– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

- There's a very good chance

that if you're watching this video

and you are a person who lives in the year 2023,

you don't have as much money as you probably want to have.

It's difficult times right now.

I've always been pretty good at making money.

I've always found a way to somehow acquire money,

but I've always been horrible at keeping it.

No matter how much money I made I always found a way

to live paycheck to paycheck somehow,

like I just couldn't figure out

how people accumulate wealth.

And that is until first year of university

when I read this book called "The Richest Man in Babylon."

I'd have one earbud in my downtime at work listening

to "The Richest Man in Babylon."

And I remember my mind slowly being blown

and it completely shifted my mindset towards

how money even works.

And it really acted as the catalyst, the game changer

that shifted the trajectory of my financial reality,

and helped me end up where I am today.

So I wanna share with you guys some of the key takeaways

that I learned from "The Richest Man in Babylon,"

so that hopefully by the end of this year

you will have more money in your bank account

and your financial future

will end up looking a lot more optimistic.

So the only way that you are going to work your way

out of financial misery is if you stop falling

for the biggest money mistake.

What is the biggest money mistake?

Well, it's not this cute little thing,

it's not this little mistake that you know, haha, silly me,

it's so much bigger than you think.

So let me paint a picture,

it's kind of the only way of understanding it.

Let's pretend that you are a little kid again,

you're nine years old and you really lucked out

because it's your full-time job

to play Chuck E Cheese games.

You go to Chuck E Cheese, you play Whack-a-Mole,

you drain the hoops, shoot the guys,

I don't know what you do at Chuck E Cheese.

I haven't been there since I was nine years old,

but that is now your full-time job as a nine year old.

You work there all day nine to five, Monday through Friday

and at the end of each day you're given

the Chuck E Cheese tickets.

And as a nine year old, you're probably very excited.

You're thinking, man, I'm making so much damn ticket money,

I can afford all of these cool prizes

at the Chuck E Cheese Prize counter.

Your entire mind is occupied by this.

It's occupied by the amount of tickets that you have

and what you can purchase at the prize counter

with the tickets that you have.

Everybody in the world is playing this game with money.

We are all in Chuck E. Cheese.

We are under the illusion that we are getting paid

with Chuck E Cheese tickets, and the only thing to do

with the Chuck E Cheese tickets

is to buy Chuck E Cheese prizes.

But when you think this way, you are living in the Matrix,

you are not aware of the fact

that you're actually getting paid in cash

and you can step outside of Chuck E Cheese

and spend money on whatever you want.

You know, it sounds overly simple

and kind of ridiculous when I put it this way,

but this is exactly what keeps people financially stuck.

It's because they slave away for $10 an hour,

eight hours a day, 40 hours a week at the trinket shop

and then they come home we start thinking

about all these cool trinkets that we can buy

with our money that we earned

from working at the Trinket shop.

And this is extra sinister because the Trinket shop

actually makes more money off of you

than you make off of them

because when you work at the Trinket shop

you are worth more than $10 an hour to them.

Otherwise they wouldn't pay you,

you would be a net loss to them.

So for all of the time and effort and sweat you invest

into the Trinket shop, they give you a little bit in return

and then you somehow fall for the ruse,

and convince yourself to give the money right back

to the Trinket shop by buying trinkets.

Everything that you watch on the TV when you get home,

every billboard that you see on your drive home from work

is just talking about Trinkets again.

Ooh, look at this little Trinket you can buy.

Even though you just spent all day serving the Trinket shop

and the Trinket owners here give your money back

to the Trinket shop.

That's how you get the (beep).

The question is how do we break free of this cycle?

There's only one way really

and that is to pay yourself first.

This is one of the biggest takeaways

from "The Richest Man in Babylon."

If you pay yourself first, you make $10

from working at the Trinket shop every day, just take one.

This one is for you and for you alone, okay.

You take this, you put it in a different account first

and then you use this to buy trinkets.

Do whatever the hell you want with this.

You gotta pay rent, right.

You know, rent's like all of it.

There's like internet and phone bill and you're out again,

but at least you paid yourself first.

10% may sound like such a small amount,

but if you save 10% you'll be doing more

than most people do.

Most people don't save anything

because they feel like they can't.

But in reality most people have a Netflix subscription,

a Disney Plus subscription, blabbity, blabbity, blah, right.

And they go to Starbucks or they go to Tim Horton's here

in Canada, McDonald's.

Everybody manages to hemorrhage money.

It's because if you are an average person

then you follow right into the demographic of buying things

that you don't need.

Your money is going to go to the emperors

of the world no matter what.

It's just gonna happen,

it's the way the world is structured.

But if you pay yourself first you will find a way

to save a little bit on groceries, a little bit on coffee.

Human beings are super adaptable.

If you learned that, okay next month you're gonna make 90%

of what you normally make you would find a way

to make it work, you always do.

You're still here.

We are survivors, and we're in a situation economically

where you really have to bet on yourself

because nobody's gonna do it for you.

It's crucial that you pay yourself $1

for every $10 that you make.

You put it into an account that you cannot,

and will not spend on anything other than things

that can potentially yield a return,

we'll get into that later.

But at the very least it sits in an account

that you don't touch.

You don't waste it away on everything else,

that money is for you, it's yours and yours to keep.

Okay, so let's summarize what we've learned so far

and then let's move on to the next most important thing.

Number one is we're not at Chuck E. Cheese.

Number two is that the only way to escape the nightmare

of the Trinket shop tyranny is to pay yourself first.

Then the next most important thing

is to increase your ability to earn.

Once you've gotten into a habit

of continually saving as much as you can,

paying yourself first before you pay anyone else

then the only way to increase your wealth or increase

the rate in which you accumulate this stack of cash

that you have and you don't touch is to increase

the income coming in.

So how do you do that?

The easiest way is through education.

Now, I don't mean you have to spend four years

and tens of thousands of dollars getting a college degree

because we live in the information age.

There are so many marketable skills

that you can learn online for free without the need

to pay a cent, like a perfect example

of this is video editing.

So I know a guy who I know quite well,

he might even be watching this video

and be like, hey, that's me.

He just learned video editing basically this year,

you know, dabbled a little bit in the past

and it led to a four to six month stint working as a video

editor for some company and now he has that on his resume

and now he can go get another video editing job.

People want things that are popular.

Video content is extremely popular.

You learn how to do Photoshop,

you can pose as a thumbnail expert.

People are hitting up my DMs all the time saying,

hey, do you want YouTube Shorts?

People pay money for that kind of thing.

You know, you look around you, you're here on YouTube,

you're watching a video, someone edits videos,

someone makes videos, be the guy who knows a little bit more

than your average person on how to produce video content

and boom, you have a job that's in demand.

Learn how to do things, okay.

Learn how to make things, how to build things and monitor

what you're consuming.

With whatever you input into your brain on a daily basis,

you have to ask yourself is this helping me grow?

Is this helping me expand my expertise

and my usefulness to the world and the value

that I can add to people?

Or is it just keeping me distracted and entertained?

Because the bar is so low,

like if you don't fill your time constantly with TikTok

and YouTube, you are so far ahead of the pack in 2023.

Just find ways to just not be

on these platforms all the time

and you are well ahead of everybody else.

And then have the added upgrade of educating yourself

on how certain creative things work,

how to start copywriting, maybe how to leverage AI

to make creative content.

Stick your finger into the air, analyze where the wind

is blowing, start working on what's popular

and figure out more about it and you'll be surprised

as to how many people want to pay money for people like you

who know what to do.

And also ask yourself and reflect on

what is occupying your mind.

Like what are you excited by, motivated by?

And that might sound like meaningless mindset, gobbly gook,

but it really is everything.

What you are preoccupied with and excited by reveals

what your incentive structure is.

You know, are you excited about the new Bethesda game

that's never gonna come out?

Or are you excited about financial freedom?

Spending time with people you care about,

your spiritual wellbeing, your social wellbeing?

Like where is your mind at?

Because the answers to these questions often reveal

where you're gonna end up months and years down the line.

Okay, before we dive into the next takeaway

I just want to give a big thank you to Audible

for sponsoring this video.

And I'm extremely excited

that this video is sponsored by Audible,

specifically because an Audible subscription

is exactly what I'm talking about

in terms of like a high value return on investment.

Like instead of spending the exact same amount of money

on your sixth streaming service subscription

where you can watch 68 episodes of a poorly written show

that's going down the gutter, why not spend

that on something that gives you access

to some of the greatest insights ever recorded?

You know, audio books like "The Richest Man in Babylon"

that will get you thinking about ways

that you can change your financial situation.

And for those of you who don't know Audible is the leading

provider of spoken word, entertainment,

and audiobooks all in one place.

Every single month you receive one credit,

which you can spend on any audiobook of your choice,

regardless of price and you get to keep

that audiobook forever.

And you also get access to a rapidly expanding catalog

of Audible originals, podcasts and exclusive series.

So if you're interested in joining me in becoming big brain

and expanding your mind, then if you use my link

in the description below or text betterideas to 500-500

then you'll get a free 30 day trial.

And also in August, I'll be going live here on YouTube

discussing the Charisma Myth.

So if you head on over to Audible,

or if you already have an Audible account

download the Charisma Myth

because we're gonna be talking about that on the channel

and I think it'll just be a really good time.

It's the first time I'm doing something like this

here on YouTube.

So once again, head on over to audible.com/betterideas,

or text better ideas to 500-500

to get your free 30 day trial.

Thanks again to Audible for sponsoring this video.

Oh, hey Joey, from the future here I totally forgot

to film this part, so here we go.

As we talked about earlier, you save your money, right?

So as you're escaping the Matrix you're starting

to develop this pocket of wealth for yourself.

You're saving $1 for every $10 that you make

so that you're slowly making your gold pouch fatter.

What do you do with it?

Do you just let it sit there?

Well, you know what's funny is if you did nothing else

and you just let the money sit there,

and you didn't invest it,

you didn't let the money work for you,

you would still be doing so much more than most people.

Most people don't save anything.

But I do want to say that saving while it is so much better

than not saving it's also the second worst thing you can do

with your money.

The worst thing is to not save at all.

The second worst thing you can do is to just save it

and do nothing with it.

And the reason why that's bad, well, I mean it's good,

but the reason why it's not optimal

is because when your money sits in the bank

you actually lose money over time.

I mean, you gain money over time assuming

that you are saving it, but you actually lose a lot of money

due to inflation.

Year after year because of inflation your dollar,

even though the dollar amount is constant, the dollar value,

the weight of the dollar is going down over time.

It's inevitable.

So you're actually losing money,

you're slowly leaking it when it sits in the bank.

Another important point to make

is that when your money just sits in a savings account

in the bank, it's not actually sitting in a savings account

in the bank, right?

This isn't the olden days where you had sacks of gold

and you gave it to a bank and it's just sitting there.

You know, you can open up the vault again

and take your money out whenever you want it.

What's actually happening is you're loaning your money

to the bank and the bank is doing what you should be doing

with your money, but they're doing it instead.

And that's how they make a profit.

That's how the banks make money, is they borrow your money

and they invest it and grow the money.

And they say, oh yeah, you know what?

We're just paying for security,

so when you want your money again you can take it out,

but that's not always the case.

You know, the Great Depression proved that.

If you've ever seen the movie, "It's A Wonderful Life"

you know there could be a bank run

and you can't take your money out.

The bank goes sorry, we lost all of your money

because the economy crashed.

You can't do anything about it.

So I think that's why it's crucial

that while it is better than nothing

to have your money sitting in the bank

you should start learning how to invest.

And I will never give you investment advice

because I'm not an expert,

but I will give you just a vague idea of what I'm doing.

Essentially what I do is I diversify, right.

So instead of having 100% of my money in the bank,

I'm currently building a property

where property value is high.

I understand not everyone has the luxury to do that,

but you know I'll at least have some land

that I can call my own that has no mortgage on it.

I really want to get into buying some gold,

you know some actual tangible things that are out there

as well as put money in index funds and whatever,

in the states you have 401ks or whatever.

But the the point being is that the only way

that you're going to learn how to invest is by investing.

You're going to lose your money

because you're not a pro at it.

But "The Richest Man In Babylon" has a lot of great advice

about seeking advice.

You'll start to gain a lot of wisdom about evaluating

the types of people that have the highest probability

of helping you out and giving you sound investment advice

and sort of making yourself immune

to its too good to be true type situations.

Get rich quick schemes are schemes.

The only way to get rich quick

is to offer genuine value to people.

To help people out you either have to help a lot

of people solve a small problem,

or help a few people solve a big problem.

And if you really luck out,

you help a lot of people solve a big problem,

but it's not as easy as it sounds.

So if you wanna get rich,

maybe you help a few people solve a big problem

or a medium-sized problem.

Maybe you invest in a pressure washer for $500.

Maybe you knock door to door on people's doors

because you knock on doors when you go door to door

and you say, hey I noticed your driveway is really dirty,

I'll pressure wash it for a hundred bucks.

And they'll say, oh, a hundred bucks, that's super cheap.

Or they'll say, a hundred bucks, that's a ripoff,

my driveway is super small.

You never know until you try.

If you pressure wash four driveways during the Summer

then you pay for your pressure washer back.

See, investing doesn't always have to be

into the stock market.

There are ways where you can invest in yourself.

You know, maybe you buy two pressure washers,

three pressure washers, maybe you start charging $200,

you start paying a friend to help you

with the pressure washing company.

You take a little bit of the cut

because you invented the company and you scale.

You know, there's so many ways to invest in assets

that will make you money.

You just have to be creative and you have to be engaged,

and you have to fill your mind with good ideas

from audio books, YouTube videos, online courses,

talking with people who are knowledgeable,

you know start occupying your mind with inventive ideas

and then go and take action on them.

That's the most important thing.

So step one, like I said be aware that you're in the matrix.

Step two or Chuck E Cheese or whatever.

Step two is to escape Chuck E Cheese.

Start paying yourself first,

developing a little money patch on the side

that's growing and growing and growing,

and adding and adding and adding.

And all of a sudden

while you're living a very similar lifestyle,

it's a lifestyle 90% similar to how you were living,

except the only difference is that you have an accumulation

of wealth growing.

And then with that wealth, start educating yourself

on how to make the money work for you.

Diversify so you're not just keeping everything in the bank.

Maybe this is stuff you've heard a million times before,

but if you are an average person, you're not doing it.

Statistically, you're not doing these things.

So really start with step one and step two and step three.

It doesn't have to be perfect,

but the enemy of good is perfect.

Perfect is the enemy of good,

something like that.

Take care guys.

If you're investing,

let me know in the comment section below

what you're investing in.

Are you banking everything on crypto,

on a niche coin that you're hoping blows up?

Why is that not a get rich scheme?

I wanna know these things,

I wanna learn from you guys.

Hopefully this video gives you some ideas that...

Hopefully it just simplifies things for you.

Personal finance does not need to be super complicated.

If you do the basics and you nail the basics,

you're doing so much better than most people.

But most people fail at the basics and then they look

for the super complicated get rich schemes

while they're simultaneously hemorrhaging money

due to lifestyle inflation and they're never saving anything

or paying themselves first, or developing any kind of wealth

in the background.

So nail the fundamentals and then go

to the financial experts of YouTube and try to find

the best way to help your money make you money.

Other than that though, guys thank you so much

for watching this video as per usual and I have a favor

to ask of you if you are on Instagram anyways,

please follow the Better Ideas Instagram

because I really want to start a podcast

and I want to get the highest quality guests possible,

but my presence is so small on Instagram

'cause I barely use it.

You know, I plan on using it more, but when I slide

into people's DMs that I want to talk to I just get ignored

because I have like no presence on Instagram.

So merely as a tool to help me reach interesting people,

go ahead and follow me on Instagram at Better Ideas,

so that I can secure the coolest,

most badass and interesting guests

on the secret podcast I am developing.

Other than that, guys, good luck.

If you're in a bad financial place, it can get better.

No matter how bad the economy is around you,

there are always outliers, people who can change

their situation through hard work and determination

and just the right information.

You know, maybe you've been given bad information,

and hopefully this is kind of simplifying things for you

and gives you encouragement

to help you develop wealth slowly but surely,

so that you can escape whatever situation that you're in.

And if you think I'm completely oversimplifying things,

fair enough, let me know why in the comment section below

because yeah I'm not a finance guy,

so maybe I just have a terrible take on all of this,

but you know, these overly simple methods

are working really well for me recently.

I just find that simplifying things just works better

for my brain.

So let me know all of these things.

Looking forward to talking to you guys in the future

and stay hungry.

I don't know, what do I usually say?

That's all for today.

Thank you so much for watching

and we'll catch you in the next video.

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
chance /tʃæns/ A2	noun - a possibility of something happening
person /ˈpɜːrsən/ A1	noun - a human being
money /ˈmʌni/ A1	noun - currency
times /taɪmz/ A2	noun - a period of time
good /ɡʊd/ A1	adjective - of high quality
way /weɪ/ A1	noun - a method or manner of doing something
work /wɜːrk/ A1	verb - to be employed noun - activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.
university /ˌjuːnɪˈvɜːrsəti/ B1	noun - an educational institution designed for instruction
book /bʊk/ A1	noun - a set of written, printed, or blank sheets bound together along the spine.
mind /maɪnd/ A2	noun - the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences
mistake /mɪˈsteɪk/ A2	noun - an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong
kid /kɪd/ A1	noun - a child
job /dʒɑːb/ A1	noun - a task or piece of work, especially one that is paid
tickets /ˈtɪkɪts/ A1	noun - a piece of paper or card that allows someone to do something
prize /praɪz/ A2	noun - a thing given as a reward
game /ɡeɪm/ A1	noun - a form of play or sport
hour /aʊər/ A1	noun - a unit of time, equal to 60 minutes
shop /ʃɒp/ A1	noun - a place where goods or services are sold
day /deɪ/ A1	noun - a period of 24 hours
income /ˈɪnkʌm/ B1	noun - money received, especially on a regular basis, for work or through investments.
wealth /welθ/ B1	noun - an abundance of valuable possessions or money.
education /ˌedʒuˈkeɪʃn/ B1	noun - the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university.
interest /ˈɪntrəst/ B1	noun - the feeling of wanting to know or learn about something or someone.
value /ˈvæljuː/ B1	noun - the regard that something is held to deserve