At the time of writing this blog, looking on the horizon of what is coming in twenty twenty-one, we are personally preparing for a period of economic hardships, which we believe our nation will face. We think the writing is on the wall, and if you’re not preparing now, you should start as soon as possible. But is it too late? That’s a hard question to answer for everyone watching, but we don’t think it is. What can you realistically do today to prepare for the uncertain financial future coming tomorrow?
In this blog, we will cover three main points that each build on top of each other. We encourage you to listen to each item. By the end of this blog, we believe if you’ll hear what we have to say, understand what I am saying, and apply the principles outlined; you can weather this storm that is brewing on the horizon, and not just for 2021, but beyond.
But we have to warn you. This blog will not give you the typical “just live below your means or save up an emergency fund,” all things we believe are essential when starting down a path to financial preparedness. We’ll go beyond the standard financial gurus’ conventional talking points to more critical matters that many never learn. We believe the next five to ten years will require a necessary financial intelligence that if you don’t gain now, you’ll be at the mercy of the monetary policies which currently govern our world, trapping you in a cycle of fear and anxiety of what may be coming next. If you don’t gain the financial intelligence you need now, you will always be reactionary and never pro-actively prepared. So stick around.
On this website, we discuss emergency preparedness and how you can prepare for an uncertain future. While we are not a financial advisor, we will share lessons we learned on my financial journey that took me about fifteen years. If we had known at the beginning of our journey what we know now, we think we could have shaved those fifteen years of hard life lessons down to three to five years and probably be retired now. While many people are worried about what may happen this coming year, if you don’t make the changes we’ll cover in this blog, you’ll be concerned about the following year and the next year and maybe for many years to come. But you can break that pattern, and we’ll share with you how we did.
Here are the three main points we will examine:
Number one is the financial problem we will all face in twenty-twenty-one and beyond. Number two is my financial journey to give you context leading into the final point. Number three is the solution and plan you must begin to develop. Let us warn you. What we’re about to share with you took us years of hard work. we think someone can achieve the same as we have on an even shorter timeline. While some around us have applauded us for our successes, what they rarely saw were the hours spent grinding very hard early in the morning and late at night. Kevin Hart once said, “It took me 20 years to become an overnight success.” After what we’ve gone through, we get what he’s saying. And let me say, I don’t think I’m some big shot or this shining example of success. Still, I have built two businesses that have allowed me to take care of my family and put us on a path to financial independence. While we’re not entirely there yet, we are on a track that has a clear end in view, and we’re working on a strategy that we believe will pay off. For those that are willing to venture in to change their financial future, are willing to put in the hard work that this requires, and don’t want to be constantly worried about what’s coming next, even a potential economic collapse, let me take you through these three points.
The Problem
If you don’t understand what we’re about to explain next, the rest of this blog won’t be useful. If we don’t start by explaining the problem, you’ll likely continue through life not making any real changes while the house of cards, which is our nation’s monetary policies, collapses around you.
The Federal Reserve is printing money at an alarming rate in an attempt to prop up our nation’s economy due to the impact of COVID nineteen. The result is that it is destroying the dollar’s value. The Fed is propping up the stock market and buying up billions of dollars in corporate bonds. Our national debt to GDP ratio is about to hit one hundred percent, and the U.S. debt is set to exceed the size of the economy next year. Due to the coronavirus spending, shrinking GDP, and a tax-revenue decline, we are being propelled toward a milestone we haven’t seen since World War II. Guaranteed pension plans and entitlement programs in the coming years likely won’t be payable. We think we’ll see a UFO with our own eyes before we collect Social Security, and we’re not building my financial future on the hope the government will help us during my retirement years. You shouldn’t either.
At the moment, we currently are the world’s reserve currency, and maybe we will remain so for a while longer. Still, we’re devaluing the dollar printing at an alarming rate causing other nations to look for alternatives. If countries begin to move off the dollar as the reserve currency due to the active steps we’re currently taking to devalue it, we will face a massive problem. Discussing this is beyond this blog scope, but we’ll cover it in the coming weeks, so you’re educated on the issue. It’s something you do need to be aware of.
Even once we get this pandemic under control and the country can return to work, things won’t bounce back immediately or potentially ever. In 2008, during the last major market crash, the Fed had to use whatever means necessary to keep the markets from crashing, employing such techniques as quantitative easing. The result is that the tools we have available sitting on the table are no longer present. We’ve effectively backed ourselves into a corner with practically no options other than the one we’re using now– printing money.
Now, if you’ve followed our website for any length of time, we try to explain issues we’re facing, but we don’t like leaving our readers with no solutions that they can apply. Before we jump to the solution, let us give you a quick back story to provide you with context explaining the journey we had to go through personally.
Personal Journey
Growing up, we were fortunate to see one of the best examples of a hard worker–our dad. He had an unbelievable work ethic. His generation worked through the end of the modern Industrial Age. He worked the same job most of his life and was fortunate to retire with dignity several years ago and is currently able to take care of himself and our mother. We consider him one of the fortunate ones. That model is all but gone.
Our generation was one of the first to transition into this new Information Age. We were raised in an education system that taught the model that, unfortunately, many still live in today. This system leaves many people behind and frustrated because things have changed quickly in recent years, and those who have not figured it out are left out. It’s what they teach you in high school, college, and it’s the blueprint for success that the system raised us on. Are you ready to repeat it with me? Here it goes. Go to school. Get good grades. Go to college. Get a good job with a retirement program. Save your money. Live below your means. Pay your taxes. Work 40 plus years and hopefully get to spend the last ten years of your life for yourself, if you are still healthy after giving the best years to employers. Sound familiar? This is how we’re taught, and it worked for the most part for the previous generation. But that model is dead now, manual labor has been shipped overseas, and it’s not coming back. For many, they are stuck in between the old and new system and haven’t been able to shift their paradigm, which we’ll touch on momentarily.
Today, we are in the Information Age, where information is leveraged by technology and inexpensive resources like silicon, producing wealth. This means that the price of getting wealthy has gone down. For the first time in history, wealth is available to just about everyone, but many don’t understand how to access it.
In 2004 when my wife and I got married, we didn’t have any money. We came across Dave Ramsey’s course, and it changed our lives. If you’re not familiar with Dave Ramsey, you may have heard of Suze Orman or any of the many other financial gurus. They promote very conservative economic approaches of saving money, living below your means, and investing in several financial products like Roth IRA’s. Following his plan, it enabled my wife and me to get out of debt. While I don’t regret following the Dave Ramsey approach, I wish I hadn’t stopped there. I realize now those plans are just the first step. Most people don’t realize that following a plan like what he lays out creates several problems, the biggest of which is that you live a life of living just below your means and hoping for the best. It’s a bit of a defensive financial position.
The next ten years, we believe, will require you to think differently. If you’re not actively trying to stay a few steps ahead, you’re going to get hammered. Savers will be losers as the dollar will be vulnerable to the forces we laid out a moment ago. You’ve got to be smarter. There’s a move you will have to make that will take you to the next level to survive, which leads me to the next point, the Solution.
The Solution
So how do we prepare for a potential economic collapse in 2021?
What we share with you in a moment may throw you off a little bit. Most people are looking for a blog that tells you the five steps to follow or a hot tip for where you should invest your money, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. This is a prepper website, and the advice we always give starts with making sure you have the basics in place. Store food and water, so you’re prepared if something significant happens, and we’re not going to rehash that point here as those that follow this channel already know that’s the starting point.
But we’re talking about preparing for a financial collapse, so how do you prepare for something like this to make sure you can live through it? What can you do to prepare for what’s coming next? We think there’s the typical thing every household must do at this point, which is to evaluate your finances to determine how you can best cut back to make sure you can weather the approaching storm, work extra if you can, or pick up a side hustle. In a recent poll, more than half of Americans plan on getting a second job in twenty twenty-one just to pay the bills after the financial disaster of twenty twenty. While that approach may be necessary for now, it will leave many burnt out and only take people so far. Whenever the next storm comes or the next ugly financial problem arises, you’ll be back at square one, having to play defense and figuring out how to financially survive.
We wish we had realized back at the beginning of building our first business fifteen years ago what we’re about to share with you. At that time, I was in the rat race of working hard, trying to save money for a rainy day, and hoping our Roth IRA will get us through retirement. We hoped that one day if the stock market didn’t crash, wiping out our savings in our Roth IRA, we could eventually retire. One day, after reading a book for a second time that I had read years prior, I finally figured out what the wealthy understand. The light came on: dump all your liabilities and invest in assets that put money back into your pocket to create cash flow. Let me repeat that. Dump all your liabilities and invest in assets that put money back into your pocket to create cash flow. This concept was a simple seed that got planted in my brain. And once that seed took root in my mind, everything changed quickly, and I started taking big, bold actions based on what I had learned. But for anyone that plants seeds know, seeds require certain things to grow, and apart from those necessary items, they never mature into a plant. The most important thing to grow that seed, that idea of investing in assets, comes from becoming financially literate. I started devouring investment books, listening to audiobooks on my Audible app covering investing while driving and slowly changing my entire outlook for my financial future. I took a simple concept and spent time educating myself, looking at examples of others that have succeeded, the steps they followed and implementing those approaches into my own life. I would list out all the books in this video that have changed my life, but for the sake of time, I’ll put them in the description section and pin a comment below for many of the books that have radically changed my views in the last year and one half. I’ll put notes next to each of the books, giving you a little insight into what I learned from each of them, and I would recommend them to you now.
Before I lose some people saying, “what about saving money for a financial collapse” or “it’s all gonna crash soon,” hear me out. A financial collapse could take my hard-earned savings, but it can’t take the most valuable resource I now possess: financial knowledge. Once I had that paradigm shift, once I unlocked that part of my thinking by investing heavily by becoming financially literate, everything changed. You see, in the U.S., and I’m sure it’s the same around the world, we are conditioned to buy, and our education system is really only designed to teach you enough to be a good worker. We’re told buying things will make you happy, and when you look back over your life, you’ll see you own these things that no longer have value and are more of a liability. But when you become financially literate, you understand what actions will put you on a path to financial freedom. It removes the fear of an economic collapse because you know you now have the tools and knowledge to make it when a storm rages around you. And, I’ll admit, it took me years to figure it out as I was raised on the industrial revolution mindset: just work harder. That will only take you so far, and I’ve watched people burn themselves out with this approach because they never become financially literate.
So what should you be investing in after listening to this video? The single best investment you can make is to invest in yourself by becoming financially literate. Once you understand the principles of money, how it works, and how to build recurring revenue streams, you open something that most never do in their lifetime. If I had a time machine and could go back ten years, there are a few books I would read, re-read, and read again. The first book I would grab is “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. It’s a book that has radically changed my view of how finances work. The next book, an audiobook, which I listen to again and again on Audible, is “The Ten x Rule” by Grant Cardone. This book has caused me to dream at levels I never thought were imaginable and has pushed me out of being complacent with the status quo. From there, if you can grasp the concepts laid out in these books, I can guarantee you that you will begin finding other books to consume. I started buying all the Robert Kiyosaki books I could find and devouring them one at a time. Maybe his books work for you, perhaps they don’t, but I’m willing to wager you can find books or an author that will speak directly to you.
I’m sure some will ask, “ok, you gave us a starting point, but what real assets should we invest in?” I’m a bit hesitant to outline them here as some may criticize what has worked for me, or they may try the same and fail miserably. After all, I am not a financial consultant. I’ll share some of the assets I’ve built and invested in that are paying me back just to give you some general ideas of what has worked for me, but again, you need to find your path after first investing in your financial literacy. The first and, without a doubt, the most valuable assets are the two businesses I own. They didn’t just spring up overnight. They took years of hard work and sacrifice, building them from scratch. I didn’t inherit them, and I don’t have a business degree. The first business I started is a web development agency, which I’ve mentioned a few times on my channel. The next company I’ve built is this YouTube channel. For the first several years, this YouTube channel didn’t produce hardly any income. I had to put in a lot of sweat equity, but I knew that the information I could share as I learned would be invaluable to someone, and I’ve been fortunate to build a community that values this type of information.
I do plan on investing in Real Estate in the not so distant future, and I have been investing in Cryptocurrency this year, which is a very speculative investment. What I will say about Cryptocurrency is only to invest in it if you’ve got a high-risk tolerance and only invest what you can afford to lose. I’ll do another video in the future covering my thoughts on crypto later.
But how would I advise anyone who is either just starting or has no idea where to begin and feels trapped in a dead-end job or is worried about a potential economic market collapse? Here’s my advice: again, invest heavily in yourself. I purchase books non-stop, as I realize that an idea taught in a five to fifteen dollar book could change my life. I listen to audiobooks through the Audible app when I’m in the middle of something that doesn’t tie up my cognitive thinking, like driving a car on a long trip or when I’m winding down at the end of the night. Educating yourself and becoming financially literate will be critical in the years ahead. We are in the beginning stages of this Information Age. If you can position yourself now, you can weather the coming economic storms we will inevitably face in this coming year, decade, and beyond.
