# Money Isn’t the Goal: Building a Financial Life With Purpose | John Coleman (Bonus Episode)

An episode of [Minimalist Moms Podcast | Purposeful Life & Parenting Tips](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1159498258), 3 Apr 2026, 32 min.

Audio: https://prefix.up.audio/s/pdst.fm/e/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/mgln.ai/e/35/audio2.redcircle.com/episodes/ad65f818-a665-4a60-9e18-69f098c23222/stream.mp3

What if the goal of money isn’t just more - but meaning? In this conversation, Diane explores a refreshing and purpose-driven approach to personal finance inspired by Good Money by John Coleman. Rather than following the traditional formula of earning more, saving for retirement, and checking all the expected boxes, this episode invites you to rethink your relationship with money from the ground up. Together, we unpack how to align your finances with your values, prioritize purpose in your work, spend more intentionally, and use your resources to create real impact. Links Discussed in This Episode | • Checkout the podcast storefront for recommendations from Diane. • Previous Episode: Uncluttered Faith: How Minimalism Deepens Your Relationship with God | Joshua Becker (Bonus Episode) • Book: HBR Guide to Crafting Your Purpose • Book: Happy Money: The Japanese Art of Making Peace with Your Money • Harvard Study • John Beneficial Resource: Hallow app • Connect with John: • Website: https://www.johnwilliamcoleman.com/ • X (Twitter): https://x.com/johnwcoleman • Subtack: https://onpurpose.substack.com/ • Book: Good Money: Six Steps to Building a Financial Life with Purpose About John| John Coleman is an investor, author, and speaker whose work explores the intersection of faith, purpose and finance. He serves as co-CEO of Sovereign’s Capital, a values-driven investment firm active in public equities, private equity and venture capital, and is a co-founder of the Faith Driven Investor movement. A frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, his writing has also appeared in Forbes, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Financial Times and Los Angeles Times. His books include Passion & Purpose, The HBR Guide to Crafting Your Purpose and even a novel, Miracles. A graduate of Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School, Coleman and his wife live in Atlanta with their four children, pursuing the good life he teaches—one marked by purpose, generosity and faithful stewardship. Episode Sponsors | The Minimalist Moms Podcast would not be possible without the support of weekly sponsors. Choosing brands that I believe in is important to me. I only want to recommend brands that I believe may help you in your daily life. As always, never feel pressured into buying anything. Remember: if you don't need it, it's not a good deal! Enjoy the Podcast? Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning into this podcast, then do not hesitate to write a review. You can also share this with your fellow mothers so that they can be inspired to think more and do with less. Order (or review) my book, Minimalist Moms: Living & Parenting With Simplicity. You can contact me through my website, find me on Instagram, Pinterest or like The Minimalist Moms Page on Facebook. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Cure Hydration and use my code MINIMALIST for a great deal: https://www.curehydration.com * Check out DeleteMe and use my code joindeleteme.com/MINIMALIST for a great deal: https://joindeleteme.com * Check out Wayfair: https://www.wayfair.com Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

## Transcript

[0:00] \[SPEAKER_01\]: For those of you that are new around here, I release bonus episodes that serve a niche part of my audience.
[0:06] \[SPEAKER_01\]: This episode is coming from a Christian perspective, so if that's not something you're interested in, check out one of the other episodes that dropped this week or joining back to your next week for episodes that you don't want to miss.
[0:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is meant to encourage people to really reflect on the why that they're doing things and to really firmly establish for themselves and their families.
[0:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What is our vision of a good life and make money subservient to that?
[0:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And the good news is, most of those things that make a good life are practically free.
[0:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Financial and material stability enables them, but we can lean into relationships for free.
[0:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We can develop great care of turn virtue for free.
[0:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Mental physical and spiritual health, we can take care of usually at pretty low cost, right?
[0:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so we've got these things we could focus on, we just sometimes get distracted by the less meaningful things.
[0:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What is it that defines a good life for me?
[0:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What do I think that looks like?
[0:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And is my spending, is my earning, is my investing really lining up with that?
[1:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Or am I off track?
[1:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Am I not connecting the way I use my money to my vision for what a good life is?
[1:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And if I'm not to try and adapt my spinning earning, giving, et cetera, so that an enables me to reach this good life that I think should ultimately define my life.
[1:21] \[SPEAKER_01\]: This is Diane Bowden, and you're listening to the minimalist mom's podcast.
[1:25] \[SPEAKER_01\]: What if the goal of money isn't just more, but meaning?
[1:28] \[SPEAKER_01\]: In today's conversation, I explore a refreshing and purpose-driven approach to personal finance inspired by the book Good Money by John Coleman.
[1:36] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Rather than following the traditional formula of earning more, saving for retirement, and checking all the expected boxes, today's episode invites you to rethink your relationship with money from the ground up.
[1:47] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Together, John and I unpack how to align your finances with your values, prioritize purpose in your work, spend more intentionally and use your resources to create real impact.
[1:57] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But quickly before we get there, if you have yet to leave a rating and review, hit five stars, tell me your favorite episode, your favorite guests, or how this episode has been particularly helpful to you, and if you do find this episode helpful, share it with a friend that could also benefit from the content.
[2:11] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I so appreciate you tuning in and spending some time with me here today.
[2:14] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So with that, let's get to this conversation with John.
[2:20] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So, okay, we're going to be talking about money today, because you have a new book coming out.
[2:24] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It's called Good Money.
[2:24] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Six steps to building a financial life with purpose.
[2:27] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I guess it already is out.
[2:29] \[SPEAKER_01\]: March 10th was the day that launched.
[2:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's right, just six days.
[2:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's worth recording this.
[2:35] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah, congrats.
[2:36] \[SPEAKER_01\]: That's super exciting.
[2:37] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Well, okay, before we get into the content, what made you decide to write this book?
[2:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, that's a great question, Diane.
[2:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So it's kind of two strains of my life.
[2:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: One, I worked in the investment management industry for a long time, so I'm an investor by day.
[2:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm around money all the time, and around people with a great deal of money, and I've seen what goes right, and what goes wrong.
[2:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And then for Harvard Business Review, I've been one of their principal writers on leadership, purpose, and human flourishing for about 15 years.
[3:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So this is my third book with them.
[3:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The last two have been on purpose.
[3:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so this was their first personal finance book and I and they were really interested on writing about this intersection of human flourishing, what it means to live a good life and money, which can enable a good life for a bad life, depending on how you use it.
[3:23] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah, no, I'd love to start there with the idea of good money.
[3:28] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So is the inverse true?
[3:30] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Is there such a thing as bad money?
[3:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, you know what, shocking is money can be good or bad depending on how it's used.
[3:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So one of the principles of the book is that money is a means not an end to the good life or to human flourishing.
[3:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I lay out a framework in the book, but there are a number of things that are intrinsically good in life.
[3:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: relationships, character and virtue to meaning and purpose, et cetera, money is not intrinsically good.
[3:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's just the tool.
[3:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so we all need it in order to live well in order to achieve some of those things, but it can hurt people as well.
[4:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And you see this in studies of lottery winners who go bankrupt at multiples of the general population that commits suicide at higher rates,
[4:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Professional athletes go bankrupt it multiples of the general population and have all kinds of problems and anecdotally we've all seen it with wealthy families were we're around or actors and actresses to become famous and money Really destroys them and so a lot of ancient tradition has been clear about that modern research is starting to back it up and so I think it's one of those areas in which people have to take great care That as they get money that they use it well so that it enables a flourishing life for them in their families
[4:39] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I may have scratched the surface of this question comment with someone else when we were talking about money.
[4:44] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Oh, it was Joshua Becker.
[4:45] \[SPEAKER_01\]: He wrote a book for Christians on minimalism.
[4:47] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It was this recent book.
[4:48] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But we were talking about, yeah, is money inherently good or bad?
[4:52] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Is it inherently good or bad to be wealthy?
[4:54] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I don't know.
[4:55] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I think some Christians feel guilty if they do have money in success.
[5:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, and I think in the Christian tradition, it's not money that's inherently bad.
[5:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So the Bible actually says in first Timothy that it's the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
[5:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And yet if you look at the Bible, there were a number of the most regarded people in biblical history like Abraham or David who were incredibly wealthy.
[5:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so I think...
[5:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The Christian tradition would treat it as a gift that sometimes given that can be used for good or ill purposes, but a uniquely tempting thing.
[5:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So in the Bible, for example, it's mentioned money is mentioned 2,350 times, almost more than anything else.
[5:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so I think it re-emphasizes this idea that money itself can be used for good purposes, but it does have some uniquely dangerous characteristics or tempting characteristics that
[5:50] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Absolutely.
[5:51] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So I guess it what negative ways can we view God that we hold tighter to our money and or start creating bad habits.
[5:59] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Is there a perspective that we have of him that may affect that.
[6:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, that's a great question.
[6:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think any time you place your, so I'm a Christian, any time you place your security and something other than God, it can become a false idol.
[6:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And a lot of people seek security in money.
[6:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like I know, I grew up when I was younger, we didn't have a lot.
[6:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: When I was born, my dad was a rodeo cowboy, we lived in a trailer park.
[6:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I've had this experience of both having not enough and also more than I need.
[6:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I think that one of the dangers is placing our security or identity in that in the book I talk about the fact that your network is not your worth and I think people can fuse that particularly in modern culture and the truth is enough always feels out of reach and that's one of the reasons I love what you're doing around minimalism.
[6:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think one way in which people go off track is they're constantly escalating their lifestyle with their income and sometimes beyond their income and they get into traps with that.
[6:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There was a Harris poll recently that surveyed 2000 Americans and they asked them how much money would be enough for you to feel happy and fulfilled or how much annual income.
[7:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And at every median income bracket, it was more than they had today.
[7:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So at 25,000, it was 40,000, at 50,000, at 75,000, at 250,000, it was 350,000, and if they'd surveyed beyond that, I think someone with a million dollars would say just a couple million dollars.
[7:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So it would make me feel happy and secure.
[7:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so money is this treadmill that we get on that if we haven't
[7:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: can become this thing that we chase because it's uniquely concrete, it's easy to define, it's an easy scoreboard.
[7:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so we end up prioritizing that at the expense of these other things like relationship, character, meaning, and impact that are actually more likely to make us happy than just pursuing things or pursuing money itself.
[7:52] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah, and I think on the flip side of that, the scarcity mindset, the scripture that talks about, look at the birds in the air,
[8:01] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And so I think that sometimes I know tithing is a hot topic.
[8:05] \[SPEAKER_01\]: We don't necessarily need to walk down that path.
[8:07] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But I think that people are afraid to tithe or they're afraid to be generous because they're like, wonder if I'm not provided for a winner if I don't end up having enough at the end of the day.
[8:16] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So I think both things can be true.
[8:18] \[SPEAKER_01\]: We can feel guilty for having too much, but also we're feeling fearful if we don't have enough.
[8:23] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I guess maybe that's somewhat similar, but yeah, I want to speak to that as well.
[8:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, absolutely.
[8:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And look, the truth is that some people in the world are genuinely living in great financial need, especially if you look globally.
[8:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And even here in the United States, there are people like that.
[8:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think the blessing of being here in the U.S. is that fewer people are in that situation than in most places in the world.
[8:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And most of us do actually have what we need to cover our expenses.
[8:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Even if you look at things like median income, one of the things I do through the book is after establishing this kind of mindset, I touch on one of the different areas we touch money.
[8:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So earning, spending, giving, investing and saving.
[9:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In generosity, I think, is one of the most underrated topics there.
[9:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think you're right.
[9:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: People always wait.
[9:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They think I'll be generous when I can afford to be generous.
[9:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And yet because that finish line is always at a reach.
[9:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You'd be shocked at the number of incredibly wealthy people who've never been generous.
[9:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Four out of 10 Americans gives nothing every year.
[9:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Only 2% of US GDP is given to charity each year.
[9:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And even amongst religious communities, giving is quite low.
[9:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so one of the things I talk about in generosity or different habits so that it can become a word of a part of your life, like percentage giving, which is tiding, where you just carve it off at the beginning and live off the rest.
[9:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And the research is adding up to show that not only is that good for the world, generosity is obviously what we're called to do to serve others, but it's actually remarkably good for the individual.
[9:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So even if you were just selfish, the research shows that it has mental and physical health benefits.
[9:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So all cause mortality goes down, feelings of purpose go up, things like cardiac disease go down, dementia goes down,
[10:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Anna draws us closer together in relationship when she went down properly.
[10:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like one of the things I was most intrigued by as I studied for this book was looking at really wealthy families in which ones had gone off track and which ones had stayed really good even with future generations growing up and well.
[10:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And one of the defining characteristics, maybe the defining characteristic of families that I felt like state on track was that they did generosity together.
[10:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They had some practice of family giving, where that was baked into the parents, the kids, the grandkids, et cetera.
[10:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And that was really something that gave them the right mindset of being open-handed with their resources, serving others, and doing it in relationship with one another.
[10:46] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah, that's really good.
[10:47] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Thanks for sharing that.
[10:48] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I guess with tithing, again, not to necessarily open this can of worms, but I don't necessarily look at tithing just to the church.
[10:54] \[SPEAKER_01\]: That's my personal opinion.
[10:55] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I think can be tithing in different areas.
[10:58] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I don't know that's something that's always kind of put my mind to use it like as long as we're giving cheerfully to these things that's a tith.
[11:05] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So.
[11:05] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I don't know if you want to speak to that, but I know it's a hot topic as well.
[11:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: No, I think the same.
[11:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think the way the Bible thinks the church.
[11:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So the Bible never actually lays out a 10% tie.
[11:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's derived from something.
[11:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Testament.
[11:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I give generously and sacrificially.
[11:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And church really, I think we sometimes confuse the church which is a building with the church which is this global community of believers and those were in the reach and I would define it more like the latter and I think God calls us to just give to others and even even non-Christians even people in need who are suffering in other ways and so I think
[11:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: everyone is called to different areas of generosity like we have a daughter with a health condition.
[11:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so one of the things that we give to is the foundation that helps kids like her, right?
[11:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And we feel really good about that as a part of our giving plan.
[11:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I think the key is for people to be giving, to be passionate about it, to be purposeful in it, to do in a relationship with others, and to really commit to it through percentage giving, rather than leaving it as something they'll try and handle later.
[12:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Because so often people just end up never doing it if they don't start
[12:10] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Let's talk about some bad money mindsets that people might have maybe either knowingly or unknowingly.
[12:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, for sure.
[12:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think I mentioned one earlier, which is too quite our worth and our network.
[12:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think in society today, we're often told through TikTok or Instagram or whatever else, our kids see it in school that we are defined by the things we have, rather than the people we are.
[12:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And people often, if you put that to me explicitly, will acknowledge that's not the case, like we admire Mother Teresa, more than we do, some of the wealthiest people in the world, for example, despite the fact that she really had no material possession, so to speak.
[12:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But we often get ourselves in a competition comparison trap with others, because we place too much of our identity in what we have.
[12:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so I want to break people of that.
[12:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think as I mentioned before, I encourage people to set up financial finish line, which is to find a lifestyle at which they'd be comfortable and stop there so that they're not constantly escalating their spending with their income and they have the ability to build financial freedom to be generous, etc.
[13:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And then one of the others around spending that I talk about a lot related to what I just mentioned.
[13:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: is to really spend on things in enable human flourishing rather than stuff.
[13:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I think most of us get caught up in acquiring stuff.
[13:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You're the minimalist mom's podcast, so I love the names that I actually talk about minimalism a bit.
[13:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The research would tell us what scriptures and other sources wisdom have told us, which is the stuff that we chase.
[13:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: doesn't make us happier.
[13:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It only makes us happy temporarily.
[13:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And there's this psychological concept called Tidanic adaptation, which is when we get something, right?
[13:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That becomes our new baseline.
[13:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So we thought a dream car or a dream house would make us happy.
[13:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And then basically the minute we get it, we start to see what's wrong with it, or what someone else has, and we begin to want more.
[14:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Right?
[14:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's this inquisitive nature within us.
[14:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And if you can short-circuit that and then begin to spend on things, you know, you've got to buy some stuff.
[14:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You and I both have little kids.
[14:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It sounds like they need basket all shoes and backpacks and we need a car and a phone and those sorts of things.
[14:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But if you stop spending on things you don't need.
[14:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: and redirect spending towards things like experiences, mental physical and spiritual health, relationship building activities, you know, then you're connecting what you spend to more intrinsically important things, things that are more likely to make your life good.
[14:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And the cool thing is that's true not just intuitively, but again, there's a ton of research that's piling up to demonstrate that as well.
[14:51] \[SPEAKER_01\]: in your book you'd speak to work as a calling and believers finding purpose in their work outside of just being a vocation.
[15:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, absolutely.
[15:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So earning is one of the most important ways being counter money, right?
[15:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Everybody needs to earn money in order to get buying, unless you've been fortunate enough to win the lottery or inherit or something like that.
[15:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think meaningful work is an intrinsically important part of human flourishing.
[15:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That may be work as a mom for some people listening or a dad that say at home, it may be work in the workplace more formally, but using our talents for the benefit of others in some meaningful and impactful way is important.
[15:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The crisis that we face is so many people in their jobs that they don't feel meaning.
[15:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So in the United States, only around 15 to 20% of people are engaged at work, which is catastrophically low number.
[15:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Globally, there's no country in the world where a majority of people say that they get significant meaning in purpose from their work.
[15:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In the US, that's only 17% of people in South Korea, it's only 6% of people.
[15:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so we've got this crisis of purpose of work, and yet that's where most people spend 30, 40, 50 hours of their week.
[16:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so my contention is there is no success without significance.
[16:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like if you're wasting that portion of your life, not feeling a sense of meaning in purpose, which are so intrinsic to human flourishing, not developing positive relationships.
[16:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In the context of your work, you're missing a huge component of your life.
[16:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: that could be meaningful and so in that chapter and actually my prior book was called the HBR Guide to Crafting Your Purpose which was all about the idea that purpose is made not found that almost any job can be meaningful if we focus on it and attempt to attempt to end out with meaning.
[16:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so in the earning with purpose, chapter of good money, I lay out the ways in which I think almost anyone can craft greater purpose in the context of the work they do, whether they're a cashier or bus driver or an investment banker or management consultant or even a stay at own parent.
[16:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Many people just haven't focused on that enough to get that sense of meaning and flourishing at work and engage in the practices that would enable that.
[16:58] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So would you suggest, my friends were over a couple of weeks ago, and he was just saying how he feels like he has golden handcuffs right now, shading him to this job because of what they're making and it's of a benefit, but he's also like tying inside a little bit every day because of it.
[17:16] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And I was like speaking to them, his wife is kind of stepping into this new role.
[17:19] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I'm like, can you get her to a place where you can go do what you want to do outside and get away from a desk?
[17:24] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I guess my point is in sharing a little bit of it in a story,
[17:28] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Do you think that people should just uproot their lives with their jobs if they aren't happy in those ways?
[17:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, my first suggestion to people is you can often build, again, I think that purposes largely may not sound.
[17:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so I think most jobs can be made meaningful if you think about them properly.
[17:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In the book, I lay out a four-part framework that I think can make almost any job meaningful.
[17:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: One of the great interviews I did in my last book was this bus driver and Dallas named Curtis Jenkins.
[17:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He was in the Dallas School District.
[17:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There was great
[18:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Most people wouldn't think of bus drivers like a super meaningful job, right, or an inspiring job.
[18:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But he thought of it as being a caretaker for kids.
[18:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The first adult they saw when they left their home in the morning, the last they saw before they got home.
[18:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so he would give them all jobs on the bus.
[18:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They'd have a president, a security guard, a secretary, whatever the kid wanted to be, he'd celebrate their achievements in their birthdays.
[18:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And he cultivated this like real community
[18:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: that transformed it from a means of transportation to one of the most meaningful parts of each of those kids' dates, right?
[18:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so I think whatever your job is, if you focus on the right aspects, and I lay out for one is crafting your work, which is this concept in the management literature called job crafting, which means making the job you have the job you want, changing your job in small ways so that you emphasize those things that give you greater purpose and
[18:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The second is to treat work as a craft to really focus on your self improvement in that work and trying to perfect it in the way the old crafts people did and then the final two are emphasizing service to others in building positive relationships at work.
[19:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We all have an opportunity to serve clients to serve our colleagues, et cetera, but we often don't take that mindset to it.
[19:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: but you will also find it your better at it, right?
[19:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Because we're all better at things that we're doing with the sense of purpose.
[19:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I do think that this golden handcuff concept often comes because we haven't been thoughtful about our financial finish line.
[19:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We've elevated every time we get more money, we spend it to elevate our lifestyles.
[19:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And that's where a lot of people feel trapped.
[19:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They haven't were then they need.
[19:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: but they've gotten their lifestyles to a point that they can't roll it back or they feel uncomfortable rolling it back if they do want to find a greater sense of purpose than their work.
[20:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The final chapter of the Good Money book is called Save for Freedom Not Retirement.
[20:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It kind of hits on this.
[20:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In the sense that I think we should all think about our saving and investment in terms of giving us the freedom
[20:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: to pursue with agency and autonomy, the things that will give us the greatest purpose.
[20:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So if we do find we need to leave a job, we've actually got the financial platform in order to do that, to do what we find meaningful.
[20:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And that's always the last option to me.
[20:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You'd rather make what you're doing meaningful.
[20:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But if that's not possible, you want to have the financial where we're all to make that decision.
[20:31] \[SPEAKER_01\]: some really good points there.
[20:33] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I can't not have you speak to simplicity and minimalism and materialism here on the minimalist moms podcast.
[20:40] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So I guess I would ask you specifically to the believer, how would you encourage them to combat some of those impulses in their own lives?
[20:48] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I have my answers, but I'm just curious to hear your opinions.
[20:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, your answers are probably better in the mind, Diane.
[20:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You've been the most thoughtful people in this topic it seems.
[20:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: we are also attracted to stuff.
[20:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And when I think of minimalism, you know, can't extend into experiences as I talked before, but often it means getting more stuff, nicer stuff.
[21:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In the book I review a bunch of statistics just about the average number of pairs of shoes that people have in the UK and the US and it's extraordinary.
[21:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think it's like 30 pairs for the average woman in 20 for the average man or something like that.
[21:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We often, especially in the prosperous world, have so many things that we lose track of what we have.
[21:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And again, the research is super clear on this.
[21:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There's a great book called Happy Money, where I adopted this principle, experience is not stopped.
[21:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So in our family, we always say spend on experiences not stuff.
[21:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The other principle we have is normal is boring.
[21:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So we just never allow them to spend money on something they want to spend on because someone else has it.
[21:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: that they come in and say, my friend has a Stanley Cup.
[21:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They will never have a Stanley Cup.
[21:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They have to come in and say, my friend has these shoes.
[21:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You're not getting them for that reason, right?
[21:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like, you were going to get stuff that's meaningful to you.
[22:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And the truth is, as you simplify, and if you study minimalism, as you simplify, not everyone's going to live like a hermit or something like that, but we don't need as much stuff as we want.
[22:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And if you trim that stuff, you actually make room for things like family vacations, mission trips, service projects together, the kinds of things that are durable.
[22:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So if you look at the research on experiences,
[22:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: while stuff quickly fades, stuff doesn't make you happy.
[22:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In fact, too much stuff makes you unhappy in the research.
[22:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But experiences are not like that.
[22:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The happiness you get from those lasts over time.
[22:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The memories don't fade with time.
[22:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They sometimes get even better.
[22:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so it's really about determining why am I buying something.
[22:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I think to, and this is a family, it's helpful, because I have a whole chapter in the book I'm Money and Kids.
[22:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And one of the things I talk about is applying all these principles with your kids, and now that my kids have walked through this with us, they'll often call us out if mom and dad are spending on something that they think is goofy.
[23:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If I get a new watch, my son will be like, oh, nice watch.
[23:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like, what?
[23:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Did you need that?
[23:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it's just a nice little source of accountability to say, and I need it.
[23:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like, why did I need it?
[23:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And isn't it the right thing to spend on when I could be redirecting it somewhere else?
[23:18] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah, I had a conversation with a friend about that.
[23:20] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Just quality of her quantity.
[23:22] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I do like nice things.
[23:24] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I would say if I had more money, I would be much more bougie than I am, but I wouldn't have all of the things.
[23:29] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I would just have viewed very nice things because I'm like, I want them to last.
[23:33] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So yeah, I think there's like a happy balance to also celebrate your success.
[23:38] \[SPEAKER_01\]: If you've had a successful year, like it's okay to treat yourself to a watch.
[23:41] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But it's all about the heart posture and motivation of why you're doing things.
[23:45] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I really like how you shared.
[23:46] \[SPEAKER_01\]: not necessarily buying it because a friend has it, those shoes or a friend has that film the blank.
[23:53] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I've noticed that with my daughter and her friends, which again, magnetic desire we want what others have until we have it.
[23:59] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It's not a shiny.
[24:00] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So yeah, I guess as we wrap things up here, what is the final word in encouragement that you have for listeners when it comes to their money?
[24:05] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Again, this idea of good money versus bad money, we understand that it money is not inherently bad.
[24:10] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It's about the heart position, but any final word that you'd like to share with listeners.
[24:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, I think everyone's path around money is different.
[24:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So this is not meant to be prescriptive saying, you have to cap your network at this, right?
[24:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: People at different needs, like I said, people at different health issues in their family.
[24:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They have a different background.
[24:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They have different number of family members, et cetera.
[24:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is meant to encourage people to really reflect on the why that they're doing things.
[24:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: and to really firmly establish for themselves and their families, what is our vision of a good life, right?
[24:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And make money subservient to that.
[24:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And the good news is, most of those things that make a good life for practically free, right?
[24:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Financial and material stability enables them, but we can lean into relationships for free.
[24:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We can develop great character and virtue for free.
[24:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Mental physical and spiritual health, we can take care of usually at pretty low cost, right?
[25:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so we've got these things we could focus on, we just sometimes get distracted from by the less meaningful things.
[25:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so my push to all your listeners would be just to take stock consciously, especially talk with your spouse, with your family, if you don't have a spouse, with your friends, what is it that defines a good life for me?
[25:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What do I think that looks like?
[25:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And is my spending, is my earning, is my investing really lining up with that?
[25:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Or am I off track?
[25:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Am I not connecting the way I use my money to my vision for what a good life is?
[25:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And if I'm not to try and adapt my spending, earning, giving, et cetera, so that an enables me to reach this good life that I think should ultimately define my life, right?
[25:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I think that's within reach for most people, but we just haven't been conscious of it.
[25:52] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah, absolutely.
[25:53] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I didn't ask you this, but I'm curious to know your perspective, we talked a lot about consumerism and materialism, but do you have hope that the next generation might not be as much this way, I guess, or that we have hope that we can kind of course correct with some of the behaviors that we have currently as a society?
[26:12] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I partially feel like we're just
[26:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think there are mixed messages about it right now on a be honest.
[26:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So the truth at a macro level is prosperous societies have a hard time flourishing.
[26:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So the global human flourishing project at Harvard, which is the largest study on human flourishing ever.
[26:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's a couple hundred thousand people that they've studied, Harvard, Baylor and Gallop are coordinating.
[26:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And they recently released results that there's actually an inverse relationship between the prosperity of a society and its composite measures of human flourishing.
[26:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The prosperity somehow gets us out of touch with many of the things that are intrinsically good about human flourishing.
[26:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And we see that reflected in American society, which has become very materialistic, young people when they're surveyed often do place too much of an emphasis on money.
[27:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They maybe have outsized expectations around money because of social media.
[27:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: On the other side of things, there are some encouraging behaviors.
[27:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Young people do seem to see very clearly that there is something missing from their lives that's not material.
[27:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So Bible sales are up, church attendance is up.
[27:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A recently saw that young men, some millennial and gen Z men,
[27:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: are actually the highest weekly Bible readers in the country that was survey released today.
[27:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think that showed that we're more than 50% of millennial men are reading the Bible in a weekly basis.
[27:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's only 30% for boomerven, for example.
[27:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so there are some encouraging signs that people are beginning to seek more meaningful outlets for this.
[27:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You have the good life.
[27:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is a structural problem in prosperous societies where we become so focused on material prosperity that it's distracted us from the relationships from meaning that they could otherwise give us hope and so one of my hopes with the book is to encourage people to pursue it more thoughtfully so that we can't attack that trend and I do think young people are beginning to wake up that there's got to be more than this.
[28:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's a life and in turning away from that.
[28:13] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah, thanks for sharing that there.
[28:14] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And I'll be sure to link the Harvard Study I found it.
[28:16] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So I'll put that in the show notes this all.
[28:18] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But John, where can listeners find you and connect with you, Grab a copy of your book if they want to do so?
[28:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, the book is available anywhere, books are sold, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, hopefully in your local bookstore.
[28:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's published by Harvard Business Reviews, so it's out there.
[28:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You can find me in contact me through my website, which is johnwilliamcomen.com, where if you Google on purpose, John Coleman, that's a sub-stack newsletter I put out periodic.
[28:42] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Well, I'll be sure to link all that in the show notes, like I said.
[28:44] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And then just finally, as we wrap things up here, I always ask my guests just to wrap it via questions here at the very end.
[28:49] \[SPEAKER_01\]: The first one is, what has been a beneficial resource in your life that you want to share with the listeners?
[28:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Oh gosh, you know, recently, well, not recently, over the last couple of years, I've begun using the Hallowap a lot, which is like a prayer and meditation app.
[29:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I found that super helpful in addition to like regular scripture reading and things like that, just to reflect.
[29:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it's become a part of my daily routine.
[29:12] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I heard a podcast on the Hallowap, and I ended up downloading it as well.
[29:15] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I really love the teachings and meditations on there.
[29:17] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I can take so much away from it.
[29:18] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Okay, final question, what is something you can't stop talking about?
[29:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Oh man, after all this talk and materialism, I'm gonna say the first thing that popped to my mind, even if it reflects badly on me.
[29:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I got my first full self-driving car last year.
[29:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It is like changed my life.
[29:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like I did not realize how much low level stress driving and made it.
[29:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And self-driving is unbelievable.
[29:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And with my oldest being 12, I have four kids between five and 12.
[29:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm like bringing all of my kids have totally autonomous of shit.
[29:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, thank you.
[29:52] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And also where you afraid to, are you afraid to let it do that?
[29:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: No.
[29:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: No.
[29:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's amazing how quickly I got.
[29:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I like on the test drive.
[30:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I just test drove it because I was like, I gotta go to the cell.
[30:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: five minutes.
[30:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I was like, man, it feels like their car is a horse and buggy.
[30:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like this is the best.
[30:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I think my staff, Sam, at 96% full self driving right now, like it's driving me 96% of the time, which is not.
[30:16] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I feel like I have too many control issues to think it's actually going to work.
[30:20] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And then it's just going to like ram me into something.
[30:22] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And it's like I could have controlled that.
[30:23] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So,
[30:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, the data says, I'll get, see, you'd ask me to, some of them talking to the data says that full self-driving, at least for this one particular, I have a Tesla, full self-driving Tesla's, are 90% less likely to be in a car accident than a human controlled car.
[30:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And my kids joke all the time, it's a better driver than me.
[30:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I try not to take it personally,
[30:49] \[SPEAKER_01\]: No, my husband says the same thing he's been trying to get me not that we would get one right now But he was like this is gonna be amazing.
[30:55] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It's gonna change the future like fewer accents our kids will be safer I don't know like I said it's just hard for me to wrap my mind around that I don't doubt the evidence and the research right I believe in all that it just is again allowing that control to be given up to something that's so unknown But yeah, well, John again Thank you so much for joining me sharing some insights here with the listeners today.
[31:16] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It was really helpful So I appreciate it
[31:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Diane, thanks so much for what you're doing.
[31:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Thanks for having me on.
[31:23] \[SPEAKER_01\]: What did you think of the episode?
[31:24] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I hope you enjoyed the conversation.
[31:26] \[SPEAKER_01\]: To learn more about today's guest, including links, resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at minimalismamspodcast.com where you can find the entire podcast archive as well as my book, minimalismams, living and parenting with simplicity, or other ways to connect or work with me online.
[31:45] \[SPEAKER_01\]: If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, or YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
[31:54] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And leave a rating or review of your favorite episode.
[31:57] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Lastly, sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends and social media is very helpful and will encourage others on their journey to think more and do with less.

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