for most of my life i wasn't very good
with money
i made it and i spent it the money came
in and out and since nearly 8 out of 10
americans live paycheck to paycheck i'm
guessing that's something that you can
relate to as well
after four years of college i left with
a degree in mass communications and 97
000 in student loan debt then i bought a
brand new car
i told you i wasn't very good with money
there was something holding me back from
even looking at my personal finances it
had become a joke i owe him some money
what kind of money i had dug myself into
a hole so deep it didn't even seem
possible that i'd ever get out the crazy
part all that debt wasn't stopping me
from spending after i got the new car i
added a new tv computer and even a
leather jacket to my running tab that
leather jacket was pretty cool though
soon after college though i came to the
realization that i needed to make a
change that i couldn't just pretend like
i wasn't in massive trouble it was one
of the most challenging things that i've
ever done in my entire life but over the
course of four years
i was able to pay off every single
student loan
even that car payment
and that's what i want to talk about
today money are problems with it and how
minimalism has helped me
there's a basic formula to win at
personal finance
and it's this
spend less money than you make
he sure knows his money in practice
though it's not that easy money seems to
completely slip through our fingers no
matter how much money we make our bank
account seems to have a completely
different agenda one of the reasons that
we're bad with money is because
money is taboo we can't even talk about
it with co-workers with family members
without people feeling judged or
downright offended we can only improve
if we start to have honest conversations
about money we need to remove our egos
and actually try to learn one of the
best ways that i've found
to learn about personal finance is
through books and i'll give three
recommendations dave ramsey's total
money makeover ramit sadies i will teach
you to be rich
and tony robbins unshakeable all three
of these books lay out great advice
trusted advice that has worked and i
think that you'll find a lot of value
from them don't fall into the trap of
lifestyle
creep whenever we get a pay raise or we
start to make a little bit more money we
land a really big project the first
thing that we want to do
is upgrade our apartment buy a better
car
increase our lifestyle
so then that way we're in some way
rewarding this win
but if we were instead
to be more mindful about our spending if
we were to keep our lifestyle in check
and not inflate it as our income rises
five ten years down the road we're gonna
be able to live a lot more comfortably
and we're gonna have so much more
security than if we continue to increase
our lifestyle every year let's be honest
we buy a ton of and we convince
ourselves in a lot of sneaky ways why we
deserve it i mean i like shopping
is there anything so wrong with that
not all advertising is bad but a lot of
it is driven to make us feel as if we
deserve the indulgence you've worked so
hard you deserve this handbag these
sneakers or this watch and the truth of
the matter is that what you deserve is
to be debt free you deserve not living
paycheck to paycheck we face pressure
from social media keeping up with the
joneses or the kardashians is a very
real thing and if we're not curating and
mindful of our news feeds and our social
media feeds
it can be
very tempting to want to keep up and
have the things that everybody else have
otherwise we'll have the fear of missing
out but here's the thing rich people are
rich because they make smart decisions
with their money they don't go out and
lease a brand new bmw they don't rent an
apartment that they can't afford
and the last type of pressure that we
face is pressure from ourselves
there's this thing called the myth of i
don't have and it's something that we
tell ourselves to to convince us that we
need to go out and buy that thing
so as a filmmaker you might say oh i
really want to make that film or that
video
but i don't have this lens or i don't
have this camera so i can't do it or i
can't go out for that run or that jog i
can't start my new workout routine
because i don't have that pair of
sneakers but really the only thing it's
doing is procrastinating us from getting
started with our goals and our dreams
and it's convincing us that buying that
extra thing is gonna solve everything
which it won't
you need to make sacrifices when i
graduated college within three months i
decided to move home
with my parents and i lived in my
parents basement literally in the
basement for two years i didn't date
much didn't spend much i didn't go out
much because i knew that i had to make
some sacrifices to get to a point when i
could start to take risks you have to be
completely clear with why you're doing
this in the first place why do you want
to be debt free why do you want to have
financial freedom when we truly
understand why we don't want to be
living paycheck to paycheck why we would
want to be debt-free
everything else comes a little bit
easier when we think about having the
security and safety being able to take
care of our family and our friends if
they run into trouble
it becomes more obvious
why this is so important you're able
then to take more risk to challenge
yourself put your push yourself outside
of your comfort zone
in ways that you otherwise wouldn't be
able to i know
for myself if i wasn't debt-free
i wouldn't be where i am today if i
hadn't taken that first step and and
realized that i had a problem
i wouldn't have had that domino effect
that led me to where i am to be able to
take
pretty ambitious and risky decisions to
move across the country to
leave my business and start a complete
new one these aren't easy decisions and
when you have debt
it's gonna be that much more difficult
and that less likely that you're gonna
succeed
the strategy couldn't be more simple
spend less money than you make but as
you know we face a lot of pressure to do
the exact opposite but if you can out
maneuver these forces if you can build a
healthy relationship with money and
create positive habits that stick you
will be able to become
financially free
thanks so much for watching what
strategies tips tools and books have
helped you on your own personal finance
journey what things have helped you to
chip away and even get out of debt i'd
love to hear about your success stories
as well as a part of that conversation
opening up the dialogue about money i
think we should be encouraging each
other and
really rewarding each other for making
positive steps in our lives try not to
feel threatened or discouraged if other
people have a great success story
see it as potential in yourself if
somebody's able to get out of debt that
means that you probably can too thank
you guys for watching