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Meet The Automatic Millionaire

This book, The Automatic Millionaire is based on a story about Jim and Sue McIntyre. What I call ordinary people who built extraordinary wealth. And again, I was very blessed. This book really hit a chord with people all over the world. It's been translated in a dozen languages. It's gone to 50 countries. It's sold over a million and a half copies. I'm so grateful that we just put it back out again in the world. I'm so happy to be teaching this. This class is based on this couple. It changed my life; Jim and Sue McIntyre. Now that's not really their picture. But that's what you call photo stock. Jim and Sue McIntyre, here's their story. I used to teach a four week class here in the Bay Area, and they were from San Leandro, California. And so I would teach a four week retirement planning class, and at the end of four weeks, a lot of those people who would come to class, would then ask to meet with me to do a financial plan. And most of the people who would take the class were often thin...

king about retirement. They were five to 10 years away from retirement, or in some cases they were very close to retirement. And you get to meet people when you teach a four week class. So I got to meet the McIntyre's throughout the class, and they were just super nice people. You could tell they were in love, they had been married for I think almost 30 years. They would always come in holding hands. Jim always had a short-sleeve dress shirt on. He had a pocket-protector with all the pens in it. You young people have no idea what that is. Not that there's anything wrong with that if you wear a pocket-protector. But you know, he had a middle-level corporate job. And his wife Sue was a beautician. She had all kinds of like little blonde sprouts going, and she was like a little spunky. And they came up to me at the end of the fourth week and they said, "David, we have loved this class. "We are so excited about retiring. "Jim wants to come in and talk to you tomorrow "about retirement." I said, "Okay, great when are you thinking of retiring?" Right, kind of an obvious question to ask. And he says, "Well I'm thinking like "I'd like to retire Friday." And like you, I'm like Friday, it's Tuesday. And Sue's like, "I know, isn't that great? "Can he meet with you tomorrow? "We'll come in together." Now the craziest thing about their story, is I already knew how old they were 'cause they had told me. Jim was 52. So I've been doing this business long enough to know that people who are typically 52 with ordinary incomes don't retire. And they had told me they had an ordinary income 'cause he had told me that year he had made a little over $50,000. So I was like, "Okay, I'll meet with you tomorrow." And then I literally drove home from the class totally dreading this meeting. 'Cause I'm thinking, unless they've got inheritance; they're so excited and they're such nice people; this is gonna be a horrible meeting. But at least I'll get them on the right track so that 10 years from now they can be in great shape. So they come into my office, and I go, "You gotta bring all your stuff together." And I'm gonna give you tools that I actually use with my clients, but back then I didn't have those tools. So they came in with a brown paper bag filled with all their stuff. And so we sat down at my table. And I started off, I had my yellow pad of paper. I said, "Just gotta ask a question. "What makes you think you can retire on Friday? "I'm just curious, before I look at what you've got. "What makes you think that you're ready?" And Jim goes, "Oh my God." He looks at Sue, he goes, "He doesn't think we're ready." He goes, "Let me show you what we've got." And he just dumps the bag out. And so I started going through it. And as I'm going through it, first thing I, 401(k) plan. He's got over $625,000 in his 401(k) plan, at 52, wow. Then he starts showing me what he's got in the bank. He's got CDs in the bank, and she's got an IRA account. And I start adding them all up, and now I'm over $1 million. And then he starts showing me his real estate. He owns two properties. One's paid off and has a renter in it, which he's collecting about, I think at the time it was like $3,000 a month in rent. And then he's got a home that he owns, and it's paid off. So the homes combined were worth at the time about over $700,000. So I've got my yellow pad of paper, I've got my little calculator, I add this all up. Oh, and he's got two kids. Kids are already gone through college and that's been paid for. He has a boat; boat is paid for, which that in itself blew my mind away. He had cars, two cars, those were paid for. I was like, "Wait a minute, you have no loans "on a car or a boat?" He's like, "Who would borrow money for a car or a boat?" I'm like, "Ah, most people, like me." So I add this all up and he's got almost $2 million. And I go, "Gosh, you guys are multi-millionaires." And Sue goes, "I know it's great, he can retire, right?" And at this point I'm like yeah. 'Cause I'm going through his expenses and I'm like you can retire. He's like, "See, I told ya." And now I'm just totally depressed. 'Cause literally I'm sitting there; my income at the time is twice what theirs is. I'm in my 20s, and I'm not really saving a lot of money. I'm kind of the guy who's living paycheck to paycheck. I'm the guy who thought at $50, the reason I couldn't save money was because I needed to make more. I thought if I got to $75,000 in income then I'd save. But I wasn't, because I kept growing my lifestyle. Then I got to $100,000 and I'm still not saving. I had this beautiful apartment in San Francisco in the marina, some of you know where, 'cause you're Bay Area people. I've got a beautiful leased Jaguar convertible. Keyword is leased. I have really very little in assets 'cause I'm in my 20s. And I'm like well I'm gonna get to this eventually. And here's this ordinary couple retiring at 52. And the key thing that this couple has, aside from the fact that they're still in love, is they're so excited and they don't look stressed. And I walk out of that meeting. I tell them, "You guys are in great shape." But before I walk out of that meeting I go, "You guys, I have to know how did you do this? "How did you do this on an ordinary income?" And they go, "David, we just did everything "you talked about in your four week class." I go, "No c'mon seriously, what did you really do." They're like, "No, all that stuff works. "Paying yourself first automatically." And they went through all the things I had taught. They go, "But you talked about budgets. "You spent like an hour on budgets. "Those don't work." And I'm like God, I know they don't work why am I teaching that stuff. And he's like, "We almost got divorced "over the first year of our marriage "'cause we tried to budget. "So all we did is we took the budget out of the equation, "and we automated for all these things." And I had a yellow pad of paper, and I'm gonna show you in a second the blueprint. They go, "We just automated everything." "We automated our mortgage, we paid our debt down early, "even though the bank told us not to, "we automated paying ourselves first, "we automated our dream account, "we automated our college account. "We made it all automatic." And they go, "It wasn't hard." And here was the interesting thing, being from San Leandro, California, they said, "Our whole block; "we've lived on this block for like decades. "We're all friends; we have barbecues together. "We all agreed in our 20s and our 30s "that we were gonna retire early together. "This is actually what we talk about on our weekends. "At our barbecues we talked about "when we were paying our mortgages off. "We had mortgage burning parties." People never do those anymore. So I literally was like oh my God. I left the meeting, I thought I want this. I want what these people have. Not the money, but the freedom. And I went home that night. I'll never forget, I drove across the Bay Bridge 'cause my office was in Orinda, and I came back to San Francisco, and got in my apartment. I took out my journal, and I literally wrote down, tomorrow I'm changing my whole life. I don't wanna be a big hat and no cattle guy. That's a Texas phrase, for those of you who are from Texas you know what I'm talking about. But I don't wanna look rich and be living paycheck to paycheck which is what most Americans are like. Most cars are leased, lots of people rent, we're all out there trying to look wealthy for. You know, we always say, we're trying to look a certain way for people that don't even care, that we don't even care about. So I wanna be the McIntyres. And I went home that next day, I came back to the office, I changed everything in my life financially. Today I sit here at 50, I'm completely financially free. I'm still working 'cause I love what I do. All these compound interest charts, they've all come true in my own life. And I just wanna say, I know a lot of you, some of you in this audience you're in your 20s, some of you at home are in your 20s. When I saw people talk about these compound interest charts, that I'm gonna show you later, and people say you know what 20, 30, 40 years go by like that, you don't believe it. I still feel 20, and the time frickin' flew. And the compound interest charts work. So I just wanted to do what the McIntyres did, and I want you to do what the McIntyres did. Again, this was their situation. Average income $35,000 a year, retired at 52, two homes paid off, three cars and a boat, two kids through college. I wanna walk you through their entire system today. You know, I grew up with a single mom that'd get money and spend it, get money and spend it. And that was kind of my whole life. I got married, we always had money, I got into real estate. It would come and it would go, and I never really saved anything. When we divorced, I got my settlement, blew through that. I never had a mentor or guide or anything. And I'd read those books, they're all written in gibberish. I'm sorry. No it's true, they are; like what. It's just like it's a secret. We're gonna tell you, but you gotta figure it out. It's like a puzzle. And then actually you asked me how I found it. It was on Amazon, it came up on the audibles. Okay. And I downloaded it; and I'm sobbing while I'm driving 'cause you finally got something and you kept saying it's not too late. I'm 57, so I feel like it's too late. Not too late. I know, but you kept saying that, and them I'm like okay, I'm gonna believe this guy. I don't know why. And so it was the Start Late, Finish Rich book that I first read. And now I just bought your updated Automatic Millionaire, I can't put it down. It changed in the aspect that I've already opened a savings account that has interest. It never even dawned on me that there's accounts. That pay interest. Right, I didn't know. So I opened that; I'm putting all my savings into there. I still need help with figuring out how to, 'cause my income's sporadic. Sure 'cause you get commissions. Yeah, but I do a lot of business, but I still need to know that part, so that's why I'm here. Good, we're gonna help you. 'Cause 57s not too late. Okay, you swear? I swear. 'Cause 57s not too late. You got this. But I've got two kids that are draining my swamp. We'll talk about that too. Remind me of that later.