Epic Real Estate Investing - A Debt Management Trick to Gain Financial Freedom Without Sacrifice | Krisstina Wise | 1358

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

In this episode of the Epic Real Estate Investing Podcast, host Matt Andrews welcomes Krisstina Wise to discuss the implications of recent Federal interest rate cuts on the real estate market. They explore the fundamentals of supply and demand, the generational housing needs, and the influence of corporations and demographics on real estate prices. Krisstina shares her journey from being a successful real estate sales agent to experiencing financial struggles due to a lack of financial literacy. She highlights the importance of understanding financial principles, conscious spending, and creating financial security through investments. The discussion delves into breaking societal myths about money management, the pitfalls of overspending, and addressing bad financial advice. Krisstina emphasizes the value of a personal profit and loss evaluation, conscious investment, and wealth-building strategies. The conversation reinforces the significance of building financial freedom through disciplined and consistent money management strategies. Krisstina’s links: Youtube channel Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Let's go. All right, please help me welcome the Mrs. Christina Wise. to the Epic Real Estate Investing podcast. Welcome, Christina. Hey, it's great to be here. Yeah, glad to have you. Long overdue. Looking great. Excited about today. I just saw the headlines hit on the Fed cutting the rates. Did you see that? I did see that. Yeah, I've been reading up on it. I mean, I was reading right before we clicked on, click the on button. Do you follow that closely, or is that something that, do you follow it closely? I mean, close enough for sure. I mean, I think it has impact on all of us when we're another.

And especially those of us in real estate, it has a different impact. Right. There's a rather aggressive move. And I looked at the major report on the projections. So we're expecting down to get to 4.5% by the end of this year. And then by 3.5% to 3.5% by the end of 2025 and to 3% by the end of 2006. Really? Yes.

Wow. Wow. that's going to be a conversation. What would domino effect that's going to happen? Correct. Correct. What do you think it'll do? Well, push up prices. I mean, right now it's been a good time to buy in the sense that prices have been down. Obviously, interest rates are higher, but it's certainly going to create a lot more demand with interest rates at that level, which that's tend to pull up prices. So usually we're in the same place anyway. It's just common sense, right? Supply demand. It's amazing on how many people, and I might have said,

this before you're on the show once or twice. And I'm saying it a lot lately because I'm starting to recognize how many people understand the concept of supply and demand. Like when it comes to Super Bowl tickets, when they become rare, the prices go up. And everyone understands how that works. But when it comes to real estate, people just kind of throw that out their brain and like, no, but it's a cycle. It's going to crash. The prices can't go up forever. And I'm like, Well, actually they can. If they keep making, like, for example, interest rates could cause prices to go up forever. But there's such a huge supply demand imbalance.

I mean, people don't really are, most people I don't think are aware of the actual population boom. And where the demographics of our different generations are like millennials are at their peak buying age over the next two or three years, they're all going to need a place to live. And we have this huge deficit in housing. What's interesting, because we have the huge deficit in housing. What I found interesting too, I'm sure you've seen this statistic lately, but I found it, I mean, it's actually surprised, but that foreclosures are at all-time lows. And so, I mean, people aren't losing their houses. There's a low supply because there's, like you said, just the millennials be such a large

numbers group buying houses, but then people are staying in their houses longer, those that were locked in to lower interest rates. And then we have BlackRock and others that are buying up just huge supplies of lower priced inventory. So you lock all that together. And I don't know how prices go down. I mean, sure, there can always be some crash, unpredictable crash. But based on the fundamentals, I don't see that there's going to be any like 2008 type buying

opportunity. I don't either. I don't still know how it can be. So, I mean, you're absolutely right. you have the corporations now representing a significant portion of the demand. And then you just have the natural demand is already out of balance. So there's that. And then you have people like other big mobiles coming out of retirement,

such as Jeff Bezos, just started his own single family fund to start buying houses. And then, you know, depending on the government's numbers, say that we had 12.5 million people come over the southern border in the last four years during this administration. That's 12.5 million people. We only build 1.1 million houses a year. where are those people going to live?

So how can the prices go down? What would have to happen? I don't know. I've been a real estate investor in my whole life, so I'm biased. I know I'm biased towards real estate because it's real estate's truly very well and I've built my wealth off real estate.

And so again, granted, I'm biased. But with that said, I mean, the last number of years I've been just saying, buy real estate because prices are only going up. It's just when you look at all these factors, I just think it really is, if you're going to store money somewhere, it is the place to store money. And the more real estate, the better. Yeah.

From this point in time, if you look backwards, you would have never been wrong with your advice. You'd be batting a thousand. And that's better than anyone on Wall Street can say. Christina, I'm so glad you're here. Tell me a little bit about your business, who you help and how you help them. Well, we're here talking real estate. I'll tell a little story is that, I mean, I started my career in. real estate sales. And so I love the real estate sales. I started in my 20s. I did well. I worked hard.

I got great at real estate business, credit brokerage. I mean, I've been in real estate one way or another my entire life. And I had two personalities. I had my real estate sales personality and brokerage personality where I helped others buy houses and sell houses. And I had 50 real estate agents. I did all the things. And, you know, I've just always loved being in housing in this industry. But then my other personality was to buy houses and to invest in houses and use real estate to make money, but then also use real estate to create wealth. And that one-two combo treated me really well. Like I said, I love the industry. And then I retired out of the industry. I sold my company because my real estate investments basically could pay for the cost of my living. I said, okay, I want to now teach

others how I have done it. And today where I could potentially teach maybe real estate investing, because I've, like I said, I've done it my whole life. I'm pretty good at it. But I wouldn't even know how to teach it. Like you're the master at teaching real estate investing for investors who want to do this. And you've created frameworks, you've created a structure, you've created a system that makes it really easy for anybody that wants to become a real estate investor to do it. I didn't have you when I started. Like, I learned trial and air. We didn't have the mats of the world. But I don't teach real estate investing, even though I've been a real estate investor, like I said, that's how I've built my wealth and financial freedom. And I love talking about real estate. I mean, my definition of porn is

looking at real estate all day long every single day. So I still buy and sell for my own portfolio. With that said, since I don't teach it, what I do teach is I teach financial competencies. So I teach those who are on just what I call high income broke people that make a good amount of money, but that are month to month broke. And I'll tell another quick story where this desire to learn this came from. Like I said, I started in real estate sales, and I loved sales. I loved real estate because there's no feeling to my income. I worked hard. I did all the things as a good real estate agent.

And I was top sales in my company and my city for years. And I was locally known. I became nationally known as just this top salesperson who ran this really great real estate team and all the things. And it seemed to be working really well. I was making a lot of money. And then about seven years into my real estate career, I ended up getting divorced. And this was a horrible divorce.

I'm still ashamed of this day of how ugly this stupid divorce was. But I was young, and we fought over all the things that my money was buying at the time, basically. And what happened is after this divorce, I lost everything this divorce. It's 100% commissioned job.

Now I'm a single mom that is supposed to... I had the court, since I was a wage earner, I had to pay child support, and I had to pay for the kids' activities. And then we left the big house, and all I could afford was this little crappy apartment. I nearly lost my car. They were trying to repossess it. I had $100,000 of credit card debt.

I had tax liens I didn't even know about as I didn't know I'd pay taxes. So it's just a terrible story, but I had made hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in sales. And here I am completely broke and so broke that I didn't have the money to pay the deposit to turn the electricity on. And the only thing that got me and my kids for that time is that I had these colleagues at work who pitched in. And, I mean, to this day, I have so much gratitude because I just don't even know how I got myself out of this hole without them.

But they came and they brought over blankets and towels and sheets and filled the cupboards and prepaid the utility bill. And they just did me such a huge service. And I was so grateful, obviously, because again, I don't even. even know what I would have done otherwise, but I was in that dire straits. And the bad thing about that also is, I was so grateful, but at the same time, I was so embarrassed. I was like number one in the city, and now I'm having to take handouts to feed my children, my three and four year old at the time. And, I mean, how do you go from being number one to being basically destitute? And then two,

I was so ashamed that I happened to take, like, charity, but ashamed because I grew up having to take handouts. I started in a trailer home. We had nothing. I was fighting about money all the time and a horrible divorce. I'm like recreating my childhood, but I was just so ashamed because, again, as children, we never had anything new.

We only got everything secondhand, and now I'm doing the same thing to my children. And it was just this moment. I mean, I was just so broken and so lost. And the thing was, is I was like, Christina, like, how the how did you get here? You made all that money and you're here? And I couldn't reconcile it. Like, I couldn't understand how that happened and where, why I wound up where I was. So is it that juncture, I mean, my just darkest breaking moment is they're trying to repossess my car. And I needed a car not only to get my kids to school, but as in real estate, you can't show property without a car. Right. Right. So it, I do. I, I picked up my first book then, which was somebody must have told me about it, rich dad, poor dad. And then there was actually a little workshop that came to Austin, Texas at the time. Never heard of it.

Yeah, exactly. And I think for most of us in real estate, we probably was one of the first books we picked up. But it just taught me that first book was like, this is how I wound up here. I was a high-income broke person living month to month spending everything I made. And I was helping other people get rich in real estate, but I was totally broke as a real estate agent. So that sent me on this journey, become a real estate investor, not just sell it, but to actually buy it. And then at this stage of life, I just see so many people that are where I was at that time. And that's my mission today is help just the average Joe or Jane who are working hard learn the financial principles and fundamentals of money so that they have that money that they can invest in real estate or other places.

but to be able to build network and create some type of financial legacy. That's awesome. Yeah, it's such a story about our society. I mean, the more you make, the bigger your bills get, right? And you're constantly chasing the bills and you're outliving your lifestyle, I guess, right? You're outspending your lifestyle or understanding. You know what I mean? It's more expensive to provide or support the lifestyle that you've created than you're actually making.

and I don't know what's the statistic you probably even know it's 60% of the country is like one paycheck away from being homeless themselves despite how much they earn the amount that they earn doesn't make all that bit of a difference so for like the ideal person like I mean if it affects so many people you would think that your business would be like in such high demand right oh my gosh you're the savior But I would think a lot of people are just kind of in denial of that. Like, how do you recognize it? Do you have to hit rock bottom like you did before? Or are there some signs or symptoms that people can kind of look at their own life and I identify, like, that is my issue. I need some help with this.

That's such a great question, Matt. I'm kind of like the last resort because what I find or what I found that I believe to be true is that when we have money problems, Meaning, money is the number one cause of divorce. Money is like the number one cause of anxiety and stress, like worrying about money or arguing about money, conflict of money. So this money thing wreaks a lot of havoc on individuals and especially families. And so it's an issue, yet it's so hidden. So number one is that nobody talks about it. On social media, it looks like everybody's doing great.

Nobody has money problems. We've got all the big houses and the cars and everything to display that we have no many problems at home. So part of that is that it's taboo in the sense that we don't want our friends or neighbors to know that behind closed doors is kind of ugly. And we want to portray that we have no many problems. So that's issue number one. So to come to terms with that and to admit like, hey, this isn't working, you really have to get to that place of saying, I need help. and that's a hard place to get to when it comes to money. So that's number one.

Number two is that we're constantly bombarded with this buy more, buy more, buy more. I mean, everything's an ad these days. I mean, everything's an ad these days. Right. And so, like, culturally, we're getting this message that the key to happiness or being worthy enough is you need to buy more things. And so we're constantly buying and people are going into debt. And so, you know, they're just keeping up with that.

But what's the illusion is that it looks like one can afford it because if they're making $10,000 a month and they're able to cover $10,000 a month in bills, it feels like, hey, there's enough money, but there's still that financial stress because like you said, over 60% don't have enough money to cover one month, you know, of not getting paid. And it's going to be, I just call it one paycheck from disaster. So that's too, it's just that lifestyle in keeping up with the Joneses type of thing. The third piece is that all the, I just think the narrative out there is if you have money problems that you either need to work harder, but the focus is on how to make more money. So it's like, hey, go do a side hustle. So there's all everything on YouTube about side hustle. It could even be like, become a real estate investor overnight and XYZ.

Like there's just all this stuff out there, these ads and this narrative that says to fix your money problems, you have to go figure out how to make more money. And that's the worst message of all because at the end of the day, it's far less about how much money you make and about how much money you keep. And it's understanding that most of our money problems aren't earning problems. Most of our money problems are spending problems. Because if you spend inappropriately relative to your income, you're not. You're never going to have the money to create savings, which is financial security. You're never going to have the money to invest, which is called wealth and ultimately financial freedom. And that's what keeps the paycheck to paycheck. So you put all those things together,

and I think people are looking for the shiny pennies, kind of get rich quicker, how to get me out of this financial situation, combined with bad spending habits because we don't know that we're spending everything we make, combined with we want to keep the illusion that, hey, everything's cool financially at home, and that keeps us from taking the next steps to try to figure out what's the root problem of all this. So is the answer just, I don't know, restraint, discipline, sacrifice? Is that what the answer is? It really is.

I mean, I love Morgan Housel. He wrote the book called The Psychology of Money, and I think, you know, he said it really well. He said, the secret to getting rich becoming wealthy is disciplining consistency. And it's really meaning at the simplest terms, it's as simple as spending less than you make and being disciplined to take that amount and invest consistently over time. And if you want to do it slow and do it index funds, safe and slow in index funds over 30 or 40 years, you can hit your numbers as long as you don't miss a payment. Just like you don't miss a payment on your mortgage, you don't miss a payment to your index fund. So that's the long slow way, but it's pretty much guaranteed to work. But same thing.

I did it much quicker because I invest in real estate and really learned you had to use real estate as a wealth building tool and did it and probably half the time. But still, I had to learn that I couldn't live that lifestyle of that high-income real estate agent. I had to live off our list and start investing real estate and all of that. So to go back to Morgan Housel, it is. It's a simplest spin lesson you make, consistent. and discipline. The problem with that is, I mean, it's like saying, hey, it's not rocket science

on how to lose weight or be healthy. You eat good healthy food. You stay away from junk food and processed food. You don't eat sugar. You move your body. You get some decent sleep and you live heavy weights two or three times a week. It's not rocket science, but I don't know. I forget the latest statistic, but like 65% of our country is overweight moving towards obese. I mean, those numbers are staggering. And only 9%, the average income in the U.S. is $107,000. Only 9% are net worth millionaires. So we're overweight, we're broke, we're the 55% divorce rate, and none of this is rocket science. It goes back to, we're just not doing the basic thing. to have a good marriage, to have a healthy body, and to have, you know, wealth on our balance sheet.

So I think it's just so much that unhealthy food is really easy to access and it tastes good and it's quick and it's all the things. And so we can get in these really bad habits. And money's the same thing. It's just really easy to spend money. And it's so easy to spend money on all this nonsense and a lot of stuff that's keeping us broke. And so much of that comes from this external message that says, hey, we need to show our neighbors that we're just as rich or richer than they are at any socioeconomic status. So wherever we are, we need to prove that, hey,

we have just as much money or more money than everybody else, and we display that based on what we buy and how we show this off. So that goes back to Morgan Housel's psychology of money, is that we have to get out of the way of our own psychology and have to get very connected to what do I value? What do I care about? How much money's enough? Do I want financial freedom?

Do I want financial security? How important are these things to me? And if they're important, then, who do I learn from and what do I need to do to be able to change the trajectory that I'm going to wind up in the 9% and not the 91%. But people just have to get real raw

in clear on that, but that takes like 15 minutes to sit down in some quiet time or a really serious conversation with your spouse to talk about this and we can't just disengage with Netflix and think it's going to get better on its own. That's actually something that I cover in one of my workshops with regard to you had said it. Like what's most important to you? Because whatever's important to you, there's a plan to get it. And a lot of times people have, they'll say one thing that's important to them, but they take a different set of actions that's not going to get them there. For example, most people rate financial freedom very high on their priority list, on high on their importance list. But they also have a free and clear home high on their list.

They also have being debt free, high and clear. And they also have maxing out their 401k really high on their list. And it's like, well, actually, if you want to be financially free, eliminating debt is not necessarily the best or fastest way to get you there. But they have these conflicting values that have a conflicting course of action. And it really prolongs the journey. It doesn't have to be a 40-year retirement plan, just like you had said. I mean, you did it in half the time. And that's pretty common for people that are consistent, like acquiring real estate as an example. So I think it does start with when you say a conversation. It's like, let's decide what's most important to us and then establish the plan, I think we do all foolishly spend. If someone was going to make a, say,

they're going to cut one thing, if you're going to go across the country and look at everybody that was having a money issue and they had to cut one expense, what thing would move the needle the most for them? Well, so what I do is I have a money school. And it's 12 weeks where part of the work is we look at every single thing you spent money on over the last 90 days and itemize it and group it. But in everything that goes in the food cat, groceries category, car category, clothing category, subscriptions category, mortgage or house category. So I mean, part of that is to look for leaks. Like, where is money going that we're unaware it's going? So if we're not paying attention to your money, like those that are kind of in the month to month, you have to pay attention

your money. The only way to get out of the cycle is to start looking at where the money's going. and I call this finding leaks. And so those, you know, to go to the program and do this work, I can tell you what consistently shows up. And my average student that goes through, they earn somewhere between like 115 and 250,000 a year. Some earn under $100,000. But it's usually in that income range that are going, but they're month to month. And most of them are married, but not all of them.

But what happens is when they start looking at these things, they're like, inevitably, They're like, holy shit, I had no idea I was spending that amount of money on X. So this is what shows up in this income range most often. Number one, I call it the number one wealth killer. And the number one wealth killer is the amount of money people are spending on car payments. And it's like some entitlement that when we hit a certain income, we need a certain emblem on the car. And it needs to be a brand new car. And we need to show that off.

Because if there weren't any neighbors that cared about our cars might judge us from our cars, we probably wouldn't be spending these amounts. And people are doing anywhere from 60 to 72-month loans on these cars to get their payments where it's affordable. So number one, number one wealth killer. And then you just go from car payment to car payment without realizing that that amount of money, if it were put somewhere where it's going to appreciate or compound, they're probably going to be far better shape.

So there's car and expensive luxury cars have higher insurance and hire all the things. So card payment. Number one is eating out. I mean, number two is eating out. So, you know, we're all busy. So we spend a lot of time at restaurants and eating out. And usually when you eat out where you might not have a glass of wine at home, you usually have a glass of wine at dinner.

For sure. We eat more. But eating out, people are always just shocked at how much eating out or even convenience runs are. Combined with DoorDash and some of these other just what I call convenience spending. So that's another big one. That, again, these are when people like, I had no idea of spending that amount of money. Another one that shows up is

subscriptions. And it's just so easy, especially when you're making a certain income that you just keep adding subscriptions and you're not paying attention to the $15 there and $20 there. And the average American with the average income spends $300 a month

on random subscriptions. And the higher income earners are even spending more money on subscriptions like having your clothes delivered to your house once a month so you can try on new clothes. And so just subscription services that feel like kind of luxury I can afford it, you just keep adding these things. And all of a sudden, there's several thousand dollars a month that has been eaten up just by frivolous kind of. I don't even know where the money is going type

spending. Yeah, I do that audit once a quarter now on my credit cards for the subscriptions. And I find stuff there all the time. I don't even remember signing up for this. And why did I sign up for the what did this was in a lot of times it's attached to a seven day trial or something like that yeah yeah you forgot to go back in and cut it off so really with those top three things i mean if you take your car you take your eating out and you take the subscriptions you know if those are the top three things you can really move the needle without making a huge sacrifice on anything or out without ever exercising any significant discipline which is what i love i like that about about what you just said i wasn't anticipating that that i think you're actually

absolutely right on the money. I hear a Susie Ormond or a day of Ramsey and then, you know, stop drinking your latte every morning. Like, no, I need my latte every morning. But even if you did, you know, what were five bucks a day, is that really going to move the needle? Like buying a used car or just finding that $30 a month subscription thing that you don't use it. I like it. I wasn't expecting such practical and doable advice. That's amazing. I just call it finding money. Like, yeah, if you live your Starbucks, get your Starbucks. It's not about giving up the Starbucks. It's just becoming what I call conscious spending. It's just to know where your money is going and knowing that if you're not paying attention to it, it's disappearing. Like it is leaving your wallet and winding up in some subscription service. Like all these services are billion dollar companies with the SaaS software and your business too. Like it's so easy to do subscriptions in your business and you signed up for this or that and the other. I mean, I found one the other day, it was a click funnels. I haven't used click funnels like in two years. And I don't know it was attached to a different, some, thing that I miss because I go through my books every single month because I really pay attention.

I found a $97 month subscription that I hadn't been using. And another one, like personally, this was probably a couple years ago. Well, it was during 2020, I think, during, you know, when we couldn't go to a gym. And I'd signed up for a Peloton app. But I'd signed up for my Apple phone and not in my normal credit cards. So it just attached to my Apple pay whatever I pay on my phone. And I had that and some other thing that I'd signed up for that I didn't even realize I was paying. So it wasn't showing up in my itemized Quickbook

is just part of my phone bill. So it's just like these things can be insidious and all this money. And then it's on purpose. Like I always say like everyone out there wants to separate us from our money. And it's so easy to let the big world out there separate us from our money.

And it's our job be like, no, I'm not going to allow you to separate from my money. I'm just going to be very conscious. And I want to spend money on what I want to spend money for. It's not about being frugal or cheap or the Dave Ramsey or Susie Ormond type mentality, but it is about being very conscious and connected with how much am I spending? Where is the money going? Is this an alignment with what I care about? Is this money, if I take this

average, you know, one to $2,000 a month that's just blown out somewhere and I put it into some type of investments or something where it's going to make me more aligned with my savings and my financial freedom calls? And when you can start putting a couple thousand dollars to work, it's amazing how fast you can really start changing your life. It changes really quickly. Yeah, I think one of the things when we first met what we kind of had in common was being a fan of the concept of profit first, of paying yourself first. I read that book on our long drive, I don't know, six or seven years ago. And I was like, wow, this makes so much sense. And I adopted it right away and just started really small. I didn't even do it to the letter of the book. It was kind of like the meatheads

version of profit first. I was like, okay, just automatically allocated 50 bucks a week into my account. Like, regardless of how much I made, if I made a lot or made a little that week, 50 bucks always went. And I didn't even notice it. And I said, okay, let's ratchet this up to 100, 200. After about four or five months, I was like, I couldn't believe how much money was in there. Right?

It was just, it adds up so, so fast. And if you're able to go through your credit card bills and hunt down a couple thousand bucks, I mean, all of a sudden, it's not a 40-year retirement plan. whether you invest in real estate or not, right? Yeah, absolutely. One other thing I wanted, like, add to the list of why the country is in this financial situation, two is a lot of just kind of bad advice. I mean, you miss in Ramsey can be a great place to start.

Like, if you're in debt and you just really need kind of a shake-up, nothing wrong with Dave Ramsey, but he's giving such bad advice, like don't get into debt. And debt's evil and pay cash for your house. and all these things. Like, that's such bad advice for most people. Like, some people that have no discipline. Like, maybe that's the case. But it's like, no, like, you have to understand things.

Like, it's just what I call the basic financial competency and literacy is to just learn there's a difference between good debt and bad debt. Like, yes, you can't be in credit card debt. But, man, you're missing big opportunities if you don't leverage debt to buy real estate, to invest in your business, to invest in other things. and use debt as a really good leverage and tool. But so many people that have come into my programs after Dave Ramsey, I have to help them unlearn some of these beliefs that they've taken on

because, yeah, those methodologies can be great for getting out of debt, but they're not good for making you rich. So two different financial goals. And use one to get out of debt, but don't stick with that one if you really want to build wealth and create real financial freedom. And it's short of time possible. Even though the Dave Ramsey thing is such an issue with him. I don't even think his advice is that bad.

Like some of the stuff I certainly don't agree with, but I wouldn't get upset or angry with it. If he didn't speak in such superlatives, right? Because he's like, never get into time. You're like, never, never, always do this or always do that or never do this. I'm like, no, it's actually, anytime someone says always or never, or like, you need to, like, your antenna needs to go up and really pay attention

what's happening. Exactly. But I think another thing that's really important, coincidentally, that I am here in Oceanside, California, and I'm here for three days, actually meeting with a coach to help me plan my 2025. And I'm a smart guy. I know how to do this. I could certainly stop it and do everything that we've gone through. But separating yourself from it and sitting down with someone that can look at what you're doing with an objective point of view. It's amazing how much stuff that you don't see and how much stuff that there is for you to discover. And I imagine, as I'm talking to you, I think I should do this with my personal life too. I don't know if you do something like this.

Do you do like a P&L sheet for someone's personal life? Yeah, that's what we do. It's actually called a personal P&L. And once that's part of the exercise first is finding out where all these leaks are and doing that. And then what we do is we use QuickBooks and just like using QuickBooks online for your business or running a product. You're not business if you don't run a profit and loss and know the basic, you know, how to run a profit and loss, how to read a profit loss, how to read your balance sheet. I work with a lot of solepreneurs or self-employed. And I mean, they don't even know what a P&L is.

So I teach them what that is. But yeah, that's in business. Like if you're in business, you understand a P&L and you understand no profit means you're not going to laugh. on. I teach the same thing is that our business is the business of making money. So like you do your three-day planning. I do my three-day planning here and I do mine at the beginning of November. So I'm going to do my whole business planning for 2025 and just that is like compared to last year and what goals are I want to do, what different projects and what do we need to do differently, basically what problems do we solve to be able to hit new numbers and that becomes a business plan.

But yeah, it's just based off the financials of the business. And I run regularly profit and losses for my business, obviously. But it's all about profit and profit first. Like you said, I teach the same thing in household is that in our business, we want to make more money. So the better business people we are and the more we can increase our profit, the more money we get to make as a business owner. But the business is all about making more money.

It's not about building wealth. Our household is our wealth-building machine. So if we can run our business. in a way, the business plan and planning and strategy is about more profitability. It's doing the same for our household with the same business mindset. And it's like I'm the CFO of my household and my job now with household finances to create that surplus to make sure that we're, one, we have the money to be able to live our lifestyle in a month-to-month basis. But we're also moving the money to be able to be on track to hit those longer-term net worth

target. So this financial, personal financial target, separate than the business. Our personal net worth is nothing to do with our business unless we have some business equity on our personal balance sheet. So that's just the thing that we want to do same things. In QuickBooks Online, you have everything itemized so that you can see where every expense is going, and you're revenue to profit and loss. And it's the same profit-first system that is like, hey, I'm always going to pay myself a 20% profit in my business, which means I have to run my expenses on my business, to maybe make sure that I have that 20% profit. And the same thing as our household is I always want to make sure I pay myself first.

I have a profit first in my household. So I need to run my profit and loss and manage my expenses relative to my income any single month, which can be variable as an entrepreneur, to make sure that I have that 20% profit first in my household. And my household is a business that I'm going to then move out to invest somewhere so that my money can start creating money. But yeah, when we have these two machines, our business and business finance and profit and loss and balance sheet that we run synergistically with our household, we have these two engines working together. It's amazing how fast we can really start building a lot of financial abundance. Can we taught that in high school, right? I might not be in a situation right now because I would recommend it for everybody.

And I resisted for as long as I can remember of sitting down to do that because I was very much of the market. I said, no, just make more and the problems will go away. I was very focused on make, make more, more, more. I'm in the room right now with some extremely high performers. I'm pretty close to the smallest fish in the room. And they don't think that way at all. They're 100% measuring every single penny that comes in, every single penny that comes out. It's not like they watch it all day long, but they have a system in place that they can review it at a glance anytime that they want.

And they can set their activities and actions around those numbers, so they're making and data-driven decisions, and it's the business of you, right? You are a business and you do have expenses and income to monitor. And I'd recommend this for everybody. If someone wanted to reach out to you, Christina, what would be the best way for them to do that? You have a great podcast, the wealthy, wealthy podcast. Welcome, Philadelphia, podcast.

And we really were appoint people today is my YouTube channel. It's just at Christina Y. I said K and 2S is. So YouTube's a great way. And then, you know, if you want to reach out, there's all the places that you can find me. It's probably the easiest thing as far as listening on a podcast just go to at Christina Wives.

Super. Super. I'll make sure all that stuff is in the show notes. It's been a pleasure. We get to actually meet in person here next month. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, me too. Before we go, what's in your future that you're really excited about?

I just like you, I love what I do, and I just feel very fortunate that I get to wake up every day and build a business around teaching what I love to talk about, which is money and wealth creation. and having conversations like this. So any given day, it's living life outdoors in Park City, Utah, and enjoying life, and then all the good things that are about building a better business. Awesome. Well, Christine, let's check in again in 2025.

And it's been a pleasure having you. And again, I'll see you soon. Thanks for being here. My pleasure. Thanks so much. You back. Take care. And that wraps up the epic show.

If you found this episode valuable, who else to be able to. you know that might too. There's a really good chance you know someone else who would. And when their name comes to mind, please share it with them and ask them to click the subscribe button when they get here and I'll take great care of them. God loves you and so do I. Health, peace, blessings, and success to you. I'm Matt Terrio. Living the dream. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home for us. We got the cash flow. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit C-sweetradio.com