What is the biggest factor that’s preventing you for creating the financial freedom of your dreams? What can you do to stop it? In this episode, Chris Miles identifies the primary reason that is preventing you from potentially NEVER creating financial freedom for you and your family.
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The #1 Cause of All of Your Financial Problems
Welcome to our show. It’s for you, those who work so hard for your money and want your money start working harder for you. You want that freedom, cash flow, and prosperity now, not 30 or 40 years from now. You live that life that you love with those that you love. Most importantly, it’s not by getting rich. It’s by living a rich life because as you are blessed financially, you have a greater capacity to bless the lives of others.
Thank you for allowing me to create that ripple effect through you. I appreciate you tuning in. You’ve been binging and sharing. I appreciate you subscribing to our YouTube channel as well as those that left a review on Apple and iTunes. Thank you so much for doing that. I appreciate all the good words and even the topics that you guys have brought to us. Thank you so much.
What’s Stopping You?
In this episode, I want to talk about the number one reason for your financial problems or the number one cause that’s creating these worries and your limitations in your life. What is it that’s stopping you from being able to create all this freedom we talk about on the show all the time? I could make you feel good. I can tell you things like, “It’s not your fault.” I can say, “It’s not your fault. You’ve been trained by financial institutions, financial advisors, and experts all over TV and media. They’re telling you that you should always be doing the same mediocre status quo crap where you save everything, spend nothing, pay off all your debt like good boys and little girls, and hopefully, someday, you might have something.” You never live your life now. You live it tomorrow instead. That’s not great.
That’s not the number one reason. That’s not the number one cause of your financial woes and financial worries. I’m going to get into that in a bit. Before we get into that number one, I want to share with you a little bit about our situation within my family and everything else. I know we talk about it sometimes, but if you haven’t followed me long enough, you probably don’t even know much about me besides being this ex-financial advisor that became an anti-financial advisor.
Marriage
In my life, I have a blended family. It shocks most people. Being here in Utah, they’re like, “Is that from one wife?” Technically, no. I remarried. This is my family from several years ago. We celebrated our sixth anniversary. These are 7 of our 8 children. I have six. My wife brought two to our marriage. As a result, my wife was a lot more stressed out than I was. Going from 6 to 8 is a lot easier than going from 2 to 8. Even my oldest son is eighteen years old. My oldest daughter is sixteen, driving cars, and so on.
We’ve got six children that are aged 12 through 18. It’s one after the other that we blended these families together. We had all this hope in our eyes. We were like, “When we get married, we’ll blend our families and everything will be perfect.” If you’ve been married or been in any relationship for that matter, there are going to be some rough patches. There are going to be some rough times.
In my own marriage with my wife, I love her to death. She’s been on a few of these episodes. If you go back, you can find some of them. She is a spitfire. She is a Venezuelan woman who immigrated here to the United States. In fact, she can speak English much better than Spanish. Here’s a thing. She is a strong queen, and she should be treated accordingly.
I’ve been successful in many aspects of my life. I’m a marathoner. I do well in those races. I’ve gotten very fast and gotten faster over time, where I’m the fastest I’ve ever been in my adult life. I’m 45 years old. I’ve excelled in so many areas, financially speaking, in business, in health, and in mindset. The one place that I’ve failed has been in my marriage. It’s not like I’m a complete number one absolute failure or the biggest jerk in the world. In fact, if you were to look at our situation, I would’ve thought, “I’m doing a pretty good job.”
From the outside, I look like an amazing husband. I do work here, but I work more part-time in my business. I also help out with the family. When my kids are here, I’m the one pretty much cooking, cleaning, and taking care of things to relieve that burden for my wife. I do a great job in helping out. I even do a lot of the chores. I do a lot of the honey-do list stuff. I do a lot of good stuff. I even massage my wife about every single night. It’s crazy. I treat her like she’s my queen. With that being said, there are many ways I don’t treat her like a queen.
In the case of the emotional aspect, I don’t always do the best job. There have been several times that we’ve got into these arguments. Trust me. She’s the kind of person that calls you out right off the bat. She calls you on it. I’m one of the guys that go inward. I’m the one that gets quieter or silent during those conflicts. She calls me out on my crap right away. She’s like, “You’re not listening to me. This is what I feel.” I say, “You don’t because you said this the other day.” She’s like, “You can’t say that to me. You can’t say I don’t feel a certain way because I do.”
I’ll go back to my memory. I’d be like, “you said this, so this is what you think. I listened.” She’s like, “I don’t because this is how I feel in this moment right now.” She gets to the point where she says, “When are you going to learn to trust me? When are you going to trust what I believe and what I say that comes out of my mouth? I’m pretty straightforward. I tell you exactly how I feel. Trust it.” I say, “I get it.” She’s like, “Do you hear me?” I’m like, “I hear you.” She’s like, “Are you listening? Are you getting this? We’ve had this discussion many times in our marriage. When are you going to get this? When are you listening?” I’m like, “I’m listening. I’m getting it.” What I then say is, “I understand.”
I get it logically on an emotional basis. Sometimes, when I get emotional, I don’t always make logical sense. In fact, the more emotional I get, the less logical I become or the more illogical I become. I tell her, “I can’t promise I’m going to get it right, but I promise I will be better.” Once I started doing that, things got better in our marriage. Things improved to where the romance started coming back again. Things started to get better.
Sometimes when we get emotional, we don't always make logical sense. In fact, the more emotional we get, the more illogical we become. Click To TweetI was blamed for what was happening in our marriage for the last several years saying, “I’m doing all the hard work. I’m cooking. I’m cleaning. I’m a housewife. I’m a provider of this home, too. We’ve got our investments. We got all this stuff. I’m doing it all. I’m carrying this heavy load on my shoulders to take it off of yours.” She’s like, “I didn’t even ask you to do all that. I didn’t ask you to take all that crap off. I asked you to be there to do these few things that I ask. That’s it.” Understand that I was thinking, “She owes me. I’m carrying the weight on my marriage. I’m the martyr here. I’m the victim.” That’s what I was doing.
Once I got out of that attitude, started to own up, and started to be of integrity to do what I say I’m going to do, instead of saying, “I hear you,” I was like, “I’m listening. I’m heeding your call. Now, I’m acting accordingly to what you’re telling me.” That is when our marriage improved. She got better when I got better. This is important. You might be asking, “Why are you airing out your dirty laundry here?” First off, I’m not even giving you all the dirty laundry. I kept this pretty dang clean. This is Tide-washed clean laundry you’re seeing. It’s floating on the clothesline in the wind, drying in the nice spring sunlight. It’s that kind of thing. That’s what you’re seeing right here.
I’m offering this to you because I know many of you have been in relationships and you understand this. Maybe you don’t understand this. Maybe this is an epiphany to you that what’s going on in your marriage and your relationships might be your fault. You might be at fault. You might be 100% responsible for what’s happening. I get it. In a relationship, there are different factors. There are other things. I know I’m not 100% responsible for everything in our marriage, but I can tell you. When I stopped acting like it was her fault and I started acting more like it’s mine, I was like, “Where can I own up? What can I control?”
In the Navy SEALs, they don’t talk about what can go wrong. They talk about, “What are the factors I can control right now? What’s in my control? What can I do to make this situation better?” That is the real question you should be asking. What does that have to do with the money? It is everything. Believe it or not, you have a relationship with money, too. Some of you have a great relationship with money. Many of you have a crappy relationship with money. Many of you already divorced money. Maybe you’ve been divorced from money ten times and you’re wondering what the heck is going on.
It’s You
I’m here to tell you the number one cause of all your financial problems is you. You are the cause of it. I’m not letting you off the hook here. I’m not even denying the fact. I know everybody’s brainwashing you to believe a certain way about money, but the truth is it’s in your hands. You’re getting an education. Despite this education you’re getting from my show and maybe whatever others you’re reading, if you’re still dealing with stress about your money, with uncertainty about where to invest and what to do, that is 100% your fault. That’s all on you.
It’s not about just hearing. It’s like my wife says. She’s like, “Are you hearing me?” I’d be like, “I’m hearing you.” She is then like, “Are you listening?” Are you understanding it to the point where it’s a part of you and you’re willing to take action to do something differently? Are you willing to be of integrity and move according to your knowledge? You understand that many marriages and relationships have suffered. It’s not because somebody is always doing something wrong, but it is what you’re not doing. It’s what you know you should be doing, but you’re not.
This is why many people are in bad health. We all know we should be eating better. We should be exercising more and doing the right things. Do we always live in that integrity? No. Do we live those commitments? No. I’m even talking about myself. I’m a marathoner. I can beat 97% of people on a race course, but that does not mean I still don’t do everything I know I should be doing. This is true with my money. This is true in my life.
I know I try to get in integrity as fast as I can, but there are still blind spots. There are still things that I ignore or maybe I want to blame something else. The truth is, you have no one to blame but you if your life hasn’t changed yet. You are the deciding factor. You have full control to change your life. We’ve had a lot of people come in. We did that promotion. If you’ve been on our email list over the month of September 2022, we had ten people come in into our program to become our new clients. I’m sorry you missed out.
We are still accepting clients, but the ten that we wanted to have where I was going to do a bonus meeting as a part of that as an extra bonus for that program, that’s full. People took action and did it. To those of you that did it, congratulations. You acted. Here you are. The real question is, because you acted on the coaching, do you do the things that you’re learning?
We’re not investment advisors. We don’t tell people they should be doing anything like they should buy, sell, or do anything like that. We do give people a lot of education and pros and cons. We help them be able to evaluate a situation to be able to make educated choices in their financial lives, including the kind of investments they do because we can connect them with good, vetted investors. It doesn’t mean that it’s 100% guaranteed. They aren’t. Given the situation, it’s a lot riskier to gamble your way into the stock market.
I’m hearing stories from many of you that have reached out. Many of you are still like, “The market went down again. That makes me so mad. I hope it comes back up. Maybe it if comes back up a little bit more, I’ll get out.” I’ve done several episodes on this very point, yet, many of you’re saying, “I can’t do it. I’d rather gamble my life away in the stupid stock market that I can’t control than put my money in places I can control.” Does that make freaking sense to you? No.
Take Action And The Results Will Follow
I’ve had a few people say, “You shared my story on your show.” I have, but I didn’t mention your name. You are the only one that knows what I’m talking about. There have been people who were called out on this show. I’ve had clients that eventually became clients that got upset. One of them was somebody I’d known as a friend for a while.
I brought up the situation because I said, “We can help you create another $50,000 or $60,000 in the next year.” They’re like, “I’m scared.” You’re scared. You’re not sure about what to do. You’d almost rather suffer in ignorance or suffer not knowing what to do than possibly take the chance on doing something that’s already been proven to work with hundreds of her clients. It makes total sense.
I called her out. I didn’t say her name, but she was mad. In fact, she didn’t talk to me for six months. Finally, she came back around. She said, “I have to admit. I read that episode. You mentioned me and I was mad about it. I was upset.” I was like, “I called you out. You didn’t take action when you should know better.” There are many of you. Maybe you’re reading this and you’re like, “Is Chris going to bring up my story?” Probably not. Honestly, you’re not alone. There are many people that don’t take action, while there are many people that do take action and have gotten great results.
I’m not saying you have to work with us. This is not the point. I’m not saying you should hire us to be able to help you get out of the rat race because we do a great job. That is not my point here. My point is you get knowledge. What do you do with that knowledge? Are you just somebody who hears or do you hearken? You hear that in the scriptures a lot. Are you hearkening to the point where you act in faith and take action? The only way your life will change is if you do something different. You got to change your mindset and behavior. When you change the behavior, your results will follow.
What I’m seeing is many people, especially if you’re watching the news and all that crap, the media gets you scared. They’re like, “Real estate’s at an all-time high. This is it.” The real estate’s always at an all-time high. Other than a few rare situations like 2008 where it goes down, it’s always an all-time high. The stock market, even a lot of times, is at an all-time high. Although, it does have a lot more rollercoaster waves. How many of you still keep your crappy money in that stock market? I had somebody. She was like, “I’ve got $1 million in the stock market.” I’m like, “Why? Why is it still there?”
I can’t tell people to take their money out of the market. I’m not going to tell you that either, but I got to ask bluntly. What are you thinking? Are you believing that the market’s going to go up in what’s becoming a down market? In March 2009, when it hit rock bottom in the stock market and then it started skyrocketing from there, you’re probably thinking, “It always goes up.” Do you not remember Y2K? Do you not remember the Great Recession? The market has tanked for a couple of years each in those situations. Half of those 2000s were down years. They were losing money in the market. What were you doing? Were you keeping it there and hoping it will come back? How many years do you have to wait to do that?
I’ve already done plenty of shows and episodes about how mutual funds suck. They’re high-risk, mediocre returns at best. Alternative investments like real estate can kick the crap out of it easily, with you having more control. You have more control of your own freedom in your own life. Yet, you’re like, “I’m not sure. Maybe I’m going to wait a little bit longer.” I’ve had people wait for years. Understand that you’re not the first person to say this. There are people that said that to me in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.
Even when the market’s going up, people are like, “Real estate’s a little bit high. I don’t trust it.” The real estate market goes down for a year or so. The stock market goes down for half a decade, but people don’t get scared of that. Why? You’re like, “It’s because everybody else is doing it.” When did everybody else become the authority in your life? When did you become a lemming? When did you believe that that’s going to work?
Even when the market's going up, people go, “Real estate's a bit high. I don't trust it.” It’s funny that the real estate market goes down for a year, and the stock market goes down for half a decade, but people don't get scared of that. Why? Because… Click To TweetDo you believe that mediocre people or the average person is successful financially? Never. It’s not happening. It never happened. I already gave you evidence. I’ve already given you mutual funds on trial. It didn’t work. Yet, what are you doing with it? What are you doing with this information? Are you sitting around on your butt doing nothing? Maybe you’re doing something. If you are, congratulations. Thank you for being an example to the rest of you that are reading and not doing something. You’re watching your life pass you by while your family suffers because you lack initiative. You lack the faith to do something about it.
I might be a little bit harsh. I know I’m usually light and fun, but at some point, we got to have a reckoning. At some point, you got to take responsibility for your actions and not get all depressed about it and say, “You’re right. I’m not doing anything.” Do something about it. Stop whining about it. This is the same thing in a marriage relationship. You don’t say, “You’re right. I’m a horrible husband.” If I would’ve done that, do you think I would be married? Trust me. I know. I’ve been divorced. I know what it’s like not to be married. I know what it’s like to mess up a relationship. Don’t mess up the relationship that you have with your own family and your money at the same time. Don’t mess up your life because you refuse to take action. That’s ridiculous.
The Invitation
I get it. You might not know where to turn. You have a resource right here. There are plenty of things to do. Even if you don’t trust us in the coaching, we have the Wealth Accelerator Academy, where you can learn a lot of this stuff. There are even a few things you could be doing in the meantime to generate passive income and/or improve your cash flow situation, and test to see if it works. Are you doing that? Maybe not. Maybe you didn’t know it existed. If not, that is great. Here’s the invitation.
Go to our website, MoneyRipples.com. We’ve got the Wealth Accelerator Academy. Even if you’ve taken the Passive Income Calculator and you didn’t get $20,000 or more on the calculator, do the academy. That’s the thing you should be doing. If you got at least $20,000 or more, you need to be reaching out to us and saying, “Can you verify these numbers for us? Can you verify this for us and make sure that this is right?” The answer is, “Yeah. Let’s see.”
Here’s the promise we have for you. This is a solid promise. We will not ever bring anybody on board that we don’t know can at least double whatever they pay us. In fact, I’m going to be perfectly blunt. To hire us is $10,000. What do you need to be able to qualify to do that? You need to get at least $20,000. Why? It’s because I want you to make double whatever you pay us.
If you hire almost anybody else, even financial advisors, sometimes, you end up paying them more in fees than you make, especially the market goes down. If you hire most people, most people are like, “After a few years or so, you’ll start to get your money back.” We’re like, “In twelve months, we want you to make more than your money back or we won’t accept you as a client,” at least not on the one-on-one consulting side. That’s why we charge $10,000. That’s why we want you to make $20,000. How do you make $20,000? If you have at least $200,000 to invest, you can make at least $20,000.
I’ve had people come to us that have $1 million, $500,000, or more. They’re saying, “I don’t know if it works.” I had that insurance client of ours. I got him the best dang policy you can get. That’s another promise on the infinite banking side. We will give you the best policy possible. We won’t try to sell you the high-commissioned crap type of stuff that even the infinite bankers have you do.
He did a policy with me and then said, “I don’t have the proof of concept.” Maybe not in his life. He doesn’t have proof of concept, but we’ve got more than enough proof of concept. If you’ve watched this show, we have proof of concept. If you’re not even sure, go to the Money Ripples YouTube channel. There’s a playlist on there. On the playlist, there are client testimonials, which are the episodes of our clients talking about the results they got.
I’ve worked for companies before. When I was doing stock coaching, I worked for companies where they weren’t getting results even though they had thousands of clients in that program. When they would ask the coaches, “Can you get us somebody who could give us a good testimonial?” Few ever came forward. Even we, as coaches, were like, “Some of them are getting results, but not enough to get a testimonial. Most of them are losing money in the market.” Even if they’re taught the right things, they couldn’t even get the results. Our program does not happen that way.
If you have at least $200,000 investible assets, even if it’s home equity, savings, old IRAs, 401(k)s, and things like that, using those things to generate at least $20,000 or more per year, that’s ongoing year after year. We don’t even charge $10,000 a year. We charge it one time. That’s it. What happens? Those people get results. The only people that have not gotten results, and they’re very few, are the topic of this conversation. They’re not acting on their knowledge. They’re not doing it. The only people that haven’t gotten results are the ones that didn’t do anything. Even then, they eventually do stuff.
Our Promise
I’ve even had clients that were in fear so much and then eventually got over that anxiety. They did a little bit of investing. They got a little bit more comfortable. Pretty soon, they started getting results. Even they would admit it. They’re like, “It took me a few years, but I did it.” That’s our promise. We will not take you on as a client unless we know you can at least double your money with us. That’s zero risk in my mind. We’ve done it over and over again.
That’s the thing. There’s no risk. If you’ve done the Passive Income Calculator on the website, MoneyRipples.com, that is great. If you got over $20,000, you need to be talking to us. You need to act on that faith and ask. I want you to act on faith. I want you to be able to do the things that you know you should be doing. I don’t want you to have a situation where you live a life of regret.
How many times have you heard of people that have been on their deathbed and they don’t regret the things that they did but regret the things that they didn’t do? That is the thing you should be concerned about, too. Are you going to change your life in a way that your life becomes extraordinary, or are you going to live the mediocre status quo life that everybody else does because you still stayed trapped in that mindset?
It is that mindset of, “Maybe by staying in the stock market a little bit longer,” or, “Maybe if I keep paying off my debt,” or, “Maybe if I keep doing what that financial advisor told me,” or, “Maybe if I keep doing what Dave Ramsey,” or whoever else out there you’ve been listening to tells you to do, maybe it’ll work. I’m here to tell you it does not work. At some point, you’ll have a reckoning. You’ll come back and say, “Where were you guys twenty years ago?” We were right here. The question is, what are you going to do with this knowledge and this information?
If you’re not ready, that’s great. Find somebody, at least. Find some way to do those things to make it work in your life. Do something about it. Stop tuning in to these freaking shows and doing nothing. This is not why I keep doing the show. This is not even why Money Ripples is still around. The only reason that I have Money Ripples growing and expanding the way it is is that I know there are more of you that need what we have.
There are more of you that need to be served. This is why I can’t do it all anymore. This is why I’ve built my team to serve you on the infinite banking side or on the consulting side to create passive income. That is to get you out of the rat race in the next 5 or 10 years, especially where I want over 1,000 of you financially free by 2030. That’s a bare minimum standard that we’re going for. I want you to be that way.
I want your family to be blessed. I want your kids to be so grateful that they said, “Our lives are so much different than our friends.” I want the rest of your family around you and your friends to say, “What is it you’re doing? What kind of magic is happening? You must have gotten lucky somehow. Did you do Bitcoin? You must have bought Bitcoin.” You didn’t. It’s because you didn’t buy Bitcoin is why you have money. You’re doing something different. You have a different life. It’s the life that you and your spouse will look at each other and say, “I can’t believe it’s the same life. I can’t believe we have the freedom to do what we want to do with those that we love while they still want to be with us.”
While they’re still here on this earth to have this time, you don’t have enough time. You don’t know how many years or days you have left. Your days are numbered. What are you going to do about it? I’ve rambled enough. The point is this. I want you to be able to take action. I’ll tell you this as a follow-up. My marriage has improved drastically because I took personal accountability. I started to do the things that I said I was going to do. That is integrity. One of our core values in Money Ripples is integrity. Do what you say when you say you’re going to do it. It’s about humble confidence. We’re service-oriented. Those are the things that make up our culture with all the people that work here. I had to live that first.
What Fruit Are You Going To Bear?
I had to be of integrity. It is not just in my business or with my money, but I had to be of integrity with my wife, kids, health, spiritual life, and relationship with God. I have to be of integrity with that. That’s not a thing that’s pressure. It’s good pressure, but it’s not a thing that depresses me. This excites me because every time I live in integrity, I know my faith will be blessed. I know that the blessings follow the fruit. By your fruit, you shall know them. What kind of fruit are you going to bear in your life?
The great news is it’s up to you. The bad news is it’s up to you. What are you going to do with this? Are you going to sit around and do nothing? Are you going to take advantage of this and make your life better? Are you going to make the life that others envy, that they wish they could have, and they think there’s some magic behind it? In truth, all you did was do and act upon your knowledge.
You did what you knew you were supposed to do to live that life of integrity, be accountable to yourself, and take control of your own life again. That is why we exist. We are here for that very reason to make sure that you do it. The choice is up to you. I want you to make it not just a prosperous week. I want it to be a wonderful and prosperous life. I know that’s up to you, not me. It’s your choice. Make it sell.
Important Links
- YouTube – Money Ripples
- Apple – Money Ripples
- Wealth Accelerator Academy
- https://www.MoneyRipples.com/cashflow-calculator/