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These are seven money lessons that I wish somebody taught me as a absolute beginner when I was getting into this, when I was an unprofitable trader, and when I was just starting to make money because best believe every single one of
TJR shares seven money lessons for beginner traders: change your environment, live below your means, invest early, spend only passive income, and more.
Key Takeaways
- Build a financial foundation through living below your means and investing before taking big risks.
- Only spend passive income so your lifestyle does not depend on active earnings.
- Surround yourself with driven, successful people and vet business partners carefully.
- Test ideas cheaply and quickly, and treat failures as lessons rather than endpoints.
What the video covers
- Moving to a new environment with driven, wealthy, like-minded people (Puerto Rico in his case) can accelerate growth and focus.
- Living below your means, such as buying a house and car in cash, builds a financial foundation and avoids monthly payment pressure.
- Investing consistently, illustrated by compound growth in the S&P 500, is one of the biggest wealth builders and should start as early as possible.
- Build a passive income base and only spend passive income, not earned income, so you are never forced to rely on your next paycheck.
- Having a financial nest egg gives the confidence to take calculated business risks, such as spending on ads or inventory, that can produce exponential growth.
- Surround yourself with trustworthy partners and be cautious with business partners who offer deals too good to be true.
- Be skeptical of people pitching business ideas they do not pursue themselves; ask why they aren't doing it personally.
- Test ideas on a small scale quickly, since failing fast with limited money teaches more than overthinking or delaying action.
- Mistakes are a learning opportunity; taking action and iterating matters more than avoiding every possible error.
- The speaker encourages viewers to keep showing up daily while learning, acknowledging that everyone is figuring things out as they go.
Chapters
- 00:00Intro: Seven Money Lessons for Beginners
- 00:50Lesson 1: Change Your Environment
- 02:45Lesson 2: Live Below Your Means
- 03:53Lesson 3: Invest Early and Consistently
- 04:54Lesson 4: Spend Only Passive Income
- 08:34Lesson 5: Vet Partners and Business Ideas
- 10:16Lesson 6: Test Ideas Quickly and Learn From Failure
- 14:00Closing Thoughts
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
you guys is going to start making money. I know it for a fact. If you guys are watching this video, I know you guys are destined for something great. You guys are telling yourself that you're destined for something great. So, I know
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for a fact that you guys are going to be able to get there. But, there are a lot of mistakes that some people make when it comes to first getting money and first actually getting into this. It's pretty difficult once you start making
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money to know what to properly do. So, these are seven things that I wish someone told me back when I was first started making money in order to help every single one of you guys. So, first and foremost is changing your
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environment. Moving out of my hometown and out of the college town that I was living in was by far the best decision that I could have ever made for myself when I first started making money. And this was actually something that I did
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correctly. Now, when I first started making money, I made the decision to move to Puerto Rico, which is a US territory that has a tax act that helps me save money on taxes. Now, not only did this make me move to an area and put
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me outside of my comfort zone to where I was no longer living around a bunch of broke college kids that were doing nothing with their life, but I ended up surrounding myself full of billionaires, where they were absolutely crushing it.
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And once I moved there, I looked around and I was like, "Oh, where are all the bros at? Like, are they playing basketball? Are they watching the NBA game? Are they watching the NFL game?" And I realized the answer was no. Every
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single one of them was working. That simple change in environment was like, "Oh, all of these guys are working. I wasn't working nearly as much as I was in like whatever when I was living in that college town before dropping out
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and moving." And I got there and I was like, "Wait a second. Like, these guys are multi-billionaires, hundred-millionaires and multi-millionaires because of how much they work." So, what did I do? I got down and got to work. And that's
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actually what ended up causing me to make the trading boot camp that you guys all know and love. And that actually helped me blow up on social media after moving out to Puerto Rico. So, that's the first thing that I would say is
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change your environment, put yourself around other individuals with like-minded mindsets, and just in wealthier areas because you will be able to learn and pick up and just honestly like blossom in a new environment. That was something that was massive for me.
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The next best thing that I wish somebody told me when I first started making money was living below your means. So, this is something that, you know, is uh I was honestly forced into because when I moved to Puerto Rico, I had to buy a
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house and then I had to buy the house in cash. That was like the best thing that could have ever happened to me because I ended up buying my house in cash and pretty much everything out there I had
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to own in cash. So, like my car, I couldn't go out and finance some like [ __ ] SVJ and like blow all this money on monthly payments. No, I had to own the car in cash. I had to own my house
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in cash. So, I pretty much was living in Puerto Rico for free besides that money that I actually put down and that obviously ended up being like a good investment. It got me into real estate as well. Now, from there, obviously, you
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know, living in Puerto Rico, there's really nobody to freaking impress. Like I'm not trying to buy all these designer clothes or buy any like watches or anything to try and show out for any of these people. And again, this is pretty
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early on in like my successful journey. This is right after I started making money. Obviously, as time went on, you know, whatever. I'm I'm wearing a watch right now. Now, I'm wearing nice clothes right now.
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But, at the beginning, I wasn't doing or participating in any in any of that. And what did that help me do? It helped me build a foundation for myself and it helped me, one, again, save money, but also, two, I was saving money on taxes.
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So, it helped me build this super solid foundation of investments and of savings to where I knew that, you know, if everything went wrong or if I lost everything, I would still be okay. And that leads me into number three thing
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that I wish someone told me back when I was broke and just started making money was you have to invest. You have to have to have to have to have to invest. This is by far the biggest thing that I wish
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someone told me earlier, like as early as possible within my money-making journey. I've obviously done a great job of it now because it's pretty related to everything that I do for work, which is trading. But, even to this day, I'm
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like, "Man, I need I need to invest more because that is really how the rich get richer." Now, let me give you a little statistic. If you take $1 million and put it into the S&P 500 today and
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wait 30 years, 30 years from now, it will be worth $30 which is absolutely insane the amount of compound interest and compound gains that you get. And that's if you're not putting any money back into the markets. That's assuming
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that you're only putting a million dollars into it right now. You're literally getting a 30x return over 30 years, which is absolutely nuts. So, if you can just slowly but surely start putting money into index funds or giving
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money to a wealth manager or just putting money into savings account so that you know, "Hey man, if the thing that I'm doing right now goes away, if I lose everything, then I'll be okay and I'll have at least this little nest egg
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to help keep me alive and like, you know, so I can start hustling again to make sure everything can keep getting better from that down point and then then on." I think that that is one of the biggest confident boosters to be
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able to start then taking risks within your business because you can then say, "You know what? I'm good, so I'm willing to continue taking these big risks in my business to have these exponential growths within my business and you're no
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longer going to be a [ __ ] You're no longer going to say, 'Well, I don't know because you need that monthly paycheck to hit.' You're not going to say, 'Oh, well, I don't know if we should put more
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money into ad spend. I don't know if we should put more money into inventory. I don't know if I should start risking more on this trade.'" You won't be thinking that if you have that nest egg set up because then it will give you the
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utmost confidence to say, "You know what? If I lose this trade or if this inventory doesn't sell well or if these ads don't perform well, I will still be okay." And that gives you just this massive confidence boost where you can
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just drag your nuts on these business decisions that will actually end up 10x or 100x in your business, but in order to have that confidence, you need to have that nest egg. And that's something that I really wish that someone had
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taught me at least earlier on or when I was younger was just to invest. And again, I'm not a financial advisor. I can't tell you exactly what to do with your money, but you can go to a financial advisor and you can go to
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someone that is trustworthy with these things and say, "Hey, you know, I just started making good money. Where should I put it so that I can be set for the rest of my life?" And again, you guys shouldn't be spending reckless amounts
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of money until you have that nest egg and until you have these investments that are actually paying you and are actually compounding to be able to, again, make you richer and richer. And that's actually something that leads me
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into number four is spending your passive income, not your actual earned income. So, again, if we take our earned income and then put it into investments, what's that going What are those investments going to do? Those investments are going to make passive
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income for us. That passive income, we can use it and we can spend it however the [ __ ] we want. That's when we can go and buy watches. That's when we can go and buy nice clothes. That's when we can
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go and buy jewelry. That's when we can go and do whatever the [ __ ] we want with it. Why? Because those investments are going to keep compounding and keep making money for us. So, we know that money that those investments are making
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for us, we can go ahead and spend it. Do we know for an absolute fact that our business is going to be around for the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years? Again, as much as I would like to say yes, it's
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not a sure thing. And again, no investments are a sure thing, but there's certain investments where you can get them FDIC insured. You can have high-yield savings that are backed by the US government. So, you know for a
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fact that you are actually going to get this money. And that's when that's the type of money that you actually want to spend. So, that's the next thing that I wish someone told me was build your investments up and then once your
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investments start paying you, that's the money that you can go and have fun with.
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Now like the fifth thing that I wish someone told me when I first started making money was choose your friends wisely. Okay? This was a massive, massive, massive thing that I ran into. I don't really talk about it much, but there was
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a couple situations where I started a business or got into something with someone that, you know, I didn't necessarily know, like, 100% and I just gave them all of my trust. And then also there was a couple people that I
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befriended where they were just around me simply for my money. And I am at the point now where I pretty much am not interested in making any new friends. I love the people that I'm around and I think I have the best friend group ever.
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Why? Because they've been around with me for so long and they've actually built that trust with me to prove, hey, you know, like, we're not going to do you do you dirty. We always have your back.
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They're going to cover the bill. I'm going to cover the bill. There are going to be leeches in your life that they are going to see right when you start making money, they are going to start hitting you up. And these might be disguised as
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famous people or other successful people that see online. I cannot tell you the amount of time that I have been hit up by other successful people or other rich people or other famous people online asking for a handout or asking for me to
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help them make money. And then it raises a red flag in my brain because I'm like, wait a second. I thought you had it like that. I thought you had money yourself.
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Why would you need me? Why would you need my following? Why would you need me to help you make money if you're already crushing it? And these are valid red flags to actually bring up. And for the for the most part, I say no to literally
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every single one of these things because if they needed me so bad or if their business idea was so good, why didn't they just do it themselves? And that is the biggest question that you guys should always be asking with these
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people is if it is such a good idea and if we are going to make so much money together, then why wouldn't they have just started that started it themselves and why wouldn't they just take all the money for themselves? They don't love
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you that much. They're not trying to give you like throw you a bone. They're not trying to do you a favor. [ __ ] no.
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They're trying to take advantage of you. They're trying to take advantage of your money. And if you have an audience, they're trying to take advantage of your clout and your audience. That is one of the biggest things that I learned
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especially after growing a presence online and especially after making some money, I learned a lot of difficult lessons with a lot of difficult people and I sent money out. I paid for certain people. I started businesses with certain people and a lot of it ended up
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falling short because of the people that I was dealing with, whether it was friends, whether it was business partners, whether it was other people that I'd met online who like had money and you know, I thought that I could
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trust them by giving them some money and the next thing you know, I ended up getting burned. Don't let that be you.
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You are going to feel like a cool person once you get money because everybody wants your [ __ ] money. I'm not trying to tell you that you're not cool, but I'm trying to tell you that you should be cool enough to
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the point where you should say no to being friends with these people because why do they want to be your friend now that you all of a sudden have money?
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They are not in it for the right thing and that is like a massive thing that I wish someone told me back when I started making content, back when I first started making money because holy [ __ ]
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it would have saved me like close to a million freaking dollars, okay? Number six thing that I wish someone told me back when I was getting into making money and you know, something that probably would have saved me a whole
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bunch of time is speed is going to favor money or money favors speed and this is something that I think even today I struggle with where whenever you have an idea, you need to act on it immediately and whenever you are trying to think of
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something or trying to put some something together, whether it's a project, whether it's a new business venture or whether it is just like an idea that you had for your business, you need to act on it as soon as possible
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because then you are going to be able to get that result as soon as possible and be able to see if it was like a good idea or not. I would much rather spend a week planning and doing something than a
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year planning and doing something where the result is unknown because then if we spend a full year planning and working on something and then it ends up flopping, then what happened? You know, I just wasted a year's worth of work on
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this one thing that ended up being a massive failure. Versus if I can just replicate at least some level of that thing within one week and do it, I can see whether or not it has potential to perform. And if it shows, "Hey, this
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worked pretty well." then I know for a fact that, "Okay, if I put a year's worth of effort into this thing, then I know that over the course of a year, the results are probably going to be 10 20 X
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of like the amount of work that I put in just in that one week, you know?" So, again, money favors speed. I think the biggest thing that helped me when I was, you know, like just learning and figuring things out was just volume,
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volume, volume, volume. Do as much as possible as soon as possible. Whenever you have an idea, act on it because the worst thing that could happen is you fail. And the best thing that could happen is you find success. There's only
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two things that could happen out of you attempting something is you fail mi- miserably, you lose a couple you lose a couple bucks, you lose a couple thousand dollars, you might even lose a million dollars. But, at the end of the day,
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what happens? You're going to be able to learn from that mistake and you're going to be able to get better. And you wouldn't be able to understand if that was a failure or not had you not actually taken a chance and had you not
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actually done it first. So, that's the biggest thing. Like, once you have an idea, go and [ __ ] do it. Like, there are so many businesses that ended up just thousand X'ing off of some business owner having some random idea and being
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like, "Oh, let's try this." And had they not tried it, it would have just their business probably would have just continued being on that slow and steady growth that it was already on and they would have never seen that exponential
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growth. And that's the last thing that I wish someone had told me back when I was trying to figure out money and, you know, like trying to find success and like first started getting money was just try things and try things as soon
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as possible. We are all on this crazy long journey of success and crazy long journey of making money and newsflash, bro, none of us know what the [ __ ] we're doing. This is all our very first life
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and this is all our first time doing anything. So, I like to say, "You know what? I don't know what the [ __ ] I'm doing, but I'm trying my hardest." And I'm here to show up every single day and
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I'm here to learn from my my mistakes. And the only way to learn from your your is by [ __ ] trying by showing up every every single day, by taking action every single day, and by not playing it safe,
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by taking [ __ ] risks. If you guys can wake up every single day and say, "How can I risk something? How can I take a [ __ ] risk? And how can I try and get better?" you guys are going to
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absolutely crush it going into this new year. If you guys can wake up and say, "Hey, I'm trying to get after it. I'm trying to do something and I'm trying to risk something to better my life." you guys are going to absolutely crush it
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and that's the last thing that I want to leave with you guys. I love and appreciate you guys. If you guys enjoyed this video, make sure you guys subscribe and I'll catch you guys in the next one.
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Peace
Topics:money lessonspersonal financeinvestingcompound interestpassive incomeliving below your meanstradingentrepreneurshipwealth buildingTJR
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