The Personal Finance Podcast - 16 Money Stats That Will Blow Your Mind (These Are Wild!)

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

In this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to talk about 16 personal finance stats that will blow your mind. How Andrew Can Help You:  Don't let another year pass by without making significant strides toward your dreams. "Master Your Money Goals" is your pathway to a future where your aspirations are not just wishes but realities. Enroll now and make this year count! Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Learn to invest by joining  Index Fund Pro! This is Andrew’s course teaching you how to invest!  Watch The Master Money Youtube Channel!  Ask Andrew a question on Instagram or TikTok.  Learn how to get out of Debt by joining our Free Course  Leave Feedback or Episode Requests here.  Thanks to Our Amazing Sponsors for supporting The Personal Finance Podcast. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at  shopify.com/pfp Monarch Money: Get an extended 30 day free trial at monarchmoney/pfp  Links Mentioned in This Episode:  Rocket Money Connect With Andrew on Social Media:  Instagram  TikTok Twitter  Master Money Website  Master Money Youtube Channel   Free Guides:   The Stairway to Wealth: The Order of Operations for your Money  How to Negotiate Your Salary  The 75 Day Money Challenge  Get out Of Debt Fast  Take the Money Personality Quiz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. On this episode of the personal finance podcast, 16 personal finance stats that will absolutely blow your mind this year. What's this up, everybody, and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew founder of mastermoney.com. And today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to be talking about 16 personal finance stats that will blow your mind. If you guys have any questions, make sure to hit us up on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter,

at Mastermoney Co, and follow us on Spotify. Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on it. If you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Cannot thank you guys enough

for leaving those five-star ratings and reviews. We finally crossed the thousand review mark on Apple Podcasts. Cannot thank you guys enough for doing that. And on Spotify, I think we're getting closer to like 3,000 reviews. So really, really appreciate you guys leaving those ratings and reviews. They mean the world to me when you

leave those five-star ratings and reviews, and they help other people find this podcast as well. So today, we are going to be diving into 16 personal finance stats that I think will be really, really insightful for you and really be something that you can take action on. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through each and every single one of these stats, and then I'm going to tell you, hey, if you're in this situation, here's exactly what you need to do to get yourself out of this situation. So I don't want to waste any more time. Let's get into it.

Now, the first one is one that I am extremely passionate about changing this statistic. I think most of us need to understand that a lot of people in our lives are on this path, and we need to change this statistic. Now, a lot of you listen to this podcast, maybe you've been listening for a while, and maybe you've surrounded yourself with some other people who are also interested in personal finance. So it may not seem like this is true. But let me tell you, I talk to so many different people about their finances. This is absolutely true.

And the stat is up to 64% of Americans are on pace to retire completely broke. This is one of the most sad things that I can ever see because you have the opportunity to change your retirement and change your financial future. You have the ability to be able to retire with freedom, to retire without stress or anxiety. And this study by GoBanking Rates came out that 64% of American workers are expected to retire with less than $10,000 in their retirement. savings account, while close to half of all correspondents claim they had no money set aside for

retirement. Let me tell you right now, if you're listening to this podcast, maybe you're in the new year and you're listening to this podcast and saying, I'm trying to get my money together. I have never saved money in my entire life for retirement. I don't even know where to start. Well, my friends, you came to the right place because what we do here is we empower you with your money to teach you how you can build generational wealth for yourself or for your family or anyone else that you love and who are surrounded by you. And guess what? It starts by saving for retirement. If you do not save for retirement, you will never be able to live comfortably. You're going to live in financial stress your entire life. I don't want that for you. I want you to have that freedom

because money is a tool to give you everything that you want in life, including freedom, getting your time back, which is the most important thing. You can retire so much sooner if you just take action on this. So if you were someone who is on this path where you have no retirement savings, start investing today. Just start investing. a little bit today. If you're scared to invest or you're scared to get started, start with $100 a month, start with $50 a month, start with $25 a month. Get the feel of what it's like to start investing your money. Then after that, start to increase that amount every couple of months as you get comfortable. And as you start to set this money aside, you're going to say, hey, this is money that I know

over time I can invest these dollars. Now, if you're scared to invest, here's an exercise I love to tell people to do. Take out your phone and go to the stock market app and look for the little chart. maybe it's the DJI or the Dow Jones Industrial Average, maybe it's the S&P 500, and turn that chart to the longest time that you can take it to. A lot of times it's 10 years, sometimes it's 20 or 30 years. And that market goes in one direction when you pull it out in a longer time horizon. It doesn't really matter what it does day to day, week to week, month, and month. What matters is what happens over the long run. And over the long run, the market goes in one direction. And that is up. So start investing your dollars over the long term so that you can start to build wealth for you and your family so that you can retire.

We have tons of episodes talking about retirement, how to set up your retirement accounts. Make sure you subscribe to this podcast so that you can check some of those out. Also, if you know what to do and you're not doing it, one big thing that you can do is start automating your contributions to your retirement accounts. So your 401k already does this naturally. So if you have a 401k, it's going to naturally automate into your 401k. That's just how it works. They take it out of your paycheck before they pay you.

But when it comes to something like a Roth IRA or anything else like that, if you just start to automate your funds into those accounts, then it takes your willpower out of the equation. And this is the most powerful thing you can do with your money is take your willpower out of that equation. So that is another great thing to look at. Now, if you're brand new to our stuff here, we have a PDF called the Stairway to Wealth that I want you to check out. It's go to mastermoney.com slash resources and you'll see the stairway to wealth there.

And that'll show you the order to start to allocate your dollar so that you can start to build wealth. It helps you build wealth over time. Really excited for you to check that out. Now, the next one, number two statistic is bank fees are actually on the rise. So according to a survey by money rates, the monthly maintenance fees for checking account rose to an all-time high, where monthly maintenance fees on checking accounts are now on average $14.39. Over the course of a full year, that is $172.68.

Now, if you have a checking account and your checking account has a fee to open it up and it has a fee to maintain that checking account, you have a checking account in the wrong location. This should be absolutely free, and there are so many great banks out there that have free checking accounts, no fee checking accounts, that if you are paying a fee, you need to move your money somewhere else. This is a big no-no for most people, and you need to understand this. So I bank at Chase. Chase does not have fees on their checking accounts. All the big banks usually don't. Now, I'm not saying I recommend, Chase, because I really don't. It's just a bank that I have my money in. that's the closest location to my house.

But at the same time, there are so many different banks out there. Make sure your checking account does not have fees so that you can save your money over the time. Your checking account, I'm going to say it again, should be 100% free. Number three, younger generations are not planning for their financial future. Research from the National Institute on Retirement Security found that 66% of millennials don't have any money put away for their golden years. I'm going to say this again. If you have zero dollars that you started investing for retirement, now is the time to start. It is never too late to start.

Maybe you're a millennial and you're 35, you're 40, maybe you're a younger millennial and you're 30 years old. It is never too late to start saving for retirement. If you think it's too late, you have so much time left. It's incredible how much time you have left if you're a millennial. So making sure you get started today and getting that financial education so that you can learn to start investing. Now, if you're thinking, hey, I don't even know where to start investing. Here's the order that I really like for myself, and this is kind of how I invest my dollars. I like going towards the Roth IRA first and the HSA.

I have those two kind of at the same level, but the Roth IRA is a great place to start. Then I like you going back to your pre-tax accounts, things like your 401K or a 403B or a 457, all of those fall into the same category or an IRA. All of those are on those pre-tax accounts. Then you can go to your tax brokerage because doing this allows you to kind of diversify your tax situation. But in addition, it also allows you to take advantage of some of these things. And so in Stairway to Wealth, we actually had a recent episode with the Stairway to Wealth 3.0. If you want to check that out, you can look at that episode. And I kind of go through exactly why I think that

when you go to that order. Number four is millennial retirement savings. So only 34.3% of millennials have ever participated in their employer's plan. Now, you may be going on TikTok right now, or you go on Instagram, and you're going to see people saying things like the 401k is a scam. And let me tell you right now, if somebody is telling you that a 401k is a scam, they are most likely trying to sell you something or they are trying to scam you. The 401k is just a wealth building account. In fact, I always talk about this, but Ramsey Solutions did a study of millionaires a millionaires a few years ago and they surveyed 10,000 millionaires. And of those millionaires, 78% of them became millionaires through their 401k. 78%. 78% of those 10,000

surveyed became millionaires through their 401k. Now let me tell you, if someone's telling you a 401k is a scam, they're trying to sell you a real estate course, they're trying to sell you cash value life insurance, that is what they are trying to do because they are not scams. They are places to put your dollars so that they can grow over time. And in addition, if your employer offers a employer match, you get a 100% rate of return on that money if your employer offers a employer match. You need to make sure that you are matching your dollars with your employer. What that means is that a lot of times your employer may offer a 3% or 4% match or whatever else it could be. I've heard as high as 8, 9, 10%. And so when you put 3% of your salary

every single month, then they will match it 3%. There is no better way to build wealth than to get 100% rate of return. So making sure you at least take advantage of that is really, really important. Number five, money is a leading source of stress. So there was a study done by Northwestern Mutual that found that 44% of respondents cite money matters as the dominant source of stress in their lives. And 28% of Americans say they feel depressed at least monthly, with 17% suffering from depression as often as weekly, daily, or even hourly, as a result from their money stress. Now, let me tell you this.

This is one of the most difficult things that you can go through. I have been there. When I started my financial journey, when I got my very first job, I lived paycheck to paycheck. And I learned very, very quickly that living paycheck to paycheck is going to make you feel down. You're going to feel terrible about yourself. You're going to feel terrible about where you are going. But let me tell you something. There is light at the end of the tunnel because you can make a change in your life.

Now, it may seem like right now they have no other options. There is nowhere to go. But let me tell you, the only place that you can go now is up. And so what I want for you this year is to be able to turn your financial situation around. I know you can do it. I know that if you put some of these simple money practices into place in your life, you will be able to change your financial life. Maybe for your entire life your family has never had money.

Maybe your family has been poor your entire life. Guess what? What if you are the person who can make that change in your family's life? This can be something that will be absolutely amazing if you can do so. And I want to be the person who helps you through that to teach you how to do that. So stick around. I'm going to help you with that. Money reduces your stress. Money reduces your anxiety. Getting good with money takes away some of that stress and anxiety around your life.

And that is one of the most powerful things that money can do is remove anxiety surrounding money out of your life. You're still going to be stressed about other things. Maybe it's work. Maybe it's your family life. Other things are going to stress you out. But if you can remove that money stress out of your life, how much more simple could life be? I was amazed that once I got my money together, how much less stress I felt every single day. I wasn't worried of where the money's going to come so that I can repair my car. I wasn't worried about where the money's going to come from so that I can just pay the light bill. And so once you make this change, it will absolutely change your life. Stick around and we'll keep showing you how to do that. Number six is crazy. Okay. It makes my jaw drop

every time I look at this, but it obviously makes sense. And this is one that I want to kind of talk through. And I'm going to show you the opportunity cost of this as well. You guys love when I show you the opportunity cost of some of this stuff, but this is one that I just think is absolutely mind-blowing when you add this stuff up. So it says Americans blow $324,000 on impulse buys over their lifetime. Now, when I saw that, I was shocked, but I was also just amazed that that's probably absolutely true. So slickdeals.net, which is a cool website. Actually, I go on there sometimes if I'm looking for deals for specific things, found that shoppers blow around $5,400 per year on impulse purchases,

which amounts to a shocking $324,000 over a lifetime. Now, I'm going to go through the most common impulse purchases in a second as well because I think that's really, really fun to go through. But when looking at some of these types of things, it's interesting that slickdeals.net did this because they are also a site that tries to get you to impulse purchase. So this is going to be something where they probably took this data and they were going to utilize it against you.

But anyways, overall, what this means is that if you spend that amount over a lifetime, this could be you're just going to Target and you want to grab one thing and you end up walking out with Target with 200 different things. I've done that a million times. You've done that a million times. I go on Amazon and I want to look at one specific thing and all of a sudden I buy three different things instead of the thing that I went to Amazon to buy. You have to learn how to combat against this.

So one big thing that you can do this year is tell yourself, I'm not doing any impulse purchases unless I planned on making that purchase when I went to that website, or I planned on making that purchase when I went in the store. Now, if there's something that you want and you see it and you want to make that impulse purchase, we have a couple of different rules talking about this. But if it is under $100, I wait at least 24 hours. If it is over that, if it's over $200 or something like that, I wait at least three to five days.

And then if it's even a bigger purchase, then I'll wait at least seven days because this allows you for a cooling off period. Now, what is a cooling off period? this is where you're thinking about this purchase and all of a sudden you're gung-ho about this thing and then you say to yourself, time to get this thing. I'm going to push by right now. But if you hold back for a second and let everything just kind of settle down and you cool off, maybe you will not make that impulse purchase. Maybe you'll take a step back and you'll think through this a little bit and say to yourself, maybe I don't actually need this or maybe I don't actually really want this. I just wanted to buy this in the moment.

They had a really good ad. It hyped me up. It got me really excited about this product. But now that I'm thinking about this, this may not be the best route to take. So making sure you reduce those impulse purchases over time is going to be really, really powerful. But let's take a look for a second. And let's just see what would happen if you invested that $5,000 per year over the course of time. So I'm going to put in $5,400 here. And let's just take the average rate of return 10% in the market over the course of 30 years.

And here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at this and we're going to go over the course of $4,400. 40 years with a 10% rate of return, $5,400 per year. So let's say over the course of your lifetime, over 40 years, you had those impulse purchases. If you invested those impulse purchase instead, meaning that, if you took those dollars and invested those dollars instead, you would have $2.389 million in your account if you invested that money. This is extremely powerful stuff that you can do if you take that cooling off period.

$2.3 million over that time frame. I cannot tell you how big of a life change that would be. In retirement, say you retired with $2.3 million, for example, that'd be about $90,000 per year that you could spend in retirement. An additional $90,000 per year where you can impulse purchase all day long. You can make it rain on your impulse purchase because you've got 90 Gs to spend per year instead of 5 Gs to spend per year. You can be balling out all day on whatever you want.

You could go to Target and buy the whole store every time you go. This is where it makes a massive change on what's going on in your life. So these little financial tweaks are going to be really, really big overall. Now, number seven, millennials are the most underpaid generation. So a study by the financial health of young America, which is a nonprofit, they do a bunch of different financial studies, found that millennials earn 20% less than baby boomers did at the same age and the same stage of life. You wonder why we can't afford housing.

You wonder why we can't afford all these different things. And affordability is at an all-time low. But in addition, we also have higher student loan debt cost. So overall, this is something where millennials are making less money. Now, what can you do about this today? What can you do to change this? Number one is you need to learn how to invest in yourself. So if you are starting out, you're like, I only have $100.

I don't know what to do. What I would rather you do is take that $100 and buy 10 different books to invest in yourself so that you can gain the knowledge so that you can earn more money. Because that is the number one thing that will change the trajectory. of your life is your income. Your income is going to make the massive difference. Number two, I would work on gaining skills. Now, you don't have to buy 10 books. You could go to the library and gain those skills via the library. You could go and do online workshops. There are free online classes from Harvard, from Yale. You can take all of these different classes for absolutely

free. So, furthering your education via a bunch of different things, you could do it with audiobooks, you could do it with YouTube, you could do it with reading books, podcasts. These are completely free. So furthering your education, investing your money in yourself so that you can increase your income is the number one thing that I want you to focus on this year if you are living paycheck to paycheck or if you are struggling. The next one, number eight, most Americans underestimate spending on subscriptions. Now my friends, I have even done this. In the last year alone, I had a podcast episode talking about this where I just took out all the subscriptions that I really don't use anymore or maybe I use them bi-monthly or something like that. I cut them all out because I was sick and

of seeing all these subscriptions just showing up on my credit card all the time. Guess how much I cut out? I cut out over $200 worth of subscriptions. Even your boy who thinks about money all day long had all these additional subscriptions. So what I did is I decided, hey, I'm going to cut them out. But a study was done that said the average American pays over $237 per month for subscription services. And 84% of these people who were surveyed underestimated how much they actually spent on

these subscription services. So this is something where just go through your subscriptions. I use a tool called Rocket Money. It's absolutely free if you're using it just for subscriptions. And you can put all your accounts, just link them up into Rocket Money. It tells you what all your subscriptions are. And then boom, just knock them off the list and cancel those subscriptions. That'll save you a bunch of money alone is just syncing it up to Rocket Money.

A great little tool there for you to utilize. We'll link it up down below as well so you can check that out. Let's jump to a break and then we'll get into number nine. All right. I remember when I needed to hire someone fast, but finding the right person quick, felt impossible. And if you've ever been there, you know how stressful this can be. That's where Indeed comes in. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Instead of struggling to get your job post noticed, Indeed's sponsor jobs help you stand out and hire faster. Your post jumps up to the top of

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Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and stretch. Steep. Flip. Or that and enjoy. Via rail, love the way. Number nine, parents go into debt to please kids.

So this is one that I know is absolutely true from just talking to different folks over time. So this is one that is actually mind-blowing for a lot of people who do not have kids. But once you have kids, you're going to see how people actually do this. So overall, almost 65% of parents with children under the age of 18, so they would be fine with adding to their credit card debt during the holiday season, and more than 56% said that that was fine to do. And more parents are more prone to spending more for their kids because they didn't have specific things for themselves when they were growing up.

Now, this is an entire lesson on psychology and how much. we think about stuff. A lot of people, if we didn't have specific things growing up, we want to compensate for that by giving it to our children. I get it. I have done this myself. It's something that a lot of people I know do now. In fact, a lot of people I know are trying to make sure that their children have the Christmas that they always wanted or the holiday that they always wanted or the birthday they always wanted or depends on what it is. Whatever it is. You can see this by going to kids' birthday parties now. If you haven't been to a kid's birthday party in a long time, it's the most bougie experience you're ever going to go to. Everything matches. There's balloon arches going

left and right. There's stuff everywhere. You've been to these birthday parties if you are a parent. These did not exist when we were kids. So figuring out, hey, if you're going into further debt just to please your children, that is a no-no, especially if you're not on pace to retirement and if you're in debt, you're likely not saving for retirement as well. This will reduce your stress. It will reduce your anxiety. Your kids will understand over time because now you're actually doing your kids a favor. They're not going to have to take care of you when you are retired. And instead, you can put them on the path to financial freedom. And you're already financial free.

They don't have to worry about taking care of you. So making sure that you don't do this is tough at times. But you just got to make sure you give your kids enough. You love them. Your time is the most important thing to them. They would rather have your time more than anything else in life. So giving them your time instead of just trying to impress them with all these different things is going to make a massive difference.

The stuff will fade. It fades in a couple of days after Christmas. It fades in a couple days after their birthday. But the time you spent will last forever. Number 10. Down payment savings create hurdles to homeownership. Now I know this is absolutely true. So a survey found that the younger generation, millennials, Gen Z,

they will prioritize purchasing a home before getting married, before paying off debt, and even traveling. And this is according to the Financial Security Index. However, the same survey found that prospective homebuyers delay buying a home because they are struggling to save up for a down payment. In fact, 46% of millennials and 40% of Americans overall cited affording a down payment as the greatest financial barrier to homeownership. Now, I get it because saving up for a down payment is a really, really difficult thing to do.

Now, there's a bunch of different hacks that you can do, one of which is, say you're married and you and your spouse are trying to save up for a down payment. $192 per person, so your spouse saves $192 from their check. you save $192 from your check, and you save that over the course of an entire year. You will have $20,000 saved up for a down payment by the end of the year, which is enough for a down payment on a $400,000 home. There's a bunch of different hacks like that that you can do. But what do you do if, over time, maybe you don't have that additional $192 per week?

Well, you have to extend out the timeline of when to save for your down payment, and as home prices rise, it feels like you're trying to just catch up to the home prices, and you're struggling to be in the same spot that you were when you started. Well, overall, one thing I could tell you is you got to take a look at your finances as a whole. And you can take whatever extra dollars you have outside of obviously investing first, then take whatever extra dollars you have and put them towards that prioritization. Now, what I like to do is I like to make a sub savings count. You can make an individual savings count at your bank and or if you're an ally or somewhere else that has these sub savings accounts or these savings buckets, you can make the saving bucket. And then you can automate your

money into that savings bucket. So every single week or every single month, you're just automating your down payment savings into that bucket. That's going to take your willpower out of the equation. If something happens in life, it's not going to be like, maybe I just shouldn't buy this. Instead, I'm going to go buy these cool headphones or something like that. So overall, that's what I would do is I would automate it into there. But you only have so many extra dollars per month. So if you want to get there faster, the other way to do this is to increase your income, which is probably not what you want to hear. But at the same time, you only have so many extra dollars per month left over. So it's either decreasing expenses, increasing your income,

or changing your discipline, meaning changing your discipline of when you're saving, and the automation will change your discipline for you. So between those three things, that's the best way to do it overall. And then looking at different loan options, maybe if you do a FHA loan or something along those lines, those will still allow you to have less than 30% of your income at housing costs and you can still buy the house with a lower down payment, but you get in there much quicker. There's a lot of different options there, but you just got to think through what's been. for you. Number 11. Financial woes keep consumers up at night. So this is one that is absolutely true, but a survey was done from bank rate that found that 48% of U.S. adults report losing sleep over a

financial issue, at least occasionally. And the good news is that number was down for 56% a year ago. Meanwhile, 23% of consumers say the main concern keeping them up at night is their ability, or lack thereof, to pay everyday bills. Now I could tell you this. If you are losing sleep over your money, you are in extreme financial stress, and I cannot sympathize with you enough. And what I want for you is to find a way to get out of this situation so that you can sleep well at night again, so that you can be present with your family, so that you can spend time

with those you love instead of thinking about money or worrying about how I'm going to make the extra dollar every single month. And so putting together a financial system is the way to do this. And I would start off, if you're losing sleep over some of this stuff, I would start off by just thinking through. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, just set up a simple budget. Just set up a simple money system so that you can figure out where all this money is going. And then sometimes what the problem is is not you're spending too much.

You're just trying to get by every single month. The cost of living is rising. Sometimes the problem is your income. So you must increase your income over time in order to keep up with inflation. It has to happen. You cannot keep the same income year over year. So in order to do that, I would look for, ways that you can gain specific skills and invest in yourself like we talked about earlier so that you

can take those new skills and start to increase your income. You can do this by negotiating your salary. Negotiation is a major skill that you can learn at your day job. You can do this by getting additional certifications so that you can get paid more. You can do this by learning how to do additional skills like Excel or maybe sales or all these different skills are going to help you earn more money. So pick one in your industry, whatever you work in. and see what skills you can gain in order to get to the next level, to get that promotion, to get that new job where you're going to make more money, to get that sales job where you can earn commissions and larger amounts of dollars over time. All of these are really, really important

and you reduce your stress and anxiety where now your income coming in is covering all of your bills and you have some left over so you can put it towards wealth building activities and be able to retire and actually do all these things we're talking about here today. This is the most powerful thing you could do. I know you can do it this year. And I want you to make that change. That's the change that I want for you. I want to see this massive change in you. Number 12, more than half of homeowners struggle to pay their mortgage. So a survey of 2,000 American homeowners from 72 point and the National Association of Realtors found that 52% of people surveyed are routinely concerned about making their mortgage payments. This is another one. If you are

concerned about making your mortgage payments, you have to do the same activities where you're looking at this situation saying, A, first, did I buy more house than I can afford? How much is more house than you can afford. If you are spending more than 30% of your income on housing, unless you live in a big city where you don't have transportation costs, if you're spending more than 30% of your income, your gross income on housing, you are spending too much money on housing. And so if that's happening, you are most likely house poor, meaning that you're overspending on this. This is something that nobody's probably ever told you. Nobody's ever taught you that this is the number that you need to understand. Because if you spend that much, it doesn't leave enough money left over for the rest of life,

including saving for retirement, which is a big one. So if you are struggling to make the mortgage, you're likely not saving for retirement either. So overall, we've got to make sure that we can afford our house. So making sure we stay within that box is really, really important. If you're in that situation and you realize this, it might be time to change home situations. Maybe if you're renting, it's really easy to do that. If you own a home, obviously it's a more complicated situation or we increase our income. Those are the two things that I would consider as we go through this so that you can make sure

that you're on pace because the last thing you want to do is stress about making the mortgage over time. Number 13, this is an interesting one. So a survey from Ops Loans found that the average parent across the country spends $9,470 per year on their kids. But the location truly, truly matters when it comes to this. And so there's a dramatic shift from state to state. Most notably, parents in Washington, D.C. spend the most, spending a whopping $17,921 on each kid per year, while parents in Montana spend the least at $2,000 per year annually. That's very interesting.

one big thing though is that dads actually spend more than moms so dads spend on average about nine thousand four hundred eighty six dollars annually per kid while a typical american mom spends just eight thousand seven hundred eighty nine dollars per kid now honestly your boy may be spending too much in his kids because i feel like these numbers are low so overall we have daycare costs things like that so that might be a big reason why and if you have daycare costs you know this number is way too low but overall that's what the average is across the country and so i think that's just an interesting survey. Dad spend more than moms is the other interesting piece. Number 14, fighting over finances can obviously ruin a marriage. So Ramsey Solutions did a study and found that the

higher a couple's debt burden, the more likely they are to argue about money. Meanwhile, over 86% of couples who got married in the last five years started out in debt. And 41% of these debt-laden couples say they argue about money often. Now, this doesn't mean your marriage is doomed. This doesn't mean this is a huge situation. 86% of people in the last five years who got married are most likely millennials or Gen Z, and they most likely have student loan debt. So 86% of them have debt because they most likely have student loan debt. Some of them may have credit card debt as well, but that's why that is happening. Now, money.com did a really interesting thing, and they said couples who fight about money, there's actually a higher percentage for specific things. So this is a

really, really interesting thing. Forty-six percent of couples who fight about money fight because of frivolous purchases, meaning you're going out and making those impulse purchases that we just talked about. So overall, that is one big thing. Now, if you want to combat this, if you are fighting a lot about frivolous purchases, meaning you're going out and just blowing money on one thing and your spouse doesn't like it, and then your spouse goes out and they blow money on something

and then you don't like it. Now it's starting to get friction and you're starting to fight about all this stuff. If that's you, let me introduce it to the blow fund. The blow fund is one of my favorite things that my wife and I do. So if you have a budget, you set up a blow fund where each of you have this specific blow fund.

Now, usually we have combined finances, so this is why we do it this way. And so each of us has a specific count. And so I get a certain amount of money every single month to my blow fund. And my wife gets quadruple the amount that I get every single month to her blow fund just because that's what keeps the peace around here. I could care less and that just keeps the piece. So what we do is we put that money in our account every single month and then we just spend that money in whatever we want. Nobody questions anything.

Nobody says anything to the other person because it's all just getting blown on whatever we want. You can make it rain on whatever you want. Your boy wants to stripe a brand new driver right down the middle of the fairway. really I put in the water, then what your boy does is he goes and buys himself a brand new driver. If my wife wants to go out and buy the latest and greatest clothes or whatever else, then she can go do that. And there is zero issues whatsoever. So that's just a solution for 46% of frivolous purchases. If that's you, if you're one of those 46% of people, that's what we do.

The next things couples fight about is 33% on household budgeting. So this is another one where if you want to stick to a budget, you could fight about budgeting, or you could also automate your money, which reduce. the amount of budgeting that you have to do and really, really don't have to budget. I have an anti-budget that we're talking about. Speaking of Automate Your Money, we are working on a course to teach you exactly how I automate all of my dollars, where it reduces your time spent on budgeting and all these other things. So if you're interested in that, send me an email, and I will get you on the pre-launch list.

26% fight about credit card debt. This is one that you definitely should be really, really worried about because if you have credit card debt, that is a pants-on-fire emergency. You need to get rid of that. So if your spouse is telling you this credit card debt is a major, major factor and you're spending too much on frivolous purchases, we need to pay down this credit card debt. They're right. 25% insufficient emergency savings.

So if you don't have enough of emergency fund, it is very, very stressful overall. So making sure that you have enough in there. I like six months expenses. That is what I truly believe should be in there. And so overall, that is a really big one. 22% insufficient retirement savings. Another huge one. You will never have freedom if you don't start saving for retirement.

So you have to make sure that you are. saving for retirement. All right. Number 15. Upper middle earners are scraping by. Nearly six and 10 Americans say they are living paycheck to paycheck, reported by the wealth index in Charles Schwab. 18% of employees making more than $100,000 annually say they also live paycheck to paycheck.

So a lot of high earners live paycheck to paycheck, and a lot of Americans, over 60% of them, also say they live paycheck to paycheck. We are going to be putting out an episode teaching you how to break this paycheck to paycheck cycle coming up. So make sure you're subscribed to this podcast and it will be coming out in the next couple of weeks so that you can learn exactly how to do this. Because I want to take you step by step on how to get out of this paycheck to paycheck cycle no matter how much money you earn. For high earners, it's a little bit easier than for folks who don't earn as much as the high earners. But we're going to talk through this and I'm going to teach you exactly how you can still build wealth.

Now the last one, social media envy fuels excessive spending. Charles Schwab's Modern Wealth Index survey found that 48% of millennials spend more money, than they can afford to participate in experiences with friends, and 49% were influenced by social media to spend money on experiences. If this is you and you're going into debt to go on trips for social media, if you're going into debt to go to restaurants for social media, if you are going into debt to do all these different things just to show off, let me lay something down for you.

Morgan Housel has this great book called The Psychology of Money. And in the Psychology of Money, he talks through someone who got a brand new car. And when someone gets a brand new car, let's say, for example, you buy the fanciest car in the world. Let's just use a Lamborghini, for example, and you go out and you buy a Lamborghini. What a lot of people think when they're buying that Lamborghini is, man, my friends are going to think I'm cool, my family's going to think I'm cool. They're going to think I'm the most amazing thing in the world because I've got this Lamborghini. But here's what they're actually thinking.

What they're actually thinking is how cool they would look inside of that Lamborghini. And this is the cycle that we all run into and the psychology behind all of this. Think about this for a second. Think about your friend who got a brand new car with a child. you loved. Maybe they got a truck or they got a car or they got a the mom SUV that you've always loved. Think about this for a second. Do you think they are cooler because they got that car or do you think about yourself in that car? The same thing goes for everything else. Do you think about yourself on that trip or do you think about how cool somebody is because they went on that trip? Do you think about

yourself when you go and get that giant diamond engagement ring or do you think somebody else just thinks I would look amazing in that giant diamond engagement ring? All of these are reasons. All of these are things that nobody cares about you. They all are in their own little bubble and they care about themselves. And so if you can understand that, you will do this so much less than what other people out there were doing. Worry about yourself, worry about your family, give to others in need, and you will live an amazing life going forward. And I want to see you get there by building wealth over time. So we want to teach you this year how to build your generational wealth. If you have not started or if you're on the path and you're a long time listener, thank you

so much. I love each and every single one of you. So make sure you're sticking around on this podcast. Make sure you're subscribed. If you enjoyed this episode, consider leaving that five-star rating and review. I cannot thank you all enough for being here. And we are going to teach you the most amazing ways to build wealth this year. I'm so excited for what we have in store in this podcast. You guys keep me going. And if you have a major change in your life where you have gone and listened to this podcast and it has changed your life, let me know about it because those keep me going every single day. Can I thank you guys enough for listening to this episode and investing in yourself because it's exactly what you did by listening to this episode is you invested time

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