The Personal Finance Podcast - How Do You Stay Motivated to Pursue Your Goals - Money Q&A

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Starting point is 00:01:26 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 are going to be talking about motivation. We're going to be talking about mindset. We're going to be answering a bunch of your questions regarding those topics. In addition, we're going to be talking about my daily routines, because I'm getting that question a lot now.

Starting point is 00:01:49 Never thought I would, but here we are. And we're also going to be talking about some of my favorite apps and budgeting tools as well. So if you guys have any questions, make sure you hit me up on Instagram at Master Money Co or TikTok at Master Money Co. And make sure you're on the Master Money newsletter as well, because that is incredibly important for you

Starting point is 00:02:10 to be able to see some of the stuff that we have going on, get discounts on some of our courses coming out, get discounts on coaching and all these other things that we have coming out for you. I'm so incredibly excited for. So today we are going to be answering some of these questions, really excited to answer these questions. We haven't done a money Q&A in a while.

Starting point is 00:02:28 And what I'm going to be doing with Money Q&A is I'm going to start to split some of these up. So I'm trying to categorize them in a way where they all make sense to kind of have the same episode together. That way we're staying on topic and we're making sure that we are talking about some of these similar things. Now, if you like Money Q&A,

Starting point is 00:02:42 you want us to do more money Q&As, let me know. Tell me on Instagram, let me know, send me an email so that we can do more of these for you because I love answering your questions. I think this is a fun way to actually give back to you guys as well. Make sure I'm serving you and answering your direct questions because you guys have a lot of questions. And so we want to make sure that we are answering as many of those as we possibly can. Now, this time around, I put a poll out on Instagram.

Starting point is 00:03:07 I said, listen, if you guys have any questions for money Q&A, send them out to me. and we got so many on mindset and my routines and the things that I do, I don't talk about myself a lot. The reason why I don't talk about myself a lot, there's an actual, a real reason for that is because I'm trying to bring you as much value as I possibly can.

Starting point is 00:03:23 And within that value, I want you to take actionable advice so that you can go and use that in your everyday life. And me talking about myself a lot doesn't really help you accomplish that goal. But a lot of people are asking me questions and they are asking me over and over and over again

Starting point is 00:03:37 to talk more about myself. So if you guys want that as well, let me know, but the reason why I don't do it, and I'm just telling you, is because when I do that, it doesn't always help you in your day-to-day life, your personal finance, your money, you're investing, your money hacks, all of these other things that we love to talk about. It doesn't help you as much. But today we're going to be talking about mindset. We'll get into some of the stuff I do day to day so that you can have that understanding, and we'll do that in this money Q&A as well. So we're going to jump into some of these questions. So let's get into it.

Starting point is 00:04:08 So the first one is how do I gain motivation to pursue my financial goals? Now, this is something really important to understand very early on, especially if you are trying to get your financial life together. And all of us have been at this point we're trying to get our financial life together. But there's a certain way to go about this because you got to have something that you're going for. So the first thing you want to be doing is you want to find your purpose. What are you doing this for? For me, for example, I wanted as much time as I possibly could have

Starting point is 00:04:37 back. I didn't want to work in the corporate world anymore. I didn't want to sit in that cubicle anymore. I didn't want to sit in my office once I got promoted anymore. I wanted to get out of this situation because I wanted my time back. Why? Because I knew in the future I wanted to have kids and a family and everything along those lines. And I wanted to spend as much time as I possibly could. So something has to ignite you, ignite that fire inside of you to give you that want to continue to pursue those financial goals. Now, this is a major thing to start off with. So figuring out what your why is is what you absolutely have to do. Maybe it's because you want to go out and pursue a business. Maybe it's because you want to go change people's lives. One of the biggest things here

Starting point is 00:05:16 at Master Money in the Personal Finance Podcast is we want to help as many people as we possibly can. Now I know that fire inside of me was one of the reasons why I wanted to get after it so that we could start doing this and now we're getting closer and closer to be able to reach as many people as we possibly can here at Master Money in the Personal Finance Podcast as well. But that's one of the things that fueled us early on as well. Maybe you just want to go after something like barista fire where you work part time at a job that you actually love doing. Maybe you love fishing so you become a fishing captain.

Starting point is 00:05:45 Maybe you love golfing so you want to become a golf instructor part time or work in a clubhouse. Maybe you love yoga so you want to be a yoga instructor part time. But you want to achieve these goals so that you can do more of what you love to do day in, day out. These are all fantastic reasons to want to pursue financial independence. And this is where you have to figure out what you want. What do you want in life? What is your why? Because once you figure that thing out, you're going to have what you are going after.

Starting point is 00:06:12 So when times get tough, you remember what you're actually doing it for. Because if you don't have something that you're going after, you don't really know why you're doing this, then the purpose of this entire thing is a lot harder to accomplish the goal if you don't really have your why. Now, there's something that's much more important than just what I'm talking about here. And the thing that's really incredibly important is to understand that your motivation is feeble. Your motivation is something that is not going to stick around forever. I know for me, there are days I don't want to be doing my budget and I don't want to be doing all these other things, but guess what? Sometimes that motivation is going to fail and it's failed for me over and over and over again, many times over.

Starting point is 00:06:50 You can think about this in the same way as fitness. There are days you just do not want to go to the gym. I've had days where I drove all the way to the gym, sat in the park and lot and I just can't do this today. And it's very rare that that happens, but it's happened. and then I just drive all the way back home. So that used to happen all the time until I built my home gym, which we're going to talk about later in this episode.

Starting point is 00:07:09 But that is the same thing when it comes to your money. There are days, nobody wants to do this day in and day out. Nobody wants to do this every single day. So guess what you have to do? You have to set up systems. Now you maybe have heard me say this with the habits as well because when you're setting up money habits, having systems in place is what's going to help you achieve those habits.

Starting point is 00:07:30 Motivation is for suckers. systems are for winner. So creating money systems is how you're going to keep this thing rolling because sometimes you're going to have to do it when you don't want to do it. So if you haven't heard the episode when I talk about my daily money routines,

Starting point is 00:07:43 which has been one of our most popular episodes as of late, if you have not heard that episode, make sure you check that out. I'm going to talk about the daily routines here as well, but I'm going to give you an overview of some of the routines that we have. So the daily routines we're going to talk about a little later in this episode.

Starting point is 00:07:57 But for example, the weekly routines that we do is we pay off our credit court every single week. So every single Friday, I send my wife a text say, hey, pay off the credit cards every single Friday. And in addition, I make sure my money's right, making sure looking at the businesses, making sure everything else has come in on time, making sure my income is looking okay, and the money is actually hitting my checking accounts.

Starting point is 00:08:17 Then we also have monthly routines. Like I meet with my wife every month, make sure we're on track with our goals, make sure we're doing the right things when it comes to our money and we are actually accomplishing our goals and we are living our best life, meaning we are doing the things with our money that we actually want to be doing, we're not just spending frivolously on things that we do not care about. We are buying things that bring us value. We are doing things that bring us value with our life. So we look at our spending, our savings rate, all those other things. Then there's the yearly routines, and we have an episode talking about the yearly routines.

Starting point is 00:08:47 We'll probably do a new version of that episode at the end of this year as well. But with the yearly routines, what we are doing is making sure that we have everything set for this year, and we are setting ourselves up for success for the next year as well. So having all these systems in place is incredibly powerful because these things can run on autopilot and we automate our finances to run on autopilot so that if something happens, you can actually make sure that you're still accomplishing your financial goals. And the automation is another big key here. Automation with your money is so incredibly powerful. It is one of the biggest things that you can do. So for example, every single time you get paid, your money gets transferred automatically

Starting point is 00:09:25 into your brokerage account so you can invest those dollars. What this does is it removes willpower from the equation. And if you can remove willpower from your financial equation, you're going to be so much better off because willpower fails. Willpower always will fail. So your why and your systems are what are going to take you over that hump so that you can actually stay motivated when it comes to your finances. This is the key with anything in life. This is the key with your fitness. This is the key with your health, with your marriage, with your wealth. Everything in life needs systems and it needs the why. If you have those two components, you break those systems down into small daily chunks where you can actually achieve those goals. It is absolutely life-changing what you

Starting point is 00:10:07 can do with your money. It is absolutely life-changing what you can do with your health, with your wealth, everything in your life, even relationships. It may sound silly to put systems into place with a relationship, but guess what? If you do it, it's actually going to happen. If you want to have date nights with your significant other, if you want to do things and making sure you're saying, I love you to your significant other. All these different things are going to make a great impact on your personal life. And so making sure you have the systems in place, that's what's going to do it for you. So this is a very type A way of thinking. This is a very systematic way of thinking about the same time. This stuff works. So if you put these into place, pick one thing,

Starting point is 00:10:43 start with your money, figure out what the systems you need to have in place. Do I need to budget every single day? Do I need to budget every single month? Do I even need a budget? Or is it work better for me just to do the reverse budget where I just send my money to my investments, my emergency fund and my short-term goals, and the rest of money I just spend whatever is left over. Automating, figuring out what works best for you is the way to do this. So really, the big takeaway here is understand that your motivation is feeble. Your motivation is not going to stick around forever because nobody is motivated every single day, but we do it anyway because we have to.

Starting point is 00:11:15 It's the same thing when you go to work every single day. You do that anyway because you have to. You have to make money. You have to earn an income. You're not just going to skip work because you don't feel like it. one day. Most days, a lot of people don't feel like we want to work, but you still do it anyway. And that's why it's so incredibly important to have these systems in place so that you can achieve these goals. All right, the next one is what are your daily routines and how many hours do you

Starting point is 00:11:38 sleep? So I never thought I would answer this question on this podcast, but here we are. This is one thing that I'm going to show you how I set up my day. And the reason why this could be valuable for some of you is I am trying to set up my day and I'm trying to structure my day so that that it is for high performance throughout the day. So there's a very specific way I do things, and the reason why I do it is it works for me. Now, some of this stuff may not work for you, but I always have found it interesting what people's daily routines, or I remember listening to the Tim Ferriss show for a long time, and Tim Ferriss used to pull this out of every single person he would interview. He'd asked them their daily routines, but it would take him 45 minutes

Starting point is 00:12:14 to get through all the questions about their daily routines because he thought it was so incredibly important for you to listen to this. Now, one thing about daily routines is that a lot of people are like, oh, you don't need routines to be able to be a high achiever. No, you do not need routines to be a high achiever, but most people, it helps to have that structure in place. For me, I have to have it in place to be able to do my most optimal work. So when it comes down to daily routines, I think it works for the majority of people.

Starting point is 00:12:39 And the reason why Tim Ferriss used to do those in such depth is that you can take one piece away from one person. You can take another piece away from another person. And then once you get to this point, then you have all these things in place that are working for you so that you can be your best self when it comes to your health, your wealth, your relationships, everything else. All of this is built around doing that, optimizing time, so that I can produce the most that I possibly can. So for me, it's all about structure. It's all about structuring your day

Starting point is 00:13:07 in a specific way so that you can be ready to go. Now, I don't wake up at 4 a.m. I don't wake up at 4.30 a.m. I used to try to do that, and the entire day, I was completely groggy. So I wake up around 6 a.m. And the only reason why I wake up around 6 a.m. instead of like 6.30 is because, that's what time my four-year-old likes to wake up. So he comes downstairs and he usually wakes my wife and I up and he's ready to roll and he is super energetic. I have two boys in the house. He is super energetic so he is already ready to rock and roll by 6 a.m. My second son doesn't actually wake up until closer to 7 and he's one, but he actually sleeps longer than the other one. So I wish they both slept a little longer, but that is the way that it goes. But 6 a.m. is a great

Starting point is 00:13:49 wake-up time. It's a time where you can get started, especially if you do don't have kids and you don't have kids that are awake. It's a time where the whole house can be quiet and you can start to get some work done maybe on your side hustle or you can get other deep work in as well. So that's what I used to do is I would wake up at 6 a.m. and I would get a bunch of deep work in before the house woke up and everybody else woke up and started sending me emails and all these other things. So now it's a little bit different because I spent a little time with the kids, make sure they get fed some of that stuff early on and then we go throughout this process. Now one thing I want to do during this time frame, this first chunk of time,

Starting point is 00:14:20 this first hour from six to seven is I want to wake my brain up. Now, a lot of people hit caffeine right away. But Huberman Lab, if you've never heard of that podcast, Andrew Huberman has this recommendation to actually forego caffeine for at least 90 minutes early on in the day. The reason why you do this is actually increases energy later on in the day. So I tried this because I was starting to get groggy later on. And once I started to do this, I did have energy for a much longer period of time.

Starting point is 00:14:46 So I actually forego caffeine. And the way I wake my brain up is I start to do some reaffirmed. So a lot of times early in the morning, I want to read things that are inspiring that kind of help me get through that morning portion so that I start my day off right and I start my day off in a good mood because I think your mood impacts the rest of your day as well. So a lot of times, one of my main core things that I read is Proverbs, which is in the Bible. Now, even if you're not a person that believes in God, problems is still absolutely fantastic. So let me explain what Proverbs is. It was written by King Solomon. and King Solomon is known for a lot of people

Starting point is 00:15:19 as the wisest person who has ever lived on this earth. And King Solomon is also known as one of the wealthiest people that have ever lived. For a long time, he was known as the wealthiest, and I think there's a few other things that have come out, maybe some emperors and some other folks who may have been wealthier than he was. But he is one of the most wealthy people of all time,

Starting point is 00:15:36 and if you took his wealth in today's dollars, it's well over trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars that he had in wealth. And some of the stuff in Proverbs is some of the most wise writing I have ever seen in my entire life. So there is 31 chapters in Proverbs. So you can read one every single day and you'll read the whole thing once a month. It's really quick. It takes you like five minutes to read it. You can think of how there's like the Stoicism movement as well with Ryan Holiday. He has all these books that are great

Starting point is 00:16:00 around Stoicism. Proverbs is the same thing. It's ancient text. They were probably written close to the around the same time. And this kind of stuff really does help improve your life if you take some of these principles and put them into place. So that's one thing I utilize to wake up my brain. Other things that I used to utilize was just reading my standard books, but I found that my mind didn't wake up as much because I'd have to deep dive into some of those. So that is one thing that I do during that first hour as well. Then we go into seven o'clock. So seven o'clock to eight o'clock, I built out a home gym. And when I built out this home gym, it was one thing where I invested $7,000 to build out the home gym. The reason why the number is important is because if you want to do this, that's what it

Starting point is 00:16:39 would cost. Some of the prices may have gone down. But when COVID hit, couldn't go to the gym anymore. I was like, I don't want to even do this anymore. I don't want to travel. I had young kids. So it's much easier. So we built out to home gym and one of my garage bays in our house. And what we did was we put in first a squat rack. So I have a rogue squat rack. I think it's the 42 inch monster light squat rack. And then we got a bar and a bunch of plates and all that kind of stuff. So I have a road bar, road plates. Then we have dumbbells from five pounds all the way up to 100 pounds. And this is incredibly important as well because it allows you to do almost anything between these two things. But in addition, I splurged and we got a cable machine as well because the cable

Starting point is 00:17:18 machine just allows you to do some functional movements and other movements that I wanted to do. Then we have a sled to do some work where you're walking backwards, helps out the knees, knees over toes guy, look them up, it's an awesome, awesome system in place. And in addition, we have an elliptical machine that I found on the side of the road and somebody put it on the side of the road. They were throwing it out, grabbed it, threw it in the back of my truck, and then found a core on Amazon to hook it up with and it worked. So I use that actually a lot. and I'll talk about that a little bit later on the later part of my routine. And then lastly, we have a spin bike as well that is my DIY Peloton.

Starting point is 00:17:50 So for a long time on dollar after dollar, our old blog, I ranked as the number one person if you search DIY Peloton on Google. And so we created this DIY Peloton for like 350 bucks where it's a couple hundred dollars for the spin bike. And then you have a mount on the spin bike that you can put an iPad or anything else on. Then you get the Peloton app and you can get some sensors and they will all kind of sync up. Now, I've heard from people it's not exactly the same as their Peloton, but if you don't want to spend a couple thousand dollars on a peloton and you only want to spend a couple hundred dollars, this is the way to go. I think I actually early on did a podcast episode on this as well talking through this.

Starting point is 00:18:25 So that is the early morning routine. And obviously after that, about 8 o'clock, then I come in, eat breakfast, and then it's time to work. So some days I go to an office, some days I don't because I like to work from home. And a lot of the master money stuff I work on from home. So when I get to work, the first thing I do is my daily money routine. So my daily money routine is two things. Reviewing my goals and budgeting. So budgeting, I just have to categorize a few transactions, make sure everything looks

Starting point is 00:18:52 okay, and then do my daily goal review, which is what are my goals? Why are these my goals? And it just helps remind me every single day what I'm going after. The daily budgeting just helps me stay on track of my money where it takes me two minutes instead of having to do it at the end of every single month and it takes like an hour and a half and I used to never want to do it. So the daily budgeting just helps me. It's two minutes, no big deal.

Starting point is 00:19:12 Do a couple categories and that's it. And why now? So if you want a deeper dive into that, just listen to my money routine episode. I think it's called the life-changing money routines. And that one will help you out with that as well. After the money routines, then we get to work. And when I get to work, the mornings are usually dedicated to deep work. And deep work is stuff like writing or it's stuff like creating outlines or it's stuff like working on my other businesses that really require a ton of attention.

Starting point is 00:19:37 It requires me to really get into deep work. And this is inspired by Cal Newport's book, Deep Work. And the way I structure this is with time blocking, which is from that same book as well. And Cal Newport writes it on a little notebook that he has, but what I do is I just put it into a spreadsheet. It's called the Get Stuff Done spreadsheet. And I time block out my entire day,

Starting point is 00:19:55 but the mornings are dedicated to deep work because that is when my brain is firing. That is when I'm the most functional. So during that time, I'm doing all that deep work stuff that I really do not want to be interrupted from. and having that time frame, having a block of time where you can do deep work is life-changing. So if you've never done it, that is something you definitely want to look into. And sometimes at a corporate job you can't do that because people are bothering you all day long.

Starting point is 00:20:18 I know how it is. So either doing it early in the morning or late at night and having a block where you can do that deep work is something that's absolutely going to be imperative for doing this. And then time blocking means every single hour of every day has a job. So 9 a.m. to noon, I'm doing my deep work. And here's what I'm doing for my deep work. and then after that, what I'm doing is either podcasts or calls or I'm doing video stuff. A lot of times we have calls for the businesses and a lot of things that we have to do

Starting point is 00:20:43 for those other businesses, a lot of that time is eaten up there. But we try to push the podcast through the afternoon as well so that we can get that deep work and protect that time. So in addition, emails, all that other stuff as well. So all the boring stuff that's out there. Then I usually shut it down, 430 to 5, head home, make dinner, hang out with the kids all the way up until 7. We do bath time, all that kind of stuff.

Starting point is 00:21:04 and they go to bed at eight. So after that, I either start working at seven or eight, depending on what's going on. So during that time frame from eight to nine, 30, 10, I'm working again. So I'm working on some other projects and deep work and other things that I need to get done. And then after that, I read.

Starting point is 00:21:20 And then I do zone two cardio. So zone two cardio is something also on Andrew Huberman, where I do like 30 minutes and it's usually three, four, five times a week. I'm going closer to like five or six times a week now, where I'll jump on the elliptical or the spin bike and do zone two cardio, where it's cardio that you can actually still hold a conversation with.

Starting point is 00:21:37 But it's optimal for longevity, for one thing. But it also makes me feel really good. So I like to do it at nighttime. The only reason why I like to do it at nighttime is because the garage heats up. I live in Florida. And so the garage heats up. It gets really hot. And when it does that, I just like to sweat out all the stress from the day and everything

Starting point is 00:21:52 that's going on. So that is one of the other main things that I do there. And then after that, read and go to bed. So bedtime, hard 10.30, the latest 11. And the reason for that is. because I want to get that seven to eight hours of sleep, which was the second part of the question. So this is a little longer winded that I wanted to be,

Starting point is 00:22:09 but that is how my day is structured on a normal day. Obviously, there's a lot of other things that go on that I can get into details with what the businesses and all that other stuff. But that is how that is structured. That is the main piece of what we do day in and day out. The next one. So lately, I've been noticing how fast things are changing at home. The kids are growing like crazy.

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Starting point is 00:25:12 I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. What is your favorite apps and tools for budgeting? So for budgeting, there are three apps and tools that I absolutely love. And I did an Instagram post and I think a TikTok a long time ago on this.

Starting point is 00:25:38 And it's pretty much the same as it is when I did that. So if you follow me on Instagram or TikTok, you will see that post or maybe you remember that post. If not, here is exactly what I do. So Wynab is my go-to-day. I've been using it for a very long time. I've been trying other budgeting apps. I can't get away from it. It just works really well.

Starting point is 00:25:55 It does take some time to learn and you have to pay a monthly fee. but that monthly fee more than is covered by the stuff that you do every single day. I think they do a 34 day free trial. This is not even sponsored. They don't do affiliate relationships or anything like that. I just love them so much. And I want to have Jesse Meacham, the founder of Wynab on this podcast at some point in time, because he had a major impact on my financial journey as well. So that is the first thing I do. That is the way our family budget is set in there. And even some of my businesses, I set budgets in there and kind of run the YNAB system through a few of our businesses as well. Some of them are a little higher level. have to run P&Ls and different things.

Starting point is 00:26:29 So we run those through QuickBooks. But for Wynab, we do it for some of our smaller businesses, and it's very easy to utilize it that way and use that system and put it into place. So Wynab is my core budget software. Absolutely love it. The four rules that come with Wynab, we're life-changing for me. And it's something that absolutely changed my life. And I'll talk about that a little more on the next question as well.

Starting point is 00:26:49 My net worth tracker is personal capital. Personal capital, I do have an affiliate relationship with. It's an absolutely free app. So if you do want to support the show and you do, want to use personal capital, use my link down on the show notes below, but personal capital is an app that helps you track your net worth. Now, you can do budgets and stuff in there as well, but I utilize it to track my net worth and I have for years and years and years. So I think I've been using personal capital since 2014 or 2015. And it is an amazing way to sync up all your

Starting point is 00:27:17 bank accounts, all your debt accounts, everything in one spot, and you can see it all on one dashboard. And on that dashboard, you can look and say, what are my assets? Meaning, what are the things that go up in value, things like your stocks, your house value, all those other things. And then what are my liabilities? So things that you owe money to. So maybe your credit cards. Maybe you have a student loan. Maybe you have a car loan. Maybe you have a mortgage. All those things. How much money do you owe and how much do you own? And between that equation, you have your net worth. It could be negative for some people. It could be positive for some people. But watching that net worth grow is part of your why. It's going to help you with your why. And it's amazing to see it grow over time. And the cool thing,

Starting point is 00:27:56 about personal capital is I can go back on some old dates and I've had it for so long that you can kind of see the net worth growth over time. And it's so powerful to watch that happen. It's so motivating to watch that happen because your net worth is your scorecard. If you haven't listened to the episode, we talk about net worth versus income. We talk about why your net worth is so incredibly important and why it's more powerful over time than your income. So your income's going to help you early on build your net worth. But your net worth over time is what really wealthy people focus on. So personal capital is a fantastic, way to track your net worth. It is what wealthy people track. It is the scorecard for wealthy people.

Starting point is 00:28:30 So make sure you are checking that out with a link down below as well. And then I use Rocket Money, which used to be True Bill. And Rocket Money is just a like bill alert system. So the cool thing about Rocket Money is you can look at all your subscriptions and everything that's going on and say, hey, do I really value this stuff? So it's kind of like my value tracker is essentially how I talk about it. And what Rocket Money does is it allows you to get alerts so that when your bills come due or if you have something that you get double charge on or if you have a big transaction, it'll alert you. So you just hook up your bank accounts.

Starting point is 00:28:58 It gives you those alerts. And then we'll also at times be able to cancel bills for you. So there's been a couple of bills. Like, for example, I wanted to cancel an Amazon Kids subscription that I didn't even know I had. And Rocket Money is the one that told me that I had that. And so with that subscription, I went to have them cancel it. They couldn't cancel that one.

Starting point is 00:29:15 But they have been able to cancel some other subscriptions that I've had as well. So it is a great tool. And there's a paid version and a free version. Just start with the free version. And then if you're really getting value of it, then pay for it. I think I pay four bucks a month or $4.99 a month for it. And it is a really, really great tool to be able to utilize and control your bills. One day we'll do an episode on like all the money tools that I use and a bunch of different

Starting point is 00:29:35 softwares and stuff like that. But these are the main three for budgeting. And these are the three that I use every single day pretty much. Now, using these tools is not something you have to do. You could do this in a spreadsheet and stuff like that. It's just stuff that I like to use to make my life a little bit easier. The next one is what made you want to teach money to others. So this is a longer story than what I'm going to tell here.

Starting point is 00:29:57 But the reason why I wanted to start teaching money to others is I have an innate passion for this stuff. So when I was in high school, we would be in like computer class and I would go read money blogs. And one of my favorite ones actually was called youngmoney.com. Youngmoney.com got bought out by Little Wayne and is the group that propelled Drake and Nicky Minaj and all artists as well. But when I was in high school, youngmoney.com was a website that taught you about money and all investing and mortgages for people who are usually like age 18 to 30 was the target market for that. And I would read that every single day. In addition, I would read like blogs like Get Rich Slowly by J.D. Roth and a bunch of other ones out there as well. And very early on, I was just passionate about this stuff. I would

Starting point is 00:30:39 read Money Magazine. Every magazine that had any article about money in it, I would pick it up and read it. And I would go through this stuff like crazy. I would read books and all those other things as well. But I was more inclined to read blogs and articles online. So this is where, it kind of started. This is where my baseline started was reading very early on all these publications, all these different things to start to get that fuel and that fire that kind of ignited. Then I started to buy investments as a teenager. So I buy mutual funds. I wasn't buying index funds yet. I was buying mutual funds and they were doing very well. So my first brokerage I ever opened was Fidelity. I put $2,500 that I worked for years for into Fidelity so that I could have that money

Starting point is 00:31:20 start to build up over time. So I put that in there. And I remember In about a year, that money made $1,000, and I was so incredibly excited for that. And that was my first taste into compound interest. Then I've also made a ton of investing mistakes as well. So as I got a little older, I think it was 17 or 18. I read this blog about penny stocks. I put all the extra cash I had into one penny stock. I think it was like $600.

Starting point is 00:31:41 It went down to zero in one day. So I lost my entire net worth of extra cash, not the original mutual fund, which I just let sit there. But the extra cash went down to zero in one day. So that was a major investing lesson about investing. stocks as well. Then as time went on, I went through college, had a job in college, but I was utilizing that to kind of pay for some of my expenses and things like that. Then I graduated college. Now this is kind of where the impetus of a lot of things started, including dollar after dollar, this podcast, a bunch of other stuff as well. My first job I got, I've talked about this before,

Starting point is 00:32:12 was about $30,000 per year. And when I got that job, I thought, this is amazing I'm going to make more than I ever made delivering sandwiches or working as a waiter when I was in college and doing all these other things. But I quickly realized that this amount of money in the area that I lived in was very hard to live off of. So what I did was at one point in time, I went to the gas pump, and I went to go fill up my gas tank,

Starting point is 00:32:37 and I remember this like it was yesterday. And I was driving a Chevy Suburban at the time, and I went to go fill up my gas tank, and I did not have enough money to fill my gas tank all the way up. Now, this is when gas prices were sky high, but I did not have enough money to fill. my gas tank up. And I remember that feeling and I said to myself, this is never going to happen again. Now, sure, I still always had those investments, but I knew not to touch those from all the education

Starting point is 00:33:02 I had, but I did not know how to manage money. And very early on, what I did was I said, this will never happen to me. This is not going to happen. So you're talking about motivation. You're talking about the why. This was the first thing that this will not happen to me. And instead, what I'm going to do is I'm to take this experience and learn how to build wealth and I'm going to build an incredible amount of wealth because of it. And it actually made me so mad that I could not fill up this gas tank. And this was the beginning of everything for me. So I've never talked about this in this podcast, probably should have, but I've never talked about this in this podcast because it is one of those things that I think really changed my mindset for so many other things. And at this point in time,

Starting point is 00:33:42 people talk about the moment that changed their lives. This is one of the things, the simple thing. I could not fill up my gas tank, did not have enough money, and I decided today I'm going to figure this out. So immediately I started to set up a budget was the first thing I did. And setting up that budget all of a sudden my life changed because I had control of my money. I had control of where my dollars went. And every single month I knew what I was going to do. And shortly after setting up my first budget, and I used Mint to set up that first budget, I realize automation is a little bit difficult when it comes to this.

Starting point is 00:34:10 And I shortly after found Wynab. Now, Wynab is what changed my life. I've had it for over a decade now. And it is one thing that has changed my life in terms of being able to budget my money properly. So this is the point where everything changed for me, started to be able to invest all this money. And at that point where I could not fill up my gas tank, I was 22, I believe. And from age 22 to the beginning of age 25, I had my first $100,000 saved on a low salary, but I figured out what I needed to do.

Starting point is 00:34:40 So figuring that part out was when I wanted to start telling people what I did. And so teaching people this stuff because I knew it was life changing for me, I figured it out, and making sure that other people knew this information was incredibly powerful. But from that age, age 25 to now, that's when the wealth started to accelerate and really build up really fast. So obviously my savings rate, I started to earn more and I talk about all this stuff, started to earn more money. Being able to earn more money helped me get to the next level. And being able to do that means I can invest so much more money into brokerages, real estate,

Starting point is 00:35:15 all these other things. So the next few years is where all that stuff happened. But early on getting that baseline and having that failure, that failure changed everything for me. So to get to your question, what made me want to teach money to other people, it's to have that life-changing moment. To have that light bulb go off,

Starting point is 00:35:32 to unlock that for you is exactly what we want to do. And the reason why this exists, the reason why all of this exists, is to teach you how to build wealth for you and your family. Because once you unlock the base, The basics early on are what this podcast was built on. And once you unlock those basics, then what happens is now, as we go into some of these deeper topics, now what's going to happen is you're going to be able to start to build wealth.

Starting point is 00:35:58 Your income is going to rise every extra dollar you put towards investments and you're going to reach financial independence very quickly. I learned about financial independence while I was saving up for that first 100K by reading Mr. Money Mustache and a bunch of other blogs. And once I learned about that, that was actually a real thing, I was all in. I wanted my time back. I wanted the freedom back. And that is what I want to unlock for all of you.

Starting point is 00:36:18 So the reason why I am so energetic about this subject is because I'm so excited about it. But at the same time, I want to unlock this for you. I want you to be able to have this freedom in life. And I am so excited about this that that is why we structure the podcast the exactly the way we do. And when we make a push next year, which our plan is to make a major push on YouTube and some other channels as well, that will be the next thing. So there are so many things that we want to do for you guys,

Starting point is 00:36:46 and there's so many courses and things we want to unlock and freebies and all this other stuff that we want to do, that we want to make sure that you are the wealthiest that you can actually be. And we want you to optimize your income, optimize your money, and everything in between, because I want to see everybody who listens to this podcast become extremely wealthy. That is our goal. That is why we do that.

Starting point is 00:37:06 And unlocking the basics first, and now that we go into these deeper topics, it's going to be something that's absolutely life-changing. So that is why I wanted to do this. is to change lives for other people the way my life was changed with money because it took away stress, anxiety, made relationships better.

Starting point is 00:37:20 Everything changed because I changed my money. Everything changed. You can see people like Jeff Bezos. Once he got really wealthy, all of a sudden he's jacked and tan. Even his fitness improved. So there's so many different things that you can see here

Starting point is 00:37:32 that will be impacted if you can start to build wealth and take that stress, melt that stress, melt that anxiety away with money. Melt away the stigma with money is the other part of it because a lot of people don't want to talk about this,

Starting point is 00:37:45 we're going to talk about it. And we're going to talk about it a lot so that we can all learn and grow from each other. So that is why we wanted to start this. That is why we're so incredibly excited about the future of this podcast and the future of master money and the future of everything else

Starting point is 00:37:59 that we want to do. And we have visions to take this to different levels as well. So we're so incredibly excited to do that for you. And it's all around serving you. It's all around serving you guys. And I cannot thank you guys enough for listening to this podcast, sharing it with your friends so that we can grow this

Starting point is 00:38:16 because this message is something we just want to teach people how to build wealth. We want people to be stress-free, anxiety-free. So that is the key. That is exactly what we are here to do and we are so incredibly excited that you're on this journey with us. So I can't thank you enough for listening to this podcast.

Starting point is 00:38:29 I appreciate each and every single one of you and that's why we want to make sure that we are serving you as much as possible. Listen, this is the last part of this money Q&A. The next one we have coming up is going to be on personal finance and we have another one coming up on investing as well.

Starting point is 00:38:43 So all of these, we are so incredibly excited to answer your questions. If you guys have any questions, make sure you send them over to Master Money on Instagram or TikTok. For some reason, Instagram hates us. TikTok loves us. We have like 120,000 followers on TikTok. We have like 9,000 on Instagram. So make sure you hit us up on Instagram as well.

Starting point is 00:39:01 YouTube, we are going to be creating a bunch of content doing a big push on that as well. So really excited for all this, really excited to share all this stuff with you, pumped up. Get ready for index fun. Pro releasing very soon. and all this stuff is going to be coming out very, very soon. So so incredibly excited for this. Can't wait to share this journey with you guys,

Starting point is 00:39:19 and we will see you on the next episode.

The Personal Finance Podcast - How Do You Stay Motivated to Pursue Your Goals - Money Q&A

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