I'm Politely Begging You To Get Good with Money

I am politely begging you to get good with money, because here's the number that I think should stop you cold. Waiting just 10 years, which doesn't seem like a lot, to start investing can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars and more, even if you do everything else right. Well, in this episode, I'm going to show you exactly why time matters more than your effort and how well the wealth creation curve actually works. What do you need to do right now to put yourself on the right side of that curve? Without overwhelm, without guesswork. This is building your money machine, where we help you master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life by choice. Because earning more doesn't make you free. A money machine does. And I'm your host, Mel Abraham. And after 30 plus years as a CPA, an entrepreneur, and a money mentor, I've seen the math play out in real lives, including my own. After starting from negative net worth and building it, and then losing some of it and having to rebuild a big chunk of it, I've done it all. Now I want to make sure that you don't make the same mistakes and that you get control of your money and you get good with it. Now, starting today. So let's dive in. Yes, I'm begging you to get good with money. Not because I want you obsessed with money, not because I want you chasing some fake Instagram version of Rich, but because if you don't get good with money, money will quietly control more of your life than you realize. See, by the end of this episode, I think you'll understand why this is so important. And getting good with money is no longer optional. It's a requirement. And when you start to understand exactly what to do first, second, and third, your money stops stressing you out and it starts supporting the life you want. So let's jump in, okay? Because if your money feels heavy, then this is the game I want you to play, because I want to start here. You didn't click on this video or this episode because everything's perfect financially. You click because money feels heavy. Or maybe you feel behind, or maybe you feel tense, or maybe you're doing okay, but it still feels fragile. And here's the thing. You're not imagining it. Nearly 40% of Americans say they can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing or selling something. That's not motivation. That is a fragility problem. Okay? Money stress is the most socially accepted anxiety disorder on the planet. Let's face it, it is in everyone's lives. We don't talk about it. We just live with it, and we assume that that's the way it should be. And money, stress doesn't stay just in your bank account. It leaks into your sleep, into your relationships, into your confidence. So if this feels personal, good, okay? This means that we're talking about the right thing. All right? So we need to think about this and say, well, why is money so important? What do you actually want and it's not more stuff? Let's be honest. You don't want a yacht. You don't even want to be rich. You want breathing room. You want stability. You want options. You want peace, okay? You want money to stop being the villain in every decision. Here's the metaphor I always use. Money should be like oxygen. You don't think about it when it's there and there's enough. But when it isn't, when you feel like you're getting choked, nothing else is working. That's when it's an absolute necessity and it becomes painfully so. Okay? That's why getting good with money really means it's not about the excess. It's about the enough with margin, okay? And when we don't, there are quiet consequences of not doing it right. And I have seen it live out in friends lives, clients lives, family's lives. I've seen it. Because when money is unmanaged, life manages it for you. That's when you. You start to stay in jobs longer than you should. Or you say yes when you want to say no. Or you delay dreams because now's not the right time. Okay? Bad money habits, they don't blow up your life. They slowly shrink it, okay? And the scariest part is it starts to feel normal. See, we don't really understand the cost of waiting, the cost of delay, the cost of doing things, because we've never talked about it. We've never had the conversations about it. But if we start to understand this concept that I've taught for many, many years now and wrote about it in my book of the wealth creation curve, you start to see what happens with real numbers. So I want to make this undeniably clear, because this is where people lie to themselves, including myself, okay? I'm not exempt from this, okay? They say, I'll start later. Or they'll say, when things calm down or when I make more. I've heard that one a hundred times, a thousand times. It's always, when I make more, I'll. I'll start investing. So let's put numbers to later. Imagine two different people, okay? You got you got Bobby, Person, person a. And saving $5,000 a year, starts at age 25, earns a reasonable rate of return of 8%. Okay? And does this until age 65. So effectively 40 years, okay? No genius, no lucky breaks, no hustle, you know, none of that. Just by age 65, doing $5,000 a year over 40 years, at 8%, Bobby will end up with 1.3. Around $1.3 million. Now, let's look at person B. Okay? Angela. Angela saves the same $5,000 a year, earns the same 8% that Bobby did, does everything exactly the same, makes the exact same decisions, but waits until age 35, just 10 years, so they. Angela does it for 30 years instead of 40 years. That's it. By age 65, Angela has a total of around $566,000. That is $750,000 less than Bobby. Let that sit for a second, okay? Because Bobby contributed $5,000 over 40 years, $200,000 total. Anza contributed $5,000 over 30 years, $150,000 total. The total difference between the investment is only $50,000, but the outcome is a $700,000 difference. See, that money didn't come from working harder. It came from time showing up. This is the wealth creation curve, okay? See, early on, it feels pointless. At the bottom section of the wealth creation curve, I call it the wealth flatline. You're putting money in, you're putting money in, you're saving, you're investing, and nothing exciting is happening. You're looking at it and going, this doesn't make sense. I've only made $67. That's the flat part of the curve. And you know what? Every single person has to do that. Every single person has to go through the flat line. The question is how fast you can get through it. This is where it challenges your discipline, because it's where people will say, this isn't working. I don't feel rich. What's the point? Okay, so what do they do? They quit. But then, quietly, the curve starts to bend and it hits what I call the acceleration zone. But if you quit and you start over, you actually go right back to the beginning. You have to start through the flatline again. That's why we have to get in the game and don't get out of the game. I don't care how much you put in. I care that you're on the field playing the game. See, when you start to move through that flat line and you get to the acceleration zone, the money starts earning more than what you put in growth accelerates, momentum takes over, and then there's this steep side of the curve, the exponential side of the curve that most people don't even see because they don't have the patience and the discipline and everything to stay in the game. Most people don't fail at money. They leave the curve right before it starts working for them. See, waiting doesn't just delay wealth. It eliminates time. On the steep side of the curve where we want to be the time in which your money is multiplying, that's the thing that we need to be on, but we need to get in the game to make it happen. Wealth creation is not a spectator sport. It's not something you do from the stands or on the sidelines. You have to be on the field playing it. And this is why it's so important for people to just get in the game. I don't care that you're only getting in the game at $5 or $10 or $100 a week. I don't care. I care that you're playing because what you're doing is developing the skills, the mindset, the muscles and the habits and behaviors that wealthy get good with money. And that is the key. Now, one of the things that also helps is you knowing where you're going with your money. What is that number that's going to give you the freedom? What's that number that you have to cross to get to a life of choice? It's something that I call the Freedom number. Okay, now here's the thing. A lot of people don't know what that number is, but I have a tool for you that I'm going to give you for free. It's called the freedom number calculator. You'll go in, you'll put some information in, it'll give you a ballpark idea of what you need to create the money machine. You need to create to have freedom, to have choice in your life. So you can, we'll hook it up down here, but you can grab it by going to melabraham.com number to get access to it. Like I said, it's totally free. Okay, now let's talk about a little deeper of why waiting is even more dangerous now than it's ever been. And that's something that I've talked about on stages and on some of my other videos. And that is the idea of a K shaped economy. Right now we are sitting in a K shaped economy. We have two directions we're going. You have those people on the Upper arm of the K, those, those are the ones that own assets. They have systems, they understand how to use leverage properly. They are building something to allow their money to work harder for them than they did for it. Okay, then you have those people that are on the lower arm of the K. They're waiting for stability, they're waiting for things to change. They're relying on their hard work, their effort and the income alone to make happen. Now that is, it's not bad in and of itself, but the idea of a K shaped economy is the fact that the divide between the upper arm and the lower arm is, is getting bigger and bigger at an accelerating pace. And at some point it gets you to a point of no return. That gap widens so big that getting from the bottom arm to the upper arm becomes harder and harder, if not impossible. And this isn't about fear. This is about the reality of things. That's the other reason that I need you to get in the game. I need you to get on the field. I need you to start using the principles that we talk about to start getting it in play. I don't care that maybe in a year's time you're going to sit back and well, I'm not rich yet. Well, it's not going to happen that fast. It didn't for me, it doesn't for the clients. But you want sustainable, lasting wealth. Build the habits, build the muscle, build the literacy to make it happen. See, you will build structure in that process. And those with structure will pull ahead. Those without it will fall behind quietly and consistently. Do nothing used to mean standing still. Now it means sliding backwards. Okay? And so we need to think about this through a different lens. And you might sit back and say, man, why do you care about this so deeply? Well, I do. Let me tell you why. My dad came here to this country at 17 years old with nothing. We didn't come from money. We came from grit. We came from a dream, we came from a vision. We came from my dad saying, I wanted a better way, I wanted a better education, I wanted to, to raise a family and do that. And my dad came here and went to school. I started my adult life in a negative net worth. Why? Because I had student loans, I had all that stuff. And like I said, my debt income for money became an aerospace engineer. We had a good life, but it wasn't a luxurious life. We lived in the same home all our life. We drove used cars. We didn't live a lavish lifestyle. So I didn't have a head Start. I didn't get an inheritance. I built wealth the hard way. I learned the hard way. The lessons I talk about aren't from some theory or some book. They're from a life lived, okay? And when I built the wealth the first time, I ended up losing one third of it in a Ponzi scheme. Okay? That moment, I mean, between me and two friends, we lost over four and a half million dollars. And that moment taught me something important. Hope is not a strategy. Systems are. I needed to look back and say, what systems allowed me to get into the Ponzi scheme? What systems allowed me to build the wealth before the Ponzi scheme, And what systems would allow me to rebuild. I didn't rebuild faster, although I did. I rebuilt smarter. And so when I tell you this, I mean it. Where you are today is not where you're destined to end up. And what we need to do is give you the habits, the systems, and the elements to make it happen. And there are things that are holding us back. And it's not intelligence, it's not laziness, it's emotion. Money feels scary, so we avoid it. We've never talked about it. It feels complicated, okay? Avoidance feels like protection until it becomes a prison. See, you don't need more motivation. You need a clear sequence. I want to give that to you right now. What do you need to do first, second, and third? Here's the path, okay? Step one, get clear. Know where your money goes. Know what your life costs. No judgment, just truth. That means that I want you to track you're spending for 90 days, how much you're spending, what you're spending it on, what the emotion is when you do the spending. Not for judgment, but for awareness. The more aware we are, the better off we'll be. And I want you to categorize it between needs, wants, and noise. Needs, wants, and noise. The needs are your survival. They're the food that you eat. They're your health care. They're your clothing, your shelter, and your transportation. That's it. The wants are all the other stuff. And I'm not saying not to have the wants, just to be conscious of it. The other thing that you can do to accelerate this getting clear is look backwards six months. Get all your bank statements, get all your credit card statements, and go through and do the exercise going backwards six months. Now, all of a sudden, you'll have clarity of where your money's going, which is the awareness that we need. And at some point, you'll look at and say, I don't get any value out of this. Why am I doing it? And so now all of a sudden, you'll start to cut things out. And that gives you the margin that you need to use to start building your wealth. Step two, build safety. The wealth priority ladder that I talk about in my book, building your money machine is the process that I have, my clients, my students, and what I've done with my family. And to build wealth in a sustainable way. And the first stages of the wealth priority ladder is to build an unshakable foundation, safety first. So you have that foundation for growth. So this is the time for you to start to look at, do I have emergency reserves? The two things that you do here is liquidity and debt management. So do I have emergency reserves? Can I sustain myself if something happens? An emergency fund in a high yield savings account, three to six months. That's what people say. Okay, that works. That's cute. I want you in a peace of mind fund 9 to 18 months. Now, you won't get there overnight. Let's get you to three months to start. Put it aside, get it in a high yield savings account and get that liquidity under your belt so you have the oxygen. And if something happens, you're not going into debt, you're not selling things, okay? Because you need stability before strategy to make that happen. And then at the same time, I want you to look at all the debt you have. And if you have destructive debt, if you have consumer debt, if you have high interest debt, I need you on a debt payment plan. Let's get this debt put to bed as quickly as possible. And you do that by using an avalanche method or a snowball method. I talk about it in detail in my book and there's a lot of information. I've done other episodes on that specifically, but get on a debt payment plan. If you have a debt payment plan in place and you've got that liquidity in place, you've done step two and you're ready to move from there. Step three then, is to start building your machine. See, once we have that unshakable foundation, now is time to save and invest. And this is the key to your wealth. The amount you invest, the percentage, the savings investing rate, the percentage of your income you put away, is the biggest indicator of your ability to build wealth. Now we recommend 20 to 25% of your income going into investing in savings. Okay? This is the time and the space where you have the ability to separate your earnings from the efforts to earn it. And when you do that's when you get a life of choice because you're not imprisoned to that earnings treadmill where you have to go to work each day. I'm blessed that I can get up every morning and have a choice that everything that I do from a work standpoint and everything is by choice, not because of demands of the bills or the day. Okay, And I want that for you. But here's how you you need to do it. I want you to automate it so you don't have to think about it, you don't have to pull the levers, you don't have to turn the dials, but automate your investing. And there's a hierarchy. And I talk about it in the book of which accounts you go to first. You know, can you qualify for a roth account, Roth IRA than other IRAs or 401ks and employer matches. There is a specific optimization strategy that we talk about. I'm not going into depth here. I just need you to get the concept in place and make the choice that you're going to automatically save, automatically invest to make it happen. That way you can let time and not stress do the heavy lifting. That's the first choice. Then we can worry about where you put it and how you invest it. Step four, Stay on the curve. Remember, if you get off that wealth creation curve, you go back to the starting line. You have to start all over again in the flat line. Consistency will beat intensity every time. Progress beats perfection. That's why I don't care if you start with $5. I just need you moving. I just need you in motion. Time beats timing. Get in the game. All right. See, I'm not begging you because I doubt you. I'm begging you because I've seen what waiting costs. Your future doesn't need perfection. It just needs structure. Where you are today isn't a verdict. It's. It's just the starting line. But every year you wait, the climb gets steeper. So start now, not perfectly. Just intentionally. Get good with money so your future doesn't have to recover from your past. That's the game I want you to play. And I'm here for you. This channel is here for you. This show is here for you. My work is here for you to help you on that journey. Because I promise you, if you commit to getting on the field and getting good with money, your future life will be vastly different than you can imagine. The math will always math out. I hope that this helps. I hope this lights a little bit of an inspirational fire under you. A little different of an episode. But I think this is an important thing to think about and understand because it matters to me. That's my mission. And so I am politely begging you to get good with money starting today. And I hope that this moved you a little bit forward. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear your comments or your thoughts or even your questions. I love having conversations with you and to keep you in motion towards your financial dreams. All right. And until I get a chance to see you on another episode or as I'm on the road, speaking as I always say, always, always strive to live a life that outlives you. See you in the next one. Cheers. For now,