Do you consider yourself a conservative, safe investor?
What’s the safest way to save and grow your money while minimizing risk?
In this episode, I dig into how you can truly protect your hard-earned cash and maximize returns without taking unnecessary risks.
I share the biggest mindset shift you need to reject: high risk does NOT create high returns. Instead, I show you how to manage risk, analyze opportunities, and surround yourself with the right people and strategies to create wealth safely and securely.
You’ll hear how I personally evaluate investments, reduce risks in real estate deals, and vet operators I trust with my passive investments. Plus, I’ll share the single most important resource for reducing risk: a community of trusted advisors and counselors who’ve been there, done that, and are still succeeding today.
If you’re tired of chasing returns and losing money, this episode will show you how to find confidence, safety, and success in your investments.
TRANSCRIPTS
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do you consider yourself a conservative, safe investor? What’s the safest way to be able to save your money and get it to invest? That’s what we’re going to talk about. Hello, my fellow Ripples. This is Chris Miles, your cashflow expert and anti financianal advisor. This show is for you that works so hard for your money and you’re now ready for your money. Start working harder for you to today. You want that freedom and cashflow right now. You want to become work option where you work because you want to, not because you have to, and most importantly, it’s not just about getting rich, although that’s awesome too. But we want to live a rich life because as you’re blessed financially, you have a greater capacity to bless the lives of those around you. Thank you for tuning in today, guys. I really appreciate you tuning in, being a part of this movement because this allows me to create a ripple effect through you, and that is what gets me excited to be on this show.
(01:01)
So a special shout and thank you to each of you that have been faithful followers, and if you’re brand new, welcome, appreciate being here. Invite you to binge just like everybody else does on this show as well. As a reminder, guys, if you’re always looking for ways to be able to increase your passive income, maybe you’re wondering what you could do in your situation, try out a passive income calculator@moneyripples.com right now, you can pretty accurately be able to predict assuming you put in the information, all right and fully, you’ll be able to predict just how much passive income you could create in the next 12 months in any given situation. So be sure to check that out right now. So how can you keep your money safe? What can you do to actually allow yourself to really grow your money safely and ensure that you’re going to have wealth today and tomorrow?
(01:43)
This is something that’s a very, believe it or not, this kind of debated topic. Now, yes, you could put your money in banks and things like that, but then you also run the risk of inflation risk, and that’s where we have to look at risk. What is risk? Risk by definition is just chance of loss. What’s your chance of losing? Unfortunately, you’ve been probably brainwashed for years. I was when I was, especially one of the financial advisor, that high risk creates high returns and they’ll say, the bigger risk you’re willing to take, the bigger the returns you can make. But remember, if you have a 90% chance of winning, that means you also have a 10% chance of losing. If you have a 90% chance of losing because there’s a 90% chance of risk or loss, you only have a 10% chance of winning. This is why I kind of put my thumb on kind of thumb a little bit on that kind of teaching because really think about it this way, if I wanted to take the highest risk with the highest return possible, all of us right now should be pulling our money together to buy lottery tickets, right?
(02:40)
Buy those Powerball lottery tickets and whoever wins, we split the proceeds, right? We get to share in the wealth. Yes, it’s possible that none of us will win it and we’ll just literally lose millions of dollars, but hey, if I want high risk rate, high returns, let’s cash out our 4 0 1 Ks and IRAs and get rid of everything. By the way, I’m not giving investment advice and that’s stupid. If you don’t think it’s stupid, then I would question that mindset right there. But yeah, obviously we know that’s dumb. We know that’s a high risk. That’s not a way to create real wealth. And so the biggest thing is we do want to be safe with our money, but we also want to maximize returns, don’t we? And the way to do that is to actually one debunk by rejecting the belief that high risk does create high returns.
(03:21)
Are there things that could be risky that might pay you a high return? Yes. Even in the real estate space, there are people who say, I’ll pay you more money to be able to do that. Even banks, for example, a bank, if they do a first mortgage, they’ll charge you in the ballpark of six to 7% on that mortgage. But if it’s a second mortgage, now you’re looking a little bit higher. Now you might be looking at eight to 9%. Why do they charge more? Because it is riskier for them. And the banks set the terms. They say, well, I want higher compensation to potentially offset the loss. So does it apply? In some cases, yes, but the problem is that I’ve witnessed too many people that think they just have to take unnecessarily high risks and then they strike out instead of trying to go for the base hit, they’re trying to swing for the fences every single time and just keep striking out over and over, and you work too dang hard to have that money be lost.
(04:12)
So how do you do it? First and foremost, one, we got to make sure we just completely challenge and reject the belief that high risk creates high returns. No, we want to have managed risk. And so when you look at risk, figure out how can I manage my risk better? Now I’m going to give you an easy example. I’m not saying this is the best investment right now, but it’s still a good solid investment is if you get a turnkey real estate property. Now, part of the risk would be is that now you’re trying to rely on a company to help you find the property, and then two, you’re also relying upon a good property manager. There are some risks involved. You could actually have a nightmare even investing in real estate. Yes, you probably will have some value protected there because real estate does not go down very often throughout history, especially even in the short term and let alone, definitely not more in the long term either.
(05:02)
But what we do watch though is that you can have risks that can create a lot of headaches. When I look at a property like that, for example, I would say, all right, I’m seeing this property first and foremost. What’s the price? What’s also the numbers? So I’m looking at the numbers to see what kind of risk is there? What kind of rent can I realistically get? Now, even if a turnkey real estate company says, you should make X amount of dollars, I’m still going to go and look up online to say, all right, what are rents really going for in that area? Ideally, if I can find a property like just identical in the same neighborhood, a great example. Now there could be differences. What if yours is renovated and that other one is not great? Then we might be able to get more rent.
(05:42)
But remember, you want to make sure that you’re doing some due diligence on the numbers upfront. Do the numbers make sense? There’s an episode coming out here pretty quickly with a turnkey operator where they get you to get an interest rate down below 5%. Now that interest rate, if you can get that interest rate down more, creates more cashflow, and that makes it easier. It makes it less risky. So I personally will actually buy down the rate. Or of course, nowadays you usually have the sellers buy down the rate for you by paying extra closing costs to help offset those closing costs. But for the most part, that’s one of the biggest risks. How do we get rid of that interest rate risk? How do we ensure that there’s good cashflow? How do we make sure we have a good property manager? And even before I get worried about the property manager, the thing I’m going to worry about is, alright, well what if one, the appraisal comes in too low?
(06:30)
Good news is you could probably negotiate the price down. So one of my risk is worrying about the value of the property is we do an appraisal, want to make sure that an appraisal is done. Secondly, the other thing we do is a home inspection report, because I want to make sure that if there’s a lot of repairs that could be coming up that would be on my bill, I would want the seller to do those repairs first before I decide to buy the property. If they say no, I move on. I’ll tell you one of the best ways to prevent against risk is to also have an abundance mentality. Abundance mentality does not mean you’re naive. It does not mean you’re overly optimistic about things and reject truth. It’s quite the opposite. An abundance mentality would say, you know what? If that person’s not willing, I can see that this is going to cost me a lot of money and probably not worth my time or energy and definitely not my money.
(07:16)
I’m not going to do this deal. I trust to know that there’s an abundance of opportunities out there. Now, it doesn’t have to be perfect where all the heavens open up and the angels are singing. No, of course not. However, when I look at this, I want to make sure that if it doesn’t look good, if I have any doubts at all, my mantra for myself is when in doubt, stay out. Even worse, if you already got into something, if you’re in doubt, it might be time to get out. That’s kind of my own mantra too. You leave it wherever you are. I’m not giving investment advice by just you adopting whatever I say. I just want you to know how I think and how I try to reduce risks so I can sleep well at night. And even when I have, I’ve really minimized a lot of my losses.
(07:58)
I wasn’t always this way, just so you know. I would always chase the highest returns and that would bite me in the butt whenever I would try to chase returns and just go, or if I just thought the person was a good person and just trust them but not really verify. That’s where most people are susceptible to the highest risk. It’s not that you’re a bad investor, it’s just that you might try to overlook some little details that might not work out for you in the end. And so those are things that I would do like when I’m buying a property now I do other things like if I’m not the one investing, I need to know who I’m investing with. I bet on the jockey just as much, if not more than the horse, the horse would be the investment. The jockey is who you’re investing with. If you’re a passive investor, you have to put a lot of trust in these people. And so I love asking questions of operators of, Hey, when things did go wrong, what happened? What did you learn from it? What ended up happening? Did everybody lose their money? Did you lose money?
(08:56)
What actually happened with that investment deal? And then secondly, what did you learn from it? What have you done differently now as a result of that? That’s a big question to ask. That’s one thing I don’t mind. If people have lost in the past, what I do mind is that they haven’t learned from it or they’re not really putting their own skin in the game. I mean, some of my favorite stories are when I talk to operators, they say, yeah, this deal I had even some of these recently, they said, yeah, I had this deal. It’s pretty bad. I had to put a million dollars of my own money to keep it afloat. I kind of put my family in a stressful situation, but they got through it, right? And they learned some things too. They say, yeah, I learned next time I’m going to try to adjust my numbers this way to be a little bit more conservative or do this or that.
(09:39)
And I think when I hear that, I love it. I remember even one guy says, but honestly, I don’t want that to be publicly known. I said, are you kidding me? That should be publicly known. How many of us, and I’m talking with you as well, but all of us that are passive investors, how many of us would love it if somebody had said, you know what? I had to put my family at risk. I didn’t want to. I could have easily walked away from the deal, but my integrity was just too important to me. When I hear that, I think now that that is a person that money can’t buy money can make up for things here and there maybe in some situations, but someone’s integrity, that’s something that you can’t just teach somebody to have integrity. It’s just something that they have to be that person of integrity.
(10:24)
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(11:06)
Now, whether you’re religious or not doesn’t really matter. Take it for what it’s worth. But for those of you that are in the Bible, if you know the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament, there’s a scripture in chapter 15 of Proverbs verse 22. It says, without counsel purposes are disappointed, but in the multitude of counselors, they are established. Lemme read that again without counsel. Purposes are disappointed, but in the multitude of counselors, they are established. This is where it comes in. What is one of the best ways for you to reduce the risk is a surround yourself with great people. The best thing you can do is surround yourself with people smarter than you are, even if that’s uncomfortable. I had a client, this is probably about 12, 13 years ago, I had a client that was on a mastermind call and I kept talking about where you want to surround yourself with good people, like smart people, and that’s one way to elevate your wealth, elevate your success.
(12:05)
And she said, well, what if you’re the smartest one in the room? I keep running that situation. I’m always the smartest in the room. And I told her, I said, listen, one of two things are probably likely here, and there could be a third option, but I think it’s one of these two things that are most highly likelihood. One, you’re not as smart as you think you are, or two, your ego is so fragile. You insist on being in rooms whether even if it’s not consciously, subconsciously, you want to be in rooms where you are the smartest person in the room and you got to get over that ego. Either way, it is ego, right? Either you’re not that smart, or two, you just don’t want to be around people smarter because your ego is too fragile. I got to tell you guys, the best thing you can do when it comes to investing is not to have ego.
(12:48)
Now, we all have it to some level, right? Of course. But to get over that, to be willing to be uncomfortable, to be willing to be in an environment where maybe you feel like you don’t know everything, and just so you know, I’m environments like that all the time. Even sometimes around my own clients, there’s questions my clients ask. I say, wow, I haven’t even thought of that question before. I could guess what it is, but I’m going to need to look into it more, right? I’m going to have to do a little deeper dive. That’s a good thing, guys. That’s good. Now, part of me, of course, is like, why didn’t I know this? But I can’t expect to know everything. I don’t think anybody can ever expect that, and in fact, a lot of times, I even told people before I start a mastermind, I say, if you ask me a question, just be aware.
(13:32)
It’s possible. I might say, I don’t know. I just can’t know everything, but I usually can know where I can find the answers. I usually know the right people and that multitude of counselors. Now, that’s why I joined different mastermind groups. I want to be around certain counselors in a sense of getting a feel. When people say, well, how do you find your operators? How do you find your deals? One, I make sure if I’m in a mastermind group as an example, I want to make sure the culture fits with my values, that their values are shared. For example, our four core values within Money Ripples is first and foremost, one, integrity. Integrity is big. Do what you say when you say you’re going to do it, stand by that. What goes along with that is also always improving, right? We have this growth improvement mindset of always trying to improve and grow.
(14:19)
Three, to go along with that is humble confidence. It doesn’t mean that we’re trashed and talking ourselves, but just realize that, hey, even if I know I’m great at one thing, I always know I can be greater. It’s like Michael Jordan or LeBron James. They can be the best in their field, but they know that they can always get better. They can always keep pushing those limits. That’s a good thing, and so I love that kind of humble confidence where you don’t let arrogance take over. You’re confident, you’re good at what you do. You know that you might know a lot about a certain type of thing, but you’re still open to learning more. Guys, I’ve actually changed my opinion and views over the years. Believe it or not, in many cases, I’ve become more diplomatic. There are some things that I definitely become more staunch on if I start to see real problems, but for the most part, I become diplomatic most of the time.
(15:08)
Truth is not on the extremes. It’s in the middle. The two extreme point of views usually aren’t, right? It’s usually somewhere in that spectrum that you usually find the truth in that place. By the way, for those of you in politics, this might not be a bad thing to remember for those of you who watch politics and stuff, but again, that humble confidence, which allows you to keep growing and improving, which is one of our core values, and then our fourth core value is service, right? Always trying to serve, add value, serve people, solve problems, things like that. That’s the core tenet of everything that I teach here, even in stewardship, even in the fact if you’re a business owner or if even you’re an employee, it’s always about if you want to make more money, it’s about how you go about serving people and solving problems for them.
(15:56)
I look for people just like that. Now, they may not have the exact core values that we talk about in Money Ripples, but they might have a lot of the same ones. Maybe they have the different emphasis or focus. Someone might say, I want more fun and excitement in life too. Great, awesome, but are they that integrity? Is that integrity there? That’s why I look for people that went through hard times and had to grow and improve and do something with it. This is why also, when I’m talking to real estate investors, I’m in different mastermind groups. I’m asking about what’s going on in their world, and by the way, I don’t even have to be mastermind groups. One of the benefits of me having a podcast is the fact that I can get different perspectives and different viewpoints. Of course, I’m asking people, when we bring on these people talking about multifamily, I’m asking them even off the air kind of deals, are you looking at right now?
(16:41)
What are you seeing? What’s happening right now? Are you in nationwide? Are you just in this section of the country? Because different sections have different things going on, and sometimes my assumptions are wrong or just outdated and things are shifting and changing, so I love getting that. This is one of the biggest benefits you get with this podcast and not even just mine. I know there’s others too, but that you get to hear multiple counselors, multiple people from different walks of life, even even different types of investing, and you’ll notice that there’s a usually common theme for the vast majority of these guests is that these are real people doing real things. Even when I bring our own clients on, a lot of times we’ll bring our clients too to talk about their experience. These are salt of the earth, good hearted people that want to make a difference in the world.
(17:26)
A lot of ’em even come on the show at really for themselves with a lot of nervousness and apprehension because they’re nervous. So many of you guys listening to them, they’re like, well, I don’t know everything yet. I’m still learning and growing. Not to remind them, no, you’re helping with this ripple effect. You’re actually blessing more lives by what you share. You might be the very catalyst that gets people to say, you know what? I need to get away from the stock market. What if it does tank? Maybe I need to do something different. Maybe I keep a little money in the stock market, but what if I move more money over here to start getting more income? You could be that person. You’d be the person that says, here’s a better way to do infinite banking than the other way. I was learning from even on another podcast or from this other person.
(18:06)
Understand that when they share that with you, they’re really becoming another counselor for you, and even with our own community, we actually have them now talk to each other so they can ask questions of us. Myself, even Craig, who’s their coach, they can even ask questions of us, but I love opening up to the group to get other people’s feedback. There have been deals that people have asked about, and even though I might have my opinion, they kind of say, oh, yeah, I see Chris thinks that. What does everybody else think? As much as I love to believe that everybody wants to listen to my opinion, the truth is a lot of our clients get a lot of value from asking each other and saying, Hey, who else has experience? Anybody actually been in this investment done this before? Anything you warn me against, do you know how powerful that actually is?
(18:49)
That experience means everything. Getting it stuck in your own head, speculating over analyzing. Maybe you’re an over analyzer and an overthinker that doesn’t do you any good. What does you better is if you can then be able to take different sources and voices? This is what does great for me is I take all these different opinions and voices, even ones that don’t agree with me, I still take those opinions. Hey, somebody even just asked me about podcast. They said, well, don’t you take advantage of the stock market and mutual funds? It’s liquidity. I said, yeah, if there’s anything that’s positive about the stock market, it’s liquidity, but I also could put my liquid assets in other places, which is what I do. I don’t just put it in the stock market. I could put it in treasuries, but I know I can get the same or better yield by putting my life insurance.
(19:33)
I get 6% tax free, so I’m just going to put it there and it’s still liquid. It’s in my control too, right? I mean, I use that for myself as an investor first and foremost, even before we talk about doing it for you guys. So those kind of things. I still am open to hearing those kind of conversations and saying, yeah, you’re right, guys. If you’ve followed our YouTube channel, the Money Ripples channel, there’s been a time or two where someone calls me out and says, actually, Chris, it’s this, and there’s sometimes I’m like, you know what? Let me look that up, and I’ll come back and say, you know what? You’re right, and I think some of you guys listeners actually came on because of that. Like, whoa, this guy actually admitted I was right. Instead of bashing me on the comments in YouTube.
(20:16)
No, because if you are right, I want to acknowledge it. In fact, I want to be more right, and the only way for me to be more right is to of course, hear viewpoints, hear other people’s views, or to hear things that maybe were true one day but not the next, right? I mean, that’s why I’m never going to be perfect for you guys. I’m never going to give you the perfect answer every time, but over the years, I’ve done a pretty good job trying to stay on top of it to try to make sure I can offer a voice for you, but again, it’s not just me. There’s guests that we bring on this podcast. There’s even other podcasts you can be listening to and get different perspectives and different viewpoints. That is how you stay in the loop. Now, I like to be belly to belly.
(20:56)
That’s why I do like attending mastermind groups as well to talk to people. That’s also one benefit of having a podcast. I can talk to people even off the air as well, or not even that way. A lot of times I’m calling these people just to get an update of what’s going on with their investments. That is where you find the safety among many counselors. That is how you create the safest investments. Don’t believe the talking head media, that’s the worst place to go. Again, they’re always betting on the money, making money in a specific place. You got to be aware of people’s agendas. This is why you’ve got to be open to different viewpoints. Even ones that have conflicting views can be valuable sometimes, but I just got to warn you that you got to make sure you’re finding the right people. The right people listen to, and the people I like to listen to are those that have boots on the ground.
(21:45)
They’re doing it. They’re succeeding at it, and if they’ve had failures, they’re learning from it and still succeeding at what they’re doing. Those are the people I like to talk to. Those are the people I like to learn from. So if you want to have that safety, it’s the safety in numbers, having a community around you. This is why our clients love having that aspect. They have that community that’s even, I would say, just as strong as the one-on-one help and guidance that we’re giving them to. That’s great, but it’s that community that means everything. So find that safety and counselors, the right counselors, those that have been there, done that, and still doing it today. Those are the people I like to follow and listen to. That’s my recommendation to you. If there’s ever an investment, invest in that. Invest in finding those people and give you great advice. I would hope that we would be a part of that for you in helping you among your journey as well. Obviously, if you ever have questions, feel free to reach out to us@manyripples.com and the meantime, go and make it a wonderful and prosperous week by associating with wonderful, prosperous people. We’ll see you.