10 Money Mistakes That Will Destroy Your Wealth

Most people think wealth is lost in the big moments. A bad trade, a market crash, a wrong decision. But in reality, wealth is usually destroyed quietly through small habits, delayed decisions, or poor structure and money behaviors that compound against you over time. These mistakes don't show up on the balance sheet overnight. They show up in years later when progress stalls, returns lag and wealth plateaus. Today we're going to break down the top 10 money mistakes that actually destroys your wealth. Not from theory, but from patterns we've seen repeatedly among high earners, business owners and sophisticated investors. And also from the book Property Secrets of the Rich by Alan Mason. 10 tips on how to break the poverty trap. So if you've made good money or you're making good money, this isn't going to help you make or get you rich. It's about protecting you from what you've already built and making sure it compounds the way it should. Bergs, you've written out these 10 steps mate. And you know, 80% of our audience already has wealth, but maybe the 20% that he's still building, this is going to help you just the same because I'm reading through these and going, wow, these are like, this is a good plan of attack.

Exactly rich. So. Exactly rich. Exactly right. So this is. These habits will help you build wealth and it will help you protect your wealth as well. And it's always good to have a check in to make sure you're doing the right things and you're not making these simple mistakes that are going to cost you a significant amount of money over time. So let's get right into it. Number one, not making saving a priority. So a lot of people generally just save over what they say, what they have left at the end of the month. So they go spending, spending, spending. I've got $200 left over, that's what I'm going to save. That is absolutely the wrong way to go about this. You need to prioritize your savings. You need to put that first. So put at least 10% of your pay away, save it, build an emergency fund or invest it. And that is how you will get that growth and you will adapt to your new limits. If you've got 10% less to spend, you will adapt within that and honestly just automate it with a direct debit. Think of it as a non negotiable expense. Something that has to happen. And Ben, we've done this in our business with profit first and before we did that it was much like just seeing what we've got left over and hey, where did our profit go?

Yeah, and it's like you spend everything first and then whatever's left over you take. But the profit first method is getting what you want to take home first and the reverse engineering what you can spend. And Bergs, you taught me this in my personal life because I'm, I'm a terrible saver because I don't, I didn't automate it. Whatever comes in usually goes out and it was about a year ago that you and I sat down and you really helped me like build out this automation structure. It was actually quite easy and now, you know, over the last year or so I think, you know, I. All of my money is in crypto so I really had no cash savings and I've saved close to $100,000 in like 12 months and I haven't even noticed it. Like it's actually wild. Like it's just been automated. And then I checked my bank account like a few months ago. I'm like, what the fuck?

Like, I remember an episode, yeah, for an episode of Ben and Bergs, you're like, oh bro, thanks for telling me to set this up. And all it is is literally just a direct debit from one bank account to another one or to an index fund that automatically invests and you just wake up and you've got all this money. So you're only 27. Could you imagine another 40 years when you're 67? How much that money's going to be compounding for 40 years? Absolutely crazy. That one little thing that you did that took 15 minutes of your life.

And a hack, I think for people is what I've used and what I've done is I've actually moved my savings to a different bank account so I don't even look at it. So that's. I think that's the other thing when you forget about it, that automation, it just kind of builds up and now I've got like a really, you know, great sort of emergency fund. I've got a good, you know, bit of savings bullshit but you've got to prioritize it, you've got to automate it otherwise it just doesn't happen. So yeah, good first one.

That's a good tip. So you can put it somewhere else so you don't see it or something. I do is I hide specific accounts in my banking app so I can't see those accounts. I'm not tempted to take money out of them, they just don't exist.

And we've done this in our business of all burks where we've actually created separate bank accounts where we move money that's going towards different things. So when it's all lumped in together psychologically, like, oh, look at all the money I have. But like you don't actually realize, you know, all the stuff that's going to come out.

Yeah, it's allocated for other things it's spent. Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's the key. First one, make savings a priority. So the second one is unnecessary spending habits. And this generally happens when you're first starting out and you haven't started this journey or when you actually make a decent amount of money. And this is the McMansion scenario where people will either get a pay rise or they will exit a business or they'll have a windfall, an inheritance, something like this and they will immediately go and buy a new house or a new car. And honestly do not do that. These are the biggest money sucks you could imagine. Nine times out of 10 people buying the massive house are going to have a crippling mortgage and they'll have to pay down that debt and it's going to significantly cripple their wealth compared to putting it in other things.

Yep. And I literally wrote this down. Burgs. I did my, my 12 month yearly audit like I normally do the other day. And one of my points here around like my personal change and growth is that as you know, this year my wealth has grown significant. Sorry, 2025, my wealth grew significantly. Business did really well, personally did really well. But as things grew, you know, lifestyle happens quickly and you get very excited when things go really, really good. And then when there's, you know, going to be periods of times when there's a bit of a, you know, plateau that those, the time, those are the periods of times where I reflected back and got oh actually what I should have done was, you know, maybe knock on that and spend that thing on, on you know, whether it was a holiday or whether, you know, I'm glad I didn't go and buy that crazy, you know, supercar that I would have been like tied up on a, on a loan for because now I would have been like holy, you know, like. Or you know, it's, it's really. I think that lifestyle happens quickly. And I think the other thing I wrote down is it's also hard to remember where you were previously. And reflecting back where I was 12 months ago.

Yeah.

And where I am now, significantly higher. But like it becomes the new normal. So that's the thing you Gotta be careful of.

Exactly. So lifestyle creep, hedonistic adaptation. If you think about where you were five years ago and where you are now in your quality of life. Yeah. Generally if you're building your wealth, it'll be significantly better. And what you need to do is you can have everything you want in your life, just not all at the same time. So you need to make conscious decisions on what you want to spend your money on, what you want to own and essentially which master you are serving. Right. So for me, it's a lot of freedom. And I like specific things. I like really good food, I like a comfortable house. I'm not into massive big cars. I like bikes, I like pinball. Right. But I can't like every single thing and have all the things. Otherwise my life's just going to be one big slop. And I really enjoy the things that I have. And if you're working in a corporate job or if you're in business and you're in a forum with other business owners or your mates, just be aware of that because, you know, this person bought the house by the beach. I want the house by the beach. They bought a Ferrari. I want a Ferrari. They go on camping trips twice a year. Well, I want to buy the camping gear. And now I need a Land Cruiser as well. Oh, and they bought the fancy $10,000 carbon bike. I need that too, because I want to go riding on that. Just be aware, like, it's more important to know your preferences than to be rich.

Yeah.

If you know who you are and you know your preferences, that is worth so much more. So don't just go along with everything else. Have a plan and just stick to it.

Yep, yep. Great call. Yeah, yeah.

Third one burgs and mate, delayed investment decisions. Aren't we all guilty of this? So this is procrastination or analysis paralysis. So waiting for, you know, that special thing to come along or, you know, the whole thing here is it takes time to build wealth. And compounding. Secret ingredient is time. Timing. Time will fix a timing problem. So everyone always says it's time in the market, not timing the market. Most people hang around Ben. Oh, I'm waiting for a correction or a crash or a dip to get in. And you just need to start today. And more is lost from indecision. They're making the wrong decision. And I'll give you an example here. If you're 25 and you put away $200 per month at 7% interest at 65, you have 525,000. So let's say for 25, when you are 35, even if you double that to $400 per month, that's only 10 years difference and you're doubling the amount of money, you'll still only have $486,000 at retirement. So you would have invested an extra 48,000 and you're still 38,000 behind the person that started at 25 and you put in twice the amount.

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

That is what compounding does for you. So it is time in the market. So don't delay getting vesting as soon as you can.

Yeah, and obviously like Bergs from like a lot of our listeners have already, you know, generating wealth for their business or they've got investments or maybe they've got property or maybe they're looking to get into crypto or something like that. As an example, like for me, when thinking about bitcoin, let's say your business is producing cash flow or you've got property and you're looking to make an investment into, into bitcoin, you might be new. I think a lot of people to that point you said their burges is like waiting for the right time. And especially in crypto what happens is you wait for the crash, you wait for the dip, the crash happens. But then you get sucked into oh, I may go lower and then you end up he's not even buying the crash always.

And if you're fearful, you think things are too expensive and what makes you think at that point in time you're going to first of all recognize it, have the psychology to accept it and actually take action. You're not, if you're not doing those things today, you haven't built that muscle. Start buying today by the top, by the bottom, by the middle. Get that average price and get compounding because nothing can give you that time back. And that time is what creates significant wealth.

Yeah. And over the years, like if you look at the returns on bitcoin, let's say even like the last three years, Bitcoin 2023 up 157%. 2024 up 120%. 2025 up 14%. You know, there is going to be years where you have way outperformance and there's going to be years where it, you know, tracks negative or the same year. So what we like to do is not just put everything you have in at once and try and pick the absolute bottom because it's not reality. And you're going to probably be panicked because the Market's gonna be volatile, so ladder in like you said, Bo, automate it, put it in per month, per week and just, you know, forget about it. Time will fix the timing problem.

Absolutely. Number four, underinvestment in self development. I know you're a huge proponent of this, Ben, so invest in yourself. First of all. You can learn about investment and finance and those kind of things. If you understand accounting, you got a free kick in life and you can do courses to increase your income. So if you, if you're on, you're just starting out or your income's not that high and you want to increase it, you can do very basic online courses to get another job or to get higher duties at work or to get that new role. And self education investments generally exceed traditional investments in terms of return. So when I think about the things I've invested in, my university degree got me a great job straight out of Unique. I did my mba, which really accelerated me into, you know, management strategy to C level. And that really increased my income. And then just reading like back in the day, for me it was, it was Money magazine and then reading online Reddit forums and even watching YouTube videos and understanding about investment, psychology, finance, reading a lot of books to invest in myself to then become this human that can have a good job, have a good income, have multiple sources of income, build a business and invest that money.

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I was listening to my first million episode the other day around like, you know, and I've always believed this, that your business or your career is only going to perform and grow at the speed that you can grow and perform as an individual. So like if your knowledge and your progress is capped and you stagnate well, then your business or career will stagnate because you can only grow as fast as that. You're growing yourself. And I think that's been a huge area that I've always invested so much money in learning from best advisors, the best coaches, the best groups, best communities, best everything that I could find. And yes, it costs a lot of money, but like if I look at what we've been able to achieve or what I've been able to achieve personally, no way would I be able to do any of the stuff that I've been able to do without any of that.

Exactly right. And when I look back to when I worked in health, like people would do a uni degree or TAFE course, go work in health and work there for 40 years and not do a course that 40 years. And they're not Learning anything new. They've got very old ideas. The world moves on quite quickly. We're having a discussion before the pod about how far the world has come in the last 100 to 200 years.

Yeah.

Could you imagine where it's going to go? So you've always. Look, the world is always changing. You have to change with it, update yourself. And if you want to go on this journey and you want to be successful, you have to fight every day. It's like if you want a healthy body, you have to fight every day. You have to eat properly, you have to go to the gym. And these are the things you should be doing if you want to be at the top echelon and have a decent amount of money and live the life that you want.

Totally. And I think, like, a lot of people that listen to this are already on this journey. But I think one thing that I'm trying to consciously do more when I listen to content now is actually like, write things down. You're really good at this Burgs. Like when you read a book, when you listen to a podcast, you write it down. I'm not sure if you have a notepad for like, all your learnings, but you always refer back to like, hey, I read this book.

I want to.

I want to read you this quote. A lot of people don't do that. They just read the thing, consume the thing, and then like a week goes on and they forget about it. Like, that's actually really important. You don't just consume content and just do nothing with it. Like, it's a bit of a waste of time.

Don't you meet so many people that just kind of parrot content and they sound really smart, but they don't sit down and deeply think about it and how it affects their lives. And then also that's one type of person, but then the next one is then applying it to their life. So this like Naval says he's like, you might as well just read the top 100 books over and over again and you get something different every time and implement them in your life and you'll be way better off than if you read 10,000 books.

So true. So true. Every time.

That's it. Because you get the message sooner or later. And then it's about seeing how it applies to your life and implementing it in your life. Yeah. All right, man number five. And I love this one. So this is rife in society. This is poor or limited financial education. So if you don't have a decent financial education, you're not going to be a good investor. Right. You're not going to save on your tax or whatever it may be. You need to learn about this stuff. You work a minimum of 40 years in your life, usually it's closer to 50. And you're working every day for money. And if you don't understand money, you're doing yourself a disservice because all these hours you're putting in, you're going in blind if you don't have a basic understanding of finance. And you'll be reliant on advisors who may not be the best at what they do or have your best interest at heart. And the scary thing is you won't be able to tell. You can't discern a good between, between a good and a bad advisor. And everything's available to you. You've got the Internet now. Do a course, read a few books. You know, don't, don't follow people blindly on YouTube either. Like, re. Listen to what they've got to say. But then go and seek the professional services like legal and tax and take those learnings to an accredited investor. So I've got my team set up, my legal person, my tax person, everything like that. And I start to look at, you know, because, because I've educated myself. I'll look at the ATO website, oh, I wonder what I could do here. Or I'll listen to something in a podcast and I'll go and take it to them. Be like, I want to implement this strategy. Will this be applicable to me? Is this illegal? Can I do it? Those kind of things. And that's where you really get those percentages around the edges. And what this really is about, and especially if you're 10, 20, 30 years into your journey, is don't become soft, okay? Understand what you're doing. Always push your advisors and push yourself to that edge of knowledge and squeeze everything you can out of all that hard effort you put in. Keep as much money as you can, minimize your tax and invest it for the long term.

Yeah, two things I want to share on this. One is I've never hired anyone good. And it's always been the wrong hire when I've hired someone to come in and do something that I need done that I don't know how to do myself. I've always hired poorly and it's always taken way too long to fire them and it's cost me a fuckload of money because I don't know what good looks like. They might be able to talk the talk, but not walk the walk and I don't know the difference. And then I figure out a year later that I spent a bunch of money on this thing that hasn't worked out and I should have just learned it myself. So the second part of that is best thing I've ever done, Burks, was you pushed me to go do the AI Australian Institute of Directors finance course. Yeah, yeah. I hated the idea of doing this. Like, you know, how much did you.

Push back on this? You're just like, no, I don't have the time. I'm doing this. I'm running a business, mate.

Now I can't do it. Not doing this. And did it. And I think, like, out of anything that I took away from that, outside of this big fat, like, book of all the rules and all the shit that I had to, like, learn, the number one takeaway was ask good questions. And that was the biggest takeaway that I, that I still use to this day with my personal accountant, crypto accountant, we've got bookkeeper, we've got a cfo. Anyone that I work with that I pay for Insights strategy, especially when it comes around finance. And like paying an expert is ask good questions and ask deep questions. And even, and even, like, use AI to help you ask deep questions when you don't know. Because what's like, finance isn't black and white and people have knowledge that they may be capped or they may be reading from a book, or they may be speaking from experience or like, you don't know. So I think ask your questions and ask a lot of questions is my biggest takeaway.

And we ended up changing our whole financial situation in the business. And we got in an accountant and bookkeeper and they're just amazing. And they say, I don't know, I'll go and find out. And just how. Just talk a little bit about how you now relate to finances in the business and relate to that person giving you that information, how you feel about it after you've learned it.

Well, I now you, like, finances are a weapon. Like, you know, we, we went from doing, you know, 2024 to two and a bit million a year and 2025, we closed off like seven and a half. Like we kind of 3x the business nearly in a year. How do we do that? Well, we started using finance as a weapon. I started using it as a weapon because I could actually understand, you know, why certain inputs create outputs. You could start to work on, you know, growth rates. You could start to understand, you know, you know, what economic, you know, economies of Scale will do. You could start like, there's so, like so many different things that you could start to understand and you're just a lot more confident. And I think as things grow and as your personal wealth grows or as your company grows, like more important than ever, you need to know your numbers because cash is what kills 90% of businesses. And you know, it's what a lot of people. And even on my personal life, I now understand a lot more to then work with my partner on what our home finances look like and how that operates. Like it's just super, super important.

Exactly right. And so if, if you're just starting out and we're taught like, you know this, this is something you don't talk about. That's nonsense. That's, that's like, that's a psyop to keep you poor. That's what that is. Honestly, talk about this stuff, learn about it. It is for you, no matter how, how much someone tells you it's not, it's actually quite easy to learn. And the whole thing is you learn so much and then you cut out 90% of it because it's all bullshit. And you stick with that 10%. And if you're already, you've already learned all of these things, catch up with your advisors, find out the latest thing, don't become soft and keep pushing those boundaries. And again, another thing people won't tell you is your life will change probably every five years. Like, you know, you'll be young, then you get married, then you have kids and the kids will get older. Next, next, next, next, next. So this will constantly be changing for you and you'll have different needs. So when you're updating your plan and your strategy, keep educating yourself along the way.

Yep. And another hack that I use personally is I like to go and find the best or one of the top person in that field that I can pay to learn from and then go all in on like Property as an example. Spent $10,000 on a strategy piece around property and spent probably three to six months because I didn't know a lot about property. Three to six months going down the rabbit hole to learn everything I could about it. You know, Bergs is obviously an expert. Spent a lot of time with him and just speak with multiple people on that topic to then create your own answer because rarely I find in finances a black and white.

Exactly right. So you actually implement a thing called Bloom's two sigma problem quite well. And that essentially is if you want to be like, you know, you got like A bell curve, a distribution, and you got people in the middle. If you want to move two standard deviations out in terms of education, the way you do that is by hiring an expert and one on one tutoring. That is the only way to get a significant boost in your education. And although it might seem high, like the rates you might be paying them, a few hundred dollars an hour, that is cents on the dollar compared to the time you're going to sink in and how it can accelerate your wealth. And like we talked about previously, it is time in the market. Yes. So the earlier you get that education, the earlier you get to a decision, the more you can be in the market.

Yeah, yeah.

Yep. Good.

Let's move on to that. That's a good point. Yep.

Number six. And you'll love this one, Ben. This, this was you all over a few years back. Bad spending habits, mate. So this can be anything. It can be overextending yourself, buying too much crap that you don't need, getting caught in these habits you don't understand. And it may be this, this. Everyone hates this example, but I'm going to illustrate it anyway. It may be expensive coffees every day, so. Or maybe drinking like a couple of skewies or betting on the horses. Habits that compound over time. And this is about choosing better habits that will help you achieve your goals and distinguish you from the masses. Like if you want to be elite and you want to have retire with millions of dollars more than anyone, like 90% of other people, you need to do things that they don't. And every single day we sacrifice the important for the urgent. I want that thing, I want it here. I want to feel that way. And you sacrifice that bigger goal. And what I'm saying here is don't sacrifice everything. Don't live like a monk and frugally and not have anything, but be sure about the choices that you're making and conscious. Don't be on autopilot and go and do things. Because everyone at my work goes for coffees and they buy their lunch and they drive this car and they have this house and just to illustrate this and really drive it home. So you work for an average of 45 years. If you save $10 per day, let's just say that's your coffee or your skewy or whatever it is you ride to work instead of catching the bus. Just $10 a day at 7% interest rate over 45 years, that's $1.1 million. Right? So $10 a day, if you invest that $1.1 million. So we think when we look at our credit card statements, oh, it's only 20 bucks. Oh, it's only 30 bucks. It's only this, it's only that. Yeah, but you're doing that almost every day for 45 years. That is a huge amount of money.

Yeah. I think for me, the thing that helped was getting actually clarity on what I was spending because, like, I was on autopilot in a sense of like, I'd just spend because I was just spending and I wasn't reviewing or looking at what I was spending. And I've got an assistant and that, you know, I didn't. I don't book my travel and I don't book different things. And, you know, a lot of what I would spend each month I actually didn't do personally. So I kind of. I wasn't even consciously thinking about it. It wasn't until we sat down and went through everything like, basically line by line, and you go, okay, fuck. Like, I understand now. And now what I do personally is like, you know, I'll de. Identify, but then I'll put my bank statements and credit card statements through AI and then get a summary of now what I'm spending on a month by month on. On different sectors. And now you get a really good understanding and basically there's no excuses anymore to not know this. And then you can start to restructure and, and pivot based on what you need.

So it's really cool. Exactly right. And for those people that have already accumulated wealth, I encourage you to go through your credit card statements because what a lot of people do say, okay, 15 or 20k, that's my cap per month. As long as it's under that enough money comes in, I'm absolutely fine. Just go through and have a review. And this is the equivalent of just paying lazy tax. Like you don't cancel the subscriptions or your insurance goes up every year because you don't make the phone call and you don't get a discount or just those very simple things so you can stay a little bit lean, set half a day aside a year for a little bit of admin and just sort those things out and just get to some better habits.

Yeah.

Love it, mate. Number seven. You love this one, mate. Watch Ben get on his soapbox about this. This is so good. So the get rich quick mentality, this is horseshit. Yeah, Right. So winning lotto is around one in a 30 million chance. That's probably the chance you have of getting rich quick. It's the same with risky investments that you do not understand. Do not listen to some guy on YouTube, some trader that's going to make you rich in seven minutes a day. It doesn't happen. Wealth building takes time, consistent approach. Just like going to the gym, you are not going to get jacked in two days. It does not happen. You're going to die. If you try, put it that way, with all the bloody drugs you'd be on. It takes time and it takes consistent effort. And the good thing is there's no magic thing. Like these are known things that you can do. It takes a bit of time. Great. I've got time. Brilliant. I can do a little bit every day and that's fantastic. I might just read a little bit on my lunch break. And Ben, I know you've got a lot of examples of what people promise you and how all this get rich quick thing and really they're just selling courses to fund their lifestyles and they are broke behind the scenes.

Yeah, I think this is so relatable in crypto. And again, we know a lot of listeners have built all their wealth and all, you know, on that journey. I think the important thing to remember in crypto is that you only hear the good stories. And a lot of people think that it's super easy to come in and just make a bunch of money in crypto, but the reality is it's not. And there are tough periods and you know, this idea that like, you know, something is new and it's easy to make money and you can make 20% or 10% a month on some AI, new bot or like some yield bearing. Thing is, there's always the other side, right? These are open markets. You know, once markets are understood, you know, the, the return profile becomes less and less over time because there's more and more people in the market that want to take advantage of it. And you know, a lot of these get rich quick style, you know, protocols or whatever it may be may work for a very short period of time, but usually end really poorly because the economics of it are not sustainable. And that's where people lose money. You know, the protocol gets rugged. You have impermanent loss where you basically just lose, you know, a bunch of money through, you know, you know, different defi products. Regardless what it is, when you're getting into crypto, realize that we've all tried. It's not any easier. It doesn't work in crypto. Just because crypto's new doesn't mean you can now make money faster. And I Always just question everything. Yeah, you know, we're in crypto or not. It's not easy.

There's no secrets to getting rich, right? Like it's very boring but people want shortcuts. There are a few shortcuts you can do but they're not even really worth taking. Like the best things you can do is just save more and invest more and compound earlier. Like they're the shortcuts, right. And trying to find some secret hack to getting rich, you're going to lose your capital, you're going to put that capital at risk. And people don't want to take the long discipline path, the boring path. They want the exciting one. I can make it rich quickly. I could be rich tomorrow or the end of the year or the end of two years. Don't get sucked into any of that nonsense. And this leads perfectly into number eight, not fully appreciating or using the power of compounding gains. So most people don't understand non linear growth. They understand growth just kind of goes up. Like this year I have 10k, then I don't know, 5 years later 20, then 40 and great, brilliant. Like you know, eventually just over time if you look at any compound growth, it's essentially just kind of linear and then just bang straight up and to the right. People don't understand hockey stick wealth and they don't understand it in business. Startup guys might get it, but a lot of people just do not. And to give you the example, Warren Buffett made 99% of his worth, his net worth after he turned 50 years old but 95% of it was accumulated after he turned 65. So he started investing I'm pretty sure in his teens. So let's just say from 20 to 65, 45 years, he only accumulated 5% of his net wealth, right? So he made 95% of that after he turned 65 and I'm pretty sure he's in his 90s now. So that 30 years of compounding or slightly under 30 years outdid the first 45 years. That's exponential growth and that's why they call it the eighth wonder of the world.

Yeah, I love this Berg because I also, I think about this in like you know, a business equity growth like ownership in assets, which for me is the most exciting part about growing wealth, whether it be property, whether it be about a business, whether it be about Bitcoin, you know, any or just Ethereum or just holding anything for a long period of time. People look so short term like we see this every day in our space, folks like members will come in or our audience online will be like, oh, you know, I'm, you know, I've been in for crypto for three months. I'm not rich yet. It's like, well, no fucking shit you're not rich yet. Like, chill out and understand that, you know, growth is, is, you know, non linear and it will compound over time. And you know, I think about our crypto holdings or whether it be, you know, the business that we've been working so, so hard on for so, so many years, like click shift now five and a half years old. Going back first four years was brutal. Now we're into this growth stage where the company's growing really fast, the equity growth is compounding like, and it was, it was growth wise or asset value wise for four years was basically nothing. And now the last two years, it's gone off the chart. So yeah, you know, it's about time.

Exactly right. Anything worth doing takes time. And to use like, you know, analogies, relationships, like think about the relationship with your partner. Takes a lot of time. It gets better over time. You understand each other more and you get along better. Right? Or going to the gym. It takes a lot of time to build a healthy body, a gym habit, and it goes through to eating and everything. Anything you want to become skilled at that is worthwhile doing will take a lot of time. And think of it as a flywheel. We use this in startup jargon quite a lot. There's this giant wheel that you're trying to push and at the start it is so heavy and you can't get it going. You're like, why do I even try? I push for like six months and I moved to a millimeter. But eventually when you push and time goes on, you get that one rotation. And after you get that, the flywheel starts to go around and it starts to spin faster and faster and faster. And that is the exponential growth you get in your relationships, your wealth, gym, learning guitar, whatever it may be.

So good time.

Yeah, exactly right. And number nine, mate, we're almost there. Not managing your debt. So debt is a massive drain on your budget and your wealth. It's a huge burden. Break away from credit card debt. Don't take on too much mortgage debt for your primary place of residence. I've seen this with the majority of my mates that are very high income earners. What did they do? Got a high income after they did their MBAs, went out and got a massive house and now some noose around their necks. They went and got married after that they had kids. The wife drops down to part time or potentially is not working to look after the children. Massive mortgage. They're just on this hamster wheel. They've got a lot of credit card debt as well. You know, they don't pay off their credit cards. They want to live, have everything at once. Oh, I'm earning heaps of money. I'm going to earn heaps of money forever. I'll just keep paying this, it'll be fine. And really the point here is to get out of debt as quickly as possible and use good debt for investments or use consolidation of debt. So if you've got lots of credit cards, get a balance, transfer to a 0% interest card and then pay that off as quickly as you can. So use debt to your advantage. Let debt run you.

Yeah, and I think as a couple burgs, like I've just literally gone through this. Like, as you know, Laura and I have been here for a little while now, like bringing our finances together and what I used to do personally and what she used to do personally, like we're now, you know, bringing it together. And how you do that as a couple, I think is, is even more important because you're kind of, you know, you're managing, it's like, it's like a business nearly. Like, you know, you got to come together and treat your finances nearly. I like to treat it like a business because it makes more sense, you know, when you think about it like you're an entity together. How do we grow our capital? How do we grow our balance sheet?

You know, exactly right. And if you've already got a decent amount of wealth and just have a look at what you're doing. So if you've got it in property, you've got a significant amount of debt. What's coming up on the horizon for you? So what is your strategy? Are you going to have cash flow issues because you might retire and not have your high income job? Do you want to sell down some of that and reduce your debt? Or do you leverage a lot of credit cards and you pay a heap off and you're a bit complacent with it? Or do you have that personal loan that's kind of hanging around or that loan on your car? What do you have that's eating away at you that you can pay off and not have to service because the banks win, you don't.

How do you manage this perks in your, you know, your relationship? Do you have like a, a monthly meeting? Do you Manage it all. Does your partner, like, how does that work?

Yeah, we used to have like a. We don't have too many meetings nowadays. We do for our goals and stuff, but we kind of just put a few rules in place about what we wanted to do, how much we wanted to spend, and then how we manage that is we've got a limit on our credit card and we can spend on that credit card for specific things. We never really get near the monthly limit. We did have to change a few of our spending habits where I was just like, this took a very long time. This took years of, hey, we're just buying this bunch of bullshit. Like, why are we doing this? Like, we're going to get further away from our go. And it's for you to find out how to explain it in a way to your partner that makes sense to them and talk about like, hey, if we keep doing this, great, we can keep doing it, but this is the path we're going to go down. You might have to go back to work because you're buying too many of these Amazon boxes that rock up at the house or we don't need them or it's crowding us out and it makes me feel like this and I really want us to go in this direction. Can we make this change or monitor month to month and just see how we're going and we can work towards this together?

Yeah.

So, and for us, like at the start, it was us both working full time before we had, before we were married actually and had our first child and it was just paying down our mortgage, so putting as much in the offset account as we could because we knew that my wife would want to work part time or not at all when we had a child. And that was an option that was available to us. And she ended up working part time and then a few years later she just quit a job and that's what she wanted to do because we planned and we saved all that money and it gave us that future freedom.

Yeah, love it.

Yeah, love it. And then number 10, mate, lack of financial planning. Oh, mate, don't we see this a lot? So what surprised me was a lot of high net worth people don't have clear financial goals. And if you don't have financial goals, how do you know what you're aiming for and how can you align activities to it? So whatever you have in your life, you need goals in your life and you need these mental models. So this mental model of I need to save this amount or do this thing or go to the gym, whatever it is, that's what your decisions are going to be made on. If you write down those goals and you look at them every day, that is what you're going to go towards. That is just step number one because a lot of people's decisions are just made on must haves, what everyone else has and instant gratification. And I work hard, I deserve a big house. And mate, this was so eye opening. When I worked in health there was a surgeon that probably earned one and a half million per year, went out, bought the big house, has four kids, does absolutely everything for them and she's like, well I work really hard, I've studied for like 30 years, I deserve the big house, I deserve this. Where's all my money? At that time my net worth was higher than hers and she out earned me more than 10 to 1.

That's crazy, right?

Which is insane because the spending's insane. You've got the big international holidays, all the private schools for the kids, the massive house, all the like designer clothes from Italy that costs so much. Because I'm a surgeon I have to look a certain way and all that money just got eviscerated and they didn't have that financial security and they never bothered to learn because they were focusing so much on medicine. Becoming a consultant surgeon.

I think one thing that it's, I just made a note personally because I want to, you know, think about in my relationship and we've done this a little bit but like I think a lot of people including myself are very, you know, we see kind of what's, like, what's ahead of us. We might be thinking a bit too short term when like thinking financially, like five, 10 years when we have kids, when we're married, when it's like what does that look like? Like you know, and what money are you going to need at that point? If you have four kids in private school, as example, like what does that cost you? Like that's, you know, as someone that doesn't have kids, like I really haven't thought about that. But at some point in the future like I'm going to need to, you know, be, be you know, not only thinking about it but you know we're going to be spending money on it. So like planning about what you need cash flow wise and, and that in the future. Then to your point, what happens if you lose your job? What happens if you get made redundant? What happens if you can't work anymore like and you're, you don't have that income you know, got no assets.

Well, you know, oh, people don't even think about income protection. Like if you're reliant on your job to pay your mortgage, if you're a sole income earner or you're the majority income earner, look at income protection. That's what, yeah, it'll cost you about 3% of your wage but maybe it's worth it for you because if that goes away and you can't easily find another job and replace that, you better have a big emergency fund to fund that. And man, the last thing I'll say about financial planning is it doesn't have to be complicated, it can just be a few statements, it's very easy to do. And a financial plan really just means you're going to give up some short term purchases so you align with your long term goals. You give up those short term shot in the arm things that maybe I don't go on that massive international holiday that's going to cost me 20 or 30 grand this year, maybe I put that towards my mortgage and I go on a local holiday twice and in a couple of years that'll be compounding. I'll have some more choices and I can go on another holiday then and just think about moving things around. It doesn't all have to be now. There's this thing in society where I think a lot of people, particularly young people, have just given up because mortgages cost a lot. Cost of living is very high. Things are just very challenging compared to where they used to be. And don't give up, don't throw the towel in like actually just fucking go for it. It's not that it is difficult to do because you need discipline, but it is achievable. There is a path and it is there if you want it. If you want to be wealthy, get after it, start sacrificing a bit today. Don't do the thing your friends are doing. I know it's hard to see, but you'll be in such a better position. And it's not like, you know, they're going like this and you're just going to be here, you'll be up here because of that exponential growth, the choices and freedom I have compared to 98 out of a hundred of my friends is just insane. And I am way, way above them. And it's not a brag, it's just to say that, you know, my autistic special interest was investing since I was 20 years old. And it's just something I've been doing and I Didn't realize until recently how much that is actually compounds. Yeah. Compounded and made my life amazing.

Yeah. And also you don't get taught this. Like I quit year 12, quit high school because you know this wasn't learning this stuff. I was trying to build my business and then I look back and go wait a minute. Not only did they not teach me that, they didn't teach you about taxes, they didn't teach you about investing, they don't teach you about compounding, they don't teach about superannuation, they don't teach about anything.

You'll learn this stuff exactly right. And just, just like you mentioned, super there and tax. If you say percentages there if you get your structuring right, if you put them in the right vehicles that saves you 10, 15, 20% on the money that comes your way and then that compounds at stock market's pumping at like 15% at the moment like you are getting some significant gains. And just try be disciplined, you know, as small as you can. Don't let the wheels come off. Even if you're really wealthy, don't let the wheels come off. Cause that's how you blow wealth. Teach your kids as well because if they grow up rich they will blow the entire stack because they don't know what it is to earn a dollar. And let that compound over time and you will be rewarded.

So good Berg. So there's the top 10 secrets. Well from the book Property Secrets of the Rich by Alan Mason but the top 10 points there around money mistakes that destroy wealth. You've got not making saving a priority, unnecessary spending habits, delayed investment decisions under investment in self development, poor or limited financial education, bad spending habits, get rich quick mentality, not fully appreciating the power of combating gains, not managing your debt and lack of financial planning. Wow Bergs, that's, that's so good.

Oh mate just hits you right in the feelings. Yeah. And the, the whole thing is get out there, learn, get after it, talk to advisors, pay the money, invest in yourself and just accelerate your life.

Yeah. Focus on behavior, structure and discipline. And that's the one that is going to be a bit, be a bit more intentional clear on your goals and that is how wealth is grown and protected.

The final thing I'll say is you've been told your whole life this is not for you, it is for you. You can be like all those other rich people if you already are mate, congratulations. And just keep it going. Don't become soft, don't become complacent, just set yourself up for the next five years and live an amazing life. Love it.

Thank you so much folks for listening. As always, we'd love for you to share these podcasts around if you find them interesting. If you think a friend or family member would benefit from it, please share it around. Subscribe if you're on YouTube, follow us on your favorite podcasting app and we'll see you on the next episode.

Thanks, JP.