GI: You write very early in the book that there’s a difference between being broke and being poor. Can you explain the difference? 

BK: We’re talking about a poor mindset.

Being broke means you have no money. I’ve been broke, my co-author was broke, our families have been broke, a lot of people have been broke. We differentiate between being broke, which is a temporary condition, hopefully, to a poor mindset, which will keep you broke forever.

It’s not really related to money, because I know people who make six figures and multiple six figures, and they have a poor mindset. We all know stories of people who win the lottery, or they win a big sports contract or music contract, and then all of a sudden [the money is] gone. Why is it gone? They have a poor mindset. That’s the distinction we make.

GI: Does this suggest that people, no matter their socioeconomic circumstances, can lift themselves out of poverty if they adopt a rich mindset?

BK: Yes.

GI: Is that one of your “harsh truths”?

BK: Yeah. We frame it in different ways based on the [book] chapter titles. For example, “It’s not your fault if you were born poor, but it is your fault if you die poor.” That’s a pretty harsh reality that we’re throwing in people’s face.  

GI: What is a rich mindset?

BK: It’s an approach to life and an approach to money.

Some of it goes against our natural wiring. There’s a future orientation. You have to have a vision of the future. A poor mindset [is] really focused on the here and now, not really thinking about the future. And if you don’t have a clear vision of your future, you’re not going to save, you’re not going to invest, you’re not going to live below your means.

A rich mindset puts an emphasis on owning their time versus owning a bunch of stuff. A poor mindset, as we describe it, [is] very willing to trade time for stuff.

GI: What do you mean by that?

BK: A poor mindset is like, I want this fancy car. And I’m very willing to work an extra 10 hours a week so I can drive that car around. And the problem with that is that mindset goes everywhere: “I’m gonna buy the biggest house I can get, I’m gonna get the nicest clothes I can get, a big watch.” And then people have no net worth. They’re not saving any net worth.

Meanwhile, a rich mindset is like: How can I own as much time as possible? You might think of that as retirement, where I don’t need to work anymore to fund my life. They have a future orientation, and they think, “Every dollar I get, I’m taking some of that money and I’m going to put it over here so that I can own my time and eventually have that money fund my entire life.”

GI: So what is the No. 1 thing people can do to save themselves?

BK: The first part is embracing some of these harsh realities: Your political party is not going to save you. Your corporation doesn’t care about you. Your beliefs about money are keeping you poor.

These are all meant, in different ways, to just help you shift from an external locus of control to an internal locus of control: The outcomes I’ve been getting in my life are because of me. It’s because of what I did, what I didn’t do, what I didn’t know. It’s a difficult mindset to grasp.  

You need to wake up to the fact that it doesn’t matter who the president is in terms of your financial freedom. None of them are going to make you financially free. They’re not going to send you a check. Your company? They don’t want you to be financially free. The replacement cost for you is really high. Your teachers can’t teach you to do that. They can teach you history and English. But they’re not financially free themselves.

The bottom line is, you have to do this yourself.

Then the next question is, well, what am I supposed to do? And that’s where we want to get people, because that’s a much easier answer.

GI: And what is the answer?

BK: The answer is really, really simple.

Here’s the rich mindset: $1 comes into your life; you are going to put a percentage of that towards your financial freedom before you do anything else.

You can work at McDonald’s your entire life and be a millionaire if you have that mindset.

GI: What is the percentage people should be aiming for?

BK: It just depends on how rich you want to be and how fast you want to be rich. That determines the percentage. You’ll hear personal finance experts say you should be saving and investing at least 10% of everything you make. I advocate for 30%; that’s what I shot for, just because I think it helps you get there faster.

And people are like, “Oh my gosh, 30%.” Well, it’s real easy before you get your first job if you have this mindset. It’s real tough if you’ve designed your entire life around 100% of your paycheck. That’s where you have to make cuts.

We have a chapter on cutting expenses. It’s called “Get a roommate, get on the bus, get sober, get bald, and get a side hustle or shut up about being poor.”

We [hear] this all the time: “I can’t afford to invest.” We’re calling bulls— on it. Yes, you can.

We looked at the average amount that Americans spend on rent, on cars, on going to the salon, and on alcohol. Two thousand dollars a month is average rent; if you have a roommate, it cuts it down to $1,000. Just that alone, if you invested the difference, in 25 years you’d have $1.3 million. Now, if you had three roommates, it would go all the way up to $2 million. Just think about that. You now are a multimillionaire just from that, doing nothing else. And by the way, that’s average market returns.

But then when you add in: Take the bus, stop drinking alcohol, shave your head? [That’s] $2.8 million in 25 years.

GI: If you do all those things?

BK: If you do all those things. That’s just one roommate, riding the bus, not drinking alcohol and not going to the salon — watch YouTube [or] get your friend to cut your hair. The richest people I know, this is the kind of stuff they do. And yeah, $2.8 million.

I would say to you all: That sounds terrible.

OK, so why don’t you just go ahead and invest 30% of every dollar you make? Then you don’t have to do any of that s—. If that’s your mindset, it’s impossible for you not to become a millionaire. Unless you do something stupid, like take your investments and do something crazy.