Early Retirement Expert: A House Vs Stocks, Here's The Truth!

0:00 If you don't get in the game of homeownership and you rent in your twenties and you rent in your thirties, you're gonna turn around in your forties and having not built any net worth. And in fact, homers in America are worth forty Hindsight. More than renters. And I'm talking about ordinary Americans. But that doesn't mean that buying a home made them rich, right? It actually does. And I'm gonna go through that. But am I not better off renting and investing in the stock market? I wanna bust this myth, because I have sp I spent the last 33 years of my life helping millions of people with ordinary incomes become financially free. Including nine years as a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley, and I got to see firsthand. Help everyone who came into my office with an ordinary income built well. And there's a formula to getting rich.

0:44 But there's also a system to how you put your financial life on autopilot in less than 10 minutes. And it doesn't require discipline, budget, and you don't have to make a lot of money to get started. But unless your financial plan is automatic, it will fail. But more importantly, I believe the next 10 years will be the greatest opportunity to build wealth in our lifetime. And yet seven out of ten people right now are living paycheck to paycheck. More than 50% of Americans don't have savings. And most people don't know where their money goes. And in fact, when we ask people how much money would it take to totally change your life, they say$10,000. Now, how much money do you need to spend a day to blow$10,000 a year?$27.40 a day. If you invested that a day for 40 years, you'd have over$4,424,000. That would be life changing.

1:29 But just before we get into all of the specifics and the strategies, do you have any specific advice to people that are currently struggling with debt? Absolutely. There's a very simple formula to getting out of debt called DOL. I'd tell you to Just give me thirty seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.

2:00 And if you enjoy what we do here. Please join the twenty four percent of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm gonna make to you. I'm gonna do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're gonna deliver the guest that you want me to speak to, and we're gonna continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you.

2:24 What has your mission been for the last Three decades. I have spent the last thirty years of my life.

2:38 Helping ordinary people. People with ordinary incomes. Become financially free. And the last twenty years I spent helping people become automatic millionaires. So I love to teach. Anyone at any income level, minimum wage, living paycheck to paycheck, you might be in debt, you might be struggling.

2:57 I've Taught. Millions of people how they can improve their life financially. That's what I've been dedicated to.

3:03 And I spent thirty three years total in the financial service industry. And is this conversation just for people that are in their twenties? Or is it applicable to Everybody at every age. It's applicable to everybody every age, because whatever your age is Yeah, s look, Steven, so many people are living paycheck to paycheck right now.

3:20 In this country what's happening right now is that Seven out of ten people are being left behind financially. Seven out of ten people right now are living paycheck to paycheck. When you go into looking at finances in America today. Half of Americans can't get their hands on a thousand dollars. in case emergency purposes.

3:39 And my biggest fear why I updated this book and why I decided to come back out one more time and do another financial literacy campaign. is I'm afraid people are being left behind. I think with AI right now, the next 10 years is gonna be the greatest opportunity to build wealth. In our lifetime. That's the good news.

3:58 The bad news is a lot of people being left behind. My goal today next hour is very simple. I wanna give you the system on how to become an automatic millionaire. At any age level. at any income level.

4:09 What I'm gonna teach you is how to put your financial life on autopilot. In less than ten minutes. Because when your financial life is automatic. Your habits Work.

4:20 automatically. And an automatic financial life. Doesn't require discipline. Doesn't require a budget. And you don't have to make a lot of money to get started.

4:32 Why should people be taking advice from you on this subject matter. What's what have you done in those thirty three years? I've been doing this my entire life, right? So if you go all the way back. I started investing at the age of seven. And how that happened is I had a grandmother, amazing grandmother, her name was Grandma Rose.

4:48 At thirty, she made a decision that changed the whole destiny of our family. The decision she made was She won't be poor anymore. And at thirty on a very cold day on her birthday. She turned to my grandfather and she said

5:01 We don't have any money. We're living paycheck to paycheck. And I don't want to retire here. I want to go to California. I want to be where it's warm.

5:09 And my grandfather said, Well, what do you want to do about it? She's like We need to change what we're doing, or nothing will change. So my grandmother started saving fifty cents. A week.

5:19 out of her paycheck. So fifty cents each,'cause they were like Middle class people, right? Didn't have a college education. My grandfather worked in a plant, my grandmother worked in retail. But she started saving small amounts of money.

5:33 And over her lifetime she became an investor. And she became a self made millionaire. My first book, which you have sitting over here, was a book called Smart Women Finish Rich. It was the lessons that my grandmother taught me. So от севен Маграмотер тут ми до Макдоналдс. And she taught me a lesson that would change my life.

5:51 She said, David, you're sitting here eating McDonald's and cheeseburgers and your French fries and your milkshake. She said, I'm gonna teach you today how to be rich for real. You like to play Monopoly? Here's my lesson today. She said there's three types of people. Those like you

6:06 Who are here eating right now, you're what's called a consumer. She said the people over there who have been working They're Called employees. And they've been working for minimum wage.

6:17 And that's a very hard way to live. She's they make eight at the time they made eighty five cents an hour. And she said the third type of person is the person who owns this place. They're called an investor. And she said, Today I'm gonna teach you how to buy stock at McDonald's. So that when you come to McDonald's, you'll make money from everybody who's here. When your friends come to McDonald's, you'll make money from them.

6:38 And you'll be an owner of McDonald's. She took me down to a brokerage firm. Help me buy my first share of stock at McDonald's. That moment changed my life because what she made me realize is like Everything that we do. I'm seven years old.

6:53 Everything that we do. There's an opportunity to be an investor and own that. So like at nine years old, I'm at Disney. I'm like, Hey Mickey Mouse, are you public? So I was like a not a normal kid.

7:05 In that way because I start investing at a young age. But then I made a lot of mistakes. Then I went to college, then I got myself in credit card debt. Then I believed all the myths that young people often believe. I believed I couldn't really invest a lot until I made a lot of money.

7:24 So my early twenties I was making money but spending everything. So I was Went from making nothing to making fifty thousand dollars a year. And I'm still broke. I'm like, well, it's not enough money. So I went to seventy five thousand dollars a year.

7:38 Still bro. Spending more. Then I got to a hundred thousand dollars a year in income. Lot of money, right? In my twenties, oh my god, I'm rich. No, I was still spending more than I was making. At that point

7:50 I was a financial advisor. And also joke. That was my job. I was working at Morgan Stanley. Helping people plan for retirement. Teaching retirement seminars. А мета з орний коплета камінь у майофис за фіті твої.

8:05 Jim and Sue McIntyre. They had an ordinary job. That year they had made a little over fifty three thousand dollars. There Average income over their lifetime was forty thousand dollars. And at fifty two, Jim

8:18 On a table in front of me. I sat there and added them up and they had a net worth of one point eight million dollars. And I sat back at a table just like this and said How did you do this?

8:33 And they had just been in my class for four weeks. Like, David, we did a lot of what you talked about. But we didn't have a budget. 'Cause budgets don't work. And they talked about why budgeting didn't work for them. They said we put everything on autopilot.

8:46 We saved money automatically for everything. And that was the moment that changed my life. I realized that day As somebody who is living paycheck to paycheck with a high income These people had half the income that I did.

9:01 And they were able to retire at fifty two. I was in my mid twenties. And I realized that if I didn't start saving and investing. I didn't change. Nothing was gonna change. And I would never have the financial freedom that they had.

9:16 And so I went home that day. And I changed everything in my life. Now I had a lot of bad habits, so I had a lot of things that needed to be changed. You were the senior vice president at Morgan Stanley when you stepped down. And you

9:30 soon after wrote this book called Smart Women Finish Rich. It begs the question, what are the differences that you saw? through your process of financial education that Women face versus men. I started I was in business with my father. And we had a lot of older clients.

9:46 And I would sit in on meetings one after another with widows. So in the first month of my career. I sat in three meetings with three widows. Where the husband had dropped dead suddenly. And my dad at the time was teaching.

10:00 These women how to read the broker statements. How to write checks. And how to know if they would have enough money. And I thought This is crazy. I said to my daughter for the third appointment.

10:10 God, what are you what what's going on here? He's like, Well, what do you mean? I go, Well You're teaching these women when their husband has just died. how to handle their finances. He said David. Not all women are like your grandmother.

10:22 Your grandmother was a rarity. And I said, Yeah, that's crazy. I'm gonna go out and teach a class for women and money. And When I started choosing glass room money, here's what I learned.

10:32 Here are the things that make women different than men when it comes to money. Women first of all live longer than men. Which means they need more money than men do. The average age of widowhood in America when I wrote that book originally was fifty seven, Steven. Now it's fifty nine.

10:49 Okay, you do all these shows on longevity. It seems like everybody's living forever. They're not. Okay. The average age of widowhood in America is fifty nine years old. When you say widowhood, you mean the age in which uh a woman becomes a widow. Exactly. They're married and they lose their husband. Okay. Okay, so so women are often wiped out when that happens financially. Second thing is that women are hurt more than men when it comes to divorce. The third thing that affects women is they work fewer years. I'm thinking these are just the the the the statistical realities. Women work fewer years than men because they have children.

11:22 So that's an average of somewhere between seven to eleven years less, and that's less money going into soul security. Retirement accounts. And it affects their earnings, and often they earn less. So what I have taught for th nearly thirty years now is as a woman, I don't care what your situation is. I don't care if you're an entrepreneur, I don't care if you're a stay at home mother.

11:43 I don't care if you're married to local bank president. I don't care if you're married, singled, widowed, divorced. As a woman You have to be in charge your finances. Period.

11:52 Drop the mic. End of discussion. You can't delegate your financial well being. To anyone else. You have to be in charge. Now, I will also tell you, Stephen, that women make better investors than men.

12:06 They they be better versus than men because often women don't trade like men do. And they are they do more research before they invest. And their performance is better. They're way better at long term investing than men are. I heard some stats once upon a time that men are

12:23 m the majority of the gambling addicts. Well, I'm sure there the majority of the gambling addicts and also when you look at trading,'cause trading's become a very big thing, but trading's always been a thing. Trading meaning trading like trading stocks, buying and selling stocks, now it's buying and selling cryptocurrency. Buying and doing selling options all these things are primarily men doing it. And they don't make money'cause the bulk of people who trade Lose money.

12:47 Day in the Day out. And you're out. I teach a philosophy which is this. Your money and your investments should be boring.

12:55 Your life should be interesting, your investments should be boring. Someone's coming to a cocktail party talking about their investments. And it's exciting. Something's wrong with it. Why?

13:07 Because sexy is how you go broke. When it comes to money. Boring is beautiful when it becomes when it's about your wealth. So

13:17 even driving over here, my son was just like, Yeah, why aren't you trading Tesla stock? I'm like, You know why I'm not trading Tesla stock? Because you can't make money trading. You gotta figure out when to buy, when to sell I want my kids investing in index funds. I have my clients investing in index funds. Boring is beautiful when it comes to money. Before we get into the real specifics and the tactical strategies and um

13:41 We think about a bunch of the sort of things you said about debt and credit cards and saving and getting out of debt and how to become wealthy and an automatic millionaire. Is there anything we should discuss as it relates to the broader context of what's going on in the world, whether it's wealth inequality, whether it's the amount of people that are living paycheck to paycheck. What I'm trying to get a picture on what the the state of financial wealth looks like in the Western world. Yeah, well, so let's talk, you know, when people talk about economies, here's here's the economy that matters. In my opinion. your economy.

14:10 Meaning the person that's listening, the economy that you're c in control of is yours. You're not in control over What's gonna happen with interest rates. What's gonna happen with geopolitical things, what's gonna happen with AI. The only economy that you can control. Is yours.

14:25 Now here's the question. Are you working? Most cases the answer's yes. The average person will work ninety thousand hours over their lifetime. So if you are a dual income household

14:38 You're gonna work somewhere between ninety Two hundred thousand hours, the two of you. Over your lifetime. You're going to actually make millions of dollars over your lifetime.

14:51 The question is with your own economy, are you going to keep Any of the money. And the sad thing for many people is that they're not. I I say most people have what I call a no plan plan. Money comes in.

15:05 Money goes out. And they say, Well I don't know where the money all went. And I go That's called the No Plan Plan. A person who's an automatic millionaire, the moment money comes in, they have a plan. For exactly where it's gonna go, and that start with paying themselves first.

15:20 automatically. A lot of people listen to this and if I go back If I go back just over 10 years in my life, I would have been sat listening to this conversation in seven thousand pounds of debt. And I would have thought, God, like um becoming a millionaire, that's a that's a million miles away. No pun intended.

15:37 I I to become a millionaire, I'm gonna have to Earn so much more money. And at the time I was working in call centres. It w it we just felt so far away. And I say, you know, people uh struggling to feed their children, let alone become a millionaire.

15:51 I is it far away? For the average person. It's far away if you don't know the strategy. There's a strategy to getting out of debt. There's a strategy building well. There's a system.

16:02 How much of it is just earning more money? Because when I have these conversations on my show, I think the surprisingly untouched territory Is We don't teach people how to Become more valuable.

16:14 So that they can earn more money. A lot of it's about like index phones or savings, whatever. But how much of it is just like I need to get higher valued skills in the market. We know for a fact that making more money doesn't make you rich. So so people can go as I told you earlier, like from a hundred thousand dollars, they can go from fifty thousand to one hundred thousand and still be broke. They can go from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand a year and still be broke. They can go from two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand and still be broke.

16:42 In the US When you take households that make a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year one out of three of them are still broke. When you peel back the curtain and you ask why is that? Well we know things cost more.

16:54 But we also know there's massive lifestyle creep. Right. You get you get around other people who are making more money and then you spend more money. And the reality is these phones are designed to get you to spend everything. Right, today with the algorithms, there's better technology today than there's ever been to get you to spend more money.

17:13 And nobody wants you to spend money once, they want you to spend money for a lifetime. Right? It's the lifetime value of a customer. So there's a battle. For our income. And

17:23 Everyone wants a piece of it. Starts with the government. Like you go to work. And you go to work at nine. And you actually work from nine o'clock

17:31 to twelve for taxes. Now this is an important lesson actually. The government doesn't ask you to budget. To pay taxes. they take your taxes from you automatically.

17:43 They take social security from you automatically. They take the money from you automatically because they know. you won't have anything to give if they don't take it from you. Then people work from twelve to about three o'clock for housing. And food. And then from three o'clock to five o'clock for all the rest.

18:00 All the rest of the things. The people who build wealth In America and really all over the world, they do something different. They keep the first hour or day of their income. What do you mean by that?

18:11 So what that means is whatever you earn. You could be w making minimum wage. You can be making twenty dollars an hour, thirty dollars an hour, forty dollars an hour. Whatever you earn. The first hour day of your income.

18:23 has to go to you. You're the first person who gets paid. And you mean you have to save it, invest it? You have to invest it. So How do you invest the first hour of your day?

18:35 Without paying taxes. The answer is you pay yourself first using a four one K plan. So if you have a job The retirement account. Four one K plan. You sign up and you use that plan.

18:47 Now I can't just stop right there, right? Because the because it sounds so simple, like okay, I'll use my plan. No. You have to know the formula to using your plan to be rich. We know авто. exactly what you need to do if you want to be a millionaire.

19:02 I can tell you how to become a millionaire starting in your twenties so that you're done by the time you're in your mid fifties. You save A little one hourity of your income is twelve and a half percent of your gross revenue. I went on online today to look at what's the latest statistics with four one K millionaires. The new stats that just came out from Fidelity.

19:21 There are six hundred and fifty four thousand people in Fidelity four oh one K plans that are now millionaires. What is a four oh one K because you know we've got a lot of global listeners. Yeah, yeah. There's different types of four O one K in every Country. So in the US a four one K plan is a retirement account. It is a retirement account that the company has set up.

19:41 Right. And it allows you to put Money away. Tax deductible. Call it pre-tax. In most countries you have a deductible retirement account.

19:52 But it depends on the country, too, right? Like in Canada, it's a different type of plan than it is in Australia, than it is in Italy, than it is here in the UK. Almost every country though has some form of retirement account. and has the ability to put money away automatically. Here's the problem. And I'll use the US specifically'cause it's where I do most of my work.

20:14 In the юс Those who have a four one K plan. The ones that are millionaires, what they did, here's the formula. The exact formula, they saved fourteen percent of their gross income. And their employer had a small match on top of that. And then how they invest the money is key.

20:33 put money in these four one K plans. You have to be invested for growth. And growth means stocks. Right.

20:42 You'd have to have and the and the actual specific allocation in these four one K millionaires I just talked about. was about seventy percent stock. And thirty percent bonds. Okay, now what are people doing that

20:55 aren't achieving this. Well the average American saving maybe three or four percent. Maybe five percent. if they have a four one K plan. People who don't have four one K plans in many cases aren't even doing this. They can. They can open up an IRA account. But in most cases they're not doing that.

21:12 So the whole secret is. Not budgeting. Not using discipline, having the money move right from your paycheck. Paycheck gets deposited automatically. And then it moves the day it hits your bank account.

21:26 Automatically First for retirement. Then later we'll talk about building a security account, building a dream account. The key is the money. moves.

21:37 automatically. So in the United States now there's by the way twenty four million millionaires now. So we've seen an increase of eight million millionaires to twenty four million millionaires in the US in just twenty years. How did they do that? There's two primary escalators to wealth.

21:55 That is stocks. and real estate. And if you're not in stocks and you're not in real estate. You are being left behind. When you say real estate, does that mean having a mortgage and ha owning a ha home?

22:08 It's Owning a home Or owning REITs. REITs. REITs. Real estate equity investment trusts. So that's another way to buy real estate without actually having to own the home, but you don't get the same level of returns. I mean, this is um this is one of the hot topics of conversation we've had on this show several times is many of my guests that are

22:26 sort of financial advisors. Say that owning a home is a bad investment. I think from what I understood from the research and from reading your books that you feel differently. About that. Yeah, I mean I I couldn't Feel more differently.

22:40 When we look at where is wealth created in the United States and also abroad. It's in two places. It's in home accurate. And it's in the stock market. So when you look at housing.

22:52 And you take someone who owns a home and we'll talk about it, I know it's hard to buy homes right now. But when you look at people who own a home versus people who rent. Homer is America? Follow this for one second. Homers in America are worth

23:06 Forty Times. More than renters. So the average homeowner in America today is worth

23:14 Over four hundred thousand dollars. But this doesn't establish causation. I that doesn't mean that buying a home make made them rich, right? It actually does, and I'm gonna go through that here. So the average renter is worth ten thousand dollars. Right. So why why does buying a home build wealth? And how much wealth in the United States is now in home equity. Wall Street Journal just ran an article on this, came out two days ago.

23:38 There's thirty four Trillion dollars now? in home equity in America. This number has gone up. Ninety percent since before covet.

23:50 The other money. Is in retirement accounts. Which is Sixty, seventy percent in stocks. There's forty five trillion dollars now.

23:59 In retirement accounts. So those two things alone equal eighty trillion dollars. Right, like when you wanna go like Where are the breadcrumbs? Where's wealth being created? It's right in front of us.

24:12 Now the problem That we have. in the United States, but also look, we're here in London right now. problem we have in so many cities is that real estate keeps going Higher and higher and higher.

24:23 А пип'имс а на кіпінпа. With the cost of buying a home. So when someone comes on a show like this and says look, you don't have to buy a home. It's cost more to have a house and rent. You you know, I I I watched one of the shows. I won't say who it was, it doesn't matter. They all say the same thing.

24:40 Don't buy a house. You'll be trapped. You'll have to pay You have to pay real estate taxes, and you have to pay insurance, and things break. They go through all these expenses.

24:53 And it it makes it sound like oh yeah, if I rent it'll be cheaper. So who who do you think pays these expenses? When you rent. You do. The landlord passes the cost of these expenses over. On

25:08 to the renter ultimately. Why do they do this? Because people who buy real estate Buy it for an investment. They buy it for an investment. They're not

25:18 They're not subsidizing these costs. So th it's a hard thing to hear and especially when you're young, like I have a Yeah, Sonny's twenty two, he's in Chicago. He's gonna move to New York City. It'll be extremely hard for him to buy a place in New York.

25:33 When he starts working right away. Just will be. Probably won't for two or three years. Lotta young people when they move to a major city they can't afford to buy right away. When I came out of college, like you, I was in credit card debt.

25:45 I had twelve thousand dollars in credit card debt. I remember opening up my bills and having the room spin. And thinking I'm never getting out of credit card debt. How am I gonna buy a house? But I did. And in fact, I didn't buy a home when I was young by myself. I bought a home with a best friend.

26:03 So how did I get my first house? First house we bought was a quarter of a million dollars. We put ten percent down. And my best friend and I, Andrew. We split that down payment. So we each put twelve thousand five hundred dollars down. This is how we scraped it together. House was a complete fixer upper.

26:19 And we didn't have enough money to make the mortgage payments, so we rented out bedrooms. And we had friends rent bedrooms. And that helped us cover our mortgage. We scraped it together, and that's what a lot of people do. When you're young.

26:33 But if you don't get in the game of homeownership. And you rent in your twenties and you rent in your thirties. you're gonna turn around in your forties and having not been built any net worth. When I wrote the automatic millionaire twenty years ago

26:48 Two things have happened since then. The stock market Has gone up. In twenty years Six hundred percent

26:56 Mm-hmm. Okay. So if you had a Hundred thousand dollars. Just that has gone to six hundred thousand dollars. If you bought a house The house has gone up four hundred percent.

27:08 So when you read this book with all these there's a whole a whole chapter of updated success stories. There are a lot of ordinary people. That started saving five, ten, fifteen, twenty dollars a day. Bought a starter house. And today they're millionaires.

27:23 Am I not better off renting? And Investing in the stock market. versus buying a house. Because obviously when I when I g when I buy a house, I'm paying a premium on the house so that I can get a mortgage.

27:38 I wanna bust this myth because what happens is people come on and they go, The stock look, I can tell you right now, the stock market over the last twenty years has averaged over ten percent annually. People go the returns are better in the stock market than in real estate. Yeah, but that's not apples to apple comparison. Why? When you buy a piece of

27:57 Real estate. When you buy a home. People don't typically pay cash for their first house. They put down twenty percent and they borrow the other eighty percent. So you take like an example of a Take a$200,000 home.

28:11 Two hundred thousand dollar home, he put forty grand in. Home goes from two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand. In ten years. This has happened to so many people in the last Five years since ковід There are markets all over the US where housing prices have gone up a hundred to two hundred percent.

28:27 So a person buys a two hundred thousand dollar home They borrowed eighty percent. It's doubled. So they've made two hundred thousand in profit. They didn't put in two hundred thousand, they put in forty.

28:39 So they got a five times return on their down payment. They go to sell their house. They don't pay taxes on the game. Because when you own a home, at least in the United States, you own a home for over two years if you're single You get two hundred fifty thousand dollars in tax free gains.

28:55 If you're married, you get over half a million dollars in tax free gains. you get tax deductions on the mortgages. So What happens is people come here and they go, You know what? You shouldn't be you shouldn't be tied down. You need to be flexible when you're young.

29:10 І don't have the responsibility. And you should take the extra money and you should put it in a mutual fund. And you know what happens in the real world, Steven? People don't do that. They rent an apartment that's nicer than what they can afford.

29:23 And they spend all their money. And then they turn around in their mid thirties and And they have no equity because they haven't bought anything. And they also haven't saved money. It is an absolute fricking myth.

29:37 that people take this extra money that they could have used to buy a house And they're gonna put it in the stock market. They don't do that. And that's why also, by the way. Corporate America got into the game of buying up

29:52 real estate all over America. Houses And building apartments. to rent to an entire generation hoping These people never

30:03 Bye. This like Ten days ago Trump came out and basically said He wants the institutions out of buying up all the homes in America. Why does he want to do that? Because he because he recognizes

30:17 How serious of a problem it is to have a generation of Americans Who are renters. I'm telling you, when you look at average Americans, average I'm talking about ordinary Americans, when you look at where their wealth is. It's in home equity and it's in the stock market. And this is the last thing I'll say.

30:36 Generational wealth is created For better or worse. Through home equity. So when you look at What you asked the question about causation.

30:47 If a family doesn't buy a home The likelihood the next generation can buy a home is very low. Бікани в сомне. The money that is in the house.

31:01 That home equity. transfers to the next generation helps the next generation buy a house. I was looking at some stats here'cause I wanna what I wanna I I I wish I could say sit down all of the guests that have been on my show that have had a difference of opinion and have said that buying a house is a bad investment. It could be a really interesting conversation, right? It would be a really interesting conversation. Uh what I've done uh as an alternative to that approach is I've pulled up what they've said.

31:25 And I'm going to give you some of the things they've said just so you can rebuttal them and have your say on them. One of the things that they often say is that long term real inflation adjusted home price appreciation in the US. is about one percent annually. And one of my guests cited Robert Schiller as the evidence of that. After maintenance.

31:44 um, which usually equals one to two percent. Um property taxes, which equals about one percent, insurance and transaction costs, the net real returns approach Roughly zero on average. So when you say Housing is a great investment. Are you referencing the gross appreciation, which is the the the the total appreciation or the net returns after taxes, maintenance, insurance, and selling costs? So when you dig into these kind of numbers like this

32:08 What they are is they're numbers, but they're not real world. Right. So like when you when you talk to someone who owns a home today and they've owned it for twenty years. And you ask them. How much of your net worth? Is now in the equity in your house.

32:23 Over fifty percent of their net worth is in their house. You will see people on your YouTube channel. That literally if you read the comments, I'm sure you do, yeah. Where people say It's not true. There was a I read a comment yesterday on your YouTube page. All I know is

32:38 I bought a house and it's got up in value Three and a half times. And the rent when I bought the house was twelve hundred dollars, and the rent today to buy that if I had that house If I was renting it would be four thousand dollars. So the thing is you have to understand

32:55 Is that rents always go up, Steven. Like I lived in New York City. For eighteen years. When I moved to New York City in two thousand one A really nice apartment.

33:09 A nice apartment was like six thousand dollars a month. When I left New York That same apartment. was twenty five thousand dollars a month. Follow follow the insanity of that math.

33:21 Now that apartment went from being Two million dollar apartment. to a five million dollar apartment. So I could have been renting it? But in my case I owned it.

33:32 And it went up in value three million dollars. So I have friends who have been renting in New York for 20 years. They have built no net worth. I have no vestige interest in this conversation, meaning I don't sell real estate. I'm not a real estate agent.

33:46 I'm not selling real estate. I've just seen in the real world how people have built wealth the the the the McIntyre in this book The Automatic Millionaire When they came into my office and they were worth one point eight million dollars. And he was fifty two.

34:01 And able to retire. having earned an average of forty thousand dollars a year. All their money wasn't in the stock market. They had bought a home in San Leandro, California. What he what they call the middle class neighborhood. Their home at the time was worth about three hundred thousand dollars.

34:19 They had paid their mortgage off. And they had bought one more house on their street. They rented the first house. They bought a second house on their street, they paid that mortgage off. And so they own two homes free and clear.

34:32 One house they got income from? One else I lived in with no debt. And then they had saved money in their four one K plan. So if I was a a young person, or n not even a young person, middle aged, an older person Who

34:44 took my down payment that I was gonna pay into the house. If let's say it was So my down payment was twenty thousand dollars and I put that into the S P five hundred instead. Over the long run. Won't that grow larger? than the total home equity potentially.

34:59 Here's why the index fund theory doesn't work. You can't live inside an index fund. You can't live inside a mutual fund. You have to live somewhere as long as you're alive. Here's what people should do.

35:15 Take a look at what you're paying in rent. Now ask yourself a question. If I am paying five thousand a month. In rat. But

35:25 Lots of people are, right? Do you know people paying five thousand a month in rent? Yes. Okay. So they're paying sixty thousand a year. Let's take that number. Yeah. So over ten years they're gonna spend six hundred thousand dollars in rent. Yeah.

35:37 If the rent doesn't go up. Yeah. In twenty years they're gonna spend one point two million in rent. If the rent doesn't go up. In thirty years they will have spent

35:48 Two million dollars in rent if the rent doesn't go up. But the rent does go up. So the question you just have to ask yourself is am I gonna take all this money that I'm spending on rent and never build anything? And if you really believe that renting is better than owning then you should still consider the idea of buying something then that somebody else rents. 'Cause I promise you somebody's getting rich in the transaction.

36:14 If you're the renter, you're not the one who's getting rich in the transaction of renting. It is a great short term solution renting. It is not a great term long term wealth building solution. The other thing that people often talk about and you you cited earlier is the mobility that renting gives you. Yeah.

36:32 Your son was here a second ago. He's sixteen years old. Yeah. Uh soon he'll be at the age where he's got his own place and he's th thinking about different career opportunities, then I got AI's this big thing, so he might want to go to San Francisco, then he might want to go live in Florence and wherever else. If he's Bought a place. There is a interesting sort of psychological, but also financial component to the fact that it makes it harder for you to move with the opportunity of life. And if we are

36:56 If if what people say about the future of work is true, that we're gonna have many more careers In our lives than we did in the past. one might assume that we're also gonna be more mobile. And so Is there an argument to say that

37:09 Buying a house. professional opportunities, my ability to p pursue professional opportunities. The answer is possibly. Right. But here's the thing about rent.

37:19 Runs. Interestingly enough A major obligation. Right. Usually when you go and you do a lease You locked yourself into a one year lease.

37:29 Sometimes you lock yourself into a two year lease. When you buy something And this is assuming that you have the money to buy something, Steven. Look up'cause you've got all the data at your fingertips here, look at what the average length of time it takes to sell a home in the United States. Just just Google that right now.

37:48 Because what I will tell you is in certain markets You can put your home on the market and you can sell it in less than ninety days. Now some markets you can sell your home in less than thirty days, in many cases. You actually have more flexibility when you own something than when you rent, and that's if you want to sell it. It says the average time.

38:08 From s listing to sale. Is about Forty seven to sixty two days from listening to closing in twenty twenty five, including sixteen days on the market and thirty to forty five days to close. That's called less than two months. Even in hot markets, the process from putting a house on the market to legally selling it can take one point five to three months, meaning home equity isn't

38:29 A quickly investment. Yeah, but do you think that's pretty quick, ninety days? No, it is it is I mean it takes it takes you that much time to get out of the lease. Exactly. So now so so here you've got a piece of property that you can turn around and sell in less than ninety days. Now this is the US. You can't do that. Like for instance, I live in Italy. That could be very hard to do that in Italy. But in the US, you've got something that's in a good market, it's liquid. The other thing is You can rent it. Right.

38:52 You're you're actually not trapped. If if you start to build equity in your home when you pay your mortgage down slightly. Next thing you know, you're able to rent that property and you can still move. Today people are taking their homes and they're Airbnb them. What I really want for people is the chance to be financially free. There's also an age at which it doesn't matter if you own. You know, once you start to get older and you've built financial security, you get in your fifties or your sixties or seventies and you just want to travel and you don't want to own anything.

39:19 That's a different stage of life. So the question just becomes The money that you make and go back to the ninety thousand hour comment. When you make nine when you work ninety thousand hours over your lifetime. What's your plan to keep some of this money?

39:36 You have to have a pay yourself first plan. That has to be your number one priority. Is that when you earn money, the first person who you're gonna pay is you. If you say, you know what, I watch Steven and I saw David and I've seen a bunch of other people on his show And I'm not gonna buy a house.

39:53 Okay. Then You have to pay yourself first more. Now I go around the world For the last

40:01 Thirty years, starting with Oprah with the Automatic Millionaire, I launched this book on Oprah and I talked about You have to save one hour to have your income. And people will get on these social media boards and be like I can't save ten percent of my income. Don't tell the I I can't live off ninety percent of my income. I it's not possible I have to spend all of it.

40:21 Right. Well then that person Who's renting? And not buying a house, which is for savings. is clearly never gonna save.

40:30 So b the other thing about buying a house is it Does require. For savings, because when you use it have a mortgage payment, part of that mortgage payment is paying down your debt. And I teach you how to use a biweekly mortgage payment plan. So you take a thirty year mortgage and you pay it off five years earlier. And doing that can save you depends on the size of the home, can save you fifty to one hundred thousand dollars just interest payments.

40:50 You talk about having a savings mindset. What is a savings mindset and how does one go about saving if they are one of those people that says, Listen, I'm barely getting by as it is, David. Yeah. How how the hell am I gonna save money when I'm actually increasingly getting into more debt right now. So the first thing is you have to find your money.

41:11 Right. So what I what I find, Steve, is when I talk to people, most people don't know where their money goes. Literally they don't know. They're like I'm like, How much money you spend a month? Well, I'm not really sure. How much money you spend a year? Well, I'm not really sure. You need to be sure, so you should be doing something to track where your money goes. Now you can be sophisticated, you can use an app so will track where your money goes. You can also take out a pad of paper.

41:33 And I give people a seven day financial challenge. For seven days just bring a little padder with you. And write down every single day where your money goes. Now why do I want people to do that? Because most people today are spending money unconsciously.

41:48 I go back to these phones. fact that I don't even I don't even have to carry a wallet anymore, right? It's just click, click, click and pay for things. We've lost touch with spending money. So when people start to see what they're really spending, it's a wake up call. The biggest thing I've been sharing lately is what does it take to blow

42:06 Ten thousand dollars a year. per day in terms of spending. How much money do you need to spend a day to blow ten thousand dollars? Now show us the pro the here Th now we happen to have these are we have pounds today, right? So Um

42:20 So I I'm holding Steven right now, I'm holding what is known as a brick. So I don't know if your staff told you how much I'm holding here. You know what c what you guess I'm holding? It looks like maybe five thousand dollars. Okay, so this is a life changing amount of money. Steven, this this is ten thousand dollars, right? And what does it take to blow ten thousand dollars into In a year per day.

42:43 How much money you have to spend per day. To go through ten thousand dollars. I'll make it easy for you. The the answer is twenty seven dollars and forty cents a day. Twenty seven dollars and forty cents a day.

42:56 As a Equaling Ten thousand dollars over the year. Now before we go through where do you where do you spend this money? How do you waste twenty seven dollars and forty cents a day?

43:06 The question becomes if you didn't waste twenty seven dollars and forty cents a day. And you were able to get yourself to an Vest ten thousand dollars a year. What could this be worth? Over time.

43:20 And the answer is in forty years. If this was in the S P five hundred fund, which you quoted earlier, and you earn ten percent annually with reinvested dividends. That stack there would grow to four million for over four million four hundred thousand dollars. If you invest twenty seven dollars and forty cents a day.

43:41 Pass me this big brick. Yeah. So if I save Half of this a day. Than in did you say forty years? In forty years. So let me give you the math on a couple of different ways of doing this. Okay, so what would happen if you invested

43:55 Roughly half of this a day. The number I use is twenty seven dollars and forty cents a day. It's the magic number. That equals ten thousand dollars a year. If you invested that a day for forty years, you'd have over four million four hundred and twenty four thousand dollars. If I invest twenty seven dollars a day, in forty years I'll have

44:15 four million dollars. Over four million dollars. Let's go through the Yabuts now. Because people are gonna hear this. Some people are gonna go, Wait, what? And then we'll talk about where you find twenty seven dollars and forty cents a day.

44:27 Yeah, but Four million four hundred thousand Dollars won't be worth a lot of money in forty years. With inflation, it won't be worth that much. It won't have the same purchasing power. My answer would be it's worth a whole lot more than zero.

44:42 Right. If you're not saving any money, if you can't save twenty seven dollars and forty cents a day You won't have four million four hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, but with taxes, you know, it it won't grow that much. Well, it could if it was in a retirement account, you wouldn't be paying taxes on the money. Yeah, but it's not possible to earn ten percent on my money.

45:02 Well The stock market for over a hundred years has averaged over ten percent annually with reinvest dividends. Yeah, but the stock market's risky and complicated. Well no it's not. If you bought an index fund, it's actually not that risky and complicated. Yeah, but I don't know. I don't know how to get started. Well, you could start really easily. You could Open up a brokerage account.

45:23 You could go to a Charles Schwab. Fidelity I mean I'm literally gonna go through them all. Vanguard Robin Hood

45:31 Coinbase Acorns And in less than ten minutes. You could open up an account. And be saving, pick a dollar amount.

45:40 Five dollars a day, ten dollars a day, twenty seven dollars a day. And that could change your life. Now why is ten thousand dollars, Steven, such an important dollar man? Here's what I can tell you having done this for thirty years. This dollar amount right here?

45:56 First of all, this is One in two Americans don't have a thousand dollars. In a bank account right now. So this is ten times what one out of two Americans have. But more importantly, ten thousand dollars when we do surveys.

46:11 And we ask people, how much money would it take to totally change your life? The answer's not a million dollars. The answer is not a hundred thousand dollars. The answer's actually ten thousand. And the question is, why is it 10,000?

46:25 And the reason is is that's about what the average person has in credit card debt. And they feel like they're drowning, like you talked about earlier. And they know that that could pay off their credit card debt. Or They have a job they don't like.

46:39 And they Yeah. knew that if they had ten thousand dollars In a savings account? They'd quit that job and they'd be free.

46:47 They'd have to go find another job. Or start a business or something. Or God forbid they're in an abusive relationship and they can't leave. But if they had ten thousand dollars, they'd leave.

46:58 So You know, a lot of people go, Dave, you just make this all too simple. And it's true. I do, because when it's simple, people take action on it. So for years I have taught concept called the latte factor.

47:12 lot of people love me for it. Now I have a lot of people hate me for it. And I have taught that you know, we waste small amounts of money on little thing. I had your staff Bring me a nice coffee. Um

47:24 When I started teaching the latte factor, I would talk about the idea that we waste Five bucks a day on coffee. And then if you don't believe you can start saving and investing At least save five dollars a day. Make your coffee at home.

47:38 And people would say, but I don't want to give up my coffee. Okay, well then Figure out another way to save five dollars a day. This ice coffee, I don't know what costs you're in London. In New York City. That coffee right there. Is nine dollars and fifty cents.

47:51 Plus a tip. It's over eleven bucks. I know,'cause I was just in New York. So Today we we had a bunch of props here and I said, Well, let's try to show like what what is twenty seven dollars and forty cents. Like when I go to my hotel later when I leave here

48:07 A cocktail is gonna be thirty bucks. Right. I was just in New York City cocktail had a cocktail my hotel it was thirty one dollars and fifty cents. Wine, fifty dollars, eating out. You you go and have lunch today, it's gonna be twenty five dollars. And people say well I have to eat.

48:23 And I go, I know you do, but you could also ground bag your lunch. It's what my grandmother did. Now her friends teased her. But my grandma was able to retire to California. And her friends all got stuck in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where it was cold'cause they couldn't afford to retire the way she did. How many people could

48:41 actually save twenty seven dollars a day. Cause if I go back again just over ten years of my life. I mean there's no chance I could have saved twenty seven dollars in a day. There's just no there's just no There's no way. If you go back to what age. I'll go back to between

48:56 Like eighteen, nineteen Years old, roughly that period of my life. Yeah. There was no way I could have saved twenty seven dollars a day. Here's really the question. Do you have friends and do you think you have people who work with you?

49:09 who are making more than fifty thousand dollars a year. And they're not saving twenty seven dollars a day. They're not even saving ten dollars a day. This is true. I actually did a bit of research um on this. And it says approximately Forty to fifty million families, if we just take the United States, where I think there's what, three hundred and thirty million people roughly.

49:28 Um approximately forty to fifty million families in the US can realistically save twenty seven dollars a day. This represents roughly the top thirty to thirty five percent of households. For everyone else, the bottom sixty five to seventy percent, saving that amount would require either extreme poverty level budgeting or is a mathematical impossibility. Over forty million people they think can afford to save twenty seven dollars and fifty cents a day. Yes, it's based based on income and expenditure data from twenty twenty five to twenty twenty six. Approximately forty to fifty million families in the US can realistically save twenty seven dollars a day. So for those forty to fifty milyen people United States.

50:06 That would be life changing. Now are there people who can't afford to say that? Absolutely. In the United States, I j I was just in uh Arizona. I just did a keynote speech. I asked the audience. This is when the government was shut down. I said it.

50:20 How many people do you think in America are taking In receiving. Snap checks. What's that? Thank you.

50:28 Because by the way, most Americans don't even know what a snap check is. That's a check that the government gives to people for food. And the dollar amount's a little over six dollars a day. So smart people in a room. Uh by the way, I didn't know the answer to this.

50:42 A week prior either. The answer is about forty one and a half million Americans. Get a snap check. When I told the room that the room gasped. А се со вони ондервоні шум.

50:59 For six weeks? That was three Hay cycles. Well the average American doesn't have two weeks of expenses set aside. I mean, I don't think everybody fully grasps the problem right now.

51:15 Four out of ten Americans can't get their hands on a thousand dollars in case of emergency purposes. If you actually dig into the Federal Reserve data. It's thirty seven percent of Americans can't get their hands on Four hundred dollars in case emergency purposes. So there's a whole section of America that's truly struggling. Like But there's a whole lot of America.

51:36 That is still struggling they're living pay to paycheck, but their money's being taken from them. All the time? because they don't have a plan for it. For that bottom sixty percent of Americans that

51:50 My research says wouldn't be able to save twenty seven dollars a day. Um the data reveals a discretionary income cliff once you drop below the top forty percent of earners, the money available after bills vanishes rapidly. The top twenty percent. Which um I think ninety six thousand dollars. per household are in a surplus. The middle twenty percent

52:07 um have a fifteen thousand dollar surplus, uh, which they're twenty seven dollars a day. take 66% from, but the bottom 40% often have a roughly$2,000 surplus. So it's impossible for them to get to the$10,000. For that bottom 40%, What's the advice for them? Start with something. Okay, it's like we took this fifty and we said cut it in half twenty five.

52:32 I would say, can you save a dollar a day? I have actually talked about this idea. Really simple. Could you save ten dollars a day for one hundred days? So like if you're listening to me and you happen to really be struggling right now, my question would be could you save ten dollars a day for a hundred days? Why?

52:50 'Cause it would get you to your first thousand dollars. And you now have more than fifty percent of Americans who don't have savings. And I can't tell you how many people have come back after a hundred days and said, Okay, I did it. It wasn't easy. For some people saving ten dollars a day would be really, really hard. But

53:09 You're you're into fitness. You saw my son who just came in here. Fitness is built. through daily action. Right. It's built through daily action. Daily eating well, going to the gym

53:22 Doing certain things on a regular basis. Saving's the same thing. There's a company called Acorns. I invested acorns back in two thousand fifteen. Acorns came up with an app. that helps you roll your change up.

53:37 So if I go to Starbucks and I spend nine dollars and fifty cents on a coffee. You can round it up where the fifty cents To ten bucks. Is put into Investments.

53:49 Just rounding up your change. And people have saved tens of thousands of dollars over the last ten years by just rounding up their change. Every time I've tried to improve something in my life, like my businesses, my health, my relationships, I've noticed that the biggest shifts have come from being better informed. And when it comes to our health, most of us know very, very little. So when our team was approached about partnering with Function Health, it felt very much aligned. Their team has developed a way of giving you a full 360 degree view of your health. Many of the things that are going on in your body in the form of different tests. You do one blood draw and it gives you access to over a hundred and sixty lab results. Hormones, heart health, inflammation, stress, toxins, the whole picture. I use it and so have many of my team members. You sign up and you schedule tests, and once you're done, you get a little report like the one I have here.

54:39 I can see my in range results, my out of range results, and there's a little AI function too. So if I have any questions about my out of range results, I can just go in there and ask it any question I want. And these tests are backed by doctors and thousands of hours of research. It's three hundred and sixty-five dollars for a yearly membership. Go to functionhealth.com slash D O A C. And use the code DOAC twenty five for twenty five dollars off your membership. I had a friend of mine contact me and I I spoke to one of the previous financial advisors and educators that I'd spoken to on the show about him.

55:09 He Told me he was in deep financial debt. probably earns about fifty thousand pounds or dollars a year. But has got himself into real debt. And I imagine a lot of my listeners are l are somewhat in debt, whether it's credit card debts or loans or others.

55:22 Do you have any specific advice to people that are currently straddled with debt? Absolutely, because it's one of the most important things you need to know how to get out of. Debt is like quicksand. Like you know, you talked earlier about how you were in debt and what that felt like. When I came out of college and I had twelve thousand dollars in credit card debt.

55:39 It felt like the greatest weight on my shoulders. Like I was carrying like a fifty pound backpack. Um How did I get out of debt and how do you get out of debt? I will give you the very simple formula to getting out of debt.

55:51 Dolp. Dulp stands for done. On Last. Payment. If you said to me, David, I've got five credit cards.

55:59 I'd say okay. Steven? Tear a piece of paper, just like this. And I'd start listing your credit cards. I'd go one Two

56:09 Three Four Five and I'd list them all. Visa Mastercard. I listen, and then I wanna know

56:18 D how much do you owe? So I put the dollar amount down. And what I would do is I put the dollar amount down on paper. And I listed small Too large.

56:31 Then I want to know the interest rate. Now what people say is oh you should take the highest interest rate and pay it off first. But I wouldn't tell you that, Steven. I'd tell you. You take the smallest credit card, I don't care what the interest rate is.

56:46 The smallest amount. Smallest amount. So maybe this card right here's five hundred dollars. And this card down here is three thousand. I'd have you make minimum payments on every card. Automatically. This is really important, the automatic part.

57:02 have you go on I'd literally go into your house and open up the I'd open up your iPad And I'd have you make minimum payments online. automatically so that every card's paid on time. Then I'd say, Steven, how much extra money do you have?'Cause I want you to put it all towards the smallest car. We're gonna get that small card paid off as fast as possible. We're gonna add all the extra money to that small card.

57:24 Minimum payments on everything. Once that card's paid off. We're gonna go like this. You don't have to close the account because we don't wanna lower your cred score, but we're gonna put that card over here and never use it. Now we're gonna go to next f next smallest card. Some people call this a snowball approach.

57:40 The reason I teach this system. Is it reduces the amount of credit cards you have? As fast as possible. And You see yourself make progress.

57:52 It's really important to see yourself make progress when you're doing anything funny, actually. Then I would attack the interest rates. Because the interest rates aren't always Herman. You can negotiate your rates lower.

58:07 You can move credit cards to another car with a low interest rate. Have to be very careful though when you do that, because they're waiting for you to make a slip up. Make a late payment. When they do they'll jack the credit card interest rates back up again. You can also call up your credit card companies if you're really struggling.

58:25 And tell them I'm struggling and I like to know if you have a program in place where I can Stop the interest rate. And pay these cards off. and more accessible. Like this is basically what the nonprofit credit card counseling organizations do. But the credit card companies often have programs too for this.

58:43 They'll tell you to stop using the card. They'll actually make it so you can't use the card anymore, but they'll stop the interest rate. So That approach has helped so many people get out of credit card debt. Now I just want to say something super important. 'Cause I've gone through this.

58:59 when you go through the work of getting out of credit card debt. It's a huge victory. Don't go out and celebrate. On the credit cards. Because I got myself out of credit card debt in college junior year.

59:15 And then I went out and celebrated and got myself back into credit card debt. And people do this all the time. Usually people get themselves in a hole at least twice, sometimes three times. Don't go back in a hole again. Uh I didn't carry credit cards for thirty years, only carried a debit card. And I had to pay it off every month.

59:35 Should these people um who are in the bottom sort of sixty percent be thinking at all about How to make more money. How to increase their income. Absolutely. And what are the like the easiest ways to do that?

59:48 W that you'd recommend just from your own experience of, you know, being in the professional world and So my experience and I know that you look you wrote this great book. Dire M CO. Right. Anyone hasn't read your book, you're this great book. What's the best way to grow your income if you have a job?

1:00:04 It's to be good at what you do. Мика. At minimum wage. Let's pretend you work at McDonald's. And you have a job working minimum w wage at McDonald's.

1:00:16 The owner of McDonald's, the guy who owns that franchise or the gal that owns that franchise Desperately needs good employees. Who becomes a manager that makes more money? The person who works really well. Now a lot of people well I don't I don't know if I want to work at McDonald's. I'm just giving it as an example.

1:00:33 Anywhere you work, how you grow your income. Is you are the best at what you do. You show up early. You have a game plan at work.

1:00:44 You work late. You do what you say you're gonna do. You don't wait to be told what to do. Right? Like I've been an entrepreneur all my lifetime. The hardest thing about being an entrepreneur is what?

1:00:56 Yeah. It's everything and most people are entrepreneurs. Well it's you know a lot of times it's hard to have good people unless you're a good leader. People are so thirsty to have jobs with purpose and meaning. And most people are actually looking for leadership.

1:01:13 So if you can be really good at what you do. you will make more money. There's no limit to wealth in the world. Right. We've never seen so much wealth being created in our entire lives as right now.

1:01:25 If I were young a lot of people, Well, you shouldn't AI. Yeah, you know what? Probably you definitely should learn how to use AI. Because if you don't learn how to use AI, you're gonna have really limited skills and go on the way. And do certain jobs. You know what else people are gonna go on to? Learn how to be a plumber.

1:01:41 Learn how to be electrician. Learn how to put up garage doors. I've got friends I kinda I was just recently on a podcast with a guy who's made a billion dollars putting in garage doors. Yeah. And He took me through his warehouse.

1:01:55 And showed me their garage door models and I was like, You know, I've got a friend who makes gyms that go in garages. I just connected them. He's got a huge business. Making gyms For garages. There's just no limit to the amount of opportunities out there. You have to, though, get out of a stuck mind frame. I mean you had Tony Robbins here. If there's anybody who can help you get out of the stuck mind frame.

1:02:17 It's that guy. Right, but you can't You can't have they zigzag used to call it stinking thinking. You have to have The ability to look into the future and believe that your future can be as exciting today or better.

1:02:33 I put up a post yesterday. I said um I would rather be an Optimist. And be wrong? Than a pessimist.

1:02:43 And be right. And you show me somebody who wants to make more money. Go in the world of an optimist. And figure out how to go make more money. Do you think a lot of this is a mindset?

1:02:56 At at at the core of it. Obviously there are real socioeconomic factors and there's people live in certain situations. And if I think back to, you know, where I was born in Botswana, there's just less opportunity. And sometimes you have repressive governments and other factors that will objectively keep you stuck. But All other things being equal. How much of the game is mindset. It always comes down to a decision. And we started by talking about my grandmother. If my grandmother hadn't made a decision at thirty

1:03:24 that she didn't want to be poor. She was tired of living paycheck to paycheck. She hadn't decided that she would go out and teach herself about money and take fifty cents of her paycheck and Fifty cents from my grandfather's paycheck. Start investing. I wouldn't be here today.

1:03:40 She made a decision that had a ripple effect through our family. She built financial security for herself with that one decision. She taught my father how to invest and he was a financial advisor for over forty five years. My sister's a financial advisor. I was a financial advisor. I spent the last thirty years teaching people about money.

1:04:00 One woman's decision had this ripple effect. So one thing I say to people who are listening, especially the moms Sometimes you gotta make a decision that's not just for you. You're actually making the decision for your family. And you can come up with a list of reasons why this stuff won't work.

1:04:18 Somebody who's watching this show or listening to us right now. They're already interested in this. That's why they're here. Now they're here for a couple of reasons. Either A they're hurting financially.

1:04:30 And they know they need to fix something. Great. Start where you are. Fix what needs to be fixed. Some people are like, you know, I think I'm doing pretty well, but I'm not sure if I'm doing everything well.

1:04:42 You know, I I've I've opened up my Roth IRA or I've opened up my four one K plan. Putting some money away, but I don't know if I'm putting enough money away. then you can improve what you're doing. Some people are like I'm renting I think I would like to buy a house some day.

1:04:57 All right, make that a goal. I teach three buckets when it comes to money, three baskets. Pay yourself first for retirement. We haven't even talked about emergencies yet. Putting aside putting aside money for emergency purposes. Have to talk about that. You gotta get you gotta get more money put aside for emergency purposes. And then building a dream account.

1:05:14 You need to put money away for your dreams. Those three accounts should be automated. And on that point of having three accounts, you call it a future account, an emergency account, and a dream account. How much of your earnings should you be putting into each of those accounts on a monthly basis? Alright, so keep it super simple.

1:05:32 I recommend one hour day Again, so this is earlier. twelve and a half percent of your gross income. When you say one hour a day, you mean one hour of the the the time you work per day. Yeah. So whatever you make an hour. Yeah. It's if you're say if if you're working a forty hour work week

1:05:46 twelve and a half percent of your gross income. goes off the top into a retirement account. Now let me just say something up for the Yabutters. Like I can't go from zero to twelve percent, there's no way. Then start at one percent.

1:06:00 If you're not saving right now and you're listening to us and all you do when you leave this podcast Is make one decision. And that decision is I'm gonna save one percent of my income. And you start that this month. Your life will change.

1:06:15 Your life will change because you start process of making a difference. It's just like the first day you go to the gym. I will tell you if you save one percent of your income you won't notice it. And if you did that every month For a year?

1:06:27 At the end of the year you would have saved twelve percent and you will be saving four times what the average American saves. And you will be in rock star shape. Then the second hour. This is where people's minds blow up. But the second hour.

1:06:40 So the first hour goes for the future, the second hour goes for safety and for dreams. So Thirty minutes of your income, roughly five percent. should go into an emergency account. And another five percent goes into a dream account. Now that dream account could be for

1:06:56 Buying a house? Could be saving money for college. Could be the vacation you want to take at the end of the year. It could be getting married. Could be the engagement ring. But you're putting money away for your dreams because when you put money away for your dreams

1:07:12 That's how they become real. And you know, the book is called The Automatic Millionaire. Mm-hmm. This is a book that sold over two million copies. Um on its own. Why Did you use the word automatic?

1:07:25 Unless your financial plan is automatic. It will fail. How do I know this? Because I spent nine years as a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley and I got to see firsthand. Everyone who came into my office with an ordinary income who built wealth

1:07:41 They did it by saving automatically. Every single time a client came into my office and they said I'm gonna bring you a check. every month myself. I never had a client save for more than six months.

1:07:54 They stopped. When once you make the decision to automate your financial life. It works in the background. Now here's the thing. Everybody else is already doing this to you.

1:08:08 You go sign you go to go to a gym to go work out. They don't ask you to bring them money every month. They automatically bill you. You get a phone bill. They automatically bill you. Today in many cases when you rent

1:08:20 they automatically pull the money out of your account. the banks automatically take money from me for your mortgage. When you pay taxes, they're all automated. Everyone takes money from you automatically. Everything that you sign up for on your phone is a subscription service.

1:08:35 Netflix. Go through. your credit card today. Open up your phone. Look at all your subscriptions. All those businesses are taking money from you automatically. Why?

1:08:46 That's the only way they can be in business. They know if they don't get money from you automatically You will keep using them. Most people who start off with a free subscription І'л take them three to six months.

1:09:00 to turn off something That they don't use I'm here getting people to automate their financial life. For themselves. Is there simple ways?

1:09:12 apps, tools, websites we can use. to go through all of our subscriptions and turn them all off. Yes. There are. So let me tell you the easiest way. This is really actually Free publicity for Apple.

1:09:25 Okay. Because so many people have Apple phones. Number one Only do your subscriptions. inside of Apple.

1:09:34 In an ideal world, don't pay anybody directly. Do it all through Apple. Why? Because if you go to the bottom of your phone and you don't know how to do this and you put subscriptions Up will pop.

1:09:45 Everything that you've signed up for and you can go click. Click. Click and turn them all off. Another thing I will tell you is that when you sign up for Anything.

1:09:54 Let's say it's a one year'cause everything now is a one year trial subscription. or a one month trial subscription. The moment you sign up for it. Shut it off. Because what happens is if you sign up for anything and

1:10:06 Think of any subscription you can imagine. Companies hate me for this. The moment you shut it off. When the Time comes for it to renew. They will offer you a better deal than renew.

1:10:17 Okay, so I've opened up my iPhone, I've gone to the settings, I've clicked on my name in the settings, and then I've clicked on the button subscriptions. I have One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Of which Three of them.

1:10:37 I would keep. So all these other ones have just been running in the background. And it and it's because I used an app one time and it signed me up to some kind of free trial and I just totally forgot to cancel it. Oh my God, some of them are massive. Okay, so so so as you do this, what you're doing right now is a real life Example.

1:10:57 So If someone's listening to us, watching this, they're married, they've got kids, or they're single by themselves. This one exercise My guess is there are many, many people listening that could find fifty, a hundred, two hundred dollars a month. They could shut off.

1:11:14 and redirect that money to saving and investing. And that could change their life. Oh, there are other apps you can use and go to to figure out how to cancel all of your subscription. So there are there are, and most of these apps you have to pay. Right. So like you can go to then then you're right back into paint for now.

1:11:30 Probably the two popular most popular apps are Monarch. And Y and A B. You can also do this with your credit cards. Um, the credit card comes in doing a better job of showing it on your statements. And again, I go back to the Apple example because

1:11:46 Apple makes it the easiest to shut these off. Maybe some of you will be spending a hundred dollars a month. So I did a hundred dollars a month and it says if you invest. if you sort of cancel those subscriptions and invest a hundred dollars per month For forty years. an annual rate of return of about 10%, which is roughly what you get if you just put it into some of the big tech index funds at the moment.

1:12:06 The total money you'll have in forty years. Is six hundred and thirty two thousand Dollars. Which is a staggeringly life changing amount of money. It's staggering. And let me just give some very specific investment.

1:12:20 For people to consider. Right, and they still need to do their own due diligence and read prospectuses and yes, there's risk involved in the stock market. But the first one I would talk about and look at, these are all listed in my book, because I just want to give you because people are like, What's an index one? What do I buy? Look at the Vanguard total stock market fund.

1:12:37 Symbol is VTI. Okay, this is this is actually the largest index fund in the world. There's trillions of dollars now in this fund. I talk about it in the book. I looked up the annual uh the annual returns of VTI the last ten years have been fourteen percent. Fourteen percent annually.

1:12:54 This Fund has thirty five hundred stocks. Y all the biggest US stocks. So you don't have to figure out what stock to buy. You buy this fund. You buy an exchange trade a mutual fund, you have access to Thirty five hundred great American companies.

1:13:11 I'll give you another stock. Index fund I love. And everybody can buy this on their phone right now. Literally. You can go to Vanguard, Schwab, Fidelity. This funds this is an ETF, so it's available. Everywhere to stock. And if you want to figure out how to do this and you're listening right now, what I do is use ChatGPT or Gemini.

1:13:30 and put in the stock, the the funds that um and ask it how do I invest in this in the country that I'm in? What app do I need to use? What website do I need to use? Again, this is not investment advice. Well, I guess it kind of sounds like it is, but Well and but it's also like so like we someone says, Okay, but I'm not I I'm in um wherever I am. I'm in the UK. What's an index fund in the UK that covers the UK? I'll give you the global version of VTI.

1:13:55 So'cause I own these funds. So I so the global version of VTI is a symbol which is all I'm gonna give you never Vanguard fund. When you say you own these funds, for clarity, you mean you've invested in them. Yeah, I've got money in these mutual funds. So this other fund'cause I have I want money, my my personal money that's in the stock market, I am One third global investments And I'm two thirds US investments. So I have a lot of global index funds.

1:14:20 This global index on the symbols VEA. 'Cause this is the Vanguard Global Index fund without US stock. Symbol again is V E A. That fun last year. And it won't always be like this because global investments have underperformed the US for a long period of time.

1:14:39 That fund last year was up thirty five percent. Last year global investments significantly outperformed the US investments. And the US investment market was up on average of seventeen percent. So the US markets were up seventeen percent or higher. And global investments were up thirty percent or higher. Now there will be a point in time, Steven, without a shadow of a doubt.

1:14:59 that we will see a market pullback. And when that day comes, you have to stay the course and keep investing automatically. Monthly. And then I'm gonna give you a tech fund'cause everybody wants to know What should I invest in that is you know, should I invest in AI tech phone.

1:15:17 And my answer would be is you don't need an AI tech phone. You need the best tech fund that's Existed my lifetime. And that's the NASDAQ one hundred. ETF.

1:15:28 The symbol for that Is Q Q Q. So go and look up you know, go into whatever you're using and go look up QQ Q Read about the top one hundred stocks in the Nasdaq. And the returns for Q Q I mean, actually in the top of my mind right now, I can I th I think it's over

1:15:46 twenty percent um But look up what has the QQ Q total return been for the last ten years. I can tell you since I put money in QQ Q, it's gone up. Tenfold. No.

1:15:59 The market's been unbelievable. And there will be pullbacks. And that is also why I should say this, Steven, because we haven't even addressed this. I don't run around telling people to put all their money in the stock market. I also don't think that young people

1:16:12 should be putting all their money in the stock market. I think one the greatest miss. out there is that when you're young you should take a lot of risk. Let me say that one more time because it's super important so make sure it sits. Everyone says when you're young

1:16:29 You should take risk. The problem with that advice. Is that today people in their twenties and their thirties are taking a lot of risk. They're not just putting money in index though. They're putting money in meme coins.

1:16:43 They're putting money in meme stocks. They're putting money in NFTs. They're on social media and tick tock watching people day trade, they're trying to get into options. What they're really trying to do is get rich quick. All I can tell you is the older guy in the room here.

1:17:00 People who try to get rich quick stay broke. Forever. And the problem with taking too much risk with your money when you're young is if you keep If you do everything right, like let's just say you're the You shut off all your subscriptions.

1:17:13 You're saving two hundred dollars a month. But you put that$200 a month into a junk investment. And you turn around in ten years and you have nothing to show for it? You'll stop at investing. Looking at the QQ Q data, so this is the Nasdaq one hundred. So this invests in the top one hundred companies.

1:17:32 In America. The Nasdaq Stock Exchange. the returns over the last ten years from two thousand sixteen to twenty twenty six, the annualized returns have been Roughly nineteen percent.

1:17:43 The total return of that period has been Roughly four hundred and eighty percent. So uh ten thousand dollar investment ten years ago would now be worth approximately sixty thousand dollars today if you'd done nothing.

1:17:55 And nothing. Over the last twenty years. the annualized return, so the return every year has been fifteen percent. With a total return. over that period of one thousand five hundred percent. And again, so if you've added ten thousand dollars to it twenty years ago and done nothing, you would have roughly a hundred and seventy thousand dollars

1:18:13 Today. So the here's the beauty of what you just did. You checked my my my you checked my advice. You looked at the data. And now you know what has been done in the past, right?

1:18:27 Let me give you a super boring fund. I'm I'm not sponsored by Vanguard. I'm just giving generic vanilla stuff here. Look at the vanguard. balanced fun. So right, Vanguard balanced fund. And the Vanguard balance fund is sixty percent stocks.

1:18:42 And forty percent bonds. That by the way is the most Typical asset allocation, the difference between stocks and bonds in the world. The average retiree has a portfolio that's about sixty percent stock and forty percent bonds.

1:18:58 You look up the Valingard balance fund and what you're gonna find is that fund has averaged over eight percent annually since inception. It is as boring an investment as they come. So if someone says, Well, I don't want to be a hundred percent stocks. I just want to be I want to be more conservative, but I want some stock exposure. The Vanguard Balance Fund's a great example.

1:19:19 I list all these funds in the automatic millionaire. One of the kind of funds I talk about the most is what's called a target dated Mutual fund. I don't know if you guys have do you guys have a four on K plan? We have something similar.

1:19:33 Okay. So in the US if you if you have a four one K plan, what you're gonna find when you open up your four one K plan Is you have what are called target dated. Mutual funds. This is a one stop.

1:19:44 Mutual fun. solution to your investing All the way until you retire. And it will be divided among stocks and bonds and it will be what's called rebalanced.

1:19:56 automatically as you get closer to retirement. So I'll go from being More stocks when you're young. Less stocks as you get older. There are trillions of dollars now in these target data mutual funds. When I wrote the automatic monitor twenty years ago, it's just getting started. This automatic solution to investing

1:20:13 has changed the game of investing. For millions of Americans. That's why there's twenty four million millionaires, and that's why there's now forty five trillion dollars in retirement accounts. We have a brain budget. The way to think about it is we have a limited amount of of energy that we can spend Every single day. I'm saying find ways to simplify your life. And one way I've conserved my body budget is via our sponsor, Factor, who are a meal delivery service. They are especially great because they make fresh meals and they cater to so many different diets. High protein, keto, vegan, vegetarian, low carb, gluten-free, paleo diets, you name it, every meal.

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1:21:17 Over the years, people have reached out asking me for mentorship, but the challenge I've always faced is that my calendar doesn't permit me to help every single person that reaches out. So when I know I can't personally help, I try to push people towards tools that I think can. And that's why I wanted to tell you a little bit about a resource that I think will be great for those of you who are founders of small and medium sized businesses. It's a content series that our longtime show sponsor Vodafone has created. It's called Vodafone Business. Dot connected. You'll find it on YouTube. This series delivers the knowledge that founders today need to grow their company in the digital age. There you'll learn about personal branding, cybersecurity, scaling e commerce companies, and through conversations with many founders who I've invested in and work closely with, the opaque picture of building a business will become clear. Some of those founders I've invested in in the series include Christiana Brenton from Flight Story, Marissa Posta from Perfect Tead, Leo Harrison from chapter two, and Georgie Gibson, who I've partnered with to build Steven.com. And these are just a few of the great names involved. Such Vodafone Business.connected to learn more. The other book.

1:22:19 that you wrote which sold incredibly, incredibly well, is this book about smart couples finish rich. That's the title. Smart Cups Finish Rich. Nine steps to creating a rich future for you and your partner. As it relates to how rich or wealthy you become. The person you choose and the way that you configure that relationship. How consequential is that?

1:22:38 It's everything. Really? It can be everything. Why? You're married?

1:22:43 I'm married. Yeah. So why can it be everything? Because here's what here's what happens in the real world, Steven. Often We marry our financial opposite. So I always joke, like I used to do a lot of seminars for couples, and I'd say

1:22:59 There's two types of people that are born in the world. One person comes out literally with a calculator and they're bored to track where all the money goes and they love to budget. And they're super excited about investing. That's one kind of person. The other kind of person

1:23:14 Loves to shop. Loves to spend money. Almoст Inevitably those two people hook up. Now sometimes two people who like to spend money

1:23:24 Mary. That's a disaster. 'Cause they end up broke. So now what do you do about the couple that's got The financial opposites.

1:23:33 That's what led smart couples fashion rich because If you are married to your financial opposite. You will fight about money. All the time. And fights about money.

1:23:47 are what lead to divorce. They're the number one cause of divorce. The Real key would I've been teaching now for over two decades is the way you get couples on the same page when it comes to money.

1:23:59 is you start with your values. So you look at what do you really value most together as a couple. You put the money aside for a second. You go through your values. What's most important to you? What do you really care about?

1:24:12 You talk about your values. And then you build a financial plan around what's really most important to you. You say that there's six worst money mistakes that couples make. And the first of those is not deciding who is responsible for what. Yeah.

1:24:28 So often in a relationship One person pays the bills. Okay. Who's managing the money? No.

1:24:39 I used to say in every household there should be at least one person that's paying the bills and then if the other person's managing the money, meaning that they're in charge of the f investments. That you still Get together and go through it. As I've gotten older, I've really realized how important this is because I go back to the fact that the average age is fifty nine. Average age of widowhood is fifty nine.

1:24:58 I'm fifty nine now. I've had three best friends already pass away. Amen. And they passed away before they were fifty seven. So all these statistics that I talk about, I'm seeing them come true.

1:25:12 And I will tell especially the women hear me loud hear me on this loud and clear. But this is important for the men too. The question you need this is hard to hear. question you have to ask yourself. Із іффер дає туда.

1:25:30 What would you need to know about the finances? And the answer is everything. Now what does that mean everything? That means you would need to know where is the money. W does he have money in an old four on Cape Land? Does he have money in an IRA account? Does he have money in a bank account? What are the passwords to get into the accounts?

1:25:49 Where's the will? You know, six out of ten people listening to us today don't have a will. You have to have a will. At any age. At any age. If if you especially if you're in a relationship, you have to have a will. If you have kids, you have to have a will. Is there life insurance?

1:26:05 You know, so many people today who have children don't have life insurance and they don't have assets. You should at least get a million to two million dollar term policy. Super inexpensive. Protect your family. You have to run. The drill. Right? Like

1:26:20 We we got on a plane, we flew here today. The first thing they do on a plane before you take off is they talk to you about what to do in case of emergency purposes. The mask's gonna come down, you're gonna put it on your face. Okay. You get on a cruise boat, the first thing you do is talk about what you're gonna do if the cruise boat's got a prompt. You're gonna go get in these emergency boats. You need to run the fire drill for your family on finances.

1:26:41 I almost died like four years ago. I uh my wife found me face down. Past out. I was brought to the hospital in Florence. Um I was in a coma for four days.

1:26:53 I was in the hospital for seventy. I had men in jail this. When I came Out of Just like a movie. I'm laying down.

1:27:03 Yeah, laying down in the hospital. Doctor's looking over me. Doctor says Do you know what your name is? I said it's David. It's very good.

1:27:12 So your last name is I said Bach. He says, do you know where you are? I go Yeah, I'm in Malone. I just had an ankle surgery'cause I had had an ankle surgery two weeks Prior.

1:27:22 Two weeks before that. And he says no no you're you're in Santa Maria Novella. You're in the ICU. How we're treating you right now for meningitis. But now that you've opened up your eyes, you're going to be a

1:27:34 You're gonna be okay, you're safe now. And then they brought my wife in. Said, Do you know what her name is? I And I made a joke. I said this Rebecca. She was like Who?

1:27:44 And I go, honey, I can still be a smart ass in the hospital. It's Elisha. And she starts screaming and yelling and she's like, Oh my god, oh my god, he's okay. But Steven, the truth was I wasn't okay,'cause when you get men in judges, you get brain swelling. So I couldn't remember things.

1:27:58 I couldn't remember my passwords to To the bank account? I didn't know the passwords to my phone number anymore. To my phone. One of the things I did when I came out of the hospital.

1:28:09 'Cause I always manage the money. As I said to my wife. We're gonna hire a financial advisor. And you have to be involved in what's going on. We actually had yesterday our annual counter.

1:28:22 'Cause I tell couples you gotta have an annual camera review either together And if you have a financial advisor at a minimum with your financial advisor. And I didn't want to cancel the appointment'cause I was even though you guys invited me to come here, I'm like I'm keeping the appointment. We'll fly your d flu this morning.

1:28:38 And so Again, having worked at you know Morgan Staling for nine years and been a financial advisor, I've seen too many couples Not do this. Including Sadly, Stephen, my dad just recently passed away.

1:28:51 And My dad was in the money management business his whole life. So he managed the money. And my mom Was not involved.

1:29:00 And when my dad passed away we had a Just like my book. Step in and help my mom. With everything. Now she's lucky. She's got two kids in the business.

1:29:10 But if she did. My mom was just a ripe Waiting. Example of somebody who could be taken advantage of. So the time to learn about money is before there's a problem.

1:29:20 If you took smart couples finished first, honestly, Steven. It's it's designed to be a A roadmap for two people together. Where you can sit down and go through this book chapter by chapter together. Starting with

1:29:34 Just organizing your financial information, putting everything into file folders. It starts the conversation. And then talking about your values, then talking about your dreams. Then going into well what What do you want to share? Yeah, you have a very comp I don't know all your stuff, but I

1:29:51 I've followed you for years. As I told you, I'm a fan of yours. I've got your book. I've watched your podcast. I've listened to you now for years. As your business is expanding, your life is getting more complicated. God forbid something happens to you tomorrow. Yeah, it'd be a fucking nightmare. And she's your fiance. Yeah. She wouldn't even know where to start. Mm.

1:30:12 And I don't know if she would know who to call. So It's a worthwhile conversation be like I just had this guy in the show and I don't know, maybe maybe we really need to like You know, involvable. I was just looking at some of the data here, and it says that

1:30:26 In terms of income ignorance, according to a 2021 study by Fidelity Investments, nearly forty percent of couples could not even identify how much their partner earned. It says In terms of financial infidelity, surveys from Bankrate and Credit Cards.com consistently find that up to 40% of adults share. That they have kept financial secrets, which is hiding

1:30:49 Cash, hiding bank statements, and hiding debts that they have from their romantic partner. So that's almost half. And you pointed out this earlier on, which is the CFO dynamic. In many households, one spouse acts as the chief financial officer, and research indicates that roughly fifty percent of couples um have a non managing spouse who has little to no idea how much money the family have total. They don't know where it is, and they don't know the passwords. Can sound scary.

1:31:16 It can sound intimidating and yet I can tell you every day people who actually Kinda do this basic stuff that we've talked about. Once you start to do it, you feel a lot better. You feel better instantly. You don't you don't have to go from having no savings to having a million dollars to feel better. If you just start automatically saving some money.

1:31:34 Paying yourself first. The moment you make that decision, you'll feel better. You go and you turn off some subscription fees like you just looked at. The moment you do that, you'll feel better. It's literally like a financial muscle. You start to build this financial muscle.

1:31:50 When you start to take action. It is action that changes your life. I always say I wrote all these books. If a person buys a book, reads it, and doesn't do anything. Then I was a form of entertainment. If you listen to a podcast on money and you don't do something

1:32:07 Then we were again a form of entertainment. My purpose for doing this podcast today, why I got on a plane and flew out here immediately to do this with you. Was I wanna try to change somebody's life today. I've always taken the approach of like I want to change a person's life one person at a time.

1:32:23 And Sometimes the things I share are hard to hear, but I also know they wake people up. You had this great Great quote of this pub. I was showing this today to my son.

1:32:33 I'm holding s for those of you who can't he see me, I'm holding Steven's book, A Diary of the CO, which is also sold millions of copies. This is your quote on page two. I wonder if you remember your quotes, because sometimes you forget'em, right? If you want long term success in business, relationships, and life. You have to get better at accepting.

1:32:55 Uncomfortable truths. As fast as possible. When you refuse to accept an uncomfortable truth. You're using to accept. An uncomfortable future.

1:33:08 The one thing that wasn't in this quote was money. And everything we're talking about is I'm like, You're gonna work ninety thousand hours over your lifetime. If you don't pay yourself first and you have nothing to show for it. The uncomfortable truth is you will be broke. We haven't talked about um

1:33:23 global issues and government issues and debt. Why do you have to take care of yourself financially right now more than ever before? Because the future Is about to radically change. And I will talk out of both sides of my mouth for a second. Number one

1:33:40 I believe the next ten years Hands down. will be the greatest opportunity to build wealth. In our lifetime. AI is create going to create so much wealth.

1:33:50 That We've never seen anything like it. Like when you look at the returns in the stock market from last year, they're a result of AI. What's happening is AI is making companies more profitable and more productive.

1:34:01 than they've ever been. The downside is People are losing their jobs. You've had people on the show, including Tony Robbins, talking about this. And there are gonna be a lot more of those job losses.

1:34:13 So some people are gonna get much wealthier. And then a whole lot of other people are gonna have a challenge. But there's another problem that we ha we're not talking enough about. And that is The safety net.

1:34:26 of governments. All these safety nets that were created. in the US social security. Medicare. Medicaid.

1:34:37 Unemployment. Through every single country. All of these things are called entitlement programs. Which is a fancy word for saying. The government made a promise to you.

1:34:50 And a whole lot of people Are dependent on that promise. And there's not enough money. To pay. For those promises.

1:35:00 So like in the US, you take soft security. The average social security check right now is nineteen hundred dollars. Not a lot of money. But about sixty million Americans? Depend on that.

1:35:12 Amount of money. In the US Social security, this is government data, not me. You can Do all the stuff online. The government is telling us that in two thousand thirty three.

1:35:25 That's around the corner. The social security is gonna be underfunded and they're gonna have to cut the benefits. Now what they're talking about is cutting the benefits by twenty percent. You have a lot of Americans that that's gonna be a real problem for. Every country's got this issue.

1:35:40 Because people are living longer. Governments have more debt than they've ever had. I am here to tell you. It's a cliche term, but no one's coming to save you. It's you're gonna have to save yourself.

1:35:53 And you're gonna have to take your personal financial well being. more seriously now than ever before. And if you do, you will be in great shape. If you don't You will be dependent on the easy.

1:36:06 On a system. That is buckling. One of the things in your I think it's the sixth point of the six things that couples get wrong is waiting too long to pay off the mortgage. What do you mean by that? I actually had a friend contact me. Um And ask this, they said, Steven, I've got some cash

1:36:23 That that's been given to me, I think, through an inheritance. Should I pay off my mortgage or should I go invest in the stock market in the S P five hundred or something else. Yeah. I didn't know what to say,'cause I'm not a financial advisor. If you call me up and you said, David, what what should I do? I'd go, Steven, what's the rate on your mortgage?

1:36:40 Then You'd say, Well, David, I got a mortgage five years ago and it's two and a half percent. I'd say, Okay, well that's a really low rate, Steven. You know what? You can put the money in a money market account right now and make more than that. So maybe you don't need to rush to pay it off as fast as possible. But if you've got a mortgage that's six or seven or eight percent.

1:36:58 It's a no brainer. The biggest thing I can tell you about paying down your mortgage early is actually really simple. Here's Ways to do it. If you make one extra payment a year on a mortgage

1:37:10 You'll take a thirty year mortgage. And you'll pay it off, depends on the rate. Five, six, seven years sooner. So you can go online, you can run a calculator. Today you don't even need calculators, you just run the question. You put in your mortgage, you tell Chairman I

1:37:23 Here's the size of my mortgage. Here's my mortgage payment. If I make an extra payment a year, how many how many years faster will I pay it off? And how much will I save? And you'll see the number.

1:37:35 When people see the number in black and white they go Gotta do that. Now here's the key. Make that payment automatic. Easiest way you make your payment automatic is either make one extra payment at the end of the year.

1:37:49 Or Take your mortgage payment. And increase it by ten percent. So if your mortgage payment's a thousand dollars. Make an eleven hundred dollar a month mortgage payment and tell the bank you want to add that to the principal.

1:38:02 When people do that, they need to make sure though that money's actually paying down the principal. Another way to do that is a bi weekly mortgage payment plan. Where you take your mortgage, you split in half, you pay half every two weeks. That'll also pay your mortgage off, really. Prenuptial agreements. I'm engaged.

1:38:17 Yeah. Should I be getting a prenup? So I would tell anyone Who's getting married?

1:38:27 Number one, if your incomes are not the same, you should get a print up. Number two, if you both have good incomes, you should get a print up. Number three, if you're in your thirties, you should get a print up. You would never go into a business without a contract. Marriage is the ultimate contract.

1:38:43 It just is. Now, is it romantic to do a prenup agreement? No. Does one person in the relationship typically not like the Doing print up. Yes.

1:38:54 I know a lot of women today who want prenups and the husbands don't want them. It's whoever's making the money. But I will say this about prenups. You need a lawyer, she needs a lawyer. You cannot go and do a prenup right before you get married.

1:39:07 When people do that, those prenups get thrown out the window. Because they will claim and say and have an argument for I was under Extremely

1:39:19 Undue influence to sign this agreement. Before The wedding. And those agreements get thrown out. Even if there's disclaimer language.

1:39:29 And both of you need attorneys. And prenuption agreements can often be like a negotiation. And you can learn a lot about your partner that it's not always pretty. I'm not saying you, but one can learn a lot about their partner that's not always pretty when you do a preemption. And once the prenuptial agreement is done, if it's a reasonable prenuptiment. It goes in a file.

1:39:50 It doesn't get looked at again. And it won't matter unless the day comes that you need to pull it out. And that's for a first time marriage. Okay, you're a second time marriage or a third time marriage? And you've got kids?

1:40:04 And custody issues. And And support for your first wife. Yeah, definitely need.

1:40:12 What is the most important thing we should have talked about that we didn't talk about? Mm. Steven, we've talked a lot about money today. But money's just a tool. So we actually haven't got to talk a lot about is

1:40:23 Using money just To free yourself to live your best life. And you don't have to have money to live your best life. And money is just a tool. So what's most important in life?

1:40:34 I'm gonna say things that people know. Health. Yeah, I started following you because of all the shows you did on health. Mm? People hold on to love way too much.

1:40:48 Gratitude? Being consistently grateful for the life you have. Friendship? Loving your friends fully. And the la last thing is fun.

1:41:01 You know, does I I think people go through life and at some point They stop designing their life. My grandmother used to say You gotta dream it. Design it.

1:41:14 And do it. And she's like and you've gotta run out of time. So what I would say to anybody is like This is you've got this one beautiful moment. In time.

1:41:26 Where you're here. What do you want? And start working on that today. You listened to the episode with Tony Robbins, though I guess. You've referenced him several times in this conversation.

1:41:43 If someone were to ask me who is the greatest mentor and greatest influence in my life besides my grandmother and my father. It's Tony Robbins. So I Went to Tony Robinson Summer in the early nineties. Back in the day when he had an infomercial with audio cassette. And I went to a program that he taught in Hawaii.

1:42:00 He had this big hotel called the Wikaloa. And he did it he did an exercise. So I it's like I remember like this is yesterday. He said to this

1:42:10 The room we were in, there were I don't know, a thousand of us in this room. He said How many of you have a dream that you're not working on? And we all We all had dreams. So he got us into a peak state.

1:42:23 And he had his work on our dreams. And then he asked the question. How many of you think are going to be alive in 10 years? Everyone's like, Yeah, we live in ten years. He's like, Great, so I got a question for you.

1:42:36 Are you going to be alive in ten years? Having worked On your dream. Hopefully gotten it. Right?

1:42:45 Done all the things I've taught you to do. Yeah, model the masters got yourself in peak state. Learn the pattern recognition. Have you gotten ten years older? Having gone through dreams

1:42:57 And maybe got it. Or did you just get ten years old? Ten years older. And you let your dream die. You let your dream die.

1:43:08 And the room just let that sit. And then he had his go off in groups. Of ten. And share our individual dream. So we'd all written it down on paper.

1:43:18 So I shared That my dream And this young kid Financial advisor, I'm a guy. I shared my dream was to write a book called Smart Women Finish Rich.

1:43:29 And teach a million women to be smart with money, s they could Проте темсел, тіч сер кід. And help their family. My heart's pounding, Steven, I'm sharing this idea with ten strangers, and then we go back into the room. And he's like, How'd that go? Are you guys all ready? Gets us back in a peak state.

1:43:46 Ten minutes later, a woman comes, taps me on the shoulder, and she says I just heard about your dream. My name's Vicky. I've worked on Tony's last two books. If you want to do your book, you're gonna need a book proposal.

1:43:59 You've done books, you know this. She's like, I can help you write a book ball as well. I hired her. Start working on the book proposal. Later I would

1:44:07 Go after the same agent that Tony has Jan Miller, she became my agent. He write a cover letter? I get a book deal and I start working to help millions of people. It started at a Tony Robbins seminar. I go back to my grandmother, right, Dream it.

1:44:21 Design it and do it. He gave me the life skills to do that. And I will tell you something about Tony because uh you see Tony on all these shows and People go, Is Tony the real deal? I

1:44:35 Stephen, if I if I was with you and I send Tony a text. Uh and Tony has a lot of friends like this. Tony gets right back to me. Tony's the real deal. I just went to Germany and took my older son, Jack, who's twenty two. To si him do.

1:44:49 UPW in September. Bring tears in my eyes. 'Cause I wanted Jack to have the experience without me there, so he was You know, bless Tony sitting in the front row. I came in on day three when he was in the peak state.

1:45:02 And I came in and I watched him. You know I was basically his age. And I thought God, you know, you know, I I went in and I gave him a hug. And I'm like, you just don't even know this is just

1:45:15 This experience that you're seeing What you're learning today if you use this stuff. It will change your life. That's the power of Tony and people go, you know Whatever it is, your podcast, your events.

1:45:31 Tony's events. My books. We're just careless. But God. God gave you a seed.

1:45:42 And a dream. And when we're the catalyst for like Go do this. Listen to that voice. Whoever your God is, that soul that you hear yourself saying

1:45:53 I have a dream. If I only had ten years left to live. I would really hate to die with that dream inside me. That's the dream you go work on. And since then you've

1:46:05 Done exactly that. You've educated hundreds of millions of people through your books, through podcasts, seminars, newsletters, and thousands of media appearances on how to do exactly that, how to get financially free, pursue their dreams, get hold of their money. So that they can live the life that is um destined for them. And that is an incredible thing.

1:46:24 And you've sold almost ten million copies of your books worldwide. I'm sure you're gonna hit that number at some point soon. And uh I guess you'll never get to see the impact that that's had on so many people's lives and how you've therefore changed the trajectory of their financial future and their kids and their kids and their kids like your grandmother did for you and your family. I would highly recommend everybody go and listen to that episode. I'm actually going to link it below. So if you haven't listened to the episode with Tony Robbins, that's a great next thing to do if you're still listening now. But uh David, I wanted to thank thank you so much for coming. And uh you present a really interesting different perspective on the subject of money, which is

1:46:56 It's hard to find. It's rare. Um, but it's very, very, very important and hopefully it'll be consequential for many. We have a closing tradition, as you know, um, where we ask the next guest the question left by the last. And the question left for you. Is Interesting. If you had all the money you needed to have to support yourself and your family.

1:47:16 Zero financial Worries. What job profession would you be doing? Or rather. What?

1:47:24 would you spend your time on? Hm. Yeah. That's surreal that this is the question you're giving me. That that was asked before I got here. Like that's a that's a God moment, too. Like that's meant to be. This is by the way, I'm not making this up. This is not a

1:47:40 Because that's me. I have enough. I have all the money that I need. I have my health right now, I have my time. And this year what am I gonna what I what I wanna go do, my dream for the year?

1:47:51 I want to have an endless ski sees them. So at the end of the year, ask me did I ski somewhere every month this year. I leave you today. I go back to Florence for twenty four hours and I turn around and go to Verbier, Switzerland with friends. I'm gonna try to ski somewhere.

1:48:06 Every day, every month this year. With friends and with family. all around the world for fun. I did this as my last dream to help one. More generation be smart or money. This is my final book. These may be my final podcasts.

1:48:21 And what you've done is you've updated Your smash hit. best selling book that's s that sold millions and millions and millions of copies that you wrote twenty years ago to make it relevant to the Turn. financial situation and world that we live in.

1:48:35 And my goal with this was a lot of my readers now are in their fifties and their sixties, but they've got young kids like I do. And I wanted this to be a book they could put in their hands. I'm gonna link the book below. Fantastic reader, you've written several incredible books, so it's I'm gonna link all of them below in the description for anyone that wants to grab a copy of them. The automatic millionaire, a powerful one step plan to live and finish Rich.

1:48:58 David, thank you. Stephen, thank you. It's been great. I'm gonna show you how to make it clear what you really want, figure out what's been stopping you, put the plan in place, and teach you the most important thing that's made me successful. And I don't think people fully realize the significance of how many of the most influential people on planet Earth you have worked with and continue to work with. What is the pattern that you noticed in those people? So I found four things with them, and the first thing is

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