Anthony O'Neal: Tired of Living Paycheck to Paycheck? Break the Money Habits Blocking Your Financial Freedom | Finance | E413

Financial freedom felt out of reach for Anthony O’Neal at 19, when he was homeless and $35,000 in debt after spending money he didn’t have to look successful. Years later, he was earning six figures but lost his job with only $400 to his name, proving that even high earners can be broke if they lack financial literacy and money management skills. That realization pushed him to stop chasing the appearance of wealth, become debt-free, and build a career teaching others to take control of their finances. In this episode, Anthony shares how to stop living paycheck to paycheck, eliminate debt, create financial margin, and build a financially secure future. In this episode, Hala and Anthony will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (00:00) Facing Homelessness and $35,000 in Debt (07:20) Luxury Spending and Fake Wealth (09:34) Credit Scores, Credit Cards, and Freedom (18:03) How Anthony Finally Became Debt-Free (25:10) How Big Is the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Problem? (30:31) Budgeting and Building Financial Margin (40:00) Protecting Personal Finances as an Entrepreneur (44:52) Creating More Margin Through Entrepreneurship (50:44) Generosity as a Wealth Principle (55:16) Anthony’s Financial Escape Plan Explained (1:11:17) Navigating Relationships, Prenups, and Finances Anthony O'Neal is a personal finance expert, speaker, and host of the popular YouTube show and podcast, The Table with AO. A former Ramsey Solutions personality, he is known for helping young adults and entrepreneurs take control of their money through budgeting, saving, investing, and debt elimination. Anthony is also a national bestselling author, and his most recent book, Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck, is a guide on how to break free from debt, build real wealth, and live free on any income. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Mindstone - Master practical AI skills without the complexity with Mindstone’s AI Competency Programme. Head to experience.mindstone.com/yap and get 10% off. AT&T Business - Stay connected with reliable, secure internet built for entrepreneurs. Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com. HoneyLove - Treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market. Save 20% off Honeylove by going to honeylove.com/PROFITING! #honeylovepod ElevenLabs - ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs helps businesses deliver better customer experiences. Start with a demo at ElevenLabs.io/profiting Quo - Bring your calls, texts, and contacts together in one place. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/profiting. Resources Mentioned: Anthony's Website: anthonyoneal.com Anthony's Instagram: instagram.com/anthonyoneal Anthony's Book, Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck: bit.ly/-Paycheck2Paycheck Anthony’s Book, Debt-Free Degree: bit.ly/-DebtFreeDegree Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki: https://bit.ly/RichDad-RK The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey: bit.ly/TTMoneyMakeover Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Stock Market, Scalability, Investment, Risk Management, Financial Planning, Business Coaching, Finance Podcast

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 00

  As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at YoungAndProfiting.com/deals.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  I remember walking back to my car and I got in the backseat of my car. Suicide came to thoughts. I felt like my life didn't matter and I felt like just giving up on life.

• 1:06Speaker 00

  Anthony O'Neal teaches that real wealth is not about looking successful. It's about building freedom. After becoming homeless and deeply in debt at 19, he rebuilt his life and became a number one national bestselling author, personal finance expert, and the host of The Table. So let's talk about how bad it was because you were $35,000 in debt.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  $35,000 when I should have been, if we're going to look at it from a practical perspective, I probably should have been in zero. There are some cities out there to where everybody got a Rolls Royce. Everyone's a millionaire, but the truth of the fact is 76% of them are faking. If we really look at the math, 71% of us are living paycheck to paycheck.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  So what are the three things people should do once they receive their paycheck?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  The very first thing that I tell everyone.

• 1:51Speaker 00

  That reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from you. It's the goal is not to be rich, the goal is to be free.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Freedom is everything that I'm aiming for. Throughout the entire month of July, my company is off and I pay all of my staff and my team members a full month. Hey, go take it off. Why? Because.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  Anthony, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Man, Hala, I've been excited about this one.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you so much.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  I flew in just to sit down with you.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  I'm so honored. I feel like our listeners are going to learn so much from you.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  And I do want to start from your origin story because it was so powerful. You've got this awesome rags to riches story.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 2:27Speaker 00

  So I found out that you were homeless at age 19.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  And one of the most pivotal moments for you was when a little girl saw you and asked her dad, "Hey daddy, can we give him some money?" And, and he said, "No."

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  What, what feelings did that bring up at the time? What kind of shame were you going through at the time?

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Um, a lot, if I'm being honest and transparent, you know. Just a little backstory, right around that time, there were some tough issues happening within that particular city in Oceanside, California. We had just built the very first school that was named after the first African American to really do big things, from my knowledge of it, Martha King Jr. And so I felt like I was being judged,

• 3:19Speaker 01

  one, possibly for skin color, or two, for that. But I also remember being the kid in the backseat, asking my parents the same question when I was young. And I was like, "Man, I'm not, I'm not a bad guy. Like, I'm not going to do drugs." I literally wanted to go to Carl's Jr. and get me a burger and some fries. And when I heard the father say, "We don't give them money because they'll do bad things with it."

• 3:47Speaker 01

  I remember walking back to my car and I got in the backseat of my car and suicide came to thoughts. I'm a Christian man and I was like, "Man, God can't be real."

• 4:03Speaker 01

  I felt like my life didn't matter and I felt like just giving up on life. Clearly, I didn't because I'm still here today, but a part of me was like, "Man, I'm done."

• 4:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Because if we rewind, all the money that I spent up until that point was on my friends, was on ladies I was trying to impress, was on a lifestyle that I was trying to maintain, and not one person who I tried to impress, who I helped, who I bought things for. They never offered me a place to go lay my head. They never offered me a place to come and eat. Then here you go, I got my mom and my dad, who are these God-fearing people, and me and my father get into this argument that pretty much lands me outside of the home. And so I'm looking at, both sides of my worlds are saying, "Yeah, no, bye."

• 4:57Speaker 01

  And so it was, it was a tough season, but I also do believe, Hala, that was the best season of my life.

• 5:04Speaker 00

  Because it led to everything else, like your, your purpose in life, essentially.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  It forced me to see, see me.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  And to see the lack of information that I didn't have at the time. Then it also made me be like, "Yo, you don't really have real friends in your life." You have users.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  You have placeholders, but you don't really have real friends. And three, it really made me understand that my parents did love me. They were just trying to teach me the best that they could, with the information that they had. And then again, like I said, I'm a spiritual guy. I just, I just literally fell to my face. It was like, "Okay, God, what do I need to do? And how do I get back on my feet?"

• 5:51Speaker 00

  I really want to talk about how you got back on your feet, but first of all, let's, let's talk about how bad it was because you were $35,000 in debt.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  $35,000 when I should have been, if we're going to look at it from a practical perspective, I probably should have been in zero. You know, my father, my biological father, so I have a unique situation. I have four parents. And my biological parents had me outside of wedlock. So my biological father married my other mother, who's an amazing woman still to this day, and they lived in Fayetteville, North Carolina. My biological mother married my other father, had two more siblings, and we all lived in Oceanside, California, pretty much San Diego. And so, man, when I sit here and I tell you that I had a, a solid upbringing of, of people, it was just absolutely, absolutely amazing.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  But I'm grateful for those four parents that really stowed into me.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, but, but they, they failed to kind of teach you financial literacy, right? Because you ended up in debt. How did you end up in the $35,000 debt?

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Well, the first part was, which was the craziest part, is my biological father, like I was saying, he was in the army, right? So I had my father's GI Bill. So when I went to school, I didn't have to borrow any money. But because my parents, unfortunately, which I love, and they're, they're pretty sure they're going to be watching this show, so I love you, mom and dad, so just know I love you when I say this. They didn't know what to do with their own money at the time. And so the world taught me, "Well, hey, since you have access to this money, go borrow it." And I'm like, "All right, bet. Cool. Man, there's no problem." My school was already paid for with the GI Bill. So I take out $15,000 in student loans just to, just to live, just to have money, just to go buy nice things.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Then I was like, "Okay, cool. Great." I get a credit card and I get that credit card very first day. My momma tells me, "No, bro, I don't do that." And I say, "Momma, I'm good. I got it." And within 24 hours, I maxed out that first card. And so back then in them days, you know, they were just giving away credit cards to college students. And so they upped that limit to about $1,500. I spent that on my car and a sound system. Then six, seven months later, you know, I'm in another, what's that, about $20,000 with the debt, renting from Aaron Sales and Lease, renting a Playstation and a big, heavy floor TV. You know, I'm renting leather couches that I was sweating on. I'm renting the bed inside of the apartment.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  And so I'm, I'm just racking up all this money, but if I'm being honest, my parents didn't teach me financial literacy because their parents and the school system didn't teach it. So who taught me finance was BET. Who taught me finance was MTV Cribs. It was the music videos. It was the, the environment that I subscribed to that was showing me, "If you want to be successful in life, you better drive this. You better have this kind of house. You better have the Playstations." And if I go really honest and vulnerable with you, "If you want to get a beautiful woman, you better have some money." And so I said, "Well, let me go get this money." When it wasn't my money, it was borrowed money and no one even taught me what, I just knew if you borrow money, you pay it back.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  And no one told me interest. No one said, "Hey, over a period of time, it's going to be way more." If you borrowed 500, if you pay it over the minimum payments over three, four years, you're going to spend $2,000 for it. And so that's how I got into the $35,000 worth of debt. And I would say about $32,000 of it went to collections.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  There's so much to dig into there, but something that really hit me while you were talking is the fact that you felt like when you were down and out, you had nobody to turn to. Meanwhile, you did all this spending to impress those very same people. Like you were trying to put on a facade.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:43Speaker 00

  And it was the culture that you were in that was really, I guess, pushing you to feel like you needed to buy all these things, have this image, look blessed. And I actually saw something on your social media. You said 76% of luxury buyers are actually broke.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  For sure. Yeah, it's, it's. When I look at social media, when we look at what's going on, we see that, for an example, well, I won't say the name of the city because I don't want to be disrespectful, but there's, there's, there's some cities out there to where everybody got a Rolls Royce. Everyone has a beautiful car. Everyone's a millionaire. Everyone is doing this. But the truth of the fact is, when you really study it, 76% of them are faking. If we really look at the math, 71% of us are living paycheck to paycheck. Out of that 71%, 90% of them are saying, "If I miss a paycheck, oh, all hell is about to break out when it comes to my life." And so that was the case for me.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  I was looking good, man. I was driving a nineteen eighty seven Nissan Maxima with twenty two inch rims on it that was rented with two twelves and a thousand watt amp that I did pay cash for that. I didn't pay cash for that. I put that on the credit card. The car could not go in reverse. It had a dent on the passenger door and it was only worth maybe five hundred dollars.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  But I had about three thousand dollars of extra stuff on the car.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  Hmm, to make it look good, yeah.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  So I can look good, right?

• 11:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  And I was so upset because when I went to trade it in, they only gave me five hundred dollars for the car.

• 11:18Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Didn't give me anything extra for what else I gave them when it comes to the rims. So I took the sound system out, couldn't take the rims out because I didn't know, well, if you can put your those on, you should keep the stock ones. Like it was a lack of information. So I learned from culture, not, I didn't learn from school. I didn't learn from my parents. And so that's why I do what I do today.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  You might have thought that you were actually financially secure because you had good credit.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  Like you were able to get those things.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  And a lot of people sit there and they're like, oh, I got an eight hundred credit score and I'm doing good. And people are always asking about other people's credit scores, especially in relationships, but that doesn't really mean anything, right?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  No, it doesn't. I had a young lady ask me that, um, what was my credit score on the first day? And I told her the truth. I told her the truth. I told her the dead truth. And I'll never forget it. Um, I've never shared the story like this before, but I I told her my credit score was a five ten. She never went back out with me.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Never went back out.

• 12:19Speaker 00

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• 15:35Speaker 01

  She calls me back the next week. The ratchet side of me came out. I just ignored her.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  Good for you. Good for you. I mean, that happened to me too. I remember when, like, I I decided that credit cards are bad. And when I started my company,

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  all the credit cards, first of all, were in my company's name that I did have. And I had no personal credit.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  And I remember I made almost a million dollars that year.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  And I went to go try to get an apartment that was like, I don't know, seven thousand dollars a month or something.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Facts.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  And they wouldn't give me the apartment because they said that I had bad, like, I didn't have good enough. I didn't have enough credit. Like, I didn't start my credit, you know?

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  So I had to, you do need a balance. But that brings me to, are you aligned with Dave Ramsey's perspective on no credit card debt ever?

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Um, you know, Dave Ramsey is, I believe he's a guru in the financial literacy space. And I had the opportunity to work for the man for years. And so when I say aligned, no. Do I respect and agree with his stance? Absolutely. Um, since I have left his camp, um, went back to school and I've evolved, I have a different philosophy. And I talk about this in my book, Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck. I believe if you're drowning in debt,

• 16:44Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  I'm one hundred percent aligned with Dave. You do not need a credit card. Cut it up. Run away from it, right?

• 16:50Speaker 00

  Because you you're not responsible.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Not responsible at all. And if we're going to be honest, I think that's about ninety percent of the average everyday people are not responsible to have a credit card. So my philosophy is get out of the credit card debt. You need to be out of debt for the period minimum of twenty four months before you even touch it. Because I believe money is not really a math problem. It's just habits.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  You know, can you build a healthy habit to where you treat your credit card like a debit card? So to this day, I only have one card and that's Amex. And I pay that off every single Monday.

• 17:24Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  I will not let it go past.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  Every single Monday?

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Every single Monday. I'm so, I don't like debt. I I I completely run away from consumer debt.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  But I do understand, um, the the benefits of having a credit card,

• 17:41Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  uh, which I have Amex, it's a charged card. You got paid off every single month. You know, I won't even get a card that will let you pay it off over, you know what I'm saying, over over months? Because I don't want to pay out any interest. I still do believe that paying out interest is a penalty and it's not worth it.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  I want to receive interest rather than pay out interest.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  So I'm gonna put it on my Amex, get my points, have the security. Um, and I love the added benefits that come with the Amex.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Um, I had a trip come up and unfortunately, it got canceled and Amex took care of it before me.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  Oh, nice.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Right? And so I do. So I respect and love and I believe that his system works because the reason why I am consumer debt free today is because of the baby steps, right?

• 18:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  And so now with me evolving and I have just a different audience, um, I have veered off some things from what I used to teach with Dave.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. So if you have good behavior with your credit card.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 18:37Speaker 00

  Use it. Use your points for flights, for hotels. Now, why every Monday? I feel like that must be like a mindset thing with you. Like, do you just hate seeing debt?

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I just don't want to be caught lying. You know what I'm saying? So I think for me, it's just more so of I build that habit. I just build the habit of making sure that I stay consumer debt free.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Because what Dave teaches is honestly the truth. Um, you're gonna swipe it, you're gonna spend more.

• 19:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  And I think for me, it's, I, before I even swipe it, I look at my budget. And if it's in my budget, then I'll swipe it. If it's not in my budget,

• 19:14Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  then I won't swipe it. Now, let me be completely honest. Is that difficult, though?

• 19:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  To not swipe? Absolutely. I'm human. I got flesh. I want that.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  You know, but, you know, for me, here's what I've learned.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  I want freedom more than I want to be impressed, impressive. And one thing I have learned that debt robs us from freedom. And the moment that you borrow money from somebody, you are now enslaved to them. They get to tell you if you can take off for a month and go enjoy time with your family. And I just said, I do not want to be enslaved to no other person, but to my decisions and my habits.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  And so I, I refuse to allow my debt to be someone else's game.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  That reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from you. It's the goal is not to be rich, the goal is to be free.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Free, yeah. Freedom is everything that I'm aiming for, you know? I think this culture is driving off of like, oh man, I want to make a million dollars in a month. And I want to make this and I want to make that. I'm like, man, I just want to be free. You know, I just came back from a two week cruise out in Greece that I paid cash for.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Right? And throughout the entire month of July, my company is off and I pay all of my staff and my team members a full month. Hey, go take it off. Why? Because

• 20:38Speaker 00

  So cool.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  we've built a business without any consumer debt that allows us to have freedom. And freedom for me may look different from freedom from what you may call freedom for yourself and for your family. But for me, it's if I want to take off for the month of July, unplug, go travel the world, let my team off and pay them their full salary for the month. Man, I get to do that. But if I was just in debt, I couldn't do that.

• 21:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  You know, and so I'm, I'm single and I'm looking forward to being married one day. And I want to have the freedom and I'm practicing that now because of my situation. Like every Friday I don't work. So we're, we're recording this today, tomorrow will be Friday. I'm going home and I'm playing golf in the morning and I am going to take myself out to a movie and a nice little dinner on tomorrow night. Because I want to practice freedom. I desire freedom so that way when I get a family, I can take my children to school if I get married with kids. If, if I can say, hey babe, after I play golf with my best friend on the morning, me and you going out every Friday night, no matter what. Right? And so that's to, that to me is way more important than rich.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Cause rich is temporarily.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  You know, and, and I think wealth positions you to have true freedom.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, you've done an incredible job with your career with acquiring wealth. And you know, it all started from when you were 19, homeless in your car. How did you get to where you are today? Like, what were some of the first steps that you took?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  You know, I had to be honest with myself and I won't say that it started at 2021, 22, when I started changing things around. It took me a while to really figure out some things. If I'm being honest, I think the reason why a lot of people do not experience success is because they do not have a strategy or plan. I think that a lot of us, we know how to work hard, but we don't know how to steward that hard work and turn it and follow a solid plan. So for me, when I was trying to get out of it, man, I was reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Robert Kiyosaki, I seen you had him on your show.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  I was, I read Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and I've read so many books and I was watching so many things on YouTube. And, and at that time of that season, Yahoo was real live. So I'll look up some things on Yahoo and I had to teach myself, you know, these principles. And so I think for me, when I resonated with the seven baby steps, it just, I was like, okay, cool. This is what I want to do. I'mma follow this. And that's what I did. And, and that's what I tell everybody. Even if you don't agree with everything, you can, seven baby steps, what you teach.

• 23:31Speaker 00

  And that's to get out of debt. That's like Dave Ramsey's famous thing, seven baby steps to get out of debt.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so it's like, even if you don't agree with the stuff, still do it. Because it's a proven system that works. And so that's what I did. I literally followed that. Some days I'll fall off, some months I will fall off, but I'll get right back on it. And I did that until I was debt free. You know, and so for me, it's, it was, I found a plan. I found a strategy. I worked the plan and the strategy until I saw a difference in my finances.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  And how did you turn that into your purpose in your career? Like, what were the first things that you did to start speaking about financial advice and getting your foot into Ramsey?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  The foot into Ramsey was simply because Dave and his team noticed that I was teaching it. So I was a youth pastor for years. And I would go around to different high schools. We built probably one of the largest African American youth ministries in the world. We would have three to 4,000 people at our youth conference and see thousands come throughout the week. But it was because I was going inside the high schools during the day. So my pastor at the time would allow me, instead of coming into the church office, he would allow me to go into the schools. When I would go into the schools, I would sub for some of the teachers. And when I say sub, I'm going in there while they may be doing work, study or doing something like that. I can go in there and I would talk to kids about how to look up scholarships. You know, what is a credit card? What is a credit report?

• 24:55Speaker 01

  I was teaching financial literacy to kids. Then what we end up doing, because we saw that that was working, I would then come back and on Wednesdays for our midweek days, instead of me teaching quote unquote, the Bible, I taught them life skills around finances.

• 25:11Speaker 00

  Oh, cool.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  You know, teenagers want to know, how can I get a pair of Jordans at the time? You know, how can I, how can I do this? What can I do? So Wednesdays was our life financial days and Sundays was our biblical days. So when that started blowing up, man, I was getting calls from all kinds of churches, from organizations. Hey, can you come teach our students this? And so then that was my journey to really build the talking, I would say ministry and a talking platform around finances. When I first joined Dave, I was the youth guy. And of course I evolved, got too old to be speaking to young people. And so with that's, that's one thing that I did there is just really started my youth career around.

• 25:50Speaker 00

  And how long did you work at Ramsey Solutions?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  I said for six years, I think.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  Six years. And then at some point you decided you wanted to go out on your own. What was, what was the moment where you're like, all right, it's time for me to go independent. I want to be an entrepreneur.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think for me, it was, Dave and I both agreed, I, I grew such a hard passion, always had it, but just didn't really have it that well, that established, I would say. But I, I have a heart for the minority community. And so I wanted to really learn more about some of our history, to learn more about some of the struggles that we dealt with and some of the struggles we're still dealing with. And I'll never forget, I went back to my high school in Fayetteville, North Carolina. And I looked around and there was not one curriculum around financial literacy. The, and our counselors are, you got five counselors to three, 4,000 students.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  They can't talk to every kid.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  And I was like, wait a minute, we don't have access to certain things. And I say this respectfully, but different cultures experience different things and there's a different message for different cultures. And so I say, you know what? I want to do that. And Dave and I and his, his board agreed that it was just best for me just to do that. And they supported me in my transition because I really wanted to make sure that I can go back to the African.

• 27:18Speaker 00

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• 28:18Speaker 00

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• 29:02Speaker 00

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• 29:18Speaker 00

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• 30:02Speaker 00

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• 30:14Speaker 01

  NBC really touched my heart and said that right now, their numbers, their data is just showing close to 62% of people are living paycheck to paycheck.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  Jeez.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Right, so that means the majority of them. When you're looking at the paycheck, what's hurting them is going to be car insurance. Interesting. Debt, which I looked at that, is unnecessary debt. And then the other one was just the cost of living of today.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  And when you really study that report, the average household is going to be making in between $60,000 and $100,000, depending on where you are, right? And so it's really not the, it's really not because we lack income. It's, I believe it comes down to two things. Number one, we're overspending in certain areas, right? And then number two, we don't really just have an understanding of what to do. When I really go back to myself, I was selling cars and I made $100,000 when I was 26.

• 31:18Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  27, I made $130,000. 28, the car dealership closed down, I was fired. I called my dad and my dad says, "Well, you should be straight, son. Your rent is only $500. You made at least $10,000, $15,000 a month. You should be straight." I opened up, I didn't open, I called the bank because apps wasn't really a thing back then yet. I had $400 to my name. And it was because I didn't have access. I had the income.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Like, I think I didn't have access. And so for me-

• 31:56Speaker 00

  Access to information.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Exactly. I had access to income, but I didn't have access on what do I do with this kind of money?

• 32:03Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  But I was taking my money and going to strip clubs and doing all this type of stuff at a young age. And I really wasn't making the right decisions because again, I was trying to be impressive.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  And so I think for me, which is so funny, and was why I could understand it. At 26, 27, I'm making the most money I've ever made in my life at the time. And I'm still living paycheck to paycheck.

• 32:25Speaker 00

  So what are the three things people should do once they receive their paycheck?

• 32:30Speaker 01

  The very first thing that I tell everyone when they receive their paycheck is before you even receive it, the very first thing you should do is have a plan for your money. People don't like the term budget. And I can understand that. In my book, I call it have a vision meeting for your money. And sit down and tell your money what to do. There's this viral post that went around with a young lady. She was being interviewed on the podcast and the podcaster asked her about budgeting. And she said, "You know, one of my friends, we invited her to go on this trip with us and her friend didn't say yes or no. Her friend said, 'Let me go check my budget first.'" Well, when she said that, her friend said, "We never even called her back." And the podcast host says, "Well, why didn't you call her back? Because I don't want to be on a trip with someone who's counting every single penny."

• 33:15Speaker 01

  And I was like, "Well, that has to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard." Like, you don't want to budget, you don't want to steward, you don't want to know what you're doing with your money? And so for me, I actually enjoy budgeting. Like, it is, it is fun today because I get to tell myself, "I'm, you know what? I'm gonna save to buy my dream car." I just purchased an estate home, a big home, out in Maryland. And I've been saving because I knew eventually I would like to have a home on a golf course. And so I was trying to wait until I got married. That didn't happen, so I just went and just bought me a wife. Anyways.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  And so, but for years, I saved up for it, right? It was on my budget. And I love the fact that I'm able to sit down on paper. And sometimes when I'm really dreaming, I'll pull up the wall and I'll just write on my wall on a sheet of paper. And I'll say, "Okay, I want to do this. This is what I'm doing with my money this year. 2026, I want to make this much money and pay myself this much money. And every single month, these are the categories that I got to cover." And I honestly get excited about it because when I go and drop money to be on a yacht, I'm not burdened by that because I gave myself permission to enjoy it. And I already know when I got, when I get back, everything else is straight.

• 34:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's also like visioning your future and like making sure you get to do the things that you dream of doing.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  That's, that's a fact. And it's like, even on my budget, I have a line item on there for my children who I haven't even met yet. Every single month, I am setting aside money for them. And I see it getting bigger and bigger and bigger every single month. But that's because I'm budgeting. It's because I'm putting it on paper and I see it. And on the 27th, in between the 27th and the 29th of the month, I always take myself to Ruth Chris. I get me a nice cocktail and I sit there and I write out my budget for the next month.

• 35:14Speaker 00

  Now, one of the ways that we can make sure that we're not living a paycheck to paycheck is making more money.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  And you talk about this thing called financial margin.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  What is that?

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Well, margin for me is, is your biggest wealth building tool. Everyone thinks that, "Oh, my gosh, I need to make $100,000 to become a millionaire." No, you don't. I know millionaires and I mentor several athletes who make millions of dollars, right? And they are broke. They live paycheck to paycheck. And one of the very first things when I'm sitting down with some of these athletes is, and I'm just asking them the very first question, "What is, what's your margin?" And I'm a professor at Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia. And that's the very first thing that I write on the board on our very first day of class. I tell them, "Hey, listen, your biggest wealth building tool is margin.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  It is not the salary that you're going to get from your job. And you'll be so surprised when I say margin. My students on day one do not know what the word margin means when it comes to finances. And by the end of our semester, they totally get it. But I think for me, that's one thing that I work on now is how can I create more margin in my business? How can I create more margin in my own personal home?

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  And I, I have goals for my own personal. When I see my margins getting below this, I hold up, wait a minute. What do I need to go back into my budget and fix so that way I'm not getting below this? Because I want to be prepared for what if, what if a brand deal says, "Hey, we don't, we no longer want to partner with you." Okay, cool, great. I have some margin within my income. I don't have to touch my emergency savings account, right? And so I think margin is just a solid break in between your income, what you have coming in, and your outcome, what you have going out. And whatever's in between of that, that's where I play with. And I invest and I strategize and I multiply.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  That is the tool that's going to get me to, my goal is 50. When I turn 50, that's in eight years, I'm building a house in Accra, Ghana, right now. Should be done by the end of this year. I want to retire in Accra, Ghana. And the margin is going to be at a certain number inside of my portfolio. And I will live off of the interest of that portfolio that my margin allowed me to have.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  So cool. I love this concept because margin, we always think about it in business, but we don't actually look at our personal life and think margin. So what is like the practical way for people to figure out what their margin is? I know it seems like an easy question, but break it down for people.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  No, I mean, it's an easy, it's an easy question, but it's also not easy for people who really don't understand it.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  So I think for an example, let's say if you have, let's just go round number. If you have $5,000, right, of income, your net income, not gross. Net income coming in, you write that down. And then you're going to look down and this is what we call a zero base budget. You're going to write down all of your expenses. And I tell everyone, man, write down your student loans, write down your hair, write down your makeup, write down your shoes, write down the apps that you're, you're, every single thing that you're spending money on. If you're in a church and you tithe in offerings, you got to write that down as an expense. And then you will see, once you get done with that, before you get to zero, you will see how much money you have left. I call that margin.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  And sometimes the majority of us are at negative because we're overspending what we have coming in.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's living above your means, basically. That's exactly what that is.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we're using what? Credit cards and payday loans and, and all that type of stuff. And so I'm like, for me, that's how you can identify if you have margin. Margin is going to build your net worth. And if you are negative, then you got to go back to your budget and you got to figure out, okay, wait. Can I cut? And sometimes, a lot of times, honestly, you can't cut nothing else.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Which goes back to what you said earlier. We gotta get some more income coming in.

• 39:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Um, and so, but if you have, let's say, five thousand and you have, let's say, uh, thirty five hundred dollars going out, this means that you have fifteen hundred dollars in margin.

• 39:30Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  So now you understand that, cool, great. Now, on the paper, on your budget, go back and say, how am I going to invest and spend this fifteen hundred dollars?

• 39:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  And this is what I tell everyone, man. I think for years, I, I grew the, I grew the, uh, I would say, people thought that I was very strict.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  And I think that with that margin, you have to determine how much of that do you just want to spend and enjoy? Because I do believe that there has to be a moment and some time and resources in our life that we can just spend money on what everyone spend it on.

• 40:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  And enjoy life.

• 40:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Because every single day, the majority of us are getting up every day, working hard. Sun up, sun down. You're an entrepreneur. We don't, we, we can't work eight to five. Sometimes we gotta work eight AM to eight PM, right? And so I want to enjoy.

• 40:21Speaker 00

  Especially while we're young and we can do the fun things, right? Go traveling and everything like that. So we want it, but that means that we need to make sure that while we're young, we have a big enough margin, right? To do what we need to do.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  And I just think this generation has the opportunity to do some things that, um, our parents and great grandparents could not do.

• 40:40Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  You know, I think we can get to margin quicker.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Um, um, all of my mentees who I mentor, um, they all sign a contract and an agreement with me, uh, that they will maintain a certain amount of margin. And we just had one young guy, he is twenty six, started with me four years ago. Uh, he graduated college, got a job making about sixty two thousand dollars. And he, he went back home. He saved thirteen eighty a month, every single month. Um, and he did some extra things on the side. He's twenty six, just bought a home, put down a hundred thousand dollars, paid cash for BMW, still has six figures inside of his account,

• 41:27Speaker 01

  and has a job now paying him about eighty two thousand dollars.

• 41:31Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  And he's, he's twenty six.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  So now he understands it, and we laugh all the time because he's like, man, everyone thinks because I had this BMW and I have this town home, that I'm just gonna be balling out like that. And they still don't understand, like, no, no. Because he values traveling.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  He values going to play basketball with his big brother, um, overseas. So he can take off work for two weeks and go, go do that because he has the resources and the funds to do it. So I think this generation just has so much freedom that I didn't have, um, growing up, uh, and which I love though, because now I'm able to utilize it.

• 42:13Speaker 00

  Let's stick on margin a bit. So when we have our margin, I'm assuming some of it goes to emergency savings, some of it goes to investing, some of it goes to debt. Is, is that right? Am I missing anything?

• 42:23Speaker 01

  For sure. I mean, here's my thing, if you have consumer debt, ninety percent of it should be going towards your consumer debt.

• 42:28Speaker 00

  Got it, okay.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Um, and then I would even say, if you have consumer debt, this is where I differ from the guru himself, Dave. Um, I do believe that you still should be maximizing on your 401K match.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  If they're giving you a match, if, let's say, if it's three percent, we'll take some of your margin and give them three percent of your margin,

• 42:48Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Uh, to, to do that. But let me rewind. If you're drowning in debt, you really don't have margin, right? And so you need to utilize as much of the extra cash that, that's not going to mandatory bills, you need to utilize that to get you out of consumer debt.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  So, uh, pay off your consumer debt and then you can focus on margin.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 43:09Speaker 00

  Got it, okay.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  Cool. And then how much of that do you think should go towards savings versus investing?

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so for me, I, I don't really have a certain amount. I have an amount that you should land on. I believe that we should be at at least six months of our net pay inside of an emergency account.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Uh, and the reason why that is because it's taken on average about ninety days, ninety to about a hundred and twenty days for someone to lose their job to get a new job.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  And so I want you to be comfortable and not have to change your lifestyle at all for those ninety days. Because what studies are showing is that if we, um, can operate out of our slow mind, we make better decisions. If I only have a thousand dollars, right, to my name, and I just got fired.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  I gotta operate off my fast mind.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  And that's when we tend to make the wrong decisions. And so for me, when I can just still be Anthony O'Neil and not stress, man, I'm, I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna call you, hey, sis, I just, what do you think I should do? You know, because I have time to think, to process.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  You're not just like, making like, you know, crazy moves that are gonna put you in a bad situation.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  That's it. And so I think six months, after six months, um, I say, uh, in my book, and I talk about this, some people may disagree with it, you shouldn't invest up to twenty two percent of your income. Twenty two percent of your income is gonna be ten percent in titans offerings if you are practicing Christian. And then right around, uh, twelve to fifteen percent, um, into, you know, investment accounts and portfolios.

• 44:41Speaker 00

  Nice. Okay, so let's say you're a high income earner. A lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs. This is an entrepreneurship show.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Dope.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  And some of us are making millions of dollars a year. And we have a lot of income. So for me, for example, if I was to save six months of my income, that's a lot of cash.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Good.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  And like, would you want me to put that in a high yield savings account? Or, or, or is stocks considered okay?

• 45:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:08Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  No, I need you to keep it liquid. You know, we're, we're blessed to do, you know, a lot of money as well. And I honestly have a year. I have a year because of my expenses. Um, I still have a mortgage, so I still have debt. I don't really believe in the term good debt, bad debt. I have debt, uh, that's on an asset, right? And so, um, I wanted to make sure that I have enough money to pay my mortgages, right? Because I have more than one, I have rental properties as well. Um, and then I could still play golf, right? I could still do whatever I want to do. So when I say your net pay, your net pay should be able to cover every single thing. So I keep that parked into a high yield savings account.

• 45:52Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  There's several out there that's, if you have more than six figures, let's say, for example, you can get up to about five point five to six percent on some of that.

• 45:59Speaker 00

  Which one? Because Amex, I just, I was putting it in American Express and it just reduced it from like five and a half to three and a half.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When I opened up mines, I was with Bank Purely.

• 46:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  And it was offering five point seven.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Um, I haven't checked them lately because I don't look at that account.

• 46:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's just.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just, I don't even wanna see that money, right? You know? I know it's there. I don't even have a card to that account. Um, I just know that it's there. And if I ever have an emergency, then boom, I can go to it. But I haven't seen that account, honestly, in maybe about four years.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  I just put the money there and I let it sit there. Uh, but I, I get that a lot of people, especially in our bracket, they're fearful to let their money sit there liquid.

• 46:40Speaker 00

  Totally, yeah, yeah.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Because it, they say it's not growing. But in today's economy, you need some funds liquid to make sure that you're prepared for when the storm is coming.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Because I, I, it's coming. I mean, I've been doing this now on my own, going on for now six years, right? And there's been some months that my business did not make any money.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  There's been some months that my business made a little bit of money, right? And so because I had the funds liquid, I was able to pay my staff and my team and just didn't take a check for myself.

• 47:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  And just lived off of my savings, right?

• 47:17Speaker 00

  So important for entrepreneurs whose income is always fluctuating and everything like that, yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's a, um, it's bad management and it's not really good entrepreneurship if your personal life is not taken care of. The reason why I can focus on my business and really excel in my business is because I know personally I'm, I'm covered.

• 47:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  And this is what I tell all the entrepreneurs. Never go into your personal income to fund your business. I will let my business go before I pull for my personal.

• 47:45Speaker 00

  Why?

• 47:45Speaker 01

  Because my personal is my life, that's my livelihood, you know, that's my family. So I'm not gonna take money from my family to fund, I hate to say it like this, someone else's family. You know, hey, I teach it to my staff, when you first joined my team, save money, bro. Because if I have to shut this down to protect my family, I'm gonna do that, right? And so I'm not gonna pull money out of that to go save this because your business account should already have an emergency account.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  So we have an emergency fund. If I have to use all of that for some odd reason, I'm not gonna pull for my wife and my children to go fund this, just to make payroll.

• 48:23Speaker 00

  In the beginning, though, you might wanna save up money to bootstrap your company.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 48:28Speaker 00

  And then at a certain point, you're like, okay, that's what happened to me. At a certain point, I was like, okay, the business needs to like work on its own now.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the beginning, you should be your number one investor.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  Uh, but if we're talking about entrepreneurship and we've made millions,

• 48:41Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  and we still don't have an emergency account on that account?

• 48:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, uh, you, you unfortunately made a bad decision. And so I do not, I will not do that. And that was just one thing that my mentors told me. They said, hey, man, for those, that first year when I stepped out on my own. Man, I paid myself a very small fee. Um, and I put, I was so fearful because I was like, hey, man, entrepreneurship is not easy.

• 49:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  And what you don't want to do is build this, make all this money, then you gotta rob from your future family just to make payroll. It was like, man, you need to have X amount of dollars sitting inside of a high yield savings account, not invested yet, and then really start building things. Cause I har- I already had the savings account on this and I was about to pull money out of my emergency savings account to fund the business and my mentor told me no.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  Let's talk about making more margin. One of the ways that we can do that is by taking a second job, becoming an entrepreneur where there's no ceiling. And something really interesting that I heard you say is that you wouldn't advise people taking a high six figure job, like a three hundred fifty K job a year. You wouldn't advise doing that because it's kind of like golden handcuffs, right?

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, if, if I pay, if you come work for me and I'm paying you one fifty and you don't pick up the phone call at, at seven thirty at night talking about you was with your husband, I'd be like, no ma'am, I paid you too much money for that. And so my suggestion, right, for if we're speaking to your audience, right? We are in a unique time. I think within the next five to 10 years, we're going to see a major wealth transfer happening. And I, I had the opportunity to sit down with, um, the president of the Black Chambers in, uh, Washington DC. And just listening to him talk, I was like, wait a minute. Okay. For an example, we're living in a day and times where people who know how to work AI, they're, they're going to get some good jobs.

• 50:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  For sure, right? But AI can't touch the AC companies. AI can't touch roofing. AI can't touch plumbing. And so what I'm telling these young guys coming out, I'm like, hey, man, if I was you, I would go work for a trade company, learn the trade, right? Do that on the side and start your business. Because AI can't come in there and figure out why is it not getting cold? They can help you with some coding, let you figure out, okay, this is the problem, but you gotta actually go in there and fix it. And we're in Austin, it's ninety eight degrees here right now, right? So we know houses are running that AC and that AC unit is going out. And so I think when it comes to margin and growing more margin, if I'm an entrepreneur right now,

• 51:26Speaker 01

  let's say I have a little bit of margin that I can invest, I'm going to go buy an AC company. I'm looking at any kind of trades that requires physical hands and I'm going to talk to that eighty year old, ninety year old owner and say, hey, can I come work with you for a year or two and buy this company from you? Now that when I buy this company, man, one of my friends just did that. Company was making maybe about seven hundred thousand dollars a year. He, he added in new technology, brought in AI to run and to handle the other stuff. Last year, I think he told me he made like one point three. His investment in it was, I think he said he paid one for it, one million for the business. I'm like, wait a minute, okay.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  So even if you can't buy it, if you need to make extra income, man, I will be working in that field right now. Because that's where a lot of, nobody really wants to go out there in the heat. Nobody wants to do the plumbing. And so a lot of people, and I, I will say this, and people may disagree with me, but I'll say it. I think that's probably the quickest way to become a net worth millionaire.

• 52:32Speaker 00

  Right now is to, to go into, um, trade work.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Absolutely, because everybody wants to sit up in an AC and just do coding and figure out AI and do automations and stuff like that. Great. I think that world is going to be saturated. I'm always looking for, if, when I, when I'm doing my stuff, right? Uh, and I'm always trying to find different avenues. I'm saying, what is the void and how can I fill it?

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Even if it's unattractive, even if it looks horrible, if it's a void and I can fill it, oh, I'm gonna make a lot of money.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Because nobody else wants to do it. And because nobody else wants to do it, I can charge a premium price.

• 53:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  But now everybody's in AI automations. Everybody's coming out with this AI something, something. Wait a minute, well, why was I going with you? Let me go, it's saturated, I can go to her and go to him, I go to her and get the best quote, boom. But, but there's not a lot of trade companies out there. And so I really believe that if someone really wants to get some extra ca- cash real quick, I'm looking into trade.

• 53:33Speaker 00

  When I first started my company, Yap Media, I actually was working for Disney. And I had my podcast already and I started building my social media and podcast agency on the side. I had international employees and I would finish work and I would work on my social media business at night. And within six months, I was making over six figures a month and I quit my job and, uh, you know, became a full-time entrepreneur.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:56Speaker 00

  But those six months were amazing.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:59Speaker 00

  Because it was COVID time, so like I, I was working from home.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:03Speaker 00

  And I was like able to kind of build this new thing on the side. And it was because I was getting paid a little bit over six figures, but I wasn't like an executive yet. If I was getting paid three hundred thousand dollars a year, I would have felt like Disney's my identity. I've got to do everything for this company and I wouldn't have dared started anything on the side. So it was sort of like a blessing to have like, kind of like a lower level job so I could start my own thing.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  I, I think that is what I said on that clip. I'm like, hey, if you're looking at this being your forever situation, I understand. But I never really looked at something and said, I'm gonna be here forever. I've always looked at something to where I'm gonna be a good steward while I'm here, I'm gonna serve, I'm gonna grow, I'm gonna learn and then step out eventually and do my own thing. And I, I would advise that to anybody, man. If you can get your job, just paying you eighty grand, ninety grand a year and you can live way below your means and come home every single day, eight to five, you work for them, five to nine, you work for yourself. You, you will excel and I believe you'll even pass your goals and your dreams.

• 55:11Speaker 00

  Now making like at least five times more than my VP was making at Disney, you know? Like making so much more than I would have if I just stayed on that corporate track.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree with you.

• 55:22Speaker 00

  So.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  And it feels good.

• 55:24Speaker 00

  It does feel good.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  It feels good.

• 55:25Speaker 00

  But you also have to be giving, right? As an entrepreneur.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  You were saying as a Christian that you, you're very generous. You even teach that, that you should give before you even start investing.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  For sure. Um, I think generosity is one of the best kept, um, I can't say wealth secrets because every wealthy individual, even, uh, Dave, you had him on. I've never seen a more generous entrepreneur outside of Dave Ramsey.

• 55:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's the best.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and I believe, okay, wait, wait, wait. If he's doing it, my parents, super generous at their income level. I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute. And I've never seen my dad frown. I've never seen him miss a mortgage payment. I've never seen him like go broke. He worked, and what I've learned with all of the individuals who are generous, yeah, they're at different levels, right? Income wise, but they have so much joy in their life. And I said, okay. And, and a true story, when I first, uh, transitioned out on my own, um, you know, of course my paycheck stopped. And so for the first three months, I didn't make any money.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  But every single month I still gave away, I paid myself out of my savings and I gave away ten percent.

• 56:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Before I paid my mortgage, before I did anything else, I gave ten percent away. And I just believe, whether you believe in God or believe in the universe, I'm a God fearing man. And so I believe that God said, you know what, Anthony's being faithful with the few, let me bless him with more. And I was like, okay. And so when I started noticing that my income was going up and when my income would go flat, maybe sometimes down for a season, like for us in the money space, that June, July, August, that's when our, our money tends to go down. Then it goes back down right around November on December because of everyone is going for Christmas. I've never skipped a beat. I've never missed a payroll.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  I've never been able to not do what I want to do. Um, and so our CFO, she understands that every single month, uh, we give away ten percent. And specifically within our company, we give away ten percent to single mothers. And we just love it. We've, we've bought a single mother a car before. Sometimes we put it on social, sometimes we don't. But I just really do believe that if you're generous, it acts, it activates the spiritual realm for me. And I believe that is the greatest multiplier quicker than stocks, bonds, real estate. Because if God can trust me with this amount, then he'll enlarge my territory and that's what I love.

• 58:08Speaker 00

  I totally agree with that. I'm actually a hundred percent Palestinian.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 58:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so, um, I feel a lot of guilt because I'm like, I should like use my platform to be an activist, but I already started my career before a lot of this happened. And so something that I did is that I started a charity project called Four Piece Media.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  Facts.

• 58:29Speaker 00

  And I donate, at first it was more, but now it's ten percent of my sponsorship money every month.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 58:35Speaker 00

  And I basically just fund this project and it's a whole other platform that basically speaks out about human rights and things like that.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:43Speaker 00

  And it does make me feel like I'm getting rewarded for doing that. And, and it helps me like mentally think about everything that I do, it like has a purpose. And the bigger that I get, the more impact that I'll make on the world.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  No, that's a, that's a fact. Listen, uh, me and you are the same way, right? And so I was like, man, I don't want to be, um, the black power on my show with all the stuff that has happened. And so I did the same thing too. I started a nonprofit and we donated that, um, and we donated that, that creates and donates to some of the other causes out there. Because I, I, I want to be a blessing to everybody.

• 59:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  But I also understand that I am an African American male in the United States of America. And there are some issues that need to be corrected. That battle is mine, but I fight it differently. I fight it with my resources.

• 59:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  And I've funded and people don't really know where Anthony stands, uh, because I respect and love everybody. But I, I think what you're doing, man, keep doing that.

• 59:45Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  You know, and there's nothing wrong with that because we all got it, we all got to do it. I like that. I like, I like her even more. Is that my camera right there? I like her even more now, y'all.

• 59:54Speaker 00

  Thank you, thank you. Um, okay, so I want to play a little game with you.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Okay, we're gonna play a game.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  We're gonna talk about, so in your book, you talk about escape plans.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:06Speaker 00

  Okay, and there's different stages. We don't have time to go over all the stages.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Yes, ma'am.

• 1:00:10Speaker 00

  But what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a scenario and you're going to tell me what is the next step that the person should do.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  So a person in this scenario, what is the next step that they should do?

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  Somebody earns ninety thousand dollars a year. But has no idea where the paycheck goes each month. What do they do?

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  Uh, the very first thing is they gotta lay down a foundation. That's the very first thing. So, uh, that's phase one. So within our, my philosophy, right, is if you're making ninety thousand dollars and you have no idea where it's going, you need to step back and look at, okay, what am I doing with this money? Uh, one of my friends, I talk about this inside the book, she's an ER doctor. And, uh, she said, one of her biggest complaints is that people will come in to see her. She, I, I forgot the correct term for it, but she's like stage two, like gunshot wounds and something major. She goes and she deals with that. And she says, the very first thing they ask me, or the family asks me, is to fix them. And she said, that's the wrong ask.

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Because if I go in there thinking I'm fixing them, I could honestly kill this individual. The very first thing, I, I, I gotta get him stable, get her stable. Get her heart pumping without us having to pump the heart. Once I get you stable, then I can go in there and assess what is wrong with you, what happened, how do we fix it? And I think that's what we gotta do. If you got ninety thousand dollars and you don't know what's going on, okay, wait, we need to get you stable. And stabilizing is, all right, very first thing is, you need to set aside at least one month of your net pay. So that way you know exactly where one month of your money is going. Then from there, we gotta sit down, look at your budget. If you don't know where it's going, what are you spending it on? Okay, what, what's your mortgage?

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  You know, how much money are you spending on clothes? What's your transportation looking like? What's your food looking like? Do you have childcare? Right? Like, what, what's going on with your children over there? Let's lay down the priorities. And let's put everything honestly on the table. And I think this is where people mess up at. They're not honest with themselves. They guess. No, go pull up your last three months of your bank statements. Go pull up the last three months of your credit card statements. Go pull up all of your credit reports, all three of them, and put it on the table and put the truth before you. Because we cannot fix what we refuse to look at. And so I, that's the very first thing I would do, uh, for that scenario.

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  So good. A family invests consistently, but they don't have a will, trust, or life insurance.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that means your, your legacy is not cement. It's not, it's not locked in, right? And so we talk about this in phase five, that I believe that, um, everybody should be focusing on building a legacy. Right? And so, um, it just happened to me, it just snapped it on me personally, five years ago. Um, I was investing, got no consumer debt, making a lot of money. And I woke up one morning feeling guilty that I did not have a trust. I didn't have a will. And I felt convicted that if I was to die today, because I have a unique situation for parents, two siblings,

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  a staff that depends on me, that my family would argue over what I want. And what I wanted them to do with my resources. So I literally woke up, called my attorney and said, hey, I need to put an estate plan together. I need to get a will, I need to get a trust. And you know what's so funny is, all of them was like, are you okay?

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  Do you need to tell us something? And it's so sad that people think when we start talking about wills and trusts and medical power of attorneys and stuff like that, that something's wrong. Like, we need to change the narrative. Like, no, life can just happen. I mean, we, we, we see it all over the news, um, every single day, that you can think you're going somewhere, you can think you're gonna go back to sleep, and life can just happen. And I didn't want life to just happen to me without it being clear of what I want to do. And so I put together my trust, my will, my power of attorneys, um, and even, watch this, I moved all of my beneficiaries to the trust.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  So that way, when it goes to probate court, it, it won't be as expensive for my family.

• 1:04:31Speaker 00

  Is there like a certain, like, milestone where people should be considering having a will and a trust? Is it like an income level, or is it when you have kids? Like, how old do you recommend people do this at?

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  As soon as you have a job.

• 1:04:44Speaker 00

  Really?

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, cause there's layers to it, right? And so if you're twenty-two years old, just got a job, making thirty thousand, thirty-five thousand dollars a year, you got an apartment, you got a car, uh, start the process, because here's why. Yes, you may not have a lot, right? But you're building the habit for yourself. And that's what I want you to do. So if you get a basic will, man, put on their mom day, hey, don't be crying at my, at my funeral. You know, have a choir and sing some happy songs. Rather than something small, cool, great, but then as you get older, wiser, making more money, have more assets, have more things, then it's honestly gonna be even a bit cheaper for you just to go back and to add things to it, rather than start from scratch from brand new. And so,

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  um, I, I tell everyone inside my book, the very first thing is, um, in phase one, as you're getting, you know, stable, hey, yes, go ahead and get a basic will, get a basic trust, right? And then build on it as your assets and have you, and as you have more income.

• 1:05:47Speaker 00

  Okay, this one's about debt. A couple has forty thousand dollars in consumer debt, and I'd love for you to explain to us, cause we said it a bunch, like, what does consumer debt even mean? And only five hundred dollars in savings, what should they do?

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  They have forty thousand dollars in debt and only five hundred dollars in savings? Oh, man. Do they have income?

• 1:06:08Speaker 00

  Let's say they're making a hundred grand together a year.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  Okay, that's good. That's average. That's mid, that's middle, middle class, about, for the, um, let's say about eighty-three thousand for the middle-class individual household income. Forty thousand dollars in debt, five hundred dollars in savings. Okay, cool, great. Very first thing I'm gonna tell you is, consumer debt, to me, is anything that is requiring me to spend money on a liability, right? And then, uh, debt that I have is anything that is gonna be on an asset, um, like land, real estate, right?

• 1:06:40Speaker 00

  So house, car, is that, is car?

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  So yes, to answer your question, a car is not, um, that, that would be for me, considered consumer debt. Some people say, well, wait a minute, if I'm using it for Uber, it's, it's still consumer debt, right? It's not an asset, uh, because it depreciates, right? So I think a car is one of the worst things you can actually borrow money for, respectfully saying that. Um, but for me, if I'm the couple, I'm making a hundred thousand dollars a year, I have forty thousand dollars in debt, and I only have five hundred dollars in savings, the very first thing I'm doing is I'm gonna put at least one month of my family's net pay inside of the savings. So that's for me and my wife. If my wife makes twenty-five hundred and I make twenty-five hundred, we putting five thousand dollars for an example inside that account.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Then from there, I'm sitting out my wife, and we're gonna list out all of the debt. Now, there's two type of ways. Some financial advisors argue with me all, all the time on this one. Uh, but this is where I align with Dave. I'm going to look at all my debt, and I'm gonna line it all up from smallest to largest when it comes to the amount, not to the interest payment.

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  And that's debt snowball.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  Debt snowball, right? Yeah, so I, I'm not a fan of the debt avalanche. Now, let's be honest, the debt avalanche does make sense.

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  That's starting with the biggest.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  The biggest interest, right, down to the smallest, right?

• 1:08:00Speaker 00

  Which makes sense, cause you would save money, I guess, over time, right?

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  Well, if you do the math, yes. But if, if my interest rate is twenty-eight percent on a thirty thousand dollar loan, yeah, no, I'm gonna pay this, this payment, and I'm not gonna see it go down. And so, uh, we see success when people can honestly see quick wins. Um, I am, uh, in the process of getting my AFC, uh, for a financial counselor. And one of the things they tell us is, the, one of the best things you can do is identify a quick win for your, your client. And so if we can get people to see quick wins, man, they'll get through that debt snowball very quickly.

• 1:08:42Speaker 00

  Cause it's a behavior thing.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  It's a behavior thing. It's a habit thing. And they can see it. They can see their, the fruit of their labor and their sacrifices and their hard work. They can see, I'm gonna say no to McDonald's today for my family, and go cook at home, and we're gonna take this money and put it on this debt. They see the payment go down. So it creates this momentum and excitement, um, and I think that's what I would do with them. I'm getting on the debt snowball method. And watch it, let me go deeper. You said family. Mom and dad need to have a conversation with the kids and let them know, like, hey. We are in debt. And we want to make sure that you you understand of why we may not be able to go to Pizza Hut.

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  This weekend. Why um we may not be able to cer- do certain things as a family? Because we want to make sure that when you graduate high school, that we can give you a check, that we can help pay for school.

• 1:09:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  And not just do it behind closed doors, bring children in.

• 1:09:39Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Uh because they need to understand about money earlier on and let them help. Hey, go cut some grass.

• 1:09:47Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  And if you make a hundred dollars from cutting grass, you're gonna contribute fifteen dollars to this.

• 1:09:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, and now when the parents say no, the budget is the bad guy, not the parents.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  And that's the thing, too, when it comes to marriage, man, uh uh being a single person, I'm not qualified to give dating advice, right?

• 1:10:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  But I have a lot of married people come to me, and when they come to me with money arguments, what I've, I would say about seventy percent of the time, it is not really money arguments, it's just a lack of a clear defined vision for the finances of the family.

• 1:10:18Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  She has her own vision for the money, he has his own vision for the money. And so my philosophy is this, no matter what you said, if we sit down as a couple and as a family and say, this is our vision for the family. Son, you wanna go to school? Yes, sir. Uh you wanna go to school debt free, taking no student loans? Yes, sir, cool, great. Mom, what you want? Wife, what you want? Boom, husband, father, what you want? Boom, great, we put it on the table, here's our bu- goals, here's our vision. Now, when son comes to me and says, can I have this? You don't gotta ask me, just ask the vision.

• 1:10:46Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  If if my wife came to me and say, babe, I know we got the money. Okay, cool, great. But does that, if we buy that, does it stop us from accomplishing the vision that we set out for? Now, goes back to what you said, I don't have to tell my wife no. The vision told my wife no.

• 1:11:02Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  My wife doesn't have to tell me no. The vision told me, you know.

• 1:11:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  And so I think that's very, very important for a family, that if you are in that amount of debt, and you have that little bit of resources, the very first thing I'm doing is I'm getting money inside of that, and I'm sitting down, I'm getting a clear vision. Because if you aim at something, you can get close to that or hit the target, but if you aim at nothing,

• 1:11:26Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  you're gonna hit that all the time.

• 1:11:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I wanna move into relationship advice, uh.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:11:31Speaker 00

  Financial advice.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:11:32Speaker 00

  But first, I wanna talk about the debt snowball, because I never really understood what it meant. And then I did learn, and it was pretty interesting, like, basically, you start with the smallest amount.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:41Speaker 00

  You pay that off.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:43Speaker 00

  And then you take, you go tackle the next one, and you roll in whatever you would have spent on the smallest amount

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:49Speaker 00

  on the next debt payment.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:11:51Speaker 00

  So it kinda makes it easier, because you're already used to spending that money, right?

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely, so what happens is, let's say, you have three items, one of them is uh twenty five dollars a month, the next one is fifty dollars a month, and they say the next one is a hundred dollars a month. So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna make all the minimum payments on all of them, I'm paying at twenty five, right? But then, the debt snowball really works when you can make extra money and put it on top of the very first one. So let's say you go look at your budget, you're already paying twenty five dollars here, fifty dollars here, a hundred dollars there. But let's say you found an extra, you tu- you turned off Netflix, you turned off Spotify, you turn on some other things, you got an extra

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  twenty five dollars, just for simple math. Well, I'm already paying twenty five dollars. I'm not gonna spend this twenty five dollars on the food, I'm gonna take this twenty five dollars and put it on top of the first twenty five.

• 1:12:36Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  Now I'm paying fifty. Okay, now I'm paying the regular bills, then when this one gets done, I have fifty dollars over here that I was paying.

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  Now I'm gonna take this fifty, I'm gonna put it on top on the next fifty for the account number two.

• 1:12:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  Now I'm paying a hundred dollars, right? And and I think that's the secret to the debt.

• 1:12:56Speaker 00

  It like gamifies it a bit.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  For sure, right? And then I'm just, I'm just a guy to where, man, when I was getting out of debt, I was calling them, I say, hey, listen, you know, I got, I got some extra money, can I put it towards principal, can I, can I cut a deal with you, can I, can I get out of this quicker? Like, I wanna pay you back this money ASAP. Um I I I got excited, I got so excited, too, that I think ladies back then, when I was dating, they didn't like me, because I just would not spend any money.

• 1:13:21Speaker 00

  We didn't spend any money on them?

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  Wouldn't do it, cuz I'm like, well, if I, dang.

• 1:13:25Speaker 00

  We gotta invest in your girl, too, right?

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  Hey, man, listen, listen, man, when I was getting out of debt, man, I, back then in them days, it was Denny's. Uh we would go to Denny's, sometimes we'll go to IHOP, and I was like, y'all, I can't do it. You know, so I would literally go back to the crib, I'll make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I remember taking a young lady on a date to the beach, and I had uh peanut butter and jelly sandwich, some Cheetos, um and some Kool-Aid, and bought a blanket, and we had a blast. I mean, we we didn't, we didn't last too long, but

• 1:13:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  But I mean, I I think for me, it was, I was, I saw the fruit of me working two, three jobs at that time. I saw my money actually making an impact on my life.

• 1:14:06Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  And for the first time in my life working that, I saw freedom. I didn't see more money, I saw like, wait, wait, wait, I could really be free here.

• 1:14:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, you learned your lesson, nineteen years old, right?

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  And I learned it again at twenty three, and I learned it again, is that?

• 1:14:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  When I finally got it, I was like, wait, I I could really be free, and I could be the first family, I could be the first person in my family

• 1:14:28Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  to have freedom.

• 1:14:29Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  And that meant a lot to me, more than having a girlfriend and more than impressing people. Because I knew that with me being a man, I gotta provide for my family, and and I don't want to tell my children I can't buy them shoes, because I was at IHOP in Denny's years ago.

• 1:14:45Speaker 00

  Hmm, I love that. Okay, so speaking about family uh relationships, how do you feel about prenups?

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  Oh, man, you know, uh so such a funny um conversation. I feel as if prenups for a certain net worth, certain people um is is wise, I think prenups are good, right? Uh but I mean, if you're coming into something, you got nothing, and she got nothing, and you got nothing.

• 1:15:10Speaker 00

  I feel like that's the best, but so many of us are older and

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Speaker 00

  not in that situation.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, my attorney, he told me, he was like, Anthony, when you get married, uh I'm not letting you get married without a prenup.

• 1:15:20Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  And uh the Christian side of me was like, what? Nah, no, you crazy, man, man, I'm not getting into this expecting it. He said, yeah, but fifty two percent of marriages are not working. He said, and out of all of the couples who come to me, they were in love day one. Uh but the truth to the fact is, we're all dating a different human being, and you never know. Um and um I can say this respectfully, without saying too many names, but someone in my family, I would have never thought they was going through a divorce. They're going through a divorce today, and it is, i- i- it is emotional, I cried one night.

• 1:15:56Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  Uh because forty two years of marriage, and the hell that she's having to go through, the bills that comes with it.

• 1:16:07Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  Um it's not, it's it's just not fair, and because of their situation, it's looking like uh this particular family member will have to pay him something.

• 1:16:16Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so I'm like, yeah, no, you ain't about to get me at at this age with that. So I think that it should be a healthy conversation that both parties bring to each other and just ask, how do you feel about it?

• 1:16:28Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  You know, this is where I'm at in life, this is where you you are in life. And I would not, I would not go to the extent of saying that if she or he is not willing to sign a prenup, then you should walk away. I can't say that.

• 1:16:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  Uh but I think that it should be a serious conversation. Um and I think we need to, I know me, when I'm dating, like, hey, we were to get married, what's the worst case scenario?

• 1:16:50Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  Like, what do you want?

• 1:16:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:52Speaker 01

  Like, if we were to get divorced, what would you want from your husband? Because right now, we're happy, we're in our right minds, we're not hurt, we can be fair up front, right? And I think that that's why I like prenups, because when things go wrong, man, even the good people can turn nasty at times.

• 1:17:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, how how often do you think people in relationships should be talking about money? Like, should there be like a monthly meeting, like, what do you suggest?

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  Married or just in general?

• 1:17:21Speaker 00

  Let's say married.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it should be monthly. I mean, uh one of my good friends, Darrell and his wife, they actually talk every Tuesday about money.

• 1:17:28Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  They have a business meeting. I think that marriage, I'm gonna say this correctly, I'm not marrying someone who I only love. Love doesn't pay bills, love doesn't build legacy.

• 1:17:40Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  Um I'm marrying someone that I love and that I can build a business, a dynasty, a family with. And her IQ, when it comes to money, is important to me.

• 1:17:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  Uh her IQ, when it comes to business, I'm not saying she has to be an entrepreneur. She has to understand how to have the conversation with me around business. And so I think that every week, every other week, at least bare minimum, monthly, we should be having a healthy conversation about money. Uh but if we rewind before then, by date three, you should be talking about money.

• 1:18:19Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:18:20Speaker 00

  What what what do you think the question should be, like, what should you bring up on date three?

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  Hey, man, uh tell me, how how was your um upbringing when it came to your family? Like, what was your, what was your money philosophy?

• 1:18:31Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  What are some of your goals with money? What do you, what are some of your goals right now with money?

• 1:18:35Speaker 00

  Can you ask, do you do you suggest asking people, like, how much they make?

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  Why? Why? It doesn't, it doesn't matter.

• 1:18:41Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  Because he can make two hundred thousand dollars and still be three hundred thousand dollars in debt.

• 1:18:45Speaker 00

  True.

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  She could be making fifty thousand dollars as a school teacher.

• 1:18:48Speaker 00

  She'd be like, what's your margin?

• 1:18:52Speaker 01

  But I'm just saying, it was like, if I ask a young lady today, hey, what are some of your money goals today that you're working on? And she tells me, yeah, man, you know, I'm trying to invest 15% of my income. She has margin. I'm trying to save up for a house. Okay, she has margin, right? Or if she says, I mean, I don't really, you know, I don't really got no goal. Okay, so you ain't got no money. Right?

• 1:19:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  And so for me, mindset, how people think around money can give you a ballpark of where they are with their money, right? And so, which goes back to what we said in the very beginning. If the young lady would have asked me, well, when she asked me my credit score, that was on day one. And I told her the truth. If she would have came back with a second question.

• 1:19:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, she would have.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  She would have been highly impressed. That, okay, wait. And then it would have started, I think, a conversation that probably would have been intriguing to her. Because one thing we do know about ladies, and correct me if I'm wrong, because again, I'm still single for a reason. But ladies love to learn something from the man who they're with.

• 1:19:51Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  And so I could have taught her some things about why I have this philosophy of, I want more money in the savings. She would have saw my goals and the vision that I have for my life and how a credit score to me just simply means that I know how to borrow money and pay it back.

• 1:20:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  But you don't know what my portfolio is with an 800 credit score. And so I think that when you're dating, man, have the questions around money because, let's be honest, we talk about anything and everything else. So if we can talk about anything and everything else, why can't we talk about money?

• 1:20:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  And, uh, and I've, there's been several ladies that I've, I've respectfully walked away from just because we weren't aligned.

• 1:20:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:34Speaker 01

  When it comes to the money thing.

• 1:20:35Speaker 00

  I love that. Well, Anthony, this has been such an incredible conversation.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  Yes, ma'am.

• 1:20:40Speaker 00

  It really has been. I end my show with two questions I ask all of my guests.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:20:44Speaker 00

  The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young improfitters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that's a good question.

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  Make better decisions. When it comes to your money. I believe that the caliber of our financial futures will be determined by the choices that we made today. So if you want to make more money, become more profitable, sit back and look at what is a decision today that I can change that would change my tomorrow into my future.

• 1:21:15Speaker 00

  So Anthony, what is your secret to profiting in life?

• 1:21:18Speaker 01

  For me, at this season of my life, every decision that I make now has to benefit my future tomorrow. And so that's how I benefit in life. And benefit in life does not mean I make more money. It means, does it get me closer to my freedom goal? And so if it does, I'm profiting.

• 1:21:40Speaker 00

  That's beautiful. Anthony, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 1:21:44Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me. I gotta have you on my show now.

• 1:21:45Speaker 00

  Oh, I love that. Yeah, fam, I love these money conversations because they're really never just about money. They're about freedom, peace, options, and ultimately, the kind of life you get to create for yourself and the people that you care about. One of the biggest lessons from Anthony is that wealth is not just about how much money you make. It's not just about your income. It's about how much margin you can create. He talked about how people spend every dollar that they earn trying to maintain a lifestyle they cannot actually afford. They're trying to impress people rather than focusing on their own financial structure. Real financial freedom comes from creating space between what you earn and what you spend. That's called margin. Margin gives you breathing room when life happens. It gives you an emergency fund.

• 1:22:29Speaker 00

  And it gives you the ability to act on opportunities when they come your way because you've got the investment to do that. The second lesson is that consumer debt is one of the biggest obstacles in building wealth. Anthony made a clear distinction between debt that helps you acquire appreciating assets and debt that funds temporary wants. Too many people are financing lifestyles that disappear long before the payments do, like flexing on a vacation for Instagram. The more money that goes towards debt payments, the less money you have available to invest, build, and create long-term security. And the third lesson is that wealth is not the end goal. The goal is not to be rich. The goal is to be free. Free enough to give away as much as you want.

• 1:23:13Speaker 00

  Anthony's vision of financial success was much bigger than luxury status or having the nicest things. He talked about building enough wealth to take care of your family, give generously to your community and the causes that you care about, and leave a legacy that continues long after you're gone. That perspective shifts the entire purpose of money. It stops being about impressing people and starts being about serving people. And if you believe what me and Anthony do, the more that you give, the more that the universe will reward you as an entrepreneur. When you put all these lessons together, you realize that building wealth is not a math problem as much as a lifestyle decision. Create margin and lots of it. Eliminate unnecessary consumer debt. Stop spending money just to impress people and use money as a tool.

• 1:23:58Speaker 00

  Do that consistently and your financial future can look very different in a few years. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting. If you know somebody who earns well but still feels financially trapped, share this episode with them. Anthony flew in all the way to Austin for this interview, so make sure you check us out in the flesh on YouTube or Spotify video. You can also check out his new book, Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck to Go Deeper. As always, this is your host, Halataha, AKA The Podcast Princess, signing off.