BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 493: 24 Money Tips for 2024: The BEST Ways to Invest Your Money THIS Year

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

Looking to be a better investor in 2024? A few simple adjustments could help your money work much harder for you this year, and our hosts are here to lend a hand! In part three of our four-part money tips series to kick off 2024, Mindy and Kyle offer some top-notch advice on how to invest your money this year. You’ll learn about the importance of tracking your finances year-round, savvy retirement planning, and, if you’re a real estate investor, putting some of your “lazy” equity to better use! Beyond investing, our hosts provide several money hacks that will help you chip away at your expenses this year—whether it’s taking advantage of autopay or annual-pay discounts or pivoting to a low-cost phone plan. Finally, they discuss how spending money can actually propel you toward your FIRE goal! In This Episode We Cover How to be a better investor in 2024 and beyond Finding the perfect method to track your finances year-round Paying a fraction of your current phone bill by switching to a cheaper plan Saving money on bills with autopay and annual pay options How to spend money, enjoy your life, and still save BIG Getting the highest retirement account benefit by planning contributions Making your money work harder by optimizing your investment portfolio Reinvesting the “lazy” equity in your real estate portfolio And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group Network with Other Investors on The Path to FIRE Through the BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Join BiggerPockets for FREE Mindy on BiggerPockets Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Apply to Be a Guest on The Money Show Podcast Talent Search! Money Moment Check Out Part 1 of Our 24 Money Tips for 2024 Check Out Part 2 of Our 24 Money Tips for 2024 Ramit Sethi Revisited: Spend Like Your Life Depends on It Find a Discount Phone Plan: Mint Mobile Visible Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/money-493   Interested in learning more about today's sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email us: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. Today is our third installation of 24 Money Tips for 2024. My name is Mindy Jensen. And joining me today is my financial mastermind co-host, Kyle Mass. Hey, Mindy, how are you doing today? I'm great. Kyle, how are you doing? I'm doing great.

It's going to be another fun episode of hitting these tips and just plowing through them here at the beginning of 2024 to try to give people a leg up right at the beginning of the year with their finances. Yep, I am super excited. let's jump in. The first tip we have today is re-evaluate the way you keep track of your finances. I see so many people get so motivated to keep track of their finances and then they set up these super fancy Excel spreadsheets and get really, really detailed. If your system is holding you back from tracking your expenses, make a new one. I was keeping track of my expenses in a notebook,

and that worked just fine for me for a while. So there's nothing wrong. with whatever you're doing as long as it's something that's going to keep you keeping eyes on your finances. So find a system that works for you and use it. Love it. Yeah. Number two, go through your bills, all of them and look for a couple of things. See if you can put them on auto pay and also see if there are discounts available for annual payments versus monthly payments. Putting things on auto pay will really make a difference as far as like any late payments that you might accidentally do with different items, whether it's a mortgage from the big end of things or something as small as some sort of subscription or like garbage service, you know, things where you might

have a $10 fee. Auto pay takes away pretty much all of that. And very rarely does it fail unless you close a bank account or switch credit cards or something. So try that first. The other thing, and sometimes you get discount for doing auto pay too. A lot of times insurance companies will offer you a discount for doing auto pay. But the other thing is look at annual pay. versus monthly payments. And I'm a huge fan. I'm not always an annual payment guy. If I actually look at the percent interest savings that it is, and if I can do better with that on some other sort of use of the money. But if your annual payment gives you a significant discount, go ahead and pay something annually. However, if it doesn't, I would argue that just put it up on

the auto pay for monthly payment. Why give money away too early ahead of time if you're not going to get reimbursed for it when you could use that to pay down some debt in the meantime or have it in an investment account and grow differently and even have it as emergencies as for reserves for some reason. But look at auto pay, look at annual payments for subscriptions, see if you can use those to reduce your fees and get some discounts. I love that. I love annual payments because then I don't have to think about it every single month. Why think about it 12 times when you can think about it one. Re-evaluate your phone plan. I use Mint Mobile. Why? Because it's $15 a month. They have higher plans, more expensive plans for more data, but I never even use all of my data.

Why would I pay $100 a month for the exact same service I get for $15 a month? So if you're tired of paying more than you need to, check out a new phone discount phone operator. I use Mint Mobile too. Go figure. My wife. wife is on the $15 plan, but I have the unlimited plan. So when we're road tripping or traveling, and if we are going through data a lot faster, we can switch to my phone or if I'm working on the road. I pay a little bit more, but it's still really, really reasonable. So great tip there. And if you do it with two people, you can kind of hack it a little bit more if you need some more data that you can share. Next one, happily spend money on what you love. Mindy and Ramit Setti.

episode. Maybe check that out, everyone. This is, I'm giving Mindy a hard time here, but as one of the best episodes I have heard on personal finance, if you could check out what Mindy and Carl discussed with Ramit Sadie, it will, it will impact you. So it might sound counterintuitive to spend money on what you love, but there does come a point on where you need to focus on not just saving money all the time, not just living so frugally that. you don't enjoy life. And this can actually be done in a way that you can still save and you can still advance yourself financially, but you just have to focus on the things that are really important to. Is it really important for you to have a date one night a week at a restaurant with your spouse?

Spend the money on that. Save it somewhere else. Does that bring you a lot of joy? Spend it on that. Save it somewhere else. That will make it sustainable so that you can continue on your financial journey and continue to advance as opposed to just completely limiting everything, which will burn you out and will make you not want to make financial decisions. It'll kind of, it's like habits as far as eating or exercise, anything. If you try to do too much at once and don't enjoy yourself a little bit, it's going to fail. Yeah, absolutely. And you are 100% right, Kyle. I should take a little bit more of that to heart. I am. We're working on it. It's a work in progress. I love math, said no one ever. Nobody starts a business thinking, you know what would make

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I'll tell you, they're $24,000 for a 401k and $6,500 for an IRA. Now, these are your regular under 50 contributions. You're over 50. If you are 50 or older, turning 50 or older in 2024, your contributions are more. you can give an extra $6,000 to your 401k and an extra $1,000 to your IRA. Next one, rebalance your portfolio. And I would also say, along with this, not just rebalance, but try to optimize your portfolio. A lot of times with your stock investing, your bond investing or your real estate investing,

you can be doing a really good job and adding to it. But things can get out of whack a little bit from stocks and bonds. Sometimes things grow more than other things. and it may be outside of the risk profile that you're looking at. And that's kind of maybe a big phrase, risk profile. All it means is that you want to make sure that you're investing according to what you're comfortable with. And over time, if certain investments grow more than others, you might be invested uncomfortably

more in one thing than you would like to be. As far as real estate goes, this is definitely something I think people do not pay attention to enough. Look at how much equity you have in a property. Look at how much cash flow you're now getting from that. that. Have you had the property 10 years? Has the mortgage been paid down a lot? What's your goal with that property? Is it to pay it off and then just have the cash flow? That's one way to do it. Is it to use that equity and get as much return on that as you can? It might mean refinancing it, pulling some of that out

and getting another cash flowing property or another investment or putting that into a stock portfolio in addition to your real estate. Try to pay attention to the lazy equity in your real estate portfolio. and also look at properties that, you know, do the zero-sum thought process. If I didn't have this today, would I buy it again? And ask that question really hard. And if you wouldn't, try to consider a way that you might pivot out of a certain property or a certain investment to something that would be a good fit for your current situation. I love that.

That zero-sum, would I buy this again? Just because you're holding onto it right now, it doesn't mean you would buy. it again like oh it's okay maybe it's not maybe it's time to ditch that property that's it for us today but we will be back one final time giving 24 money tips in 2024 next thursday in the meantime tell us your money tips in our facebook group which can be found at facebook dot com slash groups slash bp money all right kyle thank you so much for joining me today thanks minnie this is just a lot of fun Looking forward to the next one. Me too.

Okay, we'll talk to you guys soon. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give us a five-star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you're looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash Bigger Pockets Money. Bigger Pockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kaelin Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the Bigger Pockets team for making this show possible.