Is financial freedom, or even just a little more passive income, on your list for new year’s goals? What does the future have in store for 2023 and the markets? Are there amazing opportunities that you could be missing out on? In this episode, Chris Miles looks back at some of his predictions from 2021 that happened in 2022 and what we may see happen in 2023. Find out how YOU can profit from opportunities in 2023.
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The Path To Financial Freedom In 2023
Happy New Year. I appreciate you tuning in and allowing me to be able to share this with you. Thank you for sharing this with others, whether it be your friends, family, coworkers, colleagues, or whomever it is, thank you for helping us create a bigger ripple effect in this world because we need it more than ever, and you are critical for making that happen. As a reminder, if you have not done so already, go to MoneyRipples.com, and fill out that Passive Income Calculator. If you want to find out how much in 2023 you could start creating passive income right now, so be sure to go check that out.
I want to talk about 2023. I want to talk about the outlook that I have and what’s your path to financial freedom to get there because I’m going to emphasize that this year, 2023 is a very important year for you if you want to create financial freedom. You are going to do 1 of 2 things. Either you are going to take advantage of it and do something about it or you are going to let it pass by and you are going to have generations of people beyond you say, “What did you do in those early-2020s?” You’ll say either, “I took advantage of it. I prospered. I became financially free in the 2020s,” or you are going to say, “I missed the boat again.” It’s going to be up to you.
I want to talk about the past few years, from 2020 to 2022 and until now. I want to emphasize the trajectory and where we are moving. The truth is this. When it comes to 2023 and the outlook for the future, I don’t know what’s exactly what’s going to happen. In fact, I said the same thing a year ago in 2022. I said, “I don’t have a crystal ball. Lots of different things can happen.” I tossed some very important things. I going to share pieces of that video from 2022 and even when I talk about 2021 as well.
We all know that 2020 was a crazy time. We had COVID, and then, as a result of the lockdowns and everything, the interest rates tanked to rock bottom. Money was being produced like crazy. Eventually, what we knew drove up inflation. This was talked about even in 2020, yet many people ignored it and we are starting to feel the effects of it even today, so we have seen that.
Now going into 2021. 2021 was like that euphoric year. I talked about those market cycles of emotions. We were in the euphoria in 2021, but it wasn’t always cracked up to be. There were a lot of things underneath the surface that were very unsettling that I and a few others of us were talking about at that time that many people ignored.
The 2022 Stock Market And Economy
Let me share with you my January 2022 video of when I was discussing that. Now, what most people don’t realize is that the S&P 500 is not representative of the total stock market of all industries. Some of the big companies like Tesla, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft, and all these companies have been booming, but a lot of the littler companies, those that are down below them in the industry, have been tanking.
The interesting thing is that in 2021, a lot of stocks dropped. They dropped in value. They weren’t as big as what you saw in the S&P or the Nasdaq, which is tech-heavy. What I said there is that all these stocks were overvalued going into 2022. I even said in 2021 that all the S&P 500 and all the indexes were up, yet the majority of stocks, the smaller companies were down. The only reason the S&P 500 was up is that it’s all weighted toward these big companies.
They always talk about the big six. You talk about the different fang stocks and things like that. Those stocks right there are the stocks that have been driving indexes skewing the truth. As we are talking about 2022 saying, “The smaller companies or most companies are losing money in 2021. Their stock prices are going down, but we didn’t see it yet.”
Even when you are looking at these markets, we saw a huge boom from these bigger companies that swayed the S&P 500 because they do it based on how big the companies are. Now, we are going to start seeing what might be a correction to that. With inflation, if they keep driving up prices and people keep paying the prices, the higher prices skyrocket, and they can keep their earnings up. The stock market would be fine, but that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt the economy.
Here’s the thing with the economy. The economy’s separate from the stock market. The thing that drives the economy is how much flow of money there is. Is money flowing? We have already seen the Feds printing money. They have been bailing out as they have been buying up all these bonds and mortgage-backed securities. They have been pumping tons of money into this economy, which is skyrocketed our inflation.
The Feds have been doing that. Why? To keep the money and flow going. As much as that money keeps flowing, the economy is strong when money contracts. When the money stops flowing, people stop spending money as much. This is most important. Not people spending money, but banks stop lending. That’s when things contract in the economy, which could also affect the stocks.
Remember, I talked about the money that’s been pumped into the markets, especially the bond market. What have we seen in the last year? The bond market tanked. The stock market tanked, didn’t we? I’m talking about the same critical piece of information that’s going to be applied for 2023 if you are looking at what’s going on, which is how easy money is flowing and how much credit availabilities are.
It doesn’t have to do that. It could still keep pumping out money, but if they start skyrocketing interest rates which drives some of the expenses up in companies, that drives profits down, at least in an investor’s mind, and they start selling off those stocks. If interest rates start rising up, that starts cutting into the company’s profits. Stock prices go down. What did we see happen in 2022?
Hopefully, you are with me here. It’s an interesting correlation that, even over the last several years, I don’t fully understand. I know enough to be a little bit dangerous. I used to trade in the stock markets, but it’s because of crap like this, that got me to stop. Even though I did a decent job, the problem is that it is unpredictable and it’s a day-by-day thing. This is why I taught swing trading. This is why we only did trades for a few days to maybe a few weeks and then got out.
We wouldn’t try to buy and hold anything because it’s too risky. The problem is that almost everybody’s talking about buying and holding in retirement funds. You don’t go and trade your retirement funds necessarily. A few of you might, but the vast majority of people out there are letting their money ride and hoping for the best.
We are moving to a key section right here. I want you to read this and see what you remember happening in 2022. We have had a great huge swing up, humongous. With over 13.6% average for the last several years now, the stock market’s been up. That’s a real rate of return. Not the average return, but the real actual average yield of the stock market has been 13.6%. When historically, it doesn’t usually do much better than 8%.
We are already way overbought. Everything’s way bigger, but the stock market could keep going up if they keep money flowing. Now, what we are seeing is that the Feds are talking about backing off all those things. If they start backing off and raising interest rates, we hear in 2022, which there’s a prediction, they will raise at least one, if not more.
The stock market could keep going up if they keep money flowing. Click To TweetWe talk about the Feds raising one maybe more times at their meetings for interest rates. Remember, we saw a lot more happen. Here’s the key thing I said. You’ll start to see stocks start to taper off a bit. It may not go down but it might slow the growth. The other factor, too, is how much inflation is there. If inflation keeps going up, there’s a point where people say, “That’s enough. I can’t afford it.”
It’s funny because everybody’s been go talking about minimum wages going up, but they drive up the other cost. Here’s one thing to look for in inflation. Don’t look at the consumer price index. That has been manipulated so much. It’s false. Look more at the producer price index. The producer price index is about the cost of goods that companies have to buy to produce materials or produce goods. If those things keep skyrocketing, they are going to have to drive up prices and middle America and lower-class America will suffer this year as a result.
Did we suffer? Yes. Didn’t we? I’m going to cut off there. It’s a great episode to go back to and be able to read. It’s always good to see me rotating my office literally 90 degrees and see a completely different setup. I have upgraded our equipment and our studio since then, but very good stuff and things about economics you want to learn. The key is this. We saw interest rates skyrocket way bigger than even the Feds were predicting.
The Feds were talking about it. Even by February, they are starting to say, “We are probably going to raise rates next time.” Then they start with like a little 0.25% and then they did a 0.50% the next meeting, and then they did four 3.25% jumps before they finally, in December, did a 0.50% increase. Even then, they are saying there’s still more room to go.
2023 Prediction
This is thrown the stock market reeling. This is why we have seen about a 20% drop in the market in one year. Now many people would say absolute bottom. People are even saying that in November, saying, “We have hit bottom. We are coming back up because these things only last nine months.” Guess what? My prediction for 2023, again, things can change.
There are ways that different governments have that we have already seen how they can manipulate things. They already understand that in 2020, the market was already poised to start going down. They were already lowering interest rates in preparation for the recession. With everything with COVID, all that money came bailing people out. This bailed out even the average American. Everybody was getting money. Now that those purse strings, it was almost like saying mom and dad said, “No more. We are not paying you anymore. You are on your own.”
This is what happens. Things get brought back into balance. We have even seen real estate prices start to drop, haven’t we? In fact, in that same episode, I said that if we start to see prices drop, we’ll most likely see them happen on the Western half of the US, like the West Coast, and that’s exactly what’s happened. It’s even starting to roll eastward a little bit. It’s starting to affect going towards the East Coast, which they call the California wave. Whatever happens in real estate in California tends to ripple through first through the hot markets and then even eventually even to the smaller markets at times.
We are going into 2023. I truly believe some of the best opportunities right now, and also some of the biggest upsets and some of the biggest negative news, are going to happen this year. You are going to start hearing more company failures. Even in the real estate space, you are going to hear people failing. Why? As I had mentioned before, cashflow should be the focus.
If you are trying to bank on appreciation or values increasing all the time, and that’s the only way you make money, that is risky. I’m going to say this for 2023, you are going to see a lot more people losing money in the real estate space even though it could have been good. There were so many people, especially new players coming into the game from around 2018 to 2020, saying, “Here I am. I did 1 or 2 deals. I made money. Throw your money with me.” Those people are suffering, even right now. Even if they haven’t told you yet, there are many companies that are suffering. There are many different types of deals right now suffering. Even good experienced people are experiencing some pain in different places.
I say this all the time. It’s not so important about where you invest but who you invest with. Who are you investing with? Where is your money? Do you have somebody? What happens in times like these when things start to happen, I do believe there will be a struggle this year. I don’t think the stock market is done going down at all, and I don’t think real estate, in some areas especially, is not done going down. There’s still more to go.
Mortgage rates have softened a little bit more, even in December 2022. I don’t think many people realize that yet. It might create more opportunities for people buying rentals, especially if you are using a mortgage. It could create more opportunities because now the prices have softened, and the interest rates have come down too. They are trying to come back into balance again. This could be a good thing if you are looking to buy rentals in 2023.
Again, you don’t have to do that and you can be into syndications and there are lots of opportunities there. We saw great opportunities in the oil and gas industry and many of our clients benefited from that in 2022. You have to ask yourself this question. “In 2022, did I become wealthier?” Did you take advantage of this already? Has your life changed? Is your life better than it was in January of last year?
That’s a good question to ask yourself, honestly. “Am I better off? Am I in a healthier position now?” Those of us that took advantage of those things realized that we have made more money or created more cashflow during that period of time. I have invested a lot more money into my business this last year versus buying my own portfolio. We still increased it a little bit, but that wasn’t as big of a focus in this in previous years.
Buying the right assets and investments can still increase that cashflow and wealth along with it. The question is, what are you going to do in 2023? How are you going to take advantage of what’s going on now? Are you going to miss the boat, or are you going to miss out and say, “I should have done this,” or are you going to take advantage of it?
I understand there are many of you in different places right now. You might not be in a place yet where you can take advantage of these opportunities. Don’t fret. There are still opportunities for you right now. I believe that having cash on hand is going to be very important this year in 2023. Having cash for opportunities and building your cash reserves is going to be critical because there are going to be more opportunities.
In 2023, building your cash reserves is going to be critical because there are going to be more opportunities. Click To TweetIf you are starting out and you are saying, “I don’t even know what to do yet,” don’t worry. If you got less than $50,000 right now, I would even worry about where to invest your money. Even less, maybe than $100,000. Build up your emergency fund right now. There will be more layoffs and effects. Even the Feds have said that American consumers or the average American are going to feel pain in this type of time.
They won’t call it a recession. They will say, “No. We are planning to see more flat growth.” If you still have inflation and flat growth, that’s called stagflation. That’s also damaging because you still lose in that economy. I do think you are going to see more news of layoffs this year. You are going to start seeing more things interrupted and thrown off, even the financial markets. You are going to see more of that this coming 2023.
I don’t want to be calling a ton of doom and gloom because the truth is every disaster, and we are moving into this barely. Everything that might seem like disaster or misfortune is the key to a bigger fortune in your life. How many of you guys would have loved to go back to the Great Depression when prices were tanking 80% to 90% of their previous values in the 1920s? How many of you would have liked to gobble up a bunch of assets then? That’s what John F. Kennedy’s dad did. He went from a $4 million net worth in 1929 to a $100 million net worth in 1937. Big difference. Why? He had cash to take advantage of those opportunities.
Y2K, the same thing happened as the markets came crashing down. More importantly, they came crashing down because people fudged on their numbers. Does that sound a little like FTX? Interesting. We had people fudging on their numbers. Prices came crashing down, especially in 2002. That was the worst year out of those three years, from 2000 to 2002. 2002 was the worst year before it got better in 2003.
It’s those things and opportunities. What if you were like, “That was a time to get into tech at the very bottom?” That’s right. How about the last Great Recession? When real estate prices came tanking down, how many of you would have loved to buy real estate in 2010 and 2011 when it was at rock bottom? I was talking to somebody who bought a ton of Florida properties around 2011 and made a crapload of money. It wasn’t about the appreciation. That’s great. That’s a bonus. That’s the icing on the cake. It’s the cashflow that you can earn. In the meantime, that’s what creates certainty in your life. Focus again on passive income.
If you are starting out, you got maybe less than $50,000, or maybe you got less than $100,000. I’m going to give you one action to work on today. Work on getting that infinite banking policy. If you already got one, great. You’ve got more cash to build, perfect, but use that. I predict in 2024, you are going to start seeing those dividends go up. If you walk in now while the dividends have already been at all-time lows and then you start to get in there as dividends go up, you get a better-than-expected return potentially.
Move To Action To Take Advantage
Again, interest rates could come crashing down. Who knows? I don’t think that’s going to happen in 2023. I think interest rates will climb higher than people expect. People will be shocked once it goes past 5.5%. We have already seen the Federal funds rate about 4.5%. I think there’s another 1% plus left to go. I don’t think the Feds are done yet, even right now.
It’s funny, the highest Fed predictions are 5.6% by a couple of the Fed presidents. Did you know that at the beginning of 2022, some of those predictions were right around 3% to 4%? We have already surpassed even their highest predictions based on that news. I think it will go higher until they start seeing almost not quite a deflation but a massive turn of inflation, and we’ll see what happens.
I could be wrong but I do think we are going to see interest rates continue rising up. Despite what people are saying, they are going to bring rates down, and mortgage rates will come down. I wouldn’t hold your breath for that. I would predict that at least short term, we are going to see those rates continue to go up quite a bit until they feel like they have got it under control.
That’s a perfect opportunity, the perfect storm. If you are going to be getting an infinite banking policy, now is the time. You can always reach out to our team to see what that looks like for your situation. Secondly, if you got at least $100,000 or if you got even more than a couple of $100,000 in cash savings, old 401(k)s, and IRAs that are sitting around that you wonder what’s happening.
If you're going to be getting an infinite banking policy, now is the time. Click To TweetIf you’ve been in mutual funds, you should be kicking yourself for not listening to us before, before you lost 20% of your money or more potentially. We had one client who thought their fund manager was doing a great job. They found out they had lost way more money. They lost more than half of their money in the stock market in the last years or so, and they were still thinking, “It’s happened to everybody.” It hasn’t. That’s a bad thing.
If you lost even more than 20%, you should be saying, “I have got bad advice.” I talked to a lady. A wonderful woman has over $1 million inside of her IRAs. She has somebody managing it and charging her 1%. They are charging her $14,000 a year. They are charging her every year about what we charge for a one-time type of fee. They charge that much, and yet they are still losing her money.
Our goal with her, I said, “You are pulling out $3,500 a month from $1.4 million. That’s what they are having you do when you could be doing better than that. You could be generating even if you made less than 10%.” $120,000 a year, you could be making $10,000 a month more than paying her bills financially free, saving in retirement. It doesn’t mean there’s no risk, but a very different situation and she’d be paying less money. She’d be saving herself $14,000 a year on that alone. Big difference.
That’s the thing. There are so many opportunities right now. If you’ve got over six figures and savings, maybe equity. Maybe you have underperforming assets or maybe you don’t have rentals doing a great job right now. Maybe we should be looking at that and seeing if we can be moving that equity over somewhere else moving over tax-free, making more money and we save you more money in taxes.
If you are an entrepreneur, we might be able to save you more money in taxes. There might be ways to free up cashflow on top of creating more passive income, making your life better and making you safer during this period of time because businesses will be affected. The average American will be affected this next year. There will be more pain. If the Feds are saying you are going to experience pain, and they try to soften their answers, that’s going to get worse.
Not to scare you, but I want to inspire you to move to action to take advantage of this. You’ve got more than six figures. This is now the time to start investing that money and buying real tangible assets, not hoping and praying that the market will come back or you are buying at a low and buying it on sale, all those things that all these financial experts will tell you, and financial advisors.
Most of these people are good people, but they are deceived. They are self-interested because they want your money to go to those places. There are better things you be doing with your money, making more money and creating freedom right now. The question is, “What will you do about it?” Will you be the person that says, “I missed another opportunity? I missed another year or two years. I think 2024 is going to be more opportunities.”
Still, I don’t think it’s one year. I think we have multiple years to be able to do this. Again, when you are in the right markets and you are doing the right things, there’s always opportunity. Right now, I see it as one of these great cool times that when people start to get scared, that’s when people are running. That’s when I want to run toward where people are running from.
That’s what real people create wealth and bad times do. They run towards what seems the danger. They don’t run away from it. They run towards it while everybody else runs away, freaking out. This is your time. What are you going to do with it? How are you going to help, not just yourself, create freedom? How are you going to help support your family? How can you create something that goes beyond you? How can you teach your kids to do something better, to do something that’s amazing, to create more, to be able to be a better servant in the world? What will you do with this time? Will you be the person that, all of a sudden, kicks himself down the road and says, “I should have done it, but I was scared?”
That could be you or you could be someone who says, “I was scared. I was a little bit nervous. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I had the right people supporting me. I had the right people that had their ears to the ground and knew what they are doing by people we trusted.” When we look for people that we have people invest with, we are looking for people to put in our network or the Rolodex of investment operators. We look for people that have been through recessions before, that have been through pain and different times, and who know how to maneuver and move.
It doesn’t mean that they will be pain-free. It might mean that they experienced some challenges, but what’s nice is that they know that they can make it through. What I especially love is that when tough times come, they have integrity. They know what to do. Their character is what steps in. This is why it’s more important about who you invest in versus what you are investing in.
The what’s important, but especially if it’s somebody else involved in making those passive income returns, the who is the most important thing. Having the right people in your court, having the right community and circle around you, having the right mentors and the right people to help you guide you along. It doesn’t mean it’s risk-free, but if you are saying, “I was scared.” I have the right team and people around me. I have people that are involved and the people that are knowing what’s going on or help to guide me through these troubled waters. In fact, not just guide myself through troubled waters but find the best opportunities for me now.
That has created all that freedom for me as we moved into the 2030s. Imagine what it’d be like when your kids ask you, “What was it like when you took advantage of that? How did you create that wealth?” You are able to teach them something by living and doing the very thing you can do. Imagine what it’d be like with your spouse to be able to say, “Thank you. I can breathe easier now.” Even if there are layoffs or whatever, you still know that you have a plan B in place.
Regardless of what goes on with job layoffs and regardless of what happens in the world, you know you are safe. You know you can come out triumphant and you can come out. Still, a lot less pain than the other people that are experiencing it. Heaven forbid, I don’t want that to happen to anybody. Truth is, this is why the show is still here today.
I was asked by a mentor of mine, Eddie Wilson, “Why are you here? Why are you doing this?” The truth is, I don’t have to be. I could shut it down today. Why are we doing this? It’s because I know that you have hope. I need to bring hope. The fact is, I don’t know anyone that’s doing what we are doing, helping you do right now.
I’m not here to beat my chest on that. I’m doing that because I see it as a problem. I see something missing. People aren’t helping guide people and walk them step by step. It’s one thing to say, “Here’s somebody.” If you read our show and know that people coming on talking about their stuff. Even if they do funds, even if they are an investment operator, it doesn’t mean we’d recommend them. It means that they have an investment.
There are lots of great people that we don’t put on this show. In fact, some of the best people we never put on because we want to save those deals for ourselves. We want cherry pick the best ones, so we don’t put them on this show. We have great people that come on, but that’s not where the opportunity is. The opportunity is having that one-on-one guidance helping you do that.
The whole reason we are still doing infinite banking is that I haven’t found people that are doing a good enough job yet. There are still these insurance agents that don’t think like investors. They think like insurance agents. They still charge too much in fees and commissions and you are the one that suffers. This suffering needs to stop and I don’t want people to suffer needlessly right now. This is so vital and important. I want you to come out on top.
I want you to be able to prosper. I want you to do this to live your life now, not tomorrow, and have that life that you and your family can enjoy to have that freedom and prosperity and cashflow today. You become work optional where you work because you want to and not because you have to. 2023 can be your year if you take advantage of it. If you got questions for us, reach out to us at MoneyRipples.com. Make it a wonderful and prosperous new year. We’ll talk to you later.