How To Not Suck With Money

Why Most People Struggle With Money (0:00)

Brian: 54% of US adults say they know a great deal or at least a fair amount about personal finances. The other 46%, not so much.

Bo: Brian, I am so excited because we believe that anyone can build wealth, even if you think that you’re not that good with money. And today, we’re going to cover five simple things that you need to know to get your finances on the right track so that you can start building wealth.

Brian: Just in case you’re confused, I’m Brian. He’s Bo. This is the Money Guy Show where two financial advisers give you the knowledge and tools you need to be better with money. And with that, let’s jump right in.

Bo: Brian, we say all the time that building wealth is simple, surprisingly simple, but it’s not all that easy. And there are a lot of people out there that frankly are just not very good with money or perhaps it doesn’t come to them naturally. What we want to communicate today is that if you want to start being better with your finances, there are really five key concepts. And if you can grasp these concepts, it’ll change your world.

Brian: Yeah. Let’s start with one that I think defines both of us. How your journey started does not define how it ends.

Bo: Look, some people are in a bad spot because of their decisions. They got into consumer debt. They didn’t save. They lived beyond their means. And other people might just have poor circumstances. They were born into a unique situation with a unique family or there were unique constraints or a unique thing happened. But either way, just because those truths might exist, it does not mean that you are helpless to impacting what the future looks like.

Brian: Yeah. I think this is one that I would encourage, and we’ll bring this full circle at the end when I share some stats about our own clients and their mindsets. But guys, I don’t care how bad your situation is, you can improve it. There’s going to be a way. And we’re going to give you the tips, the tricks, and all the ways to cut through all the things and struggles you might be having right now. And the first key thing is that you just need to understand there are three key ingredients to wealth building. If you can understand these mindset and techniques, you’re going to be better for it. The first is discipline. Can you live on less than you make? That’s the part that’s going to create the margin, or as we call it, money. And if you give that enough time, man oh man, is that time an important component in this. You can watch compounding growth do its magic.

The 5% Test Anyone Can Start Today (2:25)

Bo: And if you don’t believe us, I’ll prove it to you. Because there is a singular behavior, whether you’re awful with money or you’ve never made any money decisions at all, we have a little test that we think if you will execute this, you can prove to yourself that you can build wealth. And we call it the 5% test. And it’s literally this easy. Whatever your paycheck is, whether you’re an hourly employee or a salary employee, don’t even worry about taxes, 401(k), health, any of that kind of stuff. Whatever dollar number hits your checking account on a weekly basis, every other week, monthly, whatever it is, I just want you to take that number and multiply it times 0.05. That’s 5% of that. I just want you to take 5% of your net pay and I want you to just put it in a high yield savings account. You don’t have to overcomplicate it. Google best high yield savings account and just park it in there. Only 5%. You take that at your next paycheck next week, next month, whenever it hits. Take 5% of that, put it in that high yield savings account. And then next month, do the same thing. 5%, put it in that account. And then the next month, 5%, do it again. If you can do this for 3 months consecutively, if you can walk away from spending just 5% of your net take-home pay, you have proven that you have that very first ingredient. You’ve proven that you have discipline, that you can create margin, and that you can do that over a period of time. If you can pass the 5% test, then you can build wealth no matter where you’re starting from.

Brian: What I like about this, give us 5% and we’ll change your life, is that I think for a lot of people you get overwhelmed. You just don’t know what you don’t know about money. You don’t know where to start. You don’t know where to even put this money to work. And that’s where this just clears the noise. Full stop. All you have to think about is, hey, what’s 5% of my income? And can I do this for three months? Because you do this for three months, you know what that starts to look like? It looks like a habit. That’s right. And if you set up a habit, you literally will change your life. And I like that because a lot of people can get overwhelmed on which savings rate is right. Is it 10%? Is it 15%? Is it 25%? Guys, don’t get caught up in it. Full stop. Just give us 5%. And I think you can do 5%. Literally it will change your life.

Compound Interest: Friend or Enemy? (4:45)

Bo: Now the second principle we want you to understand and want you to come to grips with is the fact that compounding interest specifically can either work for you or it can work against you. And you have to choose which side of that equation you’re going to be on.

Brian: So let me give you a little indicator on how the mind works. Look, we as humans overestimate what we can do in a year, but we way underestimate what happens in the long term. I’m talking about 5, 10, 15 years in the future. And the way our mind works is that we think linearly. So you save a dollar, next month you save another dollar and it just stacks. And at the end of the year, you have $12. No, that’s not the way it works. The reality is money compounds. So instead of it being this slow straight line, if you look at the visual when we zoom out, it’s actually the hockey stick of your money working harder than you can. Meanwhile, that linear number just sits down there in a very slow, steady pace. Don’t underestimate the value of what your money can do over the long term.

Bo: Well, and the question is, okay, well, how does this happen? And what’s the actual math behind it? When you say exponential growth, what are you really telling me? Well, think about this. If you have $100 and you invest that $100 and it makes a 10% rate of return, now you have $110. That’s $10 in gains that you had on the initial $100 you put to work. Now, if you take that $110 and then it earns 10%, now you have $121, which is $11 in gain. So, not only did the $100 you started with make money, but then the money that your money made made money. And with compound interest, that happens over and over and over again. It’s like a snowball rolling down the hill that gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. It’s why your dollars can grow exponentially, not just linearly.

Brian: What I love about this illustration is, look, this is the basics. This is showing how $100 then turns into $110 and so forth. What I love is that you get to year 30, you’re still might only be saving $100 a month, but the monthly compound interest change is going to be thousands of dollars. And that’s why if you just put a little bit today, you really can make huge changes for the future. But it brings it back to the point: are you harnessing the power of compounding interest? Is this friend or is this foe? Bo, walk them through what we see when people turn compounding interest into the foe.

Bo: Yeah. I think it was either Benjamin Franklin or maybe it was Michael Scott who said compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. But you have to choose: is that wonder going to be on my side or is it going to be against me? Because when you’re investing, compound interest is working for you. It’s the thing that’s allowing your dollars to grow. It’s the thing that’s allowing your money to work harder than you can. And if you don’t believe us, we actually do an annual survey of all of our Abound Wealth clients and we ask them, “Hey, how was it that you came to be wealthy? What was the thing that you used to create your wealth?” And over 76% of our clients, so three out of four of our clients, said that they reached their first million dollars just by simply saving and investing. It wasn’t because they had some unique talent. It wasn’t because they inherited their money. It wasn’t because they were some C-suite executive. It was just steady saving and investing through time, allowing their money to work for them, creating that exponential growth.

Brian: That’s why, and I want to get into the details on it, I think a lot of people think you have to either be born into it, you have to be some supreme talent like a virtuoso, or a senior executive making huge annual incomes. Or maybe even because you watch enough social media, you’ve got to be an entrepreneur. You invented something. And what’s magical to me is that of all those categories, it’s the 76.4%, just to echo what you said, that are savers and investors. It’s the boring stuff. It’s the simple stuff. That’s why I love creating this type of content because I want everybody to know that they can do this. Not everybody makes it through the journey of becoming a millionaire, but the steps are really simple if you actually put the plan to action.

Bo: And so just how powerful can this be? Well, think about this. If you started investing $200 a month starting at age 20 and let’s say that you earned a 10% rate of return on average, by the time that you got to retirement, 45 years in the future, a full working career, that $200 a month invested would turn into almost $2.1 million. And as impressive as that is, maybe the more impressive part is that you actually only saved $108,000 of that $2.1 million. The other nearly $2 million actually came from growth. It was earnings. It was your money making money. If you can exercise the discipline to create the margin and apply it over a long enough time period, compound interest can change your life.

Brian: That’s why if you’re even listening to this on the podcast version, I’d invite you to come please look at this visual that we have on the show. Because you’ll see, and I’m going to try to do the best job of describing this in the graph: we have green is the growth, blue is the principal contribution. The blue and the green really for the first 12 years look like they’re about equal. So that’s why I always tell people, even if you have good habits or good instincts, a lot of people just drop out after the first 10 years because you’re like, man, probably more than likely the market gets beat up somewhere in that first 10-year journey and you’re like, I don’t know if I believe this. Guys, I’m telling you, stick-with-it-ness is rewarded. Because if you go into this journey for the long term, you notice all of a sudden on the visual the blue is minuscule, it’s so tiny, but the green and the growth, because those army of dollar bills will start doing more and more for you. It is worth repeating that $108,000 divided by $2.1 million is 5%, that’s your contribution. 95% is the army of dollar bills growing for you. You’ve got to stay in there and stick with it to make this actually turn into something for you.

Why High-Interest Debt Is So Dangerous (11:28)

Bo: Yeah. So, okay. I’m sold. I want to start using compound interest to my benefit. What should I do? Well, that’s why we say, “Hey, we want you to aim for saving 25% of your gross income.” Because the earlier you can do that, if you can save 25% of your gross income and you can have it put aside and invested and begin compounding for you, what’s going to happen is that pot of money is going to grow to a size that now it can provide for all of your living needs. It can literally work harder and provide for your expenses better than you can. That’s what we call financial independence. So the earlier you figure that out, the easier the path will be. But remember, compound interest, it can either work for you or it can work against you. And if you’re someone out there carrying high-interest debt, you are allowing it to work against you.

Brian: Yeah. I mean, and the big thing, I know when we gave big goals like 25%, realize you count your employer’s contribution in that. A lot of people get thrown off by that. And also, if you’re under 30 years of age, I’m even going to give you grace to say it doesn’t have to be that big. But Bo is spot-on: high-interest debt is chainsaw dangerous, guys. This is where I think young people, when you first start out on your journey, you’ve been in school, you’ve been deferring all of your happiness because you’re investing yourself. It’s the first thing you get out and you’re like, “Let me reward myself for all this hard work. Let’s go get a nice car so that my friends, my peers, everybody can see how successful I am.” Guys, that is horrible. Or maybe you get that first credit card and you run up all the latest gadgets or maybe you dress yourself in the fashions to show the success you have. Guys, if anything, you are turning compounding interest against you. And we need to show you why that is a disaster versus the flex that you think it is.

Bo: Yeah. When you have high-interest debt, it’s not just kind of working against you. It’s actively working against you. Let’s assume that you had $100 a month of free and clear margin. And let’s just say that you took that $100 a month and you invested it over a five-year period. And let’s say that you could earn an 8% interest rate on that. So $100 each month over five years, 60 months earning 8%, that would turn into $7,348. So over $7,300 of compound interest working for you. But now let’s flip and let’s say that you’re the average American out there. And right now we know that the average American carries a credit card balance of $6,768. And let’s say that now because you have that high-interest debt, instead of being able to invest that $100 a month, you have to take that $100 a month and apply it towards that high-interest debt. And right now the average interest rate on credit cards is somewhere around 23%. So you start with a $6,768 balance. You pay $100 a month towards that credit card every single month for five years or 60 months. Do you recognize that by the time you get to the end of that 60-month period, that $6,768 of debt, without you buying another thing, without you swiping one more time, without you charging a single purchase, has now grown to be over $10,000? It’s literally gotten bigger, not smaller. Just having compound interest work against you instead of working for you created a $17,000 swing over a five-year period with just $100 a month. That’s how powerful it can be when it decides to go the other way.

Brian: Well, it even gets worse than that. It’s not only just the opportunity cost of that essential $17,000 spread. It’s the five years that you’ll never get back. And that’s what we wanted to kind of cover. Yes, please avoid high-interest debt and extinguish it as fast as you possibly can. But in a minute, we’re going to show you why that timing matters.

Sponsor: Monarch Money (15:24)

Brian: All right, before we move on, let’s talk about a tool that can help you on your financial journey.

Bo: Brian, here’s the truth. We all have a different financial story. Some of us didn’t have a lot growing up and it’s easy to fall into the trap of just thinking, you know what, I’m bad with money and I’m never going to get ahead.

Brian: But the good news is, even if you’ve made some dumb decisions with money, I’ve sure done that, like we all have, that story doesn’t have to stay the same. Every financial decision you make is a chance to start writing a new chapter.

Bo: And Monarch can give you some clarity around your money so that you can make smarter financial decisions. It brings together all of your accounts, investments, savings goals, and spending into one singular place so you can see where you are as well as where you’re headed.

Brian: Yeah. And Monarch also helps you stay on track. You can set savings goals, monitor your progress, and get the AI weekly recap, which shows you spending trends and upcoming expenses. Yeah. You don’t have to stay stuck in the same financial habits forever. Your next money decision can be the start of a very different story. So, we invite you to write your own money story with Monarch. Use code money at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That’s 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code money.

Best Way to Pay Off Debt (16:41)

Brian: A lot of you are like right now you feel motivated. You saw this. You’re like, I want that money working for me, not working against me. Should I do what’s called the avalanche method, which means I prioritize the highest interest rate first? Or do I do the snowball where maybe I’m more of a behavioral person where I need to pay off the low balance so that I can get some momentum and see this thing pick up speed as I’m paying off more and more debt? I’ll be honest with you, this is where we’re different from other financial channels. We don’t care. That’s right. Know thyself. If you’re a financial nerd and you’re kind of nerdy and you know how interest rates work and you’re also very disciplined, do the avalanche because it’s going to minimize the interest cost. But if you’re a person who is more about needing it in front of you, you need the motivation, you need the small wins to keep this good habit and this momentum going forward, there is nothing wrong with a snowball. Because I think at the end of the day, they get you to the positive point of extinguishing that high-interest debt that much faster.

Why Starting Early Changes Everything (17:40)

Bo: All right. So, you figured out this key concept that compound interest can work for me and it’s more valuable working for me than against me. That leads now to key concept number three. The earlier you start, the earlier you start figuring this out, the earlier you start getting out of high-interest debt, the earlier you actually start saving and investing for the future, the easier it is to build wealth.

Brian: Yeah. Let’s talk about the power of starting early. This is one of my favorite slides that we love to show. We’ve kind of laid out the groundwork on this. If you’re 20 years of age, less than $100 a month will turn you into a millionaire. It’s actually right around $95 a month. For a 30-year-old, it’s $340 a month. You’re still landing at the same place, but because you started 10 years later, you notice it got four times harder. You had to basically save four times as much money. And then for a 40-year-old to get to the same million dollars at retirement, you have to save $1,532 a month. Do you see the difference between the 20-year-old versus the 40-year-old? 10 times harder. This is why we always tell people, look, you don’t have to take a lot, just a little bit. That’s why I’m willing to give a lot of grace for somebody in their 20s. Just do something. I don’t care if it’s 5%. I don’t care if it’s 10%. Just do something. Because a lot of us look up at our peers who are maybe in their 30s and 40s and we go, “But look at what they’re making. Look at what they have.” Guys, they’re looking back at you and going, “Man, it is 10 times easier if you’ll just do something.” When we do our millionaire survey of our clients, you know what they all say? Even though these are very successful people: “I wish I’d just started sooner.”

Bo: I wish I could go talk to my younger self. This is the power of starting early. So, why is it so much easier earlier? And why does it get so hard? Well, it’s because of this concept that we have called the Wealth Multiplier. And it’s this idea: my money, because I recognize that time is one of the most important ingredients in wealth creation, the longer it works, the harder it can work for me. So, if I’m a 20-year-old, every dollar that I deploy and put to work has the ability to turn into $88 by the time I retire. That’s how hard it can work. But if I wait until 30, every dollar that I save and deploy only has the ability to turn into $23 by the time I retire. Still respectable, but very, very different than 88 times. If I wait until I’m 40 to begin taking it seriously, to begin thinking about building for the future, every dollar I invest only has the ability to turn into $7. If I wait all the way until I’m 50, now every dollar will only turn into $3. You can imagine how much harder you have to work if every dollar only turns into $3 versus if you took hold of it when every dollar had the potential to turn into $88. If you want to do it light and do it right, then do it early. If you want to do it wrong and do it long, then wait. Those two paths are not the same.

Brian: I think a lot of you are starting to notice a trend here. If you want to maximize the Wealth Multiplier, you’re going to have to think differently about money. This is where the whole Financial Mutant mindset comes from. Because we live in this consumption society that’s going to try to tell you, look your best, show off so people think that you’re living your best life. You know, we’re all in this social media world with Instagram, do it for the gram and so forth. But that leads to key concept number four.

It’s Better to Be Rich Than Look Rich (21:12)

Brian: Which is it’s better to be rich than to look rich. Bo, you know, we just recently had a huge thing that took over the zeitgeist which was Taylor Swift got married. I thought it was so funny that some of the key comments that came out of it were about Adam Sandler and how he dressed up and everybody was so impressed because Adam usually looks so comfortable. I’m not going to pick on him too much because I’m hoping at some point I get to meet Adam Sandler and I don’t want him to be like, “Hey, I heard you on the show picking on how I look, what’s up with that?” No, no. In all reality, we have done this so many times. The richer people are, it seems like the broker or the sloppier they look, the less they care about the image they project. So, you need to understand this consumption society we live in where they’re trying to tell you this is what you need to do. Somehow, it’s disconnected from the people who are actually living the life that a lot of us want. And it’s not just anecdotal.

Bo: There’s actually been research studies to suggest this. Experian found that 61% of households that make over $250,000 of household income don’t actually drive luxury brand automobiles. Instead, even those very high-income households, they drive Hondas, Toyotas, and Fords. Very reasonable non-luxury brand automobiles. They behave differently than the world would suggest that wealthy people behave.

Brian: Yeah. This is, you know, the Millionaire Next Door. Wealth is silent. It’s that stealth wealth that you don’t realize is on the net worth statement that’s doing all the heavy lifting. So if you want to start practicing how do you be rich versus just looking rich, lean into what we were talking about, that first concept or ingredient of wealth building, which is discipline. Practice deferred gratification where you just give a little bit today to create big results in the future.

Bo: And now we’re not saying defer everything. We don’t want you to not live your life at all today. If you’re in the early stages or if you’re newer to wealth building, we still want you to bedazzle your basic life. We still want you to create memories and do wonderful things at this present age and present stage, but they don’t have to have a huge price tag. Figure out how you can create those experiences, create those items, create those events that still allow you to enjoy your life, but doesn’t have you robbing from your future self.

Brian: Yeah. And then also automate and avoid the lifestyle creep. A lot of people, I think, when we get out of high school, we think, well, good, everybody will quit looking out at the student parking lot and putting my value on what type of car I drive. Unfortunately, it seems like when I moved into a neighborhood and you get into your messy middle 30s, it feels like we’re still all measuring a little bit. So, the way you can avoid lifestyle creep and make the good habits that much easier and the bad habits that much harder, let’s automate what your savings goals are. Let’s automate where the money goes from a spending standpoint. That’s why budgeting and tracking your expenses can do a lot of good in making this automatic for the people and creating success that just happens from your good habits.

Focus on What You Can Control (24:23)

Bo: Again, none of this is like overly complicated. None of it is super complex, but it is difficult and it does require discipline and it does require taking an active role in your financial life. But one of the things we want you to make sure of is that you don’t confuse taking an active role with overestimating what you actually have control over. Because key concept number five that we want you to know is in life when it comes to your finances, there are some things that you can control and there are some things that you can’t control. And you need to understand what the difference is between those two.

Brian: Yeah. And what I love about this is we’re about to turn things upside down. One of the worst things that’s going to work against your finances is how the media or the world puts things in front of you to try to scare the heck out of you. Let’s just say it: if it bleeds, it leads. You’ve heard all the stereotypes. And then you’ve got the political world, you’ve got the news world, all this stuff can really put you in a place where you lose your focus on what you actually control. What I like, and we’re going to turn this upside down, is that tax policy is one of those things you’ll see in a news cycle for months on end. Outside of your vote, you don’t control tax policy. But you know what you can control? Tax efficiency. You can look at your account structure, you can look at your investments in different accounts and say, hey, how do I structure my life so that I work within the rules that are before me but I get to keep or grow as much of my money as possible? That is the healthy way to process what you can control.

Bo: Yeah. Even when you’re doing that, when you’re trying to discern those accounts, even just recognizing that different accounts are treated differently. Pre-tax accounts operate one way from a tax standpoint and tax-free accounts operate a different way. And then after-tax accounts even operate a third way. And so when you begin to understand that the types of investments you hold inside of each one of these accounts, even the way that you fund each one of these accounts, it may not affect the tax policy, it may not affect what the tax rules are, but what it can affect is how much tax you actually pay. And the more active a role you can take in recognizing how those things work, the more tax efficient your financial life can be.

Brian: The next one that is another emotional play is market performance. I think about how often, when we’re in great times like this, it feels like everybody’s looking for the shortcut or the best way to top the market or make even more. But then when the market gets its teeth kicked in and it’s actually the best time to invest, everybody’s scared to death and they don’t know what to do. That’s the stuff you can’t control. Let me tell you what you can control. If you want to take this to the healthy side of things, when the market’s getting its teeth kicked in, you can control your savings. That’s where the Financial Mutants say, “Hey, markets are down. Here’s a Financial Mutant opportunity to get in while the getting’s good.” Just like Warren Buffett talks about. Same thing: if you look at what’s happening with market volatility, you can’t control that. But you can control asset allocation. How much of your money is risky? How much of it is aggressive going out there for the growth? If you are a person that’s a scaredy-cat or you find that you just pay attention to the news cycle too much, you don’t have to just flop around. You can change your asset allocation. As long as you’re taking into account your goals, your age, and what you’re doing, you can be an active participant in your success.

Bo: And not only can you change how much you’re saving and what your savings rate looks like, and not only can you change how you spread out and invest and diversify your assets, you also get to choose your consistency. How active of a participant are you going to be in just showing up pay cycle after pay cycle, month after month, putting your dollars to work?

Why Consistency Beats Timing the Market (28:15)

Bo: Because far too often people say, “Okay, well, I can’t control what the market does. But I bet what I can do is I can get in at the best times and out at the worst times. And if I do that, then I’m going to go out there and beat the market.” But we know the numbers suggest something different. If you were to just invest $10,000 in the S&P 500 from 1987 until 2025, $10,000 right at the beginning of that period, it would have turned into $616,000 if you did nothing at all. You just put that money in there and you left it. But if you were to just miss the five best trading days over that nearly 40-year period, instead of having $616,000, you’d only have $380,000. If you missed the 10 best days, it drops to $274,000. If you missed the 30 best days, it drops to less than $100,000. The more active you are, the bigger the opportunity for you making the wrong call. Don’t go out there and try to beat the market. Be okay just being the market.

Brian: We’ve been in this content game for a long time, Bo. 20 plus years. And every time I’ve shown this, because by the way, we’ve updated this through the end of last year, but this is not a new concept. This idea of being consistent and staying the course is rewarding. But there’s always somebody in the comments section who says, “Guys, why didn’t you show this if we just missed the worst days?” Here’s why. Let me go ahead and save you. I actually created that slide early on in the content game and I’m like, “What are you doing?” Because nobody can go back in time and be that good. We’ve shown it from a behavioral standpoint. Nobody has the time machine. Nobody has the ability to get the 88 miles per hour in the DeLorean to where you can use a sports almanac to avoid the worst days. But everybody out there in the audience can stay consistent. It requires zero calories, zero mental horsepower to make it happen. So that’s why we show you what happens when you miss the best days, because you can control that. You can’t control the volatility going to come from the worst days.

Bo: And look, we know this to be true that when it comes to investing, when it comes to our financial life, there are going to be unknown unknowns that come our way. It’s just a reality. It’s a truth of this life that we live. But we can’t control those unexpected setbacks. They’re going to happen. They’re going to show up and you’re not going to know they’re coming. But what you can control is, okay, what is your outlook on that? How do you receive that? And what is your attitude navigating through that? And you have two choices. You can have the positive outlook or you can have the negative outlook.

Brian: Yeah. This is one that I’ve always considered myself an optimist. And we talk to entrepreneurs, we talk about people who have success. And even in dark times, I’ve had some, you know, I started my first company. I’ve had struggles. I’ve had downturns at the worst possible timing of when I hired my first full-time employee. And what I always came out with is I was always able to find the silver lining or find the good even from bad situations. And I thought I was unusual until we started doing our annual survey of our clients. Because look, a lot of the research shows that more than average, meaning more than 50% of the general public, consider themselves pessimists. So you can imagine when we ask our clients, “Hey, do you consider yourself an optimist or a pessimist?” 82% of our clients consider themselves optimists. And I think that’s something you have to choose. Because look, that’s one of the things, you know, one of the updates I’ve made in Millionaire Mission is coming to understand the power of your mind and rumination. And if you find yourself just wallowing in negative stuff, it doesn’t help you grow out. It actually can cause and create its own little prison for you. I would love for you, look, there’s a lot of bad stuff. There’s always going to be. I could go through every decade that I’ve been alive and tell you bad stuff that was going on. But don’t ruminate on that. Find what you can control. Find your path out and live your best life.

Bo: So those are five key principles, five ideas that if you can understand them, building wealth does not have to be difficult. It does not have to be this black box. It’s not something that does not apply to you, that is not available to you. Those five principles, five key concepts will get you there.

The Financial Order of Operations (32:47)

Bo: But we want to throw in a bonus. We want to throw in this sixth idea. And this is something that is true to us here. This is something that through all the 20 years of creating content, through working with thousands of wealthy individuals and families, through building our own wealth individually, we have recognized that there is actually a better way to do money.

Brian: Yeah. We like to call this the Financial Order of Operations. Just like in math, if you do a math problem in the wrong order, you don’t get the right answer. Well, guess what? If you do money in the wrong order, it creates a bad result. So, that’s what we tell you. Do the FOO, do the Financial Order of Operations. Don’t be foolish and do it out of order. Because we’ve worked through all the ways you protect yourself from putting yourself into desperate decisions because you ran up debt or didn’t have emergency reserves. We also tell you how to maximize the free stuff or the opportunities like employer matches. And then we help you take advantage of all the tax code as well as how do you do money and what’s the right time for making those big decisions like real estate and so forth. We hook you up by following the Financial Order of Operations.

The Decision That Changes Your Financial Future (34:01)

Bo: So, okay, now you guys know how to not suck with money. We’ve kind of laid the groundwork for you, but there’s a final question that we have to ask and it’s okay, what will you do with this? How will you take this information 5 years from now? Will you look back and say, “All right, you know, not a lot’s changed. I still don’t have much in savings. I still got a ton of debt. I’ll figure that in the future.” Or will you look back and say, “Holy cow, I’m glad I made that decision five years ago to begin reframing, rethinking the way that I think about money and I began making decisions differently to be in a different place than I was in.” Because once again, how your journey starts or where you are today does not define where you are going to be tomorrow. So take these principles, put them into practice and change your life.

Brian: Well, I get sentimental because we’ve been creating this content for so long. And this is what we call it the abundance cycle, is that I literally, we have people who have had student loan debt, who are in really bad situations, and we’re not asking anything of them. All we’re saying is, hey, go take advantage of all of our free content. Go to moneyguy.com/resources. Let us love on you, help you learn the concepts, apply the concepts, grow your assets. And we’ve been doing this so long that we’ve filled a cup. We filled a cup of value. That’s really what we’ve been trying to give you. So much value that the cup is overflowing now with your success. And you realize, holy cow, these guys were not kidding when they said, “Hey, if I keep doing these simple concepts, it will naturally through success create complexity.” And now I just don’t know what I don’t know. And it feels like, man, now when I make decisions, this could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars because a 10% downturn when you have a million dollars is a lot different than a 10% downturn when you have $50,000 to your name. We’re here. Instead of you doing this all alone, not knowing what you know, we’ve done this thousands of times for our clients, our very successful clients. We’ve used this to create our own wealth for people. And we always tell people, we want to help you live your best life. So, if we planted seeds and now they sprouted into huge live oaks with big old trunks on them and they’ve got all kinds of branches that are creating complexity but also fruit for your life, but you want to live your best life and not focus all of your time on that, consider taking the relationship to the next level. I want you to go to moneyguy.com/become-a-client. We’ll keep the porch light on and keep creating great content. I’m your host Brian joined by Mr. Bo. Money Guy Team, out!