Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
There must be lies parning brighter somewhere.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Got to be birs Why hi in the sky?
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Good morning, Welcome to Right Thinking with Steve Copeland. I'm
your host, Steve Copeland, and thank you for tuning in.
Let's have a great day. Good morning everybody, glad to
be with you. Well, today's episode number two thirty six,
Right Thinking with Steve Copeland is very pleased to announce
(00:50):
that this week's show is called Investing Turning your Goals
into Reality with Guess Johnny Lloyd t In and Here
Steve and Johnny continue the series Right Thinking Life Money Relationships.
Once you have made the choice to take control of
your life by discipline personal financial management, there are many
(01:14):
ways you can put your money to work for you. Well,
good morning, Johnny, thanks for being with us today.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
It's my pleasure, Stephen looking forward to the conversation and
the impact.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
You know, Johnny, We've done this eleven episodes now on
this series, and I love where we're at. I hope
that there's a great many that started out on the
first episode on Right Thinking Life Money Relationships with us
that are still with us, because you know, it's a
building block process, and we said early out that when
(01:48):
we get to the later episodes of this series, you
would start to see some wonderful things happening in your life.
In other words, if you didn't give up and you've
learned some of the things that we've tried to help
you focus on, keeping track of your spending, learning the
importance of savings for emergency fund, getting it all on paper,
(02:11):
learning how to do cash flow management, how your money
comes in, how your money goes out, and getting rid
of your debt. If you get rid of your debt,
you may be able to get ahead, have some surplus money,
put it towards savings, build that emergency fund. But then
there's something far beyond that. That is where we really
(02:34):
want people to go. Johnny, you and I would not
have done what we set out to do if we
don't have many people that are listening to this series.
Give us a call and say it is working in
my life. I am starting to have all those things
that you said and the less stress, and that is
(02:58):
part of it. But what we're taught talking about now
is the ways that you can start to feel like
you're you're not just getting ahead, but you're you're growing
your personal wealth. You're having the goals that you've set
for yourself. You've got your priorities all focused and now
you're starting to see them be put into place. So Johnny,
(03:19):
that's my prelude to what we're going to talk about today.
You know, I gave it the title investing turning your
goals into reality. And as you know, if you don't
know what your goals are, it's going to be hard
to turn in to anything that is going to happen.
So Johnny, what is your overview towards the subject of investing?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Steve?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
What I would say about investing is is that number
one is very imperative that we all look at investing
in our future because that's what investing is about. Investing
is about putting something away now so you can take
the benefit of time to compound.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
What you invest and cause it to grow.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
It's the seed that you put in in the ground
and anticipation of a harvest, and the harvest is always future, right,
Harvest is not immediate, and that's what Sometimes people are
looking for things that caused them.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Immediate return on their investment.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
However, typically if they don't get rewarded, because you know,
so what I look at when I look at investment,
I look at risk reward. Is are to the second
power risk reward.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
So when you.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Look at where you are in life, remember Steve talked
about goals. He looked at that, look at strategies to
get you to where you want to be in the future,
and start making your plans now to help yourself get there.
And I think that's kind of where my.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Take is on investments. It is imperative.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
And we have to decide to invest is an intentional decision?
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Very nice, very nice. I have a lot of conversations
with a good number of people that are at a
place in their life where they're trying to get established,
where they're trying to work through some difficulties where not
just young people, but particularly with people that are in
their young thirties, maybe late twenties, early thirties. That seems
to be a turning point in people's lives where when
(05:39):
they get to their late twenties, hopefully you know they're
starting to look at life a little more serious, think
about the future that you talk about, But then they're
not sure what to do next. And if you cut
on your radio, you can flip that channel switch, whatever
you want to call it. You can get on the
interstate and there's going to be a thousand messages coming
at you, and you've got to have a filter, and
(06:01):
you've got to know who to listen to. And so
I'm going to tell you right now that Johnny and
I are not telling you that we're the ones that
you should be listening to. We're saying we hope that
we can give you value in what we have to say.
It's your choice to determine that. But what we're trying
to do here is today we're not going to give
you like we didn't when we did an insurance. We're
(06:24):
not going to give you the complete primer of the
definitive work on investing. We're not going to talk to
you as investment advisors. If we were investment advisers, we
couldn't do that anyway like we're doing. We can just
give you overviews. But what we really want to do
is come back to what we're doing with this whole series,
and that's to help you make some choices in your
(06:47):
life or what you really want out of life. And
we're going to show you some of the ways that
you can move toward that through investing and apply it
to your life, but you have to be disciplined. So
what I want to start with is the first step
to being able to be an investor, which means setting
(07:08):
aside funds or making a commitment to do something that
requires well, the word investment. I don't want to use
the word investment in my definition, but you know, investments
aren't just with money. So that's where I want to
go before we go much further. I think the most
serious investment that you can make is with your time.
(07:29):
And the second one, which was really I'm going to
reverse this. You've got to have your heart in what
you're doing. You've got to know what it is that
you want, and your heart has to be in that
you're living for what your own goals and dreams are.
And please, if you're a person that's been a people
please or your whole life and you're just trying to
(07:51):
go through life doing what other people say you should do,
you've got to break that. You've got to break that habit.
You've got to you've got to come to grips with
your you gotta decide who I am, what I want,
and when you get there, you can win. You can
win and achieving your goals Johnny, why don't you speak
to that part for a minute there.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
The winning to achieve your goals part. Yeah, this is okay.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So this is the when people don't plan to win,
they they actually plan the field. You have to you,
I mean, it's just it's just life. So I'm gonna
give you a scenario that I hope will bring it together.
Is that if you empty a feel and there was
(08:38):
nothing on the field, you don't have to plant anything
for weeds to grow. You don't have to plant anything.
You don't have to put anything in the ground. Weeds
are going to come up. If you leave a blank,
weeds are going to come up. So weeds are something
that's natural.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
And when you.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Plant to grow, because that was the term plant to grow,
you have to do it intentionally. You have to cultivate
the land. You have to watch it, you have to
look at things. You have to intentionally make sure that
it has the nourishment. You intentionally make sure that you
keep on going out and looking at your feel. You
(09:18):
intentionally do those things, because if you don't, weeds will
overtake what you thought was a harvest. Okay, so let's
let's be a little bit more specific. I look at
investing as an intentional decision, and when you want your
investments to grow, you intensify your intention. What I mean
(09:42):
by that is that you look at what most of us.
Most people are hired by a company. A lot of
companies have the ability or they have something set up
for you to have a four one K or some
investment strategy where they help you toward your retirement. I'm
going to talk a little bit about. They call it
(10:05):
TSP for the Government Thrift Savings Plan or and so
what they do with that is they will match a
certain percentage if you invest that percentage, right. So any
company that offers you matching, any time you don't put
in up to the maximum, they will match. You're leaving
(10:28):
money on the table. You're not intensifying your intention.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
So the reason I say that is if you put a.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Dollar in but they will match up to five dollars
and you only put one dollar in, you're losing the
ability for the full not just the four you could
put in. But you would have had ten dollars instead
of one had you put in the max.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Right, instead of just two dollars.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
So you have lost out on the time money compound
benefit of not having of not putting in the max.
So when you look at that, a lot of people say,
well I don't have it, but where else matching where
else can you double your money immediately?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Number two is if.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
You have a program at you at your workplace and
you have to be vested. So vest it just means
that you have to be there for a certain lengths
of time. What are the requirements that means that all
the money in the account is yours?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
For some companies in maybe three years.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
So you don't want to stop three feet from goal,
you know, gold, and you think, well, I'm gonna quit
it two years and eight months and you find out
that fifty percent, you know, you didn't You didn't carry
the whole amount you thought you were going to carry over.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
So look at what's out there. And what I.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Call is diversify your your I'm gonna call it your briefcase.
Most people call it a portfolio, and I'm gonna do that,
and it is a portfolio. But to diversify what you
have in your briefcase that is going to help you
through retirement and move forward. And then for Ma Seve,
(12:12):
one of the things that I've done and I know
that you. Uh, you are very aware of this. Is
I do passive and active income. Passive income means I have.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
To be uh.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Passive income means I don't have to be present to
get my resources. I lay in bed and I get
I get paid for my book sales. You know, I
wake up in the morning and they hit my bank account. Okay,
because I've already written, the book is out, it's out
on a platform. So I get resources as people purchasing
active means it requires my body. It requires my presence
(12:49):
in order for me to get the resources. So as
we get older, we want less active in at least
I do. I want less active in income coming in
and more passive that does not require me because then
it affords me because I'm older, it affords me the
(13:09):
opportunity to do some of the things I love, some
of the things that I'm passionate about that may be
in the nonprofit arena or to give or so my
time and my energy in my church or whatever I
desire to do. So as you get older, that's part
of it. So Steve, I'm gonna hand it back to
(13:32):
you in that regard and see how I know you've
gotten some nuggets.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
But in addition to that, I know you have a
lot to share.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
That was a very good lead in for where we're
going to jump down. We want to establish why investing
is good and so I want to get some of
that out of the way right now, and then after
we do that, I want to talk about some ways
that you can get started with and where it can go. So,
(14:03):
you know, I mean, there's a lot of things. There's
a lot of different directions, but the purposes for why
a person invests, education, retirement, philanthropic things, charitable causes, sometimes
political things. You might want to have money to put
in political things. You might want to be taking some
(14:25):
responsibility for other people, like in your family, like you
may have some siblings or someone who are falling on
hard times, and you might want to be in a
family where you help other families, not just your own
where and that's that's a lot of people do that.
You know, that's very important. But there might be protracted,
(14:46):
long term illnesses that you're going to be hit with
in your life. They're going to just drain everything. And
so having a good amount of money that is yours
that can be turned into a liquidity that can be
yours when you need it. Liquidity is being able to
(15:10):
have something that can be turned into usable funds if
you have to draw from them. Sometimes you have an
investment like a piece of real estate a house, but
you can't sell it. You might have something that doesn't
have a market for it. So what we're talking about
investing is having something that's very similar savings, but it's
(15:31):
not savings. It goes far beyond savings, and a good
rule of thumb is to your savings should be pretty
much a liquidity that is available to you for emergencies
in short term things that you want to take care of.
(15:51):
Investing is much longer term, like you say, because we're
trying to build for peace of mind in the future
and to not have to be working. And the whole
concept that you mentioned that I am totally on board
with is we It's in my title. You know. There
are many ways you can put your money to work
for you, and your definition of passive and active was
(16:14):
very straightforward. A passive investment is something where you're getting
paid without you having the physical You put in your
own time in your efforts. You could be an investment,
might be you might be an owner and a partnership
you could be what you call a passive investor in
a partnership where some other people need other people's money
(16:37):
to get their deal going. What we're really talking about
here if you're a wage learner, an employee, a person
that's got an income coming in, and that's where everything starts.
You got to have an income. And because if you
have an inheritance, for example of say a million dollars,
but you never work that million dollars, it's probably going
(17:00):
to erode over time, and then you might get to
a point where you don't have that money anymore. So
one of the key concepts of investing is to not
let your principal, your amount erode. And so what we
want to do, like, you know, a lot of colleges
in particular, have what they call endowment funds that they
(17:21):
established where very wealthy people might give a couple million
dollars to the college where they graduated from. They're very successful,
they want to they want to give something back, so
they give a ton of money to their college. But
the whole thing with endowment funds is they don't touch
the principle they want that money to be invested in
earn money with what they're getting into and we're going
(17:44):
to talk about different ways that you can actually invest
the money that you have. But first of all, let
me just give a little simple outline here. You cannot
be a serious investor where you can put a lot
of money into investing for the future too you're stable,
getting all your bills paid, get your debts under control,
(18:04):
and have a savings and an emergency fund. Those are
the starting points. So if you want to be an investor,
it's kind of like if you want to be a
star on a sports team. In the off season and
the preseason, get yourself in shape so that when you
get out there you'll be able to play competitively. You
cannot be a real investor if you're ignoring other things
(18:28):
such as current obligations. So you've got to get your
budget all straight, like we've been trying to teach you
for the last ten weeks or so. Get yourself on
top of that, get rid of debt, quit paying the
credit card companies for things that you that you know
that trap we talked about. So now the one of
the other things that I didn't say in my list
(18:49):
that I gave of why you might want to have
investments that have grown The biggest one, as we know,
is retirement, protracted illnesses, education, those things. But the the
other ones are you want to be able to purchase
some major assets in your life. You might want to
you know, you might want to own your own home.
(19:10):
And people that are just starting out in their career,
they it might not be advisable for them to try
to buy the house that they want. So a lot
of people in real estate they get a starter house
and they live on it, They build equity, they get
their tax breaks, which are changing by the day, though.
But you start a house, you get it in the
right neighborhood, it appreciates in value. So your investment in
(19:34):
that home in the right neighborhood ends up having a
lot of equity, and then you can sell that roll
that money back into a bigger house. And I know
many people that have gone through as many as three
or four different houses in their life to get to
their final one. And then it's a beautiful thing. When
they get older and their kids are all grown, they
(19:56):
don't need the big house. They have all this equity
built up into the house. They sell the house and
then they put it into things such as mutual funds,
which are what we want to describe what mutual funds are. Johnny,
I know you know very well about mutual funds. I
want to talk about that for a minute. But so
what we're saying is it's a well defined strategy. It
(20:17):
requires diversification. You don't want all your eggs in one basket.
You want to make sure that whatever you do is
not high high risk where you could lose your investment.
Because you think you're going to make so much money
if you do this, you got to be very careful.
You got to be very careful that you don't get
into things that are too risky. And there's a direct correlation.
(20:39):
I'm going to turn back over to you in a second,
but I want to tell you this. There's two shows
that I did. They were episode one fifty five and
one fifty eight, and it was about investing in how
to Get Started in investing. The first show was like
a real primer, it goes a lot deeper than what
we're going to do today with actual investing. And then
there was how to Get Started the second follow up
(21:01):
and it was a national expert that was on my show,
and it was a beautiful show, full of information, really beautiful,
but he did. One thing that I want to bring
out in those shows. There's three major types of investing
of when you invest your money other than in real
estate or houses and those kind of things we're talking
(21:24):
about when you get into what kind of things can
you do? Now, everybody should have a trusted financial advisor
that they can learn from, and everybody's got to make
up their own mind. You don't have to have a
financial advisor you pay a fee to, or that the
investments cost anything for transactions. But there's been studies done
(21:46):
that show that people that go in and piggyback in
some of these wonderful successful mutual funds make more money
even paying a fee, because the study that I heard
about was they tend to make three percent more than
when you do your own investments, and that more than
covers the fees that you pay for transactions. A lot
(22:08):
of people say, I'm not paying for transactions. You got
to decide that for yourself. There's a lot of people
that have made a lot of money doing it themselves.
But they're very astute. They've studied, they've read books, they
followed things. They know what they're doing. Don't take the
cab driver that's a phrase that somebody gave me. Don't
take the cab driver's tip that's a hot tip and
put a couple thousand dollars in them tomorrow, because that
(22:30):
money might not really be there next week if you
just throw that money into something that's that spontaneous without
knowing where the tip really comes from, without doing the research.
I'm going too deep. But here's the formul that I
wanted to bring out before give it back to you.
If you take the number one hundred and you subtract
your age, there's the three basic types of investment or
(22:53):
money that you're going to put in to stocks, money
that you're going to put into bonds, and money that
you're going to have tied up, and just cash or
the cash equivalents available to convert to cash very easily.
Stocks are the highest risk, but they have the highest return.
Bonds are kind of in the medium ranges, not as
much risk at all, but the returns a little lower.
(23:16):
And then cash as solid as a rock. It's not
going to devalue in money other than inflation in the
way all that you know the global things affect it.
But here's the formula. Stocks. If you take your age,
the younger you are, after your stable, after you're paying
all your bills, got a nice savings account that covers
(23:38):
emergency things, and know how to live within your means
and have a good budget that you live by. You
can get into stocks more when you're younger. I left
this out. This is material. The sooner you start putting
money aside discipline, the larger. Over time it's going to grow.
(24:00):
We're going to come back to that. I don't want
to come on that right now, but here's the formula
one more time. If you're ninety years old and you
take your age and you subtract it from one hundred,
you get ten. You do not want to put ten
percent more than ten percent of your money that's available
to invest outside of your current your current budget, because
(24:25):
it's too risky. You don't want to lose it. But
if you're thirty years old and you subtract thirty from
one hundred, you could put seventy percent in the stocks
under this formula. And then how much do you put
into bonds that are more less risky and just more
of a medium investment. That's the default number when you
(24:45):
take between five and ten percent depending on your budget,
and put it into cash. That's the only overview that
I'm really going to give investment advice that I picked up.
But that's a proven formula that if you take five
to ten percent of your available funds you want to invest,
and you keep it in cash for emergencies short term,
get your money back real quick, beyond your savings. This
(25:08):
is beyond savings. So you have you have you just
have a cash pool over there that are in things
that are liquid. Then you take the other part, subtract
your age from one hundred. The difference will be how
much you invest in bonds and so very complicated. So
what I want to leave you with is this, if
you invest money and you use a theory of just
(25:31):
discipline savings, one hundred dollars a month or whatever you
can afford, that money will be there and it will
grow over a longer period of time. And I think
I think one hundred dollars a month invested for twenty
five years at whatever the index is that ties into
it what they call the standard and pores, which is
an index on the stock markets, I think you'll have
(25:53):
eighty thousand dollars. I think you'll have a huge number
like that because you're taking twelve hundred dollars a year
and letting it compound, earn money, and then reinvest the
interest on it. And then so what does that come
to twenty five years times twelve hundred dollars is a
little less than thirty thousand dollars, give or take. And
(26:15):
that'll grow to at least eighty thousand if you don't
touch it and you just leave it aside. So if
when you're thirty thirty five years old you start doing that,
you're going to have eighty thousand dollars towards your retirement
when you hit sixty. But the secret is, don't try
to pull it out when you see the markets going down,
because the markets generally will just always come back and
(26:37):
keep going. And there's a million studies that have been
done that confirm that there. So start early, stayed disciplined,
put it in buy stocks even if they went down
or up in price, just put that same amount of
money in. And that theory is called dollar cost average.
And I've got a very close friend that did it
for thirty years and he was amazing. He was so disciplined,
(26:59):
and he took money out of his normal normal budget.
He put it into his budget and he ended up
with several million dollars from it. And so that's the
whole theory. Johnny. Just take it from there, because I
just put a whole lot of stuff out. Unravel some
of that stuff, please.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Okay, So.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Let me just let me say a little bit about liquidity,
because we're in the finance field. Liquidity is something that
just rolls off our tongue, right, So let's talk about
what liquid means. Liquid What is like water? It flows,
so it's easily available to you. So when we say
(27:38):
liquidity or you need to have assets that are liquid,
we're saying that you can literally go to the bank
and get your money within a very short period of time.
When we say that, I mean like basically go to
the bank teller and get your money. Now. It's on
demand money, right, So that's what we're saying when it's liquid.
(27:58):
So we're looking at the fact that in the liquid
space would be your emergency fund, your savings, those kind
of things.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
That you can get to immediately, right. And then when you.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Look at stocks, stocks, you have to selle, you have
to do other things too, but you get a higher
return on your investment. And I love the you're thee
hundred minus your age. I really love that.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
And what that does as well is that gives you.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Your risk factor you can take. You're at a higher
risk because you have time to recover in the marketplace.
I'm gonna repeat that, you have time to recover in
the marketplace. What Steve just said was he said, don't
pull your money out when things are going up and down.
(28:49):
Don't follow the market like be careful, be careful about
doing that.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
I mean, it's your decision.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
However, when you pull your money out because things dropped
and you pull your money out, that's your gain.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Or loss at that point.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Typically the market will recover based on where you have
the money. Yet, remember we're not giving you guidance. We're
giving you information for you to utilize to make better decisions.
So you look at that and say, do I have
time to recover?
Speaker 3 (29:18):
You never put.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Money in that in the stock area that you cannot
afford to lose.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
I'm gonna say it again.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
You don't put money in the stock market and high
risk instruments of investment unless you can afford to lose them.
And it's not that you're doing it to lose them.
You're leaving them in there so that they can go
through the ebbs and flow of the market, and you're
(29:49):
not looking there and looking at the drop and saying,
oh my god, that's all the money I ever had.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
You don't want to be there.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
So that's why the older you get, the more you want.
And remember I said risk reward earlier, you want them
in less risky, stabilized rewards. That's when he Steve was
talking about bonds and other instruments. You can do tax
liens because you know the city, the state's.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Gonna cover that.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
You can get a high return on your investment on
things like that. But you need to do research and
check out those things because there are a lot of
things that are available that you that the government system
will support or back right, So.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
You need to look at those things. And then of
course you need cash.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
You need cash because if you have an emergency today,
you want to be able to get your cash to
get to the point where you can go in and
get it.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Now.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Some people initially use and I'm gonna say this and
it's gonna be like, oh, they use their credit card
because they have their credit cards supported by very emergency fund.
Listen to what I just said, So what they do
is an emergency comes up today with a person's vehicle,
(31:08):
They're going to swipe their credit card. It's an emergency,
I said, emergency came up with your vehicle.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
You're going to swipe your credit card.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
And then you're going to pay it off so you're
not paying interest on it because you don't want to
end up paying a high interest rate for your credit
card on your credit card. And I'm gonna give you
a great example of an opportunity two ways.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
One is.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
What we just went through this thing, and I'm gonna
give you the scenario. We went in and there was
a very uh there.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Was a mattress.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Needed to purchase a mattress right looking for a high
a really nice mattress.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
It's time to change it.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
So the person, he said, and I wouldn't have done this,
but now I am. He said, the mattress wasn't on sale.
He said, so the guy was offering him another opportunity
to do a cover or something for the mattress. And
what he said was, he said the mattress wasn't no sale, right,
And the guy said no. He said, well, then I
want you to give me this. The other item was
(32:09):
almost two hundred bucks, and he said, I want you
to give me that because the mattress is not on sale.
So I know you have that, I know you have
the flexibility to do something. The guy marked the item
down by seventy five percent. The reason I'm saying this
is most people will say, well, that's not an investment. No,
the mattress is part of what he needed right his
(32:30):
money is he had set aside money to save up
for the mattress and he ended up getting a twelve
month no interest hear me, twelve month no interest thing
so that he could pay it off in twelve months.
So when you get something and they give you twelve months,
(32:51):
I'm gonna get this is investment. You may want to
leave your money in another account to make money, but
what you do is you divide it by ten. Don't
divide it by twelve, because the moment you pass into
that twelve month, they're going to get hit you a
huge interest rate. The reason I'm saying that is make
your money. Remember what Steve you said, make your money
(33:13):
work for you. Make your money work for you, so
when you look at opportunities, make your money work best
for you, It's the same thing as don't leave money
on the table with your employer if they're matching.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Don't just you know, have a credit card.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
That's high and you have a lot of money in
your account for your whether it be TSP or whatever.
I just had a client pull out a sizeable amount
of money to pay off all their debt. And what
they did was they did a loan against their own
money to pay off their debt that was less than
(33:53):
the interest rate they were dealing with.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
So they're making their money work for them. Now.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
I know that these are some additional strategies, but let's
go back to the point of how you can invest.
Start today what Johnny say, start yesterday, today, Start right now.
It doesn't matter what age you are, doesn't matter your
station in life.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
You have money to invest.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
It's a matter of you taking the money and putting
it in your budget and strategically aligning it in a
way where you say, just like I paid by my
Verizon bill or whatever your cell phone bill, I'm going
to pay myself by putting this money away in an
investment right so that it goes away from you, and
don't make it so easily so it's available to you
(34:41):
like it's a debit card you could why be careful
with it being too available.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
The other thing when he said is stay disciplined.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
I'm going to say, not only stay disciplined, but stay consistent.
Because if you say, well, I'm away and do it
at the end of when my taxes come in, Nope,
use the time value of money and put in money
every single month or every time you get paid.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Pay your investments.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Give a little chunk to your investment piece. And I
know some people are saying, well, you know I still
have debt. Look at the debt because if you're on
even making three percent in your investment and you have
a credit card that's seventeen percent, that don't make no sense.
You need to pay off your credit card. So that's
what Steve is saying. Make sure that your balance and
your debt is paid and all of that. So look
(35:33):
at that and don't be afraid to act for opportunities
when you have a relationship with your bank. One of
the things I'll tell you to invest in is invest
in relationships. Remember Steve talked about it's not just about money,
invest in relationships. Invest in and be a part of
(35:54):
investment groups where you get the benefit of everybody in
the room and what they're doing. And you may not
be where they are yet, but you get the information
that's helping you get to.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Where they are. You know, to grow better, to do more.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Get in uncomfortable groups like that may be uncomfortable for you.
Get in groups like that so you can learn and
see what they're doing. Now, just because they're doing it
don't mean you have to do it.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
So you do due diligence.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
When somebody is offering you something an opportunity, make sure
you do your due diligence.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
And when I say that, i'm saying make sure you research.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Especially if you're the one that's investing, make sure you're
doing the research. If you're not doing the investing and
you have it in a mutual fund or some other
kind of fun make sure you know what's going on
and what the fees are. Make sure that if you
have a transactional fee for every transaction, if they're making
a bunch of transactions, remember that thus fees. So look
(36:57):
at all of those things to see how your money
is and then look at it quarterly and see what's
going on, and you can ask questions. Remember, is your money,
make your money work for you, and then you have
the person who is doing helping you, supporting your process.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
That person works for you.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Remember that they work for you, so you can ask
them questions you can, and by doing that they know
you watching and then they know what you're looking at.
Now me, I invest in things that I understand. I'm
not the person that's going to stay in the stock market.
I mean I like the stock market. I know about
you know all of that. We know all about that, right.
(37:41):
I invest in things I understand. I love banks, so
I have a lot of bank stock, and so people
do what they understand. I understand banks. I enjoyed that space,
so I have bank stock. So and when I in
this bankstock of places I visit and I'm a part of.
(38:01):
So if I see there they're going in a different direction.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
You can then.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Look at it and say, hmmm, what do I need
to do?
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Is this?
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Do I still agree with their mission, vision, purpose?
Speaker 3 (38:13):
That kind of thing? So those are some of the
things I'll tell you.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
And then the last thing before I hand it back
over to see that I'll tell you is this is
remember I said start today. The other thing is if
your children are young, help them move from being a
consumer to a producer of wealth. Now this is this
(38:38):
is a mini in the MIDI. This is a meeting
in the meeting almost So the same thing with you
move from being a consumer. You know, every diame that
comes in you, you farm it out to people to
a producer which investments it makes you're an producer of
wealth because your money's working you. So you want to
(39:01):
be a producer of wealth and not just a consumer
of wealth. And so I'm going to give you one
example for that is with a young child. Your child
likes Nike. I think I've done this on another session,
But your child like Nike shoes.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
They wear Nike all the time.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
You go out and you pay one hundred plus to
get the Nike shoes.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Teach them, help them own.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
A piece of Nike. Buy a piece of Nike stock,
which is less time I looked it up, was less
than one hundred dollars to share. And then they own
a piece of the company that they love. And you
can help them say hey, you know you own a
piece of Nake. It changes their mindset. So this is
(39:46):
about a mindset. This is not just about habits. This
is about your mind changing because habits build your next
steps in life, and when you don't have the habit
of buil wells or being a producer of wealth, you'll
end up staying in the consumer lane and you'll end
(40:08):
up spending all your resources.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
So, Steve Honney, that was good.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
That was good. I got a lot of notes on
some of the stuff you just said now, and I'm
going to use myself, like I do most of the time,
as an example of going through a lot of stuff,
because I've been in crisis modes, healths, crisis things like that,
and I want to tell you how I did exactly
what you're seeing that got me into a better place.
(40:38):
First of all, I don't think I said earlier in
the show, but people that are wage owners working, and
we all are, whether we're self employed or whether we're
in employee somewhere, supplemental income without having to burn yourself
out with the amount of time you've got to give
working nights, weekends away from your family. We cover that
(41:00):
very carefully when we did the session on cash flow
and getting out of debt. Rather did when we did
the debt consolidation, where we showed that it's easier just
to take a smaller nut to crack and take it
out over time so that you don't really burn yourself out,
so to speak, and then still fail and not be
(41:21):
able to keep all your payment plans in place. With
me on reference in that well Johnny forced savings about
eighteen nineteen months ago, I used I already said this
in another show. But I started taking five hundred dollars
a month, and I put it into an auto debit,
out of my bank account, into a mutual fund. I
(41:45):
didn't have time to play the stock markets or read
things or take any tips the everybody and their brothers
giving me. And I told the person that I did
this through that I don't even want to know a
thing about it. I don't. I'm not going to do
a thing with it other than just know that it's
coming out of my bank account. And I made sure
that on the fifteenth, I think is the date that
(42:06):
I gave them. You can assign a date for a
program like this. I wanted them to draft my bank
account and grow my phone by five hundred dollars and
I didn't. I didn't. I never planned to stop it.
I never planned when I would take money out of it.
I just said I'm going to discipline myself to do that,
and it grew to I put in over the eighteen months,
(42:31):
I put in almost nine thousand dollars. I think I
did it for seventeen months. But it came on a
wave in the market that I wasn't paying any attention to.
Because the key to this is do it and not
think about it. Just do it because this is not
something now a lot of people make a hobby out
of it. Yeah, but that's different I'm talking about. I
(42:54):
built a fund that got to be about eleven thousand,
four or five hundred dollars, and then when I got
to a certain place and now I'm going into my
refinance of my house, and I had a curve ball
through me because I had the benefit of not having
you know, I have curriculums that I do in prisons,
(43:16):
but they've been very slow the last year and a
half because the pandemic. The representatives of the company that
I do, I license my curriculum to, they can't go
into prisons, and so the curriculum sales went way down.
And that was a really good royalty income that I
invested a lot of my time to develop my curriculum.
And then I got a license. A license and royalties
(43:37):
are the very best income you can get. Is you
finished a project, you give it to somebody, they sell
it for you, and then you get a royalty. If
it's a book, you get a license fee if you
develop something that is like a curriculum. But my income
went down. My medical crisis is still always going on,
and I could not refinance my house because I had
(43:59):
to do some credit work and I went on too
a forbearance program with my first mortgage. Well, what I
didn't know when it came time that my income came
back up, what I didn't know was that I had
to make three monthly payments on the forbearance. This is
a repeat. But I didn't have the money. But I
went to that mutual fund and I took out money
(44:22):
to cover two of my mortgage payments. I had enough
to cover the third. And now my credit's rebuilt. I've
gotten out of forbarance. Forbearance is not over when you're
on it until you've made three payments back on the mortgage.
And now now that I'm getting ready to refinance, and
my situation is going to improve dramatically. But if I
(44:42):
didn't have that five hundred dollars a month that I
was disciplined to do, I would not have been able
to get out of this program. And so that was
one thing, and I'll give you a real simple one.
We all want supplemental income to make life easier. Where
do you get supplemental income from that you can put
into this investment is through the substitution principal. When you
(45:03):
learn where your money's going and you say, you know what,
I'd rather build long term investment program than go to
the movies twenty two times a month, or have sixteen
channels on my cable tot my cable or internet or
whatever you call it. Now, these are all just priorities.
So the whole key to what Johnny and I are
saying to you is you got to know what your
(45:25):
priorities are. You got to see where you're at and
make that as good as it can be, to know
where you're going to go, And then you've got to
answer this question, what are you willing to do? What
are you willing to sacrifice to get what is more
important to you? And if you can't answer that question,
you're not going to be an investor that's going to
(45:46):
make money. But if you say, you know what, I'd
rather build a ten thousand dollars fund through my investment
portfolio and my briefcase there, I'd rather build a fund
that's going to be worth ten thousand dollars in the
next couple of years by saving money from other things
and divert it into an investment program. Once I've got
(46:09):
my couple thousand dollars or whatever, I need emergency fund
over here on the side that I may have to
tap into for a car that breaks down. But you
got to decide. And if you don't decide, you know
the title the show there, the description is said, once
you have made the choice to take control of your life,
(46:30):
if you don't want to do that, and you just
want to be a player, so to speak, and spend
your money and have a good time and just not
put anything aside, don't put it off. As the key
to what we're trying to tell you. Now here's my
other example. I'm the success that I am today, and
I'm proud to say it like that that I am
a success because I was a paper boy when I
was a teenager, when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old,
(46:54):
I had a paper route, and I learned so much
from that, had great successes a paper out, learned how
to sell, learn how to do things. But I'll tell
you what I did. I was only making eleven or
twelve dollars a week, but I put five dollars a
week in my bill every time I paid my bill
to the paper and company. They took five dollars out
(47:15):
of what I paid back to them for all the
money that I collected on those papers, and they put
it into a savings program for me. And I bought
my first car with the two hundred and fifty dollars
I saved that first year I had a car. But
why because it was a disciplined savings program that I
committed to. The five dollars came out of my bill.
(47:38):
They billed me my own money. I made money, but
then they took it back from me because of the arrangement,
and they put it into a savings account. It was mine.
So I'm using these principles that we're talking about. And
I'll tell you one, Johnny, that you really hit on.
My wife says, you're so transparent. You know, my finances
have been a struggle for years and years to stay
(47:59):
on good insurance because of because of my health, I've
always got to have insurance. But my heating and air
system my house is thirty thirty one years old, and
I'm keeping my house forever. When I need to downsize,
I will and I'll have equity built in my house.
So that's my prime investment that I had. But it's
not liquid. I can't take much money out of it.
(48:21):
I took a second mortgage when I needed money for
a lot of other things. But here's what I'm going
to tell you, Johnny. The heating and air system was
replaced at my house thirty one years old. We replaced
it at fourteen and seventeen years then we got another
fourteen years went past. When I did that last time,
well it went on me a couple months ago. Do
you know that my heating and air company that I've
(48:43):
been with for thirty one years, same company, because I'm loyal.
They gave me great service and I love them, and
their prices are great. Whatever. They had financing program interest free,
and I I bought. I hope to pay it off
early maybe, but I don't need to. I'm getting a
(49:06):
big heating and air system that I couldn't afford I
dreaded when it would happen, the fact that they had
financing interest free from me that was not normal credit
approval because I was a long term customer and they
had a company that all they had do was say, no,
we're good with this. I got a finance system interest
free for five years, and when I go to refinance,
(49:31):
I'm not refinancing that because whatever rate I can get
on my refinance, I think it's in the three to
three and a half percent range these days on my mortgage,
it's not as good as free zero interests. So I
don't need to refinance that. I would only need to
refinance that if my monthly payment was I couldn't afford
the payment and I had to put it back into
(49:53):
the bigger one. But the bottom line is is that
what am I trying to say to you? My summary? Then, Johnny,
you give a summary, we'll close it up. My summary
is there's three things you can do to learn about investing.
Whether it's four if you want to ask people that
you respect that know a lot about it. You can read,
you can study, you can subscribe maybe that you can listen.
(50:14):
So that's a lot of things. But learn, get educated,
get your priorities straight and decide I want to do
something about it. So here's my only last example. I
talked to a close friend. Today's thirty three years old,
and he's a single dad and his daughter lives with him.
He's a wonderful young man. I was thrilled to know
(50:35):
that he has an aunt that worked in the insurance
world for years, and she gave some good advice. We've
already talked about insurance as a wonderful investment. I totally
believe in insurance as an investment because it's there, it's
your money, and it serves a dual purpose. We covered
that two weeks ago. Well, there's a lot of stuff
out there, like bitcoins and gold and silver and things.
(50:58):
I don't know much about any of that. Research the
heck out of it before you get involved in it.
It may be great, but I can't tell you. I'm too.
It's not something that I that I do a lot of.
But I know some young people, some friends of my son,
my son, they get involved in that stuff, but I
don't understand it enough to tell you about it. You
can use your assets that you accumulate, your investments for
(51:18):
collabal if you have to But here's what I want
to tell you. Don't put it off. Because if you
say one hundred dollars a month's not going to grow
very quick, and you go, I'm going to wait a
couple of years till I get a little more further
along in my career and then start saving, well, guess
what happens in life. Life happens. You'll get to where
(51:40):
you didn't save that twelve hundred a year, that grows
to twelve hundred and eighty the first year, whatever the
number is. By the second year, you'd have about twenty
five or six hundred dollars sitting over here. But if
you wait and don't put a dime in, and you
just say, I just keep going out to dinner a
few times because I don't that's not enough. It won't
make any difference to me. If you put it off
(52:01):
and you think you're going to start doing the five
hundred a month like I started doing in two years,
then all of a sudden something came up and you
don't have a penny to put in. If you had
figured out how to put that one hundred in, by
ten years from now, and you'll have about seventy eight
thousand dollars. Actually you won't. It'll be twelve hundred a
year for ten years. As principal is twelve thousand. You'll
(52:22):
have about thirteen fourteen to fifteen thousand dollars in ten years.
But if you don't start, you won't have it done
and you'll still be You'll go from being thirty two
years old wanting to get some wealth to where you'll
be forty five years old and you never started the program.
Make yourselves now, pay yourself first, and cut out things
(52:43):
that are wasteful, unnecessary, of no value. To think about
your own future. My whole message today, Johnny, no matter
what else we did, is to tell people think about
your future. You're not going to be as young when
you get older. Now, that's the most brilliant thing you've
ever heard of. Philosopher's second, you're not going to be
as young when you get older, and your ability to
(53:05):
do things might not be the same. Do it now?
How about that? Johnny?
Speaker 3 (53:11):
Wow? I love that you're not. I love that. So
my closing remarks would be this.
Speaker 2 (53:21):
Is that the earlier you start, typically the more flexibility
you have and the more resources you'll have at the end.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
So that is it. Is so critical that you start.
Speaker 2 (53:37):
So investing is just about committing your money, committing your time,
and committing your energy.
Speaker 3 (53:46):
That's all.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
Investing is, basically committing your money for future right for
a future benefit. Investing is committing your time for a
future benefit and committing your energy for a future benefit.
Speaker 3 (54:01):
And so we're giving you.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
This insight so that you can choose wisely.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
So that your life.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
Your life can be better because life happens. Life happens
whether we choose every decision the way we would like
to do in the future. So this is what I'm
going to say that I hope really taps into people
that are saying, is it too late? So I'm gonna
(54:33):
say no, it's never too late to start investing. It's
never too late to make the decision to pay off
debt because that's one of the that's that's part of
it too, because your your net profit or your or
your your bottom line, your wealth grows when you pay
(54:54):
off your debt. Then, for the people that are looking
right now and saying there's a possible ability that they
may be losing their house because of foreclosure or other
situations they're in, please don't do it in a vacuum.
Go out and build the relationships. Like Steve just talked
about an amazing relationship with people that he had for
(55:16):
his HVAC system. You should have a relationship with a
banker whoever owns the property.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
Go out and talk to.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
Them and then make the best moves you can make.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
So don't forget because you have equity in there.
Speaker 2 (55:33):
And that's why I'm using that you have equity in
that property.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
The housing market right now is extremely.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
Volatile. It is a it is a seller's market right now,
and so there are benefits to having property. There's benefits.
So look at all of your stuff. So this this
is the last point. Stop looking at what you don't have,
and look at what you have. Bring everything you have
to the table and say now what Now? How can
(56:06):
I take what I have and make better decisions through
all of these weeks that we've been and make better
decisions that Stephen Johnny has talked about. How can I
just take a couple of the things that they've said
in each episode and apply it to what I have
on my table. So you can't work out of your
(56:27):
pocket my pocket, and I can't work out of yours.
Speaker 3 (56:30):
However, I do know that you can do this.
Speaker 2 (56:34):
You can invest and be better thirty days from now,
sixty days from now, ninety days from now. You can
be better because you have to face You have to
face it right, You have to face whatever the situation is,
and then you can make better decisions about how Now.
Steve and I on right Thinking dot org. You can
(56:56):
reach out to either one of us in and we
invite you to do that. The other thing is, don't
hesitate to send questions or comments.
Speaker 3 (57:06):
I'm on all social.
Speaker 2 (57:09):
Media, so all you have to do is Google me
Johnny Lloyd and reach out as well if you have questions.
We're here to help you move forward, and you don't
want to miss next week.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
Wow, Johnny, that was good. That was good. I'm telling
them about next week in a second. When I did
today's show and I gave it the title investing Turning
your Goals into Reality, I was hesitant about using the
word reality because we did a show episode two thirty
one you and I called reality Check. But I purposely
put the word reality there because we are dealing with reality.
(57:48):
So we've given you a tool where you can look
at reality, look at your purpose, look at your goals,
see what you can do with your budget eliminate that ways.
You know, I'm just going to go over that there.
But we believe in what we're doing. And I just
want to tell you one more thing, Johnny. I think
the highest thing that you said today, the most beautiful thing,
(58:09):
was invest in relationships because they will get you through life.
They will be there for you when you need. When
you're down, you'll be there for them also. But invest
in good health because all bets are off when you
lose your health. And I'm a living, walking, breathing example,
someone that's been fighting it for years. I'm not giving up.
(58:29):
But all these techniques and all these things that we're
talking about have kept me still here to tell you
that I'm living with it. We talk too much about it.
This is a holistic approach, and what we want to
tell you is is that you can be a winner
if you just just get focused, then plan, develop a strategy,
(58:51):
and stayed discipline. So with that said, it's right think
dot Org. Thank you Johnny for mentioning that. But next week,
with johnny'salking talking about is We're going to try to
take most of all that we've been telling you and
go to the highest level that we can talk about.
And that's the transformational changes that Johnny is a expert.
(59:13):
She's got books we'll talk about next week. But here's
what it is. It's about legacy, and it's going to
be about not just building a legacy, which most people
think is about how people know you and remember you
when you're no longer here, what they say about your
funeral at your funeral, about who you were and what
you did. No, Johnny and I are going to talk
(59:35):
to you about living your legacy while you're here, and
so I can't wait till next week. Johnny, Johnny, you
were wonderful today. Thank you so much. God bless you. Everyone.
Have a wonderful week and we'll be with you next week.
Thank you. Thanks for listening to Right Thinking with Steve Copeland.
I'll look forward to being with you again next week.
(59:56):
And remember, don't quit plan ahead. It will get better.
God bless you, and have a great week.