Anthony O'Neal: Tired of Living Paycheck to Paycheck? Break the Money Habits Blocking Your Financial Freedom | Finance | E413

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incredible deals in the show notes or at Young Improveding.com/deals. I remember walking back to my car, and I got into the back seat of my car. Suicide came to thoughts. I felt like my life didn't matter, and I felt like just giving up on life. Anthony O'Neill teaches that real wealth is not about looking successful. It's about building freedom. After becoming homeless and deeply in debt at 19, he rebuilt his life and became a number one national best-selling author, personal

finance expert, and the host of the table. Let's talk about how bad it was, because you were $35,000 in debt. $35,000 when I should have been, if we're going to look at it from a practical perspective, I probably should have been in zero. There's some cities out there, to where everybody

“got a Rolls Royce. Everyone's a millionaire, but the truth of the fact is, 76% of them are faking.”

If we really look at the map, 71% of us live in paycheck to paycheck. So what are the three things people should do once they receive their paycheck? The very first thing that I'll tell everyone. There reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from you, "It's the goal is not to be rich, the goal is to be free." Freedom is everything that I'm aiming for. Throughout the entire month of July, my company is off, and I pay all of my staff and my team members a full month.

Hey, go take it off. Why? Because... Anthony, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Man, hello, I've been excited about this one. Oh, thank you so much. I feel like our listeners are going to learn so much from you.

I hope so. I do want to start from your origin story because it was so powerful. You got this

awesome rags to reach a story. So I found out that you were homeless at age 19. Yeah, yeah. And one of the most pivotal moments for you was when a little girl saw you and asked her dad, "Hey, Daddy, can we give him some money?" And he said, "No." What feelings did that bring up at the time? What kind of shame were you going throughout the time? A lot. If I'm being honest and transparent, you know, just a little back story right around that time. There were some

tough issues happening within that particular city, you know, emotions I California. We had just built the very first school that was named after the first African American to really do big things. And from my knowledge, I was a bit Martha King Jr. And so I felt like I was being judged

“one possibly for skin color or two for that. But I'll also remember being the kid in the back”

seat asking my parents the same question when I was young. And I was like, "Man, I'm not, I'm not a bad guy. I'm not going to do drugs. I literally wanted to go to Carlos Jr. and get me a burger and some fries. And when I heard the fathers say, "We don't give them money because they'll do bad things with it." I remember walking back to my car and I got in the back seat of my car and Suicide came to thoughts. I'm a Christian man and I was like, "Man, God, I can't be real."

I felt like my life didn't matter and I felt like just giving up on life. Clearly, I didn't because I'm still here today. But a part of me was like, "Man, I'm done." Because if we rewind all the money that I spent up until that point was on my friends, was on ladies I was trying to impress, was on a lifestyle that I was trying to maintain and not

one person who I tried to impress. Who I helped who I bought things for. They never offered me

a place to go lay my head and never offered me a place to come and eat. Then here you go, like, "I'm mom and my dad who are these God-fearing people and me and my father get into this argument that pretty much lands me outside of the home." And so I'm looking at both sides of my worlds are saying, "Yeah, no, bye." And so it was a tough season. But I'll also do believe

essentially. It forced me to see me and to see the lack of information that I didn't have at the

“time. Then it also made me be like, "Yo, you don't really have real friends in your life. You”

have users. You have placeholders. But you don't really have real friends in three. It really made me understand. My parents did love me. They were just trying to teach me the best that they could with the information that they had." And then again, like I said, I'm a spiritual guy. I just literally fell to my face. I was like, "Okay, God, what do I need to do?" And how do I get back on my feet? I really want to talk about how you got back on your feet. But first of all, let's

let's talk about how bad it was. Because you were $35,000 in debt. $35,000 when I should have been, if we're going to look at it from a practical perspective, I probably should have been in zero. You know, my father, my biological father. So I have a unique situation. I have four parents. And my biological parents had me outside of wedlock. So my biological father married my other mother,

who's an amazing woman still to this day. And they lived in Fadbino, North Carolina. My biological

mother married my other father had two more siblings. And we all lived in Oceanside, California, pretty much San Diego. And so, man, when I see here and I tell you that I had a solid upbringing of people, it was just absolutely, absolutely amazing. But I'm grateful for those four parents

“that really sold into me. Yeah, but they failed to kind of teach you financial literacy, right?”

Because you ended up in debt. How did you end up in the $35,000? Well, the first part was, which was the craziest part is my biological father, like I was saying, he was an army, right? So I had my father's GI Bill. So when I went to school, I didn't have to borrow any money. But because my parents, unfortunately, which I love, and they're pretty sure they're going to be watching it show. So I love you, mom and dad. So just know I love you when I say this,

they didn't know what to do with their own money at the time. And so the world taught me, well, hey, since you have access to this money, go borrow it. I don't know, all right, bad, cool, man. There's no problem. My school was already paid for with the GI Bill. So I take out 15,000 dollars in student loans just to just to live, just to have money, just to go buy nice things. Then I was okay, cool, great. I get a credit card. And I get that credit card very

first day. My mom tells me, nah, bro, I don't do that. And I say, my mom, I'm good. I got it.

And within 24 hours, I maxed out that first card. And so back then in them days, you know, they were just giving away credit cards to college students. And so they up that limit to about $1,500. I spent that on my car or a sound system. Then he six, seven months later, you know, I'm in another, was that by 20,000 with the debt, renting from Aaron sales on lease, renting a place station, and a big heavy floor TV. You know, I'm renting leather couches. And I was sweating. No,

I'm renting the bed inside of the car. And so I'm just racking up all this money. But if I'm being honest, my parents didn't teach me financial literacy because their parents in the school system didn't teach it. So who taught me finance was BET? Who taught me finance was MTB crypts. It was the music videos. It was the environment that I subscribed to that was showing me. If you want to be successful in life, you better drive this. You better have this kind of house,

“you better have the place stations. And if I go really honest and vulnerable with you, if you want to”

get a beautiful woman, you better have somebody. Yes. So I said, well, let me go get this money. When it wasn't my money, it was borrow money. And no one even taught me what I just knew if you borrow money, you pay it back. No one told me interests. No one said, hey, over period of time, it's going to be way more. If you borrowed 500, if you paid over the minimum payments over three four years, you're going to spend $2,000 for it. And so that's how I got into the $35,000

worth of debt. And I would say about $32,000 a bit went to collections. There's so much to dig into there. But something that really hit me while you were talking is the fact that you felt like when you were down and out, you had nobody to turn to. Meanwhile, you did all this spending to impress those very same people. Like you were trying to put on a facade. Yes. And it was the culture that you were in. That was really, I guess pushing you to feel like you needed to buy all these things,

have this image look blessed. And I actually saw something on your social media. You said, 76% of luxury buyers are actually broke. For sure. Yeah. When I look at social media,

city, because I want me disrespectful. But there's there's some cities out there. Everybody got a rose Royce. Everyone has a beautiful car. Everyone's a millionaire. Everyone is doing this. But the truth of the fact is when you really study it, 76% of them are faking. If you really look at the map, 71% of us are living paycheck to paycheck out of that 71% 90% of them are saying, if I miss a paycheck, oh, all hell is about to break out when it comes to my life. And so that was the case for me.

Yeah. I was looking good, man. I was driving a 1987 Nissan Maximum with 22-inch rims on it. That was rented with 2-12s and a 1000-watt amp that I did pay cash for. I didn't pay cash for that. I put that on the credit card. The car could not go in reverse. It had a bit on the passenger door, and it was only worth maybe $500. But I had about $3,000 of extra stuff on the car. Mm, thank you. So I can look good. Yeah. And I was so upset because when I went and traded in,

they only gave me $500 for the car. Mm. Didn't it give me anything extra for what else? I gave them when it comes to the rims. So I took the sound system out, I couldn't take the rims out,

“because I didn't know what if you put your those on, you should keep the stock ones. Like,”

it was a lack of information. So I learned from culture, not, I didn't learn from school. I didn't learn from my parents. And so that's why I do what I do today. You might have thought that you were actually financially secure because you had good credit. For sure. Like, you were able to get those things. For sure. And a lot of people sit there and they're like, "Oh, I got to 800 credit score,

and I'm doing good, and people are always asking about other people's credit scores,

especially in relationships, but that doesn't really mean anything, right?" No, it doesn't. I had a young lady asked me that, "Um, what was my credit score in the first day?" And I told her the truth. I told her the truth. I told her the dead truth. And I'll never get it. I've never shared the store like this before, but I told her my credit score was a 510. She never went back out with me. Never went back out.

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six figures inside of my bank account. I had just paid off all of my debt made by a few years before that timeframe. And my credit score was low because I didn't have any open trade lines. I wasn't even a homeowner. So there was nothing being reported to my credit report, which is why I'm not a huge fan of the credit system because it rewards you for borrowing money, but it doesn't reward you for investing for saving for living below your means. But when she asked me that,

“I would never forget to take a back home. Never got a phone call from her again. She told her”

home girl her home girl. Boyfriend, he and I played golf together. He said, "Man, I really wanted to go out to my girlfriend because how does Anthony have a 500?" And so he said, "Man, I asked her one question." I said, "What did you tell her, bro?" He said, "Did you ask him why?" He has a 500 credit score. And she went back and asked her friend and her friend said, "No, I didn't." And then he went back and told both of them when she was on speaker phone. He says,

Anthony has a lot of money. He doesn't really buy and put anything on credit anymore. And so true story. Yeah. She calls him back the next week. The ratchet side of me came out. I just ignored her. I guess we are. I mean, that happens to me too. I remember when I decided that credit

cards were bad. And when I started my company, all the credit cards first of all were in my company's

“name that I did have. And I had no personal credit. And I remember I made almost a million dollars”

that year. And I went to go try to get an apartment that was like, I don't know, $7,000 a month or something like that. And they wouldn't give me the apartment because they said that I had bad like I didn't have good enough. I didn't have enough credit. Like I didn't start my credit. You know, yeah, yeah. You do need a balance. But that brings me to are you aligned with Dave Ramsey's perspective on no credit card get ever? Um, you know, Dave Ramsey is I believe he's a guru and the financial

literacy space. And I had the opportunity to work for the man for years. And so when I say aligned, no, do I respect and agree with his stance? Absolutely. Since I have left his camp, went back to school and I've evolved. I have a different philosophy. And I'll talk about this in my book, stop living paycheck to paycheck. I believe if you're drowning in debt, I'm 100% aligned with Dave, you do not need a credit card. Cut it up run away from it, right? Because you're not responsible.

Not responsible at all. And if we're going to be honest, I think that's about 90% of the average everyday people are not responsible to have a credit card. So my philosophy is get out of the credit card

“debt. You need to be out of debt for the period minimum of 24 months before you even touch it.”

Because I believe money is not really a math problem. It's just habits. Yeah. You know, it can you build a healthy habit to where you treat your credit card like a debit card. So to this day, I only have one card. And that's the MX. And I pay that off every single Monday. I'm I will not let it go past everything on Monday every single Monday. I'm so I don't like debt. I completely run away from consumer debt. Yeah. But I do understand the the benefits of having a credit card,

which I have MX, the charge card. You got paid off every single month. You know, I won't even get a

pay out any interest. I still do believe that paying out interest is a penalty and it's not worth it.

I want to receive interest rather than pay out interest. So I'm going to put it on my MX, get my points, have the security, and I love to add it benefits that come with the MX. Yeah. I had a trip, got come up and unfortunately, it got canceled and MX took care before me. Right.

“And so I do. So I respect and love and I believe that his system works because the reason why I am”

consumer debt free today is because of the baby steps. Right. And so now with me evolving and I have just a different audience, I have very good off some things from what I used to teach with Dave. Yeah. So if you have good behavior with your credit card, use it. Use your points for flights for hotels. Now why every Monday, I feel like that must be like a mindset thing with you. Like do you just hate seeing debt? Yeah. And I just don't want to be caught lying. You know, I'm saying

so I think for me, it's just more so of I build that habit. I just build the habit of making sure that I stay consumer debt free. Yeah. Because what Dave teaches is honestly the truth. You're going to swipe it. You're going to spend more. Yeah. And I think for me, it's I before I even swipe it, I look at my budget. And if it's in my budget, then I'll swipe it. If it's not in my

“budget, then I won't swipe it. Now, let me be completely honest. Is that difficult though?”

Yeah. Not swipe. Absolutely. I'm human. I got flesh. And I want that. You know, but, you know,

for me, here's what I've learned. I went freedom more than I want to be in press, impressive.

And one thing I have learned that debt robes us from freedom. And the moment that you borrow money from somebody, you are now in slave to them. They get to tell you if you can take off for a month and go enjoy time with your family. And I just said, I do not want to be enslaved to know what the person, but to my decisions and my habits. And so I refuse to allow my debt to be someone else's game. There might be one of my favorite quotes from you. It's the goal is not to be rich.

The goal is to be free. Yeah. Freedom is everything that I'm aiming for. You know, I think this culture is driving off of like, oh, man, I want to make a million hours in a month. I want to make this and want to make that. I'm like, man, I just want to be free. You know, I just came back from a two week cruise out in Greece that I paid cash for. Nice. Right. And throughout the entire month of July, my company is off. And I pay all of my staff and my team members a full month.

Hey, go take it off. Why? Because we've built a business without any consumer debt that allows us to have freedom. And freedom for me may look different from freedom from what you may call freedom for yourself or family. But for me, it's if I want to take off for the month of July, unplug, go travel the world, let my team off and pay them their full salary for the month. Man, I get to do that. But if I was just in debt, I couldn't do that. Yeah. You know, and so

I'm single. And I'm looking forward to being married one day. And I want to have the freedom. And I'm practicing that now because of my situation. Like every Friday, I don't work. So we're recording this today to tomorrow. Be Friday. I'm going home. And I'm playing golf in the morning. And I am going to take myself out to a movie in a nice little dinner on tomorrow night, because I want to practice freedom. I desire freedom. So that way when I get a family,

I can take my children to school if I get married with kids. If I can say, hey, baby, after I play golf with my best friend on the morning, you're going out every Friday night, no matter what. Right. And so that's to me. It's way more important than rich. Because rich is temporarily. Yeah. And I think wealth positions you to have true freedom. Yeah. Well,

you've done an incredible job with your career, with acquiring wealth. And, you know, it all started

from when you were 19 homes in your car. How did you get to where you are today? Like what were some of the first steps that you took? You know, I had to be honest with myself. And I won't say that it started at 2021, 2022 when I started changing things around. It took me a while to really figure out some things. If I'm being honest, I think the reason why a lot of people do not

“experience success is because they do not have a strategy or plan. I think that a lot of us,”

we know how to work hard, but we don't know how to steward that hard work and turn it and follow

a Robert Kiel Socky. I think you had them on your show. Yeah. I was a red total money makeover by Dave Ramsey. And I've read so many books and I was watching so many things on YouTube and at that time at that season, Yahoo was real lives. I look up some things on Yahoo and I had to teach myself, you know, these principles. And so I think for me, when I resonated with the seven baby subs,

“it just, I was okay. Cool. This is what I want to do. I'm a follow this and that's what I did.”

And this is what I tell everybody. Even if you don't agree with everything, you can seven baby subs, what you teach. And that's to get out of debt. That's like Dave Ramsey's famous thing, seven baby subs to get out of debt. Yeah. And so it's like, even if you don't agree with it, stuff still do it. Because it's a proven system that works. And so that's what I did. I literally followed that. Some days I'll fall off some months. I'll fall off. But I'll get right back on it.

And I did that until I was dead free. You know. And so for me, it's it was I found a plan. I found the strategy. I worked the plan in strategy until I saw a difference in my finances.

And how did you turn that into your purpose and your career? Like, what were the first things

that you did to start speaking about financial advice and getting your foot into Ramsey? The foot in the Ramsey was simply because Dave and his team noticed that I was teaching.

“It's obviously youth pastor for years. And I would go around to different high schools.”

We built probably one of the largest African-American youth ministries in the world. We would have three to four thousand people out of youth conference and see thousands come throughout the week. But it was because I was going inside the high schools during the day. So my pastor at the time would allow me instead of coming into the church office. He would allow me to go into the schools. When I would go into the schools, I would sub for some of the teachers.

And when I say sub, I'm going in there while they may be doing work study or doing something like that, I can go in there. And I would talk to kids about how to look up scholarships. You know, what is a credit card? What is a credit report? I was teaching financial literacy to kids. Then what we ended up doing because we started that was working. I would then come back in a Wednesdays for our mid-week days. Instead of for me teaching quote unquote the Bible,

I taught them life skills around finance. How can I do this? What can I do? So Wednesdays was our life financial days and Sundays was our biblical days. So when that started blowing up, I was getting calls from all kind of churches, from organizations, hey, can you come teach our students this? And so then that was my journey to really build the talking, I was a ministry and the talking platform around finances.

When I first joined Dave, I was the youth guy. For of course, I evolved.

Got too old to be speaking to young people. And so with that's one thing that I did there, it's just really started my youth career around. And how long did you work at Ramsey Solutions? So for six years, I think. Yeah, six years. Hey, Yappam, this commercial is for my

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their four week AI competency program, App listeners get 10% off at experience.mindStone.com/yap. That's experience.mindStone.com/yap. And then at some point you decided you wanted to go out on your own. What was the moment when you were like, all right, it's time for me to go into pendant. I want to be an entrepreneur. I think for me it was, Dave and I both agreed. I grew a such a hard

passion. Always had it, but just didn't really have it that well. That is stylish. I would say,

but I have a heart for the minority community. And so I wanted to really learn more about some of our history to learn more about some of the struggles that we dealt with and some of the struggles we're still dealing with. And I'll never forget, I went back to my high school in Fedville, North Carolina and I looked around and there was not one curriculum around financial literacy. The, and our counselors are, you got five counselors to three four thousand students. They can't

talk to every kid. Yeah. And I was like, wait a minute, we don't have access to certain things. And I said, it's respectfully, but different cultures experience different things and different messages for different cultures. And so I said, you know what, I want to do that. And Dave and I and his his board agreed that it was his best for me just to do that. And they supported me in my transition because I really wanted to make sure that I can go back to the African-American community,

the minority community, and really speak our language to us to help us make some of some massive changes, which is important to me. Yeah. Help us understand the current situation of the African-American community financially compared to other people in America. Like how much worse is it? Oh, man, it's an interesting question. It was a set of just came out here recently that from 2000 in, I would say, 2009 to 2017, the wealth gap didn't just stay. It got wider

about $50,000. Wow. Right. So we're not talking about this happened in the '60s and the '70s. We're talking about, and during the internet boom, during this time, that the wealth gap even got

“wider. And I think it's just because when the lack of information, the lack of access,”

and us really not really narrowing down and having the right plan. I have a lot of white friends and anybody's like, "Well, what do you want me to stop working on my app slowly?" No. Yeah, I don't want you to stop working, because I mean, that's important. And so my philosophy when I speak to my community is like, "Hey, we can't really close the wealth gap because of that's the case." And I got to ask my friends to stop making money. I don't want that. What we

can do is focus on our family in narrow the wealth gap. Meaning that Anthony O'Neill today,

in things that outweigh when they're born. They're already at $100,000, $200,000 of a head start. Rather than being at the negative, when I graduate at high school. And so I wouldn't say it is worse. I would just say that we are behind. And we got to do some things on our end to really close the wealth gap and close the narrow it for our particular family. Yeah. Well, one of the

first steps is to stop living paycheck to paycheck. That's the theme of your new bug. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

“How big of a problem is this? How many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck?”

Yeah, I mean, it was just on a news yesterday I was watching this preparing to fly here and CNBC really touched my heart and said that right now, their their numbers, their data is just showing close to 62% of people are living paycheck to paycheck. Right. So that means the majority of them. When you're looking at the paycheck, what's hurting them is going to be car insurance, interesting, debt, which I looked at that is unnecessary debt. And then the other one was just a

cost of living up today. Yeah. And when you really study that report, the average household is

going to be making any between 60 and a hundred thousand dollars depending on where you are. Right.

And so it's really not that it's really not because we lack income. I believe it's comes down to two things. Number one, we're overspending in certain areas. Right. And in number two, we don't really just have an understanding of what to do. When I really go back to myself, I was selling cars and I made a hundred thousand dollars when I was 26. Okay. 27, I made a hundred and 30,000. 28, the car dealership closed down. I was fired.

“I called my dad and my dad says, "Well, you should be straight, son. You're right. It's only $500.”

You made a least 10, 15,000 dollars a month. You should be straight." I opened up and it opened. I called the bank because apps wasn't really a thing that they had. I had $400 to my name. And it was because I didn't have access. I had the income. Like, I think I didn't have access. And so for me is the information. Exactly. I had access to income. I didn't have access on what do I do with this kind of money. I was taking my money and going to strip clubs and doing

all this type of stuff at a young age. And I really wasn't making the right decision because again, I was trying to be impressive. Yeah. And so I think for me, which is so funny, and was why I can understand it. At 26, 27, I'm making the most money ever made in my life at the time. And I'm still living paycheck to paycheck. So what are the three things people should do once they receive their paycheck? The very first thing that I'll tell everyone we received their paycheck is

“before you even receive it. The very first thing you should do is have a plan for your money.”

People don't like the term budget. And I can understand that. In my book, I call it "Have a vision meeting for your money." And sit down and tell your money what to do. There's this viral post that went around with a young lady. She was being interviewed on the podcast and the podcast to ask her about budgeting. She said, "You know, one of my friends, we invited her to go and strip with us and her friend didn't say yes or no, her friend said, let me go check my

budget first." Well, when she said that, her friend said, "We never even called her back."

And the podcast host says, "Well, why didn't you call her back?" Because I don't want to be on a trip with someone who's counting every single penny. And I was like, "Well, that has to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard." Like, you don't want a budget, you don't want a steward, you don't want to know what you're doing with your money. And so for me, I actually enjoy budgeting. Like, it is fun today because I get to tell myself, I'm, you know what? I'm going to save the

Obama dream car. I just purchased an estate home, a big home out in Maryland. And I've been saving because I knew what you eventually, I would like to have a home on a golf course. And so I was trying to wait until I got married. That didn't happen so I just went and just bought me a wife. Anyways. And so, but for years, I saved that for it, right? It was on my budget. And I love the fact that I'm able to sit down on paper. And sometimes when I'm really dreaming, I'll pull up the

wall. And I'll just ride on my wall on a sheet of paper. And I'll say, "Okay, I want to do this. This is going to do my money this year, 26. I want to make this much money and pay myself. This much money and every single month, these are the categories that I got to cover." And I honestly get excited about it because when I go and drop money to be on a yacht, I'm not burdened by that because I gave myself permission to enjoy it. And I already know

future and playing, like making sure you get to do the things that you dream of doing. That's, that's a fact. And it's like, even on my budget, I have a line item on there from my children who I haven't even met yet. Every single month, I am setting aside money for them. And I see it getting bigger and bigger and bigger every single month. But that's because I'm budgeting. It's because I'm putting it on paper.

And I see it. And on the 27th and between the 27th and the 29th of the month,

always say myself to Ruth Chris, I get me a nice cocktail. And I sit there and I write out my budget

for the next month. Now, one of the ways that we can make sure that we're not living a paycheck to paycheck is making more money. Yeah, yeah. And you talk about this thing called financial margin. Yeah. What is that? Well, margin for me is your biggest wealth building tool. Everyone thinks that, oh my gosh, I need to make a hundred thousand dollars to become a millionaire. No, you don't.

“I know millionaires. And I mentor several athletes who make millions of dollars, right?”

And they are broke. They live paycheck to paycheck. And one of the very first things when I'm sitting down with somebody's athletes is, and I'm just asking them the very first question, what is, what's your margin? And I'm a professor at Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia, and that's the very first thing that I write on the board on our very first day of class. I tell them, hey, listen, your biggest wealth building tool is margin. It is not the

salary that you're going to give for me a job. And you'll be so surprised when I say margin, my students on day one do not know what the word margin means when it comes to finances. And by the end of our semester, they totally get it. But I think for me, that's one thing that I I work on now is how can I create more margin in my business? How can I create more margin in my own personal home? Yeah. And I have goals from my own personal. When I see my margins getting

below this, I hold up, wait a minute, what do I need to go back into my budget and fix that out of the way? I'm not getting below this. Because I want to be prepared for what if, what if a brand deal says, hey, we don't, we no longer want to partner with you. Okay, cool, great. I have some margin within my income. I don't have to touch my emergency savings

“account. And so I think margin is just a solid break in between your income, what you have coming in,”

and your outcome, what you have going out. And whatever's in between of that, that's where I play with and I invest and I strategize and I multiply. That is the tool that's going to get me to my goal is 50. And I turn 50. It's in eight years. I'm building a house in a Cragana right now. Should be done by the end of this year. I want to retire in a Cragana. And the margin is going to be at a certain number inside of my portfolio. And I will live off of the interest of that portfolio

that my margin allowed me to have. So cool. I love this concept because margin we always think about

it in business. But we don't actually look at our personal life and think margin. So what is like the practical way for people to figure out what their margin is? I know it seems like an easy question, but break it down. No, I mean, it's an easy, it's an easy question, but it's also not easy for people who really don't understand. Yeah. So I think for an example, let's say if you have, let's just go round number. If you have $5,000 right of income, your net income, not grows.

Net income coming in, you write that down. And then you're going to look down and this is what we call a zero base budget. You're going to write down all of your expenses. And I tell everyone, right down your student loans, right down your hair, right down your makeup, right down your shoes, right down the apps that you're, you're every single thing that you're spending money on. If you're in the church and you tie the offerings, you got to write that down as an expense. And then you will

see once you get done with that before you get to zero, you will see how much money you have left. I call that margin. And sometimes the majority of us are at negative, because we're overspending what we have coming in. Yeah, that's living above your means basically exactly what that is. Yeah. So we're using what credit cards and payday loans. And all types of stuff is so I might

“for me, that's how you can identify if you have margin. margin is going to build your net worth.”

And if you are negative, then you've got to go back to your budget and you've got to figure out, okay, wait, can I cut? And sometimes a lot of times honestly, you can't cut nothing goes. Which goes bad to what you said earlier. We got to get some more income coming in. Yeah.

And so, but if you have, say 5,000 and you have, let's say, 3500 are always going out. This means

on your budget, go back and say, how am I going to invest and spend this $1,500? Yeah.

And this is what I tell everyone, man. I think for years, I grew the, I would say people thought

“that I was very strict. And I think that with that margin, you have to determine how much of that”

do you just want to spend and enjoy? Because I do believe that there has to be a moment and some time and a resources in our life that we can just spend money on with everyone's spend it on. Yeah. And enjoy life. Yeah. Because every single day, the majority of us are getting up every day, working hard. Sun that is sundown. You're an entrepreneur. We can't work 85. Sometimes we got to work 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and so I want to enjoy. Especially while we're young and we can do the fun

things, right? That's what we're traveling and everything like that. So we want it. But that means

that we need to make sure that while we're young, we have a big enough margin, right, to do what we need to do. And I just think this generation has the opportunity to do some things that

“our parents and great grandparents could not do. You know, I think we can get to margin,”

quicker. Yep. All of my mentees who I mentor, they all sign a contract in agreement with me that they will maintain a certain amount of margin. And we just had one young guy. He has 26 started with me four years ago. He graduated college. Got a job making about $62,000. And he's went back home. He saved 13, 80 a month, every single month. And he did some extra things on the side. He's 26, just bought a home, put down $100,000, paid cash for BMW, still has six figures

inside of his account. And has a job now paying them about $82,000. And he's 26. Amazing. So now he

understands it. And we laugh all the time because he's like, man, everyone thinks because I had his BMW and I have this town home that I'm just going to be balling out like that. And they still understand it like, no, no, because he values traveling. He values going to play basketball with his big brother overseas. So he can take off work for two weeks and go do that because he has the resources and funds to do it. So I think this generation just has so much freedom that I didn't

have growing up in which I love, though, because now I'm able to utilize it. Let's take on margin in bed. So when we have our margin, I'm assuming some of it goes to emergency savings, some of it goes to investing, some of it goes to dead. Is that right? Am I missing anything? I mean, here's my thing. If you have consumer debt 90% of it should be going towards your consumer debt. Got it. Okay. And then I would even say, if you have consumer debt, this is where I differ

from the guru himself, Dave, I do believe that you still should be maximizing on your 401k match. If they're giving you a match, if the safest 3% will take some of your margin and give them 3% of your margin to do that. But let me rewind, if you're drowning in debt, you really don't have margin. Right. And so you need to utilize as much as the extra cash that's not going to mandatory bills. You need to utilize that to get you out of consumer debt. Got it. So, pay off

your consumer debt and then you can focus on margin. Absolutely. Got it. Okay. Cool. And then how much of that you think should go towards savings versus investing? Yeah. So for me, I don't really have

“a certain amount. I have an amount that you should land on. I believe that we should be at at least”

six months of our net pay inside of an emergency account. Okay. And the reason why that is because it's taken on average about 90 days, 90 to about 120 days for someone to lose their job to get a new job. And so I want you to be comfortable and not have to change your lifestyle at all for those 90 days. Because what studies are showing is that if we can operate out of our slow mind, we may better decisions. If I only have a thousand dollars, right, to my name, and I just got fired.

Yeah. I got to operate off my fast mind. And that's when we tend to make the wrong decisions. And so for me, when I can just still be Anthony O'Neill and not stress, maybe I'm I'm going to sit down. I'm going to call you. Hey, says, I just, I love what what do you think I should do? Because I have time to think. Yeah, you're not just like, I'm not making like, you know, crazy moves. Exactly. I'm going to put you in a bad situation.

That's it. And so I think six months after six months, I say, in my book, and I talk about this, some people might disagree with it. You shouldn't invest up to 22% of your income. 22% of your

right around 12 to 15% into, you know, investment accounts and portfolios. Nice. Okay. So

let's say you're a high income earner. A lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs. This is an entrepreneurship show. And some of us are making millions of dollars a year. And we have a lot of income. So for me, for example, if I was to save six months of my income, that's a lot of cash. Good. And like, would you want me to put that in a high yield savings account or, or is stocks considered okay? No, okay. No, I need to keep it liquid. You know, we're blessed to do, you know,

“a lot of money as well. And I honestly have a year. I have a year because of my expenses,”

I still have a mortgage. So I still have debt. I don't really believe in a term. Good debt, bad debt. I have debt. That's on an asset, right? And so I wanted to make sure that I have enough money to pay my mortgages, right? Because I have more than one. I have rental properties as well. And then I could still play golf, right? I could still do whatever I want to do. So when I say your net pay, your net pay should be able to cover every single thing. So I keep that park into a

high yield savings account. Okay. There's several out there that if you have more than six figures, let's say for an example, you can get about five point five to six percent. It's a one. Because PMAX, I just, I was putting it in American Express and just reduced it from like five and a half to three and a half. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When I opened up mines, I was with paint purely. Okay. And it was offering five point seven. Nice. I haven't checked them lately because I don't look at

that account. Yeah. That's just, yeah. I just only want to see that money. Right. You know, I know it's there. I don't even have a card to that account. I just know that it's there. And if I ever have an emergency, then boom, I can go to it. But I haven't seen that account honestly. And maybe about four years. Nice. I just put the money there and I let it sit there. But I get that a lot of people, especially in our bracket, they're fearful to let their money

sit there literally. Because they say it's not growing. But in today's economy, you need some funds liquid to make sure that you're prepared for when the storm is coming. Yeah. Because it's coming. I mean, I've been doing this now. I'm my own going on for now. Six years. Right. And there's been some months that my business did not make any money. There's been some months that my business made a little bit of money. Right. And so because I had the funds liquid,

I was able to pay my staff and my team and just didn't take a check for myself and just lived

off of my savings. Yeah. It's so important for entrepreneurs who. For sure. And come this always fluctuating.

And I really like that. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a bad management and it's not really good

“entrepreneurship. If your personal life is not taking care of the reason why I can focus on my business”

and really excel on my business, it's because I know personally, I'm covered. Yeah. And this is what I tell all the entrepreneurs never go into your personal income to fund your business. I will let my business go before I pull from my personal. Why? Because my personal is my life. That's my livelihood. You know, that's my family. So I'm not going to take money from my family to fund. I hate to say it like this. Someone else's family. No, hey, I teach it to my staff. When you spurs during my team,

save money, bro. Because if I have to shut this down to protect my family, I'm going to do that. Right. And so I'm not going to pull money out of that to go save this because your business accounts should already have an emergency account. Yeah. So we have an emergency fund. If I have to use all that for some odd reason, I'm not going to pull from my wife and my children to go fund this just to make pay roll. In the beginning, though, you might want to save up money to bootstrap your

“company. For sure. And then at a certain point, you're like, okay, that's what happened to me.”

At a certain point, I was like, okay, the business needs to work on its own. For sure. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the beginning, you should be your number one investor. Yeah. But if we're talking about entrepreneurship, and we've made millions, and we still don't have any emergency account on that account. Yeah. Yeah, no. You, you, you unfortunately made a bad decision. And so I do not, I will not do that. And that was just one thing in my mentor's told me to say,

man, for those first year when I stepped out of my own, man, I paid myself a very small fee.

And I put, I was so fearful because I hate, man, entrepreneurship is not easy. Yeah. And what you don't want to do is build this, make all this money. Then you got to rob from your future family just to make pay roll. It's like, man, you need to have X amount of dollars sitting inside of a Ohio savings account, not invested yet. And then really start building things because I already had the savings account on this. And I was about to pull money out of my emergency savings account

One of the ways that we can do that is by taking a second job, becoming an entrepreneur, where

there's no ceiling and something really interesting that I heard you say is that you wouldn't advise people taking a high six-figure job. Like a 350-k job a year, you wouldn't advise doing that because it's kind of like golden handcuffs, right? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, if I paid, if you come or for me and I'm paying you 150 and you don't pick up the phone call at 730 at night, tell my jewels with your husband, I'll be like, no, man, I paid too much money for that. And so

my suggestion, right, for if we're speaking to your audience, right, we are in a unique

“time. I think within the next five to ten years, we're going to see a major wealth transfer”

happening. And I had the opportunity to sit down with the president of the Black Chambers in Washington, D.C. and just listening to him talk, as I wait a minute. Okay, for an example, we're living a day and time to where people who know how to work AI, they're going to get some good jobs. Yeah, for sure, right. But AI can't touch to AC companies. AI can't touch roofing. AI can't touch plumbing. And so what I'm telling these young guys coming out, I'm like,

amen if I was you, I will go work for a trade company, learn to trade, right? Do that on the side and start your business. Because AI can't come in air and figure out why is it not getting cold. They can help you with some coding, let's you figure out, okay, it's the problem, but you got to actually go in there and fix it. And we're in Austin. It's 98 degrees here, right? Right? So

“we know how those are running at AC in an AC unit is going out. And so I think when it comes to”

margin and growing more margin, if I'm an entrepreneur right now, let's say I have a little bit of margin that I can invest. I'm going to go buy an AC company. I'm looking at any kind of trades that requires physical hands. And I'm going to talk to that 80 year old 90 year old owner and say, hey, can I come work with you for a year or two and buy this company from you? Now that I'm going to buy this company, man, one of my frances did that company was making maybe about $700,000 a year.

He added in new technology brought in AI to run into handle the other stuff. Last year, I think he told me he made like 1.3. His investment in it was, I think he said he paid 1,4 1 million for the business. I'm like, wait a minute, okay. So even if you can't buy it, if you need to make extra income, man, I will be working in that field right now because that's where a lot of nobody really wants to go out there and he, nobody wants to do the plumbing. And so a lot of people.

“And I, I will say this and people may disagree with me, but I'll say it. I think that's probably”

the quickest way to become a network millionaire. Right now, is it to go into trade work? Absolutely because everybody wants to sit up at an AC and just do coding and figure out AI and do automation

and stuff like that. Great. I think that world is going to be saturated. I'm always looking

for, when I, when I'm doing my stuff, right? And I'm always trying to find different avenues. I'm saying, what is the void and how can I feel it? Even if it's unattractive, even if it looks horrible, if it's a void and I can fill it, or I'm gonna make a lot of money. Yeah. Because nobody else wants to do it. And because nobody else wants to do it, I can charge a premium price. Yeah. But now everybody's in AI automation. Everybody's coming out with this AI, something, something,

wait a minute. Well, why would I start to go with you? Let me go, it's actually, I'm going to her and go to him. I go to her and get the best quote boom. But there's not a lot of trade companies out there. Yeah. So I really believe that if someone really wants to get some extra cash real quick, I'm looking into trade. When I first started my company, yeah, media, I actually was working for Disney. And I had my podcast already and I started building

my social media and podcast agency on the side. I had international employees and I would finish work and I would work on my social media business at night. Yeah. And within six months, I was making over six figures a month and I put my job and you know, became a full-time entrepreneur. Yeah.

But those six months were amazing because it was COVID times. So like I was working from home.

Yeah. Yeah. And I was like able to kind of build this new thing on the side. And it was because I was getting paid a little bit over six figures, but I wasn't like an executive yet. If I was getting paid $300,000 a year, I would have felt like Disney's my identity. I've got to do everything for this company. And I wouldn't have dared started anything on the side. So it was sort of like a blessing to have like kind of a galore level job so I could start my own thing. I think that is

I understand. But I never really looked at something instead. I'm going to be here forever.

I'm always looked at something to where I'm going to be a good student while I'm here. I'm a server. I'm a grow. I'm a learn and then step out eventually and do my own thing. And I would advise that to anybody, man. If you can get your job just paying you 80 grand, 90 grand a year, and you can live way below your means and come home every single day, 8 to 5, you work for them, 5 to 9, you work for yourself. You will excel and I believe you'll even pass your goals in your

dreams. Now I'm making like at least five times more than my VP was making a Disney. You know, like making so much more than I would have if I just stayed on that corporate track. Yeah, I agree with you. So, and it feels good. It does feel good. It feels good. But you also have to be giving, right, as an entrepreneur. Absolutely. You were saying as a Christian that you're very

“generous. You even teach that that you should give before you even start investing. For sure,”

I think generosity is one of the best kept. I can't say wealth secrets because every wealthy

individual, even a debut had a mind, I've never seen a more generous entrepreneur outside of

Dave Ramsey. Yeah, he's the best. Yeah, you know, and I believe, okay, wait, wait, wait. He's doing it. My parents, super generous at their income level. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait. And I've never seen my dad frown. I've never seen him miss a mortgage payment. I've never seen them, like, go broke. He worked. And what I've learned with all of the individuals who are generous, yeah, they're at different levels, right, income wise. But they have so much joy in their life.

And I said, okay. And the true story, when I first transitioned out of my own, you know, of course, my paycheck stopped. And so for the first three months, I didn't make any money. But every single month, I still gave away. I paid myself out of my savings. And I gave away 10%. Yeah. Before I paid my mortgage, before I did anything else, I gave 10% away. And I just believe, whether you believe in

“God or believing universe, I'm a God for your man. And so I believe that God, so you know what,”

Anthony's being faithful with the few, let me bless him with more. And I was like, okay. And so when I started noticing that my income was going up. And when my income would go flat, maybe sometimes down for a season, like for us in a money space, that June, July, August, that's when our money tends to go down, then it goes back down right around November on December because of everyone is

going for Christmas. I've never skipped a beat. I've never missed a payroll. I've never been able

to not do what I want to do. And so our CFO, she understands that every single month, we give away 10% and specifically within our company, we give away 10% to single mothers. And we just love it. We've bought a single mother a car before. Sometimes we put it on social, sometimes we don't. But I just really do believe that if you're generous, it activates the spiritual realm for me. And I believe that is the greatest multiplier quicker than stocks, bonds, real estate because

“of God can trust me with this amount. They feel enlargement territory. And that's what I love.”

I totally agree with that. I'm actually 100% Palestinian. Oh, yeah. And so I feel a lot of guilt because I'm like, I should like use my platform to be an activist, but I already started my career before a lot of this happened. And so something that I did is that I started a charity project called For Peace Media. And I donate, at first it was more. But now it's 10% of my sponsorship money every month. And I basically just fund this project. And it's a whole other platform that basically

speaks out about human rights and things like that. Yes. And it does make me feel like I'm getting rewarded for doing that. And it helps me mentally think about everything that I do, it has a purpose and the bigger that I get the more impact that don't make on the world. So that's a fact. Listen, mean you're the same way, right? And so I was like, man, I don't want to be the black power on my show with all the stuff that has happened. And so I did the same thing too. I started non-profit.

And we donate to that. And we donate to that that creates and donates to some of the other causes out there. Because I want to be a blessing to everybody. Yeah. But I also understand that I am an African-American male in the United States of America. And there are some issues that need to be corrected. That battle is mine. But I fight it differently. I fight it with my resources. Yeah.

of everybody. But I think what you're doing, man, keep doing that. Thank you. And there's nothing wrong

“with that. Because we all got it. We all got to do it. I like that. I like her even more. Is that my”

camera right there? I like her even more. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So I want to play a little game with you. Okay, Blue and play a game. We're going to talk about, so in your book, you talk about escape plans. Yes. Okay. And there's different stages. We don't have time to go over all the stages. Yes, ma'am. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a scenario. And you're going to tell me, what is the next step that the person should do? Okay. Or go. So the person this is an aerial,

what is the next step that they should do? Okay. Somebody earns $90,000 a year. But has no idea

where the paycheck goes each month. What do they do? The very first thing is they got laid down

in a foundation. That's the very first thing. So that's phase one. So within our my philosophy, right, is if you're making $90,000 a year, you have no idea where it's going. You need to step back and look out okay, what am I doing with this money? One of my friends, I'll talk about this side of the book. She's a ER doctor. And she said one of her biggest complaints is that people will come in to see her. I forgot to correct term for her, but she's like stage two like gunshot wounds and

something major. She goes and she deals with that. And she says the very first thing they ask me, or the family asks me is to fix them. And she said, that's the wrong ask. Because if I go in there

thinking, I'm fixing them, I could honestly kill this individual. The very first thing I got,

I got to get him stable, get her stable, get her heart pumping without us having to pump the heart. Once I get you stable, then I can go in there and assess what is wrong with you. What

“happened? How do we fix it? And I think that's what we got to do. If you got $90,000, and you don't”

know what's going on. Okay, wait, we need to get you stable. And stableing is, all right, very first thing is, you need to set aside at least one month of your net pay. Yep. So that way, you know exactly where one month the money is going. Then from there, we got to sit down, look at your budget. If you don't know where it's going, what are you spending it on? Okay, what's your mortgage? You know, how much money are you spending on clothes? What's your

transportation looking like? What's your food looking like? Do you have childcare, right? Like what's going on with your children over there? Let's lay down the priorities. And let's put everything honestly on the table. And I think this is where people mess up at. They're not honest with themselves. They guess. No, go pull up your last three months as your bank statements, go pull up your last three months as your credit card statements, go pull up all of your credit

reports, all three of them, and put it on the table and put the truth before you, because we

cannot fix what we refuse to look at. Yeah. And so that's the very first thing I would do

for that scenario. So good. A family invest consistently, but they don't have a will, trust, or life insurance. Yes, it means your legacy is not cement. It's not locked in, right? And so we talk about it in phase five that I believe that everybody should be focusing on building a legacy, right? And so it just happened to me. It's just snapped on me personally five years ago. I was investing. Got no consumer debt, making a lot of money. And I woke up one morning

feeling guilty that I did not have a trust. I didn't have a will. And I felt convicted that if I was to die today, because I have a unique situation for parents, two siblings, a staff that depends on me that my family would argue over what I want. Yeah. And what I wanted to do with my resources. So I literally woke up called my attorney and said, hey, I need to put an estate plan together. I need to get a will, need to get a trust. And you know what's so funny is? All of them was like,

“are you okay? What's that thing? It's like, do you need to tell us something? And it's so sad that”

people think when we start talking about wheels and trust and medical power of attorneys and stuff like that, that something's wrong. Like we need to change the narrative like, no, life can just happen. I mean, we see it all over the news. Every single day that you can think you're going somewhere, you can think you're going to go back to sleep and life can just happen. And I didn't want life to just happen to me without it being clear of what I want to do. I put together my trust, my will,

my power of attorneys and even watched this, I moved all of my beneficiaries to the trust. So that way, when it goes to probate court, it won't be as expensive for my family. Is there like a certain milestone where people should be considering having a will and a trust?

do you have a job? Really? Yeah, because there's layers to it, right? And so if you're 22 years old, just got a job, making 30,000, 35,000 dollars a year, you got an apartment, you got a car, start the process because here's why. Yes, you may not have a lot, but you're building the habit

“for yourself. And that's what I want you to do. So if you get a basic wheel, man, put on their mom”

day. Hey, don't be crowned at my funeral. You know, have a choir and sing some happy songs. Whether it's just something small, cool, great, but then as you get older, why is it making more money? Have more assets, have more things. Then it's honestly going to be even a bit cheaper for you just to go back and to add things to it, rather than start from scratch

from brand new. And so I tell everyone, it's on my book, the very first thing is in phase one,

as you're getting, you know, stable, hey, yes, go ahead and get a basic wheel, get a basic trust, right? And then build on it as your assets and have you, and as you have more income. Okay, this one's about debt. Oh, it couple has $40,000 in consumer debt. And I'd love for you to explain just because we said it a bunch like what is consumer debt even mean. And only $500 in savings,

“what should they do? Yeah, $40,000 in debt, and only $500 in savings. Oh, man, do they have income?”

Let's say they're making 100 grand together a year. Okay, that's good. That's average. That's middle class, but for the, um, let's say about 83,000 for the middle class and the

visual household income, $40,000 in debt, $500 in savings. Okay, cool, great. Very first thing I'm

going to tell you is consumer debt to me is anything that is requiring me to spend money on a liability, right? And then, uh, debt that I have is anything that is going to be on an asset, um, like land real estate, right? So, how's car, is that, is car? So, yes, to answer your question, a car is not, um, that, that will be for me, consider consumer debt. Okay. Some people said, well, wait a minute, if I'm using it for Uber, it's still consumer debt, right? It's not an asset, uh, because it depreciates.

All right. So, I think a car is one of the worst things you can actually borrow money for, respectfully saying that. Um, but for me, if I'm the couple, I'm making $100,000 a year, I have $40,000

in debt, and I only have $500 in savings that very first thing I'm doing is I'm going to put

at least one month of my family's net pay inside of this savings. So, that's from me and my wife. If my wife makes $2,500, and I make $2,500, we put in $5,000 for an example inside that account. Yeah. Then from there, I'm sitting out my wife, and we're going to list out all of the debt. Now, there's two type of ways. Some financial advisors argue with me all the time on this one, but this is where I line with Dave. I'm going to look at all my debt, and I'm going to line it

all up from smallest to largest when it comes to the amount, not to the interest pain. And that's debt snowballed. That's snowballed, right? Okay. So, I'm not a fan of the debt avalanche. Now, let's be honest, the debt avalanche does make sense. That's starting with the biggest interest rate down to the smallest, right? It makes sense because you would save money. I guess over time, right? Well, if you do the math, yes. But if my interest rate is 28% on a

$30,000 alone, yeah, I'm gonna pay this payment, and I'm not going to see it go down. And so, we see success when people can honestly see quick wins. I am in the process of getting my AFC for a financial counselor, and one of the things they tell us is the one of the best things you can do is identify a quick win for your client. And so, if we can get people to see quick wins, man, they'll get through that debt snowball very quickly. Because it's a behavior thing. It's

a behavior thing. So, I have a thing, and they can see it, they can see the fruit of their labor, and their sacrifices, and their hard work. They can see, I must say, no to make Donald's today from my family and go cook at home, and we're going to take this money and put it on this debt,

“they see the payment go down. So, it creates this momentum and excitement. And I think that's what”

I would do for them. I'm getting on the debt snowball method and watch it. Let me go deeper. You set family. Yeah. Mom and Dad need to have a conversation with the kids and let them know, like, hey, we are in debt. And we want to make sure that you understand of why we may not be able to go to Pizza Hut this weekend. Why we may not be able to do certain things as a family, because we want to make sure that when you graduate high school, that we can give you a check,

that we can help pay for school. Yeah. And not just do it behind closed doors, brain children

grass. And if you make a hundred hours from cutting grass, you're going to contribute $15 to this. Yes. And now when the parents say no, the budget is the bad guy, not the parents. And that's the thing, too, when it comes to marriage, man, being a single person, I'm not qualified to give dating advice, right? But I have a lot of merry people come to me. And when they come to me with money, arguments, what I, I would say about 70% of the time, it is not really money

arguments. It's just a lack of a clear defined vision for the finances of the family. She has her own vision for the money. He has his own vision for the money. And so my philosophy is this, going back to what you said, if we sit down as a couple and has a family and say, this is our vision for the family. Son, you want to go to school? Yes, sir. You want to go to school, debt free and take a no student loans? Yes, sir, cool, great. Mom, what you want, why would you want

boom, husband, father, what you want, boom, great to put on a table? Here's our book, goals, here's our vision. Now when son comes to me and says, going to have this, you're going to ask me just ask the vision. If my wife came to me and say, hey, I know we got the money. Okay, cool, great. But does that, if we buy that, does it stop us from accomplishing the vision that we sit out for now goes back to what you said? I don't have to tell my wife no, the vision told my wife

“no, my wife doesn't have to tell me no, the vision told me, you know. And so I think that's very,”

very important for a family that if you are in that amount of debt and you have that little bit of resources, the very first thing I'm doing is I'm getting money inside of that and I'm sitting down and I'm getting a clear vision. Because if you aim at something, you can get close to that or hit the target. But if you aim at nothing, you're going to hit that all the time. Yeah, I want to move into relationship advice, uh, financial advice. But first, I want to talk about

the debt snowball because I never really understood what it meant and then I did learn and it was

pretty interesting. Like, basically you start with the smallest amount, you pay that off and then you take, you go tackle the next one and you roll in whatever you would have spent on the smallest amount on the next step payment. Yes. Yes. So it kind of makes it easier because you're already used as spending that money, right? Absolutely. So what happens is, let's say you have three items. One of them is 25 dollars a month, the next one is $50 a month and the state the next one is

100 dollars a month. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to make all the minimum payments on all of them. I'm paying at 25, right? But then the debt snowball really works when you can make extra money and put it on top of the very first one. So let's say you go look at your budget, you are to pay 25 dollars here, $50 here, $100 there. But let's say you found that extra, you turned off Netflix, you turned off Spotify, you turned off some messaging, you got an extra 25 dollars, just for simple

math. Well, I'm already paying 25 dollars. I'm not going to spend this 25 dollars on the food.

I'm going to take this 25 dollars and put it on top of the first 25. Now I'm paying 50.

Okay, now I'm paying them regular bills and this one is done. I have $50 over here that I was paying. Yep. Now I'm going to take this 50. I'm going to put on top on the next 50 for the account number two.

“Yeah. Now I'm paying a hundred dollars, right? And I think that's the secret to the debt”

you know. I can identify that a vet for sure, right? And then I'm just, I'm just a guy to where man when I was getting out of debt. I was calling them. I said, hey, listen, you know, I got some extra money. Kind of put it towards principle. Can I, can I cut a deal with you? Can I, can I get out of this quicker? Like, I want to pay you back this money, A&CP. I, I, I got excited. I got so excited too that I think ladies back then when I was dating, they didn't like me because I just would not spend any money.

And we can spend any money. I wouldn't do because I'm like, what if I didn't get to invest in your girl too, right? Hey, man. Listen, man, when I was getting out of debt, man, back then in them days, it was Denny's. We would go to Denny sometimes we'll go to I-Hop. And I was like, y'all can't do it. You know, so I would literally go back to the crib. I'll make a peanut butter and gel sandwich. I remember taking the young lady on the date to the beach and I had peanut butter and jelly

sandwich, some cheetos and some cool egg. I bought a blanket and we had a blast. I mean, we didn't

“we didn't last too long. But I mean, I think for me, it was, I was, I saw the fruit of me working”

two, three jobs at that time. I saw my money actually making an impact on my life. And for the first

time in my life, working that I saw freedom. I didn't see more money. I saw it. Wait, wait, wait. I could really be free here. Yeah. We learned your lesson, 19 years old, right? Sure. And I learned it again at 23 and I learned it again, is that when I finally got it, I was like, wait, I could really be free and I could be the first family. I could be the first person in my family to have freedom. And that meant a lot to me. More than having a girlfriend and more than

impressing people because I knew that with me being a man, I got to provide for my family. And

years ago. I love that. Okay. So speaking about family relationships, how do you feel about

prenaps? Oh, man. You know, such a funny conversation. I feel as if prenaps for a certain

“net where certain people is wise. I think prenaps are good, right? But if any of you're coming”

into something, you got nothing and she got nothing and got nothing. I feel like that's the best. But so many of us are older. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, my attorney he told me was like, Anthony, when you get married, I'm not letting you get married without a prenaps. And the Christian side of me was like, no, no, you crazy, man. I'm not getting into this expression. He's yeah, but 52% of marriages are not working. He said, and out of all of the couples who come to me,

they were in love day one. But the truth of the fact is, we're all dating a different human being

and you never know. And I can say this respectfully without saying to any names, but someone in my

family, I would have never thought they was going through a divorce. They're going through a divorce today. And it is emotional. I cry one night because 42 years of marriage and the hell that she's having to go through the bills that comes with it. It's not fair. And because of their situation, it's looking like this particular family member will have to pay him something. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And so I'm like, yeah, no, anybody get me at this age with that. So I think that it should

be a healthy conversation that both parties bring to each other and just ask, how do you feel about it? You know, this is where I'm at in life. This is where you're, you are in life. And I would not, I would not go to the extent of saying that if she or he is not willing to sign a prenaps,

“then you should walk away. I can't say that. But I think that it should be a serious conversation.”

And I think we need to. I know me. When I'm dating like, hey, we were to get married. What's the worst case scenario? Like, what do you want? Like, if we were to get divorce, what would you want from your husband? Because right now we're happy, we're in our right minds, we're not hurt. We can be fair of front. And I think that that's why I like prenaps. Because when things go wrong, man, even the good people can turn nasty at times.

Yeah. How often do you think people in relationship should be talking about money? Like, should there be like a monthly meeting? Like, what do you suggest? Married or just in your marriage? Mary, let's say, Mary. Oh, yeah, it should be monthly. I mean, one of my good friends to run in his wife, they actually talk every Tuesday about money. They have a business meeting. I think that marriage, I want to say this correctly,

I'm not marrying someone who I only love. Love doesn't pay bills. Love doesn't bill legacy. I'm marrying someone that I love and that I can build a business, a dynasty, a family with. And her IQ when it comes to money is important to me. Yeah. Her IQ when it comes to business. I'm not saying she has to be an entrepreneur. She has to understand how to have the conversation with me around business. And so I think that every week, every other week, at least bare minimum,

monthly, we should be having a healthy conversation about money. But if we rewind before then,

“buy a date three, you should be talking about money. Really? For sure. What do you think the”

question should be like, what should you bring up on date three? I mean, it tell me how was your upbringing when it came to your family? What was your money philosophy? What are some of your goals with money? What are some of your goals right now? Can you ask, do you just asking people like how much they make? Why? Why? It doesn't matter. Because he can make $200,000 and still be $300,000 in debt. True. She can be making $50,000 in school tea. She would be like, what's your

margin? But I'm going to say it. If I ask a young lady today, hey, what are some of your money goals today that you're working on? And she tells me, yeah, I'm trying to invest 15% of my income. She has margin. I'm trying to save her for a house. Okay, she has margin, right? Or if she says, I mean, I don't really, you know, I don't really got no go. Okay, so you, you ain't got a money. Right? And so for me, mindset, how people think around money can give you a ballpark

of where they are with their money. Right? And so it goes back to what we said in the very beginning, if the young lady would ask me, well, when she asked me my credit score, that was on date one.

I told her the truth. If she would have came back with a second question. Yeah, she would have

she would have been highly impressed. Mm-hmm. Okay, wait. And then it would have started, I think, a conversation that probably would have been intriguing to her because one thing we do

But ladies love to learn something from the man who they're totally. And so I could have taught her some things about why I have this philosophy of I want more money in the savings. She would have solved my goals and the vision that I have from my life and how a credit score to me just simply means I know how to borrow money and pay it back. Yeah. But you don't know what my

“portfolio is with a 800 credit score. Mm-hmm. And so I think that when you're dating,”

man have the questions around money because let's be honest. We talk about anything and everything else. So if we can talk about anything and everything else, why can't we talk about money? Yeah. And there's been several ladies that I've respectfully walked away from just because we weren't aligned. Yeah. When it comes to the money thing. I love that. Well, Anthony, this has been such an

incredible conversation and it really has been. I and my show with two questions I ask all of

my guests. Okay. The first one is what is one actionable thing are young and profitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow. Oh, man. This is a good question. Make better decisions. When it comes to your money, I believe that the caliber of our financial features will be determined by the choices that we made today. Mm-hmm. So you want to make more money become more profitable, sit back and look at what is a decision today that I can change that would change my tomorrow

“into my future. So Anthony, what is your secret to profiting in life? For me, at this season of my”

life, every decision that I make now has to benefit my future tomorrow. Mm-hmm. And so that's how I've been if it in life and benefit in life does not mean I make more money. It means does it get me closer to my freedom goal. And so if it does, I'm profiting. That's beautiful. Anthony, thank you so much for joining us on young and profiting podcasts. Thank you for having me. I'm going to have you on my show now. Oh, I love that. Yeah, fam. I love these money conversations

because they're really never just about money. They're about freedom, peace, options, and ultimately

the kind of life you get to create for yourself and the people that you care about. One of the biggest lessons from Anthony is that wealth is not just about how much money you make. It's not just about your income. It's about how much margin you can create. He talked about how people spend

“every dollar that they earn trying to maintain and lifestyle. They cannot actually afford. They're”

trying to impress people rather than focusing on their own financial structure. Real financial freedom comes from creating space between what you earn and what you spend. That's called margin. margin gives you breathing room when life happens. It gives you an emergency fund. And it gives you the ability to act on opportunities when they come your way because you've got the investment to do that. The second lesson is that consumer debt is one of the biggest obstacles in building wealth.

Anthony made a clear distinction between debt that helps you acquire appreciating assets and debt that funds temporary wants. Too many people are financing lifestyles that disappear long before the payments do, like flexing on a vacation for Instagram. The more money that goes towards debt payments, the less money you have available to invest, build and create long-term security. And the third lesson is that wealth is not the end goal. The goal is not to be rich.

The goal is to be free free enough to give away as much as you want. Anthony's vision of financial success was much bigger than luxury statusor having the nicest things. He talked about building enough wealth to take care of your family, give generously to your community and the causes that you care about, and leave a legacy that continues long after you're gone. That perspective shifts the entire purpose of money. It stops being about impressing people and starts being about

serving people. And if you believe what me and Anthony do, the more that you give, the more that the universe will reward you as an entrepreneur. When you put all these lessons together, you realize that building wealth is not a math problem as much as a lifestyle decision, create margin, and lots of it. Eliminate a necessary consumer debt, stop spending money just to impress people and use money as a tool. Do that consistently and your financial future can

look very different in a few years. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting. If you know somebody who earns well, but still feels financially trapped, share this episode with them. Anthony flew in all the way to Austin for this interview, so make sure you check us out in the flesh on YouTube or Spotify video. You can also check out his new book Stop Living

Paycheck to Paycheck to Go Deeper. As always, this is your host, Halataha aka the podcast princess,

signing off.