Ep 230: The Investor's Secret: Live Like You're Already Retired

Hey there, and welcome to Money and You. I'm Michelle Perkins, your host. My search for more fulfilling work led me to career in business coaching, where I stumbled upon a game changing discovery. Money issues often start with our mindset and habits.

You see, our relationship with money is the key to overcoming those frustrating financial obstacles. As an entrepreneur, coach, and problem solver, I'm passionate about helping you create a great relationship with money, because turns out that's the foundation for a limit free life. Each week on Money in You, I speak with amazing guests about all things money, mindset, practical tips, and everything in between. We're here to give you new insights, education and empowerment, so money can be one of your favorite relationships.

So join us for some lively conversations and let's transform your financial life together. Hello, Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Money and You Show. I'm Michelle Perkins. You're a host, and I'm thrilled today to bring a great guest to the show.

I have somebody who I think you're really going to enjoy. Has a very very popular financial podcast which will give you the name of In just a minute, and yeah, he's a real leader in the industry and somebody who has a tremendous experience. And he's written a marvelous book called Money for the Rest of Us. And I think that says a lot just in the title, so I think everybody will get much out of the show.

So without further ado, I'm going to introduce you to David Stein. David helps individuals become better and more confident investors through his writing, audio, and video. He hosts the personal finance podcast Money for the Rest of Us. The show reaches more than forty thousand listeners per episode as over ten million downloads.

The podcast has received mention from The New York Times, Forbes, the chicag Tribune, in the US News and World Report. David also provides investment insights and model portfolios to a thousand members of the Money for the rest of Us plus community. David is the author of Money for the rest of Us, Ten Questions to Master Successful Investing. Prior to launching the podcast, David was the chief investment strategist and chief portfolio strategist at Fund Evaluation Group, LLC, a thirty three billion dollar investment advisory firm.

I'm going to go ahead and stop there, even though the bio goes longer, and invite David in and we'll get to talking. David. Welcome, Thanks, great to be here, Michelle. Yeah, great to have you.

So yeah, you're in a lovely, peaceful looking location, and so I'm just I'm finding my piece just looking through your windows. So thank you for that. David, tell us a little about how you you know, how you kind of progressed from being what sounds like a very successful fund manager to what you're doing now. For sure, I left my prior advisory firm.

It's been see fourteen years now, so I was in my mid forties. I was a senior partner at our firm. I was our chief investment strategist, and I, frankly I was bored. So there it was.

You know, I'd spent so many years saying, we as we know, built out our firm, we had sold it, we'd bought it back, and I just I was ready for a new challenge. So I left and my partners bought me out. And it took me several years to figure it out. But what I found is I did miss the teaching.

So I launched a podcast in twenty fourteen, so it's been twelve years now, and it's it's different because but I essentially at this point work with my kids. So all three kids are involved in our family business. Uh. That's that's been super exciting to work with them, you know, really the past four years and longer if you count when they were in school and such and so, yeah, that you know, our mission is just to help individual investors, not not only investing wise, but how to think about money, how not to worry about it so much, and so we address a lot of various philosophical topics in our podcast.

Yeah, I love that because I love the philosophical side of money. I think we talked about that. I was really excited to have you on for that reason, especially you know you mentioned something that is, you know, I try to help people worry less about their money. And I know when I hear that, I'm like, I can imagine a lot of people going, well, how the heck can you do that?

Money is just a huge worry all the time. What what do you mean by that? Well, first off, money itself is it's completely made up. It's just something to keep score.

And it took me a while to realize this, but you know, mus money is created electronically when banks make loans, the government can make money, and so and the value money can dissipate very very quickly, as we've seen with inflation, and so we don't want to spend a whole of time worrying about something that's make belief. What we want in our life is abundance, and how do we get abundance in our life? Yes, sometimes when we talk about what abundance is, you know, we have all of these what I call resources, capital, resources, and so often we just focus on capital being money, but our life energy is a resource, our social network, our social capital is a resource.

Our our talents, human capital that to resource and what you know, we take some of those resources and we do have to convert them sometimes to but there are many ways that when something is incredibly abundant often doesn't cost any money at all. It's free, and so we don't want to get so tied in and locked in. So it's all about money because money is very ephemeral and can go away very quickly in terms of its value. Yeah, I really find that that's one of the fundamentals is to define abundance for you whatever that means.

I mean it means different things to different people. But to really dig into that, because I think there's sort of an idea that, yeah, I'll figure out what abundance is to me after I have enough money to sit back and figure it out. And I think it's the opposite. I mean, I think you really have to understand otherwise you're just chasing something that probably won't deliver in the end.

I mean, money's great, don't get me wrong. It opens a lot of doors and creates a lot of choice for people. But as you're saying, there are a lot of people with quite a bit of money who don't have the abundance that somebody, well at least that I would want. I see it all the time around me.

So yeah, I think it's a really interesting question, and I kind of love that you help people understand that well when you. Think about it. So there's economists back in the thirties called John His name is John Maynard Keynes, and he wrote an essay about what life would be like in one hundred years, so essentially twenty thirty, and in there he saw the trends you could see that the global economy that there would be. It would be so productive and there would be so much of everything that people would only have to work three or four hours a week.

Wow, because all our needs would be met. And he said, yeah, there'd be some that would continue working, and he all them purposeful money makers, that those are just like to make money just for money's sake, to keep score. But the rest of us would would basically we would have everything we need. And so we know it's twenty twenty six, we're not there in the sense of what changed.

What changed is we invented so many other things that we could buy with money. You know, So we need a gym membership, we need five streaming services. We need the latest iPhone, iPhone fold or alter when it comes out next fall, and so we we we need bigger homes, we need more granite countertops. We even as simple as something like a light bulb when you look at you know, on hundred years ago, to light your home equivalent of sixty watts would take thousands of hours of work to be able to afford that, and now we can buy one delight with three minutes of effort.

So what do we do. Your average home has fifty light bulbs, Your average room. You know, we don't just so, and I mean that's just a metaphor, but we do that on all kinds of things, keep adding to what we want, which keeps us locked in. It is constant effort to make money.

Yeah, and we work in this system of you know, our world that is generating so much desire for the things I don't you know, how do you kind of combat that need, I mean perceived need for all of I'm thinking now about the twelve light bulbs in this tiny room in the ceiling. But anyway, well, yeah, I mean, well, you know, one one trick is we know that there's something called the hedonic treadmill. So when we buy something new, we there's some a dopamine hit we get. We feel pretty excited about that new thing, whether it be a new outfit or a new phone.

But after after a while, the kind of that dopamine hit wears off and so we start thinking about the next thing. And it's it's like with any treadmill, you don't ever get anywhere. And so one thing that I have found to be helpful is to slow it down by thinking more about what you want to buy. So an example would be if somebody likes to cook, you know, rather than go to the dollar store and buy every cheap gadget that comes out that's at a discount and doing that every week.

You know, maybe you want a set of whatever European or Japanese Japanese made cutlery, so you spend hours and hours researching and thinking about it, and then eventually maybe you buy one and you try it out and you cut all your vegetables or whatever, and and you have such pleasure and joy in using it because the object itself is soparently good because there's been so much thought put into its design, the artisans that made it. And so by buying fewer, better quality things and taking our time to enjoy them rather than and so then the depth of that that satisfaction with that that item, we don't get bored as quickly or even you know, you put it away and you use it and you remember it, and so that that would be one way.

So because it's so easy, because we get so much information to always be chasing the next thing, and we should try to slow it down and enjoy the experience more because much of the experience is actually the anticipation rather than the actual purchase. Yeah, that's so true, and and I love what you're saying. I think you know you're not saying don't spend, but you're saying saying, spend intentionally on the things that matter to you, that actually bring you some level of joy, and buy the right things.

And I've gone. My mom always said that, she was a big proponent of, you know, buy good quality things and just have fewer things. But what you have, you know, you enjoy. And I know, probably like every young person, you go through a period where you can't buy enough, you know, new clothes every season.

You just want a whole new wardrobe. And the older you get, it feels it just feels very different. It's like, that's not even interesting at this point. I much prefer to buy a few things that I really love.

I wear them a lot, but whatever, I still like them when I put them on, instead of the cheaper things that I'm just ready to toss. So I love that philosophy of what you buy. I think clothes is a great example most people have they just have never actually experienced what high quality clothes look like. I feel like my son and I just as an experiment this earlier this year, we hosted We rented a booth at the Pump Springs Vintage Market, and so we had some vintage clothes, but we also had contemporary clothes by well, you know, very well made stuff, just to show people like, this is what quality feels like.

And it does and people tried them on and they realize, oh, this actually does feel different. Now, we sold a few things, but that really wasn't the point, and so a lot of times it's not having been exposed to those things to you know, people often think, you know, T shirts is supposed to to wear out after whatever, three weeks after you wash it, right. I mean, I'm wearing a T shirt I've had for four years, and you know, I know everything about it and how it was made, and it'll lasts another four years.

But I mean, and then the collar still stands up, right, So it just But when we think about buying fewer, better things, that's actually good for the overall economy. So when we think about you, there's a lot of one. Whenever economic growth gets into the news GDP, it's called gross domestic product. That doesn't measure how many things are made, but it's measuring is the value of what is produced.

So if we buy one T shirt and it costs eighty dollars and it's made in the US. That from a GDP standpoint, that's equivalent to buying do my math whatever, six, seven, eight, ten dollars T shirts at Costco or Walmart. Right, and if you got one, you can wear it multiple days in a row. It's just that we get in this habit of wearing more and more, buying more and more, but we can be satisfied with less and owning fewer things and actually be more joyful in it because it just film is so much better to wear or to use.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean you can think if you think about all the consumer goods in your home, whether it's furniture or clothing or you know whatever. You know, pots and pants, I mean, one amazing set of good pots and pans will take you through your lifetime. Really, I kind of I really love this.

It's making me think because I've been going in that direction. But I'm realizing, well, why do we want to buy all these new things all the time? And that is, like you say, just the dopamine hit of you know, I don't feel so great today or I need something new to pick me up, you know, and so you go out and you buy more stuff, and I get it, you know, but I the I think people feel like, well, I can't buy the expensive piece of clothing, so instead I'll buy these, you know, ten T shirts.

But the reality is you kind of can you just you're opting to buy more quantity and less quality. And you can buy it used. I mean, they're the I mean, there's so many other ways Second Street too, if you want to shop in person that it's all accessible it is. I mean maybe if to schedule, like I live in Idahoa, like I don't buy clothes in Idaho.

I only buy clothes when I happen to be traveling somewhere that you know, certain shops that I like or whatever. I mean wine that keeps me from buying a lot more stuff. If you schedule a trip to wherever La Area or New York or I mean any super big city, there are boutiques there are used clothing and make it experience. And so when you connect buying the good with an experience, then then again that helps reinforce the joy and the satisfaction because when you wear it, you remember, I mean I remember where I bought I remember the shirt I'm wearing all right, I know exactly who I bought it from.

Yeah, we were in New York. We went to a pop up and met the designer. I didn't no idea she made. We weren't even there for that.

We spent thirty minutes with them. Yeah, and I had no intention of buying the shirt. But you know, after meeting with them and thinking, yeah, I'll support your business, it's like buying art. And that's what when you buy quality clothing and you're supporting a designer, you know it's a small business.

I mean, they are not wealthy. You're buying a piece of art that you can wear for decades. Wow, this is not the way I thought the conversation would go. But this is so interesting to me.

And I just love that you said all that. It just it really drives home this idea of intentionality with your money, whether you're investing or whether you're just buying. You know, your regular things that you buy, and I think you know you can have that carried throughout your financial life, and I think it's really wise. And I think, uh, let's talk about investing since that's your thing.

Are how what are some of your investing philosophies. Well, the one of the biggest women that comes to not so much investing, but so many of us are investing to retire, hoping to retire. One of the things I've taught for years is to is to live like you're already retired. So we don't we don't want to retire to get away from our job.

We want to create a life now that we that we enjoy. And you talk about that in your works, where you're not dreading your job, so you're creating a life, and you're obviously you're investing. I mean, the whole point of investing is taking some of that life energy and storing it. Because we know that due to inflation, you know, the value of a currency you has to do is falling relative to real things over time.

And so all investing is it's it's taking that life energy and whether we got paid for them and got paid for it in our job, and we're putting some of the some of the way. So the idea is we want investments that will earn more than inflation and so, which is called having a positive real rate of return, So something above the inflation rate. Right now, inflation is running roughly three percent per year. It's been higher, sometimes it's lower, but we need a minimum beyond three percent of our investments.

Unfortunately, right now, I mean even just a money market mutual fund investing in cash, you can earn three and a half four percent, and which you couldn't do four or five years ago. You were losing money every time you stored money in cash. And so, but you know one ant. So there's a really two things.

They are. One, figure out a way to live like you're already retired. And then as you do save and invest, just seek investments that generally have a positive rate of return. And then a third thing we've taught for years is never invest anything that you can't explain.

I many years ago I had a university endowment client and I had made recommendations to them, and the board chair says, we'll never invest anything that I can't explain to another board member that wasn't at the meeting. And we should do the same thing. We shouldn't invest in something unless we can explain to a friend or partner. Here's what this investment does.

This is this is how this has to happen to make money. This is how it works. This is what the fees are to be able to explain it. And that's why you think about four to one K plans.

There's so much information that the sponsors are providing so that we can actually understand what we're investing in, even if it's something as simple as a target date retirement fund, I at least understand it, be able to explain it. That that process one that humbles us because we realize, well, maybe we don't know as much about bitcoin or prediction markets or currency trading or whatever hot sexy thing that is marketed so heavily that maybe we should step back before we enter into that and focus on simpler things like what's center for one K plan?

Yeah? And how to invest it? Yeah? And I think, just like the clothing conversation, people sort of chase, you know, the next trending thing and they don't understand it.

I didn't understand cryptos still don't really understand it. So I haven't bought it because, like you said, I, you know, I need to be clear in my mind about what it is, how it works, and how I could see, you know, can I understand how it creates a return? And if I can't, and I'm just not comfortable, even though maybe I'll get left behind, but that's kind of okay with me. So yeah, I think you bring up a lot of great points.

And to understand means you have to spend some time learning and asking questions and researching. And I think that's I don't know how common is that. Are people okay to do that? Well?

They should, I mean they like if one doesn't, Like, you don't have to be an expert to be an investor. You can understand what options are in the four one K plan. You can. There's so much education and it I mean there are there are obviously, and there's some very basic books on how investing works.

And the idea is is just to get competent. We're not trying to be the smartest person in the room. We just don't want to be vulnerable so that we can be taken advantage of, so that we understand, you know, if whatever, an insurance salesperson comes along, and just always step back and think about, you know, what is the expected return, like how how do we make money with his investment? Like what are the underlying factors that are driving the return?

So let's take stocks for example, most people have exposure to the stock market through some type of index fund or ETF. And I saw a post the other day on LinkedIn and it had shown the twenty year return for the S and P five hundred over rolling twenty year periods, and their post was c you basically would never want to own cash because the stock market always has this high return. And I don't usually get on LinkedIn on a Saturday night, but somehow I stumbled on this, and it's like, no, it's not that that's simple, because you have to look at what drove the returns.

What drives the return of the stock market. Why, it's the dividend, so the cash flow that the companies are paying a portion of their profits, and so that there's something called the dividend yield. It's like an interest rate. But what you're getting on stocks, well, back in the seventies and eighties, when those returns really high, that dividend yield was four or five percent.

Now it's one percent. So that's the one thing. The other factor is how fast are the earnings of these companies, Because when you own a stock, you're owning capital in a company. How fast is are those earnings growing?

And generally they can only grow as fast as the economy is growing on a per person basis, because we won't get into the details, but you know, in aggregate earnings, they follow attracts the economy, what's being produced, what's being bought, the income being generated, and so yeah, maybe, I mean there's times typically earnings that have been five to six percent on average, and so yeah, if you're getting four percent dividend yield and your earnings are growing at at five six percent, that's a ten percent return.

But today the dividen yield's one percent, and you know, hopefully earnings will grow at five to six percent, so that could give us to seven percent. But there's a third factor, and that's what are investors paying for those dividends and earnings? And so many of those twenty year periods, it started out with what's known as the price to earnings ratio. What are investors paying for one dollar of earnings?

And it was six or seven dollars, So there's a pe of price to earnings ratio of six or seven. Now it's twenty eight. It's it's well above average. And so when you think about, okay, what about the next twenty years, we know are dividend yields super low and we're at a super high valuation.

Maybe we're not going to get a ten percent return, maybe it'll be closer to five or six, or maybe it'll you know, if who knows. But that's why we diversify into out. We owned the S and P five hundred, but maybe we should own some smaller companies, some non US stocks. And so when you buy, for example, just if you want to just invest in your target A fund and your four one K plan that does that, it's diversified among many different types and it isn't just a one trick pony hoping the US stock market will return like it has done in the past, because the conditions today are very different than they were twenty years ago.

Yeah, yeah, very interesting. And that is I mean, you bring up a great point, which is, look at your four own K. A lot of people don't know what they're invested in in their four oh and K I find so they may they may have bought a lot of their own company stock, for example, and not really paid attention to what they've got in there. So I think, first of all, become aware of what you've got.

And for some of these they're very old too, and they've been investing the same way for a really long time without moving it around. So how do you feel about that? I mean, what should people be how often? Well?

First, yeah, first off, if your four one K plan has your company stock, like if if you're able to buy it at a discount and then buy it a discount and sell it immediately because if and I've seen this, I grew up in Cincinnati, So in Cincinnati, Practic Gamble was a big employer, a lot of retirees had a lot of P ANDNG stock. Your double count, you're basically you're doubling up your risk. You're already exposed to Procter and Gamble or your employer because they've employed you.

You could get laid off, and then you're doubling down and your retirement savings are tied to the fortunes of that company. And I've seen that with P andng's gone through periods of a bad times. I've had family members that were heavily invested in General Electric stock sell it because take the discount. But that you can't.

You don't want to double up the risk where you're employed and your investments, and you definitely don't want your your retirement tied up in one stock. It is, or I talk, I teach them like I don't buy individual stocks. I've spent many years researching managers that do, and I've tried it. But you know, as individual investors, if we're maybe you do it for fun, just a few.

But when you buy a stock, it's an auction market. Somebody is selling it to you. And you think about when you buy a used car, aren't aren't we skeptical when we're buying a used car? Like, what do they know that we don't like?

What what flaws are here? Well, when you're buying a stock, somebody's selling it to you, and by and large it's it's going to be institutions that know way more about it than you do, and a stock will only outperform because it's it's an auction market. So the price of a stock is the consensus of what all the buyers and sellers think, many of which have done a ton of research. And so when we buy just one stock, we're saying, oh, I know more than everyone else because I think the company, it's earnings, it's it's product, it's going to do better than everybody expects because if it does worse than everybody expects, then it's going to underperform the overall market.

It only outperforms if it does better. And how does it do better, Well, maybe the earnings come in higher than expected, and so people willing to pay a higher multiple or a higher price to earnings ratio for that company answer that it outperforms. But most of us, like, we don't want to do that, Like who you take tennis? So I've been I've been playing tennis again, and I'm not going out and play against the pros.

And yet we do it all the time. And investing like I'm going to go go invest in buying individual companies, I'm going to trade options. You're betting against you're playing against the pros. And I've seen it.

I've gone. I had a guy I one of our sponsors of our podcasts was Sleep Number Bed, and I finally got tired of talking about their pillows, and I said, I'm going to go buy a bed. So we go, and the salesman didn't want to talk about the Sleep Number bed. He want to talk about trading stocks and academies.

And he had taken thirty thousand dollars he got from an inheritance, and he went to this trading academy to learn how to trade. And I said, which one is it? This was in Phoenix. I go and I and I and I sit.

What's their sales pitch? And there's sales pitches. You're falling behind. You aren't going to do it with your four one k.

You need to generate a much higher return. We will teach you how. We have a patent, didn't We have a patent on the process. We're going to teach you.

And it was people that were vulnerable. And I don't know how many bus I didn't buy, but I went and I checked out their patent and what did their patents say? So we teach people to take advantage of unsophisticated traders in the sense that we will. We will teach you how to take the people that are just going in and they don't know what they're doing.

That was their patent to rip off people that were naive. Wow, And that's what a lot of investing is. When you're when you don't have cash flow on your side when you're buying the stock. If you buy an index fund, you're buying an ETF or something.

In your four owing K you benefit from hundreds, if not thousands, of companies. Some will do better than expected, some will do worse. But in aggregate, what's going to drive the return. It's going to be the dividends, the earnings and changes of actuation.

You don't have to pick individual ones. It's like looking at a big bowl of popcorn that's unpopped and deciding which one's going to pop first. We have no idea. We went the entire bore knowledge and that's what that's how we invest.

We want the entire bow and then we benefit from these broad factors that are tied to global economic growth. Yeah, I love that you said that. I do feel like in general, people are watching the people who do pick individual stocks and things think that they're going to you know, I don't know their whole what they have going on is somehow weaker because they're not doing that. And so, yeah, I love what you because it's boring.

It's so much more fun to pick individual stocks. I as an institutional advisor, we would do beauty contests. We would there would be a university and downmentn investment committee. They'd bring in three or four managers that let's say they were going to hire a new US small cap value manager, and so they'd bring in three or four and they would do their they would have their presentation, and invariably the committee members they want to hear stock stories, like tell me about one of your holdings, and it might have been one of one hundred, and it's a compelling narrative.

It's like the hero's journey but for the stock market. But when you think about, well, what actually has to happen. The company has to do better than what everybody expects because it's an auction market. And sure, try it out, but if you try out picking individual stocks, track your performance.

How well have you done across all your picks? You know what percent one? What was the total return? Maybe you set it up as a separate portfolio or something on Robinhood.

Fine, I think you'll find over time that you're just you're not going to do as well as buying the overall market or what's available when you're four one k plan. But it's still fun. You learn. I learned a ton right breaking individual stocks, and then I got tired of it because we're like, I'm not smarter than everybody else.

Yeah, yeah, well I love this. I could talk to you all day. I have eight hundred new questions that are popping up. We don't have the time, so please tell us a little about your book and about your podcast.

And you know, why did you write the book? Is the book out now or is it? Well, you know, the book's been out five years, so I'm in the book. I'm hopefully getting my second book out here in the next year.

I read the first book. McGraw Hill published it, and I learned a lot about book publishing. One is I don't work well with a deadline, because that's what you do when you sell a book. You do a book proposal and they want very specific outline, they want sample chapters, and then they pay you in advance and then you give you a deadline, which works great people.

But I don't care to do outlines. I want the book to evolve over time. And so this book, it's been four or five years, is about halfway done. But it's you know, a lot of the themes that we've talked about.

So the original book is ten Questions to to ten questions for mastering successful investing. So if you want to invest, if you have a specific investment, here's the ten things you should ask and I've talked about one of them, like be able, what is it? Can you explain what it is? And I won't go through all ten questions.

You can find the book, but that's what that's about, which is interesting. But after publishing that book, some of my listeners on my show is like, where's the throw Like, where's the philosophy stuff? That book was very more nuts and bolts. Yeah, so the second book is much more about the difference between what is money, what is inbundance?

How do we not get like a lot of people were in Venezuela where they were millionaires, but they were poor because their currency was worthless, And what are the tricks to do that so that we can build abundance in our life, that we can have this capital reservoir and use it wisely and sort of all those different processes. But the websites to money for the rest of us, we do a podcast every couple of weeks and lots of a free resource there, Free resources there, free investment guides on many aspects of investing.

Wonderful. I'll put all of that in the show notes so people can have access to it. And yeah, thank you so much. This has been great any again.

I could talk to you about so many different topics, but any kind of final parting words for people who are listening, going, you know, I really want to get into this, I really want to get some control over my financial life. Well, I think the biggest thing is slow down, so slow down, so down your purchases, think about the more specifically, but also be willing to just get up the courage. We recently hosted some live portfolio cohorts where we were working with people. They are about to retire within the next year, and so now things matter right before if it's twenty years away, but if you're going to retire in the next year, suddenly it makes sense to understand, well, what do I own?

And so we help them gather all their statements and figure out what the investments they own and what is the expect to return and the risk of what they own. And most didn't realize that they were taking as much risk as they were leading into retirement. So another thing that we should do is certainly slow down what we're spending, but face the music where you're at, see what is your savings rate, and use some of the free online calculators to kind of see and that can kind of it takes courage to do that, but those tiny steps.

I got an email the other day, I'm going to talk about our podcast this week. He started listening to our show in twenty fifteen. He didn't come from wealth. They had no money.

They thought their retirement plan was to hopefully they had a condo. They would someday be able to pay off their condo and get enough money to buy a tiny house that they could rent or buy, and then they could live off whatever rental income on their condo. That was it. They were in debt, they had medical debt, they had children with special needs.

Ten years later, after just learning from our show, from learning from others, by budgeting, by slowing down, they have seven hund and fifty thousand dollars and it's more money than they ever thought they would have in their life. Wow. And with their home equity, they're a millionaire in ten years from debt. And in twenty fifteen he finally was able to get thirty thousand dollars to invest in trying to figure out how to do that, and so it's a real story.

Ten years. We can change our financial life over a ten year period if we're willing to kind of stop hiding what's happening and actually look at where we where are we now, and what has to change. You bring up the you know, one of the greatest points which I really like to encourage people to do, is to just stop avoiding your money. I mean, at any point, I know why we avoid it.

I've avoided it myself for the same reasons, but we just don't want to look at it and we don't want to face, you know, whatever there is to face. Sometimes it's not as bad as we thought it was. Sometimes it's worse. But your point is is so important.

You know, for the most part in life in general, we can fix anything if we know what the problem is. But when we are just leaving it, we don't know what we don't do anything. That's right. That's right, David, thank you so very much.

You're a wonderful guest. I'm excited to listen to your podcast. I hope the listeners here are excited to listen to the podcast. There is a wealth of information that to be gained from listening, from reading your books, and so yeah, I'm officially a follower at this point.

So thank you so much, and really appreciate you coming on today. Thank you, Michelle. That's great an audience, Thank you, thank you for listening. We love it when you listen to the Money and You show, and you can do so on all the podcast platforms.

You can bind us on the Limit, Free Life and YouTube channel. And I always love to get comments and feedback and certainly love you to share the show with anybody who think can benefit from it and give us a rating and a review. That would be fabulous. And we will see you next week.