MINDSET & MONEY | THREE THINGS YOU SHOULD BE DOING RIGHT NOW

Is history repeating itself?

Well, not really. We have never been in a situation where the entire world and every single economy is currently based on fiat. It’s difficult to say what the future will hold. However, there are three things that everybody should be doing right now. Specifically focused on your financial health and wellness.

Invest in cash-flowing assets. You do not need $1,000,000 to start thinking this way. If you do not know how to invest in assets, it’s time to find a coach, program, or mentor. The most important part is thinking about it. What are some examples of cash flowing assets? Businesses, podcasts, Instagram pages, and creating courses. There are seasons when it makes sense to start a business. Now is the season to buy a long-standing customer list and a long-standing group of employees.

Many companies cannot get their employees to go back to work because they are making more money on unemployment. People are getting regular checks and becoming reliant on the government. That’s the reason why real estate is high during COVID – unemployed people still have money. However, it’s still an excellent time to buy real estate. Many properties are costing the owner a lot of money to sit there. Therefore, people are still looking to sell real estate.

Buy gold and silver. With all the money that is being printed, you won’t go wrong with buying gold and silver. For $25 you can buy an ounce of silver. Put 10% aside every month for gold and silver. You can store it offshore or in vaults around the country. Buying gold and silver isn’t an investment; it’s just an excellent place to store some of your money.

Set aside cash. You can’t go wrong with having some cash set aside for a rainy day. We could also have some challenges in the banking system. Be careful where you keep your money.

Where you should NOT put your money right now:

Stocks. People are taking their stimulus checks and putting them in the stock market. A bunch of money poured into the stock market during COVID. There is a false sense of security with the stock market right now. Think about the worst-case scenario and start preparing.

“Your boss will never pay you enough to be his neighbor.”

HIGHLIGHTS:

• [ 1:00 ] History is not repeating itself
• [ 1:55 ] Invest in cash-flowing assets
• [ 9:40 ] Buy gold and silver
• [ 11:35 ] Set aside cash
• [ 12:20 ] Where you should NOT put your money

FULL TRANSCRIPTION:

[INTRO]

Are you looking for freedom? Freedom from the daily grind and hustle, or just finding a way to live the life you always wanted. Then join us on the investing for freedom podcast. Our hosts, Mike Ayala will help you discover new ways to find freedom with tips, insights, and interviews. You’ll learn the exact systems he’s used to travel the world and live his best life. True success and happiness are all about freedom. And here’s your roadmap on how to find freedom on your own terms. Welcome to the investing for freedom podcast. Here’s your host, Mike Ayala.

[MIKE AYALA]

So today, We’re going to be talking about three things that I think everybody should be doing right now. And I’m going to throw in one bonus thing that I think you shouldn’t be doing right now.

Obviously, we’re in some uncertain times and you know, there’s that old saying that history repeats itself. Well, here’s what’s interesting to me. I’ve studied and listened to some mentors of mine that are in the economic space on all sides of the aisle. For the last, I don’t know, 10 or 15 years, I’ve really just tried to be a student of economics and the economy in general and financial markets. I’m not an expert in any way, shape or form, but when we say that saying that history repeats itself, I’m not so sure that history, anybody, any country, any empire, any Fiat currency has ever been where we’re currently at.

So while history repeats itself makes a lot of sense. And we know that every company that ever went to a complete Fiat currency, sorry, country, that went to a complete Fiat currency, ultimately imploded. We’ve never been in a situation where the entire world and every single economy was based on a Fiat currency. And then you couple that with the political environment, the rage that’s going on and, everybody seems to be unhappy. There’s a lot of problems in the world. And so here’s three things that I think everybody should be doing right now, specifically focused on your financial health and wealth. So number one, it’s the same thing that I’m talking about constantly. We should be investing in cash flowing assets right now.

There’s that I put a post-up, I don’t know, probably six, eight months ago. And I said, your boss will never pay you enough to be his neighbor. That really pissed some people off. And I understand that, but what we should do with that is really look internally. So when I say investing in cash flowing assets, you don’t need a hundred thousand, you don’t need a million dollars to start thinking this way. You need to just begin setting your intention. And if you don’t know how to invest in cash flowing assets, find a coach, find a program, find a mentor, start thinking about it. But the most important part is thinking about it, getting your mindset straight. So investing in cash flowing assets, what does that mean? That could be businesses. It could be buying, literally you could buy a Facebook community. You could buy a podcast. I’ve got a good friend that’s in the group Gobundance that I spent a lot of time talking about. He literally just bought a podcast, like I don’t know, six months ago, and it was plug and play. So he bought the list. He bought the podcast; he took over the podcast because the guy that was running the podcast was tired of doing it. Wanted to move on and do something else. So you could literally buy a podcast. You could buy a brand; you could buy an Instagram page. There’s sites out there where you can literally go buy an Instagram page that has a hundred thousand followers. And it’s not really that expensive. And so if you have a product or a brand or a course or something, you can go buy eyeballs. So cash flowing assets, it could be creating a course. I’ve got a good friend, her name’s Jess Glacier. She’s got a program around creating courses. So you spend five grand or whatever the number is, and it teaches you how to build a course. So that’s investing in a cash flowing asset, even though you don’t realize it, you’re investing a little bit of time and a little bit of money in a program that now becomes a cash flowing asset because you don’t have to reteach that course every single time you want to sell it again. So that’s a cash flowing asset.

Businesses, just brick and mortar businesses, 80% plus there’s different statistics, but 80% of businesses just close their doors. They never actually get sold because the owner is too tired. He hasn’t put the processes and systems in place and doesn’t think that he can sell it. And by the way, if you don’t have the systems and processes and team in place, you’re probably not going to be able to sell it. And even if you do sell it, the only thing they’re going to be buying is your customer lists. You’re not going to get the value of what you really should because you did not invest in the time to build out your team, to build out your processes, etc. So now it’s probably one of the best times ever to buy businesses because businesses are struggling from a cashflow perspective. Owners are tired. They’ve been through their third downturn. They’ve had to lay off some of their core staff potentially. And this is one of those times. And you’ve probably heard me say this before, but this is one of those times or seasons. There are seasons where it makes sense to start a business because businesses are overpriced. But I believe this is one of those seasons where you can buy a really good long-standing customer list. You can buy a really good long-standing group of employees. You might even be able to buy a bunch of inventory for little or no money down because the owner is just tired and wants out. So good time to look at businesses, good time to buy businesses.

It’s a great time to buy real estate. Real estate prices are still high. They have not come down yet. And that’s because the fed has pumped so much money into real estate just through various means through the banks, though, I’m just going to call it bailing out. Operators, bailing out property managers, bailing out landlords, but also this is unprecedented. And this is why I say, when we say history repeats itself, we’ve never been here before. Because the government is basically moving toward UBI, whether this is something that stays long-term or not. And you’ve probably heard about this, but universal basic income. It’s a conversation that’s been going on for a long time, but really more the last three to five years, UBI universal basic income. There’s a lot of people that were like, no way, we’ll never go to a universal basic income. It’s welfare, it’s socialism. I’m not here to get political. I’m not going to tell you my viewpoints, but that overnight just happened. Like basically everybody’s on, like a lot of companies can’t get people to come back to work because they’re making more money on unemployment. A lot of people are getting regular checks. And so to some degree, we’re getting conditioned right now to be reliant on the government. And so from a real estate perspective, the reason why real estate prices are still up is because the government’s giving people that are unemployed and people that aren’t unemployed money. And I’m not saying that they should or shouldn’t have done that. I’m not here to get into the argument of should or shouldn’t or right or left. What I am here to talk about is the reason why real estate hasn’t dropped yet.

It hasn’t dropped yet because the government’s pumping that money in, people are still paying their rents. Our collections are like 2% off. We had our highest leasing and sales month ever. Well, the second, it was tied, it was like literally tied in May, tied for the highest leasing and sales month ever, during the middle of COVID. Our managers couldn’t even show houses. People are wanting to move out of urban centers and moving toward suburban centers. And so real estate hasn’t balanced yet. This has happened so fast. And it will balance. I was on a call with a friend who does work out mortgages. And he said, just this last month, which would have been June, we’re in July now of 2020. They saw a spike, like 150,000 requests for defeasance, additional defeasance, where basically people still can’t pay their mortgage. They got three months and now they need another three months. Well, that’s different than a deferral. Deferral goes to the end of it. A defeasance is like, Hey, we can’t pay, and this is going to get extended. So anyway, there’s some stuff that’s happening in the mix right now that’s really a bad indicator for the economy. So I do believe that real estate is going to be a good deal, but it still is a good time to buy real estate right now. And I’ll tell you why. There’s a lot of real estate owners that are in the same boat, Just like I talked about with business, they’re in the same boat with real estate.

I’m doing the same thing. I’m looking at my entire portfolio and I’m analyzing certain properties that have not been performing well. That take up a lot of my mind time, my thinking time, my management time. I’m looking at my entire portfolio. I literally this morning sold off a property that has been sitting empty for probably two years. Cause I just haven’t, I know this is going to sound horrible, but it’s kind of out of sight. Out of mind, it needs a bunch of work. I couldn’t find the right contractor to do it. I got frustrated. So I just let it sit. I offloaded that this morning, somebody wrote me a check. Because I’m at the point where it’s costing me more to sit there than it is for me to keep it. And I’m the eternal optimist. So I’m thinking all these amazing things that I’m going to do with this property, but the reality is I don’t have time for it right now. I’m out doing the same thing I’m telling you to do. I’m buying businesses, I’m buying real estate. It’s a perfect time. So I’m also offloading real estate.

So I can tell you from experience as a landlord, I am selling some of my real estate. And you might think to yourself, well, I don’t want to buy real estate from that guy. No, the person that I’m selling this real estate to is a friend of mine. I’m selling a couple of properties to potentially a family member. I’m selling a few properties to somebody that’s been managing my properties for years. So this is the win-win conversation. You might think that well, if Mike’s offloading it, it’s not a good deal. There’s a reason why he’s selling it. Well, yeah, there is a reason why I’m selling it, but it’s not always financial. Sometimes it’s bandwidth. Sometimes it’s time. Sometimes it’s energy and resource. Sometimes it’s distance related. Sometimes it’s the three d’s, death, divorce, don’t want them. There’s so many reasons why people sell real estate. Right now is the time for you to be out talking to people about buying businesses and about buying real estate.

So here’s the other thing that might’ve been a curve ball to you, I’m saying buy gold and silver. You can store it offshore. You can store it at vaults onshore. You could keep it in a can in your backyard. You can put it in a safe, I’m not telling you how to keep it, but by physical gold and silver, don’t buy any ETF. Buy physical gold and silver, you’ve never heard me say that really, but I’ve been a fan of golden silver for a long time. I don’t really care; I don’t really care what the price of gold and silver is. It’s not really an investment to me, although if it was $10,000 or $20,000 an ounce, I probably wouldn’t be buying it. But with all the money that’s being printed and the turmoil that I believe is going to be in the economy in the next, let’s call it six months to three years. I don’t think you can go wrong by buying some gold and silver. And I’m not talking about a hundred percent of your portfolio and by the way, silver is, let’s call it $20, $25 spot, depending on what’s going on, actually not spot necessarily, but that’s the purchase price right now. It’s really expensive above spot because there’s not a lot of inventory. So for $20-25 bucks, you can buy an ounce of silver. So nobody should have an excuse that they can’t buy an ounce of silver or a hundred ounces of silver or gold. So put 10%, just set aside a little bit every month, Kara and I, we set aside enough money to buy an ounce of gold every month. And again, you can store it offshore, you can store it in vaults. There’s vaults around the country.

There’s plenty of places to store it. So buy gold and silver.

I am in the camp that thinks that golden silver is probably going to go to $3,000 an ounce if not five in the next couple of years. So but I’m not necessarily looking at golden silver as an investment, as much as I think that the dollar is really going to be challenged. And it’s just a good place to store some of your money. So maybe five to 10% of your money, put it into gold and silver.

Cash, I know, a lot of people would say that cash is trash, but I don’t think you can go wrong right now, having some cash set aside for a rainy day. We saw some food challenges. We saw people in the stores, some supply issues that could happen again. So setting aside some money, for opportunities like that, opportunities to buying business, opportunities to buy real estate, set some cash aside. And if we’re talking $10,000 $15,000, $20,000, it’s fine to keep it in a bank. If you’re talking $500,000 to a million dollars, you might want to spread that out. Bigger conversation, different day, FBIC insurance, etc.

We could have some challenges in the banking system here in the next, six months to three years. So we have to just be careful with the banks and where we keep our money.

So here’s where I wouldn’t put your money right now. There’s some statistics which I’m not going to spend a lot of time right now, but a lot of people saw the stock market drop at the beginning of Covid. And there was a lot of conversation about, Hey, where’s the bottom and stimulus checks started coming out. There’s some statistics that show like 90% of people that had never invested in the stock market, 90% of new accounts that were set up were people that had never invested in the stock market. And all of a sudden, these people are spending like $1,200. Where’s this money coming from? People were taking their stimulus checks and they’re like, Oh, this is extra money, I’m going to go start a Robin hood account or, some E-Trade account and I’m going to start investing in the stock market. Cause I think it’s at the bottom. And so a bunch of money poured into the stock market just from individuals, but obviously also the fed and the treasury is buying up all kinds of corporate bonds and stocks and all this stuff. So that’s why the stock market is doing what it’s doing even though the rest of the world is having some challenges.

I think we have this false sense of security that things are just going to be great, everything’s going to be all right. I’m not a doomsdayer, everything will and can be all right if you prepare yourself. But you kind of have to go out there. We started talking about this at the beginning of Covid, but go out to kind of worst- case scenario, don’t stay there cause you’ll go into a dark hole, but what’s kind of the worst-case scenario and then bring yourself backwards. And what are the things that I can do every day to start preparing.

So the three things that I think everybody should do right now, invest in cash flowing assets, businesses, real estates, real estate coaching programs, etc., buy some gold and silver and set aside money for opportunities. Cut your living expenses. I didn’t really say that, but now it’s not a time to be living frugally. Yeah, I’ve already got an extra $1,200 check from the government or whatever the number is. But I would cut your living expenses, hold onto some cash. Cause there will be some opportunities in businesses, in real estate and it is a great time to buy golden silver. So here’s a little bonus. All that negativity aside, make sure you enjoy the journey. We’ve got one shot at this. This isn’t the last time we’re going to have some challenges. And that’s why the saying exists history repeats itself. Because there’s cycles in life. I mean there’s winter, there’s spring, there’s summer, there’s fall. The seasons exist for a reason. It is not the last time we’re going to have challenges. We got to keep our head up. We got to make sure we enjoy the journey. Never been a better time to surround yourself with positive people, people that are out doing the thing. Never been a better time to get involved in a course or a program, even follow free content, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. Find people that are positive. You know you’re the average of the five people, make sure you’re surrounding yourself with people that are lifting you up.

So the bonus is, make sure you enjoy the journey. We’ve got one shot at this.

[OUTRO]

If you found value in this episode and you know, someone who’s wanting to start or move further along in their journey toward investing for freedom, I would be forever grateful if you would share this show with them and help me get this message out to more listeners. Also, if you enjoy what you’ve heard, I would appreciate it if you’d take 30 seconds and leave me a five-star review and share this with your friends and until the next episode, cheers to moving further along in your journey of investing for freedom.