The Personal Finance Podcast - 25 Things to Do With Your Money In 2025 Part 1
Episode Date: January 8, 2025Join our free live masterclass teaching you how to Master Your Money Goals in 2025! Sign-Up Here In this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to talk about 25 things to do with your ...money in 2025 Part 1. 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/ Thanks to Fundrise for Sponsoring the show! Invest in real estate going to fundrise.com/pfp 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! Go to Acorns.com/pfp and start automating your investments and get a $5 bonus today! Links Mentioned in This Episode: How to Negotiate Your Salary and Get a Raise (The Step-By-Step System!) How to Break The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle (IN 2025) The Bucket Method For Managing Your Savings (Master Multiple Savings Goals) How to Invest In Yourself and Earn More (THIS YEAR!) 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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On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, 25 things to do with your money in 2025, part one.
What's up, everybody? 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 25 things to do with your money in 2025.
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 your questions there. And don't forget to follow us on Spotify,
Apple Podcasts, YouTube or your favorite podcast player. And if you're getting value out of the show,
consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube, and consider
following us as well. We're going to bring you as much amazing content as we possibly can this year.
I cannot thank you guys enough for those follows and to actually leave those ratings and reviews.
they really do help us spread this message that anybody in this world can build wealth. And that's
truly what we believe. And we are trying to give you actionable free tips that are going to
help you build wealth in your own life. So really, really excited. We want to bring you as much
value as possible in 2025. And we are definitely going to be doing that here. We're working hard
in these episodes. So I am so excited for you to hear these episodes today. Now, I'm going to be
diving into 25 different things that you should be doing with your money in 2025. Now, do you need to do
every single one of these things? No, you don't need to do every single one of these things.
If you're a pure optimizer or a high level wealth builder, maybe you're going to want to.
But these are things that I am looking at doing in 2025.
And some of you may know some of your weaknesses when it comes to your finances.
And so you can pick and choose some of these and say, hey, these are things that I definitely
want to make sure that I am doing in 2025.
So really, really pumped for this episode.
If you're trying to hit some of your money goals this year, make sure you add some of these
to your money goal list.
And if you want to learn my exact system on how to set up money goals, we have Master Your Money
Goals available for you. If you go to MasterMoney.com slash Master Your Money Goals, you can see
that course available there. Really excited for those who have started to take that already and
really jumping and diving into that. So if you're interested in that, feel free to join Master
Your Money Goals. If you want to have the best year ever, we have a very specific system on how to
set money goals. And hopefully some of these will trigger ideas for you that will allow you to set goals
in the future. So we have a ton to cover in this episode. This is going to be a two-parter because
there's so much to cover. So without further ado, let's get into it. All right. So number one,
and this is one I'm going to tell everybody every single year to make sure that you are doing.
This is one everybody needs to be doing is increase your investments by at least the inflation
rate. Now, one big thing most people need to understand is if you are not investing your dollars,
This needs to be the year that you start investing money. Why? Because investing allows you to grow your
money over time. And the only way you're ever really going to be able to retire is if you invest
your dollars. You cannot keep cash on hand and think that you're going to be able to retire. You need
to be able to draw down on money and allow that money to grow and preserve itself throughout retirement.
And the only way to do that is to invest your dollars. Now, you can invest in real estate. You can
invest in stocks and index funds and ETFs. You can invest in a whole,
multitude of different things. Maybe it's small businesses, but you need to invest your money.
And here, we talk a lot about different ways to invest, but really, when you want to increase
your investments by at least the inflation rate, we want to make sure that we are doing that
specifically when it comes to investing in our taxable brokerage account into our Roth IRA,
our 401K, all these different places, so that we can do a number of different things.
Number one is we can do that so we can preserve our purchasing power.
inflation erodes away the value of money over time.
And a lot of us have seen this over the course of the last couple of years, especially
in 2020, 2020, 2021 when inflation was sky high.
The purchasing power of our dollar is eroded away every single year.
My grandmother just passed away at the age of 100, about a year ago.
And before she passed away, we used to have all these different conversations when I was a kid
and growing up on what the cost of movies were for her.
She was born in 1923, so she used to be able to go to movies for a Nick.
she used to be able to go to the movies and get a burger, a fries, and a Coke for 10 cents.
And so this is something where, hey, if you tried to do that now, how much would it cost?
It probably cost you $30 to $40 to get that same exact thing.
This is because the purchasing power of our money erodes over time.
And the way to combat against this is to invest our money.
But if you increase your investments by at least at a minimum, the inflation rate every single year,
you will still be continuously investing the same purchasing power.
over a year. And it will help you maintain that purchasing power year over year. So think about this for a
second. Say you, for example, you got a 5% rate of return, but you had a 3% inflation rate. That means
your real return is only right around 2%. And so you need to make sure that you keep up with that real
return by aiming to outpace inflation. And this helps you just avoid falling behind. The number one thing
we want to make sure we do not do with our money is fall behind. And so thinking through how we can
avoid falling behind is going to be really, really important. Now, some years, the inflation rate
rises pretty quickly. And in 2020 and 2021, we had really high inflation rates of 6, 7, 8%,
depending on where you live and your personal inflation rate. And so you got to make sure that you
are really thinking about those adjustments. Last year in 2020, for the inflation rate nationally
was about 2.7%. What I typically do is round up on this kind of thing. And so you can increase it
by 3%. I always try to increase it by way more than the inflation rate. And so that's my plan for
this year as well. But if you are someone who is on a fine line, you're living paycheck to paycheck
and you just want to increase your investments by the inflation rate, that's fantastic. I would just
round up a little bit because there are specific examples of inflation in your current
geographic location. And so we want to make sure that we are covering all basis here. So I like
to just round up just to make it easier in a flat number. So if you are investing $10,000 per year,
then you want to make sure that you are increasing the amount that you're investing by $300 this
year. The way I would do that is break that down. So you can look at 300 divided by 12. I'll pull out
the old trusty calculator. I don't do public math on podcasts. And so we got $25 more per month that you
need to increase your investments by. And it's going to be something I think most people will be able to
do to increase that purchasing power. Just make sure you're increasing that number every single
year. Now, I also think about this when it comes to $529 plans. I think about this when it comes to
investing for your kids. I think about this when it comes to my retirement accounts, my tax or brokerage.
Every single place you're investing, I try to increase that. Now, if you're maxing out your Roth,
IRA. You can't increase it if you're maxing that thing out. And so that's another situation where
why they raise those limits over time is because inflation. And so they need to be able to raise those
so people can outpace inflation and increase the amount that they are investing every single year.
So that's the first thing I want everybody to do. Take out the old calculator. Do the math on what
the inflation increase needs to be for your personal situation. And let's get that one done. Now,
if you had never invested before, we got a lot more content coming up on exactly how to do that.
Number two is we are going to be hitting these big ticket things up front here
is we want to set a meeting with your boss to see how you can be involved in projects
that have a meaningful impact on the bottom line of the company.
What does that mean?
What I mean by that is we are setting up a situation for you to make more money in
2025.
And I want you to set up a meeting with your direct report to see how you can be involved
in more projects in 2025 that are going to allow you to make a huge,
impact on this company. Now we have a very specific way to negotiate your salary here at the
Personal Finance Podcast. We have episodes on that that you can check out on how to negotiate your
salary specifically when it comes to your own job. But what I believe is that you need to come up
with a collaboration with your superior when you want to make more money at your job. And so what you
do is you set up a meeting with your boss at the beginning of every year or six months before your
yearly review and you say to them, what are some things that I can be doing? And so, what are some things that I can be
doing in order to earn more money. You say it up front that you want to earn more money or you
want to get promoted here at this company. What things do you need to be doing so that you can be
involved in more important projects that are going to allow you to get to the next level at this
company? And you're going to start to have a conversation. And this is going to happen six months in
advance or a year in advance. This is not some thing where you walk into your boss's office when you
have your yearly review and you say, I want to make more money and I want to make it now. That will
never ever work. Literally it'll never work. You need to start having this conversation.
up front and start to work the system a little bit, meaning that you have to prove your worth
to your boss after you have this conversation. If they have no idea that you're going to come in and
you want to make 10 grand more per year and then you walk in there and say you want to make 10 grand more
and you list all of these reasons and all of a sudden budgets were just cut, well, then neither one
of you are going to be happy about that situation. Whereas if you start to have this conversation
up front and say, hey, in the next six to 12 months, I want to be making more money. How can I be
able to do that? And you start to have this conversation. They give you,
the action items of what you need to be doing, and then you execute those action items with
precision. And now every month thereafter, you try to set up some sort of meeting or some sort
of conversation with them to see if you're on track because you're going to list out the things
that you did and go through this entire process. We have actually a free ebook on exactly how to do this
step by step. If you want to check that out, if you go to mastermoney.com slash resources,
it's the how to get a raise ebook. It's completely free. I list out all these steps.
I give you scripts on how to actually have these conversations so that you can make this a lot easier for yourself.
So make sure you check that out if you want to learn more about this.
And then eventually, once you get to your yearly review, you and your boss are not on different pages.
You have been on the same pages the whole time because you've continuously communicated with them.
And so it becomes so much easier to get that raise when you go through this process.
So make sure you check that out.
A lot of people have gone through that process and it's been something that allows them to actually get a raise.
And we've seen people get 20, 30, 40, and one person got 50.
got $50,000 raise just from having these conversations and going through that process.
So when you align yourself with impactful projects, this helps you align your work with the company
goals. It also helps you build skills specifically within your network. If you're in corporate,
you want to play the corporate politics game. And really, even if you're in a blue collar
job, you also want to play the politics game, making sure that you are talking to the right people,
you are working on the most impactful initiatives within your department that are going to help
the company bottom line or increase productivity or increase efficiency so that the company can make
more money. It's also going to help you position yourself for career growth. If career growth is a
huge, huge factor for you and you want to build wealth through your career, this is going to help
you do that. It's making sure that you are part of some of these big projects. But in addition,
guess what it also does? It makes you indispensable, meaning that it's going to be a lot harder for someone
to lay you off when layoffs come down the line at your company if you are working on the big
ticket projects. If you're going to doing the big deal things, it is going to be a lot more
difficult for them to lay you off. Now, that may still happen, but it's going to make you much
more indispensable to them because you are making them more money. And so you are a person
that could be involved in some of these projects. And if you get really, really good at that
stuff, I guarantee you're going to be making more money and you could get some big promotions
as well. But making sure you're involved in communicating with your boss. Now, some of you may be
an introvert and you may not want to have these conversations with these negotiations. But let me
tell you, just by asking for a three to five percent raise every single year is going to be a multi-million
dollar difference in the long run over the course of your career. Is it worth a multi-million
dollar difference for you to just get a little bit uncomfortable and have these conversations?
And every single year that you do this, you're going to get better and better at having these
conversations. So making sure that you're doing it is a really, really important thing. So set up that
meeting with your boss, send him an email. Let's get this thing rolling. Check out the e-book if you have
not again, go to mastermoney.com slash resources, and you can get that e-book there completely free.
Number three is we want to make sure that we know our financial baseline. There are numbers that you
need to know off the top of your head. You need to know your savings rate. You need to know your
net worth. But you also need to know what your baseline finances are. Meaning, what is the bare
minimum that you need to make every single month to live on so that you can cover your necessities,
housing, food, utilities, transportation, all of those are your core necessities, and you need to know what
that number is. Now, this should be 50 to 60% of your income that comes in every single month. Really,
I'd like it closer to that 50% number. But some of you have to get to that 60% number.
Now, if you missed our paycheck to paycheck episode, or we talked about how to get out of this
paycheck to paycheck cycle, we go into great detail on how to find your financial baseline and
then differentiate between all of your other expenses. I highly, highly, highly,
recommend you listen to that episode if you have not. That is an hour-long episode that we worked
pretty hard on and I want you to be able to kind of see how we do this. But I'll give you
some ways to calculate your financial baseline here. So what I really want you to do is I want you to
take out the last three months of bank statements. If you want to go farther back, you can go to six
months and start to open that up and review all your recurring expenses that you have every single
month. Now, if you're going to do this on paper, if you're going to print it off the old-fashioned way,
I want you to take out a highlighter that is a specific color. And I want you to start highlighting
all of the expenses that you think are something that you need.
They're necessity expenses.
Debt payments, housing, food, transportation, health care.
This kind of stuff is your baseline necessities that you need to make sure that you are
including.
Now, exclude things.
Do not start to highlight things like dining out or entertainment or stuff that does not
meet these requirements, okay?
Number two is list your non-negotiable expenses.
So I want you to think through what is the stuff that improves my life significantly that I'm
is never, ever going to be willing to get rid of, meaning that. Let's say you are looking at something
like you got a brand new car and that car makes your life so much easier to make a commute.
Are you realistically ever going to get rid of that car? Well, that car payment needs to be part
of this scenario and it needs to be part of these necessities. And really, all debt payments need
to be part of these necessities. But if you're never willing to get rid of that car, then you need
to make sure you're including expenses surrounding that, including insurance and all those different
things in your non-negotiable expenses. Now we're going to calculate an average. So I want you at least
do three months. If you could do six months, that's great as well. But add up all these expenses. And let's
figure out what the average is of all of these expenses. This will help us kind of weather some of the
storms of fluctuations. And we can see what the real number is. And if you really want to get
technical with this, you can even go with the month that has the highest number of these expenses,
just if you want to get really, really safe and separate that out. Now what we're going to do is,
I don't want you to forget some of those semi-annual expenses.
If you pay your insurance semi-annually or you pay other specific expenses annually,
like if you're never willing to get rid of your Amazon Prime membership because you do most of
your shopping there and, you know, it's just really easy and convenient for you.
That's an annual subscription most likely.
Some of you may pay monthly.
But the annual subscription could be something I need you to factor into this number.
And so making sure you're not leaving out those annual or semi-annual expenses is going
to be really, really important.
Now, why do you need to know this number?
Why is this so important?
Why is this guy harping on this so much on why you need to know your baseline expenses?
There's a number of different reasons.
One is it helps you create a budget that actually works and a spending plan that actually works,
meaning that you're going to know how much money you have left over without going into the hole,
without going into debt and or without living paycheck to paycheck.
We need to know this number so we can get out of any paycheck to paycheck cycle or make sure
that we can find more money to put it towards wealth building activities.
But number two is it helps you build out your emergency fund because this is,
is where you can start with your emergency fund, is making sure your goal is at least at the first
couple of months, is I can start to get some of this cash on hand saved up so I can protect myself
in the long run. But it also is going to help us prepare for life's changes. If you have a job
loss, if you have a career switch, if you're going towards retirement, we need to know this number.
It is very important. And then we can know how much flexibility we have on some of our variable
expenses or expenses that are our wants. Another thing is it helps us avoid drastic lifestyle
creep. Now, I am all for lifestyle creep. My lifestyle probably creeps up a little bit every single
year. I think that's healthy. I think that's good to have your lifestyle increase over time,
especially if you start to increase your income over time, is I want you to spend some of that.
I want you to make it rain on things that you love. But at the same time, you want to make sure
that you are watching which direction your lifestyle is creeping and how much it is creeping.
If your lifestyle creeps up 75% in one year and it is something that is a huge drastic change and
you realize, whoa, I am spending way too much money.
You need to be aware of that.
You need to be aware of why that is.
And is it partially because you got a new house and your mortgage win went higher?
Is it partially because you got a brand new car and your car payment is now $1,000 per month
and you are really overspending on your car?
We need to understand our lifestyle creep.
And knowing this number before you make any of those big financial changes is going to be
huge to make informed financial decisions, which is another reason why we need to know this number.
But it also helps us understand our financial independence number, which is really, really important.
and a huge portion to why we do this.
Because if we know what our baseline expenses are,
we can actually map out exactly how long it's going to take us
to become financially independent.
And so that is something I think a lot of us need to understand
as we want to become financially independent.
We need to know what this number is because bare minimum.
If you have a million dollars and your baseline expenses are $40,000 per year,
then you can literally become financial.
independent today if you wanted to because of the 4% rule. And so because of this,
we got to think through. Now, there's a lot of variables in between there. We can talk through those,
but this is a rough outline of yes, if you have a job where you're working and grinding really,
really hard and then all of a sudden a new boss comes in and they're just absolutely miserable,
you can actually leave that job if you wanted to and you want to be able to know this number.
So knowing the number of what your financial independence number is going to be really important,
but you got to understand those baseline expenses. And so that's where I think most people need to do this.
Number four is I want you to start to reduce some of those expenses that do not bring you value,
and I want you to do this gradually.
So let's give you a quick example.
I want you to pick one to two expenses.
For most of you, let's pick two because we know there's two things you overspend on every single month.
I know I have two things I overspend on every single month.
Now let's pick two expenses and let's gradually reduce those over the course in the next six months.
What do I mean by that?
I mean that let's say eating out is your big problem and you eat out.
all the time and you're spending $800, $900 a month, maybe $1,000 a month on eating out.
Maybe some of you, you're spending more, maybe some of you're spending way less.
It doesn't really matter.
This is just an example.
Okay.
And let's say, for example, you want to reduce that from $1,000 a month eating out.
And you want to reduce it down to $500 a month eating out.
You have a big family and you eat out a lot to make it easier on your life.
But you want to reduce that down.
You want to save that extra $500 a month and put it towards your raw fire rate.
Let's say that's your goal.
And so what I want you to do, they start to gradually reduce.
that number. If you do it all at once, this may become something where it's shocking for you,
and it's a huge change for you, and then all of a sudden, you're not going to want to do it anymore.
But if you gradually do this over the course the next six months, it's going to start to feel
natural. You're going to get used to reducing it for the first month, $100. The second month,
another $100. The third month, maybe you go backwards and you increase at 50 by accident. But then now the
next month, you're going to decrease it by another $150. And so you're reducing the amount that you're
spending on this specific line item over the course of the next six months. This is how you reduce
your expenses. If you try to reduce your expenses all at once, unless you're very disciplined,
most people are going to fail. And the reason why they're going to fail, especially if it's a big
number, if it's like canceling subscriptions, whatever. But if it's a big number like your grocery
bill or eating out or you want to reduce the amount that you're spending on very specific things,
this is where you gradually reduce it over the course in the next six months. And as you start to
gradually reduce it, it's going to feel painless because you reduced it a little bit at the first
month, and a little more the second month, a little more of the third month, and over time,
you're just going to get gradually used to this. You know how they say if you boil water and
you throw a frog and then they're going to jump right back out, but if you put a frog into water
and you start to boil it and slowly increase that temperature, then over time they're going to
sit in that boiling water until they die. This is kind of what you're doing with your psychology.
You're reducing the amount that you're spending on specific things and you're just slowly
boiling that water until it gets to the number that is your goal. Now, your goal, I would set it up
ahead of time and then gradually reduce it over time. Don't do this with more than two expenses at a time.
I want you to try to focus on those two. Now, if you want to cut a bunch of subscriptions or you want
to start negotiating bills, that's a different story. But I don't want you to just kind of
gradually reduce your entire budget over time because it's kind of confusing. Instead, just do two big ones.
The two biggest ones that are going to make a huge impact for you and start to reduce those
over time. Number five is let's try to achieve our financial goals this year.
actually achieve these financial goals. And so what I mean by that is there are very specific ways
that you can achieve your financial goals and master your money goals. We teach you my exact system on how
I did it when I was living paycheck to paycheck. And a decade later, I was a millionaire just by following
and setting up my specific goals. And so I teach you exactly how to do that and master your money
goals again. You can join that if you want to. It's $99 and it is one of my favorite things to
teach every single year because when we teach that, we teach you exactly how to achieve your
financial goals in a system to do that. They say goals are for suckers, but systems are for winners.
And we teach you how to set goals and then create a system around that goal so that you can actually
achieve it. I love doing that. So the way that you do this, though, is you're going to look at
your goals and actually achieve your goals and break them down into small chunks. And I want you to
create these small chunks where, hey, if I have a huge, big, audacious goal, I want to make sure
that I am saving $10,000 every single year. Well, if you want to save $10,000, every single year, well, if you want to
save $10,000 every single year, that means you need to save $8333 per month. You need to save $192.31 per week.
You need to save $27.40 per day. And when you start to break up these goals into smaller chunks,
then you realize, oh, this is achievable. And can I save up $27.40 per day? I probably spend
more than that just by doing my random shopping trips every single week. And so as you start to look at this,
you say to yourself, is this achievable?
I'm going to go backwards and I am going to make sure that I have a system into place
to make this achievable.
So you first put it together in small chunks.
Then you must have a plan.
So let's say that you wanted to save that $10,000.
Well, you would automate $833 per month into your high-yield savings account.
And you wanted to save $10,000.
Maybe it's for a down payment on a house or maybe it's to increase your down payment on a car
or maybe it's to save for a huge family vacation or maybe you want to save $10,000.
so you can put it towards an investment or you want to buy a business. It doesn't matter what it is.
You automate that money into your high-ealt savings account, or if you're going to invest it,
you automate it into your brokerage account. And every single month, you automate $833. Well,
you say to yourself, well, I think I'm going to overspend that money by the time the month ends.
Maybe I need to do it weekly or maybe I need to do it bi-weekly. And so you break that number down
to make this goal achievable. If you think you're going to walk through life and you think
you're just going to magically achieve goals because you wrote them down on a piece of paper,
that will never, ever happen.
Instead, you also have to see how long it's actually going to take by breaking it down to do small
actionable chunks.
If you do not have these small actionable steps that you could take day in and day out,
you will never be able to achieve this.
And so we got to make sure that we have a plan in place and then it's got to be timebound.
So if you want to save $10,000 by December 31st, 2025, we need to make sure that this is
timebound.
and we need to set up smaller goals in between here that we need to hit because it's really
important to have smaller, shorter term goals that we can hit. So monthly, we need to hit this
$8333 a month so that we can stay on track to hit that goal. And the next is it must be in your
schedule, meaning that you must put these goals into your schedule. It must be systematized.
And it must be understood that if you do not systematize these goals, you will not be able to
achieve them. So I highly recommend you,
learn how to set goals this year. And we just had a master class showing exactly how to do this
and really, really excited for that. We may do it again. But this is going to be something I think
most of you need to be going through is learning how to set these goals and then setting the systems
into place. Setting goals is not some pie in the sky thing. It is something that is helping you set up a system
for you to achieve what you want every year. And I want you to be able to achieve what you want
every year. Again, check out master your money goals. If you want the fast track to learn how to do this
and that will kind of take you through that step by step. All right, number six,
is we want to make sure that we are updating our net worth. And this is something that is very,
very important for a lot of people. Now, there are free tools that can help you do this automatically
where you could be checking it anytime you want to, something like a monarch money, or something like
a, you know, Empower is another place where you can do it for free. Both of those locations are
fantastic for updating your net worth. But you need to be doing this for a number of different reasons.
One, is it tracks your financial progress, meaning that your net worth is going to show you how to
move closer to your financial goals, and it is going to be looking at your very specific situation.
Now, if you don't know what your net worth is, it's your assets minus your liabilities,
and that's going to give you a number. For some of you, if your liabilities like debt payments
are much higher than your assets, then you may have a negative net worth. And that's okay.
We've had plenty of people listening to this podcast who have had a negative net worth.
And just by listening to the show, we got amazing emails that come in all the time that say,
hey, listening to your show, help me get my net worth positive, and now I have a six-figure net worth
just because we've gone through some of the steps that you talk about here. And so I love when
people start listening to the show when they have a negative net worth. You can get out of this
situation. If you are looking at your net worth and it is negative, I promise you, you can take this
step by step and gradually get yourself out of this situation. And so tracking your financial
progress with your net worth is one of the most important things that you need to be doing.
At a very minimum, do it at the beginning of every single year, try to make sure you update your
net worth or you can do it at the end of the year if you want to. It's part of our year in money
checklist. It's take a look at your net worth so you can start to set up your goals for
2025. Both of those times are absolutely a great thing to look at. Now, it also identifies areas of
improvement. So when you know what your net worth is, you know where you need to improve. For example,
a couple years ago, I was looking at my net worth and I didn't like the percentage of my
net worth that was actually classified in my personal residence. I don't love a personal residence
being a huge chunk of your net worth.
And the reason for that is,
it's just not a great asset to have
as a huge portion of your net worth.
I'd rather have more stocks or real estate
or rental properties or businesses.
Those types of things would be the majority of my net worth
when it was for personal preference
is what I would like to have a lot bigger chunk.
So I said, hey, I got to really get aggressive
on some of these assets
and buying more assets
that we can grow our net worth in other areas.
So it helps you identify areas of improvement.
You may look at your net worth
and say, wow, my debt pile
is so much bigger than my asset pile,
I need to start paying down some of this debt.
And I'm just really imbalanced.
Or you may look at your net worth and say,
man, oh man, I have a ton of cash.
I need to invest some of this cash
so that I can get some of these investments
to rise up over time.
And this is just going to help you
identify areas of improvements and weaknesses.
This is your scorecard.
I mean, really, your net worth
is the scoreboard for your financial situation.
And so once you know what that number is,
it really, really helps you.
It also motivates you.
And this is what I love.
love about it is it really helps me stay motivated. I want to increase that number every single
year. I want to see that number grow every single year. And I want to see it grow a lot every year.
And so you try to do things that it's going to help your net worth grow over time so that you
can see where you land. Now, if you love gamifying things, if you're motivated by games and understanding,
you know, this is something that needs to increase over time, then the game is increase that net worth
number or decrease the negative net worth number so that you can get to net worth zero and then start
to build your wealth after that. It also helps inform you based on big decisions. So let's have an example
here. Let's say that you have a $100,000 net worth. You're in positive $100,000 net worth and you pull up your
net worth statement and you're trying to decide, hey, should I buy a brand new car? And you're trying to
decide, should I finance this car? Should I pay cash for this car? Or how should I handle this?
And you pull up your net worth statement and realize, well, if I finance this entire car and I'm paying $60,000
for a car, all of a sudden my net worth is going to drop $6,000.
60% meaning that now it's going to be a $40,000 net worth instead of my $100,000 net worth,
should I actually be doing this? And your net worth is going to help you truly make informed
decisions. And it's also going to help you measure financial independence. Because when you look at
your net worth, once you have enough money invested in that net worth component, you can know when
you can become financially independent, but also growing it over time is going to really help
inform you how your progress is on financial independence. Now, if you want to step by step on how
to update your net worth. If you're going to do it manually, if you're not going to use Empower,
which is free and or something like Monarch Money, which is a budgeting platform where you pay
monthly, you can do it in a couple of different ways. One is you're going to list all of your assets.
So this is going to be things like your cash. This is going to be your stocks or bonds. This is going to be
your real estate. This is going to be your personal properties. And other assets like
business equity or HSA balances or cryptocurrency, all that stuff is going to be your assets.
And then you're going to determine the value of each asset. And so you want to get up-to-date
statements and all that kind of stuff. Now, what I like about a tool like Monarch money is that on their
net worth updates, they will actually like connect your house to Zillow, for example. Now that's not the
most accurate number in the world, but they'll connect it to his estimate. They'll also connect
your vehicles to whatever the blue book, that current blue book value is of those vehicles,
and it will kind of update all this stuff in real time. Like anytime you open up Monarch money,
it's going to adjust based on what some of those values are. So for some of those things on your
network statement, it'll update them automatically. So you don't have to try to figure out what those
values are. When it comes to some of these things, though, it's just really important to make sure that
you're realistic about this. Car values go down over time. They depreciate in value over time.
They're depreciating assets. And so your net worth will go down based on your cars, but they will
go up based on your stocks or any other assets that you have over time. So just thinking through that
is really, really important. Next, you're going to list all your liabilities. This is going to be like
mortgage balances, student loans, credit card debt, car loans, personal loans, or any other
outstanding debts, these are going to reduce your net worth. And every time you take a new one on,
your net worth actually goes down. So you've got to think about it in this way. Ah, man, I just financed a brand
new car. My net worth just went down $30,000. Oh, man, I just took out a personal loan. My net worth just
went down $20,000. Or I just took out a mortgage and I was mortgage-free before. My net worth just
went down $300,000. And so this is where you want to think through how you want to take on debt. Now,
it didn't fully go down $300,000. If you buy a house, for example, and there's some equity.
in there, then the equity is going to maybe offset some of that debt. But you just want to think
through this process and understand how it works. And then you're going to calculate your total
assets. So once you do this, you're going to take your assets and you're going to add them up,
then you're going to calculate your total liabilities. You're going to add those up and you're going
to subtract your assets from your liabilities to get your net worth number. And so this is really
important for most people to do. And then you repeat this and update it over time. I like to regularly
have this updated and I just do it automatically through tools. And so that is a great way to do this.
But making sure you update your net worth this year and understand what it is if you've never done it before is really, really powerful because that is your financial scoreboard.
I want you working on that.
Let's jump to a break and then we'll get into the next one.
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All right, number seven is to get a high-yield savings account.
to bucket your finances. Now, what do I mean by that to bucket your finances? A high yield
savings account is one of the best things that you can do when it comes to your cash savings.
In your high yield savings account, I want you to have all kinds of different savings goals
from your emergency fund to your vacation fund. I want you to have your down payment fund in there
for a car or a house or whatever else it's going to be. If you want to save up for a wedding
or if you want to save up for any big ticket items that you need to save in cash, a high
legal savings account is fantastic for this. But I want you to have a high yield savings account
that has savings buckets or ways to actually compartmentalize what you are saving for inside that
high yield savings account. Now, back in the day, people used to have to do things like
sinking funds, meaning they would open a bunch of different bank accounts and each of these bank
accounts would be for a different savings school. Now, you don't have to do that anymore because
technology has advanced, obviously, and you can actually budget inside of savings accounts.
So there's a bunch of different companies out there that will do this, but I just love the opportunity to be able to save in buckets and to be able to automate into those buckets. So getting a high yield savings account in 2025, if you don't already have one, should be your goal. I cannot stress this enough that it should be your goal. You make way more money than you would at your brick and mortar bank. Do not have like a Bank of America savings account or do not have like a Chase Bank savings account. Make sure you get a high yield savings account because it will help you earn more money over time. And it helps you organize you.
your goals and it helps you have intentional saving. Now, if you haven't heard our episode where we
talk about the bucket method, the bucket method will teach you how to utilize the high yield savings
count and maximize the way that you are saving your dollars. I want you automating your finances
as much as you possibly can because it removes your willpower and allows you to save more money
over time. The bucket method will teach you exactly how to do that. Which leads us into number eight.
Number eight is I want you automating your finances. So when it comes to your money, we're going to have
a lot of content coming out this year on how to automate your finances. And one of the biggest
things is we have a course coming out called Money on Autopilot. We're actually filming the
videos now. And I am so excited to introduce this to you because it is going to be the exact
system on how to automate your entire financial situation. And so as we start to go through this,
you're going to see that automation is life changing. I gave this example in the Paycheck to Paycheck
cycle episode. But what I talked about.
talked about was I was actually automating into Fidelity on a taxable brokerage that I
quite frankly forgot about. And it was automating about $1,000 per month over the course of the last
year into this taxable brokerage account. And they was just automating into an ETF that was
investing into the S&P 500. And I was doing this every single month. And all of a sudden I went and
looked at my statement and I had that invested over the course of the last year. In addition to the
S&P 500 increased 25% over the last year as well. And to my surprise, I had an amazing surprise
they're just from automating my money, I built that much more wealth just by allowing automation
to take place. What would I have done with that extra $1,000? Who knows? If I didn't have an intentional
spot for it, it could have just got spent. But instead, I automated it into this Fidelity account,
this taxable brokerage account, and now I have that money in place. And I'm never going to say to
myself, gee, I wish I wasn't automating money into my investments. I would never say that.
Nobody has ever said that before unless they automate into something stupid like Enron,
for example. And so I am so happy that I had that automation set up,
because it just removes you from the situation.
And the more you can remove yourself and your willpower out of your financial situation
and allow your automations to do the work for you, the more wealth you're going to be able
to build.
I promise you, you won't build so much more wealth just by automating your dollar.
So if you haven't done it yet, you really need to do it.
It helps save you time.
It helps you reduce your stress.
It helps ensure consistency with your financial goals, meaning that as long as you don't
touch those automations, they are going to do their job, and you just need to continuously
be going to work and earning money so that you can increase that number over time. It helps you
you build financial discipline where if you're worried about your willpower and you're worried
about having financial discipline, if you make sure you set up those automations when you get paid,
guess what? You can't start spending money on other stuff unless you want to go into debt.
So it helps you increase that financial discipline. It helps you avoid costly mistakes
because you're not in there just trying to say, oh, the market just dipped. I'm not going to
invest this month. It helps you avoid those big mistakes that a lot of people have when it comes
to their psychology. But it also helps encourage long-term wealth building, meaning that as long
as you set those automations up and you vow to yourself, I'm not going to touch those things
unless I really, really have to. It's going to help you build long-term wealth. It's going to help
reduce some of those emotional decisions and it's going to make money management effortless.
And this is the part I really want most people to get is that if you automate your money,
you're going to be spending way less time on your finances. I cannot stress this enough.
Most of us don't want to spend all day and all night on our finances. You don't want to spend
three hours at the end of the month trying to figure out how much you budgeted and how you're
spending plan is working out. Instead, you want to make this effortless. And so this makes it effortless.
It's just so incredibly important to automate your finances. And once you see how it works,
it's going to be really, really powerful. Number nine is I want you to build on one skill
in your skill stack. So if you didn't hear our recent episode talking about how you can actually
invest in yourself and earn more money, one of the biggest things we talk about is your skill stack.
And if you don't know what your skill stack is, it's the skills you possess that allow you to earn more
money. And these are super, super important to have in your repertoire, meaning that this could be sales,
it could be networking, it could be understanding how to negotiate. All of these different types of
skills are parts of your skill stack. And so what I want you to do in 2025 is you should always be
working on one of these skills and trying to develop it over the course of the year, is I want
you to identify one skill to enhance. Now, if you haven't heard that last episode where we talked about
how to do this, we talked about how to find gaps in your skill sets, how to actually identify those gaps,
and then make sure that you are improving on those gaps.
Make sure you check out that episode.
But I want you to identify one of those skills.
And I want you to set a specific goal
on how you were going to achieve that.
Are you going to read the five best books on that skill?
Are you going to take courses?
Are you going to go out and get a coach
or a mentor on that specific skill?
How are you going to develop that skill over time
to make sure that it is going to be getting better
and better every single year?
Because you've got to look at your learning resources
and figure out what you want to do
and develop the plan and put this into place.
And then what I want you to do is I want you
to put time on your calendar where every single day or five times a week or four times a week,
whatever your cadence needs to be in order to work on that skill, I want you to work on that
and put it on your calendar. Maybe it's early in the morning. You wake up and you get up before
work and you start working on that skill. Maybe it's after work when you put the kids to bad
and it's 8 o'clock at night. So from 8 to 9, 845, you're working on that skill set and trying to
improve that skill set. Because once you have this and once you've acquired that skill, you can
make money with that skill for the rest of your life. It is the best dollars that you will invest in
is by putting money towards learning a specific skill set that is going to help add to your skill stack
that you will earn money forever with. Investing in yourself this year is going to be huge and I want you
to try to do that as much as you possibly can. Then track your progress. As you start to do this,
say you're doing 45 minutes a day, four days a week. Track that progress and see where you're landing
with this. Are you able to improve that skill set and or are you kind of falling?
behind. You need to increase the amount of time that you're spending on that.
Invest for time, invest your energy on improving that.
Number 10, this is something I think a lot of people need to hear, and I think a lot of people
need to start doing sooner rather than later. If you're someone who wants to go on a big vacation
one day and you have a dream vacation that you want to go on, for example, you want to take
your entire family to Hawaii, maybe it's 10 people and you want to go to Hawaii. Start this year
saving for your dream vacation. And now maybe you're not going to achieve it this year.
Maybe it is a huge, massive audacious goal and you want to
achieve this thing, you know, you want to go to Ireland with your entire family for four weeks
and you want to do it, you know, closer to when you're retired so you can actually take that time
off. Start saving for it now because what I want most people to do is I want them to know that
your money is a tool that can allow you to do the things that you want. Maybe there's some other
big thing you want to do. You want to take a bunch of cruises or you want to go travel every
country in the world or whatever you want to do. You want to go to each and every continent and do
a big old trip there. You want to go to Egypt and see the pyramids. I don't care what it is.
But if you have a dream vacation that you want to take,
I want you to start saving for it now.
I don't care if it's $5.
I don't care if it's $10 a month.
I don't care if it's $25 a month.
I don't care if it's $1,000 a month.
But this year, I want you to start to use your money as a tool for the things that you love.
And so if you love vacations, I want you to start saving for that and turning your dream into reality.
Why do we want to do this now?
One, is it A, turns that dream into reality, but two, it helps us avoid debt.
Too many people go into debt because they want to go into debt.
on a vacation, but they did not plan out for it in the long run. Now, you may not even know what
this vacation is yet, but I want you to just start a vacation fund and I want you to start funding
it with small amounts of money over time. You can make a large amounts of money if you really
are going on one this year, but also just start saving for it. Then we'll reduce your financial
stress and it will create motivation and excitement for you and your family if you start to save for
this stuff. Make it a family experience. Tell them why you're starting to save for this vacation.
If you know what destination you want to go to, start talking about it, start mapping some of
this stuff out and really thinking about how you want to spend these dollars. Because this is the fun
part about saving money is that as you start to progress, all of you can get on on this so that you can
really be thinking about this dream vacation. And it's going to be a much better experience for you
if you pay for this whole thing in cash and do not go into debt. I don't want anybody listening to
podcast going to debt for a vacation this year. I want you to be able to enjoy it and pay full in cash
and be able to go and do what you want. Now utilizing travel hacking is going to be another big thing
that you can do in 2025 by, you know, putting your bills on a credit card, using those credit
card points to pay for your hotels, your flights, or whatever else you want to do. And so adding that
in to your vacation plan can be a really powerful tool that most people just need to understand
how to work through this. Now, if you want to start saving for a dream vacation now and you know
where you want to go, is I want you to start setting up a clear goal and decide on the destination,
how long you want to go, all that kind of stuff, the type of experience you want. Some people want to go
on a vacation and they don't care what hotels they stay in. Some people like luxury hotels.
And so these are two different price points that you must make sure that you are kind of setting up
and estimating when you go through this. Now, number two is I want you to estimate costs,
meaning that thinking through what that's going to cost, how much time you're going to be there
is going to be a huge factor. The level of hotel, the level of flight that you want.
All of this is fantastic. Now, do not feel guilty. If you want to stay in a super nice hotel,
it may take you longer to save up, but don't feel guilty for that. If you love that, if that is one
of the big things that you love and is a true value to you, more power to you. Or if you want to
take a first class flight or you want to go to business class and you're flying to Thailand,
and you want to take business class over to Thailand, more power to you. This is your money.
You get to decide how you spend it. It just may take you a little longer to save up for it,
but you may have a better experience for you. Now, you can work this backwards. Let's say,
for example, you want to save up $5,000. You can take a big vacation. Just work this backwards.
See how long it's going to take you, how much you can actually afford to save every month
after you hit your investment goals, and then you can go from there and then automate the savings
every single month into your high yield savings account. Now, if you have any windfalls that come in
and you're like, hey, I want to invest half of this windfall, but the other half, I actually want to
go to my vacation fund so I can get this goal faster, things like bonuses, things like extra
cash that comes up, maybe you get cash for Christmas. I don't know what happens. But if any of that
stuff happens, that's a great place to look to put some of that stuff as well. And then utilizing,
again, cashback apps, credit card points, those are going to help you.
a lot to get that goal even faster. But I want you to start to use your money as a tool.
Some of you are not treating yourself enough. And I want you to treat yourself to a vacation,
but you just need to gradually be saving over time. And this is exactly how you do it.
Number 11 is I want you in 2025 to think about creating a giving plan. Now, we're going to do
an entire episode on giving plans and why they're so important to me. I gave away 10% of my money
every single year. 10% of my income goes to giving away. And that was part of the
and why I wanted to originally build wealth, it brings me so much value to give money away.
I am so happy that I do it.
And it's like some of the best money that I spend every single month.
I am so excited to do that.
Now, at Master Money, we are also in conversations in 2025.
One of my big goals at Master Money is to also at least at a minimum give away 10% of any
revenue that comes into Master Money and any of my other businesses.
We want to make sure that we are giving more money away to causes that we believe in
and giving money away to things that are going to help improve this world.
And so for me, it really, really is important for me to do this.
And why should you create a giving plan?
I'm going to give you a little quick pitch on this.
We're going to do an entire episode coming up down the line here in a couple of months.
But why you should, A, is you can align giving with your values.
We vote with our dollars with which what we value, meaning that.
Your dollars are going to go to things that you value.
If you truly value certain causes, you'd put your dollars behind them.
and it really does make a big difference.
Two, it maximizes impact.
If every single one of us gave to the causes we believe in,
imagine how much progress we can make in this world
just by putting our dollars behind this.
Okay?
So it helps maximize this impact.
If it fits into your budget, that's absolutely fantastic
because it helps ensure that generosity is sustainable.
Also, a nice throw-in is it provides tax benefits,
meaning that you're going to be paying taxes on those dollars.
And so you actually get great tax benefits by giving more money away.
But if you also want to instill generosity in your kids,
This is a great way to do this is by leading by example, showing them how to do this.
So one thing that we do with our kids is we have three separate jars when they get an allowance.
My kids are six, three, and I have a baby, but she doesn't earn money yet.
And so my six-year-old and my three-year-old, we started this when they were both very, very young.
So my six-year-old, we started this when he was about two or three.
And we started talking about money when he was one.
But when he was two or three, we started to create this.
And I'm actually going to create an exact way on how I teach my young kids about money
and then how to teach kids as they progress in age over time.
When we create our finance community,
we're actually going to have some information in there
on exactly how we do this.
But with each of my kids, I have three separate jars.
One is spend, one is save, and one is gift.
And so they put X amount of dollars into each of these jars.
And I'm teaching them as early as possible
that we want to be a family of generosity.
And so when they put it in the give jar,
when it gets to fill all the way up,
then we start to take some of that money
and teach them, you know,
ways that they want to give. Now, we talk it through and they actually choose where they're going to
give these dollars. And it's one of my favorite things to do is to teach them that. And it is something
that I think that they really love doing to. Even the smile on my kids' face is when they help
in specific scenarios is really, really cool to see. So for a lot of folks, if you've never given
money before, it may feel kind of weird and it may feel kind of funky. And if your family never
gave money away and they're really stingy with their dollars, then you may have been brought up in a way
that you're saying to yourself, well, I earned this. I don't want to give it away. But I promise you,
If you're someone who wants to make more impact, it feels amazing to give money.
Honestly, not even helping the causes you believe in.
If you want to feel good about yourself, it is absolutely amazing what you can do.
So here's just some quick steps on how to create a giving plan, and we will dive way deeper in this on the episode.
But I want you to identify your values and your priorities and think of the causes that really impact you.
One big one for me is child trafficking, meaning that child trafficking is one that really bothers me.
And so I give the Tim Tebow Foundation is a great example of one that is fighting against that.
And so there's causes that I really do believe in that I want to give more money to that is impacting some of that stuff.
So figure out what your values are and what your priorities are.
Help fight back.
Like for me, every time I think about that, we're saving children.
We're saving children from predators over and over and over again.
It is something that I think we really, really want to make sure that we are supporting.
Number two, because then you can set a budget for giving.
Like I said, mine's 10%.
I actually automate it.
It's completely automated.
I give it away to causes I believe in.
Give it away to my church.
Give it away to things that I really, truly, truly believe in.
And that is something that we will definitely be doing.
Like at Master Money, we're going to create a board of at least three individuals that will decide
where this giving money goes so that we can make the biggest impact.
And the goal is impact when it comes to giving money with Master Money.
Then you want to define your goals and plan your contributions,
meaning that when you define these goals, you've got to decide whether you want to support
one organization consistently or spread it across to a bunch of different organizations.
And then when you plan your contributions, you set that giving schedule.
Maybe it's quarterly.
maybe it's monthly, maybe it is annually. For me, it is biweekly, and then I'll look at the year end.
I'll also look to see if we want to give extra, which is just the way I do it. It just keeps it
consistent for me and how I think through it. It's all automated, though, which in Money on
autopilot, we will teach you how to give automated to. And there are tax advantage ways to do this.
So you can do it with like donor advised funds, which I'll dive deeper into, or you can do
on tax-exempt organizations, or you can do other things to maximize tax benefits. And if you want to,
you can involve, you know, folks like your family to kind of think through this and
organizations that they believe in. There's a cool one that I'm looking at with my kids
called the Heifer Project. And the Heifer Project actually will buy cows for communities
like in Africa who do not have access to food at all. And they will actually help supply a cow
to them so that they can have milk. They can have meat. There's different things that they can do
there. And so there's different organizations that you can help involve your family where they can
completely understand how that works. And then you can track and evaluate your impact. If something
seems like it's not giving the best of impact, then you can think through and how to track that.
Now, there are sites like Charity Navigator or GuideStar who can help you figure out which charities actually use most of this money because I don't want you giving your hard-earned dollars away to charities and they're just paying your CEO with it. You got to make sure that you are vetting these charities and spending a lot of time doing that.
And so there's a lot of good websites out there that help you do that. But make sure you're looking at the right ones when you go through this process. But a giving plan is going to be something I would highly, highly recommend for a lot of people if you have the extra dollars on hand. You know, this is not a requirement. But it is something that really does bring me join. I just want to talk about here on this episode because it makes it.
a huge impact on my life.
All right.
Number 12 is to open an HSA.
Now, why would you open an HSA for retirement goals or why would you even consider doing this?
An HSA stands for health savings count if you've never heard of it.
And if you have a high deductible health plan, you can open an HSA and use that to save
for health savings goals or for what I like to do with it, which is to save for retirement,
which sounds crazy.
So why would you save for retirement with an HSA?
Well, an HSA has what we call triple tax benefits, meaning money goes in and it has not been taxed to the HSA.
You can grow the money in an HSA tax-free by investing those dollars, and you can pull the money out tax-free as long as you have a qualified medical expense.
But the beautiful thing about this is, is that even if you don't have a qualified medical expense, by the time you turn age 65, it just turns into a traditional IRA basically anyway.
And so you can get some great tax savings within HSA.
It's my favorite account by far.
and you can also use these funds completely tax-free if you have a qualified medical expense.
Now, here's the thing about the fund-filled qualified medical expense, is the IRS has no timeline
on when that qualified medical expense needs to happen.
So you could break your arm when you're 21 and make sure you save that receipt,
and you can reimburse yourself at age 55 for that broken arm at 21 and not have paid taxes on that money.
And so the HSA is a really cool way to be able to invest and grow your money for a
bunch of different things. And it provides flexibility if you're going to decide to retire early.
It provides flexibility if you want to use it for health care expenses, which are rising at 7%
every single year. It is one of the biggest things that we have to worry about when we get to our
retirement age is the cost of health care expenses. And this is going to set apart and compartmentalize
some of that money for you if you wanted to use it for health care expenses down the line. But what I
wouldn't do, as I wouldn't open an HSA and just spend on my medical bills every single year.
You can use an FSA for that or something else. But for me, the
HSA I am using and building as a retirement account. You do with it what you want to do,
but that is exactly how I'm using it. It's flexible and allows you to reduce your tax burden
significantly. They're also pretty portable. So they're not just tied to your employer.
Even if you change jobs or retire, you can kind of take them with you. And if you're trying
to think through, well, where should I open an HSA if my employer doesn't offer it or all these
other reasons? My favorite place is Fidelity. Fidelity has the cheapest fees. They have the best
investments and really that is the number one place. If you look at like ratings on Morningstar,
for example, they have Fidelity rated as their number one place to keep your HSA. So check out,
do your research on where to open them, but I like Fidelity personally. It is a great place to have
that. But it also just helps future proof you against rising costs. If health care costs are rising
at 7%, we need to grow our money at at least 7%. And you can do that in an HSA.
Number 13, and this is going to be the last one for this episode. Then we'll go to part two is to get
your employer match. Now, what is an employer match? You may ask, well, it is tied to your employer's
sponsor plan. So if you work at a company that has a 401k, maybe they have a Roth 401k, or maybe they have a
403B or any of these other 457, see if your company has an employer match. Because what this means
is that they will state, hey, if you contribute X amount of dollars towards your 401k, we will match it
up to a certain percentage. And so, like, when I first started my first job in the corporate world,
it was 4% is what they matched.
And that's kind of like a pretty standard number for a lot of people, meaning that they would put in 4%.
If I put in 4%, for some of you, you may have to put in 6%.
And they'll put in 3%.
There's all these different ways that it could work.
But you need to make sure that you are getting your employer match.
Why?
Number one, it's free money.
Do you like free money?
Because I absolutely love free money.
And so your employer match is really the number one thing that you need to do with your finances every single year.
If you are not taking advantage of your employer match, I have.
highly, highly, highly recommend that you do because it is such a powerful thing that you can do.
It helps accelerate your retirement savings. It has the compound growth benefits. It automatically
invests your dollars. It's literally automated and it supports long-term financial security.
Let me just give an example here. If you made $100,000 per year and you got a 6% employer match,
you would have an additional $56,000 in your retirement account. If you got a 7% rate of
return on that money just by getting your employer match over half a million dollars and you'd be able to
spend $20,000 more per year in retirement just by getting your employer match. It is money you are not
going to miss. I promise you. You need to make sure that you are getting your employer match if it's
offered to you. It is the number one thing you need to do. It is completely free money. Do this even before
you pay off high interest debt. Do this even before you start your emergency fund. Your employer match is
the number one thing you need to be doing. Listen, thank you guys so much for listening.
you this first part of this episode. We are so excited that you are here in investing in yourself
because that's exactly what you're doing when you listen to this podcast is you are investing in
yourself. I am really pumped for you listen to part two of this episode. We got so much more
actionable tips for you. And we can't wait to see you on that next episode. Thank you again for
being here and we will see you on the next episode. Don't forget to follow us for part two.
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