Owners' Equity

There’s a huge difference between having an opinion on the markets and having a crystal clear game plan on how to manage your wealth. If you want to create enduring wealth, your financial vision can not be blurry. 

We have seen too many entrepreneurs who have created wealth with 20/20 business vision drive their personal wealth strategy with blurry vision - either through procrastination, opinion , speculation or mis(un)education.  

On today’s episode, we discuss several tools that entrepreneurs can implement in their personal finances to give them complete clarity on what to do with their wealth and money without having to predict the future. The benefits of LASIK like vision with your wealth can reduce worry & overwhelm, eliminate procrastination and analysis paralysis, help you execute no matter what the markets are doing at any given time. 

On this episode, our host Matt shares his experience playing a behind the scenes role in powerful new movie called Playing with Fire. The movie  premiered to a sold out theater in San Diego this past weekend.

Playing with Fire is the first documentary on the Financial Independence Retire Early movement (FIRE). This movie captures one family's journey to acquire the one thing that money can’t buy: a simpler — and happier — life.  The FIRE movement embraces values based spending and financial optimization to achieve financial independence early. 

Listen to learn the 10 major takeaways from the movie that will help you achieve financial independence on your own terms and your own timeframe. 

"If you are not financially independent by the time you are forty or fifty, it doesn’t mean that you are living in the wrong country or at the wrong time. It simply means that you have the wrong plan."  - Jim Rohn.  

Mr. Rohn was a business and success mentor to many, including Tony Robbins and myself. Mentors are invaluable and can help shape the direction of your life.  They can come from all walks of life - business peers, coaches, family members, even friends. 

Many people have an internal struggle with money so if you can get money out the way, you can move on to many more meaningful dimensions of your life --- thus making Financial Independence a very important objective. On this episode, we share 5 timeless lessons that we have learned from one of our mentor's on Financial Independence. 

One of the biggest financial decisions people make haphazardly is the car buying or lease decision. Transportation expenses are the second largest expense in the average American's budget - secondly only to housing costs and represent 16% of all spending. From our purview, most people spend too much money on cars...and considering the significance, not enough time has been devoted to doing it right. 

On today's episode we walk through a real life car "buy or lease" decision-making process that started from the inside out. The key areas that we focused on included: 

1. Actually getting a good deal on a car within our budget 

2. Finding a car that fit our lifestyle needs and values and 

Listen in to learn to learn how time, money and peace of mind was saved with this approach. Drive safe!

How much money do you need to be wealthy? This was a question posed by Charles Schwab in their most recent Modern Wealth Survey to 1,000 American between ages 21 and 75. The answers were surprising and varied amounts the generations (Gen Z to Baby Boomers) as well as where one lived. 

How would you answer the same question?

On today's episode we discuss how much money you actually need to be wealthy,  the most underappreciated component of real wealth, and a profound insight from "Millenials" on what to avoid in order to build wealth faster.

We all know that buying a home is one of the biggest decisions of your life, but buying your next home comes with another huge decision to make: Should You Keep Your Home as A Rental Property or Sell It? 

Not everyone has the ability to keep their house as a rental but in today's housing market, many are considering converting their home to a rental property for the income generation ability instead of selling it. The overarching decision is not always a financial one but whatever you decide will have a significant impact on your wealth. 

On today's episode, we discuss the key factors that you must evaluate before renting out your primary residence.  You will learn about the key tax implications, the return on your equity, cash flow, the opportunity costs, and mortgage interest rate differentials amongst others...all of which require math that is interdependent on one another. When you put it all together, hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, are on the line with this decision and that doesn't even include your own peace of mind. 

A recent Bloomberg article highlighted the divorce proceedings of a billionaire real estate developer from New York City. The divorce documents revealed this wealthy real estate investor paid no tax since the 1980's. It articulated how investing in real estate can be tax favorable in good times and difficult times. On this episode, we discuss four key real estate tax benefits that can help you become your own real estate mogul next door. The tax breaks offered in real estate are not just available to the super wealthy – they are being put in place by the millionaire next door as well. Listen in and learn.

Just because you watch Flip or Flop does not mean that flipping homes is the right real estate investing path for you. There are, however, many ways to invest in real estate. You can live-in-flip, landlord, lend, partner, invest, sponsor, develop, do multifamily, residential rental, REIT, vacation rentals and the list goes on and on. 

The most vital aspect is that your real estate investment approach must be strategically designed around your life and stage of wealth. It's very important to utilize your competitive advantages, skill sets, professional experience, values and network to make your real estate investing improve the returns on your entire financial life. 

On this episode we discuss the differences between active real estate investing and passive investing so you can understand what may fit better in your life. We also share real life examples of how different people incorporate both active and passive real estate investment strategies in their life for you to see what's possible. What you will find is that despite the differences, all of the approaches have been strategically developed around their unique resources, competitive advantages, personal values, and life. 

Traditional financial advice typically disregards real estate investment from the asset allocation conversation. Real estate is often called "complex" or an "alternative" investment. Meanwhile the public markets consisting of Stocks, Mutual Funds and ETFs are conventionally believed to be the safest and the best long-term generators of wealth. Just look at Vanguard (who manages over $5 Trillion of assets). Their portfolio allocation models are comprised of Stocks, Bonds and Cash...ditto for their widely used Target Date Funds. The problem is, this advice has never been fully data driven, just Wall Street convenient. On this episode, you will learn why you, as a wealth builder, may want to take the traditional advice from Wall Street with a grain of salt. In addition, you will learn about the actual outsized real estate allocations of some of the most financially successful and risk averse individual investors and financial institutions out there. There is no one sized fits all investment allocation, just the right one for you.