Welcome to the Real Estate Strategy
podcast with the deal. Hello, and Ken, how are you guys today? So today we're going to talk about
six habits that keep people broke. And we like this topic
because today I've been talking about this over the last couple of days. So let's start with the six habits. First of all, of course, it's not keeping
track of your finances, right? Yeah, it's super important, you know, to keep track
of where your money is going, because if you don't know where
your money's going, as we always say, then it's just not going to be
go to anywhere fruitful. I know. Well, I remember as a kid, I you know,
I used to have to keep receipts or whatever, write this down. But today
there's like all these great apps. Yeah, I know. Mints, one of the apps,
as you guys must, you know, I use my little iPhone notepad,
which is super old school. But you know other people you know, I have friends
that they simply put money in envelopes for the week, spending money in envelopes,
you know, and that works for them. That's a little non-digital, but sometimes, you know,
holding that actual cash in their hand makes them
so they don't have to keep track anything other than that's
how much they can spend. That's true. I know Danielle really, really follows
this one completely because one time we went to the post office
and bought one stamp, as she put it in to her expense, every dollar
or every dollar that was a stamp or the time that you, me,
I need a new shoes. And I said, I got to wait 24 days,
you know, because I ain't got anybody walking around. I'm like,
You look homeless. Yeah, it's like I need 20 days
before I could buy some new. I think you just bought me a pair. I Well, I thought you should see them. So, anyway, the point is, there was
we weren't always this diligent. No, I think that's important. It's something that you have to learn. And when you start to keep track
of finances, you actually start
to see some of your spending habits. They start to show up. And also another way to do it,
although this isn't the greatest way, is to put everything on a credit card,
but pay it off every month. But at least you see it right. At least you're looking at your statement
and you're saying, oh, gosh, I just spent I spent $50 on coffee in the mornings
the last month. You know, maybe I can get that down. So, yeah, you need to have it. So that is trackable. I think, too. The budget portion is so important
because you might not care that you spent $50 on coffee, but say you have,
I don't know, $500 for the month to spend and then you are buying that coffee
every day and you're saying, Oh, well, this is really dipping into this 500
I have every time I get coffee. So it's those things
that, you know, are pointed out to you as you start to run out of money
or maybe the first month you do it, you run out of money
a week, two for spending. Then you start to say, okay,
for next month, where can I cut? Because I needed to make this last
four weeks that only lasted two. Yeah, there's there's
a number of small adjustments you can make, but it's really hard to make them
unless you actually know where you're spending your money today. And that's why
it just needs to be trackable. Absolutely. And then the second, a habit that is really important
is not having a strong network. Yeah, that's for sure. Well,
let's you go into that a little bit more. So I like that one. So, you know, you always hear
and we talk about honesty and all is you are the equivalent of the five people
you hang out with or, you know, whatever. Right. And it is really true. But I, I think there's more to it than you
picking up habits from those people. If they're not motivated people. It's also that you're really limiting
your your network. I would agree with this. I think what this was for me
was I remember when I got my first job, I was I didn't even really know how to use
an organizer for my day. Right. I remember we had way back. This is dating myself. I can't remember the name of the ad, but it was an actual like a book
with with a calendar. It. And you write them all down. This was old school, obviously,
but it was so foreign to me. I had never been taught,
you know, scheduling, organization, that kind of stuff. And what I found is that, you know, the network of people that I was around
was already doing it. So I was able to ask them. They were kind of mentoring me. This is how I do it. And this is,
I think, what we're talking about. We're talking about people
that are fine tuning their time as far as from an efficiency standpoint, both from a budgeting standpoint
and from a organization standpoint,
because you guys will soon find out that your network will be your net worth,
I believe. Yeah. I mean, when you start to get a little bit older
and you look at people that hang around people, it's like you don't really see
people that are like, for example, so say you want to everyone's always like,
How do I raise money, right? How do I find investors? Well, if all your friends play video games
all day, every day and they go work,
you know, low paying salary jobs, you're probably
not going to find investors through them. You know, it's a group. But but if you're you know,
if you're friends with people that are doing stuff
and starting businesses and they don't even have to be wealthy,
they just have to be doing things, and then all of a sudden you want to raise
money, you know, they'll know people that are doing things,
other people that are doing things, or somebody themselves like, oh, you know,
I know a guy doing a deal here. I know a guy that has a business here. So that's that's what it is.
That's your network. And if you want to stay just with people that are just doing all
the things that you're doing right now, if those things aren't very productive, you're never going to have
a strong network. And the network you have makes a bigger
difference than anything else you can do. I know I always tell everybody
environment is stronger than Will. And I know like like when you if at the end of the day,
I know people that go to the gym, I know people that go to the bar, you know, you plug into other people's
habits. A lot of times. And so some of it is just being aware
of those kinds of things and making better choices. Yeah, absolutely. And actually the third one is habits. So the third, the third thing
that's holding you back is your habits. Right?
And your habits are keeping you broke. And I think one of the bigger habits
I've seen a lot lately is video games. I know it a lot. It's gotten a hold of my own kids. Yeah, you know,
it's gotten a hold of my friends kids. You know, I know a lot of people
even that work for us. Go home and they do it. You know, I don't know how true this is,
but maybe I've even seen a a something online that the quarterback for our Arizona Cardinals,
they have him tracking. You know, when the
I think it's call of duty is a call of duty
or no grand theft Auto and Graf. The Grand Theft Auto comes out it actually shows up in his statistics
when he when he actually plays football. So like his stats
go down. Yeah, his stats go down. So I think it's a it's a big deal. But it's not just video games. It's it's there's so many poor habits. I think, you know, a lot of video games is predominantly boys,
but I think girls are on just social media Instagram,
Facebook, TikTok, whatever it is. Yeah. What's up with that? Why, why, why? What's up with all the selfie stuff? It does like fuck you in though. Like I, you know, like I've even had friends
that are in my group are very productive. People say I had to take that off my phone
because I would just get sucked in, you know? You think you're going to be on it for
10 minutes and you're on it for an hour. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but there's also habits around
health and habits around sleeping and habits
around eating and habits around drinking and habits around
going to the gym and and habits, you know, are around, as you said,
social media and, you know, all those things
you need to take a look at and really understand
where can you get your time back? Yeah, I like what am I
let said you know it's that motivation because everyone motivation comes
and it goes. It's really just discipline, you know. So you really need to be disciplined
around your habits and that's
what's going to make you successful. Yeah. The other thing that I found
there is a link to poor habits and depression. Mm hmm. Absolutely. And I think people need to understand,
I've seen this firsthand. I've seen people that have poor habits,
whether it's, you know, the way they eat
or the way they don't sleep or they do sleep, let's say,
and or how long they sleep in, I should say,
and their actual mental depression. And the minute
that they change some of those things, you know, that, that
that seems to lift the fog lifts. Yeah. It's interesting. You know, I used to be a schoolteacher
and we'd have summers off. And the first summer I didn't work
and I got depressed after two or three weeks of not working. And I think for me, what it was is
and I'm not a person that really gets depressed, but it
what it was is I wasn't doing anything and it gave me too much time
to just think about things. Yeah, you know, it's good. Not that it's just good to stay busy,
but I just. It was depressing to me cause I really had nothing going on
and nothing to do with my day. We know, You know,
we don't want you in that state for sure. Yeah, it's not pleasant around.
That's why I actually. I actually had to go get a job. Really? I mean, I needed to work anyways
because I was a teacher, but I also really just needed to get a job
to just have something to do. Yeah. Yeah. Completely agree. Yeah. So the first thing is, you know,
and this is something that I just have learned through hanging out with people
that I've been hanging out with the last few years
is not being financially literate. So I think that's just something that
the average person does not think about. But it is one of the biggest things that
if you're broke, you need to understand. Yeah, it's it's not taught in schools. And I believe
that it's actually by design. And there's a couple of things
that you can do really easily. I obviously I'm a huge proponent of Rich
had poor dad Richard Poor dad is a story. It's really easy read. You can read it in one evening. It's a book about a county. It's simple. And then then the next piece,
the next tool for education is the cash flow game. And if you could just look at those
two things, you'll learn, you know what? What an asset and a liability. And and you know what a cash flow
statement is and some very basic things because the cash flow
when you're playing a game. So it is a great way
I taught my kids that way. And I remember when they were young,
my son was in junior high and he's like, Dad,
like we're we're learning accounting. And he goes, I'm the only one in the class
that understands. And it was just because we'd been playing
that game cash flow. And it sounds simple,
it sounds easy, and it is. It's just a matter of,
of, of understanding what some of those things are. The other thing that I don't think
I fully understood as a young man was how inflation can impact it or roach, you know, erode your savings. Right. And you remember, I grew up, you know,
in the eighties and the in the inflation and interest rates were high
and I didn't quite understand it, you know, how I was making my ears
working hard, but it was buying me less. And so there's just a few little concepts
I think that people can understand. It's by design. We don't understand
finance and essentially they encourage it. You know, they encourage debt in school
loans and then, you know, with the colleges and then the colleges allow
all these credit card companies to just, you know, flied
you know, the college kids. And truthfully, you know, when you're under all of that
debt, it's really hard to get out of it. It's hard to not be broke
when you have so much debt and that is step one of you know, Dave
Ramsey talks about the debt snowball and that's where he does have it, right, is
you got to get out from under that debt. And if you're young enough,
you know, never get in that debt. But you know, our system,
I mean, they want you guys indebted because you're much easier
to control that way. Yeah. Guys, it's not a conspiracy. You know, like we have friends
that went through medical school. They have hundreds of thousands of dollars
of student debt rack, you know, racking up each and every month
with a fairly high interest. And and they can't buy a house right
like it's ridiculous are renting they're doctors
and you know it's just not good so that you know there is something to that
And I remember as a when I was in college, I remember all that
going down to the mailboxes in my dorm and they would be flooded
with credit card statements. You know, trying to get these
young kids in debt before they got jobs. And of course, they also pushed it. You have to have a credit card
to build your credit. So you just got to be really careful. The fifth thing
is living on one source of income. Yeah, so many people do this. Yeah, less people now
because they're starting to have to make more money
because of inflation. But I realize
there's all kinds of articles on this. It says that the average billionaire
has seven streams of income. Now, that might be hard to believe
if you have one, but I will tell you
that I have gosh, over ten easily. And they're just things that I started
and did not all some of them don't make a ton of money. Some some will make a lot. I do have my primary way that I make money
at ABC Companies, of course, but most people I know
have money coming in from a lot of different sources,
including yourself. Yeah, yeah, I have four or five myself
and I think it's important because one, you know,
it it's a backup, right? It's a failsafe. If you get fired from your job
or whatever life happens, you know. But the other thing is, is it's extra
money coming in. I mean, most people don't just make
most people that are wealthy don't just make one, you know, money
off of one source of that income. They have multiple things coming in
that build themselves to be wealthy, right,
between all of the different streams. So I think that it's important
that you start to branch out and try to find something
that interests you and not really just like a second job,
like I don't have like a second job. I just have different sources of income
that I do and enjoy doing that bring in income. So I think, you know, and some of them
are very passive and some of them are not. But either way, I do enjoy all of them and it's not taking
like a secondary position. Yeah. The other thing
I think you should also point out to people that you start off
as a school teacher, right? Right. You are under 40 grand a year, right? Like 30. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know,
we've been there, both of us. And the other thing is, is
I think that had you not had summers off, you may never had fallen out of that trap,
but what you did was you started working in the summers and
then that turned into your first business. It, it's it over time. Over time, Yeah. I think that if I wouldn't have got
I would argue with you on the summers off, but if I wouldn't have got paid so little, I think that I would have
probably stayed there forever. Right.
Because I was just making so little money. I was kind of drowning,
which forced me to move back home and, you know,
have to reevaluate my whole life. But I think if I would have been making,
you know, 60, 70 grand a year,
I probably would have just stayed. And the problem with that, because I know a lot of you are in
that situation is it's comfortable or maybe you make a lot of money and you
just hate your job, but it's comfortable, but it's not doing what
you actually want to do. Right. Right. I think that's the important thing is
if you have other streams of income coming in, then it actually empowers you
a little bit to kind of evaluate what it is you want to do when it does, Right,
Because you can't just quit your job. Like, you know, I hear you all the time. I'm going to quit my job
and start a company. It's like, No, you're not,
because your company is not going to make any money
for 1 to 3 years, probably. So, you know, there's a slow transition
and you're not going to know if you like
what you're doing at this new company and if it's a good idea
and if it's going to work. Until you started outside
of the business hours. Right. But but it kind of comes full circle
because that means you can't be playing video games
and you can't be on social media and you have to have good habits in order
to have time to do any of this stuff. If you're already working 40 hours a week. Right, Right. Yep. Good point. Yeah.
So I think that's just really important. And then this last one kind of encompasses
a lot of things and, you know, when we were talking about what
to put on here, we were like, this one kind of came to mind last. But your risk tolerance is also keeping
you poor. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. So I want you to explain that a little bit
because we were debating on this. Yeah. So basically, you know, and I know
a lot of people that do this, you know, you kind of you're, you're, you're
living in fear like you hate your job, but it pays the bills or,
you know, you, you, you want to make more money
and try a business, but you're worried about what other people
are going to think about it. Or, you know, you could take out that loan
to do X, Y or Z. But you know, it's a lot of money
and you're not sure. And the truth is, is that
if you don't take some risks for for what you want, you're always going to be
in the same place, you know. Well, I hear this all the time. I see it especially at my age where people have had long careers
and they've been in corporate America typically
or even if they've own their own business, they're they're they they just wish that
they would have tried something different. And, you know, almost 100% of the time. I also hear the story
where I left corporate America and I went out on my side, my,
you know, my own thing. And I was scared
and I didn't think it would work out. But it has. It's the best decision
I ever made. I've also heard that a lot. Yeah. You know, I, I think everything the rest Gray, like me
moving from Ohio to Arizona was a risk. Me quitting me in t shirt was a rescue. Me starting my own business was the risk. Like there's a lot of risks
and they don't all go well like there's you always hear about the risks that go well cause you're like, oh,
I should have done that. There's so many risks that go sideways. Don't go well, but it doesn't mean
that you feel that you just then have to try again
until you find something that works. And you know, I like that quote that, you
know, you're never standing still in life. You're either
falling behind or moving forward. So, you know, if you're not taking risk
and propelling yourself forward, then you are just falling behind. Yeah, things are changing. And, you know, especially with now AI and
all this stuff, there's also tremendous opportunities as well, you know,
presenting themselves each and every day. But you're right, you have to take you
have to be a little bit of a risk taker. And I, I actually think the opposite
of what most people think. I think
when people are getting a paycheck, you know, go to school, get a good job,
you know, work really hard. That doesn't work. Right. You know,
and but I do think that if you have one paycheck, one employer, one consultant job, whatever it is, I think that's when you're most at risk because you don't always know
what's going on with that employer or you don't always know what's going on
with that one contract that you might get. I remember
even when I first started my own business, I poured myself into one client and you know, in the first two
or three years, it was awesome. You know, they had a lot of you know,
we had a lot of success with them. But then they came to me one day and said,
I want to buy your company. And I go,
No, I'm not going to sell my company. And guess what they did? They gave us a 30 day notice
and they started a company and they took the accounts with them
and some of my employees. So it can happen. And my mistake was that I had almost 40%
of my income and one client. So it can happen.
It can happen with an employer. It can happen
if you start your own business. But I think diversification is key. Yeah, absolutely. And just kind of not caring
what other people think and just, you know, living your life for yourself
and trying it. Yeah, I think you'll find that
that yeah, most people are very resilient. Most people are pretty smart. And especially
if you have a little bit of pressure and you know, it actually becomes FOD
and there's a lot of people that are doing it.
So just jump out there and try it. Yeah. And you know, going back to that network piece,
you know, as you start to take these risks and try to do your own thing
or whatever that risk is, you you just naturally draw people
that are doing the same thing and you create like your own network
because you know, when somebody asks you to borrow
right now, what do you do? And you say, Well, I'm an accountant. They're like, okay, But when you say,
well, I just started this accounting firm on the side and I'm
an accountant, say, Oh, that's awesome. I have this thing or I've done this.
So you just open up. You know, it's kind of like that thing
where you don't notice your car driving by all the time until you buy your car
and then you keep seeing it everywhere. So the same thing
when you become an entrepreneur, where you start
following your dreams in any capacity, you have exciting things to talk about
and then you just naturally attract those kind of people when you start
running into them everywhere. Yeah, it's
is you're vibrating at a different spot. Yeah. And, and, and you start to talk about it
and people all sudden they start referring you business
and opening doors for you as opposed to I'm an accountant at a,
you know, at a big firm. Right. Right. Very different. If you say I have my own business, then,
you know, it's just like a realtor, You know, I'm a realtor.
Oh, I know somebody, you know. Do you only want to buy a house? It's the same. It's a little bit of hustle, but
it's really just a different conversation. Absolutely. So we hope you that helps you guys out there
that are either wanting to make more money or you feel like you're broke
and you want to make some money. These really are good pieces of advice. So I hope you take them with you
and have a good week. Yeah. Cheers, guys.
