9 Money Rules I Wish I Knew at $0

9 years. That's how long it took me to go from nothing to financial freedom. But if I knew these nine rules from the start, I could have done it in 4 years. Rule one, find your financial freedom number. Imagine waking up tomorrow and you don't have to work. Not because you're on vacation or sick, because you don't need to. Your money makes money and that money pays for everything. There's a number where that becomes real. Here's how to find yours. Take your yearly expenses, multiply it by 25. That's it. If you spend $40,000 a year, you need 1 million. If you spend 30,000, you need 750,000. I'm sure you're wondering why multiply by 25. Well, back in the '90s, three professors at Trinity University studied 70 years of markets, every crash, every recession, the worst of the worst. They wanted to know, "How much do you need so you never run out? " The answer was 25. 25 times what you spend in a year. That's where your money grows faster than you spend it. Your investment never shrinks. It just keeps going forever. Now, here's why knowing your financial freedom number matters. Most people say they want financial freedom, but ask them what that actually means. They have no idea. They want a lot of money. They want enough. That's not a goal. That's a wish. But once you know your number, you can track it. Every month, you know if you've moved forward or backward. So find your number. Take your yearly expenses, multiply by 25. Now you have a concrete target. Rule two, cut $1 to save $25. In rule one, we multiplied your yearly expenses by 25. So this means every $1 you spend actually needs $25 invested to support it. And because of that, if you cut $1 in expenses, your freedom target shrinks by $25. Say you move to a cheaper apartment and save $200 a month on rent. That's $2,400 a year. Multiply by 25. That's $60,000 less you need to save. Now, the question is, where do you actually cut? Should you stop buying coffee? Cancel Netflix? Honestly, no. Stop stressing over small stuff. Instead, housing, transportation, food. Focus on these three. That's 70% of your spending. Move some are cheaper. Drop the car. Cook at home. One big cut beats a hundred tiny ones. Remember, every dollar you cut is $25 you don't have to earn. Rule three, protect the gap. Dave makes 10,000 a month, spends all of it. James makes 3,000 a month, spends 2,000, saves 1,000. Who's closer to financial freedom? James. Every single month. Dave looks rich, but he's stuck forever. James looks broke, but his finish line gets closer every month. Here's the point. Your income doesn't make you rich. Your saving rate does. The gap between what you earn and what you spend, that's where wealth lives. Now, here's where people mess up. They get a raise. Let's say an extra $500 a month. What do they do? Move to a nicer apartment that costs $500 more. The gap didn't change. They basically got a raise for their landlord. This is called lifestyle inflation. Your income goes up, but your expenses go up with it. So, you never actually get ahead. Your freedom number keeps moving further away. You'll be running forever. Protect the gap. That's the whole game. Rule four, build your foundation. Okay, you know your number. You're cutting expenses. You're protecting the gap. Now, you're excited. You want to start investing. You want to see that number grow. Hold on. Slow down. If you skip this step, you're going to start and then stop. Life is going to punch you in the face and you'll be right back where you started. Before you invest a single dollar, you need to build a foundation. Here's how. Step one, save $1,000 fast. This is your oh money. Phone

cracks, car breaks, bill hits. Without this, small emergencies become debt. You go backwards. Step two, kill highinterest debt. If you're paying 15% interest on a loan, it doesn't make sense to start investing in the stock market for an 8% return. You're losing money. Kill the debt first. Paying off a 15% loan is a 15% guaranteed return. No stock can promise you that. Step three, build your opportunity fund. This is 3 to 6 months of expenses just sitting there ready. This is your hell yes money. Imagine a great opportunity shows up. A friend wants to start a business with you. You find a course that could teach you a skill that doubles your income. A chance to move to a city with better jobs. If you have 6 months saved up, you can say yes. — You can take the risk. You have room to breathe. But if you're living paycheck to paycheck, you're trapped. You have to say no to everything. So to recap, step one stops emergencies from becoming debt. Step two kills the debt you already owe. And step three lets you say yes when opportunity knocks on the door. That is your foundation. Only after this you start investing for financial freedom. Rule five, stop dragging dead weight. You set your financial freedom number. You know exactly where you're going, but then you look around. There's an expensive car with 3 years of payments left, a house that eats half your income, a lifestyle you committed to before you even knew what financial freedom was. These old decisions are now anchors. They're keeping you stuck. Here's where people mess up. They say, "But I already bought the house. I already signed the lease. I already committed. " So, they try to reach financial freedom while dragging all this weight behind them. There's a name for this in psychology, the sunk cost fallacy. You keep doing something just because you already put time, money, and energy into it, even when it's hurting you today. But here's the truth. The past is past. What you already spent has zero impact on what you should do next? Ask yourself one question. If I were starting fresh today, knowing what I know now, would I make this same decision? If no, it might be time to let it go, sell the house, move somewhere cheaper, get rid of the car? Yes, it feels like a step backward, but it might be the very thing that sets you free. Trust me, I know this is hard. I spent four years getting my bachelor's and two years getting my MBA, built a corporate career, then walked away to grow this YouTube channel. I felt like wasting everything. But those years weren't wasted. They just weren't my future. Rule six, invert. Always invert. Charlie Mer, one of the greatest investors ever, had a simple rule. All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there. That's inversion. Instead of asking how to succeed, ask how to fail. Then avoid those things. So instead of asking, "How do I reach financial freedom? " Ask, "How do I make sure I never reach it? " Get a raise immediately and upgrade your car. Tell yourself you'll start saving next month for the next 10 years. Buy things to impress people you don't even like. Now, just don't do those things. Avoiding stupidity beats chasing brilliance. You don't need to find the best investment. You don't need the perfect strategy. You just need to stop doing stupid things with your money. Rule seven, don't diversify. Everyone tells you to diversify. Have multiple income streams. Start a few side hustles. Build passive income. I get it. It sounds smart. But here's the problem. You can't master freelancing, sell stuff online, and learn day trading at the same time. It doesn't work. You end up being average at all of them. Making like $200 here, $150 there. 6 months go by and you're making $400 total from these three different things. Every rich person you know got rich by doing one thing extremely well, not by diversifying. You get rich by focusing on one thing. You stay rich by diversifying. Diversification is for protecting wealth. You don't have wealth yet. So what are we really diversifying?

So here's what you do instead. Pick one thing. Get scary good at it. make real money from it, then you can start thinking about diversifying. Rule eight, at zero dollars, you are the investment. When I was starting, I spent hours researching investments. Should I buy stocks, real estate, gold? What's the perfect asset allocation? 80% stocks, 20% bonds. I'd read for hours, compared returns, studied different strategies. Then one day, I realized how stupid this was. I had roughly $1,000 to my name. Even if I got a 20% return, that's $200 for an entire year. I wish somebody grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me really hard, and said, "What the hell are you doing? You're broke. " A broke person has one asset: Time. You're spending 10 hours a week to make $4. That's 40 cents an hour. McDonald's pays 20 times that. Go do anything else. Here's what I should have done instead. Put that $1,000 into a certification, a course, a skill. Within a year, I could have been making $1,000 more per month. That's not a 10% return. That's a,200% return. The stock market can wait. You are the asset. Invest in yourself first. Rule nine, create imbalance in your life. Everyone talks about work life balance. Let me tell you something. Everything worthwhile in life is created because of imbalance. When you pass that difficult exam, you didn't study balanced. You locked yourself in a room for weeks and went allin. When someone gets in incredible shape, they're not living balanced. Strict diet, gym every day, saying no to everything for months. Balance is a lie sold to people who want to stay comfortable. Work life balance is for later. Right now, it's work balance. You can have a hard four years now or a hard 40 years later. That was the last rule. If you want more videos like this, check out the playlist on your screen. Thanks for watching.