I got a question for you. What if you

lost your job tomorrow? The average

American doesn't own anything anymore.

Your car, your home, your phone, your

music, your movies. You can't even work

out if you can't afford that Equinox

membership. You could even lease a pet

these days. You don't even own Fido

anymore. There's a leasing company out

in Nevada that owns your dog. What if

like there was no source of income

coming in, nothing getting your account

on the 1st and the 15th, nothing to be

able to make all those payments that you

have. I mean, think about it. I just

hate the idea, guys, of having my wife

and kids in a home

where John the landlord could come and

say, "My brother-in-law Bart just lost

his job. I'm moving him back in. You

guys need to find something in the next

month.

>> [music]

>> Sorry." As a man, that's not a position

I feel good about or I want to put my

family in. If you were making payments

on things, if you were giving other

people, landlords, control of your

future and your family, is that really

where you want to be? I don't think so.

America is basically renting itself into

poverty. We become slaves to our

lifestyle and the corporations. In

today's episode, I'm going to talk about

this rental addiction. [music] I'm going

to talk about why it's a much bigger

problem for our country than most people

realize, and I'm going to give you some

actionable steps that you can take to

kick the rental habit.

Welcome back to the American Capitalist,

guys. I'm Rob Luna. For nearly 30 years

now, I work with entrepreneurs,

corporate executives, athletes, and very

wealthy families building wealth. I've

built my own wealth. I've sold

businesses. I started businesses all

over again.

And after about a decade of watching

wealth created, I've become convinced of

one simple truth.

And that's there's just two ways to make

money. You could either work for it,

or you can own something that earns it

for you. One is a paycheck, and the

other is a path to freedom. And most

people right now are spending their

lives trying to earn that bigger

paycheck, but the wealthiest people that

I've worked with, what they're doing is

they're buying assets. They're building

portfolios. Those portfolios of assets

that they're building are eventually

going to replace that paycheck. And what

that's going to do, one word, it's going

to provide freedom to them. And freedom

from all these payments, freedom from

doing the things that you don't want to

do, the dinners that you don't want to

go to, the jobs that you don't want, the

people that you don't want to talk to,

freedom is what this episode is all

about. First, let's understand how did

we even get here?

Where did this come from? You know, and

why does this Wall Street trend, and it

is a Wall Street trend,

where did it really happen and how do we

get to this point? Well, one thing I

could tell you is Wall Street loves ARR,

annual recurring revenue. And this

started a long time ago with Gillette.

Remember they gave you the razor blade

the razor for free, and then they sold

you the blades. Before that, you had

that one that you would sharpen, keep

for yourself, but then Wall Street

realized if hey, we can get them

addicted on buying this razor blade

every single time that it falls out, we

know that there's going to be steady

ongoing revenue. And then there be there

came AOL. You remember AOL?

That dial-up internet service that we

all had to have that subscription for.

Then if you look back at Adobe is one of

the first Wall Street companies to say,

"Hey, if you're going to buy our Adobe

products, you can't now go to Costco and

buy that or Microsoft 365." How many of

us used to before go and buy that and

we'd keep that outdated version for 7 or

8 years?

Well, they took all of that away to put

this on this subscription agreement.

Because then what that allows Wall

Street to do is say, "Hey,

we don't know if Tom or Stacy, they go

out and buy that new version of

Microsoft 365, are they going to upgrade

that in a year from now, 3 years from

now, 5 years from now? What if there's a

bad economy? If there's a bad economy,

they might not go out and buy that new

software. They might just keep running

that. And as a matter of fact, what they

might do then is take it and give it to

their neighbor or their sister. And so,

what they did is they took all that away

from us, our ability to own the

software, our ability to own anything.

And all we have now is a payment for

that. Think about it. Before, what did

you do for music? You would go out and

buy CDs, tapes, cassettes, you'd pop

them in there. You actually own the

music.

Now, what is it? Well, even with iTunes

and Apple, you used to buy your movies

on there. You can't even really do that

anymore. What you're doing now is you're

paying for that monthly subscription.

And so, why everything has gone this way

is because Wall Street loves it. They

love ARR. And the more things that they

can get you addicted to, and they can

put you on a payment plan to, and that

you don't own and cannot control, the

better off those companies' bottom line

and their profit is going to be. And how

did this happen to us? I mean, well,

look,

somewhere along the line we stopped

asking the question of how much does

this cost, right? How can I afford this?

Do I have enough money in the bank to to

own that? And we started asking, what's

the payment? What's the payment for the

TV? What's the payment for the car?

What's the payment for the iPhone?

What's the payment for the gym

membership?

And as long as we thought that, hey,

there's enough money from that job

coming in to our account to the bank

could go out to take care of those

payments, well, then we thought that we

could afford it. And I think that

psychologically

is where things really started to go

wrong for us. And here's my problem with

all this in America.

America was built by

not consumers. Think about our

grandparents.

A lot of them came to this country and

they dreamed of home ownership,

owning their own business, owning a

farm, owning that equipment for the

farm, land, stocks. Why? Like I said

before,

ownership meant freedom.

It meant independence. There's no

landlord to control your future because

their brother-in-law Bob wants to come

in so they're kicking your family out on

the street. They own their own

businesses, so they were in control of

their own income. You couldn't get fired

when they were downsizing. You were

making money while you slept because you

had assets. You had freedom. But today,

what is it? We're celebrating

consumption.

The new watch, the new iPhone, the new

sports car. And if you can afford the

payment, look, treat yourself. YOLO, you

only live once, right?

So today, nobody's out there posting

when you look at social media about the

great company that they have or

acquiring another business or

building their own home gym with

equipment that they could own forever,

whether or not they have a job to make

that payment or not. It's much easier to

get on social media and show the leased

exotic cars that you have, um the fancy

vacations, all of these things, even if

you're just

1 month away from bankruptcy, it looks

really, really good on social media. And

as a society, those are the things that

we're celebrating today. So, one of

these strategies makes for a really good

social media clips,

but the other is building financial

independence, and that's what I want to

talk about is how do we start to get

back to financial independence? And the

truth is, it's ownership. It's not from

leasing, it's not from renting, it's

from owning things to where we have

complete control. All right, we talk

about the wealth gap in America. I wrote

a book called Close Your Wealth Gap.

But what I really think it comes down to

is the ownership gap. Here's a

statistic. About 45% of the typical

person's net worth is tied up in their

home. When you think of it look at it,

blacks, Hispanics, that number actually

jumps up to about 65%.

So, if that's true and you just think

about homes, what if we remove home

ownership from that equation? Well, the

vast majority of Americans don't have

anything.

So, we've got people who are leasing and

renting and then we've got another group

who owns businesses, stocks, real

estate. They own things that are then

giving them passive income. The other

group has

rental payments, subscriptions, interest

payments, lease payments, monthly fees.

So, money is leaving those people and

it's rolling up to the people who own

assets. That's the ownership gap. That's

capitalism, guys. And the question

really isn't about fairness,

although there's a lot of people like

AOC would like you to believe it's about

fairness. I mean, think about it. Was it

fair when one person skipped vacations,

worked 80-hour weeks, had to build a

business, buy a home, while the other

guy was just out there leasing fancy

sport cars and spending his money on

European vacations? It's not about

fairness. It's about decisions in life.

And what I want to try to convince you

is that you have to start making

decisions that are going to put you in

the driver's seat. You have to start

making decisions that are about

ownership. And ownership again is about

freedom.

So, I want you to understand this. A

paycheck does not make you wealthy. One

thing I could tell you guys, I told you

I work with some very, very wealthy

people.

The more money you make,

the more vulnerable you become. When

that paycheck stops, guys, your

lifestyle is at risk. And I've seen this

from people in corporate America making

$800,000, $900,000 a year, then they get

laid off

and guess what? They'll be lucky to get

a job for 150 to $200,000 a year. And if

they're those people

who had that subscription lifestyle, we

call this lifestyle creep, a lot of

times the more money we make, what do we

do?

The more payments we take on, the cooler

things we do, the faster car.

Right? The G550 isn't enough anymore. G

Wagon, you need the G63.

Right? The the Ferrari F8 isn't enough,

you need the LaFerrari. Right? The

million-dollar house isn't enough, you

need to rent the luxury penthouse

apartment. All those things, the more

money we make, the more payments we

make, never thinking about when that

paycheck stops, what happens to us. And

what happens is

the lifestyle stops.

Things start getting repossessed, taken

away. And that's the problem when you

don't own anything.

I mean, think about it. Just think back

to COVID.

Right? Think about just something really

simple, your own health, your own

workouts.

And COVID, for my wife and I, this is

one of the things that convinced us,

"Hey, we want to have our own home gym."

Our own home Our home gym now is better

than most gyms you can get a membership

for. Why?

Because we understood that that could be

taken away from us at any time. We lived

in Los Angeles at the time.

You couldn't even go to a gym for a

while. When they finally opened up, you

had to have masks on and gloves on. It

wasn't even worth doing it. To where if

you owned your own gym equipment at your

home, guess what? You never missed a

beat.

That is just an example. You know, it's

funny, when I started doing this

podcast,

I started asking myself, obviously, a

lot of these questions.

I started asking, like, what are the

things that I don't own anymore? And I

got this real like love-hate

relationship with Apple.

I love Apple, it's great products. They

make it easy.

But I've had some really problem big

problems with trying to get some of the

movies I bought on a different

membership and all those things. And

then I realized

I don't even own my movies anymore.

So, what happens if the power goes out?

What happens if I can't afford these

subscription agreements anymore? So, you

know, one thing I talked to my AV guy

today, we are buying a 4D Blu-ray HD

player. I talked to my wife and said,

"We're going to start buying all those

movies." Yes, old school Blu-ray movies.

So, again, I want to start owning

everything. And that's really like most

of my clients, most of you guys that

listen to this show. What is the

ultimate goal? What do we invest for?

What do we work for? At the end of the

day, what we're trying to do

is be able to have a life that we love.

That we don't have to worry about

interest payments. We don't have to

worry about payments at all. We don't

have to worry about who's in office. We

don't have to worry about if I'm going

to lose this customer or gain this

customer. At the end of the day, if we

could snap a magic wand and we were as

independent as possible

from any paycheck, any government

entity,

any

third-party issue with oh, we can't

import meat or or eggs or whatever it

is. If you can become self-contained

living a life you love. As the as you

make more money, I can promise you guys

every conversation that I'm having with

people that are worth hundreds of

millions of dollars and billions of

dollars, it's focusing on what can I

control? Nobody's happy with politics

anymore. No Nobody's happy with the

taxes that they're paying. Everyone's

just thinking of how do I become

independent? How do I become less

reliant? And this whole idea about

renting our life away, about everything

on a subscription, about

owning nothing anymore,

that is not leading to happiness. It's

creating slaves to corporate America,

slaves to your job. And what I want to

talk about is how do we start to own

more of this? How do we end this rental

stuff that is killing us? I mean,

there's nothing wrong with earning a

great living, guys, but there is a lot

wrong with a lifestyle that's spending

every single dollar of what you own.

What you have to be able to do is take

some of that great living, and as you

earn more, you don't spend more. You

take a percentage of

it into investments that eventually are

going to put you in a position where you

don't have to work anymore. Let me show

you what I mean. Let's take two people,

each earning a half a million dollars a

year for 20 years. The first guy is

going to live off off of it. He's going

to have with that half a million bucks a

pretty nice lifestyle. He's going to

have a sports car, a luxury apartment,

the vacations. About what 500 grand's

going to afford you. From the outside

looking in, this guy's got it all. The

second person, though, is going to live

off 70% of that and save 30%. So, that

means after taxes, they're going to be

investing about 105k

a year. After 20 years, the first guy,

he's got zip. He's got nothing. He spent

all his money. The second guy has a

portfolio of 6.7 million dollars of

income-producing assets. And if you

could take a 5% withdrawal rate off of

that, that's going to give you $335,000

a year. So, one guy spent it all on his

lifestyle, gets fired or is committed to

working till the day he drops dead. The

other guy still had a great lifestyle,

took some of that money and put it into

assets that he owned, and now owns a

portfolio that is paying him the same

amount of money after taxes that he had

to work for for 20 years. And at the end

of the day, guys, that's what financial

freedom is about. What we're all trying

to do, going back to what I said, is

we're trying to build that investment

portfolio

that after taxes gives you a passive

stream of steady income that you can't

outlive and allows you to do everything

that you want to do. Let me repeat that.

Here's what everybody is trying to do.

When you say you're trying to get

wealthy, when you're investing, every

single wealthy person that I've ever

worked with, whether they're worth 10

million or a billion dollars, it really

comes down to this.

The question they ask me all the time is

Rob, how do I get to a point, how much

do I need where I don't have to worry

about anything anymore? They call it FU

money. We call it your magic number,

your financial freedom number. How do we

get there?

We don't get there by spending

everything we make. We don't get there

by

leasing everything, making rental

payments everything. What we get there

by is taking our income in the early

years

and we take as much of that as possible

and we put that into things that we own.

Stocks,

bonds, real estate, businesses, all of

which, if you invest and set them up the

right way, will pay you a steady stream

of passive income. So, what you then are

doing is you're giving up this idea of

becoming a slave to corporate America,

becoming a slave to your corporate to to

your subscriptions that you have there.

And what you're doing essentially is

trading your time for money to pay these

businesses.

And so, what you do is you take some of

that We all have to trade time for

money. But you're taking some of that

money and along the way, like this

example I just gave you, is you're

peeling off some of that and you're

buying assets. So, I showed you over 20

years a guy peeled off 30% of his

income, he put that into stocks, he put

that into bonds, and he was able to

amass

$7 million, which then after 20 years,

so if he started when he was 25 or 30,

by the time he's 50 or even if he

started at 40, by the time he's 60,

guess what?

All those days he had to show up and do

things that he didn't want to do, take

meetings that he didn't want, clients

that he didn't want, jobs that he didn't

want to have to do, he's putting himself

into a position now where that passive

portfolio has replaced 100% of that

income for him. And that's what this is

all about, guys. It's about owning, not

renting.

This subscription thing that we're

talking about that we've all become

accustomed to, I think that's magnified

the problem, but this has been happening

for a long, long time. We stopped asking

how much

is this and what is the payment? And so

now, like even if you go to a car

dealership, people just want to know,

"Hey, I could afford a thousand dollars

a month in my payment. What does that

get me? What car?" That's not what you

should be asking.

What you should be asking is, "What can

I afford to pay for that car to where if

I lose my job tomorrow, they don't back

up the tow truck and pull that out of my

driveway because I can't afford the

payment anymore." And I think the thing

about AI we're all

worried about it, some of us are excited

about it, but I think AI, truthfully, is

making ownership way more important than

ever because the winners won't be the

people using AI, they'll be be the

people that own it. The IP, the

platforms, the audiences, the business.

I think that ownership with AI is

actually going to become more valuable,

not less than it is today. So, I mean,

the whole idea about this podcast, guys,

is when I started having these

conversations with some of the

wealthiest

people maybe a year or two years ago,

and I think especially after COVID, the

mind shift really just started

to change. If and I started thinking

like, "Hey, if the wealthiest people in

the world are looking to to farmland,

are now making sure that they have

really nice home gyms, are buying

Blu-ray discs. If they're really

starting to own their lifestyle as much

as you possibly can these days, what

does that mean for the rest of us?

Right? What does that mean? Why Why are

they doing These are people that they

can afford They don't have to work

anymore. They can afford to do anything.

Why are they doing that? It's about

freedom, guys. It's about dependence,

and we're all very worried about

politically what's going on right now.

We don't know who's going to

be in office in the next 2 years. What

What I can tell you is taxes are

probably going higher. Socialism's going

to become more rapid. People are going

to be doing as much as they can to be

more profitable, which means more and

more subscription services, getting you

more and more addicted. So, if you want

to start thinking about that in general,

you want to start thinking of how do I

become an owner? How do I have less

dependence out there? And that's really

what this is all about. So, what I want

you to do, this is just something to get

you to think about. Hey, if I lost my

job,

like, what do I really own?

What am I making payments on? And if I

don't have that cash coming in,

what are the things that could easily be

taken away from me or my family

overnight? And you guys know how I feel

about home ownership.

A lot of people will tell you, "Oh,

don't own your home. It's a horrible

investment." Most of those people

because they're benefiting from you

renting from them. I think it's the

single most important thing you could do

for your family. Forget about the

financial aspect. It's the behavioral

aspect. At the end of the day,

we're humans, guys, who care about one

thing.

That is our family.

That is our ability to have freedom, not

be controlled by anybody else. And I

just hate the idea, guys, of having my

wife and kids in a home

where John the landlord could come and

say, "Hey, guys, I know you love your

neighbors, your Johnny's little best

friend. I know you love that school that

you're able to walk to, but guess what?

My brother-in-law Bart just lost his

job. I'm moving him back in. You guys

need to find something in the next

month. Sorry.

I don't know, guys, but as a man, that's

not a position I feel good about or I

want to put my family in. And when you

start thinking about that and how that

trend sounds across of across

everything.

If you were making payments on things,

if you were giving other people,

landlords, control of your future and

your family, is that really where you

want to be? I don't think so.

So, that's what this was about. It's

just to get you take some inventory.

Here's your homework.

Go take inventory. What do you actually

own?

And if it's not a lot, what can you

start to own? Even small things. You

might not be able to afford your house

right away, but you can afford to own

your movies. You could probably afford

to build a little bit of a gym in your

in your office in your house or your not

where your garage, you're not worried

about it. You can own your business. You

can own your skills. You can own your

brand. You can own your future. Cuz

here's what I can definitely tell you.

After nearly 30 years of working with

really really wealthy people,

here's what I do know.

Is a paycheck can make you really

comfortable,

but ownership makes you free. And

freedom is the world's most valuable

asset. So, that's what today is about.

It's about freedom. It's about less

reliance on Microsoft and Apple and

Adobe and John, your landlord. And it's

about more reliance on you. What can you

own? I want to own any more. I'm

starting with Blu-rays.

My family and I are looking to buy a

farm so we can own our own food. I just

don't want to be relying on anyone else,

guys. That's just me. But it is the

American capitalist and this is about

what we can do

is we can earn more money. We can work

harder. We can do things and we can take

some of that money

to own things, not rent things. Stop

trading

your time and your livelihood for money

that you believe is enough to make

payments to somebody else's ownership

and start converting that into owning

your own future. So, look, if you like

this episode of The American Capitalist,

if you know somebody who's addicted to

payments, if you know somebody who is

one paycheck away from losing their

Netflix subscription, their house,

their dog Fido, please share this

episode with them. Thanks for watching

this episode of The American Capitalist.

We'll see you on the next one.