America’s #1 Wealth Killer (That No One Talks About)

Our number one wealth killer? Not cars. Not inflation. Not even credit cards. Our number one wealth killer is the lack of financial education. Our 5 Truths to Financial Education: Others don't need to lose for you to win (based on the previous 25 years). Your small decisions have a big impact ($250/month can become almost 7 figures). You don't have to make ALL of the right decisions (with a great quote from Mr. Buffett). What you value doesn't always feel good in the moment (4 questions to ask yourself). You need time to learn (just like your money needs time to grow). Jump start your journey with our FREE financial resources Reach your goals faster with our products Take the relationship to the next level: become a client Subscribe on YouTube for early access and go beyond the podcast Connect with us on social media for more content Bring confidence to your wealth building with simplified strategies from The Money Guy. Learn how to apply financial tactics that go beyond common sense and help you reach your money goals faster. Make your assets do the heavy lifting so you can quit worrying and start living a more fulfilled life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m. We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once. And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.

• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:00Speaker 02

  America's number one wealth killer. But here's the thing. This is the one nobody's talking about.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Brian, I am so excited to talk about this because I think this is our bread and butter. This is our sweet spot. When we talk about the number one wealth killer in America, we feel like we very much sit in the void to help people not fall prey to this. Because we talk about it all the time. There are tons of things out there that people ascribe to killing wealth. One of them, cars, automobiles.

• 1:36Brian Preston?

  They depreciate like a rock.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Another one, inflation, a huge wealth killer.

• 1:40Brian Preston?

  Oh, we've always heard, you know, $1 million in 40 years won't be anything.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  What about this one? Divorce, they say, is the number one wealth killer in America.

• 1:48Brian Preston?

  Hey, measure twice, cut once. I'm making sure you have the right partner.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  How about this one? Fear. We've even covered this in the past.

• 1:54Brian Preston?

  Hey, why would I want to invest? That market's gonna crash. I don't want to get in that.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Or maybe it's credit cards. Maybe it's debt is the number one wealth killer.

• 2:02Brian Preston?

  Hey, I'll just pay for it later. I don't have money right now, so why not have a bridge full of debt?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  And so, and it's true that all of these things can...

• 2:10Brian Preston?

  Bridges to nowhere.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  All of these things can be devastating and they can lead to killing wealth. But we think they all, they all form out of one systemic issue that exists. And we believe, in our view, that the number one wealth killer in America is actually... A lack of financial education.

• 2:30Brian Preston?

  Yeah, look, this one really hit me hard because I think about even my own journey. When I first came out, if I would not have found the wealthy barber, millionaire next door, because everybody was thinking with my accounting degree, I knew something about money. No, I was just as clueless because I didn't have it modeled in the house. I had great discipline with money modeled, but I didn't know how to actually maximize money. So guys, we're passionate. We're trying to, this is kind of our calling is to get the lack of financial education out of the system.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  And we know that 90% of Americans say they want to build wealth. I want to be financially independent. I want to make sound financial decisions. And yet, half of respondents would say, I don't know where to start. I want to be wealthy, but I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. And what happens is, this gap in knowledge can lead to all sorts of other financial issues. Some of them are like clear and direct, and some of them are a little bit less clear.

• 3:30Brian Preston?

  Well, you see this on social media all the time. I'm shocked when you watch content out there that shows that some people think you have to keep some money on your credit card to maximize your credit score. What are you guys doing? This is, this is not how it works. And when you have these misconceptions, it can lead you down some roads that are going to definitely not lead to your great, big, beautiful tomorrow.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lack of financial education can, it can lead to fear. So you might be like, I'm afraid to invest because I understand that the stock market has some risk involved. And because of that, I'm not going to do anything. And I'm never going to actually get my arm of dollar bills working for me.

• 4:09Brian Preston?

  Well, think about comparison. How many people think looking rich is where they're going, whereas we're trying to teach you, be wealthy, actually have the assets on your net worth statement, not just have the fancy car and the nice house that you live in.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  A lack of financial education can lead to procrastination. This idea of, okay, well, I'm, I'm young, I'll just save in the future. I'm going to do stuff today and I'll, I'll have more time later. I don't need to prioritize my finances today because I've got plenty of time.

• 4:37Brian Preston?

  Unfortunately, we'll put this in there, "Living Beyond Your Means." This is where I get to correct my mistake earlier, is that debt can be the bridge to nowhere, because it feels like temporarily, it solves a lot of problems. You don't have money, so why not borrow that money in the short term? But the problem is, is that it keeps stacking upon itself, and it really does trap you.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  And you can go out on our website, and go to moneyguy.com, and you can see that through our website, and on this YouTube channel, and in our podcast, we try to educate you on all these different parts and pieces. And we have tons of content out there to help you figure them out. But we thought, today, if we're going to be talking about lack of financial education, what are some pillars of truth that we hold on to? And we think that you can hold on to as you begin to impact and change your financial life. So we're going to walk you through sort of some pillars that we hold to be true. And the very first one, Brian, me and you talk about this all the time, and I think a lot of people don't recognize this, is that financial independence, or financial success, is not a zero-sum game.

• 5:41Brian Preston?

  Well, I look, I resemble this as well. I grew up in a house where my father, you know, had shared with me that to be wealthy, you had to be born into it. Or you probably had, there's something you came across, a scheme or something. And I think a lot of people think that the stock market is rigged against them. You know, we even see that people equate it to casinos, and all kind of other things. I'm here to tell you guys, it's not wired that way at all. If you understand how money works, if you understand how the system is built, how the economy is growing, how innovation and technology is changing things, you can prosper off of this as well.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, the idea is, is for you to win financially, it does not mean that someone else has to lose. It is an ever-expanding pizza pie. Brian, we were talking in pre-show prep, and you're like, hey, this, this isn't something that we just need to say. We can show this.

• 6:35Brian Preston?

  Yeah, don't take our word for it. I feel like so much on social media is, is, hey, trust me. And I'm like, no, this is probably something you hear. And this is also, we're optimists. I will tell you, I think, and we, when we do our survey of our wealthy clients... We find out that the majority of our clients are optimists as well. But unfortunately, the majority of Americans are not optimists. And I think that's because there's this this message that you can't prosper unless somebody else fails. And that is false. And the proof is, look at market cap of the S and P 500. We just went back to the late 90s. You can see market cap back in 1999 was 12 trillion dollars.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  And to define this market capitalization just means what's the value of all the 500 companies that exist in the S and P 500? If you're going to value those, what are those companies worth? And in December of 1999, all of those companies were worth about 12 trillion dollars combined.

• 7:30Brian Preston?

  So do you see that? I mean, that's, that's what's amazing to me is we can three, four fold growth. And it's because you can be a part of this too. But I think it's accelerating. When in Millionaire Mission, I talk about law of accelerating returns. We're getting more innovation. We're getting more technology. This is something you can build off of that I want you to be successful. And I also want to tell you about a mindset. I know when I started my first company, I told my boss when I put it in my notice, what I anticipate, I said, if I could just make this sum of money for the, I'd be happy for the rest of my life. It's because I really had a mindset, a limited mindset on what success was or what opportunity was, or we, I could even build.

• 8:13Brian Preston?

  I'm telling you, I think a lot of you guys have those limiting beliefs as well. And I want you to open your mind, open your eyes to the opportunity that sits right before you. And that's with investing, that's with maximizing every dollar that comes into your control.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's wild when you recognize this. I mean, again, in this, in the S and P 500 example, the market capitalization in 1999 was 12 trillion. And here we are as of 2024 at almost 50 trillion. The pie gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's great news for folks that are born in this country that end up in this country. Because there is a truth that exists that how your journey started does not define how it ends. If you can buy into this idea that It is an ever-expanding pizza pie and that there are ways that you can actually participate in that directly. You recognize that financial independence is attainable and achievable for everybody.

• 9:09Brian Preston?

  Okay, so that's the motivation is this thing's expanding. You don't have, somebody doesn't have to lose for you to benefit and build your great big beautiful tomorrow. Here's another thing that I'm hoping will energize you. The second truth is, is that small decisions you make today can have tremendous results in the future. Now, Bo, we were talking about this in pre-show. I'm, once again, the optimist. We always talk about this in terms of good things, meaning you make a small sacrifice or a small decision today and you get your great big beautiful tomorrow through compounding growth. But there is a dark side. There is a two-sided sword that can actually cut the other way as well.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, we know that the consequences of small decisions can stack up. For example, you say, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go on that trip that maybe I really can't afford, or I'm gonna buy the clothes that are a little bit more expensive, or I'm gonna move into the nicer apartment. I'm gonna make these seemingly small decisions, but I'm gonna make those decisions instead of saving, instead of putting money in my Roth IRA, instead of putting money in my 401K. And even though it seems like a small insignificant decision, when you make those small decisions, the consequences downstream, the consequences later on in life can be substantial. And we see this reflected in the numbers. We know

• 10:30Speaker 02

  right now that 57% of Americans feel unprepared financially for retirement. And I would argue that these Americans didn't say, hey, I'm not gonna prepare for retirement. Hey, I'm gonna just go into it bligh. I'm gonna go into it willy-nilly. They did not recognize that early on, there were small, bad decisions that they were making. And now they find themselves today waking up saying, oh, my goodness, I'm nowhere near where I should be because I didn't make the decisions back then when I should have made them.

• 11:01Brian Preston?

  Well, it's a combination of procrastination, living paycheck to paycheck. But I'll even tell you, it's worse than that. The system in many ways is stacked against you. Tell me, tell me if this sounds familiar. You can't afford a new car. I mean, who could when these things cost 50, $60,000 right out of the gate. But then they tell you when you go to the dealership, say, you know what? Yeah, that's a steep price, but how about if we finance this thing six, seven years? About $700 a month?

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Oh, I can do that. I can't afford 60,000, but I can afford 700 a month.

• 11:34Brian Preston?

  So you see what happened, that mental trick that happened? You can't afford that $60,000 car, but they used the monthly payment. The industry was stacked to where now it seems much more digestible. How about this? You know, look, I know I'm not supposed to say YOLO because you're like, that is so last generation. Don't use that word. But there is all these things in life that pull at you to live your best life right now because you're never going to have another season to be in your twenties or thirties. So you can't afford to go on that big trip that your friends are planning, but then you find out, you know what? How about for $150 a month, I can go on that trip?

• 12:11Speaker 02

  That seems much more palatable.

• 12:13Brian Preston?

  Do you see how the industry is set up and stacked? How about you can't afford the new clothes right now, you just put it on a credit card. Once again, that bridge to nowhere shows up because it seems like it is solving all the problems you have. You don't have the money, you don't have the access, but you want to look cool. Debt is what seems like it's going to be the perfect solution, but I'm telling you, it is the bridge to nowhere.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Those small decisions, if I can afford anything, one month at a time, one monthly payment at a time, have huge consequences. So that's the negative. That's the downside. Now, let's talk about the other side because you said, Brian, it's a double edged sword in terms of these small decisions. And we know that actually the consequences of small decisions can stack up in a positive manner too. Just like those little, small decisions early on can have big negative consequences. On the flip side, little, small decisions can have huge positive upsides.

• 13:07Brian Preston?

  Yeah, I love when we get to create content that kind of highlights these things. And we always talk about Manny the Mutant because financial mutants really do have the world by its tell. And we show that if you can just understand, look, I want you to have reliable transportation to get to work because more than likely, your first wealth building tool is going to be that J O B. But there is a huge difference, literally a seven-figure difference from making the 20 $3,000 car decision versus the $40,000 car decision and we detailed it Bo.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, we actually have a mini episode that you can go look that says this decision costs people millions. It'll walk through how literally just that right there, a $20,000 decision on a car can cost you a million dollars in retirement, or maybe you're someone who said, you know what, I just want to live in like just a little bit nicer apartment. Like I'm, I'm, I'm gonna pay 1750 a month in rent instead of getting the more reasonable apartment for $1,500. Well, we know that if you make that decision at 25 and you were to save that $250 and you were to put that to work every single month for all of your retirement, that singular decision could be an $800,000 difference in your portfolio.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Most people don't think about their consumption this way. They think, oh, 250 bucks, that's nothing. That's no big deal. That's no problem. I'll just pay that in rent, not recognizing that could literally be the thing that's paying for your full living expenses later on when you get to financial independence.

• 14:35Brian Preston?

  Well, you know, we talk about the three ingredients to wealth building and the first ingredient is discipline on the ability to live on less than you make. But you know, this second component, we talk about it with discipline is actually the discipline of actually putting that money to work. It's one thing to create the margin, that $250 difference on the consumption choice or the lifestyle choice. It's another thing to say, you know what, I'm actually going to set it and forget it. We've had guests on Making a Millionaire, other things said, the best thing we can do is do automatic wealth building. It really does clean things out. And then I think about if people understood, because we set it up early. We talked about procrastination and I think for a lot of 20 somethings or even a lot of 30 somethings, they say, look, life is tough right now. I don't have a lot of income, so every dollar is super valuable to me.

• 15:21Brian Preston?

  I've got to consume with lifestyle for keeping rent and shelter and getting transportation. But guys, if you can change your mindset and understand just a little goes a long way. I don't care. Just start somewhere, do something. Cause look at this, if you jump into your employer's 401k, if you start in your twenties versus your thirties, we're talking. About a $2 million difference.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Huge.

• 15:45Brian Preston?

  If you're thinking about twenties, or even you could say thirties versus somebody who starts in their forties, it's still close to a mil- that thirty to forty difference is still close to a million dollars. And then if you compare the twenty something to the forty something, guys, we're literally talking about a $3 million difference. That's why, it look, there's, the best time to start was yesterday, or last, you know, last year. But the second best time is right now. Don't sleep on this. Actually let your money start working for you.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  And not only can these small decisions add up and compound, but behavioral changes can do the same. If you can change your behaviors just by one degree today, you'll recognize that you're able to start doing things like paying off your debt, or cutting back on expenses, or beginning to reach financial independence. You'll start to have a sense of ownership in your financial life. But even though these small decisions can have huge impacts, both in the positive and negative, I want to put your mind at ease, because another truth pillar that we hold on to is the reality that you don't have to make all of the right decisions. You don't have to get every single financial decision right. And Brian, you and I both, we've made a lot of the wrong ones in our financial journeys.

• 17:01Brian Preston?

  Yeah, we've, I've, I think we've created a lot of content, being very transparent and sharing our mistakes. And I love when we even get to bring in a quote from the Oracle of Omaha. You know, people look at Warren Buffett, and they look, of course, if you live to be his age, that component of time is very valuable. But there's also a lot of wisdom that Warren Buffett has built up, and a lot of quotes that he is, he's kind of given us that pay dividends. And look at this one. You only have to do a very few things right in your life, so long as you don't do too many things wrong.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  I love it. You need the good decisions to outweigh the bad decisions.

• 17:36Brian Preston?

  So, and, and what I like about that is, is you don't have to get them all right. I mean, that's the thing. You just have to, I've told you guys, I deal with the English language like I'm playing horseshoes. I don't get a lot right. But fortunately, it still works. The communication.

• 17:53Brian Preston?

  And flows and it's the same way with your money. You do not have to be a hundred percent. Here's the cool thing. You probably don't have to be an A student. You don't even have to be a B student. I think if you get somewhere in that D to C range of your decision-making wins when it comes financially, you're going to be A okay in the long term.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  And the beautiful thing is, is no matter what mistakes you've made in the past or the position that you're in right now, you still have the ability to course correct. And it doesn't take some sort of crazy investment strategy. You don't have to go like find the next hot dot that's going to be the thing that goes up a thousand fold. All you have to do is subscribe to like simple, true techniques that help build wealth. And we've found this, you know, every year, we do a survey of all of our clients at Abound Wealth Management. We asked a lot of our money guy, financial mutants too, and we say, hey, how did you build towards financial independence? How did you get to where you are today? And 74% of our respondents said that they became wealthy simply from systematic,

• 18:55Speaker 02

  disciplined and consistent saving and investing. It wasn't writing some Grammy award winning song and it wasn't from being a professional athlete. It was just implementing behaviors that were consistent over a long enough time period to build wealth.

• 19:11Brian Preston?

  And, and look, we love entrepreneurs. We even have an entrepreneur background, but no, these were just savers. Savers and investors make out the, make up the majority of our clients. And that's why I focus on what these small decisions you can make. We see it with making a millionaire. And here's what, I want to kind of open the curtain up. Instead of just saying make the small decisions, let's actually share what are these small decisions? And if you can catch these things, put them in your back pocket and actually start applying it, you're going to be leaps and bounds ahead of your peers.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  The first one is, is simple and you hear this over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, but it's worth repeating. Live within your means. If you can't afford the thing today, odds are you can't afford it unless it's an asset like an automobile or a house. If you need to defer that gratification, to save up to buy something, that's okay. Live on less than you make, build some margin, and take that margin and apply it so that your future self can benefit from the decisions that you're making today.

• 20:10Brian Preston?

  I love that this worked out that I get to share it because I always like saying, "Always be buying." I mean, if you can understand ABB, if you can automate your wealth-building journey, it just, it makes the good habits that much easier, the bad habits that much harder. This is going to be your superpower to get through market volatility, through crazy politics. You're just setting it, forget it, and you're paying yourself first. This is the way to be.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  And don't try to outsmart yourself. Don't try to go out and beat the market or be some sort of investing guru. Just be the market. There's nothing wrong with buying good, low-cost index funds, doing that consistently. Always be buying. And when you look back, five, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years in the future, you can be like, "Holy cow, it really wasn't all that difficult to get to where I've gotten to today."

• 20:58Brian Preston?

  And then this is another one that you hear us talk about, understand opportunity costs. I think life is made up of a bunch of incremental decisions. You can go left, you can go right. This choice leads this, this choice leads this. Guys, you can break down a lot of decisions in your life into these small decisions, and then think about, "What does this from an opportunity cost?" If I actually bring it back to the components of what this, and it's back to, "What does $100 a month do for me? What is $200 a month? What if I don't consume this, or I make sure my overhead is this much lower?" It's stacking up those decisions in combination with the understanding of incremental decisions and opportunity costs, and you will have the field vision to be successful.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  I love it. Stacking up small decisions. All right, Brian, let's talk about the next pillar, and this is sort of a truth pillar, and this is a little bit interesting, and this is something we subscribe to. What you value is not always what feels good in the moment. Meaning that our emotions and our feelings can often be deceiving. Even when it comes from a place of good intentions, we can end up not in the place that we ultimately want to be.

• 22:10Brian Preston?

  Yeah, this, this comes in many forms. I'm going to take it from the personal and then we'll get into kids and other things. But I think a lot of times we, when we make bad decisions, we, we do some self insulation or self coping. Like how often, Bo, do we see people in our comments section that say, hey, yeah, I spent too much on my car, but I'm a car person.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  I'm a car person.

• 22:31Brian Preston?

  I'm a car person. You know, and that's, I get it. We, and look, if you're paying yourself first, if you're on step eight of the financial order of operations, yeah, be a car person. You live your best life. But there is too much content that we've reacted to where people are using this more as a cope than actually a justification. So your why, and I get it, you want to feel good about yourself. You want to, maybe you're influenced by Pinterest. If it comes to your home furnishings, maybe you're influenced by your peer group. But you need to kind of understand, how do you create the coping skills so you don't fall into these traps?

• 23:06Speaker 02

  And the question that I would always ask these people is, okay, are you more of a car person than you are a financial independence person? Are you more of a travel person than you are a financial security person? Because those two things can coexist, but so often it gets out of whack and people end up prioritizing that thing that makes them feel good today, that car, that trip, that outfit, that whatever. And they begin sacrificing the thing that actually matters. And again, a lot of times this can even come from places with good intentions.

• 23:33Brian Preston?

  Well, and if you will, if you'll actually create a good plan for yourself, if you set it and forget it, as I was talking about earlier, it insulates you in a lot of ways because now you know better. It's almost like you get to see through the, the mirage of how cool you'll be. Cause we all know hedonic treadmill, that stuff comes and goes. Yes, you get a short-term sugar high from it, but then it goes back. If you can get addicted to saving and building for the future and owning your time and making the flexibility decisions because this is where your, your why and your purpose lies, that's where abundance actually is. And that's probably a great segue, Bo, and you have three kids, I have two.

• 24:12Brian Preston?

  Sometimes I think this intention of what you value is not what always feels good in the moment. This can really, we can all have blind spots when it comes to our kids.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think we as parents, and it's noble, we all want our kids to have a better childhood than we have. They want them to be able to experience things that we didn't get to experience. We want to make the world a better place than it was for us. And we'll even say stuff like, "I don't mind spending money on my kids because they're my why." Or, "I'd give anything for my child." And oftentimes, even though that sounds like a noble endeavor, what you end up doing is not creating the kid that you ultimately wanted to create, not equipping them to become what you ultimately wanted them to become. Because one of the best things that we can do as parents for our children as it relates to money

• 25:05Speaker 02

  is not give them the nicest things, or buy them the most expensive stuff, or let them have the priciest experiences. But it is modeling for them what sound financial behavior looks like. What making good financial decisions is so that when they get out into the real world, they've had an entire childhood where that was modeled for them, and they can take that good news of sound financial management and allow it to truly impact their life well into adulthood.

• 25:33Brian Preston?

  Well, the traps, and I'll just be harsh on it, is I see people, they'll save for their kid's education before they save for their retirement.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  All the time.

• 25:41Brian Preston?

  You'll see people who will, they think it's the right thing to do. They'll give their kids the brand-new car at 16. And we've heard the horror story of adults who share that it's sad for them, and it makes life harder when their best days, most lucrative days, were when they were in mom and dad's house. Don't take that from your kids, guys. I know we all want our kids to have a better life, but make sure you are somehow taking time to teach, to model what good financial management looks like so that when they leave your house, they're actually good with money. That is how you pay it forward. That's one of the reasons it gets me excited about what we did in Millionaire Mission,

• 26:23Brian Preston?

  is that it allows you to give them the roadmap so they can pay it forward. Because yeah, it feels good to load your kids up. Maybe it even looks good to your neighbors. But I'm telling you, you'll be much more successful and it pays a lot better dividends. If you can make them be good adults when they're out there on their own.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, the reality is you can probably create a much better life for them by teaching them how to make those decisions on their own. And that doesn't always feel great in the moment. Telling your kid no or not providing something that maybe you have the ability to provide can be a difficult thing, but you need to recognize, you need to understand, what are my values and what's the ultimate end that I'm working towards? I mean, yeah, I can make my kid happy today and they'd be super pleased and they'd think I was the greatest parent in the world. But at the end of the day, who do I want them to turn into and what do I want them to think about the way that I manage my finances as they get into adulthood and they see, holy cow, I had no idea that

• 27:22Speaker 02

  mom and dad had no money. I had no idea they weren't saving. I had no idea they didn't build up a 401K. Don't let your kids have that realization later in life. Let them be the kids say, holy cow, I want to do exactly what mom and dad did. I want to be able to be in the financial situation my parents got to.

• 27:40Brian Preston?

  Well, I even think it's a mindset issue and the fact that, you know, you think about, if you grew up in scarcity yourself, you probably had to start working when you're 14, 15, 16 years of age because you just had to. It wasn't a choice. And I think that that's something, look, I know you're like, I'm in abundance. I don't want my kids to have to work as hard, but please do not skip the step of them having respect for the value of what hard work is. I still stand by, now, this is, this is Brian speaking. I don't know if Bo will have this opinion, but I did, I modeled this with my oldest child. I sent her to go work fast food. I think that working in food industry was a powerful thing. It teaches work ethic. It teaches, there's nothing wrong with teaching

• 28:20Brian Preston?

  your children to love the value of what hard work can create. And don't shelter them too much from that stuff.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  And so as you're making these decisions, you're trying to navigate this. Begin with the end in mind. Think about the outcome that you ultimately want and begin adjusting your decisions accordingly. If you want security, are you right now, today, putting money into an emergency fund? Do you have three to six months of living expenses built up so that no matter what the unknown unknown is that comes your way, you're going to be okay and you're going to be prepared for it? That's how you build towards security.

• 28:57Brian Preston?

  I mean, and if you want flexibility, here's an easy answer. Get the word obligation out of your life and that means that's got two components to it. Debts, do you, can you pay off your debts? And also, how do you build your career so you own your time that much sooner? That's what's actually going to build flexibility.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  If you want financial success for your children, are you actually teaching them and demonstrating what a healthy relationship with money looks like? Are you modeling for them the type of human being that you ultimately want them to turn into?

• 29:31Brian Preston?

  And of course, financial independence. This is the culmination of those small decisions, stacking one on top of the other. And you, and I've shared this so many times, when you get to your seven-figure success in the future, your future 50, 60-year-old self, 40-year-old self, because most millionaires are in their 40s when they cross that status, you won't know which $1 decision you made or which hundred or thousand-dollar decision, but I'm telling you, it's the culmination of all those small decisions will build that great, big, beautiful tomorrow.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  And so then the question becomes, okay, how? How? I want to begin with an amount. How do I actually do this? How do I put this into practice? Well, that is our fifth pillar. This is a truth that we hold on to when it comes to not allowing yourself to fall into the trap of lack of financial education. Make sure that you take the time to learn. Become a lifetime learner. Become someone who educates yourself on what your dollars are doing and why that makes sense. It's why the fact that you're just here, listening to or watching the Money Guy Show, already shows that you have an affinity, you're moving in the right direction to begin doing this.

• 30:38Brian Preston?

  Yeah, and I like, because we've tried to reach people Where they, where they, where they come to us. If you come to us and you just, you're just beginning this journey, you don't have a lot of resources to you, that's A-OK. Cause you can go to moneyguy.com/resources, we will load you up with tons of free resources, free downloads. We even have some calculators that you can use, all completely free of charge. Our content's always free. If you want to listen to our podcast, watch our YouTube channel, and then maybe you start this journey, you start having some success, you catch some traction, you go, I need a little bit more. I need to have some tools and some things that give me a dashboard view of where I am financially, so I can keep track of the scoreboard. That's why we have the net worth tool. If you're trying to figure out, are

• 31:20Brian Preston?

  you ahead of the curve, behind the curve, or right where you need to, we have the Know Your Number course. And then we have a new and improved Financial Order of Operations. Guys, we have tried to load you up, and you can get every one of those courses at learn.moneyguy.com. And then, look, I've said it before, I still think that if you're starting out, you need the instruction manual, this is a concise way to do it, is Millionaire Mission. We love creating content for you guys. It energizes us. I get the emails. We read the emails. We get the studio tours, people coming by and telling us how we've changed their life. That is the abundance cycle. We want you to come and find us at the beginning of your journey, reach so much success, that those blind spots get so complicated, you go, oh my gosh, this

• 32:05Brian Preston?

  is what the guys are talking about. My life was simple, now it's complicated. I don't know what I don't know. So I'm going to take the relationship to the next level. We'll be waiting. We'll keep the porch light on for you. You come on in and, you know, consider hiring Abound Wealth. We'll do this for you. And guys, we just love creating this content. I'm your host, Brian Preston, Mr. Bo Hanson. Money Guy team, out.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  The Money Guy Show is hosted by Brian Preston and Bo Hanson. Brian and Bo are partners with Abound Wealth Management. Abound Wealth Management is a registered investment advisory firm regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission in accordance and compliance with the securities laws and regulations. Abound Wealth Management does not render or offer to render personalized investment or tax advice through the Money Guy Show. The information provided is for informational purposes only, may not be suitable for all investors, and does not constitute financial, tax, investment, or legal advice. All investments involve a degree of risk, including the risk of loss.

• 33:00Speaker 00

  LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  We can help you sell, market and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once. And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.

• 33:31Speaker 01

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