What Every Level of Wealth ACTUALLY Feels Like

what every level of wealth actually feels like. Listen, have you ever noticed that some people make great money and yet they still feel completely trapped? Here's the part that most people miss, and this is where it gets really interesting, I think, is it's not how much you make that determines whether you feel free or not. It's what stage of wealth you're actually living in. And today I'm gonna walk you through what money really feels like at each level, how it turns the volume up or down on stress, how it changes your time, and why so many people are trying to fix the wrong problem for where they're at. All right, this is Building Your Money Machine, where we help you master your money to eliminate financial stress so you can live a life of choice. Because earning more, it doesn't make you free. A money machine does. All right, and I'm your host, Mel Abraham. And after 30-plus years as a CPA, an entrepreneur, a money mentor, and someone who's walked this financial freedom journey from nothing to something, broke it down and had to rebuild it again. I've seen what works. So if you've ever thought, why does money still feel so heavy? Stick with me. We're gonna break it down for you. Let's do this. What every level of wealth actually feels like, not what it looks like, okay? Not the Instagram version, not the I woke up like this nonsense. That you hear, okay? But what it feels like, okay? Because here's the truth that most people miss. Money doesn't change your routines nearly as much as you think. You still wake up, you still eat breakfast, you still have responsibilities. What money actually changes is this. It turns the volume knob on your life. Stress, noise, mental chatter. Okay? And here's the part that surprises people. Most stress doesn't disappear when you make more money. It just moves. Okay? And if you don't know where it moves next, you stay stuck longer than you should. And that's why two people with the same income can live in completely different emotional realities. Same money, very different nervous systems. Okay? That's the game. So I wanna talk about the levels And I want to talk about what's going on in the levels. And the level 1 is what I call survival. Okay? And this is where the volume is maxed out. It is pinning the gauge, if you will. At this level, money isn't just loud. It's screaming in your ear like a smoke alarm with a low battery. Okay? That beeping of a smoke alarm that the battery needs to be changed because you feel like Life feels fragile. Everything feels temporary. You check your bank balance before you open your mail because you hope, you know, that there aren't overdraft fees that are just destroying you, but they are real. Okay. This is a place where we're struggling. And many of us have started there. I started there when I first started out, I was in debt. Okay. You know exactly which bills can be late and you're playing that game and you You also know which ones will blow up the whole thing. Okay? Groceries at this stage are planned around price, not preference. Organic, it's just a dream. You're not at Whole Foods. Generic becomes the lifestyle. And this isn't about judgment. This is about awareness. And when something breaks, the question isn't, how do I fix it? It's okay. What else isn't going to get paid now? All right. The dominant, the dominant fear is simple. One thing goes wrong and this house of cards collapses. The stress is constant, not dramatic. It's just freaking exhausting. Okay. Time doesn't feel manageable. It feels like it's chasing you with, with a stick. And let's be real. Let's get really clear. This isn't a discipline problem. It's not a motivation problem because scarcity is hijacking our bandwidth. When the volume is this loud, your brain isn't wired for 5-year plans. It's wired for survival. That's not a weakness. That's literally biology, okay? When money is loud, It lies to you and it makes everything feel urgent, even when it isn't. Okay. What helps here is this. It isn't about optimization at this stage. It's about stabilization, not budgeting harder, not hustling yourself to burnout. It's, it's how do I turn the volume down just one notch, one predictable bill, one little buffer or a little account somewhere. It's why we talk about the comfort fund as the first stage and step to the wealth priority ladder. One system that creates just a little quiet in your life. And that's how you escape survival, not with heroics, but with stability. Okay. Now here's a self-check. Here's something that you can think about. If you're here right now, does this feel familiar? And that's okay. Okay. And this is where most advice completely fails people is because they don't get this right. In this stage, all we're trying to do is get stability. But if we're trying to— I want to build wealth— that's not— this isn't— this is not the time to start to do that. This is the time to give you breathing room, to give you margin in your life, to look at ways to build that liquidity and that unshakable foundation. Then you can transition. To the next level. And level 2 is about stability. See, the volume at stability drops from a roar to background noise. Okay? This is that first moment where you can actually really exhale. Rent is getting paid on time. The lights, they stay on and you're not playing, you know, whack-a-mole with your bills. Okay? And when the phone rings, Okay, your heart rate stays mostly normal. Okay, you're not rich, but you're also not Googling, what happens if I ignore this bill? You've got a small emergency fund in place, you've got some liquidity in. I mean, nothing to brag about or write home about, but it works. And you're probably still checking your balances. You still think twice before spending, but you're no longer bracing for impact with every single day. Now the dominant fear shifts to don't mess this up because you feel like finally you're making progress. The stress is a little bit quieter. Time becomes more predictable and control starts to return into your life. See, what helps here isn't more money. It's about the consistency in doing what got you here. And so the primary thing to focus on is that discipline and the consistency with everything you're doing, doing the boring things even when that adrenaline fades, to look at those micro successes along the way. This is where people get itchy because stability feels slow. You know, when you watch a building being built, a house being built, that foundation and all that stuff. When we were building our first home, that foundation, all that stuff, it seemed like it took forever. And then once they put the framing up, it It went fast. Stability, the foundation feels slow, but, and slow doesn't feel impressive, but slow is what teaches your nervous system that you're safe. And safe is when progress actually sticks. All right? So here's what I want you to think about here is to ask yourself if you're in this stage, are you building stability? Or sabotaging it because it feels boring, getting that itch, because that's what a lot of folks have. I see people, they get money in and it gets them out of the hole they're in and they right the ship that they're on and then they completely sabotage it because they get bored. Okay. This is also where a lot of people will start to build to the next level. Okay. And if you're not careful and you do it wrong, instead of going to the next level and turning the volume down, you turn the volume back up. But when you do it and turn it down, you move from level 2 to level 3. Level 3 is security. So we're going to move from stability to security. And you'll notice that these are not net worth levels. These are not income levels. These are psychological levels that we're going through. Now, all of a sudden, under security, this is where the volume becomes adjustable. The shift is subtle. But it's powerful. The bills that you have are on autopay, and autopay isn't laziness. It's literally giving you cognitive relief. Everything I have on autopay, auto-investing, all that stuff means I don't have to think about it. I don't have to twist a dial. I don't have to pull a lever. I don't have to log in. I don't have to push any buttons. It gives me relief from all the decision fatigue that can come into play. If the car needs tires, it's annoying. but it's not some full-blown crisis at this level. You've got insurance that you understand, you have savings that is built and that you trust, and you have a plan that actually works when life throws a curveball. And it will. Okay? Because you built that unshakable foundation. A big expense hits. Okay? You don't go into some downward spiral. You simply adjust. Okay? At this stage, the dominant fear here isn't survival anymore. You've moved away from it. But the dominant fear is regression, losing progress, losing momentum, making a dumb decision that undoes years of your effort. See, the stress at this stage becomes situational. But your time feels much more intentional. The control you have over your time and your life feels more reliable, and you're no longer managing money on a daily basis, but you're supervising systems, the, the auto-pays and the, and the automation to run it for you. And that is a massive upgrade. Okay, see, what helps here isn't complexity, it's systems. So, you see that each level, what we're doing is we're building something in place to get you ready for the next level. And those systems allow you to have fewer decisions, more automation, more consistency, and more levels that you're hitting every single time because freedom doesn't come from doing more. Okay? We want the freedom of our time, including the management of money. It comes from thinking less about the stuff that doesn't matter. Okay? Your self-check here is this: does money still take up more mental space than it should? Ask yourself. And if it does, what do we need to change? What system do we need to put in place to move it away from you, to relieve you, that cognitive relief to put it in place? Okay? That's the game I want you to play. If you're listening to this and you're thinking, yeah, that's me, you've seen yourself in some of this, and now we have more to go, then there's something that I want to give you for free. That will help you understand where you are on the financial freedom journey. That is called the Financial Freedom Zone Quiz. Here's what I've, I've seen is people don't know where they are in their journey, which means they don't know what to focus on, what their next steps are. And so that's why I created this quiz. Allows you to go through and answer a handful of questions and give you a report of what your next steps are, what to focus on, and some trainings that can move you forward. We're going to hook it up for you here. It's totally free. Or you can go to yourfinancialfreedomquiz.com. Melabraham.com to get access to it. All right, here's the deal. Let's move on to level number 4. Level number 4, when we start to understand this, you start to realize that this is the moment that people think they've made it, but they haven't. 'Cause level 4 is called freedom. Now the volume you're in control of, okay, this is where the emotional texture really changes in your life. Life feels lighter, not because you stopped working, but because work stopped owning you. Okay? This is where you have a life of choice. This is where you can say no and not have the stress come about and go, "Well, how am I going to do this?" Okay? You don't have to take the meetings just because someone put time on your calendar. You think in the idea of opportunity cost. When I'm looking at the things that I take on in my life at this stage, I look at how much of my life it's going to take away. And I'll say no, no matter what the money is, if it doesn't make sense. Okay. Vacations become planned. We plan ours a year in advance. We block it off. Not changeable. Okay. Without the financial anxiety. Okay. And you don't spend the whole trip thinking about the credit card bill. You go there and it is planned. It is built into the plan and the system. It allows you to look at things through a whole different set of eyes, a set of eyes of options and choices. Now, it doesn't mean it's not without its fears. The dominant fear at this stage isn't running out of money anymore. It's wasting time, saying yes to the wrong things, building a beautiful prison, but it's a prison nonetheless. Okay? Stress now is mostly self-created. Time becomes the real asset. Control feels real. That's the game that I think we need to play. This was the thing that I realized I needed to get to when Jeremy drew that picture of me at 6 years old. Okay? He saw me in front of 2 computer screens with phones in each ear and everything. And he wasn't even in the picture. That's how he saw me as a single dad, the person that that I— that was my, my biggest gift to try and take care of him. And I was failing him. And I realized that I had to build options in my life. I had to get to the stage where work became optional. I could be there, but on the process to getting there, I needed to make sure that I was good for him. And that's why the whole Money Machine concept came about and what it was born out of. Okay. Now, what helps here isn't more opportunity. It's more discernment. See, I started to make different choices after Jeremy drew that picture because freedom without boundaries is just chaos. Yeah, with better snacks. So I started to put boundaries in. This is where people finally see it. The goal was never more money. The goal was control over your time and the volume of stress in your life. That's the thing that we're playing. So, the self-reflection here is this, to ask yourself this: are you using freedom? Are you letting it drift? Because freedom is where you want to get to, and this is the stage where you start to see everything start to shift in how you feel around the money. But that's not the final stage, because this is where money starts to even ask harder questions. This is next stage. Level 5. Level 5 is abundance. This is where the noise fades into the background. At this level, money becomes infrastructure. It just works. Okay? I don't have to sit back and pull the dials or do anything. Our plan is working in the background. And whatever the stock market's doing, whatever the economy's doing, we're okay. The money moves automatically. Investing is totally boring, and that's a compliment. Okay? I buy quality and I expect it to last. You stop impulse buying and you stop emotional buying to try and get some peace. You just start designing things and saying, this is the path I'm going to go. I know that it's in alignment with my vision and my values. Generosity becomes even more intentional. Not reactive, not through guilt, but intentional. That doesn't mean that there isn't a dominant fear. The dominant fear is now isn't loss. It's misalignment, using the resources poorly, chasing more when enough is already here to sit back and understand that because stress is minimal, but mostly philosophical. Time feels more spacious. Control over things is much stronger. Money is no longer the scoreboard. It's just a tool. Okay? It's a servant, a very well-trained one. See, what helps here isn't accumulation. Now, all of a sudden, we move to intention. That's what helps. Because peace doesn't come from growth. It comes from clarity. Now, there is one level above this that is a level that I hope to aspire to for everyone. But I wanted you to understand the first 5 is the most important. Then there's this 6th level. And the 6th level is this idea of generational wealth. When we have the latitude and the ability to think not in years, not in decades, but in generations. Now all of a sudden you can take this and you're responsible for the volume that others inherit. The stewardship, if you will, the concept of transferring the money machine down the generations. This level is misunderstood. It doesn't feel like freedom. It feels like a weight and a privilege at the same time. The conversations here change. Not, can we afford this? But what are we teaching? I was just having this conversation with my wife about other family members and who might be the catalyst or the inflection point on her side of the family and whether they're going to do that. Because that's where we start to transform family trees, family meetings, having family meetings, education before inheritance. It's the very reason that in my book, I have a chapter that says skill sets before assets. They have to prove their stewardship at this point, which gives you great responsibility. Because the money itself becomes an amplifier of who they are. And if we didn't instill the values, the skills, and everything, and then we give them the money, look out below. We've seen the explosions out there with, with children and heirs that get a lot of money that don't have the structure to work from it. Okay, the dominant fear here isn't financial anymore, it's relational. Okay. Entitlement and family fractures. I can't tell you how many times I've been involved in family disputes when the money gets involved, when heirs get involved. See, the fear is that the money starts speaking louder than the values. And that's what we need to deal with at this level. Stress lives in the conversations now, not in the spreadsheets. Okay. What helps here and what what really starts to drive this isn't control anymore. It's communication. And that communication is very different because if we don't teach values, money will teach entitlement. And it is a terrible, terrible teacher. Okay? And that's why at the higher levels, this is the real work that really starts to drive everything. Okay? That's the game that I want you to play. Listen, at every level, money doesn't change who you are. It changes how loud life feels and how far ahead you think you are and how much control you have over your time. And the way forward is never doing more. It's turning the right knob for where you are. Okay? No level is wrong. No level is shameful. And no level is permanent. If you're early in your journey, nothing's broken. You're learning. You're learning how to turn the volume down. You're— and if you're further along, the question isn't how much more? It's what do I want to hear now? See, most people won't remember every word of this episode, but they'll remember whether it felt true because we don't pursue wealth. We live wildly different daily lives. We pursue it to live with less noise, more choice. I remember having a conversation with a driver who picked me up at a speaking engagement from the airport, and he had just recently graduated college. And he said, what advice would you give this 25-year-old about retirement? And I said, the first thing's first, don't call it retirement because retirement is easy to put off. We don't want retirements. We want peace of mind. Peace of mind we want today. Peace of mind is when we get a chance to transition from a life of demands to a life of choice. We want deeper control over our time. And that's what actual wealth feels like. And that's the transitions that I want you to go through. This is the game that we really should be playing. But too often we're playing the game in the bank account, which I understand when we're at the lower levels, but we never transition from that if we're not careful or deliberate or intentional. So, I hope that this episode started to give you some seeds of thought to ask yourself, what level I'm at? What stage am I at? What should I be feeling? What should I be thinking? What's the dominant thing that starts to drive things? Because when you do, when you start to move with that, you grow as your wealth grows. Now, all of a sudden, that the ability to turn the dial down, to control the volume of stress and the things in your life, to control the time completely changes. That's where fulfillment's found. That's where alignment's found. And that's where richness is found. Because I truly believe your legacy is in managing the moments of your life and not the money in your life. All right. I hope that this helps. I hope that you found this meaningful to you and that you took some seeds out of this. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to have you DM me or send me a comment or drop me a comment here below. And while you're at it, make sure that you subscribe because there's more where this came from. And I can't wait to see you soar on your path to financial freedom. And until then, as I always say, always, always strive to live a life that outlives you. See you in the next one. Cheers for now. 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'd do me a favor, go to Apple Podcasts 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 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.