My Mindful Money Journey, Chat with Ken – Mindful Money Matters

Yasi: Hi everybody. And today I have Ken with me. Ken is from Mindful Money Matters and he’s a blogger also content creator. And he’s also very active on Twitter and all the content that he writes about tweets about is about personal finance investing, and also helping you to understand how to manage your money.

And today I’m so excited to have him with us. 

Ken: Oh, that’s a great intro. Thank you so much for having me. You asked me, I appreciate you so much loving what you’re doing. 

Yasi: Thank you, Ken. Welcome to a Fast Track podcast.

Yeah. So your Twitter name is called a mindful money matters as well as your blog. Can you tell us why you call it mindful money? 

Ken: Yeah, for sure. For sure. I’m really passionate about just being mindful about your money. Because honestly, you know, you look at. There’s a ton of great people on there. A lot of people who’ve been really successful, especially on money, Twitter. And the reality is not everybody has as much money to get started into investing and creating freedom for themselves.

So I just thought, you know, by having a take where you’re being mindful about your money, not necessarily. Promoting wealth or just trying to get rich. It could let the average person feel like they have a chance. You know, they have a chance because for me growing up, I didn’t have all the money in the world, but I slowly learned that if I was mindful of my money and I tried to save and I tried to invest that eventually life will start to get a little bit easier for me.

So that’s kinda what inspired it just through practice, practicing what I preach. And now we have mindful money matters. 

Yasi: Yeah, I liked the name because personally I’ve been through this journey from not mindful about my money to mindful about my money.

Ken: Sure. And listen, we all have to go through it, you know, and again, like, We don’t have to act like we just know everything about everything. A lot of people jump on Twitter and they see these bigger accounts and what their following is like and the things they talked about and think, oh man, I’ve got, gotta go do that.

I’ve got to figure out what it is that I know really well and make sure that I act like I know everything about it. And for me, at least I don’t have all the money in the world, but you know, I’m passionate about investing. I’m passionate about teaching people about personal finance and, and when you have something that you’re passionate about.

It’s better off you run with it instead of acting like you just know everything about it. You know what I mean? 

Yasi: Yeah. Where’s this passion coming from? When did you start first? Learn about personal finance and money management skills. 

Ken: Hmm. This is a good question. So it goes a little bit back. So I’d say the first person that really.

Started to teach me about money was my grandmother. So my grandma, you know, she’s from a completely different country. I’m from America, from New York city. And when she migrated over here, She had nothing but a few sweaters to herself. You know, she, she worked got up every single day, cleaned people’s homes, you know, like did whatever she could to kind of scrape money together to feed her family.

And she’s someone that really inspired me because she raised not only my mom, but raised all of my uncles and my aunts by herself. And now she has a huge portfolio of of amazing stocks, great investments. And I always asked myself, even from when I was a kid, I was like, damn, grandma, grandma really did it.

I don’t know how she did it, you know? But she really made it work and hearing her just journey and how she made it to America and essentially built something for herself, taught me that you don’t have to come from money in order to create wealth for yourself. So she was really the person who inspired me to really start taking, investing more serious.

Yasi: Well amazing because not as many people have this kind of influence from family members, you know, and things, you learn it from your grandma where you just be aware of money, be aware of investing, or did you also later actively read books and learn about it? 

Ken: So grandma, you know, she was my grandma. I was much younger. So when she told me about investing. I was, I was a kid. I probably wasn’t older than 12 years old. So I was curious about it. But as you probably would remember if we’re talking back then, well, I’m 25. So if we’re talking more than 10, almost 15 years ago there wasn’t a Robinhood, you know, there wasn’t an online version for Charles Schwab.

There wasn’t Vanguard online or anything like that. So for me, I didn’t really have all the knowledge I needed to get started with investing pers. A book that really changed my life. However, was in the fifth grade rich dad, poor dad had just came out by Robert Kiyosaki. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. A great book, amazing family.

And reading that book even in the fifth grade. I mean, I didn’t understand everything, but I learned that money is way different from what I remembered it. At that age back then, I thought, okay, you get rich by, you know, playing sports or being an entertainer. And that’s all I thought genuinely. But that book really changed my perspective.

So I’d say Rich Dad Poor Dad, for sure. 

Yeah, 

Yasi: for sure. If the audience, if any of you have not read it, please, please just read it. 

Ken: Yeah.Go ahead to 

read that. That’s a great book. That’s a great book. I got to reread it, but there’s some phenomenal stuff, phenomenal stuff. 

Yasi: It’s very easy to understand, but the concept is so important that can be used lifelong back that’s back then, after you read this book, did you do something different with your own money, you know, with your own personal finances?

Ken: Can I do anything different for a while? I did it I had just been soaking up the knowledge. I still didn’t really know what I was doing. So outside of talking to my grandma, just didn’t know if there was a real actionable step for me to take. And then I would say at around maybe 19 or 20 that’s when I discovered Robin hood.

And so that’s when I kind of invested in my first stock. I’m trying to remember what it was. If it was a piece sec, it was like, I EDP or like Aurora something very, just like, Hmm. Kind of went with the S and P 500, but okay. I took like some random stock and it excited me though, because I made a little tiny, tiny, tiny little piece of money and it wasn’t anything at all, but from there it definitely inspired me.

So I just started learning more. You know, researching more stocks and that’s how my love for investing really. 

Yasi: Well from 19 years old, you been, you Vesta for already six years. 

Ken: Yeah. When you put it like that. Yeah, definitely. It’s been, it’s been a little, little longer than I then I guess I realized for sure.

Yasi: Okay. You’ll start to wait. Earlier than majority of the people 

Ken: I was, I was motivated. I was trying to figure it out, you know, and I probably would have tried to do it early. But I just didn’t know. I didn’t know what I was doing. And it’s so funny because with investing and I’m sure you probably know too, it’s just like with anything, you know, when you get a little bit of success, you always like beat yourself up and you’re like, dang.

I wish I had just, at least for me, I’m always like man. And for magic, if I went back even further, if I started leaving. Well, you can’t beat yourself up. You gotta just jump in. 

Yasi: You know, everybody said to, once they learned about personal finance, the right money, mindset investing, everybody said, oh, I wish I could have started earlier.

I said the same thing by the way. 

Ken: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What about you? Do you invest at all? When did you start investing?

Yasi: I actually seriously started investing last year. 

Ken: Wow. That’s a big.

That’s amazing

Yasi: when I was 32 years.

Ken: So, you know, that’s bad now you’re comparing yourself. See that that’s black. You shouldn’t be comparing to.

You started, you still have a chance of being financially free and you probably will. This podcast is awesome. It’s going to only get bigger. I’m sure you’re doing other great stuff. Don’t, don’t, don’t hate on yourself. Yasi. I’m watching you 

Don’t do that. 

Yasi: It’s better now that it’s really, it’s better now than later.

And I think after talking to, you know, we also have this fast track money course, and I’ve talked to a lot of students. We realized that actually it’s a natural phase in life. That when you started to get your first job, you feel like, oh, I made it my first job, my first paycheck, I’m going to buy something nice for myself , meeting friends, you know, all this lifestyle things happening and a few years down the road, maybe late twenties, like you have done all this traveled, like, okay, what next?

How will be? You know, my financial future will be, then people start to think about investing, saving financial future. And then when they start to have a babies, suddenly their investment horizons become 20 years. It would be the right now. 

Ken: It’s so true. Yeah, it’s true. And that’s the power of, I think investing in why it’s so important, like now more than ever.

I think people are realizing that if you invest, you have the chance to give yourself and your family a brighter future, it’s gone are the days where you just go to work and you get your nine to five check. Okay. You just save and then you’re good. Like that doesn’t happen anymore. You got to get creative, you know, so investing is a really important thing.

I think. 

Yasi: What is your investment strategy? 

Ken: Another good question. You got some good questions you asked me my investment strategy is buy and hold. And what I mean by that, for anyone who’s new to investing, that means exactly what it sounds like. You buy us. Or, or just buy into any company that you believe in and you hold it for as long as it possibly can.

And so I’ve implemented this strategy over the last four or five years or so. And I try to make sure I hold anything. Well, caveat with that is the only way this type of strategy is successful is if you pick stocks that are actually winning stocks, meaning stocks that have the best chance of performing well the easiest way to figure that out is to look at the top performing companies, just in the world.

When you think of brands like target, when you think of Johnson and Johnson, when you think of Amazon, you know, these are companies that are not going to be going anywhere. Anytime soon. And so I try, I look for companies like that, just hold, hold, hold for dear life and just keep on investing in them.

And it, it works. It really does. 

Yasi: Why do you not invest in ETFs?

Ken: And I knew you were going to ask you that. So I do invest in ETFs. I do invest in ETFs. I have a few that I like VTI is a good one. Spy’s a great one. So spy is an S and P 500 ETF. I believe it’s the ETF. I’m pretty sure I’m right now it’s around.

That’s a pretty expensive stock, but the return is really great. It pretty much takes all the top performing large cap companies. Like I think it’s the top 400 or 500 and it replaces, you know, each company based off of who falls off, who’s doing the best and the return on it is just, it’s phenomenal. It’s, it’s a lot of money to get.

So you know, 

Yasi: it the same as S and P 500, or it’s another version of S&P500? 

It it’s 

Ken: the same, but it’s just another version. Right? So it’s like, it’s nothing super different from VTI or like there’s quite a few other ones out there. I don’t want to butcher any names, but it’s just called spy. You should definitely check it out.

I started getting in on that and it it’s good. It’s really good. You can look into it. So yeah, no, but ETFs. Yes, I do. I do invest in ETFs. And. You know, for anyone who’s a new investor or an old one, if you just want something that’s going to perform well, highly recommend you look into ETFs look into mutual funds and look into the best performing companies.

You’ll sleep well at night, you won’t be waking up wondering, oh man, this stock crash, I got a gold trade in and I used to do that a lot now. 

Yasi: So let’s talk about, let’s talk about that. You used to do that a lot. What did you do back then? 

Ken: Oh God. Yeah, I see. I was doing some ridiculous stuff. I, I used to, so I told myself, you know, what, the easiest way for me to make money, you know, is to just trade any stock that I believe in if I believe in it.

And I see that it can make me some money, I’m going to buy it. So. I, this was when marijuana stocks were like a huge deal. You know, two, three years ago, everybody was talking about that boom and everybody thought they were going to get rich. So I invested in Aurora cannabis which was like one of the first top tier.

Like everybody’s like, oh, aura, there were supposed to do a deal with Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola wants to do infused I think CBD soda or something like that. They were talking about this huge deal. Everybody was raving at it. So I was like, okay, I’m going to buy some. I got in really early, I made some decent money.

I think I doubled my investment and I was like, oh, this is so easy. I knew it. So like the issue with that is, and it’s going to get worse, but, but before we even go there, the issue with buying stocks, short term meaning buying them and then just selling it right after is you can never time the market.

It’s impossible. You’re gonna win sometimes, but there’s going to be a lot of chances where you lose. But a lot of times, people who just buy short-term and sell they’re chasing the high that comes with selling at the right time. That’s my personal opinion. You’re just chasing the high cause when you do it the first time and it works, it’s worked and then you do it another time and another time.

But the fact of the matter is you’re never going to win a hundred percent. So I sold Aurora. I did pretty decent. And the stock tanked after. Right. So I still had some left, so I started losing money, losing money, losing money. And I was like, what the heck? I just made money on this. Why am I losing money?

And it ended up what ended up happening was I lost so much money from selling and still holding a little bit that it was almost like I made no money at all between what I’m, what I made when I first sold it. And from what I kept, so. It just, it was null and void. I was like, what, what am I doing? So then, so then, cause I don’t give up.

Unfortunately I was like, okay, I’ll change my I’ll change my strategy. That’s what it was. So I ended up buying another stock. I bought some jet blue, this was during COVID and I told myself, I’m going to, I’m going to hold it, but I’m not going to hold it forever. I did that did pretty decent too on that.

And then I sold it, but then I was like, What’s the point of me doing this. I keep on holding stuff and selling it. If I, if I sell it, yes, I’ll make some money, but I’ll never actually obtain financial freedom because the whole point of, of holding an investment is to own it. You got to own it. If you don’t own it, you don’t make any money on it.

That’s the, that’s the truth. So if anybody’s listening and they’re thinking about investing, whether it’s stocks or there’s crypto real estate, anything in life, if you want to obtain an asset plan on holding it. Or else it’s not going to be worth anything to you. So that was what caused me to start jumping into ETFs and all of those great things.

Yasi: That’s why you say now you just buy and hold.

Ken: Buy and hold, hold, hold, hold, hold. 

Yasi: Imagine if you’re earning for anyone who is earning, have income come in and not retired, living on assets. If you sell, you make money, what else can you do was the cash. You still need to buy something else. 

Ken: Exactly. Exactly. You have a family to feed, you have yourself to feed, you know, what are you going to do with that lump sum of money?

And then there’s taxes. You know, that’s another thing people forget about. So you have to be really strategic when you decide to invest. Otherwise you’ll be left with a lot of money and just what the government’s going to take it. So. It’s it’s the system is designed to make sure that you keep your money in one place and that you’re 

investing it.

And you mentioned about financial freedom. Do you plan to retire early achieving financial freedom? 

Good question. So at first I told myself I really wanted to, and now I’m like in this new phase where I’m telling myself that I want to keep working, but I want to set my own hours. So I feel like there’s a lot more power in that, right.

Because if you like pay attention to successful entrepreneurs, like Kevin O’Leary like mark Cuban, you know, anyone, Barbara Corcoran, that’s like the whole shark tank. Well, I don’t know that I think about it, but I love that show. I love that show. So, you know, when you look at those people, what ends up happening is those are all successful people who decided to retire.

But guess what? You still see them till this day. You still see them working for their companies. Why? Because, you know, having money doesn’t necessarily mean being on vacation for the rest of your life, you know? So, so for me, I’m just looking at those people and I’m saying, well, if Kevin O’Leary is worth this much, Mark’s worth, Babara is worth this much in their all work.

Clearly, there’s a reason why. So like now I’m just like, Hmm. Maybe I maybe I’ll take a little bit of a break, but I think there’s a lot of value for people who can wake up every day and have something going on. Because if you become a multimillionaire, Yasi assuming you’re ready. Not because you’re killing it.

You know, if, when, when that time does come, but then seriously, when that time does come, you know, what are you gonna do? Sit home all day, sit on. We’ll stay home and watch soccer games, or like, you know, play Scrabble on your phone. Like, I don’t know. You know, so for me, I think I just want to set my own hours.

That’s what I care about the most. 

Yasi: I think there were two schools thoughts though. People they want to achieve financial freedom, they can retire and do whatever they want later after they achieve financial freedom. Or you can, before you achieve financial freedom, you can think about what you want to do.

Just do the thing that you want now and make it happen now while achieving financial freedom. 

Ken: So wait, is that your opinion? Cause that sounds like you thought about that. Like, what is your opinion on retirement or. 

Yasi: So for me last year, I went through like a, a lot of things in my life. And I, I did redesigned rethink about how I want to live my life.

Therefore you’re not, I have my own business. I’m running my business and growing my business. So sometimes I think late last year I worked so much on early this year as well. I worked so much, I don’t even feel tired. I just feel very energetic, you know, even doing the podcast, like I’m interviewing you. I feel, I don’t see it as the work, you know, I enjoy having conversations with you.

So yeah, to me, it’s I agree with you. I also want to do the things that, you know, it’s work, but I don’t feel it’s work is because I chose to do it. Yeah. And then at the same time yeah. Bring value to people and then, make income from it and then save and invest and then build a solid financial future.

Ken: Yeah. That’s how, yeah. That’s literally how I feel now. And it’s funny. Cause like starting a podcast is obviously a lot of work, but it’s like, if you it’s all about how you see it, you know, like if you see it as work, it’s going to be work. But if you’re passionate about it, just like with anything, you’re going to have all this energy.

Cause I’m going through the same thing too. Like I’m working all these hours and then I’m coming home and then I’m blogging and then I’m on Twitter and then I’m on here and I’m in and all of those things podcasting and you’re just. Sometimes you think you’re crazy, but then you realize in the back of your head, like, but I like this, this is scalable.

So, you know, I, I dunno, I feel the same exact way for me. I think setting my hours, you know, would be, would be great. So we’ll see what happens. Maybe I’ll change. They’ll be like, yes, you’re right. I’ll just retire and just never looked at it. 

Yasi: And my next question is, do you have a, a net worth goal. 

Ken: A net worth goal.

I do. I do. So my goal is to be a multimillionaire, honestly, and it, and it’s funny. I don’t talk about this at all. 

Yasi: I should becomes a reality , 

Ken: right? So for me, I’m actively working on. You’re a good podcast here. So for me I’m actively working on trying to achieve multimillionaire status. I always use it some myself since I was a kid like 10, like I’m going to make a million dollars back when you thought a million dollars is everything right.

And in life, you look at things now, a million dollars isn’t going to actually do much for you. I think they say on average, like to raise one child cost a million dollars, you know what I mean? So it’s like, it changes your perspective as you get older. And I was like, you know, what, if I really want to do this, I have to think beyond a million.

I got it. I got to 10 X that 20, you know, 50, a hundred even. And that’s how I live my life. So I guess. I don’t have a specific number, but I do have a range and the range is honestly well over 20 million. I think it’s possible for me. I’m making sure that I work towards that and we’ll see what happens, but I’m definitely I’m gunning for that because if you aim high enough, I think.

I think you’ll get there. You 

Yasi: why you’re talking about this? I have goosebumps because it’s all about do not limit your own mind. You know, like people, I would say people by in general, we tend to set a goal that is achievable realistic, but somehow if you set the goal too low, yes, you can achieve it, but it also hinders your potential to meet the goals.

Ken: Yeah, you get it in your own way. I do that a lot. So I’m like, you know what? Forget it. I’m not limiting myself no more, a hundred million with me. So 

Yasi: imagined many of our audience, you know, they, they all have this growth mindset. They also think big dream big. They might have the same plan as you do. And then where do, what do you want to share with us?

What are some of the money tips that you’re implementing yourself that you see, you know, is helping you to build up wealth over time? 

For sure. Another great question. I think for me, what I’m trying to do, and I think, you know, a lot of people should aim to do is pay down your.

Ken: While also investing your money. When you do both at the same time, it really fast tracks you to wealth because you’re actually increasing your net worth. So like net worth is like this it’s classified as almost like this vain metric. Right. Cause we’re always trying to figure out who this person’s net worth is that person.

But the reason why it’s important is because. It puts financial institutions on notice about your assets without really having to dig too deep into figuring out what’s going on. So when you work on building your net worth, it’s almost like this report card that like lets you, and it sounds like your GPA is your financial GPA and next to your credit score, I’d say that’s more of a.

But for the sake of this, focusing on your net worth is going to do a lot for you. If you work on increasing it in the simplest way to do it, whatever debt you have, credit card debt, student loan, debt, car loan, debt, anything that’s bad debt focused on paying it off every single month. So for me, every month I work on doing that.

And every month I set aside a certain amount of money that I know I’m putting towards investments. So if that stocks I’ll do that, if it’s crypto cool. Yeah. If it’s a new startup, I’ll go and try and do that too. Just get creative and just make sure you’re putting some money away to do both. Sure.

You’ll be fine. You’ll look up and be like, dang, I’m worth this much. Seriously. It can happen. It can happen. 

Yasi: Yeah. Recently I was talking to a couple of friends and then they, both of them are high income earners, really high, I mean, high it’s high. And then we talk about certain tax that people need to pay once they achieve certain networth..

And then our friend was surprised like, oh, if you are entitled to pay that tax, you must have that much money. And I was like, for sure, you guys have it too, but because net worth, so they didn’t. Oh that much, I’m sure that you have that much money. They are not aware of that. 

Ken: Yeah. Yeah. Isn’t it weird.

And that’s how net worth works. It’s like, you know, unless you’re checking, you’re actively, re-looking at what you own and cause assets appreciate. And that’s why we need to invest in them. Assets appreciate. So you can hold an asset in something and maybe it was worth a certain amount of time, you know, at one point and then literally five years later, Dang like it skyrockets, you know?

And, and that’s why it’s so important to talk to people who do have a higher net worth, because if you want to become wealthy, you need to learn from them. I figure out, like you said, even something as simple as a tax situation, I’ll just how that stuff works. So yeah, man networth, net worth is important, for sure. 

Yasi: So I assume you check your net worth? 

Ken: You know, what’s crazy. I, I do. And I don’t so like, Kind of, I kind of do, but at the same time, because of net worth, isn’t always as accurate as say a credit score or just what you have liquid. I try not to fall into the vanity metric of net worth because if I did, I think I walk around with a slightly bigger head than I should, but I do try to focus more so on what I have liquid and just what my credit score is in general, because.

You know, your net worth can be a certain amount, but if you have terrible credit, you’re going to need to ask someone else for long. Cause you’re not going to get much, you know? So that’s, that’s the balance. What about you? Do you, do you track your net worth? 

Yasi: Yes. Every single month. Really? 

Ken: What do you use? Do you use mint? 

Yasi: No, we actually don’t have that many options as you guys in the US, because you mentioned a credit score. It’s not like a major topic here in Switzerland. Yeah, so we just use Excel, which we developed. Yeah. We also put that in the course for students as well. And then at the end of each month, me and my husband come together and we’ll put update numbers.

Ken: Of course, of course. That’s got to be exciting. 

Yasi: Yes. Coming back to this mindful money matters topic personally, since I started tracking my net worth and I’m so much more aware of my money, like it’s really, I’m mindful about my money. It’s, it’s very helpful. It’s really helpful.

So the last question I have for today is that about your What you are doing your, you know, your content creation, you block your Twitter, your everything that you’re doing on the side, like let’s say side hustle. Can you tell us a little bit about that and then where people can find you online?

Ken: Yeah, sure. So I have a blog it’s called my phone money matters. You can find it mindful money matters.blog. Not dot com. And yeah, I upload every single week or new articles, anything surrounding finance, so personal finance. Financial news, crypto stocks, startups my interview, a lot of people as well.

So there’s a lot of interesting takes from other people who feel that certain way about money, not just me. And then on Twitter, you can find me at my full money, 2, 4, 7 also given a lot of game out on there. You can catch a lot of my podcast snippets on there. And blogging tips too. So that’s really, that’s really where you can find me for the most part, got a podcast as well.

And I’m definitely going to have to invite you on here on there too. Yes, because you’re killing it. It’s called mindful money matters. You can find it on anchor across all platforms, Spotify, apple podcasts, and wherever else have you. So that’s pretty much it about. 

Yasi: Great. And check out the show notes audience.

I always call my audience audiences such as 

you tell it, like forgot a cool name and stuff. 

All the links in the show notes. If you’re interested, check out Ken mindful money matters. Thank you for being here with us. 

Ken: Glad to have me. Thank you.