Your Success Is Your Own Dang Fault | 447

 

Today, Chris Miles has some good and bad news for you. The good news is if you succeed, give yourself a pat on the back, good job! The bad news is, if you fail, it’s also on you, it’s your fault.

Regardless of what comes into your life, you have the power to make a change.
You have the power within your mind to create the results that you want.
That is the most liberating part, that’s freedom. To control a lot of situations in your life.

You may not be able to control all the outside influences, but the truth is you have the ability to respond accordingly, to be able to choose differently.

You can control what is happening to you. How can you have financial freedom if you feel all things are out of your control?

For instance, if you throw money in the stock market, is that out of your control? The answer is yes, but the fact is you don’t have to keep it there.

Take personal accountability and accept responsibility for it.

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Hello! My fellow Ripplers. This is Chris Miles, your Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor. Hey, welcome to our show. A show that’s for you and about you. Those of you that work so hard for your money, and you’re now ready for your money. Start working harder for you. Now! You want that freedom. You want that cash flow. You want that prosperity today, not 30 or 40 million years from now, but right now, so you can live that life that you love doing what you love with those that you love. But guys so much more than creating the life of ease and comfort. It’s about creating a “ripple effect” to the lives of others, through your family and generations, beyond you, as well as to your community and across the planet. And guys, thank you so much for allowing me to create that “ripple effect” through you. Thank you for being a part of this movement, thank you for sharing and bingeing and applying the things that you learned on this show, because that is where freedom really comes from.

It comes from actually doing and walking the walk and not just talking the talk. So guys, thank you so much for tuning in as a reminder, check out our website, WWW.MONEYRIPPLES.COM You got great blogs on there. And of course, subscribe to our YouTube channel. You know, the Chris Miles with Money Ripples. We have that in the show notes as well. You can check that out. So guys today I have some good news for you and some bad news. The good news is if you succeed, great job, you succeeded. The bad news is if it happens, that’s also on you. The truth is that your results are your own dang fault. It’s your fault. You know, now I get this, that there’s things outside of your control, but the truth is that regardless of what comes into your life, you have the power to make a change.

You have the ability to do that, and it doesn’t just require a free country to do that, although that helps. But guys, I’m telling you that you have the power within you. You have the power within your mind to really create the results that you want in your life. So if you fail, good job, that’s on you. If you succeed great job, that’s also on you. And that is the liberating part. That is how there’s freedom, because you do have control over a lot of the situations in your life. You can’t control all of the outside influences, which I understand. I’ll tell you some stories here in a bit. The truth is that you have the ability to respond accordingly, to be able to choose differently. And guys, it’s driving me nuts because there’s this culture. Now, even as counterculture out there, right?

This culture of becoming a victim and in fact, it’s becoming permanent, not just in certain groups, like the ones you hear on social media or the ones that you hear all across the news about how they feel that their race or their background is the reason why they’re persecuted or the reason why they are, you know, less than what they should be. Guys, this is happening to everybody. This is becoming a cultural thing across all races, all religions, all sexual preferences, everything. This is happening to everyone because right now it’s actually, okay, many people are making it okay, to be a victim to say, Hey, it’s not my fault. Or, Hey, this is what’s going on in the world. Like, I don’t have control. It’s not like I can do anything about it. I can’t control the government. I can’t control when my spouse does it. It’s their fault.

I can’t control my kids do. It’s their fault. It’s everybody else’s fault. But yours and the truth is guys that it actually is your fault. Yes, they’ve got their own things they’re doing. Right? They make their own choices. You can’t control that. But you can control what’s happening to you and this, even then you might think, well, Chris, is this just a life lesson? Well, heck yeah. It’s a life lesson. Because if you want financial freedom, how can you have freedom? If you feel like everything’s out of your control, by the way, if you throw money in the stock market, is that a control? Yes. But the fact is you don’t have to keep it there. You know, I was talking to somebody today where they’re saying, yeah, my husband is really bought on this 401k thing. And he really want to give money to other people, you know, especially to individuals that might take it, because he works so hard for that money.

Why give people that money? They might just steal it or lose it. And I told her, I said, that’s completely valid point. Why give your money to somebody that you might lose or whatever, right? Or run off with that money. But here’s the thing I said, he’s still putting money in that 401k, nearly max funding it every year, he’s giving his money to somebody else for somebody else control where the government makes all the rules and they can change the rules whenever they want. He’s in a partnership where he has no say in the matter, the only thing he has is how much money he throws in. But no say of how much you can take out and when. He has no say on how he’s able to access his own money or really how to invest it, because the truth is even when you try to pick your own funds, you still don’t invest it.

You still don’t control where it’s being invested. They pick everything. You’re just trusting them. I said, he’s already doing that. He’s already turning over all of his cash to somebody else to be the victim. Now, if it does great, he thinks he’s brilliant. Right? And I’m just saying this in general, I’m not saying this is him specifically, but people in general and the market goes up, they think they’re brilliant when it goes down. It’s not their fault. No, it’s the financial advisor’s fault. No, it’s the market’s fault. It’s the politics. It’s everything else. It’s everybody else’s fault. But when it goes up, do you say I had nothing to do with that? I’m purely lucky. In fact, I did nothing. All I do is throw money in and it made some money. Yeah. That’s the truth, right? You have no control in your life there.

If you want freedom, you must have control. That control starts by taking personal accountability, accepting responsibility for it. And I’ll tell you the biggest fights in my wife and I have had is when I’m not honest with myself, right? When, like, for example, there’s been times where I’ll get defensive or I’ll say, well, you hurt my feelings. You did this to me. Right? And social media and everything else. You see this happening all the time. People are like, yeah, this happened. Or you did this. And people are taking offense, everything. Well, when I took offense. The thing that takes her off is she’s like, Chris, you took offense at something that wasn’t supposed to be offensive. You know, that’s your fault, Chris, not mine. Yours. You chose to be offended, which is true. Anytime you guys are offended, that’s your choice.

You know? And now I might be an offensive type of statement, but again, you choose how you respond. Do you take offense or do you laugh and say, well, that’s ridiculous. By the way, I’ve noticed in my life, the things that offend me the most are usually the things that actually have some truth to it. You know, because if it is ridiculous, like if somebody says, you know I remember, I can’t remember what somebody has said recently. I remember I did a podcast cause somebody sent me some hate email anonymously. A few years ago, I don’t get hate mail nearly enough. I guess I’m not roughly enough feathers, but you know, like they accuse me of stuff that wasn’t even close to truth. And I just laughed. That’s why I did a show on it. Now some of the things ticked me off a little bit, which is also, I did a show on it.

Right? But and it wasn’t because it wasn’t true. It was just because it was too close to home a little bit. Right? But and there were, you know, trying to find my character, but the truth is they didn’t really know who I was. They were pretending to know who I was. And the truth is like, we get offended by things we take, you know, take fault for things we get offended. And the truth is that’s not the case. And if you want financial freedom, you must change this. This has to switch in your brain. You cannot be blaming everybody else for your life. You have to accept responsibility that your life is yours and yours alone to control, not your spouses, not your children, not your financial advisors, or whoever you listen to, or the stock market or whatever it has nothing to do with that.

It’s all about now, you, you’ve got to choose that. Let me dig down a little bit here. Right? So you know, first off, like I get life circumstances. If you’ve heard my story, you know, I’ve been through hard times, heck the last recession, I went over a million dollars in debt. A lot of that stuff wasn’t my fault. But some of it was, some was based on choices. There were results of choices that I had made. Right? You know, when the real estate market tanked, I couldn’t control that. But the fact is that when I went into real estate gambling on appreciation first is trying to focus on cash flow. Yeah. That was my fault. The reason I was losing was because I made dumb choices. I wasn’t focused on the right things. You know, the business I went into, I cut off my streams of income because I told the partner, yes, I’m all in.

I’m all into your mission. Yes. Yes. But the truth is, is that I should have kept the streams of income and said no, if I’m going to live what I preach, shouldn’t I be doing this stuff too, so no, I’m not going to cut off these streams of income. I’m going to keep them and heck we’re not going to focus on real estate investors. We’re going to start broadening our company, broadening our marketing and things like that. All of these things were within my control. Right? Now again, I couldn’t control outside market circumstances, but I could control how things worked. You know, the fact is when I went reclusive, I started becoming anti-social because I didn’t want to spread my scarcity on other people. Have you ever done that? Where you’re like, Ugh!!! Like I feel, like I’m struggling right now.

I don’t want to spread it or depress people or bring them down. So I’m just going to do this. I’m going to suffer in silence. Guys, that was the wrong thing to do that made me suffer more financially. The truth is that I should rightfully get go, got out and started serving people. This was the difference of what I did when I went through a divorce that divorce, by the way, emotionally was harder on me than even losing over a million dollars. It was much harder. Now the million dollars thing, I mean, that took a good, it was about two years before I started to really pull out of that and feel like now I was leaving that situation that was on the ups, much higher on the upswing versus kind of rolling around on the bottom. Right? In the pit.

With my divorce, it was much different because although emotionally was harder, the thing is, I realized from what I learned back then, I had more control than I gave myself credit. And so after I went through my little victim experiences, I, and I did go through a victim moment, right? Especially when, you know, things were being said, rumor spread. I was mad. I was bitter. And really hurt. I mean, that’s really where all the madness and bitterness came. It was, I was just hurt. And what happened is I said, you know what? Enough is enough. Like I need to start answering emails. I actually had left my inbox blowing up because I didn’t want to look at emails. So I started answering emails. I started fulfilling on commitments. I started focusing instead on the clients I wanted to tract because I had clients that were draining me at that time.

I said, it’s not just, you know, things from my marriage it was draining. I had clients that were draining, not all of them, but there were some, what do I need to do? Where do I need to focus? And I put my focus on what I wanted versus what I was trying to avoid. I start focusing on what I had power to control and create versus becoming a victim to something that wasn’t a thing I should have been a victim of anyways. And there was a thing, that things turned around quickly. Like that little motion, the little emotional, and even a little financial dip that I had, was just a matter of few months. And that’s started pulling right out of it within a six month period of time, pulling out of it and guys about a year or so later, well, year and a half later, I was able to retire.

And that right there guys is the key, is that, I was able to flip that switch and start can taking control and ownership of my own crap .I’ll give you another example. I had a client recently who had reached out and said, Chris, you know, we’re just not feeling like we should really do anything with our money. Like we’re feeling like we just don’t want to use it to buy real estate or do this. I said, okay, well then don’t, if you feel like you just sit on it. And they’re like, Chris I mean, can you refund us the money? You know, that we paid you. I’m like, why would I do that? Like, I have no problem refunding money people if I thought, Hey, you know what? I can’t find the money, but here’s the thing we never take on clients.

Unless we know we can at least double the results that they pay us. Right? Same thing with them. And then the truth is they ended up finding more than I expected in their situation. So I said, no, absolutely not. You know, like you already have the information, you have the resources. I give you all the resources you need to more than double what you pay me. In fact, it was actually going to be closer to about triple, quadruple what they paid me. I said, no, like, you can just take that information, use it whenever you want. You know, do you go to college and then change your major and say, Oh, can you give me money back for the classes I really didn’t need? No, you know, even if you change your mind and take a different career path, like I did, I didn’t go back to my university and say, Hey, I’d like to have that four years of money.

I paid you back because I decided to become a Financial Advisor instead of going into Sociology and Psychology. Right? That’s ridiculous. But the thing is like, they didn’t want to take responsibility for their own results. I’m like, you got to take responsibility. I took responsible for what I taught you. You take your own responsibility. And then the thing that ticked me off, wasn’t the fact that they asked for whatever reason, the fact is that they came to the table thinking that somehow they weren’t in control, but they were in full control of their destiny. And they’re like, well, Chris, it sounds like you expect us to you know, like you only want to honor that commitment if we do what you ask? I’m like yeah, like when I say give him a good, full faith effort, you give a good full faith effort.

You don’t just say, nah, I don’t feel like it. You know, that doesn’t work. Now contrast that with today, like today I talked to somebody who is looking to hire us. Right? And she even reached out. She was like, you know, I’ve been listening to a podcast. She’s probably listening right now. In fact, maybe her and her husband listening to this now, which would be perfect for them. But she reached out and she said, you know, Chris, you know, here’s our situation. And the crazy thing is they’ve been trying to pay off their mortgage. Right? They’ve been aggressively paying off. They’re about 10 years away from paying it off. They’ve been aggressively funding their 401k and saved up a nice nest egg for being in their mid forties. Here’s the thing. Now, just like, if you heard that podcast earlier about the 401k issue, right?

Like you cannot ever retire. I said the truth is even in 20 years, when you’re 65 years old, if the market does better than the average, right? It actually does better than expected. You might have enough money to pay you 50,000 a year. In today’s dollars 50,000 a year. Not in real buying power. Right? We got inflation to worry about too. I said, just in today’s dollars, that’s 50,000 a year. Not a lot considering how much they’re putting away. And I said, and in fact, if you factor in inflation is about 20,000 a year, right? Maybe less than that. And they’re like, well, that’s not great. I know it’s not. I said, but here, do this. Stop funding, your 401k that even after you pay taxes gives you 10,000 a year. Two, we refinance your mortgage to 30 year mortgage. By the way, I hope you guys are listening to this because this is exactly kind of stuff that I help clients through.

By the way, if you’re wondering, what does Chris do? On the consulting side, this is what we do. I said, if you refinance your mortgage here, we can actually lower your payment by 600 bucks a month. Now there’s equity trapped in this property, of course, because now you’re trying to pay off aggressively there’s equity here, the cash that some more equity get about 165,000. Even with the payment, you actually will still save 40 bucks a month on your mortgage and have 165,000 you can invest, and we’ll pay off one of your debts. They’ll free up over 200 bucks a month. And then the rest of it, the other 150,000 plus, we’re going to use that to go and invest. And I showed them, I said, Hey, here’s two properties right here. You buy right now. It was less than a hundred thousand dollars, but it’ll generate over a thousand bucks a month.

And I said, what’s your mortgage payment? They said a thousand bucks a month. Let’s say, guess what? Between that, and paying off this loan, you’re going to have over 1200 bucks a month and you still have 50 grand in cash that you can invest and do whatever you want with it. I’m like, that’s, if you don’t do anything, they just let it sit and savings. You would actually now have your mortgage paid for, you know, that payment went out. We fully paid for versus you trying to aggressively pay it off, which by the way, the banks love. Because if they ever foreclosing you, they love taking properties with equity. Now with the ones that are leveraged. And so I said, voila! There you go. No money out of pocket, just using the same money you’re using, but you can generate at least a net $20,000 a year.

And here’s the key thing guys I said, but the choice is up to you guys because she’s just like, Holy cow! Like that doesn’t even seem real. She’s like, does anybody tell you that seems too good to be true? I’m like, I hear it often. And the reason it’s too good to be true is because your brain has been shifted and only been looking at it from a certain path, looking at the Dave Ramsey Method, right? Are you looking at it from a very, not even conservative approach, really a risky approach because you’re everything you’re throwing. You’re throwing your money into your house and you can’t get to it. Especially if something goes wrong in the markets, right? The banks can say, Nope, you can’t get to that money. So you’re throwing into a place like your house. You’re throwing it away into your 401k, that you can’t access while you’re working with that company, it’s trapped.

The government could change the rules on you whenever you want. And you have zero vote in the matter. Technically, you guys are doing the most aggressive risky thing that’s possible versus getting that money in your control and going and using that to invest, whether it’s by real estate, into different types of funds or whatever it might be. And you can generate more cash flow. In fact, to the tune of at least 20,000 a year to tack on to that 10,000 year you’ve been saving your 401k. Now you put those together. You got 30,000 in the next year. Guess what? 20,000 now becomes, about 23,000 a year or more possibly. Actually probably more. It’s probably going to be closer to 24,000. Then the next year that’s going to be up to at least 28,000 next year about, you know, now you’re about 33,000 a year.

And so on, like you’re already creeping up to that 50,000 a year income that you’re hoping to get 20 years, but you might easily be able to do within five to seven years. I’m like, and they’re like, Oh my gosh, that seems crazy! I’m like, it is. But here’s the thing guys. It’s up to you. You have the control. You can decide whether you actually take advantage of it or not. You’re not the victim here. You are the hero of your story. Or you should be the hero of your story. It’s fully up to you. And I told him, I said, honestly, I don’t need your money. Like, I’m fine financially. I don’t need to work with anybody. But I was like, but to do this, would be fun. Like this would be fun to change your life, to actually do something. That’s what makes it worthwhile for me to create that “ripple effect” guys like, and the ball’s in their court.

They can either keep being the victim and keep trudging along, right? Just keep working their tails off, make it a good few hundred thousand a year, hoping and praying that something will change and hoping that maybe that 401k will build up if the market doesn’t tank on them, which obviously it will at some point over those next 20 years, or you can take advantage of their life now. Have more life to live, have more years of their life, that they can actually do something that’s impactful now. That can actually impact their family and be able to create something much bigger than just themselves. Guys, that’s the choice. Each of us have, each of us choose every single day to be the hero or the victim of our story. Which one do you choose to be? By the way, if you ever watch a movie, right?

Think about it with Halloween, right? Coming up here. Do you ever really remember the victims? Do you remember the screaming teenage that gets killed in the woods? No. You don’t remember who that is, you know, but you, you remember that you might remember the murderer, right? You might remember Michael or Jason or Freddy. Right? but you remember the hero, you remember the hero’s story. We remember the forced gumps of the story, right? Remember those people, remember the people that become the hero. We remember the Luke Skywalker’s of the journey, right? We remember those people. We don’t remember the storm trooper that got shot. Nobody does. Right? Nobody knows what happens to those characters. When they become the victim, they become forgotten. You are not here to be forgotten. You are here to make a difference. This is much, much bigger than just making money.

Guys, this is about you choosing the life that you want. Not believing all the dumb perspectives out there about being the victim, being the victim, to whatever circumstance or people or organizations that you see out there. You’re not a victim of your masks. Guys. You get to choose still. Even though you say you have a mandate on you, you’re still going to choose how you respond. You’re not a victim to that. Yes. We get thrown curve balls all the time. Welcome to life. Welcome to the freaking human club. But your life, your results are your own dang fault. And that is the good news. There is where the hope is guys. It’s not up to somebody else to give us our freedom. We have that choice to make within ourselves. Will you take it? Will you continue to be the victim? And the purely the choice is up to you.

What are you going to choose? Are you going to be the one that chickens out and becomes like everybody else? Or do you want to live an extraordinary life? Guys, there’s anything else you remember? Remember this, that you are the hero choose to be that hero, not the victim, not the Whiner, not the cry babies of the world. You are here to make a difference and to create something impactful that creates a “ripple effect” and creates a legacy beyond you. Your family is watching, your friends and everybody else is watching to see what you choose. No matter what comes in play, you make the difference. And that is what’s inspiring, guys. I hope you make it a wonderful and prosperous life and you make it a process week! We’ll see you later.