How to Get So Filthy Rich That People Start Looking At You Funny

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Welcome to the channel here. We're going to be talking about everything money and markets. And a big part of the reason why we're doing this is because honestly, there's just not a whole lot of information about this that gets into the hands of the everyday American. And so I figured, well, I'll do my best to take some of the information that I've learned throughout the years. I spent time as a financial adviser. I've spent time as a licensed investment broker.

[00:00:26]and I've spent time uh deep into the world of fintech and so I feel like there's an opportunity here to take some of the things that I've learned and the lessons that I've learned also personally in my life and share them with you and hopefully provide some value. Now I do want to be extremely clear that none of this is financial advice and I highly recommend that you do not take financial advice from a random guy on the internet uh who sometimes goes around and talks to a stick and then also who sometimes does these whiteboard explainers. But with all of that said, what you're currently looking at right here, right now is a simple visualization. And this here is a pyramid uh of the different things that I think are worth looking at and understanding when trying to build wealth in life. Now, I want to be clear that although this is a pyramid that there is not necessarily an actual hierarchy to how to look at this, but this was something that I did not understand and that led me to a lot of pain in life. And so I wanted to share it with you. So, at the very bottom of the pyramid, we have this first thing that must occur if we're going to build wealth, which is for us to make money, uh, making money. And this typically really comes down to having a business or generating income from your job.

[00:01:33]Okay? We'll talk more about some of the stuff a little bit later, but obviously, if we're going to build wealth, we got to make money. This isn't something that we'll spend a whole lot of time talking about here on this channel in particular, but it is important to think about it as that fundamental building block of building wealth. And then if we move up the ladder just a bit, uh we have keeping money. Okay? And so this is something that I personally messed up on in my life. Uh have I'll talk a little bit more about it in just a second, but think about this, right? There are people around the world who make millions of dollars a year, but in reality, uh they might not keep enough money to live any differently than the person who's making $50,000 a year. And quite honestly, this is something that we want to avoid. So uh keeping money can come down to well how are we managing our expenses but then also how are we working with the tax code depending upon where we live in the world and the different ways that we might be able to use that to our advantage. Uh next up the pyramid here is uh growing money and this was something that I had a lot of luck with very early in my life. I I will say that you know I learned to grow money uh at an incredibly fast rate. But what happens with that is that growing money still requires that you have the thing under it which is keeping money.

[00:02:48]If you're not able to keep money then just because you grew the money doesn't mean that you won't still lose it. Okay?

[00:02:54]So these are separate skill sets. Okay?

[00:02:56]And all of them come together to help us build wealth in life. And now at the very top of our pyramid is understanding the system that we're playing within.

[00:03:05]Right? Understanding money and markets from a fundamental perspective. Now, this is at the top of the pyramid here, but I want to be clear that really none of this is truly hierarchical, but rather these are all building blocks that you will need to be extremely successful in building wealth in your life. Right? So understanding the system, the thing that I think I I worry about is sometimes even personally, you know, we get so caught up in that piece of it because it's the most shiny, it's the most cool, it makes us feel smart, but in reality, there's other things to think about that will actually have a much more meaningful impact on how our personal financial lives actually turn out. Now, one thing that I want to talk about before we move too much further is uh something that comes from Morgan Howel's book, The Psychology of Money.

[00:03:51]something that I love and I highly recommend to everyone uh to read. And in the book, he talks about the fact that well, you know, while finance and personal finance in particular always sounds like it's this uh scientific and mathematical phenomenon, it's really much more a phenomenon of behavior, psychology, and uh human history. Okay?

[00:04:11]And those things become a lot more important when we're looking at this.

[00:04:13]And so, we will talk a lot about psychology. We will talk a lot about behavior as we go through all of these things as well because I do think that those things are actually really fundamental to getting each one of these building blocks together because we can know all of the things that we're going to cover on this channel, but it doesn't mean that we're going to apply that information in the way that actually is going to allow us to reach our goals.

[00:04:33]So, with that, let's move on forward and let's talk a little bit about growing money. because uh if you've watched any of my content on any of my other channels, you may have heard of me talk about the three levers of wealth in markets. And so um there's three different things here that I think a lot of people uh will think about as different ways to increase their wealth and especially when you're investing in markets. And so the first thing, the thing that everybody focuses on is returns. How do I make more money in the market from $1 that I put in, right? How can I get 15, 20, 30% return? Sometimes people get promised even higher returns than that. And the reason that uh we want to be careful about focusing in particularly on the returns or the rate at which your money compounds on a yearly basis uh well is because usually with a higher return also comes this concept of higher risk. Okay? So we always have to keep that in mind when we're making decisions about how much of a return that we want. You obviously we all want higher returns, but the question is at what risk. One of the biggest things that we'll continue to talk about on this channel is what's called the risk of ruin, which means what is the risk that one particular decision that I'm making is actually going to force me to go back down to zero and start over from scratch. And this is something that we want to avoid at all costs in this journey. Now, the second lever of wealth in the markets that you can pull is your contributions.

[00:05:57]So, how much are you actually investing on a regular basis? It could be weekly, it could be daily, it could be monthly, it could be quarterly, but how much you're contributing, I think personally, is one of the most slept upon things when trying to build wealth. Because in reality, um, that contribution thing is going to allow you to compound on your returns, right? Your returns don't have to be that high if your contributions are really high, right? But we'll talk about some of that a little bit later.

[00:06:28]Now, the next thing that we want to think about as a lever of building wealth in markets, and this is something that I think is the most underestimated, is time. How long are you actually staying invested in the market? My favorite story about this also in Morgan Howell's The Psychology of Money, is a man named Ronald Reed. Ronald Reed actually worked at a gas station and he worked as a janitor for almost his entire life. Now, the thing about Ronald Reed is that he never had incredible returns and honestly he never had incredible contributions, right? Your income becomes the thing that must be higher in order for you to have higher contributions, right? And so, uh, working as a janitor, working at a gas station doesn't necessarily allow you to have super high income and therefore you can't have super high contributions. And so the thing about this though is that Ronald Reed without crazy returns, without crazy contributions, he was able to retire with a net worth of $8 million. Okay? And uh I said retire, but he passed away with that uh as his net worth. And so a couple things that I like to take away from that story. One of them is that Ronald Reed also made it to I believe his 80s. Okay? And uh that's really important, right? in order to build that kind of wealth using time as the as the the lever, well, you're going to have to be healthy. You're going to have to make it to that kind of age in life. Um, but the other thing obviously is that he he was consistent.

[00:07:54]Okay, this is back to that psychology piece, that behavior piece. Uh, the only way that he was going to be able to get there was by doing the same things and doing these things over and over and over again for decades of time. Okay?

[00:08:07]And that right there becomes the differentiator when it comes to building wealth, especially if you're doing it by using time. And if you're watching this, you might think that you don't have time, but I promise you, you do. Now, let's move on forward and let's look at Grant Sabotear's seven levels of financial freedom. This is something that is outlined in a book that he wrote, and I want to breeze through this with you. So, look, when we're on this journey, we're going to find ourselves at different uh levels, different areas of where it is that we're at with building wealth. And so let's go over this here. Uh level one according to Grant is clarity. And this is around understanding where you are, right? Just having a good idea of what's actually happening. Uh level two is self-sufficiency, which is being able to support yourself. Okay? Uh a lot of times in life, we have people that we rely on. Uh and there's people that might also be relying on you that might be uh not self-sufficient people. And uh first off, there's nothing necessarily inherently wrong with that. Uh but what is important is if you want to build wealth, you'll have to get to this self-sufficiency stage, which really doesn't necessarily mean that you're thriving, but you are at least able to survive on your own. Level three is about breathing room, and this is creating margin between income and expenses. And this becomes the place where you actually get to start making any kinds of decisions. Because when you're in that level one, level two, you're not necessarily in a place where you get to make a decision. You're just getting by. You're just surviving. And um this uh becomes really important when you create that margin between your income and expenses uh because now you can finally start to well save if that's something that you want to do or you can invest or for some people it might turn into spending and then you end up in well level two again. But moving forward you can get to level four which is stability. And this is about building protection against uncertainty. Uh there are so many things that come up in life.

[00:09:56]Uh nearly six in 10 Americans say that they couldn't cover a $1,000 emergency expense from savings. I happened to uh have a conversation with a lady once uh who was telling me about her family story and it was a very very sad thing.

[00:10:10]And essentially what happened here was that um the man at the household uh he had a a medical issue and this medical issue was something that wasn't covered by insurance. And so for all of my Americans, people living in the United States, uh you know, we don't have free healthcare. And so when certain things happen, uh it can be really hard to financially weather these things. And in this particular case, like I said, uh this man got sick. Uh insurance didn't cover it and the family ended up with very very high levels of medical debt.

[00:10:41]And this medical debt is something that actually led to this family not being able to maintain their home. And so the lesson or the thing that she she gave me after this was that you know most Americans or a high level of Americans are just one health crisis away from being homeless. And so uh this level four is all about building protection against uncertainty because unfortunately uh events like this will inevitably happen to us in life whether it's to us directly or if it's to our loved ones or people that we would like to support and be able to be there for.

[00:11:12]And so we have to get to where we build up a little bit of a cushion in order to maintain uh some level of stability in our financial journey. Now level five is all about flexibility. Buying yourself time and options. And this one is one of my favorite things. Uh because when you get to this point, right, you start to realize, wait, what is the point of money? Oh, it's not just to like not be in fear all the time. It's actually it's something that can allow you to well make decisions and to get your time use your time that you have to do things that you want to do. Uh when I was young my father he sent me to a conference. It was a Damon John conference and one of the men in the conference he had this beautiful quote. He said rich people say that time is money and wealthy people say that time is precious. And the distinction here is that well for the wealthy person they recognize that uh time is priceless. There is no dollar amount that you can put on the time that you have here uh to spend on the planet.

[00:12:07]Whether that's enjoying the planet itself or whether that's enjoying your time with loved ones. And um that's really important to think about when we're trying to uh think about what is that next dollar actually going to do for us. And having this level five, this flexibility, you know, buying yourself time, allowing yourself to to either decide what it is exactly that you want to do with your time or do with your life or also uh just being able to actually make the decision to do those things. Now, at level six here is financial independence, where your assets generate enough income to support your life. This right here is the golden level, right? This is where we all want to be able to get to where our dividends, our our rental income is enough for us to be able to make enough money to live without even having to go out and work at all. A lot of people, I think, uh, when it comes to this concept of retirement, especially when you're younger, you don't think about that, but in reality, you only have so many years that you're able to really effectively work. I mean, there's people like Warren Buffett out there who have worked for 90 years of their life or whatever, but um that that is not the standard and especially if you're working physical labor, right? You're you're not going to be able to do that forever. And so, you have to prepare for those moments and you have to set yourself up for that.

[00:13:13]That's not something that just happens uh by default. And so, uh this is where we all want to be at some point in our lives. Obviously, the earlier the better, but you you really really want to focus in on thinking about how do you acquire assets that allow you to generate income that allow you to live your life and potentially support others in living theirs without even having to work at all. Now, level seven is that abundant wealth, right? Having way more than you need. This is where you get to think about things like legacy. You get to think about donating, helping people, and making sure that you use your money to do things for the world. So, with all of that said, look, throughout this channel in particular, we're going to be breaking this down into the four things that I've discussed earlier and and we'll zoom in on those things as well.

[00:13:54]So, the first bucket here is making money, right? Careers and business, you know, developing skills, uh, creating leverage, having side hustles, labor versus ownership. We'll talk about Robert Kiasaki in the four cash flow quadrants. We won't spend a ton of time on the making money section here, but it is important. it is fundamental to being able to build wealth. Then we have the keeping money section. This is more about personal finance and wealth management. We'll talk about budgeting.

[00:14:19]We'll talk about uh taxes. We'll talk about debt, inflation. We'll talk about some of the behavioral things that happen, right? Lifestyle creep. Uh what are you actually doing with your money when you have something left over? Then we'll move into growing money. We'll talk about investing, how compounding works, portfolio construction, long-term investing. We'll talk about risk versus reward. And then finally, we'll dive into understanding the system uh the financial systems that we're within. In macroeconomics, we'll talk about banking, we'll talk about fintech, uh geopolitics, currencies, and things of that nature in a similar format to this.

[00:14:50]Uh so, zooming in even further, personal finance and wealth management, you're talking about retirement accounts, whether what's a Roth IRA, what's a 401k, what's a high yield savings account, uh how does debt work, what are credit scores, how does that stuff work, taxes, insurance? We'll dive into some levels of financial planning. And then when it comes to investing, what are stocks, what are ETFs, what are bonds, dividends, risk, all of these things.

[00:15:12]And once again, uh, financial systems and macroeconomics, what is inflation, interest rates, the Federal Reserve, and so on. And so now, the reason that I created this channel in particular, in case you're you're someone who's watched my other content, is because on that Keith D channel, it's all about understanding the systems, right? And that's cool. That's great. That's fantastic. But if we're going to actually do something with this information, then it's going to be helpful to have these other building blocks in place. So yes, uh I do think it's important to try to understand the system to the best of our abilities because I do think that that gives us even more leverage when we're thinking about all of these different things, right? Really that understanding the system part does tie right back into this building block of how do we actually make money? Where are the larger macro macroeconomic trends? what is actually happening from a a a secular level? What's going to happen in the next 10, 20, 30 years where we can create businesses that allow us to make more and then allow us to utilize the functions of keeping and growing our money as well. And so I do think that understanding this system is important, but I also think it's important to zoom in on some of these things and to really understand how money works from a mechanical level. I want you to be able to come away from some of these videos with actionable insights and things that you can do to make your life better today. So, uh, with all of that said, I do hope that this was helpful, and if so, be sure to hit that like button and definitely subscribe so that you don't miss the next video that comes out.

[00:16:36]Click the link in the description to sign up for my newsletter where I'm going to be doing nononsense explanations of everything money and markets, completely free. None of this is financial advice. I'm only here to provide some information and to hopefully be a little bit entertaining as we go through this process. And so, um, with that said, uh, I am Keith D and I'm here to talk everything money and markets. And until next time, peace.