Latest / Money Grows on Trees / #205 - 19 Minutes of Brutal Money Advice (From a Millionaire) 💰🔥

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#205 - 19 Minutes of Brutal Money Advice (From a Millionaire) 💰🔥 · Money Grows on Trees

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Most people have no idea about Bitcoin. They have no idea about shares.
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They have no idea about sometimes even the property they're about to buy, but
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they'll go and invest in it because their neighbor's doing it, their friends are doing it. And
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just because your neighbor's doing it doesn't mean you should do it. When do you have a shower? And it's every
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day. Why? To stay clean. Why do you brush your teeth? So you don't lose
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your teeth. How often are you cleaning your money? You're on a first class flight
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and it's on Instagram? Congratulations, I'll bet you bro. You may see people
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flying first class, buying Ferraris, buying Louis Vuitton, traveling
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here, doing this. The reality is you don't know what's going on with someone's business, their
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bedroom, or their bank account. So now you might be thinking to yourself, well Lloyd, what's the point
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in having that extra cash? What if I want to buy a Ferrari or a Lambo? What
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if I like nice clothes? What if I do want to have some status? The reality
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is... I'm Lloyd James Ross, seven-figure investor and entrepreneur, and
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I've helped thousands of business owners and professionals turn financial stress
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into success. If you're stuck in old money habits, overwhelmed by
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investing, or unsure where to start, this is for you. I'll
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give you the mindset and strategies to take control, grow
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your wealth, and achieve financial freedom. It's time to make
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your money work for you. Look at
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your bank account. Like, look at it. The biggest problem people
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face when it comes to their money is they don't look at it. Like, where's my money going? It's
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going where you're sending it. It doesn't just get legs and
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walk away by itself. It's where you send it based
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on your own behavior. And so if you're wondering where your money's going,
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you've got to look at it, which means looking at it consistently. So
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many people I talk to that have their money out of control is out of control because
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they don't consistently look at their bank statements. And
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I think of this when people, you know, have a shower. I say, hey, when do
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you have a shower? And it's every day. Why? To stay clean. Why
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do you brush your teeth? So you don't lose your teeth. How
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often are you cleaning your money? If you had a spouse or
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a girlfriend or a loved one and you didn't spend time with them, what if you
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had a wife or a husband and you only caught up
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once a year for a date? Would the relationship last?
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No. But this is what people are doing with their money. This is the relationship they
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have with it. They haven't been on a date with their money for years.
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Why is my relationship falling apart? because
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you're not dating your money. Student of mine, Steve, he hadn't shouted his
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money. He hadn't dated his money for ages. I asked him, I said, when was the last time you looked at
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your bank account and actually went on and did an audit? He said, I can't remember. So
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when he came in, the first thing he did was that. The next month, he
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sent me a message on WhatsApp and he said, Lord, you wouldn't believe it. This is
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what I've created. I was like, what is it? I looked at it. $6,000 in
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the first month just by looking at where his
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money was going. Imagine what you could do if you just looked at your statements
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every single month and shifted it. $6,000 in a month? What's
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that? $70,000 a year? You can save a lot of money. Another client of mine, the
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very first thing she did was an order of a bank statement and she said,
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you wouldn't believe it, Lloyd. I said, what is it? She said, can
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I tell you how much I've saved? I said, how much? She goes, in the last 90 days, I've
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saved $8,000. I said, how
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did you do that? And she said, well, I actually figured out I was going to this
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shop too much, I was going to that shop too much, I was spending a lot of time on Amazon apps, and
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I just couldn't, I didn't realize. So a small hole
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will sink a big ship. And what she discovered was how to close that
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small hole. And now she's got a ship that's sailing smoothly. So how often should
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you date your money? Every single month. You've
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got to know where it's going. You've got to push it
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where it needs to go and pull it back from where you don't want it to go. It
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will go where you send it based on your own behavior. That's why 80% of
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money problems are behavioral problems. It's not really about the mathematics
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of money. It's pretty much grade two math, which is kind of like add, subtract,
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multiply, divide. It's very easy, but it's about our behaviors. You
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might be walking past a sushi train at lunchtime and
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you just get this feeling like, oh, I'll be so quick just to get this sushi roll. Bang,
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you've lost 15 bucks. Money management's done
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in moments, okay? So the most important thing to do is look at
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The other advice I have is invest in what you know, meaning
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this. Most people are putting their money in stuff they don't have
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any idea about. They're like, oh, should I buy this? Should I invest in that?
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I'm like, what do you know about it? Not much? Then don't. Investing
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has to be rational. So don't invest in what you
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don't know. And most people have no idea about Bitcoin.
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They have no idea about shares. They have no idea about sometimes even
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the property they're about to buy, but they'll go and invest in it because their neighbor's
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doing it, their friends are doing it. And just because your neighbor's doing it doesn't mean you should
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do it, right? Just because people start trading feces
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doesn't mean you start trading feces. You've got to
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understand what you're doing. And how
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Education comes before acquisition. She
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I was like, oh my God, why? And so the
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reason she did that was because she didn't understand the
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foundations and principles of investing, right? She didn't understand.
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And so she just threw her money at it because she wanted her money to
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grow. She wanted to see it go up. But the problem is if you don't
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know what you're buying and it goes up, you don't know why.
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and she didn't know why it went up, and she didn't know when to sell, and if
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you don't know when to buy, when to sell, what you hold, and you don't understand what
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you are investing in, you have no business doing that. And
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so what we needed to teach her was, hey, let's get some education around
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this so you actually know what you're doing. Imagine what it's like to know exactly
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where your money's going and how long it's going to be in there, what
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it's going to produce, and just have certainty around it. Like, what if you could just do that? And
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that's what she's got, right? So that's where financial education is more important than
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financial advice. So educate yourself financially, then decide rationally and
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The thing is this, most people are using their
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money to play status games. And status games are
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where you deploy your money into your clothes, your car, your
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holidays, your Instagram account, to show people
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that you're rich instead of actually being rich. All right, so you posted you're
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on a first class flight and it's on Instagram? Congratulations, I'll
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bet you're broke. I bet that's the first time you've done it and you showcase on Instagram,
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I'm on a first class flight. Great, good for you. That's a status game because
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you're showing people that you're playing a status game, right? Charlie Munger,
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who's Warren Buffett's former business partner, a multi-billionaire, multi-billionaire,
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flew coach, flew economy because he knew it's
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a slippery slope. The moment you turn left, you've always got to turn
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left, especially when you show people you turn left on the airplane means
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you've got to continue to do it. And if you're broke and you do it once, you're in trouble.
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Most people waste money looking rich when the reality is they
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need to become rich. How do you do that? You actually underspend your income. You
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actually put it into assets. You actually put it into your own skill set. You
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don't want to show off to people that you are looking rich. You just want
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to be rich. How I learned not to play status games was when I
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was young, I was in my early 20s. I had this incredible opportunity,
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this job in the Middle East. I was building the Formula One circuit for
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the inaugural Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi. And my
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HR manager at the time, he was an English guy. He
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used to call me Rossa. And I was very influential at
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the time. He said, Rossa, you're making some good money now. You
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got to level up your apartment and buy a nice car. That's
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my best accent. And I said, all right, so I'm influenced by this manager.
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And at the time in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, there was a lot of that going on. There's a lot
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of wealth, a lot of money in that place. And so being influenced, I was like,
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great, I've got to upgrade my apartment. So I went and got an apartment in
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Abu Dhabi. And in Abu Dhabi in those days, you couldn't room share your apartment,
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even with a guy. It was against the rules. So I couldn't even lease out
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my second bedroom. So I had this massive apartment on the niche. I couldn't afford
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it. It was taking up 50% of my wage. And I was like, oh.
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I've fallen into the status game trap. Straight away, I was influenced
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by someone else. I made the decision and immediately regretted it
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because I saw all the money just leaking out of my account. For what purpose? To
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say that I lived in a nice place? There was no way I would have had enough money
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to actually save up to resign from that job and build a massive career elsewhere if
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I kept playing the status game. Be careful of the status games
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you're playing and be careful of the people around you because once you
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make the decision to play status games and you build an identity
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around that particular game, it is very difficult, very
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difficult to wind that back and actually start playing
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wealth games. Because once you have that identity, everyone thinks
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you have to be rich all the time. If you've got to play that game and keep
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stepping up to the plate and you don't have the money, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. You're
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going to be living a lie. You're going to be living a life that's actually not yours, which
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is why I've always delayed the gratification of those things because I'm
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so much more involved in making sure I've got free time. I
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can spend time with people I love. I can do the things I want to do. They're
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wealth games. They're the things I want to do. That's the game I want
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to play with the people I want to play them with. When you start playing status
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games, you fall into the trap of playing games with people you don't like, doing things
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you don't want to do, and having to sacrifice yourself for the next 50 years playing
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a game or working in a job or running a business you don't even
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like. So just be very careful when you take that step. It's
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a slippery slope and it's hard to get back up the top of the hill. 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 Buys Happiness,
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simplifies investing and wealth building with practical steps to help
10:09
you achieve financial peace. Get your copy via the
10:12
link in the show notes and let's get your money working for you. Now back
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to the episode. So avoid playing status games. The opposite of that is to play
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wealth games. Wealth games are games you can't necessarily see
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straight away. And so if you're seeing someone who's playing a
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wealth game, you may not even know. They may be driving a Toyota Camry.
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I remember for us personally, I drove, we had a little VW car, little
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black one, convertible. We bought it for cash. And
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for 10 years, I drove that thing into the ground. My wife did, I drove it
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into the ground. We didn't buy and upgrade our car for 10 years.
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We had a goal. We thought, you know what? What if we just become millionaires first? We
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had a business goal and a wealth goal. It wasn't until that
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goal was hit that we upgraded. I can still remember our little car. The
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seats were coming off it. There was oil all over the ground. It was
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time to upgrade, but we didn't do it. We delayed our gratification. Most
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people can't do that. There was a test they did with kids
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to showcase what the number one underlying element
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was to future success. And it was a fascinating experiment they
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did. And they did it with marshmallows with kids. They sat these kids in a room.
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They gave him a marshmallow and they said, we're gonna leave the room. If you eat
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the marshmallow, you don't get a second one. But if you don't eat it, we'll come
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back and we'll give you a second one. They left the room and all the kids are sitting there
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like, oh, I'd love to eat this marshmallow, love to eat it. And then some of
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the kids couldn't handle it and they went bang and they ate it, right? And
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then some of the other kids didn't touch it. So when the experimenters came
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back into the room, they gave the kids who didn't touch it a second marshmallow. And
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later on, as the kids grew up, The only thing
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that could determine their future success was their ability to say no to
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the first marshmallow. That's called delay gratification. And most
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people can't play that game. They want to eat the marshmallow
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straight away. They want to buy the car. They want to get the trip. I mean, they want to
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get it so bad, they borrow money to do it. They borrow money to get married because
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they just want it so bad. They want the social validation so
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badly that they've got to eat that marshmallow straight away. But here's the thing. If
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you eat the marshmallow first and quickly, you've got to pay
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a marshmallow tax. there's a price to pay for
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the marshmallow. And that will dictate how
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successful you are when it comes to your money. So delay your gratification, right?
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Like what we did with our car, we finally upgraded, we bought a nice Range Rover Sport,
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paid cash, it was fun, one of the best things we ever bought. And every time
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I go to that car, I walked to it and I'm just so proud of
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it because we actually earned it. So now you might be thinking to yourself, well,
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what's the point in having that extra cash if I can't fly first class? What
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if I want to buy a Ferrari or a Lambo? What if I like nice
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clothes? What if I do want to have some status? What if I just want to have the status and attract opportunity?
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And the reality is you can. But do it later. It's like the
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cherry on top at the end of the cake. You don't start with the cherry. You
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bake the cake, you put the icing on, and at the very end of that, you put the
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cherry on top. So the Ferrari, the first class, that's
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the cherry you want to put on the top. It's not what you start with, okay? So
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play the game, but play it at the right time. Which brings me
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to the next point. Avoid, buy now, pay
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later. You don't want to do buy now, pay later. You
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want to pay now, buy later. Pay
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now, buy later. It's a wild world out there. It's a dangerous
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world when it comes to money because people will prey on
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your psychology. They'll prey on your weaknesses. If
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you're someone that needs to go for the marshmallow quickly and have
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your cake quickly and eat fast and not delay
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any of your gratification, if you're someone that needs to have your thing now, Then
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people or companies like Afterpay, Zippay, Klana,
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they're actually exploiting that weakness in
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your psychology. So just understand, that's a business. They're
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making money from fees from you when you use this because they know
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you're weak. And what I would suggest is to build
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your strength. Say no to things quicker, delay your
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gratification, and say no to what they're doing to you which is exploiting you.
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Because part of the business model they have is
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to say, well, people want things now and they'll pay later. So they know that.
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They can see it. And they've built a huge business. The guys that
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started Afterpay sold that and exited it for $60 billion. Like,
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they knew what they were doing. They're like, oh, people want this. They need this. That
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doesn't mean you need it, right? So shift your
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weakness and turn it into a strength. And if you need to do it, delete
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the apps. Take it away. Move the marshmallow away from
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yourself so you don't eat it, right? You don't want to delay the tax,
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okay? So a lot of people are trying to use ZipPay and
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Afterpay and Klarna and all these buy now, pay later
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apps. But the problem with that is you're being validated before you've earned it. You're
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getting the juice before the squeeze. And the idea is
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to actually delay the juice, put the squeeze in first.
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And this is an age old thing. I mean, my mom used to go to to lay
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by things when I was a kid and she would buy the thing for
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the price in the shop and then she would pay it off over time. That
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is delaying the gratification. That's the second marshmallow. And
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all that Buy Now, Pay Later does is give you that marshmallow, but
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you don't pay tax right away. You pay it later and later and later. And the reality is
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if you do that now with small stuff, it's going to come and haunt you later
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with big stuff. A lot of people want to have multimillionaire portfolios. They
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want to have a multimillion dollar business. The problem is that if
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their behavior is ineffective with
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the small stuff, like if you're putting your peanut butter jar on Buy
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Now, Pay Later, It's going to come and haunt you when you got a bigger business,
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let me tell you, right? So your behaviors will follow you around. Wherever you are,
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there you go, right? And so, you
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got to change your behavior in the small stuff. The other thing is this, don't
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borrow to fund expenses. You can borrow money,
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but don't do it to fund expenses, right? Meaning
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this, if you borrow to buy something, make sure it's producing
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income. So you can borrow money to buy a property investment. It's
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producing income from rent. You can borrow money to buy a
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business. We recently just bought a business. We knew the income coming
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in and we knew that if we borrowed, in fact, we
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borrowed all the money to acquire this business. We
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had 100% financing from the bank and we knew the interest rate
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and we knew the repayments and we knew the business would pull in twice as
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much as what the repayments would be. So that was a sensible borrowing
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to buy a business. Same as a property investment. If it's making
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more than it's costing in your debt, go for it. But it's when you
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start borrowing money to buy stuff and things, to
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buy a boat that's a depreciating asset that takes money for
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registration, insurance, and upkeep, that's when it
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starts to work against you. So the worst thing you can do is borrow
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money and buy depreciating assets that take cash flow
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from you. So you definitely want to avoid borrowing
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money to go on trips for sure. You want to avoid borrowing
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money to have a wedding. I had a friend of mine, he borrowed $60,000 to
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fund a wedding. Now, last time I checked, weddings
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didn't produce income. Weddings didn't grow in value. Your spouse
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can grow in value, but the reality is they should have saved the
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money and then spent it on the wedding. There's time for that. They weren't just going to
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run away. There's time. You don't need to do stuff now. Right?
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So be careful you don't borrow money to buy things like
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that that just don't produce income or growing value unless you've got
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the cash. But also understand when you deploy the cash, if
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it's not going to grow, it's not going to give you any back. Bye-bye cash. So be
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very careful about borrowing to fund expenses. So
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I hope this brutal money advice has helped you. It is brutal. It's so important. Money
17:46
is a game that you can win, but you can only win if you're
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brutal with yourself. Because look around, all the adults are
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gone. There are no adults in this game of money. You're
17:56
it. The buck stops and starts with you,
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which means you've got to be brutal to yourself. If you're having these
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types of conversations in your head saying, you haven't earned this yet, wait
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till you earn it to get it. You've got to look at your statements, date your money. I
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don't understand that investment. I better educate myself. I
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don't have the skills. I better invest in myself before anything
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else. I'm going to avoid those apps. I'm
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definitely not going to borrow money to buy things that don't produce income. And
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this kind of lays the foundations for your money
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rules. All right, hope you enjoyed the episode. Go hit the subscribe button, but
18:31
most importantly, leave a comment below of the most brutal money
18:34
advice you can give. And this month, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go and give away
18:38
one of my books to the most impactful comment. So go ahead, leave
18:41
us a comment. See you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to Money Grows
18:45
on Trees. If you enjoyed the episode, leave a five-star review on Apple
18:48
Podcasts and Spotify and subscribe to us on
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YouTube so you never miss an episode. And if you're serious about building wealth,
18:55
make sure to check out the links in the show notes and follow me on all
18:58
social media platforms, at LloydJamesRoss for