Why You Don’t Understand Money (And Why That Keeps You Poor)
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David Wood opens by describing the view outside his house in Costa Rica, then immediately undercuts it: a year and a half before recording this, he was living in a rusted 1996 Dodge Caravan with peeling green paint, working for Greenpeace at eight dollars an hour, his wife asleep beside him in the van. He tells of the night a cop knocked on the window at two in the morning and wrote him a ticket for 35 dollars, taking the last money he had for gas. That moment, he says, is where the story of what he calls “the ultimate way to get money” begins.
From a parking ticket to 25,000 dollars in a week
David recounts that after the ticket took his last 35 dollars, he decided something had to change. He started an online business with no marketing experience and no money to market with. Within 45 days, he says, he had a single two-hour stretch where he made over 12,000 dollars, and that same week he cleared more than 25,000 dollars. He points out that he had dropped out of college, got F’s in eighth grade, and didn’t know how to use the internet, yet the money kept showing up. That contradiction, he says, is what pushed him to start asking how money actually comes into a person’s life and how he had been able to make so much of it so fast.
The silver coin nobody would recognize as money
To make his point about how little people understand money, David holds up silver bullion coins on his desk, about 10,000 dollars worth. Each coin is one ounce of .999 pure silver, minted by the U.S. Treasury and stamped with a face value of one dollar, though the silver itself is worth around 38 dollars at the time he’s speaking. He raises the possibility of hyperinflation in the United States, which he says could send the value of each coin from 38 dollars toward 900 dollars.
He then turns the coin into a personal story: if he had still been living in the van and his boss had offered him one of these coins instead of 20 dollars, he says he wouldn’t have known any better.
I would have looked on the back. I would have said that it saw a dollar. And I would have thought they were trying to give me a dollar… I wouldn’t have known and I would have taken the 20 dollars instead thinking he was trying to rip me off.
He uses this to argue that most people don’t understand how money works, how it’s created, or how it moves out of the hands of the middle class and the poor and into the hands of the rich. He goes further, saying that if people don’t act on this understanding, there is, in his words, a very good chance they will not survive.
What The 4-Hour Workweek and The Creature from Jekyll Island did to his thinking
David describes picking up Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek while he was working 80 hours a week and living in the van, and being irritated by it at first. The back cover told him Ferriss had gone from making 40,000 dollars a year working 80 hours a week to making 40,000 dollars a month working less than four hours a week, partly by outsourcing to overseas virtual assistants for five dollars an hour. David says the comparison stung: he wasn’t even making 40,000 dollars a year, and he was already putting in 80-hour weeks. That gap is what sent him down what he calls the rabbit hole, researching where money actually comes from and realizing, as he puts it, that if he didn’t change his beliefs quickly, being poor would be his destiny for the rest of his life.
He also references a second book, The Creature from Jekyll Island, saying that before reading it he had no idea where money came from at all, and that what he learned from it appalled him. He’s careful to note that this book isn’t about how to get money, only about where it originates.
A bill, a whiteboard, and a question about what money is worth
Moving into his home office, which he jokes is a little messy because his maids hadn’t been by since that morning, David sets up a whiteboard to illustrate his point physically. He pulls a 10 dollar bill from his pocket, the Hamilton, and starts walking through what it is actually worth compared to what people assume. He mentions being born on May 17, 1981, and recalls that in the 1980s, ten dollars an hour was considered a lot of money, setting up the question he poses directly to the camera: how much is ten dollars an hour actually worth today. It’s at this point in the talk that he begins building out, on the whiteboard, the explanation of where money comes from and how it is created, a demonstration he says will lead into showing proof of the checks, statistics, and links behind what he has been describing.
Written up from the original recording. The full transcript is below.
Read the full transcript (10 min talk, 2,186 words)
Hey there, my friends. This is Dave Wood. I live in Costa Rica, and I like to walk around the house barefoot. I don't know if you've ever got a chance to live in a third world country today, or ever, is what I really meant. But you know, it's nice. I wake up every single day.
This is the view that I have outside of my house. And it wasn't always like this. In fact, a year and a half ago, I lived in a van. It was a green 1996 Dodge Caravan, had the paint peeling off of it, rusted tires, working for Greenpeace, and I was making about eight dollars an hour. My wife slept in the van with me, and she'd been married to me for about two years. One night, it was two in the morning, and I got a knock, knock, knock on my window in the van that I lived in, and it was a cop.
And what the cop said to me after he woke me up was he said that he was going to write me a ticket for my last 35 dollars. Now, I don't know if you've ever had only 35 dollars in a bank account before. Actually, this is gone. You know why this is there. But it's not fun. And I got that ticket, only had about 35, 40 dollars in my bank account.
The ticket was for 35. So the last 35 dollars that I had that I needed for gas to put in my van so I could survive, so I could go try to make money and get food, was paid to the state of Hawaii for being homeless. Now, if that's not a slap in the face, I don't know what is. And so I had no money. You know, you're on this website, theultimatewaytogetmoney.com, and today I'm actually going to show you the ultimate way that I discovered of getting money, because here's what happened to me. I decided that something needed to change.
I started a business. It was an online business. I'd never marketed on the internet before, and I had no money to market my business. And when you think of marketing, you think of money. Well, I had a problem with money. I didn't know how to make it.
And so here's what happened to me. I got started in that online business. And within 45 days, I had actually had a night where I made over 12,000 dollars in one two-hour period of time. That week, I actually made over 25,000 dollars. I made more than 25,000 dollars a week. I dropped out of college.
I got F's in eighth grade, and I didn't know how to use the internet. And I was pinching myself because I didn't know how all this money started manifesting in my life. And I started to really ask the question, how is it that money comes into our life, and how was I able to make so much so fast? And that's how I discovered the ultimate way to get money. So let me show you some neat things that I've kind of figured out along the way. And I'm going to kind of take you on a tour a little bit through this property.
And I think that you are not only going to find this one of the most relaxing presentations that you've ever seen and one of the most convincing, but I think that you are going to have some personal and financial breakthroughs from what you're about to learn. So let me show you some real money. I've got right here on my desk some silver bullion coins. Now this is actually about $10,000 of silver. Each one of these coins is one ounce of .999% pure silver minted by the U.S. Treasury.
And it can actually be used as legal currency. They're minted as $1. But the silver in the coins alone is worth right now about $38. And there's actually a real good chance that we might have hyperinflation here in the States. And if that happens, of course, these coins that you see right here are actually going to go from about $30. $38 to about $900.
So let me show you some other nifty things. And then I'm going to attach this camera back again. But let me kind of wade through this here because I didn't always understand this. And I wouldn't have known, had somebody showed me this when I lived in a van about a year and a half ago, I literally would not have known that this was worth $45. I would have turned it. I would have looked on the back.
I would have said that it saw a dollar. And I would have thought they were trying to give me a dollar. So if my boss owed me $20 and he said, I'm going to do you a favor and give you $40 by giving me a one ounce silver coin, I wouldn't have known and I would have taken the $20 instead thinking he was trying to rip me off. Isn't that fascinating? You know, most people just don't understand how money works. They don't understand how it's created.
They don't understand how the government creates it out of thin air. And more importantly, they don't understand how not only is it being taken away from the middle class and the poor and passed into the hands of the rich, but if they don't act, they're not only going to be in poverty, but there's a very good chance that they will not survive. You know, talking about the art of money book making, there's this really great book that I discovered in my quest to learn the ultimate way to get money. I discovered this book called The Four Hour Work Week. Now, I first read this book. I was kind of mad at it.
And the reason why is because I was working 40 hours a week and I lived in a van. And I opened this book. It's by this guy named Timothy Ferris. He actually started a nutrition company online. And he got, if you look on the back of this book, I want to show you something here. It says how Tim, I don't know if you can read this, went from making $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week of work to $40,000 per month working less than four hours per week.
How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 an hour and do whatever the heck you want. So I picked this up. And first of all, I wasn't making $40,000 a year. And I was working about 80 hours a week. I was poor. But second of all, he was making $40,000 per month in four hours a week.
And I said, you know, this guy knows something that I don't know. I started to really ask myself, why don't I have money and why can't I get more money into my life? And the more I researched, the deeper the rabbit hole went. And the more that I realized as I moved deeper into the rabbit hole that I did not understand money growing up at all. And if I didn't change my beliefs very, very, very quickly, not only would I continue to not understand money at all in my life, but I would be poor as my destiny for the rest of my life. And so let's walk in the house now.
Hold on a second. Got to turn this camera around. And I'm actually going to show you different ways of getting money. I'm going to show you how money is created from thin air. I'm going to show you how this is important to get more money in your life. And the only place that it comes from, that's right, money only comes from one place.
And that's the funky thing that most people don't in fact understand. So let's take you into my little home office here. This is a little bit messy because my maids haven't been over since this morning. Yes, I have two maids. I don't clean my house at all. I got to move this tripod a little bit to get it to where it will look at the chalkboard.
And you know, one of the things that I discovered in that book, The Four Hour Work Week, I used to want to control everything. I would have never hired maids several years ago. This was a little description that I made for a guy who came over here. I was teaching him how to market his photography business on the Internet. This is kind of what I do for a living. I am very good at making money online and very good at teaching it to other people.
In fact, I'm not only the number one recruiter in one of the largest home businesses on the planet, but I am also the number one producer inside the largest online attraction marketing community. And I started doing it, get this, when I was living in a 1996 Dodge Caravan on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii with absolutely no money to start. Sometimes people say, Dave, I got you. I want to make money. I'm so excited about the concept of having more money and more prosperity in my life. However, because of my financial lack and because of the fact that I don't have anything to start, I don't possibly see how I could ever, ever get more money into my life.
So let me show you, in fact, how the different ways of making money manifest and how you can end the frustration forever. Let me actually show you why I chose certain directions and what that's led to today. Now, I'm not the richest person in the world. I don't think that I want to be because I don't want the responsibility. And I also don't want to bother trying. However, I have made over $5,000 a week minimum for the last year, almost and a half.
And my life is the coolest life of anybody that I know. Now, just as a warning, this camera may run out of battery, so I might need to stop this presentation. And I think you'll be amazed that I can talk for this long with almost no breath, but I might have to stop this presentation and restart it. So if that happens, well, you'll know why. After this presentation is going through, I'm actually going to be showing you proof, pictures of checks that I've earned, different companies that have paid me lots of money into my bank account. I'm going to show you links and I'm going to show you statistics.
As I'm kind of talking here, you're going to kind of see these kind of draw onto the screen, beaches that I visited. You already saw the beautiful view in front of my house. I actually got interviewed today by Home Business Connection. I'm going to be the cover story of Home Business Connection on the next issue that's mailed out. The lady was blown away because I started to describe to her what I'm about to describe for you. Now, I don't have this book, but you're going to see an image of it, hopefully, if I remember.
Flash on the screen. It's called The Creature from Jekyll Island. Now, when I read this book, previous to reading it, I had no idea where money came from at all. And when I read this, it was appalled. Now, this isn't quite how to get money yet. This is just where it comes from.
So let's talk about this. Where does money come from? When I grew up, I had no idea, didn't even ask the question where money comes from. I assumed that a dollar bill was worth 20 bucks. Well, let me try to find a dollar bill to show you how much it's actually worth, if I can find it. Let me show you actually how much I think that this money is worth.
I actually don't have any dollar bills probably on me. Oh, I actually do. Hold on just one second. I have a $10 bill. I want to show you how much this $10 bill is really worth. So let's step back into my office here really quick, and I want to paint out an illustration.
Let me make sure this is lined up properly and looking at the whiteboard. I want to show you actually how much this $10 bill is worth. You see this on the screen here? You got a picture here. I don't even know which present. Hamilton, okay?
We've got Hamilton, 10 bucks. When I was in the 80s, I was born on May 17, 1981. 10 bucks an hour was a lot of money. You know how much 10 bucks an hour is worth?