Healthy Living Blog: Why Most People Stay Broke (And What They Were Never Taught About Money) with Hannah Hammond

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Have you ever done everything “right” financially and still felt like you were spinning your wheels? You saved a little, maybe put something in a 401k, bought the house, paid your bills, and yet… real financial freedom still feels like it belongs to someone else? If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone, and more importantly, it’s not your fault.

Most of us were never taught how money actually works. We were taught how to earn it and spend it, but the deeper mechanics of how to build wealth, create passive income, and make money work for you? That education simply wasn’t part of the curriculum. And for midlife women especially, that gap can feel both frustrating and deeply discouraging.

That’s exactly why I sat down with Hannah Hammond, a self-made millionaire who figured out the wealth-building playbook before she was 30, not because she had a head start or wealthy parents, but because she went looking for answers when everyone around her told her the system was rigged against her.

What she found changed everything. And it can change things for you too, no matter where you’re starting from.

She Didn’t Come From Money. She Built It Anyway.

Hannah grew up in a scarcity household. Her dad would take showers in the pool to save on the water bill. Her brother told her flat out that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and that she’d never amount to anything. On paper, the odds weren’t in her favor.

But Hannah did something most people don’t: she got angry enough to go looking for a different story.

At 13, she found it in a book. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki became what she calls her “lifeline of hope.” It introduced her to a completely different framework for thinking about money, one built around assets, skills, and ownership rather than paychecks, savings accounts, and hoping for the best.

That early education, combined with a fierce refusal to accept the financial ceiling she’d been handed, set her on a path that eventually led to becoming a millionaire in her 20s.

The Wealth Gap Nobody Talks About: Assets vs. Liabilities

One of the most powerful concepts Hannah learned from Kiyosaki, and one that most of us were never taught, is the distinction between an asset and a liability.

Here’s where it gets interesting, because it’s probably not what you think.

An asset is something that puts money into your pocket. Think rental income, dividend-paying stocks, a business that generates revenue, or a real estate investment that produces monthly cash flow.

A liability is something that takes money out of your pocket. And this is where the conventional wisdom starts to unravel.

Most of us were raised to believe that buying a house is the cornerstone of wealth building. Hannah challenges that assumption directly. A primary residence, in most cases, takes money out of your pocket every single month: mortgage, maintenance, insurance, property taxes. Yes, it may appreciate over time, but when you sell it to buy another house, that other house has also gone up in value. The equity rarely becomes free cash flow. It just moves sideways.

This doesn’t mean homeownership is wrong for everyone. Hannah is clear about that. But the idea that buying a house automatically makes you wealthy is, as she puts it, a myth that keeps people from thinking more creatively about where their money could actually be working.

The same logic applies to cars. A car is a depreciating asset. It loses value the moment you drive it off the lot. It is not building your net worth.

So what does build wealth? Cash-flowing investments: rental properties, funds, dividend stocks, equity ownership in companies whose products you actually use. Anything that produces a return and puts money back in your pocket while you sleep.

The Skill Nobody Is Teaching Our Daughters (Or Us)

When Natalie started thinking about her own 18-year-old daughter, a budding musician buying Starbucks every day, the conversation Hannah sparked hit home. That daily $10 habit, around $300 a month, seems harmless. But when you run the math using compound interest at even a conservative 8% return over time, the number is staggering. We’re talking potential millions over just a decade or so of consistent investing.

The problem isn’t that young women are irresponsible. The problem is that nobody is teaching them (or us) to think this way.

Hannah’s advice for getting the next generation started:

Start early, start small. A nine-year-old can grasp the concept of investing versus spending when it’s made concrete. One parent Hannah knows doubles his son’s investments whenever the child chooses to invest rather than spend. The result? A nine-year-old with $20,000 in savings.

Teach the three bucket system. One third to spend (without guilt), one third to give, one third to invest. Starting this framework early creates lifelong financial habits that don’t require willpower, because they’re just the way money works.

Make it personal. What does your kid love? Tesla? Starbucks? Amazon? They can own a piece of those companies. Turning investing into ownership of something familiar makes it feel real and exciting rather than abstract and overwhelming.

It’s Not Too Late. Here’s Why.

This is the part that matters most for the women listening to this show.

You may be in your 40s, 50s, or 60s. You may have spent decades in the traditional system: job, 401k, house, repeat. You may feel like the window has closed.

It hasn’t.

Compound interest works at any age. Time is still your ally, even if you have less of it than a 13-year-old Hannah Hammond did. Starting now means your money has years, possibly decades, to grow. Not starting means it definitely won’t.

More importantly, Hannah makes the case that the skills required to build wealth are learnable at any age, and they’ve never been more accessible. Information that used to cost thousands of dollars to access through coaching programs, masterminds, and mentors is now freely available. Books, podcasts, YouTube, and AI tools can walk you through everything from understanding real estate underwriting to building a full investment strategy.

Her suggested AI prompt for anyone who wants to start is worth writing down: Tell an AI assistant that you want to build wealth in a specific area, ask it to create a step-by-step training framework to help you become an expert, and direct it to act as your chief strategy officer. You’ll get a personalized roadmap that rivals what used to require a $50,000 coach.

The Real Barrier Isn’t Money. It’s Mindset.

Hannah’s financial journey didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened alongside a significant inner transformation. By her early 20s, despite her early knowledge and ambition, she found herself depressed, isolated, and in a genuinely dark place. The external drive to build wealth wasn’t enough on its own.

What changed everything was recognizing a pattern: her internal state was driving her external results, and the results she was getting were a direct reflection of what she believed about herself.

She calls the concept the “green zone,” a peak energetic state that she now protects fiercely. Her morning routine is built entirely around getting into that state before the workday begins: a walk at sunrise, music that energizes her, exercise she genuinely enjoys, hydration, and setting a clear intention for the day. No phone. No scrolling. No news. Just input that lifts her up.

The principle behind it, as her coach put it, is that the outcome can only be as great as the energetic state from which you initiate the action. If you begin your day reactive, overwhelmed, and already in comparison mode from social media, you’ll produce outcomes that match that energy.

This isn’t woo. It’s pattern recognition applied to your daily performance. And it’s something every woman can implement today, starting tomorrow morning.

Protecting Your Energy as a Wealth Strategy

One of Hannah’s most practical recommendations is using an app called Opal to block social media during your most productive hours. It’s not about eliminating social media entirely; it’s about preventing the reflexive scroll that derails focus, fuels comparison, and quietly steals hours you could use to build something real.

She also lives by a “signal vs. noise” framework borrowed from top CEOs. Every morning, she identifies no more than three things that will actually move the needle toward her goals. Everything else, even the urgent-feeling inbox and unread messages, is noise. Not signal.

It sounds simple. But how many of us are spending the best hours of our day managing noise while the actual needle-movers sit undone?

Where to Start If You’re Starting Over

Hannah was asked: if she lost everything at 50 and had to rebuild from scratch, what would she do?

Her answer didn’t involve regret or panic. It involved skills.

She would find an inefficient market and figure out how to make it more efficient. She would identify a problem people needed solved, and she would build a solution. She would lean on the three skills Kiyosaki identified as the most critical: public speaking, capital raising, and sales.

She pointed to AI as one of the single greatest leveling tools ever created. Right now, in this exact moment, there are people building profitable businesses using AI tools that most people haven’t even discovered yet. The window won’t stay open forever, but it’s wide open now.

If you have an idea, a skill, a problem you’ve noticed in your industry or community, the tools to build something around it have never been more accessible or more affordable.

The Takeaway

The wealth gap most of us experience isn’t a gap in luck, inheritance, or even intelligence. It’s a gap in financial education that we were never given the chance to close.

The good news? That gap is closeable. Whether you’re starting conversations with your kids about the three-bucket system, rethinking what you count as an “asset,” automating a small monthly investment into an index fund, or finally reading the book that started it all, every step counts.

The most important step is the one you take today.

 

 

The contents of the Midlife Conversations podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider. Some episodes of Midlife Conversations may be sponsored by products or services discussed during the show. The host may receive compensation for such advertisements or if you purchase products through affiliate links mentioned on this podcast.

 

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