6 Money Myths You Must Avoid at All Cost! (Don’t Fall For THESE)

Transcript:

On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, six Money Myths You Must Avoid at All Costs.

Woo, what's popping everybody and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. It's your Boy Androgen Cola. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're gonna be talking about six money myths that's you need to avoid at all costs. If you guys have any questions, make sure to hit us up on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok at Master Money Co.

And follow us on. Spotify Apple Podcast or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on right now. And if you wanna, how about the show? Leave a five star rating and review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or whatever other podcast player you love listening to us on. Right. Now, and if you wanna watch it, you can watch this on the Androgen Cola YouTube channel.

Just go into YouTube, type in Master Money or Androgen Cola and you will come up and you can watch these videos. And we have some other graphics and other stuff that we throw up in there if you wanna watch it. So today we are gonna be talking about six money myths you need to avoid. At all costs. Now, as we go through these various money myths, these are things that I have been seeing spreading all over the internet and social media, and these are things that I am here to debunk for you.

These are things that I do not believe to be true. I know they're not true for a lot of them, and so for a lot of these things, There's just old wisdom that had been passed around for a long period of time, and we need to put an end to these different things. So really, really excited for this episode.

It's gonna be a lot of things that are gonna help you build wealth. So without further ado, let's get into it. Number one, and I have no idea where this came from or who started spreading this myth. I've heard it all over the place. I've heard people telling this timeless wisdom. In fact, I've heard a lot of folks in the baby boomer generation saying this to me.

And then we've gotten into arguments back and forth because I'm telling 'em, no, this is not true, and it is. Keeping a balance on your credit card is going to help your credit score. This, my friends, is absolutely not true. Never ever, ever, did I say ever keep a balance on your credit card. Why? Because if you keep a balance on your credit card, it is going to hurt.

One of the most important factors when it comes to actually building up your credit. And this is your credit utilization ratio. And what that means, it is the amount of money that you have spent based on what your credit limit is on across all your credit cards and all your different things that you have available, open to credit.

So what does that mean? So the credit utilization is a very, very important factor. It's about 30% of your credit score. And what I mean by this, and lemme give you an example 'cause I think this is the easiest way to think about it. Say for example, You have a credit card and you only have one credit card, and it has $10,000 of a credit limit on there.

So with that $10,000 credit limit, you spend a thousand dollars per month on this credit card. Then you pay it off, then you spend another thousand dollars, then you pay it off the next month. Then you spend another thousand dollars. Well for easy math, the reason why I did this is that your credit utilization rate would be $10,000.

'cause you're dividing 1000 into 10,000. That's 10%. You're using 10% of your credit utilization rate. That's a great credit utilization rate, and it's something that you want to keep lower. The lower your credit utilization rate the better. But if you keep a balance on your credit card, You are gonna be hurting that rate because you're always gonna have credit on that credit card.

The closer you can get to zero every month, the better off it is while still utilizing that credit card. So there's a couple of things here to think about here. First off, there was a survey done of folks who have a credit score of seven 90 and higher, and when they did this survey, these folks who had really, really high credit scores, they asked them, Hey, What is your credit utilization rate?

Everybody went and they pulled their credit utilization rate. All of a sudden they found out the average credit utilization rate for somebody with a seven 90 or higher credit score is 7%. The problem is the average person in the US is using 30 to 40% of their utilization, if not way more on their credit utilization.

So, Keeping your credit utilization below 10% is a really, really powerful tool. How can you do this? Well, this is why a lot of people say, Hey, if you have too many credit cards open, it actually hurts your credit score. It does not hurt your credit score as long as you're not opening them month after month, after month after month.

Say for example, you have four credit cards that have $10,000 balance and you're still only spending a thousand dollars between those four cards. Well now, Your credit utilization is gonna go way, way down because you have $40,000 of credit available to you, and you're only spending a thousand dollars.

So when you have more credit lines open, it's gonna allow you to reduce that credit utilization rent. Now, do I recommend opening a bunch of cards that have annual fees, things like that? No. What I'm saying though here is make sure you're paying off your card on time. That's number one. Make sure you keep your credit utilization low.

That's number two. And look at your credit history. How long have you had credit for that long period of time? That is your 80 22, increasing your credit score. It does not help your credit score whatsoever, and in fact, it hurts your credit score to have a balance on your credit card. Do not listen to the old wisdom that comes into play where a lot of people are talking about this.

I do not know where this came from. If anybody is saying this out there, make sure you tell them this is not true. And if your parents have told you this or somebody else has told you this, send 'em your boys podcast and we'll talk about it. That is the first one, keeping a balance on your credit card.

Let's jump in to number two. So number two is that a lot of people think that if you put money into retirement accounts, it is completely locked up. In retirement accounts. So why do they think that? So a lot of retirement accounts your 4 0 1 K, your Roth I r A, your standard I r A, your Roth 4 0 1 k. For a lot of these retirement accounts, you cannot withdraw money until you're age 59 and a half without paying a 10% penalty.

But there's a bunch of different ways that you can actually withdraw money from retirement accounts early. If you wanted to. So the first one is early withdrawal. Obviously we don't wanna do this, but you can withdraw money early from these accounts, face that 10% penalty. That is one we want to avoid at all possible costs, unless there's some crazy emergency.

You really don't want to be touching these retirement accounts for a number of reasons if unless you have to. If you need to touch these retirement accounts, you are interrupting compound interest unnecessarily. And we want our money to get to work and we want our money to stay working. If you start interrupting compound interest.

In fact, Charlie Munger talks about this. He says, one of the worst things you can do poor, your personal finances, is interrupt compound interest unnecessarily. The reason is that once you start doing that, you can be missing out on the best days in the market and that will absolutely destroy your rate of return over that timeframe.

The second way though is 72 T payments. So these are equal periodic payments that you can have, and this is a rule that the i r S basically allows you to take out money early before the age of 59 and a half without penalty. The catch is that you have to take it out at least five substantially equal periodic payments.

The catch is that you must take at least five substantially equal periodic payments. So we talk more about this with our episode with Jeremy Schneider from Personal Finance Club. We have an episode we'll link up down below and we kind of dive deep into this to figure out ways that you can actually pull money out early.

So this is one that honestly gets more complicated than you need it to be. But if you need this and you're getting closer to retirement age, or you retired early, maybe you retired in your fifties for example, this is a great option for you. So, uh, this is one where I would definitely consider it if you really, really need it and you're in your fifties.

Third Roth I r a Contributions withdrawal. So your contributions to a Roth i r A, not the earnings, but the contributions to a Roth I r A can be withdrawn, penalty free at any time for any reason. So your Roth I r a contributions the money that you put into the Roth I r a, if you max it out every year, it's $6,500.

If you're below the age of 50, that's $6,500. You can pull back out at any point in time, which gives you an added benefit to the Roth I R a. I do not recommend doing that. But you can absolutely do that. That is another out that you have with the Roth I r a. Number four is the Roth I r a conversion ladder, so the Roth I r a conversion ladder.

We have an entire episode on this and then we talked about this and how to optimize it with Katie Gadi from Money with Katie. On the Roth I r a conversion ladder. This involves converting a traditional I R A to a Roth I R a and paying the income tax on the conversion. Now with Katie, we talk about how you don't have to pay the income tax on that conversion.

If you optimize this properly, we'll link that episode down below too, so you could check it out. And then you have to wait five years by utilizing the five, five-year rule before you can withdraw that money. So this takes some planning. This probably takes a little bit of a taxable brokerage magic also, so you can bridge those five years.

If you retire, if you don't retire and you know you're gonna retire in five years, you can start this process early. This is an advanced way to allow you to get ahold of those contributions. So check out our episode on it. Then if you wanna optimize it, you could check out the one with Katie. Also, there are 4 0 1 K loans.

Now I don't really recommend 4 0 1 K loans ever, but it is a way for you to borrow against your 4 0 1 K if you need cash really quickly for some sort of emergency. Maybe you didn't have an emergency fund buildup or something along those lines. You could do a 4 0 1 K loan. There's hardship withdrawals.

So some retirement plans actually allow for hardship withdrawals for immediate and heavy financial needs, but these are still subject to taxes and potential penalties, so you gotta watch out for those. There's also the rule of 55, so if you leave your job after the year that you turn 55, you may be able to take out your withdrawals from your 4 0 1 K with your former employer without penalty.

You can also withdraw up to $10,000 from an I r A to buy, build, or rebuild a home that is your first time home purchase. So there's also a first time home purchase. Caveat on there, I would never do this because your home on average gets like a 3.5% appreciation rate, and that is not factoring in all the cost of ownership.

And your I R A. Typically, if you're invested in index funds and etf, you have a nice portfolio, you're gonna get between seven to 10% rate of return on that. So the math doesn't math. You see what I'm saying here? So I still would not do that, but that is another option that you have. Then there's education expenses.

So you can actually use I R A funds to pay for higher education expenses for you. Your spouse, your children, or your grandchildren without penalty, love this one that nobody talks about. So you have those four options there, especially if you, maybe you get to a point in time where you're getting close to retirement age, you have a bunch of wealth built up, and so you have this Roth I r A that's also built up a bunch of wealth, and you have this money there and you're trying to figure out ways to actually distribute this money.

You can distribute money for your children. For your grandchildren outta your Roth i r a for education expenses. Or maybe you wanna go back to college, you wanna learn some new things. Maybe you've developed a deep love for psychology, for example, and so you want to go back and learn about psychology in college.

You can use that for education expenses or little hack here. Maybe you want to go study abroad. Well, you can go ahead and do that with education expenses. Then there's medical expenses if you have unreimbursed medical expenses out there. And they're more than 7.5% of your A G I or your adjusted gross income.

Then you can use i r A funds to pay for those without penalty. So if you get into a pickle with medical expenses, you can use I r A funds to pay for those without penalty. So you don't get into medical collection debt if they have a high interest rate or anything like that. Health insurance premiums. If you've lost your job and are collecting unemployment, you can use your I R A to fund health insurance premiums if you need those.

Premiums funded. Obviously health is wealth. That is one big one that we wanna make sure that we are taking advantage of. So these are all different ways that you could do, there's even more ways than this. But what I'm trying to show you is there's so many different ways to get money out of retirement accounts.

Money is not locked in retirement accounts, but you have to understand how this stuff works and it's really powerful once you learn how this stuff works. 'cause it gives you a more flexible retirement, especially for folks who want to retire early. If you're gonna retire early or you plan on being financially independent or fire, then I definitely want you to learn about all the flexible ways to pull money out of retirement accounts.

'cause there are so many different ways, but you gotta have your financial plan in place in order to do so. The third myth is that all debt is bad no matter what. So we haven't talked about this much in the podcast yet, but there is a difference between types of debt. There's good debt and there's bad debt.

And between those two things, some people say that doesn't exist. But between those two things, There is definitely a difference between good debt and bad debt. Now, I do believe that borrowing money at any point in time does put your financial life at risk. No matter what you do, maybe you're just borrowing it for your mortgage.

That still increases the liability in your life that you have to pay down something if you lost your job. So sure, your financial risk does go up for borrowing money, and the more debt that you take on, the higher your risk level is. I don't think anybody in the world would actually argue that who's actually of sound mind as you borrow more money.

Your risk level absolutely goes up. So you have to think that way as you take on more debt. But that is also what comes with the territory when it comes to building wealth. If you wanna build a massive amount of wealth, you have to have some sort of debt at some point in time, unless you really slowly want to build wealth over time.

Now, if you're someone who has an amazing business, you can build out an amazing business without taking on debt. You can be a solopreneur. There's a lot of other businesses out there where you don't have to take on debt, so you don't need to take on this risk of debt. But if you are someone who wants to build out a real estate portfolio, that's really big, it's very hard to build a real estate portfolio quickly when you just pay cash.

A lot of people have to save up for 15, 20 years. If you're gonna pay cash for a house, for a real estate portfolio, you could have had 20 houses by that point in time. And so we're deciphering here between good debt and bad debt. And if you wanna reduce that risk, Then more power to you if you hate debt.

I completely get it. No reason that you have to take on even good debt, but at the same time, that's your financial plan. It does not mean that there are ways that you can build a ton of wealth with good debt. So what is good debt First? Good debt is something where you take on debt that's going to help you buy an asset that appreciates in value and produces cash flow.

I like that combination to have both of them, but it needs to appreciate in value and produce cash flow. So when you take on debt, this could be things like. Real estate. Now, there's a bunch of different ways to invest in real estate and really, really good debt to me is optimal ways to invest in real estate.

So, you know, one of my favorite ways to invest in real estate is seller financing. So say for example, you want to go out, you wanna buy a single family home, well, you can seller finance that single family home and you don't have a bank pulling credit. You don't have all these additional things. Instead the.

Seller becomes the bank. And so if you build up a portfolio of these that is really, really good debt that I would love to have, I take on as many seller financing contracts as I could get if I could find the folks who wanted to sell our finance. If you're out there, you have a house, you wanna sell our finance, call your boy up.

But at the same time, you don't wanna get in over your eyeballs. You have to run the numbers and make sure it cash flows first. If it doesn't cash flow, it is bad debt. It is not good debt. It's bad debt. It needs to be able to at least cash flow in order for you to have good debt. Unless you have some different strategy, like you're gonna flip it and or you're just looking for that appreciation.

Long-term play, that's a different story. But for most people, you need to make sure that the numbers work. An F h A on a house hack is another great example of good debt, as long as the numbers work where your house hacking, for example, maybe you live in a fourplex and you live in one unit and then you rent out the other three units.

Well, the other three units are now classified as your income. Maybe you're living in that house for free and or you're even maybe making a little money from house hacking. And so this is a way that you can really increase your net worth and at the same time, take on a little bit of debt. You wouldn't have been able to increase your net worth with that over that timeframe unless you took on that debt.

And another example is just getting a standard bank loan on a single family house or a triplex, duplex, maybe an apartment complex. Bunch of different ways out there. Where you can do really, really well. You see, I know a lot of real estate investors who have taken on $50 million worth of debt, but they have $300 million worth of real estate, and so this is something where your risk level obviously goes up if you have $50 million of debt.

But if your cashflow can cover those payments, then that's really, really important. Now, One risk to good debt that a lot of people don't think about when it comes to real estate is that in real estate, you have to make sure that if the bank calls your loan, you have a plan for that. So in seller financing, that's not gonna happen as long as you have it in the contract.

But if you have traditional bank loan and say for example, you have $50 million worth of debt, What's gonna happen if the bank calls your loan on some sort of bank run and or recession? And this is what you have to really think about. This is what happened to Dave Ramsey and why Dave Ramsey doesn't love debt.

He was a real estate investor in his twenties, and when he was a real estate investor, he had a ton of debt for his real estate properties and they were cash flowing. They were doing fine, but all of a sudden a recessionary event happened and all the banks. Called his loans. And so he went completely bankrupt because the banks called his loans.

This is why he hates debt. And if you go through a situation like that, I completely understand why you would hate debt if you have to go through a situation like that. So you gotta have A, a plan B or an exit plan if you're gonna take something on like this. And this is a caveat I we have to say when we talk about good debt and bad debt.

'cause again, it increases your risk. So you gotta have exit plans when you take on this debt. Another good example of good debt is business investments. If you have a business and you're trying to scale that business, and there's different things that you can do in order to scale that business. Say for example, you have a construction company and if you have a construction company, what do you need?

Equipment And maybe you need to buy specific types of equipment in order to take on bigger commercial or municipal jobs. If you do that, maybe you need to buy heavier equipment than what you have currently. Maybe you're started doing houses and things like that, but now you wanna get into these commercial jobs, you gotta buy skid steers, you gotta buy bigger equipment, pieces of equipment, all these different things.

Well, if you do that, then what's gonna happen is you gotta take on some sort of construction loan. But as long as those pieces of equipment are gonna make you more money than what the debt is, then that would be good debt to put into place. Not all companies have the cash to be able to buy that stuff.

So it's a great option for you. Make sure you're budgeting out though and trying to get as close as you can on that kind of stuff. And then another example, possibly, and I really don't consider this but a lot of other people do, is student loans. So if you need to get an education in order to go get a job that you want in the real world, taking on as little of student loans as you possibly can in order to get that education is another thing that's going to increase your earning potential.

As long as it's in a career or a field that actually earns, that's a way longer conversation that we need to have. But as long as it's in a field or a career that actually. Earns money, then maybe that would be an example of good debt. Not always though. So that is one word, and all of these have caveats.

So just thinking through that as you go through that process. Now, bad debt. What is bad debt? What is the bad debt that you absolutely wanna avoid? Number one, and you probably gonna guess this already. Is credit card debt. Credit card debt is one of the worst pieces of debt that you can have. Why? Because you're buying liabilities on credit card debt.

In addition, credit card debt has really, really, really high interest rates. So it could be anywhere from 14% to 30% is what the interest rates are on credit cards. It's really, really hard to recover from credit card debt, which is why we created our free debt course@mastermoney.co slash debt course. If you wanna check it out, it's absolutely free.

Teaches you how to get outta debt, I would highly recommend that you do that. It's only less than an hour long. So check out that course if you want to get out of debt. 'cause credit card debt is one of the worst ones. Another one is payday loans. Payday loans have really high interest rates. A lot of them are predatory.

You want to avoid those as much as you possibly can. So listen, if you are in a situation where you need to get payday loans, obviously you are thinking day to day. You can't even fathom thinking week to week or month to month, like we talk about on this podcast. You are thinking day in and day out, and so it's really, really difficult to get outta that situation.

But payday loans are predatory and they have high interest rates. They have high fees upfront. They have high fees on the backend. They're something you really wanna try to avoid as much as you possibly can. High interest auto loans. So maybe you need a new whip and you're trying to get that whip to go from point A to point B.

Last thing you wanna do is get a high interest auto loan. A lot of times this happens if you do not have a good credit score. So working on your credit score first before you buy a new car is gonna be really, really important. So you don't have to pay high interest on auto loans 'cause you could be paying 7, 8, 9, $10,000 more for the same car that somebody else will be buying with a higher credit score.

And then unsecured personal loans with high interest rates. I've talked to a lot of folks who have these, I didn't even know that that many people actually utilize these, but a lot of people have unsecured loans, personal loans with high interest rates, avoid those bad debt at all costs. So there's good debt and there's bad debt.

What I want you to think about is, will this debt that I take on increase my net worth any which way, and do I have a backup plan to pay this off? If for some reason the loan gets called if it's through a bank or a traditional bank or something like that. So always be thinking through. Point, plan A, plan B, plan C when it comes to taking on debt because your risk level does go up, but not all debt is bad.

The next one, number four, is renting is throwing money away. Now, ooh, boy does this get people hot who are homeowners, who think that the only way to really build wealth is to buy a house. Now, if you have the majority of your assets inside of your personal residence, you are not wealthy whatsoever. In fact, a personal residence is not a good investment.

I'm gonna say this till my lungs turn blue. Why? Because over time, if you look at the appreciation of houses over time, I got the stats right in front of me. Over the course of the last 50 years, the appreciation has been 3.8% per year, and over the last 25 years, it's been 3.9% per year. This does not even factor in T C O or total cost of ownership.

Since 1991, the annual home in price has been 4.3%. Now, this is location dependent. I completely understand that. But when you look at the national average, then you take in specific locations. Sure. Maybe since you bought a house, it has gone up significantly. I'm a homeowner myself. I've owned a home since I was 24 years old.

I'm pro owning a home, but at the same time, it is not the best situation for a lot of situations, specifically now when home prices are extremely, extremely high. Instead, renting is not throwing money away. Renting is allowing you to have flexibility and a lot of other things we'll talk about here in a second, but the appreciation rates of home and if you run the actual numbers, if you learn how to actually run the numbers of total cost of ownership.

On a home, it is not a good investment whatsoever, which is why sometimes it's hard for me 'cause I know these numbers and I've learned the math a lot of times to remodel my house. So I do it for different reasons. I remodel my house because it brings joy to my family. It makes my wife happy that we have new things inside of our house.

And so a lot of different reasons are why I remodel my house. But at the same time, it is not the best financial decision to do something like that. There's a bunch of other reasons why to do it though. So. That's one thing that I wanna talk about as we go through this process. So there's a bunch of reasons to rent, and some of them are the questions that you need to ask yourself.

So the first question you need to ask is, how long am I gonna live here? Because the big thing you need to understand is if you're only gonna live at this specific location for the next couple of years, you need to rent instead of buy. Why? There's a number of different reasons. One of the biggest reasons, though, is that if you buy a house, The markets, for example, takes a dip or it tanks or something happens like 2007, 2008.

For example, if you bought a house, say for example, at $500,000 and it goes down 50% to $250,000, you've got yourself a problem here if you have to leave, 'cause now you're gonna lose 250,000 to dollars because you bought a house. For way more than it was anticipated. Whereas if you own a house for 10 years or longer, then what you can do is you can ride out that wave.

It'll appreciate back to normal. 'cause typically housing cycles are 10 to 15 years. So you look at those and you say, Hey, I've got a longer time horizon for this to get back to normal so I can recoup all of my losses and you'll still lose money on it because your total cost of ownership is gonna take that out from your maintenance to all the other things that you have to do.

Your maintenance, your H o A, your taxes, your fees, all those different things. So you gotta make sure that if your future plans are there and you are going to leave at any point in time, there's no reason to buy a house. Number two is there's a high cost of home ownership. And most people who have never owned a home definitely don't know this.

And if you own a home, you definitely know this. There is a very high cost of ownership. So first of all, like we just said, you have your taxes now. When you're renting, to be honest, you're still paying the taxes. You're just paying the taxes to your landlord instead of to the tax folks. But when you own the house, those taxes are still your obligation.

Then you have homeowner's insurance. That's another big piece that you have that you gotta make sure that you're paying every single year. It can be anywhere from a thousand dollars all the way up to six, $7,000, depending on if you have flood insurance, all those other things. Then you have maintenance.

Maintenance is literally throwing money into the wind. Maybe you pay money for someone to come maintain your lawn. I have a lawn service who's really, really cheap. It's $55 a month, and so they take care of my lawn. That is one of the best money I spend. That brings me a ton of value 'cause I'm not out there mowing my lawn every single week and I can focus on things that actually matter, like my family businesses, those types of things.

But at the same time, It's still a cost. I have a pool. My pool person is $140 per month. I'm just throwing that money into the wind. We have a cleaning lady. My cleaning lady is $150 per week. That's just throwing money into the wind to maintain something. And so all of these things are maintenance iron.

Now you may be saying, Hey, I'm gonna do that stuff myself. Sure, you can do that stuff yourself, but you still have things like, what if the faucet leaks? You gotta play a plumber unless you do the plumbing yourself, which is still gonna cost your time and energy. What about landscaping or changing up your landscaping in your house?

What about if your roof has issues? You gotta repair that. What if your AC has issues? What if your foundation has issues? What if your electrical has issues? There's so many costs inside of a house that if you've never added all this stuff up, it's major. What about your washer and dryer? If those break, that's your responsibility.

'cause you don't have a landlord. What if your toilet breaks? Well, now you gotta fix the toilet or get a new toilet. And so over this timeframe, home Depot has taken a lot of my money as a homeowner. And so what you wanna do is you gotta factor in all these costs to your total cost of ownership. 'cause if you go back and you factor in all those costs, including remodels, maybe you buy a house, you gotta remodel the kitchen, you gotta remodel the bathroom, you're gonna have to do updates, you're gonna have to paint every five to seven years.

And the interior, if you have kids, you gotta paint all the time it feels like. So these are things where there's just cost galore when you have a house. And you are the owner of a house instead of renting. Now, if you're renting, you do one thing. You pull up the old iPhone or the Android and you just call up old Larry the landlord.

You say, Hey Larry, my dishwasher's not working. Can you come and fix it? And then Larry has to send some guy out there. He is gotta make the call in order to get the guy or the gal out there in order to come fix your dishwasher. That's a beautiful thing to have, and sometimes I'm jealous of you renters because you get to have that, and I don't, honestly, I just wanna rent a house to feel that rush to call my landlord again.

Number three, you have less financial risk. So you're taking on a mortgage, you're taking on all this financial debt. When you buy a house, when you're renting. You have less financial risk. Number four, you have flexibility to downsize or to upsize. If you want to. Say, for example, you have a growing family and all of a sudden you need more space, well, you have the flexibility to get more space if you want to, or if you wanna downsize, maybe you lose your job.

You're a single person, you're your family and you lose your job. You can downsize to another rental with less rent. You avoid the market fluctuations, although this does impact your rent a little bit. But if there's market fluctuations in the market and the housing market takes a dip, in fact, if the housing market takes a dip, a lot of times it's better for you and your rent, then you avoid those market fluctuations that happen.

You're free from debt because you don't have that mortgage take on an hanging over your head. If you're worried about that, you have less stress because it can be much less stressful to own a house than to have to worry about every single little thing inside of that house. If your job situation is unstable, definitely don't own a house.

You need to keep renting until you have a stable job situation so that you can get that income on level playing par and lifestyle preferences. Maybe if you rent, you could live downtown near all the hip that you hop. That's happening. But if you buy a house, you gotta live way farther out. Maybe you're closer to other areas that you really don't wanna be in.

And so the lifestyle preferences can make a big difference there as well. And I've got a bunch of other things here. You may need a down payment. Utilities may be included in some situations, which is a very huge savings. You don't have to save up for a down payment. You could put that money towards other things you, insurance could be way cheaper, especially renter's insurance is way cheaper than homeowners, and your assets could be liquid.

There's so many different things out there on why it is better to rent than to buy. There's a bunch of reasons why it's great to buy. Most of them though, are not for financial gain, is what I'm trying to say here. So renting is not throwing your money away. And if you actually run the numbers, there's gonna be a lot of people that argue this.

They're probably throwing their fists at their car radio right now, hearing me say this, or their headphones. Trust me, run the numbers. And if you don't know how to run the numbers, maybe I need to create a masterclass to teach people how to run the numbers so they can go out and do this. Let's jump to the next one.

So number five. Is you should invest your emergency fund or you don't need your emergency fund. Okay? If anybody tells you that, you need to make sure that you are really thinking through what they're saying here, because cash is absolute security. Now, let me tell you who holds the largest emergency fund in the entire world.

The greatest investor of all time, Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett has billions and billions and billions of dollars in cash right now. He has billions of dollars in cash, a so he could take advantage of opportunity, but it's also the world's largest emergency fund because he knows that cash is security.

And so when it comes to this, you need to understand that, number one, you need an emergency fund. Why? Because I have never been through life or a single month where something unexpected does not happen. It could be a small thing that's unexpected. It could also be a very large thing. It could be a small thing like my kids get sick and I have $200 worth of medical bills that I have to pay, and or it could be a very large thing like your car radiator breaks and you have to spend $5,000 to repair your car.

All of these things in life happens. There's a reason why we have emergency funds in place, and the reason for this is to protect us against life, number one. Number two, it reduces your stress and anxiety. It reduces the worry that you have around life. So keeping this safe in a safe place is gonna be really, really important.

Now, why do you not want to invest your emergency fund? The reason why you don't wanna invest your emergency fund is that if you invest your emergency fund and the market takes a dip, and then all of a sudden you need that money immediately, all of a sudden your emergency fund is cut in half. So say for example, think about this way, you're in the 2007 2008 crisis.

You invested your emergency fund. All of a sudden your investments get cut in half, they reduce 50%. 'cause that's what happened in 2007, 2008. But at the same time, what else happened in 2007, 2008, a lot of people lost their jobs and got laid off. So then you have your emergency fund cut in half, and maybe you only had three months of expenses saved up, and now it's cut in half and you have one and a half months expenses saved up because you invested it instead of putting it somewhere safe, and then you lose your job and you get laid off.

You're in a really bad situation if that happens. So you need to keep this money safe. So what do you do with your emergency fund instead? You put it into something like a high yield savings account? My emergency fund is in a high yield savings account. I have a couple different ones. I have c I T bank, I have Ally Bank.

I. Marcus I've heard is really, really good now 'cause they have savings buckets like Ally does. But keeping in the high-yield savings account is a powerful, powerful place to put your emergency fund. You're still getting decent interest rates that we're getting right now. Like right now, at the time I'm recording this, like four point a half, 5%, right in that range.

You could do other things like T-bills or CD ladders if you want to, but really I like the high-yield savings account because of the illiquidity and making sure that you can keep that in place. But there's a bunch of other reasons not to invest it. Like the risk of loss timing. You're not gonna be able to time the market to know what's gonna happen in the market.

Stressed. You're gonna be stressed out if that emergency fund's invested all the time and all of a sudden takes a dip. Penalties and fees. All these different things are why you want to avoid investing your emergency fund. Now, if you have a six month emergency fund and that's fully funded in your eyes and you have another six months of emergency funds where you really wanna have a year, then you can invest the other six months if you really, really want to.

But really, I just like to have cash as. Security. So yes, you need an emergency fund. No, do not invest it unless you have a really, really large emergency fund and you wanna invest a portion of it or tear it up. Ooh, this last one I love. So the last one is having a high income, does that mean that you're wealthy?

It absolutely does not mean you're wealthy. So we did an episode a long time ago. I need to redo it. It's called Rich versus Wealthy. I think it was one of our earliest episodes. And in that episode I talk about the difference between Rich. And being wealthy. And one of the biggest things that you need to understand is that the difference between being rich and being wealthy is vastly different.

Whereas rich people have a high income, but that does not mean that they're wealthy whatsoever. So according to Business Insider, 51% of high income earners surveyed said they were living paycheck to paycheck. A C N B C article came out that said that 36% of US employees with salaries over a hundred thousand dollars or more are living paycheck to paycheck.

High income does not mean wealth. 60% of millennials earning a hundred thousand dollars or more say they live paycheck to paycheck. So 36% of US employees in A C N B C article said they live paycheck to paycheck. That make over a hundred K and 60% of millennials making over a hundred K. So they also live paycheck to paycheck.

Now, there is a number of reasons why having a high income does not mean you are wealthy. In fact, a lot of high income earners will drive the Ferraris, the Lamborghinis, the gwas, all of those different things. And a lot of times when I see those vehicles, a lot of times I'm like, I don't think that person's actually wealthy.

That's actually where my mind goes. Now, instead of going to, Ooh, that person looks cool, I bet you they have a lot of money. You can have the mansion, you can have all these different things. But if you are spending everything that you make, you are not wealthy. Wealthy is the person who maybe is dressed in plain clothes, but they have all the freedom of their time out there because they have their investments set up already.

They have rental properties, they have assets that increase in value over time. They get to spend more time with their family, their friends, and maybe they live in a standard normal house. Maybe they live in a four bedroom, two bathroom house or a three bedroom, two bathroom house, or they live in New York City in a one bedroom, one bathroom apartment.

These are the wealthiest people out there because they have freedom with their time. They have all the peace in the world because they set up their life that way. And so wealth is so many different things. Wealth is not just money, but money sets you up so that you have the time to have the full, encompassing wealth of wealth, health, time with family, time with friends, time to do all the things that you love doing, work that you love, giving back to your community, giving money away.

All of these different things all encompass wealth, and what you need to realize here is that. Rich people do not have this. What rich people have is a high income and they spend all of their high income. So what you wanna be is wealthy. So the first thing is the spending habits. If somebody is rich, you need to look at their spending habits and see how much money are they spending.

There is a lot of doctors out there, there's a lot of lawyers out there. There's a lot of business owners who make a lot of money out there who spend all of their money. So you gotta make sure that you are looking at the entire picture. Before you do that, it's all about the gap, the difference between your income expenses.

Are your gap and the larger you can grow that gap, the more wealthy you can become. 'cause you put that towards your financial independence activities. Number two is debt. A lot of high income earners may take on a bunch of debt also 'cause they think they can afford the payments. Looking at monthly payments instead of looking at the entire picture and the total cost of ownership.

Is what broke people do. And so if you think you can afford the payments broke, people look at the payments. Wealthy people look at total cost of ownership. A lot of rich people have never learned this or understand this, so if they can afford the payments on a gwa, for example, they're just gonna go ahead and take on that GWA and take on that deck.

Lack of savings and investments. So a lot of rich people, maybe they'll start investing really speculative stuff. Things like crypto, things like random penny stocks. Things like companies that their friend just told them about that they should be investing in individual stocks. All these different things can be what a lot of rich people do, but they don't ever actually grow their wealth over time.

In fact, maybe it's stagnant or their returns are very low and they just didn't even know it 'cause they don't track it whatsoever. Lifestyle inflation. So as their income increases, a lot of rich people, their lifestyle will inflate all the time. Still keep buying more stuff. They'll buy the bigger house, they'll buy the fancier Lamborghini, they'll buy the Maybach instead of just having the standard gwa.

All of this stuff comes into play when it comes to rich versus wealthy. Now you could be really wealthy and have all that stuff. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying here is that you gotta see the difference between the two. Then there's lack of financial literacy. So a lot of folks who are rich who have a high income, that does not mean they have financial literacy, meaning they don't know what to actually do with their money in order to make it grow.

A lot of people know that you need to invest in assets, but they don't know what are the right assets are, how you actually handle your money, what to do when money comes into your hands? How do you grow your wealth over time? That's the principles we try to teach here on this podcast. Then they have temporary versus sustained income.

So a wealthy person is going to invest their dollars and their income into sustainable sources, index funds and ETFs, rental properties, boring businesses, and they wanna grow that income over time and make sure that it's sustainable over time and increases in value over time. Whereas a wealthy person, their income is temporary, it's from their W two job or their business that they're earning that income from, and it's temporary income that if they do not put it into assets, they will not get money back from that money.

Ever again, because liabilities, they'll actually lose money every single year. But if you put it into assets, then you can increase the amount of money you get every single year. So that's the difference between rich and wealthy. High income does not mean that you have a lot of wealth. We can do an entire episode on that again in the future so that we can talk more about that and actually dive deeper into some of this stuff.

But rich versus wealthy, Is a major topic that I love to talk about, and if you wanna learn more about that, the Millionaire Next Door is a great, great book for that. But a high income does not mean that you're wealthy. Listen, hope you guys learned a ton in this episode. If you guys got a lot of value outta this episode, share it with your family members or your friends.

I cannot thank you guys enough for listening to this podcast, and I cannot thank you enough for investing in yourself because that is what you do each and every time you listen to this podcast is you are investing in yourself, which is the most valuable investment of all. Thank you guys again for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode.