Aware & Aggravated - 29. My Financial Tricks From Every Level

Episode Date: February 23, 2025

All the things I wish I knew sooner about finances & credit from each level I've been at. Also my tricks on a few things to maximize credit card points for free stuff. Very honest takes on debt that hurt, but help.  Substack:  https://substack.com/@leoskepi?utm_so...  Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/leoskepi https://www.tiktok.com/@leoskepi https://www.snapchat.com/add/leoskepi Merch:  https://leoskepicollection.com My App Positive Focus: (Apple) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/positive-focus/id1559260311 (Google) https://play.google.com/store/apps/detailsid=com.positivefocusapp&hl=en_US&gl=US&pli=1 Business Inquiries: [e-mail]

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BitMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hi friends, this is the finance episode. Everything I've learned the hard way about money and all my little tricks around everything to do with finances. To preface this, because some people are going to get real upset because I don't play by the book. Life has never played by the rules, so I learned to stop playing by them. I'm not going to be talking about anything illegal, but I'm going to talk about all of the things from my financial life, from being broke dick to being where I am now, chilling, doing great. So this is not me telling you what to do, kinda, but this is

everything that I do and have done from the start to now. And this is everything I wish I knew sooner. from the start to now. And this is everything I wish I knew sooner. Fixing bad spending habits and bad financial habits is harder than quitting drugs. From my own personal experience, I don't know what it is. Getting money right in your head is harder than quitting a substance. And I'm talking a lot of different ones,

not the crazy, crazy shit. Now you've never been under that. But finances are no joke. And it's so much more emotional and so much more stressful than people think and like explain online. So I'm going to tell you like from the core of it and also help you with the emotional pieces of it, cause it's a pain. It's a weird comfort, bad spending habits and bad relationships with money is a

comfort. And for me also, money and food, the way that I approach each one, mirror each other. So my eating habits got better when my money habits got better. And it went the opposite way too. The better I got with money, the even better my relationship to food got. It's a weird thing about restriction and when to spend, when to eat, when to not, you know, when to save all that shit. So let's do this. Let's jump into it. I made a big list of everything. So we have like five areas I'm going to hit. I'm going to talk about debt first. I'm going to be real with you and I'm going to hit you

in the chest a little. It's okay. You'll be fine. Then we got budgeting, saving, how I use credit cards and the points on all of them to get a bunch of free shit. And then I'm going to talk about investing. Because I'm not the type that wants to invest into all this S&P 500 and retire when I'm 60 and be rich. I want to be rich now. When I was 24, I was saying that now that I'm 26, I'm great. I got rich before my 50s. So this is not me telling you what to do. Like I said, it's just what I do. But anybody who knows more than me, comment and tell me.

If you know more things I could cheat around and get around, tell me, let me know. Okay, first section is debt. Ugh, I'm mainly gonna be talking about credit card debt. If you're in credit card debt, quit, you broke. Credit card debt is the one thing you can't be playing with and you should never carry a balance on a credit card. And the reason a lot of people feel comfortable doing it

is because they don't understand interest. So with your credit cards, if you have a thousand dollar statement and you owe a thousand dollars at the end of the month, if you pay off 900 of it, you're like, oh, okay, cool. I paid off 900. I'm only going to pay interest on the hundred. No. Credit card companies charge you interest on the amount on the statement. If it's not fully paid off, you're getting charged interest on the full thousand. It doesn't matter if you only got a hundred bucks left.

If that doesn't trip something loose in your head, I don't know what to tell you. You're getting fucked. Like that's one thing to get is like all these companies and the credit cards, everybody's trying to get you when it comes to money, cause they want to make money too. Stop getting got, stop letting these people get you. Okay. You wanted to splurge. You had like a bender or you had like a spiral moment and you're like, fuck it, and I bought this thing. Okay, you're allowing these banks and these companies

to take advantage of you when you're weak and emotionally vulnerable. You do something and then they're gonna compound on top of it. Yeah, you're gonna pay us extra because you got weak for a second. Don't let them do that. Turn this into an ego game

if you actually wanna beat debt. Like if you wanna stop going into credit card debt, play the game, get your ego involved, have one with this. This is what did it for me. But I never ever carry a balance on a credit card. And the way that I look at credit cards is if I don't have the money in my checking account, I'm not putting it on a credit card.

So don't buy things that you can't afford. It's not free money. You're basically like borrowing money and you're not giving it back. So yeah, you're gonna get slapped with interest. But I'm now luckily in a position where I don't handle my finances anymore. I don't pay my credit cards.

I got a team of people who do it for me. It's great, chef's kiss. But when don't pay my credit cards. I got a team of people who do it for me. It's great. Chef's kiss. But when I was paying my credit cards, I paid them every single week just out of paranoia. And a lot of people say, Oh, you should carry a little bit of a balance. It helps with the credit. I never listened to that. I don't care. I'm not like, it just stressed me out so bad. Every week I was paying the fucking things off. Max every two weeks I was paying them off that's just how I got

into the routine of not overspending and watching the numbers because if you ain't got the money don't spend it but when I said if you're in credit card debt you're broke you are student loans mortgages cars everything else like that that's a little different. I have a couple things I'm gonna say after my little rant about the credit card debt shit. It's so common now. Everybody really is in credit card debt.

I don't care how much society normalizes credit card debt. It's fine, it's fine, just treat yourself, get what you want. No, don't normalize being in credit card debt because it's gonna sneak up on you and it's gonna fuck you. Like I said, they don't charge you for the amount that you paid off.

They charge you for the whole thing you owed if it's not fully paid off. So keep that in the back of your head. I'm talking live like you're broke. Why are you going out doing things? You ain't got no money. If you're in credit card debt, no, you don't get to do shit. And my approach mentally with this is the same

as when I'm dieting or trying to do certain, hit certain fitness goals. I have that harsh mentality around eating and also spending. If you wanna get a grip on it, there's no other reality. There are so many reasons why people are in debt. There are things that are not your fault, but you have to take responsibility for the place that you're in.

If you're in debt, nobody's gonna come take it off of you. If you overspent that credit card, for whatever reason that is justified in your head and whatever reason other people could look at you and say, I fully understand it. Nobody's going to look at you and say, I fully understand this one thing happening. And then you got stuck in credit card debt for a year. Irresponsibility with money is like something people don't want to talk about, but I'm a no bullshit approach to everything in life, especially when it comes to money. Like people have a lot more money than they think. They just don't have awareness of their spending.

It's like when you first start learning how to count calories, you're like, damn, I didn't realize I was being so careless. Get your eyes on your budget. Get your eyes on what you're spending too and start looking at how careless you've been. It's not your fault. There's no one to teach us this shit. And if you're in a bad financial spot, okay, don't beat yourself up for careless you've been. It's not your fault. There's no one to teach us this shit. And if you're in a bad financial spot, okay, don't beat yourself up for what you've done

in the past, just change going forward. I'm not over here to like bully you and abuse you. Cause like I said, no one teaches us this shit. We got trigonometry in high school. There's so many things you're not taught in life. So there is a big period of everyone as an adult trying to figure it out. And this is what I figured out that worked. So I'm going to share it. But you being in debt is

nobody's responsibility, but your own. Certain circumstances will push you into bad financial spots. You can get out. It's just not going to be fun. And the worst, worst thing is when life or something bad happens and it puts you in a financial pit the last thing you want to do is be like okay this unfair thing just happened and now I'm gonna have to go live like I'm absolutely broke to get out of this debt you're allowed to be pissed off you're allowed to be angry but there's no justifying your way out of it you got to pay it off so like I said medical bills those will get ya.

Medical bills and other types of debt like student loan debt are all different. With medical bills, I'll give you a couple of pointers because I was a nurse, I still am a nurse legally. But if your medical debt has been sold to a debt collector, you can fight that it's a HIPAA violation if you want to. I'm not going to push you, do what you want, but go Google some shit. Go learn some things, go research some things. You might be able to get some debt taken care of. Also with insurance companies and any kind of medical debt, ask and demand an itemized list of what the charges are and what the money's for. And if you don't recall getting certain treatment or certain things that they're saying you got when

you were at the hospital or going to certain visits, decline it, dispute it, fight it. There's no like harming it and trying to fight it and get your bills knocked down. Buck back all these people who are trying to buck you. Student loan stuff, call them after a few years and see what, I'm not telling you what to do, go Google it, go research it. But these are options you got. So someone just says, oh, you owe this amount of money,

fight it, fuck with them. See what you could bargain, see what you could haggle and you might be able to get it brought down. One more thing I also wanna point out is I'm not someone sitting over here who has like a giant trust fund and I have like people to help me. Like I don't have to budget and deal with it.

I've been broke before. Like my first 40 episodes of my podcasts are only audio. The first almost year of my podcast was only audio because I couldn't afford camera equipment. I couldn't afford the mic. This is like five, 600 bucks. I don't know how much it is now. I bought it years ago, but I couldn't afford camera equipment. I couldn't afford the mic. This is like five, 600 bucks. I don't know how much it is now. I bought it years ago, but I couldn't afford to stuff at the time.

When I first moved to Houston and left my hometown a few years ago and started my podcast and was doing all this, I was eating chicken and rice and canned vegetables for months. I know what it's like to struggle. I know what it's like to be pissed off and irritated and have to live like that,

but it's very character building and it makes you very resourceful and it's kind of fun. And low key, I miss those times. Like I miss those days now. I'll never be in that position again because I'll never allow myself to. I've set myself up financially where no matter what, I'll be fine.

But I kind of miss that. Like the set yourself up mode. There's more I'm going to get into about the living broke stuff to get yourself into a secured spot, but let's move on to budgeting and my whole perspective on that. So I heard about that whole like envelope thing long time ago. I forget who it was. I don't remember who it was online. Somebody's talking about, Oh, the envelope thing. You make a fucking envelope and you get your cash from your checks every week and you separate your money with different things for your bills. I liked that. I did that. I opened seven different checking accounts and I use the

envelope method with the different checking accounts to store money away for different things. the envelope method with the different checking accounts to store money away for different things. And all your bills that you have make different categories for each one. But one really, really big extra envelope, I always add is piss away money. So every time you get paid, every time you get some money, you divide it up into your little categories, add money into your piss away account. So you have money to piss away.

It's like when you go out and you see something, it's like, I want that. And then it's not the constant, oh no, I can't have this, can't have that. You have money to piss away and you have money. If you want something stupid, you can go buy something stupid. And it's the little things that make you happy. Money makes you happy.

Buying certain things brings you joy. There's a little ghost that I have that I bought when I was in Houston and it was $20. Back then, me buying that ghost for 20 bucks, I think it was 25 bucks. It was like, damn, but I have my little piss away money spot. So I pulled the 25 bucks out of there and bought myself a little ghost. That little ghost, I still have it. I put it out every Halloween. It makes me so happy.

There are gonna be things that just make you happy for no fucking reason. Buy them, have money set aside to buy them. I used to have envelopes so detailed out when I had hair, I would get my hair cut every week. I put 50 bucks a week in the envelope to have for my haircut. Like I would separate my money boots.

Like it was very organized, very nice. But the thing that it did to me mentally and the reason I like this method is you're preparing and you feel prepared for bills and expenses. You're not a victim to them. You're not just getting bitched around by constant things popping up. Well, I got to pay this. I got to pay that. And you're just like confused and you feel like I just can't get ahead. So putting the money aside and splitting it up in different checking accounts or the envelope method, it makes you feel more prepared. But there's a big emotional shift that has to happen. I don't want to get too spiritual into all this about the whole thing with money. I have other episodes that are a little more spiritual about money, but that's a big thing is preparing. Now the other thing with the checking accounts is I cut up the credit cards for all of them

except my main checking account, like my spending one. And then I had my other debit card for my business checking account. The reason I only had the one debit card is because when I wanted to buy something, I had to go in and transfer the money out of my piss away account and put it in there. Or if I had a certain bill come up, I had to transfer the money from that thing to the checking account to pay it. So I only was spending out of the one account,

but I had the other one set aside and that's how I put the money in and move it around. This is also very self-esteem building when you have something that you need money for and you're like, wait, I can go to myself for it and I can go to one of my other accounts and I have the money for here. I'll just transfer it over. Boom. I gave myself money. You become a lot more confident and you feel more stable in life cause you're not like having a bill pop up. You're like, ah, what do I do? Who do I go to?

It's like this frantic shit. You don't have that because you already get the money set aside. So it's self esteem building when you know you got your own back and it's like, Hey, hey, my other account, look at me. And one thing not a lot of people say is how isolating it is when you're trying to get your finances in check and you're trying to fix the way you spend money, maybe save a little money, maybe get out of debt. It is very isolating. And the point that I'm gonna bring up with that

is you don't have to stop going out with people, being around people, going to eat. Be strategic and be smart. And one thing with me being Albanian that was very hard is when the bill comes at a restaurant, usually I was always the one to pay. With my family, with my close friends, yes. But with friends, guy friends, other girlfriends,

it's like, it was hard for me to say that the bills are separate. If you cannot lay down the boundary and tell your friends that the bill is separate, if you can't let yourself stop being taken advantage of by people that you don't care about more than everybody else. So you got your inner circle and then you got like the second layer of the circle. Don't be buying people drinks.

Don't be buying people dinners. Don't be doing none of that. If you can't lay down the boundary, remove the temptation. If you can't say the checks are separate, you pay for what you got, then don't go. Same thing with food. If you can't be around cake and say no, then get rid of the fucking temptation. Don't even have it around.

It's like the same thing with food, like I said, it mirrors. But that's one thing that helped me a lot is removing that obligation and just like committing, like, okay, yeah, it's gonna be uncomfortable for a little bit from my cultural background to not take care of the bill, but it gets easier when you're dealing with Americans. It's fine. They that's their normal. So it's not like a big deal. And you might feel like it's a big deal to only pay for yourself with like

distant friends or like just whatever, like party friends, whoever, but it's not going to be that uncomfortable and everybody's going to kind of get it. And also if people start not wanting to hang out because yeah, you gotta float your own bill, you just weed it out a fucking mooch. So good job. One thing I will say about budgeting that a lot of people do not agree with

is when it comes to a car, a lot of people get so mad and pissy. They got like a hard on for telling everybody, get a piece of shit car, don't have a car, no, don't, no, no, no, no, no, no, okay? Get the nice car, get the reliable car. Don't be getting nothing fancy crazy, but buying a newer car, get it under warranty,

get a car under warranty for a while so you don't got no expenses with it. You don't got to worry about is the motherfucker going to start? Is whatever. You could find ways to make more money to cover the car. I bought a car in 2019 that was a 2019. I think it had like 3000 miles on it. I had a Chrysler 300 S. I'll finally tell y'all what I drove for a while.

I had that car for five years. Even when I started making money, before I moved to LA, I still didn't upgrade my car. When I was in LA, I was driving the Chrysler. Didn't care. It was still nice. It was the leather, all black, tinted out windows. I loved the car. I had a lot of memories with the car.

But yeah, in LA, I had that and like the insecurity because everything's about the money and the cars and shit over there. But I didn't care because I knew how much I was making one, but two, the car was paid off. So I was like, why am I gonna go get a nice car and go to LA? Are people gonna ding it up and fuck it up? You got a valet everywhere you go, park on the street, all these crazy people around all the time. I'm not taking a nice car out there. And then when I got to Texas again, when I came to Dallas and moved here,

I still waited a little bit to find the exact car that I wanted. Then I went and custom built my dream car, which is insane, but I didn't get money and then immediately go jump to upgrading the car. My point here though is reliable cars are important. You don't wanna be dealing with every month, two months, 500 bucks, thousand bucks to fix something else

on the fucking car just cause you wanna lower car note. Get a car that's under warranty. Don't be buying no name brand fancy shit. It's not a big deal to have a car that's under warranty. Don't be buying no name brand fancy shit. It's not a big deal to have a car that's not like super name brand whatever. Just have it under warranty. Make sure you're good. It's not gonna be an expense.

It's not gonna be a headache. And you got a little confidence when you're driving around. You're like, yeah, okay, it's reliable. It's not dinking and dudding and stuttering every time I pull up. But that's one thing that I personally get a lot of peace of mind with is a car that I don't feel alone to deal with the costs of if something happens.

Yeah, it's under warranty. The manufacturers fucking help me pay somebody's bills. Yeah, not just me, because I wanted to have no car note. Girl. Okay, now let's move on to saving money and my whole outlook on that. So when I was in my like living, like I'm broke period, even when I started making a little money, I was still living like I was broke because I was saving a month of expenses.

So I at all times in the past, if you want to start, I'll tell you like how it went. So the first time I did it, I had a month. Set aside all the money it would cost for me to live, eat and pay all my bills for one month. Set aside in a separate savings account. Then I built it to three months. I have that account at a whole separate bank. That is money that I have set aside and hidden

that I can't access. It's not like fresh in my head. Every time I pull up my one banking app, it's not there. I got a bunch now, but like at the time, I would like, if you start now, save a month of all of your expenses and put it in a separate bank and just leave it there in a savings account.

So you know, you got the comfort. If everything goes to shit or if something goes wrong, I can live for an entire month. I have 30 days to figure something out. The peace that you get, the confidence that you feel, just the relief of having that money in the side, then build it to three months, have three months of your expenses because you become free and you're able to walk away from anything. So if you've got some shit going on at a job, you don't like, you got the balls now you can afford to walk in there and walk off,

be able to walk away from anything. And this is how you can set yourself up financially to be able to do that. I would say have a minimum of six months of your bills set aside eventually. I'd say like get to three months and then you could be a little more relaxed with how fast you build it. But I have a year at all times now. You just walk around with the peace

of knowing everything I've got now. Okay, if something goes wrong, I can survive for a month. I've secured myself. That confidence gonna radiate. It's gonna change like just the everyday anxiety that you feel and the stress that you feel after you get out of the debt and you got that one month, please, and then you bump into three months, please.

You gonna like be able to afford to be yourself when you do that, because you know you got yourself. You can say no to shit you don't want to do or say no to certain treatment that you get or have to deal with because you need money. So you kind of set yourself free. Okay, so separate from that account. That's just your expenses on the side. That's what I like to do. In the accounts that you have like at the one bank that you like and you got all the ones listed out, your little envelope method with all your checking accounts, great.

Have a separate savings account in there. I'd say minimum five grand. Emergency fund, emergency anything, you can start off with a thousand bucks. That's just an emergency fund if something happens or comes up. That's not a savings account. That's an emergency, like, for an unexpected expense.

So let's say you got the car ordeal. You over here, you budgeting, you're living according to your budget and you're like, okay, something has happened with the car or some random expense just came up and it's a thousand bucks. If you got the thousand bucks sitting in the emergency fund, you don't feel it. Don't sweat it. Don't think twice. You pay it. You're done. As annoying as it is, that's the reality of life. Unexpected expenses come up all the time. So I'd say keep the emergency fund thousand bucks minimum, bump it to five once you can get there, but just don't fucking look at it. Okay.

Then you're going to have another savings account where you put like just for your personal savings. Cute. Have a little extra savings for whatever the fuck you want to do. A really big thing that helps me with saving money is dropping subscriptions. Random things that you subscribe to that you forgot about. Go clear them out. There's a lot of apps you can use. A couple of them have sponsored my podcast before. They didn't sponsor this episode, but I like Rocket Money. There's plenty of ways to go clear out all your subscriptions.

Go on your phone and do it and then go on your PayPal and then go on your bank and see what you can see that you're subscribed to. Go clear out that shit out. Get rid of it. Another thing where I'm talking about with all of the savings accounts, the budgeting, everything that you've got laid out, your little envelope theory. Okay, theory. Your little envelope plan.

This is you showing yourself how to handle money and deal with money because you now have a plan. When unexpected money comes in, you know where to put it. So if you're still trying to build that first, all the bills, the one month of bills separate, you know where to put the extra money. Once that's covered, you got a month of all your expenses in that separate bank, great. After that, any money that's unexpected or random that comes in, put it

in the emergency fund. Once that's built, you put it in your savings. Once you're comfortable with your savings account, put it in your piss away fucking pile. This gives you confidence with how to handle and deal with money. It also is a big vibrational, spiritual thing, emotional thing. And as soon as I got a grip on all of this, my diet switched. Like this isn't even part of it, but I'm just saying observations. Like the way that it went for me, diet got better. And that's how to make more money. The more that I managed it and felt confident receiving the money and spending

money, like you feel confident with spending money cause you got it all separated. You're not over here victimized. Oh, I just keep getting blindsided, hit upside down. All these bills. You're comfortable letting money go cause you prepared for it. You're also comfortable with getting more money because you've set up stability for yourself of where to put it and you're making yourself feel secure. You can use money to bring yourself certain feeling states and to cause certain feeling states.

If you wanna feel stable and secure, organize the shit and get comfortable with letting it go and letting it come back in. Now let's talk about the credit cards and the credit card points and what cards I use and how I use the points. Because I'd be getting a lot of shit for free. Like I told you on my last episode, the other day I bought myself a PlayStation with all the points that I had'd be getting a lot of shit for free. Like I told you on my last episode,

the other day I bought myself a PlayStation with all the points that I had. I bought a bunch of Best Buy gift cards and got a free PlayStation 5 Pro. First thing I'm gonna call out is the whole American Express thing. People are dumb, they don't know how to use it. Like you need to like card max with the points.

And the more money you make, I always thought like, oh, rich people don't care about the points, they do. And if you do it right, you can do it right. It's a missed opportunity if you're not doing it. If you Elon Musk who gives a damn about a point, but everybody could benefit from the points. With American Express, the platinum card is $695 a year to have the card.

You get a lot of benefits for having it. You can go Google them whatever but with American Express Platinum it's five times points on flights and hotels But you have to book them through the American Express website one mistake I fucking made so I have that card only for travel and hotels. I didn't get the Platinum card until only for travel and hotels. I didn't get the Platinum card until before last tour, last year. I had plenty of money, I had plenty of reason to get it.

The points didn't make no sense, I wasn't traveling like that. So, once I had the need for it, I booked all my travel for tour on the Amex and I got five times the points back. With the gold card, the American Express Gold, that one's $325 a year. Well worth it, because you get like

a hundred something dollars in Uber credits for both of the cards. American Express Gold, you get four times points at supermarkets and restaurants. With the platinum one, you only get one point per dollar. So when people go to a restaurant and they slap down the platinum card, they think that they owe,

like a lot of people just try and flex, like, oh, I have the platinum. Like, you're dumb, you're dumb. You need the gold one to go out to the restaurants. You get four times points back. That's like 4% cash back. Supermarkets too. Go grocery shopping, put the shit on there.

It stacks up more than you think. So hotels and flights are on the Amex Platinum. Groceries, restaurants, Amex Gold, and that feeling of slapping down a metal card. Nice. I like the gold one more. I just think it looks better, but the Platinum is more of a flex. If you got the black card, hit me up. The other card that I use for every purchase that is not those two categories with those two categories with those

two cards the Capital One Venture card that's the one that I use for every other purchase because it's two times points that you get they say that it's miles they say it's a venture card they say you can redeem the points for travel no I'm about to get to my trick with redeeming the points, but the capital one card, the venture one is, I think it's $95 a year. They give you $120 credit just for having their card for TSA. So TSA pre-check is free. So if you already buy TSA pre-check and pay for that,

you might as well just buy the card. It's cheaper and then get the TSA for free and then pay for that. You might as well just buy the card. It's cheaper. And then get the TSA for free and then have the two times points on the card. You see what I mean? Be smart about it. Look at what you get with all the credit cards. And if you don't have high enough credit

to get certain cards that are like I'm mentioning, you can look at all the rewards and start looking at which one you can get right now that has the best output. But the whole thing with the rewards, one with the American Express, the Platinum, there's a lot of really, really good deals that you get. Also the gold has a lot too, but one that I use every single time it comes up is Aborsachi. If you spend 700 bucks, you get $150 credit from American Express.

So you get 150 bucks off basically, and they have that for all kinds of stores. So that's a big way to save a lot of money. A lot of cards have them too. It's not just the AMX, but the AMX has the best ones. Now, when you're redeeming the points on your credit card, redeem them for gift cards. They have gift cards that are digital,

that you can get sent to your email immediately. The main ones that I get gift cards for is Instacart, Uber, because you can use it on Uber Eats and Uber. If you're going to buy furniture on Wayfair, they got Wayfair gift cards, they got Amazon gift cards. If you need equipment, they got Best Buy, they got Apple. My main thing is any repeated expense that I have. I use Instacart every single time I order groceries.

That's just free when I get the gift cards. So if once a month I get a $200 gift card, that's 200 bucks knocked off groceries. So it stacks, but when I say redeem the points for gift cards, if you redeem the points for gift cards if you redeem the points for statement credit it's not usually as high as a conversion that you get fucked so go peruse the site if you've been wanting to buy yourself something you want to buy some design it they have Neiman Marcus, Saks,

Nordstrom they got all those brands and all those companies in the gift card category also with travel when you redeem the points with booking flights through the Capital One card or the Amex cards, it's better when you convert it to cover the flight or the hotel when you book it through that. So don't be using the points on your credit card for statement credit.

Stupid mistake. One more thing I'm gonna mention, for anyone who's in the public eye, whether you're just on social media, like your little influencer, or you're higher up or you're rich. If you just got money, you need to pay for a credit lock for sure. So no one can open shit in your name. No one can run your credit without you approving it.

That's something you got to watch out for. If you're trying to rebuild your credit, people are going to be running it. It's not really going to be useful unless you have someone that's trying to steal your identity or you have a lot of money. If you're in a very toxic relationship and finances have gotten involved and it's gotten twisted and it's gotten bad, that's a way to secure yourself as a credit lock. So that's something I didn't know until I got to a certain point and the people

that I work with business wise are like, Hey, fuck it. Yeah. We setting you up with that. I was like, okay, cool. So I want to tell you, okay, now let's talk about investing. First thing you should be investing in before you go into stocks and all this crypto bullshit, you need to be investing into getting your time back, invest money into buying your time back. So a couple ways that I do it. Cleaners, housekeepers, car wash people that come to your house and clean your fucking car for you. You ain't got to drive nowhere, you got to worry about it. It's just done. Automating and getting things done for you, buying your time back. Ordering groceries. I do it every single time. You rarely catch me at the grocery store unless I'm desperate or I hit my pen a little too much

and I wanted to go play in Target. Like, I don't usually go to the grocery for a lot of reasons and it saves you a lot of time, headache, travel, dealing with stupid ass people, wasting your time. You should be investing and getting your time back and be consistent and be able to afford that before you over your trying to invest in the long term, things are gonna make you money, invest so you can be rich when you're 60.

Oh my God. That's my outlook on it. And that's what I do. Another thing that I am big on investing in is premiums for YouTube. Cause I'm not watching ads. Your attention and your time is very valuable. Why are you over here watching an ad? I paid a fucking 9.99 a month, whatever it is, 15 bucks, I don't care. The Apple Music, the SoundCloud premium, the Spotify premium, YouTube premium,

I pay for all of it because I'm not listening to ads. I don't want that shit going in my head. I wanna choose what I listen to and watch, not be fed like ads and crap. Like be respectful of your time. If you got a little extra money, pay for that shit. It's useful. Another one is Instacart plus and Uber plus, Uber one, whatever the hell it's called. It saves you a bunch on fees. So pay for the premiums before

you start investing into the S&P bullshit. But that's the thing about the next point I have is the whole S&P 500, investing in the stocks, investing in crypto. I don't understand it, I don't get it. And I don't care, truly, because I've been around, met and seen a lot of people who are all in this investment space and they are broke dick. Like yeah, they was living large, they was doing great.

A lot of these little influencers are like, Oh, I'll teach you how to invest, bro. Teach you to teach you that. Look at them all now where their Lamborghini Eurosis go. I don't trust the whole like learning from people to invest in buying a course and all that crap. I don't personally concern myself with it. The whole thing, everybody's shoving it on everybody's throat. You need to be investing. You need stocks. investing you need stocks It's even hang it. Shut the fuck up

Enough I want to like bark at that in the back of your head because I don't want you worrying about it Don't stress about it. Don't think about it. You'll know when it's time to invest I could be a full dumbass and be missing out on a lot of money. I Really don't mind. I don't care. I've turned down so many opportunities of like brand deals, partnerships, all this crap. Yeah, I could have much more money, but like if I'm not even desperate enough to sell out for it, I'm not going to stress myself out playing in a stock market. I'll go to the casino before I do that. On the topic of investing,

I do like to invest in goals and things that you wanna do. So I'm big on like committing hard and investing so the pain of quitting is harder than continuing when you have a goal or something. So I have a nutrition coach, again, I hired him. I'm getting back on my shit. My birthday's coming up.

I'm trying to go to Cabo. I'm trying to be on the beach. So I gotta get my body right. I'm in slack if we love it. But I hire a nutrition coach when I'm ready to get back in the groove of shit. Buy a more expensive gym membership. Buy clothes to work out with.

Buy equipment. If you wanna like start doing something, making something, buy a laptop. But if you wanna start making content or doing things, buy the equipment. Like fork out and like be nauseous at how much you just invested into your goal because it's like, it's gonna piss you off every day

when it just sits there. Like you buy a camera, it just sits there and you just look at it and you walk by, you're like, that's two grand every fucking day, I just gotta look at. It's your choice if you make it be a waste of money or not. So I'm very big on investing in your goals and investing money where it like hurts a little, pisses you off.

So you're forced to kind of like act and do what you're supposed to do and do what you're trying to do, make it harder to quit. So that's a big thing where I say, yeah, invest. And speaking of investing, I'm going to talk about investing in business events and business seminars, save you fucking money. I paid $5,000 recently to go to a business event of people that I trust and look up to and have helped me a lot. I love their free content. Their books have been great. When I got to the event,

it wasn't really for me. It wasn't really what I needed or wanted when I did the phone call to like be approved to go. The person assured me, yeah, that's exactly we can help you with all that. The event turned into them just upselling you into a fucking $35,000 thing where you work with them one on one twice a year every six months. And then it's like, Oh, if you don't buy it today, we're going to charge you $45,000. I hate that.

I say it's a waste because I'm not going to let it be a waste. I've let it like kick me into overdrive and piss me off where I'm going to make it worth it. I learned a couple of things, but not $5,000 worth and like networking and connecting, save it. Don't worry about the business events. Read the books, watch the videos, watch the free shit, go to your little Barnes and Noble, go on Amazon, buy some books, read as much as you can,

consume as much as you can and act. You learn more by doing. Like I am glad that I went. I learned my lesson. I paid five grand for the peace of mind. I ain't going to no shit like that. Again, most of it's just like't going to no shit like that again. Most of it's just like trying to upsell you into something else. Another thing with courses, a lot of people online, Oh, I make a million dollars a year by my course. I'm going to teach you exactly how don't get caught. And none of these scams and schemes and all this shit.

People who are really making a million dollars a year are not going to be making a course to tell you how to do it. They're busy making the money. If you see somebody who's like, Oh, my course is going to help you be a million. Yeah. Just know that you buying their course is their income. That's how they allegedly make the million. A lot of these people lie about the numbers that they, that they make and they lie about their income cause they want to upsell you.

And then a lot of people you'll get into their course and then it's just how to do what they just fucking did, which is sell courses to people on how to make money and that's your income. It's a pyramid scheme from hell. There's more than you think. There's more than you realize. So my rule of thumb is when you see somebody online,

if their free content has not changed your life or helped you or improved something, there is a 100% chance nothing behind their paywall will help you either. If it's all just an act to like get you to buy something, you're gonna know. So if they're not genuinely trying to help with free shit, they're not gonna try to help you. Their goal is making money.

They're trying to loop you in, not post things that are going to help, you know, go on Google. I never will tell you go on Reddit, but go on Reddit, go look up some forums, go look up some reviews about certain people's courses before you buy them and you'll see who's full of shit from other people who have paid the money. So my last section for this whole topic about finances is about shopping and travel. How I save money with both of those things,

but I'm not posting it here because I don't want y'all getting all the information bumping me at the sales I'm trying to get into, okay? I'm gonna post that on my sub stack. And I know I just talk shit about people with courses. The sub stack's not a course. That's my sub stack and I know I just talked shit about people with courses the sub stacks Not a course. That's my private group where I hang out and go live and post details like this that I don't want everybody knowing it's like the close knit like

Leo community, so if you want to join I'll put the link in the description But that's all I got for this week's episode If you liked it leave this video a thumbs up and comment a money emoji I always say comment a certain emoji at the end of the episodes. So I like to see who makes it this far. So comment a little money emoji, your little money bag, little something. If you're listening on the audio version on Apple podcasts and Spotify, leave this podcast at five stars rating and hit the download button.

It helps me a ton for real. Hit the fucking download button. I'd prefer that over the five stars. Thank you. Love you. As always, everything you need from me will be in the description where you can keep up with me. I have been posting over the five stars. Thank you. Love you. As always, everything you need from me will be in the description where you can keep up with me. I have been posting a lot on TikTok, my whole meal plan that I've been doing. If you want to like eat along with me, because I got two weeks where I'm in Cabo. I gotta look good. But everything you need from me is in the description. Also working on some new merch. I switched manufacturers and the journal. I've talked about the journal for a while. That I'm gonna make perfect.

I had to switch people. We in a whole new design process, but trust and believe it's coming. My version of a gratitude journal and my version of other things are coming too, because I don't like that whole, today I'm grateful for this, shut the fuck up. I'm so excited for the journal.

I just need to get the right person who can make it. But that's it for this week. Thanks for hanging out. Love you so bad. Everybody be safe. Take care of yourself. Get your money right. Get your finances right.

I just told you how. I'll talk to you guys next Sunday.