How To Get Rich Starting From $0

I learned number one is the courage. And one of the things I learned, romantic climbing, is that you've got to move. Even when it's dark and you can't see your next step. You've got to move even when you know you may start to take that next step, but you may be disrupted in the process. But you have to start to move, and that takes courage. There's this blind faith of saying, if I have an intention and I. I have a goal and a passion to get, move forward, do it unless I move. And sometimes the first move is the hardest.

Guys, welcome the one and only Grace Vander Cruz. How are you doing?

I'm doing great. How are you?

I'm so excited to talk to you. You know, it's not that often you get to meet somebody who is also been homeless before. I've. I share that part of my story. Also went on to build a sizable organization, start to then feel called to help a lot of people kind of break free from their own, you know, beliefs and shackles and whatnot and create their own lifestyle. One thing I haven't managed to do yet is climb mountain peaks, which I know that you absolutely love to do. So just for fun, what was your favorite peak so far?

So far, it's Kilimanjaro. It's the most, I think, common of the Seven Peaks. It was fun because there are three major terrains. You start off in a tropical rainforest and very hot and fairly flat. And as you move higher up, you're looking at tropical or the African plains, which is the red clay mountains that just keep rolling. And then higher up were the glaciers.

Yeah.

So pretty distinct terrains. I think it was. It. It's a special meaning for me.

Yeah. I'm curious. How did you. How did you discover your love for it? How'd you, you know, how'd you find. I mean, that's. Doesn't, you know, create a business. Okay. That makes a little sense. Like you've. You've got. You've definitely got the grit and the tenacity for that. Okay. Help a lot of people. Okay. You got the heart of a servant. You got that. You got the love for God. So that's. You got that as well. So how did you get into mountain climbing?

Right. You're right. Most of us don't wake up saying we're going to scale the highest peak on the continent. Today. I went to the Wharton Business School and one of the professors invited me to climb. Professor you seen, had a vision of bringing together leaders from various parts of the globe, different industries. And he believed in order to teach leadership, you have to be outside of your comfort zone. The goal he had was to do an expedition, and the one he invited me was to climb in Bhutan for 14 days, eight days up, six days down, up to 20,000ft. Oh, wow. Altitude. We climb during the day and at night we have a bonfire discussion on a relevant business issue.

Yeah.

I received this invitation three years after 911 and you know, 911 was still, you know, pretty vivid in my memory working on Wall Street. And I had vowed to myself to take more meaningful vacations. And even though I think I'm one of the most unlikely climbers, one, I had a serious injury to my left leg.

Oh, wow.

Grew up with pins in my leg. Never participated in any major sports before. Um, I had this within me of how can I really get to my next best. I'd accomplished a lot at that time.

Yeah.

But I knew getting to my next best meant taking on opportunities outside my comfort zone, even if I had to do it. Questioning and shaking.

Yeah.

But to see what my next best and if I would trust me to go to my next best, this seemed like an opportunity I should take. So I took it.

Yeah. Well, it's funny, you know, some of the most incredible experiences you'll ever have in life in general are on the other side of the most uncomfortable places that you can possibly think of. You know, And I'm just trying to think about a couple of the moments of my first time that I ever went on a trip of any kind. I was very fortunate and was allowed to go to Hawaii. And you know, for someone who grew up in an environment also that was. Had very difficult financial circumstances and whatnot, going to Hawaii was not something I ever thought I would ever do. It was, you know, it's kind of one of those things that, you know, you kind of wouldn't it be nice if. But you don't actually believe you'd ever actually do it kind of thing, you know, and when you're kind of doing that, one of the things that actually takes place is you're, you start really work on that limited belief system. Right. So I land, I get off the, get off the, get off the airplane. Beautiful smell, pineapple, snow, orchids everywhere. Get on the, get on the commercial bus. Because I was part of a group, we took the commercial bus out to, towards the hotel which was the Weston at the time. And it's about 5, 5:30 and 6 o' clock in the afternoon and the sun was kind of like Setting over the water, obviously, is the sun setting over the water, straight line to, you know, and of course, the, you know, no matter where you go, it looks like it's coming directly at you.

And then a well breaches in between the, the point of the, the, the line in the water and the sun. Like, I wish I had captured that moment, but that moment literally taught me a great deal about possibilities.

Absolutely.

You know, so I'm curious to know, from your, from your climbing experience, from your experience from, you know, building a life from scratch, what type of things have you learned about, you know, creating possibilities and creating meaningful moments and kind of using those to leverage you up?

Yes. I learned, number one is the courage. And one of the things I learned through mountain climbing is that you've got to move even when it's dark and you can't see your next step. You've got to move even when, you know, you may start to take that next step, but you may be disrupted in the process of taking the next step. But you have to start to move, and that takes courage. There's this blind faith of saying, if I have it, if I have an intention and I have a goal and a passion to get move forward, I can't do it unless I move. And sometimes the first move is the hardest. I remember when I was in Bhutan climbing for the first time, I got up one morning and I was climbing with my partner who was very experienced, and it felt like if my feet were like boulders, it was so hard to move. And I turned to him and I said, how do you feel? And he said, oh, my God, I feel terrible. This is really hard. And, you know, I felt the support of that. Like, wow, I'm not the only one, right? Yeah. I tell you, as we continue that day, I got energy, I got the strength. You know, it's, you know, the same that the plane uses 60% of its fuel with the takeoff.

Yeah.

So true. What a second thing I've learned is that there's someone in front of you that, that created a footstep in front of you that you. That even though I'm not sure what to do, all I have to do is really focus on my next step and place my feet where the last climber.

And I do think sometimes there are clues successfully clues. They're guidelines for us to follow. I think the third and most important is who is your guide and who you hooked into, who you're harnessed into, and who is giving you the support and the leadership at that time.

Yeah.

And I think Many of us have to make sure that along the journey, whether it's mountain climbing or in life, that we into the right people on the right path in life.

Yeah. You know, it's funny, not funny. It's actually like powerful just to reflect back on who is your guide even right now, no matter who's listening or watching right now, no matter if it's time at what time and space. But you know, if it's the episode just dropped or if it's going to be a year or two years from now, it doesn't matter. I think that is a powerful question to continue to ask yourself is who's your guide?

Yes.

Not just in following a mentor, but more importantly, also assessing the mentor that you have now or the mentors you have now or the absence of the mentors you have now. So what are some like characteristics you're looking for when you're trying to select this guide?

Great, great question. Because I could ask this a lot. Who your guide? And I, I always use this. Who my guides. I think everyone needs their own personal board of directors. Your own personal advisory board. The same way big corporations who function so well have great governance. We need it for personal life. So my guides are my life coach. I have a life coach. I have a spiritual coach. I have a, A therapist that I talk to on a daily basis. I have a business coach that I talk to. All of those make up my personal board of directors. I have a corporate great husband who I met at school and we share values and he's my life and love partner. And, and, and you know, we, the synergies are tremendous that I've learned so much from my coaches.

Yeah.

And they've encouraged me and also they're my accountability partners.

Yeah.

You know, if us, we are, you know, on a journey. We've talented, we're anointed, we're. But there's no one that we're counting to and that can lead us to very difficult or dangerous places. So, you know, I want to stay accountable to my, to my board of directors.

Yeah. I guess a little bit of a side question. How do you know when either you've outgrown us, guide, mentor, board of director, or their values no longer align with yours and therefore it's time to replace that, that role. Almost like it would be a boardroom.

Oh, very, very interesting. You know, I, it's interesting because I serve on five corporate boards and one of the most difficult decisions of a board is to tell one of its members it's time to leave it's time to either retire, it's time to move on, that you're no longer serving the purpose. You're just coming into the meetings and not able to really add significant values. You know, I think, you know, it's amazing how relationships can naturally evolve and grow.

Yeah.

Same as my board of directors, you know, So I have evolved and grown with a number of them. And I must say, my board has a growth mindset, and they were able to grow, they were able to expand with me, and they're able to constantly, you know, make sure that I am holding myself up to very high standards.

Yeah.

And. And they know I'm. They know I'm ambitious. And sometimes some of their major.

Goals for me is R and R, you know. Yeah, you're taking enough breaks and you're pausing in the journey. Are you reflecting enough? And I think that's one of the, one of the things that I continue to work for, to make sure I give myself the time to pause and relax.

Yeah. Oh, it's so good. I want to pivot a little bit to the book. You know, one of the things I know that's on your heart that you are absolutely gifted about.

Is teaching people. I wouldn't even call it financial wellness as much as financial elevation. Right. There's. There's a wellness component to it. There's a strategy component to it. There's, you know, and one of the biggest, most search items on Google, in any point in time, it has to do with money. How, how to. How to make more of it, how to invest more of it, how to save more of it, how to spend a little more of it. Like, there's all these different dichotomies related to money and lifestyle. I'm curious to know, how did you understand or spend some time understanding the, you know, kind of the financial perspective around the history of how money was created and how it's been utilized around you and then kind of your. Your own developmental journey with it.

Oh, that is such a great question, because my very first chapter of the book is all devoted to the history of money. You know, whenever you go to the doctor there, what's your family history?

Yeah.

And spent a lot of time with that assessment. However, we don't do that with money. And I'm like, before you can take action, we need to go back to what is the. Your background and your relationship with money. Every ethnic group, every country, every community, every family and every person have a history with money. And if you were to look at your money history, personal money history, or Family money history. You will find most likely incidences of fraud, lack of payments made, not kept.

Yeah.

Being returned. And I would submit to you that most of you listening to my voice and all of us are suffering from some kind of financial ptsd. Order to really move forward and grow wealth the way we need to, we have to address it. Yeah, we have to address it. So in my book, I. I go through. What's your first money memory? And I shared a powerful one of my first money memory. But it's all surrounding the lack, the scarcity mindset, the shame denial. There was a joke my mom made about the entire thing just so that, you know, we would be not tense about the situation and to have that in a child and, you know, years later, of course, I'm advising on billions of dollars of transaction. But the money memory lives with us even, even consciously or unconsciously that we have to address in order for us to really build.

Well, yeah, I'm curious to know. So I believe I'm. I'm totally on board with you, by the way. Obviously, I have. It's funny, I've had to overcome quite a bit of limitation and scarcity mindsets obviously, build the size, organization, and then exit a business and all that kind of stuff. There's a whole lot that you go through during that, that thing recently. Chastity, who's my. Who's my girlfriend.

Challenged me. She's like, you do realize that you're a whole lot more gifted than you're letting yourself believe you are. You can create more if you want to, you know. And, you know, I said, well, do I really need to? Like, I'm. I'm comfortable. Like, I'm, you know, I'm. We're in a good place. We can travel and do and go and whatever. And she's like, yeah, but how many people are missing out because you have the ability to create? You're not create. You're not. You're not actively creating more. So therefore your overflow is less. Right. So. Right. Me too. You know, so we started thinking about that. So, you know, there's. The reason I say that is because there's this element of constantly working with your mindset around resource and money in general, you know, And I know for me, you know, my audience has heard me say this before. My father said one time, scoggins don't get ahead. They get by. After he lost his business, right? And he was, he thought he was loving me in the moment by trying to give me whiz pearls of wisdom to make Sure. I never got I dreams crushed. Right. Fortunately for me, it worked out where I pressed on years later and did and did. Did pretty well. But in the grand scheme of things, we start looking at these experiences, we start looking at, you know, it's more subconscious than anything else. Right. So in your experience, you and I both know it tends to be more subconscious than conscious. How do we bring the subconscious to the conscious so we can deal with it?

Yes. So one of the things. And you're right because 99% of it is conscious. And we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. So it's where we have to really be introspective and go deep within ourselves.

Yeah.

To really. And this is why I say first money memory. Let's deal with that. Write it down. See what lessons you've learned. See how that has permeated your life. And then consciously say, look, I want to rewrite the script of my money. That's going to be drastically different from how I was taught.

Yeah.

I hold the pen.

Yeah.

Wealth is my birthright. Wealth is our birthright. We live in a world of abundance. How do I shape that so that I can live and maximize my time and have a healthy relationship with money? And going back to some of what you said, I'm a firm believer that your net worth can never exceed your self worth. We see this all the time. People make a lot of money but they lose it if their self worth is not saying you're worthy of this. You deserve this. You worth part for this. You can, you can mo. You can now multiply this.

Yeah.

You know, so I, I really do think there's significant things we can do with our money.

Yeah.

And you know, I use the parable of the, the one talent. Two talents.

Yeah.

Many of us have the mindset of the one talent. We only have a little. We, you know, we finally got what, you know, we're most successful. Our ancestry of our entire family. And we hold on dearly to what little we have and not grow. Grow it as much as we can because of the way we see our world. Yeah.

You know, another, that was another byproduct of money is. And I've seen this and I'm sure you have as well. I'm curious to get your thoughts on it. There is an element of folks who are high income earners. I've got a, a few friends and clients who are 9 and 10 figure earners. They do very, very well financially. About half of them are happy.

The other half would, would dare say that they have everything that money can possibly buy or have access to it for the most part, but yet are still not finding joint fulfillment. So how do we balance the ability to create abundance but also have an abundant heart in the process?

Interesting, because you're.

If you associate your happiness with a certain level of financial wealth, you will never achieve it.

Yeah.

Because it's not tied. Your money and your happiness are not linked and should never be linked and will never be linked. So happiness is achieved by much more. Looking at your internal values, are you living a life that aligns with your soul?

Yeah.

You know, are you happy with. Are you doing your talent? Are you living out your talents, your dreams, your expectations? Have you resolved conflicts? You have within or without that need to address what is. What is eating away at you? Yeah, and that's. That's a personal question. And so, I mean, you can be, you know, you can be miserable in a place. Palace and very happy in the. In the pit. So, you know, that is, you know, that is something that only.

A person, you know, can. Can resolve for themselves.

Yeah, no, I. I wanted to get. It's funny that subject matter rarely gets discussed because. Because there's so much emphasis on getting more, creating more, having a better lifestyle, so on and so forth, which is all great. It's all true. I mean, to your point, I think, I think, you know, it is a birthright. You can look at Esau and Jacob, like you. It's a birthright to create wealth and to have abundance. You can also. You can also short circuit your own birthright as a result, using the same. Just using the same story. You know, one of the things that I've also heard you talk about, both in the book and a little bit on a few podcasts, is this element of how a traumatic experience can actually create a transformation. And I was wondering if you'd be willing to maybe go into the. The. A little bit of the story of the five months that you guys spent near a shelter and, and kind of how that led you to have the mindset. Because a lot of times I find that if we go through a very difficult, traumatic financial experience, we become that experience rather than the alternate.

Yes, that is so true. How do we transcend from where we are to where we want to be and not be, you know, not be buried in the traumatic experience? So this is where I give a lot of credit to my late grandmother. She. Her name is Hagar. She had nine. Nine children.

Oh, wow. God bless her.

But in the. In, in spite of her limited resources, she and my granddad found room in their hearts to adopt five young sisters who lost their mom. Wow. So My grandmother raised.

14 children as a result. I'm one of 52 grandchildren.

And my grandmother had very little schooling. And she told me she learned to read and write from reading the King's James version of the Bible.

So, look, as we speak here today, I can assure you that I was her favorite. She would look at me and she would say, grace, you have lengthened my years and you have blessed my eyesight.

Oh, wow.

What amazing love for a young child to have. But her most cherished words to me were, believe beyond your limits. See, my grandmother believed that you never plan your goals based on your current circumstances. As a matter of fact, she knew that your capacity to achieve your goals, your visions, your passion in life was way beyond your current circumstances. Your circumstances could not contain your capacity to exceed. And so it was my grandmother's values that she shared, and she gave in. Me. So let's move forward. At college, I'm majoring in accounting. I went to Pace University. My home is in Brooklyn. I'm commuting back and forth. And on one beautiful summer, summer day, I came home where I shared a brownstone apartment with mom and dad and my six siblings. I came home to that apartment, and as I turned the corner, what I saw was a just utter chaos. Fire trucks, sirens, everything. And as I got closer, it's the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that that chaos centered around where I lived. And I saw my mom, and she was holding some of my siblings. And I said, what's going on? And she was so calm, and she said, can't you see we had a fire?

Wow.

And you know, the.

After all the back and forth in the midst of the ashes, my late dad was determined that we, as a family of nine, would stay together regardless happened. So when the Red Cross, Salvation army family and friends came and said, look, why don't you split up into twos and threes and go your. Go your separate ways until you can get your life selves together and come back, my dad said, there's no way we're splitting up. He reminded me that the saddest day of his life was when he was orphaned at the age of eight and he was separated from his two brothers. And so we stayed together. However, the only place we can be as a unit together was a unit was in New York City Homeland Shelter. And that shelter became our home for the next eight months. And the event was traumatic but transformative. And why Was it transformative? Because I was a serious student before then, but after then I was driven.

Yeah.

I went to that shelter and nothing in that shelter resonated with me.

Yeah.

When I look around and I saw even the. Even the scent when in the shelter.

Was repelling to me.

Yeah.

And so it's. It's in the moments where my grandmother's words, believe beyond your limits become so important to me. While I was in that shelter, that shelter was not in me. And what I did was I doubled down on what I had. What I had was an education that I had to finish that I had. So the next semester I was registered for 12 credit. I up it to 18 credits.

Yeah.

Because I wanted to make sure that my school became the central focus of everything I did. Because that was the bridge for me out of that shelter.

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Our own beliefs. And you mentioned your grandmother telling you believe bigger than your limitations. Right. So we're trying to. When we're trying to believe bigger, but yet we, we look around and we see adversity, we see challenge.

Like I'm just, I'm inspired and encouraged. The fact that not only that, that you just were aware enough to know that that wasn't going to be the reality that you wanted long term. Two were humble enough to get down and get your hands dirty and do the work. And three, now get out there and teach people how to do the work.

Yes. Isn't that amazing? Because I think the difference between.

Where I am.

In the midst of a fire, looking at the ashes, everything we own fit in a 13 gallon trash bag with room to spare. And where I want to be is, you know, self sufficient financially abundance away from this. The difference between there and where I am and where I need to be is me believing in the possibilities. Me thinking of what's possible. What's possible for me. And I knew that what's possible for me was to stay the course in school.

Yeah.

Was to graduate on time, was to not have this detract me.

Yeah.

Because if it detracted me, I would be, I would still be in the shelter today.

Yeah. You know what's really interesting is I also instinctively knew when we were going through the most difficult financial struggles in my childhood, there was, there was a few of them because we had a really rocky roller coaster with finance, with finances.

I instinctively knew that the belief and the comments were being made about money, that wealth is evil, which I used to hear all the time.

Which is kind of funny because the person that we, the wealthiest person we knew was the most generous person that took care of us when we couldn't take care of ourselves, which is kind of odd. So I heard that lie. I heard the skaggans don't get ahead, they get by lie. I heard that, you know, if I didn't have in, in my case, I, I was. Because I was. Had to drop out of high school to help take care of the family and all this kind of stuff that I, because I didn't go to college, I would never be successful and all these different lies, honestly. But at some. It's something inside of me. I, you know, I refer to it now as the Holy Spirit. So something inside of me knew that it wasn't true.

Isn't that interesting? You know, that's happened to me many times as a child to growing up where either I was in a place or I heard something where I said instinctively that can't be true. I don't think that's right. That's resonating with me. You know, when it doesn't align with our souls instantly and the way we walk in the world and the way I climb in the world is when I do things that aligns with my soul and my spirit is inspired to, to move forward with that. So I think that's, you know, that's a very important and interest. Interesting point you just made.

Yeah. Well, again I think it comes down to, you know, we become the labels that we allow.

Oh yeah.

So if we allow the label of being impoverished or we allow the label of being scarcity, or we allow the label of being the GED kid or, or whatever, you know, then we are not going to open ourselves up to opportunities. You know, at the same time I also think there's homework to be done. Like, you know, I had to do what my family wasn't doing, which I know you talk about in the book a lot, which is budget. Create a simple budget. It's funny, the, the people that I see struggle with money the most don't operate from a budget at all. It is very, it's very reactionary in how they handle their money.

It is, you know, it requires sacrifice. You know, if you're, if you're constantly just, you know, buying things or designer things so that your self worth can feel important based on an external item that you have to pay for that's going to depreciate within the next year or so. And then you have to keep replenishing and replenishing. That's a game that's never going to fulfill you. Yeah, yeah.

So in, in regards to kind of developing a budget, let's, let's, let's. We'll use two. We'll use a person who has never really utilized one or created one, and then we'll also use someone who has got one created, but they're not really following it per se. What can we teach them kind of in the moment right now to help Them be more successful.

Absolutely. So one of the things I did was in my book, say, the most powerful tool you have, it's right in your hands and it's, you know, your smartphone. And I listed about 10 apps, budget apps that you can download today and just start your budget using those apps. Because what I'd like to do is have us be so interactive with the way we save it and the way we budget. It's so automatic. Think of it, and don't think of it as some laborious spreadsheet that you manually have to type everything in. It is just you, you download it, you set it up. Here is your budget. It's updated on a monthly basis, sometimes a weekly basis, depending on your circumstances. But you can actually see where your expenses compared to your budget on a. On a fairly dramatic basis.

You know what's interesting? As I was being in business, you know, for, gosh, almost 30 years now, you know, and owning one, creating one, founding one, selling one, all that, all the stuff that goes with team, creating team members or creating team members, creating teams, hiring great team members, removing great team members, forcing myself to level up as a leader, all those different aspects. Right. One of the most simplistic things that helps in running a business is understanding assets, liabilities, cash flow and stuff like that. And it's funny, as I think as individuals, we understand how important it is for a business to do that, but we don't necessarily use it in our own personal lives to kind of help our, you know, be successful and kind of really kind of get there, you know? Yeah. So one of the things I've heard you mentioned before too, is this, which I, I totally agree with living debt free, but the creative way, like, I never heard that little, that phrase before. So I'd like to maybe, you know, obviously you can free flow, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Sure. So clearly there is something called toxic debt, or what I call toxic debt. And toxic debt is the plastic credit cards that are, you know, around, and some of them have cash advances and the interest rate is 20%, and in three years, you will owe double whatever you have on those cards. It is toxic. And the key is to, if you have those, to pay them down, pay them down rapidly, pay them down aggressively to make sure that that toxic debt does not.

Become a burden to you. Because if you're looking at debt all the time in that way, and it just keeps multiplying greater than you can ever get any income, you know, that's pretty defeating way to live your life. And I would like people to know that you can avoid the spending to begin with, but if you have spent, just make sure that you get those toxic debt down. Also, I also talk about ways to increase your FICO score because FICO score is the way we get.

Interest rates being offered to us for jobs and employment. Look at your FICO score and how to really raise that. I know the process because I'm in the 800/fico score in my own personal life and I had to go through a journey of taking, you know, cutting up credit cards, slashing my debt and being debt free. Yeah, There is financial and personal and spiritual liberation in living debt free. You know, one of the most powerful things I ever heard in church and it was a night service, they were by five people in church. This woman got up and she said, I owe nothing to anyone but love. She was literally saying, I don't have any debts. Yeah, my credit cards are fully paid for. All I owe you guys is love. And I thought, wow. And I was 10 at the time I heard that. And even I was like just staring at her saying, yeah, gosh, I've never heard something more powerful.

Yeah, yeah.

And I've heard people got up and say, you know, the bill is being paid and all. Pray for me. Oh my gosh. You know, and here's this little lady getting up saying, I own thing, but love.

Yeah. You know, it's funny that you also mentioned that we, and I did this too. So I'm not, I'm not casting any shade on anybody, but earlier my, in my journey, obviously, you know, you get into debt, you do, you do dumb stuff with money, then you pray to get out of debt and all this kind of stuff. And then I realized the Bible is actually a pretty good resource on how to handle money, you know, and one of the things that jumps out at me as we're talking is for every dollar that we have to pay debt on, so we have to pay a dollar towards debt, whether it's a credit card or whatever, is one less dollar we can't invest. So therefore we're putting compound interest to work against us rather than work for us. You know, so obviously you work with a lot of high net worth individuals yourself. You're around high net worth. You know, what do you see differently in how they choose to handle money versus the vast majority of the public?

Yes, it's a certain mindset. It's a mindset that there's always, there's money here and there will always be there. You Know my, my boss who was close to billionaire status, and this is back in 1999, whenever we had a company come in and said, look, I need additional capital. I need capital to grow. And he would say, well, how much do you need? And it didn't matter what they say. They would say, I need 40 million or 80 million. He would look at them and he said, that's not enough. And then he would say, you're not thinking big enough. I'll double what you want. I'll give you double what you want if you promise that you're going to grow this business 10% fold.

Yeah.

Your plan is not ambitious enough.

Yeah.

So there's a, there's a mindset of abundance and growth and prosperity that is so different high net work than those or not. And I tell people all the time, it doesn't matter where you are, think big. There's no need to bring a poverty mindset into your new financial wealth status or else it's going to shift you back where you came from.

Yeah, no, I think it's so true and it's funny. Another thing I've heard you talk about in the book too is the, this financial abundance climb, which is kind of interesting because obviously you have the mountain mountain climber part of your, part of your life. Let's lay out a handful of additional steps that really play a pivotal role in creating a financial abundance climbing. Because it is, because you are developing a mindset as you're climbing. Right. So it's, it's all, it's ever moving and ever changing.

That is a great question because with every client that you begin, the first thing you have to do is make an assessment and make sure you have the tools ready at every single level of your climb. And so we talk about the beginning level where you're going through your assessment and you look at your money past money memory and you're, you develop your future money memory and some clear financial goals that you'd like. And it's, I'll, you know, be specific, have make sure it's measurable. It's.

You know, it is realistic that you can achieve those in your goals. But once you're ready and you're climbing that journey, there's a way for you to systematically save and save in a consistent way that compounding interests work in your favor. And I talk about your lifestyle. What is the lifestyle along the way? Because we're being hit and bombarded with here's this luxury life you can live. And we have to constantly evaluate where are we Going to spend our time consistent with the goals that we.

Yeah.

Another key tool in the journey is making sure that whatever you build and you save is being protected.

Yeah.

And one way to protect that is through insurance.

Life insurance, property insurance. And the one that everyone tends to overlook is long term care insurance because we're living longer than our parents and we, some of us may risk outliving our savings. And that's where long term share, long term care insurance can fill in the gap. Another way of protecting your wealth is, is through trust in estates and creating will and creating various trust and really being armed with that, with that tool.

Yeah, I was just jotting some notes down, you know, it's. I was kind of reliving some of my own financial journey. So I went through the process of having less than equal to more than, substantially more than, substantially more than. And through the course of that, it's okay, get out of, you know, get yourself together, get yourself out of debt, start building up cash flow, you know, because again if you're not spending a dollar on debt, you can spend a dollar over here kind of thing. So getting the cash flow going and then it became a point in time was okay, well now I have things that are part of the wealth profile. So two things I guess we want to talk about asset rich, cash poor, want to talk about that as well. But I also want to talk about, I've realized now that the more successful I become, the more at risk I am for outside sources trying to basically shortcut the process and you know, take essentially try to take what I've spent my entire life earning, you know, which is. So we start getting into state and trust and planning and all this kind of stuff. So first of all, let's hit asset rich, cash poor because I think that's one segment. And then also once you have a nest egg or you have a enough to protect, so to speak, like kind of like maybe speak to that a little bit.

Sure. So the assets rich cash flow were a classic example in my book was my 95 year old neighbor who was in an apartment worth, you know, millions. But she did not have enough cash to function on a monthly basis. Her medical.

Bills were just exceeding what she needed. And she shared this with me. I mean at first I didn't believe her but said grace, I am, I got a call from my broker, I'm completely out of cash and I don't want to leave my house, I don't want to sell it because if I sell it, it means I go to an assisted Living and I want to die in my house. She had a happy ending because she was able to get someone to finance her home on a personal level and she was able to stay in the home and I'm the current purchaser of her home. I'm the new water apartment expanded. So you know, so I, I think with the.

When you're in a position of the asset rich.

Chances are it's real estate because real estate accumulated that high to the extent that you can sell some of those assets to bring your cash flow up or rent part of your asset out but just look at creative ways to bring the cash in.

Yeah.

And also too she did not have long term care insurance. It's another reason I keep saying long term care insurance is the medical bills will be exceedingly high. Higher than you can imagine.

So I guess the medical bills get you know, especially with the, with the assist. The, the long term care. The longer you wait to put it in place the more the premium is going to be. Which is another form of letting compounding work against you ironically.

Yeah.

Is there a certain ratio you're looking at with asset to cash ratio? Are you looking you know to how much liquidity do you have in conjunction with how many assets you may have?

Sure. So the liquidity you have is going to be based on your lifestyle. So whatever your current. Because you know chances are there's no mortgage then it's the maintenance, it's the housing costs, food costs, medical costs. It varies per person and per state and so forth. But if you. The liquidity needs to exceed your monthly cost.

Yeah. Otherwise you're. You're basically living at poverty level with a lot of quote unquote net worth which is kind of.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just that's. I, I hate it for your friend because I'm glad you guys were able to work something out and make something beautiful out of it because that's a. I can imagine it's a very scary place to be. I have quite a bit of real estate myself.

And I actually.

Don'T. Most of my commercial properties are triple net which means they pretty much are self sufficient. They take themselves with the tenants which is great. But at the same time there are also. Some of them are worth, you know, a few million bucks and as a result they are not properties that I could quote unquote liquidate or sell quickly. Especially in a market where interest rates are 8 plus percent or whatever the thing is. And, and you know when you're in a 3% interest rate environment you can find Deals everywhere and everybody's happy. And then, and then you're like, okay, so you're, you're buying more assets. You're buying more assets. You're like, okay, this is awesome. You know, this is kicking off this amount of cash. This amount of cash. And then, and then you have a Covid happen and then you had like, then you don't have. Then you can't fill the place up and you can't get the tenants. And you know, so I think what you're saying is very, very valuable for people to keep in, keep in mind when they're looking at the integrity of their risk profile. Right. Their risk profile has got to be one of mindfulness but not fear.

Yes, yes.

You know, maybe as we're kind of like wrapping up here, I'm curious to know. I know one of the things that you've got, you talk about the book is a, a very quick financial fitness kind of calculator, if you will, to kind of really figure out where you're at. You know, you mentioned it earlier. It's kind of like taking inventory. And I feel like that's an amazing place to be. That's the first thing I do with my kids. My, you know, I have a couple of, a few adult kids. First of, my daughter just was like trying to get another house and like, you know, and whatnot. And I was like, first thing we got to do is figure out where you're at before we plan the next course. Maybe, maybe as we're kind of wrapping up here, maybe kind of give us a couple things that we can be looking at. And then obviously I encourage everyone to go grab the book, learn more about that, but more importantly, also continue to follow your career and everything you're doing as well.

Okay? So the financial assessment, there's a tool where it just goes over your values and there's a score mechanism and it tells you where you score. But one of the things I'd like us to do is look at the big picture in terms of financial assessment. One of the things to be aware of because I work in the insurance industry is that catastrophes, their frequencies, their severities are increasing, increasing. So yeah, that came through Ivan. And you name it, you know, they just. Maria and the in there will intensify. So many of us have homes along the coast and, and they're beautiful. And we all have to evaluate our insurance. Is it enough? Is it adequate? This is the time to make sure that your insurance carrier, or this well rated carrier, and our homes are insured. Because being financially prudent, meaning that we protect our asset and for most of our real estate, is our most important asset.

Yeah. Yeah. Gosh. So good. Grace, I've enjoyed having you on. Thank you so much for sharing so much wisdom and experience with us. I want everybody to continue to follow you and learn more about you. Where can they find you at the quickest and easiest?

Sure. Raceglobalcapital.com and financial abundance with Grace for all of the masterclasses.

You're awesome. Thank you so much for joining us.

You're welcome.

All right, take care. I hope you liked that video. And if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here.

So how do we deal with these generational curses? Okay, so we have to identify them, and we can do so by just identifying where we're struggling in our life right now. Every good personal development event, you're going to be asked to do this. And what I have my clients do is sit down, close their eyes, go into meditation with me, and then I ask them to just give each of these buckets in their life a score.

From 1 to 10.