210. How to Build a Personal Finance Plan That Grows Your Wealth

Welcome back to another episode of the Ben and Bergs Podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift alongside Ms. Bergs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift. We're here to bring you world class crypto research strategies and insights to help you crush this crypto bull market. Plus, get an exclusive behind the scenes look as we scale Australia's leading crypto research company. Today we're talking all things personal finance and investing to grow your wealth. Because I nailed that intro, mate, that's the first time I've actually nailed that.

Well done, mate. I'm impressed. It's taken, you know, 210 episodes but mate, we finally got there. This is a personal milestone. Don't worry about the investing mate.

This is the real world, this is a real win.

Yeah, that's it. And look for this one we're going to put a big not financial advice, investment advice, tax advice, everything warning on this. We are going to be speaking about those things generally nature only. And I'm excited for this one Ben, because you're actually inspired to do this episode. It's something I love talking about. And now you've got the bug, mate. Yeah.

So bit of context. We've been doing a lot of planning, three year planning for our business and also around personal finances, personal wealth, ambitions, where we want to get to, how much money we want to have, where it's going to be invested, all these sorts of things which has been super insightful because we can kind of get a view and a vision of where we want to be and I highly recommend everyone do that. But then what we've done is reverse engineered a way to get there. And something that I've always struggled in or struggled, slash, never put much time and attention in is actually the mechanisms in which you need to have to grow your personal wealth to achieve those things. Because my focus and all my attention has always been my business. Grow the business, grow profitability, grow my crypto portfolio, but never what after that and never like how I actually do anything with that. And what's been so insightful, you know, Bergs is on the other side of this in terms of like, you've been through a lot of this, you're awesome at personal finance. So what we've really done is set up, you know, different structures and mechanisms. When I say we, I've done this off sort of, you know, chatting and going deep with Bergs on this, a number of different things to help create like a roadmap and a personal forecast and A personal P and L. And when I, when I started thinking about my personal life as a business, I'm like, this makes so much fucking sense. P and L balance sheets, how we all do this. And, and then now it's really exciting to see, like, how soon I'm going to be able to achieve my personal financial goals versus what it was in the past, which was just sort of money comes, money goes and business, business, business. And now I feel as I've got a bit more structure around what the hell is actually going on with, you know, my personal, personal finances.

Yeah, because when we were doing this exec retreat, we looked at our personal visions and then how we can for our lives, how we can live that through the business, but then also how we're kind of personally structured. And I remember you saying, like, you've got these goals and you're kind of not getting towards them. Your personal ones are things you want to achieve. And we asked you a question and it was, how are you complicit in creating the conditions you say you don't want? And first of all, you were like, you what, mate? And then like, all right, here, have you done these things? You're like, no, no. And I'm like, well, you need to, man. Like, you got to take steps towards those goals just like you would your fitness or anything else. And people need to realize that you don't succeed to the level of your goals, you fail to the level of your systems. If you don't have those systems in place working for you and that automation every single day, you are playing on hard mode. When you're trying to achieve your goals.

That, that really resonates because, you know, my income and personal and business, you know, has grown massively over the last, you know, couple of years. But like, outside of our, you know, sort of business and, you know, balance sheet growth, P L and my crypto portfolio and the business crypto portfolio, that's all going great. But then personally I'm like, well, hold on a minute. My salary and income is, you know, really grown the last for three years. But I, you know, I haven't really done too much with the money. Like, I haven't really been able to achieve some of my personal goals through, through fiat. And I think the systems that we've created now just makes so much sense and, and it's kind of on autopilot. And yes, it's only been up for, you know, a few weeks now, but already structurally, I, I kind of know where things are going and I'm Managing it more like a business where before I was probably not managing it at all, and it was just whatever happens, happens. But now I'm running it like a business. And, and, and that makes me excited.

All right, let's talk about this, because this is something I've just, I don't know, probably innately done since birth, right? Because I saw what my parents had, and I'm like, I see how they. I saw how they struggled and the things that we. We had to endure. And I'm like, no, I don't want that for my life. I need to learn about this and I need to enact it. So I started doing that from when I was probably 13, like maybe even earlier, about saving money, having a business here, saving more cash, working at Kohl's, then working professional jobs, started investing when I was 19 or 20. And that's been compounding for over 20 years. Like, these are just structures and systems that I've set up that have worked for me. And I want to ask you about, let's go back to before two weeks ago, your kind of psychology around this. So you've got this business. It is doing really well. You get income from that. And let's call it out, you're a business owner, and for your age bracket, you're in the top, like 5 or 10% or something of income earners because you are a business owner. So you're doing well. But how did you view the kind of psychology around that money coming in to your accounts and what you did with it?

Yeah, well, I think it's changed dramatically because of the amount of income and growth that I've. That I've got both on like a asset level and income level from cash. And I.

Let's call that out. Let's call it out. So a year ago or a year and a half ago, your salary was like $4. You're getting paid nothing, and now you're actually getting paid a decent salary because you've worked everything out in the business. So you've had that big change as well.

Yeah, well. And too, like, going back three or four years ago, like, I basically sold a lot of my crypto to build collective shift. You know, I had a huge tax debt. We weren't making any money. We're losing a bunch of money trying to grow this thing. Like, I was basically, you know, running off. Running off fumes. And, you know, if we failed, I was going to be bankrupt, essentially, and three years on or two years on now making really good money. You know, the business is Doing really well, a long way to go. But that's been a huge shift personally. And you're not taught one, you're not taught the basics of salary management at school, let alone running a business and having capital growth and investments and structures and like, where do you learn any of that? I've just learned all that off, you know, off myself essentially. But I think the most important here, back to your thing around processes and systems.

I didn't have any of that because I never focused on it. My. And I still believe this. Where I'm going to make most of my money and where I'm making most of my money is going to be in, in the growth of our business. In crypto. It was not ever through putting money away and saving and sort of like building towards something. I'm like an all or nothing guy. So I'm like, well, if it's not like six figures, oh, it doesn't excite me. But that's so counterintuitive because it's delayed gratification, right? It's more about building towards something and having the processes and systems to do that. And now I've got that. I'm like, wow, this is fascinating because it's like, it's like compound growth, right? Versus not doing anything at all. And basically money comes, money goes.

I like this because I talk about the all or nothing mindset quality quite a lot. And you find this a lot in investing, entrepreneurship. I have to sell my, my company for $20 million or it's nothing. Or I have to sell or I have to make $2 million investing so I can take that $2 million and I can buy 100% of a house. And we all hear the stories. Ben, Ben and I are behind the scenes. We know all these people that have tried to make it just a little bit more, just one more step. You even look in movies where it's like, I forget the ball guy. He's in like all the fighting movies. He's in like Transporter and everything like that. And you know, his whole thing was he was doing jobs until he gets to 50 million and he's at 48 million. And of course he takes the one last job and it all goes to almost dies, loses all his money. It's absolutely crazy. This all or nothing mentality and the kind of visualization I have of this is being in the middle of the ocean in a rowboat and you refuse to row for the shore. You're just sitting there saying, I, I want that wave to come. And it's like, no, start rowing for the shore and while you're rowing and you're making it towards the shore, you got a bigger chance of survival, you're moving towards your goals and if the wave comes, great, yeah, that's amazing. But you need that constant thing coming in.

And I think too the other thing is.

Like.

You know, lifestyle creep is definitely a real thing and one thing that I love to do is travel and experiences. Like that's what I love and I think that's. It's hard to, it's not hard, you've just got to manage. Well, I'm, I'm managing that better in terms of, you know, being able to still build towards personally the, like the plan B, if it all goes to business crypto, you know, which I don't think it will but like, let's say something bad does happen, touch wood. Then like you've got, like you said, you've got that other consistent areas that you're, you're sort of touching, diversifying against because the idea of saving money is so boring for me. I'm like, nah, let's pump it all in crypto. And I've always been 100% crypto, right? Like, like all my money's always been in crypto being very cash, cash poor. But also now I'm in a very grateful position where I, I do have excess income that I don't need that I can start to build other channels of investments.

So last year I remember you got a bonus and it might have been. No, it wasn't a bonus. It was like you saved up some money and I think it might have been something like 10k and you had it in your account and you're like, bergs, where do I invest this? And I'm like, no, you just leave it there. And a week later came back like, oh my God, this is so amazing. I've got this money there so I know if I'm in trouble, like I'll have this as a safety blanket as an emergency fund. And you're like, oh, I just feel so secure because just having $0 or 100 bucks in my bank account because I have to invest everything in Bitcoin was really stressing me out and I didn't realize it. And from that point you've made more money and you got yourself to a point where you didn't have an emergency fund and you are actually, we call it hedonistic adaptation. Where you go from oh, I want this to I'm flying here, I'm going to have more holidays Now I'm going business class and I'm doing a lot more things. Maybe you could talk to the, like, what happened between that kind of mindset and going back to.

I know, where did this come from? Is this trying to keep up with other people? I've heard it described as, well, I work so hard. This is what I'm owed. This is my money, I'm going to spend it kind of thing.

Okay, so. So my, my. One of my core values is, is adventure. And. And that basically is travel. Like, I love traveling. And I definitely have the mindset of I work so fucking hard day in, day out. I give up on so much stuff that I don't get to do. So I'm going to reward myself by, like, when I go on travel and holidays, I'm going to do it nice. And that's always been sort of in my. In my head. I've always wanted to get to that point. But also if I think about other areas, like, whether it be, you know, giving money to family or like, lending mates money, like, I do that quite a bit. And I think I leave myself.

Last in a sense of I'm trying to look after, you know, those closest around me. And because that's also the goal of mine too, the reason I'm doing this business is to buy my house and kind of set myself up and all that sort of stuff. And now having a girlfriend as well, like, also starting to think, well, I'm like, like down the line. I'm gonna need my. I need my sorted because I can't just always be 100% crypto, 100% risk on all or nothing. It's all going to be. It's all going to be amazing or it's all going to go to zero. That's all right when you're single, but. And you start again. But like now it's like, you know, okay, I need to make sure that I'm protecting my downside a little bit more, if that makes sense.

Yeah, absolutely, mate. I like the forward thinking. And have you just announced to the world, mate, that you've got a girlfriend? Is this the first time?

I think that's reversed on the Bennett Burgers podcast.

Well done, mate. Well done. Publicly announced Ben Simpson has a girlfriend.

That's like, in the group.

Do you remember 2021 where you did that talk? You're like, by the way, this is my partner. And everyone's like, what the hell? I'd like to thank my partner. So good, so good.

Oh, dear. And the market's down so, you know, she's here for the right reasons. Thank goodness.

Yeah.

You'Re just pretty rich, mate. Just one more cycle. One more cycle. So this is a key thing that people need to understand. Think about your future. There's this amazing YouTube channel I watch. It's Caleb Hammer, Financial Audit. And he's basically this, like, autistic guy that goes through people's finances in the States, generally in Austin. And mate, people's spending are out of control. Like, they're like, oh, I'm just by myself. So I won't buy groceries, I won't cook. I'm just gonna buy Uber eats every single day. I'm gonna go on this holiday. I go to Disneyland. I bought a $70,000 truck at 19% interest, even though I only earn 50 grand a year. And they're just in this financial hole and they think they're okay because they're making the minimum monthly repayments on their credit cards and the minimum monthly repayments on their debt. That's not the goal. The goal is to save up some money. Spend less than you earn, pay yourself first. So take 10% of whatever you earn or whatever that number is for you, and put it into mutual fund, into Bitcoin, into savings, whatever you want to do. Have an emergency fund, which is three to six months worth of living expenses, because if something happens, you break your leg and you can't work whatever it is, you're relatively safe. And just delay that gratification around, hey, you know, I. I won't go on that holiday now. I'll do that thing now. I'm going to get my shit right for six months. I'm going to work really hard, and then my life will be so much easier. Because if you don't do that, you get caught in a poverty cycle. And I don't blame these people because we are not taught this. Like, we are not taught. If you make these decisions in this way, it's just, hey, you went to school, now you're out in the real world, and you have to figure it out yourself. On top of everything you've got to do in your life on a daily basis, working out personal finance is not going to be very high on that list.

Yeah. And I think.

Again, back to the point of this whole thing is unless you're focusing on it, unless you're learning about it, unless you put the attention on this area, well, then you just go, you know, the life goes on and never, you know, nothing ever happens. And I think that's been the biggest thing for Me like I went and I've done a lot of like reading on obviously this space before but I think it was like my attention was more in the business and crypto that like I just didn't have the time to even think or you know, create those structures and processes. And now I've done that and it's automated. I'm like great, this is awesome. Like I understand this.

How long did all those structures take you to actually make mate?

I just put it all in the chatgpt probably took me less than an hour.

There you go, less than an hour. And that's going to compound over time. And if people want to see the effect of this, open up like a little Google sheet or Excel, literally type in the amount that you're going to save each week or month and then compound it year on year and see what money you get in 10, 20, 30, 40 years if you do that. And it is astronomical.

And just on a micro level, this is exactly what I did, right? So I wrote down what my where I wanted to be in 5 years time in terms of like my financial goals. I was looking at how much money I and I already had this, right? So this comes back to my crypto. But then there's also for me different avenues of wealth creation is crypto. There's.

The business, you know, dividends for the business, growth property and my income. So I was really looking around, well, where do I want to get to asset wise with property cash crypto looking at percentage returns each year compounded and basically I'm just trying to get to a point at some point in the future, next few years where I can basically live and earn an income off those investments without ever having to work again. But I'll obviously continue working. This is just like, you know, just a good model to have. So once I figured that out, punch all that in. I put all that into ChatGPT also went through my bank statements, wrote out everything that I spent money on, the weekly amount, put all that into ChatGPT and then it literally spat out an investment structure, personal structure for me to help me achieve that. I went and then credit all the automated transactions in in the bank and then it was done literally within an hour. I was like, well that was easy.

Yeah. And if you do this as simple percentages, even one Ramit seti, I will teach you to be rich. His book is quite good and he teaches you how to do this in a very kind of simple way. You don't have to go through and budget every little item and why have you spent $10 at Target and all sort of nonsense. It's more just having percentages like 10%, I invest 10%, I save 20. Or. Well, I know 60% goes on like fixed things like my mortgage and other things, and then the rest goes on discretionary spending. Another good book is Paul Clif Making Money. Highly recommend this book. Get amongst it. That was probably the first book I read when I was 17 and set me up for life. And just looking at like the contents page, like, it's no bullshit. It's not like all these stories and all this nonsense. It's like this is how you do it. Get to work. Look at these 10 steps of financial security, your budget, saving faster, smart buying and credit, debt investing, owning a home, getting the maximum tax, insurance, mortgages, investing in shares, property, retirement, estate planning. What if things go wrong? Incredible. Like these are the things that you need to know. And this stuff is so simple. Like just the changes you've made in one hour will set you up for life and then you can accelerate from there. You can start utilizing credit, you can start utilizing debt, you can use your use debt to buy a house. You can then recycle that debt. There's all these fancy things that you can do and systems you can set up, and the majority of those take less than an hour to set up each. And you just need to do them once and you just leave them. It's not like going to the gym every single day and building and. Ben, how do you feel now that you've set up that automation and that money just goes out of your account to another account? How do you feel?

Oh, it just feels secure.

Do you feel like you're missing out or anything like that?

No, it just feels as though, like, like it's so funny because everything you just mentioned, I'm like that I know everything about that in the crypto world and I always look at that in terms of crypto, but never really spend a lot of time again back in personal aud Fiat land because I fucking hate it. But then I'm like, wait a minute. Now that earning decent money and the things are going like I needed that strategy and I just feel as though it's, it's, it's sorted now. Like the emergency fund, the, the investments, we've got like, things happening. I'm like, I. It just. Yeah. Again, running it like a business. I feel empowered to do it. And again, another book like yours, Richest man in Babylon. Great book. There's a. It's a story, it's A little less like, logical and formal. It's a bit more like story. Like story based. And his whole thing is just putting 10% aside no matter what, into not crazy investments, like I. E. Not crypto, and just building that over time and again. It's boring and I hate boring. And I guess that's why I've never looked at it, because I'm just like, well, you know, fuck that. Like, I want to, you know, want to go big or go home, but you've got to be boring here.

That's the mentality. Like, go big or go home. I have to make it this year. I'm going to die. It's like, no, you're not going to die, you're going to be fine. If you're an Australian, look at your superannuation. Look at the things they invest in. They invest in it because they. They're relatively secure. Out of every 10 years, you might have two down years, but you make money over time and that is your retirement. So the government doesn't have to pay out pensions. You should do a similar thing for yourself. I was looking at the Vanguard website. Their marketing is brilliant. It's like this big thing and it says, oh, so you don't like money? And it's like, whoa, geez, right in your face. It's the crypto equivalent of have, have fun staying poor.

Yeah.

And you literally do five clicks and from your account you send money over every week or month. It automatically happens and it just grows. You wake up in a decade or two and you got shitloads of money in there.

So good, so good. And I think that reflection bit I really struggled on and I'm trying to get up the notes that we had from our catch up the other day. But, like, the reflection bit on, like looking at where you've come from and where you are now, bro. Yeah, I've got it. It was ridiculous. It was like I was.

Before you go into it, mate, I'll let you set the scene. Let me set the scene. So we're at this beautiful place in Gracetown near Margaret river down south. Amazing house. Like, four bedroom, four bathroom, three spas, six toilets and, like, beautiful view of the ocean. And we wanted somewhere, you know, nice for our exec retreat, surprisingly affordable as well. So anyway, we're all sitting down, like, oh, Ben's just like, oh, I've just got nothing out of this business. Like, oh, I just kept going and going. I put it. Put all this money in and like, I just haven't made it yet. I thought I'd make it by now. And I'm thinking, what the. Like, Trav's like looking at him as well, like, okay, no, this, this is understandable. You've done a lot in the business. A lot has happened. And Trav got you do this exercise. Write down where you were 18 months ago, just 18 months ago, and where you are now. Do you. Do you want to read out some of those things?

It was, it was pretty wild. It's like even 18 months ago, like, basically while I was traveling around, homeless, traveling around in a suitcase, salary was absolutely fucking awkward because I was paying myself the least out of any of our employees in the company.

Just. Just to try and get it through.

Personally. All my, all my cash was in crypto. Didn't have a car, sold everything. Business was losing money and it still had. It's my tax set that I hadn't paid off yet. And then, yeah, we just constantly, like, trying and like everything I had was in the business trying to grow that. Like, that's where I like, you know, I still have my personal crypto, but I was like, still trying to grow all of that.

Yeah, you're flying around, you're trying to do a cap raise.

There was a lot of. There was so much going on. And then we got you to write down, okay, where you at today? And you want to call out some of those things about how far you've made it just in 18 months.

Yeah, I mean, salaries are nearly like, you know, 3 or 4x. Crypto's gone up heaps. Got a car, got my. Got my dream car. Got the Tesla.

Like seven figure turnaround profit wise in the business, which is nuts.

Got a girlfriend that was put in here. It's a person paid off all the tax. Personal wealth has grown a lot. Business has grown a lot. Like, and that was only 18 months ago, which is insane.

You got somewhere to live now you have a home.

I got a home.

I've got a bedroom, plus heaps of other stuff. And let's call out the big one where you felt like you haven't made it. You were. Your net worth was negative, multiple six figures. Right, Right. Because you had like tax day, all this kind of stuff. Obviously you've got equity in the business.

Yeah.

But you have to be able to sell it.

And now you've gone the other way and you have a positive net worth. And the change has been dramatic from that negative to that positive just in those 18 months. Plus that's not actually including the business. And the business is worth a lot More because of how hard you've worked in it. That is an insane turnaround in 18 months for someone your age, let alone someone that's 30, 40, 50. That's an insane turnaround, mate.

And I didn't, I didn't really realize that, you know, I really sat back and reflected on that. And I think that again, coming back to like, where your money is parked and like, you know, I think a lot of people right now, right, are thinking about, you know, the market's down, maybe they didn't take, you know, enough of the table or maybe they don't have enough outside of crypto. And it can be hard to sort of manage these drawdowns. I think that's one thing that's really helped, you know, me and us is having like, you know, we've got multiple different investments. We've got, you know, cash, like a large cash balance, like we're not running off fumes anymore.

That's really important because otherwise you end up so stressed because you're just monitoring the day to day. And that's where people make poor investment decisions, is because they need the money and they sell their crypto. Like, that's not where you want to be.

Yeah. And you want these investments, they're just passive. You just throw it across, you go to sleep. You know, it's long term. Everything will be sorted out in time.

Yeah. Agree. Agree.

Mate. I'm proud that you've made these changes, mate. You're a lot happier and you actually. You're into it now, mate.

Yeah, super into it. And I think my, it's just my feed, my, my. Just to summarize that for business owners that don't do this, because I know and because I speak to a lot of them, because I'm mates with a lot of business owners is we are so focused on the business. That's the only thing that matters. That's. That's the go big or go home. And I'm still that. Don't get me wrong. However, it's nice now to also know that to the side, we're building another route to wealth creation that isn't entirely based on the idea that your business succeeds because most fail. And I'm not saying that our business will fail. I think our business is going absolutely amazing. But to focus on yourself a little bit has been a big, big game changer.

Yeah. Because things can happen outside of your control, you know, in your business. And you would have seen that through eo and it's quite stressful if you're not In a position of fu. If you're personally in a position of fu, you're going to take a lot more risk, you're going to do a lot better in your business because it's not an all or nothing scenario. You're not tied to it. One more thing I want to bring up with the all or nothing is I talk to quite a few people, especially Oz, Cryptocon, about investing. And these are, these are just peers, people that are, that are in this space. And a lot of them say.

They have a number. And I'm like, well, okay, what is your number? Because, you know, we talk about invest, talk about money. I said, oh, five million. I'm like, well, why five million? Well, if I hit a $5 million target and I've got that in my bank or I'm investing it, 4% rule says I'll get 200k per year and I'll get to spend that and I'm retired, which is a very all or nothing. First of all, you probably don't want to retire. You want to do something with your life. You're going to be very bored because none of your mates are retired. And also they're not factoring that, that $5 million. If you plan to live another 50 years, if you're like 30 and you live to 80, 40, you live to whatever, that's an extra 100k per year. You can burn down on that capital sum as well. Plus, you're going to earn a lot more than that. 4% is after tax. You're going to earn a lot more than that in markets over time. You don't need to get to that massive number and then retire. And if you look at people that have had massive exits, I know very, very few that are retired. And the ones that are are in their late 50s and 60s and they still do side projects, have wineries, have syndicates, invest in property actively. No one truly kind of retires.

Yeah.

And I just want to reiterate to people that it's not all or nothing. Just start growing it and you just start to see how much easier your life becomes, how much stress has been removed. And also that compounding effect, it's just this huge exponential curve. The earlier you get into it, the better off you will be.

Yep, totally agree, totally agree. Okay, great episode.

Great, mate. And we'll continue to work on it, mate. We'll kick you up a few levels. You've done the basic stuff now, which I'm very proud that you've done. And let's get into structuring and let's get into with professionals, of course. And let's get your parents a house.

Let's do it. Thank you so much, folks. Hope you enjoyed the episode. If you have any friends or family that you want to share this around, it's how we grow the podcast each and every week with no sponsors and no nonsense on these episodes. So we love. I've just given you the beans and hopefully it's been helpful. So we'll see on the next episode.

Thanks so much, champions.