 Fantastic. Guys, love to welcome you back to the Independent Investor Channel. My name is Ryan. I'm going to rip through 10 life hacks that I feel like are holding a lot of people back. And this is part of the opportunity that I have through social media to speak with many, many people. And during my cross questioning and getting to know people, this is really what comes up the majority of the time. Any one of these 10 or all 10. And I think this is where a lot of people live. And I've shared with people here as of late the 16 things that I think people really need to focus on. This is kind of the dark side of those things that you should be focused on all the time. Unfortunately, people get consumed all the time and they get into this habitual focusing on things that don't matter. And these are the 10 things that are going to hold you back. Let's kick it off. Number one is addiction. Addiction can come in a lot of different forms. But I tell you what, a lot of people, man, they talk about their love for alcohol. They're for every Friday they're in the bar spending hundreds of dollars on it. Smoking cigarettes can be one of the most costly things you can do to your life. Set you back in way of years. It can be costly over the long term. Really, what are you doing while you're smoking? Well, you're not doing other things more productive. You're not exercising. You're not working. You're not looking to get ahead. You're taking that break out of your tough day, guys. I think a lot of people need to toughen up. A lot of people have chalked up smoking as a sign of weakness. I totally agree. And I don't mean to be judgmental out there, but God, guys, if you are involved in any type of addiction, break it. You can do it. It's taking away from all of the things that you need to be focused on. And by focusing in on those things, those addictions kind of dissolve away. You'll reflect back on the addiction if you do suffer from a little bit of that. And you'll wonder why you ever did that, because now, seemingly, you don't have enough time in the day to focus on those things that matter. And I think sometimes people resort to addiction to allow them to escape the very sheer reality that they are overwhelmed in their life. They are consumed by a lot of these things that don't matter and are failing to take a deliberate approach toward those things that do matter. Number two is overspending. Overspending in its broadest sense, man, when was the last time you shopped for insurance? I find this all the time in people's auto purchases. This is one of the fundamentals that I talk about in transportation you need, but how much do you need? Do you need a $75,000 truck? These are questions that are worth asking and challenging whether or not you can afford those things if you can. Great. If not, maybe you want to start at something a little bit more economical, something that can get you to and from work and then some, it can save you some gas a little bit. People's adherence to keeping up with the Joneses is sickening in this company. It's really holding a lot of people back and they feel like if they can show off to the neighbor or show off to family or show off to everybody else out there that somehow that speaks to a successful mindset. I'm here to tell you it doesn't. It's really unfortunate that people default to that type of mentality in this life and it's unfortunate with home purchases. Are you buying above your means? A lot of people think because they're approved for $675,000 that they need to go spend $675,000 on the dot. I'm here to tell you that you can find a home for less than $675,000. If you can't afford that half a million or even $250,000, look to live at least within your means. Dare I say below your means? I really wouldn't want to allow everybody else to have success while you're making sacrifices in your life. Here's the thing, guys. There's a flip side to why we avoid doing a lot of this. If we can avoid some of this overspending in our insurances, some of the memberships that we have. I'm not saying don't have a little bit of luxury, but what I find to be the most detrimental in people's lives is they look to consume all of their discretionary income with a lot of these expenditures until they're gone. And then you don't have any money left for things that matter. Wealth building, things that I talk about on the channel all the time, but the more we can avoid overspending for things, the more we can avoid. When was the last time you went to an outlet mall and spent your money on something that was 75% off? A lot of people, man, and I've made this example many times, I walked through Nordstrom's and I don't understand who's paying $300 for a sweatshirt. A lot of people out there would be like, Ryan, the image is everything, man. You really got to let people know that your image is everything. And it's like, I wear the same Nike shirt to prove a point, guys. I don't care. There's a lot of people who wouldn't be caught dead out in public showing that they wore the same garment twice over. It's faux pas. You just can't do that. People need to not give you the image. Damn, man, to hell with people's image, man. It's all good. I save a truckload of money by not being stupid and I don't pay regular price for items. And I say no a lot of the times. And if you can avoid overspending, it'd be a huge, huge plus for you. Number three on the list is one that you're going to love. This is one that gets people in a lot of trouble and a lot of people forgot 2009, 2010, the mortgage-backed security crisis, and that that home that they bought for $250,000 went up in value $100,000 or $200,000. And it's time to refinance. And it's time to take all that money back out of that, not knowing that the home may have a potential to actually maybe, I don't know, go down in value again. And you're stuck in hawk with all of that in the hole that you've decided to borrow against. I think refinancing with the fees nowadays, it's a bank's way amongst many of taking a lot of money from regular people who are unbeknownst to the power of investing and look at their house as a piggy bank or a savings account. It is not. It is not. What is wrong with just taking a 30-year or if you have the means of 15-year fixed mortgage and looking to pay that off as quickly as possible? And what people miss is they like the idea of refinancing and taking that $50,000 or $100,000 of equity. What they don't understand is that they've paid the house down for three or four or five, even in some cases, 10, 15 years. And that loan now resets back to 30 years. People miss that all the time. They're like, oh, this is great. I can just take the $100,000. Yeah, but you've just added you've doubled back to 30 years after paying the mortgage almost half off. Very few people end up not getting to the back half of the loan because they're stuck in this from 30 years to 15 years cycle of paying it down for a few years and then thinking all of a sudden that they've got to have that newest truck. They've got to have this newest home renovation project done. And the only way to go about doing that is to refinance the house and subject their refinancing opportunity to all of the fees, all of the expenditures, all of the expense that goes into writing those documents that get rolled right back into the loan. Guys, you end up paying for that in the long run anyway. And I think refinancing is one of those big ones that we fall victim to all the time. It's really unfortunate. If you can just stay the course with your mortgage, pay that one extra payment per year or more if you have the means, you're going to end up in such a better financial position than continually. And in some cases, I find habitual refinancing. Hey, it's time to go buy a new rig. Let's just go refinance the house. I don't understand that mentality. And it is absolutely one of those things that are holding you back. Number four, auto turnover. What was the last time you kept a vehicle five years? Ask yourself, I find it ironic how people think just because I don't know something I get a little bit of dirt on the grooves of my car and therefore I have to just fall on tilt and go buy a new one. I get, I'm getting tired of it, right? You know, it's dirty. So my solution is not to just go to the car wash and actually wash it and vacuum it out rather to take it in and let somebody else do that for me because I want a new vehicle. I've had the vehicle for two and a half years. It's time to get a new one. I never understood that mentality and this, this I will guarantee. I provide a lot of guarantees on the independent investor channel, which is ironic because it is a financial channel and I'm not supposed to talk about guarantees in the stock market, which I don't, but here's the thing with your vehicle. If you buy a vehicle, whether it be new or used, I can guarantee that you can get at least five years of use out of that with proper maintenance and with proper care. It's just that simple. It's going to free up a ton of income for you. And I think a lot of people, man, again with this habitual and a lot of these people, man, they duplicate this and their degree of lack of discipline because they deploy multiple things in this category that are going to hold you back. Man, it's planned failure right from the beginning. And then they enter into retirement and they wonder why they don't have two pennies to rub together. It's because you've been living the lap of luxury your entire life and you've justified habitually turning over. It's amazing. I know people that have gone through and cycled through 15, 20 vehicles in their life. Over my career, I just turned in my one. I owned it over 15 years, 15, and I just treated myself to a new one. I really didn't want to, but there was a couple strategic reasons as to why I did that, but I didn't need to. But I have had two in my career, 17-year career. I've had two vehicles in my entire life. I've had four, my beginning car, my second car, five total, my apologies. I've had five total vehicles. I'm 43 years old. I've been driving ever since I was 16 years old. You guys do the math. Ask yourself, how many vehicles have you justified getting in and out of over the course of your life? But auto turnover is one of those that absolutely it competes. And if you guys are a household of two, you know, spouse and a spouse, and you guys are dueling auto turnovers, where who can drive the best car? It's my turn to go get the better car. And now it's my turn. Oh, you got your car last year. Now it's my turn to get the new car. Guys, it's a feudal activity. You're ended up running in quicksand and, you know, to each his own, great. You know, you get to roll around a depreciating asset every other year. And that's great for you. But I'd be willing to bet my portfolio is probably about, I don't know, 100 times bigger than yours. So put your loyalty where you want. Again, if you want to put your loyalty in a frame and a steel and a transmission and a depreciating asset that rolls down the road, then that's where your loyalty lies. Try to teach people a little bit of discipline. And if you can omit some of these things out of your life, you'd be that much more eligible to enter into a wealth building program. Number five is entertainment. Entertainment has no place in my hierarchy of needs that I've shared openly with the community. And this is a big one, man. It's crazy to me how many people, there was a long time where I didn't own an iPhone. And now with the business that I run, it's right next to me all the time. This is the Cadillac right here. Now I don't own a Cadillac nor do I own a Porsche, but this in and of itself is my luxury item that I can justify in a lot of different ways. It is a tax write-off for me because I do have a side hustle with the independent investor channel and I do make money with the independent investor channel. But for you guys that justify 200, $250 cell phone bills now, everybody has to have one. It's amazing to me. This is a real anchor around a lot of people's ankles. And for a lot of people who can justify it in the same manner that I do, it can add a lot of security to your life. It can add a lot of organization, even with the direction and mapkeeping, finding to get yourself to certain obligations here and there. It's a great thing. So if I'm going to yield one thing to you in the luxury category, it is going to be in the form of entertainment. But here's the thing. Do you need to go on vacation every month? Maybe you can come back a little bit. Do you need to go to the movies every single week and drop $50, $100? I see people at the movie theater. God forbid you just buy a ticket to go and watch the latest movie. But no, you have to go and buy the obnoxious bucket of popcorn and the hamburger and the fries and the obnoxious beer that's like a foot tall. You know, my movie theater, they serve that stuff and I can guarantee they don't make the money off of the tickets that they sell. They make it off of thinking that you have to have, you know, the six foot long Laffy Taffy while you sit there and watch the movie. Entertainment, digital streaming services, man, how many channels do you need? Have you taken a collective account of how much you actually spend on your entertainment budget per month? And I think a lot of people, man, they aspire to this. They have to have it. They have to always be doing something. I have to go. I have to do something rather than just pulling up a book and just reading for free rather than just doing what I do and go to the gym for free. It's one of the most enjoyable things that I do with my day. It costs me nothing. It's a benefit and a net positive to my health. It makes me feel good and it gives me spiritual positivity. It allows me to function throughout my day. Look at all those benefits. I spent nothing. I don't even, I don't pay for a gym membership, guys. Right? So if the entertainment category can be throttled back just a little bit, I think a lot of people give away the farm in this category. They've always got to be doing something. Again, it's show people that they're doing something. What did you do this weekend? I don't know. Same as every other weekend. I didn't do anything. I made some YouTube content and I went to the grocery store and I chilled out. I watched a couple of things on Netflix. Just chill out. Most people, man, they give you a freaking rundown and a dossier on what they did for their weekend. Well, we ran here and we ran there and there and here and there and we did this and we ran up to the here. We stayed at this hotel and this resort and this and that. It was like, it was only a two day weekends, man. Do you just kind of take a weekend off every now and then? I talk to people who they run weekends. It's not even a break. They just continually run, run, run. And it's like, man, chill out a little bit. See if you can make it through a weekend without spending money. Is that possible for some people? I would dare to say no. It is not. So challenge the status quo a little bit. Be different. And dare I say, be independent. Okay. All right. Number six on the list. This is an interesting one. And this is one that there is going to be consumers of this message that is absolutely guilty of this very thing. Restaurants. I don't mean to impugn the restaurant business, but I just took my son. We were on vacation in the Shenandoah Valley. As of late, it was a great vacation. It was free. I got a voucher for some poor service that I received at the last vacation that I got was which was very inexpensive too. You're like, do you cheap bastard, Ryan? Just stay with me. I wanted to provide him the five guys experience. And if you want to take a guess at how much a hamburger and a fries and a milkshake. Now, mind you, this was a double bacon cheeseburger. My son is just a little fella, but he's got a big, big eyes, you know, so he doesn't want to get the junior burger. He wants to get the big hamburger with fries and a milkshake. Have any idea how much that cost at five guys? Got any guests? It could cost under 20 or over 20. I'll give you a second. $28. Now, $28. And when he rang it up, I said, well, I'm just going to pay for you, buddy. I'm going to, I'm going to starve. I'm not going to eat here. It's bad for me. I had no intention, but $28 to feed a 10 year old. And we went to two other restaurants that same night. Couldn't even get in the door. It was an hour wait. And I was like, well, I'm not going to wait an hour to eat at Applebee's for crying out loud. Let's go. And the one the next morning, I decided to go down to Kroger and buy some groceries instead of wait for IHOP. I thought, gosh, if all restaurants we could get into and have a pancake or a, you know, an omelet or something, IHOP would be that place, right? Nope. Couldn't even get up there to check in anymore. Okay. But I think people's infatuation with restaurants is out of control. I do. And I think if you can curtail this a little bit, get your spending discipline in order a little bit, I think you guys would find that you would save a truckload of money. What's wrong with just looking at restaurants as an absolute luxury, which it is going to restaurants is fun. I enjoy it. I do. I love going to sushi, but I don't do it very often because it's very, very expensive. Look at it as a luxury. You know, if you want to kick out for a special occasion, a dinner out, an anniversary, a birthday, whatever it might be, great. And that can fine tune it down for you guys to a half a dozen trips to the restaurant every year. And a lot of people are like, what Ryan just said, I can only go to the restaurant six times in a year. A lot of you guys are like, I go six times in a week. Therein lies your problem. And for you guys that haven't made it this far in the video anyway, you've already clicked off and you're already looking for some other channel out there to make you riches because you're tired of me telling you the truth. And the truth is you eat at restaurants way, way too often. Try to cut back a little bit. You'll be amazed at how much discretionary cash it'll open up. Number seven, clothing, personal care, haircuts. If you're a male, a lot easier to abide by this golden rule. I've had my wife cut my hair for the last 17 years. I cannot in all faith go in and provide $20, $21 plus tip. I'm in at $25 to do something that she can do for free. I invested in the cutters. They were probably, I don't know, $60, $80. Maybe a little more, maybe a hundred bucks. Let's say at Costco, they sell the kits. Boom, boom, boom. You rip it out. It's good to go. It's free of charge, guys. It's free. Okay. Some of these folks, and I get it, man, your personal care is your personal business. I get it. Okay. Now, if there's any room to improve upon those, do you need nails that are sticking out six feet from your hand? I don't know. I mean, I guess they're cool to each zone. To a lot of people, that's very, very important to them and gives them confidence. Right? It scares the hell out of me. If you need that, great. Hair for women, I cannot believe that the cost, and this is why I say men, you got it easy. Women, much, much more difficult on the hair thing. I cannot believe what you guys have to pay for, for hair. It's amazing. $120 is just like the normal like, Hey, this is just the basic service. And it's like $120, you got to be kidding me. I have colored my wife's hair for the last 17 years, me, and I'm good at it. I'm good. Want to know what I charge her? Zero. I charge her nothing. And I do a great job. It's consistent every single time I do it. It's however much it is for the color, to color the hair, I do a great job. How much have we saved on haircuts and hair color over the last 17 years? $48,000? I don't know. The idea is to deploy a little bit of discipline. And for you guys that say, look, I've got to have my nails that stick off my hand four feet. I've got to have my braids. I've got to have my weaves. Some of you ladies that have this done, it's oppressive. There's no doubt about it. I get it. And a lot of you guys not going to give that up. That's not the point. The point is to identify these things and say, you know what, this is a luxury that I don't want to live without. Maybe I can adjust a little bit in some of the other categories that Ryan talked about. I'm not looking to be judgmental. I think some of that stuff is great. Nice hair color, nice haircut looks great. I have to for my job. I get it. The intent here is not to judge the intent here is to identify that none of these things, none of them are essential for your survival. But I think a lot of people, they dwell in these categories and they manifest over these categories and they fail to identify the very things that do matter in life. And it's meant to draw a very specific distinction between the two categories, those that will hold you back in life and those that will accelerate your life. Okay, very, very important to separate those two and not combine the two. Identify when you're wasting money. It's okay, I do the same thing. Alright, I identify when okay, we're on vacation, we can splurge a little bit, I get it. But I don't stay in that habitual routine. I'm very, very disciplined in that I know when to retract and get back on my horse again on my discipline. Okay, very, very important. But clothing, personal care, haircuts, shoes, ladies, handbags. Do you need that much? I mean, I could pick on men and women just the same guys. It's those luxuries that maybe you can cut out one or two of the vices in your life. Okay, number eight. This is a good one. For you guys that have been with me for a while, you guys know, I don't time my videos. If I did an eight minute video on the 10 things that'll hold you back, I'd probably do a lot better. But I like the open discussion because I'm looking to make you think hoarding hoarding is something that holds you back. What I can't understand in this country is storage facilities that make all kinds of money storing your crap. If you don't need it enough to keep it close to you and get some sort of passive or active benefit from said item that you have purchased at some point in your life, then why in the hell are you justify putting it into storage and especially paying for that storage? So you've not only bought a piece of crap that you thought at the time you really needed, but now you're going to take that said piece of crap and you're going to store it in a storage shed and pay $69.95 per month to store that crap indefinitely until you look to dispose of it. And I think the habitual part about it is people are addicted to the need for things. They are. They just can't be happy with what they have. They're God given body, their ability to identify those things that are really, really important. And a lot of those things have really very little to do with things and a lot more to do with people, how you feel about yourself, how fit you are, how well you eat, how secure and how well organized your life is. Yeah, these are the things that matter. And I think hoarding, I never understood it. I used the example of driving just some time ago, it's driving through North Carolina, couldn't believe all the homes out there with six, eight cars. We got into a game of counting all the cars in the front of the driveway that were all broken down. They all have weeds growing off the tires. How many people out there need to justify that type of behavior? And again, I don't mean to be judgmental, but is it necessary? Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I need eight, 10 cars in my driveway. And that's somehow going to be a signal of success to people. Maybe I could come onto YouTube and show my vehicles, none of which work. And my ability to grow grass out of the hubcaps of said vehicles is going to be a sign of success and people would come to the independent. They're like, yeah, right on, man, I want to be independent like this guy too. I want to have 10 broken down cars in my driveway hoarding, guys. Stop. It can really save you a lot by just learning to say no to every little trinket and every little piece of crap that you come across at home goods, TJ Maxx, Ross, some of these stores, some of the furniture stores out there, man, they're the freaking worst, man. It's so overpriced. And we say yes to everything. Okay. There are hacks that you can enter into to pick up some of that stuff. The furniture that I'm looking at right now, I picked off a craigslist seven years ago. I love it. It holds drinks off of the floor, just as well as a new piece of furniture. And I like it a lot. So are the end tables that I bought at the very same time from somebody who was looking to sell that because they identified that they didn't need it in their lives. So they were looking to offload to somebody and I needed a dining room table. So I got it. It's a small glass table and I got it for a hell of a discount. So go figure hoarding. If you can look to avoid that, it's the best thing. Number nine, this is an interesting one, learning proper sleep discipline. It can hold you back. When was the last time you got up at, I'll be fair, six o'clock, I got up at five this morning. This is a weekend for me. And I get up early every single day now. I don't sleep in. It makes me feel lethargic. It makes me feel terrible for the rest of the day. I cannot feel engaged. I cannot feel energized. I do not feel like myself. I do not feel like the person that I want to be without getting my butt out of bed. It forces me to go to bed a little bit early at night. When was the last time? What's your bedtime? You stay up till 12, one o'clock in the morning and expect yourself to get up at seven o'clock in the morning, six o'clock and perform like a Ferrari. Maybe this is holding you back. Maybe you're not achieving your maximum benefit by not learning proper sleep routine. Now for me, if I go to sleep by 10 o'clock and I can wake up at five every single morning, that's plenty of sleep for me. Okay, it's plenty. That's about seven hours of sleep. That's what I need. It's my optimal number. What's yours? What's your optimal number to perform at that optimal level? And a lot of people think that they need to sleep in or they need to catch up on sleep. That's a fallacy. You don't. When you get up in the morning, it should be a little bit painful. Okay? And that, yeah, you want to turn over and you want to fall back asleep again. But when you wake up, you should actually feel like there's a little bit of barrier to get over. And a lot of people out there like Ryan, I'm not, you, you, you're messing with my sleep and it going to happen. I love to sleep in until 11. I put the shades over my eyes, you know, hey, again, to each his own man, this is aimed at providing one small cornerstone to your ability in your holistic application to start to achieve a program that is going to give you the most eligibility towards success in your life and sleep discipline is a big one. Learn your number, learn what it is that you can take and challenge yourself a little bit. If sleeping until 11 o'clock is in your best interest on the weekend, great. Try my program. Try waking up early on the weekend and see how much you can get done by 11 o'clock in the morning. Pretty amazing. I don't have enough time in my day to waste time like that, sleeping in and wasting my time like that. And I feel better by getting an early start. That's just me. You got to find your, your niche in finding that proper sleep discipline. Now, number 10, finally, finally, number 10, what's holding people back? What's holding you back? I've just identified, this will be the 10th thing that's holding you back. People's inability to acknowledge in their wealth building program, the opportunity that's made possible through tax protection of your money. You can do away with some of these vices. You get a great job. You're making some surplus capital. If you fail to acknowledge how important it is to tax protect your money, you're earning that money. Now you want to shelter it as much as you can from the government. You do not want to work really, really hard to accumulate a lot of wealth, only to be stuck with a tax obligation to the government at some point. This is huge. A lot of people fall short of this and it will never be perfect in society because a lot of people think that because they just contribute to a 401k that everything is going to be hunky dory, not all 401ks are created equal guys. If you're on the hook for a tax obligation into your future, why don't you try buffering with a little bit of an individual Roth IRA account type of application to shelter some of that money for you as an individual or you and your spouse as a married couple, right? In your household, $12,000 per year, you can tax protect your money. The last bonus thing in the category here is wealth preservation. Wealth preservation is the ability to tax protect, yes, but to take your hard earned dollars and put it to work in a matter that liberates those dollars into the future, not to be subject but to fees. I'm speaking exclusively to the financial planning institutions that have over time identified a way through their gorilla math to affix a 3% fee over your money. It's an anchor that holds you back. If you identify the power of wealth preservation over time by the elimination of fees investing in those products that are low cost or no cost to entry, then you have found your way to a much better place by protecting your money and liberating your dollars in the proper account. Those two things, people give away the farm all the time. They go in, they subject their money to high fee products in accounts that do not provide any type of tax protection and you're really giving your way away hundreds of thousands of dollars. I saved the best for last. This right here is one of those things to where, yeah, if you invest deliberately over a 40 year time horizon, you're going to have a few hundred thousand dollars. There's no doubt. Some people would look at that and say, wow, you're rich. Well, it's the amount of money that you have surrendered to fees over the course of that four decades. That's really the jarring type of figure. That $400,000 looks minuscule to the comparison figure of the potential over that same amount of money over that same time period of over a million dollars in that portfolio. Guys, I hope you appreciated this. 10 things that'll hold you back. Really appreciate very, very important for you to draw that distinction between these 10 things that'll hold you back. And then you ask, where does the focus need to be, Ryan? The focus needs to be on those attributes that you identify in your hierarchy of needs. That is your real house. That's what you should be spending the majority of your time on and really revolving on and spending the majority of your time focused on and looking to reduce some of these things that'll hold you back. Guys, if you appreciate the message to make sure and subscribe to the channel, make sure and leave your comments at the bottom. If I've missed something in things that will hold you back, leave them in the comment section of the video, share the message with anybody out there, hit the notification bell, you'll be notified of future videos that I put on YouTube. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in to the message here and good luck in your investment future.