Rich Habits Podcast - 80: How To Be Intentional With Your Money

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

In this episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, Robert Croak and Austin Hankwitz sit down with Jesse Mecham, the Founder of You Need A Budget. We've spent the last 12-months or so sharing our own perspective on budgeting, specifically by building your own Honest Budget. During this episode, we get the perspective from the guy who created the most widely-used budgeting app on the planet! Click here to learn more about their YNAB Method!---⭐️ Join 425+ other podcast listeners inside of the ⁠Rich Habits Network!⁠ Livestreams answering your questions every week. ⁠https://www.skool.com/richhabitsnetwork/about⁠---⭐️ Skip the waitlist and invest in blue-chip art for the very first time by signing up for Masterworks: ⁠https://www.masterworks.art/richhabits ⁠Purchase shares in great masterpieces from artists like Pablo Picasso, Banksy, Basquiat, and more. See important Masterworks disclosures: ⁠https://masterworks.com/cd⁠---👉 Join over 44,000+ other investors who read the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Rich Habits Newsletter!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ We're growing by +100 subscribers every day and can't wait for you to join us :)---⭐ Download our FREE Budgeting Template – ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Earn 5.1% on your savings with a High-Yield Cash Account – ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Trade stocks, options, music royalties and crypto on Public – ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Get a $35 bonus when you start saving & investing with Acorns – ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Automatically buy stock where you shop with Grifin – ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Protect your family with term life insurance from Suriance – ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Use code “Spotify” for 15% off our 4-module video course – ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Optimize your portfolio with Seeking Alpha – ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---👤 Explore everything Austin does – ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👤 Explore everything Robert does – ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠❓ Ask us questions for our Q&A episodes – @richhabitspodcast on Instagram📬 Inquire about working together – [e-mail]---Hankwitz Group LLC has an existing business relationship with NEOS Investment Management LLC. The opinions expressed are those of the author, and the author owns several NEOS ETFs.

Spotify, it's Jay Shetty. Are you one of those media strategy people? Scrolling through spreadsheets, searching for an audience that pays twice as much attention to your ads than they do on social? Let me introduce you to fans. And they're here with me on Spotify. Trust me, I know fans. They don't skip. They stay for hours.

They don't move on. They manifest. They're not a demographic group. They're fans. Spotify advertising. You're among fans. Hey everyone and welcome back to the Rich Habits podcast, a top 10 business podcast on Spotify. My name is Austin Hank Witts and I'm joined by my co-host Robert Croke.

Robert is a seasoned entrepreneur in his 50s with lifetime revenues of over $300 million and I'm an entrepreneur in my late 20s with a background in finance and economics. Since quitting my full-time job in corporate finance a few years ago, I've built a seven-figure media business and actively advise some of the most well-known fintech companies around the world. As the show name might suggest, every episode, we talk about rich habits as they relate to business, finance, and mindset. However, we try and bring you two unique perspectives, one from an industry veteran, which is Robert, and the other myself, someone who's still in the process of building wealth and figuring it all out. Robert, what are we going to be talking about in today's episode?

In this episode of the Rich Habits podcast, we are sitting down with Jesse Meacham, the founder of You Need a Budget, also known as YNAB. As you all know, we've been encouraging our listeners to build something we call the honest budget. And we named it the honest budget because we believe far too many people are dishonest with themselves as it relates to their spending patterns and where their money is actually being spent. Above all else, people also make the mistake of thinking budgets are restrictive or this lack mentality around budgets, and we're going to cover that from a mindset perspective. Budgets are permission to spend. Permission to spend on groceries, transportation, insurance.

housing, vacations, clothing, dining out, and everything in between. For those of you tuning in for the first time, we believe budgeting not only gives you the freedom to spend, but also the freedom to save and invest. We are intentional with our money today so we can enjoy its growth and compounding in the future. And this is a key component of what we're talking about here today. I'm a multi-millionaire and I use a budget and all of my wealthiest friends do the same. I do not care how rich or how poor you are. are if you're not using a budget, you have no visibility into your spending, saving, or investing,

and you're simply drifting through life reacting to what happens around you. You hear Austin and I talk about it all the time. You have to have velocity on your money and know where it's going ahead of time because the more you can automate it, the better off you will be in your investing strategies. And as we always say, broke people react and wealthy people forecast. That, Robert, was a mic-draud. and a great transition into welcoming our guest today, Jesse Meacham is a personal finance expert and the founder of Wynab, an app that has inspired millions of people to spend, save, and live joyfully. He is the Wall Street Journal, bestselling author of the book, You Need a Budget, and is regularly quoted in the media as a money management expert like Wired, the New York Times,

and CNBC. Jesse started Wynab in 2004, and back then it was just a little itty-bitty spreadsheet, as he will talk about here pretty soon, that helped him, a self-proclaimed, cash-strapped, newly married college student, cover the cost of tuition without going in to debt. That is a massive feat in itself, so I can't wait to dive into that one. Now, nearly two decades later,

the Today Show has described Wynab as a cult favorite. So when not teaching the YNAB method, something we're going to talk about here pretty soon, Jesse loves gardening, woodworking, marksmanship, and to travel. He also spends a good bit of time with his wife, in seven children. Wow. Seven children. Wow, you are a busy guy. Jesse, thanks so much for joining us, man. I am so pumped to talk about all of these buzzwords that people kind of get intimidated by, right? We've talked a little bit about your Wynab method. We've talked about frugality,

intentionality, all these things into this lead-up. So we're going to dive into all that very soon. But Robert, I'll let you kick us off. Yeah, Jesse, I really want to dig into the origin story around why now we live in a society where financial education is few and far between and people really do struggle with financial literacy and i think a lot of it and that is why austin and i termed this phrase honest budget because when we're looking at people's budgets on a daily and weekly basis we find so many times within the first 30 seconds we're like wait a minute where's your hair care products where's your doggy treats where's this where's that and they're like oh well i thought budgets were just you know kind of loosely around the big bills and i'm like no not at all so that's why i think that's

this episode is incredibly important to have someone like you that has been involved in how to really break it down and build an awesome budget for people so they understand the importance because like I said to you earlier, I believe too many people think budgets just are restrictive and that wealthy people don't budget and they just have it all wrong. So I'm really excited to hear your origin story and get us started here today. Yeah, I wish I could say I had some romantic, you know, entrepreneurial inclination or something like. that when I first started. But Julie, my wife and I, we were newlyweds, and I still had three years of school left. And we had been doing well. I built a little spreadsheet, and we were tracking

our meager income. And it was working. I mean, we were able to still set aside a little bit. And just to give people an idea, my wife was the breadwinner at the time working full time, but she was making 10.50 an hour. And I remember being thrilled when she got a raise to $11 an hour. We were just over the moon about it, you know? And so I was working part-time, but focusing on school, of getting a master's degree in accounting. And what ended up happening was we wanted to have a baby. And so when our first was kind of inbound, I really wanted Julie to be able to stay home.

She wanted to be able to step out of the workforce and just focus on being a mom. And so her meager income would go away, but her meager income was material to us. And I thought, man, this spreadsheet has allowed us to save money. Maybe we could sell it to other people and just won off. I had forecasted and looked ahead and said, okay, here's our cash pile and here's our burn rate.

And I think we would need about 350 bucks a month to kind of get us over the hump where we could get out of school and I could get a real job and become a CPA and go off into the sunset. So that was the big vision was I needed to make rent. And I'm glad, honestly, I'm glad that the vision was small because it didn't scare me. It was just, it was pretty doable. The next steps were always obvious. So that was how I started. The spreadsheet itself only lasted about, oh gosh, a year and a half before we had already built standalone software and started off. and started off doing something right.

I love that answer, and it really goes back. I've been at this a little bit longer than both of you. So for me, it's always funny when I'm out doing speaking engagements and traveling the country, you see some of these former founders that sold out and rode off into the sunset. And they paint this glamorous picture of rainbows and unicorns from the start. Like they had a plan. They knew the plan was going to make them worth $10, $10, $100 million. And I just find that fascinating because it's never that glamorous in the,

beginning. We have an idea. We have the tenacity. I think that is the key. And we go for it. And Austin, you touched on it last night in the private live about how you had this dream when you left your corporate job, getting into TikTok and Instagram and doing financial education. And now look, what has happened in just two or three short years. So I think it really illustrates that, you know, you are that one meeting, one idea and one phone call away from a totally different life. And so I love hearing stories like yours, Jesse. Each day you wake up and 20 years later, I still think it's not very glamorous. You know, it's just a lot of thinking hard and new problems crop up and you solve those problems. And you try hard not to solve problems that haven't come up yet.

So you don't look ahead and say, well, what if this, what if that? You just try hard to kind keep your eye pretty close in front of you, cast some vision and all of that so you can get oriented the right direction. But the day to day, it's a lot of just almost being told what you should solve next for the most part. You talked about the origin story of you need a budget. What does you need a budget today? How many employees do you have? What does the product look like? Who are your customers and how many people have downloaded your app all time and have used it? Oh, gosh. I couldn't tell you the number that total.

Yeah, we should somehow try and scratch that together. When you first start, you don't measure anything. You know, everything's just finger in the wind and you're just kind of going for it. So some of our measurement was probably non-existent, I would say. We're in about 180 employees. And I remember being scared when I hired my first employee. And then you do get a little more used to it. But there's always this commitment to the person that you're hiring.

And you do feel like you take it seriously. It's gotten easier, but it's still, yeah, it's serious to bring someone on because they're taking a bet on you. It's not just, you know, the other way around. So we've got the 180 employees. Wynab the app ecosystem. You know, we've got the phone apps now. You can tell Alexa that you want, you know, to add a transaction or ask what the groceries balance is. You've got the web app.

So it's very sophisticated in the sense that it's just kind of everywhere. We have a big team of engineers that's just making sure everything's, you know, running smoothly. And then we've got a whole team working on the next thing. There's always something to fix to maintain. Anyone that says that, hey, once you build it, you're done building. They're just, they've never done software. You are never done. But that's part of the fun, too.

So that's kind of where we're at. I'm no longer CEO, which has been a change as of three years ago. I got to hand those reins to someone that we had had in the company for a long time. His name's Todd. And then I've been able to just kind of evangelize and started writing again. And that's been a lot of fun. So I feel like I have my dream job inside my dream company. Yeah, one of the things that Austin and I talk about a lot, Jesse.

and that is the more you automate your money, whether it's for investing, it's for savings, it's for budgeting, the more automation you have through software and spreadsheets and everything else, the better off you're going to be because I believe that too many people that don't budget, simply just have their money sitting in checking account, savings account, and they really don't have any velocity on the money.

And to me, that is the most important thing is having that automation and having velocity to make sure that when the money comes in, it has a place so you're out. optimizing your gains with that money. And I mentioned it a bit earlier, but I want to hear your take on this too, Jesse. And for those listening wherever you are, whether you're in the gym, the car, at work, or wherever, hear what I'm saying here.

And that is rich people budget. Rich people budget. This isn't a poor person thing. It's a smart person thing. So with all the people that you interact with and teach about money management, do they have an issue with understanding intentionality versus frugality? So they understand. the importance of these budgeting tools and why they should use them?

One thing on automation, Robert, I agree with you. As long as we are automating away tedium and automating away kind of valueless activity, where I start to raise a flag on automation is where people think that they're automating their intention with their money, where they can just kind of track what they're doing and then have it automatically tell them what they did. And that is the far cry from any kind of intention. So sometimes people can feel like, you know, that they connect all their accounts and software's tracking it. They look back and it's like they're at the beginning of a CSI episode and

there's a dead body and they're just like, oh, we don't know what happened. There's a been a murder, you know, and they feel bad or whatever. And so then they spend the rest of the time trying to figure out why the person died. We want to prevent the whole thing from happening in the first place. And so it's a prospective, forward-looking, intentional approach to money. And it ties into our method in that our very first rule is to give every dollar a job. You'd mentioned in at the beginning, people won't mention dog treats or they won't mention just like little that's like oh it's little that's nothing but you have to make sure that you have a complete view a thorough view of it all because you're making tradeoffs between all of those things and we want those tradeoffs to be felt so that your

priorities can start to kind of come to life through there and so if you're just kind of letting things come at you you're not acting and you're not an agent and you're not creating what you really want and so giving every dollar a job being the first rule means that every single one has to do something that you want it to do. Now, the second rule is essentially the same thing, but we're changing the lens and we're telling people to embrace their true expenses. And you mentioned this. I was glad when you were listing all the expenses that people have that they should plan for.

You mentioned good ones too. You didn't just say mortgage and taxes and let's all be sad. You know, you said vacation. And that was what I was waiting from. Like, come on, Robert. Say vacation, you know, because we have to recognize that our money is meant to be spent. The three of us here have spent or will spend just a massive amount of time. earning money. And when we recognize all of the effort, education, networking, experience,

caloric expenditure that we have given toward earning this little thing we call money, to then turn around and be like, ah, I'm not good with money or ah, whatever. It's like a dagger to my heart. We have to be just as intentional on the earning. We have to be on the spending. And so when we're looking ahead with Rule 2 embracing those true expenses, we call it, we're saying, what are your larger, less frequent expenses that you want to have, like the vacation? Or Christmas, perhaps. Like it's this fixed, day, it's December 25th, everyone, just in case you forgot. And you can actually plan for it. You can say, hey, we're six months out from Christmas. I want to spend $600. That would be fantastic for me with seven

kids. And then you would say, I want to do $100 every single month. You're giving yourself this monthly Christmas bill. And the magic is, you're just sitting and decide, leave it in your checking account or whatever. It doesn't even matter. But the point is, you're feeling the tension of Christmas, along with the tension of just the day-to-day spending. So now you're way and like, hey, do I go out to sushi with Robert or do I fund Christmas with my kids and sorry Robert but it's going to be the other we'll go cheap we'll go like little Caesars or something you know I'm able to pull on those both and balance between what I want now and what I want in the future then you tack on our third rule which is it's funny it's a rule is and entrepreneurs probably get this but the rule is to roll with the punches

meaning hey when something happens that you didn't anticipate you just change your plan and it's amazing that we have to tell someone that's the first time they've set up a budget they're making six figures they don't know where their money's gone they finally bit the the bullet and they say, okay, we're going to do this. And they set up the plan. Five minutes later, they feel like that plan has been etched in tablets and they've come down from the mountain. And we really want to just stop like, no, no, you just made that. You're more like a coach that seized the opponent and then is like, oh, okay, we did a great game plan. We practiced. We rehearsed. But we're going to change it up a little bit given this new information.

So just so everyone knows, brittle plans break. And we want you to be like bamboo, you know, just flowing in the wind. Our fourth rule is fairly unique. It's called aging. your money. All that really means we measure it in the software, but we can measure how long a dollar literally sits inside your system. And we want it to sit there a while. You have people that are paid on Friday and then broke the next Monday. And we want you to be paid on Friday and not know you were paid. You just kind of forgot, oh, it's paid. You noticed that four days later. That's interesting. I've never heard of that. 30 days later, 45 days later, someone's actually spending that dollar. It's an old accounting method that, you know, you'd be familiar with as far as like first in, first out.

Yeah, yeah. We just use it with the dollars. What it really represents, though, is someone breaking out of that vicious paycheck-to-pitch cycle. Let's give a recap. So, Rule 1, you said, give every dollar a job. And I'm right there with you, right? That's just making sure that all the money that's coming into your checking account and all the money you're spending, like, you know where that's going before the month even starts.

This month is going to those dog treats, the hair care products, some rent over here, this, this, that, and the other. Rule tours embracing your true expenses. Again, just kind of looking at it from a different lens. I like Rule 3 the most rolling with the punches. I think a lot of people forget that at least I would argue it takes about three months to figure out what your real budget is. After you've started budgeting and seeing what your expenses look like day to day, week to week,

month, a month, it takes a good three months to figure out, okay, this is actually what I'm spending in groceries, this is actually what I'm spending in transportation, actually getting, taken out of my checking account. And the fourth one, I've never heard of that, but aging your money, right? Because at the end of the day, you're right. We want to help people move away from sort of that paycheck to paycheck cycle. And if they can get to a place with their money that they have so much an emergency fund and there's so much of a cushion in that checking account and so much as being saved and invested

that you don't even know that you just got paid your biweekly salary or monthly salary because it's already allocated for everything's already figured out for you. That, I think, is going to be a massive eye opener for a lot of our listeners. And that's honestly where I would jump in, Robert, with the automation piece. If you don't have to play the game of timing specific expenses with specific paychecks, all of that just that goes away. You start setting things up on auto pay and you just get out of just like checking the balance and checking this and stacking up bills waiting for money.

We have a pile of money waiting for the bills, and we don't even notice the bills come in. It just everything's on autopilot. That's the beauty of being able to step away from that edge is the automation becomes very, very approachable then. Yeah, and the flip side to it, Jesse, one of the hills that I fall on is this phrase, make your money work as hard for you as you work to get it. And I love that phrase because so many people that are doing well don't optimize their finances due to a lack of budget or lack of automation. And that's problematic too because they'll be like, oh, well, I have like $88,000 sitting in my checking account. And I'm like,

well, why is it at least not in a high yield savings or in a Roth IRA or somewhere else? So for me, it's all about automation and velocity on your money. So then that way you are setting yourself up so much better for the future. Yeah, absolutely. And there's a materiality thing, you know, for someone that's worth tens of millions of dollars, they don't want the hassle of a thing. And, you know, you just respect that. But for others, where, you know, 5% on 88 grand is not nothing. And they would want to go after that, you know, right away. So it really is, it's a personal preference, but many people just don't know it's available to them. What we find and what we push back on is back in the day, you know, gosh, just a little while ago, you weren't getting any rates on savings accounts at all. And so

there really wasn't that compelling. But people will sometimes. build a lot of savings account infrastructure to kind of hide money from themselves and we really try and teach them hey if you work these rules there's no hiding money from yourself you're being very intentional you know where it all is you know what it's going for you don't need to worry that you're going to self-sabotage and so you want to tuck it away there's a revolving door with savings where they put it in thinking I'm supposed to save and then it comes out as soon as some little thing pops up and they kind of feel mad about it and so we try and get to be more specific about what that savings actually is doing for them if they're saving for a vacation saving for whatever

and then it becomes more meaningful and it gets rated less readily. Jesse, that is fantastic that you said sabotage, self-sabotage. And here's why. I talk about a vicious cycle that I see every single day and you do as well. And that is when summer rolls around, it's wedding season. So you go to all of these fringe friends' wedding. You fly all over the country in the world. You put it on the credit card.

You come home and you're like, oh, shit. So then you spend the next few months paying the credit cards back down. Then Christmas is there. And like you said, Christmas is there every year at the same time. They run up the credit cards for Christmas. And it's a vicious cycle. It's self-sabotage because they don't have a plan with their money. And I think that is the number one thing that I love about this episode is spelling it out to people that it is so important to put all of these things into play to make sure you have a solid plan year in and year out.

You work hard for your money. We want it to be well spent. Like even the investments, we're talking quite a bit about investing. Investing is just a fancy way of saying let's have the money earn a little money until we spend. it. And so even that, you have to acknowledge it will be spent. And then you say, oh, I'll leave it for my kids. Okay, but your kids will definitely spend the money. You know, so the money will be spent. And recognizing that all forms, all use of money is really just spending, maybe spending now or spending later or spending far, far later. Recognizing that kind of starts to let the person approach it with a little

more of a balanced look. It's not like, oh, I'm supposed to invest and I'm supposed to spend and I'm supposed to this. No, you're supposed to spend all of it. So let's figure out how to spend it well. Some of this I won't spend until I'm 70 and doing required minimum distributions. Okay, let's learn how to do that. Just making sure that we recognize that it's supposed to be spent. Like, you've spent your whole life earning the money. Like, let's make sure we spend it well and enjoy that. I think one of my favorite lessons that I've learned over the last four to six years now that I've

been out of college, you know, started working my normal job making $70,000 a year in Nashville. Now that I'm an entrepreneur and I've got myself on salary and I've got an actual budget that I have to allocate for every single month, the biggest thing I learned was spending money on things that make me happy and not spending money on things that people tell me that I should be spending money on. So like, you see online and you're like, oh yeah, so this guy's got a budget and he's got all this money for clothing or he's got this money for travel or maybe they have this money allocated for something else that I don't resonate with. I do really resonate though with food. I'm a foodie. So I love to overindulge on eating out every month. You know, to kind of upset that,

I guess is what I'm saying is I don't go out and buy new shoes every month. I have the same pair of shoes I've had for two years now and Robert makes fun of me for it. But that's what I'm saying. It's like, I think everyone, and this comes back to what Robert and I say all the time is personal finance is personal. And there's nothing more personal than your own personal budget and being honest with yourself to say, I really love having the flexibility to spend an extra 150, 250 a month on trying that new sushi restaurant and foregoing the new pair of Vejas or the new pair of Nikes that I'm not going to wear anyway because I work at my house. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

It's interesting, too, to think, I mean, at Wynab, we do not tell people how to spend their money at all. If I catch anyone, I'll call them on it, and we don't do that. And all we're doing is building awareness of what their money is already doing. And then the person comes to that conclusion themselves. What we're trying to do is give them context for their spending decisions. And that context is, hey, here's your now needs and here's your future needs and you're balancing them all out. It's akin to, like, being in the, you know, the tire shop and you need to buy new tires for your car. and you've got the money for it.

And then some guy walks up with the plate of sushi. And it's like, hey, how about this sushi instead? And they're like, well, you won't be able to buy the tires. No one makes that choice in real life in that way. But they do all the time in actuality. They'll just accidentally spend HVAC repair money or they'll accidentally spend anniversary getaway money or whatever it may be. And so if we can build that awareness, we don't have to tell them how to spend their money.

Like, I want to buy more clamps for my wood shop. I don't really care about the shoes, you know? Like everyone's got their own thing. I think that's what makes my job so fun is you get to see the person start to kind of come out and express themselves more genuinely with their money. And if there was one message, I would leave the world, it would be if the world could express itself more genuinely with its money, individuals, it would be a better place, bar none. Everything would work a little better from the very, like, lowest individual all the way to the top at countries and how they manage things macro. So it's really just a matter of being aware, being thoughtful and learning more about yourself and kind of. of being comfortable, awesome, like being comfortable in your own skin where you're like, oh,

yeah, I'm seeing this, but I don't really, that doesn't really move me. You know, experiment, find out. Like, that's all okay. But at the end of the day, like, we're all memetic, you know, we copy each other. And I think that's okay. That's how we survive. But it's also okay to kind of try and at least somewhat carve your own path a little bit. Don't let anyone tell you how to spend your money. You earned it. You get to spend it. I think that was a beautiful response, Jesse. I'm right there with you, man. What a great perspective. I guess one of the last questions we have for you is sort of navigating the harmony between the spender and the saver. My girlfriend and I, we cross our budgets.

We're looking at like, okay, she's doing this. I'll do some of this. Like, we're not married yet. We haven't combined our finances. But I'm sure there's a lot of people listening that are married that have a one big budget that they look toward every single month. And maybe the wife is the saver. The husband's the spender.

And they're trying to figure out how to navigate that. Do you have any advice for those people? I mean, the one thing is to go back to your honest budget idea. This is what we're talking about. Like, you have to be honest about it. You can't have the frugal person just naturally frugal. They should have been born in the 17th century or whatever. Like that person just, they have to recognize not everyone's like that.

And so for the spender, what I would do and what I do, I am the spender is we make sure that each person has their own money in the budget. That's just, it's yours. It doesn't need to, you don't need to be like, hey, shoot it. Let me shoot you a text. Let me see if I could buy this or that. It's your money. You do whatever you want with it.

That's critical for relationships. Everyone needs to have some money that's just carefree is what you might say. If you have people that are. spontaneous. They don't want to be controlled or contained by this mean thing called a budget. You know, set up literally a couple categories that are just like spontaneous giving. You can call those things out. And what's interesting is as you start to kind of, you know, like list the jobs that your dollars may have, you'll find that some categories, they're kind of magnets for dollars and others you don't really end up caring about. So you think you care about it. You put it in there. And then you'll just

notice the money doesn't ever really land there. You don't fund it. You always find something else to do with the money, that starts to tell you, you know, a way to go about it. One cool one that people do if they're trying to quit smoking, which we've had hundreds of these stories, is they won't put a cigarettes category. But what they will do is they'll just notice when they buy a couple packs what they categorize that smoking habit as. And then they're like, oh, man, that took away from my, you know, my movie fund. Like, they start to see what the smoking is costing them.

And there are lots of mind games you can play. And in a relationship, it just has to be open communication. You got to be honest about it. And then it's totally okay. If one person runs the budget, they're like just more of the nerd. The only thing that's not okay to separate is the goal setting. You've got to be on the same page. If you have a husband and wife, you have two partners that can't talk about money,

that means they really can't talk about the thing that they spend a vast majority of their time acquiring. So this thing that they spend their entire life getting is off limits. And you can see why it's the number one reason, you know, relationships break is if you can't talk about something so fundamental, I mean, it's almost you. If Robert's given all of his blood, sweat, tears and everything to that dollar, that dollar is really a representation of all of Robert's blood, sweat, and tears. And so then to have someone just be like, oh, I don't care about that. You don't say it out loud in the argument, but there's a bit of that person that's just like,

that's me. This is a little bit of me. So if we can't talk about ourselves, really, in that intimate relationship, we've got to either figure that out or I would just say, I don't know how that's going to end. You've got to talk about it. You've got to be able to talk about it. The cool thing is when a couple, this is my last note, when a couple is working, with a budget. You can make the budget kind of the inanimate third object that you both can talk to

and talk about versus staring at each other and being like, why did you? Why did you? Why do you always, you know? Right, right. Oh, interesting. Non-helpful things. So it's kind of like, hey, the budget's saying this or that. What do we do? You know? Yeah, Jesse, I believe, and Austin does as well, that people should run their lives like they run a business. I don't run a restaurant or I don't run one of my small businesses without knowing my numbers. And I think that too many people, you know, in the early stage of the relationship when it starts to get good and they're like, man, I could fall in love with this person, I could spend the rest of my life with this person. They don't have the hard conversation about money and I think it's critical to do it long before

you put a ring on the finger because you can end up ruining a marriage if one person is making all the money and the other person is spending all the money and not being cognizant of the middle ground of what that means. And I think it's so, so important. And you mentioned Mimetic Desire earlier on. And one of my favorite books of the last few years is Wanting by Luke Burgess. I think it's an incredible book that everyone should read because it helps people understand what Mimetic Desire is and how it affects their finances by copying others and following trends in spending.

And I think it's a great book to help people understand why lifestyle creep happens and how they can prevent it. So I'm so glad I've never heard anyone else besides me mentioned Mementic. desire. So we are definitely on the same wavelength. I'm very much about, you know, mindset and people understanding because it's pretty easy for us to direct people on how to build wealth, but they have to have the right mindset to be able to actually do it and be consistent. And I think that's so important. Yeah, absolutely. I'm pro lifestyle improvement, not pro lifestyle creep. You know, like, I don't still live in that same basement apartment that had mold issues that was $3.50 a month,

you know, and I'm really happy that about it, I crept out of that situation. But, at the same time, I want people to be able to spend their money well. And so the difference between lifestyle improvement and lifestyle creep is awareness and intention. If we have that, then I'm not worried about the creep at all. You spend your money, spend it well, do whatever you want to do with it. If you're being more of you, I love it. I want to hear about it. Say it again.

You said lifestyle improvement is based on what? Intention and awareness. Yeah, that's the only difference between those two phrase is just intention and awareness. Jesse, you're a master at work, my friend. I'm so glad we're able to have you here on the show. The last thing, more of a personal question, is do you ever really? any tips or tricks for other parents listening out there that have three, four, five, six, seven children and they're trying to figure out the budget. How do you budget as a dad of seven children?

I mean, it's the same method overall. You know, you're giving every dollar a job. You just have a few more items, you know, a few more things you got to worry about. You know, everyone's figuring out parenting as they go, including teaching their kids how to do money well. One of the things that, I wouldn't say it keeps me up at night, but one of my concerns is if you see some level of success, How do you make sure that you convey to your kids how the success was achieved? You know, not the fruits of that success. You want to be able to make sure your kids are honest, that they are hardworking and that they're kind. And the money comes, I think, if they can have those attributes.

You live it. When they turn eight, I set them up on their budget in Wynab. And you watch a master at work with a kid. Kids are unbelievably good at telling you what they want their money to do. Somewhere along the lines, adults lose the ability to just be like, oh, I ran out of money. okay, I'm done. We all just walk past zero, swipe a couple credit cards, don't worry about it. But when you say, hey, kid, you've got $80 here. What do you want to do? They'll just meaningfully be like, I want this and this. And they're just content as can be. Now, it's not as

complex or whatever, but their decision making is still solid. And somewhere along the way, we lose that. And so I've just tried to teach my kids to have money on hand does not mean that it's necessarily ready to be spent. And so you just teach them to follow that method, give every dollar a job. And it's fun. The victory is when you've got like my 16 year old daughter. She wants to buy a shirt. She's like, I have no money. Well, I have access to her bank account, and she has thousands of dollars in her account. But what she's saying is, I have no money for clothing. And that is the win. That is the win. Yeah, I love that. That is awesome. Jesse, thank you so much for joining us on this week's episode of the Rich Habits podcast. Everyone,

if you want to go check out Wynab. There's going to be a link in the show notes below. You guys are an awesome, awesome platform. So if you want to build that first budget, obviously be honest with yourself. Check out even the four rules, the YNAB method that we had talked about. All those resources are going to be linked out in the show notes below. And Jesse, I hope to have you back really soon, my friend. Thanks for having me. Holy crap. That was, I would say one of my favorite interviews thus far, Robert. I mean, Jesse, not only is an entrepreneur, right? He's got 150 employees that he's a founder of this company that went out and built something massive, but he's also doing things that are so important to everyone's just everyday life, right? Building

that budget in a way that's intentional. You've got that lifestyle improvement that he talked about, making sure that you're honest with yourself to understand the difference between, you know, how I don't want to go out, buy new shoes. I'd rather go to the new restaurant, right? Just having that sort of mindset, I think Jesse has a lot from a mindset perspective that he shared in that episode that really resonates with just sort of everything we've been talking about on this podcast. Oh, definitely. We are very connected, he and I, because I've never heard anyone else talk about Mimetic Desire. And one of my favorite books is called Wanting by Luke Burgess.

And it's very helpful to people to be able to understand what Mimetic Desire is and comparing yourself to others and how to get out of lifestyle creep because you feel it's the norm and following other people, following the herd. And so that really resonated well with me because so much of personal wealth building is mindset and understanding what you need to do and utilizing the tools that we provide each and every day to help people be able to get on their own path because like you always say, Austin, personal finance is personal. And I think it's so important for everyone. And this was a great episode to illustrate that. So we are going to add a link in the show notes below to check

out the YNAB method, those four rules, the give every dollar a job, embrace your true expenses, roll with the punches and age your money. All the resources below. This was not a sponsored episode. We just figured out that they were really popular and why not get the founder on it? Let's talk budgeting because, I mean, that's what we do here on this podcast. So go check them out. Go download it. Don't download it. Nothing for or against us here. Just trying to give you guys the resources to be successful with your money. And we are so happy to be in this position every single week. And don't forget the Rich Habits Network is live now. You can join anytime you want. You can see it in the show notes below. You can find us online. You can even Google it and just get

excited about all the modules, all the tools. We have over 300 members already in the first two weeks, which is incredible. And we're excited to have you follow along in the Rich Habits Network and the Rich Habits podcast. All right, Robert, before we jump into the question and answer part of the episode, let's take a moment to hear from our sponsor, Masterworks. So here's a fun fact for you, Robert. According to Bank of America, over 80% of millionaires under the age of 43 already invest in or are looking to invest in find art for a portion of their portfolio. And that makes sense to me because we love diversification and Masterworks Art Investing Platform has over 950,000 users and over a billion in capital raise for a reason.

Because diversification into blue chip contemporary art can make a lot of sense for people's portfolios. It does for mine and Roberts. That's for sure. We both personally invest. through Masterworks and I've personally been using it for over five years. They make it possible to invest in shares of multi-million dollar paintings by artists like Banksy, Basquiat, and others. You can learn more at masterworks.dart forward slash rich habits. Again, that is masterworks. dot art forward slash rich habits. There's also going to be a link below in our show notes if you want to go check them out. As with any investment, past performance is not indicative of future returns investing involves risk important regulation a disclosures can be found at masterworks.com

front slash cd all right robert let's jump into our first question coming from megan m megan says i currently have a fidelity 401k that's matching at four percent inside of a target date fund with sixty one thousand dollars total invested i've had the account for almost five years now and one of my goals is to begin reallocating the funds into some of these long-standard ending index funds that you guys talk about on your podcast. I've been hesitant because it seems like I'm doing okay because I've experienced a 14% return. I'm also nervous with potential market shakeups and let's be real, I'm not confident what funds to even reallocate them into. I just want to make sure my money is working best for me over the coming decades. I've already maxed out my

Roth IRA for the year and again, I invest up to the match in my 401k. So do I stick with this strategy? Do I keep investing in the target date funds? And if not, how do I begin to compare them to other funds. This is a really great question, Robert, and our friend Megan actually shared a breakdown of her performance, which I think was really helpful when she asked it. So for everyone listening, of course, we do not like target date funds. We always want to encourage people not to be sort of hands off the wheel, autopilot into their retirement with these target date funds, and instead of a little bit more control over your money. And the reason being is because a lot of these target date funds and some of these international funds, they underperform the

S&P 500. So, Robert, we all know that. I think a cool and fun way to answer this question is going to be to offer our perspective on how we personally would say, okay, let's now compare what your target date fund is doing from a performance perspective to what the S&P 500 does, right? So let's just walk them through our thought process here as Megan asked this question. So hopefully other people who are kind of juggling this idea of reallocating 401K money into different funds can do this exercise on their own and hopefully come to a conclusion. Yeah, Austin, I think it's great and we should definitely illustrate this because, you know, as everyone knows, we're not fans of Target Date funds. They just generally underperform the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ. So let's actually illustrate it for

our followers and our listeners and show them the difference of why over time we prefer these traditional funds over Target date funds. So Megan shared with us her year to date 401K return was 14%. That on surface sounds pretty good. But as you look at the S&P 500, right, V-O-O, and you look at that's year-to-date return of 18%, well, she has underperformed by about 4%. If you now look at the NASDAX year-to-date performance of 17%, she's also performed by 200, 300, 400 basis points. So what I'm trying to show people here is like, as you open up your 401K and think, wait a second, how am I doing? Am I keeping up with the markets? Am I underperforming?

am I outperforming? It's very simple to do some of this analysis on your own, right? All I did as I went to Google, I typed in VOO Price, which is the price of the S&P 500, that Vanguard ETF we like a lot. And then it's going to show you sort of this daily price chart. There's actually a button that's titled YTD for year to date, and it shows you the price return year to date of that ETF. So that's all I did. And then she shared her one year return inside of the 401k being about 15 and a half percent. This is where I think things are going bad. Vanguard's S&P 500 ETF is up 26% over the last 12 months, right, over that last one year period. And as you look at NASDAQ, that's up 28% over the last one year.

So, Megan, here are substantially, right, double-digit underperformance over a trailing 12-month period against the markets here. And the last thing that she had shared was her expense ratio. Again, just so we're on the same page, an expense ratio is essentially the price you have to pay to have access to these investments. So by investing into a Vanguard or a BlackRock or whatever ETFs out there, they all charge you just a little bit of money to do it. And they charge it as a percent of assets invested. So in this example, her expense ratio is 0.18%. So it doesn't sound like a lot, right? It's only 18 basis points.

But if you take $100,000 or for some of you listening, $4,000, $900,000 in your own 401Ks, and you now multiply it by that 0.18%. you see this as a nearly $200 a year fee per $100,000, right? That could be several hundred, if not thousands of dollars for some of you listening, that you're paying to own these more expensive funds that are underperforming the markets. So, Megan, I hope this helped you sort of take a holistic view as to how to begin analyzing your own 401k as well as others listening right now. And then the answer to your question of how do I sort of approach this? Very simple.

You want to go up to the match at that 4%. You want to max out the Roth IRA. want to make sure your Roth IRA is invested into the VOOs of the world and the VTIs and the QQs. Now because you have autonomy in your 401K and you can make sure that the funds that 61,000 can be invested into the S&P 500, into the NASDAQ, into these awesome index funds we know and love that perform very well over a long period of time. Make the switch. All 61,000's feeling good. It's invested now into these awesome funds. And now you can, if you want, max out your 401K, right?

You can put as much money in there as you want because it's invested correctly. And if you still have money left over after you max it out, then you have some extra money to put into your public bridge account. Public.com. It's our favorite, favorite online brokerage here to use for building your bridge account over your lifetime. That is the entire playbook, Robert. Yeah, I love it. And that is a great breakdown. And it's just really important for everyone following along to understand.

Many times I see people, and I know you do as well, Austin, where they have their money in these target date funds, it's their 401k. They think they're crushing it. And they think that's a proper retirement strategy. And what people don't realize over time, let's just say you underperform the market 3% a year in these target day funds. Over 10 years, that's 30% you underperformed just at 3% a year. So always look at it from the broader lens that you're not just leaving a couple percent on the table here and there. Over time, you're leaving a ton of money on the table. So just keep that in mind when you're looking at these.

And that's why Austin and I are always positively reinforcing everyone to make sure they have active management to know where their money is, how much it's costing them to invest in these different strategies, and what is going to perform the best. It's very important to keep an eye on this at least every quarter or every year, so you make sure that you're optimizing your gains. Well, beyond that, Robert, you know, we're heading into Q4. Labor Day just passed us. We're officially in September. Now is a great time to reflect upon your net worth. Are you inching closer to your goals? Are you investing more this month? You know, how much money are you? are you putting to work this month versus last month?

What is the performance been in your 401k or your personal brokerage account or your Roth IRA? Do this on a monthly if not quarterly basis to track your progress because as you guys learned in this episode, being intentional with your money and making sure that every dollar is working for you is very, very important. Wow. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. All right. Our next question comes from Scott.

Scott says my company matches 25% of my salary into my retirement. I also have two smaller pensions through my union. I know how rare and crazy this sounds. But the tradeoffs are, we just don't get any paid sick days or vacation days. I make around $100,000 a year and I do not contribute anything towards my 401K. So, at an age of 26, I have $200,000 in my 401k with literally no contributions from me. I've maxed out my Roth for the last two years as well. With having such a ridiculous retirement through my work,

should I also be investing $7,000 into my raw? Roth every single year, or should I skip that and put the money in my bridge account instead? I plan to stay with the company for a long time, and I worry that I'll be in my 40s or 50s with millions in these retirement accounts, but unable to touch the money without paying penalties and fees. What do you guys think about this? Scott, I think you're spot on and great question. And congrats for getting this situation with your company.

And in my opinion, I think you should do both. You should definitely try to get the Roth maxed out every single year, but then you should also be putting as much as you can towards this bridge account that you hear Austin and I talk about all the time because you're exactly right. You don't want to get up in years, get into those retirement years and be five years, seven years before retirement and not have any liquid capital to work with and do other investments or live off of or take a trip. So that is why we were always making sure that people are not net worth millionaires, but still broke years before retirement because they don't have access to the cash. So I love the idea. I would still try.

try to max out the Roth and everything else on top of that go into the bridge account. Yeah, I like that. I mean, think about it like this. You make $100,000 a year, 20% effective tax rate. You're taken home $80,000 of that. 7,000 immediately goes to max out your Roth. Now you're living off of $73,000 a year at 26 years old. I feel like that's pretty doable. I feel like you can live off of $73,000 a year at 26 years old and still have some extra money to set aside each month if it's $200, $300, $400 to park in your bridge account. Now, I'm not saying that, you know, you need to be putting another $7,000 in this bridge account or another, you know, call it $8,000 or $9,000, $10,000 a year. That would be nice. But I agree. I think you can do both. And I also would encourage you to think

about maybe not something you want to do now at age 26, but maybe as you get into your mid to late 30s, depending on how big this retirement account is worth, maybe there's a world where you could begin to sort of take back the contribution match of that 25%, maybe they only do 10%, and they give you a 15% salary raise, right? And then that 15% salary raise, $15,000, pay taxes on that, let's call it now $12,000 after taxes, can be taken and used to fund your bridge account. I have no idea how your compensation works. I'm not sure what your employer is doing here. Congrats on having such a cool situation. But maybe there's a world in your, you know, like I said, 30s here that you can begin to dial back the retirement contributions, instead realize that is cash, pay taxes on it, and then use that money

as a bridge account sort of funding mechanism along the way. But yeah, dude, you're 26 years old. You are way further than so many 26-year-olds that I've ever met in my entire life. Could not be more proud of you. And this is just the coolest situation. Let us know what company you're working for and let us know if they're hiring because you guys got it really figured out over there. Now, our last question comes from Shane R. Shane says, hello, my name is Shane. I'm 30 years old and I make about $110,000 a year and I have $120,000 invested between my Roth IRA and my Roth 401k, and it's entirely in the S&P 500. I also have a $20,000 emergency fund for both myself and my single family rental property. Here's my question.

You guys talk a lot about diversification, but what is the reasoning? You commonly reference the returns of the S&P 500 when you compare it to target date funds or mutual funds, so is a diversified portfolio supposed to hedge against the asset? S&P 500 or is the intent to outperform the S&P 500 over a long period of time. How should I go about diversifying? Do I sell and reinvest portions of the S&P that I own or do I start deploying future earnings into things like REITs, corporate bonds, the Russell 2000, things that you guys talk about?

What a great question. Robert, you want to pick this one off? Yeah, Shane, that is a very thorough question. I truly appreciate specificity and it makes our lives a lot easier. So let me take a stab at this and then we'll hear from Austin. I think you're spot on. Why I have diversity is I never want all of my eggs in one basket. I know some people say you should just be all in on one thing.

The problem with that is when that thing goes bad, whether it's real estate or a specific sector in the stock market, then all of a sudden you don't have a lot of options. So I definitely like to hedge with diversity. And what that means for me is I'll have real estate, I'll have startups, I'll have precious metals, but I'll still also have the QQQs of the world for NASDAQ and VO for S&P 500. I just don't ever want to have to worry about going broke because one sector of investing goes bad. And I'm old enough to remember and have lived through it that I had a lot of friends in 2009, 10, and 11 that were all in on real estate. And what happened was they got wrecked. Banks

called in their portfolios. They couldn't pay for it. They lost everything. And so they went from the top to the bottom very quickly as the housing market crashed. So that is why I think diversity is ultimately important as you build your wealth so one sector can never change your lifestyle enough to cause you to go back to zero. That's why I do it. Yeah, I think that's a great answer. And my answer to this, Shane, is human emotion. If we think about it like this, you said you have nearly all your money invested into the S&P 500. So in 2008, the S&P 500 crashed 48% in, six months time. So let's say this $120,000 that you have invested, eventually you're a smart man. You're going to have millions of dollars invested over your lifetime, right? So the human emotion

side of me says, if I've got a million dollars in the stock market, and now my million is only worth $500,000, six months later, I am losing my mind. Should I sell? What the heck do I put this money in? Oh my God, I'm losing money every day. This is torture. What's going on? Right. Human emotion takes place and you forget the rule that the only people that get hurt on the roller coaster are the ones that get off before the ride is over. And so as a human, you might say, oh my gosh, I got to sell. The bottom's not in yet. I got to sell now. And then it's going to keep going down. I'll buy it later. And then it's just sort of this back and forth. And so I guess what I'm trying to get out here, Shane, is that human emotion, speaking to myself here, has caused

me to do some stupid things with money. I'd imagine it's caused Robert to do the same thing and everyone else listening. But with diversification begins to do. do is it begins to take out a little bit of that emotion. And I'm not saying that once you have, you know, your base built that you need to go to put all of your money now into, you know, artwork or farmland or real estate or cryptocurrency or precious metals or anything else you can imagine. But what I am saying is it's probably a cool idea to have 80% of your money invested into the tried and true index funds that we talk about with 20% of your net worth also allocated to maybe some of these call ETFs for a little bit of income. So when you do see volatility, the income can kind of offset

some of that emotion inside of you. Or maybe a portion of that 20% can be in precious metals, silver and gold have had a great year. So when you do see some of the volatility like we experienced on August 5th, you know, gold went up that day. And so that's kind of what I'm trying to get at here when we talk about diversification. Is it going to hedge? You could think of it as a hedge, but I personally don't think about it as a hedge against performance and risk and things like that. I think about it as a hedge against my own mental acuity and ability to handle the anxiety when the markets go crazy. So if I know that gold is trending higher, or if I know the income is always coming in every single month for my covered call ETFs, or if I know that Bitcoin, if you zoom out over 10 years, it's done pretty well. Or if I know that real estate, you know, does okay and all these things, right, I get to feel a little bit better about my entire portfolio.

And I agree, Robert, I don't ever want to be all in on something that can go wrong because, you know, let's be real. investments, investing involves risk. There's always risk to an investment, even if it is the S&P 500, right? Forty-eight percent in six months is pretty crazy. And so, Shane, to kind of bring things back around here, just want you to know that like, we of course want people to be wholly invested into the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, some really great index funds, and we want people to ride the wave. But we think that once you are wealthy enough, where you're now allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars to a single asset class, it's probably a good idea. to carve out a couple thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars out of that total portfolio and say,

okay, I'm going to get a couple precious metals. I'm going to put a little bit over here into these covered call ETFs. I want to put a little bit over into Masterworks or a little bit into Funrise or a little bit into, you know, whatever the next thing is, that allows me to have some what I call the Swan, sleep well at night mentality with my own portfolio. I know that was long-winded, but I think Shane really struck a chord with some other people that are like, wait a second, what is diversification? So I want to make sure we cover all the bases. Yeah, it was long-winded, but worth it for everyone listening. It's just so important because there are people out there that are going to tell you don't diversify. Go all in on one sector because you don't want to be spread too thin and not be able to capitalize on the gains

in a certain sector. From someone who's older, I have lived through so many crashes, so many downswings in the markets, and I can tell you for a fact, I am glad I've never been all in on one sector because I can sleep at night knowing I'm never going to go broke if the housing market crashes or the S&P 500 crashes or crypto crashes because I have that diversification. And that's why we speak of it so much, especially during uncertain economic times because there are ways to hedge and sometimes prevail by having that diversification. I love that, Robert. And everyone, do not forget the Rich Habits Network is officially live. We have over 300 community members now. Robert, we had our second weekly live stream happen. I think we had like 180 people show up to the Zoom call. It was a blast. We talked about how the markets are broadening right now. RSP, that ETF is doing incredibly well, all the different sectors of the markets like financials, utilities, communication, healthcare, they're all hitting these new all-time highs, whereas tech is still kind of trying to hit a new all-time high. So we're trying to find you guys a little bit of insights,

both for the markets, as well as answer your questions in real time, give you some perspective as it relates to Robert's business acumen, my sort of nerdiness, and it's always a good time. So if you want to join us for these weekly live streams every single Tuesday night, don't forget to join the Rich Habits Network. We have raised prices now to $97 a month. They were 77. Over 300 people got in at 77, so there'll be grandfathered in now in perpetuity. But you can, of course, still join us now at $97 a month.

I'm always available in the DMs, and you can ask any question you want, and we're definitely going to get back to you. It's so much fun. We're having a blast in there, and we can't wait to see you in there. Yes, Austin. And we also have to make sure everyone understands that by joining, you are not just getting access to Austin and I weekly on these live streams. You're getting access to all of the modules that we're creating these educational modules.

You're getting access to all of our tools. But also, the Rich Habits Network is exactly that. We have an incredible network and community of people already over 300 of them joined. And it is just going to be awesome for the future for each and every one. of you and I believe between the newsletter, the modules, the tools, the weekly live streams, and everything happening in school, that this will be the quintessential premier community on the internet for people that are trying to level up their game, not just in mindset or personal finance, but also in business, understanding the stock market, crypto, and everything in between.

So I couldn't be more excited for the future of the Rich Habits Network. I am so pumped. So of course, there's a link in the show notes. or just type in Rich Habits Network on Google and it should pop right up. And as always, everyone, thank you so much for joining us on this week's episode of the Rich Habits podcast and we'll see you on Thursday.