What to Do Differently With Money to Win TODAY

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. This year, it's more important than any other year to do money differently if you want to win in the financial gain. You know, let's face it, this year's been a volatile one. So, you know, market up, market down, inflation, rising interest rates, volatility, all kinds of things. And what does that mean for you? That means that if we try to do some of the old ways of doing things with money in this coming year. Cause it's not over yet. We're not going to win the way we should. So in this episode, I'm going to walk you through 12 things that you need to do differently with your money to win in 2023 and beyond. All right, I'll see you in the episode. Welcome to this episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur Show. See you soon.

This is the Affluent Entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it take to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money, and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom. Because that's what it really means to be an absolute entrepreneur.

Hey there. Welcome to this episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur Show. This one, we're gonna give you the tools, we're gonna give you the tactics, the things you need to do differently to win in the money game and financially in the next year and beyond. So, look, here's the deal. I don't have to tell you that it has been a volatile year. I don't have to tell you that inflation has been rampant, that we've had interest rates going up, that the economy is kind of in a disarray. We don't know which way's up, which way's down. Have we stopped inflation? Are the interest rates going to stop going up? Are things going to stop getting more expensive? And I think the answer to all of that is who knows? Who knows? The fact of the matter is that things have shifted. We no longer have cheap money, the low interest rate loans and almost free money. We don't have things that are affordable, rents and real estate and everything is going up. And what that does for us is it puts us in stress. Let's face it, financial is one of the biggest stressors in people's lives. Statistics have shown it over and over again. And so when we start to look at what is happening, that is completely out of our control. Look, we can't control the economy. We can't control what the Fed does. We can't control the interest rates, we can't control the stock market. We can simply control what we do in our little siloed world. We can simply control the choices, our response, and the way that we set ourselves up financially. This is the very reason that I've created the show and that I keep doing the show, the YouTube channel, the content and putting stuff out there is to give you the tools, to give you the tactics, to give you the strategies that will allow you to thrive no matter what is going on in the economy. This is why I want you here. And in fact, if you know someone that isn't here, that should be here, share this out, let's get them in the game. Because here's what I know, okay, from decades of doing this. You had decades, because I'm old, all right? But decades of doing this is that as much as I say financial freedom is a birthright, and you can think that that's, oh, just kind of a tagline or whatever, it's a belief. It's to the core of my being. The fact of the matter is to build wealth, to have control of your money. It isn't complicated. There's people that want you to think it is, but it isn't complicated now. It doesn't mean it's easy, especially if you're struggling with debt, especially if you're struggling, check to check, especially if you're having those types of challenges, but it's not insurmountable, okay? And when we understand that now, all of a sudden you can take control back. And that's the thing. If all I did with this show is to give you the avenue and the possibility and the ability to take control of your financial destiny back then I did what I need to do, okay? But we're going to give you more. We're going to give you more with that. Because I'm, I'm not going anywhere. We are on this journey together for a while. And so in that process, I want you to start to look at what is going on in your financial world. Be okay to have those hard conversations in the mirror, those hard conversations with the people that you're sharing life with, to do things differently, to give you back the control of a new financial reality. Okay, so what I want to do is I'm going to walk you through 12 different things that I think we all should be looking at, no matter where you are, no matter how financially free you are, or no matter how financially stressed you are, and that this will help you move you along the trajectory to financial freedom. All right, so I'm going to walk you through these 12 things, and if anything hits you, I'd love to hear from you on this comment below. Send me a dm, reach out to me. And in fact, if you have questions or anything that comes up that you want support with or help with, or I'll bring it on the show. I might even bring you on the show. So just go to askmelnow.com submit your question to me. You can do it audio, you can do it video, you can do it in text form. And we'll make sure that we keep you supported and moving in the direction of financial freedom. So let's get to the show, let's get to the details, and let's start to really nail it. So the first thing, let's just jump in. I'm going to jump to my iPad. For those of you that are watching on YouTube, you'll get a chance to see it. Those of you that are not, you'll listen to it. We'll take, take you through it either way. All right, so here's the thing. The first thing that I think we need to look at is this. The first thing to do differently is to truly make savings and investing a priority. Okay? See, what ends up happening a lot of times is that we come to life, we come to and this is the way we were raised. Society has done this to us that we turn around and we, we earn income, we make money, we go get a job, we build a business, and we make money and we go, I made that money. And we feel entitled, and I totally get it. We feel entitled to go spend the money on us and create the lifestyle. So we go out, we spend the money to create this lifestyle, and then we see what's left. And whatever's left, that's what we decide to invest. Here's what we know.

Those that actually create Real wealth flip that. They earn money.

And they invest. First they look at how do I take care of my future life, how do I take care of that while living my present life? But they make investing a priority. And then they look at what's left and they say, that's what I'm building my lifestyle on. And what the wealthy do is if they say, and they go, I don't like the lifestyle that that's going to build for me, they then look back and say, how can I increase the income so I can have the investing and a lifestyle today all at the same time. They don't look at it from the perspective of saying, well, I'll forsake my future because the future's coming no matter what, just so I can have stuff today. So first things first. I want you to prioritize investing in savings. What that means for me is this one. I want you to get educated, okay? I want you to get educated, start studying, whether it's my show, books, all that stuff. Get educated. So you're educated to be able to make smart decisions with your money. But now the other thing that I want you to do is to allocate a portion of every dollar that comes in. If you tithe for the church or the temple, I want you to tithe for your financial future. I want you to tithe for your financial freedom. I want you to take a percentage of every dollar that's coming in and automatically have it transferred at least to a high yield cash account today. In today's terms, you can get 3.8% in a high yield cash account insured. Okay? So the key is this, is that you're creating the behavior. Even if it's $5, even if it's $10, you're creating the behavior that's going to serve you the rest of your life. Because when you get used to the $10, you'll move it to 15, then you move it to 30, then you move to 60. All of a sudden you're putting $500 away, and all of a sudden you're going to look back in a decade and go, how did I have all that investing? Look at what happened. But the only way it happens is if we do this thing, and that is to make investing a priority. So that is number one, number two, number two, if we're going to make investing a priority, the second thing is to create what we call a cash resource plan. Now, some people might call this when they hear it, call it a budget. I actually call it a cash resource plan. Because here's what it is. You have dollars that come in, whether it's $100 or thousands of dollars, ten thousands of dollars, a hundred thousand dollars, it doesn't matter. Every dollar that comes in is like an employee you hire and you have the choice to tell that employee to go sit in the break room and do nothing or to tell that employee to go work for you and bring back more employees, more dollars. So a cash resource plan is where you are directing, where every single dollar is going to go. Every dollar that comes in, every ounce of money that comes in should have a job description. Now, some of it, they might look at it and say, this is to pay the mortgage, this is to pay the utilities, this is to pay for dinners. Some of it is, this is to invest in stocks, this is to save for a down payment on a house. And so what happens with a cash resource plan is, it is the plan of execution on every single dollar. And too often what we do is the money comes in and we have no plan for it. And we wonder why it's gone at the end of the month or why we at the end of the year, we didn't put as much away. It's because we didn't plan for it. So the key then is to make sure that you're proactive and planning for every dollar that comes in so it knows specifically what to do. That leads me to number three. Number three, and I mentioned this already, is to get guidance and get educated. Look, and if you have listened to me for any length of time, you know that I just, it makes my skin crawl when someone says I'm self made. Ain't no one self made, okay? There's no one that's self made. First off, there is a greater energy and a greater thing at work here than just you and I. And I'm not going to pretend there isn't. But at the same time, I have built what I have built with the help, the guidance, the love, the caring of the mentors, the coaches, the employees, the team members, my customers, you, my family, everyone on their shoulders, their. Their support. And I'm not discounting that to say you, oh, I'm self made. Hell no, I'm not self made. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the great people that were in my life that helped me. You being here, listening and watching. I wouldn't be here. I'm not that egotistical to think that I did this on my own. Hell no. So what does that mean? That means it's okay to get guidance, it's okay to get educated. I belong to a number of masterminds. Three, three, four masterminds. I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in masterminds, in coaching and consulting and advisors and all of that. But in the end, I get multiples of that back. So to the extent that you sit back and say, I gotta figure this money game out, I gotta figure out investing, it's time to get guidance. Get in the circles where you have people that have done it, that can walk you through it. The reason you should be here is so we can have that guidance. So I can give you that guidance. Get educated, take courses, join programs, read books. Okay, Stay in the game. Because the more you get educated, the more you will see that you actually have control. So that's number three. All right, Number four. Number four. Get your liquidity up. Okay? Like it or not, get your liquidity up. What do they mean by that? That means I want money in a high yield cash account to give you the peace of mind. We call it a. In the. The wealth priority ladder. We call it a peace of mind fund. I want you to have enough liquidity to sustain yourself no matter what the uncertainty is. You know, if the economy really tanks, if all of a sudden we end up deeply in a recession, you know, they have not called it a recession. We're in a recession. Technically, we're in a recession. So they can deny it all they want, but you know what? The pain that people are feeling already is real. And so whether we go deeply into a recession, I want you to survive. I don't want you to stress, I don't want you to know how we can do that. And the way we do that is you build liquidity. That means that you build. Some people will call it an emergency fund. I call it a peace of mind fund. I'm much more conservative because I know what it takes to kind of build and carry yourself through. Through this. And so I want you to have. Not three to six months, I want you to have nine to 18 months. And I know that you can't do that overnight, but I want that to be the target, the more liquidity you have. And full transparency. I'm sitting on 35% cash. And some people will go, oh, gosh, man, you're losing money. In inflation, maybe, but some of that money is earmarked for my peace of mind. It's not meant for investors investing, but the rest of it is your mark for the opportunities that are coming. And I keep buying opportunities We've been buying all through the year opportunities, and I'll continue to buy, and it's liquidity that allows me to do that. So get your liquidity up. That's number four. Number five. Okay, number five, I want you to avoid debt. Listen, like it or not, and I'm not one of those that says all debts the devil. I've got an episode that talks about how to get out of debt the affluence way, and I'll make sure that we hook it up here. But the reality is that debt, no matter whether it is destructive debt or productive debt, and I believe that there is such a thing as productive debt.

Debt, all debt, no matter what it is, has two characteristics.

It all costs. It's called interest. Okay, so all debt will cost you, but all debt also. The second thing will stress you. It stresses your financial structure. It stresses you personally and relationally, potentially so. So we need to understand that whether it's productive debt or destructive debt, and in a time where we have rising interest rates, in a time where we have rising interest rates, that stress gets greater. So my feeling is that to the extent we can, we completely avoid destructive debt. That's consumerism at its best. That is buying stuff you can't afford just to live a life that you're not in a place to live. In other words, we don't overspend just because we feel entitled. We look at it and we deal with it separately. I'm not financing lifestyle here, so I want you to avoid consumer debt for consumerism.

I want you to avoid carrying balances on credit cards. Credit card rates are going to be in the 20s, well into the 20s as we grow. And I just saw a statistic where foreclosures in some cities year over year has increased over 50%. So what's happening is interest rate costs are going up. People can't afford it. And if you're carrying balances for consuming, it's going to be harder and harder to get that balance paid off. So avoid debt as best you can and do it from that perspective. Now, that leads me to number six. Number six.

Find ways to scale cash flow. Okay, on one side, avoid debt. On another side, how can you increase your income? How can you turn around and bring more cash in? Because if we bring more cash in, we can plug holes, we can get out of debt, we can take advantage of opportunities, we can get into investments. We can do all kinds of things. If we didn't. So that might mean.

Side hustles, that might mean a second job. Temporarily, that might mean looking at my current business structure and the product mix. And is there something I can do to increase the value to bring in more cash? That might mean joint ventures, it might mean a lot of different things. The key is that you are an active search to scale your income, to scale the cash flow coming in, because that cash flow is going to be the thing that gives you the flexibility in the future. And we can do another episode on side Hustles and other ways to scale cash flow. In the Affluence blueprint. We talk about the eight revenue scalers and, and that kind of thing, but I just want that to be on your radar. Okay, that leads me to number seven. Number seven is all about diversification of your assets and income. Now this is really important because what ends up happening is that many of us hear this idea of diversify your assets. And the reason you diversify your assets is to reduce the risk. So if you're not putting all the eggs in one basket, if one investment goes bad, you don't get destroyed. If an investment goes bad. Let's just look at Tesla. Tesla over the last 90 days has lost a 50% of its value. It went from over $300 a share to 150 bucks a share. Okay, over 50% value. If you were invested in Tesla alone, okay, you lost 50% of the value. If you had all your net worth, all your wealth was In Tesla, it's 50% less. Now, that hurts. That's going to stress. That's going to hurt. That's going to leave a mark. Now is it going to come back? Yeah, but when? How long? The purpose of diversification is you might own Tesla, but you own a hundred other companies too, in an index fund or an ETF or some basket, okay, that Tesla's only one fraction of it. So when Tesla loses 50% of its value, some of the stocks in that basket are going to go up while Tesla's going down 50%. You don't get hurt as bad and in some cases it counteracts it completely and you actually still make money, just not as much. Diversification of assets is to reduce risk. Now here's the other side of that most people don't think about is that I think that we need to also diversify our income. Too often we look at it and we have one source of income. We have our salary or we have our business, and that's it. And the problem is, is that if that goes south on us or we have a problem, we lose the job. There's outsourcing or there's downsizing or there's a pandemic, there's any of the host of things that can shut you down, then what do you do? You've got no diversification of income. I want you to look at how do I diversify my income streams and as well as the asset holdings. This is the thing that actually saved me.

With the cancer. When I shut down the business, I didn't shut down my income streams, I just changed the mix of income, the diversification of income. It's why I say that multiple sources of income is no longer a luxury, it's a necessity. So like you can have like I've got my business income, I've got speaking income, I've got product income, I've got investing income, I got stuff from real estate, I've got stuff from consulting. So I've got all these different income streams that come in and just because one of them I shut down because of the cancer, the other still produced income and I wasn't in trouble. This is what we, what we talk about with creating what I call the money machine. The money machine is what's giving you the freedom. The money machine is what's going to give this to you. And so, so the importance is not just the diversification of assets but the diversification of income. I want you to go back and look and say how many sources of income do I have? You know, and when I teach deeper on this, we talk about the five incomes and that there's, I want people to be able to support their lifestyle at least 80% and above their lifestyle from the top three incomes and which is asset residual and portfolio income because it doesn't require you in a one on one relationship with generating the income. So diversification of assets, diversification of income will help you. And this is something that I think we should have been doing a long time ago. And if you haven't done it, now's the time leads me to number eight. Number eight is to have regular money conversations. You're not in this journey alone. Like I said, you have a spouse, you have a significant other, you have friends or partners. I want you to have real money conversations. The more you have a conversation around money, around wealth, around finances, the easier it will be to continue to have that conversation and to grow in this. But if we're not having the conversations because, oh my God, money is taboo, we shouldn't be talking about money and it's impolite and we shouldn't do any of that. Well, listen.

The first step to solving a problem is being willing to talk about it, to be willing to be aware of it, to have a conversation. There's no problem in this land that has ever been solved without a conversation.

And so being able to have a conversation with someone, an advisor, a coach like me, a money mentor like me, or an advisor, to be able to have a conversation and say, look, I'm concerned about this. Oh, I don't understand this. I was just having a conversation just now on Voxer with one of my elites about buying a business and how to structure the deal. Look, I may have done a lot of deals. They're doing their first one. Ask the questions, get in the money conversations. Raise the vibration in how you're approaching your money game. In doing that, make it a regular thing. In fact, our clients, we tell them that we want money dates on a regular basis with your spouse or your significant other. Not to talk about the money and say, hey, you spent this and you shouldn't have spent this. To talk about the vision, to talk about the richness of their life, to talk about what they want to create in life, the impact they want to have. Because that's the reason we're actually doing the money thing. Okay? It's not to have the money. That's just stuff in a bank account. It's what we do with it. It's what we create with it. It's the lives we change with it. Okay, that leads me to number nine. Number nine, beware of trends and fads. Oh, my gosh. You're going to see this coming out a lot right now. Things like, you know, the crypto and hopefully FTX has shown you some of this. But the meme stocks and the trends and the promises that these, Some of these people that are scammers, quite frankly, are bringing out and saying, we can save you. Like, we have a program that even in the volatility, you'll guarantee you an outcome. I got news for you. If someone's guaranteeing an outcome, run.

Run. I mean it. So. So I want you to be smart. I want you to do your due diligence. I want you to make sure that you're researching. I want you to make sure that you're. You're kicking the tires in a critical way. Because if someone's trying to sell you into something, there is a bias there. Their job is to sell you into something, even if that something isn't in your best interest. And the way they do it is, they trigger the emotions in you. I did an actual Episode on the psychological emotional triggers of scammers. You need to listen to that, because it's how I got caught in the Ponzi scheme and wiped out one third of everything I owned. That they will hit the emotional buttons to get you to make decisions because, oh, my God, I might miss this trend. I might miss this fad. This is my ticket out. May not be. So avoid trends and fads in there. Now, number 10. I know this one. You're gonna say, oh, gosh, I don't like this. Track your numbers monthly.

If you're not checking the pulse on the patient, the patient's gonna die on you. All right, bad analogy, but it's true. At least monthly. I want you to check the pulse on your financial gain. I want you to track your numbers. What's your. And if we're gonna just look at a few numbers, let's at least track. At least track your net worth, your cash in, your cash out, you know, and your cash balances. It's part of the net worth, but your cash balances. And when I say cash balances, that means investing, too, okay? So you're looking at the numbers on a regular basis. And now if you're in business, if you're in business, there's a whole other set of criteria and set of metrics that. That we. We have. This is the reason we use scorecards and dashboards to help our clients in an instant be able to know exactly where they're at and what they're doing. But if you're not tracking your numbers on a regular basis, as painful as it might be to sit back and go, oh, I overspent this month, okay? I'd rather know it up front than get blindsided down the road, okay? So track the numbers so you can make informed decisions on what you're going to do the next month and the next month and the next month. It is the plan. It is the path to financial freedom and wealth. The fact of the matter is, like I say, wealth is more a behavior element versus a money element. It's the habits, the decisions, choices, and behaviors that will create the wealth or keep you from the wealth. It's not how much money you make. There are plenty of people that I can show you that are millionaires making less than $100,000 a year because of the behaviors they have. There are plenty of people I can show you that are making hundreds of millions of dollars and are broke. Okay? So it's not the money, it's the behaviors. And they're tracking it. They're doing it and they're doing it the right way. They're willing to learn. Okay, number 11. Number 11. Leave the emotions at the door. Oh, this one is a big one. Oh, how did I lose one third of my net worth? Because I let the emotions get involved. All right? When your emotions go up, your financial intellect goes down. Simple as that. Okay. When they start to pull the emotional strings on you or the emotional strings get pulled with respect to an investment or a deal, that's when you start to make bad decisions. I did and I watched it happen repeatedly with other people that I know and I didn't know. Just reading through and seeing, seeing how these things happen. So leave the emotions at the door. Your emotions do not belong in any of your financial decisions. This is why I want to separate the decision from the emotion. Okay, that leads me to number 12, which is really you understanding this idea of what we call the wealth priority ladder. I'm going to walk you through it pretty quickly. This is something that we go down deep into in the affluence blueprint and with my students. But the fact of the matter is that I want you to set your cash up in a very specific way to prioritize where the money goes. And the first place that we need to take care of is this. When you're starting out, and you may have this already, but when you're starting out, the first thing that I want everyone to have is at least $1,500 or one month's expenses in a high yield cash account. We call this the comfort fund. The purpose of this is to make sure that we don't have to crack the glass on, on our credit cards, that we can cover our deductibles, that we can cover some expenses if something crazy happens in the short term. So that first thing, and this is not an emergency fund, that first step is I want a Comfort fund of $1,500 or one month's expenses, whichever is great. And the second stage, we do it together, and that is eliminating the consumer debt, the destructive debt. We're going to eliminate that. You're going to use a debt pay down plan. We will work an avalanche process or a snowball process with our clients to help them make that happen. While at the same time you're building your peace of mind fund. This is the 9 to 18 months worth of cash in a high yield cash account to give you the liquidity. But we want to do that together. I don't want you sitting back. I know there's commentators that will say this and say, oh, get out of debt first and then do it. Yeah, you'll get out of debt faster, but you're not building the wealth building habit. See, it's a different habit to pay down debt than it is to invest. I want to build both habits at the same time. So the second stage, the second phase of the wealth priority ladder is getting that consumer debt, the destructive debt, paid down and building the peace of mind fund. Then the third phase is about building your freedom fund. This is where I want you to make sure you're investing 20 to 25% of your income. And if you're later in years, it's going to be closer to 30% into investments. And we can talk another time about what investments to go into. But this is what's going to build your freedom fund. And so this is where we start to invest into our retirement accounts, 401ks, all of that type of stuff. And one of the challenges is that a lot of people come to me and say, well, should I pay my mortgage down too? Once I know that you got your maxing out, you're doing 20 to 25% into your investing accounts, then we can accelerate the pay down of the mortgage in this phase also.

Then the last two phases are looking at the possibility of funding colleges for our children. This is optional. I know this is going to scrub some people the wrong way, but I don't believe that you forsake your financial future for paying for college for your child. The child needs to get involved with.

Their path to college. That means scholarships, that meets grants. That does not mean student loans. They need to understand that they have some say and some doing in it. And we don't overextend ourselves by putting ourselves on a parent plus loan or them into a student loan that's going to bury them when they get out of college. And why I say it's optional is this. You don't know if your kid's going to go to college. You don't know if they're going to graduate college. You don't know any of that. But we do know that you're going to retire one day. We do know that one day you're going to need the money. We do know all of that. So let's take care of the known before we take care of the unknown. And so I want you to take care of yourselves and make sure that all that stuff styled in before you start thinking about the college. And then the last stage of the wealth priority ladder is affluence living out your affluent vision, being generous and creating legacy wealth, those are the stages, those are the steps. But that's what we do. All right? So I hope that this helps. I know I went through it fast, but I want you to go back through this 12 steps. These 12 things to do differently with your money going forward. Use it as a checklist. Make sure that you've got this dialed in. If you have to write it out, print it out, make sure it's there. I promise you, when you turn around and you start to do this on a regular basis, you start to build the wealth, creating creation habits that matter. You start to build wealth. You start to take control of your financial future. You start to put yourself on the proper path to financial freedom. Right? I hope you found this episode helpful. Listen, one more thing. If you have questions, like I said at the beginning of the episode, if you have questions or things that I can help you with, do me a favor, send me a DM or better yet, go to askmelnow.com.

And make sure that you leave me your questions so I can get them answered. I can bring them on the show. I might even bring you on the show to make that happen also. So send me the questions. Let's keep moving on this journey. You're not alone. I'm with you. And I've got a whole community of people with you, too. Until we get a chance to see each other in another episode or talk on the road, always, always strive to live a life that outlives you. See you in the next episode. Cheers.

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 there.

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.