Hey there! Welcome to the Independent Money newsletter 👋 We’ll be exploring the latest financial news and discussing how it affects entrepreneurs like you. Plus, we'll share some awesome wealth creation insights from successful entrepreneurs that you won't find anywhere else.

Let’s dive in! 🏊‍♂️

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In this newsletter, we’ll discuss:

• An Entrepreneur’s Financial Journey: Today we get to see inside the financial journey of Steven Arena, the founder of Ancient Crunch.

• Generational Wealth: Good Or Bad For Your Kids? Nick Maggiulli asked his 154,000 plus followers if they would or would not leave their kids substantial money. Check out the juicy comments.

• Crypto Sentiment: What happened to crypto? Is it still a thing? A few leaders (8-9 figure founders) recently gave their spicy takes on it.

Inside An Entrepreneur’s Financial Journey

Today we hear from Steven Arena, who is the founder of Ancient Crunch, the snack brand on a mission to recreate America's pantry with snacks made with real ingredients that taste even better than everyone's classic favorites.

He first discovered nutrition and fitness 10 years ago while in college, and has been obsessed ever since. After graduating, he worked at Facebook as a software engineer and began posting about health in his spare time on TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram, hoping to teach people how to take control of their health by living in accordance with nature.

However, he soon realized that the real reason people are unhealthy is because they’re surrounded by food filled with toxins and pollutants. So after a challenge from a friend, he created the first Ancient Crunch product, MASA Chips.

How did your spending habits change after starting your business?

While I never spent a ton of money on frivolous things, let's just say I used to receive a much more continuous stream of new toys in the mail and traveled much more frequently than I do today.

At this point my primary expenses are food at the farmer's market, rent, and my car. Gym and gas is a company expense, and I acquired all the clothes and gadgets I could possibly need while I had my previous job.

My wife and I would prefer to eat at home instead of going to a restaurant, neither of us drink, and we got most of the traveling out of our system when we were dating. So we are quite content with our modest life. About 90% of the time is occupied with eating, sleeping, and working.

This is one of the comforting aspects of starting a business – you think it will be tough on your finances, but since you don't make any money, you barely notice because you'd have no time to spend it even if you had it.

What were some key milestones or turning points in your career?

I started several business ventures prior to Ancient Crunch with varying degrees of success.

The key difference between AC and other efforts that didn’t scale was that I reluctantly started AC as a side project, while I started the other businesses with an explicit goal from the outset to make money.

MASA Chips were born in an attempt to solve a real problem that I personally faced for myself. The fact that many other people had and have that problem, and that solving it could be turned into a business, was not the initial concern.

All the pieces sort of just fell together. I didn't feel like I was swimming upstream, rather I felt the wind in my sails pushing every next step forward.

Entrepreneurship is hard enough, and by doing the thing that I was uniquely positioned to do, I had every possible advantage. And that has kept me going where I lost interest much sooner in other ideas that had been more generic.

What is one money rule you live by?

You don’t have the money until it’s in your account. Whether you are expecting funds from investors, vendors, or customers, the money is not real until it’s in your account.

Example: on our first day of MASA Chip sales, we sold out in a few hours. Every week or so, we would drop a new batch, notify our customers, and we’d sell out again.

One of our payment processors was PayPal, and the erratic but high volume of sales coming through a new account on their platform spooked their algos, and flagged us for fraud.

Despite submitting proof of order fulfillment, a DNA test, and an anal probe, they were unconvinced that we were a real business selling real products. So our account was locked and we couldn’t withdraw money for 180 days.

$5k was locked, and while fortunately not material it was still significant for us when starting out, and it made our life annoying. So, even though we sold a product and shipped it out, we didn’t get paid for it. If we didn’t have other sources of funds it could have been a real problem.

You never know what’s going to happen. So don’t act like you have money until you actually have the money in your account.

Where can people learn more about you?

You can find my writings on health and society at reallytanman.substack.com, and you can

Generational Wealth: Should You Leave Something For Your Kids?

A hot topic… What's your take?

Here were just a few interesting perspectives on this topic:

Crypto Sentiment

If you’re still holding crypto or thinking about investing in it, we got a few different perspectives from some very successful entrepreneurs.

First, Charlie Munger shared his thoughts on the subject at the recent Zoomtopia conference, and it’s safe to say that you won’t find any crypto investments in his investment portfolio anytime soon.

“Don’t get me started on bitcoins. That was the stupidest investment I ever saw,” Munger stated. He also predicted that most of those investments are going to zero.

On the other hand, Alex Lieberman recently made an interesting statement:

What’s your take? Is it all going to zero, or is now the time to be greedy while others are fearful?

But before you decide to invest in crypto, maybe max out your 401k and SEP IRA first 😉 

What’s Happening at Carry?

Here’s what you can expect in the coming weeks

See the full list of events here. ⏰

Want More?

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If you want more resources on building wealth as an solopreneur/entrepreneur, check these out:

• The Solo 401k handbook 

• What is a Solo 401k?

• How to Open a Solo 401k

• Solo 401k Contribution Calculator