Afford Anything - The Brutal Money Truth No One Wants to Hear, with Dr. Brad Klontz and Adrian Brambila

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

#553: This is the third and final episode in a three-part series. Dr. Brad Klontz and Adrian Brambila join us to share 21 harsh truths about building wealth.  This episode focuses on the final 11 harsh truths, following up on their previous conversations about the first 10 harsh truths. The conversation begins with a key distinction: poor people buy stuff, while rich people buy time. They explain how wealthy people focus on building passive income streams rather than trading hours for objects. Brambila shares how he learned this lesson personally, discussing his pickleball court purchase through investment income rather than active work hours. The duo challenges common assumptions about luxury brands, arguing that people who constantly show off designer items are usually compensating for insecurity. Klontz shares his own experience of buying an expensive watch early in his career to prove his success. They examine whether college, marriage, and homeownership are necessary for wealth building. While data shows these traditional paths often lead to higher net worth, they acknowledge these aren't the only routes to financial success. On the topic of retirement, both guests argue that completely stopping work can be psychologically harmful, sharing examples of successful people who stayed active well into their later years. They break down specific money-saving strategies like getting roommates, using public transportation, and cutting your own hair. Brambila demonstrates how women can cut their own hair during the interview. The discussion covers specific side hustle opportunities, with detailed explanation of how to make money doing Amazon product reviews. Brambila shares how his videos have generated significant income, including $2,000 in a single day during Black Friday. They address money myths about credit cards, particularly the misconception about carrying balances to improve credit scores. Real examples and personal stories illustrate their points. Klontz shares how his 11-year-old son is making $5,000 monthly doing Amazon reviews, while Brambila discusses living in a van while earning six figures to demonstrate that wealth isn't about outward appearances. The episode concludes by connecting financial security to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, explaining how building wealth enables higher-level personal growth and positive impact. Timestamps: Note: Timestamps will vary on individual listening devices based on dynamic advertising run times. The provided timestamps are approximate and may be several minutes off due to changing ad lengths. 0:00 Introduction 2:02 Poor people buy stuff, rich people own time 13:20 Wealth mindset invests in passive income vs trading time 21:20 Only insecure people flex luxury brands 30:00 Debating necessity of college, marriage, homeownership 38:20 Why retirement can harm mental health 48:40 Wealthy people aren't afraid to ask for help 54:40 Don't rely on politics for financial freedom 1:03:20 Complaining keeps you poor 1:05:20 Alternative saving strategies: roommates, bus, sobriety 1:15:20 Netflix binging vs side hustles 1:19:40 Making money with Amazon product reviews 1:28:20 Credit cards must be paid in full monthly 1:31:00 The importance of thinking rich 1:33:30 Where to find more resources and bonuses For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode553 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We have a very special episode today. Episode three in a three-part series with Dr. Brad Clance and Adrian Brambilla about how to start thinking rich. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast. You can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice carries a trade-off. And that applies not just to your money, but to any limited resource you need to manage, like your time, your focus, your energy, your attention. This show focuses on five pillars.

financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate, and entrepreneurship. It's double-eye fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant. I trained in economic reporting at Columbia, and I help you focus on what matters. Welcome, Dr. Brad and Adrian. Thanks for having us. Glad to be here. In our last episode, we talked about 10 harsh truths that a person needs to learn if they want to start thinking rich. We're going to jump right in with the following 11, come up with a total of 21. And we're going to jump right in with the next harsh truth, which is poor people buy stuff. Rich people own time. It's the idea that time is the real most precious resource that we have and money is best used to try to buy back your time, own your time.

And I think also on your bio, you talk about when people buy stuff, they usually are trading hours of their life for objects, for purses and cars. We agree. When a wealthy person buys something with a rich mindset, they don't think in terms of I make $20 per hour and I want to get the new PS5 probe. That means I need to make, okay, $500. I need to work basically a week and then I can save enough and buy. And that's not how rich people think. They don't think in terms of I need to work X amount of time to trade and get this object.

Wealthy people, when they want to buy something and sorry fire movement, but it's actually okay to have some nice things. The only difference is wealthy people are not trading their time for the nice things. They're buying it with their passive income from investments. So when they make a purchase, it's not a trade of their time. They're living off their passive income. I have some nice stuff. I have a pickleball court, spent $40,000 doing it and it's about to be ready next week. That's a lot of money on something I don't need to spend money on, but I did it because I want it. I wanted to have it and I didn't trade my time. It's not like I'd sacrifice years to get this Pickwell Court, I have investments and my whole cost of living is paid for for my investments.

Now, some fire moving people might say, well, what if you took that passive income and then invest it again, keep investing, keep investing? But I think there's also a question of like lifestyle and buying stuff just won't let you know it is okay. But the wealthy people think differently. They're not trading their time for it. They're doing it a smart way. Passive income has a bit of a controversy around it. There's a bit of a connotation there because there are some people who would argue there is no such thing as passive income, that all income requires some level of active input. I agree, especially in my world of internet marketing.

Most people know me online as a very successful affiliate marketer. I've promoted actively 500 companies at a time. Right now, I'm probably like a little lower than that. And I'm really popular on TikTok in the affiliate marketing space. And people even use the term passive income with like internet money. And it's rooted in the sense that your website's running 24-7. So when you're asleep and someone happens to go on your website and buy something or checks out. It's like passive income. But I don't know if I agree with that. I do feel my definition

of passive income is when your money is able to make money. And I think real estate's a great example. My wife and I invest in through syndicates is like apartment complexes. We're not the property management company. We're a syndicate and investor of many investors in this. And so our obligation to work is nothing. Now we miss that on the potential upside on some other things if we were running the property, but to me, it's a fair trade. I help invest and I get my dividends, and to me, that's passive income. Now, is there any other work involved? And what's the risk? Well, there's a risk that, according to my percentage of ownership, there's a callback and I had to put more money because the property wasn't doing well, that that is a risk. But in a good investment,

I am truly feeling like I make passive income. Maybe you could argue, well, how did you even get the $100,000 to invest? Yes, I had to actively work for it. But I think in terms of when I, hear the word passive income, it's not internet money, it's when your money is able to make money and keep printing money. Would you agree or do you have a different take? So I reframe it into residual income because I think that speaks to the nature that you frontload the workload and then you earn residual income in an ongoing manner as a result of that frontloaded workload, which is synonymous with what we've been trying to say with the word passive income all along. But I think Some people think that passive is a euphemism for free money.

And so by switching it to residual income, it removes the connotation of free money. Yeah, I like it. My definition of passive income is similar to Adriens, where it's like it's investments, that quite literally you may be doing nothing and it's generating income. And as a matter of fact, that's what most wealthy people are doing. They have financial advisors and managing their money. They're taking out residuals as you go. I've owned property and it's not passive. It's not passive income. You got to get tenants. You got to worry

about the fixing. Even if you're outsourcing it, it's active. And so for me, that's where I sort of differentiate. But I do love the idea with regard to stuff versus time. Like if the rich mindset in my mind is I'm going to buy back my life one minute, one hour, one day, one week at a time. And that is my focus in terms of financial freedom is to get money so that I can buy back my most precious resource, which is my time, so I can do whatever I want with it. The poor mindset is I am going to save money to buy a car, whatever it is, a watch, a coffee mug. That is not the rich mindset. Now, of course, you need to do that along the way, but the focus really needs to be on buying your most precious resource, which is your time, and you want to own it. How would a person buy their time? So people do it in

different ways. I looked at reducing my day job as much as I could as I got other sources of income that were more passive in nature. The fire movement, I think a lot of people look at it as all or nothing. I think there are ways to do it along the way. You don't need to wait until you're 75 to be financially free. Maybe you can work to go part-time. What would it take for you to be able to go from 40 hours a week to 20. And how much money would you need to be saving and investing and spinning off income so that you could do that? So I encourage people look at it as a phased out process versus waiting for it all at the end. Right. And that prevents just one more year syndrome, which is really prevalent as well. Right. It gave me so much passion and energy. And actually, I did have a job

and I started to get frustrated with that job and worn out with that job. And when I was doing my side hustles and as those started to grow, I just, just had so much passion for that. I was actually able to stay up my day job with a totally different mindset and experience related to it because I was growing in these other areas that I knew for me were going to get me what I wanted a lot faster than grinding out the salary game. And by the way, we do not disparage nine to fives. Actually, the research I've seen, 70% of millionaires are nine to fivers. They have jobs or they're professionals. So I think it's a totally legitimate route to go. As a matter of fact, I think people need to be careful about the entrepreneur

route because there's a lot of misinformation about how easy it is. And this is the only way to get wealthy. That stuff drives me nuts because there are tremendous risks involved. Like I have several businesses. I probably have one or two that are failing as we speak. I've had a lot of failed businesses over time. It's a risky proposition, although my bet it was sort of a side hustle until it showed me that I could count on it. Because I got a family. I don't want to roll the dice like that. If I was younger, I might have been fine with rolling the entrepreneurial dice, but I didn't want to rack up dead. I was more conservative. Lots of different ways to get it.

But the key really is, how can I own more of my time? That is the rich mindset. I also think rich people try to optimize their life for time. As a kid, we watched like villains or superhero movies. And the main superhero or supervillain is never driving the car, actually. They're like in the backseat. When I think of like, would I ever have a driver? sounds insane. And right now, I still think that's insane for me if I add a driver. But as I've

started to make more money and I am trying to optimize for time, I've tried to try to buy back. So other specific things, like, if you have the means, you can do these things. If you don't have the means, you can't afford to buy back your time. This is the whole point. We want you to stop buying silly objects and start saving so you can get to the position to do these things. So I have a house admin. I was sharing Brad yesterday. Brad asked me, is like, what does your house admin do? She can do anything from like laundry to like some business stuff, like managing receipts. But here's actually something I said yesterday.

I got an affiliate company. I'm the number one affiliate for is hasty bake. They make, it's like a really high-end charcoal grill. And they sent me one for free. And I am not handy. I can't change a light bulb. So when I got this grill, I opened it. I looked at the manual and I was like, yeah, I'll put this together.

And I was like, wait a second. This is crazy. So I was like, this is probably going to take like three, four hours. One of the things I sent was, can you put this grill? So I'm here in New York. I'm going to be back tomorrow and that grill is going to be done. That's a really silly example. And some people say, that's what a waste of money. You're paying someone to put your grill together? Like, that's embarrassing. Like, what kind of man are you? But that's time I didn't want to spend. There's productivity hacks that don't cost money. For example, online grocery shopping. I have delivered

up my house and sometimes that's sacrifice a really bad avocado. But to me, it's worth that time saving. from a technology standpoint, like one thing on Zoom now, you have AI meeting review. I used to take notes. I don't take notes anymore. I have AI compressed an entire hour-long meeting and it tells me beautiful notes. There's technology hacks. There's, of course, income hacks. There's outsourcing, having a cleaner, like all these things.

If you have the means and you realize that time is our most valuable asset, now it's time to take the action and outsource. And the only thing why you wouldn't do that is probably because of some, way you were raised where this it's almost like a crime like my parents who are mexican like at first when i told my outsource my yard work and i told me you should do the same you have the money you and my dad makes jokes like we're mexican we can never outsource our yard work but every time they do the yard work they always complain about it it's like i hurt my back they can't let go of these things but i'm not perfect i know there's some things i probably shouldn't do that i am doing

but i'm trying to optimize for time constantly because i know it's fleeting our days are numbered Right. Should a person who is just starting in this world, should they, with their first batch of savings, prioritize buying back their time in the ways that you just described or prioritize putting more money into index funds than other investments? If you're just starting out, I would look for the many freeways that Adrian just described to help you buy back some of your time. The big problem we see is people wasting time. They have a lot of. a time that they're not utilizing towards their goals. I mean, that's a whole other issue where how are you spending your time in the evenings on the weekend? If you have these goals of improving your financial life, maybe you're going to have to hustle more. And again, find something you're passionate about. If you have the goal of like financial freedom and you have

a clear vision of what it is and it's really exciting for you, it's a lot easier to do that. But essentially it comes down to math. It's like, have you increased your worth enough where it's actually worth it for you to spend more time somewhere else making money or exercising your vision towards those goals where you can outsource it and pay someone else. I mean, for a lot of my life, it actually would cost me more money to pay someone else to do it than for me to do it myself. And so essentially what you want to do is stack up your skills, whatever, it's education formal or informal. How can you increase your values so that it's actually a financial crime for you not to outsource it? That's kind of where you.

you want to get in terms of how much money you're making because you spending an hour, building your business is going to be worth so much more for you than you spending an hour washing and waxing your car. But I think that's something you have to work towards. Here's my answer to the question. I pulled my phone. I looked at my screen time. This is an exercise you should all do. And I think the question is if you have the means, do you invest in the index fund, ETF, the smart investments, or do you hire a cleaner now or hire a assistant to help you with busy house adulting. And I think before you hire someone to buy back more of your time,

you should first take a look to see, are you maximizing and using it correctly? Go to your screen time. I know where this is going. Yesterday I spent two hours and 19 minutes on my phone. Most of it looks like it's social media and text messages. I like to think I'm a little different. I'm a professional social media content creator.

If you're not a professional social media content creator, you can call that the baseline. If you're spending more than two hours and 19 minutes and you're not a professional and you're not using it for money, that sounds like before you spend money to buy back your time, are you spending it wisely? It sounds like you could probably cut back on these mindless death scrolls that you're doing. And by the way, I should also, I probably did not spend two hours and 19 minutes working on social media too. I'm a victim of scrolling like we all are. I think that's how I would take the question is like maybe you're not ready to have more time yet. because you're not using it in your best light. Now, if you dial back the bad habits that we all have of scrolling and binging,

and now you're like, I'm now spending my time cleaning my dishes. And if I had more time, I could focus on my side hustle or learn more or get a second degree, whatever those things are like, then maybe you can explore that. But it's like, how disciplined are you with your time? With scrolling in particular, I think one of the challenges in evaluating your screen time is that so much of scrolling happens in the margins. So you're in the back of a taxi on your way from point A to point B.

So you start scrolling Instagram or, at the more extreme end, press an elevator button and then you just start scrolling as you're waiting for the elevator to show up. And that's something that Dr. Cal Newport talks about because he's like, the elevator's going to show up in 20 seconds. You don't need to scroll for 20 seconds. You can be bored for 20 seconds while you're waiting for the elevator. Practice being bored. But so much of scrolling happens in those margins.

that otherwise could not be used for any constructive purpose. Arguably, maybe you could send an email, possibly, but there's probably not a whole lot of work that you're going to be able to get done in the back of a 10-minute taxi ride. I don't want to speak totally out of my element, but I know I have listened to health podcasts, neuroscientists, talk about how that need to constantly be distracted

actually creates behavioral patterns where we struggle to focus. think of that as the reason why you shouldn't pick up your phone. Maybe you could be more productive in 20 seconds, but that you're creating a habit to always need to be distracted. And that can potentially make focusing when you do have the time to learn or read. I know I've been there where I've been reading the same page over and over again. I just can't make it through.

That probably has nothing to do with the books, probably because my need to constantly get more information. So that could be something. Yeah, that's exactly what Dr. Cowell Newport said as well, precisely what he said. Well, I don't want to be a boomer. I'm not, by the way, I'm Gen X. But also, like, maybe on the 22nd ride up the elevator, you could think about what state of mind you want to be in before you walk in the door on whoever's waiting for you on the other side, whether it's you want to relax, whether you're going to make some phone calls, whether you have family there. Like, maybe putting yourself in the right mindset of how you want to show up wherever you're moving next. Some of my best ideas have come from those moments in a shower or whatever, where just spending some time away from what we're all so addicted to. I mean, I'm one of them. I'm afraid to show my screen time. Although I was with you. So it's probably exactly the same amount. When you pick up your phone, I pick up mine. It's reorienting you to what's really important in life. Again, time just goes

like that. And so what can we do to maximize our experience of time also? And this sort of deep psychology here. But 24 hours can go really fast or it can go really slow because you're really immersed in it and you're really counting on that time. So I think there's some gifts in those little transition moments as long as you're not the one driving where you really have to focus on the road. Right. Well, and don't they say novelty increases your experience of time, so novel situations. That's why if you're traveling, a week feels like quite a long time versus if you're in your routine at home, a week flies by. Yep, absolutely. That's one of the reasons why, for me anyway, I always like to talk about experiences are greater than things because things, as

Adrian just said, you'll trade your time for things. And if you can really focus on experiences, that's really what it's all about. Like people at the end of their days, they're not thinking about, oh, at the car, I wish I would have had. They're thinking about the experiences they wish they would have had. Let's talk about the next harsh truth, which is only broke and insecure people flex luxury brands. That's right. We said it and we believe it. And a lot of it's based on research around how wealthy people spend their money. And they're not really the ones doing it. You know, studies have shown on our research on money vigilances, the wealthier people tend to downplay how much money they have. Think about it. I grew up lower socioeconomic class.

And in our studies, those are the ones. I'm the people who want to sort of show the world that I made it and increase my value because frankly, I felt terrible about myself. I felt like I didn't have nice clothes. I didn't have nice shoes. I couldn't do certain things. and there's some status associated with stuff. It's just, I think we all have to admit it. It's really important to admit because we are very driven to pay very close attention to our status. We always like to tell people, oh, you shouldn't care about what other people think.

And I think that's actually the most ridiculous statement to say to somebody. We are wired to desperately care about what other people think. And that was key to our survival in those hunter-gatherer groups. Like your status within the tribe was something that you constantly monitored heard and looked at. And what's so fascinating, our tribes used to be more local. I remember as a kid, like, I didn't really know what to covet until the Sears catalog came around, by the way, which is like once a year. You guys probably can't relate. But it'd be this catalog from Sears that had all this stuff that I'd never seen before. It's like, oh my gosh, I didn't even know I needed that.

I feel deprived now because I don't have it. And people in your neighborhood would drive similar cars, and you'd go out to eat in similar places and dress in a similar way. And there'd be some variability for sure. But now with social media, we're just inundated with all this stuff you don't have and you feel bad about yourself and you feel like you're missing out and we're very tempted to do it. So we come out really hard on this because part of what we want to do is retrain people to make the correct assumptions, like the statistically correct assumption when they're on social media and they're seeing people flexing luxury brands. The statistical correct assumption is that that that person is perhaps a high earner, maybe, with very low net worth because they are prioritizing outward displays

of wealth, or they are low net worth, low income, and they're just trying to sell a get rich quick horse, or they're trying to show the world that they made it. And again, I was victim to this. When I got out of school, a bunch of debt, I was starting to make some money. I immediately went out and bought like a $2,000 luxury watch. And I bought my mom a very expensive gold Hawaiian heirloom bracelet just to show her that and by the way I wanted her to show her friends this oh look what my look what my bradley got me you know by the way he's a doctor by the way she still introduces me to everyone is this is dr brad it's my son dr brad clontz it's like her friend from church and then she'll do the same thing with my wife and dr brad clots and his wife dr joney wada it's so

i mean she's so proud right she's so proud of the sacrifices that she made and i and i love her dearly for all that but that's a clear sign that somebody's not feeling great about their social status that they need to show this off. And so when people see that on social media, I want the immediate assumption to be like, oh, come on, this person's obviously not wealthy. And because the opposite is assumption is what people typically make, which then leads to these patterns of consumerism and overspending because they're playing the wrong game. I think the question be, do you think every person that rocks Gucci a millionaire financially

free? I don't think so. If you're looking for signs, a clothing, an article, a jewelry, all of these can be faked. All of these could be on a maxed out credit card. It's very rare to think of someone as the picture of success, as someone that actually has all these things that is broadcast in media. The millionaires, Brad here has done so much research and studying

on what an actual millionaire has and they consider someone frugal. And designer brands are a shout, a plea for attention. I know some people have them that are financially free. It's true. But I think it also has to do with the intention buying their brand. Rameet Sethi, he loves designer clothes. This is rich life. So like here's an example of someone that is a household name in the financial space.

And he loves, that's his rich life, right? So again, if that's it, I'm pointing the deception here. Like, that's great. Your rich life can be whatever you'd like. If you're living your rich life and you have your intention behind your spending, don't be fooled by most people because most people don't have financial freedom. Most people are trying to project a level of success that they don't have. Just think about it psychologically.

Why the need on social media to be posting these luxury brands repeatedly? What is the psychology behind it? Because there's no accident. This is not an accident at all. They're definitely wanting to have you have a certain opinion about them. And they're curating it very carefully. and it's bottom line, it's insecurity. Like, it's the bottom line because they really want you to see them as important and valued.

And as we said, the research shows it's typically people who grew up with less. Now we just offended everyone that has Gucci and Louis Vuittal. Gucci belt. I don't have one. Yeah. And again, we're not trying to disparage people and want certain people to be, feel like, oh, gosh, he's right. I mean, because that is the majority of people who are doing it. It's like they are living outside of their means to put,

together persona that they think is the world is going to reward them for. And the problem is, it's never enough. That is literally the problem, because you're going to move to a better neighborhood and then it's the same thing. It's like, I got to keep up with the Joneses. I got to surpass the Joneses. How much money are they investing in their kids' private baseball lessons? I mean, it never stops. Oh, they have a jacuzzi. I don't have a jacuzzi. And so just to understand that people who are most likely to be fronting that have some deep insecurities and they really care about how you see them and perceive them. And brands will target people who have that insecurity,

and those are the ones who are typically advertising it like a billboard. Why else would we have walking billboards? Is there a distinction you brought up Rameit and his enjoyment of designer clothing? Is there a distinction between those who pursue a luxury brand because of the label versus those who pursue it due to the craftsmanship involved? I think for sure, if we make this very clear, so people don't get this twisted. You've achieved your level of financial freedom or maybe you haven't, but you're on the path and you are so happy to be with your automatic percentage, let's say

for your numbers, 30% of every dollar I make is invested. And as long as that's happening, the rest of the money after my cost of living is my fun money. And as long as you feel like you have your plan, you like the pace of your plan and you're heading in the right trajectory and you got this leftover money. We're not judging you if designer brands is what you do because you like the craftsmanship, you like the way it makes you feel. That's not the people that we're talking about here. Now, you've been doing this podcast for so long. I would imagine most of your long-time listeners, they're probably those people actually who like their path there, like they're investing as much as they like and they're also living in the best quality life. So if designer brands is

how you'd like to spend your money, that's amazing. We're talking about most people, which are not probably these long time lessers. These are people who they're caught up in the status game and thinking because of their insecurities of making these purchases. So I don't want to offend fashion people in craftsmanship. My wife loves fashion. I'm wearing a shirt that I got in Japan and I think it was $50. It's more expensive than my normal shirts. But I'm here for a special podcast. I wanted to put it on, you know? And yeah, I appreciate the craftsmanship. It was really nice. But I feel like that when I make that purchase, I'm not trading my time for it. There's no prominent logo on here and I didn't buy it to try to flex people. You guys would have never

known it's from Japan if I didn't say it. I bought it because it truly felt nice. Yep. And I grew up, like I said, in a lower income area. I saw way more labels there than I see now where I live in Boulder, which is extremely wealthy. And so it's sort of fascinating. It's like people tend to downplay how much they have. And for many reasons, they don't want to be targeted during the Great Depression. the wealthy just fled to the countryside and like mounted machine guns on their homes outside because they were worried about people stealing from them. And that could be part of it. You know, part of people worry about being judged by flexing if they have a bunch of money and they're worried about being targeted and judged and all that. But the bottom line is that

those labels and Adrian talked about his more expensive t-shirt here and it doesn't have a big label. And if it did, you know, you would just ask yourself like, why? You know, why the need to project this outward display of wealth? That's really the question that I want. people to ask when they see it on social media because the untrained eye who does not know the research is going to assume, well, that's what people do. And then that leads to people who can't even afford it buying this stuff and promoting it on social media. And that's really what that chapter is about. It's about flexing it. Like what's the need for the flex? Adrian has nice stuff. And I've yet to see posts that he or I are making, you know, leaning up against our luxury this or luxury

that. I mean, that's not the, we don't need to do that. Leaning against the Lambo. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we should do that. Maybe we'd sell more books. Get the wrong. Should have had that on the cover. Yeah. That's the sad thing. Yeah.

It works. If we were to lean against Lamborghini and talk about our books, start thinking you're rich. I think it would work. But it would attract the wrong type of person that we want. How I went from like 100,000 followers, like 1.5 million was I was living an example of a contradiction of what people perceived with wealth. I was living in a van and I would transparently say like share, I made $100,000 last month and I live in this van by choice. So people would say, there's no way.

Any millionaire wouldn't live in a van. You must be a scammer. This is a fraud because people think if I make that much money or if I'm a millionaire, you wouldn't live in a van. You would have a Lamborghini. I think it would work. And I think that's the problem with the guru industry and finances and business industries is like they prey on the cultural norm that the Lamborghini is the reason.

That means you are successful. You have to be rich and afford that. And I think we can't deny the fact in order to get a Lamborghini, whether you max out leverage or not, you still have to get to some type of income level to do that. They don't just hand out people like loans on Lamborghini. So there's some level of income success to get there. But income is just one part of the wealth formula, right? So you can have a high income.

You'd be living debt. So much debt. Living paycheck is paycheck. 50% of people making six figures do this. So you just have to be careful and know that objects, brands. They're not the only reason. They're not a reason why you should be impressed by someone. Yeah, I call them Scambraguineas. That's awesome. Lambergros driving scambragonies. I love it.

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or don't. And there's going to be, I think, a little bit of a debate going on. Let's go, baby. Yeah. Let's go bring on. Bust out the spreadsheets. Out of all the chapters in the book, this is one chapter that Brad and I didn't have the exact ideologies on in beliefs.

But I also mentioned in one of our previous podcasts how working with Brad has helped me take what I used to believe was like fully true into a partial truth. And so one of the things coming from the fire movement, living in a van, I believed before working with Brad closely that like a home is not the answer to the fastest path to achieving financial freedom. And in many ways, that is an illusion that most people have. I was hardcore. That was my stance. I'm not so one-sided anymore. The data shows that most people become millionaires through their home. This is what I tried to argue is like homes, phantom costs,

all the things that pop up in homeownership, insurance and taxes. And if you were to rent instead and take the difference of the money, invest in the stock market, it would always win versus homeownership. But it's just not what people do because we're not mathematical creatures. We're emotional creatures. So typically what happens when you get that extra money, we're not robots. We spend it. We don't save it when we don't invest it. So even though on paper in many, many ways renting is better, people don't do it. So what a mortgage does is it creates forced savings.

I'm basically finding your point for you. It creates forced savings. And that's the secret. Not that necessarily getting a house is the best investment, but it creates for savings. Yeah. And for this chapter, we're just given the stats because I see tons of misinformation. like the one that that really gets me. And by the way, I'd like to consider myself open-minded. And if I'm not, please confront me. But I see on social media like college isn't worth it anymore. My first thought

is always like, oh, is it not? Oh, my goodness, this is interesting. And then I go look for the data. And I keep doing this every year because I keep hearing that. But every single year and people say, oh, but that was back to that. No, no, right now, the Department of Labor does studies and they ask, they look at how much people are making each week. And the bottom line is the average college grad in the U.S. makes $1.2 million more over their lifetime. And that number fluctuates. But it's a lot more. And so it's not true that college isn't worth it anymore. It may be in the future. Also around being married, I think it's between the ages of 25 and 35, the average married couple has 10x. The net worth is the average single person. And by the way, I think it's like, for men,

3x the net worth and for women at 7x. So for both, it's like more money. Now, we're not suggesting that you get married. We're not suggesting that you have to go to college. We're not suggesting that you need to buy a house. This is just the common path and it's good to know the numbers. Because when it comes down to you, it really does matter. Like, for example, if you pick the wrong major, the wrong major, I don't want to say it like that. But let's say that you go to college because you want to make more money. You pick certain majors, 25 to 40 is the average college debt. to get a job that pays minimum wage. That's fine to get a job that pays minimum wage if you want to go to college,

as long as you come from a wealthy family. That's fine. And what's so sad about it is when you look at the list of majors that don't pay, they're like the best ones, like for society and culture and humanity. I'm hoping actually the humanities have a resurgence with AI, which is probably another conversation. But you've got to pick wisely. And so what I see is a lot of first-generation college students, immigrants to the U.S.,

who think if I just go to college, I'll be set. I'll be set for life. And by the way, used to be, you just go to college, get a degree, you're set. You're already in that higher income. Now it really matters with regard to your major. So especially for people who come from backgrounds like I did, lower income, you want to go to college to advance yourself, make money. You have to do your research on what major to get. You have to look at, it's the Occupational Outlook Handbook. And it's free online. I think it's Department of Labor. But I can consulted that in college to figure out what major to get. So you really have to do the research. Essentially, we just wanted to lay out the stats based on how people get rich and what rich people do.

And that's what we found. See, how do you argue against that? He's got all these data points. Like sometimes my entrepreneur content would talk about like more of a logical thought. Like if you want to create an online business, if you want to be an entrepreneur, instead of going to college, like try it. Like there's ways you can create a YouTube channel for free and start creating. content. You learn so many invaluable skills that college won't teach you. But again, I'm not so extreme anymore. My mind is open. And I get the data. And it's so hard to try to argue against the data. It's not, there's so much nuance too of like, you know, who you marry. Absolutely. What college do you go? Like, what do you study? What kind of home do you get? Like, there's so much nuance, but I can't deny data. Well, and it comes from lies. There's a lot of mail generated content that I'm seeing online right now that

talks about how marriage is a scam and how women take all your money. I mean, there's these dark areas of the web. And these comments are popping up on my feet all the time. And so I'll literally be like, oh, really? Is marriage a terrible thing for men nowadays? And so I just go look. And I'm like, well, looks like they have three X the net worth as single men at the same age. I'm like, I guess not. No college is actually worth it. If it wasn't, I'd be happy to tell you it's not. Like, I have no skin in the game. Well, I guess I'm a professor. But I don't need to be. So I think we're just trying to challenge some of those myths. And I also hear on social media that it's better for you financially to rent.

And so I look at it. And by the way, Adrian has beautiful spreadsheets showing you exactly why. If you did everything the way you should do it, that renting, you'll have a higher net worth at the end of then buying with all the phantom costs and investing the difference and over a certain number of years with average market returns. By the way, he did a really great job. It's in the appendix. Very long.

Go ahead and read it. And he's right about that. But when it comes to the actual behavior that most people do, it's like nine out of ten millionaires on their own home. So if you wanted a formula, we're just sort of laying out the stats. But it really does come down to the individual decision. Part of what I'm hearing is that what's true in the aggregate may not be true for the individual. So I think there's some messaging that sort of gets lost there when you take something that might broadly and directionally be true for a wide swath of millions of people. but that in a given individual's personal circumstances might not be necessary.

That's totally true. And we say that in the chapter, too. Like, we're not telling you to do any of these things because these might be horrible decisions for you as an individual. Right. But these are the general trends. Don't make decisions based on false information around what happens in general. We were having this conversation before we started recording over lunch about how no one

ever said, what do you want to be when you grow up? People said, are you going to be a doctor or an engineer? because when you grow up around Nepalese Americans, that's what you hear, at least if you were me. What they were indicating was something that in the aggregate has a high probability of financial success. And so when I said, well, I'm not going to be either a doctor or an engineer, it was like, gas, scandal. But again, it's what works in the aggregate for a large portion of the population might not be a good fit for a given individual person inside of it.

Yeah, absolutely. It might be the absolute worst move. Right. Yeah, I would have been a very mediocre veterinarian. No one wants to take their dog to a mediocre vet. All right, let's talk about the next harsh truth. Ooh, oh, this is going to get some people riled up. Retirement is for dead people.

All right, so before you get too mad, I just looked up the definition of retirement. So what does retirement means? It means to stop working. Then I said, well, what does work mean? And I'm going to get it wrong because we're just talking here. But it's essentially activity designed to produce in pursuit of a purpose or a result. So retirement essentially means to stop engaging in behavior designed to produce a result or a purpose. And I'm just going to suggest to you that's a terrible, terrible idea for you to stop what having purpose and putting effort

into something, you know, that's focused on a result. And really, this is a little bit of us challenging some of people in the fire movement also and people of like-mindedness around that once I stop working, then I'm going to be happy and everything's going to be great. Once I stop engaging in a pursuit. And what we have found and what I have found personally in working with people is people end up getting depressed without a purpose, without a reason to get up in the morning, without a passion, without a pursuit. And so not to hang your hat on this idea that once I stop working, then I'm going to be happy and fulfilled. And it also depends on how much of your self-esteem is wrapped up in that work. Because retirement can be a mental health crisis

for many people. In Japan, they have an entire syndrome related to like retired men who just become assholes. And their wives actually develop psychological symptoms because now they're home. and they actually have training programs. RHS, retired husband syndrome? Yes, retired husband syndrome. Isn't that fascinating? The culture has identified it as a huge issue because these guys all of a sudden have no purpose

and they're just sitting around the house and they're not very kind because I think they're struggling with their own existential realities. And I've just seen so many people who've cashed out on what you would think would be incredible. Like, oh, sold my business for $25 million. Now, unfortunately, they signed a non-compete so they have to stay out of that industry for like five years.

And I've seen like so many examples of people becoming depressed, becoming suicidal even, under those circumstances, because you have to have a purpose. So we're just throwing that out there, that the idea of stopping a pursuit that has a purpose and meaning it is not good for you. I just became aware of someone who on the surface felt like they had it all in Austin, a very prominent entrepreneur who had exited a supplement company in the hundreds of millions. I have a guess as to who this is. We'll talk after.

Yeah. Although he was a very well respected entrepreneur and grew so fast and made so much money, he grew a company, scaled it so fast. And then you know he was such a good guy. He donated so much of his money to amazing impacts. He has photos with Tony Robbins. His photos with Tim Ferriss. He's like, this guy, he did it.

He made a lot of money. He gets away. Like, this guy has it figured out. And he's retired. And I can't say these things on a podcast, but they're horrendous. You're saying it right now. No, the specifics. The specifics, such a toxic lifestyle has created from retirement and from losing his sense

of purpose to just scandalous relationship stuff. I was just thinking of this guy of like, this is someone who at first, I even looked at his profile page and his bio and I was like, man, that's cool. Like I was even like fantasy. Dude, I would love to do that. I would love to scale my business to $100 million sell and then donate it. And here I am taking photos with Tony Robbins. And then after you exit it, then what do you do after that?

And even someone that has gone to that caliber lacks purpose and it can totally ruin and jeopardize your entire life. So this is like such a serious conversation, even in a much more smaller capacity. Like we were talking just about our parents and their retirement life and how they're just struggling to spend the money that they so rightfully earned. And we both shared it in kind of funny conversations of us saying, please don't leave me inheritance. Like I want you to spend your money. And it affects everyone to try to figure like, how do we live our life? How do we actually, we make so much content about saving money, but what about spending money to love your best life?

So purpose is such, that's like the purpose of life. That's the hardest question to answer and figuring out. And retirement, the act of working, because most people have to work, kind of distract us from the real question of like, what should we do with our lives? And then when you retire, you're faced with that question instead of answering it, people can struggle emotionally and through relationships. I've already heard you say this a couple times today, like mentioning Warren Buffett and how he's 92 and he's still working. 94. 94. And I asked you also like, do you have an exit plan? You're like, no, I'm going to do

this? I'm in for the long run. And you found your, you found your thing. You know, like, you're going to create content. You're doing this by choice. And I shared like, I'm always going to be creating content. I shared also, I don't know if I'll always be creating content about finance, but I'll always be creating. I like the act of creating. So you've got to find something that compels you, that drives you. And if you don't, life can get rough. Right.

And it sounds like in the example that you shared, it sounds to me like this person is spiraling into self-destructive behaviors. Yeah, lack of purpose can do that. You would probably have studied this more than either of us, the triggers that can lead somebody down a self-destructive path. Yeah, and work has built-in meaning. built-in purpose, a lot of times built-in social interactions. And the call to action here is not not to discourage you from transitioning from a job you don't enjoy. I mean, we would actually

love for you to do that. That sounds like a terrible thing to have a job you don't enjoy. But it's like, don't think that you stopping working is going to lead to you being happy. Don't wait for that because you could be sorely disappointed, especially if you're dedicating so much time and energy to that purpose because you want to get there fast. Because at the end of the day, you're going to still need something you should do and a purpose so you don't have retired husband syndrome and you don't make your life miserable and your partner miserable. That's really the call to action with that. And part of that is build some of that now. Don't wait to the end. Just like stuff's not going to make you happier. Stopping your pursuits

which have passion typically and drive. That's not going to make you happy either. Let's talk about the next harsh truth, which is only poor people. are afraid to ask for help. And we should take a moment here, since this is a new episode, to redefine for the people who missed it in the last one, what you mean by poor in this context,

because you're not talking about an income status or a net worth status. Absolutely. Poor is a state of mind, just like rich is a state of mind. Broke is having no money. Broke is supposed to be a temporary thing. We've all been broke.

And the only thing that makes the temporary into a longer duration is having a poor mindset. Someone that has a rich mindset, but is broke, it's just a matter of time until they're elevated because they're doing the right things like saving and learning and trying to educate. So when we talk about poor people, we really are talking about people that have a poor mindset or toxic mindset with money. Right. All right. So only those of a poor mindset are afraid to ask for help. Why be afraid to ask for help?

One of the studies that I conducted, we actually asked people whether they're asking for help and who's, they get help from? And we saw a very clear pattern where ultra wealthy people more likely to be asking for help with things than people who are lower net worth. Adrian, as he's becoming wealth, is asking for more and more help along the way. Help me do this. Help me do that. Most ultra wealthy individuals hire out help for their investments. Most middle class lower income people are much more hesitant to do it. And it really comes down to a culture. A culture, I call it do it yourselfitis. And by the way, I'm still in recovery. Adrian's doing interventions on me yesterday doing an intervention on me.

I have much more do-it-yourselfitis. I wanted to share, actually, when I reached out to you, there was a year that I had tripled my income and I was looking at the taxes I have to pay. And I was like, holy moly, this is insane. So I texted Brad. I was just asking him for help because I know he's worked with billionaires. He works with hundreds of millionaires. So I'm like, I'm going to pay so much in taxes or any strategies I could do.

Like, what are the really rich ultra-wealth people do? Like, am I even there yet? What are my options? And Brad reached out. Every single wealthy person I know pays a ton in taxes. And he educated me, despite on the media we hear like, or rich people don't pay taxes. He's like, it's not true. Every rich person I know pays a lot in taxes.

I reached out for help and he was that person. When I asked for help, you have to almost like humble yourself. Like, you don't know all the answers. But any successful rich wealth mindset, like we never assume that we know all things. things. All right. So this is the metaphor I use. I know you have pliers in your garage, but you should outsource your dentistry. And I feel like the same is true for taxes. And the sort of the middle class, lower income mindset is I have to do it all myself. And this is sort of trading your time for money and that kind of thing too. And it's like the bottom line is that,

especially if you're starting a business or even not, hiring somebody to do your taxes might cost you hundreds when you start out. And it could save you thousands. Having an investment advisor. So you're not up trading all night, thinking that this is what wealthy people do. That's not what they do. Wealthy people are out there doing their thing, whatever that thing is that brings in income, and they're outsourcing some of that. And so it's really a call to action because the middle class lower income mindset, we feel bad about not doing it ourselves. We feel bad that we can't do it ourselves. I felt like I needed to know taxes. That's what wealthy people know. A lot of them don't even know what any of the forms mean on a tax return. I mean, they outsource that.

They're not reading tax journals. Are you reading the updates to the tax law every? Of course not, unless you're an accountant. It's sort of like we're trying to combat the belief that I need to know all of this by letting people in on the fact, the secret, if you will, that wealthier people tend to ask for help. And it's easier for them. It's easier for them to admit that they made mistakes. It's easier for them to admit that they don't know something, which I think is fascinating.

And it could be that locus control that they have, more of an internal locus control. but their ability to outsource things like having an attorney help them set up a business, having an accountant help do their taxes, having a financial professional manage their portfolios. One of the barriers I'll hear from middle class law outcomes, I can't afford it. Of course they can afford the help. It doesn't really cost that much. Like you could actually hire a CPA, pay them for their hour, an attorney, a financial planner, and just pick their brain until you can actually afford to have them on like staff full time or whatever

or hire them for a particular jobs. So it's a big mindset shift that will accelerate your net worth and your success in business, too, by asking for help. There's often, though, a bit of an inflection point. So when you're really lower income, you simply cannot shell out $500 an hour to an attorney. As you ascend into middle class, then some of the services start becoming more available. but they take up a disproportionately large percentage of your income, but you are able to do it.

But there's a little bit of this like funny inflection point. I call it the murky middle of do you spend $7,000 a year on a financial advisor? Because on one hand, you can see the value in it. But on the other hand, you made a total of $120,000 this year. And so that $7,000, you made $120,000 pre-tack. And so that 7,000 represents a large portion of your income after tax. And you don't quite know if you make enough such that the ROI is there. Yeah, well, and also, like, I had to go to court when I was in my 20s.

I had no money. I was broke. They had legal aid. You know, I had somebody there. I could get it for free. I know there's a lot of CFPs that would be happy to sit down with people pro bono and just review your portfolio. I'm a CFP.

And I report my pro bono hours. They collect this information. There's all sorts of resources. And then also people who are a step or two ahead of you with regard to business will very often sit down with you and have conversations with you and share some of that knowledge with you. So I think there's a lot of help out there. But I think for me, the big psychological barrier is even asking for help to begin with.

And that is a block. Certainly for my father, trained me like growing up on a farm. You don't ask people for help. And not only that, you don't ask outsiders. Okay. When I was growing up, I didn't know a CPA. I didn't like growing up in a wealthier area, you might have friends of your parents who are CPAs or investment advisors or attorneys. And so there's this general sense of a culture of trust in that area.

And when you grow up lower income, you don't even know any of those people. So it literally feels like a another world, another culture. And so that's a barrier to asking for help. And so that that's sort of the mindset shift here is that look, you don't need to do it all yourself. You're probably going to mess it up. And wealthier people do not have the same inhibiting. as you do to asking for some of that professional help. And I truly believe you can access it very cheaply at the start because you're just asking for an hour of their time. The other thing about asking for help is you actually don't need to ask for help,

but you need to look at the world through a lens that you can learn something from everyone. Some of the most profound things I've learned wasn't because of a question I asked, but it was because of witnessing something or seeing something or being around someone. So, like, actually, this is real talk from bottom of my heart, Paula, like, your inspiration to me over 500 podcasts, years, and you're still building your empire. And podcast is a medium that, like, I've never created before. You didn't teach me how to podcast. You didn't break out on any tutorial.

I didn't ask you, what's your mic? I haven't asked any questions. But just by being around you, every time I'm around someone, I look through my lens of the world, like, what can I learn from the people around me? And they're living proof of realities that can be attained. like, wow, maybe I could do that. The other lens of looking at the world is when you see successful people, you have, I would say, the poor minded, like, what were your privileges?

What got you here? Like, what lucky break did you get? Or some other ones like, oh, I could never be like you. I'm imagining your podcast one isn't the same quality as this one, you know, or in the studio. So the lens that you view the world, it's not necessarily where you need to actually ask the right question. It's just when you were around people, how do you think about them? And for me, I was like, what can I learn?

Right now, like your person today, we met for the first time, like, man, 500 podcasts, years building an empire, I'm inspired. Thank you. And you see you're learning in public, learning in real time. So there's an element of learning in public, iterating in public that happens. Let's talk about the next harsh truth. And this is particularly apt for this moment in time. Your political party does not give a shit about you.

They don't. I don't want to keep saying that I grew up lower income, but I did. And what I remember is every election, and I heard this talk to my family, this person's going to help us. I almost brings tears in my eyes. This person's going to save us, you know. This politician. This party.

This, you know, and there's such a sense of disempowerment when you're in that situation. And then if you can just pin your hopes on this political party that's going to come and they're going to solve your problems. In preparing for this book, I went back and looked, and the poverty rate in the United States since I was a kid to now has not changed an ounce. Okay. Now, it has over the last 150 years. It's like 80% of the world was in extreme poverty, and now it's like 17%.

So great there. But in terms of these political promises, it doesn't happen. We're not hating on any particular political party other than politics in general, But really it comes down to what are you pinning your hopes on? And I see a lot of people talk about how unfair the system is, how the corporations don't care about you, all the fairly valid points. But what I see them doing is waiting. You know, we need to change this political landscape. We need to change the system. We need to change this law, that law, the other law. Then we're going to be okay financially. And it's so sad to see because it's not going to happen.

when I see people stuck on that external locus of control, they then sit still and they wait for the powers to be, to change things so that now they can start to make advancements in their life. And really essentially that we're trying to have a real hard, tough love conversation here and saying, it's not going to happen. They actually don't care about you. Even if they tweak a little law here and there's a, I don't know, a child tax credit, whatever the heck it is, it's like, okay, here's an extra thousand bucks for you.

We've had presidents in various times send out money, like literally write checks. to people. I think both parties have done that. And by the way, keep the checks coming. But it's not going to help you become financially free. It's not going to solve your big problems in life. That essentially it's going to come down to you. And not only that, the government has been working against us. And so have corporations, like quite literally. And my best example of that is pensions. Like when my grandpa worked for GM, he got a pension. And by the way, back then you worked at a job forever. and then at the end of it, they're like, you know what, you did such a great job. We're going to fund your retirement.

And then when you die, we're going to give money to your spouse until they die. The companies were going to take care of you. And one of the challenges is that's not the case anymore at all. So we went from defined benefits plans where the corporations took the liability of funding your retirement. You have to contribute yourself. You have to do your 401K. It's crazy when you think about it.

So it went from that, the company's taking care of you, all the sudden, it's 100% on you. Did you get the memo in the mail? Did Americans get the memo that said, oh, guess what? From now on, your company doesn't give a shit about you. Your government's not going to take care of you either because Social Security may have to be there. It's 100% on you.

And no, we didn't get that memo. And so we look at people who are like, what is wrong with you that you're not saving and investing for the future? Well, the bottom line is all that was taken care of a couple generations ago. So it wasn't even in the collective consciousness of people that they had to do that. Anyway, this is another reason why not to feel bad about it because your parents didn't teach you. Your grandparents didn't teach you. They didn't have to do it.

They had corporations taking care of them with their pensions. They had the promise of Social Security. And all that is sort of being ripped away by the current generation. Like I don't trust that Social Security would be there for me, let alone like Gen Z is, is it going to be around for them? I mean, no, not the way it's going. And so essentially it went from the government, corporations literally taking care of you to they're not going to do it anymore. We really don't want people to wait and hope that they're going to be taking care of from an outside source because we're pretty sure it's not going to happen. So we have to do it ourselves.

Right. Just for clarification here, Social Security Trust Fund is going to not be able to meet its full obligations as of 2030, but it will be able to provide 70% of its obligations starting from that point forward. That is assuming that there is no policy change between now and 2030. Yeah, or further mismanagement to speed up the demise. Yeah. So even when the Social Security Trust Fund becomes insolvent, which is currently set to happen in 2030, it will be able to meet 70% of its current obligations. It also remains to be seen the Supreme Court Chevron decision, which changes how governmental agencies are administered, how that will impact Social Security moving forward.

I think of the energy around political affairs and as our civilian duty, we need to vote. That's our duty. How much time it takes you to get that information to vote, that's the variable. I think we talk a lot about optimizing for time and how you spend your time. I think another distraction, and it happens every four years is actually doesn't even happen every four years. Usually the politics leaves after the six-month issue. period of the before and after of a new president. I feel like I never left this time. I feel like

a constant media attack of both sides of what's happening to keep me up to date with everything that happens. And I'm not a politician. And to me, I don't know what good it does for me to know every single detail as it happens from a political standpoint. Some people disagree. And I totally respect it. I think that energy could be better invested. If you already know you're going to vote for, what about now learning about your financial freedom? That's where I start to think of like, what a goal? If your goal is financial freedom and you're not there, then that's your time. And how do you want to spend your time?

Do you want to spend your time in something that could be productive, like learning about money, learning about side hustles, learning how to invest, how to increase income, learning about real estate? Or politics to me is another shiny object that can really distract your time. Could be a hot take. And that brings me to one of the most shocking. things that I've heard you say. So, this is a pack of cigarettes. Would you rather smoke that pack of cigarettes or would you rather watch an hour of news? That's good. I'd rather smoke the cigarettes. I'd rather smoke the cigarettes. Oh my gosh. That's so good. In full disclosure,

this is actually a pack of a deck of playing cards. I didn't have a pack of cigarettes and I didn't want to go out and buy one just for the sake of the prop. But I've got a deck of cards right here. I figured it would be a stand-in for a pack of cigarettes. Oh, you called him out. That's so good. He backed it up. He backed it up. Would you smoke this pack of card? I would. I'd smoke the bag of card. And that's coming from someone who's actually never smoked a cigarette in my life. I started saying this many years ago and it's become one of my most viral videos, millions of views. Instead of, that's the same. Like, I would rather smoke a pack of cigarettes than watch the news.

And I've even said things like, it's actually healthier to smoke a pack of cigarettes than to consume, than to watch the news every day. And I think, pro-smoking podcast here. By the way, we haven't actually done a double-blind control study on that. We're looking for funding.

I'm an internet marketer. Great marketers are in touch with psychology. And today, a lot of media is actually some of the best marketing. They create the best hooks and headlines to trigger emotional response. And media today, the journalism, the integrity of journalism is not what it once was because the incentives have changed. How is performance measured with media? It's measured in terms of eyeballs and clicks and the time you spend a duration.

Same thing as you measure the success of your podcast, the way I measure my social media. How do I know what I'm creating is actually affecting people? I'm going to look at the engagement metrics. Well, one tactic of engagement that sadly works is to trigger on our emotional insecurities and fear. And so fear-based marketing and headlines and trauma and chaos are some of the most effective ways to capture attention. Most extreme type of situation scenarios or spun in a way to elicit me and to get me angry, emotional, or stress. And so I feel like the moment you turn on the TV, you're inviting uncontrollable stress into your life on what the world's happening. I also think as a human beings, because we know everything that's happening around the world, I don't think we have the emotional capacity to really grasp all the tragic things that happen in the world.

Because that's what the news do. They focus on a lot of the bad. After watching the news, I've never felt, I feel good, right? Things are going well. Yeah, I watched the news and I feel, I feel sick. I feel angry. I feel stressed out. And that's, the news is doing a good job.

That's the news. They're measuring that. They're measuring that. I say we have more people watching, watching and we're increasing our engagement. We got more clicks. Click through rates are high. They're saying the most crazy expressive things to,

and they're focusing, while they, there's a lot of good that happens in the world too, but they're focusing on the most extreme, terrible things to try to keep us hooked. So I think in terms of your mental health, this is why I make the analogy between smoking because I know smoking is now at one point the government actually came out with

ad saying that smoking was good for you. I equate the news and consuming it on a daily basis like smoking a pack of cigarettes for your brain. I'm not going to ever forget that though. That's so good. That's good. I'm just glad she called you out on something. I hope she doesn't have something over there. Oh yeah, just wait. That's so good. I've had this prop with me all day waiting for the moment I can slap the slap the pack down on the car. table and be like, will you smoke this pack? Oh my gosh. That's so good. Let's talk about the next harsh truth. Complaining is for losers. All right. So it's so harsh. So I'll tell you what. Well, go ahead and complain for like a minute or two. And we'll listen to you complain. I love you. You're my

friend. I want to hear all about it. Okay, great, great, great. And at the end of that complaint, because I love you, I'm going to say, okay, so what are you going to do about it? And these are the friends I have in my life. My friends don't let me complain about my wife. Well, I don't really complain about her to them. We don't complain about our wives to each other. We don't. And but every now and then we do. We complain about something. And my friends, though, try to point me back to to get in my head right. He's one of them. It's like, okay, I understand. So what are you going to do about it? And that's really what it comes down to. I read a study to you that complaining like shrinks your brain. I mean, it just makes you dumb. and it's a terrible emotional experience, but I think sometimes you've got to get it out. So I say,

go ahead, if you must. I'll hear about it. Your complaints. Your complaints. Okay, got it, got it, got it. Okay. So that all that sounds terrible. I really empathize. But the entire time, we're going to get to the point because I care, I say, okay, so what are you going to do about it? And that's really what it comes down to. It's locus of control. If you spend all your time complaining, we'd have to come up with what's the definition of loser, but it's usually like not living up to your potential and it's not succeeding in the ways you want to succeed. I mean, It's a very subjective thing. And that's what complaining will get you.

Complaining will get you the results of underperforming, of not achieving your goals, and of being stuck. And so we don't want that for you. We want you to be a winner. And as a psychologist, so people have complaints and I'm there to hear them. But essentially, you got to move past that into what are you going to do to take action. Is there a psychological benefit to venting so long as it doesn't cross the threshold into wallowing? Well, there's all sorts of studies that have been early on around emotional expression

of all of this stuff. And I think it can be if it's directed by your therapist, you know, who's going to help you process it and move past it. Because you definitely can, like there's been some studies on like the expression of anger helps you get rid of anger. Well, sometimes it just creates more anger. So it has to be really targeted well and strategically to be therapeutic, frankly. And it's usually around a traumatic experience.

It's not around your misperceptions of the world. and what other people are doing to you and all of that. That's a rabbit hole you can go down and never get out of because you see it everywhere. You see complaints everywhere. You see villains everywhere. And so it's really hard to get a lot of benefit out of that. You know, it's like processing your feelings about complaints about a villain that is it truly a villain or not? Or is it just your perception because you have a mindset that the world's out to get you that you can't trust people.

It's not a lot of benefit to that. So I think there's a lot of benefit to it if we're looking at a traumatic experience. I think it's actually really important to process emotions related to that. To make those beliefs and conclusions less sticky, you can expand your thinking and expand your perspective. But a lot of times the complaining becomes an addiction in and of itself because there is some emotional benefit from it. And then if you surround yourself with people who love to complain also, you're going to get

some social reinforcement for the complaints. So now we have a whole complaining group of people. And we can all get together and talk about how terrible everyone is to us and how mean the world is and how we're never going to be able to succeed because of everyone else. And we can we can just collect a group of friends and we all just sort of stay stuck. So the bottom line is it really depends. But being stuck in the complaint cycle is not good for you. What is the emotional benefit to complaining? It's easy to see what the social benefit might be because it creates that group cohesion. But what would be the personal emotional benefit? Well, so, so first of all, you're complaining. It's, it's typically about what an injustice someone is doing to you. What's so, so tempting for me to complain,

let me just be honest about my wife, is if I can just complain about her, then I can feel justified in my own goodness, you know, and the fact that she's just not treating me, Paula, the way I need to be treated, you know, and you're not going to believe what she said to me. She actually raised her voice at me and said something, you know, insulting. And then you can say, oh, my God, Brad, but you're so nice. You don't deserve that. And I can be like, oh, thank you, Paula. It feels so good. And I just feel better about myself now because I'm in the right and she's in the wrong. And that makes me feel good. I feel really good about that because I'm a good person deep down inside. And so I'm not left to wonder, what did I do to precipitate it? What did I do to

help create an environment in which my wife is upset or she is feeling that I mistreated her? I mean, it's just, it's, it's just a losing strategy for life. And by the way, if it was helpful, that chapter would be, you need to complain more. I'm not, we are agnostic around it. But yeah, it's not a great way to go through life. And frankly, I don't want to win or losers, people who are successful and on the road to success and are living the life they want to live, they avoid complainers. They don't want to hear it. And so that is the huge social cost for you. in complaining. As a matter of fact, if you're talking shit about, if Adrian's talking shit about a previous business partner and I'm in a, I'm partnering him with business. I'm out immediately going,

okay, so is he talking like that about me? Because apparently his last business field because of his business partner, I mean, people who are psychologically minded and have a lot of success and they're like, they avoid you like the plague when you're doing that. And so part of it is like, be careful about that because people who are living their best life and are trying to, thrive and climb, climb, whatever ladder is they're trying to climb, they're going to avoid you. Right. I feel like I'm allergic to complaining. When I talk about them, I'm talking about the sense of like, how do I conquer it?

Or like, I need help. I'm explained like, man, I can't get past this point. I keep running into an issue. I'm messing up. So when I do those things, I'm trying to, I'm looking for an answer. A complaint is not looking for a solution. It's to vent. I think there's status in that, like that social status, like social currency to talk

about the bad things that you experience. But I'm allergic to that. Just like I'm allergic to the news. Like, these are things that like, if the news is on in the room, I got to turn it off. Like, I just go one of those things. If I hear someone complaining, I'm thinking about how can I escape this conversation as soon as possible. Yeah, that's such an important distinction because when bad things happen and talking about your emotional experience of something that happened to you, that, to me, that's not a complaint. To me, that that's processing an emotion around something that was difficult. It's the complaint starts. when something's happening in your life,

and then you're starting to pin the blame on other people for it. To me, that's a big difference. Like, I can listen all day to the fact that you're really emotionally struggling because your business failed and you're questioning yourself, and you're wondering if you, I mean, I can listen to that all day long. That's real. That's real talk. I love that within my friend groups.

And then if you start telling me about how it was everyone else's fault, that's when I start to go, oh, man, it's like, this is not fruitful. And by the way, I don't want that point. I don't want you to poison my mind with that stuff. Like, it's infectious. So I don't want to join you in, in that sort of perception of reality and your,

and your relationship and all of that because it's, it's real easy to get stuck in it. And it's, it'll keep you stuck. Mm. One of the weirdest complaints people do is when they're actually experiencing something good, they explain it through like,

kind of the bad things that happen. This was like an awakening moment for my wife and I. We went to to to make an report. public and she got to swim with Dolph and she always wanted to do that it was like a lifelong dream of her to always do this and she was explaining the Dominican Republic and she shared it like this oh so how was it in a big republic? Dominguez was amazing but we we found out like after a day we had like bed bugs in our bed and like oh no that's terrible and I'm like listening to this like nodding my head and then she's like yeah and it was how was rest of it was great the weather was awesome but

then we had our anniversary dinner and they forgot to bring out like the bottle wine that we got and then the person's like listening and then then she shared the dolphins thing which was like that was like her ultimate dream to finally swim with dolphins and then she was like I know you told us before you were going to go you were swimming with dolphins like yeah but we only got to be with them for an hour and then the person at that third standpoint was like they looked at Ashley like you know you just went to Dominican Republic you had amazing food you sat on the beach and you got to swim with dolphins I was stuck at the office auditing, like the new, whatever client that they had. And so it gave like a perspective.

And I remember talking to Ashley. We were almost afraid to share like the good experiences. So we like almost picked the bad things. No trip goes perfectly. We picked like the bad things that occurred to us. And that was how we were telling our experiences because we were almost like afraid to share how wonderful it was despite the hiccups. And I feel like that was a moment now. Like if I, am I truly having an amazing time?

If I have amazing food, if I do something amazing, I don't want to hold. back. I want to share like, man, it was a blast. I loved it. Every single moment was a great. Went to Lincoln Park concert last night. It was amazing. They're back together. It's one of my favorite childhood bands. I had a blast. I'm not going to tell you about like that we waited in long, like long lines. And the guy behind me was like sweaty. I'm not going to share those things, even though no journey is perfect, but we understand how we like tell our own stories, not through complaints. Like tell the good stuff. Right. And that makes sense. You might might want to underplay it because you think that you're,

you don't want to come off as braggy. But people, real friends, want to share in your joy. Let's move to the next one, which is, Ooh. I know this is the long one. I knew it was coming. I got a stretch. All right.

Get a roommate, ride the bus, get sober, get bald, and get a side hustle, or shut up about being poor. Yes. This chapter was inspired. by the many comments that we've gotten that start with, I can't afford to invest. And so we're just trying to help you out. We found some ways where you can cut back. And we looked at the average amount that Americans spend in each of these categories.

That's what we did. And then we came up with a bit of a solution. So the biggest expense, for example, people have in their lives is rent. Right. And so we have a fabulous idea how you can, instantly cut your rent in half, and that is get a roommate. And not only that, we created a very useful and handy table for you where we did the math on two roommates, three roommates or four roommates. And so we could probably keep going, five, six, seven. The second one is ride a bus. So the average

American is spent in almost 900 bucks a month on car payments, just times 12 is a lot of money. I went actually, when went to Boulder, I was in a minimalist phase, and I could actually bike to work and walk to work, snow, sleet. I loved it, this thing I'm doing. And I said, saved a ton of money because we just had one car. So you can absolutely do that. Get sober. The average American spends about $110 a month on alcohol and shave your head. So by the way, I take my advice. This is me. How much money I save on haircuts and trips to the spa? It's a tremendous amount of money. So the average American woman spends about $1,800 a year on haircuts and spa trips. And we just say, hey, you can't afford to invest. Maybe watch YouTube videos about getting your

haircut. Have your friends cut your hair. This is the chapter of the fire people are going to love. And I'll say this too, if you did all this and just took that savings and invested it and got average market return, so just average over 25 years, you would have an additional $2.8 million in 25 years. And so there, very simple, multi-millionaire by just doing this formula. Now you might say to us, well, all that sounds horrific. You know, I like to have a glass of wine and I don't want to live with a roommate and bald are you kidding me nobody can look as good as you dr brad bald then we would say and this is our sort of my preferred plan is like well then maybe how about if you just pay yourself first why don't you make the first bill you pay your financial freedom

fund and then you could say well you know i don't have enough money to do that and this is where we bring in adrian who's the side hustle king increase your income so that's the other strategy so this This is sort of meant to show people in a useful, slightly sarcastic way about how they can free up cash, very effective ways, by the way, which will guarantee you're a multimillionaire. If you're saying you can't afford to invest, because we think that you probably can. So my question is to you, I can't afford to invest. I always say, well, how many roommates do you have? And then you'll get this litany of excuses.

And by the way, we can talk a lot about this. It's a uniquely sort of American. You guys are more internationally traveled than I am. but there's this concept of you got to live alone. You know, I lived in Hawaii. There's a lot of multi-generational families living in homes. My family, my dad's side on the farm, three generations living in the same home. This is like a sort of a unique idea that the way that human beings need to live is to have your own place.

Just understand this. This is a mindset that a lot of the world doesn't share. And so just by shifting that mindset, more than a million dollars you can save and invest. But people don't want to do it. It's kind of hard. And I get it. And so then it's focusing on the other eye in your FII, RE formula, around increasing your income. Right. And I should add, when you were a child, your mom, she was a single mom of two, including you, you and your sister.

And she rented out a portion of the home that you as a child, you and your sister grew up in. So for the people who say, well, I have kids, therefore I can't get a roommate. I mean, you were a child who grew up with a mom who rented out a portion of the home. Yep. And she vetted them and she chose females, significantly reducing the chances that something would bad would happen to her children. And we only had one bathroom too. It was a grind, but she did it. And because she, we needed the money, frankly, out of necessity. But we're sort of trying to free up some ideas and try to shake your thinking a little bit. And ironically, when you run through this experiment and I pull out my razor and say, you want to get going on the ball?

people will suddenly find ways to cut back or find ways to save or invest more. But for me, again, the cutting back is kind of a miserable emotional experience. And so that's why I'm a huge fan of increasing your income. And before Adrian talks about this, and by the way, he's a great mentor for me around this. My couple different examples here. So I had a family member losing a job during the pandemic. And I called Adrian. And literally after half hour, I launched online side hustle that is still generating about

50,000 a year. and my son right now who's 11, he wanted a job. And so again, following some of Adrian's advice, this month, my 11-year-old son is going to make five grand on Amazon product reviews. And he finds the products, scripts the videos, edits the videos, does the captions. He's learning this entire skill set that is yielding. He's going to make five grand this month. Wow.

And that's my 11-year-old son. And he's putting in the work. I'm helping, right? I'm mentoring and all of that. But by the way, I'm spending all my weekend helping him with videos. But I'm spending time with my kids. Right. But there are ways to do it.

And so part of it is just sort of trying to shake this up that you're stuck and there's nothing you can do about it because we think you can do a lot. And for any woman who doesn't want to get bald, if you go to Mr. Money Mustache's Instagram page, I did a little video tutorial. This is a couple of years ago of how you can cut your own hair. It's actually you can find some good tutorials on YouTube. YouTube as well. You put everything up into, put all your hair into a high ponytail, and then you flip your head over. I'm just going to demonstrate. Yeah, I'm going to demonstrate right now. All right. So for

those of you watching on YouTube, I know a lot of you are listening to this on audio, but go to YouTube. YouTube.com slash afford anything. Okay. You pull all of your hair up to the crown of your head, right? Form, I'm not wearing a ponytail band. Form a ponytail. Then you flip your head over. And what this does is it creates layers. Naturally, it creates layers because the hair that's on the back of your head right here. So this ends up being the longest layer because it's traveling, as you can see, all the way from the nape of your neck. So this ends up being the bottom layer and it ends up being the longest layer. Whereas the hair that is formed closer to like your temples, naturally it travels to shorter distance and therefore ends up being the shorter layer. And so by gathering everything

into a ponytail, flipping your head over and then doing a straight cut, you can cut layers into your own hair. And I'm just going to say this because I track the math, that is $201,000 if you did that instead of go in the salon in 25 years. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. What assumption are making for cost of salon cut? $1,800 a year, on average. So we just ran the average numbers. So the average American, by doing these things, $2.8 million more in 25 years. You're welcome, everyone.

Get a roommate, ride the bus. Problem solved. Okay. We are down to the final three harsh truths. The next one is, people who binge Netflix without a side hustle will be poor for us. Yeah, I think this one I had a lot of fun making because I have been almost obsessed with the idea of making money online. It reminds me like a video game. I grew up playing Tekken and Final Fantasy.

And in these games, you could like build up characters and they get different skill sets. And I feel like I equate it to making money online because you're looking at a screen. And usually you don't ever get money. It's deposit on a bank account. So it feels almost imaginary. But in a playful kind of perspective, I've always thought, like, Like I can make money online by creating or posting something. And I still am romantic about having these create something from scratch and posting online

and getting your first sale. It's still always such a great dopamine hit, have your idea become a reality. And in this chapter, we broke down the most popular Netflix shows, how long it would take to watch each one, like Game of Thrones. And I equated it to instead, if you didn't watch that, that time. is actually enough time to learn a business model like how to sell on Etsy. Wait, Game of Thrones is on HBO Mac. Fact check.

Fact check. Clearly, I'm not an avid show watcher. He did research the exact amount of time for each of these shows. Yeah, exact amount of time. So breaking bad, I picked Breaking Bad and just like friends, like these huge popular shows that they take days, if not months, to watch in terms of hours. So equating that to like if you actually took that time to learn because there's so many different ways you can make money online. Actually, I'll just make it really specific instead of talking high level.

If you guys actually wanted to walk away and take a side hustle, you're about to learn one that's amazing that Brad was mentioning with his son. There's an incredible business opportunity right now. It doesn't cost any money to get started. And it is creating Amazon product reviews. This new industry that's kind of coming as called UGC, user generated content. and Amazon is changing the way we shop always. They're the innovator. And one newer thing that they started introducing and shopping is they learn that when you're

about to buy a product, they added video. And a video helps you buy it because you can see instead of a static photo. And then they also learn that when the company makes this high end produced video, that it still creates this like almost like, well, of course, this company is not going to say anything bad about their own product. They're going to paint it in this perfect light. And so then they introduced this. First it was in beta, and now it's a real, real thing.

People are making some serious money by doing this because of Amazon. So Amazon's like, we're going to actually let real, regular people create the official videos that show up on a product page. And we're not even going to have much guidelines. And when I say much guidelines, I mean, you take out your phone. You point out this coffee mug that's sitting here on this table. And I can say this is a porcelain coffee mug. And I can kind of talk about it for 60 seconds, 30 seconds. I can demonstrate, I could pour some coffee into it, I can say, like, it's really sturdy.

I can give it a knock. The way I'm talking now with ums and, like, it's good enough. They're looking for real raw humans because consumers, we actually trust real people's almost like versions of like they're explaining a product versus like a company that's going to paint in this perfect studio. And so Amazon right now is paying you. If someone watches your video at least 30 seconds and then they purchase, they're attributing like your assist to the sale.

You make a range of commission from 2 to 5% on. And so the game is this. Everything in your house, most likely it's on Amazon. You can take out an Amazon app. You can hit the scan button and it'll show if that product is on Amazon. This program is called the Amazon Influencer Program. By the way, you don't need to be an influencer. When you apply a bot or algorithm will quickly scan your profile and you'll know that if you're

accepted or rejected instantly. And if you get rejected, it's not the end of the world. They just need more engagement on your profile, followers. That's the only gatekeeper. After that, you simply upload everything in your house, upload it to Amazon, and this is where the things get crazy. Last Black Friday, Saturday, Saturday, Sunday, I made $2,000 in one day, and it all came from one video I made on my shark vacuum cleaner. It's like a Roomba. And so this one video, that ended up being like a promotional product on Amazon for Black Friday's Sera Monday. It was like trending. And so

everyone that's going on that page, my video exists there. I'm not telling my social media marketing to go buy this vacuum. My video literally lives on Amazon. And so people watch people buy it. It creates this like one video ends up producing that income and still makes money. And so the last thing I'll say, if you guys want to pursue it, the only gatekeeper is like trying to get accepted. And once you're in, it's a very simple, I would say, pretty risk free side hustle since there's no capital involved. And we have kids doing it. We have senior citizens that do it. And it's a fun one to do it. And the only problem with the side hustle is that you're never going to look at the world the same. You're going to think, is that on Amazon? Is that on

Amazon? Because I could do a review on it. But I went specific, but there's so many different ways to make money. And if you, you could watch the next big show on Netflix or HBO Max, or you could try to learn a side hustle because there's a lot of amazing opportunities that don't require capital. It don't require risk. They just require a little bit of creativity and some hustle. My friend Caitlin submits user-generated video reviews on Amazon for exactly that reason. She told me recently that her goal is to upload 1,000 videos, which I thought was interesting because she wasn't making a revenue goal. She was making an output goal, right?

Which I like better because that is a goal that's firmly inside of her locus of control. It's an effort goal. A thousand is, for reference, I think I have 700 videos uploaded. It's been two years since I uploaded those. last year I made, this is a year after, that brought in $43,000 for me from these videos. I made, $43,000. You have to keep feeding the beast. It's been now almost two years since I originally uploaded those videos.

I was really early on the program. And now I make like $1,500 to $1,500 a month from it. But these videos, again, I'm not uploading new ones. If I was continue to pursue it, I would be uploading every single day. And I know someone that's uploaded 2,600 video reviews and they actually rent out Airbnbs where there's lots of products and they've really gamified the system. But that's just one of so many amazing opportunities online that you can start online income. Right. One of the things that I do as a consumer on Amazon is I conscientious about making sure that I click on a couple of those videos

before I buy something so that that way the creator gets something. That's cool. Because I'm going to buy the product anyway. I want a creator to be able to get paid. I love that. All right. The second to last harsh truth. The penalty. Ultimate harsh truth. You're not allowed to use your credit card if you don't pay it off in full each month. Obvious, right? Isn't that obvious? Isn't that obvious? For your audience? Yeah, this is, I think the audience, they're like, nah, obvious. Yeah. Well, what's crazy is that Adrian put a post out with that. And we decided to include it because we were so appalled by the answers where people were telling us we were wrong and we didn't understand credit cards. And I almost feel like there's a conspiracy. I became

I'm a conspiracy theorist. Pretty sure the earth is round, but I'm slightly concerned that there aren't credit card companies out there trying to sell some lies. Like the one that just came up was if you pay it off each month, your credit score will be demolished. And the way that to have a higher credit score is to always keep 20 percent, don't pay it off. Keep 20 percent of the max on the credit card.

And it's like, whoa, I think that's the opposite of the, like, you shouldn't go over 20 or hurt your credit. I mean, but it was such a prevalent lie that. We got deeply concerned credit cards. And credit cards are like the most slippery slope for Americans. And once that racks up, it's just a terrible, terrible thing to try to pay it off. Because it just keeps compounding in the wrong ways for you. So yeah, that's the chapter that your audience probably already knows.

But it was shocking how many people don't know that. Right. There's a lot of credit card misinformation out there, which goes back to the importance of listening to personal finance podcasts, reading personal finance books, not listening to the water cooler chatter because water cooler chatter is so often wrong. And the average American, what's the numbers now? You probably know, but it's like six, seven thousand in credit card debt for the average American that has credit cards. I mean, this is a very, very common problem, even for people who know better. So we really tried to lay out exactly what's happening there and steps you need to take to

start dialing that down because that is a very, very challenging obstacle and hurdle for people to overcome once it gets out of control. We have 21 harsh truths. We tested hundreds. This was one. I assumed everyone knew this. It's, it actually is not true. This is a special audience you have listening here who you've probably dialed this into them so many times. But to the common person, it was shocking to us that it made it in the book. But through our own data of our own audiences, people do not know how to use credit cards. And to assume that everyone knows what that's inaccurate. And also to cast blame and judgment also we feel like if you've never seen someone use a credit card the right way because you're of Harry family and the only thing they said, you always should have a debt and you always should have a debt. And you always should have a. the balance, you always pay interest, how are you supposed to know otherwise? So yeah, credit cards ruining financial freedom goals for a lot of people. So it makes sense that most people actually don't know how to use it. Well, and this leads us to the final truth, which is that you need to start thinking rich. So what does that mean? Does that mean, is that the synthesis of the last 20 things that we've just discussed? If you adopt all of those into your mindset, you've now begun to think

rich? We had various titles for that chapter, including being rich is awesome. Being poor socks. Right. Rich is awesome. And essentially, you'll never get there unless you start thinking rich. And again, that's a mindbender for people because they think other things need to happen. It really does start with your mindset. And if we can get the right mindset drilled into your brain, success is pretty much guaranteed. And it's pretty much automatic regardless of where you're coming in the door. We're not saying that you need to go do anything drastic, take big risk. You don't need to do anything. There's all sorts of routes to getting there. It's a nine to five route. There's a go to college route. There's a go to college route. There's a skip college. You've

an entrepreneur route. There's a trade school route. But what we've noticed in all of these people who go from humble beginnings to becoming rich is very consistent mindsets that are across the board shared. Adrian and I have very different stories. Paula, you have a different story than me. But we all share some of these core elements that allowed us to climb the ladder and enjoy success. And so we're trying to make this infectious. We're trying to teach as many people as possible. And in that chapter, we really do outline how having additional resources can help every aspect of your life, your basic security, your belongingness needs, your connection, to be able to have time to spend with the people you love. That's so critical all the way up to your professional

goals and self-actualization goals. We talk about Maslow's hierarchy of needs there, if you want to nerd out, and how money intersects each one of those things with the ultimate idea that you can self-actualized so that your best self can be put forth into the world and you can maximize your impact to pursue your passions and to make the world a better place because that's really what it's all about. We want that for people as individuals and we want that to leak around so that we can spread it everywhere. Right. And it does make sense if you have secured the bottom of that hierarchy of needs, the bottom of the pyramid, then you can focus on the top, which is that self-actualization. Beautiful. Well, thank you for spending this time with us.

us. Where can people learn more? We mentioned the past couple podcast episodes. We're obviously on social media. I plan on being creative for as long as I live. But there's one place that everyone should go to. It's startthingerrich.com slash Paula. The reason why you should go there is because we have not just a place where you can get our books and you learn about our social media, we have extra bonuses that kind of embody all

the 21 harsh truths and more of the start thing you're rich. We have a ecosystem of a community and some master classes. and if you go through there versus our like normal place, they'll be rewarded. And that's just one way we can say thanks for having us in collaborating with us. Amazing. So start thinking rich.com slash paula. That's right. Well, thank you so much again for spending this time with us.

Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Thank you.