791 Be Financially Free and Pay Yourself First with David Bach

This is episode number 791 with nine-time New York Times bestselling author, David Bach. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.

And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

[Foregoing].

Confucius said, when it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps. This one is all about how to become an automatic millionaire, how to live rich and be rich and finish rich. That's what this episode is about. So many people talk about their financial pain, the struggle they have with their finances, and really how how to earn the type of money they want, how to invest their money, how to save their money, how to automate their money so they can live rich and finish Rich. David Bach is the financial author, nine time New York time bestseller consecutively, huge TV personality, motivational speaker, entrepreneur and founder of finishrich.com. over the past two decades, he has impacted over 100 million people through his books, seminar, speeches, newsletters and thousands of media appearances. He's been a contributor on the Today Show more than 100 times and a regular on the Oprah Winfrey Show, where he appeared six times to share his strategies for living and finishing rich. Again, nine time consecutive New York Times bestseller. He's one of America's most trusted financial experts, and he is here to reveal some powerful strategies for you on why people who try to get rich quick, they end up staying broke long. How to create system versus budgets for your money to grow. The first lesson of David's book, which is to pay yourself first always. Always pay yourself first and the importance of doing that.

The three things people can do to.

Get started with being wealthy right now, the action steps that you can do, doesn't matter if you feel broke, if you're making money, if you feel organized, how you can optimize all of it. It's in this interview, I'm super pumped and make sure to share this with your friends, lewishouse.com/sell /791 tag me on Instagram at Lewis house and be a hero to someone today by helping them find Financial peace right now by listening to this episode.

One of the best parts about my job as a podcast host is getting to know people on a deeper level, and I love discovering the interests my guests have that they don't always talk about. You know, the world-class athlete whose favorite pastime is painting, or the billionaire who still plays a weekend garage band. And the truth is, everyone has layers. and people are rarely as simple as they appear on the surface. For marketers, that complexity can make the job even more challenging. After all, how can you reach your customers if you don't really know them? That's where TransUnion's marketing solutions come in. TransUnion brings clarity to marketing chaos by delivering a 360-degree view of your customer, helping you deepen your insights, accelerate your decision-making, and better measure the impact of every marketing dollar. Visit transunion.com/clarity to learn more.

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All right, my fans, get ready to pay yourself first, automate your money, and become financially free with David Bach.

Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness podcast.

We've got the inspirational David Bach in the house. My man. Buddy, good to be here. Good clap, good clap. We're excited. Thank you. We just met in person, was it.

Two weeks, three weeks ago? Three weeks ago in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico. That was a very cool place, by the way, to meet. Amazing place to meet. I've heard your name for many years. You've written how many, nine, ten New York Time bestselling books, back to back to back. You've been on the New York Time bestseller list for 40, 50, 60 weeks, I don't know, something crazy. You've been on Oprah six times, Today Show 100 times, you've been on every other media outlet there is. So I've heard about you, I've seen your work. The Automatic Millionaire is something that a lot of people talk about in the money finance space.

So you're here now and-- I'm here now in, by the way, because I'm a fan of yours, right? So like it's a mutual love fest. Like I've watched all of this, by the way, it's as cool as you would imagine it is. It's fun. So it's really neat to be here.

With you live in LA. We're excited to be here.

West Hollywood where this all happens. this is pretty, pretty special.

And you live in Florence now in Italy.

I'm going to, I'm gonna leave after July 22nd and go live in Florence, Italy for a year. Which is amazing.

You gotta come over to Italy. I'm gonna come and visit. I'm gonna come and visit. And you got this new book out. I mean, you've written a number of books, but you've got a new book out called the Latte Factor and why you don't have to be rich to live rich. Now, we were just talking before this started, and you were saying that there's you've got some controversial things that you do with money that other influencers or thought leaders do differently. For example, you said that there's two things that everyone needs to be doing at a young age if you want to generate more wealth.

Completely.

Two things are investing in stocks and real estate, is that right?

Yeah, it's the two primary escalators to wealth.

Escalators, where you can grow your money, your investment, your money can work for you as opposed to just sitting in a bank.

Completely. It's like the game of Monopoly. I was just literally explaining this to my kids yesterday. I said, you know, on the game of Monopoly, you go past Go and you get a paycheck. And if you just go around the properties and you land on them, you pay rent. And you can't win the game of Monopoly unless you buy one green home, then two green homes and three green homes and four, then a hotel. You have to be an owner in the game of Monopoly. The ironic thing is that the game of Monopoly is a great lesson for all of us for life.

Yeah.

You have to own assets that make you money while you sleep, that grow while you sleep. And the challenge for most of America is that this stuff is not taught in school. Like this little book, the Latte Factor, I wrote it as a parable to reach the 98% of people who will not normally read a financial book. You've got my other stack over here. But like most people won't ever read a financial book. So I thought if I wrote it as a story, you can read in less than 90 minutes. and I can teach you these life lessons, the importance of paying yourself first, why you don't need a budget. Like we'll talk about that a little bit. But for instance, budgeting, everybody says you need a budget and budgets totally don't work. People hate them. They hate them. They hate them. It's like dieting, right? Like you try to go on a budget and you're married, you will fight about those budgets. People go on them, it's totally frustrating. So do you believe in budgets or no? I don't.

No.

What I believe is you need to have a system that That doesn't require discipline, does not take time. See, this is the part that's different. The secret to everything I've taught, like you've got my other book here, the Automatic Millionaire, is that the real secret to building wealth, how ordinary people in this country have built real wealth, is automation. They're saving money automatically.

They're not even thinking about it.

They're not thinking about it. They're not stressing about it.

They're not stressing about it. They're not writing checks. They're not putting cash in little buckets.

And envelopes and carrying these omelets in a thing and being like, okay, I've only got a little bit left. Look, my grandmother, when she started at 30, she had nothing and she used to literally save 50 cents a week and put it in a coffee can. And at the end of the year, she took that coffee can down to a brokerage firm and started investing in stocks. That's what changed the entire destiny of my family. Wow. Was that my grandmother at 30 with no college education, working at Gimbel's department store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, got tired of being poor. There's some people watching today that are there, right? They're listening, they're watching this or they're listening to this and they're tired of being poor. My grandmother was frustrated and She came home and said to my grandfather on her 30th birthday, Jack, this is not working. And when you're the guy and you hear that, you're like, what do you mean this isn't working? And my grandfather said, what's not working? And she said, We're broke. We don't have any money. And to my grandmother's credit, she decided to do something about it. And so she literally brown-bagged her lunch. Every day, she brown-bagged her lunch so she could save that money and go invest. And the way the story turns out, Louis, is my grandmother, my first book, Smart Women Finish Rich, was dedicated to her. She didn't become rich overnight. She built wealth over her lifetime. I always say it's decades, not days. People who try to get rich quick stay broke long.

It's true.

Show me those banner ads on how to get rich quick and I'll show you a way to stay poor forever.

Right.

So my grandmother realized, like, you invest in great American companies and you just keep investing and you leave it and you leave it and you leave it. And she helped me buy my first first stock at age seven in McDonald's. Wow. And that was seven years old. It was like she taught me, she taught me three lessons about money at seven that to this day, I still teach, which I can share with you.

What's that?

So at seven, we're sitting at McDonald's and she says, you know, David, you can get rich at McDonald's. I looked at her, I'm like, Grandma, I'm eating my, you know, my cheeseburger and my french fries and I have my apple pie. I said, what are you talking about? And she's like, I'm not how about you getting a job here? She's like, see those people over there? They're working for what's called minimum wage. And I think back then minimum wage was like a dollar. Nothing. And she said, it's very hard to make a living on minimum wage. She said, then there's people like you right now, like all these people are coming here and they're eating and they're spending money. That's called a spender. And she said, then there's some people who own this place and owners get rich. And she said, and I love to play Monopoly at seven. That was my thing. I'd go to my grandmother and she'd play Monopoly with me. And she said, I'm gonna teach you how to play Monopoly For real. And she took me home that day. She opened up the Wall Street Journal. She circled MCD. That's the symbol still to this day for McDonald's. And she said, here's how much McDonald's is. She put me in front of a television screen and said, watch the ticker tape. She taught me how to read that ticker tape. And she said, just call out the price on MCD. That's the price McDonald's. And she said, tomorrow I'll take you on a broker's floor and we'll open up an account. And you'll, you'll buy one share of that stock. And then every time you go there, you'll know you're making money from yourself.

Wow.

That is a wow, right? And it's funny 'cause I'm here in LA with you, but I just went to Disneyland two days ago with my son, who's nine. And Disneyland-- Did you buy Disney? I bought Disney.

That was my second stock.

That's amazing. So, like, literally at nine, I'm at Disney with Grandma, and I'm like, Hey, Mickey, are you guys public? Like, you know, 'cause she taught me to think. as a child, like an investor. Now, I'm doing the same thing with my kids. Now, my kids don't want to own McDonald's. They want to own Shake Shack.

Right.

So my son owns Shake Shack. Right down the street. A brand new one, right? My younger son, after Disneyland, is like, I want to own Disney. His older brother owns Disney. It's doubled. He's like, well, I want to own Disney. My kids own Amazon. So, you know, they're, they're learning, like, I learned. Now, this stuff should be taught in school. Today, this is the school, right? Like, today what we do is another way to teach people. So, but those are simple lessons I just gave you that were passed to me. And we just did that in a matter of minutes. And like this book, the Latte Factor, everybody thinks I'm trying to take away their coffee and I'm not. But there's a, we'll talk about the story inside this book. It's about a, you know, 20-something young woman. who learns that she's richer than she thinks and she actually learns it from somebody who works at a coffee shop. Wow. And one of the lessons that the person teaches her is ironically it happens in Starbucks. He says to her, you know, the $5 that you're spending on Starbucks, you could also be buying Starbucks stock. And we have the numbers in the book over how like $1,000 invested in Starbucks would be worth over a quarter million dollars today when it went public. Wow. So I always say, look, if you don't want to give something up, like that $5 at Starbucks for your coffee, then buy the company stock.

Right.

Invest in where you spend money.

That's interesting. If you go there every day, you put $5 a day into buying the coffee, put $5 a day into owning the company as well.

And now there's so many companies that make this easy. I'm an investor in a company called Acorns, fastest growing financial service company in America today. It's covered 5 million accounts for millennials.

Wow.

You can open up an app on your phone and in less than 10 minutes have an account, go click, click, click and be saving change into a diversified portfolio and it costs like a dollar a month.

Wow.

So technology is making it all much easier for everybody.

With a few clicks you can be investing in stocks. I just heard, what's the Robinhood is a new one. It doesn't cost anything to trade now on Robinhood app.

Again, one of the fastest growing financial service companies, they now have a market valuation of like $5 billion was last I read. And they made everything free. Again, lots of millennials are using Robinhood. There's so many great resources, like 20 years ago, this was complicated. You would have come into my office at Morgan Stanley and I would- you- have the paperwork, you have to 11 pages of paperwork to save $50 a month automatically. Oh my gosh. Today again, you open up an app, you go click, click, click, and it's done. And it's all automated.

Right.

That's going back to this idea of like, you don't have to do it manually. Like you've got your pad of paper and I always tell people, you know, in the back of this book, we've got a little sheet and you track where your money goes for a day manually. But there's also a lot of great websites and apps can help you do that too. Yeah.

I love these lessons about your grandmother early on of investing in the places you're spending money at already. And I think of two influencers. So you say there's two things to really generate wealth and that's real estate and stocks the fastest way.

And we haven't gone to the real estate part yet.

Right.

And it's funny because my friend Ramit Sethi always says like, don't give up your lattes. And I know you're not saying that. Yeah. You're not saying that. But he's like, don't give up your.

Lattes, but invest in things, you know, automatically as well. And, well, it's funny. Ramit and our buddies.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's great. So I go, I'm like, buddy, I know you're always making fun of my latte thing, but it's not about the lattes. It could be bottled water. It cigarettes. You could just be eating out lunch every day.

Right.

Like we put out a little meme yesterday saying like, you know, you say you don't have enough money to go on a trip, but if you just made your lunch at home for the next 90 days, you'd have enough money to go on a trip. Right. Like the way you get your freedom and your dreams is you buy them.

Right.

Exactly.

You buy them, you don't borrow for them, you buy them. What too many people do is they actually borrow from for them. They want to go on a trip and then they just put it on their credit card.

Yeah.

And then instead of that trip being a $15 trip, by the time they.

Pay interest, it's a $3,000 trip. Oh my gosh, yeah. This is the Dave Ramsey model of like never putting anything on your credit card. It's like, so we've got the latte and we've got for stocks and we've got real estate as well. And I've heard, I've seen so many studies online of like the pros and cons of buying real estate. for people that own real estate and they're getting checks every month from renters, great. But what if those renters leave and you have to fix it up and all these costs and taxes and fees and these, these things that you have to pay on real estate that you're not really aware of until after the fact or some type of disaster. Then you're like, this is stressful. So we got the Grant Cardone model, which he says, you never live where you own. What does he say? He says, rent where you live. and own what you rent and rent what you own or something, right? So it's never live where you actually own something is his model.

Yeah.

But he's like, you need to be in real estate and own lots of other things that you're renting out. But don't own your own home that you live in because you're not paying yourself.

Right.

You're not getting paid from that investment. So what's your thoughts on that?

So we'll leave Grant down at this for a second. Let's just go to the core concept of, I'll go back to the Latte Factor book. What happens is I wrote this book as a parable. again, because like my 15 year old just read this book cover to cover in two hours and was like, wow, dad, you know what? I actually need to do this. I need to open up an IRA account. We've got this chart that shows a young person how they saved $2,000 a year at the age of 19. $2,000 a year at the age of 19. They only do it till 26. They do it from 19 to 26. By 65, they have over a million dollars in savings. It's crazy right here. It's crazy. I don't know if you can even.

Show that later on a camera shop, but and if you started at 27, $2,000 a year, does it all the.

Way till 65, that person, so they've saved way more money, right? They've saved their basically their entire lifetime. They end up with $805,000. That's crazy. Still a lot of money, right? But my 15 year old son looked at this chart and goes, Dad, I'm 15. If I do this at 15, I'll have more than $1,000,000, right? By the way, pretty smart, right? I'm like, yeah, actually you'll have more like $2,000,000. He's like, well, and then he takes his calculator on his phone and goes, that's $5.41 a day. I go, Exactly. That's why I didn't want you to buy the bottle water when we were all to skiing yesterday. That's why your dad had the free water and you went and bought the stupid water. -Right. -Because that's enough money to do every day to have an IRA account. And he's like, well, then we need to do that. -Wow. -So, you know, these lessons are so critical. So, what I did with this book, and I'll get to the real estate here, is that I wanted to teach these core lessons that there's three secrets to financial freedom in this book, which are pay yourself first, first person who gets paid is you.

The math- Don't pay the bills first.

Don't pay the bills first. Don't pay taxes first. Don't- Most people, they pay taxes first. They go to work at nine. They work until 12 o'clock to pay taxes. I mean, here in California, for sure.

Yeah.

Right. Then they go then from 12 30 to 1, it's lunchtime. And then from 1 to three 330 is housing costs, car costs, and then from 330 to five, it's everything else. And what, what most people hope through budgeting is that somehow they're gonna have a little money left over at the end of the day to save. Completely wrong philosophy. You carve out the first dollar day for yourself. You become financially selfish. So in this book, Zoe Daniels, who's the main character, a 20 something millennial, she's living paycheck to paycheck. She lives in Brooklyn. She's traveling to New York City on the subway. She's working in the Freedom Tower. She's a pub, she's an editor of a travel magazine, but she never travels.

She makes no money. She's working 70 hours a week.

Exactly, and what happens to her is what happens to so many young people in big cities. She's making a little more money each year, but she's not saving more. Her expenses just keep going up. So six years in, she's totally depressed, and she goes through this building called the Oculus, and she sees this LCD screen. It's all real, it's all real place. and she sees this LCD screen that's a football field long. It says on the LCD screen, if you don't know where you're going, you might not like where you end up. And this is all underground. And she takes this escalator up to her office, which is the Freedom Tower, and she's thinking about this. And as she comes up, she's by the 911 Memorial, 'cause that's what's next to her office. I know this place very well, yeah. And I live across the street from this. Yeah. And so I walk through this every day, and so she comes up, And for the first time in six years, she actually sits down and looks at the memorial, because she's always normally just turned right and gone into her office. She's busy, she's a New Yorker, rushing to work. Today she stops, sits on a mobile bench, looks at the 9/11 memorial, sees people crying, thinks about the people who've died here and says to herself, where am I going with my life? And goes into the office depressed. and then proceeds to tell her boss that she's like, she can't afford anything. And then through the book, she gets these mentors and she learns about paying herself first and the magic and the miracle of compound interest to have five to $10 a day could start to free her. And then later in the book, she learns about the importance of owning real estate because she's renting and she thinks she could never own. And one of the mentors, Henry, teaches her, you know, the amount of money that you're spending on rent. you can make a mortgage payment and you could own an asset. And she has critics in her life who are like, oh, none of this stuff would ever work for you, right? You know, you can't make 10 rates of return. You know, it's. You don't want to own real estate, but then she's surrounded by some people who are older and wealthier and wiser, and they show her how to get there.

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I took a way to get your.

Question, the bulk of wealth is built in America is built in real estate. So grant's not wrong. You should buy real estate. But guess what the easiest real estate to buy at first is. Your own home. Your own home. Or a property. First of all, it's the easiest thing to qualify for a loan for.

Because you're living in it.

It's your yeah.

Right.

So the bank will loan you money to buy a home. Second thing is, it's tax deductible, right? You get tax deductions on your interest. Third thing is, you have to live somewhere as long as you're alive. So you can own it, eventually free and clear, and have very low overhead next to nothing besides taxes and maintenance fees. Or you can rent for the rest of your life and never have your expenses go lower. The myth is that you want to rent because you don't want to have to pay maintenance and insurance and taxes. Guess what? They're all passed on to you. The landlord passes those fees on. The landlord doesn't say, oh, you're a renter. I don't want you to pay those things. No, the landlord charges you by escalating the rents. I used to live in LA in 1985 to 1990.

Much cheaper then.

I went to USC. All the real estate here was like probably one what it is today, right? And so I'm in a friend's house in the Hollywood Hills. She bought it in 1994, right? Out of college, she did all the things you have to do to save. She bought the home. It was a total fixer-upper. I'm sitting in this home overlooking all of Hollywood last night with this beautiful pool that she's put in. This one of those edge pools. I don't know what her home's worth today, but I bet it's worth five million.

Wow.

And I bet it's gone up three to four million since she bought it.

Wow.

And you only have to do that once in a lifetime to build wealth forever.

Right.

So if you don't own real estate, you don't get in the game building wealth. There was somebody who was on CNBC their day comparing how. Well, they actually used Brooklyn as an example, which is ironic because Zoe lives in Brooklyn. They said, you know, if you rent in Brooklyn, it's 25 a month. It's not, by the way, it's more than that. But if you did if you rent for $25 a month, he said it would cost you, it could cost you $4,500 to own. And he said, and you know, so if you didn't do that, you could save the extra $2,000 and you could put it in a diversified portfolio and you could make a better rate of return. And I'm watching this and I'm thinking, no, that's wrong. And here's why it's wrong. I believe in the stock market. I give examples of earning 7, 8, 9, 10%. And I know stat wise, meaning like statistically, the rates of return in the stock market have been higher than real estate, but it's misleading. The reason it's misleading is if you give me $100,000 and you put it in mutual funds and I earned 10%, my $100,000 grew to $110,000. Follow me so far?

Yeah, in the next year.

And the next year, right? But if I put $100,000 into real estate, I didn't put $100,000 in real estate. I put in probably 20,000. The bank loaned me 80. So when that $100,000 grows to 110, I just made $10,000 profit on $20,000 investment. That's a 50% rate of return. And if I bought it as a personal residence, which is what most people do first, I can sell it and if I'm single, I can make up to a quarter of a million dollars tax-free. Wow. After two years. It is wow. It's the only thing I can buy and sell and get tax-free money if I'm married.

You don't have to pay taxes on the money from selling a home? On the first quarter million dollars.

If I'm single.

Why the first quarter million? That's government law right now.

Wow. The government quarter million.

The first quarter of a million in profit.

In profit.

You don't have to pay tax.

Wow.

That's interesting.

I didn't know that. If I'm married, if I'm married, then what?

Half a million.

Wow.

Seriously.

You don't pay taxes on any of that. You don't see the hair on my side? You don't pay taxes on any of that.

On the first half a million dollars.

This is all across the US. All across the US. Wow. So like my home in Manhattan that we just sold because now we're moving to Florence.

And I'm not going back to New York. Buy New York. So the first half a million, you.

Don'T pay any taxes. You can keep a half a million tax free. Legally. And I can do it over and over again.

Wow. So I've now done this three times.

How much of a tax you pay on the other?

Profit.

Then you pay long-term capital gains.

Yeah.

So I had a home in San Francisco, same, moved to New York, sold it, got all that money tax-free bought my first home in New York, sold it, bought a bigger home in New York, got that money tax-free third home I've just sold. Got that money tax-free I can never do that in mutual funds unless it's in an IRA account. But that's a different game. And again, I want people to use retirement accounts.

Yeah.

And then I want them to own real estate. If you have those two vehicles, You pay yourself first, you save money automatically and you own real estate. And by the way, I'm not against, I want people to own rental properties too. I own rental properties with my wife. She's got a rental property in our building. Wow. But the way you get usually your first rental property, you buy your first home, then you rent that home out.

Then you buy a second home.

Live in that for a while. It's like Monopoly. It's like Monopoly. Then you rent that home out. In the automatic millionaire, I say three homes over a lifetime and you're done financially. You don't need to worry.

Yeah.

Two of them you've rented out, you've got rental income. The third one you've paid down. You have no debt and now you're.

In your 50s or 60s and you're not dependent on Social Security.

Yeah, and those two homes should be paid off by then and then they're just paying you every month. And we get people, you know, posting on our website all the time. We had one there a day ago, you know, 10 years ago I had nothing and now I've got five rental homes because I did exactly what you talked about. Wow. So it's, it's, these are not pie in the sky ideas. I'm not telling people to go buy homes and flip them. Like I was listening to some radio out on the the way over here and I thought, those are the things that don't usually work. You go to one of those seminars and they're free and then next thing you know, they're putting you into a $30,000 coaching program to flip homes. I'm just talking about basic simple stuff. Pay yourself first, one hour a day of your income, don't budget, save money automatically and get yourself into a piece of property and then pay the debt down. So buy a home as early as you can. As early as you can and the thing is when you're young, what happens is you think you're, a lot of.

Times you'll come to a place like LA.

Or San Francisco.

Or I can't afford this.

And you go, I can't afford it. So, you know what you do is you buy something and then you get two or three of your friends to be the ones that rent from you. And they help you make mortgage payments. My first home I bought with my best friend from growing up, it's a complete dump. It needed sweat equity. We put every dollar that we had into it. I had less than six months of expenses set aside. And I was in real estate. I was in commercial real estate commission only. I remember calling my dad and going, you know what? I don't have enough money after six months to pay mortgage payments. What am I gonna do if I don't make money in my job? He's like, well, son, nothing will motivate you like that.

Yeah, it's true.

As I'm cold calling, he was right. Yeah. And we rented bedrooms to friends to help us make mortgage payments. Crazy.

So do what you gotta do. Gotta do what you gotta do. That's how you get started. That's it, man. So how much should someone put down on a home. Should they put as much as they can down first or should they put the minimum amount down?

The most important thing when you buy a home is to make sure you can afford to buy the home. And so whatever the bank always start with whatever the bank will loan you, borrow less. Borrow less. Yeah. So the bank says I'll loan you two hundred thousand dollars. Borrow less than $200,000 because they don't really care as much as you need to care. So borrow less than you think you can. You know, people always try to get the next level house. get the house you can afford or lower. Your first home is rarely your dream home. My mom actually cried when she came to see my first house because she couldn't. She's like, oh, God, you don't know what you've done. I'm like, we didn't actually know what we had done. There's a lot to be said for being young and stupid, right? But we thought it would be fun to fix all this stuff up. It was a lot of work, but I think you want to buy less than the bank will loan you. I kind of scribed to Warren Buffett, right? Like a good old-fashioned down payment, 10 to 20%. More is better because your payments are lower. But one thing is you need to have six months to a year worth of mortgage payments set aside. I would not recommend somebody do what I did, which was only have like a little window of. I think if you can have a year's worth of expenses set aside, you're better off to put here. You're more prepared to buy your home.

Mm-.

But I will say one thing is that people think buying a home is risky. So is renting.

Right?

Like if I buy a home, I've got to pay the bank. If I rent, I've got to pay my lease. If I don't pay my lease, my landlord can evict me. If I buy a home and I don't pay my mortgage payment, it's a lot harder for the bank to get me out of that home. Mm, really?

Yeah.

So I'm not suggesting people buy homes and not make bank payments. What I'm suggesting is the same discipline it takes to pay rent is the discipline it takes to make a mortgage payment. But owning real estate long term frees you, especially if you're lucky enough to be in markets that are going up. Wow.

Now, I feel like I've been doing everything I can, maybe not yet, because I don't own real estate. But I've invested at a young age in maxing out my whole life insurance policies for the tax deferred and all those things. I've got 401Ks, Roth IRAs, defined benefit plans all maxed out every year for many years. I invest in my own business. I invest in my personal plan. I invest in learning new skills. I invest in people, my team. I invest in new projects that we own assets within my business. I'm investing in real estate funds. I'm investing in all these things. and what would you say is missing for me that I could be doing? I mean, I put a lot away every month. Well, I mean, first of all, listening.

To you, I'm like, you're doing everything right, right? And a lot of things you just said so quickly that people don't know what you're talking about. But like a defined benefit plan, it's the single greatest vehicle ever. Is it? For a self-employed person who doesn't have a bunch of employees.

Right. Right.

Because you can put up to over $200,000 tax deductible. into that retirement vehicle. Now, most people don't set this up until they're in their 50s. Wow. And a lot of people say, oh, you can't do this and you really don't want to do it until your 50s because of all these different requirements. Totally wrong. You can go and max out a defined benefit plan for two or three or four or five years, then just shut the plan down. If your income doesn't stay the same, then roll that into an IRA account and you can get a fortune put away. Tax defer, it's all about taxes. I don't want to pay taxes if I don't have to legally.

Not being smart.

Not being smart, but that's what people who become wealthy do. They focus on not paying taxes legally. So when you put $100,000 or $200,000 into a defined benefit plan.

For the last four years, yeah.

You didn't pay taxes on that money. Now critics will go, oh yeah, but you have to pay taxes later. Fine. I'll have my money grow for the next two, three decades and I'll pay taxes later.

I like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eventually you gotta pay taxes on something, whether it grows tax deferred or- Eventually.

When you go to take the money out of these retirement accounts, you'll pay taxes on it. So what? I'd rather pay taxes later than now. Now you mentioned a Roth IRA. I love Roth IRAs for people who can fund them because the money, you pay taxes going in, but it grows tax free forever coming out. So they're both great vehicles. I like insurance for the right person. You don't have any, but you're not married. You don't have any kids. So the ironic thing about insurance, usually insurance is designed to be a death benefit. It can also be an investment vehicle, which is how you're using it as a sophisticated investor. Yes. So with everything that you just said to me, and you're probably invested in privately in companies too, right? Like startup companies. Of course.

Which that doesn't make me any money.

But those are just rich. We call that the hopeful pile.

I've never made any money on the last eight years of all like eight startups that I've invested in.

But it's a hard way to get wealthy. Nobody really talks about that. It looks super sexy, but usually you're putting your money in and you're lucky if you see it back in 10 years.

Years.

What I would say, not knowing how you organize everything, because it seems to me like you're doing everything right. It's all about having this on a dashboard. Because as you see it all, as you start to have all this stuff, what happens is we're all busy. And if you're not tracking everything, that's the big thing.

I just started doing that like seven, eight months ago because I was like, I don't even know where all these accounts are. They're all in different portfolios and plans and companies and like, Where is all my money?

So whether you use, you know, there's all kinds of tools you can use, but even just a simple spreadsheet, which lays it all out. So also that if God forbid something happened to you, your family would know where everything is.

They know where everything is, yeah.

Because, you know, if you die and your family doesn't know where the stuff.

Is.

They may never get it.

Really?

Yeah, because like, let's use an example of investing in a startup. Okay, you know, God forbid something happens to you tomorrow, and your family doesn't know that you have private equity in a startup. They're not coming looking for you. If you have money in an old 401 plan, there are billions of dollars in old 401 plans that people have died that the family doesn't know it's there and it's just sitting there in an unclaimed asset. All the time this happens. So having it like it's all sitting there, it's all organized, you have a sister, right? Yeah, I've got two sisters and a brother.

Two sisters and a brother.

Somebody in your family you trust is like, Here's where all the stuff is, if something happens to me.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So how would it organize and would you recommend me investing in real estate? See, I invest in real estate funds because I'm like, I don't want to manage a property. I don't want to deal with it. But I know I'm investing in real estate.

Like, first of all, you're renting this apartment.

Yes.

I mean, so you got to buy.

A place here in LA.

Are you going to stay in LA?

Yeah.

So I'd buy a place. And then, by the way, I'd rent part of this. Like, this is an office here.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'd have your company, your LLC, or, you know, the other thing I do. I buy a condo in a separate LLC, and then I have your business rent the condo.

And pay the business. Yeah, that's legal.

Totally.

Interesting.

You still have to pay taxes somewhere on it, but the point is your business is paying the rent to another piece of property that you own. Ultimately how business owners get rich who don't do what you're doing, 'cause you're doing things that are the exception. Most business owners don't have defined benefit plans, don't save money automatically, aren't actually investing like you are. I give you all the credit in the world. A lot of influencers are broke. Yeah, they are.

I mean, you know this, right? You see all the bling bling. They make a lot of cash and.

They spend it all. They have nothing to show for it. It's like pro athletes too. It's really sad. I spent nine years at Morgan Stanley and my clients who became wealthiest, I always said they became wealthiest by accident. They owned a business and they bought real estate that the business was in. And 20-30 years later, that building was worth millions, sometimes tens of millions of dollars. The business wasn't worth anything.

The building, the asset.

The building was. And then if the business is worth something and you can sell the business, you can make the buyer turn around and have to do a 10-year lease with a building that you own and you're collecting rent. You don't even sell the building. You just still have the asset. So you should totally buy something. Okay.

It's always been like the the peace of mind and the freedom of like, I don't want to deal with the logistics. So I'd rather pay a premium to have freedom, peace of mind and like, someone can fix this and take care of this. I just want to do what I do best, focus on that. But I'm buying a condo in this area.

There's no logistics. I've had a condo for most of my time in New York, right? Like, I don't do anything. I don't know how to do anything. My wife says, you know, you're totally useless, right? Like, I'm like, that's why we have the guy downstairs.

You just call him and he does it.

Right.

Exactly. Okay. So there's two things that you need to be doing real estate stocks. And I have been doing index ones for everything that I've been doing because I tried doing like individual stocks and betting and guessing and I'm like clueless to this stuff. So I'm just like Warren Buffett model. Just put my money in. If it grows seven to 10% a year on average or whatever, just like it's not sexy. That's what I've been doing. Is that what you recommend as well?

It's a great way to go. By the way, I invest in Warren Buffett too. You own Berkshire Hathaway. So I invest in Warren Buffett, I own Berkshire Hathaway, I also own index funds. I run a registered investment advisory firm. I think I was telling you that earlier. I'm a co-founder of a firm that literally today, we just went over $7 billion on the platform. Amazing. So I sit on our investment committee. So I've got a lot of different things. I've got mutual funds and ETFs, index funds, and individual stocks. But if you're not somebody that's excited by individual stocks, like you heard me talking about how excited I was when I bought McDonald's or Disney, if that doesn't excite you, then put an index fund. Warren Buffett told his wife, when I die, take the money and put it in this Vanguard index fund. That was his advice to her. And like, you know why? Because you can't really go wrong owning an index fund if you don't want to spend a lot of time on it. I think the real key to managing money is diversification. you shouldn't have all your money in the S P 500. It shouldn't be all stocks. Even though I say you need to own stocks in real estate, I own bonds. I've got a diversified portfolio. Our clients have diverse five portfolios. Because I actually am shooting to get the return that you just said earlier. My goal for my money is somewhere between seven, eight, nine percent annually. And the reason that is, is that I'm not looking for home runs. I'm looking to double my money every 10 years. There's a rule called the rule 72. It's a great formula to learn. The rule 72, you take the number 72, you divide it by the rate of return that you're earning, and it will tell you how long it takes double your money.

So if you're getting 7% or 10% rate of return, you divide that by.

72 and it'll give you the number. So 72 divided by 7, it's gonna come out right at like 10 years. 72 divided by 10, it's gonna come.

Out right at 7 years.

So that's doubling your money. Is that what that is? Doubling.

Yeah.

If you're in a bank account earning 1%, you're gonna double your money in 72 years.

Oh my gosh. So get your money out of a bank account savings account.

Only your emergency money should be in a bank account. And even then it needs to be at least earning today 2%, right? There's all kinds of online savings vehicles today that are earning 2% and so don't be earning zero at the typical bank account.

How much should you have in, what's an emergency fund? You know, it's like, if you got a lot of cash, how much did you have in savings, checking, and then the rest in stocks or real estate?

Okay, so if you and I were having this conversation, nobody was watching right now.

Right?

Like, I'd say, I'd say, well, I would say to you, Louis, how much money do you need to have in terms of expenses set aside to feel safe, to sleep well, for how long.

Expenses, just in general for, like, six months or something or.

But so I would, I would ask you. personally, what's the amount of money?

I probably like 100 grand.

Oh, I wasn't even asked the dollar amount. No. I would just ask you, like, in.

Terms of how much months, how many months? Yeah, six months or something.

Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Okay, so.

So.

So that's your answer. So for you, and then I'd probably go, are you sure? Six months?

I would probably go, like, if I was your advisor, I'd probably be like.

No, maybe have more than that. Like, if I lost everything and this is all I had left type of thing. See, everybody's different in terms of how they sleep at night. Like, for me, I want two years of expenses set aside in cash.

Okay.

I sleep better.

Peace of mind.

Peace of mind. Most Americans don't even have three months of expenses set aside. In fact, what led me to write the Latte Factor was about three years ago, the Federal Reserve came out and said that four out of 10 Americans can't get their hands on $400 in case of an emergency. six out of 10 Americans can't get their hands on a thousand dollars in case of emergency. Seven out of 10 are living paycheck to paycheck. They're men. And eight out of 10 women are living paycheck to paycheck.

Wow.

So when I say, oh, I need two years, that's really extreme, right? Like, I would love to get the average American to get a thousand dollars in savings. Wow. Which, by the way, if you just save 10 bucks a day in a hundred days, you've got more than six out of 10 Americans. So when I go back to the latte factor metaphor, I'm like, you know what? Yes. 5, 10, 15, 20 a day can change your life because in a hundred days, you could have more money than the average person walking down the street. Yeah. In 40 years, you're a million.

You got a million bucks. And again, people go, oh, in 40.

Years, a million dollars won't be worth a lot. Guess what? It'll be worth a million dollars more than zero. Exactly. Which is what the average Americans working towards and, you know, I was thinking about one other thing on the way over here because things get me fired up. Like the dumbest thing Americans spend money on are new cars. So when you borrow money, you borrow money to buy assets that can go up in value, like a home. You don't borrow money to buy assets that go down in value, like a car. So the average American buys a new car constantly, right? Like the car industry is just starting. It was on CNBC yesterday saying that the car industry is getting nervous that people are going to buy less cars. you know that old saying?

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People should buy less cars. Millennials are starting to use Uber everywhere. My kid doesn't even want a driver's license. The average American's car payment right now for a new car is $533.

Crazy.

A month. When you factor in insurance, and God forbid you have to pay for car.

Gas, it's a thousand bucks a month almost.

It's almost a thousand bucks a month and the average American is spending three months a year to make their car payments. And when you think about it that way, and you're buying an asset that goes down in value the moment you drive it off the lot by 20, 30, 40%, it's just the wrong place to put your money, but we're marketed to. to get the new lifestyle, the new hot car, the new special thing. And we're basically trapped by marketing. We're trapped by, you know, when you succeeded, you should have this. And so what we've done for a lot of young people is we've gotten them. And we haven't talked about student loans yet, but, like, you know, Zoe Daniels has got student loans in this book.

And 100 Grand, 300 Grand, whatever it.

Is, we're trapping an entire generation, two generations now. with student debt that they'll never be able to pay off. And it's sad because if you go to college and you're first of all, you don't even know better, right? And you take out $100,000 in student loans, it could take you 20 years to pay those loans off if you're lucky. And you can't walk away from those student loans. Literally the laws are set up that you can't get away from student loans. It's the only thing in life that you can't get away from through a bankruptcy or student loans. That's because the government got in the student loan business They should have never been in the student loan business. I went to school right down the street here in USC. That was a super expensive school to go to when I was going there back in 1985. Today, it's a fortune.

It's like 50 grand a year. 60 grand a year, right?

It's crazy.

And I just go, you know... How do you afford to pay that off?

It's just so hard. And I think, you know, I would tell anybody who's young today, don't get trapped by these debts. Like, go to junior college for two years. Actually, like, find an inexpensive way. Go to junior college. Go to state school. Go to state school, transfer into the the school you want to ultimately be out when you're a junior or senior, take on as little debt as possible. We're just not preparing people properly to realize how we're not explaining correctly that these are handcuffs. And so people are getting out of school with these handcuffs that aren't a year or two long. That's what it used to be. It's now decades long. And so, I don't know. I mean, I guess unless you can.

Learn how to build wealth fast, you're not going to pay that off.

You're not gonna pay it off. I mean, imagine if you and I had an online course and we said, it's $100,000 to join. We have absolutely no way to guarantee that you'll ever make money from it. We're not even sure we'll improve your life. But by the way, we know you.

Don'T have 100 grand, so borrow it.

And then it's massive interest. We would go to jail. Literally, but that's what the university systems are like. So I'm not against college. I want my kids to go to college. I just don't want people to get these these, these days.

It's crazy. It's interesting because my dad never bought new cars. He would have, like, 10-year-old cars. We had a 1989 Oldsmobile. They would. I don't think Oldsmobile is out of business now, but we would drive. He would drive that thing. He would, he would run his business and, and drive that thing, and he would just save his money and invest it. And the challenging thing is, you know, I look at my mom now, she's going to be 68 this year. She went through divorce, I don't know, 20 years ago with my dad and. She bought some real estate properties and made some money renting them out, but.

She had a lot of expenses of.

Her own and she really didn't have a lot of savings, right? She had the money to live off of from the divorce. She was working to pay for stuff. And I look at it now, she's gonna have her, what is it? Social Security that she can take out now or if she waits a couple of years, it's a little more money that comes out. And then she's got a retirement from working at the company she worked for. It's a pension plan.

Yeah, pension plan.

But they're both like, what? one's like a thousand bucks a month, one's maybe 800 or 1200 a month. It's two thousand dollars a month. And she just moved to LA. She's got a little apartment down the street. That doesn't even pay rent for the rest of your life.

Right.

If you got two thousand, three thousand bucks a month, doesn't even pay that much. The challenge is it's like, what do you do then? You know, it's like, you can't save anything. You don't want to go keep working.

You know, you're working part-time at that age, maybe. It's, this is why like 80% of the poverty-stricken elderly are women.

Wow.

What you just described is the single biggest financial challenge. This is what women face. When I wrote Smart Women Finish Rich, it was because I saw all these women being hurt financially. Yeah. They had gone through divorce. They had gone through widowhood. 80% of women die widowed. 80% of men die married. So what happens in the real world in marriages is that a lot of times, the wife has delegated the financial well-being to the husband.

She's not educated then when she's gone.

She hasn't learned. I tell in this book, Zoe Daniels is basically the mentor says to her, Prince Charming is not coming. You need to be your own Prince Charming. And in this book, the mentor who's also, I don't want to give it away, but one of her mentors at work turns out to be extremely wealthy and she had no idea. And she says to Zoe, you need to be in charge of your finances. I don't care who you marry. local bank president, as a woman, you have to take charge of your financial life. Because what you don't want to do is turn... I mean, I hate to say this, but you don't want to turn around at 68 and figure this out. Because at 68, like you just said, she doesn't want to work anymore. A lot of people are having to work in their 60s because they don't have enough money.

Yeah, and unless they have family that can support them and pay for them, but you can't rely on that for everyone. You know, she's got me.

You can put your mom on the payroll.

She's got... She is. She is, trust me. So she's, I mean, she's fine. But it's like, if she didn't have me or someone in the family that could help out, it's like, then what? No, and I'm not blaming her or anything. She did what she could. She saved her money in the best way she had retirement. She's still working, but it's like, it's still not that much money.

It's not that much money. When you know, I would go back to when you know better, you can do better.

Right?

Like this little book, Which I hope will go worldwide. I was inspired to write it by Paulo Coelho. He's my hero as far as a writer goes. He's right. And I went to Geneva to meet him and have dinner with him. I wanna meet him someday. You know, I've had him on the show. I wanna interview him. Brendan and I went over to have dinner with him. Yeah. And my wife goes, you,'re gonna go to Geneva to have dinner with Paulo Coelho? Paulo Coelho, he wrote the Alchemist. It's the greatest book of all time. Greatest book of all time. She goes, you,'re gonna go to dinner to have, I mean, go to Geneva for dinner? Yes, I would. Yes, I am. And right, this is also the importance of like, you know, when you get a chance to be in front of somebody that you respect, admire, and want to learn from, yeah, you get on a plane and you go. So we go out, we close this restaurant down. Paulo Quayle is amazing. We go to, we have drinks and we basically stay out. Paulo likes to stay out. So I'm staying out with Paulo as ladies, Paulo wants to stay out. And around two or three in the morning, his handler's like, okay, we gotta get going. And he says, Let me ask you a question, David, before I leave. What's the book that you haven't written yet that your soul desires to write?

Right?

All right, follow, follow. And I go, follow, I want to write this book like you've written a parable. I want to write a little story that will inspire people to realize that they're richer than they think, that they have more strength than they know, and that the dreams can still come true. I want to package up these financial lessons in a little story that anyone can read that'll translate all over the world. And he goes, then David, you must write this book.

And then he walks away.

And then he leaves. And literally, Brendan's like, what did he say? So we're leaving this restaurant, pitch black out, totally buzzed, and I'm like, he said I should write the book. So I'm literally on cloud nine and I get home and I go, get home, I'm all jet lagged. And first thing my wife, Alicia says, so what did Paulo say? And I go, he said I should write the book. And she goes, well, I've been telling you to do this for 10 years. And I go, I know, but it's Paulo. So, you know, that was the end of 2012. I've been wanting this book for 14 years. And finally, I partnered with John Mann, who wrote this great book, the Go Giver, and said, let's, let's try to write this parable, but let's, let's write it until it's perfect, and then we'll sell it. It's the first time I ever wrote a book without a deadline. -Wow. -Yeah. You know, I just I spent two years working on it. Now we spent a year getting ready to market it. So, look, I thank you for having me out because you have such a big community. I hope that this will reach some people and you know, I got on a plane to come see you because you've got one of my favorite podcasts in the whole world. I appreciate it. It was super cool to be with you. I appreciate it. Puerto Rico, when you turned to me.

And said, hey man, let's have you on the podcast. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna plan and come see you. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate you coming out. Make sure you guys get the Latte Factor. I've got a few questions left for David. Make sure you get this super short. You can get this and read in a couple hours. Even I can read this quickly and it's super inspiring. Plus it gives you a lot of practical things you can do at the end to really manage your money. What are three steps people should do right now? Whether they get this book or not, they can start doing today that it's like if you did these three things right now, it could help you set you up for financial freedom later.

So, number one thing, make a decision today to become financially selfish.

Okay.

And here's what I mean by that. Make a decision today to become financially selfish. Decide today to pay yourself first. So, like, if you were gonna have like little Chiron's, it would be like, your first thing is become financially selfish. Pay yourself first. The formula to paying yourself first is one hour day of your income. If we could get everyone watching to make it a goal to save one hour a day, whatever they're earning an hour, you'd be earning minimum wage. Literally, like you have a $15 an hour job. If you could save $15 a day.

$15 a day, yeah.

$15 a day, your first hour of your income, especially in your 20s, you'd have financial security by the time you reach retirement.

So you say $15 a day for seven years.

Well, seven years, I mean, like, I'll go back to charts, right? 'Cause it's not, It is always the compound interest over decades, right? So if you look at like, I've got these great charts back here, let's just use $15 a day. In 30 years at 10%, happens to be it's $1,017,000.

So $15 for 30 years.

Yeah, in 40 years, it's, I got without my glasses on, 2.8 million. Wow. In 10 years, it's $92,000. Still a lot, by the way.

It doesn't seem like a lot.

10 years are savings. It doesn't, and here's the thing. These decades go by.

Like this.

And if it's automatic, you don't have.

To think about it. You don't have to think about it. So I would say if you've got a 401k plan just from this podcast, go sign up for it and save one hour a day of your income. Happens to be the math on that is 12 and a half percent of your gross income. With your company's match, which you probably will have, you'll be saving 16% of your income, which is like four times what the average American saves. It's huge. It's huge. If you don't have a 401k plan, go open up an IRA account.

Fund that.

Or if you're self-employed, do a SEP-IRA. Second thing I would say is, okay, so pay yourself first one hour a day. Pay yourself one hour a day. Second thing I would say is track where your money's going, but don't budget.

So I would download an app and.

Like, what are a couple of things? So I would use, like, an app that I was an investor and we sold the company to Goldman Sachs. It's called Clarity Money. Clarity Money is my favorite app.

You can, it's like mint.com on steroids.

But Mint's good too.

Yeah.

Same as betterment, similar stuff.

Well, no, because betterment's for investing.

Gotcha. So this is a dashboard.

It's a man. You hook up a thing like Clarity Money, and in minutes you'll see where all your money is being spent. You can put your credit cards in there, right? So one of the great features of an app like Clarity Money is that it'll show you not just where you're spending money, but it'll show you where you're spending money automatically monthly.

On all your things.

All your subscription fees.

So you can start canceling a lot of stuff.

Yeah. And there's a cancellation button in the app. So what happens is, I call this the piss you off factor.

Oh my God.

You're like, I've been spending this much for years.

You also, you don't realize it, right? Because we didn't used to have all these subscription services. And so when they're summarized in your phone.

You got 30 of them.

And you're like, wow, I'm spending three, four, five hundred dollars in these, and I'm not using a lot of them. And then there's a little, but these companies hate this, right? Because we were talking about how people sign up for things and then they un-sign up, but you go click and then you un-sign up. Well, you take a typical $50 a month box that's being sent to you, right? Like everybody's trying to send you these boxes of stuff. And you turn that off. Well, that's $600 a year. It's not $50 a month. It's $600 a year. Fastest way to change your life financially is get rid of some of these fixed expenses. So the way to do it, use an app like Clarity Money. mint.com, then I would go back to this idea of saving money automatically, right? Because besides your 401k plan, there's other ways, other things to save for, like your dreams. Like, I want to go take a trip, I want to go start my business. I want, you know, a lot of.

People, I want to get married, I want to do that, whatever it is.

Whatever it is. So I would use another app, like an Acorns.

Acorns.

Acorns is A-C-O-R-N. acorns.com and there's no, I'll give you multiple ones. So, because acorns, I'm also an investor. Okay. Yeah. So, but I got invested in acorns three years ago. Robin Hood. Robin acorns, Robin Hood stash. You, you talked about betterment. These are some of the bigger players in automated investing. But, but, but acorns for one of them. Go sign up for one of them. Companies like acorns or Robin Hood stash.

Make it so you can put very small amounts.

Put'S money away.

Put 15 bucks a month.

Pick a number. Whoever you, because everybody's different, right? Yeah.

But come up with something that you're gonna save automatically.

100 bucks a month, 200 bucks a month automatically comes out of your money. In the book, Zoe Daniels, Henry, here, one of her mentors, says, Zoe, you know how you get your dreams?

You buy them.

So, like, having a dream without a payment plan is a wish. Having a dream where you're saving for it automatically. that's how it becomes real. Like in her case, she wants to take a sabbatical and she wants to travel. She's a travel editor who's never traveled. And he teaches her how to like save for this break. And then later in the story, I don't want to give it away, but she like starts to take these trips. Well, she got there because she saved for him.

Then it just happened magically.

Didn't just happen magically.

Yeah, it just like unfold.

You know, people, the thing is, you have such a great audience and people come here because they want, because they're great and they want get greater, right?

It's the school of greatness.

And someone said to me yesterday, is.

There ever a point at which you.

Feel like you don't need to grow anymore? I'm like, no, right? Because what got us to where we are is we're curious and we're growers. We were this mastermind together in Puerto Rico, right? And everybody's hugely successful at that mastermind. And we were all there to grow. We were all there with our journals taking notes on every single word that everybody was saying. because we're still learning. So there's no finish line in life. I think that's a big thing that I try to convey in this book is that it's about living rich, but there's no finish line. So whatever age you're at right now, your mom is 68. Forget the money for a second. I'd be talking to your mom about what is she excited about? Because the problem at 68 is that people get depressed. And like your mom at 68, the next 10 years is the most important of her life. that are going to be the healthiest of her life between 68 and 78. She's not getting healthier from 78 to 88. So I'd be sitting down with your mom and being like, Mom, what are you going to do in the next three years that you haven't done yet? Let's work on a dream plan for you. I had this guy, David Bach, on the show, and I came home and thought, you know, is there anything that you're not doing that you want to do?

Like, is there anywhere you want to.

Go that you haven't gone? We can start planning for it.

Yeah.

Go take a trip with your mom. My mom told me she wanted to go on a safari. My mom's health is also getting worse because she's 70. My dad's 79, she's 76. Her dream trip was a safari, which we went on last summer. And I'm like, well, the mom was go. Because if we don't go now, I don't know when we're going. So yeah.

Yeah, that's good advice. What's missing in your life right now?

Wow, I don't, probably at the very moment, because I'm on tour, is sleep in my routine and exercise. I actually have a lot of routines. I'm one of those people who gets up very early, meditates, does my positive focus, normally exercises, but I'm living a pretty unbelievably blessed life right now. And also I know when you put out a book, I'll do 100 podcasts and I'll be on the road for two months almost. We're doing a nationwide tour with this book, but then I'll be done. You do all this work, you want to get the message out, you've got to go do the work. There's a finish line. There's a finish line, then I'm gonna go to Florence, Italy and spend a year and like eat pasta and drink wine and hang out with friends when.

You come visit me.

That'd be amazing.

You got a guest room for me?

You know what? I will find a guest room. My wife's like, Don't tell me we.

Have a guest room.

Seriously, come out to Florence. I would love to. Yeah, bring your girlfriend. I would love to. The reason I'm taking a year to go to Florence right now, even though I'm co-founder of a big business and I love other businesses, I've got a 15 year old son who's gonna be a sophomore and what's about to be missing in my life, is this kid's gonna go to college in three years? So because I want to live my home, the principles I teach, I want to live them, I said to my wife, you know what? The last year I can take this kid abroad as a family is his sophomore year. So let's go live abroad for a year, and let's take the kids to go see the world, and let's have them learn another language. A lot of work to go pull this all off, but we're almost there. We're leaving in 92 days.

Crazy.

It's crazy. And it's like, you know, it's exciting. So I feel blessed that we've been able to do it. But we didn't just snap our fingers and do this. It was like a two-year plan. And I just say that to anybody too. Like when you see the greatness, right? Like this incredible wall over here with all these people who've done so many amazing things. They worked on it for years. Most people, by the time they end up on a School of Greatness podcast, they've been doing it for decades or longer, right? Like, I used to always joke like, yeah, yeah, it was easy. I was a 15-year overnight success story.

Right?

Like, this stuff takes a long time. You were kind of an over. But you really weren't, right? Like, how many years did you work before you were like, oh, my God.

People now know who I am? That's probably about 10 years.

Yeah.

It's probably close to 10 years of working hard. I mean, depends on the industry I was in. I was playing a sport for my whole life, mastering myself in a craft. to be great as an athlete, then transitioned in 2007, got injured playing professional football. So now it's 2019.

It's 12 years.

12 years, yeah. And it wasn't really until a couple of years ago, two years ago, I got an LN and that was like kind of helped expand it more and more. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I wrote a New York Times bestseller, but 10 years after the fact I started in the business. It took a long time.

And it was easy, right?

And this is, you know, six, we're six years now, but it's like three times a week, every week for six years, almost, you know, almost 800 episodes. It's every day showing up and not every day is fun. You know, you go through weeks and months and years where, like, you know, it started as one episode and one listener, and you're like, oh, is anyone gonna listen to this?

And the one listener was your mom.

Right.

Exactly. And then it's like, and then it gets two listening. She tells a friend and then her.

Sister got listen to it right? Exactly.

And I never, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have any skills as an interviewer or doing a show or anything. I had no clue. I just wanted to have conversations with smart people and share the wisdom. And so I'm curious for you, what's the best money advice you've ever heard? If you could give one piece of.

Advice you ever heard.

You've heard from all of them.

It's a funny phrase, but it's called benign neglect. and it was given to me by somebody who used to run, Dean Witter. And he said to me, because I used to ask this question a lot to young people, I'm the young person, I would be around all these incredibly successful people in their 60s and 70s, and I asked that question, and he said, Benign neglect. And I said, what do you mean? He's like, Buy quality investments and leave them alone.

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Fidelity Brokerage Services member NYSC SIPC. He's like, I can't tell you how many things I've sold over my lifetime that went higher.

Oh.

If you buy quality investments, buy quality and leave it alone. I was like, huh? Okay, that was super powerful. The second, I'll give you two. The second thing was I came to the financial services industry and I had all these successful financial buyers who would, I asked for mentorships. Tell me what you learned after being in the business for 30 years. And these financial buyers would say to me, if you invest for yourself the way you invest for your clients, you'll be extraordinarily wealthy. He said the problem, and they were all joking. They're like, the problem is when we got, we, we went, when you're in the business of managing money, you think you're so smart that you take a risk with your own money that you wouldn't take for a client. If we didn't talk about the issue being a fiduciary, but like, when you're a fiduciary, you have this massive responsibility. You can't not put the client's interest first. And, but a lot of people, when they become wealthier, and more sophisticated and the income starts to roll in. You start to take these, you take additional risks with your money. And so keeping this, keeping it simple, buying quality, leaving it alone, not going off and doing a bunch of crazy things to try to get rich quickly.

Startups that you think are gonna blow up a thousand times your cryptocurrency. I've tried all this stuff and I lost all my money. I'm like, Luckily, I never spent a lot of it in this. I just like play with it with a little bit. I'm like, okay, I'm willing to lose 50 grand or 20 grand.

But then you're like, what was I thinking? I'll tell you, I used that money.

And put it in here.

So I'll give you one more nugget, which is people call it play money. I put my play money into Bitcoin, my play money into this cryptocurrency. And I go, you know, did you play to make that money? And they go, what do you mean? Did you go outside and kick a ball and somebody gave you money so that you could then go invest it? if you didn't, then it's called work money. Never refer to your money as play money. It's work money. You just talked about, you did three podcasts a week, you worked for your money, and then we turn it over to somebody else that goes and plays with it and it goes away. One thing you said earlier in the show is that you invested in you, which is, by the way, why you've been so successful. You have one of the greatest websites, one of the greatest quality podcasts. You put money into your brand, your business. who invested in you. Smart, right? Because nobody cares about your brand more than you do. The next thing you know, you see a great idea and you're like, oh, here's 50 grand. Well, it doesn't matter until it doesn't come back. And then you do 10 of those and you're like, believe me, we've all been there. I have so many friends. We talk about this now because we're like, we've all put money into 10 or 15 or 20 of these deals. And then you go, 50 grand a pop, it's a million dollars. And now it just didn't come back.

Right?

And then we all hope one of them's gonna come back.

Right, right. And make all our money back.

Right, right.

Equal it out.

Yeah. So, meanwhile, I would have just rather have been in an index fund. It's liquid. I could sell it tomorrow or buy one more condo.

So, this is called the three truths. I ask it at the end. Imagine it's your last day on earth. As long as you want to live, but at some point you have to die. It could be 200 years from now, right? And you've written multiple more books. You've done everything you want to do. you've lived your dreams, you've seen your kids do what they want to do, grandkids, whatever you want, you've created it. But it's time to go and everything you've created you've got to take with you. So your work, your messages, your videos, audios, virtual reality, whatever you created by then, it's got to go with you. But you get to leave behind a piece of paper and you can write down three things you know to be true about all the lessons you've learned in your life. Wow. and this would be kind of your Commandments to the world. And this is all they would have to remember you by. It could be on anything, but your greatest lessons, what would be your three truths to the world?

Okay, now, now, that's. That's deep. And I'm thinking about my kids, right? Because, ironically, I just. I've been working on a book of life lessons for them, which. They just be just for them. My first truth would be to love fully. Don't hold back on love. You know, like, we've all been there when we were guys, like, you know, you wrote a book about being, I'm gonna blank on your masculinity.

Masculinity, yeah.

Yeah, but like, you know, a lot of times when, especially guys, like, being vulnerable. People like, we're sometimes like, when you're young, you're afraid, and you might be in love with somebody. you're afraid to tell them. And oh man, I want to make, don't be afraid to tell somebody you love. Love fully in the relationships that you're in. I was unfortunately last week in a hospital with my wife thinking that she's having a stroke. And had eight doctors around her in the emergency room. And I'm like, wait a minute, we're going to Italy in 90, 40 days. She can't be having a stroke. This is how life works. And then she had to go have an MRI. And I'm waiting in the waiting room for hours. This is Wednesday. And I'm like, oh my God, like my whole life has just changed. Her life is potentially to change. My whole life has changed. That's how life is. And I started thinking about our last 11 years together. And it's amazing because I told my wife I loved her and wanted to marry her and have, I told Jesus actually for me, I told her I loved her, wanted to marry her and have children with her before I kissed her.

Wow.

Which is insane, but it was true. And we've had an amazing 11 years together, and I had not fully done that in the past. And I was like, this is the girl I gotta love fully. I gotta not hold back. But sitting in the emergency room, I was like, okay, what have we been focused on that doesn't really matter? I gotta keep going back to it's the love fully. So that would be number one.

And... Is she doing okay?

She is doing okay. You know what? She came back with a complete clean bill of health, and I think it was stress related.

Oh my gosh, yeah.

Probably changing her whole life around. You know, we had just gotten back from Florence, we just got our lease signed, and this has been a lot of stress.

Wow.

'Cause by the way, sometimes going through.

Your dreams is stressful. It can be.

The second thing I would say, it's actually the core of this book, ironically, My grandma, the very back of this book is a lesson from my grandmother that my grandmother shared on her deathbed. At 86, my grandmother had a stroke and I didn't know she was going to die and I was finishing Smart Women Finish Rich and I asked my grandmother because she knew I was dedicating the book to her. I said, Grandma, do you have any regrets in life? And she proceeded to go through her regrets going back to being a teenager.

And she went through five of them.

Oh my gosh.

And in those regrets, she said, it's not about the individual things. She goes, my regrets were I came to a fork in the road and there was one road that had more risk, which is where all the gold was at the end of the road. It was what I really wanted to do. And then there was a safe route. And she said, at every regret, I took the safe route. Wow. And she's like, I know. And she's like, I'm sitting here now at 86. And she said to me, and I'm, I'm gonna die. I'm not going to leave this bed. I was like, no, Grandma, I'm getting married in 90 days. You're totally getting out of here. You're coming to the wedding. She's like, no, I'm not. And she said to me, I'm here to tell you that you're young. I was in my 20s. She said, if I can give you one last lesson and gift, and she's like, and you should share it with other people. And I do a lot from stage. I said, she said, tell people when they get to a fork in the road, there's going to be the little boy or little girl inside of them wanting to take the risk. Like, you're going to get to these Forks in the road, and there's gonna be a little boy inside you that wants to go take as risk. And then there's gonna be a big boy inside of you who doesn't. And she's like, listen to the little boy and let him come out and play so that you don't turn around 86 and wonder what you should have done with your life. So that would be lesson number two, which is like, listen to your little boy or little girl. And it's hard to take the extra risk in life. But I go back again to my wife. I'm sitting in the emergency room last Wednesday at Presbyterian Hospital, and I'm thinking myself, God willing she's okay. This is why we're going to Florence. This is why we're taking a year moving abroad. Because I'm 52 and maybe I'll live 50 more years, but who knows what can happen. So we got to take the risk and go live the life now, which is all about living rich. And yeah, and then the third thing I would say, this is probably the hardest one. which is forgive the people you're mad at.

Mmm, that's so true.

And if you need to say you're sorry, just say you're sorry. And I, and I, and there's so many things below that, but like, right now, someone, everybody who watches this, for the most part, there's somebody in your life that you're not talking to. You had a falling out. and it hurts you still. Like it could have been 10 years ago. A lot of times it's family, which is the saddest thing. And people typically wait until the person's dying, if there's a deathbed part of it, where they show up at the hospital and try to say, I'm sorry, or I love you. And they've lost out on the 10, 20, 30 years of lifetime together. I saw this as a financial advisor. The thing that was insane to me being a financial advisor, because you get to know clients better than a therapist knows them, is how many clients we had that weren't talking to their kids. They got all this money and they've had falling out with their children and the children don't speak to each other way more often than not. And we would try to help these clients make up. You know, I'd say in meetings, are you sure you can't have a conversation with, like, you haven't seen your grandkids in five years. Are you sure How about you just reach out to them? Like, a lot of times we'd have both generations of the accounts. I'm like, I could call them right now. Like, I just saw them last week. Your grandkids are gorgeous. And people get stubborn or they're afraid to say they're sorry or there's just, and then what happens is the person gets sick. Then it's like in the hospital room and dad's dying. So I would just say, forgive and say you're sorry. And if you're not gonna actually bring this person back into your life, then figure out a way to forgive them on your own so that the pain that it's causing you can go away. Because if we hold on to that resentment, that pain eats at us. That's where disease comes from. Like, we could do a whole segment on health, but, like, that's where the pain of life comes from and that's why a lot of people get sick and die, is because there's this spot that they're holding on to where they're so angry with somebody that did them wrong. And you know, we've had Tony, you said you had Tony Robbins on his show three times. He does an amazing thing at one of his seminars where he gets you to take that thing that you're so angry about and turn into like, how did that help you? Yeah. And it reframes you, right? I mean, it happened for you. Yeah, Dean and I were together. You had Dean here too. Dean and I were together at a Tony Robbins event and we both had our journals and we were writing out whatever it was. Because everybody's got this, right? And then we wrote our whole big thing of like, well, this is what I gained from it. There's always something positive that can come from the pain. But if you keep holding that person or that business or that thing inside of you and you don't let it go, then the person who you're making yourself continue to suffer.

To. Yeah, it's like drinking poison and trying to, it's like trying to poison someone else, but you're drinking the poison.

Yeah, you're mad at someone, but you're feeling the pain.

I like these last three questions. Powerful, huh?

Yeah.

This is gonna be the theme of your next book. So I'm setting you up for it. I'm getting you ready, David. Make sure you guys get this book. This is really gonna be powerful. Get it for your friends, get it for your kids, get it for your parents. Super quick read, the latte factor, why.

You don't have to be rich to Live Rich. We've also got on our website, we got a website for the book, like obviously, but it's called thelattefactor.com and we've got, I don't know when you're gonna air this, but we have a bunch of bonuses on there. So when you buy the book off our website, our class that we did with Create a Live, because you've done a class with Chase, we've got a 19 video class called Start Late, Finish Rich, that's free. When you buy the book from us and you send us your receipt, you get that, you get that course.

So we've got like $200 of bonuses on that website, thelattefactor.com, People are loving the book.

And so I just thank you for having me on.

Excited, man. Before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you, David, for showing up with a lot of energy in your life at 52.

Thank you.

52, right?

Yeah.

You've got a childlike joy inside of you that radiates. And the fact that you keep showing up and create meaningful, you don't have to be writing these books. And you don't have to keep serving people to help them heal the pain and the stress and anxiety of finances, but you're doing it in such a powerful way and you're being innovative to reach different people in different ways that will resonate for them. Thank you. So, I really acknowledge you for taking the time to go on a two-month book tour, even when your wife is going through some health challenges and just show up to serve people. I think that's the greatest thing you can do. So, I appreciate you, man.

Thank you.

Appreciate you, man. Final question is what's your definition of greatness? greatness.

Ooh. Why is my definition? So I believe. I believe in God. I believe in a higher power. And I believe that everybody is given God-given gifts. That we're all given whoever your God is, right? Like, we're given these gifts and they're inside of us. And the. The most important thing we have to do while we're on this planet. is listen to what those gifts are and then go use them, like bring the gift out. So I think greatness is listening to your soul, truly listening to your soul, not your head, and going, okay, I was given this gift. I know I want to go do this, but it's so scary. And getting that gift out into the world, whatever it is, could be the gift of being a mom, could be the gift of being a good dad. Like we're all given these gifts, When I think about why I've done what I've done for 26 years, I think what my gift was, I was given this talent, trying to free people financially to actually use their God-given gifts. It's actually not about the latte, it's not about the million dollars, it's not about the real estate, it's about the financial freedom to use your God-given gifts. And I think what happens is we become trapped financially. When I tell you that six or seven or eight people out of them in America are living paycheck to paycheck out of every 10, It's very hard to hear your soul and hear a higher power if you're worried about money every day and how you're gonna pay the bills. And so I think the way you get to your greatness is you free yourself, but you gotta listen. You gotta listen to your soul. And we do a lot to not listen, right? Some of us are working, working, working, working to not listen. Some of us are drinking to not listen. Some of us are taking drugs to not listen. Some of us are cheating on our spouses to not listen. You gotta listen to your soul. And if you don't listen to your soul, the thing about the soul conversation is that it doesn't go away. It's just like, it's this weird thing. And I go, that's 'cause it's a higher power that said, I gave you this and you're not listening to it. And so that's, people finally, like a lot of times they're like, finally there's six years said, oh, okay, fine. So I think greatness is listening to your soul consciously as much as you can throughout your life and making space for that.

That's great. David Bach, my man. Thank you.

Appreciate it, bro. Thank you.

Appreciate it, man.

Really appreciate you. Thank you. That was awesome.

There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'm always looking for the best and brightest in the world. world to help you unlock your potential and reach greatness in your life. Financial freedom is one of those things that you want to master in your life. It's a thing that we all need to handle and deal with living in the modern world with the economy and and expenses. But once you have a handle on this, you can have peace of mind and peace in your heart and allow yourself to take on life's greatest challenges and optimize every area of your life. So I'm super excited about this. be a hero for someone today. Just take the link for this, text it to a friend right now, put it on your Instagram story, put it on Facebook or Twitter. You get to be the hero for someone in your life, a friend, a family member, text them this link on your podcast app or lewishouse.com/791 do it right now, guys, because I want to see everyone find peace in their heart around finances. Again, tag me @LewisHowes. You can tag David Bach as well. That's B-A-C-H over on Instagram, Twitter, and everywhere online. As Confucius said in the beginning, when it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals. Adjust the action steps. Your goals are not too big. It's the actions you're taking every single day. It's the way you think about your actions, the way you think about everything. And when you can start to automate things with your finances, you can start really seeing the goals come true. That's what I love about this episode with David. He really unlocks a lot of that for you by automating and creating systems. So make sure to become financially free, automate your money, pay yourself first.

Always.

I love you guys so very much. I hope this was a helpful one. Make sure to share with your friends and you you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

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