The Personal Finance Podcast - 17 Signs You Might Be Broke (And How to Solve Them!)

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

101. 17 Signs That You Might Be Broke  Today we are going to talk about the 17 signs that you might be broke and how to solve that problem!  Today we are going to talk about:  The 17 reasons why... you might be broke. Actionable advice to solve each problem. How to avoid being broke. FREE GUIDES: ============== -Check out the free guide on where to put your money in what order!  https://www.mastermoney.co/stairway-to-wealth -Here is the free How to Ask for A Raise ebook! https://www.mastermoney.co/get-a-raise-ebook -Get Access to the 75 Day Challenge: https://www.mastermoney.co/75daychallenge  ============= We have a YOUTUBE channel! Check it out here!  Our Latest Videos:  5 Index Funds to Hold for Life!  What Would Happen If You Maxed Out Your Roth IRA By Age?! (These Results Will Amaze You!) How to Become a Millionaire With a Small Amount of Money (Is it Really This Easy!?) ============ Got questions? Ask me on Instagram Here. @mastermoneyco This is the fastest way to get in touch with me.  ============ Sponsors:  Thank you to Better Help for sponsoring the show! Check them out at betterhelp.com/pfp Thanks to Policygenius For Sponsoring the show! Check them out a Policygenius.com Thanks to Mint Mobile for supporting the show! Cut your phone bill to $15 a month by going to https://mintmobile.com/pfp Thanks to Ladder for Sponsoring the Show. Go to Ladderlife.com/pfp Thanks to Fundrise for Sponsoring the show! Invest in real estate for as little as $10 by going to fundrise.com/personalfinance Thank you to Hello Fresh for sponsoring the show! Go to Hello Fresh and use code PFP16 for 16 free meals and 3 free gifts.  Thank you to Ourcrowd for sponsoring the show! Check them out at ourcrowd.com/pfp   ============   Want to Support the Show? Follow on Spotify or Follow and Leave a 5-Star Review on Apple Podcasts! ============ Episodes Mentioned More Episodes You Will Love:  The Stairway to Wealth 2.0 (The Order You Should Put Your Money in!) How to Track Your Net Worth How to Set Money Goals You Will Actually Achieve How To Prevent Lifestyle Creep (Lifestyle Inflation) 7 Ways to Pay Down Your Student Loans Faster How You Can Have a Free Car for Life (It's True!) Why Your Savings Rate Matters  ============ Check out all the Stuff I Recommend!  USEFUL RESOURCES: Best Place to Open a Roth IRA: https://m1finance.8bxp97.net/5vzD1 My Favorite Free Net Worth and Budget Tool: https://fxo.co/905L Best High Yield Savings Account: https://bit.ly/3HpPjAr  Get a $10 Free Bonus with Acorns: https://bit.ly/3lV0LLE Best Bank and Debit Card for Kids: https://bit.ly/3pJeI09  Get $5 Free Bitcoin at Coinbase: https://bit.ly/3oIQOml Best Credit Building Tool: https://bit.ly/3rmBuwZ  Best Personal Finance Books: https://kit.co/MasterMoney/best-personal-finance-books  ============ DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial adviser. This Podcast is for educational purposes only. Investing of any kind involves risk. While it is possible to minimize risk, your investments are solely your responsibility. It is imperative that you conduct your own research. I am sharing my opinion.  AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE: Some of the links on this channel are affiliate links, meaning, at NO additional cost to you, I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase and/or subscribe. However, this does not impact my opinion. ============ Check us out on social fam!  Twitter Dollar After Dollar Instagram www.thepersonalfinancepodcast.com www.dollarafterdollar.com www.mastermoney.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:56 Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. On this episode of the personal finance podcast, we're going to talk about 17 signs that you might be broke. I'm not your host, Andrew founder of mastermoney.com. And today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to be talking about 17 signs that you might be broke. If you have any questions, hit me up on Instagram or TikTok at Master Money Co. And follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever podcast player, you love listening to this podcast. If you want to help out the show, leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I can't thank you guys enough for leaving those five-star rating and reviews so that we can grow this message on how to build wealth to as many people as possible.
Starting point is 00:02:09 And in addition, don't forget to check us out on YouTube as well. We have fresh content over on YouTube. We're releasing two videos every single week. So make sure you check us out on YouTube at Master Money on YouTube. Now today we're going to be talking about the 17 signs that you might be broken. What we're doing today is we're going through a bunch of situations. And I want you to realize your own specific situations. And if you fall into one of these categories, I'm going to show you with each of these signs how to fix the problem.
Starting point is 00:02:38 See, a lot of people go through life with their money and they have no idea how to assess that they're even having a problem. And then how to actually fix that problem. So what I want to do is make it as simple as possible for you to realize. how to fix each of these problems. Because the biggest thing that I want you to do is be able to build wealth. And if you're broke, one of the biggest goals of this podcast is to take as many people as possible from broke to millionaire and from millionaire to generational wealth. Those are the steps that we are trying to get to here.
Starting point is 00:03:09 But the first step is getting yourself from being broke to getting to that millionaire status. Now, we've talked about this a number of time. Saving up your first 100K is the way to get the ball rolling. so that you can get to that point. So there's goals in between. The stairway to wealth is a great step as well. It's got the stepping stones that have the exact order that you should put your money in.
Starting point is 00:03:29 If you haven't heard that episode, make sure you check out the stairway to wealth. But this is the way that we are looking to help you build wealth over time. Because we're here for you. We are here for you to try to help you build this generational wealth so that you can get to the next level. Because being first generational wealthy
Starting point is 00:03:46 is going to be very difficult. It's simple in concept, but it's difficult in practice. But imagine how good it's going to feel. So let's break some of these broke habits. Let's talk through some of these things and give you solutions so that you can go on and take action on these solutions
Starting point is 00:04:02 and change your life forever. If you're into that, let's get into it. The first one is your living paycheck to paycheck. Now more than 75% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. And we had an entire episode on how to stop living paycheck to paycheck, but I'm going to go through some of it here because the stats are staggering. Nearly one in 10 workers making over $100,000 plus live paycheck to paycheck. So it doesn't matter how much income you make.
Starting point is 00:04:30 It's how much income you keep and how much of that money you invest. And more than one and four workers do not set aside any savings each month. That's absolutely insane because you're never going to be able to retire if you don't set aside any savings. And nearly three and four workers say they are in debt and more than half think they always will be in debt. Well, we're going to break you out of that really quick on this podcast. More than half of minimum wage workers say they have to work more than one job to make ends meet. And 28% of workers making between $50,000 to $99,000 a year usually are always live paycheck to paycheck. And 70% of those are in debt.
Starting point is 00:05:09 So what do you do about this? Because the majority of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. What I mean by that is every time you get paid, you need that money to paychecks. to live throughout the month. Now, what we're teaching here is how to build yourself up cash buffers and how you're going to be living off paychecks from months ago so that you can free yourself from that stress and anxiety. So how do you do that?
Starting point is 00:05:31 How do you relieve that stress and anxiety? Well, there's a bunch of reasons why. But the stairway to wealth is going to be the biggest factor for you to get started to utilize to make sure that you are doing those steps because those steps can take you out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle. But I'm going to give you some additional tips right here. The first one is the word everybody hates is you got to be. to build a budget. Now, there's two budgets that we talk about here all the time,
Starting point is 00:05:51 and we're going to talk about that later on in this podcast, so we will get into detail on those in a little bit. But making sure you have a budget and a way to track your money is incredibly important. You want to make your savings automatic. So instead of relying on your willpower to save every single month, you want to automate it so that you're saving your money automatically every single time you get paid. Every single bank could do this. So automate your savings so that you can save that money into your savings account and save that money into your brokerage account so that you can. begin to build wealth and have that cash buffer there so you don't have to worry about living
Starting point is 00:06:22 paycheck to paycheck anymore. Now, when you make those savings account, make them hard to reach. Because having separate accounts and making that savings difficult to reach, especially if you're prone to dipping into your savings account, then make it much more harder at a different bank to reach. Another big one is to wait to buy anything. Wait a couple of weeks before you buy something big specifically so that you can see if you really want that thing. And then one big factor that I want you guys to focus on is when you're trying to save a little more money, the biggest thing to focus on is the big three. So it's housing, food, and expenses. Those are the big three expenses that if you can control those three expenses, you can pretty
Starting point is 00:06:58 much spend lavishly on everything else. So controlling your housing cost, controlling your food cost, and your transportation costs will make a significant difference because that's what the majority of people spend the majority of their money on. Now, we have an episode on that. If you haven't heard that episode, I will link it up in the show notes as well. And then, then watch out for lifestyle creep. So lifestyle creep is when you make more money and your spending goes up with that. So let's say, for example, that you got a raise. And when you get that raise, well, now you sign up for a couple more subscriptions. And now you start to buy more things more frequently. And all of a sudden your lifestyle increases. Maybe you buy a new car and take on that new payment. And as your lifestyle increases, instead of investing some of that money, all of a sudden you're just bringing your lifestyle up and you're still in the same situation living paycheck to paycheck. So that's what a lot of people do, especially. high income people who are living paycheck to paycheck, they have to do that to be able to live. And one other way to do this is to just build a buffer with cash bonuses that you get. So save your raises, save your tax returns, things like that, and making sure that you're
Starting point is 00:07:58 doing that so you have a cash buffer so this doesn't continue to happen. The second one, you have credit card debt. Now credit card debt for most people is a pants on fire emergency because credit card debt usually has an incredibly high interest rate. Now, if you have an incredibly high interest rate, you really want to get that paid off. Anything above 5% we here at the Personal Finance Podcast and Master Money, call that high interest debt. So high interest debt is something that you really want to try to get rid of so that it's not
Starting point is 00:08:30 eating away into your buying power in the future. And it's taking away from you being able to invest your dollars. So getting rid of that credit card debt is really being focused on putting a plan together so that you can get that credit card debt gone. Now, one way to do this is to do a balance. transfer into a 0% balance transfer credit card. If you can get access to a 0% balance transfer credit card, then you can transfer your credit card debt into this new account.
Starting point is 00:08:54 This new account won't charge you interest for like 12 months, and you can focus on paying that down so that you can get rid of that debt and then move on with your life so that you can start to build real wealth. The next one is if you have a high interest student loan debt. So along those same lines, high interest student loan debt is the same exact situation. Now, if you have student loan debt and the interest rate's like 3%, then it's not an emergency. But if you have student loan debt
Starting point is 00:09:17 and the interest rate is much higher than that, it's 5, 6, 10, 12. I've seen it as high as 15%. Then you need to look at A, refinancing your student loans, and then B, paying those bad boys down so that you can start to build wealth instead of having to spend all your money on your student loans.
Starting point is 00:09:33 Now, we have an episode on the fastest way to pay down your student loans, and I'll link that up in the show note as well so that you can check that out. The next one, you have a very high monthly car payment. with a high interest rate. So one thing I want to tell you guys, don't start buying cars to impress people you don't even like.
Starting point is 00:09:50 If you love cars, then cool. That's what you value. Spend your money on the things that you value. But if cars aren't your thing and you're just doing it as a status symbol to look cool for other people, but you haven't started to build wealth yet, then you have a problem here.
Starting point is 00:10:04 So trying to eliminate high interest car payments is incredibly important. Now, if you have a low interest car payment and you bought yourself a standard car that you can afford and you're investing those dollars instead, more power to you. But if you have a really high interest rate in a car, maybe your credit's bad or something else along those lines,
Starting point is 00:10:20 then they have no business buying a fancy car. You want to make sure that when you buy liabilities like that, you have assets in place that are paying for those liabilities. Number five, your income dictates your lifestyle. So this should be completely flipped. We should be working to earn enough money to live, not to live to earn enough money to buy stuff that we don't need. So if you're looking every,
Starting point is 00:10:42 single time to get paid so that you can spend those dollars on something else, then you want to reverse that mindset, because every time you get paid, guess what that could be? That could be fuel to the fire to create freedom for your life. And every time you get paid, you have a choice right in front of you. The choice is, do I leverage this income to create generational wealth for my family, or do I spend this money on frivolous things that don't matter and that I don't value and I just keep my family in the same place for the rest of their life? You have those two choices every single time you get paid.
Starting point is 00:11:14 Now everybody's got bills. I understand it. I got bills. You got bills. She's got bills. He's got bills. But at the same time, making sure that any excess income that you have coming first and that you pay yourself first, you invest those dollars first, goes to you first and your family first,
Starting point is 00:11:29 then you can buy the fun stuff later. See, money isn't about just hoarding this cash. Money is about creating freedom for your life and spending those dollars on the things that bring you value. I want you to spend money. I want you to treat yourself. But doing it responsibly, especially early on when you're broke, is incredibly important to build that baseline so that you can start to get wealthy. Number six, you aren't saving for the future.
Starting point is 00:11:52 So along these same lines, if you're not saving money for the future, if you're not building wealth towards your retirement account, you're not putting money in your emergency fund. If you have no financial buffer whatsoever and you're not saving for your future, you're going to be working in that office or working in that cubicle or working in that construction yard for the rest of your life. You have to build wealth to create freedom in your life. This is so incredibly important to understand. You hear the passion in my voice because you will sit in that office for the rest of your life if you're not investing your money. And I don't want that for you. And you don't want that for you. So what you have to do is instead change your mindset to put your dollars towards your future.
Starting point is 00:12:33 Now, how do you do this? You can put it in retirement accounts. We have episodes on the Roth IRA and the 401K. You can put it in your brokerage account, an investment account, or you can create your own personal insurance policy and start building up your emergency fund. But doing this and putting your money towards your financial future is incredibly important.
Starting point is 00:12:50 Number seven, you argue with your significant other about money all the time. See, money is a huge stressor for a lot of people. So if you're arguing a lot about money, then that means there's a stress and a friction involved. Now, I'm no couples therapist. But what I'm trying to tell you here is, once you start to build wealth,
Starting point is 00:13:06 the stress and anxiety with money begins to float away. Because if you're doing these things that matter, you have a cash cushion in place, you're starting to contribute to your retirement accounts, then all of a sudden you can start to do some other things that you want to do. But setting that baseline when you're broke, everybody starts off broke. If you just graduated from college and you just got married, everybody starts off broke.
Starting point is 00:13:29 This isn't something that's new. But some people are faking that they're wealthy when they're not. And some people look like they're poor and they're actually rich. Which category would you rather be in? Because what's happening here is you can do either or, but you both have to be on the same page. Now, one way to reduce the friction in this situation, this is a tip I'm going to give you, is my wife and I, we have what we call blow accounts. So each month, we each get a certain amount of money, and we can just blow that money, no questions asked. If I want to go get myself a driver so I can stripe one right down the middle
Starting point is 00:13:59 on the fairway, I can go do that. If my wife wants to go buy herself a designer purse, she can go do that. But we have these blow funds that we're allowed to allocate. And obviously they roll over and whatever else, but you just save up that money every single month. And then all the other money goes towards our family and building wealth and everything else. So lately, I've been noticing how fast things are changing at home. The kids are growing like crazy. Clothes don't fit anymore and routines are changing. And it just hits you. Life is expanding. And when your life grows, your responsibility grows with it. That's something I've been thinking about more this spring, making sure the safety net we have in place actually matches the life that we're building.
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Starting point is 00:17:15 Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Number eight, you have more money sitting in your driveway than you do in your bank account. So first of all, if you have more money sitting in your driveway, meaning that you have more net worth in your vehicles or in toys or whatever else it is, then you do in your bank account, let's flip that script. Because what's happening here is you're investing your dollars into liabilities instead of assets. Now, what you want to do is put as much money as possible into assets and allow those assets
Starting point is 00:17:51 to pay for those liabilities. Here's the beautiful thing about this is you can have all those liabilities, but let me explain something to you. Say, for example, you want to buy yourself a fancy, schmancy car. So what do you do? Instead of going out and buying that car and losing that money forever because cars go down in value over time, instead, what you're going to do is go out and buy an asset. Now, you could think of something like a rental property, okay? So what you're doing is you're going to go out and you're going to buy a house and you're going to put a tenant in that house who's going to pay you rent every single month.
Starting point is 00:18:22 And when that house starts the cash flow, meaning producing an income for you, you're going to utilize that cash flow, go out and buy that car and that cash flow is going to pay the car for you. So somebody else is going to get up, go to work every single day, come home and pay you money to pay for your car. So somebody else is paying for your car. And in addition, when that car is fully paid, you still have a pouse producing income and paying you every single month. Welcome to building wealth. Because this is the life hack that most people don't understand. But if you do this and you do it over and over again with all your expenses in life, all of a sudden everything changes for you. Number nine, you save 10% of your income.
Starting point is 00:19:01 If you save 10% of your income, you might be broke. What do I mean by this? You're saving money. Isn't that a good thing? If you save 10% of your income, you're going to be working for 51 years. Now, where do I get that from? We have an episode talking about how much you need to save to retire every single month. That episode's incredibly important to understand.
Starting point is 00:19:22 And if you save what all the financial gurus tell you to do, which is 10% of your income, you will be working for a very long time. So instead, what we say, hey, increase that savings rate over time to 20, 25%, and see if you can get to that point. Now, if you can't get to that point, I got a tip for you. And you heard this tip a couple episodes ago. But you want to increase the amount that you're saving and investing by 1% every single month. This is so incredibly important because this is going to help you ease the pain of saving more. So say, for example, you're saving 10% of your income.
Starting point is 00:19:55 Well, if you increase it to 11% the next month, 12% the next month, 13% to,000, percent the month after that, you're going to be saving 12% more than you do today. So if you save 10% now you're at 22% by the next year. This is how you ease the pain where it's not as painful as it would be if you just went to 25% right away. Now, if you have the money to get to 25% right away, please do that. And then raise it over time, especially if you want to achieve financial independence or fire, then you need to make sure that you're saving way more than that 10%. You need to get to 30, 40%, especially if you want to retire specifically really early. Number 10,000. Number 10, you don't track your spending.
Starting point is 00:20:32 So here's a stat that I want you to hear. 75% of people live paycheck to paycheck like we talked about earlier, and 57% of people don't have a budget. There is a massive correlation here because people who live paycheck to paycheck also don't have a budget. How do I know that? Because they're not tracking where their money's going. And when you don't know where your money's going,
Starting point is 00:20:53 it gets lost in the fold. Have you ever gotten to the end of the month and been like, where did all my money go? How did I spend all my money? A lot of times people start doing this, and when I work with them and start to coach them, all of a sudden they say, oh my goodness, I spend $1,500 a month on groceries, and I thought I spent $600 a month on groceries. And so what you do is when you track your spending, you have power over your money. And when you have that power over your money, now you can allocate those dollars towards things that you value, towards things that actually matter to you. So tracking your spending isn't restrictive.
Starting point is 00:21:26 It's actually freeing because now you're tracking your money, and those dollars, are going to where you want. Maybe you want to give more to charity. Maybe you want to give more to causes you believe in. Maybe you want to save more for your retirement. Maybe you want to put more in your kids' college fund. All of these dollars are going exactly where you want. Maybe you want put more dollars into your hobbies. This is the power of tracking your money. And this is exactly why you need to be tracking your spending. Now, there's two budgets that we talk about here. The first one is the reverse budget. And the reverse budget is very simple. Because if you hate budgets, this is the budget for you. You take your money off the top,
Starting point is 00:22:00 every time you get paid. So whatever you want to save, say you want to save 20% of your income, then you take that 20% off the top and then spend what is left over on whatever you want, including your bills. The other one is the standard budget, which is a standard line by line item budget. Now, we have a number of episodes on budgeting. So if you're interested in that, make sure you check out those episodes because they will tell you exactly how I do it.
Starting point is 00:22:20 I talk about my budget categories. I tell you exactly how I do that and the four rules of budgeting. So those are the big things that we talk about in those episodes. Number 11, you don't have an emergency fund. If you don't have an emergency fund, what's you doing? What's you doing if you don't have emergency fund? Because emergency funds protect you against life. Life is going to happen.
Starting point is 00:22:41 We all know this. How many bad things have happened to you throughout your lifetime where you had to spend extra money? Your car broke down. Your air conditioner broke. You had a health issue. You have to have extra money on the side to prepare you for life. This gives you time.
Starting point is 00:22:56 It gives you freedom. If you lose your job, you can recover from it. There's so many different things that emergency funds do, but it gives you peace of mind, which is the biggest one. So, this is your insurance policy against life. How much do you need? To start off, you want to have a cash buffer of at least what your highest deductible is. So if you have a car insurance deductible and a health insurance deductible and you have any
Starting point is 00:23:17 other deductibles in your life, whatever of those three, four, five, however many insurance policies you have, whatever the highest deductible is, that's what you should target first. Why? Because if anything happens within those timeframes and you have to go to the high, hospital or you have to fix your car or you get in an accident well at least you have enough money to cover the deductible so that you can take care of that situation and then in addition once you have that built up then you start to figure out well how many months do you have expenses do I want if you have a job where you can get another job really fast maybe you're in the tech field because you can get a job
Starting point is 00:23:48 in one or two months in the tech field then maybe you only need three months of expenses but if you're in a job where it's going to be a lot harder to get a job then you want to target closer to six month's expenses. Those are the starting points for you to look at for an emergency fund and you can build it over time. Now, if you want to put your emergency fund somewhere, the best place to put it where it will not go down in value over time is a high yield savings account because at least your interest rate is a little bit higher and you get that extra interest. Now, we're going to have an episode coming up talking about how to invest your emergency fund if you want to do that. I don't do it myself personally, but I have a very systematic way to do this if you want to invest your emergency fund. We'll have that coming
Starting point is 00:24:26 up as well. Number 12, you don't invest your money. Do I need to even say more? If you don't invest your money, you got to get with the program and start today. There's no perfect time to start investing your money, so you need to realize that up front. There's no perfect time. The market may be up, the market may be down. I don't care where it is in life. Over time, the market goes in one direction. And if you want proof of this, take out your phone, pull out the stock market app, turn it sideways to the longest time horizon it goes, and watch what direction that market goes. It goes up.
Starting point is 00:24:57 So making sure that you do this so that you can start to build wealth over time is incredibly important. Number 13, you have not increased your income in some time. See, companies have a knack for taking advantage of people when they don't speak up. So if you don't speak up and say, I need to earn more. money, then a lot of times companies will continue to pay you the same thing with your 3% raise, which doesn't even cover inflation, for a very long period of time. So what you want to do instead is begin to start negotiations with your employer. So the first way you want to increase your income, which is the biggest way to start building wealth and the catapult to building
Starting point is 00:25:34 wealth, is increasing your income. We talk about that in this podcast all the time. So what you want to do is if you haven't increased your income for some time, you want to negotiate your salary. Now, I wrote a free ebook on exactly step by step how to do this because we have a very specific system on how to do this. I'll link it up in the show notes so you can check it out. But that's the first thing you want to do. Then, after you do that, if they're not willing to pay you more, then you want to look at it additionally switching jobs. People who switch jobs can typically, on average, make 20% more when they switch jobs. That's why a lot of people jump ship now because a lot of companies who aren't loyal to the people who are loyal to them,
Starting point is 00:26:10 they are now going to jump ship so they can make more money. The next way is to build side hustles and work on side money. So there's a bunch of different side hustles you can start. My favorite way is if you're just trying to make money today is to go flip things. So you can go to places like Walmart and look in the clearance aisle and say, hey, scan the items and you could sell those items on Amazon. Amazon has a seller's app and you can scan items on Walmart. We'll have a whole episode on this, but you can scan items on Walmart and sell them on Amazon. I used to do that all the time when I was trying to build up well.
Starting point is 00:26:39 You can go to garage sales and flip them. You can go to offer up and flip items. Ryan Paneda, if you haven't heard our episode where we talked to Ryan Panetta, he used to flip couches. And he goes into detail on exactly how he did that. And he would make $8,000 a month just flipping couches that were on Craigslist. There's so many things that you can start by flipping items. If you want to make more money, flipping is the way to go because there's so many things that you can flip. And you can scale flipping over time because Ryan started from flipping couches to flipping multi-million dollar houses.
Starting point is 00:27:06 And now he makes millions of dollars a year from flipping things. Now he's flipping NFTs and all these other very cool things. So make sure you check that out if you're interested in making more money with flipping. The next one. This is a big one. You are prone to wanting what other people have around you. So if you think that you need to keep up with the Joneses, your neighbor got a new car, so you needed a new car. Your neighbor got a pool, so you need a new pool.
Starting point is 00:27:29 Your neighbor redid their flooring, so you need to redo your flooring. Your friend got a designer purse, so you need a designer purse. Your buddy got a truck, so you need a truck. All of these things are things that you need to pay attention to because if you feel that bubbling up inside of you, but you really don't value those things, then you are looking at a situation where the more you buy those things, the less wealth you will have.
Starting point is 00:27:51 Allocating your dollars towards freedom is the best thing that you can do. The next one, you don't have the number that is enough. This is one of the biggest ones that I struggle with. So when you always want more, you don't have a plan for what is enough. You don't have a plan for when you can actually stop. And in some situations, this is good. If you're trying to build businesses and things like that, sometimes you don't want to have enough. But having enough is extremely admirable.
Starting point is 00:28:13 And I really struggle with this because every time I hit my financial goals, I want more. But figuring out how much is enough is so incredibly important. And I work on this every single day. So here's how you can figure out how much is enough. If you want to look at retiring early or doing something like that, what you want to do is calculate how much you need every single month to live, not bare bones, but to live comfortably. How much do you need every single month to live comfortably? Multiply that number by 12.
Starting point is 00:28:40 So that's how much you need every single year. So your monthly number to live comfortably and multiply that number by 12, that's how much you need every year. Then once you have that number, then multiply it by 25. Now this is called the 25x rule. And what this does is it tells you how much money you need to retire. So for example, let's say you need to live on $80,000 a year. That's how much you need to live on in retirement.
Starting point is 00:29:04 Maybe you got rid of your house payment and you want to just live on $80,000 a year. Well, if you wanted to do that, you would take $80,000 times 25 and you'd have $2 million there. So once you hit $2 million there, you can draw down 4% every single year and you are retired, my friend. So that's incredibly important to understand. That's how you do that calculation, the quick math. I have a whole episode deep diving into why that is. So if you want to check that out, it's in the show notes as well. But this is a way for you to figure out how much you need to retire.
Starting point is 00:29:34 Number 16, you focus on the little things instead of the big things. This is one big thing that we talk about on this podcast all the time. If you're new to this podcast, a major factor for us is focusing on the big things and cutting out the little things that don't matter. So people will tell you all the time, we need to save money on coffees or lattes or avocado toast or people start to clip coupons all the time or making your own laundry detergent. None of those things will make you wealthy. And what I'm trying to tell you is, yes, they can help.
Starting point is 00:30:01 They can help. All the little things definitely add up. Small amounts of money over time invested grow to very large amounts of money. That's not what I'm saying here. If you're starting off and you're dead broke and you're trying to figure out how to save an extra $100 so you can invest those dollars, do that. But if you're only focusing on these things and not focusing on the other side of the equation, which is increasing your income and focusing on the big three expenses,
Starting point is 00:30:24 then you are losing out on a situation that can make a massive impact on your life. So let me explain this. Focusing on cutting out lattes instead of cutting out the major car, payments that you have that have a really high interest rate that cost you hundreds of dollars per month, if not thousands of dollars per month? What if you cut a thousand dollar a month car payment down to $500? That's a $500 impact instead of cutting out lattes, which will save you $50 a month. This is what I'm trying to explain here, because $500 is much greater than $50. And the $500 move is amazing. Now, if you want to do all of this, then you're really optimizing your life.
Starting point is 00:30:57 But focus on the big things first instead of the little things. And number 17, if money is a cause, of anxiety and stress in your life, then you might be broke. Money is there to reduce your stress and anxiety. That is the way money should be utilized. Now, there's a number of ways that we've talked about this in the past before, but it should be used for things that bring you value, as we talk about all the time.
Starting point is 00:31:20 So if money is causing you stress, if it's causing you anxiety, then I encourage you to continue listening to this podcast, watch our YouTube videos, because we are trying to teach as many people as possible how to take the stress and anxiety out of that. their life with money. Money is self-care. I've said this a number of times. Money is self-care because it reduces your stress. It reduces your anxiety. And once you get your finances in order,
Starting point is 00:31:44 it will absolutely change your life and take that part of the equation away. Imagine every time you get to payday, it's just another day. That's what wealth is. You don't even have to worry about when I'm getting paid next because those paychecks don't matter because you're living off other income that you already have. And that is what wealth building is all about. It's taking the stress, taking the anxiety out of your life. Listen, I hope you guys enjoy this episode and learn some things. If you have any questions, hit me up on Instagram at Master MoneyCo or hit me up on TikTok at Master Money Co.
Starting point is 00:32:16 And follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast too. And if you want to help out the show, please leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don't forget to check us out on YouTube at Master Money on YouTube as well. so much. I appreciate each and every single one of you guys, and I hope you guys have a great.

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