Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to create wealth through franchising. I'm your host, Kim Daley.
Whether you're a CEO, a military vet, a real estate investor, or simply in career transition and ready to take ownership of your future, with each episode you're going to learn valuable insights and hear inspiring stories from within the franchise industry.
On that note, my guest stories are their own. And as a franchise consultant, I do not make personal brand endorsements or earnings claims, but I do educate, motivate and inspire dreams.
Now onto the show.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Welcome back to American Wealth Strategies. I am your host, Kim Daley. And in studio today is friendly the fellow investor Joey Murray of Ralph with Al Wall street. Welcome to the studio of Kim Daley tv and american wealth strategies.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: So glad to be here. And by the way, call me whatever you want. I get called all sorts of things on our show. Coolest. What is the italian stallion? The worst one I don't know is yet to be to note.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: So Joey and I go way back. We are both alternative investors, but he is the expert in the alternative investing world and that's why he is a guest in my hot seat today. So, Joey, let's talk a little bit about a very heated debate or topic that I think this will be a very downloaded episode with a title, why 401 ks are the worst financial investments.
[00:01:37] Speaker C: Oh, you are picking a fight right now, Kim. I'm just going to go ahead and tell you you're hitting the bees nest and there's going to be some things coming out of it. But I think at the end of the day, it's really, it's not that difficult of a concept to understand that 401 ks keep you from freedom. And let me explain what I mean. 401 ks are not designed to give you freedom today, are they? No. Otherwise you would call up your 401K custodian and say, hey, I really am kind of about to invest in some things, like to get some of my time back. I've got this side hustle. I'm going to do this Amazon business. I'm going to buy this website. I'm going to do whatever the alternative investing is that you want to do. And they would say, oh, great. Yeah, well, you've been saving this money for a good reason. And here, here's your money. But what do they say instead? They say you don't have access to your funds. By the way, isn't that interesting? Like these are no longer your funds if you can't access them. When we're talking about the worst vehicle for financial freedom, let's define financial freedom. Right. Financial freedom. And this is not our idea. This is people way smarter than us. You've heard Robert Kiyosaki, rich Deb, poor dad. How does he define it? Financial freedom is passive income exceeding your monthly expenses. And again, if that's the first time you've heard it or the 7th time you've heard it, let it sink in for a second. If you have more money coming into your mailbox or ached into your account every single month, then you have fixed monthly expenses.
You now can look at your calendar. In fact, you can just imagine pulling up your phone, looking at your calendar, and you see nothing on the calendar because there's nobody requiring your time when your bills are paid and you have literally not have to trade your time for it. That is, when we define passive income greater than monthly expenses is financial freedom.
Then we say, well, what's going to get me there? And if a vehicle has been created that is designed to make you accumulate until your age 59 and a half and you're age 25, 35, 45, none of those are going to get you to financial freedom in the next two years. It just isn't. And people will say, well, Joey, you don't understand, my 401k is great. I mean, last year it gained 12%.
And you know what I say, I don't care.
The 12% didn't give you freedom today, did it? No, because you couldn't even get any access to the 12%. It doesn't matter. See, people say, well, Joey, it's tax deferred, right? I don't have to pay tax on that money. That's a good thing, right? They say, you know what, that is a good thing, not having to pay taxes. I love that. But does it give you freedom today?
All the tertiary, secondary, tertiary kind of benefits that you've been told about your 401K are meant to make it feel good to part with your money for the next 20, 30, 40, however many years you have to work, because it's predicated on the idea of retirement, not on financial freedom. And that's why I'm sticking to the idea this is the worst place to put money for your financial freedom.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: I love that introduction and thank you for backing up and like getting everybody onto the wavelength of the definition of financial freedom because this is so different from what the world taught us. But let's back up. The world taught us, go to college, get a good job, work for a pension maybe, which doesn't even exist. Work for a loyal company doesn't exist. Work until you can't work anymore. And then start withdrawing your money and go, you know, travel or then enjoy your life. But how many butt flaws are in that plan today? Like, that doesn't exist, right? Like, before we started recording, I was telling Joey about the Amazon business I'm launching with my kids this summer. Why? Because they've seen mom be a business owner their entire lives. They do not want to go get a job like their friends at Chipotle or wherever. Right? They want to own a business. They don't want to trade their time for money. And they're only teenagers. So to me, that's the best legacy I could ever leave my kids, is to learn how to be self reliant, how to create income for yourself and never need anybody else. So while this isn't directly on the topic of 401K, it is because it's connected to a w two job.
[00:06:36] Speaker C: It is. And I would say it's even bigger than that. You said there's so many holes in this plate. Like, poke on that for just a second. How many people do you know that have lived and scraped in to just put up with life until they're age 59 and a half, 65, whatever that magic quote unquote retirement age is? And then they say, that is when I'm going to start living. I mean, think about it like, you have somebody in your head that you know that has lived that way. And here's the question I'll ask you all of a sudden, once they retired, they started living more freely and, like, enjoying all the things like the travel and the time with family and all the things that we value. Did they just start magically living more freely? No, because they've been trained for 40 plus years to live scarcely. Because how can you accumulate enough money in a retirement account to live freely unless you've lived scarcely up to that point? That's a big deal. In fact, I'm sitting here wearing my passive income shirt. I'll give you this story. I was at the beach with my family, and we all had our wealth without Wall street shirts. It wasn't our passive income shirt. It was wealth on that Wall street. And even my kids, they had their swims shirts. And this lady, she's probably 65, 67, something like that. She walked up to us, like, made a d line towards us, and she's like, what's that? He was asking me about my shirt. I was like, what? You mean my shirt? She's like, yeah, wealth without Wall street. What is that? I was like, well, you know, we teach people how to gain financial freedom through passive income greater than monthly expenses. And we do it all without Wall street. And she's like, hmm, that's super interesting. You know, we just retired this year and talking about her and her husband and this was the next word. I didn't prompt this. She said, I just hope it's enough. And I said, what do you mean? She's like, well, I mean, we've been putting money away for all this time and I just hope it's enough. Okay, so not only let's poke some holes because this has to be painful enough to say I got to do something different, but this is really known and convenient and comfortable, right? There's a massive amount of people doing this one plan, and Joey and Kim are talking about this other plan. I don't know if I'm with them. Well, one, I don't want to live scarcely today. Two, I don't want to retire, right? The idea that I'm going to be taken out of service and just, I'm a believer and I'm just telling you in the Bible, like, there's never a point where I'm going to be taken out of service. Like, I know you, I know your heart, Kim, like, you have a calling to serve business owners right, to coach them, to give them direction, right? If someone said, well, you know, Kim, you need to retire from that, what's your answer?
[00:09:43] Speaker B: No, just like I would say, I would do this for free, like, right. Because this is just who I am.
[00:09:49] Speaker C: This is who I am. This is what I've been made to do. There is no retirement, right? So that's a lie. That's something that we've been told. And then the other part, like I was mentioning, you put off and defer life for some time in the future. Like it's all magically going to start being lived at some point. And how many people I asked you about the person that lives, really scarcely that says that they're going to start living all of a sudden doesn't exist. The second one is the person that says, you know what I'm going to put off? I'm going to retire one day and then I'm going to be free to travel and all this stuff. And what happens within twelve to 24 to 36 months? They have a major health issue. Like they've lost their will to live because they're no longer doing what God's called them to do and to be. And I'm telling you, all of them are lies. So I'm not even talking about a specific vehicle at this point except saying 401 ks are tied to a false narrative that you got to stop believing because your life is today. Does your kid, or you just talked about your teenagers, do your teenagers want to play video games with you whenever they're 45? That would be a fail. Right? I have five daughters, Kim. You've met them at our conference. Do you think my five year old wants to play barbies with me today?
Or is it when she's 25? No, it's not going to happen. And when I have put on myself this requirement of 40, 50, 60 hours a week where I'm trading time for money and I'm just putting off and saying, you know what? One day I'm going to connect with my daughters. You've missed it. The ship has passed, and I never want to look back in regret.
I want to look forward knowing that I have done the very best with what God's given me today.
To amplify the life that he's given me and to be in greater service to others.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Yeah. So for 22 years, I've been the franchise consultant who, for 18 of those 22 years, basically met people at the fork in the road when corporate America had let them go. I was the career transition consultant. Right. Who came in and breathed a little bit of hope while other executives who were downsized with a package. But I never worked in corporate America. But after 18 years of upfront and close and personal and hearing all of the stories, I never really met anyone who said, especially after being laid off through no fault of their own, wow, that was the best 20 years of my life. That was like, a lot of times it's. I never would have left, but I'm so glad that I'm done, and now I can do something different because I wouldn't have had the courage to put myself here. And then other times, people just raise their hand when there's an opportunity to get. Take the package and get out, because it's just. I hate my life. I hate the travel, I miss my kids. Right? There's a glass ceiling, the politics, you name it. This is the world that I've played in in terms of, like, prospecting for most of my years as a consultant. And so I know it upfront, close and personal, and helping those people transition to a business, which is usually more active. It can be semi active once it's up and established, but a franchise is usually more active upfront. So the 401K is tied to the w two life. So now that we're talking about, we've sort of, like, set the stage for okay, why no 401K? What do we do, Joey?
[00:13:45] Speaker C: Well, I think it is so funny. As we're sitting here talking, I was thinking, this is the first time I'm hearing this and I'm like, okay, maybe I buy into the idea that the 401K is not the best place. In fact, there's probably many people who are like me. When I was first into the corporate world, I was in the mortgage business, and I remember people like passing me the paperwork at the HR first few weeks. Hey, just pick your elections for your 401K, just like in an assumption, like you're going to do it. And here's the just pick based on the last year's numbers, which one was best, and all this killer stuff, your allocation.
But I never really felt comfortable with it. I never really understood what I was investing in. How could you? Because the mutual funds that are tied to them, if I ask somebody right now, name ten of the companies in your mutual fund, they couldn't probably even name one and let alone the CEO of that company. And here's my point of that, is how far you are away from the investment tells you, when do you get to eat, right? So think about it. If I'm the CEO of a company, I know exactly what's going on in that company. If I'm on the board, I know a lot of what's going on with the company because I'm really close to it. If I'm dead at the executive level, I understand a lot about it. And then you kind of keep going down the road. Well, the investor in a mutual fund is about 50 deep before you ever get paid on the performance of that company. And they're certainly not updating you until it's way past. If something goes wrong, like, you're the last one to find out, right? So let me just stick with this for a second. You're like, okay, Joey, I get this idea. Kim, I'm with you. I don't love this 401K anymore. What's the alternative? Where do you even start? And I think that that's a great way to bring up the idea that you have to have a plan.
And we talk about it within our book with our podcast, our YouTube page. However you like to learn is you have a GPS system that has to be installed. You know, the benefit of the GPS is you know exactly where you're at and you know exactly where the destination is. And it even tells you the number one, fastest, most efficient way to get to the destination.
Well, if you're gonna try to build financial freedom. You have to have your own gps system. And it starts with a goal, a plan, and then the support it takes to get to success. And so gps, if you just think about that for a second, we break down each one of those characteristics, those pieces, to give people the clarity that they need about where they are right now. I have all these different financial tools, different ideas. How do I get really clear on what my goal is? And then secondly, and we can break these down as much as you want, but you have the plan. And the plan includes making some changes. It includes, where do I invest? What sort of investor am I? I remember you came to our conference, you learned about the investor DNA profile. Then what goes into that? And then that gives you direction to filter. Okay, maybe I could focus it on these two strategies out of the hundreds that are available and get focus. And then I need that support. I need a coach, I need a community, need people around me who think like this. Because as soon as I go to the water cooler at work and I start talking about this stuff, I'm not only going to get like discouraged, I'm going to be booed out of the water cooler. Like, what are you thinking? You can't do that. Like all the negativity, all the groupthink is just going to take over. You're not going to take the action that you need to be successful.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: Hey, daily Coach fans, if you're ready to begin your own journey to find the perfect franchise, please email me right now at enquireemdaily tv. My services are totally free for you. That's inquireyimdaily tv. Now back to the show.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: It's all the same traveled path that happens when people come to me and they want to invest in a franchise, right? We start with the goal, what is the goal of the business? And then I provide the vehicles, right. That could help you reach those goals using the skills that you have and the personality that you have to drive an act of business. But you're right. It all starts with the goal and the plan. And you're so spot on about people outside of this world not understanding what you're doing. And sometimes it's the people closest to you. I remember when I first started thinking about alternative investing. So I met you and many other people in the alternative investing world by being guests on your podcast talking about franchising. And then it was sort of like I always say, it was like, you know, in the Bible you read like, Paul is like the greatest atheist and he was like my lightning. And then he's like, becomes like, you know, right, 90% of the New Testament. And so sort of the same thing. Like, I was on all these alternative investing shows and then maximizing my self employed pension plan, which, you know, it's a 401k for self employed people. And then I just sort of had this, like, lightning strike. Like, what am I doing right? There is a better way. And, you know, those of you who know my story know that four years later, I was able to, quote, retire myself because I had more passive income that I have fixed expenses, minus my businesses, and I don't have to work. I work because I want to work. That's Joey's definition of financial freedom. So now the whole intent of this show is, I know you might have come to me to invest in a franchise, and you have that active business and you've built more cash flow, but what are you doing with the cash flow? You can't go back to putting it into a 401k. What's the old you? That's the old way of thinking. You can't put new wine in the old wine skin. Right? The same thing when you invested in that franchise and all of your family and friends said, don't do it. Like, my dad. I'm a daddy's girl. My dad was like, Emily, I don't know what you're doing. This is not how you build wealth. Because he was taught the traditional way that did work for him. But he had some alternative investments, I had to point out, like a beach house, a secondary house he invested in. He had a rental property that we had for years. He had these other things, but he didn't look at them as retirement. But all of those things, acquiring them, taking the cash flow, redeploying that, selling them eventually for profit, having more money. He didn't look at that as what I was talking about until I so smartly pointed it out to him. Get educated. Stay open. There are some really, really amazing people. Like, listen, Joey from wealth without Wall street, I'll say this, and I'm going to give it back to you, Joey. They invited me to be a guest at one of their conferences last year. When I wasn't speaking, I attended some of the breakout sessions, and I went to one of the, like, very first sessions you would go to if you were a newbie. Then gave me this checklist. That 100 point checklist or whatever it is it takes you from day one to retiring the way that you want to to its generational wealth, is what it was like. Every step in between, 100% crazy how detailed and organized and easy. If you follow the plan, this plan will be. So back to you on that investor DNA and on this generational wealth plan and what you do at wealth without Wall street. And I want to talk a little bit about your book because I think this could be a great place for people to kind of get into your energy and like, understand more about what you do at wealth without Wall Street.
[00:21:51] Speaker C: Jeff, absolutely. Yeah. What you're pointing out is what we call the right next thing grid. And I think the reason why that's so valuable is we all get media just deluge every day, right? We get every single sort of influencer and messaging and all this, and they're conflicting at the end of the day, especially around finances. Those are the things that just, they confuse you because you'll hear one person say, you should have no debt, and then you'll have guys like Robert Kiyosaki say, I'm a billion dollars in debt. And you're like, wait a minute, this guy is actually really smart. This guy's really smart. Why are you, they're totally different. Well, they're not your plan, right? They're not your goal of financial freedom. What is your goal of financial freedom? And then how do you align the messages to support whatever that goal is? And the right extend grid helps you to figure out, okay, now I've got this set up. How do I level this part up in my vision, my goals and visions area. I know, Kim, we've been fans since 2000, 920 ten. And what is that? How do I learn about that? How do I level that part of my finances up? Going into investing my passive income? There's certain things I need to check mark on that. And I can start down as low as, I have no passive income. Well, I need to know what investor type I am. I need to know what my buy box is like. You can work with a personalized coach or you can do it on your own, but having that grid helps you to understand what's the most important thing to be working on right now. And then as I move that up, I move on to the next one. And that to me is like a really critical part of the plan is implementing something that gives you clarity so you can cut through the noise, right? You start hearing all these other buzzwords like, oh, what about this velocity banking where I pay off my mortgage? And let's look at your right, next thing grid. Is it on there? Does it help you? Does it support your goal? Does it really match up with more passive income? Than monthly expenses and those things that you just go by the wayside. Once you start really holding it up to the plan, its so good.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: And theres so many different types of alternative investments. Even if youre new to this conversation and you just start searching, youre going to see, oh, my gosh, who do I trust? Where do I begin? And I didn't have a plan like this, and so I just started asking people and be like, oh, that sounds good. Oh, you do that. Okay, I'll do that. Trust me, I've learned the hard way, I don't like those investments. Oh, I do like that investment. Oh, look it. On this multifamily, they stopped paying me dividends when the interest rate went up, but on this multifamily, they stopped paying me dividends. Right. You, Ron, by doing. And you learn very quickly. And so, I mean, I've learned from me. I'm a business owner. I like businesses. I want to be invested in things that I understand. To your point earlier, Julie and I have an investment. I don't even know if we want to say it out loud, but in a crypto mining business, and, you know, maybe you still think that's a good thing. I don't know, but I've sort of just like kissed that money goodbye. And that was a lot of money for Kim Daley because I thought, okay, those people are really smart and they tell me to do it, I'm going to do it.
[00:25:22] Speaker C: Yeah, that is a great fund in terms of the people involved. But the actual investment didn't support my ultimate end objective. It was more of a defense strategy for me. Like, I need to have currency in a different format than just the US dollar. And from that standpoint, it's working. It's a lot slower than it would have been for me to just go buy the crypto. Now that you think about it, it's like, oh, well, if that's really what my goal was, I should just bought the crypto. But, you know, we live and learn, and maybe eventually it pays off substantially more. But in the meantime, it definitely wasn't the best use of my money. So I'm with you.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: I agree with you on that. And so, but we're not dying from it. You're definitely going to try some things and you're going to make some wins, and you're going to try some things and you're going to take some losses. And just like anything else, it's all a learning curve. But it starts with the mindset shift of how we started this conversation. About not putting your money into your 401K, but putting it into investments that allow you to build cash flowing assets that create tax advantage, build some equity for you, whether they be active like a franchise or a business or semi active or even passive, like some of the things that Joey and his partner Russ can help you find at wealth without Wall street. So this is so awesome. I mean, we could go on and on and on, Joey, but let's talk a little bit about your book that you recently wrote. Congratulations on that, because I know that that's like a life hurdle. That's awesome. So tell us the name of it. How can people learn about it? What can they expect if they pick it up and read it?
[00:26:55] Speaker C: Yeah. So great question. Wealth without Wall street. Three steps to freedom through passive income. That's the name of it. And we just outlined exactly what we kind of started to talk about before. What is your gps to financial freedom? What's your goal? And we break that down. Do you have a financial passport? And when we say that, that's a proprietary thing we built, but it helps you dream again. And I think, Kim, there's a lot of people, me included, when you've been investing in 401 ks to kind of bring this full circle, you shut off the creativity of your brain because you don't have to think anymore about what to invest in, why you would invest in something, what it would return, how it's going to support you. You just literally just say, well, it just gets siphoned off of my paycheck every two weeks, and it either grows or it doesn't. I can't control it. I can't influence it. And you stop thinking about what is possible that I could be doing right now. People, our coaches, actually, you know, meet with people individually, and you'd be shocked when you ask somebody, if you were financially free today, what would it look like? Who would you be? What would you do? And what would you have? Like, we do, the B do have kind of exercise through this passport, and it is shocking. As adults, we don't know even how to dream. It's just like, well, I mean, I guess I wouldn't go to work. Very, very basic things that people come up with, but this financial passport challenges you and pulls it out of you to help you kind of get really clear. And then. So under that, that's the goal. Under the plan, you start talking about your budget, you start talking about the major money mistakes that people are making, one of which we've already talked about. Qualified plans are just crushing people debt freedom doesn't equal financial freedom. How you choose to pay cash for everything is a major mistake, and we don't have time to get into it today. Maybe you have me on to talk about that, but these are some crazy money mistakes people are making that are keeping them from financial freedom. And then the lastly, in the support piece, you're learning about your investor DNA. You're learning about the different options on which you can finance things. So money doesn't create a hurdle for you to get to financial freedom. There's all sorts of cool ways to buy the assets to create cash flow. There's hands on options, there's hands off options, and there's a support system that is built around you within the wealth of that Wall street fabric. And so that's kind of the overarching, you know, 30 seconds of our book. But the goal is just like what we talked about in the intro, is that ultimately, you are your greatest asset and you are created for more than what you're living for right now. And our goal is that you have been given resources. How do you steward them in the greatest way to fulfill your calling? And if you're in the jail cell of a 401K or a w two that you hate but you're just putting up with, you will never live to the highest level that you've been called to. And so that's our goal. Not to make a bunch of crazy Scrooge McDucks out there. That's not our goal. It's that we want you to live freely. And ultimately, that's for your creator in the best way that he's created you to live.
[00:30:27] Speaker B: That's awesome. What an amazing ending to this awesome, awesome show. Like, I would say this, it's like going from a survival mentality to a thriving mentality, a fixed mindset to an abundant mindset where you find all the possibilities of what was always there for you. You just didn't know. And that's the point of american wealth strategies. Joey, thank you so much for being all that you are in my life personally and for being my guest here today on american wealth strategies.
[00:31:00] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure being with like minded people. Just makes it easy.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: It's awesome. And we are going to put a link to that book in the show notes so you can grab your copy of the three step process that Joey has outlined today to help you figure out your financial freedom. And until next time, I'm so happy you were here today, and I want to see you in the next show. My name is Kim Daley. I am your daily coach, and together we want to build american wealth.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: You can find more content just like this on my YouTube channel at Kimdaily TV. And if you're inspired to take the next step to explore franchises match to you, please email me right now at Inquire at Kimdaily TV. That's inquiremdaily TV.
