Video Transcript:
Sup guys, Dennis here. Want to do a quick video for you. I’m here taking a walk in the office. Check this out.
Pretty dope, right? I like to be in nature. I think it’s important to breath in some fresh air, get some sun, look at trees and stuff and that sort of thing. But I want to do a video on something I believe is very important. I don’t really like talking about this topic too much, but I think it’s important to bring up some stuff. Uh, I think everyone has the right to, to teach some things. Everyone has experience and there’s things that you have done or are doing that may be working for you, beliefs, habits, certain things like that that you can teach or maybe there’s things that you’ve done that aren’t working or haven’t worked that you can also teach, you know, not to do. So this video is a, my personal financial tips, my beliefs, my habits, things that I live by, um, that have proved to be useful and helpful in my situation and my circumstances.
[01:19] Um, and these are ideas and concepts that I live by that I basically accumulated over many years of doing different things, but the video is about financial tips and my, my personal financial tips, um, the first thing I want to talk about is spending habits. Your spending habits determine everything, your stress levels, um, where you can and cannot go, If you travel, you know, what you buy, you know how often you can go out to what caliber of places. And the reality is, if you have tons of money or a little bit of money won’t matter because if you don’t have your spending habits down, if you’re not responsible with your spending, you’re always going to be stuck. You’re always going to be stuck in it. It’ll be your fault because you know, see your finances. No one’s spending your money, right? Um, that’s, uh, that’s tip number one.
One of my recommendations is to buy less, buy less and buy higher quality. I live under the assumption of the idea that if you buy cheap, you buy twice. Um, and I’m very particular with what I buy and there’s people that buy lots of crap and they feel the need to continue buying stuff to keep that new feeling of I just bought something and that sort of thing. Um, buy less and buy higher quality. The more things you buy, more money you’re gonna spend up and direct cost, but you’re also gonna have more to maintain more to clean, as sucks up your time and your money kind of in the future. And that sorta thing. A big piece of this is delaying gratification and sacrificing. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. Every successful person, I guarantee it, they’re going to tell you, you’re going to have to delay gratification and
[03:20] Sacrifice. That means sometimes when you’re trying to reach a financial goal, trying to save money, trying to pay things off, stuff like that, you need to sacrifice. That means not going out. Maybe you need to stay home, you know, maybe don’t go out and keep buying food out in the streets and that sort of thing. Stop buying stuff, clothes and unnecessary stuff, right? These are all things that determine your, your, your lifestyle. You know, most people, if you were to grab, you know, 50 people randomly off of the street and you asked them why do you work? They’re going to say because I need to pay bills, so why do they say that? Number One? I think that’s a crazy answer, but why do they say that? Because they’re actually living to pay bills. They go to work five days a week to pay bills because they put themselves in a situation where that’s what their life is about.
They’ve bought so many things they shouldn’t have bought, things they can’t afford. Things they should’ve put off and now they’re working to pay those things. That is a mistake. That’s what gets you stressed. That’s what gets you overwhelmed and frustration that brings arguments and stuff into, you know, into your family and your relationships and that sort of thing. If you can master your finances, you can reduce the stress in your life. If you were to create a list of the top things that you know, break up relationships or bring stress into people’s lives, finances would be right up there with whatever the other ones might be, right? This is a key right here. Your stress levels and your lifestyle are completely determined by your recurring bills that you have in the month. I’m going to say that again. Your lifestyle is determined and your stress levels determined,
your peace of mind and security is determined by the recurring bills that you have in the month. Run Lean. Keep your expenses as low as possible. Delay Gratification, sacrifice. Talk yourself out of buying things. Most people will justify whatever they have to and talk themselves into buying things. There’s people that will buy a $1,200 iphone, right? And the next one comes out and their phone. It looks brand new, still in the case, and you need to get the next one. Why? That’s someone that’s now responsible. It doesn’t have self control and is not, is not running their finances like they should. Talk yourself out of buying these things because these companies are juicing you right there, juicing you. Everywhere you go. It’s a battle for your mind, your time, your attention, and your money. Make no mistake that everything is marketing. Don’t be fooled. So don’t fall for that.
[05:58] Keep the money in your pocket. These companies are multibillion, multi-trillion dollar companies and they keep doing this and they’re feeding off of people that haven’t gotten this down yet. People that feel the need to keep buying stuff and buying stuff and accumulating stuff, that’s just going to sit in a closet or in a garage or an attic and then there’ll be thrown out later as clutter run lean. I absolutely believe in this movement called minimalism and that’s running lean. That means don’t buy a bunch of crap buy things that are functional, that have a purpose and stay late and lean. The more things you buy, again, the more you have to maintain, the less money you have, the more you have to clean and organize, and that sucks time and energy from your life running lean, buying things to have a function will reduce the stress in your life. You can come inside your home and have just a few things that you need to worry about instead of having cabinets and closets, stuff full of crap, just blowing money on stuff that you don’t use and that sucks, it just sucks energy out of you and your finances as well.
[07:10] Another piece of this is to buy cash, not finance stuff. There’s a reason why you finance things because you can’t afford it for the just the mere fact that you can’t afford it, You couldn’t afford to buy it cash should say something to you. That should say, warning, you probably shouldn’t buy this. There’s certain things that you should buy or finance because not many people have the money to drop down on something of a large, larger expense like a house or a car. Right? And even if you have money for a car, I still wouldn’t recommend that you pay cash for it because it’s not necessarily an asset it just depreciates, right? It’s better to have the liquid capital
Buy cash. There’s things like televisions and iphones and all this crap, computers that people finance. They finance their car, their finance their phone, their financing the refrigerator, all the appliances, furniture and then what you end up doing is you lock yourself in for five, 10 years paying all this stuff and you’re literally working to pay bills. You’re working to keep the business that sold it to you up and running. Now that got you into this trap. Now you’re stressed all the time for all these bills that you have. Your life literally becomes about paying bills because you got yourself into this trap where you’re buying stuff you don’t need your bindings and may be too expensive or things that you just shouldn’t have bought altogether. Save up money if that means getting a second part time job just to buy things that you want or working more hours if you work hourly or doing stuff outside of work to get some money.
[08:41] Those are the things that you have to do. Again, sacrificing and delaying come into play in this. When you buy things cash, not only is it absolutely yours, but you’re not you’re not stressed about it anymore. You can use these things, you can get entertainment, the pleasure that you want out of them, the way that it was meant to be done, not you’re looking at something you bought, you’re happy for two days because you have it and now you’re paying for the thing you know for five years. What that does is lock you into stress and frustration in your life. Run Lean, finances control people’s lifestyle. Again, you want to keep your recurring expenses, your monthly expenses as low as possible. That’s what determines your lifestyle and your stress levels. If you can keep your costs low while focusing on raising your income, then you’re in a really good place, but don’t get yourself into the trap where you’re now working for companies so that you can use the stuff that you shouldn’t have bought to begin with. Something else to touch on, investing in yourself. This one is huge because not many people do this or see the importance in this. Again, when you’re not spending money on stupid stuff, you have more money to invest in yourself, and when I say invest in yourself that that means more your education, your education. Don’t think that because you went to school that you’re done learning. If you do that, you’re going to get screwed. You are going to stay stuck in the same place as everyone else. Why? Because as soon as your education stops, your progress stops as well.
Everyone thinks if they go to school and they get this degree, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, that they’re good, they’re educated. Yeah they may be more educated than the person that didn’t go to school and get a formal education, but it doesn’t mean that they’re smarter than them or more qualified or more experienced, right? People go to school because they think that they’re going to have an advantage over the people that didn’t go to school. Well, here’s the problem. A lot of people go to school. A lot of people go to school, and I’m going to ask you this question. If 200 people go to school and get this degree and you’re in the stack of applications for a job that you’re applying for, and those people also have the same degree as you, what advantage do you have? I’m going to tell you what advantage you have.
[11:01] You don’t have an advantage and investing in yourself gives you that advantage. It’s the unknown advantage. When you get home from work, pop open a book or watch videos, master your craft. Get on webinars, go to conferences, find mentors, buy trainings. Invest in yourself. The same way that you pay for your bills when those due dates come around without question, you have to be able to have a budget set aside to invest in yourself. Some book comes out, you’re like, oh, I really want to get this, or some course or whatnot. You have the money set aside because you’re not blowing it on other things. Now you can put it into something that’s productive. Something’s going to put information into your brain. Raise your value so that you can then make more money, whether in a business or at a job. You can get a promotion or change jobs and get a raise that way, and then you can do what you gotta do, right, but when you don’t invest in yourself, you don’t increase your knowledge. Your value stays exactly where it’s at and you can go five, 10, 15 years working at the same place, the same amount of money, or you go up one or two percent every year because you’re not increasing your, your, your value. It’s all about value. What is someone going to make? What? Why are they hiring you? What value are they going to get out of you, and if you want to make more money, you need to learn skillsets that make your company more money.
[12:26] Other big piece of this, save money, save more than you spend. A lot of people suck at saving money, and this is interesting too because even if you don’t make that much money and you’re good at saving, over time, you can accumulate your own level of wealth where you’re at. This is key. This is key. It doesn’t matter how much money you make. You have something left over and if you have something left over that means you have something that you can save. There are people that will make a thousand dollars and blow $800 because in their mind, $200 left over is a lot. Don’t be fooled. Bills can accumulate really quickly or you can get into a situation where your car breaks down or something is going to cost probably more than 200 bucks. Save money. Absolutely save money. I heard this from once in my life, just one time, one once, and this was about a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago, and I absolutely agree with this.
[13:25] You should save, your goal should be to save at least six months worth of expenses, your monthly expenses. If you spend a thousand dollars on bills every month, your goal, I believe, to be to save at least six months worth of your recurring bills. What does that do? What does that do? That’s going to give you peace of mind. That’s going to reduce the stress. You’re not going to live paycheck to paycheck. You have a little bit more leverage when it comes to your job. This is what most people do. They’ll get into their job, they’ll stay there for two, three, four, five years and make the same amount of money, right? Same amount of money. Their financial situation stays the same and then even though they’d been there for five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years, whatever the case may be, they’re still scared that if their job fires them, they’re screwed because they’re living paycheck to paycheck because they were assuming that that they had to do with clock in and show up and continue to get paid.
[14:24] As long as that money kept coming in and they could continue to blow money. Don’t get yourself into that trap. You can save money over time to the point where you can buy some of your mental freedom and you can reduce the stress in your life. You can be more responsible and have just less stress overall because you know that worst case scenario, your job fires, you, they let you let you go. you don’t have to go rush and polish your resume and go put in 10 applications at jobs that you weren’t ready to apply to because now you have to take whatever comes because you’re broke and you have to pay bills. Buy yourself the freedom of being able to not 100 percent depend on your job. This is a big one. This is a big one. Save money, save x amount of months worth of, of running expenses. That’s why it’s important to keep your monthly recurring costs down and running lean like I mentioned earlier, because then it’s easier for you to save more months worth of expenses. Create several income streams. For most people, they have one and that’s perfectly fine. It’s absolutely perfectly fine to have one and but when you should be saving like I mentioned, but you should absolutely be taking time outside of your job to create more income for yourself. Absolutely be taking more time to create more income for yourself.
Eight hours might not be enough. It might not be enough. You need to go home, clock back in. Keep learning something that you can apply that can allow you to do something outside of work, right? Sometimes what you learn outside of work ends up being what you do inside of work and that becomes a cool place to be because then you’re never in an unproductive place. The time that you’re putting into something at work is only benefiting your own knowledge and experience so you can apply it into what you’re doing outside of work or any other job that you get, that’s a good place to be, but try to create additional income streams. That doesn’t have to be anything crazy either. It could be a couple of hundred bucks a month that will take over your car payment or something like that, right, and you do that over over years and you keep trying to work on that stuff
you can eventually, again, not fully rely on your job, and I do have one tip on this and trying to create an income outside of your job, whether that’s a business or anything else. If you are living paycheck to paycheck, you’re wondering where your next meal is gonna come from, if you’re struggling, if you’re struggling paying bills, focus on that first. Don’t try to build a business. You’re going to starve your business if you can’t even pay your bills yet, comfortably. Don’t focus on trying to build a business of any sort. That I can tell you from experience because if you don’t have the finances to get yourself in order, you don’t have the finances to invest in something. Don’t try to get into a business to solve a financial problem that you have currently. It’s not going to happen fast enough. It’s going to take time, effort, and money, and you probably don’t have those things, so get yourself in order first. Get yourself to a place where you can breathe, where you’re comfortable, you’ve given yourself some wiggle room and then you can start buying trainings or trying to develop other skill sets, start going after certifications, whatever the case may be. That’s a big one right there, but overall, this is my ultimate purpose of this video and what I believe everyone’s goal should be.
[18:07] If you’re chasing money, it has to have a purpose, has not chasing money for the sake of chasing money because that’s what everyone else is doing and that’s what everyone says you need to be doing. Right, or that’s the norm. Well, you should absolutely chase is mental freedom, financial freedom, spiritual freedom and emotional freedom, and I know this is a video about finances, but I believe finances influences and affect all of those chase freedom, freedom, freedom. That’s why I mentioned saving six months worth of finances because saving that amount gives you six months worth of time and time is more valuable than money and I did another video on on that particular topic which you can find on my website as well.
[19:01] That is absolutely huge. You want to chase freedom. You want to go removing and loosening the grip that your job has on you. There’s so many people that if something was to happen again, if their job fired them or they got laid off or some emergency came up, someone’s in the hospital and they now have to travel for a couple of days and now they’re locked to this job, even know they have a family member or something really important comes up or some opportunity that could be really good for them and they can’t go because their boss said no. Your boss said, no.
[19:40] Now, is this a life boss or a job boss? Is this a life boss or a job boss? You want to get to the point where, again, worst case scenario, it does not absolutely matter what the case is. If you had to say, you know what, I don’t have enough vacation days to go see XYZ in the hospital. I need to go take care of something. Need to be off for two weeks on a family emergency. You don’t have to explain anything. If they request a no and you can’t provide a note or whatever the case is, you can say, you know what? Okay, I told you what the case was and if you don’t like it, fine, I’ll get another job, right? Because they’re gonna replace you anyway, so you want to buy that level of freedom to where something more important comes up.
[20:29] You don’t have to ask permission or count your vacation days and your sick days, right? If something comes up where you have to be gone for two weeks or a month, you need to leave the country for whatever, you know that you have months worth of recurring expenses sitting there for exactly that reason. That is leverage. That is personal freedom. That is a level of financial freedom. That is responsibility, that is security, peace of mind. Those are the things that you want to chase. That’s the purpose of money. See, money spent can buy things, but unspent money buys you security and peace of mind. That’s worth more than anything else that you can possibly buy in a store. So I hope you got something out of that. Comment like if you’re seeing this on Youtube now, you can come if you’re seeing this on my website, but let me know what you think , I hope you got something out of that, see you guys in the next video.
