Ron Kmetovicz - Ghost Money: The Pathway to Financial Independence

In 3, 2, 1.

Welcome to another episode of Becoming Preferred.

Today, we're diving into a topic that every entrepreneur and professional eventually grapples with, the difference between building a high income career and building true, lasting independence.

Our guest today is a master of the systems behind success.

Ron Kimatovic is a seasoned engineer with roots at Hewlett Packard and Stanford, but he's also a powerhouse entrepreneur and investor who has spent decades distilling complex financial principles into a blueprint for freedom.

He is the author of Ghost Money, the Pathway to Financial Independence.

Today, he's here to show us how to stop trading time for dollars and start building Ghost money, that invisible compounding engine that works for you while you sleep.

Whether you're looking to scale your first business or planning your legacy, Ron's engineering approach to wealth is exactly what you need to take full control of your financial future.

Join me now for my conversation with Ron Kimatovic.

Well, hi, Ron.

Welcome to the program.

We're delighted to have you.

Good to be here, Michael.

I'm excited about this.

We're going to be reviewing and talking about some of their insights, strategies and tactics in your book Ghost Money and it's a Pathway to Financial Independence.

So it's a book for teens, young adults, parents, grandparents are on financial education.

Anyone wants to learn how to build some wealth.

And so we got five generations out there that can all use some help.

So I'm really excited about this because I'm one of those generations probably on the top end of it.

They're more joining you, I think.

But for our kids and our grandkids, I think this is going to really give our listeners some great tools and insights that they can take with their families.

So welcome to the program.

I've taken a break from our summer that we're having here in Reno, Lake Tahoe.

Michael, crazy warm winter thus far.

I like to be out there on the snowshoes, on the skis.

I'm on my mountain bike.

So no, we're having the same thing.

I'm in the Calgary studio up in Canada.

We have Calgary and Phoenix.

And we were just 4 degrees difference between Florida the other day.

And yeah, it's kind of nice.

It's, it makes it fun to be able to walk outside.

But again, you enjoy the winter sport, so that makes it a little more challenging.

But Ron, let's go back to you're in high school.

I know you had a career in engineering.

We're going to talk about that, how you got there.

But you're back in high school where Are you living, you're deciding what you want to be, what you want to go to school for when you grow up.

Give us a little bit of background.

Our listeners always like to know where you came from, just the genesis of where you are.

Let's go back there and start moving forward.

Well, yeah, let's go back to high school.

I am in small town Pennsylvania, seven miles out of small town Pennsylvania.

I'm a farm boy.

I grew up with my grandfather, aunts and uncles on the farm environment.

My dad out of World War II with an electronics background, he got into radio and television.

Late forties sales service in a mountainous region of Pennsylvania where there were no TV signals.

So dad, with a little bit of help from some people in Mahanoi City, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, was a pioneer in the cable TV business.

Cable systems went in so dad could sell televisions in Pennsylvania.

So I grew up in that environment.

I'm a kid that's 10 years old, okay.

And cable television is around me.

And engineers from Philadelphia came in.

So I got that.

On the other side of the coin, the farm is going on.

My grandfather's farm was not a single entity producer of revenue.

He had sand and gravel, we did logging, we did the truck farming.

There were chickens and eggs.

They did it all.

And on top of that, he was a general contractor.

So in the small community where I grew up, my grandpa built many of the homes that people lived in there.

So with dad on the electronics side, the other part of the family on the farm side, I grew up in a sea of entrepreneurs.

We were so self sufficient.

I didn't know it at the time, but if you needed something, you did it.

And it was easy for me because I had the exposure to the electrical engineers coming by and my destiny in high school.

I graduated high school in 1965. Who likes to think about that?

But I was off to get my engineering degree at Penn State.

That was it.

I had no, no question about what I was going to do.

Oh, that's awesome.

And then you're.

I know you went out to the West Coast.

You know, I remember back in the six.

So I was born in the 60s and I remember watching television, black and white, three channels and television was not much.

You had Ed Sullivan basically, so could watch the Beatles come over and play.

There just wasn't much.

We didn't have cable systems where I grew up.

But I remember getting into electronics and I remember I had an interest in.

I had a buddy and we were buying Heath kits.

So if you remember those.

Oh, I do and that kind of got that started.

So we're learning how to solder down on a board in the 70s and everything.

But when you try to tell people about the technology today, it's really evolved.

All right, so let's fast forward.

You went to work for a major.

What kind of things did you get to work on?

Well, I had a stepping stone.

I graduated from college in 69.

The Vietnam era was going on.

While I was at Penn State, I had the good fortune of working as a research assistant doing ionospheric soundings.

Ionospher soundings are a version of radar.

I so I had a radar background from my undergraduate work.

I ended up landing a really good job with a firm called Goodyear Aerospace in Phoenix, Arizona.

You know the place, I had a run of a three year run there working on side looking.

Radars are imaging radars.

I balance my time between Goodyear, Litchfield park and Edwards Air Force Base.

I got to work on the RF4E, the U2, the SR71.

So it was, it was really a great thing.

But at the same time, I'm involved in this military industrial complex.

I got really close to the engineers that were out in Silicon Valley.

When I was out at Edwards, I knew where I wanted to go.

I got the job at Hewlett Packard in their R and D organization.

I was in heaven.

So I spent three years in aerospace and 17 years with Hewlett Packard in an R and D role.

So what did we work on?

We worked on the Internet.

We worked on gps.

Most anything that we're living with today was in its infancy.

Back in those days, I knew the people that were making the, the graphical user interfaces on computers.

I had the good fortune of working with a space cadet.

His name was Barney Oliver.

He was looking for extraterrestrial intelligence through radio signals with radio telescopes.

There probably wasn't anything in a research development structure that we didn't touch upon in the labs.

We had the resources, we had the instrumentation, and we had the brilliance of the, the engineers coming from all over the country to work there, with the added benefit of continued education at Stanford and other Bay Area schools.

It was just a, just an incredible place to be in the 70s and the 80s.

I loved it.

Yeah, there was a lot of good technology.

But we're going to segue.

That's a good segue to move from that electrical engineering and some of the things you did.

We were talking about Goodyear in Litchfield.

I've been out there several times and watching them shoot the chicken guns into Windshields.

They were making windshields for fighter planes.

And they shoot frozen turkeys and chickens through these long cannons into the windshields to see if they would shatter.

And so I thought, well, that'd be fun.

So got to do that a few times and pull the trigger.

So lots of fun.

But let's talk about engineering of a different type of.

And that's engineering around money.

And because I think it's an engineered solution as well.

And you've written a book called Ghost Money and coined the term ghost money.

So for our audience of entrepreneurs and business professionals who are used to looking at P and L statements and balance sheets, what is ghost money and why is it the secret sauce to financial independence?

Well, the title in entirety is Ghost Money the Pathway to Financial Independence.

I define financial independence as multiple revenue streams, minimal debt.

The reason I use the term ghost money, one, well, it might be a little catchy, but when you have multiple revenue streams and minimal debt, those conditions set you apart from other people.

You're a little bit different.

They become your ghost.

You behave differently.

You have a revenue stream or two out there that gives you some freedom.

When you build that kind of structure in your life where you're not dependent on a paycheck to paycheck, single revenue stream, you're on your way to financial independence.

It doesn't have a number, doesn't have to be a million, half a million.

It has to be sufficient in its value to you to maintain what you like to do.

So multiple revenue streams, minimal debt, that's your ghost money.

That's what keeps you going.

And what I do with the book is my attempt is to get people that have one revenue stream to two revenue streams.

Two is a very large number if you're living off one.

So ghost Money gives the guidance and the information to go from one revenue stream, a paycheck to paycheck, to two revenue streams in your life.

Once you know two, you're likely going to be able to put together three, four, and five.

So it's the stepping stone to multiple revenue streams.

Multiple revenue streams are your ghost money.

You have a background and we've talked about in electrical engineering, and you spent lots of time working for some great companies like hp.

I think how has that engineering mindset, focusing, which, you know, you focus on systems and efficiency, changed the way you approach wealth building compared to, say, a traditional financial advisor?

Well, the wealth building for me is I'm in an environment with Hewlett Packard where we were involved in the business too.

It's not just Engineering.

If you're going to make a product, you're going to try to make a product that's going to do well in the marketplace.

The training that I received was not just technical, it was business.

We had professors from Stanford coming in and working with us on real life problems.

So the MBA aspect of my career was formed through hands on working with business people.

I got the best exposure possible doing that.

So I understand business and I understand it reasonably well.

And I certainly used what I learned when I struck out on my own.

On the other side of the coin here, the folks that want to influence you were in my direct presence.

So I learned how to analyze stocks.

Early bottom up numbers, okay.

Detailed.

We would build models on stocks that we should invest in and it was a team effort amongst engineers.

We got pretty good at it.

So as a stock picker I developed some skills there.

Okay.

I am not about to tell people how to go out and pick stocks, but I do do significant amount analysis in my own investing work that allows me to pick stocks and be reasonably accurate and long term investing for me is something I've just personally done for 50 years.

But to tell other people no, it's because it's mathematically intensive, it's skill set intensive, it's training intensive.

So when I see things that are going on now in social media about invest here, invest there, do this, do that.

Okay.

It scares me that I fear that some people are actually going to listen to some of these people and.

And they do.

And they.

And they do.

Yeah.

And it's interesting to me you've gone through an education system, so did I.

And I remember in high school, I remember learning about stocks and I took a class in order to learn it.

Back then we looked at a newspaper and you could see it was printed out every day.

They had to print out what the stock was, what the traded was.

And we're not even talking options, we're just talking stocks and how to track them.

I remember buying Disney at $25 a share and doing those types of things when we're going back into the 70s.

And why don't they teach this in school?

Like to me, okay, math and science, we got it.

You've had that English.

Yeah, that's a fundamental.

We don't teach money or manage money and usually we're taught by people who've never even left school.

So why do you think there's such a. I want to say why isn't it taught?

And what do you think the issues are there?

Well, you made me think Of a fun story.

I bought my first share of stock, literally one share, when I was in eighth grade because of my algebra one instructor, Mr. Sheepra.

We pulled about a buck from every class member.

I went down to the Berwick bank, where was the only place to buy stocks at the time was at the bank and bought one share of Pennsylvania Railroad.

Okay.

It was, it was familiar country, but I learned the process.

And just like you said, we watched the ticker and at the end of the year, we made about 10% on that investment.

That taught Ron a big lesson.

Okay?

Because mom and dad were, and my grandpa and the family, they were into the bond side of things.

They, they came out of the depression, they were playing it safe.

Okay?

Bonds were good, stocks were bad.

Okay.

But I knew the returns that they were getting on their bonds in high school.

And I saw this 10% come from Pennsylvania Railroad.

I said, ah, okay, this is something to keep an eye on when you get some money.

And so, so that came a couple of years later.

But then I got into stocks.

Now to answ why this is not taught.

Role models, mentors.

In my eighth grade, it's junior high school, there was one person in the teaching staff that knew about stocks and bonds who taught the kids.

I never heard about them from any other instructor in school.

When I got to high school, it was never mentioned.

So it's the mentorship, it's the skill set of the people that you're growing up with in the educational environment or in life, life's environment, that makes the difference for the young folks.

My kids and grandkids grew up with me, so they had that, they had the role model, they have the mentor through ghost money.

I'm attempting to get this role model mentorship out there in a little 100 page book so that somebody doesn't have it.

Could look at this thing, read the stories that are in it, no math, just, just get into it a little bit and, and see a pathway to their second revenue stream after they get their first job.

Well, it makes sense.

And like I say, they're not taught.

And I have always thought it was, hey, we were training factory workers.

Our education system was designed to create factory workers.

Number two pencil, fill it out.

Came out of the Soviet Union way back when, as far as our model goes.

And then we need employees, we need factory workers.

And the person up at the front is the factory leader.

And we just keep cranking out workers and people.

We look at America and we look at the people with retirement.

I saw one stat, the average retired person only has $75,000 in their account in their retired income, like 70% of the country, which is just how are they surviving?

How are they living?

Like it's paycheck to paycheck and it's there.

It's a learned thing.

And when you're teaching these younger generations, and one thing I love about your mission is it's about empowering the next generation to break free from dependency.

So in a world of instant gratification, what's the first mental shift that a young professional needs to build lasting wealth?

Behavior is the key word.

I look at the spirituality, the religious side of things, okay, the seven deadly sins.

You can't do any of them, and a lot of people do one or more of them.

If you want a financially independent life, behavior is going to set the tone for you.

So the first chapter I talk about is the behaviors to abandon, and it's based on the seven deadly sins.

Then you go to the behaviors to adopt.

That gets really good if people can adopt them.

This is where lining up with a role model, with a mentor, high school kids that I talk to, I really encourage trial and error.

Get a job.

Try it.

Okay?

You'll learn things you don't like.

Get the second job.

Try it.

You'll learn things you don't like.

You bounce around a little bit between the ages of 16 and 18 with mom and dad for you because you're not out there all alone and learning there's a safety net in place.

Then, okay, by the time you've been beat up a little bit in employment in high school, you've got a much better calling for what you're going to do post high school.

Will you line up with a job that you've picked up in high school with a mentor that's really going to take you places?

Will you go to trade school because you found something you really enjoy?

Or will it be a college or some type of professional pursuit that you get into?

But it all comes from the exposure to failure.

A couple of failures early on in life are good for you.

Then you learn what you need to do.

You enhance your skill set.

That becomes the behaviors to adopt.

Part of what I like to talk about.

You're on your way.

Then you have your career.

You start making money.

You're living paycheck to paycheck on that one start.

Then you start taking 10, 15, 20, 30% of that paycheck.

And every month you start putting it into what I call the ghost account.

And you're building your second revenue stream.

When you Start doing that.

That can be done in high school with kids.

I have a number of them that leave high school with pretty nice chunk of change by the time they're out of high school because they're investing every month.

Okay.

They're taking 20% of their paycheck.

Okay.

And making $10,000 in high school these days is pretty easy.

And.

And if you do that for two years, you got 20 to 30,000 by the time you graduate from high school.

Buy a house, down payment on a home.

Yeah, all kinds of things.

And I appreciate the insight where you were saying about starting early and failing early.

I remember my daughter, actually, when she was 16, she went to work for a grocery, Safeway.

Most people know Safeway, so national chain.

And she was making ten dollars an hour.

And their workforce was unionized.

And so ten bucks an hour.

And one day I was having a conversation with her, and she was cashier, just checking out groceries.

Great.

She's working.

And she came to me at the end of that summer, and she said, I am going to college.

I want to go to college.

And I said, oh, what prompted that?

Like, we were glad to hear that.

As a dad, you want to hear that?

And she said, dad, there's women who have been here for 10 and 15 years, and one was even 20 years, and they make just $1 more an hour than I do.

Yep.

And she.

That was it.

I didn't even have to say anything.

So as a parent, it was perfect because she got the work experience and went.

She did the math and went, hey, this doesn't end anywhere good.

And we have to do something.

And I think part of the problem is most people, they want to look at what's right in front of them.

They can only see this weekend.

They can only see, hey, I want that car.

When you're a teenager, where's my first car?

How's that going to go?

And with our kids, we always said, hey, you earn half, we'll give you the other half.

But you got to have half.

And if you want a $5,000 car, come up with 2500 if you want a 3000.

And we had, you know, one bought a $3,000 car, she only coughed up 1500 bucks.

She got a junker compared to one that somebody was saving a little more for.

So we taught them to do that and put away the money so they could understand it.

Now they all have a good, healthy sense of dollars.

But our system doesn't create that.

It's not built that way.

We don't most of the parents don't know either.

That's why we use financial planners that would go from that one.

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And now back to my conversation with Ron Khemitovic.

You know, one truth stands out when you talk about making money is wealth starts with income and most of us begin at 00 with nothing.

We don't have anything, no trust funds.

We don't have silver spoons in our mouths.

And what have you seen the difference between those who've made it versus those who maybe were born with silver spoons?

You've seen both.

What's been your assessment of that when you look back at it?

Well, the silver spoon crowd in my life has been very small.

I know a couple of people that money came their way while they were very young, but it's far and few between.

Most folks that I know started with modest means but comfortable.

I came from an environment of people being financially comfortable but not wealthy.

So the key difference, and I think you spelled it out with your daughter, it's the exposure to life's circumstance and the ability to see yourself in those circumstance to make adjustments in what you personally need to do to rise above to achieve the objectives that you want.

So it's the exposure and the support.

If you come from the folks that have the support, then you're on your way.

So what I would say, Michael, in the I wouldn't call it the silver spoon, but I certainly had I know a number of other people who have had the family structure and the network and the Role models and the mentorship as kids to be successful.

And there are a number of folks out there now who don't have that.

When you grow up in a single revenue stream family, you're learning survival tactics.

You're not learning strategy on how to develop your life and your financial future.

So getting in there, showing people the alternate path to build their own structure and their own way of achieving financial independence is what I'm trying to do.

If you're trapped where you don't have the role models, you don't have the mentorship, there's at least one book out there that might show you a little

bit of light and an easy read.

Easy read too well.

And you talk about the behavior when it comes to money.

You talk about money in the book doesn't care about your fame.

It doesn't care about your talent, doesn't care about your good intentions.

It amplifies what your choices are so it doesn't vanish due to bad markets or dumb luck.

As you say, it often disappears because of poor behavior.

So in the book, you identify seven behaviors that people should avoid for achieving financial independence.

Can you unpack that and share a couple of those with us?

Well, let's.

Let's start with.

We're talking about youth today.

The one I see most of the behaviors to avoid is the one of pride.

Pride is a.

It's a real killer of folks that are consumed by it.

And what's part of that pride thing is you think you know it all.

And who that's young doesn't know it all.

Okay.

It's almost like the.

The killer of the goose that lays the golden egg.

But on the other side of the coin, you can develop some humility when you're young.

You can start to look at situations and try to see the other side so that you can more or less work through the truth.

The story about your daughter with someone that sees somebody working for just a dollar more an hour.

Her pride didn't get in the way of that.

She saw the situation for what was real.

My grandson, when he went to work part time at ups, came home with the slogan of I have to be smarter than the box.

And that gave him the incentive to learn how to 3D model the environment of the boxes and the trucks that he was loading the boxes into to optimize.

So it became a challenge.

He let the challenge of the job overcome the paycheck and whatever else could have worked him his way through the environment that he was in.

So he made challenge out of it.

So pride Was swept out of the way.

People get sucked up in that one.

So boom.

Okay, so I'll leave pride now.

Okay.

I got a feedback from a co worker.

It was funny.

He said, I have a nephew that's consumed by lust, gluttony and envy.

Well, how is that kid going to.

He's 30 years old, by the way, is what I was told.

Okay, so here you go.

Okay.

If you're into those three kinds of things and you're living at home with mom and dad, you're not going to make it.

You're not going to achieve financial, financial independence.

So there's a couple of examples there of what I mean by behaviors to abandon.

Okay.

You aband in these things, they gotta go.

Yeah.

Our organization, we work with marketing and sales, so we're trying to teach our clients and they want to sell things better, but our whole society is consumer driven and they're bombarded.

They got to have this, they got to have this kind of this.

And with social media, of course, that's amplified that.

And so we got a lot of people who just, they want more, quicker, they want shortcuts.

They're looking for shortcuts.

Like I was reading one stat that if you build houses, for every five people who leave the homebuilding business, just one signs up.

They all try.

And five of our kids don't even work in the area that they got their degrees in.

They work in different areas.

It was kind of like the new high school diploma.

But it's a matter of learning and they have to learn.

And we tend to spend more than we make.

So you earn a hundred 'Thousand a year, 50,000 a year, you're spending 60, you earn 100, you're spending 110.

And I think putting those disciplines in place where you pay yourself first and then, like you said, talk about debt and reduce debt.

Let's talk about debt because I think there's a difference between good debt and bad debt.

Oh, absolutely.

Let's talk about those.

What makes debt good and what makes debt bad?

Well, yeah, good debt is if you borrow money to buy an appreciating asset.

That's good debt.

If you borrow money to buy a depreciating asset, you've made one heck of a big mistake.

So debt for appreciating assets, positive.

Debt for depreciating assets, negative.

So the most common that you find in this structure is the depreciating asset.

Apparel, cars, consumables.

And consumables, in my view, is the trip to Starbucks to get the five buck cup of coffee or something like that, that's a depreciating expense.

Okay.

And if you borrow money, the latest Android or iPhone.

Yeah.

Still works great.

Yeah.

And if you put that on the credit card, okay, big mistake.

Okay.

If you shop ebay and pick up your next cell phone for 75 or 100 bucks, okay.

That's more or less working.

You quite likely bought an appreciating asset because you'll not only have your cell phone that will serve you well for a year or two, but when it comes time to sell it, you might be able to, to sell it for the same amount of money you paid for it because you bought low and you'll sell low.

No big deal.

But on the appreciating side of things, well, that's the beauty of home ownership.

Homes tend to be appreciating assets.

So you can afford to take out a loan and put that money into an appreciating asset.

But on the other side of the coin, okay, there was talk of somebody putting 50 year old loans.

Okay.

On.

Okay.

That's not the right answer.

Well, and I've been guilty of this one.

I've learned.

But it took me a while.

I buy a car and I wanted that car that you go, whoa, that car, that guy's doing.

Well, it was all image oriented.

And then that car loses 70% of its value over the next five years.

What I've spent on vehicles, I'm going where the people who bought those used vehicles, drove them for a year or two and sold them for what they paid for them, or close to it to your point, and didn't have to carry a bunch of debt with it and had money for other things that are more important for them.

Well, we'll second that, Michael, because I bought one new car in my life.

All my other cars have been used.

So the, the cost of ownership for automobiles these days for me has been pretty low.

And it's been low through my life.

The other world that we're talking about, autos, but I, I, I entered the world of the electronic car probably five, six years ago, and I'm making money on my cars.

I buy used, buy a used Tesla.

It's hard to lose money.

Yeah, it really is.

You can make a couple of bucks, so.

And we always want that latest thing.

And we see that from a social point.

Yeah.

As well.

I want to talk about just your mountain biker philosophy.

And you're 78, and the only reason I bring up your age is you're still an avid mountain biker and hiker how does physical health and energy management play into your financial mentoring?

My physical being is my driver to do what I do and to stay well.

If I didn't have my physical structure in place, my life, for me, it would probably be close to the end.

That's number one priority with my wife and I right now is take care of our health.

So I'm on a program.

I do cardio one day a week.

I do weights the other day, alternating.

Sometimes I take Sunday off.

Most times I don't.

But the whole structure of staying healthy to live life is health is the foundation.

The rest is the enjoyment.

So we work on it actively.

The.

The part of writing the book is a part of that structure as well.

We've been around long enough to enjoy the company of our kids and grandkids, and we're really motivated to make it with the.

With the great grandkids too.

Okay.

We want to be around.

So health is the bedrock.

I do the mountain biking, the outdoor activities.

It's a product of a lifetime.

I would not, at 78, be able to hop on a mountain bike if I hadn't mountain biked before.

Okay.

Not the kind of things we do.

We do some pretty serious stuff.

And I have a mountain bike group called the E. Geezers.

It's the E. Geyser Mountain Bike Club.

Sure.

But we're all of similar age, similar skill sets, and we go out and we're having a good time.

So it's a part of life.

Well, it makes sense.

I've talked to many billionaires, and I've seen panels where, you know, T. Booms Pickens, Warren Buffett, they're all.

And they would all trade every dime they had for their health.

Because if you made a bunch of money, but your health is gone.

You missed the whole point.

But they would trade everything for good health.

And just because if you're sick or you can't do those types because money, we use money, we use things.

None of this is going with us.

Right.

Whatever your belief is or philosophy you follow, none of it's coming to me.

We borrow it.

So what is it adding to my life?

Is it taken away?

Is it.

Is something that's gonna.

Can I do it without.

And we don't need as much as we think we need.

My wife and I started, oh.

A decade ago working on more of an essential.

What's essential that we need?

Because we had far more than we needed.

And it was, do we need four cars with just the two of us?

Do I need two motorcycles?

Do I Need an airplane?

Do I need a motor?

Do I need a boat?

Sea.

Do you know all the toys that most people.

Oh, yes, you can't have all these toys.

And once we started unloading all of those things and then just focusing on the things that were really important, the overhead came down, the obligations came down, the commitments came down.

More time, more freedom became available for me to do exactly what I wanted when I wanted to do it.

And we still want to be, you know, quote, successful, but not at the expense of that.

And to me, because it can all be gone just like that.

We talked prior to the show.

Starting in the pandemic, things happen, markets collapse, things go wrong.

And when you learn it now, do you talk about that in your book at all?

Where.

So, for instance, when the market went down in 070809 and we had that issue, well, I went all in when everything was on sale, when everything was really cheap, I believed in the companies.

I had a list of them.

I bought Apple at $58.

Right.

I sold it at 144, thinking I'm the genius three, four months later, but it went to 700 and split seven times.

So I'm not that smart.

But do you.

Do you cover any of that in the book as far as taking advantage of opportunity, like Warren Buffett says?

I think it's Warren.

He says, when the blood is running in the streets, when the market's fearful, be greedy.

When the market's greedy, be fearful.

What's your take on that, Michael?

I do not.

Okay.

I do not take on the topic of market timing.

However, I do believe that there is good money to be made if you know how to do it and if you're disciplined, to do it.

So I'm not disagreeing with your approach.

Where I have difficulty is most folks do not have the skill sets to identify a good deal that they should buy.

It's tough for most people out there.

So what I do with Ghost Money in its business base essence is I advise or recommend that folks work with time tested mutual funds.

I outlined 10 of them in the book.

I just did the research with AI to get the list.

There's one that's been around since 1929.

It's the Vanguard Wellington.

It pays almost 9%.

Okay.

I recommend for people who don't have the training to be stock people, to be bond people, that they just find a mutual fund that's been around for a long time that pays in the vicinity of 10%, which is a really good return.

It's a really Good return and keep putting money into it every month after month.

Just keep putting it in.

I've played both sides of the, of the fence where I do my own stock picking and my stock picking over my lifetime.

I started in my 20s and I have a lifetime average now that's running around a little over 15% on my stock picking returns.

So that's a good number.

Yeah.

Okay.

But to do what I do, people don't want to do what I do.

I do a lot of analysis.

I spend a lot of time with the numbers.

It's a hobby for me that I enjoy doing.

So I get good returns.

If I were a financial advisor, could I tell other people how to make these returns?

Probably not.

Okay.

Because I have a risk tolerance that I understand.

Other people likely don't have the risk tolerance that I have.

Okay.

I know if I bought something that's a value and the markets go down, I'm not going to sell it.

I'm going to wait until it comes back.

But most folks can't do that.

So I strongly encourage people to buy quality, balanced mutual funds that pay about 10%.

Do your research on it, personal or with any advisor you work with.

Find the ones that work for you and keep putting in 10, 15, 20, 25% of your monthly income into these funds.

15, 20 years later, you're going to have a nice second revenue stream and you're going to have a relatively large revenue stream in the process.

Yeah, no, I think you're bang on.

And people don't realize that by putting away.

It's like compounding.

I've talked to my own kids when they put away at age 21 and put away $3,000 a year and a retirement fund or an IRA or an RSP or whatever.

And over time, the power of compounding.

But they see $3,000 in year one and then in year two they see 32, 3, $300 and then.

And it's that continuous.

And you talk about this in the book and you illustrate, just wait.

Even what the power of doubling does.

Doubling?

Yes.

Yeah.

It becomes.

It's magic and it is magic and it works like magic.

But by the time you're 60, you're going to be a millionaire.

You're going to, if you do just that little bit consistently or that 30, 40 year run.

But people, they want that instant gratification.

And we talk, like you said, it's probably one of those seven sins.

Like we've all been guilty of those things.

We gotta eat at this restaurant.

People see us in this Vehicle, I need that toy and take care of it.

Let's talk about things where they make some mistakes as well.

We see memes, stock memes.

Like I remember Gamestop was going up.

A lot of the kids are putting their money in that because it's get rich quick or Bitcoin.

And just in the last month or two, we've seen Bitcoin go from $100,000 into the low 60s.

So it's tanked.

And again, those things always scared me because there's no value there.

I was a value investor.

Meaning can I cash this in for something like is it worth something versus whatever it is?

What's your take on that?

Well, my take first off, my take on investing is invest in only those things that you understand.

So if you don't understand it, for crying out loud, don't put any of your hard earned money into it.

Now when it comes to the crypto world and what's going on out there, I have really made some honest effort to try to understand the value associated with any of the crypto pieces.

I have yet after, I'd say I've been looking at it.

How long has this stuff been around?

A decade?

I have yet to find any value.

All I see is people paying the price that the market will bear.

And that's not value.

There's no value there.

So yeah, yeah, so.

So it's a market driven entity subject to the whims of manipulators.

And I do think that they're out there working the, the little guy to, to siphon some cash into their pockets.

So I don't see it.

And 78 years old, I still don't see it.

And I stay away.

I'm okay missing that bus.

That train can go without me.

And I'm fine with it.

It's fine.

Yeah, it's that old get rich quick.

I picked stocks and had them do extremely well.

If anything, I sell too soon.

And in my world, like I always make my pride, I'm so proud of myself.

And then the thing shoots up, up goes nuts.

So I'm a good picker.

I just held on to everything.

It's a different story.

Ron, our last question for you.

We want our listeners to always try and take action.

If there's someone who's listening right now that feels overwhelmed by their finances and where they are, what is one thing that they should do in the next 24 hours, 48 hours to start their journey towards ghost money.

I call it a ghost account.

Take some seed money, come buy it with.

If it's your own.

Get some help.

If you need to, go to a discount broker, Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard.

Open up this ghost account.

Pick a quality mutual fund, one one of the 10 that's listed.

Do your own little research on it.

Start putting what you make, 10 to 20 to 30% of what you make into that fund every month.

Consistency.

Yeah, that's it.

It's a simple recipe.

Don't touch it unless you have to.

It's there if you need it for an emergency basis.

Okay, you got something there now, okay, leave it alone.

Wait a decade or two and you're going to be well on your way with a multiple revenue stream that can support you through life.

Well, it's getting that ghost working for you.

And I know you talk about conducting a leak audit.

Most people don't really have income problems.

They have a leak problem.

So it's finding that recurring expense or habit that's draining that account and then moving and redirecting.

It's like you talked about.

Starbucks.

Yeah, I go to Starbucks.

And every time I go or take a granddaughter or something, it's 15, $20.

And.

Yep.

And you do that on a weekly basis.

There's a hundred dollars and there's people where.

Put that, make your coffee at home, take that.

Maybe go out once in a while or get rid of the morning one and take the afternoon one or vice versa.

So it's really looking at where you're spending subscriptions.

Netflix.

Look at all your.

What are you paying for?

What can you get free?

How many subscriptions are you paying for?

Take a look at those expenses and go, do I need this?

Do I want this?

Is it just leaking $?

And we're all guilty.

Guilty of that I find every year I go through, I call it the Spring Clean Financial Sprinkling.

I look at everything I've been writing checks for or being charged for and go, have I used this?

Do I need this?

Am I going to be using it?

And if not, it's gone.

Because I can usually reset subscribe if I need it.

And every, every time I do it, there's hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars that are saved that can be used and allocated for something else.

So.

Well, the book is called Ghost Money the Pathway to Financial Independence.

So it's a book for teens, young adults, parents, grandparents on financial education and wealth building.

So what's the best way to find the book?

We've got the website at ghost money the book.com and they can go and obtain it.

There's.

And I guess they can communicate with you at that website too as well.

Yes they can.

And I encourage.

I don't travel far from home, but to folks that are within about 100, 150 miles of Reno Lake Tahoe.

If they want me to show up at a at a function that they've organized to talk about finances for the youngsters, I'd be happy to do that so that that's part of it and I'm easy to find on my website.

So yeah, no good way to do it.

Ron, this has been illuminating.

Thank you so much.

Glad to see you're still at it and still active and still staying relevant in today's world.

And I think that's.

Well, thanks for being our guest today and sharing your insights.

Well, I like staying relevant and I've got to do my damnedest to to stay there too.

Perfect.

Well, glad you are and glad you will.

Thanks Michael.

As you are listening to this episode, what is one idea that you've heard that has caught your attention and why does it matter so much to you?

And who is one person who you can share that with, either sharing this episode or just sharing that insight that occurred to you while you were listening?

Perhaps it is shifting from being a technician to an architect of your business so that you can stop trading your time for money and start building invisible ghost money engines that generate wealth independently of your daily effort.

Or maybe treating your financial life like an engineered circuit where you intentionally minimize the resistance of unnecessary debt and taxes to maximize the current of your cash flow.

Thank you for listening, for learning, and for investing in yourself so that you can become the best version of you.

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Until next time.

This podcast is created and associated with Summit Media.

My Executive producer is Beth Smith and Director of Research, Tori Smith.

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Goodbye.