On this episode of Investing for Freedom, Mike discusses the importance of questioning your beliefs. “Who told you that?” is a question you should be asking yourself regularly in order to release some of the limiting beliefs you may have grown up with. Enjoy!
“We’re living in a day and age where we need to question everything, and that’s the key thing that we’ve taught our children.”
HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 – Intro
1:59 – Mike urgers to you to ask yourself, “who told me that?” and to question your beliefs more.
2:28 – Mike speaks about a pod he is in with five intelligent guys who challenge his thinking
4:21 – Mike gives an example of this by asking the question, “you can get a property a 15% return plus another $10,000 tax savings but you’ll have to borrow 7% on your money, is this a good or bad deal?”
5:39 – What are the limiting beliefs you have grown up with?
8:42 – Mike sums up his point for this episode. Mike wants you to stop and think for yourself, question everything!
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Thank you for joining me on the Investing for Freedom Podcast. Today I’m going to talk to you about something that I have been thinking about quite a bit, and it’s actually something that we’ve taught our kids. One of the kids reminded me the other day of something that Kara has always really taught them. And I believe I have too, but it’s to question everything. And last year I think it was March 6th or something like that. We went to Hawaii right before the pandemic started. And one of the things that we spend a lot of time talking about on that trip was “who told you that?” And this is something that we’ve talked about as a family for a while but Hannah, Dylan’s girlfriend, was with us and so we were having a conversation around who told you that and where it came from.
And there’s a scripture in the Bible. There’s a story in the Bible that actually talks about it’s in Genesis and, and when Adam and Eve first realized that they were naked, Satan, the serpent was telling them that they were naked. They had eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And when God came looking for them, they were hiding, and God asked them why they were hiding. And they said to him, we were afraid, and God asked them why they were afraid. And then they went on to talk about how, you know, they were naked, and you know, they were covering themselves. And so God asked them the question who told you that? And so that’s always just led us into this conversation. And it’s, I’m actually, I enjoy little tattoos. And so I’m actually thinking about getting this tattooed on my arm. The question who told you that, because if you think about it, there’s truths and then there’s non-truth and then there’s flat out lies. And when we look around, there’s so much going on right now, that is so much more complex than any one of us could even think or imagine.
I really think we’re living in a day and age where we need to question everything. And that’s the key thing that we’ve taught our children. And I’m going to keep this short today, but that’s what I want to leave you with today as we talk through this is who told you that. You should question more, there’s so much going on right now. You know, sometimes I wonder if even just talking about monetary policy and the federal reserve and, you know, printing money, loaning money right now, like basically we’re heading down this wormhole rabbit hole, and I’m not really here to get too far into that today, but we have to question everything. I’m in a pod, which you may have heard me say this before in GoBundance, it’s a group of five guys that I have a call with every single Tuesday morning. And even as smart as that group of guys are, you know, we all come from different backgrounds, different heritages and everything. And what I love about this group, every single one of these guys is so smart, but they challenge me on my thinking. They challenge me on my limiting beliefs, but then they also challenged me on my current thinking. And so I’m thinking today after that call, about who told you that?
Because as we’re constantly challenging each other, it’s easy to do it through that frame of reference. It’s easier to understand, you know, one of us might say something like, well, you know, real estate prices are going to drop. And even though this isn’t how we say it, there’s always, we’re always causing each other to question. So asking the question, like who told you that? Meaning what’s the frame of thinking that has you thinking that real estate is going to drop anytime soon? We were actually challenging each other on this morning because interest rates are at an all-time low. Inflation’s probably going to rage out of control. And so I would ask you this, even interest rates are really just, it’s a mindset issue. It’s really irrelevant because let’s say the interest rates went to 5% or 6%, or let’s even say 7%. If inflation is averaging 3% to 4%, then the interest rate on your money is really only 3% at 7%, right? But that’s just questioning who told you that, because if somebody told you that a 7% interest rate was high, okay, maybe it is compared to what? If I told you that you could get a 15% return on a property, but in order to do it, you would need to borrow money at 7%. So you’re basically going to get an 8% return on your money if you borrow interest at 7%. Is that a bad idea or is that a good idea? Well, it depends. It depends on who’s telling you what. And so if I told you today, hey listener, you could get a property. That’ll bring you a 15% return, plus another $10,000 a year in tax savings on top of that. But you’re going to have to borrow 7% on your money, you might say to me, that’s a horrible deal, Mike, I would never borrow money at 7% interest. That’s a bad deal.
Well, here’s my question. Who told you that? What in your thinking, has you thinking that? Because in my mind making an 8% return on a property on top of the interest, I might have to pay at seven, getting a 15% yield on an investment property that I have to borrow 7% money interest at 7%. To me, that seems like a decent deal. I’m making an 8% spread, not to mention a $10,000 tax savings and depreciation. So here’s the real point that I’m making, question everything. What are the limiting beliefs? What are the things that we’ve been taught by our parents as well-meaning as they are. I don’t think any parent taught us something intentionally, for the most part, I don’t think any parent out there is trying to teach their kids something bad, but what are the limiting beliefs that we’ve grown up with? What are the things that somebody has taught us and told us along the way that are really driving the conversations we’re having today. Here’s a positive, your parents may have taught you that, you know, generally speaking, people are just good. They’re well-intentioned. And that’s true for the most part. I really believe that. But there are evil people out there.
I was literally having a conversation the other day with somebody that said to me, like, I just can’t believe that somebody would be that evil in order to do XYZ that we were talking about. And it was really around financial, you know, weapons of mass destruction. Warren Buffet said that there are weapons on Wall Street. You know, certain I think he was talking, I can’t even remember what, derivatives, he was saying, he said that derivatives were weapons of financial mass destruction. And so I’m having this conversation the other day with somebody that said, I just can’t believe that somebody could be that evil and vindictive, that they would be so hungry for money and power that they would do XYZ. And I’m like, I think we’re naive if we think that, because I think there are people out there whether they started good or not, they’re out to make money and maybe it’s they’re out to make money for their clients or, well, I don’t really care what the reason is. But if you’ve been raised with the concept or the mindset that people can’t be that evil, I would question, I would ask you the question who told you that? Like what makes you think that way?
And so if you think that the government has our best interest in mind, my question to you is who told you that? And why are you thinking that? If you think that they can’t keep printing money for the next 5 or 10 years and us float through this, the question I would ask you is who told you that? The other side, I’m not saying that they could do that, I kind of leaned in the other camp. I’m like, how long can this go on? But I’m questioning myself, like who told me that? What level of thinking has me considering that, you know, maybe real estate prices are going to crash and that we can’t keep going this way on lending and finance. I’m questioning everything at this point in time. There’s nothing that surprises me when I war game this through. One of my favorite authors, Jim Rickards the CIA and the Pentagon actually hired him because he is a financial genius. I love every book he’s ever written. He just came out with a new one called the new great depression. And by the way, as a side note, a lot of people would think that, you know, he’s doom and gloom because he is so financially smart, he tells it like it is. But what I love about Jim Rickards is he always tells us what to do to, and at the end of the book, the new great depression he talks about what he thinks is a smart asset portfolio mix to get us through this next new, great depression. And so while it’s not always, you know, positive reading and we all want to be encouraged and all that, the new great depression is a great book. And he really tells us what he thinks we should. And I buy into for the most part and again, he’s way smarter than I am, but for the most part, I buy into his mix. There’s just, he’s not a fan of Bitcoin and I am at this point in time. But other than that, I’m like sold on his mix that he talks about at the end of that book. It’s on audible too, by the way.
But anyway, the point of this whole conversation is not me to rant about what could or couldn’t be, it’s to cause you to really stop and think for yourself, question everything who told you that, what limiting ideas, what limiting beliefs, what things that you grew up with, even, here’s another thing maybe you’ve been through situations where, you know, you invested in a business and it went bad or your first business failed. And so you’re like, you know what, businesses don’t work, or maybe you had a bad partnership and you’re like, I’m never going to partner with anyone again. What are the real deep-rooted hurts and pains and situations, because just because you had one business fail doesn’t mean that you can’t be successful in business, just because you invested one time in a rental property 20 years ago and you hated every minute of it doesn’t mean that you can’t successfully invest in real estate and let a property manager manage it. Just because one property manager screwed you at one point in time and sent you too many bills for, you know, frivolous charges doesn’t mean that every property manager is bad on and on and on.
So our previous hurts, our previous pains frame our way of thinking today. And what I really want to encourage you today is who told you that? It might not even be somebody external. It might be up here. Maybe some situation, maybe trauma in your past has got you thinking a certain way. And you’re the one that told yourself I can’t do X. I’ll never be able to do that. I can’t do Y, I’ll never be good enough for this person. I’m a horrible father. I’m a horrible husband on and on and on. Who told you that? So anyway, I’m going to leave you with that today. I think in this day and age, the time we’re living in today, we need to be questioning everything. And I think the simple advice that Kara it’s simple advice, it’s harder to do with everything, but I think it’s more important than ever the advice we’ve taught our kids, question everything, who told you that.
We should be questioning everything right now because I think there’s a lot of things happening in a fast way. And it almost makes me want to put my tinfoil hat on sometimes. Things that we think are crazy, You might want to just stop and ponder for a little bit and maybe just war game it out. What’s the worst-case scenario. So, you know, you’ve got some gold, you’ve got some Bitcoin, you’ve invested overseas, you have a second passport, you’ve traveled and seen the world. You’ve got some extra food laying around in case the power goes out for a week or two, or, you know, or some of the crazy stuff. I mean, we’re even hearing so much about aliens now. Like, do aliens exist? I don’t know, who told you that?
So question everything, I’ll leave you with that today. Hope it helps. We’ve got a lot of stuff going on and I think we need to dig deep. You need to find out what your intuition is telling you. That’s one of my big things this year, I’m going to lean into it. I’m going to lean into my intuition because at the end of the day, questioning everything, who told you that, doing what you feel is right inside. Most things that we would prep for or prepare for are not going to be detrimental to us anyway. So hope that helps.
