I spent the weekend wading through all the marketing emails that hit my inbox. I bet you did too.
Black Friday early sales… day-of sales… last chance sales… I lost count of how many there were.
Then, at a certain point, the headlines flipped. Now it was time for Cyber Monday sales. So I waded through all those emails too.
Of course, I don’t have any problem with these emails. I understand. I try to send out a couple emails every week myself.
But here’s the thing – the whole concept underlying Black Friday is a problem. That’s because it perpetuates the most common misconception we have around money.
It’s the consumerist view of money. The idea that the whole point of making money is to spend it on stuff. And then if we can make “good money”, we can buy even nicer stuff.
So many people view money in this way.
And as a result, they live their life on a treadmill. Constantly working for money… buying stuff… and working for more money.
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
That quote comes from Albert Einstein. He also said it’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal schooling.
So the guy who we often associate with brilliance was no fan of school. There’s a good reason for that.
The educational system that’s been in place over the last century isn’t about enlightening and empowering individuals. Quite the opposite.
It’s the factory model here in the U.S. In Germany, they originally referred to it as the gymnasium approach.
The system is designed to produce good soldiers and good workers. People who will be punctual and follow their orders reliably.
This is why the modern education system neglects the subjects of money and finance. It’s also why the history and economics we get is overly simplistic. And these days hyper-politicized.
To me, this is educational malpractice.
Fortunately, there’s a solution. Two solutions, actually.
“No man sews a piece of new cloth into an old garment, because that new cloth will pull away from the garment, and the tear will be made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old wine-skins, or else the skins will burst, the wine will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined.
Men put new wine into new wine-skins, and both are preserved.”
That’s a quote from Jesus of Nazareth. He was trying to explain why his proposed system of morality was incompatible with what came before it.
Jesus’ model of morality is the golden rule. On the surface it’s very simple. But there’s a big nuance in there that I suspect a lot of people miss.
That nuance is this: Jesus defined an entirely new way of judging right and wrong.
Previously, laws and commandments from authority figures determined what was right and what wasn’t. With the Jesus model, a person’s actions towards others are what matter.
By treating others in ways that they would not like themselves, people condemn their own actions. And by treating others in a manner that they would like themselves, people justify their actions.
As simple as this model is, it threatened to completely upend the established hierarchy in Jesus’ day. That’s because it was simple, easy to understand, and better. For everybody.
Now I know we may be wondering – what in the world does this have to do with Bitcoin?
We got a glimpse of one back in 2008. There was all kinds of chaos and excitement for a few days. Iconic investment bank Lehman Brothers even collapsed in a heap.
But then the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve (the Fed) stepped in to bail everybody out. Show over.
Well, last week one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, FTX, gave us another show.
To set the stage, FTX was handling billions of dollars in crypto transactions every day. This drove over $1 billion in revenue last year.
And as a company FTX was valued at $32.5 billion at the start of last week. That’s thanks to pulling in nearly $2 billion in venture capital investment since its founding in 2019.
And look at who invested in FTX…
Sequoia Capital… Tiger Global Management… SoftBank… Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan… Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund… Tom Brady and his former wife… Steph Curry… the list goes on.
These are all people who should have known better.
Yesterday we observed how wages, adjusted for inflation, have stagnated since 1971. And we suggested that the answer is to fill in the gap with passive income.
But what exactly does that mean? What is passive income?
Simply put, passive income is money that we make without constantly working for it. That’s it. It’s the holy grail of personal finance.
That said, passive income is a buzz word that’s thrown around everywhere these days. And there are a lot of misconceptions out there.
When we talk about passive income, we’re not talking about a way to make money without effort or investment. That’s impossible… outside of criminal activity and perhaps politics.
Remember, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
I also don’t consider side hustles to be passive income.
I love the fact that anyone can start an online business today. But it’s a lot of work. There’s nothing passive about it.
So in my experience, old fashioned rental real estate is the single best vehicle for generating passive income. There are a few reasons for this.
First, if we utilize existing systems we can build a robust real estate portfolio with no more than thirty minutes worth of work a month.
The key is having a network of professionals in place already. I call this “infrastructure”.
And this infrastructure provides us with access to the best U.S. rental markets. That means we only invest in places where the cash flow is high and the laws are good.
This also gives us access to a wide range of properties. We can start as small or as big as we want to.
In other words, it’s far easier to break into the game than most people realize. I’m living proof of that.
Finally, real estate provides some tremendous tax advantages to investors. There’s a reason why it’s always been a good old boys game. The tax issue is a big part of that.
My point is this – if we want to build passive income, rental real estate is the way to go.
With the right system in place, anybody can work up to $2,000 to $3,000 a month in passive income in just a few years. That’s $24,000 to $36,000 in extra income a year.
Then that number can grow as big as we want it to. It’s just a matter of systematically following the process.
Which begs the question – what process?
That’s where our Rental Real Estate Accelerator course comes in.
This program tears down the barriers to entry and makes real estate investing simple. It covers the entire process from A to Z.
Developing investment criteria… analyzing properties… strategic financing… LLC structure… advanced tax strategy… asset protection – Rental Real Estate Accelerator covers all of it. Everything one needs to know to get started with real estate, it’s in here.
What’s more, the program walks through the process of buying an investment property step-by-step. We’re talking about a real example. No hypotheticals here.
And if that weren’t enough, we’ll show how anybody can plug in to existing real estate investment networks right now.
This is how we find the best investment properties and trusted professionals – both of which are key to making real estate as passive as possible.
To sum it up, Rental Real Estate Accelerator makes passive income as simple as possible.
In fact, it makes building passive income with real estate almost as easy as buying stocks online. No kidding.
That’s the power of plugging into existing systems.
And the beautiful thing is, anybody can do this. It’s just a matter of knowledge and connections.
And I should point out that Rental Real Estate Accelerator is incredibly affordable.
We aren’t shilling financial advice for thousands of dollars a year. In fact, we don’t even require a subscription.
Instead, we typically offer our core program at a one-time cost of just $42. That’s it.
But not today.
In honor of the brave new financial world we find ourselves in, we’re offering a 30% discount right now.
That means you can tap into a tried-and-true system this week for less than thirty bucks. Anybody who follows through on what they learn will recoup this and a lot more with their first investment.
To take advantage of your discount today, just enter coupon code “RREA” at the checkout page.
“Your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today,” President Nixon proclaimed on television with a straight face.
“The effect of this action, in other words, will be to stabilize the dollar.”
The date was August 15, 1971. President Nixon just announced that he was closing what was known as the “gold window”. This was the system through which foreign countries could redeem U.S. dollars for physical gold upon demand.
The gold window was a fixture of the Bretton Woods System of 1944. That was the international agreement which established the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
What we’re talking about here is trust. The idea was that if the U.S. started printing too much money, the rest of the world could trade their dollars in for gold.
Makes sense, right? Nobody wants to hold a currency that can be created from nothing at will.
President Nixon got rid of this restraint on money-printing in 1971. The story behind that move is very nuanced. But what followed isn’t…
2022 is the year the rules of money and finance changed.
If we look at a chart of the S&P 500 going back to the early 80s, it’s only gone up over time.
Sure there were plenty of dips. But for the last forty years we could buy a simple mutual fund or index fund and two years later we would have made money. Fifteen years later we would have made a lot of money.
Meanwhile, if we were to overlay a chart of the 10-year Treasury rate – which is a proxy for interest rates… It’s only gone down over the last four decades.
This dynamic – stocks going up, rates going down – is largely thanks to the Federal Reserve (the Fed). It’s had a hand in both. Through loose monetary policy.
But the game’s over.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell made that abundantly clear last week. The Fed has aggressively raised interest rates this year… and it will continue. There’s no pivot coming.
And that means stocks will have to stand on their own. The Fed will no longer prop up the market.
We’re in uncharted waters here. Nobody under the age of 60 has lived in a world in which the Fed didn’t push stocks up and rates down.
So to me, the big takeaway is that we have to rethink financial planning 101. And I’m talking about the entire “nest egg” approach to retirement.
By that I mean the idea that we need to pour our savings into financial assets trying to get to this mythical retirement number.
What’s Your Number? I remember old commercials promoting this model.
The idea is that we build financial assets and we hope our returns get us to a big enough number so we can retire. Then we draw-down our assets to create income for ourselves after we quit working.
So it’s always a choice between assets and income.
When our assets are going up, we don’t have the income. Then when we want the income, our assets have to come down.
Why put ourselves in this position? Why not get assets and income on the same side of the equation?
We do this by flipping to a model that focuses on monthly cash flow. On creating extra income streams.
That’s how we put assets and income on the same team.
When our assets go up, so does our income. And when we want more income… we just buy more assets. It’s a far more robust approach.
In fact, with the right vehicle… and the right system in place, anybody can work up to $2,000 or $3,000 a month in extra income in just a few short years.
From there, getting to $10,000 a month in extra income is just a matter of accelerating the process. It’s completely possible to get there in six years. Ten at the most.
And that’s where our new Rental Real Estate Accelerator program comes in.
Our goal with this program is simple. We want to tear down the barriers to entry around real estate investing.
And we do that by providing a step-by-step system for building passive income with real estate. This is something anybody can plug in to right away.
By the way, when I say passive, I mean it. Our program boils real estate investing down to a system.
We aren’t pounding the pavement or taking calls. All we have to do is send a few emails occasionally. That’s it.
Best of all, our course is priced such that anybody can afford it.
We aren’t shilling financial advice for thousands of dollars a year. In fact, we don’t even require a subscription.
Instead, we are offering our core program at a one-time cost of just $42. That’s it. We’re talking about the same price as a decent meal out for two.
And in honor of this brave new financial world we find ourselves in, we’re offering a 30% discount to anybody who checks out our accelerator program this week.
That means you can tap into a tried-and-true system for less than thirty bucks. Anybody who follows through on what they learn will recoup this and a lot more with their first investment.
For a more detailed explanation of our program, just go right here:
We’re at an inflection point in history right now. Things aren’t going back to how they used to be.
I don’t think the financial media understands this yet. But in hindsight, the bread crumbs were right there in plain sight. It comes down to an arcane change at the core of our financial system.
This is the first year in which the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) went live across the board.
I bet very few people out there even know what this is. And of those who do, I doubt many understood SOFR’s significance.
SOFR is a benchmark interest rate for dollar-denominated loans and derivatives.
We don’t need to go down a deep rabbit hole on this. What’s important to understand is that the interest rates for all loans in the U.S. are now influenced by SOFR.
The London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) used to hold that privilege. Before this year those who controlled LIBOR could influence interest rates in the U.S.
And that means the Fed did not previously have full control over U.S. monetary policy.
SOFR changed that.
That’s why the Fed’s been raising rates aggressively this year. Even though everybody has been screaming at them to stop.
And it’s why they will keep going. The Fed is playing the long game here. It’s all about self-preservation.
So the days of the Fed propping up the stock market are over. The Fed Put is dead.
And aggressive monetary policy will force some dramatic changes with how Treasury debt is handled. I think we may even see gold partially remonetized as a means of offsetting higher rates.
As such, we need to completely rethink financial planning 101. The old ways aren’t going to work anymore.
And that’s where Finance for Freedom comes in.
This is the only financial course designed to account for the current climate. Our program accounts for the major macroeconomic changes that are playing out right now.
Friends, we’re living history right now. The question is – do we want to be on the right side of it?
Finance for Freedom will show us how. More information right here:
Everywhere we look, it seems like the world is falling apart.
The stock market is crashing. Consumer prices are ballooning. Interest rates are on the rise.
It certainly feels like a recession is bearing down upon us. And it’s hard to feel secure about our finances in this environment.
Everywhere we turn there’s another reason to worry. Stuffing money under the mattress now seems like a good idea to many.
The good news is there is a solution.
Our revamped Finance for Freedom program can help you weather the storm.
That’s because it’s designed specifically for times like this. I’m not aware of another finance course out there that can make the same claim.
It all starts with understanding the secrets hidden within the current monetary system. And trust me, they run deep.
Then we cover basic personal finance topics. This helps us optimize our current situation.
From there, we dive into the principles of asset allocation. And we talk about specific investments that are critical in the current climate.
Some of these investments will be familiar. But some won’t. We provide an entire section on alternative investments that provide peace of mind in trying times.
Occasionally I sit back and reflect upon my life’s milestones.
Graduation. Marriage. The birth of my daughter… then my son. These were incredibly formative events.
And I just added another milestone to the list. Getting banned from the hospital’s rehab unit.
I was visiting a family member who just had a stroke last week. Upon entering the facility, the person at the front desk informed me that masks were required. And he asked me to take a mask from a box on the counter.
So I did. And then I made my way to the elevator and up to the seventh floor.
It turns out the floor’s nursing station is right there as you get off the elevator. And the director happened to be on duty.
She was talking with somebody as I made my journey towards the room. But she immediately called out as soon as she saw me. Sir, you need to have a mask.
I smiled and called back. “It’s okay – I do!”. Then I held up the mask I was carrying in my hand.
Sir, you must put the mask on! She snapped back.
I repeated that it was okay as I walked around the corner. I figured that would be the end of it.
Wrong.
She pursued me. And she barked at me to put the mask on every step of the way.
I simply repeated to her that it was okay. Then I walked into the proper room and shut the door.
For the first ten minutes of my visit I was thinking that security may barge in any minute. But they didn’t. Though, I don’t think I’ll be welcomed back.
Now, I’m not at all a disagreeable person. I would happily wear a mask if there were truly a medical reason to do so.
But the research is very clear. Masks do not stop the transmission of aerosolized particles.
Two randomized control trials confirm this definitively.
The first trial was conducted in Denmark with about 6,000 participants. That was two years ago. The second was conducted on Paris Island with nearly 2,000 U.S. Marine Corps. recruits.
The data clearly showed that masks did not inhibit the spread of COVID-19. And our real-world experience confirms this.
If masks worked, we would have seen a dramatic drop in cases after mask mandates rolled out. But we didn’t. Cases continued to rise.
So why was this person aggressively trying to coerce me into wearing a mask? They don’t work. And all Covid-related restrictions have long been dropped.
I think the answer is simple. Some people are just like that. Sometimes life just wants to push us around. We all know what that’s like.
But there is an antidote. It’s financial independence.
When we are in a good place financially, we can retain much more control over our lives and our decisions. To me, this is the true purpose of money.
I care nothing for consumerism. I’m not interested in luxuries. What I value is freedom. And that’s what financial independence enables.
This is the driving ethos behind our newly revamped Finance for Freedom course. It drills into the fundamentals of money, finance, asset allocation, and investments.
The goal is simple. The course is designed to help people get a jump on their path to financial independence.
And we’re running a 30% off special this week. That’s in honor of all those times when life tries to push us around.
Just go right here for more information on Finance for Freedom. You can use coupon code “ER” at the checkout page to take 30% off the normal price.
Then let’s stand tall and tell life we refuse to be bullied around.
