Are you going to keep thinking with the masses and getting NO RESULTS or are you going to try something new?
It drives me NUTS to see people continuing to contribute their life’s savings into 401ks even though they see that 99% of people who retire with a 401k don’t have enough to live on long term. Oh, and those are 401k MILLIONAIRES that don’t have enough…
What does that mean for you? Is there no hope?
Thankfully, today I am talking about a better way to retire and stop worrying about cash. Listen and learn!
Start thinking differently.
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TRANSCRIPTS:
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, my fellow Ripples. This is Chris Miles, your cashflow expert, 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 anti financianal advisor you deserve. He’s jumping behind the mic right now, ready to make waves. Here’s Chris Miles.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I’m going to show it’s for you. Those that work so hard for your money and you’re now ready because you’re sick and tired of it, you’re now ready for your money to start working harder for you today. You want that freedom and cashflow. Now, you don’t want it to wait 30 or 40 years from now, but you want it today so that you can live that life that you love with those that you love. But it’s not just about getting rich, although that helps, but it’s about living a rich life because as you are blessed financially, you have the greater capacity to bless the lives of those around you. Thank you for tuning in today, guys. I really appreciate you guys. They’ve been binging and sharing and you know what? Making 2023 an amazing and amazing year. Absolutely. So thank you so much for tuning in and being a big part of this ripple effect and allowing me to create that through you.
(01:20)
I want to build on that ripple effect right now. I want to talk about that because that’s really been on my mind a lot lately. I went back in, I started talking with some of you. Many of you, I’ve reached out. You’ve done the calculator for example on our website, money ripples.com, and realizing that usually if we talk to you, it’s because that result was at least 15,000, assuming it filled out correctly. Sometimes I’ve seen people fill it out incorrectly and they actually would’ve got a better number than what showed up. As I’ve been talking to more and more of you, you’ve really been on my mind because there are a lot of myths. There are a lot of things mentally that you have to get over and I mean when I say mentally, I don’t mean that you’re psychologically damaged or anything like that, but what I mean is there’s mindset things that you’ve been brainwashed to believe just like I was when I was a financial advisor.
(02:07)
If you don’t know my story, maybe you’re new tuning in. I’m known as the anti financianal advisor, right? Well, why is that? Well, remember, I wasn’t raised understanding money. All the thing I was understand about money growing up was that there was never enough of it that we can’t afford things, that there’s never enough of it. There’s like there’s never enough time. There’s never enough money. Money doesn’t grow on trees. We’re not made of money, so don’t keep blowing it pretty much. There’s always a scarcity of money. There was always a lack, and that scarcity went with me into my adult years even though I wanted to do something different than what I was taught. I took that with me in my adult years, which eventually what led me to be a financial advisor because guess who supports that scarcity mentality? Financial advisors do right now.
(02:52)
They may not talk about it like you’re not going to have enough, but they are going to say, you need to sacrifice. You need to suffer essentially for today, even if they don’t say suffer, you really are suffering for now to try to script together and save whatever money you can. Don’t spend a lot of money. In fact, don’t spend hardly anything in the meantime so that if you do enough sacrifice and you really are disciplined as they’ll say enough for enough years, you could become financially free maybe by your sixties, and that’s the dream. They try to sell. They try to save this kind of hopium, but what I found is after I became a financial advisor and did that for several years and especially when I sat down with my own father, sat down with him who had been cheap, he had saved as much as he could.
(03:34)
He was the one that taught me to save everything, try to spend nothing. He did the same thing in his life. He paid off his house in 18 years and was completely debt free. At that point, he had actually gone and stuffed his 401k. You’ve been taught to do your entire life and you know what the result was 61 year years old and me having to tell him as a financial advisor, being honest with him, you’ve got five years of money, you better hope you die soon, and that was the reality, right? So what happened? He had to work until the seventies and even then now he’s still living. He’s still alive today, the guy, he’s alive but he’s not able to live. You understand why? I mean, why say that he’s alive, but he can’t truly live again. Someone who worked so hard for so many years saved so much and yet it was still not enough.
(04:20)
Why? Because you’ve been sold a bill of goods. You’ve been sold something that just isn’t true. You’ve been sold to think that you might make 12% a year in the stock market, which it’s never done, not for a long term, not for a long period of time. It’s done much, much less. You’re lucky to get 8% even with your 401k match because those funds don’t do as well. You’re lucky to get an 8% rate of return. Do the math on that. What I’ve found, especially when you start to factor in real rates of inflation, and a lot of times I even do it lower than what I think inflation actually is based on shadow stats and things like that, you’re lucky to live on. Whatever you save per year is the lifestyle you’re going to live on per year, so if you save, you max fund your 401k, I actually talked to somebody the other day that was doing this.
(05:01)
He’s like, yeah, max funding the 21,000 a year. I said, well, guess what? With inflation and everything else and so that you don’t run out of money, you’re going to have to live on about a 21,000 a year lifestyle. That’s what it ends up being. Almost every time I run the numbers, even with the 401k matches, you might get a little bit more, maybe a little bit higher. It might not be 21,000, might be 25,000 a year, but that’s not enough because your max funding your 401k getting the matches and it’s just not doing enough. It doesn’t move the needle enough. Guys, this is why . I know there’s some other financial advisor that can do that. I’m not that guy.
(05:40)
I can’t teach and sell something that I no longer believe in, and especially when I realized there was something better, something much better than that because I’ve been watching people, and by the way, I’ve already talked about the statistics, fidelity. They’ve got 45 million clients that have put money into their IRAs and their 4 0 1 Ks, and I can assure you that the baby boomers are at least 30 to 35% of that, those that are already in retirement years, and yet despite at least maybe almost a third of their numbers being baby boomers, guess what? Only one and a half percent of people have a million dollars or more in those accounts. On top of that, what’s crazy and sad is that they pulled those people, same people, Transamerica pulled those people said of 35% of those people that had a million dollars or more, they thought it would take a miracle to be able to retire, guys.
(06:32)
Why? Because if they’re living on 3%, because four percent’s too much, now you’re living on 3% and you have a million dollars, you’re living on 30,000 a year. That’s not what you’ve signed up for. Is that what you were taught by financial advisors? And I’ll tell you, I had somebody recently that said, Chris, I’m really struggling because we have a financial advisor and we were really struggling because we’re still taught in this traditional thing. I said, of course you’re struggling with that because everybody’s telling you that’s the right way to go, but when did the vast majority of Americans, for example, know what’s right? If that were the case and those kinds of companies would be out of business right now, wouldn’t they? No, they’re not. Despite the fact that we know they’re literally killing people still do it. This is why in the state of Utah, right?
(07:18)
That’s where I live. You might not see a lot of liquor and stuff, but man, you will see soda restaurants all over the place. People are buying their swigs and whatever they call it, right? They’re buying all their big gulps and everything else becoming diabetic as a result of that kind of thing. Well, just because a lot of people are going and buying sodas and doing stuff like that doesn’t mean it’s right. Same thing with your money, and just so you know, just because it’s the majority of people, because that’s what you’ve been sold for the last really 40 plus years when financial companies really became aggressive and started hiring financial advisors to teach you this stuff, still, there’s still at least 10, 20 million plus people in the United States doing the kind of investments that I’m talking about here. I’m not alone, and guess what?
(08:02)
We have better odds of success than you guys do with your 4 0 1 ks in your IRAs. Guys, take the hint. The evidence is already there, but the media won’t do it because all the financial media, what are they going to do? They’re not going to tell you, Hey, you know what? Don’t invest in these companies because those companies are the very ones sponsoring their media. They’re the ones putting running ads and paying them millions if not billions of dollars in media and sponsorships so that you buy their stuff. They’re not going to bite the hand that feeds them because sadly enough, those sponsors, those financial institutions like your Merrill Lynch’s, your Goldman Sachs, your fidelities, they pay them a lot more money than you do. You don’t pay them that money. They pay them the money. That’s who they support. They’re supporting the very institution that I left because I could not teach a lie.
(08:51)
How long do you want to keep believing a lie? Particularly when that person said, well, I’m kind of risk averse and I keep buying into that mindset. I have to shift that mindset from a financial advisor. Well, when you tell me you’re risk averse, meaning that you don’t like risk, well, why would you have a financial advisor where there’s almost a hundred percent chance that you’re going to lose? That’s like going to a restaurant that has 99 1 star reviews, one good five star review and trusting the one five star review. That’s what you’re doing guys, when there’s less than a 1% chance of success here, and remember, like I said, with Fidelity was one and a half percent and still a third of those people didn’t believe that they would be able to retire at all, so why would you believe it today? Why not go with something that’s actually been proven, and so when that person says a risk averse, and it’s like, no, you’re not because you’re still trusting your financial advisor.
(09:41)
I’m more risk averse than you are because I don’t gamble my money in stocks and things like that that have no real value to ’em. That’s just arbitrary. I buy real assets. That’s why I get things that are backed by real estate. You understand how much more secure and safe that can be. Now, I’m not saying it’s, but if I’m going to take a risk, I’m going to take a risk on a thing that has a real tangible value versus something that doesn’t Why Tesla is ridiculous. That thing is so overvalued because people love Elon, but the company itself isn’t that profitable, not as profitable as people if they make it out to be so already. If ever reality comes back into balance versus people’s emotions that stock could come crashing. What if you have all your life savings in that stock? What’s going to happen next?
(10:24)
What if you trust in Apple? Hey, that’s great that many people do, and I don’t think Apple’s been a great company, but let’s be honest, it’s not the same as it was when it was with Steve Jobs. I liked it a lot better back then. Now it’s like you’re kind of boring. You’re like everybody else to me at this point, so you’re trusting something that has no real tangible value. It’s very arbitrary based on how people feel about it, not about what it actually is. The truth is this, is that if things got really bad in recession, what do people likely to do? Are they likely to keep holding onto their stocks or are they going to hold onto the place that they live? When you’re needing to survive, you’re going to prioritize the place that you live more than that, whatever crappy stock you’re going to cash in those stocks, especially because they’re so easy to cash in, you’re going to cash those in to get cash because real to you to buy real things like food and shelter and clothes, those are the things you could trust in, not the stocks, so who’s risk averse?
(11:22)
If that’s the case, I’m the most conservative guy you’ve probably heard because I’m the one that doesn’t want to gamble my money and things that everybody else says is conservative. Just because everybody does a dumb thing doesn’t make it any smarter, okay, so I know I’m being pretty blunt here because it’s true. At some point you’ve got to wake up to the reality that what you’re doing, your actions may not match your beliefs. Who’s to say you’re even investing in companies you would even support in real life, you might be investing in companies and doing that. If you’re a business owner, why would you invest in everybody else’s company besides yours? Right? I mean, that’s the truth is that if I’m going to invest in any company, I’ll invest in Money Ripples because I can control that kind of return. I can make those things work.
(12:03)
I can’t go buy a bunch of Apple stock and tell Tim Cook, Hey, you know what? You need to shape up here. I can’t do that. I don’t have as much money as Warren Buffet does to be able to do that kind of thing to sit on the board. Neither do you, and so why do we keep buying into the same old crap every time, hoping that maybe history will change, hoping that something will be different? It won’t be, and if I have to slap that reality on you, that’s what it has to take. Now, I’ll show you the opposite. I recently spoke with a couple that is just genius right now. They’re not smarter than anybody else in that sense, but they made great decisions, better decisions is what most people make. I want to repeat that. I’m not saying that they’re smarter than anybody else, although they’re smart people, just like I think most of you guys are pretty intelligent as well, and I say most because I don’t know all of you.
(12:50)
There’s possible that some of you may not be that intelligent, so I don’t want to assume, but I actually do believe that people are more intelligent than the general media and the experts out there give people credit for. I think for the most part, people are pretty darn intelligent. Now, we do dumb things. Obviously we do things that aren’t supportive of that intelligence, but I think people are intelligent. I think you do have a BSS meter and what’s right and what’s wrong, and I’ll tell you this couple here. What was interesting is that one of the wife’s mother, the mother-in-law, depending on which perspective you’re looking at, but the wife’s mother, she actually got them at a younger age to do some real estate investing, so they had sold a business at one point, and so when they were about 30, they started getting into real estate partnerships with their mother.
(13:36)
Well, flash forward now they’re in their fifties, right? Their early fifties, not quite at that retirement age yet. Right now they’re making 150,000 a year of passive income from their real estate alone, 150,000 a year. Understand, to be able to make 150,000 a year, you generally have to have $5 million in mutual funds to pull off that kind of income. 5 million. They didn’t have to have 5 million. They actually had a lot less that they put into that real estate, but it’s generating 150,000 a year. That doesn’t include even the fact they even have some pensions from companies coming in too. They’re technically financially independent. The great thing is that they’re still open, and I know almost anybody listening to this right now, I’m not financially independent, but they’re still open the fact that they could be doing things better, and so when I’m looking at their situation, I said, well, let’s look at this.
(14:22)
Your real estate, you’ve got at least 4 million of equity in this real estate making 150,000 a year. That’s actually a low return on equity considering we could probably pick and choose some of these real estate properties to sell, move them into something else that actually has a higher return. Probably even get close to at least 50% more, if not double the cashflow they’re making, taking it from at least 150,000 to a minimum, I would think, 200 to 300,000 a year, even if I’m being conservative. That’s the kind of thing they have, and they also have money sitting on the sidelines. I said, even want that money sitting on the sidelines. Even if you take 800,000 of that cash just sitting around doing nothing, that 800,000 would make you at 10% 80,000 a year, so you got that, and they also have an old 401k. They’re wondering what to do with it.
(15:04)
They didn’t even need that money. They had a lot less of that in their situation. They said, well, I did it because that’s what you’re supposed to do, so they still bought into the typical, well, we’ve got to do the 401k because they give you a match. It’s free money. Not realizing those returns haven’t been as well, and I said, it’s interesting you did that, and they acknowledged me before I said it. They said, oh yeah, our real estate did way better than our 401k did over these last few decades. Duh. That’s what I’ve been telling you guys. Same thing, real evidence. I can’t tell you. In fact, I’m really excited at some point. I would love it if they actually came on this show to talk to you guys about that because how many of you have said, I wish I knew about this 10, 20 years ago?
(15:45)
How many of you have said that? How many of you have said, I wish my kids would grasp onto this because if they’re 20 years old right now, what could their life be like? I’ll tell you what their life could be like. It could be like them, but in their forties, and the thing is they could still do it better. That’s the amazing thing is that we could still find ways to increase that cashflow. I said, I think conservatively we can increase your cashflow by at least a hundred thousand a year, and the guy was like, really? It could be that much. I said, yes. The funny thing is they wanted to increase it by another 200,000 a year just to just blow the financial independence number out of the water, really more than double their financial independence number. I said, yeah, you could. I’m like, I’m going to keep it at a hundred thousand just to stay low in case you guys change your mind on some of these strategies you could be doing to make better returns, but then you fight me on it or something, right?
(16:28)
But the truth is really in their situation, they probably could do at least another about 200,000 a year if they were fully, fully open to all the possibilities. That’s the amazing thing is that that is what gets me up every day, that kind of situation, and it’s not just about that they have so much money, it’s about that they’re willing to take a chance on themselves, and yes, they take a chance on us, but in my mind, we’ve done it so many times, it’s just so easy for us, but to see that change happen and see those changes happening with a lot of our other clients as well, right? Where they’re starting to see that, and heck, even with the real estate market being crappy in the last year, almost two years now, ever since the Fed started raising the rates, things have gotten tougher in the real estate game yet because there’s so many different types of real estate investing you can do, these people are still getting results.
(17:20)
It’s changing their lives. It’s allowing them that if there’s problems with their jobs, they have something to fall back on. Understand that. I guess I’m taking this back personally to home for me because I’ve seen what it’s done for me in my life, but it’s always hard to describe your own life when you’ve been living it for so long, isn’t it? It’s so much easier when it’s brand new for you. For example, I was talking with my dad just a few months ago and I was talking about just us going out of town. I went to do a business event for a couple days, but then to stay an extra week or so week and a half in St. Augustine just to have some time with the family, and that’s even after we spent a month in Hawaii and things like that just to get away from the winter cold that’s here in Utah, all these things, and my dad’s like, I just don’t understand your life.
(18:03)
I don’t understand it. He never had that ability. Understand. He worked until he was just over 70 years old until he was pretty much at the point of being forced into retirement. He worked all that time and now he’s still alive, but he’s not really truly able to live right? He’s not able to really enjoy that time. He’s now really on a clock. He’s trying to let that money stretch as long as he can. Those of things, even as I’m trying to help him out, we’re just trying to let his money stretch out as long as we can possibly go, and that’s not a way to live, guys. Not to mention that’s if you live too long and that’s happening more and more to people right now, he thought, by the way, we have a quick easy death like some of his family members had.
(18:42)
It didn’t happen that way for him. He actually, his life has been extended much longer than it should have been based on statistics, right? The guy is just amazing that he’s still alive right now, but think about that. If you live so much longer, you’re just going to be counting your pennies as much as you can hoping and just letting that money stretch. That’s why you have to live on less than 3%. You try to retire, you try to retire early, you better not pull out more than 2% a year, right? If you’re trying to retire in your forties or something like that, if you do the traditional financial advice, but contrast that with what if it’s not about living too long? What if you die young? What if you’ve been sacrificing and saving and suffering this whole time and delaying your life for some day, wanting to find out that you die too young?
(19:26)
What kind of regrets would you have? Would you say, I wish I’d spent more time with my family, or maybe you’ll say the opposite me. You’re like, oh, I wish I’d put more in that 401k. Would you really be saying that? No, of course not. You’d be saying, what could I have done to have that time back with my family? What can I’ve done to literally buy that time back and I know many of you guys have been reaching out because you’ve been asking, how do I buy my time back? I don’t want just a lot of money. I want the time freedom that comes with it. I want to be work optional where I work because I want to, not because I have to. I want that freedom. I want the ability to choose. I want to be able to choose to see what I want to do with my life.
(20:03)
That is the kind of freedom we want. I’ll tell you, having six teenagers and they’re getting older and their lives and their schedule are getting busier, it’s getting harder and harder to enjoy time with them right now because they’re realizing that they’ve got to become adults. They’ve got to start taking care of themselves. No, I don’t just take care of every one of their little needs. I don’t believe in that. I believe that they need to make their own way and make their own money and their own wealth and their own decisions with their life. I’m willing to help guide ’em and offer advice along the way, but I want them to make their own way and not have to think that their money, it’s not their money. We created the wealth ourselves. I expect them to do the same. I’m definitely willing to get help to give them a leg up, but I don’t expect ’em to do that.
(20:43)
But as they move into adulthood, they realize, I got to work jobs. I got school. Maybe I want to do extracurricular type things and hobbies and interests. It doesn’t leave much time to enjoy. You go out of town with them for a couple weeks or something like that. I’m dealing with that with going with a Christmas break. One of ’em is saying, I’ve got my job, and I don’t think I could take that much time off. Okay, well, that stinks. You don’t ever want to be the person that’s singing, casting the cradle and crying your eyes out because your family, you realize that by the time you had enough resources to be able to spend time with them, they’re gone. They’re living their own lives. They’re busy doing their own things. They’re making their own excuses why they can’t spend that time with you. You need to control today.
(21:25)
That is the difference between what we talk about here. It’s not about creating a financial future, but creating that financial present that allows you to be able to live that life that you want now and also have a better future as well. Anyways, guys, that’s what’s been on my mind lately, especially as we’re going to this holiday season going into the new year. I want you guys to have a better life than that. I really, really, really want you to have something better. Maybe I want it better more than you do. Maybe not, but I’m telling you the guys, I’ve never ever seen an opportunity as good as it is right now for you to be able to have better hope, and so if anything, I want to leave this message of hope, just like the Christmas season is all about with Christ and everything else.
(22:08)
I want to leave that message of hope with you too, is that there is hope you could have a better life. You have that choice. You have that power in your control. It’s up to you whether you take advantage of it or you follow the mainstream and have that ordinary life that leads to ordinary results, which leads to working later, working harder, saving more, so that you can live on less. I want you to do the opposite. I want you to be able to get your money working harder for you so you not to work so hard for your money. Guys, take that into serious account, especially if you’re going to the new year. That’s something different you want in your life. Do something to make a change. Hey, if we can help you out in any way and support you in any way, let us know by reaching out to us money ripples.com.
(22:48)
You can also take that passive income calculator to see what is possible in your situation, make it wonderful and prosperous holiday season and going into this new year. Guys, we’ll talk to you later, and that scarcity, I took that with me in my adult years, which eventually what led me to be a financial advisor because guess who supports that scarcity mentality? Financial advisors do, but they are going to say, you need to sacrifice. You need to suffer essentially for today, even if they don’t say suffer, you really are suffering for now, so that if you do enough sacrifice and you really are disciplined, you could become financially free maybe by your sixties.