I don't have credit, don't have a credit card. I don't actually know what rent is here so today i want to introduce you to michael reeves. He's a millennial college dropout, turned computer programmer turned robotic mad scientist turned youtuber turned back to robotic mad scientist turned viral internet personality within a few short years. He's amassed a following of nearly 5 million subscribers on youtube 1 million on twitch and hit upon hit of multi-million view, videos showcasing his love for computers, programming and tasers lots and lots of tasers.

I was intrigued by nothing short of a youtube algorithm masterpiece and, as someone who's deeply obsessed with all aspects, personal finance, investing and saving money i had to reach out, so we can get an inside look into how michael reeves was able to turn his love for Computers, programs and tasers into a full-time career and now how he manages and spends his newfound money. So with that said, here's how michael reeves saves, spends and invests his money. Wait for it, michael reeves, millennial, money, oh and by the way. If this video gets 100 000 likes, michael reeves will tase me: okay, fine! He was going to tase me anyway, but still make sure to smash that like button, because it helps out my channel tremendously and subscribe, because why not - and it's totally free just takes you a split second and uh.

Thank you so much and let's begin here, oh boom, you mentioned robotics, you can move my thing with just floating your hand around like the way i got into it was um. I worked a software development job for uh. The government, like a like, like a internal tooling system, for one of like the public school systems, uh back where i'm from on maui and i was getting like extremely bored of uh programming and i used to have fun with programming. So i, like purposely, started doing really like stupid things.

Just like keep my interest going with it, because i i've seen you know it's like good to just do dumb, that's fun! How much were you making back then yeah? It was 15 an hour which sucked because i was like leading their team at this very small rinky-dink college. What were you doing with that money? Back then? Were you saving? It are we spending it? I was still living at home. It was like a. It was a good thing, but i uh i was saving for the year of college.

What am i saying? I didn't get scholarships, so i had to pay for it. No investing seriously. I took a small interest in like a stock market and learned about it. A little in college, but that was that was about it.

So did you teach yourself to code um, yeah yeah, just internet's like a great place, especially comp sci. It's just like like harvard puts their computer science courses online. You don't need to go to harvard. You can just like look at the harvard class online.

It's crazy yeah when kovit's not around. I go to colleges and i break into their comp. Sci classes just pretend to be a student, bring a backpack just sit down and they just talk. They don't take.

Have you actually done that yeah, it's bad? What yeah you just get to watch a college class without paying tuition? It's awesome, your first job. Did you get that just from information you learned online for free? Was it free very yes, you're still free man yeah, you just go on youtube. Free courses, um like you, can sign up for skillshare or you dummy the meat of it's always the same. If they're, a decent teacher, does an employer.

Look at that and see that you don't have a degree and like, what's your degree udemy, i learned online youtube. What you got ta do is you got ta start doing stupid projects and they don't have to be stupid. Just you got ta start doing your own projects, so you don't have to be at like a workplace. It's really nice! It's not like uh.

Like you're a doctor. You don't have to be on site to show something on a resume with software development. You don't need to be working in a company to you know, make your own app. You just make your own app and then now you have that on your resume, a microwave that only turns on when you scream at it.

How would i why why why pull it out? What made you post that first youtube video i've been watching youtube since i was like very young, and i i would sometimes just watch youtube for like eight hours a day, and it was like that's what i did. It's just bad yeah, and so i'm like it's not that it was easy, but i'm like i i know i've always gone off of like i know what i like to see in a youtube video and it's like i'll just do what i would like to see. If i was some other guy watching, it's like i mean i'll, just try it have you ever thought to yourself gee. I wish i had a robot that could shoot lasers into my eyes, while i sure have like i haven't, worked just doing like youtube and stuff.

Very long still, i i got out of my one-year college and then moved back home for like the summer um, and then i moved to oahu, which is a different island in hawaii, not the island, i'm from, and i just kind of chilled there and was almost Homeless - and i think that was the point when it was like um it's somewhere in in like that span of that blur of time i was like yeah. We should probably make this like a try full time at it, not too close, because it's kind of dangerous so just put your hand up it'll reach the water first and foremost. I need it to be fun and interesting, because then i'm gon na, if, if i start treating it like a job where i'm just like strategizing about how to grow and get bigger, then the way i think about it is i i'm just back at square one Where i was at my job and i was like trying to think of new fun things to do, this is the new fun thing for me. You know, and i needed to like stay fun and interesting and not turn into like a grind.

I needed to just like enjoy it. I won't work on like projects, even if, like maybe they do well on youtube. If i don't think they'd be fun and interesting, you know um like this. What is this that we're in oh yeah? This is the this.

Is the from my last video we're doing uh? This is for the video with amazon amazon. It was all based around uh the show on amazon, prime um. It's called the boys. There's a scene where, like a guy, uses a baby superhero to cut two guys in half he uses like the laser vision i put this together, and so the thing is it's like wow.

This is scary, so if you give it a good shake like give it a really hold it by the neck, hold it by the neck, hold wow yeah. It's shake activated. Uh lasers come out, wow, okay. So how about this? Could you break down a bit of your business? I mean surely at this point it's it's turned into an income source.

Where does that come from? Is it like youtube at the top and then that trickles down everywhere? Is it like? It's actually youtube is maybe like the youtube. Adsense is like 10 of it. I don't make like very much because of how much i like swear. I they just.

I don't get very good cpm um, so most of the income is actually from sponsors, which is which is nice sponsors um. I started doing twitch recently, which is which is cool so there's like income there, but i don't really stream because i need the income. I just it's: it's like a fun thing. So when i get stressed from youtube, i go to twitch stress from twitch.

I go to youtube. I take sponsorships that i, like the fact that i like don't make many videos means. I can just take the sponsorships that i think are you know good products and i get to keep it like genuine, like i don't do any sponsorships for like stuff. I don't wouldn't use myself or don't enjoy.

Oh, we should have talked about my uh tutoring business. I had on oahu, so i just made like a bunch of fake websites and companies not not actually founding them. I would just like fake website fake craigslist ad three four five, six different companies, jokes on you they're all me, i'm all of the companies and then i would just contact people that way. So i just had a small monopoly on the comp site.

Tutoring business on oahu, that's clever for a while we're gon na get to the juicy stuff now yeah sure. How much do you spend? I think most it's the same as most people where my biggest spend is is food. It's food food! Isn't that how much? No? That's not the biggest success for most people. How much you spend every month on food.

I guess don't have a lot of expenses. Okay, i've, i've! I think i was actually watching one of your videos. How much do i spend on food? I get like uber eats like once a day or once every other day, okay um, usually it's like i'll get it, and then it just lasts me the whole day. What would you say, though, your food budget is, if you have a food, do you have a budget or is it just whatever? It's really comes to mind, whatever comes to mind: 30 bucks a day, 40 bucks a day, so we're gon na count that about a thousand dollars a month.

Now you really just got to extrapolate that out to the months besides food. Where else do you spend your money, i mean um. I got business expenses um this i mean i pay a guy to type the room. I my overhead's really low, though, since i do most of the stuff myself um and chinese electronics are extremely cheap.

Most of the time, so i just order like bulk electronics, for whenever i'm building something you'll get your odd like. I need to pay for something quite expensive. What about rent? Oh rent? That's got to be more than food right, yeah, yeah, it's more than food! Surely yeah yeah, surely it's more food? I i don't actually know what rent is yeah here. Could you could you say your portion of friendship? I know i don't know what my portion of rent is.

I cuz there's like it's complicated. There's one big bedroom upstairs yeah and we're it's like a thing where we keep swapping around our splits of the rent. At one point it was like 2 000 or something it less more. It's it's.

I think it hovers around 2000 or less okay around there. Yeah. That's really good yeah. Well, there's a lot of people in the house.

It's not too bad right, that's! Actually! I i approve of that. I will give the thumbs up. Yeah, plus i get like um. No one uses the garage, so i just pack a full of my tools.

It's actually really that's decent yeah. How long did this take you to make? I think two months start to finish wow like, and that was just like every day get up. That was. I had a lot of structure at that time like come in here.

Work on this thing go to sleep. Obviously i don't know start to finish when i start something how to do it. I have to kind of go into a little blind solve it. As i go, that's just like the nature of doing new projects, but like mostly it's just internet, it's like watching some people do some things like building off of it learning 3d printing.

So i wouldn't have known that. I could do this if i didn't like learn. 3D, printing, like from a random chinese 3d printer that the chinese company sent me like forever ago what about car payments? Anything like that? No! I just bought my car okay, tesla right. I yes, yeah all three! I always wanted that yeah.

It was what didn't pay zero dollars. I'm gon na have it for my whole life um. I i assume, like most of my adult life. I've never been like a car guy, but when i like first saw tesla coming out, i was like okay, if i were ever to get a car that would that would be the car okay.

So now, why didn't you finance it? Oh, i i don't know how to do that. So i went. I don't have credit, don't have a credit card, don't talk to me, don't talk to me about it. Don't worry, i'm really not waiting.

Don't talk to me girl, we're gon na sign you up from a credit card before i leave. You know what i'm getting i have one. I just never activated it and it's a problem which what was your first credit card? What did you get from chase? I think it was when you talked about financing like houses and how it's smarter to mortgage them instead of just pay for them outright. I was like, oh that's what that's what credit score is for like i don't i, because i hate owing money so much.

I i don't ever have debts, i always pay them off. Just always i just hate hat or i just won't, do it in the first place, but when you're like leveraging you're using it as a leverage, instead of like it's a necessity, i i understand so. Where would you say, then you waste your money? Is there any place you're just like i'm actually not too bad? One of the few things i bought for myself is that record player. Okay, i was like two years ago.

How much was that it's like 200 bucks? Really yeah: it's this pretty cool record player. I don't use it all the time because i just have a spotify account. I i invest in the stock market. Sometimes um been doing that since i lost a bunch of money on gopro in college and i buy a bunch of money, i mean probably like 200 bucks, okay, because i was in college and didn't have money at all.

I just have a low overhead, so i'm able to do i'm able to save it. I'm able to invest it, throw a lot of it into investing, i'm thinking about real estate, actually less as a source of income and investing uh, though i want that to be. You know a facet of it. I i think i just want like a i like the idea of like redoing, like a house just like it's a fun project on the side just like and like having a house, it's like wow, i that's my house, that's cool, so how much of your money Would you say you save as a percentage like fifty percent sixty percent? Eighty percent? Do you save eighty percent of your income like all the money i don't use on like food rent? I don't buy a lot of things like for myself.

I think every purchase i've made and i buy from like amazon so much every purchase. I've made like in the last five months has been business expenses. So what are you invested in now, just spg, which is a property company you're just in simon property group, on uh on the recommendation of a friend not much else just kind of so wait wait. So all of your investment right now is simon.

Probably oh! No! No there's a bunch of it's not the whole portfolio. Okay, it's that's! I haven't found anything else that i'm like very interested in because i'm, like you know, just throw a you know sliver into into that. It's not like wall street bets double down on svg one day calls now. Why tasers, you know, there's no better way like they're, just fun.

First of all, they're fun. Also, you can't like trigger fire with like like as quick as you can. You know like with electricity, it's so easy to just you know, hook a taser up to a relay, and now you have something you can trigger electronically through, like a robot. It can trigger instantaneously.

For robot. Tasers are easy to work with they're epic, too. It's fun to taste people on a scale of one to ten. How much does it hurt? It's, it's probably not as bad as you think the sound is definitely more impending than the actual tasting.

Remember. I told you how the sound is worse than the actual table. How many times have you done this to people more than i can count and more to myself than i would care to have admitted all right, i'm gon na do this! Oh okay! It sounds bad, it's not as bad as it's a little shocked. It's not as bad as you think.

Also you can get you can get like. Do it again, it's not too bad, it's not as bad as yeah yeah. This is like. I think it's mid-charge, it's not as bad as you think how many hours a day do you work depends.

I have a very like really weird schedule for working like if i am working. It's like i'm working like 15 hours a day, 16 hours a day, working on like working all night working like 30 hours straight. I did for the last video of like overnight um and then, when i'm not doing that, i'm like just playing video games any idea! Why you're so successful? I try to just make stuff that, like kind of how like when i first started where it's like, i just want to make stuff that i myself would enjoy like i like good youtube content, i love good youtube content. I want to make you know, youtube content that if i were watching i'd enjoy so with that said, you guys thank you so much for watching.

I really appreciate it make sure to subscribe hit. The like button and notification bell also feel free to add me on instagram. I posted pretty much daily. So if you want to be a part of it, there feel free to add me there, as in the second channel.

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