Dimitry Neyshtadt ChFC is an award-winning Financial Advisor who left behind his office life to spend 2019 traveling 25 States in 25 Weeks on the #moneyprotour. Make sure to follow along on Instagram and Youtube!
I set off from Boston and rolled into Connecticut, a state I’ve been in many times before. This southern New England state is home to both upper-class communities and inner-cities. Some parts of Connecticut have mega-mansions and top-class private schools. Other parts of Connecticut have severe problems with homelessness, crime, and high unemployment.
Growing up in nearby Massachusetts, I drove to Connecticut in my 20’s a few times each year. The main reasons were usually trips with friends to celebrate birthdays or special occasions MGM Foxwoods & Mohegan Sun. These two casinos were filled with nightclubs, fancy dining, shopping, gambling, and more. These were all of the fun things we 20-somethings really enjoyed in the era of Jersey Shore and G-Unit. Yes, even The Bill Nye of Money knew how to party hardy!
Are Too Many Americans “Rolling the Dice” With Their Personal Finances?
It made sense to go visit Mohegan Sun and chat with folks about money. After all, Connecticut was State #1 on the Money Pro Tour, and casinos are an infamous place for spending lots and lots of hard-earned money.
When you think of gambling, you may envision the motorized scooters and packs of Virginia Slim 120’s. Senior Citizens are famous for giving a solid percentage of their retirement and/or social security income back to the government through gambling. These choices consist of lottery drawings and numbers games, scratch tickets and keno, and even all the way up to casinos.
For many Americans, Gambling becomes a serious issue. There are over 1,000 Gamblers Anonymous groups in the United States, and it is said that approximately 1.6% of Adult Americans suffer from gambling addiction.
While in 2019, 67% of Americans do not even have $1,000 in savings, at the same time 55% of Americans have visited a Casino to gamble in the last 12 months. This seems to me to be a pretty serious problem.
People are risking money that they can not afford to lose. That’s the bottom line. Nationally, the epidemic of poor financial decision making continues. That just isn’t okay with me.
I set out to discuss this with folks at Mohegan Sun Resort and Casino. Check out the footage below.
“It needs to be taught, [financial education] absolutely needs to be taught,” one woman told us. Ain’t that the truth.
Our school system that is entrenched in test scores and college prep is failing to actually prepare young people for LIFE – especially from the perspective of making smarter financial decisions.
“Really sit down think about ‘how much is this education costing me versus what I’m getting out?'” one man told us as we explained
Perhaps our favorite interview was with one of the cocktail waitresses on the floor of the casino. “I’m not afraid to work, and I’m not afraid to save,” she told me. She saves faithfully every single day and doesn’t touch her savings. Some days it may only be $10 others it can be $20 or more, but she makes sure to save every single day.
An Author Finds Freedom in his RV
Casinos are very RV friendly. Almost every casino across the USA allows for free overnight parking for RVs. It is a great way to meet some pretty cool characters. Tom was one of those cool people. Check out the Instagram Post here below.
#MoneyProHabit — Asset Building
It is critical to save a solid percentage of how much money you make. You can make a ton, but if you don’t save anything then you will be worse off than someone who made a lot less than you but saved even just a little of what they made.
Both the cocktail waitress at Tom the RVer echoed these important key factors. They save a solid amount of their gross income. Above all, it’s less important where your money goes, just as long as you save the money in the first place.
What do you think about my first experience on the road on the #MoneyProTour? What do you think of these interviews? Let me know below!
