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It's 2026 and I want to ask you a question. What did you accomplish financially in 2025? Did

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you build your wealth? Did you increase your net worth or did you just survive? Pay the bills, get

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buy tread water? Because here's the brutal truth most people waste entire years. They have

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good intentions. They want to save more, invest more, build wealth. But they don't have a plan. And

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without a plan, nothing happens. So this year is going to be different. Right now, I'm going to give

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you a complete financial plan for 2026. Three simple steps. No complexity, no

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overwhelm, just the things that actually matter. Because I've helped people save tens of millions

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of dollars over the years, and it's never the complicated strategies that work. It's the simple

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ones, the ones that focus on the 20% that drives the 80% of your results. So if you're serious

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about building wealth in 2026, this is your plan. I'm Lloyd James Ross, a seven figure investor and

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entrepreneur, and I've helped thousands of business owners and professionals turn financial

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stress into success if you're stuck in old money habits. Overwhelmed by investing or unsure where

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to start, this is for you. I'll give you the mindset and strategies to take control, grow your

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wealth, and achieve financial freedom. It's time to make your money work for you. Step one the Magic

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Number I talk about this in my book Money Buys Happiness, and the magic number is the number at

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which your net worth needs to be for the income that you can generate from that capital that will

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cover your expenses. Where this comes from is the definition of wealth by Robert Kiyosaki. And he

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said, wealth is measured by how many days you can live at your current lifestyle without working

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another day in your life. That's the definition of wealth, as far as I see it. Yes, because time is

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more important than money. So your magic number is the amount of money that which once invested

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based on the return that it can get from cash, will cover your expenses on a yearly basis. That's

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the magic number. That's the number you should aim for. So for example, if your expenses are, say, 5000

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a month, it would equate to about $60,000 a year in lifestyle expenses. Okay, that covers your

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expenses generally. Now, if 60,000 a year is the number to get to the magic number that we

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should have invested, all we need to do is pull out a little calculator on our phone and we take

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our annual expenses. So if it's 4000 of us, sorry, 5000 a month, then annually it's $60,000. Yes.

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Now, if we were to invest that at say, and you can do this in certain ETFs, a 6%

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dividend rate, then if fully invested in that particular ETF, it would produce enough to cover

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these expenses. So it would have to produce 60,000 a year. So here's what we do. We do the shortcut. We

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we work it back. We back work it. And we divide that number by 0.06 and it's $1 million.

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So if you had $1 million invested in a specific ETF that paid a 6% dividend, it means that every

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single year 0.06, you would get paid $60,000 in income. That doesn't include the growth in the

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actual underlying cash either, but that would be an example. $1 million divided by is the magic

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number. Does that make sense? That's your target. That's your goal. So you've got to have a goal.

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Otherwise you're like, why am I doing this? Why am I going? Why am I flying to the mines twice a week

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and sacrificing time with my family? Why am I saving y y y y y? You have to have a y reason. This

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r right. So that's that was my first goal. And now I've got a goal of, you know, 10 million. But

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we got two goals. Otherwise we don't know what we're doing it for. Right. And on the way to the

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goal you'll have financial independence okay. That's the first step getting a goal. Step number

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two. To get to that number you have to put your money to work and you have to do it over time,

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which means you have to have some spare money to actually put to work. And the number one

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underlying problem I see in every single person that I talk to, that I deal with when it comes to

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their money, this is the number one thing they don't do well. They don't track their spending, so

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they don't actually know what money's coming in and what Money is going out. They have no idea. So

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if you have no idea, then you can't do this one. And this is to ascertain how much money is left

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over every month after you live life. Because if there's no money left over no free cash flow, you

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can't invest, which means you can't do step three. So how do you do this? Well,

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the first step is to actually look at your bank account. I know I've said this before, but most

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people don't. And what you have to do is you have to identify what money is coming in from wages,

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investments and welfare. Calculate it and tabulate it and sum it up. And then you have to calculate

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exactly how much money is going out on rent, groceries, insurance fees, school,

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travel, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And you have to make sure that there's more money coming in then

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going out every month. Now here's the caveat to that. If more money is going out than coming in,

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the number one thing you need to do immediately is to cut your costs. That's the. And the reason?

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Yes. You can increase your income and I encourage it. Of course you should increase it. You should be

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working to increase your income as much as possible. However, your cost structure is the first

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thing that you can control, and it is the thing within your control because you can literally

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make a decision today that stops that money going there. Here's an example. Let's say you've got

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Disney, Netflix and stand and you see that in your expenses. Here's how you address that. Oh I have

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three streaming channels. I'm entitled. Hmm. Maybe I should cancel two. Perfect. Boom, boom. Save yourself

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40 bucks a month. Done. It's like that. It's that or. Oh, we ate out four times this week. Maybe we

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should not do that. So, honey, we're not going to go and eat there and there anymore. We're just going

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to eat there. Are we saved ourselves $200 that month. You see how this works? This is identifying

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where you're sending your money and stopping it. This is to stem the bleeding to to plug the holes.

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And then at the end of the month you can go, oh my God, we got $1,000 here. There's a student that I

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was dealing with. Uh, he's one of our programs and he's from the USA. And he did this one exercise,

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and the first month he did it, he said, Lord, you wouldn't believe it. I said, what? He goes, there's

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$6,000 in my account. I'm like, huh? You don't say. I mean, you know, if you can't measure it, you can't

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manage it. So as soon as you started measuring it, he can manage it. And he created 6000 in a single

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month. That's 70,000 a year, right? So imagine what you could create if you knew where things were

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going. And most people don't do this. They're just so reactive. They have no idea. So it's about

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getting in control of your money. That's step two. Just quickly. If you're ready to take control of

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your finances but feel stuck on where to start, I have a solution. In my book, Money Buys Happiness

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simplifies Investing and Wealth Building with practical steps to help you achieve financial

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peace. Get your copy via the link in the show notes and let's get your money working for you.

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Now back to the episode step three the Final step. Because you have some free cash flow, because

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you're tracking your expenses and you have a goal of getting to $1 million, which is a wonderful

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goal. Then the next step is to get there. And what you want to do is you have to understand that

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saving your way there is the hard way. So the thing is, if you put it into a high interest

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bearing account, I say for 4.5%, the government will take 30% of that is taxed because they tax

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interest income. Uh, and so and then you don't get any underlying growth in the cash in the bank. So

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savings are not ideal. You want to be able to grow your money sensibly and safely and consistently

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above the rate of inflation. And so one of the most simple ways of doing it is to take the cash

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and invest it into a simple exchange traded fund, which is like a basket of stocks fully

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diversified by one of the major fund managers their low cost index funds. Warren Buffett has

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mentioned this many times at his shareholder meetings at Berkshire that if you just were a lay

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investor and you just put your money into a broad based index fund or an ETF, you can compound your

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money at between eight, nine and 10% a year. That's well above the inflation rate. Over long periods

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of time, your money grows. Plus you get an income from the dividend. And this is the most sensible,

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safest, most effective and predictable way to get your money to work harder than you do. And the

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beauty of this is you can pull up your phone. You can download an online broker platform to your

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phone. There are many. I'm sure you can find one if you just google it, download it, open up like a

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bank account, put your money in there, select the ETF that you desire and purchase it with your

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free cash flow you're creating every single month and repeat that for the next ten years. That's the

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plan for certainly repeat it in 2002 and in 2026, because if you just did those three steps, you had

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a goal. You understood why the goal was in place. You had savings each month because you're

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watching and managing your money nice and simply. It's not crazy. And you took some of that free

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cash flow and invested it into an ETF. At the end of 2026, you're going to have a money system

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that's repeatable for the rest of your life. And the philosophy of wealth is finding the simple,

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effective things that move money forward and avoiding the stuff that doesn't. You don't have to

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be super smart. You don't have to have a high IQ. You don't even have to like numbers. You just have

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to do the basics well and again and again and again. It's about iterations of doing that over

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long periods of time that makes you wealthy. So if you don't have a plan now, you do. You've got a

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three step plan to actually execute in 2026 that will markedly see your

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money start to grow in savings, in building wealth, and of course, keeping things simple. And that's

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really what happens because simple scales and complex files. So hope it makes sense. I'd love to

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know what step are you on? Leave me a comment below. Tell me what step you're on. What's your

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magic number? Pop it in the comments below and keep me posted in 2026 on how you're going at the

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end of the year. Shoot me a DM and let me know. Hey, I implemented that money plan and it's doing so

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well. Thanks so much. That'd be amazing. All right, see you soon. Thanks for listening to Money Grows

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on Trees. If you enjoyed the episode, leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and

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subscribe to us on YouTube so you never miss an episode. And if you're serious about building

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wealth, make sure to check out the links in the show notes and follow me on all social media

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platforms at Lloyd James Ross for more. See you in the next episode.