Smart Money Habits That Made Ordinary People Millionaires (With Tom Corley)

24:10And the funny thing was, Andrew, I was asked to speak with Robin Sharma had a thing called the Titan Summit and the every year. And so he asked me to speak at the Titan Summit because he heard me on the Success Magazine. He used to have a CD that they included in the magazine. And I did this big interview with Success Magazine. He, Robin, listened to it. He was blown away. And he said, I want to have this guy speak. So at the last minute, he pulls me in and I'm speaking. And he says, oh, by the way, you got to follow Richard Branson. And I was like, what? Are you high? I mean, I said that to Robin.

24:45I didn't even know him. I said, are you high? I'm not following Richard Branson. I never get nervous speaking and I never get, you know, in front of a people. I love it. I just, it's just an inherent trait I have. I like being in front of people and teaching them, but I, my knees started shaking until I heard Richard Branson speak. Then I was like, oh, this guy sucks. You know, he's terrible speaker. So, but that was funny because I, you know, it's like all of this stuff was kind of connecting. It was weird. You know, here I am, I'm reading Richard Branson's book two years ago and now I'm following him on stage.

25:17But the, I guess, you know, circle back. It was because of the multiple streams of income that introduced me really to Richard Branson. I mean, everybody knew him. He was an icon, but I didn't really know much about him, but I do now. And he had so many streams of income. And if you look at all of these, I'll say it's a big chunk of luck with these instant millionaires like Zuckerberg. There's a big chunk of luck that goes into it that is not created luck, what I call opportunity luck. It's just random luck. They just happen to be at the right place at the right time and just things happen. But they all start taking their millions and investing it in other businesses that are synergistic to what they're doing, but it's still they generate a stream of income and now they have more income and now they can do more things.

26:04And then all of a sudden they become philanthropic at some point. But that's what I noticed. They all take their money and invest it in these streams of income. And the typical stream of income takes about three to five years of, I would say, massive investment in time and money. Not always money, but definitely time. You have to, you know, my writing my books, they're a revenue stream now. That took a lot of time. And it did take me about$100 ,000 of income of money spending. The speaking gigs, they were, you know, I invested in reaching out and saying, hey, you know, I'm on CNBC, Business Insider, you know, you might have seen articles, Success Magazine.

26:42And they said, oh, yeah, we want you to speak. And that was an investment in my time in getting those articles out there besides the books, the articles that were published by these media outlets. And that, you know, led to the speaking gig. So now I have probably, I mean, if you put the books all on the one category, I have four streams of income, but I have books all over the world. So each book is a revenue stream and I get a royalty check from China, I get a royalty check from India, I get a royalty check from this country, that country. They all come at different times. And so they're all revenue streams that I use to, I typically pour it back into building my rich habits empire, if you will.

27:23And if you look at some of those things, so they invested back into their business, did you find that there were wealthy people investing in real estate and stocks? Were there other areas that they were investing in outside not just business? Yeah. The Saver investors in particular, there was a good percentage of them, maybe close to 35 % of them invested in rental properties. In fact, in my book, Effortless Wealth, my friend, Tom Howey, he's a very successful guy, but we grew up together poor on Staten Island. And Tom, he and I became CPAs and we both worked for Arthur Anderson and he off to go to college and to go to law school.

27:59And he became a patent attorney. Anyway, he got lucky in life through his hard work. His opportunity luck paid off for him. And he was able to retire. Well, he included some of the stuff that he did to invest his money. And so a lot of these saver investors, they did have multiple rental properties. And at some point, they were able to to free themselves from the slavery, the work slavery. And they just were managing their four, five, six properties. And that was generating enough cash flow that they were able to live off of that. So that was kind of unique. Annuities, I saw a lot of this self-made millionaires, once they gained a certain amount of wealth, it was typically around three or four million.

28:45They started investing in annuities as sort of a pension, a way of creating a pension, because there's guarantees and all that stuff with the annuities. And so that was another one. And I guess I'm not a big fan of this type of investing, the Bitcoin. I am a big fan of blockchain investing. But I see a lot of that going on now with a lot of my clients. In fact, the CPA and CFP clients I have there, oh, should I invest in Bitcoin? Should I invest in Bitcoin? You know, like, yeah, 15 years ago. So, you know, it's like you invest now. It's you got to wait. If you think about it, Andrew, because I have a family member who invested$10 ,000 back in, I think, 2013.

29:29Oh, wow. In Bitcoin. And he's probably worth, I don't know, 60, 70 million dollars now, I think, something like that. And that was the time to invest. My daughter, my daughter invested in Bitcoin only so that she because they mandated she needed five Bitcoins. She needed three Bitcoins in college in order to get a fake ID, you know, so that she could get liquor. I was like, it's the kind of kids I raise, you know, Irish kids. Of course, they want to drink beer. And so she had two Bitcoins left over. She still does, I think. I think she has one and a half left over or something like that. But she did that back in 2013.

30:07And that was the time to invest. Maybe 2015, 16, 17, you can make a case for it. But, you know, it's these investments that are the leading edge investments like AI now. I believe Elon Musk is going to be the wealthiest man in the solar system because I believe he's going to branch out into the solar system. And more than just a rocket ship, he's going to be mining stuff. He's going to be doing all sorts of things that are revenue streams that we can't even understand that don't exist today. He's going to be doing that. He'll be so wealthy and AI, anybody that's, you know, on the forefront of AI, if they're investing in AI, they're going to be very wealthy off of that.

30:50It's the same when the Internet broke out in like 1993, 94, 95. When that exploded, people that invested, I had a family member that invested in Yahoo. And she went from, you know,$3 ,000 investment to a$350 ,000,$400 ,000 investment without doing anything. So, you know, that's you got to get in at the right time. And these people that have their fingers on the pulse of these new emerging technological industries, they're going to be the rich people. Right. Exactly. And I think there's so basically what you saw was mostly it was a various different ways that people were investing their money. But the big key was making sure that you actually start to get your money to work towards something.

31:32And they had those multiple income streams. So they were looking to have a multiple income streams and hoping to have some of those kind of set up. And like you said, I love that stat that it takes three to five years because I think a lot of people want to kind of invest into an income stream and think it's going to just happen overnight. It takes a lot of time and effort and energy to kind of get that income stream stabilized. Then once it's stabilized, then you can probably take your foot off the gas a little bit or hire somebody to kind of help you with that business or whatever else. But it does take that time and energy up front.

31:58So I think that's a really important point that would help a lot of people just understand how this works. So when it comes to all this, I know we've kind of talked through some of the habits they have and some of the investing. Another big piece is the mindset. Is there mindset shifts that someone needs to adopt if they want to become wealthy or if they want to become rich? Or are there anything that you saw that a lot of folks had who were wealthy that were common? Yeah. So I had this poor habit, this mental poor habit of thinking that wealthy people were evil and that most of them had inherited their money.

32:29It turns out my study had 76 % had created their own wealth. that came from poverty or the middle class. You threw out a 79 % stat, and there are other stats that are as high as 82%, 83 % that the wealthier self made. So it's not inherited money. For the most part, inherited money comes and goes. It's usually one or two generations and it's gone. So you have to really want to become wealthy. You have to want to be more than you are. What keeps you stuck is the thinking that I was born into poverty and I'm behind the eight ball and there's nothing I can do about it. And so you basically have planted your flag on the notion that you got a raw deal and there's nothing you can do about it.

33:20Well, that couldn't be further from the truth. You can absolutely 100 % change the circumstances of your life. The key to changing the circumstances of your life is to change your mindset. And the key to changing your mindset is to shift from negative thinking to positive thinking. And the key to shifting to positive thinking is to express gratitude every single day. Even like I express gratitude for three things that went right yesterday. Yesterday, I always look at yesterday and say, what went right yesterday? Three things. I express gratitude on my commute to work. Oftentimes, I express gratitude for my car.

34:00I love my car. And it's an experiment. This is a car that when I found out that most of the self-made millionaires, they kept their cars forever. I didn't. I always either leased or got a new car every five years or whatever. This car I bought in 2013. And my goal was from the get-go, I want to put 250 ,000 miles on the car. So I'm at 208 ,000 miles now. And so I express gratitude every day for that car. I express gratitude for every time I get to spend time with my family and my friends. I express gratitude every time I have enough money to do something like take my niece out. We went to Thursday night in New York City, took her out to a nice restaurant.

34:41We had a great time. If I didn't have money, I wouldn't have been able to do that, Andrew. So I express gratitude. And what happens is it's a shift. And I guess you can look at it from, you know, the glass is half full, the glass is half empty. Now you're looking at your life and you're saying, these are the things that I am grateful for. And these are the things that I want in my life. when you express gratitude, you're actually feeding, you're sending a message to the universe, our quantum-based universe, which is an important factor, meaning our thoughts are real. They're out there. They float around there in the quantum universe.

35:16And if you have negative thoughts, the universe is going to deliver to you the things which you think about more often. I don't have enough money. Great. We're going to make sure you continue not to have enough money because that seems to be something you think about a lot. I don't have a good car. My car always breaks down. Great. We'll make sure that your car keeps breaking down. So the universe will give you what you keep putting out there. And I mentioned quantum-based because what they're starting to realize is that the universe is conscious. There's a consciousness to the universe. And we're conscious beings.

35:47And so when we throw thoughts out there, whether they're positive or negative, the universe picks them up. And the universe is a repository and a delivery system. Our pineal glands in the brain is a cell phone. It sends out thoughts and it receives thoughts from the universe and from others. So you want to have a positive mental outlook because that positivity is like an attractor. It's like a magnet. It pulls in more of the things that you want in your life because you're expressing gratitude for them. And so when it comes to kind of your mindset shifts and like some of the ways that you're thinking about this, is there a way that millionaires set goals differently?

36:24Let's say, for example, someone's listening to this and you kind of talk through, hey, my situation, I grew up poor. I don't even know how to manage money. I'm trying to learn how to figure out my entire life and my whole situation. How can someone like that look at this and say, I want to set some goals like millionaires do, and I want to make sure I can achieve those goals? How do they actually set goals differently than everybody else? Yeah, well, let's talk about this. This is such a big, important point because what I learned from my research is that a lot of people set goals that are actually dreams.

36:54dreams are broad-based wishes things that you want in your life goals are the construction crew that make your dream come alive they basically i have this dream of having this house down by the shore i create all of these goals i gotta write books that's a goal i've got to write every day I've got to publish the book. These are all goals. I published a book. I've achieved my goal. Now I've got to promote the book. That's another goal. I have daily goals. I call them daily habit goals, goal habits, where every day I'm pursuing a specific goal as if it were a habit in an effort to realize my dream.

37:40If you think about your goals as rungs on the ladder and at the top of the ladder is the dream that you need to realize, right? So you set these goals, you achieve each goal, and you move yourself up the ladder. And when you get to the top of the ladder, you realized that particular dream. So you actually build goals around each dream. Each dream may require the realization of three, four, five, or six goals. Now, the important thing about this is sometimes goals are unachievable because you lack the knowledge or the skills to pursue those goals. I want to be a CPA. Okay. That's a dream. Do you have the necessary skills and knowledge to become a CPA?

38:25Well, you've got to study for the exam. First of all, you've got to go to college. You've got to get an accounting degree. Then you've got to study for the CPA exam. And then in New Jersey and in a lot of states, you have to have two years of experience. So now you've done all of these things. You've achieved all of these sub goals that allow you now to pursue your getting a CPA and then you realize your dream. You have all these rungs on the ladder that you climbed and now you've realized your dreams. The way I like to present it to the listeners is think of each dream as a ladder that you have to climb.

38:58And in order to climb that ladder, you have to achieve all of these different goals. And once you achieve all of the goals, you will realize your dream. I love that. And I think that is, you know, it's one of those things that we have this program we called, it's called Master Money Goals. And what we do is we kind of look at this in a way where we'll have a big goal and then we kind of dissect it backwards. So we'll go backwards. Okay. What do I need to do in a year to achieve this goal? You know, every single year, if it's a big, huge goal, it's a five-year goal. What do I need to do each year to accomplish?

39:23Okay. What do I need to accomplish every quarter? What do I need to accomplish every month? And we break it all the way down to daily actions that you can kind of take. And it's the thing that I think is just the best overall way to kind of move mountains, because you can take one step every single day, take those daily actions. Just like you said, you want to write an entire book where you're writing every single day. And I'm sure you have like a certain amount you want to write every single day. And you're taking those simple actions each and every day to get to your next book. And I think that's just such a powerful way for that millionaires look at goals too, is they try to break them down into smaller chunks and take these daily actions.

39:53And it's just like you said, it's just like following up a ladder. And what is the next step that you need to take in order to get to that point in time? So I think that's such a powerful lesson that a lot of people can learn. My relationship with money has changed a lot over the years. Early on, I thought building wealth was about making more money. Now, I know it's really about having clarity. When you know exactly where your money is going and whether you're on track, you make better decisions. That's one of the reasons I love Monarch. It's the personal finance app that tracks everything from your accounts and investments to your savings goals and spending.

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42:20That's PolicyGenius.com. This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message, and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook. Right now, when you buy more carpet at the Home Depot, you save more. During our Buy More, Save More event going on now, upgrade your carpeting with the top brands and save up to 15 % off installed carpet projects.

43:04Installation starting at just 49 cents per square foot. Select from a wide assortment of carpet to fit your room, lifestyle, and budget during the Buy More, Save More event at the Home Depot. Offer valid August 27th through September 13th, 2026. Base price for standard installations only. excludes Traffic Master and Stock Car. For licenses, see homedepot.com slash license numbers. Now, when it comes to family, teaching and family, I know, you know, back in the day, the Millionaire Next Door that we chatted about earlier has a lot of, you know, different things that they talk about when it comes to how millionaires kind of teach their family about money and how they teach them how to handle wealth.

43:36What did you find when it comes to, you know, how do they teach their kids money habits and how do wealthy people actually help their kids overall when it comes to learning about money? Yeah, so what I learned, and this is pretty profound, is that millionaires teach their kids about money in stages. So when their kids are young and they're getting gifts, I'm talking about like 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, 11, 12, they say, okay, you're going to save 50 % of that. That's going into a savings account. And then the next stage is, okay, well, I want a bike or I want a video game or I want this cell phone.

44:14And you say, okay, great. You have a thousand dollars in your savings. You can use 50 % of that to purchase, you know, the thing that you want. And so it forces them to have skin in the game. The parents will pick up the other 50%. You'll pay 50%. But it teaches them, hey, I've got to save in order to get the things that I want in life. My parents will help me, but that's another stage. You know, they teach them how to save and then how to use their savings to purchase the things that they want in life. The other stage is when they get into like their junior year in high school, they start, these wealthy families start teaching their kids about insurance, car insurance, tenant insurance.

44:57Well, they know they're going to be going to college. And so health insurance, you know, you may have health insurance at the college. In some cases, they may have supplemental health insurance at the college in case something goes wrong. And so they start teaching them in junior and senior year in high school. They teach them about student loans. They teach them about college costs. They start teaching. They dribble certain bits of money information, financial literacy concepts at different stages. They just don't overwhelm them and say, OK, we're going to do this. This is what you're going to have, 17 concepts of financial literacy.

45:31We're going to shove down your throat. And, you know, I love this. I read a book on J.D. Rockefeller who created Standard Oil and all that stuff, and Rockefeller oil and Standard Oil. Anyway, they still have, because his son was so smart and created a foundation, a trust, a legacy trust, that all of the Rockefeller descendants are beneficiaries of. And when you're a Rockefeller at a certain age, and I think it's 18, you actually go to money training. They teach you about life. It's not just money. It's philanthropic. They teach you about a lot of things, but money is a big lesson that they learn.

46:11How to manage your money. You're going to get a stipend. It's not going to be enough for you to live off of. You're still going to have to work. But now we're going to help you manage this stipend that you're going to get. And we expect you to tie, you know, 10, 20 percent of that money. And we expect you to, you know, with the other 80 percent to do productive things with it. You know, go to college, do this, do that. So they teach them. They actually take them through like a Rockefeller course. And I thought that was really interesting. That's a way to create a legacy for generation after generations, you know, by teaching.

46:42You know, if you teach your kids, there are basically 17 financial concepts you need to understand to be financially literate. If you teach your kids those 17 concepts, they'll teach their kids and their kids will teach their kids. And so you don't need a Rockefeller trust. All you need is the knowledge and the kids will be, you know, financially, you know, free. You know, they'll be able to build their own financial freedom. And I think the Rockefellers have so many cool stories about how they taught their kids. And one is I think that the family with the longest tenured, you know, ability to kind of preserve that wealth over time.

47:16And I read in it might have been Titan. Is that the book you read? That's the book. What a book that was. Right. It's incredible. And I think in that book, it's there's a part of it. I remember that he was kind of talking through where the younger kids would get an allowance. And sometimes they'd get this allowance. And if they did not report back what they actually spent their money on, they did not get their allowance the next week. They actually had to set like basically a mini budget, even when they were younger. And so I remember kind of thinking through that. And I have a seven-year-old, a four-year-old, and a seven-month-old right now.

47:44And I start them at age two and three. I get three jars. And I said, save, invest, and give are the three jars. And we label them. And so each time they start to earn the amount, whatever age they are, that's how much they'll earn an allowance. We have all these like different things that they do outside of their normal chores. And so they'll get, you know, a little bit of money coming in and they have to kind of budget that money out in these jars. And this is why I truly believe in the stage thing that you're talking about here, because when they're younger, you can kind of teach them in that stage.

48:08And then as they get a little bit older, you teach them more and more and more and start to trickle that in, you know, and as it's just a very interesting thing. It's so incredibly important for any parents listening out there to teach your kids how to handle money. First, you have to understand how to handle money, but then you need to teach them how to manage money properly because that is a multi-generational lesson that you can teach them, which is what Tom is talking about here because I think it's just so incredibly powerful what you can do there. And it's really just making sure that they aren't dependent on you as they become adults because as time goes on, it is one of those things that they need to be self-sufficient in order to really get a head start in life.

48:41And I think it's just so incredibly powerful. So is there something – if someone's listening to this, they're like, this is amazing. I want to start developing some of these habits. Are there two or three habits that you would recommend for them to kind of focus on right away if they are starting from ground zero that you think that most millionaires have had the biggest impact with? Yeah. The number one thing I would tell them, and it doesn't involve money, is to start building relationships with other successful people. In other words, evaluate your inner circle. Who's in your inner circle? How many of them are successful?

49:15Is it one? Is it two? Typically, it's one or two. And then I would say to them, you want an inner circle where you got five people who are successful. So have an inner circle with five people who are successful. And the reason is, Andrew, is if you start spending time with those five successful people, you're going to learn things from them. They're going to teach you through their habits. They're going to drop little nuggets here and there. And they say, well, we did this and we did that. And this is how we were able to save for our house. And this is how we save money to reduce our spending so that we can save for the house.

49:53And if you're a saver investor, if you have that saver investor mindset, and that's a personality trait, that's typically somebody who's, you don't have to be extroverted. You're not typically introverted. You're just an average person, but you're kind of conservative. You don't like spending money. You have this fear, actually, of being poor. So, you know, you save like crazy. If you have that kind of personality trait where you're not going to take these significant risks like entrepreneurs and big company climbers do, then surround yourself with frugal people. Have the people in your inner circle.

50:23If you're going to pursue the saver investor path, have those people in your inner circle be saver investors. If you're going to pursue the entrepreneur path, have five people in your inner circle that are entrepreneurs. If you're going to be the virtuoso or the big company climber path, have five people that are pursuing those paths because you're going to learn from them. They're going to be almost like mentors. And what I found in my research is the fast track to wealth is mentorship. If you can find somebody that can teach you what to do and what not to do, within 12 years, you will become wealthy.

50:57If you find a mentor who's successful, they'll teach you the habits, they'll teach you the thinking, they'll teach you the shortcuts, they'll tell you what to do and what not to do, which saves an enormous amount of time. And in 12 short years, you will actually have some wealth. And so that's, I'll leave it there. That's the kind of summarizes everything there. For sure. And I think building up that network is just so important. Like Tom said, at least having that five. And if you are in like an area where you say to yourself, okay, I don't have five friends who are trying to be on the entrepreneur path like I am.

51:30What I would even consider doing is thinking through, okay, is there a way for me to, you know, start an entrepreneur club or something like that in your local area, where maybe you just meet at a coffee shop once a month with this group. And you can start to, you know, share business ideas. And that is going to start to develop some of these relationships that I think can really, really help you over time. If you're looking at this and you're just saying, I don't even know where to start. Well, you can start by, hey, in your neighborhood, are there any entrepreneurs? Put it in your neighborhood Facebook group or whatever else.

51:55And just kind of get that ball rolling so that you can meet other people that are having the same goals and ambitions as you are so that you can share ideas. And I think it's just so important for most people. Now, we've talked about all the rich habits that people should be doing. Are there any habits that you have seen from people that they should be avoiding at all costs if they want to be able to build wealth? Yeah. So there's, you know, one of my books is rich habits, poor habits, specifically for that reason, because, you know, the media and everybody likes to focus on, you know, how do you build wealth?

52:25Nobody wants to talk about what not to do. And one of the things that I found in my research is that poor people have a habit. It's a really bad habit of gossiping, and it's always negative gossip. They also have a habit of saying whatever thought they have, it comes immediately out of their mouth. Rich people don't do that, or self-made millionaires don't do that. They vet every word that before comes out of their mouth because they want to build relationships, whereas poor people aren't focused on building relationships. They're just pissed off at life. And so, you know, they're not looking to build relationships.

53:00So they say what's on their mind. And my Aunt Peg had this bad habit and she used to brag about it. And I used to think it was, you know, a good habit. You know, I always say what's on my mind. But when my Aunt Peg died, the only people, you know, at the wake in the funeral were family and a handful of our neighbors, right? She didn't have any friends because she pissed everybody off because she said what was on her mind. You can't do that kind of stuff. And the other thing is the poor people, I'm talking about lower middle class poor people, because lower middle class is still poverty because you're living paycheck to paycheck.

53:35They have this nasty habit of seeing someone has something that they desire and they must have it, even if it means going into debt. I'll give you an example. I was doing a speaking gig and at the end of the speaking gig, this IRS agent came up to me. She told me that she had just leased a BMW and it was costing her$650,$700 a month. And IRS agents don't make a lot of money. And so I said, why did you do that? I don't understand your thinking there. And she said, well, my friend who I live with, she had a girlfriend, a roommate. She worked for like Goldman Sachs or something like that. And I think her roommate bought a BMW.

54:18and so she couldn't buy a BMW so because she didn't have the money for the down payment so she leased it and she said I just got caught up I just wanted to have what she had and I'm with her every day and I see her driving around in the BMW and you know everybody thinks how successful she is I just wanted some of that praise and you know I said oh but I so I helped her uh get out of it because I'm a CPA and I helped her get out of her lease we worked on that together and she got out of release and ended up getting like the same car that I have, a Hyundai Elantra or something like that. And so, you know, it's that kind of stuff.

54:52You see what other people have and it's really bad with Facebook and with, you know, TikTok and all these social media sites. You see people, you know, hey, look at me. I have a cocktail and they're on the beach. And the next thing you know, you're on the beach with a cocktail and$5 ,000 on your credit card. You know, that's just, that's a bad habit. And I also found that the poor people, they just did not have any growth habits. They didn't read to learn. They contributed to nonprofits, you know, charities, but they weren't involved in a lot of nonprofits. I saw that more with the middle class and upper middle class, in addition to the wealthy people, they got more involved in, but the poor people, the lower middle class people, they just, they didn't have the time.

55:35And the reason, one of the things I want address here is they just don't have bandwidth, mental bandwidth, because they are literally just trying to survive. And they're trying to figure out how to pay this bill, how to pay that bill. So they don't have the bandwidth. So I would say to them, look, you're struggling with bandwidth issues. The only way to get some clarity and to be able to think your way out of this mess that you're in is you've got to sit down for 15 minutes a day in the morning before anything starts and silence and just think in silence and think about what you want in life, how you want your life to change.

56:14Just that's 15 minutes is for you to dream and fantasize and pretend that you're going to have this amazing life. You need that 15 minutes. It's like putting a new battery in your brain. And if you're struggling with bandwidth, you're never going to be able to think your way out of your problems. You have to isolate time every day and think clearly. And the only way to do that is to stop thinking about all your problems. 15 minutes a day is all it takes. Gain some clarity and your subconscious will start giving you, feeding you with information on how to solve your problems. Trust me, the brain is an amazing device.

56:53It's a sender and a receiver. You'll start getting ideas from all throughout the universe, from other people around you. They'll be filling your head with ideas on how to solve your financial problems. Absolutely. And I think that personal growth piece is just so important, especially if you're listening to this and you're just starting off or you are someone out there who is just like, I cannot get ahead ever. It's investing in yourself and that personal growth is just going to absolutely change. And it's going to jumpstart your path to becoming a millionaire or becoming wealthy. And I think that is just one of the big things overall.

57:21So I want to shift gears here really quick to some of the rapid fire questions we love to ask our guests, Tom, because I think you'd have some really interesting insights on some of these. So if you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be? Well, I would tell myself two things. One is start writing now and focus on school to get better grades. I was always a B student. I did what I had to do to get a B. I just was sports addict. I just wanted to play basketball, baseball, tennis, every sport you can imagine, swimming. I did everything. I would say, you know, focus on your grades, not so much on your sports and start writing now, because I the thing with young people is you don't know what your innate talents are until, you know, maybe you find them later in life.

58:02But I discovered that I had this innate ability to write. I just have it. It's a talent. And I discovered that at age 48 years old. I wish I knew that at 18. I love that. What is your best money advice you've ever received? Same house, same spouse, same car. This really applies to the saver investors, which happen to make up about 51 % of my self-made millionaires. That advice, if you follow that advice, and by same car, I don't mean obviously not the same car. I mean drive your car, own it, and drive it until – and take great care of it. Change the serpentine belt. Change the timing belt. Change the oil all the time.

58:40You know, do all the things that you have to do to keep your car running and you'll get 10, 12, 13 years out of your car. So same house, same spouse and same car. A hundred percent agree. We have a car buying rule and it's called the 24, 12, 10 rule. But that last number, that 10, it stands for you need to drive your car for 10 years or longer if you want to actually maximize the value and all that stuff. So I love that. How do you plan to level up your finances this year? So I have a new book coming out in August in China. It's Rich Habits Wealth Academy. It's going, it's really, I was thinking about it being a course and I was going to charge whatever for the course, but I got somebody in China, my books, I've sold so many books in China, so far more books than I've sold in every other country.

59:27So they were really, they wanted a book and I said, I got one for you, but it's a course and I modified it. So that's coming out in August. China has always been really kind to me. So I don't know. I have no expectations on any of my books, never. But I've had success in China. So that's my, I'm going to level up a little bit with that book. That's a big, important book. Awesome. And then what does wealth mean to you? Oh, freedom. It means freedom. Freedom of time and freedom from worry, financial worry. I love it. So Tom, thank you so much for being here. This is absolutely incredible. And I think, you know, I know I learned so much and I know our listeners are going to love this as well.

1:00:04Where can people learn more about you, your books, and everything else you have coming out? Yeah, just go on richhabits.net. I write almost every day. So I have an article that comes out. It's always based on my research. I'm continuing to do my research. I don't stop. I do it about an hour and a half every day of research. So I come out with these articles. And sometimes my media interviews I'll throw on there. But you can subscribe. There's no cost. And we don't sell you your name or anything like that. I really don't give a crap about that stuff. So, yeah, you'll get an email from me every day that says this is one of my articles and you can read it or not read it, whatever.

1:00:41Awesome. And we'll link that up down in the show notes below as well. Tom, thank you so much again for being on here. We truly appreciate it. Thank you, Andrew. It was great interview. Thank you.