You Are What You Eat

Money does not have to lead us to this life of dependence and scarcity. We were just taught wrong. We weren't taught how money really works. No class in high school shows us how to become wealthy and financially free.

Listen in to hear:

• We were never taught how money really works
• The biggest difference between the poor and the wealthy
• Right mindset but wrong brain

Audiobooks to "read":

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
Why the Stock Market Goes Up by Brian Feroldi
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Money Mammoth by Brad Klontz
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach
Broke Millennial by Erin Lowry
Clever Girl Finance by Bola Sokunbi

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Welcome back to ADHD Money Talk, the show that helps dynamic but distracted ADHD brains learn how to build wealth and become rich. Not the bad kind of rich, the good kind of rich. The rich that means you get to do what you want and help your family and your loved ones and be generous and feel no guilt, feel no shame, feel great, feel amazing, have an emergency fund, have investments, be on a track to where you could say, if I keep this up for 10 more years, I will have no reason to work. I can work if I want, I don't have to, if I don't want to, I'm good. And that's kind of line of thinking I want to talk about today. Today I'm gonna talk about education, why it's so important, and how the wealthy people out there think, you know, how they think, how they are able to seemingly so easily coast through life building wealth and security and freedom. We're not so good at that right now. A lot of us with ADHD, we're not. Like, what are we taught in school? We're taught like, let's go to school, let's get good grades, let's go to a college, let's learn a skill. Then like let's get a job. Let's go to that job dutifully every single day, bring home money, use that money to pay our bills, rent an apartment, go out and have fun, buy some stuff. You know, you've earned it, you finally got that job, you have money. Like, you get to use it and spend it and like have cool stuff. That's great. And like maybe one day you'll buy your own house, and you know, you'll add some money to your 401k at work, and then you'll kind of just go to bed at night and sleep and then repeat that the next day. You just keep doing that, and you maybe you build a family, it's all good. And then one day you hit this age where like it's like time to retire. Okay, so you look at your 401k, you look at all your savings and stuff, and you're like, I'm kind of tired of this working thing, and you look at it and you're like, oh wow, okay. Oh, great. Okay, so I could spend okay, this much money per month, assuming that the my investments do this good for this long until I probably die, and so and then you come up with this math number, and there you go. But now you're still limited, you're still having to worry about money the rest of your life. How's the market doing? How's the 401k doing? How much do I have to reduce how much I'm taking from it? You're always on this fine line of worry, and something bad could happen. And you know, if you don't have much of a buffer, then maybe you have to go back to work when you're older. Like that's and that's no. No, no, no. We do not, we do not want that. We I don't want that for you, you don't want that for you. I haven't met a single person ever who wants that. And that's where a lot of us are headed because we weren't taught how money works, like we just weren't. And that's not good because honestly, to me, it's almost like the powers that be don't want us all to know how money works and how to build wealth, because it's very useful for the large corporations and for the government, honestly, to have lots of busy bees working because we pay a lot in taxes. Employees, you know, we play look at your pay-stup. Look at how much money you pay in taxes. You pay Medicare, Social Security tax, you pay payroll tax, those are payroll taxes, you have to pay those, you have to pay income tax, state and local tax, you know, federal tax, you have to pay so much in taxes. And then the more money you make as an employee, the more money is taxed until like ultimately like 50% of your pay is going to one place or the other, and you're only getting like 50% of it. And that's that's not cool. And guess who's not getting taxed as much? The business owner. The business owner, the corporation, the shareholders of the company that you work for. They own the shares of your company that you're working for that you're helping improve this business. You're helping the stock price of this company go up. The shareholders get to increase their net worth by owning the stock and don't have to pay taxes until they sell it. But even when they sell it, the capital gains tax is lower, you see, than the tax you're paying. And of course, the corporation itself, yes, they have they have to pay corporate taxes, but they get to write off a lot. Businesses get to write off a lot of expenses, and so they get their taxes pretty low. And the corporate tax rate is lower than the individual tax rate. So they're taxed, then they give you money, and then you're taxed again. There's so much tax, it's crazy. But guess who's got the advantage? The people that made the system. And the people that make any system in any place in around the world, it's the people in power, and the people in power are the ones with the wealth. And this, frankly, if this is the system we live in, and I'm not, I'm not picking sides. But it makes sense because at the end of the day, you are important to be a busy bee because you are helping the economy. You we are a very important piece, but we don't need to be, we can break free of this, and we can be the ones in power. And if you have power, you don't have to use it for bad. It's not bad. It's not bad that the corporations do this, it's not bad that the government does this necessarily because it it's just part of the system. I mean, you can have whatever opinion you want on all this, but the system is tilted in the favor of the wealthy. But you can be wealthy. Being wealthy isn't bad. If you read about the psychology of you know, money or the psychology of financial planning, you'll learn a lot about money beliefs, where they come from. They come from your culture, they come from your history, they come from your ancestors, your generations. And people that have gone through generations of lower income and feeling, you know, on the lower end of the scales, or whatever you want to call it, there is this sort of belief like rich people are bad, rich people are corrupt, it's bad. We're not rich, we can't afford nice things, we're not a rich person, you know. That can be very limiting, honestly, because having a lot of money enables you to live a more fulfilling, more rich, a more in tune with your values life, because you could freely give money away and help make so much change. So that crazy, crazy murder story down in South Carolina, the Murdoch. Like, I feel like the Murdoch family, like that is they they just piss me off. They're like the stereotypical rich, powerful, evil family. And that doesn't, it's not how it has to be. There's a lot of wealthy families out there who are truly good people and are a much better example than stuff like that, which just drives me nuts. It's actually funny because if you have that mindset where you almost resent wealth being rich, the idea of being rich kind of disgusts you, but at the same time you think money is gonna solve a lot of your issues, that's a formula that can't be solved. So what happens is, and this has been studied, and it's you know, there's there's there's statistical power to this. People that then come into money that have this belief that money is bad, but think also money is good that will help their life, they find a way to avoid having money. So they find a way to subconsciously sabotage themselves. And I think you know, I've talked to a lot of people, and I and I think that's something that in the ADHD crowd, there is some of that when you dig into your beliefs. So again, but the Money Mammoth by Brad Klons, that's a great book that I would recommend you reading. It's it would really open your eyes. So here you are working tirelessly, but then giving all your money away, spending it. And so if we could just learn how money works, learn the secrets, they're not even really secrets, but just learn and become really strongly educated, then I think we have a really good chance for this because you know, money really is a form of power and it shouldn't have a negative connotation, like I'm trying to say. Power is control for yourself, it's freedom for yourself, it's freedom of choice. But you know, we really don't stand a chance to be able to harness uh that power if we don't understand how money works in the first place. And so this is what happens. We just end up working tirelessly our entire lives for money to keep us alive, but never letting it give us what we deserve. And we deserve a lot more than that. There's nothing wrong with working, and if you truly love what you do, that is amazing, admirable, and a blessing. But I've never met someone who has said that working for money to be able to pay bills and eat food and occasionally go on a vacation and rinse and repeat is their ideal existence because it's not. So the saying that you are what you eat is true, right? You know, like remember that documentary, supersize me, like disgusting, disgusting. Well, I think you're also what you read and what you're learning and what you're engaged with. You're sitting here today, and maybe you struggle with impulsive spending, maybe you feel like you money is just complete, pure chaos. It's all flying around, you don't know what's going on, you have debt, you don't know how to get out of it, you feel like you're making progress, and one thing breaks, and you're back, and you know, it's pure crazy mayhem, it's stressing you out. You can try and you know, budget, you can try and do the reverse budget that I recommend. You can try these kind of things, but what you really ought to try is try reading a bunch of books. A lot of you out there have audible. So, like, what if your next 10 audiobooks were these? And write these down. Pause this, you know, whatever. Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, Why the Stock Market Goes Up by Brian Ferraldi, Atomic Habits by James Clear, Money Mammoth by Brad Klantz, The Millionaire Next Door by Robert Stanley, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, a classic, The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach, Broke Millennial by Aaron Lowry, and Clever Girl of Finance by Bola Sacumbi. What if the next 10 audiobooks you listen to with your Audible? This is money well worth spending, by the way. That's education. The biggest asset you have is your brain. Your brain can take you far if you keep working it. If you do that and then you spend the next six months making no progress with your money, email me and let me know. Honestly, and say, I I read those 10 books and I'm still I'm worse off, then I will send you a$100,$200, whatever. I promise, I will. I really will. The biggest difference between the wealthy and the poor, and unfortunately a lot of us ADHDers are poor. I'm still poor. Guys, I'm still, I'm still poor. If you've listened to this podcast from the beginning, you know I had some struggles not that long ago. I'm still working my way through it. I'm on a good path. There's no question. I've made incredible strides. For me being diligent, not even consistently diligent, just on average, more diligent. Over the winter, I I had an impulsive spending spree of golf stuff. But I got a handle on it quickly. Way quicker than I would have used to if I had no idea what I was doing, and I had no clue what I really wanted, no clue what my values were, no clue. I wouldn't have to know a chance. If I never was lucky enough to read the book on ADHD, the first one that triggered me for all this to happen. I'm I'm religious, so I think God did it for me. It's okay. That's what I think. Because things were put in my life that changed things for me so dramatically that I can't believe it's a coincidence. The biggest difference between the wealthy and the poor is that the wealthy work to earn money, but they work to earn money so that they can buy assets that will then earn them more money. It's really that simple. The poor we work tirelessly for money and then we impulsively spend it all. If you make$500,000 a year and you spend it all, you're poor. You're dirt poor. You got nothing behind that. You could yeah, it'd be much easier for you to change it. But that's just the point I'm trying to make. It's kind of that simple. Now, in con I'm saying the concept's simple. So of course, executing is different. You know, first, us ADHDers, our brains are so ridiculously different. And people don't get that. It it drives me up a wall when I hear people say things because our brains are dramatically different. There's a girl on Instagram, D.T. Perry. She's always keeping up with the um science, you know, the ADHD science and stuff, like new revelations and stuff. There was something that happened that made more evidence that ADHD could be diagnosed not just from qualitative sort of testing and you know, psychoeducational stuff, whatever, but also through maybe like a brain scan or of something. You know, don't you know I I'm grossly uneducated in this area, but check, you know, her latest posts out. But the point is that our brains are so different. Our prefrontal cortexes don't work right. Someone who's impulsively spending who doesn't have ADHD has an inherent advantage to get out of it. Because they have to figure out what they're fixing by doing this, like what where is it coming? They have to understand their family history, you know, where it's coming from, how their parents behave with money and and come to it, and they need to come to the clear conclusion that what they're doing is harmful and build habits, but they have an advantage because their executive functions aren't malfunctioning. So, you know, we just don't have that advantage. Have you ever started a new habit that you're so impressed with yourself? Like you've did it for like two months straight, but then for whatever reason, it just stopped and you went right back to where you were. Like that's ADHD, and that happens like all the time. And it's like happening in a way that we're not even we're not even aware when it's stopping, when it's starting, when we're starting to do something better, when we're doing something worse. Things just happen. We just have no, like we're just very disconnected from the awareness of it all. And so it's very hard for us to get a hand to handle on this because most of us already know. Like, we're you're listening to this podcast because you know you want better. It's just much harder to do. So you'll read some books, like probably some of the books I I recommended that say you're lazy. The biggest problem with Americans is that we spend too much money because we're lazy and stupid. And I still want you to read the book, but when when you read that, just know, like, like, like, no, like, no, it's different for us, but it's still not like an excuse because you know, we can overcome our spending problems. I mean, I've done it, you can do it. It's not like spending is the only problem with ADHD and money. I mean, there's a lot more problems. That's just that's just the one that is most prevalent and most painful and most obvious. So that's why I always come back to it. But you know, we can break the patterns that we're in, you know, and it takes serious, concerted effort. I know that can be a sort of a triggering word, you know, effort, because we're we we are always trying, we're trying really hard, but it takes concerted, intentional sit down, write things, go through exercises, block off time, like set the boundaries up, do what it takes for you, you know you best, where you will put in the time to set stuff up and to think through things so that your time is not so you know, the more time you put into it, the more things you read, the more that your brain's gonna want to get a payoff for it. But if you don't want this, like if there's nothing that you really want, then don't even bother because there has to be something that you really deeply want to keep you motivated. So going through exercises to help you figure that out is important. You have to be a little greedy. Greed's not bad. Excessive greed is bad. But we're all humans, we're all self-interested. So it's okay. It's just exchange greed with desire. You need desire. You have every right, you deserve to have more, you deserve to treat yourself better, you deserve it. There's no nothing wrong with that. So, you know, once you have the desire and the motivation to make changes, and you've armed yourself with knowledge, you've read books, you're listening to books, you feel good, you feel strong, I think changes will happen in your life. And then you definitely want to use the pay yourself first method. You pay yourself, money comes in, you put it towards your goal. You figure out your goal, you figure out how much money you want to put towards it. You want to get out of debt, you put$500 towards your debt every single month. You do that as soon as the money hits. You have money set aside for things that are fixed, that are coming out no matter what. You have leftover money after that into a separate account that is your spending money. You live on that money. If you run out, that's okay because use the pressure that that puts on you, that bad feeling, but use the pressure to your advantage. Be creative, figure out a way to make it run, figure out a way to make some side money for a week to get to the next one. Don't dip into whatever savings you finally started doing. Don't do that. Just keep yourself going. Do it, do it, do it. I want nothing more. I literally want nothing more than to help people get wealthy in the best way possible. Wealthy to me is not bad. Being filthy rich is amazing. I'm not filthy, I want to be filthy rich. Because you know what I can do if I'm filthy rich? And the way I'm gonna get filthy rich, by the way, is by building a business, paying less taxes because it's a business and because I can deduct stuff, but you know, hiring people, creating jobs for people, treating them well with respect, giving them good pay, you know, that's my dream. I want to help as many people with ADHD as I possibly can. I don't want to just help a select few clients get better with money. There needs to be more. There needs to be more. I want a bigger platform. I want to have courses, I want to have stuff, I want to help as many people as I can. I want that my tribe to be moving up and feeling strong and empowered and educated with money. I can't do it alone, which is why I do want to build a larger business. That doesn't make me bad. If I make a lot of personal wealth that transforms my life and my family's life and gives me freedom and gives me uh freedom of choice and freedom to do what I want, freedom to go on vacations whenever I want, freedom to be able to delegate and have my job simply be to record a podcast. What a dream life. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. I would not be ashamed of that. And I would help the people that I hired, and I would inspire them, and I'd say, you know, if you want to go out and make your own, do your own business, I'm supporting you. If you want to show, take the initiative and show why you should get paid more or have ownership in this business or whatever, then like do it. Like, do it, be positive, grow, train your brain, become smarter, keep educating yourself. That's your biggest asset. Don't stay stuck in your$50,000 job. If you don't have a college degree, find a way to get one, find a way to make yourself marketable, find a way, find a way you can do it. We are super resourceful people. Us ADHDers. Super duper. Super duper you do. Another thing the wealthy do is they do hire professionals. So if you want to radically transform your financial future, improve your mindset, and have your handheld in the best possible way, step by step, to true personal wealth. All this stuff I'm talking about. And I promise you, you won't become a bad person. You will become a better wife, husband, parent, teammate, friend, colleague. You will become better for it all. You'll have more time and energy to give to the world, to give your best true self. That is what I sell. That's my sales pitch. If you want that and you're ready, work with me. Because I'm loving working with anyone who really has a good attitude. And yeah, so that's it. So that's it for today, guys. I really enjoyed this particular podcast. This is the kind of stuff that I really do think needs to be heard. Read those books, use your audible credits, and once you use those audible credits, cancel Audible for a few months while you listen to all the books. Save that 15 bucks. And this is Dave DeWitt saying, do it. See ya.