What happens when the poster child for conventional financial advice is actually broke? Former financial advisor Chris Miles shares his shocking journey of leaving the harsh rat race of Wall Street and making the leap into making passive income. Joining Ava Benesocky and August Biniaz, he looks back on surviving a near-bankruptcy during the Great Financial Crisis and how it became a catalyst in creating his own debt paydown system called the Cashflow Index. Chris also discusses the importance of keeping liquid money and how he guides high-net-worth clients in securing diversified passive income streams.
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Important Links
- Chris Miles
- Rich Dad’s Who Took My Money?
- The Work Optional Blueprint
- Rich Dad Poor Dad
- The Richest Man in Babylon
- How to Win Friends and Influence People
- Think and Grow Rich
- Chris Miles on Instagram
- Money Ripples Podcast
About Chris Miles
Chris Miles is the Cash Flow Expert and unapologetic Anti-Financial Advisor who helps high-income earners break free from the grind and achieve financial freedom—without gambling on Wall Street. Disillusioned by the broken financial industry, Chris built multiple streams of passive income and retired—twice—before 40.
As founder of Money Ripples, author of The Work Optional Blueprint, and host of the top-rated Money Ripples Podcast, he has helped clients create over $300 million in immediate cash flow and long-term passive income. Featured in CNN Money, BiggerPockets, and Entrepreneurs on Fire, Chris reveals how to stop working for money—and start living free, wealthy, and abundant.
Chris Miles On Passive Income, Financial Freedom & Escaping Wall Street
Let’s get started again. Excited about this episode. Is there something you want to talk about before we start?
No, I was just reflecting and thinking, I think we’ve had like 400-some guests on our show, which is unbelievable. August and I have been doing this every Thursday for as long as I can remember now. It’s just incredible the amount of amazing, incredible people that we’ve met and the stuff we’ve learned.
I didn’t know this is where you wanted to take the conversation, but let’s spend a few minutes on this. It’s been one of the greatest experiences of my life. One of the great things that people don’t think about, which I’m going to touch on, is the fact that your peoples, your offsprings, your offsprings’ offsprings, this stuff is going to be online forever for time to come. Somebody can say, “This was my great-grandfather talking to this guest and this was his viewpoint about life or other things.” That’s an exciting part about having a show.
Now, coming back to actual material things, I’m not saying that wasn’t material, but more the things that matter in our lives, I would say that average lifespan of a podcast is 42 episodes. We’ve had it now over 350, close to 400 guests, and the other part about having a podcast is when guests come on, we have to prep for the guest for an hour before the show, and then we have the show for close to an hour. We get to learn about the person, about their business strategies they utilize, really intimately learn about this person, but that teaches us a lot of things in life as well.
The other part of having a podcast is the doors it opens for you. You have a platform now, you can speak. You can send somebody a message that you really want to connect with and get them to come on your podcast and meet them. We’ve even made friends on the podcast. We’ve had people invest with us that come on the podcast, we’ve had people that we’ve partnered with that have come on the podcast. It’s been a really fantastic experience. Ava does sometimes fall sleep on the show and I have to give her a nudge to wake her up, and it’s been a grind sometimes. Aside from that, it’s been a great experience.
He loves to bug me about that.
You’re just about that, so you’re admitting that you do fall asleep sometimes? Okay.
I have a great time as well. Let’s get started.
Looking Back To Chris’ Career Journey
Bring in our guest. Chris, we had a great conversation before the show, learned a little bit about you, but why don’t you tell our audience who you are, what you do, where do you live, give everybody a crash course on yourself.
I live in Utah but raised near Portland, Oregon. Funny enough, I went to college not in money, not with finance. I actually went to college with a major in Sociology with a triple minor in Psychology, Japanese, and Ballroom Dancing. Naturally, I did really well in school and then dropped out. Like all people, became an entrepreneur.
Ballroom dancing is what you see on TV where they’re like some fighters or some other people, politicians, and they go and dance. Is that ballroom dancing?
It’s like Dancing with the Stars, if you’ve ever watched that.
That’s what I meant. Okay, nice. You do that? Incredible.
In fact, if you watch the earlier seasons, there was a few women that actually danced on the same team that I did here in Utah. People like Ashly delgrosso, there was Andrea Hale, she danced with the ESPN sportscenter guy, obviously Louis, he’s been there forever. He was often teaching out here and stuff and so I took some classes from him back in the day. No, it’s a cool little world.
What do you do after college?
I actually became an entrepreneur. My goal was actually to become a business consultant, but I figured if I’m going to do that, I should have real-life business experience. I took a sabbatical. Supposed to be like a one-year sabbatical to just put college on the wayside a little bit, find some business to start so I can gain experience and then go back and get my MBA. As I did that, I was looking for some business to start and eventually I came upon financial advisors.
Not realizing you didn’t need to have a lot of experience in the financial world, you just had to be able to pass a test with 70%, which was easy, eventually, once I figured out the little hack code with that. Of course, just not be a criminal and not have robbed a bank or something or killed somebody. You can become a financial advisor too. I did that. I became a financial advisor and enjoyed being my own boss so much I actually never finished my degree. I dropped out of college and went on that path and was doing that for four years. In that journey, my dad reached out to me and he says, “When are you going to advise me?”
You do not need to have a lot of experience in the financial world. You just need to pass an easy test with 70% grade. Share on XWhen was this? What time? What circa was this? What year?
This was 2005 when I sat down with him. I’m sitting down with him and I’m looking at his finances, and he was the penny-pinching saver, the guy bought everything on sale. He was always about save, save, no debt, in fact he had paid off his house and everything early, so 100% debt-free. This guy was basically like a Depression-era mentality. By the way, this guy also packed away money into his 401(k) getting that match from his employer like every good boy and girl should.
As I sat down with him and I looked at all of his numbers, I said, “Dad, you’re 61 years old. If you want to retire now, you would need to die in about 5 or 6 years because that’s when you’re going to run out of money.” he said, “That’s not what I want to hear. I was hoping you’d tell me how to get out of this job because the stress is literally killing me.” he had already had strokes and heart attacks by this point.
He’s like, “I got to get out.” And I said, “I don’t know what to tell you. If you were able to take out the equity from your house and invest it, it’d be great, but you can’t legally do that in mutual funds. That doesn’t work.” I just didn’t have any answers for him. I just said, “Keep working and save more,” and he did. He ended up working into his 70s before he was forced into retirement and then he actually just passed away in December 2025, 81 years old.
Sorry to hear that.
Yeah, it took me a while to kill him off, but I eventually did. No, I’m just kidding, I didn’t do that. No, but he lasted way longer than he expected even. He was not the guy that took care of his health, but that’s the thing is like you can be alive but not really living. He was bedbound and so I was even bankrolling him the last few months of his life, paying him like over $13,000 a month for his healthcare, things like that. It was hard to watch because he got a couple years that he got to do karaoke and things that he enjoyed, but it didn’t last.
It was because of that situation that I realized, “Listen, if this is the guy that was the poster child of what I was teaching people to do,” I was teaching people basically live like Dave Ramsey teaches you. Debt-free, save in your mutual funds and eventually you’ll be financially free and you can scream freedom on the air like on Dave Ramsey show or something.
That wasn’t the case. He was the model example and yet the model was broken. I realized I was on the same path. I was doing the same things he was doing, how would I expect to even have any freedom? It was just a month later, I was talking to a friend of mine and he was a financial advisor. I actually trained him to be a financial advisor, but then he quit to go do real estate investing. Crazy person. Those crazy real estate investors.
I know, can’t stand them. Anyways, he actually went and in five months, he partnered with his dad. He’s like, “Yeah, my dad and I, we’ve partnered on some real estate deals and we’ve doubled his income as a professor at the local university.” I said, “Hold on. You’ve doubled his income. That’s too good to be true. There’s no way that’s possible.”
He said, “Chris, let me ask you a question. How many of your clients are really financially free where they don’t worry about money?” “Well, none. They all worry about money. Even the retired ones worry about running out of money too soon.” “Okay, great. How about this? How many of you guys as financial advisors are financially free, not off the commissions you’re earning, but actually doing these investments?” as I really thought about it, there’s about 100 people in our office and I said, “Well, there’s guys been worked here since the 1970s, I would have to say none.”
“There’s your problem.” “Okay, well, give me the answer.” “I won’t give you the answer because you just got done telling me that real estate sucks and stocks are better.” I’m like, “No, I’m open. Give me something.” he’s like, “All right, if you’re serious, go get this book called Rich Dad’s Who Took My Money? By Robert Kiyosaki.” It’s a lesser-known Rich Dad series book. Basically, it just tells you mutual funds suck. “Listen to this AM talk radio show with these two real estate investors that were local here in Utah,” and so I did. I got hooked.
The next thing you know, March of 2006, just a few months later, I’m at the point where I say, “You know what? I can’t teach this anymore. I cannot justify my mind teaching something that I know doesn’t work.” I left at the height of my practice. I said, “I’ll never teach about money again. I’ll teach ballroom dancing and I’ll be a mortgage broker.” that’s pretty much what I was doing in 2006.
Braving The Challenges Of The Great Financial Crisis
That’s right before Great Financial Crisis where people lost their life savings. What happened around then? You go from being a financial advisor, being financially savvy, understanding the mechanics of money, but then you get involved in being a mortgage broker and real estate investment. Soon after, GFC is coming, I’m sure you were not insulated. Talk to us about that maybe briefly.
Definitely not. I got to the point where eventually I had enough passive income I was able to retire in the June of 2006. I was shocked that it was that easy because it was about income, passive income. Some of it was lending, some of it was like taking my starter home, turning into a rental and whatever. As you said, 2007, I actually came out of retirement to teach people how to get out of the rat race. I partnered with some other guys to do so.
That was about the time that everything shifted because we were mostly educating a lot of real estate flippers or people that were wannabe real estate investors. When 2007 hit and all of a sudden, the banks tightened right up by the summer of 2007, all of a sudden, our business was struggling because they weren’t getting paid, they weren’t making money on the real estate, we weren’t getting paid as a result. I was putting all my chips in. I’d actually got rid of my passive investments, bad mistake, to then go all in on this business which was now sinking.
I went from financially free in 2006 to all of a sudden now, 2007, going to 2008, I was in the hole about $16,000 a month and over $1 million in debt eventually as a result of that. Especially as values shifting because I went and bought a new home and I bought a huge one, it was like a mcmansion, and those values came crashing down. All that stuff was happening all at the same time and I was cash-crunched. I went from literally financial freedom to welfare, like living on food stamps by 2008.
That’s a good time to stop there, but it’s shocking because this event that happened in the US and it happened in other places around the world as well, but it was so seismic that it affected everyone, even somebody who was in the financial advising space. You would think that person would have the financial wherewithal to be able to survive and do good, to do decent. How did you come out of that? What was your path out of that slump?
I definitely stopped teaching people how to get out of the rat race, that’s for sure, because I can’t teach something I don’t do. I can never play poker because you’ll win all my money because I cannot bluff. I am who I am. I shifted. I pivoted the business and instead of teaching people how to get out of the rat race, I started addressing the issue that other people were having, which were similar to mine, which was, “Chris, I would love to learn how to do some things, creative things with money, but I don’t have the money.”
I wouldn’t tell them this verbally at the time, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking, “Man, my situation sucks so bad, way worse than this person’s. I wish I was as good off as they are.” I started asking them, “Well, listen, if I can help you find the money, will you pay me?” They said, “Yeah, if you can do that, it’d be awesome.” I was like, “Great. Here’s some things you can do.” I was getting creative trying to figure out how to avoid bankruptcy myself.
I was learning that there’s different things I could do to plug up money leaks whether it be taxes I was overpaying on, creative ways to pay off debt that can actually improve your cashflow better. I created a whole system called the Cashflow Index, which is a debt paydown system that now apparently if you Google it, you’ll actually find it’s one of those debt systems that other people are teaching too.
Ways to save money by pulling levers on insurances, like saving on your auto insurance, homeowners’ insurance, things like that. Just little things to help with the budget and things of that nature plus earning more income. I would show them like on average, they would find like a couple grand a month. It started becoming its own business. I pivoted away. Instead of teaching about how to get out of the rat race, it was more about how to find and free up cash.
Eventually, by the end of 2009, it created a life of its own. I got to the right people that were centers of influence, especially in the chiropractic and dental space, and then our company exploded. We went from almost bankrupt in 2009 to doing over $5 million in coaching sales alone in 2010. That started helping me build up income, start to help me get things under control. I also shrunk my lifestyle big time.
I eventually foreclosed on my dream home that I had bought in 2006, I foreclosed on that in 2009 and got into a nice small rental to crowd all of my kids into and we basically made things work. I got my expenses down to like $4,500 a month, which is crazy considering that the expenses were probably over $10,000 a month before that. I just got really lean and mean. I actually talk about in my book, The Work Optional Blueprint, that really the three-step area of success is get lean, get liquid, and get out.
The first thing is I got lean, I figured out where could I find I started tracking my money and seeing where it was all going. Whether you use Rocket Money, Monarch, whatever it is to track your money in business using like QuickBooks, but watching your money on a weekly basis and figure out where you not just to get cheap, but even just to see where am I just wasting money I didn’t know was happening.
For example, just as we’re recording this, I found out in my own business that I was paying for a service that went from about $80 a month and jumped up to almost $500 a month, just two months ago. I didn’t see it until just now. I missed it. For whatever reason, I missed it. I thought maybe because I thought it was an annual fee that I was paying, but when the second one came out, then I was like, “Wait a minute, that’s not supposed to happen.” I went and found out they increased their fee, so now I’m switching over and it’ll probably save myself several hundred dollars a month there. Things like that.
Helping Dentists And Chiropractors Save And Make Money
In 2009, you start this new venture helping dentists and chiropractors save money, make money, then what happens?
As I did that, I started to get myself out of the hole, digging out of the debt that I had, created my own cashflow, I eventually started to get liquid, so having more cash on hand. That’s one thing I learned in the last recession. Although I have some emergency fund, it wasn’t enough to weather the huge storm that was coming. Plus, I also made the mistake of throwing all my money into equity in my house.
I was paying it down, thinking that anytime, because I’m a mortgage broker, I can always pull it back out again. That didn’t happen because they changed the rules. The bank said, “No, we’re not going to let you do cash every finances anymore.” All that equity got trapped, and because it happened not just to me but to everybody, that’s when we saw real estate values tank and I watched all this extra equity I had on that property just disappear. I tell people to get liquid, like have the money in cash.
Aside from personally, talk about business-wise. 2009, you start this venture. What happens to your business from there? Talk to us about your entrepreneurial side, your business side of your life, what do you go and do after that?
We kept doing that system, just kept repeating it and kept coaching people. It got to a point where I started to feel like I wanted more. I even told the guy that I was working with, I was like, “I want to do more than just coach people, I want to get out and speak, I want to do more stuff, I want to get that message out more.” I felt like something was missing. He just was like, “No, I don’t see that. I’ll be the speaker, you just take care of the kids at home,” so to speak. “You take care, you coach everybody.”
He didn’t know half the things I was teaching. He would just repeat some of the stuff I talked about and he repeated it on stage and then people would give him the credit. Eventually in 2012, we actually split, we parted ways. I actually launched my company Money Ripples, even felt impressed just a month prior to that happening, I felt impressed I should start a company Money Ripples thinking that was going to be another marketing arm for the business, and it ended up being its own company.
I actually launched my own company Money Ripples, started from scratch with a two-year non-compete. I had to start over with new relationships, new everything. I still kept doing my cashflow process because they were borrowing my process in their company, but it was mine. I kept doing that. I even did a little bit I started doing more on the life insurance side of things with infinite banking and things like that that I would teach people how to get liquid there. Eventually, I started teaching people how to create passive income, started adding that in once I started personally also doing passive investments, then I started teaching people how to do that too because again, I didn’t want to teach something I wasn’t doing.
What is passive investments? Describe that. We know what it is, but just for the audience.
Absolutely. To be clear because a lot of people are ruining that name of passive income because you hear people talk about passive income, they’re like, “Yeah, start this drop-ship business,” with Amazon, which is anything but passive, or wholesaling. It’s not passive. It’s an active business. Passive means that you get your money to do the work. For example, even if I bought a property, I wouldn’t be the one property managing, I would get a property manager or I’d use turnkey real estate companies to help me find the property, get the property well, either they’re the property manager or find the property manager and then they manage it, I just buy the property.
Passive income means you get your money to do the work for you. Share on XI’m in a business right now with raw land where I’m a 70% partner, I’m financing the whole thing, but they’re doing all the work where they’re buying and selling raw land and then they’re paying us back on terms, so we’re getting paid mortgage payments from people that buy our land that we sell at retail price. Oil and gas, again, I’m not the one drilling or doing any of the operational stuff, I’m investing with the guys that are the operators and I’m getting paid off that.
Syndications and so forth, and lending. I love to lend to real estate investors all the time, especially lately, it’s been better. Doing that and then getting paid off of that and if they don’t pay me, I can always take the property. Again, just investing with the investors, the operators, and I get paid the passive income from that.
Sourcing The Right Operator, Asset Class, And Business Model
Got it. You started teaching people how to be able to make passive investments and have passive income. How do you go about sourcing the right operator, asset class, business model to bring in front of your clients?
One of the things we look for is track record. For example, how long has somebody been in the business?
Before doing the due diligence on the firm, how do you even say, “How should my client be diversified? Have some money in debt, have some money in equity, have some money in raw land, in multifamily, in other asset classes?” How do you initially the strategy how do you initially come up with that? I guess it goes back to your clients possibly about their level of liquidity and risk tolerance and what asset class they believe in.
How do you initially figure out that, as this asset manager individual who’s going to bring in these investments to my clients, what’s the world I want to play in? What’s the sandbox I want to be in? How do you make that decision and how do you bring deals then we can talk about after that how do you bring deals in front of your clients?
First and foremost, we’re not investment advisors, so we’re not telling them you should or shouldn’t do anything. We try to give them ideas based on what their objectives are.
Options, you’re going to give them options, basically.
Options that exist and you eventually make the final decision of what you feel comfortable investing in.
Exactly. We’re strategists and connectors in that sense. For example, if they’ve got like IRA money, it’s like, “Okay, cool. Did you guys know you can self-direct this? Can we move into a self-directed account? We connect them with people to do that.” what are the better type of investments for that certain thing? As many people know, you wouldn’t want to buy a rental with a mortgage with a self-directed IRA because, one, you’re going to put down double the down payment, two, you can possibly have extra taxes that you don’t want on it. There are some investments that work better with like an IRA or an old 401(k) than it does with using cash. We try to teach them the difference of, “Here’s what you can use cash for, here’s the better investments, here’s what you use IRA money if they have IRA money.”
Let me give you an example. I had a guy that he came to us and he had about $1 million. He was actually just retired from the military. The financial advisor says, “You can live on $30,000 a year,” which is not fantastic because they tell you, you can only pull out 3% a year if you’re in your 60s. He’s like, “Well, I don’t want to live on $30,000 a year. I live in California. That’s not possible.” It’s like living in Vancouver on $30,000 a year, never happen.
Anyway, so he was looking for stuff. He found our podcast and then he eventually became a client of ours. We said, “Well, let’s find ways to do this.” He’s like, “I want income.” That’s my focus. He doesn’t want growth. We’ll ask, “Is it income or growth? Which one do you really want?” He wanted immediate income. “Okay, let’s find what those are.”
For him we end up buying a couple duplexes that were turnkey duplexes, so again hands-off, he’s not managing it. He even got into like a real estate apartment syndication, he got into some oil and gas as well, he really liked that, even showed his twenty-some-odd-year-old kids how to do the same thing. Next thing you know, instead of living on $30,000 a year, he was now generating about $150,000 a year off that same money.
That’s the kind of thing we try to show them. It’s like here’s the different options. We showed him some other options too, but those are the ones he end up selecting. He’s like, “You know what? These are the ones I feel most comfortable about.” we became like the sounding board. It’s like, “Here’s what I’m thinking, but I’m not so certain. Are there risks? Are there things I’m not seeing or things I should be aware of?” Even if they ask about certain operators, we can’t tell them you should go invest with that person because we don’t raise capital ourselves, we connect them if whether it’s people in our group or they go outside of our group, that’s up to them.
Do you have a group? Do members of the group get to chat with each other as well? Is it a mastermind style? They can tell each other how things has worked or their point of view on a certain investment. “Did somebody invest with this? How’s it going?”
“What was your experience with that GP? What was the communication like?”
How do you get compensated? Do you get compensated through fees that people pay to be part of this group? You do? Okay.
They’re hiring him as a coach because he’s coaching them to everything that really comes along with passive investing. It’s probably a one-time fee as you were mentioning. Is it a monthly fee after that?
Yeah, exactly. It’s like an upfront fee that’s anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000 depending on the level they’re in. After that, it’s like $250 dollars a month to keep us on retainer for life.
Do they get to join like a monthly mastermind?
Yeah, we have monthly calls, actually multiple calls a month. We even have annual masterminds that we do as well that can be live because you’re right, I realize that more. They come to us for the coaching, they want to be connected to the deals and everything, but at the end of the day, one of the big value-adds for them is of course when there’s other people in the community that are just like them.
People seek the help of a financial coach to be connected to the deals. But at the end of the day, one of the big value-adds for them is finding other people in the community who are just like them. Share on XEven though I see myself on the same journey, I’m just further ahead down the road than they are. Having their own peers that they could talk to and especially if they have fears and concerns because the hard thing as a passive investor is that especially when you go into the real estate or alternative investment world is that your friends and family aren’t doing that too. They’re just pumping money in those 401(k)s thinking that’s somehow going to work even though it hasn’t historically worked yet, but they’re still thinking that somehow it’s going to because everybody tells you to, especially financial advisors.
They feel alone a little bit. Having somebody there that says, “We get it.” And they might ask like, “I’ve been looking at this particular operator. Anybody besides Chris or the other coach Craig besides you guys anybody else have any experience with them? What are your thoughts? What have you done?” it’s nice that they can have that sounding board and people that are also on the same journey that don’t judge them for doing something different.
It does. It makes them feel amazing that way and they love getting together live because now it’s like you get to create those bonds and that relationship and go deeper in the conversation than just a Zoom call where Zoom call you might hit surface level, but face-to-face you might be able to go deeper into what emotions or feelings or thoughts you have. You can go down a rabbit hole a little bit more.
Yeah, that’s so important, I think, because a passive investor, this guy had like $1 million to deploy. You look at all these different asset classes, it can be very confusing. Okay, so you find one that you want to invest in, you don’t really understand it. It’s not your business. How are you supposed to look at the underwriting and make sure that the numbers are penciling out to the forecasted returns that are being advertised? It’s very beneficial to have a mastermind to bounce it off.
Becoming A Brain-On Investor
What’s the perfect profile of a client who wants to come and use your services? What’s their age group? What’s their net worth? What’s their liquidity? Do they all have to be wanting to retire? Can they just have this as part of their diversified portfolio? Give us a viewpoint on that.
They’re generally between the ages of about 35 and 55, maybe up to like 59 or so sometimes. They have to be somebody I call a brain-on investor. They’re actually using their brain, they’re critical thinkers. Gen Xers like myself, we tend to be really good at that, like we tend to question everybody and we don’t just trust people’s word. We really want to be shown the proof a lot of times. Even Xennials too.
Even Xennials too. You see that happen as well with the older Millennial generation as well. People that are willing to question and challenge the status quo, they don’t want to live an ordinary life, they want an extraordinary life. They want to have something that is better than just falling in and becoming a statistic. They often have had financial advisors, they probably have at least a couple hundred thousand dollars liquid that they could access and use to invest. Otherwise, they wouldn’t even qualify to work with us. If they don’t have at least $200,000, there’s not enough money there to really diversify and do a lot of things with. We just don’t take them on unless they have at least that much.
I’d say about at least half of them are accredited investors where they probably have at least $1 million net worth and/or income of over $200,000 or $300,000 a year. Really, the common theme is they’re looking for time freedom. They want to become work-optional where it doesn’t mean they really want to quit their job or their business, they might love it. They just want to have enough passive income where they have choice.
Give you an example. I had a guy that was 59 years old that came and had $1.9 million sitting in his IRA account, and his financial advisor at Vanguard wouldn’t give him an answer when he could actually retire. I said, “Well, how much income you trying to live on?” He said, “Well, $200,000 a year.” That’s the problem.
Either, one, the financial advisor doesn’t always know what he’s doing and that’s why he didn’t give you an answer, or, two, which could be likely, is that the financial advisor was scared to give you the answer because if you’re going to live on 3% a year, which would be the recommendation at your age, you would have to have about $7 million saved up. By the way, congratulations having $1.9 million you’re in the top 1% or 2% of all Americans of how much they’ve saved in retirement accounts. That’s pretty good, but it’s just not enough. You’d have to get to up to $7 million and hope and pray you get there by the time you’re 70, assuming the market does anything.
He says, “Chris, I don’t mind working until I’m 70. I just don’t want to feel like I’m forced to work until I’m 70.” I showed him. This even before he hired us. I said, “Here’s the thing. Your goal is $200,000 a year. Watch. You have $1.9 million. Let’s say you actually just lend all that money, not saying you’re going to put it all in one place, but say you lend $1.9 million and make even on the low end 10%. What’s 10% of $1.9 million?” He said, “Well, that’s $190,000 a year.” “Yeah, $190,000, at nearly your $200,000 a year goal, isn’t it? You could actually retire next year just on that alone. That’s not all because you mentioned you have a rental property, right?” He was like, “Yeah.” “How much are you making per month on that rental property? “$300 a month.” “Okay. How much equity you have in that property?” “I’d say about $800,000.”
I said, “You realize your return on equity is like .25% or .3%-ish? It’s horrible. You could do way better putting your money in a CD. You could do better. Let’s do this. Let’s say you get the $1.9 million invested, that’s $190,000, but then let’s say you sell this property. You do lose the $300 a month, but say that you get $700,000 from that sale of that property that you make 10% on, guess what? That’s $70,000 a year, you’re now at $260,000 a year this year.”
That property would have gained in the equity as well over the years. It’s not staying static. As years go by, he’s getting that money rental money but the property is appreciating as well. Depending on what market it is, they don’t appreciate as much as other markets. Depending on where he was. Let’s get to the next segment of the show. We’re on a bit of a time crunch here. Any questions quickly, Ava, before we go?
No, that was great, Chris.
Thank you so much. All right, let’s do the next segment of the show.
Ten Championship Rounds To Financial Freedom
Are you ready for the Ten Championship Rounds to Financial Freedom?
Let’s do it.
Okay, fantastic. He looks ready.
He’s ready. He’s going to grab you and he’s going to go turn you. That’s what it looks like. He’s ready to do right now.
All right, let’s get started. Ten questions, whatever comes top of mind. First question. Who’s been the most influential person in your life?
I don’t want to sound like cliché when I say this. I would say first and foremost, God, in a lot of ways because the inspiration I’ve gotten, even the name Money Ripples was like that flash of inspiration I got. Whether you say it’s God, the universe or whatever, that’s it. Now if you’re talking about on the earth like human being that I’ve been around, I would probably say the most influential person in some ways good or bad was my dad.
He taught me a lot of what I am. The good stuff he taught me. Not money stuff, but the good stuff he taught me was one is that your word is your bond. You do what you say you’re going to do, which I wish more contractors would do that, especially now. Two, he even taught me about things like question everything. Question it, find out is this legit or not? Question everything and that’s really what’s led me to where I am now.
Next question, Chris. What’s the number one book you’d recommend?
I would say the number one book I’d recommend I’m going to go steer away from Rich Dad Poor Dad because everybody talks about that in real estate. One of them I would recommend would be probably The Richest Man in Babylon if you want some interesting basics. It’s tough to read sometimes because of the language in it, but the basics of investing are really right there. They are if you really come at it from a place of, “How can I really glean what I need?” Great book.
Seven Cures for a Lean Purse. Absolutely. We love that book.
What are the Seven Cures for a Lean Purse?
You’re going to put me on the spot?
Give me some of them.
Make that dwelling an investment. That’s one of them. Put 10% of all the money that you make away. Invest with an expert is another one. Set your family up for the future is actually the last one, I believe. That was four. There’s three more. Chris, help me out here. What’s another one?
I blur them all together. I’m glad you brought those up because those are the ones I thought of too. I think there’s one about producing more than you consume, essentially. Create more than you consume. That’s basically spend less than you make.
Control thy expenditures. That’s one f the cures, so that’s five.
Are you guys getting overexcited? Let’s move on to the next question, please.
All right, here we go. Next question, Chris. If you had the opportunity to travel back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?
Depending on what age I was. For the most part, I actually like what I went through because it taught me everything I know now. If I were to go back to say like 2005, 2006 Chris, maybe even earlier in 2005 would be I would just challenge myself. I’d question myself faster about being a financial advisor and buying into that advice because don’t buy advice from people that aren’t wealthy. Of course, just having liquid cash. That was so important. That’s something I’m doing right now that I know it’s going to put me in a better position than most investors because I’ve actually got cash available to do something with even when most people don’t right now.
Okay, next question, Chris. What’s the best investment you’ve ever made?
Best investment I ever made, this would be ironic. It was probably starting out as an entrepreneur as a financial advisor. Just because it got me to open up my perspective to something different and new because I wanted to control my time, my money, my freedom and all that stuff. It got me on the path of reading the first book I ever read, self-personal development book, was How to Win Friends and Influence People. Rich Dad Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich, all those classics you talk about. I got introduced to that first. I’d say that was probably my best investment to get going. Now was it the final investment? Absolutely not. There were way better rates of return as I got into things in real estate, but that was my start.
Now what’s a worst investment you’ve ever made and what lessons did you learn from it?
Worst investment ever made would probably have been actually my house, the dream home that I bought because I remember feeling like something was wrong, I shouldn’t do it. Logically speaking, my numbers all supported it. It seemed fine. Like I could easily afford it, it wasn’t a problem. I remember putting so much money into that house, even trying to finish off the basement and then I got the appraisal back and I made more than what I put into it.
I thought I was a genius until the market reversed and then all of a sudden that money was gone. It was locked up in the house, I couldn’t get to it. I realized that end up being my bad investment not because I lost a huge amount of money, but because the money that I did have wasn’t in my power, in my possession, and then it was gone.
Next question is, how much would you need in the bank to retire now? What’s your number?
I don’t need anything in the bank technically to retire now because I just need the investments to pay the income. For my family security, I told my wife like we would have $400,000 that we just never touch, we never invest, doesn’t go into business, doesn’t go into real estate, it’s just there to provide for the family, to protect the family, just in case. Do I need to have more money in the bank? No, not at all. Even though I do have more than that of course.
I guess the how much in the bank is more rhetorical. It’s more about like a total net worth. How much money you want to have to just walk away from ever working again or is that even in your periphery? Is that something you would even do?
That’s what I already did by 2016 the second time. At the time, all I needed was $10,000 a month and I got there. Now it’s like $20,000 a month but I’ve gotten well beyond that, I’m about $50,000 a month right now. Net worth wise, I was only in the hundreds of thousands of net worth I think when I got there the first time.
Any amount of money you can have that you just wouldn’t ever work again or do you enjoy working?
I love working. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing right now. That’s why I’m here because teaching like this is my joy. This what gives me purpose.
It’s your joy in life, yeah.
I did try to retire in 2017 for a few months and it was depressing. I was the most depressed I’ve been in so long.
It’s because you don’t ski, that’s why.
The marathon running is just not enough. It gets boring after a while.
Okay, next question, Chris. If you could have dinner with someone dead or alive, who would it be?
Every time I get asked a question, I swear I have a different answer. I would say the answer right now, the name actually pops in my head is George Washington, honestly. Just a guy that has very interesting wisdom, you could tell he had a lot of patience, very prayerful and stuff so he had connection to God but he was also very grounded on Earth. Just a great leader and he wasn’t a loud leader. He was just somebody who led by example and so just be around that I think would just be a powerful experience.
The Union is a result of him walking away saying that, “I don’t want to be a king.” He had a chance to have ultimate power.
How many people would do that now? How many people like, “No, I know you would elect me to do it, but I’m good.” I know we have a current president that he would definitely not do that, so he’s like, “You’re going to elect me again, I’m going to do it.”
A fun fact about George Washington, he’s actually the only president who did not live in the White House. I don’t know if you guys knew that.
That’s right. It wasn’t built yet.
All right. Next question, Chris. If you weren’t doing what you’re doing today, what would you be doing now?
If I was doing something different, that’s tough because I’m doing what I want to do right now. I can’t imagine doing anything else.
Be a ballroom dancer. Professional on TV, maybe Dancing with the Stars.
I used to have that dream, but not so much anymore. That could be something I do, like I did love teaching dancing. I love the teaching more. I love the competition scene, but the teaching was fun. I do joke with people sometimes that honestly, if I wanted to do something fun, I’d probably do something in the more hospitality realm, like almost like being a waiter, like a server because I love just social psychology type stuff.
How can I influence a situation to where somebody will do something different, good or bad? Could you get your tips be higher whatever. I think that’s just fun to try out. For me, though, teaching something has always been fun. If it’s not ballroom dancing, which I’ve been out of that scene for a little while, actually like having a gym or something like that. I love the physical health aspect. Obviously, the running part would be fun. Owning a gym or doing the occasional class even if it’s like a running class would be fun.
Next question. Book smarts or street smarts?
Street smarts all the way. I think books are great to give a start, but you need the street smarts.
Absolutely. Last question, Chris. If you had $1 million in cash and you had to make one investment now, what would it be?
This is someone who’s been around money for a long time, advised people. This is going to come from a very important place, Chris. It’s $1 million in cash and you have to make one investment today.
I would say this for me, right now, in the current market, current economy, at least with my goals and my vision, I would actually want to find a competitor’s business that I would want to buy up, honestly.
You would do M&A?
Basically, yeah.
I think that’s a great answer. Awesome.
Chris, let everybody know the best way that they can reach you, please.
Money Ripples. Whether it’s MoneyRipples.com, @MoneyRipples on social media, or the Money Ripples Podcast you can find on any podcast platform.
Thank you so much, my friend. You’ve been the best.
Thank you.
