Why The Retirement Model Is Breaking Down
In this episode, Ryan D. Lee—founder of Wealth Outside Wall Street and author of Retire in 10 Years or Less—joins the show to challenge conventional thinking around money, investing, and retirement.
Drawing from his own journey out of the “rat race,” Ryan explains why traditional strategies focused on net worth and market returns often fall short, and instead makes the case for prioritizing cash flow, financial intelligence, and ownership of income-producing assets.
We’ll explore how the rules of money have changed since the end of the gold standard, the role of leverage and liquidity in building wealth, and how investors can protect themselves against inflation, taxes, and other wealth destroyers.
If you’re looking for a clearer framework for achieving financial freedom—not as a distant goal, but as a sustainable lifestyle built on productive assets and passive income—watch the interview now.
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Additional Resources
Transcript
Ryan D. Lee:
And if you want to get wealthier, you have to raise your financial intelligence, and then you can pick up and use that tool of money in an effective way. So now that I know that, if I’m going to mortgage my future production to buy a liability that I have to then pay back, that’s bad debts, right? That’s credit. And that’s why most Americans get trapped in what we can call the proverbial rat race. They mortgage their future, their future production, their future earnings to pay for stuff that doesn’t give them an income.
They’ve consumed it already, and they’ve got to trade the next 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years of their life paying back the things that they’ve already consumed. An investor does it completely opposite. They use the same tool; they just use it in a much smarter way. You know, ’cause a lot of people wanna throw rocks at millionaires and billionaires and say, ah, it’s not fair, they’re bad people, whatever, you know, fill in the blank. But what if we asked a question to ourselves instead and say, how did Jeff Bezos do it? Could I mimic his behavior to get the same results? What Jeff Bezos does is he—
Monetary Metals:
Welcome back to the Gold Exchange Podcast. I am joined by our good friend Ryan Lee. He’s the founder of Wealth Outside Wall Street and the author of the successful book, Retire in 10 Years or Less. Today he joins the podcast to talk about all things passive income, alternative investing, and of course, how to retire in 10 years or less. Ryan, welcome to the show.
Ryan D. Lee:
Ben, what’s up, my man? It is such a privilege and such an honor to be on the microphone with you today and to be talking about money, to be talking about investing, you know, to be talking about something that every single person thinks about or does in some degree or fashion. But I think most people are kind of confused about it. So we’re going to have a fun conversation today.
From rat race to investor: Ryan’s wake‑up call after 2008
Monetary Metals:
Ryan, I want to start quickly with your background because it truly is fascinating. People hear retire in 10 years or less. Yeah, what is this guy thinking? But give us a bit of your backstory because in a way I think you were kind of stuck in the rat race that many of our audience maybe feel like they’re stuck in and you escaped in 10 years or less. How did you do it? Give us a bit of your backstory and how you ended up where you are today.
Ryan D. Lee:
Man, I love that question, Ben. You know, for me, I think I did. I started off pretty traditional. I came from a great family, learned how to work hard, never been scared of hard work, but I didn’t really take school seriously. In fact, you know, I kind of kind of floated my way through school until I got to college. And when I got to college, I went to college, not because I wanted to be there, but because I wanted to get the degree.
Because I thought it was a stepping stone, a milestone to really start to build wealth. And so I, I went through, got my college degree, and I’ll never forget when I got my very first post-college degree job and my first paycheck, right? I had to move from Utah. That’s, that’s where I was from is Utah. And my wife and I, we moved to Arizona, had a boss named Rob, and I got that first paycheck. And I remember when I got it, I, I, opened it up. It was back when you got paychecks, right? I opened it up and I looked at that check and I thought to myself, where, where’s all the money?
I kind of flipped the check over a couple times because after insurance and taxes and deductions and moving and all of that, I realized I was making more money as a hustler in college, paying my way through college than I was with a professional job. But I was married now and I had a kid on the way and I felt this mantle of responsibility. And so I thought to myself, you know what? I’m gonna climb the corporate ladder. I’m gonna go from making what I’m making today to making as much money as I possibly can.
And honestly, Ben, as I started climbing the corporate ladder, I didn’t realize it in the moments, but in hindsight, I absolutely realized it. I was making little trade-offs with my life. Bigger promotion, more responsibility, less time at home. Bigger, you know, territory to cover, more traveling, less time with my family. And in the beginning, I thought if I make enough and keep enough, right? I, I was like, okay, I’m just gonna start saving as much money as I can and maybe, maybe I could retire early. That was kind of my goal is I’ll just work as hard as I can.
And I thought I’d retire in my 50s. I’m 46 today. And I’ll never forget about 5 years out of college, my net worth crested $100,000. You know, I didn’t really know what that meant, but I thought, I’m, I’m on track. Something’s working, right? But that was 2007. And in 2008, I learned a couple of lessons that I’m so grateful for. 2008, obviously everyone has their own story, but my net worth fell from over $100,000 to $28,000. And at first I thought I did something wrong.
Right? I thought I did, like, maybe I made the wrong mutual fund. I don’t know. Like, but I was doing everything. I was making big-time sacrifices to make money, keep money, and retire early. And I realized for the first time, if I don’t control what I’m invested in, how could I ever plan on retiring early? But it was the biggest, biggest lesson I learned, Ben. I remember I would look, I looked at my coworkers. These were people that were 20, 30, 40 years ahead of me. And it was kind of a window into my future because I’ll be honest, I didn’t really like the life I was building for myself at that time.
I was making so many trade-offs, thinking when I have enough money, I’ll kind of repair my life and build it back. But I watched those people and man, I remember people specifically breaking down, crying, thinking that they would never retire. And I realized for the first time, that’s me, you know, give it enough time and that’s me 20, 30, 40 years down the road. And that was the first crack in the foundation that I realized I’ve gotta start learning more about money.
And I started going down the rabbit hole that got me into a world of alternative investing. We can talk about that, but that was the first time I realized if I follow do what everyone else is doing but expect a different result. I don’t know, this really smart dude might have said it or not, but Einstein says that’s the definition of insanity. And so I decided to start looking outside of Wall Street into alternative investing. And that’s an exciting, scary, somewhat dangerous place, but it opened my eyes of how the game of money really works.
“Net worth is irrelevant”: why retirement planning must start with cash flow
Monetary Metals:
And a lot of people think, well, Ryan, I’m, you know, on this career path, I may be making good money, I have a strong salary, I put it into my 401k, my company matches, right? My net worth is growing every year. What’s wrong with that kind of mindset of, oh, I’ve got this net worth, it’s growing, I’ve got my 401(k), I’ve got my IRA. What are people missing when they’re using that framework as opposed to your framework?
Ryan D. Lee:
Yeah, man, I’ll tell you what. I think we all have the universal desire when it comes to putting money away for the future. It’s we want to be financially free, whether we, you know, name that retirement or financial freedom. And the one question The one question that never gets addressed in traditional retirement planning is how much income, net spendable, how much net spendable income does fill in the blank, whatever asset produce.
No one answers that question and they don’t answer that question for one of two reasons. Either A, they don’t know and they’re just selling you what they’re told to sell you. And this is even the more nefarious one. B, they do know the answer and they’ll do everything that they can to distract you from asking that question. Because once you understand the answer to that question, you’ll realize why Robert Kiyosaki says savers are losers.
Monetary Metals:
So obviously a lot of our audience might think, yes, I really do want to end up retiring or finding financial freedom, but I’m really afraid less of losing my job or quitting or doing all these things to put myself on this path. What I’m most worried about is retiring too early. I get these assets, I get this net worth, and all of a sudden I’m looking at my spending habits, I’m looking at my assets or my capital in reserve, and I’m realizing this is going to outlive me.
My money is not going to outlive me. I’m going to outlive my money. So how do people get past that fear, or what can people do to set themselves up so they’re not worried about retiring too early and not outliving, or maybe outliving their money?
Ryan D. Lee:
Oh my gosh, Ben, that is the fundamental crux. Like, if you look into retirement planning today, people that are retired, they’re more afraid of running out of money than they are of dying. I mean, that’s legit. And it’s, it comes down to a, a misalignment of what you’re actually optimizing in your investment plan. Think about what Wall Street does. Wall Street wants you to optimize for rate of return and they want you to optimize for net worth. And those two things, they’re, they’re good metrics to look at, but they don’t want you to optimize for cash flow.
And here’s the problem in net worth. You’re in a spend-down plan. You’re hoping that you don’t spend down your asset base before you run out of time. And man, I’ve talked to so many people, so many people over the years that on paper they might have enough money where they’re not going to run out, but they’re scared to death. Everything they save for, they’re scared to spend their money because they don’t want to run out of money. So the simple fix to all of that, it comes down to what we optimize and what we’re measuring for success.
I tell people this all the time. Net worth is irrelevant. It’s meaningless. It’s based on public opinion. What you really want to optimize for when it comes to investing is cash flow. How much income does an asset generate? How much taxes do I have to pay on that income? How long will that income last? And how does it rise with inflation?
Once you start asking and answering that question, the range of opportunities of what you want to actually focus, focus on so you never run out of money, it, it changes massively. And this is why I can say legitimately, I walked away retired in my mid-30s once I adopted the system that we use today. And I’ve, I’m never worried about, of run, about running out of money because I own assets that I don’t sell that generate income instead. It’s a whole different game.
How Jeff Bezos lives on “no income”: borrowing against assets for tax‑free cash
Monetary Metals:
So, let’s use an example of someone maybe that everybody knows, and that’s Jeff Bezos. So, Jeff Bezos, he is—obviously has a quite high net worth, but what strategies does he use that maybe you’ve mimicked to say, hey, I’ve got this maybe illiquid stock that I’m not going to sell because maybe there’s a tax issue or some liquidity issue? So how does Jeff Bezos live his lifestyle when in reality his income or, you know, his reportable or taxable income might be low. What can we learn from this Jeff Bezos strategy to live the lifestyle maybe that people want today?
Ryan D. Lee:
Well, Ben, that’s the best question you could ever ask. I’ll tell you what, you know, because a lot of people want to throw rocks at millionaires and billionaires and say, ah, it’s not fair, they’re bad people, whatever, you know, fill in the blank. But what if we asked a question to ourselves instead and say, how did Jeff Bezos do it? And maybe on a different scale, I don’t need to own Amazon, but could I mimic his behavior to get the same result? And so the biggest detriment, the biggest destroyer of your wealth is going to be taxes.
And I don’t think people too oftentimes recognize that or plan for that inside of their retirement plan. In fact, what most people end up doing, this is what I was doing in the beginning. I was putting all of my money in tax-deferred assets, meaning I was shifting my tax liability to the future. And when we really think about it, if we just want to take the tax code and break it down to its fundamental simplest buckets, there are 3 3 ways you can generate income and how you generate income in one of these 3 buckets will determine how much of the income you actually get to keep.
So you can generate income as earned income, right? And that’s, that’s the same type of income that you’re making as, you know, an employee, right? You’ll pay federal taxes and state taxes at whatever tax rate that, you know, that they, that it is in the future. So if you’re using a 401(k) or an IRA or any tax-deferred asset like that, whatever the tax rates are in the future, which I don’t control, let’s just, let’s just say it’s 30%. 30% of what’s in that account is not actually mine. It’s the IRS’s.
So Jeff Bezos isn’t doing that. The second way to generate income is a capital gain. And capital gain, you can kind of, you can kind of put a roof or a ceiling or a cap on how much taxes you’re going to pay, whether it’s short-term or long-term, but it’s owning assets. It’s then selling those assets and generating an income off of selling assets and paying short-term or long-term capital gains. But still, Anywhere between 10% up to 20% generally is what you’re going to pay in capital gain taxes. But there’s a third way to do it. And this is how Jeff Bezos does it.
And this one, it, you have to go a level deeper. Words have meaning and most people don’t understand what I’m about to say. What Jeff Bezos does is he collateralizes and he borrows against his Amazon stock. Now, on paper, that sounds crazy. Why would Jeff Bezos borrow against his stock? And the easiest way I’ve found to explain this this is, you know, Ben, if Visa sent you a credit card, right? And you went out to your mailbox today and you opened up the letter and there was a credit card and let’s say it had a $30,000 limit on it.
And you tell yourself, hey, I’ve worked hard. I’ve been, you know, doing podcasts. I’ve been, you know, working with all these clients, generating phenomenal results for our people. I’m so—I deserve it. Right? And you open up that card and you put, you rack it up to the limit. You put $30,000 on the card. At the end of the year, you spent technically $30,000 more, right? Do you have to claim that $30,000 as income? No, right? I mean, debt is debt. Now, the problem with putting it on a Visa card is, you know, now you’ve got to pay off the debts.
All Jeff Bezos is doing is he’s using that one understanding. He’s borrowing against an asset that has increasing value. He’s using the increasing value asset to either pay back the debts or just to collateralize the debt indefinitely. Then because he’s borrowing, he pays zero. Taxes, zero taxes. He doesn’t even have to claim it as income. And so on a much, much, much smaller level, that’s what I wanted to duplicate. I want to find a way to own assets that allow me to use leverage debts to use that debt as income and have the assets pay off the debt or collateralize the debt for me. That’s the game of how to generate tax-free income.
Money as time and why bad debt traps you in the rat race
Monetary Metals:
To me, I’ve always kind of seen there’s this spectrum for people who are investors, maybe just at the start of their career. They’re maybe not in debt. They maybe have a strong financial situation, but they’re looking to do something more. That’s where I see kind of a Robert Kiyosaki Rich Dad Poor Dad understanding of here’s how assets work, here’s how cash flow works, here’s how debt can be used for you to kind of leverage your situation. And then maybe on the other side, we’ve got people who maybe don’t have such a strong financial education, maybe they have a low financial IQ, maybe they have trouble with credit card debt or personal debt or mortgage debt.
And for those people, actually paying off debt or doing a a debt snowball might be more helpful. So for you, where is that dividing line where people should start thinking, hey, I’m a little bit better than average when it comes to my financial IQ? I want to upgrade myself. I want financial freedom. I don’t want to be average. What should people be looking at for if they need to decide, hey, am I kind of above the average or do I need to work to get to average?
Ryan D. Lee:
Yeah, I love that. You know, I really believe money is a tool. And just like any tool, like if, if you handed me the a scalpel, I think that’s what it’s called, like a doctor knife, right? If you had to be a scalpel, it’s extremely dangerous in my hands. Like if I came to do surgery on you, Ben, that’s crazy dangerous. But if we hand that same scalpel, that same tool to a doctor, a trained professional, the risk is far, you know, massively mitigated, right? And so it’s the same with money, right?
If you want to get wealthier, you have to raise your financial intelligence and then you can pick up and use that tool of money in an effective way. So ineffective uses of debts are mortgaging your future time. Because let’s take one step back on this, Ben. The, the, the way it’s been easiest for me to start to conceptualize money is I now conceptualize money as time, right?
If I have money in my life today, that’s, that’s a function of I’ve traded time doing something that created value. And as a result, I have money in my account. If I wanna buy my life or my time back, I’ve gotta take that same dollar and I’ve gotta build a stream of cash flow.
I’ve gotta build a stream of income. So now that I know that, if I’m going to mortgage my future, my future production to buy a liability that I have to then pay back, that’s bad debts, right? That’s credit. And that’s why most Americans get trapped in what we can call the proverbial rat race. They mortgage their future, their future production, their future earnings to pay for stuff that doesn’t give them an income. They’ve consumed it already and they’ve got to trade the next 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years of their life paying back the things that they’ve already paid or already consumed.
An investor does it completely opposite. They use the same tool. They just use it in a much smarter way. They use leverage. And here’s the crazy part, the way our economy works, they, they use bank money that doesn’t technically exist. The bank prints it on their behalf to go out and buy an asset that has, you know, economic value to it. They then bring people into that asset who then pay them for the service. Let’s just use rental property. That’s an easy way to say it. They’ll pay rent to live in a rental property.
They take that rent and they pay the bank off and they generate a surplus. And if we really understand what just happened, you’re creating money out of thin air. You’re turning fake dollars into real assets. You’re using those real assets to generate a stream of income that pays the debt off. And if you go—if we go back to the Jeff Bezos example, I now have a way to generate tax-free wealth for the rest of my life. So that’s the biggest difference between debt, bad debt as a consumer, and productive debt used as leverage.
And I’ll I’ll say this one last thing on it, uh, Ben. If I have $1 that I’ve traded my time, effort, and energy for, and I can take that $1 and convert it into 5 working dollars, is it possible that I could take what takes maybe most people 30 or 40 years to have the hope of retiring? Is it possible that I could collapse my timelines and do it in 10 years or less? 100%. Leverage is the key. It is the most powerful tool in all, uh, available finance. It’s also the most dangerous. You’ve got to have the financial intelligence to understand how to use it.
The four wealth forces: taxes, inflation, interest rates, opportunity cost
Monetary Metals:
Talk to us about some of those dangers, some of those wealth destroyers, some of the things that people should be looking out for because they hear leverage, they hear, okay, there’s risk, there’s obviously taxes. Hey, I mean, I don’t want to get in trouble with my taxes. There’s things like inflation that people need to be worried about. What are some of these risks, some of these wealth destroyers that you think investors should be paying attention to?
Ryan D. Lee:
I think there’s 4 of them. Okay, there’s 4 of them. And these are omnipresent for every single person. They’re, they’re present for you, they’re present for me, they’re present for the president, for the president of the United States. It doesn’t matter no matter who you are, the question that you have to ask yourself, are these 4 wealth forces, are they working for you? Are they making you wealthy by, by default, or are they working against you? So I’m just gonna state ’em and we can talk about each one of them, but it’s taxes, it’s inflation, it’s interest rates, and it’s opportunity cost.
And as all of the listeners are listening right now, think about where you put your money. Let’s just use a 401(k), an IRA. If you’re putting your money in an IRA, Taxes are making you poor, right? You’re shifting your taxes to the future. Inflation is making you poor. It doesn’t matter what the stock market is doing. It matters what your net rate of return is after the rate of inflation.
It’s making you poor. Um, interest rates are generally making you poor. This is how consumers work, right? They might earn an 8 to a 10% rate of return in the stock market net, but then they’ll go defer payments on a credit card at the 17% interest rate to finance, you know, their lifestyle today.
So interest rates are working against you. And last but not least, opportunity cost. If I come to the table and say, oh my gosh, there’s a life-changing investment opportunity right here, you probably won’t even be able to see it because all of your money is locked up in something that you can’t touch until 59 and a half.
But on the flip side, if we understand how to build wealth productively in our world today, and I’m going to use real estate just because it’s the easiest thing to conceptualize, but there’s many other ways to do this, right? Um, if I buy an asset like real estate, um, interest rates are working for me. I can borrow money from a bank at a fixed rate and I can generate a far greater rate of return, um, on, on that real estate. So interest rates are working for me.
Opportunity cost is massively working for me because I’m using the bank’s money to buy an asset that’s appreciating. And it’s not really appreciating. As the government prints more money, the price of the asset is going up. So inflation is now working for me as well. As the government prints more money, it just costs more money to buy assets that are in demand, real estate.
And then last but not least, taxes. I mean, I asked this to ChatGPT, so take it for what it’s worth, but ChatGPT said that 40% of the tax code, the US tax code, has to do with real estate. Most people get stuck on the first page of the tax code, which is everything you make is taxable.
And most CPAs only deal with the first 10 pages of the tax code, which is like like, you know, buy a house, put money in an IRA, have some kids, put some money in charity. That’s it. The rest of the tax code, all of the additional thousands of pages are telling you how to not pay taxes. And 40% of the additional pages are around real estate in some form or fashion.
So if I understand how the economy works, I can use those economic forces. And I don’t want to say this simply, but I am going to say it simply, to get wealthy automatically. Inflation makes me wealthy. Taxes make me wealthy. Interest rates make me wealthy. And opportunity costs make makes me wealthy because I understand how the game of money works.
Monetary Metals:
I want you to talk a little bit about that opportunity cost, that level of liquidity that you need and why you need it, right? Because locking up money in a 401(k) or an IRA, well, the point of it is that because you’re a dumb investor, you don’t know what you’re doing, this needs to be locked away from you so that by the time you retire at 65, it’s unlocked and hopefully, you are now there with a cash, you know, or a cash balance for retirement because you wouldn’t know what to do if you invested it yourself.
Why do you think having that liquidity now or currently is so important rather than saying, well, I’ll just trust that 65 years from now, you know, I’ll be able to unlock this capital and that’ll be the better way to do it?
Ryan D. Lee:
Yeah, I’ll tell you what. And we don’t—we don’t have to go down this rabbit hole. But if you’re giving your money to someone else, do they know what to do with it? I mean, seriously, could anyone have predicted the loss in the market this year? And if they didn’t predict it, do they even know what they’re doing? That’s the real game is, are you an investor or are you a speculator?
And if you’re a speculator, you’re just hoping that you’re doing something that over a long enough time horizon makes you money, but you have no control over the middle. But let’s come back to, let’s come back to this idea of liquidity because this is radically important when it comes to leverage. And the way I like to think about this, Ben, is, um, there’s a book, uh, it’s, it’s written by Nassim Taleb. Um, it’s Antifragile, phenomenal book, Antifragile.
And I use this metaphor a lot when I talk about using leverage. Leverage is one side of a barbell. Barbell. And if I went to a gym today and I’m going to try to bench press—let’s say I can bench press, I don’t know, 200 pounds, but I stack all 200 pounds on just one side of the barbell, right?
What’s going to happen when I try to lift that thing up? It’s going to fall on my face, right? But if I put 100 pounds on one side and 100 pounds on the other side, now I can lift the barbell because I’ve evenly distributed the weights. This is exactly the counter to leverage. Leverage is permission to print money, to own assets, to convert $1 into 5 working dollars.
But the permission slip to use leverage is liquidity. Period, bar none. Because in the middle of using leverage, I know that assets go up in value or go up in price because the government’s printing more money. And I also know anyone who tells you otherwise, they’re lying to you or they’ve never actually invested. I also know there’s volatility in the middle, right? There’s vacancy, there’s make-ready, there’s things that are going to come up.
And if I just double down on leverage and I have no liquidity, I’m forced into a selling position at the worst possible time. But liquidity allows me to responsibly use leverage and let time, which is the greatest wealth creator, let time make me wealthy. And anyone who’s bought real estate, anyone, right?
You ask them, how did you do it? They’re like, I bought real estate and I still own real estate. So it’s time that made them wealthy. Anyone who’s failed in real estate, they bought real estate and they were illiquid. And then time didn’t work for them. They were forced out. They had to sell at a loss. And they’re like, real estate sucks. It’s not real estate, it’s you, right? It’s you have had the financial IQ and you have to have liquidity, which counterbalances the leverage that you’re going to use.
1971 rule change and why savers are losers in today’s dollar system
Monetary Metals:
Ryan, obviously you mentioned the time, this power of compound interest, right? Time working for you versus working against you is so powerful. But what, what changed in the past? You know, my grandparents, your grandparents, they had really simple jobs. They earned a wage, they put it in the bank, the bank gave them a good interest rate. Interest rate, and then they retired off of that. They had a CD that was super safe.
Things were super simple back in the day. Why is it today things are so complicated? And to get to this level of retirement or financial freedom or financial independence requires so much work and actually requires you to increase your financial IQ, where in times past, really anyone could figure out how to retire because it was so simple.
Ryan D. Lee:
Oh man. And Ben, you’re—I love, love, love that you’re actually talking about it this way. Because the way I like to think about money is money is a game, right? It’s a game of life. We’re trading our life to try to get enough money to buy our life back.
And if I don’t understand the rules of any game, whether it’s basketball, Monopoly, or whatever it is, I’m going to lose the game to someone who does understand the rules. And here’s the crazy part. The rules of money change. They legitimately changed. And they changed back in 1971. And when I say that, most people are like, ah, Ryan, you’re going back to 1970. My grandparents lived in the ’80s and it worked for them.
So that must not have been true. So let me tell you this in 1971, and this is where what you guys do is so crazy important in pre-1971, every dollar in circulation, every piece of paper was backed by a real asset. And you know what that real asset was? It was gold, right? It was redeemable for gold. And what happened up to 1971 is it kept the printing press, the injection and the creation of new money It kept it in check with economic output, right?
And so you could save, literally you could save your way to financial freedom in the ’40s, the ’50s, the ’60s, because you could put money somewhere and pull it out at some point in the future. And the biggest advantage you had is it had relatively the same purchasing power. You could buy the same goods and services.
Now, from 1971 to the year 2000, the rules did change. We took—our government went off the gold standard and they started printing on average. If you just look at the average between that time, it was about 5% new money injected into the economy every single year over that, you know, over that 30-year period of time. But what didn’t change, or what kind of, what kind of masked that a little bit, was this is also when all of the companies went off pensions.
They went off pensions and everyone just shoved their money into the market. And so the market went on just a phenomenal, crazy run from 1980 to 2000. The average S&P return was 14.2%. Downtimes were like days. They weren’t years. But then in the year 2000, everything’s like, all of the cracks in the system started to get exposed.
And if we just look at where we’re at today, there was more money created in between the years 2000 and 2022 than in the history of our country, in the history of our country. And so the biggest rule change that happened in 1971, and it was masked, it was, it was overshadowed by all of the money flooding into the market.
And an artificial rise in market values, uh, because companies went off pensions and went into 401(k)s. But now it’s fully exposed. Savers are losers. Those economic forces are working against you. And the biggest rule change that makes it incredibly difficult today, unless you raise your financial intelligence, is inflation. And inflation is a silent tax that you and I, we didn’t get to vote on it.
Like the last president, you know, Trump, he didn’t say he was going to start printing $40 billion a month again. We didn’t get a chance to say stop doing that. He—we didn’t get a chance to say, hey, are you going to go to war and print more money? We, we sit back and our monetary supply is getting increased and the, the purchasing power of our dollar is going down.
And that, that just comes back to the idea it’s almost mathematically impossible when you factor in inflation, let alone tax taxes, when you factor in inflation, it’s legitimately nearly mathematically impossible for you to work hard enough, save enough to be able to retire. So if I simplified everything we talked about today down into one statement, here’s what I would say.
If our dollars are debts, if our dollars are literally debts, then your objective as an investor is to convert fake dollars into real assets. Fake dollars into real asset. And I’m just gonna say a real asset is only something that allows you to have inflation, taxes, opportunity cost, and interest rates working for you. If you don’t have those things working for you, you don’t have a real asset.
Gold fixed income: inflation, taxes, and gold interest vs bank interest
Monetary Metals:
I totally agree. And here’s where I get to discuss gold and gold fixed income products, ‘cause I think they actually meet exactly what you’re talking about. First is obviously inflation, right? If you look at inflation as this just increase in currency, coming from the federal government, gold obviously has some monetary response to that.
Obviously with taxes, we have a whole video on taxes with over 50,000 views talking about how gold interest income, gold yield income is taxed. So, you can watch that as well. And then of course there’s the interest rate portion, which I think is quite fascinating. The federal funds rate is completely disconnected from the gold interest rate. They’re completely separate, right? Because if someone were to offer you a 0% yield on your gold, you might as well keep it in storage, right?
You wouldn’t want to risk it on lease for 0% yield. But at banks, banks might offer you 0.001% interest, and unfortunately many people take that, right? And then the last one would, of course—so we have inflation, interest rates, taxes, and then the last one was, um, uh, opportunity cost. Opportunity cost. Last one was opportunity cost.
Well, in the past, having a high-yield savings account or a bond was a way to say, well, why would I own gold? It doesn’t pay a yield. There’s this opportunity cost to gold. Now it’s completely flipped. Now when gold has a yield of 4% or 5%, and now you’re holding Treasury bonds, which of course have to—they have a whole separate product called a TIPS, a TIPS bond, a Treasury Inflation Protected Security, right?
They’re admitting that non-TIPS bonds have to fight against inflation, right now the opportunity cost is the other way around. Do I really want to hold dollars and face the opportunity cost of instead having a real asset like gold and a gold yield? So Ryan, now I want to take us to a—
Ryan D. Lee:
Can I say something about that, Ben, really quick? Because man, when I, when I met you, Ben, and met what you guys are doing at Monetary Metals, you—man, I’m so excited to be working with you because here’s the way I’ve always looked at gold.
I’ve always owned gold because the biggest the biggest risk that all of us face right now, all of us, it doesn’t matter if it’s in real estate, if it’s in the stock market, if it’s in bonds, it doesn’t matter. The biggest risk that all of us face is transactions are done in dollars and those little pieces of paper suck, man. They’re getting less and less valuable, right? And so I’ve always held gold as a hedge. So if I think about the barbell, you know, I’m using leverage.
I have assets on one side and then I have liquidity, but I also have hedges on the other side. That’s the counter risk that I’m trying to produce. And so a hedge, the purpose of a hedge is to maintain value. It’s not to increase in value. It’s just to maintain the value. And so I’m trying to hedge the risk of the dollar with tangible precious metals.
Now you brought in an opportunity to say, okay, not only could I hedge the risk of the dollar, but I could also earn a return on that hedge. And that return is denominated in the very thing that I’m trying to hold, which is more gold. I love, I love, love, love what you guys are bringing in. To the table.
Turning gold from a simple hedge into an asset that pays you in gold
Monetary Metals:
Yeah, in many ways, I think there’s another analogy with an insurance product, right? Everyone buys insurance because they need this hedge against whether it’s, you know, a medical risk, you know, a life risk, a working risk, an employment risk. You know, your house catches on fire, your car gets into an accident. Everyone has this insurance product.
But what if that insurance product, rather than just hedging some bad outcome, could actually produce something for you? It had some absolute utility outside of just the insurance. And that’s where our gold fixed income products work. Not only do you own the physical gold, but there’s an income, there’s a cash flow being produced also in physical gold. So you get the hedging properties plus some additional utility as well.
Ryan D. Lee:
I love that. And that, you know, we haven’t hit on this piece of our investment philosophy. So inside of what we do, it’s exactly that, right? So my objective, I really believe if you want to achieve financial freedom in 10 years or less, you need an income machine, which is your ability to solve problems, create value, but you need a capital machine.
I need a place to store store my capital, stage it, and position it. And I need to protect my capital from destroyers—taxes, predators, uh, inflation, um, lawsuits, those type of things. And I use overfunded high cash value life insurance. So it’s taking the benefits of, of insurance but flipping it on its head and having a monetary benefit. I pay as much premium as I can for the least amount of death benefit. It’s called overfunding.
And all of that extra capital It now sits in a private contract that grows tax-free. It gives me a rate of return at about 5%. So it’s not the way I’m increasing my capital. It’s keeping me at concurrent with inflation. It’s tax-free. It’s safe. It’s not associated with the market. And then the biggest advantage is it opens up a private line of credit.
Ryan D. Lee:
Whatever cash I’ve got in that account, I can borrow money on a private basis from the insurance company. I use that to go out and buy all of my real estate assets. This is how I grow my wealth. Wealth now. But then rather than letting all my profits sit in a bank or sit on a balance sheet, I scrape the equity, I scrape the cash, I scrape everything, and I put it back in this private contract. And so it’s just making money, keeping money, multiplying my money, and then building up this massive reservoir of cash in an overfunded life insurance policy. Then I protect that cash with A, life insurance, and B, gold.
Monetary Metals:
Ryan, I want to get to a rapid-fire section with you. I’ll ask you questions from all over the map. You can of course answer with one word, or as you want. And you’re right, as an American, you can always take the fifth and pass.
Ryan D. Lee:
Let’s go.
Monetary Metals:
All right. So let’s start with a fun one. Rich Dad, Poor Dad. What’s the one thing you’ve learned from the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki that you want to share with our audience?
Ryan D. Lee:
Oh my gosh, man. Those lessons came in tiers for me. The first tier was like savers are losers. That was really hard for me because I’m a good saver. I’ve always been a good saver. I’m not afraid of working and saving money. But understanding the math that we talked about today, that was lesson number 1.
Lesson number 2 for me was the rich don’t work for money. And again, that was a really hard lesson for me to learn because I work hard. I don’t—I’m not afraid of hard work, but the rich work smarter, not necessarily harder. It doesn’t mean they don’t work hard, but they convert their dollars into assets. And the last one was debt is money.
Again, man, when I first learned that, like, it just—it broke my brain in every possible way until I saw how the wealthy generate their income. And we talked about that today. So I had 3 massive lessons from Rich Dad Poor Dad, and it came in tiers as my—as my progression in raising my financial IQ grew.
Monetary Metals:
Let’s talk about that financial IQ. What is the one lesson you can give today that you think would quickly get people up that financial IQ ladder where maybe just something they need to hear to gain knowledge, to gain understanding, or to get them on the path to gaining knowledge to increase their financial IQ?
Ryan D. Lee:
Yeah, you know what’s—here’s—this is going to be a counter, a counter way, but it’s going to really come back to the purpose. I don’t think anyone actually really wants money. No one wants money. We don’t want the dollars. We don’t want money in our bank account. Of course, we want the feelings and the opportunities and what we can exchange it for.
That’s what we really want. So the fastest way to increase your financial IQ is get clear on what you want, right? Most people, they’ve never sat down long enough to define what the heck they want. They have this arbitrary idea. That one day when I’m 65, I’ll figure it out then. And in, in the middle, they just kind of mundanely trade their life, hoping that one day they have enough money. The fastest path to start raising your financial intelligence is you gotta give money meaning. And the way you give money meaning is get clear on what you want and why you want it.
Once you are clear on those two things, then you can look at your life today and say, the only difference between the version of me that I have to be to get what I want and the version of me today is is I’ve got to become a better steward over my money. Money is the tool, and when you’re clear on why it matters, then it becomes a lot easier to raise your financial IQ.
Monetary Metals:
Let’s talk about this exercise sometimes called a reverse obituary, popularized by our friend Morgan Housel, where he says, okay, imagine people are reading your obituary. They’re saying what happened in your life. You know, are you really going to think about, well, his net worth was XYZ, or, oh, you know, he had this many real estate properties.
Really what you want is some, you know, he was a good dad or a good husband or a good father, right? And so can you explain to us in your reverse obituary exercise, what are some of the things that people should be thinking about? Hey, this is what I want out of my life, and I’m not doing it for a net worth or, you know, a certain number of units. I’m really doing it because I have this purpose in life. What is your reverse obituary?
Ryan D. Lee:
Man, I love that. And I think there’s a really good book written about this topic written by Bronnie Ware, and it’s The Five Regrets of the Dying. And in her book, she talks about, she spent time in hospice and, you know, transitioned people from living to, to not living. And after thousands of people, she had 5, 5 regrets of the dying.
And most of those regrets are around the opportunities not seized in relationships, right? It’s, I wish I would’ve been, been a better husband, father, provider, you know, neighbor, community member. And so those are given, I want those on my tombstone for sure. But I think the biggest one that stands out to me outside of, you know, success inside of the home is success with my unique God-given talents.
I want to be known for someone who is willing to take the risk to chase their dreams, you know, go all in, play all out. And in chasing your dreams, you’re gonna lose. You’re gonna not win every single time. That’s part of chasing your dreams, right? And I think that’s the biggest thing I wanna be known for is someone who dreamed boldly and acted nobly in pursuit of living a purposeful life. Driven life.
Monetary Metals:
Next one I want to ask you, it’s about net worth versus cash flow. So many people focus on, oh, what’s my net worth? Is my net worth increasing? And then of course, there’s this whole other school of thought. Now you should be focusing on your cash flow. What’s your argument for focusing on cash flow versus net worth?
Ryan D. Lee:
Yeah, it was really simple for me, right? I mean, the story I told you earlier today, I had $100,000 net worth and I did a thought exercise when I, when I, after I lost all of that money. I started going down the rabbit hole of alternative investing, and the whole idea was how many days forward does your money last?
And with net worth, let’s just assume I didn’t lose all that money. Let’s assume I had $100,000. And let’s also assume I could get access to my money, which I couldn’t because it was all stuck in a 401(k). But after taxes, I could only support my lifestyle for about 7 months. So after 5 years of trading my life, I only had enough net worth to support about 7 months of expenses, which meant after 7 months my net worth is gone. I’m back to trading time for money.
But when I flipped that entire game to assets that generate income, I remember when I hit $2,000 worth of income, like cash flow. It wasn’t life-altering in the sense that, oh my gosh, you know, I’m financially free. But I now had a scoreboard. I’m like, I’m 20% of the way there.
If I just do this a couple more times, I can go from $2,000 to $4,000, from $4,000 to $8,000. And from 8 to 12. That gave me a game that I could track. I could measure. I knew when I was financially free.
And I’ll never forget, Ben, when I quit my job, like when I quit my corporate job, I didn’t intend to quit on the day I quit. My boss kind of came to me with some, a list of demands. And as he was telling me the list of demands in the back of my mind, I was adding up all my cash flow over and over and over again.
And I realized I had enough income at the time to cover my mortgage, to put food on the table and to keep the lights on. On. I wasn’t financially free in the sense I could travel across the world. But when I quit my job, I quit because that cash flow was a doorway of options. That’s what cash flow is.
Monetary Metals:
Let’s talk about financial freedom for a second. Is it a destination where, oh, I’ve hit it, here’s financial freedom? Is it a lifestyle? Is it something different? What is financial freedom?
Ryan D. Lee:
Man, I love that question, Ben. That’s probably the best question that you’ve asked me so far. You know, the retirement paradigm that people live under, it’s a destination. Trade enough time, wait enough time, hope to save enough. And I don’t know who came up with 65, but it’s when I’m 65, magically it’s gonna work, right? That’s a destination. Uh, financial freedom is a lifestyle.
And since I quit my job, I’ve raised and increased my lifestyle over and over again, but I’ve stayed in congruence with financial freedom. If I wanna raise my expenses or, or simply the definition of financial freedom is income greater than expenses, passive income greater than expenses.
So over the years, as my wife and I have decided to travel more, as our kids have grown up, as we’ve decided to expand, you know, the home that we live in, we’ve always come back to the table and said, how many more assets, how much more cash flow do we need to acquire to perpetually stay financially free? If we have more income coming in passively than the expenses going out, then we’re living financially free. Our assets are paying for our life. So for that, it’s a lifestyle, and you can consciously and intentionally upgrade your lifestyle based on having more income coming in.
The four ways to make money from an investment and why real estate wins
Monetary Metals:
All right, maybe here’s a fun one for you. Obviously, a lot of this alternative investing focuses on assets like life insurance, real estate, gold passive income. What are some other alternatives? Are there stock investors who use stock dividends to try to do the same kind of passive income machine? What are some of the assets that you tend to focus on and why? What are some that you tend to avoid and why?
Ryan D. Lee:
Yeah, this is a phenomenal question. This isn’t always a rule of thumb, but I’ll just tell you, there are 4 ways to make money when you invest. The best form. And you can start to look at every single investment and you can choose which of, you know, investment I’m gonna put my money in based on the 4 ways to make money. So think about this, right?
Let’s put 401(k)s and real estate side by side. You can make money when you invest through appreciation, right? You buy an asset, you hold an asset, and time increases the sell of that asset. Now, I don’t control that, and that’s highly bound to time. So appreciation’s one. Number 2, I can make money when I invest in cash flow.
I have an income stream coming in independent of the appreciation. Number 3, I can make money with real legitimate tax advantages. And number 4 is kind of a dual, right? It’s, it’s, it’s amortization and/or leverage. Amortization is a real rate of return and it’s only available when I use leverage. So if I look at buying something like stock, I really only make money in one pillar, appreciation.
Maybe there’s some cash flow, maybe there’s a dividend, so I have 2 the, uh, 2 of the 4 pillars, but I’m taking more risk because I only have 1 or 2 ways to make money. Whereas if I buy something like real estate, right, I got all 4 pillars. I’m actually taking less risk and getting a higher return.
If my cash flow dries up for a month or 2, I’m still making money with amortization, with appreciation, with tax advantages. If my appreciation—if the real estate values go down, I sit back and I collect my rent checks. So the, the way I look at decision-making when it comes to investing is how can I get the best outcome for the least amount of risk? And by default, as you start looking at all of the different investments that allow you to get all 4 pillars, there’s not many of them.
So I narrowly define where I invest my money, and if I go outside of the 4 pillars, I’m doing it for some conscientious reason where I’m willing to take a little bit more risk to get maybe some asymmetric, asymmetric upside. But I know I’m taking more risk because I’ve eliminated pillars.
Monetary Metals:
All right, let’s talk now to one of our viewers or one of our audience members. Maybe they’re listening to this, they’re 55, they’re 65. They say, yeah, this is great if I’d started in my 20s or 30s by, you know, having this overfunded life insurance, and then I use equity from real estate and yada yada yada cash flow. Yeah, Ryan, I hear you, but the issue is I’m 55 years old, I’m 65 years old, I’m either about to retire or currently retired. This doesn’t apply to me. What do you say to that person?
Ryan D. Lee:
Yeah, that’s a phenomenal question. Like, the thing I would say to that person is, if you retire without a system to put either an asset or a contract behind your dollars, you’re not really retiring. You’re going to be so scared and nervous about your future.
And so the, the second best time to start anything is right now. Yeah, it would have been way better had you started in your 30s. I’d probably say, Ben, the majority of the people that we work with, they’re in their late 40s mid-50s, right? They followed all of the quote-unquote rules. They get to the point where they’re thinking about retirement and they realize, I don’t know if it’s going to work. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to retire. I’ve got a decent nest egg, maybe $1 million, a couple million dollars.
I’ve got some equity in a home. But man, I’m worried about everything. I’m worried about the stocks. I’m worried about the markets.
I’m worried about interest rates. I’m worried about taxes. There’s a really quick and easy way to shift everything that’s working against you to working in your favor. And that’s, I think, really what we center on.
Is we center on a game plan. It’s not about adding more products to the—to your portfolio for the sake of having more products. It’s about having the right mix of products in the right combination to get the right outcome. And that’s not what anyone sells on the marketplace. They say, hey, come buy this, come buy that. We actually sell a game plan. We show you the right assets in the right quantities in the right order to get the right outcome.
Monetary Metals:
Let’s say someone’s listening to this right now. Maybe they’ve listened to a lot of YouTube videos. They like learning about investing. They like listening about gold, the markets, or volatility. But now they say, okay, I’ve gotten enough education. I like this guy Ryan. This guy Ben’s pretty smart, but what’s an actual step that I can take today? I’m going to turn off this YouTube video after I finished subscribing. I want to actually do something actionable today. What would you advise someone to actually think, hey, this is an actionable step that you can do right now?
Ryan D. Lee:
Yeah, man, probably two things, and I bet you and I are going to have a similar answer on this. You know, my life started changing when I did put down the books and I started doing doing. Now, that’s also a scary thing because a book is phenomenal, a podcast is phenomenal, a YouTube video is phenomenal. It’s—it can get you directionally and going in the right direction.
But man, I guarantee you, the second you take a couple of steps, you’re going to butt up against everything that you knew, and you’re going to get to a point of blind spot. You don’t know what to do next. And that’s a little bit of a dangerous place to be, especially if you inject leverage into the equation. Where my life started to transform is when I started associating with people who’d actually done everything I wanted to do.
Life got so much easier when I started looking for the who solution rather than the how solution. Because when I found people that did what I want to do, I just said, how did you do it? And they’d tell me a couple things and I’ll go do it.
And I’ll be like, I’m stuck. What should I do next? And they’ll be like, oh, when I had this, this is how I did it. I’m like, okay, great. But I’m stuck again. What do I do next? Right? I mean, that’s, that’s the best thing is get around people that are doing, that have achieved the things that you want to achieve. And two things really interesting happen.
Number one, your belief skyrockets cuz you realize they’re average everyday people just like you and me. They just have a different playbook. So you realize if they can do it, you can as well. And number two, your risk massively plummets because you can avoid pitfalls before you ever step into them based on real world experience of someone who’s already navigated through ’em.
Monetary Metals:
All right. How about a fun one? Give us a nugget for our audience. What’s something that one of your mentors has taught you that you have thought, wow, this is absolutely invaluable?
Ryan D. Lee:
Hmm. I’ll tell you what, man, and this is a hard one for people to hear, but I’ll never forget my first mentor in the game of real estate. I went out and I bought 3 properties after reading Rich Dad Poor Dad. And man, after 3 properties, I almost like melted into a puddle in the corner of a room because I realized real estate’s a whole different game and leverage is a dangerous beast. And I remember I, for the first time, I hired someone and I hired someone to coach me, mentoring me and guide me. Me.
And the first thing he told me was this. He said, you cannot lose if you do not quit. And I wanted to quit. I mean, it got too hard. And think about your dreams. Like if you’re clear on what you want, hard is required. It’s the hero’s journey. Now I’m not, I’m not gonna say it has to be extremely hard, but you’re gonna have to face limiting beliefs. You’re gonna have to do things that you haven’t done up to this point in order to get what you want tomorrow, which is different than what you have today.
And if you’re doing something following a real principle, a real economic principle, you cannot lose if you do not quit. I really believe the majority of the people who tried and failed and then quit, they’re the ones that are pointing the fingers at everyone else saying it doesn’t work. It’s too risky. It’s dangerous.
And it’s just risky because they weren’t committed enough to see themselves through the risk, to see themselves through the challenge and to come out the other side with financial IQ, right? That’s really how you forge it is by doing things, facing risk, solving challenges, and sometimes falling flat on your face. Picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and saying, I’m never going to do that again.
Monetary Metals:
All right. Perfect segue. What are some of the risks that you faced, maybe overcome? Give us kind of a cheat code saying, hey, listen, I remember that guy Ryan on that podcast. He made this exact same mistake. I’m not going to make it today, and I’m going to skip that whole falling on my face flat.
Ryan D. Lee:
Yeah, I’ll tell you two of them. Number one was we’ve talked a lot about real estate today. And I’m going to kind of now go back on everything I said and tell you one thing that I learned in the game of real estate. I don’t like real estate. I mean, it’s kind of funny, right?
I read Rich Dad Poor Dad and I’m like, oh my gosh, I got to go out and do real estate. I went and bought 3 properties. And before I knew it, I had a part-time job in real estate. I had to find properties. I had to rehab them. I had to renovate them. I had to manage tenants. Ben, I’m the worst, man.
If you rent a property from me and you call me up and say, I’m not going to pay my rent and cry on the phone, I’ll just cry with you. And I’ll be like, oh, it sucks. I understand. Don’t worry about it. I got you. Like it was 3 properties and I realized I’m stuck, I’m lost. I don’t know how to go any further than this. And so the biggest lesson I had to learn in this whole process was financial freedom is a function of 2 things, not just 1.
I knew financial freedom was a function of cash flow greater than expenses. What I had to learn by trying to do all the work myself was it’s a function of time. It’s how much time do I own? So today, Ben, as, as opposed to those 3 properties where I was doing all the work myself, myself.
Today I own thousands of doors, right? But I do very little of the work myself. I’m the CEO over, over a portfolio. And as a CEO, I know what success means. I know how to hire people to do the things that I need them to do. And I started doing that on property number 4. Like, there are ways that you can get into real estate and own the asset, own the upside, but hire out and offset the middle ground work. You don’t want a job in real estate, 99% of you.
So that’s number Number 2, and I’m going to go back and just re-edify the lesson that we already shared today, because if anyone missed it, it’s this, it’s liquidity. Liquidity is your permission slip to use leverage. Leverage is the only way, period. There is no other way.
You will never retire in 10 years or less unless you use leverage either in your income or in your investments or a combination of the two. You’ll never achieve it.
But if you’re willing to raise your financial IQ and start to use leverage, then what is possible for everyone, financial freedom in 10 years or less, now becomes possible for you. But as you’re using leverage, the only way that you can do this sustainably is with liquidity. Like if I achieve financial freedom today, but I’m bankrupt tomorrow, was it worth it?
No, it was stupid, right? Financial freedom is a function of sustainability. It’s financially free today and 10 years from now and 30 years from now and 50 years from now. So liquidity is the key and the permission be sensitive to leverage. Those would be the two primary lessons I have had to learn the hard way. Um, and now they’re tried and true rules for me inside of everything I do.
Monetary Metals:
I want to ask you as our last rapid-fire question about this passive nature and this time nature of the passive income, right? Because obviously you can have an active cash flow income that’s greater than your expenses, but almost more importantly is the passive nature of the income, right? And that your time is not being sucked away this time is money, obviously, if you’re spending every waking moment dealing with tenants and termites and headaches, right, then that’s not so much of a passive opportunity. So, speak as kind of our last rapid-fire answer on the nature of how important is it to win your time back, not just have your assets paying for your expenses.
Ryan D. Lee:
It’s everything. There’s no other metric that matters more than that. Um, that is financial freedom. And at the core, if we can just simplify the entire conversation down on money, money. Let’s go back to where we started. Money is time, and you don’t want money, you want time.
And so your objective is trade time for money in your active pursuits. I don’t care how you’re doing it, right? Podcasting, doctor, lawyer, janitor, business owner, doesn’t matter. Find your talents, find problems in the world, go solve them and make money. But you have to find a way to convert active income into passive income. And we’ve talked through a pretty specific framework of how to do that today. But if you don’t convert active income into passive income, you’re stuck.
You’re never free. And freedom is a function of owning and controlling the one non-renewable resource that we all have. It’s our time. Time is what matters most.
Ryan’s playbook: retire in 10 years or less and move to the “ownership economy”
Monetary Metals:
Ryan, we have obviously loved having you on the podcast, but I know people are going to want more. They’re going to want to learn the exact game plan, the exact steps. They want to learn the game of money. So, talk to us about Wealth Outside Wall Street and how people can get connected with you.
Ryan D. Lee:
I’ll tell you what, man. Um, Ben, we just, uh, and I’ll throw it up here on the screen. Um, I’m honored. I’m honored because some of my mentors, after doing this for 10 years and helping thousands of clients, um, I was able to write a book. And, uh, this book is the playbook. It is the manual. It’s Retire in 10 Years or Less, and it’s how to generate six figures of tax-free income for life, putting into play everything we’ve talked about today—how we use gold as part of this process, how we use assets, how we use tax strategy, inflation, interest rates. It’s all in there.
So that’s probably the best way to learn more about what we’ve talked about. If you go to retire in 10, the number, and Retirein10Years.com, I give out a free copy of the audiobook. I give out a free copy of the digital book. You can buy the book. It is literally a playbook. And then we created an online learning platform with it, complete with calculators, complete with assessments. And you can go in and see, are you operating—we didn’t talk about this, but are you operating what I call the dependency economy where you’re dependent on economic forces and hoping with your fingers crossed, or are you operating in the ownership economy?
And it’s really simple, Ben. It’s really simple. Raise your financial intelligence, understand how the game of money works, and get in the ownership economy. And anybody can do it. Retire in 10 years or less. It’s not a marketing slogan, it’s reality. If you’re willing to take the steps necessary.
Monetary Metals:
Ryan, it’s been absolutely fascinating. I want to end with a final question, which I ask all my guests. What’s a question I should be asking all future guests of the Gold Exchange Podcast?
Ryan D. Lee:
Mm, man, here’s the number one thing I don’t think people understand: the difference between, um, the difference between money and assets. And so you guys bring real assets to the table. What I would ask them is, what purpose does gold serve in a wealth portfolio?
Like, wealth and money are two different things. And I think that’s the number one thing people were so used to. Everything are dollars, and you know, it’s just currency. It’s money coming in and money going out. Out, but no one talks about wealth. And wealth is a function of assets that retain value, and assets like you guys bring to the table, which is gold.
So, and probably most of your listeners understand that, maybe they do. I’m curious if most of the economic heads out there understand it, because very—so many people, they, they don’t, they don’t think gold is really anything to, to be worried about. Like, it’s all about put your money in paper assets, paper stocks.
Monetary Metals:
Real wealth are real For those interested in earning real wealth, real passive income paid in gold, they can check out Monetary-Metals.com. Ryan, it’s been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today.
Ryan D. Lee:
Heck yeah, Ben.