Millionaire Money Habits

0:04This is the Ed Milet Show. All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. So excited that you're here with me. I love our solo episodes because it gives me a chance every single week to answer your questions on the show. And so, by the way, if you do have a question, you can submit them at edmylett on Instagram, E-D-M-Y-L-E-T-T, and there's a really good chance that a question will end up on the show. So this week we're going to talk a little bit about money and financial peace. Now, I'm licensed, so I can't give you any real specific investment advice or anything like that, But I can talk to you a little bit today about just some basic principles that will give you more financial peace in your life and some insights into some of the things I see that are very commonly spread on social media by many influencers that I just don't necessarily agree with.

0:46And so one of the things that I've been very fortunate to do is to build a pretty significant net worth. And I believe part of that net worth was built because of some basic principles that I've adhered to that I want to share with you. And so let's start from the very beginning. Number one, you have to decide that you want to save and accumulate money. It has to become a priority for you. And I'm going to say some things that sound a little bit contrary to what you hear on social media all the time about. I hear people say, you should get rid of all your money, right? You should use debt like crazy.

1:19You know, debt on appreciating assets you should always use. And there's no reason to save cash. You should be investing all of your money. That's just insane. like some of that's true but this notion that i keep hearing on social media from people that's like get rid of all your money and so that you stay hungry yeah you might end up being starving if you do that and so let's go all the way back for a few minutes about some basic things that i believe about financial security i think this is something by the way you could share with your children all the way up to somebody who's you know 80 90 years old listening today there's a few things.

1:54There's two types of people in life. There are savers and spenders. There just are. And you need to know right now, which one are you? And how do you know that? You know that based on the amount of percentage of the money you make that you save. And I want to say something to you. If you can't save money when you're broke, when you're making very little, you will not save money when you're making more. That's a fallacy. People say, well, once I make more money, then I'll save. If you can find a way to save any amount of money right now, build the habit, the pattern of being a saver. And I'm talking about when I was making minimum wage as a busboy at the whole enchilada restaurant.

2:34Yep, that was my job. I was a busboy at the whole enchilada. The very next job I had basically after that, I worked in an orphanage for$5.60 an hour. That gives you an idea of how old I am because that was minimum wage then. And in both of those careers, as a young person at 17 and 18 years old, and then I got the job at the orphanage when I was 21 years old after college, I saved money. Now, I saved$18 a month into a forced savings program when I worked at the whole enchilada, and I saved$20 a month when I was working at McKinley Home for Boys. But what happened was that was money that I never missed and it was forced savings and it created a behavioral pattern in me When I was poor and broke that i'm a saver And so what I went without I went without the starbucks's of the world.

3:28I made my own coffee I brought my own lunch to work These things like very insignificant things, but what I was doing was ingraining in myself The ability and pattern of saving So which are you right now? Are you a saver or are you a spender because you're one or the other? I've never been addicted to what kind of shoes I had what kind of jeans I was wearing the shirt I had I was much more addicted to accumulating wealth I got off if you will on showing somebody my mutual fund or my bank account statement Much more than I did on what kind of car I drove and i've always been that way And I wasn't that way naturally and I knew early on I learned that I needed to establish this pattern of which one was I?

4:13And so ask yourself this. And by the way, you could be making a lot of money right now when you're not saving, or you could be making very little. It's an idea that you just begin this pattern of some sort of forced savings. Have it taken right out of your account, have it drafted out of your account. I don't care if it goes into a, I'm not going to tell you where it can go because I'm licensed to where it should go. And for the purposes of today's message, there are qualified people you can see in your life that can tell you what to do with that money. But are you a saver or a spender? A really scary thing is when two spenders are married to one another.

4:44I hope if you're married that one of you at least is a saver and that if one of you is a spender, the saver has influence. But when two spenders are married, that is a formula for a lot of toxicity and a lot of stress. This idea that I keep hearing from so many people of get rid of all your cash, get rid of all your cash, is insane. right? Oh, it'll keep you hungry. It'll put pressure on you. Really? No, what it'll do is put stress on you. If you can't be hungry when you're saving cash, at what point does that end? Or to all your life, do you just keep spending? Think logically about that. So you're supposed to get rid of all your money to stay hungry.

5:23Are you that unmotivated, that uninspired that you have to have no money or very little money to be hungry? There's not other higher purposes and callings that can keep you hungry in your business life? That's so stupid, but I keep hearing it. So stop that nonsense. Of course you should save money. Now there's a difference between saving and investing. There's a percentage of, now once you start to make money, you should have savings, which is just cash, and then you should have investments. And I'm not going to tell you where to invest your money. You'll make those decisions. Those are two totally different things.

5:54But I can tell you right now, like to this day, and I'm not exaggerating this, I add up like, what am I spending on my streaming services? What am I spending on Starbucks? What am I spending on DoorDash? What am I spending on Amazon? You should audit all of these things. Like, do you, and by the way, if you're an addicted spender, shut out your Amazon account, just shut it down. Right. But the amount of money people spend on frivolous things, silly things like, like their door dashes or their Uber deliveries or these things that you could just go to the grocery store and save money or all your streaming services.

6:31Plus you still have direct TV. Plus you got cable service. These are, this may not seem like$8,$12,$20. This adds up to places you could save money. And, and again, it's that habit. It's that feeling that I love saving as opposed to I love spending. This is so counterculture what I'm saying right now. It's crazy to me that it It is counterculture. But I've always felt like I have this huge advantage financially in my life because, like, I'm into that, not the other stuff. And then once I had enough cash, then I became an investor. And you can decide where you put that money. For you, it could be real estate.

7:06It could be the market. It could be CDs. It could be treasuries. I have no idea. And I'm not suggesting any of those things. Let me be very clear. What I'm saying is that you should have savings and then investments, and they're two different things. But I cannot begin to tell you how many times in my life that because I had some cash saved I took advantage of different situations When if you don't have cash you can't or you don't have investments you can't now secondly Audit where you spend your money. Do you have a budget every single month? You should have a budget and the first thing in that budget for me is my tithing If you're a person of faith, it's what you give to god's kingdom It's the seed you plant.

7:45And again, if you're broke, that may be$5 in the hat at church when it's passed. I don't know. But it's some seed you're planting. If you have 100 pennies and a dollar, the first pennies go there. The second pennies, even if it's a small amount, go to savings. You pay yourself first. Let me say it again. You pay yourself first. That's after you pay God if you believe in that. Okay? Okay, next. Now you have your money that you live on. And then I would audit that. Where am I being wasteful and silly? And I got to tell you, it blows my mind. People say we're in a recession right now. I don't see that.

8:24I mean, maybe we are, but I got to tell you, I go to airports, they're full. They're packed with people, right? I see people using their credit cards at airport food and spending, do you know how much it bothers me to buy a bottle of water to this day? I'm worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I still cringe when I buy a$5.60 bottle of water at an airport. Yet I watch people who have no money frivolously spend it there. Still, it's like, oh, what am I? Gosh, I can't believe I'm doing that. I still scrutinize things like that. I still don't feel great when I overspend on Amazon. I don't. I just cut out three streaming services.

9:04I'm not exaggerating this. Last week, I'm like, I'm not using this is$8 a month. I've watched it three times in a year, right? That's, it's a hundred bucks a year. That's silly. I could put that a hundred dollars somewhere else. I could give it away. So begin to really micromanage and audit where you waste money, where you spend money. What type of gas do you put in your car? I'm not kidding. What kind of car do you have? What's your car payment? What could you do with that? if the car payment was half and it was not as nice a car, what could you do with that extra three or four or$500? And when you look up the rule of 72 and how money compounds, what could that do for you?

9:40So look at that. The next thing is your debt. Why are you spending money to buy things that impress people who don't care that you can't afford? Who gives a crap what they think? Why would you do that? Why would you put it at 15 % interest or 20 % interest on stuff that no one gives a crap that you have to impress people who don't care, who are hating on you behind the scenes anyway, when that could be money you're saving or investing in your life. So stop using debt on depreciating assets and then even debt on appreciating assets. There's a threshold to which you should be doing that with, but you should be scrutinizing when you do it.

10:20And so I've always tried to get myself to be someone who listen I'm going to say it to you the way that I think it if you're going to if you're going to invest money and it's an appreciating asset and you want to use debt to get access to other people's money and rates are still relatively low by the way people say oh interest rates are so much higher I've been alive when interest rates were 18 percent so interest rates are still relatively low money's cheap if you can end up leveraging debt in order to buy an appreciating asset you should consider it but what a lot of people do is they go well I can get the money cheap they don't really scrutinize.

10:53You make your money in most things on the buy, on the buy. So you still have to get the right price. And if you're saving in the stock market, you can dollar cost average. And if you don't know what dollar cost averaging is, you can look at that. You can look into that too. But the point that I'm making to you is why not get focused on getting wealthy? You do not become wealthy by mistake. You become wealthy by your habits and your disciplines and your routines and your rituals. And so many people that are in the personal development space, You've really gotten good at your personal habits, your workout, your morning routine, your meditation, your gratitude, your cold plunge, the food intake that you have.

11:30You have these great routines. What's your financial routine? What's your financial routine? Well, I'm going to get around to that. I'm only 21. I'll get around to that. Really? Well, I was getting around to it when I was 17. And just for the record, you will never get around to it. And typically, someone who's a spender will attract another spender because they like shiny things. and they can both go out and impress a bunch of people with shiny things that nobody gives a crap about. Not any really good people. I'll be really honest with you. Some people do this, but I don't. I don't know what kind of watch you're wearing.

12:02I actually have a Rolex on right now. And I didn't buy a Rolex until I was worth$100 million.

12:15I bought my first new car brand new car this year and I'm worth hundreds of millions of dollars every single car I have ever bought was used every car this year I bought a brand new Range Rover first time in my life why would I buy something that depreciates the minute I roll it off the parking lot how stupid and then some of you finance this asset that's depreciating off the parking lot What are you doing? What are you doing? So what's your financial habits your financial routines your financial disciplines? Consumer debt is horrible. Try to stay away from it Even business debt be careful with or even debt on real estate Doesn't mean it's right just because you got debt on it And then there's just a certain threshold of debt that I don't want I love cash And so this notion that you should get rid of cash and cash is dropping in value because of inflation and all that stuff, there's some validity to that.

13:13And then it's also just wrong. Because when the economy changes, cash is king. And people that have cash, and by the way, if you're going to get really wealthy, it's a bunch of cash. But it could even be that you are able to get different services or products on discounts when you have cash at your disposal. There's a security and a confidence that comes with cash. I'm convinced that the reverse is true. This lie that if you get rid of all of your cash, you'll be hungry just creates more stress. I can tell you that my accumulation of cash gave me strength, gave me confidence, gave me comfort, gave me the ability to walk away from a deal or a table because I didn't have to have it every single time.

13:51Cash is still king. And I'm telling you, I still leverage debt as well. But this notion that you should have all this debt and no cash breaks my heart because that advice works great. when the economy's going up. All these people who tell you they get rid of all their cash and they're leveraged to the hilt and they're really rich right now, wait till those values come down and the equity isn't there. Or when their loan renews or their adjustable rate mortgage changes, or they just don't have any cash in life. And so I'm a big believer in cash. I'm a big believer in savings. I don't believe you need to make millions of dollars to become financially independent.

14:30You know, there's different levels of wealth. The first one is just to become financially independent. And financial independence just basically means that you saved enough money where that you don't have the necessity for your job. But ask yourself this right now, no matter how old you are, what if you went six months with no income? Can you live? Can you pay all your bills? Can you? If you had no income coming in, right? Do you have enough cash saved? Because by the way some of those investments that you've leveraged they can't be liquidated So these people who have told you get rid of all of your cash use debt to buy a bunch of assets really?

15:07Well, what happens if that cash flow is not there? So ask yourself this right now Can you go six months of paying all your bills right now if you lost your job? How about six years? How about 60 years? So at one point, at some point in your life, you won't have a job at some age. And by the way, I just did an interview where life expectancies may be getting to 120, 130, 140, 150, potentially. How much cash do you need? How much revenue do you need to live long term so you don't have to work anymore? That's called getting financially independent. Wealth, that's a totally different thing. But some of you at least need to get to financial independence before you can get wealthy or then stone-ass wealthy, right?

15:50And I can tell you that people will say, well, certain cars go up in value. Yeah, you're probably not buying those cars. Well, watches, Ed. Rolexes, yeah, they've gone up the last five years. I don't know what they'll be worth in 15 or 20 years. Maybe they will be. But I'm not going to have a bunch of watches and call myself a rich person. Rich people don't just have watches. They have cash. They have assets. And so I say this to you today because I love you and I'm concerned about you. I'm concerned about our culture. I go to airports. They're packed. I don't think we're in a recession. I go to a mall.

16:22They're jam-packed. I was at a very expensive resort recently, packed with people. And next to it, there was a casino, packed with people. People are spending money like it's water. So I don't know that we're in a recession. Or people are just delusional right now in spending money they don't have. And I get all this past the pandemic. We want to have some experiences. I get all that. You just got to decide what makes you happy. What makes me happy is saving. What makes me happy is accumulating abundance and wealth so that I can give to the churches that I want to or give to the charities that I want to and take care of family when they need us.

16:59Listen, what's the likelihood of there not being a financial crisis in your family in the next five years? What's the likelihood of someone in your family not needing you for something? A medical emergency, a cash emergency, a tragedy of some sort, just life. What's the idea? What's the probability the next five years there's no chance of that? How about the next 10 years? And so what if you found yourself with no cash and just a bunch of debt and assets at that time? You can't help them. So this stuff is nuts what's being taught out there. So the bottom line is this. What I wanted to encourage you today is just to become more aware financially.

17:36And this notion that I'm going to get my life together, myself together, my business together, my body together, my relationships together, and then my faith together. Once all of that's done, the money thing will just take care of itself. Or I'll eventually get around to the money thing. Or I'm so young or whatever. That's just not how it works. You start it now. You start with a budget now. You start scrutinizing your money now. You start trying to become a saver now. And again, I want to be clear. I have leveraged debt on appreciating assets and made a lot of money doing that. But I didn't just do that.

18:11I also saved money. Because opportunities, and I'll be honest with you. I've made more money with my cash than I have with debt because when you've got cash in difficult times you can get deals and steals and amazing opportunities because you can pull the trigger immediately when someone needs it immediately rather than waiting for financing waiting this so both are powerful but man my heart breaks when I see these very influential people constantly telling you this stuff. And by the way, I know many of them and they also have cash. They also have cash. And so it's both. It's not one way or the other.

18:51I wish I could give you more specific financial advice, but today's a wake up call. You want to have more confidence when you walk in a room, have some money saved. You want to have more confidence and bliss and peace in your life, have a pattern of being frugal. Have a pattern of being smart with your money. Listen to me. Show me a human being who is under control financially. Financially under control. They have disciplines. They don't give in to the temptations of immediate gratification. Show me a human being who shows me emotional control and discipline financially, and I'll show you a human being who's probably a pretty happy person.

19:32You show me someone who is out of control financially, but thinks they're going to get control over their emotions and their relationships and these other areas of their life, I'll show you a person living a delusion. How you are doing financially at every stage of your life is a reflection of how you are doing in almost every area of your life. And don't you dare say to me right now, hey, that sounds good, but I'm on minimum wage right now. I know. It's very, very difficult. But if you could begin to, if you're paying, if you're a person of faith, just a little bit to your tithing, If you could just do a little bit to some savings if it's five dollars a month Five dollars and you go ahead.

20:13I don't have it you do You do there's five dollars somewhere if you're employed you do and I've got this many kids as much I know I'm telling you There's five dollars somewhere to save you go. Well five dollars isn't gonna amount to anything Yes, it is because it's a habit. It's a belief. It's a pattern. It's a routine it's a part of who you become and I'm telling you right now when you go from that minimum wage and now you're making$20 an hour and$50 an hour and then you make an 100 grand and 200 grand if the pattern all the way back in the beginning is to spend everything you get you'll find a way to do it you'll have a nicer car a better apartment you'll eat nicer restaurants you'll upgrade the way you drink when you go out and all of a sudden the money's gone and then you go well no now I'm an entrepreneur and I'm making 250 or do you know how many people that are nodding right now that go man I uh I have the same amount of money saved that when I was making 50 ,000 that when I made 100 ,000 I just went from having a Honda to a BMW and I went from a two-bedroom apartment to I rent my house and then there's people listening to go man when I went from 100 grand to 250 grand I basically have the same life except now I drive a Benz I got a Benz and my partner's got a nicer car too.

21:33And now I got, you know, a decent watch and much nicer clothes and I'm eating at Mastro's once in a while. And the truth is there's no tangible difference in where I am financially. How many of you right now know somebody like that or are nodding you? And by the way, then I got to four or 500 grand a year and now I bought a house. I bought a house. My business debt is up. My credit card bill seems to get much higher every single month because now I am not disciplined on Amazon. I've got 19 streaming services. I door dash my meals. You know, I don't pay attention to what I pay for my airfare or other things I do.

22:08And all of a sudden, man, I just spend, spend, spend. And the truth is now I'm at four or 500 grand a year. And I'm not that much further ahead financially than I was when I was making$50 ,000 a year. And then what ends up happening is you go, it's not worth it to keep getting more and more income. and that's when people stall out most people stall out even if they're really good 250 300 400 500 grand a year why do they stall out because the truth is their financial life didn't change very much they got a nicer car they got a house now you know they eat in nicer restaurants they've got nicer clothes on their body but the truth of the matter is they're really not that much further ahead financially than when they were making minimum wage or they're making fifty thousand dollars a year because the habits weren't ingrained back then i promise you that i'm right right now, and I promise you most of your friends that you think are rich that make $100 ,000 or$200 ,000 or$300 ,000 or$400 ,000 or$500 ,000 a year, they are quietly going, he's completely right about this right now.

23:05He's 100 % right. The truth is most people can't go six months without their paycheck, and almost nobody can go six years. And that's sad because it could be different if their habits, their beliefs, and their patterns were different. And so today was just simply a wake-up call to create more financial peace in your life, even on a limited budget. And if you don't have a limited budget, this is a huge wake-up call for you to begin to become a saver and have a conversation with whoever you're in a relationship with about your spending and saving. Begin to scrutinize it. Begin to break it down. Begin to have a real budget.

23:38Begin to have some outcomes and goals for how much you want to save as a percentage of your money and then let the professionals you deal with in your life or your own research, by the way, determine where those money should go. That's not the topic of today and I'm licensed so I can't go through any of that with you. But I can talk to you about basic blocking and tackling as a human being of creating financial peace in your life. I hope today helped you. I really do because it was important for me to get this off my chest and to share this with you. I want your family and you at peace. I want you feeling like you're making progress.

24:08I want you to feel like you've got the right routines and habits and disciplines in every of your life, including the financial area. Because it won't just get fixed when you fix the other things. You've got to address it right now. and it's fun to do it and you'll feel better about yourself when you do this. All right, if today helped you, please share this with somebody that you love, that you care about, who needs to hear this. This is one that can go to a person at every single age. Financial saving, financial peace, having a financial strategy in your life is just an awesome part of pulling all the other areas together and it's something you deserve, your family deserves, and you're worth it.

24:45God bless you, everybody. Max out. This is The Ed Miland Show.