Time Billionaires – Ep. 303

Welcome to the Accumulating Wealth podcast. I’m Hunter Satterfield. And I’m Judson Crawford. We’re CPAs, wealth advisors, and partners at Cain Watters and Associates, a financial services firm here to help you navigate the decisions you face every day. A few weeks ago, I had the chance to present at a sold-out event filled with students and young adults who are ready to take control of their financial lives. 

The energy in the room was incredible, and it made clear how eager this next generation is to learn how to shape their financial future. So today, we’re building on that, sharing a few of the key topics from the event, hearing directly from some of those students, and diving into some of the early decisions that can have a long-term impact. Let’s get into it. 

Okay, so Hunter, just this past weekend, you hosted, gosh, a group of about 150 students, mostly students, for the Accumulating Wealth podcast and, Accumulating Wealth seminar … seminar, yes, sorry that we’re now talking about on the Accumulating Wealth podcast. 

And you mentioned in the intro how eager they were to learn at this seminar. So, tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, I mean, listeners, I seriously am so excited about the next generation. I mean, I have kids at this age. Judson, you’ve got kids coming into this age. But the number, we were getting 20 to 25 questions an hour from these kids. 

Once we started the seminar and we would start a topic, it just went gangbusters from there which is incredibly cool. Number two, everybody was fully engaged. Nobody left early. Nobody was falling asleep, which is saying a lot for kids that gave up two days of their summer to fly down to Dallas and come hang out with me. 

And then number three, we sold it out last November. This next one’s almost already sold out. So, the energy and excitement for this generation, man, I’m super encouraged. Okay, we’re going to talk about what this seminar is and why it’s important, but while we’re on this topic, I think it’s hard for maybe a parent of an 18, 19-year-old to listen to this and be like, ” Yeah, right, they’re excited about it.” Like, this is a financial seminar that we are asking them to take days out of their summer. Why is it that these kids are so engaged and why is it, do you think, that this seminar hits them where they’re at so well? 

Well, you are, listeners, going to get to hear directly from them in just a second. So, I recorded some questions with them and- Unpaid … unpaid. To your point, they were, like, lining up to answer questions to be on the podcast, right? Like, they were so excited to share their experience. And I think to the root of your question, I think the reason is, I mean, there’s a couple things. 

Number one, a lot of this stuff is on social media, right? Their knowledge in the financial space is so far ahead of where we were just because, like, information is knowledge, and there’s information everywhere. And so, they absolutely hung and tracked with much of what I was talking about, no matter how complex I went. 

Number two, I don’t think we give our kids credit for how smart they actually are when it comes to topics like this. you’re hitting them right when they’re like sponges, and we can really capture their attention. And really, when we start with the power of compounding, the second they start seeing some of these charts, they’re like, “I can’t save fast enough,” right? 

And then I think the third is it’s a lot of the same things that we tell our kids at the dinner table or in the car or when we’re on a walk in the neighborhood, we’re like, “You need to save money in a Roth IRA,” and they’re not listening to us, right? It takes it coming from somebody else who is a perceived financial expert or a real financial expert in their eyes perceived and maybe that’s that final piece that gets them over the hump. 

And so, we’re going to actually hear from one of our planner’s children who was there at the seminar. He came up after the second break, and he was like, “Dude, Mr. Satterfield, this is changing my life. My mom’s been telling me this stuff for years, and it’s finally setting in how important it is.” 

 Yeah, I think the other thing too is, and this is not only you but also some of the other people that you had presenting with you is that you make it relatable and you are relatable people, right? You’re not going in there with a suit on and very stuffy. I mean, you’re making this fun. You’re making this engaging. And so, it is not a stuffy financial presentation, right? 

Exactly. I think it was until I got some of our younger people involved and they were like, “Hey, let’s make it more like a college experience.” So, we have a QR code with questions going throughout, fun questions, outside-the-box questions, but then also some learning questions. 

A lot of the examples, like I used Roger Federer to talk about asset allocation, right? So, we’re using a lot of real, fun, lighthearted examples to really get to where they’re at in life and to explain complex topics down to them. And so I think they can track with it really well. 

But as you mentioned, 150 students. We had to move it to another site offsite of our offices because it got so big. That’s probably the most we’ll ever be able to have though which is why we’ll end up selling it out again next year. We had four presenters, so myself, Austin Scott, one of our wealth advisors, he was a CFP, Caden Byrd, who’s a CFP, and then Ben Blalock as well, all from our wealth management team. Caden and Ben are like young, just like these students, and can really talk generationally at them which is really, really nice too. 

Two days pretty intense for me, maybe not as much for the kiddos because I just go straight the whole time. We did a Q&A this year with Ben and Caden, and they got to ask about like, “Hey guys, how did you network?” The kids asked, what was it like when you got your first job, and like what anxieties do you have, and how did you go find out and chase your passion that you were interested in? I mean, the questions that the kids were asking, Caden and Ben, were phenomenal.  

Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about the 3to1 Foundation, right, which is our foundation that is really behind this event and so much more. So, tell us a little bit about the 3to1 Foundation, what it is and again, kind of why this event even came about. 

 Yeah, so it was started by our team here and our clients as well. In fact, 3to1foundation.org, you can go join and become a lifetime member, and your money that goes in, it’s a 501[c][3]. The money that goes in is to accomplish our mission, which is to bring financial literacy to those that may not get it otherwise, right? That’s what we are about here is just education and giving knowledge to folks so they can really be good stewards of that knowledge and what they have. 

So, this is actually the 100th event of the year, so we’re already at 100 events through May. Wayne and his team are gathering all kinds of volunteers from the Cain Watters family. We’re going into elementary schools. I mean, shoot, you’ve done that with your girls, right? Yep. Give, Save, Spend. 

We are going into middle schools, high schools, colleges and teaching the core foundational concepts. And so many years ago it’s like, well, why don’t we have a seminar, a two-day seminar where we bring it all together? And we bring in our clients’ kiddos, our employees’ kiddos, people from the community that are committed to saying, “I’m going to spend two days to learn on all topics.” 

And we go the whole spectrum. We go compounding, how you set goals for yourself in life, budgeting, debt, what’s a credit score, what is retirement? Like, how do I actually understand my retirement plan? What’s an IRA? What are high yield savings accounts? What is estate planning? Insurance. I mean, employee benefits, all of it. And really as these kiddos walk out of the seminar, they feel like they’ve just gotten an entire semester of college education on the stuff that actually matters. 

Yeah, and I think, and as you said, I think, a few of the big highlights are this foundation teaches literacy from literally the age of 5 to 85, right? There is no age range that we’re not trying to hit. It’s hitting, our clients’ kids to different organizations around Dallas for people that were once homeless and things like that, unhomed, and ultimately, the cost of this seminar, I think the registration fee may be $100 per person. 

It is something we’re trying to do at lower than cost. That is never a barrier. If you know somebody that needs to come, we will get them in. This really just shows you, I think it really shows you the heart behind our organization for the last 40-plus years of knowing that, hey, we’ve got a lot of important things to teach, and the earlier we can get these in people’s minds, the better. 

Yeah, probably one of my favorite stories was a client of yours, their daughters came, and… older daughters, our age, one of which – they’d never heard this stuff, but one of which husbands just tragically passed away, and she is literally starting from nothing. And after the first day, she came up to me, and she was in tears and she’s like, “Thank you so much for what you said about…” Because one of the things I talk about is like, no matter where you are in life, if… I gave the example, if Carrie goes up and tells the boys, “Hey, clean up your room,” or if I go up and tell them to clean up their room and they just shove everything in the closet, they didn’t clean anything up. They’re just ignoring it. 

And I give that example to say, like, if you are behind, if you just say, “Well, I’m just not even going to think about it,” you’re not making it better. It’s about engaging in the process and just starting from wherever you are. And she said, “Thank you so much for saying that. It’s the challenge that I needed.” And she was in tears, and I gave her a big hug, and, like, we changed a life, right? Just that one life that’s changed. 

And so, I love the mission of the foundation, and as you’re about to hear from some of these kiddos, it’s pretty fun. Their answers were really fun. So, what we did is on some breaks, we had come up with some questions ahead of time, and I asked one or in some cases two people just to answer a simple question. 

We have the recording, listeners, and then we’re going to talk about just kind of what the answer was and maybe give a little bit of context to it. Well, I say we jump into it then. All right, let’s go. First one. 

Okay, listeners, I am here with Hannah, who is clearly smarter than me because she’s an AI engineer. Okay, Hannah, what is one thing that you learned this weekend that you didn’t know before? 

I was not familiar with the concept of rebalancing when you’re thinking about portfolios and how they’re managed. And it was really interesting to see what effect that would have on, like, your long-term returns over time, especially because in each year it seems like it’s a very small amount or, like, a small change that makes a huge difference in the long run. 

Okay, y’all, Hannah was a rock star. So, she has graduated from university, several years out. She is the daughter of one of our clients. Seriously, AI engineer. She’s like, “Well, if that’s too much, you can say this.” I was like, “No, no, no, say you’re an AI engineer. It’s pretty awesome.” But about ten o’clock on the first morning, I didn’t even see it until this time, but I look over, and she’s knitting, and she knit for two straight days, and I told somebody on a break, he’s like, “It’s like Judson. He always has to have something in her hands.” 

But I was like, “Are you knitting?” And she’s like, “Yes, it’s how I pay attention.” But she would sit there and knit, but she was picking up everything, including rebalancing. And I think what I love about her answer, because again, none of that’s scripted, listeners, what I love about her answer is in this seminar, there’s something for everybody. Some people probably would’ve answered like, “I learned how money grows,” and she’s like, “You know, this concept of rebalancing your investment portfolio, that was really impactful to me.” 

Well, and again, it’s something that, that you don’t… you’re not going to get in an everyday just boiled down seminar or if you’re just looking into, “Hey, tell me about how to invest in my 401k,” it’s not going to talk about this simple thing that you can do to reset your allocation. So again, also not something that I would’ve necessarily thought about her picking up on. Exactly. Yeah. She was intelligent, for sure. Okay, let’s go to number two. 

Okay, listeners, I am here with Blythe and Colin, recently engaged, set to get married in May of 2027. Super exciting. So, I’m going to ask them this question: Hey guys, what is one thing you heard this week that makes you optimistic about your future, especially since you’re headed toward getting married? 

I think it was just the savings plan in general on the steps that you need to take with starting the emergency fund first, and then all the way ending at college planning. So, it’s really good to have a roadmap of where I need to go as I’m starting a new job. Love it. Love it. Ah, yes, especially because you got your new job. 

Okay, kicking over to Blythe. Blythe, what are you most excited and optimistic about for your future? I’m most excited for just having a foundation for being a wife and having a family and graduating from grad school and just knowing where to go. 

Well, that’s adorable. I mean, adorable, right? Jeez. Okay, so Colin is the son of one of our associates, which is so cool. But yeah, so they get engaged. He brings her, and they sat next to each other and, like, whispered back and forth when I would make comments, and they were, like, talking about it right there. You don’t know what they were talking about. 

And what was so cool about them, I mean, other than how adorable it is for Blythe to say that, what was so cool was we talk a lot about in the seminar about our financial decisions are a product of what we’ve lived growing up. And so I looked at them and I was like, “Guys, I’m going to just, like, call you out right here because you’re about to get married, and you guys need to have some major conversations about both of your financial backgrounds. 

Like, when did you learn about money? What does money mean to you? What do you want to accomplish?” Because so many marriages fall apart due to money, and so if you can start at this point, it can really bring you success in your marriage. And so, when she said that, like, after we finished recording, she’s like, “You know, it really meant a lot to me for Colin and I to be able to sit here and say, ‘All right, now we can start our marriage and our family off right because we have this core foundation of education.'” 

Well, what a cool thing for our coworker to get them there at that seminar at this time in their life and how impactful that is. And again, just shows the breadth of the different types of people that are at this seminar, but that it met all of them. Yeah, and he told me on Saturday morning, he said that he was hanging out with buddies on Friday night, and he was like, “I told you I should’ve come. This seminar’s awesome.” And they’re like, “Yeah, whatever, dude.” But yeah, shout out to Colin. Love that dude. Okay, let’s go to number three. 

Okay, listeners, I am here with Hayden. He’s a sophomore at University of Arkansas. Go Hogs. Okay, Hayden, what is one immediate action or change that you’re going to go straight home and make based on the seminar? 

One immediate action I’m going to take is definitely just start focusing on saving as much as I can right now, because it’s going to help me so much in the future. And I didn’t realize that until the seminar where, like, just seeing the numbers of what you can do if you start as early as you can. That’s one immediate action I’m going to take when I go home. 

You know, one of the things that I think about, obviously, both you and I know Hayden’s mother very well. We’ve known Hayden since he was, like, two. Literally. But there’s nobody… you know for a fact that these same things have been talked about in Hayden’s household, but sometimes it takes getting out of your household and hearing it from somebody else in order for it to sink in. 

Oh, there’s no question. He was so locked in the whole time, and he’s at Arkansas. Ronnie’s there, same age. Moms told him for years. Dad, incredible dude, has told him for years. And he was so locked in from the get-go. He was like, “Man, I am 100% saving everything I can.” 

And that’s a lot of, like, the core thing that we teach at the very beginning is that you are a time billionaire. As an 18- to 24-year-old, you’re a time billionaire. You have so much time to take advantage of compounding, to take advantage of developing goals for your life, to accomplishing things that you want. Like, don’t take time for granted. And so, I loved hearing him say that because you’re exactly right. Like, he has heard it, but now it’s, like, really sinking in for him. Absolutely. All right, let’s go to number four. 

Okay, listeners, I am here with Jonathan. As a freshman at Boston College, pretty sweet. All right, Jonathan, what is one thing you heard that you are excited to get home and share with your roommate or friend? 

One thing I would say is that time is very important for especially people at my age. So, one thing I would tell my roommate or, like, a friend is that since we’re so young, we have so much time to, like, invest our money and let it grow over the next couple years until retirement. 

So, this is a client’s kid who is headed off to play football for BC, and he walks in… he’s a dude. He’s a big dude. And he walks in with his, like, BC pullover, and I’m just like, “Oh, man, that is a flex like I’ve ever seen.” But again, Judson, thematically, time. Like, that is the thing that we beat into their head over and over again, and I think the common theme with those that come to the seminar, they may be a little bit older, or our clients that come in, what do they always say? “I wish I knew this earlier.” Right? And I think that’s so much of what this seminar does is it teaches them this stuff so much earlier than most people are learning it.  

Well, and I think it’s the connection, right? I mean, these young individuals, without knowing it, they know that time is on their side. They don’t think about the things that we’re talking… They don’t think about death. They don’t think about retirement. But they also don’t typically connect the value of connecting that time that they have with actual savings now, right? And I think that, again, just that lesson is, is so very valuable. And really, I mean, in a lot of ways, Hayden and Jonathan took away the same thing. All right. Let’s do number five. 

Okay, listeners, I am here with Cambry, mom of one in Colorado. Okay, Cambry, what is one financial concept that your parents have always told you about, but you didn’t truly understand until now? 

They always told me to invest. They mentioned something about a Roth. And if I was smart, I would do something with that. But it wasn’t until being here and knowing the steps of that, what that looks like to put it into account, how to max it out, what order I should be doing everything before I worry about the next step. 

This one’s awesome because she knew. She knew what a Roth was. She knew she was supposed to do it. In fact, her Roth, it’s a client’s daughter, her Roth is with us and has been for years, but I love it. She’s like, “I didn’t actually know how to do it.” Yeah. And she’s married, daughter and her and her husband, they had some amazing questions. Like he’s really into real estate about, “Hey, should I buy homes? And how should I do that in comparison to other investing?” 

And at the end of the day, she didn’t even know how to do it and that’s the simple stuff that I think prevents so many people from actually getting in the game, is they just, they feel intimidated by it, or they get overwhelmed by it, and they move on to the next thing. And so I love that takeaway that’s like, “Oh, this is actually actionable.” 

Yeah, and again, it does, it takes this theoretical thing out there that’s just a word, a Roth. I have one to actually like, “Oh, I can actually take action on this. This is why it matters.” And also, probably some realization of how important it is for what her parents had done for her before and putting all those dots together. I think it’s interesting. You picked these five. You probably had 50 more that are different answers that could’ve been played.  

Absolutely. I mean, there were so many that would have been happy to answer, and they ask questions constantly and whatever else it is, and I tried to pick a bit of a diverse group just age-wise and, and where they were at in life. And I do love that for so many of them, they got the real thing that mattered, which is take advantage of the knowledge that I have and really move forward with a plan now. Because if you don’t have a plan, you don’t know where you’re going, right? 

So, super cool. Thank you to Hannah, Blythe, Colin, Hayden, Jonathan, and Cambry. Thank you, guys. You guys rock for being willing to answer that. 

Judson, if somebody wanted to sign up for next year’s seminar, which as I mentioned already is already almost like 60% full, what do they do? Go to the website? What do they do here? Very, very simple. You go to 3to1foundation.org and you go under “seminars” and you find next May’s Accumulating Wealth Seminar and you get signed up. That is as easy as it is. 

Like we said before, there’s really not a seminar that we do that we can recommend more for someone in your life that’s in this age range, again, the 18 to 30, but then as Hunter pointed out, it could really apply to anybody, right? There, there’s not an age that it doesn’t work for if the people need to hear these foundational pieces of information. We cannot recommend this enough and don’t wait to do it. 

And you can also find out a lot more about the 3to1 Foundation online. They do have resources outside of this seminar and they have resources that if you really wanted, could be brought to your own communities for all of those ages that we talked about before. So, if you want to do this for yourself, if you want to do it for your office, if you want to do it for your community, these are resources that 3to1 Foundation can bring to you. 

That’s right, and if you come next year, bonus, you’ll get to hang out with Ethan Satterfield. My middle son is coming next year as he graduates high school. So, it’ll be a blast. Look forward to seeing you guys there. And you might, just might get on this podcast and go viral. You never know. You just never know. Get us out of here.  

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