Kickstart Your Year: Why New Year's Resolutions Fail and How to Set Real Goals

All right, welcome back to the show.

Today I've got a few things I kind of want to talk about and this is the, I think the first show of the new year. Yeah, I think it is depending on what we schedule, but it will be at least towards the beginning of the year, of the new year. And one appreciate everyone for following us along on this journey. We're about a getting close to a year and a half in doing this. I have been releasing more, I guess just content videos by myself. Still want to do interviews, really enjoy them.

I, I learn a ton from other people and obviously other people bring a different perspective, bring their own knowledge, their own wisdom, which is awesome. So if you want, if you have any interest on coming on the show, I don't care, I don't want to say I don't care what your experience is, but everyone's got something to share, right? Even people that I've kind of forced to come on. It's amazing what everyone has to share and it may not be necessarily real estate investing or entrepreneurial.

Maybe something else happened in their life or something. They're a skill they're good at. But yeah, you want to come on. We actually have a new website and it is the Domore Podcast.com so if you want to join, come on the show, please go there, hit about show and then fill out the details and we'll be in touch. Other than that, let's get into it.

I saw something the other day and this is relative to I want to hit on this before we actually get into the show relative to the new year and it's goal setting and we've talked about goal setting on here quite a bit, I think. In fact, I think I did entire show on how I set goals and how I go about that, but saw something and it was really good. Where. And I don't remember where it was on Instagram, I'm sure, but I don't remember who said it.

But if you're not serious, if you're setting New Year's resolutions, which I think I've probably talked about, is an absolute joke. If you're setting New Year's resolutions and thinking you're going to stick with those just because it's a new year, it's not going to happen, right? How many times have you seen someone say I'm going to lose £15 and I'm going to start January 1st? Well, wait a second.

Actually going to start January 2nd because probably going to party New Year's Eve and then I'm going To have a day to relax and then I'm going to start January 2nd or I'm gonna get in better shape, I'm gonna gain, you know, muscle. Whatever it is, financially, whatever it is, it's just an empty thing, right? If you're not serious to start your goals in June or today or yesterday, you're not gonna, you may try to start them start of the year 20, 25, but you're not gonna stick with them.

And this is relative back to 75 hard, which I've talked about. There are good things with it, but majority of people that I've seen that have done 75 hard. And again, it's no different than New Year's resolutions. And when I say majority of people, probably 99% of people that do 75 hard, do it for 75 days and then they're done and then they go back to what they were doing. It's the same thing as New Year's resolutions.

If you're not serious to start it on your own basically today and not say, ah, you know what, I've got things to do today, I'm busy today, I can't start today, I'll start tomorrow. You're not serious about it, you're not gonna stick to it. It's just, it's not gonna happen. So I heard that want to drop that second thing is, and this is kind of a loaded, loaded episode for me, jam packed here, season of giving. This is after Christmas, but I tried this last year and had a few people reach out.

This year I want to at least double it. So in thanks to everyone that's listening and has been listening and following along, I want to offer a free. I, I don't want to say session, but basically free session. And I'm not trying to say I'm type of any type of expert or anything, but there may be things that I can share with my experiences, things that I've learned, whether it's self storage, real estate, investing, mindset, whatever it is, financials, I'm willing to give.

If you reach out an hour of free time to I guess, pick my brain. I know some people don't like that term, but just to talk. See if there's anything I can help you with. I really enjoy those conversations. So reach out. Free hour, one hour. We'll talk anything you want to talk about. Anything that maybe we've talked about on the show that you're like, well, John may know a little bit more in this subject matter, so maybe I'll talk to him, see what he's doing. But yeah, reach out.

And again you can reach out at the do more podcast.com go to about and even though you may not be signed up as a guest, still fill that out and just say hey, interested in, in hanging out with John for an hour? And we'll get on the phone or virtual call, whatever we'll do and, and we'll talk. So third thing here, third or fourth whatever it is again, this is a jam packed show here this morning I was scrolling and I don't, I don't get into the news. I don't watch the news.

I will go to yahoo.com for whatever reason. It's just been something I've done for I don't even know, who knows, 20 years. I don't even know if people go to Yahoo anymore other than me. I may be their only person that visits Yahoo.com but I'll just look at their, their top eight headlines and usually it's I'm out of there within 20 seconds. But I pulled up and I've got it here in front of my screen.

But I pulled up something that I thought was going to be interesting to read says how should, how much should I contribute to my 401k? And it definitely hits a nerve with me one because this is probably finding an article like this back in 2013ish before I got into real estate investing. An article like this probably is what spurred me to get into real estate investing and eventually quit my 9 to 5 and become financially free.

So while these articles are absolutely ridiculous to me, they did spurn my, my quest for wanting to learn more and getting out of the rat race, so to speak. And before I go on, these are my opinions. This doesn't mean any of this is facts. I am not a financial planner. This is just from my experience. So do your own research. Again, I'm not a financial planner. I've just have some opinions on some of this stuff.

So it's funny because as soon as it's the article and then there's two sentences, three sentences and then it goes into this long advertisement and this is the, this is the stuff that we're fed daily, right? And we're supposed to be, this is what we're fed daily to stay in the rat race in the hamster wheel.

But then there's after the three or four sentences to kind of introduce us to whatever they're going to talk about 401ks here is a huge advertisement, probably 20 different financial advisors. In fact they even have Coinbase Coinbase in here, which is obviously crypto, but yeah, they've got all these different financial advisors in here. That is an advertisement in between their articles.

So wonder how this article is going to go when their advertisers are financial institutions, financial advisors. But anyways, it goes into when you should start saving 441k. And obviously it's talking about the earlier the better, just with compound interest, which 100 true. It says starting in your 20s. And I know for myself I don't think I legitimately started saving in a 401k till probably at best late, very late 20s or early 30s.

And at that point it was very minimal, probably, I don't even know, a couple hundred bucks a month. I know when I did retire from the rat race, I did have six figures in my 401k, but at that point I was 37. Yeah, I was 37 years old. According to their calculations here, that's not enough and I was making decent money. But again, this is, you know, kind of the hamster wheel thing, keeping in the rat race. And with all that said before, I go on to more of this kind of my opinions here.

We need employees. Employees are great. I'm probably not a great employee. I think I'm better as an entrepreneur. But we do need employees. And but with that said, you don't have to get a 401k if you're an employee. There are definitely better alternatives in my opinion and not necessarily with me, but other real estate investors that are syndicators and they're qualified syndicators and they know what they're doing, their experience and they get into good deals.

You can make way more money for your retirement jumping alongside some of them, some of those guys and or girls. And if anything, if you want to reach out to get more information on some of those, those people feel free to reach out to me. I definitely have some good friends that, that do that and do a great job of it. But I'm not comparing real estate investing 401k. I'm just. This article to me is kind of funny.

So yeah, it's saying obviously the sooner you start, the better your access to employer matching contributions. They're basically saying, hey, hopefully your, your employer matches or, or maybe pays more than you're matching to fill up your 401k and then it goes into your salary relative to expenses they're wanting. You just basically live on nothing and fund your 401k. I definitely agree on you need a budget. Right? And investing in a 401k, or shall I even say investing?

Putting money into a 401k is without a doubt better than buying video games, you know, drinking, eating your money away, setting your money on fire. Right. 401k is definitely better than those things, without a doubt. From what I've read and from what I've seen and from my experience with my portfolio that I had, 8% average is probably what you're going to get with your 401k. Some people may argue that, but I think that's if you, if you just Google that, you're going to find out.

Now, with that said, if you've got $100,000 in your 401k, you lose 8%. Right? So it drops down to 92,000, the gains, 8%. You're not going back up to a hundred thousand. Right. You're gaining 8% on the 92,000. So you're still short of that hundred thousand. I don't think people. Well, one, there's just not great information out there about this stuff. They just kind of want you to throw money blindly into your 401k, not knowing what you're even investing in.

And hopefully you get a good return and hopefully by age 65, and at this point it's probably closer to 70 to 75, hopefully you can retire. And then it goes on to tips for raising your contribution rate. Basically, as you get paid more, they want you to continue to put more money into your 401k. Even though inflation is going up, everything else is going up, everything else is more expensive. They still want you to live super tight and keep, keep funding that 401k.

And while you're funding that 401k, you're not getting any money from that 401k until you retire. Right?

So to compare to real estate investing, if you find a good syndicator that you can invest into some of their deals, you should be getting cash flow depending on how they have it set up. So you should be, if you put money into their deal, you should be getting cash flow probably quarterly. It's what most of them do. And then you're getting a return whenever they refinance or sell too, and getting your money back if you want, or keep it rolling.

But you're getting money, you're getting paid during that time as opposed to 401k. You're just getting paid as long as you live to 65, 70, whenever you can retire. So that's something to think about. And all this stuff. Do your own research. If you've got a 401k. I'm not completely bashing this. I'm just saying these are kind of my thoughts and opinions around it, my experience, kind of going through it and then some maybe alternative ideas.

I'm not saying get rid of a 401k, I definitely think you should have some type of savings vehicle. And this is a saving. To me, a 401k is more of a savings vehicle other than an investment vehicle. You're not getting paid up. You know, when you put money in, you're getting paid 30, 40, 50 years down the road. And then basically it's saying hold lifestyle spending steady, trim spending.

So again, they want you to live on nothing and continue to fund that 401k, not enjoy life, but you can enjoy life when you retire with your 401k. Even though, and I even think it says it somewhere in here, the article is not very long, it's pretty brief. But Even though your 401k, when you do have it, there's a very good chance. I wish I had numbers, I didn't look it up, but I'm sure you can find it.

There's a very good chance your 401k, you're going to be taking home less money when you retire than what you, what you did when you were actually working. So it does say that, you know, trim your expenses as you get older. For me, one inflation keeps going up, my expenses will probably keep going up. Even though the kids will, you know, grow up and leave the house, my guess is our expenses will continue to go up.

So for me to try to live on less money, basically 30 years from now, 30, 35 years from now, that's, it's insane. Like that's, that's, it's impossible. No one can do that. You can, but it's going to look ugly. So that's really all I've got. I don't want to go too far, too much further in this. And really that's all they've got, just says save early and often do your 401k, which isn't wrong. But a lot of us can't really start in our 20s. Most of us probably still have college debt.

Some of us at this point probably have six figures worth of college debt. If you're in your 20s right now, you know, a recent graduate, I don't know how someone could contribute to their 401k, pay their college debt, pay rent, look for a house to try to buy.

You know, it's just there's better alternatives out there. And this goes back to my point kind of beginning of the show, if, if you have any interest and want to learn more or maybe, you know, kind of getting my experience from all this stuff, reach out the domorepodcast.com go to about fill it out and say, hey, would love to have an hour session with John and we'll talk and see what we can see what we can figure out there. But again, beginning of the year here.

I don't do New Year's resolutions. A lot of people feel like it's kind of a fresh start. But your goals, whatever you want to do, start them today. Don't wait for a New Year's resolution. Don't, don't think it's a New Year's resolution. You know, go back to the episode where I talked about goal setting and, you know, figure it that way, or look up other stuff on goal setting, on how to do that stuff. But definitely want to see everyone succeed out there. Appreciate everyone for listening.

We'll see you guys next time. Thanks for following, subscribing and listening to this episode of the Do More podcast, hosted by John Farling. To learn more or ask questions, go to L4Investing.com.