The Personal Finance Podcast - 25 Scary Money Statistics (Part 1)

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

In this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to talk about the 25 plus money statistics part one.  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 Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/ Monarch Money: Get an extended 30 day free trial at monarchmoney.com/pfp Thanks to Fundrise for Sponsoring the show! Invest in real estate going to fundrise.com/pfp Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/personalfinance Thanks to Policy Genius for Sponsoring the show! Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Go to joindeleteme.com/pfp20 for 20% off! This show is sponsored by Better Help. Go to betterhelp.com/pfp and be on your way to your best self.  Relevant To This Episode:  How to Protect Your Finances Online (And Prevent Getting Scammed!) 10 Ways to Prevent Identity Theft (and What to Do if it Happens to YOU!) How I would Invest Large Sums of Cash - Money Q&A 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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I'm your host, Andrew founder of MasterMoney.com. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be diving into 25 plus money statistics, part one. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money newsletter by going to Mastermoney.com slash newsletter. And you can ask a question there and respond to any of those newsletter issues that are coming. out and you may get your question answered on the show. And don't forget to follow us on Spotify,

Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or whatever your favorite podcast player is. And if you're getting value out of this episode, consider leaving a five-star rating review or give us a thumbs up on YouTube if you're watching over on YouTube. Now, today, we're going to be diving into part one of 25 plus scary money statistics. And we do this every single year in October. And this is actually Halloween week, which is right on time for those scary. money statistics as we go through this. We're going to be looking at a bunch of eye-opening trends that are happening in 2024. I'm going to kind of talk through some of these trends that are happening. I'm going to give you actionable solutions to each of these statistics. And I'm going to make sure

that you can try to avoid these statistics, if at all possible. Some of these are really, really surprising. So I want you to tune in here because some of these are pretty shocking even to me. And I'm going to give you these real strategies that you can use day in and day out to make a huge impact on your finances. So today we're going to go through the first dozen or so of them. And then the next episode on Wednesday, we're going to be going through the rest of those money statistics. So if that's something you're into, let's get into it. All right. So number one is 78% of Americans still live paycheck to paycheck. Now, let's start this off right now. A lot of people out there are in the paycheck to paycheck cycle. And if you are in the paycheck to paycheck

cycle, this does not mean that you do not have a high income. There are people with a very high income who still live paycheck to paycheck. So there are two reasons why you're in the paycheck to paycheck cycle. One is you are not making enough money and you can't cut back anymore and you're just living paycheck to paycheck. You are stuck in this cycle where you can't save any money. You can't give yourself a cushion and you don't know where to turn. And so the number one thing if you are in that situation that you need to focus on is looking for ways to increase your income now that is way easier said than done i know that and i say that every time we talk about this but looking for ways to increase the amount that you're making is very very important

but on the other side of the coin if you are someone who's making 80 90 100 150 000 a year 200 thousand per year and you are still just getting by, then we need to assess your spending and where your dollars are going. And if you're spending money on your values. Now, folks that live in the paycheck to paycheck cycle typically do not have any emergency funds saved up whatsoever. And so what you need to be doing is, A, first, making sure you have that cushion in place because a lot of folks in the paycheck to paycheck cycle, stay in that paycheck to paycheck cycle because something happens in life that surprises them. And so they go backwards, either they go into debt and or they just barely get by with the extra cash that they have on hand in order to just get through that situation

and move on with their life. But if you do not plan for those emergencies, if you do not plan for those emergency expenses, then you will never get out of this paycheck to paycheck cycle. So it's incredibly important for you to make sure that you have some sort of financial cushion there. Now, another way to make sure that you get out of this paycheck to paycheck cycle is to automate as much as you possibly can. Automating your money into various savings buckets is so powerful. We just had an episode recently talking about how to automate your money into savings buckets if you did not hear that episode. And so that talks through exactly how you can do this process. We call it the bucket saving method. And so when you go through that process, you'll see automating is the way to go.

So really important for most of you listening today. If you are in the paycheck to paycheck cycle, start to work your way through this process to get yourself out of that paycheck to paycheck cycle. And your goal really is to make sure that you're tracking every single dollar that you're spending. If you're tracking your spending every single month, then you can start to see patterns of where your money is going. And is there places you can cut back? Maybe, but maybe not. The biggest problem for people with low incomes is you can't cut back anymore.

And so you're listening to all these financial gurus out there telling you, hey, cut back more on this, cut back more on that. Well, sometimes there's nowhere else to cut back. And so we have to focus on getting some financial cushion and increasing our income. That's the only options that you can have at times. And so let's work on that, work on different areas of your finances. Today, let's see what you can do today and try to get yourself at least some sort of financial cushion. Now, along the same lines, number two, is that nearly 70% of Americans have less than $1,000

in their savings. So the average emergency is right around $2,300. And the average person out there has less than $1,000 in their savings. This is not good, folks. And if you are a person who has less than $1,000 in your savings, let me show you how to solve this problem. It is through something called automation. So I want you to get yourself a high-yield savings count.

I want you to set up a high-yield savings count. You can do this through Ally Bank. You can do this through a number of different places. So-Fi, there's a number of different places that have high-yield savings accounts. And what I want you to do is set up one automation into your savings. account and I want you to start working towards a goal. Now the real goal that I really want you to have is to have one month of your expenses saved in a high yield savings account. That's where I want you to start is to get to one month of expenses saved in a high yield savings account. Now you may be saying

to yourself, well, I've tried that a number of different times. I just can't do it. Well, the automation is going to do it for you. You're going to automatically transfer money from your checking account when you get directly paid and you are going to transfer it every single month or maybe it's twice a month if you can't trust yourself with your paycheck and you're going to transfer it directly into that high yield savings account automatically. You can do this very simply. You log into your high yield savings account, connect your checking account and automatically do transfers. And it's going to say, hey, how frequently do you want to do these transfers? You're going to do it monthly or biweekly, whatever you think works for you. But automatically doing this

is going to be really important. Then I want you to gradually increase this amount over time because as you start to make more or as you get those small raises for inflation and or as you get more disciplined with your money, I want you to gradually increase those automatic transfers over to that savings account. This is unacceptable and I want nobody who listens to this show regularly to have less than $1,000 in their savings account. I know you can do this. I believe that you can do this. And once you get past this first goal of having that $1,000 in that savings account and you start pushing towards one month of your monthly expenses in a savings account, you're going to be so much better off financially. See, people who don't have savings can't take advantage of opportunities,

for example. So say, for example, someone asks you to take a job that pays triple what you make now, but you have to move across the country. If you don't even have $1,000 in your savings, you're never going to be able to take advantage of this. Or here's another example is recently, I live in Tampa, Florida. We just had a huge hurricane hit, and there was a lot of people who could not evacuate. This hurricane was looking like a category five at some point, and so people started to evacuate. I evacuated. I left and went to Alabama. I went. I went to Alabama. I Then I went over to Georgia. And when I left, I started to see people coming out with TikToks in the area or Instagram

Reels in the area saying, hey, where are you guys getting this evacuation money from? I don't have evacuation money. And this is the problem. This is what you need for your own personal safety is making sure you have cash on hand for emergencies. These are examples of reasons why it would reduce your stress and it would reduce your anxiety to make sure you save up some sort of cash. Now, if you're in that paycheck to paycheck cycle and you are in the thick of it right now,

you are in the thick of it where you're saying to yourself, I don't know what I'm going to do next. I'm just trying to think of the next day. I'm going to save up enough money for an entire month. Then we need to focus on your income. We need to focus on your skills, growing your skills. Maybe we need to take on a second job if you have the time and the wherewithal to do so. Maybe we need to start a side hustle in order to make enough money to build up this cushion. You owe it to yourself to do this so you don't have to be stressed about money

anymore. You don't have to be anxious about money anymore. I want that for you. I want you to reduce your stress and anxiety. The only way to do this, though, is to have a cash cushion, which is why we talk about the emergency fund so much and the 136 method. It's really, really important to do that because the next stat is the scariest, honestly, maybe of this entire list, is 51% of Americans would run out of money in one month if they lost their income. Fifty-one percent of Americans would completely run out of money in one month if they lost their income. This, my friends, is a really big problem. Because if you're in that situation, you are one person's decision away from not being in financial ruin. Say, for example, your boss decides one day, hey, they want to make cuts. They want to cut back your department.

If you don't have a month's worth of expenses saved up, what are you going to do? What exactly is your plan? You have to have this emergency fund saved up and you have to start building towards that. So here's what I want you to do first. Boom, I want you to review your monthly expenses. I want to pull those expenses out if you're in this scenario and I want you to review those expenses. Identify any non-essential items that you have on that list and start to call up and cut back on things. Maybe this is like prioritizing subscriptions, for example. Look at all your subscriptions. Do you need all those subscriptions? Can you start to build up some savings there? Look at your housing. Are you spending too much money on rent? Do you need to get a roommate? Do you need to

change that situation? If you're spending more than 30% of your income on rent, we need to make a shift and we'll talk about housing a little more later. Look at your food. Are you spending too much on groceries every single month? Add it up. Get the real numbers and add it up and see if you're spending too much on groceries every single month. Look at transportation.

Do you have a massive car payment? Look there and see those big three things. If you can control those three expenses, housing, food, transportation, you can spend a lot on everything else as long as those three expenses are controlled, which will give you extra dollars to go towards other things. But you have to be able to look at those things

and really make some real decisions. Now, your ultimate goal is to have six months expenses saving that emergency fund in that high-yield savings count. That's your ultimate goal. But if you can't even get by with one month and 51% of people in America cannot get by with just one month, if they lost their job in one month they'd run out of money. It is really, really scary. Now, you can use resources like Monarch Money. It is a great budgeting app in order to make sure that you are on track and you can see your

spending plan. But you can also download bank statements, go through it, just add it up, and start to make financial decisions, based on data. If you don't have data backing you up, then you're just using your opinion to try to make decisions, and that is not the wisest choice that you can make. Number four is over the course of the last year, consumers reported losing over $10 billion to online fraud. Now, you know, one big thing I talk about a lot in this podcast, especially on money Q&A episodes, because we get a lot of questions on this, is we get questions on how to protect your finances online, specifically

protect yourself against fraud. I just got a letter in the mail again the other day. I mean, it feels like I'm giving and reporting things that are happening to me constantly about this kind of stuff that a health care company that had some of my wife's information had a big data breach. And they had this huge data breach. They lost a ton of information. And because of that, now someone has my wife's information that has it in the wrong hands. And so you need to protect yourself against this. Every single time this happens to you, it's going to feel normal at some point in time because it's going to be starting to happen so frequently, but you need to start taking action on your personal protection plan.

If you don't have a financial protection plan in place, you need to get one. One is you need to learn how to freeze your credit. Now, we have a listener who sent in a really cool system of how they froze their credit, and we're going to be talking through that in a future money Q&A coming up here, where they can do it in a minute and a half with all three big credit bureaus. So make sure you're subscribed to this podcast. We're going to be talking about that in that episode.

But one, you need to learn how to freeze your credit. This blocks people who get your personal information from opening up credit cards in your name, opening up home loans in your name. And it's a way for you to tell all the credit bureaus, hey, I am not opening up anything in my name right now. Please freeze my credit and do not do anything unless I authorize you to unfreeze my credit.

That's how it works. So you're going to notify all three credit bureaus, freeze my credit. I'm not doing anything right now. I'm not applying for a home loan. I'm not applying for a car loan. I'm not applying for a credit card. And then when I unfreeze my credit,

then you comply for whatever you want and then freeze it back up again. This protects you big time against fraudsters out there. And so everybody listening needs to be freezing their credit who is listening to this podcast. Number two, using services like Delete Me, who can remove your personal information from online. So delete me as a service that I use. I talk about it a lot because I love it so much. And delete me as a service that I use that goes out there and they go find your personal information. They remove your personal information from data brokers.

Now, why is this important? Why is it so important for your personal information to get removed from data brokers? The reason for that is because when you go and you have a data breach, for example, and they get a piece of your personal information. Sometimes when they have data breaches, they only get your name, maybe they get your address, maybe they only get your social security number. But when you have a data breach, they're going to at least get a piece of your personal information. And what they can do is they can go to data brokers and they can say, hey, do you have any other information on this specific person? And when they do that, they can buy your information from data brokers. and there are not very many laws and legislations around how data brokers can use and sell your

information. So, you have to go out there and get your personal information removed from those data brokers. And in order to do so, you have to go and either write them a letter, you can send them an email, you can do all these different things. Delete me does all that for you. And they do it at a really affordable price. And so you don't have to think about this. It could take you hours and hours and hours.

They remove my information from thousands of different data brokers. And what I want you to do is just check out join- delete me.com slash pfp20 and you can get 20% off delete me through my code. It is by far my favorite service out there and one that I use all the time. Next, every single website that you use online, this is the most obvious thing in the world, but guess what? Most of you don't do it. And so I'm going to keep reminding you, but it's making sure that you have really complicated passwords online. And the reason for this is if someone gets even a slight piece of your information of your password, these data breaches, a lot of times they have your password on file and they,

get a hold of that. If they get a hold of your password and that's the password you use for 10 different websites, what do you think is going to happen? You're going to have a major problem here because they have your email and they quite possibly have your password for a bunch of different websites. So I like a service like OnePassword, which what OnePassword does is they keep all your passwords in one secure location and then all you have to do is remember the password to one password. And what they'll do is they'll also customize new passwords for each and every single website. So it's a bunch jumbled numbers and letters and really complicated passwords that it's going to help protect you over that time frame. Now also, make sure you're also monitoring your credit report. So you can go to

annual credit report.com to make sure that you are monitoring if anybody's pulling credit on you or anything like that. You can do things like identity guard for ongoing maintenance, but really making sure you're going through and using one password, you're using delete me. You're using the credit freezing systems are all going to be really, really important. 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.

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Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IDPrivatewealth.com. His credit card debt has reached $1.15 trillion. Now, let's get something straight right now. If you're listening to this podcast and you are in credit card debt, this is a pants-on-fire emergency. Why? Because credit card debt means that you are paying a very high interest rate

and borrowing money for something that you probably don't even value. And when you have credit card debt, it is absolutely destroying your wealth building ability. Credit card debt is robbing you and your family of the ability to have financial freedom. And your entire goal, the reason why you probably listen to this podcast, is because you want to have financial freedom. You want safety, you want security,

and you want to be able to have that freedom with your money. And I want that for you more than anything. It's the entire reason why we do this show is to bring you as much value as possible and teach you that financial freedom is possible. But the only way that you can do this is a getting rid of your credit card debt. This is the second thing that you should be doing with your finances is you're going to get that 401k match and then what you're going to do is build up at least one month of emergency fund. And then I want you to pay off high interest debt, specifically credit card debt. Credit card debt is the enemy to anybody out there. Now credit cards are

not the enemy. I am a big proponent of using credit cards. You get points. You get some great protection with credit cards, and so there's a lot of reasons to use credit card. But credit card debt going beyond one month spending is really important. So let's get into some of these rules. If you want to avoid credit card debt at all cost, first, any time you spend money with your credit card, you need to already have the cash in your checking account ready to pay that off that day if you needed to. You're not going to spend ahead.

You're not going to get ahead with your credit card. Instead, you need to have the cash on hand in your checking account, and that's how you verify if you can use your credit card. That's the only time you can use your credit card. You are not going to go backwards into credit card debt. That is going to reduce your net worth. It is going to change the entire dynamic of your financial situation if you go into credit card debt. Those interest rates at 10, 15, 20, 25 percent are so detrimental to your finances. I cannot stress this enough. Okay. So you will never use a credit card. You will never pay a cent of interest, ever and you will always pay off that card on time, at least monthly, but I like to pay it off

weekly because I like to stay on top of it. Now, there's no big benefits paying it off weekly. I just like to do it to stay on top of those credit card payments. Now, if you are in credit card debt, what I want you to do is I want you to list all of your credit card debts in order. If you just have one credit card, great. We have one to focus on. If you have multiple credit cards with debt on them, I want you to list them all in order of interest rate. Okay? And then I want you to look and start to assess the situation here. I want you to say to yourself, well, is there one that's like 200 bucks that you can just pay off really quickly and get rid of that one and then move on to the highest interest rate? Or do you want to go in interest rate order? Meaning that you want to pay

the highest interest rate first off, then you want to go down the line to the next highest, then the next highest, then the next highest. That's the faster way to do it. But it doesn't really make a huge difference. What I want you to do is focus on your personal psychology and which one is going to make you more motivated to get rid of this stuff. Is it to focus on some? something like the snowball method where you pay off the smallest balance first and then the next one and the next one and the next one. Or you want to reverse it and optimize it to the wrecking ball method. A lot of people call it the avalanche method where you are paying off highest interest rate first and then going down the list. I personally would do the avalanche method, but it depends

on your personal psychology if you were in that situation. And so use some of these resources and make sure you're looking at that. Also, if you are paying really high interest rates and you can find a balanced transfer card that is 0% and you believe that you can pay. off that card within whatever the time frame is that it is at zero percent maybe it's six months, 12 months or 18 months. I would definitely take advantage of that so that you do not have to dig yourself out of a bigger hole instead of you use that balanced transfer card. But just be careful and make sure that you can pay it off in time. Otherwise, you're going to be paying a lot of interest at the end of that road. So making sure you understand how that works really important. But I don't

mind them as long as you have a plan in place to play off that credit card debt. Number six, and this is one of the saddest ones out here as well, is that 23% of credit card. users go deeper into debt every single month. If you are going deeper into debt every single month and you are in credit card debt, you need to take out that credit card right now. Hey, let's all do it together. Let's pull that credit card out of your pocket. I wish I had a card I didn't want to use anymore on air here on YouTube. But pull that credit card out of your pocket. And what I want you to do is grab the biggest scissors you can find in the house. You know those big old kitchen scissors that you usually use to cut up the chicken breast or maybe you have a samurai sword

hanging on your wall, or maybe you've got some sort of axe in your garage because you are a logger, go grab whatever you got. Maybe you got a chainsaw, maybe not a chainsaw, but go grab whatever you got. And I want you to cut that credit card up, and I want you to get rid of that thing. And if you want a little credit card therapy, maybe put it on a punching bag, give it a couple of punches because it's stealing away your financial freedom, but then take it and throw it away. The last thing I want for you is to allow that credit card to get you deeper into debt. Instead we're going to do is we're going to get rid of that card. We're going to switch to cash or we're going to switch to a debit card until we get out of this situation.

And we're probably going to do it for a while afterwards as well. Because if you can't trust yourself with credit cards now, I don't think you should try to trust yourself with credit cards here in the very near future. And so what we're going to do is we're going to switch to cash or debit card and we pay for everything. And we're going to cut that credit card out. Now, if you don't have a credit card problem, more power to you. Use your cards all day long, ball all day long. Make it rain credit cards. But if you do have a credit card problem and you are credit card debt and you're going deeper into debt. If you're part of that 23%, it's time to get rid of it. It is the problem. That's what you need to understand. Then I want you to create a

monthly budget that prioritizes making sure that you pay off that debt. If you don't know how to create a budget, we can help you with that. Just reach out to us and we can help you through that process. And then I want you to set up alerts for spending limits on certain budget categories. So you can do this like with Monarch Money, for example, but you can also do this in a bunch of different ways with your bank if you want to do it in a free way. So there's a bunch of different ways to do that, but I want you utilizing and tracking your spending. It is so important that you're doing this, especially if you're in debt. Every dollar matters. And you want to throw as many dollars as possible towards that debt because these high interest rates are using compound interest and reverse against you.

And that's the last thing I want you to do. Number seven is debt is peaking between ages 40 to 49. This is a scary stat for a number of reasons. People that are in their 40s, you are in your peak years of setting yourself up for retirement because in the next decade, you are going to start to really get that all situated. So if you're in your 40s and you were peaking at debt, friends, we got to make sure that this does not happen. Now, this could happen for a number of different scenarios. Hey, if you have kids, you know how expensive kids can get. I know how expensive kids can get. I've got number three coming any day now. And so because of that, I'm spending a lot of money on daycare. I'm spending a lot of money on extracurricular activities. Andrew Jr.'s

Jujutsu's not going to pay for itself, my friends. And so there's a lot of different things that we've got to make sure that we are budgeting out for, especially in your 30s and your 40s. But folks in your 40s, if you are going deeper into debt for a number of different reasons, maybe you're having a mid-life crisis and you bought that brand new Corvette that you've always wanted. Maybe you are paying for your kids college and it's just difficult and you feel like you have to because you don't want them to go into debt. Maybe you're just trying to get through life and get by day to day and you've never had money in your entire life. Or maybe you have a really high income and you just have a real bad spending problem. Real bad. Well, let's talk about this because what I really want you to do

is I want you to make sure that you are avoiding this debt and not letting it peak anymore. You've got to say this to yourself right now. I'm never going to let this happen anymore. So what you're going to do is take the time and take the steps in order to, A, stop going into debt, B, focusing on removing any high interest debt first, and then C, starting to take those extra dollars once you actually get rid of that debt and investing them towards your retirement. retirement. Retirement is coming up, folks. It is going to be real soon here if you're in your 40s, and that time is going to fly by, so you've got to make sure that you are investing those dollars for retirement. It is so incredibly important, okay? Attack that debt in your 40s if you are in your

40s. Along the same lines, we are still on debt here. Millennials carry an average of $125,047 in debt. Now, let's talk about debt for a second because we have high interest debt, which is 6% or above, and there's also low interest debt. And low interest debt can be a number of different things. It could be your mortgage, which I don't really think that, especially if you're a millennial, this is not a huge priority that you need to pay off if you got like a 3% mortgage or a 2% mortgage. I got my mortgage in COVID. It's like a 2.5% interest rate. I'm not paying that thing off any time soon. It probably be one of the last things I did in my financial situation is pay off that mortgage at 2.5%. And so because of this, I don't care that I have that debt. Some people care about it.

And if debt really bothers you and you have low interest debt, more power to you. You can go ahead and pay that debt off if it keeps you up at night or it increases your stress and it increases your anxiety, then go from being debt free. I don't care, but it's not the most optimized way to do this. The most optimized way is focus on high interest debt and invest those extra dollars instead if you got low interest debt. And so when you're thinking about this, make sure you're thinking about this in a way that makes sense for your specific situation and how your temperament is and how you react to specific financial situations. Really important to do that in bringing up a repayment plan. Now, a lot of other millennials are in debt because of student loans. And student

loans are something that a lot of people have struggled with for a long time. And you can get into student loan situations where you have a high interest rate and it feels like you're never getting anywhere. I know people who are in their late 50s still paying off their student loans. And so this is a tough position to be in, but you got to have a plan in place, especially if you have high interest for student loans. They need to go. And so just making sure that you avoid that at all costs is going be really important. Along those same lines, student loan debt has reached $1.6 trillion. And so I want you to look at a number of different options. One, if you have student loan debt, it may not be the highest priority for you, but I want you to check eligibility for income-driven repayment plans.

You may be able to reduce your repayment plans through your loan service or because of that. Secondly, I want you to look into refinancing options if you have a high interest rate. Try to refinance into lower interest rates and make sure it makes sense with the closing costs and run the numbers on that, but look to refinance if you can. And then also research forgiveness programs if you are really struggling with your student loans. If there is a forgiveness program out there that can help you, take advantage of it. More power to you. Like people get mad when they talk about student loan forgiveness because they paid off their loans. Hey, I get it. I paid off my loans. I understand it, but at the same time, I want you to become wealthy. That's what I want for every single one of you.

So I want you to take advantage of that stuff. Use the opportunities in front of you to make yourself successful personally. So if you have forgiveness programs, that you can use, make sure you do that. So you can go to student aides.gov is a great place to start to find detailed information on repayment plans and forgiveness options. That's a great place to start to look through this. Number 10 is along the same lines. Forty-four percent of Americans cannot afford a $500 emergency expense. So we saw at the beginning of the show that there were 51% of Americans would run out of money in one month. 70% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings. And now we're saying 44% of Americans don't even have 500 bucks.

If that's you, I'm hoping you are listening to what we're saying here and redirecting as many dollars as possible into your savings. Number 11, 47% of Americans tend to spend more than they earned. So this means that almost half of Americans spend more than they earn every single month. Now, this can be for a number of different reasons. This can be because inflation is high, but this can also be because you have bad spending habits. And so I want you to focus on some of those habits. We're going to talk more about those here in these episodes as we're talking through this. So you can learn how to change.

some of those habits. So make sure you're subscribed to this podcast. Number 12, this is a huge one. And this is one I want you to focus a lot of your time on if you do not already, is that 56% of workers feel underpaid. Fifty-six percent of workers feel underpaid. Now, what I want you to do is if you feel underpaid, I want you to learn, number one, how to negotiate your salary. This is one of the most important skills that you could ever learn. Now, this is not just negotiating your salary at a brand new job, I want you to also learn the system of how to negotiate your salary at your day job. Now, I'm going to explain it here. We also have a free ebook that kind of walks you through these exact processes. So if you go to mastermoney.com

slash resources, we have a bunch of amazing free resources for you guys. But I want you to look at the one called Finally Get That Raised. It's a free ebook that shows you step by step how to do this. Now, I'm going to explain this here now so you understand how to do this, but I also want you to implement this here in the future. So the way that this works is we teach you how to get a raise at your day job by actually doing a specific system that is not a get a raise quick system. This is a system that takes about six months before you actually get a raise. And so when we teach this system, it is one of the most eye-opening things for people. It is so cool to watch people's eyes light up when we teach this system because for the most part, when people do this,

they either will find out a lot about their employer and if they want to stay employed at this company. and if they will ever give them a raise, or they will be able to actually get a raise. And we've had so many people right in thanking us for teaching them how to get a raise. So here's how it works. Step one is I want you to set up a meeting with your boss, and I want you to have this conversation with them saying to them,

hey, I have been in this position for X amount of time, and I want to get to the next level. I want to make more money or I want to get a promotion. And I want to get to that next level. What things do I need to be doing in this department in order to take that next step to get to the next level. Maybe you can suggest some things. Maybe it is increasing revenue at the bottom line,

depending on where you work. Maybe it is increasing productivity. Maybe it is taking on projects that your boss does not want to take on anymore and they're going to go up to bat for you to get that raise. You've got to figure out what those actual items are. Now, what this is going to do is, A, this is going to set up expectations for both of you.

Hey, I'm going to be doing this stuff over the course of the next six months, but I expect when my quarterly review, comes up, which you want to time this around when your quarterly review is going to happen six months prior to it. Then when your yearly review comes up, you're going to have a couple of conversations where nobody is caught off guard when you ask for more money. So this first meeting is going to happen six months before that yearly review. And you're going to have that conversation with your boss and write down everything that you guys talk about. When you leave that meeting

with your boss, what I want you to do is then send them an email about everything you talk about. So now it's in writing. It's fresh in their mind. You just had the conversation. You said, hey, Thank you so much for speaking with me. Here's exactly what I'm going to be doing over the course of the next six months to make sure that we are on the same page and the same target here so that I can move up to the next level. Now, you can word that in the corporate way or you do it in whatever professional way you want to do it. But making sure that you send that email right after is very, very important.

Then what I want you to do is three months down the line. You're going to schedule another meeting with your boss and you're going to do a check-in. Okay. So now that you have that scheduled, three months in the line, we're going to do a check-in of where you are. In between that time, I want you just to just. start preparing a couple of things. I want you to start preparing A, what you want to make at that day job. B, I want you to start preparing comparables to other people within your specific state,

within your specific city of how much they're making incomparable jobs. If you do it in New York City and you live in the middle of Alabama, that is not comparable. You need to make sure that you understand where your location is because cost of living is higher in New York City than it is in Alabama. Cost of living is significantly higher in Silicon Valley than it is in Alabama. So you got to make sure you are doing it specific to your location. Then, I've talked about Alabama twice in this episode. That's the first time ever. Next, what we're going to do is then you are going to start to compile all this information.

Then you're going to meet with your boss again. And you're going to do the things that they asked you to do over the course of three months. You're going to say, hey, I started to take on this project. And I started to lead these team meetings. And I started to do this, this and this. Everything that we talked about here. I just want to make sure we're on track and we are on pace for what we want to be doing. And they're going to say yes.

they're going to say no, and then you make adjustments based on whatever that conversation goes. But this three months is to remind them. Your boss is very, very busy. They're going to forget that you had this conversation. Or three months down the line, they're going to be like, ah, they forgot about it. We had the conversation initially, but they forgot about what we were talking about. You got to make sure you're checking in and that you both are on the same page. That is really important in this communication process.

Once that is done, then one month before your yearly review, you're going to check in again. And you're going to say your boss, hey, this is what I've been doing. This is what I've done. I expect to be making more here. Just want to make sure I'm checking in. We're on the same page. So you're continuing that communication. And then when you walk in on the day of your yearly review,

what's going to happen is both of you are going to know which direction this is going to go in. And you've been doing the work. You've accomplished what they've asked you to do. And if they do not give you that raise, you give them a certain time frame of asking, when can I get that raise? If they don't give you a time frame,

then you know this place may never give you a raise. And it might be time to move on. Or they might give you that raise. And a lot of times, most people that we've talked to, they give them that raise because they had the conversation and they stayed in communication. This is how you make more money at your day job. Is you stay in constant communication with your boss and you do it in a very specific and systematic way. This is not something that you're going to be doing in a way that where you just walk into your boss's office on the day of your review and you say, hey, I want more money because this is what most people do. And they walk in frustrated and mad and they just catch their boss off guard.

I've had employees in my companies do that to me. I've had them do it to me recently, where I had no idea that they wanted to make more money. And so they've come to me and said, I want to make more money during their yearly review. And I say, lay out the case for me. And usually I let them talk as much as I possibly can. And the reason for this is I want to hear their entire case. And usually they don't have it prepared. Or their case is based off frustration or dealing with frustrating customers or specific things like that instead of actual data of why they should make more money.

So I actually teach them this process of how to do this with me. And once they learn this process, it is one of those things. that I think is really, really beneficial for a lot of people. So really cool to kind of show the process and the data for this. But check out that ebook if you want to learn more about that. I also give information if you work remotely on how to do this in a bunch of different ways remotely. So just make sure that you are going through this process and trying to make more money. Because if you feel underpaid, which I'm sure most of you listening do. If you 56% of workers feel underpaid, most people do. And if you're in that situation, I want you to learn about salary negotiation. So listen,

This is the end of part one of this episode of the 25 scary money statistics. Part two is going to be the next episode. And we're going to be going through a bunch of different things, including credit card debt. We're going to go through housing. We're going to be going through transportation, how much people are spending on that. We're going to be going through retirees and are they saving enough for retirement? And we have so much more coming up.

So really excited. Make sure you stay tuned for part two. It's coming up on the next episode. Thank you guys so much for listening. We will see you on the next episode. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time. Let's play.

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