The Get Ready Money Podcast

The Get Ready Money Podcast with Mark Yegge: Time Is Your Most Valuable Asset

• Tony Steuer

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On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Mark Yegge, author, podcaster and Director and CEO at Destiny Creation & Cash Flow Machine about changing the way we think about money and building wealth. 

In this episode we discussed:

  • Why financial education is more important than anything else in the world of money.
  • Why time is our most valuable asset. 
  • Embracing abundance.
  • Be positive with your money. 
  • The importance of having your money work for you with passive income. 

Mark Yegge, the Wealth Architect, has spent his entire life learning and teaching people about wealth and the importance of a success mindset. He started investing when he was 12 – and made enough to buy his first car at 16. Mark started, and later sold, his Wall Street software company - the company that ushered in after-hours trading. He then “retired” at the age of 39, but not before growing the company from nothing to a $30-million dollar enterprise.  Today, Mark manages several investment funds, is a Wealth Architect for 7- and 8-figure investors and provides wealth education through his learning ecosystem at DestinyCreation.com. He is also the host of the Wealth Architect Podcast - WealthArchitectPodcast.com.

Connect with Mark Yegge:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mark.yegge11

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/551434932601334

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/markyegge/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markyegge/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/markyegge?s=20&t=Hbtm9dcLgpWuU3dwdXev0w


Books: 


Cash Flow Machine Fundamentals: How to Make Safe, Reliable Income for Early Retirement and Passive Income (Amazon) 

Negotiate to Win-Win: A Simple System That Creates Incredible Results (Amazon)

Passive Income for Doctors: The Covered Call Prescription for Prosperity (Amazon)

The 20 Keys To Pure Relationships: Strategies for romantic, friendship, family and business relationships (Amazon)

The Secrets Of Business (Amazon) https://amzn.to/3IS0pk7


Podcast: 


Wealth Architect Podcast: https://wealtharchitectpodcast.com/

Websites:  


Mark Yegge: Markyegge.com

Cash Flow Machine:https://cashflowmachine.io/

Destiny Creation:Destinycreation.com

Hacking Money:  HackingMoney.com

Light Circle: Light Circle


YouTube Channels: 


Mark Yegge - Wealth Architect:  https://www.youtube.com/@MarkYeggeWealthArchitect 

Covered Calls channel: https://www.youtube.com/@coveredcalls 

Mastermind Group channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Light_Circle



Support the show

Speaker 1:

Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Catch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work, Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast changing the way we think about money. I'm pleased to be joined today by Mark Yeagey. Mark is an author, podcaster and the director and CEO at Destiny Creation and Cashflow Machine. In this episode, we'll be discussing Mark's insights on how we change the way we think about money and building wealth. Mark, welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast. Thanks for joining us today.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, Tony. Let's rock and roll today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Glad to have you here. So you know, to start off, you know, tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your origin story?

Speaker 3:

I basically grew up in a typical middle-class family. Blah, blah, blah. I won't bore you with that, but I will jump to the theme that I learned about money at a very early age. It was a topic of discussion at dinner, mostly around real estate in the stock market. My dad taught me at a very early age how to read the stock tables in the stock market.

Speaker 3:

It was my dad taught me at a very early age you know how to read the stock tables in the Wall Street Journal and how to do research, and I started reading books by people like Edward Thorpe, who wrote a book called Beat the Market, and I learned and that's basically what I still build on today is I build on the giants that came before me and it's I've. You know, I bought my first car with it, carried me through high school and college and I started my own New York or Wall Street brokerage firm and sold it, and now I run hedge funds and help people learn how to trade. So that's the quick summary of a 45-year teenage years to where I am now something like that.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's awesome. So I think one thing that's of interest to people is that it was reading and learning that helped you build your career, and I think that's important when we talk about financial education is that you can learn from the past and people who've been successful.

Speaker 3:

That's so true. I mean, one of the things, tony, is that we don't get taught money. We don't get taught it in school, and this is what I'm doing now is, you know, I don't need to do it anymore, but I really enjoy teaching people and watching their eyes open when they learn about money, because not everybody really understands it and it doesn't have to be hard. The reason I think it's hard is because I think they want it to be hard. I think people want to make it so that it's intimidating. They use big words like diversification and asset allocation, and you know a lot of people are intimidated by those things and once you get your brain around them, it's no big deal. Plus, there's a lot of myths on Wall Street that maybe we can get into here, because, well, you know, we're not taught in school how to you know how to handle our money, but I don't know about you.

Speaker 3:

I use money pretty much every day, so I should know how to use it. And then when we are taught, we hear you know things from Kramer and CNBC and magazines, and you know those people are not always right. I mean, in fact, you know there's a study done that Kramer is wrong about 71% of the time. So you know, if that's where you're getting your financial education is from people that are selling advertising and trying to get eyeballs, you know you're at a big disadvantage. So it pays to study this subject and it doesn't have to be hard, you know you could just start with basics like how to save money and how to invest and how to create passive income at some point, but it doesn't have to be really intimidating, and I know that's part of what your work is all about too, so I applaud that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely, and I think you hit on so many important things. There is like well, take diversification. If you just tell people don't put all your eggs in one basket, they get it. You know, spread things around a little bit.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, talk about diversification.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah, yeah, Because to me.

Speaker 3:

There's a big myth about it and what they tell you and I'm not sure you agree. But in studying this for 45 years, I don't believe in diversification the way it's taught. I call it diversification because what happens is you end up putting your money in, let's say, a mutual fund. Now, a mutual fund is great because you've got a professional manager handling it that gets paid out of your money and the idea is that that person is supposed to handle your money better than you handle it. Because they're, in theory, in the know, Fine, but they invest in 500 stocks. Well, there's no way they know about 500 stocks. I mean, there's no way they can know about 20 stocks at an in-depth level where they can make decisions. And so you know. I did a study back and I think it was 2013 and 2014, and I studied the s p 500 for those two years. The total amount they were up was 29.2.

Speaker 3:

But when you know, which is pretty good if you divide it by two, it's like 14 percent a year. That's more than the typical average, which is about nine and a half nine percent a year for the S&P 500 over the last, say, 70 years or whatever. But when you really study it, the top 10 stocks over those two years were up 185 percent. So you think, well, if these guys are so good, how come they're not just identifying the top 10 stocks? You think, well, if these guys are so good, how come they're not just identifying the top 10 stocks? Why do we have to have the other 490? That drags down the 185 percent back down to a 29 percent level.

Speaker 3:

And so the goal is to really get what's called alpha, which is exceeding what the market is doing, and you concentrate on those names that can give you that outsized alpha. Now, easier said than done, of course, Right, but that's you know like. Otherwise, you're just putting your money into something and all they do is throw their money in and they go play golf, right, Because it's just 500 stocks that are in the S&P 500 and there's no real skill to doing that kind of management in my opinion. So I always say this, and I know I've already gone too long on this particular topic, but it's diversify among asset classes. So have some real estate, have a little gold or Bitcoin, have some stocks, have some bonds, have some dividend stocks and have some real estate. Have different investments, but inside those investments, concentrate so that you can become an expert on what's going on inside those categories.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I think that's awesome advice and I agree with you completely that you know. You know people think about diversification in a certain way, but it really means something else, and I think that's so true across the financial services spectrum is, you know, we think, you know, like I come from life insurance and people think, well, life insurance is an investment because it can do all these things. And you know, I'm always like, well, yeah, but it's still an insurance contract at the end of the day that has some features packed onto it, but it's not a retirement account, it's not designed for that. So I wanted to back up and ask you, because, you know, one of the things I'm trying to do on the show is help people understand concepts that they hear about. You mentioned that you had a hedge fund earlier, so can you tell us a little bit? What is a hedge fund? What does it actually do?

Speaker 3:

A hedge fund is essentially a pool of money, kind of like a mutual fund with active management In this case it's I who is managing it and it's basically a mutual fund for rich people. Really, if you want to put it down, so you have to be what's called an accredited investor, which means you have to have a certain amount of net worth, which is generally considered a million dollars in net worth, total worth, without including your home, because now, if you include your home, you don't have big debt against it. It's gone up quite a bit. So the idea is, this was created after little old ladies were losing their money in the Depression, and so they created these laws in 1933 and 34 and said we'll do a carve out for exceptions for rich people and if, because rich people should know better, like if they put all their money in something and they lose it, well, they should have known better, because you know they presumably know about money to be able to get rich, and so that's what. That's what a hedge fund is.

Speaker 2:

Fantastic. Well, that's great Cause I think so many people hear about hedge funds but they don't really know what it is, and it gets to that point where you don't want to admit I don't really know what a hedge fund is, but it sounds cool.

Speaker 3:

And the idea is that they were hatched at a point in time it no longer applies, but at a point in time where, if you bought stock, you would hedge against it in case the stock went down, so you would use some kind of anti-policy like a put, or you would sell calls against it or do some other sophisticated strategies, or do pairs trading, where you buy Microsoft but you sell Apple, for example, and so you would have a hedge on your bet, so you wouldn't be totally exposed to the market. But these days, hedge funds are set up to do all kinds of things. There's Bitcoin hedge funds and gold hedge funds and aggressive hedge funds and private equity hedge funds.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, yeah, that's awesome, and I think what this is important for people too is to realize that some of these things get pretty complex, and just because you might hear a simple explanation doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be simple or something for you. And I don't want to get into the whole. You know rich people should know better, because then we could talk about Bernie Madoff and take up the rest of the episode, but he does remain a really striking example of rich people don't always know better.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, they sure don't. And you know, and I think you know, bernie Madoff may not have started out as a fraud, but I think what happens when you're managing a stack of money? The temptation is very easy. You can see it, possibly if you agree with this. But in politics, right, you got a stack of unlimited amount of money, or certainly a bigger amount of money than you're used to, and then you start to realize that you didn't do so well. So you start to fake your books and you say you have to keep up the lifestyle and that's got to be paid for by somebody, otherwise people start to question your uh, your, your, your returns, and then pretty much, you're stuck. You can't back out, right, you're, you're. One thing leads to the next and you know, 60 billion dollars goes poof, you know. So, yeah, it's people's hard-earned money.

Speaker 2:

So I feel for them yeah, I, I, I do as well. And I think you said something that's really important that I think we should highlight is that it starts with a small thing and that that small thing it's like one decision and then all of a sudden you're in too deep and you can't really get out. And I think that gets into habits when we talk about money habits, you know it relates to that is, you know you take these small steps and it's going to impact the changes down the road. And I agree with you, you know, from what I understand about Bernie Madoff is that you know that wasn't his intent. He was a really good manager at first, At first.

Speaker 3:

So I mean I went into his trading shop on Wall Street. I mean we had meetings there and he had quite an operation. There's a lot of people with a lot of Bloomberg terminals trading away and you know he was revered on Wall Street. He was a former chairman of the Nasdaq and, you know, very highly respected one of the greatest firms, you know most most reputable firms. You know they did a lot of business with my firm at the time and you know you couldn't have imagined that this guy was, you know, cooking the books for all those years. You just couldn't imagine it but that these kinds of things happened. And they have happened and they, you know it just happened with Sam bankman freed at at ftx, you know, on a cryptocurrency exchange.

Speaker 2:

so yeah, definitely don't want to get into cryptocurrency right now. So you know um, one of the things you talk about is time. Why do you feel that time is our most valuable asset?

Speaker 3:

well, I mean, we can go. We can go down a big rabbit hole on the concept of time and whether it even exists, but I can tell you, in investing, at least in the construct that we have, it does exist, and so to me, time is an exponent of what you end up doing. So there's lots of studies out there and you know these studies. But if you just start investing when you're 20 and you stop investing when you're 30 and you compare and you let time go until you're 65, or you start investing when you're 30 and you invest the same amount that you know the other person in their 20s would have invested for that 10 years, you won't have as much money as the person with the first 10 years, that 20 to 30 age, even though you've invested for 35 years. The power of that initial 10 years is exponential compared to the slightly comparatively geometric progression of starting later. So while we're young, we should be investing, but the problem is we don't see the future 45 years from then, and that we have to put money away. We're more into having fun and doing things that are right in front of us without having that 40-year perspective. But boy, I'll tell you, if you start investing early and you just keep at it and you compound that. It's exponential. I call it financial Well. I call it financial Well. I call it something different than you probably want to say here.

Speaker 3:

But I think it's ridiculous when you look at these numbers. I play with the numbers all the time. For example, if you can make 2% a month, which by most standards is pretty high it's certainly higher than the average of the S&P 500. But 2% a month is let's just round it and call it 20% a year. It's compounding on itself, so it's about 27. But let's just say it's 2% a month and that's 24 a year.

Speaker 3:

If you put $100,000 in and get 2% a month without losses for 10 years, you end up compounding that to a figure of 1 point. Let's call it 1.1 million. But if you can get 2 more percent during the month in other words you can get 4%, which at this point I don't believe inflation is 3% a year I think it's 15 to 20% a year if we're lucky, and so you have to exceed the rate of inflation, otherwise you lose your buying power. If you can get 4% on that same $100,000, it turns into almost $11 million of just getting double the amount of money for that period of time. So, even if you say that's crazy, and how can you be possibly thinking that the power of compounding is amazing?

Speaker 2:

The power of compounding. Remember, before the show, there's a phrase that pretty much every guest says, and that is it. Phrase that pretty much every guest says, and that is it, if you, if you remember the old garage and mark show where there was like a word of the day, do you remember? That show and yeah, like a duck or something would fall from the ceiling. I think I'm going to do that and every time somebody says compound interest, I'm going to have the duck fall from the ceiling, that's great if I get if I can figure out the technology there.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome, and I think that is a super important lesson for people. Even if you haven't started saving, the best day to start is today. That's right. I mean, it'd be great if we could all start it when we were 20. But if you're 30, you still have time. What if you're 50,. You've got time Exactly, maybe just not quite as much.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and the thing is, if you do start, it doesn't matter how much you start with. It's the habit that you form and the mentality and the brain waves that you create to say look, I'm putting aside $100 a month and you don't realize it, but you won't need that $100 a month. If that $100 sticks in your wallet, it's easy to take out. But if you put it away into an investment account and you say I can't touch that until I'm whatever age, it's a mentality, it's a habit and it's a great habit to have, especially the earlier you do it. So it doesn't matter how much it is, just, even if it's five bucks a week, do something get into that habit Exactly.

Speaker 2:

It's the best habit you can have. So you know. One of the things you talk about is passive income. Why is replacing active income with passive income helpful.

Speaker 3:

Well, I mean, Tony, I don't know about you, but I'm not getting any younger.

Speaker 2:

I wish, and so.

Speaker 3:

I'm pretty sure nobody listening or watching your podcast here is getting any younger. So the older we get, the less mobility we have, maybe the less energy we have. We got a lot of experience and knowledge, but we are running out of that vitality that we might have had when we were 20, 25 years old. So you want to be able to to harness that, and so you want to be able to work hard while you're younger. That's the active income. But as you get a little bit older, you want to be able to enjoy the fruits of that labor. So that's part of why the investing early game is important, but it's also why shifting your mindset to a passive income strategy I mean, that's really what retirement is for most people right. They learn, they earn, they save, they invest, they retire and supposedly they've done all those other things to build up enough assets to pay them while they sit on their butt or go on vacation or play golf or go to the spa.

Speaker 3:

That's the concept of passive income. So you don't have to actually be actively working. You are just going to town and letting your money do the working right. So that's the concept that I talk about. So much is that you want to have passive income to replace your active income at some point. And why should it be 65 or 67 years old? When things are creaking and the knees don't work and things like that, you should be enjoying your life during your life, not working 45, 50 years, so that you can enjoy, you know, 10 or 15 sitting in front of the couch watching, you know.

Speaker 2:

TV that's awesome advice and I've heard that from so many people on the show is you know that you want to do all these things, you want to save, but you also want to enjoy your life as you go along. But I think I agree with you completely and I highlighted this in my new book is you know the concept of financial independence? Because, as you say, it's not really about the age, it's about where you have enough passive income that you can either reduce or not even rely on active income. Right, that is an important number.

Speaker 3:

And a lot of people don't realize that they're so close, right, if we're just a few changes. So I call it playing offense and defense, tony. So offense is money coming in, defense is money going out. And you know defense wins championships, they say in the in football. So you have to have good defense.

Speaker 3:

Well, the problem is if most people, if they start out making let's call it $40,000 a year, you know they spend year. If the cost of living is $40,000 a year, they pretty much spend it. But if they all of a sudden in the next five years get up to $80,000 a year and they start spending $80,000, they haven't really gotten ahead. They've lived a decent amount of life already, but they haven't really gotten ahead as far as saving. But if they had kept their standard of living at $40,000 and not bought the bigger house and a nicer car that depreciates and spent money on nicer trips or first class flights or whatever, now that $40,000 that's extra could have been going to work, creating a nest egg for passive income at a later time, with that compounding that we talked about Falls from the sky, right? So the idea is you don't have to work for money forever. You're really close, probably If you just tweak a few things, downsize your house, don't buy the Rolex watch.

Speaker 3:

Don't buy the Gucci purse that you've been eyeing for a long time, you know a good purse from Target will work just fine. If you want to, you know, afford the Gucci purse later on in life, great you'll be able to. But if you have the, I heard an interview with Jeff Bezos and his mother told him when he was young he had like $17 to spend and he wanted to go buy something a baseball glove or something. And she said you know, you can go take that 17 and buy the baseball glove and you'll have a baseball glove and you won't have the 17. Or you could not buy the baseball glove and you'll always be able to buy the baseball glove and you'll have the 17. And it totally shifted the way he thought about money just with that interaction, because then he realized there's potential in money. If you spend it, there's no more potential.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I agree with you completely and I think people oftentimes miss that one is you know there's a lifestyle creep, but it's also managing your expenses in something that's often in your controls. You know. Even just delaying a purchase, you know, like If you're buying a new car every four years, maybe buy a new car every six years, something that's tolerable for you but that also makes that small change. So, mark, your thing is the cash flow machine. Tell us a little bit about it. What is the cash flow machine? You know, tell us a little bit about it. What is the cash flow? What is the cash flow machine system?

Speaker 3:

Well, I came up with the name because I was like well, what is a good metaphor for getting money out of something? And I always thought like an ATM. So I kind of think of my program as an ATM. You put money in and then you start to take money out and hopefully that money becomes a passive stream of income. But it doesn't have to be so. In the beginning, where you don't have a huge amount of money, you put money into it and then you learn how to compound your interest. You learn it.

Speaker 3:

It's an income investing program and, without getting too complex for your viewers and listeners here, I just want to point out that it's a stock buying program. So you own an asset, kind of like a house. Let's say you buy a house not to live in but to rent out to make income on it, and then you get the tenant and the tenant pays you rent. So when the tenant pays you rent. That's your income. Now, do you care that much that the house is going up or down in value while the tenant's there? No, you didn't buy it for that. You bought it for the income, and that's what the cashflow machine is. You put money into an asset.

Speaker 3:

In our case, we put it into a stock like Amazon or Apple or Tesla or Google, and then we use that asset to find somebody, like a tenant, that's going to pay us for the right to do something at a later date. It's called an option, and I could go into the whole concept of having an option. But the option for us, as the investor, provides the income. So we own Amazon and we sell somebody else the right to buy our Amazon at a predetermined price before a predetermined date, and that price that they pay to get into that trade with us is our income and we just do that over and over again. We target two to four percent a month. We always get the income as long as we're selling calls against it and the stock can fluctuate. So there is, of course, a risk that the stock can go down and the stock can go up, and that fluctuation is what creates the market and sometimes we're right, sometimes we're wrong, but we always collect the rent from that tenant.

Speaker 2:

So that's awesome and so I think that's really helpful for people is to understand that some of these things you can hear about, you know are helpful for you if you learn a system and understand the rules, and that's you know. From what I understand, the cashflow machine system helps people understand how to actually do it, because options, as you point out, can be super risky, but if you understand what you're doing, you know they're still going to be risky but you can reduce your risk with them.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, just a quick example would be let's let's say, a stock like Amazon, and this is not the right numbers. But let's say a stock is trading at one hundred dollars and you find somebody out there that doesn't have the $100 to buy the stock, but he has $2. And so he comes to you and he says hey, tony, you've got this Amazon. I'll tell you what. I'll give you $2 if you promise to sell it to me anytime in the next month. Let's call it for $100. Because I don't have the $100 now. So now, what does he want? Well, he wants the stock to go up. He wants the option to be able to buy it from you for $100. So he gives you the $2 and you're like thank you, that's my income. You just made 2% and lowered your basis on it from $100 to $98. He came out of pocket for the two bucks.

Speaker 3:

So what does he want? Well, he wants to be able to make more than $2 on his investment. He wants the stock to go up to $110. If it goes up to 110, he comes to you and goes Tony, thank you so much, but I have a deal with you that you're going to sell me that stock for $100. And then he turns around and sells it for 110. So he takes his $2 investment and he makes it into a $10 investment. He makes 500%. That's a lot of years of S&P 500 style returns. But there's also the risk that the stock doesn't move at all or it goes down. If it does, he loses his whole $2. But no matter what happens, you kept the $2, right. The stock could go down. You still own the stock. You find somebody else like him that's going to give you another $2. So you give up the right for the stock to go up to $10, but you always get that income.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that's awesome, and I think this is another way to think about what you do with your money. You know, don't do this yourself. Make sure you know I'm not endorsing Mark's program by any means, but it is a program to consider. You know, learn some educational system, follow a system with somebody who knows what they're talking about. This is not somebody you follow on TikTok, you know, but somebody like Mark, who's got 40 years of experience on Wall Street and you know, understands how mark, who's got 40 years of experience on wall street and you know, understands how the system works and can explain it to you. Because that's the big thing. If you don't understand the cash flow machine system or you don't understand some other system, you don't have any business doing that. So I really appreciate you, um sharing that with us, because I think this is an important concept for people to understand, because they hear about options, they hear about all these different things, but they it's hard to find real information on it. That breaks down. So I appreciate you breaking that down for us.

Speaker 3:

Sure, one more. Let me just put an epilogue on that, and that is that system that I just kind of explained is called covered call writing. You write covered calls it's a call option and then you write it, meaning you sell covered calls. You could find tons of free information out there on covered calls, right, tons of free stuff. The problem is, I don't think very many people I haven't seen a full system on it, certainly not one that's deep like ours goes into a system for what happens if the market goes up or goes down or goes sideways.

Speaker 3:

How do you pick your stock? How do you choose the right market? How do you find the right place to buy the stock? Right, because anybody can give you free information on YouTube. But it's going deep and learning, and that's the whole concept of what you do. Right, you're not just like anybody on YouTube making a video about you know, save some money. You've got a systematic approach and a system, and that's the important thing is, systems have rules and parameters that help you navigate the emotional roller coaster that money can be, and so that's a really important part. So, yeah, you don't have to endorse my system, and in fact, I'm not telling anybody. I have the best thing going either. I think it's the best thing I've found. But do your own research, figure out who else is better. No-transcript comes in and it eventually replaces your active income with passive income. So just wanted to polish that little thought off there.

Speaker 2:

Oh no, that's awesome and I think that's super helpful, and I think the big thing that I hope people really take away from this is to follow a system and guidelines and rules. You know, set up what you're trying to do, stick with it. It's just like anything you know. Know your system, know your rules. You know let's take. You know you mentioned football. You know it would be really hard if you had two teams and they were playing by different rules. That's so true. You know the game would be pretty crazy. Yeah, you know, it was like that when I played with my son when he was four years old. He invented his own rules, so it made it a little more challenging, sure, but you know, I mean that's the basic takeaway. So, mark, let's.

Speaker 3:

Well shoot, I have so many that I could go with. I would say that financial education is more important than anything else in the money game. Just learning about the concept of money gets you more attuned to being able to utilize it and save it and invest and create a lifestyle of your dreams.

Speaker 2:

Way better than anything else, financial education, create a lifestyle of your dreams way better than anything else. Financial education, that's awesome, yeah, and clearly for everybody watching and listening knows that's what I'm passionate about, which is the whole purpose of this podcast. So you know, I love that. You said that what is one simple thing people can do each year to set themselves up for financial success year to set themselves up for financial success.

Speaker 3:

Well, the easy answer is the same answer I just gave you Commit to learning some new things every year about money. But I'll change, and that is to begin now. To begin now, whatever it is, whether it's beginning saving, beginning investing, beginning learning. Begin now, I would think, would be the mantra that every year somebody should do. And if you forgot to begin now this year, you better start today to begin now, because next year is a year you'll never get back.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome. That's great advice. What is one habit that people can change when it comes to their money?

Speaker 3:

habit that people can change when it comes to their money. I would say the habit of being closed-minded and negative. Right, money is fully of emotion because we work hard for it, we save it, we put a lot into it. We're bombarded with messages every day of how we need to spend it and use it and buy this and buy that, and so it's got a lot of emotional charge and so we can tend to be scarce from that emotional charge or abundant from that emotional charge. Most people go to scarcity. They'd rather not lose money because the wiring of our brains is the pain is two or three times more potent from losing money than it is from gaining money, the pleasure in gaining it. So that's how most people are wired.

Speaker 3:

It's a negative thing. Money's negative. There's even an ostrich complex where people put their head in the sand and they just hope it's going to all work out. Just be positive about it and make it work for you and use it as a tool for your lifestyle change. Be a good steward of your money. I know you like that one.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think you said something that is really critical for people to understand money as a tool it's. It'll help you achieve certain things where money isn't in a means. I mean it's a means to an end, but not the end result. That's right. Don't be ruled by your money, I guess is probably a good way to put it. What money myth are you trying to break?

Speaker 3:

Well, we talked about the diversification one, so let's talk about the safety one. So they tell us that if we put our money in a nice allocation 60-40 allocation or whatever of stocks and bonds and mutual fund and gold and real estate, that everything's going to work out great. And they tell you that some of the safest money that you can get is in treasury bills, treasury bonds, treasuries US government backs those like they're safe, and so a couple of years ago if you'd put your money into a treasury bond you would have gotten two, two and a half percent, something like that. And then the Fed started raising rates and the interest rate environment has completely changed. We have an inflationary environment. So the Fed and the world and the environment has had the has had an increase in the rate of money, the cost of money. It costs more to borrow money now. So what has happened? Well, there's an inverse relationship between the price of a bond and the rate of inflation. So if inflation is being increased, the price of that bond decreases because people can go buy different bonds with higher inflation. So they have to lower the price. It's a higher rate of return. I mean they have to lower the price of those old bonds that are paying 2%, to be comparable to the ones that are paying 4% or 5% or 6%. So as the Fed, over the last couple of years, has raised rates, the price of those bonds has decreased, and it hasn't decreased a little bit While you were making your 2%.

Speaker 3:

Your bond has gone down 50%, tony, and so this safe money that's backed by the US government and is so safe, it's great and just pays you 2%. You ended up losing 48% on that while you got your 2%, and it's going to take you a long time to make that up. Now that's fine, but this is supposed to be the safest money out there, and it's obviously not the safest money. So be careful about weight, the way things are packaged. Even programs like mine where I target a certain uh you know rate of return. There are risks, but you have to learn that some of the things that you think are safe are the most unsafe things that are out there. So that would be something, something that I'd like to change in the zeitgeist of what people think.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think that's really important for people, because I think people often miss that as they hear something about something or they look at the surface packaging and they don't get into the details. And it's always important to look at the details. It's like if you were to sign a contract, hopefully you would look at the contract before you sign it. We all know that, like, hey, if we sign an agreement, it's probably a good idea to look at the agreement, unless I guess it's terms and conditions on a website and then we all click away, just click it, accept it. But you know, I mean, that's really the same thing you know with your money. That that's, you know.

Speaker 2:

To me, that's what you're talking about is that you know, before you buy an investment, product, service, whatever you want to call it is to think about what you're actually getting, understand how it works. That doesn't mean to be, you know, stand there, uh, you know with. You know, uh, fixed in place. You know, go out and learn something. That gets back to what you were talking about earlier financial education. Learn something, uh, and move forward. So, mark, you know, let's get out the time machine for a minute. What advice would you give your younger self if you could go back in time, knowing what you know now about money.

Speaker 3:

Well, obviously everybody would love to answer that question with buy Amazon or buy Microsoft or buy Bitcoin, and those are the ones that come to mind. But it goes back to where we started this whole concept and it is to start now. If I went back to my 20-year-old self, I would say look, take whatever you've got and put it into investments. Watch your investments wisely, and you have plenty of time to let them go, so let them go and learn the learn the game early yeah, and I think you said one word there people need to understand wisely, wisely.

Speaker 2:

And that gets back to the education education of anything, and you know we were talking about this. Any rule, I mean, any game you play, you need to understand the rules. And it gets back to even about treasuries. You know, understand the rules. They're out there. You can learn how treasuries work. I mean, the treasury website, I think, has a lot of resources and tools, if I recall correctly that. Talk about how it works, read the stuff. That's what it's there for. You know, we spend more time thinking about the new television we're going to buy than we do thinking about these investments that are going to make a whole lot more difference for us. One of the things, just a funny story is lately.

Speaker 3:

We're sitting here and Bitcoin is hitting all-time highs. So I know you may not want to talk about it, but I think it's instructive, because it is an investment, or at least it's being treated like that by some people. I look at it more as insurance, but it depends on how you look at it. But now people are asking.

Speaker 3:

I've been talking about Bitcoin for three years because I studied it. I dismissed it for a long time. It was a scam, it was a Ponzi scheme, it was for the kids or whatever. And then I started to study it and I've got a thousand plus hours into understanding Bitcoin right. So I didn't just go dismiss it like I did in the beginning. I shouldn't have. That would be one thing I wish I could go back and do.

Speaker 3:

But here I am and I've been telling people about it for three years now and people are you know. Now they're starting to ask me about it again. Well, you know you should have asked me about it three years ago when I was trying to explain it to you, but people were fighting me. So I don't even try to talk to people most of the time about it. You're going to be ready for any investment Bitcoin or the other junk that's out there in cryptocurrency when you're ready. But if you're going to be ready, put a thousand hours into it. Certainly put a hundred hours into it so you can speak like you know what's going on.

Speaker 2:

But don't just take a soundbite off a TV and go back and look to put more time into planning your vacation than you spend on your financial education. Yeah, and I think you said you know that's valuable. Put a thousand hours into it. You know that's what they say. You know how do you get to Carnegie Hall. You practice. Get into it. Now with Bitcoin, do you have any resources either on your website or you recommend where people can learn something useful about Bitcoin? Yeah, there's a ton of stuff.

Speaker 3:

Let's start. My podcast is called Wealth Architect Podcast and I did a series I think it's eight modules on it. It's a free thing. You just go and watch those videos on it and I just present my belief on Bitcoin and try to educate you from all the different sides of it. But there's other free ones on YouTube and I would say, if you really want to learn, there's a guy that most people probably haven't heard of. His name is Michael Saylor. Michael Saylor is probably going to be the richest man in the world within five or 10 years, I believe, because Michael Saylor took his MIT physics education and applied it to Bitcoin. He really got behind it. He's been talking about it just a little longer than I have.

Speaker 3:

I learned a lot of things from Michael Saylor. Michael Saylor runs a company called MicroStrategy, and MicroStrategy basically put all their chips in on Bitcoin three years ago and he's borrowed money to do it and leveraged and built his company around it now and he's got something called Saylor University S-A-Y-L-O-R. Saylor University is free education. Michael Saylor is a generous person, at least from what I can tell. You never know about anybody, but from what I can tell, he's a generous person who's using his wealth and his resources to put up free things for people, and on there there is Bitcoin education for free. So don't take my word for it. Go to the original guy that's, you know, going to be a trillionaire and I believe and he's already one of the one of the you know richest people already. Might as well learn from that guy. He's he certainly, you know he wished he bought it in 2012 too, but he passed on it, just like I did.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, and I think that's important. And so, for people watching and listening, I'll make sure I have the link to Saylor University in the show notes. But, as Mark mentioned, he went to MIT. So this is somebody who you know has the education to understand, because, at the end of the day, all these investments and everything else, it's about math and contracts and understanding patterns and everything else, and you know. So, somebody like Michael Saylor versus somebody who's 20 years old with a TikTok, you know, michael may know a little bit more you know, with an MIT degree in physics.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, Certainly has a lot of credibility when it comes to the way he talks about it. You can pull up Michael Saylor on YouTube and watch his videos and I think they're mesmerizing because he puts it in a way that really makes it understandable. Right, he talks about energy and momentum and all these other things using physics, but he makes it really understandable. So that's what got me interested in it. And there's a book called the Bitcoin Standard by Seyfeddin Ammous, a-m-m-o-u-s. And if you really want to go down this rabbit hole, it's a fantastic book by an economist named Seyfeddin Ammous. You can go to seyfeddincom and he's written three amazing books the Fiat Standard to talk about our fiat currency and the problems that we're having with it. Now we're starting to see it with inflation.

Speaker 3:

The Bitcoin Standard, which I believe is his first book. And then now he's got a book on economics which really studies economics, called the Principles of Economics. I believe it's called it studies economics from the proper perspective, which is the Austrian perspective, not the Keynesian perspective. The Austrian perspective to me is a little bit more common sense, that you can't make money out of nothing and expect it to have value. The Keynesian is like just keep printing money and we'll be able to afford whatever we need to afford and that's what we're operating on is this Keynesian system, but the Austrian system always has won out in every economy throughout the ages of humans.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, that would make another amazing discussion. I do want to have an episode on economics at some point, because I think it's an important topic we don't talk about as much you know. So, Mark, to wrap up, what is your number one tip on changing the way we think about money?

Speaker 3:

Embrace abundance. Embrace abundance because there's not a finite pie, tony, of money, right, certainly, the way the government prints it it's infinite. Right, but that's not the point. The point is, just because you have money doesn't mean I have less. See, we live in a multiplied world, right, there's as much air as we need. There's really as much water as we need, right. And just because you have air and you're breathing doesn't mean I don't. Right, there's an abundance of things that we need and we need money, because money is energy, there's an abundance of energy. So if you go at it from that standpoint and look at money as something that is a tool, like we talked about, but it's also an abundance measure and it's a way of living our life with abundance, that is a better way to look at it than a scarcity mindset where you're afraid of losing and you're hanging on to it and you're negative about it. You know there's plenty of money for us all. Let's just go out and get some for ourselves so that we can transform our lives and make it better.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, 100%. That's wonderful advice. So, mark, where can people learn more about you? I think, if I recall correctly, you wrote a book. Find out more about the cash flow machine.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I've actually written seven. I don't know, I have this thing about writing books. But yeah, I've got a book on Amazon called the cash flow machine fundamentals. It's the first book on on it. It's it's basically, if you want, if you're interested in understanding, uh, our system, it's a basic book. For sure. It's not for for the in-depth knowledge. That's why we have our courses and our mastermind groups. But listen, you can go. I'll just give out our, our general website it'sflowmachineio. That's it. How about that? How about cashflowmachineio?

Speaker 2:

Well, you know, I'll put it in the show notes as well, so people will be able to access that. I have access to Mark's books links, as well as to Mark's podcast, which you mentioned earlier, the Wealth Architect Podcast, where Mark has guests on, as well as to Mark's podcast, which you mentioned earlier, the Wealth Architect podcast, where Mark has guests on as well as explains concepts. So I highly recommend checking out his podcast. So, mark, thanks for being on the Get Ready Money podcast today.

Speaker 3:

It's been a pleasure, tony, and thanks again for what you do. I really like your systematic approach that you have to teaching people the basics about money and how they can turn their life around with a really cool get ready system. I think it's great.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome. Well, I appreciate it. I appreciate your time and you sharing your insights today, and thank you everyone, as always, for tuning into this episode of the Get Ready Money podcast. If you liked this episode and learned something, please share it with a friend and be sure to subscribe to the Get Ready Money podcast. Until next time, let's change the way we think about money. You.

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Tony Steuer

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