Afford Anything - 52 Tiny Improvements in 2026 [GREATEST HITS]

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

#682: Grab the FREE handbook: affordanything.com/financialgoals For 76 years, the British cycling team lost — every season, without exception. Then they changed how they approached improvement, focusing on tiny gains instead of dramatic overhauls. In today's episode, we unpack how they became champions – and apply those same tactics to our financial life. This episode originally aired in January 2025. It was our most popular episode of the year on Spotify. You hear how the British cycling team used “aggregation of marginal gains” — tiny improvements like adjusting bike seats, improving sleep with custom mattresses, even repainting floors so dust was easier to spot. Those details seemed trivial on their own. Over time, they added up to Olympic gold medals and Tour de France wins. We apply the same logic to money. The episode lays out a full roadmap for the year, broken down by quarter. Early weeks focus on foundations. You start by writing a short financial motivation statement, calculating your net worth, choosing one metric to track, and creating a spending decision catchphrase that forces trade-offs into the open. Later weeks shift into action. You raise your savings rate by one percent at a time. You declutter physical items that cost money to store. You add a waiting period before purchases. You trim subscriptions, set up credit monitoring, commit to meal planning, and try a one-week spending fast to reset habits. As the year progresses, the tweaks move into optimization. You plan for irregular expenses, build buffers for price shocks, automate goals, check tire pressure to save on fuel, and calculate the real cost of transportation. You review investment fees, workplace benefits, insurance deductibles, and estate planning basics. Toward the end of the year, the focus turns to fine-tuning and reflection. You map out major expenses for the next five years, create rules for handling market volatility, repeat your most effective tweak, and close the year by reviewing progress and setting intentions for 2026. The episode frames the year as a steady climb. One week. One small move. No overhaul required. Just consistent attention, applied over time. Download the guide: https://affordanything.com/financialgoals Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2012, the British cycling team pulled off what they thought was impossible. After 76 consecutive years of losses, they won the Tour de France. British cyclists took both first and second place. That same year, they also grabbed eight Olympic gold medals. They were an unlikely team to have done this. And their secret came from a coach who emphasized a concept called the aggregation of marginal gains. It's the notion that making small incremental improvements,

each one of which seem negligible in a vacuum, compound into something great. This was the philosophy of the performance director Dave Brailsford, who began working with the British cycling team a decade prior to their quote-unquote overnight success. He looked for tiny improvements. He refined the seat ergonomics, the wheel weight. He studied athletes in wind tunnels to find microscopic improvements in technique.

He painted the floor white so that the maintenance team could better spot dust that might affect the gears. He transported specific mattresses to hotels, literally brought his own mattresses to hotels, so the athletes could sleep better. He brought in a surgeon to teach proper hand-washing technique to the athletes. One of his cyclists traveled with his own espresso maker in order to brew the perfect pre-race cup of espresso. And in an interview with the Harvard Business Review, Brillsford talked about how each one of these tweaks in isolation seems utterly insignificant. But together, they accumulated into enormous progress, ultimately leading to what the rest of the rest of the world perceived to be a quote-unquote overnight success or a quote-unquote surprise victory.

In today's episode, we're going to apply this same principle to your financial life. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows you can afford anything, not everything. This show covers five pillars, financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate and entrepreneurship. It's double I fire. I'm your host Paula Pantt. Today's episode is tactical. Now, this episode comes from our greatest hits vault. This was our most popular episode on Spotify in 2025. Actually, we had some interesting data because we can see what episode was the most popular

specifically on Spotify and then what episode was the most popular across all platforms overall. The episode you're about to hear originally aired in January. of 2020, and it was our most popular episode in all of 2025 on Spotify. This episode maps out 52 tiny, tiny improvements that you can make to your financial life, one for each week of the year. That's why we air this in January. Some of these are so small that they're almost laughable. We're talking about changing your thermostat by one degree. It's an incremental change that takes a couple of seconds.

Some of these are a little bit bigger. They might take 10 minutes or 15 minutes. There's nothing in this list that you're about to hear that will take you more than an hour. In this list of 52 tiny improvements that you can make, some of these will take only a couple of minutes. Some of these might take up to an hour. Nothing will take longer than that. And it's mapped out as 52 weeks so that you can make one change per week. over the span of the next 52 weeks.

And if you do so, these marginal gains aggregate. So think of this as your roadmap for 2026. One small thing you can do every week that builds towards something bigger. And here's a preview of how this breaks down by quarter, because in the first quarter of the year, we focus on building foundational habits. You'll write out your financial motivation statement. You'll calculate your net worth.

you'll pick one financial metric to track, and you'll create a spending decision catchphrase. And in just a few minutes, I'm going to explain what all of those things mean. But those foundational elements, that's the first quarter of the year. The second quarter of the year focuses on making your money work harder because, remember, there are two ways to make money. Your labor can make money, or your capital can produce more capital. And your labor is limited by your time and energy. Your capital is unlimited.

So make your money work so that you don't have to. Or at least for you, working is an option, not a mandate. Right? When I say, make your money work so that you don't have to, that doesn't mean you're prohibited from working. It just means that you're not required to work. The goal is not the cessation of productivity. The goal is optionality.

So anyway, if that's the goal, how do we get there? Well, in the second quarter, as you're about to hear, we're going to create strategies that handle market volatility. We're going to create an emergency medical expense fund. We'll design a strategy for charitable giving. And we'll also focus on activities of daily living. So we'll talk about starting a fun fund. We'll talk about tracking prices.

We'll plan for professional development. This is when we adjust the thermostat. All of that happens in Q2. And then the third quarter focuses on optimization. So that's when we'll make plans for annual and seasonal expenses. We'll build a fund for unexpected price shocks. We'll set up automations for your financial goals. We'll check your tire pressure.

So Q3 focuses on optimization. And in the fourth quarter, we're going to fine-tune everything. We'll take a look at your housing options. We'll create systems that manage variable food costs Because that's a big source of stress is that you've got certain costs that are fixed. You know exactly how much your rent or mortgage is going to be every month. But you don't know what your grocery bill is going to be, and that variability can introduce stress in your financial system.

And so we'll create systems to manage that. And in Q4, this is also when we're going to create these micro-savings challenges. And then we'll wrap the year by celebrating your progress and setting intentions for the next year. So what you're about to hear lays out 52 things that you can do one thing per week over the span of the next year. And many of these things in isolation feel like trivial nothings. But when you combine all of them with dozens and dozens and dozens of tiny improvements, it's transformative. It's the same philosophy that led the British cycling team to victory. and it's what this can do for your own financial life.

We have a free guide that goes along with this. You can download it at afford anything.com slash financial goals. Again, afford anything.com slash financial goals. It's completely free. It lists all of the 52 tweaks that we're going to talk about right now. So keep it on your desktop, use it as your weekly checklist, and watch how these small changes add up to significant progress over the year. And by the way, the guide is also adorable.

It's dogs wearing glasses. It's got this very adorable, ridiculous illustration that makes you want to look at it. It's completely free, afford anything.com slash financial goals. With that said, enjoy the episode. Let's kick off with week one this week. I want you to start by writing your financial motivation in 100 words or less. Having a clear why behind your financial decisions, this is what keeps you focused even when your motivation waivers. This why is your personal anchor that keeps you aligned with your goals.

So in 100 words or less, write down your why. Why does being good with money matter to you? Why do you want to be debt free? Why do you want to have a strong portfolio or a high net worth? Why? Why does it matter? What's it all for? Answer that in 100 words or less. And make it the wallpaper on your phone. Stick it on your mirror. Make it the desktop background on your computer. Because when you're tempted to drift from your financial goals and you will be tempted to do so, this why statement will anchor you back. It will pull you back to what matters. But for this to work. It needs to be your real motivation, not what you think, quote unquote, should be your motivation. So don't write down the polished answer that's socially acceptable. Write down the one that's real. That's your one task for this week. That's week one. That's the one thing that you're going to do to start

2025 right. Next week, week two, you're going to calculate your net worth. Now your net worth is everything you own minus everything you owe. Think of it like your financial GPS. It shows you exactly where you stand right now so that you know your starting point at the beginning of 2025. Now, you can link your accounts to a net worth tracker in order to get real-time updates, but I personally, I like manually doing this one to two times a year.

One to two times a year, I will log into all of my accounts and just manually update a spreadsheet. You don't have to do that. It's a stupidly time-consuming, which is the reason that I only do it at most one to two times a year. It's too time-consuming. It's too onerous to do it more often than that. But what I like about doing it manually is that it's a moving meditation. As I log into each account, I'm reflecting on that account. What's it being used for? How am I allocating it? It's stupidly time-consuming to do it manually. And all, Also, that's the point because it slows me down and it gives me that time to think, to deeply just be in it. So if you have a couple extra hours in week two and you want to do it manually, I recommend going through that practice. But if you're like, look, beginning of the year is really busy. Cool.

Just link all of your accounts to a net worth tracker. There's a lot of software out there that will just automate this for you. That's week two. Week three, pick just one financial metric that's going to be your focus for 2025. What gets measured gets managed. And when you concentrate on one single metric, you're more likely to improve it. In finance, there are a lot of metrics you can track. But if you're simultaneously trying to improve a dozen different things,

this leads to fragmented attention, which often slows your progress. By contrast, if you choose just one meaningful metric and focus all your energy there, it often ends up having these spillover ancillary benefits that organically improve your progress in other arenas as well. For example, let's say that you decide this is the year that you're going to pay off your debt. And so your debt payoff rate becomes your one singular metric. It's the only thing that you focus on. Well, by virtue of doing this, your net worth is going to improve, your savings rate is likely to improve, your side hustle income might go up,

you might get motivated to ask for that raise at work, the amount of money that you spend on Uber Eats and DoorDash might go down, you might set up a website blocker to block yourself first, any kind of online shopping past 10 p.m. Because you know that after 10 p.m. You make bad decisions. All of those things might be the downstream effect of focusing singularly on debt payoff

as the sole metric. And this same thing holds true, regardless of what metric you choose. For me, for years, I would organize my financial life around the singular goal of, I'm going to buy another rental property this year. It became that one dominant, overarching goal and then everything else got organized around it.

All right, how am I going to save for the down payment? All right, this means I need to cut my expenses here, here, here, here, and here. This means I need to boost my income there, there, there, there, there. I'm also going to start studying the neighborhoods. I'm also going to start looking at listings. I'm also going to make sure that my paperwork is organized so that I'm ready for that mortgage application. right? Everything revolved around that one singular goal and because of that focus, I had spillover improvements into a whole bunch of other financial categories of life. So that's week three. This is how you're spending January. And we're going to close out the month in week four by creating a spending decision catchphrase. This is a personal question that you're going

to ask yourself before you make any major purchases. And it's going to frame every decision in the context of your larger goals. So for example, you might ask yourself, would I rather have this or would I rather fill in the blank? Would I rather buy this iPad or would I rather have an extra 500 bucks to put towards a trip to Hawaii? Would I rather make this purchase or would I rather be one week closer to leaving my job. The thing is, if we're making isolated spending decisions, then there's no reason to say no to anything. If you've got the money in your bank account, why wouldn't you? But if you're contextualizing every purchase in terms of its trade-off, then you're making really conscious choices that are aligned with your true priorities.

That's what the spending catchphrase is designed to call to your attention. Now, your spending catchphrase is yours, but if you're looking for some ideas for formats, I like starting it with either, would I rather, X or Y? I think that's a good format. Another one is, is this worth delaying, right? Both of those formats, the would I rather or the is this worth delaying X, Y, Z, both of those formats question purchases by linking it to its trade-off with a particular goal. So that's the fourth week.

We're done with January by this point. And you've now laid the groundwork for knowing your net worth and understanding what matters most to you. All right. Week five, we're beginning February. Boost your savings rate by 1%. That's $10 for every thousand dollars that you. you make. So if you bring home six grand a month from your paycheck, one percent is 60 bucks. If you bring

home $8,000 a month, one percent's $80. You get the idea. Whatever your current savings rate is, boost it by just one additional percent. And here's what you're going to do. You're going to set up an automatic transfer. You're going to choose where to send that. That could go to savings. It could go to debt payoff. It could go into a retirement account. That's up to you. But you're going to automate that so that it set it and forget it. That's how you'll kick off February. Week six, clear out the items that you don't need. Physical clutter often correlates with financial waste. There are added storage costs, there's maintenance, there's also the added mental burden of keeping things that you don't need. Now, there are a lot of people in the like

minimalist decluttering movement who are, who will encourage you to get rid of sentimental items. I actually disagree with that. I do think there is value to sentimentality. And for most people, there's a benefit to focusing first on obvious clutter that's simply costing you money in space. Now, these are the items that don't have any sentimental value, but you hold on to them because maybe you'll use it someday. Oh, what if I throw it out?

and then I need it a year from now. Okay, well, you haven't needed it for the last three years. So how much would you, even if you did have to buy it again twice, how much would you pay just to get that space back? And if you think an item is worth more than $20 or, you know, pick your threshold, whatever is worth your time, I'd use $20 as a minimum starting point. If it's worth potentially more than that,

throw it on Facebook Marketplace, see what you can get for it. That's week six. Week number seven, you're going to set a row of, rule for yourself. A mandatory seven-day waiting period between wanting something and buying it. You're going to create a natural barrier between impulse and action. One of the ways that I like to do this is I'll just load things into an Amazon cart, but I don't check out immediately. So things will accumulate in my Amazon cart over the span of a week. And then once a week or so, I'll process a checkout. Now, of course, if there's something that I need,

imminently, I'll get it, but that's just usually not the case. Usually nothing's that urgent. All right, week eight, well, you've probably already done this. I say cancel your cable. I would actually start trimming back on all of your streaming services. If you have like Hulu and Netflix and Disney Plus and and and and and and and trim back. I mean, how many things can you possibly watch? So cut the cable, trim back on the streaming. I think that's one of those things. that we all know, but it's nice to have a reminder to do a check-in every now and again. Week 9. Set up a credit monitoring system. Now, I'm talking about regular ongoing monitoring that can help you catch potential fraud quickly. So real-time monitoring alerts. There are a lot of

services that offer these for free. Get set up on those. Enable purchase notifications on all of your cards and set up bank account alerts for any unusual activity. If you're using any kind of budgeting service like Monarch, they're one of our sponsors, but there are also plenty of other options that you can choose from. If you use any of those, you can also set that up so that they'll send you notifications for anything that falls outside of your normal activity parameters. So unusually large purchases, you can set it up so that you get a notification. if there's a purchase for, let's say, over $200 or $500 or whatever that threshold is. Or if your total account balance goes over a specific amount.

Maybe you want a notification if you go over $3,000 a month. And heck, that's not just fraud detection. It's also like, hey, am I spending too much detection? Setting up all of those monitoring services, that is your week 9 activity. Week 10. you're going to commit to meal planning. Oh, I know, I know. It's one of those things we all know we quote unquote should do.

And then many of us don't. Or sometimes you'll go through a phase where you're really good about meal planning and it lasts for like maybe four or five months. And then you fall off the bandwagon and all of a sudden you realize your meals are all coming from Chipotle. And then you get back on the meal planning bandwagon for a while and then you're back off it again. I get it. It's human. So week 10 is the week where you're checking in with yourself. Are you shopping your pantry first? Because you probably already have more ingredients than you think you do. You know what's cool is you can actually take a picture of what you have, load it into AI and be like, here's what I've got. What recipe ideas can you come up with? Or I'll just type out what I have. Actually, so I did this last night. I was like, hey, I've got.

spinach and frozen cranberries. I'd like to make a smoothie involving these two items. What else? I know that's kind of an unusual combo for a smoothie. So what else should I add to this to like round out the flavor? I just asked the AI that and the AI started giving me a bunch of recipe ideas. So that commitment to meal planning, that's week 10. Week 11, you're doing the opposite of meal planning and eating.

You're going to be fasting. But don't worry. Not with your actual food. you're going to be going on a spending fast. So for one week, you're going to minimize all optional or discretionary spending. What does that mean? It means if you need to put gas in your car in order to get to work, cool, do that. Go to work.

Don't lose your job. But if there's anything at all that is optional or discretionary, then for one week, just one week, you're going to eliminate it. The point here is not permanent deprivation. This is intentionally designed to be an unsustainable activity. This is not something that you should incorporate into your life forever. You don't want to eliminate all discretionary, everything forever. But by virtue of doing it for a week, you cultivate a much greater sense of awareness, much greater consciousness around what expenses are actually adding value

to your life and what expenses are just habitual but not really valuable. And what's going to be interesting about this exercise is figuring out what that delineating line is between necessary and optional. Like for example, this kind of goes back to what we were talking about from the prior week. You might look in your fridge and think, there's nothing here. I need, at a minimum, to go to the grocery store. but oftentimes there's enough food in your house that you can make some kind of a meal out of what you have. It might be a weird meal.

Like you might be eating cashews and pineapple chunks alongside chicken breast seasoned with salt and pepper. Right? It might be a little, hey, here's what we got. But that's the point. That's how you make efficient use of what you've got, of your resources. and it's also how you remind yourself of the difference between what's necessary and what's discretionary because oftentimes that line can get a little bit fuzzy in our heads. All right, week 12, we're going to make our homes a bit more energy efficient.

And we're going to start with the solutions that are not sexy, but that bring us the biggest impact for the lowest cost. Weather stripping. Nobody talks about weather stripping. Nobody talks about weather stripping because it's boring. You know what's exciting? Solar panels. You know what's boring?

Weather stripping. You know what else is boring? Outlet insulation, door sweeps, window ceiling. No one wants to talk about this stuff. People are like, oh, you know what? I want to talk about a comprehensive smart home system. Of course you do. Because a smart home system is really fun.

It's new. It's techy, it's innovative. It's not the boring stuff like spray foam insulation. But you know what's cool is that it's exactly that. It's the low cost, easy to install stuff that makes the biggest difference. I mean, there are a lot of companies that get paid a lot of money to convince you with shiny marketing to go for, the big, expensive, cutting edge, trendy eco-friendly upgrades. And I'm not saying don't do it.

But there are a lot of people who then think, oh, I can't afford to green my home because the only way to do that is by shelling out a lot of money. The reality is, if there are gaps or cracks that allow cold air to blow into your home while you're heating it, just filling in those gaps or cracks is going to do a heck of a lot. And it costs almost nothing to do that. And that's why you don't hear about it is because of the fact that it's so cheap, there are not big vested interests who get paid a lot of money to market that stuff to you. That's why we don't hear about it.

There's no giant outlet insulation ad campaign. So, seal the gaps around your outlets and pipes, put weather stripping around your doors and windows, install door sweeps wherever they're needed. That's what you're doing in this 12th week. And then finally, we're closing out the quarter with Lucky Number 13. Pick one item that you regularly throw away. Just one. Just start with one. And find its reusable counterpart. Disposable items cost you money.

It's a recurring expense. So swap it out for something that you can reuse, swap out paper towels for old kitchen rags, and boom, now you don't have to spend 20 bucks a month on paper towels anymore. That's $240 a year. That's the cost of a really nice dinner out, like with appetizers and wine and the whole thing. Or that's the cost of an extra night's hotel during your vacation, just for making that one little swap. Those are our first 13 moves we've reached the end of the first quarter of the year. The first quarter of 2025. We still have the rest of the year to go. And we're going to move on to that second quarter up next. We kick off week 14, the beginning of spring, by adjusting our thermostat just a smidge. And when I say a smidge, I mean one degree.

Believe it or not, every degree of adjustment saves roughly 3% on 4%. on cooling or heating costs. Now, it's the start of spring, and depending on what part of the country you live in, you're either battling the cold and running the heater or you're kicking off the AC for the first time in what's about to be a very hot summer. Whatever it is that would be normal to you at this time of year,

adjust it by just one degree. And the reason we're starting with one degree is because if I told you to start with a five-degree adjustment in either direction, depending, again, on the climate, and what part of the country you live in, if I told you to make a five-degree adjustment, it's so severe that you're likely to not stick with it.

But a one-degree adjustment you'll get used to. So do that for a week. Do that for two weeks. And then decide if you can go one more degree. Because by making the heat less hot or the AC a little bit less cool, running that over the span of the next season adds up to barely substantial savings. So week 14's task is going to take you, one minute.

Week 15, you're going to open a fun fund. It's a dedicated account for guilt-free spending because you know who you are, many of you who are listening to this, have pendulum swung a little too hard in the opposite direction, where you're so into savings that it's hard for you to part with money.

And making sure you set aside money in a savings account that is specifically for enjoying it now, that's what's going to keep you going long term. Week 16, you're going to put together a charitable giving strategy. Because if you're randomly giving here and there, that can either lead to overspending or missing opportunities to support causes that you care about. Sitting down and creating a thoughtful giving strategy will make sure that your donations align with your values and align with your capacity to give.

So here's where you're going to decide, are you going to make monthly donations? are you going to do a lump sum at the end of the year? What percentage of your income are you going to give? Is it going to be a percentage or is it going to be a raw dollar number? Which specific organizations do you want to give to? You're going to make all of those decisions in week 16. Week 17, you're going to decide how you want to invest in professional development. One of the highest return investments that you can make is building out your skill set.

And so sitting down and writing out a comprehensive plan for the year, And it doesn't have to be as serious as I'm making it sound. This can be one page in a notebook that you jot down of courses that you want to take, workshops that you want to go to, trainings you want to attend, conferences you want to go to. But sit down, make a plan, make it thoughtful, write it out. Be conscious about it. That's your week 17 task. Week 18 is to create an emergency medical expense plan.

Do you have enough money set aside to meet your deductible and your co-pays? Like, if you had to pay your entire out-of-pocket maximum, could you do it? Is there enough in your HSA for that to happen if you have an HSA? Or do you have enough in an emergency fund or in some type of liquid savings that you would be able to hit that annual out-of-pocket maximum? Do you even know what your annual out-of-pocket maximum is? These are the questions that we're going to cover in week 18. This entire guide, just as a reminder, you can download at a 4.

afford anything.com slash financial goals. It's completely free. Every single one of these weeks is mapped out. And I'm giving a high level overview in this episode. But if you download the guide, there's a lot more detail, including bullet points for specifically the things you should be checking. All of that is available at our free guide. Afford anything.com slash financial goals. All right. Week 19. We've been very practical for the last five weeks. So now week 19, we're switching into your financial mindset. This is the week where you're replacing I can't with I choose not to. It's a shift in mindset where you rephrase limiting language into empowering choices. So it's not I can't afford that. It's I choose not to spend money on that. Week 20.

We're going practical again. You're reviewing your tax withholding. How much tax are you having withheld from your paycheck? Does that need to be adjusted? We've linked in the guide to the IRS tax withholding estimator tool, which you can use to check to see if you're on track. Week 21, you're boosting your savings again. Remember how earlier you boosted your savings by 1%,

which is $10 per every thousand dollars of monthly income? Week 21, you're going to do it again. And by the way, in this context, when I say savings, I'm referring to anything that improves your net worth. So this could be additional payments that you're making towards a debt. This could be money you're putting into a retirement account. It could be literal savings in a savings account. Now, any net worth improvement is what I mean when I say save or savings in this context.

So you already increased it by 1% earlier. Now you're doing one more percent on top of that. Week 22, you're drafting an estate plan. This is one of the more time-consuming ones. And of course, you don't have to finish the whole thing this week. But take the first step towards creating an estate plan, whether that's through an online service or through a consultation within a state attorney. Week 23, here's where you think critically about the question of a side hustle.

If you do not have a side hustle, is it worth your time to start one? Or is it a better use of your time to focus on your primary occupation? Remember, there are three types of side hustles. First, there's gig work like driving for DoorDash. It offers immediate income, but it's capped in terms of its upside. I don't recommend that most people go this route. at least not long term. If you're a student, fine, but don't stay at this stage forever.

The second type of side hustle revolves around skill-based services, where you leverage existing expertise like programming, design, copywriting. You're trading your time for money, but you're doing so in a manner that gives you a healthy hourly rate because you are leveraging some skill or expertise that you have. And then the third type of side hustle is the one in which you sell some type of scalable product. So you're not directly trading your time for money. You're selling a product, whether that product is digital or physical. And therefore, this is a side hustle that is infinitely scalable.

So if you don't have a side hustle yet, your first question is, is it worth your time to start one? Or are you better off focusing on your primary occupation? That's going to depend on the type of career that you've chosen. The second question is, if you do have a side hustle, hustle. Which of these three is it, the three types that I described? Is it gig work? Is it skills-based or is it a scalable product? And how do you ascend up that ladder such that you can make your side hustle scalable? That evaluation is your week 23, focus. In week 24, you're planning some financial self-care, some budget-friendly self-care habit. It could be taking an

Epsom salt bath. It could be spending an hour at the library, could be taking a long walk. It could be spending five minutes every morning doing stretching and mobility work on the floor of your bedroom. It doesn't need to be expensive. This type of healthy activity, building that into your routine, has huge ramifications, not just on your health, but also on your wealth. So pick something that's either free or under 10 bucks and schedule it as a weekly or monthly or daily commitment. week 25, you're going to learn one new financial terms. You know, the world of finance has a lot of jargon. You're going to learn one new word this week.

By the way, this is where community comes in. So inside of the Afford Anything community in the one-week-a-week community, when I'm excited for us to get to week 25 because I'm hoping this is where the forums blow up and everyone starts sharing their most obscure financial words. Because it's fun, but also when you give a word to something, you develop a more firm concept of it in your mind. So for example, point in time analysis. I don't even have to explain what that means.

You probably contextually can pick up what that means just based on what it's called. But unless you have that phrase, unless you know the phrase of running a point in time analysis, you might not crystallize the concept in your mind. That's why these, you know, learning financial terminology or financial phrases, that's why it matters. because the act of doing so crystallizes concepts. Okay, week 26, we're midway through the year at this point, and we're going to create a price tracking system, an organized system to monitor price variations.

Because many of the things we buy have fluctuating prices. I mean, the grocery store being the most obvious example. Tracking these prices can be as simple as taking a picture or a screenshot and then using on iPhone the add-to-album feature, or if you're Android, Google Photos album feature, to just assemble a folder where you're tracking through photos and screenshots the prices of certain grocery staples. Do that for a while, and then you can look back and get a sense of, wait a second,

so is this a good price or a bad price or a normal price relative to what I usually see? It's hard to store that stuff in your head, but by saving screenshots, you can use. the system to identify the best stores or the best times to shop. Week 27, you're going to do the same thing, but now you're going to expand it to monitor the difference between delivery versus in-store pricing. You're also going to calculate the real savings of bulk purchases, worth it or not, especially if you live in kind of a smaller footprint where square footage is at a premium. There comes a point where you have to decide. You know, you can't simultaneously live in a

smaller footprint and buy in bulk, right? Sometimes frugal advice contradicts each other. Like, oh, live in a tiny home and shop at Costco, right? Like, you hear that on the frugal threads all the time. And those two items are just not compatible. You can't live in postage stamp square footage while also buying in bulk. So let's actually run a spreadsheet on these things and see how much one comparison tracks to another. Same thing with, you know, delivery versus in-store pricing, this can go either way. It might be that you calculate the cost of delivery, because remember it isn't just the delivery cost, it's also that individual items that you purchase cost more, eggs, milk, these

things sometimes have a higher cost if you're getting them delivered in addition to the delivery fee. But maybe you run the numbers and you figure out exactly how much more it costs, and your conclusion is, yeah, that's absolutely worth the time savings. I am going to pay that amount because it is worth my time to pay somebody else to do that. So I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying run the numbers so you know exactly how much it costs so that you can make an informed decision. By looking at that delta in cost and asking yourself based on what you earn, is it worth it or not?

This is also why we're evaluating our side hustle because we want to know what's the opportunity cost. How much are we pulling in from that side hustle? What is the cost of spending that hour buying groceries instead of growing something scalable? Here's how we apply a layer of math, of just basic math, to this decision-making. Week 28, we're checking our tire pressure. Why? Because it improves fuel efficiency. Plus, it extends the tire life. Plus, it's safer.

Week 29, we're raising the thermostat again, especially if you didn't do this in the spring. because week 29 we're now in the heat of summer, so you're going to optimize your cooling costs by slightly increasing that thermostat setting. According to the Department of Energy, you'll save about 3% on your cooling bill for each degree that you raise your thermostat. Week 30, if you work from home,

even if you hybrid work from home a few days a week, calculate how much money you're saving by virtue of working from home in terms of the savings on transportation costs, gas, parking, vehicle wear and tear, the savings on not buying lunch out, the savings on needing fewer office clothes, less dry cleaning. Try to get some sort of framework, some set of numbers around this. Even if it's a rough guesstimate, just make a reasonable estimate of what this number is and then siphon it into a savings account.

Be intentional with what the alternate use of that money is going to be. That's week 30. Week 31. Plan for your annual and seasonal expenses, meaning your irregular expenses, because there are certain things that happen either annually or semi-annually, but they're not monthly bills, and so often people don't plan for them.

This could be holiday gifts, annual subscriptions, seasonal clothing purchases, insurance premiums that are paid annually, travel funds, birthday gifts, make a list of these annual or semi-annual expenses, and then divide by 12 to figure out what this is costing you every month, and then set up automatic monthly transfers to a dedicated account

that proactively plans for these expenses, these predictable but irregular expenses. Week 32, build a price shock fund. There are those moments when prices just spike. Remember, you've seen the volatility in food. I think groceries again. are the most obvious example where suddenly the price of eggs

or the price of beef or the price of gas going away from food, there are times when these prices just spike. So take a look at the last few months' worth of bills. Look at the difference in what you spent on groceries over the last, you know, January through now. What was your monthly grocery bill in January, in February, in March, in April?

Look at that variation. Take the highest number, compare that highest number to whatever you're spending right now, and whatever that difference is, put it into your price shock fund and do this for those variable necessities, right? In fact, if you did this for just groceries and gas, just those two items alone, if you always planned to spend whatever that highest threshold is, and then in the months that it goes lower, you siphon off the difference, you now have a buffer to accommodate for those higher priced months. That's week 32. Week 33, you're going to automate your financial goals.

Automation isn't just for paying bills. It's also for making progress towards your financial priorities, savings, debt payoff, retirement. So set up automatic transfers into these, or if you've already done so, which I hope you have, adjust your automation to align with any changes either in your priorities or changes in your budget, right? Automation is not set it and forget it forever, automation to set it and forget it until it's time to do a periodic check-in. You know, a routine maintenance check-in. Week 34. Remember that 1% challenge we talked about?

In which you increase your savings by $10 per every $1,000 that you make? Week 34, you're boosting it by one additional percent. So let's say that you make $8,000 a month. Right? The first time you did this, you began routinely saving an extra $80 a month. second time now you're up to 120, third time now you're up to 240. But you did it in 1% increments spread out over the span of a total of 34 weeks. So you had time to adjust to it. You had time to get used to missing that money. And this is how incremental changes add up.

If for the people who make 8,000 a month, if I had said at the beginning, save an extra $240 a month, many of you would have been like, man, I don't know where that's going to come from. But if you do it in stages, if you do it in 1% increments over time, it doesn't feel quite so taxing. Week 35, you're going to clean up your financial digital footprint. How many financial apps do you have on your phone? Let's clean that up because I bet you've got some apps that you're not using. How many subscriptions do you have to various financial services or really to anything? Right.

Let's clean that up because I bet you've got some apps that you're not using. bet there's a few you're not using there. You also have accounts not just that might be costing you money, but also that might be creating security vulnerabilities. So let's review and update authorized users on all of your accounts. Let's create a master spreadsheet for all your digital financial tools. Let's use a secure password manager for all of your login information and make sure that you have a different password on every account. That's what you're going to review in week 35. Next up is week 36. You're going to create a financial self-care day. We already talked about self-care for your own mental well-being, that five minutes of stretching that you do every morning.

Now we're switching focus to your financial well-being. So choose a consistent time, maybe every Friday morning over coffee. This is Financial Friday. You're going to use this time to review your accounts, to track your goals, to plan for upcoming expenses, you're going to create a weekly habit for a money check-in. This is going to become part of your routine. Financial Fridays I like because it has a nice ring to it. Paula Pant, afford anything. I'm obviously into alliteration. Financial Friday. It's going to be the one day a week, the dedicated day of the week where you make sure that no matter what else is going on in your life, financial Friday, you hit pause. You hit pause. You review your accounts, you take stock of what's going on, you review the week that just passed, you plan for the week ahead.

This is now a part of your weekly routine. Week 37, you're going to replace another disposable product with a reusable one. Remember we did this earlier in the year? And we're now going to build on that earlier switch. Find one thing, one item, something that fits naturally into your routine where you can swap out disposable for reusable. Maybe you start using a mesh coffee filter instead of the paper ones. It's such a small thing, but that's a recurring expense that you now no longer have to pay.

Week 38, you're going to safeguard your career. Job markets evolve quickly, and it's your responsibility to look five years ahead in your industry and be proactive about staying on top of changes. What are the ways in which emerging technologies are affecting your field? Where is the industry headed? What skills do you need to have? What relationships do you need to have? This is a week where you're going to shift your focus onto being proactive about skills, certifications, courses,

relationships, professional organizations, about what is it that you need in order to stay ahead of the curve in your career? What's nice about the one-week-week framework is when I say something, you know, okay, stay ahead of the curve. That's a lifelong practice. It's not a checkbox one-and-done deal. But by virtue of having this structure of one thing that we do each week, one thing that we just check in on, it provides us with a reminder. Staying sharp in your career, staying current in your career, it's a lifetime practice. but it's nice to have a little check-in, a little reminder that says, hey, I know life is busy.

I know you're thinking about a thousand things right now. But let me give you a little reminder. Are you thinking about this? We do this, you know, week 38, that reminder is about staying current in your career. But in a different week, that reminder is about cybersecurity. And how protected is your digital footprint? And in a different week, that reminder is about estate planning. And in a different week, that reminder is about making sure you can meet your medical deductible, your health insurance deductible.

There are so many things that we need to monitor in our adult life. It's nice to just have a framework that gives us a reminder that in the cacophony of life, let's not forget about these things that are important, even in the moments when those important things are not urgent. That's part of the beauty of one tweak a week. Up next, we're going to share the final 14 tips. But before we do, remember, you can download a comprehensive explainer of all of these with much more detail and bullet points and checklists. You can keep this to refer back to it by going to afford anything.com slash financial goals. You can download this for free and follow along all.

year long, join the community, chat with other people in the community about how to incorporate these tweaks into your life. Which of these are the most helpful? Which of these are not? Because not everyone is going to be equally helpful. Which of these do you have added questions about? Which of these are really easy and which of these are a little bit more daunting? You can chat with the community. You can get a guide to walk you through all of this and it's all completely free. Affordainthing.com slash financial goals. Up next, let's talk about the final 14 tweaks. Welcome to Week 39.

It's now late September, and in most parts of the country, the weather is starting to get cool. So now, as winter approaches, it's time to adjust your thermostat down one degree from your usual setting. Start with a small change at night when you're sleeping under blankets during the day, keep warm with layers, and plus it's September, so it's not for most of you, not that cold just yet. which makes this a perfect time to start adjusting to keeping a slightly cooler home. Week 40, calculate your true transportation costs. What is the actual cost of owning and using your vehicle? What are the monthly payments? What's the insurance?

What are your average fuel costs? What about maintenance, repairs, parking fees, tolls? And once you calculate this number, compare it against alternatives, like electric. vehicles, car sharing services, public transit. Obviously, the viability of these options is going to vary wildly depending on what part of the country you live in. A lot of places are totally car-dependent. I grew up in Cincinnati. It's an enormously car-dependent city. You really reasonably don't have any other option. But if you live in a city in which you do have other options, then why not math out the delta in prices? Because here's a thing. If you live in a city, if you live in a city, you live in a city,

city with other options, then you probably live in a high cost of living city. And one of the major complaints about high cost of living cities is, obviously, the rent is high, slash mortgages are high. But one of the ways that you can offset that is by keeping your transportation costs low, because in high-cost cities, you often are less car dependent. So the way I think about the cost of living is not what is the rent or mortgage in a vacuum, but rather, what's the rent or mortgage combined with necessary or mandatory transportation costs? When I lived in Las Vegas, I needed a car.

Now that I live in New York, I walk or bike or take the subway pretty much everywhere. The exception is if it's very late at night, I will take an Uber or Lyft, but it's rare that I'm out that late. The other exception is if I'm carrying some type of cargo, I'll take an Uber or Lyft for that. But otherwise, getting from point A to point B is either free because I'm walking

or it's less than three bucks because I'm renting a bike or taking the subway, which means my transportation costs are usually less than $100 a month in total. That's with everything combined. And if you compare that to the cost of owning a car plus insurance, plus fuel, plus depreciation, plus repairs and maintenance, parking fees, tolls, I mean, the savings are substantial. And it dramatically helps offset some of the other increased costs. So get clear on what your transportation is costing you. That is week 40. Week 41.

map out your big ticket items for the next five years. And you're going to break this down into three clear categories. First, list your definite big ticket expenses. You know that at some point in the next five years, you're going to replace your phone. Heck, you might even do that two or three times in the next five years. Replacing your phone somewhere between one to three times over the span of the next five years, That's not a question. That's a certainty. Map that out.

That's one category, the absolute certainties of the next five years. Then you've got the second category, which are highly likely expenses. If you own your home and you know that that roof is 25 years old, it's likely that in the next five years you're going to have to replace it. You might, if you're lucky, get to eke a couple extra years out of it, but there's a decent chance that bill is coming. do soon. If you drive a car, how soon do you think you'll need to replace it? Will that be in the next five years? What about your dishwasher? What about your fridge? Washer, dryer? What about all your major appliances? When are they going to need to be replaced? How about your laptop? So that's the second category. And then the third category of big ticket items are potential expenses like

moving to a new city. Maybe there's a goal like that, something like moving to a new city that's in the back of your mind, you think that you might want to do it in the medium-term future. It's not something that you want to do imminently, but you can see the potential that it might happen in the next five years. So mapping out your major expenses over the next five years, it's a forward-looking approach that helps prevent financial surprises. If you have that timeline, you can prepare in advance. Week 42. Review the expense ratios on your investment funds.

High fees eat into your returns over time. And if you're in the financial independence community, you know this. And you probably, if you invest in passively managed index funds, you probably have very reasonable fees on your funds. But if you're new to this arena or if you used to have, have high fee, actively managed mutual funds before you found the financial independence space, well, take a look at what you've got, take a look at what you're paying, and make sure that you're not paying excessively high fees. Week 43, make sure you're maximizing all your workplace benefits.

Obviously, as we all know, you should be getting your full retirement match, a 401k match, for example. But you probably have other benefits that you might not even know about. Maybe your workplace offers technology allowances, or a home office setup fund, or mental health benefits, or remote work stipends. Take a look at what your workplace offers because there might be benefits that you're not even aware of. Also, set calendar reminders for any benefits that have deadlines, like FSA contributions. FSAs, remember, are used it or lose it, as opposed to HSAs, which are not. Week 44. Take inventory of all of your interest-bearing accounts.

You probably have multiple high-yield savings accounts. What are they paying? I mean, this is variable, right? These things change constantly. So even if you had a great grasp of it a few months ago, things have changed. What are all of your savings accounts paying? And where should you be consolidating your savings? Now, I'm not saying that you should waste your Saturday chasing yield.

but for one hour a year, it's not a bad idea to sit down and take a look at the yield on all of your savings accounts to make sure that your funds are living in higher earning accounts where possible. Week 45, run the numbers on your housing options. Housing is, for most people,

their single biggest expense. So it's worth building into your root again, one hour per year, just one hour per year of taking stock, having a heart to heart with your spouse or partner, and asking yourselves, are we satisfied with where we live? Do we want to downgrade? Do we want to house hack? Let's take one hour a year to question our assumptions and just check back in with ourselves about this. Is the juice worth the squeeze? Are we happy with what we're getting for what we're paying? Is this aligned with our priorities? So that's week 45. And in week 46, we're going to boost our savings rate for the fourth and final time. That's another $10 per every thousand dollars that we make. You'll notice that we've now done this quarterly.

The 1% challenge in which we increase our savings rate by 1% a year, we've built this in to one week a week such that quarterly there's another boost. that means that over the span of the year, we've now increased our savings rate by an additional 4%. But we've done it in quarterly increments. So it doesn't feel that bad. We have a few months to get used to it before we make the next shift. Let's say that your take-home pay is $96,000 a year.

That means you're taking home $8,000 a month. If you've taken this challenge, you've increased your savings by 80, then 160, then 240 and now 320. So at this stage of the game, you're saving an extra $320 a month above and beyond what you were saving at the beginning of 2025. And because you made the adjustment in quarterly increments,

you had time to get used to it. And if you just freeze here, let's say that you don't increase your savings rate anymore, you just keep up with this. You're now saving an extra 30% 4840 per year. Extra above and beyond what you were already saving. Those types of adjustments, particularly if you're putting that money into accounts that are invested and compound, make a massive difference.

And so that is the beauty of week number 46. Week 47, I want you to go revisit that variable food cost system. Remember the three biggest expenses that a person has. are housing, transportation, and food. And of those big three items, food is the most variable. That's why we spend so much time focusing on the price of food, focusing on how to manage the price shocks that come with groceries, which is something we've experienced quite a lot of,

particularly in recent years. If you know how food prices fluctuate in the places where you typically shop, you can maintain a stock-up list for shelf-stable items, that frequently go on sale. And remember, anytime that you're spending less than your highest spending month, you're still transferring that difference to your price shock fund.

So checking back in with that grocery store volatility so that you can manage the most variable of the big three items, that's week 47. Week 48, I want you to set a challenge for yourself, and this is going to be a micro-savings challenge. Choose something small but meaningful.

a small amount over a small period of time. Maybe you take a 30-day break from buying lunch out while you're at work. I'm not saying forever. I'm saying just take a 30-day break. It's a detox. After a month, you can go back to it. But just for a month, take that little detox, break the unconscious habit of doing it without thinking, and then bank the savings that come with it. So this little 30-day micro-savings goal, that's what you're doing. You're going to put in place in week 48? Week 49, you're going to take another look at your home, particularly in your kitchen and bathroom, and find another disposable items that you can replace. At this stage, you've already made two sustainable switches. It's time for just one more. So you see what we're doing here is over the span of a year, we're swapping out three items. So a reasonable number of items, we're taking our time, we're pacing ourselves, right? We're incorporating sustainability into our lives at a sustainable pace, but by virtue of no longer having the recurring cost of using these disposable items, we're building bigger savings into our lifestyle.

And we're doing so just one step at a time, one tweak at a time, one swap out at a time. Week 50, create a plan for handling market uncertainty. One of the major ways that people mess up their own investments is by panic selling. So set clear rules for when you'll invest, when you'll make changes, set that investor policy statement for yourself. Write it down. Have it written somewhere so that when you're in a highly charged emotional moment, when you're starting to worry about what's happening in the markets,

you'll be able to look back on what you wrote in these calmer, more clear-headed moments and just know your plan, stick to your plan. Trust the process. So writing that out, that's what you're doing in week 50. Week 51. Repeat your favorite tweak from a previous week. This is another week in which I think the community will have some really fun, stories, I hope, in the forums where I want to hear from you what's been your favorite

tweak? What made the biggest impact? What felt the most satisfying to complete? What worked best for you? Because the most effective financial habits come from repeating simple actions that align with your goals. And week 52, you're going to celebrate all of the financial progress that you've made in the past year. Reflect on your achievements and set intentions for the year ahead because celebration fosters motivation. So pull out your numbers from January and compare them to December. Look at your automated savings. Look at your debt paydown. Look at your net worth. Whatever metrics you've been tracking. And by the way, I say this. I'm recording this obviously in January 2025. I have no idea what the market is going to do in 2025. Maybe, maybe the market tanked.

And by December of 2025, your net worth is down. All of our net worth. All of our net worth. are down, right? That's entirely possible. But if your contributions went up, then that's what you celebrate. Because you can't control the output. You can't control the outcome. You can control the input. The input is within your locus of control. So celebrate the progress that you made on the effort, on the input, on the things that are directly inside of your locus of control. Well, hello and welcome back to 2026, Paula. What you've just heard came from our greatest hits vault. That was a rerun of our most popular episode from last year from 2025, 52 tweaks that you can make in 52 weeks.

And you just heard me say that I was recording that original version in January of 2025. And you just heard me say, we don't know what the market will do this year. And who knows, maybe there's a possibility that the market might be down by December of 2025. Well, obviously, now it's currently January 2026, and we do know what that answer is. We do know that if you followed 52 tweaks a week last year, your net worth would have been up significantly, right? You would have been making contributions into a market that had double-digit returns. The S&P 500 over the last three consecutive years now has produced double-digit returns. every year for the last three consecutive years.

That's incredible. Again, I will reiterate what we can control are our inputs. What we cannot control is the performance of the S&P 500. We can control the contributions. And my role here is to encourage you to make those contributions, and that's what this 52-week exercise is all about. Download the guide.

It's totally free. Afford Anything.com slash financial goals and join us as we make one tweak every week. Join our community. You can go through one tweak a week with us throughout the year, talk to the community. So afford anything.com slash financial goals. Use this as your motivation to increase your contributions, to increase your savings, and to take the small, consistent actions every week that individually in a vacuum don't seem like much. but that aggregate into big changes, the type of changes that turn a British cycling team that lost for 76 consecutive years into champions, right? These changes work. We know that they work

for athletes. We know that they work in business. And we know that they can work in our personal lives as we strive to pay off debt, to save for retirement, to send our kids to college, to feel financially secure, to buy our first homes, to be the first member of our our family to become a millionaire, whatever your financial goal is, these small tweaks help you get there. That's the beauty of the aggregation of marginal gains. Thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to download the free guide, affordanything.com slash financial goals. My name is Paula Pantt. This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I'll meet you in the next episode.