What Is The Jesus Year?

A couple of months ago, I was in my weekly training meeting, and my boss talked about the Jesus Year. I didn’t know what he was talking about and he told me it’s when you turn 33 years old, and that something special was going to happen your life.

In 2018, I went up to NYC a couple of times to do some networking for my Grow With Joe workshops. In September I went to a Prospancia Leadership event to do some one-on-one coaching for them. I drove up there and back from DC, so I had a lot of time to think and listen to podcasts.

On the ride back, I was listening to the Michael Kitces Podcast, which helps financial advisors build their business by getting the best practices in the industry. One of the episodes included a financial advisor named Mitch Anthony, who combined life coaching with financial planning and I got super excited.

Back in college in 2014, I took an entrepreneurship class and had to do a business plan. My idea was to combine personal training with financial planning. The issue was that I didn’t know anything about financial planning and that’s why I decided to become a financial advisor with an established firm so I could gain some skills.

With my public health background, I learned that a lot of things are interconnected with each other. If you want to have money to invest, you need to have a good job, and if you’re going to have a good job, you need to be a competent individual by being physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually healthy. So solely focusing on the financial planning piece was not going to be enough to help folks become financially secure.

When I heard that podcast, I was 32 at the time, and I’ve been working close to four years at my previous financial advising firm. That podcast got me thinking about making a change in my life. I was looking for something else to do because I felt I wasn’t growing as fast as I wanted to, and I wasn’t living life to my expectations.

Soon, I was thinking about moving to NYC because I thought I could grow my Grow With Joe Business faster over there and was quickly looking for jobs. After having an interview with one financial services firm, I decided I didn’t want to live within their system or worry about making rent in NYC. So I decided to focus more on my current job for the time being until I got some more clarity about my life.

I get a lot of clarity on the decisions that I make from reading a ton of books and listening to podcasts. When I heard that Mitch Anthony created the business I wanted to build four years earlier, it just prepared me more for change. So now I was trying to figure out how to make that dream a reality by learning the rules for doing so.

I continued to listen to the Michael Kitces podcast, and a couple of months later, his guest Rodger Whitney explained how he went out on his own as a financial advisor and shared his revenue model, and I told myself that I could do that as well. Then I e-mailed Rodger about tips on how I could get started on my own, and he directed me to XY Financial Planning, which has been a great resource to get started as a fee for service financial planner.

When I was with my previous firm, I had to pay an office bill and hire an administrative assistant to help with paperwork as a broker-dealer. This was an expense that was between $2500-$3500 a month and was expected to get bigger. I didn’t like dealing with the paperwork of being a broker-dealer and how I was restricted on how I could market myself. I couldn’t say certain things on social media or via e-mail as a broker-dealer because it could create a conflict of interest since I could actually sell those products.

Once I found out that I could be a fee for service financial planner and those communication restrictions could be removed, I got a sense of relief. I also learned that I could be a virtual financial planner to reduce my operating costs to $600 a month. To me, this was much more manageable and could give me the freedom to behave as I please.

When I first joined my previous firm, I was not aware of my options and thought joining a broker-dealer was the way to go. I learned a lot from them but after a while, I was getting buried in paperwork, and I was spent a lot of time dealing with that than doing what I wanted to do, which was give advice to folks on how to improve their financial situation. I didn’t like the business model, and I felt the fee-for-service model was more tailored to me as a person. I learned a new way of life at age 32 thanks to Michael Kitces.

I turn 33 today, and I’m about to embark on a whole new journey. I decided to move away from Washington, DC to Oregon so I can save some money while I work on my virtual financial planning business, which is in the process of becoming registered. I would also like to help my cousin in Oregon build an online store for his company and assist his 15-year-old daughter who is a great artist to become a business owner herself.

I can’t believe how talented this girl is. Here is a picture of my grandparents (her great grandparents) that she drew.

Now that I’m getting older, I want to minimize the number of situations I don’t want to be in. When I was in the Marines, at the Pentagon as a Federal Employee, and as a financial advisor with my old firm, I did things or was told things that did not align with my values. I remember that my financial planning supervisor told me that I should not focus on Latinos because they don’t generate the revenue required to stay in business. He was right in a sense because my overhead was pretty high. That’s why I’m excited about starting a virtual financial planning business that will serve as the vehicle to help me focus on this population. Latino Financial Advisors make up less than 2% of the workforce and Latinos make up 19% of the population. There is a huge need to help them out, and my new business model is set up to do so.

I only have a finite amount of time left on this planet, so I’m going to put myself in a situation where I’m creating the future I would like to see. If I can help 100 Latinos become more financially secure, then those folks can be stronger members of their community and hopefully make their community stronger.

We can’t save the whole world, but we can save a slice of it. And the sum of our slices can be greater than the whole if can get enough people to save their slice of the world. I found the slice of the world that I want to save and my Jesus year is going to be the start of helping me do that.

Urban dictionary defines your Jesus Year as the following:
The 33rd year of your life where you are reborn in some sense. Perhaps a mid-life crisis, maybe an ego death, perhaps the year where you abandon old ways and start new …. or maybe you were affixed to a cross and came out the other side a religious figure that historians, theologians, worshipers, and dissenters make the subject of many a conversation.

My new pivot in life is going to be a lot of work, but I believe it can provide me with the future that I want and create a positive change in the world that I desire. If you are younger or older than 33, don’t delay the chance to make a change in your life.

When I was in the Marines, I saw a lot of career military folks that were miserable in their jobs and resulted in them being in marriages that they didn’t enjoy and/or become an alcoholic. I didn’t want to become that miserable and I felt I was heading in that direction if I stayed in.

Knowing your options is a great way to give you the freedom that you desire so you don’t become stuck. If I didn’t spend so much time learning by listening to podcasts and reading books, I wouldn’t know what was possible for myself and I would be miserable with my life.

There is safety in being comfortable, but it comes with a price. Your freedom and I rather die in freedom than to succeed in chains. If I want to do something, I’m going to try to do it. If I fail, at least I know I did my best, and it will just cause me to think of a different path to get what I want in life.

After quitting my last financial planning job, I’ve felt like there has been a weight lifted off my shoulders and I feel freer to make sure I take advantage of my Jesus year. Hopefully, I have some good luck on my way, and I’m super excited about having my two-year sabbatical in Latin America so I can learn Spanish starting in January 2020, which will help me with the Latino population even more. I don’t want to be 40 or 50 years old and tell myself that I wish I would have done certain things. I’m going to try to figure out how to do it now.

Before I left DC, a friend said that I’m about to be on some Eat, Pray, Love shit and after reading the movie description, and I guess he was right. I got out of a 9-year marriage at age 31, and I’ve been trying to figure out what I truly want in life, and I think I’ve found it. Looking forward to age 33 and the adventures that I get into.

Seneca once said, “No slavery is more disgraceful than one which is self-imposed.” There has been a great sense of happiness I’ve felt over the past two months to pursue something that will make me more of the person I want to become and not be restricted by chains.

As I said, you don’t have to be 33 to make a change, and you should just ask yourself, “Am I as free as I think?” If the answer is no, what changes are you going to make to remove the chains?

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