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S1 E35 | Goals Plastic Surgery
00:58:14
DJ Scream and Big Bank share nothing but “Big Facts” in their podcast, as they chop it up with today’s popular figures in the entertainment industry
Big Bank and DJ Scream return with another special episode of the “Big Facts” podcast and this time the crew sat down with investment expert Aristotle Varner Jr. of “Aristotle Investments” to talk about all things money including financial literacy, proper investing, and much more.
Aristotle revealed that his interest in investing began while he was enlisted in the military working as a barber. “I was cutting hair, and I saved money, and I wanted to figure out what to do with the money, and that’s where — pretty much — I just googled how to make money from my cell phone. That’s literally how I learned,” the finance expert explained. “The only thing that popped up every single time was investing. So, how I learned how I research is, I’ll google something, and I’ll read every last link. Pretty much whenever they all say the same, that’s what I’m getting into.”
Later on, Aristotle shared some tips on how to save and use your income successfully. “I came up with a system, and I tell people use this system when it comes to saving. So, I live extremely below my means,” he revealed. “The army paid me about $4,000, and I was making $3,000 a month cutting hair. So, what I would do was I would live off my $4,000 but use the $3,000 risk-free and just throw it in the stock market. So, that’s how I was able to learn the stock market and trial and error cause sometimes I would blow that, you know?”
He credits his parents for their guidance, which ultimately influenced the decisions he made growing up. “Even though we lived in that area, he would always tell me what not to do, and my dad sold drugs growing up. And my mom… she [had] a middle-class business. So, I had the best of both worlds,” he said. “I really had a Boyz In The Hood story. My dad lived in the hood, and then my mom lived in the ‘burbs. So, my mom actually made me live with my dad because I got expelled in elementary school.”
However, his outlook on life really enabled him to stay focused on learning the world of finance. “I looked at it the opposite of what people looked at. I saw people. I saw crackheads. I saw gangs, you know, a lot of my cousins losing their lives to gang violence, stuff like that, and I was trying to figure out what not to do to go down that path. So, I was thinking the complete opposite. I was saying I’m not gonna do this, I’m not gonna do that, and that’s pretty much what kept me positive.”
Aristotle also broke down some of the language of investing. For example, dividends. “For instance, Coca-Cola is going to pay you. So, Coca-Cola is $40 a share… and all you have to do is Google dividend history. Let’s just say Coca-Cola is paying you, let’s say, I would say 20 cents, 20 cents per share. Okay, so every $40 you spend, they’re going to give you 20 cents back per share per quarter,” the expert explained.
The money maker also writes about investing while helping consumers find solutions to their financial troubles. “So one book is called ‘Find a Problem Sell the Solution,’ and that’s pretty much how I figure out all my streams of income. So, what I do is I’ll look at a problem and then I’ll sell the solution,” he said.
Even if you’re starting from square one of saving and financial literacy, Aristotle says it doesn’t count you out. He tells folks to “create a system to save.” First thing is to get a source of income, “It could be anything whether it’s a job a hustle, whatever,” he said. “However somebody gets some money, as long as you ain’t killing… stealing or nothing like that, it’s fair game in my opinion.”
If you like what you heard, be sure to stay tuned every week for new episodes of “Big Facts.” Also, don’t make sure to watch the latest show above!