George Kamel - Millionaires in Cars Getting Coffee with Humphrey Yang

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

💵 Sign up for EveryDollar today. Create a free budget!     Ride along as I treat Humphrey Yang, former financial advisor turned social media influencer, to a cup of Nashville’s finest coffee. We’ll break down his wealth, his investing habits, and what he really thinks of Gen Z.    Next Steps  📗 Order George Kamel’s new book, Breaking Free From Broke.  💸 Check out the latest from Humphrey Yang.   🧠 Keep watching Humphrey Yang, Jaspreet Singh and myself get real about life and money.    Offers From Today's Sponsors  This episode is sponsored by DeleteMe. 🔒 Remove your personal information from the web at JoinDeleteMe.com/George and use code GEORGE for 20% off. 🙌    🎙️ The Ramsey Show    🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour  💡 The Rachel Cruze Show  💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights  🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show  💼 The Ken Coleman Show  📈 The EntreLeadership Podcast     Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, to kick things off, here are my top five Humphreys of all time. Number one, Bogart. He's looking at you, kid. Number two, Dumpty. Yeah, actual given name, Humphrey Dumfrey. The bullies rolled with Humpty Dumpty. Number three, Yang. Yang!

Yeah, I'm an official member of the Yang Gang. What? And honestly, that's all the Humphries I can think of. Not a lot of Humphreys out there. And we couldn't get Bogart on the channel for obvious reasons. About 70 years late on that one, rest in peace, homie. And Dumpty is still recovering. Get well soon, bro.

But you get the pleasure of meeting Humphrey Yang today. He's a former financial advisor turned social media influencer, and you've seen his TikToks, his Instagrams, and his YouTube's educating people about personal finance. He's got over a million subscribers and, of course, over a million dollars in net worth. And that's why he's on today's edition of Millionaires in Cars Getting Coffee. We're going to break down his wealth, his investing habits, and what he really thinks of Gen Z. It's going to be fun.

But before we get to it, let's finish our game of naming famous Humphreys. If you can't think of one more before I'm done with a sentence, you got to hit that like and subscribe. Sorry, you lost. I don't make the rules. Don't hate the player,

hate the lack of Humphreys. That's really what's to blame here. That is terrible. That is truly, truly awful. And while you're at it, give some love to the share button and send this to a non-Humfrey in your life. That should be everyone,

except for Humphrey Yank. Don't send this to him. He knows it's out there. He's fine. Let's get to it. Humphrey. Thanks so much for being on this segment. First name Humphrey. Last name Camel. You've got a newsletter called Humpdays. I do. It's free to subscribe. It comes out on Wednesdays and Friday. Wednesdays and Saturdays. Do you have a trademark on Hump Day newsletter? Because I feel like with the last name, Camel, it should have gone to me.

It definitely should have gone to you, but so should have the cigarettes, I suppose. You're right. I'm not part of that empire. So speaking of wealth, you've accumulated a wonderful net. Steg and portfolio. Could you like break down your wealth as it stands today? I worked in the corporate world for a long time, and I also invested for a long time. And I used to be a financial advisor, so I just have all this knowledge of... Your brain just thinks in terms of wealth and investing. And all it always has been, even ever since I was a kid, I was just always thinking about how can I make money.

But as it stands right now, I'd say half my net worth or more is invested in just stocks, index funds, if you will. And then I have quite a bit of cash right now. About 30% is sitting in cash because I was planning to buy a home this year in California. And I needed that big down payment. Yeah, that's serious. But now I'm having second thoughts because rates are so high. I'm thinking maybe it's better to not be 30% in cash and maybe be 10% in cash and just kind of put it into the market and see what happens. I don't own any real estate.

I don't really own anything else. I have like a little bit of crypto. How much is retirement versus a taxable brokerage account? Oh, yeah. I used to have a 401k and I still have my Roth IRA and I would say of my total investments now, I think the retirement portion makes up 15% of all my investments. Yeah. When did you officially hit that millionaire status where your net worth hit that million dollar mark? And what were the factors that caused you to hit that? It was probably around 31 or 32 years of age, so not that long ago, four years ago. I had been investing since I was 24. So seven years of compounding and also the market did really well. I kept continuing to invest.

So I kept putting money into the market even no matter what, basically. Always 15 to 20% of my income that was saved would go into the market. And I had a really great paying job from the years of 2014 to 2016. I was a montization manager. What is that? A monetization manager at a video game company. So a tech company. Oh, wow.

I did that job for two years and it was almost like a all day. everyday type job. But I was living at home this entire time until the age of 34. So that's like a life hack in and of itself. No rent, no bills? I was very lucky in that my dad wanted me to stay at home and was okay with me staying at home. Obviously, I had to deal with kind of like the societal negative impacts of living at home in your 30s would be. Yeah. But I saved almost every dollar that I earned. You know, I was living very frugally. So you built that habit early on. You're investing 15 to 20% of your income for seven years, no matter what the market's doing. Yeah, exactly.

And that helped you hit that threshold. And it was largely in investments in cash at that point. Investments in cash, and then also my business started to start making more money. And so when you have my income grew as well over the time. So when you have good offense and you pair it with good defense, which means not spending too much, your wealth grows. Yeah. Well, it sounds like savings rate was a huge factor.

My savings rate has always been high, yeah. Yeah. So that's huge. Definitely agree. The percentage, the amount of your income going towards investments, that's really the key versus, hey, the market did 7% or 8%. Yes, and not buying a new car. Ooh. Yes, because I know that we both have videos about the wealth killer in America.

That's one of two, like my biggest video, I think, is about how auto loans are the wealth killer. And yours is one is the biggest. That's my biggest video, too. Me too. Me too. And the thing is, is that I have not had a new car or a car payment in overseas. Now, seven years, eight years. Wow.

So once you paid off that car, you were like, I'm done with carpet. I'm done with it, yeah, and I'm going to try to drive my car into the ground. People are always arguing with me about what kind of cars, millionaires drive. Because I go, they don't drive the cars you think they drive. So as a real-life millionaire, can you tell us what you're driving? I actually drive the car you think I might drive as a millionaire. I drive a... No, I drive a used, so when I bought it, it was already four years used.

I used Mercedes, GLE. E. It's the SUV. Yeah, those are beautiful. And when I got it, it had 15,000 miles on it. Yep. And most the depreciation was already chipped away. Thank you. Which is great. And it was also sitting on the lot for 60 days. So they had to get rid of that car that day, or else it was going to get moved somewhere else. So you had some leverage in the negotiation too. Yes. And luxury cars, they tend to take a pretty steep hit because most people want that new luxury car. They're worried about maintenance and I love that you have that mindset of, hey, I'll let someone else take the hit on depreciation. I'll take the discount. Because we know, based on stats, new cars depreciate on

average about 60% in the first five years. Oh, 100%. Yeah, for sure. No one even knows that it's used. Yeah. Right? And it still looks brand new. I still get, you know, people compliments on it all the time. You paid cash for this. I paid cash for it. So I actually had payments for the first eight months. And then at the end of eight months, I was like, okay, I have the cash for this car. Why am I making payments, paying interest in this car? And I was just like, you know, if I just get rid of this cost right now completely, yeah, it would suck in terms of my bank balance. But my peace of mind would go up so much.

And once I did that, I felt completely more free. And once I felt free, I felt like I had more options. It almost gave me more flexibility to take on more risk because I had this like, I didn't have any debt obligations of that in sense. Oh, that's huge. Yeah. Well, you've talked about the tradeoffs needed to invest. and build wealth. What were some of those sacrifices for you? Living at home, that was definitely

one of them. You know, I didn't really buy new clothes for a very long time as well. I would wear the same things. In fact, some of my shirts had holes in them and my friends would give me crap about it. So your lifestyle stayed low. My lifestyle has been, little expenses. Yeah, my lifestyle has actually been the same since 2014 because I track it in an expense tracker. Every expense goes into this expense tracker on my phone and then I put it into a spreadsheet. And what I've noticed is that my discretionary spend from 2014 to now, it's almost been 10 years, has been roughly the same.

Obviously, it's gone up with cost of living, et cetera. But back in 2014, I might have spent $1,500 a month on discretionary expenses. Now it's closer to $2,000, which makes sense. But as my income has grown, I still think that's great. And I track it every month. And I make sure I don't go too much. So you are very intentional with every dollar coming in. Yeah.

And that's what's helped you keep. this wealthy bill too. Exactly. Like if I buy you coffee right now, Duncan, it's going to go into my little spending charge. It's on me, baby. This is millionaires and cars getting coffee, and I'm taking you to a Bostonian favorite. May I have just an iced coffee, please? I'll just do a small black cold brew. Can I get a donut? And a donut. We'll get a donut. We're going to live today. What would you do for a donut? Kill a man. This is very, no one's ever done the donut. That's impressive. I thought I'd switch it up for you.

I love it. Milliers in cars getting coffee and donuts. Now we know what do millionaires eat? Donuts. And by the way, guys, we're paying for this with a debit card. Wow. There's your donut. Oh, thank you very much.

Boom, I'm like Charlie DiMello. I was thinking that just now. I was like, he's just like Charlie. Hey, Humphrey. Listen, Humphrey's captive in here, and that's not good. But you know what else isn't good? Your data being captive. because data brokers are out there selling your information and it's not okay with me.

And that's why I use Delete Me. They find and remove data about you from hundreds of sites and they send you an easy-to-read report outlining what they did. And with my link, you'll get a one-year plan for less than $9 a month to help keep your personal info off the web. So set your data free. Don't let it be captive. Go to join deleteme.com slash George for 20% off. Or just click the link in the description. All right.

Back to the ride. Cheers. To building wealth and drinking caffeine. Dunkin donuts. Look, I get my donut. Oh, man. Show that to the camera. That's the kind of stuff money can buy.

What's like a splurge for you now? I feel like you still are fairly frugal. But you've also, you know, you're making good money. You've built wealth. You've done it all the right way. Financial spurge. Yeah. Okay.

I kind of, it's mostly just travel stuff now. So if I go somewhere, like, for example, I'm in Nashville, I'm staying at a nicer hotel than I usually would stay at because I just want to be comfortable. Yeah. So it's usually... So it's usually... I'm not staying in the motel 6. Yeah, it's usually something more travel-related, experiential-related. You know, if I buy something material, it doesn't really hit the same.

I also splurge a lot on camera equipment and camera gear, but I feel like that's kind of a business expense. You can justify that. I've heard you talk about the fire movement and that the retirement part didn't appeal to you. you know, financially independent, retire early. What is your take currently on the whole fire movement? It depends on what you define as retirement, right? If retirement means to you that you can just live the rest of your life without ever having to do active income again,

or like what the fire movement is about, personally, I feel like I would get bored not working. Yeah. I've gone through stretches of not working and I'm just like, what am I doing? You get a little stir crazy. You get a little stir crazy. So I always want to be working on something, And I feel like even when I'm 65 or 70 years old and I quote unquote retire or stop actively working, I think I still want to do something.

Yeah. You can't just sit for 20 years and watch Netflix. Yeah, exactly. Although there's a lot to catch up on, I feel like. There is a lot to catch. It's exhausting. It's overwhelming. Yeah.

So yeah, I like that take. Is the idea of retiring early, no one really thinks about what that next 30 years looks like. They just have the goal of quitting this job. Yeah, I mean, running from something instead of towards something. My dad quit or my dad retired twice and he just got bored. And, you know, I saw that firsthand. And I've had, I have many friends' dads who also quit or friends' moms who also quit. And they're just like, wow, I've got nothing to do.

Or the spouse is like, you need to get out of the house. You're driving to be crazy. Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's always good to have something that you're working on. Maybe it doesn't have to produce active income when you're retired. But as long as you're, like, growing and building towards something, that's always something that I really enjoy. No, there's a lot of wisdom there. Talk to me about the young Whippersnaps.

out there. What is your advice for Gen Z, younger millennials, like if you were just sitting down coaching them and they're frustrated with the current state of the world and the economy and their finances, what do you tell them? I always wanted everything now, right? Like, we're in a culture where everything is instant gratification. And I realized through building businesses, because I did an e-commerce business before YouTube, stuff takes like three years before it even gets going, you know? And it's like, you need this long-term time horizon of like, at minimum five, 10 years. in my opinion, to be really great at something. And so I would just say when you find something that you like that you want to do,

whether it's a 9 to 5 job, you're working at a corporation or it's something on your own, give it five years. Yeah. Give it 10 years and see where you come out of it. It seems like there is a lack of stick-to-itiveness, of just that commitment to something because we're like, well, this isn't it, I got to jump. This isn't it, I got to jump over here. So there's just constant movement.

Yeah, and admittedly, I used to, I mean, I did that too, right? Like, I jumped around a lot in my 20s. So, you know, it's, I guess it's a little bit, you know, I am kind of speaking from experience here, but it's like I wish I'd, I wish I kind of stayed at some certain places a little longer. Yeah, that makes sense. Just giving up so quickly. Well, that's my story at Ramsey was, I've been here for 10 years. I think I have the longest running career held by a millennial.

You know what I mean? I've had six jobs at Ramsey, but I decided just to commit and plant my roots at one place and go all in. And I think it's part of my, you know, my career success, even going from intern to, personality and all this stuff. And so I recommend to people, don't just jump around willy-nilly for another buck. Like, find out what you really want to sink your teeth into and commit to it for a long period. I will agree unless that person is not making. If they're miserable and under pain.

If they're miserable and they're not continuing to get raises or, you know, roll changes like you have, right? So if you're in the same job for four years, they haven't done anything to help progress you. You want to learn more and nothing's going on. Maybe that's a good time to switch. That's good advice. Yeah.

You've talked a lot about psychology when it comes to money and marketing and consumerism, and I loved this video you did talking about the TVs at the front of Costco. Yo, Costco, what's up with the TVs at the front of the store? They call me the Kirkland King, the Costco Cowboy, if you will. No one calls you that. And I've always noticed that, but the way your video was presented, it was interesting, the way you presented anchoring. Yes.

So what's behind the psychology? of that product at that spot at the front of the store. Yeah, so humans have a tendency to be psychologically anchored, as they call it, or impressed easily by the first number that they see. And so Costco will put their TVs at the front because when you get in, you get kind of a price shock. You're like, oh, my God, $2,000 for a TV, $1,000 for a TV, $800. For the 8K-75-inch TV.

Whatever it is, right? And then, you know, so you go through the rest of the store, and when your bill comes out, it's $200. She's like, oh, man, I didn't spend that. much today. But had you not even seen that TV before the trip and you said, you're going to spend $250 at Costco, you might think that's a lot of money. We see this all the time. The best analogy, I feel like it's like popcorn at the movie theater. Like the smallest six bucks, the medium is going to be $8 and the large is nine. You're like, well, I might as well go for

the large. Exactly. Exactly. I'll get the most value. Decoy pricing. We see that all the time. Starbucks too. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure Tesla too. You know? They're no strangers to They're not stranger to pricing strategy either. I love it. We talked about savings rate and the importance of that. And I know in America, our savings rate is abysmal. I just did a video on like 401k by age. We're lucky to see like 7, 8% savings rates.

We're lucky to see that, yeah. And you posted a video about the savings rate of people in China. That was interesting. Yeah. 45.9%. Whereas Americans are closer to 3.5 to 5%. Yes. It's definitely one of the biggest cultural shows.

that I've personally seen in my life is that my Chinese parents say love saving money. My dad gets more of a thrill out of saving a dollar than earning a dollar. Is that the cultural thing? Like, is America the land of abundance? And so we're like, we'll worry about savings later. Why do America sucks so bad at saving? I think the America, America is the land of debt. I've said in the book, America's land of the free home of the broke.

Yeah. Like we have one of the greatest countries with so much wealth and opportunity. that we are just, we've lost our minds on the consumer spending side. And that is a huge part of that. Exactly. And so I think, it's well marketed in America. America is the home of consumerism. And so, yeah, maybe you, you know, we want to be somewhere between America and China, right?

45% is a very high savings rate and many of them hold it in cash. And so I'm guessing, like in China, is there less debt? Because you can't invest 45% when you have payments coming out your eyeballs. Correct. There is less debt. I mean, most people in China, they like to buy. things in cash. That's smart. Yeah. Now, this is something everyone wants to know. Sure. As a guy who's successful, you know a lot about investing. How are you investing your money in

2024? Uh, 20204 is just a lot of index funds, man, S&P 500. So you're not getting fancy, because a lot of people go, well, did you see, well, should I go all in on Tesla or Apple? And what about the div, these dividend funds? I had an idea like that once a long time ago. But you're saying, hey, I'm just going to invest in the total stock market. The total stock market is generally the way to go. I have had many individual stocks in my past, and that those positions have grown because I own a lot of Apple. Which is already in index funds and mutual funds. And I've owned Apple since 2014, so you can tell my Apple position has just gone really big. And I should diversify, but I don't want to take that capital gains hit right now. How is your view of wealth

changed since you started your channel and creating content? I feel like back in the day, I thought, to be wealthy, you just had to make a lot of money. But these days, I know it's more about how much can you save as well. So, you know, in 2023, I tracked all my expenses. I spent a little bit too much money than normal, and as well as business expenses. I think I went a little bit too ham on lighting and equipment. So this year, I'm trying to rein back all the spending and just keep increasing my income. So I would say savings rates. It's not what you earn. It's what you keep. That's what you keep. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously, you've got to earn a lot too, or try to increase your earnings by doing side hustles and having, you know, different types of things going on.

But savings, what you keep is important, right? Well, as we take calls on the Ramsey show, I'm finding more and more people are just out-earning their stupidity. Like, they're making $190K and they're surviving. They can manage the payments, but they are like broke. You know what I mean? That's crazy because their lifestyle creep just eats away all their income. They bought too much house. They're doing too many things at once.

They're messing around with debt. So you're right. I think it's what you keep. And I've just found a debt-free lifestyle just gives you so many more options and much more peace. You know, that is the one thing I do agree with the Ramsey solutions. The one thing. Well, I agree with a lot of things. This will be a great title.

The one thing Humphrey agrees with Ramsey-on. I agree with a lot of things, but I do think a debt-free lifestyle is the number one thing that I agree with. How much debt do you have currently? Oh, zero. Right there, y'all. Yeah. Humphrey has zero debt. So if you're thinking, well, the wealthy, all,

use debt, apparently not because he's wealthy. I do have credit cards, though. You were this close, and you blew it. But you pay them off every month, let me guess. I pay them off every three days. Every three days. Every time I spend money, I just log into my credit card, and I'm like, pay it off. So I always treat it like cash, and I think that's the one reason why I don't mind having

a credit card. But I also acknowledge that many people that great credit cards don't do that. You're also a super nerd with an expense tracker that gets fed into a spreadsheet. So, you know what? Like everyone thinks that they're going to be Humphrey, but they don't live the Humphrey way. And so that's my rub with the credit card, you know. I understand. But I did get our friend Seth Godwin to cut his up on a TikTok live.

I did see that. This has been really fun, Humphrey. Oh, thanks, George. This is our first time, like, really getting to hang out. So it's fun getting to know you and getting to hear your thoughts on building wealth. And you've been helping a lot of people. I've been following you on the Internet for ever now, and you've been crushing it since day one. And it's fun to get to meet you here in Nashville.

Cool. Great to be on the show and make sure to subscribe to George, guys. That's right. Smash that subscribe button. Let's make Graham Stephan jealous. How's that? Yeah, sorry, Graham. Sorry.

Yeah, I got it. Let me re-edit that part. Cheers, man. All right, cheers. I mean, talk about a rousing conversation. Huge shout out to my new most favorite Humphrey for joining me today. What a wonderful person he is. Now, make sure to let me know in the comments section who else you want to see on this series.

And don't forget to share it with a friend who could use a a personal finance mentor in their life. They'll thank you later. And if you liked today's video, there is more where that came from. Check out the first official summit of the Financial YouTube Avengers, Humphrey Yang, Desprete Singh,

and myself, as we get dangerously real about life and money. How dangerous you ask? Well, you'll have to click to find out, or click in the description below. As always, thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.