Is your money locked in a 401(k), a paid-off home, or a low-yield investment, earning you little to no return? Join host Bronson Hill on the Mailbox Money Show for an eye-opening conversation with Chris Miles, the “anti-financial adviser” and founder of Money Ripples. A recovering registered investment advisor, Chris shares his journey from a traditional financial advising career to retiring at age 28 by investing in real estate and alternative assets. After facing a million-dollar debt during the recession, he rebuilt his wealth and retired again by 2016, now coaching thousands to achieve financial freedom through cash flow-focused strategies.
In this episode, Chris reveals how to free up cash from underperforming assets, why cash flow trumps appreciation, and how to assess risk in private deals. Learn practical steps to unlock your money, hedge inflation, and build passive income that lets you live life on your terms.
Get my new book: https://bronsonequity.com/fireyourself
Full Transcript:
Bronson Hill: Welcome to the Mailbox Money Show.
I want to ask you. Do you have money in your retirement account?
Do you have it in a rental house?
Do you have it in your house you live in?
Do you have it someplace that it may not be doing a lot for you?
I know people that own homes in cash literally. They own a million dollar home in cash and they’re getting after expenses about twenty thousand dollars. Or thirty thousand dollars per year.
That is not a good ratio.
That’s a two to three percent return on your money. You can say well, it’s going to appreciate, you say well, yeah. But you’re not really actually doing well with the funds that you have. So I really love this conversation about freeing up your cash getting out of just money that’s tied up somewhere. Whether it’s in the stock market, in a retirement account, somewhere putting it into real assets.
That’s actually not only hedge inflation, but they also produce cash flow. This question comes up often of what’s more important. Is it cash flow or appreciation? I am 100% cash flow if you haven’t read my book yet Fire Yourself. You need to get in with see it just how cash flow is what allows you to leave a job. It’s what allows you to become financially free.
You can’t leave your job if you’re gonna make a lot of money someday. But if you can free up cash and have cash flow that covers your living expenses, for me it wasn’t a lot of money.
I mean really if I looked at the bare bones, what I need was six K a month ish right? About 72,000 a year I could cover. I didn’t need a 200 K salary, I needed just about six K a month to be able to cover my living expenses, which is amazing, right?
So let’s jump in this interview with Chris Miles for money rebels.
It’s a really great interview. I think you’re really gonna enjoy it.
Alright Chris Miles. Welcome to the Mailbox Money Show.
How you doing brother?
Chris Miles: Yeah, I’m doing awesome, Bronson. So good to be here.
Bronson Hill: Good to have you man I was just on your show last week and just you lead a great show. You’ve been doing a long time and we are both, he’s acting an RIA, which is, you know, register investment advice. But we’re both recovering investment advisors that we were even the anti financial advisor. But tell us a little bit your story.
How did you become the anti financial advisor?
Chris Miles: Yeah, so I never intended to become a financial advisor in the first place. The only reason I did is because I was gonna go into business consulting. I was gonna try to do that. But I figured if I’m gonna do that before I try to graduate with an MBA, I should have real-life experience, right?
So I kind of took a sabbatical from college I said, let’s find some business to do. I didn’t know what to do and a financial advisor was the first thing that sounded kind of interesting. Because I figure worst-case scenario I walk away not just with business experience. But experience like with how to make money or manage money and invest it, right? And especially for my dad where my dad was like the guy that he was the penny-pinching saver, right?
He was so freakin cheap, he says frugal, but we’re like no you’re cheap. Like he’s the guy that buys case lot, you know cereal like 24 boxes of it. So then we have to eat it for a year straight of cap and front, right? And so I did it for him because he’d always say even though he always say, save everything or whatever and spend nothing. The big thing was it got me was he always say my job is gonna kill me. Like the stress my work will literally kill me.
I’ll die working, right? But I figured I’m gonna do something different. So not only did I want to go into business, but I wanted to learn about money. And so I became a financial advisor. Actually I liked learning about money and investing and things like that. So I actually never finished my degree in college. I never finished it.
I was one one paper shy of getting my bachelor’s and in sociology and with a business focus. And then I was like, okay. Well, let’s just be an entrepreneur. I can make way more money here and I like it.
Well four years in as I’m a financial advisor, my dad says when you’re gonna advise me?
And so the first time in my life. Because he would never share anything about his money because he always thought people were trying to steal money, right? So I never trusted anyone. But then he decided to open up his books and show me what he’s done. And so I see for the first time like he’s now got his house paid off. He’s totally debt-free. He paid off his house in like 18 years.
So this guy was like the Dave Ramsey dream come true, right?
You know and then he also likes stuff money is 401k getting the match from his employer and everything for years. And this was 2005 by the way when I’m sitting down with him. And so I’m looking at his money. He’s like, yeah, Y2k was rough, you know, those tech stocks took a dive that affected my retirement. But now it’s on the back, his back up again. And I looked at it said, dad you’re 61 years old. If you want to retire today, you’re gonna need to die in about five or six years because that’s when you’re gonna run out of money.
Like alright, Mr. Sunshine. Thank you so much for that. What do I do?
I don’t know, you did everything right from what I teach as a financial advisor. And so I walked away really bothered by that. Cuz I’m like, well you got a paid off house but I wouldn’t suggest cashing in. Doing a key lock on your house and investing in the market because one that’s illegal. You can’t do that. You’ve literally signed disclosure saying you’re not gonna borrow money to put in a stock market. But then two on top of that I couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t make money or lose money in the market. And so I walked away pretty much upset.
Upset I couldn’t help him the way I wanted to. And a few weeks later, I’m talking with a friend of mine who I trained to be a financial advisor. But then he quit to go do real estate investing. As I’m talking with him and I’m thinking like, maybe I can convince him to come back to work for me. Because I guarantee that real estate thing didn’t work out. It was the opposite. He comes back.
He says Chris. My life’s awesome right now. He’s like my dad and I have partnered on some real estate deals. And we’ve now doubled his income as a professor at that local university.
Bronson Hill: Wow
Chris Miles: Hey, wait a minute.
You’ve been doing this like five months. Come on, that’s too good to be true. He’s like, well Chris, how many of your clients are financially free where they don’t worry about money? Like well, they all worry about money.
They all worry about like running out of money too soon or outliving their money.
It’s like, okay. Great. How about this?
How many of you guys as financial advisors are financially free? Not the Commission’s earning but actually doing these same investments. And I thought about I was like there were guys in my office working since the 1970s. And still they couldn’t quit either. I said well none.
I don’t think any of them can retire. And so that got me kind of looking more into like real estate investing. He was doing more stuff with like flipping and do things like that. But when I realized it wasn’t just flipping. There were even passive ways to make money, too. I started getting to that eventually. I couldn’t make the two worlds mesh I realized I could either stay as a financial advisor.
Just put my blinders on and ignore truth or two I can keep my integrity intact and quit. So I chose the latter kind of like you did right? I just said I’m out, I’m not doing this anymore.
I’m just gonna be a mortgage broker because it’s 2006 by this point. So being a mortgage broker was easy like 2021 was and then I’ll just teach ballroom dancing on the side. And so I was doing that but then I wanted to learn again how these guys were doing it in real estate.
So later I started learn how to do that even though I could lend my money out to these guys and then make money off that. And so later that next that later that year in 2006. I was able to retire when I was 28 almost 29 years old and I was like dang that was way easier than I thought like I was hoping and praying I’d save enough my mutual funds up retired by 40 or so, right?
And here I am 28 years old I’m like, well now what I’m gonna do with my life And of course you do something crazy like that people like wait you’re retired. How’s that possible? They don’t want to learn So eventually that seven came out start coaching people how to do that kind of thing and and even went through the mess the recession went From millionaire to upside-down millionaire.
So I went over a million dollars in debt I was able to retire the second time do it again by 2016 This time I’ve made a last right? I haven’t like messed it up this time around.
Bronson Hill: Well, no, there’s so many things you shared that are so good. I think I mean what you shared is is true, I mean most people they can’t retire. The average person has zero dollars saved for retirement. And if you average the people that have money, it’s like not it was like less than $100,000. It’s very minimal people have saved up for retirement and a lot of times, with stocks. It’s like, there was a time when the market crashed between, this is a long time ago 1929.
The big crash went on 89% didn’t come back to where it was until 1954 and that doesn’t take into account inflation. Which would also devalue dollars. So, if the market crashed now, I mean 25 years up it wouldn’t be how would people live?
I just think we’re taught these things that are just not true. And like you start looking at him, you start reality checking him. You’re like, well, hold on like I invest in stocks and then what happens and how do I actually make money and like it?
Like it’s hard unless you have dividend stocks or even then it’s like, to actually have things actually pay you money versus these other like real estate or alternative strategies.
So that’s what you started doing. That’s awesome.
So for you, obviously, I’m talking to people to you that had something like that, where they had a time where they made money – lost money – made money. Like they’re heading things back and forth, but you learn every time.
So I think it’s regardless, everything is learning and so I think a lot of people really undervalue financial education and what it takes to really become a good investor. Warren Buffett even says the best investment you make is in yourself, right? You actually invest in yourself.
So what are some things that I guess some of the lessons that you learned or that you see most people need to learn. That they just don’t kind of make the connection in between. Oh, he actually need to do this and here’s actually the way to be able to create financial freedom.
Chris Miles: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is look for evidence, right? I mean, that’s the one thing my dad did teach me. He always like, don’t take those word for it. Like look to see if it’s actually true. And so like when my friend pointed out is like well, how many clients are free? How many financial advisors are free?
Well, there’s your answer, right? It’s like if this were really so good, you would hear more success stories about it. But you really don’t, like you said. I mean even if you look at the better statistics like the average Gen X-er now Gen X-ers are between 45 and about 65 right now. The average Gen X-er that’s been saving for at least 15 years for retirement has five hundred ninety nine thousand at the end of 2024.
Now remember this some people talk about the 4% rule, which has completely been debunked years ago. But still there’s people even in the fire group, right that financially independent retire. I got booted out of that Facebook group, even though I’ve done it twice before I was 40. They booted me out because I said hey that 4% rule doesn’t work It’s actually 2% if you’re under the age of 40. 3% if you’re in your 60s. And because like because that number for the 4% thing came from the doing stats from 1926 in 1976
Bronson Hill: And this is this is the amount of money you need in the bank. You need to be able to withdraw three or four percent per year or two percent for retirement account to keep it to have it not go down. Right?
Chris Miles: Yeah and not run out of money, especially with inflation everything else, right? So they said hey, well you only pull out 4% a year. Well, then you’d be good.
Well, that was true 1976 remember the gold standard was just taken off inflation skyrocketed. After that we’ve now higher inflation by far since then in fact, even real estate prices skyrocketed a lot more since 1974. We have more inflation people are living longer.
So therefore when you see the stats now from the actual companies are reputable. They’ll say no, it’s more like 3% if you’re age 65. It might say like 3.2, 3.3 depending on the year, but it’s about 3%. So that means if you happen to save up, say you’re the average Gen X or that’s 65 years old and you have six hundred thousand dollars. What’s 3%? 18,000 a year.
It’s 1,500 bucks a month and then you pay taxes on it. That’s the problem, right? So people have got to realize that you know one that’s a big lie about the 4% rule to there’s a lie about inflation. Inflation is way higher than the government says it is Outpace it more right?
It’s not 3% or 2%. Let’s be honest. I mean even when they say like based on the government stats that we’ve only seen a 40%. Inflation increase since 2020 but you ask anyone like look at your real life. Look at the evidence. What part of your life has not doubled in cost?
Bronson Hill: Well plus they haven’t said there was one time officially inflation was like 9%. But otherwise it’s like was very it was like one summer 21 or whatever that was. And then other time it’s been like between like 3 and 5 is 6. But it’s kind of been in that range, but it’s like that’s not even possible. Like mathematically it’s not even possible that inflation is what you say it is. And prices are what it is. Like it’s just not even possible
Chris Miles: Exactly. So we know that’s a bigger head when than 3% where people model out by the way about 3% a year. Yeah, then when it gets so depressing I would change it to 2% a year just to make people feel better. Even if they’re in their 20s starting to save putting away like 500 bucks a month or whatever, right?
Bronson Hill: Well, and that’s why inflation hedge assets are so much better or being able to hedge inflation, right? It’s like using inflation at your advantage versus getting pain and you’re right stocks. Don’t keep up a lot of the things, don’t keep up I’m not the other thing stocks though the average of the SP 500, right?
Chris Miles: I mean how long we’ve been taught it’s been like between like ten point four for large cap twelve point. Whatever for small cap stocks, right? So every always says 12% is the magic number I taught. Well, I actually just showed people just a few weeks ago just early April I showed them where I said, hey if you look at the 30 year from April 1995 to April 1st of April of 2025. The average is actually eight point zero three percent of the S&P 500, 8.03.
It was eight point seven four a couple months ago, but with that recent little drop that we saw in the market. It just demolished it like it demands that average, right? Plus it always depends on when you get in, right? Like whatever it shows based on the beginning. And so if it’s eight percent and even if you reinvest maybe you get nine percent that’s a big difference. Like for example Dave Ramsey. He always has a popular Instagram post and Twitter tweet that he puts out saying, you save $100 a month next 40 years. You’ll have one million one hundred seventy six thousand.
No one should retire broke, right? So he says this crap. He always uses the 12% assumption.
Bronson Hill: Right? Right?
Chris Miles: Here’s one problem, one I ran that was numbers for 40 years in a real calculator and it wasn’t one point one seven six million. It was nine hundred seventy nine thousand.
So even a hundred bucks a month at 12% for 40 years still doesn’t even make you a millionaire. But two, so not only was he 200 grand off because he can’t do math. The second thing is is that if you only earn 9% that number drops from now nine hundred seventy nine thousand to four hundred twenty four thousand, right? So when you’re thinking I should be making almost 1.2 million. But you’re like, no, I got a third of that and it was only 3% less you get asked stuff, huh?
Maybe maybe these assumptions aren’t good.
Bronson Hill: Well, there’s so many issues there too because like just what’s the purchasing power that gonna be? It’s gonna be a third of what it is now. So it’s like, you look at like all those things and then secondly, Tony Robbins had a book called Money Master The Game.
I talk about this in my book where he says that people look at what it takes to actually invest in passively and mutual funds. There’s like time dated thing products. They put people into, you have the 2050 fund or the 2030 fund based on your age and whatever.
So let’s say the fees are 1.2% but he said there’s always hidden fleet fees like administrative fee, drag fee, exchange fee, marketing. But what are the fees that a lot of the advisors don’t even know that they’re there. And legally they don’t have to explain them, they don’t have to expose them. So typically the fee is actually three point two percent and then plus if you have a money manager they’re typically taking another two percent on top of that.
So then your fees are actually around on five or five point two percent. And I think it’s if you look at volatility you include volatility as well where it goes up, you’re probably more like six or eight percent before you remove any of that. So it takes away most of people’s stuff and it becomes a savings account.
And if people really need help to save then that makes sense. But like it’s really not a great investment, but it’s like you start talking about this stuff and people think you’re crazy. But it’s just because Wall Street spent billions of dollars advertising this is what you should do.
What do you think we can do to like I guess as educators in the space till I guess we can just keep doing? What we’re doing people are in the matrix, right? They’re just doing this thing. That’s like you’re not even living life.
Chris Miles: Like indoctrinated.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, exactly
Chris Miles: Yeah, it’s like financial dogma, isn’t it? Like it’s just like a religion it is and it and it’s a sacred cow. I mean if I talk about 401k in the match, Oh my gosh. Like do I get those comments on YouTube all of a sudden, right? Because like, you’re just talking about those fees and stuff. Well, I look the fidelity the real fees like it’s like on their their target date retirement funds. Which by the way 86% of millennials use target date funds.
Well, that’s what they under perform.
I looked at the last 10-year performance. I compared it to the S&P performed by 2.1 percent that’s before those fees come out even if you get the minimal fees of point seven five percent. That comes out of those, right? That means it’s about three percent difference and so I even show people like on my master classes stuff. I’d like look if you invested just in the spider fund the SP 500 by itself versus getting a hundred percent match on your 401k. Look at the difference and you’ll see that the bad performance of the mutual fund in the fidelity 401k those target date funds. Literally the match only makes up for it. In fact, it still falls behind the actual S&P 500 returns. Is getting that match to pay for bad performance of bad funds, right?
Bronson Hill: That’s crazy.
Chris Miles: And so that’s not always the first thing is waking people up to it. But then you got to give them a hope right you got to give them some answers. And that’s why I tell people like instead of compounding interest, which is that what they always say. How they always misquote Einstein? They always say I know it says it compounding interest the eighth wonder of the world.
Look it up.
Einstein never said it. Financial companies and financial advisor and companies will quote it all the time. They call it, say it he never said it right? That’s like that’s like Abraham Lincoln saying, everything I learned was from the internet. I actually saw a financial advisor I actually presented for a real estate group just just recently I was out there in Florida.
I presented I started teach about all these lies and even more that we’re talking about on the show, right? And I didn’t mention that whole Einstein quote thing. I could have because I could have said like, I never said it he talked about compounding numbers. But he said nothing about money company.
Bronson Hill: Yeah.
Chris Miles: Yeah, you took that to they twisted it to make it their own. Well, then what happens right after I sit down, a guy walked showed up late as a financial advisor. He only saw the tail end of my thing, right? He saw a little bit about infinite banking and and about passive income.
He’s like cool. That’s great.
But you know, here’s what I’m gonna show you he’d like look, you know Einstein says compounding interest the eighth one of the world. And those that pay interest earn it and those that don’t pay it or whatever like that quote. Yeah, it’s like you didn’t say that. He’s like now he did not say that first part, but the second part was Ben Franklin.
So like he’s like finding two people that say oh, yeah. Well a brilliant genius scientist said it so it’s gotta be true. So I was like no that’s not the case and now that’s why I tell people like we’re it’s up. We’re about this compounding interest.
We’re about compounding income, right? It’s how do you get your money out of prison first, right? So I teach people get lane, get liquid and get out. Get Lane just means be a wise steward of money like track your money. Don’t just create budgets like that’s useless when you don’t know how much you’re spending. Like know how much you’re spending, how much is coming in track that money and pay attention to it because whatever you pay attention towards. We’ll expand and grow.
Well, what if you ignore we’ll leave you like if I ignore my teeth, I won’t have them anymore. Yeah, I ignore my family. They’re not gonna be around anymore. If I ignore my health it won’t be there anymore. If I ignore my money they’ll disappear, too.
So really start to watch it, right? Start to track your money. Then you can create little spending plans and stuff too, but track it. You’ll find cash faster that way and get the cash flow under control.
I did that with one client where they had five million in stocks between Google, Meta, like that, Facebook stock and stuff too. And they’re like, we just want to diversify in a real estate. But the first thing we looked at is let’s see your whole situation of income and expenses and when we did I looked at some of their their loans.
I said, hey we refinance your house. We could actually not only consolidate some of your debt, but we’ll free up thirty eight hundred dollars a month. That’s like forty five grand a year with nothing out of pocket. Like let’s do that first. Let’s get your burn rate down without you having to sacrifice your lifestyle, right? You have to live on rice and beans, do that. And then I was like, oh by the way, you gotta get a house here an investment property.
How much do you make on this?
Oh nothing. Okay.
Well, you got two hundred thousand equity in this property. You’re making a zero percent return on equity, sell that. Even if we reinvest it will make about two thousand more a month there. So that’s twenty four grand on top of the forty five. Now we’re at seventy grand a year and then was like, hey you need to talk to a different CPA. Your CPA is not doing a good job here. We found we can frame over thirty grand a year in taxes so even before we did anything with investing cashing out stocks or anything. We already improved the cash flow by over a hundred grand a year. It’s amazing when all was said and done. And we worried about investing that money and that’s where you try to get liquid, right?
So how can we get liquid if you got stocks sitting around? Maybe cash saying savings not do anything equity, dead equity in properties. I had one client in California had 700 grand in a rental property. He was making 200 bucks a month on it’s like how that property. Went out and he bought like six more properties in Louisiana and they kept compounding income, right? He kept reinvesting the income over the last few years that now it’s over a hundred grand a year versus twenty four hundred a year, right?
Bronson Hill: So I had a conversation was I’m gonna slow you down here for a minute I’m just trying some good nuggets here. Just finding money that exists that people don’t see. So we have our group called the Wealth Forum, which is our mastermind. We do it’s all high net worth. Typically two to ten million or higher. This lady was there. She’s got about ten million in just equity in single-family homes. So this is like 20 or 30 homes in different parts of the the US and she’s sitting by a couple guys. One guy is a syndicator and it’s 8,000 units and he does a lot of hotels as well and all he’s really great.
Another guy is basically kind of self-made. He says about 1,500 units himself and a lot of multifamily and stuff. And so she only had out of the ten million she had like maybe a debt of like 400k on the whole thing. And so they were all kind of like oh my gosh you’re probably getting like a two or three percent return per year. Probably get a terrible return here and that’s where it’s like and she said what should I do? Whatever.
Well figure out, you could pull money out. You could maybe sell them in 1031 into something like larger and do something. We’re gonna get a better return or put in multiple things but it was just interesting. A lot of people, they just don’t realize that their return on equity is really poor. What they could be doing is it could be way better.
Chris Miles: That’s right. Yeah, cuz most people look at what did I pay when I bought it? The cash flow now and they think I look at that progress.They forget to look at the equity piece, which is a potential right?
I always tell people get money out of prison like get out. You know like equity in your house is dead equity, right? Like it’s not it’s just locked up. Everybody tells you to pay off your house and look at my dad. He had paid off house, sure.
He didn’t have a mortgage payment, but he’s like yeah, but I don’t have any cash flow. How many Dave Ramsey poster children I’ve talked to? They have like two three million net worth but they have zero passive income coming. In it’s like and if we can just take two million of your net worth make 10% a year. That’s 200 grand a year. That’s totally different. It’s not that you should have debt or not have debt. That’s not the thing because you can look at both right, but it’s really about how do we actually turn this all this net worth?
Cuz net worth is worthless unless it’s turned into cash flow income.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, it’s a hundred percent true. So the idea I like the topic of freeing up your cash. I think that’s a great episode for this. How do you feed your cash?
I remember when I worked for a large company in medical sales was making really good money. You know hundred, two hundred thousand per year and I remember like I had the match. So they had the match thing where they matched a hundred percent or fifty percent or whatever.
So I did the match and then I would try to say hey, I want to actually pull this out. And they said well, you can’t pull it out. You can only pull it out if you’ve been with us the money that’s been here for like it was like more than two years. There was a certain period of time you had to have the money was there for two years then you could pull it which they didn’t really give any reason for.
But I remember like making noise with HR. This is a company over 10,000 people and they said they it was interesting. It was like a CFO or some sort of treasure or something said something like, oh well, I realized Bronson like he seems to be not even investing well in these different funds that we have. He’s in a money markets because there was like so there was only like six or eight different options. I was like, well give me them I don’t want to lose the money they put it in money. Yeah, so I put it in money markets and they think I’m a fool or whatever. But I was eventually able to pull some of it out Be able to roll some of it over into a self-directed IRA, you can buy any types of assets. You can buy precious metals, you can buy, depending what type it is. You can buy real estate, you buy all kinds of different things.
So you like you were saying just freeing it up, freeing up your cash. So you actually can use a lot of people don’t realize. They have all this money sitting there and they can use it to invest in things that are awesome investments. That are way better than Wall Street options.
Chris Miles: Oh, yeah. We think about a 401k. It’s a negative hundred percent return. Because it’s literally away from your family and you get paid zero cash flow from it. It’s literally just an expense and people call it investment, right? But the truth is it’s not until either you change jobs you quit, retire, get fired whatever, right?
In fact, just before we talked here recording this podcast. I was just minutes ago. I was talking to a client. He’s like Chris update for you.
I just got laid off which I’m seeing that happen all the time I know if everybody says in unemployment’s low. I’m here with people that are in good high positions getting laid off like executives. And so I said I was like, this is great, I mean it sucks.
I’m sorry, but this is awesome because now that 401k it’s been locked away that we could never touch. Now we have an opportunity and by the way cuz you’re laid off maybe we can claim a financial hardship avoid the 10% penalty. And we’ll pay taxes, but you’re gonna pay taxes money.
Anyway, so who cares you have to pay money anyways And this is the last year the Trump tax plan. It might be worse next year. This might be your best year to get that access that money and yeah, we can do a self-directed IRA. But I was like you probably need cash flow now, don’t you? He’s like, yeah in the meantime I’m like great. What if we cash this money out you kept a little bit in savings just for taxes. You kept the right use the rest of it we can pay off a couple credit cards. Here pay off your boat because The boat would look 15 grand but 300 a month.
I’m like 300 a month. In 15 grams like making 2% a month on my money. I’m not gonna I’m not gonna do a real estate deal with that I’m like pay those suckers off. Then we saw money to invest and he also can sell property we found out like we can sell this property now And it’s got 200 grand of equity, but you’re only making 700 a month You just had you lend the money to other real estate investors. You made 12% a year 1% a month That’s 2,000 a month. You’ll still net 1300 month more what you are right now with that current property.
Bronson Hill: Well, I think it’s and this is what you guys do I encourage people to reach out to you and we’re gonna talk about how they can do that as Money Ripples here in a little bit. But it’s really the return on equity question, right? People like have money sitting around. What if I have equity in a property if I’ve got money in a retirement account. If I got money in a deal, how much, how is that money working for me now? Now some deals you can’t if you’re in a syndication. Sometimes there’s a time it takes time to kind of season and get well. You start cash flowing well. But if it’s just available and you have it in something that you can remove it. It’s important to constantly be looking at what’s the return on investible equity, right?
If it’s like hey, I’ve got 500k in a house. Well, it’s not really doing anything for me, right? What can I do with it?
Is there anything I can do with this money that would be able to get me without taking on a lot of risk. That I can get a good return and that’s actually let’s ask that question because I’m curious. I feel like the answer to this question is a tricky one.
But how do you Chris assess risk across different types of deals. I know there’s different ways people do it. Things can seem very not risky, all of a sudden rates go way up. All of a sudden these things something like real estate or commercial real estate seems very risky.
So how do you assess risk in a deal is it just kind of what factors do you look at when you’re looking at? Some sort of private deal.
Chris Miles: Well, especially when nothing’s risk-free, right? I mean, that’s the truth I mean any kind of investment has risk to it even in real estate. You know, I love it, I know that’s the fact so I’m a hands-off investor, right? Like I don’t want to be the one actively buying and selling flipping wholesaling, you know or whatever. Nothing against it I just I realized after the last recession.
I was like I suck at this I’d rather be hands-off and just put my money and let them do all the work. So if I do that then I’m betting not just on the horse, but I’m betting on the jockey as well, right? I got to see who that operator is. And so I do more due diligence on the operator and I do on the deal the deal is gonna make sense, right? Like it’s gonna have some sort of real value or some sort of you know sense there. But I look at the operator.
So for example, if I’m looking at a syndication like a multifamily syndication, I remember there’s one guy that that I’ve I’ve definitely had a lot of different investments with and he always had his vanilla deals, right? His vanilla deals were always Alabama, usually properties that have about 100 to 200 units. It was like clockwork and he was so good at it. When 2021 started happening, he’s like I’m having a hard time finding good deals that fit my buy box so I’m gonna start doing chocolate deals. So he started doing like hotel conversions in the Phoenix, Arizona a market he doesn’t know anything about and an asset class. He doesn’t know anything about right?
He started doing things in Texas, which again, he doesn’t have those contacts and those typical stuff there. And so people like it’s my clients are saying, hey, so I hear he’s doing these deals I’m like, listen anything that says chocolate to I would avoid. I can’t tell you what to do. You don’t like this kind of chocolate. Yeah, this kind of chocolates and I love ice cream But that’s not the kind of ice cream. I want you know, because chocolate could also be crap. And that’s what happened. All of them and he did like 10 plus of these kind of deals all of them failed, right?
And so that’s where like you got to be so when I look at it. Like I try to see if who’s an operator has been doing this for at least 10 or 15 years and ideally in the same kind of assets, right? I’m not opposed to them pivoting like I have a friend that pivoted from real estate to oil and gas. And he’s a great guy very charismatic. But I’m like, okay, cool. Once you kind of bump your knee a few times, maybe after a decade. Let’s talk right because right now this is your brand new and he’s all hyped up about it.
Like cool. Call me in in 2035 Yeah, yeah, right. No, that’s not what I look for.
I look for those people that have like been through it. And you know that kind of thing. So I look for that. I look for I look for a return of my money. That’s just a return on my money, right?
I want to make sure that you know, do I have some collateral or something like that? You know, if I’m lending money can also be on title. So then I can foreclose if I have to you know things like that.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, no, that’s that’s great.
And I think we do we do some stuff we’ve pivoted a little bit to go to more cash flow. I think you talked about and that’s interesting too with real estate. It’s hard to find cash flow these days and cash flow is really what helps people to leave their job or have income coming in. But we’ll look for partners that we’ve either a invested with or we have a great relationship with for at least five years typically. And then we’ll basically make sure that background checks, all the things go in and even then it’s like you really you have to. There’s risk involved and I think it’s really hard to assess and communicate risk.
And yeah, okay, we’ve got one deal that’s owning the land that it could be that it works out as plan as a four to seven equity multiple over the next ten years. But it could be not, you know I mean, there’s just a lot of things there that okay owning the land is a little safer because what you have. You have some safety in that specific deal but when you’re doing oil drilling. You’re doing other types of things.
We have one that’s a very speculative one in the oil and gas space that it’s more of a VC type of deal. So it’s just really explaining to people. Hey, this is not for everybody. This is for like if it works, it’s a 10x plus if it doesn’t it goes to zero and it’s just making sure people understand kind of what they’re getting into. So I think those are also signs of good sponsors as well.
Now. I know what we need chance to talk about it. We’re out of time today. You do talk a lot about we’re not gonna get into it now, but about infinite banking, which is about being your own banker. We’ve talked about it on this show before that’s what you do. You also help people create a financial kind of like master plan and not as an advisor. But kind of as hey, what are some things like you said freeing up different amounts of cash something is awesome. So I just want to say because I really appreciate that you are one of the few in the proud. There’s some people that are just advisors.
They’re taking the money. They’re not, they don’t ask too many questions. They’re really psychology managers to manage people psychology when the stock market goes down and for some of us, we look at it. We just kind of see the the Wizard of Oz, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. It’s like once you see there’s a guy there who’s like it’s not really this big beastly looking thing. You’re like the stock market isn’t exactly what they’re presenting it as and we have to start educating people.
So I love the mission that you’re doing want to acknowledge you for that. Creating Money Ripples and they’re doing this for over a decade and this specific thing not only what you did before so well. Then how can people reach out to you, connect with you, hear about your stuff and and get her about your services
Chris Miles: Yeah, look at anything Money Ripples. Well, that’s money ripples.com, @moneyripples on social media or even our Money Ripples Podcast like you mentioned. We’re in our 11th season now, so yeah, definitely follow that on wherever you follow podcasts, whether it be Apple, Spotify or even YouTube.
Bronson Hill: Awesome, brother. Well, I appreciate you for creating big ripples in the world and in finance and we look forward to connecting again soon.
Chris Miles: Same here, Bronson. Thanks.
Bronson Hill: All right.
We love this conversation It was just a kind of a back-and-forth between two recovering investment advisors that are just saying like hey, these are things people should consider and this is what Chris does on his business. He helps coach people on how to free up some of these money. What we do is we actually provide specific deals and you can say well we provide oil and gas and provide real estate.
We provide debt funds. We’ve done car washes and private businesses. Why are we doing all those things because we found partners in those spaces and it really helps solve one of three problems. The first one is cash flow. That’s the biggest thing right now.
That is very difficult to find particularly in real estate and a lot of deals we have things like oil and gas that are cash flowing. Awesome private businesses are cash flowing amazing. You can buy a private business and if cash flows really well or invest passively in a private business and it does very well. So those things are very very important.
Now, if you haven’t joined our investment club, I strongly encourage you to join it check it out. You can go to bronsonequity.com.
You can the join button would love to see if we could start a relationship with you and you can hear about some of these amazing deals that we’re doing. And I Appreciate you taking the time to educate yourself because again, you just these little interviews. These books you read the things that rooms that you get into. Those things create significant impact over time. There’s this book out called The Slight Edge, if you haven’t read is by Jeff Olson. It’s amazing. It says if you start smoking it will not kill you today or tomorrow or the next day. But over 10, 20, 30 years that will have an exponentially negative effect on your life. Same with investing and same with learning you may not make a million dollars today but over the next 10, 20 years you’re gonna have this exponentially positive effect. And it works in areas of health. It works in areas of relationships. Just continue to do the things that really matter. That you value, that are important and you will reap a benefit over time.
So I’m inspired by you.
I appreciate you.
Thanks for taking the time.
We’ll see you on the next episode of the Mailbox Money Show.
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