How To Grow Your Finances So FAST in 2025 It Feels ILLEGAL!

In this podcast, I break down exactly how to grow your wealth in detail!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Hello guys and welcome back to the Money Games Podcast. Now, today I want to do something a little bit different, and I just want to actually go how you actually do this step by step. How do you build wealth without all the jargon, without all the overwhelm, and just give you the actual secret source which I've used to completely transform my life? And since I changed my mindset around my wealth, it has grown so fast that it feels illegal, but it's actually so easy when you put it into play. Now I've gone from 24 grand in debt. I went, I got debt-free in 18 months just after that. And now I have a net worth of over 375 grand. I've bought a house, I've set up successful businesses, I have multiple profitable side hustles and a multi-six-figure investment portfolio. And we're talking about an exponential change in my life in just 10 years. So I'm going to show you the strongest levers that I've pulled to get these results and how you guys can literally do this on any salary, even if you're starting from zero, from Nada, from scratch, or you know, maybe you have a little bit of savings here and there and you want to know how to kick things on. But it's very important that you follow these six levers in order so you guys can rapidly scale up your finances and make an exponential change to your lives in the next 10 years. Now, let's start with the first one and let's get into it. And the first one is the nobody cares lever. Now, most people are living under the delusion that others are paying attention to you. And if you stop worrying about what other people think, you'll stop trying to keep up with their flashy little lifestyles and the social media culture which we see, which is driving all of this, and you'll start building wealth, real wealth. So that's what I want you to do. If you don't fix this, guys, this one right here, you might as well not move on to the next ones because you'll always be a little bit broke, or you'll be living paycheck to paycheck because you're spending money on stuff that doesn't matter. And yes, this is the hardest one because it is ingrained into us. We're fed over 10,000 ads a day if we're living in a city, and 6,000 ads a day if we're living in rural areas. You won't even realize it. Radio, phones, all of these things are designed to make us buy. And we're looking up to these plunkers on social media and we're trying to live our lives like them when actually our finances don't justify that kind of decision. But look, guys, nobody cares. Sure, your mum might and your other half or your kids or whatever. Of course they care, but nobody else does. They're too worried about their own lives to care whether you succeed, fail, or fumble. And that means you guys are free. I'm giving you the permission to feel free to make bold, unconventional, money moves without the judgment. So I want you to think about how you can stop playing the status game. Even if you cut out 20, 30% of this, it's gonna make a massive, massive difference to your life along the way. Now, look, guys, 91% of the cars on the road are bought on finance. So if you go out today, nine out of the 10 cars that you see, they're bought on finance. I'm sure many of you are listening to this, and it's not a dig at all. But most people are financing perception and not progress because nobody looks at you in the car, they look at the car. Nobody looks at you, they look at the watch, they don't look at the expensive things. And the average UK household carries nearly 8,000 pounds in credit card debt. Now, when you realize that no one is watching, you stop performing. And that was the big problem that I had. I was peacocking, I was keeping up with the Joneses, I was buying the flashy goods, going out all of the time, spending money, feeling like I needed to turn up to everything. And when you stop performing, you actually start building something. And if you're struggling in your life right now to really build wealth, this is the one that you want to nail down. And even if that means that you, you know, you go into monk mode for six months and you just focus on yourself, it's gonna make a massive, massive difference to your life. Now, number two is the salary slave breakout. Now, you guys have been sold the lie that a pay rise will change your life. It won't if you don't fix your spending habits, guys. You will stay stuck. And it's not about earning more, it's about keeping more. So, in this next lever, I'm gonna show you how to create the margin that will actually lead to wealth. So, that pay rise, if you do get it, lovely, but it's not gonna change anything if your spending rises with it. Fewer than one in ten people hit their financial goals in their lifetime, and most of those people cite lifestyle inflation as the main reason why. You could be earning 80 grand a year and still be broke if every pound goes on your lifestyle. Real wealth is actually built in the margin, the gap between what you make and what you actually keep. Now, your job today is to think about how you can go away and grow that margin. That might mean budgeting a little bit more ruthlessly, capping that lifestyle creep. And what we want to do is try and find ourselves a little bit of a gap where we can move money out of the things that aren't providing us value, trying to create this little savings pot that we can either save or invest. And that could be 50 quid, guys. I'm not telling you to go and create thousands of pounds here. It's a bit of a margin between what you're spending and what you're willing to keep. And it's not about being cheap, it's about being free. Because every pound that you don't spend, guys, is a vote for your future. So what I want you to do is go away and have a think about how you can really create this little bit of gap. And it's going to make a massive, massive difference as we get into lever number three, which is the money flywheel. Now, this is the most important of the lot. What we want to do is kick this flywheel round, and it starts, you know, a little bit slow because we need to put some time and some effort in to get it going. But once it's going round, it feeds itself. And I'll explain a lot more on that as we go through this today. The goal of the money flywheel is to create this self-reinforcing loop where progress in one area accelerates growth in others. And here's how it works. So, number one is that cutting the costs and increasing awareness, even if that's just 50 quid a month. As I said, that's going to be the real first step on the money flywheel that we want to kick round. Then, number two is we want to redirect this money into security pots. So making sure that we don't go backwards and also making sure that we're covering off the shorter term goals in our life. So, number one on that list is an emergency fund, right? We want to try and get that together. I know everyone goes, oh, boring, emergency funds, blah, blah, blah. But it is so, so important. Every single person that I've worked with that doesn't have an emergency fund in place, as soon as they got one in place and they just tucked it away in account, which they never ever touch, every single person says they have feel like a complete weight is off of their shoulders because they have that little bit of a safety net there. Even if they've got loads of money and investments, this money could be separated out into savings and just get that there. If something happens to you, you are okay. And then the second part of this, on the second part of the second part of the money fly will, is these sinking funds. Now, sinking funds are the biggest hack for shorter term savings because you guys have all got commitments which happen every single year. And that might be Christmas. Christmas comes around every 12 months. We know it's coming. You know you've got different birthdays for different important people in your life. You know you've got, you know, holidays that you might want to go on. You know that you have to pay your car insurance once a year. And if you pay it in one go, then you get some money off it, which could then what be redirected back into things which are more important to you, right? So sinking funds are these little things that you can set up. And I use Monzo pots for this, and I just name each pot what they're actually going into. So let's say I save 100 quid, it might split 25 quid into each of my four pots, for example, the day after payday. So I set that up to happen like that. Automatic, and I'll talk about automation as well in a bit. But these are like pots which I'm building up throughout the year, which are completely separate to investments because these costs are happening. So when they happen, it doesn't feel like a big slap round the chops and you need to get the credit card out on. You can just actually put money that you've saved into them. And guess what? These pots earn interest as well. And so it is really important to focus on these things as well as part of the money fly wheel. And look, guys, all of this can be set up in a matter of minutes. Like, and you're gonna be building this up over time. The money fly will, as I said, it took me sort of 10 years to really kick this on the go. And you know, even now I'm only really sort of kicking it into gear properly. So don't beat yourself up if this takes months, sometimes even years, right? Like, this is just gonna be the part of the game that we're gonna have to play when we're doing personal finance. But short-term savings are massively, massively important, and especially those yearly costs which come around every single year. We don't want that to derail our other uh endeavors, which we're gonna go through in a second. Now, number three on the money flywheel is increasing your income. So this can be done for a range of different things, and I'm gonna talk about a lot about increasing your income today as well, but mainly it's through negotiation in your salary, it's through some side hustles and increasing your skills so you can get paid more. That's what we really want to focus on because bringing more income in, once we've got number one and number two sorted on our money flywheel, and we're not doing lifestyle creep and we're kicking things on and we're aware of where our money is going and you know how it's coming in, more money going into the money fly wheel is gonna help us kick things around a lot more. So, think about number three, and we're gonna go through um a little bit more about how you can do that as well. Now, number four on the money fly wheel is invest the surplus. So we want to start very, very simple here. Super, super simple. We don't want to overcomplicate things in any way, shape, or form. So, what I want you guys to think about doing is opening up a really simple low-cost stocks and shares ISA. And a stocks and shares ISA could be done with a range of different providers. I've left a link to a couple in the show notes below, which I think are awesome. And you can buy a simple index fund. Now, an index fund is just simply a list of the top companies around the world. A global index fund covers all of the countries around the world, and you have country-specific ones like uh the SP 500 for the USA and the FTSE for the UK. So I just tend to put my money in a global index fund just simply because it covers the whole world. So if one country doesn't do that well in a year or even a decade, it's not reflected as much if I only own that country, for example, then I'm overexposed to that. So super, super simple global index fund. We can then look later to then grow this and put more time into thinking and looking into other investments, but just get that set up and you can automate that as well. So day after payday, money goes in, utilizing that paying yourself first mentality, and that's gonna really change the way you see things because you are more important than your bills. You work so hard for that money, you should let that money reflect on you first, and then you pay the people that you owe the money to. So, number four is investing the surplus, and we want to really kick that on later in our journey. Now, number five is when we reach escape velocity. Now, eventually, your assets start to cover your expenses, and this system starts to spin itself. Now, the hardest part is the start. I'm not gonna lie, it sucks because you have to take a good hard look at yourself and your spending and the way that you do things, and that's just so much easier to bury your head in the sand and go, oh yeah, you know what, mate, I'll just do that next week. I'll do it Sunday. Sunday comes around, oh, I've got a bit of hangover, went to the pub last night. Like that you you will make excuses for this as much as you possibly can, but fight them, fight them, stay strong because number one and number two are massively important once you go to get those in place. Number three and four can be easily done. And we don't want to do this all in one go because it's gonna be overwhelming. So we start with number one. Let's get that nailed down. All right, cool. Yeah, I've made myself a bit of a gap here. Wicked. Okay, I've started to redirect number two. I'm moving some of my money into my shorter term savings now. Some have got my emergency fund ticking over, my shorter term savings are uh uh growing now. Wicked. Um, okay, yeah, now I'm gonna think about increasing my income. You know, could I get a pay rise? Could I change jobs? You know, could I start that little side hustle thing that I was thinking about doing? These are all things that you can start doing. But if you start doing it all in one go, you're gonna overwhelm yourself. So please don't do that. Okay, so that's the money flywheel that's gonna kick round and that's gonna be at the base of the next few levers because everything's gonna start feeding into that, and that's why it's so, so important. Now, number four is the asset builder blueprint. Now, you guys are currently most of you probably trading your time for money, and that is a little bit of a problem, but it's totally understandable because everyone's got to have a job, right? We've all got to have a job, we've all got to work hard for our money. But what we want to do is start buying things that are gonna make you money while you sleep. Now, assets are how you escape the hamster wheel of the nine to five and going back in, back out, and unless you really love your job, which stats show that 91% of people don't, which is just absolutely mind-blowing. I'm gonna break down the blueprint in this sleeve that you need to start building income generating assets today. Now, assets don't just grow, they produce as well. So your investments and should be now ticking over if you're doing number four in the money flywheel. And so that's one part of the blueprint. Now we actually want to pour some fuel on it as well to really kick this on. Now, one stream of income, in my opinion, is not enough. But multiple streams of income is gonna spin that money flywheel a lot faster. Now, that's how I paid off 24 grand in 18 months. I was never gonna do that from my income alone, it just wasn't gonna happen. You know, I haven't got 24 grand spare each month to basically pay that off. It works out just over, you know, 1,600 and something of pounds a month. And I was never gonna pay that from my income. So I had to try and bring in more money for me to be able to kick this round. Now, what I want you to do is think small at the beginning. You're not trying to come up with the next Tesla here, guys. How can I bring in an extra £20, £30, £40, £50 a month at the beginning? And one of the best ways you can start by doing that is exchange more of your time for more money. Now, yes, that might seem like overtime and all of that jazz, but actually what you can do is do some work in the evening. Freelance work is honestly such a hack. If you go onto Fiverr or Upwork and you look at what you do in your day as a day job right now, I bet you there's skills that you have which people are paying for on these platforms. And you can set up profiles, start getting some low-cost work in at the beginning. Yes, you are gonna have to build a bit of a profile up. You know, you might start charging 10, 15, 20 quid for one bit of work, but eventually you're gonna be charging 100, 150 pounds for that same bit of work because you can build up a profile and a repertoire of you know clients and customers, etc. But you know, this could also look like doing extra time or taking extra jobs if you're in the trades, for example. You might take an evening plumbing job or you know, go and give your mate a hand with his you know extension so he gets it up faster for a couple hundred more quid. These are things that you can do that are small and it's exchanging more of your time for more money. And the fact is, most people are like, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to do that. Well, the simple fact is you're not gonna move any faster. And if you're okay with that, fine, but most of us aren't. We want to try and kick the wheel round a lot faster. So time for money at the beginning. And then don't spend that money, use that money to buy more assets. So you could be buying more of your index funds, for example. You could look at dividend stocks. So dividend stocks are amazing. If you own a dividend stock and it pays 5% dividend or 3% dividend a year, you know, that's great. Every hundred quid you get in there, you get three pounds back for that. Plus, the, you know, if it goes up in value as well, you'll you'll also get that reflected. So that's a brilliant way to start kicking this round. You could look at potentially later down the line, buy to let properties, you could look at some extra low lift side hustles, which other people could help you do. I get this question like literally all the time. Like, what side hustles could I actually do? And the simple fact is there are hundreds out there. So I don't have a blueprint or an answer for you that this is the best side hustle to do. I've done trainer reselling, freelancing, coaching, I've done car boot sales to bring a bit of extra cash in. I've done vintage, I've done everything you could possibly imagine. Online surveys, you can jump on and do them right now. And yes, they're not going to make you rich, but it's going to bring in 10, 20, 30 quid a week extra money from doing these surveys online. You can do website testing, you can Google them and sign up to them. You can do focus groups, for example. There are many different companies that launch products that want feedback on their products. Some are in person, some are on Zoom. So there are tons and tons and tons of ways which you can utilize a little bit of your time to bring in some extra cash and to then kick that flywheel around a lot faster. Now, an extra 200 pound a month becomes an extra 2400 pound a year, and that can be reinvested. The wealthy don't earn more, they own more. And you don't need the millions of pounds to get started to try and start buying some more assets. You need ownership. So the next part of this levers, the number five, is called the second curve switch. Now, the game that we've been playing up until now has gotten us this far. We've got our investments ticking, we've got our flywheel moving round. But here is the hard truth. You do need to switch gears at this point if you really want to level up. And this is the tipping point. It's time to go beyond fugality and structure to start expanding and scaling ourselves up. And here is how you can play the bigger game. In all honesty, this is where most people get stuck. They stall a touch. They stay stuck optimizing coupons and cutting out coffees while ignoring the bigger play. They optimize for the five pound problems and not the five grand problems. Early wins and a touch of frugality and structure is gonna get us to this point, which is great. That those plateau, in all honesty. And so now we want to pivot. And the second curve might mean that you might turn that little side hustle into a fully fledged business. You might leverage some of your savings and investments into an investment property so it starts kicking you back out some more income. Remember that escape velocity, remember that money fly wheel. We're kicking it back round a bit faster. It might mean learning how to tax optimize yourself, to increase your net income. It could be to create a scalable digital product online and you start putting content out on social media and you sell something to people online. That's very much what I do as part of what my business is, you know. So the goal here is scale, right now. It's bigger plays, it's smarter strategy, and it's a higher return on your time. It's not that five pound problem anymore, it's the five grand problem. And this is where we don't want the flywheel to start stalling because you're a touch too scared to switch gears. This is where we really want to take those real smart, calculated risks, as it is really the only way that we can actually leap forward. Now, once you have that safety net from your savings and investments, you can make those strategic bets that are going to pay off big potentially. It could look like investing in a course or a mentor to, you know, free X your income because you put your time to invest back into yourself. It could mean hiring some help in your little side hustle so you can scale it up. You know, it could be giving some money to a friend to start their little startup business and you own 10-15% of it. You know, it could be putting uh money behind a little small product that you've had an idea on, or these are small risks at the right time. And when you do these types of things, it changes everything. You're not reacting anymore, you are positioning yourselves. And that is the difference between the real slow compounders, which where it really takes 30, 40 years to actually build any real wealth or net worth, and we become the strategic legendary leapfroggers, and that's that's what we want to become, right? To build up to that point, it takes a while, you know. I'm for now four years as of today, actually. It's up the Gaines' fourth birthday as of today, when you're listening to this. Um, and you know, it's taken me four years to really kick it down the road. It it started as a side hustle. I got up at five o'clock in the mornings uh to do a couple of hours on it before work. And once, you know, I spent a bit of time in the missus, had a bit of dinner, then I went back to work on it because I wanted to change my life and change other people's lives as well. And so, you know, that little side hustle that starts in your bedroom can become a fully fledged business if you want to do that. But you don't have to do that. You can You know, invest your money smartly into other people's businesses and let them do it for you. So there are a multitude of different ways, and you can stay in your happy job if you're happy in your job or you don't want to become an entrepreneur. Don't let yourself and your limiting beliefs on how money can be grown because it is everywhere, and you can go and get it, and that is so so important to say. The last lever is the wealth character loop. Now, you don't just need better habits, guys. You need to actually become the person who naturally makes those habits stick. That's when the wealth here becomes inevitable. Identity truly drives your behavior. And I'm going to explain how changing your self-image is the final shift that you need to make to stop thinking about wealth and actually start living it. Now, this is an internal one because you hopefully have now built up the habits, and we want you to actually become the person who just lives with them without any friction, without those limiting beliefs, like, oh, you know, I can't, yeah, a person like me can't do that. And it really does start with behavior. Now, I'm the kind of person who doesn't waste money anymore. I invest it. And the more that you act in line with these beliefs, that you are this type of person that can go out, that growth mindset, the more it becomes true. And eventually wealth stops becoming a project for yourself and it just becomes the default in your lifetime. You become that person that attracts money and that can put money into different areas to help it then further and grow your lives. And that is when the flywheel doesn't need to be pushed anymore by you. It's when you can just let it do its thing because you're just acting like that. You've got this brain wired in this way. Now, these are the levers which I've pulled, and it's completely changed my entire life around money. So I really wanted to go over this today because I just think it's so valuable for someone to lay it out for you. And just again, I will bang this drum. This is 10 years of work, and I really only think that I'm actually at the kind of, you know, where the hockey stick goes up. I've only just started going up. So I really do feel like over the next couple of years there's going to be some enormous growth because I've kind of given myself that opportunity to make that happen. You know, the business is kicking on, my investments are going well. I'm looking at an investment property, I'm moving house with the missus, and yes, that's a liability and a cost, of course. But, you know, the opportunities which I've given myself allow me to afford these things and living the life that I dreamed of living and living in the house which I dreamed of living. You know, I've got my own little office outside in the garden. I just, you know, these are opportunities which I've given myself because if I had carried on down that road with that keeping up with the Joneses that out on a Tuesday night in a pub, drinking my life away, um, you know, I was massively overweight. I was just, you know, I don't know what was going on in my head. But I was young, I was in my 20s, and I didn't know any different, right? We weren't taught this stuff ever in school, and our parents definitely weren't. So unless our parents managed to figure it out and pass it on down, most of us didn't have that luxury. Then we're left to figure it out. And so we're making mistakes left, right, and center. And usually when we hit our 30s, we're like, shit, man, I should probably do something about this, right? So this is why I really wanted to lay it all out for you today. And I hope you've got some good value from it. Um, I've really enjoyed this. And just a reminder, of course, you know, you can go down to the show notes. I've left a bunch of free resources there. Beginner's investing checklist guide for you as well. And honestly, guys, it's been a real pleasure. You can always email me or message me if you have questions. Oh, I literally read and reply to everyone. I'm one of those weird people that, you know, wants to make sure I'm helping as many people as I possibly can. Uh, it does get somewhat out of control sometimes with the amount of messages that we do get, but I do read them all and I do reply to everyone. Um, so it's been a real pleasure, and I will catch you guys on the next one. And yeah, peace out. Have a great week or weekend when you're listening to this. Ciao.