The 5 Biggest Wealth Destroyers | Don't Do This.

hey everybody welcome back to whiteboard finance my name is Marco and I'm here to help you master your money and build your wealth in today's video I want to talk about the five biggest wealth destroyers that will actually end up hurting your chances of reaching Financial Independence or Building Wealth overall um so some of this stuff will apply to you before and after you're wealthy uh so make sure you pay attention let's get into it so typically you know my videos I present a lot of facts figures charts data um that way we're not just

kind of having a conversation but in this video I actually do want to skew more towards having a conversation because a lot of you need to hear this let's start with number one so wealth killer number one is trying to get rich quickly so there's a lot of stuff especially in Bull markets that entices you to fomo into it uh fomo just stands for fear of missing out uh these could be stocks highflying tech stocks like Nvidia or Tesla for example uh or you can get into crypto uh when I say crypto I'm not saying

Bitcoin I'm separating Bitcoin from crypto um but you see a lot of people posting these ridiculous gains and you get that itch and you have to you know fomo into these trades right you don't even know what you're buying you don't even have a thesis you don't even do any research on it you just saw influencer number one two and three posted on uh X or Twitter or YouTube or social media and you're like I need to get in on this right and a lot of times nine times out of 10 those things don't hold

value over time or you're buying literally at the top um because now you're finally stting to hear about it so these are almost uh aen to a lottery ticket that's what I like to compare these two um and a good healthy study would be to figure out the future value of money that you just potentially lost by foming into these things uh so say for example you find the next highflying uh Tech stock or the next highflying crypto right um some of these things may or may not pay off so I'm not telling you not

to do this um but what I'm saying is if you end up losing this money that you invested uh let's say it's $11,000 let's say it's $110,000 I would do an exercise of understanding what the future value of that money is that you just lost if you were to put that into something you know quote unquote safer like an index fund or an ETF which is what I've been teaching on this channel for many many years so do that exercise all you have to do is find out an Roi calculator online and you can figure

out how much that money cost you in the future compounded at a certain uh compound annual growth rate uh 10 20 30 years from now so with all of these five wealth Killers I'm going to finish them with how to fix this so my fix for this of getting rich quick is investing in ETFs and index funds and also having a diversified portfolio um so what I like to do is I like to barbell invest so if you picture a barbell uh it has a weight on one end the handle and the grip in the

middle and then a weight on the other that's typically how I invest so on one side you have super conservative Investments uh such as cash T bills high yield savings accounts or things that you know um not know but are pretty confident that will go up over time at a decent rate uh nothing in the Middle where you're going to get killed and then uh high risk on the other side of the barbell um if you are going to fomo into something you don't really understand or uh do a quote unquote lottery ticket keep that

to maybe 1 to 5% of your net worth okay that's that should be the other side of the barbell so ETFs and index funds and a diversified portfolio uh when I say Diversified portfolio think of a pizza with slices only have the amount of slice or weight of your net worth 1 to 5% that you're willing that to go to zero that you're willing to lose make sense okay wealth Destroyer number two is being house poor this is a huge one and I don't see a lot of people talking about this buying too much house

is possibly one of the worst things that you can possibly do because you're locking yourself in for a very long time if you plan to live there unless you can sell it you know within a certain number of years right and hope that you um after commissions broker fees all that stuff are actually making out so I wouldn't want to take that risk on so I would just stick to certain criteria in the beginning to not buy too much house a lot of this comes from Keeping Up Appearances which we'll talk about later in this

video but you have to realize guys house costs they go up exponentially okay uh bigger property bigger property taxes bigger house bigger roof bigger floor plan uh two HVAC systems all that stuff more maintenance uh bigger house more square footage depending on where you live more home insurance right uh so all these things go up exponentially maintenance repairs M uh all those things that's why buying a modest home that you can easily pay for um and I'll give you the how to fix this how to uh avoid being house poor here in a second but

just remember that with um bigger houses come bigger problems right just more maintenance so how do we fix this uh to avoid being house poor I recommend you try and keep all of your housing expenses under 30% of your net uh take-home pay okay this is after taxes uh when people give you these numbers on uh 28% of your gross and this and that who cares what your gross is okay it's how much money you bring in so when I say 30% of your net I'm not only talking about the mortgage I'm talking about everything

the pititi payments interest taxes Insurance maintenance all that stuff try and keep that under 30% of your annual income and you should be good okay number three on the wealth destroyers are your friends and your lifestyle okay so I live by the Mantra you are the average of the five people that you hang out with the most uh if you hang out with successful entrepreneurs there's a good chance that you may become a successful entrepreneur if you hang out with people that are college educated with steady jobs there's a good chance that you'll fall in

that group too if you hang out with five people that um binge eat pizza and popcorn and sit on the couch and play video games all day there's a good chance that you'll become that too right right not always but typically tends to be true birds of a feather um so childhood friends versus new friends this is a personal theory of mine uh and you'll see why when I get to the how to fix this part of this section so with childhood friends they already know who you are for the most part right if you

grew up playing soccer with uh friends that were 5 years old till you're till you're 25 years old 35 years old they already know who and what you are right you don't necessarily need to impress these people however what I see happening with new friends whether this is getting into a new College new career you're moving somewhere new part of the country uh you feel like you need to get in with new friends and with those new friends they may not know who you were as a kid so they're expecting certain things of you uh

whether it's the car you drive the neighborhood you live in how much money you make your career whatever um so just dep just be very careful when picking your new friends your new hobbies you don't have to be as strict on yourself with childhood friends because again they already know who you are the new friends they me they may be the ones that you know hey we got to go clubbing we got to get a certain car we got to live in a certain house we got to take a certain vacation and then also social

media I consider to be a new friend these are people that you quasi know uh say it's an influencer you follow or someone you really like online and they're influencing your purchasing decisions and your lifestyle so how do we fix this find friends that would be your friend whether you're broke or Rich whether you lost everything tomorrow or gained everything tomorrow uh these are people that you know say you win the lottery tomorrow they wouldn't be the people hitting you up asking you for money right say you lost everything tomorrow those would be those would

be the people that are helping support you and lift you back up they care about your mental health your physical health how your family is doing uh almost like a tight-knit community right you need to be somewhere in the golden middle and find friends that will accept you no matter what these are your true friends not based on the clubs you go to the restaurants you eat at etc etc uh before we get into number four which is a huge one and one that I don't see talked about often on these types of lists or

videos let's get into today's sponsor policy genius the holidays are just around the corner and I have peace of mind knowing that the people that I love most are covered with life insurance that I found using policy genius many of my friends are having kids and starting fames so they're coming to me for insurance and investing advice not Financial advice I always recommend policy genius because not only did I use it to find my term life insurance policy that my wife and I use but because the process was so simple and it's saved me a

ton of time we spoke to one of their licens experts she gave us options based on the amount of insurance coverage in term of the policy that we thought was appropriate and we went from there step by step the process couldn't have been simpler with policy genius you can find life insurance policies that start at just $292 per year for $1 million of coverage some options are 100% online and let you avoid unnecessary medical exams my wife and I didn't have to have any medical exams and did everything liter literally over the phone I like

working with policy genius and I recommend them to everyone that I know because they are simply a Marketplace that helps people find and buy insurance they are not an insurance company themselves they can help you compare options by getting quotes from America's Top insurers and you don't have to worry about them having your best interest at hand they work for you not the insurance companies sometimes there are financial advisors or insurance sales people that sell you the policy that makes them the most money while not having your best interest in hand I didn't have this

worry with policy genius check life insurance off your to-do list in no time with policy genius head to policy genius.com whiteboard Finance or click the link in the description to compare free life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save that's policygenius.com whiteboard Finance okay wealth killer Destroyer number four this is the biggest one okay especially if you're a guy with western family law it's divorce okay so the average cost of a divorce is 11 to $20,000 with the median being right around $7,000 that's just talking about legal fees uh we're

not talking about what it may actually cost you which I'll give you a real life example here at the end so this is an easy way to cut your wealth in half okay no matter what uh B and I'm I'm not a lawyer uh but typically no matter what as long as you're married uh whatever income came into the household during that time uh it doesn't matter who made it you can make 99% of it your spouse can make one one it could be truly 5050 it could be 7525 any money that came in during

marriage marital wealth that's going to get cut in half okay half of it goes to you half of it goes to your spouse so not only that you have things that are alimony so alimony is spousal support during uh and after a divorce these could be in the form of monthly payments uh kids they add complications with child support you know until they're 18 years old most likely um and here's a huge example and there's many examples like this uh look at Jeff Bezos one of the richest men in the world his wife got $38

billion in their settlement okay $ 38 billion that's 38,000 millions and uh he's one of the richest men in the world so if he can't fight it you can't either so how do we fix this obviously the legal uh route is to sign a prenup um which I don't have one I just I don't know to me it's bad juju um but then you can have the other side of the argument where it's like well if you really love me and nothing's going to happen you wouldn't mind signing this thing anyway right so just be

careful out there again I'm not a lawyer um I tend to look at this a little bit more pragmatically but things happen in marriage whether they're expected or unexpected that could lead to divorce and this is one of the biggest wealth destroyers by far okay finally number five this one is a no-brainer but I there's a good how to fix this solution at the end so pay attention uh these are status symbols okay we kind of alluded to this with you know the house pour the clubbing the restaurants the vacations social media things like that

however we get into a different Echelon once you start making uh new money new V right your your whole family's been Blue Collar now you're the doctor in the family you're starting to make a bunch of money right money is new to you and your family that's when you can kind of get the itch to get into the super expensive watches bags cars things like that luxury items um so here's the thing that I would just very pragmatically add if you're in the wealth building phase I'd try and stay away from these items in general

if you're already wealthy or close to 25 times your annual expenses and you're getting close to that financially independent retire early number I'd keep these to a very small percentage of your net worth okay so again look at it like uh the stock uh pizza pie that I keep alluding to over all these years only make it a certain small percentage slice right if these things were to get stolen tomorrow and you can't get them back whether it's a watch a purse a car whatever you'd be okay with these items going to zero or that

slice of your net worth Pi going to zero the problem with these items though is that they're like tattoos right it's hard to just get one you get one tattoo you want to get another next thing you know you're covered in sleeves right so it's hard to just buy one Rolex than you want to get the you know let's call it a braitling or a Richard Mill or whatever just these really expensive watches same thing with cars right there's cars that people love you know they get old it's human nature you want to get a

different one or a new one um at least cars you can sometimes sell uh for at least what you bought it for if not more uh but if you're the new buyer of a let's call it a daily driver luxury car you're going to take a 3040 50% haircut all day long unless it's a collectible or rare or not a daily driver so uh how do we fix this keep these items to a small percentage of your net worth which I mentioned earlier um that way hey it's a small portion of my pie AKA net

worth and you know I earned it I deserve it you know pat yourself on the back but again I wouldn't do this if still in the wealth building phase hopefully that makes sense okay so now that we went over these five wealth Killers I just want to do a quick recap think of your pizza pie AKA your net worth keep these things to a small percentage uh if you have to buy these material things however to recap when you're in the wealth building phase try and stay away from all these things okay I'm not saying

don't have friends I'm not saying don't go out I'm not saying don't get married uh that would be ridiculous right the Mantra of my channel for years has always been find the golden middle um for example I'll give you a perfect example uh my wife and I uh we just booked a trip to uh Turks and caos I'm looking at Resorts these things are like th000 a night 2,000 a night $5,000 a night I'm like screw that that's way too much what did I do we still found a a cheap flight it was like 1,000

bucks for two of us um and we found a really inexpensive Airbnb uh we're actually paying $975 for five nights Believe It or Not uh so you can still have your k C and eat it too uh so we're going to get there for let's call it two grand spend maybe you know two grand while we're there on food and excursions and things like that there you go really awesome fun vacation for three four grand Allin um now if I were to go the crazy route which I'm trying to tell you to avoid in this

video I could have stayed at a ridiculous Resorts you know eating out every night expensive restaurants this this and this and then you're at 10 15 grand for the same exact vacation so I would just uh try and make prag decisions like that and find deals when you can and you can still have your cake and eat it too uh be cognizant of these five wealth destroyers and let me know if there's some that I missed down in the comments below thank you so much for watching please share this video with the family uh member

or friend and as always have a prosperous day H let me check the time on my Rolex Submariner uh oh it's not wound up let me check my phone 10:37 okay got it sounds good just just kidding it's a SEO relax [Music]