Meaning Over Money

As a culture, we love to point our fingers at the rich and famous and accuse them of only caring about money. What if we have it totally backward? What if wealth and fame are byproducts of caring about anything but money and fame? In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton uses the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team Olympic gold medal game to explore this topic.  Podcast website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.travi...

Guilt, regret, resentment, remorse. All feelings tied to money. It’s so easy for us to beat ourselves up for each and every decision we make. However, nobody wins when that happens. In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton discusses how we need to give ourselves the gift of understanding the bigger puzzle and all the pieces involved. When we do, it’s easier to see how these other pieces fit in. Tha...

Hello again! After an unexpected hiatus, we’re back at full strength! One of the elephants in the room in our culture is the idea of retirement. Not just any retirement, though, but a constant pursuit of an earlier-the-better retirement. 60 is better than 65. 55 is better than 60. 50 is better than 55. All the while, in our efforts to get there, we’re unintentionally sabotaging our lives. The alte...

Many people are hurting financially this holiday season. Things feel tight. This can lead many families to feel defeated and throw their arms in the air when it comes to creating memories for their kids. In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton discusses how memories are memories because they are memories…..period. Memories don’t require a large financial investment to be valuable. Instead, all tha...

We invest, invest, invest, and invest some more, only to look at our numbers and get frustrated by little progress we’ve made. Sound familiar? It’s common for people to experience immense frustration and fatigue about 10 years into their investing journey, sometimes leading to apathy….or quitting altogether. Did you know that $100,000 is 1/3 of the way to $1M? It sounds ridiculous, but it’s true....

We’re all going to die. Yeah, morbid, we know. What will your obituary say about you? In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton talks about the exercise of writing our own obituary. What do we want to be remembered for? What impact do we want to make on this world? How do we want the end of the story to read? Then, once we do that, we reverse engineer it; work our way backwards to fill in the gaps b...

Would you take a pay cut to pursue work that would provide you with more meaning and a higher level of well-being? In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton shares the story of a friend who recently weighed this very decision, and chose meaning. His decision may be counter-cultural, but through the lens of pursuing work that matters and living a fulfilling, meaningful life, he might have cracked the...

You know what the problem is with more? Every time we get more, more is still, well, more. In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton shares an intense story about a couple that is painfully losing the battle for more. It’s a brutal story to share, and one that far too many people can relate to, but perhaps this story can help to shift the perspective of many. We hope you enjoy.  Podcast website: ⁠⁠⁠...

Whether you know it or not, there’s a hidden force at play in your life. It’s called recency bias. It’s a phenomenon where we humans place too much emphasis on recent experiences when making decisions. It’s present in all areas of our lives, but nowhere as impactful and prevalent as in our finances. We’re notorious for allowing recent events and experiences to cloud our judgment and pollute our de...

Budgeting is simple on paper, but we don’t live on paper. We live in a chaotic, volatile, and ever-changing world. In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton discusses how best to live in a budget when the real world decides not to cooperate with our best laid plans. It’s not easy, but it is simple.  Podcast website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.travisshelton.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   Daily Blog: ⁠⁠⁠...

We’re living in crazy times. Never before has our culture seemed so divided, so polarized. This sentiment also applies to businesses, unfortunately. In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton explores the dangers of what happens when businesses decide to adopt human beliefs, values, and polarizations. It may seem like a zero-sum game, but it’s far from it. The consequences may not be immediately evid...

Buy low, sell, high, right? That’s the motto when it comes to stock market investing. One problem: It doesn’t work. It’s nearly impossible to time the right moment to buy, and even if we get lucky, it’s also nearly impossible to time the right moment to sell. In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton shares a cautionary tale from one of his “expert” investor buddies. The costs of trying to game the...

Have you ever intentionally made a decision that hinders your finances? Good! That’s great news! It means there are more important things in life than money. In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton shares his controversial perspective about how the mission should matter more than the money. Sometimes, in order to pursue the mission (and the meaning behind it), we must make decisions that will inev...

It seems like our culture has grown accustomed to mediocre. We’ve normalized bleh. It almost feels like every time we engage with a business and they hit a home run, we’re shocked. We didn’t expect that. We expected to be let down like every other time. In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton discusses why the bar is so low today, and how that has created countless opportunities for each of us to...

In the personal finance world, experts are typically keen to recommend all sorts of cutting, saving, hacks, and frugality. Don’t get us wrong, all of these have value! However, sometimes, the only prescription is more income. Sometimes, there simply isn’t enough fat to cut in order to get on the other side of our financial tensions. Sometimes, we just need to get to work. In today’s episode, host...

Whenever we spend money, there’s a tension in the air. Do we buy cheaper items so we have the resources to buy more, or do we focus our resources on buying fewer, but higher quality items? In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton shares why he believes quality over quantity is almost always the right answer. Not only that, but buying more expensive items is often a cheaper long-term strategy.  Podc...

For more than four years, we produced two episodes per week.....like clockwork. 419 episodes in a row without a single miss. Then, something happened. We decided to skip one episode, which led us to take a week off, which led us to take two weeks off, which eventually led us to take nearly three months off. If we give ourselves an inch, we'll take a mile. In today's episode, host Travis Sh...

If sugar is what makes cake taste good, why don’t we just replace all the flour with more sugar? It would taste like crap, that’s why. However, we live in a culture that continually tells us that we should replace the flour in our lives with more and more sugar. In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton explores the idea of finding a healthy balance of sugar (leisure and fun) and flour (work, purpos...

Compounding is a powerful phenomenon, but it’s staggering how much so for young people. In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton shares some insights from a recent talk he gave to young adults. In short, young adults have a particularly massive opportunity to embrace the power of compounding. All it requires is the willingness to start…..and a ton of patience. Podcast website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https:...

This money stuff should be simple, but simple doesn’t mean easy. In fact, some of the simplest things in the world are the hardest to actually do. In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton discusses this important distinction, and will challenge you to aggressively and obsessively pursue simple. While it might be tremendously difficult, it might also be one of the best things you ever do.  Podcast w...

Humans have an interesting knack of overestimating the probability of something bad happening, but underestimating the severity of said bad outcome. The net result of these dynamics can be utterly destructive. In today’s episode, host Travis Shelton discussed the importance of understanding the true downside risks of xyz decision. If we do, we’ll make better choices and protect our family from pot...

Worried about a possible stock market crash? You aren’t alone! With the volatility we’ve experienced in the first three months of 2025, many people are getting nervous. Will the market crash? Is this just a bump in the road? Are bad days ahead? We aren’t fortune tellers, but we can say with 100% certainiy that a stock market crash will happen……at some point. If true, what do we do with that inform...

Did you know that host Travis Shelton recently had a midlife crisis? Well, that’s what most people would call it, anyway. In the Meaning Over Money world, we simply calling it living for the meaning, not for the money. In today’s episode, on the one-year anniversary of Travis purchasing an 18-year-old Nissan 350Z, Travis discusses the costs, benefits, and overall takeaways. In short, it’s pretty f...

Would you spend $10 per day on things you don’t need? Every day, every week, every month, every year. In some ways, this idea sounds crazy and irresponsible. Host Travis Shelton wrote a blog about this recently, and his readers agreed. Spending $10 on wants every single day sounds grossy reckless. However, would you believe that almost every person who listens to this episode already does that…..a...

No, that daily coffee isn’t ruining your financial life…..by itself. We love to pigeonhole certain expenses in our life as the ones that are hurting us. Truth is, most probably aren’t. It’s okay to spend money on fun things like coffess, drinks, clothes, and dining out. There’s nothing inherently wrong with buying fun things. However, we can’t have ALL the fun things. In today’s episode, host Trav...