Podcast 120. Make Money While Paying Off Debt with Jerry Fetta

Average Joe Finances:
0:02

Hey, welcome back everybody to the Average Show Finances Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Cavaggioni and today's guest is Jerry Fetta. So Jerry and I were talking a little bit before we hit the record button. I understand he's down in Florida enjoying that sunny weather and I'm enjoying the sunny weather out here, Ewa Beach, Hawaii. So we kinda had something to bond over really quick. Hey Jerry. Just looking at your background it's super exciting to have someone like you on the show and share your story and what you're doing. So thanks for joining me today. Yeah.

Jerry Fetta:
0:33

Thank you so much for having me on Mike, by the way. I used to live in Alaska. Believe it or not. Oh, I've had the extreme colds and the extreme hots now.

Average Joe Finances:
0:40

Wow. Yeah, definitely. You know what, let's get into that. Let's talk about that a little bit. Having you come on the show, I'm gonna ask you the same question. I ask everybody that first comes on and we wanna know a little bit more about you. So if you could share your story, how everything got started for you and definitely wanna know how you went from Alaska to Florida. It's two different sides of the world, pretty much. How did you wind up in Florida and how did you get to where you are today?

Jerry Fetta:
1:03

Yeah. We moved to Florida about a year ago. Just, I'll backtrack some of my company wealth dynamics I've been in the financial industry for about a decade now. And it's actually what I started doing at 18. I was a personal trainer and a bodybuilder for a little while I transitioned into finances and I saw a lot of parallels. That's what I liked with that, earn more than you spend, burn more calories than you consume, like similar parallels. And so I did that for many years in Alaska and that's where I grew up, I lived there for about 20 years and as I grew my business, I started, especially in today's day and age, getting a lot more digital. And so we were able to start, really being more of a cloud based interface. So I was in Los Angeles in early 2020 doing some work and seeing some clients down there and literally right when COVID had hit. So we got stuck in LA for a year. And we were just intending on visiting for a little, we were stuck there for a year. And then, during that year we realized we don't need to go back to Alaska. We can run this business from anywhere. That's one of the benefits of passive income and residual income and having an online business is you can do it from your laptop and there's a lot of freedom. So we just thought about where would we like to go? And Florida was what came to mind and that's when we moved over about a year ago and we've been here since just enjoying the sunshine and growing our company down here.

Average Joe Finances:
2:14

Oh right on man. That is like the ideal way to do things, that's the whole idea behind building passive income and building your wealth is so you can have that freedom to do things like that. And I think that's the biggest goal for most people is that they wanna have that freedom to be able to live where they want, and be able to Just live this life of enjoyment, fulfillment and not have to worry about can I put food on the table at night? So that's pretty awesome, man. Now, what is it that you currently do, in your own personal financial freedom journey? I know you said you run wealth dynamics, right? So what is it? So is that company still Alaska based or has it moved to Florida with you?

Jerry Fetta:
2:53

So it's still an Alaska based LLC and we've got an expansion and an LLC now in Florida as well. But our staff are all here in Florida. We've got some throughout the United States, so we don't have anyone in Alaska now, but clients. And so that's our main, headquarters I would say is in Florida. And the main thing that we do is we help families and individuals, number one become financially educated and financially literate but with the real truth about money. When I was a financial advisor there's one side of finances that you learn that's on, CNBC and you're gonna hear from all the financial professionals and experts, and then there's what the wealthy actually do. And so for me, that was a hard learning curve on, learning it, the retail way is what I call it mainstream and then figuring out behind the scenes, what actually happens and realizing that those aren't the same thing. So we teach clients and families that, and really the big goal is learning that the second step we help with is becoming financially solvent. And then once someone's got that foundation, then starting to achieve greater financial freedom with one of the end goals of financial independence, not having to trade time for money anymore.

Average Joe Finances:
3:53

I absolutely love that and respect that. That is exactly what we're trying to do here. With Average Joe Finances as well is promote financial literacy and show people that there are so many different ways for you to build your wealth and get yourself out of that rat race. So that's awesome, man. So I'd like to talk about that a little bit, cuz you, you had mentioned like, you have the mainstream way and then you have the behind the scenes, like what's really going on. And I would say that I would argue that's, Hey, this is what the top 1% do.

Jerry Fetta:
4:21

For sure.

Average Joe Finances:
4:21

So how does somebody build wealth? Like the top 1%?

Jerry Fetta:
4:25

So that's a great question. And there's a lot that goes into that. So again, I was a mainstream financial advisor when I first got started and I did that for many years, was endorsed by Dave Ramsey. We were in like eight different states at that time. And so I was very ingrained in the retail or mainstream method of put everything in a retirement account and buy your mutual funds. And, hopefully when you're 60, you've got enough there and you've paid off all your. debt And what I noticed was when I looked at certain wealthy people, they didn't have anything to do with that system. Like they weren't interested in the financial products and the mutual funds. They were doing something else and as I had to start looking and pulling that string on, okay what are these people doing? And so for me, when I started, looking at, okay, what do the wealthy actually do? The best thing I was able to do is just go study their biographies. And so I started reading biographies on guys John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, JP Morgan. Some of these big historical names and finances and I started seeing a lot of commonalities. And one of those commonalities was, they might have owned banks and wall street firms, but they didn't use those products and services themselves. They offered it to other people. They did other things entirely. And that was where I started my trail. And, okay what do I need to be doing? And what does the average person need to be doing?

Average Joe Finances:
5:34

Yeah. That's a great point, man. It's actually so I'm doing something myself right now. So I'm sure you know what velocity banking is, but I'm doing that right now. I've basically turned my home into my own bank. And I utilize a HELOC to pay off debt. To pay off, pay down my mortgage a little earlier. And I've even used it to invest in some syndications as well. So there's this versatile use that I have with it which has just been pretty awesome. I would've never thought to do something like this. If I would've stuck with this mainstream way of thinking that oh, I need to save up this money and then I need to invest it into some, index funds and something safe so that I can retire when I'm 65. Man 65 that's too old for me, man. I need to reach financial independence way before that. So what are some ways to do that? And that's when I started looking into all these different alternative methods of wealth building. Can we talk about that a little bit? What are some strategies that you focus on now? cuz you know, when you said you were endorsed by Dave Ramsey back in the day, then you know, that kind of, this is like two different worlds, right? Because he's all about Hey, pay off debt, stay outta debt, stay away from debt. And that's it. So it sounds like you're on the other side of the fence now where you utilize debt as a way to mitigate. And use it or leverage it right to your advantage. Can you share with us like some of the strategies that you do?

Jerry Fetta:
6:48

Yeah, for sure. So it really is you've got the Star Wars stuff in the background. It's like going to the dark side, going from Dave of over to the dark side of the forest.

Average Joe Finances:
6:56

I love it. I love it.

Jerry Fetta:
6:58

Exactly. So I did a lot of that stuff for many years. The strategies that I use now are they almost all fly in the face of that. And it's not even intentional where it's like, Hey, I'm intentionally gonna do opposite of all the things I learned. It was again, studying and seeing this is actually what the wealthy are doing. So one of the big concepts that I use is actually ironically using whole life insurance as a bank. Back in my Dave days, the whole life shirts was the devil. If you've ever seen water boy, mama says whole life insurance, Dave says whole life insurance is the devil.

Average Joe Finances:
7:27

So it's like foosball

Jerry Fetta:
7:28

Exactly. So I use that regularly now. I do a lot of investing for passive income. I'm very big on private lending and seller finance. And again, when I look at the wealthiest, some of the wealthiest out there are banks and bankers. So I just look at how many loans do they have out there? And those are all truly passive income sources. And so I'm really big on that. I love the HELOC strategy. I also do a lot of buying gold and silver. Similarly, you can collateralize that as an asset and borrow against that too. And so I'm always looking at, A, I want to earn a lot of income B I wanna store it in real assets, real stores of value, but C if I can, I want to collateralize against those assets and invest those in immediate, truly passive income sources so I can double dip. I wanna earn interest on the store of value, the asset, and also the thing I'm investing for and not have to pay the taxes on that loan.

Average Joe Finances:
8:14

Yeah that's fantastic. And a great way to look at it too. I love the term that you use there, right? Where you double dip. And I know a lot of people that do the infinite banking strategy with life insurance. And that's one of the beautiful things about, being able to borrow from this policy while it's still gaining interest and invest that money into another cashflow producing asset, that's gonna create more passive income and now you get that double dip effect, which is just absolutely awesome, man. Now I'm curious because I haven't heard too much about people doing that with gold and silver. So are you're buying like actual physical assets of gold and silver and then borrowing against that. Like how does that work?

Jerry Fetta:
8:50

Yeah. So this was one that was it was a very similar concept. When I was starting to research, what are the wealth you do? One of the stats that I saw was that the United States Central Bank, The Federal Reserve Bank, they still own like the majority of the gold in the entire globe. So they have almost half a trillion ounces or sorry, half a trillion dollars worth of gold. It's about 216 million ounces. And so they have that as a store of value. They do things like leasing it out to others. And so when I started looking at this I realized you can actually borrow against gold. You can do a collateralized loan. There's certain banks you've gotta do this with, but you can usually borrow about 75% of your value. The interest is very similar to life insurance. It's about 5 or 6% interest. Over the long haul, I know my gold is gonna appreciate at 8 to 10% a year, it's been doing that since the 1970s, when it became legal to own again. So I can really do that same arbitrage play, borrow against the gold and what I like to do is when I do that deal, so I borrow against it and I invest it for passive income. I'm usually gonna save that passive income anyways. And I'm gonna accrue it until I can do another investment. So I go ahead and I de-leverage, I pay my line of credit directly, like a checking account, and then it pulls that loan value down the gold appreciates. And then I can do another deal that much faster.

Average Joe Finances:
9:59

That's like exactly what I'm doing with the HELOC right now, too, which is awesome.

Jerry Fetta:
10:02

Yeah, same concept. So I call those tier two and tier three it's the tier one is the life insurance tier two is the gold and tier three is the HELOC.

Average Joe Finances:
10:10

Yeah, that's awesome. And so with gold, you're saying like most the lenders that will do it for you, they say it's around 75%, of the value of the gold. But the funny thing is like, when you look at other ways I know M1 finance will let you borrow against your paper assets that you have in stocks. And I think they let you go up to 80%. Oh no, maybe it's less than that. Maybe it's 60%. So you have a 40% buffer, but when you think about it, if you could borrow up to 75% on the value of what you have in gold, that you still have that 25% buffer and I can't remember the last time I've seen gold really drop in value, 25%. So yeah, it keeps you in a pretty safe spot that if something was to happen, that you can always cash that out if you needed to. So that's a pretty interesting way to do it versus For example, like the way I'm doing it with the HELOC, my home can go down and value. It's not likely that it's gonna be something crazy, like 2008, but it's very possible that it can go down and value. So, it depends on how safe you wanna be. So I only took out maybe one fourth of what I was eligible to take out when it comes to the equity on my home. It's just one of those things I wanted to play it safe, but at the same time, it gave me enough that I could do what I wanted to do with it. So that's it's very interesting that with gold, I'll let you do 75%. Now, you had mentioned silver as well. So is silver more of a, you're just buying and holding silver because the way I look at it, silver in the future might be well, not be worth more than gold, but the uses for silver are outweigh the uses for gold. Gold is nice, it's for jewelry. You don't see it too much in technology. Silver is used for so many things because of its it's very good. It's a very good conductor of electricity, right? So you see in a lot of phones and other electronics and things like that. Where do you see using silver as a hedge against inflation?

Jerry Fetta:
11:56

Yeah, that's a great point. So I do own a little bit of silver. So when I'm borrowing against assets, there's three key metrics that I look at. The first one is against, the asset I'm borrowing against itself. What's the compounding annual growth rate? So that's gonna tell me on average what can I expect. The other stat that I look at is the standard deviation. So how far above or below that average number could the pendulum swing? And then the third one is called the max drawdown. What's the worst year it's ever had? And so gold and silver, you can both borrow against same loan to value 75%. The compounding annual growth rate is very similar. They're both, between 8 and 10% over the long term. And I tell people if you're gonna buy these, if you're not gonna hold them for five years, don't even. There's just too much cost involved and it's a real physical thing that you wanna hold onto for a while. The standard deviation on silver is where the main difference happens. It's got about a 25% standard deviation, whereas gold is only about 15. And that means if I borrow my margin call risk is a lot higher, if it drops down and my loan is now higher number than my actual value, I've either gotta buy more silver or I've gotta pay that loan down in order to get it corrected. And so there's more risk of that with silver. So I like silver as a hedge. It does have the benefit of that deviation is the upswing is the same, right? So silver could go from 20 to 48 an ounce and it's gonna double in some cases like that and I could take advantage of that. With gold we're not gonna see it in a year, go from 2000 to 4000, it's gonna be a slower, more steady increase. So that's where I see that. But one unique thing that I didn't know until I started studying this years ago, silver is actually a byproduct of gold mining. So you can't have silver without first mining gold. It's with milk, you get way from milk. And so that's the same kind of refining process. Silver comes outta that refining process. So they're gonna go hand in hand, but the big thing I look at there is even just as a store of value, Mike, there's only enough golden existence for everyone on the planet to own one ounce. There's only enough silver in existence for everyone on the planet to own eight ounces. That just shows you the scarcity behind both of those assets. And like you said, the uses continue to grow. I just saw an article the other day, they're using gold to cure cancer now. If you inject the cancer cells with gold, it kills it off like chemo does without any of the risks of chemo. With silver, Tesla is gonna be using a ton of silver for their cars. So the demand is definitely there.

Average Joe Finances:
14:04

Yeah, that's a great point. I had no idea that gold could possibly have some type of medicinal properties to it, man. That's mind blowing Jerry.

Jerry Fetta:
14:13

It is. And they use it for that and they use it for dentistry for a long time, too, gold fillings and different things

Average Joe Finances:
14:18

Definitely seen that before. I grew up in New York, man, for sure. I saw gold fillings and gold teeth all the time, for sure. Oh, right on, man. That is so cool. I had no idea. Yeah, definitely silver. For sure with electric car not just Tesla, but just electric EVs in general. And they're also now with hydro fuel cells that they're trying to work on which is gonna be another way, but they need to be able to conduct electricity really well with that and what's gonna be needed for that is silver. So if you look at a lot of the emerging technologies and just the different things that are happening, there's so many requirements for these finite resources like gold, silver, like you said, Once you use it all, that's it? I've heard of in the future that the possibility of space exploration to go mine gold and silver off of asteroids, because they discovered a lot of them do have those same minerals and earth quality minerals on those. But I think we're a pretty long way from that. Unless Elon Musk gets his way and then we'll be on Mars in a couple weeks.

Jerry Fetta:
15:12

And the irony behind that and no, no pun intended is that in order to go to space, the sheathing that they put on the outside of the astronauts masks is actually made out of gold. So you can't go to space without gold. You have to have that to go to space, to get the gold or get the silver.

Average Joe Finances:
15:28

See that's all interesting stuff, man. Definitely. It's the things that you don't think about that are tied so closely to these precious minerals and resources that we have. All so I wanna touch on something else that involves the top 1%, and it was one of the topics that you had listed for us to discuss. This one might be a little triggering for some people, but at the same time, I think it's a very important thing to understand and to know, because this is something I use as a strategy as well, but how do you go about not paying taxes or paying very little taxes? I know that's one of the topics that, that you want to discuss. And I definitely want to touch a little bit more on this because the stuff that we talked, there is some tax mitigating there, but not as much as what I would say you would get in real estate. So I wanted to see where your mind was at with that.

Jerry Fetta:
16:12

Yeah, that's a great topic. Like you said, it can be a little bit triggering we're in an environment where we have, a group that's saying, Hey, we need higher taxes. And then we've got another group saying, Hey, no let's lower it or let's leave it alone. And you really have to take a step back and you have to look at the tax code. So we have, if we were to put this on like a chart, we have The US Treasury, which is, The Federal Government. And then we've got the IRS, which is like their collection agency. And then we've got The Federal Reserve Bank. And the tax system, a lot of the income tax that we get actually goes to service those loans, to pay our debt, to pay the interest on that debt. Very little of it goes to things that we think it would go to like roads and different things, schools, et cetera, a lot of it's, interest on debt. There might be some, there's a lot of more expenses. That's usually a big one and, different costs associated, but the tax code itself is really what we have to look at. So the code, if you look at just code, not like the case notes and different things, there's, I believe six or 7,000 pages of just straight code. And so that's the entirety of the tax code only about 0.50% of that has to do with the paying of income tax. There's only 50 or 60 pages that say here is what you've gotta pay, which means the rest of the code is clarifications on ways not to pay taxes, which is very interesting. Cause we think about taxe that we're like why would there be a code and the majority of it is ways to not pay. And then you have to look at who wrote the code, right? So the internal revenue code, it gets passed by Congress. If you look at that net worth of most Congress members, many of them are in the top 1%. And then the other people that influence the internal revenue code is actually lobbyists and lobbyists work for giant corporations. So the top two groups that influence what's in the tax code are in the top 1%. They're incentivized to not have to pay taxes on all of their assets and all of their wealth. So the thing that I tell people is, it's a knowledge thing I can feel triggered by it, or I could be like, okay it's there. I just don't know something, there's things in there that other people know that I don't know yet. I need to find either a professional that can help me, or I need to dive into that code and figure it out. And that's it, there's thousands of ways not to pay taxes and it's all in that code, it's all legal and it's mind blowing when you see some of the stuff out there.

Average Joe Finances:
18:16

Yeah, absolutely. It's funny cuz I recently was just audited by the IRS. It was actually on my 2020 tax return and

Jerry Fetta:
18:24

yeah, congratulations by the way.

Average Joe Finances:
18:25

Oh, thanks. Yeah. Yeah, but the thing was, and I didn't expect this, but they actually owed me money and they sent me a letter in the mail and said, Hey, we reviewed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you paid this much. You really should have paid this much. So we owe you, 2,600 bucks. So I'm like what, and next thing I know, like literally a couple days after I got the letter in the mail, I got a check and I'm like okay. I thought I was gonna get a letter saying I owed them more money. So it was very interesting. Not what I expected, but the thing is, It's funny because a lot of it was something I missed with one of my properties, something I guess I forgot to claim or something. Cuz for the longest time I've been doing this myself and like this year I'm hiring a CPA because it is just too complicated for me at this point. But It was little things like that. Just things from the tax code that I was able to benefit from such as owning real estate and being able to claim some of the depreciation on different parts of the real estate that I own. And now investing in multi-family assets, I get to get this advanced depreciation, with these cost segregation studies, which really help and really help you take a huge loss. It's the little things like that, I get it some people are like, Hey that, that's not cool. You're not paying your fair share, but really you are because when you're buying these assets and you're buying like real estate or other things like that, you're creating jobs, you're creating a livable area for people, affordable housing and then making it so that, those tax dollars are still getting put into the system. So there's little things like that. Trust me, I'm paying my fair share, and it's just something I wanted to touch on a little bit because like you said, you've got these two opposing sides, that are making these arguments about why people should pay more. Why we should leave it the same or why people should pay less? It's very interesting when you look at the tax code, like you said, and there's more clarification in there to help you pay lessen taxes than there are saying here's what you actually need to pay based on the bracket that you're in. So it's wild and I think it all has to go back to your mindset. And I think that's where you go, your focus is when you're talking to people about this, but building their financial literacy and understanding these things is changing your mindset, changing the way that you look at this, because if you would've asked me 10 years ago, I would've never looked at it this way. I would've never thought I could save money on my taxes because I bought some properties. You know what I'm saying? So things like that are interesting and I'm glad that you're out there putting out this information and sharing this with people so that they can get a better understanding themselves.

Jerry Fetta:
20:43

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. And a big thing to add to that mindset too, is, when the government, creates a tax code that gives you an incentive. It's either because A they wanna use it themselves or gut lobbied in or B it's their way of outsourcing, right? Like they're looking at it and saying, okay, we could turn this into a government agency to create more housing. Or we could give a tax benefit to the investor and have them do it. And then they create more housing or they create more jobs or they invest in oil and gas or electric vehicles or solar. And so we're gonna incentivize them to do it by giving them tax breaks. And it's like their way of then hiring and outsourcing that to the private sector.

Average Joe Finances:
21:22

And the best part of that is too, is now you have these private entities doing it, which we all know, when you leave the government up to something it's not gonna be that great, where if you let these private entities and companies or people and investors go out there and do it, you're gonna get a better end product. You're gonna get a better, a more livable, apartment or home versus the government doing it themselves. Let's face it, they're trying to save as much money as possible while doing what they do. That's a huge point. Definitely appreciate that. Okay, cool. So I wanna shift focus a little bit and talk about besides just the tax piece of it, what else can you do to hedge against inflation? Like we talked a little bit about gold and silver. What are some other ways like, actually I wanna ask you how you feel about this, cause I know you like to focus on hard assets. How do you feel? Because like right now, I bonds, for example, or over 9% I think going now until October, so at the time of this recording, it's over 9% to buy I bonds. How do you feel about something like that? Which is, it's government subsidized.

Jerry Fetta:
22:24

Yeah. So I think, for investing in anything, it comes down to, for me, like it comes down to six different points. So the word investing at its root, it actually the etymology, that word means to clothe your capital, right? So it's literally like you're putting clothing on your money. And so I just think common sense, I grew up in Alaska, I'm a common sense guy. So when I wear clothing, if I cloth myself, I'm not gonna wear things that I don't like. I'm not gonna wear things that I don't understand. I'm not gonna wear things that don't fit me as a person. I'm not gonna wear things that don't fit the occasion that I'm gonna be using them for. I'm not gonna wear, like I'm gonna wear vital clothing first, and then I'm also not gonna overpay for clothing. And so the same rules would apply with my investing. If I don't like an investment, if I don't understand it, if it doesn't fit me as an individual, if it doesn't fit my goals, if it's not vital, like if it's not tied to something valuable that people are gonna continue to pay for whether the economy is up or down. And then lastly is I'm not gonna overpay. And so everything I do, I run through that filter. I don't like, not having control, so I don't like digital and paper assets for that reason. And so it doesn't matter how big of a yield you wave in front of me. I can't check off that first box of I like. And then because I'm not in control of it, there's always gonna be some missing level of understanding, unless they're fully disclosing to me, all of the books and all of the financials behind everything, I'm always gonna be the odd man out on that kind of investment. And so I might be able to say I understand, but do I really? And so that's where something like real estate, I actually can, I can dive into a P and L . A life insurance company they disclose their profit and losses on their website every year. I can look at that. And so that's a big part for me is, those two boxes would've to be checking. I don't think I could do that on a bond like that.

Average Joe Finances:
23:58

Wow. I just wanna say that analogy right of, clothing, your capital absolutely love that, man. Especially the way you tie it in you're not gonna, you're not gonna buy clothes, you have to buy clothes suitable for the situation. So when you were living in Alaska you needed something that was going to keep you warm right. Versus Florida. Yeah, exactly. So that is super awesome. Like when you tie it to something like that, and then you're not gonna buy something that you're not interested in or that you don't like. Because if it's not something you're gonna be passionate about, it's not something you're gonna care too much about. There's a lot of room for error right there. You don't want to go out to the store and mismatch clothes and then, people looking at you all funny. So there's that aspect. And then also, it's about dressing for the environment that you're in. So when the way you described that, man I absolutely love that, Jerry. That is fantastic for sure.

Jerry Fetta:
24:45

Yeah. Thank you.

Average Joe Finances:
24:46

Yeah, man. I'm gonna use that in the future for sure. I'm just letting you know,

Jerry Fetta:
24:49

Go for it.

Average Joe Finances:
24:49

Somebody brings that up and be like, Hey, let me tell you about what Jerry said. Okay. It'll help a lot of people. Yeah, that is super cool, man. All right. I wanna kind of transition to this part of the podcast, what we call the final round. Okay. I'm gonna ask you some hard-hitting questions three hard-hitting questions and then an opinion based piece. And then we'll go from there. Okay.

Jerry Fetta:
25:07

Let's do it.

Average Joe Finances:
25:08

All right. Let's do it. All right. So the first question I have for you, Jerry. Okay. With everything that you've had, and that you've experienced from being on the traditional or the mainstream side to where you're at now with alternative investments and building wealth, like the top 1%, what would you say is the biggest mistake you've ever made?

Jerry Fetta:
25:28

The biggest mistake that I ever made was not checking where the information I got, where it came from and if it was valid. And I say that because I was an actual financial advisor, I took actual series exams with the state government, federal government. And that's, quote unquote gospel. That's the right information. But I never looked at what do wealthy people use. Let me see a practical example. And so I bought into that for several years and I was at the top of the top. Most people don't have those licenses and they buy into it. And so I would say, if I would've just asked that question is okay, good. I learned this, where is it? Where is the example of this with a wealthy person in the real world? I think I would've switched over much sooner.

Average Joe Finances:
26:06

Wow. Yeah. That's a fantastic point. I definitely appreciate that answer. Okay. And this is gonna tie into the next question I'm gonna ask you. And what is something that you've learned over the years that you wish you knew when you first got started?

Jerry Fetta:
26:18

Man, that's a great one. I, so one of my, one of my favorite things I've ever learned, there was a chart that was shown to me back in 2016 or 2017. And it showed the savings rate by wealth class. So it showed like the top 1%, like the next 10% spread and then the bottom 90%, and this stuck with me as soon as I saw it for a hundred years, it went back from 1913 until 2013, I think, or 2016, the top 1% saved 40% of their gross income. 40%. And it was like clockwork. During the up economies, they're saving 40. And then the great depression, the 1950s, those recessions and depressions, their savings rate would drop. And you could actually see where they were in good times, stacking it away, building liquidity. And then in bad times they were going in and there buying everything. So that stuck with me. And when I learned that was, if I knew nothing else, I need to go save 40% of my income. And that was for me, the linchpin of, okay, this is how you, this is how you get into the top 1% of wealth.

Average Joe Finances:
27:14

Wow. That's that's significant 40%, that's that could be tough for a lot of people to do, but you can get there for sure. That's a great way to, to stay focused and disciplined but you can reap the rewards later on, as those opportunities present themselves. So it definitely gives you more liquidity, more liquidity for opportunities in the future. That's for sure.

Jerry Fetta:
27:32

It does. Yeah.

Average Joe Finances:
27:33

Awesome. All right. So this again is gonna tie into the next question. And so you've, you shared, the something that you learned that you wish you knew when you first started, but what about do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started today?

Jerry Fetta:
27:49

So if you're just getting started today, I used to be a personal trainer. I've done body building since I was like 16, make finances, a daily habit. Like I related to, when I would go to the gym, like you're not going to get in perfect shape in three weeks, it's gotta be a daily thing. So with my clients, we have this thing called the big three challenge. And so it's a triangle. You check off one point to the triangle and try and do all three of them every day. The first one is every day. You wanna learn something about money, spend 10 minutes, go and invest a PD, watch a YouTube, whatever it is do something to increase your financial literacy. The second point is every day, do something to earn more income, right? You're already working, but we're saying do an extra, like something extra to earn more income. And then third is, reconcile and rate your transactions paying attention to where the money is going. And that's something I'd say, if you're just now starting do that big three. If you do that every day for 90 days, it'll become a habit, then it's just on automatic. That behavior will take you so far.

Average Joe Finances:
28:44

Yeah, that, wow, Jerry, that is a fantastic point and a great, tip for somebody that's just getting started today, do that for 90 days and it will, it'll become a habit. It'll just become second nature. And just something that you put into your routine and do every day. I like how you tie when you first started off as a, As a bodybuilder and doing a, like a, as a physical fitness instructor and things like that as a coach, right? How you're able to tie that into finances and how like these different things can go hand in hand and why it's super important that these things are or what makes them similar is your mindset, right? It's how you look at it and how you think about it, how you treat it and also your relationship with it, right? You can't just go into it, saying, oh I'm gonna do ABC and D but I'm gonna get to that later. That's like me, like when I say, oh, I'm gonna go for a run. I'll go later this afternoon when I'm done with everything

Jerry Fetta:
29:31

Sometime

Average Joe Finances:
29:31

And then when I'm done with everything, I'm like, I'm tired right now. Not really feeling like it. So it's the things like that can break you out of that habit. So you gotta, stay disciplined and stay focused and stay on track. So that's huge, man. Absolutely. All right. So the final question I have, this is more of an opinion piece, but. You're pretty well versed in this stuff. So obviously you've got, you get some great information, some great content from somewhere, so you're also absorbing stuff yourself. So do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast or both?

Jerry Fetta:
30:02

Yeah, so I, like I said, I did a lot of biographies, so I wouldn't say I have one particular book. This might be a cheating answer, but I tell people like, go learn about old dead people. Go read from guys like Rockefeller and Carnegie and like their biographies, cuz you can just dive into the data. One of the best books I read was Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie. I would say that would maybe be my answer at one point, the richest man in the United States. And he died pennyless because he gave literally all of it away. And before he was wealthy, he stated that's what he was gonna do. He said, I'm going to become the wealthiest guys in the world and give it every penny of it away. So when you see that, setting the goal, and then you can see how we did it all and how we built it and then actually followed through on the plan like that for me was just beautiful. That's the goal for what I would hope everyone could do.

Average Joe Finances:
30:49

Wow. Yeah, Jerry, that, that is great recommendation, wrote that one down too, Gospel of Wealth. Definitely go check that out that one's getting added to my list as well. But yeah that's a great point. Go read the bios of the old dead people that have come and gone, but have done amazing things during their time here on earth. Okay, great. So this was fantastic. That's the end of the final round really appreciate your answers. This has been an absolutely awesome interview, man. But I have one more question for you and this one's really important because the people that have been listening to this show are like, man, I really what Jerry's talking about, everything that he's all about, I wanna learn more about him and the content he's putting out. If you could share with us, where can people find you? Do you have a website you could share with us any social media accounts or anything like that?

Jerry Fetta:
31:32

Yeah, so we're everywhere. I'll go ahead and give you on Instagram. So that's probably where I'm the most active. If you follow me on Instagram, just@jerryfetta, my first and last name. If you go to our site, I actually wrote a book about two years ago, and I can give you a free copy. This's called Blueprint to Financial Freedom. And maybe Mike could drop this in the show notes. If you go to jerryfetta.com/b2f says B the letter two, and then F sorry, the number 2, and then F. Promo, and then you can get a free copy of the book. We've got a ton of free articles and blogs and different things on the website as well.

Average Joe Finances:
32:02

Yeah, fantastic. So I, I will definitely have all those links in the show notes to make it easier for people to find you guys and to find you Jerry, but also to find wealth dynamics and everything that you guys are all about because this is really good stuff, man. And I'm definitely gonna go follow you on Instagram as well and absorb some of this awesome content that you're putting out because that's what it's all about, man. I'm also a content sponge, especially when it's good information. I love to go out there and absorb as much as I possibly can. Definitely appreciate you taking the time to, to chat with me today. Especially with the time difference. I know it's getting a little later there, even though you still got some sunlight. But I definitely appreciate you taking some time to, to chat with me today.

Jerry Fetta:
32:38

Absolutely. Thanks for having me on.

Average Joe Finances:
32:39

All right, brother. Aloha.