Escape the Debt and Spending Cycle: New Rules for Building Wealth with Brian Muller | 082

Escaping the Financial Vortex: How to Break Free from the Debt and Spending Cycle with Brian Muller
Ever feel like you’re trapped in a financial vortex? Are you working harder, earning more, but somehow never getting ahead? You’re not alone. In this episode host Chris Luger sits down with financial coach Brian Muller to shred through the chaos of consumer debt, lifestyle creep, and the mental traps that keep us spinning our financial wheels.

Brian breaks down the Financial Vortex. This is a relentless cycle of overspending, debt, and paycheck-to-paycheck living. He shares practical, no-BS strategies to escape it for good. 

Together, we talk about mindset shifts, building real wealth, and what it means to live financially loud!

Whether you’re buried under credit cards, chasing that next raise, or just tired of watching your money vanish faster than a festival beer, this episode will help you slam the brakes and take control.

Listen now to learn:

• What the Financial Vortex really is (and why most people don’t see it)
• How to spot the warning signs before it pulls you under
• The mindset shifts that separate broke thinkers from wealth builders
• How to create systems that automate your escape plan

Contact Chris:

https://heavymetal.money

https://www.facebook.com/MoneyHeavyMetal

https://x.com/MoneyHeavyMetal

https://www.instagram.com/chrisluger

https://www.tiktok.com/@heavymetalmoney

email: chris at heavymetal.money

Resources and Links:

Connect with Brian
https://www.momentouswealthadvisors.com

Brian's 5 Minute Challenge:

1. Check your 401k, are you getting the full employer match?
2. Subscription Audit, remove/cancel at least one service
3.  Setup one automatic transfer into a Roth or Brokerage account
4. Shop and compare your home/auto insurance

Momentous Decisions: 7 Steps to Better Health, More Wealth, and a Richer Life

by Brian D. Muller

https://amzn.to/3LpnVJO

The Financial Vortex:
Why 74% of Young Workers Struggle to Save

https://youtu.be/adbY8zwmUW4?si=yUN0bd6w2wj31R00

Get Paid While You Drive To Work

https://heavymetal.money/get-paid-while-you-drive-to-work/

Earn Extra Cash With These Easy Side Hustles

https://heavymetal.money/easysidehustles/

Score Extra Cash with These 9 Kick-Ass Side Hustles

https://heavymetal.money/9sidehustles/

Donating Plasma as a Side Hustle

https://heavymetal.money/donating-plasma-as-a-side-hustle/

Meta Viewpoints: How to Earn Real Cash by Sharing Your Voice

https://heavymetal.money/metaviewpoints/

Can You Really Make Passive Income?

https://heavymetal.money/passive-income/

What is a Health Savings Account (HSA) and Why It Rocks!

https://heavymetal.money/hsa/

Seven Financial Mistakes I Regret: Lessons from My 20s and 30s

Contact Chris:
https://heavymetal.money

https://www.instagram.com/heavy_metal_money/

https://www.youtube.com/@heavymetalmoney

https://www.facebook.com/chrisluger

email: chris at heavymetal.money

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Are you trapped in the financial vortex? New rules for wealth building this week on the Extreme Personal Finance Show. All right, I'm excited to welcome back to the show Brian Muller. Brian is a certified financial advisor for over 25 years. He's also a certified life coach and an author. And Brian, welcome back to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

And first of all, Hey, thanks for having me, man.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Yeah, man. First of all, I gotta congratulate you on the book launch. How awesome is that?

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Thank you so much. Yeah, it was uh it was awesome. We put the book out, came out August 6th and did a big book release party, got the bad back together and had a had a great night. So it was it's really been fun. It's opened up a lot of doors for me. And uh I got a PR guy now, I guess you know I sent him a check every month, and uh he's getting me on. Uh I'll be on WCCO today. I was interviewed this morning. Saw that with Social Security Lies. So that'll be on today at four o'clock. So pretty exciting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

That's awesome. So just share a little bit about like um about the book and like what people can expect reading the book.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Yeah, it's I mean, it's everything I've learned about health, wealth, and life all in one book. I'm a certified life and health coach as well as an advisor. And I think what I've seen over the years with uh clients that have built up an enormous amount of wealth is there a lot of them aren't healthy enough to really enjoy it. I've had instances where clients you know retire, and three years later one of them gets sick. And it's really just a book about how can you live this richer life? And it's not just about money, it's about having the you know, the health and vitality to really be able to enjoy your life. But also, like there's some life coaching stuff in there too, like how to have better relationships with your spouse and your kids. It's just uh kind of a handbook for life, and there's an action plan and the seven steps chapter to uh help people kind of plan life out, like live life by design rather than by default. It'll help you help you get a better mindset around money, around health. It'll help you, you know, transform into somebody that that you probably won't recognize in a couple years by creating new standards in your life. And so it's uh I'm very proud of it. And if I never put out another book, I am working on another one right now. But if I never put out another book, it's I'm very proud of it.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

So that's awesome. Well, good for you. Again, congratulations on the book. Um But one thing that that I wanted us to talk about, you know, I was listening to your podcast, and just really quickly, so your podcast, uh Wealth Decisions, is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Yeah, Wealth Decisions by Brian is what it's called. The full title.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Right on, right on. So I was listening to your podcast, and it was interesting because many of us, right, we we're grown up, like once we get once we get our our you know, grown-up job, we're told, okay, save 15% of what you make, invest that into you know index funds, and just don't touch it, right? But now you know, housing, healthcare, child care, um, those costs have just exploded. And you you you mentioned something that the salaries really haven't been keeping up. So, like the old the old playbook that we know really doesn't work anymore. So you kind of talked about these three things that kind of come together in what you mentioned as the the financial vortex, and I want you to share a little bit about what this is and most importantly, what we can do about it.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Right. Yeah, I you know, when you look at like our parents, uh they probably bought a home and the mortgage was 20% or 25% of their income. And they probably put 20% down. A lot of people can't put 20% down. So um healthcare costs uh have gone up, you know, quite a bit. Child care costs are up a ton. And so we're we're trapped in this vortex where when we have an emergency, we we can't save as much as we'd like to because we're we're tapped out. Most people have their mortgage is 45, in some cases, 50% of their take-home pay, which is way above what any financial advisor recommends. They say 28% is where it should be. So there's no room. So you have to figure out a new formula, and that's what that episode was about the new retirement for formula save smarter, invest better, and keep more. And uh you have to start with looking at your lifestyle. Obviously, a lot of these folks, they're not really living above their means. They're just they're trapped in this vortex. If they have a problem or an emergency, they're they're putting it on a credit card, and then next thing you know, the credit card's building and building, and then they're always paying off their credit card and never getting back on track to save for retirement. So when you have salaries that have barely budged compared to all these costs, you you have an issue here where people don't have 15-20% to save. So you got to save smarter, you got to invest better, and you have to figure out how to keep more of your of your take-home pay. And that's what um the financial vortex uh has created for people. And there is a formula to get out of that and get on get on track to to be able to catch up with retirement savings if you feel like you're behind and make sure you you stay out of debt.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Yeah, I was I was really shocked. One of the stats that uh Goldman Sachs had had mentioned by the year 2033, about 55% of people under 50 are going to be living paycheck to paycheck.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Yeah. Yeah, and it's really high right now. Um people feel like they're living paycheck to paycheck, and some people are living above their means, but really it's not anyone's fault. Um we have inflation that doesn't feel like three percent. The Fed, you know, wants it to be at two and a half to three percent, but we know that's not the real inflation, right? I'm actually working out an episode right now called the inflation lie, and it's not, you know, it's it's 40%, you know, based upon all the different things we spend money on. Um, when you really look at what infl inflation means to us, it's uh it's it's almost uh unsustainable. And you know, you go out, I don't know if you've bet out recently, but I went out to a concert and I paid$35 for a vodka and soda. I'm like, all right. Next time I'm drinking at home.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

I know that's absolutely ridiculous.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

I'm just yeah, when is that gonna stop? What is it gonna be like where to point where people are like, I'm I'm not paying that?

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yeah. Well, and it's it's across the board too. I mean, it's even like I think we talked, may have talked about this earlier. I mean, insurance too. I mean, just you know, in addition to you know, housing, your your housing expenses, but if once you add, you know, homeowners insurance and taxes, and it it really starts to be out of reach, it's out of control.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Yeah. Yeah, and and you know, so what can we do about I just had two clients, they they got quotes from different insurance companies for their homeowner's insurance in their car. And they that's your big win. And I I know we'll probably get into that a little bit more in the episode, but your big win is reducing those costs, it's not skipping buying lattes, which, yes, that is expensive too if you add it up every day. But the big wins are gonna be the things that can allow you to give have room in your budget to start saving more. And a big win would be insurance. You can save my client saved about twelve hundred dollars a year just by getting some quotes. I had another client that reduced his insurance costs by$4,000. So, but he has a you know a lot of other properties and things like that. So, you know, a lot of us kind of buy insurance and we set it and forget it, right? We think we got the best deal and we let it go. And but that's that's a quick win, right there, is is get three quotes from different insurance companies and redirect that money that you save into saving in a taxable investment account or a Roth IRA or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Yeah, that's great. So well, so let's continue with that. What are some of the things to say that people can do to save Smarter, right? Some of those other guaranteed wins. What are some other things you would recommend people do?

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yeah, I think you know the biggest guaranteed win for saving Smarter is make sure you get your match. Like if you have a 401k that has a match, I I run across a lot of people. I ask them, are you maxing out your 401k? And a lot of people think maxing it out is going up to the match. Some people are not even putting enough money in their 401k to get the match, they're leaving free money on the table every single year. And most most 401ks, you know, most companies will match up to 50% to the first six percent that you contribute. So if you contribute six percent, you'll get three percent. But some people are not even doing that, they're leaving that free money on the table. But also, if you can save more than that six percent, you have to you have to figure out a way to do that. Um, and don't just go from six percent to fifteen percent. That's gonna be tough at first. Increase it by one percent, you know, every six months or every year. And by the time you do that every single year, next thing you know, you're getting closer and closer to the match. And you don't miss one percent. You'll miss ten percent.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Um, and obviously, if you can do ten percent, do that.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Yeah, and you might want to even talk to you know, talk to your employer. Sometimes they may be able to do like an automated where it just automatically increases one percent every year. And it that's like that's you know, if it's automated, it's even better because then you you don't have to worry about it.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

So yeah, and that's the second smart move is automate it before you see it. You know, you okay, perfect. You gotta you know wealthy people, yeah. Wealthy people, they they don't budget, they allocate. They have the money comes in and it gets allocated places. And if it's in your checking account, you know, if money's visible, it's spendable, right? We know this. It's psychology. If it's there, you're gonna spend it. And the solution is to get it out of your checking account, away from your bank, somewhere in a brokerage account, a place that you can't get easy access to, and automate, you know, 5% to go into a taxable investment account or a Roth IRA. If you automate it, that's that's your system. That's what wealthy people do, is they allocate. They don't budget, they allocate.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Dude, I love that. I'm gonna put that on a t-shirt. That's pretty good. I'll I'll give you I'll give you credit, but I'm gonna put that on a t-shirt. So, and that's that's I I really do like that. Like I've done that with like my emergency fund, right? That's in a separate bank. Money goes into the emergency fund. I never see it. When I look at my balances or I'm you know doing something, I never really see it. And that's kind of the best way that it works for me. So you're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Right. Yeah, yeah, you gotta you gotta automate that. And I think the third smart move is to you know, get a financial plan, get a personalized plan. People that have a personalized plan have, I think, a 27% higher savings and income ratio. So when you have a plan and you start like really following your net worth and building your wealth, you have a much better chance of you know really being on track and getting on track if you're off track. So create a financial plan. Even if it's just a simple one, if you work with a financial advisor, they can help you create a comprehensive plan. But there's a lot of great resources out there that help you create a financial plan. And a financial plan is not an Excel spreadsheet. Uh yes, that's fine, but that doesn't factor in inflation and taxes. I had a client come in and show me his Excel spreadsheet. He was super proud about. And he said, Well, I figure I can take out this much money when I retire. And I said, Well, you got to factor in taxes and inflation in your financial plan. It's not, it can't be just a spreadsheet. So there's some great uh financial planning tools out there that are you know very reasonable to work with that just make sure that they have those types of things to factor in uh inflation and taxes, which are the the two biggest wealth killers out there.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Sure, absolutely, absolutely. So there were there were kind of three main tools that you talk about in your podcast. So we just talked about save smarter, and then you talked about ways that you can bet better. Talk a little bit about what that means and how people can do that.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Yeah, so you a lot there's a lot of people out there doing some type of side hustles. Um, the bet better or invest better uh segment is just like, you know, number one is think about some strategic side income. There's a lot of things you can do. You don't have to go DoorDash, but you could do something in your field. You could consult, you could do whatever matches your skills. You know, just$200 a month that you could make on a side hustle invested from$30 to$65 at a 7% annual return is like$325,000. So um it doesn't have to be like something that takes up a ton of your time. And the the other way is just some type of passive income that actually works. You know, rent unused assets. If you have a parking spot you don't use, rent it out on Spot Hero. You know, if you have a spare room in your house, I know I think you did some house hacking at one point in your your life, didn't you?

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Yeah. So, you know, rent out a room. Use that that passive income from uh a room that's rented and invest that for the future. And the big thing out there now is like digital products, even if you have any creativity, you can create digital products that can bring in two to five hundred dollars a month. Anything you can do to bring in some type of you know, side income without taking a ton of your time and invest that for the future, that's gonna that's gonna help you immensely build wealth and and get back on track if you're behind.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

That's awesome. Yeah. And you again, you can go visit um my blog at heavymetal.money, and I got tons of articles on different side hustles, different ways that you can um earn passive income. A lot of them I've tried and some of them worked and worked well. I mean, I've done everything from you know, I run uh an Amazon store, I sell products on Amazon, both from a wholesale perspective and also online and retail arbitrage. Again, I'm spending an hour or two a day, but you can earn five hundred bucks a month, a thousand bucks a month. It all depends on you know how much time you want to put in and what kind of products you're getting. That's awesome. That's that's a good side hustle for me. And you mentioned renting spots out, yeah. I actually used neighbor, like once my kids were gone, you know, I have a three-car garage. I actually used the neighbor app to rent the third stall in my garage, so someone just stored their boat there during the nice, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:45

So you're the ultimate hacker, man. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

I've well, and that's the thing. I could talk about so many side awesome. Get this. I did one called Rapify. This was right before COVID. So I was driving every day for work, right? I would drive to to um when I had my W-2, I would drive to customers' sites throughout the cities. I used a company called Rapify, they would wrap my truck in an ad, right? Vinyl wrap. Um, it just so happened, mine was Zoom. Nice, right? Then the the meeting platform. And literally, as I'm driving, you they give you a little GPS puck you put in your vehicle. You run the app on your phone, and it tracks where you are and the time of day. I know, and then so basically at the end of the day, you would look and see, oh, I earned$36 that day. And it all adds up, and I had to go right into my brokerage account. And it was an awesome side hustle. It didn't, it was totally passive, didn't have to do anything.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Yeah, that's the ultimate passive income, right? Is is is passive income you don't have to spend any time on. That's huge. That's awesome, man. I I uh I'm so uh like watching you from afar for a couple years here. It's been really fun to to and it I know it's not just been two years you've been doing this. I mean, you've been working at this for a while. Uh the fire movement and all the things you're doing, so that's pretty awesome. Um the the the third way of bet better investing is is just smarter investment allocations. You know, a lot of people they do the same strategy in all their different accounts. Well, your Roth IRA, for instance, should be in more growth than aggressive growth investments, um, because that money grows tax-free. So put your growth investments, actively managed funds, things like that, um, or you know, growth or aggressive growth ETFs in your Roth. In your in your IRA, if you have an IRA and not a 401k, you know, real estate investment trusts, fixed income, actively traded funds, put those types of investments and be a little put your more conservative investments in your IRA if you if you're close to retirement. Qualified dividend stocks in your taxable account. You know, being smart with it's not about just asset allocation, it's about asset location. Where are you putting your different types of investments? So being smart with that, you know, Goldman also did some research and said that you know, modest allocation to private markets, which we now have access to in 401ks, can add 0.5% in excess returns over time. And that doesn't sound like a lot, but over a career, that's 14% higher retirement savings just by taking advantage of some of the things that are now available. You have private equity, private credit now available in 401ks. I think cryptocurrency will eventually be in there, um like Bitcoin ETFs and things like that. And I do believe you should have, and this is not a recommendation because I can't make recommendations, but you should have probably a 3-5% allocation to Bitcoin using like a Bitcoin ETF. It's it's a it's really you know one of these things that it took a long time to be widely accepted, but it is like digital gold and it's not going anywhere. It's going to be around, there's a limited supply, and there's a lot of money going there. Um, so having some exposure to crypto, I would avoid all the other coins and all this stuff out there, but having some exposure to the colour.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

You don't want me to invest in the Haktua coin?

SPEAKER_00 19:19

I mean, is there one?

SPEAKER_01 19:20

There was one. There was like a lawsuit, and it was like a big deal anyway. Yeah. Um, that you know, you just hit something I wanted to ask you now that I got you on here. Gold hit all-time high. And I want your thoughts on like precious metals and what like percentage of a portfolio should be invested in stuff like gold and silver. What are your what are your thoughts there?

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Yeah, it's it's funny you said I'm I'm actually working on an episode uh about gold and stocks because very I've been doing this for 25 years, and I very rarely have seen a period where both gold ad stocks are hitting all-time highs at the same time. Now, gold has come down from their highs, but I I I was I've never seen that because gold is like an asset where it's more fear-driven. People go there when they're fearful, and that hasn't been the case. People have just been going there because they don't want to miss out on it. And you have countries like China who've been buying gold, a ton of gold, more gold than they've ever bought over the last three to five years. So you have a huge, a lot of people wanting gold. They want real assets because um I think inflation is going to be a problem again. You know, when we have the government, you know, printing another trillion in debt every 90 days, you know, the only way out of this is to inflate out of it. And they're investing in precious metals themselves. They want to own real assets. They're investing in companies like Intel, I think they took a 10% stake in. I think gold, more so than I ever have, probably should be an allocation in your portfolio. Um, it doesn't have to be just gold, it could be a precious metals ETF, like you were talking about, like a silver and gold ETF. This isn't a recommendation, but I think having a modest allocation to gold, maybe 5% of a portfolio, uh, makes some sense. But it is at all-time highs. It is a volatile asset. But I think having some gold, if the markets do correct and they will, um, gold will probably hold up because it's going up because everybody wants to own it, the fear of missing out. But if the markets go down, gold will the fear gauge will kick in and people will want to buy gold too. But I do think gold probably more so than ever. I've never really recommended gold. It's usually in like some funds, like gold mining companies or something like that. But I I do think that uh that gold should be part of an allocation. But you certainly don't shouldn't go run out and put 30% of your portfolio in gold. It just um there's no earnings, there's nothing that supported other than fear and greed, and that's not a really a good equation.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

So like you know, I've always thought that gold was just that hedge against inflation. It was like, but just recently it's just been so crazy, you know. But anyway, sorry for the the tangent there. That was yeah, different conversation.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

No, that's I mean, it it's on a lot of people's minds. So I'm glad you brought that up.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, the oh back to like that that third tool. So we talked about different ways that we can save smarter, different ways, you know, look for um market allocation, side hustle stuff, but also how can we keep more of what we earn, right? So what's that next tool there?

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Yeah, and keep more, you know, obviously the insurance optimization that we already touched on. Um go out and get some quotes for your home and owner's insurance. Those are fixed expenses that can be reduced. You know, the average savings by by just getting some quotes is$600 to$1,200 a year. And over, you know, 30 years, that's a investing that's a that's a big chunk towards your retirement. You can save 10 to 25% just by increasing your deductible, bundling home and auto and things like that. A lot of people do that, um, but they never get a get another quote from two or three companies. They just stick with their their insurance. Um, another way is to just do a subscription audit. This is not as big, this isn't as big of a win, but I just looked through all my subscriptions and I saved 80 bucks a month by just subscriptions I just forgot about that I had. Go through them all on if you have Apple as your phone, you can go through and you can look at them all right on there and go, well, I'm not using that anymore. So I I was able to free up about$80 a month. And that's not a huge one, the subscription audit, but um, we are wasting money. And if you have a gym membership you don't use, you're not going to the gym, you know, get rid of it. Streaming services maybe that you replaced.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Uh that's a win. That's a win.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

I think that is a win for sure.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

And yeah, I mean, you like we all got rid of cable. Right. Exactly. We all get rid of cable to save money. Now our streaming is right right back to where cable prices were because we're we got Netflix, we got you know Paramount, we got HBO Max, and we don't need all those. We shouldn't be watching TV. If you want to get ahead in life, you should be reading books.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

That's right. That's right. You know, also while you're going through that audit, um, I I recently just did this, and again, it's it's a little bit, but it all adds up. I did things like I realized that my my home internet, my ISP, their prices went up, and I was paying like$110 a month for it, it was like one and a half gigabits, right? And I just called them and we're like, can I just go back down to gigabit? Sure, save me 30 bucks a month. And then I called my I called my uh uh my garbage service. It's like you know, it's been on the same size container, the same payment every three months. I'm like, is there any specials or promotions you have? Oh sure, save another 20 bucks a month. Like if you call and just ask, yeah, you can get like a hundred bucks a month, you know. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Yeah, yeah. And I think the like the energy thing, like I have my energy bill in my house is like$500 a month. And I I didn't even know about some of the other options you had with with your energy stuff, like spreading it out where it's not you know so high in the winter. Um, there's ways you can you can reduce that cost as well. Uh I think it's just coming down to like set up a plan. I I kind of had a five-minute challenge uh for people on just to do three of these moves right now. You know, the subscription audit, make sure you're getting your full match, and just you know, spend some time and then next week shop your homeowner's insurance and audit some more subscriptions, maybe calculate a side hustle potential. You know, look at one skill you could monetize for an extra$200 a month, and then one month from now meet with a financial advisor or set up a financial plan. And one thing I didn't talk about with keep more is like HSA accounts. Most people are not doing HSAs, they are you know the super secret retirement account because you they you get triple tax advantage. And when you're 65, you can take money out of it, it's just treated like uh an IRA basically at that time. So, you know, make sure you look into HSA accounts. They are the best way because you get the tax deduction plus tax-free growth. If you use it for healthcare, it's tax-free. If you're over 65, you can take that money out for any reason. You just have to pay the taxes. Those are the secret retirement account uh to help you keep more of your hard-earned money.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

I love that. And HSAs too, um, you know, talk to your employer if if they do have one, because you also could get free money. I know when I had my HSA, my employer, um, part of my family plan, they would put in fifteen hundred bucks every year. So every January, that was free money I got contributed to that account.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Yeah, that's huge. And the the the one caveat is you have to have a high deductible health care uh plan. So, but uh for most people, unless you have some health issues, that's the the better way to go anyway.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

So, would you think that this financial vortex that people are kind of stuck in? As I was listening to your episode, I was out on my walk, getting my steps in, listening to your episode, and I'm like, is this like the new middle class trap?

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Yeah, that's it. I mean, it is it's something that sucks people in, and it just it's like a like a whirlpool, and you can't get out of it unless you start doing some things actively to get out of it. You know, I always used to say, like, if you if you say this expression is I only make enough, you know, just to get by, or if you say something like, I just make enough to pay the bills, well, that's what you're gonna continue to get. You can figure out a way to get out of this vortex. If you don't, it's just gonna keep sucking you further in and you're gonna get further and further ahead. You know, if you just take some steps, save money, save smarter, invest better, and keep more, you you follow some space specific strategies, you're gonna have some wins. And the more wins, small wins you can have, they build and build on on top of each other. And next thing you know, you're out of it. Now, obviously, some of us can't move. Like we're we're stuck at a house, we can't afford to buy it. Like, I couldn't afford to buy my own house for myself right now. It's gone up so much in value and interest rates are so high. But you could move somewhere a little further away, so it might have a longer commute, but you could save costs. Um, you know, some of us are stuck with certain fixed expenses that we can't get out of like our mortgage or our car payment. But if your car payment is higher than what you're saving for retirement, something needs to change. You're you're driving around a car way too expensive for your lifestyle just to impress people that don't care.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

So there's definitely things there. If you're buying, if you if you have a car that's more than 8% of your your monthly payments more than 8% of your gross income, you know, you're you're you're driving around a car that's too expensive. So that's definitely something that you need to look in. That's probably a tough one for most people because they're they're used to driving a zer, nice car. They don't want to look like uh, you know, a popper driving around a Honda Accord from 1992. But um if you want to build wealth, you have to be smart.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Yeah, and and once you start to live without having a car payment, it's really hard to go back to having a car payment.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Yeah. Yeah, you know that.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Yeah, yeah. So I was gonna I was gonna mention too, you know, you mentioned something about you know uh those little decisions like you know, don't go buy a latte every day, whatever. And that reminded me of something where you know, start paying attention to the thirteen thousand dollar, the thirty thousand dollar decisions versus the three dollar decisions, like the big rocks, right? You know, what are some of those other things that people can do? Because, you know, you and I talked about how the three biggest expenses are like housing, transportation, and food. If you're gonna make those big rocks, what are some of those things people can do?

SPEAKER_00 30:57

Obviously, with uh, you know, if you're eating out every single day, you know, a really easy way to save$200,$300 a month is is is to cook from home, do some meal planning, uh, don't eat out every single day. That is a huge expense, and it's just gotten higher and higher. I just went and got a salad the other day at uh some fancy salad place. Like it was$22. I'm like, what am I doing? I can make a salad at home for like two cents, right? But it is pretty darn good because they mix it up really nice with a lot of good fixings. Obviously, that that's that's something that you can do to to lower some of your costs. The the car, the car hacking, like make sure you're not driving a car that's you know the the more the payments 20% of your income. That's just insane. I did that, I wrote did an episode where I talked about my biggest mistakes in my 25 years, and that was one of them. It was driving a car that was way too expensive just to impress people that didn't care.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Okay, what kind of car was it? You gotta tell me.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Um, and then the housing stuff. I bought a BMW five years into being an advisor and thought it was like, you know, it was the car payment was I wouldn't even buy that car, make that have that car payment right now. It was insane. Um I I thought that I I needed to look more successful. And actually, my clients didn't like it. They didn't like the fact that I had a nice car. They thought I was paid, they thought they were paying me too much. So it actually worked out, you know, negatively towards uh not just me, but like for clients' perception and whatnot. So I, you know, get it get that whole like ego, set that aside, drive a car that's affordable. It's you know, the when you buy a car, the the fun feeling of owning it wears off in 90 days anyway. Yeah, obviously the housing is is a tough one, but if you have a spare room, uh do some house hacking, rent it out. Um, you know, if you're in a home that's too expensive and you you can't move, that's that's a tough one. But um wait for interest rates to come down. Maybe you locked in at six and a half, seven percent, refinance that. But don't just refinance because your mortgage guy says you can do it. Wait till rates are more reasonable. But you can save a ton of money by refinancing from 7% to 5%. Um extend that out. And then once you get back on track and you're you're saving again, then you're you're not worried about going into debt again or creating credit card debt. Because that's the biggest thing. They said that the average person can't come up with$500 for an emergency. So this first step really should be get in an emergency account. I forget about the six months of expenses that everyone says you should have. Like just get$2,000 in a high yield savings account and just have something there. Focus on that so that you have something to fall back on if you have an emergency rather than going into debt.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

Yeah, my emergency was uh a rusted out uh water heater, but it was like$600. But the good part is that I had an emergency fund in place so it wasn't something catastrophic, right? So that was again, it wasn't six months of expenses, but it was enough to cover the emergency.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

I know the rules have changed, right? The old playbook that our parents had, right, is not the same. I guess as we kind of wrap up today, what are some like the the big takeaway you want someone, if they feel like they're going down this vortex, right? They're stuck in that the the middle class trap, what's that first step they can do? Is it just a mind shift mindset shift that I can get out of this?

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Yeah, I think you you have to stop think having a scarcity mindset and have more of an abundance mindset instead of saying I only make enough to get by, figure out a way to get by with less or make some side hustle income so that you're not always thinking that. We all have the ability to to figure out how to save more and to live a richer life. We just sometimes get lazy with things or we don't have the energy to do it because we're stressed out. You know, take care of your health so that you're not stressed out. Do some meditating, do some journaling, do something to get yourself in the right frame of mind. Reading self-development books has helped me a ton over the years. It's what inspired my book and what inspired me to actually write a book like I'd ever thought it was possible, because I did do well in English class back at high school. So um, but I did it. And you can you can do anything you set your mind to. And I think you just you got to start somewhere. So the first step would just be to log into your 401k, make sure you're getting your employer match. Are you contributing enough to get your full match? If not, increase that contribution and then increase it by 1% every single year. Step two is just set up one automatic transfer from checking to a Roth IRA or brokerage account. And I don't care if it's$50, automate it, make it invisible, create the habit, and then build upon that. And then just step three, maybe, is just do go look through and just cancel one subscription. Start there. And then from there, look through the rest of them and do an audit. And then digging deeper, you know, get on the horn and get three quotes for your homeowner's insurance, your car insurance. You're gonna be able to save potentially a lot of money.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

That's awesome. Awesome, Brian. This was super awesome. And for those of you that maybe um, you know, at the gym or driving, I'm gonna put um those steps in the show notes so you can come back and let's dive in and do those. I love that challenge. I think it's great. And those of you that also are listening, if you didn't catch the previous episode, go listen to that. I had Roxanne on from Finance Rocks, who is a certified habit coach. So you can listen to her advice with Brian's advice, put them together and start taking the world by storm, man. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 37:14

Nice, nice, Brian.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

Before I let you go, let people know where they can find more about you and if you know if they want to reach out to you and get some help.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Yeah, I have uh my channel on YouTube is Wealth Decisions by Brian, and you can go to my website, momentouswealthadvisors.com, and I have all the podcast episodes, and I have a lot of blog stuff, uh, a lot of blog posts uh on a lot of these topics. And uh you can get a lot of information on any website. You have great resources, Chris. I love all the stuff that you've put out there. The tools are available, you know. Our parents didn't have YouTube, they didn't have all this stuff to be able to figure out how to create a better life. And so the wisdom of the world is available, right?

SPEAKER_01 38:01

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Just got to take some time.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

That's awesome. Well, thank thanks again, Brian. I really appreciate your time. Thank you, everyone, for watching and listening. Wherever you get your podcast, please like, subscribe, and share with others. And we'll see you next time on the Extreme Personal Finance Show. See ya.