Peace of Mind with Tyson Koska

Come on Hello again. Hi, George. How are you? God to call you Tyson. Or, or tie?

Tyson Kosla 0:20
Whatever you prefer.

george grombacher 0:21
Okay. All right, man, shall we? Yep. Well, I put this is George G. And the time is right. welcome today’s guests strong, powerful Tyson Casca. Ty, welcome back. Are you ready to go?

Tyson Kosla 0:37
I am hankering to go GA Well,

george grombacher 0:40
then, well then let’s let’s, let’s just go ahead and do that Tyson is the founder of on trajectory, their unique long term financial modeling tool designed to be easy enough for consumers and powerful enough for professionals. Ty, tell us a little bit personal life’s more about your work and why you do what you do.

Tyson Kosla 1:00
Yeah, absolutely. And George, thanks. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for having me on. Again. It’s awesome. You know, I’m big fan, I love what you’re doing. My, my, my backgrounds really pretty diverse. I don’t want to tell you my life story. But really, I started out getting my first kind of taste of being an entrepreneur, when I was like 13 years old, I opened up a roadside snowball stand in my small hometown. I did it for like three summers. And I got, I learned a lot. Most importantly, I learned a little bit about financial independence. And being a 13 year old kid that didn’t have to depend on his parents was give me a real sense of freedom. And course, that was long before the fire movement. But I got an early taste, then by age 20, I found myself as a helicopter pilot in the army. And I also found out what it’s like to be in massive debt, because I was making a lot of money. And I was 20 years old, and I was opening up every store credit card I could find and things got really I was I couldn’t, I was literally struggling to make minimum payments on my credit cards. So that was a, it was a real shift. Through that to that 10 year period. I went on later to earn degrees, and I got a bachelor’s in English, I have a master’s in philosophy. But since there’s no money in either English or philosophy, I ended up doing a 25 year career in software development. So from a background perspective, that’s, you know, quick, quick rundown. But what I’m doing now, I really believe is a combination of those specific experiences. And I love that what I’m able to do, you know, on the one hand, I’m making a software, personal finance modeling tool. But on the other hand, if I what I really want to do is give someone a financial peace of mind, I want to bring that philosophical aspect into financial planning, because I’m sure you know, it’s not just about the numbers. It’s about feeling good about what I’m spending what I’m saving, what I’m making, and if you can get the mindset, right, the numbers will work themselves out.

george grombacher 3:08
I love it. A snowball stand.

Tyson Kosla 3:11
So I don’t know what part of the country who grew up in Minnesota, Ireland. Okay, yeah, you’re in. I’m sure this was not a big business where you’re from. But in the sweltering humid summers of Maryland, we grind up ice and put sugar water on it. Different flavored sugar water. It’s a lot cheaper than ice cream. It’s very refreshing in a summer, and anybody can make it and sell it and it’s pretty popular.

george grombacher 3:37
Nice. Okay, got it. Yeah. All the snow cones where I’m from,

Tyson Kosla 3:42
yeah, you wouldn’t believe in, you know, you have shavers, you have crushers? You have different techniques. You have different it’s, it’s a whole thing,

george grombacher 3:48
huh? Right. Okay, do you have a preferred method?

Tyson Kosla 3:52
Well, my, my grandmother had I inherited a huge ice machine. So I, I just had to take whatever I could get my hands on. It was it was a crusher.

george grombacher 4:01
I like it. Okay, perfect. So, so it’s fascinating, right? That the way that you’re looking at the world is different than I am just because you have your lived experiences and your DNA and and everything else. And so looking at it from fascinatingly from an English and a philosophy standpoint, software development standpoint, that’s, that’s sort of both sides of your brain. As you are designing this tool, how are you thinking about taking into consideration somebody else’s perspective and how they’re viewing things?

Tyson Kosla 4:39
That’s, and that’s exactly what we try to do. That’s what I’ve tried to do. Now. I’m probably a bit more analytical and engineering oriented than the average person, but always going through my head is what’s the easiest way to accomplish this. What’s, what’s the what’s the smoothest? What makes sense, if I’m just a regular person, how how Am I gonna interact with with this tool, which is why we’ve designed our tool to be extremely visual, you always have a gigantic chart in front of you that shows your entire life, every click that you make updates the chart immediately. So you get this immediate feedback of what you’re doing, like, Oh, I’m, I want to stop work at 65 Oh, I want to stop work at 64. Immediately you see the, you see the results. So it’s very, it’s very, not visceral, but immediate feedback, I’m there’s a word I’m looking for that can’t find. So we try to do that now, the nature of the tool, creating a accurate financial model of your entire life, from whatever starting age you want. And based on any particular mix of life, financial experience, financial complexity, trying to predict all that and smoothly bring someone into that accurate model. That’s honestly been a huge challenge for us. But we’re making progress, and we’re getting there.

george grombacher 6:09
What is the challenge getting people to actually put everything in? Is that what it is?

Tyson Kosla 6:18
It? Well, um, that is among the challenges, yes. Because, you know, who wants to sit down and write in every balance they have in every account and think about, you know, I have a child, I have daycare for X number of years, I then I, you know, I’m not going to have daycare, then I’m going to have this, you know, I need to change my 401k match and my, my 401k contributions. It, it’s not fun, right? It’s just not a fun activity. Sure. One, one thing that I try to stress is that, you know, when we, and this is the philosophical part of my brain coming in, when we approach things from mindset of a meditative mindset, or a mindset of, you know, I’m not gonna, I’m not going to, I’m not going to look at this as a burden or a chore, I’m going to look at this as an opportunity to make sure that me and my family are on the right financial path so that we can have a fulfilling future. And if you can make that mind shift, then all of a sudden, you know, making a budget isn’t so horrible. It’s actually Oh, this is cool. I’ve just now I’ve made a budget, and now I can, I can relax, I can stop thinking about the numbers so much, because I’ve got the numbers out of my head. Can I afford this? $4 cup of coffee? Yes, I can. Okay, buy it? Can I afford it? No, I can’t I don’t buy it. You know, it’s, it’s it’s nice. Yeah, it’s nice that to get shift that words,

george grombacher 7:54
financial peace of mind. It’s a term you’ve used a couple of times. And I’ve, for the longest time said that financial peace of mind allows us to more fully pursue our passions. And I think that all the things you’ve just been talking about, once I have it, then I don’t need to worry about it or ruminate on it quite as much it doesn’t pervade different aspects of my life. Like, can I afford that cup of coffee? Can I afford to go on vacation this year? Am I on track for retirement? What happens? If? Because if I don’t know the answer to those questions, it’s going to be on my mind

Tyson Kosla 8:29
is that net is that’s absolutely the point. So you you just like just like any investment, right? You you takes you take a little bit of what you’ve got now, and you do something with it. And then it grows. And I honest, I believe in something called happiness equity, that if you can create a little bit more happiness or create a little bit more peace of mind. Now, by putting your financial model or anything in life, it’s not about finances. But if you can create a little bit more happiness, little bit more peace of mind now, in 10 or 20 years, your peace and your happiness is going to be geometrically bigger, exponentially bigger. And the more that you’ve got to think and be stressed on a daily basis, you’re going to be in a different place 10 or 15 years down the line. And I really believe that just like compound interest, you can compound your happiness. And so you know, get the numbers out of your head. Stop. Stop worrying about whether you can or cannot afford it. Find out find out now you can you can you can find out now.

george grombacher 9:37
Just know, right?

Tyson Kosla 9:39
Yeah, yeah, you just know you just like it. The numbers are there. I can see.

george grombacher 9:44
It’s one way or another. It’s

Tyson Kosla 9:46
Yes. And so that’s why a lot of people don’t want to do it. Right. They don’t want to know the bad news, which, honestly, that’s pretty silly. If you’re heading for disaster. Maybe you should know that so you can make some changes now to avoid disaster. Which again, I know, I understand emotions, I understand the human brain. But if you can, if you can find it, you know, find a way to get past that fear, you’re going to be so much better off because, again, whether the answer is I’m okay. Or not, okay, you’re still gonna be better off either way.

george grombacher 10:16
Just right at the heart of human nature, right? I avoid going to the doctor or the dentist. Yeah, cuz I don’t want to know whatever. Right?

Tyson Kosla 10:25
So there’s, there’s some, there’s an interesting study. I’m not going to exactly remember it. But there’s a, there was a study done with some college students, and they had a choice to either work through the series of math problems, or get an electric shock. And like, the majority took the shock. They’re like, hit me. Which is kind of silly. But you know,

george grombacher 10:57
I think I’d take the shock. Evidence of how much I dislike math. It’s interesting. Okay. So then it’s a function of kind of back to where we started of making this of digestible consumable? How do you how do you make it? So it’s not like sitting in the dentist’s chair and doing those math problems?

Tyson Kosla 11:18
Right. Yeah. And a lot of that has to do with making an aesthetically pleasing tool, right? Why is apple so dominant thing, right? They usually it’s just a joy to interact with their user interfaces. So that’s one. And that’s hard to do when you’re talking about getting all the numbers out of your head and creating a 60 year model. So what we’re trying to do so if you if you use on trajectory today, you basically get our, our, our whole thing, right, you answer four questions, we draw you a quick and dirty model. That’s, that’s intended to be the starting place, not the ending place. But the reason that we make it so easy to get in, it’s because we want you to step in a door, at least get in, get that that first model down, then there’s this middle place where we need to take you from, Okay, quick and dirty model to, okay, validate your taxes. That means I gotta go back and I got to look at my tax forms, I got to figure out my effective tax rate. I don’t even know what an effective tax rate is. I mean, there’s, you know, there’s people all over the scale. So how do you so what we’re working on now is, instead of leaving it all up to the individual, which is the way it is, we get you in quick and dirty, then you then it’s your responsibility to kind of flesh out the model. We’re working on personas, hey, we know you’re 25 years old, well, if you’re 25 years old, you probably don’t have, you know, an old Ira from an ex job, an IRA from an ex job that you wrote over, you probably don’t have a 529 plan, because you don’t have any children. I mean, you know, we can make some assumptions, and we can guide you through an experience that’s tailored for your life. And so we’re working on experiences kind of generational, you know, I’m in my 20s, or I’m in my mid career, or I’m in my late career, or I’m nearing retire or whatever. Because, again, this is not about retirement. This is about financial peace of mind. You maybe never plan to retire, maybe you want to retire early. Maybe you don’t even maybe you do a partial reach. I mean, it’s, that’s not that’s not what we’re after, we’re about, hey, I’m my wife is pregnant, can we afford for her to take off a year? No, we can’t, can we afford to take off six months? Yes, we can. Okay, she can take off six months, she can be with a young baby, and then she can go back to work. That’s the kind of peace of mind that it’s about. You know, it’s a it’s a, it’s a living, breathing model. And so we’re working on these personas, we’re working on ways to shift the persona. So as you as you mature and go through different phases of your life, will have will prompt you and say, Hey, did you know did oh, you know, are you expecting or just different prompts that, that take the responsibility out of you. And we help we help we help bring you along, so that it’s a lot easier. And it’s more fun. And we show you the results? And we show you some comparisons? And and that’s you know, that’s, that’s how we think it’s going to help people. And I hope I’m right.

george grombacher 14:05
Yeah, I think that that makes a lot of sense. If you’ve never engaged in financial planning, I think it can be this sort of intimidating, abstract thing, when in fact it need not be and it is not a one time thing where I got my trust from the attorney and it’s this big leather bound book that sits on a shelf. It’s the opposite. It’s not it’s it’s non static, it is living breathing. And it’s something that you can consult and say, hey, you know what, I’ve been thinking about this, and I was reading about Bitcoin or inflation or the stock market is going to crash soon. I wonder what would happen if

Tyson Kosla 14:44
that’s right, that’s right. And, and that’s another another really cool part of what we’re what we do. So we have really easy ways to change your future assumptions. We even have, you mentioned inflation. We have a feature where there’s a Central inflation rate on your model. But what if, what if I think inflation is going to increase to 6% for the next five years, and then return back to normal? So you can go in there, you can say, Okay, well, what if it’s not? Six? 6%? What if it’s 7%? And you can immediately see the results? And then you can make choices about do I want to make any adjustments? Or do I want to, you know, change my future plans. So we’re always thinking about those sorts of easy ways to go in, make some quick tweaks, see the results immediately without getting? Well a without having to necessarily go see your advisor, although you certainly could. But if you just want to run some numbers, you can do it, you know, in a tool as well.

george grombacher 15:40
I love it. And you and I were talking beforehand, just about how different people want different things, right? Some people want a pure DIY DIY, some people want to be able to interact with a financial coach or financial advisor. And I sort of thought about it like when you do if you ever have to change doctors or dentists, you want to be able to take your records with you, right?

Tyson Kosla 16:03
Mm hmm. Yeah, that’s, that’s, yeah, we that’s another part at that. That’s the deep technology part of what we’re working on. And, and I’m glad you brought it up, because we’re super excited about actually becoming a market leader in a certain way that technology works. So I’m sure folks have heard about cryptocurrencies or Bitcoin. But those those things are built on something called a blockchain. And a blockchain is a way or can be a public transaction transactional record that is owned by specific entity. And so the way we’re thinking about it is, right now, if I go to a coach, or I go to a financial advisor, that information, they have that information, that’s their information about you. It’s not your information about you. And since since our tool is, you know, does have a DIY aspect, right, you can just log in, get an account, do your own thing. Or if you’re with an advisor that has on trajectory, you get your own account, also, when they do and we’re thinking, Well, you know what, that’s your data. That’s not their data. And so we’re think about how do we leverage the blockchain to make privacy decisions on your own, make your data portable on your own? Open it up to a second opinion on your own? Now, you know, maybe the financial community is going to resist this, but I think it’s better for the individual. And I think eventually, that’s the way the markets gonna go. So we want to be a leader in that regard.

george grombacher 17:25
Yeah, that makes sense. I like it. Alright, so how does how does pricing on it work?

Tyson Kosla 17:33
So we, so first off, as I said, you know, we really want people to try it out, kick the tires, see if it’s for them. So we have a 14 day free trial, no credit cards, like we’re not taking your, you don’t have to call to cancel before the 14 days, it’s nothing like that. So you go in there, you try for 14 days, then after that, it’s $60 per year. So it’s a subscription subscription service. If you’re if you don’t think you know, you want to sign up for $60, which is not a huge number, but it’s a number. And you just want to go on a monthly, we offer a $9 per month, and you can cancel anytime. If you take the $60 you get it for a year, and it’ll automatically renew unless you want to cancel but so it’s it’s some money, but it’s not, you know, it’s a huge amount of money, we, we really want to be the cheapest of the pay. There’s a lot of free stuff. Don’t get me wrong, there’s free stuff. But honestly, if you do a comparison between the free stuff and what we’re doing, we’re not selling any of your data. We’re not feeding you advertisements. We’re not trying to hook you up with an advisor. We’re just letting you work on your financial plan. And so there’s a small charge for that, but it’s a it is the least expensive often paid services out there. super

george grombacher 18:39
affordable. One might even say that that’s a no brainer. Thai. Thanks. I like it. all Thai people are ready for difference making tip, what do you have for them.

Tyson Kosla 18:51
So I’m gonna not talk a lot about numbers on my difference making tip, I’m going to talk about something that touches the other side of my brain, which is a English major and the philosophical part of me. I mentioned earlier about pros approaching tasks. meditatively. So my difference making tip is, whatever you’re doing, whether it’s again, your budget, whether it’s looking out over the Grand Canyon, whether it’s your wedding day, whether it’s folding the laundry, slow down, just just slow down, just do it a little bit slower. Now I know you know, there’s lots of books and stuff out there, they’ll say, you know, be in the moment and savor the experiences. That That seems kind of heavy to me. It’s like, what am I doing right now? Oh, I gotta I gotta be in the moment of folding laundry. Now you have to be in the moment. It’s just slow down a little bit. Slow it down. Do a little slower. Make that fold nicely. Don’t be thinking about what do I have to do after this? Or what am I missing out on what show? Am I missing out watching? Because I’m in the kitchen doing the dishes? No, just slow down. Just do this. The thing that you’re doing, that’s it Don’t, don’t worry about being in the moment, just slow down, do the thing that you’re doing. And what you’re going to find out is that that brings you into the moment. That’s, that’s the mechanism. So it’s, it’s a way to sort of create a meditative or philosophical outlook without having to think about philosophy or, or meditation. So if you can just remember to slow down, do the thing that you’re doing. I think that that can really change. Not only the big pieces of your life, but it can change the small pieces. And if you can change, there’s a lot more, there’s many more small pieces, there’s many more chores in your life, then there are big life experiences. So if you can, if you can find joy in that, or at least a sense of peace, or a sense of connection in that that is going to create happiness and peace that compounds down the road.

george grombacher 20:49
Well, I think that that is great stuff that definitely gets Come on. Yeah, how often too often we probably get wrapped up in being mindful and and all that stuff, which is also a little bit abstract, but just don’t

Tyson Kosla 21:02
just slow down. And you know, I’m not saying I’m necessarily perfect at this, I I catch myself on a daily basis, like just brushing my teeth as fast as I can. You know what, just slow down. Just slow down. You’re not You’re not missing anything. Just just slow down, man. And it makes everything just makes things better.

george grombacher 21:19
Love it. will tie thanks for coming back on where can people learn more about you? And how can they take advantage of that 14 day trial for on trajectory?

Tyson Kosla 21:28
Yep, just go to on trajectory.com It’s spelled just like it sounds, although it’s a mouthful. And you can register for the for free trial there. If anyone ever wants to get in touch with me personally, it’s t y at on trajectory.com. Very easy. And that’s about it.

george grombacher 21:45
Love it. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, she’ll tell your appreciation and share today share with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to on trajectory.com That’s ontrajectry.com and take advantage of everything we’ve

Tyson Kosla 22:01
been talking about. Thanks again. Thanks. Thanks, George.

george grombacher 22:05
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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