A (12:38)

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B (14:05)

So regardless your age or where you are right now on your journey, if I told you that the only way you could build wealth is to take 20% of your income right now and start investing it, if I said there's no way you're ever going to retire early or rich, if you didn't start taking 20% of your income and investing it now, and you say to me, oh my gosh, Candy, there's no way I could do that. Like I have so many bills, I have this, I have that, I can't take 20%. That's your indicator to know that you're overspending. Because if you can't pay yourself first and invest in assets, then you're, you're going to be trading time for money far longer and your option to retire early is going to be slim. So you want to make sure that you're creating assets that can print money that you pay less tax on. And the way to do that is by starting now. Now let's say you, you're just totally over leveraged. You have more month than you have money and there's no way that you can invest that amount. What can you do? What can you start with? Again, like I shared in the beginning of this, what you do with a little will determine what you do with a lot. So if you can't invest 20% now, you can invest 5, probably invest 10. And if you're still thinking, oh my gosh, I don't think I can do that. Well, how can you increase Your income by 5%? How can you increase your income by 10%? How can you decrease your expenses by 5%? How can you decrease your Expenses by 10%? When's the last time you sat down with all of your bills and went line by line to see what are you actually spending every single month? Is there a subscription on there that maybe was a trial that you started and now you're paying 40 bucks a month for? Is there a gym membership that you don't go to and you run outside? Like what are some of the things that are an automatic charge, like the storage? Like how many things are we storing on Google and on the cloud and in Apple and we don't even use? Right. It's like the equivalent of having a storage shed storing things that we don't know need and they'll probably never use, but paying every single month for them. So how you can decrease your expenses or increase your earnings is going to bridge the gap so that you can invest more now, but I just want to caution you, if you think that you'll invest when you have more and you don't do it now, I promise you, you're going down a slippery slope because you won't. You'll start spending more when you have more because you haven't adopted the behavior of being an investor and paying yourself first. And let me just show you how this extrapolates into real numbers. So this is what the cost of delaying actually is when we look at it. Real numbers invested. If you start or started when you were 25, just investing, average at the time it was like $6,000 a year that you could average in a Roth IRA. Let's say you started doing that when you were 25 years old. By the time you go to retire, if you just do that minimum, you'll have 1.96 million. If it just stays where it is right now in retirement. To be able to when you're 59 and a half or in your 60s and you want to retire. On the contrary, if you wait 10 years and start when you're 35. Now let's do the math. 25 to 35, 10 years. If you're only putting $6,000 in a year, $500 a month, that's only the difference of $60,000 in real money out of your pocket. But here is how compound interest works. The delaying of that 10 years will actually cost you more than a million dollars. Because if you start when you're 35 instead of 25, you're going to have around $956,000 in your account. Still a great amount. But if you would have started just 10 years earlier and just done $60,000 more, you would have over a million more. It's mind blowing, but it's why you need to start now, regardless your age. And if you heard all of that and the first thought in your mind was, oh my gosh, I'm so behind, I didn't start. You're getting caught into that lack mentality that keeps people broke. What you do now matters. What you didn't do, the mistakes that you made, the things that you did along the way, the overspending, the debt you've accrued, none of that matters. It's what you do next. That's what matters most. So 20% should be your goal to start investing if you don't have bad debt. I should have caveats on every single one of these things because I don't want you to start investing tomorrow if you have all of this bad debt. Your first focus should be getting rid of that bad debt because you can't out invest bad debt. Number three, rather than buying your dream home or the most expensive house that you can afford that the bank tells you that you can buy and put 20% down, this one thing, I think nowadays they call this a house hack, but way back in the day, 20 plus years ago, this was just something smart to do that I read in a book somewhere. So rather than buying the most expensive house, use that first time home purchase if you can. If you haven't purchased a home before, then use that first purchase. You only get one of them. It's a FHA first time home buyer home loan. You have to put a minimal amount down. You still have PMI and some extra costs associated with it, but it gives you one time to put 3.5% down as opposed to 20 or 25% and maybe a conventional loan. If instead of you buying that dream home, the most amount of house that you can buy, if you buy a duplex, a triplex, a small quad apartment building, you live in one of the units, you rent out the other 1, 2, 3, however many there are, and you let that pay for your mortgage, you stay there for at least a year after your year's up. The reason you have to stay there for a year is FHA requirements. And you always want to take a look at this because they change all the time. So this is my little asterisk for legal. So make sure that you take a look into FHA requirements if you want to do this. Even if you can't use fha, this is still an incredible way to minimize your expenses and make more money. Let's say you're in a house right now. You realize that you can't do 20% and you've overextended. Sell your house. Can you sell a house and buy. Can you sell your current house and buy a duplex? Buy a triplex? Can you can still do this. Now, even if you don't have the FHA loan, people get focused on that a lot and on everybody that is ripping off this content. This is what they're sharing as well. But make sure that even if you're in a position that you've already done that first big dream home, or you've gotten into a house that's maybe a little too big for you payment wise, that you can still use this today, you can still do 20% down, 25% percent depending on your loan situation, and get into a property that's going to cash flow you money as opposed to you having to pay it. This is a way that you can have your money work for you instead of it using you. What makes a leader? It's a tough question, but one thing's for sure. A true leader leads by example. And a true leader takes risks too. They plunge into life with determination. For those who lead by example and who approach life with a palpable passion, there's the Range Rover Sport. 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You put somebody else in the unit that you were living in and then you go and buy another unit. Now you have two rental properties, one that's fully filled and cash flowing and then the next one that you're living in. So that's a great way to build wealth and build real estate quickly without having a massive amount of risk. I know there are so many people that talk about OPM and leveraging other people's money and going heavy into debt. But here's the thing. It's really easy to build wealth in good times. It's really hard to sustain it through bad times and people that don't have a lot of assets or have a lot of money or make lot of money. It's really hard when you have bad times and winter comes and this the situation that you're in, the market that you're in, the area that you're in has some shift in volatility. Now it's really hard and you have a ton of debt leverage and that becomes very stressful. Like I lost friends and colleagues that literally committed suicide in 2008. They were over leveraged, they had hundreds of doors of real estate. They were trying to get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. And when we looked at portfolios, they were crushing all the little piddly things that I was doing. But when 2008 came and the market shifted so drastically, the people that had all of that debt, they were either killing themselves, they were going through divorce, they were having to go back and work jobs like the stories were horrendous. So you may not make as much as other people if you don't use some of those tactics, but you'll also be able to sustain, sustain when the markets shift. And here's one thing that we know. No matter what, there will always be change. There will always be volatility. There is no chart in the history of the world that went up forever. There are always market pullbacks. What are you doing now that will make you get through the next point that has volatility in the market, in your industry, in your business, or in your job, that is how you sustain wealth. Number four. And I don't know necessarily this is one of the things that I did to retire early, but I do think it's important to mention because this is something that I did. If you listen to the last episode that I started when I was 15 and I did have great credit and I didn't get into debt and I was using a credit card for all of my business expenses, I was really being diligent of reviewing everything every single month by doing a State of the Union meeting, which I talk about in the book and probably on many other podcast episodes here, but being disciplined, knowing what you're spending, putting a credit card to use for you instead of it using you, making sure that you're paying it off in full every single month. Those are things that I did in the beginning and that was how I was able to sustain through time because I wasn't overextending. And where I could in my business, I would set up 30, 60, 90 day net terms so that I didn't have to put it on a credit card. And the interesting thing, when you build great credit, you have great relationships with banks. So as my revenue went up in my business, as my net worth went up in my business, I would get larger and larger lines of credit that if for any reason I wanted to buy another property, I wanted to expand or I wanted to add something on in the business, I was able to then use the bank's money to do all of that. When you don't have great credit or you're using a debit card and you don't have those relationships with lenders, it makes it very difficult to want to expand. Even when you're doing it smart, it makes it really difficult because they don't have have the data to support that. You are always going to be paying back the money that you borrow. I can tell you that it is massively valuable and it will help you move a lot more quickly when you're able to have lines of credit, even if you don't ever use them. But if you're able to stroke your signature and get an unsecured or a secured line of credit, it actually helps you move more quickly in real estate investing and also in business. And I'm going to give you one mistake stake, right? I gave you four things to do and I'm just going to give you one thing to caution you on. Because there are a lot of things that people can do to build wealth. Oftentimes we don't talk about the things not to do, aside from like don't go into debt, don't buy bad, you know, depreciating assets, don't, you know, spend all that you make, make sure you invest. But there's a few other things that won't show up on your balance sheet, that won't show up on a P and L statement, that won't really show up in your net worth, but it can cost you far more than you can ever measure. And that is being in the wrong relationship, being with the wrong person, thinking that you need to jump into marriage or a relationship at all because you're of a certain age. I don't know what it is with society that we always feel like we're either falling behind or we're not meeting this societal norm where we have this outside pressure, but there is no rules. Like there's not a book anywhere that says get married when you're 25, go to college, get a four year degree, get a big house, drive two cars, have two jobs, have four kids. Like that's what people do. But there's no rule that you need to do that. And actually, when we look how many of those people are actually happy, how many of them are building the life that they want. And although that can work if that's what you want, if you try to build that life with the wrong person, it'll end up costing you a lot later. And I don't just mean going through a divorce and trying to separate assets, although that can certainly be costly. I mean more about the opportunities that you don't go after, the things that you don't do. Maybe you're a saver and somebody else is a spender or vice versa. There are so many things that being in the wrong Relationship will cost you and even far more than money. It costs you focus, it costs you time. And because we don't measure it on a checking account statement or bank reconciliation, we often forget how important that step is. But if there's something that I can give you, if it's really one of the probably most important things that I wish somebody would have been. I don't even know if anyone would have been able to tell me this when I was younger, but I would wish somebody would have, that I would have listened. But when you are deciding to be in a relationship, make sure that you are in alignment. Not just now, not just where you are in this place, but where five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road. Because if you're going to take the time and focus to build a life with this person, you want to make sure that you're building with the same intention that you want the same thing out of life. And I will also give you this. If you are meeting someone for the first time or you're in the first stages of your relationship, don't rationalize red flags. If you don't think that that person is going to be there for the long term, or you don't think that they're maybe aligned with you on all the things that you want in your life, or there's just some signs or some things that, like, you're just not sure about, you are meeting that person in the best place in the beginning by not rationalizing red flags and not, you know, fantasizing of what this person can become and what their ability might be, all of their potential. Like, we get wrapped into so much of this fantasizing what somebody can be as opposed to acknowledging who they really are. And I think that those two things together, knowing that you can define your own path and that you don't have to be with someone. And of course, I know so many people that did get married young and it worked out great, and I'm super happy for them. But the odds are that if you don't do a lot of this stuff in the beginning and really figure out what you want your life to be like and make sure that that person you're building life with is aligned on that, it can cost you so much more later. And I'm going to end with this. I want you to know that if you're thinking right now, I don't know if I can do all of these things, or I'm not sure if I have the ability or the smarts or the income. Look, I grew up in a trailer in a really small town. I started a business at 19 with no degree, no money and no plan B. I am not the smartest person. I am. I was not the most connected person. There was nothing on paper or even in society that would give me the knowledge or the ability that I'd be able to do this. And I just want to share with you that if you're in a position now that you start to trip up that stuff in your mind to think that you can't do this, I want to be the first to tell you that you can and you will if you decide and then take the next steps. It's not so much what you think, it's what you do with what you know. Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to this episode and if there was something that you loved or you had a specific takeaway, share it and tag me at Candy Valentino. And if you haven't already, grab a copy of my latest book, the 9% Edge Life Changing Secrets to create more revenue for your business and more freedom for yourself. You can pick it up anywhere books are sold, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or your local independent store. And once you do, head over to 9% Edge and claim $1500 in pre order bonuses, including a chance to join me on this very show. Thanks so much for tuning in and spending this time with me today, guys. We'll see you next time.