BOLDER & WISER with Peter Wang and Michelle Kraemer

Ro$$ Mac: building wealth, pay your future self first, 50/30/20 rule, gaming credit score

• Peter Wang • Season 1 • Episode 3

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Ross Mac of Maconomics shared truth bombs about changing our collective mind about and relationship with money: use it as a tool to build wealth, why the conventional wisdom of saving isn't enough, how to talk with kids about money, and building good habits so we can reap the rewards of our discipline.

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IG: https://www.instagram.com/imrossmac/
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/imrossmac
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Maconomics Wealth Summit: https://maconomics.com/macsummit/maconomics-wealth-summit-chicago-july-2023

⌚️ TIMESTAMPS
02:14 What is Maconomics?
04:25 Netflix documentary "Get Smart With Money": a hopeful mindset shift about money
07:55 Living paycheck to paycheck: income vs. spending habit
08:31 Learning money habits from parents
19:31 Investing = Paying your future self first
25:09 50/30/20 rule: allocating money wisely
26:47 Spending less is better than making more $
33:09 Statement vs. due dates: gaming credit scores
36:16 Income limit vs. credit limit
38:53 Talking to kids about money
45:00 The American culture of borrowing money
51:03 Financial freedom and compound interest

Peter Wang:

Welcome to the work in progress podcast. I am your host, Peter Wong. This episode is about building wealth. What is your mindset when it comes to money? Are you building wealth or do you live paycheck to paycheck like 60% of Americans? Do you believe only having one income stream is too close to having zero? In this episode, I sat down with my friend, Ross Mack, an entrepreneurial and street smart financial coach. Born and raised in Southside, Chicago, Ross is the creator of the Maconomics Show on Revolt TV, a star on Netflix documentary Get Smart With Money, and this upcoming weekend, on July 9th, Ross is launching his very first Maconomics Wealth Summit in his hometown. I'm so proud of him. We talk about why saving is only half the battle, how to game credit cards, the 50 30 20 rule, and why you should always pay yourself first and much more. Enjoy the episode. All right, Ross Mac, thank you so much for joining the Work in Progress podcast. It's amazing to have you.

Ross Mac:

My God, Peter, man, I can't say thanks enough. You're a phenomenal person, a friend of mine. So thank you for having me.

Peter Wang:

Yes, you and I have known each other for a while, aligned on values in terms of looking at money that's not either lifting up as the goal of life, so high up, or not understanding the value of money that we're living through life without thinking about the utility it provides We're all trying to seek wisdom about how to work with money. And you and I are both fathers. you just shared with me before the podcast that you were expecting number three.

Ross Mac:

dude. Number three. I don't know what I'm thinking, but I'm, it's a ride. It's a roller coaster. I'm excited.

Peter Wang:

Three gifts, okay? Not inconsequential gifts that you've been given. I put that way too because I have three kids.

Ross Mac:

that we got.

Peter Wang:

And... You and I both shared time on Wall Street, I think that's a very interesting beginning journey for all careers. That has changed our way of looking at money.

Ross Mac:

Unbelievable.

Peter Wang:

So let's get started. I want to talk about what you're working on right now to give our audience who may not know you.

Ross Mac:

Yeah. I have a brand, as you can see behind me called Maconomics, a umbrella organization that I have a lot of different businesses under it. Right now, I would say Maconomics is a content production company, right? Where we produce a lot of content and we partner with brands and the focus of our content is financial literacy, right? We're trying to make financial literacy way more engaging. Easier to digest to the everyday person who for the most part didn't necessarily have a direct line of access to attaining this type of information. Financial literacy is the type of topic that one should be taught in school and unfortunately isn't. So most people go through life learning about money. After making a mistake, right? Oh, man, I have a 500 credit score. What did I go wrong? Now they're in catch up mode. Oh, man. I'm 30, 000 dollars in debt. Now I'm thinking about budgeting. Now I'm thinking about, how I'm spending or oh, I'm 40 and I have no idea. What to do, as I'm getting close to the retirement age, and so at the end of the day, it's one of those thing where hindsight is 2020 when you come to financial literacy. And so what we're doing is trying to be way more proactive. I have a show on Revolt TV, Diddy's Network, where it's pretty awesome where, I try to take a Jim Cramer mixed with Dave Ramsey approach, where it's I'm willing to take a caller and we're going to educate you, but also going to entertain you. I want to make a person laugh because when it comes to finance, it has to be more, it has to be more personal. It has to. engage you to really make you want to say, all right, because once again, we're trying to be proactive. So I'm trying to get that person early on before, that person necessarily makes mistakes. And so outside of that, we partner with a lot of, big fintech companies, and we're, helping with whether it's big or small fintech companies, whether it's, in app Communication, where it could be videos, whether we're building out YouTubes. And then most recently we just had the, a Netflix documentary called Get Smart With Money, which is pretty legit. At the time it debuted in the top 1% The thing about that show that resonated with most people was that everybody saw themselves a little bit. So to give a background on the story, right? The plot is four families, all different places in their life. And their partner with four financial coaches. And I happen to be a financial coach. When it comes to the four people, you had a waitress living paycheck to paycheck, right? You had a psychologist who's married, has children doing well, making good money, but they're spending a lot. They're trying to get ready for retirement. Then you had a nurse. who's, largely in debt, right? And then you had the professional athlete who I coached, who was making a ton of money, didn't really necessarily know how to invest, didn't know, about taxes, et cetera. And then that person had a life changing event where they had a big injury and they were cut from the team. It was understanding how quickly all this can be taken away from you. How do we prepare for our last day of being on the field, right? The average NFL career is 3. 3 years, right? When I met the guy, he'd been in the league more than three years, but bouncing around. Me and him became very tight. I worked with this guy for a year and all the other people and their coaches worked with each other for a year. And the idea was really helping a person transform their mindset and change their relationship with money. Most people, when they watched it, they, Oh my God, I didn't know that because they saw themselves in one of the characters.

Peter Wang:

What I love about the common thread is the lack of literacy, understanding money, right? What to do with money through those four very different journeys. Even if it's one year, it can feel very long to them at the beginning. They're like, how do I turn this around? But then within a year, so much has happened to them. it shows a lot of hope. If you start making the right decisions, have more direction, your life can change.

Ross Mac:

Yeah.

Peter Wang:

I love your segment, your coaching session, because he went through so much. The highs and the lows within that period of time, just shows how unpredictable life is.

Ross Mac:

Unbelievable.

Peter Wang:

And we all want to believe that life is more predictable than it really is.

Ross Mac:

Yeah. When you really take a step back, money's the one thing in life that doesn't come with a how-to manual, right? We get a new car. It's an owner's manual. You buy new pair of clothes. It's telling you, Hey, this is how to take care of it. But money doesn't come with that. And that's the one thing, once again, people learn through experience. And unfortunately most of the time, the experience is a bad experience. And therefore now. They developed some type of trauma and now they're just so scared, right? That person, Oh, I'm 30, 000 in debt. I don't know how to get out of it. And like you say, the film actually gives people that hope because it's look, let's just breathe. Let's actually develop a plan. Let's implement it and let's follow it. And then they're able to see that person right there, able to see that nurse 50, 000 in debt in one year, they're able to see that person who You know, they are able to see that, that, that waitress was living paycheck to paycheck now come up with a extra side hustle right now. They're supplementing their income. Now they turn a passion into an actual lucrative business. They're seeing, people who making a lot of money, but still living paycheck to paycheck. A CNBC article came out where it was like people making over a quarter million dollars. 25% of them are still living paycheck to paycheck. Over 60% of Americans, irrespective of their income is still living paycheck to paycheck. It's not necessarily a, am I making enough money thing? It's, am I spending too much? And so when you take a step back and then the other thing is helping people invest, it was like, it was one of those transformative films that I was so blessed to be a part of.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, that's incredible. Congratulations on being part of that journey. So now, speaking of literacy. Every one of us grow up in different families, and we learn different habits. For you, what was your family like? Did you learn financial literacy from your parents? What was it like?

Ross Mac:

No great question. So I'm from the South side of Chicago

Peter Wang:

huh. Uh Huh. Huh.

Ross Mac:

in terms of. The type of dinner room conversations I was having, it wasn't about money management, right? The biggest thing I learned was save your money. But even then, when you really flip that on its head, that's actually the wrong thing to do. A lot of people are just. What do you mean saving your money is not the right thing to do? People listening, right? Your grandparents, your parents, they told you your whole life to save your money. And the reality is that's only half of the battle, right? The reality, if you only saving your money, putting it in the mattress, putting it in the shoe box, putting it in your savings account, it's not growing at the rate it needs to because of something called inflation. And we all just experienced the highest rate of inflation over 40 years and why that's so important is understanding this, right? The cost of living goes higher every year and we saw it reach 9% or so this past year. We're talking about is the cost of eggs, cost of gas, cost of rent, and by purely only saving your money is not being invested in order to offset the cost of living that increases every year. And so when I tell people that most people like, yo, I don't want to invest because I don't want to lose money. And I say, guess what? Putting your money in a savings account that's paying you, three tenths of a percent, right? Point 33%. Guess what? When the normal time inflation is 3%. So in an average year you got 100 saved in your savings account. The reality is the next year's purchasing power, you can only buy 97 worth of goods, but that's because it's just sitting in your savings account, making you 33 cents for every hundred dollars you have. And so the idea is okay, now that I help a person understand that What should I be investing in? A minimum is you need to invest just to offset inflation. And then the person's I don't want to lose money. Look, there are a lot of safe investments, right? It could be CDs. It can be high-yield savings account, there's things, right? That you technically can't lose money based on FDIC insurance and things of that sort. But like the idea is understanding investing is one of those things that we have to do now. Hey, if you don't want to do a stock market, you want to do something else. That's cool. But just understand that it is a necessity and that thing right there isn't taught to us. And so going back to the 1st question what was my household like a lot of stuff that I learned was on the fly.

Peter Wang:

What was it like? Did your parents, did they both work? What was the spending like? Were they like? pretty strict? Were they pretty loose?

Ross Mac:

worked. Both of my parents worked right? My mom and dad, they got divorced early on, but my dad lived in the same neighborhood. Funny enough. So we were always seeing 1 another. But the thing is that I just had a knack for wanting to make my own money, right? Like when you grow up in a household, just you and your mom man, I'm not trying to ask my mama for her money, right? Because we didn't come from the lap of luxury. I'm from the South side of Chicago from South shore. I learned how to make money pretty early on from third grade. I was selling candy, right? Like dude, there was a spot not that far from my house. A big candy distribution center, where I go there with a hundred,$200 and I could just rack up. Then I'm selling it on the school bus and then school, and this is third grade. And I'm literally able to make, take a hundred and flip it to two,$300. And so you're starting to see that pretty quickly. And then you understand supply demand, right? Nobody has access. This is no vending machines in school. We're talking. 98 or something, right? No vending machines in school. So you understand supply demand. And then I understood the politics of it. Cause I had a teacher that came Hey, you can't be selling candy in school unless it's for a charity, right? When people were just selling the popcorn or the candy bar is this for a charity? I'm like, no, but yes, it's me. So then I can only sell it on the school bus. It was just funny, but I've always been pretty entrepreneurial. I've used to throw parties and cut hair in college. Like I just always been an entrepreneur, but some of the greatest things that I learned wasn't taught in school. I always tell people your exposure is the greatest teacher. I learned about investing by being in class, my freshman year, econ one on one, there was a kid. Sitting next to me day trading in class, white bro. What are

Peter Wang:

is a UPenn, right?

Ross Mac:

is Ed Penn. Yeah, I was in the Wharton School at a business school. And what I was exposed to was kids who had a different upbringing to me, their parents maybe had a different set of wealth and a different wealth of knowledge. And so I'm sitting next to a kid and he's literally day trading in class. His high school graduation, some kids want some money. Other kids want a new car, this kid got an investment portfolio and he was literally day trading in the middle class. I'll never forget it because this was 2008. Just purely being exposed to this guy, a week or two later, I ended up opening my own brokerage account. And that's one thing that I was exposed to. And then, working, we both worked on wall street. You're exposed to a different set of knowledge that, it's amazing. You could walk down the aisle cause I was in sales and training. So it was no, nobody had, an office, everybody desk was side by side. And I'm, I see a person checking their 401k. I'm like, wow, I see a balance. I'm like, holy crap, 3 million. And I'm like, whoa, two, 2, 3 million, one or two. And I'm like, wow. But now you could ask questions. Now I'm starting to think about. Retirement, right? Most people don't think about it. Most people are never told how one, how much they should contribute to their retirement and to what to invest in it. Most people, if they do it are by nature, just get a target date fund. They don't know what's in it. Some people, unfortunately are putting money in a money market account. They have no idea. And just being exposed to certain people hearing just. Hearing water, cooler conversations, coffee room conversations about, Oh, I got an LLC and I'm doing X, Y, Z, where people are talking about different ways of, tax planning through their LLC. And so it was just a lot of stuff that I learned from being in the right place in the right time. And so going back to your original questions no, financial literacy wasn't necessarily taught. I learned 1, it's important to make money. I learned a business acumen. But I didn't necessarily know about financial planning and investing. I learned that kind of on the fly.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, that's fascinating. You grew up in Southside Chicago and you hustle during school days, learning about the value of hustling, scrappy.

Ross Mac:

Big time. That's

Peter Wang:

contrasting my own world where I grew up in Taiwan. Both my parents were both teachers. And then my mom stopped working after having my brother and I. My parents were very frugal and my dad especially would be wearing the same shirt he bought 20 years ago. Somehow it still looks great. He would tell me with pride that, Oh, I bought this shirt 20 years ago. I will always remember that, right? It's very frugal, doesn't spend more than necessary. But then we also take trips on summers. My parents would take us from Taiwan to go visit different parts of the U. S. Exposing ourselves internationally. I remember a couple trips, Korea and so on. Different, Mexico, Canada. And, I didn't know that was such a luxury what they invested in us. Looking back, they were exposing us to different cultures. I also remember learning about real estate from my father So frugal and real estate, basically two things that I remember. We have two very different worlds. I also learned a lot in financial services. You and I both work at Morgan Stanley, work at Citi, UBS, actually my wife at UBS.

Ross Mac:

Oh,

Peter Wang:

Yeah. I saw that money is made when money moves. When money doesn't move, money is not made. So with someone in between, And whatever transaction that could be, and that's how money is made. I was like, this is fascinating. This is why I realized, no matter what year this could be, there's always people asking you to move your money. Today, interest rates up, guess what? Banks are coming to you and say, hey, come over, open an account. You're going to get higher yield. I see what's going on, right? You never see the industry the same after you work in it. So let's go back to your journey You talk about saving is not enough. You gotta invest it. What about spending aspect of it? On Netflix shows, actually all four characters were all like examples of how to control your spending, how to discipline spending.

Ross Mac:

Yeah. And it's interesting. You talk about your upbringing, you were able to see. Your dad was pretty frugal, and I tell people all the time, like what our kids watch us do, they learn a lot of stuff subconsciously. And so I definitely would see my dad both my parents for the most part, they were pretty frugal, but my dad was definitely the cheapest and, like you say you internalize that. And that's something that you inherit. And it could be a by product of maybe not having a lot of money or actually being good with your money. Now we're in a different world. What people see on social media, they aspire to that. And, people trying to flaunt certain things on social media. And as a result, people subconsciously say, oh, I want to buy that. I want to do that. I want to look like that person. When it comes to spending, especially in Get Smart With Money. When I was talking to the professional athlete, a person that's coming from, the inner cities, the moment he signed a contract and he's an instant millionaire, first thing you think about is, okay, what should I spend money on? Oh, let me get this piece of jewelry. Let me go on this trip. And he literally talked about, his first check, how, it was like a 1. Maybe 6 million contract or something. And it went from one six to 800, purely off taxes, right? Then he pays his agent. Then now he's spending trips, jewelry house. And he look up and it was just funny to just see how all that money just gets subtracted and what you're left with. But spending is something that is the biggest issue. That's why I say, when you see the stats that say over 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, it's largely because how they're spending. A lot of people are overspending, living beyond their means. A lot of people like, yo, I just need to make more money. I get that. I think we all would like to do that. But the easiest way to truly make more money is just to spend less, right? When people look at Get Smart With Money, you see the family who was doing well, that was a therapist and they look at their grocery bills. Holy crap. it was like, this is the level of you're shopping for a ballroom. You're spending too much on groceries alone. When I was talking to the athlete, I'm like, dude, if we would invest in that money that you bought that new watch in. It would have doubled by now, just that simple. And so now it's okay, what's the opportunity cost or should I spend this verse should I invest? When we really think about how we are as a society, we're taught to spend money, right? Pay bills, spend money, but we're never taught to pay ourselves first. One of the things I was teaching him was look, pay yourself first. Pay your future self, because you're gonna end up not playing football again. Whether you work on normal job, you're going to end up hopefully retiring. I look at investing is paying your future self. I want to reap the rewards of my discipline today when I'm 60.

Peter Wang:

I love the concept of paying your future self. When the paycheck comes in, we're like, I'm getting paid. But no, not really. You're getting paid now, but that income, ten years from now, five, even a year from now, is not guaranteed. No income is guaranteed. Especially if you're an employee relationship with a company. It can change. I think 2023 is a wake up call for a lot of people. And across the country, across industries, from blue collar, white collar, knowledge workers. We're seeing across the board.

Ross Mac:

Yeah. Call it the last three years, right? From COVID, when you saw the entire service industry shut down and people literally, if it wasn't for, the stimulus checks, America definitely could have been in a very ugly place. And then, like you say, fast forward to now people are like, are we going to have recession? Yay or nay, but you seeing, like you say, white collar workers are getting cut, whether they work at Google, Engineers and a lot of people in the tech field are feeling it and then who knows what other industries we're going to start seeing that we see it in, Amazon, Walmart, et cetera, other big companies, but like you were saying, no income is ever secure. And that's the thing that you can learn from Get Smart With Money is, only having one stream of income is too close to having zero And so the idea is, like, how am I making other money or better yet? How am I preparing in the event that I do lose my job and. A lot of people have the wake up calls like, man, I'm not planning. I don't have an emergency fund. I was only 18 in 2008, right? I'm sure that was a big wake up call, but 2020 COVID 19 was a huge wake up call, especially for people in the service industry. If you're in the service industry, you're getting, a check every week or 2 but you're getting a lot of tips and stuff. So money's just flowing. And if you're not putting that money aside 1, paying your future self, but 2, having a fully funded emergency fund. So like it was just so many things where people realize man, I'm not doing good with my money because when COVID happened, the person should have still had an emergency fund to be able to pull from.

Peter Wang:

yeah, there's so many real life examples. We also know that humans are very forgettable. We're trying to get over the pain quickly. We forget and then we're seeking comfort, and I think that seeking comfort, is a big enemy to the things we were talking about: paying your future self. My in laws had a small business during COVID. It's a pool cleaning route. During COVID, pool routes were disrupted. And that had a cascading effect. One of the reasons we're out here in Southern California is because of that. So we had to actually look at two degree effect on all of us. Now, the outcome is probably better for all of us, but that was definitely a very challenging to figure out. Okay, what do we do to this business that was disrupted? What about the home? All those things. That's also why we have a multi generational home here. Now we're managing this portfolio of household quite differently

Ross Mac:

Yeah.

Peter Wang:

Let's talk about spending Why is it so hard to reign in spending?

Ross Mac:

One, right? People want instant gratification. That's the world we live in, right? Everything you look at is effectively marketing. And as a result, people want to be rewarded. Oh, I worked really hard. I want to buy that new house. So I want to buy that new shirt, that new watch, right? Or I want to go out. I want to enjoy myself. Life is meant to be lived, right? Carpe diem. You only live once, right? And so one we overspend, right? We're getting close to a trillion dollars in just credit card debt. We're spending a ton of money, right? And so why it's hard to reign in the spending is because why should I have to? Live, you know at my means why should I? But spending is one of the biggest things, right? Once again, I'll say it, the easiest thing is to cut spending rather than make more money. But everybody's like, maybe I should just make more money, but the reason it's hard to spend less is because, the psychology effect of it, right? Everything is marketing. The reason social media is free, it's because it's the greatest marketing tool. And so anytime you go on Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, you're seeing, and then obviously the data aspect of it. So anytime you look at something, they're going to retarget marketing at you. So anytime you open your phone, you're seeing something. You want to buy something. But now it's like, how do you stop it? And I think the easiest way to stop spending is just to make a different line item. And one of the things I tell the average person making money, right? You want to look at how you spend your money in a 50, 30, 20 budgeting rule, right? Where it's 50% of your after tax take home money should be going towards your necessities, right? 50% or less. But those are your necessities that's paying your rent and your mortgage car note. Your light bill insurance food, things you need to survive on a day-to-day, right? And then after that 30% goes to the things you want to do your wants, right? And that's whether you want to go out, you want to go on a vacation. And then 20% should be saving and paying down debt and investing. I'm not telling the person to never spend money again, but the idea is: am I spending money within my plan, right? Do I have an actual plan because everybody could go get their hair done. Everybody could go on vacation. Everybody can buy that new shirt or shoes, purse or whatever. But the idea is, am I spending more than what should be allocated for this month? And I think once a person writes it down, because everything starts with the budget, the reason it's hard to stop spending is because we don't know what our true inflows and outflows are. And then the person's like, oh, if I miss one paycheck, if I, lose a job now. Everything just downward spirals. The easiest way to help a person stop overspending is to write it all down. Because once you know how much you can spend after you allocate saying, okay, I have to save this much. I have to invest as much. I know, my rent, my mortgage and my food is not taking up more than 50%. So I'm living at or below my means there when it comes to necessities and the things that I want to do. I got this wiggle room here and so that's what I always look at it and boil down because, I'm a person that always says, what's the worst that could happen, but also I'm trying to plan for the future. My wife is pregnant again, and so I wanted to make a big purchase. I'm like you know what, let me slow down. I'm not gonna make this big purchase. Let me just make sure because, like you say, income is not um, you know, especially as an entrepreneur. If we're getting ready to go into a recession, right? And I, one part of my business is, brands paying me to develop content. What if they start cutting costs, right? And maybe marketing is one of the things and therefore, so now it's okay, what could go wrong? I have a very fully funded emergency fund. Cool. But is now the time to make a big purchase? Probably not. When I have a kid on the way and I try to be very disciplined with myself and I tell people, look, you guys can do the same, but it starts with a budget.

Peter Wang:

So coming up with the budget, having a plan. Definitely. People don't like doing that. How many of us, right?

Ross Mac:

It's not sexy.

Peter Wang:

it's not sexy. It's quite boring. But also, what I, my personal take on why people don't want to make a plan. Because the moment you actually study your own spending habits, and I've done it a few times, not very, not only I should do more periodically like every month, but I don't, because you're forced to look at the mirror and say, it's basically an honest mirror that says, You're not really living a life that you are so proud of because you're spitting out stuff you don't need

Ross Mac:

Absolutely.

Peter Wang:

and I think that No one has to be pointing out flaws, but you look at spreadsheet and be man. What am I doing? I haven't talked to my wife about plans. I honestly i haven't said Hey everyone, this is how much we have this month and we should be keeping in and that is not an easy conversation unless both people have the goal that's shared and have the discipline as well. So I think most of us approximate. I go by feelings, like how is your, I don't look at the numbers exactly right. Sometimes it's okay, but when disaster happens approximation no longer.

Ross Mac:

It got to be precise at that moment, right? Where it's kind of like a person working out. I'm like, Oh, I don't know how much I weigh weighed, but now I just feel that I'm growing by my feeling.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, I feel fine. And then you and then all of a sudden something happened. You're like, shoot, and you go doctor goes, Oh, your cholesterol level is Oh, don't give me that number. Why is it? No, don't give me that number.

Ross Mac:

Literally, right? And and another thing to you, right? When you ask the questions, why spending? To actually reign in that spending, it's a lot easier to spend than it once was, right? There's so many different methods that are kind of tricky, right? One click purchase on Amazon, right? If everybody was spending with just cash, one, it'd be harder. Because you got to go physically to the store, right? We're not talking e commerce anymore. You get e commerce, you get buy now pay later, we got access of credit cards. And so another psychological effect is the fact that it's just so easy to spend money. It's easy.

Peter Wang:

Absolutely. So I love that point. Actually, there's two points here, I think, a by making transactions so frictionless. Convenience is a benefit, then convenience can become something negative, past a point. No different than people are sucking in for hours for TikTok. Because it becomes so frictionless. Second is the culture of debt, which I think is worth pointing out When I grew up, my parents never had debt just because culturally, you don't take on mortgage, you don't buy anything that you can't pay for. That's how I grew up in Taiwan. A car, a house, whatever it is. I come in the US, and I didn't realize at the time, people who pay cash outright for a house is an anomaly in this country.

Ross Mac:

Not only is it an anomaly, you can actually be deemed, you can actually get a strike against you, right? Think about it. The idea of having a credit score, a good credit score is so important in America. But the idea of the way the system is in place in order to have a perfect score, in order to have a high score, you have to show that you've borrowed money and you have a good system of paying back your creditors on time. But then there's another thing, 10% of your credit score is called your credit mix. So I just don't want to see your credit card. I want to see your credit mix. I want to see installment loans. I want to see you have a auto loan and a home loan as well as credit cards and maybe student loan. So like when you really take a step back, it's wow, we, the way the system works is it is, it's like you get a good credit score by having debt. And to your point, like it's an anomaly for a person to buy a house outright cash. Guess what? If I bought that house outright cash, I don't get to get that to be on my credit. Where it's it's insane. You know how things work in this society.

Peter Wang:

That's such an interesting point because in America, in our system, debt is necessary. You have to borrow and pay back in order to have this credit score, which I have a lot of opinions about credit score in general. because I'll say one thing real.

Ross Mac:

Yeah. Go don't hold back. Absolutely.

Peter Wang:

Credit. So there's a few things. I understand that the credit score is meant to conceptually to reflect how credible you are, how responsible you are with managing debt, right? For example, I have a number of credit cards and I pay them back 100% every single month. However, I see my credit score go up and down, fluctuate, because it says your credit card usage is going up. And then they start subtracting 20 points, sometimes even bigger. I'm saying this is a big month, but I always reliably pay it off. So the reliability aspect of it should be weighted a lot higher than my credit usage,

Ross Mac:

Absolutely.

Peter Wang:

Then they penalize you things like getting new credit cards. Because the average length of credit. I'm getting a new credit card, increasing how much I can borrow. And then because it's only one day old, you're averaging it out. Now you're penalizing on the other hand. What's the purpose of that? So now we game it by doing a couple of things, right? Parents would apply credit cards for kids early on. And actually to build up the length of credit for them as long as possible. Or the, Sorry, I'm not, I'm feeling like I'm venting.

Ross Mac:

You want to know what's funny?

Peter Wang:

Yeah.

Ross Mac:

The first thing you have your issue with the system is right. You got to understand like Everybody has this, right? I pay my credit card bill on time every month, but yet I'm still getting a ding. Why is that? That's because there's a difference between your statement date and your due date. The way you can get around that is making your payment before your statement date. Suppose you have a 10,000 credit card limit. It was aggressive month. You charge six thousand dollars, right? So you had 60% credit utilization. Cool. You're going to pay six thousand dollars on your due date. But when it's the statement date, that is what is communicated to all the credit bureaus-- Experian, Equifax, TransUnion, they get that on the statement date as opposed to what is paid on the due date. It's a cycle that a person needs to know. Maybe I need to pay, 5 or 7 days or whatever. You just got to know what your statement date is, but to your point, they don't tell us that. They just want us to not know that, but

Peter Wang:

that's fascinating. When you set up autopay in banks, they should be like, we recommend this to optimize.

Ross Mac:

Once again, why would they want you to do that? Instead the default, once again, from frictionless, the default is here's your minimum payment here, Quick button, press that because they know they're going to charge you 20% on the balance,

Peter Wang:

Huh.

Ross Mac:

The frictionless way. So like when you take a step back and you understand the way society has like I'll take it a step further. This is dude, it's some predatory stuff happening. It's pretty crazy. But like your point, there is a lot of issues. With the FICO score, but I don't know. How do we fix it? I don't think we can

Peter Wang:

For most of us, I would say 99% of us who are not behind the desk that actually programs the FICO scoring algorithm is understanding how the calculation works. I just learned a lot of new things today and two is not taking defaults on face value. Playing by the rule in a way that's optimized for you versus optimizing for the consumer banks or the commercial banks, because they make money on interest, make money, and so on and so forth.

Ross Mac:

Exactly. So to your point And I love the word you say gaming as long as you know how to game the system credit Cards are good. I do think a person needs to utilize a credit card in order to play the game. A credit score's used all facets of society They can literally run your credit when you apply for a job, so something you shouldn't think about whoa, why are you running my credit? I'm just applying for a job. They want to know, they want to know everything about you. Applying for a home, applying for a job, all these things, they can run your credit. And it's one of those things, but going back to your thing is like, what do I think about credit cards? I think credit cards are cool because of one, it will help you get good credit. And like you say, you can use other people's money to maybe finance a dream, especially like a business or something. But I'm never a person that tell you, I never recommend spending more than you can afford to pay.

Peter Wang:

Yeah.

Ross Mac:

And no point do I recommend ever carrying a balance unless it's like, mortgage or something. When it comes to credit cards, you should never carry a balance because you're paying 20% interest rate on money that you already have. It doesn't make sense. So therefore, I recommend that's the first thing you pay off, especially when you're in debt, you might have your student loans here and their mortgage, but credit card, anything that's accruing more than 10% is a necessity to pay off. But like your credit cards, once again, understand how to gamify the system, but you should never carry a balance.

Peter Wang:

That's a good point. Never carry a balance. Also, it's not about your credit limit that they put on your card. It's about your own income limit.

Ross Mac:

Absolutely.

Peter Wang:

That's the number you have to know.

Ross Mac:

Oh, no, dude. I just got this free money. That's why most college kids come out of college, not just in student loan debt, but credit card debt because they think it's free money. We need to know about credit scores, need to know how to buy a home. We learning about isosceles triangles and sine cosine. Like some stuff works, but the vast majority of the things that we're taught, you can't truly apply it to your life. And so imagine a kid growing up, learn everything, biology, anthropology, whatever you name, but when they get to college they get bombarded with credit card offers. Oh, free 10, 000, free 5, 000. And the person thinks that's what they can spend and know you are going to dig yourself a hole.

Peter Wang:

12 month free interest. So let's talk about kids real quick because our habits, especially with spending, starts young. You have two kids now, right? How old are they?

Ross Mac:

So I have a daughter. That's call it two and a half. My son just turned one. And my wife is call it five months pregnant.

Peter Wang:

The five months. The three. Yeah, sorry. I was thinking about the two. For me, ten, eight, and six. A bit older.

Ross Mac:

Yeah. Two, two year gap. You were way smarter than me, by the way.

Peter Wang:

It wasn't really planned that way, but yes, we were just like trying out if, if God gave us a gift. We'll choose the received gift kind of

Ross Mac:

Yeah.

Peter Wang:

Because my wife's a little one year older than me. We're already past 30, something was okay.

Ross Mac:

Same, same on

Peter Wang:

35, 36. I'm like, I don't know what's going to happen. But what's interesting about, because credit card, for example, give you an example. Maybe your kids are too young to think about debit card, credit card, and so on. So for our kids this year, I opened up debit cards for them. Via a company called Greenlight.

Ross Mac:

I know Greenlight.

Peter Wang:

I've been observing their behavioral shift, and my own behavioral shift, with money. Let's say, Easter, right? We just passed Easter. We had an egg hunt, right? Typical American thing to do. On the yard, Easter hunt, some eggs, have money in there. Tom, my youngest one, comes back, says, counts up the money, goes, I have 8. Crumbled up, right? Can you put this in my account? He gives me the cash, and I go to my app, and I say, alright, here's 8. Eve, my second one comes, I got 8. 81. Cool put it in there. And I show them, here's a new balance. And they get this debit card that they use. And what's interesting is, it has changed the way they think. So because some things will be like, okay, Tom loves popsicles. A lot of, those kind of things. It's okay, Tom. Go to the store and say, okay, do you want to pay for it yourself? Versus asking me to pay for it. Tom goes, actually at the beginning, he was like, I will pay for it. He knows I'll be asking this. I'll pay for this. I will pay for this. And then he goes, kind of literally goes to zero. And then, and I asked him again, do you want it? He said, I will pay for it. I was like you have zero right now. What do we do? That's why yesterday he was very intent on making sure he deposit eight dollars in there, because then he has something to spend. So he's already thinking differently, and my daughter, my oldest one, Etta, she goes to this book fair by Scholastic, and same thing, I always get the card, and I'll add, say, twenty dollars every time there's a book fair. But then she can choose what to spend on and it has been a negotiation of I want to buy my friend this gift. And even things like returns. she said, I bought this book, but it was not what I thought It's going to be. Usually she would let it go because I'll buy the next thing she wants. It's like, oh, can you go return this book? Get the money back from the book fair. And then you can have enough money to buy the book you really want. She did that. It's really interesting. To your point about spending starts young. Being responsible with debt starts now, not when you're in college.

Ross Mac:

Absolutely. I love the way you're parenting because. They need to start thinking about money now. They need to understand the value of a dollar now. Before it's too late and they're at college and they're spending money that they don't have. To your point, that's why I talked to my kids about money now. And crazy enough like, your kids 2 and 1. That's insane. But the reality is financial literacy is a language. And the earlier you learn how to speak it, you become fluent in it. It'll become second nature when they're four or five, right? When they're eight, six, eight, and ten, like your kids now, right? I want to see, are they retaining this information? How are they thinking about spending? And I think that what you're doing is so legit because now they start thinking about money completely different. Oh daddy, I want this mommy. I want that. Okay. Yeah, sure. You have money. Oh no daddy. I can't afford that, but you can't like, no. Whoa. Right now you're teaching them, life skills. And I think the earlier you do it, you're setting them up for success, right? A lot of people try to shield their kids from certain things. And once they actually get into the real world, They're in for a rude awakening and they just have poor money management skills. And so the idea of talking to them now, and that's one of the things I do, I love, I talk to my kids every morning, not just about money, but I talk about the world of finance. I want them to know why investing is important. I want them to know the different accounts I have for them. I want them to know what's going on with Jerome Powell and what could happen if we raise interest rates. And the idea is like the early we start having those conversations, these kids are going to one, retain it, but two, be much more responsible young adults.

Peter Wang:

100%. When we first started talking, we talked about the healthy relationship with money, whether it's the lifting up too high or the fear of it, right? I think this is part of integrating money into their thinking. For me, I didn't know what to do with money when I start working either. I can remember looking back when I started college, I don't know if it's a funny story, but my mom gave me, on the first day of college, a white envelope, this is going to tell you how my parents are, gave me a white envelope. Inside that white envelope has 20 20 bills. So it's$400. And that was my spending money for the entire year,

Ross Mac:

Wow.

Peter Wang:

400 in there. And I remember that was the very first time in my entire life that my mom, that envelope was like gold to me. I'm like, my gosh, I have 400. I remember going and I'm thinking, what do I spend the first 20 on? That

Ross Mac:

that's

Peter Wang:

And also because I was living a more sheltered life, I couldn't make financial decision about what I wear. So I had no idea how much clothes really are. I would go to Banana Republic, and I realized a sweater is like 68 or something. I was like, oh, that's three of twenty. And I have, so I shoot, I only have 20 of these, I have 3 of this for one sweater, what do I do? I remember running out of the$400 in the first semester. And then the second semester, I found out you can work on campus. And I was like, oh my gosh, I can work! And then I started working 3 jobs per semester, on campus. Money for me was what I will call freedom for myself to make decisions, such as what do I eat, what I wear that I didn't get before that was my first like chapter of my relationship with money. And of course,

Ross Mac:

unreal. Because imagine if after you spent your first 400 in that first semester, Imagine that you got one of those credit card offers, which I'm sure were coming to you. And imagine he was like, Oh, spend another 400. Oh, let me spend another 400. Like that, the idea of the way we all learn, you were blessed and lucky enough to learn. As you went, because you were knowing like, okay, I received my first 400 now I'm going to work for,

Peter Wang:

hmm.

Ross Mac:

so many people have no experience with the money. And as a result, they just 1, spend it all blow it off, but to borrow money that they don't have. And they think to go every quick,

Peter Wang:

So easy to borrow actually that's interesting point because I didn't connect the dots at the time. I didn't grow up thinking that I can borrow money. So the concept of credit cards, even having a line of credit, is not a concept in my mind. I just knew I ran out of money and where I get more. So

Ross Mac:

but that's culturally right? Like that 1, that culture is unbelievable, but right. As you see, maybe your kids, they're going to grow up thinking or knowing, Oh, we can borrow money. Everyone does it right. That's the American way. And that's when most people, once again, we as American citizens are a trillion dollars in credit card debt, trillions of dollars in student loan debt, right? Like, when you really take a step back, like the culture of America is one where it's predicated on people borrowing money and spending money that they don't have. But, to that young person who has no idea what they're doing, it could even be more detrimental.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, one other thing, the latest development in debt world, credit cards being around for decades, is the buy now, pay later world. Product has emerged over the last, I don't want to say last five years. The Affirms of the world and so on, Apple's in the game. What is your take on this even easier version, I think, than credit cards?

Ross Mac:

It's listen, once again, everything is made so that it's frictionless, but in the end, you could end up paying more, right? The idea is this, right? Oh, you can pay spread out equal amount over the next three months. I don't recommend spending any money you can't pay the very next month. I understand some people, they're in different financial states, but at the same time, the idea to buy something should be after you've saved up for it after you've allocated. So it's one thing to say, Oh, there's a new TV I want to buy. I can't afford it now. Guess what? Maybe every check I'm putting another a hundred dollars aside or 150 aside. Now month six, I'm able to buy that as opposed to, I'm going to buy that thousand dollar TV day one, and I'm going to finance it, whether it's a BNPL or a credit card. And I'm not going to have enough money. I'm going to just end up paying it off over the next year or two. I think that is a cycle that you end up realizing, when it's all said and done, you probably could have bought two TVs for how much you might end up paying for an interest, right? Like the idea of paying to borrow money, I doesn't sit well with

Peter Wang:

Maybe this is a product idea I've been ruminating on, but it's becoming clear just in this conversation. Buy now, pay later we need to reverse it. Save now, buy later, and make

Ross Mac:

me. Hmm.

Peter Wang:

as frictionless as possible. Now let's say I see this

Ross Mac:

I like

Peter Wang:

I want to buy. I save it to my list, like a Pinterest style. It says, okay, if you want this over the next three months, here's how much to put in. Make it easy, LinkedIn, you actually move money into that account that will open up for you. And now you say, hey, every month is like, you're one third way to that TV you want. Do you still want the TV? Now, sometimes love at first sight. A day, a week, a month. You're like, I don't need that thing. Give you a chance to think about it. I don't need it anymore. Awesome. Then invest that money you put in. Put it aside. It's growing in there. That's something, right? We should think about reversing the

Ross Mac:

No, literally. It's because it's, I want to say it's called like a aspirational fund, whatever you want to do, it's a genius idea because we're not taught that like the, once again, access to free money, easy capital, whatever you want to call it. It's so easy. Any checkout. Oh, do you want to do buy now, pay later, or, Oh, do a credit card. Like you get a credit card offer every day in the mail or every week, call it. And so I love that idea. Save now, pay later. We'll save now. buy later.

Peter Wang:

that's right. Not just Apple Pay, it should be AppleSave. Apple should be thinking. They really care about

Ross Mac:

No, they, but they don't make money that way. How, how can they make money? Unless it's a service you charge for no company could make money that way. In fact, you have the lobbyists the capital ones of the world and the buy now pay later. Oh, I think there's a horrible idea. Copyright infringement. Let's shut them down. Like they realize that we are helping the people that they effectively make money off of through

Peter Wang:

It's a responsible bank. I think this is a responsible bank kind of style, right?

Ross Mac:

I like that.

Peter Wang:

okay. We talked about the importance of not saving only, you gotta invest it. We talked about spending habits and why it's so hard. How it starts young, if we take it a little further, I'm in my forties now, you're in your thirties, life is not getting any younger, you're having your third kid, I already have three, I feel the weight of, right? Oh, I have my in laws with me, so I'm in a multi generational mindset, and that's my life going forward. I want to talk about the concepts of financial freedom and financial independence. You said if you just have one income stream, it's almost having zero. Maybe you can touch on that piece.

Ross Mac:

No when you think about being financially free, financially independent, it starts with understanding your inflows and outflows, right? So it starts with the budget. It starts with having a fully funded emergency fund because rainy days happen, right? You could get fired. You can have a water heater go out of your house, a car accident. There's so many things that can go wrong Medical expenses, right? So many things can go wrong. You want to have that fully funded emergency fund, which once again, we were talking about budgeting being 50, 30, 20, 50% going to necessities you define your emergency fund by having, 3 to 6 months, if not more, right? If it costs you 2, 500 every month with being rent, food, and all the other things we mentioned. Guess what? You want to have a minimum three X that. So you want to have 7, 500 in your savings account. It could be a high yield savings account, right? Get you close to 4% or whatever. But after that, the next thing is making sure that you're investing, right? If we know every month we're investing, then we understand, being financially free is one investment a month. You got the ability to compound. And most importantly, you're trying to say, I want to retire rich. And the way you do that is by taking the guessing game out of it. Auto investing, auto contributing to your retirement accounts, your brokerage accounts. Change your mindset with money, right? Money isn't just a means to an end, but it's a tool. How do I look at money as a tool? My money should be making me more money. How do I approach it that way? My money has the ability to make money if it's invested, right? You can have that lazy relative that could just sleep on your couch, or you can have that person that's going out and contributed to the household. That's what your money is, right? You could literally just blow it, or you could actually have it working for you. Warren Buffet says he who doesn't learn compounded interest or investing, yada, yada, you'll die working. Right? The reality is, people have to say, how can I get to my goal?

Peter Wang:

Yes.

Ross Mac:

And you work backwards, right? Financially free for one person might be a million dollars, might be a half a million dollars, and it might be$30 million for the next, right? Everyone's gonna have a different threshold. But if you work backwards and say, how do I get to$2 million? And if that's me putting$400 every month into. And we can talk about the different ideas of where to invest, but the easiest thing is buying the S and P 500, right? That being 500 of America's best companies, right? Is going to have a plethora of them that being in a stretch from tech to travel, to communication services, to energy utilities, right? It covered the entire gamut. And if you understand that the average return of that is roughly 10%, And then you understand the power of compounded interest, you'll realize that in call it 25 years, you'll have over a million dollars and that's the name of the game. And so the way you truly get financially free, it's cutting back spending, knowing your inflows and outflows, making sure you're fully funded on emergency fund and investing and doing it, taking the guessing workout and doing it on a monthly basis to take advantage of compounded interest, which is your money, making more money and that money being reinvested to then make more money. That what I believe is how you get financially free. Now, we talked about another thing, right? Which is having only 1 stream of income is too close to having 0, right? I agree with that, right? Is it having another business? Is it right? One investing is a stream of income, right? So you could say that you could own dividend stocks and REITs and et cetera or own a real estate investment property where a rental property where you're making money every month, but at the end of the day, right? When it comes to being financially free, it is saying, how can I use my money to then in turn leverage that to make more money and that is investing and that is buying assets. And that is owning different businesses.

Peter Wang:

yeah, and I feel like there's potentially a whole other episode on how to have, and I'm pausing here because I know on YouTube and other places, there's a lot of hustle culture Of how do you turn a dollar to a, to whatever, 5, 000 to a million, how to make money for today from all this site hustles. And actually I went down, personally went down a deep rabbit hole. I looked a lot of these influencers and did research on how much laundromat make, how much does x business make, what does it take to do, to buy, and so on. All these vending machines. There's a few like very typical ones I can see over and over again.

Ross Mac:

Yeah. Amazon, dropshipping.

Peter Wang:

I did deep dive in dropshipping as well as creating your own products. I talked to a few suppliers in China, figure out what's popular, and creating a competitor against it, but slightly better with a similar pricing. So I went in a whole rabbit hole. I was trying to figure it out, aside from my employee relationship with my employer by having a job, how do I have a second income? My wife doesn't work. Focus is on family, so we have a balanced family life. The reason I'm talking about this journey is because I find that there is, I don't want to overuse the word misinformation, I will call them half truths on social

Ross Mac:

I like that.

Peter Wang:

That doesn't paint an entire picture about what it takes, what expertise it takes. They always sound as if it's, it should be so easy and a no brainer,

Ross Mac:

Yeah.

Peter Wang:

right? The word no brainer actually should be rarely used, even starting a t shirt company with Printful. Not hard to do, but you need to take what's the concept, what's the branding, what's the distribution, right? How do you get consistent sales that, that takes more skill than being portrayed. I mentioned this because I think it's on a lot of people's minds, especially after 23, many people have lost their one revenue stream, which is their job. Many people are reflecting on should they go back to the job market as one too. Many people went back to job market with a pay cut. Therefore, that's doesn't really afford the current lifestyle, which part of is cutting back spending, but also for many people, especially the older ones are thinking, Okay, maybe I need to do more than just getting a job, I should do more. I feel like there's an inflection point in America, that people are more and also coinciding with the boomers generational shift. So there's a lot of people looking to sell their businesses. This is the trend is actually coinciding, overlapping right now. So it's a sweet spot, but it's not easy to make sense of the situation without really diving in. This is why I think it's important to talk about how do we, how do people approach it. I don't have a solution yet, but to this topic, I think the investing where you mentioned is clearly what we should be doing as a base, like a cushion, especially over time. And then for those people who want to level up even more beyond investing is think about how do I get multiple income streams, but not think about the quick, easy site hustle. they're often harder than you think.

Ross Mac:

We'll see. We'll see.

Peter Wang:

yeah, we maybe can talk specifically about buying businesses and evaluating them on a separate podcast. I think worthwhile. Maybe we can exchange notes offline first.

Ross Mac:

Yeah.

Peter Wang:

I'm currently evaluating two right now in the local area. So that's why my mind's being.

Ross Mac:

I love that. Let me see. I it's funny you say that because I was looking, my brother and I were talking about saying like we might need to buy just some business, right? That's already running. And my cousin was telling me there's a site called BizBuySell.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, I use that one.

Ross Mac:

You use that?

Peter Wang:

There's a few of those exactly. Kumo is another one, K U M O. as well. What I found so far is this. One. Those listing sites are helpful from seeing what kind of business are being listed, from gas stations, nutrition, keto programs, no physical stores to brick and mortar, to consulting business like small agencies. But also those listings are incomplete. A lot of listings are offline, very similar to the job market. Not every single job is being posted. So they're like brokers out there that just does this for a living. So I contacted a few brokers I saw a listing on restaurant locally for sale. I called the broker up and I realized she has other listings. they're not. Then I found out there's a few other ones. So brokers, so it's even more, if real estate is fragmented in some ways, but it's fairly efficient from a residential point of view. Buying business is very fragmented, old school and it would take a couple of years to mature.

Ross Mac:

Now that, that's one, I love the way you think about that and also the way you get the inside scoop on other potential businesses that are. Either struggling or look, like you say, looking to get some new fresh ownership and leadership in there because I didn't think I would imagine though, right? A lot of real estate agents have properties that they know are getting ready to hit the market, but to get the leg up and the same thing, thinking about how to buy a business, but literally was like thinking about this because my cousin, him and his girl, they bought two businesses during COVID. They bought a pet store and a moving company. When he mentioned that, I'm like, dude, that's interesting, right? Because you don't always need to start off buying a business from scratch.

Peter Wang:

No.

Ross Mac:

buy something existing and you can go in and literally, like you say, as a consultant, go in and find the way to one increased sales, lower expenses, figuring out what needs to be done to take this business to the next level. Exactly.

Peter Wang:

Yeah. Also one more thing, today's culture has so much influence on not only spending, but also how we make money. And I'm starting to feel a shift, undercurrent, not above the surface yet, of used to be getting out of school, getting a job, find the best job you can. That has been the culture, right? Cornerstone of how you make a good living in America. And then, 2000 or so, tech came in. Startups. VC backed funds. How do you raise money and how do you go from the garage to the IPO stories? That's a very big cultural influence. But with tech going down in the last year or so, that cultural narrative has shifted. Meaning VC backed startups are not as sexy as like I bootstrap this myself with Positive profit margin now, that's cool to have positive profit margin bootstrapping.

Ross Mac:

Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely a changing of tides, right? What once worked isn't necessarily what's going to work. Like you say there's always business cycles, right? Whereas one, if you look at the overall economy, it's probably going to be difficult for certain startups to raise capital right now. So like you say, what is the businesses that are bootstrapping that are already cashflow positive. Would I be more willing to put money into an idea or a business that is already thriving that could use my capital to just excel exponentially because it's already proven. And I love what you said about looking at the website because the sites also telling you the type of businesses. That'll be enlisted. If I see too many of the same type of business, maybe that's not the business I

Peter Wang:

Maybe not. Yeah.

Ross Mac:

because it's letting, people aren't buying that right now. Like it's a lot you can learn from purely just doing that little bit of research.

Peter Wang:

Yeah. Ross, before you leave, any last thoughts you want to say to, to the audience

Ross Mac:

just, I think the first step when it comes to being financially literate is just changing your overall relationship with money. The way you do that is understand that money is a tool when used properly, right? It doesn't just have to be something that. You spend, but it's something that could also bring you more money on it in the long run. And I think when people are on their journey to building wealth, it starts with having a strong plan and effectively sticking to it, right? Know what you can spend, know how much you should be investing to get to your goal. I think, a lot of it should be sometimes working backwards. If you know you want to have two, three, 500, 000 more, like whatever your number is, sometimes it's good to just work backwards. And remember. Pay yourself first.

Peter Wang:

pay yourself first. Ross, thank you so much for your time. That concludes today's episode with work in progress podcast.

Ross Mac:

Without a doubt, man. Thanks so much for having me. I look forward to being on it again.

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