 What's the phrase? Hell hath no fury. You know the rest of that, how that goes. So eventually if you set the stage for that, it ends in divorce, and you're paying for that mistake for a long time to come. If you have kids, you'll pay for that along to come. If you've been in a long-term relationship with a woman, alimony, that mistake is going to stay with you for quite a while. So trying to buy a woman's love. If you set the script the way you want it to be at the start, you'll find the right woman. If she's not into that, and she says, you know, I got guys that want to take me out, have fun, enjoy. She'll still be into you if she's really into you. So trying to buy a woman's love falls into the third trap that a guy should avoid in his 20s would be avoiding getting caught up in materialism. It's so prevalent in America. I mean, the television, every show, you're just bombarded with Madison Abbot. Advertisers are telling you that the car you drive is not good enough. You need a newer car, a different car. The clothes you wear aren't good enough. The neighborhood you live in isn't good enough. The water you drink isn't good enough. You know, the phone that you got is outdated. You need a new one. We're just bombarded left and right in this culture with all the stuff that we need. And it's easy for a guy in his 20s because you get good grades in high school so you can get to college. And you study hard in college so that you can get a good job. And you get a good job and now your buddies are out and like, man, look at the car I'm driving. I got this new BMW and the other guy's going, well, check this out. I got this new Escalade and the other guy's going, hey, I got a Mercedes. I'm going to trade up because that makes me look good. When you get a copy of materialism, you take some of your worth and value and you're assigning it to what you have in your possessions. And that stuff is so fleeting and we get suckered in when we're young because we think in America that economic success is really what it's all about. But when you get caught up in that in your 20s, automobiles, clothing, being addicted to a particular brand, I got to have this particular brand of car. I'm always going to drive a BMW. I'm always going to have a Mercedes. I've always got to have this line of clothing or these are the kind of shoes I'm always going to wear. In your 20s, you'll find that you spend a lot of money to keep up with materialism. Instead of investing for your future or taking your money and spending it investing in a business or investing it in yourself for travel or things that you like to do. And everybody loves it. The reason being is there's a thrill of the new purchase. Every time you buy something new, you kind of satiate that need and that want. You're like, man, look at that and just fill in a blank, whatever it is. Look at that new computer. Look at that new car. Look at that new shirt. And we buy it and it satiates it, but then after a while the thing's old. So we get caught up in that. That's a big thing to avoid in your 20s because there's other things that you should be focusing on. Really, your goal in your career should be finding a work that supports your lifestyle. Like I said earlier, when you get to be later in life after a couple of decades has passed since you've been in high school, since you're out of college, like, wow, I can't believe that happened. That was so long ago. You think, man, some of you guys are just out of college. You think, wow, college is 20 years ago. That time will go by so fast. And you'll find at that juncture in life, you'll look back and you'll define yourself differently. If you work to support a lifestyle, that stuff just comes and goes. It changes with the fads. But if you work to support your life, the kind of life that you want, you say, hey, I don't want my life to look later on. Do I want to be able to travel when I'm in my 40s, 50s? Do I want to be able to retire at age 55? Right now in your 20s, maybe you've got the whole, you say, I've got time to make mistakes. I can go here and do this. I can do this. I really have to think about money. Retirement's not that close. That's way off in the distance. But that, man, it comes steam rolling along. So when you're 20s, you really got to avoid that materialism trap. The myth of the American dream. What is the American dream that we just saw in the past couple of years totally implode and blow up? Anybody know what is the American dream? To own a house. Exactly. And everybody invested in houses. Man, I'm going to trade up. I got this one. I'm going to buy a couple, rent them out. And the whole housing market crashes. Everybody's got a short sale. People are walking away. People's credit is going to be destroyed for a few years. Because they thought, hey, this whole thing, this is going to make me happy. And a house, a nice house. And I've got friends that have lived in some of the nicest houses in Orlando. And knowing them and having talked to them, been in a relationship with this guy, being a close confidant. I know that the house had nothing to do with his equation of happiness. The house, a car, anything that materialism has zero to do with your level happiness in your life. So you got to avoid the trap of materialism. Let's see. Along with that, if you fall in that trap, you'll make the fourth mistake. Is amassing personal debt. Man, we live in the culture where you can buy everything on credit. No one sells anything on price anymore. Everything is sold over time. And that's been the way for about 30 or 40 years. Marketers, salespeople tell you, hey, when you see the car commercial, in a little, let's show you the number of the price of the car. But in the car commercials, what's always the thing that they advertise? Drive this for $449 a month. You can lease this car for $399 a month. So they sell it on payments on time. People are like, hey, man, I'll sign up for that. I'll sign up for some debt. So I've driven nice cars, and I've driven beaters. I've gone from the beaters I drove in college to driving nice cars to realizing, hey, that's not that important. So I'm going to drive a car that's paid for. If I have to fix it every now and then, that's fine. But the car, again, has nothing to do with your equation of happiness. It has nothing to do with the level of woman that you're going to attract to your life. It has nothing to do with the level of friends that you're going to have, true good friends that you have in your life. So you have to be careful of that. Some of the things in your 20s that you collect debt for are college loans. If you want to go to grad school, people instead of working and putting themselves through or trying hard to get a scholarship. I'm going to get a student loan to go to grad school. I'm going to put the stuff on my charge card. Credit card debt, car loans. My rule is that I should have stuck to before I met my ex-wife. Hopefully she won't see this. It's on the internet. Maybe she will. But if you can't, you probably, maybe you guys have a grandfather that went through the depression or maybe a great-great-grandfather. Hope I'm not that old. If you can't pay cash, you don't need it. If you live by that maxim, your whole life, if you get involved with a woman who becomes a long-term relationship and you have a living together, if you can ingrain that in your brain and she's on the same book and the page, you guys will have a huge amount of financial success. You should. If you don't have, you can't pay cash for it, you don't need it. The only time that I think borrowing is good for you or leverage is for a business venture that's going to make you a profit. You're pretty certain about it. Borrowing money for a risky venture is stupid because there's all kinds of people that are willing to take your money. But if you've got a good, solid business plan, you've got a team of people put together and you know that this thing is, everybody's going to put 100% effort into making it work. That's not a bad time. I borrowed money for business. Capital's easy to raise in America. If you're a sharp guy and you've got good ideas and a good, solid business plan, you can go out to raise a million or $2 million of capital. It's not a lot of money these days, but if you've got a business venture, it's easy to find that if you've got a good plan, if you're on the ball. And that's probably the only time to borrow money in your 20s. If you did that, you've got a good business plan. The other thing about amassing personal debt, you say, well, you know, I understand the car. I'll just drive the car that I have. I'll pay cash for it. That's good. I'll fix it. Because in the long run, fixing the car is as much as making the monthly payment and you're not indebted to it. But you know, a house, a mortgage is a good idea. Who's got the cash to buy a house? Man, I see this house and it's decent. In today's market, it's $250,000. You know, I can't be wrong. Get a mortgage. And what we found the past couple of years, getting a mortgage is not. Housing values don't always appreciate. You know, we've seen them drop off. Most of the markets, especially in Orlando, we haven't even hit the bottom yet. You know, it's another 12 months before it hits the bottom. So people are going out and buying houses. Now they're going to be hit another 12 months. People are trying to jump off their sinking ships for closures, short sales. So the mortgage is not always a guaranteed thing. The house is not always going to go up in value. A house that you live in is not an investment. If you ever, Amy has ever heard of Robert Kiyosaki? Rich dad, poor dad. Cash flow quadrant. He's got a line of a bunch of books. Great books to read for you for money, for financial. But the house you live in is not an investment. And we've learned that in the past few years. A house that you buy and rent out with a positive cash flow, and you get depreciation that you're writing off on your taxes. Now that's an investment, but your house is not. The other thing with amassing personal debt or getting a mortgage or getting a car loan is that it ties you down to one location. When you're in your 20s and you're not married and you're not in a long-term relationship with a woman, or you don't have any kids, this is the time to see the world into travel. And if you've got bills that you have to pay here, if you've got a car payment you've got to make your upside down in. If you find that you want to move, you'd be surprised when you want to have a little freedom and move to a different city, maybe take another job opportunity. Well, I'm chained at this house here. Wow. It used to be that that was a sign of success. But not anymore. I mean, a sign of paid-off mortgage. That is the guy on the radio who's got the financial radio. He says, hey, that's the new. It's not the BMW that you're driving. It's a sign of your success. It's the paid-off mortgage. So a mortgage is not a sure bet. It's a chain. And you can be mobile if you're not tied down to debt. So amassing personal debt, besides the pressure that it puts on your life, it forces you to stay in a job because maybe I hate this. I want to make it try a new opportunity. I'm not starting a business, but I got all this debt that I have to make this monthly. Not I got a crack. So that is the fourth thing. The fifth thing, a mistake to avoid.