Next Level 265: Your Work Optional Blueprint with Chris Miles

Again, everybody's teaching the financial education. Are the big companies that sponsor all the financial shows. They're the ones that pay all the financial advisors to teach the same old crap and have Dave Ramsey tell you debtors dumb and you should just put your money in mutual funds. Even though he doesn't do it, you know he's got very little mutual funds compared to his net worth of business which is worth about 50 plus million plus $150 million real estate portfolio. But does he tell you to do that? No.

Welcome to the Next level Income show where it's our goal to take your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host Chris Larson. If you haven't yet, get a copy of our book for free at our website nextlevelincome.com. that's www.nextlevelincome.com. just click on the book link and I'll even send you a copy if you put your address in. On today's show we have Chris Miles. Chris Miles is the cash flow expert and an anti financial advisor. He's the leading authority teaching entrepreneurs and professionals how to get their money working for them. Today he's used his knowledge not once but, but twice to become financially independent where his passive income exceeded his expenses and paid off $1 million in debt after the last recession without filing bankruptcy. He's been featured in U.S. news, CNN, money, entrepreneurs on fire, bigger pockets all across the podcast and media world. But he has his own podcast, Money Ripples and his goal is to get his clients fast financial results. In fact, his personal clients have increased their cash flow by almost 3,300 million dollars in the last 12 years. And today we're going to talk about his framework to help you make work optional. Chris, welcome to the show.

Hey, it's good to be on with another Chris.

Absolutely. And I love, for those that are listening, not watching, I love it. It says in your background says live your life now, not tomorrow. And I've talked a lot on the show here over the last several years, just about losing, losing my friend and family members and different people and I really love that quote. So maybe you could share a little bit about that Chris, as well as your background before we jump in here today.

Yeah, I mean I found the sign I think at a yard sale once, but I liked it so I got it. I don't know, maybe it was a store. I can't remember now where I got it from. But it definitely resonates well because I used to teach people to do the opposite Right. Because I actually started my business career. I actually was planning to go into business consulting, but I wanted to have real business experience before I gave people advice about what to do with their businesses.

That's good.

So the first business I came across that was kind of intriguing was being a financial advisor, not realizing they hire anybody off the street. As long as you haven't robbed anybody or killed anyone or you can pass a test with 70%. Right. And I did that. I did that for four years. Loved being an entrepreneur. I never actually. I actually dropped out of college, never finished my degree to do that. And as I was doing that for several years, eventually I was drinking the Kool Aid. I was telling you to set it and forget it. Save everything, spend nothing. Save it forever. And hopefully someday you'll have something by putting in these mutual funds. Well, four years in, my dad said, well, when are you gonna sit down with me and understand that? My dad was the super penny pinching saver. Right. This guy was depression era mentality. I mean, he'd saved everything in his garage, so therefore, he couldn't park a car in his garage because he had all the parts just in case he needed to use it.

Just in case. Can't get rid of everything. I was just like, my grand.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I mean, he was 100% debt free, including his home. Paid off his house early. He was the kind of guy that bought everything on case lot sales. So I ate cap and crunch for an entire year straight. I still have scars on the roof of my mouth from sucking on those things.

Right. That stuff, it takes. Yeah. How did you do that? Because it takes at least 48 to 72 hours to recover from one bowl.

I know it was constantly damaged mouth, but maybe that's why I had so much room in my mouth for the dentist. I just.

You got to pour it, like, you know, pour it and like, 30 minutes later eat it. You know, you got to, like, let it. Let it soften up, like, prep it. Yeah. Like musely. Yeah.

Yeah, it did help. The next year we went to Fruity Pebbles, and then the year after that went to Cocoa Pebbles. So I did get a little bit of a break, I guess. Those things go soggy, like, in two seconds. So anyways, I mean, long story short, he's pretty. He's pretty, you know, pretty frugal kind of guy. Yeah. Very guarded by his money. Never would tell us how much money he had. So when he asked me to sit down with them, I said, all right, well, here's my chance. Because My dad was kind of the one that inspired me to want to learn about money because he would always say, I can't afford this. We think I am made of money. Money doesn't grow on trees. Hey, I give up that, that Corvette to have you kids, you know, he even said things like, you know, this job will literally kill me. Because he'd already had heart attacks and strokes by his 40s and 50s. Really? I said, wow, I want to break him free. And so I sat down, looked at his numbers. He had been stuffing money, his 401k, getting the company match. He is debt free. And I said, dad, you're 61 years old. If you were to try to retire today, you would have to die in about five or six years because that's when you're going to run out of money. Wow. He's like, okay, well, I was hoping to HEAR Something better, Mr. Sunshine, you know, what else can I do here? And I said, I don't know, save more work longer, you know? And I really didn't have an answer for him. I knew he had a paid off house, but I'm like, well, you can't cash out, you know, you can't take out, you know, like a HELOC and then invest that in a mutual fund that's actually illegal. Like, they sign, what's it called, Like a little, you know, initial next to the whole. I'm going to say affidavit. That's not the correct thing, but like a disclosure. You sign disclosure saying, I did not borrow money to put in the stock market because that happened the Great Depression and therefore we had the Great Depression. Right. Among other issues. So I was like, well, I can't do that. And he's like, what'd I do? I'm like, I don't know. And I walked away frustrated, very upset that the very guy who did everything right didn't. It really couldn't, Couldn't retire, couldn't do what I've been teaching people to do all along. And that was in my 20s. Well, about a month later, I'm talking with a friend who I hired to be a financial advisor on my team. But then he quit to go do real estate investing. And as I'm talking with him, he says, kris, man, my life is awesome right now. My dad and I have partnered on some real estate deals and we've now doubled his income as a professor at the local university. I said, hold on a second, you've only been doing this like four or five months. That's too good. To be true. My financial advisor brain can't handle something like this. He's like, well, we're doing it. And I argue with him. I said, no, Stocks are better than real estate. Real estate can't keep up with stock market. It's better. I have the charts to prove it.

Yeah, just put in REITs and.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You got, you know. Yeah, REITs. You know, that's not even real estate, you know, but he. He finally just said. He's like, well, Chris, how many of your clients are truly financially free where they don't worry about money? Well, none. They all worry about money. Even if they're retired, they still think they're gonna. They're worried about living too long and running out of money. Okay, Kris, so none. Got it. How about this? How many of you guys, as financial advisors, are financially free? Not off the commissions you're earning off of these people, but. But actually doing these investments he'd been recommending. And as I really thought about it, I said, well, maybe none. Cause this guy's been working here since the 1970s. He's like, there's your problem. And so I started going down the rabbit hole. He had me read a book called who Took My Money? Which is a lesser known rich dad, poor dad book.

Yes.

Sum it up for you. Mutual funds suck is the whole point of that book. And I started listening to this radio show that on AM talk radio locally here in Utah that these two real estate investors would talk about, and they talk about these principles of abundance and, you know, all these kind of principles of wealth and everything else. And I got hooked, you know, and just months later, I realized I'm teaching a lie. Like, if I keep staying on as a financial advisor, I will know I am lying and deceiving to people. Right? I was. I wasn't doing that before, but now I know more. I. Now with this curse of knowledge, I've got to do something. Either ignore it or keep my integrity intact. And so I quit. I said, I got to keep my integrity intact. I will no longer teach about money. I will just be a ballroom dancer. And. And I will do mortgages as well. So as a mortgage broker, 2006, anybody could be.

Oh, boy, oh, boy, what a time to. What a time to become a mortgage. I mean, a great. A great time, like for probably like a year. And then. Then it fell off a cliff there.

Especially because I did it for a couple of years. I was mortgage licensed while securities license and life and health insurance license. I was trying to be the one Stop shop guy, right?

Yeah.

So I started doing that, but of course I want to learn what these guys did. And later that next year, later in 2006, I had enough passive income coming in from, like, lending and rental properties and things like that that I could actually retire. You know, I only need 3,500amonth to live on as a disclaimer. But I had enough that I was like, I could quit. I'm making four or five thousand a month with these things I'm doing. And that blew my mind. I was 28 years old, almost 29, and I was retired. I didn't know what to do with my time, so I kept, you know, doing what I was doing a little bit. But eventually 2007 came out of retirement, you know, partnered with some people at the time and. And started to teach people, hey, here's how you get out of, you know, get out of the rat race, quote, unquote, right? Only when the recession hit, I got back in the rat race again and went over a million dollars in debt and had to dig out of that hole and eventually had to become financially independent the second time at the end of 2016. So, if anything, you know, people are like, how did you retire twice by the time you're 39? I'm like, well, I screwed up the first time. That's why eventually I did it right the second time. And I've stayed, you know, free since. But. But that's the thing. I mean, it's kind of. Kind of cool when you realize that there's a lot of hope, right? There's a lot of things you can do to actually really make a difference in people's lives.

Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. And, yeah, I was blessed with the curse of knowledge, too. I've got an MBA in portfolio management, so I got to learn all about the financial industry. And I was like, wait a minute. This is not. This is not what people do to actually become financially independent. Because that was my intended path was to become a financial advisor, but I ended up in real estate as well, as listeners know. But I'm a little curious. You kind of. You kind of. It was like, like in, as they say in Seinfeld, like, oh, I want a million dollars in debt, yada, yada, yada, paid it off, became financially independent again. Let's walk back, like, what? Explain what happened there, Chris. And then really, I want to know what you learned through that process as well.

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing is, like, your ambition of your 20s catches up with you in your 30s. And you can become wiser if you learn from lessons, right?

So absolutely.

It was like the perfect storm, but like in the movie George Clooney sort of way. Like, you know, in a bad way. Right. Obviously, as a recession hit, we had just started a new business. Our business were really targeting real estate flippers. I mean, we're targeting a bigger audience, but all of our connections were real estate flippers. Well, 2007, the first people that got hit were real estate flippers because the banks were quietly tightening their grip. I remember this because I also believed as a mortgage broker, if I ever needed money, I. I can always just tap into my home equity. So, hey, why not pay extra towards my mortgage? Dave Ramsey would be so proud of me if I did it.

Oh, yeah.

So I start throwing money into my. My house, paying that down. I just bought a new home at that point, you know, just a year prior.

And you get the letter in the mail like I did that says, hey, all your HELOCs are revoked.

Yeah, I wish I had a heloc. So I bought the house a year prior. I was renovating it, and. And then about summer of 2007, July, to be exact, I go into the bank. I said, hey, let's do a new appraisal. So they did a new appraisal, and it came in even better. So I thought it was a genius. I'm like, man, my house is now worth three quarters of a million dollars, which back then was a lot. And so I was like, dude, I am amazing. I'm freaking awesome. I believed I had the Midas touch back then. You know, it was all market. It had nothing to do with me, obviously. But, you know, like, I remember going to the bank, they said, you know what? We just kind of changed some rules. If you just get your score up two more points, we'll give it to you in August. I said, fine. Whatever I make on time payments, I'll raise my score two points. So I did raise my score two points. And they said, last week, we just added some more rules. If you do X, Y, and Z, we'll get it to you in September. I did whatever the hoops I had to jump through to get it. I said, all right, can we get this done now? And they said, we're sorry. We no longer give cash out refinances to business owners. Wow. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, well, now I've got all this money trapped, this equity trapped in my property. And of course, you just try to make things work out, but my Cash flow was getting, getting tight because those real estate flippers couldn't afford to pay us either. So income was drying up. Plus I made the big mistake with one of those partners. He kept saying, you know what? You should be all in, in our business and our mission and things that we're doing. So cut off all your other streams of income. So I had all these other streams of income other than like a rental and things like that. I cut them all off to focus all my resources, my money into that one business. Biggest mistake ever, considering I'm teaching people how to get out of the rat race. And what do I do? I get myself back in it, you know. And so between that not being liquid, not having enough money there available, and then of course, eventually, when things are desperate enough, I go to try to see if I can sell the property. And the market's of course being hit because now the credit market's being very tight. You know, Lehman Brothers failing. Oh, by the way, the mortgage company that refused to let me short sell the property eventually because the values came down so much. I had a short sell, they refused the offer. The company was owned by Lehman Brothers, so they would even let me short sell. So finally, after having that property for three years, I finally foreclosed on it. And for about 170,000 less than the offer we had for the short sale. I did get a 300 settlement check from Lehman Brothers after they got sued for mortgage, you know, malfeasance or whatever it's called. Right. Yeah. So anyways, I learned a lot. I mean, I learned that cash flow is everything, right? Like cash flow creates more options and with more options comes more freedom. You've got to have cash flow, you got to have liquidity. Don't tie up your. Like everybody teaches you, especially financial advisors, it's always about locking your money in prison, pay off your house, lock up in that 401k or IRAs, where you can't get to it unless you quit or change jobs or something like that, which is not usually the best option. Fire. Selling your house isn't always the best option either, right. So they tell you to lock it up in prison so that it's under their control. Because it's not just the financial advisors, obviously get paid whether you make money or not in the market, but the fact that, you know, of course, like even the banks, right? I mean, this, all the financial institutions, the. What I learned as a financial advisor is that I worked for them, not for the client ultimately. Right. Because that's who really paid Me, and, and that's where I, I really believe there's this huge conflict of interest. And actually really, I kind of feel it. That's like semi unethical because if the market drops, you lose money, but they don't, they still get paid, you know, off of the assets under management, you know, that kind of stuff. Right. So, yeah, you know, when you think about it, they're telling you to lock your money away, let it stay in their power, their control, while you have none of it. And that to me, is where the robbery happens. That's where a lot of the myths are prevailing. Because again, everybody's teaching the financial education. Are the big companies that sponsor all the financial shows, they're the ones that pay all the financial advisors to teach the same old crap and have Dave Ramsey tell you your debt is dumb and you should just put your money in mutual funds. Even though he doesn't do it, you know, he's got very little mutual funds compared to his net worth of business, which is worth about 50 plus million plus $150 million real estate portfolio. But does he tell you to do that? No, he doesn't. Right. So all this BS that's out there and that's kind of why I'm doing what I'm doing today is because I feel like I have to undo the damage I did as a financial advisor. But even what other financial advisors are still doing in the whole financial world is teaching stuff that just does not create freedom. My dad is living proof and millions and millions of other people are too.

I love your, your slogan, the anti financial advisor. And one of the things we're huge fans of, we were chatting about before the show is cash value life insurance. Chris, when did, when did the light bulb go off for you in terms of, of the life insurance picture?

Yeah. I was actually against the whole infinite banking thing initially, especially because when they told me they're using whole life insurance, which as a financial advisor, I didn't know anything about it. But what other financial advisors taught me.

No, don't buy whole life insurance. That's what the financial advisors tell you. It doesn't make sense.

Yeah, no, they're like buy term invested difference or get like something that's, you know, maybe it's like tied to the stock market, like in a vul or something like that. Right. And so those are the kind of things I was raised on in the financial advisor world. But then when I hear from all these real estate investors buying whole life insurance, you know, this is in 2006, I'm like, why? That's the worst thing you could buy? So I thought, right. So anyways, I eventually started studying it a little bit. I didn't, even though I had an insurance license, I didn't know how to set them up. So I went to the guy that they're all going to and I remember when he showed me the plan of paying $1,000 a month into it, I said, man, this is kind of expensive because I don't have any cash in this thing. That tax free savings account aside, which is the thing I would talk about a lot as a financial advisor, in those accounts you have nothing for like the first two or three years. And I said, well, aren't there different levers we can pull? Because I remember as a financial advisor, I could do stuff like that to help make it perform better. And he said, no, you can't. If you do, you'll get taxed. I said, well, I hate taxes, so let's not do that. So I did it. Now that's 2006. And remember 2008, I was pretty much broke, okay? So I couldn't afford to make the payments. I called the insurance company, what can I do? They said, nothing. If you don't make the payment, you lose the policy. 25 grand was painted to that thing and I have nothing to show for it because there was no cash. I couldn't keep making the payments and so I lost it all. Now I just thought it was just the market's fault, right? It was the economy and all that stuff. Months later I started doing my own research, found out that that guy lied to me, that he could have pulled different levers.

Did he lie or was he just ignorant? What do you think?

Well, I confronted him about it. I even told him. I was like, listen, I think I found a better way because I started doing my own research. I started designing my own plan like I would for myself. And I was like, wait, I can get cash in here from day one. Not wait till year three, but day one. And so I confronted him about it. I showed him the numbers. We had a two hour debate back and forth in his office. And it got loud. I mean, the assistants out in the hallway, they were pretty much very nervous because I was getting very heated and finally got to the end of it. He says, chris, I did it that way because I couldn't afford to cut my commissions.

Yeah, because you make less. Because you make less when you set it up that way. Yeah. And a lot of yeah, I think that's the challenge is. And you kind of said it, you know, if you understand the financial incentives behind what's happening, then you can figure it out. And that's, you know, a lot of people when we talk about these policies, we say, well, if you structure it this way, one, your advisor is not going to get paid as much, you know, or the insurance agent's not going to get paid as much. And two, it's way more complicated for them to set up. It's a lot, it's a lot more complex. They have to teach you all this stuff. So not only do they have to teach you all this, but they actually get paid less for doing it. Like, and, and that's if people understand that it can be very empowering.

What I learned is the insurance companies won't teach you how to do it either. I mean, because they also, I mean, they don't have high risk necessarily, but they don't think it's useful. They think you should have a big death benefit. That's the whole purpose of insurance. Who cares about cash value? It's a nice perk, right? And I'm like, no, I want that tax free supercharged savings account that's paying me 6% tax free right now. And I want that because I know it's 100% protected from lawsuits and creditors, that no one can touch it. It's protected from law, from not just lawsuits, but also taxes. It's tax free, comes out tax free. I can use it for whatever I want. Like, it's literally where I store almost all my emergency reserves. I keep a little bit in the bank so I can get to it like that day, but I keep it in here almost like it's a high yield, tax free savings account.

That's amazing.

And yeah, of course you can make money two places at once investing with it and things like that that you hear about. The thing is there's all these myths and these people that teach half truths. Even people are influential in the space, even the real estate space with infinite banking. I get so pissed off at them. In fact, that's the reason why by 2017, I stopped referring it out to people I would try to find that would do it the way I want done. I just started bringing in house. We did it ourselves because I couldn't find any insurance agent that would consistently do where they would make minimal commissions. I mean, and literally, like the way we do it, like it cuts commissions back BY about almost 80%.

Yeah, absolutely.

But the difference is this, is that, you know, just like with one of my friends who's a turnkey real estate, you know, company owner. He. He was putting like 6200 a year into his crappy little plan. And after six years, he says, Kris, I've paid 37 grand into this. I have 18 grand of cash. This isn't like the one you were telling me about years ago. It's like, no, it's not. I told you that guy was a schmuck, you know, and, and so he's like, well, what could you do? I was like, well, here, let me show you. Apples. Apples. And it's like, whoa, five years, I'd have all my money back. Not six years, only half. And, and so he's like, well, dang, if it's that good, maybe I should put in 50,000 a year. So here's the crazy thing is because most of those guys get such a scarcity mentality, the funny thing is I made double the commissions that that other agent made setting up a crap policy. Because, you know, when he, when either.

He wasn't providing the value that you were.

Yeah, because, yeah, he's like, man, if I'm going to have, if I put in 50 grand, I'm going to have 40 grand from day one. And that's the most expensive year. And it just gets better from there. Like, why wouldn't I put more in? You know? And now he's putting in almost 200 grand a year between a couple policies. Right. And so it's the big thing is this, is that when you're a real estate investor or a business owner, the reason that's so good is one, you want to have cash on hand. Because I didn't, you know, early on I was not liquid with cash. And that got me in trouble. I have, I have a one real estate investor friend that he's out in Missouri, and dude, he keeps like four or five million dollars just sitting in cash inside of his policy because he's like, hey, this is safe money. This is my family's money. If anything happens to me or my business, this is going to protect me because I can guarantee it's going to be there.

Absolutely.

And I get it. I mean, I love real estate. I mean, that's how I was able to retire twice. Right? Was using that, you know, using real estate investments. But same thing, there's no guarantee. Right. And so, so although I want to get as much cash flow as possible, also that's a good place to store my cash. And yes, I can use it to invest in, you know, borrow from the insurance company and use that to Invest so that my money's still there, compounding tax free. And I can earn money in real estate at the same time, essentially making money in certain places it wants.

Absolutely. We love it, Love it. We've been using that strategy when I, when I brought that to my agent back in, oh, geez. It's over 10 years ago. Told him what we were doing. We were building spec home. So we were taking the money out on the spec home, rolling the money back in, doubling our money every 12 to 18, 18 months. He goes, man, Chris, I, I really wish, you know, more of my clients would do this. It's like, why don't they, why don't you teach people how to do this? So that's when we, we launched.

He didn't know how to do it.

Because he didn't know how to do it. Yeah, it's, it's too complicated. So you have a whole wealth blueprint now that you put together around work optional. So talk about, talk about the framework behind that, Chris.

Yeah, so work optional. It's a, it's another way that, you know, describe like what Kiyosaki talks about getting out of the rat race. You have enough passive income to pay your monthly expenses, right? Yeah. Or in other words, you work because you want to, not because you have to. I find more and more, most people don't want to retire. They just want to be at a point where they say, you know, I just want the.

It's a four letter word in our house.

Yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a massive four letter word. Right. Or five letter. If it's retire. Wait, no, maybe more than that. Six letters. Whatever it is.

Six, you know.

Yeah, it's worse than a four letter word. But yeah, I mean, like, it's. So most people want to just say, I just want the option to work because I want to, not because I have to. Like, I want to have the ability and the time freedom to say, if I want to take off a month, I take off a month or two. Right. And I want to come back and work. I want to come back and work because I, I still feel like I have purpose or life.

Absolutely.

And so what we do is we really help people, work with them one on one, figure out what's. How do we map out that plan. Like, how do we really get you there and doing truly passive investing because, I mean, there's plenty of people out there teaching you how to wholesale, fix and flip, you know, or even all kinds of stuff that's a Business, sure, yeah. Crap load of money doing that.

Yeah.

But it's very active. It's not passive at all. Like, don't believe for one second that wholesaling is passive. Right. Because none of my friends that wholesale will ever tell you as passive, you know, but if you have cash, if you have money, you're saying, how can I get this money working harder for me so I have to work so hard for it. Yeah, that's where you have that power. And, and that's where we say, great. Where can you put that money? Where other real estate investors are, the operators, they're doing the work, they're doing that stuff. But whether you're buying, you know, like I mentioned, like my friend that does turnkey properties, I met him, I said, man, I actually like the idea of turnkey because I'm a horrible property manager, I don't have to manage it. And if I could buy a property out in like where you are in North Carolina, get way better cash flow than I can in anywhere in the western half of the United States, I'm going to do it. You know, I can lend my money to real estate investors, make double digit returns there. I have a raw land partnership where they're buying and selling raw land at, buying it wholesale, sell it retail and sell it on terms so that we're making interest on top of it. So we're like tripling our money over like five to seven years or so. I mean all that kind of stuff. I mean oil and gas, I mean there's even things in that space or like car wash businesses or whatever. With Frank, you know, with syndications, you know, there's, you know, apartment buildings, there's self storage. I mean there's so many options that when you take that freaking matrix red pill like I did, you start to realize, man, financial advisors don't offer squat. Like they literally only offer insurance, mutual funds. Even if you say, well, they have annuities, yeah, it still fits in those two categories, right?

That's right. Yeah.

They literally only have a license to sell you stuff, not license to make you more money. And that's where, that's where I get excited. And so for a lot of people, they're like, hey, I've got at least a few hundred thousand dollars. What can I do with this? Can I actually create passive income with this? And the answer is yes you can. Let's help you do that. And so we really are strategists and then we're connectors to those people that have good track records. You have to, like, spend all that time worrying and hoping you find the right, reputable people and you don't get duped by some charlatan because they're on some crappy podcast, you know, or something like that, you know, not yours, of course, the other ones, you know, but. But, you know, like, that kind of thing. So. So that's really what we do is just help them really map it out step by step, and, you know, turn that money into actual passive income. And I'll tell you the thing that makes me happy. And just to share an example of that, yeah, we had one client who actually just recently passed away a few months ago. I was actually just talking to his kid on LinkedIn. In fact, his kid's 23, ironically, works for a bank, but he's learning different things because of what we taught his dad. His dad was 60 years old, retired from the military, had a million dollars in his retirement account, and his financial advisor says, good, well, now you're 60 years old. You can now live on 3% a year because the outdated 4% rule, safe withdrawal.

No, no, no.

It doesn't work unless you're 70. So it's 3% if you're in your 60s. So he's like, wait, 30, 000 a year. I live in California. No one can live on 30, 000 a year. Homeless people barely live on 30, 000 a year. Come on.

Oh, yeah, yeah, you can't. Yeah, it's. No, no, I think. I think I just read you need to be middle class. You need, like, 175k a year in California on average. I mean, it's something that effect. Yeah, it's. It's off the charts. Yeah. You need. Yeah. And the whole state.

$5 million to live on 3%. Well, maybe more than that. Actually, closer to about $6 million to do it. That number. You just said $6 million to live on. 3% to final pull out 180,000 a year to live on in California. Well, long as, you know, with him. He just. He heard my podcast, you know, and he says, hey, I want to figure out how to do this. So he. We started figuring out what to do with his money and strategize with it. He bought a couple duplexes, and then he did apartment syndication. Then he did some things with, like, oil and gas. And the next thing. You know, the second time he came on our podcast, you know, a year later, he's like, yeah, like, I actually got up to, like, 13,000amonth, you know, like, well over a Hundred thousand a year versus 30,000 a year. And I'm grateful for that because for four years he was free. And then, of course, he just. 64 years old, you know, died of a heart attack just randomly on his desk on a Monday evening, you know, and left his wife and his kids behind. But I'm grateful that he bought that time. Freedom back that he had that time. He was able to do what he loved and even volunteer for, like, the fire, you know, for the Forest Service and things like that. Yeah, did a lot of cool things, you know, with those last few years of his life, and he was trying to pass it on to his kids. So he was taking them to, like, some of these, you know, like, due diligence trips and things like that, you know.

So one of my favorite things. Yeah, yeah.

And that's really the ripple effect. That's why our company's called Money Ripples, is because as you increase and grow your financial and your time freedom, you can now bless more lives with that. And I'm grateful for the ripple effect he created.

Yeah, I love that. Thank you for that. That story. And, yeah, it's. You know, that. That's the thing. You know, I have one of my best friends, his wife passed away at 40 from cancer. And he called me, unbeknownst to me, he's like, chris, what do you do? Like, what do you do, you know, for. For insurance? And I explained, and I didn't know. He turned around and called his. He went with a. Well, I won't say the name of the company, but he went with the company. They do an okay job structuring these policies.

But.

But she left him and his two daughters with $3 million, which allowed him to take time off of work and relocate closer to his family. And he said, hey, thank you so much for doing this. And I was like, wait, what did I do? He goes, well, you told me this. I called my advisor, and we set these policies up, and it was amazing. Contrary to my parents, who I found out, when my mother passed away 14 years ago, my stepfather said, oh, well, we don't have life insurance. It costs too much money. And I was like. I was like, oh, my gosh. I was like, this is. This is. You know, it's always painful when you. When you see that. So, you know, that's our mission, is to help people as. As you all do, you know, learn about these strategies that the truly rich do. And you've got a whole system set up. Chris, how can listeners find out more about what you and Money Ripples does.

Yeah, just look up anything Money Ripples. Whether it's money ripples, dot comoney ripples on social media or even our Money Ripples podcast that we're now in our 11th year of our podcast.

11 years. Oh, I love it, man. We're only in year seven. So you're what? You're four years ahead of me. I love it.

I know. Keeps calling me an og. I don't know what to think of that. I feel like I'm too young to be an OG in that space, especially because this is my second podcast. I had another one four years. For four years prior to that too. So.

Wow. Yeah, there you go.

Very happy. It's. It's been a great, great run. And that's really my labor of love goes into is my podcast, my YouTube channel.

Amazing. Amazing. Well, if you're listening today, check it out. We're going to have all of this in the show notes and you can learn how to set up your own work. Optional blueprint with Chris Miles. Chris, thanks so much for joining us today.

It's been such a pleasure, Chris. I really appreciate being here.

Hey, Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to gift you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.