644 – Building Generational Wealth: Tom interviews Joseph Garcia

Episode 644 – Joseph Garcia
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody, is Tom here with episode 644 of Screw the Commute podcast? I'm here with Joseph Garcia and he is part of Vetpreneur Month here on Screw the Commute podcast. Every September, we highlight our wonderful veterans that are also entrepreneurs, although we still are in love with all our veterans that help us do and protect us so we can do what we do. So we'll have him on in a minute. Hope you didn't miss Episode 643. That was John Davis. He claims to be the most tattooed person with a Harvard degree. He's also a veteran and he likes whiskey, by the way. So that was episode 643. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go screwthecommute.com, slash and then the episode number. John was 643 and today will be 644 for Joseph Garcia. All right. Make sure you pick up a copy of our automation book. This has saved me 8 million keystrokes over many years and allowed me to spend time with customers and prospects. And that's where the money is, folks. So download that. That's most of the techniques in it are free or super cheap. And it allows you to just get your work done lightning fast instead of fighting with your computer. So pick that up. It's screwthecommute.com/automatefree. While you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app. It's screwthecommute.com/app. You can put us on your cell phone and tablet. Take it with you on the road.

[00:01:54] All right. Let's get to the main event. Joseph Garcia is a US Army veteran. He had 12 years of active duty there and he's located in central Texas and married with four children. And he is a financial literacy educator. He helps people and families and veterans reduce taxes, eliminate debt, build generational wealth and create cash flowing assets. Joseph, you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:02:24] I'm ready.

[00:02:25] All right. How are you doing, man?

[00:02:27] I'm doing great. How about yourself?

[00:02:29] I am peachy, man. I love talking to our veterans. And. And I want to thank you on behalf of our whole audience and screw the commute for your service. Boy, you did a lot for us, so thanks so much. All right. So I want to get right into it because finances are the source of a lot of consternation for people, especially now with inflation going crazy and and a lot of marriages end because of financial troubles. So tell us about the American dream. You know, you talk about that a lot and how much money it takes to reach that American dream.

[00:03:04] I'm glad you asked. So not everyone really knows how much money they need to retire, but that that goalpost keeps getting pushed farther and farther down the road. We don't know if Social Security is going to keep lasting. Inflation's kicking our butts and then people are retiring later and later. So a goal of financial security and freedom, which is the American dream, is not not as attainable these days.

[00:03:37] Define that American dream.

[00:03:38] The American dream to most people is having a good life, financial security.

[00:03:45] So, Joseph, what can you do? I'm going to I'm going to ask the question again. So, Joseph, can you define the American dream? What exactly is that?

[00:03:54] So the American dream is really four things. So, first of all, is having a good, good life for our families. Number two, financial security. Number three is freedom. And number four is opportunity.

[00:04:07] You know, like you said, the goal post is getting moved further and further because the amount of money you, let's say, five years ago that you think you needed is a lot different now, right?

[00:04:18] Oh, absolutely. The price of everything is going up. And what people have been retire on, retiring on right now is just it's not enough. So you see people that already have one retirement starting to work a little job here and there to make ends meet. It's an unfortunate fact, but it's the life that we're living in right now.

[00:04:39] Now, I know when things were calm, you could kind of estimate how much money you actually needed. But how do you do it nowadays? Well, tell us that method. How do you estimate how much money you need? And then how do you account for all this craziness that's going on with inflation and prices?

[00:04:59] Yeah. So how much you really need is a combination of a couple of things. Number one, to. Depends on where you're living. The cost of living. Of your area. Because I'll give you a quick example. Living in central Texas is fairly cheap, but if you're trying to live in California, that's a much bigger sticker price there. Right? So that's one factor of understanding how much you need. The other one is deciding what standard of living you want to have. A lot of people just want to have the bare bones live off very little and cut down on their hobbies. Or do you want a very grandiose life? Do you want to go out and travel? Do you want to open up some non-profit organizations? Those are some examples that you need to take a look at.

[00:05:54] Yeah, it seems like people are moving to to try to help with this. Like people are like leaving California in droves because of the costs there. In fact, I've heard this thing about U-Haul. It's like you can get a U-Haul going to like Los Angeles dirt cheap. They almost give it away. But coming out of California, it's like a couple, couple thousand bucks because all the U-Haul is are going one way getting the heck out of there.

[00:06:23] Oh, absolutely. If you take a look at the demographics for Austin, a lot of people are are leaving California in droves. Definitely see a lot of California license plates there.

[00:06:37] I just hope they don't bring all the craziness with them to ruin the places in Texas. That's I mean, seriously, they they it seems kind of stupid to me. They leave something that's terrible and they then they want that terribleness in the new place that they go to. I mean, I don't see the you know, they're getting there's a lot of backlash by by locals like go back where you came from if you're trying to bring that crap to our nice place. Oh, yeah. Now, with regard to making your money work for you, I know you talk about the rule of 72. What is that?

[00:07:17] So Rule 72 is a pretty easy to understand concept. It is actually designed by Albert Einstein. It's a mathematical formula. And he called it the eighth wonder of the World, the magic compound interest. But the way the rule works is 72 divided by the interest rate is a number of years. It takes money to work for or against you. And I'll use one quick example. So let's say you're getting something at a 1% interest rate. So 72 divided by one is 72. So it would take 72 years. You might double once. Yikes. Yikes.

[00:07:57] So where can you beat I mean, in regular savings accounts and money markets? I mean, you almost owe them to hold your money. It's so bad.

[00:08:07] Oh, yeah. So if you're keeping your money in the bank right now, you might. If you're really lucky, you might be getting one or 2% of an interest rate. But on the same token, banks use rules to against us. They'll take they'll give you they'll give you more than 2% an interest rate, and then they'll take your money and get returns 12, 15, 20%. And then those stick you with a car loan or credit card that is at 18 20%. So it's pretty easy to see how the st2 can work against you. And you definitely want to be on the winning side of the interest rates.

[00:08:46] And how do you do that?

[00:08:48] It's easy in concept, but it involves understanding what your accounts are earning. So first of all, you want to get everything that you have best are saved at a rate that's being inflation. And then the second thing is you want to make sure that all of your your liabilities, your debts are at an interest rate that's lower than what you're currently making in your savings investments. A lot of people got that backwards.

[00:09:18] Yeah, but it's like you said, it sounds easy, but where do you go and find something that's going to beat inflation?

[00:09:25] Oh yeah. So most traditional investments will get you anywhere from 4 to 6%. But organisation has helped people get their savings investments at rates 10% or higher since the past 40 years. A lot of people don't know how to get those kinds of interest rates because we're not taught how to get them. And that's what I help a lot with, is understanding how to get those higher double digit returns.

[00:09:55] Well, it doesn't doesn't the risk go up commensurate with those interest rates?

[00:10:03] As a general concept, the higher risk, the higher the risk, the greater the return. But we do have a couple of different strategies that we take a very custom approach with each person to find out something within their risk tolerance. For example, someone that has someone in their twenties, they can afford a little bit more risk because theoretically they don't need to retire for another 40 years. But you can't use the same formula for someone that's near retirement. You don't want to put everything that they have into a very aggressive strategy where they could lose everything right, such as cryptocurrencies.

[00:10:44] And you could always you tough military guys could always be loan sharks and get 50% interest. I guess that's.

[00:10:53] A whole nother ballgame.

[00:10:54] Yeah, that's not that's not in the How Money Works strategy, although it does work. Now I understand you have some side hustles. Like I was wondering, like this made for you TX.com and I saw something about vinyl like some it said the big headline was heat transfer vinyl and I'm like, I have no idea what that is. What kind of business does that?

[00:11:29] Yeah. So we sell craft. Fine. So any where.

[00:11:33] Would you say craft.

[00:11:34] Or any kind of.

[00:11:35] Did you say craft like people that do arts and crafts? Is that what you mean?

[00:11:40] Yes.

[00:11:40] Okay.

[00:11:40] Go ahead. Yes. So the easiest way to explain to someone is if you've ever worn any kind of any kind of t shirt. So I'll take the army t shirt, for instance, the gold yellow.

[00:11:56] T.

[00:11:56] Physical.

[00:11:57] Wait a minute. Is physical. What?

[00:12:00] Physical? Physical fitness. It's called something different in every branch. But in army we call them the apt uniform. But if you look at the army lettering, it's all in gold. So the material of that gold lettering is actually defined.

[00:12:19] I say, and what's the heat transfer have to do with it?

[00:12:23] So the heat transfer is how you apply it to the material. So for example, you have a t shirt and you want to apply the vinyl to it. It's called heat transfer because at a certain temperature it adheres to the fabric and it becomes permeable.

[00:12:40] I see. I see. There's that. The best way to have vinyl on a shirt so that it lasts through the washing and all that stuff.

[00:12:50] Yeah. So we've found that he transfer is permanent. The vinyl lasts longer and it looks better. There are other methods, such as the direct fabric or direct garment, but they don't typically last quite as long as heat transfer.

[00:13:09] Right. Right. So how did you get into this business?

[00:13:15] So it all started from my wife's hobby. And then we found that there was a local need for it. Definitely a lot of crafty military spouses, t shirt shops, and then in the local community, people with sports teams definitely love to get some custom shirts made or the material to make their own. So we found a need for that in the community, and we've been in business ever since.

[00:13:45] Wow. Yeah. And and starting your own business, you know, that's I've never had a job, so I kind of know that the 10% return, you can blow that away, especially with the digital products we sell because their 97% gross profit and no shipping, no going to the post office, no, you know returns are, you know, are usually a hassle for physical product, but for digital, it's like, okay, so I put some more electrons back in my computer, so. So what's the other business you got into? You told me you had two businesses.

[00:14:24] Yeah. So my financial literacy.

[00:14:26] Oh, the financial business. Right. And. And so there's several parts to that business. One is reducing taxes, the other is eliminating debt because that eats up with that high interest and then building generational wealth, I guess that's being able to pass it on to your kids and.

[00:14:49] And so forth. Yep, absolutely. You nailed it on the head.

[00:14:52] Yep. And creating cash flowing assets. Let's take each one a little bit. So so reducing taxes, what's what's some of the strategies you do to help people reduce taxes?

[00:15:03] So we generally walk with people through their finances. We explain to them how Uncle Sam is taking money from their retirement accounts. A lot of people don't generally understand how their four one K's or IRAs are actually taxed. So that's one thing that we try to help people with is get them into the most tax efficient of vehicles for their particular circumstances that we can and we help. We use the tax code to help them reduce as much tax as possible.

[00:15:42] Yeah, yeah. I actually have been teaching for 27 years on making your hobbies tax deductible by putting up websites and and selling either affiliate products where you get a commission or making your own product. So so there's reducing taxes. But you said when you say the government's taxing your 401. Ks, you mean after you start withdrawing the money? Because I thought they were not taxed when, you know, until you withdraw the money.

[00:16:11] So there's there's really two different ways that you can have four, okay. You can for traditional, which means that you're basically deferring paying taxes now in order to pay them later. Right. Or you have a Roth version and I'll explain those. I'll explain the difference here in a little bit. But either way, you're either going to pay the taxes now, are going to pay them later. But a lot of people choose the traditional.

[00:16:42] Yeah, pay me now or pay me later, right. Yeah. Because they think they're going to be in a lower tax bracket, you know, when they eventually pull the money out. Right.

[00:16:51] Yes. It's a it's an assumption a lot of people think is going to happen, but the opposite ends up being true.

[00:17:00] All the time. Or just because whatever administration is raising taxes overall.

[00:17:06] That's a very interesting concept. So the not only do the tax laws on these qualified plans, such as for one case and IRAs, change with each administration, but also the age when you can start using that. Something very interesting to consider is that the age is to where you have to start taking out the required distributions keeps getting pushed sooner and sooner.

[00:17:35] I think I'm going to wait till I'm dead to pull the money out and let them let them come after the taxes to whoever is left over. All right. Let's go to the next section. Eliminating debt. You know, a lot of people have run up a lot of debt and some people say, oh, well, just quit going to Starbucks. And, you know, so what's the what's some of the ideas you have to get get out of debt?

[00:17:57] Yeah. So we have a really great partner, an affiliate in our organization that tells people reduce up to 55, 55% of unsecured debt. And the way that they do that is they take a fine tooth comb through your credit report and then anything that's not right. If you're not getting charged the right amount by your creditors, if there's something inaccurate, it's all used as ammunition to help reduce the amount that you owe. And ultimately, in the best case scenario, they're able to bring favorable terms against your creditors because at the end of the day, all your creditors want to do is get paid, and they'd rather get paid something rather than nothing at all.

[00:18:44] Right. Right. Okay, that's cool. Now, how about being able to pass on some of your wealth?

[00:18:51] Ooh. That's a very, very powerful concept. So we help people build up plans to pass on generational wealth, and there's a number of ways to do that. Trust wills. It really depends on what the ultimate goal of someone is in making sure that the money that they do pass along is not being all eaten up by taxes. That's a really crucial thing.

[00:19:19] And legal fees to. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because, yeah, my girlfriend's mother just passed away and you know, I had when she was sick over the past year, I kept telling him, You've got to do something before she dies to to handle the house transfer. And so they finally did. I'm not I don't remember exactly or I'm not really in a position to tell what they did, but they did something that made it so that that was a smooth transition. The same thing happened with me. My, you know, ten years before my dad died, my property was transferred to myself and my brother. And so it didn't have any adverse tax stuff going on. So that's that's important for people to pay attention to for sure. And then and creating cash flowing assets, is that like your your vinyl transfer business or what what else do you consider no cash flowing assets?

[00:20:17] So it really depends on what someone is willing to learn about. So I'll use real estate, for example, so we help people get into a better financial situation to where they're able to leverage their money better to either purchase a franchise, build up a real estate portfolio, build up a residual and passive income, any number of different things.

[00:20:49] Yeah. And cash. Cash is king, they say, you know, and cash flow is king and know in my business I do it by creating what we call virtual real estate. And there's no bank, there's no mortgage, but there's websites that are creating cash flow and residual income. I'm always you know, I started out with real estate. I owned five apartment buildings in a hotel before I graduated college. So I was totally into real estate. But now I'm a little worried about some types of real estate because, you know, they just think of all those landlords where the the government stopped rent payments and like the mortgages didn't stop, but the rent did. And I have a friend in New York that says, I got to tell you, he's a mortgage or he's a real estate broker. He says there's only 30% occupancy in some of those massive buildings. Imagine now those people that own them are probably super rich anyway. But but I think housing stuff is probably safer than big, big business. You think business was business assets, real estate would be greatest. But like I said, all those landlords got screwed over because nobody was paying rent. So it's best to diversify, have a lot of different things going? I think so, exactly right.

[00:22:14] So we've got to take a brief sponsor break. And when we come back, we'll ask Joseph what a typical day looks like for him. And then we'll he's got a place he can go and you can get some free books. Check that out. So, folks, about 25 years ago, roughly, people started begging me to teach them Internet marketing for small business because I had been so successful myself. And when you're successful, kind of people notice. So I started a mentor program, then kind of made everybody mad. That was also doing the same thing because they were charging 50 or 100 grand up front to help people. And I knew a lot of these people they'd be hiding out in Mexico. If you just if you gave them 50 grand up front, they'd never help you. So I turned it on its head and I just charged an entry fee that was way lower. And then I tied my success to their success. So for me to get my 50 grand, you have to net 200 grand. Well, guess what? People love this. And 1700 plus students later, the program is still going strong. It's the longest running, most unique, most successful ever in the field of Internet and digital marketing.

[00:23:24] You have an immersion weekend at the retreat center here in Virginia Beach. We have our own TV studio where we shoot marketing videos for you. Everything is one on one where you can call up and make an appointment and we help you personally take over your computer, watch and show you where to click on stuff. I mean, nobody else on earth will. I'm crazy fanatic. I mean, I could have retired and 22 years ago if I felt like it, but I'm a crazy fanatic for small business people. So if you're interested in success in online, check out greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. We'd be glad to talk to you about it. There's no pressure here. I do not need to pressure anybody to join this program once you see all the things that are in it. All right. Great Internet marketing training.

[00:24:16] Now let's get back to the main event. We've got Joseph Garcia here. He's one of our veterans that we just love. And he helps people with reducing taxes and eliminating debt and building generational wealth that you can pass on and creating cash flow flowing assets. So Joseph, what's the typical day look like for you?

[00:24:36] So pretty standard schedule for me. On any given day. I spend a lot of time just talking to people, people out in the community, people online. People ask me for advice all the time. So any given day, I spend the first couple of hours a day just just talking with people, generating some conversations, and then I'll spend another couple hours a day meeting with clients, what we call the one on one or a discovery call, where we talk about the Rule 72 and how money is taxed and pros. So some of the things that we referenced earlier in the podcast, we'd love to start people off with financial education and then towards the evenings. I like to do some follow up. Conversations and meetings with people, typically after the first step of financial education is as what we call the financial lifestyle strategy. So I spend a little bit more time with people and help devise a strategy that will work exactly for them. But that's typically what my day to day looks like. That's the best a lot of my.

[00:25:55] Do you get up early? Do you work out? What do you eat? Do you have family to to deal with what's what's your life like? Sure.

[00:26:05] Sure. So I'll give you an example for today. Since school started for the kids. So on any given day, typically wake up around six, drop the kids off to school for breakfast, they'll have a protein shake, work out a little bit, hop on the computer for a little bit. And then before you know, it's time to pick up the kids and then we finish up in the afternoon with all the family activities.

[00:26:39] Nice. Yeah. So it's kind of a lifestyle business, right? Worked around the kids schedule and the family schedule and you can still do business, right?

[00:26:48] Absolutely.

[00:26:49] That's what we're all about here. So so you told me you had some kind of giveaway for him at howmoneyworks.com/Joseph Garcia. Is that the right place?

[00:27:00] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:27:01] Right. What will they find there?

[00:27:04] So if you click on my website, you'll learn all about how mine works. Book Stopping Soccer. So you can take a little look through the book, and if you find yourself wanting a free copy, you can go directly to my website, type in your information, and our agency will send you a book for free.

[00:27:28] Nice.

[00:27:28] All I have to do is sign up for it.

[00:27:31] Yeah. And I love that quote I saw there. Stop being a sucker, start being a student. Yeah, because knowledge is is the key to to all success. You know, it could take everything away from me that I have, but they can't take away the knowledge in my head that's can can make it successful. So the place they go right is howmoneyworks.com/JosephGarcia. Is that where they start out?

[00:27:58] Yep.

[00:27:59] Awesome. All right. Well, thanks so much for coming on, Joseph. And again, we on behalf of everybody at Screw the Commute and our team here and the audience, we want to thank you for your service.

[00:28:12] It's my pleasure. And thank you for having me today.

[00:28:15] My pleasure. All right, everybody, check out howmoneyworks.com/JosephGarcia. Uh oh. The last part, CIA. Maybe he's got to kill me now that he's told me all that stuff. All right, everybody, we'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.