Does MONEY actually change your life?

Hey guys, as you can tell, this is a different setup. Like this is not something that we normally do or normally talk about. But as you can tell by the title, we are going to talk to you guys today about a topic that I have been wanting to share with you for years. Like we have been talking about doing a video like this for like two years now. And it is- And basically I'm gonna take credit because last night I was like, listen, we just gotta do it. We just gotta do it. And stop talking about it and do it. Yeah. So I have a cold. I have a nasally sound, but just bear with us because I feel like this is a very valuable lesson that we learned early on in our life. These are some mistakes that we made in the past and sort of recently, and we learned from them. And we feel like we could help other people by sharing with you guys the mistakes we made. Yeah. So we're gonna dive right into it. First of all, we need to rewind back to when we were 16. That's when we started dating. And we always, always, like since the day I can, since the day we met, I can remember us dreaming of this life we would have one day, right? What would we do at night time? We would drive up on the mountain? I wouldn't even say it was dreaming because like we were like already speaking it into existence. This was before like we knew the movie, the book, The Secret hadn't even come out yet. Yeah. We would drive up to this neighborhood and we would look at this specific, really big house. And we used to tell each other like, we're gonna live in that house one day, or we're gonna live in a house just like that in this neighborhood. Like that's what our, that's like, that's what we aspire to do. And literally at 16, we would drive around this neighborhood actually and look at big houses and be like, oh, I like that one, or we'll live in one like that. Like that's how we dreamed, right? I just, and honestly, even before that, like I can always remember as a kid, just looking at big houses and nice cars and just wanting them and just wishing one day to have one, right? So. Actually, I remember the first big house I ever went in when I was younger, I was in like fifth grade. It was my best friend Chase's house. And it was my first time ever going in a big house. And I just was like, this is what I want. Like, this is what I want one day. Cause I grew up in a family of 11 and we shared a thousand square foot house. So you can imagine, there's 11 children, two parents, 13 people walking back and forth shoulder to shoulder in a thousand square foot house. So anyway, we, when we started dating, we both have like the same mindset of like one day. We would just, we would do great things and have big houses and have all this success. Lots of stuff. We knew that like, we were like, we need lots of stuff because all these other people that were successful had stuff. They had the stuff. And I was like, you know what? If you've got a garage full of stuff, you made it in life. You don't need a car in the garage, you need stuff. Oh my gosh, that's so true. If you, seriously, if you drove by a house and just the garage is packed to the brim, you're like nice. Nice dude, you got stuff. Oh my gosh. So we were married in 2011. In 2012, we had our twins. We were living in my parents' basement apartment and it was a perfect little space for us. This is where I discovered network marketing. And this is where our story completely changes. Okay. So my first year in, we made about, I mean, we did okay. We made about 15,000 for the whole year. So that's great. She did with her network marketing. I still worked full time. She, just with network marketing, brought in 15 grand that first year. She was only in for, what was it? March till the end of the year. So I just remember what my tax thing said, was 15 for the year. So 15 grand, that's great for a side little hustle. But over the next two years is when things really took off for us with this industry, with network marketing. And over the next 700 days, we became millionaires in our company. So. Things changed fast. Very fast. And things, I mean, oh, it was crazy. I just feel like a lot of responsibility was put in our hands at such a young age without like life experiences of. That's true. You mature as things go on and you learn from your small mistakes. Immediately, we were dropped with a bunch of money in our lap. Yeah. And we were young. And we just came out of a studio apartment in Ashley's parents' basement. And then you can only imagine. We were traveling. We were spending money like crazy. Like we were thinking, you know, money's here today. It'll come back tomorrow. You know, we had that mindset. But this is also like, I wanna back up a little bit because right before we had this huge success is when our son passed away. For those who don't know our story, we had a five month old son who passed away suddenly, very unexpectedly back in 2014. And I feel as though, you know, that month after he passed away, we were just like, we didn't know how we would even go on. But I remember just being inspired to throw myself into this work because I knew it would help me to keep going. I mean, we had our twins and those, I feel like that was such a blessing because they helped us get out of bed every morning. But I was able to throw myself into this work. And that's really why I think, you know, I was giving it like 100% of my focus every single day. And that is where things took off like crazy for us. So it was right after that, that, you know, we had moved into, we moved into a new house every year. So we were already living in a, we were renting a home at this point when all of this started happening. We moved into his family's house. We remodeled it. That wasn't good enough. Then we wanted a big house. We literally took this home. It was a good home. It's in Layton. And we put like $40,000 into it. Not an exaggeration. I did all the remodels myself. We made it exactly to a T what we wanted at the time. And once we did that, we were like, well, this isn't enough. Like we need something bigger. We need something better. We need something nicer. We need something newer. Cause we got the money, we can afford it. So, and then it always just was constantly more. Ashley got her dream car. I got my Range Rover. That was literally on my dream board for my whole entire life. She rolled in and snatched one of those up. And then we were like, you know that like void you think you're filling when you go and buy that new car? Well, we did that and that void didn't get filled. So we went and bought another car, a Mercedes. Like I bought a brand new Mercedes and was like, okay, now that's going to fill that void. Well, then after that didn't happen. At this point in our life is right when we moved into our million dollar home. So this was up on the hill that we always dreamed that one day- That same hill at 16 when we would drive up and look. We would just look at the land up there. So we moved into this house. Honestly, I think back and I'm like, why? But really it was just like, well, we can. We can afford the payment. We can afford this payment. We can afford that payment. So let's just keep buying. Let's just keep buying more stuff. And one night in this house, I remember it was about six months into living here. I felt so discontent and I was on Instagram. I remember seeing this picture of a walk-in closet and it had like an Island and there was like a separate closet for purses and all just like, it was just amazing. And so I started looking on Pinterest. I started making this new board of our future dream house. I showed him to Thomas. I'm like, you need a closet like this. By the way, this time you guys, my closet was already huge. I got the big walk-in closet. We both had a walk-in closet already. We already had huge walk-in closets and mine was packed full to the top with clothes on both shelves of clothing. Anywhere you could put a shoe, there were shoes. Like you couldn't even imagine it. And then I remember actually coming to me and be like, Thomas, look at this though. Look at this. And I was like, that's cool. That's really cool. Like I want that, right? And at this point, we're both kind of like, we're not, we're like, there's a void. We got to fill this void. And we thought the void we needed to fill was a bigger house. Not just like bigger, but better. Like we're like, well, this one, we didn't design this one. Like we kind of just had like a great opportunity to get into here. We knew the builders and we were like, well, let's like, let's get that. But then Ashley was like, well, if I really could pick everything, it wouldn't be any of this stuff. Like my kid, you guys, she literally wanted to remodel the kitchen after six months. She started showing me pictures. Like hey, I know what, she's like, hey, if we're not going to move and build a new house, I want to redo the kitchen like this. I'm like, Ashley, that's like $100,000 kitchen already. And we're just going to rip it out and put in your kitchen you want? She's like, yeah, I think so. Okay, well. So that, we're just giving you examples, you guys, of how discontent we were with our situation. And from the outside looking in, you'd be like, what could you possibly be discontent for? Like, what are you crying about? And I know it sounds like we were spoiled little brats, but it was just, we were trying to fill a void. And you're going to hear us say that a lot. There was something missing and we kept trying to just fill it. And we thought money and stuff, remember the garage, like, packed full to the top with stuff? We wanted that. We wanted that garage packed full of stuff. Okay, so then I was tired of my Range Rover and I remember on my birthday, we went to the Mercedes dealership. Well, we stayed at Grand America first. We did, we stayed downtown in Salt Lake City. We stayed at Grand America so we could go over to the Mercedes dealership. We went over there. It was actually really late. So like they were about to close down, but we walked around, we talked with one of the dealers. Yeah, we sat in some of the cars that were like inside the showroom and then there this G-Wagon was. So the G-Wagon, that was like the ultimate goal, right? Like this, oh my gosh, I felt like if you have that car, right? You made it in life. And so I remember taking a picture next to it and saying, well, we were really contemplating on getting it, but we thought maybe we should sell the car first. Yeah, I was smart enough to go towards nighttime because I knew they couldn't like work a deal out with us yet. And she like sat on it and mulled it over like, we were literally this close to buying, it was $150,000 for that G-Wagon. I felt just sick. I like, I really, you guys, the reason this video was so hard to make is because I just like, we just both feel. Shamed kind of. Yeah, like I want to say stupid, but really it's more of a shame. Yeah, like it's embarrassing to talk about how dumb we were with money. Yeah. Sure, it's totally embarrassing. But the whole purpose of why we're doing this is because we want to share with you guys the bigger picture here. Okay, so anyway, I remember we went back to our hotel room that night and I had a sick feeling. I had a really sick feeling about that decision to buy a car like that. I heard these five words in my head and I will never forget it. I'll never forget how it made me feel. And honestly, this was part of the turning point in our life that completely turned it around. I was laying there in bed and I literally heard the words, when will it be enough? And I just sat there and thought like, oh my goodness, okay, if I were to go and buy that car, well, in about six months, I probably will be discontent again, right? Sure, it'll be fun for a little while. Sure, when you buy it, that rush and that endorphin high you get when you have a new purchase, you'll feel that and you'll feel excited and you'll feel proud that you were able to buy this car. But in a few months, that will go away. And it'll mean nothing. And then what? What could I buy from there? I would have to go and buy, what, a $200,000 car? Like, it just seemed like it was never ending and nothing was good enough. And it seemed as though, if I was already looking to remodel this brand new house, we were the first people to live in it. If we were already looking for ways to build a new dream home, or we need a bigger closet, when would it be good enough? When would we finally decide? What would the purchase be? That was finally- Where it finally filled that- It did. Where it finally, it would never- Is it gonna be the car? Is it gonna be the remodel? Is it gonna be the new house? What? And we constantly were thinking that there was an answer of something, like something. We were just sitting there thinking together and we had these conversations about like, how is it possible that we could be discontent with our life right now? How is it even possible that we could want something more or wish for something greater? It's just, it really came down to the fact that money can't buy happiness. And how many times have we heard that in our life? You know, people say that that big house won't make me happy, but I wanna find out for myself. And we did. We did. Also though, at the same time, like we never had somebody tell us what the knowledge we have right now. No one sat me down, which it's not anyone's fault. Like I didn't expect anyone to do this for me, but no one was there that said, hey, Thomas, by the way, you guys are making a lot of money. If you go and buy all this stuff, no matter what you do, no matter how many things you buy, it's not going to fill that emptiness you feel. It's not going to fill a void. It's not going to actually make you happy. You'll be like excited because you bought something and you spent money and you get that rush. And then the second that rush drops, that new shirt you bought, that new pair of shoes you bought, the next day don't even matter. You're like, oh, well, I've already got like, it's not like I can wear those shoes every single day, is what I'm thinking, you know? So it's, you think that you're filling that and no one was there to tell me that. So we had to figure it out the hard way. But I think that's the most important part of this video is helping you guys understand, hey, I'm here to tell you firsthand, like the exact experience we had. It won't, it won't make a difference. When you buy something, it's not filling anything. You're just spending money and you're just blowing it so you have more stuff to worry about. And really, if you think about it, think of a time, which I know you can probably think of a time, even in this past week, that you bought something, you were excited about it right in that moment, you bring it home, and then you kind of just forget about it, right? We just had to adjust because we ran out of space. Technical difficulties. So anyway, what I was just finishing up really quick is, it's more of an endorphin high than it is happiness. You temporarily get that excitement and that fake happiness, and then it immediately goes away. It's like a pre-workout. It only lasts a little bit. So that's the kind of rush you're getting when you think you're feeling happiness, but it's a temporary excitement. Right. So in February of 2016, we had been in our home now for like eight months, about, I don't know. We'd been in there for a minute. And I stumbled across something called minimalism. I'd never heard of it. I had no idea what it was, but the more I read about it, I became obsessed. I love the whole concept of less is more. It's like an understatement. It really is. You were very obsessed. But the good thing was, is when I shared it with Thomas, he was so on board. I was so afraid to even like share with him, like, hey babe, I think we should like. Get rid of stuff. Yeah, like do the opposite of what we've been doing, and let's like sell everything, or just let's donate everything. Let's get rid of all the stuff that we have. And so we started with our closets, and we started just decluttering those, and removing anything we didn't wear. I mean, honestly, think how many things you have hanging up in your closet, and you always go to the same like six shirts. That's what you said to me that really got me to actually be on board. Yeah. She said, hey, of all that stuff in your closet, all the clothes, all the pants, all the shirts, if you haven't worn it in the last 30 days, why do you still have it? Yeah. And I'm like, well, because I gotta have stuff. Like, if my closet isn't full of stuff, then like I don't have stuff. And like, what is life if I don't have stuff in my closet? And people don't think I'm cool if I don't have a lot of stuff. Right. So that was what really got me clicking. Yeah. And then she was like, name your 10 favorite outfits. I'm like, oh, that's easy. It's like the only 10 that I ever wear. Literally, I'm like, I wear these same 10 outfits all the time. She was like, so why do you have the rest of it? And I was like, okay, I could get on board with this if anyone wants it. I was like, I could get on board with this. Let's try it. Like, let's go. So then we went down to our kid's toy room. That was like a whole mess and disaster of just like, it was disgusting the amount of things that our kids had. Baby, you're on a kid. It's so hard not to, okay. I'm sorry. I have to be honest right now. Thomas yawns a lot when I talk. And so when I go, anytime we edit film, I'm like, he is so rude. Like, people are probably thinking like, oh, look at him, just yawning while she talks. So anyway, if you see some yawns that I didn't catch before, I've been trying to get back at him. I swear, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Anywho. If I yawn, you guys, call me out. So we decluttered the toy room. I, let me just share this little random statistic with you guys. I don't mean to like, be all statistic-y, but this is crazy. So the average American child has 500 toys. Okay, that's crazy. And they play with the same 12. Now really think about that. Think of the toys that your kids are playing with. It's probably the same like, couple, right? They go through these phases where they like this toy, then they like this kind of toy. But it changes every month, like. Yeah, but. One minute it's Transformers, one minute it's dinosaurs, next it's Pokemon. Through this concept, we've really changed the way that we spend our money with our kids too, because it's the same thing with us though. Like, think like he was saying, in our closets we have like a thousand things, but what do we do? We resort to the same like, 10 or 12 outfits, right? It's the same thing with kids. So anyway, we went through and we started decluttering the kids' toy room. We got rid of tons of stuff. Tons of toys. Tons. Then we moved on to the kitchen. We had probably 100 cupboards in the kitchen and they were all jam-packed, full to the brim. We got rid of so much in there, we probably used about six cupboards. Well, I had a yard, I did a yard sale while Ashley was in California, I think. Yeah. Visiting California. Yeah. And I sold so much stuff, you guys. Like, we had about 1,500 to 2,000 square foot garage and then 1,000 square foot gym underneath the garage. Well, honestly, you guys, all the space that we had, like if you included the garage and the shed, or not the shed, the gym. Like 10,000 square feet. We had about 10,000 square feet worth of space, okay, in our house. And we still had a storage shed. That was like, 10 by 10. Like, we still filled up a storage. How was that even possible? I feel like that is, it's so embarrassing to even admit that, that we had that much stuff. So we ended up getting rid of at least 60%, maybe even more than 60% of our things. We didn't have a shed. Our storage, we had a huge storage room, too. Remember that, underneath it, like wrapped around the whole back? Yeah. That was filled. So anyway, we got rid of tons of stuff. And then, in July of that year, we moved. We sold our house and we moved into the house that we're in today. And we, let's see, it's about 8,000 square feet, smaller than our last house. And I. Oh my gosh, this house is 2,100 square feet. There's not much storage space. But guess what? We still had a big garage. Like, we still have two car garages. I mean, it's not big, but. When we moved in here, we still, our garage was full to the roof. It was still full, yeah. We couldn't even fit a car in the garage. But like, even then, after doing that little purge we did, I still was like, nice, dude. We got like a garage full of stuff still, at least. It was weird. Do you remember the day we decided to do it, what you said to me? Yeah. She literally woke up in the morning and said, Thomas, if everything in the garage caught on fire, what would you have lost? What's in there that you would be mad that you lost? And I was like. Literally. I'm like, wait a minute. Hold on, give me a second to answer. And I was like, I don't even know. We don't know what's in the boxes of stuff. I don't know what's in the boxes of stuff. I just know that I got stuff. And after she said that, I'm like, babe, back the trailer up. Not her, literally. She can't back the trailer. So I'm like, I'm gonna back the trailer up and we are gonna throw away and donate everything. I don't want anything in that garage. And she was like, are you serious? I'm like, yes, right now. Let's do it right now. Yep. The best part to me of all of this. So exactly about, well, not exactly. A year and about a month ago from today, I did another closet purge and I got rid of a bunch of things. And what ended up happening was I created this justification in my head where like, well, I need that shirt because I got rid of like a hundred. So I can buy one more. And then that one turned into two, turned into 10, turned into 20 more. And all of a sudden, two weeks ago, my closet was all the way full of clothes again. And I don't have a huge closet here. Like it's not an abnormally large closet or abnormally small. It's like a decent, a normal sized closet. I would say it's pretty on the small side. Right. But I had it packed from one side to the other full of clothes, which most people probably have that or more. And I started to feel sick to my stomach again. And I was like, man, I remember that feeling I got when I got rid of all those clothes that made me just feel so empowered. It made me like, wow, this huge weight was lifted off my shoulder. I don't have to wake up in the morning and scratch my head on what I'm gonna wear because I only have 10 options now. So my closet before packed from side to side. Now I have the things that I enjoy wearing. Like it doesn't matter what I grab. I know I like every single one of those 10 things the exact same. So for me, it takes a lot of weight off my shoulders and it just feels so good to know, wow, I got rid of all of that. And that's what I have now. That's all I need. It makes me happy. The more things I found that I've gotten rid of, the happier I'm actually feeling. And it's not an endorphin high. It's happiness. Because every time I open that closet, I feel good. Yeah. You just feel like relieved. It's really interesting how we found that we became happier when we let go of things. Because this whole purpose, like the whole reason we're here, it is not to acquire more stuff. And in fact, we have found we become happier when we have less, which sounds so backwards. It's so true that less is more. Yeah, it really is. You guys, seriously, I hope that these little tips have helped those of you that are watching. I hope that you now know that you don't have to make a ton of more money to be happy. You don't have to constantly stress about, well, I need a side hustle. I need a raise. I need this. We're not saying don't have ambitions and don't strive for things. We've figured out that the more simple life is and the more simple things we have, the happier we are, which is exactly polar opposite from what we were two years ago. Yeah, and what we've believed our entire life, what we always chased after. And honestly, if we could leave anything with you, it would be that if you are discontent with how your life is right now, you will be no matter what. No matter what circumstances come your way, you will find a reason to be discontent. We constantly give up time with our family so we can make more money to do what? To buy more stuff. That's all it is at the end of the day. We work those overtime hours. We do extra side hustles. We do things to make more money so we can buy more things. And it sacrifices time with family to do something like that. Something that I learned that was the most beneficial thing I think I've ever learned and that you guys can take with you is whatever you are now, money will make you more of that. If you are a big spender, if you live paycheck to paycheck, if you are a good saver, whatever you are, money's gonna magnify that. Depending on how much you get. We've always said this. Money makes you more of what you already are. So yeah, if you are. Doesn't matter if you make an extra 10,000 a month or an extra million a month. You will be more of whatever you are right now. You have to fix whatever the issues you're struggling with now before you get the raise if you truly wanna change. You can't expect a million dollar paycheck to change your spending habits. Right, no way, no way. You guys, it's the exact same. If you live paycheck to paycheck now, you'll do it making $60,000 a month. I've seen it happen. Remember though, if you're going for that big house, like if that's what your dream is and you wanna live in a huge house or you want the really fancy car, if that's what you're going for and that's your dream, we're not here to discourage you and tell you not to go after that. Yeah, my biggest piece of advice though is to ask yourself why. You know, why is it that you want the big house? Why, what will that do for you? You know, peel back those layers to find out why this specific thing is what you're going after. Because had I done that, once I peeled it all the way back, I would have thought because I would be happy. That's what it would have come down to. I thought that is what would make me happy. But if I were to have done that before we had bought the cars or bought that house or, you know, spent money in a very foolish way, if I had done that before and I really thought about it, I would have realized, okay, I know this won't bring me happiness. Right, like I don't really want that. Why did I buy the Mercedes? It wasn't because my whole life I've wanted a Mercedes. Yeah. It was simply because I wanted other people to know that I drove a Mercedes. Which was like the dumbest reason. If you wanna be straight up, that's what it is, right? You just wanna be flashy. I just wanted to be flashy, kind of. Yeah. I mean, it's like a hard pill to swallow. It is. I have an awesome neighbor, you guys, that I talked to that I was telling, we were talking about this, and he said, Thomas, that's why I sold my business. I sold it because I watched my kids grow up before my eyes. And I didn't get to spend that time with them when they were your boys' age. I thought that I needed to chase this business venture and make all this money so one day I could. But I realized that that's not what I was after. I wanted to spend time with those kids. Yeah. And I missed it, and I missed my chance. So he sold his business, and now he spends as much time as he can with his boys that are a lot older now. But I don't wanna make that mistake. I don't want in 20 years to say, yeah, I chased a great career, and it was awesome, and I made all this money, but I miss my kids' first day of kindergarten, or I miss the first time they walked, or the first time they crawled, or something like that. Those are the things that I get to take with me into the afterlife. We know when we die, we don't get to take that stuff with us, but I do get to take the memories of my kids, and the time I spent with them, and they get to hold onto that as well, so. Yep. If I had to sum up what these past five years have taught me in just a few words, it would be that true joy and happiness cannot be bought. No amount of money earned, or material possessions will bring you the peace and comfort that you're searching for. Don't fall into that trap. I've often wondered, when in society did we decide success was measured by how much stuff we can acquire? If you really think about it, doesn't that just sound silly? That because someone owns more things, or bigger things, we admire them and covet their life? Our purpose here on Earth is so much bigger, and so much more important, than to ever let the constant pursuit of more distract us from what our actual purpose is. So ask yourself, what do you have to offer? Who can you help? Who could you become if you actually became the person God intended you to become all along? And if you're feeling discontent and unfulfilled, that could be a sign that you've wandered off the path God has for you. We need to stop measuring our worth and our success based off the money in our bank account, or the material possessions we've acquired. In the end, none of that matters. This to me is one of the most valuable life lessons I could have ever learned. How grateful I am that I didn't spend my entire life chasing this empty dream, only to wake up one day and realize I missed out on the most important things. That I never lived in the moment because I was always pursuing more and more. More money, more cars, more clothes, more success. Only to be stuck on this merry-go-round, to repeat this vicious cycle over and over again of the constant need of more. And just remember, money cannot buy your purpose. It cannot buy true friends. It cannot buy memories. It cannot buy inner peace. It cannot buy more time. And it definitely cannot buy your happiness.