Money secrets that can take you from debt to millionaire

Ross Mac answers your questions on navigating market volatility, using credit cards wisely, managing student loan debt, and building wealth through consistent investing.

Hey guys, welcome to Real Money Talk with Ross Mack, where we help the average person stop struggling with their finances silently. We all know that talking about finances is taboo, but not no more. We allow questions from the audience each and every week to actually help them, and we got our first question. Let's talk about it.

Hello, Ross Mack and Yahoo Finance. This is Charles Kony coming to you live from Atlanta, also known as Wall Street Consortium on IG. My question to you, Ross, right now, what would you tell investors who are new to the market.And seeing all this chaos going on, how to handle their portfolios and to investors who have been in the market for 2030 years, especially in 401ks with their companies, what they should be doing with their portfolios. Maybe give, you know, your top three for both of those, uh, questions. Anyway, thanks a lot. Have a great day. Talk to you later. Bye.

I love the question, Charles. Listen, to anybody that's just now starting to invest, this is the perfect time, right? You know, one of the greatest sayings in the world is, from an investment standpoint, is be greedy when others are fearful and be fearful when others are greedy. And by definition, when there's chaos in the market, that is the time to actually start stepping in and buying, right? That is whenTrue wealth is built, right? And if you think about 2008 and all this was happening, people, you bought real estate, guess what? Your property appreciated several hundred%, right? And so, what I say to a person that's just now investing, keep it simple, but the most important thing is you want to remain consistent and disciplined. And what I mean by that is not saying, OK, I want to start investing and how much do I need? No, the idea is how much can I afford to invest on a monthly basis. And I think to those new people that are starting out,You want to put a couple 100 you know, dollars every month into a few ETFs, exchange-traded funds, which are a basket of stocks. And the way to think about this, my most, the most common and, you know, the one I always recommend is the S&P 500.This is on average going to give you an annualized return of about 10%. Meaning some years it are gonna be higher, some years it's gonna be lower, but on average, you're starting out saying, I'm gonna buy every part of the market, right? 500 of America's biggest and best companies, and I think that's what you want to do for that new investor. Remember, stay disciplined and stay consistent and set it on autopilot, meaning auto investment, you don't even have to think about it. And to those, you know, people that have been in the market for over 20 years.Now's not the time to deviate from your plan, right? You've been here before, you saw it in COVID, you saw it with Liberation Day, you saw it in 2000.com, in 2008, right, you saw, uh, you know, you saw, you saw a ton of different cycles in the market, and I think now is not the time to actually deviate from your plan. The only thing I will say is maybe assess what you have, right? Do you wanna be overlyExtended to, you know, um, tech names or semiconductors, right? I, I, what I want you to do is actually look at, look at what you have and potentially rebalance, but more importantly, you want to look at things from your overall investment horizon and what your overall, um, you know, risk appetite is. And what I mean by that is, as you get near and closer to your retirement,You don't want to have a portfolio of 100% tech and cryptocurrency, because those are extremely volatile, right? We're seeing a lot of big names down 1020, 30%, and obviously crypto down over 50% from its eyes this past year. And so what you want to do is say, OK, let me rebalance, but you don't want to deviate from your plan and just like panic sale. Uh, so that's what I would say, but I love the question from Charles. Next question, talk to me.

Whatis, what is truly the benefit of having a credit card? Cause right now, I'm really happy with my debit card, but everybody tells me you have a credit card, it's like, you need to have it, and I'm looking into getting it, but I wanna know like, what are the actual benefits of having a credit card.

I love it, right? Uh, I think what happens in certain communities.You have other people that inherit a different bias when it comes to, you know,If you've ever had a bad experience, right? Any past financial trauma. So you might have a parent, a relative, or a friend, and they might have a 40 or 500, you know, a 50, 600 credit score, and as a result, they're like, don't use credit cards. And quite often, you know, a lot of people come up with that concept. Oh, you don't need credit, just use cash. Here's the reality.With your credit, it gives you some inherent leverage, AKA through the, through the idea of having points, having rewards, and so, you can look, you can have a credit card that has, you know, I get almost a million points with American Express. I got a million points for myUh, you know, Chase Sapphire, you know, so you're looking, and those points are, you give you the ability to redeem them for different rewards, right? You know, miles and trips, uh, different dining, uh, benefits, etc. But here's the idea.You have to use a credit card responsibly. I do, I never recommend using your debit card unless you need to get cash from the ATM. I'm buying gas, groceries, uh, any other thing in my life on a credit card, but here's the reality, it all boils down to, are you using it responsibly?I never recommend using a credit card if you can't pay that balance in full within the next 30 days when the, when the actual bill is due. And so, the way you look at a credit card is not saying, I am borrowing money to thenBuy something that I can't afford. That is when a credit card does not make sense. A credit card makes sense if you're doing your day to day purchases, your monthly expenses, anything from, um, you know, your utility bills, groceries, etc. gas, etc. but the idea is you have to use it responsibly in order to truly benefit from it. And so I recommend only using a credit card if you can pay everything in full. So in short and a very long-winded way of saying it is,You can use a credit card, but only if you can afford it, and the benefits of it is the points that you can eventually redeem and, and get discounts and, you know, free trips and hotel stays, etc. uh, as you continue to pile up points. All right, so let's actually go through the benefits of a credit card, right? As you can see on this Chase Sapphire.Um, I have 815,000 points that can all get redeemed, right? I can literally get cash back, or travel, redeem as gift cards. And so, every dollar that I spend has the ability to uh go back and do something even better.Right? And here on my Amex, I got 970,000 points. Once again, I can redeem these guys, I can get a statement credit, I can redeem his gift cards. Uh, and to give you even an example, my wife and I, we went on a trip to Morocco, um, kind of late last year, and it cost me 100,000 of my points, and I put, you know, a couple 100 bucks with the flight, and that was like a finesse.Uh, and mind you, I was going to spend this money anyway. That's the thing, right? When you look at a credit card versus a debit card, this is money that I had to spend. And so with that debit card,You're not getting any points for your dollars, but with, um,With the credit card, this was money that I was going to spend anyway.

My biggest question for you is, how do I manage my student loan successfully?

Oh, I now listen.It's quite clear in, in America, we have a true student loan pandemic, right? We have the average person graduating with about $3,300,000 to $40,000. We could test, we can check those numbers, but it's something like that, and so the way you manage it, right, is saying to yourself,Let me actually know what I have. It's very important to see if you have, you know, federal student loans or private student loans. There are a lot of different things that come with that, right? You might be able to be forgiven for federal, but never on the private side, right? I, I, one, I think you need to truly understand what it is, but also understand what your interest rate is, how much is accruing? Is it 6%, 8, 10%, or plus, right?That's the next thing. So know what kind of loan you have, then also know what your interest rate you're paying on it. And then now say to yourself, let me run a calculator. If I'm only paying the minimums, how long will it actually take me to get out of this? Sometimes you could be paying this for the rest of your life, if you are not saying to yourself, let me prioritize this.And actually pay this back immediately. And so, I think the idea is to work backwards and start budgeting to literally say, I want to be out of student loans over the next 5 years, 10 years, or as soon as possible. But the idea is to know what you, know what type of loan you have, know the interest rate that you're paying, but also work backwards to see, OK, I'm making this amount, maybe over the next 3 years, I'll get a raise, and then at that,That moment, maybe I could allocate more to my student loans because while you're doing this, obviously, you have life. You're gonna have other bills, you're gonna hopefully be planning and allocating to your retirement account. But I think in the, in the near term, live below your means so that you can allocate money to paying off student loans because when it's all said and done, these things are gonna carry, they're going to follow you for the rest of your life, right?We had some momentum, where it was like, oh, student loans are gonna get repaid. We, we heard that momentum and then it kind of quickly died out as it got introduced to being a real bill in the uh in, in