Retire In Less Than 10 Years | 55

 

Is it really possible to retire in 10 years or less?

Not only is it possible, but if done right, it can be highly probable. The thing is you have to question EVERYTHING you think you know about retiring. Learn how Chris Miles was able to retire when he was 28 years old with only $2,000 in his bank account, and how you can apply the same principles to retire yourself!

Chris Miles Bio:

Chris Miles, the “Cash Flow Expert,” is a leading authority showing entrepreneurs and their spouses how to quickly free up and create cash flow and lasting wealth TODAY spending time doing what they love most! He has been featured in US News, CNN Money, Bankrate, interviewed internationally on TV and radio, and has a high reputation with his company, Money Ripples getting his clients fast, life-altering financial results.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Retire In Less Than 10 Years

I’m excited to be here with you because we’ve got a fun topic for you. I want to remind you again to check out our website. Visit us at MoneyRipples.com. Check out the blogs. We’ve got other podcasts. We’ve got here out both on iTunes as well as online and learn more. Keep taking all the value you could possibly get from us for free, especially.

I want to talk to you about a topic, which is, how to retire in less than ten years? This is a fun one because I don’t believe I’ve done this one before. I thought it would be fun to do this. I want to give you some background on this because I was able to retire when I was 28 years old, and it completely shocked me how it worked.

In fact, I was able to do it in a matter of months versus years. This is somewhere I know there are different circumstances and situations. I want to give you plenty of leeways here. If you could do this for a month. Some of you could take a lot of years to do this. If you don’t apply the right principles, you can never make this work. I want to give you the way that I do it and the way I have been able to help other people do it, including some of my clients. How are you going to retire in less than ten years?

The first thing I want to start with is to let me tell you what doesn’t work. Years ago, I started as a financial advisor. I went into that profession because I knew if I could help even my father, even somebody is able to retire and have one year of life back. I believe they are going to have to work until they die. I figured that would be the way to do it. I had to learn what the professionals knew. I wanted to be the one that had financial savvy. As I was in that for four years, I realized pretty quickly, especially as a friend pointed it out to me, that no one, financial advisors included as well as their clients not retiring with financial freedom.

Now they might be able to retire but don’t feel financially free. They don’t feel safe. They don’t feel like it’s a guarantee, necessarily. I found that very quickly, it wasn’t working. My personal goal as a financial advisor is I was trying to do it through business. Not through the investments per se. A little bit through the investment but more through the business. My whole focus was trying to accumulate and save as much money as possible for them, one day, live off the interest and retire.

My hope was that by the time I was age 40, I would accumulate enough money, maybe $2 or $3 million, and then live off the interest. I thought that it would be so awesome if I had a couple of million dollars in savings. Now, if you look at what it requires, even if you get a couple of million dollars in savings is not an easy feat. Most people have to save thousands of dollars every month, even to do that within a matter of 20 to 30 years. It’s not easy to do.

Even for 40 years, it takes several hundred dollars a month, even hit that point. By the time you hit that, what’s the inflation going to make it look like? I thought, “If I could have even $2 or $3 million, live off the interest, say I lived off 4% or 5%, I would be making it.” The reality, if you had $2 million now, financial advisors are saying that you would have to live off maybe 2% or 3%. Meaning that even with $2 million, you would be maybe able to pull off $40,000 to $60,000 a year so that you wouldn’t run out of money.

You become a millionaire to then live in poverty or above the poverty line. It does seem twisted to me but that’s what I thought. I thought, “If I could save up enough money and work my tail off in my business, sacrifice now. Sacrifice my time with my family and everything possible, and then I would be able to retire.” I know I’m not the only one that thought that either. I’m here to tell you that is a long slow way to do it.

It’s possible. Yes, but it’s going to take a lot more work and effort than the other way I’m going to teach you. The mindset you have to have to reverse this around because it takes us a very different mindset. Beginning of 2006, I started to realize that maybe financial advising wasn’t the best advice out there. It wasn’t going to give you the best results.

You have a better chance of being successful if you do the opposite of what hasn't worked for people already. Click To Tweet

I realized this when I was trying to retire my father, “If I did all this stuff that my company would recommend, even most of the financial industry would recommend, he would be lucky to barely pull off anything but he would have to hope he would die sooner than later. He wouldn’t be able to retire for many years because he would only accumulate a certain amount of money that wouldn’t give him a lot to live off of.”

I thought, “There’s got to be another answer.” Remember, I came in contact with people that were millionaires, and we are offering education much as I do now. They even have their own radio show. I realized they taught not something different but the exact opposite. They started talking about different things and talked about cashflow. They talk about this and that. Some of the things that I teach but they talked a lot more about principals. They talked to me even more about politics and things like that.

I started to apply the things I learned from them. I left in March of 2006. I quit being a financial advisor. I said, “I will never do it again,” but by applying what they had taught by July of 2006. Four months later, I was able to retire. By the way, I only had about $2,000 in my savings account. That’s it. I want you to understand that it’s not about accumulation. Everybody is trying to teach you. Every financial advisor, every financial expert essentially is teaching the same thing that financial institutions have taught them to teach you, which is what’s in their best interests, not yours.

They are teaching you what’s in the best interest of the bank and the financial institutions. They want you to keep your money with them forever because they are applying the same principles, and you are not. They are teaching not to apply these principles. You are taught to accumulate money. You are taught a theory of accumulation.

However, I would you to apply the rules of acceleration. The theory of accumulation tells you to save up money and then live off the interest or live less than the interest because the banks and the financial institutions want to keep all of your money in their possession and power as much as possible to then go and accelerate it.

The banks are already accelerating your money. They are trying to take your money and use it to make more money. They have no fear of using your money, even though it’s not their money. They are borrowing it from you at an interest rate to then turn around and use it to make more money. Now, you don’t have to act like the bank but the principles that they use are very similar. Let’s talk about three of these principles to keep it very simple. We can go on this for a while. In my seminars and whatnot, I do talk about this more in-depth but I want to give you some real simple ways to be able to reverse this thinking and ways to retire in the next ten years.

When it comes to the acceleration of versus accumulation, I already mentioned this before. Number one is to do the opposite. If you believe that you can accumulate your way to wealth, it’s going to be a very painful road, and you will be lucky even to see that happen. You will most likely have to do what everybody else has done in the last few decades, which is settle for less. They settled for less than they thought they would get.

This is especially becoming more true of the Baby Boomers who have been exposed to financial advice for a long time, told how much they are supposed to save 10% or a few hundred bucks a month to become a millionaire and things like that. It’s not working, hasn’t worked, and will continue not to work because they are based on faulty assumptions of interest rates and inflation. It’s all wrong. It’s not working, so do the opposite.

You have a better chance of being successful if you do the opposite of what hasn’t worked for people already. What do I mean by that? For example, when people say you should save for the long haul, you start to ask yourself, “What can I do to create wealth now?” Here’s another one. It’s about accumulation and compound interest. No, it’s about acceleration and cashflow. That’s the key.

 

In fact, I want to tell you what happened to me. The reason I was able to retire is that I didn’t focus on accumulation. I started focusing on acceleration and cashflow. For example, what I did was I was able to be good at connecting business owners with potential clients. People who needed their help and business owners who were looking for those who needed their help.

People ask me, “Chris, do you know someone who does blank?” I have this weird storage of information in my head that’s a lot, a ton of information to keep up there. I said, “I know somebody, and they are good. You should talk to them.” They would, and I would get paid a referral fee from the business owner. I was good at connecting people and getting paid a lot of money for very little time because of connections by creating these affiliate or referral type of relationships where I was creating a win-win-win transaction. Win for the business owner. Win for the person I refer them to or the person that was referred to them. Win for me because I was able to get a benefit from that as well as being the connector between them.

I was good at connecting people together. For me, I realized it didn’t take much. It was all about the cashflow. “How can I get into the stream of income coming in that would then replace what I would need or be able to pay more than my expenses every month?” That was the focus. I was able to do that, and in a few short months, I was making between $4,000 and $5,000 a month by passing referrals on, not doing a lot of the legwork.

I was letting the business owners do the work while I made the connections. Very valuable for the business owners especially and valuable for the people that are referred to as potential clients or customers. They were all happy, and I became happy as well. Awesome way to do it. Now that’s one way of many but I have to think the opposite. I had to realize that everything I thought was true wasn’t. I would pose this question to you as well, “If something you thought was true weren’t, how soon would you want to know about it?” Hopefully, as soon as possible. That was a big thing. Doing the opposite. Thinking the opposite.

I don’t look at debt the same way anymore. I used to look at debt as something evil and had to pay it off as soon as possible. Not only that’s something that you have to respect. You don’t use it like crazy. I don’t gamble with it or anything like that but it’s something that’s a tool. It can be used to be able to create more value. Something that you can be used in business or investing. If it’s done wisely, it can be a huge source of leverage for a lot of people. That’s a big way to do it.

That’s number one. Do the opposite. Look at the differences there. I’ve got plenty of shows that talk about these opposite types of philosophies and principles that do work. They create different results. Number two is looking for systems. Look for ways of creating systems for that cashflow. For example, my system was very casual or it was not a complex system. It was a very simple system.

It was pretty much me, and that was it. I’ve made a much more complex system with Money Ripples because I want to expand and make a bigger impact. I can very easily take on it. Do a few things, and the next thing you know, I will make it easy, great, big income because of that leverage. Systems are what you want to do to be able to create leverage.

Now the systems could be either through business, and if you are in business, I would prefer you go that route of focusing on your business. If for someone who does not have a business, either 1) You find a business that does have a great system or 2) You be able to do some investing that’s can be safe and create some leverage. I will give you a few examples here. I had a client. They wanted to retire their husband. She’s in direct sales in a direct sales company. He was working 60 hours a week in a business.

He wanted out. He didn’t want to have to keep working 60 hours a week. They were making great money. Living a great lifestyle but the one thing they didn’t like was the fact that he was still tied down to a job. They asked me, “Chris, can you look over our stuff? Can you look at these things and see what it would take to get him to retire?” We did. We looked it over. We had to get the numbers. It took a little while to get the numbers from them.

Know your genius. You don't want to be doing something that you hate. You want to do something that you're amazing at. Click To Tweet

Look at both the business and the personal numbers. Look at everything, how the money flows through from the business to their home. The next thing you know, we looked at it. I said, “If we make sure we are a little bit responsible here and here and do this, he can retire now.” The crazy thing is they have the ability the whole time but they were never looking at the numbers. It’s very important to look at your numbers to know what’s going on. For them was to be able to create a system and make sure that the system still ran. It still works in her business so that he could retire from work with her business. They have, since now, I don’t know the exact income yet.

It’s several thousand dollars more a month than it was before. They’ve got to a point where they pretty much replaced his income. A very exciting time. You can do it in business. I’ve seen other people where to try to fire their selves from a business. They try to create things where it’s more online. Things are more duplicatable. Things that they could hire out a little bit more and be able to take more of a backseat. They still run things. They still manage it. It’s not now they completely retire because the honest truth is if you love what you do, why would you retire from that?

Now, if you are going to retire from anything, retire from the things that you hate. Retire from the things that you don’t like. Retire from the tasks and the things that you don’t like doing and find other people that do like doing those things. Find systems to create more leverage. I’ve had a client who still works in his business, working half a day a week. That’s his big focus. He will go into the office and work. He will still manage it from outside, from home. They will come into the office for half a day to get his fixed because he loves what he does but doesn’t want to work full-time.

He makes a half million dollars a year working a half day a week inside the business. Rest time, a few hours a week outside of the business. That’s pretty cool. It doesn’t happen overnight for most people but it can take time. It does take ventral progress step-by-step. Another person as well. I have somebody where they are on their way toward retirement. They did a real estate investing. They bought a few properties using their IRA money. They did a self-directed, and now they are meshing, netting over $1,200 a month.

They are netting about $15,000 a year. That’s about one-quarter of their current income or so, but they are well on their way. They’ve got some other properties that will sell off and make some pretty good cashiers in the next 3 to 5 years. Plus, there’s still more money in that IRA they haven’t even used it. They are at the point where they are maxed out their credit and need ways to create more leverage. They are on their way to where easily, within ten years, they could retire. Piece of cake. Presuming they do everything right and things stay the same.

Now, as I mentioned getting great tax advantages and everything else. They are probably getting closer to the benefit of at least $25,000 a year between building equity in their homes, being able to get tax advantages, and everything else. Awesome stuff. I love seeing that happen. Again, it’s finding those systems of leverage. No matter where you are, whether it be in business or through investments, especially wise, safe investments that can happen.

The third thing is to know your genius. What is your genius? This is something that is key because, as I mentioned, you don’t want to be doing something that you hate. You want to do something that you are amazing at. For me, I was good at being able to create those connections. That was something I didn’t know at the time. It came naturally. What are those things that come natural to you? What are those things that are easy?

For some people are good at research and could do some things that wouldn’t work. They could work in business. They could work in investing. They could work in all ways. Some people are natural listeners. Listening can be huge because if you can help people get what they want, you can get a lot of what you want. Know your genius. Know what you are good at. Know what you are passionate about and understand that.

That’s why I teach that in my course, find your divine genius. I want people to get a deeper understanding of who they are at the core and apply that to be able to use it in a way that people want to pay you. The key to be able to retire faster is not just saving up a bunch of money. It’s remembering that the core principle of be able to make more money to earn money is that dollars follow value created for other people. Dollars follow perceivable value.

 

If people value something, they want to exchange money for it to have it in their life because they would rather have that in their life than not. They are willing to exchange dollars for it. What do you have to offer that people are willing to exchange dollars for? It could be something that takes so little time and effort. You don’t have to trade time for money. You’ve traded value for money. Find ways to do that.

As you start to focus, this is a big picture of how do you go and accelerate your wealth? How do you make it better? How do you go and do the opposite? How you say, “I’m not going to do what everybody recommends. I’m going to do the opposite of what they recommend. I’m going to start doing some things that Chris talks about here and see what happens.” You start to do the opposite. You start to create systems, whether it be in business or investing.

Wherever it might be, create systems to create more cashflow, not just accumulate money. Remember, it’s the cashflow that you need to do. It can take very little money to create that cashflow. In some cases, no money at all. If you start to do things like that, whether you do that through business, as I mentioned, your own business, direct sales, and network marketing or through investing. Whatever it might be, there are ways to do that. When you start to tie that in with your genius and bring those things together, you will notice it accelerate even faster. That is how you can retire in ten years or less.

However you define retirement, this is how you can do it where you build to pay for your expenses doing very little work, doing leverage work, leverage effort. You are still providing value. It’s not that you sit on a beach and do nothing but you are providing and offering value in a way that people want to pay for it, however that best shows up. That’s how you are able to do it in ten years or less.

Again, we talk about that way more in-depth in our events as well as the coaching and things like that. At least, this is a start to get your brain moving. Get your brain creating ideas. Look for ways to do that yourself. This is Chris Miles here. I’m your cashflow expert and financial advocate for entrepreneurs signing off. Join us next episode as we come with more great value and good stuff for you to be able to apply to create real wealth in your life now. Not 20 or 30 or 40 years from now but creating real value, a life that you love that you are able to do to work in your life because you want to, not because you have to. Everybody, we will see you later.

 

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