 Hey, hi everybody. Welcome to Dedicated to Financial Planning. You can hear my son in the background. He's full of sugar. He probably had some cake or ice cream or something we gave him. So I'm going to let him just be. So if he comes into the video at one point, hey, don't freak out. He's family. He really lives here. Okay. In fact, he runs the house. He's my boss. All right. So welcome Dedicated to Financial Planning. It's the channel on Russell Moore. Be sure to hit the subscribe button. A little like if you like the content and notify in case you want to get more content in the future. Today I'm going to talk about starting an investing series, particularly because we're talking about we've been talking a lot about inflation. And I can look around this room and everything is in this room. The prices have gone up. So inflation is not transitory, at least not right now. That's filming. You want to come over and say hi to people? Come on over and say hi, Benji. Everybody wants to say hi to you. So it's not transitory. Okay. Inflation is going to be here for a minute. I don't mean to sound like a pest in this, okay? What goes up must come down. What goes down eventually will go up. And we're experiencing the up right now. Inflation. So I look around the room, the table, up, desk, up, a printer. You're going to pay more now. Furniture. You're going to pay more. This lights. The lights. You're going to pay more. Television. You're going to pay more. A taché case. Or a book bag or, you know, backpack. You're going to pay more right now. Hey, even for a Bible, you're going to pay more. Inflation. Hats, clothes, shoes, cars, especially rental, especially not just rental vehicles, but also used vehicles, up 32% year to date. Wow. Ground beef is up. 13% eggs are up. 13% fruit, oranges, pears, apples, peaches up over 13, 14%. Everything's up again. So we got to combat this. All right, we got to find out what can we do practically that will offset our cost. Because let me tell you something. Number one, I set out a disclaimer. Let me set this disclaimer out. I'm not a financial analyst. I'm not an economist. I'm not related to Kathy Wood. I love Kathy Wood. I love, and I believe in her. I believe in what she's saying. And I believe she's ultimately going to be right. She's having a rough year. Okay. She's just having a rough year. But she is who she says she is. She's right about Tesla. And I believe she's going to be she's right about a lot of the innovative companies that she's supporting that belong to her ETF. Okay. So just watch it. But it is, it's going down a lot of her, a lot of her ETFs, they're going down. But I'm like, Hey, buy on the dip, buy on the dip. I'm gonna personally get, I'm personally going to get at least a couple of her ETFs. Not at this time, but I will. I know, I know she's right concerning innovation. All right. Anyway, back to what I was saying, disclaimer. I'm not, I'm not going to tell you what stocks to get, what to invest in. I will not do that. So that's my disclaimer. Number two. And this is, this is for my young folks out there, young people that are out there, newbies, because my channel is geared towards young and the new investors. Invest while you're young. Invest while you're young. Let me give you one of the reasons. Number three, one of the reasons is compound interest. Compound interest. Let me give you an example of what compound interest, what I mean by that, because somebody said, what is compound interest? Let me give you an example. So you put away $300. Just monthly, $300 a month from the age 20 to 60. And you make, say an average of the stock market, 8%, just say you make, you know, some years you may make 12%, some you may make 6%, but on the average, 8% is your average return annually. And you're putting away $300 per month, 20 from 20 to 60. That's 40 years. At the end of that 40 years, you'll have about a million dollars. Now, let's say you take the same $300 and you start at 30, 10 years later from 30 to 60. Now you got 30 years, 8% return. You'll make $440,445. You see the difference? Almost a half a million difference, over a half a million. In 10 years, because the compound, the interest compounded. The more you save, the longer you save, the more you gain. Okay? So as a young person, start early. Begin to discipline yourself early. You know, Charlie Munger was on CNBC being interviewed by Becky. I like Becky a lot. And, man, it was like two hours. It was a question and answer series. They were on, I believe, the Daily Journal. They were at some kind of conference. And one of the things that Charlie Munger said that was, he said a lot of good things. He said a lot of great things. But when in concerning, investing early, he talked about not being, not chasing the blame, basically is what he was saying. It's like, a lot of people want to buy all this expensive stuff, and it doesn't make you happy. Instead of just building their finances, building their portfolio, building and building, they're wasting their money on things that don't really matter. And, you know, they could get, they could purchase a Toyota, but no, they've got to go get the latest Mercedes Benz or something like that. And it's like, save your money, invest your money, be smart. You don't have to buy the latest and the biggest things. You don't have to impress anyone. You don't have to try to impress anyone. Be content with what, just be content with what you do have. And let me tell you something. That Toyota will run just as well as the Mercedes Benz. Car, it's a car. Yeah, there's a few other things because of luxury that you'll get. But let's face it, it's not going to make you any more happier. It's not going to make you even more fulfilled. So why not just forget about trying to impress people? And I thought it was a very good statement that he made about that. So I want to encourage people not trying to preach to you. I'm just saying that be a little bit more modest, be more concerned about your future. And that means that you may have to suffer a little bit when you're younger and sacrifice a little bit more. But you'll be happy at the end. You'll be happy as you get older. When you get closer to retirement, you'll look back and say, I'm glad I made those sacrifices. While your other friend B didn't do that, party, spent, wasted a lot of their money, made a lot of money. They made a lot of money, but they wasted a lot of money. And so they get to the end of their life at a time of retirement and they're not happy. They have to work a little extra. They got to put in more time. They don't have the money they have to settle down. You don't want to be that way. Okay. All right. Number four. Control and take care of your debts. Control and take care of your debts. So you want to control your debts. You want to take care of your debts. So whenever you and it happens, you guys, it happens even to the best of us. You'll get in debt. And what I would say is, as soon as you start getting in debt, as soon as you start getting in debt, the sooner you want to start attacking your debt. Now, once you get out of debt, stay out of debt, look at and write down all the reasons why you got it. How did I get in debt? There was some kind of a habit that you developed something that you did you started doing on a regular basis that was not good for your finances. And you want to write that down and say, look, I will not repeat this. I was going out all the time. I was buying his clothes. I wasn't satisfied with what I had in my closet. I bought this purchase, this large purchase that I didn't even need. How many things that you buy that you really didn't need. And I'm not saying don't enjoy the fruits of your labor, don't enjoy the fruits of your job. Oh, but you've got to plan it out. One of the things I try to do is that if we want to purchase something, we set up an account board and we feed it say, hey, we're gonna put money in there for this specific thing. We're not going to touch our budget just to fulfill this need. We're going to hold the need over here in this account and we're going to just feed it feed in and feed it and it does require discipline and it does require patience. Alright, so control and take care of your debts. Now this to me is like the foundation. One of the foundational things you have to do. And that is change your spending habits. You must change your spending habits. Yeah, I mentioned in the background. But don't worry about that. I'm going to let him flow. I'm not going to add it in my love this kid. Everything I do is for him. Change your spending habits. Change your spending habits. Now, here's what I mean by that. If your spending habits are good, that you don't need to change. I'm talking about if your spending habits are horrible. And you find yourself always spending money that you don't have always overspending always exceeding your budget or you don't have a budget. So you want to get a budget and stick to it. But change your spending habits. There's no spending habit to detrimental to your future and to your portfolio. And you must address it quickly and say look, this is going to be the foundation. This is going to be the foundation of my finances is that I am going to make sure that my spending habits are in line with my goals for me and my family. And I want to have extra money so I can be able to give and bless others. And that's really what my goal is. It's always that the reason I want more money is not so that I can feed me and take care of me and make sure that I've got everything and no one else around me does. I feel like I am not a success. If the people around me that I'm close to and my church and my friends are not blessed to what good is it if I'm doing so well and everybody else around me is. Personally, I wouldn't want that. I want everybody around me doing well. And so the more I grow, the more I can help others. And that's the key you want to help others, right? So change your spending habits if they're bad, if they're habits that you've developed over the years that's keeping you broke. And be honest about it. Say, look, this keeps me broke right here. This habit right here, keeping me broke. Number six, how do I invest? How do I invest? You got to evaluate if you're an investor, stocks, real estate, whatever you're doing, crypto, how do you invest? And the number one key I think you have to do is research. You have to research. If you're going to be if you're going to be investing in crypto, find okay, what is crypto? What's the origin of it? Where to come from? What's the purpose of it? I heard a man say this years ago I've always stuck it's always stuck with me. If you don't know the purpose of a thing, abuse is inevitable. You don't know the purpose of a child abuse is inevitable. You don't know the purpose of a wife that abuses and inevitable, you don't know the purpose of your car abuse is inevitable. If you don't know the purpose of something, abuse is inevitable. And so it is with investing. If you don't know the reason why you're investing, abuse is inevitable. Number seven, renting versus buying a house. Oh, this is a loaded one. And I don't want to. I don't want this to go out too far and make this so extensive. But I'm just gonna say they're pros and cons to both. The good thing about renting is that one of the things is that when you come home after a rental, if something's wrong with that apartment, the landlord, the owner is obligated to fix those items. You don't have to you can call them up and say, Hey, I need you to send one of your vendors over, your maintenance guy or whoever, and they got to come over and fix those items. You're not responsible for the maintenance. Another thing is a lot of times in a larger buildings, at least, they're more secure and security is in place. You can't just walk in, they're usually are locks, they're usually gate openers and different things. So there tends to be a little bit more security when you're renting, unless you're like in a like a duplex or triplex or something that's, you know, much more smaller. But if there's a large building that you're renting out, a lot of times it includes security. One of the things I don't like about rentals is this, is that they can go up on the rent. And you might say, Oh, there's rent control and all that, but they still can go up. They can still go up on your rent. And real quickly with homes. Here's the things with homes. You got to fix everything when you own it. Anything that goes down with your house, you got to at least pay somebody to come and do it. Or you got to do it yourself. And if you want to save money, a lot of times you're going to have to do it yourself. And in what the interesting thing about this generation, the younger generation coming up, unfortunately, a lot of guys do not do not know how to fix and repair things. It's interesting. I talked to a lot of guys. And this isn't all guys. There are a lot of guys that know they can, you know, they can handle a screwdriver and they can fix certain things. But there are a lot of guys that don't. And so they got to call somebody. They got to call somebody to come in and fix it. And that requires more money. When it's as an apartment, when you were in the apartment, that's part of the package. All right. But here's one of the pros about owning a home, owning a townhouse or condo. Here's one of them. And that is interest rates. If you got a low interest rate, like the interest rates are low now, until the 16th, which is Wednesday, I believe, that's when Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve is going to raise the rates. Well, the housing rates are already going up. But I bought a house in November that got it for 2.7. 2.7% is my interest rate. That's a great rate. And here's what happens when you own a house. Boom. If you got a fixed rate, a fixed rate, that means it's solid. It's stuck. It's not moving. That rate is the same. It won't change unless you refinance. You know, unless you don't do something else affect that to affect that loan, but that loan is locked in 30 year fixed rate, you're good. So your payment is going to stay the same. And if you have a PMI once you get 20% equity, that PMI is going to leave. So that'll reduce your payment again. So here you are. You got this locked payment. Now the thing about it though, taxes will go up. You still will pay taxes and taxes will go up. All right. But what you pay is going to stay the same. Another thing about if you have a condo or a community that have HOAs, if you have an HOA, you're going to be paying HOA interest rates, HOAs repairs on you. So that's some of the things that and taxes, that's some of the things about houses that you have to consider. So you got to find out where you are in life and what you're doing right now and say, Hey, is it time for me to buy a home? Do I have the money for a down payment? You want to have 20% if you don't, you don't have to. Many people say you got to have 20%. No, you don't. You don't have to have 20%. Want to just get into the house, but your payment is going to be higher and you're going to have that PMI. You're going to have that mortgage insurance. You're going to have the private mortgage insurance and they do that mortgage company and do that because they feel like you're more of a risk if you're not paying 20% and they want to ensure that, Hey, this mortgage is going to be paid. So if you don't pay, if you start coming up and you're not paying the mortgage, they got that insurance they can get to make sure they get their money. All right. So that's the purpose of it. But once you achieve 20% equity, that means you paid three or four years. Say you put down 15% and you pay about two or three years on that mortgage, you'll gain that 5%. Once it hits 20%, you want to call them and say, Hey, I want you to come and I want, you know, I want this, I want my house appraised again. I want to say appraise it. Yeah, you're, you have at least 80% equity in the property. You've got 20% to 20% 20% if you've paid in 20% you've paid on the life of the loan basically as far as equity is concerned. And then once you do that, they say, Yeah, you're good. We'll remove the PMI. They'll remove it. Now you're payment drops again. Now you're locked 30 years. Okay. So that's some of the things that you can think about when it comes to renting and housing. Are there other things I'm going to get into? Number eight, 18 to 34 year olds. Now get this 18 to 34 year olds right now. 31% still live with their parents right now in America. 18 to 34 years old. 31% of them still live with their parents. That's fine. Save your money. If you're living with your parents, save your money. Invest. Because most times when you're living with your parents and parents are going to be, especially if they pay their house off, they're not going to be charging their kids $2,000 to live with them. You know, they're going to have compassion. They're going to say, Yeah, we know you're going to rough times. And in some cases they're not say the kid just got out of college. They just need some time. They got this loan that they got to pay back school loans. So the parents say, come on in. Live with us for a while. Live with us for about five years. Save your money. Deal with your debts. Lower your debts or get out of debt totally and then stack chips, stack your money. And then when you're ready to move out, you can move out. All right. So that's that's another consideration. That's that's interesting, too. Right now, 18 to 34 years, 34 year old, 31% are living from with their parents. Number nine, why didn't I have more money? Say, why don't I have more money saved? That's a good question to ask yourself. If you don't have a lot of money saved, ask yourself why and begin to attack those bad habits and different things that are keeping you from saving money and investing. All right. And that may mean you're gonna have to sacrifice. Say no to some of those subscriptions. You don't need every subscription out there. You got Disney. You got Netflix. You got Hulu, HBO Max. Get rid of some of that. Go down to maybe one or two. If you got children, you definitely want to I would say, you know, Disney, and it's less is cheaper. Disney has a nice package. Disney plus has a nice package. It's got ESPN that takes care of the men and the guys that like sports and women, too. They got Disney for the kids and the family. It also has Marvel in it. Because then you Disney owns Marvel. So you got entertainment, full package for them and then you got Hulu. All three of those are together. All right. Last but not least, how to hold yourself accountable financially. You got to hold yourself financially. You got to hold yourself accountable financially. One of the things you want to do is make sure you're transparent and have somebody have somebody that checks and that you trust just found a partner and have them look at your finances on a regular basis. Have them look at all your accounts. And make sure it's somebody that's going to hold you really accountable. Don't just grab anybody that's gonna say, oh, that's okay. You spent you spent $2,000 on a pair of shoes. That's okay. Enjoy your Nikes. No, no, no. No, you want somebody who's gonna say, Hey, you paid what for what? That was that was a bad purchase. You want somebody to hold you accountable, but use your budget, use your budget and your tools that you use of maybe it's an online budget system. Maybe there's mint or your bank or whatever, use your budget to rebuke you to correct you. As you see your budget at the end of the month, you're like, wow, I need to bring I need to reduce spending in this area. I need to reduce spending. I've been going out a lot. A whole lot of entertainment. Let me quit. You know, I've been spying this certain thing too much and begin to begin to show more accountability and transparency and then check with somebody have somebody that you love and trust that you know it's not going to run off with your money in the bank. Have them come and show have yourself accountable to a person. So that's it for the first installment investing this investing series and hopefully this will help people that you know, during this time of inflation, everything is it is it's on the rise, but things are going to work out. Hang in there. Keep fighting. Excuse me. Keep fighting. Keep investing. And let me give you this acronym that I have G. I. S. S. Yes, J. G. I. S. S. Generate generate more money. Some of you may not be making enough money. Get you some side hustles going on. Okay, number two, the number two, the I and in guess is invest. Generate invest so you want to keep selling and give it and then last save. Generate invest so safe. Excuse me. Wow. Have a wonderful evening. Have a great day. Bye bye.