 Next question is from Danny Matrenga. You talk about the importance of one's relationship with food and exercise. How does one maintain a healthy relationship with money? Oh, good question, Danny. Oh, hey, Danny. Oh, wow. Danny finally asks a good question. Yeah, that's the first time he asks a really good question. We should give him a little star or ribbon or something. No, he's a good person. Yeah. Danny, for those of you who don't know, he's our head trainer. Yeah, he's our guy. Super smart kid. He's all over our YouTube channel. You know why this is a phenomenal question? I learned this recently, relatively recently, that you look at nutrition and exercise and how people can develop a bad relationship with them or a good relationship with them. And once you develop a good relationship with exercise and nutrition, you have this balance, this natural balance. You take care of yourself. You eat right. You exercise. It feels good. It's not this crazy struggle back and forth. Same thing with money. Same thing with money. People who tend to have money issues, it tends to be because they have a bad relationship with money. Such a good point. Don't you feel like there's the same type of extremes too? Impulsivity. It applies to money just like it does food and everything else. Dude, it's funny. I had a friend whose family had constant issues with money and they would always either be in debt or couldn't pay bills and you'd see the gifts that they'd buy each other for Christmas and they were ridiculous, expensive presents and stuff. And I know they're trying to be good and nice and show their love, but I remember thinking like, that's a bad relationship with money. You're always struggling with money and then when it's time to buy a gift, you spend $500. That shows that there's a little bit of an issue with money that you don't necessarily respect it or value it in a healthy way. So this is something that I think people need to work on. In those studies, they have studies on lottery winners. I talk about that all the time. Like people will win the lottery and two years later they're broke or you have celebrities who are totally broke. Michael Jackson, you know when he died, he was something like $500 million in debt. Oh really? Even after taking the Beatles catalog? Yes, $500 million in debt because he had just this terrible spending habits. Oh, I didn't know that. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, so this is too many Ferris wheels. Yeah, maybe. What do you think about your personal relationship with money and how have you managed that? I grew up, so both of my parents are immigrants. My mom came here where she was four. My dad came here after he married my mom. Both of them very poor upbringing. So when my grandfather, my mom's dad came here, he had very little skills that were applicable to the new place that he moved. He became a custodian, worked his ass off. My family's the exact people that, you know, programs are designed for that are supposed to help them and no one in my family's ever enrolled in any of these programs because they're always about like, I'm going to work as hard as I possibly can and find every opportunity I possibly can. I'm not talking down on people that need help. It's just kind of highlighting kind of the attitude that they have. So my grandfather worked seven days a week. My mom grew up, you know, lower middle class, but they never bought things they didn't have money for. They saved every penny. My dad grew up very poor. He started working full time at the age of nine. So nine years old, he had to go to work, didn't go to school anymore. And when my parents got married, my mom would tell me, you know, I remember as a real young kid, my mom would take napkins and she'd open them up and she'd break them up into four squares. She'd tear them up and she used cloth diapers with me and my sister because they couldn't afford diapers. When we would go out to dinner, like, oh my God, hey, everybody, we're going to go out to dinner. It was a big deal. It was McDonald's. We'd go to McDonald's. Remember, this is a kid. You know, that was a big deal. We were never in debt. My parents were able to raise four kids, have a house that they were able to pay. And my dad had no further education than I think third grade. And he worked very, very hard and they saved a lot. And so my relationship with money was work hard and save. Now that's good, but it's not great because I never learned the other side of it, which was invest. It was all about saving, save, save, save, and didn't know anything about investing. So then when I was, you know, 19 years old managing gyms, I was one of the top performers at a big fitness company. This was back in 1998. I was making 100, I made 120 grand, I think that first year, which for a 19-year-old is a shit ton of money, especially back in 1998. I never bought a, I didn't buy a house, I didn't invest in the stock market. All I did was put it in the bank and live at home with my parents, which was better than I think a lot of kids would have done. But I wish I had that other person in my life that could be like, hey, what are you doing with your money? You got all some money saved up. Let's take 40,000 and buy this property and teach that investing. I also think that there is, I think it's a spectrum, just like there, and I love that you started the analogy of exercising food and how that, and I think there is, what we, what most people would think is a really healthy relationship could be borderline unhealthy, too, on the other extreme, right? So I think that there's extremes on both ends of the spectrum, that somebody who has a terrible relationship with it, they buy $1,000 gifts for Christmas when they barely make $500 a month, is totally irresponsible and they never have money and they're broke and whatever. And then there's the other person who makes all this money and they save and invest and they put it all in these things like this and they never spend it or do anything with it. You could become a miser. You could make all this money and live in like a little shack. Right, I think that's unhealthy, too. The funny part about it, there's so many social constructs that are surrounding money. It's really an interesting topic and a topic that I like to talk about and learn about and think about because really all it is is fucking paper. It's really just a way for us to exchange things, right? I go to work every day. I work really hard. I get paid for that, right? That's why I... And then what I do with that is, I can exchange that money for something else. Now you can save it and exchange it for security because some people value that highly or you can exchange it for things because some people value that highly. But really I think it's understanding that balance and I think to your point, Sal, that when you really get at control of it, I think you have a really nice ebb and flow. I personally save and invest, but I also spend. I have friends that save everything. I have a buddy of mine who may have as much, maybe as saved up as me and make significantly less than what I do and is always thinking about investment in the future. But I also see the way that he lives his life and I think, man, that's so crazy. You have all this money in the bank and invested and you're worried about having a second streaming service because it's $3.99 a month. That's, to me, crazy. If there's a show on there that you really love and enjoy and it gives you fulfillment to watch it, but you're going to choose not to do it because $3.99 times 12 months adds up to a whole $50 or $60 that you could have used. So I really think that there's also a balance too because then you could spend your whole life preparing for the future, you could come for you or make it taken away from you. So I think sometimes we look at money and we give it this thing so much more than what it really is. It really is just an exchange for your labor. If you compare it to food because it's easier for us to communicate, I think, when it comes to nutrition. I have a much better grasp of what a bad relationship and good relationship to food is or at least I can communicate it better than when I try to communicate with money. When it comes to food, there's eating for enjoyment. There's eating for health and sustenance and performance. When does it become pathological? It becomes pathological when I'm eating to fulfill something that can never be fulfilled with food. If I'm trying to eat because I'm depressed or I'm numbing myself or I'm distracting myself, now it's become pathological. So if I'm buying things because I'm trying to distract myself because I'm fulfilling something that cannot be fulfilled with money, like I'm lonely. So I'm going to spend tons of money on it. I'm going to go to the mall and just shop. Or buy friends, hang out with my friends and pay for everything because I'm lonely. Or I'm insecure and so I'm buying these things so I look more powerful. I got to have a nice car so everybody thinks I look cool. Not because I really enjoy the car or whatever because if it fulfills, I'm trying to solve an insecurity through money, that's when it becomes pathological. So if you can examine that, be honest with yourself with that, what tends to happen, this is what tends to happen. The people that I found that I think have the best relationships with money, they tend to have the stuff that they kind of value and they don't have the stuff that they don't value. So like, I used to train a lot of executives and high achieving doctors and surgeons. And I remember one guy that I trained, I love training him because his attitude towards money was one of the healthiest I've ever seen. Now he was a vascular surgeon and he was a damn good one. He probably would make, I'm sure he made close to three quarters of a million dollars a year as a vascular surgeon. He was a badass and he was working all the time. This guy drove a 1999 Nissan, it was like one of the SUVs, like an old Nissan SUV. It had like 200 something thousand miles on it. And he worked out in a shirt that had holes in it and shoes that were kind of old. At first I was like, God, is this guy like a, is he a miser? Like he's just work, save his money, not spending on it. So I remember asking him, like, why do you drive such an old ass Nissan? He's like, oh, I fucking love that thing. He goes, I throw my dogs in there. They get it all dirty. It's been with me forever. I don't really care about whether or not I bump into things with it. I just enjoy driving it. And he goes, you know, at home I have a Porsche. I had no idea. Like, oh, you have a Porsche? He goes, yeah, I like that too but I use it for other things. And I'm like, why do you work out in these kind of workout clothes? I'm working out. I was like, I don't care what this looks like. Went over to his house just after a year or something of training him. Gorgeous house up in the hills of Los Gatos. And I knew that he really valued privacy. So he had land, he valued privacy. And I could see the stuff that he put in his home were things that he truly valued. And I remember thinking like, oh, like he doesn't spend money on what everybody else thinks he, he doesn't have to walk around with flashy clothes. And that's okay too but that's what you value. But my point is he didn't. Therefore, he didn't spend his money on those things. So I think that's where you start to look at the pathology. So like if you're looking at your money and you're making money and you're thinking, you know, I'm sad. I want to go shopping at the store to make myself feel better. That's probably a bad relationship with money. You know, you might be better off taking that money and investing it so it can work for you and grow and develop some spirit. I've shared on the podcast a long time ago that I built this kind of formula. And I'm not like completely strict with this ever but it's what kind of head, it started me in the right direction of a better relationship with money. And that was at the end of every month I would look at like all my normal bills, your cost of living, food, things like that. And whatever sum of money that I had left over I would invest or save half of that and then the other half I would allow myself to spend. And the harder I worked the bigger that number became. You know, if I got better at my craft I worked harder. The number that I was able to save and spend on myself was greater and if I wanted something bigger or nicer and it would take more than two or three months of saving then I would just keep saving that money away and then I would go and spend it and buy. But I would always do that where it was like I was never taking all of my money blowing all of it on something and then like having to wait for the next paycheck to get me by. I was like, so I just created this good habit of putting a little away, spending and enjoying a little bit. Now older way beyond all that I have just a nice ebb and flow of I know if I've been in a streak of indulging and spending on myself then I'll go the other direction and I'll make sure that I'm balanced it out by investing more and saving more of the next couple of months after that. So I have this really nice and really what it is is just having a good relationship with money but I do believe that there is just like there is with food and exercise a big spectrum and there's extremes on both sides and just like in fitness where we look at the people with the amazing bodies and they're all ripped and shredded. And we think, oh, they must have the best relationship of food and exercise. Right. Oftentimes it's the worst. And sometimes it just says somebody has all kinds of money, right? Or has all kinds of things that you would think oh man, they got it all together when it comes to making money or having money. Sometimes those ones are not at all and so I think there's a nice balance of the two of them. Yeah, I think I'm still learning. I think that this is one of those things. I've been, I definitely was raised more in like a blue collar kind of a setting where I never spent outside of my means and what I worked for equated to what I was able to buy and getting beyond that for me and learning how to better optimize my investing strategies and be able to make my money, make money is something that I'm still reading and learning and trying to get better at and implement for my family. So therefore, you get like all those main things covered. All the rent, all the day-to-day things that need to be accounted for. Everybody's living to where it's all those foods on the table, the lights are on, the main utilities. So I just making sure that's all established. Now it's like, okay, since I've sort of established that now how do I be better? How do I optimize? I feel like this is just, this is a whole another leg of my experience with money. Yeah, let's talk about debt because debt to me in, if I were to compare it to nutrition trying to think of a good analogy it would be something, it would be like fasting. You can utilize debt and be smart with it and improve your financial stability and circumstances. You can be very smart with debt. Most brilliant millionaires and billionaires in the world tell you to go in all kinds of debt. Know how to work through debt. But most people do not have a relationship with money at a level where they can do that. Debt becomes a big problem. The way I view debt is this. I have to want something more than I don't like the debt. In other words, I almost never am in debt but mainly because I never really want anything bad enough to go into debt. Now a house is different. A house, I may want a house where I've had several in the past and I want that house and I don't mind the debt to have the house but like a car for example and this is just me. I'm not a huge car guy. I've realized this to myself. I don't value it so much that going into debt to own a car doesn't bring me a ton of value. But again, that being said debt is a tool. I would consider it an advanced tool for the average person. If you knew, if you had a good relationship with money, a healthy relationship with money you could utilize and manipulate debt in ways to benefit you but people have such a poor relationship with money that debt becomes a bad, it becomes terrible and you see these people who are just the average American I think has something like $15,000 with the credit card debt and what do they buy with it? Now you got a massive hole to get out of. What are they buying with it? It's not like essential shit. Debt with a car and debt with a house are two different things too and there's of course there's two camps that would argue with the house and stuff but a house would still consider and it is a liability but it's also an asset and it's also an investment where a car, you know, unless Unless you're buying like a rare car. Right, like a classic. I consider my Camaro as it was an investment. That's actually what made me funny that we're talking about that. What made me buy the Camaro, I remember when I had saved up enough money to go out and go buy myself a $100,000 whip and that was like a big goal for me. I'd saved up this money to go buy myself and the younger kid and me and the ego wanted to go get something flashy and new. I want to go get some flashy new car that was awesome and I thought to myself before I did it and I was shopping all these different vehicles and I had always liked classic Camaro is a car that my real father had and drove and it was something that I always wanted as a kid growing up and I thought, you know what I can kind of do both here. I can get something that I've always really wanted but then also it'd be something that's an investment. You know, anybody that has classic cars knows that you know, on average, most of those vehicles go up between 6% to 12% every year just because every single time one gets in an accident the value of those things go up because they're even more rare. But things like that I think are other side from classics are things that are regular cars are a different type of debt than like a housing debt so any sort of debt that I were to consider putting myself in running credit card to go buy a bunch of electronics or buying a car I'll never do it unless I have the cash saved. So like when I go out and go buy a really nice car I already have that cash. I'm doing it for the leverage to build credit and that because we live in a world now where that does matter. And I wasn't... But you're using debt in a right, in a smart way. Right. Where a lot of people don't understand they don't have the good they're not advanced enough with the nutrition to go and use fasting for their health. You know what I'm saying? It's the same thing like there's a basics that you need to learn and basic rule number one is work hard and make money that's number one and don't spend what you don't have and save money. Like if you can't get that down you can forget about investing debt. Don't get involved with the strategies. Yeah, you're just going to fuck yourself up. But if you get that down then you kind of graduate to the next level like okay I can save money I don't spend more than I make and I have a consistent job I work hard now I can look into how do I use debt leverage debt how do I invest so that I can continue to make this grow up. It's funny I always tell myself slow to spend you know that's sort of like a rule I have because it's just again like those impulse buys and those things like it's tempting at first but for me it's like okay if I keep thinking about it over and over and over then you know it's something I'm going to consider. It's a lot like food what do you think about it? It's why it's a great question. It's a lot like food. It's all relationships that we can become pathological. I don't know what the number is and I'm pissed off but speaking people in lower incomes in comparison to higher incomes spend a much greater percentage of their income on luxury type items so I'm not saying that they buy more luxury items but a greater percentage of their income goes to shit that they probably shouldn't buy right so you'll see a lot a greater percentage of people in lower income spend money on things like jewelry or cars or electronics as a percentage of their income things that are considered luxury not necessity then people who cigarettes and things like that things that are not necessary but that are kind of just money killers a greater percentage and that's because a lot of times people who don't have a lot of money a lot of that has to do with the accumulation of the bad relationship that they have to food excuse me with money so it's like over time these people could it be in a higher bracket of savings and wealth but because they get money they spend it on this stuff that's not very smart or they have a bad relationship with money they kind of keep themselves down there and you can look these statistics up and they're really crazy a lot of that I mean it was this is something that I battled with as a kid in his early 20s who was making good money like I wasn't rich at 20 but I was making six figures which for me that was a lot of money of that six figures probably 90% of it was spent on exactly what you said because it was more about everybody else it was more about the insecurity that I had with being successful coming from nothing to wanting to show everybody that I am successful now so therefore here I am buying all these flashy things spending all this money on everybody else picking up bar tabs all the time and so that's I was a classic example that and most of the time when you see people like that that have lower income that's been a majority of it it's because you're trying to look as if you are wealthier than you really are and what you don't really know is you're really shooting yourself in the foot for long term real success and wealth that's right and with that if you want to come and download our guides they're all absolutely free you can also find all of us on Instagram you can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam