8 Signs You're Doing Well Financially (Even If It Doesn't Feel Like It)

Ever catch yourself scrolling through Instagram and wonder, am I the only one who missed the secret meeting where they were handing out yachts and six figure bank accounts? I mean, seriously, sometimes it feels like everyone else is swimming in cash while you're just trying to not drown in bills. I get it. Here's the truth. If you ever felt like you're behind, then you're definitely not alone. In fact, you might be doing way better than you think. Even if your social feed, your social media feed is one giant highlight reel of a fake it till you make it scene, today I'm breaking down the real signs you're actually winning with money. Even if it doesn't feel like it. And even if your biggest boat is a shopping cart with a wobbly wheel at Target. Ever catch yourself scrolling social media seeing some guy named Chad on a boat or is it, or is it a yacht thinking, why does everyone have it together but me? Okay. Meanwhile, your biggest vessel that you have is a Target shopping cart with a squeaky wheel. If you've ever felt behind with your money, you're not alone. The truth is that you might be doing actually better than you think. So we're going to get real here. There are eight signs that I want to walk through that will allow you to sit back and go, hey, I'm doing a little better than I thought. I'm doing well for financially now, even if it doesn't feel like it and you have more to go, I just want you to celebrate and look at where you are and realize, hey, you're not that bad off. You're doing pretty good. All right, so we're gonna run through them, we'll see how many of them are in your life and we'll keep you moving forward. Alright, so the first one is this is that you can actually handle an emergency without going broke. That's sign number one. Let's. Your car gets a flat tire, your water heater breaks or dies like ours did, or your dog decides they're going to swallow sock, you can actually handle it. You can handle it without calling a bank, without calling your mom, without going into debt, without getting running up a credit card, without talking to a higher power. The fact is that 56% of Americans can't cover a thousand dollar emergency. They don't have it in their savings. 56%. That's what Bankrate.com is saying in a 2024 survey. That's more than one half of the people. This is crazy. All right, so if, if you've got even a couple of grand in your emergency fund, even if it's only for a light drizzle or, or not a hurricane, then you're already ahead of most people. It's not that you need a lot. You just got to get in the game. So, so what does that look like? It's like when you have an unexpected bill that pops up. Your, if your first reaction isn't, isn't like, wait, which credit card isn't maxed out and is more like, dang it, I hate this, but I'm okay, I got this. Then you're okay. See, I tell my clients that you want to aim for three to six months of expenses saved up, but if you want to sleep like a baby, my recommendation is nine to 18 months. And yes, you can sit back and go, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, that's, that's a lot. But here's the thing. When you look at the time it takes, if you have a job loss or something like that, having the additional cash on hand in a high yield savings account as an emergency fund gives you the breathing room. It doesn't stress you out, it doesn't stress your health out, it doesn't stress your relationship out. All of that. Now mind you, if you're looking for a job, you're stressed. So let's not add to it with some additional financial stress where you don't know if you're going to keep your car, keep your home, or you going into deep in debt. So this is a time for us to start looking at do you have that? And if you have that, you're better than, than 56% of the, of the folks out there, okay? And so the $1,000 curveball isn't going to knock you out of the game. Knock you out of the game. So that's sign number one. Sign number two, your debt is not running the show, okay? Debt isn't eating your lunch, your breakfast, your midnight snack. You know, here's the challenge is that too often when we start to play this payment game and it seems like when we get in the game, oh, it's only $100 here, it's $200 there, it's $50 there. But when we start to add those all up, we are just beholden to the payments. And if your debt payments are swallowing your paycheck, then that's a challenge. But if we look at your debt to income ratio and it is under 36%, which is what most banks look for, then you're in the financially fit club. Okay? So what I would look at is what are my monthly payments on my debt compared to my income? And as long as it's below that 36%, you're doing okay. Check this out. The average American right Now has about $77,951 in credit card debt. That is based on Experian and a study that they did. That's $8,000. And in the household debt, the US household debt has topped 17 and a half trillion with a T dollars. That's a lot. Okay? And when you think about $8,000 in average credit card balances or credit card debt, that tells me that that's going to be probably 16,000 by the time they get it paid, which is a whole lot of interest, a whole lot of making banks wealthy and not you wealthy. And so if you're paying your cards off in full and your balances are under the 30% limit, okay, under that, then you're above average, meaning that you're not taking the full card, writing it up to the limit every time, and then paying it all down. So you're carrying. If you're going to carry any balances, which I don't like to carry balances, then it's, it's a very small percentage. But you're not playing bill roulette. You are sitting back and you have control of it. So the question here is, where are you when you compare your monthly payments of debt to your paycheck? Are you in that 36% or below? If you are, you're doing better than, than most, all right? And we keep you going. And if you're not, then we need to change some things. That means that we got to get you on a debt payment plan. We got to get you dial in. That means that if you need a debt payment plan, I want you to go to melabraham.com no debt. It's free short training. It's a, it's an Excel template that will allow you to put your debt in there, get yourself on a debt payment plan, either using the avalanche or the snowball method. Get this thing down, get control of it. Don't become the statistic of carrying that balance in there. And now let's add that to your column of successes to make that happen. And when we do that, then Visa and MasterCard aren't on the holiday card list anymore because you're making progress. That leads me to sign number three. You don't dread the paycheck gap. What do I mean by this? You, you're not stressed between the space between paydays, okay, there are 60% or more people living paycheck to paycheck, according to Lending Club. And in fact, people that are making over $100,000, a high percentage of them are still living paycheck to paycheck. So if they miss a single paycheck, it would throw them into a tailspin. How about you? If you miss a single paycheck, if it wouldn't throw you into crisis mode, then you're actually in a solid spot. If you're sitting back and playing the game and going on Thursday before payday on Friday, you're going, oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh, I hope the bill doesn't hit before the paycheck hits. Then we have a problem. But maybe you've got a buffer. Maybe you have a month or two buffer. If you've got that emergency fund in place, you're probably in good shape. But the question here isn't how much you have in savings. The question here is the relationship of how much is coming in versus going out. And so we don't want to live at the ends of our check. One of the things that we need to do is follow something called the Wealth Priority Ladder, which I talk about in chapter 12 of my book, where it allows you to sit back and say, here's the things that I'm going to do first with my money is creating a prioritized plan that optimizes your ability to build wealth and. And the safety in that journey. Okay? So let's make sure that you got that dialed in and make it happen. So if you're not freaked out and living paycheck to paycheck and worried about that gap between the two paychecks, then you're doing pretty good. All right? Leads me to sign number four. Sign number four. You're not trapped in comparison. Now, this is a hard one today. I mean, here's the thing. If you got this under control, you're not letting envy run your life. But social media, the media itself, everything is basically the Olympics of fake wealth. They sit back and flash their facades of the perfect lives, the perfect vacations, the expensive cars, the boats, the yacht that Chad is on, okay? And as if it's their reality. Now, some of them it may be, but most of them, and I know I've seen some of them, they're to their neck in debt, they can't carry anything, and they're struggling, but they're creating and painting a beautiful picture out there. The problem isn't the picture. The problem is our Comparison of the picture. The problem is us looking at it and saying, oh, look at them. I'm so less than. There's studies that show the more you scroll, the worse you feel. This is why with our clients, we put in place, we say, hey, let's build a Money machine master plan. The plan for your life. When we start in the book or any of my trainings, my money machine blueprint, we work through and say, let's create your life. What do you want to do? How do you want it to be so you live your life? Not what social media says. Because what I'll do is I stay in my lane. I say, this is my life. This is what we're doing. Do I have friends and people that have more than us? Sure, I do. But I'm okay, because this is my life. I'm not living their life. So instead of defining our life by social media media, how about we take the time to reflect and say, where are we on our journey, our life? But here's the truth. The median net worth in America right now is a little bit shy of $136,000 for people in their 40s. Hey, y', all, I just want to let you know that my book, Building youg Money Machine is out. And it debuted at number four and number 24 on the USA Today bestseller list. Number four in business, number 24 of all books, all titles, all genres. It was big time. So if you have not got your copy of Building youg Money Machine, then the first question is, why not? The second question is, when? And the third thing is, go to YourMoneyMachinebook.com, grab your copy, then give me the information from your book so I can make sure that I give you some special gifts or bonuses and wealth resources to accelerate your path to financial freedom. Let's get to the show. That's not Instagram rich, but it's real. 136,000. So now I don't think it's enough. I think that it. We need to. We need to build on that. And that's why the wealth priority ladder and my work is. Is so, I think, so important. But if you're anywhere in that ballpark, you're doing better than most. Okay. You're doing okay. But remember, there's a whole lot of influencers out there that are just faking it. True wealth is not about what you paint as a picture. True wealth is your journey. True wealth is how you feel. True wealth is you living in alignment with your life and your path to life. It's not someone else's highlight reel. Okay? So if you're unsure about where you are on this journey and you're trying to figure out, hey, what is my lifestyle going to cost? And all that type of stuff, I have a special lifestyle cost calculator that you can get for free. Just go to melabraham.com lifestyle and we'll send it to you. And you'll get a chance to go through and say, what is my life going to cost me? And you start to estimate it and start to get acclimated. But the whole purpose is to know that you're on your path to live your life, not some comparison driven life that's driven by, by ego envy or watching people's facades. Okay, sign number five. Your credit score is decent or better. Now, I'm not a big worrisome person about credit score, okay? But the, the credit score that, you know, it affects everything. Now I'm not would. We don't like to use a lot of debt unless it's strategic productive debt. We don't use destructive debt, consumer debt. We don't use it to finance lifestyles. We use it to finance wealth and cash flows. That's it. So if I need it to finance a vacation or luxury clothes or a big screen tv, we don't put it on debt. You pay for it for cash. That's how you keep yourself out of a challenge. But here's the thing. Your credit score can affect everything from utility bills to rent to rates that you get on credit cards or loans. And the average FICO score in the US is around 717. At least it was in 2023 by Experian. And if you're sitting above that, then you're, you're above average and you're in the good range because above 66, 70 is, is good. Okay? Now a good, good credit score will help, but it doesn't really define you, okay? But it's something that you want to monitor. It's something that you want to be aware of. I don't monitor. I monitor to make sure that my credit reports and my credit score are consistent with what they should be and that there's no errors on the report. But I know that if I'm responsible and I follow the rules that I teach and everything, my credit score is going to take care of itself. It becomes the byproduct of the way I live. But as a metric to define where you are and everything, you want to just look at it and say, hey, where's my credit Score. And if you've not checked yours, you can get free credit. Go to freecreditreport.com, pull your credit report. At the same time, I want you to check your credit report. Make sure that everything on there is correct. Get any errors cleaned up, fixed, taken care of. It'll also show you if, God forbid, someone has stolen your identity. My own brother had someone take a loan out in his name. He didn't know about it until he pulled his credit report. Okay? And so it's important for you to stay on top of it for that purpose. But then if you're doing all the other stuff correctly, you'll be fine. And there's ways to bring your credit, credit score up. Things like your historical payment patterns. You want to make sure you pay things on time. The utilization of your credit. So if you have a $10,000 limit on your credit card, you shouldn't be borrowing $10,000 if you are carrying a balance at all, which is a whole different question. But as long as your balances are below that 30% range, you'll be okay. So they look at credit, that's called credit utilization. So those two big things will have a big impact on your credit score. And you can adjust those, you can tweak those, and you can build on those to make that happen. So check your credit score. If you're above that 700 mark, then you're doing better than most. Okay, that leads me to sign number six. Sign number six. Are you actually investing? Are you in the game? Even if it's not much? Because here's what we know. If you intend to win the wealth game, you gotta be on the field, playing the. Playing the game. You can't be in the sideline, on the sidelines, or sitting in the stands. I don't care how much you invest. I care that you're investing. Over time, we'll increase it. But if you're not developing the muscles, the skills and the behaviors, then, then you're not going to do it when you have a lot of money. Okay? Only 54% of Americans have a retirement account at all. 54%. Okay. Only 6 out of 10, about 60% own any stocks. That means that they're not in the game. Okay? If you have a 401k, if you have an IRA, you have a brokerage account, you're ahead of more than half the country. But what I need you to do is to do it right. I need you to follow the wealth priority. I need you to know that you're, you're maxing out the match for your 401k that you're putting 20 to 25% away, or at least you're on the road to get to that point. Okay. That you're doing it because. Because when you start to build that, now all of a sudden you're in the investing game and investing itself. It doesn't need to be complicated. We make it simple, we make it diversified, and we make it without the friction, and we make it automatic. Okay, here's the other side of it, is that if we just look at 401k balances, Vanguard said that 401k balances are for about $76,000 for people in their 40s. I like that. But I think it should be more. But if you're anywhere near that, at least you know that you're above average. Okay? So get in the game. Stay on top of it. But we're going to need to. We're going to need to increase it. And I look at it and say, the number that you need to have is more dependent on the life you want to have. But at the same time, I want you funding 20 to 25% of your income into your future. That's your 401 s, your IRAs, your brokerage accounts to take care of the future. All right, that leads me to sign number seven. Are you earning, learning and adapting? Here's the deal. Are you still learning? If you're here, you are. Okay. Are you building skills? Okay. Are you looking for skills that are going to build bigger income and more ways to earn? Because the bigger. The more income we have, the bigger shovel we have to build our wealth to find that financial freedom. This. And this is a time where, if there's uncertainty, if there's a recession, the people that survive from a job standpoint, from a client standpoint, are those that create the most value in the marketplace. Because if you are creating more value, you will become invaluable to your clients or your company. So what I want you to do is this is a time to make sure that are you consistently learning, skilling up, building your skills, finding ways to be more valuable to those you serve to boost your earning power? When you create a plan or a budget or New Year's resolutions, do you have a plan for your personal growth, your educational growth, and those things? More than half of the millionaires are lifelong learners, according to Fidelity. Okay. Warren Buffett reads ferociously just. Just all the time. So do I. I listen to audiobooks. I listen. I watch podcasts. I am Constantly studying. See, I saw that my degree, I don't use my degree really. It's an accounting degree. That was just the baseline to get my degree. My true training, my true learning started when I got out of college and continues today. Okay, this is where we start to grow. And given how things are changing so much and so fast in today's world, your ability to adapt, to develop those skills is going to be paramount to you being able to continue to get paid at the upper echelons or to get yourself to the upper echelons and to build wealth. So. So this is the space and place to be. Are you consistently trying to learn, adapt, and grow? This is the thing to start to look at because it'll help you negotiate, raise. It will help you with side hustles. It'll help you with positioning you in a marketplace if you've got a company. And it's going to help you build your money machine moving forward. All right? So you can learn something new all the time, and it's easily accessible, you know, at least on the financial side. My channel, my work. Okay. And there's plenty of others out there. All right? That leads me to sign number eight. Sounds odd, but are you sleeping at night? Okay. All right. Are you sleeping at night? One of the biggest stressors that people have that lose sleep is financial. Financial stress is one of the biggest stressors in relationships. They say it's the number two leading cause of divorce behind adultery. Crazy. Do you go to sleep, you know, worried about that unknown caller that's coming, coming through on the phone and going, oh, my gosh, that's another bill collector. See, real wealth is peace of mind. Is peace of mind. I know that when I was diagnosed with the cancer, I went to my. My estate attorney and I said, let's go through the trust. Let's make sure that everything is dialed in. You know what? It felt good to know that not only financially do we have everything taken care of, but I had everything in place. So when I walked out of his office and we had the updated trust, my beautiful wife is taken care of. My son and his wife, my two granddaughters, my brother. All the causes, the things that mean so much to me, they're good. And as much as I was battling the demon cancer, I could go to sleep and have peace in my life around the fact that financially we were okay. And I think that this is one of the biggest things that will help you understand. Are you doing okay? Do you. Do you sit back and say, can I sleep? Do I have Peace of mind when it comes to finances or am I constantly stressed? Okay, these are the eight signs. And I think that if we just bring them down to these things and you look at them and you say, how many of these do I have in my life? You might be able to look at it and go, hey, you know what? I'm actually doing okay. I'm doing okay. I got three of them, four of them, five of them, and keep going. Celebrate where you're at. And if you have less than them, then let's look at knocking them off one at a time. I'm here to guide you. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you make it happen. It's why I'm putting the episodes out. It's why I'm doing the show. It's why I wrote my book. It's why I'm out there speaking. So go back on these and let me know. Let me know in the chat, in the comments. Let me know where you're at. Let's check them off. Okay? If you got more than three, then you're already ahead from most Americans, most folks. If you don't have them all yet, don't sweat it. Let's get it done. All right? It's progress, not perfection. That's what builds your money machine. That's what it's all about. Okay? Every step forward builds momentum. Every step forward, we're going to celebrate. All right, let me know if you want more ways to build real wealth with a little wit. Okay? Zero yacht envy. Then make sure that you subscribe to this channel and check out the book for the full blueprint, the full building your money machine blueprint. All right? And we'll make it happen. All right? This isn't about beating Chad and his yacht. This is about building the life that you envision, the life that you deserve. The life that I believe is called a freedom based life. All right? Until I get a chance to see in the next episode of the next show or on the road to your financial freedom, always, always strive to live the life that I always do. See you next one. Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneur show with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to melabraham.com group and I'll see you. And that's it for this episode of building your money machine where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor. Go to Apple, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright, and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.