In this episode, I discuss financial freedom with Chris Miles, the anti-financial advisor, debunking traditional retirement saving myths and spotlighting alternative investments. We advocate for wealth-building through non-traditional routes like real estate and oil, sharing success stories of those who've prospered beyond the 9-to-5. Our discussion covers the advantages of tangible assets over the stock market and reconsiders whole life insurance as a tool for tax-free growth and strategic investment, offering fresh insights on financial autonomy.
📺 You can watch this episode on Moses The Mentor's YouTube page and don't forget to subscribe: https://youtu.be/IWyUZyVZ9lo
🎯Connect with Chris Miles @moneyripples on Instagram and visit his website moneyripples.com
🎯Connect with Moses The Mentor: https://mtr.bio/moses-the-mentor
☕If you value my content consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mosesthementor
📢Support Money Focused Podcast for as low as $3 a month: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2261865/support
🔔Subscribe to my channel for Real Estate & Personal Finance tips https://www.youtube.com/@mosesthementor?sub_confirmation=1
In this episode, I discuss financial freedom with Chris Miles, the anti-financial advisor, debunking traditional retirement saving myths and spotlighting alternative investments. We advocate for wealth-building through non-traditional routes like real estate and oil, sharing success stories of those who've prospered beyond the 9-to-5. Our discussion covers the advantages of tangible assets over the stock market and reconsiders whole life insurance as a tool for tax-free growth and strategic investment, offering fresh insights on financial autonomy.
📺 You can watch this episode on Moses The Mentor's YouTube page and don't forget to subscribe: https://youtu.be/IWyUZyVZ9lo
🎯Connect with Chris Miles @moneyripples on Instagram and visit his website moneyripples.com
🎯Connect with Moses The Mentor: https://mtr.bio/moses-the-mentor
☕If you value my content consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mosesthementor
📢Support Money Focused Podcast for as low as $3 a month: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2261865/support
🔔Subscribe to my channel for Real Estate & Personal Finance tips https://www.youtube.com/@mosesthementor?sub_confirmation=1
Welcome to the Money Focus Podcast. I'm your host, moses the mentor, and in this episode I got the pleasure of bringing you guys Chris Miles. He's the anti-financial advisor and also the force behind the Money Ripples Podcast. Chris has transformed a lot of lives over the years, helping people increase their cash flow by tens of thousands of dollars in just their first year. He's an advocate for financial freedom and peace of mind through alternative investments. That's key. Let's discuss the secrets to his rapid wealth growth and learn how you can break free from conventional financial constraints with Chris. All right, chris, thank you for joining the Money Focus podcast. I really appreciate you taking time out your busy day to come join and talk to us and share your story with the audience. So the first thing I always ask my guests to do is to just really break down their career journey and, ultimately, how they actually started their business. So the floor is yours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, as a kid, my dad was really encouraging me to get a good education right, go to college, because he never did, and so he wanted me to do that sort of thing. I was, I was given that traditional path, you know, it was laid before me and it of course didn't hurt that I easily aced classes in school. So that was, you know, it was easy for me to do. That didn't hurt, that I easily aced classes in school. So that was, you know, it was easy for me to do that. But at the same time, I didn't want to be like him either, because I mean, he would always complain about work, right, he would complain about how his job would literally kill him, like he thought he would die working. You know, he was in the automotive industry and things like that and you know. And not to mention, when it came to money, it was always like, hey, we can't afford this. What do you think I am made of? Money? Money doesn't grow in trees, you know, yeah, all those kind of phrases you hear growing up Probably the same things you might have heard, or something like it right, absolutely yeah. And so I didn't want that. I wanted control of my own destiny, my time, my freedom, my money, my financial prosperity. And so when I went to college, it wasn't long when I realized, you know what? This is just a bigger problem. This is just a higher advanced version of what he was already going through. Right, I'm basically training to be a slave here in college. So I thought, well, if I'm going to become, my goal is to become a business consultant. I said, well, before I go and get my, my MBA or PhD or whatever, let's, let's take a break, let's find some business that I can get real life experience with. So I took a sabbatical from college right before I got my bachelor's. I said I'm going to take a year off and find some business. But I didn't know what that was going to be. Well, a few months later, the opportunity came up to be interviewed as a financial advisor. You know now I didn't realize that they take anybody off the street as long as you can pass a test and not be a criminal, right? So I started doing. I started, you know, I go in there, I interview and everything. They. They hire me because, hey, you know, I'm willing to work for a hundred percent commission, you know? No, no big risk for them Right. So I started going down that path and I actually liked being my own boss. I'd like to be an entrepreneur, so I actually stayed dropped out of college. I never finished it up.
Speaker 2:You know I had worked my nine to five type job. You know where I was doing. You know, basically answering phones for customer service. I did that for five years, you know. They even said they retired my phone extension. I doubt they did it for very long, you know, but they claim that they retired my phone extension when I when I when I quit that job and they gave me my $25 watch, but anyways, so I'm a financial advisor and I did that for four years. Well, four years in.
Speaker 2:My dad then comes back to me and he says, chris, when you become my financial advisor, I said, well, that's a shocker, cause you never want to share about your money situation. He was always so guarded thought everybody's trying to rip them off. So I sit down with him and, and as I look at his finances, he paid off his house. He was totally debt free. He had been stuffing his 401k like every good boy and good girl should do, right. And at the end of it I said dad, you're 61 years old. If you want to retire today, you better hope you die in five years, because that's when you're going to run out of money.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's not what I want to hear, chris. What can I do? Want to hear, chris, what can I do? What else should I be doing? I said I don't know Because, honestly, you're doing everything right from what I teach. You've been stuffing your money in mutual funds and getting your 401k match. You paid off all your debt. You should be. If you're doing all the things that I tell people, it gets them to financial freedom. You're just not there yet. And that bugged me because I'd spent the last four years teaching people saying, hey, if you just scrimp and save which is what I was doing for myself, right, I was following my dad's and following his footsteps to scrimp and save, and if you save enough, you can live on less than the interest. You can live on 3%, that's whole 3% rule. Cause 4% was debunked a long time ago, and well, I did. I was on that path and so was all so, all my clients.
Speaker 2:And it became apparent a couple of weeks later, because I was talking to a friend who I trained to be a financial advisor, but then he left to go, do, go, do this crazy thing called real estate investing, and. And so we're talking and I'm, I'm, I'm thinking that he's going to be broke, you know, and that he needs to come back to work for me again, totally opposite response. He says Chris man, my life has been awesome. I've actually my dad has now doubled in. My dad and I've partnered on some deals and we've actually doubled his income as a professor at the local university.
Speaker 2:I was like you've only been doing this four or five months. There's no way. That's that's too good to be true, right Cause, my little financial advisor brain can't handle those kind of results. It's got to take you 40, 50 years of sacrifice and toil to maybe never make it work. Well, they were making it work and he finally stopped me.
Speaker 2:He says, chris, how many of your clients are truly financially free where they don't worry about money? Well, I mean, they're all worrying about money because even if they retire, they still worry about running out of money in retirement. He says, okay, great, so none Good job. How about this? How many of you guys, as financial advisors, are financially free, not off the commissions you're earning, but actually doing the investments you've been recommending. And as I was really honest with myself and I kind of mentally looked at the hundred plus people in our office, I said none, none of them are. There's your problem, chris. Okay, and that's when I started to take the matrix red pill, right.
Speaker 2:That's when I started to realize, like wait a minute, maybe he's onto something, maybe what I'm doing doesn't work. And, uh, and when? Why would I teach something and and sell people on something that doesn't really work, that hasn't produced the results that they've so claimed? And, by the way, I'd even inherited clients that had financial advisors that retired right or died, you know, financial advisors that quit the business, retired or died. I inherited some of their clients from decades of advice and they were still just as broke as all the rest of the clients I was meeting with. So what was the benefit?
Speaker 2:And it got to the point where, when I started to see the light and see how much better it was on the real estate investing side, where you can create more income passive income versus just accumulating money and hoping you can live on less than the interest and basically retire a broke millionaire is really what they're trying to train you to do. That's when I realized I can't do this anymore, and so I had to keep my integrity intact. I quit. I would never teach about money again. I was just going to basically be a mortgage broker and teach ballroom dancing. That's what I was going to do, and that was my path in 2006.
Speaker 2:But while I was doing that, I started learning about real estate. I started learning about ways to create passive income, realizing it's not about how much I've accumulated, it's how do I get that money to create more income. And uh, and later that next year, I was actually able to retire myself when I was 28 years old. Uh, I only needed 3,500 a month in my defense, you know. Uh, I didn't need much. I only had two kids at the time, two little kids, and, you know, now I've got eight.
Speaker 1:So, uh, you know 3,500 a month doesn't work with inflation and everything.
Speaker 2:But we need over 10 grand a month easily to be able to make that work. But but still, it's it's. It was. It blew my mind. It was even possible when I was hoping and praying that I would save enough, turn off the heat in the wintertime, turn off the AC in the summertime and save enough pennies so that I could scrimp and save enough to put in my mutual funds, maybe retire when I was 40, but instead I was able to do it in my late 20s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that's a good point. I mean you really can't save your way to wealth. You know and I think that's something that you know is widely shared that you know you put this aside for a rainy day. You really do have to invest Now, your, your investment medium can be different things. It could be real estate, it could be, you know, you can be an active stock investor. I'm not, we're real estate investors. But you know you, you can start a business, a franchise, but whatever the case may be, like just traditional savings and whole and being passive, it's not really going to propel you to where you probably want to be.
Speaker 1:And I love the fact that you talk about income. You know, the first time I heard that the thing that really woke me up is when I read Rich Dad, poor Dad, because you know Robert Kiyosaki just really talks about really like, when you buy a property, it's like you're buying income, that cash flow, and once that cash flow meet or exceed your operating, you know expenses in your home, it's like, hey, you really are free. You know, like you said, $3,500 was your number. So if 5,000 is your number, 10,000 is your number, you can really work your way up to have that amount of income to where you can say, hey, work optional at this point, so that's right. I really love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're absolutely right. Like it was, it was. It was hard for me to break out of that mindset, cause the funny thing is, as a financial advisor, I read rich dad, poor dad, a couple of times, right, and somehow I I created the narrative, and so did everybody else in our office, that what he was teaching is exactly what we were telling people to do. Right. But you read another one of his books that's less popular, called who took my money and he rips mutual funds to death. In fact, that's the first book my friend recommended to me. Like he said listen, chris. When I asked him, I said all right, doug, you know his name was Doug. I said what you know? What should I do? And he's like I don't really believe you're serious, I don't think you want to know. I said listen, you got me to admit that what I've been doing hasn't worked. Give me something. He's like listen, if you're really serious, go find who Took my Money by Robert Kiyosaki. And then go listen to this AM Talk radio show because it's pre-podcast, right, these two real estate investors talking on the radio on these weekdays. And that's what I started doing. And that's when it's just like listening to podcasts like this, it starts to chip away and for a few months, I try to make it work, I try to have my feet in both worlds and it just didn't work. Because, in fact, the funny thing is that the financial advisor I made more money when I stopped going to financial advisor trainings and I started listening to the very things we're talking about today, because people said, oh, that rings true, that resonates, because, let's be honest, if financial advising really worked right and I think there's a lot of money behind this just like pharmaceutical companies, right, financial companies do not want you to know that they're not successful. However, the great news is that those companies do have stats if you really look them up, like Fidelity.
Speaker 2:Fidelity, we know, is like the number one 401k provider 45 million Americans. Fidelity, we know, is like the number one 401k provider. 45 million Americans have an account, either a 401k or an IRA, with Fidelity. Of those 45 million Americans, guess how many of them have at least a million dollars? 750,000. Now, that's one and a half percent.
Speaker 2:I can guarantee you that baby boomers have been saving for decades, who, supposedly? If they listen to Dave Ramsey, if you save $100 a month for 40 years, you'll have over a million dollars, even though he miscalculated it, and he thinks you're going to actually get a 12% return on the market, which is bull. It's never been that way for a long period of time. Spurts has done that right, but not in the long period of time. But they keep claiming it. But here it is. People have been saving for 30, 40 years and they don't have a million dollars, right? So one and a half percent actually have a million bucks.
Speaker 2:But then trans America did a separate study. It said of those people that had at least a million dollars saved up, 35% polled said quote I think it'll take a miracle for me to be able to retire, a miracle. Those people all had a million dollars or more. That means of the one and a half percent, over a half a percent says they'll never be able to retire, right? So what does that mean? That means less than 1% think they even have a shot.
Speaker 2:That should be alarming to you.
Speaker 2:That's like if I were to go look up a restaurant to see if I want to eat there.
Speaker 2:I see 99 negative reviews with one star and then one five-star review, and I'm believing the one five-star review instead of the 99 bad reviews. Right, that's what you're really doing, but again, people don't question it. Why? Because every financial advisor is incentivized to tell you to buy their crap, and they're paid by those institutions that are also paying for the commercials on every financial station you're on. They're basically bought out the entire industry to make you believe that this is the way. Unfortunately, it's not the Mandalorian way. It's not it at all. You're going to be broke as crap if you keep following their advice, and so the best way to do that is to go on the main street instead of Wall Street. Go the main street route, which is investing in real assets that actually produce income Income producing assets. That's where I've found that there's tens of millions of us that have done that, where you have to really look hard. In the other side the people that are saving their 401ks and IRAs to find somebody who actually feels like they are truly financially free.
Speaker 1:I personally. I know this is not popular, so anybody who's listening to this I get it. I don't personally contribute to a 401k. I made that decision, my wife and I, years ago, not to do it. The primary reason is that, you know, I want to be in control of my money. You know, I want to know that I'm putting it in the places that can actually materialize and if it doesn't, then I can only blame me. You know that I'm putting in the places that can actually materialize and if it doesn't, then I can only blame me. You know what I'm saying. Like I don't want to have to have this guessing game on where it's going. And also you know the fact that if you just want to spread my money across a million different, you know stocks. You know what are you doing special. You know diversification is just an easy way to mitigate risk. You know, and that's not I can do that, you know. So I don't personally do it.
Speaker 1:And then for the people who have 401ks who have been, you know, contributing year after year and then, depending on when they retire, the market might be on a decline. That's right. So you've been working all your life to get to this retirement stage, but then it's like, wow, you know we're going through a recession, so now your money is bottomed out. So I don't, I don't want that, whereas if you had a rental property portfolio or you had a cashflow or business, it doesn't matter. You know it's like that's your money. Every month, month over month, that money is contributing to your bottom line. So I just think more and more people need to, you know, absorb. The truth about it is that you need income to survive, income to replace your W-2 job, and not just what the masses are doing. When you're doing what the masses are doing, it's a good chance you're doing it wrong. That's exactly it. That's just the truth. That's just the hard truth.
Speaker 2:It is. Appreciate that. Well, I think 401ks are one of the biggest scams out there today, right, and, like you said, it's probably not a popular opinion. I used to have a 401k, but today, right, and like you said, it's probably not a popular opinion. I used to have a 401k, but when I really, what I really realized is this is that imagine you want to start a business with a partner, right, and this partner comes to you and says listen, I will let you. You know, let's go into business together, but you're going to finance a hundred percent of this business. However, you're going to have limited voting rights. I'm going to have the veto, ultimate veto, the ultimate decision-making, and everything that happens, including if you can even take money out, if at all, and if you do try to access money from a company, I am going to penalize you and take some more money from you. And, on top of that, if I decide that, you know that I want to change the rules and say you know what? You can't touch this money till whenever I feel like I can say that and you have no say in this matter, would you ever go into that business partnership? That's exactly what you have with 401ks and IRAs. Exactly Like they can change the rules of when you can access the money without the 10% penalty, they also dictate how much you're going to get taxed, because they put you in the worst tax bracket possible when you put money in 401k. And yes, even those that say, well, I'll still self-direct my IRA and invest in real estate. Well, to say, well, I'll still self-direct my IRA and invest in real estate Well, that's better, but still, currently, you better hope you don't plan to retire before you're 60. So make sure that the vehicle matches your goals. If you want to retire before 60, don't get into something that says, no, you can't do it until you're 59 and a half or 60 years old, or 62 or whatever age I decide at that time.
Speaker 2:And you mentioned this too, my dad. This is exactly why he had to spend another 10 years working until his seventies, until he was forced into retirement, because a few years after I met with him, the gray recession hit. So what had happened to his portfolio? It went down. But of course the financial advisors are going to say, well, you're in it for the long haul, just hang in there a little bit longer. It always goes up over time. Do you realize that from the height that it hit in 2000, march of 2000, the stock market there, it didn't recover until 2013. However, because even if you were investing in the S&P 500 because of fees, those people that I knew that just put money in did not see their money come back until 2015, before they finally said now I finally got the money back that invested before the year 2000 or when it hit the height in 2000. 15 years to then finally say I got back to breaking even. But they didn't, because with inflation it cut it in half. So they really only had half the money. They lost half their money in those 15 years just waiting because financial advisor says well, don't time the market, just hold in.
Speaker 2:If it's that uncertain, if it's that unpredictable, why would you gamble your money there? Oh, because high risk creates high return. Come on, when did high risk let's be honest here High risk the definition of risk is chance of loss when did a higher chance of losing become a higher chance of winning? When did a 90% chance of losing become a 90% chance of winning? It never did winning. It never did. The math doesn't add up. 90% chance of losing means you have a 10% chance of winning period but they try to teach you to take these high risks because they want you to take all the risks. They let you take all the risks while they get the guaranteed fees taken out.
Speaker 2:The biggest reason that 401ks don't work is because they underperform even the stock market. They say over 85% of millennials surveyed right now, when they get their retirement with their 401ks or whatever it might be, they pick over 85% of the time the target date funds, right, the fund that says retirement date 2040 or 2055, 2060. They pick those funds. I went into Fidelity I said what's the real return of those funds? It underperformed the stock market by over 2% and that's before the three quarter percent fee came out. So in reality you lost 3% compared to the actual stock market. Here's the problem the actual stock market is averaged just barely over 8% in the last 30 years and this is comparing a low that hit 94 when it hit a recession, to the height of the all-time highs that's hit now. It's still like 8.1% average. The problem is this is that if your 401k underperforms that market by 3%, what are you making? 5%? Oh, but Chris, I get the match. That's 100% return. No, it's not Put 100% return.
Speaker 2:In a retirement calculator, you'll find out you'll be richer than Bezos in 20 years. I guarantee you're a little piddly. 10 or 20,000 a year will not make you richer than Bezos in 20 years in a crappy 401k. No, your real compounded interest return on that match only ends up being about 2% or 3% a year. So guess what? You underperformed by 3% a year only to have the match help make up for the bad performance You're. You're lucky to barely get stock market returns. If you were, if you were even thinking from that standpoint, you'd say why would I even do the 401k in the first place? Why I could go invest in a mutual fund and put in the S and P 500 and be just fine, you know, and I would get just as the same return, even with a hundred percent match for my employer. That's the difference is that you want that Like. What you're doing is get it in your control and then get it into places where you can actually control your rates of return and get better rates of return, more certain, with less cash.
Speaker 1:I'm with you. I'm with you 100%. So you've coined yourself as the anti-financial advisor.
Speaker 2:I don't know why it's weird.
Speaker 1:You know how. How's that philosophy helped shape some of your clients? You know needs, or just you know desires when it comes to money, like what are some of the things that you've instituted with them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll give you a few stories. I mean we've had hundreds of clients. I mean we've had almost a thousand clients in the last 14 years and and we've now got to tally up over $300 million of cashflow improved, whether it be from investing or even just ways to improve cashflow, paying off debt, freeing up money in taxes, whatever it might be. You know, I'll give you an example of what we were just talking about here. I had one, one client that came through a few years ago. He uh he actually was just retiring from the military had a million dollars. He was the one of the few guys that actually got out of the stock market in y2k. He timed it perfectly. He got out before the great recession, timed it perfectly and just happened to get a million dollars. You know, by that point, when he sat down with his financial advisor, he says this is awesome. Luckily you have your pension, because you should only pull off 3% a year of your million dollars, which is $30,000 a year. Right, that's below the poverty line, but that's what you're taught as a financial advisor. If the ones that are up to date, we'll say 3%. Well, he said this guy Dan. He said no way I can't live on 30,000 a year. That's ridiculous. Even with my pension, my government pension, that's not enough. So he started listening to podcasts like this one. He heard one that I was on. He says I need to do something different. He started going to the alternative space and we don't ever raise money like capital to invest people's money. We're not investment advisors, but we are strategists and connectors, and so we have some companies that we've worked with whether they're like turnkey real estate lending and debt funds could be, you know, apartments, self-storage, oil and gas, whatever might be and so he decided to diversify a little bit. He bought some rentals, a couple duplexes that are managed by a property manager. He got into apartment syndication. He also got in some oil and gas syndications and whatnot. His what was supposed to be 30,000 a year turned into 130,000 a year, and even it ranges between 100 and 130,000. And that's the difference, like that. That's the key. He didn't have to have more money, it was just about how to get that money working harder for him. So you have to keep working hard to accumulate more money, right? Um?
Speaker 2:Another guy is interesting because he he had. You know, I get a lot of Asian clients and it's very common for Asian clients to be like the ultra savers right, like they are just fantastic savers. Um, they probably end up being like Dave Ramsey. They actually ended up being Dave Ramsey's poster children. Um, and unfortunately, I'm not a big fan of Dave Ramsey. I'm a fan of what he's done for people that are, you know, spend, you know need spendaholics anonymous. Unfortunately, most people that listen to him. It's an echo chamber. There are already people that are doing these things he's recommending but unfortunately keeps them trapped.
Speaker 2:And so this guy, his his goal for retirement was he was going to pay off his house, pay off his one investment property that he had and that would give him. I said, okay, if you do that, what will that do for you? And we looked at the mortgage payments. I said, well, you still pay taxes and insurance because those don't ever go away. Government always gets paid. So I said, really, you free up 4,200 a month. He's like, yep, the next six years I'm just going to spend everything to pay off all my debt and then I'll have that money, that 4,200 a month or 50,000 a year.
Speaker 2:I said, well, that's great. But here's the thing. I'm looking at your situation here. You've got equity in your house. You've also got a lot of equity in this investment property. And we talked about the equity from his house and he's like I can't do it, it's too scary. I was like, fine, don't worry about your house, then We'll get to that one later. He's like, well, I don't want to refinance it. I was like I don't want you to refinance it either. What if you sold it and you got the equity out of it and then you use that equity to go invest and buy other properties that actually do cashflow, cause you know his cashflow was not property 200 bucks a month, but it had 700,000 of equity 700,000 equity for 200 bucks.
Speaker 2:His whole goal was well, if I just paid off, I got another $80,000 to pay off on this thing. Well then, it'll go up to $2,400 a month. I said here's the deal, that's $700,000. If you only made 10% cash on cash on that money, that's $70,000 a year. That still beats $2,400 a month.
Speaker 2:And it took a couple of years and he finally did it. A few months ago he emailed me. He says, chris, just want to give you an update. I finally sold a property. You were right, I sold it. I bought six properties with that same equity that are now cash flowing over a hundred thousand a year. I said see, that's a lot better than 200 bucks a month, which, by the way, he would still be at 200 bucks a month to this date had he not done that. He would have a few more years before he paid off that mortgage. And that's the difference. Like you have to really get them to question everything that you've been taught by Dave Ramsey, right, and people like that say just save in your mutual funds forever, pay off all your debt and it's just going to work out.
Speaker 1:But the evidence does not show that that's an excellent example of you know why the Dave Ramsey method is really not optimal. Now I would rather you follow Dave Ramsey. If you're just a, you have no financial acumen, no desire, no control over your expenses because at bare minimum, you know you can still work on getting rid of your debt, consumer debt. You just won't be great at wealth building. Budgeting is great Budgeting, saving and paying down debt but that's still a whole lot better than really what most Americans are doing. So I'll give you that. But when you are ready to take that next level up, you got to listen to guys like Kiyosaki. You got to listen to people like you, like me, because you can't grow wealth I said this at the top of the show by saving. You know, it's just really simple. I always use this as an example when I talk to people who are really just new to having a different money mindset.
Speaker 1:If the inflation rate on the normal terms is two to three percent, right, that's normal, and that probably won't be the normal terms.
Speaker 1:It's two to three percent Right, that's normal, and that probably won't be the normal time, so Right.
Speaker 1:But if that's the case and your savings account is giving you zero point, zero five, whatever percent. That tells you right there, just by saving a loan you're not winning, you know, because you have to exceed the normal inflation rate to at least have your money grow right. So if you're not getting 6%, 9% return, 12% return, you're pretty much you're broken to where you were the year before. You know you might have $1,000 in your bank account, but that $1,000 is now worth $995 in the same money year over year. So those are the things that are just really basic and that's why I want to make sure I bring people on the show like yourself who can cover some of the basics but also introduce some more advanced concepts that people can really say, oh, I can do that. Once I, you know, get my debt under control, once I get my spending under control, I can utilize the excess cash that I have to put it toward income producing assets. You know, that's really the goal.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And it's so nice because I was just interviewing somebody from my own podcast. I have my own podcast called the Money Ripples Podcast and I was just interviewing them today. They own Turnkey Real Estate Company and I was kind of firing some hard questions. Because Turnkey, you know, like just rentals in general, people are scared because they're like, oh, the interest rates are so high I don't want to buy it.
Speaker 2:But I told them it's like listen, like look at the difference. You know, people are all gung ho about trying to buy a Tesla stock, which is extremely overvalued. Right, they can drop like a rock if all of a sudden, elon Musk tweets the wrong thing, you know. But you don't get that with real estate. You don't get that little bipolar, crazy ex-girlfriend type of behavior from it, right, you don't get that with real estate. It's very slow and it's very certain. And that's why I said I was like well, you guys I mean everybody's like worried about here's what I hate. I hate when people say I'm a conservative investor, that's why I save my 401k or my retirement plan. I was like no, you're not. You're a comfortable saver, you're nothing. You're not conservative at all, because if you were conservative, you wouldn't be gambling your money in the market the way it is, with zero control, knowing nothing. I was like I'm more conservative than you because I buy real assets. I buy something that I know won't go to zero. A property won't go to zero.
Speaker 2:And even when people say, what about the last great recession? Yeah, the one time in over six recessions that real estate actually dropped in value during that period of time. The other recessions either stayed the same or increased in value during that period of time. Well, people remember, because of that recency bias, they think, oh well, no, like real estate, it's going to go, it's going to tank. Guys like, if you're, if you're worried about anything tanking, look at what's at an all time high right now, which is the stock market. That has room to tank. That thing's been overvalued. It has no logical reason to be as high as it is.
Speaker 2:Even my friends that are traders I used to be a trader myself, by the way I used to teach people how to trade stocks and options no one wants to be in the market right now. They're like, no, it's just too, you know, put very little money in the market If you're going to do anything at all, because it's just too unpredictable right now. But real estate I'm buying Awesome it's, there's great deals right now and making and at the same time I'm making great consistent cashflow that pays me month after month with tax benefits which I can never get in the stock market right, if I wait.
Speaker 2:401ks and IRAs is not a tax benefit, it's a tax. Delay is push it to a later date. So then you get taxed more, right, cause you don't have all the write-offs you had when you had kids. You know they're just doing that to basically screw you over. You get none of that, those kinds of benefits in the market. But I get all those benefits, like you do in real estate, where again there's risk. It's not like it's guaranteed but, man, the chances of me losing all my money is almost nil.
Speaker 1:Very true, I mean, and even if I'm a cash flow investor you know, in real estate you do have some investors who buy for appreciation I focus more on cash flow. If I get appreciation on the back end, it is what it is right. But so for me, I'm not really concerned about if the property value tanks, because I'm buying the property, I bought it for a reason, because I feel like it's a great rental and I'm getting my cashflow every month. And even if the value drops, the cashflow is not going to drop. It's not like rent is not going to go down you know what I'm saying Like it's not going to dramatically drop. So my rent is still in play. I have a locked in mortgage, so that's my mortgage month over month. This is the rent I charge month over month and the net difference after expenses is my cashflow. It doesn't matter what's going on And-.
Speaker 2:Well, especially if you're buying in Ohio, right? Oh yeah. Ohio is known and notorious for no appreciation. Like you buy a $60,000 property, they'll cashflow maybe you know 800 bucks a month, but yeah, you won't really see any appreciation, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean I invest in the suburbs of Cleveland, so it's slight appreciation but it's really not A little bit better. You know I plan on having these homes for years to come. You know I really do Like I I. My focus, my strategy, you know, is I buy single family homes in the suburbs of Cleveland that are in, like you know, high C, low B areas, so somewhere you would be perfectly fine having your family member live in. No, no bullet holes, no bullet holes, no vacant lots, nice solid properties in decent areas. And I specialize in Section 8 investing. That's what I do. So I put Section 8 tenants in that give me guaranteed encode. Section 8 tenants stay longer. And I vet my Section 8 tenants, you know very well you can still require a security deposit background check. You know references and I pretty much. I have my tenants in there and they don't leave. They love me, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, so far you get Section 8 approved, right, like they don't want to leave, but you don't have to they don't want to leave.
Speaker 1:So when they do get Section 8 approved, you have landlords who don't take care of the property or it's in a bad neighborhood. So it's like, wow, you know, I can get a nice, you know a nice home that's well maintained, and I have a tenant. And then the good thing about Section 8 is that you're getting, you know, market rent guaranteed. Yeah, so even when there's lows in the market, I can still always command a really competitive market rate and it's guaranteed money. So, yeah, it's just.
Speaker 1:Why would I put my money in a 401k, like you said, banking on Elon Musk? You know what I'm saying. When I can literally buy a property, have a system and I'm not saying that this is all easy, but nothing in life that's rewarding is easy. You have to establish a system, you have to really network with people, establish a team. But once you have it down pat, you'll take that money.
Speaker 1:Every time you get new money you say, okay, well, I've done it before. I did it with one property, I can do it with two, I can do it with four, I can do it with eight, I can do it with 16. And it just multiplies and you just double year over year and next thing you know you are work optional, which we're going to talk about. You know because I wanted to ask you about that. So what are some steps that you recommend for people that would like to be work optional or just even start off by, you know, defining what work optional is? It might sound obvious, but what is work optional to you and what are some steps that you recommend people take to become work optional?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I stopped trying to tell, tell people like, hey, you can help you retire. And the reason being is because let's look at the word retire, it kind of sucks in a lot of ways. I've tried to do it twice, you know, and each time I get bored out of my mind because there's no real purpose behind it. And so work optional is kind of nice because it's you work because you want to, not because you have to, meaning that you have enough money, like you said in the beginning of the show. You have enough money to at least pay for your expenses right Now. It may not be a hugely comfortable life just getting barely to work optional. That's why I think there's a difference between financial independence and financial freedom. Financial independence means your work optional, you just paid enough. You get paid enough to pay your bills. Financial freedom means you get more than enough. More than enough money to burn. It's almost like F you money, right, it's kind of like that. So there's there's different levels and different definitions, but that's kind of what I mean by work optional and and that's really what it is Like how do we? The one piece of advice I give you is get your money out of prison, which is ironically what we've been talking about, right, because you know, we've we've been taught for our whole lives save up everything, spend nothing, pay off your debt, save it forever and hopefully you have something someday, right? Well, when you put your money in that 401k at the company, you can't get it out. Yeah, you can get out up to maybe $50,000 or half of your money whichever is less as a loan, but then they make you pay back every month, usually not enough to even cashflow. If you're going to try to invest outside, your best thing is to get fired or quit your job and get that money out, right? So, by the way, it's not a recommendation. I'm not telling you to quit your job or get fired, just just so we don't get sued here on this show. But I mean, that's that's. The point is that if you put your money in a company 401k, it's locked up, unless you're at least 60 years old. There might be what's called in-service distributions, but for the most part, you can't touch that money. It's in prison. Right, it's locked up. And if the market goes down, I mean, yeah, you can say, well, I'm going to take my money on the market. Yeah, but you won't.
Speaker 2:Because usually when people take their money, I tell people it's like how do we get your money liquid? Right, how do we get, you know, stop paying extra payments on your mortgage, like what was happening with my one client. You know, how do we stop putting your money in and things like 401ks and IRAs? How do we get that money liquid? And you know, even if it's a simple savings account, that's a better place to hold it than trying to lock up in a company 401k where you can't access it. And a lot of times I'll teach our clients about infinite banking strategies where you can store it there and you can make a higher return than 0.0% at your bank. But for the most part, it's getting your money liquid and then you can get it out.
Speaker 2:You can deploy it into places that do cash flow, into real assets, and that's a fun thing. Is that? Just when you were talking about section eight tenants right? The great thing is there are so many options in the real estate space that most people in America never even know is an option. Most people in America think you buy the house next door, that's your rental thing, or in the same town, but the truth is you can buy it anywhere in the country and there's hundreds of markets. So even if you live in a crappy market and I say crappy markets like West Coast anywhere in the West Coast stinks. In fact I'm in Utah and it still stinks Anything in the Western half sucks. I look more out of your direction to the Midwest and the Southeast, where I look for good rentals, right. So I'm looking out. There. I'll find a turnkey company that will help me find those properties so I don't have to go searching for them myself. Although I could, I don't want to spend that time doing it. I like my life without that kind of time constraint and so I'll have them help me find the properties. I know exactly what the kind of cashflow I'm going to make before I buy the property and then decide to buy it.
Speaker 2:That's one option, but I also do other things to diversify. You know like I'll have my money. I can do short-term hard money lending. I got paid 15% recently from a guy that was an apartment syndicator, needed to buy a few extra months because he was trying to sell the property. It was taking a little bit longer. He was cash strapped. I loaned him some money, got paid 15% a year on that money.
Speaker 2:I can also do debt funds right, where you know people sometimes will just pool money together to go invest. You know I basically invest in the investors. Let them do whatever they want with them, make whatever profits they make, but they pay me a contractual return of 10, 11, 12% on that money. You know I can. You know I have a partnership right now with with a guy that does raw land investing, where we buy the land at wholesale, sell to people at retail on terms, so that we're basically becoming like the mortgage company right, so that they pay us a monthly payment over the next five or 10 years. So far invested 350,000 in the last two years in that deal and it's cash flowing over 9,600 a month.
Speaker 2:You know, so it's awesome I mean oil and gas like you can actually lease land to oil companies, get paid rent and get royalties from any of the drilling production that they do from natural gas oil. By the way, natural gas is actually kind of a semi. You know green energy, right, because people always say, what about green energy? I'll tell you, even Biden doesn't give a crap about green energy. He just gives you lip service that you want to elect him longer, but the truth is, they already know, even though all the scientists, the most liberal scientists, know that by 2050, only 10% of the cars will be running on electricity, because there's not enough electricity to be able to go around and be able to get everybody driving.
Speaker 1:That's what it looks like because a lot of these electric car company movements and stuff like that have slowed down drastically.
Speaker 2:They're just riding the fad, right. And I'm not saying that I think it's kind of cool that you have that option. I really do, I actually, and I'm from Oregon, so we're tree huggers, right. So don't get me wrong, I like the environment quite a bit, but just so you know, I'm saying this because oil and gas isn't going away anytime soon. You know, and even if we're driving vehicles, majority is it from the products that you make. You know, sometimes the when you go and eat out, you're pretty much using up oil and gas, you know, for that very reason. So so that's the thing is like there's so many different ways you can make money in real estate. That's not just like buying a rental in your backyard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, and you gave so many different ways to make money. I did have a question about like the hard money lending on a private money lending. Are you able to use like the home as collateral still, or is it a non-recourse type of thing? Like what can you describe a little bit like if they were to default? Like what are your options at that point?
Speaker 2:God forbid, but yeah, that's, that's why. That's why the terms are so important, right? That's something I learned in the last recession is like, for example, I made it a rule always your first position, which means it's like you know, when you have a mortgage, you know you're paying a mortgage payment. There's the first mortgage and you might even have a second mortgage. Well, if you ever default on that, the first mortgage gets paid off first, followed by, if there's anything left, the second mortgage. Well, you know, that was kind of my rule. Anything left, the second mortgage. Well, you know, that was kind of my rule.
Speaker 2:I remember one of my family members. They went and did that, got their money paid back. They were very happy. They went to do another deal with the same guy again, but they didn't read the contract. He put them in third position, so they're the third of the pecking order getting paid back, right? Well, the deal flopped when the recession hit. They lost all their money and there was no recourse because the property just wasn't worth enough, like it barely even paid anything back to the first position person, right? So, and the second person, I think, got screwed too.
Speaker 2:So that's what I mean is like so, when you talk about lending your money. Yes, you do want to be on title for the property, just like the bank is. Do the same thing that just when we talk about think like the bank. It's also invest like the bank.
Speaker 2:Banks when they give you more money for your mortgage, they make sure that they're on title. They make sure that if you default, they get the property. Now they don't want the property no more than you would want the property. Right, you just want to get paid. So do banks, but to have that extra collateral and that's why I think first position is important. I also like to make sure there's equity in the property, just like a bank would do. Remember, banks don't like to give a hundred percent loans anymore. They did that in the last recession. They got screwed. So I like it to know that there's at least 30, 35% equity in a property. So if, say, the property's worth 300,000, I would want to make sure that we're not loaning much more than about 200,000, so that there's that extra safety. So if I ever do have to take the property back and maybe values happen to drop, I still have that buffer to make sure I get my money back and maybe some more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can do a short sale and then the new investor, can you know, get a good deal, but you're still covered. You know, exactly Because like you said you're not trying to. You don't want the property, you want the money.
Speaker 1:So, as long as you're covered, you're good. So that's cool. That's cool, that's good to know. I mean, for people who you know, have, you know, are fortunate enough to have capital and just really don't know how to, you know, put it to work, I think that's a cool option because you might not want to be an active investor, you might not want to be an active investor, you might not want to own rental properties, but you can literally set yourself up and say I'm the bank, you know, hit me up if you need a loan and be able to. Now you'll have to learn some of the terminology so you can make sure that you are well-versed on the process, but you don't have to be active. You can pretty much put your capital to work, get the passive income wash, rinse and repeat.
Speaker 2:So that's a great option.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so a few questions before I let you go. So you mentioned it's called Infinity Banking, right or Infinite Banking. Excuse me, I've heard this from several people on social media, different podcasts. Can you explain to the audience and to me, refresh my memory again, what the concept of infinite banking is, as if we're a fifth grader.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it depends on who you ask Most people when they talk about infinite banking, here's what it simply is. The vehicle is a whole life insurance policy, right? Everybody's heard of term insurance, which is basically death insurance. You pay a premium into it If you die or when you die. It finally pays out but you get nothing while you're alive, kind of like car insurance. Right, you have to get in a car accident to actually use it. Well, whole life insurance has two components it has that death benefit that you get if you die, but it also has this tax-free savings account as a part of it.
Speaker 2:And so what most people teach with infinite banking, again, there's a lot of varieties and most of them, I think, suck. Okay, just to be perfectly honest. That's why I would in some ways agree with Dave Ramsey on when he rips on infinite banking, but not completely, because he's kind of closed-minded anyways. But most of the time they'll tell you hey, you're going to pay these high fees up front, but eventually down the road you'll have this cash. You know this tax-free savings account, this cash value growing over time that then can be used to. They'll say you can buy a car with it, and then you have quote unquote pay yourself back instead of paying the back. You know the bank, the interest. They'll say you can buy your own house with it and then you can pay it back and it might even be like a supplemental retirement income, like a tax-free retirement income. That really those are half-truths and a bunch of crap. Okay For one, you'll find out that eventually you actually aren't paying yourself back. You still pay interest. You just pay it to the insurance company instead to a bank.
Speaker 2:Right, but here's how I use it as an investor, because I was sold one of the policies early on, like in 2006. And, by the way, I was a financial advisor. Never heard of it before, you know, but I trusted the guy. The guy sold me a very expensive version of this policy where I paid a lot of fees upfront for two years, almost going into third year, had no cash value. When the recession hit, I couldn't make payments. I lost that policy. I paid 25 grand into it. I have nothing to show for it. I lost it all.
Speaker 2:Here's how we do it differently now, and actually we even do it internally. So I'm not just promoting because we do it. We're only doing it because insurance agents a lot of times are kind of crooks. You know not to rip on the industry, but sometimes they just they're not going to give you the best deal because they want to make money too. Right, and that's how they make their money. I don't give a crap because I make money on my investments and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:So you can actually do these and design them in a way where those insurance costs go down and more goes that cash from day one, like when I put my money in for two years straight, there was zero cash in my policy. Now, the way we do it, if you pay it from, you know, pay the same kind of way you would actually have about. Of the money you paid in, you'd have over 80% of your money in that policy, probably 80 to 90% in there by that point. The reason being is we cut down the insurance costs as low as we can, which means we also cut down the agent commissions, right. We get them as low as they can possibly go. Here's where the real magic works as an investor, right? And now I'm going to kind of back out a little bit. Go big, you know, go back to five-year-old again.
Speaker 2:Here's what you can do. You can make money in two places at the same time if you use it right. So, for example, you have this money in this tax-free savings account. Now you could pull the money out, withdraw it just like you would a savings account, and then buy a property with it right, you can buy like a section eight property.
Speaker 2:However, the other method you could do is you can get a line of credit against it. You can borrow the money. That means your money still stays there. It's still paying you like 6% tax-free in this account, right? So the money stays there. But instead, because the money is guaranteed, banks and insurance companies will give you a guaranteed loan and you can actually get a line of credit from them and you just go for wherever the interest rate's cheapest. You get it from them. So you take the money from them and then you invest that money.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of like when people do a home equity line of credit, when they take equity out of their house to go and invest. It's like that. But imagine if the home equity line of credit actually paid you interest too, right? Then you're actually able to make money in two places at once instead of just making whatever's left over. So that's the difference, and when you do that, you invest it. You take the cashflow from that investment that you're earning.
Speaker 2:So let's just say again you put $100,000 down to buy a property and say that the property cash flows for easy numbers a thousand bucks a month. Right, well, you're going to take that thousand bucks a month, use that to pay back towards the line of credit. And as you pay the line of credit down, guess what? You can do it again. You can pull out the money again and invest it again. And so, as you're always constantly like taking the money, using it and then paying the loans down and then using it again, paying the loans down, what happens? You end up even if that was a 12% rate of return on your cash, on cash return, you'll end up making at least another one or two or three percent more on top of it because they're still paying you compounding interest, while you're only paying simple interest on the loan when you borrow it.
Speaker 1:So it's pretty, pretty cool strategy if you know how to use it right yeah, I've never heard it broken down that way, but I mean I'm a fan of p-Lock, so that connected with me when you described like hey, you can use the equity or the cash value from a policy to get a line of credit, then you use that to invest and then you pay that down while you're getting interest on the original insurance line. So yeah, I haven't heard it. Normally, when I hear about infinite banking, people are saying be your own bank, you know where you don't utilize another bank at all. It's like hey, I'm borrowing against the cash value within my insurance plan. So I haven't heard the concept that you described.
Speaker 2:That's the thing. You could do that. But it's kind of BS, right Again. That's they only teach it that way because they're ripping. They're kind of ripping you off, right. Like there's a guy popular on YouTube. Again, I think the guy is awesome, like I, I I really respect him. But the insurance guys that he uses I know that they never get people the best deal.
Speaker 2:And I actually was talking to one of my friend's brother who was just meeting with these guys. He's like yeah, yeah, like they do, they do an awesome job. I'm so excited I'm putting in $10,000. I'm going to have $7,000 from day one in there, which is is better than normal whole life where you have $0 day one, right. And I told the guy I was like dude, how old are you? He's like I'm sure I'm getting the best. No, I'll show you apples to apples, showed him that save him a thousand bucks a year. The guy started raving. He's like I didn't know. And I was like, of course you did, because these guys they did a good job. But they still were like well, we still need to make money too, so we'll just charge you a little bit more insurance costs to make it a good deal, but just not the best deal, right? And they're the ones that always say, oh yeah, you pay yourself back or you know, or use this instead of the bank.
Speaker 2:Here's the thing as an investor, and you, you know this cause you like HELOCs, right. As long as HELOCs they don't, you know, take them away from us, like they did in the last recession, they're great, but I love leveraging cheap money. I love it. I will leverage the bank's money as long as I can. So, for example, like people are like, oh, with interest rates going up, did you, did you use that to buy your new car? Cause I got in a car wreck, totaled our car, and so we decided to buy a brand new car, which meant more money out of pocket. Right? We're like, oh, did you use your policy? I said Nope, I didn't.
Speaker 2:I ended up getting a 3.9% three-year loan on my car and I love it because that 3.9% is definitely less than what I would pay in interest to the insurance company, because they would charge me about 6% interest, right. So I'm like I'm going to go for that and even if they were, even I would still take the bank money, because that's money that's not mine, right? At least the life insurance. That's my money.
Speaker 2:So what do I use a life insurance cash for? I use that for things where the bank won't give me money or it's just not good terms. So I use it for things like the down payment of a house where they're not going to give me a mortgage. For. I'll use it for things where I'm investing for hard money or whatever it might be, where I'm lending my own money out or whatever it might be. That way, that's what I use it for. I that's what I use it for. I want as much cash as possible to be leveraged that way, and then I'll leverage the bank's money for the cheap money I get from them for everything else, and the cash value.
Speaker 1:You can tap into that without any penalty. So it's nothing like a 401k.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can get access 95% of whatever cash is in there at any time, assuming with certain companies. Some companies will put some restrictions on you. Like there's one company that they'll brag and actually this company we write with, to Mass Mutual, for example, they have a product where you can have 90% of your cash in there from day one, which is better than most of them where it's like usually eight, you know, maybe 75 to 80% day one, but that 90% though, they lock it up for a year so you can't touch it anyways, and then they charge you more over the life of that policy, so you end up getting ripped off over the long haul anyways. So I usually don't go that route. Even though it looks sexy up front, it's actually unsexy on the back end. But yeah, there's a lot of ways you can design it. But just having that cash, having that ability to use it. Oh, and here's the other thing too Not only does it grow tax-free, comes out tax-free, just like a Roth. There is no 59 and a half rule, so there are no 10% penalties. You can invest it, however, wherever you want and, even better, when you do get a loan, the loan doesn't have to be paid back. They will charge you interest. Every you know they charge you daily interest, the total to be like 6% or whatever it is per year, depending on the company, but you don't have to pay monthly payments on that. So if you're trying to do like a fix and flip type of scenario, where if you use the HELOC, you're going to still have to make the monthly payments, there's a little bit of expense there that you're floating. There's none of that with this. They'll charge you interest, but it's like a student loan and deferral, so you can. You can pay it back. However, deadline the balloon payment is due at your death. Is that your death? They will get their money back at that point. They'll take out the death benefit and then pay the rest of your family tax-free. So say that you had already borrowed out like $200,000 to use for deals, right and and, but you had a million dollar death benefit. Well, what they're going to do is they're going to pay. They're going to get paid back their 200,000 plus whatever interest you owed them, pay the rest of it, the $800,000, to your family tax-free.
Speaker 2:And as an investor, I know one of the biggest fears, and this comes up every time we go to a real estate mastermind is how do I protect my money from lawsuits and creditors? Any of that stuff. In most states, in almost all states in the country it is 100% protected from lawsuits and creditors. They cannot touch it. You can have millions in there, they can't touch it. You keep it in your savings account. They can get a lien on it just like that. Just pull it out if there's a judgment and it's gone right. But they cannot pull it out of your life insurance. So it's one of the safest places you can have it Most guaranteed and you're earning more than 0.0%. The guarantees are usually like three or 4% minimum guarantee, even though they've been paying about 5.5% to 6%, even in low interest rate environments.
Speaker 1:That sounds great. I personally I don't have one of those type of policies, but everything that you mentioned I mean it seems like a no brainer, is it? Last question on that is there a minimum like initial investment that you have to make when you open up these type of policies?
Speaker 2:It depends on how it's set up, the way we design it. We reverse engineer so we don't even worry about the death benefit. We figure out what's the minimum death benefit needed to allow X amount of dollars to go in every year. So we figure out what's the max you want to be able to contribute and then we reverse engineer to figure out that minimum death benefit. So say you want to put in a max of 25,000 a year, depending on your age and whatnot. Right, your minimum might be around five, $6,000 a year or so you know on that. So that's the guarantee. Now you could go lower and you don't have to do 25,000 a year.
Speaker 2:I would recommend I wouldn't consider doing this unless you're you're putting away, whether you're saving your retirement plans or you're saving on savings to invest in real estate or whatever it might be. I would recommend doing at least five or 10,000 a year as a max, which means your minimum is like a thousand or 2000 a year. You know, I'd recommend doing at least that much. If you don't, if you're paycheck to paycheck, don't do this strategy. I would just buy like a convertible term policy that can convert to a really good whole life down the road where you don't have to requalify your health and stuff. So just do term. If you're a paycheck to paycheck but you're saving at least five or 10 grand a year to invest, I would definitely look at this strategy.
Speaker 1:Well, Chris, you gave a wealth of information and I really appreciate you. What final advice or thoughts that you have for the audience that you would like to share? And then also, before you go, make sure to shout out your website, social media and how we can best reach you. So floor is yours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can find us at moneyripplescom. That's money ripples, not money nipples. You can also find all our social media at Money Ripples. We got our Money Ripples podcast, anything Money Ripples.
Speaker 2:The last advice you know, I want to kind of you know, I'm really kind of want to reiterate what we kind of both talked about right, which is, you know, if the masses have been doing something and it hasn't worked for years, why would you keep doing it? Right, Like that's the definition of insanity. It's doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Don't follow the masses, because the masses are not financially free. Do what's worked for us, right, and that's the thing is that you want to follow people that have actually been there, done that and still doing it today. That's the best model to always follow is find something that's proven to work Doesn't mean it's guaranteed, but, man, if I'm going to do anything, I'm going to take advice from anybody. I want to take advice from somebody who's not only done it for themselves but even helped others do it too. Proof is in the pudding.
Speaker 1:Show me what you've done. Talk to it, you know. Tell me the good, bad and the ugly too. If someone only tells you the good part yeah, you got to question that it's always going to be some level of work. But again, it's all about the systems. That's right. Well, again, I mean appreciate you and I'm going to include all your contact information in the show notes.
Speaker 1:And really appreciate you, Tom Chris, Really appreciate it. So, Chris, thank you again for joining the show and providing, you know, tremendous insights. You definitely enlightened us and you also challenged the wave of traditional norms that financial planners love to lay out. You know, the way you guided people to success financially is very inspiring. So really appreciate that. And, listeners, make sure to tap into Money Ripples. You can go to his website, moneyripplescom, or just add his podcast, Money Ripples Podcast, on all streaming platforms. Before you go, make sure to tap into my website, Moses the Mentor, and also go to YouTube and subscribe to Moses the Mentor as well. So until next time, keep grinding, keep opening your eyes to what's financially possible and enjoy the rest of your day, Peace.