Can your money mindset be the key to financial freedom? In today's special episode of Money Conversations with KJ, we promise to unveil the secrets to transforming your financial struggles into successes. Join us as we dissect the reasons why many people find themselves trapped in a relentless cycle of earning and spending without clear goals. From setting specific financial objectives to making your money work for you through investing, we'll guide you on how to break free from living paycheck to paycheck. Inspired by Warren Buffett's wisdom on making money while you sleep, this episode will empower you to take control of your financial destiny.
Discover the hidden hours in your week that you can convert into productivity and additional income. We'll walk you through practical exercises designed to maximize your time and discuss the differences between passive and active investing, with a focus on retirement accounts like 401(k)s and Roth IRAs. Learn to overcome the emotional barriers that keep you from engaging with your finances and step towards financial independence. Plus, explore the Money Mastery Institute's free resources to shift your money mindset and learn to invest wisely. Don't miss next week's episode featuring an inspirational guest story on achieving financial freedom!
Don't forget to subscribe, like and share it with a friend or two!
Can your money mindset be the key to financial freedom? In today's special episode of Money Conversations with KJ, we promise to unveil the secrets to transforming your financial struggles into successes. Join us as we dissect the reasons why many people find themselves trapped in a relentless cycle of earning and spending without clear goals. From setting specific financial objectives to making your money work for you through investing, we'll guide you on how to break free from living paycheck to paycheck. Inspired by Warren Buffett's wisdom on making money while you sleep, this episode will empower you to take control of your financial destiny.
Discover the hidden hours in your week that you can convert into productivity and additional income. We'll walk you through practical exercises designed to maximize your time and discuss the differences between passive and active investing, with a focus on retirement accounts like 401(k)s and Roth IRAs. Learn to overcome the emotional barriers that keep you from engaging with your finances and step towards financial independence. Plus, explore the Money Mastery Institute's free resources to shift your money mindset and learn to invest wisely. Don't miss next week's episode featuring an inspirational guest story on achieving financial freedom!
Don't forget to subscribe, like and share it with a friend or two!
Speaker 1:
Well, hello everybody, welcome back to Money Conversations with KJ. I'm your host, kj, and today's going to be a little special episode. Stand by. We're going to talk about mindset with money, investing money and sources of income. So let's get going, all right, guys? So I've been getting a lot of feedback with our economy doing what it's doing and people are still struggling with money. And we got to understand why we're struggling with money. It's not about how much we make, it's about what we're doing with it. And so today, the three topics right we want to start off with, which is mindset understanding it's not your fault, the way that you're thinking and acting with your money.
Speaker 1:
For most of you, through my research and conversations, it is because no one ever taught you at an early age, right, the intention of money and what we're supposed to do with it. And it's not go make money, go spend money. It's ultimately you want to learn how to make money, make money. That's the end game. Make money, make money. So you trading time for money or value for money is just about feeding the fuel of your money. Making money right. The sooner that you can do that, the sooner that you won't struggle with money. Right, because if you just trade time for money and then spend your money, you got to keep trading, you got to keep trading. It's an endless cycle that won't stop, and this is why people live paycheck to paycheck because they're not doing that right. So we must learn how to invest, and it's not your fault. Unfortunately, mom and dad didn't teach most of us or didn't teach us enough maybe just basics. So that means it's time for you to be proactive, and if you're listening to this or watching this on YouTube, you're being proactive and I'm going to applaud you for that. You're being proactive. You're telling yourself I'm tired of struggling, let me listen to some things, let me watch some things here. What do I need to do? Okay, and listen, guys. I have plenty of free trainings on my website at moneymasteryinstitutecom that you can go over there. There's some free ones in there. There's some other paid for trainings that are just really inexpensive, that you can reach out to a book and all of that stuff. But today I just wanted to talk to you guys about these three topics and hopefully today's the day that you make a shift, right? Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the conversation that got you thinking. That's it. I'm tired of being tired. I'm tired of being broke. Let's do something about it. Right, and the best way that I can teach you is shifting your mindset about how you're thinking and acting with money.
Speaker 1:
Right, one of the things that why we struggle, or people struggle, with money is they don't know where they're going. Right, you don't have specific goals, clear written goals of where you're going. Therefore, you're just working, making the money and spending it. It's a vicious cycle. And you don't know where. You're just working, making the money and spending it. It's a vicious cycle. You don't know where you're going.
Speaker 1:
If you, or when, you know where you're going, what you want, clear, specific goals and there's specific reasons of where every dollar you make goes, you will live life on your terms. You will live life of stress-free, without money, right, but unfortunately, the majority of people right two-thirds of people don't live without money, right, but unfortunately, the majority of people right two-thirds of people don't live that way, right, they live for right now, right for today. I got my check, I need to pay this, I want to buy that, and that's not what we want to do. We want to get in a habit, a mindset shift habit of the minute you get your paycheck, you get paid. However you make your money, it doesn't matter that you're putting money to work right, you have to pay yourself first. It's the concept that Warren Buffett's been teaching for years. Learn how to pay yourself first, because if you don't learn how to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die, and we don't want to do that. We don't want to work because we have to work. We want to work because we like to work, because we enjoy doing what we're doing.
Speaker 1:
I'm sure most of you out there whatever it is that you're doing to make a living, you like it. You like your job, you like the people you work with. Whatever it may be, it doesn't matter. You enjoy going there, and this is engaging with people, giving value to whatever this job may be and then getting paid for it. You enjoy doing those things. If you're doing something that you don't enjoy, I suggest that you find something else that you do enjoy, and you don't have to enjoy it at the highest level. I talk to people like you know. I don't particularly like what I do at work, but I like my work environment, right, so I go there and it's steady and I get my money. So what I want you to learn is that's great, keep doing that If that's not getting you ahead.
Speaker 1:
We just need to make a mindset shift on what we do with the actual money, because people often think, when you hear the term living paycheck to paycheck, it's people that don't make no money, right, make minimum wage or barely over. Where the fact of the matter is out. Of 63% of the people who live paycheck to paycheck, 25% of those people make six figures, up to $200,000 a year. And I know it's hard to fathom how anybody can make $200,000 a year and live paycheck to paycheck. Well, they do, because whatever they make, they spend. All they did was raise their lifestyle, and they're not thinking about the future, right, they're just thinking about today. And so if that's where you're at it's time to pull back the reins, so to speak.
Speaker 1:
And for those of you that think like, well, every dime I make, I need to support myself, my family, then we need to learn how to make more money, and we're going to talk about that in a few minutes, when I we're going to talk about sources of income. How many do you have? Because most people have one source of income. So if you get laid off, your industry falls off, whatever the reasons are that you don't have that job anymore and you left. You're left with your hands holding out, like reasons are that you don't have that job anymore and you live. You're left with your hands holding out, like what do I do now? Right, I got to go find something new.
Speaker 1:
Multiple sources of income will allow you not to have the stress and anxiety about money, knowing that, hey, you know what that particular job maybe it was the main job, maybe it was a second job didn't work out and I got to get something new, but you still have something coming in right. So multiple sources of income, I believe in today's world, is necessary. Now, some of you out there are together, whether you're married or just committed to relationships, and you have both of you working. That is, two sources of income, right, you both bring income. If you're, in fact, you're sharing all of your living expenses. That is, two sources of income Doesn't mean that each of you can't go out there and get a second source. And now you have four sources of income coming in right.
Speaker 1:
And why do we want to have multiple sources of income? Well, maybe we had some bad habits and we created some debt and we've got to get out of this debt. Whatever the amount may be, right, there are strategies to get out of debt. You can learn those on some of my free trainings that getting out of debt is, first and foremost, vital. You're earning money. You're doing things with your money. Debt is a big anchor on your financial well-being, and whatever that debt that happens to be especially any consumer debt, debt through credit cards or charges of some sorts those are vital to get rid of and not have those things.
Speaker 1:
The big major debts that are understandable in life are a mortgage right. You bought a home and or an automobile right. Automobiles in today's society are, geez. The least expensive brand new automobile you can buy is right around $20,000. And then it goes all the way up. Right. You can spend a ridiculous amount of money, but most people are out there, and if you have a family and you need a minivan or a small SUV, you're spending $40,000, $50,000. And so we know that you can't go pay cash for those things, and so you need you have a car payment, and a lot of cases you have two car payments right, so we need to map those things out.
Speaker 1:
So we got to set our goals, what we're doing, what do we want to do, and then reverse, engineer where we spend on our money. And we're spending our money depending on what we're doing with our time right. And so I think we need to start off first of where our time is going right For all of us on planet earth. We all get 168 hours per week to do what we want, with no more, no less. Doesn't matter if you have zero money or you're Jeff Bezos with billions of dollars or an Elon Musk, doesn't matter. We all get the same amount of time. So I highly suggest that you do a time mapping exercise at home to figure out what are you doing with those 168 hours every week.
Speaker 1:
It's vitally important to know where you do and don't have time to go do things, because if you're going to create multiple sources of income, well, some things you can only do during the average working day hours, which is 6 am to about 6 pm. Other things you can do online 24-7. So maybe, if you need that second job, second side hustle, some of it's outside the home, some of it's inside the home, because in today's world, we can leverage the internet and make money there, right? So, first and foremost, map out where's my time. Right, we know we all have to sleep.
Speaker 1:
Every day, everybody sleeps a different amount of hours and you don't sleep the same amount of hours every night. It fluctuates, and so if you were to track it out two to three weeks right In a row so you could get an average, I average sleep 50 hours a week, 60 hours a week, whatever that time is. You guys know what your sleep habits are, what you need. Some people can survive on four or five hours every night. That's good. That's all you need. Doctors recommend at least six. We don't really need more than six, but some people feel that they need the eight or nine, and that's fine, whatever yours are.
Speaker 1:
I'm not telling you there's a right or wrong answer here. I'm just trying to get you to understand out of the 168 hours, where are your hours being spent? So if we know right off the top sleeping is, let's just go around numbers. Eight hours a day is 56 hours for the week, so we can take that right off of the 168, right. And then, from there, where do you work? And then, from there, where do you work? Do you work 10 minutes from your job? Do you work an hour from your job, right? The commute time is different for everybody, but it's time spent. I call it windshield time. It's time spent in the car, so that's a given. You work five days a week, six days a week? I don't know Either way. Do the math. I work six days a week. I'm 30 minutes each way. That's six hours off of my 168. And then just work your way down the list from there.
Speaker 1:
What are you doing with your time on a regular basis? I promise you, if you're living paycheck to paycheck, that you don't have enough to put away 15% minimum. You need to go get that second source of income to make up for that 15%. And as an example, let's say that 15% equals $200 that you need to be putting away every single week. Then you've got to go find a second job, slash side hustle. That makes $200 a week. Now you can make $200 a week on the internet, many different ways, with limited time, two to four or five hours a week. So that's not a lot of hours.
Speaker 1:
But again, we're trying to dissect where is all of our time going right? Because I keep hearing people telling me well, I don't have enough time, I can't get another job. This one's enough. You know I don't have time to do anything else. Well, do you really? I promise you, every person I've ever had do this exercise. They find between 25 and 30 hours that they are not using. They don't even know where it is.
Speaker 1:
What did I do? Did you visit the neighbor for an hour? Did you go visit a friend for two hours? Did you go to the movies? That week? That was two and a half hours. Three hours drive time there and back. That was three hours that week because I went to a movie. I went to the park on the weekend for a half a day. Whatever it may be, time's ticking it doesn't stop and we all get the same amount of time every day. Map it out when did you go this week? How many productive hours did you get put in out of that 168? How many of those hours out of the 168 did you just fluff off that? You could have been productive and say making up that money, that $200 in the example, that 15% to get you where your monetary goals are right.
Speaker 1:
Again, the experts will often tell you look, the reason you struggle is you don't know where you're going. So where are we going? This is why goals are vitally important to write down and know that I have to map out my goals. Well, to reach my goal, it's going to take my time 90 minutes a week. Okay, 90 minutes a week. There's 168 on the table for you that you can use, right?
Speaker 1:
I had one client that used money. He went out and got a bunch of pennies and every penny represented an hour. So he had 168 pennies and he kept putting them aside. How much do I have left? How much do I have left? And I promise you, at the end, when you think you did everything you needed to do, you still had 25, 30 cents left, 25, 30 hours. You're like I don't know where they went.
Speaker 1:
And if you can, if you can do this exercise three weeks in a row to get an average, then you know I need my second source of income. I need my second source of income because my new goals to reach are X. I need to go earn X money. This is just a simple math equation. Guys, I have so many hours. What am I doing with them? Where am I going Right Now with that money? We have to invest.
Speaker 1:
Investing is the fuel of our financial future. You cannot earn your way to financial independence, you must invest. Right Now. There's two kinds of investing. You have passive investing and active investing. Right, everybody's different. You can do one or the other. You can do both. There is no right or wrong answer here. It's different. You can do one or the other. You can do both. There is no right or wrong answer here. It's whatever you're comfortable with. Some people are numbers people, so they can really get into the act of investing because you're going to dig in. Some people are not numbers people. They just want to. I call, set it and forget it here. Put my money in that account, let it, let it do its thing. Let the experts go. Do what they're going to do, such as at work. You're going to participate. If your job offers a 401k and they match, you want to participate in that. You also want to open up your own Roth IRA. The earlier you open that, the better.
Speaker 1:
If you're young and listening to this or watching this and you're under 20 years of age, oh my gosh. You have time, because money is grown based on time. The rule of 72 compounding is based on time, and if you're starting this at plus 40 years of age, we don't have as much time as that 20 year old. 20 years of growth compounded over 35, 40 years, is ridiculous. Starting with low amounts of money, you have large amounts. So when I say that 15% rule of putting your money away, investing it, that's if you're under the age of 40. If you're over the age of 40, guys, you got to catch up. And to catch up means you got to put more away because you don't have as much time left.
Speaker 1:
When I say enough time left, most people, unfortunately this society, has taught you that retirement is an age, typically 65. When I ask people and retirement is not an age whatsoever, retirement is a dollar amount income, right? Retirement means I don't have to go trade time for money anymore, that my money is making enough money for me or you're going to depend on the government to subsidize you with Social Security, which we don't know is going to be around for another 10 years. So don't bank on that. If you're under 40 years old, bank on. I got to take care of myself, so let me go put money to work. Let money compound money works. 24, 7, 3, 6, 5. You and I don't and we don't want to.
Speaker 1:
So think about on your mindset what's holding you back? Is it fear? Is it fear of changing? Because a lot of people have that fear. Is it anxiety? Does money give you anxiety? I know talk to a lot of people. They don't even want to think and talk about money. It's just like oh, it just freaks them out. They don't like it. So the sooner that you can put yourself on autopilot with money, the less anxiety, the less fear that you can have right Learning how to invest in the right vehicles for you, for your goals in life.
Speaker 1:
Where do you want to be? I know people that are retired in their 60s that are happy to survive and I say survive on $3,000 a month. They're good to go. They don't want or need a lot out of life. There's other people I know in the same age bracket that tell me I need $20,000 a month, I've got to pay. My lifestyle that I want to live is $20,000 a month.
Speaker 1:
Okay, that's fine. What are you going to do to get there? How is that going to happen? To create that lifestyle right? What do you need to do? Well, time is your best resource. Don't waste it 168 hours in a week.
Speaker 1:
Where are you going? What are you doing with it? What are you doing to make that money, make money. That's the mantra that should be in your life Make money, make money. So you don't have to right. You can monitor what your money's doing. You could change it around. There's nothing that's forever with money. You can always move it because money's grown in many different areas and whatever the money fad happens to be right, technology is what it is today. It used to be in oil and gas. It used to be in your basic commodities, right, but today, with technology growing as it is, I can use this is recorded in 2024. Is I can use. This is recorded in 2024. Nvidia has been the unbelievable story in the stock market. Its growth has been exponentially 200% in the last year. That's just crazy, right. If you would have invested in 2015 in NVIDIA, you would be sitting on a pretty good pile of cash right now. Even if you limited five $10,000, you'd be sitting on a pretty good pile of cash right now. Even if you limited $5,000, $10,000, you'd be sitting on some pretty good money. So, understanding the three things here mindset, investing and sources of income If you're struggling with money, you can't get ahead. We need to have that mindset shift. We need to understand we have to invest. If we don't make enough, we need to get that second, third source of income. If there's two of you in the household, great. If both of you get second sources of income, you have four sources of income. Now map these things out. Map out your hours of the week. What am I doing? Where am I going? Understand where you're going. Know where you're going. If you don't know where you're going, you're never going to get there. You're never going to get where you don't know where you're going. So always know where you're going. What am I doing? Enjoy life on the fullest. Do everything that life has to offer you. Enjoy people, enjoy food, enjoy places. Traveling doesn't mean that you got to have a $20,000 vacation somewhere Traveling could be. I'm going on a camping trip that's an hour from my house. Enjoy life, enjoy life. Life can be short for some people, so get out there and enjoy it. I definitely don't like to see people who just work, save money, work, save money, work, save money and don't enjoy life. Go enjoy life. Have your hobbies. Just do it responsibly with money. Stay out of debt. If you're in debt, 100%, work towards just getting rid of that debt. All of it. All of it. Consumer debt first. Get rid of consumer debt. High interest paying credit cards Must get rid of them as fast as possible. Some people can get rid of that stuff in a few months. Some people take a few years. Whatever that timeline is for you, that's your goal. That's where you're going. I'm going to eliminate all my debt goal. That's where you're going. I'm going to eliminate all my debt. Now you know where you're going. Where are you going after that? I don't know yet, but I know my first goal right now is to get 100% out of debt. I'm in debt dollar X. I did the math, I did the numbers. I can save 15% and I got to put another X percentage on taking care of debt. All just mathematical, simple equation here. But you're going somewhere.
Speaker 1:
Once you pay off debt, go ahead, write down your next goal. If your debt is 36 months to get rid of, okay, great. What am I doing after that? What's my five-year goal? Let's plan for that one too. Where are we going? We just need to know where we're going and we're never going to get there. So don't fly blind through life. Know where you're going, know what you're doing, know where your time is. Know where your time is what am I doing with my time Right? So I hope that this helped you guys somewhat.
Speaker 1:
If you want to get more of my free trainings again, go to my website, moneymasteryinstitutecom. Got some free trainings in there. Got some other really inexpensive trainings in there for you guys to grab. You can grab my book in there Roadmap to Success. So go in there. These are some very affordable resources to get your money mindset shift learn how to invest, talk about sources of income and look for opportunities.
Speaker 1:
Always you have conversations with people. You never know who you're going to talk to next and all of a sudden you heard something that may trigger you to do some investing. Okay, I hope you enjoyed this. I'll see you guys on the next one Next week. I've got a guest coming in and we're going to hear another story. These stories are always fantastic and I hope that you guys learn from other people's stories what they've done good, what they've done bad, and they can inspire you, because this is the game of life that we're all playing. The rules are the same for most of us. Let's just get out there and live our best life and create your lifestyle by design. All right, guys, take care.
