Preparing for Financial Freedom with Todd Miller

04/06/21 • 38 min

Achieving financial freedom requires having the right mindset about money. Having found his own financial freedom at the age of 35, financial coach ‘Tightwad’ Todd Miller knows how to safeguard and grow wealth. Today we speak with Todd to hear his insights on preparing for your financial freedom. After sharing how he went from the corporate world to becoming an investor, Todd unpacks how he helps his clients to become financially independent. From curtailing your expenses and raising your financial awareness to shifting your perspective on what’s important in life, we touch on the key aspects of effective wealth management. We discuss the small actionable steps that you can take to set and stick to budgets while also diving into debates around saving versus investing. Later, we talk about communities that can help you build your wealth, along with questions that you need to be able to answer and that can guide you in creating investing goals. We wrap up our conversation by hearing Todd’s book recommendation, what he’s most proud of, and the top key to his success. As Todd explains, your path to financial freedom starts now. Join us for Todd’s expert advice on taking your first step.

Key Points From This Episode:

We introduce financial coach Todd Miller.
Todd shares details about his journey to financial freedom.
How Todd discovered and then learned about real estate investing.
What Todd does to help his clients grow their wealth.
Hear what goes into planning for your financial freedom.
Exploring the mindset shift that’s needed to attain financial freedom.
Advice on budgeting and holding yourself accountable.
We ask Todd how long it takes to secure financial freedom.
Debates around saving versus investing.
Why you should act now to ensure a stress-free retirement.
The questions that every investor needs to ask themself.
Todd’s top book, what he’s most proud of, and his number one key to success.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Todd Miller on LinkedIn

Your Money or Your Life on Amazon

Key Points From This Episode:

We introduce financial coach Todd Miller.
Todd shares details about his journey to financial freedom.
How Todd discovered and then learned about real estate investing.
What Todd does to help his clients grow their wealth.
Hear what goes into planning for your financial freedom.
Exploring the mindset shift that’s needed to attain financial freedom.
Advice on budgeting and holding yourself accountable.
We ask Todd how long it takes to secure financial freedom.
Debates around saving versus investing.
Why you should act now to ensure a stress-free retirement.
The questions that every investor needs to ask themself.
Todd’s top book, what he’s most proud of, and his number one key to success.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Todd Miller on LinkedIn

Your Money or Your Life on Amazon

Previous Episode

Reverse Engineering the Wealth-building Strategies of the Rich with Lane Kawaoka

The traditional methods of building wealth, like investing in postgraduate degrees, working for up to 50 years in your W2 job, and putting money towards your 401(k) mutual funds are all good and well, but they’re not the best strategies out there. Why not begin with the end in mind and have multiple streams of income today? Today’s guest, Lane Kawaoka, can help you do just that. Lane uses his engineering degree to reverse engineer the wealth-building strategies that the rich use in his top 50 investing podcast, Simple Passive Cashflow. He owns 4,200 rental units and is the leader of the Hui Deal Pipeline Club, which has acquired over $350 million of real estate by syndicating over $40 million of private equity since 2016. In this episode, Lane shares his advice for doing what the rich do by diversifying into real estate and investing with private operators, and he explains why he believes you should not invest in retirement accounts, how taxes play into your investments and his three rules for investing. Tune in today!

Key Points From This Episode:

Hear about Lane’s background and what sparked his interest in passive investing.
Lane’s journey from his first passive investment to a business and a podcast about it.
How the podcast originated because of the “dumb questions” his friends asked him.
The virtual events that have adapted to COVID and the limited time of those with families.
Do what the rich are doing by diversifying your investments into real estate.
The benefits of investing with private operators and cutting out the middleman.
Four reasons why Lane believes you shouldn’t invest in retirement accounts.
How taxes play into real estate investing; using your passive activity losses to offset passive income gains from an asset or deal.
Some of the lessons Lane has learned along the way, like letting every dollar work for you.
The importance of educating yourself on the benefits of using podcasts and blogs.
Why Lane believes that anybody can do real estate investing; it’s an endgame strategy.
Lane’s three rules for investing: it must cash flow, be a hard asset, and be leverage-able.
Keys to Success: the value of building organic relationships, why Lane is so proud of quitting his day job, and book to read.
Lane’s one key to success: figuring out the next thing to do and executing it to completion

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Lane Kawaoka on Twitter

Lane Kawaoka on LinkedIn

Simple Passive Cashflow Podcast

The Millionaire Real Estate Investor

Next Episode

How to Optimize for Profit with Neal Bawa

Our guest today is a man who needs no introduction; if you are an avid real estate podcast listener, you’ll definitely know this name. On this episode, we are excited to introduce Neal Bawa. Neal is a technologist who is universally known in real estate circles as the mad scientist in multifamily. He treats his $250 million-plus portfolio as an ongoing experiment of efficiency and optimization. Neal serves as the CEO and founder of Grocapitus, which is an iconic data-driven, commercial real estate investment company, and also serves as a CEO of Multifamily U, an apartment investing education company with over 5,000 students attending his multifamily seminars, and hundreds attending his magical multifamily boot camps each year. Tune in and join us today as we talk to Neal all about numbers, measurements, adapting, and succeeding. Neal shares a lot of key information and tips about using data to your advantage, reinventing and adapting to ensure your success, his opinion on the strongest asset classes, and what investors need to be paying attention to. He also unpacks the five ratios that you should be tracking, so stay tuned for all this and more!

Key Points From This Episode:

Hear more about who Neal is, his background, and what led him into multifamily.
Looking at data trends: the goal is to constantly be reinventing yourself because that's what data tells us to do.
Neal shares the top strongest asset classes, pre-and post-pandemic: e-commence boom.
How multifamily has stayed the average most favored class over the last six to seven years.
Neal talks about how the pandemic has impacted the class C price: old versus new.
What do investors need to be paying attention to, according to data, a year from now: no bad news in multifamily.
Neal explains why the next twelve months are gold, even if bad things will happen after.
Innovations that Neal is implementing now that keep him ahead of the curve: cameras, sell covered-parking, calculating and tracking key ratios.
The five ratios:
- The number of leads that your property seized each week.
- The number of appointments that were set from those leads.
- The number of people that actually showed up at the property.
- The number of people that signed apps.
- The number of people that became leases.
What things in his portfolio would he consistently measure: unit turn.
Neal’s message to passive investors at this point: make sure your syndicator is both excited and afraid.
The one question that every investor should be asking their deal sponsor: what was their worst deal and how did they deal with it.
What Neal is most proud of throughout his career, thus far: their employees and how their company has molded itself into an extremely customer-friendly place.
A book everyone should read: The Miracle Morning.
Neal’s number one key to success: measure everything, and adapt.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Neal Bawa on LinkedIn

Neal Bawa on Twitter

Multifamily University

Multifamily University on YouTube

The Miracle Morning

Ritter on Real Estate - Preparing for Financial Freedom with Todd Miller

Transcript

“TM: At the end of the day, most employees are just kind of a number or a cog in the wheel at their company and can really be let go at any time. And that was really what I realized and I didn't want to have that risk going forward in my life. So, I was determined to find a way to have some sort of other forms of income so that I wasn't 100% reliant on a job, you could just kind of toss me away when they were done with me.”

[INTRO]