Money Lessons from Toy Story: Comparison, Teamwork, and Contentment

What can Woody and Buzz teach us about money, mindset, and even marriage?
In this episode of Movie Money Mashup, David and Laura dive into the timeless classic Toy Story (1995) to uncover financial and life lessons hidden in Andy’s toy box. From jealousy and comparison to teamwork and contentment, this family favorite is packed with wisdom that applies to your money, career, and relationships.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why comparison (like Woody vs. Buzz) breeds discontent—and how gratitude can fix it
• How teamwork multiplies impact, in both money and marriage
• Why fear can paralyze your progress, and how creativity leads to better results than “throwing money” at problems
• The danger of putting your hope in stuff—and where to root your identity instead

Whether you grew up quoting Buzz Lightyear or are watching Toy Story with your kids for the first time, you’ll walk away with practical ways to apply these lessons in your financial journey today.

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Transcript

Laura: 0:01

Welcome to the Money and Movie Mashup. Where your favorite nostalgic films meet real life money lessons. I'm Laura Sexton here with my friend, coach David Gibbs, and we're diving into the. Iconic movies of the nineties and two thousands to unpack what Hollywood accidentally taught us about money, mindset, and meaning. It's fun. It's a little nerdy, and we want you in on the conversation, so grab your popcorn and let's roll.

0:29

Hello everyone. Welcome to another movie, money Mashup. I am so pumped today because we are talking about one of my most favorite movies ever. Last time we did Twilight. It was interesting. Not one of my most favorite movies ever. I. May have been caught, not watching it completely, but today we're talking about Toy Story came out in 1995. What were you doing in 1995? Well, while I'm waiting for Laura, I'm gonna share just a quick synopsis if there's anybody in the world who hasn't seen this movie, and if you haven't, go watch it and then come and see this again once it hits YouTube because. You just gotta watch it. Alright. So when young Andy isn't around, his toys come to life. Woody a cowboy doll and Andy's favorite feels threatened. When Buzz Lightyear a flashy new space ranger action figure arrives, the rivalry leads them on an unexpected adventure where they must learn to work together to find their way back home before Andy moves to a new home. It's fantastic. I love it. Let's see. Who do we have watching? Who do we have watching? I can see everybody say hi. Who's watching?'cause I can see two people are watching, but I can't see'em. Oh, there we go. Mom's watching. But yeah, this is one of my most favorite movies ever. It is a blast. Oh, here comes Laura. And it is. Tons of fun. I have so many memories growing up, watching this during summer, watching this with my cousins, getting outta the pool when I was a kid. It is just awesome. Oh my gosh. Is that Laura? I'm trying to see if it'll let me do it this way. Am I sideways for you? Yeah, you look sideways. Yeah, but it's cool. Oh, that's not gonna work. I was, I was thinking if we went sideways. That it would not make our faces so big. You know, it's funny. That's exactly what I was trying before I got on, but I tested it before. But I mean, we look okay right now. I tried. It's fine. We're good right now. Yeah. Here you back up. This's as far back as I can go. That's as far back as you can go. Okay. I'd have to move the chair. It's a whole thing anyway. Nobody cares. We, I try to think, I try to think, well, I did the synopsis for those, I don't know, maybe one person who hasn't already seen the movie and now you, I mean, I can't imagine anybody hasn't seen this movie. I can't imagine it. Lauren, my five month old has seen this movie, so I don't. You haven't seen that's on you. You know, even though I just saw you two weeks ago, it feels like I haven't seen you in a while, and I dunno why that is. Something about the in person and then the not in person, I think. Yeah, could be. Could be. And then it was just a different rhythm last time, so, yeah. Alright, well, are you ready to talk about this? I, yes. I just want, I wanna point out that I had planned on Thursday night is movie night in our house now, where Thursday night, either I watch, well I always watch something with the kids, but if it's something I can't watch with the kids, we let them go to bed and then my husband and I stay up and watch something. Yeah. Such a tombstone. Such a tombstone. Although my kids did watch. Part of Tombstone and they're like, are people gonna die in this? And I was like, yes. And they're like, we're gonna go to bed. And I was like, okay. They spontaneously decided they were gonna watch Toy Story this week. They didn't even know this is our plan. This is a spontaneous watch in our house where the kids are like, you know what? We should watch Toy Story. I haven't seen that in a while. I'm gonna watch. This is the, one of the cinematic masterpieces of our time. Yeah. And yes, it happens to be animated, but like. The story is perfect. Yeah, it's perfect and it's perfect for a ton of money. Lessons too. Can I start with the first one?'cause I'm gonna steal it from you'cause I know you probably have it written. Okay. Woody's jealousy of Buzz. Lightyear is totally keeping up with the Joneses. Yeah, that was, that was too easy. That was like the sprinkle on top of easiness right there. Well, my, yeah, my first one was that comparison breeds discontent. So same sea? Yeah, same sea, same. But you know, Woody goes through, he was Andy's toy, he was his best friend, and then all of a sudden this crazy guy comes, who's all super cool with his box. Do you remember I, I, I wrote it down, but then I lost my paper. What exactly does Buzz call tape? What's his like science. That's his space Ranger name for tape. Because I just always thought that was super funny and when I was, when I was little, I would ask my parents, can I have that something bonding strip? Right. It was something Bonding strip. Yes. The unidirectional bonding strip. Yes. There we go. Can I have a unidirectional bonding strip please? But, you know, and that comparison, discontent and all that, we all have that, we all deal with it from time to time. I know that when you saw me in person, you were like, man, I want that shirt that David is, is wearing because it's so cool. Yeah. I, I mean, not for me, but for people in my life, yes, I do. They have girl versions, you know? Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. It's really quick. We'll check out. We'll because I want it. But so give me an example then, in your own life, have you, have you been jealous of somebody or, or discontent at one point? Let's get real. So this whole week, wonder how much of this I can say about getting in trouble. Well, my husband's not gonna, well, he will listen to the podcast right now. That would be vague. A person I know and I know very well, has been very discontent with our current domicile. Oh. Things have been piling up. I've got a big mess behind me where I've been trying to move over from move the kids over from one side so close to another. I've been trying to go back to regular people clothes, post to maternity clothes, so there's been clutter. And so he started comparing our home to all of our friend's house. Well, at so and so's house, they have this at so and so's. I was like. I'm not quite content with where we're at right now. And it makes me a little sad that you're not, because like nothing's gonna change for another year, so we're gonna have to fix it. So, yes. The answer to that question without getting too in the weeds on things that I'm still working through is that. Comparing the houses, everything was fine until we started comparing to everybody else. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and it's hard, you know, and, and it's funny, one thing that my wife and I that we have worked through, you know, who, whoever you were talking about, but what we have worked through is when we're comparing, you know, like where our parents were at our age, where some people, our friends are at our age, it's like, oh my, my wife always. Has wanted more plants. That's her big thing. She wants more garden and that, that seems to be the one thing she always brings up. Like, oh, she and my mother should be friends. Yeah, she, she always, you know, when we're going by other people's houses that the one thing she points out, oh, I could use that. I would really like that. And so, yeah, and it can be, it can be challenging because it gets folks, and I'm sure we both have had clients like this to purchase things that they can't actually afford because someone or something or in somewhere has it. Well, I'm hoping that we can use this discontent as an excuse to make more because what you were just saying is, you know, I need to purchase more because I don't have, that's a scarcity mindset. Whereas I have an abundance mindset where I'm like, oh, we can always go get more. Right. The only thing, you can't get more of his time, they're not making more of that. Right? Like, God's not making more dirt. We don't get any more time than what we get. And so part of that is also shifting back to Buzz and Woody, Woody gets very worried that there's not going to be enough love to go around that he and Buzz won't get the same amount of attention. Yeah. And for a while that's kind of true. It's, it's, but it doesn't stay that way. I'm, I'm curious, David, did you have a special toy growing up that was like your buddy? Oh, darn. We should have done that.'cause I, if I thought about it, I know exactly where mine is and I could get up and go get it, but I'm not going to, I know I can get up and go get mine too. I know exactly where mine is. Okay. Well mine is a bear. Okay. And his name is Bear. Whoa. And I actually have pictures of me as a newborn with bear and he now is hanging out with my 6-year-old in his bed and he's still with me. I have, his butt has been sewn up a couple times and he is still rocking it. Yeah, I have a lamb that doesn't have any back feet, which is the story for another day. And it has a rattle in time and it is completely thread bear, completely thread bear. So my children are not allowed to play with it. Because one of them will do something and it will rip apart and I'll never be able to put it back together'cause it has been sewn up as many times as we possibly can. It is the only thing that has gotten me through all of my struggles and sometimes put him beyond and I didn't play with him. I play with other things, but it always came back to him. He was always, so let's say he was always my woody. Yeah. So everyone who's watching, make sure you go and follow Laura and I on our social media and will you commit? I'll go and put a picture. The bear. Oh yeah. Oh, I'll tell. I I love him. Yeah. He just put away where the children can't touch him. My husband's happy that he's not on our bed. I know, I actually, I I have another one on, on our bed. I'll, but yeah, but you put a picture of yours. I'll put a picture of mine so everybody who's watching take a look. We'll put a picture up for you. Alright, so I wanna get practical'cause I do think this is, even though it, it's easy, it is hard. So how do you maintain contentment? And I'll answer too. Probably a lot of prayer and a lot of gratitude. I do a lot of gratitude. So one of the things with my children is every time, every time they go to pray, they have to say thank you before they can ask for anything. Yeah. And they wanna ask for another thing. They have to say thank you for something else first. So that's kind of it. It's not so much a, this is how you're supposed to pray, but it's more of I'm trying to breed contentment inside of them. Yeah, I do the same thing. And in trying to get them to pray that way, that is helping me. So I try anytime I'm feeling discontent, to find things to be grateful for first. Like I'm really upset about my to-do list not getting done, but I'm like, here are the other things I did that weren't on my to-do list. Right. And those are ways for me to, and I think for anybody, if you can sit, you can't be, you can't be grateful and anxious at the same time. And if you're sitting here and you're sitting in your gratitude and you're truly sitting in the gratitude, it's impossible for you to be like, but I don't have. It doesn't matter.'cause I'm grateful for what I do have. Yeah. Yeah. And, and depending on the situation, you know, I'll be grateful for something recent, but sometimes I literally do, like, I look over like, like I wanna hang out with the ghost of Christmas past and let's go check out and look at all the. Times that my butt has been saved from dumb things that I've done. And like, thank you God for that because my life could be very different in some of those situations than it is right now. And I'm so thankful. A hundred percent. Yeah. Alright, so what's next? Teamwork. We'll multiply your impact. Oh, I love it. Okay, so bunny, bunny and wood buddy. And woodsy. What and buzz, I don't even know. I don't even know what bunny and woodsy, I'm gonna remember this and hold this against you forever. When they work together, stuff happens. When, when they're strapped to the rocket at the end of the movie, yeah. They're in a situation where one of them could have walked away and been fine. Yeah. Right. Woody could have just been like, see you later, pal. But he didn't. And so all of the toys banded together to work together. But then buddy, I, I'm gonna do it again. Woody and Buzz had to work together again, but now happier right? To make it onto the truck. And thankfully our team came to save the day a little bit. That means to me how I'm going to apply this lesson to everybody else listening. If you have a partner, you have to work together. Otherwise, the two of you are working next to each other, you're doing double the work for less traction. Yeah. And then work together. As we saw in the movie when they weren't working together, they're falling out of trucks, they're getting lost in pizza planet. All these terrible things are happening to them. Well, when you're working, when you're working against each other, and they were, because they had different end goals, which I didn't write this down, but y'all, if you're married, you need, you need a, a common end goal, right? We need a common vision of what our life's gonna look like and is there room for more than one person's dream in a partnership? Absolutely. But Bud wanted to go to outer space and Woody's like, Hey bud, we live here in the real world. We don't go to space. You're not actually a space ranger. I wish, wish that you were, but you're not. So you have to stay here. But because the two of them had differing goals, they weren't able to make the progress they needed. If they needed to just go back to Andy, they fell out of the window. They could have just gone to the front door. Yep. But we weren't thinking that. Or did Woody, did Woody try to kill Buzz? I think he did. I think he wanted him to fall into the crack and get lost behind the desk. I think he wanted him to be forgotten. Not not die. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And actually, that comes to my mom's favorite part of the movie that I'm gonna torture her with right now since she's watching, is when Woody says, okay, Mr. Light Beer. You do it. She was so mad that there was a mention of light beer in a Disney movie when I was a little kid. She, she almost didn't want me to watch it because Woody says that line. Well, don't, don't have her watch Turning Red. Okay. Does your mom go by Judy or Judith? Ah, Judy with an I, not a Y. My mom is Bobby with an E, not a Y. So look at you. Look our moms and their fancy spellings. I love it. Yeah, I'm amazing. She hasn't written something yet because I knew I had to. Oh, I saw, I saw her pop up at one point, but I, I didn't see anything. If she said anything recently about the light beer. So Wizzy and Bud they had no, so I have another one. I have another one. Okay. Don't let fear rule you Oh, because it can make you freeze and then not make a decision. And so when Woody and Buzz are in Sid's house, the Room of Doom they get stuck there for a minute of course, because Buzz is having his identity crisis, right? And he is not, he is not sure what to do. But you know. What I was thinking was, your mom was okay with the cross dressing. He was dressed up like a, like a lady at one point, it was the beer that got her upset. Okay, hey, hey, don't remind her of these things, Laura. Whatcha doing. But, but when, when I was seeing that part and I was thinking, you know, kind of an add-on to that teamwork piece is that. There's scary stuff out there. We have, I mean, there is an equivalent to us in our daily lives, and of course everybody has their own different fears that I think can be battled with a gratitude and, and a good mindset and abundance mindset. But we all have our dolls with their heads on mechanical things coming towards us. And so I'll tell you one fear of mine that, that I brought into my marriage is that I. Was just scared of being poor at all. I was scared of, of going backwards at all. I was scared and so I did crazy things. Oh, my mom says I forgot Laura. But, but I did crazy things in my first year of marriage, trying to budget for the first time of my wife where we would make a budget and then I would treat it as if it's a sculpture. And like one minute later Kelly would be like, oh, I forgot to add this to the budget. And I would say, Nope, the budget's done. It's over. I totally did that. I did that because I was so afraid of things going wrong, of us being poor, of things going right. And so we all have our thing, you know? What would you say is a big fear for you? We're getting deep here. I am. I'm always worried that we're gonna run out of money. Yeah. That, that is, it just kind of is where I'm at. It is not, that is not a rational fear. Another irrational fear I have is birds, but that's not what we're talking about today. Oh, birds. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. You freaked me out. But one thing I have learned in my'cause I grew, I grew up in scarcity. That is my natural Ben is towards scarcity. So I have to actively work towards abundance. Yeah, me too. Another thing that I have learned about myself though is if I don't have the money, I have to get creative. And that brings me back to the movie. These toys, they do a lot. They go a lot of places. They do a lot of things and they don't spend any money'cause they don't have any, they get creative, they make stuff happen. And sometimes I think that we need a little bit more of that type of ingenuity in our lives. And so I wanted to call that out. Mm-hmm. Because I wanna not talk about birds anymore. That No, but that tweet, tweet. I actually side note really quick for just for fun. We bought my in-laws, a bird feeder that has a video camera on it, and they've been sending us camera footage of birds eating. I'll send one to you. They're fine if they're on the other side of the camera. They can't hurt me. But yeah, that is. That is amazing. And, and when, oh, we got a little baby. We're, yeah, we're gonna move. Sorry guys. Sorry. Okay, no worries. Thought we were good, but yeah, absolutely. And some of the best things. Have come out in life, and I'm just, first of all, I'm thinking movie wise some of the best things I've ever made is because they didn't have all the money in the world or all the technology in the world. And, and it's kind of interesting when folks have to get creative, and I'm just thinking art, but I think this is true in real life, that it comes out better somehow. You know, I still think the original T-Rex from Jurassic Park looked better. Some of the newer ones because back then they had to do it part practical and part cgi, they couldn't rely on, oh, we just have a ton of money and stuff. They had to figure it out. And that's true in our own lives too. Or Jaws. There was a mechanical shark named Bruce. Yep. Which is why the shark is named Bruce and finding Nemo in case anybody didn't know. And oh, you have to save that for when we do Nemo. We'll get there. And. The, the shark didn't work. Yeah. The practical shark didn't work. So they said, okay, I know what we'll do. We'll just use the fin. Well not seeing the shark in the water, but just seeing the fin was terrifying. Yeah. That was more scary than if you would ever seen the shark. That's why a lot of paranormal movies work so well, which I'm not doing this. Yeah. Hard pass. So for me, I'm looking at these things and I'm going. Yeah. Sometimes being creative gets you a better result Yeah. Than if you just throw money at things. Yeah. And so we'll get practical in, in money wise when. You know, some of the best times that I see, you know, my clients really getting stuff done and I myself is when, okay, we wanna save up for this, we wanna do that. Okay, what are we gonna do to get there? Because it it'cause so many folks they jump to, we just have to, you know. Cut everything and be depressed and stare at the wall. You could be part of that. You know? Or we gotta kill ourselves and make a bunch of money. Yeah. That's part of it. But also we can do both and Right. You know, we, I, I am always taught to do everything you can to get moving. You know, let's see, what can we do on the side? What can we throw an hour or two on the weekend plus cut some, plus make more. Right. And, but the thing, what's cool about all that is. Is when you do that, guess what you have to have? You have to have teamwork because you have to have boundaries and schedules figured out with your partner. Absolutely. And by the end of, I mean, my wife and I took us three and a half years to get out of debt and to actually accomplish the mission and keep it that way, we had to get better together. Yep. And so the time I talk about display, it slaying the dragon. You have to slay the dragon. And in order to do that, you have to work together.'cause if you're working against each other, then you're fighting each other. And the dragon, the dragon's gonna win. That's just the nature of the beast. So if you can fight together instead of fight each other, that's when you're gonna win. Yeah. And it's, it's refining. It's refining fire, you know, it's making sculptures out of us. I love it. Remind me how long you've been married. This is our 10 year, we'll celebrate 10 years in October. Okay, awesome. We're gonna, we're gonna be hitting 11 years this next month. So we've seen a couple things folks now, now my mom, she's like 30 something around with her and my dad. Woo. Yeah, they're crazy. So that's amazing. Congratulations, Judy. That doesn't they, as I write it out in the comment, mom, because theirs was in June. I had one more. Did you have any more? It's over there. Over, over there. All my notes are over there. So now we're good. Well, we're doing great on time. I have one more. I'm sure it'll make you think of something. Don't put your hope in stuff. Hey, that's a good one. And Buzz, you know, this is kind of, you put his hope and his identity and it blew up. Yeah. And, and so. And that could be, and this could be hit on many things, money, career, you know, anything that we're putting our, too much of our identity and, and our hope in, don't do it because things can shift. Things can change. Oh, it's 42, 40, 60 years. Yeah. That's amazing. Are you? Wow. I didn't realize it was that high, but well, how old are you? You're 37 Maybe. Yeah. So other than that, yeah. And my sister's a few years older than me, so there you go. There you go. Makes sense. But but yeah, not putting our hope and stuff. And that goes with what we're talking about with our mindset, with our scarcity, with our abundance. Anything that we, you know, all we can do is make the next best decision and build that positive momentum. And then. Have our partner where Woody comes in and tells him, Hey, you're not a space ranger. I'm trying to do, but you are a cool toy. You are Andy's toy. I always love how we emphasized toy when you, it was funny when you were saying that. The thing that I thought of was, we can't put our hope in stuff, but you know what Woody was always hopeful of and always had his. Always has his mind on, and this is very interesting, and you can say, I'm, I'm pushing a little bit here. But Andy was Woody's higher power, okay. Andy was the thing that Woody always had hope in. Always knew that no matter what was his person, was his thing. And to not extra. I was, I was told at a very young age to not extrapolate, look for God in every movie that I watched, which is probably a good thing. But if you want to, you can look at it that way. Where if we put our hope in the right thing, what he puts his hope in, Andy, if we put our hope in God, we can get to the end result that we are, that we are meant to get to. What Woody wanted in the beginning was to be the only toy. And that wasn't what was best for him. Yeah. Sometimes what we, what we want and what we look for is not what's best for us but putting our hope in someone who actually has the ability to give us what we need, not just what we want. I think, I think that's something to look forward to. So if you're looking for, I guess today we're doing money messages and faith messages and I'm sorry, this baby is kicking my arm. She does not want me paying attention to anybody except for her. It's fine. She's cute. It's great. But we're doing money lessons and faith lessons today apparently. So it, it, you know, it's amazing how things intertwine. Can we get a, a shot of the wee babe at all? Hello. There we go. We just got like 10 more followers just because I know just that yelled asked, says ias. Alright, so any last thoughts? I think I'm gonna reiterate what I said in the beginning. This is the perfect movie. It's the perfect movie. It is a family friendly movie. Everybody should watch it. If you haven't watched it recently, go watch it again. If you've never watched it the first time, we need to talk'cause your choice of movies is obviously lacking. We've done some of the best movies ever and we have a lot more to go. Oh, we've got all of them more to go. I'm very excited. But we need people we would like, we don't need, if you guys don't wanna give us suggestions, you don't have to. We got this. We have a never ending compendium. Absolutely. But if you wanna give us a movie that you think we could find a money lesson from, or you think we can't find a money lesson from, we wanna talk about, tell us what your favorite movie is, tell us what you wanna find some information about. And that is what we are going to focus on next time. Beautiful. I'm so excited. I've got so many ideas by the way, it's never ending. All right, everybody comment below and then if you want to see older episodes, if this is your first time catching us, I'm so happy that you're here. But you can check my YouTube channel coach David Gibbs. And then what's, you know what's funny? I can never remember the name of your podcast. I don't know why I don't remember it. It's not hard. It's money and Career Mastery. Money and Career Master. Look how lovely that money master your money and your career. So go ahead and take a look at that on where podcasts are, and you'll hear Laura, and then you can see some of, you can hear some of our past episodes on there as well. All right. All right, everybody. And then be on the lookout. I think I'm gonna go get a picture of my little toys right now and I'll put Oh, I'm gonna her too. Yes, absolutely. And and how do they, what's your Instagram handle for folks to see that Instagram at Accelerate your legacy? Boom. And mine is Coach David 87. So take a look at that. We will see you next time and have a wonderful day. Alright. Oh, she's saying. Bye. Bye everybody. Bye.