[00:00:06] Viktoriia Miracle: Hello. Hello and welcome to happy time happy money podcast and today we have Eric Almonte. He is a college in high school sports coach who decided to study personal finance after graduating college. After realizing that everyone should know a lots of this information, he decided to dive in further and keep learning.

[00:00:30] Then now he manages that page that's mindset dollars, 12, 17, Instagram, and it's trying to spread us much knowledge as possible when it comes to personal finances. Hi and welcome Eric.

[00:00:44] Well, as always, I'd love to hear what, it's your story and the kind of your stories already. Bio, tell us more on how you, what, what inspired you to do what you're doing right now?

[00:00:58] Eric Almonte: Yeah, so, I come from a family and, you know, culture, so I'm Hispanic and I'm typically, you know, some would say minority in the US with other minority groups and, you know, finance is a taboo subject, I guess you can say, like, nobody really speaks about it. we're not taught about that you know, loans, credit, anything like that.

[00:01:19] So, yeah, I decided to take it upon myself to like really learn, not just why we don't learn about those things, but like, what is the power of knowing these things and, you know, Videos, Google, articles, I would say courses. I took a lot of them, you know, and I just did a lot of my own research, took a lot from different investors, different speakers and just made it my own.

[00:01:46] Like, I I'll take pieces of someone like Dave Ramsey, which there's parts of him, that a lot of people don't agree with. Robert Kiyosaki where's there's parts that I don't agree with Warren buffet. And then I took, you know, what, what works for me obviously, but like, what is the simplest thing? And I just came to the conclusion that seeing how almost everyone that I've known that's above 60 years old and things like that wasn't really able to retire. So, because of that, I decided to not only find out why, but like what can you do to, to be able to retire or retire early if that's what you want to do. But I just, one thing led to another, I decided to help my mother out and things like that and here I am now, you know, I just studied a lot.

[00:02:34] Viktoriia Miracle: Awesome. So what do you think is the top three mistakes that people are making when they're starting learning about finance, wonder doing the wrong financial decisions?

[00:02:47] Eric Almonte: I think, I'll give, I'll give you three fresh mistakes, but like one right before making, I mean, after making those mistakes is automatically starting to invest first.

[00:02:57] You know, like just diving in, but before that it would be things like trying to get rich quick by like everyone, you know, sees their friend making money or the lottery or gambling and things like that or a stock is going up without them or a new trend. And they think that they can do the same thing as well.

[00:03:16] And it's a, it's a dangerous game to play because you know, you have moments where it can do well, but for the long run, it's not a really like, successful game takes a lot of time. But another mistake too is not taking their finances seriously. I think too many people just, um, feel like it's just going to work out.

[00:03:37] You know, I think they think that when they hit 60 retirement happens, and that's not the reality for a lot of people, especially if you kind of don't own your own home, it's like, you can't just wake up and then just think that the government like social security or a 401k, you know, is going to like save you.

[00:03:56] And within that too, as well, I think that enough people like don't invest enough into their retirement accounts. Uh, I think something that. You know, 10,000 we'll hold them down and then it'll just bro. But like the reality is that it kind of does it and I think another mistake is, you know, the mindset and just emotion and time, right?

[00:04:23] Like it takes almost everything that's real. It takes time and I think that people just, like I said before, they want it fast, but just in general with investing, like you have to be patient, you know, and I think we can, we can do better at working at those things. So it doesn't like three common sticks.

[00:04:43] There's no, I wouldn't say just, I wouldn't call them too much mistakes. I would say more of like where we're like conditioned or like, we think that that's the normal, right? Like we're supposed to take on student debt, you know, buy a house, get married, buy a car. And it's like, all of that is already like 300 to $500,000 in debt.

[00:05:01] So it's like, it's, it's tough. So I think those are some mistakes.

[00:05:07] Viktoriia Miracle: Cool. Awesome. Yeah, absolutely. I think trying to, you know, to get rich quick, it's, it's just it's can be lottery, but it's very substantial. And the proven that people that are winning ladders, they're losing that money really fast because they don't know how to manage them and how to they'll just give them away, lose them, do wrong decisions, lose them all.

[00:05:30] So absolutely patience. So what will be your number one advice?

[00:05:38] Eric Almonte: I would say to study, that I think that's the, the, the big one. I think, like I said before, people would just dive in. I think even you can even study, the three things that I just said that were mistakes, right? Like that student loans, you know, Mortgages things like that, right?

[00:05:55] Like just a little bit of research, like just to not signing on a dotted line or just not like throwing in money or just not like buying something. I think, we have to switch from consumer minds. You know, like, and then become an investor. So I think, studying is really big because once you, you know, like what you, what you're able to do for you, you won't want to turn back.

[00:06:19] Like, that's why, you know, that's what happened to me and then a lot of the people that follow my page and even the other finance pages, they're like, you know, this is so true. This is this and then they put their stuff up too. And like, everybody's just a cream once you step in. It's hard. You can't really, it's hard to see money another way, you know, without it making more money for you.

[00:06:39] So I think studying is definitely like the number one.

[00:06:43] Viktoriia Miracle: Thank you and the last question that I always ask, and it's more of us fill in the blank. So fill in the blank for me, if you really knew me, you will know that I am blank.

[00:06:57] Eric Almonte: Determined.

[00:07:00] Viktoriia Miracle: That was a good quality classic and share with our audience where they can find you and we'll learn more from you?

[00:07:08] Eric Almonte: So my Instagram page is at mindset, knowledge wealth, two periods in between. I also have two courses on there. I would say that, you know, get, take the time to study, whether it's from me or from someone else like just study. That's all. I just want to spread this information because we need it. You know, you can't retire without it..

[00:07:29] Viktoriia Miracle: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Eric for coming on and thank you everybody for watching or listening to this episode, and you will find all links in the below and shown notes, click it will take it to the webpage, and there will be all information and contact information of Eric and me and please do send us any messages reviews on how do you like it and what would you like to see more.

[00:07:53] Thank you so much to, and I'll see you tomorrow.