Why Most People NEVER Get Rich | Andrei Jikh

0:00 What would you say is the best investing advice you've ever heard?

0:02 I don't know.

0:02 I I think like the most important investing quality of people that I've

0:06 seen that have built wealth is like their ability to delay gratification.

0:10 It's just their ability to project into the future and see

0:12 that there's an older version of themselves that is grateful

0:16 for their younger self saving and investing money and delaying that grat

0:22 delaying buying the things that you think will make you happy.

0:25 And on that note, I don't know if you guys agree with this, but like for me,

0:29 when I want something and I'm like,

0:30 I really don't want to buy it, but I really want it.

0:33 And when I buy it, I feel this like sense of relief.

0:36 But I figured out that the relief comes from not in owning that thing,

0:42 but in the peacefulness that comes with not wanting it anymore.

0:47 Does that make sense?

0:49 Mhm.

0:48 It's like, oh, I'm so glad like I have it now.

0:51 I don't want it, and now it's it's not bugging me as much.

0:54 And so if you're able to extrapolate that into the future,

0:57 you could be like, "Okay, I could buy this thing,

1:00 but maybe I can just skip the buying part

1:02 and then go directly to the not wanting it."

1:05 A lot of the pleasure is in being able to buy something.

1:11 Exactly.

1:10 And also, I I heard some wisdom which was

1:13 not wanting something is just as good as having it.

1:15 Right.

1:15 That's true.

1:16 And so you could take someone that like,

1:17 you know, really, really, really doesn't want

1:20 a a really fancy car for some reason,

1:23 and they're living just as good as someone that like

1:27 bought that fancy car just because it doesn't matter to them.

1:29 Like, they have other priorities, other things that make them happier,

1:32 such as an aquarium or other things that are just more significant to them.

1:35 But if you don't want something, it's just as good as having it.

1:38 I remember reading a piece of advice on the old fire forums that was like,

1:43 "Oh, use this one trick." It was like I could buy that.

1:45 I was like, "Oh, what is this?" And I clicked on it

1:47 and it was like if the next time you want to buy something,

1:50 save up enough money to buy it and then see how you feel about it.

1:55 Mhm.

1:54 And often times just the ability like you said

1:57 to buy that thing is as good as owning it.

2:00 So like it's like a it's my I could buy that trick.

2:03 So the key is you could either save and make enough money to be

2:07 able to buy the things that you want or you could just want fewer things.

2:11 Exactly.

2:11 Yeah.

2:11 you go directly to that part if you can.

2:15 Um, and then also like I think this is the dividend

2:17 brain of me which is like most people I think when

2:20 they when they compare if they want to buy something they're

2:23 like well how many hours of my work does it cost?

2:25 Like if something's $100 and they get paid $20 an hour like

2:28 okay it cost me 5 hours of my life to buy that thing.

2:31 And that's how most people think about purchasing things.

2:33 But what what dividend investing has really taught me

2:36 is to instead think about things in terms of 4%.

2:38 So it's like how much money do I have

2:40 to have for that thing to passively exist in my life?

2:42 And that's what we talk about all the time.

2:44 That's how I everything is.

2:46 I love that the 4% rule.

2:48 So like how much money do I need to invest?

2:49 If you don't have that much money invested in the market,

2:52 then you have no excuse to own that thing.

2:54 Like you can't afford it.

2:56 That's I've always looked at affording.

2:57 So is that 4% per year or 4% of the the amount?

3:00 Well, if it depends if it's like a recurring cost,

3:02 like for example, if it's like a Netflix subscription, what's Netflix right now?

3:05 Per $12.99, we'll call it.

3:07 Let's say $13, right?

3:08 Times 12, that's $156 a year, right?

3:14 25 or divided by 04, that's $3,900.

3:16 If you don't have $3,900 invested in the market at 4%, you cannot afford that.

3:21 You cannot afford that $13 a month.

3:23 Like, that's just how you think about it.

3:25 I've always thought about it that way.

3:26 I think that's the coolest way to think about it.

3:28 And so that that's what motivated me to to build

3:31 a dividend portfolio because then I could be like, "Okay,

3:34 now I know how much money I'm passively making and now

3:36 I can delegate what things I can and can't afford."

3:40 It's so addicting once you start doing that though because I remember

3:44 in a separate vein, it wasn't dividends,

3:46 but for me it was YouTube income because I viewed

3:49 that as all passive because I would have done it anyway.

3:51 And I remember making a dollar a day and thinking, "Oh, wow.

3:54 That pays for an all you could eat sushi every

3:59 single month for free." And then it started to become,

4:02 "Wow, I got a free phone bill every single month at $50 a month.

4:07 And then my car insurance is 100.

4:09 Oh wow, my car insurance is now free." And everything starts to like stack.

4:13 And then pretty soon it's like, "Wow, my mortgage is now free, right?

4:18 This is free.

4:19 This is free.

4:20 I just live for free because I would be doing this anyway and I'm making money.

4:24 Yeah, that's so cool.

4:24 And then you eventually realize that the quickest way

4:27 to being financially free isn't necessarily by building a bigger portfolio.

4:31 It's literally by removing those recurring costs cuz that's way

4:36 easier to do than needing that money invested at 4%.

4:39 Just like, hey, if I could remove this this car payment

4:41 or this like I just saved a h 100red grand from like retirement.

4:45 That's like that's the coolest way of thinking about it.

4:47 Yeah.

4:48 Do you think that the money printing in the United States is a strategy?

4:52 This is this is a conspiracy theory right here.

4:54 To keep people poor, that's a really good question.

4:59 I don't think on that level of conspiracy to where

5:01 I think that is an intentional thing that we're doing.

5:04 I don't think people are that organized to be like,

5:07 "This is what keeps people poor.

5:09 Let's keep doing I I don't think that's the case." What do you think?

5:13 You think it's intentional?

5:14 I tend to not buy into conspiracies,

5:17 but also if you think about it, any money printing drives up assets.

5:22 Assets are owned by wealthy people, not poor people.

5:25 Poor people suffer with inflation.

5:27 It's just what's happening.

5:28 And they're printing money to try to help the poor people,

5:31 but it's like clearly not.

5:33 So, I don't understand.

5:34 I don't think money printing has anything to do with poor people.

5:37 Why would they want them to be wouldn't they would

5:39 benefit more from people having more money because they spend more?

5:43 Like if if you gave a $100,000 to an average person,

5:46 I I almost guarantee the average person it'll be gone almost instantly, right?

5:51 They're not gonna save it.

5:52 So it's better for people to make more money.

5:54 Like there's no incentive for the government to keep people

5:56 Well, technically speaking,

5:57 poor people are going to be easier to control with the government.

6:01 What I what I think is more systemically realistic is

6:06 that the school system teaches people just to work and follow in line,

6:11 listen to another person, do as instructed.

6:14 You take your lunch here, you start here, you end here,

6:18 you do this whole thing so you could work for someone else.

6:20 It's just a very outdated system that I

6:23 think is probably more likely that they keep

6:24 people in like a working hamster wheel

6:27 and then they shove it down throats of like,

6:30 oh, it's good to go to college and then

6:31 now you borrow money, now you're in debt.

6:33 And then it's, oh, but you have

6:34 to buy a house because that's the American dream.

6:36 Now you buy a house.

6:37 Now you now you have a $50,000 student loan and a $300,000 mortgage.

6:41 You're not going anywhere.

6:42 And now you have to take that job

6:43 to keep making those payments because you don't

6:46 want to lose your house and you can't

6:47 default on your student loans even with bankruptcy.

6:50 So now you're kind of stuck.

6:51 But then you're 35 and you think, "Oh crap,

6:54 I'm getting to an age where I should probably

6:55 have a kid." So now you have a kid.

6:56 Now you definitely can't take the risk

6:59 to start your own business or do anything.

7:01 So now you're stuck working that job you don't like to pay for the house,

7:05 to pay for the student loans,

7:07 and now you have a kid to support and now you're just kind

7:09 of and so you keep working till you're 70 and then you die.

7:12 Right.

7:12 So you're saying it's kind of a result of our own decisions

7:14 and kind of as a byproduct of a shared delusion that we

7:17 all have about what it's like to live a I heard

7:20 that a lot of the school system was was created by a factory owner,

7:26 and this could totally be untrue,

7:28 and I'm just rephrasing what someone else told me,

7:30 was dictated by a factory owner who wanted more workers.

7:34 And so they they set up a whole system to basically keep

7:38 people in this loop of like learning how to work for somebody else.

7:42 And that makes sense.

7:43 Makes perfect sense.

7:44 Yeah.

7:44 So, I don't know if that's true or not, but

7:46 I think that's separate from the money printer question.

7:48 But the money printing, I think,

7:50 is purely a result of the government getting out of control in their spending.

7:54 And this is the only way they could get out of it is just like what do they do?

7:58 Here's how here's how I see the whole money printing thing.

8:01 The money printer allows governments to do

8:05 whatever the hell they want, whenever they want.

8:07 Because if we operated on a fixed supply kind of a system,

8:10 how long do you think people would put

8:13 up with fighting wars or whatever the government wants?

8:17 Cuz like if you were to fund a war, let's say, you actually have to tax people.

8:21 You actually need the money and the revenue from people.

8:24 But if you couldn't print money, if you could print money,

8:27 then you can do whatever you want.

8:28 And so I think that's a byproduct of power

8:31 being exercised beyond what what's in our best interest.

8:36 And that's what Bitcoin is trying to fix.

8:37 Like that's why people are obsessed with Bitcoin is because

8:40 it's a fixed supply and therefore governments have to be responsible.

8:43 Therefore, they can't just do whatever they want.

8:45 So then what would you say is the main thing that is keeping people poor?

8:49 Then

8:50 just a lack of financial education and literacy mostly and lifestyle decisions.

8:56 I for whatever reason these questions make me think of uh George Collins.

8:59 Do you guys know who that is?

8:59 The comedian.

9:00 He's like, "Oh, yeah.

9:01 The rich exist to like kind of inspire the middle class

9:05 and then the poor exist there to scare the out of them."

9:09 Well, because it's like keep keep being in the hamster wheel.

9:11 Like if you don't if you don't want to be like these people,

9:13 you got to keep working.

9:14 You got to keep doing

9:14 and the keep working is look at this guy who just bought a Ferrari, right?

9:18 You don't you want to be like that guy?

9:19 But you definitely don't want to be like that guy.

9:21 It's keeps you stuck in the middle, right?

9:23 I heard somewhere that the worst thing you could

9:25 do to someone is pay them $80,000 a year

9:28 because it's just at the right point where they're

9:31 making enough where they don't want to risk it,

9:33 but it's not so little that they're forced

9:36 to take big action and make significant moves

9:39 to do something that would drive their income so

9:42 much higher and give them so much more opportunity.

9:44 It's like that safety middle where it's just enough to keep you going

9:50 and especially if you get promised like a raise to 90k to then 100

9:54 you like you see the trajectory going up you're going to want to stick

9:58 on that and not do your own thing the slowly boiling crab right I

10:03 don't know I just feel like in order to be like if you

10:05 think about it mathematically in order to be the one like if you think

10:08 rich is to to have a lot of money if that's your definition

10:11 of rich then you got to do like what the 99% don't want to do,

10:16 like to become the 1%.

10:18 Which is literally the opposite of what everyone else does,

10:20 like not going out to eat in restaurants and saving

10:23 money and not owning a car and bicycling to work.

10:25 It's like that's what it takes just have

10:27 enough escape velocity to get out of that.

10:29 And I think that's what I focused so much on in my early 20s

10:33 because my parents were immigrants and they

10:35 didn't understand money and I was like, "Okay,

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