Does Getting Married Help You Earn More Money? Earn Your Leisure's Troy and Rashad on the Marital Minimum Wage, Tariffs, Financial Trauma and "F U Numbers"

I'm Nicole Lapin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand.

It's time for some money rehab.

Well, well, well, this is the crossover episode we have all been waiting for.

Today I'm joined by the Trailblazers behind Earn Your Leisure, Troy Millings, and Rashad Bilal.

If you don't already know, Earn Your Leisure isn't just a financial literacy podcast, it is is a full-on empire.

Troy and Rashad have been hosting their show for years and bringing on guests to share advice on building wealth.

And so when their team reached out to us and asked if they could be guests on Money Rehab, it was a fast hell yes.

And the conversation was just awesome, nerdy, and actionable as I knew it would be.

We dig into a lot, so get ready.

We talk about their predictions on the U.S.-China trade war and what it means for your portfolio.

We also talk about the insider trading mess in Washington and whether finance can really be democratized.

Also, we go pretty deep talking about financial trauma, money dysmorphia, and the push-pull of relationships and money and what it actually means to feel like you have enough.

Oh, and if you have a crush on Rashad, you will get the answer on whether or not he is single.

Kind of.

Welcome to Money Rehab.

Thank you for having us, Nicholas.

Pleasure to be here.

So I've been such a fan for such a long time.

Got to throw some financial flowers your way since the beginning.

Please.

I've been such a big fan of what you do we're all in the financial literacy party i think what really struck me is you're so calm i love your voice in a crisis

it

even makes me calm everyone relax appreciate thank you have you always been chill no you got to keep your composure i think that we've always had like a calm demeanor he's a little bit more outgoing than i am like i'm very like chill laid back reserved person but i feel like um in a day and age age where everybody's trying to be somebody that they're not, and like, I feel like a lot of times when you get online or get on social media, it's almost like wrestling.

You have to adapt to a personality.

So you have to like change your name and you got to change the way that you dress and change the way that you talk.

So I think it's refreshing for people to just really feel like it's an organic vibe.

And that's what we did.

We haven't.

changed our personas or changed our name or changed too much about ourselves.

We're just the same people that we were before.

So even if people don't know us or haven't knew us for 20, 30 years, they can feel like it's an authentic person that they actually grew up with as opposed to a celebrity or a talking head that they're listening to.

Maybe with some fancier stuff.

A couple of trinkets.

With the tariffs going on, not necessarily on my bingo card, although it probably should have been because With Trump, he tells us what he's going to do.

It just wasn't on the bingo card with how aggressive it was.

So everybody's freaking out.

Your audience is freaking out.

How do you tell people to stay calm?

The beautiful thing about our audience is that they grew with us through the pandemic.

And so they've seen crisis before and they've seen a bull market and they've seen a bear market and they've seen catalyst events that have the market appreciate and they've seen catalyst events have the market depreciate.

And so when this happened, it was kind of that preparation of there's some uncertainty, which has always been the number one thing in the market that we can't control.

And you can reference 2020 March of what uncertainty looked like.

And we can reference.

Circuit breakers.

It was crazy.

Exactly, right?

Like, this is the end.

Like, how far can this thing fall?

And so when you see something like the tariff announcement happen in early April, it was like, oh, okay.

We've seen something like this before.

There's a lot of uncertainty.

But this is an opportunity, right?

Every time there's a crisis, we always tell people there's an opportunity for people to really take advantage of it.

And so our audience was prepared.

It wasn't like I'm selling everything.

It It was like, we know what to do, right?

When these prices get to points that we like inside of good companies, we're investing.

And so they did that.

And they're going to slowly, but surely, they're starting to see the benefits of that discipline when it comes to investing.

Yeah, because with that opportunity, we saw 1,500-point gains, three of them, I think, record-breaking highs.

And you can only participate in that if you don't sell.

I mean, retail investors, I think studies have shown, and you'll know this, tend to do 4% to 5% worse than the SP 500 because they get so scared during these times.

And Google shows that sell stocks, that search rises anytime we see a short-term dip.

But that opportunity means that your investment portfolio is up.

Do you guys know how much yours is up right now?

Well, I'll say this.

We're still down from the highs that we were at in February.

We haven't recovered fully yet.

But we spoke with the head of brokerage at Robinhood, and he says they had had a record inflow of money that flew in over the last month and a half.

So now I think that people are starting to go away from what they used to do as far as panic and sell.

There's still some panic selling that happens, but now people are really buying the dip and that's become a term in urban vernacular is buy the dip, right?

So I think that more and more people are looking at these downturns as an opportunity as opposed to being scared.

And that goes to the work that everybody like yourself has been doing and championing as far as financial literacy, teaching people about investing, teaching people about index funds, teaching people about dollar cost averaging.

So they used to call retail investors dumb money because they were not educated.

So they were liquidity.

They were opportunities for smart money, which is whales and institutions and hedge funds to make money off of.

But now I think they're starting to change.

I think more and more regular people that might have $5,000 or $10,000 or $1,000 invested, they're still educated and they're not getting taken advantage of at the same level that it might have been at previous times in history.

So I think that current is starting to change a little bit.

He said something important.

The title sophisticated investor really doesn't have a monetary amount attached to it anymore.

You could have $10,000 and be a sophisticated investor because you have the education.

Whereas in the past, a sophisticated investor was somebody that had over $250,000 in their brokerage because they had the capital and people giving them information, then they were making better decisions.

But now with the wealth of resources, obviously shows and books, people can make their own decisions and become sophisticated with the amount of money that they had and can grow portfolios.

I mean, the best emotion to have when you're investing is no emotion, which is really, really hard.

And that's where a lot of the financial demons come into play.

And you guys talk about in the book, You Deserve to Be Rich, some of your financial trauma.

So, Troy, can you talk to me about when your parents lost your house and how that impacted you and how that still impacts you today?

Yeah, it's interesting.

I still live in the neighborhood where that house is, which is pretty interesting.

So when we were writing the book, I drove past it just as a moment to see how far we've come.

But yeah, my parents from Jamaica, they moved to the Bronx and we were living in the South Bronx in the 80s and they bought a house in Greenberg, New York.

And at the time, I remember them trying to get as much money as they could for the down payment, borrowing money from family members.

And we finally got the house and it was great.

It felt like, yeah, we're moving on up.

And within three short years, everything turned around.

We lost the house and ended up moving twice and ending up in somebody's basement, one of my dad's friends, his basement.

And it was humbling, the embarrassment of it.

You have a house in the neighborhood and everybody's looking at you like, yo, you guys, you're doing well.

And then you're in somebody's basements, roach infested, rat infested.

And just like, how did this happen?

As time goes on, you realize that the financial education wasn't there.

What happened to them was they signed an adjustable rate mortgage in 1988

and they didn't know what a fixed rate mortgage was.

And so when they could afford it in 1988, it was great.

But by 1990, 91, that interest rate almost doubled.

And so now it wasn't something that they could afford anymore.

And it was moving on down.

But what it did do is it showed me what coming together looks like.

Because even in the midst of that, we never felt like we didn't have.

I grew tight relationships with my parents.

I grew tight relationships with my brother because we were experiencing that at the same time.

And so financial discipline became became the thing.

I was going to school in Westchester, but living in the Bronx and getting bus money and trying to figure out how am I going to have the bus money and lunch money to get home every day.

And these are the things I'm thinking about, like, how am I going to do this?

I didn't have a TV at the time.

I remember I used to just listen to the radio and read the newspaper.

But inside that, that's where I got a love for reading, especially like I was reading the sports section, but then I go to the business section and then I would read the news in front.

So I always read the daily news back to front.

I love sports and I was like, all right, I'll get a little business in the middle and then I'll get to whatever's happening in the world.

And so that discipline helped me later in life.

When it was time to learn about finance, I didn't go to school for economics.

I didn't go to school for business.

It was self-taught.

And so that reading came back into it.

It was business week.

It was CNBC.

It was anything I can get my hands on that would help increase my knowledge base around the world that I wasn't familiar with because my parents didn't come for it.

A lot of my family didn't come for it.

And I did have some friends who have some financial knowledge, but I wanted to be part of their conversations.

Like I was around and they they would have financial conversations.

I was like, man, I can't really contribute.

I don't know what they're talking about.

And so I took on the liberty to say, all right, I got to go educate myself.

So the next time they have a conversation about money and finance and real estate, yeah, I'm well in depth.

In fact, I'm going to add to this conversation.

So it was like a challenge for me from that point on.

But that all happened because of losing a house and figuring out how you're going to move on as a teen and how you're going to correct those mistakes in the future for your family.

And you own a house now?

I own a house.

I own two homes.

Yeah.

So I own my parents, we live in a home now.

And that's interesting.

During the pandemic, when the interest rates were really low, and I remember like, hey, we got to refinance this house.

And my parents were like, we can't do it.

We co-own it.

And they were like, psychologically, they did it.

Psychologically.

Just going through the process of interest rates, that trigger word again.

They couldn't do it.

I'm like, look, it's 2.75.

We may not get to this point again.

Right now we're at 4.5%.

That's two points on your interest.

And just the fear and the process of them going through something like that again, they didn't do it.

And so we stayed at that four and a quarter, four and a half.

And now you see your interest rates up at 7%.

So we missed a moment where they could have saved money on a mortgage, but that fear kicked in again.

So I owned that home with them.

And then I just completed a home that I just built with my wife.

So that was a process too.

Yeah, I remember my family's house being foreclosed on when I was little.

And no matter what I know still about finances, it's always going to be an emotional conversation.

And I think a house is a home.

It's not actually a great investment over time compared to the stock market.

But I think it's hard to divorce yourself from those early emotions and that early trauma.

Rava, do you have an early story that has affected the way you look at money?

For me, it's just a matter of understanding entrepreneurship at a high level.

Because my dad was an entrepreneur.

My mom was a school teacher.

She's always from a standpoint of like security.

And he was on a standpoint of making risk.

As an entrepreneur, you take risks.

You know, when you're a kid, you're not really privy to a lot of conversations.

But if you're an observant person, you can pick up things.

You don't have to actually have a conversation with somebody to know what's actually happening.

It's like a puzzle.

You can put pieces together.

There's a lot of times where, as an entrepreneur, you might not get paid.

for a week or a month or whatever, right?

And it's an inflow of cash that's not always stable.

So that can cause a lot of issues.

When one person has a stable income, the other person doesn't have a stable income,

that causes problems.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, that causes problems.

So you see things like that and you understand, like, okay, like, this is the dynamics of a family that when you're dealing with finances and it could lead to issues.

And

that's something that you pick up early on.

So you got to figure out, like, is this something that I want for myself?

Or do I want to subject somebody else to that?

Or you start to think about those type of things because a lot of issues in relationships come down to finances.

I think that's one of the major cause for divorces, actually, in America.

There's a lot of different things that you just pick up on as a child that shapes who you are as an adult.

But for me personally, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur.

So you see the ups and downs and you know that it's not easy, but that's giving you some level of foresight of what you need to avoid and different mistakes that you could potentially stay away from.

Keep your overhead low.

Don't overexpend yourself when times are good.

Make sure you hoard money as opposed to spending money when times are good.

Then you don't have money when times are not good.

So these are all things that you pick up if you're around people that actually are in business and you can learn from their mistakes just by observing.

And you can learn from things they're doing good by observing.

Like sometimes you don't always have to actually get mentored to learn.

Like I said, if you're an observant person, you can actually learn just by being in close proximity.

So, you wanted to be an entrepreneur, but you also want to be married.

Huh?

You said I wanted to be married?

You want to be married.

Is that right?

Marriage, if it happens, it happens.

Haven't you recently said that the best thing you can do in this economy is get married?

For sure.

Nothing more.

Two incomes is better than one.

So it's been proven that a married couple's financial trajectory

is better than a single person.

That's been proven.

So

I think that is it's beneficial if you find somebody that you know you really connect with to have a family unit, even if we need taxes and like there's so many different things that you get benefits for from being married.

But it's also a thing that can actually really hurt somebody financially also if you find the wrong person.

That's for sure.

So it's not something that you enter into ill-advised prematurely.

so you have to find the right person and you have to have proper guidance and education before you enter that union

wow that's very prophesory

this is a message sponsored by the married man of america

if you could find love

i congratulate you but have you found love me i'm not married Are you dating?

That wasn't the question, man.

I'm just day by day.

I'm just living, taking it one day at a time.

So that's a nope.

Yes, Nicole, I am married and I am in love.

We recently celebrated 13 years.

Congratulations.

And what he's saying is true.

And before I was married, he was my financial advisor.

And so that was some of the advice.

It was like two incomes are better than one.

But there's a certain level of stability that you have when you're in a marriage.

If you look at the wealthiest people in the world, they have something in common.

They either are married or they were married or.

they've been divorced and got remarried because there is a sense of stability there and there's a sense of ordinance in your life right there's a certain level of discipline when it comes to being in a marriage so there are benefits for it which is what prompted that statement that you read because being outside and being around a lot of my friends who are single i'm listening to the stories and i'm hearing the feedback and i'm watching the relationships that they're having and there's a common theme and it's imbalance right there's a lack of stability there's a lack of knowing what i want and what i'm looking for And so that led to the prompting of like, you know what, the best thing to be in this space right now is find somebody that you can really rely on, count on, and build with.

How do you feel about it?

What's your thoughts on that?

Well, I actually learned from you guys about the marital minimum wage.

So that basically is that married men make on average more than single men.

I just wonder if what's the chicken and what's the egg?

Do married men become more successful or do more successful men get married?

Well, what's your personal experience?

My personal experience is having a happy marriage, which I have.

And there's a difference, I think, between being married and being happily married.

You're absolutely a partnership and a team.

And the day we mushed our brokerages together,

that was such a great experience because you talk about compound interest.

That was a compounding effect of two

investment portfolios becoming one.

And that number doubled.

Do you think that you being married has helped you, not just from a brokerage standpoint.

Do you feel like you're more successful because you're married?

I think that I have more time to focus on it because we actually met on Rya.

On what?

On a dating app.

Okay, okay.

Are you on dating apps?

No, I'm not on dating apps.

I had more time because I wasn't on the dating app anymore.

Now we talk about the app

being like Zillow.

Social media is a dating app.

Instagram is a dating app now.

Like every, every how you're starting to date?

No, I just, I'm not going to let you know.

How so bad.

Don't know

about what's going on with you.

We don't know.

We never really got the answer on that.

You're such a politician.

So most, I'll get us back to financial news, but the people want to know, what are you looking for?

Good energy is extremely important.

That's the number one key in life.

You got to have good energy.

Good financial hygiene.

Yeah, you know, I'm not really a person that really checks somebody.

I'm not one of those people that's like, on the first date, what's your credit score?

That's not cool or sexy.

But some people, like,

some people in the financial literacy community, they're like, that's the first question you should know.

Nobody you should know to pick up on cues for how responsible somebody is.

For sure, definitely.

That's important.

I think positive cash flow is important.

You don't want to be with somebody that's a liability.

You need assets.

More assets than liabilities, for sure.

She's 10 for 10 right now.

Nicole, you're on fire.

I'm loving this.

You're amazing.

She's a Pisces, by the way.

Are you?

Yeah.

When's your birthday?

March 7th.

Wow.

You thought I was going to be able to do that.

You did some due diligence.

I know who you are.

Oh, my God.

I know your birthday.

I know your social security number.

That's next.

Later on.

Okay, Rashad.

We're just trying to get you married here.

Appreciate it.

We're trying to do money rehab.

I appreciate it.

Should I get a pre-nump?

Mando.

Do you want a prenup?

Mandatory.

Mando.

Oh, Mando.

It's money rehab.

We got to make sure we give responsible financial advice.

So you're ready with your prenup and you want good energy.

Yes.

That's the crazy thing.

You know what I saw on social media?

People with a prenup are less likely to get divorced divorced than people without a prenump.

Is that true?

That's what that's what I saw.

A divorce lawyer.

He said he's done thousands of prenumps and only have five divorces.

Because I think it's about good communication, right?

Like you're going to have a prenup regardless.

The state's going to decide what happens if, God forbid, you get divorced.

But it's having that hard adult conversation.

I'm going to let you go on this one for today.

Communication.

No, communication is key.

I like that you said that 100% key.

But he's answering questions now like a politician.

And so I'm curious, with all of the chaos happening in Washington, would you ever run for office?

I put on my Instagram last year that I was thinking about running for governor of New York.

And so I have political friends.

So one of my friends was actually a Congress person.

And they're like, are you serious about this?

I'm like, look, nah, I'm not serious about it.

Don't worry.

But I do think that I'm 50-50 on the politics thing.

Half of me.

would be very interested in being in office.

The other half of me just feels like it's so fake and you got to make everybody happy and you can't be who you really are, which now I guess that's not.

Maybe you could be, right?

Maybe you can't.

The floodgates have opened.

Yeah, kick down the doors.

For sure.

So, I don't know.

Politics is interesting, man.

It's just

a dirty game.

Politics.

Do we like his chances if he does?

I love those chances.

I vote for you.

What I'm worried about in Washington is all of this insider trading.

When we were checking our portfolios, there was a report that Nancy Pelosi made like 5 million bucks, which is 26 times her salary by the way in the market it's on both sides of the aisle so the only thing they can agree on is the trading side or trading yeah i actually did a study on nancy pelosi's trading it was interesting how she was doing options and so a lot of her options were deep in the money and so that that was even a strategy explain what deep in the money means so deep in the money so options are you're predicting the appreciation of uh an equity right and so there's a strike price which is where you want to reach but if you've passed that on the way up then you're out the money right?

Because it hasn't gotten to that point.

But let's give a number like 150, right?

When you're deep in the money, you're going below 150, right?

So you might be at 100, meaning the equity is already passed by far where the current equity is trading.

In other words, you're not buying it unless you know something.

Yeah, you know something and you know that there's potential.

for growth inside of that equity.

And so I looked at the companies she was invested in.

A lot of them had to do with technology, which was interesting.

I'm like, all right, we know technology runs the economy, but where she was buying these calls at was really interesting.

So if a company like NVIDIA was trading at 120, she was buying like $60 calls, right?

It's meaning it's far surpassed $60, but there's potential growth for it to go up.

And the depreciation, the percentage going down is a lot less because for NVIDIA, a company like that, a trillion-dollar company, to go from 120 back down to 60 is highly unlikely.

So there's a little bit of certainty there.

So it was interesting.

I was watching that.

Marjorie Green is another one.

And I actually listened to your episode about it when you were talking about the ETFs that track both Democratic and Republican moves.

And it was like, it's funny that none of it's illegal, but it feels very

allegedly, it feels like

there got to be some legalities that are not being checked.

We had Senator Jill Brown on the show.

Just saying.

From New York.

From New York.

And senators, actually, I think it's all Congress beats the SP 500 by 17%.

That's unless somebody is like

Warren Buffett in disguise

in Washington, it has to be knowledge.

It's like COVID.

They all sold their stocks two weeks before the official lockdown happened because they got briefed that we was going to get a lockdown.

It's human nature.

If you know something, you're going to act on it.

And it's not illegal.

It's not.

SEC chair Gary Gensler came out and said it's not illegal to act on non-public information if you're in Congress.

Yeah, so they get, even when you're a senator, they know who's getting, they know who's getting contracts, they know who's about to get under investigation, they know when, and they know everything, they get briefed on things that we're not privy to.

So, of course, if they're smart, they're going to use that information to make money.

And now we've seen it even go a step further with meme coins.

Yeah.

President has a meme coin, right?

So now you actually have political people that's actually endorsing

their own

coin investment to push to the public, marketed from the bully pulpit that they've been provided from being elected officials.

That's unprecedented, pretty much.

And it's centralizing it too.

What do you think about Trump coin?

Because I think it was like 58 people made a ton of money.

10 million.

Yeah, and then everybody else lost everything.

Yeah, it's a scam.

Any of those coins are scams.

They're not tied to anything.

The whole point of that is just to...

pump it up real quick get a few people rich and then it's going to fall apart so that's with anybody that's done that with celebrities when they've endorsed the coin.

We just never seen a president do that before.

But there's a lot of things that we've never seen happen.

Or a first lady.

She got a coin.

Yeah.

Everybody gets a coin.

Your granddaughter is going to get a coin next.

I don't know.

I think what worries me, and you guys do such great work on democratizing.

financial literacy and I try to do the same work.

But when you have this going on in Washington, can it ever actually be democratized when there's such an unfair advantage?

When you see, you know, I think it came out that 100 members of Congress are trading stocks that they have bills on.

With this playing field, can it ever be leveled?

No, it's never going to be level.

The idea of there's no democracy.

Like democracy is everybody's equal.

That's not true.

We know that.

If you're Elon Musk, you're not the same as a school teacher in Nebraska.

You can literally put $200 million into an election.

How are you equal?

Right.

If that was the case, then it would be so many different laws and rules that would be put in place to make every single person equal.

So I think that

it's never an equal playing field in life.

But the most you can do is actually just get into the game.

That's it.

Right.

You can get into the game.

You're not going to be LeBron James, but at least you're in the game.

You can participate.

You can participate in an imperfect system.

I think that's the key to the democratized part is the participation.

So yes, we know that they're doing it.

Can we track what they're doing?

Oh, yeah, there's actually apps that you can use to track it.

So, if we can track it, that means we can use the information too.

We can participate it at the level we're at.

Because, yeah, like you said, it's always going to be imbalance.

But if we don't participate, that imbalances

that gap just widens so far.

Yeah, you can't say, well, I'm not going to do it because it's not fair.

Well, then get left behind.

You got to be in the game to win.

You either participate or sit on the sidelines or start a revolution and try to erase the whole entire system and bring a new system in, but that's extremely difficult to do.

So as long as you're going to do it, we're waiting for you.

Prashad, you're going to run for office with your wife.

First lady, y'all have it.

CNN.

Yeah, you have it.

Got to be the campaign manager.

I got your political strategist right here.

I like that.

I like that.

We're on the case.

You're hired.

Hold on to your wallets.

Money rehab will be right back.

And now for some more money rehab.

How often do you check your brokerage?

I mean, you got to check every day.

Every day.

I check twice a day.

How much are you up?

Let me check.

Can we check?

Yeah, I'm going to check right now.

Should we all check?

My E-Frame is up 79%.

79%?

We got down to 11% earlier in April.

So yeah, since April.

So we're up about 60% since the tariff.

Where primarily?

So my options trading account.

But it's all relative.

I think sometimes people get discouraged when numbers.

Numbers is an infinite language.

There's no ending or beginning in mathematics.

So we have to look at, okay, where are you up since we started the year?

Where are you up since you started your brokerage account?

Let's say I'm up 500% since I started my brokerage account, but I'm down from the start of February when it's

I think sometimes this can be misleading and it can have some level of discouragement for the average person.

I just tell people, just invest.

If you invest in quality companies, ETFs, index funds,

you're going to make money over the course of time.

But in pockets, you might have a good season where you're up.

You might have a bad season when you're down.

But if you look at it, if you look at it too much, then that's going to cause you either a comparison analogy where you're actually comparing yourself to other people.

Then you start to gamble.

then you start to make bad decisions, or you get discouraged because you're like, why am I doing this?

I'm only up 5%.

I might as well just gamble.

Online right now, there's more money put in online gambling than the stocks.

That's a problem.

So we really have to be cautious about how we're curating these messages because the reason why people are putting more money into online gambling is because they think that they can have a quicker opportunity to make more money.

I like it boring, like so boring.

I like my returns.

Most people are not entertained by something that's boring.

They're entertained by Flash and numbers.

And if that's the mentality, then you're going to go to Las Vegas.

Yeah.

And you're starting to see it now over the past six or seven years where people are appreciating the number.

So where it was, hey, we can get you a return of 7%.

People are sneezing at that.

That's a good return.

Yeah.

7 to 10%.

When you're not educated in the space, it feels like, oh, that's not a lot.

Especially if I tell you, hey, I had this equity that I invested in.

NVIDIA would be a company that's up 400%.

The seven doesn't feel as good.

And so there's a level of expectations that we have to put, but a level of knowledge we have to put behind that.

If you have compounded interest of 7% return every year, you're in a good position.

It's also based on how much money you have.

Because if you have 7% on $1,000, you can't do anything with that.

If you have 7% on a million, that's somebody's salary.

So it's all relative.

And that goes back to the education as well.

So the numbers that we're looking at is important, but it's also how much money you're putting in.

That's why you got to put as much money as possible.

Saying like the amount doesn't matter is a lie.

Amount always matters.

I agree.

But that's why investing and business go hand in hand.

So like with our platform, we teach entrepreneurship and we teach investing because you got to have money to invest.

What happens is that if you don't have money to invest, now you start with very short, small bots of money.

Then you start to gamble with that because you want outstretched returns to make it make sense.

$1,000, 7% seven percent is not gonna move the needle so now i need ten thousand percent return on my thousand dollars to actually get somewhere in life but if you have positive cash flow coming in now you can invest a thousand dollars a month now that compound interest makes sense so it's a double-edged sword you have to find ways to make money whether that's through a high earning occupation and you have to be skilled in today's high earning occupations that's actually going to make money in the next 20 years or you have to be an entrepreneur so you can't go about it one way or another.

You can't just earn a lot of money and do nothing with it.

That's the recipe for disaster.

And then you can't be a just Warren Buffett when it comes to stocks, but then have no money to invest.

You're going to get frustrated and you're going to go against your discipline either way.

So it's all interconnected.

I think the first 100K is the hardest.

I think that's when people get really frustrated because they're not seeing the power of compound interest.

But once you get up there, I was looking at my portfolio.

I thought it was good for 4% up yesterday when the market spiked again.

But at a certain point, that 4% or 1% makes a big difference.

So if you're at a million, 1% gain doesn't seem like a lot in the market, but that's 10 grand.

If you're at 2 million, you got 20 grand.

And so I think the initial accumulation phase can be the most frustrating thing.

It's interesting you said that because I agree.

It's the first 100,000, even trying to save up to that amount.

I know a lot of people are like, hey, I'm saving my money because that's what kind of been taught.

As you're a young adult, save, save, save.

And trying to get to thousand to invest is it's like the mountaintop if you can get to that then it's like all right well i have income now to see substantial growth that was kind of my story it was like get to the hundred thousand

do all the research put in some good investments and watch the return and i did that in uh 2020 and then the returns were great and so we're just gonna replicate in that but that 100 000 that that is the threshold when did you get there early 2020 what about you a hundred thousand i'm not a hundred percent sure to be completely honest with you i remember when i made my first million dollars 100,000 to me was not a goal.

I'm not discouraging people from $100,000, but I feel like $100,000 is very attainable.

I know a lot of people that have $100,000 saved, like in their 401k.

That's a realistic number that if you're doing the right things, you're going to get to $100,000.

A million is where it gets tricky because to have $1 million liquid, that's when I think it's,

that's the hardest to me personally.

million, your first million is the hardest to me.

I feel like the hundred thousand is inevitable.

A million dollars is almost damn damn possible, liquid.

But once you get a million, now you just gotta changes.

Rinse and so when was that for you?

I think it was 2021, yeah.

And you guys shared it and celebrated or did we share?

We didn't share it.

We both made it share it.

But the 100,000, like, do you say like

on your phone?

Yeah,

yeah, definitely.

Definitely.

And we were like, I remember putting metrics in.

If I get to a million, I'm going to buy this watch.

And then you got to the million.

If I buy that, that's really like 50,000.

I don't know.

I got to, I changed the metric.

I'm like, we got to make 1.5.

We got to make two.

And so you just keep changing the metrics.

But yeah, I agree with what he's saying.

Like the million was the goal.

100,000 saved to invest was like.

I got to get there.

Cause that 100,000 turned into the million.

What did you buy in a million?

What did I buy?

I bought a watch.

Yeah.

That's the first thing I was doing.

I I mean, I think the thing is we keep changing the goal on ourselves.

So once you get to a million, it's like, I'll definitely celebrate when it's 1.5 or when it's two or when it's three or whatever it is.

I think you skip steps.

So it's a million, then it's 10 million.

That's the next goal.

Like 10 million is a goal.

And then after that, it's like maybe 50 or 100 million.

You just add a zero.

You leapfrog.

What was your route?

Was it like one and then 1.5?

I think for me, Every time I set a goal and I hit it, I automatically think of the next goal.

And I think that comes back to a lot of the financial trauma that you guys talk about because it feels like it's never enough.

When you're like, oh, when I get a million dollars, like then I'm set.

And it doesn't totally change.

Like what's in your bank account doesn't equate to how you feel about something being enough.

Do you guys feel like you have enough?

I always used to say my mindset was that of a millionaire.

My bank account just didn't say it.

So even when I was teaching in school, I had that mindset of I'm going to be financially disciplined because if I was making $100,000 a year and managing a family of two and a wife, I'm like, if I get a million, there's not much that's going to change.

So it was the mindset.

The money just came because obviously the value we were adding, but the discipline remained as well.

And it wasn't like, all right, now I'm going to be an overspender.

Now I'm going to be frivolous with money.

Now I'm going to do things that are out of character for me.

Like you said in the beginning, we get to show up as ourselves.

Every day, this is, we haven't really changed since we were like 12 and 13 years old.

And so we've gotten knowledge and resources and obviously relationships that have helped us guide it.

But that just added to the tool belt of who we were already were with, especially when it comes to money.

But I feel like when you get your first million dollars, you're going to feel pressure.

You're going to have a lot of anxiety.

Why?

Because you don't want to lose it.

That's the first thing.

Nobody wants to have money and then go broke.

When you're broke, there's no fear of going broke because you're already broke.

But it is a lot of pressure.

to make sure that you do the right things with your money because there's no guarantee that you're going to make that money again.

So that's one level of pressure.

And then most of the time, you're gonna change where you live you're gonna have different things your kid might start going to private school so your expenses are gonna go up that puts more pressure on you to keep making money lifestyle creep right that's a real thing it's more pressure more money more problems more money more problems that's a fact

yeah do you guys have a number like an f you

number

it sounds like your next number or have you hit it yet is 10 million i think the fu number is 100.

100 million.

That's when you can just

ride away.

Like live off your

interest.

At that point in time, I feel like

it's almost impossible to

go back to zero if you have 100.

You want 100 million

liquid or you want 100 million of net worth?

Liquid.

100 million.

Liquid.

What?

Liquid.

Because

you could have 100 million net worth and then 95% of that is tied up into a company's valuation.

Exactly.

And then that company.

You're not marked to market and you don't

actually get...

We've met a broke billionaire before.

It was an interesting story.

He told us a story of how he's one of the youngest people to become a self-made billionaire in America.

Who is it?

Ryan Boslow.

He was like in his 20s and Forbes listed him as a billionaire.

He wasn't broke as far as no money at all, but he had probably less than $100,000 of cash because all of his valuation was tied up in his company.

And then he had a board and then he had a fight with the board.

So he couldn't really do too much with the company.

It was a lot of infighting that was happening.

He didn't have too much control of the company at the time.

The company really wasn't even at a position where he could take money from the company.

So he had a valuation of being a billionaire and he was broke and living in Los Angeles.

Like he wasn't.

You can't go to the supermarket with your valuation.

Right.

No.

But what rich people do, and I love that you guys educate on this, is borrow against

that value.

So I grew up in an immigrant family too.

A lot of immigrant families are the same.

They just use cash.

If you don't have something,

you don't buy it.

We're not getting it.

It's either cash or nothing.

And you also put all your plastic bags in the dishwasher and never use the dishwasher.

I don't know if that was the case.

Plastic bags in the dishwasher.

Plastic bags in the dishwasher.

That was the storage area for

the bathroom.

Oh, it was like a shelf, like a drawer.

Because everybody washed their

hand washer.

Exactly.

Yeah, my mom, she washes dishes with her hands, but she uses the dishwasher as the dryer.

Yeah.

So you wash this stuff and then you put it in the dishwasher so it could just air dry.

I feel like that's family.

My family didn't speak English coming here.

I needed to figure all this out the hard way.

All I knew about money growing up is that debt was a four-letter word and it was bad.

And you don't use credit cards and you don't get mortgages and you don't take out debt.

But what rich people do, I find out much later, is that they leverage against those assets.

Didn't this guy

take out a loan against

a private company?

i guess he couldn't because it was happening with the board and all the stuff that they're fighting so it was a unique situation his situation is probably not common but i'm just saying that's an example of the net worth sometimes a little bit misleading right like it's what do you have what can you touch what can you touch yeah hundreds a lot okay well what's your number he told me this when i was 24 he was like look you just got to get to 10 million because if you get to 10 million and you can live off three percent interest he was like you make sixty thousand dollars a year right now can you live off three $300,000?

I was like, yeah.

He's like, so get to $10 million.

That's what I was going to say.

Yeah.

Living off your interest, you don't need $100.

I think 50 is a number for me to say F you.

The things that I want in life, I have those things.

And so, yes, you want to make sure that you can create sustainable wealth for generations, but the liquid cash of having it, I think 50 would be good.

Because even at that 5% interest.

I think it's relative currently.

Still a million.

So 10 million to me is considered wealthy but i don't think 10 million is enough to say f you i don't think so i think you still got to be cautious you still got to be careful yeah depending on your lifestyle of course but like you're living in new york city you living in miami you living in la you're going to travel you're going to do different things i don't think 10 million is a number where you can just ride off into the sunset and just say f the world can i preference that real quick because you i was a teacher when he told me that this is 20 years ago but 10 number is it's 10 numbers that's a number that's important for sure but i just feel like once you have nine digits, it doesn't have to be like 100% liquid, but it got to be a large portion liquid.

Six digits is what you always look for as far as growing up, that you have to try to make $100,000 a year.

Seven digits is a

dream as far as everybody wants to become a millionaire, but that's still a workable thing.

You're still working.

Eight digits, as far as 10 million, to me, now you are.

wealthy, right?

But you still have to maintain that.

You still got to stay in pocket and manage different things.

Nine digits is when you're Uber rich.

And when I'm saying like FU, I'm thinking like Uber rich.

So you don't have to have 100% of the nine digits liquid, but I do think that is a large portion has to have some level of liquidity.

But to me, nine digits is when you can literally just say

FU.

FU.

Do you have a number?

Now I feel like my number was too low.

Now I have to.

What was it prior to this conversation?

It was 20.

Okay.

But now I feel like I need to add another

digit.

Add a zero to it?

I don't know.

We can be at 50 and

you can come over.

And Orthodox can, because I don't know.

God forbid if you get divorced, it's half of that.

Exactly.

Safe birth.

Happily married.

Happily married is the key.

Which is why you need the prenum.

See?

I agree though.

It's all coming full circle.

Because at that point, this idea of leisure changes.

So if you had that money, would you still do what you're doing or what is earning your leisure at that point look like for 100 million

no i feel like if you got a hundred million you're not doing the show you're not doing anything that point leisure has been earned it's over yeah game over like what about the people that need your advice we have curated over seven years of content right now and wrote a book and done a variety of different things so at some point in time it's over i'm not trying to do this too much longer like i feel like the more you do the less you'll appreciate it why

because familiarity doesn't really breed appreciation.

It breeds contempt.

So the more you see something, the more you just, all you do is just think about what they could have done better or criticize or it just leads to, because it's human nature, right?

Like you're used to seeing your mom every single day.

But if you don't see your uncle or your aunt that you only see once every two years, it's like Christmas every time you see them because you don't see them.

So if they give.

If you don't like them.

No, I'm just saying if you have a relationship, if you like them, right?

Everybody has a favorite uncle that they only see every couple of years.

So sometimes it's better

for people to appreciate your absence yeah

as opposed to you being too familiar and too comfortable we're not at that point yet but we've given a lot of information and we got a lot more information to give but at some point in time it's going to be up to the people to carry on their legacy yeah the level of appreciation always deteriorates over time right because

you've seen consistency at a certain level right every time you show up whether it's every monday or every thursday we're putting on an episode you expect it to happen.

The minute it doesn't happen, it's like something got thrown off in your life's algorithm.

Why didn't they do it?

You don't remember 10 years ago when none of it existed.

You just remember that this is what is part of my life now, and it's added value, and they're supposed to add value because I need them to add value until it's not there.

So, yeah, he's right about that.

When you guys don't show up on Monday, we'll just know that Rashad is on a yacht.

No, but we'll have a thing.

Final call.

It'll be like the last episode, and it'll be probably four hours.

And we'll actually talk about the exit.

We'll talk about our exit.

And we'll say, now you'll actually, you'll see from start to exit, literally, that'll be a whole documentary within itself.

And we'll say, okay, this is it.

This is how we've got the $100 million.

We'll walk you through the process.

This is what we did.

And this is our gift to you, guys.

And this is a send-off.

It's going to be titled Leasers Been Earth.

See you in Mikonos.

It's been real.

Yeah.

The reality is that it's very unique to watch something like that happen in real time, right?

They watched him as a financial advisor.

They watched me as a teacher.

They watched us in my dining room to having $100 million.

They've literally watched that step by step.

Whereas you've never seen that really.

Like you've never seen somebody start something, get a valuation for $100 million, a dollar valuation to potentially be a billion-dollar company.

And you got to see the day one, right?

Like by the time...

Facebook had happened, it was like already going, right?

By the time it was publicly traded, it was like, all right, we're 2012.

What was he like when he was in those dorm rooms in Harvard?

What was that?

That's what we've built with Earn Your Leisure.

Like, you've watched from day one as we've created not only just the show, but created a network, created live events, created the book, created curriculum.

People have been with us through this entire journey, which makes it super unique.

I've loved watching your journey.

Thank you for taking the time to share more of it with us.

Having us.

I could talk to you guys forever, but I'd love to play a couple quick finance games before we go.

hold onto your wallets money rehab will be right back

and now for some more money rehab

okay it's a game of bullish or bearish

yep real estate bullish but you gotta be careful gotta be careful with real estate yeah residential residential yeah for sure bullish commercial real estate bearish bearish

Crypto.

Bullish.

Bullish.

Gold.

Bullish.

Bullish.

Short-term treasury bonds.

Short-term treasury bonds.

Long-term bullish.

T-bills.

Bullish still.

Trey's like, it's choppy waters.

69%.

Choppy waters right now, but it's still in pool.

Long-term treasury bonds.

Bullish

still.

We had a good guest on Steve Eisman, who actually

met him on.

He said he's not scared.

Yeah.

His confidence was pretty impressive.

He put up a lot of valid points.

and yeah he backed it up there's no alternative as of right now exactly yeah he was a great guest for sure yeah but you're not buying any treasuries you're doing options and some other crazy okay index funds bullish bullish index funds and chill anything that i didn't mention that you're bullish on foreign investment yes bullish funds that track outside the us

ETFs i agree haven't gotten as much love but they should our next game is Never Have I Ever.

Do you guys drink?

A little bit.

You know, it's early.

We were going to bring something.

I thought you would be down.

I'm down.

I thought we could do like beer or champagne or something, but we didn't bring it.

Yeah, champagne.

We could use that.

I only drink champagne in the morning.

Rose to be exact.

Please, preferably.

We'll just pretend like we're in the south of France.

Okay.

So we've all played Never Have I Ever.

Yes.

All right.

Never have I Ever maxed out a credit card.

I definitely do.

You drink me?

You drink, of course.

Pretend that's like class day.

The good stuff.

Ooh.

It's good.

What region of France is this from?

Never have I ever split the check on a first date.

Oh, no, I don't split the check.

You don't do that.

That's crazy.

We grew up in a different era.

Splitting the check is crazy.

Yeah.

I agree with you.

You're from the same era.

Yeah.

I know.

I know the year.

You know everything.

This is true.

March Pisces.

I'm a March Pisces, too.

Oh, you are?

Yeah.

So you're sensitive.

I think that may be the female trait.

Okay.

I'm sensitive, yes.

Okay.

I will take it.

Never have I ever bought a lottery ticket.

I bought a lottery ticket before, for sure.

Never have I ever signed a prenup.

I have not signed a prenup.

Neither have I.

I did not.

Never have I ever been in debt.

Oh, yeah, definitely been in debt.

Never have I ever bought myself a six-figure gift.

A six-figure gift?

She, she got expensive.

What was your gift?

Yeah, now I'm interested.

It was a car a car a car does that count what company range river love that's one of my favorites okay love it i don't think a car really counts though well you bought it in cash yeah you bought a car in cash that counts thanks guys it counts thanks yeah i love it never have i ever disputed a charge on a credit card

definitely definitely doing it right now amex

seeking away you kidding me i agree

you haven't disputed a charge you really haven't lived yeah exactly never have i ever fought with a friend about money.

Fought with a friend about money?

Have you guys fight about money?

Never.

Not once.

No.

I don't think so.

Never.

I've had friends ask for money that was irrational, and then we stopped speaking.

Huh.

That's not a fight, though.

Because you started making money, so they thought.

They asked.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Can you loan me this?

And you didn't feel like it was appropriate for them to ask or you didn't feel like...

The amount.

I didn't feel the amount was appropriate.

Like, I'm all helping people out but when the amount is outrageous and you're like are we talking like six figures yeah as a loan or as a loan do you think you should lend your friends money i give my friends money in the anticipation that i'm not going to get it back

so a loan it was like i'm going to give you three percent over the next two years i'm like all right you know what i'm gonna call you back wow and you never did They're still waiting for the call.

All right.

Never have I ever become a New York Times bestseller.

Woo!

Let's finish this cup.

Cheers.

Cheers to you.

Cheers to you.

Boss bitch.

You guys should do the mail version.

What will we call it?

I don't know.

You tell me.

Boss broke.

What is a boss bitch?

What does that mean?

A boss bitch.

The cup just got put down.

For all the listeners, the cup was just put down.

All right.

Let me turn to her.

Let's hear this.

Okay.

A boss bitch

doesn't have to be either to be both.

So I was called a bitch in a derogatory way early in my career when I was ambitious and trying to do something with my life from where I was born, somewhere in the bleachers in the alleyway.

I don't know.

But if what I was doing made me a bitch, then I own it as a badge of honor.

Got it.

That's it.

Now it's in Cardi songs and stuff like that.

It's a popular slogan.

Took it from you.

It was 10 years ago.

Oh, so you started that?

Yeah, I did.

Oh, wow.

Congratulations.

Okay, this is interesting.

Being that you started this, do you think that it has gone away from its original?

Because now it's used all the time.

So a lot of people have said that that's taken away like feminine aspect of so there's an another term that's feminine ceo i think it's called where it's like you could still be soft still be feminine but when you created that term did you have that in mind that you could not be feminine or the feminine i'm also have never split the track like i really like being in my feminine energy i think it's super super powerful it's not about being a man being masculine.

It's about really owning whatever power you have and using it as a badge of honor.

We end our episodes.

You know this.

Rashad might not know this, but you know that we end our episodes by asking all of our guests for one final money tip you can take straight to the bank.

What's yours?

That you can take straight to the bank.

Not literally, but just.

Maybe literally.

The biggest money tip that I could ever give somebody is

to live below your means.

You know, increase your income, decrease your spending, invest a difference.

I think that's interesting because it's not within your means.

It's below your means.

Below your means.

Yeah, and that's important.

That's the thing.

That's important.

Most people haven't really, nobody ever really thought that through.

Below your means, invest a difference.

If you can do that, you'll be fine.

If you don't remember anything else in life, if you can learn to live below your means and invest a difference, then you'll be okay.

I've been going on six years with this advice, and it's still the most important advice.

Plan for your future because you're going to be older a lot longer than you're going to be younger.

When you talk to people, especially in our space, two things they say, I wish I would have known that when I was younger and I wish I would have started when I was younger.

I'm so glad I didn't invest earlier said no one ever.

Ever.

Start no.

It's true.

Yeah.

You're never as young as you are today.

Today is as good a day as any.

How long are you really young?

What do you think?

It's interesting.

Like, I remember the kid who graduates college feels like he's a man or a woman now because they've passed the phase of their scholastic education in a certain sense.

And so are they no longer young?

And I'm like, to me, they're young, right?

43, the 24 is pretty young, but they're going into now adulthood.

They're in part of the real world.

They've got to get real jobs and make real money to live on their own, presumably.

And it's wait, you're an adult right there.

I'll tell you, for a woman, it's when you hit 35 because that's when you have a geriatric pregnancy.

Or

it's 35.

But I also think it's the expiration day, too.

So I don't use terms like young young and old because it's all relative.

If you're 16, but you're going to live to 18, you're old at 16.

But if you're 40 and you're going to live to 95, you're young.

How do you know that?

No.

Exactly.

That's why we got to be careful with these words because you manifest things upon yourself.

That's why I don't use those type of words, young and old.

You're just living.

We're just passing through this.

But when you start to put that on yourself, right?

Now you're starting to actually manifest certain things that you have no control over.

So I don't really like those terms, young, old.

I feel like we're all just passing through.

We don't know our destiny.

But we just, you got to just live in that moment.

Start now.

I think that's really important, especially now.

I have a four-month-old daughter, and I think a lot about how I talk about money, because when you hear, I can't afford that, or we can't afford that, that really impacts you later in life.

Yeah.

Maybe it's, that's not a priority right now, but we don't stop to necessarily think about how we talk to ourselves and to others.

Yeah, I suppose there's compounded interests on that mentality, that language that sits inside of you for a while.

I'm asking for money as a kid, and my mom would jokingly say, if you was $20, I'd spend you.

And I'm like, she don't really want to spend me.

She just doesn't want to give me the money.

But like, it weighs on you.

We can't afford this.

Don't even look at it.

Don't touch it.

We can't afford if you break that.

For sure.

That's it.

I'll never forget growing up that I had to turn off the light to save money on the electricity bill and then only flush the toilet when it was number two.

And I think like at some point, my leisure didn't equate to a number in a bank account.

It was like, I want to leave all the lights on all the time.

Cause you remember that stuff.

Yeah, that's the trauma.

You guys are the best.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And congrats on the show.

Thank you.

I saw it was number one.

It's a big deal.

Making history.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

Appreciate it.

Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network.

I'm your host, Nicole Lapin.

Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie.

Our researcher is Emily Holmes.

Do you need some money rehab?

And let's be honest, we all do.

So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com, to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me.

And follow us on Instagram at MoneyNews and TikTok at Money News Network for exclusive video content.

And lastly, thank you.

No, seriously, thank you.

Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.