My response to Pewdiepie

What's up guys, it's Graham here. So, I never thought this would happen. Two things.

Number one, today is my 30th birthday, which means obviously I turned 30 today. So yeah, that's kind of crazy! And for anyone wondering what I'm going to do to celebrate today, I'm going to sit in my backyard, drink some iced coffee, and respond to your comments right now, if you're commenting within the first few hours of this video posting.

Number two, what makes this video just that much better is that I made it while watching PewDiePie's reaction videos, which just happen to be trending right now. When I was featured, I watched Jubilees' videos "Do All Millionaires Think the Same?" Seriously, as soon as I saw this, I was so excited! I even see that he photoshopped my picture out from the thumbnail and put his face on there instead, which come on, like, I'm not even mad. Tim Sykes' reaction is so much better than mine, so just in the spirit of a good thumbnail, I approve.

But also, I just have to say for anyone wondering, I subscribe to PewDiePie! I enjoy his videos, and overall I've liked his reaction. But, this is a warning to the entire nineteen-year-old army out there: there are a few of his points that I strongly disagree with. So, I'm going to be reacting to PewDiePie’s reaction of my feature in Jubilee.

And in typical PewDiePie fashion, I can't be all fancy today and sit at a desk, so I'm just going to join the floor gang and sit on the floor. Because it's my birthday today, if you wouldn't mind smashing the like button for the YouTube algorithm, that would be the best birthday present ever! That's all I want. I just want, for my birthday, the like button to be annihilated, and that would be it. That would be great!

So, let's go to the floor and start the video. First of all, for anyone wondering, yes, this is my first video ever being filmed on the floor. But let's start this video off in the very beginning and see what PewDiePie has to say: "Do all millionaires think the same?"

Today we find out. Growing up, I didn't have anyone in my family that was in real estate. I didn't have anyone in my family that had millions of dollars. And see, for me, I'd bought properties or something fifteen-six years having 20 bucks.

Now, I know I don't need to give that much of a background to the people who are already familiar with my channel, but let me just make this very clear: I had never flipped a property before and instead, I began working as a real estate agent. I saved as much money as I possibly could. I used that to go and invest in real estate, and then after eight years of doing that, I began making YouTube videos to try to find really creative ways to ask my audience to smash the like button for the YouTube algorithm.

I barely graduated high school. I never went to college. Two divorced parents, so I should not have become wealthy. That's right, if your parents divorce, you got no chance. I know he's just listing a couple of things; I get it. But still, that sounded kind of dumb. Sure, you can list things that would make it easier for you. I don't know.

Okay, so I said that in reference to my background and overall situation growing up. Not so much as children from divorced families don't do as well, but if you actually go and look at the data behind this, there are measurable health and mental side effects from having two parents split up that could have an impact on your financial outlook later in life. So, even though it's not a precursor as to how wealthy someone is going to be, it is worth noting that it can make things more difficult.

Wilfy statistically, what I believe that I put in them, no one's too sick to no one statistically is going to make it. Statistically, most people don't. Now, this is something that unfortunately is true: most people will not become successful, and most people will not become wealthy. But that doesn't mean you can't try and you can't do things that stack the odds in your favor.

It's like going and rolling the dice and trying to roll a 12, where the chances of that happening are 1 in 36, which works out to be almost 3 percent. But the more you roll the dice, the higher the chances you have of eventually hitting a 12. The same thing also applies to becoming a millionaire, which also has very similar odds to rolling a 12. Here in the United States, 3 percent of people are millionaires.

And even though the odds might not be in your favor, all you have to do is stay consistent with it long-term and continue rolling the dice until eventually it hits. I just generally think people becoming rich is such a fluke that I don't—that doesn't mean they didn't work for it, but there's so much luck involved in it. So to act like somewhat self-important or about it, it just—I don't know. I feel weird about it.

So, this is the point where I strongly begin to disagree with the statement. Because from the way I see it, becoming wealthy, which I'll just define as a net worth of a million dollars or more, has very little to do with luck and much more to do with delayed gratification, persistence, consistency, and time.

Now, I'm not dismissing that there is some factor of luck that exists beyond our control—like I was very lucky to have access to the internet. I was very lucky to be born in a family with two very emotionally supportive parents. I was very lucky to be born in the country that allows me to pursue pretty much whatever I want, within reason of course, legally. And those advantages happen to work out very well in my favor.

But building wealth is largely driven by so many other factors. And according to one of the largest studies on millionaires, 80 percent of millionaires are first-generation rich and almost all of them have one thing in common, and that's that they live below their means.

So, in terms of who could become wealthy, I mean obviously there are things that work in your favor—like luck and timing—but other things can also get in the way. Although instead of focusing on your limitations, I believe it's so much more productive to instead focus on what you can control.

Like, how much money do you spend? How can you utilize your time effectively? How can you go and learn a new skill? How can you go and increase your income? What could you do right now to get yourself ahead? And really, when it comes down to it, if being a millionaire is what you really care about, it's really just as simple as this: all you got to do is invest $8 a day in a Roth IRA within an S&P 500 index fund, with the dividends reinvested, and within 42 years you're gonna have over 1 million dollars tax-free, adjusted for inflation.

And that's if you just do $8 a day. Then, if you increase that to $15 a day, you'll get there within 34 years, and if you invest $25 a day, you can get there within 28 years. Sure, that might mean you end up working more hours or cutting back on things you don't really need, or taking a really close look at your life and figuring out how you can improve.

But if you're determined to make that a goal, I absolutely believe that is something you could achieve, because these are strategies that pretty much anyone could apply that don't rely on luck.

Taxes sometimes are so complex that it's almost as if it's better for me to make the decision not to pursue a big deal just because it's like—with taxes, this is not really worth it. The job that I have to put into this based on taxes? I legit—that's how complicated it is a lot of times in it.

No, I don't know exactly how much money PewDiePie makes, but I'm guessing, between his channel, sponsorships, and merch, he's got to be making at least a million dollars a month. Either way, in the UK, he's absolutely in the highest possible tax bracket of 45 percent. Plus, my understanding is that he's also obligated to pay a 12 percent national insurance tax on top of that.

So pretty much right there, 60 percent of his income is gone to taxes right off the bat. It's definitely an over complicated system. And even though taxes are required to keep our society moving and functioning, why are they going to make it so confusing?

Amazon paid zero dollars in taxes, didn't they? Didn't Amazon save that because they cut on, um, on bosses? They got a tax break or something like that? I don't know enough about these things. I just know people like to throw out lines for that, knowing the nuance.

Just like I just said, for anyone curious, that is just a clickbait headline that articles use to grab you in. And the reality is that no, Amazon did not pay zero dollars in taxes. They paid zero dollars in federal corporate income tax, but they paid $2.6 billion in corporate tax. They paid $3.4 billion in tax expenses and every one of their employees is also paying income tax on their income.

Not to mention the property taxes that Amazon pays on the buildings that they own. The only reason they were able to claim zero dollars in federal corporate income tax is that they were running at a loss for so many years, and they were able to carry those losses forward to deduct against future income.

It would be like you starting a business and in the first year you lose a hundred dollars. But in the second year, you make back that hundred dollars. Well, technically because you lost a hundred dollars in the first year, but then you made it back in the second year, you're breaking even. And because you don't have any profit to show from that, you pay zero dollars in taxes. Well, that's exactly what Amazon did. They've invested so much money and have lost so much money for so many years that they're able to deduct those losses against their future income until eventually everything they make is now profit. And that is the point where they will begin paying federal corporate income tax.

Let's see the normally-filtered normies will say yes. Here's the thing: obviously money can buy happiness. You can buy you things that you like. It can buy you good health. You can buy a lot of things, obviously. Obvious! I'm just saying true happiness comes from here. Here's what this guy is going to say.

We all find that—see this is the part that they ended up cutting out, which I don't understand why—because I was the only one that disagreed that money could buy happiness. I've said this before, but even though money does give you the ability to go and pursue your dreams and do whatever you want, it doesn't guarantee you happiness and enjoyment from those experiences. Money itself is not the reason for someone's happiness and in some situations, I actually believe that money can make things worse.

So many of us believe that when something happens, then I will be happy, as if happiness is always something that is going to happen in the future at some other point in time. Or people go through their lives thinking that more money is a solution and if they just had more money, that would solve everything. But what happens is that we never truly stop and realize that now is the point where we should really be enjoying ourselves and being happy, not some point in the future.

And from that, we never really live in the present and can appreciate just how great things are right now. To mention, there's something called the hedonic treadmill, which is our mind's ability to eventually return to its baseline no matter what happens in your life.

It's why we could get so excited to get a brand new car, but within a year that excitement has worn off. Or why you could have so much fun shopping, but within a month you have to go shopping again to get that same fix. So now, that's why I believe that money cannot buy you happiness. Now, it certainly might make some aspects of your life easier, but that in itself won't make you any happier.

I could also easily talk about this for a very long time, because there are other studies that show that as your life's problems reduce, your mind creates other problems to occupy them. So that just means if your life gets easier or all of a sudden money solves all the problems, you will subconsciously create other problems to replace your current problems. So it just goes to show you even though you might solve something, your mind is going to create something else in its place. It's weird how your mind works that way.

I gotta say though, people that are rich, they love to sell their idea. Kind of want to touch down before it's like the lottery. Let's sell this idea that you can become rich too. And in reality, a lot of it just comes down to pure luck, and it did for me, especially with timing.

Again, that's a point I strongly disagree with. Wealth is not about luck, otherwise who becomes successful would end up being completely random with no similarities between them at all. And even though you don't need to go and sell the dream, I do believe there are actionable, measurable steps that anyone can take if they want to become wealthy: improve your credit score, save your money, live below your means, invest consistently, open up a retirement account, improve your skills, don't get into lifestyle inflation, and do that long-term. If you just do that, I promise you you're gonna become so much wealthier than the average Joe just walking down the street that is not selling a pipe dream.

And that is not random luck. Those are just the boring, unexciting steps that everyone has to take if they want to build their wealth. That does not happen by random chance either. PewDiePie might be referring to himself as he says this if he feels like his success has been due in part to luck. Part of this might be that he's one of the largest channels ever on YouTube, and there has to be some aspect of him that wonders, "Why me?"

And who knows? He may have had a lot of luck work in his favor. He was at the right place and the right time with the right content that people wanted to see. But he also had the persistence to keep going. He had the knowledge to leverage his channel. He didn't spend his money on stupid crap. He seized the opportunities as they came up. He constantly adapted his content.

And I bet a lot of people could have been given the exact same opportunities as him and then just screwed it up within a few months. Same also applies to me. I got into real estate in hindsight at the perfect time. I started making finance videos on YouTube before finance videos on YouTube were a thing. I also began investing pretty much at the very bottom of the market.

But at the time, all of those things were risks. I had no idea people would be interested in watching a YouTube video about how to start a Roth IRA. We had no idea when the bottom of the market was when I began investing. But when I saw those opportunities, I did my best to lean into it, learn as much as I can, and make the most of it. And those are the things people should be watching out for, to replicate.

Like I said, I believe that life is very similar to rolling the dice. And if you only roll once, you're very unlikely to hit that lucky 7. But the more you try, the more opportunities you have to hit it. It's just selling the idea that you're in control of your destiny when unfortunately you're not.

The thing is, if you're happy, then you don't need to be rich. And being rich will not make you happy. No, I would strongly urge anyone who believes this to go and read the book "Think and Grow Rich" and also "The Millionaire Next Door." Because when it comes to building your wealth, that is something you do have control over.

And leaving it up to random chance and luck is totally dismissive of all the work that goes on behind the scenes. It is something you're gonna have to dedicate your time and focus on. Otherwise, if you just want to be pulled around by life, your chances of making it successful are pretty much slim to none.

So, those are my thoughts on the PewDiePie video. And even though I disagree with a few of the statements that he makes, overall, I enjoy his channel. My girlfriend is a mega fan of him, and I really have nothing but good things to say, except I believe he's wrong about being wealthy and that anyone can do it!

Even if the odds are not stacked in your favor, that does not mean you can't try and continue rolling the dice until eventually you smash the like button for the YouTube algorithm. So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching! I really appreciate it.

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Thank you so much for watching, and until next time!