90. The 5 Categories of Success with Sammy Warrayat

Join Mike Cavaggioni with Sammy Warrayat on the 90th episode of the Average Joe Finances Podcast to talk about the five categories of success. Sammy is a passionate finance and life coach whose target market is millennials like him. He explains in detail these five categories to achieve financial freedom and, ultimately, success.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Long-term goals and financial freedom
• Day trading versus swing trading
• Budgeting tips for millennials
• Why keeping finances in order is a need
• Move up the corporate ladder or start a side hustle?
• And much more!

 About Sammy Warrayat:
Sammy is an avid learning enthusiast who loves reading, hiking, sports, and traveling. Raised in Atlanta, GA, and currently living around wherever the world takes him, his focus on financial freedom has been crucial to his outlook on life.

He started the Successful Millennials podcast to help spread positivity and actionable tips to get closer to achieving success in the five major categories: Happiness, Career/Purpose, Money, Physical/Mental Health, and Relationships (Intimate, Familial, and Social).

Find Sammy Warrayat on: 
Website: https://financezilla.net/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/financezilla/
Podcast: https://pod.link/1559215368

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Transcript

Average Joe Finances: 0:00

Hey, how's it going everybody? So today's guest is Sammy warrior yet, and he has been a leader at a fortune 1000 company, a warehouse blue collar stocker, a support analyst, and many other roles in between throughout all of it. Sammy has always been passionate about finding a way to be financially independent and do what he loves most. Coaching personal finance and being a life coach in areas of success for millennials, his own age, Sammy realized that money is important to unlock freedom of time, but it's not the only piece needed. That was a key motivator for him to dive in and see what else was needed to be truly successful in life. Where he eventually came up with these five categories, happiness, money, physical and mental health career and purpose and relationships. And that's social, intimate and family relationships today. Sammy's retired. I'll say that word again, retired from corporate America and hosting the successful millennials podcast. It's a podcast that's dedicated to informing empowering and inspiring millennials to get out into the world and live their most successful life. They cover all areas of the stuff you wish you learned in school, and they explore the steps to reaching success in 5 categories, like we said before, money, happiness, health, relationships, and career. Hey Sammy, absolute pleasure having you on. That's an awesome background. Thanks for joining us today.

Sammy Warrayat: 1:20

I appreciate it, man. You a hype me up a lot. I hope that's a little expectations.

Average Joe Finances: 1:24

Yeah, I hope so too. Now I'm getting, Hey so speaking of that background, which amazing background, man, congratulations for all your success and everything that you're doing. I'd like to dive a little bit deeper into that, right? So I kind of gave like the wave top of who you are. So Sammy, if you could tell us a little bit more about yourself what was the thing that drove you into this? Just share your story with us.

Sammy Warrayat: 1:44

Yeah. I think it's because my parents were immigrants into the country and they thought that the level of success or the goal of success would be get a high paying job, get a college degree, lawyer, engineer, doctor, or something like that. And, you'll be good. And I started, I went to Georgia tech, I got a computer science background. Didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I was young and I was just like, let me get something that I can transfer into any industry and computer science. You can do analytics, you can do project management, you can do, coding, you could do anything really. So I decided that would be the major for me. And I started in bouncing around in corporate but, I didn't really know what I wanted still. So my only two criteria for finding a job was what am I going to learn? And what am I going to earn? And that's it like the company culture, the team dynamic, the title, none of that mattered to me. It was just those two things. And so I bounced around a little bit after. I continue to try to master every role. I was working as hard as I could. And as many hours as I felt needed, like 70, 60, 70 hours every week, and try to master the role as fast as possible with trying to find out, okay, now I can build that kind of salary. Let's figure out what I'm going to do for the future. Cause I know this isn't a, long-term like I'll burn out by doing this forever. So I had to keep a forward eye on the future with saying, how am I going to free my time? And so the last few years I've been really trying to a bunch of different side hustles, finding out where my passion could be, because I didn't just want to transfer from one job to another job. I wanted it to be something that was more passion driven and allow myself the time to really. Find it and master that role or in continuing to really learn it. Because even in podcasting, as you know, like every episode you feel like is better than the last one, because you've learned something new, either how to interview, how to edit, how to promote. So it's just a constant process of learning that I've just figured out. This is what I like doing. I love talking to people. I love helping people. And whether that be via podcast form via the coaching that I do or. Getting on other people's shows. It's just how you want to spread the word and get people to have their finances in order. And then everything else will be following in my opinion. And I think you would agree with me is if you could get your money in order first, that makes a lot of things easier. It's not going to guarantee you happiness. It's not going to make you without any problems in life, but you'll be able to handle a lot of stress better. If you could just cut a check, Zell somebody or pay cash to get rid of the problem.

Average Joe Finances: 4:20

Yeah, right on man. That's all awesome stuff and to add onto your background there. I was taking some notes as you're you were talking about the stuff there. So, you went in to your career field, right? You majored in computer science because of how diverse it can be in, in the corporate world. And. The question you asked yourself when you got to your company is what am I going to learn and what am I going to earn that I had to write that down. That is absolutely amazing. You probably saw me on the camera here, as you said that I just had this big smile on my face and I was on mute. You didn't hear me? I said, oh, that's really good. And I wrote that down. That's a question that anybody should ask in any career field that they're going to go into. Cause if you have that kind of mindset, right? The, what am I going to learn? And what am I going to earn? And I really liked that you said, what am I going to learn first? Not what am I going to earn? And what am I going to learn you? So what am I going to learn? And what am I going to earn? That's an ode to that education piece. And why it's important to learn as you go. One of the other things you said too, being a fellow podcaster are you understand that, you feel oh, Hey, this is better than the last one because I learned this or because, I, I talked to this guest and they said this, and you learn so much as you go through this process. So that's absolutely awesome. I just, I had to point that out the other thing I wrote down is you understood going into this career field, that if you did this forever, you would totally get yourself burnt out. And this was not a long-term thing for you, but going into a decently paying job right. Where you can actually. Build start building up some capital to start doing something else with that. You told yourself, okay, Hey, what's next? So you started doing side hustles, right? Something that was more passion driven is what you said. And, being able to do something that you're passionate about, and I say this on my show all the time, too. If you're doing something that you really, really genuinely enjoy doing. Can you even really consider that work? Because you sit here and it's something you're just enjoying, like you're spending your time doing something that you enjoy and it's making you money. Like you can't beat that, right? Yeah. Because yeah we are always trading time for money. We trade time for money and that's one of the biggest things. And if you're trading time and you're not enjoying what you're doing, but you're trading that time for money, man, that can really be a drag sometimes. So I really appreciate you pointing that out. Okay. So I have a question I want to ask you before I get into like some of the stuff like the different categories that we were going to discuss today. So it's more about you personally, Sammy. So what is it that you are doing right now on your own journey to, or in financial freedom?

Sammy Warrayat: 6:46

I'm really trying to focus down on my trading strategy. So I know common knowledge and the majority, the vast majority 95, probably 97% of the people in the world should just stick to ETFs and index funds and you're going to perform or outperform the market. And the people who take the risks generally fail like time in the market is better than timing the market. But there is people who have been able to do it, whether it be day trading or swing trading, and I've started to get into swing trading. I think it's more of my risk profile. I'm not comfortable throwing the amounts of money needed in a day trade or a weekly option to make the returns needed for it to be viable. So I figured swing training is a thing for me. I've dabbled in it. I've gotten. Decent at it. I need to get a lot better. But that's the big one for me because 50% of my portfolio I would say is long-term investing. And then 40% is swing trading with 10% cash on hand. Every time I need to make a move or anything, but narrowing down that strategy, figuring out how to follow that strategy is a lot of discipline and there's like a lot of emotions that go in to markets and timing. And this past week has been terrible for a lot of people. So you just got to kind of weather those storms and figure out what your plan is and follow that. So figuring out how to continue to master that is really next on my journey.

Average Joe Finances: 8:06

Yeah, right on. For our listeners here, if you could, cause you had brought up day trading and swing trading. Can you explain the difference between somebody that's day trading versus somebody that's swing trading.

Sammy Warrayat: 8:15

Sure. So day trading is normally defined as somebody who holds a position within a day. Like they buy it and they sell the same position. Same day. And swing trading is normally like a week long, sometimes a month, three months, six months. But normally in that half a year timeline there they've entered and exited that position. I try to do that two weeks to three months timeline. So I'm more of a swing trader. It's just a lot of. Pressure to bank on everything heading on the same day for me to be able to be a successful day trader.

Average Joe Finances: 8:48

And with that comes a lot of research and time into it. So if you're going to be doing the day trading that you're sitting here staring at charts all day and watching the stock market, so you have to be fully dedicated and invested in. In that moment. Whereas with swing trading, it's more of a, Hey, you can see where the trend is going and know like,, maybe it's time to get out or, Hey, right now this is on sale. Let me go get it. So that's a, for people that have day jobs or anything else like that, and you can't dedicate that time to be a full-time day trader, maybe swing trading is a better option for you. If if you research it enough and understand what you're doing Me myself personally, I don't do a swing trading or day trading. I just, I feel like a, that is not my forte. I tend to stick with real estate. But that, you know, that's just me. So that's why it's, it's really awesome to have somebody on the show that is, more into swing trading but is also has the same kind of goals that I have as well. So you're just using like a different vehicle and a different way to get there. It's one of the things that I talk about a lot too, that there's so many different ways. To get yourself to financial independence. It doesn't have to be my way. It doesn't have to be Sammy's way. It could be your own way. You can come up with your own strategy that works for you. It could be a mix of everything. I still invest in the stock market. I just, I'm more of a buy and hold kind of guy, because for me, that's what I know, and maybe one day, who knows, maybe when I retire from my day job that I'll maybe I'll do some day trading or swing trading if I could dedicate the time to it. But yeah, I just think that's awesome, man. Just to see where you're going with your journey. And that was one of the things I wanted to talk about today too. Speaking of, investing and trading and all of that stuff, what is the difference between investing and trading?

Sammy Warrayat: 10:24

I think it's the exact thing that you mentioned when you're investing, you're buying and holding. You don't really care that this variant that just came out and COVID six months ago, by the time this episode gets released, probably, and it tanked the market 15% as a person who buys and holds, that's fine. Every month you're going to dollar cost average, which means you're going to buy a certain amount of money. Let's say a thousand dollars a month in a stock. And next month we're going to buy a thousand dollars and you don't care what the price is over time. It'll average out and you'll have a cost basis of X. Whereas when you're swing trading or you're just trading in general, your cost basis is really important. Your average price of each share, whether you dollar cost average in terms of many bumps in and stepping out of a trade, or it's just, you don't, that 15% would probably stop you out. Most people have stop-losses or limit orders as soon as there's an alert that hits. So it's those types of swings really matter. And you're really focused on the short term and short term, like I said, it could be up to six months, but it's definitely a shorter focus than 20 years where in 20. Unless you're holding like a specific individual stock. If you're holding index funds for 20 years, you're always going to be up. No matter what happens, COVID happens the oh eight crash, the.com crash. Oh, if you'd look back and zoom out, you'll always be up in a long-term. So that's why it's the safest investment for a majority of people that either don't have the time don't have the emotional capability to do it because it's not really the charts are one thing, but. When you just have a strategy and then it goes down against you, how do you react to that? Is the more important, like characteristic of a good trader.

Average Joe Finances: 12:04

That's a key thing is the reaction part, right? And you had mentioned like, somebody who's trading, like they have their alerts set up and everything. I remember when I first started just getting into the market, I'd set up alerts and even being like a buy and hold guy. And then I would get these alerts. Yeah. I'd start questioning myself like, oh, should I sell? Should I buy? And it's ah, I was like, no, I don't have the time to focus on this. I gotta get back to doing what I'm doing. So like for me, like it just, it wasn't gonna work for me. So I turned the alerts off. I can't do it. Yeah. Okay. Before you got into the whole swing trading and got yourself to a point where you can get there. Let's talk about how you got there. Right? You had to get yourself to a point where you had the capital to invest, right? So do you have any budgeting tips for millennials? Because I know that's your focus. That's where your podcast is about, right? That's your focus group. So what would your budgeting tips for millennials be?

Sammy Warrayat: 12:55

Yeah. It's like the bread and butter, I think is the most important thing. You can learn how to make great returns as a trader or great returns as a side hustle or a business. But if you're spending a lot, then it doesn't really matter. If you have a lot of stupid consumer debt, then you're going to be forcing yourself to make up a lot of money. Just doing that. So the first thing I did was I bought my car. I paid off my car or I sold my car and I bought another car cash. And then I, I. I have two main tips that really helped me get there. Build up a sum or a sinking fund that you can do something like that for 10, 12,000,$15,000, you would want to do something. Like I created a list of all the groceries I ever wanted to shop in at week every week. I just it's an ever. Or a OneNote, whatever you want. And you just continuously track everything that you want to buy. And then when you go to the store, you only get that on the list. It sounds extremely simple, but the problem with it is you see, you go when you're hungry, for example, or you go on a random day or you go on target. When you forgot something on the list and you buy five other things. And these impulse decisions really drain you over a long period of time. And it's never the things that you really wanted in my experience, coaching people, or even my experience doing it myself. I've noticed that if you could just limit your impulse decisions, remove that buyer's remorse and only focus on the things you really want to have. You're going to live a more happy life anyway, and it will be cheaper. So the first thing is definitely create a list. And every week I only go shopping once and I do all my errands that day, and I only buy stuff on the list. And that has helped remove like 70% of the impulse decisions that people make, which obviously really helps your budget. I'm not going to say don't get that Starbucks and save that $5 here and there. Yeah, those things are cool, but it's not going to break your bank as much as. Let me just get these, this brand new shoes are brand new clothes and that gets a hundred to a hundred hundred. And those stuff add up.

Average Joe Finances: 14:57

Yeah, absolutely. It don't mention though, bind that extra Starbucks every now and then, you'll have a Dave Ramsey looking out from the bushes looking for you. So I just think that was a funny trend that I saw on Tik TOK, not too long ago. It was like the millennial thinking about going to get a cup of Starbucks. Dave Ramsey pops out. It's pretty funny. But anyway, no, no hating on him or anything. Cause he's helped a lot of people out. But I think that's awesome, man, because you said that you built the list in Evernote. I use Evernote too, because it's absolutely awesome. I can, if I put it in on my phone, then it's also my iPad. I can pull it up on my laptop. I do a lot of stuff with my podcast notes and stuff. If I'm at work and something comes up and there's a topic, I want to put it in, I'll log into Evernote and go put it in so I can go pull it up at home later. It's not something I have to email myself or anything. It's just one simple thing between that and Trello boards. It's absolutely amazing. So yeah, so you built a list in Evernote and what you did was like all the things that you knew you had to get, that's what you would put in there and then. You would just go get that. And I think one of the big things here is discipline. You said, hey, this is what I'm going for. This is what I'm going to get. And that's it. Even if I forget to put something on the list, I'm not going to go get. And one of the things you said too, and it made me chuckle a bit is don't go grocery shopping, hungry. It just don't do it. Cause you're going to wind up buying all the crap you don't need. Trust me. That's why I don't go grocery shopping. Cause I'm always hungry. I always ask my wife to do that because I'll well, and when she asked me to go get something, she'll send me like a list and she'd be like, oh, Hey, can you pick up this and this. And I come back with three other things. She's what'd you do? So it's like the end of the world. But yeah it's what happens, man. Awesome. So yeah by doing that, by disciplining yourself, you're removing that that, that impulse to buy things that you don't need. And like you said like maybe a coffee here and there that might not be a big deal, but the other things, like if you go to target and then you go by and pick up a pair of sneakers or some type of electronics, something that you didn't need, but you wanted, that's a, another key thing too, is identifying what's a need versus what's a want. So absolutely awesome. Going into this, right? So that's the, those are some things that worked for you. You sold your car, bought a car cash, so you removed that car payment. I think another thing that's really awesome about that too, is you're able to lessen your insurance now right? You don't know if the coverage you can now get, just liability insurance.

Sammy Warrayat: 17:09

I went from a nicer car, like a sports card. So like an Altima, which is, pre regular gas instead of premium and it's way better mileage. And to me like, I was tired of a coop because I couldn't fit anything. Like I wanted to buy a TV, couldn't fit it in the infinity that I had. Cause it was like a sports car. So like that one decision to me were on the outside looking in and like, oh, well you had a really nice car and I just have an Altima, but it saved about $750-$800 a month with the payment, the insurance and the gas combined like $800 over two, three years. That's an extreme, that's 20 GS right there.

Average Joe Finances: 17:45

Absolutely. And isn't infinity just like a hyped up Altima or a hyped up Nissan anyway. It's funny I don't know if Altimas are the go-to thing, but I've had two Altimas that I've bought used in the past. Actually my last car that I had, I have a Tesla now, but before that I had an Altima, when I first moved out here to Hawaii, I bought a used Altima after we bought our house out here. Cause I didn't want to have car payments. And then my wife's car that's been paid off for a couple of years now, so we haven't had that. So I do now have my first car payment for the first time in a long time. And that's with my Tesla. But before that, even before we moved here when I lived in Virginia, I had an Altima and then I sold that and bought a F-150 cash. And then I sold that two years later. For 2000 more than I paid for it because used trucks were went up in value. That was absolutely awesome. Best investment in a vehicle I've ever made bought it for 7,000, sold it two years later for 9,000. Love it. And it was a 2005 too. And it had it had 62,000 miles on it. It was like, Barely used, which was awesome. And I like to kayak fish, it was perfect. So I had my truck to put the kayak and it was very tough doing it on the Altima. But anyway, and the only reason why I even took out a loan for the Tesla is because the interest rate is ridiculously low. I'm paying like 2%. It's almost like free money. Absolutely. So I just want to touch on that. So yeah, I do have a car payment, so don't yell at me. In our generation. Cause I'm also a millennial, right? So in our generation we have this need for this instant gratification. And I know I have it too. Like it's for me, I understand. Like I'm a spender. My wife's a saver. I'm a spender. So I've had to change my mindset on what I spend my money on. It's not so much the, I have to go get, this because. What I want and it's going to gratify me instantly right now. It's more okay, I want to spend my money on an investment, or I want to buy an asset that will generate the cashflow to buy this thing. So I've changed my mindset on that. I'm still a spender though. So why is it important to, especially living in today's world to have your finances in order with this instant gratification society that we live in today?

Sammy Warrayat: 19:51

I think it's because there's so many things pulling at you. Like not only is, if you're a conspiracy theorist or whatever, like NSA's always listening to you. You mentioned something all of a sudden you're scrolling Instagram, that ad for that companies in your feed, like everybody is positioning to make you buy something. If you let your impulses go, or you say, oh, I need that immediately. You're just going to be given out money left and right. And it'd be like a death by a thousand cuts. You'll never be able to get your head out of the bushes and you'll live paycheck to paycheck for a long period of time. Like even a lot of big myths is you have to be a high income earner for you. To be living like that. But even people who live 50 who make 50 to a hundred thousand in the us still live paycheck to paycheck, 70% of them. So it's not like you can out earn that and to credit Dave Ramsey, like he can't earn your stupidity. He's actually right there. If you're not intentional with where you're going with your money, then you'll fall into a lot of these impulses. So for me, Figure out what you want to spend your money on for me like, I love traveling. You seem like you'd like to spend it on a bunch of different things. That's just fine. As long as you know what they are and you spend on only them, because I think the problem with budgeting and the problem with what everybody has that bad kind of connotation of it is they restrict. Only on the things they truly like, and then they go super harsh and then they end up crashing and relapsing similar to a diet okay. You like tacos and that's the first thing you'd cut in a diet. It's not really going to work because you need it to be a longterm lifestyle. That'll stay forever. As corny as that sounds, it's really the only way to make a long lasting change. And the only way the discipline will help you, because otherwise you're just relying on motivation and passion to carry you. So for me, like I create a sinking fund so I can travel every month. Or I go like for like three weeks, every two months. So it depends on where my plan is, but I always make sure that I'm saving a certain amount of money so that I can travel. And when I go to any place and I see a potential target. Of somebody who like, okay, I really want that right now. That instant gratification that impulse hits me. I look back, I just take a one, one step back and I just pause for like five seconds and be like, is this more important than me traveling to wherever my next place I want to go to is nine times out of 10. That answer is always going to be no, I'd rather go to the place that I've been planning. So I say no to the instant gratification, that impulse that I would need something right now, quote, unquote. That's how I stop it. And if you have to pause five seconds because emotionally your mind processes at faster than you can. So you have to kind of pause, take a mini step back and then ask yourself that question. Is this more important than my number one priority? And if you've chosen the right number one priority, then most times that won't be the case.

Average Joe Finances: 22:43

I love that. And if you asked yourself that question and you realize it's going to set you back, then maybe it's something you shouldn't do. You have your. You know your goal with what you want to do. Hey, I want to travel. Let's say I want to go to Italy next month. But if I go get the new iPhone that came out because of this down payment I have to put on it, I might not be able to afford to go to Italy with the budget that I have. So now, you're putting yourself in a predicament where, you know, oh, you can get that instant gratification, get that phone that you really wanted. Or you can say, this other one that lasts a little bit longer and I could still go there and still do what it was that I wanted to do. And there was another thing that you said too, that I, and I wrote this down because it's absolutely important that you are intentional with your money. Like you said, you have to be intentional with it. People are living paycheck to paycheck, and they live paycheck to paycheck because they're not intentional with their money. They're not thinking about it. They're just, okay, I'm going to pay my bills and I'm going to go do this. I'm going to do that. They're not budgeting. Like you said, too, you have sinking funds. This that's also something I do. I have seeking funds. I have, I think, seven to nine or whatever, like different accounts right now that every time I get paid, my paycheck gets split into these different accounts. So what I do is I pay myself first, so I pay into my investment accounts first. Then after that, we put the money into the different sinking funds. We're diving into one of our sinking funds right now because it's the holiday. So we have a holiday and birthday fund, we know how much we're going to spend on everybody every year. So we put a specific set amount in there each month because we know how much we need to spend for the holidays. And for each birthday and things like that. We have pets, right? We have a dog and a cat, so we have a vet sinking fund, or a pet one, we call it the vet and pet fund. And that's how we buy the dog food, cat food and all that other stuff. So I think stuff like that is super important. Then after we pay ourselves and pay our sinking funds, then we pay our bills with what's left over. And guess what? After we pay all our bills, there's still money left over that goes into savings, or it gets invested. Stuff like that is super important. And I just wanted to touch on that a little bit for for my listeners here. If somebody newer to the show that might not know what sinking funds is, that's generally what it is. You take your money and you put it into different accounts for specific reasons. Each account has its own specific goal.

Sammy Warrayat: 24:51

It's perfect. The way you do it as well. Like you, you do it for the long term. And so there's whole rays of Christmas shopping and black Friday holiday. Valentine's day. Everything is right in that last, the three months schedule, but people, most people just get hit at that three months, but if you're developing a sinking fund, you're planning for that in January of the year, before, and every month you put like $50, a hundred dollars or whatever one 12th of that number of your sinking fund is. And so that doesn't really hit you. All at once. That's really what you want to do is kinda ammortize it, if you will. It's perfect. Think about yourself as a P and L for the nerds out there. I guess like myself.

Average Joe Finances: 25:27

Yeah. Yeah. So I actually do it a little bit differently because that particular fund is also like for birthdays and stuff, and birthdays are all spread out throughout the year. So we add up what everything's going to be for an entire one year. And we say, okay, we know at this month we need this much from this account. We need this much from this account, this much from this account. So we know monthly, we have a set amount that we put into the sinking funds. But how it gets split is different. So it's always going to be the same investment amount that goes into the funds, but we split it into each account each month, based off of our chart when we know what's coming up and what's going where but the beautiful part is it is that it's always the same amount that we're giving up from our paycheck. So we understand like where we're going with that now. I wanna kinda circle this back to what we were talking about in the beginning, right? How you started off, in computer science, in the corporate world, and then you started a side hustle. And that's where, you started collecting some more money to invest and do your swing trading and everything. So is it better for you or has it worked out better for you to scale your side hustle or to move up in the corporate ladder.

Sammy Warrayat: 26:40

I moved up in the corporate ladder faster. I think you can move up in the corporate ladder to a certain extent. Faster than you could probably do a side hustle. And it was also partly because one, I didn't have enough money to feed a side hustle in the beginning and I was investing for the long-term and you're doing your bills and stuff like that. And I just paying off debt. I didn't have any extra money to really start something new. So I had to move up in corporate and I did I over doubled my salary in the four or five years. Cause I was just, like I said, learn or learn, earn a year and a half. I was out every single time. And then I was like, okay, now I have enough capital I was invested for the long-term. I have no debt. I have lower expenses because of that. And I can afford to figure out what I want to do. So like you talked about real estate. I tried Airbnb. I tried renting a house and buying, I, it didn't work for me. Eventually I'll go into multi-families again and give it another try. But for me, that just, I didn't get it. I didn't like it as much. So I just, I tried to move to something else and that's where I finally found swing trading and financial coaching. And obviously the podcast. And then I was like, okay, let me figure out how to go all three and try to scale all of them. But then. Too much things juggling around. So then I was just like, okay, I have enough capital to take this risk. I have enough capital to know I can make a sustainable living in one and all three of those combined. So let me just retire from corporate, leave that main source of income, but then I can work on scaling it. Cause I was at a position where I couldn't do both. I couldn't do all four really. But I moved up in corporate first to give myself the security, give myself the starting point and give myself really the time to know what I wanted to do. Cause I don't know if anybody knows what they want to do in their twenties. I certainly didn't graduate in college. I still sometimes don't know, like I just keep trying new things and go, okay, this is what I'm going to do for the next few years. And if it works. And if it doesn't okay, let me try something else.

Average Joe Finances: 28:36

Yeah, but you got yourself to the point where you've lowered your expenses so much and you have such a good nest egg built up that you can afford to take those kinds of risks. And I think one of the key things too, like to scaling, you had mentioned too, like you didn't have the money to put into your side hustle and a lot of people don't understand, like sometimes when you build a side hustle, you start your own business, you're going to be putting money into it. even for me, I came up with, Hey, I need to step back and give up some of the control to someone else. And that's when I started outsourcing a few things and I was actually able to scale. I actually started, I actually hired the the podcast editing team before my podcast was making money. Just because I felt like, Hey, it's the time I've got extra cash that I could put into it. That I think at least to get my time back and spend a little more time with my family. And instead of spending, four hours a day editing after I'd been at work all day, I think that was super important. And it was very helpful. To scale, sometimes you got to spend a little bit of money and I think that's really important that people understand that. And, you got yourself to a point where you were able to do that and still be able to walk away, which is absolutely amazing. Speaking of your side hustle you, you do the swing trading, and you also have a podcast now, when you when you're swing trading. A lot of it is not a lot of it, all of it is based on the market. So if somebody's getting into this and they said, oh well, I want to beat the market. So well, can you even beat the market? And should you even try to do that?

Sammy Warrayat: 30:03

You can or people have, I'll say it that way. There's been people who have beaten the market but even like regular retail traders retail being people who are like me and you, and not people who work in wall street as institutional brokerage firms, but the person I would say that is more, most capable of doing it. Somebody who is always gonna continue to learn and very humble because the market will humble you when you think you've made the right choice and everything is correct on paper. And then some news comes out that you didn't expect. And news has a very volatile impact in the short-term and the long-term, it goes away, but in the short term, it'll mess you up and then people start panicking and those emotions. So I would recommend reading a lot of books. Famous traders that have done it. One of my favorites is new trading for a living by Dr. Elder which really focuses a lot on the trading psychology and investor psychology of mass markets of people and how you can get better at that. And there's obviously technical indicators and which is like the charts and the patterns, and then there's fundamentals, which is how to assess a company. But those are easy to learn, because it's just. You can Google it and stuff like that and figure it out, research it, but how you respond to something is the biggest part that I think a lot of people miss. And if you don't have that piece, then the rest doesn't really matter in my opinion. So I, it's hard to really say if everybody should do it because a lot of people try and a lot of people don't make it very well. So I would focus on that and focus with small positions is the most important thing. Worry about the percent return, not the money you got back. Cause okay, you get 10% return is good on a swing trade in a month. But if you put a thousand dollars and it was like, oh, I did all that work for a hundred dollars. That's not what you're trying to do. Are you trying to focus on, can you get that 10% return consistently so that when eventually you're playing with the 10, 15, 20, 30, a hundred thousand dollars position, now 10% of a hundred grand is it's 10 K in a month. That's not bad, off one trade. So that's just how you have to start with the small baby positions hundred dollar positions, build it up to a thousand, five, 10, and then go from there. But if you can't handle. A small position emotionally, then you're not really going to have a good time handling large ones.

Average Joe Finances: 32:26

Now you had mentioned like that there's certain things that, traders are looking at, and like different indicators and measurements. So what is it that you're looking at when you're making these decisions on whether or not you're going to, buy or sell?

Sammy Warrayat: 32:39

Oh, man, I love this question. The Mac D is one of my favorite indicators. It's has it's called a convergence divergence and a moving average convergence divergence. And essentially when it comes up and it crosses, that's a good buy signal, but the key with all the indicators is you want two or three confirmations on two or three different timelines. So as a swing trader, I look at the day chart is my favorite chart. Look, I don't really look at the one minute two minutes charts, but the day char and when I want to zoom out, I want to look at the week and the month. So I'm looking for confirmation at the month. First, then the week, if both of those are a good trend up a pill, then I'm like, okay, this is a good time. Or they're both confirming back then. I'm looking at the day and seeing where the Chen gets. So from an indicator perspective is something called a relative strength index as well. That if it's under 30. It's considered, oversold and it's a good buy. And then over bought at like 80 meaning too many people are holding onto it. It's probably a good cell signal. That's just a quick checkmark. Makadi is a really a, is a good one for me as in terms of indicators. And then there's a bunch of different chart patterns. I try to draw a triangle. So like if it's descending downwards, Then when it hits the point or right when it breaks out of either end of the triangle, whichever direction it breaks, if it holds for a day or two, then I'm going in. Or I buy a little bit when it first breaks up by a little bit after the second day. And then if it's still holding, then I'm going with the rest of my position. And then exit signals are the, you know, there's Fibonacci sequence. There's a bunch of different ones or when a trend starts reversing is a good one as well. So like if they start losing momentum, not a lot of volume, then I'm like, okay this run is probably over.

Average Joe Finances: 34:21

That's definitely a great way to better understand it. And I know there's so much more that goes into that. So for the people that are listening, this is like a wave top of what he's doing when he's looking at making these trades. And it's still like a different language to me. So I'm sitting here writing all these notes. Absolutely awesome. Like I'm actually looking forward to when I transcribe this episode, just go back and like really read a lot of the stuff that you're talking about, because this is absolutely awesome man especially the mention of that book, I'm going to check it out.

Sammy Warrayat: 34:47

There's also Two great YouTube people. Swedish investor and financial wisdom, the two different YouTube channels. They do the same thing. It's like an animated graphic of

Average Joe Finances: 34:58

I've watched some of those channels before. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like cliff notes of books. I've actually It's funny. Cause I read there was a couple of books that I read and then I went and watched that to just compare like, okay, what did I get out of the book versus what they're saying? And holy crap, if it's not really close, it's almost like a, there's this this app or website now called Blinkist. And there's a couple other ones too, where. Or 12 minute reads and things like that, where they'll just take a whole book. And within 12 to 15 minutes, explain what the entire premise of that book is to you. And what I found is like this YouTube channel does the same thing, but they do it in 10 minutes. So why do seven minute abs when you can get six minute abs? And they say, okay, Awesome. You had said to throw a movie reference in there, but okay, cool. So now I went backwards in the order of the categories that you wanted to discuss with me today. And I did it on purpose, right? Because I think all of this culminates into what you put together as what you call the five categories of success. And that was. First thing that we had on the topics for discussion. I actually want it to be the last thing, because I feel like all of this culminates into that. So now if you could, could you explain what are these five categories of success?

Sammy Warrayat: 36:14

Yeah, and I love the way you did that as well, because they're all super intertwined and they all have the end goal. And to me, the end goal is the happiness success metric. I think nobody would really be opposed to having a happy life and a successful life and the way they determine it. A lot of people define it in different things. And to me I've heard a lot of different definitions, but if you're for the money category, if you're financially independent, you're able to do what you want. You don't have to necessarily retire if you don't want to, if you love your job, that's awesome. But being able to do what you want when you. Is the financial piece of that. The money piece of that the mental health, somebody who is not really who knows their emotions, who knows how to handle their emotions. So it knows how to build relationships through, not being jealous, not being angry all the time, not being passive aggressive, all these negative types of people who aren't really healthy mentally, or they just have mental wellness issues like anxiety, depression, et cetera. That's a really big in today's. Partially because of social media. I think probably a lot of it due to social media, but it's just the fact that there's so much comparison going on and people don't feel like they're enough. So mental health has been really huge, I think in rightfully so it wasn't really like that, I guess 10, 20 years ago. Physical health is always been important. It's been really important to me. And I think your body is, the most important thing you have to be able to be in control of your body. You have to be able to, feel good, feel healthy, look good, feel good type of mentality. So pairing a good physical frame with a healthy mind really helps you be able to do things that you want to do. And you're not out of energy. You don't lack the vitality. You don't wake up groggy in the morning, stuff like that. And career slash purpose. If you had all the money in the world and you were healthy, but then you still see people not really live in life is I think it's because they're living an empty life. You see a lot of people with the golden handcuffs even, which is, they have a high earning corporate career and they have enough money to do their family vacations every year. And they have everything they really want, but just. There they live in like in a shell of themselves. I feel like it's the best way to describe it. They don't really have that energy of working in your passion. You mentioned earlier, if you're working in something that you love doing and you're getting paid doing it, is it really even work? Like it's not it's. It's awesome. So having that purposeful career is a very big, I think success metric to achieve in order to have happiness. But even if you have all those three things and you're doing it alone, It's lonely, right? It's boring. It's you can't have the quality relationships, what's it all for, if you're not sharing it with somebody or passing it on to somebody it could be an empty world if you don't have any good quality relationships and relationship category is all about the quality of it. To me, I don't really care about how many friends I have. I care about, the ones that can count on the most. And that goes with friends. It goes with family. It goes with in a significant other when you're in a relationship. And to me, those are those all four kind of tie into the happiness. It's hard to me to be happy overall, and you're not going to be happy a hundred percent of the time, even if you have all four of these things mastered. To be happy. And majority of the time it would, it's really hard to do that without being successful in any of the other four. So I kind of have happiness at the end there, because it it's all streams of an ocean going together.

Average Joe Finances: 39:30

Yeah, absolutely love that. Man, love that. Love this entire conversation. I feel like the two of us could chop it up for hours, man but unfortunately we can't because nobody's gonna listen to a show that's 10 hours long. So I'm sure we could talk for at least 10 hours. Until I run out of breath here, but absolutely awesome. And now you had mentioned a book earlier, but I, I want also want to ask you too, if you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast besides your own,

Sammy Warrayat: 39:56

Favorite book. I think it's always been in the top three, but I think my now my favorite book is Psycho-Cybernetics, it's an old book by Dr. Maxwell Maltz has nothing to do with business or stocks or real estate, but it has a lot to do with how to understand your mind, how to understand your conditions and your sub subconscious and how to alter it. And so you're not living on autopilot, which I think if you're able to master that. Then you're able to do whatever you really want in business. So you're not always fighting against yourself, not always finding it's your preconceived notions and stuff like that. And it helps with people who are fighting, self-confidence issues and so forth issues. So Psycho-Cybernetics is a great book. It's like a book in the fifties, but it still is awesome to me. Yeah. And then podcasts, there's a lot of good ones. I've actually been recently on. What is it called? The learning leader show with Ryan Hawk and he's he has some really interesting people about business, about management, about leadership and just, he has some great guys as well. Like Patrick Lencioni is a common guest on that show. It was on of my favorite authors as well. So he's just got a really good. Corporate, he has a sales background, so he talks a little bit about his sales background. He's the brother of AJ Hawker Packers, a legend for those guys who watch football. So he came on the show a couple of times as well. And it's got a lot of different perspectives. He's a great interviewer as well. His conversations are always good on that.

Average Joe Finances: 41:23

Awesome Sammy. Great recommendations. Really appreciate that. So now Sammy has his own podcast, right? The successful millennials podcast. I'm going to ask you the most important question this entire interview, right? Because we're sitting here having this awesome conversation and our listeners right now are thinking, man, I really like what Sammy's putting out. This is some really good stuff. Tired of hearing Mike, I want to know more about what Sam's doing. Where can people find more information about you? You have a website, social media, you could share with us a, I know we could find the successful millennials podcasts everywhere that podcasts are out, but where else can we find you?

Sammy Warrayat: 41:55

Yeah, like I said all the shooting platforms that they have it there, but Instagram and email is probably the best way. So financezilla is my Instagram handle as well as the company. So you could find the website is financezilla.net as well, but Instagram, probably the best way. A lot of people, my age are probably on Instagram as well. And then email is financezilla@gmail.com. So it's pretty much fine until across all the boards.

Average Joe Finances: 42:20

Right on, man. We'll make sure we have the links in your contact information in the show notes to make it easy for everybody. Sammy dude, this has been an absolute pleasure. Like I said, I could chop it up with you all day, man. So definitely want to stay in touch when this is over for sure. But this has been a phenomenal interview and the information that you're putting out and your five categories of success. This is just really good stuff and it ties a lot into what we talk about here at average, Joe finances and you just, you get it with the common people struggle, you know what I'm saying? So it's really awesome to get another perspective like yours on the show and somebody who has a similar perspective to mine, but is doing it a little bit different in the swing trading. And I just think it's really awesome to get this perspective. So again, Sammy, thank you so much for taking some time on a Saturday to to join me on the show today.

Sammy Warrayat: 43:10

Mike, this is my honor. I was really looking forward to this episode for a while. Cause like you said, I feel like we could talk for awhile, both have similar interests and I really enjoyed this conversation and definitely keep in touch.

Average Joe Finances: 43:20

Yeah, absolutely. Man. Aloha from Hawaii.