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The Personal Finance Podcast

9 Life Lessons After 500 Episodes

In this episode of The Personal Finance Podcast, Andrew celebrates episode 500 by sharing 9 life-changing lessons—time is your most valuable asset, your money decisions are rooted in psychology, everything compounds including money and habits, nobody cares what you do so take more shots, simplify everything in your finances and life, income solves most money problems but exposes chaos without systems, privacy is now a wealth-building skill, do more hard things people avoid, and you’re one year away from transforming your life.

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In this episode of The Personal Finance Podcast, Andrew celebrates episode 500 by sharing 9 life-changing lessons—time is your most valuable asset, your money decisions are rooted in psychology, everything compounds including money and habits, nobody cares what you do so take more shots, simplify everything in your finances and life, income solves most money problems but exposes chaos without systems, privacy is now a wealth-building skill, do more hard things people avoid, and you're one year away from transforming your life.

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Transcript:

 

On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, nine Lessons After 500 episodes.

Ooh, what's up everybody? And welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host Andrew, founder of Master money.co. And today on the personal finance. Podcast, we're gonna be diving into nine lessons after 500 episodes. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money Newsletter by going to master money.co/newsletter, and you can respond to any of those issues that are there.

And don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever your favorite podcast player is. And if you wanna help out the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now, today is a special day because this is episode 500, and I remember when I first started this podcast, I thought through and our initial goal was thought as this.

We had no idea what was gonna happen with this show. We had no idea which direction we were gonna go with this, but I knew I wanted to help people and I knew that I had a vision in my mind where I saw someone who was really just struggling with their money. They were stressed about their money, they were anxious about their money, and they didn't know what to do next.

And so I said to myself, I wanna create something that solves those problems for those people, but also allows them to grow with us. Where as their income starts to increase, and as they start to build wealth and as they're able to do some of these things, they can also grow in their finances. On this show, my entire goal was to give you hope.

My entire goal is to bring as much value as possible to you. That is why we do this, and I say that on a lot of different episodes, but in addition, my goal is to show you that you have the opportunity to do anything you want in this life. And money is the tool to get you there. You have the flexibility and the ability to spend your time doing the things that you want if you use money as a tool.

And so overall, we wanted to bring this message to as many people as we possibly can. Now, as time has gone on, our message has been, I wanna create a million millionaires. And I think that is such a fun and powerful goal out there that we are trying to do. And when we started this show, the interesting thing about it was that we started with just like my mom, my wife, and a couple of family members listening.

And I remember very early on when we started the show, I had 10 downloads, 15 downloads, 20 downloads, and it started to slowly pick up in the first episode I ever did. I didn't know that you could do an episode and not do it perfectly all in one take. Now, for the most part, we do this much better where we're, we're kind of doing these in one take, but when I first started, and I wasn't even in the know on podcasting, I thought you had to do it perfectly all the way through.

So my first episode of this podcast, I recorded it 40 different times and I was like, this is unsustainable. I don't even know what to do. But then I realized, oh shoot, you could go back and edit these podcasts. That's how little I knew. And now the amazing thing is we have seen growth of this show over the course of the last year that has exceeded my expectations beyond anything I could have ever imagined.

And I wanna thank all of you for being here with me. I wanna thank all of you for sticking with me as we have gone through all of these different episodes. 'cause episode 500 is special. It is a special place to be that when we started this show in 2020. June of 2020 is when this show began to being here now.

And as we are recording this episode, I am looking at the Spotify charts. We are number eight on the Spotify business charts. Being overall, we are the eighth largest podcast in the world, in the business category. We are number 111. On the overall charts on Spotify for all podcasts across all categories, and I cannot believe it.

It is one of those things that shows a lot of the messages that we're gonna be talking about today, because my goal for each and every single one of you is I want you to thrive with your money. I want you to know that no matter where you started, no matter where you came from, no matter who you are, no matter what your job is, no matter what you're currently doing, you can change your situation and you can build generational wealth for you, but also your family.

In Proverbs, it says, A wise man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, and I want each and every single one of you to be able to do that. Every single person listening to this podcast, I want you to be able, if you want to, to leave an inheritance to your children's children. I want you to be able to give to the causes you believe in.

I want you to be able to do whatever you want with your time, energy, money, and everything else in life. And money is just the tool that gets you there. It's not about the money. It's what the money can do for you. And so I envisioned when we started this show, someone who was dead broke, dead poor, who found my podcast, and all of a sudden when they found my show, they were able to climb themselves out of a situation that honestly wasn't the safest.

It wasn't the best for their family, it wasn't the best overall situation, and they were able to do it by using money as a tool. And since then, we have helped people in a low salary. We have helped high earners, we have helped people in every single situation. We've talked about advanced tactics, we've talked about beginner tactics.

And today, on this episode, a lot has changed just with me. Specifically, if you go back and listen to the early episodes, I have developed as a person as well. And so I wanna go through nine life lessons after 500 episodes. So this is gonna be a fun episode, and I am really, really excited for it. So without further ado.

Let's get into it. Number one is that time is your most valuable asset. Now, I think a big key for most people listening to this podcast is they need to realize a lot of the things that we do is to make sure that we spend our time in the most valuable categories that we wanna spend it. Because wealth, the ability to build wealth allows you to spend more time with your family.

It allows you to spend more time with your friends. It allows you to spend more time doing the things that you love. Allows you to spend more time pushing the cause as you believe in. And so because of this, wealth is just the tool that gives you more time. But time is the real asset that we all want. We all want the freedom and flexibility to go on those vacations we ever really want.

We all want the freedom and flexibility to enjoy a cup of coffee on our back porch in the morning. We all want the freedom and flexibility to go be able to see our kids' games no matter what without getting work calls. And this is what money allows you to do. And so because of this, most of us are chasing financial freedom.

And financial freedom is the ultimate goal for most of you out there. And so time is your most valuable asset. You must protect at all costs and you must become a great steward of your time. And so what I would say first is that if you wanna become better with your time and you want to think about time in a very different way, I would set goals and parameters around your time specifically.

See, a lot of people will set goals in life. Maybe they wanna make more money, maybe they wanna get ripped. I would think through. How do I set goals to make sure that I'm spending my time intentionally? Now, if you are unsure about how to spend your time with intention, the number one thing that you can do is time block.

Now, we have this thing in Master Money Academy called Master Your Money Goals and Inside Master Your Money Goals. We go through time blocking and how important and powerful it can be. It is one of the most important things that most people need to be doing is setting up a timeframe and time blocking their time.

Now, this sounds like you're going backwards. It sounds like you're not spending your time doing what you want, but time blocking allows you to actually allocate your time towards the things that you actually value. So each and every single day, you know when you wake up, what you're gonna be doing that day.

If you want to exercise more and spend more time on your health and fitness, 'cause you wanna live longer to see your family more, you should be spending more time doing that and you should be time blocking more of that into your calendar. If you want to spend more time thinking about how to build more wealth or on your side hustle.

You should be allocating that time in your calendar every single day. If you wanna spend more time making sure that you are not wasting time at your day job every single day so that you can become the most productive person so you can get that promotion and make more money, then time block your entire day.

And if you wanna spend more time making sure you're intentional with your faith or intentional with your family time blocking that is gonna make sure that it is on your list. Now, there's a book by Cal Newport that goes through this, where in that book, Cal Newport introduces. The concept of time blocking.

And he actually does it in a very interesting way where he does it in a notebook. He does it by hand every single day. Now, how do I do it? I just do it on a Google calendar. I do a, what I call my Sunday night ritual. And every single week I will set up parameters around my entire week of what I wanna make sure that I accomplish.

And so when you look at this and you set parameters around this, this removes time sucks from your life. How many of you right now are saying to yourself, I am so sick of how much time I am spending on my phone. I am so sick about these six hours of screen time, of scrolling every single day. You know why that happens?

Because you don't have intention with your time. You don't have your time set up in a way that tells you what to do each and every single day. This is the key to success, is to make sure that you spend your time doing the actual things that you wanna be doing, because you can do a lot more than you think you can.

And really, if you show me your calendar, I will show you what your priorities are. If you show me your calendar and there is nothing on there, guess what your priority is. Your priority to me is going to be that I don't know what I'm gonna do today. And so instead, I am gonna let life choose what my time is gonna be spent on.

Because if you let life choose what your time is gonna be spent on, that is how you get nowhere in your day-to-day life. So instead, I highly recommend looking into time blocking and thinking about this. Now, most of us out there may feel like we're behind in our careers. You may think that you are not far along in your business.

But this is one of the most amazing things that I think most people need to understand about time is that you have way more time in your business, in your career than you actually think you do. Lemme give you some examples of this. Charlie Munger, who is one of the greatest investors of all time and one of the wealthiest people to ever live, was also Warren Buffett's business partner.

This is what he's most famous for, but he didn't join Warren Buffett until he was 54 years old. Another example of this is Colonel Sanders. In fact, he was 65 years old when he started it. So if you're in your thirties or forties right now and you're listening to this episode, if you're even in your fifties, you have so much time left.

And this is where I want you to realize that time is your most valuable asset. And when you have a long-term time horizon, you have the time to allow this to compound. I have seen people in their fifties say, I feel like I have no time left now. You have a lot of time left. And if you take care of your health and you take care of your health span, you have a lot of great life left where you can do a lot of amazing things.

Maybe act one is you just building up that foundation in your twenties and thirties. Maybe Act two is in your late thirties and forties. You are starting to build up some career capital, and now you will have the ability to go out there and start to truly market yourself and make a lot more money.

Maybe your forties and fifties. Now you're starting to accelerate how much you can make, and you're starting a business on the side or you're doing something else and you're able to kind of transition your career in act 1, 2, 3, and four. But you have way more time than you actually think when it comes to your career in business.

If you're in your twenties, you have a lifetime left, and you don't understand really how much time you have and how valuable that time can be because you can reinvent yourself later on in life. And that's the message that most people need to note is that if you do think that you're completely done, no, you can reinvent yourself later on in life.

I have a great family friend who became a physician, who became a doctor, went back to med school when he had three kids and went back to med school in his late thirties and became a doctor in his early forties. He retired in his early sixties. And this is something I think most people don't realize is you can change everything that you are doing.

Now, society is gonna say, well, why are you changing your career path? Or Why are you changing what you're actually doing? But instead, you need to note, I have so much time left, I have so much time ahead of me that I can do anything I want in life. Honestly, that's one thing you need to realize is you can just do things.

You can just do things in life and nobody's gonna stop you. And so you gotta make sure that you realize how much time you have, because a lot of people think, oh my goodness, time is running out. I am way behind. I don't know what to do within my career. This is one of those areas where in your career you have so much time left.

But here's the other reality is we have less time than we think to spend with our family. And the older I get, the more I realize this. So my family and I were recently on just like a weekend vacation. It was myself, my wife, my two sons and my daughter. And we were on this weekend vacation and we were just having such a wonderful time.

We were having a great time. And I sat there and I was watching my kids play in this pool, and I was thinking to myself, man, I have a 7-year-old now. I have a almost 5-year-old now and I have a 1-year-old. And just the first seven years of my seven year old's life was gone like that. It went by so incredibly fast and he grew up with this podcast.

I mean, I remember recording this podcast next to his bra, his room where his crib was in our old house. And it is one of those things where time spent with your family, especially your kids, is gonna go by way faster than you think. So you may have way more time in your career than you think You have way less time with your family than you think.

In fact, almost all the time you spend with your kids is gonna be in the first 18 years of their life or when they're under your roof. And this is the sad reality of life. This is actually a sad thing as a parent, and this is a sad thing as a child of as well, because when you are a child, you've spent the majority of your time that you're gonna spend with your parents.

You've already spent it, especially if you're a grown adult out of the household. And that's the thing I'm realizing more and more about this life is that life is gone in a vapor. It's gone in an instant. It goes by really, really fast, especially with the ones that we love. Most people on their death beds don't say they regret, um, now making more money or staying late at the office.

What they regret is not spending more time with their family. And I see it time and time again where folks have a huge regret around their kids. I talked to a dad recently and he said for his entire life, his son kept asking him to just watch a, a, a baseball game with him or watch a sports game with him or watch this thing with him and, and just spend a little time with him when he was young, when he was six, seven, and eight.

And his dad was too busy and he was working and he was spending time trying to build an income for the family. And he thought that was the right thing to do. And now he's built a tremendous amount of wealth. He has this huge company, it's making a lot of money, and his son is 25 years old now, and he keeps asking his son, Hey son, can you wanna come over for the game?

Do you wanna come over and spend some time and watch the game with me? And his son always says no, because for the longest time he was so used to getting rejected and now it's just not part of his pattern anymore to watch the game with his. I don't want that to happen to anybody out there. And if it has happened to you, I want you to find a way to fix it, because this time that we have left is so short, and the trade off of trying to get more money in order to sacrifice time with your family is absolutely not worth it.

Another thing, there's another study came out, and I've talked about this in the show before, but the majority of people with their best childhood memories, they remember taking a vacation with their family, and so I would highly encourage every single person listening to this to make sure that you have some sort of vacation fund in your budget.

Even if you're not a big vacation or yourself and you have kids, this is gonna be something that they remember for the rest of their life. Spend time thinking about travel hacking if you don't have a lot of money, because travel hacking can help you through this process, but also spend time just putting cash to the side so that you can go on vacation.

Now, never, ever, ever going to debt on vacation, even if it's a fun little family weekend trip where you can afford that once a year. That is gonna be something that they remember for the rest of their life. And I want you to make sure that you're spending time on the vacation fund and making sure you allocate dollars towards that.

I don't care if it's $50 a month, I don't care if it's $25 a month. Allocate something towards that vacation fund so that you can go on some sort of trip on a yearly or biannual basis, uh, once you have enough cash on hand. Again, never go into debt for a vacation, but always try to be saving for one, because I think that is one of the most impactful things for kids.

Now, one big thing I wanna talk about here as well is we all feel like we have less time than we actually do. We all feel like we're busier than most. We're busier than our sister or our brother or our parents, or our in-laws or whatever else. You feel like you're busier than all your peers around you.

You're doing so much more. Your calendar is fully booked. You're running around left and right from dropping the kids off to school, to going and doing these other things. Or maybe you're spending time taking care of your parents or whatever else it is. We all feel like we are way too busy on top of all that stuff.

We gotta go to work and come back and all this different stuff. But I want you to realize, and I want you to take out your phone right now and I want you to go to the settings and figure out how much screen time you spend each and every single day. We all have time for more. We all have time to do more.

We all have time to accomplish our goals. We all have more time than we actually think we do. And so I would highly encourage people to make sure that you note that most people's lives look better than you because you're not on the inside. You're seeing their highlight reel, you're hearing about their highlight reel.

Maybe you're seeing it on social media or whatever else, but you have more time than you think you can to try to accomplish those goals. I want you to spend more time and set parameters around your phone. Your phone is the biggest time suck for every single person listening, and so let's talk about this because you can labor and you can toil, and you can try to make as much money as possible.

You can try to make the highest income possible and build this net worth and this safety net and this all this other stuff, but in the end, time is always gonna run out. And so how you spend your time is more important than how much money you make and how much money you earn. That's what people will remember.

That is a big part of your legacy. And being a good steward of your time is one of the most valuable things that you can do. The most important things in life take the longest to build, and I want you to remember that the most important things in life take the longest to build. And so you need to be patient.

You need to understand that good things take time. And really in reality, if things are happening way too fast, that is typically not good for you. And so your time is one of those things that I want you to be more intentional about this year. If you are not intentional about your time, spend a few hours over the weekend or over the next couple of days saying to yourself, how can I be more intentional about my time and how can I spend that time wisely?

Let's get into number two. Number two, let's get into some finance stuff here. Because your money decisions are fully rooted in psychology now, it has become increasingly important that we understand that money psychology. Runs our life. And there's a book called The Psychology of Money that dives deeper into this.

But it is very important that you master the skill of money psychology. Your psychology is 90% of being good with money, and only about 10% is the head knowledge that you have. And so mastering your money psychology in steps is gonna be one of the most important things that you can do on the path to building wealth.

Because when you master your money psychology, you can make better decisions. You can make calm decisions, it reduces your stress around money. It reduces your anxiety around money because you know why you are thinking that way, or you understand your why and you understand why this is happening or why that is happening.

And so I want you to think about a couple of different things. One, one of the most important things is how you were raised. How you were raised is going to over spill and overflow no matter how you want it to be into your overall financial life. Were you raised in a house that's poor? Well, if you were, you either are going to start earning more money and that drives you to earn more money for your family.

'cause you don't want your family to be in that same exact situation. Or you're gonna pick up habits from when you grew up and you're gonna continue those habits and you're gonna be poor. And so here's what I want you to do is, is if you did grow up poor, look at the poor money habits that your family had and ask yourself, am I also doing these things?

Am I also subconsciously just taking on some of these habits? Progressive has those great commercials where we are just like our parents. If you've seen those commercials that have come out, it's basically these folks who are acting exactly like their parents did just 30 years ago. And they're really funny, but they're also very true because this can happen to a lot of folks now.

It is very, very important that you understand how you grew up and you understand some of those things that happened when you were younger. Were you in a family that was well off or were you really privileged? Well, if that's the case, you can also have bad money habits because you never learned how to handle money.

But you also could have learned some good money habits and become a good steward of money. Did you get money as a child or did you have to work for it? This is a very important question to ask yourself because if you did not have to work for your money, then this is gonna be one where maybe you have to develop that work ethic and that muscle in order to be able to do this.

Where if you never got a single dollar, most likely you're a very hard worker. And so this is something to evaluate. Do your parents still give you money today or do you have to find a way? So we did a a video recently talking about this, and I was doing a reaction to a girl who was saying, the reality is every single person around me, their parents give them money either for their rent or to buy a house or to help them with bills or these different things.

And we got a ton of comments that said, actually for me, it's the exact opposite. I have to give my parents money. And so there's two split divided situations here. Whereas if you are taking care of your parents, this is something where you have very different psychology than someone who was not taking their parents in the way that you think about money and the way that you operate around money.

Here's a big one. Was money taboo in your house? Was it taboo to have a conversation around money? That I think is really, really important. Now, another side of the coin is not just how you were raised, but some of your fears that you developed based on how you were raised around money. And a lot of people make financial decisions based on their fears, and I want you to identify what your fears are.

If you have fears around money or you have thoughts around money and you don't know what they actually are, I'm gonna give you some ideas here on what they could be. Are you worried that one day money is going to run out? This is an innate fear that I have. Why do I have this fear? Because I've told this story a number of different times.

When I was living paycheck to paycheck, all of a sudden, one day I was going to work and I went to go fill up my tank of gas, and I did not have enough money to fill up my entire tank of gas. My money ran out one day, and so now my greatest fear in life is for money to one day run out. And I know a lot of very wealthy people with that same exact fear.

And that's what drives them to continue to push. That's what drives them to continue to keep going. It's an inaccurate fear. It is a fear that really is not logical long term. But it is one that I need to get over and conquer. So I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. I've spent a lot of time getting over this fact, but that is one of my personal money fears.

Now I want you to think about some of your money fears. I want you to think about what those actually are. 'cause do you have an abundance mindset or do you have a scarcity mindset? An abundance mindset is someone who knows, oh, I can go and earn more money and I can take those extra dollars and invest those dollars.

Whereas somebody with a scarcity mindset is thinking, there's not enough to go around and I am not gonna be able to earn more money. I need to do everything in my power to get my nut to go get out there and get what? What is mine? Another question around fears. Do you actually understand money or do you treat it as monopoly money?

Is it just something that you do? Is it just something that you get money and you spend it? You don't care about taking on that car loan 'cause you don't understand money, you don't even understand the IM impact of interest rates. Do you look at the monthly payment on a car loan and say, ah, I can afford that.

That's how I'm gonna do that. You never look at the monthly payment. And so there's a lot more education to money where if you have that understanding that's gonna help your money psychology long term, are you fearful of falling behind others? Is everyone around you seemingly doing better than you are?

Or is this something that you feel like you're falling further and further and further behind? If that's the case, I want you to evaluate why you feel that way. Evaluate your circle and the people that are around you. Are you fearful of not being able to retire? Are you getting closer to retirement age and you're worried about I'm not gonna be able to retire?

This is one of my biggest money fears. Are you fearful about making less than you should? This is something that I struggled with in my twenties where I felt as though I didn't make as much as I should. And so I did something about it and I constantly was trying to find ways to make more money, but this fear drove me because I knew that overall I should be making more money, and I fear I'm not maximizing my potential, and so I push and push and push in order for this to drive you.

So as you can see as I'm talking through this, some of these fears can be positive in terms of what your actions are going to be in the future, but you still need to make sure that you are evaluating and understand that these exist. Because if you don't, you can make some very poor money decisions based on your fears, and I don't want that for you.

Also, what are some of the preconceived notions that you have around money? Do you believe things like buying a house is always a good decision? There are so many people out there who believe that you should always buy a house no matter what, without running the numbers. And this is a situation where I get so much flack when we talk about running the numbers on a house.

And really if you know the math, you know you have to run the numbers, otherwise you can make a bad buying decision. Are you that type of person? Did you grow up in a household where your family said, no, always buy a house. You must own a house because this is the best financial decision. Well, if they don't have a financial education, they're going to say that.

And so you wanna make sure that you run the numbers first, or do you feel like the only way to build wealth is to go to college and get a steady job? A lot of people feel that way, and it's not not true, but it is something that you should evaluate if it is true or not. For your specific situation. Do you feel like budgeting means restriction and deprivation?

This is a big one I see as well, where people do not wanna do any form of budgeting whatsoever because they feel like it's restrictive and it's depriving. But guess what? A budget is in fact just telling your dollars what to do. It's the same thing as time blocking. It's telling your dollars where to go and what to do, and in fact, it is freeing because it is allowing you to spend more on the things that you value.

And spending is a skill. Spending is a skill that most people need to learn, and this allows you to spend more on what you value. Do you feel as though you need to earn a good income to become wealthy? Do you feel like the only way to become wealthy is to earn a good income? We've proven on this podcast time and time again that you can even build wealth on a low salary.

We just had an episode about this where you can have a low salary and still build wealth. In fact, Ramsey Solutions did a study, the largest study ever of millionaires, over 10,000 millionaires, and one of the top five jobs for those millionaires was a teacher. You can build wealth on a lower salary. You don't have to have a high income.

But do you believe that? Was that a preconceived notion that was put inside of your brain? Do you believe that most millionaires were handed money? There have been a number of different studies now where people believe that most millionaires inherited their money. Do you know that 79% of millionaires did not inherit their money?

This is the best news ever for you and I. Why? Because now all of a sudden we realize, well, 79% didn't inherit their money. I can do this too. I can be a self-made millionaire, and that's what I want for every single one of you is these preconceived notions are going to kill your activity towards building wealth if you don't take care of them early and often and you don't understand what the real stats are.

There are way too many people out there believe in this stuff when it is absolutely not true. You can build wealth, you can do it today, but it's totally up to you. Do you believe that debt is normal, that everybody has debt? So I should just take on debt? I should take on this car loan. I should take on this personal loan.

I should just take on credit card debt. Who cares? Everybody's got it going on. Lemme tell you right now. Take on big chunks of debt is not normal and should not be normal. It's not something you should be doing over the long run. Do you believe that creating a retirement plan is for someone later on down the line as they're getting closer to retirement?

Is that a personal belief you have? Do you believe investing is gambling? I see this time and time again where people believe investing is gambling because they made a mistake investing because they didn't have a full understanding of how to invest. Do you think the stock market is for rich people? No.

Lemme just tell you something right now. The stock market is for you, and the stock market is for me. The stock market is for everybody. And it is one of those things where you can invest in real estate, you can invest in stocks, you just have to let time do the work and you can build wealth. So this is one of those areas where I want you to evaluate your money.

Psychology. I want you to evaluate why you spend the way that you do, why you save the way that you do, what your fears are, what your preconceived notions are. I want you to think about how you are raised. All of these are so incredibly important to understand your psychology, to understand why you think about money the way that you do, because this by friends.

This is by far one of the most important things that you can do, and the more people I talk to and the more people that we coach inside Master Money Academy, we're seeing this over and over and over again. You have the potential to unlock a tremendous amount of wealth, but it starts with mastering your money.

Psychology. Let's jump to break and we'll be right back. Alright. Lesson number three is that everything in life compounds. Now, the most obvious example of this is money, because we know that if you invest more or you save more or you give more, all of these things are gonna compound over time. Meaning that investing your dollars in the stock market means that you're gonna reap the benefits of compound interest.

Saving more in a high yield savings account means that you're gonna reap the benefits of compound interest. Giving more means that you are gonna be able to do a couple of different things. You can give more through something like a donor-advised fund, which is going to compound, and then you can give more over time.

And so this is an area where I think most people understand that money compounds, money compounds over time. And you should be putting your dollars in places where money is gonna compound more assets. Allow your money to grow, liabilities, allow your money to dissipate or disappear. And so you wanna make sure that you are putting more dollars into things that grow and less into liabilities.

But what other things actually compound? There's a lot of things that actually compound in this life, and this is something I'm realizing more and more and more as I get older. See, in my twenties I didn't realize this stuff 'cause I couldn't reap or see the benefits of compounding. But now I see it across the board.

One is experiences. The more experiences that you have, the more that you go out and do, the more things that you go out and see, the more marketable you actually are. So I would highly encourage people to go out and travel more, see different cultures, see what is going on out in the world, spend more time on the road, spend more time taking that trip.

If you have that money on hand, take the trip. Because traveling is a really, really powerful way to just see different perspectives. But number two is I would highly recommend that you meet more people, get out there with experiences, and try to meet as many people as you possibly can. Learn how to network, learn how to get out there and meet people within your industry, not just at your day job.

You're in this bubble every day where you go to work and you are with the people you're with. And so it feels like you're meeting a lot of people or having conversations with people. You're in a very small bubble. Instead, what I want you to do is go out and meet more people and you will reap the benefits of your total experiences and your relationships.

Do more things outside of your comfort zone. So one big thing I'm doing this year is I have a list of, I wanna do something outside of my comfort zone at least once a month. Something I would not normally do, something I would not normally decide to go out and do. And so this may be, you know, going to specific events that I'm invited to.

This may be going and spending more time just doing random. Things with my family, but I wanna spend more time doing things outside my comfort zone. Your comfort zone is where growth goes to die. And the more you spend in your comfort zone and the less you spend pushing the limit outside of your comfort zone, the more you just go day to day into slowly, slowly declining.

And I want you to spend more time outside of that comfort zone. Another thing that compounds is time. We just talked about this. Where you spend it, who you spend it with will compound. And let me give you an example of this. Let's say for example, your ultimate goal is to become really fit. And your ultimate goal is to, you know, become a hybrid athlete, or you wanna run more, you wanna lift more, or maybe your ultimate goal is to become someone who is really good at golf or whatever else you wanna go out and do.

Maybe you wanna become really good at yoga. And so because of this, you know, your current group of friends that you spend time with are not prioritizing some of this lifestyle. So maybe they're going out to bars all the time, maybe they're going out drinking, and maybe they're spending their time partying.

And if you spend your time continuing to hang out with them, as they go out drinking and partying, you're not gonna accomplish those goals. Or maybe you're very career oriented and if you spend your time only with those specific friends, you're not gonna accomplish those goals. And so you gotta make sure that you are looking about who you spend your time with, where you spend your time, how you allocate your time, and how you prioritize your time.

Those four things are going to tell me. Exactly what your true priorities are. And so if you have some goals that you're just trying to accomplish and you feel like you're just spinning your wheels and you're churning, you're never getting there, look at where your time is spent because the more time you spend in other areas, this will compound.

This will improve your life over time, and I highly recommend that you look at this health. This is a huge one. Do you move daily? Do you make wise nutritional choices? These will compound for the rest of your life because if you don't, what will happen is that later on in life, you will have a hard time getting up out of a chair.

You will have a hard time walking, you will have a hard time bending over and grabbing something, and this is all going to compound over time. Maybe you develop a disease or something else, and so health tremendously is a compound effect. Do you smoke or drink all the time? Because if you do, you gotta get ahold of these because it will compound against you if you are not careful.

Knowledge. This is a huge one, and this is one of the biggest ones that I have seen in my own life, is basically all of these I've talked about here thus far. But knowledge is one that I wanna show you and I can show you tangibly. So Warren Buffett said knowledge is the greatest form of compound interest.

He talked through why he reads 500 pages every single day. And the reason for that is because he feels as though that was the most important way that he could spend his time in order to be the best investor of all time. And so he spent his time reading. That's what he did, was he spent his time on knowledge.

So imagine reading one book every single week. Okay? Well, if you read a book every single week, that's 52 books a year, imagine how much more knowledge you would have over the course of just one year. That's over 250 books every five years. What does that mean? That's over 500 books over the course of a decade.

So let's say for example, you start your career and you work for 40 years. If you read one book every week, you would have read over 2000 books. Do you think you'd be much better off than the person who didn't read a single thing, who watched Netflix every single night, who spent their time doing stuff that reaps zero benefits whatsoever?

Who do you think's gonna win in that situation? Because you can pull from the knowledge that you have gained from those books, even if you retain 4%. It is a massive difference in what you can do, but also part of reading and part of trying to gain knowledge is to ignite your mind, is to actually spark ideas.

And so what happens a lot of times is I find that when I read, all of a sudden I begin to spark ideas in other areas of my life where this allows me to be more consistent in everything that I do. In addition, if you're a big scroller out there, and I'm gonna keep ragging on scrolling, because if you're a big scroller out there, this is a way to exercise your mind because you're consuming, consuming, consuming, consuming.

And reading is consumption. But it also is gonna make sure that you are exercising your mind day in and day out. So reading is so important, and it's really important to time block reading into your day if you have not. 'cause I can highly, highly encourage you to do this over time. Now, imagine the same thing.

Imagine you started to listen to podcasts on your commute just like this one every single day. Imagine how much your knowledge would compound if you're listening to shows that are gonna help improve your life. This is another thing that you can do that I did my first five years in the corporate world, all I did is I would read books in my spare time and while I was in my cubicle working, I would listen to podcasts that would help me on my growth journey.

I would listen to business podcasts, I would listen to personal finance podcasts. A lot of the knowledge and the the baseline that I built started during that timeframe. After college. Most of the knowledge that I have now came after college. College almost did nothing for me outside of learn how to be an adult.

Sure, we got some great perspectives. Sure, we learned some things, but at the same time, the stuff that I learned after on my own knowledge plan was so much more valuable than anything else. Another thing that compounds is your habits. If you start to develop bad habits, then all of a sudden it's gonna be very hard to break those habits.

Atomic Habits is a great book, if you haven't read it by James Clear, but in that book, he teaches you, Hey, if you're starting to develop a bad habit, here's how to break it. And it is something where sometimes the bad habit is just not doing something. So if your goal is to exercise and to spend more time working out, and you start to see that, oh, I'm four days in a row and I haven't done a workout yet, well, you're starting to develop a habit of not working out.

And so you need to make sure that you do the things that are going to help you in that specific area. Now you've heard the saying, we are what we repeatedly do. And so your habits are gonna develop who you are, and you need to make sure that you protect that area. Other things that compound relationships, your skills, you can compound your skills.

Your skill stack that we talk about all the time is a huge one. Discipline is a huge one. If you start to be undisciplined in one area, it will start to develop in every single area of your life. Whereas if you are disciplined in every area, you are gonna develop discipline throughout every single area of your life.

This, my friends, is so incredibly important to realize that everything in life compounds, and it's up to you to decide which direction you wanna compound in. Number four, lesson four is a big one, and this is one that I think most of us need to learn. Nobody cares and nobody's thinking about you. So I think a lot of people are nervous to take the leap in life into various things because they're worried about what people think about them.

Why this often matters is because people are worried about looking foolish or being judged or saying the wrong thing or making a visible mistake. Let me tell you something is, let's get honest here. You guys are gonna listen to me open up a little bit on this episode. I wanted to start this podcast four years earlier and I never started the podcast 'cause I was worried about, oh, what would my peers think about me?

What would my job think about me if I had a podcast? What would my friends think about me if I had this show? And I wish I would've started it even earlier. 'cause we could have helped that many more people. But instead, I was selfishly thinking to myself, well, what is everyone else around me gonna think if I start this show?

But instead, what I should have done was just start the show. Just get the ball rolling. And it wasn't until 2020 my, when my wife encouraged me and said, Hey, you've been talking about this for years. Just go do it. Just get the ball rolling. Just get started. And so that's when I decided to go buy a mic and get started.

That is an area where I think most people have the same exact fear. They're scared of making a visible mistake, and maybe they're quitting at some point in time, or it's just a complete failure. They're scared of saying the wrong thing in front of their friends or family. They're scared of being judged.

They're scared of looking foolish in front of everybody else, but instead, this is an area where you can really push the envelope if you are bold in your decisions. Nobody cares. Everybody in this life is worried about themselves. They're worried about what's going on in their life. They're worried about their own families.

They're worried about their own money. They're worried about their own health and fitness and everything else in life. They're all thinking about themselves and not about you. Nobody cares what you do. Maybe they'll, you know, you go out and do something. Let's say, for example, that you are someone out there who wants to go out and help people in a specific field.

Maybe you're really into health and fitness, and so you decide, I'm gonna start my health and fitness social media channel. And so you go out and start doing it, and some of your friends make some comments and remarks. They start to make fun of you, and in your head you're thinking, oh, they're thinking about this all the time.

They're thinking about me and they're making fun of me to all my friends behind my back. And maybe they are, but they don't really care. Deep down, they don't really care. And it's not really something that you should be worried about, what you should be worried about, what you want to do, and what is best for you.

Now, this happens a lot in different areas, in real life. Number one is in your career. So people stay stuck because they fear judgment from other people. They fear judgment from their in-laws. They feel judgment from their friends. They feel judgment from their direct family members. And so this is something where they're too busy worrying about other people instead of their own performance.

And so in your career, you need to make sure that you are thinking about what you need to be doing. Number two is money. People don't invest or they don't negotiate their salary, or they don't change their lifestyles because they fear. What will people think? This shows up in health. This shows up in content and creativity, but there is freedom on the other side because when you accept the fact that nobody is thinking about you, that nobody really cares, that nobody's really worried about what you're doing in your day-to-day life, you can take more shots.

You can move a lot faster with things that you actually wanna do in life, you can ask for more. Meaning that a lot of people are scared. Well, what will they think if I negotiate my salary? No, ask 'em for the more. And it's their job to say, no, you could try things sooner and you can live life lighter. And that I think is the big message for most people is that nobody's thinking about you.

And Morgan Hausel gives a great example of this when he talks about, uh, and I've mentioned this in the podcast before and I've had some pushback on this, but I do think this is a great example. He talks about the guy driving up in a Ferrari. Now some people said, well, I just think about the Ferrari and how great of a machine it is.

But what a lot of people think is when they buy a Ferrari. They say to themselves, oh, everyone's gonna think I'm amazing. But instead, what people think is, wow, I would look amazing in that Ferrari. They're thinking about themselves. They're not thinking about you. And I want you to remember that because this is rooted in your psychology.

And again, you'll see your psychology goes across every area of personal finance. Number five is the answer is often to simplify. So you need to simplify your life as much as you possibly can, no matter what you are doing. So this comes with finances, for example. So a lot of people have way too many accounts.

They have way too many investment accounts. They have way too many, uh, checking accounts or savings accounts. They have money all over the place. Simplify down to as little accounts as you possibly can get. This is the number one thing we tell people in Master Money Academy is at the beginning of Master Money Academy.

We show you how to set up your accounts, and the number one thing that I talk about in there, and you'll see when you join, is that you need to simplify as much as you possibly can. Simplify, simplify, simplify. The more you can simplify, the easier your life is gonna get, and the easier your life is gonna get means that you can spend more time with your family, your friends, and doing the things that you actually want to do in life.

Reduce the number of credit cards that you have. You don't need to have 15 different credit cards. Having one or two credit cards is absolutely fine. Then automating everything. So simplifying your life means that you automatically contribute money to your bills and your bills get paid off automatically.

If you're still manually paying your bills in 2026, please stop. Please find a way to automate that process. If you're still saving money in your high yield savings account manually, please stop and find a way to automate that process. If you are still manually investing your dollars into a brokerage account, please stop and start to automate the process.

Automation makes your life so much easier where you don't have to think about money anymore because money is really simple. In fact, the way that to build wealth, and this is gonna be a very simple concept, but it's much harder to put into practice, is to spend less than you make. And invest the difference and avoid debt, those three things, and you will be golden in comparison to what everybody else is doing.

And so what I would highly encourage everybody to do when it comes to their money is to create a monthly rhythm so you don't have to think, create a rhythm that allows you to, Hey, I'm gonna check on my automations at this date. I'm gonna go ahead and check and make sure all my cards are paid off at this date.

I'm gonna check my bills on this date. You know, you could do these different things that help you stay in a rhythm every single month, and that's gonna be very, very helpful. The same goes for everything else. Wanna improve your body composition, eat the same thing more often. I've talked to a lot of different healthy people and a lot of times what they will say is that I just eat the same thing a lot.

I have the same lunch every single day. It's a healthy lunch. I don't have to think about it. I just eat that every single day, or I just do the same workouts every single week. Because what matters most is consistency. You can simplify your wardrobe, and if you wear similar things each and every single day, it is one less thing that you have to think about every day.

You can reduce your clutter in your house. I don't think minimalism is for everyone, but I do think that the minimalists have it right in terms of all they're trying to do is simplify your life so that you can think clearly, so that you can be present, so that you can spend more time doing the things that you love.

You don't need all this clutter in your house. You don't need all this clutter around you. Instead, what you need to do is just simplify, simplify, simplify. So if you feel like you are running around like a chicken with your head cut off, I want you to spend some time identifying areas that you can simplify your life.

Number six is that income can solve most money problems. Money isn't the root of all happiness. But if you got problems, money can solve your money problems. And so the more income that you can drive to yourself, the better off or the better opportunities you're gonna have to be able to build wealth. And so I think what income does solve is a number of different things that actually will help increase happiness over time.

Now, if you're making $500,000 per year and you feel as though you're still not happy, well money's not gonna solve that problem. But if you are someone out there who is trying to figure out ways to increase your income, and you are making $40,000 per year, I think money can help improve your life dramatically.

Improves your cashflow. Stress meaning that your income creates margin and margin is gonna reduce some of the panic that happens in your life. It also too gives you the ability to save. Studies show that when you have savings on hand, your stress and anxiety around money gets reduced. It also. Increases the speed of progress so you can achieve financial independence so much faster if you actually know how to handle and manage money.

Because again, if you increase your income but spend it all, then it's not gonna help you in life. But if you know how to handle your dollars and where to put those dollars, that is gonna help you tremendously. It gives you more options in life. So the more money you have, the more options you have available to you.

And you can do different things because you have that money on hand. And it gives you resilience, it gives you economic resilience against, you know, downturns or market issues. It gives you job loss, resilience because you have cash on hands. You don't have to take just the first job that's offered to you.

It gives you resilience in every single area of life. And so because of this, we wanna make sure that we are increasing our income and pulling that lever. But if you spend reactively, if you're someone out there who inflates your lifestyle with every extra dollar that you make and you avoid systems and automation and you try to, I tie your identity to how much money you can spend, meaning you want people to feel like you're rich and so you buy the bigger house, you buy the nicer car.

You spend on the designer clothes, which is nothing wrong with any of those, but if you're doing it to develop your identity, it's not gonna make you happier. It's gonna make you more miserable to be honest. But your income when you are using it to buy your freedom, when you are using it to spend more time with your family on vacation or whatever else when you're using it to reduce your stress around money, it really will make the biggest difference overall.

You can only cut back so much, but you can earn more infinitely. And so the more people that realize this, the more they're gonna say, Hey, I really need to focus my time and energy on my money so that I can spend more on things that I love. Number seven is that privacy is more important than ever and is now a wealth building skill.

Here's something that's happening more and more and more is we are seeing data breaches happening on a daily basis, and I want every single person listening to this to understand this. We talk about privacy with your money and making sure you're protecting your finances a lot in this show because it is becoming increasingly alarming.

Whereas we have seen stuff like people getting their financial information stolen at a gas station, people getting their financial information stolen at brokerage accounts. Betterment just had 1.4 million people have their accounts breached. We're seeing it at the retailers that you shop at, where years ago, target got breached.

We're seeing it every which way that you can think about it. We are seeing data breaches. On top of that, we're seeing AI getting better and better and better, and really being able to scam a lot of people. We're seeing crypto scams that are happening left and right. We're seeing scams that are happening where people are doing phishing scams via email where it looks exactly like the retailer that you are going out and buying from.

We're seeing AI, voice agents being able to sound just like someone in your family saying they need money. And so this is happening more and more and more. And then it's becoming increasingly important for you to protect your finances. And as someone who thinks about this all the time, I still see how I could fall prey to some of this stuff.

Like if I'm working really fast and someone sends me an email and I respond to them with some information, sometimes I'll do that and I'll be like, why did I just do that? What if that wasn't actually that person? And I didn't really look through the email to make sure it was them. And so this is truthfully something that you need to spend a lot of time thinking about.

And really, if you have a plan in place, it doesn't take a lot of time. You just have to set up the correct plan in place. So how do you do this fast? One is, this is a very obvious thing, but if your password is the same thing across a bunch of different websites and you're just using that same password over and over and over again, or you're using the same five different passwords, you need to change that system right now.

This is your wake up call to change it. I know it's very obvious, but you need to change it. It needs to be something where everything is a unique. Long password. A bunch of letters and numbers jumbled together. Why? Because you can save these in different places now that are gonna help you store this information so you don't have to remember it, but you have it there so nobody can get into your accounts.

Okay? That's one, two. You need to freeze your credit. If you don't go out and freeze your credit. Currently, you need to go out and do that and make sure that you are freezing your credit. You go to the three major credit bureaus and you freeze your credit, takes less than 10 minutes and then to unfreeze or thaw your credit.

Then you just go to each of those major credit bureaus. You could do this online now and you unfreeze or thaw that credit, but this makes sure that if somebody gets a piece of your information, they can't open up a bank account in your name. They can't open a credit card in your name. They can't open a student loan in your name.

I have had all three of those happen because I had my identity stolen when I was in my twenties, and so because of this. I know what the pain is like I know what it feels like to have to go through this, and so I don't want each and every single one of you to go through that because people are losing their life savings to this stuff.

Okay, number three is you need to remove your personal information from the internet. So we have partnered with Delete Me. Delete Me has been a partner on this show for a very long time because it is a product that I truly believe in. What Delete Me does is they go and take your information and they remove your personal information from the internet.

Like if you Google your name or your phone number or anything like that, delete me will go in there and remove that information from these data brokers. See data brokers take your information and they post it online, or they find ways to sell it to people who you do not want them to sell it to. And there are, uh, not very many laws around this.

Hopefully the laws will be changing soon, but right now there are not many laws around this, and so delete me goes in there and they get your personal information removed. If you did this on your own, it would take you hundreds and hundreds of hours every single year, but Delete me goes in and does it, and they do it for an amazing price for the amount of work that they're.

And so I highly recommend delete me for anybody out there. If you want a 20% discount on Delete Me, if you go to join delete me.com/pfp 20, you can get 20% off of Delete Me. But I highly recommend it for every single person out there to get their personal information removed with Delete Me, because it is some of the best dollars I spent.

I tried to do it on my own. It took way too long, and so delete me is a great option for that. And then number four is I want you to go out and use two-factor authentication, meaning everything that you utilize needs to have some sort of two-factor authentication. Now you can use something like Google Authenticator.

Microsoft has one as well. Those are the two that I've used in the past. Maybe you have an authenticator that you like, but those are gonna help you make sure that you are protected long term. Those are the four quick things that you can do. And really if you do those four things, you're gonna be way better off than 99% of people because most people use very common passwords.

They don't remove their personal information from the internet. They don't freeze their credit and they don't use two factor authentication. The correct. And so because of this, data breaches are gonna continue to happen and people are gonna keep stealing money over and over and over again. The last thing I want for anybody listening to this show, and this is why I talk about it so much, is to get your wealth stolen, your hard earned dollar stolen, because you did not factor that in.

And I have realized the importance of that. If you've seen as this show have developed, I have talked more and more about privacy and why it is so, such an important financial skill, because I truly, truly believe in it. And I truly believe that you need to make sure that you have a plan in place for you and your family, and that everybody is on the same page.

Number eight is I believe that you need to spend more time doing hard things, which is usually what most people avoid. Most people avoid doing hard things in life. I think you should even try to do hard things on a daily basis. So the way that I try to do hard things on a daily basis is some sort of fitness thing and or there's a lot of other things that I'll talk about here, but if it's on a daily basis, I'm just trying to figure out, okay, well if I'm, I haven't done anything hard all day long today, what I am gonna do today is go out for a six mile run and try to beat my last time, something like that.

That is how I think about doing hard things. But the more you do hard things, the more you can build that muscle to allow you to be resilient to anything else in life. So what is a hard thing or what is a big example of this one is asking for a raise. This is one big thing with your money, is learning how to build the skill of asking for a raise.

Now we have a system that we talk about a lot. If you want the free ebook, you can go to master money.co/resources. That's where our free ebook is on how to ask for a raise. But I'll talk through the process here really quick. Now, the way that we think about this. Is that we go and we make sure we have a conversation with our boss about six months before our review and we say, Hey, I wanna make more money here.

I wanna get a promotion, or I wanna do whatever I can to get a race. And in order to do that, I wanna have a conversation with you about this to ensure that we are both in the same page on this. What do I need to do in order to ensure that I can make more money here? And you are gonna have a conversation.

And during that conversation, your boss is gonna tell you some things you're gonna note, take those down, and you're gonna start to do those things right After that meeting, I want you to send an email to your boss and say, Hey, here's all the things we discussed. Again, I am looking to make more money.

Here's all the things that we discussed. And I am gonna start to take action on these right away. Okay? That email solidifies the conversation and you now have it in writing that you are doing these specific things. Okay? Next, you're gonna start to take action on those things and start to do them very well.

I mean, home run actions, making sure that you are increasing profitability, making sure you're increasing productivity within that department, making sure you're making your boss look good. All of those different things are gonna be very important once you start to accomplish those specific things. You get to month two, you follow up with your boss and say, Hey, here's some of the stuff that I've been doing based on our conversation.

And you can either set up a meeting with them if they are the meeting type folks and or you can send 'em an email on that same chain, okay? And you're following up and saying, here's all the things that I'm doing, just giving you some updates and making sure we're on the same page. Month three, you're doing the same exact thing.

Month four, you're doing the same exact thing and continuing that conversation. You're trying to meet with your boss in person and then following up with an email over and over and over again, and by the time you get to month six, all of a sudden you both know what you're asking for and you can walk in and say, Hey, I've done all of these different things.

It's time for my annual review. I expect to get a raise. If you don't get a raise, you can decide what to do. You have two options. You can either say, Hey, I did all these things and I accomplished them, and we talked about me making more and me not making more is going to. Change the way I see this. And you can continue on for another six months or another one year cycle.

Or you can decide, well, I'm in a job hop now. I'm gonna go to a different job that's gonna pay me more and allow me to take these new skills that I just built and developed and these new things that I just wrote down and documented. And I can use those as leverage in a new job to help me land a new job.

And so this is a win-win situation for most people. And we have seen so many people in Master Money Academy doing this process and they're going out and getting raises. We have seen people outside of Master Money Academy as well that have followed this process and they have made a tremendous amount of money just from getting some of these raises.

There is one that earned a 50% raise just by going through this process. And so I highly encourage as many people as possible to do something like that. That's an example of a hard thing. It's a six month process and you gotta think about it all the time. You gotta be strategic, you gotta be political, and it's very, very hard.

But I want you to try to do more of this stuff. Another example of this would be negotiating your bills. You can negotiate most of your bills from things like your cell phone bill to things like your insurance, to things like your rent. All of these are areas that you can negotiate, and it's very important to learn how to do this.

Sitting down and looking at your numbers, that's not something that's easy to do. That's not something most people wanna do, but understanding what your numbers are is a hard thing. Making sure you get your workout in even when you're tired. That's another hard thing. Or pushing the envelope when it comes to your workout, trying to lift more weights or trying to run farther, or trying to hit different yoga poses or trying out new types of workouts like Pilates or whatever else.

All of those are gonna be very, very helpful for you. Doing hard things. You know what else is hard? Saying no more often. Saying no to things that would waste your time and spending more time on things that are gonna help improve your life. That's another one. Admitting you're behind is hard. Starting before you feel ready is hard.

These are all examples of things that are pretty difficult, but they are necessary. And so we wanna make sure that when we do this, we are developing, Hey, this is my hard list for the month. And so you put together a list of some of the things that you wanna do and you wanna improve because building that muscle is gonna make you so much better in life.

Now some examples outside of money are things like waking up early so that you can get the things done you wanna get done, or maybe spending less time scrolling and more time reading, or maybe looking for ways to have those uncomfortable conversations that you wouldn't normally have in order to network and meet more people.

All of those are things that you could do, and all of those are different ideas that you can have. Alright, so number nine and number nine is gonna tie into the rest of this episode of exactly what we're talking about here in this episode, is that I want you to understand that you are one year away from completely changing your life.

You are one year away from doubling down, buckling up, and changing your financial life, changing your health, changing your career, changing your productivity levels, changing everything you want to change in life. And we started this podcast in 2020. By 2021, our entire lives had changed. By 2022, they changed again.

And by 2026 at the time I'm recording this episode, they have changed dramatically and you can change your life. Much faster than you think you can. You could change the way that you think about money. You could change the way you spend your money. You could change the way you save and earn your money, and you could do it a lot faster than you think.

And so I highly encourage each and every single one of you to sit down and think about some of the things that you want to do. What is important to you? If you were gonna transform your life completely right now, what would be some of the things that you can do? Because if you're sitting right now listening to this podcast episode, you're saying to yourself, I am not where I wanna be.

I am not where I want to go. And I feel like life has just gotten a hold of me, and I have done what life has told me to do instead of taking control of my own life. Well, you have the opportunity right now to take control of your own life. You have the opportunity to change your life forever. And the only way to do that is to decide right now to draw a line in the sand and decide right now I am going to make a change.

Because what I want you to know is I've seen it happen in my life over and over and over again. One year is an eternity when it comes to transformation. You can transform your life so quickly if you want to, but you have to commit. You have to spend the time, you have to spend the energy in doing so, because if not, if you're not committed, it's never gonna happen.

But I know that each and every single one of you have the ability to do this. Each and every one of you can do what you want in life. You just have to take the steps to get there. It's all about mapping it out. It's all about allocating your time. It's all about thinking about your money psychology, it's all about making sure that you can find ways to earn more.

It's all about all of these things that we talked about today, and you can absolutely change your life for the better. So listen, I, I appreciate each and every single one of you for being here. I appreciate each and every single one of you and cannot thank you guys enough for being a part of this podcast through 500 episodes.

When we started our first couple episodes, it was a very different show than it is now. It was a very different show from coming from a spare bedroom in my house to now we're in a full studio with multiple cameras all over the place and lights all over the place. And just because everything has changed in terms of the exterior of way the show looks, we added video.

We've done all these different things. Just because everything has changed doesn't mean the message has changed. My entire goal for everyone is to know that anybody in this world can build wealth. Anybody in this world has the ability to build wealth. And you can make that change pretty dramatically and pretty quickly if you want to.

And so I thank you all for being here. So I wanna give a gift to you. Master Money Academy is where we have a lot of folks who we are seeing life-changing results. We are seeing results from people because we give you the step-by-step roadmap of exactly what to do. We're seeing the results where they are having relief with stress, with their money, that they're able to negotiate an increase in their salary, that they have the ability to know when to save and when to pay off debt and when to invest.

That they know the exact steps they need to be taking. They know how to automate their money. They know how to set up their savings buckets. They know how to set up their accounts properly, and they know which order to invest in and how to think about that based on their own situation. They know how to reduce some of their taxes.

And so this is something where I wanna invite each and every single one of you. So on this episode, I think it's pretty hard to see if Master Money Academy is for you without being inside. And so I am gonna give on this 500 episode a free gift to you. I want you to click the link below and we're gonna give you a seven day free trial inside Master Money Academy if you're new.

And in that seven day free trial, I wanna give you the ability to be able to see what it's like inside. Because what happens is that you have this step-by-step roadmap that you can make huge strides over the course of the next 3, 6, 9, and 12 months towards building a tremendous amount of wealth for you and your family.

And inside Master Money Academy, I show you exactly how to do it. But guess what else we do? We also do weekly coaching calls where if you get stuck somewhere, you get to ask me questions, live on the weekly coaching calls. And so our core things is we want you to see what's inside because it'll transform your entire life.

And so risk free. Zero risk to you. You can go inside Master Money Academy, see exactly what it's like, because the only way to know if this is for you is to see behind the curtain. And so I want you for episode 500 to click the link below, check out Master Money Academy, and we'll see you inside. Again, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for being here for 500 episodes. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you and I thank you and here's to the next 500 episodes because we wanna help as many people as we possibly can and bring you as much value as we possibly can. I'm so grateful, I'm so thankful for each and every single one of you, and I'll see ya on the next episode.

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Here’s What Our ListenersAre Saying

Customer Reviews 4.8• 477 Ratings

Rated 5 out of 5
Never Too Late, And Here’s Why!

Andrew is positive, engaging, and straightforward. As someone who saw little light at the end of the tunnel, due to poor saving/spending habits, I believed I would be entirely too dependent on Social Security. Andrew shows how it’s possible to secure financial freedom, even if you’ve wasted the opportunities presented in your youth. Listened daily on drives too and from work and got through 93 episodes in theee weeks.

Bradley DH
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Just What I Have Been Searching For!

This podcast has been exactly what I have been looking for. Not only does it solidify some of my current practices but helps me to understand the why and the ins-and-outs to what does work and what doesn’t work! Easy to listen to and Andrew does a great job and putting everything in context that is applicable to everyone.

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Excellent content, practical, straight to the point, easy to follow and easy to apply! Andrew takes the confusion, complexity and fear as a result (often the biggest deterrent for most folks) out of investing and overall money matters in general, and provides valuable advice that anyone can follow and put into practice. Exactly what I’ve been looking for for quite some time and so happy that I came across this podcast. Thank you, Andrew!

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Absolutely a must listen for anyone at any age. A+ work.

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Absolutely love listening to this guy! He has taken all of my thoughts and questions I’ve ever had about budgeting, investing, and wealth building and slapped onto this podcast! Can’t thank him enough for what I’ve learned!

Dmoney7777
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Fun Financial Literacy Experience

I discovered your podcast a few weeks ago and wanted I am learning SO MUCH! Finance is an area of my life that I’ve always overlooked and this year I am determined to make progress! I am so grateful for this podcast and wish there was something like this 18 years ago! Andrew’s work is life changing and he makes the topic fun!

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