Are people with more money saved for retirement happier?
Are they happy simply because they have money or is there something else involved?
Optimism is the key to life success. No, really, I fully believe this. The happier someone is, the more you pay attention to detail and actually care about savings, having a good life, and building something great.
Today I am going over 4 mindset principles that will set you up for financial success.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, my fellow Ripples. This is Chris Miles, your cashflow expert and anti financianal advisor.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
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 non-financial advisor you deserve. He’s jumping behind the mic right now, ready to make waves. Here’s Chris Miles.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Won’t there show that’s for you? Those of you that work so hard for your money and you’re now ready for your money to start working harder for you today, you want that freedom and cashflow right now, not 30 or 40 years from now if you’re even alive to enjoy it, but you want that life today so you can live that life that you love with those that you love. But it’s not just about getting rich because as you’re blessed financially and as you prosper financially, you have a greater capacity to bless the lives of those around you, and that is what it means to be a riper. Thank you so much for allowing me to create a ripple effect in your lives today. Thank you for tuning in. You’ve been binging, you’ve been sharing, and you’ve been helping this podcast become in the top 1% of all podcasts worldwide.
(01:13)
That is because of you. Thank you so much for tuning in and making this special because I cannot create this ripple effect without you. As a reminder, if you haven’t done so already, go to money ripples.com, check out the additional resources we have there, including infinite banking and how you can actually get that money to pay you twice. Key concept, especially if you’re looking to really get started into investing. Check out that concept. Check out that today. So I want to talk about something that actually came up in the news that, funny enough, it actually supports what I’ve been talking about for now going on nearly well, okay, 10 years for this show, but let’s be honest, I’ve been teaching this stuff for now in nearly 20 years because it’s something that I’ve learned myself that I didn’t even know as a financial advisor, but is key for you to be able to become wealthy and prosperous now, and they even have more data to back it up.
(02:01)
Okay, so the title of this article is The Right Retirement State of Mind Can Boost Your Savings Analysis Fines. So it’s telling people, watch. Just check this out. Okay? Now as you go into this, it actually talks about this report now. It says, making decisions about retirement savings can feel monumental. But what if someone told you that money aside, your mindset could be the magic elixir? Ooh, it sounds mysterious. It says in a new report that Goldman Sachs asset Management and Syntonic, I would guess is how you pronounce it, a bearable science research firm. They surveyed 52 61 US workers, so over 5,000 workers and retirees and teased out four psychological factors that can close the gaps between your retirement savings goals and your future reality. Here’s what they found and notice it’s not just a strategy. It’s actually more mindset. They said one, people that are highly optimistic, two forward looking, three with financial high financial literacy, and then four who focus more on rewards than risks.
(02:58)
These people tend to have higher retirement savings than those on the opposite end of the spectrum, according to the research. Now it does talk about this. It says in reality, only 10% of those people surveyed actually had all four hack factors here, right? But they said, most people, 85% possess a blend of these traits is what the research found. So the people that are investing and saving better have these blend of traits, so they find a high correlation here. It says, investing in saving psychology is important to understand because it helps explain why people make certain financial decisions. It says, according to this report, the bright-eyed glass, half full types generally have a higher level of savings and are more likely to have their savings on track and have a personalized financial plan for retirement. Now, you got to ask yourself, okay, why? Because my first response to this was when I heard this, I said, well, is that just because they have more money and that’s why they’re more optimistic?
(03:49)
That’s why they see it as glass half full. Is that really the case? Well, let’s keep going here and let’s find out. Alright, they said, meanwhile, here’s what’s interesting. So they review their savings at least annually. Something that I teach you guys to do is review this on a regular basis. They have adequate emergency savings and they avoid retirement cash outs when they change jobs. So they’re not cash out their 401k when they move jobs. Although many of our clients see that as a huge opportunity to cash out the 401k and use it somewhere else. Here’s one thing that’s interesting. It says, meanwhile, they have no problem asking for help with their finances. So these people, although they’re knowledgeable, they still ask for help. They still want guidance and direction. Isn’t that interesting? Now, it does continue to say this. Now talking about those people that are more upbeat but are more optimistic, check this out.
(04:36)
So what they’ve found is people that have a plan, 78% of them have high optimism compared to those that are 42% with low optimism. So get this. It’s not just optimistic people that have plans, even pessimistic people, people that don’t have much hope still have a plan, nearly half of them do. But notice that there’s a bigger correlation that those are highly optimistic. Also have a plan. It even says a personalized retirement plan. It means of course, they’re meeting with somebody like a financial advisor. Okay, moving on. Now, it also says this too. It says 61% with high optimism also have higher retirement savings balance compared to those with 39%. Now, I would challenge this and say, well, is that just because they have more money? But remember, there’s people still with money that 42% of them have low optimism. So it’s not just that there must be something here.
(05:23)
There must be something with this optimism thing that’s got to make a difference somehow, and they did say this. They said, really this is the number one factor that really help people, these raging optimists, they’re actively managing their finances because let’s be honest, the people that actually have higher optimism, well, they tend to want to look at their money. Here’s what I would interpret this as being. This comes really to the law of attention. The law of attention says this is whatever you put your attention towards expounds and grows, it always improves. It’s like anything you measure will improve, right? If you measure your weight, you’re likely to start finding ways to lose weight. Unless you’re focusing on you just gaining weight, you put your focus there, then you’re going to gain weight. But if you start to really manage and start to watch your weight instead of ignore it, you’re probably going to keep your weight under better control, right?
(06:12)
Same thing. If you’re watching what you’re eating, you’re recording it, you’re going to be more aware of what you’re eating. There’s no difference here. Whatever you put your attention towards will get better. Whatever you ignore gets worse. It’s just like if you ignore your muscles, they will atrophy. You ignore your teeth, they’ll fall out of your head. You ignore your family, they’re going to be gone. They won’t be around you anymore. It’s no different. When you put attention towards those things, you get more of those things. That’s the key thing here is that now for you to want to pay attention to those things, you have to have an optimistic attitude. You got to be able to see that there’s some hope. Now that goes into this next section. It says, don’t stop believing. Right? I got the journey song stuck in my head. Now it does say this, those who wholeheartedly expect things to turn out well and believe they will have the ability to make good things happen are more likely to view the retirement savings as on track or ahead of schedule, 83% versus 41%.
(07:02)
Now, this right here, I’ll say this number, this one I question because many people will say, I’m on track or I’m on schedule. Well, because they’re highly optimistic, they could be naive. They could actually think they’re on track. But if they really looked at reality realized, oh, maybe I’m not so much, especially when you start doing the numbers. I see this all the time with savers, because we get a lot of these kind of clients that are more optimistic, we tend to attract more optimistic people, pessimists, cynical people, people that are jerks just don’t hire us. Plus they probably don’t believe it’ll work anyways because they’re so pessimistic. But those are optimistic often are the ones that are hiring us to have us help them with their plan and create a game plan for passive income versus just accumulation. But what we tend to find is one of the things we have to blow up kind of that island you have to blow up so to speak, is you got to blow up the fact that what they’re doing in retirement is never going to be enough because it just doesn’t produce the good enough return with the risk that you’re taking to be able to allow you to have enough cashflow coming in.
(07:59)
This is why we focus on passive income. If you have a million dollars, you finally save up, but you have to live on 30%. That’s 30,000 a year. What if that same million dollars produces anywhere from 80 to a hundred thousand a year? That’s a very different story, isn’t it? Well, actually, in truth, it’s probably going to produce at least 80 to a hundred thousand a year if not even higher than that, and so it’s a big difference of how you get your money working harder for you. So yes, you could be naive and thinking that you’re on track, but then when you get to the point where of no return where it’s too late, you might find out now you’re freaking out, which is what other surveys have taught us, as I’ve talked about in other podcasts. So they say that forward thinkers like optimists are much more likely to maintain emergency savings and adjust their portfolios versus those that just live for today.
(08:40)
They say those that don’t really do live for today, as they say, those without the future tuned inner compass, they tend to cash out the retirement plans when they change jobs, and they’re also more likely to say that credit card debt and monthly expenses interfere with the retirement savings. Now, again, if you live for today, you tend to not plan for tomorrow. So I can see that is important, right? Is that you had to be future thinking. I still think it’s important to address today, but also address the future too. Now, they say the third thing, knowledge is empowering and they spend a lot of time on this financial literacy aspect, but they can talk about the basic financial concepts such as compound interest, inflation, diversification are important. I would argue that yes, some of those things are important, maybe not as important as these people say, but it is important.
(09:23)
Now, one thing that they talk about here I think is very important or is very good, so they got this one person who’s a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy, and this is Anna Maria Ardi. She says, we don’t learn by just absorbing and looking at the world around us. Although I’d say that’s important too, but she does say that this has to be formal education starting as early as possible. I think actually it should start when the tooth fairy comes and you get the money, and so she talks about how many people don’t even know what an interest rate is and cannot even do a 2% calculation in the context of interest rates. She said, this level of knowledge is just as important today as reading and writing. If you don’t empower people with basic knowledge, you can empower people to be financially secure.
(10:04)
I agree with this completely. Having that financial knowledge is so important. You need to be able to really understand some basic things. Now, is it all the things like rule 72? No. A lot of those things really don’t matter that much. What does matter is how this can be applied in your life. How can you actually make it work to generate real results? That’s a big thing we focus on, not just with the show, but even in our company, we’re always about how do we get actual results that you see, tangible results, actual cashflow that you’re receiving, right? Passive income, because you can theorize about what the future might bring, but let’s be honest, one, you don’t know what the future’s going to bring. You don’t know what kind of returns you’re going to get, especially on things that are based on compounding interest over decades.
(10:49)
You don’t know what it’s going to look like in the future. And then two, the truth is we don’t know if you’re even going to be there in the future. What about today? What about now? Address both address now and address the future too. I like to say it’s good to focus on the financial future, but it’s even more important to focus on your financial presence so you create a better future. That’s what I think is really key. So I do like what she’s saying here is that this is education that should be taught in schools. The problem is they’re going to teach you the same old stuff that everybody teaches, like Dave Ramsey, right? It’s how to live on a budget. Again, important things within reason if you’re teaching this with a more abundant paradigm versus a scarcity paradigm. Anyways, article goes on talking about making it totally automatic.
(11:31)
It doesn’t really talk anything about the focusing on the rewards versus risk, anything like that, and that’s fine. It doesn’t have to go into everything here. It was a long article as it was, but I want to bring this back to the things that I’ve taught you that I think we can really round this out and give you a better idea. It’s not just being optimistic, although that’s great. It’s not just forward looking. Oh, and it’s not just having high financial literacy either, right? This is really about helping you have an abundant perspective. Tell you my own perspective from experience with this real life experience, especially coaching literally hundreds and hundreds of clients, is that I’ve noticed that you could still become financially independent, but not be financially free. Lemme repeat that. So you really get this. You can become financially independent but not become financially free.
(12:20)
How? Well, if you get to the point of financial independence, and we’ve had some clients do that, but then as they get there they say, yeah, but I’m still scared. I don’t have enough. What if I run out? What if this doesn’t work out? And again, it’s okay to ask questions. That’s not the problem here. The problem is when you start living in fear, that scarcity creeps into your life. When there’s fear, doubt, worry, impatience, any of these kinds of emotions that are happening and you don’t address these, you will constantly be in a state of scarcity. And if you’re always in a state of fear, how can you ever be free? If you’re always in a state of fear, how can you ever be free? It doesn’t matter how much money’s coming in. That’s the key. Now, you could try to turn a blind eye and you don’t have to do that.
(13:01)
You can be very real with your situation. Address the weaknesses, address the strengths of what you have and look at it. I mean, for example, me, I can shut down this business right now and be fine, but my wife and I will occasionally look at it and say, well, is there anything that we’re missing? Do we want to get more? Do we want to be able to boost that passive income even higher way above and beyond our expenses, to the point where it’s not just financial independence, but really beyond into financial freedom? But the truth is, it’s not the number. Financial freedom is really a feeling that you have. It’s getting to a point where you know that money no longer dictates whether you do or do not do something. See, financial independence helps you to pay the bills. It helps you pay all the bills that you need so that you are work optional.
(13:47)
But financial freedom is more that mindset. You’ve got to have that abundant mindset where you have faith hope, where you’re actually in a place of peace in a place. So it is real literal financial peace. You can actually be in a place where you are patient. So even right now, I’ve had to tell some clients say, listen, right now in the markets, yeah, you’re still making money, but be patient. What if we need to keep more money on the sideline? Maybe don’t invest all of your money right now today. Maybe we keep more of that in your infinite banking policies. Let it build and grow for future opportunities come up in the next year or two. Yeah, that might put you back a year or two, but is that okay? Of course, it’s right. Again, your life matters, and with how we do things anyways and the planning, it’s still way faster.
(14:35)
Even if you have to put off a few years back because maybe you have some hiccups, maybe life gets in the way, maybe you have job interruptions or something like that. And remember too, they’re focusing on a lot of the people, but there are real life situations here where you might have a parent moving in with you kids that don’t move out, and you’re having to help financially support them. You might have situations where health bills, medical bills wipe out your savings. You might have a situation where you get unemployed and it stinks, and you still have to focus on having that abundant mentality. That is what’s going to pull you through these times faster. Yes, that can interrupt your retirement planning, but I’m here to tell you that I’ve had plenty of hiccups in my own life. I’ve had situations where I was over a million dollars in debt and I’ve had to pay that money back.
(15:18)
I’ve been in situations where I got out of the rat race and then lost it again, lost all these assets. They had no money, no savings, no credit, and still had to build my way back to financial freedom. Again, that takes time. It does take effort and patience, but I’ll tell you even in the beginning, if it’s a slow go, eventually, there’s that exponential curve where it really starts to accelerate, but it requires a lot of patience. It requires a lot of faith and believing that what you’re doing is right. So let me talk more about this perspective, right? Because this is so important. In fact, I’ll tell you, nobody is required to be perfectly abundant.
(15:55)
Even when we work with clients, we never expect him to be that way. The truth is, I’m not perfectly, perfectly abundant either. I think I mentioned even just in a recent episode about when I went to buy my first house after losing everything and then buying the first house again, I had a panic attack. That scarcity crept in. Like I said before. Even then, remember I talked about being forward thinking, future thinking, right? I talked about being optimistic. It’s funny that this article actually said the very thing I just taught to you just a few weeks ago. It was just a few episodes ago, you got this very same kind of thing, but I want to make this real because the truth is you have got to focus on this, and if I’m going to give you something that will help, I will definitely say this one strategy, this one practice that I do on a daily basis has made all the difference.
(16:41)
Some people call it different things. Some people call it miracle morning. There’s been the hour of power by Tony Robbins. I’ve heard power hours as well, morning rituals, call it whatever you want. Each and every day, focus on these three key areas, these three E’s, education, enlightenment, and exercise, those three things. It doesn’t have to be in that order. By the way, I actually do ’em pretty much in the flip reverse order. So for me, when I wake up each morning, one thing I do as a habit is that I wake up and I exercise. Now, enlightenment. I can’t really just pray right out of bed because I’ll fall back asleep, so I need to get my body moving. Exercise can be whatever you want. It could be plyometrics. It could be calisthenics, right? It can be something you could do in your very own home.
(17:23)
It doesn’t have to be complex. It doesn’t have to require a gym. You could do it for free from home, just using your own body weight and a few basic things. You can do these things very easily, so do things that get your body pumping. It could be going out for a walk. It could be going out for a run. That’s what got me into marathons, right as I was doing these power hours all the time, and running is a pretty cheap sport. Let’s be honest. It’s way cheaper than bicycling because bicycling or trying to do triathlons way more expensive when you’re buying a five or $10,000 bike, isn’t it? But you slap on some shoes, get out, and you walk or you run. That’s how I got started that way. Great way to get your body moving, and especially if you’re very contemplative or you’re trying to mull over a lot of things, sometimes it’s just nice to get away, do something monotonous.
(18:07)
Those kinds of activities are great for that very purpose. Now, while I’m also doing that, often I’ll even add in a prayer of Thanksgiving, so I’ll pray about really counting my blessings, the things that I enjoy. Now, if I’m in a really intense workout, I can’t do it, but if it’s afterwards, when I’m recovering, when I’m breathing hard, that you can’t hardly talk anyways, could be a great time when your mind’s clear because all you’re focused on is trying to breathe, great time to meditate, great time to pray, great time to do a lot of those things. I’ll also read things like Bible and scriptures, and in fact, I even love if I have to, if I’m driving sometimes picking up kids, and I’m busy doing that, I might even do that while I’m driving and listen to it. So I’ll hear things like I’ll be playing like the Bible and other scriptures and things like that.
(18:52)
Even good books. That comes back to going from enlightenment now to education, good books, books that might help you with this. Hey, this podcast put me on one and a half speed. I don’t speak that fast usually. Sometimes I speak really fast. You probably can’t put me on double speed. I can put me on double speed. I know what I’m saying already. For you, one and a quarter to one and a half speed might be great, and who knows? It might make me sound a little bit pep too, but really listening and consuming these kind of podcasts help, right? Anything you can to consume and learn. By the way, Charlie Munger just recently passed away, 99 years old. He’s the partner of Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway just passed away. One of the biggest things he kept saying is, learn, learn, learn. Always be learning.
(19:34)
A, BL, I just kind of said that, but it’s true. He’s like always about learning because keep adding to it. Now, you don’t have to learn random things. It could be very intentional. If you’re in business, get books that might help you in business at whatever phase you’re in. It could be sales or marketing. Hey, it could be like an Alex or Mosey book, right? I’ve done a lot more on leadership lately and what CEOs do to try to develop and build into that leadership role as I move away from actually doing the business to now leading the business and creating a culture in the company. Those kinds of things. Those are the kinds of things you can start doing. Studying in finances, right? There’s so many great books about money and investing. Now, some of ’em I may not agree with wholeheartedly or completely, but that’s okay because there’s always something you can usually take from these, especially if they come from an abundance perspective.
(20:22)
So look for things to do. Follow other people. You don’t have to follow just money ripples. There are plenty of other podcasts out there that you can be following and learning from as well, but doing those things, exercise, education, and enlightenment. When you do those three things each morning, it gets you in a state of winning. You get to win from the very get go. Do that first. Do that as you’re starting to get going through the day, and of course it gets spread out through the morning. It doesn’t have to be done all at once focused. Sometimes I’ll pull out my scriptures while I’m eating my breakfast or I’ll listen to some good books while I’m doing that, there’s so many ways you can integrate this and do some things at the same time, so it doesn’t take a lot of extra time out of your day, but that little investment makes a massive difference in your life.
(21:06)
Huge difference. It pays huge dividends. So I know I kind of mentioned this before, but I really want to put that emphasis on this again, because having and holding that abundant perspective is everything, and I’m telling you when oftentimes many of our clients, when they start to get to that scarcity paradigm, we have to kind of help shift that perspective. This is why it’s always good to have a mentor or a coach, because if you’re in your own head, sometimes things can get pretty confusing. They, I know that happens to me a lot. Sometimes I get overwhelmed. I’ll tell you, even just a few months ago, I was feeling so overwhelmed. I felt like life has just come at me. We had the car accident. My body wasn’t performing the way I wanted it to for marathons. Then I find out there’s health problems with my dad and everything else, and I know I don’t even have the worst problems.
(21:52)
I’ve had other clients I’ve talked to recently have even bigger events happen in just the last few months. But when you have all these things happening and then you’re trying to manage family and marriage, and you name it, of course, your business, right? Or your job, there’s a lot of things happening to you, and so to get to that abundant state helps just shed away all of really the distraction, the things that really just kind of bog you down. And so I know when I get clients, sometimes the best thing we can do is not even teach a financial type of topic or a financial strategy. Sometimes they just need somebody to give a different perspective that maybe isn’t in that mire where you’re just kind of stuck in the mud a little bit. Someone to help pull you out and help show you the way to say, look what’s over here.
(22:41)
Look how much better this can be, and that man that is so useful. It’s like when I was going through my stuff, I actually reached out to a woman that specializes in seasons and things like that, seasons of life, and I was telling her, I was like, I think I’m in this season of my life. She said, no, you’re not. You’re in this season. You haven’t hit that season yet. And so what happened this course is from that moment I realized, I said, oh, I need a different perspective. Here’s where I am. Here’s what I need to focus on. And she even helped say, here’s some things to help you right now. She’s like, you need to start simplifying. And so what did I do? I called my team together, and when we worked on our fourth quarter goals, I said, Hey, let’s see what we can do is simplify everything within money ripples.
(23:22)
How do we just get down to the core of what we do best? Stop with all the trying to do all these activities and just do the activities that work best in each of our roles? So although I was saying this to them, I was really doing it for myself. I needed to simplify, but getting my whole team to do that, it’s amazing how much more productive they are, how much more productive I am with my time, and that has allowed me to calm down, get to a better place, and I’m telling you, some of the biggest opportunities I’ve ever seen in my life are happening right now. That is where you want to be too. You want to be in a place where you’re not so really just bogged down with life and bogged down with emotions and everything else that you can get yourself uplifted to be able to get to a place where you’re elevated in your mood, in your spirits, elevated in your life, so that you see the better opportunities and those opportunities could be the very thing that makes a difference between you just having an average life or an ordinary life and an extra ordinary life that can be just those small little things can make a massive difference.
(24:28)
How did I get through a time when I was broke over a million dollars in debt? I did this, I did this. So you try to get myself in this best state of mind, even if I knew there’s going to be collector calls all day long, calling me. I knew that at least if I had a win in the morning, that meant everything. If it meant, I could just say I’m breathing. That means everything. I know that you’re probably going through some challenges right now, and it may not be challenges that other people see. You might even be envious sometimes of people that have more visible challenges right now, what struggles, because at least those people get some sympathy or empathy where you may not be experiencing that. I’m here to tell you that I see you. I may not understand everything you’re going through, but I felt the same way.
(25:09)
I’ve been through those same things, and I’m here to tell you the best way to get to where you want to be financially. If you want to accelerate and just speed to your goals, control this. Focus on principles and mindset first, and then the strategies will come easier. Second, focus on that. First, if you focus only on strategies, but you haven’t fixed this, you’ll probably mess up those strategies anyways, focus on this and then work on this, right? That’s where the money comes from. It comes from the mindset first. Then the strategies that support the money comes Second. Hey, if there’s any way we could support you, let us know. Reach out to us@moneyripples.com. Go and make it a wonderful and prosperous week and month, especially as we move in this holiday season. We’ll talk to you later. You can become financially independent, but not become financially free. Well, if you get to the point of financial independence, and we’ve had some clients do that, but then as they get there they say, yeah, but I’m still scared. I don’t have enough. And again, it’s okay to ask questions. That’s not the problem here. The problem is when you start living in fear, that scarcity creeps into your life. When there’s fear, doubt, worry, impatience, any of these kinds of emotions that are happening and you don’t address these.