I'm obsessed with winning the money game... here's why.
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"It's just money. There are way more important things in life."
I hear this every single day...
And it's absolutely true.
In fact, I used to think the same way.
Until one day something terrible happened.
Somebody I loved was sick... and needed surgery to survive...
A surgery I couldn't afford.
His name is Sparta.
And this little rascal ate something stupid and it got stuck in his intenstines.
He couldn't pass it on his own and it was killing him.
"It's not a problem," the vet said. "It's a fairly routine surgery."
Yeah... a fairly routine surgery that cost $5,000 that I didn't have.
Jamie and I were at a Christmas party with my family when we got the news and it broke our hearts.
Truly, nothing will make you feel more worthless and shallow than to put a price on a loved one's life.
Now, I get it: Sparta is just a cat.
But that's not the point...
Because I was forced to face a larger truth:
If my dad, my brothers or sisters, or my partner Jamie ever got sick...
I wasn't in a position to help them.
They would suffer because I was broke.
The pain of watching Sparta die finally moved me to take action.
I resolved that money would NEVER again be the reason I couldn't help a loved one in need.
So I dove into learning everything I could about winning the money game…
In the process, I read over 100 books on money, personal finance, and investing.
Here are the 3 most important lessons I learned about Money:
1. Money is a Game
If you grew up in a family like mine, we didn’t really talk a lot about money.
It wasn’t necessarily taboo, but it just wasn’t something that came up in the course of normal day-to-day conversation.
And I find it interesting that our society simultaneously puts people who have money up on a pedestal, but then also demonizes the process of “getting” money by saying things like “money is the root of all evil” or “people that care about money are selfish and greedy”.
Growing up with these conflicting perspectives of money means that most of us simultaneously wish we had more money, but also feel weird and guilty and dirty talking about it with friends and family and strangers and whoever else will listen to us.
As a result, the majority of us suffer in silence, preferring to not ask a stupid question and look like an idiot or coming across as a greedy capitalist pig obsessed with getting rich.
And it’s this mindset that holds most people back from ever building meaningful wealth.
But here’s an interesting observation:
The people who are best at making money are the ones who understand it’s not good or bad, it’s just a Game.
Like it or not, we all have to play this game. You need money to survive in this world, so you can’t opt out.
The only thing you get to decide is HOW you’re going to play the game.
Most people who grew up in a family like mine, opt for the losing strategy of just sticking their heads in the sand and pretending like none of it really matters, or complaining that the game is rigged so they don’t even try.
Listen, I’m not saying we’re all born with equal opportunity. We’re not.
Some people are dealt some pretty crappy hands at birth while others are gifted pocket Aces.
That’s just the reality of life.
But here’s the thing…
The only thing you can control is how well you play the hands you’re dealt.
And the quality of your play is dictated by how well you know the rules and how well you execute your strategy.
Which leads us to the second lesson I learned reading hundreds of books on money:
2. It's Hard To Win If You Don't Know The Rules
The thing that holds most people back from even trying to understand the rules of money is they have this limiting belief that money is complicated.
And if this is you, just know this, it’s not your fault for thinking this.
See, there’s a lot of money tied up on Wall Street and in the “finance industry” designed to make the whole system seem overwhelming, confusing, and just brutally complicated.
Why do they do this?
Well, to understand why anybody does anything in life, you need to understand the incentives, and in this case, you just follow the money.
Who stands to make the most when you feel like you can’t take control of your financial future?
That’s right, stock brokers, financial advisors, even the banks who are happy to take your deposits and give you a paltry 1-2% interest rate on your savings, while they turn around and use that money to buy, let’s say, Treasury Bonds yielding them 4%.
So just like that, for taking literally no additional risk (because Treasury Bonds are backed by the US government and just about as safe an investment as you can get), they make twice as much on your money than you do.
Crazy, huh?
Almost seems unfair, right? But it’s not.
They’re playing completely within the rules, which you could be too, if you just knew the rules better.
Now here’s the part I really want you to wrap your head around…
Understanding how money works is not complicated, it’s simply been made to look that way by people who stand to benefit from your ignorance.
Let that sink in…
Go ahead and get frustrated…
And then make a decision to turn the tables simply by committing to learning the rules of the Money Game.
I break down 3 of the most important rules of Money in this video.
3: There is No BEST Strategy For Winning the Money Game
There is no one size fits all answer.
Warren Buffet’s journey to becoming the richest man in the world was completely different from Jeff Bezos who took a different route than Elon Musk.
Anybody telling you this is the way to get rich, is simply telling you the way they got rich, and that does not necessarily mean it’s going to work for you.
And ya know, here’s an important note: What they’re teaching could be a fantastic strategy that simply won’t work for you and your unique circumstances and context.
And I think this often gets missed, even by myself, when I’m talking about things that have worked for me and that I feel confident can work for the majority of people out there…but the truth is what I’m teaching you and what countless other gurus are teaching you, has to be filtered through the lens of your unique life circumstances, your skills, your resources, and not to mention your wants and desires.
So I want you to keep this in mind as you move through your wealth building journey. There is no one path to the top of the mountain.
Some are going to be easier than others, not to mention that some paths are gonna be easier for me than they were for you (or visa versa).
So just don’t get too caught up in the comparison game of seeing what’s worked for other people and then beating yourself up because it’s not working for you.
But, with that said...
I have noticed patterns around wealth creation strategies from reading all these books and talking to other successful people and it seems to me that there are certain strategies for winning the money game that have higher probabilities of success than others.
Your time and energy, then, is best spent focusing on learning those strategies.
In particular:
This is the strategy I’ve seen work MOST often for winning the money game.
Build a cash-generating machine and then pour the proceeds into cash generating assets
This is what led me to my personal strategy which is to:
Build a Business and Invest in Real Estate.
There’s a lot of reason why this is such a powerful and proven strategy for winning the money game:
First, if you build the right business with the right form of leverage, then there’s no limit to how much you can make.
And then if you take that money and pour it into quality physical assets (like real estate) that generally become more valuable over time AND produce monthly cashflow, you can quickly start moving your income into a far more tax advantaged position.
And this is one of those lessons I learned from reading all these books… it’s this:
It’s not about what you make, it’s about what you keep.
Think about that..
Right now, if you’re working a W2, you’re trading your time for money.
This is considered active income and you’re gonna pay a ton in taxes. In fact, if you make around $55k a year then you’re going to pay around 22% in taxes. So right there, $12k is just woof… gone.
And it only gets worse as you start making more and more money.
So what are you to do?
Well, you start mimicking the strategies of those who are ahead of you in the money game.
Specifically you start taking that active income you’re being taxed so heavily on, and you use it to invest in assets (in particular, real estate, because this sector has some of the best tax treatment around.
Now, the money that’s being generated by these physical assets is considered passive income or capital gains which get taxed way less.
As a result, your money is out there working harder for you than you worked for it.
And this might seem like an incredibly basic strategy, but as they say,:
Fundamentals executed with excellence wins championships.
If you execute this strategy over a long enough time period, it’s seriously hard to lose the money game.
Alrigh, those are just 3 of the lessons I’ve learned having read hundreds of books on Money.
There are countless other lessons, but if you peel them all back and just focus on treating money like it’s a game, ya learn the rules, and then ya master the strategies, you’re gonna do pretty well for yourself.
Until next week,
Stay Hyperfocused, My Friend
AV
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