Episode 4 | Chad Hufford, Founder of Veritas Wealth Management: Tips to Building a Wealth Mindset

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Episode Notes

Chad Hufford, founder of Veritas Wealth Management, shares insights on financial planning, investment mindset, and creating high-performance habits. He emphasizes the importance of teaching financial literacy to children from a young age and starting financial planning early in life. Chad discusses the need to have clear objectives and goals for financial planning, including determining the amount of income needed to live comfortably without a paycheck. He also highlights the costly mistakes that investors often make, such as ignoring their finances until a triggering event occurs and misinterpreting the importance of income in achieving financial independence. Chad encourages listeners to shift their mindset from focusing on accumulating currency to preserving purchasing power over a lifetime. He shares stories of blue-collar millionaires who achieved financial independence through discipline, focus, and strategic financial habits. Chad's key takeaway is for individuals to take ownership and agency over their financial future and not wait for an emergency to start planning.

Takeaways

• Teach financial literacy to children from a young age and start financial planning early in life.
• Have clear objectives and goals for financial planning, including determining the amount of income needed to live comfortably without a paycheck.
• Avoid costly mistakes such as ignoring finances until a triggering event occurs and misinterpreting the importance of income in achieving financial independence.
• Shift mindset from accumulating currency to preserving purchasing power over a lifetime.
• Learn from the stories of blue-collar millionaires who achieved financial independence through discipline, focus, and strategic financial habits.
• Take ownership and agency over your financial future and start planning early.

Show Links

• Visit Veritas Wealth Management to learn more about Chad Hufford’s financial planning services.
• Follow Veritas Wealth Management on Instagram: @Veritas.Alaska

About Chad Hufford

Born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, Chad grew up in the financial industry, learning under his father, Steve. Chad graduated from the University of Alaska, and seeing the great need for holistic financial advice and coaching, he opened his own financial service practice in 2007 in Anchorage, Alaska, and now serves clients and their families across the US.

He founded Veritas in 2014 as he continued to expand his team and services. Soon after Veritas opened its doors, Chad began his relationship with Ramsey Solutions as Dave Ramsey’s SmartVestor Pro and is the longest-tenured Ramsey SVP in Alaska.

With a strong background in athletics, Chad brings a coaching mindset and the heart of a teacher to financial planning and investing as he strives to both empower and educate his clients on their journeys to financial freedom and independence.

Chad and his wife, Tiffany (also a life-long Alaskan), have been blessed with six wonderful children. Tiffany stays busy homeschooling the kids, and the whole family is very involved in their church and local community.

Their family loves fishing, camping (okay, maybe more like “glamping”), hunting, and enjoying the wonderful outdoors Alaska has to offer. Living in a more rural area outside of Anchorage, and just few hundred yards from the home Chad grew up in, they regularly have the privilege of watching bears, moose, and lynx walk right through their yard.

The whole family is often involved in the exclusive Client Events that Veritas hosts and they all share a desire to make an impact in the families Veritas serves. It is an honor for Chad to carry the mission of financial empowerment and education to the third generation of Alaskan Huffords!

Transcript

Buried in Work Host 00:00

This is the Buried in Work podcast where we share tips and interview experts to help you simplify estate planning and end of life tasks.

00:10 Adam Zuckerman

I'm your host today, Adam Zuckerman. And today we have a very special guest, Chad Hufford. Chad's the founder of Veritas Wealth Management. It's a firm that's managing $500 million of assets and they serve hundreds of families across Alaska and beyond. He's a bestselling author, financial expert with over 17 years of financial planning in the industry.

Adam Zuckerman 00:32

Today, Chad's going to share insights on financial planning, investment mindset, and creating high performance habits. Chad, it is phenomenal to have you here today. Thank you.

Chad Hufford 00:40

Adam, the pleasure is mine. And thank you so much for having me.

Adam Zuckerman 00:43

Yeah, of course. Let's start off really basic. Talk about your journey into financial planning. What inspired you to start Veritas Wealth Management?

Chad Hufford 00:51

Well, you shared a little with me offline about your father, the impact that he had, and what you're doing.

And I can't say that my father didn't have a similar impact. I grew up in the financial industry. And as you know, back in the 70s, 80s, 90s, it was extremely product focused. And I saw though, the difference that somebody can make if you actually take an individual and you teach them how to use the tools they already have better, rather than just trying to give them a new tool, you know, it'd be like, somebody that can't drive a car, you just give them a faster car and expect them to be a better driver. Like I've got a daughter learning to drive right now. It's pretty scary. you know, she's bumping into things here and there, but I'm not going to give her a Ferrari and expect anything to get better. In fact, she's going to get into trouble faster.

Chad Hufford 01:41

So I saw the need to actually teach people to have a better relationship with their finances. And as you already mentioned in the intro, a better mindset, a better perspective on how finances fit into our life. And what I realized, Adam, is when you change people's clarity and confidence around finances, you don't just change their money life, their financial life. You have a ripple effect into every facet of what they do. So I saw my dad have that impact. He taught classes at our church and our community. I saw how he changed people's lives using money and finances as a tool. But I didn't really plan to go into it myself.

Chad Hufford 02:18

I have a degree in biochemistry. Both of us have interesting pathways to where we are here today. I thought I was going to help people build a better life through medicine, for putting people back together physically. And about 20 years ago, I met the woman who's now my wife, mother of my six kids. And I realized that she was much more interested in having a family, having a husband, raising kids together than having a hotshot surgeon. And here we are today. I realized I could have a huge impact in people's lives. Make good money, have a tremendous amount of autonomy, own a practice rather than having a job that owned me. And it's just been, it's been a blessing, but a lot of hard work, but it's been amazing ride.

Adam Zuckerman 02:58

So we talk about the family that you have. Financial literacy is important that you not only understand your assets, your portfolio for yourself. When do you start teaching your kids about financial literacy as it leads up? Because a lot of people think that financial planning, estate planning, it only comes together at the end of someone's life. Should we be starting a lot earlier?

Chad Hufford 03:21

I was probably five or six years old when my dad sat me down and explained what a stock was. And he told me about how I owned parts of McDonald's and these different places. McDonald's is the one I remembered because my, my recollection of this is I can walk in there, get as many fish filets and happy meals as I want, start ordering people around.

My dad saw the wheel spinning. He's like, let me just slow you down a little bit. You don't own any particular McDonald's. You have an ownership share, but he was explaining the difference between stocks and bonds. And here's what was super cool about the way I grew up, Adam. I didn't know there was anything weird about this until I was an adult, but we just talked about money and most families don't. And the problem with what you just said, part of the problem is that a lot of people when they're growing up, money is only discussed when it's stressful. It's discussed only when it's

when it's the bad guy, when there's not enough of it or somebody squandered it or somebody's lost their job. And it's often brought up under only adverse circumstances. So it's no wonder that by the time people are adults, they kick the can down the road, they try to avoid these conversations until they absolutely have to have them. And we take something important and we wait till there's an emergency. And that's where a lot of people actually reach out to us. It's after somebody dies and they're inheriting money or they just got...

a diagnosis, medical diagnosis, they realize they're not going to be able to work as long as they wanted to or somebody else retired and that person being gone from their job now makes their own job miserable. So like, don't want to be here forever, but there's somewhat of or oftentimes somewhat of a traumatic trigger.

Chad Hufford 04:56

But what we want to do is get people as you're doing ahead of that. so long winded way of answering your question, I don't think there's any time that's too early to start talking about money.

And you don't have to be an expert. But think just opening the conversation. So if you've got kids at the house, just having regular discussions about it, kids don't need to know the details. Talk about the impact of leaving lights on and on the electric bill. And if we had taken that money and saved it instead and just having open discussions. I was talking about with my son last night. He got home from commercial fishing for a month and he's had more money than he's ever had in his life. And he was asking about Bitcoin and I was very disappointed. no, we talked about, we talked about, what are your goals? let's attach money is just a tool. Let's attach an objective to it. And you know, one of the, one of the coolest dad moments I've had around this is maybe two years ago, two years ago and my two youngest who were two and four at the time, they walk up to me and the oldest, the spokesperson said, dad, we've been talking. I thought, great, here we go. And he's like, we need money. You're two and four, like what do you need money for? But I let him keep going. So goes, dad, we've been talking. We need money. What kind of jobs do you have for us to do? And I thought, wow, at two and four, they've already connected. I want to buy something. That means I need money.

Chad Hufford 06:28

That means I better get to work and start earning some of that. I just, don't think that there's any time it's too early to start opening up these conversations and getting people more acquainted with money and finances and the impact those things can have on somebody's life.

Adam Zuckerman 06:28

And I think that's an interesting perspective and probably testament to how you're raising your kids and that they recognize that work is associated with money, not the magic ATM in the wall that you just walk up to and money comes out of.

Adam Zuckerman 06:55

One of the reasons that we wanted to have you as a guest on the show is because of that parallel that you just mentioned, where a lot of people focus on their finances during a stressful period and they don't talk about it before that. And that's a direct parallel with how so many people approach estate planning. You need to start early. The last thing you want to do is start when there is a challenging situation. Someone's sick or in an accident or about to pass away. That's not the time to be learning.

Adam Zuckerman 07:23

If we have listeners that are interested in getting started if they have time or if they want to share this with their younger self or someone that is close to them, a family member, a child, a friend, how can they start developing that healthier investment mindset?

Chad Hufford 07:38

One of the hard things with this, Adam, is when we are planning for the future, whether it's end of life planning, whether it's retirement planning,

We're doing it for either our family or a future version of ourselves or a future version of our family. All those are abstract concepts. Like I am providing something for a future future version of my kid, my wife, whatever, or just a future version of me getting a connection between what we're doing today and what that objective is in the future is really important. And too many people don't have a clear objective. Just, just going back to investing.

A lot of people aren't really investing as much as they are collecting investments. There's no blueprint, there's no plan. And it'd be no different than somebody trying to build a house. And they're just mindlessly going up and down the aisles of Home Depot, picking tools and materials off the shelves, getting out in the parking lot and say, okay, I'm 62. I should probably figure out how to get all these parts and pieces together. And that's not the time to be doing it. The time to be doing it is starting with a blueprint.

with meaningful objectives in mind and then reverse engineering that blueprint. Here's where I want to be in 10, 15, 20 years. I'm going to reverse engineer that to where I am today so I can connect my current actions, decisions and behaviors to the person I want to be and where I want to be decades down the road.

Adam Zuckerman 09:01

Let's try and take that recommendation into some tangible actions or learnings that people can walk away from. What are the steps that people should take? Give them actual tips that if they stop listening after this question, they can start getting themselves organized or getting to work.

Chad Hufford 09:18

How much money would I need to live comfortably and never need a paycheck ever again? That is one of those critical questions that people need to answer. So if you stop getting a paycheck today, how much money would you need to bring in every single month to live comfortably? And feel like you never needed a paycheck ever again. And you notice I didn't even call it retirement yet because for some people retirement isn't necessarily what their objective should be. But getting them to a place of a work optional lifestyle, a job optional lifestyle, will they independent from a paycheck? But how much money will you need showing up in your checking account in order for that life to take place? In order for you to be in a position where you can live independently from a paycheck?

Chad Hufford 10:02

So coming up with an income target, now the target can move, it can change, that's okay. But a great place to start is coming up with that strategic objective because it gives you something to shoot for. Because here's the thing with financial planning, as you know, there's no referee at the end zone telling that you've scored. Like, okay, touchdown, you've done it, you're here. And for a lot of people, the goalposts keep moving. There's always more. You can always work another year, you can always put more money in. There's nobody saying that's enough. So I think it's important to have measurable, finite goals for our investing and for our financial planning.

Adam Zuckerman 10:35

All right. So we've got that target. We're moving forward properly. What are some of the costly mistakes that you see investors make and how can they avoid them?

Chad Hufford 10:43

One of the things that people do, well, you've already you've already alluded to it. We've taken something important that doesn't seem urgent. keep kicking the can down the road until there's a triggering event. So I think our finances are lot like our health. If we ignore them, they only deteriorate. So we don't want to be in a financial situation where we've had a financial heart attack and now we're worried about our health, right?

Chad Hufford 11:07

And a lot of people with their physical health wait until they get to a point where they've had an emergency. They've had a heart, they've had a huge health scare like, okay, now I need to watch my diet and exercise. People shouldn't wait until they have that event to start taking care of their physical health. They shouldn't wait until they've had a financial heart attack to take care of their financial health. So that's a big one. Another one is misinterpreting what produces financial independence. A lot of people, when they open their statement, they look at their investments. What they're looking at, Adam, is their principle.

Chad Hufford 11:37

Financial independence comes from income, not from principle. And the problem with that is, as people get closer to retirement, they start trying to stabilize their principle. That's just units of currency. And as we know, currency over time loses value. So a lot of people in trying to stabilize principle end up stabilizing income. A nd bringing a fixed income into a rising cost retirement is a recipe for disaster. So what we need to do is learn how to weather those storms of volatility, learn how to look past temporary price declines to build a rising income in retirement. Because again, you can't bring a stable income into a rising cost world and figure you're going to get through retirement okay.

Adam Zuckerman 12:20

That's a really interesting mindset shift that we've spoken to other experts and they've, you know, harped on that a little bit in a similar way. On the one hand, most people when you're growing up, go, I want to be a millionaire when I'm a kid. know, I want to be a millionaire when I get older. But you never hear a child go, or at least I haven't heard a child go, you know what? I want to have $10 ,000 of annual recurring income every single month, which should be great. You're gonna shift that mindset. How do people start making that change and... What does that really do for them if they can actually shift from a asset bank to look at a number on a balance sheet versus annual recurring income?

Chad Hufford 13:03

Well, number one, a lump sum of money is not very tangible, especially for somebody who's younger. I want to be a millionaire. Well, you know what? If you're listening to this and you're 35 years old, by the time you're 60, a million isn't going to do much for you at all. I mean, it's still going to be a decent sum of money, but it certainly isn't going to build financial independence by itself. A million dollars, even right now, somebody who's a millionaire is probably barely financially independent with a very, very modest lifestyle. again, that's, that's, that's not something, a concept we can wrap our heads around. How much money am I spending every month right now compared to where I want to be? That's much more tangible. So

Chad Hufford 13:45

Here's where it comes down to, Adam, is taking financial goals and weaving them into lifestyle goals. That's what we're trying to do because it brings emotions into it, it makes it more meaningful, and we can start attaching what is actually meaningful in our life to how we're going to plan financially. I don't, money and wealth itself should not be the goal. It's a means to an end. Money is a tool that allows you to build a life of freedom, independence, and autonomy. That's what I believe.

I can't tell you what freedom, independence and autonomy means to you. But what we can do is talk about lifestyle goals, attach some numbers to them, which are going to be income goals because you're not going to take your 401k statement on a cruise with you. You're not going to take your 401k statement to Costco to buy groceries. You're not going to take your 401k statement to pay for the fishing trip. You use income to do those things. And it's much more tangible thinking about

day -to -day lifestyle. What do want my life to look like that first day of retirement? What's happening? What is going to make that life different than the way I'm living right now? And it allows us to get much more connected with those goals rather than having arbitrary numbers on a piece of paper or on a spreadsheet that doesn't really trigger us emotionally. Does that make sense?

Adam Zuckerman 15:02

It does. think it's a great way to characterize things. When you have people sit down with you and you ask them, what are your lifestyle goals? I think that's an unbelievably important thing for people to lay out. Do you oftentimes find that someone's aspiring goal just quite frankly doesn't harmonize with their current income of what they're making now of, hey, you've got to make some changes or you're just not going to be able to have that yacht in the Riviera or take that nine month you know, trip around the world.

Chad Hufford 15:34

I think it's more behavior that doesn't align with future goals. I mean, sometimes income is a part of it, but a lot of folks that we sit down with have enough income to meet their future goals, but they don't necessarily have the right behaviors and habits to align with those future goals. So, you know, it'd be like somebody coming in and, and, you know, they, mentioned, you know, camping and hiking and things like that saying, okay, I want to climb 10 of Colorado's 14ers next year. But I eat most of my meals at Burger King and McDonald's and I exercise seven minutes a week and that's only walking from my car into Burger King or McDonald's. Okay, you might not have the greatest genetics. You might not have the greatest pedigree, but everything that person has is probably enough to meet some of those goals, but they've got to get their habits realigned. And a lot of times people are

Chad Hufford 16:30

Their choices, their behaviors are not aligned with the person that they say they want to become and where they want to be financially in the future. They're taking on too much debt. They're spending too much money. They're worried too much about temporary volatility rather than long -term income. All those things are actually behavioral choices that somebody has to make. have people that are truck drivers that never made $60 ,000 $70 ,000 a year that are now financially independent. Some of them are multi -millionaires. We work with a lot of blue collar millionaires.

Chad Hufford 17:00

People that made decent money but not great money that have tremendous lifestyles now because they had the discipline, patience and perseverance to push through even without having a huge income. The story of the blue collar millionaire I think is absolutely wonderful. Sometimes people associate if you want to make a million dollars, if you want to be seven figures in assets recurring income, you have to have a nice white collar job. Let's talk about some of the blue collar jobs and show that it is possible. 80 % of the

the folks that I work with personally come out of blue collar work. that 80 % of people I work with are blue collar millionaires. They are pipe fitters, welders, electricians, plumbers. A lot of them work in the oil field. We've got a lot of cops and firefighters. That covers most of them right there. We've got a few department transportation workers that are out in the Denali Highway, middle of nowhere, fixing potholes while they're watching bears and caribou cross the street.

But these aren't people that have incredible incomes. Now some of our oil field folks have decent, you know, relatively high incomes. again, you know, they're working seven hours or seven days a week, 12 hours a day up in the North slope. But what they do have is tremendous discipline and they have focus and it goes back to mindset and mindset and behavior is what really separates investors more so than knowledge, education and intelligence.

Chad Hufford 18:26

And there's a lot of people that I meet that have huge incomes that still live basically paycheck to paycheck. And then we meet people that make $80 ,000 a year and still figure out how to save 15 % of their income and are multimillionaires. So it really does come down to not how much money you bring in, but how you leverage and how strategic you are with what you send that money out to do once you get it. So it's important to make your money work for you as opposed for you working for the money.

Well, and you have to know, you have to tell your money where to go instead of spend every month wondering where it went. And that's where a lot of people are. And a lot of times the more money you make, it seems like the less accountability or money needs to have. Well, I'll just make more. You cannot out earn bad financial decisions. And we see professional athletes that I read something the other day, Allen Iverson was filing for bankruptcy. think they say he had earned almost $200 million over the course of his career. And not to pick on Allen, I love watching him play, but

I mean, we see that. So if somebody can make almost a quarter of a billion dollars and run out of money, it just goes back to what I was saying about my daughter. Like more horsepower doesn't fix bad driving. More money does not fix bad money management. If you can't manage 70 ,000, $80 ,000, then if you're making $500 ,000 a year, isn't going to fix your money problems. It's just going to give you a bigger shovel to dig a deeper hole.

Adam Zuckerman 19:50

I love that. Bigger shovel, deeper hole. Okay. Now, most people don't properly define money is a term that I've heard or a phrase. How does that apply?

Chad Hufford 20:01

Okay, it kind of goes back to this idea about income, focusing on income as an investment goal and creating a rising income. Because when people think of money, they usually think of currency. They think of dollar bills, pieces of paper with dead presidents and or Benjamin Franklin. But that isn't money. That is currency. And if we're trying to accumulate currency. mean, let me just give you a real quick. Yeah. If I, I give you $10 ,000 and you put it in a safe for 20 years, 20 years, come down and visit you, pull it out. You have $10 ,000. You've preserved all your units of currency. You've lost probably half of your purchasing power due to inflation.

Chad Hufford 20:44

So you would say, Chad, I have all the $10 ,000 you gave me. have all the money that you gave me 20 years ago. Isn't that great? And I would tell you, Adam, man, I'm so sorry you did this because you've lost half of your purchasing power. So I think money, we should look at money and purchasing power. The value of goods and services and experiences that you can exchange for units of currency. Purchasing power is how we need to be thinking of money, not units of currency. And from an investment financial planning, life planning standpoint, then it shifts how we look at things. We're no longer looking at trying to preserve temporary units of currency, we're looking at how to preserve purchasing power over a lifetime.

Adam Zuckerman 21:44

All right, Chad, this has been phenomenal. What do you hope our listeners take away from your insights if there's one key thing?

Chad Hufford 21:31

I guess the biggest thing, Adam, is ownership and agency. It doesn't matter what your financial pedigree is, what your parents taught you, how much money you make, what mistakes you've made. I think everybody has the opportunity to make a huge impact in the trajectory of their own life. But a lot of people are sitting in the passenger's seat.

Chad Hufford 21:50

Waiting for an opportunity, waiting for something to happen. People need to move over, get in the driver's seat, start taking ownership, start taking accountability, maybe for the mistakes they made, the financial holes, but start acting on a plan. Otherwise, you're gonna be left reacting to this crazy world around you. And please do not wait for an emergency to start that planning.

Adam Zuckerman 22:10

Can't agree with you more there. If people wanna find you, Chad, if they wanna find Veritas Wealth Management, where do they go?

Cha Hufford 22:16

Veritasalaska .com is our website.

Don't let the name fool you. We work with people all over the country. But Alaska, as you know, Adam has some cache to it. So we kept it in the URL. So veritasalaska .com, veritas .alaska on Instagram. I'm also on LinkedIn. And if people have questions or want more info, please reach out and ask. We're happy to help.

Adam Zuckerman 22:38

Chad, thank you so much for your time. We enjoyed the conversation. That wraps up another podcast episode for Buried in Work where we feature tips and stories from industry professionals who specialize in making estate planning and of like tasks and estate transitions more manageable. If you enjoyed the podcast, consider leaving a review, follow us on social media or visit us at our website, buriedinwork .com. And don't forget podcast listeners can save 10 % off Buried in Work's products with code B -I -W podcast. Chad, thanks again. It has been an absolute pleasure.

Chad Hufford 23:07

Thank you. The honor was mine.

Buried in Work Host 23:08

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Buried in Work podcast. Remember, you can save 10 % on our estate preparation package and games with code podcast10 at buriedinwork .com.

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