EVERYTHING You’ve Been Told About Money Is WRONG

Everything you've been told about money is wrong. And here's what you need to know.

You know, one of the most destructive things that ever happened in my life was actually when my parents came to me and said this. Skagens don't get ahead, they get by. Now the reality is that had been the Skagens truth for years upon years upon years. Hard working people, well intentioned people, great people with great hearts who wanted to give, wanted to serve, but always struggled to use money to help them move forward and build a firm foundation for the generations behind them. Which is why in this particular video, I want to give you six myths and six truths to help you overcome what may be in your specific way, so you don't have to worry about that anymore. In case you also have family members who say, well, we only get by. We never get ahead in your own life. So here are the six myths and the truths to help you properly understand how to gain control of your money and not let it control you. Myth number one, I can use other people's money to make money. Here's the thing. The truth is, the borrower is always slave to the lender. It doesn't matter if you're using a credit card because you're getting some kind of points or something like that, or if you're physically borrowing money from a bank or borrowing money from your family and friends. One of the biggest mistakes that I've seen people struggle with specifically in our own finances and in business is when they borrow that money, all of a sudden they're not accounting for the potential risk that could sideswipe them or get in their way later on. And as a result, the moment they can't actually pay the money back or pay the bill or pay the interest, the very next thing that happens is a relationship is broken or something's getting repoed. You may think that you can use other people's money and you can try it, you can test me on this. You try it your way. I can tell you from personal experience that the only time that I actually got financial strength was by working hard, being smart, being diligent, and making sure that I was not borrowing other people's money. I was using my own investments. And as a result, my own investments tend to skyrocket or at least level up on a regular basis. So make sure you are not borrowing other people's money with the thought process that somehow that money is going to allow you to make money and you can pay it back and maybe it'll work two or three times until you have a Covid or a dot com bubble or a housing bubble. Be smart. Alright, next myth. I should get it while the time is hot. I cannot tell you how many businesses right now are struggling because they thought they should get it while the time is hot. What I mean is they took the time to get that money right now and not be safe with it, not be smart with it. Instead they bought a bunch of stuff, over invested, over leveraged themselves and now they're paying the price. Now they can't make the lease payment. Now they can't make the rent payment. Now they can't make this the equipment payment. Now they got to pay the bank. Now they got to pay. And the story goes on and on and on. Look, here's the deal. When there's a bull market, which is when the market's climbing up and is rapidly increasing, everybody's, there's jobs everywhere and people are making money. That's not the time to go out and buy a bunch of stuff and over leverage yourself. That's the time to actually take a lot of that cash off the table and put it in the emergency fund. Whether it be your personal one or your business one. Right? That's the time to do that. Here's what I mean by that. One of the reasons that my businesses were able to be successful in Covid, at least up until this point in time, is because we had cash on hand to basically finance our own operations if we needed in case the economy got so bad where we couldn't function. Which gave me time a lot of, gave me a lot less risk and a lot more opportunity. And it gave me capital to potentially purchase things and do things that other people couldn't because they were scared and had to sell their stuff. What I'm saying is this. Every bull market is followed by a bear market, which means every good season of making money is always followed by a season when there's not enough of money. Go back thousands of generations and you'll see the very same trend over and over and over again. Life and business have one thing in common. They're all based on seasons. A winter, a spring, a fall and a summer. And what you do in those seasons determines how successful you're going to be with your money overall. So the truth is this. When you can feast, when other people are feasting, you should also be preparing for the famine. You should also be putting money away in the emergency fund, in the savings account, in the investments where you're more likely to have less risk and more cash on hand. When things aren't going great. All right, myth number three. My credit card company gives me all kinds of free stuff, which is why I use it. Look, do you realize that 87% of the people who get a credit card at some point in time default by a month or more on their credit cards? What happens when you default on a credit card payment, Whether it's a day late, a week late, or a month late? That's right. They jack the interest rate up, which is why they can give you all the free stuff, all the airline miles, and all the cash points back. You're playing their game by their rules. Instead of understanding that credit cards don't actually pay you to use them. Instead, you're playing with fire. I am a big believer of not having credit cards or not using credit cards. I'm a big believer in saving cash and not buying stuff until I can actually pay for it. Why? Because I learned the hard way. After being 75 plus thousand dollars in debt early on and losing everything to my name, it taught me that I never, ever wanted to have a bank organization ever own my opportunity ever again. Now, you may think, hey, I'm getting the airline points. I got the airline. Excuse me. And you may think, I'm getting the airline miles. I'm getting cash back. I'm getting all these cool points. They send me a T shirt every year. They send me a Christmas card. Look. No, no, no, no. It doesn't work that way. You're being deceived. You're being deceived by the very same companies that want you to actually default on your credit card so they can charge you higher interest rates. As they charge you higher interest rates, they make more money. And to be honest, they don't care if they put you into bankruptcy. Why? Because when you actually default on that note, all they do is they sell that very same thing to a collection agency that that then sells it to someone else until they either collect it or you declare bankruptcy. You don't want to end up bankrupt. Instead, be smart now so you don't have to pay the price later. Okay. The next myth I need you to pay close attention to is this one. I need a high beacon score. I need credit in order to buy a house or car or something of value. The truth is, you do not need that in place in order to buy a house, car, or something in value. What you need is cash. If you put down 20 to 30% on a car or a house, they will actually give you a note to get started. Yes, 20 or 30%. If you focus and they do the things that I'm teaching you to do, which is the delayed sacrifice and delayed gratification, you will actually have the cash to do that. The reason I know this is because of this very reason. My very first house that I built with my own two hands, they got me kickstarted in my real estate portfolio. My beacon score was 552. 552. And for those of you who don't know what a Beacon score is, it's basically an I Love debt score and. Or the score the banks use to determine whether or not you are credit worthy or not. 552 is about as low as you can possibly get, which meant my credit sucked. How do I overcome that? Most people give up and just assume they're going to have to live a life of poverty and they're never going to have anything because they make some bad mistakes and make some bad decisions, end up with bad results. The reason credit is so dangerous is because it is, like, slippery. You miss a payment, you do this over here, everything gets jacked up, and it's hard to dig out of that hole, which is why you've got to spend the time in saving the money. Because what happened was, even though I had a 552 beacon score, I was able to put down 28% on my house, and they still took a chance to because of the amount of cash that I had in down payment. Why, in the event that I defaulted, the bank was still going to make money. Think like a bank. Banks don't do banking to lose money. They do banking to make money. Think like a bank. Play your game, don't play theirs. That's how you actually use resources to actually better your life and actually make progress on a consistent basis. Before we jump into the next myth, do me a favor. Go ahead and like and subscribe and comment if you will, and. And please go ahead and hit the bell for me as well. That way you never miss a single video that actually helps you get where you want to go. All right, Our next myth is if I show people my success, they'll appreciate me more. One of the hardest lessons I've ever discovered in managing money and doing so successfully is that people who are trying to impress are actually rarely impressed by our accomplishments. In fact, many times are turned off by it. So the truth is, wealthy people are driven by future investments and. And not showboating. People who showboat are almost always ending up in a broke mentality or end up broke in general. That's because they're so busy buying things they don't actually need that they may not even actually want to impress other people. And that impressing other people, all that does is spend their cash. The harder you feel like you have to impress other people, the more you're actually holding yourself back on a consistent basis. People who generate wealth do so because they make their money work for them. Now, I'm not saying that when you actually have some wealth and you have some extra money and you have some liquidity that you can't actually go buy some things that you want. Just make sure there are things that you actually want and you're not doing it to impress somebody else. They're things you simply want to enjoy. And then also make sure they're a small percentage of your income. I'm in the ability now. I can purchase an iPhone if I need to or want to, but it's a very small percentage of my income. I, however, am not going out right now and go buy a house. Why? Because that would not be a small percentage of my income. These types of things help you actually win the day over and over again. So make sure you follow by the truth. And that truth is, again, wealthy people are driven by future investment, not by showboating. Make sure you're driven by investment. Make sure you're driven by roi. Every time I invest a dollar, I'm making a dollar. If you do that, you'll continue to be successful with money. All right, our next myth is this one. If I had more money, I would be a lot happier. Let me settle that something real fast. I can actually tell you that the more money I have made, the more difficult it has been to actually feel a sense of contentment, joy and peace, AKA happiness. Why? Because money does not provide happiness. Money, however, will make you more of what you already are and it can intensify emptiness. If you are currently feeling empty now and you have more money now, then you would continue to feel more empty. Why? Because the more stuff you buy, the more things you have. You've got the things, but you don't have purpose and meaning behind those things. Instead, you're spending money on watches and cars and all kinds of stuff. And again, I'm not saying that's bad enough itself. What I'm saying is you can't get a sense of self value and purpose out of those things. That's the definition of letting something own you rather than you owning it. Never be so attached to your things that you're unwilling to sell them at a moment's. Notice. Why? Because that strategy allows you to never be tied so much to your things that if you need to liquidate in order to protect your financial future, you're in a position to do so. One of the biggest mistakes that my father made, and he would have no problem with sharing this, was, was trying to hold on to our house too long. Even though we could have easily started to sell the property six months earlier and gotten ourselves into a position to take a step back so we could take a leap forward. Instead, we lost the house. It was foreclosed on. Without going into a lot of detail, let's just say it's not fun to be kicked out of your own home when you need a place to live. That's why making sure that things don't own you is so very important. Be willing to sell anything that you have at any point you have if your financial need actually dictates you need to do that. Why? Because money does not buy happiness. In some cases, it can make things easier as far as making sure that you don't have less stress for debt and cash and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, if money is your driving force, the more of it you have, the more empty you will become. However, if you see money as a tool, which is what it really is, then you can actually build a solid foundational future and actually instead find your purpose and significance from actually giving and helping others in need. Now, I've got a bonus myth for you and a truth for you because it pivots off what we just talked about. And that's this. When I win the lottery or somehow some have some magical windfall, all of a sudden I'm going to be better off. You might be surprised to know that most people who win the lottery or have some kind of windfall that have never been taught to manage money end up bankrupt within two years of actually having that windfall. Yes. That means people that have won millions of dollars, they don't know what to do with it. They don't understand the taxes behind it, and they don't understand the structures behind it. As a result, all of a sudden, that money is liquidated very quickly. Money is all about character. If you can be faithful with the little, you can be faithful with the much. So no matter where you're at in your own financial journey right now, if you are building the character through proper money management right now, then I believe as a person of faith that God will bless you with more of it. I'm a living example of that. I'm perfectly attuned to the fact that my wealth creation or my ability to create revenue or ability to create businesses came from a sacrificial moment when my faith led me to put $4.86 in an offering plate and it was all I had as an act of sacrifice. As a result, I'm convinced that in that moment my character shifted, my heart shifted, and all of a sudden I went from a selfish, greedy person who just wanted money to make myself better to more of a person who said, how can I build something special with the resources that I have to honor the God that I believe in? Money makes you more of what you already are. So if you're a greedy person and you have more money, you'll become more greedy. If you're a giving person and you have more money, you will give more. If you're an investing person right now, then you will invest more money. All of these different things are nothing more than money makes you more of what you already are. The question is, who are you now? As you learn to think about your money more and more, make sure you put these myths and these truths to work for you. That way you don't end up like I did, homeless or broke or whatever. Instead, you end up far in your future, able to do things today that other people can't because you took the steps today that other people didn't. Now, I hope you enjoyed that video and if you did, do me a favor, check out this next video right here because I know it's going to keep you moving forward. Leverage temporary sacrifices clearly dictate a one to three year window where you are going to go at your life like everything depends on it and build a solid footing that then creates a foundation for you to actually be successful.