After listening to this show, and hearing lots of investment opportunities, you’re probably wondering…
“Which investments will get me financially free quickly?”
Well, this answer might surprise you!
Join our host, Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor, Chris Miles, as he teaches you which investments may be right FOR YOU, and what truly creates financial freedom.
Find out here!
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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Listen to the podcast here
Which Investments Will Make You Financially Free?
This show is about you, those of you that work hard, but you’re tired of working so hard for the money, you’re ready to get the money working harder for you, so you don’t have to work so hard for that money. You can create that freedom, abundance, and prosperity now. We’re all about creating that cashflow now, not saving for 5 million years from now. As a reminder, check out our website, MoneyRipples.com, especially if you want to get that book, Beyond Rice and Beans, 7 Secrets to Free Up Cash Today, to find out how you can free up tens of thousands of dollars per year.
I want to talk about financial freedom because let’s admit it, the number one question I get is, “What investments do I do that will get me financially free, and that will get me out of the rat race?”
I’m sure you’ve been asking the same thing of yourself. You’ve heard great guests on the show, and there are even great guests yet to come. The biggest problem that people have is, “There are SO many options.”
There are two different schools of thought. If you’ve been around me long enough, you wonder, “There are lots of choose from.” Almost the majority of people reading this don’t even realize there are options for you. We’re obviously talking about what’s possible. To become financially free, which investments do it?
The answer is none of them.
None of them will get you financially free. “What do you mean, Chris? I thought you said this is going to be possible. There’s hope.”
Financial freedom to me is when money is no longer the primary reason or excuse that you do or do not do anything. It has some to do with the numbers. It has some to do with investments, but it’s more than that.
Financial freedom comes down to how you feel. Many people don’t know what financial freedom is because they’ve never been there. Having been in a place where I’ve been able to retire twice in the last several years, I was able to see things clearly. When you get to that place, you realize that it’s not quite what you expected.
First and foremost is that when you get there, you start to realize, “What do I do with my time? What am I going to do now?” People say, “Why are you still doing this stuff? If you’re financially free, Chris, why do you keep teaching? Why do you keep doing podcasts? Why do you keep going out to speak from here and there?”
The reason is that I love teaching. I love it, regardless of the money. This is something I did both times I retired. That’s the thing that has always led me there. My heart has always led me to giving back, not just being comfortable with my whole life. There’s something bigger than that.
I’ll tell you that financial freedom doesn’t have anything to do with the numbers. Even when I was out of the rat race, I remember the first time I was out of the rat race, I was still scared.
One, I kept stock coaching because I didn’t know what to do with my time. I didn’t expect to get my freedom number so quickly.
Two, I wasn’t quite there to be financially free. I realized that it happened so fast, that I emotionally was not prepared for it.
There’s a lot of you that by the numbers, you become what I refer to as financially independent. Financial independence is very possible, and that’s just simple numbers, where essentially your income from your investments or other streams of income, the ones that tend to be more less, the non-active or passive or residual streams of income, they surpass whatever your expenses are to live.
That’s financial independence. That’s where you technically are out of the rat race, but that’s not all.
Now you can even go a little bit farther. I know what Tony Robbins refers to as financial freedom, which is you get to do whatever you want. I’m telling you, that’s not even true financial freedom because I’ve known people that are still in scarcity no matter what the numbers say. Here’s the good news for you, guys. Financial freedom can actually happen before you’re financially independent.
You can get to a place where money is not driving your life. That is the real key factor like, “Is money really driving my life?” On that bit about financial freedom, it’s not about the state of your bank account or your pocket book. It’s a state of mind. It’s a state of being. It’s who you are. You’ve got to make sure that you’re at a place where your money doesn’t create scarcity in you, no matter how much money is coming in now.
I got that off my chest. That’s a very key principle. You understand financial freedom is not tied to financial independence. To be financially independent, what investments would it take to do that? Now, there’s hope. Now, there are ways to do that. The investments that you do depends. There are two different types of investors you can become. You can become an active investor or a passive investor.
I will tell you that active investors as a whole, especially the ones that do it right and follow their rules, they will make way more and can get out of the rat race way faster than those that are passive investors. Dollars follow value. When you’re a passive investor, it means that somebody else is the active investor and they’re paying you the table scraps.
These table scraps might be great. I’ve had people on the show where they say, “You put money into a fund and then we pay you X percent per month or per year,” which is awesome. There’s a place for that. For some of you, and I’ve talked to many of you, that’s all you really want. You haven’t found something to be an active investor in.
Financial freedom means money is no longer the primary reason or excuse for you not doing anything. It has nothing to do with the numbers or investments but down to how you feel. Click To TweetBy the way, if you’re trying to figure out or if you’re looking to be an active investor to get there faster, maybe it’s because you don’t have a ton of money accumulated yet, or maybe you have a lot of money but you want to get there quick. You say, “I want to retire the next year.” That takes some education and training in a way to be an active investor in whatever that field or area is.
For example, I had someone on the show previously, The Land Geek, Mark Podolsky. He taught a very great strategy about how to be an active investor. You might spend easily 10, 20 hours a week finding out how to essentially lease land and cashflow it, and make amazing rate of return way better than it would be as a passive investor. It does require time and energy. By the way, investing requires time, energy and/or money. The real multiplier effect is definitely the time and energy. That’s the one that can pay you the most and create some acceleration.
You’re looking at my life and how I was able to do it quickly and even dig out that million dollar debt hole and everything else, it’s because I was focused on being an active investor. I was focused on finding ways to be active, to create more. I love using time and energy, especially if I can really leverage time and energy where it’s not all me, leverage teams and things like that, to create what I refer to as an infinite rate of return, which means no money out of pocket to create cashflow.
Even if it’s a little bit of money out of pocket, I love hundreds of percent rates of return. That typically happens and it especially works well when you’re in a business. That business could be in things like real estate investing or other types of investments. That could be the case. When it comes to active investing, that could be anything. If you’re going to aim for it, it’s something you would do regardless of the money, something that fascinates you, that you would love you.
I will tell you that every time I’ve seen investors do an investment where they did it just for money, they lose money or they don’t make any money. They feel like they went from one job to the next. If you want to be truly financially free, you don’t want to be putting yourself into another job. You don’t want to be just doing something for the paycheck.
If you’re buying the same old traditional crap which is what people have been doing as gamblers their whole life, where you try to go and invest and try to do something because it makes you money, it pays your paycheck, you’re still on the rat race. It’s okay to get paid for doing something, but do something that you love, something that fascinates you. If it ties in with a life mission, even better. It doesn’t have to be that deep for you, but it’s got to be something where you just love it.
I call back to Robert Kiyosaki. If you read some of his books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and some of those books, if you read between the lines, you realize that he actually has passions for the investments that he does. He loves real estate. He loves oil and gas. He loves business. It’s funny enough that I like some of those areas too, but that’s happened over time. Oil and gas has only more recently that I’ve started to like it more. It wouldn’t be something to the point where I’d be like, “I’m going to study how to do drilling and everything else.” I would be more of a passive investor on the oil and gas, but more active when it comes to the real estate side or definitely active when it comes to the business side of things.
Kiyosaki is an active investor in all three of those categories. The problem is people leave those books and think, “Watch us do those things.” No, because if you read between the lines, he talked about how he’s running through Portland, Oregon, and he’s running and picking up flyers at houses because he loves the hunt. He loved the hunt regardless of the money. Even when he wasn’t buying the property, he loved to look at them and he thought it was cool. That is a good sign. If you can find something like that, then you could be an active investor and make awesome returns.
I have a client right now and she’s looking at doing wholesaling. She is even hiring her son to do some of the work, which I said, “Do it, pay him up to $6,000 a year tax-free.” He could pay for his own stuff now. He could be paying out of pocket, which is an awesome idea. She’s starting to do things with wholesale real estate investing. It requires a lot more time and energy than just being a passive investor, but she can make a lot more money.
I’ve had people that after Mark Podolsky talked about The Land Geek stuff, I’ve had a few clients say, “I’m going to try it out.” Some find out they like it, and others find that they’re like, “Nope, not my thing.” For me personally, I’d be like, “No.” I remember I asked Mark, “Do you have something else? I could be a financer for this, or could I find one of your other land geeks and invest with them and partner on deals?” That was more fascinating to me. I didn’t want to be an active investor at that point, but you might be that perfect candidate.
Bailey, I’ve mentioned him with The Credit Marketplace, I did a show a few months back with that. Some people think that’s awesome because that’s an infinite rate of return, but that may only add a few hundred bucks a month to your cashflow. It might help dramatically. No money out of pocket to create something is awesome, but that’s not going to be everything for you. If you’re going to be an active investor, if you want to do it quickly, active investing is the key, but you’ve got to find something you love.
For passive investments, if you’re going to be a passive investor, which I know a lot of you are too or want to be primarily a passive investor, this does require a lot of capital, a lot of money. If you don’t have the money, the question you have to ask is, “Who has it? Could it be the bank? Are there ways you can leverage the equity you have? Can you get access to capital or cash?” because you need that.
Investing requires time, energy, and money. The real multiplier effect is definitely time and energy. That’s the one that can pay you the most and create some acceleration. Click To TweetI like to use a basic benchmark with my clients. This is not everything. I talked to somebody that offer about 6% rate of return. That’s 6% to get some solid guarantees with that investment, to the point where you’re almost like you have the home yourself. You have collateral, you have claim on a property and things like that. You’re just financing it. You have no involvement in the property, so you don’t have any of the work to do. You just get paychecks. That’s like a half percent a month.
Do the math here. Let’s say you’ve saved up $500,000. You get paid a half percent per month. That’s $2,500 a month, which is not bad. That’s $30,000 a year. $30,000 is pretty good. Some people might say, “I can get that in the stock market.” I’ll tell you, there is no such thing as financial independence. There can be financial independence in the stock market potentially, but financial freedom is very hard to attain.
To me for financial freedom, what requires for that is that you need to have some certainty. You cannot have high risks. If you’re taking high-risk and high returns on the stock market, there is no certainty. It’s hard to even create financial independence, let alone you’ll never create financial freedom in that kind of place. You need low-risk types of stuff to create returns.
In those kinds of scenarios, find ways to create lower risk. With most of the stuff, if you’re trying to do the typical financial advising type standpoint, you save up money and then you try to live on the interest or less than the interest just in case. You’re living only on 2% or 3% per year. If you save $500,000, you just made $10,000 to $15,000 a year. Congratulations, you’re impoverished. I’m not saying you do that.
I am saying that there are better ways to do it. What if you make 10% a year? That 10% a year on $500,000, that means you make $50,000 a year. That’s over $4,000 a month. We’re talking 12% a year, that’s 1% a month. You’re making $500,000, now you’re making $5,000 a month or $60,000 a year. There are ways to do that.
You might say $50,000 or $60,000 a year is not enough. Probably, probably not. Most of you tell me at least $10,000, $20,000, $25,000 a month is your goal. It might take some time. You might have to take this money and accumulate it and use that. This is where I always tell people, take the cashflow. You do other things with it to at least save it. Go and invest the money that you’ve made rather than consuming it all, then you can create some good passive income. I’ll tell you, it does not take as much as people think. I have clients that got $3 million, $4 million sitting in different mutual funds and things like that hoping to create a retirement. They’ll say, “I want to make $300,000 a year.” With $3 million, if you make even just 10%, that’s $300,000 a year. Done. That’s it.
Everybody has their own different recipe, and that’s the key is that each one of us have our own thing. How do you figure out which investments make you financially free one? One, the numbers have to work. Two, it’s got to be something you actually enjoy. If you’re a passive investor, it’s got to be something you enjoy, something you have decent control over, something that’s more guaranteed. I don’t mean like it has absolute guarantee risk-free because that doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as risk-free. There are things that do risk your money less. There are things that do have less risk involved. Can you get guarantees?
Like with my friend that I’m going to have on our episode soon, he might pay 6% or maybe 8% on a property deal, but he’s doing it as a passive investor. You’re purely the financer. You do nothing with the property. For some of you, that might be dream come true. For others, they might say, “No, I want to do a little bit more.” I’m okay with that. That’s the cool thing.
Ask yourself first and foremost, if money were no issue in your life, what would you want to spend your time doing? You might say travel, but what are you going to spend the other 45 weeks doing after you got burned out from travel? You might want to do something else. What else would you want to do? What would you want to learn about? That’s the direction you want to go. The cool thing is there are many options.
On my mind, I might say that there are only maybe a half dozen to 10 options that I would think are legit, ones that I’d say, “This has lower risk, great returns and can actually produce something.” The thing is there’s infinite number of ways. If you become an active investor, there are all kinds of ways you can do it by doing it yourself. If you’re looking more for the passive ways or maybe even the active ways, that’s kind of things that I have to help people identify.
We look for the passions, what’s intriguing to them, what’s going to match up with the numbers, and then match them up. That’s what I do. If that’s something that you’re saying like, “There are many options, I’m freezing up, or I don’t think there are any options for me.” It was so cool when I had a client say, “I just realized one of the options we’re looking at is 12%, 1% a month. I could actually retire in these next five years. I didn’t think that was possible.” I’m like, “Good.” I was running 10% in my mind and it worked.
If you’re trying to find those things, I can connect you that way. If you’ve got questions like, “Chris, I want to figure out how we can get out of the rat race, create financial freedom, financial independence, and essentially financial freedom,” which is more of a mindset than it is just the numbers, let me know. Email me, Chris@MoneyRipples.com. We can help you out.
In the meantime, I want you guys to know that there’s hope and that there are real options out there, real things you can do to create that now, whether as an active investor or a passive investor. There is hope, there are options. Don’t listen to everybody else, even your own family, friends, saying that you’re crazy. I don’t care because I’ve seen it work in my own life. I’ve seen it work on my own clients’ lives. It can work for you too. You guys go with that confidence knowing that it works and it’s possible. You make a great prosperous week.