206: Recovering From A Financially Devastating Divorce Through Alternative Investments With Chris Odegard

Dr. Brad Miller: 00:00

Our guest today is Chris Odegard.

Dr. Brad Miller: 00:02

He has a story of having some success and some challenges in his life.

Dr. Brad Miller: 00:08

And he has some lessons to teach us in the area of investing.

Dr. Brad Miller: 00:12

His website is a prolific investor. And his book is Get off your asset manage your money,

Dr. Brad Miller: 00:17

while you need alternative investments. We welcome to the podcast today, Chris Odegard.

Chris Odegard: 00:24

Hey, Brad, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Looking forward.

Dr. Brad Miller: 00:26

Pretty awesome, thank you so much for joining us and

Dr. Brad Miller: 00:29

you're sharing with our audience some of your insights.

Dr. Brad Miller: 00:33

You were in your life kind of cook along okay in the corporate world and doing okay.

Dr. Brad Miller: 00:39

And then ran into some challenges in life.

Dr. Brad Miller: 00:44

And you kind of had to make some, some pivots.

Dr. Brad Miller: 00:47

So, tell us a little bit about your story, some of the things you had to face,

Dr. Brad Miller: 00:50

and then how you will we'll take it from there.

Chris Odegard: 00:53

Yeah, well, I was, you know, I was raised. If you've ever read Robert Kiyosaki's Cashflow Quadrant,

Chris Odegard: 00:59

I was raised in a family of E’s: employees. And that's all.

Chris Odegard: 01:02

That's all I knew, you went to school, you got a college education, you got a job,

Chris Odegard: 01:07

and you work for the man and hopefully had a pension and 401k.

Chris Odegard: 01:10

And so that's what I knew. And that's what I did.

Chris Odegard: 01:13

And it was going about, as well as that path goes for anybody until about my mid-40s.

Chris Odegard: 01:20

And then my adversity was the end of my 19-year marriage,

Chris Odegard: 01:25

which probably hits on about three of your, you know, divorce, depression and debt, or finances.

Chris Odegard: 01:31

And I don't know that I did very well with the depression, and the divorce part of it.

Chris Odegard: 01:38

But I managed to come out pretty good on the finances.

Chris Odegard: 01:42

I lost 55% of all my assets and 1000s of dollars a month in cash flow because of the divorce.

Chris Odegard: 01:47

And, of course, it could be you know, people have those kind of situations

Chris Odegard: 01:52

for all kinds of reasons, mine just happened to be a divorce.

Chris Odegard: 01:55

And I changed the way I invested and moved from conventional investments,

Chris Odegard: 02:02

stocks, bonds, and mutual funds over to alternatives, which is pretty much everything that's not publicly traded.

Chris Odegard: 02:07

And lo and behold, nine years later, I had made up that 55%

Chris Odegard: 02:12

and multiplied it many times over and I did what I affectionately call fire the man

Chris Odegard: 02:17

and I never have to work again, if I don't want to.

Dr. Brad Miller: 02:19

I want to get into some of the details of that in just a second here.

Dr. Brad Miller: 02:22

But just the reality is whether, you know, especially the last few years,

Dr. Brad Miller: 02:28

we've had a time when people have been challenged not only in their relationships,

Dr. Brad Miller: 02:32

but also on their financial situations, businesses have closed or shifted,

Dr. Brad Miller: 02:37

and all kinds of ways and therefore people's and you know, in the last 10 years or so,

Dr. Brad Miller: 02:39

we've had several ups and downs in the market and things of that nature.

Dr. Brad Miller: 02:46

So, people have lost their fortunes or filed their fortunes,

Dr. Brad Miller: 02:51

or had devastation and certainly debit divorce is one of those things

Dr. Brad Miller: 02:54

that can just knock people on their rear end, financial, among other things.

Dr. Brad Miller: 02:58

But I do my acknowledge when you have issues in life,

Dr. Brad Miller: 03:02

whether it's mental health issues, emotional relationship issues.

Dr. Brad Miller: 03:05

If you got financial problems, it just magnifies them.

Dr. Brad Miller: 03:07

Don't you think if whatever issues you have, if you don't have money,

Dr. Brad Miller: 03:11

if you're struggling in there, it just compounds do you agree?

Chris Odegard: 03:14

I totally agree. And you know, Americans have some weird concepts about money,

Chris Odegard: 03:20

you know, people will say, well, money can't buy you happiness.

Chris Odegard: 03:23

And I remember Zig Ziglar saying, well, you know, money can't buy you happiness,

Chris Odegard: 03:27

but neither can poverty. You know, so if you can take, you know that one thing off the table,

Chris Odegard: 03:32

it makes a lot of things easier. And you can do incredible things with money, whatever that may be.

Chris Odegard: 03:38

Life is just easier with it than without it. So, I agree completely,

Chris Odegard: 03:41

that if you add that into the mix of other problems,

Chris Odegard: 03:43

it's just a huge multiplier in a negative way.

Dr. Brad Miller: 03:46

If you're obsessed with money, then you have a value system that's not complete.

Dr. Brad Miller: 03:55

And yet there are people who can be obsessed with money who have no money, right?

Dr. Brad Miller: 03:58

You know, you can be poor, and you can be the person who's standing in line at the convenience store,

Dr. Brad Miller: 04:03

trying to get the hit the big time in a lottery ticket.

Dr. Brad Miller: 04:06

And that's your financial plan. You're still obsessed with money,

Dr. Brad Miller: 04:08

but you don't have any what you're sharing here is that you can have prosperity in your life,

Dr. Brad Miller: 04:15

and still have, you know, keep your values and keep things right side up and other aspects of your life.

Dr. Brad Miller: 04:23

You believe that's the case?

Chris Odegard: 04:27

No, I don't think this way. Nobody loves money. You know, you're holding a piece of paper in your hand.

Chris Odegard: 04:32

It's what money can do for you or what you can do with money for yourself and for your family in your community.

Chris Odegard: 04:39

There was a study one time that I read that said, you know, up to a certain point,

Chris Odegard: 04:44

and I don't know what the exact number is, but up until a certain point, let's just call it $75,000.

Chris Odegard: 04:50

Every dollar that you make, you know up to $75,000 proportionally increases your quality of life and your happiness,

Chris Odegard: 04:56

but once you get beyond a certain dollar point, there's no direct correlation ship anymore.

Chris Odegard: 05:02

Most of your things are taken care of, and happiness doesn't grow proportionally above $75,000, or whatever.

Dr. Brad Miller: 05:10

So, I think what I'm hearing you say, and I have heard that said before, as well,

Dr. Brad Miller: 05:13

Chris is to use with Maslow's hierarchy thing, your basic needs are met.

Dr. Brad Miller: 05:20

Your food, and your shelter and your transportation are basically at a certain level.

Dr. Brad Miller: 05:25

And after that, you're just kind of adding to it, you're expanding things.

Dr. Brad Miller: 05:30

And so, what they do matter, it does matter.

Dr. Brad Miller: 05:33

And I've been privileged to travel in some pretty poor areas of the world.

Dr. Brad Miller: 05:39

I've done some mission work and some pretty better as world included in our country.

Dr. Brad Miller: 05:43

In terms of their economic deals and their situations, and seeing people in just abject poverty,

Dr. Brad Miller: 05:51

still have a good attitude. But I've also seen some people who have a lot who are pretty miserable.

Dr. Brad Miller: 05:56

So, what I want to talk to you about here today is how we can kind of turn things around

Dr. Brad Miller: 06:01

in our financial picture and start to move things

Dr. Brad Miller: 06:03

and still maintain a little integrity to still have some value driven things in our life.

Dr. Brad Miller: 06:08

And you went to some alternative matters of investment and so on.

Dr. Brad Miller: 06:08

And so, I'm interested here, you mentioned how you set aside some kind of traditional aspects of financing.

Dr. Brad Miller: 06:09

So, let's talk specifically for a few minutes, Chris,

Dr. Brad Miller: 06:10

about where you were when you were kind of at your worst place?

Dr. Brad Miller: 06:27

And what were some of the actions that you took on river action by us and what I like to teach?

Dr. Brad Miller: 06:32

What are some of the actions that you took to turn things around?

Chris Odegard: 06:36

I was like most Americans that conventional investor stocks, bonds and mutual funds through four, that's where I was.

Chris Odegard: 06:43

And over the history of the s&p 500, the average annual return of the s&p 500 is somewhere around 9.8%.

Chris Odegard: 06:51

But studies have been done and investors only get somewhere less than 6%.

Chris Odegard: 06:55

In today's inflationary environment, if you're only making 6% annual returns on your investment,

Chris Odegard: 07:01

you're not even keeping up, you know, maintaining bought buying power.

Chris Odegard: 07:05

So, I switch to alternatives, which is pretty much everything that's not publicly traded.

Chris Odegard: 07:09

I mean, that could be anything from real estate to precious metals,

Chris Odegard: 07:14

and in all aspects of real estate, private shares of small businesses.

Chris Odegard: 07:19

But I guess in terms of action, there were a handful of things that kind of happened to me.

Chris Odegard: 07:28

And I think the thing I could, as I look back, is that I continue to say yes to everything

Chris Odegard: 07:34

that kind of kind of came across my path.

Chris Odegard: 07:36

Around the time that I got divorced, a friend of mine, his name's Bill, he said:

Chris Odegard: 07:40

'Chris, there's this book you ought to read.'

Chris Odegard: 07:42

And I bought the book and I promptly set it on my nightstand

Chris Odegard: 07:46

and it sat there way too longer than it should have.

Chris Odegard: 07:48

But the book was Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Chris Odegard: 07:51

And like millions of others, I read that book and I was inspired to move investing in a different direction.

Chris Odegard: 07:59

And then one day, so I read that book, I was really excited.

Chris Odegard: 08:02

And I was sitting in my "van down by the river post-divorce condo" if you've ever seen one.

Dr. Brad Miller: 08:09

Chris, living in a van down by the river, and he's the inspirational speaker, motivational speaker.

Dr. Brad Miller: 08:16

He was homeless, basically.

Chris Odegard: 08:21

So, I was living in that kind of a situation.

Chris Odegard: 08:24

And an ad came on the radio, and it was it was Robert Kiyosaki's company.

Chris Odegard: 08:29

And they were having a free seminar some week, and I was like,

Chris Odegard: 08:33

Okay, I got to go to that I registered for that.

Chris Odegard: 08:35

And the day that I was to drive 25 miles north, to go to this thing.

Chris Odegard: 08:41

My car wouldn't start, I have a thing for a certain vintage of pickup trucks.

Chris Odegard: 08:46

It's a '92 F150. I still had it, but that day, it wouldn't start.

Chris Odegard: 08:50

And so, I managed to find a rental car company that would drop a car off.

Chris Odegard: 08:54

This was way before Uber existed.

Chris Odegard: 08:56

And I managed to get to that, that seminar, and there were others.

Dr. Brad Miller: 09:02

Just a second, you see that you were really motivated to do this.

Dr. Brad Miller: 09:06

Because a lot of people when the car would start, they would say,

Dr. Brad Miller: 09:08

Okay, that's it. You know, I'm just here that would be in a store,

Dr. Brad Miller: 09:11

but you really wanted it. So, I think that kind of goes to motivation.

Dr. Brad Miller: 09:14

Oh, yeah. That leads to the action. So, I'm sorry to hit the pause button there on you but I wanted to touch on that.

Chris Odegard: 09:21

Yeah. And then they talked about going to REIA, which stands for Real Estate Investor Association.

Chris Odegard: 09:28

And these are just real estate investment clubs all over the country.

Chris Odegard: 09:32

And there's one in just about every town I said,

Chris Odegard: 09:34

Okay, well, they said, I should do that. I'll go do that.

Chris Odegard: 09:37

And from that point, I started to meet people, you know, and I met a guy and he said,

Chris Odegard: 09:43

Hey, Chris, you do would you like to work with me? And we could do some things together.

Chris Odegard: 09:47

And he said, you should listen to the real estate guys podcast.

Chris Odegard: 09:50

And my first question was, what's a podcast?

Chris Odegard: 09:52

And this was quite a quite a while back.

Chris Odegard: 09:56

I mean, and so I figured out what a podcast was and got it on my phone,

Chris Odegard: 10:00

and I started listening to that, and it just was one thing after another,

Chris Odegard: 10:06

that led me down this path of learning and growing.

Chris Odegard: 10:10

And I can actually, I actually wrote an article where I did a family tree of all the different people

Chris Odegard: 10:17

and things that I met. And on one side, you have time on the one.

Chris Odegard: 10:20

On the other hand, you have net worth growth, which went 5.6 times over this nine-year period.

Chris Odegard: 10:28

And so every time somebody said, Hey, you should try something, or you should listen to this,

Chris Odegard: 10:32

or you should read that I said, Okay.

Dr. Brad Miller: 10:34

So here's what a couple of things I heard.

Dr. Brad Miller: 10:37

What you're saying there, in terms of your action points here,

Dr. Brad Miller: 10:39

Chris help me out, if you see if I'm right or wrong here.

Dr. Brad Miller: 10:44

You were, you were motivated a little bit about your pain that you felt in it,

Dr. Brad Miller: 10:47

you've gone through the divorce, and you were way behind in your finances, you're in the hole there.

Dr. Brad Miller: 10:52

You're motivated by that. But there were also some emotional elements going on here.

Dr. Brad Miller: 10:56

I take it, you read the book, you somebody suggested read the book, you read,

Dr. Brad Miller: 11:00

Kiyosaki his book, and you went to a seminar, and you started meeting and networking with people.

Dr. Brad Miller: 11:05

Is that some of the things that you did there? Yep. And then you applied what you learned, right?

Chris Odegard: 11:11

Yes, I did. I tried to, you know, I tried a whole, you know, I went down a whole bunch of different investing paths.

Chris Odegard: 11:17

And most of them were paths where I thought, I tried that, I never want to do that, again, that doesn't suit me.

Chris Odegard: 11:24

And, you know, today I'm at the place where, after going down all these dead ends,

Chris Odegard: 11:29

I finally found the kind of the, the, the alternative investments that I like

Chris Odegard: 11:34

and work best for me and my time and my skill set.

Chris Odegard: 11:37

So there might be another thing in there that people have said to me,

Chris Odegard: 11:42

Well, Chris, if you were still married, would you be where you are today?

Chris Odegard: 11:47

And I thought about that. And my ex-wife was one of the types of people if I said

Chris Odegard: 11:54

Hey, I just read this Robert Kiyosaki book, look at all this, this stuff that he talks about,

Chris Odegard: 11:59

she would have told me the 53 things that could possibly go wrong.

Chris Odegard: 12:04

So she kind of rained on the parade and not only did I have all these new people coming into my life,

Chris Odegard: 12:10

but I had kind of this in one-way, mental boat anchor removed from my life as well.

Dr. Brad Miller: 12:16

Yeah, it's interesting how we have this yin and yang in terms of relationships.

Dr. Brad Miller: 12:23

And, you know, there's, I think your seasons for certain relationships.

Dr. Brad Miller: 12:27

And there's, sometimes people just don't get it.

Dr. Brad Miller: 12:30

And sometimes we do need to listen to people come from a really pragmatic standpoint.

Dr. Brad Miller: 12:35

But there come times for a leap of faith.

Dr. Brad Miller: 12:37

And I'm going to go with you here, maybe a little different place here.

Dr. Brad Miller: 12:40

But it seems to me you had some fortuitous relationships happen.

Dr. Brad Miller: 12:45

You went with your gut your intuition; you did some things.

Dr. Brad Miller: 12:50

Do you think there is any aspect of this, Chris?

Dr. Brad Miller: 12:52

And if you don't have to answer if you're not comfortable about it,

Dr. Brad Miller: 12:55

that was kind of a bigger than yourself type of thing.

Dr. Brad Miller: 12:59

Whatever you want to say, I got a connection, bigger than yourself that was going on here.

Chris Odegard: 13:06

Yeah, I didn't think about that. You know, my friend, recommending this book, the ad coming on the radio,

Chris Odegard: 13:16

the car not starting. I do think about that.

Dr. Brad Miller: 13:20

Because I think there is something to be said here in terms of being a good listener in a discerner.

Dr. Brad Miller: 13:28

Of what higher power does say to us, and my particular case, I'm a Christian, and I believe in God.

Dr. Brad Miller: 13:34

And I believe that if we, I sometimes call those holy moments or God moments when you kind of listen.

Dr. Brad Miller: 13:39

And if you don't feel comfortable with it, if you do it any most time, many times it works out well.

Dr. Brad Miller: 13:44

We need to be a good listener there as well.

Dr. Brad Miller: 13:49

But I want to go with you just for a second about these relationships that you began to generate here, as well,

Dr. Brad Miller: 13:55

as it sounds like these relationships, regenerating both interpersonally

Dr. Brad Miller: 13:59

and people in the real estate world and other aspects and in kind of alternative financing.

Dr. Brad Miller: 14:04

And also, virtually or, or kind of mentorship stuff to talk about the books and tapes and events,

Dr. Brad Miller: 14:10

you're going to tell me about how that some momentum, or some energy was generated

Dr. Brad Miller: 14:15

by developing this kind of new set of relationships and how has that helped you in terms of succeeding yourself?

Dr. Brad Miller: 14:21

Maybe teaching others?

Chris Odegard: 14:25

Well, I'll give you I'll give you an example.

Chris Odegard: 14:30

So through some of this networking, I joined some investment kind of mastermind groups.

Chris Odegard: 14:39

And one of the guys said to me, and as a conventional investor,

Chris Odegard: 14:44

most people have a lot of their money wrapped up in their employer's 401k.

Chris Odegard: 14:48

So and that's stocks, bonds, mutual funds, so if you decide

Chris Odegard: 14:51

Hey, I want to go start acquiring rental real estate or, you know, precious metals, or shares of private businesses.

Chris Odegard: 15:00

You typically can't do that because your money is locked inside these plans, and you can't move it

Chris Odegard: 15:04

because there's all kinds of restrictions, and they only let you invest in a handful of things.

Chris Odegard: 15:09

And this, this guy who ran this group said to me,

Chris Odegard: 15:12

Hey, Chris, can you do an in-service transfer with your employer's 401k?

Chris Odegard: 15:18

And like the podcast, I said, What's it in service transfer?

Chris Odegard: 15:21

They said, well, that's where your employer will let you take money and

Chris Odegard: 15:26

move it out of their 401 K plan that administrator and move it to an outside administrator,

Chris Odegard: 15:31

and we can move it someplace where you can invest that 401 K money in real estate.

Chris Odegard: 15:36

And at this point, I had worked for my employer for probably 25 years,

Chris Odegard: 15:40

and I kind of went, if that was possible, certainly, I would have heard about that before.

Chris Odegard: 15:46

And so you know, I go up on my merry business and kind of push that off to the side.

Chris Odegard: 15:50

And then one day, I checked into it, and I'll be darn,

Chris Odegard: 15:55

my employer would let me transfer out all of their matching contributions over the years,

Chris Odegard: 16:02

which was in the six-figure number.

Chris Odegard: 16:04

And that gave me a jumpstart, on moving in the investing direction.

Chris Odegard: 16:11

And so, you know, I kind of say, you need to have a childlike curiosity.

Chris Odegard: 16:17

And when something sounds, Mike, it might be too good to be true.

Chris Odegard: 16:20

If I had walked away from all those, you know, those ideas that were brought to me,

Chris Odegard: 16:25

that sounded too good to be true, I would have left a ton of money on the table and

Chris Odegard: 16:28

I wouldn't be where I am today. So those type of things.

Dr. Brad Miller: 16:31

You wouldn't have known about that if you weren't in this network of people

Dr. Brad Miller: 16:34

and to kind of make you aware of it and you learning from different ways

Dr. Brad Miller: 16:38

rather than the kind of traditional way and it's awesome that you're able to do that.

Dr. Brad Miller: 16:44

Just curious, are you still an employed personnel? Are you on your own? Are you self-employed?

Chris Odegard: 16:49

No, I'm semi-retired, I write my blog and try to educate people about how to improve their financial situation.

Chris Odegard: 16:57

I don't work for anybody; my schedule is my own.

Dr. Brad Miller: 17:01

You made these changes here, you took some action, you made some changes,

Dr. Brad Miller: 17:05

and you were being in the net network and make some shifts over.

Dr. Brad Miller: 17:08

And I'm going to talk to you in a minute about some specifics about investments here

Dr. Brad Miller: 17:11

about how you when you shift some money over, but let's talk about disciplines now.

Dr. Brad Miller: 17:16

But I like to call this the cognitive part to help you apply things.

Dr. Brad Miller: 17:20

So what are some disciplines maybe that you do now that you didn't do before,

Dr. Brad Miller: 17:23

maybe you teach in your book, and so on.

Dr. Brad Miller: 17:25

So in different disciplines or habits, rituals, things like this people can do to be helpful in their life.

Chris Odegard: 17:33

So the one that's kind of a recent newcomer, and it doesn't apply, it applies to anything.

Chris Odegard: 17:40

There's a book called The One Thing, and it was written by CO written by Gary Keller,

Chris Odegard: 17:45

who started Keller Williams real estate.

Chris Odegard: 17:48

And I actually heard an interview with a co-author on the podcast.

Chris Odegard: 17:54

And before I even read the book, I was impacted and started doing

Chris Odegard: 17:58

and I have heard many people say that to do lists are just a waste of time, that you really need to schedule things.

Chris Odegard: 18:08

So he said, every day, you need to work on the one thing, and I have an action item list,

Chris Odegard: 18:16

that's probably 20 things long. And every day, five of them get knocked off.

Chris Odegard: 18:21

And some of them are important, some of them are art.

Chris Odegard: 18:23

But without even looking at that list. I already know what the one thing is.

Chris Odegard: 18:28

So and I know probably what the second one thing is after that.

Chris Odegard: 18:31

So that has really increased my productivity by not spending time on what I call the administrative BS,

Chris Odegard: 18:41

and really just going, the one thing is the thing that's going to make everything that you're trying to do easier,

Chris Odegard: 18:46

or even eliminate some things that you were going to do, or thought you needed to do.

Chris Odegard: 18:50

So that's one of the things and I guess another one is just continuous learning, you know,

Chris Odegard: 18:55

I think people are, are designed for, you know, productivity and improvement.

Chris Odegard: 19:01

And it's interesting that so many people leave formal education, whether that be high school,

Chris Odegard: 19:07

or some level of college, and then, you know, their learning is kind of over.

Chris Odegard: 19:13

And even if they do learn, they wouldn't consider that 10s of 1000s of dollars,

Chris Odegard: 19:18

or even more than that, that I spent on seminars and training classes,

Chris Odegard: 19:22

they wouldn't consider that real education because it doesn't come with a diploma from some university,

Chris Odegard: 19:29

but I never would have learned the stuff that I learned. It's not taught in any university.

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:34

You learn certain things in school, you'll know how to apply them in seminars and other things like that.

Chris Odegard: 19:41

Now that's not true. I have to say, you know, that's not true with all you know, degrees.

Chris Odegard: 19:44

If you're going to be a medical doctor or a counselor or a lawyer.

Chris Odegard: 19:47

There are some places where that college education is very, very specific

Chris Odegard: 19:51

and you need that, but that's kind of not most of.

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:55

The things that you can certainly get your degrees medical degrees

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:57

and I got a doctoral degree on the well behind me here from the work I've done,

Dr. Brad Miller: 20:01

but you certainly don't have to stop learning and you can apply even if you have formal education,

Dr. Brad Miller: 20:09

you can apply non-formal education to your life to enhance everything I believe,

Dr. Brad Miller: 20:14

and you just don't stop learning, I believe that you learned and also you learned from

Dr. Brad Miller: 20:18

all kinds of folks and situations, you know, you can, you know,

Dr. Brad Miller: 20:22

I've learned from my I learned from the 16-year-old kid who's out shoveling my driveway right now,

Dr. Brad Miller: 20:29

it'd be in a little bit of an entrepreneur making some money because I'm in a head, right seven is snowfall.

Dr. Brad Miller: 20:33

Were here yesterday. And you know, learning from him with just a little bit about some financial being a go getter,

Dr. Brad Miller: 20:40

and that kind of thing. Let's talk about your book a little bit now and about what people can learn in your book.

Dr. Brad Miller: 20:46

And particularly, I'm interested here, Chris, and how what you teach can serve others,

Dr. Brad Miller: 20:53

particularly as someone who's kind of wanting to break the pattern in their life,

Dr. Brad Miller: 20:57

if somebody's kind of wanting to not invest conventionally,

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:01

or they want to have some creative way to do this.

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:03

They want to make a dent in their life.

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:05

Maybe there's somebody you know, you said, you're semi-retired,

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:08

I'm semi-retired as well, maybe someone who's approaching retirement,

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:11

it's thinking they're looking at that 401k or they're looking at that pension plan, they're gone.

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:16

Okay, that's okay. But man, I would like to do a lot better.

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:20

Or they're in a situation where they have medical expenses, or they have a kid in college, whatever it is, I'm okay.

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:27

But I could do a lot better. So what are folks going to learn in your book, how you serve others with your book here.

Chris Odegard: 21:34

So I mean, if you there, there are numerous statistics out there about the financial health of the country.

Chris Odegard: 21:42

And I'll just give you a couple, you know, 34% of Americans have zero savings 69% have less than 10,000.

Chris Odegard: 21:52

You know, 46% of Americans have zero retirement savings.

Chris Odegard: 21:56

So you don't have to go very far to see that.

Chris Odegard: 21:58

The average Americans finances is just not good at all.

Chris Odegard: 22:02

And everybody has subscribed to this, what I call the 401 K path to mediocrity

Chris Odegard: 22:07

to invest for your employer's 401 K.

Chris Odegard: 22:11

And then someday you're going to have this big, this big mountain of money.

Chris Odegard: 22:16

But it's with the average investor earning somewhere under 6%, before taxes and inflation,

Chris Odegard: 22:24

they're just never going to get there. And so in the alternative world,

Chris Odegard: 22:28

it's common to routinely to get annual returns above 20%,

Chris Odegard: 22:33

before you even consider the tax advantages that some of these investments come with.

Chris Odegard: 22:40

And so in the book, I tried to show people the difference between the conventional investments and the alternatives.

Chris Odegard: 22:49

And I've created, you mentioned Maslow's hierarchy of needs,

Chris Odegard: 22:52

I created something called the prolific investors hierarchy of investors,

Chris Odegard: 22:56

where I have the conventional investments down in the shadow of the pyramid.

Chris Odegard: 23:01

And then once you get on the pyramid, there are all these different types of alternative investments.

Chris Odegard: 23:07

And I compare the conventional investments against alternatives in 13 different categories.

Chris Odegard: 23:14

And the alternatives are better in 11 of the 13 categories.

Chris Odegard: 23:19

And so I go, why would anybody be on this 401 K Highway to mediocrity,

Chris Odegard: 23:25

because it's so inferior in 11 of these 13 different ways.

Chris Odegard: 23:30

And I give a real-life exam, I give real life examples of investments that I do and how they perform.

Chris Odegard: 23:38

So that I'm not just using some kind of, you know, kind of a book research kind of thing.

Chris Odegard: 23:43

Like, here's an example. And I use that example, across all these different categories

Chris Odegard: 23:49

and show how the alternatives are better.

Dr. Brad Miller: 23:51

And let's be specific about some of the alternatives.

Dr. Brad Miller: 23:53

Right now you're talking about real estate and some of the things as well,

Dr. Brad Miller: 23:56

what are some of the alternatives that are out there?

Chris Odegard: 23:59

So everything that's not publicly traded, so that's all that's every category of real estate.

Chris Odegard: 24:04

Single family, multifamily, you know, apartments, warehouse centers, precious metals,

Chris Odegard: 24:11

cryptocurrency, business equipment. One of my investments is ATM machines, I own ATM machines.

Chris Odegard: 24:17

And I make, you know, make money on every month on those, and you could be a private lender.

Chris Odegard: 24:24

And believe it or not a specifically type of cash value life insurance

Chris Odegard: 24:31

is what I believe should be the foundation of every serious investor’s portfolio in the air

Chris Odegard: 24:37

that you didn't hear any stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs,

Dr. Brad Miller: 24:39

All this stuff that would normally be in your 401 K or in your pension plan, that kind of thing.

Dr. Brad Miller: 24:44

I'm not hearing you go on there so much.

Dr. Brad Miller: 24:47

And yet, so it sounds like it's not just a theoretical or not just an academic exercise.

Dr. Brad Miller: 24:54

It's out of your life and the life of people you've encountered and that type of thing.

Dr. Brad Miller: 25:00

So it is a hot topic and lots of ways, but you mentioned crypto

Dr. Brad Miller: 25:04

and there I know there's NFT's out there that type of thing.

Dr. Brad Miller: 25:06

Just give us your take on, that seems like a very volatile thing to do.

Dr. Brad Miller: 25:11

I'm involved with a little bit and but what's your take on that to help people to understand that aspect,

Dr. Brad Miller: 25:16

some people have a basic handle of real estate and some other things like it? I'd like your take on those,

Chris Odegard: 25:20

I like to invest in things that are mostly relatively stable.

Chris Odegard: 25:24

So just yesterday, you know, the down was down 400 points,

Chris Odegard: 25:28

and there's 24/7 talking heads about what's happening with the stock market,

Chris Odegard: 25:32

how much it went down what the earnings per share was, and you know, what?

Chris Odegard: 25:37

The ATM machines that I own, and the apartment buildings that I own?

Chris Odegard: 25:42

They just keep putting money in my bank account every month.

Chris Odegard: 25:46

And does the value of them go up or down?

Chris Odegard: 25:49

I don't know, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.

Chris Odegard: 25:51

But it doesn't make any difference to me that the only time the price of the asset matters is

Chris Odegard: 25:55

when you buy it or when you sell it.

Chris Odegard: 25:57

And because my investments produce cash flow.

Chris Odegard: 26:00

I don't like stocks, bonds and mutual funds,

Chris Odegard: 26:03

I don't have to sell a piece of my portfolio to generate cash,

Chris Odegard: 26:06

I have an asset that's growing in value and generating cash.

Dr. Brad Miller: 26:10

In a pretty steady and reliable, I assume from your apartments and from your ATM machines and so on.

Chris Odegard: 26:17

Yes, exactly. And so I look at that, and I go

Chris Odegard: 26:20

God, these poor people that are you know, they're watching this stuff and wondering about their return.

Chris Odegard: 26:26

It's an anxiety producing way to invest.

Chris Odegard: 26:29

But sorry, you mentioned crypto, so I like to invest in things are relatively stable for the most part.

Chris Odegard: 26:38

And day trading and buying and selling all kinds of these different alt coins is not investing, it's speculating.

Chris Odegard: 26:47

And it's a job. And as soon as you stop trading, you stop making money.

Chris Odegard: 26:51

So that's not investing. And there's nothing wrong with that people can do that.

Chris Odegard: 26:55

And I piddled, around with some of the altcoins for a while,

Chris Odegard: 26:59

and then I kind of stopped and I'm very bullish on Bitcoin.

Chris Odegard: 27:03

That it's here. And it's going to be kind of changed the world in a lot of different ways.

Chris Odegard: 27:08

And so every Monday, I buy a set dollar amount of bitcoin, regardless of the price.

Chris Odegard: 27:14

And so I just think it's, you know, it's kind of like the advent of the Internet.

Chris Odegard: 27:18

It's something it's a life changing kind of thing, I believe. So we'll see

Dr. Brad Miller: 27:23

I do as well have some experience with it.

Dr. Brad Miller: 27:25

But I'm hearing you say stuff that I find very interesting.

Dr. Brad Miller: 27:27

And I think it can be applicable to our audience, we're looking to break out of adverse life conditions,

Dr. Brad Miller: 27:32

you have a system, and then you're trying to avoid speculation and you more about investing.

Dr. Brad Miller: 27:38

And that kind of put the nuances of those terminologies out there,

Dr. Brad Miller: 27:43

you're investing with kind of a thinking process here, and with a plan a strategy,

Dr. Brad Miller: 27:49

in terms of just speculation, and I love that.

Chris Odegard: 27:53

You know, everybody should have an investment crisis,

Chris Odegard: 27:56

because there are so many things to invest in, right?

Chris Odegard: 27:59

So here's mine is something like this,

Chris Odegard: 27:59

I mean, you could drive yourself. It's the shiny object syndrome, so everybody should have an investment criterion.

Chris Odegard: 28:07

I like appreciating assets that have a built-in tax advantage in case of real estate, that's depreciation.

Chris Odegard: 28:15

And that I can use leverage on are the words I can borrow money against

Chris Odegard: 28:20

and provide a decent ROI somewhere north of 15%.

Chris Odegard: 28:24

So, but I do also, but there's a couple of exceptions.

Chris Odegard: 28:28

Well, sometimes you got to take a small amount of your money and swing for the fences, the home run.

Chris Odegard: 28:34

And that would be, you know, the Bitcoin, or maybe I do some small, publicly traded stocks,

Chris Odegard: 28:42

or some pre-IPO type stocks with small amounts of money, because one of those that hits,

Chris Odegard: 28:48

it's not going to take a lot of money to make a big difference in your life.

Chris Odegard: 28:51

But it could also go to zero. So you have to do that in a measured fashion.

Dr. Brad Miller: 28:55

Let me ask you this Chris, risk tolerance and that type of thing.

Dr. Brad Miller: 28:58

Let's just say that there's a person or situation who comes to you with basically this kind of deal, Chris,

Dr. Brad Miller: 29:05

I love what you're saying. Makes a lot of sense to me, but I don't have any money.

Dr. Brad Miller: 29:10

All my money is wrapped up in my 401 K are my pension plan, or there's too much month at the end of my money.

Dr. Brad Miller: 29:17

How am I going to save us money? What did realistically, Chris, what does somebody need to find?

Dr. Brad Miller: 29:22

What does somebody could somebody get started in the things you're talking about?

Dr. Brad Miller: 29:26

For a minimal amount of money? I mean, $1,000 $300, a couple 1000 whatever it would be,

Dr. Brad Miller: 29:31

can you really legitimately do that? Or what?

Dr. Brad Miller: 29:35

Just give me your kind of your scenario on this. So that person who says I can't do this.

Chris Odegard: 29:39

You can, and we all have to start where we are, right?

Chris Odegard: 29:43

So if I was going back to my 20s when I first came across the 401 K,

Chris Odegard: 29:50

and if I had known back then what I know now I wouldn't have put a dime in the traditional pretax IRA.

Chris Odegard: 29:58

Well, real estate seems like it's a really high barrier to entry.

Chris Odegard: 30:03

And when you own rental real estate, you've pretty much, especially if you're managing yourself,

Chris Odegard: 30:07

you've pretty much taken on another job.

Chris Odegard: 30:09

So there are what are called turnkey housing providers across the country.

Chris Odegard: 30:16

This is a company that works in specializes in a single-family rental in a particular market.

Chris Odegard: 30:21

And they buy or build houses where the end uses are to go to a landlord.

Chris Odegard: 30:27

And they also have a property management company and a construction company.

Chris Odegard: 30:31

So they go find a house, they buy it, they fix it up, make it durable for renters, they screen the tenants,

Chris Odegard: 30:38

they put some good quality paying tenants in there, and then they turn around and sell it to you.

Chris Odegard: 30:43

And all you have to do is show up with your down payment in your bank loan.

Chris Odegard: 30:48

And now you've got what's called a loaded rental.

Chris Odegard: 30:50

And, you know, for, you know, in some places that country, you can buy houses for under $100,000.

Chris Odegard: 30:56

So a down payment, you could get into some of these houses for, you know, maybe $20,000, or something like that.

Chris Odegard: 31:03

And, you know, if you didn't have $20,000, you could do it with a friend or a relative, so but it you know,

Chris Odegard: 31:09

I mean, people start, you know, making these contributions to their 401k, I would say,

Chris Odegard: 31:13

don't even do those, right, until you can, you know, get to this, this hurdle.

Chris Odegard: 31:17

So it's possible to do and the other thing is that we all only,

Chris Odegard: 31:22

the only money each of us has to invest is the money that exceeds our living expenses.

Chris Odegard: 31:28

So if you make $70,000 a year, and your living expenses are $70,000 a year, you've got no money to invest.

Chris Odegard: 31:34

So everybody needs to be the best at whatever they do.

Chris Odegard: 31:38

So they're the person that gets the raises, just promote promotion,

Chris Odegard: 31:41

and the more money that they have above their living expenses, the more the better their off going to be.

Chris Odegard: 31:47

So you got to focus on what you're currently doing, maximize that.

Chris Odegard: 31:51

So you've got more money to invest and maximize the investing.

Chris Odegard: 31:55

And sometimes somebody can leave that job behind and do whatever you want

Dr. Brad Miller: 31:58

Excellent advice. Now let's apply it more directly to somebody else.

Dr. Brad Miller: 32:02

One of the things I love to do is, you know, what you teach can be applied to someone's life and change their life,

Dr. Brad Miller: 32:07

sort of in people who have been impacted by your book,

Dr. Brad Miller: 32:09

or by your teaching or by something, you know, the network that you're in,

Dr. Brad Miller: 32:14

that you've seen some change happen. Tell us about that.

Dr. Brad Miller: 32:17

Give us kind of a testimonial, as someone who's been influenced by your teaching,

Chris Odegard: 32:24

I guess most recently, I first of all, the reviews of the book are just very flattering, I'm humbled.

Chris Odegard: 32:31

They're just over the top positive except for one scathing review. So I'm not sure what I did to that guy.

Dr. Brad Miller: 32:37

Always one in there. There's always one.

Chris Odegard: 32:40

It's almost like I don't know. Well, I had a guy who worked for the same company that I did,

Chris Odegard: 32:47

and retired and he had a pension. And he took the lump sum instead of the pension.

Chris Odegard: 32:55

And he found himself with a whole bunch of money, and no cash flow.

Chris Odegard: 33:00

And so I've been working with him on a regular basis to try and help him figure this out.

Chris Odegard: 33:08

And we're working through a process to take all this cash and some home equity,

Chris Odegard: 33:15

and move it into these cash flowing investments.

Chris Odegard: 33:18

In this case, it's apartments syndications, which is my main thing, so we're just working through that.

Dr. Brad Miller: 33:24

So yeah, he's seen some progress and sounds like that's good.

Chris Odegard: 33:29

He's just at the very beginning, but he sees what I'm doing.

Chris Odegard: 33:32

And it's not just me, it's other investors in some of these mastermind groups,

Chris Odegard: 33:37

and we're all kind of doing the same thing.

Chris Odegard: 33:38

And we're learning from each other.

Chris Odegard: 33:40

I can give you an example, one of the one of the apartment buildings that I'm a part owner in Atlanta, Georgia

Chris Odegard: 33:46

is going to sell this year. And I think we've owned it for maybe about three years.

Chris Odegard: 33:52

And the average annual return on that apartment building is 24%.

Chris Odegard: 33:56

And then there'll be no taxes on those earnings

Chris Odegard: 33:59

because of the depreciation that came with that apartment building and others.

Chris Odegard: 34:04

So you look at 24% annual return that's tax free compared to the stock market investor

Chris Odegard: 34:12

who's getting somewhere in the 6% range. I mean, it's life changing stuff, not comparison.

Chris Odegard: 34:17

And it's not in, you know, I was going to say, I happen to have seen this apartment building

Chris Odegard: 34:22

because I was in Atlanta, and I went and checked it out.

Chris Odegard: 34:25

But most of these places I've never seen, you know, I've never seen him, I'll never see him.

Chris Odegard: 34:29

They're all managed by other people.

Dr. Brad Miller: 34:31

Well, Chris, some fascinating things here that we've learned a lot here today on our podcast episode.

Dr. Brad Miller: 34:37

If folks want to get a hold of you, or more about your website or about your book,

Dr. Brad Miller: 34:42

or about your conventional wisdom quiz,

Dr. Brad Miller: 34:45

how can people get connected with you and learn more about your get your book?

Chris Odegard: 34:50

The website is theprolificinvestor.net and there's a number of ways you can interact with me there.

Chris Odegard: 34:56

All the social media links are there.

Chris Odegard: 34:59

There are some YouTube videos that go along with some of my articles.

Chris Odegard: 35:02

There's a 10-question conventional wisdom quiz that people can take,

Chris Odegard: 35:06

and it'll give you my answers versus what your answers were.

Chris Odegard: 35:09

There's a coffee cup right there on the homepage.

Chris Odegard: 35:12

And for anybody who wants to have a conversation with me about personal financing or investing,

Chris Odegard: 35:18

they can schedule a free 30-minute virtual coffee with me. I do those on Thursdays.

Chris Odegard: 35:22

So, there's a link there, and you can pick up a place on my calendar that works with you.

Chris Odegard: 35:27

And of course, there's a big flashing star right there.

Chris Odegard: 35:31

That'll link you to an Amazon place where you can get the book.

Chris Odegard: 35:34

You could go directly to Amazon as well and you'll get to the book faster

Chris Odegard: 35:38

if you just type in my name Chris Odegard, rather than the title.

Chris Odegard: 35:41

If you type in the title, you it'll be down there but if you type Chris Odegard in, you can find it.

Chris Odegard: 35:46

Yeah, so the website, theprolificinvestor.net is the place

Dr. Brad Miller: 35:51

We'll put connections to all of that on our website, drbradmiller.com.

Dr. Brad Miller: 35:56

Thank you for being with us today. Some good stuff here from Chris Odegard, theprolificinvestor.net.

Dr. Brad Miller: 36:01

Thank you for being our guest today on the Beyond Adversity Podcast