Is it possible that your money could pay you TWICE? How can you create more leverage with the assets you have? Knowing this ONE thing that most don’t could make you HUNDREDS of thousands more! Cash Flow Expert, Chris Miles, shares how he is teaching his clients to make their money work twice as hard, creating more leverage, and ultimately more financial freedom NOW! Tune in to find out how!
Chris Miles Bio:
Chris Miles, the “Cash Flow Expert,” is a leading authority on how to quickly free up and create cash flow for thousands of his clients, entrepreneurs, and others internationally! He’s an author, speaker, and radio host that has been featured in US News, CNN Money, Bankrate, Entrepreneur on Fire, and has spoken to thousands getting them fast financial results.
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How Can I Get My Money To Pay Me TWICE?
I’m going to welcome you because it is an exciting day. I’m loving every bit of life that’s happening right now. I’m excited for you guys as well. As a reminder, go check out our website, www.MoneyRipples.com. If you want to know how to find and free up cash now, you’ll have that money now and find some of the best ways my clients have done that. Go check it out. It’s there for free to download on my website. Also, if you got questions or other topics you would like to hear about on my show, email me personally at Chris@MoneyRipples.com.
Leverage
I’ve been thinking a lot about what would be the most valuable to you. What are you guys wanting right now? I’ve been thinking about that and what people have been wanting, and probably, you could be mindful as well. What I’ve been thinking about is leverage. It is the thing that a lot of people are wanting right now. Many people are tired of working hard and not getting the results they want, even if they get good results. I’ve been talking to a lot of very successful people in different professions like doctors, lawyers, IT or whatever it might be.
The West Coast has been very friendly to me lately. A lot of people have been asking. They want to know how to leverage their money more. One of the things I noticed when I was on another show and I was being interviewed, somebody decided to get in-depth with some strategies with me because they do a lot of real estate investing and things like that. We started talking about how to get your money to pay you twice. I realized that this is something that’s important. No matter where you are, this is something that’s very vital. This has helped me in my life.
I even helped one of my clients as we were chatting on the phone. They didn’t have a ton of savings, but it was cool because as we’re looking at it, we realized that we could leverage different things. They had some different savings, retirement accounts, and things like that. We’re able to leverage only $5,000 of it to create $637 a month. It’s interesting because they came to me and said, “We want to buy some real estate. We’ve heard that you’ve got great connections there. We’re interested in seeing how we can make money with real estate.”
As I saw their situation more in-depth and when I looked at their cashflow, some of it was done with their loans and how we can either transfer money over or use some of the money to pay off certain types of loans. We’re able to use less than $5,000 to free up $637 a month. That’s over 7,600 a year. They’re getting over 100% rate of return on their money. That’s even better if they got a 16% to 20% cash-on-cash return on their money with a real estate property, which is very easy to do and possible for sure.
Creating Leverage
When you see that, you start to realize that leverage is the key. Leverage is the thing that creates a lot more results faster. The answer was there the whole time. They just didn’t see it. That’s one way you can create leverage, but I want to talk about a way that most people don’t know. For you, maybe your thing is towards focusing on your debts, not necessarily about investing. Others might say, “Investing is the thing I should be focusing on.”
If you got a question on the other portion, email me. In this portion, I’m going to talk about those of you that have savings and equity in your home and retirement accounts, but you’re wondering how to leverage it more and get more to pay you better. I’ve been working on a presentation for a very successful doctor, and he has a following as well. I want to share a piece of that with you guys on my show as well. I’m not going to go as in-depth because it does require a webinar. It does help a lot more to have a webinar than this episode, but I want to share some of those things right there.
Challenge Everything
The first thing I want you to do is challenge everything you think you know about money, leverage, investing and everything. More likely than not, whatever you’ve been taught, it’s gotten you to this place so far. It’s probably done you a decent job, but it could be so much better if you get outside of that. I also challenge you that if you ever find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect, as Mark Twain would say. I love that quote. You don’t want to follow the majority of people because the majority of people don’t know what they’re doing. The majority of the media don’t know what they’re talking about.
Challenge everything you think you know about money, leverage, investing, and everything. More likely than not, whatever you've been taught has gotten you to this place so far. It's probably done you a decent job, but it could be much better if you get… Click To TweetIn most cases, those media are paid by certain companies and institutions to tell you what you shouldn’t know. Most of the financial advice out there is taught to you because it’s about doing what’s in the best interest of the financial institution, the banks, and other companies out there, not necessarily in your favor, especially when you get a lot of the pundits out there. Some of them are telling you to be the savior mentality. I talk a lot about the steward mentality. They tell you to be the saver. They tell you, “Pay off all your debts, live as cheap as possible, save as much as possible, sacrifice and suffer. Invest in mutual funds, stocks, retirement accounts, and everything else.” Everything pretty much does not give you any freedom and no promise of freedom in the future.
I don’t like that. That’s a bunch of crap. This is why I tell people that we want to create leverage and cashflow. I challenge you to go back if you haven’t read the first episode to know some of my stories. It’s the first episode. My story was I’ve been in crappy places and amazing places financially. I’ll tell you that cashflow is the way to create freedom, especially if you create leverage. That is the key. The question is, how do you make your money twice? The way to do this is you’ve got to start thinking like a bank. Some of you might have heard some of these before, but let’s review these.
The Basic Rules Financial Institutions Follow
There are five basic rules that any bank or financial institution will follow. I bet you already know what they are. You already know the bank wants your money, but number one is how often they want you to put money in with them. As often as possible. How much of your money do they want? All of it. How long do they want it for? They want it forever. They want to keep it. How much do they want to give you back when you come in for it? Almost nothing. They want to keep that control of your money. Lastly, how much risk do they want to take? None. They want to give you all the risks. They want you to be the one investing in the stock markets. Not them.
They don’t invest their own money in the markets. They invest your money in the markets. They go and invest in sure things or invest in things called fees that they charge you. If you’ve noticed, financial institutions do charge you fees. If you have a 401(k), you’re probably paying some of the highest fees you could possibly be paying. You’re always paying for stuff. You’re taking on all the risks. You’re the ones putting in all that money on a regular basis. You’re told to put it in every paycheck for as much as you can, for as long as you can, and keep it staying in there for as long as you can so that you can have that miracle of compound interest and all that other crap.
Here’s the thing. The bank does not do that. The bank does the opposite rules because they’re not taking your money and letting it sit on a shelf and collect dust. They’re saying, “Give us your money and we’ll go and do something else with it and make money with it.” They’re all about creating leverage. They’re all about acceleration, not accumulation. They can loan out back to you. Anytime you give them savings, they can legally loan out ten times that amount of money with all the different regulations and codes that they have, depending on where they’re holding money. They’ve got the ability to leverage at least 6 to 10 times whatever money you give them.
What does that mean for you? It means that you’re doing the exact opposite because while they’re creating cashflow in money now, you’re told to create money somewhere down the road if you even like to enjoy it. What banks actually do is acceleration. What they teach you to do is accumulation. Those are two very different things. If you want to create real wealth or freedom now, you got to have the mindset of acceleration, and the strategies that back that up of creating acceleration, not just accumulation.
Accumulating money is a slow way to go. It has been proven that it doesn’t work. People have been saving their money for years, get into retirement, and realize that they don’t have nearly as much as what they were promised 30 years ago. I’m telling you it’s a fact because I was in that business. That’s why I left the business because I realized that there were getting false rates of return. They were telling you what technically true average rates of returns, but average rates returns don’t mean that’s what you get in your accounts.
Making Money Twice
You’re lucky to get maybe 6% in a mutual fund on a real rate of return compound interest basis, not 10% to 12% or even 8% like they’ve been saying. Especially when you factor in fees and taxes, you’re lucky to pull off 5% or even 4%. Some of you might even realize, “I’m not getting that much.” That’s probably true. How do you make money twice? You got to start becoming the bank. How do you start doing that? Here’s how to do it. I’m going to start going with this basic premise. For example, in the saber mentality, you’ve been taught to pay off your mortgage. Let’s say you have a $400,000 mortgage and a 4.5% interest. I know I’m going high here for many people, and that’s okay.
I’m doing that because I like to play devil’s advocate. If you get a 30-year mortgage at $400,000 with 4.5%, you’re going to pay $329,626. It’s about $330,000 in interest over the life of that loan. Now people freak out and say, “That’s almost double the mortgage payment. I remember several years ago when they used to be doubled because the interest rate was 6%. If you get 5%, we’re like, “You got 5%? That’s amazing.” Nowadays, we’re like, “You can get less than that.” If you got bad credit, you could get a 5% interest rate or something. $330,000 is what you would pay. If you got 4%, it would be under $300,000 of what you pay in interest.
That’s what the bank will use to freak you out. When I was a mortgage broker, I would use those numbers as well, especially for those of you that have the money you’ve been investing, whether it be in 401(k)s or you have savings, even if it’s significant savings. You have assets, maybe you have equity and home and things like that. Let’s say you sold off all your assets to get rid of that mortgage. You said, “I want to be debt-free.” It might even mean that you include selling your house. The best case scenario is if you don’t have a mortgage anymore at $400,000, you’re going to save that $329,000. If you put a little extra on your mortgage payments every month, you might save a little bit of interest. It’s going to be thousands, if not tens of thousands, but not hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s not likely.
Most people who put a lot of extra into their mortgage don’t save that much in interest. Your best-case scenario is paying it all upfront now. If you sold all your assets and paid off your mortgage, you’d be debt-free with no more interest rate, and then you could save every dollar you had to go into that mortgage payment. You could start putting it away towards savings. What if you didn’t? What if you let your assets? What if you let the money you could have used to pay off your mortgage? What if instead you actually earn an interest rate on it?
Remember, we said mortgage interest was 4.5%. You’re paying $329,000 in interest over 30 years. What would happen if you only earned 3.5% over 30 years on that $400,000 that you didn’t pay off your mortgage and let it sit in your savings? Now, 4.5% of the mortgage is $329,000. What do you think 3.5% would be? Get all kinds of guesses at this point. Do you want to know what that number is and the interest you earned on that money? It’s $722,717, “Hold on a second, Chris. You told me at a 4.5% mortgage was $329,000. Now you’re saying that if I earned 3.5% of that same money, I’m going to earn $722,000 of interest. Why is it almost a $400,000 difference? Why is it almost double?”
The reason is compound interest. I told you it’s not about saving and accumulating, but this is important to understand too. When you’re leveraging money, compound interest does help you. It’s even better if you can have compound interest and earn money on top of that. I teach this because if you think about it, if you don’t pay off your mortgage and instead, you let that money earn money, even if it’s at 3.5%, you could kick the crap out of it. In 30 years, you’ll stop a paid-off home, but now you’ve got $722,000 of interest. You got to factor in the difference. You still paid $329,000 interest. We don’t ignore that, but you’re left now with a net of about $395,000 of interest that you wouldn’t have earned had you been paying on your mortgage. That is the key.
If you would’ve gotten debt-free, you wouldn’t have been nearly that place. By simply earning compound interest, you kick the crap out of simple interest, which is a mortgage. Any loan is simple interest, not compound interest. They’re not the same interest rate. What’s cool is if you earn the same interest rate as a mortgage. If you earned that 4.5%, now you’ve earned $1,098,127. Basically, $1.1 million in interest. I do not include the principal. It’s just the interest alone that you’ve earned on that money. If you throw in the principal, you’ve got about $1.5 million and the paid-off house. If you even earn the same interest, you made $1.1 million, even though it costs you $329,000. That’s huge. That’s a $750,000 difference if you earn the same interest rate on a $400,000 mortgage.
I know numbers have been thrown out to you. If you’re not seeing it, it’s hard to see, but I’m telling you to run the numbers, and you’ll see it. It’s how it works. It blew my mind when I learned this. I realized people are losing retirement because they’re trying to pay off their mortgage so quickly. Instead, what if you thought of your mortgage as investing? Granted, if you gamble with your money, it’s a bad idea. Go pay off your mortgage. If you can at least earn solid returns, use that 4.5%. That’s awesome.
Somebody said, “Chris, I want you to use a real-life example. Where can we get that interest?” Most people, even though they know they can do mutual funds, they wonder, “Where can I even get 3.5% or 4.5% interest?” Let me talk to you about this here. There are a few different ways you can do that. You could invest in mutual funds, but that’s not consistent. You can’t count that it’s going to do that, but it could. The place I like to do or a vehicle is to use the word safe is whole life insurance. There are people out there that preach against this. They say, “Buy term and invest the difference.” I’m going to tell you, that strategy has not worked either. You might get some words to some point, but buying term over the long haul will cost you more if you don’t do it the way that we do it.
If you want to create freedom, you have to have the mindset of acceleration. Click To TweetGranted, if you do a whole life like the way most people teach it or like most life insurance agents will give it to you because their pocketbook is tied to it, you’re right. Whole life will be good. It will probably still beat out doing term insurance over the long haul. I like to use whole life where you become your own bank because banks like to control money. They like to leverage it. Banks buy life insurance as well. They’re one of the biggest purchasers of life insurance. In fact, during the Great Recession, it was not uncommon to see them put anywhere from 20% to 40% of their assets in life insurance cash value, where they would store it there and then they leverage it.
If you think about what a bank does, a bank will keep their reserves in certain places that they can keep in cash, but many of them get life insurance. I remember Washington Mutual had 42% of the reserves in life insurance cash value. Here’s why they do that. It’s because you can leverage the snot out of it. I’ll give you a very simple example. We’re switching gears here a little bit, but this is the same example I gave you with the house. I remember when I first started to launch my business before Money Ripples, I had cash but I had some savings, but I didn’t want to use up all my savings. I wanted to keep it there.
I went to the bank, and I said, “What can I do? I want to get a loan against my savings like a line of credit, but I don’t want to lose my savings. I still want to have those savings there.” They said, “We can do a secured loan for you. We’ll do it for you at 4%.” That 4% back then was awesome for a loan rate. I said, “That’s great. What am I earning on my savings?” They said, “You’re earning 1.5%.” In that sense, you can earn less on compound interest and still come out okay. In that scenario, I would have to earn at least half.
If I were earning at least 2%, I would at least break-even on the interest. The thing was I was taking that money. I went and put it into my business. I made way more than $100-some odd payment that I was paying them for that money. I was able to leverage it and make more money there. If I earned a higher rate of return, say it was 3%, and then I was loaned at 4%, now I have the ability to make money in two places at once because of the compound interest on the money that I have sitting there. It’s still sitting there. They’re just giving me an extra line of credit. I have another pocket. They’re loaning me money. The compound interest of that savings can be beating the loan that I’m paying down.
The cashflow I’m earning in my business can go and pay those payments. The thing is I’m now earning money twice because I’m earning compound interest that exceeds the interest that I’m paying on the loan, and I’m making money in my business. That’s two places at once. You can do that same exact strategy with whole life insurance. You’re still earning compound interest on your money, but you can borrow from the life insurance company where they use your money basically as collateral. You’re borrowing against it to then leverage, and now you can earn off it. The difference is that the rates are much better.
For example, in some of the companies I know that I have my insurance guy use, someone will have an interest rate around 4.5%, but you can still get a cash-on-cash return of 5% on that money, especially if you structured it the way that we teach, which is very rare. You don’t see many people leveraging quite the way that we do where you get death benefit and cash value. You do need that death benefit to give you permission to spend money. In another episode that I’ve done before, you can go back and look up those. In any case, keep it simple.
Here’s the thing. You can go and leverage that money. With those people that want to do real estate investing, here’s the problem that happens. You’re always paying interest. If you use cash from your own pocket, you’re losing on interest. For example, there’s this Tennessee property of one of my friends who’s a supplier of properties. In Tennessee, you would have to put over $25,000 down for that property. The cashflow for that per month is $438. It’s over $5,000 a year. It’s a 20% cash-on-cash rate of return. You’re earning $5,000 a year, but you only put $25,000 down.
With that property, in particular, most people would kick cash. The other bank put that $25,000 down in the property. Now that $25,000 is gone and not earning interest anymore. They are earning cashflow, which is great, but that cashflow has to use to replace the savings. They’re using the cashflow to slowly build that savings back up to $25,000 they spent, which could take years. I said, “Let’s run the numbers. What would happen if you used the down payment and used your savings? If you took that cashflow, the $438 a month, and for five years, you earned a 0.2% interest on your savings, not including the taxes you pay on that savings. After five years, you will save up $26,714.”
Congratulations. After five years, you’ve got your down payment back. You can do it again. Now, if you use whole life after five years, you would have almost $33,000 in savings. You would still have about a $2,800 loan that will be gone in a few months, netting you $30,000. What’s that difference? That means your net profit is $3,360 total, which is a 13% extra rate of return because your money made money twice. You made money on life insurance and the property. You’re still making cashflow on the property because you’ve got an extra 13% of money return that happened over those five years. The cool thing is if you do that for six years, that return goes up over 20% net profit. Now you’ve made over $5,000 extra that you would have made just putting into savings.
Again, these are all numbers that I should show you on a webinar and that kind of thing. I will do that. In fact, I’m doing that for a guy, but I’m here to tell you that those kinds of things are possible. If you can leverage and make money twice, that is the key. For those of you that have savings, it’s very possible that you’re not taking advantage of it. Most people I’m talking to right now, their savings are doing a little bit. Maybe they’re doing real estate investing or they’re doing nothing. It’s sitting on a 401(k) or an IRA doing nothing and they’re hoping to make 5% or 6% a year. You guys should be making so much more than that.
The Power Of Leverage
That’s the power of leverage. You could be doing better investments or doing better things with your money. The thing is how do you leverage it? How do you make it all work together? This is why even people that are doing good with real estate are not even worried about buying real estate properties with people they have connections with. They’re saying, “We’ve got great properties already. How do we make it better? How do we keep earning money more? If you can imagine, that was for five years with one property example. Imagine people doing multiple properties. There could be tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands dollars difference. When you decide to pay on a loan when you don’t pay on a loan, and all those kinds of things.
This is where some of the biggest money leaks happen, the money that you never earned in the first place and ignore. That’s the power I’m referring to here. When you start to look at it from this standpoint, not just an accumulation standpoint, let your money sit there and do nothing, but you’re active with it. You don’t have to work full time, but when you’re active with it and when you’re being consciously aware of what you can do, it’s incredible the results you can create. That’s what I wanted to expand your mind.
The numbers are one thing. I threw a bunch of numbers at you. Some of you might have been like, “I’m lost.” For some of you, this is the first time you heard this concept and that’s okay. I want you to open up that there’s a possibility and that there is hope. There is something more out there than what you expect. I’m signing off here for this episode. Have a wonderful, prosperous week. We’ll see you next time.