Episode 195 - Financial Faux Pas: 7 Steps to Ensure You Stay Broke

Hey, everybody, this is David Chudyk, and welcome to this week's episode of the Weekly Wealth Podcast. We have an important tutorial. Today we're going to talk about how to stay broke.

Now, this applies to high earners to low earners and everybody in between.

So we're going to talk about some things that I've seen with my clients that hopefully I've helped them to change, and I've seen with some people that didn't become clients, and just my observations on the world. So if being broke is your goal, this is a great episode for you, and I hope that you enjoy it.

Welcome to the Weekly Wealth Podcast. I am certified financial planner David Chudyk.

This podcast and my wealth management practice are both designed to help the mass affluent to live better lives by how they handle their money. We talk about financial strategies, prosperous mindsets, and simply how to build true wealth. So come on and let's enjoy this journey together.

All right, well, let's get started with this week's episode. It's been a little bit of a crazy and stressful last couple weeks for me, so I want to take a humorous look at how to be broke.

But before we do that, make sure that you do all the things. Make sure that you like and subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform that you listen to so you can get automatic updates.

And also, if any of your friends, your families, your colleagues, or your coworkers can benefit from the information that we provide, please let them know. Like we always say, I believe that how we handle our money should positively impact our lives and the lives of those around us.

And I hope that this podcast can be a little piece of that puzzle in your life. Okay, so with all that being said, let's take a look at my first tip on how to be broke.

Well, I think the first one is like, don't make yourself valuable to the world. What they say in life is, the bigger problems you solve, the more you get paid. So just don't learn how to solve big problems.

Do things that are easy to replace in your career. If you own a business, don't really provide any great types of service that's difficult to replace and simply don't provide value.

And when you do that, your income will struggle, your revenue will be low, and hey, that is like, literally one of the first steps to staying broke, right? It is to not have a high income or high revenue.

So step number one is don't solve big problems, don't be valuable to the world, and make sure that you are very easy to Replace. All right, step number two of becoming broke and remaining broke is, hey, look at all your broke friends.

Look at your friends that are always struggling for money. Look at for your friends that are always playing that victim mentality. And look at the people around you who just never seem to get ahead.

And then drum. Well, please do what they do. So, yes, they're probably going out to eat several times a week. Maybe they're buying lottery tickets.

Maybe they are even taking out high interest loans or title loans. So if you want to be like them, you should act like them, right? So number two is look at your broke friends.

Look at the people who are always struggling financially in your life and do exactly what they can do. And then you can be broke just like them. All right, so number three on my list of how to go broke and how to stay broke.

And this one's a tricky one because people that follow this rule may not actually appear to be broke, although they most likely are.

And this one is to buy the most expensive home that the bank will lend you the money to buy and buy the most expensive cars that the bank will lend you the money to buy. So banks use something called a debt to income ratio.

And when you apply for a mortgage, they plug in all kinds of numbers, like your income, what your monthly debt payments are, and then they can almost make you an offer on how much money they will lend you.

Now, the people that want to go broke, the people that are really serious about going broke, they will borrow the most money that the bank will lend them because they know that if life ever throws them a curveball, if they ever get laid off, if their business income ever slows down, then they are surely to go broke because they borrowed the most money that the bank would lend them. Same thing with cars, except for cars are even a better way to go broke because they are a depreciating assets.

So if you want to go broke, borrow the most amount of money that a bank will lend you. Buy the most expensive cars that that payment can afford. So this is a big one.

So if you want to be broke, make sure that you are borrowing the most amount of money that you can to buy a home. Don't do the smart thing and have a home that's a little bit less than the max. And then also buy exp cars with high car payments.

That is a great way to make sure that you can almost have no chance of not going broke. The next step to going broke and staying broke is to blame everybody else. So blame society, blame the economy, blame the other political party.

Blame anybody but yourself, right? Because it can't possibly have anything to do with your own actions, your own habits, your own worth to the economy or anything like that.

It has to be everybody else's fault that you are broke. So make sure that you're keeping a victim mentality and that will almost certainly keep you broke. And that's where we want to be, right?

This podcast is about reaching goals. And for the goal of being broke, a victim mentality will take you a long way towards that goal.

So remember, what we think and feel affects what we do, and what we do affects what we get. So if getting to be broke is the goal like this podcast episode is about, let's think about not taking responsibility for our actions.

Let's think about not making ourself more valuable to the world, and let's just be a victim. Okay? Moving along, our list on how to achieve the goal of being broken and this item is that we simply should never do anything that's difficult.

Never do anything that is inconvenient. So broke people often take the easy way out and that's where we want to be, right? This whole podcast episode is about being broke.

So don't wake up early. That's hard, right? We shouldn't do hard things. Don't go the extra mile at work so you can get a promotion.

Don't be, as a business owner, someone who is offering a valuable service. Don't improve your skills. Don't spend time studying so that you can be better at your job.

Don't do all of these difficult things because they might help you to get ahead. And we want to be broke. So if being broke is your goal, let's make absolutely sure that we're not doing uncomfortable things on a daily basis.

Don't ask for that extra sale. Don't improve yourself. Don't make yourself better. Don't have healthy habits and definitely, definitely not. Don't read any self improvement books.

Don't find a mentor who can help you be better at your job or help you to run your business better. And certainly don't watch any YouTube videos or listen to podcasts that can help you to improve. Let's talk about a special broke hack here.

This one's a big one and it might be some something that you're doing now and you don't even realize that you're doing it. And it is called lifestyle creep. So think about how much money you made five, 10, 15 years ago. And if you have a job, you've probably gotten raises.

If you have a business, your business income has probably increased. Now, yes, I know there is inflation, but typically speaking, we all have raises and our incomes increase over time faster than the rate of inflation.

But what happens? You get a raise and then what do you do? Instead of saving part of that monthly increase, you just spend it all.

And then the next time you get a raise or the next time your business income increases, what do you do? You spend it all.

So maybe 10 or 15 years ago you were making 20 or 30 or $40,000 and you were barely getting by, and then you got a raise or your business income increased and then you're still barely getting by, and then financially your income increases even more. So what do you do? You do the smart thing. You go out and you buy an expensive car that is the most expensive car that you can afford.

And now you are still just barely getting by every month. So lifestyle creep is a really important step that we can all take if we want to stay broken.

So make sure that every time your income goes up, if you really are serious about going broke, you spend that extra money. Very often. Broke people do not seek advice out from professionals.

So maybe they'll try to do their own taxes, if they do their own tax returns at all. Just because they think that the cost of paying an accountant to do their tax is just too much.

They don't seek out financial advisors, they don't get the advice of attorneys, and they don't get advice from their successful friends and colleagues.

So if you want to stay broke, don't ask for help from people who know what they're doing, don't get support from experts and try to figure things out on your own. And then you'll pretty much maybe screw it up sometimes and that'll have a longer cost in the long run.

But hey, if we want to be broke, larger costs in the long run will get us there. So this step to becoming broke is do not seek the advice and support of experts. All right.

And lastly, you know, I love the business owner, so let's talk about some ways that the business owners can go broke. Now, when you're a business owner, not only can you not get paid, you actually can have negative income.

So people who work and have a job and have a salary, in a worst case scenario, they can get fired, but they can maybe go out and find another job. In many cases, business owners take out loans and they have financial responsibilities with regard to the business.

So it can almost be a fast track to going broke. So here's some tips to Going broke if you are a business owner. So the first thing is make sure that you are a control freak.

Make sure that you have to be involved with every decision within the business and that you are not empowering your staff and your team to do the parts of the business where they are uniquely qualified. So be a control freak and you are almost sure to go broke in your business.

Another way that you can almost assuredly go broke as a business owner is to not spend time and effort developing the culture that you want in your office.

You see, successful business owners, they purposely develop a great culture, but the business owners that are truly serious about reaching the goal of being broke, they just let things happen. They don't develop a culture of success, they don't develop a culture of accountability, and then they get to achieve that goal of being broke.

And the last of the many ways that business owners can go broke would be to not have good accounting processes in place. So don't open your mail, don't build cash flow, don't build emergency funds, don't keep track of who's paying you.

Don't keep track of who's not paying you. Don't keep track of debt reduction. Please don't hire someone like a fractional CFO if you're a small business.

So don't keep track of the money and you will have a really great chance of going broke as a business owner. So what do you think?

What would you add or maybe take away from this list of just these really key items that can help you to go broke and also stay broke? Go to my website, www.weeklywealthpodcast.com, click on the microphone icon and you could leave me a voicemail.

Okay, so now it should go without saying that this was a sarcastic episode. I do sometimes claim to have sarcasm as my spiritual gift.

And obviously this episode was about giving you some ways that you can not be broke and get out of being broke. And I also want to be respectful and I want to be understanding. If you're struggling right now financially, there is a way out. You can do it.

I have some high earning clients that have very little financial margin and they are one or two bad paychecks or downturns in business away from having some pretty negative financial consequences. So this is not meant to make fun of you. This was meant to help people from going broke.

There are many ways to describe a state of being broke, but I think from a general standpoint, if you are always or very consistently worried about money, if you have very little financial margin and if you're not over time increasing your net worth, then maybe you're close to being broke, or you're not. At the very least, you're not improving your financial situation.

And if that's you, email me davidarallelfinancial.com and maybe we can point you in the right direction. And if you are going through a tough period, which we all go through, even those with the best habits, sometimes things happen. There is a way out.

Now, if you've always been broke and you're always struggling and you're in your 30s and 40s and 50s, then maybe it is time to look in the mirror and say, what can I do differently to help me to get out of my financial reality that's been with me for a long time, So I want to be sympathetic.

And if there's anything that I can help you to do, email me davidarallelfinancial.com that's David parallelfinancial.com I'm always happy to meet with anybody to point them in the right direction with any financial issue. So until next episode, I wish everybody a blessed week. The information contained herein, including but not.

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