141. The Millionaire Choice with Tony Bradshaw

Hey, welcome back to the Average Joe Finances podcast, everybody. I'm your host, Mike Cavaggioni, and today's guest is Tony Bradshaw. So Tony super excited to talk with you today and share your story. Thanks for joining me on the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to having a good discussion on finance.

Definitely appreciate that and I'd like to start this off with the first question that I ask everybody that comes on the show, cause we wanna know a little bit more about you who you are, what your story is so we can get a better idea for who is Tony Bradshaw. So if you could please share with us who is Tony bradshaw?

Yeah, thanks for that. I grew up in a financially mismanaged home. Oddly enough, I still live in the same town I grew up in, which is Nashville, Tennessee. We have a lot of immigrants coming from California, New York, Chicago anywhere that wants to move south. We are one of the only states, by the way, that has no income tax, state income tax. I think they are about, three or five different states that don't have income tax anymore. But yeah, I grew up in a financially mismanaged home. Give you an example. Our power would get cut off pretty regularly. I remember that several happening several times. Our water would get cut off. We would use what's called a water key to go out, open the water meter up, turn the water back on. Because the bill had to be paid, and that works pretty well until you don't pay your bill continuously. And then they put a padlock on it. And my dad would come home from work sometimes and my mom would be like, Hey, the water's been cut off. I wanna take a shower. And we would, go turn the water on. And that's part of it. Lots of memories about my mom and dad fighting about bounce checks when my dad would take money out of the ATM and my mom wouldn't know about it, next thing you know, they're bouncing four, five or six checks, 20 to 40 dollars a piece in return check fees. And so that was the world I grew up in. So small wonder, I was at 25 and outta college and thought I was doing pretty well. I think at that time my mom was making about 35 grand a year, and my first year outta college, I made $39,000. And so I thought, Hey I just got to the party, man. I'm just here. I'm 25 years old. My mom's 45. I'm making more money than my mom and dad. I'm arrived like I've conquered. And then I got my W-2. And when I got that and looked at it and I realized I had about 500 bucks in the bank. I was about $16,000 in debt. And it just hit me where did all that money go? Because I'm living in a studio bedroom at my parents' house, paying 200 bucks a month of rent. I offered to pay 400, but they only took two, so they were very gracious and had a car that I had financed, a computer. I financed a desk that my dad had built for me, a bed that I had built from Post and two by six s from Home Depot. And a really good stereo and a really nice TV for the time, 27 Inch Sony Television Harman card stereo and some poke audio speakers, which is where I put most of my money and and I was just shocked. I was like, wow, like where did all of that? Because that's $16,000 in the wrong direction and I made 39. So I basically spent 55 grand that year and knew that was a bad formula, so I started going to the bookstore. We didn't have internet back then or at least it was not as well known as it is today. The resources weren't there. So I go to the bookstore and just bought up money magazines, money books, and started learning about money. And what I realized pretty quickly is that money really is just a math problem. And it's a behavior problem as well, but it's also a math problem. And I'm pretty good at math and it wasn't very complicated math and so that allowed me to put together a plan, what I call my millionaire plan to become a millionaire by age 40. And I was able to do that. And so to go from being a broke young guy at 25 and to believing that I could be a millionaire by age 40, that's a huge jump. We were a lower income family. Didn't manage our money well. And and that's what I really try to do today, is I try to encourage people to make a millionaire choice like I did at 25 and to create a millionaire plan. Do what they need to do to do that and what I find on my podcast and show is I interview people, millionaires, and future millionaires about how to build wealth, what to do with once you have it is most of their stories are exactly the same. Most of the people I interviewed, they were in broke homes, broke family, single mom households. Some were in Chinese concentration camps while they were in high school. Others were homeless at age 19 and millionaires by the time they were age 30. And those are the stories I keep hearing over and over again that were similar to mine. Some of them had more struggles to face than I did. Others maybe had a little bit of an easier road. But that's who I am in a nutshell. Just trying to get out there and make a difference in people's

Yeah, tony, definitely appreciate, you sharing your backstory and I think a lot of us, we find that we've grown up in a different time there was a lot of financial irresponsibility for a lot of people I know that listen to my show, that that they realize in their families I know for me growing up, like money was always a very taboo thing. Like we didn't talk about it too much. It was not something that we talked about at the dinner table, and it was just a don't worry about it. Mom and dad's gonna take care of things and you guys don't have to worry about it. Which it should be like that for your children. But then when you start running into problems and the children notice and they see what's going on. They're like, okay, why is the power getting cut off? What, how come I can't go take a hot shower? What? What's going on? It's these little things that kind of stick to you. And you remember, like when you look at your childhood and you're like, Man. Yeah, I remember those times and I remember the fights and everything like that. So those things stick right. And it's something that you'll never forget. But I think one of the things that, I wanna point out that you had mentioned, I was writing this stuff down as you were going, but I feel like in the back of your head it triggered something. And you had this shift in your mindset, like when you finished school and you got a job and you were making more than your parents now at this time, but you were man, where are all my money going? I racked up all this debt. I don't wanna follow these same footsteps, I gotta change something. I gotta do something different. And you did right? So what was it the actual, so when you got the W-2 and you realized, okay, I made this much this year but took out this many loans and put myself in this much debt. What was it that flipped the switch for you that said something's gotta go, something's gotta change?

Yeah. I think the biggest thing was to realize how much I had made and how little I had. That was the biggest thing. Like for me, it felt like there should have been a bigger pile of money in the bank. If I made 39 grand, not only did I not have 39 grand in my checking account, I didn't have, I was 16 grand in a negative. I was gonna be paying that off according to that plan. A car note, it's a five year note. It was a five year note. 320 bucks a month, 319. That just didn't sit well with me. I was like, wow, like that is a bad formula. What I did this last year at 25, I could never do that again. It's a recipe for disaster. And I immediately shifted from a spend mindset, we call it consumer mindset to a let's get the heck outta debt and let's start investing immediately. So what I did is I brutally broke my budget instead of everything going out the window. And not having any of it left. I call it like, it's like sand slipping through your fingers, right? You go to the beach, try to pick up sand. It's so much of it just escapes. It's hard to hang onto sand. You don't have much left. Money can be the same way. So what I did immediately is I just looked at my budget and I looked at my finances and I said, you know what? I'm gonna chop my finances up into three pieces. I'm gonna have the money I live on. That became about a thousand dollars a month. I'm gonna have the money I pay my debt with, which was about a thousand dollars a month, and I'm gonna invest about a thousand dollars. And that allowed me to have to steadily march towards getting that debt paid off. And then also have some investments going. So after, about 18 months or so, I had, my debt was gone. I was red of my consumer debt. And I had about $18,000 in stocks and mutual funds. And so I ended up liquidating those stocks because I ended up finding a wife and she wasn't gonna let me do some of the financial things that I wanted to do. I tried to get her to move into a trailer. Cause I, that was the cheapest thing I could do to make, cause I'm not going in debt. I don't wanna go back in debt. And and she's I'm not having that. We're gonna have a different plan. If you're gonna marry me, you're gonna have a different plan. And so we started looking for houses I found the $62,500 house. My house note on that first house was about 500 bucks. And I wish I'd kept that one but was the plan. But that was the biggest shift is to go, Hey, I don't have to live this way. I'm making enough money. I don't have to live like broke. I don't have, I should have more money in my checking account with the amount of money I have and the amount of expenses I have. And I was able to make a big positive shift. Now I will add to that Mike, is that, watching my parents and family they didn't shift. That was 25 years ago. And even though I shifted, my personal finances shifted and my lifestyle shifted and my mindset shifted. The people around these mindsets did not shift along with mine. And that's something that bothers me even today. And, and I, as much as I wanted to change that or I wanted to impact that, it's beyond the scope of what you can do. You can really only change yourself and other people gotta make their own decision.

Yeah, No, Tony, that is a great point. And it's one of the things that I've struggled with as well. I've seen it, with a lot of my own friends and family. I made this shift in my life and decided to take ownership of my finances and like actually do make better money decisions, right? And I feel like maybe I left some people behind, but at the same time, The whole time I'm like, Hey, come along with me. Let's go. Let's do this together. And some people just don't wanna change. They don't wanna they like the way that their lifestyle is, and that's what they wanna do. It's one of the reasons why I started this podcast is I wanted to share my story and I wanted to bring people on that have similar stories or people that have just come up and just been really successful and share what they're doing. Because when you start listening to these things, you start listening to other people that are. Having this success and it's not just the same guy over and over again. Oh yeah. Like I know that Mike Cavaggioni story, like I know that guy, whatever. Oh, but now, oh, Tony Bradshaw. So he did something like this and Oh, okay. It's a different perspective and you see it from different people. And it helps you shift into that mindset. So that's one of the things, one of the reasons why I think podcasts like this are important. YouTube channels that share this type of content, all that stuff. But then the problem is getting the people to actually consume that content, right? And that's one of the reasons why I make this big push to get all this information out there. Now your story what I love about it is not the same, but similar. I was at a point in my life where I was in a lot of consumer debt, right? $28,000 in credit card debt. I had several personal loans out and I knew I wanted to come to Hawaii. And when I come to Hawaii I wanted to buy a house and my wife and I were trying to figure out like, how are we gonna make this work? So we actually followed Dave Ramsey's baby steps steps one, two, three before we backed off. And then shifted a little bit, and then we started doing Sinking funds, So just different things like that, just trying to make sure that we were putting our money into buckets that would work for us. And that, people can do whatever you want to do, like whatever they want, right? As long as you find something that works for you, that's what matters. So now you said you broke yours down into three different categories, right? The money that you live on, the money that you pay your debt with, and then the money that you save. So when you made that shift and you started paying down your debt so you had, you said what, 16,000 right? That you were under after that first year, and you made that decision in that first year to get on top of that? For me, it took several years to make that decision. So one, I commend you for making that decision at such a young age. And early on when you realize, hey, whoa, something else has gotta change. I probably told myself something's gotta change probably for 10 years. Before I made a decision to actually make the change. So when you did that, what made you decide to break it up into those three categories, and then when you broke it into those three categories, how did you figure out how you want to divvy up your paycheck into those three categories?

Yeah. I think for back then, now today, I would probably look at it a little bit differently because I'm a little bit older, a little bit wiser, a little bit more mature, and for me it was just very simple back then because I could do it. My living expenses were essentially a car note. Some credit cards that I paid and then my 200 bucks a month to my rent, my mom and dad, and I had to pay my own insurance, right? So I didn't have all these other little expenses like, Hey, I got a house payment, I got a insurance on a house. I got, I didn't have all that. So I did have a good bit of disposable income, which allowed me to, break it up into those three buckets. I think if you're a homeowner, I think Dave Ramsey teaches 25% of your take home pay on your house note. So that's a different circumstance that you're under. But in that model and that day before. I was able to break it down into those, and that was just very simple. The reason I put a thousand dollars towards the debt is cause I wanted to get outta debt as quickly as possible, but I also wanted to start investing and I wanted to start what I call multiplying your money. And I think that's very key for people because I love the way Dave teaches things because some people need it that simple. Like they can't juggle more than two or three things at a time. They have to get simple. But I really like starting with investing early because once you can see that money multiplying, It kinda energizes you. It really does. Like I think day's plan draws energy from paying off those debts and feeling like you're gaining ground on debt. I feel like for certain people seeing that money multiply and come into an account at a big number. And so for me, after a year of putting a thousand bucks a month, and that's $12,000 plus growth in whatever fund I was in, I think I was in Kaufmann Fund back then, which honestly was not a great fund. I bought all the hype, the advertising, which they're very good at advertising. And I didn't know better, but I was trading tech stocks on the side, making 60 to 90% every six to nine months and doing pretty well with that. But it was just a small amount of money, 500 bucks into mutual funds and roughly 500 bucks a month into like different stock investments playing with those things. And then the fees were a lot higher back then, right? Because you had to go through a broker account. You didn't have E-Trade or Scottrade or those kind of guys where you're doing $8 trades. My trades were costing me like 50 bucks a pop to get in, 50 bucks to get out. And I don't remember if there was a percentage associated with it, the fees were a lot higher back then. For me, it was just very simple. Now, today it might look a little bit different because and as I coach people, I would look at what their overall situation is. Do they have enough disposable income to, do a little bit of investing while they do the debt payoff? Or do they really need to focus on the debt payoff first to get control of it? Or do they have so much debt. They just need to like, have a be okay with the fact that they're gonna float debt for a while. And I have a principle that I teach, do you wanna work your way out of debt or do you wanna invest your way out of debt? For example, if you look at real estate, and of course this would be a taboo in some circles, but if you could buy 150 or $200,000 home, let's say you got 50 grand in debt, that's a lot of work to get out of 50 grand in debt. But if you could use inflation and appreciation of a home to get out then that's a different resource to be able to leverage against your debt. It's a different way of thinking, so for some people I would look at, Hey, is this a good option for you to invest your way outta debt so you have that money left? When your debt's paid off or do you to really need to work and get it paid off. And I think that's gonna vary on how much debt someone has and, interest rates. I've got some clients that are at 27% interest on their credit cards. Yeah, it's ridiculous. And that ought to be illegal. Honestly. It thought to be illegal. There all to be laws against interest rates that high. It's just abuse of the people that have the cards and taking advantage of them to make other people very rich. But that's how I broke it down and how I got to that system, as a 25 year old, I think the learning there is money doesn't have to be complicated. You really just have to implement a few simple principles to really see things start to shift and turn around. And I think the problem is, We keep replicating the habits that we saw as we grew up and we have gotten trapped on this gebo wheel of finance where we just kinda get up, go to work, go home, spend your money, get up, go to work, go home, spend your money. And we never change the variables in that situation. And if you don't change, you're gonna be stuck in that cycle for your entire life. And, to scare your listeners here, Mike, You're gonna work a hundred to 150,000 hours in your if you're broke Now, do you really wanna be broke at the end of that? Do you still wanna be broke? That's a lot of work to still be broke at the end, and and it's something to think about, right? There are better ways. Like I mentioned before, I've talked to people who were in Chinese concentration camps, came to America with 50 bucks in their pocket. And now they're millionaires. People that were homeless at 19, married and homeless at 19, and just decided, man, I don't wanna live like this. That's a crazy story, a guy named Jerry Feda. He's a great guy. He's in an investing world now, and he broke free from that, that broke mindset or that mismanagement of finances and became a multimillionaire at age 30. He's a pretty cool dude, but there's a lot of people out there. Those aren't just one off exceptions. Those aren't people that got lucky. Those are people that put in the effort and got money smart and made a shift in their lives

yeah, Tony that is all fantastic points especially when you bring that up about the people, making those decisions that keep them on what you call the the gerbil wheel of finances. I like that because you always hear like the whole, kind of cliche saying of getting outta the rat race, get outta the rat race, get outta the rat race. But for a lot of us, it is like a gerbil wheel, right? Where you get on and you're running and running and running, and you're going absolutely nowhere. And when you think about all the time that they're running and getting nowhere, you're thinking about those hours that you're working throughout your entire life and going nowhere. So that's a very good point. And it is something to that maybe a little scare tactic as well, right? cause you think about your mortality, you think about when you're at your end life, do you really wanna be the person that's in their sixties and seventies continuing to have to work. In order to live and survive, you should want to live life, not just to survive, but to thrive. You know what I'm saying? That's the type of mindset that you need to have if you wanna become a millionaire and get yourself out of this rat race or off that gerbil wheel, right? And start actually making some movement forward, right? And there's a couple things that you can take out of that, right? You get out of the gerbil wheel and you can move forward. And then there's the end of the durable tank enclosure, right? So now you gotta figure out how you're gonna get out of there, how you're gonna climb up on out, right? There's so many different ways and like some of the ways that you were sharing. I think that's a hundred percent, a factor that people should think about. There's so many ways to build wealth, whether it's through real estate, through investing in the stock market or even through cryptocurrencies and things like that. I don't know too much about crypto. So don't, try not to talk about that too much, but I know people that have done really well with that. And I know people that have done very poorly with that. But you know what, I could say the same thing about the stock market. I could say the same thing about real estate, right? So these are all different asset classes and you're gonna find your comfort zone. You're gonna find what you're comfortable with and find something that that you are passionate about and that you wanna move forward in, right? So whatever that is, just take it seriously, right? But yeah. Now in your own personal journey, right? So you made that decision at 25 and you're doing, amazing things where now you're at this point where you're putting a thousand dollars away. 500 a month into you said, was it mutual funds or index funds and then another 500?

Yeah, that time was mutual funds.

Okay. Yeah. And then like another 500 into some stocks that you were interested in, that you were trading at a, between 60 and 90%, which is awesome, like great returns. Usually when I try to trade stuff, I usually, get negative returns, , so I try to set it and forget it. But that's just me. Yeah. Now when you did that and you made that shift, you said, By the age of 40, I'm gonna be a millionaire. So you gave yourself that 15 year time limit. How long did it take you from the time that you made that decision to actually reach that goal?

Yeah, I was right at 15 years. I was in my 40th year. I remember walking into my wife and saying, Hey, guess what? We're millionaires. She's what? I had the mistake I made there was, I didn't talk to her about it, like I was doing this thing and I didn't know what it meant to be barely knew what it meant to be married man. And and share your ideas. So I'm over here working and doing this stuff, trying to stay outta debt and, and we're having babies popping out. We popped out six kids. I did the math. I tried to get her to do cloth diapers to save money, and she said, hell no. And I was like okay, I'll do regular diapers. Fortunately, I had a boss and I did cloth diapers, don't do cloth diapers buy the disposables. And I did the math. It was like $1,500 per kid on diapers, their life the first 2, 3 years. Yeah. And I'm like, man, I didn't wanna spend that money. You know that six kids, that's like nine grand and I didn't wanna spend that money, but we spent it cause for me, I'm that's something that should be going in the investment bucket over here. Not in the poop bucket and that was the journey that we were on. And like I said I think you gotta start where you are, right? I didn't, 25, I didn't have all the answers. All I did was change course and I know a lot more today, 25 years later than I did when I started, but the beauty of it is I think if you can get people going in the right direction, they'll figure it out like that. You just gotta shift their priorities. And then, I, what I teach, one of the things I teach people is Millionaire Key number four in my book is You gotta Get Money Smart. We all go to school, spend 12 years in, undergrad school, then you go off to college, spend another four years, maybe five, maybe six, maybe eight, depending on if you get a PhD or something. But really when you look at how much studying you do, how many hours you spend to study math, english, science, you might get, like today even they might give you one personal finance class and it's not very good. So it's like, why, like why is it like one of the most important things you could possibly study in your lifetime is personal finance. And so I teach people to go, Hey, you spent that much time learning about math, English, and science. Why don't you spend that much time learning about personal finance, which is gonna affect you for your entire life and affect your family and affect your grandkids and affect your great grandkids? Because if you could make that shift. As a person, your kids are gonna pick up some of that from you. They're gonna get, on the right track. You said something earlier about growing up and shielding our kids from financial issues. I did the opposite.. If we're tight on money, I just tell them, I'm like, Hey, we're tight. You're not getting, we're not going and doing that. I was very specific about teaching my kids the goods, the ups and the downs, and are we wealthy? Yeah, we got money. We're probably the wealthiest people in our neighborhood. We're probably the only ones that have our house paid off. Everybody else is floating out on their house. My kids know that and I teach 'em that because I don't want 'em to be arrogant about the finances or about the money, I bought my wife a 1969 Corvette for her 40th birthday. And those are things you can do when you have cash. Sometimes, there's opportunities to give to people that need help. Engaged with some non-profits some human trap that are fighting human trafficking. We've written some very large checks to those groups. Those are shifts in your mindset that kind of take you on a different journey. And, and my wife, honestly, I think she's just now getting used after 23 years of marriage actually getting used to the idea of having a little bit of wealth. Like she didn't grow up in a wealthy home. So both of us are first generation millionaires in our families, and we're just now figuring out what it, means to have wealth. We didn't have it before, and you have to go through this kind of growing process. It does. It's not oh, you weren't a millionaire. Now you're a millionaire. And now you got it all figured out. It doesn't work that way. You just have to evolve in your thinking and getting money smart is a big thing. One of the things I teach too is you know like Warren Buffet, bill Gates, Warren Buffet, you name him, all the richest guys in the world. They weren't born with gold bars in their hands, doing spreadsheets on personal finance or investing. They had to learn it just like everybody else. They just happened to learn it at a probably younger age than most of us do. And they were able to walk that out for a longer period of time. I think Warren Buffet's probably what, 80 years old now or something?

Yeah, he's in his eighties. He's made most of his money from the age of 65 until now. Just because of the beauty of compound interest, the way you were describing it before, right? When you first started saving and you were like, oh yeah. That first year, it was $12,000 plus what I made with what was invested. But that's one of the beautiful things about compound interest. The earlier you start, the better offer you're gonna be in the end because it's just compounding on top of itself. On top of itself. It's the reason why it's called the eighth one of the world.

I love that. But I also wanna tell people, cause one of the things I hear from people I talk to is, oh those millionaires got lucky, or those rich people got lucky, or, which is, it's crap. That's not true. That just discounts all the hard work that people do to learn and grow and to be ready. Rich people are not evil at least not all of them, some of them are for sure. But they're good ones and they're bad ones. Just there are, good people, bad people everywhere. One thing that I do see is like when people are older they think it's too late. They're like, ah, I missed my opportunity. I'm in my forties. So yeah it's great to do compound interest when you're in your twenties, but the reality is you could be 40 and you could still take advantage of it. I got a friend that didn't start investing until he was 38 years old. He didn't know anything about investing nothing, and he had $70,000 sitting in a savings account. Collecting like one, 2% interest. Wow. Yeah. He didn't know anything about and once he discovered compound interest, once he discovered how to invest. He's off to the races. He told, his brain shifted, it only took him nine years after that moment to actually become a millionaire. And then now he's only about, I think a year or two years past that. And he's knocking on the door 2 million just two years later, a year to two years later. And so when he gets a dollar, here's how he's shifted his mind. He gets a dollar. He's like, where can I stick this money? Like, where can I compound it? Where can I multiply it? So he doesn't go go, Hey, where can I, what car can I buy? What watch, can I buy? What pool can I buy? He automatically, his brain's wired to go, how can I multiply it? And then now his wife, I met her for the first time here recently, and she's on the same page. Like they both think that way now in their family. And they both came from low income broken, like not broken, but not not well to do families out in Mississippi. And then now he's like probably first generation millionaire. He's a multi-millionaire now. And he grew up and there was a, another guy had on my show called Willie Mandrell, his grandmother. Grew up, I think she was born in Alabama. I could be wrong, Alabama or Mississippi, low income family, sixth grade education, Mike, sixth grade education, that's as far as she went. Moved up to Boston, started getting into real estate multimillionaire, and this woman's probably, I don't even think she's alive anymore. She'd probably be about 80 years old right now. She was still alive. Willie's in his thirties, his dad's probably in his forties, and so she would be, maybe 60, 70, but multimillionaire. And all she ever had was a sixth grade education woman. And that's why I tell people anyone can become a millionaire. Why not you? So you got a choice. Do you wanna, be broke at the end of your life, or do you wanna have a little bit of wealth and be able to have a little bit of impact on people's lives, make the world a better place?

Yeah, the thing is If you have the right mindset, and it's something that you put these goals out there and something you wanna do, the only person that can stop you is yourself, right? That's the whole thing about having this mindset shift and flipping that switch. I know for me, like I was going against myself for the longest time before I was able to shift my mindset and say, No! I'm not doing this anymore. I need to make better decisions when it comes to my in, what I'm doing with my income, right? And where am I putting this money? When you were talking about your buddy that he gets a dollar and he says, okay, where am I gonna put this dollar that it's going to, basically go get put to work. That's the way millionaires think. It's not about, okay, oh I made a little extra money. Let me go buy a new car. No, it's okay. I got this money that came in. What can I invest it in that's going to make me more money? And keep that compound thing going. The nicer cars and the nicer home and all that other stuff that is a side effect of shifting that mindset, because eventually when the time comes, you could be like, oh, I've got an asset that will pay for this vehicle or whatever. Like it's already taken care of because of what I bought is something that's gonna pay for it. It's not something I'm gonna pay my own money out of, it's money that I employed to create more money. We'll go pay for that. So once you make that shift in your mindset, it's just like the whole world changes for you. At that point. And it takes some time. Like you don't just become an instant millionaire, But once you get that millionaire mindset and as you say, make that millionaire choice, Once you do that, you're unstoppable at that point, as long as you stayed disciplined and focused on your goals.

Yeah, I think you're right. I love what you said about making your money a multiply for you because I'll be honest, even for me cause I come out of the corporate world, And this is a new thought process cause we get programmed to think about how to make money and we get so, in that track of a job. And that's all we learn. There's lots of ways to make money. The job just seems to be the one that everybody gets pigeonholed into and honestly stuck in and I really encourage your listeners go, okay, I can work a job and make money, but what other ways? Can I go to make money? Some people go create a business. Some people do passive income through real estate investing. Some people maybe create their own products or patents or things like that. Those are engineer types that come up with stuff, maybe software technology. But looking at all those different ways, I think Robert Kiyosaki talks about cash flow quadrants. Like how can you create passive income? And I forget who you may remember who said this. I wanna say it was like Ben Franklin or somebody like. But it was if you need to learn how to make money in your sleep or you'll be working until you die for money.

Think that was ben franklin.

And so that's something that I think everybody needs to hear because, honestly, I'm still trapped in that mindset of working for money now the last six years. One of the other goals I had when I was 25 was to be a millionaire by age 40 and living off my investments. Now, I had forgotten about that goal because I had such a lucrative job, I was just like rolling into cash, right? So long comes I was 46 and I lost my job, and now all of a sudden I went from this big fat, juicy income to a big nothing. And so what I didn't realize over the last six years is that I have been living without a job for six years. Even though my goal was to be living off of my investment income by age 40, I didn't really start that until age 46. Now, my original plan, I didn't have a wife in my plan. I didn't have her in my spreadsheet. I didn't have six kids in my spreadsheet. I didn't have private school at 75 grand a year in my spreadsheet. So those things were factors that were outside of my plan. But I got moving in the right direction. And so here I was, maybe six years later, even though I was a millionaire at 40, at 46, I was unemployed starting a new life. And that allowed me, everything I had done prior to that time allowed me to do the last six years. Go through COVID go through all this transition, be at home with my family, almost 24 /7 and I'm like, wow I forgot that I had that goal. Even, I think I just remembered that goal. Like last year I was like, oh, I had a goal to live off my investment income by age 40. I didn't do it by 40. I did it by 46. And man, it's been amazing. And I'm like, dude I don't ever wanna go back. I don't care how much you paying me, I wouldn't ever wanna go back to job. I'm not saying everybody has can live it that way. I'm just saying that's where I'm at today and it's just causing me to think differently and break free from that programming. I think I started working with my mom and dad. I was probably like about eight years old and cleaning parking lots, sweeping up cigarette butts and pulling thorns and weeds out of flower beds. I hated that job, but that's where I learned how to make money. I think I was at $3 and 35 cents a hour back then. Yeah, it was, and back then that was probably pretty good. But I was hoping to get to $4 an hour cause I thought my whole world would change get $4 an hour. It doesn't change . Average Joe Finances: That's, a I, if I just make more money, if I just make more money, everything's gonna change. No, you're gonna make more money and you're gonna spend that money. That's the only thing that's gonna change is your spending's gonna go up. Not unless you change your mindset and discipline yourself. Now Tony, there was something that you had mentioned earlier, and I want to touch on it. It was you called them your money keys. So if you could just tell me real quick what are these money keys that you had mentioned? So in my book you have to figure out how to transfer your ideas and what made you successful or what you wanna share with people. So in my book, the Millionaire Choice, I have what I call 10 Keys of the Millionaire and and the first two keys, actually, the first four really don't have anything to do with money. They have to do with what I call building your foundation and and what I mean by that is you can build all the money you want, but if you don't have a strong foundation. It's not gonna last. It's gonna be something very temporary. So the first key is you have to develop strong character cause you can't build or keep wealth without strong character. Case in point, the fastest way to lose and I hope I don't offend anybody listening to the show, but it's just the fact, the fastest way to lose half your money is to go through a divorce. Which I came dangerously close to at one point and I was able to make it through. But, my wife, if that would've happened, my wife would've ended up with, 50 to 60% of what I had worked for. That's not a good situation for anybody to go through. But I deal with only five factors of character -integrity, responsibility, work ethic, self discipline and focus. So those were five things that even though my parents didn't teach me about personal finance, they did instill those principles of integrity, responsibilities work ethic, self-discipline, and focus into my life. And that I think those were pivotal for me being able to reach some level of success. The next one was time management. So you have to maximize your time. Cause we all are created with the same amount of time. I talked about, you're gonna work a hundred to 150,000 hours in your lifetime. It's the rest of your time that really dictates how you're gonna do because you got people, average person watches like 130 average American that is watches 130 hours of television a month. That's basically a full-time. Watching video or being on television and you're not gonna build wealth doing that. That's not a wealth building principle. That's a principle that's gonna put you into poverty or keep you in poverty and so you have to think through like, how do I maximize my time and get more out of my life out of the time I had available. The third key is you gotta find a mentor. I was more of a do it yourself. My mentor was magazines and books. If I could go back and redo it. I would've went and found a mentor, I would've found somebody that could have mentored me whether that's somebody on the radio or somebody in person. But I think that's pivotal to learn from somebody else's experience that's 20, 30, 40 years down the road from you versus trying to figure out everything on your own. Go from there find a money mentor. And then the fourth one is, get money. Smart, right? We talked about that one already. You gotta put the effort in listening to a podcast, getting a habit of listening to a podcast, listening to financial guys read books how are you absorbing new information? You mentioned cryptocurrency. I gotta do cryptocurrency. In 2017 again, I went down to do it yourself, figure it out I actually picked I don't know, I probably invested in 20 different cryptos. About 15 of those are top probably top twenties right now. And then I had to sell a bunch of 'em off pay bills and different things I had going on. But those are what I call the foundational elements. And then once you get past those, you get into the basics, which you need to have a budget. And we talked about budgeting a little bit. You need to avoid, I call it avoid debt, but you could say get outta debt if you've got consumer debt. We're not talking about. Good debt versus bad debt. That's a different conversation. But we could go down that road and then when you get through the rest of those, and they're all listed on my website at themillionairechoice.com, but probably the bigger ones is you need to boost your income. You need to figure out ways to boost your income. I think that's millionaire key number nine because you don't wanna be income stagnant. I know a lot of my friends who are stuck in 30, $40,000 range and they have a lot more potential. But if you wanna accelerate wealth building, you've got to figure out how to boost your income, get a side hustle, get another way to make money. I didn't at 39 grand, so I put my millionaire plan together when I was making $39,000. Now today in today's money, that's not very much money at all. But that was enough to allow me to grab hold of that concept of building wealth. What I never realized because of the family I came from, is I didn't really believe or understand that I could make a six figure income. Like I didn't understand I could make a hundred thousand dollars a year. I didn't understand that I could make a quarter of a million dollars a year. I didn't understand that I could make half a million dollars a year, and I went to what a lot of people would say. It is a small college down in Florida. It's not a a super well known college. It's not a university. It's not one you think about people who are making big money, you're, oh, you went and got your, Tennessee University or University of Florida, university of Hawaii or something like that. The school I went to was not that school. But I still was able to make a big income because I invested in myself even after college and continued to grow. I found ways to boost my income, and that was by self development and investing in myself. And then the last one is what I call create your millionaire plan, which is, what's your income plan? What's your debt plan, what's your investing and multiplying planning? It's pretty simple. And then make sure you review that. Now, if I had to write that book again, I would say, what's your tax plan? Because I didn't understand taxes really that much until in the last year I've started learning more about them and I've paid over a million bucks in taxes. I really hate to think of it any bigger than that cuz it would really depress me. But it's, it could be double that number. But I just didn't really focus on taxes. I focused on income development and investing and not on the taxes. I should have paid more attention to the taxes, but I would add that in there. But that's millionaire key number 10, which is what's your millionaire plan putting together.

Yeah, all right. So that's fantastic. So those are the keys for your million, for your basically for making that millionaire choice that we talked about earlier. And that's awesome. So yeah I wanted to get those out there, cause you had mentioned one of the keys earlier. I wanna know what these keys are that he's talking about here. Awesome. Tony, I'd like to transition this now into something that I call the final round. Where I'm gonna ask you four hard-hitting questions. Really three hard-hitting questions and one opinion question. And just to give the audience a better idea of, how you perform or how you've performed, when you've made mistakes and things like that. So if you're ready to go, we'll get this party started.

Let's do it, Mike.

All right, let's do it. So the first question I'm gonna ask you is, what's the biggest mistake you've ever made in your finances?

I'm gonna give you two. And so the first one I would say is I was so opposed to debt that I felt like I needed to sell my first house, that I, that when we moved to a new house I should have kept that first house. We paid 62.5 for it. It the house note was 500 bucks a month. I could have easily afforded that house and turned it into a rental. I just wasn't thinking that way. And because of the group of people I was running around with it was a very much an anti-debt teaching or anti-debt philosophy. My second house, I sold my second house. Same thing. If I could go back, I would've kept both of those houses. Both of those houses together is probably three quarters of a million dollars in net, in a asset value, maybe higher. And I would be renting those for probably probably about three to $4,000 a month between the two of them, and that would be a good investment. I should have kept both of those houses. I should have done that. The second example I would give is I bought a lot of cryptocurrency back in 2017 and I made some really good choices with my crypto, very good choices. And, but what I ended up doing is I had depleted some funds in some other areas, so I did not get to hold those crypto investments as long as I needed to to really get the value. If I had held those assets through this last bull run or, yeah, bill. I probably would've gotten about a 1,500% return on those investments, but I had to sell them and I didn't give 'em time to mature. I wasn't able to give them time to mature. And I think that's the thing we talked about, time, value, and money. When you make an investment, you either got to have a plan to leverage it, to get it out, or you've got to let it sit and give it some time to grow and that, those are my biggest ones.

Ok. No, thank you for sharing that. That's huge. And I mean with any investment, right? You can't just jump into something and then get out of it right away. Cause one, if you did do really well with it very quickly, you're gonna pay a lot of capital gains for one. But for two, a lot of times you're not gonna give enough time to actually turn into something that's going to build you wealth or be beneficial to you. So no, I definitely appreciate that. Definitely some good lessons learned there. But speaking of lessons learned, that kind of ties into the next question and that is what is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first started?

Something I wish that I knew even started probably Just evolution, I think evolving, like how can you, once you get started and how can you continue your growth? Like I was very focused on my corporate leadership growth and my skills growth. Like I got into the internet data and grew my skill set, which allowed my income to go up exponentially. But what I didn't do was continue growing my mind on the way to multiply my money or investing. And I wish I had done that more. Now, there's a lot of reasons why you could say oh, you got married, you had six kids, you're popping out kids like crazy. Your job was evolving. There was a lot going on in that season of life, but I wish I would've developed a habit of personal development growth just around the area of finance so that I could have spent growing that For 15, 20 years. Also developing multiple income streams. That's a real big one. When I lost my job in 2016, that was my only real major income stream. I had, rental properties and stuff, but that was a sliver of what I was making as an income. And I think I would've it would've been good if I had stayed more focused on multiple income streams so that you got options like when the transition comes and it's gonna come, It will come for everyone eventually. How ready are you gonna be for it when it comes.

Yeah. No, very good point. Very good. Lessons learned and stuff to take for those that are listening right now, things for you to think about. That Tony looks back at his past and says, wish I would've done this instead. And I definitely appreciate that perspective cause a lot of times, we get so comfortable with what we're doing and you get that complacency right. And complacency can sometimes really become detrimental. But thankfully you were able to land on your feet because of the good money decisions that you've made, that losing that income didn't completely decimate you. Where somebody who's not making such good money decisions, they lose that primary income and they lose their home, they lose everything. So definitely something to think about. Definitely something to chew on, for sure. So speaking of that, do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started today?

Yeah, probably the biggest one is to get around like-minded people. If you wanna go build some wealth, the best thing you can do is get around somebody else that's trying to build wealth and grow. And if you can figure that on your own. Now the sad thing is the majority of people that we hang out with, the people that we went to high school with, the people that we work with, they're not building wealth. 80% of roughly 80% probably with this, what's going on with the economy right now are probably living paycheck to paycheck. I think the real statistics that are published are like 72, 75%, but I believe that number's much higher right now just because of the gas prices and everything else that's going on. But if you're hanging out with broke people, you're gonna be broke. It's just a sad fact. So you have to change the people that you're around, change the people you're hanging out with. Their investment group is pretty much all over America. If there's not one in your area, go find one online. The whole thing with the Game stop and all that, with Wall Street Bets on Reddit. I had a guy, a friend of mine that was in a group like that and he made first year investing. He made 1,200%. And it was because he was hanging out in one of those groups and made two investments that they recommended. And he got 1,200% on $6,000, so that's not too bad.

Yeah, absolutely. No, I love that because I am a huge fan of networking and I talk about a lot on this podcast too, about surrounding yourself with like-minded people. Similar to what you just said, that, if you're hanging out with five millionaires, you're gonna be the sixth one. Because that stuff rubs off. It's something that will keep motivating you and pushing you to keep going. That's awesome. All right, Tony, so the final question in the final round. This is an opinion based one. And I'm gonna preface it with, besides your own, do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast or both?

Yeah, I'm gonna give you a couple of things. One, a book I'm going through right now, which I wish everybody in America would read, like it's, I think it is that important of a book. I recommend you do it on audio book. Okay. Because it's a very long book. It's a very long book. It's called The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin. And I'm not going to give the secrets of it away of what it is. But if you read that book or listen to that book on audio, you will be blown away by the material that's contained in it. I'll go out there and say that. If I'm wrong, email me and text me and tell me I'm wrong. Okay. But it'll blow your mind. It'll blow your mind. And I've had this book on my shelf for a while, but I'll tell you right now, most everybody I'm talking to that, that come on my podcast right now, are talking about that book or bringing that book up. As I would say, maybe not everybody, but maybe 30%. That's a big one for me. Robert Kiyosaki is a book that keep rich Dad, poor Dad is a book that a lot of. People are coming out. I think the two books I see that pop up the most in financial world would be like Dave Ramsey's Told Money Makeover or Robert Kiyosaki's, rich Dad, poor Dad. And those two are some of the biggest financial books out there. I like Robert's material just cuz it's so wealth Mind. Now I didn't build my wealth the way that Robert teaches, but I know a lot of people that did, and so that would be another one. I like the Millionaires Unveiled podcast with Jay Mattson and some other guys. Their podcast is very inspirational. They interview millionaires and talk about net worth and just really share those stories. And I think that's so important for people to hear every day because you're hearing from everyday people. Some of them might have 20 million net worth, others might be, 1.2 million, but they're people that are, Like us have come from lower income families or broken families and done something different and been inspired and gotten there and Jason and them do a really good job of communicating that and letting people share their stories.

That's great. Recommendations. I love Rich Dad, poor Dad. It's one of my favorite books. And definitely gonna check out that podcast as well. It definitely sounds like right up my alley. I love listening to stuff like that, especially when you get to hear people share their story and you realize that, Hey, they came up the, similar stories came up the same way and look at what they're doing. It's absolutely awesome. So I definitely appreciate you sharing that with us. Now I have one more question for you. The final round is done, but I have one more question. It's the most important question of all, because the people that are sitting here listening saying, Hey, I really you know what Tony's talking about. I wanna know more about him. I wanna know more about what he's doing. So if you could you share with us? Where can people find more information about you? Do you have a website, social media, or anything like that you could share with us?

Yeah, so I'm on all the social media platforms, or at least all the big ones, so feel free to check me out there. It's either gonna, you'll find either Under The Millionaire Choice or Tony Bradshaw or combination thereof Facebook, Instagram the two primary websites I'm using where I have most of my materials at themillionairechoice.com. You can go there and get my book for free on ebook format. If you wanna buy it, a paperback, go pick it up from Amazon. The other thing that I do that I think a lot of people don't do out there is I've really set aside an hour of my day to just talk to people who wanna talk about money. So I do one hour of free coaching. If anybody wants to go sign up, you can just go find that link on my website. Say Free Money Mentor session life Money mentor session. So you can go book that. And that's only at themillionairechoice.com is the only place you can book that. So go there to book it. But tonybradshaw.com as well. I've got a lot of material over there, but yeah that's where I'm at. If you wanna talk more find stuff in. But I try to I really wanna get free material into everybody's hands. I can, so I try to make as much of this stuff available for free as I can. At the millionairechoice.com.

I love that. Thank you so much, Tony. Thank you for sharing that with us and thank you so much for joining me on the show today, man this was awesome.

Yeah, Thanks for having me on, Mike.

Yeah, absolutely. And to my listeners, thanks for joining me and our special guest, Tony Bradshaw, on the Average Joe Finances podcast. Go leave us a five star review and tell us what you liked about today's episode with Tony. Aloha from Hawaii and have a great rest of your day.