Daniel Umfleet — The Dark Side of Financial Gamification with Daniel Umfleet

[00:00:00] Daniel Umfleet: When we’re looking at the psychology behind all of this and, you know, paying close attention to people under the age of 26, have a tendency to weigh risk quite a bit different. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that their brain’s not fully formed yet. that seems to be a category of individual that, you know, really we need to do a lot of work with, even leading up to that age category to try to reinforce the way they think about money, the way that they associate money, the way that they think about using money to make more money and use money to make growth happen, and sustainability and things like this. A lot of that thought process is not present.

[00:00:37] Intro: Do you think money takes up more life space than it should? On this show, we discuss with and share stories from artists, authors, entrepreneurs, and advisors about how they mindfully minimize the time and energies. Spent thinking about money. Join your host, Jonathan DeYoe, [00:01:00] and learn how to put money in its place and get more out of life.

[00:01:11] Jonathan DeYoe: Welcome back. On this episode of the Mindful Money Podcast, I’m chatting with Daniel Umfleet. Daniel’s the president of the Kindbridge Research Institute and the Founder and CEO of Kindbridge Behavioral Health. He has advised c-suite executives on mental health care strategies, designed consumer facing education programs, and lobbied for better mental health provisions and funding for mental health services.

[00:01:34] Jonathan DeYoe: I wanted to have Daniel on the podcast, because the Kindbridge Research Institute is in partnership with UCLA has launched the financial stability and responsible gaming initiative or gambling initiative, the first coordinated US effort to address gambling related financial harm through a public health lens. Daniel, welcome to the Mindful Money Podcast.

[00:01:54] Daniel Umfleet: Very happy to be here. Thanks very much for having me.

[00:01:57] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m excited for the conversation. Before we dig [00:02:00] into the meat of this, where do you call home and where are you connecting from?

[00:02:03] Daniel Umfleet: Denver, Colorado. Which has recently been, labeled home. We just moved here in July of 24. spent the last 10 years previously over in the uk so coming back to the United States for the first time in quite a long time. And, uh, I gotta say I’m really enjoying Denver.

[00:02:21] Jonathan DeYoe: Denver’s beautiful. My, my favorite cousin lives just outside of Denver. Love it. Where did you, uh, where’d you grow up? Where, where?

[00:02:28] Daniel Umfleet: grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, so I spent first 18 years of my life there and bounced around. So I did, uh, southern Missouri for my undergrad and then hit the west coast for a while and continued learning, and then got linked up with a management consulting firm that, uh, took me global and I spent a huge portion of my adult life overseas.

[00:02:51] Daniel Umfleet: And, um. Met my wife in Vietnam in 2010. She’s British, , we were assigned to the same project and we decided to move to [00:03:00] England when we settled down for a little while. And then, in 2020 , we decided we were gonna work on Cambridge and the United States. And, and we just permanently relocated over here last year.

[00:03:11] Jonathan DeYoe: Beautiful Going back to those first 18 years, what did you learn about money, you know, growing up at the needs of your parents and grandparents?

[00:03:22] Daniel Umfleet: Not a lot. Not a lot. I think actually when I talk to my mom now, one of the things that my

[00:03:28] Jonathan DeYoe: I.

[00:03:28] Daniel Umfleet: she wishes she taught me earlier was money management. I remember in eighth grade we actually had a guy from Monsanto. Which, you know, he came into the classroom to teach us about how to balance a checkbook, which seems strange considering it’s from Monsanto.

[00:03:46] Daniel Umfleet: But there was some sort of community outreach project that Monsanto was doing on, teaching kids about, uh, early money management. Um. my parents always sort of emphasized the of a savings [00:04:00] account. you know, but I would say that was pretty much it. And then I managed to escape high school and university without doing any sort of finance classes or money classes. so yeah, I would say I come from very little knowledgeable background around how money works. It was only through sort of self-discovery and self-learning that, uh. kind know what I know today.

[00:04:22] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, you’re not alone. I think that’s how most of us come to it, is by self-discovery. take just a quick minute and give the mindful money audience your career arc. Like how did you get here?

[00:04:32] Daniel Umfleet: that actually people like hearing this story, so. When I graduated from university, I took a job with a consulting firm

[00:04:40] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:04:40] Daniel Umfleet: it was

[00:04:41] Jonathan DeYoe: I.

[00:04:41] Daniel Umfleet: much my first job right outta school. that was like the poor man’s MBA as we liked to refer to it. I was helping Fortune five hundreds and Fortune one hundreds optimize business systems in a way that helps with profitability and efficiencies.

[00:04:57] Daniel Umfleet: And then, Started getting much [00:05:00] more into like product line development and go to market strategies for new product lines or shifting portfolios from one product to another. I handled two verticals. I handled a healthcare vertical and I handled an oil and gas vertical, and I went often sort of flipped back and forth in between. this job was really like my sort of fast education around, money management systems and how money worked from a corporate perspective and from a publicly traded company perspective and things like that. then I. see. We took a bit of a deviation. Uh, when my wife and I got married, we decided we were gonna kind of slow down and get off of the consulting circuit.

[00:05:39] Daniel Umfleet: She was a consultant as well. so we started opening up coffee shops in England where we lived. It was really a response to not having access to good coffee. ’cause we had lived in several different parts of the planet where coffee was taken very seriously. and we had experienced what really good coffee was and we just couldn’t find it where we [00:06:00] were in England.

[00:06:00] Daniel Umfleet: So, we actually took it upon ourselves to solve the problem. and while we were doing the coffee shops, I had also taken a contract up in Aberdeen, Scotland with. BP and the consulting group that I used to work with called Renoir, and I was going up and down from Aberdeen to South Hampton, which was, you know, it’s like two hours in the air, ballpark, Monday through Thursday. I. There was this startup that was constantly occupying one of our coffee shops for the wifi, and every time I was there, I would ask them questions and they would ask me questions and um, we came to a point. Where my wife was pregnant with our second, and, I needed to stay home.

[00:06:46] Daniel Umfleet: It like she was put on bedrest and I needed to stay home. So I basically needed to wrap what I was doing up in Aberdeen. And I walked into the coffee shop and I said, did you, did you guys have money? And they said, yeah, we just got funded. And I said, [00:07:00] great. Do you need some help? And they said, yeah, do you wanna be our COO?

[00:07:03] Daniel Umfleet: And I said, sure, why not? I knew very little about what it was that they did. but I was really happy that I stepped into it. it was a little company that was building a product for the UK Gambling Commission, which was designed to help people who wanted to stop gambling block themselves from being able to access. Any online sites that had gambling mechanisms on ’em. It was actually a really cool project. one of the things that I noticed pretty much straight away as I started lifting the hood and getting to know the product and getting to know the users that were, using the product, was that there was a lot of mental health issues that were related to what these people were experiencing and what they were talking about when they were using the app and the service that we were providing. got me very interested. And so like, that kind of took me back to my sort of healthcare roots and I started asking a lot of questions about what services are available for [00:08:00] individuals in situations like this. And, started working on bigger infrastructure projects within Europe and within the uk And in 2018 when PASPA got overturned by the Supreme Court, which allowed sports betting to enter and become a state decision, I got really interested in what was happening over here.

[00:08:19] Daniel Umfleet: ’cause I had spent some time over here previously. sort of lifted the hood a little bit and started asking some questions, across the US to stakeholders that were in the space of helping individuals with gambling problems. there wasn’t a whole lot of infrastructure anywhere. you know, this was a very niche sort of community of people that were highly passionate and very dedicated to trying to help, but had no access to like, any real funding. There wasn’t really any innovation in the space I had, contracted with Rutgers University to start doing some landscape analysis for us to get a good understanding of what existed and what didn’t. it really got me [00:09:00] kinda lit a fire in my belly to put some good infrastructure in place over here for individuals that were suffering from gambling related harm.

[00:09:07] Daniel Umfleet: COVID hit, right? Like there was no real use case for us in any capacity over here until COVID hit. and that was basically because PASPA had just overturned and states were legalizing and everybody was really focusing on, getting markets open. And there wasn’t a whole lot of focus on consumer protections yet.

[00:09:24] Daniel Umfleet: we knew it would come. And then, when COVID hit. we just basically started looking at how people were getting to the doctor and how people were getting to clinicians. And we thought building a telehealth company and a research institute would actually solve a lot of problems really, really quickly in terms of sort of leveling the playing field for people to have access to resources. so yeah,

[00:09:45] Daniel Umfleet: that’s the arc.

[00:09:46] Jonathan DeYoe: so I see, I see. Um, things like financial literacy and or lack of literacy and financial stress statistics all the time. I don’t see much. Maybe yet, I guess is the way to put it, in terms of gambling or gambling addiction, statistics. can you rattle [00:10:00] off some, like what percentage of people, what are their outcomes?

[00:10:03] Jonathan DeYoe: done some research, what do we see going into it as the negative or the, or the statistics that exist?

[00:10:10] Daniel Umfleet: there’s a reason for that. Right? So you know, it was, it is been in the DSM. like 1980, right? And then in 2012 it got reclassified as a, behavioral addiction. Right. And unfortunately when it got placed in the DSM as an addiction, there wasn’t much effort to put any screening out into the community from a public health perspective or from a healthcare.

[00:10:34] Daniel Umfleet: Perspective in general. So this is a disease that sits inside of a manual that most clinicians have absolutely no idea exists. Right. So you bring up a very good point, which was part of like my desire to get into do something was I had a buddy, he’s one of the original co-founders of Cambridge with me. about six months before we started this, um, [00:11:00] I called up and I said, can you do me a favor and run a query? And he was able to run against a, a bunch of different CPT codes, that I had given him to look to see how gambling disorder was. Presenting in data sets, across Medicare, Medicaid, and a couple of the large payers. And he came back to me and he was like, man, there’s like nothing here. There’s like nothing here. There’s, there’s a little bit, but there’s not much. It’s like a blip. Right? And I, I thought this is, I. is where it is like we have got to get a lot more transparency, clarity, awareness around the fact that this is a disease and that people need help with this particular problem.

[00:11:41] Daniel Umfleet: And if it goes unchecked, it leads to higher acute situations down the line with comorbidities and co-occurring addictions. so. We have done a ton of research in this space. the population that we spend the most amount of time with is the military general population is a little bit different, right. [00:12:00] situations where you have folks that are sort of like military personnel or are professional athletes or, Collegiate athletes that are in high pressure situations and highly competitive environments and things like this, these are the populations that we tend to see higher utilization of service rates.

[00:12:18] Daniel Umfleet: It’s hard to get a sense of the size of the problem from an addiction perspective ’cause there’s no measurements out in the community that allow us to quantify it. So it’s one of those we’re gonna need to sort of wait and see a lot of what you read. when you Google, like what’s the prevalence of gambling disorder across the country? You’re gonna see a range of anywhere from two to 7%. Right? And a lot of that is old anecdotal information that is just sort of made its way as legacy information into the environment where we’re in today. what I can say, which I think is very interesting is like. Cambridge has gotten really in tune with a lot of the [00:13:00] casino operators to help workflows inside of the casino landscape where we have the opportunity to identify player patterns early and then route them into behavioral health services or educational modules early. Or in some instances when somebody basically puts their hand up and say they want to quit, and we’re seeing good response rates as we go directly to the customer through those channels.

[00:13:25] Jonathan DeYoe: Hmm.

[00:13:26] Daniel Umfleet: one of the projects that we wanted to work on. To get a better understanding of like if you meet someone where they are, when they’re in trouble, will they take up services? The answer to that is yes, but at what rate and how big. This is to say.

[00:13:42] Daniel Umfleet: what I can also say is like, because of the way that we do it, what we’re finding is a lot of people who have an addiction. We’re finding folks who are, you know, effectively touching the stove a few too many times and burning their hand, and they’re starting to feel the pressures of what it’s like to miss [00:14:00] a car payment or fall behind on a mortgage, or, make some decisions about what gets paid for.

[00:14:06] Daniel Umfleet: And what doesn’t. And we’re seeing folks that are, to supplement some of these things instead of sort of like reigning back their sports betting habits or their gambling habits. They’re going out and they’re getting more jobs. So, you know, they’re going and they’re driving Uber or they’re taking a second job to try to make ends meet.

[00:14:24] Daniel Umfleet: mainly ’cause it like, as you spend more time. Talking with folks, they’re really into this idea that they can make money off of or sports betting. but they’re not really, they don’t have the information that they need to make really good decisions about how this is going to impact their finances and just how the odds are pretty

[00:14:45] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:14:46] Daniel Umfleet: them in all cases. So like there’s a lot of education and harm prevention that you can do by raising awareness around how this can impact budgets and throw you on tilt basically.

[00:14:55] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:14:56] Jonathan DeYoe: what specifically I, I wanna, I wanna get specific on what is a gambling [00:15:00] behavior? is it just sports betting or is it just the tables or what, what, what qualifies as gambling behavior? I.

[00:15:06] Daniel Umfleet: Well, I, I think, gambling behavior is one thing, but I think unhealthy gambling behavior is probably what you’re actually like getting at. Right.

[00:15:14] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:14] Daniel Umfleet: People have a relationship with money where like when they part money with ways that they’re not comfortable with or that it makes them feel weird, it kind of gets their backup a little bit, right?

[00:15:23] Daniel Umfleet: feel right about losing that money. And so then they start chasing that money, right? And so they start placing more bets. All of a sudden you know, if you look through somebody’s financial history and you see maybe you know, Hey, I bet on the Super Bowl here. Or you know, maybe, I bet on the World Series or whatever it is, and then all of a sudden you start seeing financial patterns where it’s like, okay, well I, you know, I went from, I.

[00:15:46] Daniel Umfleet: Two deposits a year to two deposits a month, to two deposits a week, to two deposits a day, to two deposits an hour, and it just kept amplifying and it just kept adding [00:16:00] up and adding up and adding up, and adding up and adding up. Now, there are things that are very interesting about individuals that tend to suffer from addictive behavior related to gambling. you know, it’s basically called the silent disease, right? Like nobody really openly talks about this very much. They tend to lie. They tend to hide. They tend to fabricate realities and construct realities for the people around them to believe in a way where this is completely unnoticed. until it’s way too late, so it’s very hard to pick up on. But from some of the things that we see in treatment for folks who are coming through, who are struggling with gambling related issues, you know, it is extremely common. In over 50% of cases, there’s an acute level of depression. High presence of anxiety. high presence of insomnia. There’s high presence of A DHD. There’s high presence of schizophrenia, there’s high presence of bipolar [00:17:00] disorder, there’s high presence of nicotine use, there’s high presence of alcohol consumption,

[00:17:05] Daniel Umfleet: the bottom line is, is like, that could be anybody,

[00:17:09] Daniel Umfleet: right?

[00:17:10] Jonathan DeYoe: yeah,

[00:17:10] Daniel Umfleet: like, what we want to try to make the point on is like, listen, if any of these things present. Right. Just ask the question, are you feeling any stress related to your finances? And you can usually start to unwind the situation from there and get a good clean picture of what’s going on. Right? There’s a lot of stigma and a lot of shame that surrounds

[00:17:30] Jonathan DeYoe: yeah, for sure.

[00:17:31] Daniel Umfleet: as well.

[00:17:32] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:17:32] Daniel Umfleet: It’s, you know, folks in our society who don’t manage money well or you know, they tend to think to themselves, money’s not for me. This isn’t a language that I speak. I don’t know how to do this. And they don’t. Openly talk about whether or not they have, you know, growth strategies for portfolios, whether they have a portfolio, whether they have savings, whether they have savings goals or anything like that.

[00:17:54] Daniel Umfleet: And so this is something that tends to really sort of fly under the radar

[00:17:58] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:17:59] Daniel Umfleet: a lot of [00:18:00] cases. But when you recognize that there’s so many other things that are typically present and you start asking the questions around what’s going on with your finances, you start getting some answers and you start teasing out the direction that you need to go to start dealing with some of the unhealthy behaviors.

[00:18:16] Daniel Umfleet: I.

[00:18:17] Jonathan DeYoe: so, so it’s, it’s very interesting to me because I, I actually generally think that, and we talked about this before we got on, like we didn’t learn anything about personal finance at all growing up. We didn’t learn about it, you know, in high school we didn’t learn about it in college necessarily, unless you seek it out, no one teaches you this stuff.

[00:18:31] Jonathan DeYoe: And so in the last, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, in the finance world, in the last decade, I’ve seen some pretty major shifts. Like we’ve got the gamifications of trading on things like Robinhood, these investor apps, the introduction of crypto and NFTs, you know, the GameStop mania, legalized sports betting we already talked about.

[00:18:50] Jonathan DeYoe: I just feel like there’s this financial time bomb and uh, I wasn’t at all surprised when I heard about your partnership with [00:19:00] UCLA and the idea that, hey, we need to research this. So can you just speak to gambling as this. Early sign of distress. And what are the, what are some of the like educational tools we can apply that help people stay out of it?

[00:19:16] Daniel Umfleet: this actually opens up a much sort of broader. Prospect. So like the stuff that we see going on with like the Gen Zers,

[00:19:23] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:19:24] Daniel Umfleet: And like sort of like the late

[00:19:25] Jonathan DeYoe: My kids. My kids. Yeah.

[00:19:27] Daniel Umfleet: And then the, the Alphas, right? there is a complete disconnect between the value of a dollar and the amount that is being spent in the virtual ecosystems.

[00:19:39] Daniel Umfleet: Right? So ultimately, what I mean by that is like. Kids are engineered in a way now where a lot of what they do takes place online and it takes place inside of an app environment and video games aren’t what they used to be. Right. So like when I was growing up and probably we seemed like we’re probably close in age, right.

[00:19:59] Daniel Umfleet: [00:20:00] You know, but it was like if you, if you wanted to go buy an Atari game, you could play the Atari game endlessly for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and the whole thing cost you, you know, 10 bucks.

[00:20:10] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:20:11] Daniel Umfleet: And then Super Mario on Nintendo. You know, like you, you had hours and hours and hours of entertainment with these things where it was like a one-time purchase.

[00:20:19] Daniel Umfleet: But now for pretty much everything that these kids are engaging with is you get push notifications for special deals inside of games. You’re being asked to make micro-transactions pretty much daily, if not multiple times a day. know, 99 cents, five times a day. 30 days a month starts to add up in a way where you’re not quantifying what the impact is on your budget or if you’re even paying attention to a budget. And a lot of times it’s the parents that are footing the bill with the younger kids. And so like what we see is we see parents who come in and they’re like, my kid have a gaming addiction? What’s the problem? Because they’re feeling it in the pocketbook. And so they become concerned about the play. Right? [00:21:00] And the reality is, is it’s. Everything that you do inside of that game, you can now customize everything. You can customize the shoe laces, you can customize the sword or the weapon that they’re using or the coat that they’re wearing or whatever it is. And every time you want to do that customization, it’s, you know, you buy a 99 cent loop box and maybe you’ll get something that’s got a high power value to it or gives you better health or whatever it is for the game.

[00:21:25] Daniel Umfleet: Right? And then a lot of times, you know, the algorithms in the game make it complex to move up levels and so. In order to move up levels, you have to have a sustained level of patience to go off and earn all of the things to move up a level, or you can buy things right away that’ll allow you to move up the level, right?

[00:21:46] Daniel Umfleet: So the gamification of pretty much everything is creating issues. Everywhere with every mechanism. Right. So, you know, fast forward all of that. Right. And you know, you’ve always said this is a culture [00:22:00] we’ve, we’ve had daily fantasy sports around since. Before I was in university even. Right? Like it’s, it’s always been around, like Gambling’s always been sort of in our culture, whether we want to admit it or not. flip all that on its head from traditional mechanisms into a format where you’re getting continual push notifications. You’re getting offers and deals to sign up, or you’re getting bonus bets or things like this. You know, like the casino industry is literally leveraging the same thing that everybody else is doing. Right. And it’s just. This happens to be tied to more risky financial situations if you are not careful. and so I think like that’s, that’s a big thing to pay attention to, right? Is ’cause like when we do think about, and this is part of what we’re doing with UCLA, we’re doing this big landscape analysis, we’re coming across. Credit unions, banks, payer systems, uh, payment providers, you know, sort of like you name it, if there’s money trading [00:23:00] hands somewhere and it’s involved in anything sort of casino oriented, we’re just looking to take a a, we’re looking to take a peek at what. These verticals and these institutions have, in terms of knowledge and information to pass on to their customer about what responsible gambling looks like, about what safeguards look like, about what addictive behaviors look like, about how to protect their money in a way where that money continues to be thought of in a growth mindset instead of sort of like a dwindling mindset. and so like that’s sort of the crux of what we’re looking. to do with UCLA here is get a really deep understanding of all of the financial systems and how they’re addressing education that goes out to individuals that bank with them or use their services around, you know, the next generation of individuals and all of the

[00:23:53] Jonathan DeYoe: Hmm.

[00:23:54] Daniel Umfleet: and all the gamification of literally everything that’s going on.

[00:23:57] Jonathan DeYoe: there?

[00:23:57] Daniel Umfleet: dangerous way to get yourself into some debt [00:24:00] really, really quickly. That becomes really, really hard to get out of. And, you know, then you add in the layer of a lot of this activity on credit cards and people not managing credit appropriately, you know? So, there’s a lot that we can be working on. And with that said, you know, I think part of what we’re trying to do also

[00:24:18] Daniel Umfleet: sure that we can get all of these stakeholders around a table. anyone who’s working in banking, anybody who’s working in payment provider, anybody who’s working in credit score management, anybody who’s, you know, anybody who’s sort of in that financial realm, get them around the table with clinicians, get them around the table with operators. Get a good level of understanding of what everybody sees, what everybody has, what everybody needs, and then go off and build it and push it out into the system for a new wave of education that makes sense to individuals that are coming up through a system now that is basically gamifying

[00:24:56] Jonathan DeYoe: hang out here for a bit.

[00:24:57] Daniel Umfleet: in life.

[00:24:58] Jonathan DeYoe: All right, Daniel, can you point to [00:25:00] some of the markers that would suggest that one’s gambling is sort of moving from, you know, safe, intelligent, to problematic? What’s an early warning for us?

[00:25:09] Daniel Umfleet: If you’re starting to miss payments, right on Pretty much anything else life related if you’re starting to recognize that you’re thinking more? About getting to the tables, or if you’re thinking more about placing the bets than you are about things that we would consider sort of everyday, things that need attention in life.

[00:25:28] Daniel Umfleet: , or if you’re starting to recognize that you’re paying less attention to your wife or to your children, or if your children are starting to get on you about paying less attention to them, these are things that really should make you. Pause, like, just pause to think. there’s a big one, which is if you’re basically escaping to spend more than 10 to 15 minutes in the bathroom at a time, that is definitely one to look out for. if you’re finding yourself hiding what you’re doing on the phones behind walls and behind [00:26:00] doors and out of sight of someone else. it is time to sort of rethink your relationship with whatever that may be. Be that the video game be, that the sports betting app be, that whatever else it is that you might be, that might be going on. but if you really starts to analyze your behaviors on how much time you are spending on specific things and recognize that it is taking away from the enjoyments of other activities. You might want to reconsider your relationship with those things. and if your spouse or your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your family members, your parents, your grandparents, whatever, or your kids are basically constantly pestering you to get off of the device and you’re constantly trying to disappear to get on the device, might be time to rethink your relationship with what’s going on.

[00:26:49] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. Is there a, is there a demographic that’s most at risk?

[00:26:52] Daniel Umfleet: By and large right now, like in in our population pool, we are 75% male [00:27:00] it is 75% male that really between the ages of 18 and 35.

[00:27:08] Jonathan DeYoe: Hmm.

[00:27:08] Daniel Umfleet: And so that group right there is the group that is seeming to have the most. unhealthy interaction with the sports betting apps, with the video gaming apps, with, you know, a variety

[00:27:21] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:27:21] Daniel Umfleet: of behavioral addictions, right? so I would say that is the category of person that probably should be paying a little bit closer attention. Or if you have a person that fits in that category in your life, you should, know, basically be paying a little bit closer attention if you’re starting to notice that some things are on, out of sorts.

[00:27:39] Daniel Umfleet: but you know, it is very much like When we’re looking at the psychology behind all of this and, you know, paying close attention to, know, kids that are underneath the age of like 26, right? You know, your brain’s not fully developed yet. Your systems are not functioning as they would, as if you were in, you know, your mid thirties type thing. Your capacity for [00:28:00] risk is a little bit higher than it is. If you have a different life situation where you’ve got, you know, kids and, uh, family members involved in things like this, and you’re more focused on retirement goals and getting ahead in your career, right? So, you know, kids under the age of 26, uh, you know, I use that term, they’re not all kids, but you know what I mean.

[00:28:18] Daniel Umfleet: Right. People under the age of 26, have a tendency to weigh risk. Quite a bit different. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that their brain’s not fully formed yet. Right. that seems to be a category of individual that, you know, really we need to do a lot of work with, even leading up to that age category to try to reinforce the way they think about money, the way that they associate money, the way that they think about using money to make more money and use money to make growth happen, and sustainability and things like this. A lot of that thought process is not present. We’ll put it like that.

[00:28:53] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep. Yep. my, my 20-year-old actually would come home from work, when he was like 15, 16 years old. And he would say, he would talk about [00:29:00] how the guys in the kitchen were, they were placing bets on the game, on a soccer game, on a Premier League game. Right. Which is, you know, great.

[00:29:07] Jonathan DeYoe: We all did that. and he would do it more and he would do it more, and he would do it more. And I’d be like, uh, is this, you know, how, how much money are you losing on this? Like, what is the, what is the story here? what I don’t know is I don’t know the questions to ask to actually delve deeper.

[00:29:20] Jonathan DeYoe: Um, I have access to his accounts. I can see that he’s not like, you know, there’s not a whole bunch of money flowing out. but I do think that there’s, it makes me nervous. So what, what are the kind of questions you ask for a 20-year-old who’s, you know, in that, in that situation?

[00:29:34] Daniel Umfleet: Why? Like, I think, what is your fundamental understanding of what gambling is gonna give you in return? I think that’s an important one to start exploring. Right,

[00:29:44] Jonathan DeYoe: If like the gambling itself is fun because you’re doing it with friends and then that’s fine, but if you’re trying to do this to like make financial, you know, good decisions, then that’s probably a mistake.

[00:29:53] Daniel Umfleet: Bingo.

[00:29:54] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:29:54] Daniel Umfleet: help that person understand why it is, what is it? Is [00:30:00] it, are you doing this because you see this as your way to climb the ladder? ’cause you might hit the jackpot and you might win big, Or are you doing this because it’s part of the culture that

[00:30:09] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:30:10] Daniel Umfleet: by and all your buddies are doing it?

[00:30:11] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:30:12] Daniel Umfleet: then the other thing is like, you know, everybody. fives and jumps up and down on the wins. Right. And nobody really ever talks about the losses.

[00:30:22] Jonathan DeYoe: Nope.

[00:30:22] Daniel Umfleet: Right. So like when you’re talking about monitoring and like sort of checking some unhealthy behavior, right? The people who play arm bandits stop machines, right? Like they will sit there and mindlessly put in coin after coin after coin. Back in the day when you still put coins into the machine, some of ’em still do it, right, or they’ll tap the button, tap the button, tap the button, tap the button, tap the button, tap the button, and then they’ll hit the jackpot. And they’ll be over the moon that they hit the jackpot and say the jackpot was 2,500 bucks, whatever it is, right? It’ll be over the moon that they want 2,500 bucks, but they will have completely lost any notion [00:31:00] that they put in $5,000 to get 2,500.

[00:31:03] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:31:04] Daniel Umfleet: So understanding, making sure that those individuals are also monitoring the way that they’re spending their money and quantifying the amount that they’re spending, and understand that gambling money or sports betting money really should be entertainment and thought of as an entertainment product the same way you would think of it as going to the movies,

[00:31:24] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:31:25] Daniel Umfleet: You have to have a budget for that. Like you have to have excess for that. It has to be disposable income, right? Like these are not things that you sacrifice late payments on car payments for because this game is happening and the odds are so great on this, right? You have to be more disciplined than this. You have got to actually park money aside if this is going to become, you know, like an entertainment feature and like, and that’s fine. That’s okay. But you just have to make sure that that person is

[00:31:55] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:31:55] Daniel Umfleet: understanding that this is not a vehicle for you to go make millions and millions of [00:32:00] dollars. You know, like there are people then in the industry that are called Sharps that basically dedicate their lives sports betting or figuring out loopholes in games or like learning The odds of the games in such a way where they play at such a high rate that they get a rate of return and that’s.

[00:32:17] Daniel Umfleet: How they make their money, right? But like even the best sports betts on the planet only win like 57% of the time.

[00:32:25] Jonathan DeYoe: Right, right.

[00:32:26] Daniel Umfleet: You know what I mean?

[00:32:27] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:32:27] Daniel Umfleet: So like you, you gotta really, why, what, what’s the purpose? Like, are you doing this because you want to gamble and this is, you know, exciting to you? Or are you doing this because your friends are doing this and you feel like you should do it? Because ultimately, like the end message needs to be like, this is not rooted in any good financial wealth building strategies.

[00:32:51] Jonathan DeYoe: right.

[00:32:52] Daniel Umfleet: Right. And.

[00:32:52] Jonathan DeYoe: is this such a thing as healthy gambling? cause it’s like, I, I sort of remember the big battle with the, uh, smoking industry [00:33:00] about whether or not there’s, you know, oh, smoking is fine. Right. Smoking is fine. for decades, smoking was fine.

[00:33:05] Jonathan DeYoe: And then we learned, oh, smoking will kill you.

[00:33:07] Daniel Umfleet: Listen, like if you go to Vegas, like, you know, once a decade and you’re like, Hey man, I just, you know,

[00:33:13] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:33:13] Daniel Umfleet: got two grand with me. whatever I do with it is what happens, right? And you’re like,

[00:33:20] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, it’s, it’s entertainment.

[00:33:22] Daniel Umfleet: That’s it. That’s fine. If you’re going to Vegas every weekend, or if you’re gonna Vegas every day right, with two grand and you don’t know where that money’s coming from, that you’re going to the table with the next day, that’s a problem.

[00:33:34] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, for sure.

[00:33:35] Daniel Umfleet: . I mean that’s another thing is like if, if things start to look really outta sorts, you have start looking at source of funds.

[00:33:41] Daniel Umfleet: Like folks who have a serious issue will find money any way that they can possibly find it. That’s not theirs to gamble with. Right? And that leads to fraud inside a companies people embezzling outside of their companies, people stealing from their family members, right? Taking out loans from people that you should not be taking out loans to [00:34:00] stealing.

[00:34:00] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:34:01] Daniel Umfleet: If this looks like an unsustainable habit, it probably is an unsustainable habit, right? But the reality is, for like 95% of the world’s, right, this is never going to be a problem.

[00:34:14] Jonathan DeYoe: Right.

[00:34:15] Daniel Umfleet: This is, you know, like this is going to be a hey. Okay, cool. I like that horse.

[00:34:21] Daniel Umfleet: Let me bet on that horse in the Kentucky Derby.

[00:34:24] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah,

[00:34:25] Daniel Umfleet: in a social event

[00:34:26] Jonathan DeYoe: yeah, yeah.

[00:34:27] Daniel Umfleet: my team made it to the Super Bowl. Alright, cool. I’ll put 20 bucks down on my team. Right.

[00:34:34] Jonathan DeYoe: right.

[00:34:35] Daniel Umfleet: those are more sort of regular behaviors that you see the majority of individuals in the country and in the world participate in gambling with. It’s the higher level of frequency. Right. And it’s

[00:34:47] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:48] Daniel Umfleet: like we’re going through a phase, I think. The states where like there’s, you know, something that has been sort of swept under the carpet and hidden a very long time. Like you, it’s, it’s [00:35:00] impossible to make an argument that sports betting didn’t exist before PASPA got overturned. It’s impossible to make an argument that when March Madness rolls around, I. Lots of people don’t engage in brackets in their office, right? Like it’s impossible to make that argument. The legalization of it and the access to it in a 24 7 manner are the things that,

[00:35:22] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:35:22] Daniel Umfleet: know, are basically driving a lot more awareness around the issue and. Highlighting a lot of the issues that are developing around it because it’s not under the carpet anymore. This stuff was always here. It’s just now more visible. Right. But for the mass majority of individuals, like it’s never going to become a problem. And that’s great as long as you’ve got it parked in your head that this is an entertainment, this is not a method to make money and don’t expect to make money,

[00:35:50] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:35:51] Daniel Umfleet: be okay.

[00:35:52] Jonathan DeYoe: I was gonna, do you think that, the incidents of. Problematic gambling is increased. this is a stupid question actually. Of [00:36:00] course, the incidents of problematic gambling is increased when you, when you build the app environment to support it, because the apps themselves are promoting more.

[00:36:09] Jonathan DeYoe: They’re pushing you to do more. And if you got a 19-year-old brain and you just want a dollar and you think that’s, or, or $10, you’re, you’re super excited about that. Of course, you’re gonna take that 10 bucks and bet it again, right? That, that doesn’t seem like the odds are in their favor.

[00:36:23] Daniel Umfleet: No, it’s not. It’s not. And, and that that same concept that you just described applies to so many more things that go on on the phones.

[00:36:30] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:36:30] Daniel Umfleet: so it is like, for younger kids, man, it’s like, you don’t have a chance,

[00:36:34] Jonathan DeYoe: Nope, nope.

[00:36:36] Daniel Umfleet: If you are a person who likes to spend a lot of time in virtual environments, and those virtual environments are continuously engineered for you to click the button and spend 99 cents and, know, increase your level of payout with your level of risk type thing, that’s what we’re trying to really get to the bottom of is like, you know, this didn’t exist 20 years ago. Like even if you would’ve put online gambling online 20 years [00:37:00] ago, it still would’ve been, Hey, you gotta basically use a dial up modem log in and you know, you know what I mean?

[00:37:07] Daniel Umfleet: Right. It’s so slow. Technology has advanced so fast,

[00:37:10] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:37:11] Daniel Umfleet: and the way that we interact with technology is now intricately women into pretty much every hour of every day.

[00:37:17] Jonathan DeYoe: it strikes me. So, so I’m, so, I work in financial services. I counsel long-term investing, like buying the SV 500 and holding that for 40 years. Don’t think about it. Right. And I get more pushback about, well, this, what about this, what about the crypto? And what about the other thing?

[00:37:35] Jonathan DeYoe: And what it’s, it’s just even the 50-year-old and 60-year-old brain is being affected by the speed of the information in the app world. And the, it’s like, no, Warren Buffet got wealthy just holding it. Just follow that. Stop.

[00:37:49] Daniel Umfleet: Fear of missing out is real.

[00:37:50] Jonathan DeYoe: Oh my God, it’s huge.

[00:37:51] Daniel Umfleet: fear of missing out is real.

[00:37:53] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

[00:37:54] Daniel Umfleet: And that impacts decision making

[00:37:56] Jonathan DeYoe: for sure.

[00:37:57] Daniel Umfleet: big time.

[00:37:58] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:37:58] Daniel Umfleet: We get [00:38:00] periodically, not, not a ton, right? But periodically get calls from groups that we work with, that work with like wealth management and wealth planning companies or banks. And there’s been an increase in requests. For parents who are wanting to pass wealth down to create a vehicle that they can pass the wealth down to their children into in a way where the children can’t gamble with the money

[00:38:27] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:38:27] Daniel Umfleet: because their concerns.

[00:38:29] Jonathan DeYoe: set up. I have that set up for.

[00:38:31] Daniel Umfleet: Yeah. There you go. Right. So like there’s more of these questions we’re getting, we’re getting more interesting queries from legal teams who are seeing more and more financial destruction happening on one spouse’s side.

[00:38:46] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:38:46] Daniel Umfleet: some states you’re able to quantify the amount that the person, that the one of the individuals gambled and take that over onto the other side and say, well. was money that shouldn’t have left the account. so this [00:39:00] person is getting X amount more in a settlement because this is money that shouldn’t have left the account.

[00:39:05] Daniel Umfleet: These behaviors are erratic and he was, he or she was basically blowing through retirement funds.

[00:39:11] Daniel Umfleet: you’re seeing it crop up in a variety of ways in systems that, you know, are, are typically pretty private in the way that we manage ’em. but it’s there.

[00:39:22] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:39:22] Daniel Umfleet: It’s there and it’s very interesting.

[00:39:24] Daniel Umfleet: You’ve set up, you know, a pass down for the next generation that is safeguarded from being able to gamble the money,

[00:39:30] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:39:31] Jonathan DeYoe: there’s a ton of noise out there and I like to, I like to bring this down. I, I ask every guest this kind of a question and I want to know, amidst all the noise that pushes us towards fast decision making, what is one thing that a listener could do to sort of push back?

[00:39:45] Jonathan DeYoe: On this noise.

[00:39:47] Daniel Umfleet: Well, like actually looking at what some good growth strategies are and educating yourself are going to actually start to inform you on what you need to do more or less than instant [00:40:00] gratification. Right. I, I think I. You know what is actually probably the most impactful

[00:40:04] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:40:05] Daniel Umfleet: when I’m dealing with folks that are thinking sort of immediately short term, right? Like, you know, the constant, okay, well I want to, I wanna get rich now. Or like, I wanna, I want more money now. I need more money Now is you actually have to. Get them to take a pause and pull together all of their financial records, pull in the credit card statements, pull in the debit card statements, pull in the loan statements, whatever, like actually get a picture.

[00:40:31] Daniel Umfleet: ’cause basically, I think people reach a tipping point where they’re like, I. Okay. I kind of know what’s going on. I kind of know what’s going on, nevermind. I don’t wanna know what’s going on and I’m just plowing forward anyway. And then actually get them to quantify the amount of money that they’re spending on specific things that are taking away from their ability to make their dollar go farther.

[00:40:53] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:40:54] Daniel Umfleet: what I mean by that is like we get a lot of. Folks that, you know, it, it’s very like, look, you know, [00:41:00] I get paid every two weeks and for the last four days of the pay cycle, I’m basically eating out of a 10 of beans or out of a, bag of bread. Right? And that’s, that’s basically it. And I, I can’t figure out how to make my money go any farther.

[00:41:12] Daniel Umfleet: The economy is crushing me, inflation is crushing me. while those things compounding are, you know, They’re definitely influencing. Once you actually get somebody to quantify and go, okay, well, guess what, man? Like, you know, every two weeks you get paid 1600 bucks after taxes. And every two weeks you are spending between your Amazon account, between your Apple account for like in-game purchases for games that you’re playing, and then between your sports betting account, you’re spending over half of your paycheck

[00:41:46] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:41:46] Daniel Umfleet: on those three things, right?

[00:41:48] Daniel Umfleet: So maybe we should consider. Carving some of this back, know, claw some of this money back and maybe, you know, maybe don’t buy private [00:42:00] movies on Apple every time you get paid. Or maybe don’t go into the game and buy the $99 loop box

[00:42:08] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:42:08] Daniel Umfleet: time you get paid. Or you know, maybe, you know, instead of doing. Five bets a week, maybe do one bet a week. Right? And let’s start, see how things shaking out. And it’s like you can start turning those short-term And I have food security, I have. Housing security. Right? I got people off my back. Right. That feels good, right? It feels nice to have these things. Start with those small building blocks, right? And then really just arm yourself with what you can do to make that money go farther longer and get into that.

[00:42:46] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:42:47] Daniel Umfleet: You know, you don’t need the instant gratification through the apps. You’re not going to get rich quick. Any of these things that are basically designed to make you think you’re going to get rich quick, you’re not going to get rich quick off of them. They’re just trying to take your bloody [00:43:00] money.

[00:43:00] Jonathan DeYoe: That’s dopamine. It’s you get the little dopamine hit. Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine

[00:43:05] Daniel Umfleet: Understand that that’s the way that your system is regulated and that’s what it’s hijacking. a lot of people, once they arm themselves with that information, they start to make decisions differently.

[00:43:14] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:43:14] Daniel Umfleet: Not everybody but I think, you know, the more information that we can raise around the fact that, you know, dopamine plays such a huge part in this and that pleasure system. That pleasure delivery system. Everything around us is basically designed to tap into that. Right. And you’re getting played, even though you don’t know you’re getting

[00:43:32] Daniel Umfleet: played

[00:43:33] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep. Well, we’re all getting played every minute of every day. We’re getting played, for sure.

[00:43:36] Daniel Umfleet: the time,

[00:43:37] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:43:37] Jonathan DeYoe: like know your numbers, get educated.

[00:43:39] Daniel Umfleet: percent.

[00:43:40] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:43:41] Daniel Umfleet: And then like there’s other stuff. I mean, for this there’s medications for other diseases that actually mess with your dopamine agonist and lower your guard and you can do more damage to yourself quicker than you would ever think possible because your brain isn’t even telling you that your warning system should be going off. So like [00:44:00] there’s a handful of Parkinson’s drugs that if you are an individual that is suffering from Parkinson’s and you’re dealing with taking multiple drugs for multiple things, there needs to be a heightened awareness among individuals that are involved and helping that individual through

[00:44:15] Jonathan DeYoe: I have never heard.

[00:44:17] Daniel Umfleet: Those are the interesting things that like, you just need to be aware, man. Like you just need to be aware. One thing that helps one system the same time lowers inhibitions in other systems.

[00:44:27] Jonathan DeYoe: Wow.

[00:44:27] Daniel Umfleet: at that point, that’s where, that’s where like when you see like when you see cases or like when you hear stories of like, you know, grandma was dealing with Alzheimer’s disease and on the way out she spent every dollar she had on QVC. Right. so we basically found attics in basements filled with stuff, but her accounts were basically drained and she had. collectors after, which made no sense to the family members, period. Right. And then you rewind and you start looking at some of these drugs and you start thinking, okay, was [00:45:00] going on with these drugs?

[00:45:00] Daniel Umfleet: And you start looking at the way that the drugs are jacking the dopamine agonists outta whack. You know, like, so there’s stuff out there, right, that you’re just completely oblivious to and totally unaware of. That could be driving behaviors that you don’t know. So like you just. is about just heightening awareness

[00:45:17] Daniel Umfleet: from one angle or the other. You just have to have all of the necessary information to safeguard yourself as much as possible. to me, this is the way you have to approach the next generation of youth. you know, now we’re getting deep into ai, AI’s being used for a variety of different things to, and. You know, to make us engage with things more. the future of education in so many ways is going to be done through tablets and programs that you interact with online. You know, like of this stuff, like You know, it’s a blessing and a curse at the same time. You

[00:45:51] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:45:51] Daniel Umfleet: for all of the efficiencies that we think we we’re gaining, there are things that we’re losing.

[00:45:57] Daniel Umfleet: Right. And you know, I think [00:46:00] continuously just awareness around these things and reminding folks of this is, is it’s about the only way that you’re gonna get enough people to, you know, build safeguards around themselves. ’cause there’s nothing else that’s seen to it,

[00:46:12] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep. No other way. No other way. Just, just before we wrap up, we’re getting close to time here. Just before we wrap up, I’d like to come back around to personal, I don’t know, I don’t mean this as a zinger, but often it’s in, it’s taken as a zinger. I just wanna know, what’s the last thing you changed your mind about?

[00:46:25] Daniel Umfleet: a painting that my wife wanted to buy for the house. That was pretty much it. We recently moved in, like I, I think I explained to you maybe before we jumped on, or maybe

[00:46:35] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. Denver. Denver. Yep.

[00:46:36] Daniel Umfleet: but we are literally starting from scratch. So we had to furnish the whole house once we bought the house.

[00:46:42] Daniel Umfleet: Right. I was basically like 50 50 a, a really nice painting that I think actually tied the house together. and I ended up going with it and I’m really glad that I did. Sounds kind of funny, but you know, you, you

[00:46:58] Jonathan DeYoe: I, I.

[00:46:59] Daniel Umfleet: thing was and that [00:47:00] was recent.

[00:47:01] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, you, you can’t, you can’t trust my ability to choose a painting. I, I’m going through this right now. I’m trying to, I’m trying to, trying to put art in my house and I’m just like, I can’t, I can’t. Someone else needs to make these decisions anyway. Daniel, I appreciate you coming on. how do people get in contact with you?

[00:47:14] Jonathan DeYoe: Where do they find your work? how do they find you?

[00:47:17] Daniel Umfleet: kindbridge.com. K-I-N-D-B-R-I-D-G e.com. And you can always, if you need me directly, you’re welcome to email me. It’s daniel@kindbridge.com,

[00:47:28] Jonathan DeYoe: Thanks for coming on. Uh, all this stuff will be in the show notes and, uh, and good luck with, discovery, you know, working on this stuff with UCLA. It’s great.

[00:47:35] Daniel Umfleet: Perfect. Thank you very much.

[00:47:37] Outro: Thanks for listening. Full show notes for each episode, which includes a summary, key takeaways, quotes, and any resources mentioned are available at Mindful Money. Be sure to follow and subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. And if you’re enjoying the content and getting value from these episodes, please [00:48:00] leave us a rating and review ratethispodcast.com/mindfulmoney. We’ll be sure to read those out on future episodes.