How to Buy Anything You Want Without Going Broke
In this video, Shanli Liu, CPA, CTP, presents a four‑category framework for financing purchases without jeopardizing financial health. The categories are: (1) Past Money – saved earnings; (2) Income Money – current monthly cash flow; (3) Debt Money – borrowing against future earnings; and (4) New Money – generating additional, purpose‑specific income by leveraging under‑utilized assets, time, or side‑gigs. Liu argues that the wealthiest and happiest people rely on New Money for discretionary, “grandiose” purchases, keeping core savings and income untouched and avoiding long‑term debt. He illustrates the concept with anecdotes: buying a 36,000 sq ft building for a home gym, a business owner choosing a larger office, Paul McCartney writing a song to fund a swimming pool, and a gym member driving for Uber to afford membership. The speaker emphasizes a mindset shift toward resourcefulness, creating a defined, short‑term plan to earn the needed funds, and treating money as a tool rather than a goal. He cautions that the approach suits those with some financial cushion and offers a brief plug for his broader “28 frameworks in 22 minutes” teaching series.
Chapters
There's 4 ways to buy anything, and I'll show you one unique way. That's what actually got me this building. And so let me walk you through it. You've got what I would consider past money, so that would be savings. So that's earnings that you had in the past, and that's money that you put away. The next money is you have income money. So this is the money that you make every single month. You can spend this money rather than touching your savings. This makes sense. Then you've got debt money. Which is basically future earnings. Like, this is money I'm going to take debt and I'm going to pay with future money, right? And I'm going to have to pay this debt off. And then finally is the category that I like to have, which is— and I'll call it new money. Now you're like, what does that even mean? That's what I'll explain. So I've noticed amongst the friends that I have that are the best with money, that they're wealthiest with money, they, they're okay buying things that are a bit grandiose., right? Now some of them buy big houses, some of them buy big cars, some buy big yachts, big buildings, whatever it is, right? And I had a business owner who came here and he was like, hey, I'm choosing between two offices. I've got basically a sensible office and I've got a much bigger office that I'm really excited about. He said, which one do you think I should take? And I said, which one do you want? And he said, the big one. And this guy was a very good salesman. And I said, okay, here's the deal. You can buy the big one. It was 2.5 times the size, um, or at least 2.5 times the price. And it was a little bit nicer, whatever. I said, but the deal is you gotta pay it off in a year. He was like, I can do that. And I was like, right, then don't worry about it. And so the thing is, is that I would say these are kind of almost like different personality types in terms of where people are taking the money from. Now, the reason that I bring up this building being a significant purchase is it was less that the price was a significant purchase and more so that I didn't need this building at the time. I just wanted to have a place to have a home gym that would be more than like, it'd be like a commercial gym. And I wanted to have place for meetups and things like that. And I could come up with a rational explanation that between all the portfolio companies, we were spending about $4 million a year in event spaces. And I was like, well, if I had a big enough space for all of them to do their internal meetings, their quarterlies, fly out their staff and their team and have a venue, then I could probably save that and it would pay for the building. But I remember Layla was like, hey, you know, we should maybe, maybe we should just get like a 5,000 square foot building. So this building's about 36,000 square feet, much bigger. And I remember hearing this and I was like, I mean, that's appropriately sized for where we're at now, but it's not the size building that I would want it to be for where I want to go. And so I remember telling her, I said, I promise if we buy this building, I will make sure that it makes us more money than it has cost us. And I would say that a behavior that has served me extraordinarily well is looking at new money, meaning, If I buy this building, can I find something that will pay off the building? Now, of course, I had the expenses on the portfolio side. We could have just saved the $4 million a year that we spend in venues and all that stuff. Sure. But I was like, I'll bet you there's something that we can do with our existing resources. And this is the key part, is that it's sawdust money. It's money using your existing resources that you're currently underutilizing to generate new money for a specific project. And so my favorite way of doing this is like, hey, if Daniel wants to buy a boat or wants to buy a car, I love the idea of him being like, so I'm just going to work one extra day per week over the next year and then I'm going to buy it. The richest people I know, that is the behavior that they typically use. I want this thing and so I'm going to go make the money to buy the thing. I'm not going to use my existing income. I'm not going to use my existing resources. I'm not going to use my savings. To buy it. I'm not going to go into debt unless I know that I'm going to pay it off within a year and I have no prepayment penalty and I have a clear plan of how I'm going to do it. They have a clear plan of how they're going to make the money on a very defined time period. And it's from doing above and beyond. It's looking at all the stuff you got. And the reason that I like this is I was talking to a good friend of mine, Sharon Cervantes. He's a president of Real. Actually just became a board member, excuse me. And he said, oh, he said, you just wanna write yourself a swimming pool. And I was like, what does that mean? He said, so Paul McCartney, the Beatles, used to say he wanted a swimming pool. And everyone's like, well, how are you gonna pay for it? Now obviously he has the money for a swimming pool, but he didn't wanna use his savings. He didn't wanna use his income and his royalties. He didn't wanna go into debt for it. And so what'd he do? He was like, I'm just gonna go write a song. And so he writes a song and he writes himself a swimming pool from the money that he collects from selling the song, right? And so I think about this a lot because I think it's, it's a different way of thinking about money. It's like, I'm going to, I want this thing. And so I don't want to limit that thing. If anything, I want to use that thing to motivate me to find other resources. So what I'm being is resourceful rather than draining resources I have. I'm finding new resources by utilizing existing assets. That are currently under my control. And so this is fundamentally like, people are like, well, you know, you could Airbnb one of the rooms out. And it's like, okay, that's one of the things I'm gonna do, but I also have some time. So it's like, maybe I'll drive Uber. There was one of my favorite customers ever at my gym. She was a mom of 4, single mom. She didn't have the money for the gym membership. And she was like, well, I could drive, I could drive Uber one day a week and that I would be able to afford it. And I was like, great, then do that. And so that's what she did. And she was one of my longest standing members, lost 100 pounds. And it's like there's a shift that happens when you decide to do it that way. And I think there's something to be said about creating a vacuum, about creating space. I've heard the saying like make yourself poor, right? Of the idea of like how do I create this deprivation? How do I create this threshold that all of a sudden increases my demand for money, right? Because everybody has a demand for money. Like you have a certain lifestyle that you have grown accustomed to And so that's your minimum threshold. That's your minimum requirement for living. The real wealth comes from being able to continue to jack this up while keeping this low, of course. But in those instances when you do wanna buy the sweet ride, 'cause I'm not, like, people think of me as an aesthetic, and I am to a large degree. But if I wanna buy a sick-ass home gym, which I do have, I would rather that money come from new stuff, either you can do extra stuff to get the thing. Or I think the 201 version of this is how do I use the thing to make even more money? And so part of the reason we spun up the advisory services was actually like me fulfilling a promise to Layla of like, okay, we'll find a way to use the building, uh, to generate income to cover the building. Cause I do want to have this sick home gym, which will be a complete and utter waste of space. Um, besides the fact that I think it's dope and why have money if you can't spend it and you can't take it with you anyways. And so this may seem like a wild departure from some of the content that I make, but this is obviously targeted at someone who probably has a little bit more, is a little bit further along. All right? If you are broke, don't do that. If you're broke, just focus on the new money stuff, right? But if you have some, I think that you stay ahead of your spending by not increasing your lifestyle relative to your income, but by increasing the new money relative to the new purchase, which typically are defined. And so it doesn't have to be forever. So if you're like, well, I don't wanna work overtime all the time, fine. Then you can just work overtime for a year, work overtime for 6 months, work overtime for a month so that you can afford the thing. And I think it's always, when you think about it like that, is I have to take, I have to add this on top. I don't touch my flows, right? I don't touch my income flow and I don't wanna create a liability with the debt and savings is like, that's my nut, right? I don't wanna use up my nest egg, right? So I gotta go make it. And if this has just been this behavior, that I have observed from the people that I know that are the wealthiest and the people who enjoy their money the most. And I think that's the thing is like, it's one thing to have money, 'cause I know plenty of people who obviously have money, but some of them, I don't think they enjoy their money. And it's because they're always, it's like they're like afraid. And there's some of this whole idea of like you have to be abundant and all that stuff. I know tons of people who are super scarcity mindset and have a lot of money 'cause they just don't like spending it. And so like there's something to be said for that. But that's if you make money the goal. And if you do make money the goal, then by all means don't spend it because then money is the goal. So fine. But if money isn't your goal, then the people that I've seen that are the happiest that I think spend money well, they use money like a tool, is they use an expense or use something that they know they're going to consume. They know it's not a good investment and they say, fine, I know it's not a good investment, so I'm not going to use my income to buy it. I'm going to use something that I already have that I'm underutilizing, which might be just your time. You might take on a new client project. You might take on some one-on-one services that you wouldn't normally take on, right? Those types of things can be defined period because you're like, well, it's not gonna increase the enterprise value of the business. It's not gonna be some sellable asset, but I do want this thing and I don't wanna touch how my existing infrastructure functions. It's just one behavior. And I think many of you, like if you're like me, like I don't like spending money and I've tried to learn my way out of it, which is I don't like spending money that's like my main money. It's like my core money. It's the money comes in from businesses, distributions. That's my main thing. But if I wanna buy something crazy, then I've just gotta be willing to do something crazy for it. And the weirdest thing happens is that I get almost more excited about making that money than the money that I make every single day because I know that that money's going towards this specific thing. So I'm like, I'm building a home gym right now. I'm buying equipment right now. Like that's my, as I'm doing this, I'm almost like more joyful about doing the work 'cause I know exactly what it's going towards. And so just a little behavior that I've picked up over the years, something that I've observed in other people that I've used myself that has been wildly valuable. And if you have that, you know, if you've got two machines that you could buy for your business, you know, and one's a little bit sweeter than the other and you can't really justify the expense, then just take the delta and be like, I'm gonna go make that myself 'cause I think it's sicker. And I have never been disappointed about doing that. Not once have I done that and been like, this was a mistake. And the thing is, is that I've bought plenty of things that I think were expensive, right? But I can minimize my regret by saying, I'm not using money that I otherwise want to use somewhere else. And so that's my little money behavior that has served me very well, and I hope it serves you well. And if you like this one little framework, I have 28 frameworks that I teach in 22 minutes on how to reprogram how to think about money. Enjoy.
