The Home Service Expert Podcast - How To Turn $15,000 Into $1.6 Million Without Adding Another Dollar | David Bach

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://freedomevent.com David Bach is a ten-time New York Times bestselling author and the man behind The Automatic Millionaire. In this episode, David and Tommy break down why $3,000 a year saved from age 15 to 19 beats saving from 27 to 65, the one hour a day rule for retiring a millionaire, why a tech making $250,000 can still be broke, why owners should buy the building their business is in, and David's idea for a flat tax on IRA accounts. Get The Automatic Millionaire, 20th Anniversary Edition ⟶ https://davidbach.com -- 🕐 TIMESTAMPS 🕐 -- 00:00 - Introduction 01:37 - The Number One Rule: Pay Yourself First 03:17 - Save One Hour Of Pay A Day 03:57 - How 565,000 People Became 401(k) Millionaires 06:46 - The Myth About Investing Aggressively When You're Young 07:32 - Tommy's Roth IRA At 16 08:56 - What $20 A Day Becomes 10:06 - The $27.40 A Day Leak 13:38 - The Corvette Ride That Started It 16:19 - Born To Spend Or Born To Budget 18:15 - A Lesson At McDonald's At Age Seven 24:10 - Homeowners Are Worth 40 Times More Than Renters 27:31 - Why A Garage Door Is Worth Financing 28:29 - Buy The Building Your Business Is In 30:04 - Wealthy But Not Free 31:49 - Why High Earners Start To Resent Their Jobs 32:49 - Making $250K With Nothing Saved 35:25 - The Chart: Start At 15, 19 Or 27 39:33 - Why David Holds Zero Private Equity 41:07 - The Advice He Wishes He Had At 20 45:01 - Batteries Included People 48:11 - $46 Trillion Sitting In Retirement Accounts 50:42 - The IRA Flat Tax Idea 58:37 - Social Security In 2033 1:00:48 - Why The Trades Aren't Going Away 1:01:40 - The Barber Who Saved 75% Of His Income 1:04:55 - What Money Taught David About Himself 1:08:10 - Discipline And Non-Negotiables 1:18:05 - What People Said At His Father's Funeral 1:25:00 - The 20th Anniversary Edition 🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://freedomevent.com Check Out My Social Media: Tiktok ⟶ https://www.tiktok.com/@officialtommymello Instagram ⟶ https://www.instagram.com/officialtommymello/ Facebook ⟶ https://www.facebook.com/thomasmello/

If you start at age 15, this is like my son, and you save $3,000 a year from age 15 to 19, at 65, this person's got $1,615,000 if they earn 10%. Next kid starts at 19 to invest until age 26, never invest in a dollar. They've got less, 1.5 million. Compound interest works when you start it, and you start sooner versus later. I say 20 people hear about money, 30 people worry about money, 40 people really worry about money, and 50 people hyperventilate. Today I got an awesome guest.

You're going to learn about wealth saving. Retiring like a millionaire, David Bach's in the house. He's a former financial advisor VP at Morgan Stanley, author of the Automatic Millionaire. Start late, finish rich, smart women finish rich, the latte factor. David Bach is a 10x time best, New York Times bestselling author, entrepreneur, and financial educator known for the automatic millionaire and finish rich series. David has taught millions of people how to build lasting wealth through simple automatic habits and inspired a global movement around financial freedom. And today he's going to share with us an amazing new tax strategy.

David, thank you so much for being. Buddy, good to be here. I'm so thrilled this could work out. Thank you. That did. It worked out well. Joe Polish is just a connector, man. One of the best in the world.

The greatest connector of our life. Yeah. I've known Joseph since 1997. I see your book back here. I just sent him a picture of it. Yeah. Yeah, no, he and I grew very, very close. He lives down the street from me.

We probably talk. We're texting every day. I mean, he texts everybody every day. But so let's just get started, you know, great to have you. What's the number one piece of advice that you give people about money? Super simple. And before I even say what it is, let me just say that I've worked with thousands of real-life millionaires. Not people who built business and sold businesses.

people who had jobs making $50, $75,000, $100,000 a year. Average Americans, how they built real financial freedom is super simple. It comes down to three words. Pay yourself first. Because I know I watch one of your podcasts and you were talking about, it's all about paying yourself first. It's the flow of money. And so the way ordinary people in America have become millionaires. And by the way, as I updated the automatic millionaire book, there's now,

24 million millionaires in America. And that's a number that's going to double in the next 10 years. And the bulk of these Americans become wealthy by paying themselves first, but it's the second part that's the key. And we'll talk about what it means to pay yourself first. The key is those who paid themselves first, and it worked, it worked because they made it automatic. It was all done automatically behind the scenes, right?

Like you've got 1,015 employees you told me today? Yeah. Okay. So when an employee has a 401 plan, the single most important decision they make is when they sign up for their 401k plan. It's that automatic decision where they're paying themselves first before they pay the government, which, by the way, it's the only legal way to get to pay those taxes, right? So they've got to pay themselves first. The formula, and I'll give you the exact formula right now, we know what the number is to become a millionaire in your 50s. It's one hour day of your income.

So the first hour day of your income So everybody who's working for you If they're filling out the little form And they go, what is an hour day of your income? It's 12.5% of your gross revenue. Now, I actually want you to save more than that. I want you to save 15 now Because you're going to need more money.

The reality is with inflation, the cost of everything, you need to be saving minimum 10% of your gross income, but ideally 15%. Now, the formula, when I say it's a formula, because we now have 40 years of data on this, this, Fidelity has the largest 4-1K numbers of anybody. There's Fidelity, there's vanguard, or Schwab. Fidelity has right now 565,000 people who are millionaires in their 401K plans. It took them an average of 26 years, and they saved 14% of their gross income.

Now, in most cases, those people also had some kind of a match, their employer put a match on top of it. Right. And the breakdown of how the investments were inside the 401k plan, that's very important. It was 75% stock and 25% bonds. Now, for, you know, your employees right now, who do you have your 401k plan with? Do you know? No, I don't even know. I should know.

And by the way, guys, I'm sitting in the office with how, what did you tell me? I heard you have 40 people in your family office now. Yeah. So, okay, we've got to find out who your 401k plans with. and then inside these 401k plans are what's called target dated mutual funds. So very important for your average employee that they invest in a target dated mutual fund. And what that means, and well, I'll use Fidelity in his example here. If it's a Fidelity plan, inside that 401K plan will be a mutual fund with a date.

So if somebody's 20 years out from retirement, let's say they're in their 40s, they would pick a fund and it would be 2040. So they just literally say Fidelity Freedom Fund, 2014, that fund will automatically do it for your employees. That's what most people should be using inside the 401k plan. What about just a Vanguard that's cheap that's going right into the S&P? I mean, what's beat the S&P? Okay, so let's go back to...

I'm just curious because I don't know as much as you have. No, no, not at all. So like Vanguard, same thing. If you have a Vanguard 401K plan in most cases, they're going to have Target Data Mutual funds. You may have offered your employees also the option of having an index fund. If someone wants to have 100% an index fund, which is great, like the Vanguard Total Return Stock Market Fund, the symbol's VTI has 3,600 stocks in it. That fund has got $1.7 trillion in it right now.

That's the biggest no-brain or mutual fund you could ever invest in, meaning like you don't need to think. It's got 3,600 stocks in it. It's going to average wherever the stock market does are in many cases better. that fund has averaged over 12% for the last five years. If you go back and you pull these funds, the S&P 500 fund, great option. Here's the problem. If you go 100% stocks and the market goes down 20, 30%, even though you and I know that you can't time the market, like I heard, I are listening to you on a podcast. You've got $100 million now in the S&P 500.

Pretty much. Well, there's bonds. We copied a Warren Buffett thing at Goldman. Okay. There's some cash or some bonds or some, yeah. You've got diversification then. Yeah. So for somebody who's listening, one of the biggest myths is that tell people when you're young,

you should be super aggressive with your investments. 100%. They say, you know, you're young, you can afford to lose money, you should take more risk. The problem is someone who's 30 and invest super aggressively and loses all their money, they're equally unhappy. Yeah. And so someone who's 30 that takes too much risk, they often get scared out of the market and they never go back in again.

So I would, if I go back to that allocation I said earlier, 75% stock, 25% bonds for a young person, it's a great allocation. So you think, I mean, listen, I just heard this professor talking about S&P where it's averaged does not even keep up with inflation, the rate they're printing money and the way the dollar is decreasing. So I'm just curious. I did a Roth IRA when I was 16. At this point, next year it, it comes. comes out of a self-directed. It's got over a million dollars in it. I got very lucky. Now, I couldn't put money in there after I was 27. It's in a Roth IRA.

A Roth IRA, which you could max out $7,500. I was putting $300 a month when I was 16. I worked two jobs to do that. And you're 42? 42. Okay. Yeah, no, it worked out well. You know, now we'll talk later about my ideas for change in tax long retirement accounts.

You know, with a Roth IRA, you'll just leave it there because why would you take the money out? It's just like you keep growing tax-free. But what I would tell you, because my kids have Roth's, IRAs. When I wrote this book, The Automatic Millionaire and then the Latte Factor, my young, I've got a 15-year-old now and I have a 22-year-old. So when they read the latte factor six years ago, they were like, well, Dad, how do I get one of these Roth IRA accounts? I'm like, well, we go set it up for you. And my 15-year-old now has, we funded it for three years. So this year, it's $7,500. Right. Previous two years, it was $7,000. So this kid's 15 with $24,000 in this Roth IRA. Now, I listened to you where you took out Chachians. And you ran a compound calculation. And it screwed it up the first time, which was beautiful, because that's how it really works.

But if you go to investor.gov, they've got probably the easiest compound interest calculator there is to use in the world. It's free. And you can run these numbers. So I go, James, let me show you something. If you save $20 a day, so we just use you, all you do is fund a Roth IRA until you reach your 60s. It's so cool. And you only earn, you know, you don't get the returns that you quoted with like private. Exactly.

You know, if you get 10%, right, the stock market for the last hundred years is average, 10% annually with reinvested dividends. James, how much money you think you'll have? The answer for him is over $11 million in tax-free money. At 10%. At 10%. Now, you can run these numbers lower. You could run it 8% or 7% and then you just realize you need to save more money. But the key is, $20 a day for most people can be a life-changing amount of money put away for retirement.

One thing's I did, I didn't bring my stack of cash for this show because I wasn't knowing we were going to do this show. But I just did a bunch of podcasts and I carried around. I'm not one of these people who does this, but I carried around a stack of $10,000. So a stack of $10,000 in 20s is about that thick. Okay. And the reason I brought $10,000 is podcast. So imagine I'm holding $10,000. The reason I did that is because I wanted to ask people, what do you think it takes to blow $10,000 a year?

and the answer is $27.40 a day. And, you know, the question I ask people is like, look, I don't know what your financial situation is, but I know a whole lot of people who blow $27.40 a day on nothing, right? And so if you can say – You talk about that in the book, yeah. Just stopping the gas station. I mean, look, people need gas, but, you know, today, like I just read about – We're going to get a candy bar of the chips.

You know, you go to Starbucks, and you're not going into Starbucks and out of Starbucks and spending less than $10. Right. You go to Chipotle. Chipotle did he just came out with earnings and they basically said, you know, young people are starting to come here less because, yeah, less because you go there and you get a burrito and a Coke and it's $27. Right. So, you know, people are starting to actually wake up to the fact that with inflation, they're going to need to save more money.

And the only way to save more money is to make the decision automatic. I carry this phone right now as a prop also. These are money-making machines. And what I tell people is your phone right now is a money-man. magnet where you can make everything automatic, all your savings, all your investing, automated with a few clicks, or people, the greatest technology in the world is separating you from your money automatically. It's much harder to hold on to your cash right now because everyone is coming for it. And they're not just coming for it once. They're coming for it for

the lifetime value of the customer. Everything's a subscription fee now. Oh, yeah. So you've got to cut those off too. Yeah, that's the one thing. You know, I'm sure you're familiar with Michael McAllots. to know him pretty well, but this idea when it hits, that's when I was 16, it hit my account. I didn't miss the $300 a month. Right. Because I just would look at it once a year. And I just never used that money. I said, that's my future self's money.

And it's hard to do that. This takes some discipline. What you just said is like, it gives me chills because it's the key, right? You made a decision at a young age to take care of your future self. Right. Now you're doing that with your health. Right. and at the end of the day

a lot of people will, they know they should do something better with their finances, right? Like this book, The Automatic Millionaire sold 2 million copies. The updates got success stories galore in the back of the book. And the thing I'm always the most fascinated with

is like, well, what made you make the decision? Right? Like there was a story in the front of this book now with a woman named Tiffany. She's known as a budgetista. She was a teacher making $39,000 a year, but she lost her. job, which is unusual as a teacher.

They had layoffs. She was hugely in credit card debt. She had to move home with her mom. And she saw me on Oprah talking about the automatic millionaire. She's like, I think I can do this. She went down to the bookstore, bought the book and said, not only do I think I can do this for myself, I can get out of debt, I can pay myself first, I can change the course of my life, and I think I can teach others.

she's now gone out and taught millions of people how to do this. And she's a self-made millionaire now. And that's an extreme example. But I get these stories all the time from people. And the question is always, what made you make the decision? And in many cases, they've hit bottomed something. They've reached a pain point where they're like, I just can't keep going this direction. I'd like to reach people before the pain point.

Right. Like you weren't in pain probably at 16 when you started saving $300 month. I was busting tables in, and, uh, lifeguarding. Yeah. So let me ask you, what made you make the decision at 16? So I got in my cousin's Red Corvette. It wasn't a new one.

And it was no doubt playing, don't speak. And he lowers the radio. I was in Gilbert at my uncle's house. And he sits, we're sitting in the car and he goes, how much money you got in your retirement account? Like, tell me about your Roth IRA. I said, what are you talking about? And he goes, dude, I'm 10 years older than you.

I'm 26. he goes, you don't understand that extra 10 years, what it'll do. Wow. He goes, listen, man, why don't we go set something up right now? So we drove to the bank or we had a guy. And we sit down and he goes, how much can you afford a month? I go about $100. He goes, can you do $300?

And I'm like, I'd have to get a second job. He's like, well, how do you feel about that? I'm like, I could do it. And it was more of like, you know, when I looked at a compound interest back in the old school finite math base on the back. That extra 10 years is crazy. It's unbelievable. When you look at Buffett, when the wealthiest people in the world today,

and you see his compounding, his compounding started after 60. Yeah. And then he made his money a millionaire after, yeah. And they just went astronomically up because once you get to the fourth decade, money starts compounded a rate of our 20x compound over 40 years. So people, I always say they hear about money and saving it in their 20s. You were rare. You heard about it at 16.

Who was the person that mentored you? My cousin, Brian. Ryan, good job, man. You know, sometimes that's what it takes is taking somebody by the hand. But 16 so early, I say 20 people hear about money, 30 people worry about money, 40 people really worry about money, and 50 people hyperventilate. You know, and it's not that at 50, it's too late, but ideally you start in your 20s and your 30s. Yeah, so I got orientation tomorrow, three hours long, 50 brand new technicians and installers,

and I put up at what age, and I think it's at 9% it would take and how much each year. And I just want them to think about it. And it's so easy. If you make six figures, there's no excuses. It's just this idea of like keeping up with the Joneses. Hey, we deserve, I don't know what it is about a husband or wife getting together. But if there's both of them there, they'll say, you know what? Let's just, let's just do the fifth will.

let's just do that second house. Let's just do the Harley. And like, we deserve it. We work so hard. And they don't realize they're stealing from their future. And they almost feel like they're self-entitled. Business owners do it all the time. They take out a draw.

And they're like, we work our butts off. But I'm like, that money is like the fuel of growth. I'll tell you, for couples, it's a real issue because I always say people are usually born one and two ways. They're born to spend or they're born to budget. Which, by the way, I don't like budgeting because budgeting's too hard. you should make it automatic. But you tend to marry your financial opposite.

And it's very rare that two people who like to save get married. Sometimes two people who like to spend get married, but that's why they end up bankrupt. Right. So I think the way you get people to get clarity around their money decisions is I teach people to look at their values first. So what are your most important values? And I know you've done a lot of vivid vision planning, right?

And another way when you think about vivid, I call it purpose-focused financial planning, which is that what's the purpose of money in your life? The purpose in your money in your life is whatever you've decided the purpose is. But if it's just to buy stuff, I promise you that stuff long-term doesn't make people happy. It just doesn't. No. And it creates more stress. So the thing that happens is our incomes go up is our lifestyle's increase.

As our lifestyle's increase, our stress goes up. And, you know, they say 70% of people have jobs. jobs right now would like to quit their job. They're basically checked out, right? They're unhappy. And the number one reason is typically because they think their boss sucks, right? Like I know you're- Direct report.

You're doing leadership books or whatever. Like, I joked with somebody there today, I said, you know, somebody should do a book called Just Don't Suck, right? Because people are looking for leadership and they're looking for love when it comes to work. And, you know, you're doing something that's so important. You have a 401 plan. You're doing an orientation. you're teaching this stuff, too many employers don't.

And if you can take your employees by the hand, you should tell your story, by the way. You should tell the story you just told me. Because if you tell people, look, this is how I got started at 16. This is what changed my direction. People's, you know, our real stories are what impact people. Like my case, I started buying my, I bought my first stock at age seven. Yeah, my grandma rose. Yeah.

And that's because my grandmother took me to McDonald's and was like, I'm going to teach you today. There's three types of people in the world. Those who work here, they make minimum wage. That's a tough way to make a living, but people do. There are those who come here and eat just like you right now. You're a consumer. You're spending money. And there are people who own this place.

They're the ones who bought the stock. And she took me home that day, much like your cousin did, and opened up the newspaper and circled MCD and was like, that's the symbol of the stock, put me in front of a television set, showed me how to read a ticker symbol on the screen, and then took me down to a brokerage firm and helped me buy my first stock. And what that lesson did for me was that lesson was that made me realize everything we do every single day, someone makes money from it. And if I can invest in those companies, that means I get to make money on it.

Like, how can you own an iPhone and not own Apple stock? Well, you might not know if I should own Apple stock, but you know if you buy the S&P 500, you have Apple stock. How can you shop on Amazon every day and not own Amazon stock? every single thing that you do all day long, you're spending money all over the place. And I was just on another podcast and somebody said, well, aren't you worried about everything going wrong? I'm like, everything going wrong? What does that even mean? Like, do you think people are not going to keep watching Netflix and they're not going to be listening to Spotify and they're not going to go.

They're not going to go on Amazon? Like, you're not stopping what you're doing. Coca-Cola. You talk about Berkshire. All those companies just continue to make profits. And by the way, the next 10 years are going to be the best 10 years I think of our life, even though the market's at an all-time high right now, you know, if you've been in an S&P 500 fund this year,

you're up 19% year today. Right. It's insane. Don't be there in 2022. Yeah. You know, I think what will happen in the next 10 years is we'll continue to see this hockey stick because the reality is AI is producing profitability.

You're absolutely right. I'm bullish. And by the way, I was with the, oh, man, the old CEO. I was at a Goldman event. And he goes, you guys think that Nvidia open AI and he's going through deep seek and all these things. He goes, so many people are like long-term bearish. And he goes, dude, we're barely getting started.

He goes, this is going to make multibillion. There's going to be trillioners. I mean, Elon Musk is going to hit it first, but it's happening. We're not even in the first inning. No. I mean, as we talk about this tax idea I have, I've had this idea for years, but I had no way to actually, other than hiring a consulting firm and spending millions of dollars,

I had no way to pull the data. As soon as ChatGBTD deep research dropped last year, I was like, wait a minute, could I test this idea in ChatGBTD deep research? Click, click, click. It gives me chills. An hour later, I had this full-blown analysis of my idea. Now I've been able to run it through ChatGBT, Poreplexity, Gemini. I've used Notebook LM. And, you know, I don't know if you want to go into it yet,

but I have an idea that could fundamentally change the future retirement. I have a whole plan, but listen, let's... No, no, no, no, no. Look, I love podcasts like this. There's a few questions I ask every person on the podcast. We get into that. But I'm really, I enjoy this stuff because I do think America, I was just in Australia last week. I've been to China, South America. I've been all over the place.

And I just love this country. I love the idea of the American dream because I came from very low income. We had clothes on our back. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't like we were starving. But this is the epitome. We all have a chance. And I'm into meritocracy.

By the way, my mom went to the church for help. She was working three jobs. I mean, look, my grandma was on food stamps. She raised five kids on her own. Grandma Rose, my grandma rose. So I'm not saying there isn't a spot. I don't want to go down this lane right now. But I just love the fact that capitalism is live and well.

And I believe in capitalism with all my heart. And I believe... How could you not? You're the American dream. Well, this idea, I'll tell you this, I wouldn't try as hard in school if I knew I was going to get an A plus and the other guy was going to get a D minus and we both got C's. I just wouldn't try as hard. No. And I know no matter what.

And if you tax me, did you hear about the new California tax proposal for billionaires? No, tell me about it. So 5% of their entire wealth. They got to get, it's going into legislation. They're voting out in January. 5%. Of non-liquid. Of non-liquid.

So they got to get everything appraised. are stuck. It's not going to happen. 200 millionaires there. Yeah, they'll just move. Well, that's the thing. What's going to happen with Mum Downing today? I live in Europe and the end.

Full time? Yeah, full time. I live in Italy. I live in Florence, Italy. Oh, that's great. So I moved there six years ago, and I was only going for nine months. I wanted my kids to live abroad for a year before they went to college. So we lived in Manhattan.

And I'm like, we're going to go for nine months. We're going to go, Jack, when you're a sophomore, and we'll go live in Italy and we'll expose you to all of Europe. Well, what ended up happening. is everybody fell in love with it, we stayed. So both my kids went to international schools in Florence. My older son now is at Northwestern. He's about to graduate and he's going to go live in New York again with it. He's got a job. And my younger son's got two more years. But we've been in Florence now for six years. I have all these expat friends. And the thing you learn about wealth is that the United States is the only country that taxes you wherever you go. So, you know, if you decide to move abroad, you still get taxed. But other countries, you can get out.

I have a lot of those taxes. And people just move based on taxes. Oh, yeah. And so the wealthy all over Europe, they just go where the next good tax deal is. Or Puerto Rico. Oh, Puerto Rico. So I fundamentally believe in the American dream. I think, you know, the automatic millionaire book was about the American dream.

If you pay yourself first, if you save small amounts of money automatically and you buy a home, you have to buy a home. Because you can't get wealthy as a renter. It's just statistically been impossible, right? Homeowners are worth 40 times more than the average rent. renter. And I know it's getting more exciting. 40 times. So if you go into a bar and you meet someone, if you ask them if they rent or they own, a renter on average has $10,000 net worth. And a homeowner on average has a $430,000 net worth. And that is because all the compounding of when people go, people say the dumbest things. People will say real estate hasn't performed

as well as stocks. That's ridiculous. When you buy a, I don't know. What is the average home here costs now? Oh, that's 600 grand. Okay, 600 grand. Nobody pays for the most part for their first home. They don't pay cash. No, you're getting a 30-year mortgage. They're putting 20% down.

If they're lucky, yeah. So maybe they put 100 grand down. And now if that $600,000 home now turns into a million, they made $400,000, if they're married, they made $400,000 tax-free on $100,000 investment. We call that a $4-X return, right? Very hard to get a Forex return by simply buying an index fund. It takes decades, right?

Rule of 72, 10%, it takes seven years, double your money. So you've got to have both. So when you look at the wealth in America today, it's in two buckets. It's in retirement accounts, mostly stocks. You know, it's about 60% stocks and 40% bonds, because that's what the average account looks like across America. If you sliced open America, they've got a balanced portfolio that's 60% stock and 40% bonds.

And they own a home. Those have been the two things that have made millionaires in this country in the last 30 years. When I wrote The Automatic Millionaire, I launched his book on Oprah. 20 years ago, stock market has had a 6x return. So it's gone up sixfold in 20 years. Real estate's gone up fourfold. But again, with actual leverage of a mortgage. The leverage is where you get it.

So an ordinary American with an ordinary job, if they bought a home and they've been paying themselves first for 20 years, they're a millionaire today. Now, some people go, well, a million dollars isn't what it used to be. Still more than 96% of Americans have. So there's 24 million millionaires in America. 96% aren't millionaires. And seven out of ten Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck. Seven out of ten. Seven out of ten.

So, you know, right now, maybe they'll solve it in next week or two before this podcast comes. out, but the government has been basically shut down for six weeks. I don't think the average person understands what that actually looks like, because what it looks like is if the average American lives paycheck to paycheck, they've now missed three paychecks. So when you see why they have to get together and figure this out, you can't have a country that hasn't gotten paychecks for three weeks. The average American doesn't have any money set aside.

Six out of ten Americans don't have $1,000 in a bank account. case of emergency purposes. Four out of ten don't have $400. It's scary, actually. Yeah, you know, you think about those numbers and, you know, I tell all of my, the trainees tomorrow, I'm going to say, we will sell financing every time. Now, let me tell you guys one thing. We do not go out and finance a Harley. The garage door, study after study, 268 percent return on investment. You put 10,000. in you get $26,800 out. That's an investment into their property.

We provide the Zillow price before the garage store and the Zillow price after the garage store. And so I'm like, they're like, well, if you're so against financing things, then why do you tell us the find? And I explain that to them. It's different. If you go buy an asset, in 2015, I had a mentor, another garage store company that I ended up buying out. He said, you know what, Tommy? We were at Top Golf. He goes, by doing 2016.

He goes, I made more money buying buildings. outgrowing them, moving into the next building, buying it, than I made in the groundsdoor industry. 100%. Our dear buddy, Joe Polish, even in his office. He owns that office because that's what I said when I put out this book 20 years ago, he said, what's the number one key for an owner to be wealthy? I'm like, Joe, all my wealthiest clients became rich by accident.

They bought the building that their business was in. 20 years later, they might not even sold the business. They may have just leased out the building, but it's the real estate that builds the wealth. And you were in commercial real estate. Yeah, you did some good research. I started my career in commercial real estate. And, you know, what is your take on that? Because you talk about stocks, bonds, and you talk about homeownership. You talk to Grant Cardone. We don't need to go into that. But, you know, there are a lot of tax advantages to buy real estate depreciation.

Huge. Now you got accelerated depreciation. Well, I mean, like, I'm imagining that we're in the building that you own. Yeah, these are both paid off. So, you know, when you have a business, it is literally the biggest no brand. in the world to buy a building. Right. And then you have a building, you have an LLC that owns the building

and your business leases it back. This is an opportunity zone, by the way. And there's an opportunity zone, so you got even bigger depreciation. And now with the new tax laws, as you know, you can do cost segregation now. Yeah, the cost segregation. You can do that on an Airbnb too.

You know, you're getting 100% depreciation depending on how it gets done. You can depreciate things a lot faster. So it's all about taking your money and getting your money to work for you. The thing, and you're entering, this new level of wealth and you're learning all the tricks. The one thing that's a tax rule.

One of the things that people do when they start to make real money is they obsess on making sure that their money is working for them while they sleep. Right. That's wealth. And that's wealth. And really what wealth is, if you're smart about it, is it's freedom. You can be wealthy and not be free. I have quite a few friends who've got a lot of wealth and they've bought so many things

that they're actually not free. You know, now they've got five, six, seven, eight homes, and now they have to have a whole team to manage the houses. All those things can start to weigh you down. It's very interesting, and I know you're building a couple big homes, but that's like for the whole experience of having everybody there. Yeah, that's a, and I do, like I want to have a melting pot of experiences, love relationships.

And that's my goal to become closer to the people I get the opportunity to work with my teammates, my family where I want to raise my kids is the experiences. I'm building two houses. and, you know, if COVID ever happens, I will never have to leave. Well, you know, back to an early one when I was talking about values, you're clear on your values. You're not buying, you're not building these homes to show off a house. No, the houses are full most of the time.

I mean, the family office stays with me. You're building these things for the experience and the love and the family and the fun. That's really the beauty that wealth provides you. So all I can say to somebody who's listening and they're like, well, I'm not at that level is the way you get to wherever you want to be is you pay for it. Right. And with your money, everyone who's working here is they're bringing in wealth, they've got to be paying themselves first automatically.

If what they do when they get a bonus is they go out and get a Harley or they go out and get a boat or they go out and get a second house, one of the things that happens is that people, they get more stuff, but then they realize I'm actually not getting wealthier. and then a year or two go by, now they've got this stuff with overhead. And it breaks down, accidents happen. It breaks down, accidents happen. Hot water years blow. An interesting phenomenon happens where people were making good money in a job.

If they don't actually start to build financial freedom, they actually start to resent their job. So what happens is you've got someone who's making $200,000 or $250 or $300, and they got themselves a Harley and they bought themselves a new truck. And maybe they got into a bigger home. Now, two years have gone by. a recession hits, they're having to work harder, they're making maybe 310, 320, but they're actually further behind. And all of a sudden, they're like, you know, I think this job sucks. It's not the job that sucks.

It's that you didn't use your money to build some freedom. And so I just, you know, I decided to do this one more time. I'm basically hanging out in Florence, kind of just enjoying my life. I'm like, okay, one more time. I'm going to go out and educate one more generation because they're still not teaching this stuff in school. No. And this is the freedom map.

It's so powerful. I'll tell you one more story. Then I want to ask a couple here, the repeat questions I ask. I have a guy that I work with that's like family. And we're talking, this is about two years ago. He goes, he goes, dude, he goes, I don't get it. He goes, I make $200 grand. My wife, Leslie, she's a teacher.

She makes like $43,500. So I'm like roughly $250, minus taxes, you know, maybe $200. And he goes, yeah, I'm. I'm paying $1,200 for it. And I'm like, dude, that's so cheap. Like, how much you guys... That's amazing. He's like, dude, I don't have a penny to my name.

What? And I'm like, here's the deal, dude. I'm paying you for tomorrow. And I'm also giving you $1,000. Go open this account tomorrow. And he goes, well, Leslie wants a boo job. And I'm like, well, dude, I'm like, is that a priority? I'm like, don't get me wrong.

That's really cool and it's fun. You know? But I was like, come on. I was like, dude, what else? And then the kids want this and we need to go on this vacation. And it's like, I don't really understand it because I've always tried to pay myself first. There's been times where I've had to write the business checks. I remember 2017 was a tough year.

And, you know, I was focused more on revenue than profit. And now I'm like profit first. Revenues for vanity, profits for sanity. But I just, what's the best way to get through to people when they're not ready to get through to, I guess? What can you say? What moves the needle for people? You know, I would say things that were said to me. So, and first of all, so he's making $2.50, which a lot of money, right?

It's more than the average American couple. If you take, you know, typical American couple might be making $150,000 a year. By the way, one out of three of those people are still living paycheck to paycheck. So it's not totally shocking to me that somebody who's making $250 is broke, but it's a system that doesn't work. So I don't know how old this person is. But my age in the early 40s. So the thing is when you're in your 20s and your 30s and even your 40s, you have an unstoppable amount of energy.

You can just go through walls. And then all of a sudden you get in your 50s and your 60s and you just don't have the same energy. You don't want to go through walls the same way. And you want to get to that age. And if you don't want to work, you want to be in position that you don't need to work. You don't want to wake up in your 50s and be like, Oh my God. Okay. I've really got to get going. I mean, and by the way, if you're in your 50s and that's you, you still need to get going. I'm not saying like, go out and shoot yourself at all. I'm literally like, if you're 50 and you can save $20 a day and you both of you save $20 a day, that's $40 a day. You're saving. You can get yourself a half a million dollars in savings by the time you're 60 if you invest it. But man, it's so much easier when you start early. There's a chart in my book. And this was a chart given to me in training at Morgan Stanley. We had a

guy coming out, you know, one of our top financial buyers, he was like 62, he's getting ready to retire. And the last thing he did was hand us this chart. And the chart was showing us back in the day, what would happen if we invested $2,000 in IRA account? I saw you give this example before. But I've got

this example of $3,000, right? So if you start at age 15, this is like my son, and you save $3,000 a year from age 15 to 19, at 65, this person's got $1,615,000 if they earn 10%. The next kid starts at 19 and invest until age 26, never invest in our dollar.

They've got less, $1.5 million. Next person starts investing at $27, invest every single year until the age of 65, and they've got less at $1.3 million. Compound interest works when you start it and you start sooner versus later. Anybody who's listening like that friend of yours, tell them again your story of you at 16. And even showing these accounts sometimes. Like the amount of, I have millions of dollars now in my IRA account. It started with a $2,000 IRA.

Like, I go through in the automatic millionaire, IRA accounts, 4-1K plans, SEPIRAs, defined benefit plans. I've had all of those. But it all started with a little $2,000 IRA account, which at the time seemed like a lot of money for me. Yeah, it always is. What about overfunding an insurance policy? You're a fan of that?

Hmm. You know, in general, no. Right? You're talking about like a mech. Yeah. and a modified endowment contract. And that's typically something that someone is doing for, because they're high net worth,

and they are doing it often for estate planning purposes. They're sticking in it, maybe they're sticking in intervocable trust. It's not my preference. Especially for, like, not for, I mean, your situation is different, but for somebody who's an average person. The last thing they need to be doing

is overfunding insurance policy. So let me just ask you a selfish question. Let's just say God was really good and abundant with your life. where would you be thinking about putting money to get the highest iron and I know you'd be diversified. You'd probably have some long-term P.E. You'd probably do some commercial real estate. I don't know.

What would you do? Because there's a lot of business owners on this podcast that literally sometimes, you know, you're getting 15x multiple on EBTA. I know. So if you get to a $10 million EBITA company that's $150 million, you'd have to roll. Then you've got to pay taxes, but you get good little tax advisors. You know, I think everybody's situation, it's always. different, right? I think the question is, is the goal to continue to build wealth? Is the goal to preserve wealth? I think aged is a lot of a huge factor in this, right? Because you're 42, you're doing so well

that you're at a point now where, like, I'll just talk to you personally, you're in a position now where you could set up, you know, your own foundation. And you can start to create something that's a true, generate. Donor advisory fund. You can start with a donor advisory fund because that's super easy. Yeah. But later you could just have your own foundation. donor advisory funds are fantastic. They're super easy. You can put appreciated assets in them. You get a tax deduction.

You can fund the money later. But you're at a point where you're building generational wealth. And part of it when you build generational wealth is, are you simplifying your life or are you making your life more complicated? So one of the things you need to ask yourself when, like, I think it's smart. Because again, I listened to a couple of your podcasts before I came here. You're buying businesses and spaces that you know. You understand the game now because you've been bought up by private equity.

You get how like, look, I can buy these businesses that is sick. I can clean them up, I can sell them into 12 or 15, right? That's the whole private equity game. So you're in what I would call the smart part of the food chain in private equity. For most retail investors, and I include high net worth individuals in this category, anybody over $25 million. Once you get over $25 million, which probably a lot of your listeners are, the first thing these advisors will tell you is you should have 25% in private equity. but they'll try to have you have 10 to 25% of your allocation of private equity. I can tell you how much I have in private equity.

And I've been involved in private equity because I was a vice chairman of a firm that was bought by private equity. I have zero in private equity. Now, why do I have zero in private equity? Well, that's 10 years and then it can extend for two. Yeah. So really, it's not 10. It's usually 15. These funds roll over.

The IRRs that are quoted all the time. the question you have to always ask is, is that an IRA where you returned money? Because these IRAs are actually often not real numbers. So like if you listen to Schmoth, for instance, on the Allens Summit, he rails against the fact that many private equity funds, the old ones paid back capital, right? But the new ones, the money is just continuing to roll from fund to fund. And what happens is the NAV value of these funds is arguably made up because these things are not. not liquid. So they're selling these, they're selling companies from one private equity friend to the next private equity friend, but they're not always paying out the dollars. So I'm not

personally a huge fan of it. I think for you, I'd be buying businesses and buildings. Right. And land, you know. Yeah. But again, but 122 acres in, uh, in Idaho because, dude, this is the most unfound area in northern Idaho. And I'm like, man. man, once this thing gets found, it's still a little late for me. Yeah. But 10 years ago, people were buying it, like, pennies on the dollar. And it's like, it's paradise. It's right next to a ski mountain.

It's on a massive lake. Oh, you got to tell me where it is later. Yeah, yeah, I will. So these are the questions I repeat all the time. So what's one piece of game-changing advice? And you knew this, so this is not about money. It could be about anything, but what's one piece of game-changing advice you wish you knew in your early 20s? Oh, game-changing.

changing advice in my early 20s. You know, we're here in a way because of Joe Polish, right? And so I think Joe Polish, I'm going to give Joe Polish a call out here. I think Joe is a master of adding value to other people and staying in touch with people. I've done that too, and I haven't done it as well as Joe Polish has done it. And I think that there's a skill set and a gift to building relationships. and continuing those relationships. And I'm somebody who's got friends

as it goes all the way back to the third grade, and I continually make friends and I keep friends. And if I could go back, and I told my son this, I wish I had kept a really solid database starting at 20. Because I still am not a position where I can just click an email and go, I want this to go out to these 500 people.

And I think that I told my son right now he was 22. everyone you meet, you should be starting to build that database. Harvey McKay used to talk about this. Harvey McKay and, you know, the, oh my God, I'm going to blank. Harvey McKay, I'll come back at this. But he had the Harvey McKay system. And it was like, keep a database. And I think the younger you, the younger that you appreciate the relationships, the better.

So that would be my first bit of advice. And my second bit of advice is like love fully, love fully. you don't have to wait until your R.H. to love fully, right? I think when we're in our 20s, it's very easy to hold back on love. You just don't know how to give it out freely. Like, if I don't ever leave a friend anymore without telling them I love them, if I love them, right? Like, because I've had three best friends die in the last two years. Yeah. And so if I'm with you, and you're a friend of mine, I'm going to take a selfie before we leave. I'm going to look you in the eyes and be like, dude, I love you. And guys don't do that a lot.

No. Now my guy friends are starting to do it back. And there's just, we've got more love to give than we actually give out. I think that's really brilliant. And I love the idea of the Rolodex. I mean, that's an old-fashioned term, but a database of, you know, I was on stage with a guy, a buddy of mine. And he goes, why did you come here? He goes, you flew here.

You're flying back the same day. I flew back from Australia. The next day I flew to Vegas, flew back. And I go, you know, I know I would have spent as much. time with you, but you've been nothing but genuine to me. And if I could support your wealth, Khan, I said, I don't want a lot of friends. I just want the right ones. Yeah. And I want to pour into those. And I do have a lot of friends. And I don't know whether there's acquaintances, and I still keep track of my old friends from third grade as well. One of the things, I stopped

picking up people I had a common history with. And I started hanging out of people I have a common future with. Oh, that's powerful. And, you know, I love my friends. They're friends forever, because we grew up together. Yeah. But it's interesting. And I don't want to turn my back on them. I just have a little tolerance for negativity. Like, I will listen.

And people go through a lot of shit in their lives. And I want to be there for them. But at the same time, it can't always be like that. Because that could be a real drain on your health. You've gotten to know probably Dan Sullivan, right? Because you're in 100K. So I know Joe because we were in Dan Sullivan's class. That's how we know each of them from 1997.

And dad used to say, you know, I want to be a lot of him. be with people who are batteries included. And I started saying, you know, when you meet people, if you're somebody who's got a fully charged phone, like you're a battery's included guy. So if you put yourself around other people who are batteries included, the energy level just immediately goes up. However, the friends you say however, and people who are batteries included, people who don't have a fully charged battery, they want to hang out with you too because they want to plug into

your battery. That's interesting. Right. So you have to sort of think, you have to look at things as like, is this person bringing energy to me or is this person draining energy from me? And look, we've all got some of those friends that we've had forever. And maybe they're not the same journey that we're on and we have and we want to keep them. But you have to be, I think, as I get older, I'm very selective around whom I'm around because I don't want to be around people who are negative with bad energy. Here's my test, David. It's an easy test. You pull out your cell phone. And when the caller ID pops up, do you get excited? Do you smile? Are you excited? Or are you like, here we go?

Yep. That's the test. And you should say, here we go. Sometimes somebody's going through a lot. And still be excited to listen and just be there to listen and not give solutions. But if it's all the time. And it's like, man, there's so many people that are the cup. Like, this is like five times full for me.

I mean, this is really half empty, but or half full, but whatever. You know, I love the advice. Have you read blue fishing? No. So Steve, what's that? his name. Steve just passed away with cancer and he was a good friend of Joe's. Oh, I met him at Joe. Paulusia.

Such an amazing guy. He passed away young. Yeah, he was in his 50s. He had the travel business, right? Steve Sims. Blue Fishing and he wrote Get Stupid was the other book. But what he did was his book is he's like, listen,

I got 20, 30 people. If I'm in Italy and I'm at a restaurant and I got the best martini or margarita or the best Italian spaghetti. He goes, I'll grab coasters and me and the bartender will just write, the bartender will do it because they want to bring in my friends. Yeah.

And we'll write down the recipe or whatever. Hey, and he'll send a coaster out with a recipe on the back of a drink and say, next time you go here, you really enjoy this. I miss you. I wish you were here. Those little things, those little touch points. It's awesome. That's one thing I want to get better at.

John Rulin's same thing passed away. Yeah, I know. A good buddy of mine stayed at my house every time you come in. but this idea of just stay in top of mind and investing in those relationships. I try to wake up every morning. I have my whole process everybody has, but I've got my, I wake up and I meditate. I journal. I do my gratitude.

And then every morning I usually send three messages a day where I send out basically a love message. And often that message is just what I call a good job message. And I do that, you know, I know you're talking about kids. Like I do that with my kids. Like, you know, good job. here's what you're doing right. You know, catch people doing things right.

We don't do that enough. Oh, I love this. Yeah, you do have great energy, David. Thank you. We can keep going here, but I really want to dive into this tax strategy because I'm super excited about it. All right, so this is a big idea. At least I think it's a big idea.

What happened is when I started updating the automatic millionaire, I'm getting all the new statistics and all the new stats, a number popped out at me that blew my mind away. So write this number down. there's $46 trillion right now in retirement accounts. All that money got there in the last 40 years, because that's how long we've had these 401K plans. So there's $46 trillion in retirement accounts,

and I've spent basically 30 years of my life helping people fill these accounts. My whole career has been about teaching people to pay themselves first and save money automatically, so they'll have money when they retire, and they can enjoy their retirement. What I realized is I was updating the book and I've had this idea for a few years, people aren't taking money out of their retirement accounts.

What I didn't know is what percentage weren't taking money out. With CHAT, Deep Research and all these AI tools, I was able to find out that 8 out of 10 Americans, it's 83%, but I'll keep it simple, 8 out of 10, 8 out of 10 retirees are not taking money out of their IRA account until they hit what's called RMD age. RMD age is required mandatory distribution age. 66.

It was 70 and a half. Now it's 73. And it's going to go to 75 in 2013, depending on when you were born. So, like, I'm 58. I'm now not going to need to take any money out of my account, out of my IRA account until I'm 75. When I have to take money out,

the law is it's roughly 4%. So the government's created a law it that will make people start to pull money out of the retirement accounts. 4% a year? Yeah. As a financial advisor, because that's where I basically spent my last 30 years, when you run a financial plan for someone, the plan, all plans default to take IRA money last. So they have you spend all your taxable money and not take your IRA money until the RMDA age.

So no one's taking this money. And the number one reason is taxes. Right. Because all this money's been put away tax deductible. It's growing tax free. And no one wants to pay ordinary income tax. That's why all the money got put there. It was a tax, you know, avoidance strategy, right?

Like you're basically taking money and paying yourself first. You don't pay taxes. That's the beautiful thing. Well, if you got nothing to spend it on, yeah, why not let it grow there tax free? So my idea is this. And this is really an idea for Trump because it's a borrow against it. My idea is to change ordinary income tax on IRA accounts to a flat tax. So what we ran was an analysis of what would happen if you had a flat tax.

We ran three different cases, 10%, 12%, and 15%. And people can go to IRAflatax.com, and this will be live after I do the event with Joe, and they can read the white papers that we've done. And to simplify this, here's what happens. if you take ordinary income tax and you go to retirees, you give them an eight-year window. So my suggestion is that basically Trump would come up with a, it would have to be bipartisan ultimately.

But someone like Trump would lead this charge, right? Like make America retire again. Make American retirees rich again. How do you do that? You lower the taxes so they can enjoy retirement. Let's just use 12% as a number. The analysis came back and basically said, if you have a flat tax at 12%,

more money will come out of these IRA accounts sooner. You're flowing it into the economy. You're flowing into the economy. The numbers look like this. And these are, again, I'm using AI to, you know, I'm using all the engines to do this. So you have to take that with somewhat of a grand of salt. But all this data came back and said,

you would in 10 years basically bring in a trillion dollars in taxable money forward. So the government would earn, but bring in all this money over a trillion dollars. you'd bring another trillion dollars into the economy and that economy money is not all instantly spent and in many cases they'll move money into their taxable account but then they'll start to spend some of it sooner

that goes into a local economy right right like that goes into garage doors it goes into anything that needs to be done in their local economy so that could create up to two and a half trillion dollars in local economy revenue it would raise the GDP the lowest number it's come back is a quarter of 1%. Could raise GDP, that's quarter 1% annually, could raise GDP

up to 1% annually. So what you have here is a very simple idea that is less tax means more retirement. It's optional. It's an eight-year window designed intentionally to be an eight-year window. So, you know, an ideal world would start in 20206,

but let's say it starts in 2025. Let's say Trump hears this idea. It goes, you know what, that's a great idea. We did no tax on tips. We did no tax on Social Security. We're giving car deductions now on car loans. Why don't we do low tax on retirement accounts? If that idea got floated, because that's all I'm doing.

I'm not a lobbyist. I'm not running for political office. I'm basically floating this idea out there. And I'm hoping that I can get this idea in front of people who are next to Trump. I was with Trump Jr., yeah, the other day. To look at it, to consider it. Money will go everywhere. I'll go into real estate.

It'll go in people. It'll help people, it'll help people help their kids buy their first home. It'll go into cryptocurrency. The money will just spread. And that's what helps the economy too. But aren't you pulling it out of the stock? If you're 75% stock, 25% bond, wouldn't you be divesting from stock? So here's what I think would happen in the real world.

You go in to meet with your financial advisor and your advisor would say, look, you got a million dollars in this account. I don't know if this is going to last long term. We should take the money out. pay the 12% tax. Now where do we put it? Depends on how the bill's written. Because the bill could be written to allow you to put it into a Roth IRA. I don't think that they should do that.

I think it should be going into a taxable account. But once it's in a taxable account, most people won't go to cash. They'll keep their 75% stock and 25% bonds. They'll simply move into their taxable account. Then the advisors are going to be like, okay, well, now what do we want to do? We got all kinds of choices. We could buy an annuity for you. We could put you in municipal bonds.

we could put you in an annuity, we could put you in insurance. Like there's, it's just moving money into another pocket and then figuring out what you're going to do next. It's not going to, people aren't going to go run out and buy Harley Davidson. Right. They're just, no, I love it. That's brilliant. It's, uh, it's good thinking. So, so how's your, what's your plan to, you just want to get in front of it, get on, you know, get Dr. Phil possibly?

Yeah, I want to get on the right podcast, share the message. I'm starting with Joe Polish at Genius Network and New Year. with me. Starting with you. And, you know, I think it gets told enough. Look, there will be people who are all distractors. The financial service industry is not going to jump up and down and go, oh, my God, this is great.

You know, they like this money in these retirement accounts staying there. So there will be some people who are against it. But I think it's kind of such a simple idea that it could get bipartisan approval. And it's similar to the Roth IRA. The Roth IRA was done with bipartisan approval. There's $2.2 trillion dollars now in Roth IRA. the financial service industry learned how to teach people

how to do Roth conversions and this would just be another conversion that could be considered for an eight-year window. It would also, the last thing I'll say is this impacts 73 million baby boomers and it impacts 50 million people underneath those baby boomers.

So we've got 50 million people in their 50s. If all of a sudden you're in your 50s, you're 53 to 60, and you know that you've got the chance to fund your. retirement account and then take it out at a lower tax rate, you're going to see people increase the amount of money they put in their retirement accounts. They'll use the catch up provisions in their 50s, which is exactly what we need them to do.

That's brilliant. I love it. Why don't you think the government would ever look at a flat tax, a consumption tax? You know, Steve Forbes floored that idea 20 years ago. That's never going to happen because so it there's so many, everything. we've talked about is a tax rule, right? You have a flat tax, you change everything. Right.

So you have a flat tax on IRA accounts. It's pretty simple. They can go run this through the government budget and figure out, like, to, you know, is there a hole, what happens? But you have a flat tax, a consumption tax or a VAT tax. Maybe one day it'll be a VAT tax, but I don't think so. Let me ask you another question. So Steve Jobs just came out.

This is a while ago. And it's not the first time I've heard this, but with AI, machine learning, robots, Tesla's market cap of just the robotics is 20 trillion. Just the cars are only 5 trillion. So I'm looking at this. He said in five or seven years, you won't necessarily have to have a job. We're going to have to learn to live, to not have to work. And I don't know exactly how that's done.

I've been studying with the government, and I hate that they could be. I just don't like the government and control of everything because it always goes bad. But what are your thoughts on that? because the robots could do a lot of the work. A lot of these things are going to be going away. I mean, literally, like, I don't anticipate people with robots fixing garage drawers anytime soon or fixing pipes. But they'll be mowing lawns. They'll be walking the dogs.

They'll be cooking for you. I mean, here's the truth. I don't think we know. No one really knows. I don't think we know what the world's going to look like in 10 years. I'm hopeful, and I've always been optimistic, especially as an American, that we figure this shit out. You know, we create opportunities all the time. And I think for a lot of people, this can make life better.

I think the thing that I see now having done this for 30 years is that the statistics haven't changed much. It's basically two out of ten people that do well financially and eight out of ten don't. And I think, you know, what's missing is financial education schools. We don't have automated saving the account for most people. And as a result, half of America is dependent on financial service. basically entitlement programs. Right. So the United States is a free country, except one out of five, one out of two Americans is dependent on Social Security. We haven't even talked about Social Security. One of the things, Social Security is going to be insolvent, Insolvent, 23. Right. Because that's around the corner. Now, when I became a financial advisor in the 90s, they were talking about this issue. Nothing got done. So what's going to happen in 2013? Well, they're, going to cut benefits unless they do something, which I don't know what they're going to do,

move the date back. They're going to cut benefits by 20%. The average social security check right now is $1,900. 30 to 35 million Americans are dependent on that $1,900 a month just to survive. So, again, I think if you give money, people access to their IRA accounts, some people will work longer if they can. And then they'll take social security maybe even later. Yeah, I don't depend on Social Security.

No, I know. It's like, you know, as energy gets cheaper, Alex Epstein, I met through Joe, went out to this Energy Freedom Summit. And that's where I met Mike Roe. And it was awesome being on his, just the coolest dude ever. And, you know, we're talking about energy, and it will get commoditized. It's going to take AI to start learning how to do things at a cheaper. But that's, it's a crazy world. I'm very optimistic.

I was sitting down with Robert Chardini in high. He came to the house that met through Joe, got to know him really well, hung out with him like a dozen times, comes to the house with him and Bobbett. And we're just chatting and he goes, I am so excited. I am so energetic about the future. And so many people are so worried. What is your take? Are you? I'm excited about the future.

I think the next 10 years are going to be the greatest 10 years of our life. Golden. I mean, I really do. And I think from an investment standpoint, there's going to be more money made the next 10 years than the last 20. I just think we're going into a very unique moment in time. And I also think what's exciting, especially when I meet people like you, is there's just an entire opportunity of wealth creation in these older blue-collar traditional businesses. Like this whole idea that everybody's got to go to college and get these AI jobs, right? And like you talked about like, you know, private equies in all these businesses now, but roofing, HVACC.

Plumbing pest control goes on to the gutters. All of these businesses, you know, this, I don't think, I don't think robots are. coming over your house to do plumbing. No. And the thing is, those jobs are just not going out of style. So I think there's a lot of opportunities for people today. And the biggest thing I worry about is for young people is they have to have hope, right? Because hope is what create, you need opportunity, but hope is where it always starts.

And you have to believe that your future can be as good as your present or bigger than your past. I just worry about the entitlement. Not the entitlements. I'm not talking about government. Just this idea that we should be provided for. We live in this rich country. We don't need to work. We don't need to try.

We want to play video games. We shouldn't have to. And this idea of the hunter of going out getting it. I got my first job at 12 washing dishes. And I'm not bragging about it. I'm just like, mom didn't have a lot of money. I wanted to make my own. Like, what's wrong with that?

Some people just... And you funded a Rothler at 16. I'll tell you one last cute story. When I wrote The Automatic Millionaire, I used to get my hair cut at a place called Nice Cuts in San Francisco. I went to nice cuts because the haircut for six bucks. So the guy who cut my hair was a guy named Sam, and it was his place. And Sam had two of these places. And he goes, I gave him the book. I go, I'm going on Oprah with this book. And he's

like, oh, what are you going to talk about? I go, well, I'm going to teach Americans, you know, my goal is to get 10 million Americans to pay themselves first one hour day of their income. And he goes, what does that mean? I go, it means 12 and a half percent of their gross income. I want him to save. And I go, at least 10 percent. And he, he fall, he literally falls over laughing. He could not stop laughing. I go, Sam, what's so funny? He goes, David, I came over on a boat from Vietnam. Like, I'm one of those people. I didn't speak

English. I had $75. I worked in the back of a restaurant, and they gave me a cot. And I slept on that cot, and I ate rice and bananas, basically, for a year. My mom told me, when I

got to America, she said, you need to save 90 percent of your income and live off 10%. That's why he's laughing. He goes, but I was in America, David. He goes, I lived off of 25%. So he saved 75% of his income that first year. That's how he got into his own business.

And now Sam had these hair salons. The wealthy barber. And now he has these hair salons, and now he owns real estate. He was buying buildings in San Francisco. And that's the immigrant mentality. You know, you've got this book over here. Where's the book I just saw earlier? The Home Service Millionaire. And I always thought, you know, the immigrant millionaire stories. They come to this country. They're so hungry. All they see is opportunity. And that's a gift. Oh, it is. And it's something to where when you learn where they come from,

like there's so many people that come from different ethnicities. They come here for the American dream. And they do know how to save. And they know how to live below their means. I call it in the book, The Home Service Millionaire, delayed gratification. Yeah. And if you have that, it's such a good trait. I don't want to keep you too much longer, but maybe I didn't. ask you something. I mean, you got your books right here. You got the new release coming out. First and foremost, how do people get a hold of you, David? Oh, come on over us, Davidbock.com.

Visit me on the website. Depending on when your podcast comes out, you know, we'll be doing a launch, a whole program around the book, so they can sign up for our VIP insider team and catch me online. And, yeah, all there. So you've got these books. Is there a book that when you were younger, just changed your

perspective on life or just really changed something other than your own? Oh, my God. Dale Carnegie, you think and grow rich. I mean, Del Carnie, how to win friends and influence people? That's the book that started all for me. So that was, I read that book at age and Appoleon Hill, yeah. 19. And then after that book, I read Pauline Hills, Think and Grow Rich.

Those were my first two self-help personal development books that started me on the journey. Those books are still classics. I've made my kids read those books. Oh, so good. And finally, I'm going to let you close this out. We talked, look, I love this podcast because I didn't have to use any of my notes. We could have gone for three hours. I don't have anywhere to go.

We can keep going as long as you want, but I've enjoyed the time with you. Yeah, no, this is really great. Well, I'll ask you a couple more questions. What's something that money has taught you about yourself? Huh. I think the most fascinating thing about money is that once you have it, you realize it's not very important. You know, it's just, and it's always, you know, so I always hated this when I was young and I hear people say this. Because it's like, oh, well, they have money, so it's not important.

I have less wants now than I had 20, 30 years ago. I mean, I find it fascinating, right? Like, I used to always want to have the watches and the cars and the stuff. And now all I want is experiences. I want my health. I want to spend time with my family. I want to spend time with my kids and my wife. I want to spend time with my friends.

I want to travel. I want to make a difference, which is why I'm doing this still. But at the end of the day, I don't have things I want anymore. If you had told me in my 20s that you're going to be 15. and you don't actually care about all the stuff that you thought you, I think that's been the most interesting thing. Money is just a freedom tool.

It's 100% freedom. I hear this a lot lately, but my 40-year-old herself would give every single achievement, every dime to be back where I'm at today. And there's this idea, a carpet DM or whatever, live life to its fullest, but here's my problem. How do you say live today like it's your last day,

but also say prepare for the future. I know, it's such a great question because my phrase is always live rich now. And people go, well, live rich now, that would mean I should just spend

all my money and just enjoy my life because what if I die tomorrow? Yeah, but liverish now means how do you live your best life today but you still have to take care of your future self? It's a balancing act. It really is. It's like yesterday,

I'm staying at the hotel where we're going to all be at the JW and I didn't want to have salmon in a salad. I wanted to have a cassidia in nachos. But I said to myself, David, you'll sleep better if you have the salmon and the salad and you'll wake up and you'll feel better. So I know you want to eat that, but today we're not going to eat that, right? And those are the whole decision-making process that you have to do every day.

A discipline. Yeah. There's a lot of discipline. How do you exercise that skill of discipline? I find it easy and hard at the same time because discipline is doing something you people are like, man, I get up early and I go to the cul-plice, but you love that stuff.

If you love doing it, some people go, I hit the gym for two hours a day. That's not discipline. Not if you enjoy it. Not if it's like something you, discipline is actually doing something you do not want to do. See, we got such an interesting conversation about this because I think the discipline is in the habit.

Right? So whatever the habit is becomes a discipline. I don't think people who go to the gym two hours a day started off liking it. I think the more you go to the gym, the habit of going to the gym, it's just way more enjoyable. Right? Like, I work out five days a week at least. And I've just been in Chicago for four days, a hotel that did not have a gym and I had four days without working out, which is a long time for me. And I, today, it was great to be in the gym.

And I felt like, wow, my body hasn't worked out for four days. So I think the key's all about in a way Disciplines a result of non-negotiables with yourself Right? Because we negotiate with ourselves all the time Oh yeah you got two you got the good guy right You wake up and you're like I don't really want to get up yet No no no you're gonna get up a metta I didn't want to meditate this morning But I knew I'd feel better if I meditated

I've meditated twice today It's funny I learned TM in 2013 because our dear buddy Joe Polish I was supposed to go to an event with him in Iowa And I missed it And he just really realized relentlessly stayed on me and was like, you have to learn TM. Have you learned meditation yet? With Joe, I've done, you know, the deep breathing, but I've not, that's about the extent of it.

I would tell everybody, you should, you should fill up your. Yeah, that's a diaphragm breathing. That's great. But you should learn Transcendental meditation is life changing. All right. Okay, if I could go back and redo my life, I would write a seven-figure check instantly to just go back one decade earlier and have meditated. What is it that you love about meditation? Just clear answers?

No, it's hard to explain meditation. When you start to meditate, you learn to go inside and yourself, which is where it's really quiet. And we have all this monkey mind, right? Especially when we've been sleeping because we wake up and our brain's been going like this for 10 hours or 7 hours or 8 hours. So meditation in the morning is the hardest, at least for me it is. but it settles me. And then in the afternoon, it gives you a totally new reboot. It's just like plugging your phone back in.

And then you just end up being happier. So what happens when you meditate regularly is you end up being happier. You know, I've told people you're 10, 15, 20% happier. You don't know why you just are. And shit doesn't get you the same way. So I don't know. You seem like a pretty calm guy. But when you're an entrepreneur a lot of times, you're very driven.

Everything seems to be important. I would have a lot of highs and lows. And now my lows are, I go down, but I come back up again. It's more like this versus huge highs and lows. But do you think that that's, I mean, you're obviously in Italy. There's something to be said about you do have kind of a backstop. You've saved well. You know, I think right now I was sitting here with Dr. Brackman.

and he wrote, what is the book he wrote? Hunters and Gatherers, it's somewhere along the lines of that. Drive. And I'm like, you know my problem is when I hit 11% body fat, I want 9%. When I hit 9% I want 7. When I hit 100 million, I want 500. Like, whatever it is, I just, the goalpost moves. And if I'm going to church, I want to start going to church two days a week.

It's like, but I'm not like a failure. I don't look at myself and say, man, you're just, you're just, you completely missed it. Like, I'm really looking at the faith, the finance, the fitness, the friends and family, and the fund and the future self. And really, those are my six Fs. But I want to go all in. Like, it's never enough. I'm super competitive and I want more. That's what made you who you are.

Yeah. And as long as it works for you, that's all the matters. Right. I think the entrepreneur dilemma, people who are entrepreneurs are white. are different. Right. We are. We're just totally why you're different. The reason we are where we are in our lives is because of everything you just described. The challenge becomes does it ever turn off? Right. And I don't know that it needs to turn off, but I think it has to evolve. You know, you've talked about your wanting to be a dad. Yeah. And your priorities shift when you have kids.

100%. Or they don't, right? Like a lot of people miss out on their children. You get married. Your priority shifts. So I think everything in life is a season. And you, I mean, I've only listened to a couple podcasts before I came here, but I was impressed with how clear your vision is. And I think it's important to be clear on like,

like you're thinking about the next 10 years, your 40s. I happen to be thinking about my next 10 years or my 60s. Like, I just came from Mel Robbins podcast. And she's like, five second. You know, she's like, why are you, why is this going to be your last financial book. I said, you know, Mel, I've done this for 30 years. I want to meet me at 70 with a whole

new list of things I've done. All horizon. Whole new, I want the next 10 years of my life to be all new experiences. I don't want to keep repeating the same experiences. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean I have to go start another business. I don't know what it means yet. I don't know if it means I've got a friend in cooking school right now in Paris for two months. I'm like, that looks like a lot of fun. You know, I'm like. Do you know Cameron Harold? I don't know him personally, but I know who is, yeah. He was in here the other day. He's a great guy. And he's like, I go, I go, you know, what's weird Cameron is I like to work.

Like, it's actually fun because I hired for everything I hate. So I enjoy coming into work. Like I get to do what I want. And he goes, that's bullshit. He's like, let me tell you why, Tommy. He's like, if I would have met you at 15, what did you like to do? I was like, golf, shoot, pool, go to movies, bowling. He's like, dude, I got a lot of stuff I love to do.

And it doesn't involve going in and looking at KPIs. And he's like, so you guys. So you got to find that younger self of what you really love to do and your passions. And, like, he goes, I don't talk to people when I go to an event. And like, I love to work. I was, you know, he's like, and these people are like, I like to work a double day and weekends. And I'm like, no, you're right. It kind of clicked for me.

Like, you should find, and I like to do a lot of stuff. And I wouldn't say, I'm a man on the move. I mean, literally, like, I'm in and out of town all the time. It's not fair to my dogs. And, you know, they're like my best friends other than my fiancé. But, yeah, no, it's interesting. So finding your past times when I work with Dan Martel, I was his last student that he worked one-on-one with. And he's like, dude, I just want you to close your eyes.

And I want you to really understand what do you want? If you want to go to Italy, because that's what on my list, he goes, I want you to start studying. Where are you going to go? What plane are you going to take? Who are you going to visit? He goes, you've got a vivid vision. Manifest it. Yeah.

And so that's something. So I don't know about your next 10 years, but at least the next couple. I would imagine you're starting to set up a bucket list of things you want to do, who you want to go with. The hard part is, and you probably, at 59, you've got the people you know that can do these trips with you and the kids that have time between school. I don't know. How do you figure that out? You know, when we moved to Florence early, I planned it for two years because there was a lot of moving pieces.

Had to pull the kids out of school, how to put the kids in new schools. what I didn't know moving to Florence I came from Manhattan I've been charging hard for 30 years So I was in Manhattan for eight years I was in San Francisco for 10 I'm a city kid I've always worked a ton

So when I got to Italy And I was still actually working I had to learn how to slow down Yeah just like lunches like two hours Always right It's like a siesta right And most of my friends are also kind of in a place where they don't have to work.

You know, they may have businesses, but they're not having to work every single day. They're checking in with people. You know, I started having these lovely days where I like woke up, meditated, went for a walk, went to the gym, met my friends for a long lunch, you know, had a social night out. It's beautiful. You like wine? I love one. Yeah. I would tell you come out to Italy for a month or two.

Just put that on your list. Like, don't wait 10 years. So is it, so why Florence, have you been everywhere in Italy? A lot of places. There's, there's Italy's, Italy is one of the most amazing countries, I think, in all of Europe. Yeah, I mean, look at this. No, I'm Italian. You know, I haven't been there.

Oh, is that right? Okay, well, you got to go. I mean, I'll tell you, I don't know if you knew Rick Sapio. Yeah, I did. So Rick, I knew Rick for a long time and great guy. Just an amazing square of a human being. And he came and saw me in Florence right, like, I don't know, four months before he died. And he was in my kitchen.

and he said, Rick's Italian. And Rick looked around my place, and he's like, I always plan to move here with the kids. And then he had a moment. He's like, I don't know if I'm going to get to now. And I said to him like,

look, you can have my house in March because we won't be here. And I'm like, so next year you're going to be here and bring the family. And he didn't make it that long. And so I think like, lesson there is like, and Rick worked so hard. Oh, I talked to him. He was looking at different deals with me. He worked so hard. And yet I think those windows are closed sometimes, right? Like, I wouldn't, I, if you want to go live in Italy, don't wait 10 years. But you don't have to

move to Italy for a year. Move to Italy for a month or two. Dude, you want to come to Florence? I can set you up with everybody. It's, it's hard when you first do it and then once you do it once you realize, that's not hard at all. You know, and we moved into Italy. furnished apartment. We basically had two bags. Our apartment was furnished. We came into our apartment. We dropped our bags off and then we started traveling because it was summertime. We went all the place. And you still maintained the business you were doing? Yeah. And some great partners running it. That's fantastic. Yeah. You know, you do, I guess when you, when you, you know, no one that looks forward to this day, but it's with seven habits of highly successful people,

Well, he says, imagine, you know, you're at your own funeral. What are people going to say? And I just say, but best dad ever and everybody he met, he added value. But what are people going to say about you? It's a great question. I don't, you know, I don't know what people are going to say about me. I just, sadly, my dad just died. And my dad died in the funerals in August of last year.

And I would love what they said about my father. which is that my dad made people feel good. You know, my dad was a financial advisor almost his whole life. And I was this young kid I would be going through all the, I want to show you the standard deviation in your portfolio. You know, I want to explain how these assets correlate or don't correlate. And my dad would be like, he'd have a meeting, he'd ask about the kids, how's your family, you know, and he's like, you're doing great.

You got nothing to worry about. And I'd be like, dad, you didn't even go through the standard deviation. you didn't discuss the ass location. Like, David, they didn't hire us for that. They're here because they want to know they're going to be okay. And they're going to be okay. And the people that, my dad had a funeral that was completely standing room only. And when we went to go set up for that funeral, I said, well, what about these side areas?

Where are you putting the chairs over there? And they go, oh, no, no, no. We never fill this chapel for older people. We only feel if it's somebody who died when they're really young. Kids feel chival. filled churches. And this, this was this,

it was totally full. Every single part of this. How was your father? My dad died at 84. Wow. But he had people come to this funeral. He had friends from work. He had friends from life.

He had the manager of Ruth Chris and the waiter from Ruth Chris because he ate there all the time, come to the funeral. He had the guy who he bought cars from come to the funeral. And all these people were like, oh, I just loved your father.

Now your dad just made me feel so good when I saw him. So I hope when the day comes that I'm gone, I hope that that's what people will say. The being around me, they felt good. Wow. Well, that's great. What was his name?

Marty. Marty. And where did he grow up? He grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Oh, that's where my sister lives. Is that right? Fish Bay. Yeah.

No way. Yeah. So my whole family's from Wisconsin. Oh, yeah. My mom's from Green Bay. You know, again, my first book was around my grandmother, Rose Box. Smart One Finish Rich. she at 30 was broke and sold wigs at gimbled's department store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,

started investing became a self-millionaire. Really? Yeah, without a college degree. Oh, that's great. So I know it's possible for anybody. I love this. Well, so, last question, I could go on all day, but, so you spent a lot of time traveling. Yeah.

Where else? I love this question because there's so many things on so many people's bucket list. I think where are we headed? what is that country with a bunch of oil that's coming up? Dubai. We're headed to Dubai in January. Dubai is amazing. How long are you going for? Just 10 days. 10 days is a great amount of time.

You're going to be blown away by Dubai. It'll absolutely below your mind away. There's nowhere in the world I've actually ever been quite like Dubai. What about Singapore? I heard Singapore is kind of... Singapore's remarkable too, but I've been to Singapore in the last 20 years. Singapore is also unbelievable right now. What I would say, it all depends on what you like to do.

Like, I'm a big skier. Okay. So I live in Switzerland during the ski season. So I live in Verbiade. Okay. So I skied 78 days last year. See, I grew up in Michigan. I know on a snowboard decent, but I never ski.

That's one of the things I want to learn how to do. Is it easy to pick up? I don't know if it's easy to pick up, but you're an athlete. You can pick it up, you know. It's my favorite thing in the world to do is ski. You get it in like flow? You get a flow. You don't think, it's the most meditative experience I've ever had in my life.

I've loved skiing. You talked about being 15. I've loved skiing since I was a kid. It's always been my favorite thing to do. And I had moments of ski season where I'm skiing by myself. Every single day I had these moments where I would just be going down a run. I'd be like, oh my God, this is so fun. I would be talking to myself.

This is so fun. fun, like a little kid. So I'm looking forward to doing that again. Give me your top three spots other than Florence. Well, so in Italy, I mean, remarkable is the Amalfi Coast. Like, you've got to go to Positano and Capri and Rovello. That's that whole little pocket right there. You shouldn't go in the summer.

Okay. So I always hate talking about this on a podcast because then it'll bring traffic there earlier. But like you want to get to these places in like May before the crowds get there. The crowds right now are brutal in Italy in the summertime. Okay. Now, they went down a little bit this summer, but you really want to come to all these places, not in the summer. April, May is great time to travel in Italy.

You know, you've got to go to things like Venice and Cuomo and Rome, but the Post-Utono is one of those places that when you go to Post-Utono and it's not crowded, it's one of those few places where it's beyond the pictures. You know, like sometimes you see pictures of places. and you think it can't match it. Yeah. There's an experience there that's just, you're just like, wow, it's just amazing.

You know, I was talking to Goldman's at, we went to the NASCAR on Sunday. My guy came into town. He's out of Michigan, but he goes, spends a lot of time in Chicago and Manhattan. And I said, where would be the best spot with all your wealthy clients to build a plan B? And he goes, what kind of plan B? I'm not talking about like Armageddon. I'm just talking about like something goes wrong. And we talked about Costa Rica.

and he said, we talked about a lot of stuff that night. But if, you know, the dollar's got to go a long way. It's got to be safe. And it's got to be somewhat not 24 hours to get to on a plane. Where would be, you know, if you were back in the States, would you think about like a place where it's super fun, the dollar goes a long way and you feel good walking at night? Is it Florence?

Well, you asked me if it's back in the United States. Yeah, so it would have to be getting out of the States. States. Oh, you're going to leave the States. Because, you know, where lots of wealth people are buying, building homes and compounds is New Zealand. New Zealand's unbelievable, but New Zealand's a long flight away, right? Like, for you to get to New Zealand's probably, is it 15 hours from here? I'm not sure. It's a lot. But New Zealand's just insane. It's spectacular. So, what about Portugal? So if you're going to go that direction, Portugal, a lot of Americans are moving to Portugal. You know, I wouldn't go to Lisbon. I would

go to one of the outlying areas along the beach in Portugal. Okay. Man, I love this, David. Well, you got, look, I want to do this again in the future. You got a book release. Everybody got to, you got to go pick up. So you got the new copy of the Automatic Millionaire. Here we go, Automatic Millionaire, 20-year anniversary edition.

There's your shot right there. There it is. And then you got the Finnish Rich series. Yep. I don't have all the other books The books are updated right now and they're all at Davidbock.com. You got smart women finish rich,

smart couples finish rich, and the latte factor in this book. And this is my last book update. So this is it, guys. Go get a copy of this. All right. Thank you so much, David. Thanks for coming in today.

I really enjoyed it. You're super welcome. I'm enjoying it. Thank you, brother. Appreciate you. Thank you.