Most of these people will never retire, including you.
Here's why.
Society has fed you the lie that if you do well in school,
get good grades, you'll get a great job,
and retire with enough money to enjoy your old age.
But this is rarely the case.
Hi guys, it's Mark.
So firstly, let's get rid of the idea
that retirement is just for old people.
It's simply when you have enough money that it allows you
the freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want.
My aim was to get to the point where I could retire
and live out the rest of my days in comfort
without anyone telling what I could and couldn't do.
Yeah, I might have a bit of a problem with authority,
that's for sure.
Through hard work and dedication, I managed
to achieve this goal in my late 20s, all from scratch.
However, times have changed, and I understand that.
I'm not oblivious to the fact
that house prices have gone up 48% in the last 10 years.
The stock market is the most expensive it's ever been.
And to top it all off, we're on the brink of a recession
with a lost decade of returns looming.
This is all leading to the rich getting richer
and the poor getting poorer.
And from someone that came from nothing,
that's something I just can't let happen.
Retiring is a lot like climbing Everest.
It's a hard challenge, and some people, sadly,
don't make it to the top.
However, the ones that put in the years of training have
the best shot of summiting the mountain.
This training comes in the form of financial literacy
and it's the key to closing the wealth gap.
That's why today, I'm gonna be sharing
the four different levels of retirement
and how to achieve each one in today's economic climate.
Contrary to what a lot of people think,
retirement is still possible if you have
the knowledge to secure your freedom.
The levels of retirement.
You can clearly break down retirement
into four different levels,
depending on your goals and aspirations.
It's important to first know where you're going
in order to pick your path up the mountain.
Level one is drifting.
Now there's no shame in this, but it is the bare minimum.
Level two is stability.
This is basically drifting,
but with a Captain America shield
protecting your financial interests.
Level three is freedom.
There's a very clear way to know when you've hit this level
and it's called the 4% rule.
Level four is abundance.
Now this is the absolute summit of the retirement mountain.
Some people achieve this goal at 65,
while others manage to climb the mountain much quicker,
I'm talking in their early 30s.
Everyone is having such a fun party up here
and honestly, it's where you wanna be.
You have abundance when you have enough money
to do whatever your heart desires.
With great power comes great responsibility.
And when you reach this stage, it's all about helping
other people up the mountain.
It's important never to forget where you came from.
That's why I'm gonna be sharing a personal story
for each level of retirement so that
you can plot your course up the treacherous mountain ahead.
Just a warning here, no one said it's gonna be easy.
So if you're looking for a quick solution,
please click off this video right now.
Level one, drifting.
Difficulty rating, two out of 10.
Before this level, you're financially relying
on other people.
Maybe this is student loans or even your parents.
The beauty of beating this level is you finally gain
your independence from those that seek to control you.
A friend of mine named Jonathan works a normal job
at B&Q which is a bit like the Home Depot in America.
Don't worry, I've changed his name,
so I'm not publicly outing poor Jon.
He earns a decent salary which gives him the ability
to buy a car and travel wherever he wants
in his free time.
However, he also lives with his parents.
Now, this is actually quite a good idea
when you're trying to build up your finances.
But it's important not to get too comfortable.
He enjoys his job, but he's definitely trapped
by being paid just enough to survive,
but not enough to thrive.
And this is why they call it the rat race.
The issue with drifting is that
you can't work all your life.
This leaves you very reliant on potential inheritance
to secure your retirement, and not everyone has this luxury.
I know I certainly didn't, not with three sisters.
To achieve this level, you need a job that pays
for your living expenses with enough left over
to meet debt payments.
On top of this, it's imperative that you have
an emergency fund of at least three
to six months of your living expenses,
in case an unexpected emergency occurs
and throws you off your paycheck to paycheck lifestyle.
Without this, you could be trapped
in not just comfort, but also debt.
Level two, stability.
Difficulty rating, five out of 10.
By reaching this level, you have already beaten
the majority of people, as you're secured
your retirement later in life.
Well, I say that, however at this point,
you'll be tested more than ever,
as the drifters wanna drag you back down the mountain.
An associate of mine called George is 45.
He's doing pretty well and has his own house.
But times are tougher than they once were.
He also has an emergency fund
and a good investment portfolio
that will provide him with more than enough
once he reaches the retirement age.
But here's the issue.
He's finding it very difficult
not to dip into his investments.
He's currently working as a carpenter and joiner.
But due to the current financial volatility
in our economy, his wages aren't going up fast enough
to account for the level of inflation,
which leaves him short of money when he's providing
for his family and paying a mortgage
because it just doesn't stretch as far anymore.
Instead of spending money from his retirement pot
and being dragged back down to just drifting,
he's done something really quite special,
and that's profiting from a hobby.
In his spare time, he enjoys going to Airsoft sites.
This is about like paintballing, but some would argue
a bit more realistic.
Huh, it certainly hurts when you get hit.
After attending many of these events,
he felt that he could run one himself.
So he found some land to rent and originally planned
for the site to operate only on Sundays.
However, due to extremely high demand,
he's now hired someone to operate it throughout the week,
and has even branched out to include corporate away days
where staff can get their anger out on each other
and go back to the office ready to work as a team again.
Kurtis, when you booking this?
- [Kurtis] ASAP.
- This gives him the extra income he requires
and therefore saves him from raiding his investments.
This combination of hobby and business is
extremely effective, as the benefits are two-fold.
Of course, it provides you with extra income,
but also saves you a fortune, as the money
you would be spending on a hobby goes straight back to you.
To achieve this level, you want to be focusing
on three main areas.
Firstly, you can never be stable
with high interest debt around your neck.
So paying off anything that
isn't ultimately making you money is essential.
Secondly, in order to be able to retire in later life,
you need to be investing into the markets.
A great way to do this is through a Roth IRA in America
and an Isa in the UK.
These are tax advantage accounts that will
allow your money to grow over time completely tax-free.
I like to invest in index funds with this type of account,
as it's a more reliable option over the long-term
and requires far less maintenance.
The only thing better than investing in index funds is
grabbing your free stock slice from Public.com
as it's worth between three and $1,000.
Public puts investors first and has an amazing community
of investors sharing their insights on the app.
I'll leave a link below if you wanna pick that up.
Thirdly, you need to recognize your existing skills
and stack them effectively in order to create extra income.
It's all about identifying your unfair advantages
so that your skills' stack can't easily be replicated.
Level three, freedom.
Difficulty rating, eight out of 10.
This is the stage where you unchain yourself
from day-to-day work, and get paid based on your value
rather than your time.
My old chiropractor, Harrison, started out
by doing just the basics: cracking backs and getting dollar.
But he quickly realized all of his time was being sold
and he hit the point where he couldn't make any more money
unless he put up his prices.
But the problem was, doing this
may have cause his clients to walk.
Well, maybe they wouldn't have walked due
to their bad backs, but you get what I mean.
So in order to gain real freedom, where his income
wasn't tied to how many hours he was working in a day,
he had to get out his wand, the magic rule of time.
I'm only joking, of course, there's only 24 hours in a day.
But for a lot of us, that time is being taken up
by little tasks that don't pay us the money we deserve.
Harrison worked out that during the half hour
he saw a patient, approximately 10 minutes of his time
was wasted with him just getting ready,
and another 10 minutes was wasted doing a warmup massage
to get them prepared for their back correction.
So really, his skill was only required for 10 minutes.
So he employed a masseuse, so when his patients arrived,
they immediately went up for a massage.
This essentially tripled the amount of money he could earn.
But he didn't stop there.
After realizing that once he'd fixed
peoples' back problems, they didn't return.
He implemented a membership program.
This is because it's much easier and cheaper
to retain a customer than to acquire a new one.
In this level, you'll have invested 25 times
your desired annual salary, meaning you should have
an endless pot of money if you only withdrawal 4% per year.
This is known as your freedom figure
and it's different for everyone.
For example, if you wanna live off $50,000 per year,
you'll need to times that by 25,
meaning 1.25 million invested
in a fairly liquid asset would be required.
If you want a bit of diversity from investing
in the stock market, then Bitcoin was
the best performing asset of the last decade.
And I buy mine on the FTX app because the fees are
85% cheaper than the top competitors,
meaning you get more bang for your buck.
And the best part is, you get free Crypton
every trade over $10 when you use the code MARKTILBURY.
I'll leave a link below if you wanna check that out.
Level four, abundance.
Difficult rating, 10 out of 10.
This is FU money, the kind of money
that most people only dream of that allows you
to turn down any opportunity that you're not interested in
because it just doesn't matter.
In order to achieve this,
I combined all of the levels into one.
I secured a nine-to-five job like Jonathan,
built up my investment portfolio like George,
and built a profitable business like Harrison.
But I didn't stop there.
I expanded into multiple different businesses
and investment assets while maintaining the ability
to be able to adapt to disruption for over three decades.
The main difference between financial freedom
and financial abundance is the willingness
to embrace the new.
I mean, I was one of the first people
over 50 to be on TikTok.
At this point, it's not necessarily about making more money
but it's about making more impact.
The biggest problem is people reaching the abundance level
and spending all their time trying
to conserve what they have, rather than giving a leg up
to the talented generations below.
Remember, most people will watch this video
and not take any action.
So your competition is far less
than you might first realize.
And after that first step up the mountain,
you may even surprise yourself with the momentum you gain.
So I'm gonna leave the next video right up there,
but don't click on it just yet.
Make sure to subscribe if you wanna grow your wealth.
I'll see you over there.