Latest / Money Grows on Trees / #241 - Watch This If You’re 40 And Still In Debt

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#241 - Watch This If You’re 40 And Still In Debt · Money Grows on Trees

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  Stop using debt to survive. It's like putting a bayonet on a bullet wound.
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  You're just going to keep bleeding and bleeding and bleeding until you fix the actual problem. Money
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  is a byproduct of your behavior. That's what happens when you look at your bank account. It
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  shows you your behaviors. And a lot of people don't want to come to terms with or
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  be honest with themselves when it comes to their behavior that's ineffective. Master cash
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  flow like your life depends on it because your future does. So you got to track
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  every single dollar. That includes tracking your assets, tracking
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  your liabilities, and of course, tracking your income and expenses. But if you're at
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  40 years of age, and you're in lots of debt, and you feel stuck, you don't know where to go, and you're a
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  little bit worried, then I'm Lloyd James Ross, seven-figure investor
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  and entrepreneur, and I've helped thousands of business owners and professionals turn
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  financial stress into success. If you're stuck in old money
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  habits, overwhelmed by investing, or unsure where to start, this
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  is for you. I'll give you the mindset and strategies to take control,
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  grow your wealth, and achieve financial freedom. It's time to
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  make your money work for you. Watch this if you're
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  40 and still in debt. Being 40 and
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  in debt doesn't mean you fail, but it does mean it's time to
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  wake up. You got 20 to 25 years of
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  working at least left in you, right? And
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  so what do you do now that determines your
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  retirement setup? And I wouldn't even suggest that retirement's the answer,
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  but how do you set yourself up to continue to live a great life beyond 60 and
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  beyond 65? So if you're someone who wants to
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  retire but you know when you're at 40 and you're in debt, you can get out
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  of it. But most importantly, how do we set you up a life that you
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  don't need to retire from? I'd much prefer you to approach life
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  that way from 40 in debt than actually think you're gonna even want to retire, okay?
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  But if you're 40 years of age, you're in lots of debt and you feel stuck,
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  you don't know where to go, and you're a little bit worried about
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  where to go next or what life's going to look like in 20 years, then
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  pay close attention because I'm going to give you a few steps here of what to do
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  to get out of your debt, okay? Here's the first step. One,
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  get brutally honest about your numbers, okay? Which
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  means no more ignoring bank statements. I
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  know it's very tricky and challenging to sit down even for 10 or 15 minutes
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  and actually look at what you're spending money on because Let's be honest, it feels like
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  a personal development journey just looking at it, because it's staring right back at
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  you, your behaviors. That's what happens when you look at your bank account. It shows you
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  your behaviors. And a lot of people don't want to come to terms with or
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  be honest with themselves when it comes to their behavior that's ineffective. But
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  that's really the first step. So it's just getting honest with where your behaviors
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  are currently at, right? Because money is a byproduct of your behavior, okay?
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  It's habits. So we have to look at that first. Now, the
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  next step, here's what we want to do. Cut, lifestyle
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  creep, right? If your income went up, but you're still broke, that's
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  not inflation, it's habits, okay? It's just,
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  it's like a frog being in the, you know, when you throw the, when you've got
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  a frog who's sitting in the pot and it boils slowly, it cooks the
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  frog. But if you chuck a frog in there and it's already boiling, it jumps straight
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  out. And lifestyle creeps a little bit like that. It's where you don't realize it's
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  creeping, but it is. And here's how it happens in actually in
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  real time, ready? You get a subscription for something and
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  you do it and you use it for a bit. But then you go and get something else and
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  use it for a bit and then you get something else. And before you know it, it's just stacked on top of
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  each other. You're like, future cost, future cost, future
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  cost, future cost. And you start to kind of like stack these future
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  costs on top of each other without cancelling one before. And it also happens with
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  things and stuff. So for example, let's say you bought, like the other day I bought
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  an electric skateboard, right? 800 bucks. Now, if I don't use
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  that, I'm like, cool, now what's my next novelty I'm getting? Oh,
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  it's another 500 bucks. Oh, I'll get another novelty, then another novelty. My
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  neighbor's got four motorcycles in the one car park. Great,
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  he's a lovely guy. He has four, he can't ride four at the same time. So.
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  He's got to sell some because he's stacking up the things and the stuff. So the
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  same way you can creep your expenses in lifestyle, you can creep up things you
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  buy. So here's a hard and fast rule. If you're going to
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  get something, be it a new subscription or a new thing, sell or get rid of
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  the one you've already got. Then get the new thing. And that's actually how you
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  prevent lifestyle creep. Question every
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  expense. Next step. Stop
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  using debt to survive. It's like putting
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  a bayonet on a bullet wound. It's just going to keep bleeding and bleeding and bleeding until you
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  fix the actual problem. Now, the issue with debt is that I read
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  a statistic the other day that was very frightening that a large percentage
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  of people, certainly in the United States, are using after
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  pay, like buy now, pay later, like Klana, to
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  buy their groceries. That's credit, that's debt.
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  And they're using it literally to survive because that's how they're buying their groceries. So
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  if you're someone who's buying the basics and using debt to do it, you've really
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  just got to stop. How do you stop? You delete the apps. Does that make sense? You got to delete the
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  thing that's causing you to do it, all right? Just
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  quickly, if you're ready to take control of your finances but feel stuck on
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  where to start, I have a solution. My book, Money Bias Happiness,
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  simplifies investing and wealth building with practical steps to help
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  you achieve financial peace. Get your copy via the
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  link in the show notes and let's get your money working for you. Now back
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  to the episode. Step number three, track every dollar.
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  Master cash flow like your life depends on it because your future does.
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  So you got to track every single dollar. Now that includes tracking
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  your assets, tracking
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  your liabilities, and of course, tracking your income and expenses. Now,
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  how you track every dollar is you master your
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  cash flow like your life depends on it, right? Because your future definitely does. So
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  here's what I've suggested. I've suggested this in other episodes, but I don't know how many of you
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  are doing it. So I want to explain it very briefly, but I'm challenging
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  you to do it, okay? you need
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  to go to your online bank, whatever it might be,
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  ANZ, whatever bank you're with, all online banks have
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  this feature. And you just wanna download your
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  last month's bank statement with a CSV file and upload
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  it to Excel and just filter your expenses for
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  the month. And all you're trying to work out is, where
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  is my money going? Where is every step going? Where
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  is every dollar going? And you've literally got to go line by
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  line by line and find out where it is. Now, a few years
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  ago, I had a student in one of our programs and
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  she was struggling to figure out where her money was going. Now, I know that money
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  doesn't just grow legs and go and wander
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  off by itself. It goes where you send it. And so we went
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  line by line and I noticed, she said, Lloyd, I've cut everything. I don't know what else to cut.
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  There's nothing else on. I'm like, let's have a look. So she was open
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  and coachable. We went down line by line. She downloaded from her online
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  bank and then just occasionally, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon,
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  Amazon. Uber Eats, Uber Eats, Uber
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  Eats. Now, you may not think that's a lot, but a
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  small hole can sink a big ship. It's the little tiny wounds
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  that are inflicted, that
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  are inflicted bit by bit that start to help you, they make you bleed
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  to death, okay? So you've really got to track the small ones
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  over time. Does that make sense? Tracking the small ones will lead to big ones.
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  My mom, she did a talk at
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  our Become Tyrone Ridge book launch VIP event last night. She's
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  awesome, my mom. And she says, look after the
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  pennies and the pounds will follow, right? So that's
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  what I mean at this point, track every dollar. You don't need to do it forever, but
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  you do need to do it to get ahead. It is a great habit to be in,
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  and I want you to start today, okay? Next step, if
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  you're 40 and in debt, here's the next step, okay? If
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  you've got consumer type debt, which is expensive debt, and typically it's run
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  up on credit cards, What you really want to do is
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  you want to pay it off quickly and you can
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  go and look at another episode I did called the four, four steps
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  to, sorry, five steps to paying off debt faster. But if you're 40 and
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  you've got debt, You've got to look at what kind of debt it is. So
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  typically, the expensive debt is credit card debt. And
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  how you actually pay that off faster is you just go get another credit card for interest-free, and you use
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  that to pay that off initially, give yourself a holiday period of interest. If
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  you've done that or you can't do that, then what you've got to do is look for
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  things in your house to sell. And I've had students before in one of our
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  programs sell their cars downsized. They've sold certain
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  things in their house to take the money quickly and pay it off faster. And I think
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  it's like people are waiting for permission to pay off debt
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  faster. You don't have to wait for permission. You just got to go sell things. So
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  that's the other step. If you've got consumer debt, sell things, get rid of it fast and
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  then make a hard and fast rule that you don't
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  use credit cards anymore. So if you're someone that can't be trusted with
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  a credit card, cut it up. I've got a rule where we pay our credit card
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  off every single month in full. Right now, our particular credit
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  card is a charge card. It also has points attached to
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  it, so it makes sense to have it, but we're also committed to paying off
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  every month in full, otherwise we can't use it again. All right? Now,
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  what you definitely want to do is make sure, habitually, that
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  if you actually can't afford it, just don't
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  buy it. And you'll say things like, yeah, Lloyd, but I needed to
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  do that. No, you didn't. You didn't need to. It's
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  all entitlement. And I've done episodes on entitlement before. In
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  fact, one specifically. Go and watch that. But we do carry with
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  us this sense of entitlement. We're entitled to these comforts
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  of life. But just because
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  you're 40 doesn't mean that you are entitled to anything
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  you didn't have when you were 20. Age is irrelevant. If
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  you want to get ahead financially, you have to Shuffle
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  off this coil of entitlement from your
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  thinking. Otherwise, you're just going to stay in debt, in debt,
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  in debt, in debt. You're never going to get rid of it. I did an
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  episode on this show where I went and looked at it and we
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  posted about what I would do to get out of this particular situation this couple was
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  in. One of my suggestions was sell the car and buy a moped. Someone
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  came in the comments and goes, ìWhat am I supposed to do? Take my kids to school on a
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  moped?î I'm like, ìNo, they take the bus.î You
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  see how like angry and angsty people get when you suggest they take
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  bold action, like, you know what I'm supposed to do? Well, you got yourself
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  in this predicament, so I'm just explaining to you what I would personally do to
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  get out of it. You don't have to take it on board. You don't have to be coachable. I'm fine. My
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  finances are good. But I'm trying to explain to
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  you what I would do if. So if you're 40 and in debt, these
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  are the things I would do if I was too. You've got
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  to take a different mindset approach to this. You've got to be open and coachable with
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  your spouse. And if you're scared, talk to them about what to do. Just say, listen,
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  I think the best thing you can do is send them a text message. Hey, I've
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  been thinking about our money. Are you open to having a wine tonight and
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  just going through some things? I said, that's like the first step you've got to take. And
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  all of a sudden, you're having a conversation with your spouse about your money. And you think, oh,
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  that's all I had to do. And then you're sitting and doing your audit together. And you go, oh,
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  we'll cut that. We'll cut that. Oh, perfect. And you're off and running. And
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  the reality is you're really 90 days away from a completely different life
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  at 40. So I don't want you to have to worry about
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  60. I know it's around the corner because the last 20 years went so fast,
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  I get it. But there's really plenty of time for you
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  to get it sorted, okay? I wouldn't want you to think that you're in the same
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  place when you're 60. That would
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  be a failure because right now, if you're listening to this or you're watching this,
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  you're aware, which means now you can change
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  it. But if you don't, and you come back in 20 years, we cannot blame anyone
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  but you for that. Does that make sense? All right, so hopefully these
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  simple basic steps and some of those ideas that I share with you is going to help you to
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  realize age is just a number. It's irrelevant when you're 20, 40, or
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  60. If you are in a position where you need to get out of it and get financial peace instead of stress, there's
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  never a better time to do that than today, okay? The
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  best time to do it was 20 years ago, I get it. Second best time, boom, today.
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  So take this episode as a bit of a kick in the pants, a
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  bit of a rev up to motivate you to move,
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  to get your money on track because we can't wait another 20 years.
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  What are we going to do, right? Go do it now. Your age? irrelevant.
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  You got plenty of time. I believe in you. You can do it. You're amazing.
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  You can do anything. You just got to put it into action. Okay. So
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  I hope you've enjoyed the episode. It's a mini leave a question below or a comment about
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  one of these steps you want to ask me about. And I'll
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  come back and answer them because I do respond to the comments in our
• 12:13
  YouTube channel, on Spotify and come and hang out with
• 12:16
  us on Instagram whenever I go live there. But I hope you've enjoyed the episode. If
• 12:20
  you know anyone who's 40 and they need to hear this, click the share button, share
• 12:23
  it with them, subscribe to the channel so you can hit the next channel whenever
• 12:26
  we create them and help us grow the channel as well. I think we're making a real impact
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  here and we're only just warming up. All right, so I hope you've enjoyed the episode and I'll
• 12:33
  see you in the next one. Thanks for listening to Money Grows on Trees. If you enjoyed
• 12:36
  the episode, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
• 12:40
  and subscribe to us on YouTube so you never miss an episode. And
• 12:43
  if you're serious about building wealth, make sure to check out the links in the show
• 12:47
  notes and follow me on all social media platforms at