Hey, welcome back.
Tech Lead here.
Now, today, I wanted to talk about,
as a multi-millionaire,
how many has changed me.
Number one,
your wife has more of an incentive to leave you.
No, I'm just, I'm just joking about that one.
(grunts)
(groans)
Where was I?
Yeah, so, I'm not who I used to be,
you know, I'm not stupid anymore.
I've changed ever since having made money
as a multi-millionaire.
Did I already mention that?
See, I'm an ex-Google and ex-Facebook Tech Lead.
But little would you know, I actually didn't make my money
from my job.
It's actually been a lot from my personal ventures
and project work.
But, here's a thought experiment for you.
Let's imagine that tomorrow you were
to win a hundred million dollars.
How would you imagine your life would change?
Do you think you would be doing anything different?
And, wouldn't it be funny if the way
that you're currently acting
would be far different than what you were getting
like if you had money.
I think that would be a pretty sad realization, wouldn't it?
If later on, one day when you do achieve wealth,
you look back,
and you have a whole bunch of regrets.
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Here's the first thing I would say.
You would be making far wiser choices.
Smart, safe choices for yourself.
Good decisions about your life.
For example, if you knew you had a really bright future
waiting for you
and that you had
hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank.
Well, you probably wouldn't be doing risky sports.
You would probably not do motor cycling, scuba diving,
rock climbing.
You wouldn't go bungee jumping,
you wouldn't do drugs,
you may even quit alcohol just because you know
you have a really bright future ahead of you
and that the only limiting factor for you
would be your own health
and in order to enjoy that wealth
you would want to be healthy about it.
And, I remember one time I went skydiving, as well.
And I was just totally freaked out.
I was shouting throughout the whole skydiving adventure.
My instructor must have thought
I was totally crazy like a chicken.
But, the thing is, I knew I was worth a lot.
I had a really bright future
and I didn't want it all on the line like that.
What you find, actually,
is that these crazy, life-threatening adventures
that sometimes young people in their 20's go through,
can actually be made safe simply
by paying a little bit more.
Brazen, cheaper person may hitchhike and risk their life.
A wealthier person would rent a car.
A cheaper person may get a motorcycle.
They risk their whole life that way.
A wealthier person just gets a Lamborghini.
It's just as fun.
You can also bring along a second person
like a girlfriend or something.
Why risk your life on a motorcycle, then?
And that's kind of one of the defining factors for me
why I decided to quit the whole motorcycling game
because I realized it's a sport for cheap people
who cannot afford the Lamborghinis.
Like myself.
Which, as I mentioned, the reason I don't own one
is because I lost it when I lost $350 thousand
in the stock markets.
The second thing is, I just had nothing to prove anymore.
And I don't play the status game.
You know, sometimes you see people,
they get Tommy Hilfiger clothes
and then they go up to Armani Exchange clothes.
Well, for me, I mean, I can go straight up
to Louis Vuitton clothes if I wanted to.
Why go through all those intermediate steps, right?
Same with cars.
Yeah, I could go through an Audi, Jaguar, Porsche
and then get up to the Lamborghini, Ferrari.
But, why go through all of these other intermediate steps
if I can just go afford that Lamborghini right away?
So, I just stopped playing the game
because when I thought about it,
do I really wanna go get Louis Vuitton clothes
and a Lamborghini?
Or, do I wanna just do something really basic
and opt out of the game entirely.
You know, I just decided
I didn't need all of that fancy, life-dream materialism.
And it was really pointless for me
to go somewhere in-between.
These clothes I wear, for example,
they tend to be classless.
The car I drive is classless.
So, I might wear like North Face clothing,
Patagonia clothes,
because you can't really tell somebody's social status
from that all people, poor through rich,
would be wearing these brands
just for outerwear protection.
For cars, probably 10 years ago,
I had the MINI Cooper.
I still drive one occasionally.
I drive a SUV occasionally, as well.
Because these are utility cars.
You'll see people, rich through poor,
driving these.
Priuses also actually are classless.
Like, some celebrities have driven them for a while
so, in my mind, there are certain brands
that are part of the whole social status ladder.
And they exist only as a part of that.
Like Jaguar, Infinity, Banana Republic, Armani Exchange,
these brands are kind of upper-middle class
and, as you gain wealth,
you just learn to ignore that whole upper-middle class area.
And you either skip straight through to the top
or you just don't play the game entirely.
I just have nothing to prove to anyone, anymore,
because I know my value.
And when I see other people playing that social status game,
it just looks kind of cheap to me.
Along with that, I think you also shift your thinking
from one of consumerism to one of investment
where, sure, you can buy a $500 thousand car
but you realize that if you were to take that and invest it,
and multiply your money over time,
that time-value is just worth more.
And, it's not worth just a little bit more
where most people, they save up some money,
they just spend it right away because,
yeah, you can invest it
but you're only gonna get a few bucks anyway
so must people don't even get into that investment mindset.
When you have a more sizable chunk, though,
then you realize that even, say, a 4% or 5% gain
on some of this stuff can be quite meaningful.
Now, we have a number of assets
including time, money, health.
And when you take money out of the equation,
then time and health become really important
because those become your limiting factors.
You're no longer limited by
how much money's in your bank account.
So, you start taking more care for your health,
as I mentioned,
and then you also start caring about your time usage
because your time just becomes far more valuable.
For example, the value of one hour of time
may be worth far more to someone like, say, Warren Buffett
compared to a high school student
simply because Warren Buffett can use that time
to find better business ideas, opportunities to invest
and he can do financial planning, what management,
tax optimization strategies,
consult with his legal advisors,
he's just, overall, operating at a larger scale.
And, not to mention, as you gain wealth,
I think people become busier as well
because you have to find ways to invest the money,
optimize for taxes, protect the money,
and so time just becomes more valuable.
If you spend two hours watching a movie,
the price of that wasn't the admission ticket of, say,
$10 to $15, the price may be a $100
in lost opportunity costs.
And, I think that's not necessarily a bad thing.
We should all be valuing our opportunity costs.
Now, before I continue, you may be thinking,
well, maybe you're not rich.
How does this really affect you?
And, the fact of the matter is,
I live a very similar life to everybody else.
If you want some money, I can give you some, right.
Like, we got lunch, I'll buy you your lunch.
You want a free dinner, I'll pay for your dinner.
Maybe I can even get you like a PlayStation 4.
And, in fact, if you take a look at your parents,
that's pretty much the relationship you have with them
or your aunts, or uncles,
or grandmothers or grandfathers, as well.
You're surrounded by people who have money
who, most of these people,
they don't really know what to do with that cash.
At some point, you'll probably inherit some
and then you're not really going to know
what to do about it, either.
Most of these people around you,
they're just guarding some of the money
to make sure that you don't take it
and just blow it all on a Lamborghini.
What people are really looking for
are good business opportunities and investments.
So, here's how I like to think about money.
Only a fool would take a million dollars
and then just blow it all and spend it on two Lamborghinis.
What most people like to do
is take that and reinvest it in, say, houses
or business ideas,
maybe make an investment in stocks
and get a positive return on it such that year over year,
you're getting more on top of that.
And, so, what that money really does for you
is open up more opportunities
for making even more money.
If you're working as a waiter,
you now have the opportunity
to become the owner of the restaurant
and it helps you to think at a grander scale,
thinking about what you really wanna do out of life.
It can speed up your career trajectory, in a sense.
By helping you think longer-term,
instead of always focusing on your next paycheck
so that you can get fed and get your rent paid.
However, learning to invest money
is kind of a different mindset
and I think it's more difficult than it sounds.
For most of us,
all the know is how to do a nine to five job.
We go to work, go to Starbucks, get paid 10 bucks an hour,
save on a few lattes, clip a few coupons
and then blow the rest on clothes
or a brand new car every 10 years.
Now, what about dating?
How is that affected?
Well, we know that childbirth rates
tend to go down with more economic poverty.
So, maybe you'll be more inclined to have kids
because you know that you have more wealth to pass down.
You need an heir.
A single person just can't spend everything, after all.
And I know that there's some line of reasoning
where people think,
well, maybe if they were rich,
they would just go on a dating spree
and date tons of people
but, at the same time,
I've seen that since you have far more to offer,
and, if you were to date somebody,
you could take them to trips around the world.
You could take them to Michelin star restaurants.
You may be actually less inclined
to go out on short-term casual dating.
You're really then looking for somebody
more worthwhile who can last in a long-term relationship
just because you know you're able to offer so much more.
And you're prepared to invest,
not just a small amount of money
like restaurant days or coffee days,
but you can actually invest far more than that.
You can provide them their entire lifestyle
and at this point, maybe you're just more interested
than playing for keeps instead of going out
on casual, cheap restaurant dates all the time.
Let me know what you would do in the comments below, though.
Lastly, I think that having money
allows you to take more ownership of your life.
More responsibility.
You learn to blame less people
because you have all the control and power in the world.
You don't like something, you can change it.
Hire someone, fire someone, pay someone
to have something done.
Money can do a lot.
So, you have all the power now.
You're as enabled as you possibly can be.
So, instead of criticizing and being negative,
you just start focusing on the positives
and things that can be constructively done
to improve a situation.
You find that negativity, blaming other people,
just doesn't help any situation
and you really start to take full ownership
of your own life.
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and get 10% off. So, that'll do it for me
but let me know how you think money changes you.
If tomorrow, you were to win $10 million,
do you think that you would be able
to responsibly handle that amount?
Or, do you think that you would have
to change your mindset some more into a way
that's responsible and able to manage that amount of wealth?
Let me know in the comments below.
If you liked the video, give the like and subscribe
and I'll see you next time. Thanks, bye.