All right, so you're looking at your life. You're saying, God, I thought I would be further ahead financially at this stage or age of my life. And here's the thing. Before you start judging yourself, before you start beating yourself up because you thought you would be further ahead, let's start to look at things and say, is there still time? Now, here's my perspective. What's your choice? No matter what your age or stage is, you got to get in the game. You cannot win the wealth game in
the stands or on the sidelines. You have to be on the field playing. And so what I want to do here is I'm going to focus on the things that I would have told myself at 40 years old. Now, mind you, I am 63 right now. And what would I have told myself 23 years ago? Now, some of these things I was doing, some of these things I wasn't doing, some of these things I probably should
have done more of. But here's the thing. All of them will help you navigate to financial freedom, no matter your age or stage of life, no matter your circumstances, when you get it dialed in. So whether you're 20, 30, 40, or 50, or even 60, let's go through this. All right, so I'm going to break down eleven things that I would have told myself at 40 that I know now at 63, and being on this journey for decades on financial freedom and advising people
just like you to find the path to financial freedom. So the first one is this, is that I would have automated earlier, okay, automate everything, your savings and investing. Now, in my defense, I'm 63. 23 years ago, the level of automation that was available to us is not what it is today. Today it can be almost fully automated. Here's why we do this, is that when they give us a credit card, they know what's happening. They don't give
us a credit card for you to have credit. Okay, we think I got to get a credit card for credit. The marketers, the credit card companies, they give you credit cards not for the credit. They give you the credit cards to remove the friction from the buying decisions. And when they remove friction from buying decisions, you buy more. They get it. The problem is, is that we have very little friction in our buying and
a lot of friction in our investing in savings. And if we reverse that, that's when we start on the path to financial freedom and building wealth. What we really need to do is remove the friction from our investing in savings, meaning that we got to automate it. If you have to push the buttons. If you have to write a check, if you have to do conscious transfers, the ability to sustain it, to have the discipline long term to continue to do it, is
a bit more difficult. It's not impossible, but it is a bit more difficult. So we want to automate it so you don't have decision fatigue, so you don't, you don't have the friction that's pushing against you to make it happen. That means that I want you to set up an automatic transfer of savings in chapter twelve of my book, building your money machine. Okay? I talk about the wealth priority ladder and I literally tell you what to do with every single dollar
that comes into your life. How to allocate it, what the priority is and what to do. And when you automate it, 20% to 25% of your income should be going towards investing. Once you have your peace of mind fund in place and you've got destructive debt under control, then you automate it. It's automatic. You don't have to think about it, you don't have
to calculate it. It's automatically happening. It's going to savings, it's going to pay your bills, it's going to go into investing, it's going to build your portfolio, take that out. And so when we do that, we then make sure that we're in the wealth creation game. We're on the field playing the game. Because if we don't do it and we don't have the automation, there was times I know in my life where I need the money, we're going to do that. So I'm not going to invest this year, this
month, okay? And it impacts you. You don't think it's a lot, but it impacts you. And so we need to look at it through those eyes and automate as much as possible towards our investing, towards our savings, okay? Put as much friction into our buying decisions as possible. That leads me to number two. Number two is maximize tax advantaged
accounts. This means that your 401K, your iras, your Roth IRAs, your catch up contributions, all of those things really are really important if you are not maxing out, especially if you, if you are working for an employer and they match on your four hundred one k and you are not getting the max of the match, you are leaving free money on the table. Y'all. If I came walking into your house and I come walking and I'm dropping hundred dollar bills all over the floor, would you pick them up?
And my guess is you would pick them up. But your employer is kind of doing the same thing. What they're doing is they're saying, you come and work for us, you put $100. If you. You put $100 in, we'll put $100 on top, and you pick up both. It's free money. Make sure that you're getting the full match. And I talk about it again in. In the wealth priority ladder. But if you're not fully funding your 401K, your iras, your Roth IRAs, and taking full advantage of the tax advantaged accounts,
then you are leaving money on table. You're leaving wealth on the table, because now what's happening is you're either going to have money when you're doing this, you have money growing either tax free in the case of a Roth, or tax deferred in the case of a 401K or an IRA. But you're going to allow you to use the tax rules and the tax laws to your advantage, and to allow you to build wealth in a way that isn't stripping it away
to taxes, at least immediately. You'll have to pay taxes on the Roth and the mean, not on the Roth, but on the IRA or the 401K. When you pull it out, if it is Roth, you won't pay taxes on it. When you pull it out, it's completely tax free. Think about that. Think about that. We got a 16 and a half year old kid that joined one of my programs at 17. He got a job. He asked me what to do. I said, open up a Roth. So he opens up a Roth IRA at 18 years old. We're on a call, and he says,
I funded my Roth Ira. What do I do now? And I said, all right, how much did you fund it with? Now he's 18 years old. I'm thinking he funded it with $500. He fully funded his Roth Ira, $6,500. And then he tells me that he funded the 2024 Roth, also already $7,000. This kid put $13,500 away at 18 years old. If we put it away in an s and p 500 fund at 8%, 9% over the long term, by the time he is retirement age, that will go up 107 times. 107 times one point two, one point three
million dollars if he did nothing else. And because it's in a Roth, it's all tax free. So it is important for you to take advantage of these accounts. If you don't understand them, then let's get the understanding. Okay? Whether it's through my trainings, through my show, or my book, let's get the understanding. So you maximize it, because that was one thing that I left behind. In fact, I cashed out my four hundred one k at one point in time. Big mistake. Big
mistake. But at 40 years old, you still have the ability to build wealth because every dollar you put away will go up anywhere between five and seven and a half times. Five and seven and a half times. By the time you're ready to retire, it's pretty good odds, pretty good money. So now let's go to number three, get serious about diversification. I didn't, now, back in the day when I was doing this, I was not really focused on building a portfolio, building a portfolio that works to start building
the money machine. I didn't understand the elements that I understand today. And so what ended up happening is that I had this very convoluted, complex structure in my investing that wasn't really serving me. It wasn't creating cash flow, it wasn't creating diversification of income streams. It wasn't creating a way for me to remove myself from the efforts to earn. It was creating a dependency and a complexity that made it
difficult to manage. What I would look at at 40 years old is I would start to look at it and say, what can I do to diversify my income streams? My ability to earn from my actions to earn it. In other words, yes, I have my job or I have my business, but there are other ways to earn money that aren't tied to your efforts. That's where your financial freedom comes in. That's what the money machine is about, to remove the ability to earn from the efforts
to earn it. So you have a life of choice. And what we should be doing is in our forties, if not sooner, asking ourselves, how can, once I get my regular earnings spinning and that plate spinning and generating income, how can I use that and my skills to create another additional set of income and a stream of income that isn't tied to the efforts? Cause if you start another endeavor or you get another job, great. But now you're on
two treadmills. I don't want you on two treadmills. I want you to build something that doesn't require you to be on the treadmill. And I would have gotten more serious about it sooner in the game. That leads me to number four, which actually helps with number three. And that is, I would invest in skills, not just stocks, not just investments. My own skill development is what allowed me to, one, recover from the Ponzi scheme. Two was to allow me to expand my, my wealth
faster and more effectively. And it is a skill set. Wealth building is a learnable skill. It is not taught. Okay. Unfortunately, and it should be. Money management is a learnable skill. So it is important for us to start to look at and say, what are skills that help you build? Well, things like, how do you figure out time management priorities, negotiation, leadership, technical skills, the understanding of how money flows, understanding of the fundamentals
of investing. All of those things is saying, the more I can skill up, the better I am at building wealth. But the other side of that is, the more I skill up, the better I am at generating income, because the more I got more skills into my talent pool, if you will. The more I was able to build, the more
I was paid the ability to do those things. It is important to understand that your skillset is probably one of your greatest assets for wealth building, because it can drive your income and it can drive your ability to build the money machine more effectively. So invest in. I would invest in skills sooner and make sure that that was a priority. That leads me to number five. Number five is I would prioritize my future. What do I mean by
that? I mean that I would prioritize my building, my financial freedom versus material trappings, acquiring stuff, achieving and just acquiring expensive cars, expensive hobbies, expensive stuff, because I'm looking good. But you know what? I'm in debt or I'm overextended or I'm not building anything for the future. I looked at someone's budget, okay? Mind you, this is crazy. I looked at someone's budget. They make $1.1 million a year. They're a surgeon, they're a
doctor. They make over a million dollars a year. And when I looked at their spending on a monthly basis, at the end of the month, they had less than $500 left. Less than $500 left. And in their bank accounts, they had $40,000. That's it. Their spending was outrageous because they were so focused on the materialities, the trappings of what it looked like on the outside that they weren't and really starting to
build wealth. Remember, I've said, in fact, I've got an episode out there that talks about the greatest purchase you can make is your own freedom. It's not stuff. And so I didn't get that. And it's hard in this world. You're on social media, they're all comparing, and they're parading their facades of their perfect life in front of you. And you see how they're living, and you want to live that way. I get it. The media, the marketing, messages. All of that gets to
us. We have to be disciplined. That's why we need a vision for our life, specific to our life. Because you're living your life, not anyone else's, and you need a plan for it and a strategy to make it a reality. That's what we do with our clients. That's what I do when I do my money machine master plans with my clients to literally build a plan out for the rest of their life. So they see the probability of success and what they need to do.
But what we tend to do is living in the moment jeopardizes our financial future, our financial freedom, and building the money machine. And what we really need to do is make that the priority. That doesn't mean you leave everything on the table. That doesn't mean you don't enjoy life. Trust me, I enjoy life immensely with my wife and everything. It's why when we build the plan, I ask my clients, I want three to four sustainable, meaningful joy points that
we make sure we build into the plan. Because if you do not enjoy the path to financial freedom, you will not enjoy the destination of financial freedom. But when we build the joy points and that are meaningful, not momentary pleasures, not keeping up with the Joneses by swiping on instagram and buying stuff you don't really need, but the stuff that really means something to you, that joy will sustain you as you're building your financial future. That leads
me to number six. Number six is I would be more selective about debt. Debt is your great wealth destroyer. I would absolutely avoid consumer debt, destructive debt, like the plague. I remember in the day they don't do it anymore. But I remember back in the, when I was in college, there was credit card companies on campus and they were giving us credit cards. We didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know that when the bill came in, we had to pay the bill and we run up credit cards.
My brother and I, we got an identical twin brother. He was down in San Diego in school. I remember one weekend I went to visit him. We literally went to the mall and went from store to store and applied for store credit cards because we got the 10% discount. And then we would buy stuff and all of a sudden all these bills came in and like we were buried in debt. We're going, oh, my God. So I would have. I would tell you to be very selective about the debt. The only debt you take on is
productive debt. That debt that's going to increase your cash flow, increase your net worth over the long term, if it is for consumables, if it is to finance a lifestyle that you can't afford to pay for for cash, then it's out. It's not something that you want to use. And that goes for also looking at being really cautious about student loan debt. I've got a family member that got a PhD in art history. He's got $150,000 in student loan debt, and he's got a job that pays him 30.
He's buried. Our rule is that it's twelve to 18 months of your starting salary. That's the max you're going to get on debt if you use it at all. Okay? There are other ways to pay for school grants, scholarships, working through it, work programs, all those things. And you always, always look at it and say, what is the Roi on the education? If I'm going to spend $150,000 or $200,000 on an education that gets me a $30,000 job, it's not a good investment. And so I would be more selective
about. About that. Now, number seven. Number seven is know your number. Know what your number is. In other words, know the destination. How much do you need to be financially free? So often I will meet with a new client, I'll have a conversation, and I say, what do you want your life to look like? And they have no clue. They haven't taken the time to define what the vision is for their life. And because they haven't taken the time to define the vision, they have no idea of the price tag
of that vision or how far they are from it. If you don't know where your finish line is, you will keep running a race that you'll never win because you don't even know whether you cross the finish line or it's miles away. And so it's important for you to calculate what your rough estimate at the beginning of your freedom
number is. It's one of the things that we do in a very detailed way with our clients in our money machine master plans, where I literally build the plan out and we test it and we stress test it, and we do all kinds of things beyond what you can do in a spreadsheet. But there are simple ways to at least get a ballpark of your financial freedom number. In fact, I have a tool that is free to download that will get you
a simple path to getting that number. I'll make sure that we link it up in the show notes here and everything so you get access to it, but you have to have a clear target. But before you get that clear target, understand what the life looks like and why you want it, because money is a result. It's not a purpose. So the question is, what's the purpose behind the money? You give your money a higher purpose, your life will take a higher purpose, too. All right? And then number
eight. Number eight, health plus wealth. Okay? I think that as much as we plan for wealth, we need to plan for health also. Listen, this didn't happen in my forties. It happened in my fifties. But I was following my wealth and my money, just checking it regularly, regularly, regularly. And I was doing that with my health. I worked out. I've worked out literally consistently for five, six days a week, almost since high school. Okay? But then I moved.
I moved away from where I lived, where all my doctors were, and I hadn't seen the doctor in seven years, seven years. And then all of a sudden, I get symptoms of what turned out to be cancer. Now, it doesn't mean that if I had seen a doctor sooner, it would have avoided the cancer. It just means that the tumor that they found, which turned out to be seven
and a half centimeters, wouldn't have gotten that big. We probably would have caught it sooner, and I wouldn't have been in the precarious position of losing my bladder or losing my life. It just would have been different. And I think that we need to look at planning for our money, our health and wealth at the same time, because creating habits around wealth are no different than creating habits around health. Having wealth and not having health is. It's not a way to live. Look at
what happened with Steve Jobs. And he made that statement before he died of that. Having all of the wealth, he couldn't take away the health challenges he had. So it is important for us to plan health and wealth, and the better time to do it is early on, because you can do things around your health that are easier when you're younger to do that. Now, number nine is get comfortable with risk. Here's the deal. If you're going to make investments, if you're going to build wealth,
there's going to be risk involved. It's just the way it is. Just be smart about it. Now, remember, I talk about, in my book, the risk triad, risk tolerance, risk capacity, and risk need. The intersection of those will define the risk you should be taking on and allows you to be smart about it. You cannot be completely risk free when it comes to investing. Otherwise, you're not invested. And in fact, not investing is a risk in and of itself. So you don't put caution to the wind and just invest
recklessly because there's high returns. When someone says to you, we can get you 25% returns, it's because you're taking on more risk versus someone that's saying, I can get you 10% returns. The question isn't the return. The question is what's the right return and the right risk for the recipe to create the financial freedom you need in the time you need it. So we don't shy away from risk, but we need to be smart about it. And in your
forties, you still have time on your side. You don't have to be reckless and you don't have to take on an inordinate amount of risk. But if you're too conservative, you lose the time. And now we're behind the eight ball. So we got to find a balance between the two. Leads me to number ten. And this is really about mentors and coaches getting the right people in your life that can support
you, that can. That you can go to you trust, not someone that's getting paid a commission, not someone that is making money transaction from you, but someone that is where you want to be or beyond where you want to be that understands it, that can guide you, that can help you learn from their mistakes, that can keep you from making the mistakes they made. It's one of the reasons I do what I do is to make sure that you don't make the same mistakes that I made. So you can accelerate your path to
financial freedom without the. The stress, without the mistakes and without the cost. I mean, listen, I lost one third of everything I owned in that Ponzi scheme. I don't want that to happen to you. So having the right mentors, the right coaches in your corner to support you on your financial journey will be instrumental in navigating that path to financial freedom. I am a consultant for companies. I sit on boards of directors as their
consultant to give them perspective. I work with families as their family CFO, helping them guide them. And I work with individuals to make that happen, to become that sounding board, if you will, to ask the hard questions and do the right things to make that happen. And then that leads me to the last one, number eleven. This is going to drive my english teacher crazy. Ain't no perfect time if you're waiting for the perfect time to
start, it's not coming. The perfect time to start if you haven't started is now in my forties. I need to be in the game and I need to be in the game, heavy. And I wasn't at the level that I should have been. And so the key is this. Remember, if you're going to win the wealth game, you have to be on the field. You cannot be on the sidelines, and you cannot be in the stands. You have to be on the field.
That means that if you're not in the game, you get in the game. Even if it's $5, even if it's $10, you get in the game. You start exercising the muscle. Too often, people delay until they think they're making more, until they think that, that it's time. But here's the thing we know. The more time you have, the less money you need to build wealth. The less time you have, the more money you need to build wealth. Okay? There isn't a perfect time. You cannot time the
market. It's not. You can't sit back and say, I know when the exact top is or when the exact bottom is. It hasn't. No one's been able to do it. Even the best hedge fund traders with the best algorithms, the best computers, the best data, they can't do it. There's no reason for you to do it, because you can't. The key is to get in the game with proven strategies, understanding skills that will, over the long
term, build for you. It's how we do things to make that happen. But I need you to get in the game to be prepared to get in the game, because it's the only way you're going to win the game, because you can't win it if you're not playing it. All right, so those are the, those are the eleven things that I would have told myself at 40 years old that I think would have changed the trajectory and the path to wealth for me, it would have
accelerated my path to financial freedom. It would have got me there sooner, it would have kept me out of trouble more often, and it would have taken more stress away. And I want that for you. I hope that this helps you to go through this and say, all right, what do I have? What do I need to get into my life? Whether I'm 20, 30, 40, or 50 or 60, these things matter. Get in the game and let's get you dialed in. If you need help on any of this, do me a favor, reach out to me. Stay with me
on this journey. If you're not subscribed to this channel or this show, make sure that you click subscribe. Be part of this journey with me. That's what we're here to do. I'm here to help you master your money, eliminate financial stress so you can live a life by choice. All right? As I always, always say, until I get a chance to see another episode, another show, or maybe down on the road, as I'm speaking, always, always strive, live a life that outlives you. Thank you for listening to the
affluent entrepreneur show. With me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to melabraham.com group, and I'll see you there.