throw, catch, throw, catch the ball. Love doing that with my brother and my father. Great memory I have. But my father wasn't just my little league baseball coach. He was my coach overall because he was like my life coach. He was my father. He taught me many things. And of course, he taught me stuff about finance. But I'm gonna tell you some ways that he taught me about finance. Now, another thing that I'm so glad that everybody in his room knows about is something called a newspaper. You guys remember those? I remember I'm old enough, you guys. I might be young, but I'm old enough to remember the newspaper. You know, the driver would come and throw it on the front porch. And I remember my dad would go grab the newspaper, and he would grab the newspaper, come to the kitchen table. We had this big, beautiful wooden table, and he would open up the big newspaper, and he'd have his coffee, and he would have a pastry. Now, for those who know me, anyone want to guess what pastry that might have been?

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Donut coffee button.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Donut is correct. I've heard that a couple ways. So I think you guys might have figured out why I'm a little obsessed with donuts now. Yeah, so um, that is a great memory I have about my father. It was always usually donut, newspaper wide open, coffee on that table, and I would see him reading as I'm getting ready for school when I was a young kid. Now, you guys, seven-year-old Darren, eight-year-old Darren, nine-year-old Darren was not reading no newspapers. I'll be honest. Except for one day. The Sunday newspaper. Or someone guessed that, you're correct. Sunday newspaper. Now, why would a nine-year-old Darren read the Sunday newspaper? There's three of them. Man, you guys are good. I have a great audience. I don't even have to list them, but I'll just do it. Number one, comic strips. I would read Garfield, Peanuts, Cavan Hobbits. Those are my top three. Number two, of course, the sports. Number three is word puzzles. You guys remember the little word searches that would be in the newspaper? Yep. Little Darren, you know, going through there, circling all that stuff. I do that. And there was another reason that I would look forward to the Sunday newspaper. And I'm old enough to know this. Newspaper advertisements from the stores. So I would open up and look at Target and Walmart and Best Buy, and those are the stores that are still here. So we have to say rest in peace to Toys R Us, KB Toys, Circuit City, Video Only, and all these other great stores that are no longer with us. Little Darren would read those every Sunday. Now, why would I read the advertisements at nine, ten years old and get excited about that?

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Because you want stuff.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Dang, you guys are good. Because I wanted some stuff.

SPEAKER_02 10:15

And you wanted to know what to write their Christmas list of that?

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Oh man, see, that's gonna be in speech number two. But there is a particular thing, because I didn't, I was a lucky, remember, I was spoiled Darren. I didn't have to always wait for Christmas. I can get stuff earlier than that as long as I was well behaved and I did good in school. But there was one caveat, and I will tell you guys that caveat in a second, but that comes with another story. So, you know, my dad's the focal point, but my mom was there too, and we would both go grocery stopping. And you know, I have great memories of them taking me to Food Max and Walmart and Target and places like that, Safeway. And I can I was the lucky kid. I can get like the main brand cereal, the main brand snacks. I had a possibility I can get those things, you guys. Very lucky kid. But there was that one caveat I mentioned. It had to be on sale. It had to be on sale, and I can tell you, I knew it so well, I still remember it. Target, red, had to have the red little label over the price. Best buy if I wanted a little game, had to be yellow tag. Same thing with Walmart, I think Walmart was blue. I know the colors, you guys. And I and I and particularly my favorite cereal was Applejacks at the time. So if I wanted Kellogg's keyword Kellogg's Applejacks, the only time I got it was it had to be on sale. That's right. And if it wasn't on sale, what was I getting? Target Circle Applejacks, the off-brand version. And that's why I looked at the paper because I had a new, I was trained that if I had an opportunity to get Kellogg's or a Hot Wheel toy or whatever, I had to, of course, behave, get good grades, but most importantly, it had to be on sale. And if I would ask, and it wasn't on sale, it would be you take a guess cancer. What would the answer be? No, I wasn't getting it. And if I was silly enough to ask a second time, you know what would happen?

unknown 12:42

Pop, pop, pop, pop.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

Because I'm a 90s baby, you guys. They still did that. They still did that back then. And they were in the right because they trained me, and I knew better that it was gonna be enough. So they had me trained. And guys, it wasn't just my dad who had me trained, my mom had me trained as well. So I'll tell you guys a story about my mom. Now, my mom was an avid shopper, and she loved the thrift stores. Why? Because you get the deals there, right? You get low-priced clothes. And guys, I did not like going with her to the thrift store because she can stop shop till you drop. Man, if there if she was ever a contestant on Supermarket Sweep, the store where you would go around and shop and try to guess the prices, she would have won that game because she was in that store and she would look through every single clove item. Because she was shopping not just for herself, she'd be shopping for herself, me, my older brother, and my dad. And she'd be in that thrift store, and I'd be forced to sit on the bench. If I'm lucky, I had my little gray game boy at the time, two games, maybe tops, and I have to be sit there and watch her shop for literal hours at a time. But I understood because she always walked out with like 20, 25 pieces of clothes and didn't spend a lot of money for them. So I totally got it. So now, Darren, what the heck does anything have of this have to do with personal finance? Well, I'm gonna be honest with you guys. Again, I was lucky, but I, like I'm sure most of you guys, did not have my mom and my dad. My dad did not go walk up to me, sit down. I'm pulling up a seat for you guys to be like, and my dad sits me down and goes, hey Darren, today we're gonna learn about credit. And I'm gonna teach you about FICO, and you're gonna learn how you can have an 800 credit score. Those are not the conversations I had with my father. My mom did not sit me down and go, hey Darren, today we're gonna learn about the Dow Jones, the NASDAQ, and the S P 500, and you're gonna learn how to invest. Yeah, Darren, aren't you excited about that?

unknown 15:16

No.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Yeah.

unknown 15:18

Not at nine years old.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

No, and not at no point in my life, because that's not how my parents taught me personal finance. And I'm sure you guys relate to that. Most of our parents did not just sit us down and told us and taught us about how to manage our money or how to invest or anything crazy like that. What I find with most people, including myself, is you learn through modeling. You just watched your parents. If your parents didn't stress too much about money, you would notice that. If your parents were worried about if they could pay the light bills, well, you learned about that too. Now I'm gonna continue. So as you guys know now, I had a very blessed childhood. But little Darren has to grow up, right? So I became an adult. Obviously, I'm here, right? So I made it to adulthood. Now, unfortunately, when you grow up, and everyone here knows this, probably better than me, you face some real obstacles and challenges when you become an adult. And my very first one I I faced pretty much right away. Unfortunately, my mother had cancer, and she got it when I was about 16, and she was only 53. And unfortunately, she would succumb to that and pass away only two years later when she was 55 years old and I was 18 years old. I had only been an adult for about six months at that point. Now, that was my first blow to my safety net, my emergency fund, as they would call it. I didn't have my mother no more. But it was okay because I still have my older brother and I still had my dad and my father. And I'd like to tell you guys another story of how my father continued to support me. Now, I was blessed enough to be able to go to California State University, East Bay, and I attended there all four years and I was able to graduate. Now, I'm gonna tell you guys why I was able to graduate. Other than me hardworking and partying hard, of course. There was one time where I needed um financial aid. Actually, I used financial aid for all four years. Um, my mom passed away in 2008. I'm sure we all know what happened around that time, the great financial crisis, and my dad had stopped his career and stopped working so he can take care of my mom. And he never really could find consistent work afterwards. But it was okay. I was in college, I was in my own world, and one day I realized that I wasn't getting my grant money, my FAFSA money. So I went up to the campus one day and I just asked the cashier, one of the people there, like, what's going on? Like, classes are due yesterday, I still haven't gotten my funding. What's going on? And they explained to me that I had incorrectly filled out the FAFSFA forms, and I was no longer qualified to get those funds. And they're like, Darren, you owe $3,000 to us, or you're about to be kicked out of your classes. And matter of fact, we're already kicking people out. We're and we're going by last name. The last name at the time was D. So I heard that news, guys, and I panicked. I was freaking out. Like, oh God, what am I gonna do? Like, but I was like, oh wait, there might be one person who can bail me out. You guys want to guess who that one person was? That's correct. So I called my dad on the cell phone. He picked up, he said, Don't worry, I have the money, just come home. So I ran to my car, and this is the part, this is the only part of the story you guys promise can't tell anybody. Stays in the room. You guys promise? I sped down that hill and broke so many speeding laws to get that check, you guys, ran in that house, saw that cane same kitchen table that the newspaper would be at, and said, there's a check. $3,000. I'm like, great. Grabbed the check, and again, you guys promised me, sped faster, broke even more speeding laws, and got up that hill, went to that same lady, gave her the check, cashed it, I was saved. What was so crazy though, guys, is that the let the the letters they were kicking out were the letter J. Now, if you guys know me, my full name is Darren Harvey. And if you guys don't know your alphabet in order, J comes after H. But for some reason I was still enrolled. I wasn't questioning anything. I'm in my classes, I'm enrolled, I'm safe. I thank my dad, and I thank the powers that be, I thank my Lord. I was able to keep those classes, and that's why I was able to graduate on time with a degree in sociology and a minor in psychology, thanks to my dad. Now, I'm gonna tell you my a story about my brother. So now I graduated from college, about 23 years old, and I'm in my room one day, and my older brother, he's eight years my senior, he comes in my room, and he's like, Darren, can we have a conversation, a serious conversation? I'm like, sure, we have a relationship like that. Let's talk. So he's sitting there and he's explaining to me that he's having trouble in his relationship with the mother of his kids, which would be my niece and my nephew. And he was like, Darren, I'm gonna move away. I found this new lady, we're gonna move to San Jose, and I want you to take a special closer attention and eye on my kids, because I won't be there as regularly, at least for a short time being. Thought it was a little weird, but I'm like, okay, cool, no problem. That's my niece, my nephew. I love them. Um they lived in Hayward, not too far from my house, so cool, got it. And he was so thankful, so grateful, a little overly. And I was like, okay, this is a little odd, but okay, cool, no problem. I get it. And he was like, thank you, Darren. You've always had my back. I love you. That threw me off. We're mo, we're, you know, we're kind of like macho men. Like, we don't go around and say, hey dad, I love you. Hey, D, hey D, I love you. Like, that's just something we just didn't grow up doing. So I was like, okay, you know, I love you too, brother. And like I mentioned earlier, sometimes, like in baseball, you'll catch some things and you'll miss some pictures. You'll catch them and you'll miss some pictures. Later that night, we're talking like 11:30 at night, we get a knock on our door. Front door opens up, I open it up. It's the Milpetis officer. And he sits there to inform me and my father that my brother was in a shooting accident. And that he was at the he was at a hospital in San Jose. So we raced over there. This is gonna get a little geographic, I admit. I saw my brother. I'm gonna give you guys the audio description version because we need it. There was a bullet hole that entered through his bottom chin and exited through his left cheek. The doctor quickly, once I saw that, the doctor quickly came in and explained to us that by the projection of the bullet, it looked like he had tried to commit suicide. And it shot off his brain stem.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

So you guys know by the reactions that once you shoot off your brain stem, there's not much chance of survival after that. And that's what he explained to us. That we had less than 24 hours on life support with him. And he had to, and he asked my dad one of the toughest questions a father has to hear. Do you want to keep your son on life support or do you want to pull the plug? And then my father turned to me and looked at me, and I knew I had to make that decision at 23 years old.

unknown 24:20

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

And I knew, because I knew my brother and I had that relationship with him, what that decision, what the answer to that decision would be. So I decided to pull the plug. And that was the last time I saw my brother. I was 23, he was only 31 years old.

unknown 24:40

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

So now it went from my mom, my dad, and my brother to just me and my father. And I'm only 23 years old. Now, not too long after that, things that quiet down, kind of got used to this new situation, and I'm in my room at this big, comfortable lazy boy recliner chair that I would always use to study and read books in. So I remember I was reading The Hunger Games at that point, and it just came out. I was reading that book, and I got an eyelash in my left eye. And what do we do when we get an eyelash in our eyes? We just close our eyes and you know try to rub it out, try to rubber out. And I noticed that my vision didn't change. I was like, okay, this is a little odd. Now, guys, I've been wearing glasses since I was seven years old. And I've been wearing strong, thick glasses since I was seven years old. And I always got thicker and thicker and thicker as I got older. So not seeing is something I'm kind of used to in my entire life. But even I knew this was a little odd. So I quickly made an appointment. A couple weeks later, I went to the doctor, and that's when I got my own devastating news that I would be diagnosed with glaucoma. And that started my personal journey when it came to blindness at around 24 years old. So now I have glaucoma and it's just my dad. Shortly after that, my dad comes to me and says he wants to have a conversation with me. And I'm like, all right, we have that relationship. Okay, let's talk. He proceeds to tell me that he cannot afford any longer to pay the mortgage and he needs support with paying the mortgage. Now, guys, I want to make this clear. I've never been evicted anywhere, never been late paying rent or mortgage. But when my dad, same dad who would spoil me, said, I need help paying mortgage. Remember, this is the same guy who can cut $3,000 in a moment's notice. I took that like we're about to get evicted. That's the way I took that. So I told my dad, look, I have a job, you're getting $600 from me, and I think we may need to open up the house to tenants. So that was my first business. I opened up the house to tenants, got two tenants in those two spare bedrooms we had now, and everybody was giving $700 a month to my dad. I want to make sure we ain't losing the house. We is not losing that house. That was a good, you know, and I was away. I have no problem doing it. That was my dad. He had helped me out this whole time. It's my time to help him out. So as time goes on, I'm losing vision. The glaucoma is doing its thing, and it gets to the point where I'm around when I was 26, about 27, I could no longer drive. So now I'm fully dependent more on my dad than ever, even though I'm 27, to just get me to work and get me back home and take me places because I can no longer drive. But that wouldn't last for long. My dad asked me if I can accompany him to one of his medical appointments. Sure, no problem. We're a team. So I go with him, and now he gets some medical devastating news. He was diagnosed with what was called early onset Alzheimer's disease. So now I'm 27 years old. I can't drive no more. I can't drive no more because I'm already legally blind at 27. And he has Alzheimer's. So that would be my life for the next couple years. I would care for my dad, do the best I can for him, and do, but I couldn't do the best I can for him because I couldn't drive him around. I remember the day when I had to take the keys for my dad. And he was at a point with his Alzheimer's that he couldn't comprehend why he couldn't drive no more. My dad was a perfect driver. I have no memories of my dad even getting a parking ticket, a speeding ticket, nothing. And he just couldn't understand why he couldn't drive no more. And it's because we all know people with dementia get to that stage where it's unsafe. And he had gotten to that point. So now I needed my dad. He couldn't help me in a certain way, then I need him. But I'm sure you guys understand, you guys more than anybody understand. When you have a disability and you can't help somebody in a certain way because you have a disability, you don't forget that. It kind of irks you. And there's a lot of stories I can tell you guys about how I was caregiving for my dad. There are stories where he needs to go to a medical appointment. I had to call somebody because I couldn't drive them. There's one story I'll quickly share where his Alzheimer gets to a point, this is common with people with dementia, where they can't sleep. So I would have to put him down like a kid. So we would like watch TV, some of the same cartoons, literally, I was watching as a kid with him. Now I'm walking with him because his dementia got to that point. And usually that worked. Usually he would fall asleep to it, and then I would go to bed. And I'm stressed out because I'm still working, I'm still managing a house full of tenants, and I'm also my dad's primary caregiver. So it's not like I'm over here happy-go-lucky at all. I'm stressing out, you guys. But one day he couldn't go to sleep. And he straight up asked, Hey Darren, can you drive me to the hospital? It's 2 a.m. in the morning. I'm lying. I can't drive him clearly. So I had a choice to make. Call an Uber and hope he even gets in the car, or wake up my tenant who's asleep, and ask him nicely to take him to the hospital for me. Guys, I've had this disability for 10 years. That still irks me that I couldn't do that for my father. This is the same man who had no problem getting me a toy, no problem taking me somewhere, no problem taking me to sporting events. I couldn't drive him. But let me share with you guys the actual moment. This is the moment I'm about to tell you guys where I became obsessed with finances. My dad had got to the point where he needed further assistance. I could not be his sole caregiver at this point. He had to move out the house. He had trained me to budget and track finances. So I did that on a Google spreadsheet. One column, all the income we brought in, one column, all the expenses we brought in. And we were doing good, guys. We were doing great. We were bringing in between my mother's pension, my dad's Social Security, my job, and the rent money, we were bringing in, by the way, after taxes, $12,000 a month. $12,000 a month. A lot of money, right? Clearly. A lot of money today, and this is 2019. However, it wasn't enough. The caregivers I had hired that gave 24-7 care to my father, I was paying them $10,000 a month alone. Yep. And I remember the facility I wanted him to be in was $15,000 a month. I still had a house bills, groceries, all the other expenses that you just need to live. That all added up and totaled $17,000 a month. Guys, that was for that was seven years ago. I still remember that moment, that feeling like it was yesterday. I couldn't believe it. How am I in a world where I'm making $12,000 a month and I can't provide the best care possible for my father? It absolutely crushed me. Now I was lucky because we still had the house. So we were able to take out a loan from the house, and that's eventually and inevitably how I was able to afford to take care of my dad and pay for the expenses. It was the house. Now, the last story I'll share was the last time I talked to my dad, or the last time he talked to me per se. We had a little gathering. It's actually a bunch of my friends. And my dad was there. And he was talking to my friends. And anybody who knows who has ever dealt with somebody with dementia, they all had this moment. He was talking to my friends. He was talking to them about Darren. And he was talking about to them about how he would take Darren to go shopping and buy him toys because he was a good kid. He would take Darren and he would go play catch with him and Darren's little brother. He would take Darren and take Darren to the Oakland A's games. And then he turns around and proceeds to tell me the exact same thing. He would tell me about Darren and how he would take Darren to do all these things. And that's when I realized that my dad did not remember who I was no more. He was literally talking to Darren about Darren. Unfortunately, my dad did succumb to his dementia, and he passed away one day before his birthday, September 29th, 2020. His birthday is September 30th. He was a day away from 65 years old. And that was it, you guys. It was just me and my out of my immediate family. I was only 30 and I had lost them all. My security net, my emergency fund was drained. My family was gone. All I had at that point was the house that I had grew up in since I was three years old. Now, again, that's my background. That's my story. How does this all again connect to personal finance? Well, one thing that I learned with working with a bunch of my clients is we all in our we are all in our situation when it comes to finances for one reason or another. I've literally heard every story in the book. There are stories where it is completely the person's fault. They were like gambling and now they have like 20, 30k in credit card debt. And there are stories like mine where we were just dealt a bad hand. A bad hand. But what's interesting about personal finances is that no matter how you got your 20K in debt, 30K in debt, 50K in debt, whatever that number is, the steps you need to take to make your situation better is the same. It does not matter if you got your debt from gambling, it does not matter if you had a whole bunch of medical expenses, it does not matter if you're unlucky enough to be born with a disability. It is ultimately your responsibility to get yourself to a better place when it comes to personal finance. It is ultimately your responsibility to figure out how you're going to manage your finances. It is ultimately your responsibility that if somebody or a loved one needs financial support, you find a way to be able to do that for them. But I'm obsessed because my father and my mother, of course, did a great job of making me financially secure so that when they eventually left, I would be okay. And my passion is to make sure that I do my best to that every person who wants to be able to do that for themselves and their family and their kids, they have the opportunity to do that for them, like their father, like my father, excuse me, did for me. That is why I'm obsessed with financial security. That is why I started financial state of minds. Because if I knew 10, 15 years ago, or if my father knew 10, 15 years ago, that there is something simply called long-term health insurance where it would cover for something like Alzheimer's or dementia, we might have been in an even better situation. I would have been able to maybe put my dad in a $15,000 a month facility. But he didn't know that, and I didn't know that. So that's why it starts with education. We have to know our options. Because, like my father and mother, and like most of us here, our parents didn't sit us down and be like, yeah, just in case we get sick, sign us up for long-term insurance and you'll be okay. We don't have those conversations. So I hope that my story gives you guys a little bit of inspiration, a little bit of introspection on if you're in a situation with your personal finances that you want to improve, that hey, not only can you improve it regardless of your age, you you can, you can do it. It doesn't matter. And I'm always here with you guys every month at these meetings. And if you need support with that, I'm more than happy to support. Thank you guys. I appreciate it.