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This week on The Millionaire Choice Show, Tony talks with Chris Miles of Money Ripples. Chris grew up in a single parent home raised by his mother. After his parent’s divorced at age 9, Chris found himself living in a trailer park. After high school, Chris managed to get into college where he dropped out with one class left to finish his degree so that he could start his first business.
About Chris Miles
Chris Miles, the “Cash Flow Expert,” is a leading authority on how to quickly create cash flow and lasting wealth for thousands of his clients, entrepreneurs, and others internationally! He has been featured in US News, CNN Money, Bankrate.com, and has a high reputation for getting his clients life-altering financial results in his company, Money Ripples.
After working as a traditional financial advisor and stock coach for several years, Chris came to a stark realization that the financial advising industry was not showing anyone how to quickly and safely become financially prosperous today.
After leaving that industry, Chris was able to retire when he was 28, and has since worked to teach his effective, unique strategies, for companies like Freedom Fast Track and Garrett Gunderson, and now Money Ripples, while exposing the popular myths around money that have kept so many from enjoying financial freedom and peace of mind.
Chris consistently practices and teaches small business owners how to do what no other financial advisers can or will – achieve financial prosperity, now and in the future, spending time doing what they love most.
Learn more about Chris Miles, moneyripples.com
Take advantage of Complimentary Life and Money Mentor Session with Tony or Downloand FREE eBooks.
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Show Transcript
Tony (00:01):
Welcome back to the millionaire choice show. We're gonna have a lot of fun on the show today, cause we are gonna talk to the anti-financial advisor, Chris Miles. Chris is the host of the Chris miles money show and founder of Money Ripples. So we're gonna get some good conversation. I'm eager to hear this too about, financial advisors, maybe the bad side of the financial advisor world. So we're gonna hear Chris share that with us. Chris, welcome to the show.
Chris Miles (01:08):
Hey pleasure to be here, Tony.
Tony (01:10):
We didn't get to do a lot of pre-show today, which I normally do. I'm eager to hear your story the first time. Just like the future millionaires that are listening to the show, I'm gonna be hearing it for the first time. So, let us have it, like what did life look like financially or up for you?
Chris Miles (01:25):
I definitely didn't grow with a silver spoon in my mouth. That's for sure. I grew up with a dad that was all about, trying to save your money and get that good job. You had to get an education cuz he didn't. So he wanted me to be the first one in our family to go to college. My mom was more of the starving artist. She was trained by the same master painter that trained Bob Ross how to paint. So, she did that, but she's like, "Hey, once I die, then I'll make money." I'm like, "I wanna be different. I don't wanna be like my dad who said he's gonna work the rest of his life. He'll literally die working, and I don't wanna do that."
Chris Miles (02:00):
I did go to college, but I ended up dropping. Even though I grew up with all the, "Hey, save everything, spend nothing." And, "money doesn't grow on trees." And, "what do you think I am made of money?" that's all the kind of money conversations I had growing up. Even lived in a trailer park for five years, that was fun. We had the double wide. We were "fancy"
Tony (02:21):
You were the rich trailer park guys.
Chris Miles (02:24):
That's right. We were on the rich side of the dead end street. But anyways, I went to college and I wanted to have my own business. I wanted be an entrepreneur. I knew that because I didn't want someone to dictate how much money I made; didn't wanna dictate my own freedom and that kind of thing.
Chris Miles (02:40):
I wanted to dictate my own schedule, my time and money and all that kinda stuff. So I was gonna be a business consultant, but I thought, "if I'm gonna be a business consultant, shouldn't I have real life business experience," not just get an MBA and then come out and say, "yeah, I studied a bunch of books. I'm so smart." So, I actually dropped outta college with one class to go before I got my bachelors, took a sabbatical. It was only gonna be for one year. And I thought, "I should start a business. What's it gonna be?" And the first business that came that kind of perked my ears was actually becoming a financial advisor. Little did I know they take anybody that has a heartbeat and can pass a test with at least 70%. You don't have to be a financial genius cuz I wasn't, like I was smart.
Chris Miles (03:20):
I was good with numbers. But, definitely, I wasn't anybody who had been trained in that industry. I started doing that, loved being an entrepreneur. So, I stayed dropped out. I didn't go back. I figured, "Hey, I'm gonna take this path. Maybe it's hard one." I did that for four years. Then after four years in, I started- I'm one of those guys. I like evidence. I like to know that things work, and four years in, I realized, "this isn't working," but I didn't wanna admit it because that would destroy my business. Right. I mean to tell people, "Hey, I don't think people are retiring doing this stuff, but you should still invest money with me." That's not exactly the best marketing strategy. So, what I ended up doing is-
Chris Miles (04:01):
When the student's ready, the teacher appears. So, end of 2005, one of the guys that trained to be a financial advisor had left to go do real estate investing. And I reached out to him, wish him Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, all that stuff. And I was hoping to hear that he had went broke. So he would come back to work for me again, exact opposite was true. He was like, "man, life is awesome. My dad and I partnered up on all these deals and my dad's now doubled his income as a professor at the local university." I said, "doubled? You guys just started doing this four months ago. That's Too good to be true. There's no way." He's like, "man, it's worked." And so we got this debate about what's better; stocks or realistic.
Chris Miles (04:41):
Finally he stopped me. He said, "Chris, how many of your clients are truly financially free? Where they don't worry about money?" And as I thought about it, "I thought, well, none cause even the retired ones still worry about running outta money." He said, "well great, good job, Chris, way to go! Way to help nobody. How about this? How many of you guys, as financial advisors, are financially free? Not off the commissions you're earning, but actually doing the investments because if anybody's got figured out, it should be you guys. Cause you're the experts." And I thought about it. I said, "well, maybe this one guy in our office is, but I don't think anybody is. Even the guys that have been working the late seventies, they're still working." I found out later that guy wasn't either. So, nobody was financially free. He said, "well, there's your problem, Chris."
Chris Miles (05:27):
I said, "well, give the answer if you're so smart." And he's like, "I'm not gonna give you the answer," because he just got into an argue with me that I'm wrong. And I said, "listen, I'm open you. You got me. Give me something." So, he's like, "all right, I don't think you're serious. But if you really are-" I love how he used reverse psychology on me without even knowing it. He's like, "I don't think you're serious, but if you are go get this book by Robert Kosaki called, Who Took My Money." It's a lesser known rich dad, poor dad book. It says mutual funds suck. And then he's like, "and then go and listen to this radio show," It was a FM talk radio show, here locally in Utah.
Chris Miles (06:04):
I started listening to it with these two real estate investors. Pretty soon I started to get my whole world rocked. By March of 06', after a while I realized I can't stay in integrity and teach this stuff anymore. It doesn't work. So, if it doesn't work, why am I trying to sell this thing? It's crap. So I quit. I put in my resignation at the height of my practice. I was just gonna do mortgages and then be a ballroom dance instructor. That was my thing I was doing. But of course I wanna know what these guys knew. So, I started to learn from them. And, long story short later that summer of 2006, I became financially independent. Granted, I only needed $3,500 a month to be independent back in those days.
Chris Miles (06:45):
I had a growing family of, two kids at that point. Now, I have eight kids in a blended family. So, it's a busy household here. But needless to say like, 2006; I was outta the rat race. So I was 28, almost 29 years old. And I realized, "holy cow, that was so much easier than what I had taught as a financial advisor. Now, what am I gonna do with my life?" And so that's where I came outta retirement 2007. I did it informally in 2006, but 2007, I came outta retirement to teach people how to do that. Well, behold, I went through the recession, which kicked my butt. Got back in the rat race over a million dollars in debt, short 16,000 a month. I went from a millionaire to upside-down millionaire. Had to dig back out of that. Didn't file for bankruptcy, but I did pay back a bunch of debt.
Chris Miles (07:29):
Eventually, by the end of 2016, I was financially independent for the second time when I was 39 years old. So, not many people become financially independent twice by the time they're less than 40. But, that's not a good thing cause I had to do it twice cause I screwed up during the recession.
Tony (07:47):
Now, when you talk about that, the recession side; was that just because the property values dropped so much and you were upside down on properties, is that how you found yourself?
Chris Miles (07:56):
Partly was that. The other part was we launched a new business. I had a few partners that we had launched, this new company, this coaching company, and we were focused towards real estate investors that were more flippers. They were flipping properties; they were banking on appreciation.
Chris Miles (08:11):
So, we put a lot of our own money and skin in the game. They even told me to cut off my other streams of passive income, which looking back was so stupid. Considering we're telling people how to get outta the rat race. I cut off my streams of income, which kind of definitely put me back in the rat race even before the recession really hit, because now that was my mainstream of income. I only had a little bit of passive income coming in after that. So, that's where I got kicked in the teeth. Of course expenses were big in the company. I had raised expenses in my lifestyle at home, and I was no longer at $3,500 a month now. Between my business and my personal; my expenses were more like $21,000-22,000 a month.
Chris Miles (08:51):
But unfortunately, because we're launching this new business and then everybody gets hit; now I'm only making about five or $6,000 a month. So, definitely not the best place to be in. And, so even before the recession really hit by late 2007, when the credit market's tightened up, and then I couldn't get equity outta my house, even though I had dumped a ton of money in there, like good old Dave Ramsey tells me to do. Which is a bunch of crap. I did that. And, as a result all my money was tied up in that property and then the value dropped and then I actually lost a bunch of cash, a lot of equity and net worth because of that.
Tony (09:27):
Now, I have to laugh a little bit cuz; you that was my boss for 15 years, right?
Chris Miles (09:30):
I didn't realize that, but I know you're in his backyard. You're right there in Tennessee.
Tony (09:36):
Well, I joined with him when it was about 30 people, and worked with him until it was about 550. I left in 2016. And so, it's funny. I'm sure we'll have some fun conversation here. Let's rewind. I'm back in the conversation a little bit; back to the trailer park. I got a little bit, I got some trailer park stories, and for you listening; we're not dissing on trailer parks, or anything like that, or people living them. Everybody's got their own circumstances, their own living arrangements, hardships, they face different things like that.
Tony (10:09):
We need to have some candid conversations because, I think just right off the gate, a lot of people, might go down the trailer route going, "Hey, that's cost effective. It is; like, when you look at like buying a house versus buying a trailer, you're shaving tens of thousands of dollars. In some cases, maybe even hundreds of thousands, depending on what you're trying to buy, what area you live in, but you're buying a depreciating item. A trailer is gonna go down in value. It's not gonna appreciate, it's not going up in value. So, you've got to retrain your brain to think about the things you spend your money on. You wanna buy more appreciating type assets than you buy depreciating type assets.
Tony (10:48):
And that's really how one of the ways you build wealth is just thinking about where your money's going. Is it gonna come back to you later and be worth more, or is it gonna be worth less? You buy a car, the average value of a car drops like 75% in side of five years. It's worth virtually nothing after 10. Trailers are kinda like that. Interesting story, before I let you share yours a little bit more detail, cause you kind of glossed over that a lot, and there's some hardships related to that. My uncle and aunt and cousin, we were always over at their trailer house, hanging out, got some crazy stories around that. When I had gotten on the debt free wagon, like, "get outta debt," at 25.
Tony (11:32):
And I met my wife. I was investing and getting outta debt. I was very money focused when I met my wife. And, by the way, I was still living at home with mom and dad paying rent, right before I got married up until about six months before I got married. And then I'm like, "it's time to move out, find a place, find my own cave to put my wife in," versus the one my dad had. And I talked to my wife about moving into a trailer. I'm like, "it's cheap, it's cheap, it's cheap. It's the cheapest thing you can do. 40 grand. We get a trailer; we'll have that thing paid off at no time flat. We'll have no obligations, living effectively," and she just looked at me, she's like, "I'm not moving into a trailer," and then I'm like, "oh, okay."
Tony (12:16):
So, that's when I found out that you have a spouse that has an opinion, and you gotta somehow get on the same page. But we were able to find a house for- I think it was like $78,000 and I think I offered them 58 or something and we ended up paying like, I think 60, 62 5 for our first house, $500 a month house payment. And I wish I'd kept that house. It's worth a fortune now, but your story; that's not the ideal place to raise a family. It doesn't sound like your experience was like that.
Chris Miles (12:52):
No, my parents divorced when I was nine, and my dad got to keep the house cuz he could afford the mortgage payment while my mom, went to get her own place, which, $300 rent a month.
Chris Miles (13:02):
That was a trailer. The double-wide, like I said, it was a nice manufactured home for sure. It was one of the newer ones in the neighborhood. Definitely a hard neighborhood though. I mean, there were definitely not the best examples of kids around me, being in that place. I mean the kids were pretty much jerks. We had a lot of fun, and I learned how to play sports in that neighborhood. So I'm grateful for that. But in a lot of ways, it was definitely trailer scarcity mentality.
Tony (13:32):
That's the thing. You're living around a bunch of people, and one of the principles in life; if you wanna have a more abundant and prosperous life, you gotta get around abundant, prosperous people, mindset wise, and that's not where you were.
Tony (13:45):
My neighborhood was the same way, everybody's still living there. The kids, the families; broken homes. I had friends that had dads dealing drugs, one growing pot in the closet with heat lamps. Another one; my friend was stealing his dad's drug stash and they were smoking it. It's just crazy stuff. It's just where you are. But, I think the beautiful thing about your story, my story, other people's stories; you don't have to live there. Just cuz you were born in that state or that was the experience you were in. Anybody can really break free from that and create something really new and beautiful.
Tony (14:27):
You don't have to be stuck there. What were some of the hardships you faced back then? Obviously, not the best influences on your life in the neighborhood you grew up in, but there was any other big, like challenges you guys faced as a family financially.
Chris Miles (14:42):
I was kinda insulated from the financial part of it. I didn't really see a whole lot going on that way. But I started going through junior high, not long after that. I was getting picked on cause I was a lot shorter than the other kids and smaller. Like I said, that's what got me into sports too, because the kids that were picking on me were in sports, the kids in my neighborhood, they weren't picking on me, but they love sports and they got me to start liking it too.
Chris Miles (15:08):
And so I thought, well, "Hey, if I play sports, then I'll be popular. Then they will stop beating up on me. And maybe I'll even get strong enough so they'll stop beating up on me too." cuz heck even by the time I was a sophomore in high school, I was only five-three, a hundred thirty pounds, and then between my junior and my senior year, I shot up six inches. Finally when I of course quit some of those sports and started doing other sports instead. It was more just the shaping in the way that there was a lot of scarcity; there was never enough. Right. There's definitely that piece that I got growing up, "we can't afford it," that stuff. But for the most part, I didn't hear a lot of the stresses. I didn't really get involved in that other than my own little issues of adolescents growing up.
Tony (15:54):
And growing up, I think one of the hardest things ever is probably growing up in a single parent household. I fortunately, both my wife and I, come from long married, parents, but my family is all broken marriages on my mom and dad's side and grand grandparents and stuff like that. You get to see some of the damage that happens from that, statistically, it's a challenge. A child that comes from a divorced home- there's a lot of statistical evidence there about how detrimental that is to the development of people. So I've obviously that didn't crush you. You got out from under that and it started growing. So, financial advisors, you made some pretty strong comments right there.
Tony (16:42):
What were you saying there around, Mr. Ramsey?
Chris Miles (16:44):
Well, I mean, Dave Ramsey, he teaches some of the same stuff about financial advisors you teach. It's the same stuff we've been taught for decades, which has been proven not to work; because if it had worked, we'd have a lot more financially free people out there. By the way, being debt free does not equate to being financially free. I actually love Dave Ramsey poster children because they end up being the best clients because they're the ones that are the most desperate. They say, "I just got debt free and I'm not free because I still have expenses. All my expenses weren't debt payments. Most of my life was not debt. And so what do I do now? And I put this money in the stock market, but my financial advisor tells me it's not enough, but I'm putting away a crap load of money.
Chris Miles (17:27):
What do I do?" and that's kinda what happened even as a financial advisor because for example; I have a nice Twitter post- and here's the thing- I'm put a disclaimer on this. I think Dave Ramsey is awesome. I think he's a great guy. I think he has a great mission for what he is doing, but he is- you've worked internally and my wife was actually the first approved licensed teacher in the state of Utah. Because, Utah was kind of banned for a little while, but they let my wife in for some reason, and she went to the trainings in the corporate office, and she went, drove by the house. She didn't go into his house.
Chris Miles (18:02):
But, did the whole tour and all that kind of stuff and got to see it. And even she was like, "there's some good things, but most of these guys here are just broke ministers. They're like making $30,000-40,000 a year. That's really who this is for. What about the middle class? What about the upper middle class? Like, it's not really for them." It's for the people that are really paycheck to paycheck or not even paycheck to paycheck, that's where Dave Ramsey thrives. Right. And the people that need a budget or they spend-aholics. They've got that issue. But a lot of people, unfortunately, a lot of his biggest fans already believe the way he teaches. They're already savers. They're already doing the same stuff. Those are the people that really don't need his help,
Chris Miles (18:42):
it's just not the right fit, but those are the people that keep doing it because it's the narrative they've always had. The problem is that I've seen the in financial advising is that, we taught the same thing, get outta debt, save it forever, save it in the stock market and everything else. I remember there's a, I was getting to this, there's a Twitter post; A tweet that Dave did that I got a screenshot of, cause I couldn't lose it. He said, "if everybody saves a hundred dollars a month for 40 years, earning 12% a year, you have 1.17, 9 million. Everyone should retire a millionaire," end quote. The funny thing is a hundred dollars a month for 40 years at 12% doesn't equal 1.179. It actually was 979,000 instead. So he was off by 200,000 bucks.
Chris Miles (19:28):
Secondly, the stock market has not 12% long term. The real rate of return to the stock market has actually been even the last 30 years, about 8.4%, and that's after this 13 year run-up that we've had, that's unprecedented. We'd never gone beyond six years in a row up cycle in the market. Now we just hit 13 at the end of 2021. So, you throw those skewed numbers in there. 8%. You're lucky to achieve. If you throw 8% in there. Instead, now that number drops down to like the 300,000, almost 400,000 range, not a million bucks, and that doesn't factor in inflation and everything else. And that's what I was realizing as a financial advisor, when I put in real numbers, real rates of inflation- not what the government claimed it to be- putting in the real return to the stock markets.
Chris Miles (20:14):
And then we factor in fees. Maybe you make 7%. you start throwing all those in there. What you find out is that whatever you save per year is about the lifestyle you're gonna be able to live on in retirement. So if you're packing away, you're max funding your 401k at like 20,000 a year, you're gonna have about a year lifestyle because it's not really keeping up with inflation. And they always tell you to pull out that old 4% rule, right? Like, "Hey, whatever you have, if you have million dollars, you pull up 4%," and that doesn't work either. In fact, even the wall street journal came out a few months back saying, "no, we've rerun the numbers. It probably should be no more than 3%." And, I was even saying that 15 plus years ago as a financial advisor where we said, "Hey, four seems a little aggressive.
Chris Miles (20:57):
You might run outta money."
Tony (20:58):
Well, I think the things you're hitting on there- I wrote an article this last week, but like you mentioned the rate of inflation, and the more I looked at this, I didn't learn this stuff until, last few years, but I knew about inflation, but once you start looking at it, you're like, "it's manipulated. The whole number is absolutely fabricated and manipulated just to make the public believe the economy is better than what it really is." just recently-
Chris Miles (21:22):
Like you said, keep social security cost of living down, right? If they're basing th cost of living index on this social security based on inflation numbers and they're running outta money, they're gonna say, "Hey, well, instead of having to pay these people more, let's show a lower number. So we don't have to raise in social security as much every year."
Tony (21:36):
I had never thought about that, but absolutely, man. And, it's really sad, but as American people, we're letting it happen, but there's no other way to say it; You're getting scammed. The whole government, the whole tax structure, the debt structure, like all of these financial systems, all of them are designed by a certain group of people and it's designed to flow that money. The bailout, what happened? Well, there's your answer right there. Who are the people that are benefiting from this system? We'll look at who got bailed out, and the corporation's the same thing, corporate leaders, General Motors, for example, for you guys listening to the show, this is one of the reasons, some people tell you to diversify, it's a good idea to diversify your investments.
Tony (22:27):
But, General Motors, all the shareholders when general motors filed bankruptcy, all the shareholders got wiped. So the debtors got paid, the debtors got paid, the shareholders got wiped. So, if you own stock, "too bad, you're out." But if you're a banker that had loaned the money, well, "Hey, you got paid." And honestly, it's criminal. The whole thing. Once you look at it, I've got clients, got 30% interest rates on cards. Seriously, 30% on credit cards. And some people got 15 of these credit cards, with 20 to 30% interest rates. It's crazy, but it's crippling. And I think, what's interest; when I talk about the inflation rate, I think the latest numbers coming out from Biden was about 7% was the published number.
Tony (23:16):
There's people out there that say it's more like 15%. 15% is the real inflation rate number. We're looking at hyperinflation that hasn't been seen since the seventies or eighties. I remember back in the seventies. I don't know how old you are, Chris. But, I remember, it was so bad. We had gas rationing and, people were literally- we would get our gas in the evening, go home. And by the next morning, our gas tank was empty because somebody siphon the gas out of the car that my parents just bought the night before. And that's when you started seeing these new, gas cans or gas tanks come out where you can't get a hose pipe down in there to siphon the tanks.
Tony (24:01):
But it was because of that, people were stealing gas, like crazy. And it just, that was the life that we grew up in there. And then, the whole financial system changed. And, we're in a very interesting time right now. I don't know if I've written this article or not. I need to finish it, but, there's just some, some amazing similarities right now with what's going on in America, in the world compared to, the 1920s and the great depression in the 1920s. You had the great depression, you saw stock market implosion. It was illegal. FDR made it illegal to own gold. So you had to turn in all your gold, think about that. The government made it illegal for you to own real money. Like gold has been money for thousands of years across every civilization. For thousands of years, every dynasty has coming and gone, kingdoms have come and gone.
Tony (24:54):
It is money in every country, but it was illegal to own gold in the United States. That is a crazy concept. We kinda missed that. Then you got the IRS, you got the Federal Reserve out of that, and you got Social Security, those were like big financial ones. And here we are almost exactly a hundred years later. Oh. And by the way, you had a Spanish flu epidemic with a big vaccine push. Like a big, huge, like tens of millions of people were being vaccinated back in the twenties at the same time, the great depression was going on. Now, you fast forward, here we are, and it looks like a lot of the same stuff. You saw a huge move in the financial system a hundred years ago. And that's exactly what is playing out right now with the great reset, which is being put in place by the international bankers and the global economic forum.
Tony (25:41):
If you future millionaires wanna read up on that, I think it's a wise thing for you to do to understand how your lives and your finances are getting played with- how the economy's getting played with, right now. I'll leave that up to you guys to research on your own, but check it out. It's worth reading and learning about, but when you talk about the markets, you're talking about real financial security, not- I hate to say this cuz so many people have their money tied up in the stock market. We've been trained and programmed with 401ks and IRAs to just, trade our time for dollars and then put those dollars into- I hate to say it- a fake asset.
Tony (26:24):
When you really get to the core of what the stock market is- Now people can make money in the stock market. If you know the system, you can still play within the system and still make profit. But, when you look at what Bill Gates is doing, when you look at what Jeff Bezos is doing right now with all their billions and billions and billions, they're trading out some of that stuff and they're buying land, like you said, real estate, and that's what's been money across all civilizations for thousands of years. Even back before we actually had real money, you got business, you got land real estate. And you got gold and silver. Those were money thousands of years ago. Those are still the core of money today. I think that's what you're talking about a little bit too.
Tony (27:09):
Financial independence through passive income and through property.
Chris Miles (27:13):
Exactly. Property is definitely a good, solid place you can get some of that from, even though it's not the only thing. When we talk about passive income and financial independent; what that means is that your passive income- the money you're earning from those investments- that's paying you on a regular basis- Is more than enough to cover your expenses each month. So, if you're living on say $8,000 a month, it's covering $8,000 a month, passive income coming in. It's a different way of thinking. That's what shocked me in 2006; when I was a financial advisor, I was in the accumulation mindset. Which is what every saver is taught about. It's about saving and saving and hoarding and hoarding forever.
Chris Miles (27:53):
And then eventually you can live on less than the interest, because like you said, with inflation you gotta make sure you don't take out just the interest because then you'll start losing money with inflation. So, you gotta take out less in the beginning and then eventually wind up to it. So, you don't quite run outta money by the time you die. Then again, if you live on ramen noodles and rice and beans, then maybe you'll live a shorter life and you won't run outta money. Or pizza. But, but here's what's cool. Is that, for example, using that same 3% rule that the wall street journal talked about back in October 2021, the 3% rule, rather than 4% says, if you have a million dollars you happen to save up, which is no easy feat, by the way.
Chris Miles (28:34):
It's possible, but it does require to save consistently for many, many years. You have a million dollars saved up. That means you live on 30,000 a year before you get taxed. That's think about that. You're a millionaire and this show is about being a millionaire. You're generally a millionaire, but you're a broke millionaire. You're not even at poverty level. You're you're below the poverty. You're in lower class as a millionaire. You're a broke millionaire. I mean, think about that really. I had a guy that came to me, he had 3 million dollars. He's in his early fifties, he's 52. The financial advisor said, "if you keep saving a couple hundred thousand a year, hopefully you'll hit your goal in 13 years at age 65 to retire." He's like, "I've got more than most people."
Chris Miles (29:16):
I mean, right now the average, the average 65 year old has about 250 to $300,000 in their 401ks. That's it take 3% of that. That's like maybe eight or $9,000 a year you can live on. I mean, no wonder people are begging for social security and keep voting it in cuz they can't afford to do it by doing the same old methods. Now contrast that. Say you have $300,000 in savings. I had a client who actually had that 300,000 savings and now he was living in Columbia. And, he's like, "my goal is to have to be able to replace my income for my business," which was $4,000 a month. Well, two years later he's got $4,000 a month coming in. He only had $300,000 to start with, but now he's getting paid $4,000 a month, which was beneficial.
Chris Miles (29:59):
Cuz last year he actually got really sick, not COVID sick, but he got ill. He didn't know what was going on. Doctors didn't know. So, I mean he had to stop working for the most part. But luckily for him, he at least had that passive income coming in. He was fine. I've got another client. She retired to Bali, and she was only gonna do it for a one year experiment. She's been there now for five years, she hasn't come back. I mean, there's so many cases where you can get that money to work for you. A million dollars could be earning you at least a hundred thousand dollars a year passively. You can even do it in places where you get tax advantages, which could be like in real estate or oil, there's like mineral rights and oils and things like that.
Chris Miles (30:37):
You can get paid on as well. If you find those that are more consistently and stablely paying you out. That's the thing that woke me up. That's why I quit being a financial advisor beyond all the lies and the myths that are taught out there was, "wait a minute. If there's nothing in financial advising that tells you to do that-" They don't, they don't ever tell you to go in these places cause they don't get paid commissions to tell you those things.
Tony (31:01):
You're exactly right. It's the system. And that's more of that. If you really look, it's almost criminal. It's not that financial advisors are criminal. It's just, they have to replicate what they've been taught for the companies that they work for. And so the model doesn't give you options.
Tony (31:16):
You're not gonna go to a financial advisor and get a piece of real estate advice or be told to invest in real estate unless they can make a commission or a profit off of that. You're gonna be stuck in that. It's just part of it. So, you owe it to yourself- the way I like to say it is, "nobody cares about your money more than you. So if you're not gonna take the time to figure out the best things to do with your money, how in the world would you expect your financial advisor to take the time to figure out what to do with your money?" You've gotta get there on your own. It's very interesting. So, what are some of the investments you obviously mentioned that you are messing around with, like dividends, dividends based stocks, and things like that?
Tony (32:00):
Is that part of your passive income plan?
Chris Miles (32:03):
Not so much. Cause it's so how hard to predict that. I mean, even though there are some that usually pay so little, you could take lower risks and get better returns than that somewhere else. So no, we look more at places that have more tax advantages where stocks don't. You get taxed on that just like anybody. So, we're looking at things like rent, like real estate. Now some people, especially on the Western half of the US right now, I've got properties out in Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, Missouri, like those kind of areas. That's where I like to invest. Anything in the Western half of the United States stink. So, whenever I get people, especially from the west coast or the west side, they're like, "you can't make money in real estate.
Chris Miles (32:40):
It's too high priced," which is true in their area. But there are plenty areas in the Midwest and Southeast that I can go put a down payment and get a 12% or better cash on cash return. Meaning that if say I put a $30,000 down payment on a house, I can literally be making about $300 or more a month. And of course with rental increases each year, that goes up, so I get this little inflation hedge too. Not including anything with appreciation. I don't even need that as much. That's a bonus. But, just getting that and then I get to keep all that money cuz it's tax free. So I'll do, what's called "turnkey real estate investing," which is where certain companies out there will say, "Hey, we've got properties that we've found, we've passed it through our own filters.
Chris Miles (33:24):
Here's kinda the buffet you could pick from" in either their market or multiple markets that they're in. You can look at these properties, and you can know ahead of time, how much you make. And here's the best part; you don't manage the property. So when people are like, "I'm kind of nervous investing outta state." I'm like, "the worst thing I've ever done is invest in my own state because then I go see the property and then I get married to the property and then I justify why I don't have to make as much money." But if it's not in state, I have to actually do research a little bit. I have to like say, "okay, let's see the property. Yes. Here, all the numbers make sense. All right, let's do it." And I take a matter of a few minutes to research a property and then my hardest part is going and buying the property.
Chris Miles (34:05):
Once it's bought, I don't manage it. I have somebody else do it. And I collect the rent checks.
Tony (34:09):
So, stay emotionally detached from your investments.
Chris Miles (34:16):
Yeah. It's awesome.
Tony (34:17):
I think the worst investment I ever made, cause I had made a string of good investments, and I got a little emotionally attached to one of my stocks. I made really good money on it. I went from about $7. I think I got in at seven and got out at about 14 and then it went to 15. I was like, "oh, this, this is gonna keep going." So I got back in and it went up another $2 think out to 19 and then it dropped about 10, so I lost part of my gain and that was right when I was going to work for, Dave Ramsey.
Tony (34:48):
And so I'm like, "yeah, I'm done with stocks. I'm just gonna do mutual funds. That's what Dave teaches." And And then, just that route now, let ask you a question before we go. Cause I know we're short on time. something I've been reading about, I don't know if you've looked into this, but I've seen a lot of stuff coming out lately about by 2030 that the US government will be like the number one rental property owner in the country. It's the whole socialistic kind of mindset. My theory on that is; the us government, not the us government, America specifically, when you look through history, America has got the wealthiest, by far per capita, group of people in history.
Tony (35:39):
When you look at it across the board, 40% of the world's millionaires roughly live in America, over 10% of US households are millionaires. Too be honest, we are on the cusp- I think- of a system that naturally breeds wealth into society. That's where we're at now. It wasn't always that. It wasn't always true like that for America, but I think that's where we're at today. If we don't tip, and that's the thing we could tip over the edge and that could all disappear and then you could just roll back the clock, just like all the other countries. Now, everybody's broke again, everybody start from scratch. That could happen. I hope it doesn't. But, the socialistic mindset, which, some of the people in government are after, which they really do view all the wealth in America is like theirs.
Tony (36:31):
They view it that way. That's why you have high taxes. Historically taxes were as high as like 90, 95% on certain income brackets, which people don't understand that. Like, "wow, 95%, are you crazy?" No, that's true because they don't think that we should have wealth. They think that they should have it in government and not the individual. But that's one of those things like, UN agenda 2030, this new global reset economic form of stuff. It's all kind of geared around that. Climate change. People are gonna probably hate me- future millionaires, listening to the show, listen to this- climate change; it's a scam. I said it, I hope I didn't irritate you too much, but it's all a tax. It's all a carbon based tax.
Tony (37:17):
It's just another way for the people at the top to collect funds from everybody else who's driving around producing carbon. It's all part of the plan. The whole system is designed that way. Just wake up. Chris, but have you looked into that? Like the government really, like they have a mindset, like real estate is one of the number one, if not the number one way people build wealth in America, but yet the government's stepping in trying to usurp that and become the primary shareholder, so to speak.
Chris Miles (37:48):
Well, so far we've been pretty lucky because the government really sucks at business and making money. That's why they need our money. So, I mean, it's funny, even the city of Chicago finally figured out, "wait, we could sell off land and pay off our debt," cuz they're one of the most broke cities in America.
Chris Miles (38:03):
I think it definitely could happen. I think there's definitely people like the AOC. I mean like, you got some of those people that do believe in really communism, not just socialism, they really want communism. Right. Which by the way, it doesn't matter socialism or communism, all that money more so goes to the rich than ever it does to all the other classes. Because who do you think pulls The strings for the, for the politicians, it's the wealthy, right? That's why you hear guys like Warren Buffet who- not to not to say this is all, all people, but the reason he's Democrat is because Democrats will make the rich richer.
Chris Miles (38:45):
That's really what it's about. They come off being like Robin Hood. But the truth is they're really like Robin-leach, they're wanting to actually create more well for the rich, and that's where the power is. It's a power grab. So, could they be buying real estate? Sure. Maybe. I don't know if they will. I mean, now here's what I think they could do. Almost like what China has done. You got companies like BlackRock, you got a lot of these companies out there been buying up tons of housing portfolios, even Zillow. Which they've done a crappy job. There's even hedge funds out there trying to do it too. But they've been buying these properties at whatever price. So they're not really making money, but the best way, if you're the government you wanna take control of that is find a way to take over the company just like China does with their own companies.
Chris Miles (39:31):
They try to take them over gobble 'em up. And then it becomes theirs. And so has done that too. That's what happened in Venezuela.
Tony (39:38):
Well, I think when you look at the model and you understand the system, and you know another book I recommended to you guys listen to the show, "The Creature from Jekyll Island," the founding of the federal reserve bank, it's all tied together. Go read the book. I recommend you do it on audible because it's 23 hours. It's a mega book. Learn about it. So, here's what they're doing. Here's what I think they're doing. Actually. There's a couple things going on, then we'll wrap up. They're printing money. Like crazy. They're giving it away. Loans are going like nuts.
Tony (40:08):
So, you got all these banks putting out money. It generally comes out, goes to BlackRock. BlackRock is part of the system. Vanguard's part of the system. They're issuing the money out, buying up all these businesses. One or two things that are gonna happen. We're starting to see this. I won't get into the medical field as much. I don't wanna say too much about that. But, what happens if you have a lot of these people, property owners, that are around America that- honestly, you had a quote unquote pandemic and all of a sudden these people that own these houses aren't around anymore. Now this property goes back to the bank. It's on the market. It gets sold for pennies on the dollar, and who gobbles that up? It's people with money.
Tony (40:51):
I read the other day. I think Warren buffet has something like 150 billion in cash assets, just laying around. Like why does he have so much cash on hand. Well, you and I both know you're losing inflation. The reason you would hold that much money is cuz you're waiting for a deal. You're like, "when's the deal coming along? I'm waiting for the deal." Well, you start having a significant number of people just kind of fall out of the economic system cause they're not around. Then there's a lot of property on the market. JP Morgan Chase Bank owns over like 600 million ounces of silver. It's billions of dollars in silver. Why is a bank holding that much silver? Like we're taught to own gold. Like why?
Tony (41:31):
Like it, you just start reading the tea leaves on all these little transaction. Bill Gates is now the largest private farmland owner. Jeff Bezos is around #35 with 350,000 acres of land. I mean, isn't he the e-commerce guy? What's he over here buying 350,000 acres of land for? You start to read all that and you go, "ah, they're getting ready for something. What is it they're getting ready for?" But you make a good point. BlackRock, they get all this free cash from the banks. They go out and buy all this land up. Something happens. Well, they're using fake money to buy real assets. That's the key is you're using printed money. That's fake to buy real assets, which is land. So they're transferring, you see this transfer of what I call fake wealth into real wealth, real wealth.
Tony (42:15):
Real wealth, like we said before, is gold, silver, small business or businesses. Something that can produce income, like you said, and then, land in real estate because those three things have transcended every economy, every dynasty, every kingdom, every part society all around the world for thousands of years, those three things have always been money bar, none. But Hey, we could talk about this stuff for ever. I may have to have you back on the show. Cause I'd love to let you show your wisdom more. But before that, how can people find out about you Money Ripples and the Chris Miles show?
Chris Miles (42:50):
Yeah, you do one of two things. You can either go to YouTube or look up the Chris miles money show that's there. We've got almost 600 episodes to choose from. So good luck. Or, you can go to our website, moneyripples.com, and you can check out lots of information there too.
Tony (43:02):
All right, Chris. Well, man, I really appreciate it. I look forward to talking to the future. I'm sure we'll be in touch.
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