Transcription
Okay, so this is something that I've been thinking about for a really long time now, like for years, if I'm being honest. Even long before I ever made a single YouTube video. And then, at some point earlier this year, or maybe it was last year, I saw a number of creators make videos about this topic, and I've kind of been chewing on it ever since. So, here goes.
Growing up, I wasn't taught very much about money, except for the fact that it's really important to save it, which, I guess, is a good start. But it wasn't until I was in my early, or maybe even my mid-20s, that I started to realize that there's a lot more to personal finance than just working a low-wage job and squirreling away whatever little you can into a savings account.
Like many of you, a lot of my financial education came initially from watching YouTube videos, from watching people like Graham Stefan, Andre J, Natali Brian, The Financial Diet (actually still one of my favorites), uh, Tim Ferris, people like that. And it was through watching those videos that I initially learned about things like investing in index funds, compound interest, credit card churning, and the FIRE movement. And it really opened up an entire new worldview to me about what was possible on even just a meager income.
The FIRE movement, in particular, was of great interest to me because I'm somebody who's always been a hard worker, but who conversely has always hated working, or at least hated the feeling of being obligated to other people. So, to me, the idea of being able to work really hard for a few years, to save money aggressively, and then to ultimately be able to retire in, let's say, my 30s, sounded amazing.
I watched people like Graham Stefan talk about working as a real estate agent and living frugally, and then reaching financial independence by investing his realtor commissions into rental properties and index funds. And I kind of became a little bit addicted to these videos, subconsciously almost believing that if I watched enough of them and I learned enough, that I could also unlock the key to financial freedom.
And I want to be clear that I am not trying to trash any of the creators that I mentioned in this video. I genuinely like the content that all of them make. But I found, after a while, that a lot of the videos just kind of felt redundant. They were all saying the same, same thing: "Live on less than you make, invest the rest in index funds, and by the time you're 65, you'll have a couple million dollars." And straight up, this is good advice. This is advice that I too have shared on this channel many times because it's mathematically accurate. Like, if you invest $500 a month from the age of 25 to 65, you'll have almost $2 million.
But I started to realize that this isn't what any of these guys were actually doing. Like, I'm sure they do invest in index funds, but investing a couple hundred a month, or even a couple thousand a month, into the stock market is not what made any of them financially independent in their 20s or 30s.
This epiphany came to me when I was watching one video in particular, which is actually Graham Stefan's most popular video on his channel now. It has over, like, 8 million views, and it's about how he managed to get a Tesla for $78 a month. Now, personally, I have no interest in owning a Tesla. But what really stood out to me was that he went and bought this car, and admittedly, he finessed it to a really impressive degree, he got a great deal. But then he made a video about the process of buying the car, and in turn, that video generated more money for him than the car was even worth.
And when I thought about it, I was like, "Holy crap, this guy has like an infinite money loop." Theoretically, he could go out and buy anything and make a video about it, and then that item becomes free, or maybe even generates him a profit. Obviously, that's a bit of an oversimplification, but you get what I'm saying.
Now, even before I ever got into personal finance, I was initially drawn to YouTube for minimalism content by people like Matt D'Avella. And I was immediately interested in trying to make videos like that. But Matt's a filmmaker, and I'm not. And I recognized almost immediately that it was Matt's skills, his cinematography, his storytelling, that made his videos interesting, even if they were about things that were actually kind of mundane. And I knew that I didn't have that in me.
But the videos that Graham and other people like him were making weren't like that at all. They weren't cinematic, they weren't highly polished. They were just videos of some guy standing in his kitchen or sitting in his garage and talking about things that I find interesting. And I figured, "Well, if he can do that, why can't I?"
But let's go back to that Tesla video for just a moment, because it was after watching that video that it all really started to click for me how Finance YouTubers actually reach financial independence. And it's not through frugal living, and it's not through index funds. It's through their content. Like, obviously, I knew that YouTubers make money from their videos. I think everybody knows that. But it was in that very moment that the actual potential became a lot more obvious to me.
And I do want to give Graham credit because he has openly said that the best way to make money on the internet is to talk about making money on the internet. And he's right. Or maybe he's wrong. Maybe the best way to make money on the internet is to buy and sell people's personal information without them knowing. That's what data brokers do. They collect and sell all your private details that are intended to be kept private, like your address and phone number, your occupation and workplace, your health records, legal history, who you vote for, and even information about your family members. And make it accessible to pretty much anyone who can then use it to stalk and harass you, scam you, discriminate against you, or even steal your identity.
If you don't believe me, take a quick moment and Google yourself, or maybe Google a friend or family member, and look at how much information is just out there for the whole world to see. It's horrifying. And that's why I've been personally using today's sponsor, DeleteMe, for months now to help keep my privacy intact and keep me safe from all you weirdos. DeleteMe scans the internet for all my personal details and automatically submits deletion requests on my behalf, without me having to lift a finger. Then they send me a quarterly report showing me everywhere my info was found and removed from.
So, if your privacy is important to you, which, I mean, it should be, head over to join deleteme.com/nicole and use the code Nicole to get 20% off your US consumer plan. And thank you to DeleteMe for sponsoring this video.
If you're here watching my videos, or any other videos about personal finance, then chances are that you're somebody who's actively trying to learn more about money so you can set yourself up for a better life. And isn't that what we all want? The thing is that if you're still relatively young, if you're in your 20s or 30s, and your goal is to retire rich in your 60s or 70s, then everything you've probably already heard from me and everyone else here on YouTube is good advice. Get a good job, follow a budget, save as much as possible, invest consistently, and in 30 or 40 years, you'll have a buttload of money.
But what if, like me, you're not willing to wait 30 or 40 years? What if the idea of spending the next several decades of your life waking up early, putting on clothes you don't like, commuting, and spending 40 hours a week at a job sounds worse to you than dying? Is that dramatic? I don't know. I'm just being honest.
The part that most people are not telling you is that if you want to live an amazing life right now, if you want to have a nice place to live, if you want to be able to afford to buy yourself the things you like, and most importantly, to have freedom over how you spend your time, making coffee at home is not going to be the thing that gets you there. What will is starting a business.
And that's exactly what all Finance YouTubers, and really influencers of all types, are doing. A YouTube channel in and of itself is a business. It's certainly not the only business you can start, and it's definitely not the easiest business you can start. But it is a scalable business, which, unlike a 9-to-5 job, has unlimited potential.
When you're an employee of a company, your income is outside of your control and is most likely directly tied to the number of hours you're working. But when you run a scalable business, it's often actually the complete opposite. Your business grows, and your income increases with no direct relation to the number of hours or the amount of work you're inputting.
And I'll show you exactly what I mean. For the first 2 years of me making videos, in 2021 and 2022, I made absolutely no money. Eventually, my channel started to grow, and I got monetized. And even though nothing at all had changed on my end as far as the work I was doing, in 2023, I made a little over $330,000. And you can see, especially in the second half of the year, as my channel started to grow even more and my videos were getting more views, I went from making, let's say, $10 or $20 a day to making $50 or $100, or even $200 a day. And now, in 2024, my videos are getting more views, so I'm making a bit more money even still, but my workload still hasn't really changed.
And often, as businesses grow, they expand and hire help, which allows the business to grow even more while the owner is left with less work to do. Like, personally, I'm still doing all of this completely on my own, and I probably will continue to for a while still. But there are a lot of YouTubers who hire script writers, video editors, thumbnail designers, brand managers, all sorts of people to take over various parts of the work, which frees up a lot of their time and allows them to make even more videos, even faster, and therefore increase their income even further. Some of the biggest YouTubers around spend no more than a few hours a week working on their channel and are earning six or seven, or even eight figures a year, just chilling while their employees do the majority of the work for them.
And to be clear, I'm not suggesting that there's anything at all wrong with that. I don't think that there's anything virtuous about working as much or as hard as possible. And so, all the power to them. And in no way is this unique to just YouTube. Like, most businesses operate this way. Most businesses start out with one person busting their ass, doing everything themselves. And eventually, the business grows and gets to a point where they can afford to hire help and outsource certain tasks. So they do. And when they do, their workload decreases while their income increases. And that is how you reach financial independence. That is how you gain freedom in your 20s or 30s or 40s, rather than in your 60s or 70s. And that is exactly what most Finance YouTubers are not telling you. They didn't get rich from following their own advice. They got rich from giving you advice that they themselves don't follow. Kind of like that guy who became a millionaire selling shovels during the Gold Rush without actually doing any digging himself.
And speaking of YouTubers not following their own advice, let's talk about some of the advice that they share. As I said, there are plenty of YouTubers sharing reasonable, good financial advice, things like budgeting, frugal living, paying down your debt, and whatnot. I'd like to think that I'm one of those. That I'm one of the people that are sharing basic, common sense advice in a hopefully somewhat entertaining way. Hopefully.
But for every reasonable piece of advice that a finance creator shares, there are hundreds more out here promoting things that are absolute garbage. Self-assigning themselves as experts and recommending you to invest in certain stocks when they have no way of knowing how they'll actually perform. Pushing high-risk investment opportunities and crypto scams that are really no safer than gambling, all because they're being paid to promote them, and often not even disclosing that they're being paid. Promoting risky side hustles like day trading as lucrative opportunities to earn $10K a month from home, which is very highly unlikely. And of course, how can we forget about NFTs? Remember those?
For the last 6 months, I've been working on my own NFT project. Think about it. If getting rich was as easy as just buying a few stocks or some crypto crap or whatever, why would they be telling you about it? Why would they be spending all their time and effort making videos when they could just be taking their own advice and lying on a beach sipping margaritas somewhere?
I'm going to pull the curtain back here in a way that's probably frowned upon, but I don't really care. But when it comes to YouTubers and brand deals, there is a lot of potential money to be made, especially if you have no integrity. I get dozens of emails every week from companies trying to get me to promote the sketchiest, like, all the stuff I just mentioned: crypto scams, gambling apps, highly speculative investments. And to be totally transparent, these brands often offer a lot more money than I would otherwise get paid from working with, like, a regular, reputable brand.
Like I typically would. In fact, there's one company in particular, and as tempting as it is to name and shame them, I won't. I'd really like to, but like, I don't want to get sued. But they've probably emailed me close to 10 times now trying to get me to promote something that I think is very risky and very speculative and just really sketchy, and something that I don't want to be involved in. And the first number of emails they sent me, I just deleted them, just ignored them. And when I saw that they were going to be really persistent, I eventually emailed back and I was like, "Hey, I'm not interested in this. I don't want to work with you. I don't believe in what you're selling. It's not something I put my own money into. It's not something that I can in good conscience tell other people to put their money into. So please stop emailing me because I'm not interested."
And to my shock, they responded back almost immediately and they were like, "Hey, don't you want to hear our offer first? Or can we jump on a call and talk about it?" Basically implying that for the right price, they could convince me. I just sent them to my spam filter after that. But you can see how easy it would be to convince somebody to promote something scummy if they really wanted the money. And we saw a lot of this during the whole FTX thing, where basically every big Finance YouTuber ever got named in a lawsuit for promoting something that was a straight-up scam.
And to be totally honest with you, when this company first started reaching out to me, I was broke. Like, I wasn't really in a position where I could afford to turn down a paycheck. But I promised myself early on that I would never promote something I don't believe in. And that more specifically, I would never tell you guys to spend your money on something that I wouldn't spend my own on.
And straight up, this channel is a business. My goal is to make money from it, just as much as it is to entertain and educate you guys. But I think there is a way to go about that that is not harmful. And I think about it like this: if I was getting paid to promote something that I knew was almost guaranteed to make you lose money, wouldn't I basically just be stealing from you? 'Cause, like, the company would be paying me with money that they took from you. It's like a paid scam with extra steps. And I'm not cool with it. But hey, maybe that's why Ty Lopez is just here in his garage with his Lamborghini and I drive a 12-year-old pre-owned Toyota. Oh well.
Whether you're doing it all yourself or you're outsourcing it to other people, running a YouTube channel takes a lot of work. And so doing things like brand deals and affiliate marketing and selling courses is the most consistent way to generate income and make content creation sustainable. Without those revenue streams, most of us would be actively losing money with every single upload and would really just not be able to continue uploading.
But there are ethical ways to go about it. There are plenty of brands offering amazing products and services you can promote. You can sell a course that's packed with valuable information, that's fine. But taking an audience that trusts you and exploiting that trust by knowingly selling them a bag of flaming hot dog while you laugh all the way to the bank is unacceptable. And unfortunately, it's rampant.
Okay, so far we've determined the fact that most Finance YouTubers are making their money by shilling advice that they themselves don't follow. Some of that advice is harmless and still pretty good and relevant, and some of it is very harmful and very manipulative. But in either case, it's almost always disingenuous.
But the final point that I want to make here is what I call doom, gloom, and clickbait. In life in general, but especially on the internet, drama sells. Nobody really wants to click on a video called "The Federal Bank Just Raised Interest Rates." So instead, we get videos called "The Housing Collapse is Coming," or "Homeowners Are About to Get Wrecked," or "The Sky is Falling." Okay, so that last one is from Chicken Little, but you get my point.
For a lot of financial YouTubers, after they get bored of telling you how to save 10 cents on bananas by buying them from the markdown rack, and after they run out of crypto scams to sell you, they turn to reporting on financial news, reporting on things like the state of the economy, or interest rates, or stock market predictions, which are every bit as dry and boring as they sound. So in order to get you to click on a video that you probably don't actually care all about, they use fear-mongering to instill panic in you and make you think something terrible is about to happen. And it works. We get over-dramatic video titles and thumbnails with fire and brimstone and exaggerated facial expressions. It seems rare nowadays for the title of a video to actually be an accurate representation of what that video is about.
And to some extent, on YouTube, you do have to play the game because you can make a fantastic video, but if the thumbnail and the title don't capture people's attention, nobody will watch it. But I do think that there's a line between packaging a video in a way that's designed to spark curiosity and interest, and just bullshitting people with doom, gloom, and clickbait.
So here is the TL;DR to all of this:
Number one: If you're somebody who's content with the idea of working a fairly chill job for 40 years, collecting a guaranteed paycheck, and then retiring comfortably in your 60s, the basic advice of living below your means, budgeting, and investing consistently is great advice for you, and it will get you to where you want to be. And there's nothing at all wrong with that. Just know that that's not what all the 20-year-old millionaires online did to get to where they're at.
Number two: If you're somebody who would rather jump in front of an oncoming train than spend the next 40 years of your life working, and you have a high-risk tolerance, starting a business can be a great way to get you to where you want to be. But there are no guarantees that you'll succeed, and even if you do, it will be way more work than you're used to for years before it gets to a point where it gets easier.
Number three: No person in the world, let alone a dumbass YouTuber, knows how any specific stock or investment is going to perform. Because they're well-diversified, index funds have a track record of being fairly safe and fairly stable over the long run. But any YouTuber or influencer trying to tell you that a specific stock or cryptocoin is going to the moon is talking out their ass, and they get paid to talk out their ass. So keep that in mind.
And number four: No matter how much fire and brimstone the algorithm shows you, the economy is not collapsing, the world is not ending, and you will live to see another Monday. You lucky duck.
Anyways, that is all I have for you guys in this one. If you enjoyed this video at all, please go ahead and hit that like button. Feel free to subscribe if you haven't done so yet. You can follow me on Instagram at @according_2_nicole. Don't forget to check out DeleteMe at the link in the description box down below. Use the code Nicole at checkout. You can scan this QR, that works too. Other than that, thank you guys so much, as always, for watching. Take care, and I'll see you next time.