How To Not Suck With Money

Start a free trial, and get 50% off your first year of Monarch Core Tier with code MONEYGUY at https://bit.ly/monarch-moneyguy Building wealth doesn't require a huge income or a finance degree—it requires the right habits. In this episode, Brian and Bo break down five essential personal finance principles that anyone can use to become better with money, eliminate costly financial mistakes, harness compound interest, pay off high-interest debt, and start investing for long-term financial independence. Whether you're just beginning your financial journey or trying to rebuild after setbacks, these simple wealth-building strategies can help you develop better money habits and make smarter financial decisions. Learn why starting early matters, how the Financial Order of Operations works, and why consistent investing often beats trying to outsmart the market. ⁠⁠⁠⁠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.

• 0:00Brian Preston?

  54% of US adults say they know a great deal, or at least a fair amount about personal finances. The other 46%, not so much.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Brian, I am so excited because we believe that anyone can build wealth, even if you think that you're not that good with money. And today, we're going to cover five simple things that you need to know to get your finances on the right track so that you can start building wealth.

• 0:24Brian Preston?

  Just in case you're confused, I'm Brian, he's Bo, and this is The Money Guy Show, where two financial advisors give you the knowledge and tools you need to be better with money. And with that, let's jump right in.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Brian, we say all the time that building wealth is simple, surprisingly simple, but it's not all that easy. And there are a lot of people out there that frankly, are just not very good with money. Or perhaps, it doesn't come to them naturally. What we want to communicate today is that if you want to start being better with your finances, there are really five key concepts. And if you can grasp these concepts, it'll change your world.

• 1:05Brian Preston?

  Yeah, let's start with one that I think defines both of us, is how your journey started does not define how it ends.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Look, some people are in a bad spot because of their decisions. They got in consumer debt, they didn't save, they lived beyond their means. And other people might just have poor circumstances. They were born into a unique situation with a unique family, or there were unique constraints, or a unique thing happened. But either way, just because those truths might exist, it does not mean that you are helpless to impacting what the future looks like.

• 1:39Brian Preston?

  Yeah, I think this is one that I would encourage, and we'll bring this full circle at the end when I share some stats about our own clients and their mindsets. But guys, I don't care how bad your situation is, you can improve it. There's going to be a way, and we're going to give you the tips, the tricks, and all the ways to cut through all the things and struggles you might be having right now. And the first key thing is that you just need to understand there's three key ingredients to wealth building. If you can understand these mindset and techniques, you're going to be better for it. The first is discipline. Can you live on less than you make? That's the part that's going to create the margin, or AKA money. And if you give that enough time, man, oh man, is that time an important component in this?

• 2:22Brian Preston?

  You can watch compounding growth do its magic.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  And if you don't believe us, I'll prove it to you. Because there is a singular behavior, whether you're awful with money, or you've never made any money decisions at all. We have a little test that we think if you will execute this, you can prove to yourself that you can build wealth. And we call it the 5% test. And it's literally this easy. Whatever your paycheck is, whether you're an hourly employee, salary employee, don't even worry about taxes, 401K, health, any of that kind of stuff. Whatever dollar number hits your checking account on a weekly basis, every other week, monthly, whatever it is, whatever that dollar amount is, I just want you to take that number and multiply it times 0.05. That's 5% of that. I just want you to take 5% of your net pay,

• 3:09Speaker 01

  and I want you to just put it in a savings account, a high-yield savings account. You don't have to overcomplicate it. Google best high-yield savings account, and just park it in there. Only 5%. You take that at your next paycheck, next week, next month, whatever it hits, take 5% of that, put it in that high-yield savings account. And then next month, do the same thing. 5% put in that account. And then the next month, 5%, do it again. If you can do this for three months consecutively, if you can walk away from spending just 5% of your net take-home pay, you have proven that you have that very first ingredient. You've proven that you have discipline, that you can create margin, and that you can do that over a period of time.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  If you can pass the 5% test, then you can build wealth, no matter where you're starting from.

• 3:57Brian Preston?

  What I like about this, give us 5%, will change your life, is that I think for a lot of people, you get overwhelmed. You just don't know what you don't know about money. You don't know where to start. You don't know where to even put this money to work. And that's where this just clears the noise, you know, full stop. All you have to think about is, hey, what's 5% of my income? And can I do this for three months? Because if you do this for three months, you know what that starts to look like? It looks like a habit.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 4:23Brian Preston?

  And if you set up a habit, you literally will change your life. And I like that, because a lot of people can get overwhelmed on which system is in savings rate. Is it 10%? Is it 15%? Is it 25%? Like you guys, don't get caught up in it. Full stop, just give us 5%. And I think you can do 5%. Literally, it will change your life.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Now, the second principle we want you to understand, and we want you to come to grips with, is the fact that compounding, compounding interest specifically, it can either work for you, or it can work against you. And you have to choose which side of that equation you're going to be on.

• 5:03Brian Preston?

  So let me give you a little indicator on how the mind works. Look, as humans, we overestimate what we can do for a year, but we way underestimate what happens in the long term. I'm talking about five, 10, 15 years in the future. And the way our mind works is, is that we think linearly. So you save a dollar, you know, next year you save, you know, next month you're going to save another dollar, and it just stacks. And at the end of the month, the end of the year, you have $12. No, that's not the way it works. The reality is, money compounds. So instead of it being this slow, straight line, if you look at the visual when we zoom out, it's actually, you see the hockey stick of your money working harder than you can. Meanwhile, just that linear number just sits down there in a very slow, steady pace.

• 5:48Brian Preston?

  Don't underestimate the value of what your money can do over the long term.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Well, and the question is, okay, well, how does this happen? What's the actual mathematic behind it? When you say exponential growth, what are you really telling me? Well, think about this. If you have $100, and you invest that $100, and it makes a 10% rate of return, now you have $110. That's $10 in gains that you had on the initial $100 you put to work. Now, if you take that $110, and then it earns 10%, now you have $121, which is $11 in gains. So not only did the $100 you start with make money, but then the money that your money made, made money. And with compound interest, that happens over and over and over again.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  It's like a snowball rolling down the hill that gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. It's why your dollars can grow exponentially, not just linearly.

• 6:46Brian Preston?

  What I love about this illustration is, look, this is the basics. This is showing 100, how 100 then turns into 110, and so forth. What I love is that you get to year 30, you still might only be saving the $100 a month, but the monthly compound interest change is going to be thousands of dollars. And that's why, if you just put a little bit today, you really can make huge changes for the future. But it brings it back to the point, is are you harnessing the power of compounding interest? Is this friend, or is this foe? Bo, walk them through what we see when people turn compounding interest into the foe.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was either Benjamin Franklin, or maybe it was Michael Scott, who said, "Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world." But do you have to choose? Is that wonder going to be on my side, or is it going to be against me? Because when you're investing, compound interest is working for you. It's the thing that's allowing your dollars to grow. It's the thing that's allowing your money to work harder than you can. And if you don't believe us, we actually do an annual survey of all of our Abound Wealth clients. And we ask them, hey, how was it that you came to be wealthy? What was the thing that you used to create your wealth? And over 76% of our clients, so three out of four of our clients,

• 8:03Speaker 01

  said that they reached their first million dollars just by simply saving and investing. It wasn't because they had some unique talent. It wasn't because they inherited their money. It wasn't because they were some C-suite executive. It was just steady saving and investing through time, allowing their money to work for them, creating that exponential growth.

• 8:25Brian Preston?

  Yeah, that's why, you just said it, but I want to get into the details on it. Look, the answers on, because I think a lot of people think you have to either be born into it, you have to be some supreme talent, like a virtuoso, that's one of our categories, or a senior executive making huge annual incomes. Or maybe you even have to, because you watch enough social media, you've got to be an entrepreneur, you invented something. And what's magical to me is that of all those categories, it's the 76.4%, just to echo what you said, that are savers and investors. It's the boring stuff. It's the simple stuff. That's why I love creating this type of content, because I want everybody to know that they can do this.

• 9:06Brian Preston?

  It's, yes, not everybody makes it through the journey of becoming a millionaire, but the steps are really simple if you actually put the plan to action.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  And so, just how powerful can this be? Well, think about this. If you started investing $200 a month, starting at age 20, and let's say that you earned a 10% rate of return on average, by the time that you got to retirement, 45 years in the future, a full working career, that $200 a month invested would turn into almost $2.1 million. And as impressive as that is, maybe the more impressive part is that you actually only saved $108,000 of that 2.1. The other 1.98, nearly $2 million, actually came from growth. It was earnings. It was your money.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Making money. If you can do this, if you can create the, if you can exercise the discipline to create the margin and apply it over a long enough time period, compound interest can change your life.

• 10:12Brian Preston?

  That's why if you're, even if you're listening to this on the podcast version, I'd invite you to come, please look at this visual that we have on the show is because you'll see, and I'm going to try to do the best job of describing this. In the graph, we have green is the growth, blue is the principal contribution. The blue and the green really for the first 12 years look like they're about equal. So that's why I always tell people, even if you have good habits or good instincts, you get motivated. A lot of people just drop out after the first 10 years because they're like, man, because probably more than likely the market gets beat up somewhere in that first 10 year journey. And you're like, I don't know if I believe this. Guys, I'm telling you, stick with it-ness is rewarded because if you go into this journey, the long term,

• 10:54Brian Preston?

  you notice all of a sudden on the visual, the blue is minuscule. It's so tiny, but the green and the growth, because those army of dollar bills start doing more and more for you. It is worth repeating that 90, I mean, let's do this. So I don't have to do public math. $108,000 divided by 2.1 million dollars is, is 5% is your contribution. 95% is the army of dollar bills growing for you. You gotta stay in there and stick with it to make this actually turn into something for you.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, okay. So I'm sold. I want to start using compound interest for my benefit. What should I do? Well, that's why we say, hey, we want you to aim for saving 25% of your gross income. Cause the earlier you can do that, if you can save 25% of your gross income and you can have it put aside and invested and begin compounding for you, what's going to happen? Is that pot of money is going to grow to a size that now it can provide for all of your living needs. It can literally work harder and provide for your expenses better than you can. And that's what we call financial independence. So the earlier you figure that out, the easier the path will be. But remember, compound interest, it can either work for you or it can work against

• 12:11Speaker 01

  you. And if you're someone out there carrying high interest debt, you are allowing it to work against you.

• 12:18Brian Preston?

  Yeah. I mean, and the big thing, I know when we gave like big goals, like 25%, realize you count your employer's contribution in that. A lot of people get turned, thrown off by that. And also if you're under 30 years of age, I mean, even though give you grace to say it doesn't have to be that big. But Bo is spot on. High interest debt, chainsaw dangerous guys. This is where I think young people, when you first start out on your journey, you look, you've been in school, you've been deferring all of your happiness because you're investing yourself, investing yourself. So the first thing you get out and you're like, let me reward myself for all this hard work. Let's go get a nice car so that my friends, my peers, everybody can see how successful I am. Guys, that is horrible. Or maybe you get that first credit card and you run up, you go and

• 13:01Brian Preston?

  buy all the latest gadgets, or maybe you dress yourself in the fashions to show the success you have. Guys, if anything, you are turning compounding interest against you. And we need to show you why that is a disaster versus the flex that you think it is.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. When you have high interest debt, it's not just kind of working against you, it's actively working against you. Let's assume that you had a hundred dollars a month of free and clear margin. And let's just say that you took that hundred dollars a month and you invested it over a five year period. And let's say that you could earn an 8% interest rate on that. So a hundred dollars each month over five years, 60 months, earning 8%. That would turn into $7,348. So over $7,300 of compound interest working for you. But now let's flip and let's say that you're the average American out there. And right now, we know that the average American cares a credit card balance of $6,768. And let's say that now, because you have that high interest

• 14:00Speaker 01

  debt, instead of being able to invest that hundred dollars a month, you have to take that hundred dollars a month and apply it towards that high interest debt. And right now, the average interest rate on credit cards is somewhere around 23%. So you start with a $6,768 balance. You pay a hundred dollars a month towards that credit card every single month for five years or 60 months. Do you recognize that by the time you get to the end of that 60 month period, that $6,768 of debt without you buying another thing, without you swiping one more time, without you charging a single purchase, has now grown to be over $10,000. It's literally

• 14:43Speaker 01

  gotten bigger, not smaller. Just having compound interest work against you, instead of working for you, created a $17,000 swing over a five year period with just a hundred dollars a month. That's how powerful it can be when it decides to go the other way.

• 15:04Brian Preston?

  Well, it even gets worse than that. It's not only just the opportunity cost of that central $17,000 spread. It's the five years that you'll never get back. And that's what we want to kind of cover. You know, yes, please avoid high interest debt and extinguish it as fast as you possibly can. But in a minute, we're going to show you why that timing matters.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Brian, when it comes to money, we all have a different story. Some of us did not have a lot growing up and it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking, I'm just bad with money, or I'll never get ahead.

• 15:36Brian Preston?

  But the good news is even if you've made some dumb decisions with money, like we all have, that story doesn't have to stay the same. Every financial decision you make is a chance to start writing your new chapter.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, Brian, my wife and I, we use Monarch and we love it because it gives us clarity around our money so that we can make better financial decisions. And it brings together all of our bank accounts, all of our investment accounts, and all of our spending in one place. So when we do that, we can see clearly where our money is going. And also, more importantly, we can see where we don't want our money to be going.

• 16:11Brian Preston?

  Monarch also helps you stay on track. You can set savings goals, monitor your progress, and get the AI weekly recap, which shows you spending trends and upcoming expenses.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. You don't have to stay stuck in the same financial habits forever. Your next money decision can be the start of a very different story.

• 16:30Brian Preston?

  Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code MONEYGUY at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code MONEYGUY.

• 16:44Brian Preston?

  A lot of you are like, right now, you feel motivated. You saw this. You're like, I want that money. I want that money working for me, not working against me. Should I do, how do you pay it off? Should I do what's called the avalanche method, which means I prioritize the highest interest rate first? Or do I do the snowball? Or maybe I'm more of a behavioral person where I need to pay off the low balance so that I can get some momentum and see this thing pick up speed as I'm paying off more and more debt. I'll be honest with you, this is where we're different from other financial channels. We don't care.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 17:15Brian Preston?

  Know thyself. If you're a financial nerd, if you're, you're kind of nerdy and you know how interest rates work and you're also very disciplined, do the avalanche because it's going to minimize the interest cost. But if you're a person, you're more about you need it in front of you. You need the motivation. You need the small wins to keep this good habit and this momentum going forward. There is nothing wrong with a snowball because I think at the end of the day, they get you to the positive point of extinguishing that high interest debt that much faster.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  All right. So you've figured out this key concept that compound interest can work for me and it's more viable than it works against me. That leads now to key concept number three. The earlier you start, the earlier you start figuring this out, the earlier you start getting out of high interest debt, the earlier you actually start saving and investing for the future, the easier it is to build wealth.

• 18:08Brian Preston?

  Yeah. Let's talk about the power of starting early. This is one of my favorite slides that we love to show is that we've, we've kind of laid out the groundwork on this. If you just, if you're 20 years of age, it less than a hundred dollars a month will turn you into a millionaire. It's actually right around $95 a month. For a 30 year old, it's $340 a month. You're still landing at the same place, but because you started 10 years later, you notice it got four times harder. You had to basically save four times as much money. And then for a 40 year old, to get to the same million dollars at retirement, you have to save a thousand $52 a month. Do you see the difference between the 20 year old versus the 40 year old?

• 18:49Brian Preston?

  Ten times harder. This is why we always tell people, look, you don't have to take a lot, just a little bit. That's why I'm willing to give a lot of grace for somebody in their twenties. Just do something. I don't care if it's 5%, I don't care if it's 10%, just do something because a lot of us, we look up at our peers who are maybe in their thirties and forties and we go, but look at what they're making. Look at what they have. Guys, they're looking back at you and going, man, it is 10 times easier if you'll just do something. When we do our millionaire survey of our clients, you know what they all say, even though these are very successful people, I wish I'd have just started sooner. I wish I could go talk to my younger self. This is the power of starting early.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  So why is it so much easier earlier? And why does it get so hard? Well, it's because of this concept that we have called the wealth multiplier. And it's this idea, my money, because I recognize that time is one of the most important ingredients in wealth creation. The longer it works, the harder it can work for me. So if I'm a 20 year old, every dollar that I deploy and put to work has the ability to turn into $88 by the time I retire. That's how hard it can work. But if I wait until 30, every dollar that I save and deploy only has the ability to turn into $23 by the time I retire. Still respectable, but very, very

• 20:10Speaker 01

  different than 88 times. If I wait until I'm 40 to begin taking it seriously, to begin thinking about building for the future, every dollar I invest only has the ability to turn into $7. If I'll wait all the way until I'm 50, now every dollar will only turn into $3. You can imagine how much harder you have to work if every dollar only turns into $3 versus if you took hold of it when every dollar had the potential to turn into 88. If you want to do it light and do it right, then do it early. If you want to do it wrong and do it long, then wait. Those two paths are not the same.

• 20:49Brian Preston?

  I think a lot of you are starting to notice a trend here. If you want to maximize the wealth multiplier, you're going to have to think differently about money. This is where the whole financial mutant mindset comes from. Cause we live in this consumption society that's going to try to tell you, look your best, you know, show off so or flex so people think that you're delivering your best life. Look, we're all in this social media world with Instagram, do it for the gram and so forth. But that leads to key concept number four, which is it's better to be rich than to look rich. But you know, we just recently had a huge thing that, you know, took over the zeitgeist, which was Taylor Swift got married. And I thought it was so funny is that some of the key comments that came out of that was that Adam Sandler did the, you know,

• 21:32Brian Preston?

  he did the officiating of this, this thing. And everybody was so impressed because Adam actually dressed up. And this guy, you know, that's, that's all the comments are like, well, Adam Sandler usually looks so comfortable. I'm not going to pick on him too much because I'm hoping at some point I get to meet Adam Sandler and I don't want him to be like, hey, I heard you on the show, pick on how I look. What's up with that? No, no, in all reality, we have done this so many times, the richer people are, it seems like the broker or the sloppier they look.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  The less they care about the image they're portraying.

• 22:04Brian Preston?

  So you need to understand this consumption society we live in where they're trying to tell you, this is what you need to do. Somehow it's disconnected from the people who are actually living the life that a lot of us want.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  It's not, it's not just anecdotal. There's actually been research studies to suggest this. Experian found that 61% of households that make over $250,000 of household income, don't actually drive luxury brand automobiles. Instead, even those very high income households, they drive Hondas, Toyotas and Fords. Very reasonable, non-luxury brand automobiles. They behave differently than the world would suggest that wealthy people behave.

• 22:46Brian Preston?

  Yeah, this is, you know, the millionaire X door, you know, everything you're always, wealth is silent. It's that stealth wealth that you don't realize is on the net worth statement that's doing all the heavy lifting. So if you want to start practicing, how do you be rich versus just looking rich? Lean into what we were talking about. That first concept or ingredient of wealth building, which is discipline, practice deferred gratification, where you just give a little bit today to create big results in the future.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Now, we're not saying defer everything. We don't want you to not live your life at all today. If you're in the early stages or if you're newish to wealth building, we still want you to bedazzle your basic life. We still want you to create memories and do wonderful things at this present age and present stage, but they don't have to have a huge price tag. Figure out how you can create those experiences, create those items, create those events that still allow you to enjoy your life, but doesn't have you robbing from your future self.

• 23:43Brian Preston?

  Yeah. And then also automate and avoid the lifestyle creep. A lot of people, I think that we, we think when we get out of high school, well, good. And everybody will quit looking out at the, the student parking lot and putting my value on what type of car I drive. Unfortunately, it seems like is, I know when I moved into a neighborhood and you get in your messy middle thirties, it feels like we're still all measuring a little bit. So the way you can avoid lifestyle creep and make the good habits that much easier and the bad habits that much harder, let's automate what your savings goals are. Let's automate where the money goes from a spending. That's why budgeting and tracking your expenses can do a lot of good in making this automatic for the people and creating success that just happens from your good habits.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Again, none of this is like overly complicated. None of it's super, super complex, but it is difficult and it does require discipline. It does require taking an active role in your financial life. But one of the things we want you to make sure of is that, don't confuse taking an active role with overestimating what you actually have control over. Cause key concept number five, we want you to know is in life, when it comes to your finances, there are some things that you can control and there are some things that you can't control. And you need to understand what the difference is between those two.

• 25:03Brian Preston?

  Yeah. And what I love about this is we're about to turn things upside down with one of the worst things that's going to work against your finances is how the media or the world puts things in front of you to try to scare the heck out of you. Let's just say it. If it, it bleeds, it leads, you've heard all the stereotypes and then you got political world, you got the news world. All this stuff can really put you in a place where you lose your focus on what you actually control. And that, what I like, and we're going to turn this upside down because like tax policy, tax policy is one of those things. You'll see it in a news cycle for months on end. You don't, outside of your vote, you don't control tax policy, but you know what you can control? Tax efficiency. You can, you can look at your account structure.

• 25:48Brian Preston?

  You can look at your investments in different accounts and say, hey, how do I structure my life that I work within the rules that are before me, but I get to keep or grow as much of my money as possible? That is going, that's the healthy way to process what you can control.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Even when you're doing that, when you're trying to discerning those accounts, even just recognizing that different accounts are treated differently. Pre-tax accounts operate one way from a tax standpoint and tax-free accounts operate a different way. And then after-tax accounts even operate a third way. And so when you begin to understand that, man, the types of investments I hold inside of each one of these accounts, and even the way that I saved each one of these accounts, it may not affect the tax, it may not affect the tax policy. It may not affect what the tax rules are, but what it can affect is how much tax I actually pay. And the more active of a role I can take in recognizing how those things work, the more tax efficient my financial life can be.

• 26:46Brian Preston?

  The next one that is another emotional play, market performance. I think about how often, you know, when we're in great times like this, it feels like everybody's looking for the shortcut or best way to, to top the market or make even more. But then when the market gets its teeth kicked in and it's actually the best time to invest, everybody's scared to death and they don't know what to do. I'm telling you, that's the stuff you can't control. Let me tell you what you can control. If you want to take this to the healthy side of things, you know, when the market's getting its teeth kicked in, you can control your savings. That's where the financial mutants say, hey, markets are down. Here's a financial mutant opportunity to get in while the getting's good. Just like Warren Buffett talks about, don't go out there

• 27:27Brian Preston?

  with thimbles, go out there with buckets. So let's do it. Same thing. If you look at what's happening in the market volatility, you can't control that, but you can control asset allocation. How much of your money is risky? How much of it is aggressive going out there for the growth? If you are a person that's a scaredy cat, or you find that you just pay attention to the news cycle too much, you don't have to just flop around. You can change your asset allocation as long as you're taking into account your goals, your age and what you're doing. You can be an active participant in your success.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  And not only can you change how much you're saving and what your savings rate looks like, and not only can you change how you spread out and invest and diversify your assets, you also get to choose your consistency. How active of a participant are you going to be in just showing up pay cycle after pay cycle, month after month, putting your dollars to work? Because far too often people say, okay, well, I can't control what the market does, but I bet, I bet what I can do is I can get in at the best times and out at the worst times. And if I do that, then I'm going to go out there and beat the market. But we know the numbers suggest something different. If you were to just invest $10,000 in the S and P 500 from 1987 until 2025,

• 28:42Speaker 01

  $10,000 right at the beginning of that period, it would have turned into $616,000 if you did nothing at all. You just put that money in there and you left it. But if you were to just miss the five best trading days over that nearly 40 year period, instead of having $616,000, you'd only have $380,000. If you missed the 10 best days, it drops to 274. If you missed the 30 best days, it drops to less than $100,000. The more active you are, the bigger the opportunity for you making the wrong call. Don't go out there and try to beat the market. Be okay just being the market.

• 29:26Brian Preston?

  Uh, we've been in this content game for a long time, Bo, 20 plus years. And, and every time I've shown this, because by the way, we, we've updated this through the end of last year, but this is not a new concept. This, this idea of being consistent and staying the course is rewarding. But there's always somebody in the comments section will say, guys, why didn't you show this if we just missed the worst days? Here's why. Let me go ahead and save you. I've gone through, by the way, earlier, Brian, when I first started the content game, I actually created that slide. And I'm like, what are you doing? Because nobody can go back in time and be that good. We've shown it from a behavioral standpoint. Nobody has the time machine. Nobody has the ability to get the 88 miles per hour in the DeLorean to where you can use the Sports Almanac to avoid the worst

• 30:11Brian Preston?

  days. But everybody out there in the audience, you can stay consistent. You can, it requires zero calories, zero mental horsepower to make it happen. So that's why we show you what happens when you miss the best days is because you can control that. You can't control the volatility that's going to come from the worst days.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  And look, we know this to be true, that when it comes to investing, when it comes to our financial life, there are going to be unknown unknowns that come our way. It's just a reality. It's a truth of this life that we live. But we can't control those unexpected setbacks. They're going to happen. They're going to show up and you're not going to know they're coming. But what you can control is, okay, what is your outlook on that? How do you receive that? And what is your attitude navigating through that? And you have two choices. You can have the positive outlook, or you can have the negative outlook.

• 31:04Brian Preston?

  Yeah, this is, this is one that I've, I've, I've always considered myself an optimist. And we're like, you know, we talk to entrepreneurs, we talk about people who have success. And even in dark times, I've had some, you know, I started my first company, I've had struggles, I've had downturns at the worst possible timing of when I hired my first full-time employee. And what I always came out with is I was always able to find the silver lining, or find the good even from bad situations. And I thought I was unusual until we started doing our annual survey of our clients. Because, look, a lot of the research shows that more than average, meaning more than 50% of the general public, consider themselves pessimists. So you can imagine when we ask our clients, hey, do you consider yourself an optimist or pessimist?

• 31:49Brian Preston?

  And 82% of our clients consider themselves optimists. And I think that's something you have to choose. Because, look, that's one of the things, you know, one of the updates I've made in Millionaire Mission is coming out is, understanding the power of your mind and rumination. And if you find yourself just wallowing in negative stuff, it doesn't help you grow out. It actually can cause and create its own little prison for you. I would love for you, look, there's a lot of bad stuff. There's always going to be, I could go through every decade that I've been alive and tell you bad stuff that was going on. But don't ruminate on that. Find what you can control. Find your path out and live your best life.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  So those are five key principles, five ideas that if you can understand them, building wealth does not have to be difficult, does not have to be this black box, does not have to be something that does not apply to you, that is not available to you. Those five principles, five key concepts will get you there. But we wanted to throw in a bonus. We wanted to throw in this sixth idea. And this is something that is true to us here. This is something that through all the 20 years of creating content, through working with thousands of wealthy individuals and families, through building our own wealth

• 33:08Speaker 01

  individually, we have recognized that there is actually a better way to do money.

• 33:14Brian Preston?

  Yeah, we like to call this the financial order of operations. Just like in math, if you do a math problem in the wrong order, you don't get the right answer. Well, guess what? If you do money in the wrong order, it creates a bad result. So there is a, that's what we tell you. Do foo. Do the financial order of operations. Don't be foolish and do it out of order. Because we've worked through all the ways you protect yourself from putting yourself in desperate decisions because you run up debt, or didn't have emergency reserves. We also tell you how to maximize the free stuff, or the opportunities like employer matches. And then we help you take advantage of all the tax code, as well as how do you do money, when and where, what's the right time for making those big decisions

• 33:58Brian Preston?

  like real estate and so forth. We hook you up by following the financial order of operations.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  So, okay, now you guys know how to not suck with money. We've kind of laid the groundwork for you. But there's a final question that we have to ask, and it's, okay, what will you do with this? How will you take this information? Five years from now, will you look back and say, all right, you know, not a lot's changed. I still don't have much in savings. I still got a ton of debt. I'll figure that out in the future. Or will you look back and say, holy cow, I'm glad I made that decision five years ago, to begin reframing and rethinking the way that I think about money, and I began making decisions differently to be in a different place than I was in. Because, once again, how your journey starts, or where you are today, does not define where you are going to be tomorrow. So take these

• 34:49Speaker 01

  principles, put them into practice, and change your life.

• 34:53Brian Preston?

  Well, I get sentimental, because we've been creating this content for so long, that, and it's, we call it the, the abundance cycle, is that I literally, we have people who've had student loan debt, who are in really bad situations, and we're not asking anything of them. All we're saying is, hey, go take advantage of all of our free content. Go to moneyguy.com/resources. Let us love on you. Help you learn the concepts, apply the concepts, grow your assets. And we've been doing this so long, that we've filled a cup. We filled a cup of value. That's really what we've been trying to give you, so much value, that the cup is overflowing now with your success. And you realize, holy cow, these guys were

• 35:34Brian Preston?

  not kidding when they said, hey, if I keep doing these simple concepts, it will naturally, through success, create complexity. And now I just don't know what I don't know. And it feels like, man, now when I make decisions, this could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because a 10% downturn, when you have a million dollars, is a lot different than a 10% downturn when you have $50,000 to your name. We're here, instead of you doing this all alone, not knowing what you know, we've done this thousands of times for our clients, our very successful clients. We've used this to create our own wealth for people. And we always tell people, we want to help you live your best life. So if we planted seeds, and now they sprouted into huge live oaks with big old trunks on them, and they got all kinds of

• 36:18Brian Preston?

  branches that are creating complexity, but also fruit for your life, but you want to live your best life and not focus all of your time on that, consider taking the relationship to the next level. I want you to go to moneyguy.com/becomeaclient. We'll keep the porch light on and keep creating great content. I'm your host, Brian, joined by Mr. Bo, Money Guy team. Out.

• 36:40Speaker 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.