93: Our Biggest Wins of 2024 + Giveaway Announcement

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0:57Hey everyone and welcome back to the Rich Habits Podcast, a top five business podcast on Spotify. My name is Austin Hankwitz and I'm joined by my co-host Robert Croak. Robert is a seasoned entrepreneur in his 50s with lifetime revenues of over 300 million and I'm an entrepreneur in my late 20s with a background in finance and economics. Since quitting my full-time job in corporate finance a few years ago, I've built a seven-figure media business and actively advise some of the most well-known fintech companies around the world. As the show name might suggest, every episode, we talk about rich habits as they relate to business, finance, and mindset.

1:32However, we try and bring you two unique perspectives, one from an industry veteran, which is Robert, and the other myself, someone who's still in the process of building wealth and figuring it all out. Robert, the title of this episode gets me really, really excited, but I want to hear from you first. What are we going to be talking about in today's episode? Yes, I'm super excited. In this episode of the Rich Habits podcast, we're going to be reflecting upon our biggest wins of 2024, and there have been a lot of them. These wins will include financial wins, business wins, and even personal wins.

2:04We built this podcast to be as transparent as possible to our audience, and there's nothing more transparent than sitting down and reflecting upon what went well for us and maybe not not so well in 2024. So this is going to be a fun one. I'm definitely excited to share a funny loss or two in this episode, but I'm more excited to talk about the biggest wins, right, from 2024, because I think they're replicable wins. I think they've got some urgency to them, and I think that they can really inspire our listeners as we now flip the calendar into 2025. So this is going to be a really cool episode, and we picked three of our favorite wins from inside of the Rich Habits Network.

2:41There's about 500 people in there right now, which, by the way, if you've not yet joined the Rich Habits Network. There's going to be a link in the show notes below. And we're actually going to be spotlighting a few of our favorite wins that we saw inside of the network. So stay tuned for those as well. But Robert, kick us off with one of your wins from 2024. Yeah, I would say probably one of my wins that I'm most excited about, and it goes back to 2022. And that is, let's just call it the AI win. Because I remember back in 2022, I was sharing all of these stocks that people really weren't recognizing like Palantir and NVIDIA and SoundHound and talking about how AI was going to be this big next sector that everyone should be keeping an eye on.

3:24And this was back in like Q3 of 2022. So I would say that would be my number one win with this AI sector, not just in stocks, but in crypto as well, because that entire sector has just been so huge now for a couple years and still growing so yeah it's been an exciting time for me with some of these call outs and some of my favorite stocks in the ai category and if you look at nvidia for 2024 so far is up 196 palantir which has been ripping is up 210 so far this year and then sound hound is another one that no one was really talking about a year or two ago and that That is up 230 % so far this year.

4:08So I would say that is my biggest win financially so far this year. What is yours? Well, I guess before we jump into that, I'm curious, right? Because I want to really reflect on, let's call it this Q3, Q4 of 2022. You just found out about ChatGPT because it came out, I think, Thanksgiving at 22, right? So we just became this sort of AI-aware species of people. What was it about AI that made you feel so confident about making such a big bet on this sort of technology, not just even from the technology perspective, but even back thinking about what NVIDIA does from the hardware perspective, right?

4:44And then I guess even now Palantir from the software perspective and predictive analytics, especially with military use. Yeah, I would say for me, and you've heard more than anyone me say that you don't have to be first to an investment or an investment sector. You just have to be ahead of the masses. And I was just seeing so much hype around the future of AI, robotics, Web3, gaming, the metaverse. And it was just clear to me that I needed to get ahead of this sector and really bet heavy on it. Even when others on my team thought I was too early and that I was probably taking too much unnecessary risk.

5:23And it's the same thing like what we're doing right now in Q3 and Q4 of 2024, two years later, where we're forward thinking, talking about where are the best places to be in nuclear energy with all of this, you know, smaller nuclear reactor talks happening to build out our infrastructure of energy in the United States. You know, because as we're all seeing with the election of Trump that we believe we're going to see this golden age in manufacturing again. And with that is going to take a lot of addition to the power grid. So that means nuclear, that means solar and all of that. So between that and humanoid robotics, I believe you and I are in this same position again, where we're just ahead of the curve of guiding our audience so they know where to go to get ahead of the money in these up and coming sectors.

6:13So that's how I look at it is just trying to be ahead of the curve. I think it makes a ton of sense. Do you now, as we reflect upon some of these biggest wins of 2024 with NVIDIA and AI as a whole being one of your biggest wins, is there a moment in time now where you're saying, OK, it's time to take some money off the table? You know, how do you approach taking profits and realizing this win as a true financial gain? Yeah, that's a great question. And you and I have been talking about this a lot as we get further into this bull run, not only with stocks, but now crypto. You know, everyone's thesis is going to be different.

6:47For me, I try to look at it that when I get up 50 % in a position, I usually take 25 % off, wait till I get up to 50 % again, take 25 % off and just keep repeating that process. It's a little different for me with NVIDIA, Palantir, SoundHound, Micron MU, just because I think there's so much growth still that even though people are saying it's time to take some off the top, you know, Palantir's CEO sold a little off. Jensen from NVIDIA sold a little bit of NVIDIA off. I don't think that matters because they're just doing smart, you know, risk management by selling some of their stock off. So for me, I'm not ready to sell anything in the AI sector, even though I do believe we could see some volatility because I believe the growth is so big in that sector and that I'm already in the best of breed.

7:42So I don't think it's necessary for me to take any more off the top. But for the up and coming investor that's just really getting started and really starting to just make a lot of money in this, I think it behooves them to take profits. And that's what I would do if I were them. And when you say taking 25%, you're talking about selling 25 % of the total investments value, right? So let's say you invested$10 ,000. It's now worth$15 ,000 because it went up that 50%. You're saying to take 25 % of the$15 ,000 off the table. Of the total position, yep. And I generally do that in longer term plays.

8:18And you can adjust that. The audience can totally adjust that. They could make it that when they get to 25 % total return, they take 10 % off. I just like to get to a point in these longer positions where I'm risk off somewhat. And then that way I'm playing with more of the house's money. And then that way I can let it go longer through these dips in these cycles because I know the upside potential is so strong. Got it. Very cool. Yeah, I just did some quick math. And assuming you do that and it goes up, you know, call it two of these 50 percent gains. You actually would have taken off, taken profits now against 75 percent of your original investment.

8:55So you'd have gotten back$7 ,500 of that$10 ,000 you would have originally invested. That's the exact math of what I feel comfortable doing. And like I said, everyone can make theirs whatever they feel comfortable with because everyone should have their own risk tolerance and their own thesis for what they want to do for taking profits. All right, Austin. So let's talk about your top win for 2023, regardless of category. Let's hear it. If it was like financial wins, right there with you, AI, Bitcoin, William Sonoma actually was a great stock for me this year. I want to reflect more about like this business win, this personal win that we had, Robert, which was going to the White House to speak with the Biden administration and learn more about the student loan crisis.

9:39We got invited to the White House to learn more about the save plan and how people who are suffering with hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans and thousands of dollars a month in minimum payments that they have to make while only making$40 ,000,$50 ,000,$60 ,000 a year, the math doesn't add up. And so it was really cool to learn more about the progress that was made during that administration about student loans. I'm someone who's a firm believer, and if you take out debt, you should pay it back. right? But to that point, the reason that inspired, I believe, the save plan, which is what we learned about, was the teachers in America.

10:14On average, these teachers had to graduate with$75 ,000, $85 ,000 of student loan debt because they have to get a master's degree. And then they're making $45 ,000,$55 ,000 a year as a teacher in those first couple of years. And when you have a minimum payment of$1 ,000 and you're only taking home$3 ,000,$3 ,500 a month after taxes, like that's really tough. And so it was just really cool to see that despite this being the reality for so many people, there are solutions out there. So I actually took this safe plan solution and my friend is a DTP, which is a doctorate in physical therapy. She makes, I think,$75 ,000 a year, but has like$180 ,000 a student loan debt.

10:52Her monthly payment was like well over$2 ,000. And so I was actually able to hook her up with this safe plan. And she's now figuring out kind of balancing how do I pay this off quicker? Should I invest? Let's get the budget right, all that fun stuff there. So, you know, I think just a really big win, Robert, is like when we started this podcast, I never thought that we would, you know, have the opportunity to get invited to the White House to learn more about things that that administration did. And hopefully we get invited back again during the Trump administration to learn more about the stuff that they're doing.

11:21Because I think it all comes back to this idea that the Rich Habits podcast is not just your, you know, this old guy and this young guy talking about money. This is us sharing with you all in real time what we're doing with our money, how we are learning, what we're learning, the resources we lean on. And if we learn something new or have a question or want to figure something out more, we invite a guest on the show that knows that more than we do so they can educate us as well. So it's just been really cool and rewarding to reflect upon that. I know that happened, I think it was in like March or April this year, Robert, but it was a whole lot of fun.

11:52Yeah, I think it really, the White House trip was amazing, you know, once in a lifetime opportunity for us. Hopefully we do get invited back. But it really just speaks to the fact that I feel like, you know, we're men of the people where we're just out here beating the street, finding those nuggets, sharing those nuggets, teaching people and really learning in real time of what are the best possible solutions for everyone's pain points financially on their way to building financial freedom. And I think we just do a really good job of it. And it really, really excites me that we get these opportunities to bring on some of the people from BlackRock and iShares and all these people from around the world and these beautiful companies to really share with our audience the best possible strategies to build their wealth.

12:40And it just makes it so rewarding, not just for our finances, but everyone that follows along. So I love it. And I'm glad you brought up the White House trip because even my cousin, Tim, he was like, I've been in finance for 45 years. I've never been invited to the White House. And I'm like, well, I'm going for us, baby. So that was really, really cool. So what do you think your maybe a second win to reflect upon for 2024 was for you? Yeah, I had it written down the merger of our audiences for us creating the Rich Abbots Network, you know, because we started out with the podcast. We both had our individual communities.

13:16They were both growing really well. And just the merger creating the Rich Habits Network to me is incredibly rewarding because then we're putting all of our teams, all of our power together. And I think what we built and what we're growing right now will be one of the most meaningful communities, not just on school, but on the Internet, because people are getting two different age categories, two different experience levels and two different skill sets put together to really break down all of these myths and these struggles in the finance world. And so I would say overall, take money aside. The Rich Habits Network is the most rewarding thing for 2024 and beyond for me that I've ever built.

14:02No, I'm right there with you, man. Nothing humbles me more than getting a direct message from someone inside of the Rich Habits Network. And they say, hey, Austin, I did the things you and Robert told me to do. And now I'm debt free and I have my emergency fund. Or I just got my first hundred thousand dollars invested. I'm going to build wealth now in a meaningful way because I finally know what ETFs and index funds to buy, right? It's just, it's so much fun. Before you go on to your next point, I want to read the audience and when you touched on heartfelt and things that you see in DMs, I want to read a response from an audience member in the Rich Habits Network that came through my DMs a couple of days ago, because this is what makes what we do so rewarding.

14:41And I won't say her name, but I'm just going to read it off. Thank you so much for replying. What you and Austin do are providing real life experience and changing a lot of it for us and our families. You have changed the direction of four generations of my family in the last year and a half since I've been following you. My mother, 82, myself and my four daughters and my grandchildren. I hope you feel the appreciation from your followers. And I just wanted to write this letter and let you know. Dude, does that not just fire you the heck up? It just, oh my gosh, man. And we get so many of them when I do the one-on-one calls with people, you know, it's just so rewarding because they send me a form ahead of time with everything in it so I can study before the call.

15:28But then they get on the call and sometimes they'll be tearing up or they'll be crying or talking about how their life has changed since following along and being educated by us. And it's just so incredible. I spoke yesterday at one of our Rich Habit Network employees, and they brought all their employees in for me to speak to them. And I told you this in private, but I think we should mention it here. Over 80 % of her employees over the age of 30 do not have Roth IRAs or individual brokerage account yet because of they have student loan debt, analysis paralysis, or not knowing where to start.

16:05So that is why I love what we get to do every day because it is so rewarding, not just for the people that are already up and running and have$100K or$1 million or$5 million, but the people that are out there that have that$75 ,000 a year job and just don't know where to start. So it's incredibly rewarding. Robert, I'm going to say this now, and I hope you agree with me because it's coming out of our checkbooks. I think that if people listening right now have a big win they want to share that they achieve because of listening to the Rich Habits Podcast, to send us an email at richhabitspodcast at gmail.com, put in the subject line, big win, and we're going to pick our three favorite most inspiring wins and give each person$250.

16:49So$750, we're going to throw it out there for you guys to claim. Each person with a really big win is going to get$250. I love it. I love hearing these wins and I want to reward these people for doing the right thing, man. Yeah, it's just so good for the long term. So let's go into your next one. What's your second favorite win of the year, financial or otherwise? Well, I think we'll round off the wins here, Robert, with this idea of getting$100 ,000 invested into SPYI and the other NEOS funds that we talk about, right? Because at the end of the day, Austin, why are you doing this? Why do any of us do this?

17:21Why do any of us save money, find margin in our budgets and invest it? because we want to stop working. We want to stop trading time for money, right? I remember working every single day, commuting two ways, right? To the office and home when I was working at a Metasys. And it was fun. I enjoyed it. But oh my gosh, I was like, this cannot be it for 40 years. This can't be my life for 40 years. I got to figure it out. I just know that there's countless people listening right now that are like, I don't want to do this for 40 years. I want to retire early. I want to figure out how I can't even retire in the first place, right?

17:54And so for me, I took that leap of faith of, okay, if I'm going to retire early, I got to start acting like it, which means I need to start investing as much as humanly possible into the stock market, right? Take my active income, invest it so it turns into passive income. So I take my active income, it hits my budget, I spend money on the normal things, I find that 20-25 % margin in my budget every month because I'm really after that budget, and I take that money and I invest it. Robert, I'm up right now. So I just want to let you know here in my brokerage account has got$600 ,000 in it right now.

18:28I am up$209 ,000 over the last two years alone. Over the last, since the start of 2023, I'm up$200 ,000. And that wasn't money I had to work harder for. That wasn't money I had to be smart for. That was money that was invested into the index funds, ETFs, and a couple of single stocks that we always talk about that just consistency and discipline allowed me to realize, right? And so anyone listening right now, there's nothing special about investing. There really isn't. If there was, I wouldn't be able to do it, right? It's so simple to just open up an account on public.com and get started. Open up that Roth IRA for the first time and say, okay, I'm going to make a conscious effort now of putting a couple hundred bucks a month or even a couple thousand a year into my Roth IRA so that it can grow throughout my life, allowing me to retire a millionaire or if it's in public in a bridge account, retire early.

19:25I want to retire early. I want this money to grow for me over time. And hopefully in the next 5, 10, maybe 15 years, I'll be able to reflect on all this money management and pinching pennies and staying super disciplined and focused on investing and say, wow, I now have enough money to retire. And again, I want to make sure we're on the same page about this, Robert, because I think people confuse retirement with like Uber wealth, right? A lot of people think, oh, retired, you live on a yacht and you're on the private jets and you have an island. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, right? Retirement means your passive income can supplement your lifestyle today.

20:04So that$200 ,000 that I've made in my brokerage account over the last two years, that's about$100 ,000 a year. I guess I could live off$100 ,000 a year if I wanted to, right? So that's how retirement works. Now, we've had some really, really good years in the markets. You should think about the 4 % rule. The Trinity study, we did a whole episode about finding your freedom number. Go listen to it. But my biggest win, again, was getting so much invested in these passive income funds like SPYI and the other NEOS funds because I'm on my road to an early retirement. I'm really excited about that. And I can't wait to deploy more capital, allowing me to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

20:38Well, I definitely think we're going to have to change the opener for 2025 of the Rich Habits podcast, where you say, I'm just the guy in his late 20s trying to figure it out. because I will say if there was ever a prototypical person that has figured out the balance between proper investment strategies and the amount saved monthly and budgeted monthly towards investing while still enjoying life and the fruits of his labor, you've definitely done an incredible job. And it really makes me excited for the youth of our society because like the last two days of me being here in the great Barringtons and talking to all these 20-somethings and 30-somethings really made me realize that what we do is incredible because so many people just need a little bit of a helping hand to figure out what to do with their money and how to make more money and how to invest it correctly.

21:36So I'm really excited for 2025 and this episode really makes me feel a little melancholy because it's just so cool that we get to do this every week and have such a massive audience that agrees with us. So it's so fun. I couldn't agree more. And again, we make this episode of the podcast because we want people to get inspired by it. We want people to feel like, okay, I also invested in AI or what can I figure out as the next thing for 25 and 26? Or, oh yeah, Austin talked about passive income. I need to figure that out for myself. Or I have student loans. How do I figure those out? We want you to feel inspired when listening to this episode.

22:12Get inspired about reflecting upon your own wins The end of the year is coming out. We're finally in December. You know, maybe it's time to sit down with a notepad and a cup of coffee and just like write down some of the biggest wins that you're really proud of for 2024 and, you know, what you can continue to do, what rich habits you can continue to implement in your daily life that will allow you to not have just wins in 2025, but some really, really big ones. So we hope this episode was a good one for you guys. I feel super inspired right now. Now, before we jump into a few of our favorite wins from inside of the Rich Habits Network, Let's take a moment to hear from this episode's sponsor, Masterworks.

22:48Here's something interesting, Robert. Bank of America just released a new report that over 80 % of multimillionaire respondents, 43 years old and younger, invest in or are looking to invest in fine art as a portion of their portfolios. Yeah, that's amazing. And it really makes sense to us because we diversify with art ourselves. And we've been using Masterworks' art investing platform for diversification for about five years now. And I love it because we're always preaching diversification. And I think Masterworks is a great way to do it. Yeah, 100%. Robert and I both invest with Masterworks. And we even interviewed their founder and CEO, Scott Lynn, on the show.

23:25They've now hit over 950 ,000 users on the platform and a billion dollars of capital raised. And that's because with Masterworks, you don't need to be an art expert or spend millions of dollars to get started. Exactly. And the fact that Masterworks has successfully exited 23 paintings to date with each returning a profit doesn't hurt either. So listeners can learn more at masterworks.org front slash rich habits, which is also shown in the show notes of this episode. As with any investment, past performance is not indicative of future returns. Investing involves risk. There are important regulation A disclosures and they can be found at masterworks.com forward slash CD.

24:04So our first Rich Habits Network respondent is Paige M. She says, I discovered the podcast May of 2024. I started the first episode and I watched all of them as quickly as possible. Since then, I've one, fired my financial advisor and I'm saving so much money now. Two, opened an IRA and maxed it out. Shout out to Austin for taking a private call with me and helping me decide what percent to put where and just give me so much confidence. Three, opened a bridge account with public.com. Four, adjusted my 401k percentage, allowing me to invest up to the match, max out the Roth, and then also get my bridge account rocking.

24:39Five, changed the fund my 401k was invested into now to actually track the S &P 500. Six, started investing my HSA money because beforehand it was just sitting there in cash. Seven, convinced my boyfriend to get an IRA and he dollar cost averages every single week. And finally, number eight, I've also told my sister about the podcast and she's been putting more into her kids accounts and their 529s and allowing them to build generational wealth. Robert, are you kidding me, dude? Does this not just fire you up? Like, it's so cool to see, like, you know, it's kind of hard, right? Because like we talk about so many different subjects across all of the 92 now episodes we published.

25:18And sometimes it can be overwhelming to think like, oh my gosh, like I have to find the gems in every single one. Paige obviously did it. And she just went through and she's accomplished so much. My favorite thing is she's got the 401k now invested in the S &P 500. I bet it was in a target date fund or some international stocks beforehand. So she is setting herself up for success. Paige, we cannot be more excited for you. Yeah, I love it because Paige is a great example of someone that takes notes and takes action. Because I think there's a lot of issues in modern society where people are so over stimulated with information, but they don't do anything with it.

25:53I see it all the time where people have all this education, but they don't take action. So Paige, kudos to you. I love when I hear from people in the Rich Habits Network that take action because at the end of the day, we are here putting out, you know, the blueprint. We're giving you all the plays from the rich, the wealthy, how to do it, where to go, all of the above. But if you don't take action, we can't help you. So I love seeing page's response here makes me so happy. Let's go, dude. So our next Rich Habits Network participant is Connor L. Connor says, I've done a few things since listening to the Rich Habits podcast, starting with number one, starting two businesses.