Video Closed Captioning:
[Music]
good morning good afternoon good evening
folks michael zuber one retail at a time
back with his sunday morning guest mr
todd baldwin how you doing sir i’m doing
great here’s my new hand gesture of the
morning
folks if you don’t know we’re going to
get a new hand gesture every video so
i’m thinking in about five or six weeks
he’s going to be doing handstands or
something
it’s going to get interesting uh but
todd what i wanted to talk to you about
today
is
something that’s
not a good memory
but it is something that
hits home for all of us
and what i’ve come to realize is there’s
one kind of anchor
or key to happiness and now i’m talking
happiness in life in general
relationships all of that
and i think happiness is at least
anchored
there are other aspects but here is the
anchor to me
is no financial stress
right you’re you have enough money at
the end of the month to pay the bills
it’s not like i have more month than
money
and i say this as someone who’s family
was kind of stretched 80 85 of the time
and 15 of the time we had money for
whatever reason right i don’t know what
happened but we had money a couple times
and
yeah i mean
though
the world is the world or at least my
experience in the world growing up is
very different when there’s financial
stress in the system because everything
breaks it doesn’t matter if all the
great stuff is happening if you’re
fighting at the end of the month for
this or that dollar to pay this or that
thing
it just all blows up is it am i
am i just
reliving the past and i need to move on
or what’s going on
no i think you’re right i mean no
financial stress that is a huge
privilege that i i feel like i sometimes
take for granted because just like you i
i remember what it was like and now my
life is so different
so
yeah i think it you know as far as like
anxiety reducing
i think having having some sort of
security blanket is is enormous
yeah and
i just need people to hear this
something about one rental at a time is
well never bragging or anything of that
but what i’m trying to is highlight is
it’s worth the struggle right i talk to
people all the time that are in the
first couple of years of doing this
and again i mean i believe everybody can
make work optional in 10 years
but as i’ve said many times the first
four or five years suck because you just
the momentum in the system tries to stop
and give you off ramps and stop momentum
um but it’s worth it and again having
uh
you know
no financial stress at the end of the
month is very helpful because stuff bad
stuff still happens you still fight you
still have like the other day i freaking
hit a pothole on the freeway and had a
tire blow out
you know all these other things happen
but
then you could deal with it right you
don’t have to go oh my god how much is
the tow truck going to cost how much is
the new tire oh my god i just how can i
deal with all my scheduled meetings
because i just lost four hours of my day
and
it’s just um
i just it’s
it’s something we all need to identify
that’s a big thing i think i’m getting
from our conversations this morning is
identification
understanding so you could fix it what
do you think
yeah absolutely i think that i mean it’s
almost like a loophole right of like
having having money so you can
you can just be fine and take care of
your stuff and yeah if
you know if stuff goes wrong you’re in
the clear and i will say i think when i
think of happiness i sort of think of a
few elements
and one of them
being a solid relationship with your
partner or your spouse and but to your
point one
way to make sure that happens is you
know the leading cause of divorce is
money fights and money problems agreed
even even higher than infidelity so
statistically you’re more likely to get
a divorce based on a financial
disagreement than you are your husband
or wife cheating on you so
if you can sort of eliminate the leading
cause of divorce in your life and you
know get that correct and that’ll be
huge and then just to play devil’s
advocate here i would say two other
things that i think make you really
happy
is having
sort of lower expectations of the people
around you and higher expectations of
yourself
and then um honestly really not giving a
crap what anyone else thinks about you
because other people’s opinions aren’t
going to pay your bills so if you can do
those things right you get your money
right you have your relationship solid
and you have a realistic expectation of
the world and high expectations of
yourself i think you’re gonna be i mean
i can’t imagine what else would make you
happier than that yeah and again folks
if you follow my story for any length of
time you know that i believe that
happiness is the goal
however you get there in episode one we
talked about the 40 40 life i bet i want
to be very clear i have run into
some it’s not a big number but there are
some people that are just truly happy
truly happy going to work socializing
doing whatever they’re doing
that is you have won
if you roll out of bed every day and you
are truly i’m not talking lying to
yourself getting drunk on friday nights
to like make it go away but like truly
happy
you win congratulations you you won the
game you don’t have to play
but most people
there’s a joe rogan video that i’ve seen
on youtube a couple of times called
quiet desperation i don’t like it’s
somebody cut up a joe rogan interview i
think
uh and that’s what i was living quiet
desperation i was comfortable i was a
duck right i was comfortable on the
surface but man under the water
i was i was always
you know borderline freaked out
yeah i mean when i had my you know
nine to five
i was making tons of money and i but i
didn’t love what i did
and it was like you know it
i was happy that i was able to invest in
real estate which allowed me to you know
do all these other crazy things and now
i am truly happy but yeah it is what you
it you know
the
i think the money thing reduces stress
like i can’t even tell you how like i
don’t have any fear i literally have no
fear
and then you know once you have that
it’s figuring out okay what do i want to
do every day to keep my happiness going
but yeah when you when you don’t have to
worry about where your meals coming from
or how to pay the rent or you know
whatever that is a huge loophole that i
think so many people
like either need to realize like and
let’s help them realize they’re teaching
or if they have it they don’t even know
how blessed they are to have it yeah
yeah again i think um
i think i i really do think kind of
tying out episode one and two together
the key to happiness is identification
and then kind of working on that so
for lots of folks that you need to
identify that financial stress to your
point is the number one cause of uh
relationship issues so if you get on the
same page you can talk i do believe you
need to talk about money more how about
let’s go there
um do you think how often do you and
your wife talk about money that’s not
necessarily like income or this but just
talk budgeting money side hustles i know
you do lots of different things
i would say multiple times a day wow
i mean easily multiple times a day that
is awesome
yeah well i mean remember my wife and i
are avid secret shoppers so anytime we
want to go out on a date we first try to
see if we can do it for free yeah like
we went on a dinner date i put it on my
instagram the other day where we have
like this amazing dinner this like the
most delicious dessert with like a big
cookie the size of a frying pan and ice
cream and all that stuff we got paid 40
bucks to go there and get the food for
free so we’re always talking about it’s
not like uh let’s sit down and get out
of a notebook and write things down
necessarily it’s just like hey
let’s do this
um you know what what’s this price is it
worth it can we get it for free can we
get a discount you know all that sort of
stuff and again folks we don’t need to
have like we have enough money to buy
whatever we want it’s not about that
it’s about can we still be smart yeah
and you know not
not be irresponsible and just go on a
spending spree
i’m curious when you guys were starting
this journey did you establish a budget
it’s a good question
not in a traditional sense
okay so typically a budget is like okay
what do i want to like
keep my spending capped at every month
yes we did to the opposite approach and
we’re like what do we want to save and
invest every month
and then after that we’ll spend whatever
we want wow so for a while it was um i
remember the number we came up with that
was comfortable for us is we could
invest
like eight grand a month something like
that so we put like i think it was
six grand into investments and then two
grand a month into savings or we you
know we split it up into like the next
property we’re gonna buy but it’s eight
grand a month okay and as long as we
first saved eight grand a month it
didn’t matter what we spent we could
spend whatever we wanted
that’s awesome
that’s awesome
so uh as we wrap this up the key to
happiness in your mind again goes kind
of through your three things what do you
think the keys are that people need to
think about well i’m going to echo you
so reducing your financial stress
getting your financial security um
having realistic expectations of the
people around you and very high
expectations of yourself
and not caring about the opinions of
others whether it’s the negative of
comments on an article like you realized
wow people saying oh you want to buy
real estate that’s stupid or you know i
had so many people telling me i was
making a huge mistake when i dropped out
of college and i bought my first house
when i was 23 with my girlfriend right
that decision
has made me millions of dollars like
it’s it’s insane how how that decision
to change course in my life has has done
so well for me so just do you and forget
about the noise yeah so you would say
that you’re pro house hacking
oh 100
that was a that was subtle yeah
that’s the cheat code to wealth if you
can if you can househack roommate
fourplex whatever it is uh you take your
biggest expense to zero your financial
stress goes down because again you don’t
got that big bill there’s so much wisdom
in house hacking it’s something i wish i
would have started out of school so
todd thank you very much for all you do
where can people find you
yes if you guys want to get in touch i’m
on instagram at todjaybaldwin and if you
want to check out my youtube channel it
is just todd baldwin
awesome thanks