Traditional retirement advice often focuses on saving more, contributing to retirement accounts, and waiting. But what if building income today could create a different path to cash flow for financial freedom?
Chris Miles joins Loral Langemeier to discuss cash flow for financial freedom and why he moved away from traditional financial advising after seeing its limitations firsthand.
Together, they discuss real estate, oil and gas, businesses, private investments, and why relying solely on traditional retirement accounts may limit both liquidity and cash flow.
Ultimately, cash flow for financial freedom is about creating enough investment income to cover your expenses while building a life where money no longer determines the choices you make.
Loral's Takeaways:
- The Anti-Financial Advisor (00:02)
- The Shift to Real Estate (05:30)
- Market Volatility and Liquidity (06:52)
- Alternative Investment Strategies (16:45)
- Defining Cash Flow For Financial Freedom (21:17)
Meet Chris Miles:
Chris Miles is the Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor who helps high-income earners break free from the grind and achieve financial freedom—without Wall Street. He’s founder of Money Ripples, retired twice by 40, author of The Work Optional Blueprint, and host of the Money Ripples Podcast, helping clients create over$300 million in cash flow and passive income.
Podcast Info: https://podmatch.com/guestdetailpreview/chrismiles
Contact: info@moneyripples.com
Meet Loral Langemeier:
Loral Langemeier is a money expert, sought-after speaker, entrepreneurial thought leader, and best-selling author of five books.
Her goal: to change the conversations people have about money worldwide and empower people to become millionaires.
The CEO and Founder of Live Out Loud, Inc. – a multinational organization — Loral relentlessly and candidly shares her best advice without hesitation or apology. What sets her apart from other wealth experts is her innate ability to recognize and acknowledge the skills & talents of people, inspiring them to generate wealth.
She has created, nurtured, and perfected a 3-5 year strategy to make millions for the “Average Jill and Joe.” To date, she and her team have served thousands of individuals worldwide and created hundreds of millionaires through wealth-building education keynotes, workshops, products, events, programs, and coaching services.
Loral is truly dedicated to helping men and women, from all walks of life, to become millionaires AND be able to enjoy time with their families.
She is living proof that anyone can have the life of their dreams through hard work, persistence, and getting things done in the face of opposition. As a single mother of two children, she is redefining the possibility for women to have it all and raise their children in an entrepreneurial and financially literate environment.
Links and Resources:
Ask Loral App: https://apple.co/3eIgGcX
Loral on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/askloral/
Loral on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/lorallive/videos
Loral on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorallangemeier/
Money Rules: https://integratedwealthsystems.com/money-rules/
Millionaire Maker Store: https://millionairemakerstore.com/
Real Money Talks Podcast: https://integratedwealthsystems.com/podcast/
Integrated Wealth Systems: https://integratedwealthsystems.com/
Affiliate Sign-Up: https://integratedwealthsystems.com/affiliates
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Hey, this is Loral. Welcome back to Loral's
Loral Langemeier:Real Money Talks, a podcast about money: how we make it, how
Loral Langemeier:we keep it, how you invest it. Just understanding money. So
Loral Langemeier:many people don't understand money at all. In fact, one of my
Loral Langemeier:latest classes that is being raved about is finance for
Loral Langemeier:non-finance business owners. It's amazing how many finance,
Loral Langemeier:how many business owners start a business with absolutely no
Loral Langemeier:knowledge of finance, much less cash flow. Which brings me to my
Loral Langemeier:guest today, because we're going to talk about cash flow, passive
Loral Langemeier:income. Chris Miles is with me. He's known as the anti-financial
Loral Langemeier:advisor. So let's start there, Chris. Explain why you like that
Loral Langemeier:title. I love that title because I I have all sorts of things to
Loral Langemeier:say about financial advisors.
Chris Miles:Well, I I say that because I used to be one in the
Chris Miles:early 2000s. I spent four years as the salesman in a suit, aka
Chris Miles:financial advisor, right? And like a traditional one for a
Chris Miles:while. What's that? Sorry,
Loral Langemeier:like a traditional one, very
Chris Miles:traditional, selling you the mutual funds,
Chris Miles:telling you to set and forget it, save it forever. Because if
Chris Miles:you compound interest for the next 5000 years, you'll be a
Chris Miles:millionaire too, right? And that's pretty much what I
Chris Miles:taught. You know, I just told people to put it away, and I
Chris Miles:drank the Kool-Aid. I believed it myself until about four years
Chris Miles:into my journey. My dad reached out and he says, "Well, when are
Chris Miles:you going to advise me? And my dad was like the penny pinching
Chris Miles:saver, post depression era mentality, the kind of guy that
Chris Miles:throws away nothing, literally nothing. And and the guy was
Chris Miles:just penny pinch everything. He taught me to save. I didn't even
Chris Miles:know debt was a thing you could use when I became an adult
Chris Miles:because he refused to let me learn about debt. And and I sat
Chris Miles:down with him, and he says, "Chris, I'm 61 years old. I've
Chris Miles:had heart attacks. I've had strokes. The stress of this job
Chris Miles:will literally kill me. I need out. How can I retire? And so
Chris Miles:I'm expecting to see that I'm going to give him the golden
Chris Miles:answer, and he'll be able to retire. And he thinks, "Oh,
Chris Miles:you're my favorite son. I'm his only son. But you know,
Loral Langemeier:but anyways,
Chris Miles:I sit down with them, and I look at it, and I
Chris Miles:said, "Dad, here's the deal: you've stuffed money in your
Chris Miles:401k, got the company matched like a good boy should. You're
Chris Miles:debt free, including his house, so he's mortgage debt free too.
Chris Miles:I said, "But here's the deal, Dad. If you try to retire today,
Chris Miles:you would have to die in about six years because you'll run out
Chris Miles:of money.
Loral Langemeier:Wow.
Chris Miles:He's like, "Well, that's not what I wanted to
Chris Miles:hear. Like, what? How do I retire? I said, I don't know.
Chris Miles:Keep working, you know. Keep saving. I mean, that's all you
Chris Miles:can do because I had no answers for him. Because I mean, I told
Chris Miles:him, he's like, Dad, you did everything right. It's just you
Chris Miles:just haven't done it for long enough, apparently. Especially
Chris Miles:with the markets had gone. You know, he he was thinking he was
Chris Miles:going to retire in the early 2000s, but then there's Y 2k,
Chris Miles:and this is 2005. I'm talking to him, you know, right before
Chris Miles:2006. Of course, few years later, the market hit him again.
Chris Miles:So he had to postpone retirement into his 70s before he finally
Chris Miles:retired, living on really his last 10 years of his life in
Chris Miles:retirement. Five was okay, you know, living on a budget. The
Chris Miles:other five, he was homebound. He was in basically on in bed with
Chris Miles:home health care 24/7, taking care of him. Even to the point
Chris Miles:where I bankrolled the last months of his life, paying like
Chris Miles:13,000 a month for his home health care and things like
Chris Miles:that. And that's the the sad reality is that he was the guy
Chris Miles:that did everything right, yet it wasn't enough. And as
Chris Miles:somebody who is in his late 20s, I'm thinking, well, this is a
Chris Miles:problem. What? Because shouldn't this have worked? I mean, I've
Chris Miles:been telling everybody it's good. It's going to work. You
Chris Miles:save 100 bucks a month, and just like Dave Ramsey says, you'll be
Chris Miles:a millionaire, right?
Loral Langemeier:No,
Chris Miles:BS.
Loral Langemeier:Can't. I mean, don't you agree? I'm just going
Loral Langemeier:to cut. Like, you can't save your way to success.
Chris Miles:No.
Loral Langemeier:I mean, you can hope that it's going to work
Loral Langemeier:out. You can invest your way to success, but the word "save,
Loral Langemeier:I've beat up the word "save" since I started my career
Loral Langemeier:because I think it's savings is an undefined lump of money you
Loral Langemeier:just put in your savings. Well, what's it doing there? What's it
Loral Langemeier:for? What's its purpose? So I just don't like the words. So I
Loral Langemeier:I always say you can't save your way to success, but you can
Loral Langemeier:invest your way.
Chris Miles:That's right. Well, and and even earlier that year,
Chris Miles:I remember meeting with my brother-in-law, who came from a
Chris Miles:family of very like his dad was a self-made millionaire. His dad
Chris Miles:was homeless at 16. At 18, worked for a dealership. At 19,
Chris Miles:he got his own dealership. He actually convinced Chrysler to
Chris Miles:give him their first dealership in the state of Utah, and then
Chris Miles:by 21, he became a multi-millionaire, which in
Chris Miles:1960s actually meant something. Now it means middle class,
Chris Miles:right? Right. But I mean, that guy was very successful. So when
Chris Miles:I sat down with my brother-in-law, trying to
Chris Miles:impress him with my vast knowledge of investments around
Chris Miles:mutual funds and stuff like that, you know, I sit down with
Chris Miles:him and he's like, "So Chris, if I give you 10 grand to play with
Chris Miles:today, you're saying you can make me 12% right? I'm like,
Chris Miles:"Well, there's no guarantees, but since 2000 BC, the market
Chris Miles:has averaged 12. You know, which isn't true, and and so he's
Chris Miles:like, okay, Chris. So 10,000 bucks, if I give that to you,
Chris Miles:you might make me 1,200 bucks in a year. But Chris, I've got a
Chris Miles:dealership. He had a big rig dealership with like semi
Chris Miles:trucks. He's like, I have a dealership. I could put 10 grand
Chris Miles:as a. Down payment on a semi truck, turn around, flip it a
Chris Miles:few months later, make 20 grand profit. So why should I invest
Chris Miles:with you? I said, well, you should be diversified. You
Chris Miles:shouldn't pull all your eggs in that one basket. Ironically,
Chris Miles:since I was a business owner myself, I was 100% commission
Chris Miles:only, self employed as a financial advisor, which that
Chris Miles:was my number one investment that was working, not the mutual
Chris Miles:funds. And here I am telling him, yeah, don't do the thing
Chris Miles:that works. Do the thing that hasn't been proven to work,
Chris Miles:right? And that's when I realized, like, really March of
Chris Miles:'06, after I I kind of stepped away a little bit, kind of got a
Chris Miles:bigger view, started meeting guys that were in the real
Chris Miles:estate investing space. I realized, you know what? I can't
Chris Miles:teach this crap anymore. I cannot keep my integrity taxed
Chris Miles:and stay as a financial advisor, so I quit. Vowed never to teach
Chris Miles:about money again. I would just do mortgages on the side because
Chris Miles:in 2006, everybody could do mortgages, and then I would
Chris Miles:teach ballroom dancing as well at the local university, and and
Chris Miles:I was doing that. I like the latter
Loral Langemeier:one. I like the latter. I
Chris Miles:know. I mean, kind of a renaissance thing, right?
Chris Miles:But yeah, I mean, I was having fun doing that kind of stuff,
Chris Miles:but you know, eventually I started learning about real
Chris Miles:estate investing. And later that year, by turning my own starter
Chris Miles:home into an investment property, and literally I could
Chris Miles:do hard money lending and things like that, I had enough passive
Chris Miles:income coming in. Of at that time, only needed like 3500 a
Chris Miles:month to live on. I had like four or five grand a month
Chris Miles:coming in from that, as well as other streams of income from
Chris Miles:like some business, you know, like affiliate type stuff. Even
Chris Miles:though I wasn't affiliate back then, was just I was referring
Chris Miles:some people, and I was like, "Holy crap! I'm 28, almost 29
Chris Miles:years old, and I can definitely be retired. And that's when I
Chris Miles:realized, like, I was onto something. I'm like, I I was
Chris Miles:hoping and praying I could retire my 50s or 60s as a
Chris Miles:financial advisor, and here I am in my late 20s, trying to wonder
Chris Miles:what I'm going to do with my life, and and that's kind of
Chris Miles:when I came out and started coaching in 2007. And despite
Chris Miles:the recession, going over a million dollars in debt, had to
Chris Miles:dig out of that hole. And eventually, I was able to retire
Chris Miles:the second time after I got back out of the rat race again by the
Chris Miles:end of 2016. And so I had to do it twice technically.
Loral Langemeier:What talk about the market right now?
Loral Langemeier:There's a lot of opinions on a runaway market going to have a
Loral Langemeier:huge correction, going to go in a deep recession. Some people
Loral Langemeier:say it's going to keep going, you know, for a while. Talk
Loral Langemeier:about the market currently today, 2026.
Chris Miles:Yeah, the thing is, the market-it's always based on
Chris Miles:how much money's circulating, right? Like, how much is there
Chris Miles:available money? Like, 2008, 2007-I mean, that was a big
Chris Miles:problem. We couldn't get access to money because the banks were
Chris Miles:like, "Sorry, we don't want to lend. Especially the business
Chris Miles:owners, right? That was one of my problems. I couldn't get
Chris Miles:equity out of my house because they said, "No, we don't like
Chris Miles:business owners anymore, so no cash out refinances for you. And
Chris Miles:I locked all my money in home equity, right? Now is not that
Chris Miles:problem. Right now, we have the opposite problem. There's money
Chris Miles:available everywhere, and that's why the stock market's still
Chris Miles:going. Even though the stock market should have crashed,
Chris Miles:definitely it should have actually crashed in 2020. But
Chris Miles:the government obviously started printing more dollars, working
Chris Miles:with the Treasury and with the Feds hand in hand. You know,
Chris Miles:going to bed together that way to make sure there's tons of
Chris Miles:money in the system, and it created this extra big bubble
Chris Miles:that we've been in. In fact, we've had the largest, really
Chris Miles:the longest bull market run in the stock market in history.
Loral Langemeier:Yeah,
Chris Miles:like 2009 until now, we had a little 2022 blip.
Chris Miles:Whoop-de, freaking do. Nobody even remembers that they lost
Chris Miles:money in 2022, right? Because the market just kept soaring
Chris Miles:away, and so we are overdue for correction. Now, will it be
Chris Miles:massive? I mean, I know Diary of a CEO. There was a guy that got
Chris Miles:on there. There was a money manager saying he expects a 70%
Chris Miles:loss in the stock market. I don't think it matters. What
Chris Miles:really matters is kind of I started teaching people in 2020
Chris Miles:when I thought we were going to move into a recession because I
Chris Miles:think it could be extended if they keep printing more money.
Chris Miles:But at some point, we're going to have to pay the piper, right?
Chris Miles:At some point, it's gonna catch up to us, and they can't just
Chris Miles:keep running up more debt to try to artificially prop up the
Chris Miles:economy. And so, for us as business owners, the big thing
Chris Miles:is I taught this, and it's actually in my book too. It's
Chris Miles:get lean, get liquid, and get out. So, get lean is make sure
Chris Miles:you really are tracking your money. You don't have to like
Chris Miles:live on fricking rice and beans, like our good old buddy Dave
Chris Miles:Ramsey says, right? You don't have to do that kind of crap.
Chris Miles:You don't have to be so cheap that you cut out that latte
Chris Miles:factor, like Dave Bock says. You know, it's always a Dave, right?
Chris Miles:That tells you to not live life.
Loral Langemeier:Or Susie, to Dave. Or Susie,
Chris Miles:exactly. Yes, her too. But it's always they're
Chris Miles:always telling you to restrict, and you don't have to do that,
Chris Miles:but you do need to be a wise steward of your resources,
Chris Miles:right? So in business, I recommend people like if you're
Chris Miles:using QuickBooks or whatever system you're using doesn't
Chris Miles:matter. I like to track my money weekly because I can prevent a
Chris Miles:lot more money leaks in my business by being proactive
Chris Miles:rather than reactive at the end of the year when I'm doing
Chris Miles:taxes, right? When it's already too late. Also in your personal
Chris Miles:life, you know whether you're using like Monarch or Rocket
Chris Miles:Money or whatever it might be, track your money there too. You
Chris Miles:know, make sure you are tracking your money, and and doing that.
Chris Miles:If you do that on a weekly basis, you tend to be on top of
Chris Miles:things. You tend to tell if there's you know apps that
Chris Miles:you're getting charged for that you should be you know paying
Chris Miles:for anymore. I remember there was one woman that she was like.
Chris Miles:Get a quarter million in Silicon Valley a year, and I'm broke
Chris Miles:every month. I don't know why. Well, we ran the numbers. She
Chris Miles:was spending 5600 a month eating out, like literally eating out
Chris Miles:5600 a month. And by the way, this was 2010 prices, so this
Chris Miles:would be like spending over 10 grand a month eating out. And
Chris Miles:and I said, you know what? Cut back that budget to like 1000 or
Chris Miles:so a month. You know that was still free up 4600 a month, and
Chris Miles:you could be able to do more with it, right? So it cut back
Chris Miles:in the ways that it's necessary to help you have some freedom.
Chris Miles:But the other side of the equation is: can I make more
Chris Miles:money too? Can I increase the amount of value I'm creating for
Chris Miles:other people? Can I, you know, solve problems? Which right now
Chris Miles:there's more problems to solve than ever. Be a problem solver,
Chris Miles:solutions provider. You'll make more money, right? So that's get
Chris Miles:lean. Get liquid means you have cash in your control. Don't lock
Chris Miles:it up in prison, like everybody talks about putting your money
Chris Miles:in the 401k's and IRAs. I don't believe that. Like I'm not
Chris Miles:saying that you never use them, but when they make that the one
Chris Miles:and only solution for you, that's because Wall Street gets
Chris Miles:paid the most money, right? That's how they make all their
Chris Miles:money. They're the ones telling you lock it away forever, so
Chris Miles:they get paid forever, right?
Loral Langemeier:And they get the residual, but they also
Loral Langemeier:there's no tax strategy in that, as you and I know, like yeah,
Loral Langemeier:yeah. The you know I always tell people have your 401k open.
Loral Langemeier:That's your own company. I mean, obviously, a lot of people
Loral Langemeier:listening are probably employed, and they they don't have command
Loral Langemeier:of their 401k. But for entrepreneurs, our company 401k
Loral Langemeier:has become a tax strategy. Do you have to maximize it all the
Loral Langemeier:time? Old folk, like you said, would say yes. We would say if
Loral Langemeier:you need it, but it's not the first go to. It is usually the
Loral Langemeier:last go to for me. Usually, it's oil and gas, real estate, all
Loral Langemeier:the alternatives, real assets that actually produce cash, cash
Loral Langemeier:flow, and passive income. Then, if I need to use a 401k at the
Loral Langemeier:finale, then you can have it, but have the account open. But
Loral Langemeier:to your point, most people see that as a sole source of a
Loral Langemeier:retirement plan, and it's so wrong because you're going to be
Loral Langemeier:taxed at the end, and you don't know the tax rate.
Chris Miles:That's right, and you can get so. That's the
Chris Miles:thing. I argued with a financial advisor literally just a few
Chris Miles:hours before this, right? And he was saying, "Oh yeah, we put it
Chris Miles:away, and they can put away hundreds of 1000s a year into
Chris Miles:these retirement, these you know qualified plans and such. I'm
Chris Miles:like, "Well, one, I don't trust the government, and they can
Chris Miles:change the rules whenever they want because I don't go into
Chris Miles:business with somebody who controls all the rules that way,
Chris Miles:and that's what the government is. They own your 401k. You're
Chris Miles:just the benefactor, right? You're just the you're. It's for
Chris Miles:the your benefit, but they make all the rules. So I'm like, I
Chris Miles:don't trust that. Two, it's so hard to get to the money when
Chris Miles:you need it if you need it, and that's why you need to have
Chris Miles:liquid cash. That's why I don't like locking away in in home
Chris Miles:equity. I made that mistake in the last before the last
Chris Miles:recession, I thought because I was a mortgage broker. If I ever
Chris Miles:needed cash, I just cash out refi and get my money out. Well,
Chris Miles:until it didn't work, right? That's why I don't agree with
Chris Miles:people. They say, "Oh, I have cash reserves. I got a credit
Chris Miles:card. I'm like, "Yeah, until you don't. If they cut back limits,
Chris Miles:and I watched that happen so much in 2007 and 8, people that
Chris Miles:had all these credit limits get cut back to their balances, and
Chris Miles:then they or close altogether. You know, so you got to be
Chris Miles:careful of that. So have liquid cash. I don't care if it's in a
Chris Miles:savings account. You know, I use a combination of you know bank
Chris Miles:savings local that I can get to today, high yield savings
Chris Miles:accounts, which I can obviously transfer to my bank in a few
Chris Miles:days, and then I use life insurance for the lion's share
Chris Miles:of my money because I can get to that money whenever I want, but
Chris Miles:I'm getting paid like a guaranteed, you know, five 6% a
Chris Miles:year tax free on it, and I can get to that money whenever I
Chris Miles:need it. So I
Loral Langemeier:within your life insurance policy.
Chris Miles:I'm sorry, say again.
Loral Langemeier:Usually within your life insurance policy.
Chris Miles:Correct. Yes, specifically whole life
Chris Miles:insurance. Not like some people are like marketing like oh index
Chris Miles:universal life, all that kind of stuff. It's like no, those
Chris Miles:things are market driven. You you can't count on those
Chris Miles:exactly. But I use the boring whole life that right now they
Chris Miles:they're paying over 6% a year, you know, dividends, you know,
Chris Miles:and and that has no market risk. So it's a safe place I can get I
Chris Miles:can store it. I can get to it whenever I need it too.
Loral Langemeier:Yep, yep. So that's why I think so so few
Loral Langemeier:people know or understand passive income. I mean, you and
Loral Langemeier:I know that answer, but let's just talk about passive income.
Loral Langemeier:I and I'm just going to start off saying, just you know, I
Loral Langemeier:make fun of it because I don't think anything's purely passive.
Loral Langemeier:I call it packedive. You're going to be a little bit active,
Loral Langemeier:at least with some oversight of your real estate that's going to
Loral Langemeier:produce that cash flow. So I like that your shirt says cash
Loral Langemeier:flow freedom versus passive income because I do make fun of
Loral Langemeier:passive income because passive is nothing and too many people
Loral Langemeier:do nothing so I'm just giving them no permission you have to
Loral Langemeier:pay attention like you said weekly to your money you've got
Loral Langemeier:to pay attention and and all those I'm going to do it for you
Loral Langemeier:real estate deals you still need to have oversight, so I'll give
Loral Langemeier:a my little just my my rules around that as you answer that.
Chris Miles:Absolutely, I I couldn't agree more because you
Chris Miles:know you're right. It requires a level of stewardship, right? The
Chris Miles:problem is we've been brainwashed to believe by the
Chris Miles:financial industry, financial advisors, and the companies they
Chris Miles:work. For that, we just set and forget it, and we just never
Chris Miles:have to think about it ever again. When has that ever worked
Chris Miles:in real life? Like, when have we ever been passive? What what
Chris Miles:happens in our relationships if we're passive with it? They'll
Chris Miles:leave. If we're passive with our health, our health will leave.
Chris Miles:If we're passive with our money, it'll leave too. And we got to
Chris Miles:be careful not to be, you know, like I'm not talking about like
Chris Miles:hands off investments. There's great ways to be the financier
Chris Miles:or you know hands off in that way, but you still have to be
Chris Miles:very much aware and manage that stewardship, or you'll lose it.
Chris Miles:And so I agree. Like even rentals, like for example, the
Chris Miles:most hands off rental strategy when it comes to real estate is
Chris Miles:turnkey rentals. But even then, I mean, one. I mean, I'm doing
Chris Miles:upfront work to make sure that hey, is appraisal still look
Chris Miles:good? Is you know, do we make sure that we actually have the
Chris Miles:right numbers before we get in? Do we do we know for a fact that
Chris Miles:the home inspection is done right because I don't have to
Chris Miles:pay maintenance in something that I just barely bought? You
Chris Miles:know, all these factors, and yeah, you may have some
Chris Miles:headaches. So I tell people at best it's semi active or semi
Chris Miles:passive. Now I might lend my money. For example, I lend my
Chris Miles:money to real estate investors, and it's very hands off. But if
Chris Miles:they don't pay me, right, I might have to foreclose on them.
Chris Miles:I might have to take that control back, take that
Chris Miles:property, and that's anything but passive. And so there's
Chris Miles:always that due diligence period and those kind of things that
Chris Miles:aren't passive at all, but in comparison, I'll tell you, like,
Chris Miles:because I mean, I've got roughly about 50,000 a month of passive
Chris Miles:coming in for myself right now, and for me, like, I spend maybe
Chris Miles:at most couple hours a month managing my, you know, my
Chris Miles:stewardship and my investments and things like that, because
Chris Miles:again, like most of it's like watching grass grow, you know,
Chris Miles:like it comes in, it's doing its thing. Now up front, now I'm
Chris Miles:getting into new investments. I might spend anywhere from
Chris Miles:several minutes to maybe a few hours, depending on the
Chris Miles:investment. But once I'm in, I'm in, you know, and and then it's
Chris Miles:just a matter of you know filling, make sure that things
Chris Miles:are okay, and watching and managing what I have. So no,
Chris Miles:it's it's never brain off. Never think that passive means brain
Chris Miles:off. But if we're talking about like passive income, even if
Chris Miles:it's oil and gas, because I've got oil and gas investments like
Chris Miles:you have as well. I mean, I've got stuff in business and things
Chris Miles:of that nature. Like there's so many cool things you can do in
Chris Miles:the alternative investment space that no financial advisor will
Chris Miles:ever tell you about. Because one, either they don't know
Chris Miles:about it themselves, like myself. I didn't know any about
Chris Miles:about most these things, or two because they don't want you know
Chris Miles:about because they don't get paid a dime if you go and do
Chris Miles:those other investments, and that's the real reason why
Chris Miles:you're never taught. I'm going to go in
Loral Langemeier:three. They're legally licensed. They have to
Loral Langemeier:only sell into their broker dealer. They can't. So to that
Loral Langemeier:point, I mean, so few people endorse or even understand
Loral Langemeier:alternative investments. So I wrote, I mean, early 2007. I
Loral Langemeier:wrote Well Cycle Investing, which is a complete chapter by
Loral Langemeier:chapter alternative. Every alternative you can invest in
Loral Langemeier:that was available at the time. Now there's more alternatives
Loral Langemeier:because you know the economy and industry shift. So why do you
Loral Langemeier:think so few people understand alternatives. For I'm not speak
Loral Langemeier:for me. That's all I was ever ever introduced to. Like I knew
Loral Langemeier:real estate. I worked, you know, with Chevron. I built the
Loral Langemeier:fitness centers. I saw gas and oil, and I knew they were they
Loral Langemeier:had bypassed a lot of small fields. And that's when a lot of
Loral Langemeier:us, when we left Chevron, got together the the geologists and
Loral Langemeier:the engineers, myself, bunch of safety engineers were like, we
Loral Langemeier:know the fields. They bypassed because they were too small for
Loral Langemeier:a chevron, but they're not too small for a small operator.
Loral Langemeier:That's how I got into all these alternatives really, really,
Loral Langemeier:really young. And the market was always, like you said, an
Loral Langemeier:elusive, you know, emotional machine that's controlled by a
Loral Langemeier:lot of other market makers and not us, so that's how I got in
Loral Langemeier:the alternatives. Tell me about. I mean, obviously your story is
Loral Langemeier:very similar. You went, you know, very stock market-ish and
Loral Langemeier:mutual funds, and then over. But in general, Chris, why are so
Loral Langemeier:few people talking about alternatives when it's what
Loral Langemeier:makes us the wealthiest and gives us the most cash flow.
Chris Miles:It's true. Well, it's it's traditionally been
Chris Miles:reserved for the wealthy than the rich class, right? It's the
Chris Miles:poor middle class are told to invest in their 401k's
Loral Langemeier:and Roth IRAs.
Chris Miles:Poor middle class are told, "Hey, just pay off
Chris Miles:your house and you'll live an adequate lifestyle. But what
Chris Miles:people don't realize, and it's becoming more common thanks to
Chris Miles:social media and things that we're doing, like these
Chris Miles:podcasts. It's becoming more aware, but the truth is that the
Chris Miles:the massive sales force of financial advisors, and that's
Chris Miles:really what they are. You you nailed on the head. Like when I
Chris Miles:had my securities license, I'll tell you the most free day I
Chris Miles:ever had was in 2005 when I dropped my securities license
Chris Miles:because I wasn't licensed to make people money. I was
Chris Miles:licensed to sell only a very specific suite of "quote
Chris Miles:unquote" financial products, right? And none of them fit in
Chris Miles:that alternative. And I call it more not even just alternative
Chris Miles:investments, but Main Street investing versus Wall Street.
Chris Miles:They always pitch Wall Street, but Main Street. I mean, this is
Chris Miles:stuff that's been going on for 1000s of years. People have been
Chris Miles:buying and selling businesses, investing that way. People have
Chris Miles:been buying and selling real estate for 1000s of years. The
Chris Miles:Wall Street's only been around for a few 100 years. It's not
Chris Miles:even that new. But marketing from the big companies, all the
Chris Miles:billions that go into every financial news network that you
Chris Miles:see, they're the ones paying for that those ad spaces for them to
Chris Miles:say yes, go invest with Fidelity or Merrill Lynch or whatever
Chris Miles:crappy company you want to invest with, and again, they
Chris Miles:serve their need. But the whole other side, the side that the
Chris Miles:wealthy families have known about for so long, the side that
Chris Miles:you know you see the the typical private wealth accounts go into,
Chris Miles:and the hedge funds and things like that, they're investing in
Chris Miles:these places already. I mean, a lot of them even have like 30%
Chris Miles:of cash sitting on sidelines or cash equivalents, combined with
Chris Miles:all these other alter investment class, yeah, they might have a
Chris Miles:little Wall Street in there too, but they put a lot of money into
Chris Miles:things like private equity and credit. They put things into
Chris Miles:real estate. They put things into oil and gas. They're
Chris Miles:already doing the stuff. It's just now it's the time that
Chris Miles:people realize again, you're not what's called an accredited
Chris Miles:investor, where you make at least 300,000 a year on your tax
Chris Miles:return, or and or you have a million dollar net worth, not
Chris Miles:including your equity of your house, you won't often hear
Chris Miles:these things, especially if you're under that that realm.
Chris Miles:Like most of those people won't even offer it to you, anyways.
Chris Miles:But there are still some access ability for people to be able to
Chris Miles:get in to deals like this, even if you don't qualify that way,
Loral Langemeier:yeah, absolutely. So, just I'm gonna
Loral Langemeier:I'm gonna ask this question because it's kind of wide open.
Loral Langemeier:But when you say, "How do you achieve financial freedom? How
Loral Langemeier:would you answer that? Because so many people come to me
Loral Langemeier:because they want financial freedom, and I say, "Does that
Loral Langemeier:really mean that you just want a life of freedom? So you have
Loral Langemeier:like time freedom, lifestyle freedom. What does it really
Loral Langemeier:mean? So describe that, just because I think there's so many
Loral Langemeier:descriptions you can put with what does it mean to be
Loral Langemeier:financially free.
Chris Miles:Yeah, see, I was going to say same thing as well.
Chris Miles:How do you define financial freedom? And I'll tell you how
Chris Miles:you can get it. You know, I think there's two different
Chris Miles:terms. There's financial independence and financial
Chris Miles:freedom, financial independence. Simply put, is when you have
Chris Miles:more than enough investment income or other income streams
Chris Miles:coming in, whether you work or not. Right, they can pay your
Chris Miles:bills. So if you have enough passive income coming in to pay
Chris Miles:your monthly expenses, you can be financially independent. But
Chris Miles:that does not make you financially free. And I learned
Chris Miles:that firsthand because I had to do it twice. Financial freedom
Chris Miles:is actually more of a state of being or state of mind, a state
Chris Miles:of abundance, and that's something that you can't be
Chris Miles:bought because I've had plenty of clients get out of the
Chris Miles:quote-unquote rat race. Right, they have more passive income
Chris Miles:coming in than their expenses, but they still feel broke or
Chris Miles:they still feel like it's not it's quote unquote not enough.
Chris Miles:And I believe that financial freedom is when money is no
Chris Miles:longer the reason or excuse that you do or do not do anything.
Chris Miles:That you now feel like you're in that place, and that's something
Chris Miles:you can start working on right now. For me, it took me going
Chris Miles:broke in 2009. I didn't go bankrupt, but I was over a
Chris Miles:million dollars in debt. Got foreclosed on my house just a
Chris Miles:week before my fourth child was born. So we literally, as my
Chris Miles:wife's going through postpartum, we're moving out into a small
Chris Miles:rental, right? Moving out of our dream home that we had bought in
Chris Miles:2006, and so I mean, I had to lose everything to find out that
Chris Miles:I actually had everything, that the stuff didn't matter anymore.
Chris Miles:I was like, I was disconnected. I kept the minivan. We hid it in
Chris Miles:the garage so the the repo guys couldn't take it. But for us,
Chris Miles:once I detach from the stuff and I stop trying to prove with ego
Chris Miles:that, and this is true even for business owners, right? Often
Chris Miles:I'll drive a car that's less expensive than many of my
Chris Miles:business owner friends, but I make more money than them, you
Chris Miles:know, because I just don't give a crap. And that's it's funny
Chris Miles:enough for me. That's when I realized that I created
Chris Miles:financial freedom in 2009 when I was broke. Is when I detached
Chris Miles:from that. Then once the money came in; it didn't matter. Like
Chris Miles:I just had to hit financial independence, and the freedom
Chris Miles:was already there.
Loral Langemeier:Yeah, I had to share. I laughed because, like,
Loral Langemeier:I flew around in a King Air C 90 multi million dollar plane that
Loral Langemeier:was more important because that was my freedom to get around
Loral Langemeier:this planet, not really the planet in the U S and Canada as
Loral Langemeier:fast as I could, do as many shows as I could and get back
Loral Langemeier:home, but that was so vital to my career. And I would come
Loral Langemeier:home, and people they arrived or saw me, they'd be like, "And you
Loral Langemeier:drive a Jeep? I'm like, "Yeah, because I don't care. It gets me
Loral Langemeier:from here to there, and I like them. So now, yeah, it's just
Loral Langemeier:interesting how people put values or egos importance on
Loral Langemeier:things, and it's different for everybody. So that's why I love
Loral Langemeier:asking the question because I think you know what's going to
Loral Langemeier:have you be free is very different than you know what
Loral Langemeier:other people need to be free. Chris, I know you're whatever
Chris Miles:definition of freedom is. It might be
Chris Miles:different when you get there.
Loral Langemeier:Oh yeah, and then you go like, "This is it,
Loral Langemeier:or "This is like not it, okay. Mis misaligned on that, and you
Loral Langemeier:go again. And I have a saying. It's called "So what now? What?
Loral Langemeier:So what you arrived, or so what happened? It's now what are you
Loral Langemeier:going to do? When you live in the now, what's going to happen?
Loral Langemeier:And you have that really generative energy, just like to
Loral Langemeier:move here and then move here, and just you keep moving forward
Loral Langemeier:versus looking back and having. Any of that affect your future
Loral Langemeier:changes you changes your decision making your freedom
Loral Langemeier:creating your freedom structure. Chris, I know you have a
Loral Langemeier:calculator. Talk about your calculator. Talk about your
Loral Langemeier:book. How do people follow you? How do they watch you?
Chris Miles:Yeah, most people don't realize that they actually
Chris Miles:have more potential for creating passive income than they
Chris Miles:realized, and so to help people do that, because people kept
Chris Miles:asking me, and they'd say, "Well, what do you see, Chris? I
Chris Miles:finally put my brain into a calculator. So on my website at
Chris Miles:moneyripples.com, there's a passive income calculator you
Chris Miles:can actually put your numbers into. takes maybe a couple
Chris Miles:minutes, and it can spit out saying, "Here's how much passive
Chris Miles:income you could create in the next 12 months in your current
Chris Miles:situation. So kind of a cool free tool you can try out.
Loral Langemeier:Okay, cool. And how do you get your book,
Loral Langemeier:Money Ripples?
Chris Miles:Yep, go to Amazon. Yeah, we got the the book called
Chris Miles:The Work Optional Blueprint, and so you can find that on on
Chris Miles:Amazon or wherever you buy books. You know, but it's
Chris Miles:basically there. Eventually, the audio book will be out too, but
Chris Miles:not for a few months.
Loral Langemeier:Okay, cool. But yeah, if you ever want to
Chris Miles:follow us? There's at Money Ripples and social
Chris Miles:media moneyripples.com, or we have the Money Ripples podcast.
Chris Miles:You can follow as well.
Loral Langemeier:Perfect, and I am over there on his podcast. So
Loral Langemeier:go check out our interview.
Chris Miles:Yeah, this has been great to
Loral Langemeier:have you today. Love to have you back. I
Loral Langemeier:think you and I could rant about cash flow and just just the
Loral Langemeier:structure of what it takes to to create call it wealth, financial
Loral Langemeier:freedom, just the freedom in general, and create the cash
Loral Langemeier:flow that you really need, and understand how much it is,
Loral Langemeier:because so many people are in the situation that your father
Loral Langemeier:found them in, and still today, it's why so many baby boomers,
Loral Langemeier:in my opinion, are still working. Is they had a huge
Loral Langemeier:miscalculated structure of thinking that that was going to
Loral Langemeier:be enough, and they didn't. They didn't. You know, nobody.
Loral Langemeier:Everybody puts a little inflation in there, but when
Loral Langemeier:they really figure out the calculator, they forget all the
Loral Langemeier:economic up and downs. I mean, the fact that 30% was lost in
Loral Langemeier:2020, and now they're what 20 something percent was lost in
Loral Langemeier:the market in 20, you know, 22. Like I said, there's just so
Loral Langemeier:many variables that affect that number that never goes into the
Loral Langemeier:calculation. So take advantage of Chris's calculator and do it
Loral Langemeier:on a regular basis so you keep your mind straight.
Chris Miles:Absolutely,
Loral Langemeier:Chris. Thank you. And those of you that are
Loral Langemeier:out there, if you have any questions at any time, always go
Loral Langemeier:to askloral.com. A s k l o r a l. Ask a question, make a
Loral Langemeier:request. We'll be back next Friday on the next podcast.

