Rich Habits Podcast - 85: Side Hustles for Busy People (including Parents)

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

In this week's episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, Robert Croak and Austin Hankwitz share their favorite side hustles for busy people (including parents). ---⭐️ ⁠Click here⁠ to join our FREE webinar with NEOS Investments! 💥 ⁠Click here⁠ to sign up for the Rich Habits Network!💥 ⁠Click here⁠ to subscribe to the Rich Habits Newsletter!---⚡️ Sign up for Moby to stay up-to-date on the markets in only 5 minutes per day, click here!---🎨 Skip the waitlist and invest in blue-chip art for the very first time by signing up for Masterworks: masterworks.art/richhabitsInvest in shares in great masterpieces from artists like Pablo Picasso, Banksy, Warhol, and more.Masterworks affiliated issuers have now conducted more than 420 offerings of securities, representing over $1.02 billion in Art Investments, as of June 30, 2024.See important Masterworks disclosures: masterworks.com/cd---⭐ 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.

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That was easy. 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 advised some of the most well-known fintech companies around the world. Now, 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. So, Robert, what are we going to be talking about in today's episode? In today's episode of the Rich Habits podcast, we're sharing our favorite side hustles for busy parents. As entrepreneurs, we know how hectic life can be, especially when you're going to. balancing a full-time job and everything that comes along with it. But for some of you, you're also raising your children and trying to prepare them for the future. As we know, that can be a lot. And that's why this week's episode, we decided we're going to share some of

our favorite side hustle ideas that might both fit into your schedule and offer meaningful income potential. We're going to talk through what to look for in a side hustle, why flexibility and scalability are key and specific ideas that you can implement, even if you're going to talk to if your time is limited. This episode's going to be a lot of fun, Robert. I know we've gotten a lot of questions inside the Rich Habits Network as of late. Pretty much saying, hey, guys, I've got two kids, but I need to make an extra four, six, $800 a month.

What are some of your side hustle ideas? This episode is answering all those questions. Now, Robert, before we get started, why don't you share with the audience, too, as to why we think it's important to have a side hustle to begin with, and then what that money could be used for? Yeah, I love this. and prefacing this episode is really important because so many people out there listening right now might be like, why would I want a side hustle? I already have a career. I already have a full-time job. But the bottom line is so many people that I deal with on a day-to-day basis might have that career,

might already have a really nice job, but the problem is they're not quite making ends meet and living paycheck to paycheck. And they're not able to put away that 15% a month or any meaningful amount of money to go towards retirement, and that's why I love the idea of a side hustle. If you can take that side hustle money and put it towards your investment accounts and your retirement and find a formula that works so you can get ahead and get out of the rat race of living paycheck to paycheck if you are. And not just living paycheck to paycheck. I mean, Robert, I wasn't living paycheck to paycheck when I had my side hustle.

I think I was like 23, 24 years old. I was out of college. I was making $65,000 to $75,000 a year at my job. And I was selling website template. to dog groomers. I was charging $1,000 for these websites, and it was how I made extra income, and what did I do with that? I used that money to save up for a down payment on a house. I used that money to pay off credit card debt. I used that money to invest toward retirement, right? So this wasn't me just trying to kind of, you know, get out of the hamster wheel of living

paycheck to paycheck, because I know a lot of listeners aren't in that hamster wheel. But I do know a lot of listeners want to get ahead with their retirement. They want to maybe have a little extra every month that they could put toward that new down payment because they want to buy that next residence or they want to buy that next car or pay off that credit card debt or that medical debt just a little bit faster. And so if you are a busy parent listening right now, there's a ton of different side hustles that we're going to talk about in this episode. I think you just solved one of the great misnomer's of the internet and you don't even realize you just did it. One of the things that I think troubles people that are living, you know, paycheck to paycheck or maybe they're doing okay, but they want to make extra money, is that side hustle sounds beneath them. So I think right here today, we should rename the side hustle, make it more approachable,

and make it sound more profound, and we're going to change the name to supplemental hustle. I think that'll be great for people in the future, so they realize that it's not a side hustle that's beneath them, walking dogs or building these websites or any of this stuff. It's supplemental. That just sounds so much better to me that you're supplementing your income so you can have a greater future. So I really love that calling it supplemental, because I think that will really be a really good. really change people's mindset towards adding additional income.

Well, let's jump into the first idea here. And this idea came to me because it happened to me. Now, the first side hustle idea that Robert and I want to share are the DoorDash, the Uber Eats, the Instacarts of the world, right? These are the apps on your phone. You can go jump in the minivan, whatever car you have, and you can go make money while driving around and delivering things. Now, the reason why I wanted to include this, and it's the first one I thought of,

was I was in Gatlinburg, Tennessee for a weekend last year, and I was at Dollywood. I was doing a whole thing, and my girlfriend and I decided to Uber eat some food back to the cabin we were renting. And this wonderful woman pulled up, and she delivered my food for me, and I looked in the back seat, and she had two children, just sitting in the back seat with her. And so that's when it clicked, like, wait a second. She is a busy mother who's out here making some extra coin with her children, full supervision. They're on the iPad.

They're playing the puzzle, whatever they're doing in the back seat. and she's not paying someone to watch the kids. The kids aren't alone somewhere unsafe. They're with her in the back of her car. And so this DoorDash, Uber Eats, Instacart, is a little different. We'll talk about that one. But these are great places to start as someone who is busy and looking for a way to make an extra $200, $400, $600 a month of supplemental income to put toward those

retirement goals or the debt payoff, right? Now, Robert, we mentioned Instacart, and here's why I think Instacart's a fun one. Now, I don't know about you, Robert, but I remember on the weekends and sometimes in the evenings during the week, I'd go with my mom to the grocery store. And so I'd have to follow her around. I'd be in the card. I'm walking around. I'm holding her hand.

I'm helping her find stuff, whatever. Imagine now shopping on someone's behalf via Instacart and bringing the kids with you to go do that. Again, you're not finding the babysitter. You don't have to go find someone to watch the kids. The kids aren't, you know, alone and unsafe. They're with you on the journey of getting some extra money. And if it's Instacart, congrats. You're now teaching your kid a wonderful life lesson of how to shop at a grocery store,

find the discounts, do the right things, the checkout process, be, you know, nice to people, it's a whole thing. So the DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Instacart side hustle is my favorite for busy parents right now. So many people, you've witnessed it in our public lives. When I go live on TikTok, when we go live on Instagram, they talk about, oh, it's easy for you. You guys have money. Oh, it's easy for you. You guys have great careers. The problem is this is a victim mentality, and that's why I love services like Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Instacart, because you can literally get started today, literally. So there's no excuse to not make a victim mentality. And that's why I love services like Uber Eats, supplemental income or income at all because there's so many of these services available

that you can literally start today that's what I love about it and one of my favorite stories about just being really intelligent about this supplemental hustle is I took an Uber last year at the Super Bowl I got in this car it was super clean he had waters in the back he had like all this stuff laid out it was beautiful and he was a very clean cut guy around 45 or 50 so I had to know this story so I started talking to him I'm like, so what do you do? How long have you been an Uber driver? He's like, oh, I'm a mechanical engineer. I make $150,000 a year. I have a wife and two kids. I'm like, well, why are you Uber driving? He goes, man, he goes, I love it on Sundays. The kids and the wife go do the dance thing and they're doing

all of that. He goes, I drive Uber every single Sunday for five or six hours and that money pays for all of our vacations every single year. And I was like, wow, this is so smart. And he's like, yeah, I've got it in a separate brokerage account. I invest it. And then when we want to take our nice vacation, I don't have to take it out of my regular income that goes to the household. So I think this is a great story for everyone to realize. Having supplemental income is not something to be frowned upon. It's not something you should look down on. It should be something you should look at as a way to accelerate yourself to financial freedom and get to retirement early because you could every Sunday like this engineer gentleman, you could sit around the house while the wife and kids are gone,

or you could be milling around in the house, you know, raking leaves or doing whatever. But instead, he chose every Sunday to take four or five hours in Uber Drive. And I love the story and the use of the funds. It's such a great story. So let's now move on to our second idea, which is staying on this idea of sort of using the apps that are out there, very simple to download these different types of apps, but niching down a little bit. I would argue, Robert, that everyone in your neighborhood has a pet, right? We got dogs, we got cats, we got orangutans.

I don't know what kind of pet y'all got. Goats, baby goats, whatever? Baby goats. Yeah, hey, I'll tell you what, there's a goat down the street here for me in Nashville. Using Rover, using some of these dog sitting apps, I can't tell you how much thousands of dollars that I've spent over the last probably two and a half three years now where I'd go on a week-long vacation and I'd have to pay $746 on Rover, one of these dog-sitting apps to take my dog and have it sit at someone's house to be, you know, looked after.

I had a friend that was the executive assistant to a CEO of a $10 billion company. She was making $100,000 a year. I mean, this is a very legit job, and she was making great money. But her favorite way to spend her weekend was dog sitting. And I remember asking her, how many dogs did you sit this weekend? And she's like, oh, I had four that came over for the weekend. I made about $350 ahead. So I was making $1,000 on the weekend just sitting dogs.

And I'm like, oh, my gosh, right? So if you're a busy parent and you can't leave the house for whatever reason, you got to stay at home or you got to do these things. There's a ton of different people in the Facebook groups. This is on Rover. This is on whatever else. Hey, guys, I've got some availability for dog sitting. I have a dog myself or I've got the bulls. I got the treats. I got whatever. I'm going to guarantee so many walks. Whatever it is, there's a lot of opportunity out there to make money with pets. So if you can come up with some of that stuff, you're on the right track. Yeah, I look at it this way. I live in downtown St. Petersburg and it's all high. rises. And when you look at the facts right now out there in the economy and in the world,

especially in the United States, younger people are not having as many kids. They're really into animals, their pets, and plants. And so I was talking to two women that live in my building and they walk dogs. And for the first year, they were on Rover. Then they pivoted off of Rover once they built a base of customers. And they're doing it independently. And the one woman is very nice. And I'm like, I got to know the numbers. Explain to me the number. numbers. And she said she's on track to make six figures this year walking dogs in the neighborhood because there's so many affluent people in these four to six block radius of where I live. And all of them travel a lot or their snowbirds. And they just constantly need help with

their animals. And so you think about it, almost everyone loves dogs. I know I do. And it's just such a great side hustle that pays well. And it's so easy to get started because you don't have any upfront cost. You don't have to invest anything. With Rover, you do a little training seminar. I think it takes an hour and that's it and you are up and running. So I love this one and an oddball part of this category is poop pickup. We joke about it, but there's so many companies out there that are absolutely printing money, just cleaning up for affluent customers around these areas. So there's a lot of ways to make money in this category like Rover. And I really love this one. Right there with you. I remember when my girlfriend, to pass some time, she was really excited because she signed up for Rover. And every day, she'd go and walk dogs, one, two, sometimes three dogs a day around the neighborhood, just in our neighborhood. And sure, we have about 100, maybe 200 houses in here, but this was her just having fun. And I went with her sometimes, right? So back to the parent idea of, oh, I got to take the kids with me, whatever I do, the kids got to come. Maybe the kids go to the grocery store at the Instacart, or they go to the car with you for the Uber Eats and delivery.

Maybe they go to the high rise and they pick up the dog with you. You guys can walk around. They can pet the dog and enjoy themselves. I mean, these are all side hustle ideas that are kid-friendly and really thinking about sort of having that flexibility and that scalability. You know, I remember let's go way back to some of my side hustles. One of my funniest side hustles ever is back when Fago was really, really popular. And we used to buy Fago locally and sell it on eBay to all the people that lived in California and other parts of the country where Fago wasn't available. and they just love the flavors of Fago,

and we would arbitrage that and sell a ton of it online. So there's always a way to make money if you're willing to put yourself out there and figure it out. 100%. Now, moving on to our next side hustle idea, this one's a little bit more for the person who has to stay home, maybe they're tech savvy, maybe they're really good on the computer,

sending scheduling, emails, things like that. And that's potentially becoming a virtual assistant, right? More and more businesses are hiring virtual assistants. handle these administrative tasks like email management, scheduling, and sometimes even customer service. So for parents who are already juggling the family life, this can be a natural fit for you. You're essentially getting paid to do tasks, so you probably already have a knack for if you're someone who's good with technology. You can set your own hours, and as you build up your experience, you can begin to maybe specialize in specific services like social media management or even,

you know, leaning into different types of platforms like Monday.com or Asana for project coordination to increase your earning potential. So being a virtual assistant in 2024 and 2025 especially is a no-brainer for someone who understands using AI, understands how to use some of these different technologies, has a decent at-home setup, kind of like what Robert and I do here, and aren't afraid to put in the hours on the keyboard. Yeah, there's just so many ways. If you're doing this from home and doing it anything like a virtual assistant or a tutor, there's just hundreds and hundreds of options you can do. It could be teaching a language. It could be reading. It could be so many different things to make this extra money every single month. And that's why I love a podcast episode like this,

because I think what it does, everyone hears about these things, but I don't think they take action as much as they should. And I think this episode, and I hope this episode really opens people up to that, to the idea that what if I made an extra $500 to $1,000 a month from home or in an exterior side hustle where you're out and about. And I did all of that and took all that money and just invested it. It would be life changing for most people. And that's why I love this episode talking about ways that are very easy and cost nothing to get started. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, just give yourself the goal, right? I think a lot of us, we might get intimidated by the, oh gosh, Austin's selling these websites for $1,000. I could never make $1,000 doing that.

Or, oh, man, I got to go sign up for Uber. That's a lot of work. Or, oh, I got to go do this or that. Just make yourself a goal of making your first $100 of supplemental income. I don't care how it gets done. But once you make that first $100 and it hits your Venmo or your cash app or your bank account or however you're making this money, then you really begin to realize, wait a second, I think I can make $200. I think I can make $500. I can go make $1,000.

And so to Robert's point, by putting this money in a brokerage account or by using this money to pay off high interest debt, you just get to see very clearly the positive impact on your net worth and your long-term financial future of having this earned income here, the supplemental income. So it's just such a fun episode talking about this. Now, the last point I want to share, and we've talked about this one in the past, but recently, Robert, you've been leading in on it. It's been a lot of fun, and I've got a lot of friends that are doing this as well. I mean, it is such a great idea, especially if you're a creative person who likes to be in front of the camera, and that is a TikTok shop affiliate. Becoming an affiliate on TikTok, right? You're scrolling your four

you page you see these people that are talking about a charger or for example this is a power bank by anchor and i paid about 80 dollars for it and i found it on my tictock for you page and i guarantee the person who made the video about that that caught my eye and maybe want to buy it made 10 15 maybe 20 of commission just by me buying a product i know i need it so tick tock shop affiliates are a lot of fun there's a ton of different products out there there's clothing there's electronics there's silly bands, there's puzzles, there's a lot of cool things that you guys can affiliate and make videos about, have them go viral and make commission as people buy the product that you're trying to talk about and have go viral. So Robert, I'll pause there. What's your perspective on

TikTok shop and using it as a way as a side hustle? I think it is 100% the gold rush of the internet right now. And I want to be very, very clear. So many people that think being an affiliate means you have to have 50 or 100 or 250,000 followers. Well, I'll tell you. you what, I can tell you for firsthand, you don't. Right now we have a girl, very nice young lady that's working with us. She has under 10,000 followers on TikTok. She's creative and she is a silly band's affiliate. And for the month of September, she made over $15,000. That's right, $15,000 for herself because she went viral multiple times promoting the silly bands product. So if you think about that $15,000 off of her commissions from us in one month. That's life-changing money for most people. And it doesn't

have to be crazy. You could have 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 followers, 6,000 followers and still make maybe $500 to $2,000, even if you don't go really viral like she did. And I think it's the easiest money as long as you do a few things. Make sure you put out good content, actually work to make the content good. And then I would say number two important is pick products that align with your audience, even if you have a small audience. Because if your audience is mostly XYZ, you don't want to pick a product that doesn't align with them. So you want to make sure that the product selection aligns with your audience and what you believe they would want to buy that they think is fun or cool or is needed. So I love TikTok shop affiliates. And we're seeing it firsthand every single day with

Silly bands of how crazy we are going. And right now it's for Halloween. We're doing these special buckets for Halloween for all the people out there that don't really want to give away candy because of the liabilities or they're fearful. And SillyBans is such a great product to give away. So just keep that in mind. TikTok shop affiliates are crushing it. And there's got to be something out there you could sell and give it a try. And this could be, you know, someone who might be on the younger side, let's say in your 20s or 30s.

This could be something that you and your partner do, right? Hey, I'm going to make a video of you using a. wearing this t-shirt or this hat or you know explaining something like this or that that people might want i mean let me just log into my t-tok real quick robert and show people some of the products that they can use all right so just on my t-tok shop landing page products that i can affiliate if i wanted to some really cool sneakers from rebuck some of these jerry fuel cans a couple of t-shirts i'm seeing some chargers of course i see silly bands even books right here's a book that i've read that i can make a video about tons of different things now that are these are sunglasses. I mean, there's so many cool things on here that if I want to make a video

wearing some sunglasses and telling people, hey, these are my favorite, whatever is how I wear them, this is what I like about them. If you want to buy them, here's the link, I would get commissioned for that. And now anyone can go do that themselves as a side hustle at home. Maybe, kind of coming back to the idea of parents and children, maybe it's a child's product. I saw something on here about a child using magnets to, you know, instead of the iPad, the kids using a pen with magnets and little balls to play around. Maybe your child can help you sell this really cool, you know, product or whatever that you might be affiliating. So I guess what we're trying to say here is that there are so many different ways to make money as a busy parent, no matter if you've got the

capital to start a new business, you have no capital. All you have is time. All you have is a cell phone with a camera on it and TikTok. I mean, there's tons of different ways, but just know that having the supplemental income is not something that you should be afraid of or ashamed of making. It's going to help you move closer to reaching your financial goals or in that guy's case, taking its family on a wonderful vacation once a year. Yeah, and one of the things for me that I would say is a key takeaway here is understanding, you always hear me talk about income and buckets. A side hustle, this supplemental hustle does not need to be $5,000 or $10,000 a month.

It could literally be, I want to make $800 a month so I can put it towards investing. I want to make $500 a month because we want to renovate. our kitchen in two years and that's going to pay for the kitchen. You should have a goal for it and you should have an idea of how you can scale it because we want to make sure whatever this supplemental hustle is that it fits with your skill set and your lifestyle so you can implement it into your daily life seamlessly and then reap the rewards from the financial benefits. And that's just it. We just really want to help everyone understand the yes, groceries are expensive right now. Insurance is expensive. it. Everything is rent is expensive. But guess what? There's always a workaround to set yourself up for

financial freedom if you're willing to listen and you're willing to learn. What a awesome episode of the Rich Habits podcast this week, Robert. I hope that you all really enjoyed this. And before we move on to our Q&A section of the episode, I want to remind people, hit us with the follow. If that's a subscribe on YouTube, a follow on Spotify or Apple or wherever you listen. But also more importantly, if you know someone who's looking for some side hustle inspiration that might be a busy parent, maybe it's your cousin, maybe it's your niece, maybe it's your sister or your aunt, you have someone in your network and your community that's looking for ways to make some extra money online and you think this episode could be helpful for them, send it to them.

Share this episode with a friend. We love it when you all do that and it really means the world to us. Now let's take a moment to give a quick shout out to one of today's sponsors, Moby. The Moby app provides busy professionals with a filtered view on the most important financial news of the day and latest research on profitable trends in the stock market, all with notifications straight to your phone that only take three to five minutes to read. That's right, Austin. Moby's insights are driven by the team's experience at Morgan Stanley, Bank of America,

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And you know that the ultimate goal of the rich habits community is to help you take back control of your money. Moby is one of those tools that we believe will help you do just that. Check out the link for Moby Premium in the show notes below or in our stand stores. And as always, let us know if you have any. questions. So our first question comes from John Jay via Instagram. And remember, you have a question for us. You can ask it via Instagram at Rich Habits Podcast. You can shoot us a DM. You can email us at Rich Habits Podcast at gmail.com or, and this is what we recommend, you can join the Rich Habits Network and

your question will absolutely get answered either in the network, in the DMs or during one of our weekly live streams. So John Jay asks, listening to your paycheck to paycheck podcast. Am I supposed to build an emergency fund before I start paying off my debt? What do you guys think about this? So to remind everyone, last week's episode was an awesome one. Robert and I broke down how to escape this sort of vicious cycle of living paycheck to paycheck, and it seems like John really enjoyed it. And his question was around this idea of like, when does the emergency fund really come into play? Now, Dave Ramsey says that you should have a $1,000 emergency fund before you begin paying off your debt. I argue that that's probably not enough. So when we're over here thinking about what

should your emergency fund be? I like to think about it as phase one and as phase two. Phase one emergency fund is probably $3,000 to $5,000, right? This is enough money between you and life where if something crazy happened, a medical expense came out of nowhere, something that's due with your children, maybe the car broke down, you don't have to swipe that high-interest credit card keeping you into this vicious cycle of living paycheck to paycheck. But after you pay off that debt, which in that process, it's probably a good idea to pause your investing because, again, you can't out-invest high-interest debt. It's a good idea to beef up that emergency fund.

So for Robert and I, we like to say three, six months of expenses, somewhere in that range right for everybody. Personally, I have $30,000 to $40,000 at any given time in my emergency fund, because I think any more than that, you're kind of missing out on the gains of the stock market by keeping it in cash. But Robert, what's your thoughts on this one? Yeah, I agree, John. Great question. In my opinion, I'm always a little bit on the other side of the fence when it comes to emergency funds. So many people that are out there say six months. I like where Austin's at of three or four months.

Because at the end of the day, if you have money invested into these ETFs or stocks or cryptocurrencies, you can get the money whenever you need it anyway, as long as it's not in a retirement fund. So I always like to have most of my money working for me. You always hear me say that if you have money sitting, it's dead money. You have to have your money work as hard for you as you work to get it. So for me, I keep an emergency fund, but it's usually more like one to two months. because I want all of my money working. And if I get into a pickle or I need some cash for an investment or whatever,

I can grab it so quickly that I don't like to leave that much sitting around. So that's my take on the emergency fund. And definitely, definitely, you should pause the 401k match and get the high interest debt paid off because like Austin said, you can't out-invest high-interest debt. And what that means is you always hear us talk about positive arbitrage of your money. So let's talk about it. high interest debt is a credit card. Let's say it's 28 to 30 percent and you're just making minimum

payments but you're over here investing in the stock market making 10 or 12 percent. Well, you're always going to lose that battle because you're not even surpassing the amount of interest you're paying on the high interest debt. So that's why you want to pay that off first. So I'm agreeing with Austin that I think you should have an emergency fund no matter what of a few thousand dollars, but then immediately I would get the high interest debt paid off and keep it that way. as much as possible because people that live with balances on their credit cards for month after month and year after year usually never make it to financial freedom because they're getting eaten alive with high interest debt. So our next question comes from Stephen D from inside

the rich habits network. Stephen says, hey Robert, I was wondering if you had any tips on time management between work, spending time with my family, health and fitness, and even cooking. It's difficult to find enough time in the allotted 24 hours to accomplish everything. I'm interested in finding additional time each day to work on building some new skills, maybe even some new side hustles. This community has a ton of perspective and knowledge on it, and I'd love to hear Robert, as well as anyone other's perspective. Yeah, this is a great question and one of my favorite things to tackle. And I think it's really tough for business owners and entrepreneurs, and they face this every day. And I would say, first and foremost, you have to be realistic of how much you can achieve in a day.

So many people wake up every morning without a plan. and that is what I would say is your number one goal. I like to start out every single day by making my to-do list the day before. Because if I look at my calendar the day before, I know how much of my day is already called for. And what I like to do then is make a to-do list around that. And then from the to-do list, I try to tackle the hard things first. Because guess what?

If you tackle the hard things later, they won't get done because you'll be tired, you'll be hungry, you'll be sick and tired of the day and want to go home. and relax. So tackle the hard things first. That is what I think is one of the most important parts because at the end of the day you want to stay on track. Because like anything else, this snowball's against you if you don't control it. One of the other things that I know is going to sound harsh, but I want all of you to consider really, really seriously is sticking to your schedule as much as possible. And what does that mean? It means not letting your brother, your friend, your mother, somebody at the store that you ran into you haven't seen in a few months take away from your day it's so easy for someone to randomly call you and say hey what's up bill what's going on and you get into a 25 minute conversation about nothing and then the rest of your day is shot because you're playing catch up so guard your time very very carefully and i would say for me i have a hard rule if the call is not scheduled i don't answer it so in your case if it's your mother or your wife or your father your

kids, that's different. But for everyone else, you need to guard your time very, very carefully, because if you don't, you will find yourself perpetually being behind and not being able to control your day. And then I would say thirdly, that kind of goes hand in hand with your schedule, is try to time box that time. You've heard the saying all the time that that meeting could have been an email. Well, you need to think like that. Because so many of us agree, hey, can I pick your brain for 20 minutes? Or, hey, work sends you a Zoom call. it takes 45 minutes, it could have been 15 minutes. So guard your time very wisely, especially your personal time, because if you don't,

it will get eaten up every single day and you'll get distracted and you'll never get to where you want to in life. I think all those perspectives and those experiences, Robert, were great. I largely agree with all of that there. Stephen, you mentioned cooking as one of the things that you spend time on. Maybe there's a world where you can learn some maybe new one pot meals. I know my girlfriend loves to cook her one pot meals. that take, call it 30 to 45 minutes.

I also think that coming back to this idea, I don't mean to sound harsh here, but it's something I had to realize myself when I was building my side hustle but turned into this business, sometimes you got to sleep less. I remember there was a time where I went nine or 12 months in 2021,

2020 to 2020, where I would work my normal nine to five jobs, so let's call it nine to maybe six after a commute. I'd get home and then let's call it at eight or nine o'clock, I'd start working my side hustle, and I'd work that till about midnight, sometimes 2 a.m. And so I would have to wake up at 6.30 for my normal 9 to 5 job, have to go work out, do all these number of things.

And now I'm only sleeping five hours a day. I'd sleep a little bit more on the weekends. It really just comes down to like how important is that one thing to you. I'm not saying that everyone needs to sleep five hours a day because that's just not healthy. But it might be a season of your life like it was for mine where I was only sleeping a little bit during the week. And I was spending a lot of time on the weekends and doing this and that, allowing me to build the life. So, Stephen, I don't know what you are trying to build around your life. if you mentioned you want to just build and learn new skills, likely you can get some sleep around that. But at the end of the day, I do want to leave you with a quote here from Bill Gates that I think is one of my favorite quotes of all time.

Most people overestimate what they can achieve in one year and underestimate what they can achieve in 10 years. So what does that mean? It means as someone who's always trying to optimize the minutes, the hours, the days, oh, this, this and that. Like, okay, cool, that's great. I think what is more important is making sure that you're climbing up the right ladder. you're rowing in the right boat in the right direction versus I'm doing all these things and I feel like I'm being productive but I'm not actually learning anything or inching closer to my goals. You can make a little bit of progress every single day in the right direction and over a two, five, 10 year period of time, you become a master at it, right? Where if you feel like you're going to, you know, make a whole hours worth or two or three or four hours a day worth of progress towards something, but it burns you out, you can't do it for more than a couple weeks.

oh my gosh, I don't know what's going on anymore. That's how people just get stuck in this hamster wheel of not really being productive or good with their time. So just think about that quote. Yeah, and I want to add one more thing to this that really resonates with me. And that is be willing to cut your losses, whether it's a relationship, a consulting gig, an investment, be willing to cut your losses and not spend so much time on it because you care or you've known this person a long time because there's one thing you can't get back is time. And you have to understand to make time work for you as efficiently as you can. And it's

okay if you want to waste time on the weekends. If you want to go to farmers markets and do all that, that's great. As long as you're doing it intentionally, because if you just waste time because you don't have a plan for your life, that is just a terrible, terrible strategy. Now before we move on to our final question, here's something interesting for you, Robert. Bank of America just released a new report that over 80% of multi-millionaire respondents aged 43 and younger invest in or are looking to invest in fine art as a portion of their portfolio. And that kind of makes sense to us because we diversify with art ourselves and we've both been using Masterworks art investing platform to diversify for what like five years now. That's right. I mean both Robert and I

both invests with Masterworks, and we even interviewed their founder and CEO Scott Lynn on the show just the other week. Today, they have now hit over 950,000 users and a billion dollars in capital raised because with Masterworks, you do not need to be an art expert or spend millions to start investing. Exactly. And the fact that Masterworks has successfully exited 23 paintings to date With each returning a profit, does it hurt either? Listeners can learn more at masterworks.art front slash rich habits, which is also shown in the show notes of this episode. And as with any investment, past performance is not indicative of future returns.

Investing involves risk. There are some important regulation aid disclosures, and they can be found at masterworks.com forward slash CD. So our final question comes from Audrey B. Audrey says, Hi, hi, Austin and Robert. I've been listening to your show ever since it's. started. Thank you so much for being awesome with your tips and advice. I've really come a long way

in my investment journey thanks to your podcast. Here's my question. I bought a short-term rental for $595,000 and I manage it from across the country. I currently have 13% down and the interest rate is 7.5%. My mortgage is $5,000 a month and with HOA fees, I pay about $6,000 a month. With hosting income, it's pretty much break-even or even a slight loss due to lots of competition, even though it's in a popular tourist location, aka Orlando. I'm managing the payments relatively fine. I sometimes have to pay out of pocket, but the net expenses are maybe negative $10,000 a year.

If I invest another $41,000, I'll have a 20% down payment, and I'll be able to refinance and lower my monthly rate as well as get rid of PMI. Should I put more money into it, or does it seem like it's a bad investment? I'm 28 years old, I have no kids, and I make $240,000 a year. Robert, you want to start this one off?

Yeah, I think this is a great question, and I'll take a stab at it. So here's my opinion. You say that the rental property is in Orlando. And right now, the average capital appreciation in Orlando year over year is right around 9.5%. And so if you look at that and you consider that you have a $600,000 home, so let's say of that $600,000 home, you have capital appreciation of 9.5%.

So you're going to be at about $56,000, $57,000 a year in capital appreciation. So if you look at the small amount of negative cash flow right now because of management fees and HOA and everything else, of $10,000, you're still really doing well for the long term because the appreciation on the property. So even though you're coming out of pocket $10,000 average per year, I still think it's a hold for me to keep the property, enjoy some of the tax benefits and the capital appreciation because you can find ways to be more efficient. you can always raise rents down the road and find a better scenario to lower that cash burn, even though it's less than $1,000 a month. That's my take on it. I would not put the additional money in just to bring down the payment a little bit. I don't think that makes sense because, again, putting that additional money into the markets

is going to get you that 10, 11, 12% return per year. So all in all, you're in a great spot. And I wouldn't worry so much about the negative cash flow per month. as long as it doesn't accelerate higher. I'm going to play devil's advocate. I'm in a straw man that she should sell it, and here's why. She already put down $77,000 to buy this house. That's $77,000 a year ago, right?

The stock market's up 33% over the last 12 months. She would have made $15,000, $20,000 on that, but instead now she's net negative $10,000 and has to kind of balance now, not knowing how much she might have to pull out of pocket, the anxiety that might come with that. Now she's saying, I want to put another $41,000 on, top of the 77. We're now talking about $120,000 in one property of an Airbnb that may or may not rent correctly. She's also having no worry about refunding tenants, having all these cleaning fees.

$120,000 is a lot of money to have tied up in a single asset. I have no idea how much you have invested elsewhere, Audrey. Maybe this is, you know, nothing. You make $240,000 a year. So obviously, you've got the funds to make enough and have a good base built, I'm sure. But still, adding another $41,000 into what seems like a negative cash flowing idea just doesn't make sense to me. Sure, it could go up by 6, 7, 8, 9, 10% as an annual appreciation in Orlando. But what sucks about that is you don't see that money. That's not real money. It's imaginary money.

And if imaginary money has taught me anything, my friend Jacob bought a Airbnb in Gatlinburg that went up by $80,000 after he bought it. Well, now he's selling it for less than he bought it for because no one's buying it. despite what redfin and these other kind of, you know, things are telling them what the Zestimate might be. And so I would much rather have cash flow than, you know, hypothetical gains of capital appreciation. But again, you do make a quarter million dollars a year with no kids. And so you're doing pretty well for yourself. You could probably take this hit.

I just would rather have that $120,000 working for me in the markets where it's liquid. If I want the income, you can now deploy that into SPY or QQQQI in a way that pays you over $1,000 a month of tax-free income. So I would sell it. I'd get out of it. and I'd put it in something more liquid. Okay, one more thing to think about since you played devil's advocate is it's a short-term rental. So if she's making that much money, she needs tax write-offs. If she's only owned this for one year, she could do a lot of different things with this to write it down,

come up with ways for tax strategies, bonus depreciation. There's a lot of ways to save taxes with a short-term rental as well. So we've got to look at that kind of option also. I totally agree. I think Audrey here is in a sticky situation and she's got to run some real numbers and really look herself in the mirror and say, what do I want to do with my money? And how important is that positive cash flow for me on a monthly and annualized basis? Audrey, as well as everyone else, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Rich Habits podcast. Again, don't forget, hit us with the follow button.

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