The Personal Finance Podcast - 24 Things You Need to Do With Your Money in 2024 Part 1

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

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On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, 24 things that you need to do with your money in 2024, part one. What's 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 part one of 24 things you need to do with your money in 2024. If you guys have any questions, make sure to hit us up on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, at Master Money Co, and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on. And 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.

I cannot thank you guys enough for leaving those five-star ratings and reviews. They mean so much to us here at the Personal Finance Podcast. Now, today, we're going to be diving into an action-packed. And this has to be a two-parter because as I started to go through what I wanted to talk about in this episode, it became very apparent that this is going to take some time. And so I'm going to go through 24 things that you need to do with your money in 2024. So we're going to do the first section, the first 12 on this episode. And then in the next episode, we are going to go through the following 12 that I also want to talk through. So this is going to be a back-to-back episode of part one and part two so that you can kind of think through which of these are going to do. apply to you. Now, so far this year, I don't know about you, but I have got everything gone wrong in 2024. 2025 is going to be my year for show. But anyways, overall, we're going to turn this whole thing around. We're going to have a lot of cool things happening this year. And I'm really, really excited

for the rest of 2024. Now, as I go through this list, I want you to understand that some of these may not apply to you. Most of these will likely apply to you, but some of them may not apply to you. If they don't apply to you, just move on to the next one and you can apply those as you go through this. But if you follow through with this list, I mean, if you go through this, you're going to be probably one of the most financially educated people in your entire office or in your entire workspace or within your entire friend circle. And in addition, you're going to be equipped to be able to build a tremendous amount of wealth this year. So really, really excited to dive in this list. So without further ado, let's get into it. All right. So number one,

is one that people have absolutely loved when I talk about this. And a lot of people also have critiqued this as well. But I think this is really, really important to map out in 2024 as you start your year. And we actually talked about this on Instagram and on TikTok. And on TikTok, you got about 3 million views. And on Instagram, we got about 2 million views. So people are really interested in this topic. But number one is take advantage of your three paycheck months. Now, a lot of people will be saying, I've been thinking about my three paycheck months for the last couple of years, but it seems like my three paycheck months always just go to my bills. And the reason why that happens is because you are not planning for your three paycheck

months. I want you to think about this for a second, because if you get paid biweekly, for a number of other months, you're living off of two paychecks each and every single month. So if you plan out these three paycheck months, this will absolutely be something where you you can take that extra paycheck and you can put it towards wealth building activity. So we'll talk about those wealth building activities here in a second and what you should do with it. But I think overall, you really need to think through this and how you can plan this out. Now, how do you plan something like this out?

You're maybe saying to yourself, I don't know how to plan that out. How do I plan this whole thing out? Your spending plan is what is going to help you plan this out. Your spending plan is going to help you through this process, aka a budget. Now, you can have an automated budget where you're not really even lifting a finger and or you can have a budget where you have line by line item and you're going through and making sure that everything is allocated correctly. But if you plan this out in the calendar, you will absolutely be fine and be able to take advantage of these three paycheck months. So here's what we're going to talk through

here. When it comes to these three paycheck months, I'm going to tell you when they come in 2024 if you get paid by weekly. Really important to understand that if you get paid by weekly. So if your first paycheck was January 5th of 2024, then your three paycheck month is going to be in March and August. And in fact, your three paycheck date is going to be March 29th and August 30th. Okay. And if your first paycheck is on January 12th of 2024, then your first three paycheck date is going to be May 31st. And your second is going to be November 29th of 2020. Now, if you get paid weekly, I would look up to see where those weekly five paycheck months are going to be. Those months are going to be more frequent on that weekly basis. So,

that you can figure out what are some of the wealth building activities I actually want to put this paycheck towards. This is something where if you do this every single year, you can really accelerate your path to wealth, where it may seem like a small gesture to go out and you save that extra paycheck. Maybe it's two grand, maybe it's three grand, and you're saving that extra paycheck twice per year. But we know how fast five to six thousand dollars can compound over a very long period of time. So what do you do with this money? There's a number of things you want to do. Number one is obviously if you don't have that money in the emergency fund yet, you don't have that fully funded emergency fund build out. You definitely need to make sure that you have that going first because this is going to protect you against life.

This is also going to protect you on your path towards building wealth. So you need to have that emergency fund built out in high yield savings account or something along those lines. Now, if that is done, you can also look at making sure you pay down your debt. Now, if you're in credit card debt, you absolutely need to make sure that this extra paycheck is going to be. going toward credit card debt. Credit card debt is a pants on fire emergency. This is the same thing as going through and seeing your house burning. And if your house is burning and you're just standing there watching it burn down, that's exactly what people do when they're in credit card debt. They're just watching their financial house burn down instead of taking action and calling 911

and making sure the fire department puts out that fire. Instead, they just stand there and watch. Imagine doing that and how crazy we would look. That's exactly what you're doing when you're in credit card debt because all of a sudden compound interest is compounding against you. Those massive interest rates on your credit cards are going to take you forever to pay off if you don't get rid of it fast. So take those extra paychecks, put them towards your credit card debt if you have some or personal loans or whatever high interest debt that you have. Obviously, the best way to follow this is to go through the stairway to wealth. If you don't know what the stairway to wealth is, it is a free download that we have for you that kind of just

gives you some of the orders that we think through with our money and how to allocate our in certain order. So that's another thing to look through. But the biggest thing I want you to look at is maybe investing those extra paychecks into your retirement account. Maybe you can't max out your Roth IRA or you cannot max out your 401k. And so you can take these extra payments and put them towards that IRA or put them towards the 401k or put them towards your taxable brokerage. Why? Because now all of a sudden, you're going to be putting in three, four, five, six thousand dollars. Maybe it's your extra paychecks or 10 or 20. I don't know how much you make. But overall, let's say you take these extra checks and you put them towards investments. What's going to happen over time is that's going to compound dramatically over time.

In fact, let's just say, for example, that over the course of 30 years, you took your extra two paychecks. And let's just say it amounted to $5,000. Let's be conservative here and say your extra two paychecks amounted to $5,000 per year. And you took that $5,000 per year and you invested those dollars. It over the course of 30 years, $5,000 every single year, boom, extra $5,000 in that account. You're going to have an extra $822,470 at the end of 30 years if you got a 10% rate of return. And so historically, the S&P 500 has gotten higher than a 10% rate of return. And so we're just utilizing these returns over that time frame. So 822,000 additional dollars in retirement. That is equivalent to about $35,000 that you can draw down every year in retirement.

Imagine having an extra $35,000 per year by just putting this discipline into place. So really, really, really, important to think through your three paycheck months, because this is just a little hack. We all need these little hacks to help us save more. A lot of times we're relying on our willpower, and if you don't automate your money, then you really are relying on your willpower. And so having these additional hacks are going to get us to the finish line so much faster, and we do not realize how much faster it can happen just by making sure we take advantage of these little, little tactics. So overall, the more of these that you do, the more it's going to add up over time. Now, another thing you can do with this money is, you know, is you're going to

you can plan for major expenses. So maybe you have money coming up for large expenses like home repairs or car repairs or maybe you have stuff where you want to make extra mortgage payments. I had a lot of people tell me in the comments that they make extra mortgage payments with those. That's fantastic because you can pay down your mortgage much faster. You're making those additional payments and it's really, really helpful overall to be able to do that. Now another thing to do with this is, hey, you're stressed, your mental health is taking a hole. Let's go treat ourselves. Let's treat ourselves to a vacation or doing some of the things that will help us relax and reduce that stress and anxiety. That is another thing you could do, but specifically when you're on track with your investments.

So I am all for vacations. I am all for you taking these mental health breaks. And so that is an investment in yourself is the way I see it. I see it as an investment in yourself. I want you to spend more money on these things. I want you to spend more money on vacations. I want you to ball out more on whatever you love in life. And so being able to do that is planning.

And planning is part of three paycheck months. That is why we want to take advantage of these, because these are going to be really, really helpful for most people. Now, overall, people are going to say, well, this isn't more money. You're acting like it's more money. I'm not acting like it's more money whatsoever. What I'm saying is you live on two paychecks every single month, and there's two months where you're going to get three paychecks.

Plan them out accordingly, and you will be able to save that paycheck. I'm going to say it again. Plan them out accordingly, and you will. will be able to save that paycheck. So if your first paycheck was that January 5th date, your three paycheck month is coming up in a couple of months, March 29th, 2004, and the second one is going to be in August. Now, if it was January 12th, you got a little more time. You got until May to plan it out. So overall, we got to take action now in order to make sure that we are planning out for these three paycheck months. Let's get the number two. All right, so number two

is to increase your investments by at least the inflation rate. So we want to make sure that every single year, if we are not increasing the amount that we are investing. Say, for example, you invest 20% of your gross income. And so you're investing that 20% of your gross income every single month, but you'd never make a change. Well, what's going to happen is your purchasing power is going to start to fall behind over time. And so what I like to do is every year, I like to review what the inflation rate was over the course of the last year. And I'd like to increase my investment amount by at least the inflation rate. Now, this is really, really important. to do because it maintains your purchasing power that you are putting into your investments and

just helps you hedge against inflation over time. And so this is just another mini hack that I like to do overall and I like to review my finances at the beginning of the year and make sure I'm doing this. Now, I should probably be putting this also at the year-in money checklist just to change your automations so that when you're automating your money into your investment account, you can just adjust that dollar amount every single year. So according to the USinflationcalculator.com, they are stating that in 2020, the inflation rate was about 3.1%. So adjusting your contribution

based on that inflation rate is going to be really, really important, and I just love to do that. Now, if you're maxing out your Roth IRA, obviously it is naturally already increased for 2024, which we will talk about here in a little bit. But overall, increasing that amount

may just naturally happen based on new limits that you are trying to max out these accounts. But if you're not maxing out these accounts, you're not adjusting the amount that you're investing, then just making sure that you bump that up a little bit. Every single year is going to be really, really important. It also helps you obviously

compound more money, but in addition, it just helps you hedge against that inflation, which is the most important thing. Now, number three, this is a big one that most people will not do, and I'm telling you from experience, most people will not do this. I could say this till I'm blue in the face and they will not do this. Start saving for the holidays right now. Start saving for the holidays right now. Because what this is going to do is you're going to get to the end of the year and you're going to spend however much you spend around the holidays. And I've noticed that a lot of people have said how much they actually spend around the holidays and that is not what the average is. So a lot of people I think are underestimating what they actually spend during the holidays.

But say, for example, you spend $2,400 every holiday season. Now you may say, whoa, that's way too high. I don't spend that much. Or you may say that is exactly around what I spend or you may say I spend even more than that. It doesn't matter what the number is, but let's just say you spend $2,400 per month. And the reason why I'm doing that is because it's easy math for me. So if you spend $2,400 or the holiday season, that means you should have some sort of bucket or some sort of savings where you are saving $200 per month towards the holidays. Why? Why would you save $200 per month towards the holidays starting in January? Because you're going to get to the end of the year, and then all the sudden, the money is just there. There is power in having the money just there. And this is

exactly what we want to make sure that we are doing. Imagine getting to the end of the year. All your stress is gone, all your anxiety around money is gone because the money is just there. This is a really powerful thing that most people should be doing because the majority of Americans go into debt. And we're going to talk about that in a second during the holiday season. Imagine if you never went into debt during the holiday season and you had the money there. You were able to get every single present you want. You're able to have your holiday party without having to stress out about going into debt. The money is just there. So start saving for the holidays today. It may be so far out and you're like, ah, I can start saving a little later. It is so much easier the earlier in the year

that you start. So start saving today. Number four is pay off any holiday debt. We're along the same line. So according to a lending tree survey, about 30 to 35 percent of adults in the United States, go into thousands of dollars in debt during the holidays. Additionally, a nerd wallet survey revealed that more than a quarter, 27% of Americans expected to go into more debt than usual to purchase holiday gifts in 2023, including 42% of parents with children under the age of 18. In another survey conducted by CreditRates.com

found that 38% of Americans expected to carry holiday shopping credit card debt into the new year. So, 38% of Americans have debt. in the new year. 42% of parents with children under the age of 18 have holiday debt coming into the new year. This is really, really important to get rid of. If you have debt because of the holidays, this is the same reason to pay off that credit card debt. This is an emergency and you really, really need to prep for it now, A, and then B, get that

holiday debt paid off and start prepping for next year. It's going to happen over and over again, especially if you have kids, you want to buy them the gifts you never had, you want to be able to provide for them, you want them to have an enjoyable Christmas and the last thing you want to do is go into debt while doing so. So what you can do is if you start to prep now, it will absolutely change the way you see the holidays. Instead of a really, really stressful event, the money's there. You're able to take advantage of this. So first, let's get a plan together to pay off this debt. Then let's go and start to plan for next year. If you can only save $100 a month, save $100 a month. But do whatever you

can to stay away from debt again coming the next year. Now we have a free debt course. If you have gone into debt for the holidays, we have a free debt course. If you go to mastermoney.com slash debt course, you can take that debt course and take about an hour to go through. And this will give you an entire plan to pay off your debt. So make sure that you check that out if you have not yet. Let's jump to a break and then we'll get to number five. I remember when I needed to hire someone fast, but finding the right person quickly 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

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if the inflation rate is last year was 3.1% and your boss gives you either no raise or they give you a 2% raise or they give you a 1% raise, what just happened? You just got a pay cut. And because you just got a pay cut, that is going to be. a problem for you, isn't it, overall? Whereas a lot of companies right now are not giving as many raises as they once were in the past, and really they need to at least give you a raise to keep up with inflation. So if you do not negotiate your salary every single year and you absolutely should, if you've never heard our stuff on negotiating a salary with your boss, it is really, really

important to do so because it is a multi-million dollar decision to decide to start negotiating your salary. But at the bare bones minimum, at least try to negotiate your salary up to the inflation rate. The inflation rate last year was 3.1% according to a bunch of different sources. The inflation rate last year was 3.1%. So then you need to at least get a raise increase of 3.1%. But studies have shown that people who actually negotiate higher than that standard average are going to make over a million dollars more over the course of their career if they start to negotiate more. So we have a free ebook that shows you exactly how to negotiate. So if you've never seen that before, you go to mastermoney.com slash resources and then it's called finally get that raise.

We have a six-month plan in there on how to prepare your boss for you asking for a raise and you go through that six-month plan. But it's really important to make sure that you are getting those wage increases every single year at the bare minimum at the inflation rate, but I really want you to master the skill of negotiation so that you can get to that point in time. Now, if you want to become a master negotiator, there's a couple of great books out there. One is getting to yes. And another one is called Never Split the Difference.

I'm actually rereading Never Split the Difference right now. and it is a fantastic book for you to go through if you're interested in becoming a master negotiator. And I think overall, most people need that skill of negotiation because you use it in everyday life. You use it whether or not you were having a conversation at work. You use it if you're talking to a colleague at another company and you're trying to resolve a specific issue. You use it if you have employees under you. You're using negotiation to persuade them into certain directions. In addition, you're using it if you're asking your three-year-old to eat breakfast.

You're using negotiation every single day. And so understanding how this works and the tactics that you should be utilizing and how to work with people. Because that's exactly what a negotiation is. A negotiation is actually a collaboration. And if you're not collaborating in a negotiation, then you're the pit bull and you're the person who is going to lose that negotiation or you're going to damage a relationship. It's one of the two things. So making sure you understand how to actually negotiate is a really, really powerful lesson that most people need to understand. And so those two books I highly recommend you read.

In addition, following our plan in the corporate work environment is going to be really, really helpful. We have had a ton of people go through that ebook and send us messages saying they got a raise. We've had some people say they've doubled their salary by just going through these options. So I really, really am excited for you to check that out if you haven't checked it out yet. But making sure you ask your boss for that raise, at least by the inflation rate this year is going to be really, really important. All right.

Number six is to actually keep your financial New Year's resolution. So most people, we talk. talk about this and master your money goals. Most people fall off from their financial New Year's resolutions after week two. In fact, the second Friday of every single year, all the pizza companies call this National Quitting Day. And there was a guy who founded Slice.com who does like a lot of the pizza delivery orders for a lot of the local branches of different companies. Slice.com, he said they get the highest amount of pizza orders when it comes to the second Friday of New Year's because people quit their New Year's resolutions and it's time to get a pizza party going again.

And overall, most people quit. But I'm going to show you really quick just some of the baselines of what we kind of talk about in Master your Money Goals. Now, Master Your Money Goals goes really deep into this stuff and we give you a bunch of tools and resources. It's not going to be available until next year, but you can check it out next year. But for the rest of the year, I'm going to give you some tips on how to keep that financial news resolution.

So first of all, you need to make sure that you are breaking these goals into small chunks. If you are taking one massive goal, say, for example, you want to max out that 401K. And this is the year you want to do it. Well, that's a really, really big goal to max out a 401k with 20 plus grand that you want to put into that account. So overall, you want to break this up into small chunk. Well, what is the monthly amount I need to put in there? What is the paycheck amount that I need to put it there and break it down into small chunks? Also, you must have a plan.

It is really, really important to have a plan in place before you start chasing after these goals. What does a plan turn into? It's actually a system. So you have to have a system in place and a plan. And these goals need to be time bounce. So for a lot of financial goals, you can put timebound goals into a lot of different tools. Like, for example, Ally Bank Savings Account, they have timebound options where you can put in, hey, I want to save $10,000 in my emergency fund by June of 2024.

So you can actually set that timebound goal. You could do the same thing in like a tool like Wynab or Monarch Money. They all do this where you can go in there and set timebound goals. And then you must put these goals in your schedule. So for financial goals, you're saying to yourself, well, how do I put certain financial goals in my schedule like saving for an emergency fund. What you're going to do is you're going to put a time slot in your schedule that tells you, hey, I need to check up to see if I am on track with this emergency fund.

If I'm not, I need to assess why and what I'm going to do about it. Or do I need to readjust? Do I need to reassess? All of these are really important to think through when you go to some of these financial New Year's resolution. And then also it must be systematized. So all this must be systematized. We teach you how to systematize that and master your money goals.

But your systems need to be really, really important. and they need to trigger you to take action on a daily weekly basis so that you can really accomplish these goals. Because the actions are what's going to help you accomplish these goals. It's not just writing them down and thinking about them a little bit. You've got to take action on this stuff. And so we're all about that action boss here at the Personal Finance Podcast. So really, really important to make sure that you are doing that as you go through this.

All right. So number seven is to protect your identity from AI-equipped scammers. So the complexity of online scams are starting. to really become robust. And if you have not been following along with some of this stuff, you really need to make sure that you are protecting your identity in 2024. If you do not have a plan to protect yourself and your finances online, we have some episodes we were talking through this. But really, it's getting more and more important overall because now, because of the development of AI, there are so many more sophisticated scams out there that can be mass produced very, very

quickly. And overall, the amount of people who are getting scammed out of their money and the on people who are clicking links that look exactly like an email of their favorite store and all these different things are happening more and more and more. So there is a ton of different fishing attempts where really, really intelligent people, I'm talking about like CEOs of massive Fortune 500 companies are getting nailed with this stuff. There's government officials getting nailed with this stuff. These are getting really, really sophisticated. So you got to make sure that you were putting together a plan to protect yourself online, specifically your finances. The last thing I want for each and every single one of you is to not take this stuff seriously. And that is why we talk about it a lot

on this podcast and why we talk through some of the protective measures that you absolutely have to take that can really reduce your chances of getting nailed by like, you know, 95 to 97% if you follow some of this stuff. Is reducing the chances of you falling prey to a scam is by doing some of this stuff. So reducing the chances of you falling prey is going to be really, really important this year. And I think you really need to develop a plan because as these get more sophisticated, overall, we need to make sure that we are also following along with what some of these scams are. So I will try to report some of them as they come in, the ones that I see that may be relevant to you guys. And overall, I think this plan is really, really important. Now, one big

thing that happens a lot is that, for example, I just saw a senator get nailed the other day, where they clicked on a link that looked like a national security link. It looked exactly like the email. It was exactly like from the person. And so they clicked this specific link that they sent them to, and all of a sudden it was a scammer. And how did they get their information? Well, they got their information from online. You can find emails online. You can find people's personal information online. You can find all of this different stuff online. So if somebody gets a hold of us tiny piece of your information, they could do a search and find the rest of your information. So this is where our partner, Delete Me comes in because Delete Me is the best place to get

your information online removed. So there's a lot of data brokers out there who are hanging on to your financial information. And so Delete Me will go in and remove that personal information from all these data brokers. There are thousands of them out there. So when I did this and I use Delete me as a service for the first time, I went out there and there were thousands of these data brokers that had my information online from my address to my email address to my phone number. And you can do this by just Googling your name in quotations or Googling your address in quotations or Googling your phone number in locations and seeing all the places that your information pops up. Well, if you fall prey to a scammer and they want to look up your email address, for example, so they can send you this scammy email

where you're going to click the link and then you're going to have a couple of issues overall you need to get that information removed so it makes it so much harder for them to find you. And so this is where Delete Me falls in and I love Delete Me as a service, which is why we partner with them because this is something I use personally every single year.

And so I think it is one that you should definitely check out as well. So if you want a discount on Delete Me, they will remove your information online. If you go to join DeleteMe.com slash PFP, just use the promo code PFP and it'll get you 20% off of DeleteMe for their annual plan. And I think it is probably for the best money I spend because they remove my personal information

from thousands and thousands of websites. And so it is definitely something where you can also do this on your own. You could do it on your own, but it's going to take you hours and hours and hours to get all this removed. You're going to have to send letters and emails to all these different sites. Delete me does it all for you. And it's a very affordable price for the services they provide. So overall, making sure you have this plan in place and starting to develop your personal

protection plan, especially when it comes to having this available online is going to be really, really important. Number eight is to update your net worth. Now, your net worth is really, really important. This is your financial scorecard, meaning that your net worth is going to tell you where your financial health is. And I like to update my net worth either earlier in the year or later in the year. So when I update my net worth, this is a great time to do it because you don't need

to be checking your net worth every month unless you really like this stuff. You don't need to be checking it every quarter really. You just need to update your net worth yearly so you don't have to spend so much time on your finances. Unless you like spending time on your finances and your finances and your an optimizer. If you're an optimizer, I feel yeah. I was an optimizer early on in my 20s as well. But now I just like to simplify my finances as much as I possibly can. And so I like to do it yearly, maybe bi-annually if I have a big financial event that happens. But overall, it's just a yearly

net worth update. So if you don't know what your net worth is, it is what you own minus what you owe. So what you own could be things like the equity in your house. It could be, you know, your cars, your jewelry, your golf cart sitting in their garage. It could be all your stocks and bonds, your brokerage accounts. It could be any other assets that you own if you own gold or silver or whatever else. And really what I like to track is just my investments and the equity in my personal residence and the equity in any other assets that I have like my businesses, things like that. Now, sometimes it's a little harder to track your businesses and what that equity is, but if you can figure out a roundabout number, you can, you know, look at something like your P&Ls,

for example and just do a multiple based on those P&Ls. So overall, that is what you own and then you subtract it by what you owe. So your mortgage, for example, is what you owe. What's the total amount of your mortgage? Your credit card debt, any other debt that you have, student loan debt, all that is going to be subtracted out, your car loans, all that stuff, all going to be subtracted out. And then what you have left over is your net worth. And when it comes to your net worth, this may be negative when you are just starting

out with your finances. You're brand new to personal finance and you have not started implementing some of this. stuff yet. You may have a negative net worth. That is okay. We're going to work on this and we're going to get your net worth up to a positive. Then we're going to get you really rolling to your first 100K. Then we're going to get you to your first half million. Then we're going to get you to a million. But we're going to do this over time. It takes time to do all this stuff. And so I want you to get excited because if you have a negative net worth, you're going to have just a that much cooler of a story to get to that million dollar net worth one day as we progress over time. So really, really

excited for you guys to start tracking your net worth. We're going to be putting together a tool where you can also track your net worth. I like to use Empower. That is the automated way I like to do it, but a lot of people also just want a way where they can track it and tweak it and adjust it as they want. And so we're going to be able to do that for you as well. If you want to check out Empower, it is completely free. I'll leave a link down below in the show notes so that you can check it out. And then we will be working on that net worth tool for you guys coming up shortly so that you can utilize that as well, depending on what your flavor is, which one you want to do. All right. Number nine is to get a high yield savings account. So,

If you're listening to this podcast right now and you're sitting there and you're saying, I've got a savings account. What do I need a high yield savings account for? Maybe you're at your local Wells Fargo or Bank of America, my two least favorite banks. Maybe you are at your local Chase Bank or you're at your local credit union. And you have a checking account and you have a savings account there. Well, that savings account there is going to earn you about 0.01%, 02%, maybe overall. But if you get yourself a nice high yield savings,

account, boy, oh boy, your options open up quickly. So a high yield savings account, basically what it does is it pays you a higher amount of interest every single month. So right now at the time I'm recording this, and this may change over time, but we're like at a four and a half percent average. I've seen some high yield savings accounts above five percent on like a money market or something like that. And so four and a half percent versus 0.02 percent is a massive differential. Your money is just making you more money. Cash is no longer trash at this point in time at the time I'm recording this. You want to make sure that you are opening a high yield savings account instead of a

standard savings account at your brick and mortar bank because you're not going to return any interest. Now, what do you put inside this high yield savings account? There's a number of different things that you put in there. And most of them are going to be things like, A, your short-term financial goals. So if you have a bunch of short-term financial goals, maybe you're saving for a down payment on a house. Maybe you're saving for a down payment on your car.

Maybe you're saving for a wedding fund or you're saving for a big event for your kids. or you're saving for Christmas, for example. We just talked about saving up for Christmas. All of this would be your short-term goals. These can go in a high-yield savings account. You don't want to invest this money because if you're going to utilize that money within the next five years and you invest those dollars

in the market tanks, then all of a sudden you have your dollar split in half at the time you need it most. So all of those short-term goals. Also, your emergency fund should also be in a high-yield savings account. Really important to make sure that that's in a high-yield savings account and protected against life. So overall, if you invest your emergency fund, same thing. What happens in a recession?

People lose their jobs and the market gets cut in half. And what happens if your emergency fund is invested and you lose your job and you need that money? Well, it got cut in half, A, when you need it most. And if you lost your job, then you're going to live it on two, three, one and a half months expenses instead of the amount that you saved up. So really important to keep that emergency fund safe in a high yield savings account and stack up that interest. You can also put your buffer savings in your high yield savings account. This is another great spot to keep it is your buffer savings. so you can earn a little interest on that.

Also, liquid savings opportunity. So this is one where, you know, if I'm saving up to buy a rental property or if I'm saving up to buy a business, like we just bought a business over the course of the last year, I have not talked about it yet, but we probably should talk about it a little more. And so when you save those liquid savings, and you're saving up for something like that,

then you need to make sure that when you do this and you have this liquid savings, it is safe somewhere safe in like a high-yield savings account. And then also, lastly, if you have savings overflow and you don't know what to do that cash yet, that's another great place to put in a high-yield savings account. But the factors to consider when you open a high-yield savings account are A, interest rates, B, accessibility, meaning that is the interest rate competitive enough?

I'm not saying go-chase interest rates because you absolutely should not do that. You should find a reliable bank that has competitive interest rates. If it's a 1% interest rate and the average rate is a 4.5%, there's no reason to open it there. Accessibility, two, making sure that there are no fees, three, meaning no fees to hold the account and no fees, if you want to move money around or anything like that, making sure there's no fees in that account as number three, and then also making sure that it aligns with your financial goals. Now, there are some extra perks out there that I like. I like savings buckets, meaning you can be able to budget your money inside that account. I know Ally Bank does that.

I'm not sure if any others do that right now, but those are some factors to consider as you go through this. So high yield savings account, make sure you look and open one up. Let's jump to another break and we'll be right back. Number 10 is I want you to start saving, I mean investing, for that dream vacation right now. Meaning that if you have some dream vacation that you want to take one day and maybe you're not making enough money to really start saving up massive amounts for this vacation. But what if you just had a savings bucket or you had a little budgeted line item and you just started saving a little bit of money right now for that dream vacation?

What happens is even these small amounts of money that you start saving for these big, audacious goals are going to be really, really powerful over time. because it's going to add up very quickly. And over time, you're going to be so much happy that you start saving that money. So what I want you to do is I want you to think about where your dream destination would be. Maybe it's going to the south of France. Maybe it's going to Italy to experience Italy or Greece. Or maybe it's going up to Switzerland to go skiing.

Maybe it's going to China or Japan. Or maybe it's going to Dubai. There's all these different places that you can visit, obviously, across the country. Maybe it's going to South America. Maybe it's going to a trip to Mexico. It doesn't matter where it is. Okay? What I want you to do is I want you to start thinking about that dream vacation and I want you to set a goal.

And so first, when you set that goal, you're going to think, well, what are the flights going to cost? What is the travel going to cost? What is the hotel is going to cost? And what are the things that I want to do? I want to have some extra cash on hand for this vacation. So I want you to set that goal with a buffer of 20% or so. Okay? Then I want you to start saving in small amounts.

I don't care if you can only save $10 a month. I don't care if you can save $1,000 a month. I want you to start saving for that vacation now so that you can really have an opportunity to take it at some point in time coming up in the future. Then I also want you to utilize travel hacking to get there faster, meaning that I want you to go out there and I want you to if you have no history of credit card debt. Now this is very important to understand. You need to have no history of credit card debt. But if you have no history of credit card debt and you've never heard of travel hacking, this is a way where you just put your bills on a credit card instead of just your standard checking account. and then you pay off that card every single month.

In return, the credit card company is going to give you points in miles so that you can go out there and you can redeem those points in miles for travel. And so as you acquire some of these points in miles, I have taken thousands and thousands of dollars of vacations for absolutely free because we decided to travel hack. So we have a couple episodes on travel hacking. I will link down below in the show notes. And if you're interested in some of my favorite credit cards,

we will have a link down below in the show notes as well with my favorite credit cards for travel hacking that you can check out. Number 11 is this year I want you to set up money automations. So I want you to think through how you can automate your money more. Now, this year we have a course coming out that is going to teach you how to completely automate your money. I'm going to take you from point A to point Z on automating your money from every single aspect that we're going to talk about here right here in a second.

I'm going to show you exactly how to do it. So if you're interested in that and you want to learn more about that, we're going to put a survey down in the show notes that you can check out and tell me what you want to see in that course because I want to make sure that is an all-encompassing course on everything money automation. We want to make the best money automation course that you can ever, ever buy. And so overall, I want to make sure that we include everything in there on what you're considering. So making sure you automate that money really, really important. So setting up these money automations for things like bill payments, for things like your savings goals, where you're not

even lifting a finger, your money is just being saved, for things like investments, for things like budget tracking or retirement contributions and or charitable donations or paying down your house faster. All of these are things I want you to consider. How can I automate it? If it has to do with money, how can I automate this? Because all money is is a tool to get you what you want in life. That's all it's there to do. It is nothing else.

So if you can automate this where you don't have to spend so much time on your finances, you can spend less than an hour on your finances every single month. And I think you can spend even significantly less than that. setting up money automations is really, really important. So I would take one of these categories, and I would go out, and I would try to automate one of these categories one per month throughout the year, and then by the end of the year, you'll have a full money automation system. But I will show you exactly how to set that up.

So if there's certain things that you want to hear about money automations, please make sure you fill out that survey down below in the show notes, and we will make sure that we create the best money automation course for you, because I spend way less time in my finances than most people, and it's one of the best things that ever happened to me. All right, the last one is number 12 is to find your financial baseline. So when it comes to your financial baseline, you need to know this number. This is a very important number to know because it's going to dictate how you build out your emergency fund.

It's going to dictate how you think about your money overall. And we're going to build out a tool to kind of help you do this as well. Got a lot of things playing for 2024. But we want to find your financial baseline. So how do we do this? First, you're going to list out your monthly expenses and you're going to figure out what those monthly expenses are. Then you're going to distinguish between your needs and your want.

because what you want to do is your financial baseline is going to be what your needs are. So this is really, really crucial overall. It's the things that you absolutely need to make sure that you have. So this is essential living expenses, things like housing, utilities, food, transportation, insurance, and other different costs that you have out there, like medical insurance, all that kind of stuff, that you absolutely need to be saving for. Then you're going to calculate those total expenses. And you got to also make sure that you're including debt payments,

at least a minimum payment on debt is also included in your financial baseline. And then you know what that number is. Now, this number is very, very important because it's going to help you a budget. It's B going to help you when you're trying to decide how much you should invest. It's going to help you when you're trying to make financial decisions. It is one of the most important numbers that you really should know. And so overall, having this information is going to be really, really powerful for most people. When I'm out and about or something like people who listen to the show will see me out and about and they'll come up and talk to me.

And overall, they'll ask me some money questions. And I will say, well, what's your financial baseline? And they have no idea. Most people don't know what this number is. It's really important to know because if you know what your financial baseline is, you can really, really make an impact on your money. And it's a more powerful tool than you even know. And we're going to talk more about that as we come up here soon.

But overall, this is going to help you knowing your emergency fund. It's going to help you decide your investment percentages. It's going to help you decide if you need to cut back on certain things or if you need to increase your income. It's going to help you just make so many. sound money decisions by just knowing this financial baseline number. So we're working on that tool and when that tool comes out, I'm excited to present it to you guys. All right. So those are the first 12. So stay tuned. Make sure you're subscribed to this podcast to see part two when part two comes out because

we have 12 more to go through and making sure that you do 24 things that you need to do with your money in 2024. So this is going to be some really powerful stuff. If you follow through with all this stuff, and thank you guys for listening to Part 1 and investing in yourself. I'll see you on Part 2 next. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time. Let's play. Feel the fun with Play Ojo. The online casino with all the latest slot and live casino games.

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