Here is the best advice you will ever get if you want financial freedom. The bottom line is that I feel wealthy today. I am living this right now. A lot of people with money always feel like they never have enough, and that is why, if you can get anything out of this, it is to feel wealthy now — to feel the power you have now and the choices you have now.
The biggest way you affirm that you have enough money is that you are willing to say no to doing anything you do not want to do to make money. This is the gateway to financial freedom, and it is what I have today. I do not do anything I do not want to do to make money. That means I do not sell my soul, go to a job, and just do whatever they tell me to. I make YouTube videos whether I make a lot of money or a little money doing it. I do what I love, I try to help other people, and I always have enough money.
Being Willing to Leverage Credit and Debt
A big part of financial freedom, in my experience, is also being willing to leverage credit and debt if you need it. A lot of the advice people give you is that you should be debt free and pay everything off. I have come to believe otherwise, because of inflation and the ability to buy assets. There is a time to take on debt, like to buy a house. There is a time when you can take on debt if you need to get yourself into a position to earn. There is a time to rebuild your life and not get into a desperate situation financially, and for me, using debt has been a perfect mechanism for that. Now, it is better to minimize borrowing, and it is better to cut your expenses when possible — that part is obvious.
Spend Money on What Makes You Feel Wealthy
It is also important to spend money on anything that leaves you feeling wealthy — anything where, when you spend money on it, you feel like, man, I just feel so wealthy because I can spend money on that. For me, it is massages. I get a 90-minute massage every week from a professional, licensed therapist, and it costs anywhere from $190 to $230. My body feels so good and so relaxed, and I really enjoy the time. I only go to therapists where we can have a really great conversation and build a bit of a friendship in the context of doing the massage. It ends up being time hanging out with a friend while my body gets to relax and feel great — and especially for a guy who is sober, that is such a luxury.
What has been amazing is that no matter how busy I have been making a whole bunch of money, or how bad I got into debt at various times, I have always had money to pay for a massage. And that is wealth. Where I see most people struggling with money is that they trade their time doing something they would not do for free, and then they resent it. And because they resent it, they often will not treat themselves in ways that are healthy, like massage.
People look at me and say, that is crazy — you spend like $800 a month on massage. That is almost $10,000 a year, and after tax, I often need to make $15,000 or more a year just to pay for massages. And I say yes, because it is worth it. Sometimes, when finances were the tightest, I went every two weeks instead of every week. But no matter what has happened over the last 12 years — whether it was kids being born and business blowing up so I had so many things to do, or business collapsing so I had nothing to do and hardly any money — I still pay for massages. When you go through your life and focus on how much wealth you have, you will see that you have so much. That is financial freedom. It is not something you have to get in the future. It is here right this second. If you want financial freedom, you have got to see how you have it now.
My Friend Who Just Quit His Job
For example, I have a friend I am so proud of. He is quitting his job this week. I talked to him a month ago — I sat and talked with him for an hour and a half, and my main advice was: you need to quit your job. He is in his early 20s. He has enough money saved up. He lives in a van, so he has almost no expenses. He has thousands saved up and no debt. Yet he was dumping his time into a job he did not like, and then he was falling into coping and escaping behavior. He resented being at that job. He felt he had to be there, and he was only staying out of fear. Then he would overeat and feel bad, or go into other addictive behaviors and feel bad. I said, what you need to do is quit that job, face the unknown, and look at what kind of life you could make — because when you see and feel and enjoy that freedom, from that point of freedom and wealth, you will create more. But if you go to a job you do not like just to get money, you are not in financial freedom.
If you sacrifice today trying to get financial freedom in the future, you will find that in the future you will not be able to enjoy it. It will not be enough, or you will not be in a position where you are healthy enough to enjoy it, or you just may not be around at all. I see so many people who throw time away into things they do not love, and then they have no opportunity to enjoy the future. When their financial freedom finally comes, it means nothing. They are too sick because their body is bloated and overweight from all the overeating they did to comfort themselves from the annoyance of what they dealt with at work, or their body is broken from the job they did, or their mind is all screwed up and they are in the middle of alcoholism and drugs. When the financial freedom finally comes, it is not actually enjoyed or experienced.
If you can experience how wealthy you are today, you will see how much freedom you already have. In fact, I have never had a day where I missed financial freedom in my entire life. There were days I could not see it. There were days when I did not appreciate that I had food to eat and a place to sleep — there were many days like that. But I have never had a single day in my life where I could not afford food or a place to sleep, or where somebody would not give me those things for free. That is a level of wealth that is financial freedom.
Setting the Bar Way Too High
Many of us set the bar way too high for financial freedom. We think we need to have this big retirement, and people tell me the most ridiculous targets. If your life looks fine on the surface but does not feel good, and you want to talk with me about your exact situation, I have got a community — tell me specifically what is keeping you stuck, because I cannot see it from here, and I will work with you to make sure you have a life you thoroughly enjoy, where you are constantly aware of having enough money. And at the end of this post, I am going to give you the ultimate example of this, which is going to blow your mind.
What I was saying before that is that I know so many people who go around not appreciating that they have enough every day. I have had so many times in my life where I felt the most broke because I was not paying attention to the fact that I had enough. Like in college — I had hardly any debt in college, but I also had very little cash. When I went to the store, I was very price conscious and I bought cheap food. I would sit there and eat Goldfish — the crackers — for dinner. I felt like I could not afford to really buy stuff and feed myself properly. But then I would spend money on alcohol, because I felt broke and I wanted relief from feeling broke. And then when I drank, I would actually make myself lose money and time.
What I see with a lot of people is that this feeling of not enough plays out in money by trying to stockpile the most ridiculous amounts of it, especially as they continue going on in life. I know someone who worked five or ten years at something because they felt they needed to, and from what I saw them experience, their health suffered from it. That was my analysis of the situation — I am not a medical doctor or a financial advisor or a lawyer. I am just a YouTuber. I have a master's degree in criminology, and I have got something like a billion views online. I am good at communicating — that is my skill — and I am good at applying the things I learn.
What I have seen so many people do is make these ridiculously high freedom numbers. Like, well, when I get a million dollars in the bank, then I will be free. I see people amass huge amounts of money in things like retirement accounts, and they do not even count it. They go around feeling broke because they do not want to touch their retirement account. In my view — and this is just what I do myself — I do not have a retirement account. I have no intention of retiring, because I have no intention of ever doing work I need to retire from. I just do what I love every day.
I have set things up to make money doing what I love so I can give you what I have. I get YouTube ad revenue, and some people direct message me about things like one-on-one calls or deeper coaching, where there is a whole group of like-minded people who are there to support you and give you feedback on what you have to say. I have enough money.
You Are Financially Free Today
And here is where this gets incredible. Most people think you have to have a big net worth, or you need to be a millionaire to be financially free, or you need to be debt free, or you need to have hundreds of thousands in the bank. Most people do not realize you are financially free today. If you can refuse to do any work that you are not interested in, you are financially free. If you have somebody else supporting you and you have a cooperative relationship, you are financially free. If you have enough today, a positive outlook for the future, and an abundant mindset now, you can be confident more of that will come in.
And I am living the ultimate example of that. I made millions of dollars online, and then I blew it all up in a business idea that did not work out very well. Then I built up a whole bunch more — I was back to making six figures in 2021 — and got canceled. Then my wife at the time took over. She got a six-figure job, so I was living off her, although I resented living off her, and I often felt like I did not have enough money regardless of what she made. Then we ended up getting divorced last year.
How I Handled My Divorce With an Enough Mindset
Even though she had a much higher income, I told her she could do whatever she wanted with our money. I told her she could take the house — I would give it to her for a dollar and sign a quitclaim deed, even though it had something like $100,000 in equity. I wanted to make sure she was okay, because I have enough. When you are in a place where you have enough, you do not need to nickel and dime other people. You can do whatever you want, and you can support other people having enough also.
For example, everybody told me in my divorce, you could get more. Make your wife sell the house. Take your 50 grand out of the house. You could get some of her retirement — because at the time, I was making less money than her with my business. And yet I said no, I am not doing that, because I have enough, and I am not going to take from my ex and set her up for a life she does not want to have — having to move in with her parents even though she has a six-figure job. If I had made her sell the house, she would not have been able to afford to live in the neighborhood she lives in now. So I did not ask for anything from her. She offered to give me a quarter of the value of the house, and I said yes. She expressed confidence that I could easily make as much money as her, if not more, very soon once I was out on my own.
Acting As If the Money Is Coming
So I took the $25,000, and I rented a house for $1,700 a month with no income, because I had just deleted my YouTube channels. Then I started writing books and trying to sell books, and I made no money doing that. And then I rented a house for $2,700 a month — yes, $1,000 more a month, still with zero income — because I would not be able to have my kids overnight if I lived in some crappy little apartment that was just $1,000 a month. I figured, I am certain that I can make a lot of money. I have enough money now to pay for it, and I am going to act as if more money is going to come in. That, to me, is true financial freedom: when you can operate with perfect confidence, when you have the confidence to leverage debt and go forward without fear.
I went forward with such extreme confidence that I rented a $2,700-a-month house while still paying for massages — see how crazy the massage habit gets now. A $2,700-a-month house, $500 a month in utilities — mostly the electric bill, but also gigabit internet — plus a cell phone bill. Throw the massages in there, and I buy whatever I want at the grocery store. I do not even worry about price. But I do not spend much money besides that. I hardly go out to eat, and I hardly spend money outside of that besides taking women out on dates. So that is about $5,000 a month I have in expenses.
In March 2026, I had zero income, so I started borrowing on credit. I had made a lot of money before, so I had big credit lines — hundreds of thousands in credit — and they all had zero-interest balance transfer offers. I just started borrowing all of that, and I ran up at least $60,000 in credit card debt in the last six months. This is what I did myself, not advice — but it is exactly how I have chosen to live this.
Restarting YouTube With the Nicest Setup I Have Ever Had
I decided to start YouTube again in March 2026, since I was making $0 from writing books, could not figure out what else to do locally, and it seemed people wanted me to come back to YouTube after I deleted all my views and all my platforms the year before. Do you think I started up with some cheap studio? No. I bought the nicest camera I have ever bought — a $2,000-plus Sony with an f/2.8 lens; I think it is the MX30 or something, and it is all in my Jerry Banfield equipment video where I went through and showed everything. I bought a brand new $2,000 gaming PC. I bought an Xbox Series X and a PS5 so I could stream all those games. I bought about $500 in lights, a couple hundred dollars in a green screen, and a nice brand new $300 monitor. I put all of that on zero-interest credit cards, and I have the nicest YouTube setup I have ever had.
And you know what has happened? I have so much that I have enough. I have got two channels monetized and I am getting about $500 a month in ad revenue. In the first hundred days or so, starting brand new channels, getting $500-plus a month on average right away from ad revenue is real nice. That is me living in financial freedom.
Now, some of you with closed minds will look at that and say, that is not financial freedom — that is delusion. I say to you that it is delusion to go around with enough food to eat, free to choose what kind of work you do, with a place to live, and not see that as financial freedom. So many people go around with what looks from the outside like absolute perfection — tons of everything they could want — and they still feel like it is not enough. I have enough, and because of that, I feel very wealthy.
My YouTube has incredible momentum right now, and I am documenting every day of building it. I estimate I am going to be making $10,000-plus a month on YouTube within the next few months, probably by the end of the year — $10,000-plus a month on YouTube by the end of 2026. My Skool community will be a big part of that. I have also got crypto — I am in the one coin that has the real tech. I have got six channels. And I know people locally, with all the stuff I do and show how to do and know how to do, where I could find one person who would pay me thousands of dollars a month on retainer to coach them. I could literally find one or two people a month who, with my skills, would be happy to work with me.
Mindset Advice, Not Financial Advice
So this is the best advice — it is not financial advice, it is more general mindset advice from my own experience. If you want financial freedom, you need to really zoom in on the fact that you have enough money. At all times, you should be acting like you have enough. Never act broke. Never act like you do not have enough. Spend on things that really bring you value and joy, and do it for someone else too. Cut the expenses that hurt you — alcohol is poisoning your body, and vacations to places just to escape because you are so unhappy. I do not take many vacations, because I am happy right here. I do not need to go somewhere else to be happy over there. If you build a life you love, you do not need to escape it.
I watched another video talking about advice you need to hear if you want financial freedom, and I think that one is super basic. I have given you something much higher level here, and this is how I have actually done it. I went through this same process a decade ago — the same feeling, the same mindset, and the same debt I took on. I borrowed all the money I could, and I made millions of dollars over the next couple of years.
And I can tell you what destroyed my finances: switching from “I have enough and I am wealthy” — even when the outside world might have said the opposite — to “I do not have enough.” The craziest thing is when you have made millions of dollars and you feel like it is not enough. The times I destroyed my income and my net worth, it started with a feeling of not having enough. In 2018, objectively, according to anyone else, I was in the best financial situation I had ever been in — and it was not enough, because I thought I ought to have more. I lost track of the financial freedom I enjoyed. I started to resent everything and everybody. That played out over the next couple of years, when I drained my net worth by about $300,000 in a single year. But I have also brought my net worth up by more than that in a single year.
If you have appreciated this, I would love to see what we can do working closer together — join the family, where you can share videos and help us really get to know you.
And if you want to see how this plays out day by day as I build everything back up, I am sharing the whole journey in my Life playlist.