I am focused on savers today. I am talking about the person who feels guilty paying bills, buying clothes, going on vacation, going to dinner, or doing anything else that spends money. Newsflash, we have money to spend it. Why else would we work to earn money?
In today’s episode, I am going to go over why we need to break the scarcity mindset and not worry about spending money the right way as a good steward.
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But I’m going to go even a little bit deeper with the episodes. I wanted to spend more time at Park on this because I’ll tell you, and that’s a key thing too, that if you have to spend money on anything, and even if the hard thing is that you feel like every time you take a vacation in the back of your mind, you’re like, you know what?
Chris Miles was able to retire twice by the time he was 39 years old. But he’s not content to just enjoy his own financial freedom and peace of mind. Chris wants you to have your own ripple effect so you can live free today. He’s not the financial advisor you expected. He’s the anti Financianal advisor you deserve. He’s jumping behind the mic right now, ready to make waves. Here’s Chris Miles.
Hello my fellow Ripples. This is Chris Miles, your cashflow expert, an anti financianal advisor. Welcome to show for you those that work so hard for your money. You want your money to start working harder for you today. You want to become work optional where you work because you want to, not because you have to. You don’t want to wait 30 or 40 years because you want to be free today to do what you love, living with those that you love. And most importantly, guys, I know you just don’t want to get rich, but you want to live a truly rich life where you not only get wealthy, but you can also bless the lives of those around you by creating a ripple effect. Thank you for tuning in today. Thank you for joining our show. Hey, if you haven’t done so already, I’m going to recommend this.
Go check our website, money ripples.com. Not only do we have great information on there, but if you’re wondering how much passive income you could create in your situation today, go check that passive income calculator out. Now, if it’s over $15,000 after you fill it out completely, if it’s over 15,000, you need to be reaching out to us to see how you can make that a reality. So go check that out now. Alright, so last week we were talking about spender, saver steward. We were talking about what is it that these different money mindsets happen have because it’s principles that govern first, it’s principles first, strategy second. If you can master the principles that go along with this and the mindset that goes with this, the strategies actually become a lot easier to implement for you. And this is true for all my clients. Listen right now.
Now I know they’ve gotten this because we have our Wealth Accelerator Academy that teaches a lot of this stuff, but I’m going to go even a little bit deeper with this episodes. I want to spend more time at park on this because I’ll tell you, every time our clients come into town where we do our once a year, a mastermind group where we get together live every time we get stuck on this part, the mindset piece, because financial freedom is never possible if you can’t get free up here and it doesn’t matter if you get free on your pocketbook, if you can’t get free here and in here, that’s where it starts. So the way to do that is you got to be abundant minded. Now, I talked about spender saver, steward. Let me pull up that illustration for you again. Okay, so I showed the wealth curve right in the middle.
You got the stewardship. Those are stewards, wise stewards, they tend to have all the money. Spenders don’t have as much, but savers don’t either. Now, if I were to draw this exact, I know this is like a perfect bell curve, it might be possible that the saver might have a little bit more on their side. So the curve might come up a little bit higher, but not much because there are very high producing income, high income spenders, just like there’s low income spenders, but there’s also low income savers along with high income savers. SO’S both in both categories. But the one thing I’ve noticed that savers, although they might have a little bit more net worth, they do not have income. And so I want to focus on you if you’re the saver today. Now, I asked this question last week and this question will apply to you as well.
Is this, if 250,000 was dropped on your lap today, today, what would you do with that money? And that’s just 250,000. You didn’t work for it. It just showed up in your life. Maybe you inherited it from a rich uncle you didn’t know about or whatever it might be, or a rich aunt. It might’ve come from them, but 250 fell in your lap today. What would you do with that money? And if you didn’t answer that question last week when we did this show, answer it now, what would you do with that money? Think about it really hard and be honest with yourself. What would you really do if 250,000 for free fell in your lap? You won a game show and that’s what you got. Now, if you’re a spender, you probably would find a way to spend it or you would probably give it away.
I talked about being like that money monk where you just feel like, Hey, spiritually, I can’t have this money so I’m going to give it to somebody else. You might donate it, right? Again, there’s nothing wrong with donating money. It’s when you try to get rid of it, you don’t want it in your life. That’s where there’s a spender as well. It could also be a trauma response to a child. Now, on the saver, what you’re going to say most likely on the answer to this question is, I’m going to save it. But there’s varying different degrees of how you might save it. Some of you might just save it, and here’s the energy behind the saving is that you don’t want to lose it. You’re afraid to lose it. Now, you might put in the stock market not because it’s safe, but you put it maybe with a financial advisor because you think that’s the best way to go.
You’re a comfortable saver. You’re not a conservative investor. I like to say you’re not a conservative investor. You’re a comfortable saver because you want to put it in places where you feel comfortable, that feel good, or you might pay off debt with it. If you say you want to pay off debt, you’ll say that if you want to pay off any bills, that’s what a saver would say. They would want to pay off bills, pay off debt. They would just save it, pack it away, and for a rainy day, whatever it might be, or they might try to put it with their financial advisor, what the wise people do. You would do those kind of things. That is what a saver does. Now remember, a saver is still in scarcity. A saver can never be free because a saver is always afraid of possibly losing money.
So as a result, they can never save enough and they can never pay off debt fast enough. Even when they’re debt free, then they’re right back to not saving enough. Then even after they save a lot, then they’ll say, well, I’m not making enough income. It’s just never enough. A scarcity mindset will never allow you to be free. If you’re always feeling like it’s never enough a saver, that’s the problem. They might have a number in mind, but once they get there, it doesn’t feel right because it’s not about the money, it’s not about the number. It’s about how you feel in that situation. And especially if you’re not a wise steward, and especially if you’re like a typical saver, if you put it in the 4 0 1 Ks and IRAs because that’s what you’re taught that good boys and little girls should always do, and you’ve got Dave Ramsey’s and Susie Orman’s and David Box and even Ramit sets and people like that saying, you should just stuff your money into these Roth IRAs and 4 0 1 Ks and get your little free match.
Even though the funds in those four only case suck, you’re still going to do it anyways and hopefully someday it’s going to work out for you. And here’s the other thing. You might think that your way to wealth is by not spending any money. As I keep increasing my income, I’ll keep my expenses the same, regardless if inflation’s fighting you against that, that it’s not even logical to do it that way, but still you’re going to keep that lifestyle the same. You’re never going to increase your lifestyle. You are going to turn off the AC in the summer, turn off off the heat in the winter, just save some. How do I know? Because I was that guy, right? I was the guy as a financial advisor trying to nickel and dime and save. I drove a credit little Ford escort as a financial advisor.
Somebody even asked me, they’re like, were you the typical advisor driving a Mercedes or A BMW? I was like, well, my dream was to drive through the Lexus. That was my dream because that’s what all the other financial advisors drove if they were very successful and even then they bought at a discount because they were savers too. And so anytime you spend money, it’s crippling your way towards wealth. And that’s a key thing too, that if you have to spend money on anything, and even if you might not have any savings, you actually could be a saver because if you feel horrible that you’re just paycheck to paycheck and you wish you could save, you’re still a saver If you’re paycheck to paycheck. Now, if you’re paycheck to paycheck and you wish you could spend more money and have more vacation stuff, then you might be a spender.
Might be. But even savers do want vacations from time to time too. So that’s not always the thing, right? But if you’re always looking to get that new Nike, your new Nike Kicks or whatever might be you might be a spender, but a saver. Again, even if you’re paycheck to paycheck, you might not save anything, but if you feel guilty about not saving, if you feel guilty about paying bills, I literally had a guy tell me, he says, Chris, I’m a spender. Well, how do you know? Because I have to pay bills. I said, man, you’re not a spender. In fact, you’re not even a saver. You are a hoarder. You’re so much of a hoarder. You’re in so much scarcity that even spending a dime on anything is stressful to you. It’s like a bad thing. Even though the truth is you’re always going to be spending money.
In fact, even if you die with money, guess what? It gets spent. It goes to somebody else. You never take it with you. So what’s the purpose? What’s the whole purpose of trying to hoard all this money? For what? And see, this is the problem, and I’ve already mentioned this, like savers, they think they’re a minority. You’re not. You are actually the majority of people in America today. The majority of Americans are savers. Now, it’s not a ton over 50% in my opinion. I would not be surprised if I would put the savers somewhere in the ballpark, about 60%, maybe higher than that, but I would say right around 60%, give or take 55 to 60% more than the spenders. Less than the stewards. Why? Because like I just mentioned in the last episode, 52% of people that are eligible to put money in a 401k, do they actually put money in a 401k?
If you’re saving any money, you’re pretty much a saver. Spenders don’t put money there. They will spend it, I guarantee it. Heck, they have credit card bills. They’ll spend money on those credit card bills to try to pay them off if they have to. There’s people that are responsible savers that won’t save in a 401k because maybe they are paying off their student loans or certain types of debts first before they put the money in the 401k. Maybe they’re like me and they know that 401k is a big freaking joke and that IRAs and 4 0 1 Ks are just delaying your taxes to a future date, which you’re probably going to tax more anyways in a higher tax bracket because we’re going more in debt as a country. So why would I trust the government to give me a tax break down the road so I wouldn’t put my money there, plus I think I could do better and other things like real estate and get the tax benefits from that.
That’s actually a true tax benefit versus the fake tax benefits from 4 0 1 Ks and IRAs. So those kinds of things. There’s people like us that have that propensity to save, but don’t save in those places. But 52% of people do that have 401k options. Guys, that means the majority of you are savers. And I know a lot of you listening to this show have been raised as savers. Even if you might’ve become a steward more recently, you’re more likely a saver. Even if you’re learning and becoming wiser, even if you read Rich Dad, poor Dad, you’re probably still a saver because that is what is taught everywhere. That is like the gold medal for financial advising is to be the saver. Brainlessly set it and forget it. Put it away. Do it systematically every single month. Put your money away. Just keep pumping and pumping and pumping and pumping.
Get rid of all that debt. You should not have debt, and even though it’s okay to have some debt paid off as fast as you can, because that’s what’s wise, and don’t worry because someday you’re going to be the richest person in your retirement home with the nice bright, shiny gold plated wheelchair wheels as you’re reeling around because you finally had enough money to retire at that point when you can’t even enjoy your money anymore. Come on. Let’s be honest guys. You can’t fit your wheelchair in a back of a Lamborghini, okay? You’re not going to get rich doing that, but that’s what you’ve been taught to believe, and many of you guys have been amazing at this. In fact, many of you that reach out to us have been like the poster child, Dave Ramsey student, right? You’ve actually gotten debt free. Some of you even paid off your house like my dad did, and then yet it wasn’t enough.
He didn’t have the income coming in to pay for his other bills because believe it or not, did you know that you actually have bills outside of your debt payments? I know this is shocker, but if you listen to Dave Ramsey enough, you’ll realize that pretty much all your bills, a hundred percent of your bills are always got to be debt. So once you pay off your debt, you’re financially free. Now you can scream freedom to the top of your lungs, but that’s not the case. You still have to survive. You still have to eat food. You still have to buy toilet paper. Even when there’s a shortage of it, you still have to buy it. You still got to go and figure out how to commute. And if you ever want to see your kids or grandkids again, you can’t always expect them to come to you unless you’re too poor and too cheap to do it.
You’re too much of a saver. You’re a hoarder. Then you make them drive to you because you got to come visit grandma and grandpa. That’s the only way to do it, right? Go fuck the heck with you going and enjoying your own life. Sit on your front porch and drink that country time lemonade because of on sale, half off because it’s just past pull date. That’s what you’ve been doing as a hoarder or a saver. So that’s not what we want. We don’t want to live that kind of life of scarcity. That is scarcity. There’s no freedom in that, right? And I know you may not be that extreme. I’m trying to be a little humorous with this just to keep you engaged, I guess, but badly. It’s actually not too far from the truth. For several people, I’ve met these people. I was this person, so I know how it goes.
I was the one that turned off the heat in the winter and turned off the AC in the summer just to save a few bucks in my utility bill because every dollar I spent was one less dollar that I could save and make it work for me right now, I’ll tell you, if I had to choose spender or saver, yes, a saver, you’re going to be farther ahead when it comes to creating passive income because you’ll actually have money to create passive income. So that’s good. The problem is, is that you’ve been brainwashed to believe that you cannot use money that you think of. Money is not meant to be used. It’s meant to be stored away, hoarded away just like a squirrel, which has a hoard for the wintertime, and you just hope that you’ll have enough nuts in retirement that it won’t run out by the time your years run out, by the time your winter years are done.
You want to make sure you have enough money to last that long. The thing is, if you actually had that stewardship mentality, you would realize that’s not a hard thing to do. But if you’re always stuck in this place that you can never have enough, you have to keep saving. You got to do it for longer. You got to delay all of your gratification. You’ll take that trip later when your kids are moved down, they have their own busy lives and they don’t have enough time for you, and then you’re singing cats in the cradle and crying your eyes out because you realize that the song was about you, that you had delayed your life forever in hopes that you would finally financially be free only to realize that it just wasn’t enough, because you cannot save your way to wealth. No one gets on the lifestyles.
Rich and famous gets on there and says, yes, this is how I bought this mansion. I bought it because I saved my 401k for the last 50 years, and I paid off a couple hundred thousand bucks. It was awesome. You’re not going to do that. It just doesn’t happen. Real wealth isn’t created from saving it. Now, I’m not saying saving’s bad. It’s a good habit to have. In fact, the good thing about a saver is that savers are actually willing to think about their money. They want to be responsible with their money, and that’s why they have money in the first place. So don’t get rid of that. The thing is, you can learn a little bit from the spender is at least the spenders are willing to use money because they realize that, hey, this life is temporary. It’s fleeting. If I die, somebody else gets it, so I might as well use it myself.
You could use a little bit more of that in your life. You could say, you know what? I worked hard for this fricking money. I deserve this. This is something that I worked for my kids. They could figure out their own lives I had to do, which is true. They could figure out their own freaking lives. They can create their own wealth if you teach ’em the right ways, not just teach ’em to save. And so that’s the big thing I want you to focus on is really understand that you don’t want to be on that opposite end of the extreme. You don’t want to be over there. I’ve showed you before, you don’t want to be on the saver side where you have some money, but it’s just not enough. You never save your way to wealth or never save your way to freedom.
There is no freedom of there. And especially if you have that attitude of scarcity, and remember I mentioned being a hoarder is the extreme of being a saver. Savers. There’re savers that are just plain old savers, but there’s hoarders that really get extreme at this, right? They do not like spending money, like I mentioned. They’re the people that buy everything on sale that will do everything. They’ll even make other people pay for them. They get pretty darn cheap. Many people would say, it’s kind of like my dad. He’s like, no, I’m not cheap. I’m frugal. And everybody else said, Nope, dad, you’re cheap. It’s like that. And so you don’t want to be that far over that point where you just don’t enjoy life. Now, I know some of you guys will still enjoy life. I meet you all the time. I mean, most of you are savers that come reach out to us because you actually have money to do something with, right?
So we know this, and it’s not like you guys don’t take vacations that the hard thing is that you feel like every time you take a vacation in the back of your mind, you’re like, you know what? That was great, but that just means that I’m going to have to work a little bit longer or a little bit harder. I’m going to have to make up for that. And you can make great income, and everybody else on the outside world might think your life is amazing, but in the inside, you’re still stuck in your own rat race because you can’t stop working. In fact, you’re almost a slave to your own high income job or your high income business, but it looks great and you’ve got your kids in all their activities and everything else. And again, you feel guilty about spending money on those activities, but you do it because you love them.
And I get that you do it, but again, you still feel like you can’t stop. You’re stuck in that rat race. I don’t want you guys there. I want you out of that. And you definitely need to break free of that, need that necessity to have to hoard and control your money only to sit on it and never enjoy it, potentially never enjoy it, or to do the thing in retirement where you’re only supposed to pull off 3% a year. And if you’re trying to retire when you’re young, if you’re lucky enough to save that much, you got to live on no more than 2% a year because you got to live longer. You got to make that money last longer. So you’re trying to let that money last a long time, and especially if you have it in the stock market because you’re gambling your money away.
You’re not a conservative investor. You’re comfortable saver gambling your money in high risk mutual funds and things like that because they’re high risk mediocre returns. You’re still doing the same old crap because every advisor, everybody in the media is supporting you, telling you you’re doing the right thing. But deep down, there’s something missing, right? There’s something wrong, don’t you? I know I did, and I’m just sure, and I know a lot of you have told me the same thing. You’re like, yeah, it feels like it’s just not quite right. It’s just not enough. By the way, I would challenge you on this. If you think Dave Ramsey is a saver, although he teaches it, he might be a saver. He might have some scarcity, but he actually implements some of those stewardship principles I’m going to talk about in this next episode next week, where funny enough, if he actually did the very things that he did to create wealth, you would realize the advice he’d given is crap.
You realize it’s not about just being debt-free. In fact, stewards don’t fear debt, but they also don’t abuse it either. So we’re going to talk about that next week is really how can you do it? But again, if you’re a saver right now, remember, your action right now is to become a little bit more like the spender. Not to blow it, but to be willing to at least let your money do something, get it to work for you, because that’s the one thing you forgot to do, is get your money to work harder for you. And no, that’s not in mutual funds. It’s not in 4 0 1 Ks. That’s not how you do it. Or are ways to get your money working harder for you today? And that’s why being a wise steward. So guys, focus on this. Focus on your mindset. What caused you to even be this way in the first place? Just like I had a client where because her dad went bankrupt, so often, she became the ultra hoarding saver because she never ever wanted to lose money again because that affected her as a child. Find out where that comes from. Were you taught that? Were you trained it that way? Find ways to break free of it, and then you could become a wise steward, which we’ll talk about next week. Make it wonderful. Prosperous week, guys.