Build a confident financial future! Whether you’re a parent, grandparent, or adult looking to gain control over your money, this episode is packed with insights to help you empower your family and create lasting financial freedom. In this episode of Dr. Sev Talks Money, I chat with Darius Lester, founder of Mammoth Money Academy, about how to break the cycle of financial struggle using creative wealth strategies for both kids and adults.Key Takeaway:Financial literacy isn’t just about money; it’s about empowerment, future planning, and giving your children a head start in life. Every step you take today can create compounding benefits for tomorrow.Darius shares actionable tips for:*Teaching children to save, invest, and make smart financial decisions*Investing in yourself and your kids to prevent future financial mistakes*Making financial decisions today based on your desired future, not your past*Helping your kids exceed your expectations financially, without forcing them to struggle unnecessarily
Connect with Darius here:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MammothMoneyAcademy Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mammothmoneymindset/
His Community: https://mammothmoneyteenacademy.carrd.co/
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The Dr. Sev Talks Money podcast’s mission is to empower women to approach money confidently, reframe their financial habits, and build a future where their money is a tool for opportunity and security. Through Dr. Sev Talks Money YouTube channel and Podcast, I provide actionable advice and inspiration to help you achieve financial freedom. Join me for one-on-one coaching, group sessions, workshops, or speaking engagements as we journey to financial empowerment together. It’s never too late to begin again—let’s make it happen!
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Podcast Transcript
So I started off with Mammoth Money Mindset, which is really just like a coaching service where I was helping different adults. Majority of them, it was getting. Helping get them out of debt, and then, you know, creating budgets and figuring out how to get into different investments to, you know, get them to an early retirement or something along those lines. While I was doing that, I started to feel like a lot of this stuff could be avoidable if we just started earlier. Right. So as opposed to, you know, helping adults fix their 20, 30, $40,000 worth of debt, if I can catch the kids on the front end, we can just avoid all of that.
Hey, hey, hey, Savvy Squad. Welcome to another episode of the Dr. Sev Talks Money YouTube and Podcast where we empower women to manage money confidently. Today’s guest is Darius Lester, an active duty US Air Force member, real estate and stock market investor, and founder of Mammoth Money Academy. He’s here to talk about unconventional ways to make money and how parents can set their kids up for financial success. Darius, welcome to the Dr. Sev Talks Money Podcast.
Thank you very much. I’m happy to be here.
Oh, I’m happy to have you So I like to kick it off with a little bit of icebreaker, a little bit of fun. So my question is, what’s the weirdest side hustle you’ve ever thought about trying?
Weirdest side hustle.
While you’re thinking about it, I can share mine?
Yeah, go ahead.
So the weirdest one that I ever I thought about was a Rent-A-Friend and I thought, well, this would be a great way to meet people, a great way to, you know, get out in this community. And then I remembered I’m an introvert, so I nixed that.
Right.
So what about you?
So something I’ve thought of before, very briefly because I was like that, that’s probably something I shouldn’t even deal with was, you know, they have lots of, you know, people who get into like, you know, streaming or different services on the Internet, you know, where they’re just, you know, showing their face, talking to people, you know, around the world and things like that. I thought about trying to be some sort of middleman for that, like a, like a manager. Because I think a lot of people are having fun, you know, with the fun part of, you know, just being out there in the world and being the personality. But I think they’re missing a lot of parts on like the managerial side of maximizing the money they can make from that and things. So I thought about it briefly, but I digst that because I just, it didn’t, it wouldn’t be something I was passionate about.
Ah, yeah. Gotta, gotta be passionate or care about it a little bit for it to be, to last long term.
Right.
So you’re on a journey. You’re, you’re on quite a journey. Serving in the Air Force, a successful real estate and stock market Investor. What first sparked your passion for financial education?
Honestly, after thinking back, you know, how that I’m like in my 30s, I kind of just was looking back over my life. I think what initially got me into it was my mother. Basically. She was, you know, the. The youngest of like eight kids. And, you know, she’s my mom, so I look up to her. But I noticed that all of her, well, majority of her siblings would always reach out to her asking for money. And, you know, she gave it to him because she’s just a nice lady.
But me as a child seeing that all the time, I would see how it would stress my mom out, you know, when they say they’d pay it back and they never would. And she’d start, you know, kind of trying to skip out on their calls because she knows they’re asking for more money. And I saw that they were a burden on her. And I think, you know, in my child brain, that kind of resonated. And I decided I never wanted to be a burden on my mother, so to not ever be a burden. You know, the second I left the house, you know, to go join the military, I was like, cool, I need to save money. I need to do whatever I can so that I never have to borrow a penny from my mom because I don’t ever want her to think of me as I saw her think of some of her siblings. So that kind of.
Yeah, after just. I didn’t know that at the beginning, but looking back on my life, I think that’s what kind of shift triggered how I am now being real frugal, enjoying saving, enjoying growing money.
Yeah, those early money stories, really do shape the way we think about money. And I know that you have a story about a client who, or maybe it was a friend, I can’t remember who helped who turned her financial situation around. She started by renting out rooms and cars and some other things. So I’d love for you to share that with our listeners.
Sure. So when I started doing Mammoth Money Mindset, which was my financial coaching service, most of my first customers were friends. So she was a friend and a client. It was Crystal, actually met her in Afghanistan about, I don’t know, maybe six years prior. Since then, she’s gone ahead and retired from the military, but she still worked as a contractor because, you know, you got to keep the lights on, basically, since we stayed in contact. She saw a whole bunch of things I did. I was a real. What’s the word? I like to do a lot of things.
So I tried out, you know, renting out rooms out of my house. I tried renting out vehicles. I did a few multi level marketing things, just, just anything, just to try it out, see how it felt to make some money. And she heard about some of them. So she, you know, after working with her, I was like, oh, well, you already own your house, you know, your kid is already moved out. You’re just there by yourself and you like traveling a lot. Why don’t you rent out some of your rooms? And she’s like, I never thought about that. So I explained to her how I did it.
And then she started using Furnish Finder, which is a website where you can rent out a home that already has furniture in it, like the name sounds. And she started, she actually started renting out two rooms out of her house pretty much, you know, on a monthly basis. Sometimes it was to some travel nurses, sometimes it was to different construction workers that are just visiting the area. And sometimes it was just people who needed a place and didn’t necessarily have things to fill that place. So honestly, after doing that for about a year, she was like, man, I am making a lot of money for this. I haven’t had to pay my mortgage bill, you know, in months because the income she was bringing in from those different people renting out the rooms in her house was taking care of also doubles. She had an animal, like I said, she liked to travel. The, A lot of the people that would stay love to watch her dog for free.
So that’s, that’s, that created more savings for her because she didn’t have to, you know, leave the dog with anyone or paying one to do it because people that were paying her wanted to keep the dog. So I, you know, some people are a little fearful about doing things like that, right? Letting somebody into your space, that could be crazy. It is definitely up to you to do your own vetting before you let somebody, you know, into your space. But it, it worked out great for her. And then she did that for a year. And then the next year she saw that I was renting out vehicles. So she was like, okay. She went, I, I showed her how to buy, you know, a cheap vehicle for about, I think like nine or $10,000.
And she started renting, she started driving that one and rented out her prior vehicle. And she would just do that regularly. She lived relatively close to the airport she’d rent that out. So the income she was bringing in from renting out her vehicle and the rooms in her house ended up being enough money to where she didn’t need that contracting job anymore. So I remember she just sent me a long thank you Facebook message saying, hey, I officially, you know, quit, you know, my job. I’m. I’m retired. Retired now I don’t have to do anything because of the income that I’m bringing in from these side businesses.
So that was really cool.
Yeah. Oh, man, that sounds wonderful because my house is actually listed on Furnish Finder, but. And it does matter where you live too, because you mentioned that she lives close to the airport, so it makes it convenient. And I’m sure there are probably a lot of hospitals around there. I tend to live in the boondock, so. So here in Georgia. So it’s a. The.
The closest hospital is about maybe 8 miles, and with traffic, it’s a lot more. So I don’t get as many renters as possible. But that’s okay because it does bring in a little bit of income. But I’ve never explored the car, renting out a car. Can you share a little bit about that, how that works?
Right. But I mean, honestly, I think there’s just, you know, just, just one big one that, that, that everybody uses. And basically you sign up very similar to, you know, your, Your, your Airbnb or your Furnish finder. Just a website and an app. Honestly, it works exactly like Airbnb. You list it, take pictures of it, say how many miles it is, you know, all that good stuff, and you set your own price. And then different people will log on to the app. If they decide, oh, yep, that car fits my needs, they’ll send you a request saying, hey, can I borrow this for a couple days? Can I borrow it for a week? You get to set a mileage limit on there, and they’ll pay and they get to take the car.
The site itself, it insures it. Right? Because that’s probably the biggest thing. Everybody’s wondering, what if they steal my car? What if they crash my car? There’s different tiers of insurance plans. Same way regular insurance works. You pay a deductible and then you use. You know, they’ll cover the rest of it, and then you can get whatever repairs you need fixed, or if the car needs to be Replaced, same thing, but it’s, it’s, it’s not too bad. Honestly. The biggest thing is just make sure you take before and after pictures.
That’s, that’s probably the most humongous thing if anybody decides to get into that because that’s the only possible way you can prove somebody did something bad to your car, that they didn’t return it in the condition that they originally took it in. So that’s probably the biggest thing is take, take all the pictures in the world. There’s, I don’t even think there’s a picture limit. Take as many as you can before and after so that you can recoup any money that needs to be recouped. But yeah, it’s not bad.
Yeah, sounds very common sense. I know that you’re also passionate about helping young people develop strong financial habits. What are some of the first steps that parents can take to help their kids manage money, especially during their teen years?
That’s a great question. So the system that I run to try to help the youth and my own child, I have a 14 year old now, I think opening them a bank account is a huge first step. So I am in the military. I actually work in financial management in the military. So I handle like the paychecks and lots of different contracts and different things that go through the military. So something I noticed about a lot of the young troops that come in, right. We have people come in at 17, 18, 19, 20. Lots of them have never had a bank account.
Right. So they’re depending on things like cash app or you know, other just like little payment models and they’re wanting their entire government paychecks to be sent to these, to these apps. Lots of them aren’t, you know, FDIC insured. Many of them, you know, have a lot more frequent crashes and things. So I think a big thing we can do as parents is either go into a bank with our child to open them account or walk through it with them online to show them, hey, here are different accounts. Here’s the difference between a big bank, a small local bank and a credit union. Here’s what you should, you know, do. Here’s the difference between a checking and a savings.
Here’s how the credit cards work through this bank. Walk all that through with them. I think there’s too many adults just assuming they’ll figure it out. Or maybe we’ve had our own banking system so long we don’t think about our child has no idea the concept of a bank or the differences on how interest rates work and Things. So I think everybody should take time, open a bank with their child to explain how that works. And then you can start getting into credit cards and you can get into interest rates on their savings accounts and build up from there.
Yeah, I like that because my daughter, I took her before she was, before she could speak, she had a bank account.
Right.
So we opened at the credit union and I would deposit birthday monies or whatever, and as soon as she could walk up, she’ll be toddling into the bank. And she loved going because they gave out little suckers and.
Right.
Toddling to the bank and deposit. And then when she got older, it was a fight because she did not want to put that money in the bank. But now she is doing regular deposits, automatic deposits, because she’s got. she’s developed that muscle, right. That saving muscle. So, yeah, I really love that. So you mentioned your, your academy, Mammoth Money Academy. Talk to us a little bit about that and how kids can get involved or parents
Sure. So I started off with Mammoth Money Mindset, which is really just like a coaching service where I was helping different adults. Majority of them, it was getting. Helping get them out of debt, and then, you know, creating budgets and figuring out how to get into different investments to, you know, get them to an early retirement or something along those lines. While I was doing that, I started to feel like a lot of this stuff could be avoidable if we just started earlier. Right. So as opposed to, you know, helping adults fix their 20, 30, $40,000 worth of debt, if I can catch the kids on the front end, we can just avoid all of that. And that debt could instead be investments.
And then, you know, we’ll start having a generation, you know, retiring way sooner than, you know, 65. You know, I. I’m planning on retiring, you know, maybe at 40 or so, and I would love to enable others to do that as well. And honestly, with the Mammoth Money Academy, my goal is for anyone to be able to do that. Right. It. You don’t have to be a doctor, you don’t got to be a football player, basketball player, rapper, pharmacist. Right.
None of those things. It doesn’t matter what job you have. If you decide you want to be a janitor, a janitor at an elementary school for your entire life, that’s okay. You’re still going to retire with more than a million dollars if you follow our plan. So I’m, I’m really excited about it. I started with doing weekly classes, right. So people join the academy and then we’ll get on a live call every week and go on a different financial topic. This month’s banking.
So one of our guys just opened up his first high yield savings account. So I’m, yeah, I’m excited about that. And he was like, yeah, I’ve heard of these before, but I just never, I just never did it. So just right there on the call, it’s like, okay, let’s jump online, right? Just shared screen to the Internet. Like, here we go. Here’s a list of them. Here’s the differences between them. Here’s their different interest rates.
You know, which one do you like and why? And we found one that’s given, like, you know, 4.3% interest annually. I was like, okay, let’s go look at it. Do these fit your needs? And they did. So we went ahead and opened it up and he has it created. So now we’re working on a budget or a plan on how he’s gonna add to that account, you know, every month or he does a little investing on the side. So he’s going to take a percentage of anything he makes out of investments into that account. So it’s, it’s fun. It’s.
We try to keep it interactive. And what, what I’m working on now is improving it. So right now it’s, it’s about like $75 a month to be a part of it. And we’re just meeting every week and, you know, going over things like this. That amount is going to increase because I’m gonna add like 10 times the value to it. Because walking through that with him, I realize even if somebody’s heard of these concepts, you know, of, I can tell somebody to go invest. I can even tell them, hey, go invest in this stock, this stock in this, you know, index fund.
They’re never going to do it just because of that bridge of not knowing exactly what to click, where to go like that done for you system. So that’s, that’s what I’m incorporating into the, to the academy. I’m gonna just set aside pretty much like a month or two where I’m just recording. All right, you want a bank? Here. Here’s me going through this. Here’s how you open up a bank. Here’s the different ones. I’m not telling you what bank.
I don’t care what bank you go to, honestly. But here you can make an informed decision, right? Same thing with investment accounts. Here’s you know, eight different investment apps you can go to. Here’s how you start. Here’s the things they’re going to ask for. They’re going to want your social. Don’t freak out. All of them will ask for your social.
Right. Because that’s the thing that’s a deterrent. Some people be like, ooh, this asks for my social. I don’t want to put that in there. You have to. That’s a part of it. So, yeah, I’m really looking forward to releasing that. It’ll be a whole course.
So even outside of the weekly live meetings, people, you know, students can just go through the modules themselves and open accounts and learn the habits, fix their mindsets, everything. It should be really good.
Yeah, this sounds awesome. And, and I think that’s. That’s a smart strategy to record these things so you’re not. Keep repeating the stuff. You’re creating evergreen content that they can access whenever they’re ready to access whatever module. So I think, I think this is a great process that you’re creating. If somebody wants to join, is it only online or is it.
Do they have to come physically into the location? Do you have a website that they could go to to. To sign up?
Yes. So it. It is. It’s all online. It’s virtual. I wanted to do it that way because, you know, right now I’m located in Montgomery, Alabama, but like we said, I’m in the military, so I’m moving around every couple of years. And I thought that if it’s online, no one has an excuse for missing out on it. Right.
Different people in different school systems. Like, oh, my school doesn’t teach this. My kid never got a chance to learn this. I don’t know this. So my kid was behind the eight ball. They didn’t learn this. I didn’t want any of those excuses, so I was like, hey, it’s online. Anyone anywhere can access it.
Let’s get this information to our kids so that they can, you know, succeed. I. I cannot wait to see both of my kids do way better than I am. Because the stuff I’m teaching my son now, I didn’t learn until a couple of years ago. And now he’s 14 and he has an investment account. He’s picking stocks. Like, he’s coming and telling me about different stocks. And it, it warms my heart.
But yeah. So honestly, if anybody’s interested in joining, like I said, I’m still building out the module part, but the weekly classes are online. If you could go to my YouTube at Mammoth Money Mindset on YouTube you can reach out to me. Mammoth Money Mindset is also on Instagram either or just go there. I have more videos, a whole bunch of free content on how you can get your kids started into the stock market, how you can get them high yield savings, how you can get their credit score, you know, risen before they even get their first car or credit card. Just a whole bunch of little things to help parents help their kids be better with money. But yeah, I’d love anybody to come out and join, ask me any questions. I’m pretty, pretty, pretty available guy.
Yeah, I love this and I, I know that I know of the power of educating your kids because my daughter as I shared before she now she has two high yield savings account, one that’s specific for something and then one that in case anything happens she’s right contributing to her 401k. She’s doing Roth IRAs through Vanguard. She saw how I was able to live because of the choices that I made financially.
Yes.
So if you’re listening to us, please go ahead and check it out and it’s again it’s at Mammoth Money mindset it on YouTube and I’m going to have the link for all of that inside the show note on the Podcast platforms and on YouTube. So I, I have to ask you this. If you could go back and give your 18 year old self in the Air Force one piece of financial advice, what would it be?
That’s hard. There’s, there’s so many, so many helpful things. Oh you know what, probably take some of your savings and go purchase some financial coaching because it’s like I could tell them go invest in Apple, you know, go, you know, buy a house sooner, you know, so on and so forth. But all of those would just lead to only one thing happening. Whereas if I go ahead and confirm, hey, getting help from other people works and then my younger self went ahead and started learning from somebody else that has as much experience or maybe more than I do right now that would help me in multiple facets. So yeah, I think, I think that probably my best advice is to go and get help from somebody that’s already doing all these things that, you know, I either want done or, you know, have thought about doing or, you know, hope to see myself do in the future?
Yeah, I think that’s solid advice. You want, you want to get help? Because a lot of young people, sometimes they listen to what somebody else is doing. So they, somebody says, oh, crypto is the thing, so they ll do that.
Right.
And then they’ll say, oh, now it’s, now it’s Apple or whatever. So they’re riding the wave of, of popularity rather than having a cohesive strategy. So I think that’s great advice to really go talk to somebody who, who can help you look at the big picture and put things together.
Yes, for sure.
Yeah. So anything else that you would like to share that you think would be pertinent for, whether it’s a young per person listening or an adult that you think would be appropriate for them to hear right now to spark a desire to start doing something? Because the economy is crazy and it’s going to get crazier. So you have to do something. Right? So what, what, what are some things that you think somebody listening to us may need to hear?
A lot of, a lot of people I talk to when I bring up investing say, oh, I’ve heard of that, or I’ve always been meaning to do that. Go do it. Like, stop, stop thinking about it. Stop waiting. Literally every day you wait is money you’ve missed out on or money that you’ve spent on something that’s not going to benefit you in the future. Go invest now. Invest in yourself, please. If you, if you think you’re too far gone, which I don’t think you are, but if you feel like you’re too far gone, your child isn t.
So go invest in your child. If you don’t have the knowledge, go pay for the knowledge. What, a couple hundred? Even, even if you had spent a few thousand dollars now, if that saves them from tens or $20,000 in debt, that, that sounds like a win to me. Like, go, go do it now. Money is a, is a river. It flows. You can’t get anything without giving anything. I get it.
It’s scary. But being scared your whole life isn’t going to make you any better. Just because you didn’t come for money doesn’t mean money can’t come from you. Go, go pull the trigger and, you know, get some help. Get your kids some help so that you guys in your future lineage can, can succeed as well.
Yes, I Love that. Because value, no matter what you’re investing, think of it not as an expense expense, but as an investment in you and in your children’s life. And the value that you’re going to get from it far surpasses any investment that you could make right. Into educating yourself and making sure you get. Get further ahead. Now, there are parents who I had parents tell me, a couple of them that, well, my kid, I. I struggled. So my kid need to learn how to struggle, too.
And I’m not going to give them anything. They need to leave the house for 8 by 18. I’m not a. I don’t believe in that philosophy at all because why should my child struggle? Because I did. Why not share the lessons? So.
Right.
And I know that you believe that financial education should be simple and empowering. So what’s one piece of advice you give to someone who maybe feel overwhelmed by personal finance? Their parents left them up. Hang them out to dry, Leave them alone. What, what kind of, what piece of advice would you give them to help them take control of their financial future?
Actually, I guess something interesting. I might mess this up because I just. I drove back from Virginia. I was visiting my wife a couple of days ago, and while I was driving, I was listening. I listened to Podcast a lot, right? Different interviews. And it was Myron Golden, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. Good guy. And he had a guest, I can’t remember his name at the moment.
He’s author. Basically. He said that the reason a lot of people don’t succeed is because they are basing their decisions today off of their past instead of off of their future. So I was like, yeah, no, it was really good. And, you know, because he was like, you know, a lot of stuff, something bad happened to you in the past, you’re based on stuff you do today off of that. Even if something good happened to you in the past, you’re basing the things you do today off of that. And he was saying what everyone should do if they want to really succeed and really get ahead in life is based their decisions off of their future. So they need to focus on their future, decide on what they want to happen right now, and then make all of their actions based off of that.
So, you know, when it, when it comes to parenting and stuff, I’m not thinking about, you know, what my mom or my dad did, you know, to me, who was around, who wasn’t around, none of that stuff. I think I used to base it off of that, but I’M basing it off. Okay. What’s my desired future for myself? What’s my desired future for my child? Do I want. Is my desired future for my child to struggle? If so, I need to get checked out. There’s something wrong with me. Right. My desired future for my child is for them to succeed.
Like I said, I want them to exceed what I’ve done. I want them to blow me out the water.
Yeah.
And if I’m taking that into mind for what, with what I’m doing today, I should be giving them every single piece of knowledge, every dime, whatever I can right now so that they have, you know, they start off high so they can go ahead and, you know, bust through those expectations. So that’s, that’s, that’s probably what I would say is, you know, I get it. Some people have trauma, lots of stuff they’re working through to the best of your ability. Try to focus on the future and what you want to happen and then make this decisions today based off of that.
Yeah. And, and that is a great place for us to end our Podcast today. Darius, thank you so much for joining me. And again, for those of you who are listening, all of his contact information will be in the show notes. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with, with us and also your experience with working with other people. And again, before you go, where is the best place for them to find you?
Yep, it’s mammoth money mindset. So on YouTube, you’ll see this face. All over it, you’ll see my daughter’s face because sometimes I can’t find anybody to watch her. So she’s just sitting there. She’s six months. She’s beautiful. But yeah, it’s mammoth money mindset going to YouTube. On my YouTube videos, you’ll see links to if you’re interested in having your kids join the academy or if you just want to sit down and have a talk with me, you know, about potentially letting them join, or if you just have your own finance questions, all those links should be on the YouTube channel.
And it’s also mammoth money mindset on Instagram. If you wanted to reach out to me there.
Okay, awesome. So as we get ready to wrap up, I want to remind you to please subscribe to the Podcast on YouTube. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, leave a review and a rating. If you listen on Spotify, leave a rating. And very important for you to know as you are completing your ratings, remember that we absolutely love the number five. Until then, this is Dr. Sev saying, stay savvy and we’ll see you next time.
Other resources: https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/things-that-financially-confident-people-do-from-a-pro-who-knows
Other resources: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/financial-goals-definition-examples
