Less than 1% become financially

independent. Most people aren't,

most people are basically indebted,

and they have a decrescendo

as they get older in life.

So how is your relationship with money?

This is an interesting question to ask.

Many people struggle in this area.

I just saw something on I

believe an Instagram post,

or maybe it was on some

sort of a thing I'd read,

that shows that about six and a

half thousand dollars on credit card

debt is the average in

America that people keep

rolling in their credit card and

keep getting in debt further.

And I look at that and it's,

they say that about 10% of your gross

income per year is typically the amount

you keep on debt on credit cards.

Credit cards are designed for

banks to make money, not you.

Credit cards for you to have immediate

gratification to spend money on things

that 30 days later or so,

you pay. And by the way,

anytime you separate pleasure from

pain, you activate the amygdala.

The amygdala is a subcortical

layer of the brain,

which is more of an addictive area.

And so if the bank makes you

pay later and buy things now,

they're increasing the probability of

you making an addictive behavior out of

consumerism,

which helps maybe the economy for

people who are smarter with money,

they buy the stocks in these companies,

but not for the person that

keeps spending money. You know,

it used to be when I grew up that

you put things away on layaway,

you paid for it in advance, and once

it is, you deferred the gratification,

you finally got what you wanted after

it's all paid off, but we've reversed it,

now we get what we want and then we pay

afterwards. And we get the pleasure,

immediate to gratification, then we get

the pain later. And we separate them.

And so we don't really get the idea that

the pain is happening at the time we're

buying. We don't get that feeling.

In fact, if we had to pay for cash,

we would think twice about impulse buying.

We would go in there with more foresight

and think about what we're buying

instead of just impulse buy.

So how's your relationship with

money? That's a good question.

Is it something that you have an

intention of having you work for it,

or you having it work for you? So you

might want to take a note here or two.

But money can be seen two different ways.

You can actually be a master of money

and manage it wisely and have it work for

you. Or you can be a mass conscious

individual, like most people,

with the statistics that are in debt,

and become a slave to money and

have you work for it. You decide.

People that work for other people usually

pay the most taxes and get the most

debt. People that work

for their own companies,

usually have a little less taxes

and have a little less debt.

And people that invest and buy long term

and invest their money into something

that's an asset,

pay the least amount of taxes and

have the least amount of debt,

and they become masters of the money

instead of having to be a slave to the

money. So how's your

relationship with it? Well,

that boils down to your

relationship with your values.

So you heard me talk about values almost

every time I do a presentation because

it underlies all human

behavior. So the question is,

is where is wealth building,

where is money management,

wisely managing money on

your hierarchy values?

Each of your individual, each

individual has a set of priorities,

a set of values that are unique to

them. Whatever's high on your value,

you have discipline, reliability and

focus on. Whatever's low on your value,

you procrastinate, hesitate and frustrate

on. Whatever's high on your values,

raises your self worth when you

act on it. And whatever's low,

lowers your self-worth when you do.

When you are more inspired

by something spontaneously,

you become more efficient. And when

you're doing something low in priorities,

you become less efficient. And one

is self-worth and self appreciative.

And the other one is self depreciative.

And the way you manage money

is a reflection of that.

If you devalue yourself,

you'll typically pay yourself

last. If you value yourself,

you'll typically pay yourself first.

People that value themselves

and value money, simultaneously,

are people that want to buy

things that go up in value,

assets that go up in value

and appreciate with value.

They buy things that gain interest and

compounding and capital gains and grows

in value.

So they become less and less having to

work and more and more having it work for

them.

People that devalue money and devalue

themselves usually spend it on immediate

gratification to compensate

for their unfulfillment,

and they go buy things and they

fill their home with stuff.

When you stop and think about it, probably

a quarter of your home is storage.

So you pay a half a million

dollars for a home or something,

or maybe three or 400,000 depending

on what country you're in,

some countries it's a

million average household,

a million dollars to get a house. And

someplace like in America be two to three,

400,000, maybe half a

million in New York and LA.

But a quarter of what you buy

in a house goes to storage,

it goes to store a car,

it goes to store clothes,

and stuff, that sits in a pantry that you,

that just fills up and sits

there and depreciates in value.

And so you're paying, if you

pay half a million dollars,

$125,000 is paying for stuff being stored

that's going down in value. And

you stop and think about that,

that's not the brightest use of money.

You might want immediate

gratification that way,

but you're not going to get

ahead financially that way,

you're going to get probability in debt.

So I basically ask you, where is wealth

building on your hierarchy values?

And I've done thousands of people on

Value Determinations and I'm have to say

that very small percentage actually

have it in the top four values of their

life. In my observation,

people that do not have a

value on wealth building won't.

They'll end up in debt most of their

life. Statistically that's the case.

I remember in 2000 I did a little research

project on what the average person in

America was doing, and it's not that

much different in some countries,

at least developing countries.

And found out that a great percentage

of those people do not have financial

independence for sure.

And when they retire,

they relied on social security

and their kids to help them.

And that's a burden to the kids.

And that's you basically not thinking

long term and basically wanting immediate

gratification, not deferring

gratification for wealth building.

So the question is, is where is wealth

building on your hierarchy values?

If it's not in the top

four, my observation,

you're probably not going to

be financially independent.

And if you don't have enough benefits,

because every decision you make in life

is based on what will give you the most

benefits over drawbacks or

advantages over disadvantage,

if you don't have enough benefits and

advantages of deferring gratification and

putting your money aside and letting

it compound and grow through interest

earnings and capital gains

and be prepared for having

it work for you over a

period of time and defer it,

you're not likely to have

financial independence. In

fact, how are you going to?

There's two ways that people get

financially independent today.

One is they build businesses and they

let the income from that passively bring

in the lifestyle that they want,

and the asset accumulation.

And they eventually sell the

business and they have a net worth.

Or they go out and they save and invest

it and buy quality companies or acquire

real estate or other forms of assets that

eventually accumulate and compound and

eventually get passive income.

But if you don't have the value of doing

that and deferring gratification for

long-term asset accumulation, you're

probably going to be a statistic.

Less than 1% become financially

independent. Most people aren't.

Most people are basically indebted and

they have a decrescendo as they get older

in life.

So the question you want to ask yourself

is what is your relationship with

money? Where is it on your value list?

Are you really buying

things that go up in value?

If you are buying things that do go up

in value and you are patient and let it

go and grow in value

and compound interest,

the 8th wonder of the

world as Einstein calls it,

then you're likely to

get ahead financially.

But if you're wanting

immediate gratification and

you can't govern yourself and

you spend it and you have debt and

you're paying ridiculous sums of money on

debt, well you've created that,

you're not going to get financially well

off if you don't live somehow within

your means.

If you're basically exceeding your means

and keeping yourself further in debt,

you're going to end up burdening

your life. And time is ticking by,

and all of a sudden.

And I remember somebody told me when

I was very young in my twenties,

if you're 20 years old and you have

an income, let's say a fixed income,

and you save 10% of it,

by the time you're 65,

you can have a financial independence

based on that simple lifestyle and

factoring in inflation. If

you're 30 years old, 20%, 40,

30%, 50 years old, you need

to be saving 40%, 60, 50%,

70, 60%. The longer you wait,

the higher you have to save and

invest to be able to get ahead.

And when I mean save it, I don't

necessarily mean not investing,

I mean putting it away into buying

something that goes up in value.

So if you are waiting and you're delaying

and you're not getting into action,

well, you're just working

harder against yourself. I was,

luckily I was 27 years old when I kind

of had a wake up call and I started my

savings stashed investing process.

And once I had enough cushion

to deal with emergencies,

I just kept buying assets. And

I've done that now 42 years.

And I've been blessed <laugh>,

very blessed financially

because I deferred the

gratification and I allow it to

work for me. And now it works more

than I'm working, making me money.

So I'm grateful that I learned

that, it's not rocket science.

It doesn't take genius.

It's basically having the temperament

and the patience to defer gratification

and live simple until you do it or, to,

if you want to raise your lifestyle,

raise your income. You know,

there's no limit on the

income you can make in life.

All you have to do is care enough about

another human being or a multitude of

individuals and find out some way of

serving them and meeting their needs with

some product, service or idea.

And if you're willing to do that more

effectively and efficiently than somebody

else, you're the one that corners

the market and gets the most income.

And if you don't raise your lifestyle

ridiculously and live within your means

and make up the difference by saving

and investing, it starts to accumulate.

And I'm just grateful I did that. When

I first started saving I was saving,

believe it or not, $10 a day,

$50 a week, $200 a month.

And that was a stretch.

But I made it 300 and then I made it 500

and then I made it 750 and then I made

it a thousand. And then I kept

increasing it 10% every quarter.

I kept raising it until it was

saving and investing a very

substantial amount of money. And lo

and behold, from the time I started,

9 years later I was financially

independent. Now it's many,

many times over that, way over that.

And I just kept methodically

doing what worked.

And it was not rocket

science. I have no, I mean,

I've read a lot of books on the topic

and I've mentored with lots of people,

but I have to say most of that

stuff was more superfluous.

What really was important is to care

enough about people to serve people to

generate an income, take a

portion of that and put it away,

and buying quality companies. In my case,

I just bought the indexes and just

kept buying S&P500 equivalent.

And all I can say is that it's paid off.

I kept my cost down and I kept

investing and I deferred that.

So the question is, is do

you have more advantage,

more value on deferred

gratification? If you do,

you have the potential for building

wealth. If you don't, well that's fine.

You're going to have a decent

lifestyle, but it's going to plateau,

because eventually you're probably

going to have difficulty working. Now,

you can work, I'll be 70 in a few months

and I'm still cranking out the hours,

I love it. I don't do

it because I have to,

I do it because I really love

to do it. I love teaching.

But just imagine if all of a sudden

you're 70 years old or 80 years old and

you're maybe not able to work, if you

didn't have some savings and investments,

you might be borrowing money from your

kids or maybe in debt and you may have

more problems and burden

the next generation.

So do have foresight and think in advance

about what's really priority to you.

Because immediate gratification

costs you economically,

and long-term gratification

pays. So the question is,

is do you have enough advantages,

have you written down the benefits of

doing the action steps that have proven to

work financially?

To actually build a business that serves

people or somehow work in a business

that serves people, do you

have an income, to live beyond,

to live beneath the means of that so you

have money that's discretionary to save

and invest, to automate those

savings and investments,

so there's no emotion that

can interfere with it.

To set up enough cash cushion to take

care of emergencies and then invest the

difference, and allow it to compound

and grow without interfering with it.

Don't gamble, don't speculate. Don't

you know, try to get rich quick.

Just be patient,

methodical investor in quality companies

or real estate holdings that serve

people. If you serve people, you have

sources of income. If you do that,

magic stuff starts happening.

Money works for you.

Compound interest starts accumulating

money for you. It's amazing.

Compound interest is the 8th one

of the world as Einstein said.

And it's amazing what it does,

particularly in four decades into it,

like I'm now at, I'm going on

my fifth decade of doing it,

it really takes off by then.

But you gotta be patient.

And if you're not patient, well,

you better be working and diligently

building a massive company.

If you build a massive company, that's

the most efficient way. But investing is,

that's what most people do. You pay the

most taxes when you work for others.

You pay the less taxes

when you work for yourself.

You pay them least taxes when you

invest, as I said. So the question is,

the sooner you get into investments, the

less taxes you're going to be paying.

Now, I'm not against paying

taxes. I pay them every quarter,

and I pay them every week into an account

that eventually pays to the government

every quarter. I have no problem paying

some taxes, but not unnecessary taxes.

And you're going to pay unnecessary

taxes if you keep working and living with

immediate gratification.

You pay the least taxes if you start

putting it away and let it compound and

then let it buy quality companies and

hold them and let them just grow and defer

the gratification to further

the compounding with it.

Defer the taxes on it and

boom, you start moving ahead.

And it's a very rewarding feeling to have

your money working for you and moving

ahead than it is to be burdened

and in debt all your life.

And that's where most people are.

So do you have a higher value on the

outcome of wealth building than you do

on the immediate gratifying consumables

that fill up a house that you're paying

even more taxes and more

debt on? It's crazy.

I mean, I'm amazed at how many people

spend money on things they don't need,

to impress people that don't care,

and to have things that aren't really

meaningful, that are temporary,

transient highs.

I always say when you're doing something

that's really meaningful and inspiring

that's fulfilling, you fill

your life that way. If not,

you'll probably go and be a consumer

trying to fulfill your life through food

and drink and alcohol and

addictive behaviors and consumerism

and you'll fill up a house

full of crap. I mean,

I know people that at one time had a

garage, they could put the garage in.

Now it's filled with stuff. They

can't even put the car in there.

See the banks love you getting in debt.

They love the fractional reserves.

And now in America, fractional

reserves have been thrown out.

Now there's a zero system. They have no

accountability to keep cash on reserve.

In the process of doing that, they

can just lend out indiscriminately,

which is no governance. And this is

crazy, but that's what's happening.

And so if you're not investing and putting

money into things that are going up

in value, well you're

even more vulnerable,

because the bank you have

may not even be stable.

And then you may find out the money

you think you have in there is not even

real. You find out that, that

happened in 2008 for a lot of people.

So if you go by the banks thinking,

they're going to make sure you get a house

that's going to get you in debt and a

mortgage pay 30 years, 25 years,

you're going to have a car repeatedly

doing it to keep you in debt.

A credit card is going

to keep you in debt.

You're going to live in probably a suburb

that you have to drive where you have

to have a car and you

have to have a house.

And you'll be near a mall that you keep

using that credit card on and they keep

cleaning up and making money off

your immediate gratifications.

So if you have a value on wealth building,

you're going to want to

defer the gratification and

buy assets. Ask yourself,

because there's a basic rule, if you

don't put your money into assets,

it ends up in liabilities.

If you don't fill your day with high

priority actions that inspire you,

it fills up with low priority

distractions that don't.

And when you're unfulfilled,

consumerism is a byproduct of that.

Because you can go fill your thing with

stuff that gives you a temporary high

instead of a long-term return.

And as the great Greek

philosopher many years ago,

Anaxagorus and some of the

other ones basically said,

the people that want the

immediate gratification,

that pleasure is insignificant compared

to the pleasure of having mastered your

life, and having mastered it. There's

seven areas of life you can empower.

You can empower your business,

you can empower your finance,

you can empower your intellect,

you can empower relationships,

you can empower your social life,

your physical health and wellbeing

and your spiritual quest. Well,

money is one of them. You

might as well master money.

So that's one of the reasons in the

Breakthrough Experience Program, which I,

my signature program that I teach

pretty well every week or two,

I teach people about self worth and

I talk about living by priority.

Every time you live by highest

priorities and you have a value on wealth

building your self-worth goes up, your

feeling of worthiness to hold onto money,

goes up. When you feel down,

you go into altruism and you sacrifice

and give away your money by purchasing

things. When you value yourself,

you don't want to just give it away.

You want to make sure that you put

it into something that's meaningful.

You learn to have sustainable fair

exchange with people and serve people and

make sure that you're thinking of

not only yourself but your family,

your community, you're

thinking philanthropically.

People that do things that are money

with meaning are philanthropic.

People that have money without

meaning tend to be debaucherous,

and they tend to squander

their money away.

That's why you go from rags

to riches to rags again,

because people that had a drive to do

something and go out and build their

wealth and had a value on

it, they became wealthy,

the people that took it for

granted and didn't have a drive,

they ended up debaucherously wiping

it out like the Vanderbilts did.

So that's why I say it's having a

cause greater than yourself helps build

wealth. So there's six things that

I found common to wealthy people.

One is they cared enough about humanity

to build a business that served ever

greater numbers of people. And two,

they ended up having mastered the

efficiency of that business where they

mastered the management of it,

where it was effective and

efficient at making profits.

Then the third thing is they took profits

and they saved an every progressive

portion of it, and kept putting it away

and making sure they have stability.

And then they invested.

Number four was investing in ever greater

degrees of leverage and keep buying

assets.

And five is they allowed themselves to

accumulate and didn't just raise their

lifestyle during that whole time,

but allow the lifestyle to stay simple

while they build up assets until the

lifestyle could incrementally be raised.

And the last one is they had some

cause that was inspiring to them,

that was meaningful,

that they wanted to dedicate their

life and their wealth building towards,

something that's meaningful to them.

Because otherwise you're going to just

give it mostly in taxes to the government

and they may squander it, rescue

people and rob people of dignity,

accountability responsibly

and productivity.

But if you actually do it and you can

become philanthropic and decide where

those money's going,

instead of paying unnecessary taxes and

giving it to social things that may not

be meaningful to you,

you can decide what's meaningful and

you can go in and help other people in a

way that's not stopping them from doing

self-sufficiency on their own life.

So there's meaningful

there. So the question is,

what's your relationship with money?

And that's why I teach the Breakthrough

Experience to help people get their self

worth together, to live by priority,

to maximize their productivity,

to maximize their meaning in life, to

allow themself to defer gratification,

to make sure they grow their wealth,

to not sit and compare

themselves to other people,

but compare their daily actions to

what's meaningful to them and their

priorities in life, to allow themselves,

their self-worth to go up and to allow

themselves to build the wealth that they

want.

I'm a firm believer that you deserve to

have empowerment in all areas of your

life. Wealth is one of them.

It's not more important or less

important than the other areas of life,

but you might as well master

all of them. That's been my,

that's the whole purpose of Breakthrough,

to help you master all areas of your

life, master the business growth,

master your mental

faculties and your genius,

and wake up your genius. Master your

relationship, master wealth building,

master your leadership skills, master

your physical health and wellbeing,

you're not living just to

eat, you're eating to live,

you're eating to perform and you're,

you're exercising to perform

and master an inspired life.

You deserve to have an inspired life.

That's why I tell people to come

to the Breakthrough Experience,

they learn some of the tools that 50

years worth of research has helped me

present and I've gotten to incorporate

and empower all those areas in my life

because of it. So passing it

on to you is what I love doing,

and particularly the economic one because

my experience is people that do master

that, and I mean really master it,

not just accumulate it and

then debauacherize with it,

but to actually accumulate it and do

something really meaningful for humanity.

Those individuals I watch having amazing

tears of gratitude and fulfillment in

life. So that's why I'm doing this

little presentation right now,

because to ask you, what's

your relationship with money?

Do you have a value on wealth

building or do you not?

Do you want it to work for you

or do you want to work for it?

Do you want to be a slave or a master?

Where do you want to play

in the game of finances?

If you really have a value on it, you'll

be studying it and learning about it.

And, and when you do, you'll be

prioritizing what you're reading,

making sure it's a real asset development,

not just immediate gratifying gambling

and casinos and quick get rich schemes

that many people like to sell

to get dopamine highs and buy.

I'm talking about really learning

about the key of mastering money.

Mastering money is really

about mastering your life.

Because if you have sustainable fair

exchange and you're not exaggerating

yourself or minimizing

yourself relative to people,

and you have really caring

relationships that are long term,

you're on your way to building

wealth. So it's a mastery of life.

That's why in the Breakthrough Experience,

I'm trying to help people get empowered

in all areas because they all overlap

and help each other. And why

not have financial independence?

Why not have an extraordinary life?

Why not have a deeply meaningful something

that's a cause that you dedicate your

energies to? That's what I'm focused on.

So I just wanted to take a moment to

talk about transforming your relationship

with money. Because if

you have a priority,

if you stack up the benefits and the

advantages and keep stacking up of those

six things I just outlined and have more

advantages to defer the gratification

than disadvantages,

and more benefits of doing the

action steps that proven to work,

then you're on your way,

and you'll basically be a master

of money instead of its slave.

So that was my message today on

looking at your relationship with

money and just know that it's your life.

You're not right or wrong whatever

way you do it, you're not you know,

unethical if you decide to

make your kids depend on you.

But I personally don't know of anybody

who can honestly say that's what their

dream is.

Most people would like to get masterful

in their life and master all areas of

their life. So if you'd like to do that,

come and join me at the

Breakthrough Experience.

Keep listening to some of these podcasts.

If you know somebody that really can

benefit from these presentations I do,

please pass the torch to

them. Let them know about it.

Subscribe to our channel and our

work here and help us get the message

out. Because I assure you that there's,

if we help other people get

what they want to get in life,

we get what we want to get in life. And

that's why I do this every single week,

because I know it's, I get

letters in every single week,

almost every single day,

and people that have taken this and

it spurred an idea in their life,

that's our objective here.

So please pass the torch,

come to the Breakthrough Experience

and let me give whatever I've been

researching for 50 something years to

help you pass the torch to you so you can

go do something

extraordinary with your life.