The Mindset Mentor - 9 Habits That Build Wealth

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you love this podcast, go ahead and send me a text message right now, 512-8-0-9305. I send out motivational mindset tips and tricks throughout the weeks sporadically and you want to join us. So once again, 512-580-9305. Today, we're going to talk about how to build real wealth in your life. Not flashy wealth, not Instagram, look at me wealth, not look at my car, look at my watch wealth. I'm talking about the type of wealth where you don't have to stress out about money anymore, where you don't have to check your bank account. And you can wake up and you can choose what you want to do with your day.

That is a type of wealth I'm talking about. And here's the truth. Most people in this world will never get there. Not because they can't, but because they're playing the wrong game. And so today I want to give you nine different habits that will actually build your wealth. And I really want you to listen to this because it's not about getting rich. It's about breaking yourself free from the game of having to always be making money. So let's go ahead and dive into it.

Habit number one is this. Build your life around freedom, not things. This one took me years to learn, but it's completely changed my life. And I'm going to ask you a real question. when you look at money and you think about money, what is money actually for? Most people never really even think about this in the first place, but they think, well, money is for buying things. Money is for paying your bills. Money is for upgrading your lifestyle. Money is for looking successful maybe. And sure, some of those pieces of those things could be true.

But what I really want to do is I want to shift your mind around what money is actually for. What I want you to start thinking and what was a big shift for me in my mind is that money is for freedom. Right? Money is for freedom. Money is for getting out of the rat race and getting to a point where you don't have to play the game anymore. This is called escape velocity. So, you know, if you look at a rocket, a rocket needs enough speed to break through the earth's gravity. And this is called escape velocity. If it doesn't reach that speed, it's going to get. pulled back down no matter how powerful the rocket is. But once it hits escape velocity, it no longer has to fight gravity and it's free. And now it can get outside of the Earth's atmosphere and it can get into orbit. Money works the exact same way. If you don't use money to build assets and income and

investments, life's quote unquote gravity, like your bills, your lifestyle, your pressure, is going to keep pulling you back in to having to work to make more money. But once your investments produce enough to cover your life, you then hit financial escape velocity. And you're free. Imagine getting to the point where you never have to make another dollar the rest of your life. Not because you're so rich, but because your investments are now paying for your life.

That's really the goal. But most people never get there. Because every time they make more money, what do they do? they spend more money. And so we live in a consumer society where we think we need to buy more when we make more. We need to upgrade our car, even though the one that we have worked perfectly fine, simply because we just started making more money. And this is what most people do. So they get stuck and they play the game every single day until sometimes they die because they've just been buying stuff. But let me say it again because it is extremely important for you to understand. The goal is

not to make more money, the goal is to eventually need money less. You want to build your life in a way that your expenses are controlled. Your investments are growing. And your need to keep playing the game and working is shrinking. And you can get to a point where you can just disappear from the game. That's how you win. Most people are trying to look rich and to feel important. Very few people are trying to get free. But the ones who do get free, that's where they make an amazing life. You to make money, you want to save that money, you want to invest that money. Have that money make new money for you when you invest it. Figure out how much money you need to make yearly to remove yourself from the game and then get to a point where your investments are making that much money per year.

For most people, it's way less money than you actually realize. So that's number one. Number two is to start treating money like a tool and not a goal. Like money is not the purpose of your life. Money is a tool. And I really want you to think about that because tools are just meant to be used, not to be worshipped. Like you don't wake up and say, oh, I want to worship my hammer today. No, you say like, hey, I've got a hammer. What can I build with it? But money, like, if people flip it, people worship it. They stop asking, you know, like, hey, what kind of life do I actually want? And they start just thinking, how can I make more money? How can I make more money? How can I make more money? there's no real actual goal to making money. And that's a big shift.

And that's where most people really go wrong with it. Because when money becomes your goal in life, please, believe me, my money was my goal in life for a long time. So I have really had to pull myself out of this. But when money becomes your goal, you lose the plot. You start making decisions that don't actually make your life better. So you work jobs that you hate. You stay stressed all the time. You sacrifice your time and your health and your relationships, all for a number.

that you think will somehow fix everything. But the truth is, money's not going to fix your life. Money just amplifies who you already are. The only problems that money solves are money problems. That's it. If you're stressed now, I promise you, you will be stressed with more money. You're just going to be a rich stress person. If you're unhappy now, it's not going to make you happy.

You'll just be unhappy with more money. If you don't have purpose now, money won't magically give it to you. And that's why you see people all of the time who make millions, millions of dollars and they're still miserable. And you're like, how could that be, they make so much money, how could they be miserable? It's because they chased a tool, they worshipped a tool and they forgot the life that they wanted to build with that tool. They built the money, but they never built the life around it. So now they have wealth and they have no freedom. They have no peace. They have no real fulfillment in their life. And this is where I really want you to flip your thinking.

Money should serve your life, not make you a slave to make more. So you should decide for first. Like how do you want to live? What type of life do you want? What do you want your days to look like? What actually makes you feel fulfilled? And then use money for that as the tool that it was made to build that life. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. And if you don't do it intentionally, you're going to wake up one day and you're just going to have more money than you did before, but you're not going to actually really enjoy it. That's the trap. You haven't built the life, which is the thing that matters. So that's number two. Number three is to automate your investing before you ever see your money.

Okay. Have you ever heard of the phrase out of sight out of mind? Well, that's what you want your money to be. Out of sight. So you don't spend it. Like you have a portion of each of your check go into an investment account. And you don't have to rely on discipline to build wealth or doing it yourself. Because if you're relying on discipline and doing yourself, you're probably going to lose doing it that way.

Discipline fades. Sometimes you're going to forget to transfer the money. Especially it's going to, you know, discipline's going to be hard. when you have something really cool and new that you want to buy. So what do you do? You build a system. The best investors don't decide to invest money every single month. It's just automatic. It just comes out of their paycheck and immediately goes in and over time it grows. The money comes in, the money goes out and then investments just grow. No thinking, no emotions, no, I'll start next month because next month will never come. And if you don't see the money, then you don't miss the money.

and this is how you quietly just build wealth in the background while everyone else is just thinking about what they want to buy next. Okay, so that's number three. Number four, please live below your means, especially when you earn more money. This is where a lot of people really mess up. They get a raise and they immediately buy a bigger apartment or a better car or more subscriptions or they do more like quote unquote deserved spending because I got a raise, so I'm going to go buy something nice. and then they stay broke in their bank account, but they just have nicer things. It's so dumb, right? And this happens, even to people who make millions of dollars per year. My wealth advisor had a client a couple years ago that did $20 million in net profit in one year. And in 18 months, he declared bankruptcy.

He spent all of it. He bought watches for all of his employees. He bought multiple expensive houses in different cities, expensive cars for each house that he had. And so your lifestyle, if it grows as fast as your income does, you will never really build wealth. Wealth is built in the gap, that gap between what you earn and what you spend. And that gap, the bigger that it is and the more that you can invest in that gap, the more that you'll become wealthy quicker. So you want to protect that gap between what you earn and what you spend like your life depends on it. because your financial life actually does depend on it. And so for me, anytime that I've made more money,

oh my gosh, I want to go spend. I want to buy something nice. I don't want to celebrate, right? And then I celebrate for six months or something, right? So it's like, but anytime I've made more money, I've tried to keep my lifestyle after screwing it up when I was younger and in my early, early 20s. Anytime I've made more money after I screwed it all up,

I've tried to keep my lifestyle exactly the same for at least a couple of years. Right? So that's number four. Number five is to avoid comparison, especially, especially with the social media flexing. Because let's be honest, social media will mess with your head if you're not careful. You open up your phone and suddenly it feels like everybody's richer than you. Everyone's ahead of you. Everyone's winning except for you.

Right? And you feel like a loser. But what you're really seeing, it's not reality. It's somebody's highlight real. You're comparing your real life to someone else's best 1% moments. And the dangerous part of that is that comparison is the fastest way to feel broke and not good enough, even when you're not not broke and not good enough. Right. So you could be saving your money, investing in consistently, actually building real wealth, but you see somebody else who just bought a

nice car and you're like, oh my God, I feel like I'm behind. Because someone else is showing a car or a watch or a vacation. And then now you're thinking to yourself, well, maybe I should spend more money. Maybe I should get some sort of upgrade. Maybe I'm not doing enough. And just like that, what happens? You get pulled back into the game of life. And then you spend in order to feel like you're keeping up with the Joneses in what's happening.

You're delaying your freedom, your escape velocity for later on. You get pulled back into the game, the game of being inside of the rat race, instead of actually building real wealth. So you have to remind yourself, most people are not showing you their net worth. They're showing you they're spending. and there's a big difference between those two things. So know where you're going, stay in your lane, stick to your plane because your real wealth doesn't need to be posted all over the internet.

Okay, that's number five. Number six is to track your spending. You want to know where every single dollar goes. I have an honest question for you. Do you really know where your money is going? Not like kind of or do you have a pretty good idea. I mean like, do you know every single dollar where it's going? Because most people think that they have an idea until they like really, really look at where the money is going.

And when they finally look, they're like, oh my God, where the hell is all of my money going? And the truth is, if you don't know exactly where your money is going, you can never control your money. Because money just doesn't disappear into thin air. Usually it just gets spent unconsciously by most people. And that's how a lot of people stay stuck. And it's not even from huge purchases. It's just a bunch of little teeny tiny purchases of not really paying attention. And so they make decent money, but they have like no idea how much money they spend, what they spend it on, what's actually necessary and what's unnecessary.

And so you need really one simple thing. You need visibility. You need to see where every dollar's coming in and where every dollar's going out to. And the good news is this used to be really hard. When I was in my early 20s, you know, back in like 2007, 2008, I think is the first time I started doing it. I had to have spreadsheets and I had to track everything manually. and I had to print out all of my bank statements and log all of my money by hand and figure out where it was all going and I'd have a calculator and all that stuff. It took hours to do it.

But now the apps that are, there's apps designed to just do it automatically for you. There's apps like Mint, Monarch money, rocket money. And they're so simple. You just like log into your accounts. You connect your accounts to those apps. And they show you where everything's going in one place.

They show you your spending, your income, your subscriptions, categories, your patterns, and that's where it gets really, really powerful for you. Because once you see where your money's going, you can't unsee it. And you start realizing, oh my gosh, I'm wasting money here. I remember my wife, when we first started dating, she was like, I don't have any money. I don't have any money. And I was like, well, how much do you make? And what are your bills? And we started, and I was like, you're missing $400 a month. Like, you should have an extra $400 a month. She's like, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't. And so, no joke. This is all the way back in 2013.

we printed out all of her transaction or bank simms for the past three months. She was spending on average $400 a month at Target. And she was like, I had no idea of spending that much money on Target. And so she just stopped going to Target for years and automatically just started saving that money. And so you start noticing things within yourself, which is like, why am I spending $400 a month eating out? Like, why do I have seven subscriptions that I don't use? Why am I spending money on things that I don't even care about? And that awareness is what actually starts to create change.

Once you see the leaks in your bank account and in what you're doing, you can fix them and you can plug up those leaks and you can invest more. Okay? So that's number six. Number seven is to track your net worth consistently. You don't need to obsess about it. You just need to be aware because what you track you improve. And if you don't know what you own and what you owe and where you're going and how much you're making and how much you're saving and how much you're investing and the average return on your investments, then you're just guessing. and guessing is not going to build wealth.

Guessing is not going to get you to escape velocity. Tracking creates clarity. Clarity creates better decisions. Like when I first started making a significant amount of money when I was 21 years old, I basically 6x my income from one year to another. But my bank account was the same, like the same amount of money at the end of both years.

And so I realized like, I really need to track my money because it's just going everywhere and I'm leaking it. And so what I started doing is so looking at my, bank account every single day. And I used to get so much anxiety when I would check my bank account because I never knew if there be any money in it. If I had 20 bucks, 100 bucks, or if I was negative $40. But then I made it my goal to watch that account grow every single month. And so I started checking it every single day. And then I started getting joy in watching the account grow because I

was checking it every single day. And so I watched it go from like insufficient funds to $1,000, to $1,000,000, to $1,000,000, to six figures and so on and so forth. You should do the exact same with all of your accounts. Your savings, your checkings, your investments. And like I said, you can use those platforms to just link them all together and they just update automatically. And then you can see everything in, you know, one place all at one time. So that's number seven. Number eight is detach your self-worth from money. This is a really big one. This is where a lot of people really get stuck because they don't just want money, they want what they think money means, which is like respect or status or validation or finally feeling like they're enough. And I coach many, many very extremely

successful business owners. Like I'm talking people that have more money than they need. And they don't know how to remove themselves from their businesses. Because their business and making money has become their entire identity. And all of their self-worth comes from their business. And all of their identity comes from their business. And so they don't know how to remove themselves from it. And this is a lot of people, isn't just millionaires. So what happens?

Well, because their identity is tied to their income, they think themselves, well, if I make more money, then I am more. If I lose money, then I'm less. And that's a really dangerous game to play. Because now money just doesn't sit in your bank account. money controls your emotions. It controls how you feel about yourself. It controls your confidence. It controls your decisions. And so let me explain what this looks like in real life. You make a little bit more money, right? And now you feel like you need to upgrade your lifestyle, show some people that you're doing

pretty well, prove that you're successful. Not because you actually want those things, but because you're trying to protect the identity of somebody who makes more money, who is more successful. Or the opposite can happen as well, which is, you lose money? And now you start questioning yourself. Am I good enough? Am I falling behind? What are people going to think of me? You see the problem? Money, the tool, should not be dictating your own self-worth. Like you never go, oh, my hammer got dirty, so I must be worthless. Oh, I bought a new hammer. Look at how successful I am, right? That's why I keep going back to think of money as a tool. So you detach it from your self-worth. Because when you detach your

self-worth from the money, everything changes. You stop trying to impress people. You stop chasing status and you stop making decisions to try to prove something or to try to keep up with the Joneses. Instead, you start playing the long game. You can invest without fear. You don't have to go for those dumb purchases. You can make calm and logical and strategic decisions because money is a tool, not a scoreboard, not your self-worth, not your identity. So if you want real wealth, you've got to separate who you are from how much money you make. Because the moment that money stops defining you, it stops controlling you. And that's when you actually start winning.

And you can play the game of money with real strategy of how to actually break free from the game. And then habit number nine, this is a simple one. Think in decades, not days. Most people think like, how can I make money this month? How can I become rich fast? Can I put all of my money into Bitcoin in it 40 Xs over the next week? and then I'm the richest person alive. Wealth doesn't work like that.

Like real wealth is built slowly, consistently, quietly over years and over decades. Like if you plant a seed today, you don't dig it up tomorrow to see if it's growing, right? You just trust the process. You give it some sun, you give it some water, and you just trust the process. A seed that you plant today is a massive tree in 20 years, though.

It's the same thing with money. For most people, money will be a long game. Like unless you make millions of dollars per year, and don't spend very much of it, it will take you a couple decades to get real significant wealth. But I promise you, retiring early is way better than upgrading to a BMW when you have a working Toyota or way better than buying a $2,000 TV. So you want to start planting those seeds now. So those are the nine habits that you need in order to get true real wealth in your life.

If you love this episode, please share on Instagram Stories and tag me in at Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-L-J-R. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.