Podcasts about poor dad

Keith welcomes back Rich Dad author Robert Kiyosaki to discuss why debt, inflation, and financial education are critical in today's economy.  Robert challenges traditional advice like "save money and pay off your house," explaining how understanding good debt and owning real assets can accelerate wealth while inflation quietly punishes savers.  They explore how family background and early beliefs shape our money mindset, and why questioning conventional wisdom is essential.  The conversation ultimately stresses that financial education only matters if you take action and intentionally position yourself for turbulent times instead of fearing them. Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/608 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text  FAMILY to 66866  Unlock truly passive real estate income—visit flockhomes.com/GRE today to see if your properties qualify for a 721 exchange with Flock Homes. To get in the best physical, mental, and professional shape of your life, go to DanielThomasHind.com and apply for Daniel's intensive 1-on-1 coaching for burnt-out entrepreneurs and executives. Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com  Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold  0:00   Keith, welcome to GRE. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. This week, the number one selling personal finance author of all time, Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad Poor Dad, returns to the show, revealing that he's in debt to the tune of $1.2 billion with a B. Why he believes a depression is coming, and he strongly espouses financial education today on Get Rich Education,    Keith Weinhold  0:29   you know, Mid South Homebuyers, that top Memphis turnkey provider. I learned that a secret weapon behind their explosive growth is more than just you buying their properties, it's an executive coach for nine years now, their CEO, Terry Kerr, and his COO, Pat Nix, have worked privately with a coach who I've now learned from too, and he doesn't market himself online anywhere. After 12 years behind the scenes, that coach is now making himself available exclusively for GRE listeners. His name is Daniel Thomas Hind. If you're a hard-charging business owner or investor who wants to get in the best shape of your life, physically, mentally, and professionally, you can fill out an application for a free consult. This is private one on one coaching for those willing to go to uncommon lengths to achieve uncommon results. Thanks to Daniel, we've all become better leaders, better operators, and better men. It started by showing up for ourselves. Now it's your turn. Go to Daniel Thomas hind.com H I N D, that's Daniel Thomas hind.com and sign up before Spots Fill    Keith Weinhold  1:41   Flock Homes helps multifamily owners exit the operator grind, whether it's your sixplex or a 50 unit apartment, through a 721 exchange. This defers your capital gains tax. It's a strategy long used by institutions. Now you can swap tenants and toilets for passive income and zero management. Request your initial valuations. See if your property qualifies at Flock homes.com/gre That's F L O C K homes.com/gre   Corey Coates  2:14   You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get Rich Education.   Keith Weinhold  2:30   Welcome to GRE from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to Williams, Arizona, and across 188 nations worldwide. You're inside one of America's longest running and most listened to real estate shows, this is Get Rich Education. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. And with Father's Day this month, it's apropos to talk about Rich Dad. It's been said that the objective of parenting is to turn a liability into an asset. The book Rich Dad Poor Dad has now sold over 40 million copies, and it's been translated into 51 languages. One strong thesis in the book: well, there are a few of them: the rich don't work for money, savers are losers, and your house is not an asset. I think any regular listener here to the GRE podcast is already initiated on this. Savers or losers, because inflation debases your prosperity, and your house is not an asset, because it takes money out of your pocket every month. An asset puts money in your pocket every month instead. And I can see Robert now as he's preparing to take the mic with me here, he's got a blown up visual of his cash flow board game behind him, and then in front of him he's got a few books, including two books that he co-authored with Donald Trump, but this is before Trump was ever a political candidate, so it was before all that, and we're certainly not here to talk politics today. A central theme of the Rich Dad world is that the path for your significant financial betterment is rather than cutting your expenses, increase your income. This is the root action behind the mantra: don't live below your means, grow your means, but see, living below your means is easier. That's the easy thing to do. It's even myopic, say move into a lesser housing situation, or cut out going on vacations. Growing your means takes some education, like how to start a business, or how to own real estate. See, when you deposit money into a bank, all of a sudden that bank has a problem, they owe you interest on it, it's an expense for them. So the bank's job is now to lend your money out to somebody else and make a higher interest rate on it than. Lower interest rate that they're paying you on your deposit. All right. Well, then one direction to focus your education is to start acting like a bank yourself. How do you practically do that? How do you be the bank? Well, just like the bank, you can borrow real estate at a 7% mortgage rate. Now you've got the problem, you've got a monthly mortgage payment you need to make, so you need to beat 7% How are you going to do that? You better get it right. Well, with tax deductions, you might really be paying five to 6% Meanwhile, the real estate that you've carefully identified and invested in with your borrowed capital can earn multiples more without taking high risk, and actually that five to 6% effective cost of capital that you've got is zero, because that monthly payment is all outsourced to your tenants anyway, and what made all this possible for you? Debt made it possible, and now you're acting like the bank, and banks often have the tallest skyscrapers in your city for a reason, because they make money on those spreads all over the place, and now you're doing the same thing. This is an example of growing your means. The bank will hand you 500k to buy a new home or rental property, not for stocks. They won't do that for crypto, not for your 401k not for a business idea that popped into your head at 3am Only real estate, the same institutions, banks that manage your savings and study every asset class, and are very conservative, and have armies and armies of analysts. They will only lend you a half million dollars for one thing: real estate. For a few years, I was a writer for the Rich Dad Advisors blog when that was a thing. Robert and I were most recently together publicly last year when we both served as faculty members on the Terrific Real Estate Guys Investor Summit at Sea in the Caribbean. Let's talk to Robert.    Keith Weinhold  7:18   I'd like to welcome back to the show for his fifth appearance here on the GRE podcast. Well, just the number one selling personal finance author of all time. He wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad in 1997 and has ruled the Rich Dad world ever since. It's a warm get worse education. Welcome back to Robert Kiyosaki.   Robert Kiyosaki  7:38   Thank you, Keith. You know, nobody's more surprised about the success of Rich Dad Poor Dad than me, because it was turned down by every publisher in New York. It was like Simon and Schuster and all these guys, and they said, Why are you turning it down? They said, You don't know what you're talking about. It was consensus about the five editors of different book companies was what you're saying doesn't make sense, that's how strange it was back 1997 and now it's the number one in the world.   Keith Weinhold  8:10   This is often how it is when something strikes someone differently, like the Star Wars movies had difficulty getting traction because it was so unusual, and fortunately, Robert, today the consensus among readers has seen that, oh my gosh, Rich Dad Poor Dad changed my thinking more than anything else. The contrarian thinker,   Robert Kiyosaki  8:34   you know, strike Rich Dad, Poor Dad. My poor dad was academic, you know, PhD, yeah. So he'd be the kind of guy that says your book makes no sense, whereas my rich dad never went to school because his father died when he was 13 and he had to take over the family business. So much of a young person's life is predicated upon their parents or where the family or the culture you come from, and I've been studying more of that, like let's say I was raised in Alabama, I'd have a southern accent but because of the environment it presents it upon you, as the same as money, if a child is born into a poor family, or in my case an academic family, the value systems are all different. My family, and it's still true today. Got to go to school, get a job, and get a pension with the government. That's their whole belief system, and they're so proud of this. Is my brothers and uncles, and all that. They're so proud when their child has what's called a GS, and a government service pension, that's the whole idea on finance, get that pension, job security,   Keith Weinhold  9:49   yeah,   Speaker 1  9:49   nothing wrong with it, nothing wrong with it, but a lot of times we can't hear something because of what's been compressed into us by our culture, our. Family, so my, you know, my poor dad was always, you have to get your PhD, or what? God got a PhD. So my brothers and sisters, their kids are all getting their PhDs. It's fascinating. It's fascinating.   Keith Weinhold  10:14   Yeah, when your poor dad tells you you need to get your PhD, and you're asking for what? Maybe the answer was for him. So our parents, yes, they're often our first teachers.   Speaker 2  10:25   It's just values, very different values. And the more I kind of study it, I don't think I'm a good student of it, but there's this thing called a paradigm matrix, and a paradigm matrix is what is like a cookie cutter, so like father, like son, you know, like mother, like daughter, so much of our lives are transferred by our parents and our schools and things like this, and so that's why Rich Dad Poor Dad, for some people it works, but when it first came out, 1997 as you said, it was strange. I said, you know, the savers were losers, and today everybody knows inflation is going to the roof. I said, your house is not an asset. I got hammered for that one.   Keith Weinhold  11:11   Right.   Speaker 1  11:11   Rich don't work for money. Those are my three rich dad rules. Rich don't work for money, savers are losers, and your house is not an asset. I built Rich Dad Poor Dad around those three rules. I didn't follow my poor dad, those were his guiding lights. You know, you have to have job security, and you have to have a government pension, and my house is my biggest asset. And so you can't hear the person because you already have that paradigm magic, or that cookie cutter inside of you. This is my value system in my family. If I didn't get my PhD, I was stupid. I never got one. But anyway, you know,   Keith Weinhold  11:50   just because you believe something for a long time doesn't make it true,   Speaker 1  11:55   correct? And what's happening? Because I wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad, because I could see this economic times coming, 1971 named Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard, and I knew at that time we're going to have hyperinflation, so that it hasn't hit us quite yet. 1971 was august 15. Nixon's taking the dollar off the gold standard, and you watch what's going to happen next few years. We're going to have hyperinflation that we've never seen before, and it's gonna make the poor and middle class poorer. The rich will get richer, but poor and middle class will get poorer. Tragically,   Keith Weinhold  12:30   that is such an appropriate time to bring this up, Robert, because a lot of people are drawing parallels between the 1970s two waves of inflation during that decade, and what's going on today. I mean, there is so much fuel now that could ignite higher inflation. You've got the cumulative effects of the Iran war and the energy shocks and bottled up supply chains. And Robert, I don't know if you've heard it yet, but you and I's mutual friend, Dr. Chris Martinson, yeah, peak prosperity, there, Chris Martinson, he recently said that he would not be surprised to see 18 to 20% annual inflation in the next two to three years. That's exactly what he said.   Speaker 2  13:12   Yeah, but it's good for those who have assets, right? You see what, when things inflate, you know, like chickens and eggs and milk go up, but so do assets go up, most of them, like gold and silver, will go up, but the purchasing of the dollar will come down. Inflation is a tax, that's all it is.   Keith Weinhold  13:33   So much potential for inflation there, and a lot of this really ties in with debt, about how debtors can be enriched inflation. I think about the cantillion effect, meaning that in inflationary times those closest to the money printer win, and that usually tends to be governments, large banks, corporations with easy credit scores, but a lot of people don't realize that we can benefit from that too is everyday investors that use leverage prudent debt,   Speaker 1  14:05   right, and tell you, in effect, is basically what interest rate can you get, and how easy is money for you, and I use debt, I'm 1,000,000,002 in debt, and that scares the crap out of most people, but I use debt to get rich, and most people use debt to get poor, and again, that's family, what your education says. So, a lot has to do with early childhood development, and all that stuff. The more I study it, it really goes back to before a child was like 15. The cookie cutter has been cut.   Keith Weinhold  14:36   Yes, it goes back to not always having to believe everything that you think.   Speaker 2  14:40   We all have access to education. I have my cash flow game here. I teach people how to use debt, and Dave Ramsey says don't use debt. Well, he's a smart man too, Dave. I like him a lot, and most people should listen to Dave Ramsey, but if you're going to use debt, you'd better take some education, so. To go 1,000,000,002 in debt, man, you better know something. People aren't living paycheck to paycheck, they're living credit card to credit card now, and getting wiped out. I hate to laugh, but it's so obvious. You go, because they have no financial education, and that's why my book was turned down by all those academics in New York City, the publishers say, you don't know what you're talking about. How can I say your house is not an asset? How can I say savers are losers? How can I say the rich don't work for money? And that's what Don't Rich Dad Poor Dad on. And now it's been an international best seller, number one in the world for like 25 years.    Keith Weinhold  15:39   Yeah, well, it's so interesting that you bring up Dave Ramsey here, Robert. He often gets his followers to make a debt-free scream when they're debt free, and you know what I think, Robert, for those that scream that they're debt free, what they're doing is they're postponing screaming that they're job free or job optional, they could have been prudently leveraging dollars for profit, instead, like you and I do.   Speaker 2  16:06    Well, let me just say, Dave Ramsey's advice is good for most people. I'm saying, if you're going to learn to use debt, you know, if all you want is a job and a pension, you don't have to study that much. The biggest mistake I think ever made was at 401 k. It's going to wipe out boomer generation. It's going to.. that's the memos. I wrote this book. Here's who stole my pension, and that's when it's going to nail the boomers. They're finished, because their pensions are going to get stolen. They're four 1k IRAs. They're finished, but they do.. they listen. No, they go, they send their kids to school to get their MBA and get a, get a 401 k.   Keith Weinhold  16:46   Well, I kind of think when you have education around debt, you sort of understand this difference between productive debt and what I'll call ego debt. So, can you talk to us more about what kinds of debt make people rich today and what kinds of debt can quietly destroy them.   Speaker 2  17:02   Well, they should read Rich Dad Poor Dad. Really, I'm serious. That's all it is about, really, is I use debt to get rich, and Dave Ramsey's advice is good for those who don't want to study. So, if you're a PhD in microbiology, and you're a doctor, Dave Ramsey's advice is good for you, because you have no financial education, it's not between your right ear and your left ear. So, I had to study debt, that's the difference. It's what we study.   Keith Weinhold  17:29   And for those that are uninitiated on this, what we're talking about here is, if you've got, say, 200k to invest in real estate, and real estate's going to go up 5% a year. Okay, if you pay all cash, you only have a 5% gain on your 200k but if you get an 800k loan and now you invest in a million dollars worth of real estate, you have that entire million dollars going up 5% not just 200k and you have the tenants servicing the 800k in debt for you. This is really the path to wealth through debt, which is counterintuitive.   Speaker 1  18:02   You don't just get into debt. I mean, you really got to understand debt, and real estate doesn't always go up. It's about to crash again, and I like crashes. Don't get me wrong, I love crashes, because a crash in a stock market, bond market, real estate market is something going on sale, so like if Walmart had a sale, every poor person would run in there, but when the real estate market has a sale, all the poor people run away. I like crashes, that's when you get rich, one's coming big time, big time.   Keith Weinhold  18:33   Well, I want to learn more about that, because residential real estate in our lifetimes has only fallen significantly one time, that was in 2008 and circumstances are so different today. Today, you have responsible lending, and you don't have this oversupply that you had in 2008 So, tell us more about a potential real estate crash that's going to interest a lot of people.   Speaker 1  18:53   Well, real estate crashes, because the currency crashes. It's really the problem with the world today, and this is the whole world, is America is now what, the biggest debtor nation in world history.   Keith Weinhold  19:05   Yeah,   Speaker 1  19:05   39 trillion or something like that. And Japan is a bunch of idiots on Japanese, I can say that they save money. Why would you save money when Japan was the biggest money printer of all times? That'd be like somebody you know, sticking water in your gas tank. Why would you go and fill up with water? But that's what the Japanese were doing. They're saving money. It makes no sense. I mean, I just.. I'm just a different person, you know. I just didn't go to school like my family did. I mean, I have a college education and all that, but I studied different things after school. I studied debt, I studied real estate, and that's the big difference. So, I'm 1,000,000,002 in debt. So, in 2008 when the market crashed, you know, I borrowed 30 million bucks and leveled it up with 1,000,000,002 in debt.   Keith Weinhold  19:52   Good timing   Speaker 1  19:53   should not do what I do, but I studied it since 1974 It's debt that's not. Right now today we have oil going up. My college degree is in oil. I'm an oil tanker driver. I drove oil tankers with Standard Oil. I'm making fortunes today as the price of oil goes up, so you know, more Netanyahu and Trump bomb Iran, terrible as it is. I'm getting richer, so you don't have to be poor, but you're poor because that gap between your left ear and your right ear is empty, you know. You've been taught inflation's bad. Well, inflation is good if you're holding oil or gold or silver or some real estate. Anyway, most people have no financial education. That's why I created the cash flow board game, so you can have fun learning how to be rich. If you don't want to learn to be rich, then go to school and get your PhD.   Keith Weinhold  20:47   Sometimes, when people don't understand how real estate debt benefits them, one way I've helped people understand Robert is that, say, you have a loan balance of 112k on a piece of real estate today, that feels really small. It almost feels like something that you can pay off with what you have in your savings account, but if you go back 30 years, when the median home price is 140k 80% debt on that would have been 112k So here, 30 years later, with your 30 year fixed rate loan, you still just have that 112k in debt, while the median home price is over 400k and that's even if you hadn't made a principal payment at all, so it's really a way to visualize how inflation starts shrinking the real weight of our debt over time.   Speaker 1  21:31   My advice is I would study debt, so I take real estate courses, I'm always studying, I'm studying constantly, because the markets are changing so quickly. The biggest problem today started in 1971 when Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. So, we're the biggest detonation in world history. I think we're going into a depression right now. So, depression plus AI coming along is going to wipe out jobs. I'm going to get richer. What are you going to do? So, I'm already planning for the future, the people that get rich can see the future. So, when you say, well, you know, back in 2008 it only crashed for a little while. Then, okay, so what? And history has proven in 1971 Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. Every nation has collapsed. Who did that? The Chinese did it, the Romans did it, the Greeks did it, Germans did it. They print money, and so that's the real issue. It's not debt, but it's also the economic macro problems that keep going into the world. The dollar is coming down, and I'm afraid that we're going into a global depression. I hope I'm wrong, like Grant Cardone, and I have fights all the time about it, you know, because he's a big proponent of that. Real estate always goes up, it doesn't always go up,   Keith Weinhold  22:47   right?   Speaker 1  22:47   It doesn't always go up. The stock market doesn't always go up. The bond market's crashing. Everybody says, "Oh, bonds are safe. The bond market's in the biggest bubble in world history. We're going into a depression. So, what are you going to do about it? I'm afraid America is going to crash because we've taken on Iran, and Iran's a powerful, powerful force out there. I'm not in favor of it, but everybody who's messed with Iran has got kicked. So just note that as this look at history, you can see the future, but you have to be careful in the issue you follow. So, 1971 I was on an aircraft carrier in Vietnam, and my rich dad wrote me a letter. I was a marine helicopter pilot, went down three times. Rich Dad wrote me lessons. Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard, watch out, and immediately I started buying gold. So, I started buying gold at $50 an ounce to today is what, four or 5000   Keith Weinhold  23:43   Yeah,   Speaker 1  23:44   the trouble with gold is you pay high taxes on it, constant taxes too. Good luck to learn, Keith. I study constantly.   Keith Weinhold  23:52   You're listening to Get Rich Education. Our guest is Rich Ed Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold.    Keith Weinhold  23:58   What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine. You sure can at Ridge Lending Group, NMLS 42056 They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone, because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal, and even chat directly with President Chaley Ridge, while it's on your mind. Start at Ridge lendinggroup.com that's Ridge lendinggroup.com    Keith Weinhold  24:29   Let me ask you something. If you've worked hard to build wealth, is your money positioned to actually support your goals? A lot of accredited investors leave capital sitting in cash because it feels safe, but inflation and missed income opportunities can quietly erode its value. Freedom Family Investments offers freedom notes for investors seeking structured income backed by real estate. It's a straightforward approach built on real assets, not speculation. In full disclosure, I'm an investor myself. What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk, and nothing is guaranteed, but with a track record of consistent on-time investor payouts, they built real credibility. Go to freedomfamilyinvestments.com to book a clarity call or text family to 66866 that's family 266866 This   Jim Rickards  25:31   is Author Jim Rickards. Listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your daydream.   Keith Weinhold  25:47   Welcome back to Get Rich Education. I'm your host, Keith Weinholt. We're talking with the top-selling personal finance author of all time, Robert Kiyosaki.   Speaker 1  25:55   Just study history. History will see this, you'll see the future. So, this is my good friend here, McDonald. You know why he wants you to get rich, and it's this one man, one message.   Keith Weinhold  26:06   Robert's holding up a book now.   Speaker 1  26:08   You've got to get educated on money, but most people won't, so they got a 401 k, and they live debt free. Good advice. Will it protect them? No, it won't protect them from a, you know, if you lose your job, AI takes it away, or is a massive crash, but we've never been in this much debt before to you. Black generation is screwed, boomers and boomers are screwed, because we're the first generation with a four 1k that was 1974 1974 also Kissinger went to Saudi Arabia to sign the dollar up back by oil, and today my buddy here, Trump is bombing the crap out of Iran. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but the price of oil is going through the roof now. Everybody's complaining about it because of inflation, so chicken and eggs go up in price, you know. Diesel delivers chicken and eggs all over the world. I'm getting richer because I own oil wells, you see. You don't have to be poor, but you better question what they put between your left ear and your right ear. What did Mommy and Daddy tell you? Go to school, get a job, get a job with a government service. My daughter's a GS, she's got a master's from Washington State University losers,   Keith Weinhold  27:24   this untethering of the dollar from gold in 1971 that meant that there is no sovereign currency in the world today that's still tied to gold, allowing for more money printing and enriching over time debtors like you and I, but Robert, we think about how debtors are profiting, and you spoke earlier about how oftentimes your parents put all of these values inside you. How do you emotionally tolerate having a lot of debt yourself? You talked about having $1.2 billion in debt. How do you emotionally deal with that?   Speaker 1  28:00   I study, I take courses. I'm constantly in seminars studying debt. I don't study a 401 ks or bonds, that's for losers. But this is the biggest point, Keith. You got to find out. My rich had always said to me, says there's a billion ways to financial heaven. So, there's what, 8 billion people on planet earth, and 1 billion of the eight may make it to financial heaven, but there's 7 billion to financial hell, and the difference is what's between your left ear and your right ear, and that's why you may choose what you learn carefully, cash flow game, study it, have fun, practice, play, learn, but if you don't want to learn, then follow Dave Ramsey's advice. That's much better. It's better for you, really. I'm serious. And get your PhD and get a 401 k and get wiped out when you lose your job. It's up to you.   Keith Weinhold  28:54   Yeah, I mean, the debt-free mindset probably is better for most people, but I think you shouldn't aspire to want to be like most people. Most people are overweight, and they have a busted relationship, and they don't have enough money at the end of the month. So we're really not aspiring to be mediocre here, and that can mean taking on prudent debt. You wrote something in a book one time, I don't think it was Rich Dad Poor Dad, it was one of your later books. This is so simple, but I found it to be so profound and life-changing for me. And that is simply being wealthy is a choice   Speaker 1  29:28   that doesn't, what you want, it's your choice, but you better know what your choices are. What did Mommy and Daddy say to you? But also, were they doing in front of you?   Keith Weinhold  29:39   Right,   Speaker 1  29:40   were they cleaning for job security or were they buying coil wells? Like, I own Bitcoin, but they'll recommend it now. I study it. I don't really understand it that well. I have 5049 Bitcoin, not much, but as inflation goes up, my Bitcoin goes up. Also, have in theory. I'm old. I don't understand tech that well, but I buy it to learn it, to practice, to study it. Am I an expert at Bitcoin? No. So I just keep studying, that's all I'm saying. I have a choice how to put between this year and that year. That's your choice today.   Keith Weinhold  30:18   Well, that's really interesting, Robert, because some people say that you should only invest in something that you understand well, others say that you're only going to understand something well if you invest a little in it first and have a stake. Well, is there any last thought that you have, Robert, as we wind up, anything at all that a listener should know today?   Speaker 1  30:39   No, I mean, I just said it, that's it. Choose what you put between your left brain and right ear, and what do you do? What do you do in your spare time? Like studying, you can ask the people around me. I'm constantly studying, you know, because I like to win. I'm very concerned, Keith. We're going into the biggest depression in history. So, what happens when you lose your job and you can't put food on the table, that's gonna create another problem. So, I'm a big pessimist, but I'm ready for it. I have a lot of guns, so the, I call it the 5g's Okay, you have to have gold, food, I mean ground, gasoline, and guns, that's preparing for the future, the 5g will be gold, gas, ground, food, guns.   Keith Weinhold  31:27   Well, Robert, you gave us a lot to think about there, including some actionable things. It's been great having you back on the show.   Speaker 1  31:32   Okay. Well, thank you. Keep up the good work.   Keith Weinhold  31:40   I believe Robert feels that a calming economic depression would be linked to the longer term calamity about the dollar being de-pegged from gold for about 55 years now. His 1.2 billion in debt is largely, if not completely, good debt. You can learn more about Robert and the Rich Dad world@richdad.com and he and I talked more off air. As much as he stresses financial education, he emphasizes taking action after you've learned; otherwise, you really haven't gained much of anything. But the rat race is so busy that some people don't have time to care about this stuff. In fact, the difference between financial education and financial courage is action taking. That's the difference. Now, in my view, it seems that some feel like financial betterment means cutting your expenses so much that you reduce your standard of living even over the long term, and doing that for the long term, you might do some of that in the short term, earlier in your investing career, because you need some capital formation, but to me, before long, financial betterment should give you the ability to make your life better. I mean, really don't buy the boat or RV just because it's a depreciating asset. Well, you don't want to do that wastefully if you can't afford it, but if you can learn how to afford it, consider borrowing for it, investing it at a higher interest rate than the RV loan, and profiting while you enjoy the RV, some people don't even think something like that is possible. Well, that's the sort of thing financial education can do. Genuine financial betterment means that you can take the trip, it means that you can buy the boat, because what's worse, owning a depreciating asset or living a depreciating life. Big thanks to Robert Kiyosaki.    Keith Weinhold  33:47   Today, we've got a lot of great upcoming shows here on the Get Rich Education podcast. Next week, The Mad Scientist of Multifamily, Neil Bower, will be here. It's going to be a charged conversation on the state and the future of the residential real estate market. Also, I've been compiling my top 12 dirty dozen due diligence questions that are going to help you avoid mistakes when you buy a piece of income property, like for example, How do you be sure that a build to rent community isn't overbuilt with supply, and why you should always get a property inspection, even on a new construction property that's coming in future weeks, and if you're a new listener and still learning about how to prudently use debt to build wealth, you're in luck. Just eight weeks ago, on episode 600 it's an episode where it's just me talking to you, called Debt is the American dream. Be sure to check out that show until next week. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. In In the Spirit of Rich Dad, don't quit your daydream.   Speaker 3  34:52   Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial, or business. Professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of Get Rich Education LLC exclusively.   Keith Weinhold  35:18   The preceding program was brought to you by Your Home for Wealth Building, Get Rich education.com  

The first business Joe Wechsler bought had $280k of SDE. Seven years later, he runs a fund with $50m of buying power.Register for the webinar: Franchising for the ETA Buyer: Resales, Roll-Ups, and Real Deals - Thu, June 4 - https://bit.ly/4vnGP5uTopics in Joe's interview:Background in management consultingInspired by Rich Dad Poor Dad to own assetsJoining an early cohort of the Acquisition LabSearching is more fun with a partnerFirst deal died 10 days before closingDiscovering employees had never been paid overtimeTotal office staff turnover in first 4 monthsAcquiring 4 diverse businessesLaunching a $25M equity fund with 5 partnersIt's all about the peopleReferences and how to contact Joe:LinkedInBlueline VenturesWho by Geoff Smart and Randy StreetRich Dad, Poor Dad by Richard T. KiyosakiGet a free review of your books & financial ops from System Six (a $500 value):Book a call with Tim or hello@systemsix.com and mention Acquiring MindsDownload the New CEO's Guide to Human Resources from Aspen HR:From this page or contact jenny@aspenhr.comWork with an SBA loan team focused exclusively on helping entrepreneurs buy businesses:Pioneer Capital AdvisoryConnect with Acquiring Minds:See past + future interviews on the YouTube channelConnect with host Will Smith on LinkedInFollow Will on TwitterEdited by Anton Rohozov and produced by Pam Cameron

Carl Lenocker is the Chief Unicorn at Rockstar Unicorn Consulting and a top-tier Customer Success executive with over 20 years of experience operating in high-stakes, revenue-critical environments. He has built his career managing and protecting multi-million dollar relationships, focusing on executive-level conversations where outcomes matter more than optics and where revenue is either secured or quietly lost.Known for his no-fluff, field-tested approach, Carl teaches Customer Success professionals to think and act like revenue owners, not support teams. He is also the author of Success Plan for Life, where he applies the same principles used to protect enterprise accounts to career growth, wealth building, and long-term leverage, helping leaders earn trust, de-risk renewals, and break through professional ceilings.In this episode we cover:00:00 - Intro03:08 - Carl's Journey in Customer Success06:16 - Mindset Shift From Support to Revenue Ownership09:11 - Building Relationships and Overcoming Fears12:18 - Navigating Remote Interactions and Building Trust15:05 - The Impact of AI on Customer Success Roles18:17 - Lessons Beyond Business and Success Plan for Life21:09 - The Power of Planning for Success24:19 - Wealth Accumulation and Legacy Thinking26:18 - Personal Growth and Life Goals27:04 - Choosing the Right Partner29:00 - Navigating Career Growth and Challenges31:07 - Influential Resources for Success33:26 - Defining Success at MidlifeGet in touch with Carl:Carl's LinkedInRockstar Unicorn ConsultingBooks:"Success Plan for Life" by Carl Lenocker"Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki"Awaken the Giant Within" by Tony Robbins"Power Questions" by Andrew SobelTag Us & Follow:FacebookLinkedInInstagramMore About Akeel:TwitterLinkedInMore SaaS Podcast EpisodesSaaS ConsultantsHow To Value Your SaaS Company

Send us Fan MailJames Ashford sold GoProposal to Sage for an eight-figure sum. People hear that and picture a clean line from idea to payday. It took him two decades, several businesses that died along the way, and one moment where he couldn't afford the fee to shut a company down.He started as a wedding magician, walking straight up to the rowdiest table in the room on purpose. What he learned there became the thing every later business ran on. The failures came too: an agency he loved, gone over a single decision. A marriage under strain. A debt a friend had to cover for him.Then a mentor asked him one blunt question, and the answer changed how he built everything after.The part people don't see coming is what the exit actually did to him. The win arrived, and so did something he hadn't planned for. He talks about it more honestly here than most founders ever will, including the redefinition of "wealth" he landed on at the end, which is not the one he set out chasing.If you're building something you hope to sell, or you already have and it feels stranger than you expected, this one's worth your time.What Alan and James get into:Why he targeted the worst table in the room, every timeThe agency that went under from one bad call, and what it cost him beyond moneyThe liquidation he couldn't pay for himselfA million-pound cheque pinned to a bedroom ceiling years before it meant anythingThe mentor question that rearranged his whole approachHow he picked who would buy his company long before they knew they wouldThe second Range Rover he ordered and sent straight backThe thing nobody warns you about on the other side of an exitThe definition of "true wealth" he arrived at, and how late it cameConnect with JamesWebsite: https://jamesashford.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesashford/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejamesashfordTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fireproofjamesJames's bookSelling to ServeOther Book Recommendations:Building a StoryBrand by Donald MillerThe E-Myth Revisited by Michael GerberThe Psychology of Money by Morgan HouselRich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert KiyosakiThe Richest Man in Babylon by George S. ClasonTony Robbins' Money: Master the GameThis podcast is produced by TribunistaSponsored by Capital Partners

Welcome to the Money Vault, our new midweek show where we revisit classic, evergreen episodes from the Money to the Masses archives. On this week's episode, Damien highlights the inequality that exists between people on low incomes and those that are wealthy. He explains how the game is rigged in favour of those with high incomes, in terms of access to specialist advice, financial products, and even utilities. He highlights the key points from the popular book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" and finishes with a thought-provoking analogy of how both low and high earners are treated after they have been paid.Check out this week's ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠podcast article⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ on the Money to the Masses website to see the full list of resources from this week's show.Resources:Sign up to our weekly newsletterMTTM Podcast Episode 355 - The difference between the poor and the richFollow Money to the Masses on social media:YouTube - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/moneytothemasses⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/moneytothemasses⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/moneytothemasses⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Tik Tok - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@moneytothemasses⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

What does it look like to build steadily in real estate for 25 years — starting with a duplex, doing the work yourself, and growing one deal at a time — before most people in the industry even know your name? In this episode of The Gray Report, Spencer Gray sits down with longtime friend and LP Mike Montana of Kipper Construction for a candid conversation about an unconventional path from aspiring preacher to pharmaceutical sales rep to full-time real estate investor and builder.Mike's approach has always been straightforward: buy things that cashflow, do right by your partners, and keep showing up. This conversation is a reflection of that.In this episode:• From preaching to properties: the winding road that brought Mike to real estate• The Rich Dad, Poor Dad moment that changed how he thought about money• Flipping houses before 2008 — and getting out just in time• How Kipper Construction grew from managing their own properties to running 90% third-party projects• The leap from value-add to ground-up development, and what that process really looks like• Why Mike is still bullish on multifamily — and how he thinks about housing demand and the Midwest market

Register here to attend the live virtual event "Why Investors Are Targeting Oklahoma Real Estate in 2026" on Thursday, May 28th at 8:00 PM Eastern Time. Keith describes how a plain long-term single-family rental can quietly build wealth in ways most investors overlook, using his "GRE Duck" framework to illustrate returns beyond simple cash flow. He also emphasizes the passive income potential of buy-and-hold properties, detailing factors like: appreciation, principal paydown, tax benefits, and inflation. An Oklahoma-based investor and provider then joins Keith to introduce Oklahoma City and nearby markets as emerging options for cash flow–focused buyers.  Together, they explore why this lesser-known market and a straightforward buy-and-hold approach may deserve a closer look from investors. Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/606 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text  FAMILY to 66866  Unlock truly passive real estate income—visit flockhomes.com/GRE today to see if your properties qualify for a 721 exchange with Flock Homes. Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com  Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold  0:01   Keith, welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, the real estate duck is quacking. Learn what that's all about. See how you could expect to profit $2,500 every month just from a normal long term rental. Then the most important message that I have to tell you in years. And finally, we explore a market where new build single family rentals cost $145,000 all today on get rich, education, flock homes helps multi family owners exit the operator grind, whether it's your six Plex or a 50 unit apartment through a 721 exchange. This defers your capital gains tax. It's a strategy long used by institutions. Now you can swap tenants and toilets for passive income and zero management request your initial valuation, see if your property qualifies. At flock homes.com/gre that's F, L, O, C, K, homes.com/g, R, E,   Speaker 1  1:07   you're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold  1:23   Welcome to GRE from Hudson, Colorado to Hudson, New York and across 188 world nations. I'm Keith Weinhold, and this is get rich education with perspective every week that you won't hear from the average slack jawed finance talking head. Just a few weeks ago, it was announced that rent payments will now factor into credit scores. Yes, I suppose that now tenants can say, See, my rent is not like throwing money away. I'm investing in my FICO score. This is good news for landlords. It can be good news for tenants too, actually, and I think it's just good for society that being accountable and making timely rent payments get tracked and can be rewarded. Yes, the news is that weeks ago, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are allowing rent and utility payments to be included in credit reports that are factored into eventual mortgage approvals. It is good that your tenant is informed of this, and therefore they'll be more incentivized to pay you the rent on time. So yes, rent is now a credit builder and hmm, does this mean that America finally admitted that shelter is more important than your tenant's Banana Republic Visa card? This is something that should have been done a long time ago now. This also helps in the rent to own strategy, if you ever employ that with a tenant. Yeah, the rent to own strategy. That's where a tenant, they rent a home from you today, with the option to buy it from you later at a pre agreed price. It's basically a hybrid between renting and buying. And the advantage is you can sell your rental at a greater profit than you could otherwise, when you employ that and the reason that having rent payments be on a credit report now gives you some assurance that your tenants will improve their credit scores enough to qualify for a mortgage and actually buy your rental. So that's always an exit option for you the rent to own strategy benefiting too from this change. Now let me tell you about the GRE duck, because this duck is quacking, making some noise, and we talk about what you might think of as a more base investment strategy. And this might be your base investment strategy. It is just simple long term buy and hold investing. Some people mistakenly think that to be a big profiteer in real estate, that it takes a lot of time and money, or they think that you've got to flip a property or wholesale or do rent to own plans with your tenant, like I just mentioned, or that you have to house hack. You don't have to do any of that heavy hands on stuff. You can be highly profitable without opening up some active business inside your property, like an assisted living home or doing some co living arrangement that you self manage, or doing short term rentals. No, you don't have to do any of that. No sledge hammer required. Let's talk about the GRE duck and how normal long term rentals are super profitable. In fact, you can profit $2,500 per. Per month from just one ordinary, single family investment property, just a regular long term rental with, say, a small down payment on a 300k income property.    Keith Weinhold  5:14   Now $2,500 that might seem high to be clear, that's not the rent amount. That's not the gross. This is your net, $2,500 in total profit every month. And you know, from the outside, the uninitiated might say, Well, wait, how could one plain house really perform this? Well, all right, say that it creates $200 in monthly cash flow, your rent income, minus expenses. This only represents the part of a duck that is visible on top of the water there on the lake surface, because that's all that most people see. And it's not a decoy duck. This is the real thing, because the duck also kicks up less visible underwater returns of another $2,300 monthly. And here's how what's beneath the surface, those duck legs are paddling like they're doing CrossFit. Here's a plausible scenario. Let's just use an appreciation rate of 5% mortgage rate of 6% and say inflation is 3% Well, the first thing that the duck is furiously kicking up underwater is that erstwhile appreciation of 5% on a 300k property. This is $15,000 a year that you're benefiting, which is $1,250 per month of profit to you. Next, there's principal pay down, also known as your ROA, that return on amortization your tenant is chipping away at your loan balance for you $3,000 a year from an amortization table, that's 250 bucks a month. Then there's the tax benefits. Say the estimated depreciable value is 240k after land divide that by 27 and a half years for your depreciation schedule, that is an $8,700 a year deduction. If you're in a 25% tax bracket, that's 2200 bucks a year, nearly another $200 a month from this alone. And there are more tax benefits than that depreciation, but that's all we're going to use for simplicity. And finally, inflation, profiting 3% inflation on your 240k loan, that is 7200 bucks a year. Yes, another 600 bucks a month. Now let's put it all together to see what the duck is doing. You've got $200 worth of cash flow, which is the visible duck, and then the rest of the paddling legs, with what they're doing underwater, it's $1,250 of appreciation, 250 in principal pay down, 200 in tax benefits, and 600 in inflation profiting. This is how your total financial benefit is $2,500 a month, and this is $30,000 of annual benefit to you. Yes, on average, you are 30k wealthier annually just from this 20% down payment on one plain, single family rental with something about as passive as it gets in real estate, that $200 per month of cash flow, that's only the part that you can see the duck gliding on the surface. And now, of course, your exact number is going to be higher or lower. Oh, maybe some downers on this is if there's a surprise insurance claim that dense things like a tree falling on your fence or a roof leak or a plumbing backup, you'll also have closing costs that you need to pay one time, a three to 4% of the loan amount when you buy so the duck could get splashed. And then this could be even better than I laid out. You might have a refinance opportunity that could increase your number. Your mortgage rate could be less than the 6% number that I use. Many builders are buying it down to under 5% for you still, and this will grow your profit number beyond $30,000 a year, and in this case, the duck would enjoy a tailwind.    Keith Weinhold  9:45   Today, you do often need a seller to provide incentives to make deals create cash flow. I did some rounding for simplicity in that example, which is really like a fresh spin on real estate pays five ways that I laid out there. So essentially, this $30,000 of annual benefit this occurs whether you show up to work or not, whether you stay in bed or not, and you're probably working on it one hour per month or less. Yes, this is simply buy and hold property. None of this flipping or wholesaling or active businesses that you need to run inside it buy and hold property that's either new build or it's turnkey renovated. I mean, it's even kind of boring, no market timing, no next hot thing, nothing loud, nothing risky, nothing Instagramable. Yet so many people miss out on all of this and why? It's because they only see that $200 visible part of the duck, and they sort of think, why bother? And then you have other investors that don't stick with it long enough to realize and capture the benefit. It could take a few years to really feel a wave of appreciation or inflation. These things are more apparent, like a duck that starts quacking and getting noticed, the GRE duck helps you understand how even a modest portfolio of four or five or 10 ordinary houses builds lasting wealth. Some people think that they need to own 100 doors worth of apartment building units or something like that in order to quit their job. That is just not true. I describe precisely how the middle class can get ahead. You could quietly out earn your day job with just a small pack of properties. This is embodied and symbolized by the GRE duck. Later today, we'll talk about the exact types of properties that are conducive to this. Let me tell you what's really interesting. Now, when we look at a five year arc, here's what's remarkable. In 2022 mortgage rates tripled and home prices rose anyway. In 2024 and 2025 the level of inventory soared and home prices rose anyway. Last year, available inventory was up about 30% from the prior year. Well now it's only up about 4% from last year, the growth in available housing supply has really slowed. It is going to be fascinating if supply shrinks this year, and this is the trend, this is the direction that the market is going, which could put accretive upward pressure on prices, but not as much as something else could. Now, sometimes here on the show, I inform you about micro real estate issues, or like the savviest strategy to achieve rent increases with your tenant, but there is a macro force that could reshape real estate markets in your purchasing power for years. In fact, I'm about to share with you this is the most important, newsworthy message that I have had in years. CPI inflation keeps rising. Jerome Powell is now newly out as Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is the new guy, and he's in there at a moment where global expectations and interest rates and currencies and housing and investor psychology could all shift at once. Now, frankly, I think it would be reckless to cut rates into the fresh inflationary shock that we have from the war in Iran now, but that's exactly what some market participants are betting on, and this time, inflation is not Coming from stimulus checks and peloton bikes, like it did during covid. At this point, we have already weathered a pandemic and lockdowns and money printing and tariffs. Now it is even more we have added in a kinetic war and severe energy shocks and supply chains that are now tied into knots, the profundity of the Iran war effects are coming two time.    Keith Weinhold  14:53   GRE podcast guest, Dr, Chris Martinson and I, you know, we are not some Doomer. Spouting baseless hyperbole to get fear clicks. This month, Chris stated that he would not be surprised to see 18 to 20% inflation in the next two to three years. Yes, you heard that right. This would make the pandemic inflation spike look like a warm up act. Remember back in 2022 that's when inflation peaked at 9.1% back then, in one year, home prices exploded about 20% rents surged 15% grocery prices went to orbital and a trip to Costco suddenly felt like financing a small boat. Well, today, things are poised to get even worse. Since the start of the Iran war, we've seen the prices of jet fuel go up 70% sulfur up 60% Brent crude has spiked 52% heating oil is also up 52% since the start of the Iran war. WTI crude oil up 48% urea also up 48% diesel up 45% gasoline up 40% all of these are not obscure commodities that are sitting in a warehouse somewhere. They are the hidden ingredients inside everyday American life. Diesel moves almost everything that you buy. Urea grows the food. Oil becomes plastics, packaging, chemicals and electronics, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, paint, asphalt and 1000s of petroleum based consumer products. I mean, effectively, this massively raises the blood pressure of the entire economy, there is still cargo that's been sitting in or around the Persian Gulf and hasn't been able to transit the Strait of Hormuz for almost three months now. That's per Reuters. Even if a permanent peace agreement were signed today, this doesn't just all magically snap back by next week, it could take more than a year to normalize shipping routes, in inventories, in refining operations and supply chains. And in fact, it is even worse than that if the new Fed chair worsh decides to jack up interest rates. See, even that would do little to fix the supply side problem, because higher rates don't produce oil, they don't reopen shipping lanes, higher rates don't unclog ports. So this is not a time to sit in excessive cash and hope that your purchasing power survives. For a lot of investors, this is the time to accumulate more productive real assets while maintaining some prudent liquidity. You've always got to maintain some the alternative is to start eating losses. When we had two big waves of inflation in the 1970s bonds were mockingly called certificates of confiscation back then, and why? It's because investors earned 5% while inflation hit 15% the people who win in inflationary eras are really three groups, owners of productive real assets, people with pricing power and strategic long term fixed rate borrowers. It is pretty rare that I draw a line in the sand to identify a major inflection point and really encourage others to act. The last time that I did that distinctly was in November of 2021 because that's when mortgage rates were 3.1% inflation was double that at 6.2% and I urged investors to borrow big, and I showed you the evidence of when I stated that in last week's newsletter. I showed you right where that was published, and at that time it sounded aggressive, but today, those borrowers are sitting on yesterday's debt while they're earning today's inflated dollars. I mean, you have profited handsomely from that while there were others that were calling for a real estate price crash back in 2021.   Keith Weinhold  19:44   Gosh, that was the biggest appreciation rate year that we've had in a long, long time. Well, today, it's another inflection point, because you and I may be about to witness the highest inflation of our lifetimes, the prudent move is not paralysis. It is positioning. It means owning more productive real assets and ideally tying them to that long term fixed interest rate debt before the window closes again. So if you've been thinking about investing, repositioning your portfolio or making a plan before inflation accelerates again, you can speak directly to an MBA with real world real estate investing experience. It's a more crucial time than usual to book a free call with a GRE investment coach, which you can do at greinvestmentcoach.com. Windows like this do not stay open forever. It is the right time to act. In my opinion, that's the big message. The war inciting high inflation and hitting the point of no return for that. And I expect those free open slots to fill up fast, book a time again at GRE investment coach.com and plot out a plan. A lot of great shows coming up here on the GRE podcast, including two weeks from now, the number one selling personal finance author of all time, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Author Robert Kiyosaki will be back on the show with us. As for later today, it's interesting to learn about a new market that we have not discussed in depth before, especially when it's a cash flow market. It includes new build single family rentals for $145,000 and now it's really small, but it also includes granite and LVP flooring. That's next.    Keith Weinhold  20:20   I'm Keith Weinhold. You're listening to get rich education. What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine. You sure can at Ridge lending group, NMLS, 42056, they provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone. Because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your pre qual and even chat directly with President chailey Ridge while it's on your mind, start at Ridge lending group.com that's Ridge lending group.com, let me ask you something, if you've worked hard to build wealth, is your money positioned to actually support your goals? A lot of accredited investors leave capital sitting in cash because it feels safe, but inflation and missed income opportunities can quietly erode its value. Freedom family investments offers freedom notes for investors seeking structured income backed by real estate. It's a straightforward approach built on real assets, not speculation and full disclosure. I'm an investor myself. What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk and nothing is guaranteed, but with a track record of consistent on time investor payouts, they built real credibility. Go to freedom family investments.com. To book a clarity call or text family to 66866, that's family. 266866,   Richard Advani  23:19   This is hem lanes, co founder, Dana Dunford, listen to get rich education with Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your Daydream.   Keith Weinhold  23:35   We have the chance to discuss a cash flowing real estate market today that isn't talked about very often with Richard, an income property provider in Oklahoma. And Richard, you have over a decade of experience working and investing in the Oklahoma market. And then you your wife and your daughter, you move there because it is a rather attractive investment climate. You've been prolific in the industry. You've spoken at hundreds of real estate events, so welcome and tell us more about yourself and really that attraction to Oklahoma.   Richard Advani  24:09   Yeah, it's great to be here and share, you know, more of what I learned as an investor the last 10 years. Yeah, it's been amazing, because when I first invested here, it was more of a diversification play for me, and I didn't expect a lot of growth, but, you know, it had good fundamentals, and boy have I been surprised, because it has grown, and the growth just continues here.   Keith Weinhold  24:30   Now, in a sense, I think about Oklahoma as a potential next place. And what I mean by a next place is that 10 to 20 years ago, Denver and Phoenix were metros that worked well for cash flow and real estate investors, but then prices ran up faster than rents in Denver and Phoenix, and they no longer work for cash flow with a 20% down payment on residential property, Oklahoma feels positioned as a next place where the numbers still work before the price. Prices get run up and this is especially true when we're still in this affordable housing crisis. And Americans kind of look for that next place where the cost of living is still low.   Richard Advani  25:10   Exactly. And if we look back to you said, the fundamental things that made Phoenix and Austin and all these places grow out of the desert was they were affordable and they were business friendly. And the median home price in the US right now is $430,000 roughly, yeah, and the median home price in Oklahoma today, even after all that growth, is a little over half of that. So it's not a new concept to understand why and where that growth here stemming from.   Keith Weinhold  25:37   since 2000 Oklahoma cities, just that city's average annual growth rate is 1.4% that is really solid for a mature interior US Metro now, it's not quite like Austin or Nashville, but you're avoiding those substantially higher Austin and Nashville prices. And for comparison, the nation's annual growth rate since 2000 is eight tenths of 1% to your point about the growth now Oklahoma, I think of it as really like a two major metro state. You've got Oklahoma City in the middle and then somewhat smaller Tulsa in the northeastern part of the state. So talk to us more about that growth.   Richard Advani  26:19   Yeah, definitely. Well, I think, you know, 20 years ago, Oklahoma is really known as an energy state and a military state, and they acknowledge that as a state that they want to reduce that dependence. So there's been a huge amount of programs driven to bring small to medium size and obviously large size businesses in at the moment, we focus primarily on Oklahoma City, but Tulsa, as you mentioned, is an hour and a half away. If you look at a map, it looks really far away, but it's not in Tulsa is really kind of the Austin of Oklahoma. There's a lot of STEM and a lot of robotics and a lot of different things going on there. Stay tuned, though, as we move into latter part of the year, we are going to start expanding our product into Tulsa as well. But I think the big thing Keith is bringing awareness to people that Oklahoma exists. We do a lot of client tours, and we look forward to touring a lot of your clients as well. But people are just blown away when they get here. It's clean, it's nice, it's family friendly. All the suburbs of Oklahoma City, for example, they're just gated communities and good school districts. And what's crazy is you could put 20% down buy a brand new home in a nine out of 10 school district in the Oklahoma City metro, we're in the below $300,000 range, and make a positive you know, you can't do that in any other metro in the US.   Keith Weinhold  27:38   Yeah, that is really attractive. So I think of Oklahoma City is a place that's not very flashy, although they do have that proposal for that giant building that I think a lot of people have read about. You know, it seems like every major city has their big, pointy thing in the middle of town. Oklahoma City might as well they have a skyscraper with a proposal, only a proposal at this stage, which would make it the tallest building in the United States, but outside of something flashy like that, I don't think of Oklahoma as a very flashy place. It doesn't make the headlines as much as a lot of other places do, but those headline making places seem to have the prices run up, and that's not so advantageous for investors. So tell us more about that investor advantage in Oklahoma, including things like the law tilting toward landlords versus tenants, and any other economic drivers.   Richard Advani  28:31   Yeah. So firstly, I'll touch on that point. It's a very, very landlord friendly state, from the month a tenant runs late, you can essentially have them out that same month, as long as a property manager company is doing their job and serving notices. But at the end of the day, if it's a matter of the tenant not paying their rent, and you've provided a household right, your HVAC is working, there's nothing negligible on the landlord side, super easy. It's an open and shut case. Now what we see because of that is, out of 250 properties under management last year, we've never had to do an eviction, because it's a lose, lose for the tenants. And they know that, right? You serve them with the notice, they are out very, very quickly. So yeah, very strong on the landlord side of things, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of growth happening in Oklahoma, like you mentioned that tallest building, in addition to that, you know, the OKC Thunder, are here, and, you know, I think they're a champion. I watched zero sports, but I have read deeply into the economic impact, and I've seen it right. I've had people come to town and we give recommendations on where to stand. They're like, Oh, I've been to Oklahoma two years ago for a thunder game, and I fell in love with the city, and it's very, very underrated. Imagine if you could have got into, you know, Austin or Dallas 10 years, 12 years, 15 years ago. And I hear it very often from people. This reminds them of what those places were like 10 years ago. And that's a great thing to hear, right, that strong fundamental and catalyst for that growth exists. Buying a single family home, as I mentioned in that A plus school district that Windows closing here in Oklahoma as well. You know, I think there's another year, year and a half, before they will pencil and will be like every other large metro in the US. So, you know, I think we're all going to look back and be like, Oh, you got in Oklahoma early. I've been in here 10 years. I think I got in early, but you know, we're still relatively early in terms of, you know, the growth trajectory, that's the head and once again, it's driven by common sense, fundamentals, affordable, business, friendly people get here, establish community, and it's a really nice place to live. I love it here.   Keith Weinhold  30:35   And because now you're a resident. Yes, you know Richard, one phrase I've shared with my audience recently, and I think it's apropos here is people say that they want an opportunity. What they really want is certainty. But as soon as certainty arrives, the opportunity is gone. I really think that's relevant here. So we've been talking about Oklahoma City, and what you do is you rehabilitate or offer new build properties to investors. Oftentimes they're out of state. You place a tenant for them, and then, if the investor so chooses, you also manage it for them. Like you mentioned, you have 250 properties under management in your portfolio. That's what you do, that's who you serve. We've talked about Oklahoma City. Tell us about some of the outlying areas, and why you choose those for investors,   Richard Advani  31:29   That's a great question. And yeah, we primarily focus on new construction, because that's what I believe in for investors as well. What's amazing is, we're kind of a, I don't say supermarket, but we're a mega market because we're in six or seven different cities within Oklahoma, which means for the investors, six or seven different strategies, right? As I mentioned already, we're in the A plus areas at the best schools. We're in commuter towns that are 20 minutes outside of the metro that are really charming. We're in military towns where we have very, very strong economies, very high rent to purchase price ratios, really some of the highest in the country for new construction. And we deliver products, starting brand new single family homes is at 145,000 and at 180 and 220 and, you know, all the way up to 550 and everything in between. So we have a product for every type of investor we have, you know, a home for every type of tenant out there as well, which, you know, makes our tours amazing, too. People leave with their head spinning, but we really have a good amount of selection and strategies within the state.   Keith Weinhold  32:35   145k for a detached single family home is pretty mind blowing to some people. I've seen those. I know the footprint of those is pretty small, but that really gives an idea of what potentially makes you attractive to work with. You have those all the way up to 550k which I think are the new build duplexes, correct mentioned there. So yeah, this is potentially attractive to people. I think a lot of us are really more interested in that ratio between the rent income and the purchase price, that valuable formula. So will you tell us more about   Richard Advani  33:11   That? Yeah, that's something that I think we really excel at, is finding that balance point between durability for the investor, but also kind of where that rent range falls off is. A lot of experienced investors know, as you go higher priced, higher end, the rent starts really falling off there. All of our builds have LVP throughout granite. You know, even that 145,000, our home is so much granite and it would blow your mind, but we're not skipping anything, right? They all have full gutters. All have central heating and air conditioning with that end end goal of making it durable. But, you know, finding that tipping point to where we're not over building for that rent, so we're able to really bring in some high cash flows for what we target, and we specialize in affordable housing. And when I say affordable, don't think cheap. Just think most builders are going to build a product we've been in a boom the last 20 years, right? So if there's 500 people in line to buy a $400,000 home where your profit margins are high, why build a $250,000 home, right? And that is where the housing shortage is, and that is what we've made our nation. Most importantly, that is where we can make cash flow as investors.   Keith Weinhold  34:20   So we're thinking about numbers on our pro forma now, Oklahoma does have tornadoes. I happen to know that tornado paths are geographically narrow. It's been estimated that they've severely damaged less than 1% of Oklahoma homes. But tell us about that, including the insurance coverage is one of our pro forma items.   Richard Advani  34:42   It's a great question, obviously, that comes up a lot. I took a video two weeks ago with tornado sirens blaring, and I'm with my wife and daughter, and mind you, my wife yells at me up until recently to get in the shelter. And we walk out front and I'm recording, and I look to the left, old couple outside looking at the sky. Look to the right, kids in the. Parents looking at the sky, and surprisingly to me, my wife was right there behind me. I'm like, why are you not in the shelter so? Long story short, tornadoes are real, right? I've lived here two and a half years now. I've never met a person affected by a tornado, yet, personally, and as you mentioned, it caused very low damage. There's very rarely fatalities. And most importantly, look, insurance rates are determined by losses suffered by that insurance company. You guys will be blown away at how inexpensive the insurance is, just for that reason, right? But, yeah, tornadoes are real. We're in tornado season now, and people ask, what do people do when the tornadoes are on? And, frankly, walk out and look up at the street, you know, at the sky. It's not like a hurricane, where they come in and mass and destroy a town. You can see the storm cell moving around right when you're looking outside. So damage is low. I've owned real estate in Oklahoma for over a decade. I've never been affected by a tornado, either. But you know, they are a thing, and they're that hot point, just like fires in California. What was earthquakes? But the important thing is, the standard insurance policy covers tornadoes, it covers hail, it covers all of that. And, you know, even on those 300,000 more a plus class properties insurance is like 1500 a year. You know, very inexpensive.   Keith Weinhold  36:15   We're talking about what I've been referring to, potentially as that next place for real estate investors. I was talking about that in house here with Naresh on how Oklahoma really feels like that next place due to some of these characteristics that I've been talking about. And Richard before, I ask you if you have any last thoughts. I have an event to tell you the listener about next Thursday night, May 28 Richard here is CO hosting a live webinar along with our GRE investment coach, Naresh, and you are invited to attend from the comfort of your own home. You'll meet Richard, learn the market, see performers of specific available properties, and you're probably going to learn something about real estate investing that you didn't know before. It's also a format where you can have any of your questions answered in real time. This can be an actionable opportunity for you again. It's Thursday, May 28 at 8pm Eastern. Sign Up it's free, you can register. It's open now at gre webinars.com. You'll meet a real pro, experienced provider there on the ground. Richard here and do you have any last thoughts, including what we can learn and see next Thursday? Richard,   Richard Advani  37:34   Just that you know, if you haven't considered Oklahoma before, take a close look at us, right? There's a lot of amazing things happening. I am boots on the ground. I started as a real estate investor, and that's kind of the foundation for our business. We really encourage tours to come out here. The market sells itself, but it's not needed. Look, we are boots on the ground. I bought dozens of properties myself, sight unseen. Technology makes things amazing for that. But come down. If you guys do have the time, we're going to share a lot more specifics next Thursday on proformas, on exact numbers and specific opportunities. And yeah, excited to share Oklahoma with all of your investors, and to bring these opportunities to you guys and appreciate the opportunity to be here.   Keith Weinhold  38:18   Is there anything that investors find surprising that they did not know about Oklahoma prior to investing there, and prior to learning about it, and before you answer yes, thank goodness that you offer tours. Any good provider should do that, although, in my experience, it's typically only five to 10% of out of state investors that actually take up somebody on the tour. You can never take that personally. That's just what happens industry wide, as we know. But is there any maybe last thing that we should know about the market, Richard, maybe something that an out of state investor is a bit surprised to learn, or that's unique to that particular market?   Richard Advani  38:58   I think the biggest thing that people are surprised about is how nice it is. I've actually had an investor bought six properties and moved to Oklahoma become a good friend of mine. Now, since he lives in Oklahoma, people are just blown away at how clean and nice and family friendly. And we hear quite often that, you know, our investors would live in these homes, so much so we had one actually do that. So yeah, it's very underrated. And I think, as you said very aptly earlier, you know, it's the next market, it could be the next big market,   Keith Weinhold  39:30   potentially that next place. If this sounds interesting to you, be sure to join Richard and our team again. It's Thursday May 28 at 8pm Eastern, and you can register at gre webinars.com. It's been valuable. Richard, it's been great having you here on the show.   Richard Advani  39:46   Thank you.   Keith Weinhold  39:52   Yeah, a rather interesting potential. Next place, if you will, for some perspective in Noelle. Normal traffic conditions from downtown Dallas, it is a three to three and a half hour drive north to Oklahoma City, but that is its own distinct market and city and capital. Oklahoma City affordable and business friendly this century. Really, it's those two drivers, affordable and business friendly, that have been the growth engines for other cities. OKC also has an expanding aerospace and tech presence in major downtown development projects, among other interesting things. At next week's live event, expect to see new build, yes, as low as 145k with LVP flooring and granite throughout, like we touched on there, one investor has even moved into the property themselves. I mean, you can do that if you want to. These are conducive to being good rental properties, but you own the property, you could live there, if you so chose. Yes all the way up to new build duplexes at 565k that generate almost $4,000 in monthly rent, though, these are the types of properties where you might want to pick up one of them, or five of them as investments leveraging the GRE duck and getting position for this likely next inflationary wave from an energy shock. I don't want to steal all the thunder from the event, but expect the provider to offer two years of free property management as well. One last time it all takes place next Thursday the 28th at 8pm Eastern. Sign Up Free at gre webinars.com until next week. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream.   Speaker 1  41:49   Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests on their own information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively.   Keith Weinhold  42:18   The preceding program was brought to you buy your home for wealth, building, get richeducation.com you.

This week Labor touched the third rail of Australian politics: wealth and tax. Can it survive the backlash?

Sponsored by Count — a tool we recommend for better financial tracking and clarity   Learn more: https://www.getcount.com/us/partners/SoundFinancialGroup   Robert Kiyosaki helped change how millions of people think about money. But what happens when a voice that once educated and empowered starts leaning into fear-based predictions?   In this episode of More Than Commas, Paul takes a closer look at Kiyosaki's evolution—from the impact of Rich Dad, Poor Dad to his repeated market crash warnings—and breaks down what he predicted vs. what actually happened.   More importantly, we explore how these narratives can influence investor behavior, why fear-based messaging spreads so easily, and what investors should focus on instead to build real, long-term wealth.   -- Timestamps: 00:20 – The impact of Robert Kiyosaki's early work 01:01 – When the message began to shift 01:09 – From education to fear-based predictions 01:21 – What this episode will break down 01:46 – Why his early contributions still matter 01:53 – The success of Rich Dad, Poor Dad   #investing #stockmarket #financialeducation #wealthbuilding #longterminvesting    -- This Material is Intended for General Public Use. By providing this material, we are not undertaking to provide investment advice for any specific individual or situation, or to otherwise act in a fiduciary capacity. Please contact one of our financial professionals for guidance and information specific to your individual situation. Sound Financial Inc. dba Sound Financial Group is a registered investment adviser. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through Sound Financial Inc. dba Sound Financial Group and individually licensed and appointed agents in all appropriate jurisdictions. This podcast is meant for general informational purposes and is not to be construed as tax, legal, or investment advice. You should consult a financial professional regarding your individual situation. Guest speakers are not affiliated with Sound Financial Inc. dba Sound Financial Group unless otherwise stated, and their opinions are their own. Opinions, estimates, forecasts, and statements of financial market trends are based on current market conditions and are subject to change without notice. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Wealth manager and financial expert Walter Clarke helps us raise financially-literate kids with his insights on talking with youngsters about money--even when it's tricky.  Do we give kids an allowance?  A custodial brokerage account?  The real story on why Dad's in debt?  A doll called Sam the Spender?  You can't afford not to hear this episode!Additional resources: Instagram @WalterjclarkeFamilycfo.netBy Walter Clarke:401Kid: A Guide to Teaching You and Your Children How to Master MoneyLessons from the Magic Penny seriesBy Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Send us Fan MailOn May 5, 1976 (about 50 years ago) I, Edward Jeffrey Hill, married Juanita Ray in the Mesa, Arizona temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To celebrate that momentous occasion I am inserting a few bedtime stories that feature Juanita from that time period. This bedtime story tells about our experiences together on March 22, 1976 and is entitled "A Magical Day with Juanita Ray (I'm a poet and don't know it!)  ... Poor Dad joke!  This is Part 2

Send us Fan MailOn May 5, 1976 (about 50 years ago) I, Edward Jeffrey Hill, married Juanita Ray in the Mesa, Arizona temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To celebrate that momentous occasion I am inserting a few bedtime stories that feature Juanita from that time period. This bedtime story tells about our experiences together on March 22, 1976 and is entitled "A Magical Day with Juanita Ray (I'm a poet and don't know it!)  ... Poor Dad joke!  This is Part 1

As we wrap up this final episode of this 4-part money series, I'll dive into the most important aspect of money—generosity—and how you can implement that into your life whether you have a lot of money or a little. Also, I'll answer your money questions and more. Mentioned in this EpisodeStruggling with your budget or getting out of debt? Let's work together to get you out! Fill out this form to schedule a time to connect.Episodes:#174: Getting Out of Debt for Good#173: Fall in Love With Budgeting#172: Become the Boss of Your MoneyBudgeting App:EveryDollar AppBooks:Total Money Makeover by Dave RamseyYou're a Badass at Making Money by Jen SinceroKnow Yourself, Know Your Money by Rachel CruzRich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert KiyosakiCharities to Check Out:Make a Wish FoundationWounded Warrior ProjectCharity WaterOperation Song

Hannah Hammond is a dynamic entrepreneur, real estate investor, and the CEO of HB Capital, a national CRE lending company, and the firm RE, a CRE real estate brokerage in Arizona. As self-made multi-millionaire in her 20s. her mission extends beyond financial success-she's passionate about empowering the next generation of leaders through financial literacy, emotional wellness, and entrepreneurship.  

Keith challenges the belief that all debt is bad and reframes it as a tool for building wealth when used intentionally.  He contrasts destructive consumer debt with productive investment debt, especially in real estate, and explains how inflation, long-term fixed-rate loans, and rental income can work together to grow net worth.  Keith explores the mindset shift from prioritizing safety and being debt-free to pursuing growth through leverage, highlights the opportunity cost of avoiding debt, and offers practical guidelines for using borrowing rationally rather than emotionally.  He also shows how modern economies and many wealthy individuals rely on strategic debt, positioning it as a key part of a more intentional, asset-focused version of the American Dream. Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/600 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text  FAMILY to 66866  Unlock truly passive real estate income—visit flockhomes.com/GRE today to see if your properties qualify for a 721 exchange with Flock Homes. Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com  Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold  0:00   welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith weinholder, there's bad debt, good debt and great debt. Are you using debt wisely, and are you ensuring that you stay in debt? Because debt is the American dream today, on get rich education milestone episode 600   Corey Coates  0:23   since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get rich education can be heard in every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit get rich education.com   Keith Weinhold  1:06   the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequel and even chat with President chailey Ridge personally while it's on your mind, start at Ridge lending group.com that's Ridge lending group.com   Speaker 1  1:40   You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold  1:56   Welcome to GRE from Kennewick, Washington at Kennebunkport, Maine and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you are inside get rich education. Yes, America's favorite slack jawed mammal on a microphone has got his act back on track, for your listening pleasure, since 2014 This is our 600th wealth building week in a row, you've been misled, not maliciously, not even intentionally, but somewhere along the way, a really expensive idea got planted inside your head, and it was once planted inside my head, that debt is bad, just blanketly bad, that the goal is to be debt free, that owing money to somebody else is something to escape as fast as possible. And look, I get it, if your mindset is in the old middle class consumer credit world like mine was for much of my life, debt feels heavy, it feels like risk, it feels like obligation, but the people telling you to avoid debt, they're the same people that never built much wealth now a reliance on 22% APR, credit card debt just To pay basic living expenses, because it's the only way that you could do it, merely making the minimum monthly payment that right there is the road to ruin. Why? Well, because the interest rate is high, because you have to pay it back yourself, and because it's unsecured, meaning that there's no collateral, and at the same time, the people quietly getting rich, what are they doing? They're using debt every single day. So debt is not the enemy, it's just the tool, and like any tool, it can build a house, or it can smash your thumb if you miss the nail. Well today we're going to separate the two, because if you understand this one concept, then you stop playing defense financially and start going on offense. In fact, I'll go further. Debt isn't the opposite of the American Dream used correctly. Debt is the American dream. Now, my turning point was really fueled when I made my first ever home, that $295,000 blue four Plex Building Two decades ago, with just my three and a half percent down payment. That meant that 96 and a half percent was borrowed. That's debt, and that fueled everything for me, and got the ball rolling on using that seminal four Plex to leverage even more debt and more property with 1031 exchanges and cash out refinances debt made that American dream free. Me because I could not have afforded $295,000 all cash back then. Now, a guest that we had on the show last year and the owner of a commercial lending company, Hannah Hannan, she recently talked about the virtues of debt. I met Hannah because we were both faculty members on last year's real estate guys Investor Summit at sea cruise. Well, Hannah went on a different cruise and saw in Jamaica that there were all these vacant and uncompleted houses just sort of weirdly stuck at different stages of construction. She asked the tour guide, why are these houses all abandoned? And and the tour guide answered, we don't have loans here in Jamaica. People have to work make money and then start the build, and then the build pauses while they make more money, and then they have to construct the next phase of the build as they go and go back to making more money like that. I mean, sheesh, that's awful. Can you imagine if you had to build a home or a rental property for yourself that way? Well, back here in the US, access to debt is what allows people to build wealth faster, especially in real estate, you can use other people's money control large assets, pay less in taxes and compound off a much smaller amount of capital. That's the difference. Debt availability is really good in the US compared to other nations, and that's the emphasis on the American part of today's episode. Debt is the American dream. Now, when it comes to the big misunderstanding, most people think that debt is really just one thing. They just lump it all like it's all bad, credit cards, car loans, student loans, mortgages. A lot of people, they really do. They just still throw it all into one mental bucket that's sort of labeled da, avoid that at all costs. I'm telling you, no way you cannot do that. I mean, this is like saying food is bad because candy exists. No, there's junk food and there's fuel. It's the same with debt. Consumer debt is a wealth killer. Investment debt is a wealth creator, and if you don't know the difference well, you end up avoiding the very thing that could move your life forward. Here's another way to think about it, debt doesn't make you poor. Using debt poorly makes you poor.    Keith Weinhold  7:36   In real estate, inflation is quietly paying your mortgage, even if you never made a principal payment at all. When you really understand this, it almost sounds too good to be true. Most people think inflation is just rising prices, and it is that, but they miss the other side of the equation. Inflation also shrinks debt, something I've been talking about for more than 10 years here. If you have a 30 year fixed rate mortgage, you're paying back that loan with future dollars that are worth less, and meanwhile, rents tend to rise, wages tend to rise, and asset values tend to rise, but your mortgage, it stays fixed. Inflation can't touch it, and that means that over time, your payment gets easier and easier to make. Oh, and then if you've got a tenant in place as well, oh, they're the one sending in the check for everything. And inflation is not just happening to you. It's now working for you. If you've got, say, a $500,000 mortgage loan, and inflation is 3% well, then inflation enriched you by $15,000 every single year. That's $1,250 a month just on this 500k mortgage loan. And if you've got an investment property rented out. You've even got the tenant paying down, oh, maybe $400 in monthly principal for you on the property, plus this $1,250 in inflation profiting, plus $100 of cash flow. This is $1,750 in monthly benefit before we've even added in your tax benefits and the appreciation potential. What made this all happen debt is what made it all a reality for you. When we talk about why the middle class fears debt, yeah, there is a mindset divide here. On one side, it simply says, get out of debt, stay out of debt and avoid risk. On the other we ask, How can I use that to acquire assets? So it's really like the first group is focused on safety and the second group is focused on growth, and after a while you have to ask bigger X. Potential questions like, do you want to live a life of safety, or do you want to live a life of growth? Now, I'm not knocking discipline, but there is a hidden cost to avoiding debt entirely. It's called opportunity cost. When you pay all cash, oh, well, then you lose leverage, you lose scalability, you lose tax advantages, and you often lose time. Hey, just like I would have by postponing my first four Plex purchase for, say, five plus years until I could have saved up all that money by myself. That's why playing it safe is often the riskiest move, because while you're sitting on the sidelines, inflation and rising prices are still in the game, and you've taken yourself out of the game. When we talk about the American dream, look, America was built on debt leverage.    Keith Weinhold  11:01   Zoom out for a second. This isn't just about you and me. America itself was built on debt. Railroads were financed with borrowed money that helped Cornelius Vanderbilt build his railroad empire in the 1800s in the 1900s highways were funded through government debt. Today, our entire suburbs are built on mortgages. Leverage didn't break the system. It built the system. So it's kind of ironic that today people are told the safest move is to avoid the very mechanism that built this modern economy that you and I are living inside every day. Debt is how things get done. Now, practically, yes, debt can absolutely wreck you if it's used poorly. So we think about some simple guardrails then favor fixed rate debt over variable match long term debt with long term assets, and you want to chiefly borrow for cash flowing or appreciating assets, and also stress test your deals assume that things won't go perfectly. So this certainly is not about being reckless. It's about being intentional. Debt should serve you, not the other way around. And now notice how I said to chiefly use debt for cash flowing or appreciating assets. I didn't say solely because you'll remember how last year, I talked to you about how I bought a new car for myself and financed as much as I was allowed, almost 100% debt. I had to make, like, a two or 3k down payment on the car because it was a special order. And once they start, you know, building it and customizing it for me, well, then they're at risk if they don't have a deposit, all right? Well, I found a way to make this car debt pretty good debt. Oh, and you might be thinking, oh, yeah, of course. Well, if you use it for business, you probably get some deductions that way. Oh, no, no. Business use totally a personal car, almost leveraged to the hilt, but it's not bad debt, and I'll tell you why. By the way, this isn't some high end exotic car. It's a BMW x3 SUV. It was like 53 or 55k and now how could I possibly call this good debt? Nope, I'm not running it out to other people or anything like that, because here, unlike income property, where a tenant pays it down, I do have to make these car payments myself. Well, in a word, the reason I did it this way is for the arbitrage. I got a fixed 3.99% interest rate for five years. Call it 4% Oh, I am almost certainly going to beat that by investing those dollars in real estate. So the 55k almost that I did not have to allocate to a car. Oh, well, that amount is enough for a down payment and closing costs on a cash flowing rental. That's probably going to pay me five ways with a total ROI that I expect to be multiples above the 4% interest rate, but the car's value depreciates. What about that debt on a depreciating asset? A car depreciates at the same rate whether it's bought all cash or all debt. It doesn't matter. Here is the better question, why tie up that much in a depreciating asset? 55k if I had paid all cash which I could have, I would have foregone returns and paid opportunity cost. Now, arbitraging car debt this way. That's not great debt. I don't put it in that category like real estate that pays for itself is and that is mostly because no tenant services. My personal car debt. For me, this car debt is just good debt, not great debt. Now how about some more guardrails? How can you keep yourself from going nuts and just trying to arbitrage everything. How would you know if you've gone too far? I mean, any person that's savvy with personal finance has to ask themselves a question, and that is always, what is the risk associated with this investment, or what is the risk associated with this debt, right? Because I already talked about the upsides of car debt this way. Well, the first risk is that I don't successfully arbitrage it. Rather than having the 55k sunk into the car, I have it invested elsewhere than say, it doesn't achieve a greater than 4% return. Well, the risk of that happening is small, maybe about a 10% chance. What's another big risk of leveraging car debt this way? Well, it's if you cannot make the monthly payment, which for me is about $1,050 a month, 1050 that's a comfortable payment. For me, if you can't make the payment that's called, you got yourself into an over leveraged condition. But for me, these risks are manageable. And this is applied thinking. This is clear eyed thinking, rational decision making, a level headed approach, a long term approach. It's common sense investing. Have a strategy and then invest your plan, not your emotions. Look paying off debt. That's often an emotional response, like when the debt is at a low interest rate and yes, understanding that debt is the American dream. Okay, this is still a pretty unconventional understanding, for sure, but it is pragmatism over emotions. When emotions go up, intelligence goes down. You can see that in a lot of places in your life. I can too. I think that a lot of the emotion happened to us when we were really young, perhaps age 12. And maybe you're saying, Oh, well, grandpa, he would not have arranged his finances this way. Grandpa wouldn't have leveraged all this real estate debt, and he sure wouldn't have thought that arbitraging car debt is savvy, but your grandpa was born before 1971 back when the dollar was still gold, backed if you're older now, your grandpa might have even been affected by living through the 1930s Great Depression. Our world does not work that way. Today, the dollar is no longer tethered to gold. It's just borrowed and lent into existence, and another Great Depression that's actually really unlikely. In the 1930s President Herbert Hoover refused to provide government support to prop up the economy, and sheesh today, any crisis is like immediately propped up by us printing a ton of dollars and then giving them out, just like covid stimulus checks and mortgage loan forbearance and all of that debt, debt, debt. Now I don't think that all of that is good, but you got to acknowledge that that's the world we live in today. If you're debt averse, because grandpa always said to stay out of debt, well then you know what you can take solace. Take comfort in the fact that today, ultimately, grandpa would have understood that the world changed, and he would want what is best for you.    Keith Weinhold  19:03   I'm get rich education. Host Keith Weinhold, this week, we're talking about why debt is the American dream on episode 600 with guidance that's practical, contrarian investor first and non emotional. Contrarian does not mean reckless. And by the way, just because something is mainstream, well, that doesn't necessarily make it bad, but in this case with debt, it often does. Here we're kind of back onto the old Mark Twain quote. Go out on a limb, that's where the fruit is. This is independent thinking for real world investors. It's where theory meets what actually works, and I'll discuss some specific actionable guidance for you before we're done today. But this is largely about ignoring the masses and following a clear incentive path. And what do the masses do? Now they kind of all gel together and get pumped up when they follow these debt free call in radio shows where the host advises the caller to always desperately retire debt at all costs. They'll even tell you work a second and a third job. You got to postpone vacations. They'll tell you to defer your life and go into lifestyle debt. Then in order to desperately stay out of financial debt, we're never going to get that time back. So just chill, take it easy with a lot of debt types inflation and sometimes tenants both passively pay it back for you. I mean, on these debt free call in radio shows, almost every time they give guidance, I kind of chuckle when I listen to this stuff. I sort of quietly ask myself, how would that path ever build wealth like when people are advised to retire 3% mortgage debt? Why dreadful sounding guidance like this happens is because it keeps irresponsible people from going over a cliff. That's all it serves to do. I mean, you're here listening to me because you're good with money, or you desire to be good with money and not give all your money away to creditors used intelligently. Debt isn't reckless. It's a tool, and it's one that lets you scale without trading every hour of your life for dollars. It seems to me that some of the groups of people that need to hear the debt is the American Dream message. They tend to be in a few groups. I need to be careful here, but I'm talking about groups like people with less financial education, engineers and women. It doesn't mean that people with less financial education are any less intelligent. And then when it comes to the engineering profession, you know that type of person tends to be unusually conservative, and I've worked for engineering firms in the past, so I wouldn't know this is somewhat of a paradox. Since engineers are the calculating types, you would think that they would have leverage and arbitrage figured out, and then women are a group that they tend to be more debt averse than most, and this is not a knock on women at all. In fact, women generally do a lot of things better than men do. I mean, I could go on and on there, like emotional intelligence and social awareness and relationship building and even multitasking and sticking to a plan, but I know couples where the husband does understand that it does not make a lick of financial sense to pay off the home, but he did it because the wife wants it so badly she deems that as security. But yeah, there was a time in my life where I thought that being millions of dollars in debt. Oh, that just sounded awful, like I thought that after graduating from college, but Oh, position well, with leverage in real estate, after a long time, you might get yourself where you're increasing your debt half a million bucks every year, but right alongside it, you're increasing your asset value 1 million bucks every year. Well, right there, since net worth is assets minus debt, you're increasing your net worth by a half million bucks a year because you have a big amount to leverage, because you've been a real estate investor for a long time. For example, debt made that American dream possible. But, yeah, the needling engineer type that's conventional and is like still the guy faithfully contributing to their 401 k which is locked up until their age, 59 and a half and keeps paying down debt. You know, they're the ones showing up to their engineering job in a pair of Dockers pants. I'm telling you, people that wear Dockers are not good debtors. I mean, do they still make stupid Dockers? I've got to look that up. Do those pants have pleats at the front or not? I don't even know.    Speaker 2  24:16   Levi's 100% cotton Dockers. If you're not wearing Dockers, you're just wearing pants.   Keith Weinhold  24:21   Oh jeez. And yeah, they still do make Dockers. I mean, the stereotypical needling engineer that dutifully contributes to a 401, K, he's got to have a complete dresser drawer full of stupid Dockers, no doubt.   Keith Weinhold  24:37   Hey, I can make a little fun of them, because I spent a lot of time in that world. I think it makes sense to contribute to a 401 K, by the way, but only up to the employer match amount. That way it's tax advantaged, and you're using other people's money one to one, but above that, oh, every dollar you lock inside a 401 k is $1 that can No. Longer leverage other people's money. That means no debt, no leverage, and a steep opportunity cost. Now to get a holistic picture here, we need to think through what are some reasons to pay down debt, or to pay off debt and completely retire it? Because there are some good reasons for doing that. I talked about credit cards earlier, student loan debt is also not good debt, because you must pay that debt, not somebody else, like a tenant, and now their interest rates are not as high as credit cards, but there's also no collateral with student loans. Maybe you could arbitrage it, like I did with my car, but student loan debt can't be discharged in bankruptcy. Like most other debt types, can you also want to pay off debt when an interest rate is working against you and not for you. Also, if you want to buy more property, but you need to lower your DTI in order to qualify with your mortgage loan underwriter that is lower your debt to income ratio before you take out another mortgage. Oh, well, that would be a reason, for example, to pay off a car loan. Another reason to pay off debt is if you're approaching retirement and you expect a decrease in your income, then you would want to revisit that here at GRE you might be structuring things to increase your income once you retire. That's its own discussion. They are some of the reasons to pay off debt. It makes sense sometimes, and with all those reasons, we've kept emotions out of it. But otherwise, yeah, bring on the good debt. Debt and loan are my two favorite four letter words the wealthiest people have the most debt. I've discussed that reality before on previous episodes, and I gave a lot of examples, like with Mark Zuckerberg and also with Jay Z and Beyonce, so I won't go into all that again. So therefore, let me discuss how, not only do the wealthiest people have the most debt, I mean, for example, I'm wealthier than I've ever been, and I simultaneously have the most debt that I've ever had. Not surprisingly, the wealthiest world nations have the most debt too. Let's look at it from the perspective of household debt as a percent of GDP. There are about 200 world nations, and sure enough, the US ranks pretty high 13th in this measure of household debt, the top 10 nations, counting them down from 10 to one is and look, they're all wealthy nations that have the most debt, Sweden, Denmark, Hong Kong, Norway, South Korea. Up to fifth is New Zealand. And then you've got the Netherlands at fourth, and then Canada, Australia, and number one is the nation that you probably think of as the most wealthy and stable in the entire world. It is Switzerland. They are number one in household debt per GDP, and then the poorest of the 200 world nations have the least debt and the highest interest rates and the least stable currencies. But see, the wealthy nations can borrow the most. These countries can borrow trillions because investors trust them. Their economies are productive and they can service the payments just like you see, say that I know you've got $5 million in debt. Just say that's true. All right. Well, now that's an interesting thing that I know about you, and now I can automatically deduce something else about you. I know that you must be pretty credit worthy for anyone to have even extended you that much credit. So a high debt level is a mark of creditworthiness. The richest people have the most debt and the richest nations have the most debt too. Debt is a contract with time. Here's the deeper idea, debt lets you pull future resources into today. It's financial time travel. But there is a catch. You need to deploy that capital into something that grows faster than the cost of borrowing. If you do that, you win. If you don't, then you just brought future problems into the present debt is time travel, and most people just waste the trip. That's why debt has a bad name. Debt Free surely is not the goal. But you know, even hitting a certain net worth or income mark is not an end goal. Their financial goal. But not the end. The end goal is genuinely living the best version of you. And in fact, let's listen to this together for a minute or two from the parallel truth. Are you really living? It's a little oversimplified, but this is quite a bit more substantive than civil engineers wearing Levi's 100% cotton Dockers. Don't be startled by the sound effects.   Speaker 3  30:23   If you really think working 50 years at a job you hate just to get a few years of so called Freedom makes sense, then I'm sorry to say, you have been brainwashed. This is not living. It's a trap. From the moment you're born, the system starts programming you. School doesn't teach you to think. It teaches you to obey, to sit still, follow orders and wait for permission. Then comes work, where your best years, your energy, your creativity, all get drained away to build someone else's dream. And they call that success. Retirement is the prize they dangle in front of you. Work hard now, they say, so one day you can finally rest. But by the time that day comes, your body's worn out, your fire's gone, and all those dreams you once had, they faded into routine. You traded your time for money and then your health to earn it back. And here's the cruel truth, that's not an accident. It's designed that way, a system built to keep you tired, broke and too distracted to notice what's really happening. They want you so busy surviving that you forget to actually live the scam is simple. They steal your youth when it's full of energy, passion and possibility, and then hand you back your freedom when you're too weak to use it. And the worst part, most people defend the very system that's enslaving them. They call it normal life. They laugh at anyone who questions it, because it's easier to believe the lie than to face the truth. But nothing about this is normal. It's just comfortable enough to stop you from revolting. They give you weekends, holidays and Netflix tiny doses of relief so you don't question the cage you live in. You were born to create, to explore, to build your own path, not to clock in and out until the day you die. The world doesn't need more workers. It needs more thinkers, more dreamers, more people brave enough to walk away from the illusion. So ask yourself, are you really living or just slowly dying inside a system that calls itself freedom?   Speaker 4  31:59   Yeah. Are you truly living or just existing with GRE plan, you can often retire in five to 10 years. So no debt isn't something to fear. It's something to understand. Because the difference between being stuck financially and moving forward faster than you thought possible, it often comes down to one thing, whether you avoid debt or you learn to use it, the American dream is not about being debt free. It's more about owning assets, leveraging wisely, and then letting time tenants and inflation do some of the heavy lifting for you, all of your life. Debt is the American dream, and I've got more on this for you today, coming up here on the show in future, GRE episodes, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Author Robert Kiyosaki publicly states that he has $1.4 billion in debt, billion with a B, not because he's irresponsible, because he understands leverage and debt often entails a tax advantage with it too. Later this spring, Robert Kiyosaki returns to the show with me here. He's been one of our more recurrent guests over time. Next week, Redfin chief economist, Darrell fairweather, PhD, sits down with me here. Also a lot of other prominent guests lined up, like real estate influencer thatch Wynn will be here with me and lots of other great episodes coming up, including a lot of content that you wouldn't expect to hear that can make a real difference in your life. Be sure to follow or subscribe to the show and also tell a friend about the show today could very well be one of these paradigm shifting episodes that you want to share on social media. More straight ahead you're listening to debt is the American Dream On get rich education.    Keith Weinhold  33:50   Let me throw out a simple idea, sometimes doing nothing with your money is actually a decision. Leaving it parked might feel safe, but over time, purchasing power changes. So the conversation isn't about chasing returns. It's about intentionally placing money somewhere. Freedom, family investments works in real estate people use every day housing, senior communities, essential properties, things tied to living and not trends, their freedom notes. Offering is built for accredited investors looking for structured income backed by real assets, not speculation. I am an investor with them myself. The Freedom team makes themselves available to walk through their approach, structure and operating philosophy, so you can ask questions and determine alignment before moving forward, while past performance doesn't guarantee future results, their historical operating philosophy has yielded 100% investor payouts backed by over 20 years of experience. If you want clarity before making any moves, book a clarity call. At freedom familyinvestments.com or text family to 66 866, text the word family to 66 866.    Keith Weinhold  35:12   Flock homes helps you retire from real estate and landlording, whether it's one problem property or your whole portfolio through a 721 exchange, deferring your capital gains tax and depreciation recapture. It's a strategy long used by the ultra wealthy. Now Mom and Pop landlords can 721 the residential real estate request your initial valuation, see if your properties qualify@flockhomes.com slash, slash GRE, that's F, l, O, C, K, homes.com/gre   Tom Wheelwright  35:50   This is Rich Dad Advisor Tom wheelwright. Listen to get rich education with Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your Daydream.   Keith Weinhold  36:02   You welcome back to get rich Education. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold its debt is the American dream on episode 600 now, just before taking the mic, about 30 minutes ago, I ate some raspberries. I looked at the package to see where they were grown Mexico. Someone in Mexico supplied them. There was a supply chain. Those raspberries were planted in rows with trellising grown, and then they need to be hand picked. They're highly perishable, and they need to be shipped a long way fast, therefore, I just simply had the exorbitant privilege of buying those raspberries from a lit refrigerated store shelf with my dollars. Well, effectively, a bank lent me those dollars. Most of my debt is real estate debt, where time, tenants and inflation service my debt for me. I mean, what an amazing world. I'm just here to control those flows, those flows of money between Mexican raspberry growers, for my property managers that manage my tenants and for the banks that provide the loan. I mean, gosh, debt really is the American dream. It made raspberries appear. This is a contrarian way of thinking, but it's calculated. It's unconventional, but it's first principles thinking, rather than emotions from grandpa. You know something I've said it before that. Hey, I'm proud that throughout my life I have never ridden the government dole. Once. Never have I done that. I've never accepted a subsidy, no covid stimulus checks. I've never accepted an unemployment check in my life, even though I could have been eligible one time. I'm proud of that, because otherwise taxpayers would have had to work for me and pay for me. But in a way, since so many of my mortgage loans are subsidized, I am riding the government dole to get 30 year mortgage money at a 7% interest rate, that's also tax deductible, so therefore maybe I'm paying 5% I mean, that's a really good deal, and the government backing makes banks want to provide lucrative loans to us, just like the FHA program that I personally began with on a fourplex, and Just like these first 10 Fannie, Mae, Freddie Mac backed investor loans that you can get for one to four unit properties. So although it's indirect, it's really like a government handout that we're getting. And what can we do when we can do our part in giving back by doing good in the world and providing good housing, not being slumlords. That's the path that we're on here and the future, it's always going to feel uncertain. Always, I'm encouraging you. You've got to plant the tree, you've got to take the leap. You've got to choose to believe that there is something worth building toward optimism is not about ignoring what's broken in the world. It's about deciding anyway to keep on going, and you're probably doing a lot right, working hard, earning, well, a little saving, but more investing. There's a problem that very few people talk about, labor income is taxed heavily, asset income is treated better, and then 401, K income, well, that doesn't even start arriving until you're about 60 or 70. And really, this is why a lot of high performing. Professionals eventually hit a wall. They make more money, but they don't feel much freer. The people who break out usually do one thing differently. They stop relying on one income source, and they start building income producing assets, and that's where I come in, you already know how to do things like budget and save. We all learned that quite a long time ago, and we've all heard the usual advice about maxing out your 41k waiting for years and just sort of hoping, and that might build a nest egg like that usually does turn into something, and it's better than nothing. It usually won't build outsized returns or freedom, though, and surely not while you're young enough to fully enjoy it. So get rich education is about a different path, building durable wealth through income, property, financial education and smarter leverage, certainly not day trading, certainly not get rich quick, just a proven framework for escaping overdependence on a paycheck, a generationally proven vehicle here and here you get the mindset and tactics to make generationally proven real estate a life changing investment because most people are Climbing the wrong mountain. A lot of smart professionals spend 30 years trying to save their way to freedom, but wealth usually grows faster when you own assets that produce income appreciate over time, offer tax advantages and can be financed with long term debt. That's how you get a lot of them. That is the difference between working hard and building leverage. So you can't out earn a broken wealth strategy.    Keith Weinhold  41:47   Most people earn income, but few people own income. You own the source of the income when you have rental property. A lot of smart professionals really learn that too late, Your salary alone doesn't even have the ability to make you wealthy, since wealth is freedom. So we use an abundance mentality to invest in assets that are scarce. Most people use a scarcity mentality, leading with loss aversion, to invest in something that's abundant and plentiful. So there is always opportunity out there in a market as big and as broad as the US residential real estate market. Where is that opportunity today? Well, I'll tell you that list prices rose 2% year over year to a median of 423k that's in the four week period that just ended according to Redfin. But notice I said that was the list price buyers haggled them down to about 389k that's really significant. It's really proof that sellers are willing to bend in today's markets. So therefore in most markets, I'm encouraging you to make an offer that's below the list price, as we know, available for sale property that is still scarce in a lot of the Northeast and Midwest, and supply is abundant in Texas and Florida. But here's the thing, although Florida inventory is higher now than it was pre pandemic over that six or seven year stretch, here's the new trend, and it's worthwhile to identify inflection points like this on a year over year basis. So looking at only the past one year, Florida inventory is now down 4% it's no longer going up. So it's possible that we've reached the peak of this new Florida supply. We could have hit the turning point now, and yet, builders are still buying down your mortgage rate to about 4% giving you that long term fixed rate on new builds. So I'm telling you, that's where the opportunity is now. As far as the rent side, nationally, I don't see rents going up significantly anytime soon, and that's for most everything, single family rentals all the way up to huge apartment buildings. Rent increases in the single family to fourplex space, they showed some real promise last spring, a year ago, but as we got into summer, they didn't really materialize. Now, although you get rent increases historically, it's never wise to buy and just assume that that is automatic. But I want to underscore the fact that you really should not count on a rent increase over the next year. So that's new builds.    Keith Weinhold  44:53   The other area ripe for opportunity. Here is burrs, buy, renovate, rent. Finance and repeat properties and among GRE listeners, burrs have been our most popular investment over the past two years. Yeah, Memphis, Little Rock, Birmingham and Kansas City, they are our hottest and most reliable burr markets, and we've really improved our burr operations since first helping you with those found the secret sauce, as far as helping you get the right provider that doesn't leave you hanging on the renovation, burrs are also good for you if you have fewer investment resources than what new build properties require. GRE coaching calls and our coaching program are completely free to help you with this now. Of course, our investment coaches listen to all the GRE episodes like you. They're aligned, and we have family guys that work here, like our investment coach Naresh. He has a wife and kids, and he's just the type of person that you want to see succeed in life and that you would enjoy working with over time. And we are all investors ourselves here, every one of us, so it doesn't hurt to set up a 30 minute consultation call to see if our GRE coaching program is right for you, some good, abundantly minded council for free. Our investment coaches have access to the best deals in real time. That alone is worth a connection. We're in constant communication with the top national providers in the best markets. So there might be an incentive today, like, say, a builder rate by down to 4% that didn't exist just two days ago or yesterday. So this is why investors are succeeding. They're also succeeding thanks to our recent Florida online live event. Connect with us to watch the replay and get in on these deals yourself. In fact, we have never seen so many incentives and price reductions in GRE history as we are right now. And see, here's the thing, when it comes to you making an offer below the list price, because our coaches work with other GRE listeners, they're going to know how low that seller is really going to go for you on that price. So that negotiation is some key information that you can learn. We have access to more than 200 deals nationwide, so contact our real estate investment coaches to get access and these burr properties can give you a super high ROI, because sometimes you can end up with as little as 10k or 20k of equity invested in an income producing single family rental. That's probably going to be 20k or more. And then with some of these developers that overbuilt in places like Florida, make that offer use good debt and take advantage of that interest rate in the fours. Buy low. And the reason that these new build deals provide positive income is because you buy at a lower purchase price overall, and you get a fixed rate in the fours, and you get a low property insurance rate, since they are new build properties, you don't need urgency right now so much as you need clarity, because there are opportunities, real ones, whether it's burrs in the Midwest or builder incentives in places like Florida, where you can Get those 4% rates. But the challenge isn't finding opportunity, it's knowing which one is right for you, and that's exactly what we help you do. And since our coaches are active investors themselves, they follow the same markets and the same providers and the same strategies that we talk about here on the show. So instead of guessing or going back and forth in emails, just get clear book, a quick call. It's free, it's 30 minutes, and it could save you months or years of going in the wrong direction. You can do that@greinvestmentcoach.com that's greinvestmentcoach.com the best thing you can do next is get aligned with the right opportunity. I'll chat with you in a week. I'm Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your Daydream.   Speaker 3  49:35   Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively the.   Speaker 4  50:03   The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth, building, get richeducation.com

Keith sits down with the youngest guest in show history—a 19-year-old college sophomore and student-athlete who's already deeply immersed in real estate and economics, Hunter Taddy. You'll hear a candid Gen Z perspective on money, debt, and the shifting social landscape, along with what's really being taught in today's real estate and econ classrooms.  They explore how young people are navigating college costs, work, and early investing decisions, and how hands-on property management education is shaping one student's path.  If you're curious about where the next generation of investors is headed—and what that might mean for your own strategy—this conversation offers a rare, on-the-ground look without the usual clichés. Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/597 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text  1-937-795-8989 to speak with a freedom coach Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com  Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold  0:01   Keith, welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold talking with a 19 year old guest that I befriended last year. He's a college sophomore with a real estate investing related major. What does he think about generation Z's future is in person, social life, dead. And what do you really learn about real estate and economics in college today on get rich education.   Corey Coates  0:27   Since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android. Listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast, sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit get rich education.com   Keith Weinhold  1:11   the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequel and even chat with President chailey Ridge personally, while it's on your mind, start at Ridge lending group.com that's Ridge lending group.com   Speaker 1  1:44   You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold  2:00   Welcome to GRE from Concord, New Hampshire to Concord, California and across 188 nations worldwide, you're listening to one of America's longest running and most listened to shows on real estate investing. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, and this is get rich education. Increasingly, you know, people ask why even go to college? Is the value of higher education even worth it to drag yourself to an 8am American Lit class while living off of dining hall Breakfast Biscuits and chicken strips for $100,000 a year, it's been estimated that one in seven men are meats, n, e, e, t, that means not in education, employed or training. Why put on a suit and tie and show up at a job when you have a reasonable facsimile of life online and you have discord and Reddit and trade stocks on Robinhood and crypto on Coinbase. Now I don't think that's going to be good for you, and I still think that there are a lot of positives about attending college. At least 15 to 20 colleges close each year in the United States. And despite this, you know, most people that I talk to, they still seem to be mostly positive about college, or they have this expectation that their kids go to college. So anecdotally, this hasn't changed. I probably wouldn't even be as aware of this shift if I didn't read media like I do, if I just talked to people informally, I really wouldn't know. One thing that has not changed also is the notion of the broke college student. I used to be one of those. Now America is just a couple years removed from that wave of elevated inflation and war in Iran has positioned to stoke a second wave of inflation. Today's guest told me that he does pay credit card finance charges, even though he makes more than the minimum payment, just kind of like I did as a college student. The default state of teenage society today is different. It used to be boredom, and now that's been replaced with anxiety. That part has certainly changed, and often it tends to be teen anxiety over such nonsense things. I mean, I have a teenage niece. One example is the burden of maintaining your Snapchat streak? Oh my gosh, if you're a Gen Z or you know what I'm talking about, basically a snap streak where you've got to send a friend a photo or video every single day to keep your streak going, two people have to send it to each other, and people with long streaks, they even like send each other a photo of the floor, just. To keep the streak going. I mean, talk about anxiety over the wrong things.    Keith Weinhold  5:04   Well, today's team guest Hunter, he has a somewhat better grip on life. I haven't met his parents yet, but they've done an amazing job. In fact, Hunter's dad owns rental property, which kind of helps to fuel some of his interests and desire. But in order to cope with inflation and expenses, buy now pay later programs have really taken off. They're widely known, but less widely known. Our rent now pay later plans. They're booming. Platforms like livable, flex and affirm. They're used by lower income and lower credit score tenants that often live paycheck to paycheck. And how it works is that these tenants are extended money at the beginning of the month to pay the rent. They often pay a flat subscription fee plus 1% of the rent. And you know, hey, that could be better than the tenant paying late fees to the landlord. I learned from one tenant that had trouble paying his $1,850 in rent that flex charged him a $15 monthly subscription plus 1% of the total rent for providing the service. So his total fees for the app were around $33 a month rent. Now pay later. You're probably only going to hear more about it, but if you're a landlord, you probably do not know that your tenant is using a rent now, pay later plan, because you just received the full payment on time, and then your tenant pays back the service later. Remember, it is called rent. Now, pay later. Oh, before we bring in our guest, can I ask you for some quick help? Maybe you wanted to tell me what you think about the show. You could have been listening for years, but you don't think that you can reach me. If this show has helped you become a better investor, the best way to support the podcast is to leave a quick rating or review. It helps more investors discover the show. Just tap the five stars in your podcast app. It can take as little as 10 seconds, and I will read it myself. Thanks in advance for leaving a rating and review. Let's meet this week's guest.   Keith Weinhold  7:22   This week's guest is the youngest we've ever had in show history. He's a teenager, so he's about a generation younger than me, and it's his first time on a podcast. He is a sophomore student athlete at the University of Alaska Anchorage, where he competes in the 800 meters for the track and field team. He runs about a 155 his major is management, with a specialization in real estate and property management, and he's just into so many things beyond athletics and academics, he serves as an ambassador for the Widener property management and real estate program. He's also an officer of the real estate management and investment club from Wisconsin. He's 19 years old, a straight A student. He's also an RA that's a Resident Assistant there helping out students at the dorms. Welcome to GRE Hunter, toddy.    Hunter Taddy  8:18   Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.   Keith Weinhold  8:20   Taddy is spelled T, A, D, D, Y. I met Hunter almost six months ago. A property manager introduced us just thinking that we might have some things in common, and she sure was right. We've gotten together a few times, including going running at one time where, well, I had more than a little trouble keeping up with an active college athlete. The last time we sat down for coffee, just last week, I looked at my watch. We were done, and we sat almost two and a half hours like how many teenagers could really hold my attention for that long? But he just understands the world and politics surprisingly well. For a 19 year old. He's confident and well thought out. He's read War and Peace. He even got some of his own cooking and avoids seed oils. And you know, Hunter being born in 2006 when GRE debuted in 2014 you were eight years old. So before we talk about you, let's talk about your generation, generation Z What do you think some of the markers of your generation are?   Keith Weinhold  9:28   Yeah, so it's as I've shared with you in the past. It's interesting, because especially at UA, I'm mostly surrounded by like, athletes. So athletes tend to be a lot more social, just like how they grown up, they're always around people that tend to be a lot more driven. But then when I talk to, like, non athletes, it's a little bit different. Like, my generation is definitely they're on their phone a lot. I mean, I've told you before, like, I avoid social media. Well, I wouldn't say like the flag, but I avoid it a lot, because I know, hey, how addicting it is. And B, just like, you know, the.The word of my generation is slop or brain rot, and which is most of the stuff on the internet, but Yeah, seems to be like, there's a lot of anxiety in my generation, a lot of, like, lack of accountability, which I've noticed a lot lot of, like, lack of responsibility. And it's almost like self indulgent in a way, where it's like, oh I'm so lazy, or Oh, I'm so this, or I'm so that, and it's just kind of weird. You don't really get that much with like the athletes. Back to the social aspect. I don't know if you've seen that headline recently, that's like, the alcohol industry has lost eight, $30 million over the past four years because he doesn't drink. The real story isn't about Gen Z not wanting to drink alcohol. It's about Gen Z, not like really being social, right? I mean, I don't see that many like, Hangouts as much as, like, when I hear from, like my parents, you know, every night you're going somewhere with your friends or your you know, you're going to the bar, you're going to a bonfire, or things like that. And it's just, you don't see it as much. A lot of people are just in their rooms or online and, you know, the online gaming, online gaming, I don't game a lot, but gaming with friends is actually really fun to do sometimes. But everything's a lot more digital, you know, from the communication to like the spaces, you know, where you hang out, whether it's video games or whether it's VR chat, and some people do that, or discord, or just like internet forums and things like that. Yeah, just lot more digital.    Keith Weinhold  11:24   Yeah, you use little or no social media. Personally, I know you manage the Instagram page for your real estate organization, but yeah, there is more of this perception of in person, social life, maybe not dead, but dying. I've learned that 51% of 18 to 24 year old men have never asked out a woman in person you were sharing with me at how you know people have anxiety just about ordering food in person at a restaurant in Gen Z.    Hunter Taddy  11:54   That's actually funny. So because of how that conversation escalated, I technically did ask her out in Snapchat, but then she was like, you have to ask me out in person. And then I did eventually ask her out in person.    Keith Weinhold  12:06   Now, when it comes to in person meetings, after a few meetings with you, I noticed something rare when it's about seeing people in person, you have virtues that I think are somewhat rare for Generation Z. I mean, you actually show up on time. This this chat we're having right now. It's the fourth time we've gotten together, and you actually showed up early each of the four times, which is something that I really notice and appreciate, which, even for people my age, it seems like it's a virtue that they've lost. I mean, showing up on time is just common decency. That's just doing what you said that you were going to do. I find that pretty interesting. But when it comes to your generation being in college now, I mean, college is tough. You know, when I went to college, I took on student loans. My parents and I each paid for half of the tuition, and also worked a part time job while I was there. So I mean, you hang out with a lot of athletes, but how is it with balancing, you know, the income and student loans? Because, you know, college kids are still pretty poor   Hunter Taddy  13:10   I wanted to run for a division two program, because you can get athletic scholarship. I came in as a walk on. I'm not on any athletic scholarship. I get free housing and free meals for being an RA. Yeah, with my RA position, I actually got the RA position my second semester. So I got it as a freshman, which was like, really, really clutch. So my dad was in the Air Force for 20 years, and I got the GI bill for like, I think, six months. So I got my two first semesters of tuition paid for, and then I got some, like, some money for, like, housing and stuff. I mean, I pocketed most of that just because, I mean, I got it for free already. I don't get any more help from the GI Bill, because I'm not in Wisconsin. But if I went to Wisconsin, I could go to any school for free, like, tuition free. So, I mean, sometimes I do think about that, but with my real estate program. I mean, oh my gosh, the scholarship deadline. Every year they give out like, $50,000 in scholarships. A lot of them are from Widener and then just other like local real estate companies in the area. Last year, I got a $2,500 scholarship to travel to the National Apartment Association's apartmentalized It's like, their yearly conference in Las Vegas, and that was pretty cool. So that stuff kind of went over my head, but a lot of the stuff about AI was, like, just really interesting to hear, especially just about property management. And it's crazy to me, because, like, AI is almost like, my generation's thing, since we're, like, growing up with it, yeah. And then hearing, like, a lot of like, the older people in the property management profession talk about, I mean, they're still talking about when they had to keep their records on pen and paper, or, like, files and stuff. And I'm like, This is crazy. So I have scholarships with the real estate program, if I'm lucky, I can get up to almost $10,000 after the spring. It's.That means I pay in state tuition because I live on campus. It was a deal they were running after covid. So that's only like $5,700 I mean, my scholarships will be able to cover that. This semester, I paid like 2000 of it or something, and then my parents were kind enough to cover the rest, and then I'm going to pay them back right away after the year ends once I get those scholarships. And then, yeah, I get $11 an hour for working desk at my RA job. It's tax free, so, I mean, it's not totally bad, but I don't working desk hours that much because we only have them at night. And then, you know, being an athlete, I don't like staying up until, you know, one o'clock sometimes. I mean, the other night, I had to work a nine to three desk shift, and that screwed my whole for an entire week. Yeah. Okay,    Keith Weinhold  15:48   so when you graduate college in a few years, you could very well come out with a lower student loan balance than a lot of others did, although you might still have an informal loan with dad in there as well. How do you and a lot of people of your generation see your financial future? They sure can be hard to predict, but a lot of people see this crushing debt with student loans, and I wonder, even though it could be far into the future if really Gen Z thinks that they're ever going to be able to afford a home. Now, when it comes to the student loans, I know I shared with you when we sat down for coffee that I had a balance. I think it was like a $20,000 balance when I graduated, because again, my parents paid half of it and I worked part time when I went to school, I shared with you that I just took that balance and paid very little interest on my student loan balance because I kept transferring it repeatedly onto these 0% APR credit cards, and when my introductory rate expired on one card, I would just transfer it onto another card. So I've long been comfortable with debt.    Hunter Taddy  16:52   So me, personally, I do not want to take out a loan from any entity. I'm very fortunate and privileged that my parents are able to, you know, front that money for me when I need it. When I need it, I try to pay them back right away. I do not want student loans like my goal is to get out of college, you know, without owing anybody any money. It's weird, because I'm from such a small town in Wisconsin, and I view trades a lot differently than, like a lot of my peers who grew up in the big cities, I know blue collar millionaires, right? People who just, you know, put their nose to the grindstone, pouring concrete. You know, working driving a semi. Only do that for maybe five or 10 years, like my cousins. My cousin pours concrete, and then the other one, I think, works for construction company, the Midwestern work ethic, they're sitting on 10s of 1000s of dollars in their savings account right now. You can make the argument. Well, their back is going to give out in a couple years. And some of that's true. But also, you know, you don't have to be the guy pouring concrete for how long. You could be the business owner, or you could be the guy who's the plumber for 510, years, and then, you know, start your own plumbing business. That's why I don't look at student loans as, like, I need this college degree to, like, make money or be successful. Like, I've met a lot of people who legitimately have that mindset. That's like, I understand that if you've grown up in that sort of, like sphere, you've grown up with those ideas. But to me, it's like, I know if I can't pay for college, or if I don't graduate college, I know I'm going to be fine. I could go, you know, work construction, or I could go, you know, mow lawns or something. I know, I guess I just view it differently. But a lot of people think they need those student loans. So, I mean, they sign up for them. And I looked it up the other day, the average time to pay off student loans is, like, 20 years or something like that. Yeah, I believe it. That is kind of sad. That's insane to me. I want my lawyers going to college. I want my doctors going to college. I want to college. I want all these people to have a good education. But I mean, like 100,000 to $200,000 I just see that, and it's like, oh, I don't know, man, I sign up for the fast flow every year, but I never get anything Free Application for Federal Student Aid, yeah, but I know some people get, like, Pell Grants. If I'm not wrong, I think the Pell Grants are just, I don't know they have to pay those back. It seemed like I was applying for the Stafford Loan. I was lower middle class. I don't think we quite qualified for the Pell grant. The grant being like, free money and a loan of stuff that you need to pay back. Yeah, of course. And of course, in addition to student loans, we regularly have students using credit cards and probably not being able to pay the full balance, is they make their way and try to pay their way through college. That's certainly one thing that I did.    Hunter Taddy  19:28   Here's something for you, DoorDash, my generation and DoorDash is so crazy. I mean, I look at some of these people we have like a desk, at some of the halls, and the amount of people who just DoorDash some of these people are doordashing every night. And that's not cheap, like, that's sometimes it's like 30 bucks just to get Taco Bell or, you know, Wingstop or something like that, and then Klarna, it's like, finance a pizza. Like, what are we doing here?    Keith Weinhold  19:54   Sure, yeah, you're making a down payment on a blooming onion and financing it and making the last payment on it. Years later or something. Yeah, crazy like that, 100% and yeah, I would imagine home ownership is just seen as something that's so far into the future, it's almost unfathomable.    Hunter Taddy  20:12   Yeah, it's funny to me, because, you know, I come from, again, very small town, the cost of living is, like, extremely low compared to the country. I'm pretty sure Green Bay was voted number one place to live by us, News and World Report couple years ago, number one place to live in the United States. But more of the people back home who work these jobs in the trades, like the thought of owning a home seems a lot more real to them than my friends who are in college. And a lot of that has to do with, you know, like we're in bigger cities. Again, people have more debt, but yeah, I mean, you look at those prices of homes, I think the median home price in Anchorage is like $426,000 and just, you know, looking at that numbers like, how am I ever going to afford that? One of my friends, he's in the real estate program. He's got $40,000 saved up. He's got his Roth IRA maxed out. It's weird, because this is one of the points I want to make. So in my generation, you have people who have all these resources, you know, especially with the internet, and they're doing very well with it. They're taking it and they're running with it. And then you have the other part of my generation who's doing the buy now, pay later option. It's almost like a upside down bell curve or something like that. The people who are good are getting so much better, and the people who are making the bad decisions are getting so much more worse.    Keith Weinhold  21:25   Ah, the K shaped economy starts young.   Hunter Taddy  21:27    It's just interesting to see sometimes, because you have some people like, I can't afford this, I can't afford that, and it's like, yeah, being college student is hard. But then it's like, you buy your $6 coffee every day, and it's, you know, I'm guilty of that too. My spending habits aren't the best. And then you look at like home ownership inflation is real. Cost of living is getting higher. But also my dad talks about this a lot like our standards are getting so much higher, too great. Our houses are getting bigger. Kids don't share bedrooms anymore. All our kids have to have our phone. All our kids have to have the newest thing or the newest coat. And you know, you want nice things for your family. I get that, you know, I don't have a family, so I can only talk about this so much. But I mean, our standards are getting a lot, a lot higher as well. I mean, you look at our grandparents houses, and they're like, these, just small, one story houses, one bathroom. You know, I look at the house that my dad grew up and he shared a room with his brother until he graduated, right? And then you look at all these families kids live in their bedroom, it's so weird to me that like siblings, they know each other, but they don't know each other because they're sitting in their rooms all day and they're looking at their phones.    Keith Weinhold  22:31   You surface a good and salient point hunter that a lot of people don't bring up because the K shaped economy that means a widening disparity between the haves and the have nots, but the entire K also keeps moving up, so standards of living continue to get better for both the haves and the have nots, even though the disparity between them continues to widen, and yes, a poor person today has Wi Fi and has Air Conditioning and a lot of minor conveniences that poor people didn't have 75 years ago. You're listening to get rich education. We're doing something different this week, talking to the youngest guest in GRE history. His name's Hunter toddy. We're going to talk more when we come back about what he's learning in classes, economics and real estate classes, because that is one thing that college students do. Remember, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold.    Keith Weinhold  23:24   Flock homes helps you retire from real estate and landlording, whether it's one problem property or your whole portfolio through a 721, exchange, deferring your capital gains tax and depreciation recapture. It's a strategy long used by the ultra wealthy. Now Mom and Pop landlords can 721, the residential real estate request your initial valuation, see if your properties qualify@flockhomes.com slash GRE. That's f, l, O, C, K, homes.com/g.R, E,    Keith Weinhold  24:00   you know, most people think they're playing it safe with their liquid money, but they're actually losing savings accounts and bonds don't keep up when true inflation eats six or 7% of your wealth. Every single year, I invest my liquidity with FFI freedom family investments in their flagship program, why fixed 10 to 12% returns have been predictable and paid quarterly. There's real world security backed by needs based real estate like affordable housing, Senior Living and health care. Ask about the freedom flagship program when you speak to a freedom coach there, and that's just one part of their family of products, they've got workshops, webinars and seminars designed to educate you before you invest. Start with as little as 25k and finally, get your money working as hard as you do. Get started at Freedom, family investments.com/gre,or send a text. Now it's 1-937-795-8989, yep, text their freedom coach directly. Again, 1-937-795-8989,   Robert Kiyosaki  25:12   this is our rich dad. Poor Dad. Author Robert Kiyosaki, listen to get rich education with Keith Weinhold don't quit your daydream   Keith Weinhold  25:26   Welcome back to get rich Education. I'm your host. Keith winehill, we're talking with Gen Z and student athlete Hunter toddy. He's a sophomore college student, and he's got a management degree with a concentration in real estate investing. So yeah, Hunter, tell us some of the things that you've learned about in an economics class or two that you've taken there at UAA.    Hunter Taddy  25:51   So I had an economics class last semester, but the teacher is basically tenured, and he only posted YouTube videos and like three quizzes was like the entire grade. He made us great at 2000 wasn't gonna say and didn't even grade it. So I didn't learn anything about economics, but that was macro, and now I'm in micro. And this professor, he's fantastic. He talks to Anchorage and Alaska legislators all the time. He was on Meet the Press Like he's very, very, very, very smart and well spoken, one of my and professors, and he's also Yale educated, as I understand. Yeah, I always get crap from my cross country teammates because most of them are STEM majors. There's a lot of engineers, and then there's, you know, you have people who are in, like, kinesiology, and then a lot of aviation, but they always give me crap because, like, oh, business, it's supply and demand, blah, blah, blah. But then, like, legitimately, economics has been so fascinating for me, just like, you know, consumer behavior, opportunity cost, trade off. One of the things is rent control, right? Definitely a big conversation, especially in, like, my generation, you know, because of all these rising prices. And then, you know, the landlord always gets the negative connotation, right? Landlords are greedy. I wouldn't even as a college student. Well, you think about rent control is like as soon as you put that binding price ceiling on the rent prices in an area, that's why there's not enough housing on the West Coast. That's why landlords are painting over the light switches, or they're not fixing your toilet, or they're not fixing the leaky sink. There's just a lack of understanding general society about, like, just how markets work and why. You know, businesses make certain decisions that they do. That's one thing with, like, a lot of my generation, is a lot of them are almost anti business, in a sense, right? In a sense, but they love being consumers. What my dad talks about a lot is as the business owner, like when you work for a company, a lot of the times you can clock in, clock out, you go home and you lay your head on the pillow, and you don't have to worry about anything, right? But when you're the business owner, like my dad, and if you have a lot of anxiety, like he does, about certain things, and you stress a lot, you're up at 2am wondering if the LVP you put in someone's kitchen is going to buckle, well, then you're gonna have to go back and fix it all and all these things, and so I definitely have a lot more to say understanding for like business owners and like landlords. Yeah, the economics classes just broaden my understanding of how the world works. I think that's a class everyone should take, and it is a general ed but I think it's a class everyone should pay attention to as well.    Keith Weinhold  28:18   Sure, rent control gives landlords no incentive to make improvements to a property. So yeah, it's good that you're learning about this in econ class. Tell us about some of the other things that you've learned in economics or in your more real estate investor centric college courses.    Hunter Taddy  28:36   So I'll focus more on the real estate stuff. So Dean Widener, Widener apartment homes, one of the top five, I think, largest owners of apartment homes in terms of units like in the United States, right? He basically came to Anchorage, and he wanted to build the Widener program, basically like a farm for property managers, like, you know, give this education. And then they, you know, they come work for widener. They come work for, you know, whoever a lot of the education has to do with property management. So there's leasing, asset maintenance. Talk a lot about operating budgets, risk management. All students in the program memorize the cash flow performer by heart. So, you know, you have gross potential income loss to lease, vacancy, net revenue, other income, expense reimbursements. Maddie poo, which is maintenance, admin, taxes, insurance, payroll and utilities. Have you heard that acronym before? What is it? Yeah. Maddie poo, I pretty sure my professor, like, that's kind of like his thing. I didn't finish it all, but we have it all memorized, and then we do, like, a lot of fair housing and landlord tenant law. Yesterday, in my Real Estate Investment Finance course, we were analyzing loans, and we were making like amortization tables, yeah. And then so we were looking at like interest rates, how a balloon loan works, variable interest rates. I took real estate Maintenance and risk last semester, and that was really awesome. We got to visit buildings all across Anchorage and talk with the property managers, talk about maintenance systems, general maintenance of the property, property management, the day to day, things like that. And then leasing, we actually had us basically go undercover. We have to have three properties, and we go do a showing at all of them, and then we had to review them, and we did a presentation about them, and, like, we basically reviewed them and graded, like the leasing agent, and how they did that one was really cool.    Keith Weinhold  30:33   Okay, so the mock tenant, grading a leasing agent, yeah, then showing you amenities, explaining lease length, things like that,    Hunter Taddy  30:41   and then seeing if, you know, they violated any like Fair Housing things. He said, Don't necessarily try and bait them, but one of the questions that one of my classmates asked, so what kind of people live here? And then the good property manager, you know, it says we rent to anyone that fits our criteria. And then you have some people that's like, oh, you should have said that. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty touchy, age, race, family status, right? Yeah. So we definitely have that drilled in our heads as well, like landlord tenant law and then, like, fair housing, you    Keith Weinhold  31:11   told me something interesting when we got together, when you run the numbers for property, that the numbers always work better in one condition than they do in another.    Hunter Taddy  31:20   So we do cap rate. And so cap rate is noi over value, I believe, yep. So we analyze the cap rates for all the properties, and then we see what is our return if we pay cash or whatever is our return when we pay leverage. And sometimes it's better if you pay cash, or sometimes it's better if it's leveraged. But I always think even if you could pay cash, you pay, say, $3 million for the whole complex, well, you could put a $500,000 down payment on six other properties. So I always thought that was weird, because that's just, I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, after my dad recommended it to me, and then it just talking to my dad about leveraged investments. Yeah, why don't you do that instead? Oh, he said,    Keith Weinhold  32:00   right, as long as you control your cash flow and pay the mortgage and the operating expenses. Yeah, we typically talk about getting the leverage here, because the appreciation grade has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of equity that's in the property. Is there anything else interesting that you learned from going out in the field and actually seeing some properties or talking to some managers? And I think this is really interesting, because a lot of times when people graduate college, they tend to broad brushstroke students or new graduates, and say, Yeah, but they haven't gotten out in the real world yet, but you actually are as a student.    Hunter Taddy  32:33   Yeah. So that's one thing I really love about our program, and I really love our professor. He owns properties himself. It's not like a pyramid scheme thing where, like, almost like, you're going to college to learn how to be a professor, and sometimes that we need those people for, like, research and stuff. But like, he's actually done the work. He knows what it's like. He can relate to things that we're talking about. Yeah, we get a lot of that real world experience, which is really awesome going about that, like the leasing experience. One of the things with, like, a lot of the managers, especially in Anchorage, because there's such a housing shortage, a lot of them didn't really like try, because they like, almost don't have to, because, I think a lot of them assume you're gonna lease someone anyways, no matter, because it's not necessarily really competitive. So because the vacancy rate is so small, yeah. So it's just like, here's the kitchen. You know, we're actually taught in leasing class, leasing strategies. And also, what's really good about our classes, we read, like, a lot of personal growth books in our classes. So like in our leasing class, our professor had us read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey and yeah. And then I think for our real estate investment class, we're going to read the compounding effect. I don't know what it's about, but I mean, I really appreciate how our professor gives us, like, those books and that knowledge that's not just, you know, specific to real estate. It's like how to become like a better person, or how to become better at personal finance in general.    Keith Weinhold  33:58   All right, so some conceptual and some mindset stuff, along with more of the hands on and more of the numbers. Well, before I ask you, what's next for you, do you have any last thoughts with what you've learned in class, or just anything overall about your generation and lifestyle and getting along financially? For a college student,    Hunter Taddy  34:18   in April, I'm going down to Austin for the property con, which is Institute of real estate management, big conference. I think they have this one every year too. I think John Quinones, the guy from what would you do, is going to be like one of the keynote speakers. So looking forward to that, definitely looking forward to some of, like, learning more about, like AI, and how it's used in, like, the property management, like real estate sphere, and then I'm kind of interested in green building, because it almost seems to be like, Win win, right? Because better for the environment and then better for the investor most of the time, you know, like, through these retrofits, like you're just switching to LED light bulbs, we actually, we ran those numbers a lot in my.In its class. Like, you know, what would it be like if you switch from iridescent to LED light bulbs? And it's like, that's like, what are the things that all property managers should do? Because you're saving, sometimes 1000s of dollars and seven or 10 year period, or whatever it is, improve the cap rate, right there? Yeah, I want to definitely learn more about, like, the green building. And also, just because, you know, I'm a healthy person, when I build my house one day, I don't want to have, like, a lot of toxic materials and stuff as well. I have one friend. He's really, really dialed in his health. They're talked about him with you before, but he, like, he's not even have drywall in his house because there's some, like, toxic thing in drywall, or something, like, he's gonna build it out of brick and mud or something, I don't know.    Keith Weinhold  35:39   Oh, he can't just go live in any rental. Yeah, well, Hunter, this has been really good. Your dad owns rentals in Wisconsin, and like you mentioned, he's red, Rich Dad, Poor Dad himself. So that's kind of an influence on you. And you do have a management internship back in Wisconsin this summer. But before we go on, you mentioned to me that your dad owns a certain type of apartments in Wisconsin, and I've never heard of that type before. What are they called? And then, what does that mean?    Keith Weinhold  36:06   I think the name is local to the city itself in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. So they're called custerdales. I think there were homes built after World War Two, I believe, for like GIS and things like that so well. Just before he got in the Air Force, he was in Saudi Arabia for a year, and he was thinking about, you know, what am I going to do when I retire? Because he knew after the year was done, he was going to retire and come back to Wisconsin. And one of his friends got him into real estate, and he talked to my mom a little bit, and they just started buying properties. So that was in 2018 and now they own about 70 units, mostly duplexes, with their biggest being a five Plex. They also have a 18 bed assisted living facility. Most of the the 70 units are called custerdales. They're all like, cookie cutter, like, the same they're basically the same layout, you know, sometimes it's just flipped or whatever. And he basically did the same thing each time, a lot of them were, like, really run down ones that they purchased had someone with a chicken living on top of the refrigerator. And then when they locked the place up after they bought it, he broke back in and took stuff. And so they've really, actually, like, helped the community in a way, by remodeling a lot of these homes. And then my dad would refinance them, and then he would take that money and then invest it into another property. And he just kept doing that again and again and again. Yeah, so buy and hold we self manage, because there's not really a reputable property management service in the area. This is near Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Maybe you've heard that name before. Manitowoc, they make heavy construction equipment, and you are going back to Wisconsin this summer for a management related internship, yeah, well, Hunter, well, this has been great talking about what your generation's like, what you do in your classes, and the practical experience that you're already getting as a 19 year old. I mean, you're just substantially further ahead than I was as a geography degree student and major way back in the day, if anyone wants to reach out to you, see what you're doing, or contact you. What's the best way for them to do that? Hunter.    Hunter Taddy  38:09   So I don't have Instagram or Facebook, but I do have LinkedIn. So if you just search Hunter toddy again, T, A, D, D, y, on LinkedIn, you can find me there. Also just give my email. It's H hottie 007 at Gmail.    Keith Weinhold  38:26   All right, look that up if you want to reach out to Hunter. Yeah, it's been great having you here. Thanks so much for coming on to the show.    Hunter Taddy  38:32   Thanks forhaving me.    Keith Weinhold  38:40   Yeah, a fresh perspective from college student, Hunter toddy today. He has got his act together amazingly well for a teenager, and you know, talking to him made me think about something like I said when I graduated college, and it was just with a bachelor's degree. By the way, pretty humble bachelor's double major, geography and regional planning, I had that 20k in student loan debt, which I transferred onto 0% APR credit cards, over and over again and inflation adjusted terms, that might be 40k in today's dollars. I had no incentive to pay it down, let alone pay it off, since my finance charges were essentially zero, so that's why I probably carried that balance for close to 20 years. But this is the first time that I thought about the fact that that very habit was probably a benefit to me, not because it saved me from paying interest on student loans, but because it got me comfortable withholding debt for the long term and rationalizing that there would be an opportunity cost of paying off that debt, because a payoff would have meant that I would forego the opportunity of investing those dollars to get gains, that habit got me comfortable with prudently using debt and leverage as a real estate investor, and that helped me own and control more property sooner. So it was a somewhat autodidactic approach to good debt. Today, we talk with a young, likely soon to be investor, oppositely next week here on the show. We're talking about the book end, on the other side of the shelf, and that is when you're ready to retire from real estate, you can exchange your properties into a fund, pay zero capital gains tax or depreciation recapture. And unlike a 1031 exchange, what you've done is you have totally exited the direct real estate business with a 721, exchange, and you still get financial upside with zero management duties retired. Finally, if you've ever wanted to tell me what you think about the GRE podcast, if this show has given you some fresh perspective or helped you become a better investor. The best way to support the show is to leave a quick rating or review. It helps more investors discover the show. Here's how to do it inside the get rich education Show page on Apple podcasts, scroll about halfway down to ratings and reviews. Tap the purple stars to rate, and then tap the purple words write a review on Spotify from the get rich education podcast, tap the three dots near the top of the show page, tap rate podcast and leave your star rating. That's all it takes. It's crazy that this show has almost 6 million total listener downloads, but yet, across all platforms, we have perhaps only 1000 reviews, and that's probably because I rarely ask for them. I would greatly appreciate it. Until next week, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream.   Unknown Speaker  41:59   Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively   Keith Weinhold  42:27   The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth, building, get richeducation.com  

How Veterans Build Wealth Through Real Estate | David Pere breaks down how David Pere went from Marine Corps recruiter working brutal hours to becoming financially free through real estate—and why he built one of the largest military investing communities online. He explains the "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" spark that led to house hacking, how veterans can use VA loan benefits to fast-track their first deal, and why purpose, identity, and community matter just as much as cash flow when transitioning to civilian life. David also shares what's changing in his investing strategy (including development and bank-funded foreclosure auctions), how he defines success, and the simple "get in the room" mindset that helps vets—and anyone—scale faster. _______________________________ If you want to learn how to run your business in 5 hours or less.... Go to https://www.5HourBusiness.com Subscribe to my YouTube channel:    / @tonyjavierbiz   And if you're into flying and want to follow my Aviation journey, check out my other YouTube channel at    / @tonyjaviertv   _______________________________ Follow me on Social Media: Tiktok -   / tonyjavier.tv   Instagram -   / tonyjavier.tv   Facebook Personal -   / tonyejavier   Facebook Business -   / realtonyjavier   ________________________________________ If you want to dominate your Real Estate Market with TV commercials, go here: https://www.ClaimMyMarket.com If you want to connect with me and my network, go to https://tonyjavier.com/connect If you want to check out Tony's Real Estate Resources and Vendors go to https://www.TonyJavier.com/resources ________________________________________ Tony is the owner of an INC 5000-rated Real Estate Investment Company. He has been featured in Bigger Pockets, Wholesaling INC, Steve Trang's Real Estate Disruptors, Joe Fairless' Best Ever Podcast, and many other top podcasts and platforms. When Tony is not working on his business, he enjoys flying his plane. You can see videos on that and how he uses airplanes to save money on taxes. Don't forget to like the video, comment, subscribe to my channel, and share this with a friend if I'm doing my job and providing value to you and your network. If I'm not doing my job please let me know in the comments how I can be better, your feedback is greatly appreciated. See you in the next video!

Send a textThis week, Ed welcomes Hawaii-based real estate developer and educator Fuzzy Jardine to Real Estate Underground. Fuzzy shares his background growing up in Hawaii, getting into trouble with drugs and alcohol, going to prison, and using that time to educate himself with books like Rich Dad Poor Dad. After struggling to find work as an ex-con, he took multiple jobs, then invested $26,000 in real estate education after hearing about Fortune Builders, and learned to find deals through strategies like bandit signs and Craigslist ads. He explains how taking action led him from deal-finding to partnering with a local developer and eventually building 100+ affordable homes for local families on a more rural island, typically priced around $300K–$425K. Fuzzy talks about “The Pono Way,” emphasizing respectful, ethical investing, illustrated by a deal where a distressed homeowner was helped with housing, a car, and additional funds while the investors still profited. He also describes co-founding the Hui Mastermind with Asha Smith, including webinars, bus tours showing the full build process, meetups, and master classes teaching how to get started in real estate and fund deals without traditional bank financing. In a lightning round, Fuzzy says family is his main purpose, shares advice about being on time and owning mistakes quickly, reflects on saying yes too often and taking responsibility for a project headed toward a loss, and names motivators he follows on YouTube and podcasts. Check out Fuzzy's book, “Out of Paradise: How to Build Wealth Investing in Real Estate the Pono Way,” and shares where to find him online: fuzzyjardine.com, huimastermind.com, Instagram @hifuzzy, and YouTube “Investing in Hawaii.”00:00 Take Action Mindset00:11 Show Intro and Opportunity00:52 Meet Fuzzy Jardine01:54 From Prison to Real Estate05:58 Why Building Homes08:33 Finding Deals and First Partner10:03 Working Three Jobs to Learn12:30 The Pono Way Ethics15:58 Hui Mastermind Origins19:15 Lightning Round Purpose20:28 Mentors and Hard Lessons23:21 Books and Writing His Own24:43 Defining Success and Fun26:40 Where to Find Fuzzy27:24 Final Thanks and Call to ActionThis week's book: Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert KiyosakiElevista - Speed as a Service™Elevista Connect is the first AI-powered lead conversion system built for real estate investors. Heads up: If you find this week's book intriguing and you buy using our link, we receive a small commission that helps support the show. Thank you!

291 - From Cubicles to Closings: Mike Doherty's Path to Real Estate Success   Jen Josey hosts the REIGN podcast and shares a "Badassery Bestowment" on why every listing needs a professional photographer, citing five reasons: more clicks and offers, selling a lifestyle, protecting price, standing out in a crowded market, and saving time and stress. She then interviews Mike Doherty, a Connecticut-based full-time real estate investor, realtor, entrepreneur, co-founder of Skytree Investments, and host of the Sky's the Limit Podcast. Mike describes his path from a finance job after graduating from the University of Connecticut in 2015 to real estate investing, including learning through BiggerPockets, house hacking a duplex, and scaling by using the BRRRR method after running out of capital. He discusses misconceptions new investors face, emphasizes taking action, using meetups to build confidence and connections, and explains creative financing strategies such as seller financing and subject-to deals, including an example with 10% down, 4% interest, 40-year amortization, and a 10-year balloon. Mike shares a favorite deal involving raising the full down payment, selling after one year, and completing a 1031 exchange into a seller-financed five-unit property. He explains OPM approaches, partnerships and joint ventures, friends-and-family capital, and the importance of track record and some skin in the game. Mike outlines his move from W2 work to becoming a full-time realtor by lowering living expenses through house hacking, and he shares his BADASS answers: key books (Rich Dad Poor Dad, Who Not How, Never Split the Difference), best advice (take action), his drive (generational wealth and financial freedom), a goal of reaching 200 doors before age 35 (currently at 100), systems (assistant/transaction coordinator, Follow Up Boss CRM, calendar, and morning routine), and his definition of success as enough passive income to support his lifestyle.    00:00 Welcome to REIGN: What to Expect on the Podcast 01:02 Badassery Tip: Why Pro Photos Sell Listings (5 Reasons) 03:24 Meet Mike Doherty: Investor, Realtor & Podcast Host 04:46 From Finance Cubicle to First House Hack Duplex 08:49 Early Landlord Lessons & Misconceptions to Unlearn 11:32 Take the First Step: Beating Analysis Paralysis with Action 14:17 Scaling Up: Running Out of Cash & Learning the BRRRR Method 16:59 Creative Financing Deep Dive: Seller Finance, Sub-to & Balloons 20:57 Favorite Deals & Partnering Up Using Other People's Money 21:33 Raising the Down Payment + 1031 Into Seller Financing (5-Unit Deal) 23:00 What He'd Do Differently: OPM Sooner & BRRRR After the First Duplex 24:18 Flip vs Hold: Wealth-Building Mindset, Leverage, and Today's Market Risk 25:36 OPM Playbook: Partners, Private Money Terms, JVs & Structuring Deals 27:21 Friends & Family Funding + Skin in the Game (Even Teachers Have Money) 29:16 His Business Today: Full-Time Realtor, Investor Niche, Flips/Wholesale to Buy Rentals 31:40 Sky's the Limit Podcast + The "BADASS" Rapid-Fire Segment Begins 32:39 Books & Advice: Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Who Not How, Never Split the Difference + Take Action 35:46 Drive, Goals & Systems: Generational Wealth, 200 Doors, Assistants, CRM, Morning Routine 39:46 Defining Success + Where to Find Mike (Podcast, IG, Website) 41:12 Wrap-Up & Show Outro: Subscribe, Follow, and Join REIGN  

Everyone's got an opinion about money (especially the people with a book deal or a TV show). Some of that advice is useful. Some of it sounds better on a stage than it works in real life. Let's break it down.   Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- Transcript:  Marc: Everyone has got an opinion about money, especially people pushing a book deal or a TV show. And sometimes maybe that advice is useful and sometimes it's not, it works better on a sound stage than in real life. Let's break it down and have Tony react to some controversial financial takes here on Plan With The Tax Man.   Hey, everybody. Welcome into the podcast. This is Plan With The Tax Man with Tony Mauro, here in Des Moines professional alternative at Tax Doctor, Inc. Hanging out with me to do a little reaction type podcast this week, Tony, we'll get your take on some interesting hot takes from some financial talking heads out there and see what you think about it and practice in the real world. Because you see clients and help people every day and of course are governed and have rules that you have to follow where a lot of these talking heads don't, they can say whatever they want. We'll talk about that a little bit this week.   How are you doing, buddy?   Tony Mauro: I've been doing good. As were taping this, we're getting into our tax season so getting busy with a lot of new tax changes and whatnot that's hitting everybody.   Marc: Yeah, a lot of changes with the OBBBA. You got to be on your toes, right?   Tony Mauro: Mm-hmm.   Marc: And we talked a lot about that on some of the prior podcasts.   Tony Mauro: We did, yeah.   Marc: Yeah. If you guys aren't a little sure about some of those things, make sure you go check those out and you can find us at whatever podcasting app you like, Plan With The Tax Man. Just type that in the search box or just go to yourplanningpros.com. But if you need some help, of course, reach out to Tony as tax season is upon us again at yourplanningpros.com.   All right. My friend, let's dive in and have some fun with these.   Tony Mauro: Sure.   Marc: All right. You're probably familiar, maybe a lot of our listening audience is with Robert Kiyosaki. A number of years back, he wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Really good book, actually. Quite helpful.   Tony Mauro: [inaudible 00:01:51] yes.   Marc: Yeah, quite helpful for a lot of people. But he's since gotten a lot more aggressive and interesting in some of his stances and takes. And again, a lot of that is the demographic I think he's marketing himself to and pushing and things of that nature. But let's talk about this take here more recently. He said people shouldn't work for a company and save in that retirement plan, instead should launch their own startups or maybe buy gold, silver, and Bitcoin, or all of the above. At the time we're talking, Tony, it's early February and gold and silver and Bitcoin, we're doing pretty good last year and earlier into the year this year, but not so great right this minute. At the time we're talking, there was a recent 30% downturn in gold and silver so that didn't age so well.   Tony Mauro: No. And I think it's interesting you pick this one because I have read his books and I think by and large the Rich Dad, Poor Dad, especially the Rich Dad, Poor Dad Cashflow Quadrant are great books for people. And this strikes me because... Don't get me wrong, I like people being in business for themselves. We serve a lot of those businesses.   Marc: Absolutely.   Tony Mauro: And the tax planning and accounting capacity and the financial end as well.   Marc: But I bet they got their own SEPs and things, they've got their own retirement accounts they're doing.   Tony Mauro: We've got them in almost anybody that will listen and take us up on it, whether it's through us or somebody else. Yes, they have their own retirement plan of some kind.   Marc: Yeah. Not saving in a retirement plan just seems crazy, especially if you are working for somebody else, Tony. Because if nothing else, take the free money.   Tony Mauro: It's free money. And that's exactly it, it's free money if you're working for somebody else. I think depending on who he's trying to market this measures to, not everybody is cut out for having a business for themselves. They may be good at it but they don't... A lot of them tend to get themselves into trouble, whether it's tax-wise or lack of planning, lack of cash flow, that kind of thing, let alone the headaches. Again, I love small business. It's my favorite thing so it's somewhere deep in me. I say, I get it. I get what you're saying. Yeah, I think everybody should work for themselves but not...   Marc: Everybody doesn't have the right temperament though.   Tony Mauro: They don't. They don't. They don't have the right temperament. And I definitely think if they're working for themselves or if they're working for a company, they should be in a retirement plan of some kind.   Marc: Yeah. And to just invest in gold, silver, and Bitcoin, come on, that's crazy. Have some if you want but...   Tony Mauro: I agree. That goes against every financial prudent planning aspect that I know of, that's some diversification...   Marc: 150 years?   Tony Mauro: Yeah.   Marc: Right.   Tony Mauro: Like you say, you can have some but I think you've got to have some diversification, you got to have a plan. I'd love to hear what his rationale for that.   Marc: Well, I've watched some shorts and some reels he's had out there recently. And I do think he's targeting the younger generation right now, this kind of mindset of we're not going to work 50 years for somebody and then retire, we want to make all our money in our 20s by being aggressive in technology and this, that, and the other. I think he's pandering a little bit to that crowd. Maybe not. Maybe he's totally on board with it. But it just seems like a big departure from some of his previous stuff.   Tony Mauro: It does. Yeah, it's a real departure from his books.   Marc: Yeah. Anyway, interesting hot take there. Look, if you want some gold and some silver and some Bitcoin, hey, cool. Talk with your advisor about that, make sure being prudent though to Tony's point. Don't get crazy.   We were joking the other day. I was talking with an advisor, Tony. The Dow just hit 50,000 at the end of last week at the time we're taping this for the first time ever, right? And the comment was, "Hey, the Dow hit 50,000." And somebody goes, "Yeah, so did Bitcoin." Of course, it started at 100,000.   Tony Mauro: Right. Right.   Marc: Because it's not had a very good couple of weeks.   Tony Mauro: No. And that just goes to show you the volatility there.   Marc: Massive, yeah.   Tony Mauro: Yeah. Having all your eggs in those three baskets, definitely very aggressive.   Marc: It could be, for sure. Yeah. All right. Let's go to a different take here from Suze Orman, host of Women and Money, recently suggested and this is... If Robert was getting a little crazy and aggressive, Suze is maybe getting a little too conservative. Tell me what you think about this, Tony. She suggests retirees set aside three to five years worth of living expenses. Not six months, right? Not three to five months. Just in case bank accounts crash or stock market crashes, things of that nature. Three to five years, a little too conservative? What do you think?   Tony Mauro: In my opinion, yes. I think that's far, far too conservative because assuming, again, if you're a retiree and you have a diversified portfolio, hopefully if you are in stocks that are high yielding, good quality individual companies. But most people don't have that, they have mutual funds and a variety of things. And even in a market downturn, if you look at 3, 5, 10-year periods, there's not very many that last very long. And if you take it in 10-year periods, there never is over the entire period so that seems very, very conservative.   And who in their right mind is going to take a large chunk of their portfolio and stick it in a 2%, 3% yielding vehicle when they're trying to live off of the income? I don't know where she's coming from with that at all. And again, these people sell a lot of books and whatnot. But keep in mind, I always like to point out that... And they have a lot of followers, they've made a lot of money. But sometimes if you're listening to some of this stuff, you might want to bounce it off your financial advisor as well, just see what they think because I don't agree with that one at all.   Marc: Yeah, it's a little too... And again, if you got... I don't know. I guess if you're worth $100 million, putting aside three years worth of money is a little easier than most folks, right?   Tony Mauro: Right. Right.   Marc: It's three years. I can hardly put side six or eight months, let alone three years worth. And again, interesting takes. And of course, these folks are talking heads out there in the landscape and pushing their books or their programs or things. And while technically, Tony, doing a podcast makes us a talking head, we're a smaller talking head.   Tony Mauro: True.   Marc: But again, you're in the trenches. You're a CPA, a CFP, an EA, you work with clients day in and day out. These folks don't do that so that's a little different there.   Tony Mauro: No. Yeah.   Marc: Kevin O'Leary and his amazing suits, his very colorful, interesting suits he wears. This one might be the most realistic, Tony, of everything on my list today. And this one is still a little bit too much, I think. But what do you think? He insists that if you don't know your net worth at all times, you're being irresponsible with money. He promotes constant tracking, optimization, and performance measurement.   Tony Mauro: Somewhat I agree with him because I do think you need to know your net worth.   Marc: Indeed.   Tony Mauro: Now, at all times and if you don't know it, you're irresponsible.   Marc: Constant?   Tony Mauro: I think that's a little extreme.   Marc: A little much. Yeah.   Tony Mauro: Yeah. But I think the point he's trying to make, if I'm reading it right, is you need to track your spending and what you own and what you owe so you do know your net worth because it is an important number. I wouldn't get so hung up on it day to day because you're just not going to be able to make significant changes to it. I think it's worth looking at with your financial advisor to see where it's headed on a yearly basis for sure. We do it with our clients. Every one of our clients, we go over that net worth. Did we grow it? Did it go backwards and why? And it's good to have that because at the end of the day, a large portion of that net worth is going to be your retirement portfolio, your investments. And so that's going to be what we're focusing on mostly.   But also in that net worth, we see a lot of times where we start to become almost a financial personal coach in that, "Hey, your net worth is not growing because you're spending more than you're making." That kind of thing. I think he has some good points there but I wouldn't focus on it. I would focus more with your advisor on the month to month, the bigger plan, and I think you'd be fine.   Marc: Yeah. And I think a lot of times people do hire a professional, Tony, because they don't want to track it every day and keep an eye on it and it stresses them out. But I think most people, we should know our baseline numbers, we should have a good idea of what's going on, our total net worth, what's coming in, what's going out. You want a good understanding. Even if you do have a financial professional in your pocket helping you out, you still want to have a good... What is it? A 10,000-foot view kind of thing. But I think micromanaging it down to that small of a level, maybe at some point in life. But I think as we get a little older, we're like, "Okay, I need to turn this over to somebody else to handle this because it's too stressful."   Tony Mauro: Right. Agreed.   Marc: All right. I got two more I'm going to do and it would not be complete doing this list without old Dave Ramsey. Dave is not shy and no stranger to controversial takes like cutting up credit cards or paying exclusively in cash. And obviously, Dave has got a huge empire, helps a lot of people, and actually has a lot of good things that do seem to work on the debt side. However, on this side, Tony, this might be a little crazy. He's challenging the rule of thumb, the 4% rule. He's advocating for 8% annual withdrawal for retirees who invest 100% in the market. If over time the S&P 500 yields a 10% rate of return, he says the money should then last you throughout retirement. And while on the surface, that makes sense, 100% in stocks for retirees alone just seems like way more nausea and sleepless nights than most people probably want.   Tony Mauro: I would agree with you. I've read Dave Ramsey's books, I think one of his best is the Total Money Makeover. As far as getting yourself started with planning, I think that's a great book for everybody.   Marc: And the snowball thing works great.   Tony Mauro: It works great. This, I would agree with you too. I don't agree with him at all there. I do like a little bit more aggressive withdrawal percentage than 4%, I like to use 5% with most of my clients unless they're very conservative. But 8% and all in stocks, that would be... I think as a fiduciary, that would just be wrong of us to even assume that unless the client comes and says, "This is what I want. I want nothing else." And it's up to us to say, "Wait a minute, that's too much." Because what he doesn't say here is, yes, over time it yields 10%. I would agree with that but that time period is a long time period. What happens if you've got all of your retirement portfolio, S&P 500 index, let's say, and we have an eight-year prolonged downturn? Will you run out of money? Probably not, but you will have significantly less. And if you're living off the income, well, then you either have to take less or get into the principal.   Marc: And he doesn't really talk about, "Hey, are you willing to cut that back on the down years and things of that nature?" Because adding a little context to that, Tony, to your point, somebody could be listening and go, "Hey, man, the market last year finished at 18%. The year before that, 20 something. The year before that, 20 something. The year before that, 20 something. Making 10 back and only pulling out 8 totally seems doable the last four or five years. Why not?" Sure, you're right. But what about the 10 years where we made nothing? What about a few decades back when there was what? 15 or 18 years where it made nothing, right?   Tony Mauro: Made nothing, right. I remember through 2000 to 2000 almost 10.   Marc: Oh, the lost decade. Yeah.   Tony Mauro: Oh, just a whole decade was gone. Let's say you were following this strategy then and that wouldn't have been too good for you.   Marc: You're pulling 8% out of a million dollars, you're pulling 80 grand out year over year, and it's not making anything back. Again, it's a little too much, I think.   Tony Mauro: I think so too. I think he might be just trying to generate a conversation there but I think he definitely got to put some context to that.   Marc: Yeah, for sure. And again, while technically the numbers technically do make sense, can you sleep at night with that much risk? And it flies in the face of everything for people... And again, the fact that he even mentioned it for retirees is what kind of... If he would have said people in their 30s or 40s, I could have maybe rolled with that. But people in their 60s up, that's a little too crazy.   Tony Mauro: I agree.   Marc: All right. Final one. You might have thought that might have been the wildest take but I'll save this one for last. The world's richest man, Mr. Musk, predicts that advances in AI, energy, and robotics will generate such an abundance of resources, Tony, that all individual retirement savings will become irrelevant in the future. On a recent podcast, he said, "Don't worry about squirreling away money for retirement. In another 10 or 20 years, it won't matter anyway." There's going to be this boom that is going to just bring riches to everyone and the thing is I actually think he believes it. I will give him the credit and the benefit of the doubt saying I think that he thinks these things are true, that he can make these things happen or they're going to happen or whatever. And kudos for feeling about that. But man, there is so many holes I can punch into this. First of all, Tony, what is your thought on will it even generate that sort of money? And then who allocates it? Who doles it out?   Tony Mauro: Well, that's what I was just thinking [inaudible 00:15:10]   Marc: And who do you trust to make sure they don't take it and give it to you?   Tony Mauro: Yeah, this is nirvana. I'm thinking, "Well, boy, if that's the case, sign me up."   Marc: Heck, yeah, sign us all up.   Tony Mauro: [inaudible 00:15:21]   Marc: But the history of human beings have... Is there any company, person, government, anything that you would trust to say, "Oh, send me my universal check every month so I don't have to do anything." I know that's the world keeps thinking we're moving towards that but we have to be on it. Who is going to really trust someone to do that first and foremost, right?   Tony Mauro: I agree. I just think that's... I didn't even know where he's coming from with that. I do think he believes it because I heard...   Marc: I do. I really do. Yeah.   Tony Mauro: But I just don't see how that's possible. Everybody that either... Let's say AI and energy and robotics have taken over everything, those are the people that are going to have... Who create that I would think are going to have the money and I don't know how that's going to be doled out to the rest of the people and why.   Marc: Well, you're talking about what? They've been kicking around that universal income for everyone kind of thing, right?   Tony Mauro: Yeah.   Marc: And if you're having a computer, if you're having AI dole out the money where so therefore humans aren't touching it, therefore it's deemed fair. I guess you could make those arguments. But at some point, it just seems... All right, 20 years from now he's talking. If you're 60 years old right now listening to this and you stop, right? You stop, saying, "You know what? Elon is totally right. He's going to pull this off. This is going to happen. I'm 60. I'm not going to save another dime for retirement for the next 20 years." And 20 years comes by and you're 80 and none of this came to fruition. Well, you're screwed.   Tony Mauro: You're screwed. Yeah, you're in real trouble.   Marc: And he's not on the hook for it.   Tony Mauro: No. I would say to everybody, you keep doing what you're doing, you plan like we're in this world right now.   Marc: Exactly.   Tony Mauro: And if something like this in your lifetime ever comes to happen, well then all the better. But I wouldn't bank anything on something like this.   Marc: And that's where I think the questions and the interesting thing comes into the speculation of investing, right Tony? That's where it comes back to, "Hey, look, if you want to get in crypto, if you want to have some AI properties, if you want to do some of these different things because you believe in this interesting future possibility. Cool, do that. But don't risk the tried and true things that have also worked for 150 years just in case you're wrong because there's you, there's your spouse, there's your heirs to think about." And so I think that's where we... We're in this interesting space where it's like, "I want to take some chances maybe." Or, "I want to be on some cutting edges." But let's still keep it within that speculative portion I guess, Tony, of our finances.   Tony Mauro: Yeah, very small. Very small speculative portion because that's exactly what it is. And you certainly don't want to, just like you said, risk your future on some of the speculation. Because some of it is out there and...   Marc: And it may be possible. It may absolutely be possible but it also may not.   Tony Mauro: It may be possible.   Marc: [inaudible 00:18:16] I'm still waiting on my flying car. I ain't got it yet.   Tony Mauro: I've got a client here locally, tax only, that has... He's the same way. He is invested in some Iraqi Dinari that he keeps saying that it's going to take off, it's going to be... He's been telling me this for 20 years and it's basically worth 3/10 of one cent. You don't want to get into that. I think it was a little flyer for him, I don't even know. But anyway, please consult with advisors before you do any of these kind of things and [inaudible 00:18:53]   Marc: And again, it's easy for the world's richest man to be like, "Well, if it doesn't work, well, whatever."   Tony Mauro: Yeah, whatever.   Marc: Well, he's going to fly off to Mars and not be responsible anyway.   Tony Mauro: That's right.   Marc: But look, good stuff, fun for conversation. And I think that's a piece too, I think as humans, we're always looking to try to move forward and do some things. And of course, sometimes we're trying to sell some stuff. And of course, even in Elon's case, he's trying to promote his robotics and his AI and get people on board. And the more people that are interested and on board, the better the chances of things happening and generating.   You always have to take stuff with a grain of salt and you could simply say, "Well, Mark, you're constantly saying, Hey, call Tony." Yeah, I am. I'm saying call Tony to get a strategy and a plan in place that works for your situation based on the things you've got going on in your life, and also they're backed by years of research and data. And there's no plan that's perfect but having a plan is better than having no plan.   Tony Mauro: That's right. I agree totally.   Marc: Yeah. Get yourself onto the calendar, have a consultation and a conversation with licensed professionals, CPA, CFP, EA. It's what Tony is for 30 plus years. If you need some help, find him online at yourplanningpros.com. That's your planningpros.com. We're going to wrap it up this week so thanks for hanging out with us here on Plan With The Tax Man, with Tony Mauro.   Tony, thanks for engaging and having some fun with me on this.   Tony Mauro: All right. We'll see you next time.   Marc: We'll see you next time here on the podcast.   Securities offered through Avantax Investment Services SM, member FINRA, SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through Avantax Advisory Services. Insurance services offered through an Avantax affiliated insurance agency. Investment strategies discussed in this episode may not be suitable for all investors. Please consult with a financial professional.

Chris From Brooklyn is back at it again talking why this whole thing is stupid to not just pay off the people from Greenland to become Americans, how people get suckered into timeshares, Trump doing Poor Dad stuff with his European policy, The Buddhists monks getting into some real gangster behavior in Asia, Rob Schnieders new Anti-Woke Burbon and so much more!Record Date: 01/14/26WATCH CHRIS' NEW "NOT SPECIAL" HEREhttps://www.youtube.com/@HighSocietyRadioPodcastCome To The Armored League on 1/29https://www.eventbrite.com/e/armored-league-first-show-of-the-year-tickets-1980260275792?aff=WixEventLinkSUPPORT OUR SPONSORBody Brain Coffee: https://bodybraincoffee.com/ - Grab A Bag of Body Brain Coffee with Promo Code HSR20 to get 20% off!FatDickHotChocolate.net - Get a fat dick by drinking chocolate!Email Your Ask The Goon Questions to: askthegoon@gmail.comFollow the host on socialChris From Brooklyn Twitter https://twitter.com/ChrisFromBklynHigh Society Radio Instagram https://www.instagram.com/highsocietyradioHigh Society Radio YouTube http://bit.ly/HSRYoutubeHigh Society Radio Twitter https://twitter.com/HSRadioshowWebsite https://gasdigital.comMike Harrington Twitter https://twitter.com/TheMHarringtonMike Harrington Instagram https://www.instagram.com/themharrington/Notes Of A Goon is a weekly podcast where Goon of note, Chris from BK sits down and yells about childhood trauma, how he'd fix the whole damn country, and all sorts of other bullshit. All while splitting a six pack with you the listener. Chris is joined by his stalwart producer and homeless weirdo Mike Harrington on this journey of self reflection and yelling. There's lots of yelling.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, we dive deep into retirement planning statistics that might surprise you—and hopefully motivate you to take action. We break down the numbers, share personal stories, and give you practical steps to start preparing for your future, no matter what stage of life you're in.   Key Takeaways Start where you are: Even if you're past the "ideal" window for compounding, taking action now is better than waiting Know your numbers: Understand what government benefits you'll actually receive Review your spending: Track where your money goes—especially dining out Think long-term: You're likely to live longer than previous generations planned for Get professional help: This isn't your specialty, and that's okay Action Steps Review your current retirement savings and projections Calculate your expected CPP and OAS benefits Analyze 3 months of spending to find financial leaks Consider insurance as part of your investment strategy Have honest conversations with your partner about retirement goals Resources Mentioned Statistics Canada retirement data (2022-2025) The Latte Factor by David Bach Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel   Let's dive in! Thank you for joining us today. If you could rate, review & subscribe, it would mean the world to me! While you're at it, take a screenshot and tag me @jennpike to share on Instagram – I'll re-share that baby out to the community & once a month I'll be doing a draw from those re-shares and send the winner something special! Click here to listen: Apple Podcasts – CLICK HERESpotify – CLICK HERE Free Resources: Free Perimenopause Support Guide | jennpike.com/perimenopausesupport Free Blood Work Guide | jennpike.com/bloodworkguide The Simplicity Sessions Podcast | jennpike.com/podcast Get 20% on thewalkingpad.com using code "JENNPIKE20" Get discounts at happybumco.com using code "JENNPIKE" *code doesn't apply with Black Friday sale* Programs: Ignite: Your 8-Week Body Transformation Program | https://jennpike.com/ignite The Peri & Menopause Project  - Join the Waitlist | jennpike.com/theperimenopauseproject Synced Virtual Fitness Studio | jennpike.com/synced Services: Work With Jenn | https://jennpike.com/work-with-jenn/ Functional Testing | jennpike.com/testing-packages Business Mentorship | The Audacious Woman Mentorship:  jennpike.com/theaudaciouswoman Connect with Jenn: Instagram | @jennpike Facebook | @thesimplicityproject YouTube | Simplicity TV Website | The Simplicity Project Inc. Connect with Chris: Instagram | @chrisborsellino Finance Discovery Session | Book Here Have a question? Send it over to hello@jennpike.com and I'll do my best to share helpful insights, thoughts and advice.

What if the most transformative thing you can do for your writing craft and author business is to face what you fear? How can you can find gold in your Shadow in the year ahead? In this episode, I share chapters from Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words. In the intro, curated book boxes from Bridgerton's Julia Quinn; Google's agentic shopping, and powering Apple's Siri; ChatGPT Ads; and Claude CoWork. Balancing Certainty and Uncertainty [MoonShots with Tony Robbins]; and three trends for authors with me and Orna Ross [Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast]; plus, Bones of the Deep, Business for Authors, and Indie Author Lab. This show is supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn  Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, and memoir as J.F. Penn. She's also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. What is the Shadow? The ‘creative wound' and the Shadow in writing The Shadow in traditional publishing The Shadow in self-publishing or being an indie author The Shadow in work The Shadow in money You can find Writing the Shadow in all formats on all stores, as well as special edition, workbook and bundles at www.TheCreativePenn.com/shadowbook Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words The following chapters are excerpted from Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words by Joanna Penn. Introduction. What is the Shadow? “How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole.” —C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul We all have a Shadow side and it is the work of a lifetime to recognise what lies within and spin that base material into gold. Think of it as a seedling in a little pot that you're given when you're young. It's a bit misshapen and weird, not something you would display in your living room, so you place it in a dark corner of the basement. You don't look at it for years. You almost forget about it. Then one day you notice tendrils of something wild poking up through the floorboards. They're ugly and don't fit with your Scandi-minimalist interior design. You chop the tendrils away and pour weedkiller on what's left, trying to hide the fact that they were ever there. But the creeping stems keep coming. At some point, you know you have to go down there and face the wild thing your seedling has become. When you eventually pluck up enough courage to go down into the basement, you discover that the plant has wound its roots deep into the foundations of your home. Its vines weave in and out of the cracks in the walls, and it has beautiful flowers and strange fruit. It holds your world together. Perhaps you don't need to destroy the wild tendrils. Perhaps you can let them wind up into the light and allow their rich beauty to weave through your home. It will change the look you have so carefully cultivated, but maybe that's just what the place needs. The Shadow in psychology Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychologist and the founder of analytical psychology. He described the Shadow as an unconscious aspect of the human personality, those parts of us that don't match up to what is expected of us by family and society, or to our own ideals. The Shadow is not necessarily evil or illegal or immoral, although of course it can be. It's also not necessarily caused by trauma, abuse, or any other severely damaging event, although again, it can be. It depends on the individual. What is in your Shadow is based on your life and your experiences, as well as your culture and society, so it will be different for everyone. Psychologist Connie Zweig, in The Inner Work of Age, explains, “The Shadow is that part of us that lies beneath or behind the light of awareness. It contains our rejected, unacceptable traits and feelings. It contains our hidden gifts and talents that have remained unexpressed or unlived. As Jung put it, the essence of the Shadow is pure gold.” To further illustrate the concept, Robert Bly, in A Little Book on the Human Shadow,uses the following metaphor: “When we are young, we carry behind us an invisible bag, into which we stuff any feelings, thoughts, or behaviours that bring disapproval or loss of love—anger, tears, neediness, laziness. By the time we go to school, our bags are already a mile long. In high school, our peer groups pressure us to stuff the bags with even more—individuality, sexuality, spontaneity, different opinions. We spend our life until we're twenty deciding which parts of ourselves to put into the bag and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.” As authors, we can use what's in the ‘bag' to enrich our writing — but only if we can access it. My intention with this book is to help you venture into your Shadow and bring some of what's hidden into the light and into your words. I'll reveal aspects of my Shadow in these pages but ultimately, this book is about you. Your Shadow is unique. There may be elements we share, but much will be different. Each chapter has questions for you to consider that may help you explore at least the edges of your Shadow, but it's not easy. As Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” But take heart, Creative. You don't need courage when things are easy. You need it when you know what you face will be difficult, but you do it anyway. We are authors. We know how to do hard things. We turn ideas into books. We manifest thoughts into ink on paper. We change lives with our writing. First, our own, then other people's. It's worth the effort to delve into Shadow, so I hope you will join me on the journey. The creative wound and the Shadow in writing “Whatever pain you can't get rid of, make it your creative offering.” —Susan Cain, Bittersweet  The more we long for something, the more extreme our desire, the more likely it is to have a Shadow side. For those of us who love books, the author life may well be a long-held dream and thus, it is filled with Shadow. Books have long been objects of desire, power, and authority. They hold a mythic status in our lives. We escaped into stories as children; we studied books at school and college; we read them now for escape and entertainment, education and inspiration. We collect beautiful books to put on our shelves. We go to them for solace and answers to the deepest questions of life. Writers are similarly held in high esteem. They shape culture, win literary prizes, give important speeches, and are quoted in the mainstream media. Their books are on the shelves in libraries and bookstores. Writers are revered, held up as rare, talented creatures made separate from us by their brilliance and insight. For bibliophile children, books were everything and to write one was a cherished dream. To become an author? Well, that would mean we might be someone special, someone worthy. Perhaps when you were young, you thought the dream of being a writer was possible — then you told someone about it. That's probably when you heard the first criticism of such a ridiculous idea, the first laughter, the first dismissal. So you abandoned the dream, pushed the idea of being a writer into the Shadow, and got on with your life. Or if it wasn't then, it came later, when you actually put pen to paper and someone — a parent, teacher, partner, or friend, perhaps even a literary agent or publisher, someone whose opinion you valued — told you it was worthless. Here are some things you might have heard: Writing is a hobby. Get a real job. You're not good enough. You don't have any writing talent. You don't have enough education. You don't know what you're doing. Your writing is derivative / unoriginal / boring / useless / doesn't make sense. The genre you write in is dead / worthless / unacceptable / morally wrong / frivolous / useless.  Who do you think you are? No one would want to read what you write. You can't even use proper grammar, so how could you write a whole book? You're wasting your time. You'll never make it as a writer. You shouldn't write those things (or even think about those things). Why don't you write something nice? Insert other derogatory comment here! Mark Pierce describes the effect of this experience in his book The Creative Wound, which “occurs when an event, or someone's actions or words, pierce you, causing a kind of rift in your soul. A comment—even offhand and unintentional—is enough to cause one.” He goes on to say that such words can inflict “damage to the core of who we are as creators. It is an attack on our artistic identity, resulting in us believing that whatever we make is somehow tainted or invalid, because shame has convinced us there is something intrinsically tainted or invalid about ourselves.” As adults, we might brush off such wounds, belittling them as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. We might even find ourselves saying the same words to other people. After all, it's easier to criticise than to create. But if you picture your younger self, bright eyed as you lose yourself in your favourite book, perhaps you might catch a glimpse of what you longed for before your dreams were dashed on the rocks of other people's reality. As Mark Pierce goes on to say, “A Creative Wound has the power to delay our pursuits—sometimes for years—and it can even derail our lives completely… Anything that makes us feel ashamed of ourselves or our work can render us incapable of the self-expression we yearn for.” This is certainly what happened to me, and it took decades to unwind. Your creative wounds will differ to mine but perhaps my experience will help you explore your own. To be clear, your Shadow may not reside in elements of horror as mine do, but hopefully you can use my example to consider where your creative wounds might lie. “You shouldn't write things like that.” It happened at secondary school around 1986 or 1987, so I would have been around eleven or twelve years old. English was one of my favourite subjects and the room we had our lessons in looked out onto a vibrant garden. I loved going to that class because it was all about books, and they were always my favourite things. One day, we were asked to write a story. I can't remember the specifics of what the teacher asked us to write, but I fictionalised a recurring nightmare. I stood in a dark room. On one side, my mum and my brother, Rod, were tied up next to a cauldron of boiling oil, ready to be thrown in. On the other side, my dad and my little sister, Lucy, were threatened with decapitation by men with machetes. I had to choose who would die. I always woke up, my heart pounding, before I had to choose. Looking back now, it clearly represented an internal conflict about having to pick sides between the two halves of my family. Not an unexpected issue from a child of divorce. Perhaps these days, I might have been sent to the school counsellor, but it was the eighties and I don't think we even had such a thing. Even so, the meaning of the story isn't the point. It was the reaction to it that left scars. “You shouldn't write things like that,” my teacher said, and I still remember her look of disappointment, even disgust. Certainly judgment. She said my writing was too dark. It wasn't a proper story. It wasn't appropriate for the class. As if horrible things never happened in stories — or in life. As if literature could not include dark tales. As if the only acceptable writing was the kind she approved of. We were taught The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie that year, which says a lot about the type of writing considered appropriate. Or perhaps the issue stemmed from the school motto, “So hateth she derknesse,” from Chaucer's The Legend of Good Women: “For fear of night, so she hates the darkness.” I had won a scholarship to a private girls' school, and their mission was to turn us all into proper young ladies. Horror was never on the curriculum. Perhaps if my teacher had encouraged me to write my darkness back then, my nightmares would have dissolved on the page. Perhaps if we had studied Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or H.P. Lovecraft stories, or Bram Stoker's Dracula, I could have embraced the darker side of literature earlier in my life. My need to push darker thoughts into my Shadow was compounded by my (wonderful) mum's best intentions. We were brought up on the principles of The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale and she tried to shield me and my brother from anything harmful or horrible. We weren't allowed to watch TV much, and even the British school drama Grange Hill was deemed inappropriate. So much of what I've achieved is because my mum instilled in me a “can do” attitude that anything is possible. I'm so grateful to her for that. (I love you, Mum!) But all that happy positivity, my desire to please her, to be a good girl, to make my teachers proud, and to be acceptable to society, meant that I pushed my darker thoughts into Shadow. They were inappropriate. They were taboo. They must be repressed, kept secret, and I must be outwardly happy and positive at all times. You cannot hold back the darkness “The night is dark and full of terrors.” —George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords It turned out that horror was on the curriculum, much of it in the form of educational films we watched during lessons. In English Literature, we watched Romeo drink poison and Juliet stab herself in Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. In Religious Studies, we watched Jesus beaten, tortured, and crucified in The Greatest Story Ever Told, and learned of the variety of gruesome ways that Christian saints were martyred. In Classical Civilisation, we watched gladiators slaughter each other in Spartacus. In Sex Education at the peak of the AIDS crisis in the mid-'80s, we were told of the many ways we could get infected and die. In History, we studied the Holocaust with images of skeletal bodies thrown into mass graves, medical experiments on humans, and grainy videos of marching soldiers giving the Nazi salute. One of my first overseas school field trips was to the World War I battlegrounds of Flanders Fields in Belgium, where we studied the inhuman conditions of the trenches, walked through mass graves, and read war poetry by candlelight. As John McCrae wrote: We are the Dead. Short days agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields. Did the teachers not realise how deeply a sensitive teenager might feel the darkness of that place? Or have I always been unusual in that places of blood echo deep inside me? And the horrors kept coming. We lived in Bristol, England back then and I learned at school how the city had been part of the slave trade, its wealth built on the backs of people stolen from their homes, sold, and worked to death in the colonies. I had been at school for a year in Malawi, Africa and imagined the Black people I knew drowning, being beaten, and dying on those ships. In my teenage years, the news was filled with ethnic cleansing, mass rape, and massacres during the Balkan wars, and images of bodies hacked apart during the Rwandan genocide. Evil committed by humans against other humans was not a historical aberration. I'm lucky and I certainly acknowledge my privilege. Nothing terrible or horrifying has happened to me — but bad things certainly happen to others. I wasn't bullied or abused. I wasn't raped or beaten or tortured. But you don't have to go through things to be afraid of them, and for your imagination to conjure the possibility of them. My mum doesn't read my fiction now as it gives her nightmares (Sorry, Mum!). I know she worries that somehow she's responsible for my darkness, but I've had a safe and (mostly) happy life, for which I'm truly grateful. But the world is not an entirely safe and happy place, and for a sensitive child with a vivid imagination, the world is dark and scary. It can be brutal and violent, and bad things happen, even to good people. No parent can shield their child from the reality of the world. They can only help them do their best to live in it, develop resilience, and find ways to deal with whatever comes. Story has always been a way that humans have used to learn how to live and deal with difficult times. The best authors, the ones that readers adore and can't get enough of, write their darkness into story to channel their experience, and help others who fear the same. In an interview on writing the Shadow on The Creative Penn Podcast, Michaelbrent Collings shared how he incorporated a personally devastating experience into his writing:  “My wife and I lost a child years back, and that became the root of one of my most terrifying books, Apparition. It's not terrifying because it's the greatest book of all time, but just the concept that there's this thing out there… like a demon, and it consumes the blood and fear of the children, and then it withdraws and consumes the madness of the parents… I wrote that in large measure as a way of working through what I was experiencing.” I've learned much from Michaelbrent. I've read many of his (excellent) books and he's been on my podcast multiple times talking about his depression and mental health issues, as well as difficulties in his author career. Writing darkness is not in Michaelbrent's Shadow and only he can say what lies there for him. But from his example, and from that of other authors, I too learned how to write my Shadow into my books. Twenty-three years after that English lesson, in November 2009, I did NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, and wrote five thousand words of what eventually became Stone of Fire, my first novel. In the initial chapter, I burned a nun alive on the ghats of Varanasi on the banks of the Ganges River. I had watched the bodies burn by night on pyres from a boat bobbing in the current a few years before, and the image was still crystal clear in my mind. The only way to deal with how it made me feel about death was to write about it — and since then, I've never stopped writing. Returning to the nightmare from my school days, I've never had to choose between the two halves of my family, but the threat of losing them remains a theme in my fiction. In my ARKANE thriller series, Morgan Sierra will do anything to save her sister and her niece. Their safety drives her to continue to fight against evil. Our deepest fears emerge in our writing, and that's the safest place for them. I wish I'd been taught how to turn my nightmares into words back at school, but at least now I've learned to write my Shadow onto the page. I wish the same for you. The Shadow in traditional publishing If becoming an author is your dream, then publishing a book is deeply entwined with that. But as Mark Pierce says in The Creative Wound, “We feel pain the most where it matters the most… Desire highlights whatever we consider to be truly significant.” There is a lot of desire around publishing for those of us who love books! It can give you: Validation that your writing is good enough Status and credibility Acceptance by an industry held in esteem  The potential of financial reward and critical acclaim Support from a team of professionals who know how to make fantastic books A sense of belonging to an elite community Pride in achieving a long-held goal, resulting in a confidence boost and self-esteem Although not guaranteed, traditional publishing can give you all these things and more, but as with everything, there is a potential Shadow side. Denying it risks the potential of being disillusioned, disappointed, and even damaged. But remember, forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes. Preparation can help you avoid potential issues and help you feel less alone if you encounter them. The myth of success… and the reality of experience There is a pervasive myth of success in the traditional publishing industry, perpetuated by media reporting on brand name and breakout authors, those few outliers whose experience is almost impossible to replicate. Because of such examples, many new traditionally published authors think that their first book will hit the top of the bestseller charts or win an award, as well as make them a million dollars — or at least a big chunk of cash. They will be able to leave their job, write in a beautiful house overlooking the ocean, and swan around the world attending conferences, while writing more bestselling books. It will be a charmed life. But that is not the reality. Perhaps it never was. Even so, the life of a traditionally published author represents a mythic career with the truth hidden behind a veil of obscurity. In April 2023, The Bookseller in the UK reported that “more than half of authors (54%) responding to a survey on their experiences of publishing their debut book have said the process negatively affected their mental health. Though views were mixed, just 22%… described a positive experience overall… Among the majority who said they had a negative experience of debut publication, anxiety, stress, depression and ‘lowered' self-esteem were cited, with lack of support, guidance or clear and professional communication from their publisher among the factors that contributed.” Many authors who have negative experiences around publishing will push them into the Shadow with denial or self-blame, preferring to keep the dream alive. They won't talk about things in public as this may negatively affect their careers, but private discussions are often held in the corners of writing conferences or social media groups online. Some of the issues are as follows: Repeated rejection by agents and publishers may lead to the author thinking they are not good enough as a writer, which can lead to feeling unworthy as a person. If an author gets a deal, the amount of advance and the name and status of the publisher compared to others create a hierarchy that impacts self-esteem. A deal for a book may be much lower than an author might have been expecting, with low or no advance, and the resulting experience with the publisher beneath expectations. The launch process may be disappointing, and the book may appear without fanfare, with few sales and no bestseller chart position. In The Bookseller report, one author described her launch day as “a total wasteland… You have expectations about what publication day will be like, but in reality, nothing really happens.” The book may receive negative reviews by critics or readers or more publicly on social media, which can make an author feel attacked. The book might not sell as well as expected, and the author may feel like it's their fault. Commercial success can sometimes feel tied to self-worth and an author can't help but compare their sales to others, with resulting embarrassment or shame. The communication from the publisher may be less than expected. One author in The Bookseller report said, “I was shocked by the lack of clarity and shared information and the cynicism that underlies the superficial charm of this industry.” There is often more of a focus on debut authors in publishing houses, so those who have been writing and publishing in the midlist for years can feel ignored and undervalued. In The Bookseller report, 48 percent of authors reported “their publisher supported them for less than a year,” with one saying, “I got no support and felt like a commodity, like the team had moved on completely to the next book.” If an author is not successful enough, the next deal may be lower than the last, less effort is made with marketing, and they may be let go. In The Bookseller report, “six authors—debut and otherwise—cited being dropped by their publisher, some with no explanation.” Even if everything goes well and an author is considered successful by others, they may experience imposter syndrome, feeling like a fraud when speaking at conferences or doing book signings. And the list goes on … All these things can lead to feelings of shame, inadequacy, and embarrassment; loss of status in the eyes of peers; and a sense of failure if a publishing career is not successful enough. The author feels like it's their fault, like they weren't good enough — although, of course, the reality is that the conditions were not right at the time. A failure of a book is not a failure of the person, but it can certainly feel like it! When you acknowledge the Shadow, it loses its power Despite all the potential negatives of traditional publishing, if you know what could happen, you can mitigate them. You can prepare yourself for various scenarios and protect yourself from potential fall-out. It's clear from The Bookseller report that too many authors have unrealistic expectations of the industry. But publishers are businesses, not charities. It's not their job to make you feel good as an author. It's their job to sell books and pay you. The best thing they can do is to continue to be a viable business so they can keep putting books on the shelves and keep paying authors, staff, and company shareholders. When you license your creative work to a publisher, you're giving up control of your intellectual property in exchange for money and status. Bring your fears and issues out of the Shadow, acknowledge them, and deal with them early, so they do not get pushed down and re-emerge later in blame and bitterness. Educate yourself on the business of publishing. Be clear on what you want to achieve with any deal. Empower yourself as an author, take responsibility for your career, and you will have a much better experience. The Shadow in self-publishing or being an indie author Self-publishing, or being an independent (indie) author, can be a fantastic, pro-active choice for getting your book into the world. Holding your first book in your hand and saying “I made this” is pretty exciting, and even after more than forty books, I still get excited about seeing ideas in my head turn into a physical product in the world. Self-publishing can give an author: Creative control over what to write, editorial and cover design choices, when and how often to publish, and how to market Empowerment over your author career and the ability to make choices that impact success without asking for permission Ownership and control of intellectual property assets, resulting in increased opportunity around licensing and new markets Independence and the potential for recurring income for the long term Autonomy and flexibility around timelines, publishing options, and the ability to easily pivot into new genres and business models Validation based on positive reader reviews and money earned Personal growth and learning through the acquisition of new skills, resulting in a boost in confidence and self-esteem A sense of belonging to an active and vibrant community of indie authors around the world Being an indie author can give you all this and more, but once again, there is a Shadow side and preparation can help you navigate potential issues. The myth of success… and the reality of experience As with traditional publishing, the indie author world has perpetuated a myth of success in the example of the breakout indie author like E.L. James with Fifty Shades of Grey, Hugh Howey with Wool, or Andy Weir with The Martian. The emphasis on financial success is also fuelled online by authors who share screenshots showing six-figure months or seven-figure years, without sharing marketing costs and other outgoings, or the amount of time spent on the business. Yes, these can inspire some, but it can also make others feel inadequate and potentially lead to bad choices about how to publish and market based on comparison. The indie author world is full of just as much ego and a desire for status and money as traditional publishing. This is not a surprise! Most authors, regardless of publishing choices, are a mix of massive ego and chronic self-doubt. We are human, so the same issues will re-occur. A different publishing method doesn't cure all ills. Some of the issues are as follows: You learn everything you need to know about writing and editing, only to find that you need to learn a whole new set of skills in order to self-publish and market your book. This can take a lot of time and effort you did not expect, and things change all the time so you have to keep learning. Being in control of every aspect of the publishing process, from writing to cover design to marketing, can be overwhelming, leading to indecision, perfectionism, stress, and even burnout as you try to do all the things. You try to find people to help, but building your team is a challenge, and working with others has its own difficulties. People say negative things about self-publishing that may arouse feelings of embarrassment or shame. These might be little niggles, but they needle you, nonetheless. You wonder whether you made the right choice. You struggle with self-doubt and if you go to an event with traditional published authors, you compare yourself to them and feel like an imposter. Are you good enough to be an author if a traditional publisher hasn't chosen you? Is it just vanity to self-publish? Are your books unworthy? Even though you worked with a professional editor, you still get one-star reviews and you hate criticism from readers. You wonder whether you're wasting your time. You might be ripped off by an author services company who promise the world, only to leave you with a pile of printed books in your garage and no way to sell them. When you finally publish your book, it languishes at the bottom of the charts while other authors hit the top of the list over and over, raking in the cash while you are left out of pocket. You don't admit to over-spending on marketing as it makes you ashamed. You resist book marketing and make critical comments about writers who embrace it. You believe that quality rises to the top and if a book is good enough, people will buy it anyway. This can lead to disappointment and disillusionment when you launch your book and it doesn't sell many copies because nobody knows about it. You try to do what everyone advises, but you still can't make decent money as an author. You're jealous of other authors' success and put it down to them ‘selling out' or writing things you can't or ‘using AI' or ‘using a ghostwriter' or having a specific business model you consider impossible to replicate. And the list goes on… When you acknowledge the Shadow, it loses its power Being in control of your books and your author career is a double-edged sword. Traditionally published authors can criticise their publishers or agents or the marketing team or the bookstores or the media, but indie authors have to take responsibility for it all. Sure, we can blame ‘the algorithms' or social media platforms, or criticise other authors for having more experience or more money to invest in marketing, or attribute their success to writing in a more popular genre — but we also know there are always people who do well regardless of the challenges. Once more, we're back to acknowledging and integrating the Shadow side of our choices. We are flawed humans. There will always be good times and bad, and difficulties to offset the high points. This too shall pass, as the old saying goes. I know that being an indie author has plenty of Shadow. I've been doing this since 2008 and despite the hard times, I'm still here. I'm still writing. I'm still publishing. This life is not for everyone, but it's my choice. You must make yours. The Shadow in work You work hard. You make a living. Nothing wrong with that attitude, right? It's what we're taught from an early age and, like so much of life, it's not a problem until it goes to extremes. Not achieving what you want to? Work harder. Can't get ahead? Work harder. Not making a good enough living? Work harder. People who don't work hard are lazy. They don't deserve handouts or benefits. People who don't work hard aren't useful, so they are not valued members of our culture and community. But what about the old or the sick, the mentally ill, or those with disabilities? What about children? What about the unemployed? The under-employed? What about those who are — or will be — displaced by technology, those called “the useless class” by historian Yuval Noah Harari in his book Homo Deus? What if we become one of these in the future? Who am I if I cannot work? The Shadow side of my attitude to work became clear when I caught COVID in the summer of 2021. I was the sickest I'd ever been. I spent two weeks in bed unable to even think properly, and six weeks after that, I was barely able to work more than an hour a day before lying in the dark and waiting for my energy to return. I was limited in what I could do for another six months after that. At times, I wondered if I would ever get better. Jonathan kept urging me to be patient and rest. But I don't know how to rest. I know how to work and how to sleep. I can do ‘active rest,' which usually involves walking a long way or traveling somewhere interesting, but those require a stronger mind and body than I had during those months. It struck me that even if I recovered from the virus, I had glimpsed my future self. One day, I will be weak in body and mind. If I'm lucky, that will be many years away and hopefully for a short time before I die — but it will happen. I am an animal. I will die. My body and mind will pass on and I will be no more. Before then I will be weak. Before then, I will be useless. Before then, I will be a burden. I will not be able to work… But who am I if I cannot work? What is the point of me? I can't answer these questions right now, because although I recognise them as part of my Shadow, I've not progressed far enough to have dealt with them entirely. My months of COVID gave me some much-needed empathy for those who cannot work, even if they want to. We need to reframe what work is as a society, and value humans for different things, especially as technology changes what work even means. That starts with each of us. “Illness, affliction of body and soul, can be life-altering. It has the potential to reveal the most fundamental conflict of the human condition: the tension between our infinite, glorious dreams and desires and our limited, vulnerable, decaying physicality.” —Connie Zweig, The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul The Shadow in money In the Greek myth, King Midas was a wealthy ruler who loved gold above all else. His palace was adorned with golden sculptures and furniture, and he took immense pleasure in his riches. Yet, despite his vast wealth, he yearned for more. After doing a favour for Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry, Midas was granted a single wish. Intoxicated by greed, he wished that everything he touched would turn to gold — and it was so. At first, it was a lot of fun. Midas turned everything else in his palace to gold, even the trees and stones of his estate. After a morning of turning things to gold, he fancied a spot of lunch. But when he tried to eat, the food and drink turned to gold in his mouth. He became thirsty and hungry — and increasingly desperate. As he sat in despair on his golden throne, his beloved young daughter ran to comfort him. For a moment, he forgot his wish — and as she wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek, she turned into a golden statue, frozen in precious metal. King Midas cried out to the gods to forgive him, to reverse the wish. He renounced his greed and gave away all his wealth, and his daughter was returned to life. The moral of the story: Wealth and greed are bad. In Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is described as a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner.” He's wealthy but does not share, considering Christmas spending to be frivolous and giving to charity to be worthless. He's saved by a confrontation with his lonely future and becomes a generous man and benefactor of the poor. Wealth is good if you share it with others. The gospel of Matthew, chapter 25: 14-30, tells the parable of the bags of gold, in which a rich man goes on a journey and entrusts his servants with varying amounts of gold. On his return, the servants who multiplied the gold through their efforts and investments are rewarded, while the one who merely returned the gold with no interest is punished: “For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” Making money is good, making more money is even better. If you can't make any money, you don't deserve to have any. Within the same gospel, in Matthew 19:24, Jesus encounters a wealthy man and tells him to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor, which the man is unable to do. Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Wealth is bad. Give it all away and you'll go to heaven. With all these contradictory messages, no wonder we're so conflicted about money! How do you think and feel about money? While money is mostly tied to our work, it's far more than just a transactional object for most people. It's loaded with complex symbolism and judgment handed down by family, religion, and culture. You are likely to find elements of Shadow by examining your attitudes around money. Consider which of the following statements resonate with you or write your own. Money stresses me out. I don't want to talk about it or think about it. Some people hoard money, so there is inequality. Rich people are bad and we should take away their wealth and give it to the poor.  I can never make enough money to pay the bills, or to give my family what I want to provide. Money doesn't grow on trees.  It's wasteful to spend money as you might need it later, so I'm frugal and don't spend money unless absolutely necessary. It is better and more ethical to be poor than to be rich. I want more money. I read books and watch TV shows about rich people because I want to live like that. Sometimes I spend too much on things for a glimpse of what that might be like.  I buy lottery tickets and dream of winning all that money.  I'm jealous of people who have money. I want more of it and I resent those who have it. I'm no good with money. I don't like to look at my bank statement or credit card statement. I live off my overdraft and I'm in debt. I will never earn enough to get out of debt and start saving, so I don't think too much about it. I don't know enough about money. Talking about it makes me feel stupid, so I just ignore it. People like me aren't educated about money.  I need to make more money. If I can make lots of money, then people will look up to me. If I make lots of money, I will be secure, nothing can touch me, I will be safe.  I never want to be poor. I would be ashamed to be poor. I will never go on benefits. My net worth is my self worth. Money is good. We have the best standard of living in history because of the increase in wealth over time. Even the richest kings of the past didn't have what many middle-class people have today in terms of access to food, water, technology, healthcare, education, and more. The richest people give the most money to the poor through taxation and charity, as well as through building companies that employ people and invent new things. The very richest give away much of their fortunes. They provide far more benefit to the world than the poor.  I love money. Money loves me. Money comes easily and quickly to me. I attract money in multiple streams of income. It flows to me in so many ways. I spend money. I invest money. I give money. I'm happy and grateful for all that I receive. The Shadow around money for authors in particular Many writers and other creatives have issues around money and wealth. How often have you heard the following, and which do you agree with? You can't make money with your writing. You'll be a poor author in a garret, a starving artist.  You can't write ‘good quality' books and make money. If you make money writing, you're a hack, you're selling out. You are less worthy than someone who writes only for the Muse. Your books are commercial, not artistic. If you spend money on marketing, then your books are clearly not good enough to sell on their own. My agent / publisher / accountant / partner deals with the money side. I like to focus on the creative side of things. My money story Note: This is not financial or investment advice. Please talk to a professional about your situation. I've had money issues over the years — haven't we all! But I have been through a (long) process to bring money out of my Shadow and into the light. There will always be more to discover, but hopefully my money story will help you, or at least give you an opportunity to reflect. Like most people, I didn't grow up with a lot of money. My parents started out as teachers, but later my mum — who I lived with, along with my brother — became a change management consultant, moving to the USA and earning a lot more. I'm grateful that she moved into business because her example changed the way I saw money and provided some valuable lessons. (1) You can change your circumstances by learning more and then applying that to leverage opportunity into a new job or career Mum taught English at a school in Bristol when we moved back from Malawi, Africa, in the mid '80s but I remember how stressful it was for her, and how little money she made. She wanted a better future for us all, so she took a year out to do a master's degree in management. In the same way, when I wanted to change careers and leave consulting to become an author, I spent time and money learning about the writing craft and the business of publishing. I still invest a considerable chunk on continuous learning, as this industry changes all the time. (2) You might have to downsize in order to leap forward The year my mum did her degree, we lived in the attic of another family's house; we ate a lot of one-pot casserole and our treat was having a Yorkie bar on the walk back from the museum. We wore hand-me-down clothes, and I remember one day at school when another girl said I was wearing her dress. I denied it, of course, but there in back of the dress was her name tag. I still remember her name and I can still feel that flush of shame and embarrassment. I was determined to never feel like that again. But what I didn't realize at the time was that I was also learning the power of downsizing. Mum got her degree and then a new job in management in Bristol. She bought a house, and we settled for a few years. I had lots of different jobs as a teenager. My favourite was working in the delicatessen because we got a free lunch made from delicious produce. After I finished A-levels, I went to the University of Oxford, and my mum and brother moved to the USA for further opportunities. I've downsized multiple times over the years, taking a step back in order to take a step forward. The biggest was in 2010 when I decided to leave consulting. Jonathan and I sold our three-bedroom house and investments in Brisbane, Australia, and rented a one-bedroom flat in London, so we could be debt-free and live on less while I built up a new career. It was a decade before we bought another house. (3) Comparison can be deadly: there will always be people with more money than you Oxford was an education in many ways and relevant to this chapter is how much I didn't know about things people with money took for granted. I learned about formal hall and wine pairings, and how to make a perfect gin and tonic. I ate smoked salmon for the first time. I learned how to fit in with people who had a lot more money than I did, and I definitely wanted to have money of my own to play with. (4) Income is not wealth You can earn lots but have nothing to show for it after years of working. I learned this in my first few years of IT consulting after university. I earned a great salary and then went contracting, earning even more money at a daily rate. I had a wonderful time. I traveled, ate and drank and generally made merry, but I always had to go back to the day job when the money ran out. I couldn't work out how I could ever stop this cycle. Then I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, a book I still recommend, especially if you're from a family that values academic over financial education. I learned how to escape the rat race by building and/or accumulating assets that pay even when you're not working. It was a revelation! The ‘poor dad' in the book is a university professor. He knows so much about so many things, but he ends up poor as he did not educate himself about money. The ‘rich dad' has little formal education, but he knows about money and wealth because he learned about it, as we can do at any stage in our lives. (5) Not all investments suit every person, so find the right one for you Once I discovered the world of investing, I read all the books and did courses and in-person events. I joined communities and I up-skilled big time. Of course, I made mistakes and learned lots along the way. I tried property investing and renovated a couple of houses for rental (with more practical partners and skilled contractors). But while I could see that property investing might work for some people, I did not care enough about the details to make it work for me, and it was certainly not passive income. I tried other things. My first husband was a boat skipper and scuba diving instructor, so we started a charter. With the variable costs of fuel, the vagaries of New Zealand weather — and our divorce — it didn't last long! From all these experiments, I learned I wanted to run a business, but it needed to be online and not based on a physical location, physical premises, or other people. That was 2006, around the time that blogging started taking off and it became possible to make a living online. I could see the potential and a year later, the iPhone and the Amazon Kindle launched, which became the basis of my business as an author. (6) Boring, automatic saving and investing works best Between 2007 and 2011, I contracted in Australia, where they have compulsory superannuation contributions, meaning you have to save and invest a percentage of your salary or self-employed income. I'd never done that before, because I didn't understand it. I'd ploughed all my excess income into property or the business instead. But in Australia I didn't notice the money going out because it was automatic. I chose a particular fund and it auto-invested every month. The pot grew pretty fast since I didn't touch it, and years later, it's still growing. I discovered the power of compound interest and time in the market, both of which are super boring. This type of investing is not a get rich quick scheme. It's a slow process of automatically putting money into boring investments and doing that month in, month out, year in, year out, automatically for decades while you get on with your life. I still do this. I earn money as an author entrepreneur and I put a percentage of that into boring investments automatically every month. I also have a small amount which is for fun and higher risk investments, but mostly I'm a conservative, risk-averse investor planning ahead for the future. This is not financial advice, so I'm not giving any specifics. I have a list of recommended money books at www.TheCreativePenn.com/moneybooks if you want to learn more. Learning from the Shadow When I look back, my Shadow side around money eventually drove me to learn more and resulted in a better outcome (so far!). I was ashamed of being poor when I had to wear hand-me-down clothes at school. That drove a fear of not having any money, which partially explains my workaholism. I was embarrassed at Oxford because I didn't know how to behave in certain settings, and I wanted to be like the rich people I saw there. I spent too much money in my early years as a consultant because I wanted to experience a “rich” life and didn't understand saving and investing would lead to better things in the future. I invested too much in the wrong things because I didn't know myself well enough and I was trying to get rich quick so I could leave my job and ‘be happy.' But eventually, I discovered that I could grow my net worth with boring, long-term investments while doing a job I loved as an author entrepreneur. My only regret is that I didn't discover this earlier and put a percentage of my income into investments as soon as I started work. It took several decades to get started, but at least I did (eventually) start. My money story isn't over yet, and I keep learning new things, but hopefully my experience will help you reflect on your own and avoid the issue if it's still in Shadow. These chapters are excerpted from Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words by Joanna Penn  The post Writing The Shadow: The Creative Wound, Publishing, And Money, With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Keith shares a mindset-shifting quote from John D. Rockefeller that challenges the idea of trading time for money.  He revisits some of the year's most powerful real estate investing lessons, and breaks down the big forces shaping today's housing market—affordability, supply & demand, demographics, and interest rates.  All of this sets the stage for his data-driven national home price outlook for next year—without the usual crash-and-doom hype. Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/586 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text  1-937-795-8989 to speak with a freedom coach Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com or text 'GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript: Keith Weinhold  0:00   Welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, learn from a quote attributed to the world's first billionaire, it will change how you see wealth building. I'll explain why national home prices have never crashed. Then it's gre, 2026, home price appreciation forecast. You'll learn the future the exact percent that home prices will appreciate or depreciate next year. Today on get rich education   Speaker 1  0:29   since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit get rich education.com   Corey Coates  1:14   You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold  1:30   Welcome to GRE from Lake Huron, Michigan to Lake Tahoe, California and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to get rich education. You know something I love, quotes that shift your entire mindset, paradigm, and once your mind is shifted, actions follow. Actions develop into patterns. Those patterns become habits, and habits become the new, transformed you few quotes hit harder than the one from resource tycoon John D Rockefeller. He lived from 1839 to 1937 in fact, Rockefeller is widely regarded as the world's first billionaire. His quote, you might have heard it before. It is this, he who works all day has no time to make money. That sounds paradoxical, even provocative. It's sort of like it's inviting you to come in and want to learn more about it. And this is because most people's concept of income generating is to work 40 hours a week for a salary or an hourly wage. But what does that quote really mean? He who works all day has no time to make money, and be sure to capture the all day part of that quote that ties right back into the show that I did with you two weeks ago about the K shaped economy breakdown, where you learned about how capital compounds labor doesn't most people sell their time for dollars, but trading time for money makes you too busy to actually build Wealth. Working and building wealth. Those things are two separate distinct activities in how you're investing your time and energy. Now, most people start out with a wage or a salary job. I surely worked by pushing brooms and cubicle dwelling before investing in my first rental property. But if you're working all day in a job, physically or mentally well, then you're consumed by tasks that only pay you. Once you're occupied, you can often get exhausted and you're only concerned with short term output. You're focused on the next deadline, not the next decade, when all your hours are spent on labor, you have no bandwidth to do what you need to do, which is, create vision, acquire assets, build a portfolio, develop systems, learn tax strategy, evaluate investment deals, network with like minded investors, or refine your strategy with a GRE investment coach. Be cognizant that labor only pays today. Wealth building pays forever. Even if your work a day job, salary doubled, you would have to ask, how would that even build wealth? You could retire earlier, but you would have to keep working the hours, and let's remember that wealth equals freedom. You can't architect a wealth plan from the assembly line. Now, that's something that Rockefeller would have agreed with. Wealth requires less. Leverage and labor has none. So working all day means no leverage. You are the engine instead making money, that means using leverage, and instead of you being the engine, well, the engine is something else, like assets, systems, technology, other people's time, other people's money, and borrowing to inflation profit. Rockefeller believed and proved that leverage beats labor 100 to one. He's not discouraging work. In fact, it's just the wrong type of work, because he was one of the hardest working people alive. And really the bottom line here, with this quote, he who works all day has no time to make money, is that Rockefeller meant that if you spend your life doing tasks, you'll never rise high enough to own things that pay you for life. Earning a living is a different activity than building wealth, and once your mindset is shifted, actions follow, yep, actions develop into patterns, and those patterns become the new you. well as the last episode of the year on the show here, 52 weeks worth, I sure hope that I've helped you think, learn and grow your wealth, as have our guest contributors here early in the year, the father of Reaganomics was here, a man that frequently advised a president inside the White House. He told us how much he dislikes tariffs. Tariffs block free trade, and trade improves our lives. Major apartment investor, Ken McElroy, was here this year, and he predicted that the American home ownership rate will fall below 60% that would be major it's currently at 65 if the home ownership rate falls to 60% that would unleash millions of new renters into the market, and it has not been that low in decades, if ever you got a lot of mortgage insights with chailey Ridge, including learning how you can qualify for income property loans without a w2 job, without a pay stub or without tax returns by instead getting a DSCR loan. You'll recall this year that I discussed 50 year mortgages, and I did that before it even hit the news cycle, telling you that it could be coming and that it could be proposed. I explained why I like 50 year mortgages more than 30 year loans, but be aware it is not imminent that they're coming. Also this year, economist Richard Duncan and commentator Doug Casey discussed the Fed. Richard told us how the President is trying to totally restructure who serves on the Fed, trying to get low interest rate pushers in there. And then just last week, Doug and I discussed how fed decisions just keep hollowing out the middle class. A and E television star Todd drillette told us how to negotiate. I had four good discussions with our own investment coach, nuresh this year, more than usual, a pastor and I discussed a rare topic, what the Bible says about money. You learned how to use AI in your real estate investing and when not to. We had a few episodes about that. But above all the shows this year, they were about you, probably more than any other year that we've had here. I did more listener question episodes where I answered your questions as you wrote in, and I also had more listeners come right onto the show and tell me how this show has personally built their wealth. And of course, this year, I got to meet more of you in person when I served as a faculty member on the terrific real estate guys Investor Summit to see and I got to meet you personally for more than just a handshake. The event was set up so that chances are you had dinner with me as well. So rather than this show being a one way chat from me to you this year was more of a dialog between you and I and more two way communication. A lot of new topics are coming for next year, both me teaching and some great guests. If there's something on the show that you'd like to hear more of or less of, let us know. Write into us or use your voice to tell us either way you can do that. At get rich education.com/contact, let us know what you want to hear more of or less of. Do you like shorter term tactics like when and how to increase the rent? Or do you like mid range tactics like how to constantly do cash out refinances and get a tax free windfall from your properties every year. Or do you like more of the long term strategies like specifically how you profit from inflation? Let us know what you like again, at get rich education.com/contact, now, even if you're listening 10 years. Years from now, which I know you very well. May, I'm going to break down next year's home price appreciation forecast, but I'll do it in a way where you'll learn how to analyze a market for all time coming up. It's gre 2026, national home price appreciation forecast. Learn the future to the exact percent. First listen to this from Freedom family investments and Ridge lending group, because I'm a client of both myself and they can help you. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold   Keith Weinhold  10:29   you know, most people think they're playing it safe with their liquid money, but they're actually losing savings accounts and bonds don't keep up when true inflation eats six or 7% of your wealth. Every single year I invest my liquidity with FFI freedom family investments in their flagship program. Why fixed 10 to 12% returns have been predictable and paid quarterly. There's real world security backed by needs based real estate like affordable housing, Senior Living and health care. Ask about the freedom flagship program. When you speak to a freedom coach there, and that's just one part of their family of products, they've got workshops, webinars and seminars designed to educate you before you invest. Start with as little as 25k and finally, get your money working as hard as you do. Get started at Freedom, family, investments.com/gre, or send a text now it's 1-937-795-8989, yep, text their freedom coach, directly. Again, 1-937-795-8989,   Speaker 2  11:40   the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequel and even chat with President Caeli Ridge personally. While it's on your mind, start at Ridge lending group.com that's Ridge lending group.com   Robert Kiyosaki  12:14   this is our Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Author Robert Kiyosaki. Listen to get rich education with Keith Weinhold. And there is, I respect Kate. He's a very strong, smart, bright young man.   Keith Weinhold  12:35   Welcome back to get rich education. It's episode 586 the last show of the year. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, I am proud to present to you in this segment of the show gre 2026, national home price appreciation forecast, where I use my insight and experience so that you'll learn the exact percent that national home prices will either appreciate or depreciate next year. It's the fifth consecutive year that we're doing this. I nailed the first three spot on and then this year happened. I'll get to reviewing my track record, total accountability. First understand something, real estate values have never crashed in your entire lifetime, even if you're 90 years old, to grab eyeballs, slack jawed, tick tock. Call them crash talk. Economists keep making awful predictions about a housing price crash, and none of them have been worse than one that published last month in Newsweek, which outlines a as it's called, correction worse than 2008 and says national home prices will fall 50% five zero, starting as soon as next year. That's absurd, and I can't believe that a respectable publication would platform a view from an analyst like that, and I'm not going to call out that Doomsayer analyst's name. That's not my style. I'm sure you can find it that crash is about as likely as one social media post changing your political affiliation later today. Look, doomsayers don't care about you. They make dire predictions because they care about them. It elevates their clicks, their followers and their name recognition, and they never hang around to follow up on that prediction, but it harms you, because you miss out on the equity gains, and that's the real damage. In fact, this particular analyst also called for this year to have the second largest home price decline since World War Two. Well, national home prices have only fallen twice in that time period. In fact, going further back. Back to the 1930s Great Depression. They've only fallen twice. Yes, that means home prices have risen every single year since the 1930s except for two periods, a small decline of less than 1% around 1990 and then, of course, the severe downturn from the housing bubble and great recession from 2007 to 2011 or 2012 that's where prices dropped in total, 25 to 26% from peak to trough. Now why do I say that that period around 2008 was not a housing price crash. Well, because it wasn't. Instead, it was a slow bleed. The definition of financial crash is a sudden, sharp and widespread drop in prices. That's the definition. Well that can happen in some other asset classes like stocks or Bitcoin or perhaps even precious metals, but not real estate. It is neither sudden nor sharp. The worst year, 2008 saw home prices drop 12% in that one year and some of the other years bracketing it, home prices fell three to 4% in each of those years. So then during this time period of price attrition, during the global financial crisis, each month, real estate values fell just a few tenths of 1% maybe half of 1% or even one full percent, not a crash, a slow bleed. This means that it took about five years for values to fall, a total of near 25% I mean, that makes it really clear that it's not a crash. And again, this period was about 2007 to 2012 don't get me wrong, it was bad. I was a real estate investor both before and during 2008 but to call it a crash is hyperbolic, and that is because words mean things. I think a lot of media consumers get so conditioned to mass media sensationalism that they've forgotten what a crash even means. At some point, it begins to bend our very lexicon back around 2007 I remember I frequently checked a website called implode meter. Yeah, that's the name of it. It tracks, failing banks. I looked the other day and implodemeter.com is still in existence, even though it's not nearly as spicy as it used to be during the GFC, because lending has been pretty stable for a long time, and loans are well and carefully underwritten. So home prices are unusually stable over time, because, in a sense, housing is not a normal market. It is slow, regulated, credit driven, and it's emotionally sticky, even though rental property is less emotional. Well, the values of one to four unit property are tied to primary residence values, and that's where the emotion exists. So if you put all those together, you get prices that creep upward most years and rarely fall at all. Nationally. The real estate market moves too gradually to be crash susceptible. It is the place for real wealth building values also are not going to double annually if you want to scroll for dopamine hits from the couch. Well, you can do that with a prediction market like call she or in crypto with altcoins, while your real estate keeps leveraging dollars in a stable way in the background. That's how you can think about it. All right, so we've established since the Great Depression, home values have fallen twice and once substantially. Well, right now, home prices are up about 2% year over year. Most places have appreciated, especially the more affordable markets. Not only has home price growth been slow, though, rent growth has been slow as well. Single Family rents are up 1% per totality. Apartment rents are down one to 2% per Zumper. But back to our focus today, forecasting national home prices. Everything we're discussing is nominal price change, meaning not inflation adjusted, and it's single family homes up to fourplexes. Well, as we use context to build up to the big reveal today, where I'll tell you the exact percent that home prices will rise or fall next year. Could 2008 happen again any time soon? Let's isolate that out. It's important to look at history rather than. Having some uninformed hunch in both periods with price attrition around 1990 and 2008 these two falls have some attributes in common. So let's look at that. What led to these rare falls in home prices, irresponsible lending, forced selling, a vacancy issue and overbuilding. All four of those factors were in place during those two periods now leading up to 1990 the irresponsible lending was on the commercial side. That was the savings and loan crisis, but it did trickle into the residential market, and then in 2008 it was on the residential side. But of all four of those factors, none of them are in place today. Zero borrowers are strongly underwritten because they've got those full documentation loans, and virtually no one is forced to sell in a fire sale. In fact, homeowners still have these record equity positions of about 300k fewer than 3% of homeowners have a negative equity position, and there is no vacancy issue. Because, in fact, we've been under building. We'll look at that. So for next year, no substantial price of drawdown is coming. None's expected. We can isolate that out. Since I was investing directly in real estate through 2008 I know what happened is that when people walked away from properties, they did so because the economy got rough, their variable rate mortgages rose, they couldn't make their payments, or they just had no motivation to make their payments because they were underwater and had zero protective equity. In a lot of cases, it's almost impossible for that to happen today, homeowners can make their payments, and they're motivated to do so because they have that erstwhile equity to protect, like I said last week, through the Census Bureau data and realtor.com we know a couple things. Four in 10 homeowners have no mortgage at all. They own their property free and clear. Among the group with mortgages, 70% of borrowers still have a mortgage rate locked in at under 5% and blending those together for you means that then 82% of borrowers either have no mortgage or they've got a rate under 5% this translates to really affordable payments, along with The protective equity, even if inflation heats up again, it still cannot touch a borrower's mortgage payment amount because it is fixed. As we're leading up to the big reveal of next year's number, we're about to look at affordability, supply, demand and the effect of mortgage rates on prices. Of course, that word affordability, that has been the most central word to home buying for a couple years now, affordability will improve in three main ways. If either home prices fall, mortgage rates fall, or wages rise, it takes at least one of those three things, the good news is that this year, wages have been rising faster than both stated inflation and home prices. Wages have been rising close to 4% that looks to continue at least into the early part of next year. Well that improved affordability allows home prices to move up, and it gives room for rents to move up as well. Now when it comes to mortgage rates, if you're new to listening to me, it will be groundbreaking for you to realize that today, mortgage rates are low, and increases to mortgage rates usually lead to increases in home prices, not decreases. If you're new here, both of those facts might leave you saying what I thought it was the opposite. How can that be? I won't spend much time on this because longtime listeners already know these two things, but they do go into the forecast the long term 30 year fixed rate mortgage averages 7.7% per Freddie Mac thirst, that set goes back to 1971 and rates are lower than that now, and mortgage rates have risen 1% or more seven different times since 1994 and home prices increased all Seven times right alongside those rising mortgage rates. In fact, when rates more than doubled in 2022 what happened? Home prices soared to their highest appreciation year in a long time. It reinforced this so, yes, way higher rates equaled way. Higher prices. It's not that one directly causes the other. This is correlation versus causation. It's because rate increases confirm that the economy is doing well. I have discussed that extensively in previous episodes, so mortgage rates actually don't have that much to do with home prices, and that's why it is hardly going into the forecast for next year. I'll tell you what trying to forecast mortgage rates to then use that to predict home prices, that is a fantastic way to waste your time. Now, 1x factor that could make that different for next year is that this President, he imposes his will to make rates low no matter what. So even if the economy is good, which typically leads to higher rates, wholesale push to make rates low, and that's an artificial phenomenon. Wouldn't that make home prices boom if we had a strong economy and low rates? The fact that affordability is still historically low today, though, we appear to be off the bottom. Affordability is still historically low today, that has less to do with mortgage rates than most people think, since, again, rates are low when they're in the low sixes, like they currently are. Instead, affordability is soured, because over the long term, decades, wages haven't kept up with true inflation. That's what's really going on with affordability and what everybody misses, and because affordability is still strained, home prices cannot rise a lot, say 10 or 12% next year. That can't happen on a national basis next year, now, a bill is advancing through Congress now to make housing more affordable. It's got bipartisan support relaxing zoning requirements in such a bill that could help build more homes, but if the government tries to help by making access to loans easier, that is going to lead to even higher prices and really will not help with affordability beyond the short term. In fact, just this month, the Fed has resumed QE quantitative easing. And that effectively means that it is ramping up the number of dollars being printed. And these are just more dollars in existence coming in to chase real estate and every other assets values higher we look at the employment picture. Although unemployment has been ticking up lately, it is still low at under 5% what about housing supply versus demand? And future supply versus demand? Well, this is basic econ and it will totally affect future prices. Actually visited the home of the father of economics, Adam Smith in Scotland this year, the man that nearly invented the supply demand concept starting with supply. I think anyone in real estate knows that generally, over six months of housing supply is too much. Under six months is too little. Six months is sort of that balanced point. What does that really mean? Well, months of supply is how long it would take to sell all the homes currently for sale if no new listings came on the market. All right, that's all that means. Well, currently, that level is 4.2 months that is low, and that puts some upward pressure on prices as well. Another way to think about it is with the active listing count of single family homes and condos. All this means is the number of homes currently for sale and available to buy right now. That's what active listing count means when you see that statistic out there? Well, one and a half to 2 million is the normal level of units needed to adequately house our growing population, for single family homes and condos. Well, that figure bottomed out in 2022 and it's only hovered around one or 1.1 million for a few months now, we are under supplied, and it takes a long time to build our way out of it. Now, apartment buildings are a different story. They are oversupplied, but again, today, we're here focused on the future price direction of one to four unit properties. So that's supply, not as tight as it was, but still on the tight side, and then demand. Where is demand coming from? It comes from us. There's more of us. As our population keeps growing, there is a lot of housing demand coming. Not only is there pent up demand from those trying to afford a home as soon as they can, but more broadly. Demographically, I will point back to that period where there was a surge of us births from 1990 to 2010 there were over 4 million births every single one of those years, births peaked in 2007 if you add 40 years to that, because 40 years is now the average age of the first time homebuyer. That's still a mind blowing figure to me, 40 years the average age of the first time homebuyer. You add that to 2007 that peak birth rate year, and this demand won't even peak until about 2047   Speaker 2  30:36   and this doesn't even include additions from immigration, demand, demand, demand, propping up prices for decades, but for next year, improved affordability, which is expected that boosts the demand for those that have the capacity to pay. Well, considering everything we've covered, I'm about to reveal the number for next year. But first, I mean, gosh, don't you wish everyone actually followed up on their past forecasts, like I'm about to I don't think I've ever seen a price crash predictor follow up, because they're always wrong. Well, what is the track record of get rich, education, home, price appreciation forecasts. It's the fifth straight year I'm doing this, and I always release the forecast in the final days of the year in anticipation of the coming year, just like you and I are doing together now. For 2022 I said that prices would rise nine to 10% the year ended, and they came in at 10% 2023 a lot of people said home prices would fall because they had just seen a terrific run up. I said a price fall would not happen, largely due to that jaw droppingly low supply that we had then. I said zero, there wouldn't be any change. They came in at exactly zero. There was no price change in 2023 for 2024 I forecast 4% they came in at exactly 4% this is all documented. You can go back and listen to those episodes. They're all near year end. So yes, three straight years, I nailed it to the exact percent. How about this year? Just before the year began? Do you remember what my forecast figure was from listening here about a year ago, it was 5% home price appreciation. The year is not over yet, and real estate statistics move pretty slowly. Figures lag, but we pretty much know where it's going to end up. And as we look at this same stat set that I consistently use, which is the NARS national median existing single family home price, it is 2.2% as of late in the year, and it's almost certainly going to end up at 2% appreciation. So I would call that a miss, probably not a terrible call, but far enough apart to call that a miss, 5% forecast versus 2% actual for this year. That's the track record. So before I reveal the number for next year, in the last four I've nailed three of them spot on, and why was appreciation less than I expected for this year? Well, a few reasons. One of them is that inflationary pressure from tariffs was postponed. That Tariff Schedule was changed more times than anyone could have possibly forecast, and affordability stayed stubbornly low too. And here we go for 2026 how much home price appreciation or depreciation do I expect? Well, I haven't said this in any of the previous forecasts, because it's the easiest thing to say, and I often avoid saying the easiest thing, but this is just what I see coming, and that is, I expect more of the same. It's the first time I've said more of the same, which is drumroll here, 2% home price appreciation for next year. No wild figure or hyperbolic material here, in order to attract attention that is my best target for the truth, I'm here to do my best to be accurate and help you make the most informed decision, 2% for next year. So a 500k property today should cost you about 10,000 more dollars next year, and as we know, with a figure like 2% which is less appreciation than the long run historic 5% or so, with this 2% appreciation on new purchases, you leverage that five to one with your 80% loan, and you get a 10% return on your down payment. And you add in the other four ways real estate pays to your 10% leverage appreciation and at historic norms, you can end up with a 29% total ROI. That's realistic. I outlined the math of that in an earlier episode this year when I discussed how real estate pays five ways in a slow market, there you have it, 2% forecast home price appreciation for next year. If you want the charts that support the forecast and more, there's a way for you to get a hold of that, and also the best real estate maps, stories and investment opportunities that you won't see in any headlines. They are all in my free weekly newsletter. The newsletter also gives you access to my free real estate pays five ways. Video, course, that is it. GRE letter.com Get it all at one easy place. Gre letter.com I look forward to talking to you in the new year. I'm Keith Weinhold, don't quit your daydrem   Speaker 3  36:06   nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively.   Keith Weinhold  36:34   The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building, GetRichEducation.com  

In this episode of the School of Hard Knocks, we sit down with Robert Kiyosaki, legendary author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad and real estate investor with over 15,000 rental properties. He shares how he went from Marine helicopter pilot and failed employee to building massive tax-free cash flow and global financial influence.Robert breaks down why he rejects traditional education, why “your house is not an asset,” and how smart debt, cash flow, and the right teachers changed his life. We also explore his lowest moments: homelessness, business failures, betrayal, and the $30M lesson that reshaped his strategy and his circle.This conversation is a masterclass in money psychology, resilience, masculine responsibility, and playing the game of wealth on your own terms.Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Is your "swag" secretly hurting your brand? In this episode of Sales & Cigars, Walter sits down with Eric Turney from The Monterey Company to talk about why your promo gear should do more than just check a box—it should actually say something about your brand. Eric shares his unconventional path from construction, to almost becoming a physical therapist, to "falling backward" into sales and eventually buying the company he worked for. He and Walter dig into the real differences between being a great salesperson and being a great sales manager, handling customers who only care about price, and why saying "no" is sometimes the most professional move you can make. They also get into the nuts and bolts of branded merch: why quality matters, how to help clients think beyond cheap t-shirts, and what the pandemic and shipping chaos taught Eric's team about communication, margins, and long-term customer loyalty. If you've ever ordered promo products for an event, trade show, or team—and regretted it—this one's for you. In This Episode: College vs reality – Why what you learn in college has almost nothing to do with building wealth or becoming an entrepreneur. Rich Dad, Poor Dad mindset – The books that shifted Eric's view of money, business, and long-term wealth creation. From construction to custom merch – How a layoff, a false start in physical therapy, and a new baby on the way pushed Eric into sales at The Monterey Company. Learning sales on the fly – Word tracks, repetition, and what he learned from a top car salesman buddy. The Dutch Bros lesson – Why consistently great experience beats mediocre product—and how Eric trains his reps to "bottle" that. Salesperson vs sales manager – Why being good at selling doesn't automatically make you good at leading a sales team—and what Eric had to learn the hard way. Needing to be liked – Staying up late worrying about orders, over-promising, and the shift from "pushover" to respected advisor. When to say no – Recognizing problem customers, setting boundaries, and why "if they come for price, they'll leave for price." Niche focus – How Monterey naturally gravitated to government, military, and public service clients—and what those buyers really need. Helping the real decision-maker – Working with marketing coordinators and event planners who are tasked with buying merch but don't know where to start. The Core Four sales process – Call leads quickly, text often, quote fast, and get an art proof in front of the customer ASAP. COVID, ports, and tariffs – Container costs jumping 10x, shipping delays, switching to air freight, and choosing to eat margin to preserve long-term relationships. Quality vs cheap – Why spending 20–50% more can result in a 10x better product—and how that shows up in customer perception. Brand alignment in merch – Walmart polos vs Carhartt gear, why your team's apparel reflects your brand values, and how "one thing is how you do everything." Upselling the smart way – Medals plus shirts, plus stickers; building better event experiences instead of just pushing more product. Lifetime value thinking – Why Eric would rather lose margin on a few orders than lose a great client for good. Cigars & solitude – Eric's "special occasion" approach to cigars and why a great stick pairs well with quiet, not crowds. Connect with Eric Turney LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-turney/ The Monterey Company: https://montereycompany.com/    Connect with Walter Crosby and Sales & Cigars: Website: Helix Sales Development LinkedIn: Walter Crosby Instagram: @wcrosby248 Facebook: Helix Sales Development   Share Your Thoughts: We'd love to hear your feedback and experiences! Drop us a line and join the conversation on social media using #SalesAndCigars.   Never Miss an Episode! Join the Sales & Cigars community by subscribing to our podcast and YouTube channel: Subscribe to the Podcast: Apple Podcasts: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Spotify: Follow on Spotify ...and wherever you listen to podcasts!   Subscribe to Us on YouTube: Stay updated with our latest video content by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Hit the bell icon for notifications on new uploads! YouTube: Sales & Cigars Channel   Stay in the loop: By subscribing, you'll get instant access to new episodes, insightful conversations, and bonus content designed to elevate your sales skills and more. Keep savoring those cigars and stay sharp in sales! Until next time, keep listening to Sales & Cigars—the podcast where the only smoke we blow is from cigars.

What if prosperity has nothing to do with how much money you have—and everything to do with how you think? Join Nicole and guest Kim Butler as they dismantle scarcity thinking and teach you how to build a life—and culture—of abundance.In this powerful conversation, Nicole interviews financial strategist and 11-time author Kim Butler, whose newest book Busting the Scarcity Mindset reframes how we think about money, value creation, and prosperity. Kim shares seven core prosperity principles—including proactive gratitude, intentional income design, and matching your money to your values—and offers practical, mindset-shifting strategies that any leader can use.Whether you're a CEO, HR professional, or leader working to elevate your personal and professional prosperity, this episode equips you with tangible mindset tools to shift out of scarcity and into abundance—starting today.Vibrant Highlights:• 00:02:52 — What Prosperity Really Means: Kim shares why prosperity is a mindset, not a dollar amount, and how anyone can shift into prosperity thinking regardless of their financial situation.• 00:07:42 — The Surprising Habit That Stops Unconscious Spending: Kim explains why you should never put your paycheck directly into your checking account—and how this one shift can transform your financial awareness.• 00:26:09 — Match Your Money to Your Values: A powerful discussion on aligning spending and saving with what truly matters, and how misalignment reinforces a scarcity mindset.• 00:49:19 — Opting Out of Recessions: Kim introduces the concept of the “metaphysical economy” and explains how mindset allows individuals to create prosperity even during economic downturns.Connect with Kim:Books: www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00523N6HEWebsite: https://prosperitythinkers.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimdhbutler/IG: https://www.instagram.com/kimdhbutlerFB: https://www.facebook.com/kimdhbutlerX: https://x.com/kimdhbutlerAlso mentioned in this podcast:Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki: https://a.co/d/cpTEU8MPeter Diamandis: https://metatrends.substack.com/?hsCtaAttrib=197025689908Dan Sullivan: https://www.strategiccoach.com/coach/dan-sullivanKiva (nonprofit): www.kiva.orgListen at vibrantculture.com/podcast or wherever you get your podcasts!Book Nicole to help your organization ignite clarity, accountability, and energy through her SHINE™ Coaching Methodology.Visit vibrantculture.comEmail: nicole@vibrantculture.comWatch Nicole's TEDx Talk: https://youtu.be/SMbxA90bfXE

In this episode of the Academy Presents Real Estate Investing Rocks, Angel sits down with investor and entrepreneur Joe Rinderknecht. Joe shares how growing up on a ranch, working construction with his dad, and discovering Rich Dad, Poor Dad shaped his mindset and work ethic. He walks through his early days bird-dogging deals, the challenges new investors face in today's economic landscape, and how real-world experience prepared him for success in real estate. Whether you are new, stuck, or seasoned, this conversation offers practical insight and relatable guidance for navigating today's investing environment.Topics Covered• The mindset and values learned from ranching and construction• How Joe transitioned into entrepreneurship and real estate• What bird-dogging is and how it helps new investors enter the industry• Why old investing strategies don't always work in the current economic climate• The impact of economic shifts on Class C value-add properties• The importance of clear expectations when working with mentors or partners• The realities of getting started: experience vs. compensation• How today's financial pressures affect residents and operators• Creative ways to enter the investing space without capital• Joe's early investing environment in Utah and how he found opportunitiesFrom Ranch Life to Real Estate: Joe Rinderknecht's Journey Into InvestingConnect with Angel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angel-williams-re/Connect with Joe: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joerinderknecht/

In this episode of the Be Wealthy Podcast, Brett Tanner sits down with real estate leader Dustin Runyon, who shares his powerful journey from being broke and deep in debt to developing over 1,200 acres and leading one of the top real estate teams in the country.Dustin opens up about his early struggles with money, lessons from failure, and how he transformed his mindset from scarcity to abundance. Together, Brett and Dustin unpack how discipline, self-awareness, and clear money rules can create real freedom and peace of mind.This episode dives deep into rebuilding after failure, mastering your relationship with money, and creating a life built on focus, alignment, and long-term wealth.

Imagine a world where your investments work smarter, not harder. Keith reveals the truth about why real estate trumps stocks, and how the current economic landscape is creating a once-in-a-generation wealth opportunity. Discover: Why traditional investing wisdom is leaving younger generations behind Why owning assets is the ultimate key to breaking free from economic uncertainty From the dying middle class to the rise of strategic real estate investing, Keith exposes the game-changing insights that most investors never see. Inflation is reshaping the economic landscape - and you can either ride the wave or get swept away Generation Z faces unprecedented economic challenges  Want to learn more? Your financial transformation starts here. Resources: Text FAMILY to 66866 Call 844-877-0888 Visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/573 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold  0:01   Welcome to GR, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, talking about real estate versus stocks, how housing has been in a recession that could now be thawing. Then why the war on the young and the vanishing middle class threatens to get even worse today on get rich Education.    Keith Weinhold  0:19   You It's crazy that most people think they're playing it safe with their liquid money when they're actually losing savings accounts and bonds don't keep up when true inflation can eat six to 7% of your wealth. Every single year, I invest my liquidity with FFI freedom family investments and their flagship program with fixed 10 to 12% returns that have been predictable and paid quarterly. There's real world security. It's backed by needs based real estate like affordable housing, Senior Living and healthcare. Ask about the freedom flagship program when you speak to a freedom coach there. And here's what's cool. That's just one part of FF eyes family of products. They include workshops and special webinars, educational seminars designed to educate before you invest start with as little as 25k and finally, get your money working as hard as you do. It's easy to get started. Just grab your phone and text family. 266866, text the word family. 266866, that's family. 266866,   Corey Coates  1:37   you're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold  1:47   Welcome to GRE from Rocky Mount North Carolina to Mount Shasta, California and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, and you are inside for another wealth building week of get rich education. A lot of people have been building wealth lately. Do you even understand all the markets that are either at or near all time highs, real estate, stocks, gold, all recently hit those levels, also nested home equity positions of American property owners are at all time highs. Silver is also near an all time high, and so are FICO credit scores. All this means that the haves are in really good shape, and the have nots aren't more on that later. Let's then you and I talk about real estate versus stocks. I've invested in both for decades, and it's not something that I do on the side. This is the core of what I do and talk about with you every week. And I've never felt more inclined toward investing in real estate ever the resilience of residential real estate, a major reason is that I've always found real estate investing easier to understand than the s and p5 100, and it comes down to the mechanics of each one in The stock market, a company can be well run, it can be profitable, and it can even be growing, yet its stock price might fall anyway. Why? Because expectations weren't met for a quarterly earnings report, or investor sentiment just happened to shift for a while, people just tended to focus on the bad stuff instead of the good stuff, even though it was always there, and that's why the stock price went down. So what makes a stock move more often than not, is kind of laughable. It isn't a word sentiment, emotions. It's how investors collectively feel about a stock and that can change on a dime. One quarter's earnings miss an interest rate hike, geopolitical news or even a single social media comment from a CEO that can move billions of dollars of market value in an instant real estate, on the other hand, that strips away a lot of that noise and that ability for other people's emotions to ruin the price of your apartment building that cannot happen at its core, the value of a property is tied to its income stream and the market that It sits in, that makes it far more direct and way more controllable. If I buy a property, I can see the levers in front of me and ask my property manager to push or pull them or even do it myself. For example, I just asked them to replace flooring in three of my apartment units. With pricier luxury vinyl plank rather than new carpet, and that's because I plan to hold that building for another five years or more. I'll attract a better quality tenant that can afford to pay me more rent. So I know that if I improve operations and increase occupancy, reduce expenses or reposition the asset down the road. I mean, that is directly going to increase net operating income, and that increase will directly affect my valuation. So there's a logic to this that's almost mechanical, and that is not to say that real estate is without nuance or risk. The risk lies in execution. You have to underwrite carefully. Is the location of your property sustainable long term? Are the demographics supportive of Lent growth? What capital improvements are truly lucrative to you and provide the tenants with value, and what kind of improvements are only cosmetic? So real estate isn't just tangible, it's also something that you can interact with. You can walk a property, you can even speak to tenants, study the neighborhood and know exactly what you're dealing with. It's not a ticker symbol reacting to opaque forces that you'll never see or control, and for me, that tactile nature creates clarity. When you buy the right property in the right market with the right strategy, then the path forward is not mysterious. It isn't whimsical, it's deliberate. Real Estate is easier to understand than the S p5, 100. And that also doesn't mean that real estate is simple, because there is that due diligence and strategy, but it's the cause and effect relationship between what you do and the outcome that you get that's far more direct with stocks. You can be completely right about the fundamentals. I mean, you can nail it. You can Bullseye that stock target, and after all that, yet still lose with real estate. If you execute well, the fundamentals eventually do show up in the returns and see because of that direct cause and effect relationship, you can improve yourself as a real estate investor faster than a stock investor can, and that's because you can learn about how your upgrade drove your properties, noi, that information, that feedback that you got, that's something that you can either replicate again or improve upon in your own investor career. So between real estate and stocks, execution is the real differentiator, and control is a key one as well. To me, that sweet spot is control that I have. But through a property manager that way, control doesn't mean that you're losing your quality of life, your standard of living. Now, some people, they do, have the right handyman skills to maintain the property and the right people skills to maintain the tenants. So self managing it can work for just a few people. I sure don't have the handyman skills myself. Sheesh, if I even try to hang a picture on a wall, there's a 50% chance that it's going to end in a drywall patch job. When you can see the cause and effect between your decisions and the property's performance, it creates that level of control that stocks and bonds just don't offer. And I'm also being somewhat kind to stocks by discussing a benchmark like the s, p5, 100, even harder to control and understand are the Wall Street derivatives and financial mutations that the people invested in them don't even understand. Unlike stocks, you own, the levers you own, the operations, the expenses and the occupancy, both have risks, but real estate's risks are more perceptible, more knowable. You won't have to cringe when a company's CEO posts a tweet that's either pro Israel or pro Gaza. Billions of market cap is wiped out, and your investment goes down 12% in one hour. This is why we talk about real estate on the show. There is less speculation and conjecture. It is concrete stuff, and that's all besides how real estate pays you five ways at the same time, as if that wasn't enough.    Keith Weinhold  9:38   Now, when we talk about real estate investing in this decade, do you realize that we have been in a housing recession for two years? A recession in real estate? I mean, it might not feel like it with those home prices at erstwhile mentioned all time highs. We don't need to have falling prices to have a recession. Investors are obviously. Making money in this housing recession. The recession I'm talking about is the slowdown in housing activity stemming from less affordability, lower sales volume and less available inventory. But we do now have signs that we are breaking out of these housing doldrums. As far as affordability, national home prices are staying firm. But what's helping there is that mortgage rates have fallen, and we've also had wages that are rising faster than rents and wages that are rising faster than mortgage payments. In fact, wages have been rising faster than both of those for most of the last year now, and that's sourced by Freddie Mac Federal Reserve stats and rental listings on Redfin. Yes, year over year, American wages are up 4.1% rents are up 2.6% and mortgage payments are basically unchanged over the past year, up just two tenths of 1% and of course, these facts, combined with lower mortgage rates, all supports more real estate price growth. Now to kick off the show, I mentioned how real estate stocks and gold all recently hit all time highs. Well, that's denominated in perpetually based dollars, of course. However, one thing that affects you that certainly has not reached all time highs is the level of available homes, the number of homes for sale, that inventory is up off the recent bottom in 2022 yet it is still below pre pandemic levels. We have had quite a recovery here. National active listings definitely on the rise. They are up 21% between today and this time last year. Well, that means that buyers have gained leverage, mostly across the south, where lots of new building has occurred, and some areas of the West as well. Yet today, we are still, overall here 11% below 2019 inventory level. So nationally, we're basically still 11% below pre pandemic housing inventory levels. And in the Midwest and Northeast, the cupboard looks even more bare than that, since new construction totally hasn't kept up there, we will see what happens. But with the recent drop in mortgage rates, buyers might take more of that available inventory off the shelf. But here's the twist that I've heard practically no one else talk about no media source, no one in conversation. Nobody. It is the paucity of available starter homes. It's the entry level home segment that has the great scarcity, and it's these low cost properties that are the ones that make the best rental properties. Their paucity is jaw dropping, as sourced by the Census Bureau and Freddie Mac starter home construction in the US. I mean, it is just fallen precipitously. Are you even aware of the trend? All right, defined as a home of 1400 square feet or less, all right, that's what we're calling a starter home. Their share of new construction that was 40% back in 1982 Yeah, 40% of new built homes were starter homes. Then by the year 2000 it fell to just a 14% share, and today, only 9% of new built homes are starter homes, fewer than one in 10, and yet, that's exactly what America needs more of. So although overall housing inventory is still low, it's that entry level segment that is really chronically underserved, and that won't change anytime soon, we remain mired in a starter home slump because builders find it more profitable to build higher end homes and luxury homes. Yet for anyone that owns this workforce rental property, which is the same thing we've been focused on doing here on this show, from day one, you are sitting in an asset class that's going to remain stubbornly in demand over the long term. And when it comes to starter homes, the ones Investors love most, they are more scarce than bipartisan agreement in Congress, really. That is the takeaway here.    Keith Weinhold  14:39   So last week, I had an interesting in person meet up at a coffee shop with a 19 year old college student because he's a real estate enthusiast, rapping Gen Z there. He's an athlete too, an 800 meter runner. Well, his dad read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and his dad has 60 rental properties. Where they're from in Wisconsin, and maybe you're wondering, oh, come on, what could I learn from this 19 year old? I don't think that way. Now, I told him about some foundational GRE principles like financially free, beats debt free and things like that. It was also insightful to get his take on how he sees the world, and for me to learn what his professors are teaching him about real estate investing in his classes, he talked about how his professors show them, for example, what affects apartment cap rates. Also about how, whenever they run the numbers on a property, it always works out better to get the debt, get that mortgage, and how that leverage increases total rates of return. I was really happy that he's learning that over there at the university, but I was really impressed how at age 19, he's responsible and understands so much about society, politics, investing, athletics and even diet. I mean, this guy is rare, talking about his preference for avoiding food cooked in seed oils and choosing beef tallow instead. He also lamented on how Generation Z is so screwed up, saying that no one reads, no one's having kids, no one can buy a home, no one's going to be able to buy a home, and that people his age are so used to looking at screens that they're anxious about in person interactions, even in person, food ordering from a waiter at a restaurant gives them anxiety. He and I are planning to go running together next week. We'll see how that goes. As a college 800 meter runner, he's going to have the speed advantage on me, but we're running up a steep, 40 minute long trail where I've got a shot at an endurance advantage. So it was rather interesting to get his take and see what college professors are teaching on real estate. I mean, this generation that's coming of age now, Gen Z is the worst generation since George Washington to have it worse off than their parents. I'm going to talk about that today, shortly. next week, on the show here, I plan to help you learn about what's going on with some real estate niches and what their future looks to be over the next 10 to 20 years, including mobile home park real estate and parking lot real estate, one of these asset classes I really don't like the future of That's all next week on the future of some certain real estate niches. Straight ahead today, I want to tell you about mortgage rates in a way that you've never thought about before and more about the war on the young and the vanishing middle class. I'm Keith Weinhold. There will only ever be one. Get rich education podcast episode 573, and you are listening to it.    Keith Weinhold  17:53   If you're scrolling for quality real estate and finance info today, yeah, it can be a mess. You hit paywalls, pop ups, push alerts, Cookie banners. It's like the internet is playing defense against you. Not so fun. That's why it matters to get clean, free content that actually adds no hype value to your life. This is the golden age of quality email newsletters, and I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor. It's direct, and it gets to the point, because even the word abbreviation is too long, my letter takes less than three minutes to read, and it leaves you feeling sharp. And in the know about real estate investing, this is paradigm shifting material, and when you start the letter, you'll also get my one hour fast real estate video course, completely free as well. It's called the Don't quit your Daydream letter. It wires your mind for wealth, and it couldn't be simpler to get visit gre letter.com while it's fresh in your head, take a moment to do it now at gre letter.com Visit gre letter.com    Keith Weinhold  19:06   the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequel and even chat with President Chale Ridge personally. While it's on your mind, start at Ridge lendinggroup.com that's Ridge lendinggroup.com   Todd Drowlette  19:38   this is the star of the A E show the real estate commission, I'd roll that. Listen to get rich education with my friend Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your Daydream.   Speaker 1  19:49   Welcome back to. Get Rich Education. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, as a reminder that show the real estate commission starring our friend Todd Drolet, who is a guest on the show here with us at the beginning of this month, it starts October 10, on A and E, that's that reality based commercial real estate show. Late last year, the Fed lowered interest rates, and they're doing the same thing again this year, when interest rates rise and fall, think of it like a wall that's being raised and lowered. Cutting rates is like lowering the height of a wall or a dam. That's because it allows for the free flow of capital. Savings rate accounts. Well, since they'll now pay at a lower rate with this rate cut, they're more likely to get shifted out and invested somewhere and flow into something else, driving up that other asset's value. Mortgages are more likely to originate because you pay less interest. Lowering rates lowers the impediment to the flow of money. It eases that flow. Oppositely, raising rates is like increasing the height of a wall or a dam, because if your savings account rate goes from 4% up to 5% oh well, you more likely to keep it parked there a higher wall or dam around your money, and raising rates makes your mortgage costs higher, so you're more likely to stay put and not move money around, constrained by the higher wall, that's how interest rates are like walls and lower walls also increase inflation, since they increase The flow of money, and hence the demand for goods and services. Well, then why did the Fed cut rates, lowering the wall opening the door for inflation this last time? Well, I think you know that was due to the evidence of a sputtering job market. You know that, if you follow this stuff, a slowing job market slows the flow of money, hence why they lowered the wall to increase the flow. Now this might translate to even lower mortgage rates. It does have that loose correlation anyway, and this should lift the housing market. But here's the real problem. Inflation is higher than the Fed wants already, and it's still rising, and they cut rates, making it more likely to rise further. This is like pouring gasoline on a campfire while yelling, don't worry. I got this sure the fire burns brighter, all right, but you might lose your eyebrows. The risk here is that these rate cuts will make inflation spike, since lower rates makes everyone less likely to save and more likely to borrow and spend, this pushes up prices even farther and faster, and this is the Fed's dangerous game. This is the crux about why the Fed is between a rock and a hard place. Ideally, the Fed only cuts of inflation is at or below their 2% target, but understand it hasn't even been there one time in nearly five years. Now, year over year, inflation was 2.7% last month and rose to 2.9% this month. The price of almost everything is up even faster than it usually goes up, beef, housing, haircuts, flamin hot, Cheetos, everything as we know this inflation that's now positioned to pick up again. However, for us, this is the long term engine that makes our real estate profitable. It makes it easier to raise rents, all while your principal and interest payment stays fixed. Inflation cannot touch that like a mosquito buzzing against a window, and let's be real, official inflation numbers are like Instagram filters. They are shaved down, touched up and airbrushed. The government massages them with tricks like hedonics, the wave of inflation that peaked at 9% in 2022 that has already widened the distance between the haves and the have nots, like the Grand Canyon, eviscerating so much of the middle class. And now the powers that be are setting up a scenario for another wave of elevated, long term inflation. This could get dire. Look like I was saying earlier the generation coming of age today is the first one since George Washington to have it worse off than their parents. Do You understand the profundity of this? They had the lowest home ownership rate, and they're the poorest, often leaving them directionless, anxious, depressed, drug addicted and even suicidal for. The first time in US history, Americans are on track to be poorer, sicker and lonelier than their parents. They will make even less than their parents did at the same age, and that's despite having a college degree. Inflation is a big reason for that, and that's what I help you solve here. I can't really help you with the depression stuff. That's not really my role with what I do here in the show. But inflation, in getting behind is one contributor to all these things. Understand, in 1989 those under age 40, they held 12% of household wealth. Today it's just 7% older Americans got rich, and they basically locked the gates behind them. Those over age 70 only held 19% of US wealth in 1989 now it's 30% Harvard's endowment has grown 500% since 1980 that's adjusting for inflation, but yet their class size hasn't grown. I mean, this is just more evidence that old money wins and young people are losing and cannot get ahead in 2019 the federal government spent eight times more per capita on seniors than they did kids. We all know that Gen Z is delaying marriage, home ownership and family formation in 1993 60% of 30 to 34 year olds had at least one child. Today, it's gone all the way down to 27% in about 30 years, that's fallen from 60% down to 27% this is not a resource problem. It's a values problem and an inflation problem, and also the tax code, values owning assets which older people have over labor, which younger people have. This is the crux of the war on the young and the war on those that don't own assets. You've got to wonder, is it even fixable? Some of it is, but no one really wants to fix inflation, and now they're lowering rates to open the door for even more of that widening that canyon, yes, the wave of inflation that started four to five years ago that broke down the middle class, and now it's set up to widen even more. I want to tell you what you can do about that shortly. But first, have you ever wondered, why do we even stratify upper, middle and lower class based on somebody's income? Why the income criterion, if you say that someone's upper class, everyone knows what that means. It means that you have a lot of wealth or income. But why is that the basis? Why do we classify it based on income? Well, it really started forming during the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s and 1800s that began in Great Britain. Before that, class distinctions were usually based on land ownership or nobility or occupation, for example, aristocrats versus peasants. But as industrial capitalism spread out of the UK, wages became the dominant way that people made a living. So tracking income, it sort of became this natural way to map out class. And then this notion spread in the 1800s and 1900s that was propelled through both economics and social science. You had thinkers like Karl Marx and Max Weber that were deeply concerned with class. Marx emphasized ownership of the means of production. You've probably heard that before, capitalists versus workers. But as societies modernized people in the world of both Economics and Psychology, they agreed that income was an easier dividing line than ownership alone. And then, starting last century, in the US, the 1900s income statistics, they became rather central in all of these policies that we make, like our tax system and poverty thresholds and qualifying for housing programs and even welfare benefits. See, they all rely on income bands. And over time, this normalized in our vernacular, these strata of upper middle and lower class sort of this income based shorthand that we use, throwing these terms around. So whether we like it or not, classes are based on your income level, and that's how it came into being. Well, with. A quick history lesson with the eroding of the middle class, with the war on the young. What can you actually do to make sure that you find yourself on the upper income side of it without falling to the lower side the lower class? Well, we know who the future financial losers are going to be. It is anyone not owning assets, and it's also savers clutching their dollars as those dollars quietly melt like ice cubes in July, right in their hand. Those are who the financial losers are going to be. Who are the winners going to be? It is asset owners riding the inflation wave, and the winners are also debtors who get to pay back tomorrow with cheaper dollars today, especially with that debt that you have outsourced to tenants. Here's the big takeaway, if you did not grab enough real assets during the last wave of inflation don't get left behind this time, because the longer you wait, the harder it is to jump aboard this moving train that keeps getting momentum and moving faster. The bottom line here is that at GRE we advocate for simply doing it all at once. Use debt to own real assets while inflation pushes up your rents. That's it, right. There it is. That's really the most concise way to orate the formula. Look in your mortgage loan documents. It does not say that you have to repay the mortgage loan in dollars or their equivalent. It only says you have to repay in dollars. That's your advantage. As dollars keep trending closer to worthless. To review what you've learned so far today, real estate is easier to understand and has more control than stocks. Housing has been in a recession, but there's more evidence that it is thawing, and a setup for more inflation has America poised to exacerbate the war on the young and widen the canyon between the haves and the have nots, and it threatens to get even wider as the middle class keeps vanishing and struggling.   Keith Weinhold  32:23   Now, if you like good free information, like with what I've been sharing with you today, and you find yourself doing a bit too much scrolling for quality written real estate and finance info. I mean, yeah, it can be a mess. It can be tough. If you want to get the good stuff, you hit paywalls and pop ups, and you get these push alerts and cookie banners. It's a little annoying. It's like the internet is playing defense against you. Not so fun, and that's why it matters to get good, clean, free content that actually adds no hype value to your life. This is the golden age of quality email newsletters. I've got one. I write every word of ours myself, and it's got a dash of humor, yet it's direct. And it gets to the point because, as I like to say, even the word abbreviation is too long. My letter takes less than three minutes to read, and it leaves you feeling sharp and in the know about real estate investing, this is the good stuff, the paradigm shifting material, the life changing material, you can get my letter free at gre letter.com Where else would you get the GRE letter? Greletter.com and along with the letter, you'll also get my one hour fast real estate video. Course, it's completely free as well, and it's not to try to upsell you to some paid course, there is no paid course, there's just nothing for sale, no strings attached, free value. It's called the Don't quit your Daydream letter. It wires your mind for wealth, and it couldn't be simpler to get as you know, I often like to part ways with something actionable for you, visit gre letter.com while it's fresh in your head, take a moment to do it now one last time it's gre letter.com until next week. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream.   Speaker 2  34:24   nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively.   Keith Weinhold  34:52   The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get richeducation.com

Joining us on this episode of Living Off Rentals is someone who has mastered the art of raising and deploying private capital. Matt Faircloth is the Founder & CEO of The DeRosa Group and has been a full-time investor for 15 years. Today, he has amassed a portfolio of nearly 2,000 units and raised millions of dollars from passive investors to fund his projects. He's also the author of Raising Private Capital, a best-selling book published by BiggerPockets, which has sold over 50,000 copies. From starting with small BRRRR deals funded by friends' IRAs to scaling into large multifamily and hotel acquisitions, Matt shares how any investor can use other people's money to grow, without losing themselves or their relationships in the process. If you have ever felt stuck because you “don't know any millionaires” or worry about asking people to invest with you, this conversation will change your perspective.  Enjoy the show! Key Takeaways: [00:00] Introducing Matt Faircloth and his background [02:35] How Rich Dad, Poor Dad sparked his start in real estate [04:34] After Matt quit his full-time job [05:33] Rebuilding and learning to raise capital [06:51] The misconception of raising money [11:22] The challenge of getting an appraisal [12:40] Using self-directed IRAs and retirement accounts to fund deals [17:12] The best way to educate people about investing [20:37] The right way to combine private money with bank loans [22:10] What Matt looks for in deals today: cash flow first [24:48] Your spouse is... [27:24] Separating work and personal issues [32:53] Educating your kids about finances [35:30] What incentive-based landlording is [37:32] Residents, not tenants; communities, not apartments [41:04] His advice for people who want to leave their jobs [45:52] Clear goals to keep you moving forward [48:30] Connect with Matt Faircloth [50:16] Outro Guest Links: Website: https://www.derosagroup.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/derosagroup Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themattfaircloth/ Show Links: Living Off Rentals YouTube Channel – youtube.com/c/LivingOffRentals  Living Off Rentals YouTube Podcast Channel - youtube.com/c/LivingOffRentalsPodcast  Living Off Rentals Facebook Group – facebook.com/groups/livingoffrentals  Living Off Rentals Website – https://www.livingoffrentals.com/  Living Off Rentals Instagram – instagram.com/livingoffrentals  Living Off Rentals TikTok – tiktok.com/@livingoffrentals 

Keith discusses the pros and cons of being a hands-on landlord versus hiring a property manager.  Self-management offers cost savings, quality control, and better tenant relationships but can be challenging due to tenant and contractor management.  Keep up with inflation and market trends, by using tools like Rent Finder.ai for market analysis.  Dani-Lynn Robison with Freedom Family Investments joins the conversation to highlight their recession-resilient real estate funds offering 8-16% returns, with options for liquidity and growth.  Resources: Visit freedomfamilyinvestments.com/gre to learn more about the investment opportunity or text FAMILY to 66866 to get more information about Freedom Family Investments' liquid investment options. Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/572 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold  0:01   welcome to GRE I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, being a hands on landlord versus professional property management. Which one is right for you? How often and how much should you raise the rent? Then learn how, rather than a landlord, to be a landlord and increase your income by becoming a real estate lender. Today on get rich education,   Speaker 1  0:28   since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors, and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads in 188 world nations. He has a list show guests and key top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki, get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit get rich education.com   Corey Coates  1:13   You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Speaker 2  1:30   Welcome to GRE from Charleston, South Carolina to Charleston, West Virginia and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to get rich education before we talk about, should you be your own landlord or not, and how often do you raise the rent? Let's get more personal. I want to get introspective with you with three questions, do you focus more on what you have or on what's missing? Yeah, and not just as an investor, but in your overall life. Do you focus more on what you have or on what's missing? As for me, it's what's missing, and that might be a shame. I'm definitely grateful for what I have, but probably not grateful enough if you also focus more on what's missing from your life rather than what you have. Maybe you need to be more grateful for what you've got too. But those like me that focus more on what's missing are often accomplishment driven people always trying striving for more. The second question is, do you focus more on your past, present or future. Now we all focus on all three, but which one do you focus on the most? For me, it's the present and then the future after that. The third question that you can ask yourself to learn more about yourself is, do you focus more on what's in your control or out of your control, I focus more on what's in my control. So there you go. Certain combinations of those questions can tell you a lot about yourself. For example, if you answered that, you're most focused on your future and what's out of your control, you could be setting yourself up for some sleepless nights. Oh, gosh, did I lock the car door or really, it's more like, Geez, how is that meeting really going to go tomorrow? I do some of that too fretting too much about the future for things outside your control that won't change your future one bit, but yet, ostensibly, that steals your peace of mind in the present. And I don't know who to attribute those questions to. Who originated them, but I heard Tony Robbins talking about them, and that helps you figure yourself out for some of what we're talking about here on today's show. I want to start off real basically here most first time real estate investors, they find themselves diving into the world of property management with zero experience and tons of uncertainty. You don't have to put management experience on a resume before you hire yourself to manage your own property. Self managing a rental property, it can be daunting in the beginning, but it also offers you some real benefits, like greater control and cost savings and some hands on learning. But self management comes with its own set of challenges, like tenant management and handling maintenance issues, so let's weigh some of those pros and cons of self landlording versus outsourcing it to a professional manager, there are about four key advantages to self managing. I think that most obvious one is the cost savings, because property management companies typically charge eight to 10% of the monthly. Rent amount for their services, along with an additional fee for placing a tenant or renewing a lease, and maybe even a fee for certain maintenance types. By self managing, you can then avoid these fees and keep more of the rental income for yourself and thereby making your investment more profitable. Say that your property is rented for $2,000 a month. That $200 management fee, because that's 10% Well, multiply that by 12, that's $2,400, a year, plus a typical leasing fee when a new tenant is placed is a half months rent. That's $1,000 in this case, now, you're probably not going to have a new tenant placed every single year, but if you did, then that's $3,400 annually to the manager in total, between the management fee and the leasing fee. Another advantage of DIY ing is quality control. Now, I think people that tend to be control freaks, oftentimes have to self manage, and they care a little too much. But when you self manage, you do have direct control over the maintenance and tenant selection and the overall condition of your property, and that is going to ensure that your investment is well maintained and that your tenants are satisfied. Property managers, they often manage multiple properties, so your rental might not get as much attention. And the most common, recurring issue that I hear from investors that use a professional management company is that they don't feel like their property is getting enough attention, or that the property manager doesn't really care that much about them after their contract is signed. And if you think that through, from the property management industry side, you know most managers, they're only making that 100 to 200 bucks of recurring revenue per month on each property they manage, and these are pretty thin margins overall. So in order to run a profitable business and pay their employees and cover their other business expenses, these property managers, they need to onboard hundreds of clients, and in turn, that's going to spread out their efforts pretty thin if you've only got a few properties with a manager. Well, their main priority sometimes ends up being their bigger clients. So the smaller you are, the further down the callback list you might be. But I'll tell you, even staying in touch with my professional managers a little bit, even the ones I only have a few properties with, I feel like I get what I need. A third advantage to managing yourself is better tenant relationships. You've got a level of control that allows you to build relationships with your residents that can lead to longer retention and less of that costly turnover, and having that direct communication that builds some trust, that builds some respect between you and your tenant, they appreciate a landlord like you is probably going to respond quickly to maintenance requests and the fact that you're approachable if an issue comes up, and also, by you being more involved in the tenant screening process, you can ensure that you select a pretty good tenant that's going to stay Long Term and really take care of your property. Another advantage to you self managing is that you do build some valuable skills. I mean, managing a property on your own that teaches you a big range of pretty versatile skills, from like handling maintenance and repairs to negotiating leases and just overall, managing your finances, these can be pretty helpful skills, not just for your rentals, but for your future business ventures. So really, those are some of the upsides of self management. Now, how about the flip side, the challenges of self managing your own rental property? Well, the problem is managing your tenants. I mean, some say that this whole discipline that's called Property Management ought to be called tenant management and handling tenant relations. That's one of the most critical aspects of being a self managing landlord. I mean, even if you try to build tenant relationships, mismanagement that can lead to vacancies or disputes or can even go into legal issues. So educating yourself on landlord tenant laws and best practices, that's pretty essential. If you want to head off problems, you've got proper tenant screening and addressing tenant concerns and ensuring that rent is paid on time. I mean, all that stuff's crucial. Most tenants are pretty reasonable, but you know, there are always going to be a few that will challenge your patients, and it really requires that you be tactful and professional to manage well, managing contractors. I mean, property maintenance, that's another key responsibility you have to. Fine and hire and coordinate contractors for repairs and upkeep and poor contractor management that could lead to cost overruns or really shoddy work and more, knowing how to negotiate contracts and oversee projects that's crucial to maintaining the tenant satisfaction and the overall quality of your property. Another downside of self management is handling emergencies, I mean plumbing leaks or electrical issues, that stuff could happen anytime. And as a self managing landlord, you might not always be available to respond immediately, which can lead to property damage or unhappy tenants. So self managers, they really need to be problem solvers. Self managing a rental property, things go fine 99 plus percent of the time, but it could get emotionally taxing, especially if those tenant relations become a problem. So you got to keep personal feelings out of it, that stuff can cloud your judgment and negatively impact your decisions. If you want to self manage, you've got to maintain professionalism and set clear boundaries and remain objective when you're dealing with tenants and property issues, so creating systems and processes help you minimize those emotionally driven decisions, and can help you ensure consistency in managing approach. And then there is that legal side you ought to keep up on that local area's landlord and tenant law. So in conclusion, on whether to be your own landlord or outsource it to professional management, while these challenges are pretty real, you should still be able to self manage your properties, even remotely, even across state lines or from 1000s of miles away. I mean, most of these worst case scenarios that you hear about, like a flood at 2am I mean that stuff just never happens. I mean, it's never happened to me, even if you don't have previous experience, you really can effectively manage your rental properties and see positive results when you got the right tools and the right mindset. And today's tech tools make remote management easier than it's ever been in human history. But any long time listener knows that I do not manage my own properties. My time is simply too valuable. As a frequent guest on the show here, Robert helm says life is too short for property management, I just feel a personal sense of freedom and autonomy and some headspace clearance by knowing that no tenant can contact me directly yet that my manager is taking care of them. I mean, it's just not worth doing it myself to get that last 2% toward perfection. When you buy in the most investor advantage areas, you should have enough margin to pay for a manager.    Keith Weinhold  13:03   All right, well, let's change topics now, and whether you self manage or you outsource it to a pro, you know, you've got to ask, how much and how often should landlords raise the rent? That is the question. Let's say you've crunched the numbers and expenses are climbing like they have these past few years, and the market is shifting and your rent hasn't changed. That really leaves you with one big question, Should you raise the rent? And should you raise it every year? And if you're new to landlording, it can kind of feel complicated. It could feel like if you raise the rent too much, you risk losing a great tenant if you raise it too little or not at all, and you might fall behind on costs then, or even undervalue your property if you don't keep your rents up there, because five plus unit property values are based on the rent, which goes into the NOI your net operating income. And really, this is one of the more common dilemmas that landlords face. But really, the good news is that there's a pretty clear way forward. So let me help you determine when a rent increase makes sense, and then figure out an amount that keeps your unit competitive. It keeps your rental income on track. Now some people, they actually believe that landlords are required to raise the rent every year and to a tenant, it might seem like that's what happens, but no, landlords are not required to raise the rent every year. They often choose to do so to keep up with inflation or stay competitive and high demand markets, and keep up with shifts in local rental trends, gradual, smaller increases can help you avoid the need for making larger jumps later, that stuff can surprise or frustrate your tenant. You want to go for those big rent jumps, but two. 19 tenancies. We've covered that part before. Now, some landlords prefer to keep rent steady, like when they have long term reliable tenants, or they're just focused on building equity over time, and they want to stay hands off, and don't really need the cash flow so much. Now, in a lot of cases, maintaining that same rent amount that sure can reduce your turnover in vacancy costs, those things are your biggest expenses, but often that is not the best approach in the long run, because you probably are a leveraged investor, meaning that you have a loan on the property. Well, then a rent increase that helps you out more than it does for the less educated, paid off free and clear property owner, because you can widen your delta faster. You widen your cash flow faster because your biggest expense, your principal and interest payment, stays fixed. Yes, you are getting leverage on both the asset value overall and the income. Yes, this is winning that third crown of GRE s inflation triple crown. So ultimately deciding how often to raise the rent, that really depends somewhat on your goals and also the condition of the rental. You got to factor in how satisfied you think that your tenant is. That's part of it, and the state of the market as well. Now, if you're unsure what the right rent price is for your area, there are increasingly sophisticated tools for helping you figure that out. Rent finder.ai, can help you. One of my property managers uses it. It's a really cool AI driven report that looks at 25 rent comparables in the area. Again, that tool is rent finder.ai.   Speaker 2  16:52   Now, when should landlords raise rent? Finding the right time to do this that helps you stay aligned with the market value all while supporting your financial goals. But there are also times where it might be smarter to hold off on hiking the rent. The most common times that you implement a rent increase are at least renewal. That's really the most common and appropriate time to raise the rent, provided that you give proper notice. You usually got to give 30 to 60 days notice. Another common time to raise the rent are after you make significant upgrades, like installing new appliances or renovating a kitchen or updating flooring. I mean, this is when it might be reasonable to adjust rent to reflect that added value. Another time is when overall market rents are rising, even if you haven't improved the unit or anything, because if rental prices in your area are up, well, then raising your rent helps keep your property in line with local rates. But you got to keep in mind that rent price increases require a well thought out strategy to avoid pushing away good tenants. Another time to increase the rent is to keep up with inflation and expenses over time, especially these last few years, we've all had higher operational costs like higher insurance, higher property taxes, higher maintenance costs. So even a small annual rent increase definitely helps offset those rising expenses, but you have got to avoid basing your rent price solely on operating expenses. When you do raise the rent for this reason, though, let the tenant know just which operating expense rose. That is going to help reduce tenant frustration. Now, on the flip side, there are times when keeping your rent steady could be the better choice, especially if you have a long term reliable tenant. I mean good tenants that pay on time and take care of the property. They are worth retaining, not all times, but sometimes avoiding that rent hike can help you maintain a good relationship. There another time to avoid it is when the rental market is soft. I mean, if there's more competition in your area, or high vacancy rates in your area, well then raising the rent could lead a tenant to look somewhere else, especially if there are vacant properties nearby that they could move into. Another time to not raise the rent is if the property hasn't changed, if you haven't made any of those improvements, sometimes a rent increase might not be justified, or obviously you don't want to raise the rent if you really, really want to avoid a vacancy. So keeping the rent the same might encourage them to renew. So factors to consider before raising the rent and how to calculate an appropriate increase if a unit is aging or needs repairs, raising the rent without improvement that could discourage renewals. So consider creating a value checklist to quantify certain improvements, like new apps. Appliances could be 25 to $50 a month in additional rent, or a renovated kitchen, $75 a month or new HVAC. That could be 30 to $50 a month. Think about neighborhood changes like gentrification or new schools or increased transportation access or nearby commercial development. I mean, all that stuff can raise demand, building a Whole Foods nearby, having a new office space with high wages nearby, that can increase your rent. Look at City Planning announcements and local news. You can help stay ahead of the trends that way, and if your neighborhood has seen a rise in new businesses or housing demand. I mean, that is justification for a moderate increase and a modest annual rent increase tied to inflation that can help offset your rise in costs. You can reference the CPI, yeah, the BLS. They don't just report national inflation, but they do this by region as well. Now, is there a limit to the amount of your rent increase? Well, depending on where your property is located, there might be legal limits to how much you can raise the rent, and they're typically defined by state and local rent control laws that can vary a lot across the US, in cities or states with rent control, or what's called rent stabilization, there are strict caps on how much you can raise the rent annually. And those caps, they're often based on the local CPI. They might range from 2% per year to 10% a year, depending on the area and if your rental property is in a place without rent control, well, then there might not be any legal limit on how much you can raise the rent really. That's sort of situation normal. So you do have to look at those local laws. Of course, here at GRE we recommend buying and owning properties outside of any rent control jurisdictions, which are often those places in big Northeastern cities or on the west coast where they have rent control. Well, your success as an investor, it has a lot to do with how much of your money you are leveraging, but funds that are leveraged into property that you own directly, they're not very liquid. Any prudent investor keeps a liquidity bucket of funds, and for me personally, I don't keep many of them in these online only savings accounts that might yield a 3% or 4% return today, because that is simply too low. What I do with my liquid funds is I get a return that's more than twice that amount. Where I am not the landlord, I'm the LEND Lord. Yes, l, e, n, d, lendlord, I'll tell you how to increase your income that way. That's next. I'm Keith Weinhold. You're listening to get rich education.    Keith Weinhold  23:03   The same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage, start your pre qual and even chat with President Chaley Ridge personally. While it's on your mind, start at Ridge lendinggroup.com. That's Ridge lendinggroup.com.    Keith Weinhold  23:34   You know what's crazy your bank is getting rich off of you. The average savings account pays less than 1% it's like laughable. Meanwhile, if your money isn't making at least 4% you're losing to inflation. That's why I started putting my own money into the FFI liquidity fund. It's super simple. Your cash can pull in up to 8% returns, and it compounds. It's not some high risk gamble like digital or AI stock trading. It's pretty low risk because they've got a 10 plus year track record of paying investors on time in full every time. I mean, I wouldn't be talking about it if I wasn't invested myself. You can invest as little as 25k and you keep earning until you decide you want your money back, no weird lockups or anything like that. So if you're like me and tired of your liquid funds just sitting there doing nothing, check it out. Text family to 66 866. To learn about freedom. Family investments, liquidity fund again. Text family to 66866,   Robert Kiyosaki  24:48   this is our rich dad. Poor Dad. Author Robert Kiyosaki, listen to get rich education with Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your Daydream.    Speaker 2  25:06   If you love the income from rentals but you don't like the vetting and the tracking and the tenant calls, this episode is for you. I've openly shared with you before that I don't keep much money in a savings account, since the returns are often lower than true inflation today, it's about where I invest my own funds that I want to keep fairly liquid yet get a strong return. We're talking to who owns and runs those very funds that I'm personally invested in. She co founded freedom family investments. They're a firm with over $50 million in assets under management, and they have a 100% track record of investor payouts to those investors that include me. After building her own wealth through real estate, she made it her mission to help investors create freedom, safety and peace of mind in their portfolios. She specializes in turning hands on real estate strategies like turnkey rentals into relatively passive, scalable income. It has real estate backed returns that get fairly high. You'll see how high today. She's got a great plain English approach and focus on recession resilient, needs based assets that have earned her repeat invitations to get rich, education and other top real estate shows she and her husband flip also co wrote a great book called Get real, which I have on my bookshelf. Hey, it's great to have you back on GRE Danny Lynn Robison   Dani-Lynn Robison  26:30   thank you so much, Keith. I'm so excited to be here   Speaker 2  26:33   Danni, We'll discuss rates of return for the investor shortly, but first, I think that any prudent investor asks about that foundation, what is the investment backed by? What are the underlying assets? Tell us about that.   Dani-Lynn Robison  26:48   So that's really important to me as well. And real estate is my love and passion. So this is a fund that is based on recession resilient needs based real estate. What that means is we're really focused on the needs over economies, down economies, no matter what is going on the market, is there demand? Is there enough demand that the cash flow is going to continue on? And so our asset classes inside this fund are multifamily housing and then senior housing build to rent and self storage. And by concentrating on all of those, we're just staying aligned with the fundamental needs of American families, which is why we're freedom family investments,   Keith Weinhold  27:26   right? Okay, so, yeah, pretty staid, stable underlying assets there, like you say, these are needs based items, items that people need. And tell us more about how the investment is structured for that investor, and these investors like me, looking for predictable, passive income.   Dani-Lynn Robison  27:46   This is something that's really important to me. I'm always talking to our investors and finding out what's important to them. What are they investing in right now? How do they feel about the market? What's important to them? And out of that has come every single fund or offering that we have created. And so what I love about this one is it combines a whole bunch of things all into one place. So this fund, the way it's structured, provides diversification, because as a private money lender, you are lending on one asset, so you're dependent on that one asset actually performing and being able to pay you back. Now, as you said at the beginning of the episode, we have a 100% payout track record, and that's because I think my very first episode with you was about private money lending, and I told this story about this duplex where we lost, I want to say, over $50,000 and I talked about the importance of investor relationships to me, and that long term relationship means more to me than anything else, because if you don't Have trust, then you don't have anything, you don't have a business, you don't have you can't grow long term. So even though we had lost so much money on that duplex and made a lot of mistakes, the investor got their full principal paid back. They got every penny of interest during the time that they were owed. And that Testament has happened over and over again, and it's also why I've always preached volume, because deals like that in real estate, it's going to happen in anybody who tells you otherwise just run, because there's going to be times where you peel back a wall and there's something you know big that you're going to have to take care of, and there's times when contractors aren't going to do what they say they're going to do, and it's going to go over budget. And because of that, volume is important. So if I'm doing 10 deals a month, and two of them go bad. I've got eight that do really, really great. So that's the diversification piece that is so important to me, and therefore also important to my investors. Because we've talked about that, we've talked about those conversations. So in the fund, being balanced and diversified across those four asset classes ensures that no matter where the market is and what we're investing in, some of them could be doing really good, while some of them may not be doing as good, and we're just evening out and protecting ourselves and our investors with that separate asset classes and multiple doors. Then the other thing about that I've heard loud and clear is liquidity. And you and I were talking about this right before we pressed record, and I. Always laughed, and I was like, liquidity and real estate just don't go together. So let me figure this out. And we worked with our attorneys and figured out different ways to provide liquidity to real estate investors while still protecting just the way everything was structured, because that promise and making sure that I'm always giving that money back to the investors and paying them on time every single time, was so important, we structured a fund that allows people to invest and then get their money back in a year if they want it, but if they don't, then they get to continue investing for a period of time. And so that marriage and balance has really been a win for us and for our investors. And so I'm really excited about this fund.   Keith Weinhold  30:37   Danny Lynn, it's a little sad before our chat today, we learned about another industry professional that offered a fund to investors, and that fund imploded, for lack of a better term, and you divulged with me that you're actually familiar with that fund and with that operator that offered it. And you know you talked about how there were really some red flags, some warning signs, there, you have third party eyes on your fund for its lifespan, from beginning to end and here in the present. And the other thing is that you invest the funds in your own businesses, so you have more control over that when you talk about these four different asset types that you're involved in. So can you talk to us about that?   Dani-Lynn Robison  31:25   I've been in the room with him. I don't know him personally. We're not friends or anything, but I know him, and I know what happened as that fund progressed. And when I looked at the fund structure, I love the promissory note idea, because it's simple to understand. There's a warren buffett quote I love talking about that you shouldn't invest in something you don't understand. And I believe in simplicity. I believe in making sure that you understand exactly what you're getting into when you're putting your money on the line. And in that particular fund, it was very hard to understand the assets that you're investing in. And so it was a lot of businesses I would view them as high risk. I felt like even the monthly distributions were a little risky as well, because sometimes you just don't know if the money is going to be coming in. You know, you might be in a building phase where you actually need the capital to work on and grow and improve the business or the real estate. And so we always structure things in a way that we do two tiers. There's an income track and there's a growth track to allow us to balance everything out and be able to give the investors a lower rate of return if they want income, and a higher rate of return if they want growth, because that higher rate of return we can do that because they are allowing us to use that capital to be able to work on properties, to work on businesses have that growth trajectory, and when it comes to our businesses, I'm glad you brought that up, because he did invest in businesses, and I don't historically do that. I love real estate, but I do invest in my own businesses, because I know me. I know my character, I know my track record. I know what I promise I'm going to do, no matter how hard it is. I'm going to make sure that I fulfill those promises. And so if I have like, ownership and direct control of everything, I feel very confident in my ability to move forward. And that's really where the masternote program comes in, we now call it freedom notes, because we just love freedom so much we're just rebranding everything. So the freedom note program really does help us invest in businesses as we're growing, and it's our own businesses so super excited about that opportunity. Structured the exact same way as the flagship fund.   Keith Weinhold  33:16   You use the term promissory note there, just so that no investor is left behind. What is a promissory note?   Dani-Lynn Robison  33:23   A promissory note is really like an IOU. So I always like to compare it to bank loans. Whenever our private money lenders would come and talk to us about private money lending, and they'd say, can you explain this to me? I'd say your Bank of America like you're the one with the lien on the property, so you're in first lien position, and so if something goes wrong, then you have the ability to foreclose and get that property back. So promissory notes, essentially is a loan to this fund, and this fund is then going to use that money to purchase or acquire or invest in or do recapitalizations of those projects that we talked about. So in the flagship fund, those four asset classes, masternodes, so the freedom notes also invest in those same asset classes, but they also invest in the businesses as well.   Keith Weinhold  34:09   So we're talking about predictable passive income for the investor here, about as close to passive as it gets, hands off management. You've got the professional underwriting, the servicing and the reporting done by a third party you actually use invest next, that's the third party company that administers this. Tell us more about the investor qualifications, about the minimum investment amount and accredited versus non accredited. Tell us about that.   Dani-Lynn Robison  34:38   We have programs for both non accredited and accredited investors, and like I said, they're set up structurally very, very similar, but they are it's has to be SEC compliant, right? So for the non accredited investors, it is the freedom note program, and it's set up so your funds are in a separate bank account all by itself. It's fully tracked that way by our accounting team. And you can always go in and say, Hey, can you guys tell me where my funds are placed? And we can always track that information. So it's a little bit more work on our part, but it does allow non accredited investors to participate in something until they have the opportunity to reach a point where they do meet that accredited status and they can participate in the fund. And then the fund is the accredited vehicle. It's a 506, C, again, fully it's a Regulation D, fully vetted by our attorney. They're just actually finishing the documents right now. I didn't tell you before this, but you're actually the very first group that we're like talking to this about. And I told you how much I love our relationship and how long we've known each other, and how I just want to do more things with you. And so we're like, this is perfect that we get to actually launch it to Keith's group first. So we're excited about that as well. And then you talked about invest next. This is the piece that I think is important to me, no matter who you invest in, is what is their financial transparency look like? How are in the investments tracked? Where are the funds? Who is looking at those funds. So not only are we tracking all of the funds in house, but our CPA has to look at the funds and what's happening there. And originally we had nav, which is a fund manager. Now we've moved over to our invest next, and it probably took us six months to get onboarded with them, because of all the compliance pieces required for a company like that to bring you on board. So I just think that's one of the important pieces that makes me feel safe, because I want a bunch of eyes on the financials, and it makes our investors feel safe as well.   Keith Weinhold  36:31   For those wondering why I invest my funds here, yes, you've got that third party auditing, like you've mentioned, and you're investing only in your own businesses, so you have control. That's a big part of what makes me feel good. Well, let's talk about the fun part. Danny, tell us about those rates of return and the liquidity.   Dani-Lynn Robison  36:50   The rates of return are anywhere from eight to 14% but the 14% can go up to 16% because there's a 2% bonus upon maturity, and that eight to 16% is in two series. So there's an income series and there's a growth series. The income series is what appeals to investors who want those quarterly distributions and who want the passive income and cash flow. And so that particular series is anywhere from eight to 10% and again, depending on how much you invest, there's a 2% bonus in that series, and then the growth series is even higher. And the reason that is is because these are the long term investors who are looking to really accelerate growth in their portfolio. And that allows us peace of mind that we've got capital to be able to use for the renovations, for whatever is needed, depending on the market and how the cycles are going. As I said before, real estate is illiquid, and you have to structure and balance things based on that. And the growth series is a win for the investors, because compounding on, let me see, it's 10 to 14% returns, plus, depending on how much you invest, there's a 2% bonus that compounding adds up fast. We've done math for our investors are like, Oh my gosh, I'm never moving my money. I love this. They just love to see the growth trajectory. It's a win for us, too, because we get to use that capital as needed in order to ensure that we've got successful investments at the end of the day.   Keith Weinhold  38:21   Okay, so the income series has eight to 10% returns based on how much you invest, that pays out quarterly. And then the growth series that has those higher rates of return, up to 14 even 16% where the payout is made at the end, and how long is one waiting until the end? I know it sounds like most people want to continue that compounding and roll it forward, but what does the end look like for the groceries fund?   Dani-Lynn Robison  38:47   Yeah, I'm glad you asked that. So that's the liquidity piece, and that's the thing that we went back and forth with our attorneys about, because real estate is naturally illiquid, and so what we did is it's a recurring annual renewal. So it's an auto renewal, meaning that every single year you have the opportunity to say, Hey, Danny, hey freedom, I would like to go ahead and give you notice that I would like to get my funds back. And so that gives us enough notice be able to plan for those funds to come back to you principal plus interest. And then every year, if you choose not to ask for your funds back, it auto renews for a total of five years. I believe it is. You'll have to look at the documents just to confirm everything that I'm saying, because what I'm speaking to is our freedom note program, which is what this was built off of, because it was so popular. When given investment opportunities, everybody was just like, I want to go into those freedom notes. I like those because it gave them peace of mind, the ability to take out their cash if they needed it, but allowed for a compound or fast growth and a long term investment if they felt that was right as well.   Keith Weinhold  39:47   Okay, this freedom note program either the income series or the growth series, but we're talking about rates of return here. What's interesting is we're in a period where federal funds rate drops are. Anticipated when that happens, the return on your savings account does fall by that amount. However, these funds don't. That is correct. Yes, we're talking about, again, these funds that are backed by needs based real estate, like senior housing, workforce apartments and self storage demand that stays steady, even in downturns. And I know that you have an investor story as well. Tell us about that.   Dani-Lynn Robison  40:28   Yeah. So we have so many investor stories, and you can actually see the videos and audios on our website, and I encourage you to go check them out. But we like to call this investor story Jane, because we've heard the story so often that we call her Jane. So this is really the investors who have been investing with us as private money lenders and turnkey investors. And there they realize that number one, the in and out of investments. As a private money lender means that they always have this capital sitting and earning nothing at some point in time. And the turnkey investors, they think it's passive. And then they realize, oh gosh, there are tenant issues. I do have to, you know, manage this, the property management company. I do have to double check all the financials. I do have to approve a tenant or approve repairs, and it ends up being a little bit more work, and sometimes a lot more work than they ever anticipated. Those investors in particular, are the ones that love working with us the most, because suddenly what they thought was freedom going into the investment opportunity turned out to be a little bit different than they anticipated. And so they're like, I'm so thankful to finally, you know, be in an investment with a company that I trust, but that can be there, give me liquidity options, give me a good return, but it's 100% passive. So we call that investor Jane, because we just hear this story over and over and over    Speaker 2  41:45   before I ask about how our listeners can learn more about this, if it might interest them. Is there any last thing that you want to tell the audience? Maybe something that I didn't think about asking you?   Dani-Lynn Robison  41:57   That's a great question. The here's the thing that I always like to say, when you're investing with somebody, I think it's important to ask about the worst thing that's happened, what they did, how their investor was treated, what was the financial outcome? I think those questions are people don't think to ask that. Like, when you get on the phone with somebody, everybody's gonna tell you the rosy stories and all the good things, and this is why you should invest. And they're not going to go down the road of like, what happened, like, what are the bad things? Because every business and every real estate investor experiences bad things. So finding out the character of the person, I think, is how you find out is by asking what happened in that worst case scenario. So I think that's a really great question to ask, and you can ask us anytime I transparently tell my horror stories all the time, and just always in saying how important our long term investors are with us.   Keith Weinhold  42:46   It's just like the title of your book. Get real. If you don't have a messy story to tell, you probably haven't been in business for very long. Are there any fees in order for one to get started?   Dani-Lynn Robison  42:58   No, there are no fees. That's another investor feedback piece is the confusion. It's like they want to invest, but they're so confused by investment opportunities and what they're really making. So when you invest with us, the return that we tell you you're going to get is actually the return that you're going to get. So whether it's, you know, 8% 9% 10% whatever that is, that's the return you'll get. If there's any fees in, uh, within the fund itself, there's none in the freedom notes program. If there's any fees within the fund itself, it comes from the actual underlying properties, not from investor returns.   Keith Weinhold  43:31   Well, it doesn't take very much documentation in order to get started. This could really help you make more of the funds that you want to keep more liquid as fast as 90 day liquidity. Danny, tell our audience how they can get started, and if they just want to learn more about this to see if it's right for them,   Dani-Lynn Robison  43:50   we have done something super special this time. I think I've been on your podcast probably four or five times. Now this time, I'm going to tell you to go to freedom, family investments.com. Forward, slash, G, R, E, so it stands for get rich, education, so freedom, family, investments.com. Forward, slash GRE, what we've done this time is we're really tailoring what we do to Keith, because this relationship has just been such a great relationship we've had over time that we want to make sure that the investors that come in from your audience are just they rise to the top for our Investor Relations team so that anything that you need, we're just right there for you. We've got an investor concierge, and we're just doing as much as possible to make sure that you guys are prioritized.   Speaker 2  44:30   Yeah, feel free to let them know that you learned about this through me, you'll get the VIP treatment. Danny, thanks for being such a responsible custodian of my own funds. For years, it's been great having you back on the show.    Dani-Lynn Robison  44:42   Thank you so much, Keith.   Keith Weinhold  44:50   Look the key to most anything in business or investing is for you to provide something that's of value to someone. Else. Look for something that makes somebody else money, and then go get a piece of that for yourself. And because this is where I park my own funds for liquidity, I do need something that I can count on, recession resilient needs based real estate assets that people rely on in every economic cycle. So this is backed by, frankly, pretty plain things, with durable demand, limited supply and strong demographic tailwinds. And again, those four underlying assets are multifamily housing, senior housing, build to rent, which are new single family rental communities and self storage, which is something proven to hold up even in recessions. And what makes these funds from Freedom family investments different is that, like we said, they have third party financial eyes on them, and the control is there because the funds are invested in their own companies, and now there's no such thing as a zero risk investment or even a 100% passive investment, but this is about as close to real estate passivity as you can get. There's more of that than there is with direct ownership of turnkey real estate, they'd surveyed investors to find out what they want. That's why you can choose from again, Freedom family investments either their income series, which has eight to 10% returns, but it can be up to 12% at higher investment amounts, you get quarterly distributions, or their other is their growth series, 10 to 14% returns, but it can be up to 16% at higher investment amounts, with the option to have your funds back annually. These are fixed rates of return and a declining interest rate environment like we're in now. Cannot touch those rates of return, I think, for someone that's not in real estate and doesn't understand how real estate pays, five ways, they might find it unusual that an investment can reliably return more than 10% like this. But those that are initiated, they get it. It's pretty simple. I mean, you are going to increase your income $10,000 per year if you invest 100k at a 10% return. If you'd like to learn more and see if it's right for you, it's been made pretty easy. You can do that one of two ways. Text family to 66 866, just text the word family to 66866, yes. This is how you can, rather than a landlord, be a lend Lord with the liquid component of your investments. So you can learn more about freedom family investments, just visit freedom family investments.com/gre. That's freedom, family investments.com/gre, until next week, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream.   Speaker 3  48:13   Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively.   Keith Weinhold  48:37   You know, whenever you want the best written real estate and finance info. Oh, geez, today's experience limits your free articles access and it's got paywalls and pop ups and push notifications and cookies disclaimers. It's not so great. So then it's vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that adds no hype value to your life. That's why this is the golden age of quality newsletters. And I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor, and it's to the point because even the word abbreviation is too long, my letter usually takes less than three minutes to read, and when you start the letter, you'll also get my one hour fast real estate video. Course, it's all completely free. It's called the Don't quit your Daydream letter. It wires your mind for wealth, and it couldn't be easier for you to get it right now just text. Gre 266, 866. While it's on your mind, take a moment to do it right now. Text, gre 266, 866,   Speaker 2  49:53   The preceding program was brought to you by your home  

What if everything you've been taught about building wealth is wrong? Ryan D Lee shares how he walked away from a six-figure corporate salary after just four years by implementing a financial strategy that bypasses Wall Street entirely. His journey began during the 2008 financial crisis when he lost nearly 80% of his savings and almost lost his family, forcing him to question the traditional path to financial security.The breakthrough came when Ryan discovered two transformative books: "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki and "Creating Wealth" by Robert Allen. These works challenged his fundamental understanding of money, introducing concepts that seemed offensive at first glance—"savers are losers" and "debt is money." Yet as he implemented these principles through what he now calls the "Passive Income Machine," Ryan achieved what most consider impossible: complete financial freedom in less than half a decade.Ryan reveals the three core principles that drive his wealth-building strategy. First, measure financial success by the income your assets produce, not their total value. Second, choose assets that deliver tax-advantaged income streams rather than tax-deferred growth. Third, leverage is the most powerful tool in finance—not consumer debt that mortgages your future, but strategic debt that acquires assets that pay for themselves. This framework has helped countless people escape the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle and build true financial independence.The conversation takes a powerful turn when Ryan discusses the concept of honor and authentic living. By acknowledging and honoring his mentors, Ryan built relationships that led to co-authoring a book with Robert Kiyosaki and Robert Allen—the very authors who transformed his financial thinking. He emphasizes that true freedom comes from authentically using your God-given talents in service to others, creating a multiplicative effect that benefits everyone involved.With inflation squeezing household budgets and economic uncertainty rising, Ryan's message is more urgent than ever: financial education is the dividing line between those being crushed by economic forces and those who profit from them. As he powerfully states, "Financial freedom is your obligation"—not just a goal, but a responsibility to create options that allow you to pursue your purpose without financial constraints.Welcome to the ATLG podcast I am your host Ken Joslin, former pastor turned coach & host of CREATE, the #1 Faith-based Entrepreneur conference in America. My mission is to help faith-based entrepreneurs become the best version of themselves by growing in our Core 5: Faith, Health, Relationships, Business & Finances. You can get more information as well as join our FREE Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/676347099851525