I was teaching financial planning while my own life was financially broken. Dwight Heck shares the wake-up call that helped rebuild a financial freedom mindset.
🎙 Give A Heck Podcast
Real conversations and solo episodes about purpose, financial stewardship, mindset, leadership, and intentional living.
🧭 Episode Overview
In 2008, the financial markets crashed across North America and around the world.
At the same time, my personal life changed dramatically. I became a single father with full custody of my children and suddenly faced financial pressure I had never experienced before.
The reality was difficult to admit.
I was a financial planner teaching clients how to live life on purpose, something I explore deeper in my episode Are You Drifting Through Life? The Silent Thief of Direction and Purpose.
In this powerful presentation originally delivered in 2021, I share the personal wake-up call that forced me to practice what I had been teaching for years.
Through the story of John and Sally, a couple who appeared successful on the outside but were quietly struggling with financial stress, this episode reveals how honest conversations, intentional planning, and personal responsibility can transform a family’s financial future.
This episode is about more than money.
It is about stewardship, accountability, and learning to live life on purpose instead of by accident.
🔎 What You Will Learn
• Why so many people struggle financially by retirement
• The hidden financial stress most families never talk about
• How financial pressure quietly damages relationships and marriages
• Why goal setting is the foundation of financial change
• The difference between needs and wants when building a budget
• How proper planning protects families during unexpected tragedy
• Why it is never too late to take control of your financial life
⚠️ The Hidden Financial Crisis
Many people assume their friends and neighbours are doing fine financially.
The truth is very different.
A large majority of people reach retirement either financially dependent or struggling to maintain their lifestyle.
Many families live behind a financial facade while privately dealing with debt, financial stress, and uncertainty.
Financial conflict is also one of the leading causes of relationship breakdown because many couples never learn how to communicate about money or develop a clear financial plan.
Understanding the rules of the money game and developing a financial freedom mindset is one of the most important steps toward financial independence.
👥 The Story of John and Sally
John and Sally were friends long before they ever became clients.
From the outside, they appeared successful and stable.
But when we sat down and examined their financial reality, the truth was very different.
They were overwhelmed with debt, struggling in their marriage, and living with the pressure that financial uncertainty brings.
Through goal setting, budgeting, and accountability, they began rebuilding their financial lives.
Within two years:
• They eliminated their debt
• Took their first real vacation in more than a decade
• Began saving for retirement
• Built a financial plan aligned with their priorities
Their transformation proved something important.
Financial change is possible when people choose to live intentionally instead of reactively.
💡 A Powerful Reminder About Planning
Years later, tragedy struck.
John passed away after a battle with cancer.
Because planning had been put in place earlier, Sally was protected financially and able to stabilize her future.
Without that preparation, the outcome could have been devastating.
Planning is not only about building wealth.
It is about protecting the people we care about most.
🎯 Building a Financial Freedom Mindset
Financial planning is not about restriction.
It is about clarity.
It is about understanding your numbers, making intentional decisions, and developing a financial freedom mindset that supports the life you truly want to live.
Too many people drift financially.
They avoid looking at their numbers, delay decisions, and allow financial pressure to quietly build.
But change begins the moment you decide to take responsibility.
💰 Why Most People Stay Financially Stuck
Many people are not failing financially because they lack intelligence or opportunity.
They struggle because they never develop a financial freedom mindset. Debt grows slowly, spending habits go unchecked, and avoiding financial reality becomes easier than confronting it.
Without clear goals and a written plan, people drift financially for years before realizing how limited their options have become.
Why So Many People Feel Stuck Living Paycheck to Paycheck
Many people today feel stuck living paycheque to paycheque. In the United States this is often described as living paycheck to paycheck, but the financial pressure is the same everywhere. Many people today feel like they are working harder than ever yet still struggling financially. Living paycheque to paycheque often happens slowly over time through lifestyle inflation, debt accumulation, and a lack of clear financial planning.
Developing a financial freedom mindset begins with understanding where your money is going and making intentional decisions about spending, saving, and long term financial goals.
🚀 Your Next Step
No matter where you are financially today, it is never too late to change direction.
The key is willingness.
Willingness to learn the rules of money.
Willingness to confront your financial reality honestly.
Willingness to build a plan and take action.
Because when you choose to develop a financial freedom mindset, everything else begins to change.
🔗 Related Give A Heck Episodes
If this conversation about financial responsibility, intentional living, and developing a financial freedom mindset resonated with you, these Give A Heck episodes explore similar themes.
🎙 Are You Drifting Through Life? The Silent Thief of Direction and Purpose
https://giveaheck.com/podcast-detail/drifting-through-life-purpose-direction/
Explore how life drift quietly steals direction from your finances, career, relationships, health, and purpose and learn the clarity framework to start living intentionally again.
🎙 Purpose-Driven Living: Breaking Free From the Hamster Wheel
https://giveaheck.com/purpose-driven-living/
Discover how aligning your mindset, finances, and personal responsibility can help you escape survival mode and start building a life that reflects your real priorities.
🎙 Financial Stewardship and Ownership Principles
https://giveaheck.com/financial-stewardship-principles/
Learn how stewardship, accountability, and intentional financial planning create long-term stability, stronger families, and financial peace of mind.
🌐 Connect with Dwight Heck
🌍 Website
giveaheck.com
▶️ YouTube
youtube.com/@giveaheck
💼 LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/dwight-heck-65a90150
📸 Instagram
instagram.com/give.a.heck
👍 Facebook
facebook.com/dwight.heck
🎵 TikTok
tiktok.com/@giveaheck
🎧 Podcast Chapters
00:00 The financial crisis that changed everything
00:02:30 Why so many people struggle financially
00:04:15 The hidden story behind John and Sally
00:06:45 The four financial goals most people share
00:08:30 Why budgeting reveals the truth about your finances
00:11:00 The life insurance decision that changed everything
00:13:15 Why it is never too late to Give A Heck
📜 Full Episode Transcript
[00:00:00 – 00:14:38]
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m excited to introduce to you our speaker for today’s event. Please welcome to the stage Dwight Heck.
The year was 2008. I’d have to say it was one of the worst years of my life. And you may wonder why was it the worst year of your life?
When 2008, we seen the financial markets crash in the North America, around the world. And me being a financial planner, I had basically been skating by in my life being hypocritical.
I was teaching my clients how to live life on purpose and not by accident. I was teaching them things that were helping empower them, that I had forgotten myself.
In the fall of 2008 as well, I got custody, full time custody of my kids, became a single dad. Right.
All of a sudden the financial pressures magnified because now all of a sudden, I was responsible for everything. In order to make sure they were fed, in order to make sure that they could do extracurricular activities, I got to a point I was scared to log on to my bank account, wondering if I’d see a zero balance, wondering if I’d have enough money to pay the mortgage.
Not a way for life to be for anybody.
So how did I get past that?
I had to sit back and say to myself, what have I done for my clients the last six years? How did I help them get to a point where they were living life on purpose, not by accident.
I needed to think about what I had developed, what I had put in place to instill confidence in my clients. I need to regain myself.
So how did I do that?
Well, I’m going to tell you a story about a client, a couple actually named John and Sally. And what I did for John and Sally was what I needed to do for myself again.
And I had to remind myself what was my mission? What was I trying to do for people out there today in North America?
So John and Sally, I had known for almost 10 years before they ever became my client. We hung out a lot. I thought I knew them.
But unfortunately, today in society, we really don’t know one another.
They were living a facade.
If you went to their life and opened up the doors of their life and looked inside, you know the truth. We all live a facade.
When I first sat down with them, I was shocked to find out their circumstances.
They were having marital problems, they were not happy with one another, and they were on the verge of getting divorced.
Scary.
I did not know that.
Like I said, I hung out with them on a personal basis quite often, went on holidays with them. Did different things with them, but I had no clue.
How many of you have ever wondered, is your family and friends doing okay?
Well, guess what?
Statistically they’re not.
Today, 91% of people in North America, and this is a global pandemic. Really, when you talk about finances, it’s spreading across the world.
91 out of 100 people are dead or dead broke at the age of 65.
That’s scary.
You want to think about it?
Think of a room of 100 people. 91 people in that room are going to be dead or dead broke at the age of 65.
You look to the person to the left of you, you look to the person to the right of you, one of you or both are not going to make it.
Scary situation.
So how did I start out by helping John and Sally?
Well, I goal set with them.
And you’re thinking goal setting. What does goal setting have to have? Like, what purpose is goal setting to help somebody with their finances?
Well, guess what?
In every case where a person refused to goal set with me, they fall back onto the hamster wheel of life.
90 days later, 180 days later, they’re going into the bad habits.
So goal setting starts a conversation.
With that conversation, I can now understand their pain points.
What got them to their current circumstance?
Why did they get in such financial strife?
Right.
And just as an addition, three out of five marriages today in North America fell because of financial strife, because of lack of knowledge and understanding the rules of the money game.
So I sat with John and Sally and we goal set.
And I cover between 10 and 12 different goals specifically.
And there’s four that always are predominantly the same, whether it’s an individual or a couple or even groups that I’ve coached.
These four things are always something that people struggle with and they really want.
Number one is to get out of debt.
Debt is a cancer in our society.
It’s eaten families and individuals alive.
Number two, they want to be able to go on a vacation.
Shocking, right?
No, going to your local lake and hanging out and camping in a tent is not really what most consider a vacation.
It’s jet setting across the world, going to Hawaii or maybe Jamaica.
So that was the second thing that was really predominant for them.
Predominant with my clients.
The next thing is they literally want to be able to, in the event of a tragedy, make sure their loved ones are protected.
That their loved ones are going to feel at peace, that they’re going to be able to move on with their lives.
And lastly, we look at the situation of the biggest and most key thing is getting people out of debt.
In order to do that, though, you have to budget with people.
And budgeting.
You think to yourself, budgeting.
What does budgeting have to do with living life on purpose not by accident?
Well, you think about budgeting and the fact that the consumer industry, part of that being credit companies and the banks have led you to believe, don’t live by a month of living with a budget.
Press hard, three copies, don’t pay a cent event, pay for this product a year from now, they don’t tell you they’re going to charge you 30% interest.
And if you don’t pay it off when it’s done, they’re going to take all that interest and accumulate it.
Next thing you know, more financial burden.
So when you actually budget with somebody, I sit and I say to them, okay, well, what do you put down in your budget?
And they’ll sit there and they’ll tell me all the different items that they want to budget.
And sadly, today in North America, most people that budget do it on the back of an envelope and they write very superficial things and they miss key things.
And what do I mean by that?
When John and Sally were done, I said to them, well, hey, John, Sally, did you ever get haircuts? Do you ever get an oil change on your vehicle?
Well, yeah, I got attitude from them.
And that’s because people don’t like being put on the spot.
You got to obviously do it in an appropriate way.
And I said to them, well, that is really important that you put that on there.
Does it come out of the same bank account that your paychecks go into?
Well, yeah.
So do you understand that if you understand your numbers, you understand your inflows, if you’re spending a dollar and you only make it 80 cents, there’s a problem, right?
And that’s the issue that we’re going on today in North America, where it’s getting worse and worse.
So we literally went through their budgets and added some categories and here’s why.
Your budget is supposed to be an active representation of your life, even your dreams in there, because we need to shock a person into realizing how important it is.
I put a vacation entry.
I put a debt entry.
Because at that point in time, they were only making minimum payments.
And minimum payments on debt is not designed to pay it down.
It’s designed to service it so that you’re stuck with it your whole life.
The financial institutes are in business.
They’re not here to help you.
So we basically put the vacation we put it to pay off debt.
And the most important entry we put in there was the event of a tragedy so that Sally, who was the one that wanted it the most, could have her life insurance.
And as an addition, life insurance is actually very economical.
It’s a misconception that it’s expensive.
And I’m so glad that we put that in and I’ll tell you in a few minutes why.
So we went through this process, got their inflows of how much income, their outflows of their debt, including the new payments that they were looking at doing.
And we realized that there was a common pattern that needed to be addressed.
The pattern that needed to be addressed is that they were sadly, like most people in North America by the end of the month.
They don’t even make it to the end of the month.
They’re already financially broke halfway through.
So they live a month.
Pardon me, they live financially with a month that’s longer than their money is.
Right.
So that has become a very bad problem today in our society, where people are literally living with more months than money.
So then you go to the budgeting items and go, well, what can you cut out?
Well, guess what?
People don’t know.
So that’s why I’m there.
I’m there to help them understand the differences between a need and a want.
I’ve been teaching my kids that since they were little.
Do you know what the difference is between a need and a want?
Many of you probably don’t.
So difference is, is at the end of the day, if your car breaks down and all you have is credit, that’s a need.
You want to put a fancy stereo in your car, that’s a want.
Makes sense, right?
So that’s basically what I do, is educate people on how they need to live a life on purpose through a budget.
So fast forward two years later, we implemented their budget and they did it religiously.
I reach out to them, they stayed accountable to it, and they got out of debt and they went on their first vacation.
They hadn’t been on a vacation in over 10 years, right?
So it took them two years, but they got out of debt, got their first vacation, and they started saving for retirement, which is such a key thing that people overlook.
We all want to retire someday.
There’s no guarantee for retirement, but we really want to get there.
And unfortunately, back to the 91% that are going to be dead or dead broke at the age of 65.
So what happened then was really quite tragic.
John passed away a few years ago.
And if I had not implemented life insurance for them.
Sally would have been traumatized.
But leading up to him passing away from cancer, he literally had gotten them into a bunch of debt.
He couldn’t work because he was having health issues.
Before they realized it was cancer, he had already lost a year and a half of work and they were mounted in debt.
He passed away.
He was one of my closest friends.
And I remember sitting down with Sally and saying, well, here’s the life insurance.
We’ve got to fill out this paperwork.
You’re going to get this, this money.
And as a side note, before he passed away.
Right.
I was at the hospital hours before he passed away.
He told me how much I made a difference.
And bottom line, don’t ever think that you can’t make a difference in people’s lives.
So I sat with Sally a number of meetings after he had passed away.
We took that lump sum of life insurance, paid off the debt they had gotten into in the last two years.
Even though they understood the fact of budgeting, there was half the income coming in, right.
It just was.
It was inevitable that it was going to happen.
We paid off that debt and started her a guaranteed pension stream that she knows she’s going to be okay.
Fast forward.
After a couple of years of him being passed away, Sally met an old high school sweetheart.
They decided they were going to get married.
He was in tremendous debt himself.
Guess what I did?
I sat down, goal set with him, budgeted with him, taught him the difference between a need and a want.
Right.
This year, I remember the gladness I had in my heart.
She reached out to me and she said, you know what?
I got such exciting news to tell you about.
So I contacted and I said, what’s up?
She said, he’s out of debt.
He’s completely out of debt.
Right?
And I was just like, yeah, right.
I could feel a gladness in my heart.
I could feel my body light up.
And it rejuvenated me for, you know, to go out and continue to help families to live life on purpose, not by accident.
To ensure that they live a comfortable life, be able to someday retire in comfort.
And yes, with the insurance aspect, pass with dignity and make sure that their families are going to be okay.
So you may be thinking to yourself, well, it’s too late for me, Dwight.
I can’t do this.
I can’t accomplish what you’re talking about.
And I’m here to tell you you can.
But you have to be willing.
You have to understand that.
You have to admit that you don’t know rules of the money game.
That you don’t understand how to live a life on purpose.
And there’s coaches such as myself out there that can help you.
Or if you know somebody that can help you, get a hold of them.
If you’d like to get a hold of me, you can reach out to me.
Just access my website at giveaheck.com.
You can go on there.
You can also purchase my book, and that book will tell you my origin story from where I started as a young kid to where I am today and why I got into what I do.
You can also, at that point in time, book an appointment with me and we can have a talk.
Just realize that it’s never too late in your life to realize that you can, too give a heck.