Ever been bewildered with finance jargons that seem to pile up every day? How about the ever complex conundrum of managing finances in a relationship, or the murky waters of navigating through financial crises? We got all these covered and more in our conversation with Chris Manske, a seasoned financial planner with an impressive 20-year run in the industry. A West Point graduate, Chris brings a unique perspective to financial planning, where discipline and strategy are key players.
In our enlightening conversation, Chris uncovers the realities of the financial world, drawing from his enriching experiences at Wall Street and running his own successful firm in Houston. He dives into the world of his two books - The Prepared Investor and Outsmart the Money Magicians, shedding light on the intricate dynamics between Wall Street and Main Street. We also chat about the Netflix show "How to Get Rich Fast" and discuss when it's actually a good idea to get a financial advisor on board.
Wrapping up, we focus on the importance of financial preparedness in the face of a crisis, shedding light on the age-old dilemma of renting vs buying, particularly in the Texas market. Chris brings a refreshing point of view on looking at investments, urging listeners to focus on the income produced rather than the money invested. And lastly, as your host, I, Jordan Yates, emphasize the importance of authenticity and unstructured conversations, because after all, it's the genuine exchanges that make life interesting, right? So, buckle up for a ride into the world of finance, peppered with insightful anecdotes, seasoned advice, and a dash of authenticity.
Ever been bewildered with finance jargons that seem to pile up every day? How about the ever complex conundrum of managing finances in a relationship, or the murky waters of navigating through financial crises? We got all these covered and more in our conversation with Chris Manske, a seasoned financial planner with an impressive 20-year run in the industry. A West Point graduate, Chris brings a unique perspective to financial planning, where discipline and strategy are key players.
In our enlightening conversation, Chris uncovers the realities of the financial world, drawing from his enriching experiences at Wall Street and running his own successful firm in Houston. He dives into the world of his two books - The Prepared Investor and Outsmart the Money Magicians, shedding light on the intricate dynamics between Wall Street and Main Street. We also chat about the Netflix show "How to Get Rich Fast" and discuss when it's actually a good idea to get a financial advisor on board.
Wrapping up, we focus on the importance of financial preparedness in the face of a crisis, shedding light on the age-old dilemma of renting vs buying, particularly in the Texas market. Chris brings a refreshing point of view on looking at investments, urging listeners to focus on the income produced rather than the money invested. And lastly, as your host, I, Jordan Yates, emphasize the importance of authenticity and unstructured conversations, because after all, it's the genuine exchanges that make life interesting, right? So, buckle up for a ride into the world of finance, peppered with insightful anecdotes, seasoned advice, and a dash of authenticity.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Failing For you. It's me, your host, jordan Yates, and today I am joined by a very special guest, chris Manskey. Chris, say hello to everybody.
Speaker 2:
Hello, hello, glad to be here.
Speaker 1:
We're so excited to have you here. As Chris and I were talking about right before, Is Marie your assistant.
Speaker 2:
She's part of my public relations team.
Speaker 1:
She is awesome. She has been advocating to get Chris on the podcast and working with my hectic schedule to get him here, and we are just so excited that this collaboration is finally happening. So shout out to her. We love her and we're thankful that she got you on, chris. We had a list of topics that she sent over that she said might be up your alley to talk about. Some have to do with crisis management, financial management. You have a background in being a financial planner. Can you just kind of like dive into your background a little bit first, before we get to into our topics?
Speaker 2:
Oh, I'm happy to do that. So just as a quick introduction to myself, I've been in finance for a little over 20 years. Before that I was in the military. I'm a West Point graduate, served as an officer in the Army and then I was working for a little over a decade with one of the major Wall Street firms. And then, a little over 10 years ago, I started my own firm, which is now just recently recognized as one of the largest firms in Houston, texas, and we're also listed by Advisor Hub Magazine as one of the fastest growing advisory firms in the nation. We love to help people with their money and I'm so committed to that and I'm really on the side. In writing. I've got two books out.
Speaker 1:
Wow, look at you, you are a busy guy. Thank you so much for making time to come on here.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, vice versa. I think so well of the message that you've got about how failing is not something to be scared of, and I'm really happy to be a part of this.
Speaker 1:
It's kind of horrifying, too, thinking about failure in the aspect of, like, the financial side, because that could be really catastrophize. Just thinking about, like the level that somebody could fail on there. I mean, gosh, there's been times I've not been great at budgeting or knowing what to do with my money, so I think it's going to be really awesome getting to have you kind of give us an insider look at that, because I think everybody should be able to relate to this topic in one way or another.
Speaker 2:
We're all trying so hard to get to our definitions of success right, and I think money is almost always a part of that.
Speaker 1:
Have you seen that new show on Netflix, how to Get Rich Fast?
Speaker 2:
I have not seen that show yet, but it does sound like something I need to watch.
Speaker 1:
Oh my goodness, it's like this guy goes on and he talks about basically what money means to people. I thought it was literally going to be like how to start a business, but it was more what being rich means to you. And he's some sort of like financial psychologist and he talks to couples and they figure out like how to get to their financial goals, how to cut back, but then he goes on like other podcasts talking about oh, you shouldn't have a financial advisor. It was very contradictory, so I don't fully understand his message, but I think it was an interesting look at what a financial advisor can do. And then I guess there's a lot of beef in the industry of who thinks who is good at doing it. I don't understand, but I'm excited to talk to you.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, you know, my latest book is called Out Smart, the Money Magicians, and one of the little stories I tell in there is when do you actually hire a financial advisor? And the truth is that not everyone needs to and not everyone should. But there really are specific scenarios that, if this is true, don't wait even a second, like go get a professional and start working with them, and I think it's good to be aware of that. From my point of view, there's just four specific scenarios and it boils down to if you've got time, if you want to do it, if you think you can do it and maybe there's someone in your life you need to take care of that. Those things are tough for them, but outside of that, there's really not much of a need for an advisor.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so you also do like wealth management, and so when I hear wealth management, it sounds like I need to have $100,000 of liquidity saved up and now I need to manage my wealth. What if I don't have wealth? What if I have just getting by and you know, fresh out of college, you just paid off all your debt, you're making money. You're breaking even. When do you need to actually have somebody come in and help you? Is it more when you're trying to get to a good point or when you're already there and you don't know what to do with all your money?
Speaker 2:
You know, I think that both of those are a good time to talk to somebody, but probably you don't need to formally engage with a wealth management advisor when you're just getting your feet under you and starting to have that foundational level of your saving properly. But still it's worth it to talk to somebody that that's what they do for a living, and I'll give you a perfect example of why I'm saying that. In chapter one of outsmart the money magicians, we talk about that foundation and how most Americans they send all of their money to their checking account and then they'll do this thing called you know, set it and forget it. I'm sure you've heard of you know pay yourself first. Yeah, and the problem with this is that people they're setting it and forgetting it. They pay that money to their savings account and then, as time goes on, then maybe they get a promotion, they get a little extra money as a gift or they get a bonus or they do overtime, and all of that extra money it's available in their checking account and so they tend to spend it, and this is where we come up with lifestyle creep and I don't understand.
Speaker 2:
I'm making a lot of money. I'm now in my 30s. I'm making a lot of money, but I don't seem to have held on to much money. What's happened? And so what we suggest is, just as part of a foundational step forward make every cent that you earn go to your savings account first. Nothing that you earn goes to checking ever.
Speaker 2:
Whether you earned it from a garage sale, you sold something on eBay, it doesn't matter. It all goes to the savings account first. And then you set your lifestyle by having a specific amount come out to your checking account. You know, once a month, twice a month, whatever's gonna work for you. But when you switch it up like that, you haven't constrained your savings, you've constrained your bills, constrained your lifestyle. And so this is the real meaning of set it and forget it that it is your lifestyle. Set it and forget it. But Wall Street has kind of encouraged us to forget about what we should set, and so we end up setting our savings and 10 years later, it's like wait, I'm still not where I thought I would be. How did that happen?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I know, I definitely relate to that. I would say, based off the definition you gave, I have a lifestyle creep, no doubt because I've always been one of those people that struggled because growing up we didn't really have barely enough money to get by, much less spending money. And then I got to the point I graduated school, became an engineer and had to get salary and I was like, oh my gosh, now I could just say yes, all the time, amazon here, amazon there and drives my boyfriend crazy because he's very good at saving his money, he's very intentional and checks his stuff constantly. And I'm getting to the point where, like, okay, I gave myself what I needed. Now I need to actually start preparing for the future and I guess that's maybe a good first step is actually budgeting a bit more strictly and saying, like, what do I need to live off of?
Speaker 1:
And, like you said, sort of the inverse of going to savings first and then taking it out, because I am so, so guilty of just kind of like, oh you know, at the end of the month, here's a few extra hundreds, Let me throw that into my savings and like that's awesome, like I'm not really planning, I'm more reacting, and it's definitely a terrible trait I have. So I would love some advice on, like, realistically, say, somebody only has like a few extra hundred a month or maybe a few thousand, like once you put some stuff into savings and kind of break that down, how do you go about, like, making your money make money for you, like what we hear people say that you know you need to invest, you need to do this and that Like what does that actually look like? What are some realistic steps someone takes other than just saying have your money make money for you, cause what does that even mean?
Speaker 2:
Right, and so many people they misunderstand that and I have to say you are not alone, jordan, with what you just described. I mean, this is so common, especially, I'm gonna say, with people that are under 40, because you're wanting to show people that you're successful and you know, in the way that the culture works is we need to project that out. You know we have to buy something to prove that we're successful, right, mm-hmm. And so it's very hard to stick to a budget when that's the way that all the neighbors and friends are acting, and I think a great way to help the money make money for you is so first is you set all income to go to that savings account and what happens is, anytime that you've got a little extra, it just stays in there and you never end up spending the extra because you've set the lifestyle and it doesn't happen overnight, but as the months turn into years, your savings account, just it gets quite big. It's amazing how fast it happens. It's amazing how surprising people feel when they see wait a minute, how did this account get so big? It's only been three years. Well, the reason is because you didn't buy the BMW. You know, you didn't buy that really expensive vacation that your friends were suggesting that you go on and instead you did things that were more in the lifestyle that you had set, that worked with your bills and with your monthly budget.
Speaker 2:
And during that time, what also happens from age 20 to age 40 is people are getting their promotions, they're earning their bonuses, they're working to get established and that extra money gets saved. Okay, so then how do you make that money, make more money? Well, first you've got to crawl before you walk, and that's the first step. But once you want to start walking and turning that into running, there's two ways, I think, that people can look at that, and one is they go out there and get the advisor that's gonna help to guide you and make investing for you and help to make that happen.
Speaker 2:
But if you're someone that's really interested in doing it yourself and you have the time to do it yourself you've got that mathematics background, you're comfortable with doing it yourself why not do it yourself? And in that case, I would suggest you'd want to look at things that create income and a lot of times we get fooled into. Well, I'm gonna buy this thing. Let's say it's a baseball card, or it's a growth stock, or it's a boat or whatever it might be, but the point is it doesn't pay you to own it. The only way you make money is if you can convince someone else to buy it for more than what you paid for it. And this is a hard game to play, but it's a lot easier to play the game of oh, if I buy this, I immediately start making money. That's a lot easier to play.
Speaker 1:
And so.
Speaker 2:
I'd suggest look for things that pay you when you own them.
Speaker 1:
Okay. So what about stock market stuff like that, If we had a financial advisor say like you or we went to you, are you saying that you put your money in stocks or is it more like you want to invest in real estate, things like that? Where do you see that people would say, like maybe have like 20, 30,000, they got to give a little chunk and they're like I want to start doing something with it. What's typically your first go-to way of investing money?
Speaker 2:
Sure Well. So the first go-to way of investing is to make sure that you've got your personal situation set up well. So let's say that your annual income and not talking so much about you specifically, jordan, but just in general somebody out there let's say that they've got 100,000 a year that they're making, so that would mean 50,000 is about half of a year and that's what their savings needs to be just sitting there ready to be used in case there's an emergency. It's not invested, it's maybe making some interest at the bank, and that first 50,000 is really your safety net so that if something terrible happens, you've got time to be able to get yourself back on your feet again.
Speaker 2:
But once you get past that 50,000, what do I do with that money? And I think a great thing to do is to use, like a Vanguard approach or another company that has these low-cost broad index type investments that's Charles Schwab and you can buy a value-based index, which that's a fancy term for a big basket of stocks that all pay you. So as soon as you buy this basket of stocks, you're collecting income from it and you could use that income to pay off debt. You could use that income to just make the account bigger, you could use that income to buy more of the same investment. There's a lot of things you could do with that income to be strategic, but the point is, as soon as you buy it, you're immediately making money. It's a great way to get started.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely so. When somebody's getting married, I feel like there's always the conversation of should we have joint bank accounts? What is your opinion on that?
Speaker 2:
Well, I've got two ways of looking at it. So one is my professional way, which is let's hear what the client has to say about the situation, let's figure out how are they planning to work together and then we'll offer specific advice on well, okay, here's an account for him, here's an account for her, and we can help that way. But my personal thought behind the whole should you combine or should you not is that now, with over 20 years of helping couples and my advisory team, each advisor has a number of clients and what we typically see is that when you go all in and you get your accounts mingled together and your name is on everything and your partner's name is on everything, that it just tends to be a happier. Maybe there's more friction, but it's a more. We're in this together.
Speaker 2:
There's a little bit more of a romantic feel to that union than the colder. Let's be business managers about this and we're going to separate it out, and I'm very used to the colder version, just because sometimes you'll have one of our clients that is very wealthy and then they want to make sure that the money is handled in a way that it stays in the family. There's a lot of concerns there as you bring someone new into your life, but with my own, just personal understanding of what makes people tick, combining it all is a great step toward what really matters, which is probably togetherness and sharing and understanding and dealing with compromise and having the kind of union that you know it's messy but it's full of joy and memories.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, see, I hate this idea so much because I know it's going to keep me so accountable. Like my boyfriend and I are pretty serious and we talk about you know if we're going to combine or not. He's like obviously we're going to combine and I'm like, no, he's going to know all the Amazon orders I do. Like, oh, like, I'm already trying to hide my packages, as is now. He's really going to know. So for me that's the scary part, is like crap. No, I really have to behave, and so I think that could be the intimidating part, not as much like I'm fine to share money, like I'm fine with all that. It's more, I know he's the slightly more responsible one. So I'm curious, like do you ever see that in a situation of, I imagine, like the whole generational wealth is a big deal, when people want to keep like their, their estate safe and whatnot, but do you ever see it's just like one partner is much more you know, money minded than the other, and that's when there's like a little bit of friction in the situation.
Speaker 2:
That's how it always is. Opposites attract and even if, relatively speaking, even if both people are pretty good planners and savers, that there is still in their privacy of their own home, there's going to be a dichotomy. There's going to be a I'm the one who's a bit more of a saver and I'm the one who's not, and so it's always a little bit of friction and sometimes it's helpful to have a you know, a release valve. You know, financially speaking, you can say we don't look at each other's. You know daily spending when we're talking about 10, 20 bucks, you know. That way, if somebody goes to get a Starbucks coffee, they're not sitting there like oh gosh, is my? Is my partner mad at me because of this? You know, but there is.
Speaker 2:
There is nice to have a little release valve, but you know at the same time I think that we often have conversations with clients about the person who is supposedly frivolous and supposedly spending in a way that they shouldn't, that they're probably bringing a certain amount of spontaneity and joy to their partner's life, that it's uncomfortable and so that more saving oriented person is maybe reacting badly. But the truth is, this is why you brought that other human into your life and we like talking about you, know the fact that you know that money and that sense of discomfort, you know it's, it's part of the process, it's part of the joy of you know, sharing a life together and trying to understand each other better. And you know when, when you think about it, the you know that the sweater that was purchased is probably not the real issue.
Speaker 2:
You know the you know that the real issue is something else, and when you can get to talk about those you know with, without any judgment and without any fear, and just really this is who I am and I think I think you love me right and you can really have that conversation. That is fun and I think that's one of the things about money management that it bleeds into the immeasurable and it's it's what makes my career so, so exciting.
Speaker 1:
Do you? Did you have to take any psychology courses in your degree to get here?
Speaker 2:
because I feel like there's so much psychology around money there's a lot of psychology around money and I don't have any formal psychology or or emotional Intelligence training, but I I think, I think that when people do have that formal training, they tend to focus on the discipline of Therapy and the discipline of, you know, providing behavioral change opportunities, as opposed to, you know, the money management side. You know all of my training is investment related, money management related. You know we're supposed to help people to turn, you know, their financial situation into a better one. Yeah, but but along the way you can't help but have conversations about that you know more immeasurable side of things because they're very closely meshed.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I know that's very interesting. They do seem so related so I guess I forgot to ask in the beginning. But I am curious, like what got you started down this path? Like why? Why did you find this interesting and what kind of sparked your initial interest?
Speaker 2:
Well, I was turned on to it by another West Point graduate who is a friend of mine. He was already working with the major Wall Street firm and he was describing his career to me and I was getting out of the army and was looking at various options and it sounded as he was describing to me, just sounded really good. And so I got involved with the position as a financial advisor. And it didn't even take a month for me to realize what a wonderful fit it was, because when I was in the military, as an army officer, all of my Mindset was focused on there's an objective and you need to identify what could stop you from getting that objective and figure out how to overcome those obstacles.
Speaker 2:
And Now, in finance, when clients walk into our offices, what we're doing is we're trying to understand. Well, what is their objective? What are they trying to accomplish? Oh, okay, that's the hill we have to get to the top of. Well, now look, here are the things that are the obstacles. This is the, the problems between where we are now and that you know, final top of the hill. How do we navigate through those problems? How do we Overcome them? How do we negotiate with them? And and so it's a really similar mindset to when I was in the green machine. It's just been a great career for me and I love training the you know other advisors. I was selected to serve as a trainer. I Traveled the country and helped you know thousands of financial advisors to you know make their wealth management practice a Good one, and that was that was a great experience as well.
Speaker 1:
That's so cool. I Guess, like in your your journey since you've been doing this, has there been any like situations that really stuck out, like, for instance, I guess something that I think is really interesting I watched a movie on the other day was the 2008 like housing crash and all of that. Did that kind of creep into your job, or are you more a layer outside of that, like I? I don't always understand how the finance worlds all go together, but was was something like that, and then even the recent like housing stuff. Does that affect your industry and job?
Speaker 2:
Well, it does so. To answer your question about if there's something memorable or something that affected me I began my career in finance in the year 2000 and that was the end of the tech bubble, and so I remember so vividly the you know people were wearing t-shirts that said you know, just please give me another tech rally and I promise I'll sell my tech stocks. You know so I got to see that bubble burst and it was really frightening time. And then, just a little bit after that, in 2001, we had 9-11 and the market was really badly affected by 9-11, and that actually my experience with that is what prompted me to write my first book, the prepared investor, and you know, and I.
Speaker 2:
The reason that I wrote that book was because I got to see firsthand that Wall Street's Basic offering of here's how you should handle crisis it's, it's really unsophisticated. So it basically boils down to hey, just don't change anything, stay the course, it'll come back someday. Yeah, that's terrible advice and but it's very effective advice. You know, just, someday it'll come back. And the thing is that that is true, but along the path there's so much opportunity and so many ways to make money and to, you know, navigate good opportunities and you know. And so that's where the prepared investor was born, where I basically was saying Wall Street is letting Main Street down.
Speaker 2:
And after that, after that was done, I had a little bit of time and I had a lot of interaction with readers who had said that you know, they were wondering if there's anything else that I thought was not the way Wall Street should treat Main Street, and and so that's where my my most recent book was born, the outsmart, the money magicians is all about. Hey, this is what Wall Street typically says. You know, set it and forget it. And this is how people you know they're getting tricked. You know it's not good advice. And that book it uncovers the five biggest illusions that are happening right now for everybody that's in finance.
Speaker 1:
I'm excited to read these books. I need to link them so everybody else can find them as well. I always like a good book that gives me actual advice and actionable things. As much as I love, you know, a good fictional book. It's nice to come away feeling like I learned something. So these sound like things I need to be consuming, so I'm excited to read those. Are they on Audible yet, or are they just hardbacks right now?
Speaker 2:
They're hardbacks. Both of them the first one, the prepared investor, available on Amazon wherever books are sold in. The second one, outsmart the money magicians comes from McGraw Hill. Its launch date is November 6th and it is available right now for pre-order, so you could go into Amazon and buy it. You just won't get it for a little while.
Speaker 1:
So that's very exciting. So you guys are hearing about it now and you can get in on the forefront, I guess. So another thing that's been happening lately or at least maybe just things I'm hearing in my household, because my boyfriend's always keeping up with the financial news is everyone saying like a recession's coming, the markets are going to crash. You need to, like take all your investments out, save your money, have your hard cash. What do you think of the economy right now? And like should we be doing anything out of the usual to be proactive or are we okay? What's like standard procedure when everybody's freaking out saying something's going to happen, but we're not actually sure?
Speaker 2:
Well, I love that question. So that is the answer to that question. Is my book the Prepared Investor? I mean absolutely Like what happens? How do we prepare? What do we do for when the market drops?
Speaker 2:
But to just give you a little bit, of a little bit more information right now, I think that when people are looking at the economy, a lot of times they're being hijacked by the money magicians. You know, outsmart the money magicians points out that Wall Street has got us focused on how much money we have. But how much we have, you know it could go down, it could go up. You know that that is changing as the markets are up and down. But the amount of money we have is really less important than the income that it's producing.
Speaker 2:
Okay, and so if you can, if you can, change your perception of your money from you know what's the amount that I have, oh, and now it's two days later, and now I have less. Or now it's two days later and I have more. Instead of that perception, instead ask yourself what are those investments paying me? What am I getting an income from those investments? And when you have that kind of an outlook, you stop panicking during a downturn, because when the market drops, you aren't thinking about okay, I used to have 100,000 and now I have 90,000, you're thinking my investments were paying me $6,000 a year and they still are. That hasn't changed and it's a lot, almost like a home. You know, as someone who's a homeowner, if a person knocks on their door and says you know what, I will buy your house for $3 right now they would never sell.
Speaker 2:
That's ridiculous. They wouldn't even worry about it. And even if people kept knocking on the door every day for a year saying your home's only worth $5, it's only worth $5, they still would have that secure knowledge that the home is doing something for them because it's keeping the rain off their head. It's where they live. Well, that's how it works with the portfolio, too. If you've got a bunch of stocks and you are aware of what it's doing for you, you're looking at the income that they're paying you. Well, during a crisis, when people are saying, oh, your stocks, I'll only give you $5 for them. Well, I'm not going to sell them to you. That's not enough money, because it's doing something for me. I'm getting this income, and so that I think that's a great start to making sure you're prepared for crisis is the way that you look at the money.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I know that's so different than a lot of times the way I have it in my head because it's like, oh, why invest because it's just going to go down again. It's so cyclical, am I ever going to make money? Or is it just like an illusion? And clearly, and I think the listeners can tell, I'm not a money expert. So it's nice to have people like you in this world that we can reach out to and guide us, because we can only be good at so many things at once and it's okay for us to have our specialties and know when to reach out to somebody when something is beyond us, like maybe financial management. So I like you're in Houston, right, so you're you're local to me.
Speaker 1:
Awesome, I save up a little more money. I'm coming to see you. I clearly do not know what I'm doing and I got to stop exposing myself to the listeners. I'm supposed to bring guests on so they could tell me about their failures, but you guys always end up pulling it out of me. I'm like oh, by the way, here's more things I'm bad at. So it's it's great to be counseled live to where other people can learn from where I'm feeling and how your expertise comes in. But as as we're getting to the end, I have one more question, and I'm sure it's a loaded one, because I love a good loaded question when and I guess let me preface this how long have you lived in Texas for?
Speaker 2:
Since the year 2000.
Speaker 1:
Okay. So I'm sure you remember, because I grew up in Texas as well for the last 25 years In 2000 to like 2015-ish, before everyone from California was moving here it was pretty cheap to buy a house in Texas and it made a lot of sense to buy because it was just so accessible. The last four years or so, the properties have just gone so so expensive to where. I'm like is this even Texas? What's going on? But I still, being at 25 years old, wonder when do I need to stop renting and start buying? Like, when do I need to stop? People always say you're throwing your money away by renting. Like is that true? Do you need to have like a set time where it's time to buy? And like it makes better financial sense? Like what's your opinion on when it's time to buy?
Speaker 2:
I think it's all comes down to income. So I think you could rent and you could do it for the rest of your life. But you'd want to do it wisely. So let me give you an example of what that means. If you are renting a duplex, you are renting two halves of a home and the total cost to rent the two halves is, let's say, $1,000. And then you lease out, you sub lease out the other half to another tenant and you charge them $1,000 to rent that half of the house. That means that you are in there for free, you pay the rent to your landlord of a thousand and you sub lease out a portion of what you control to someone else for the same amount.
Speaker 2:
And you now are there and it doesn't cost you anything, and you've avoided all of the risks of home ownership, because the landlord is the one who has to take care of maintenance. The landlord has to take care of the taxes when up or whatever issues arise. And when the landlord says, oh, I'm going to have to raise your rent, then you just say to your tenant as well Well, the rent has gone up. And so that's an example. I've seen this done a number of different ways where, like in a marina, somebody lives on a boat and they don't pay any rent or slip fees at the marina because they offer their time as, like, a manager of the other slipholders. I've seen that also in trailer parks, which trailer parks like a bad word, but some of these places are beautiful and really high end.
Speaker 2:
And so you've got your home in this really nice community and you don't pay anything because your landlord is relying on you to help organize things and answer questions and things like that. I've seen it where a renter will have roommates, so they've got a good size home and there's some shared areas, but there's a different family or a different roommate in each room and the person is making money. Their total rent for the home was $1,000. And they've got three roommates and each roommate pays $500 a month. So they're making money, they're paying the landlord and they're coming out ahead. So to me it's about income and as soon as you're in a situation where you're just paying rent and the landlord is making money off of you and its income, that is gone out of your pocket and it's gone for sure then, that's probably a good time to start comparing.
Speaker 2:
OK, if I were to buy a home, would the amount of money I'm spending each month be about the same? Because, if it would be about the same, well then, at least you're putting that into an asset the bricks and windows of that home instead of just padding the landlord's pocket.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's a very good example. There's so many creative ways to, I guess, get your living situation being a little cheaper, so those are cool. I've never heard those examples. I've always heard the duplex one, if you buy it and then you have somebody paying your mortgage for you or whatever, but I've never heard it in terms of renting. So that's actually kind of cool, and once again, it just proves like it's nice to have somebody who's an expert in this area on here talking about it, and I can only imagine how many follow up questions we're going to get for you after this. So I'm going to have to include your email and all your information, because I know we just scratched the surface on so many topics. So, guys, if you're listening and you want to talk to Chris more, I will put his info below and links to his book so you can get more of his knowledge. But, chris, thank you so much for coming on today. Do you have any remaining thoughts to leave with us?
Speaker 2:
Well, I'll just mention again OutSmart, the Money Magicians comes out from McGraw Hill this November and I do podcasts quite a bit and I just really enjoyed our conversation. Jordan, you're a natural at this and I just really am happy to have been able to have this kind of a free, flowing, genuine conversation. I love your authenticity and I'm grateful for this opportunity to speak to folks.
Speaker 1:
Thank you, that is so, so nice. Yeah, sometimes I feel bad that I'm not more structured, so it's nice to hear when people actually enjoy it. So it's fun. But, guys, thank you so much and, as always, I'm your host, jordan Yates, and in the meantime I'll be failing for you. See you next time.
