Money Matters – Fixing & Growing Midlife Nest Eggs with Bret Johnson

So excited on Listen up today because I've got my good friend Brett Johnson. And if you're watching on video and you're wondering why the pink background? It's because he's using his wife's podcast studio. Did you look good in pink, Brett?

Thank you.

I'm so excited to have you on today because I have so many questions about finances and especially with the amount of people I attract in midlife middle age. I know people hate that word, but it's true. Unless we're living past 100, a lot of people wake up with this, oh, my gosh, what did I do? I'm halfway through my life. I'm in my 50s, I'm in my late 40s, and I didn't create this nest egg. I always thought I would. So they've got questions now about catch up, about what should I have done, what didn't I do? How do I fix this? Can I fix this? So following your content has been so entertaining. I've loved watching your journey on money and all the tips and information you share. So I thought it would be great to interview you today. So thanks for being here.

Well, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been fun. I actually have always done it for our business, but probably in the last, like since Brock went to college, my son, and he's now graduated, so he's 25. So let's say for like the last seven years, eight years, I've had this like, role where I played with like young people. And then also what you're describing as like that middle aged person, person who's just like, oh, they woke up one day and they're like, I haven't saved for anything. And I, and I want to go, I want to retire at some point.

Yeah.

I want to have something that's, that's worthy of like, you know, not having to work for the rest of my life, you know?

Totally. And I was watching on social media, you and Chalene, they just went on this fabulous trip around Europe. They just literally like left for a month and traveled around Europe. And I saw people commenting like, how are you doing that? And how can you afford to just do that? And it's so interesting how people just assume, oh, they just have money. They were, they're just successful. When I know you actually had a whole journey towards this, you haven't always been in that spot. So can you talk us a little bit through that first? Because that's the first thing I sort of want to knock away is when people assume that you just did it right all along?

Yeah. So early 2000s, we're $470,000 in debt. And people were like, how do you. How do you get that much in debt? Well, I had an addiction to gambling, which I've talked about, you know, publicly, and it just happened. We were basically also not. Not doing the right things in business. So you compound gambling and not doing the right things in business and just like, just like creating things and not looking at the bottom line. And all of a sudden you wake up one day and you're like, how did we get here? And so I kind of took it. Like, most people that have a gambling addiction, like, their spouse is like, okay, you're never touching money again. But I was able, through therapy and all that kind of good stuff and kind of like, fast forward to kind of like, just re. Energize my focus of like, gambling and that kind of an addiction to. More of a healthy addiction to like, really understand money and compounding it over time and letting it work for yourself. I mean, letting your money work for you rather than you always just working for money. And that's when we just started, you know, probably around 2008, 2009, really starting to create, like, systems and multiple streams of income. So, like, we weren't always, like, working all the time. Like, we could take a break and, and watch our kids. I mean, you know, because you've been friends with Chalene and I for so long, you probably don't know anybody in our space that doesn't network as. As least as often as we do. We don't. We don't network. We don't. We haven't created a bunch of different course. We've created like three or four different types of courses, and that's what we sell. And we've just kind of like. And we don't like Sprint. You never see us sprinting. We're just always the one that's just kind of like going along, just moving along, just chugging along and. But what we've done is we've created those systems, and then when we are fortunate enough to do well, we're investing that money.

Yeah, yeah, you're. You're so powerful at that. I have some questions that I want to just take back a little bit. When you, when you first recognize or you knew, but when you own that you had the gambling problem and you really started to look at the debt and what was going on, how did you shift yourself from, oh, crap, what did I do? And this sucks, and my wife's mad and all these things, because we can create a heavy story in our brains around that to. I'm going to become empowered and figure this out. Like walk us through that a little bit. Because there's some people that are stuck where you were. Like, they're in that, oh shit, what have I done? Moment.

I've always been, as a, as a former athlete, I've always figured out like, okay, there's always a plan to get to where you need to go, whether it's in fitness. And I know you and my wife have been into fitness for a long time and you have a lot of fitness followers. And I think the mindset between fitness and health and food is very similar to money. I don't think they're very different. I think they're the same person.

Okay, talk to us about that because I know a lot of broke fitness people.

I just think that people that are always looking for like the next diet or they're gonna lose weight or they, the people that, you know, they lose 5 but then they gain 10, like they self sabotage. I think it's the same way with money. Like they get a little bit of money and they just don't know what to do with it. And just like, if they have a little success with like a diet, they get scared and maybe they go too, too far or, or they're always thinking that there's a. And same thing with money and the same thing with diet. What's the number one thing? Everybody thinks that there's like a diet pill or everybody thinks that there's just one magic formula for everybody. And if you just do this magic formula, you're going to lose weight, be successful and look like the person that you're trying to like, emulate. Right. And it's the same thing with money. Everybody thinks like, oh, I'm just going to. It takes so much money to make money. That's not true. What takes what? Just like in fitness and anything else, it just takes time and a plan.

Okay, so it takes time and a plan. Is it ever too late to start doing this? When you say time and a plan?

No, because I mean. Yeah. Is it too late if you're 70 years old and you've never done this before and you know the, the life expectancy is 75. Yeah. You're probably not gonna like retire with a bunch of, bunch of money or you're not gonna be able to do it. But if you are in your, you know, 40s, early 50s, even late 50s, it's not too late to start.

Okay.

I Mean, there's You. You just have to start.

Okay? So the questions I'm going to ask now are really, truly, for the person who's listening, that I'm not talking to somebody who's just completely broke and devastated. And they don't. This is the person that. They actually have a career, they actually have incoming, they have a business, they have something. They just haven't created that freedom yet. They haven't created that nest egg, that security. So I want to, I want to talk about that. Like, what steps? Where should they start? Start. What's the first step?

I have a percentage, and that's how we did it. So my percentage is 5 to 15% of our income went to our investments.

Okay?

So you just have to set it. It's just, just like anything else. It's just like, you know, like, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna go for an extra walk a day or something like that. I'm gonna walk an hour a day. I'm gonna do 15,000 steps. Whatever it might be, whatever, whatever you're trying to do, whatever your goal you're trying to reach is, you have to just set it and then you have to do it. So, you know, some years were not as profitable as others. So maybe those years we only did 5%.

Okay.

Other years that were more profitable, we did a full 15%. And we never deterred from that. Now once you start having success and you start seeing your investment, investment portfolio, get to the point where you're like, wow, this works. There were many years where, like, we didn't, you know, us, during, when we were raising our kids, we didn't go anywhere we didn't like, you know, so there was always extra money that we were creating from all these different revenue sources because our number one goal as parents were number one goal was to raise our kids and not miss anything. So we, we had to create revenue streams and multiple streams of income so that we could do that, so we could be making money passively and stuff like that. So there was a lot. There were many of those years where the income was 25, 30% that we invested into them, you know, invested into our portfolio. So that, that, that's my kind of like rock bottom percentage is like, you have to put 5% of what you make.

So if you make $100,000 listening right now, and they make 1000-002000-00300,000, now just start deciding you're taking this percent and you're putting it towards investments 5 to 15%. Okay, the next question Is. And I know you're not an expert in specifically like where to invest and how to, like if it's Bitcoin or if it's, if it's mutual funds or whatever it is, I'm an expert, but.

I'm not going to tell you where to do it.

Okay. Okay. So without telling us where to do it, where do you advise people even start to enter? Like, how do they know who to trust? Or where should they hire a financial planner? Should they learn it themselves? Like, what, what advice would you give there?

Okay, so most people are in this position where they're like, they're scared to death. Like they don't know. Like they have no idea where to start. Okay. So the number one thing I say is to pick like a platform that is like it doesn't cost you anything to start up. It's an app. Like you can just go on your phone, download E Trade, download Ameritrade, download, you know, Morgan Stan, whatever platform it is, a lot of people already have one. Right? And my suggestion is this. Until if you, if you never want to learn about it, like it's just one of those things, like you have, you know, probably mostly women listening to this right now, and they're like la la la la la about numbers. Okay, well then that's fine. But you can still figure out what 5 to 15% of your annual income is. That doesn't take very much time. And what you do is you just stick that money. And this is very simple, but it works. And I, and I just, you know, to feel empowered. Let your listeners go Google this information. Because, because everything's at Google. Right. And you put it into the S&P 500 index fund. What does that mean? Well, there's. The S and P Index fund is one of the. It's 500 stocks.

Mm.

It's 500 stocks. What you're doing by putting your money in there is you're buying a portion of all those things. So if the S and P Index fund goes up 1%, your, your, your investment goes up 1%. If it goes down 1%, you go down 1%. But the average return over any 10 year period that you want to pull out of the sky is over 10%.

Wow.

It's like 10.24%. And so why do anything else?

Like, it's pretty safe. That's like a pretty deep thing.

Guess what? This year you'd suck. It sucks this year, but it sucks for everybody.

Yeah, but at the very minimum, you don't want to learn anything this is a great place to start.

Great vehicle.

So. So what about when people hear things like. Or they've experienced. I mean, we've definitely experienced it this year where there's a huge tank in investments. So that tends to scare people. What would you say to them?

That's a mindset thing.

Okay, talk to us about that.

Okay. People get scared. Okay. So if, let's say, for instance, at the beginning of the year, I had that, you know, and I also. Just to kind of reiterate about the 5 to 15%. I don't necessarily mean that you have to put it all in at once, like on January 1st, put in 15% or something. I would literally allocate it throughout the year. So you would set up a certain time to just put it in every single month.

Maybe the way, like somebody tithes where they percentage out. Okay.

Yeah, Just like make it a house payment. It's a house payment, you know?

Yeah.

Just so it sets it and it goes right into there. Because you can never time the market. You can never. Like these experts that come on here, they don't know anything more than you and I know, because if they did, they would have told everybody that the market's going to crash last November, because that's when it started to go, was last November.

Yeah. So they're not fortune tellers. They're just nobody.

Nobody could tell. So the best thing that you can do is like, okay, it's a bad year. It's really bad. And it's different because every kind of recession or this or downturn is. Is. Is different. It looks similar, but they're. They're always for a different reason. Because, like, this one has a lot to do with COVID Yes. This has a lot to do with how much money that was just poured into the system that has to get flushed through. Nobody could predict that Russia was going to go to war with Ukraine, which is causing a lot of this problems. There was lots of problems before that. But it also adds to it.

Sure.

You know, China, just. So there's all these different variables you have. No, you can't predict.

So do you just sort of. You just kind of put it like you pay attention, but you ignore it. It doesn't dictate that you're pulling out or anything.

No. And I would. Here's what I would do. I would add to it.

You'd add to it. So even if something went down, half a million dollars or whatever it is, you would add to it during this time now.

So if you are. If you're following my recipe of somebody that's not active participant in the stock market. Meaning, like, you're not going to, like, you know, subscribe to blogs and you're not going to watch television shows and you're not going to listen to podcasts and you're not going to fly follow individual stocks. Right. And you just want to do the s and P500. Yeah. For the first four or five months this year. It wouldn't be fun. You'd be putting, let's say, Hypothetically, you make $120,000 and we're going to do this. So it's really simple for your audience. $120,000 a year. And you pick 10. 10%. So you're putting 12 grand in, divided by 12. So you're putting $1,000 in every single month. Right. So I would keep putting that thousand dollars in every single month. And probably the second half of this year will be better than the first half. It'll probably even out. It usually does Me personally, because I have a different mindset than people, and I've seen how it works over time. I might be going back and going, you know what? I could really do that extra 5% the second half of the year. So maybe you take another 5% of your income and add it to the thing because the market's down so much. So. So for instance, like, if you take. If you take like Apple, for instance.

Right, Right.

Besides your husband, everybody owns an Apple.

He has, like, he has a. He has a Mac computer. He does.

Okay, good for him. So he's part of the. He's a mini part of the part.

Yeah, yeah.

So let's say, for instance, at the beginning of the year, you bought Apple at $150 and you bought 10 shares.

Okay.

And you're like, apple's not going anywhere. Like, it's still the same company that it was a year ago. There's you still going to upgrade your Apple. They still have you with devices, they still have you with everything, subscriptions, all that kind of stuff.

Right.

So now let's say Apple goes to like 130, and you're like, well, I liked it at 150, so let me buy some 10 more shares at 130. So now instead of having 10 shares at 150, and you're like, okay, I've lost $20 off of that. Now you buy 10 more. Now you have 20 shares, and your average cost is only 140.

So I like that. It's like a total reframe of how you're looking at it 100%.

That's the way I look at it. It's not that I'm down, because you only lose when what you sell.

Yeah. And you know, I love this. This is. I like that you just explained that, because I think that's super logical how you just explained it. But it's. I don't know that people are connecting the dots that way. So when you were just not to get too off track on this, but when you were in the debt, when you were in, and I know that was years ago, did you still from that space decide you were going to invest 5 to 15%? Or did you. Was that like, I'm going to pay this off and tackle it first and then invest.

This is a great question. I tackle this in my course. This is one of the things that I talk about in my course. So here's what my. And this is different than other people.

Okay.

Just like, just like people follow you for fitness, they might follow somebody else for fitness and they just jive with that person.

Yep.

If you want to follow me for financial advice, this is just my advice.

Yes.

I think that investing is a habit.

Okay.

Right. So. And I also think getting out of debt takes what, A habit, a new habit? Habit and discipline.

Yes.

Right. You have to be disciplined. Like, you literally are. Like, I've set aside this amount of money and, you know, I really like to go to Starbucks, but this is not in the cards right now or whatever other vice you might have for sure. And so, but here's the deal. I think that getting out of debt is important, and I think, I think it should be your priority when you have debt. But I also think you should start positioning a little bit of money into investing.

Okay.

Because what happens is, is when you're done with the debt and you've paid off the debt now, you've already created the habit of investing, and more times than not, you're going to look at that. You're going to be like, oh, my God, look at. It's already growing. Now imagine if I just take the money that I was paying off the debt and add it to that. That's what happened to us.

Okay, Got it. Okay. When you talk about investing now, are you doing traditional stock market or do you also look at, like bitcoin and stuff like that? And do you recommend that people dabble with that?

I. I don't understand it. Bitcoin. I have, I have. This is my floss on bitcoin. If I woke up tomorrow and on cnbc, There had a person on there. They're like, haha, we fooled you. Bitcoin was a big joke. You lost your money. If you're in Bitcoin, I wouldn't even sweat it. That's how much money I have it in bitcoin.

Okay. Okay.

So it's literally, it's a very minor.

Got it.

Deal. We are, obviously we have retirement.

Okay.

Individual stocks.

Yep.

A couple different, like, stock portfolio type things that I'm in, like, with private equity type things. Real estate.

Okay, I was gonna ask you about that next. So we'll go to that next.

So real estate is a major part of our net worth.

Okay. So. But bitcoin to you. So you're not against it, you just don't really understand it. So you don't dabble things.

Hey, I'm in a different, I'm in a different position. If I'm, if I, my son at 25, I'm like, hey, you know, if you think it's gonna work, get involved with it. You know, you have a lot, you know, you have many years to like see that thing go up and down and it works and stuff like that. I have enough in there that if it went to zero, I wouldn't worry about it. But if it, like, if it took off, I'd be like, oh, sweet. Look, we just paid for a couple of trips. Great trips.

Got it. Okay. So it's not, it's okay, so. And I would imagine you would give that advice to somebody like, kind of don't do. It's because that's almost like gambling a.

Little bit like I think, I think it is. And there's some other forms of like. I'm getting very technical right now, but people that are listening to this that are, that are, that might have be a little bit more sophisticated with the stock market stuff like that. There's a thing called like options and puts and all that calls and all that kind of stuff. It's, it's almost like you're, you're, you're predicting where the stock's gonna go on maybe a day basis, a week, a month, six months. I don't even play with that. I don't even want to learn that because it just. When I start hearing people talk about it, it starts drumming up like, this is gambling. Like, this is.

So you're not a trader really, you're just, you're an investor?

No, I'm an investor. I'm not, I don't, I'm not.

Got it.

I'm not looking at. If I put money in the stock market because I think a company is good and it goes up 10%. I'm not looking to, like, just cash out.

Got it. Okay. Before I ask you about the real estate thing, I do have a kind of a mindset question here. Do you feel. So when somebody says to me that they are in major debt or that they're. They don't have cash flow, my mind always goes to, how can you create more cash flow versus focusing on the debt? And I know that's like a challenging conversation for people, but I'm curious if that's where your mind goes to or if you. Because debt's obviously important to pay off, but I'm always thinking, how can I create more versus how. What. What's the lack?

Well, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. I mean, that's what Chalene and I teach. That's what, you know, our main courses. That's what our main thing is. We teach entrepreneurs. We teach people that aren't entrepreneurs, like, how to take a skillset, how to do anything and create additional cash flow and additional revenue sources. Because in this day and age, if you're in, like, if you're. All your eggs are in one basket, you're. It's just like having all your. All your money in on one stock. That's not very smart.

Yeah.

You know, so, like, that you wake up one morning and you're fired. You got no job. Wake up one morning and that stock goes to zero. You got no more money. So it's like, I'm. I'm a big preacher of, like, you want multiple streams of income. I hammer it with my kids, I hammer it with their friends, and, you know, just get as many of those as you can and focus on one at a time and build it to where you feel like, oh, this is running itself. I don't have to spend too much time and then maybe go dabble in something else or, you know, start something else. And then you. It's amazing how fast it can go in each direction. You can. That you can lose a bunch of money.

Yes.

Get in debt really fast. And it's amazing how fast. Fast you can turn it around.

Yes. Yes.

By concentration in a plan.

Yes. And I get that because I've lost it all twice in my life and built it back and more so each time, so. But I always. I always focus on how can I create versus what's. What's broken, what's wrong.

Yeah. That's the scary part, though, Natalie. Right. That's probably the one mindset thing that people that haven't. They have to get over that fear of, like, putting themselves out there and creating something. And, you know, you know, and we always talk about how, you know, I put together this, like, plan, like how to save a thousand dollars in a month, and it's like 30 things that you can do.

Okay.

And it's amazing how many people are like, oh, my gosh, I did the first five, and I've already saved $700.

Wow.

You know, so it's. It's stuff like that where it's just. If you just think about it, like, there's money sitting there and you just have to think. I mean, there's so much money just like, sitting in your house and stupid stuff.

Yeah. Like how much stuff we collect and just.

Yeah. If you have kids, they. They know where to go sell that stuff and they can get rid of it. And they. I mean, it's crazy.

I mean, there's ways that.

Yeah, there's ways to do it. There's ways to start. And it's always funny how, like, the first time, whether you create something and sell it or you start something new, whether, you know, you might have. I'm sure you probably have a lot of network marketers or something like that, once they start and they start seeing, like, they're doing well. And that's a revenue source.

Yeah.

I mean, you could be working, you know, as your day job or 9 to 5 job and start a side hustle as a, you know, a network marketer or you. Or an Etsy Rat or just whatever it might be. And then once you start seeing revenue like that, it's extra. You can start paying off debt or. Or creating more investment opportunities for yourself.

One thing I learned from you years ago, you probably don't even remember that said this to me, or maybe you still say it, but Brett said to me, this is probably 10 years ago, but you said to me, scared money doesn't make money.

I have it tattooed on my arm.

Oh, you do? I didn't know that, but that really resonated with me because it's true. Because when people go to scarcity, they're not in a place to create and make money. And the other thing, I don't remember if you or Chalene or was a combination said it to me, but it really stuck. Most people concentrate on how they can, like, I've got to go make money. I've got to go make money, which. That's a good mindset that you want to create and make money. But you said focus on the problem you can solve for people versus that you're just going to make money. Because if you can solve problems for people, that's going to inevitably create income.

That, that's, that's, that's how we create everything. Like if you solve a pro, if you can solve problems for people, for the masses, you always have an abundance.

So good. So good.

That's, that's the key. Like if, if you, especially if you, you do something. And that's where everybody always says, like, I don't do anything. I don't do anything that's, you know, different than anybody else. Yeah, you do your friends. Like, everybody listening here, like as an expert at something, like Chilean always says, if you have a teenage, if you have a teenage daughter and she got through like high school and she's not pregnant or on drug, I mean, you have a, like, like people want to know, like, how'd you do it? Like, how did you get. Yeah, how'd you get through? I mean, there's so many.

That's so funny.

There's so many people out there and everybody's like, oh, there's, there's already too many. You know, many people do fitness.

Yeah.

And they're still creating it and they still, they still find their niche. They still find their, you know, their group of people. And it's, it's so there's abundance out there and people just have like that, the blinders on. And it's the same thing with investing people. People. And the other thing that drives me crazy is people like I only have $500.

I'm like you said 5 to 15% or whatever you want, start.

I don't care what you have. Like, just start. It's like it doesn't matter.

Okay, so let's, over time, let's talk about real estate. And I'm going to put myself out here on this one because I screwed up big time on this one. So in 2000, I had owned four homes. And in 2007 I lost my home. And the reason I lost it was I bought it, paid, you know, did the normal mortgage, put 20% down, did all the things. And then just like a lot of people were doing. In 2007, your equity was going up. I was pulling it out. I was pulling it out dumbly to pay for a business. At the time I was married, ex husband, all the things anyways got backwards on it. Went through a divorce and the housing market collapsed. And I was faced with, I couldn't pay my mortgage because a House that I bought had tanked and I was literally pulling out equity to pay. It was like crazy to pay the mortgage now. So got totally backwards, almost foreclosed, ended up short selling. And it scared me from buying a house again, even though I had made money four times at a home before. So, you know, for years. And I think a lot of people are actually in the situation. It's not just me. You know, my husband wanted to buy and I nope, nope, nope, not doing it. Finally realized a few years ago, okay, actually we should buy. And now it's kind of like too late or it feels too late. So I want to, I want to talk to you about real estate and what thoughts around that.

Okay.

And what people can do, how we can, how you can fix that now.

Okay. I have an interesting observation on buying and selling.

Okay.

And rent or renting.

Yes. And when, when is it good to rent? That's the other question too, with that.

Yeah. So here, and, and I, and I, I'm not going to tell you the most common thing that gets that people come at me for. It's always real estate agents. Like, they don't, they don't, they just want to sell a house. They don't care. They get their 5% no matter what, you know, split or whatever. So when real estate agents come after me, I'm like, okay, you're, you're not, you're not my, you're not my target. But here's the, here's my, here's my deal. So I think where you buy location in real estate is huge.

Okay.

I think it's, I think it can't be understated enough that, that not every home in the United States going to make you money as an investment. I don't necessarily believe or take the philosophy that your house that you live in, these are words that you need to, like when people are listening to this, like, listen to the words that I'm saying. Don't like just prejudge the house that you live in, the roof you sleep under, not your investment. I'm talking about your primary residence. That home is not necessarily an investment. And here's why I say that. Because like you said, and you know, people will come and say, oh, you can get this type of loan if you're in the military and this kind of. But the bottom line is right now, if you don't have 20% down on a house, you shouldn't be buying a house.

Yep.

I mean, like, if you're doing that, what you just described earlier is what People are going to get into. If they start putting down 3% on a house, that's for sure. You're going to get upside down. We have one bad turn in the market, and all of a sudden now we're back to 2007 and eight for sure. So I, I don't agree with people that are like, well, you can get a loan for lower than 20%. Well, then, then you shouldn't be buying a house unless you have 20%.

Yes. This is 2005, 2006, when people were just using it to flip.

Here's my 100%. So my other rule is you should have 20% times two.

Okay.

So if you are buying a house that's $500,000, because the medium house price.

In the United States, really not living in California.

I know, but when we start talking about our prices, people get really, like, mad.

I'm like, you can't even get into a single family home for.

Correct. But the median house price in the United States is 400,000.

Okay, cool.

And so let's just go with $500,000. So 10% down is 50,000. So 20% down is 100 grand.

Right.

So if you don't have 200 grand, I don't think you should buy the house.

Got it.

Because if you do your house poor.

Yeah.

You literally just put $100,000 down. You, like, you're living in your house. You, what are you going to go. Go max out your credit cards to put the furniture in there? Like, you know.

Yeah. You can't enjoy your life.

Okay. So now here's where it gets tricky for me. I don't necessarily. I think if you don't have the discipline, and you don't have the. Discipline is the right word. If you don't have the discipline to invest in the market, then you should buy a house and take your chances of it. Appreciation and, and good luck to you. Because when people say they lived in their house for 20 years and it doubled. Okay, well, subtract all the mortgage payments, that interest, subtract the down payment, subtract all the property taxes for 20 years, and also subtract every single improvement. Because you ain't living in a house for 20 years and not putting in a pool or putting in a new kitchen or putting in a new master bedroom. So all that money has to be deducted from your net at the end from what you're going to make. Plus, that's it. That's basically. That's basically it. So if you don't have the discipline to invest. So here's the alternative. You're like, okay, what could you do as the alternative? You could rent. And if you took the down payment that you were going to buy that house with, stuck it in the market, and every single year you just took the property taxes that houses, that house that you're renting costs and put it in the market. And roughly on about a $400,000 house, $500,000 house, there's about $1400 a month that are of like hidden costs that you have as a, as an owner that you won't have as a renter.

That's true.

So if you were disciplined enough and you don't go buy a Rolex watch or a Ferrari or a Porsche or an expensive trip, whatever, if it's extra, you can. But if you just took that money and you put it into the market for 20 years and saw what it did and then you sold your house.

So if I'm hearing you correct, if you could, if you didn't have what you have right now, it's like you're starting over right now. You, you just have income coming. You didn't do all this. You actually, if I hear this correctly, you probably wouldn't buy a house right now because of time. You would take the cash that's coming in and you would invest it and you would rent right now. That's what you would do.

My, my 25, my 25 year old son is doing the exact same thing.

And you buy more stock right now because it's down right now.

Yes. And then wait. And then wait for the market to. The housing market's crazy right now. And wait for the housing market to slow down. I advise my son, I advise my son to do that. And he did the math and he's.

So funny listening to you because as you say it, it's like such an obvious, like, why doesn't everyone do this? But it's like everyone. We fight that. That, that's not. We're supposed to.

Because the American public has been told that the American dream. The house.

Interesting. Okay, well, you made me feel better about renting. Right?

But who start. Who started that saying? Who, who, who, who started. When did that start to own a home? The American dream is the American dream.

Yeah, I don't know.

What, what sales pit? Who, who, what marketing, what group was, what group was the marketing behind on that? Banks.

Ah, okay.

The bank started that in 1950. The American dream is to own a house. Because when you, you don't own the house, the bank owns the house.

Okay. So good. So good. Brett, it's so obvious what you just said. I just put it in bold because it's so. It's so important.

But see, here's the deal. Everybody will come for me and go, you're not. You know, they'll give me the one hypothetical, just like you said. California real estate is amazing. Right. First home that I lived in in California, Chalene and I lived in it for five years. We made money a little bit. Enough to put it over to the next house, the next house. Lost money. We sold it. If you added up all the things that I just said. Yeah, lost money. But I wasn't at that point, you know, I was not. We weren't. You know, I was. Yeah, that was. That was in the. You know, it was just like, we have a house, you know, And. And back then, I was under the assumption, like, american dream, own a house, you know?

Yeah.

And we did. We had success in our first one.

Got it.

But we did buy a repo in. In a neighborhood that was like, the day we bought it, we already had, like, $200,000 of equity in 1996. So it was a different. So that one. So we lost money in the second house. Third house. Lost our ass. So now you have three homes. You put them all together. I'm. I've lost money in California real estate. The reason why is you can't time it. It's just like anything else. Like, we weren't ready to sell it. Like, yeah, if I would have stayed in the other house. Excuse me. If I would have stayed in the other house for another three years, we probably would have made money. Totally got more money back. Now, the current house I'm in, we've actually done really well, and we're thinking about selling it, so. Because it's. It's. It's gone up so much. And. And so would you do.

If you sold right now? Would you take that advice and sort of go rent right now? Because. Sure, yeah, take that. Invest the profit. And then.

And then I would wait for the market to come down, and I would get. I would go and have six homes, and I would be like, I'd wait till it's a. A buyer's market and have six homes and go, here's what I'm offering.

So is this always how your brain was wired, do you think?

No, the housing. The housing thing is over the last two and a half, three years, just.

From you watching and learning.

Yeah. Seeing how much money that's. That you can. That you can make in the market. And the, the fact that. How much money. People. Now, I'm not talking about flipping homes. You can make money flipping homes. You can make money.

You can.

You know, buying a house and renting it out and getting. I'm not talking about that. So people that are going to come for me on. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the house you live in.

Yes.

That you're. That you. That you or your husband or you or your wife or whatever, you walk in and you're like, I hate my kitchen.

Yeah.

Okay, 25 grand. People don't. When they sell it, they don't put. They don't deduct that. 25 grand. Yeah, they, they. They just go, oh, we. We made a hundred thousand. No, you didn't go. Total it up.

Yeah.

And you got to have a place to live. And, you know, and I know rents are high right now, and, you know, so sometimes you might have to spend a little bit more time. But shit, go airbnb for three or four weeks while you find another place. I mean, if you're willing to do that kind of stuff. Now, I understand you're a family of 27. You know, I do get some people in DMs. We got six kids. We can't rent, we can't move people around, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I'm not saying. I'm not saying this is for everybody. I'm just saying if, if there's a hypothetical. Like, if. Apples to apples. Like, you know, you're just starting out or whatever. I told my son, I was like, you're crazy to buy right now. Crazy.

Yeah.

He's like, he's.

He.

And they wanted to buy. Yeah, you know, I get that he wanted to buy. I mean, he had enough money. He had it. He had 20% times two. And, and, you know, they were looking at places to buy, and I was like, okay, what's the property tax on that? What's that? What's this? What's that? Are you gonna get that? And you get. I'm like, just wait where you want to live.

Make more investing right now and then do that later.

Yeah. And I mean, my scenario is California. And if. If. If I'm losing money over 27 years in California real estate. Just the home I live in. Because you can't time it. Yeah, time it.

So good. Okay, so we talked about investing. We talked about real estate. Is there anything else that we should. That is critical for someone to pay attention to right now?

I mean, I'M a big. I think that people that use debit cards are missing out. I think you should definitely figure out how to get a cash back credit card that works.

Speaking to that. So cash back versus points or.

Yeah, because you know what I had somebody told me you can always buy, you know, you know, you can always buy where the points are gonna go, right? You can buy, buy your flights in. And what happens is with those like points and stuff like that, like right now the airlines are charging you so much for those points. You're not getting much, you're not getting much bang for your dollar because they lost so much more money during COVID that they're restricting those. Like they're not giving as many tickets and stuff like that. So I'd rather just give me the cash and let me decide.

Let you figure it out.

Yeah, let me decide what.

So you're not a fan of like an American Express Platinum card or something?

I mean, I, I do, I have, we have two, we have one for one business and one for the other business and one of them just happens to be American Express Centurion and we've had it forever and it is points. So we just, when we were in, people that like, tell me like, oh, debit cards are the best. I was like, okay, well I just spent a month in Europe and two of the hotels were completely paid by points.

Wow.

So, you know, so. And then the other one is a cashback card and there's so many cash back cards and I, in my course I list like five or six of them that are good and like why they're good, but it's very those. And I know most people probably on here that have looked into it, they're very temperamental to like what your spending habits are. So I, I kind of don't advise like, because I don't know what like. Yeah, you do. You know, are you the type of person that spends it mostly on like, you know, there's a lot of them, like food and entertainment, they have like double points and then like travel, they have that, you know, so it's like gets confusing.

So I just, so I've never personally been a fan of debit cards and my reasoning was if you're responsible and you can pay your credit card and full on it every month, why, why not take the free money while you can like versus just taking it out? And I do personally, like, I don't, I don't. I'm going to look into cash back. I don't do that. But I like, like for me, I like using American Express Platinum because there's a perks that go with it or their upgrades at hotels or whatever it is.

Yeah, it's a hundred percent.

I paid for more than my share of first class flights using those points. So it just. So to me it's made sense.

You know, the cash back is tax free.

I did not know that.

Yeah, it's tax free. It's considered a cash rebate. So it's a, it's a tax free thing.

So now I'm going to look into that.

And that the other reason why you want to use a cash. You want to use a credit card versus debit card. Have you ever had a fraud charge on your credit card versus a fraud charge on your, on your debit card? Yeah, it's way your credit card. It's like, it's instantaneous, like no questions asked. Your bank. It's like an act of Congress.

Yes.

So there's way more protection with the credit card. Now some people go, well, that's what I get in trouble with. With a credit card. Well, guess what you can do now with the, with this magical thing called an, with a phone. With a digital phone. It has an app. You can literally go in every single day and just transfer your credit card debit money into your credit card every day. So there's a zero balance at the end of every day.

Yeah, that's great.

So there's no more excuse.

Yeah, I think it just takes a little self discipline. So with that.

Yeah, it takes a little self discipline, but I mean, it's awesome. Like literally. Can I tell you a fun story about cash back?

Yeah.

I'm not going to, I'm not going to name names.

Okay.

But my friend is in the ticket business, so he had a horrible time during COVID because nobody was going to concerts. So he has to prepay for all of his tickets that he gets for all the concerts and all the sporting events that he does. So about seven years ago, he got approached by a credit card company because they saw how much volume he was doing and they said we're having a cash back thing with no limit. And he's got no limit on it. He does millions of dollars in transactions that he has to pay for the tickets, but he's getting the money right back from the tickets. So he literally gets hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash back every single year.

Wow. Wow.

So if you have a business that basically just amazing. Is just exchanging it. Right. And why wouldn't you put, why wouldn't you get A cash. Like if you run in a business and it's like you, you know, you're, you have to like, pay. Why wouldn't you get a cash back card? I mean, you get all that cash back at the end of the.

Yeah, I didn't even know about this. I wasn't even aware of this. Yeah, I'm totally gonna look into that.

Yeah, I mean, there's, there's some popular financial people out there that are like debit cards. They, to, you know, they, they, they put it on their back of their back of their card, like use debit cards. And I'm like, that's so out. So outdated. And like, you just don't understand. People don't understand.

So good. So good. Brett, this is so awesome. Today. How do people take your course? Because I think. And who's it for? Can you tell? Like, who should take your course, who should not take your course, and how do they take it?

Okay, so it's named. The name of. It should say everything. It's Money Matters 101.

Okay.

It's, it's, it's. If you are already like, have a financial advisor, you already like, you know, got tens of thousands, maybe a hundred thousand dollars in the market, you kind of understand it. You, you're, you're into that kind of stuff. It's not for you, right? It's, it's gonna go, you're gonna like, breeze through it. You're gonna be like, well, that was a waste of time. It's awesome for. It's, it's a binge. Listen, it's 16 lessons. You could. I. I have numerous people dming me on Monday saying I listened to it all weekend. I just did a couple walks. And, and the other great thing is they're listening to. With their kids.

That's so good.

They're like teenagers. Like, it's, that's what I mean. They don't teach this stuff in school. The stuff that I teach is very basic, but it's like those fundamental things. Like, it's going to talk to you about debit cards and credit cards. It's going to talk to you about debt, how to get out of debt and strategies and, and how to, you know, 5 to 15% and then once you get to that, like how to, like where to start investing, like where to find those, those, the S&P 500 and like all that kind of stuff. So it kind of like walks you through the stages. There is some mindset in there because I know who I'm talking to. I'm talking to the person that's just like, is not for sure.

So I'm gonna say if you're listening to this and these were a lot of light bulb moments for you. If you were like, okay, I never thought of that, or I didn't, then I would say also do it because I think there's people. I mean, I would. I'll say even myself, Brett. I mean, I definitely have money in the stock market. I definitely have an investor. But, like, I want to learn some of this stuff too. So I think if these were aha. Moments. Go get it. Go get it. Your program.

Yeah. And there's. There's some things in there, like how. Where you can go find some money like right now. Like what. What. What people are doing.

Who doesn't want that? That's amazing.

People are stupid. And I give some. Some tips for entrepreneurs too, because I didn't create the course just for like business owners entrepreneurs, but I do do have some things in there for just for them that I basically say, if you're an entrepreneur, this is what you should do.

Okay.

So, yeah, it's. It's fun. It's an easy listen to. People are like, I get the, it's the, the. It's very rewarding getting DMS of people saying, like, it was so helpful. It just helped me with my mindset. It gave me direction. It gave me the ability to like, create a plan. And, and I'm listening to. With my. With my son or my daughter, and they've already started. Like, I already have people that. Their kids already doing the S&P 500 and they're just putting in money just to learn. Because you learn that way. Yeah.

Where do they go get it? What's the link for it?

Chalene.com/money matters.

Wayne.com/forward/money matters matters.

Yep.

And Brett, one day we need a Brett dot com.

I know, but it was just so much easier just I know everything there.

Wife, if you don't know.

Yeah, it's in. It's in like, it's in Kajabi. It's super simple. It's. There's another person said that it. They were so there. There are some downloads that go with it so you can fill stuff out and stuff like that. But they were like, oh my gosh. It's so awesome that it's all audio.

So good. So, yeah, anywhere. Driving, shower, getting ready out, whatever.

They just like binge it and so, yeah, so good. It's fun.

Well, this is super helpful. Today I probably have 20 million more questions after this, but I'm gonna process this. It's so good. Thanks for doing this.

So you can always text me.

Natalie, I. I will, but then I'll have to do another podcast because then I'll be like, I gotta share this. It's so good, but thank you. This is so good. It's so helpful today. Thank you.

Thanks for having me.