We asked 1,000 millionaires how they got rich. Here’s what they said.

What do real millionaires actually do with their money? We surveyed 1,000 millionaire households to uncover the habits, savings rates, investing behaviors, home-buying decisions, debt strategies, and wealth-building mindset that helped them achieve financial independence. From net worth and income data to student loans, car purchases, emergency funds, and the Financial Order of Operations, discover the surprising lessons wealthy Americans used to build lasting wealth—and how you can apply them to your own financial journey. ⁠⁠⁠⁠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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  Born from the intensity of a night in the eternal city. Introducing Born in Roma Fragrances by Valentino. Feminine perfume Donna Born in Roma features juicy black currant, central jasmine, soft cashmerin and warm vanilla. Masculine leaning but unisex Womo has notes of fresh violet leaf, aromatic sage, green vetiver and mineral salt. Shop holiday gifts at Macy's.com.

• 0:56Brian Preston?

  You might think you know what the wealthy do with their money, but are you right?

• 1:00Speaker 03

  Brent, I am so excited about this because our clients have literally spent decades building wealth and learning financial lessons along the way. And on today's show, we get to show you just what it looks like to live like a millionaire.

• 1:13Brian Preston?

  I'm Brian, he's Bo, and we're financial advisors here to dive into what the wealthy actually do with their money, how they got there and what you can learn on your way to building your great, big, beautiful tomorrow. With that, let's jump right in.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  All right, Brent, so let's jump right in. Because you know, every year we do this survey. We're ask our clients all these questions. Let's talk about what do they actually look like? Who are these folks? And so just at a glance, let's start with the very beginning. Because it's one of the things we talk about all the time here. We want you to understand where you are and what your net worth is. You take everything that you own and subtract out everything that you owe, and that's your net worth. When we look at our clients, the average net worth for our clients is just under $3.5 million, but the median is about $2.25 million. A half million. It's not skewed by the higher and lower ends in the middle about a two and a half million dollar median net worth amongst our clients at Abound Wealth.

• 2:18Brian Preston?

  So if you're watching this and you're wondering, well, what is my net worth? We would invite you, hey, you've got to start this journey somewhere. Start keeping score of what you own versus what you actually owe. And I would invite you, go to learn.moneyguy.com and start tracking your net worth, even if it's negative. I don't care if you just came out of school and you have a lot of student loan debt. I'm telling you, if you have a dashboard view of what's going on every year, you're going to be better for it and you're going to be able to manage your army of dollar bills that much better.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  And Brian, this is the actual tool that you and I both use every single year when we do our net worth. It's not like this is something we built that we don't use. This is what we like to see front and center. So if we're talking about net worth, now let's talk about one of the things that leads to net worth. It's the size of the shovel. And when we look at the income, the average income and median income for our Abound Wealth clients, the average income is just under $350,000. But if you remove the outliers and look at the median, it's about $262,000.

• 3:22Brian Preston?

  But look, I gotta tell you, if I was outside looking in, I would say, of course, these people have money.

• 3:27Speaker 03

  They hire financial advisors.

• 3:29Brian Preston?

  I think that this is not telling the full story as of, I think, take myself. When I graduated college, my starting salary was $28,500. That's where a CPA graduating in the 90s was. So this isn't where these people started out. Yes, they've created success. We'll get into education. We're getting into careers and other things. But I think you're going to see that how your journey starts does not have to be where it ends. And don't get thrown just because you see all the success. What I want you to do is use what we're sharing, the income, the net worth. Start thinking about the behaviors that can impact your life.

• 4:07Speaker 03

  I love what you just said. How your journey starts does not define how it ends. And so while we wanted to start with net worth and income is to kind of show you what it looks like, beginning with the end in mind. So now let's talk About what were the things that took place? What were the things that happened that allowed our clients to get to the place where they are? And the very first thing, I think this is really interesting, is we ask a question around education. Like, how were you trained? What sort of education do you, did you receive? And I think the common thought is, well, okay, if you, if you're gonna be wealthy, if you're gonna be successful, you must have gone to some prestigious school. You must have gone to the Ivy Leagues. You must have gone somewhere that allowed you to build a network.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  You're that private school person, and that put you in the position to be wealthy. But when we actually look at the numbers, that's not the case.

• 4:58Brian Preston?

  Yeah, I love this because this is one of those things I found when I was started. You know, if you read any of the books out there, like The Millionaire Next Door, Everyday Millionaires, I love that we kind of get to echo these things by even interviewing and surveying our clients. You find out is that what you perceive is often wrong. And education's one of those. If you look at this, 76% of our clients went K through 12 in public education. Even the college they went to, 61% were public universities.

• 5:28Speaker 03

  Now, there are some that went to private schools, but it's not the vast majority. A lot of folks just went to the same education as a lot of you out there. That was what their upbringing was. They didn't have to go out and get hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt going into some prestigious university to get some prestigious degree to be able to attain wealth. That was not the track that they went on. And we don't think that that's necessary for you. If you're someone who's sending your students off to college, or if you're someone who's in college or thinking about pursuing higher education, we do not think it's a necessity to go out and have some crazy expensive,

• 6:09Speaker 03

  crazy debt-riddled education in order to be able to attain success. It's why we talk about when you do go out to take out student loans, we want you to follow the first-year financing rule. Meaning that whatever you accumulate in student loan debt, we don't want you to have more than what you anticipate your first year's salary can So if your first year salary coming out of school for an accountant in the 90s was $28,000, we would not want your total student loan debt to be more than $28,000.

• 6:41Brian Preston?

  Well, I think this is where a lot of people, because those first two slides, the net worth, the income, it's going to be somewhat of a, it's going to be polarizing. Whereas I love that we're going to kind of build this thing up from the foundation now of education and show, no, these people are a lot more like us than you probably realize. And the first is on student loans, because a lot of people will say, well, these are all silver spoons. They must have just had it given to them. No, we found out that our clients, 52% of them actually had to use student loans to get through college. So yes, they're just like us. They're having to go get student loans to make it through college. But that now asks this question, did they follow the Money Guy rules before the Money Guy rules even existed? Because a lot of these people are now the age that this is just good instincts.

• 7:26Brian Preston?

  And yes, we found out that 74% of our clients actually followed the first year financing rule. And if they had student loans, they made sure they kept them below the balance of what their first year salary was going to be.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  I think it's the idea that they were, they intuitively recognized, man, I don't want to be carrying this debt load into my career. I don't want to drag this education along with me for years or even decades into the future. So not only were they forward looking, they were also beginning with the end in mind. We asked them this question, for the job that you have now or for the vocation that you pursued, does it align with your field of study, the degree that you went out and got? And when we asked our clients, we found out that 76% of our clients, three out of four of them, actually work in a field related to their field of study. Meaning the degree that they got in college matches up what they do for a living.

• 8:22Brian Preston?

  Well, now, this is where, look, this one breaks my heart because I love education. I've often felt like it was holding the ladder of opportunity to make you a better version of yourself. And our clients are the best version of that, showing that 76% of them are actually working in their field of study. Unfortunately, if you look The general public, only 27% of the typical American works in their field of study. So that means a lot of people, something that should be a benefit to you and make you a better version of yourself. For a lot of you, it's creating a trap. You're, you're ending up with all of the bad stuff, the student loans, the high interest rates, and then you're just not getting the benefit if you're not even working in the field of study.

• 9:03Brian Preston?

  Guys, this is why we gotta tell you, if you're going to make sure education is going to be an amplifier of your wealth building journey, be a good allocator of resources. I want you to make sure, and by the way, a lot of you, maybe you're past it. Think about this for your kids, think about this for your relatives, think about this for your neighbors down the street, pay this knowledge forward. Don't go to college unless you know what you're going to do and where you're going to end up, because we're, it's that expensive now that you gotta be very deliberate with what the purpose and the why is on your cost of education.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  Now, I love what you said, Ron. You said that education is the ladder that you can crawl up to change the circumstances that you're in. And, and it's a wonderful tool, but it's not a necessity. In the same way, we talked about the average income for our clients. A big shovel is a wonderful tool, but it's not a necessity in order to build wealth. But I'm going to argue this next one. This one is a necessity. This is something because it is more behavioral, and this is something you can control, no matter where you came from, no matter what your shovel looks like, and that's your savings rate. How much you were willing to lean into the first ingredient of wealth creation, how much you're willing to exercise discipline and defer gratification in the future,

• 10:21Speaker 03

  will have a direct implication on how wealthy you are able to become and how healthy your savings rate is.

• 10:28Brian Preston?

  For my very detail oriented people, when we use, because we, this is part of our personalities, when we say savings, we're using that interchangeably with also investing to a large degree. So this means this is your army of dollars that you're putting to work so that you don't have to work so hard in the future with your brain, your back, or your hands. And I'm happy to report, if you look at the data- Of our millionaire clients, 71% of our working abound clients save greater than 20%.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, what I love is a love about this is to be a client of abound wealth, you have to have already attained a certain level of investable assets. Well, even though our clients have had financial success and reached financial success, they did not arrive to the conclusion, okay, well, I'm done. I'm finished. I can put that aside. No, those that are working are still committed to deferring gratification and building towards a great, big, beautiful tomorrow. And I bet if you were to ask them individually, while they might not have started as early or as young as they wanted to, what they would tell you is I started and I never stopped. I started and I consistently got better at deferring gratification into the future. And I figured out for myself, okay, I need to save this

• 11:40Speaker 03

  much money. If I save this much money, then I'll be able to get to the level of wealth I'm trying to achieve.

• 11:44Brian Preston?

  Well, a lot of you might be exactly like I was when I graduated college is that I was ambitious and I was trying to maximize every dollar earned, but I just didn't know what I didn't know and I didn't know what I should be doing. So I would encourage you, I want you to go out to moneyguy.com/resources. And if you're curious, how much should you save and invest for the future? We've created a resource where you actually say, here's what your current age is, when you think you want to retire and build and save for financial independence, we'll tell you your savings and investment rate to shoot for based upon actual math that we've done on the back end. So you don't have to, you know, spend all those calories of mental horsepower. We've done the homework for you. Take us up on that offer.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  So savings rate is this affirmative action that you take. I'm going to actually put effort into doing this thing. And yet, most Americans fall short on that. But then there's another action that sometimes we have to, when it comes to wealth building, think about the decisions that we're not making, the consumption decisions that make us as millionaires look different from our peers. And for most folks, the two most expensive things you're ever going to spend money on are automobiles and homes. And so we want to ask, okay, when we think about how our clients pursue those huge purchases, how did they do it? And how did they think about it? And we found

• 13:08Brian Preston?

  Well, no.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  What did we find? We found that 63% of our clients said that for their most recent car, they were able to pay cash. So over half of our clients are in the financial situation where they can pay cash for a car today, but that wasn't always the case.

• 13:26Brian Preston?

  Yeah, but I, I, I think that, look, I want to give the context and then I, I see where you're taking it, but I want to give the context of the person on the street. 81% of new cars are purchased or financed. And we know that most of those cars are financed for like 70 plus months.

• 13:43Speaker 03

  At least.

• 13:44Brian Preston?

  It's, it's, it's, it's crazy. So a lot of Americans are taking these big purchases, especially the auto. Is this is their first step in rewarding themselves? I think about a lot of college kids. I even was talking to somebody and we, we were talking about the behaviors and like, you sacrifice, sacrifice, you go to school, go to school. And you get out and you're like, I'm going to reward myself with a new car. But you did this.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:09Brian Preston?

  I mean, a lot of people, I've seen so many peers that they think this is what I'm going to do to show my peers that I'm good.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  I finally made it.

• 14:16Brian Preston?

  Successful and I've made it. I'm going to go buy a car. And I'm here to tell you this thing is napalm. Instead of you building wealth, you're going to drive your wealth and that's not successful. Now, I understand if 63% of our clients paid cash, that's for after they probably had a pot of money behind them. I know when I needed to, in the beginning of my journey, trade my time for wages to build, I needed reliable transportation. So how many of our clients on their first car were just like the general public? If 81% of the general public's financing their cars, how many of our clients financed their first car?

• 14:49Speaker 03

  Yes, 71% of our clients said that when it came time to buy my first car, I could not pay for it in cash. I had to borrow money. I had to finance.

• 14:59Brian Preston?

  So we want people to understand it's okay if you have to use debt to get yourself going to your J O B. But you better have some foundational rules because just as quickly as you truly can afford it, we want you paying cash for your vehicles. Cash is always the best way to pay for things that. are rapidly depreciating. But if you're in that desperate situation where you need reliable transportation, follow 238. And if you've never heard of 238, let us explain it to you. 20% down. That way you make sure you actually own a little bit of equity into this car that you're purchasing. You make sure that you don't finance it longer than three years. Look, the dealership, they're going to want to take you out to 84 months. Don't let them do that. They'll say you can afford

• 15:42Brian Preston?

  anything, a few hundred dollars a month. No, three years, that will keep your back pocket in your purse honest. And make sure that your payments don't exceed 8% of your gross income. This will keep you safe.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  Now, it's not just how you buy the car that matters. It's how you use the car, how you actually consume that purchase. So we asked our clients this question. When you purchase a new car, how long do you drive it? And we found that 83%, the vast majority of our clients, when they buy a car, they drive it for greater than seven years. They're not the people that are changing out and replacing a brand new car every two to three years.

• 16:22Brian Preston?

  Do you see though, this is why we use the term financial mutant, is because you're going to find out that our millionaire clients, just like we process the world a little differently, I bet you're watching a personal finance show right now, you process the world differently. So it's not going to surprise you that 65% of Americans drive cars for five years or less. You heard me say, these cars depreciate like a rock. I mean, they go down in value very rapidly. So you're actually rewarded if you drive cars for seven plus years, because that means you have less depreciation. You're not making more bad decisions. You're actually just driving these depreciating vehicles longer. There's a lot

• 17:03Brian Preston?

  of success built in that deferred gratification and that consistency of how you use vehicles.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  All right. So that's cars. Now, let's talk about homes. For most folks, this is often the largest purchase you will ever make in your life. And we know that right now, in this country, as we've seen home prices run up and increase, we know that the median home value in the US, according to the Federal Reserve,

• 17:29Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web. Like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Born from the intensity of a night in the eternal city. Introducing Born in Roma Fragrances by Valentino. Feminine perfume Donna Born in Roma features juicy black currant, central jasmine, soft cashmerin, and warm vanilla. Masculine leaning but unisex Womo has notes of fresh violet leaf, aromatic sage, green vetiver, and mineral salt. Shop holiday gifts at Macy's.com.

• 18:23Speaker 03

  Is about $403,000. So the question comes, okay, if that's the median, how do our clients stack up? What do their houses look like? We've already shared with you that the average net worth of our clients is around $3.5 million. The median net worth is about $2.5 million. But when it comes to homes, when it comes to their main residence, the median home value for our clients is about $700,000. The average home price of our clients' current market value is right at about $850,000.

• 18:57Brian Preston?

  This is one of those weird distortions that's coming from just what's happened in the housing market in the last five years. I think a $700,000 median house probably five years ago was, what? $450,000?

• 19:08Speaker 03

  Maybe even less than that.

• 19:09Brian Preston?

  I mean, so that's why it's all, it also depends upon the market you live in. We do have clients that live in high cost of living areas where these houses can go well beyond $1 million, $2 million. But I think overall, the important thing is to understand, hey, don't let, house is shelter, but you need to be careful how you structure it because it can be such a big expense category in your financial house.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  Well, and I think a lot of people are under this impression that, okay, well, houses have gotten so expensive. And I know I've got to put 20%. Down and I just, the house keeps running away. I'm never going to be able to own a home. It's just not realistic in the world in which we live. And so we said, okay, let's ask our clients. When you bought your house, when it came time for you to buy your first home and you're finally crossing into homeownership, the homeownership category, what was your down payment? How much did you save? How much you put down? And we found that 79% of our clients, almost 80% of our clients put down less than 20% on their first home. Brian, did you put down 20%?

• 20:11Brian Preston?

  No, I did not put down 20%.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  I did not put down 20% of my first house. And we believe that when you go to buy your first home, you do not have to put 20% down to be able to come into homeownership.

• 20:24Brian Preston?

  Yeah, I think that hopefully this liberates some of you who might be sitting on the sidelines. You know, for life purposes, it makes sense for you to buy this house for your growing family. And you fear this because you had so many talking heads telling you 20 plus percent forever. And then here you are, you find out that the majority of people who are really good with money, put down a lot less than 20%. I think I put down 5% on my first house.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  I think I was three and a half on mine.

• 20:48Brian Preston?

  So it is one of those things, but also, look, we live in a unique time and we've done shows on, is it better to buy versus rent in this current marketplace? And in a lot of cities, it's better to rent. And that's one of those things. That's why I would encourage you. Don't feel like you have to get pressured into this. I would, I want you to go out to moneyguy.com/resources. Once again, we have a home buying calculator. We also have home buying checklist. So you can go through and figure out if you go through the decision matrix, does this even make sense based upon how often I'm moving from my job or my lifestyle? Go use these tools and resources to know that you're living your best life and not forcing the decision.

• 21:25Speaker 03

  All right, Brian. So we've talked about their net worth. We've talked about our clients' income. We've talked about how they were educated. We've talked about their large, major purchases. But now let's talk a little about their mindset and their plan. Because you guys know, if you've listened to us for any amount of time, we've come up with a financial order of operations. Brian, will you bring that thing up for me?

• 21:44Brian Preston?

  I got it here somewhere. Come on. There it is. There it is.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  It is our nine step process. To help you understand what to do with your next dollar. And the way that we were able to develop the financial order of operations was both through our personal experiences, building our own wealth, as well as our professional experiences, interacting with clients who've been able to build wealth. And so I said, okay, let's put this to the test. How do our clients perceive? And how did they actually realistically live through the financial order of operations? Because wealthy folks, folks who've been able to build wealth, understand the value of what you're doing with your dollars and what you're not doing with your dollars. So we said, okay, let's figure out right off the bat, one of the very early steps, the financial order of operations is high interest debt.

• 22:28Speaker 03

  It's step number three, and a lot of Americans fall into this trap. I think the average credit card balance carried from month to month right now is right around $6,000 carried over where you're paying punitive interest rates. So we asked our wealthy clients, question number one, do you use credit cards? Some, some people out there would suggest, don't ever use credit cards. You just don't get them, you don't use them. We don't fall into that camp, and we've found that over 97% of our clients, almost all of them said, yeah, we use credit cards. We get points, we get cash back. We use them as a tool in our financial tool belt.

• 23:07Brian Preston?

  But 99% say, you know, because remember, we always say credit card use, a okay. Credit card debt, meaning we're paying it off every month? No way. We do not want to have an hour. Look, I'll be honest, when I saw this one, I was like, who in the world is here at Abound Wealth is carrying credit card debt? I don't, I don't know why this number is not 100%. But if you get enough people in a population, you're always going to have the, the crazy outliers. So I guess I'll take 99%, but that number should be 100%. That's not me, that's not you, that's not anybody hopefully who's here on staff. I want you to aspire to be 100% debt free on credit card debt.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  So one of the questions is, okay, well, why are they able to, why don't your clients have to have? Have credit card debt. Why don't they get themselves into that pickle where they have to swipe the card to cover some costs they could not afford? And the answer is because they understand the financial order of operations. Brian, hold it up for me one more time.

• 24:09Brian Preston?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  They know that in step four, one of the, again, the early stages is to have a fully funded emergency reserve, that thing that prevents you from being derailed by life's unknown unknowns. We've found that 93% of our clients, 93% of our clients have a fully funded emergency fund. They know that no matter what comes their way, they have enough liquid capital to be able to bridge the gap between what's going on today and what they hope to be going on in the future when they get through that hiccup.

• 24:42Brian Preston?

  And remember, emergency reserves are so important in the financial order of operations. It's not just one step. It's step one and it's step four. So, don't sleep on that. That's what's going to protect you from making desperate decisions. That's what's going to keep you so that you're grounded and have peace of mind. So, you don't even mess up stuff that's going on in your investments later in time because you know, hey, even if I lost my job, I'm going to be okay and I'm not going to have to do crazy things with either my portfolio or having to rely on current credit card debts or do anything that's going to get me in a bad financial situation.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  And look, we keep referencing it. If you want to know more about the financial order of operations, go to moneyguy.com/resources and you can download your very free copy. You can download your very own free copy.

• 25:25Brian Preston?

  It could be your first and your free copy.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  It can be your first and your free. It can even be your laminated copy if you laminate it. So, we want you to understand that there is a better way to do money. We've helped build the plan for what that should look like. And our clients, they've figured that out. They've actually lived that in reality. So, we said, okay, now let's focus a little bit on their mindset. We know what they did tactically. We know how they approach handling their money. But who are they when you get inside of their minds and you think about when they figured out how personal finance works? And so, we just asked this question. At what age did personal finance become serious for you? At what age did you start figuring? How money works and how you should interact with it.

• 26:11Speaker 03

  And we've found that 58% of our clients got serious about their personal finances before age 30.

• 26:19Brian Preston?

  Yeah, remember, I've already kind of talked about that our clients see the financial world differently. We see the world differently. You're watching personal finance, finance, finance content. So you also see the world differently. These are all indicators that you might be a financial mutant. And I love it when people discover the power of compounding growth and early and often is your best friend. And that's why we often talk about what's called the wealth multiplier. And this is kind of the thing, y'all know my journey on becoming wealthy was as being the poor kid sitting in my economics class in high school. And Mr. Morrow told me if I could save a hundred dollars a month, he told the whole class, a hundred dollars a month, y'all would all be millionaires. And I was working fast food and I was like, holy cow, I can do this.

• 27:04Brian Preston?

  What seemed impossible now is sitting right before me. You too can build wealth beyond your wildest imagination. If you understand that your money can actually work harder than you can. What I think people would be shocked to find out is that when you reach actual financial independence, if you put your army of dollars to work early and often, between 77 to 95% of your total account value at retirement is probably going to be the growth of those assets. I would encourage you, go to moneyguy.com/resources. We have calculators, we have resources like this. You can actually put in what you have, you can put in what your age is and see how powerful every dollar you have can be for your future.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I want to pause real quick because maybe you're out there listening to this and maybe you're not younger than 30. I mean, we, we all understand conceptually that the earlier we save, the better. And that the absolute best time to start investing and saving would have been yesterday, which makes today by default, the second best time. But I want you to hear these numbers. We said that a vast majority, 52% of our clients or 58% of our clients figured out before 30. But listen to this, even for clients that work with us today, 20% of Found out in their, they figured out personal finance in their early 30s. 12% in their late 30s. And there were still another 7% that didn't figure it out to the 40s. So maybe this is the first time you're seeing this. Maybe this is the first time that you're interacting with this content.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  It's okay, even if you're that 40 year old. Every dollar that you save has the potential to turn into $7 by the time that you retire. But you have to start today. If you've delayed, if you haven't caught the bug yet. Make sure that you catch it and your future self will thank you for beginning to take it seriously.

• 28:52Brian Preston?

  I want to bring it back to something that was said at the beginning. How your story begins is not defined how it ends. And I think for a lot of you, I grew up in a household where I was told constantly. You know, the way you get wealthy is you have to be born into it. That the system's kind of stacked against those that don't come from money. And I remember when I read, you know, I had the Mr. I had the Maro moment where he told me a hundred dollars a month. That's where I understood compounding growth. But it wasn't until I read The Millionaire Next Door by Dr. Stanley and Danko. That I, that I quickly learned that, you know what? 80% of millionaires are first generation. And then once you know it, that we fast forward the, the 30 years into my career. And we're interviewing our own clients.

• 29:34Brian Preston?

  And we find out that just like the 80% that Dr. Stanley shared back in the mid 90s. We find out 74% of our clients also are first generation. Meaning they didn't inherit this money. It came from them doing the hard work of deferred gratification. Being disciplined, saving a little bit today to build your great, big, beautiful tomorrow. You can do this too.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  If you even just think about the math, we said that the median net worth of our clients is about $2.5 million. That means that if 74% of our folks received an inheritance of less than $25,000. That inheritance likely represents less than 1% of their total wealth. These are folks who understand how money works and they have a mindset that.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  Just because I'm in a situation today does not mean that I'm gonna have to be in that situation tomorrow, that I get to take apart in controlling what my future looks like. And we believe, and we've always kind of anecdotally believed this, that our clients and the folks we interact with, they generally think that opportunity is gonna be on my side, that tomorrow will likely look better than today, that I have the ability to impact my future positively. So we asked our clients, hey, when you think about your mindset and the way that you view the world, and the way that you think about opportunities, would you describe yourself as an optimist who always sees the glass half full, or as a pessimist who always sees the glass half empty? And we found that 82% of our clients, from a mindset perspective, they would consider

• 31:08Speaker 03

  themselves and identify themselves as being optimists versus being pessimists.

• 31:13Brian Preston?

  And that, once again, is a separation from the general public, because unfortunately, there's a lot of people out in the general public that classify themselves as pessimistic. And I get it, look, if you watch the nightly news, you know, the whole, and I even put it in the book, Millionaire Mission, when I wrote it, is that if it bleeds, it leads. It seems like the news media has also discovered, hey, if we create something that makes you feel on edge, or scared, or that there's a catastrophic, catastrophic thing coming your way, they'll keep your eyes and ears that much more peeled. It is so hard to work against the current, but I'm here to tell you, guys, these are exciting times.

• 31:54Brian Preston?

  There's gonna be lots of opportunity for you to build wealth, to let your money work harder than you can. You just kind of have to see through the noise. And that's what we've tried, to create a safe space for you to come get the best education out there in the marketplace. And our goal is, is to help you really maximize the abundance cycle. And what is the abundance cycle? Is that I have literally, Bo and I have created an entire platform for you to learn our concepts, grow through them, and then apply them. And once you create so much success that your simple life, it seemed like all you had to do was know your right savings rate, you had to put that money to work, all of a sudden Your life becomes complex. You're thinking about taxes. You're thinking about retirement planning.

• 32:37Brian Preston?

  You're thinking about education planning. You think about insurance and all the things you just don't know what you don't know. We're gonna leave the porch light on for you and I want you to consider maximizing the abundance cycle to the next level by becoming a client of the firm. We do work with clients all across the country and we'd love for you to give us a chance to show you why we're that special. I'm your host Brian, joined by Mr. Bo. You too can be part of our next millionaire study. Money Guy out.

• 33:04Speaker 04

  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.

• 33:39Speaker 05

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• 34:34Speaker 07

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