From RAGS to RICHES: Become a Millionaire in Under a Decade (Escape the Debt TRAP!)

Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's gonna be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in. There's more ways to make money than ever before. There's more side hustle, side gigs, creative endeavors that people can do to make money. What was the actual moment where you broke the generational conditioning around scarcity and unlocked it into abundance for you, where it converted into money entering your hands and your bank account.

I think it's weird because I was a screen clerk. I think I was making like $16,000 a year, you know, and then driving a limo at night to make ends meet. And my roommate at the time was a waiter, and he was making like $77,000 a year. And I was thinking, I can always wait tables, but I wasn't in it for the 16,000, right? I was in it for a career path to really make a bunch of money. And so that's a kind of weird thing. And I was kind of like, if I lose my ego, which I had no ego back then, I was driving a limo at night. I was like, if I lose my.

Ego, I can always get a job.

I can always get a job. I'm not going to be completely busted, right? I might be poor and I've been broke before and I'm okay with that. And I've had great times, right? Like, you know, I'm good friends, we goof off, do whatever. But it gave me kind of this freedom. Like there's this safety net of like, I will be able to find something, right? And I remember one of the FCMs I worked for this guy named Mark, and he was like, I used to be a garbage driver. If they shut this place down, I can always drive a garbage truck. You know what I mean? Like so, you know, if I lose my ego about, like, I'm too proud to do this job, right? Then I can always go work. You know, there's way more jobs and way more opportunities. And I don't have the fear of, like, moving to another place to get the job or going to another place, Etc. You know, it's painful for a lot of people. People have the fear of going into a new environment and moving, and which I think limits them to only local opportunities. But for me, I was like, I'll go anywhere for the opportunity. I'll go to Siberia, you know? You know, I was one of those dumb, young, ambitious people that will like, put me on the moon, I will trade. Right. And so, like, when I got the chance, I was in New York City, I left, didn't know anybody, had a mattress and an empty room. And, you know, I'll be there, you know, sir, yes, sir. Let's go.

Right?

And so, and if that didn't work out, so what?

Right.

So then adventure. I want the scars. Like a life with no mistakes to me is a uninteresting life. An unfulfilling life actually. Yeah. Like you haven't touched your limits. You don't know what your limits are 'cause you never failed.

Yeah.

If everything's always working out and you reveal it's like, well, you never touched your limits. You never really sent this thing. Until you run so hard where you're grow up and you're about to pass off, which, you know, I did in college when they used to make you run, you know, back and forth. You don't know your limits, right? Like, you don't know when you're struggling with the weights, right? Like, I mean, physically, but, like, also emotionally. Like, until you've said, I love you first and you've gone through the break and you've done everything you can for the relationship. Like, you just don't know. Like, this is as much as I can give in a relationship.

Yeah. Right.

This is as much as I can do. This is. as far as I can go, figuring out this business, I need to bring in help or partners or whatever, you know, like all those things. And so wanting a fulfilling ride is the goal, right? Literally the money. The money is only a tool to get the fulfillment. Now, I have fancy fulfillment things, right? And they do it, but, and I am learning how to use that tool to drive my fulfillment, but I'm also learning pay from other professionals and other verticals in the health lake, how do I optimize my health? There's time management books, how do I optimize my time? And then even in the what bucket, there's like, how do I get the better deal to get the same experience and the same fulfillment points when I go to Greece? Now, don't do that hotel, get the Airbnb, it'll be nicer and you actually have more fulfillment, it'll be cheaper and you have more money for the trip to Japan, right? So I'm just saying, like at the macro level, you know, this is how these things interact and this is how you should be thinking about the arc of your life, but then you can.

Go into each vertical and sub-optimize.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And so.

But what was that psychological moment for you where you realized, oh, I'm actually good at making money.

Oh, wow.

And not like, okay, I'm making 16 grand a year and I'm working at nights, you know, driving a limo. But actually, I'm breaking through the generational conditioning that I live in scarcity to now I live in abundance or have the potential to live in abundance. How did you learn that you were worthy and deserving of more money? How did you learn that you were capable of generating wealth?

Oh, wow. I don't know if I learned it or I just believed it and it became. Really? So I always tell people, like, I think one of my advantages was that I was delusional. And so they were like, what do you mean? I was like, like, I believed I can do it. And that drove my decisions. Now, that didn't mean I was gonna be successful. I could have easily believed I was done it and just never have done it.

Right.

Tried a hundred times.

Failed and broken, yeah.

But the fact that I had that delusion and that belief that I can do it, that you could throw me in the desert and I'd have a fighting chance, I'd figure it out, I'd drink my own pee, I'd do whatever, you know what I mean? Right, right. I'm just- Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes, I'm just gonna do it. Like, I had this delusion that I could do it. And because of that, the drink of the pee guys, sometimes you gotta drink your pee if you're in the desert and you're dying of thirst, you know, rehydrate. But, you know, eat the bugs, right? That delusion set me on the course to try and to learn. And so when I was learning, it wasn't like I couldn't learn this or I couldn't learn options trading or whatever. It's like, I can do this. I can do this because I had this delusion. And so I think the belief is powerful.

It's very, very powerful. How do you get that belief? Most people don't believe in themselves enough to believe they're deserving and worthy of money, of wealth, of abundance. How did you get to believe you are deserving?

Okay, so I had a very topsy-turvy relationship with my dad. He came from a different generation. hard boiled, right? He was pre-civil rights. Dreams were squashed. It was openly squashed and legally squashed, right? Like in this. And I was born post-civil rights, okay? And so one of the things, and I don't want to turn this into a whole racial story, but one of the advantages of growing up in Jersey City being Black is that People in that period, people talk about you. You're accused of this, why are your people like this, you're inferior, you can't do this or whatever. And so what you develop, okay, the good side of that is you what people think. You've been trained. You know what's true about you and your people and your relatives or whatever. We're not bad people, we're not criminals, I'm not whatever, I'm not this, I'm not inferior, I'm not whatever. you just learned to brush that all off, right? And my dad was a badass. And he was like, you can do whatever. We look at all the adversity we have to deal with and we overcome, right? And so that not giving a what people think and only listening to your dreams is a superpower forged in adversity, right? And so, like, I just, you just, so, you know, a lot of people walk around like, I don't care what you think or whatever, I'm not thinking this about women. I'm just like, I don't give a, I don't give a, and like, I don't care. That's their problem, right? Like, and everybody cares a little bit, right?

Yeah.

To the extent that people's thoughts will interfere with my priorities, I care more, right? But in general, on the not giving a scale, I'm on the further scale because I grew up in a period where, you know, I was born in '69, right? There's, you know, racial attitudes going on. We're just coming out of the '60s.

Right.

You know, being having that and then just having to deal with that prepares you, you know, for this period.

Right.

I'm like, I'm not afraid to look like a fool. You guys thought I was a fool. You know, you thought I was full at birth on skin color. You thought I was inferior at birth on skin color. You thought this about me on, you know, on skin color. So you just don't give a.

Right.

And so my dad And the trainings of being a minority in a city during that time period prepared me for like, who cares, I'm already a fool. Right. Might as well try.

But some people who maybe have grown up in a lot of the similar adversities or worse or a little bit less adversities, they might take that adversity and say, well, I don't have the skills, I'm never going to be able to do this. Yeah, I think. And they stay stuck in that. They don't say, Because of this adversity, I don't care and I'm gonna go for it. They say because of this adversity, this is who I am.

I think, you know, I think it's, I think the victim story is marketed to people. And if you don't take that victim story, I think they would have the same experience as me.

Really?

But, you know, I don't wanna go too deep in it, but I would just say that, I wasn't conscious, right? You just felt it. You know, you just had pride, right? You're the underdog pride. And it came. And I guess some people, they might have, you know, I was lucky. I had a father and a mother, right? Who, you know, two college educated parents, my dad via scholarship and my mom later on in life. And so if anybody was designed to succeed, it was me. But there were, you know, when I was led on my own and it's time for me to do it on my own or, you know, who moves from New York City to Texas to go, you know, like the things, the decisions I made were kind of this like, it can be done. You know, when I had not that much experience, but I knew I can recruit people to build in to do this solar development project in the Nevada desert, right, and then sold it to Capital Dynamics, right, and made my friends and myself a good chunk of change. and also putting solar on the grid. Like, it's just this belief that you can figure it out and you can do it. And so I guess that there are some people who get dealt the clouds of inferiority and it stunts them.

Yes.

And I would hope that somebody somewhere along the line flips it for them, flips it for them and said, this is a badge of honor, man. Like, you got nothing to lose, right?

Right, right.

You got nothing to lose. You got no whatever. Nobody anything from you. So when you- no pressure. No pressure. No pressure.

This could be your greatest gift.

This could be your greatest gift. And so for me, I think it, you know, my greatest gift was like not giving and my willingness to look like a fool.

Yeah.

Like I'm just winging life like everybody else, right? Like I'm winging it, right? And so, and I'm trying to figure things out and I wrote this book for me. And then I figured if I can, you know, save my own life, like not waste my own life, and maybe it will be useful to other people. Yes. Right. But occasionally I get somehow stuck on autopilot.

Yeah.

And I need to go back in a book or my wife needs to remind me, like, hey, hey, hey, you know, let's think this through. Let's get off autopilot. Let's get off autopilot. Let's get off autopilot. You know, you're doing these things, you're playing speed chess online. Like how is this the most fulfilling thing for you to be doing in your life right now? It's not, I'm deleting them.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah. You know, things like that, right? There's more things that are deeper than that. But I think that early experience and my dad gave me the confidence seeing him do it in much harder circumstances. Much deeper clouds of inferiority. Much more hard knock like to look at that. And then other people in life, like I'm like, you know, I go places and I get inspired by people who make it. You know, a lot of people, you know, they, oh, well, they had this help or they look for the thing that was the one piece of help, but they still overcame a lot. I'm like, wow, I'm pretty lazy. Like, if that person could do it, and look at all the advantages I have, you know, born in the United States of America, growing economy, growing population, jobs, technology. I just was born in such a great era. Like, I'm like, I can ride this wave. I can surf this wave. I can do it.

Yeah.

I'm going to surf this wave of life and navigate it the way I want to go, you know? And so I just had this delusional.

Belief and it happened to work out. That's amazing. You've been around a ton of wealthy individuals. Yeah. Billionaires, mega billionaires. And you've also been around a lot of broke people who are in a ton of debt or people who've lost all their money. you've seen the both sides of the spectrum. From your perspective at this stage, what would you say are the three keys to really making more money and also being fulfilled with the money you have?

Okay, so three keys to making more money. I would have to say that on the earning part, there's a lot of people who speak better to making more money. But I will speak just more in terms of like psychology and belief is this belief that you can and you're entitled. And so when you think you can, you read the book, you read the business book, you read the so and so, you make the attempt, et cetera. A lot of people will just sit in the stands. Not go off the bat. They won't take the chance. Not only will you take the swing, you'll strike out and you'll do it again and you do it again and.

You do it again.

I was just talking with somebody on Twitter and like, oh yeah, and I break up, and I said, Isn't it great that you're bankrupt and now you can still go out and earn and take another swing? Lose the ego attachment, get the f out there and let's rip it again.

Yeah.

You know, and so that's what it is in America, right? Like there's so many people in failure stories and like Steve Jobs got fired and rehired, you know, like things like that, right? Like all these learnings that you get, like, wow, you went to school, this is expensive school, but let's go. You got subject matter expertise. What's the next thing? What's the next dream on your plate? And so when you believe you can, you start to take actions that actually develop your ability to do it.

Yes.

And then so that is one.

We'Ve.

Already been talking about it. You have to, you know, this is a saying, never tell your dreams to your parents that you want to do it, because even though they love you, They saw you as a teenager and you didn't take out the garbage, right? So they were always like, oh, you sure you really want to do that? Is this a safe job? Like, you have such a good thing going on. Like, you can just get a job at the post office or whatever. Like, they are afraid for you, right, to go on your adventure. They want to protect you. And they also seen you in your clown years, right? Not the new bad bald you, right? And so, and then also, you know, As much as your friends and maybe some of your peer group may love you or not, a lot of people behave out of fear. They don't wanna look like an idiot. They had a great idea. They had a thing they wanna do and they don't do it.

They tried it and it failed or they don't wanna do it again. Or they don't do it for it, yeah.

So your success exposes their cowardice.

Mm. Right.

Say it again.

Your success exposes their cowardice. So when you go out and you fail, they're like, see, I'm right not to go do that. See what he did? He went out and failed. He told them he shouldn't have done that. That was crazy. Why did he do that? So they feel comfortable in their safe life and their cowardice. They didn't go live their dreams or take the risk or whatever. But if you go succeed, they're like, I'm a f***ing coward. I had a chance to do it. I could have done this. I could have been in the work. I could have grinded for a year or two years with no reward, live in, eat ramen, and been successful. So I always say people like success, but they love a failure. They love a failure because it reaffirms that they're doing the right thing and you're not cowards. be very, very careful about your mindset that you're getting from other people.

Mm. Right?

And success is not just doing the thing and making it. Success is living a fulfilled life. It is about the ride. You know, a lot of people like say, oh, it's easy for you to say when you haven't, listen, I've gone like busted twice. Like I've been fired, I've been whatever. And it's been, that has been great.

That has been great.

Losing your money, getting fired, getting fired, getting humiliated, people talking behind your back, you know what I mean? Oh, he's a clown or he can't do this. It's part of it. It's like I learned who my friends were and who weren't. I know who my supporters were and who weren't. I learned about myself. Do I care or do I not care? What things really upset me? What mistakes did I, what did I mistakes? Where did I get lazy? Where did I get off track on vision? you know.

It'S about that.

It was great. And then, you know, here I am on this side of the coin, but like, still would have been great. You know, I did, I tried to do some huge project in Central America. Went busto, vaporized $10 million. Learned a lot.

Gone.

Like years, time, meetings, whatever, you know, and, and, and it's gone. I tried to do an importation project in California, learned all about permitting in California, the interest groups, Etc. Gone. The ride, you know, and, and it wasn't, it wasn't like now we have a bunch of money. It was like, that was a very significant.

It's all your money.

It was like, oh, we might have to come back on staff here.

Miss Perkins.

Oh, you know? And so I think it's like, really be careful about how you speak to yourself and the people you keep around you and who you share your dreams with.

Wow.

That's interesting. and the third thing.

Oh, man. Third thing. The third thing, consistency.

Yeah.

Take it seriously. I I hear a lot of people, like, they'll have an idea, and they're about to go into the execution phase. So ideas are like a dime a dozen.

Right.

It.

It.

There's no Market for ideas that I think Paul Graham says. Right. You can't just go, I'm gonna sell you this idea. No, you can sell a business, you can sell the execution. So, like, 90 something percent of it. is the execution. And they go in the execution phase and they don't take it seriously. You know, this is your dream, this is your life. You know, people take video games, simple things, you know, party things more seriously, and then they'll take their their dreams, right? And so if your dream is this business or this idea or take some way of making money, And it could just be like showing up for work on time, right? It doesn't have to be this like, I'm starting this entrepreneurial thing. It just be like, I want to be the best person being consistent and taking it seriously. Taking it very seriously.

I think more money comes to you when you show the universe how consistent you are with what you care about.

Use all your resources as if your life depends on it. And the funny thing is, these are the hours of your life. So your life does depend on it.

This is your life.

This is the time period and some people don't take, you know, I'll see guys come in with pitches or things. I'm like, did you do this? Did you use this resource? Did you whatever? It's not like they couldn't thought of it. It's not like they couldn't have done it. They just didn't because they didn't take it seriously enough.

Yeah.

You know? So use all your resources at your disposal to drive your fulfillment. If your fulfillment is this job and making money or this idea, use all your resources at your disposal to make it happen and take it seriously. And so I think a lot of people are, or flip it with their own dreams. I don't know why. And I think it comes down to the, I've done it before too. I've done it in school. It's one of those things where like you have this fear that you can't do well so you don't try your best. You know what I mean? Like they're like, oh, I'm afraid of failing, so I'm just not gonna do my best. And so when I fail, I can be like, oh, I didn't really try that hard. You know what I mean? I wasn't really trying to lift it. you know, like that much. I wasn't really stretched out or whatever. And so you're like, you have this excuse that you didn't try hard, so that's why you failed. And so it makes your ego feel good. And I've done that before, and I think other people do it too. I don't know if these are the three keys. I don't know what you could take out of that, but I think it's something that, you know, people can take home with and like see if that applies to them.

There's been a lot of changes over the last few years with the with the financial world, with interest rates, with real estate, with people losing jobs, with whoever knows what's happening. How can we be prepared for what's to come financially? Whether it's incredible financially or it's a nightmare financially, what can we do today to start being better prepared so that we are not as affected as we could be?

I think Diversification is really important. So that's making sure that you have that emergency fund, making sure that there's money you are investing in the stock market through index funds that are all diversified. You're not just buying like one stock and being like, that's it.

Like roll the dice.

Yeah, like it's not like that. You want to be really diversified. You want to be buying some bonds. You want to be buying, you know, equities. You want to consider maybe investing in real estate. Maybe that's buying you know, an actual physical property or just investing in funds, REITs, or something like that. I also think that like, there is a disconnect right now from like a mindset perspective of a lot of people. And not to get on this like rah rah soapbox again, but so many people now aspire to a life that frankly, they will never be within their means. And I say that and I know it's harsh, but keeping up with the Joneses has become keeping up with the Kardashians because you have it all on your phone. You can see this immense amount of wealth that like in any other reality, like before our, you know, our parents time, our grandparents time, you were never able to see it.

Right.

People have always had yachts, but now you see a yacht, like every other day, you're like, par for the course, like this is great, whatever. Like I should have a yacht too. And so you've got people spending money, like it's going out of style to keep up, and it doesn't make sense. I know people who only take black cars. I make seven figures a year and I am ready to get into the Toyota Camry that picks me up.

Yeah.

It's crazy to me that there is just, again, this almost like desire to like fake it till you make it of like, you know, this trend of like, dulu, like delusional. Like, yes, in some ways it's great because you want to apply for jobs that you're unqualified for. You want to do things that are outside of your comfort zone, but like that can also put you in a really precarious situation. very quickly.

Right. Is it possible for anyone to become wealthy or to become rich, or is it only for a certain mindset or a certain demographic of people?

Yeah, I think anybody who wants to have money, anybody who wants to have richness can get there, but it certainly is not as easy as everyone on the internet makes it seem. It's not Amazon drop shipping, rah rah, wholesale real estate, rah rah, buy some life insurance and you're good to go. That's just not it. And I think a big conversation that we don't talk about is proximity, right?

So.

In my life now, I have many rich friends and those rich friends provide me additional rich opportunities. I got to go to the US Open on a bank's dime because my fiance worked with a guy who is at an investment bank and he had four tickets, took him, his wife, my fiance, and myself. Those tickets are thousands of dollars. They're very, very expensive. I have friends who had an incredible accountant. had, you know, great team in terms of financials for business. And they were like, you should talk to my team. That's how I got hooked up with my business manager. If you don't have that proximity to people who have money, who've done it, who played the playbook, how are you going to learn it? Because, sure, if you are a young person growing up low income and you want to make smart money decisions, work very hard in school, get good grades, do the American dream thing, and you go, you get to Harvard, okay? You get to Harvard, the rich kids still don't wanna be friends with you.

Why not?

Because you can't afford to split the table at the club on Friday night.

Wow.

You can't afford to pay for the dues for your finals club or whatever they call it. Like, you don't have that money to get you there. So I think the process of becoming wealthy and becoming rich and having money, it's available to anyone. But the trajectory and the timeline is very, very different.

Interesting.

Where you start.

So proximity alone isn't enough is what I'm hearing you say because you could have the grades or the skills and the proximity, but if you don't have the money still, then people may not, what are you saying?

So I'm saying that proximity makes it easier.

Yes.

So if you grow up rich and your parents are, you know, very, very, tough and they're like, we're not leaving a penny to you guys. You still grew up around all of those rich people.

You still have access, contacts, information.

Exactly. And you still got all those soft skills. Whereas someone whose parents are like, I will leave you every dollar I have, but they grow up lower middle class, they don't have that proximity that you had growing up.

What skills should employees be developing throughout the year or years at a career or multiple careers, what can they develop to make themselves more indispensable? Besides just like, okay, I'm doing the job, but I'm showing up and doing it, but should I be taking classes? Should I be learning public speaking? Should I be some other skills learning to make myself more desirable at the current job or at another place?

Yeah, I think every job, being good at your technical skills is great. But you want to have transferable skills. And these are the soft skills.

Bring it.

What is it? Tell me.

Again, it goes back to those fork and knife skills. You want to be able to have a conversation with just about anyone. You want to be able to make someone feel special. And I feel so lucky because after my stint on Wall Street, I went and worked at a media company in strategy sales. and let me tell you, sales, that is another beast because you eat what you kill. And I got some sales training that, you know, my company obviously paid thousands and thousands of dollars for. And I don't remember any of it except for one thing. WI FM. So you guess what that means.

WI FM. F M. I was thinking what if something, but I'm not sure.

Okay, so you got the W. What? What's in it for me?

Ah, yeah.

So we always know what we want, what's in it for us, but what's in it for me for the other person? Why do they need to help you do that thing? And this is how I always get what I want. I, no, no, think about it. I always think at the other end of the table, what's in it for that person?

Yeah.

Like, it's like the prenup.

It's the prenup.

What was in it for you?

What's in it for right now? What's in it for, you know, talk about you. I know that you have, you know, a very, very successful podcast. But what's in it for you interviewing me? You want a lot of people to listen to this. You want to get those, you know, chartable numbers up. You want to be up the ranks. You want, A big social splash, you want all of these things. And I position myself in a certain way to make those things happen. If I go to the car dealership, I'm like, okay, it's the end of the month. It's the end of October. I'm going to go, I'm going to ask for the floor mats. I'm going to do all of these things. But I'm like, but what's in it for that guy? That guy's getting a commission because it's the end of the month and they need to make their number. They want to hit their quota. They want to get the kicker. and they get paid upon delivery. So I'm going to go four days before the end of the month and then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to have to buy, you know, an as is car on the lot, blah, blah, blah. But I think about what's in it for them. That's cool. When I'm at a gate and my flight's been delayed and I'm mad and I'm angry, I'm like, this gay day agent wants to kill me. She does not like me. She doesn't want to help me. What can I say that is going to make her want to help me? So maybe it's, Hey, I know you got a crazy crowd control thing happening going on. When do you think we are going to have an answer? If not, I would like to just rebook my flight. That way I can get outta your hair. And then they're like, oh, okay, this person has already thought through solutions. I can just ABC pick one for them, whichever one that I think is going to make the most sense based on what I think the plane's gonna arrive to the gate versus, What's going on? No gate agent wants to answer that question because it's always bad news. You're always gonna be mad.

I know.

So think about what's in it for me? What's in it for them?

Man, I'm excited about this. Rich AF, the winning money mindset that will change your life. Make sure you guys get a few copies of this, give them to your friends. If you wanna learn how to really maximize your earnings to get more out of your current job, your career, if you wanna understand the difference between savings accounts, Investing, all these different things. The technical side of things here as well. If you want to learn more tax strategies, legal loopholes, it's all in here. Make sure to check it out. You've also got an amazing podcast that I want people to check out as well. We'll have all these things linked up. That's called Net Worth and Chill. Net Worth and Chill. You've got your rich BFF. You've got so many different things. Your social media is great. I love seeing your content online, your TikTok, your Instagram. We'll have all that linked up. What can we, what else can we do to be of service to you today besides get a copy of the book, check out your content, all the things?

Yeah, so you can get a pre-order copy of RichAF@richaf.me. Yes, I made the URL a manifestation. And you can find me on social as yousRichBFF. But if there is one favor that you can do for me that I would so, so appreciate is just talk to your friends about money.

Mm, I love that.

Because we've been told for so long that it's taboo and tacky, and you are doing nobody any favors except for big old corporations when you keep that information hidden. Absolutely. When you hold that shame, let me tell you, when you talk to your friend about money and they make more than you, they don't suddenly make less for having told you, but you now know and you can go and ask your boss for more. So please, please talk to your friends about money.

That's beautiful. I think the earlier you can speak about money and make it more of a common practice of just having a conversation over coffee and just relaxing. It will be less stressful in the future.

It doesn't have to be an icky topic.

It doesn't have to be. I love that. Vivian, this is powerful. I've got two final questions for you. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end. It's called the Three Truths. Hypothetical question and scenario. Imagine you get to live as long as you want. But it's your last day. So you live as long as you want in this life, but we're at the last day of your life.

Okay.

Can be a hundred something years old, 200.

Okay, but has my body deteriorated?

You're still in perfect health. Okay, great.

You know, yeah, you still look great.

Okay, great. You're filthy rich, you've accomplished everything you want to accomplish, you've got a beautiful life, family, everything you want, it's happened. But it's the last day and you've got to take all of your work with you to the next place. So the book is gone. This interview is gone. Everything you've ever created, for whatever reason, is gone. But you get to leave behind three lessons with the world. And this is all we have to remember you by. I call it three truths. What would be that for you?

Wow, okay, wasn't prepared for that one. That is an excellent question. I would say, The first, always buy them the chicken parm. And this has to, you know, there's a little bit of an explanation behind this.

I love chicken parm. It's incredible.

Okay, so the first- There's amazing chicken.

Parm here in LA.

Oh, really?

Amazing chicken parm, yeah.

The first guy I worked for on Wall Street, my boss's boss, was this super Italian guy, like just the most Italian Italian man you've ever seen. and he told me one day, he was like, Viv, you always gotta buy them the chicken parm. And I'm like, sir, I'm lactose intolerant. What are you talking about? I'm vegan. I'm like, I don't even eat cheese. But what he meant by that was every so often out of just the random kindness of his heart, he would buy a bunch of chicken parmes and he would dish them out to the people on our team. And then, you know, the guys on it, the guys in the back office, the guys in the middle office, and. you know, he must be spending like almost $1,000 on chicken parm. And he meant by like just treat people with kindness, not because, you know, you have to, but because you want to. And then when he ever had an issue, those people came running to his desk.

Yeah.

If multiple people were having issues, they only ran to his desk because he had genuinely treated them with kindness. When it didn't serve him, when it was just a random Wednesday, he would be like, oh, how's your kids' little league game going? And took a genuine interest in people and to your point of being interesting and asking questions, just being kind. I think that's really important.

That's cool. Okay, that's the first one.

That's a good one. I would say, if you are a woman, Just know yourself and know your worth. I think we compete a lot with other women because we have that scarcity mindset and we think that another person's success is our downfall. And that, you know, if you're number one on the podcast charts, it means I'm not number one. Okay? But there's always room for more people to succeed. Like, there's enough white space for all of us to get there, for all of us to have what we want and get what we need. And I think it took me a very long time to learn that. I would always be like, if that girl has XYZ, I can't have it. Like, I need to do this. It was just, like, so unhealthy. So I think it's more of, like, knowing yourself, knowing your worth and not being unnecessarily competitive. I think there's a little healthy competition in everything, but don't let it be to the detriment of, you know, your mental health or like anything in your life. And then, you know, just, I think a third one is don't kill the golden goose.

Um, you have that on your shoes.

Oh my God, no, don't do that. What kind of shoes I'm wearing?

No, it says golden goose.

Yeah, it does. So not sponsored by the golden goose shoe brand, but. I would like to be. The old fable is that, and I'm sure you've heard it, right? Go ahead, say. Okay. A farmer's wife, they have this goose, and every single day this goose lays a golden egg. And they're like, oh my gosh, like a little nugget of gold. They're like, this is so weird. All the other geese are doing this, but like, this gold is amazing. Like, we now have this little pellet of gold. I wish we had more. And so every day they get a little egg of gold. and they're like, well, it's not, you know, happening fast enough. We should kill the goose. And that way, the inside of the goose will be entirely gold. We'll be able to get it all at once, and we'll sell it. So they Slaughter this goose, and the inside of the goose is a regular goose body, and there is not a single piece of gold. And I think this is a bigger metaphor of, like, life of us always wanting the next big thing, wanting more. But like, I am a big, big, like, this is a problem I have. I currently have the life that I prayed for a couple months ago. And sometimes I don't get to enjoy it. Sometimes I'm not even enjoying it. And that's sad. I think we need to not kill the golden goose, enjoy those little nuggets of gold that we get every single day. And it's okay to want to work for more and strive for more. But don't ruin a good thing just because you're always trying to like hit the next milestone.

Yeah.

They'll come, but you could, you know, completely lose this entire journey if you don't take a second to stop them roses and stop and smell the roses.

Yeah, that's beautiful. How does someone create that belief that they can have control over their money?

I think it starts with dealing with their past. I mean, our friend Dr. John Delony has a book called Own youn Past, Change youe Future. And you have to own the shame and the guilt and the baggage and the mistakes and the hurt and the financial trauma and your parents divorced and it was money stress and money fights and you took on all this debt and so who are you to ever build wealth and become debt free? You have to grapple with that and go like, that's not who I am. those are things that happened and yes, they may have happened to me, but that's not gonna control my destiny. And so it starts with that, realizing, this is my past, that's fine, that's not where I'm headed. And so we always say the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror for a reason. So if you can start looking ahead going, regardless and in spite of all of that, I am going to change my family tree. That's what we call it. Build generational wealth, break the cycles and chains that have come before me, those people are the ones that inspire me every day when they call the show. And they didn't come from money, they didn't come from trust funds. They came from broken homes and little incomes and they overcame. Those are the heroes.

Yeah, I think I saw someone earlier this week, a woman come on the show, say she got out like 300,000 in debt in like 18 months or something on your show. And maybe it was 300, maybe it was 170,000 I think it was, that she got out of debt in 18 months. and the amount of peace that she had in her facial expression and her body language around being debt free from these, I guess, bad debts really looked empowering on what she was capable of doing now without that debt weighing her down. And I'm curious, before we get into the next, the fifth habit, how does someone develop that that belief that they can pay down their debts if it seems so daunting and so overwhelming.

Realizing that you're not alone, I think, is a really important step. Too many people feel like, well, my situation's different and I'm unique and I'm special and they don't get it. But then I meet people every day and I get in a Financial Peace University class and there's all these other people who made money mistakes and I go, oh, I'm not alone. I'm not the only idiot out there. I'm not the only average George out there. That to me is encouraging because it tells me that this path is something that other people have done before me that will come after me and that I can do this too. And so I think it's important to get other people around you and that might mean cutting out some toxic friends who are not trying to be on that journey. Finding people who aren't trying to live on less than they make. That's an important piece. And the other piece is feeling progress. And that's why I think those baby steps are so important. when you start with just, hey, a thousand bucks, can you get a thousand bucks? Most of us would say, yeah, I can sell some stuff. I can get the second job. I can, you know, not eat out this month. Now it's like, all right, let's attack that consumer debt. Debt snowball, smallest to largest. Let's just attack the small debt. Can we just do that one thing at a time? We're not saving, we're not investing. We're just gonna do one thing at a time. And that, to me, is what builds that hope and builds that progress and momentum and keeps you motivated on the journey.

You have to have a little win.

Early on or else you give up.

Yeah, that's good. And what about the fifth habit?

Ooh, the fifth habit is so boring and unsexy that it will upset you, but it is getting on the budget. It's making a plan. And what I found was that budgets are not for broke people, budgets are not for wealthy people, budgets are for intentional people. That was a game changer for me because I always thought like, we have to be a super nerd and love Excel, or you have to be like really broke because you think budget, you think this person's real frugal and stingy and cheap. and they can't spend anything. You say, I'm on a budget, that means I can't go out with the friends. But to me, it's just putting a plan on paper and looking at reality, going, My income is 5,000. I need to spend, I'm gonna make a plan for every single dollar, 'cause otherwise what happens? Dollars float away. You go, Where do, where, oh my gosh, we spent 600 bucks eating out this month, door-dashing a burrito. You know, all of that unintentional spending.

And impulse leads to you not hitting financial goals.

Yeah.

So it's not, it's conscious spending habits. It's being aware of where you're spending your money. There was a quote in here, let me see this quote real quick. I saw this based on budgeting.

Yeah, I had a whole chapter on called Budgeting is Freedom. That's the first one in the Breaking Free section to help people.

And the quote on that is from John Maxwell. He said, A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. And I think a lot of people aren't conscious about their spending habits and they're not intentional about where they want their money to go. They buy things based on impulse and based on pleasure and based on desire. And then they realize like, oh, I don't have as much money as I thought I had because they're not intentional about it. How often should we be looking at all of our accounts? Should this be a daily thing? Should it be monthly? Is it too, is it You know, is there too much to look at it where it's an obsession and you're over obsessing versus like a natural flow?

What do you think? Yeah, that's a great question. Well, we tell people to make a budget every month. And so actually creating the budget on paper before the next month begins is key. So that will happen one time. And if you've got a spouse, you need to do that together with a quick budget meeting. This is not a four hour, you know, Lord of the Rings saga here. This is going, Hey, what's going on this month? Hey, we got that birthday party. We got to get that gift for this thing. Remember we have that vacation coming up, let's start saving. And so that's all it is. But as far as tracking your transactions, 'cause that's a really important part of the budget, people forget to do. Looks great on paper, and then we just spend the rest of the month and hope. Fingers crossed we have money in the account at the end of the month and don't overdraft. That's most people. But tracking your transactions is a key, and you wanna do that once every day or other day. And again, if you do it once or every other day, it's like cleaning your room. You don't ever have to clean your room if you just tidy up real quick. And so with every dollar, our budgeting app, this is as easy as dragging the transaction like Amazon, drag it up to shopping, we're done. And so when you do that, you can actually see, do we have any money left for XYZ or hey, we're over budget, we got to figure something out, we got to sacrifice, we got to cut this category here. What most people do is just overspend in four different categories and they go, we're a thousand bucks over and we put it on the credit card. We'll figure it out next month. And that's why it's important to not only do a budget, but to use your own money. And I only have a, I have a one debit card and I use cash occasionally. That's it. My life is very simple in that way. And I have my business, my Ramsey Business debit card as well.

What do you say to people that say, you know, well, I love having a credit card because it allows me to get points for flights or, you know, whatever it might be for other perks. and if I'm tracking it just like I would a debit card, then I'm missing out on all these other perks.

Well, I found the people who actually could stand to benefit and actually have any meaningful rewards make enough money and spend enough that they don't need the rewards. So it's kind of hilarious at that point to be like, if you make $150,000, the $1,000 in rewards is not changing your life whatsoever. And the mental calories you're spending to play the game and maximize is not worth your time. And so I break down, in chapter three on credit cards, I break down eight different character archetypes that I found with credit cards. And so there was the rewards redeemer, there's the world traveler, the person's like, I gotta have my airline miles. And I break down, you gotta spend $50,000 in order to get your $250 flight. But you don't even know that, 'cause what do they give you? Points and miles. What is a hundred thousand miles? We don't know anymore. The credit card companies want to confuse us. And I found this out from an ex-Capital One employee. She told me verbatim that these credit card companies run 10,000 experiments a year on consumers and A/B test them to go, if we switch it from cash back to points, it triggers something different in their brain. It's like Chuck E. Cheese. Wow. You're like, I don't know what 100,000.

Points is, but it feels like a lot.

Let's sign up for the bonus. It's like two candy bars.

Yeah.

Exactly. So most people, they're stepping over a dollar to hopefully pick up a quarter. And the average credit card interest rate now is 22% APR.

Wow.

But we're doing all this in hopes of getting 2% cash back. You're like, is it worth spending 100 bucks to get two bucks? What they tell me is, well, I'm not spending any differently than if it was my own money. I'm like, you want to bet? Here's $1,000 cash of your own money. Go hand over $1,000 and see the emotional pain it causes. And so adding friction back into our life will actually help us spend less. And that's what happens when you use cash especially, But even a debit card, your brain knows this is coming right at you. It's Louis's money right now. And so in the book, the thesis of that chapter is when it hurts less, it costs more. When we remove the friction, you're going to spend more. And I quote MIT studies using fMRI technology on the brain, and they're seeing when people swipe that credit card, it releases the brakes on spending and hits the accelerator.

Really?

And so it's like both and. And every study shows you spend more when you swipe that card. And so I try to hit every single objection here, because we've heard so much in the Ramsey Show. What if I paid the perfect spender the first one in there? I never pay a dime in interest.

What's wrong with using my credit card?

All of those expenses. Pay it off every month, all the different things. Yeah, but even then, think about it. You could have zero bucks in the bank at the end of that month. You're not building wealth just because you have a zero credit card balance.

I want people to build wealth. Sure. Not just play the game perfectly of Capital One.

Right.

And if it's coming out of a debit card, you'd be much more conscious of like, do I really need this thing? Or is this whatever I'm going to buy right now, is it really going to be the thing that I want.

Right now and going to make me happy? Or is it a rotating cashback? So when you tell me, I spend just like I would, and like, no, you're going out to eat because you get 5% this month on restaurants. Right. Like they know what they're doing. It's always on travel and restaurants. It's never, hey, pay your utility bills and we'll give you 5% cashback. It's never the boring stuff. It's the frivolous spending. Sure. So there's so much in there that was fascinating, especially the Fed Reserve study that shows that $15 billion moves from the poor, uneducated to the wealthy or educated through credit card rewards. And so when people tell me, well, George, I'm not like, who's benefiting from this? I'm not hurting anyone by doing this. Like, technically, I'm not, this is not, I'm not an immoral high horse, but the study shows that the poorest, most uneducated people is who's paying for your flight, who's paying for your cash back. And to me, that's not a system I want to be a part of if I can opt out of it by using my own money.

What do you think is the number one thing about money that stresses them out the most? The idea of money. Is it the debt of money? Is it having lots of money? Is it relationships and money? Is it people's opinions about your money? What is the number one thing about money that stresses people out the most?

When it comes to stress, I think a lot of stress is based on fear of the unknown. And when you have headlines and economic uncertainty and what's the president gonna do or not gonna do, and they're gonna forgive student loans, and I have so much peace when it comes to personal finances because I ignore all of the noise and I only focus on what I can control. When you start pointing fingers at, well, what are we gonna do about inflation? The cost of eggs and Congress has got to get their act together and the Fed, they keep messing with these interest rates and the guy in the White House crosses to blame. And all of that is, we can always complain about that for a moment. But at the end of the day, we got bills to pay, we got goals to achieve. And so I go through all of those excuses in chapter one to tell people like, hey, we can point fingers and enjoy it, and that's cathartic. But at the end of the day, what you can control is the guy in the mirror and how he spends his money and how she saves her money. And to me, that at first is kind of like, okay, I can control me, whoop, whoop. But it's so empowering when you realize, oh, if I'm the problem, I'm the solution. This is amazing. And so I think that stress comes from the fear of the unknown and what could happen and what if the stock market tanks. But when you have no debt, no lenders to pay, you have a fully funded emergency fund, and you've got wealth being built for the future, and you're thinking long term, you're not worried about what happens.

Right, because you've got your plan and.

You'Re sticking to it. Exactly. I'm so confident in my plan, and it's not because I'm some multi-millionaire, It's because I'm content with where I'm at. I don't need another million dollars tomorrow. You don't need a new watch, you.

Don'T need a new car, you don't need to go on five extra trips that you see other people doing. Exactly. You don't need to overspend because you have financial peace.

And the simpler you can create, the simpler life you can create, the better off you're gonna be. Because the more stuff you own, the more it kind of owns you. The more complicated life gets. And so, you know, I was just hanging out with the minimalists and we were talking about all of this stuff because We're seeing anxiety stems from the stuff around us and the less clutter in our life emotionally, physically, financially, the better off we are. And I've never seen someone debt free who's like, my life is worse now that I have no debt. Not once. They always are levitating because they just have a peace about them because they're not keeping their bodies, not keeping the score anymore of the debt that they owe.

Do you think people have more shame around being in debt? or more shame today about having an abundance of money?

Oh, is there a shame? And like, well, I don't want to, because other people are hurting.

Yeah, yeah, I've got.

I have wealth.

I figured out how to take responsibility for my life and pay off the debts and start building wealth. And I've actually done it now. I spent 10, 20, 30 years of actually creating something of value, and I've been smart with my money. Now I have it. which used to be like celebrated.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, but now it's.

Been a nice wealth.

Yeah.

So do you feel like people have more shame around being in debt and broke and a victim that they don't have control of their life financially or more shame about being rich?

Well, in a culture where debt has become celebrated, I think we've lost a level of shame that we ought to have. Like back in our grandparents' days, it was not okay to owe people money. It was a goal to not owe people money. Now there's TikToks about people going, I'm $15 million in debt and I'm proud of it and you should be $15 million in debt too. And the people who have wealth and have earned it with integrity are going like, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings because everyone's upset. And at the heart of it is, I don't think it's fair that Lewis has more than me. And it's this comparison culture and mentality of, if he has something I don't, that's not fair. And, you know, it goes into basically socialist anarchy at that point. And so the best thing we can do, whether you, you know, we have people with all the baby steps and they're whispering to us like, hey, we're millionaires.

Right, right. They're not like owning it.

They're not like shouting from the rooftops. But we live in such a weird world at Ramsey where we're celebrating people paying off debt, we're asking about income all day long. And so it's, there's less shame in.

Our Ramsey bubble, but it's weird that we whisper that. Why do you think there's so much shame for people that have, you know, 100 grand or a million dollars of net worth where they can't speak about it to their friends and family openly without feeling judged, attacked, having handouts everywhere where people now, now you got to pay off my debts. Is that what it is that people are just shaming people that have taken responsibility for their money?

The heart behind it is there's wisdom to it. You know, me telling a random person or my friend like, hey bro, I got a million bucks. It's out of context and it's going to make them feel small and less than. And so I think the heart of it is good, it's good intentions. And there's a time and a place to talk about it. The Ramsey Show is one of them. We love celebrating people. But going down the street being like, I'm a millionaire, what are you guys doing? It's hard. And so even with this book, I don't brag that I'm a millionaire. I tell people, I'm the average George. If I can go from broke to millionaire, you can too. So it's never a flex on my part. All it is is I want to empower other people that I didn't come from money. I am a W-2 employee. I didn't start my own business. I'm not a self-made entrepreneur. I'm a guy who just followed a simple plan and believes that anyone can become a millionaire in America today. And so I talk about money so that we don't have to talk about money. It's like, let's let's take the shame out of it and let's just make it fun and conversational. And it's not about a flex.

It's about encouraging and empowering each other. Wow. So you're telling me you can work somewhere for a decade, not start your own business, not be hustling on the side constantly and spending all your time trying to earn more constantly and you could get to millionaire status. Is that what you're telling me?

It's possible.

It's possible. I think it looks different for a lot of people. A part of my wealth building was my spouse, Whitney. I met her at Ramsey and we are net worth millionaires together as a household and people are always like, well that doesn't count. 'Cause really you have to take half of that 'cause what if you divorce? I'm like, that's such a weird, that's like saying like, what if the stock market goes to zero? You're not a millionaire anymore. I'm like, you,'re right, I wouldn't be. But I think a spouse is one of the most powerful wealth building tools. Really? It's underrated. Tell me why. Because when my wife and I met, we were so aligned, obviously. We both worked at Ramsey, we drank the Kool-Aid, and it was good. And we were like, we started off our marriage debt free. I had paid off my consumer debt at that point. She was much smarter than me, much better looking, much better at money management. And so like, it's a life hack to start your marriage off debt free already investing for the future, having the emergency fund, getting into a home. And we ended up paying off that home in 26 months because we were on the same page, got a modest home that was within our means, and we both had the goal of like, what would it be like to not have a mortgage payment in our early 30s? What could we do? How could we give? What options would we have? That led us down the path of paying off the house. That house appreciates in value over time. We've been investing 15% that whole time into our Roth 401 s at Ramsey, boring investing stuff. All of a sudden, you look up at your net worth calculation. You're like, the equity in our home and in retirement accounts, we're millionaires. I don't say that to minimize the sacrifice that we made and the side hustles that I did. Us getting promoted over the years, over a decade, it may take people 15 years or 20 years. It may take dual income. You know, we had dual income, no kids at the time. We got two French Bulldogs, which was a real net worth.

Oh, that's a couple hundred thousand dollars. That was a couple hundred thousand dollars.

We just had a little girl four months ago, and I promise you, the.

Dogs are still more expensive than a baby.

Congrats, man. Thank you. So all of that together, I say that to go, It may not look the same for everyone. So this is not a hey, if I can't do it in 10 years, I'm a failure. But I think people imagine, well, it's going to take me 35 years to build wealth. It really doesn't take that long when you get intentional and focused and follow the Ramsey baby steps. Average person following the baby steps pays off their home in seven years.

Wow. Now, what's your thoughts on buying a home being a great decision or a horrible decision?

Ooh.

Because you hear a lot of people saying like never buy a home that you live in, like just rent. And I know what you're talking about. Yeah. And, and also it's just like homes are getting more and more expensive. I mean, a home in Los Angeles is pretty unaffordable for a lot of people compared to maybe Idaho or something where a home might be a different price. Um, but should we be buying our own home and taking on this massive mortgage and this massive debt and these payments every month? and then having to fix things up and, you know, break a, you know, fix the roof and the water or the systems, whatever it is, and all the state taxes and all these other fees that come with owning a house.

It's no joke.

Or just rent a house, let someone else take care of all that stress, and you stay in a space that is more flexible for you.

Yeah. Well, I think renting has got a real bad rap in today's world. And I hate that because I think renting is very wise. It's buying patience. and for a lot of people, it does make sense. And if you're living in a high cost of living city, you're not entitled to be a homeowner. And you live in New York City or LA, like it's gonna be harder if you want to buy a home in San Francisco and that's where you choose to live. Yeah. You better have the income to support living in San Francisco. And so I think home ownership is a great goal that everyone should have to at some point be a homeowner and have that house paid off. And we've seen that as part of the millionaire study. A paid off home was a huge part of their net worth. There's about a third of their net worth of millionaires was in a paid for home. And the average millionaire paid off their home in 10.2 years. And so I think it's a huge part. I think renting forever is also a bad plan. I've just going, 'cause rent's gonna go up over time. 'Cause those homeowners property taxes go up over time and someone owns that house. And so that's also a bad plan. I want you to have a fixed expense of a home and then soon pay that off. And so we all, here's the way to do it to where you know you're not making a poor decision. only buy a house when you're financially ready. And that has nothing to do with home prices and interest rates. It has everything to do with your own financial home. How do you know when you're financially.

Ready to buy a home?

Once you're completely debt free of consumer debt, you've done the debt snowball, you have a fully funded emergency fund, three to six months of expenses, then you save up the down payment. And here's the other kicker. Not only do you have the down payment, but you get a 15-year fixed rate, mortgage where the payment is no more than a quarter of your after-tax income. So that looks a lot like, you know, if you're, you make five grand a month, 1250 should be where that mortgage sits on a 15 year. Now, that's hard to do. I'll admit, in today's world, with home prices and interest rates, that's going to be hard. So what do you have to do? Make different decisions. Because the math didn't change. So what has to change is your expectations of your first home. That might mean we get the condo instead of the single family. It might mean we're 45 minutes outside of the city because that's the one we can afford. It might mean we got to save up a bigger down payment for the next two years in order to do this wisely. Right. But the other option is, and we get this on the Ramsey Show, people call us and say, Hey, my parents pressured us to buy a house and now it's 65% of our take-home pay and we're broke. We can't afford this and that, and we can't put food on the table and cover our bills, and we got to sell the house now. Well, that turns home ownership from a blessing to a burden. And so there's a right way to do it and a right time to do it, but unfortunately people in their 20s are just like, well, it's time for me to buy a home. It's the American dream. Where's my home? I got the degree. I'm still paying on my student loans. Oh man.

Gosh, I need to get a home. And so there's a time and a place for it.

Should you buy a home if you have student debt? Oof. Well, my hot take is no. My hot take is pay off all consumer debt before you get a home. And your student loans. Everything. Student loans. Credit cards, car loans, it all needs to go before you become a homeowner. Because it just adds, it compounds the stress. Because, you know, homeownership is, it's real expensive. Like you think it's apples to apples, $2,000 in rent is not $2,000 in mortgage. Because the rent is the lease you'll pay. The mortgage, that's just the starting point. Yeah. Before you start dealing with maintenance and repairs and the HVAC went out and the roof needs to be replaced four years from now. I mean, those are some big ticket items.

And your time to fixing stuff or whatever, managing things differently. Yeah.

So sometimes I miss the days of renting when I could just call the apartment complex and be like, you got a problem to fix over here. And so it really is a blessing while you're renting. I know it stinks because you're like, I'm not building equity, but building that patience muscle is so important. And ignoring everyone else's noise of like, you got to get a house, man.

If you don't get in now, you'll never get in. Yeah, I lived in a two bedroom apartment for, I don't know, 15 years, you know, until I was 40.

Wow.

I lived in a two bedroom apartment and I felt completely fine with that. You know, it was, it was a nice apartment. I had like what I needed and I upgraded, you know, over time into a nicer apartments. But I did not feel like I'm missing out by not having a home. And I didn't have debt also. I liked the flexibility of renting and having the convenience to be able to travel and making sure someone's taking care of my stuff. Yeah. And I didn't know what city I.

Was gonna be in. But you're more flexible. Yeah, exactly. If you're renting, like if you want to move cities in a different job. Exactly. Versus, what do I do now? The house isn't selling and I gotta get to this job. Like you're more planted when you become a homeowner. It's not easy to get out. There could be tax implications if you sell too soon. So it definitely complicates things, but overall it's a great part of your wealth.

Building journey and I encourage everyone to.

Do it, but don't feel pressured and don't do it before you're ready.

Is there such a thing as good debt versus bad debt?

Well, I wrote a chapter in the book called Debt is a Thief. And it's not bad debt is a thief. It's just debt is a thief. And so the hot take here is that your greatest wealth building tool is your income. And when you're giving any part of that to a lender, you don't have your greatest wealth building tool at your disposal completely. And so I've never seen, you know, you always hear stories about people leveraging debt and mortgages in a sense with your home appreciating, people are like, well, that's good debt. But it doesn't mean we want to hang on to the debt. The home is the part that's amazing. It's not hanging on to the debt. And even with these low interest rates, people feel stuck because they have a 2-3% interest rate on their home. They're like, I can never get rid of this house. I can never sell because I'll lose this precious debt. The idea that we're so obsessed and attached to our debt shows how far off the beaten path we are as a culture. So I truly don't believe there's good debt and bad debt because I've only seen debt hurt people. And the people that say they're winning, like it's easy to go on TikTok and be like, well, it worked for me and you should do it too. That's terrible advice because you don't know this other person's situation and what life's going to throw at them.

And so it always adds risk. You see a lot of people, especially in kind of the real estate space, saying, you know, the only good debt you can have is when you're borrowing money to like get real estate and you're buying more to have more real estate and it's compounding interest over time or you're building equity in that or whatever it might be and you have 10 homes now but they're all in debt with all these homes. You're borrowing it from the previous home and unfortunately there was a guy I met, I don't know, earlier this year. I only met him once but we had a nice kind of two hour dinner conversation and unfortunately it was public about a month or two ago that he committed suicide because he was a real estate guy. He had invested in way too much. Over leveraged. He had just had his first child and the pressure was too much for him to take on. How am I going to pay this off now? It was like some building that he invested in or something. He was developing, he was investing and he had a lot of, I guess, net worth on paper but then it was over leveraged and the pressure was too much and he took his own life about a month or a month two ago, two ago. And it's just like again, you hear some people saying like, yeah, it's cool to have debt, but until you feel like everyone's calling you and collecting and you don't know what to do and you can't get access to money to pay this off. Are you emotionally stable enough to manage that chaos and stress in your life?

Yeah.

Do you want that in your life? And I don't know all the details of what actually happened, but I do know that more money doesn't always mean more peace. Sometimes more money means more pain if you're not educated or emotionally ready for that amount of money. And do you think that is, do you think if people got written a million dollar check today and they were in debt, do you think their lives would be better or more stressful?

Well, I think money magnifies who you are. And if you've never managed a lot of money, it's scary, because if you haven't managed the little money you've had well, what makes you think you're going to manage a million dollars well? Just because you have more of it doesn't mean you're going to make wise decisions. And we see this with the Data on Lottery winners. It's gone. Like, how did you blow? We got a call the other day and this guy's like, I want a million bucks and it was gone within a few years. Really? And he just blew it. doesn't take much, you know? And so it was really sad because a million bucks in lottery is really 600,000 and you spend 100,000 a year for six years. Gone. That money's gone. Yeah. Not that crazy to do. And so, I mean, you've had our friend Dave Ramsey on the show multiple times and he shared his story of bankruptcy and he was over leveraged in real estate. The bank called the notes and he couldn't sell off the properties fast enough and it destroyed his life. Wow. It almost destroyed his marriage. And so, And you know, there's a reason that Dave is so risk averse when it comes to debt. And now he has a $600 million real estate portfolio with the Ramsey headquarters and all kinds of properties, and he paid cash for every dang one. That's incredible. He doesn't have a scent of debt. And so to me, it's inspiring to go like, you don't have to, there's not this one game you have to play to be a real estate investor. You can do it differently. You can go slow until you can go fast. That's what Dave did. Because when you have all paid for properties, that thing cash flows like a mother. And so all of a sudden, pretty quickly, you have enough cash to deploy and get more property.

Right.

And so it's a different game. It's the tortoise versus the hare. But Dave is real peaceful with this property. You know what I mean? Like no one's ever coming after him to collect.

Exactly.

And so that puts you in control.

You started in debt. and then you have, you know, a net worth of over a million dollars now. What is your biggest fear around money with everything you know with your own personal life moving forward?

That's a great question. I mean, I'm unbelievably blessed and highly favored just to be where I'm at today and getting the platform of Dave Ramsey and getting to work with the amazing team I get to work with. and financially speaking, while we don't have any payments, there's always this nagging fear about what could happen and what is enough. And that's something I've been grappling with.

Of, you know, it.

The goal post is always moving. Like, is it, you know, you could say, like, once we have two million in retirement, I'll feel safe. Because if I can withdraw this much and then we can live off this, we'll be okay. But then what if you get to retirement and the stock market tanks as soon as you into retirement? It's a five-year bear market, whatever it is, there's always this fear of the unknown. And so the only thing I can do is try to prepare without becoming paranoid. I don't want to have to build a bunker and have $500,000 sitting in cash in order to sleep at night.

Wow.

And so I'm sort of, that's something I'm grappling with of, what is enough? What does that even mean?

What is enough for you?

I don't know. I mean, there's, you know, Hey, 20 years from now, if this compound interest works in my 401k and we upgrade this house, I'm such a planner and such a nerd that it's fun to do those calculations. And so to me, it's like, well, we'll upgrade to this type of house five years from now. We'll have a second kid, be a million two house we could pay for in cash. That would be a cool goal. You know, maybe in 25 years, my retirement account, we should have about $4 million. That should be enough to retire on. You have all of those things on paper. But I don't know what life's gonna hold in the meantime. I might have a lot more than that. It might be less. And so the, what I'm grappling with is, are you okay to adapt? And, you know, I've been a guy who wants to plan everything. I want to be prepared for everything in life. And it's hard to let go of that and just be present in the moment and not have to think about what's the next year look like? What are our goals? Like, as someone who's goal driven, it's so hard to let go and just stare my baby in the eyes and go like, this is all that matters right now. Wow. You know what I mean? That's, that's, Something I'm truly struggling with, just to be present. My wife is like, Can you stop looking at your phone? Your little girl is trying to get your attention. Wow. You know what I mean? And so as someone who's addicted to screens like many of us millennials are, I'm trying to now unlearn and deprogram some of this kind of high anxiety feelings I have. And getting rid of debt was a huge part of that and getting to a good financial spot. I don't have financial stress anymore. but there's still the normal anxiety of life and inputs and trying to get more centered and do the quiet time and work out and eat better and all of it is, it's a lot. And so that's something truly that I think in the next year as a new dad I'm trying to grapple with is I got new goals now. It's not about me or even my wife anymore. It's we got a little girl to raise in this chaotic world. I want to do her right. You know, my gravestone, it's not going to have my net worth on it of like, Look at what this guy achieved. Look at how many YouTube subscribers he had. It's gonna be like beloved father, doting husband. It's gonna say that. And so to me, it changes the way I look at money and changes the generational impact I wanna have. And so the goal post, I'm trying to just stop looking at it and not look at the 401k balance and instead look at my little girl in the eyes and goes, this is all that matters right now. Wow. That's it.

What's your daughter's name?

Mia.

Mia. When she was born, was there something that shifted in you around money and your mission? Or was it all kind of just like everything was the same? Did something shift inside of you around your views around money when she was born?

I think so. One of the first thoughts was, I can't believe she gets to grow up in a home where money, stress and money fights will never be a problem. Wow. Like she's going to grow up in a home that doesn't have a mortgage attached to it. Like that is mind boggling privilege that I get to give to this girl. There's the fear of, you know, entitlement. Because when you're doing well, like every parent wants their kids to do better than they did. But then the struggle is, well, I don't want my kid to, you know, think we have money. So you try to, like, hide that you try to hide the wealth. Like, we're not doing that well, honey. You know what I mean? There's that fear, but I think it's a lot more about how you raise them, the character, the integrity versus money. 'Cause I've seen Dave Ramsey raise his kids, and his kids are incredible. There's zero entitlement. They are the most humble kids in the world, and they're inheriting the Ramsey empire, and you wouldn't even know it because they're just so kind, so hardworking, not an ounce of entitlement. And so that's what I hope to do for my kid. and when it comes to money, she's gonna go to college debt free. And that might mean, doesn't mean that we're gonna have unlimited monopoly dollars to hand to her, but I wanna do my part in saving to help her avoid the chains that I felt when I graduated college, the cynicism that I had. And so it's a beautiful fresh start when it comes to money to go like, I get to raise this innocent pure human to be a generous person, not only with their money, But with their time, their resources, I get to raise them in such a way that they spend wisely, that they learn delayed gratification, they learn how to save for things they want over time. And to me, that is a, it's a huge burden, but it's also a beautiful responsibility. So I'm excited to lean into that. She barely can look at me in the eyes, but I'm still looking forward to those days as we learn those lessons and she gets her first little Ramsey piggy bank and starts to understand Money comes from work. There's three things you can do with it. You can give, save, and spend. And so, you know, well, I'm not gonna have her doing a budget at three years old, but I think it's a really cool opportunity for any parent to raise their kid in such a way that they go, I got to be a part of raising a good human. And we need more of those in today's world. So if you're on the fence, if you're a good person and you're on the fence about having kids, please have the kids, 'cause there's a lot of stupid people out there having kids, and we have to display some of that.

Sure.

With some amazing humans.

That's cool, George. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness Plus Channel exclusively on Apple podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you of no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out and do something great.