The Personal Finance Podcast - The EXACT System I Use to Manage Every Paycheck

Starting point is 00:00:00 On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, the exact system I use to manage every paycheck. What's up, everybody, and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of MasterMuddy.com. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be diving into the exact system I personally use to manage every paycheck. If you guys have any questions, make sure you just. join the Master Money newsletter by going to mastermoney.com slash newsletter. And don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever podcast player

Starting point is 00:00:46 you love listening to this podcast on. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now today, on the show, we are going to be diving into the exact system I use to manage every single paycheck. But before we dive in really quick, just in case, to get this out of the way, if anybody is interested in working with me one-on-one, we are launching one-on-one coaching, and we're going to do a very specific program for people in one-on-one coaching. If you are interested in that, shoot me an email, and you're at mastermoney.com, and let me know you're

Starting point is 00:01:22 interested. You have to make over $100,000 per year to qualify. And in addition, you also have to be willing to put in the work. I'm going to give you some systems and process to put in, and you have to be willing to do the work in order to be able to qualify. So if you're interested in that, let me know. And if you don't qualify or you don't meet those qualifiers, join Master Money Academy because I literally coach you in Master Money Academy as well if you have not seen that so far. All right. So let's dive into the exact system that I use to manage every paycheck.

Starting point is 00:01:49 Now, my goal with this episode is to make this simple for a lot of you out there so that you understand, oh, this is the order I should be thinking about my money when it comes and starts to trickle down to me so I can understand where my dollars need to go. And the problem is, most people run their paycheck in the wrong order. Most people flip this entire script, but instead, I'm going to show you exactly how to do this. Now, one big key to this entire system, before we dive any deeper, is I want you to understand how to automate your money. If you don't automate your money currently, you're going to see how automation works with every single thing that I do, but you really need to get your money automated.

Starting point is 00:02:25 This is why in Master Money Academy, we have a program in there called literally Automate Your Money in one weekend. because we want you to get some of the financial foundation done as quickly as possible so that you can get the ball rolling on investing. We teach you investing in Master Money Academy. That's our entire goal. And I want you to get to investing as fast as you possibly can. And as you see, once you have the foundation set up and you understand kind of where you are and what you're doing currently, then we can really get the ball rolling and get more dollars invested so that you can start to build wealth towards financial freedom. So that you can take those extra dollars and actually become financially free.

Starting point is 00:03:00 That's where the progress is made. is through your investments. But we got to get that financial foundation set up first, so then you can get to the point in time where you're investing is working on autopilot. Now, the way you manage your money is going to be really, really important because if you can get money out of your hand so you don't go and spend it, boy, oh boy,

Starting point is 00:03:17 is that going to change the way that you think about this? And so when it comes down to automation, I want you to automate a couple of different areas. One is I want you to automate your bills. If you are manually paying your bills, as you're going to see in a second, I don't want you doing that. I want you to automate your bills and then checking to make sure things get paid with a very

Starting point is 00:03:37 simple system. Number two, though, is I want you to make sure that you are automating your investments. And number three is I want you to be automating your savings. This is going to be the three areas that once you get all three automated, all of a sudden, you start to build wealth on autopilot, you start to pay down debt automatically. You have the ability to do a lot of really, really cool things. Now, this order priority is, in my opinion, in order of importance for, my situation. And so I want you to think through, okay, well, is there some things that you

Starting point is 00:04:07 really want to make sure that you're working on? If there's something you're really focused on right now, you can start to think about the order priority. And if you have a question on this, shoot me a question over and I can help you. But this is going to be one of those things I think for many of you could be very eye-opening. I would also love to hear down below for wherever you're listening, you know, what your order of operations is as you start to listen to this episode. All right, that's enough yapping without further ado. Let's get into my exact system on how I manage every single paycheck. So the first thing I do, step one, is every single time money hits my account.

Starting point is 00:04:44 I want to make sure I get it out of that account as fast as I possibly can. Now, you may be saying to yourself, Andrew, what are you talking about? You want to get money out of your account? Yes, I want to move money out of my checking account as fast as I possibly can. Your checking account is just a flow-through account. That's all you should see it as. Money flows through your checking account and goes to the places it needs to go. And so the first place I want my money to go is towards investing.

Starting point is 00:05:10 Investing should be treated as a bill. Investing should be something that you do first before everything else. And this is after you have your emergency fund set up and after you have your high interest debt paid off. You need to make sure that you are getting your dollars investing. So this by far the most important thing. This is called paying yourself first. See, many people do this in the reverse order. They start to spend their money on bills or they start to spend their money on fun things

Starting point is 00:05:38 before spending money on themselves. But when you pay yourself first, that means you can keep those dollars, but also get those dollars working towards your financial future. And so this needs to happen as the very first thing. Now, whether you get a 401k match or do other investing is going to be how you want to think about this. Now, a lot of times before you even get your paycheck, things like your 401k contributions are going to come out. Now, how many of you out there, listen to this podcast, have ever looked at your 401k balance and said to yourself, wow, there's a lot more money in there than I ever thought

Starting point is 00:06:12 there could be. Well, the reason for that is because you automated this. And the process of automation allows you to have way more cash on hand than you ever thought there would be. So your 401k contributions are going to come out first anyways before they even hit your paycheck. check. And so what I would recommend is trying to look into things like your 401k, and I like the Roth 401k best. And so that is going to be for me what I am really focused on. Now, the Roth 401k, if you don't know, is similar to a 401k in contribution limit, but very similar to the Roth IRA and how it operates, meaning that money goes in that's already been taxed, meaning it came out of your paycheck and was tax, then it grows tax-free and you could pull the money out tax-free. Now, this is very powerful because

Starting point is 00:06:57 is you can get $24,500 per year into a Roth 401k. Why is that great? Well, if you start at the age of 25 and start maxing out your Roth 401k, I know it's a lot of money, but let's say you're making good money and you are able to max out your Roth 401k from the age of 25 to the age of 65.

Starting point is 00:07:14 You would have $10.8 million inside of that account at a 10% rate of return. And guess what percentage of that money is going to be completely tax-free. It's going to be the growth. About $9.8 million, is going to be the tax-free growth. Literally, you never pay a diamond taxes on $9.8 million.

Starting point is 00:07:34 Plug that into your tax bracket, and you will see the amazing savings of a Roth 401K. The ability to get $24,500 per year, having an employer match, having the ability to really fund and front load that cash is really awesome. So I love the Roth 401K, one of my favorites. You also have the traditional 401K if you want to go that route. So these are accounts where money goes in,

Starting point is 00:07:56 money grows and then when you pull the money out you get taxed and the thought process here is well hopefully when i'm retired i'm going to be making less money so i'll be taxed at a lower rate than during my working years and so that's why we want to contribute to something like a 401k for example now the 2026 limits for the 401k are also 24,500 dollars per year another place that you could be contributing to is the hSA the health savings account which has triple tax benefits meaning money goes in tax free it grows tax free and it can be pulled out tax-free as long as you have a qualified medical expense, but you must have a high deductible health plan to qualify for an HSA. So we used to call this the super retirement account because it has those triple tax advantages.

Starting point is 00:08:38 And so having an HSA as part of your arsenal as part of your retirement plan can be really, really important. In addition, one of the other places that I love is obviously the Roth IRA. And for many of you out there, the raw fire rate is a wonderful place to put your dollars because it gets $7,500 per year into something that grows tax-free, and you can pull the money out tax-free once it's in there. Now, remember, the number one mistake that people make when investing their dollars is thinking that the account is their investment.

Starting point is 00:09:06 No, instead, you need to still invest the money inside of that account once you have those dollars working for you. Now, you may be saying to yourself, Andrew, how much do I need to be investing every single month? Well, our goal always here at the Personal Finance Podcast is to start you off at 20%. And so one of the things that I want you to do is as you begin to think about that 20% number, you may be saying to yourself, well, I can only invest 10% right now. Well, what we need to do is increase our income, decrease our expenses.

Starting point is 00:09:36 Increase our income, decrease our expenses. Say it over and over and over again to yourself because if you can increase your income 10% and decrease your expenses 15%, all of a sudden you have a 25% delta. That gets you 25% more that you could be putting towards wealth building. And that's what we want you to do. So as you start to think about this, I want you to figure out ways how could I get closer to increasing my income 10% this year and decreasing my expenses by 15%. Now, you can only decrease so much. You can increase infinitely every single year.

Starting point is 00:10:05 And so once you get those expenses under control, then your main focus should be going towards that income. Now, if you're starting from zero and you don't know what to do, just start by investing 1%, then 2%, then 5%, then 10%, and start gradually getting your dollar. working as you get comfortable. That's why in Master Money Academy, I tell people in there, you could start from zero and I'm going to be able to help you here. I'm going to be able to transform your finances and help you get started investing because that's my goal is to get as many people investing as possible so they can become millionaires. Now, why is this important for me to do first? Because I want to get my dollars working for me so that I don't have to think about this anymore. Your money can work so much harder than you ever can. And so this is why

Starting point is 00:10:47 it's number one on my personal list. Now, if you are still in high interest debt, meaning if you have credit card debt, if you don't have your emergency fund funded yet, those are the first two things you need to do in your foundation, then you can get to the point in time where you're investing first. So still focus on those two if you haven't done those two yet. But in my situation, I invest first, and I'm showing you exactly what I do. When I started the personal finance podcast, I had no idea how big it could become. I just knew I had something I wanted to share, so I started putting it online. And looking back, I definitely wish I would have started a decade earlier. One of the horror parts about building something online, though, is making it look professional. A website used to mean hiring a developer,

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Starting point is 00:15:04 Step two for me is to pay down any debt that I have. So I have a number of different ways I get paid. I have businesses that pay me. I even have a W-2 that pays me. So because I have all these different ways I get paid, I manage money on a weekly basis instead of a bi-weekly or monthly. So if you're bi-weekly, this is still going to work. If you're monthly, this is still going to work.

Starting point is 00:15:23 But the second thing I do is I pay any debt that I have on hand. And so for me specifically, one of the biggest things I do on a weekly basis is pay off my credit cards. Why? I put as many bills as possible on my credit cards. And I don't like for those credit cards to get a larger balance than they need to half. And so for me, it's very easy to manage my money without having to track every single penny by having the ability to be able to go into my credit cards, bills, scan them to make sure that

Starting point is 00:15:52 everything looks okay, and then pay them off in full every single week. I even do this with my business credit cards. I pay them off on a weekly basis. Does this help your credit score, Andrew? No, it doesn't help your credit score. It is just something that I do to stay on top of my money. And I promise you, if you have never done this before and you feel as though, your credit cards get way too big at the end of the month and you say to yourself, well, I don't know how I spent this much money. Paying them off weekly will solve your problem. My friends, I cannot tell you how important it is to understand that paying them off weekly

Starting point is 00:16:26 will solve a lot of different problems for you because the last thing you want is to have revolving credit card debt. Let's say, for example, that you put $10,000 on a credit card over the course of a month or two. And then you decide, okay, I'm going to go pay off my credit card now, but you only have $7,000 in your account. Well, now you have this $3,000 lingering here. That's A, going to start collecting interest, but B, it's going to be what we call revolving credit card debt, meaning every single month you're going to have to deal with this additional debt in the back of your head and maybe some months you pay it off, but then when you pay it off, you got to pay other bills and then all of a sudden it just

Starting point is 00:17:01 comes back again on your credit card statement. So it's revolving. It's always there. It feels like it's never going away. So we want to avoid that. The way to avoid that is to pay off credit cards on a weekly basis. Maybe you have a he lock or something like that. Making sure that you are paying this on a weekly basis can be really important. Or maybe you want to pay your mortgage on a weekly basis to try to get some extra payments in there. I love paying debts on a weekly basis because I think it's a very interesting way to get ahead on a lot of your finances. Now, I've had people do this where they're paying it off on a high interest car loan, for example, and they pay off their car in like a year and a half. I've had people do this with their mortgage before and they're paying it off on a weekly

Starting point is 00:17:43 basis and they're like, hey, this is making me motivated. I have a high interest debt on my mortgage. I just want to get rid of this thing and they start to really accelerate their path to paying this off. And so looking at some of the extra cash that you have on hand and paying off debts is really, really important. Now, if you are currently in debt and you're trying to decide between the avalanche or the snowball method, we actually are building out this and it might be ready. So check the show notes. it might be ready by the time this episode airs. We're building out what I am calling the millionaire blueprint. The millionaire blueprint is going to actually have all of these different ways to manage your money.

Starting point is 00:18:19 And inside the millionaire blueprint, completely free, by the way, it is going to have a debt avalanche calculator and a debt snowball calculator. So you can decide which one is the best option for you. For most folks, I think psychology needs to come into play. And paying the debt snowball or going with the debt snowball method is going to be a great way to do this. Now, if you don't know what the difference between those two are, The debt avalanche means that you pay off the debt with the highest interest rate first and then go to the next debt with the next highest interest rate, then the next one with the next highest interest rate. Whereas the debt snowball says that you pay the lowest balance debt first, pay minimum payments on everything else, and then once the lowest balance gets all the lowest balance, then once the lowest balance, it's like a snowball effect where you're paying off this debt faster, you're staying.

Starting point is 00:19:09 motivated because you are paying off these different debts. Whichever one you choose, I think both of them can work well. It depends on if you're type A or type B. And if you haven't heard that episode, make sure you check that out. But many times I think the snowball method can work for most people because it keeps you motivated. So if you have any other debts that are out there, I like to do this second. And I like to put my debt payments close together in clusters.

Starting point is 00:19:31 And you'll see why in a second when I talk about bills. Because I think these clusters are really important to stay on top of your. dollars. So let's get into number three because that leads us right into the third thing that I do, which is paying bills. So bills, I usually try to set up my bill payments three days after payday. Okay. So when you think about bills, most people don't know this. You can move the date of your bills. And almost every single bill that you have can move to a different date. Now a mortgage or like a rent payment, those are more difficult to move. And so what you can do is move your bills closer to those specific bills so you have one bill cluster in place.

Starting point is 00:20:14 Now, I call these bill clusters because you can cluster them together so that after you get paid, you already have the cash there. Then you can have a little bit of time to get your dollars into your investments. Then you have the weekend coming in. Then maybe it's Monday or Tuesday you start to pay your bills after you've moved all the other money to the places it needs to go. And so once you have these bills in place, it also makes sure that your money clears for holiday weekends or whatever else.

Starting point is 00:20:38 If you work for a small company, for example, sometimes payroll takes a couple of extra days to clear on holidays or if somebody messes something up. You don't want to have to deal with any of that. So instead, making sure that your bill clusters are two or three days after the dates you get paid can be very, very helpful for a lot of folks out there. So I really, really like this process. So let's say, for example, get paid biweekly. One of the things you could do is you could put your bill cluster near the first of the month and near the 17th of the month. that means that you can then spread out these bill clusters enough that are going to allow you to know, hey, I'm going to have one cluster on the first, one cluster on the 15th.

Starting point is 00:21:17 And this is one thing I like about Monarch Money, too, because you can kind of see exactly where all of your bills fall on their calendar. So Monarch Money has this calendar where you can visualize all your occurring payments and all your bills, and you can see exactly where those bills are going to land. And then you can go identify, oh, I need to move this one to the 17th or I need to move this one to the first so that all my bill clusters are within. in the same, you know, two, three, four days somewhere in that range. This allows you to not have a bunch of surprises throughout the month.

Starting point is 00:21:44 This allows you to make sure you can manage your cash flow a lot easier and ensures that you just have extra cash on hand once all of these clusters come through. So every fixed bill, if you can move it into one of these clusters, you can do twice a month, you can do once a week if you want to, and or you can even do this in a way where it's once a month and just having all of your bills clustered surrounding, you know, that first, maybe it's the 28th, 29th, 30th, 31st, and first, clustering all those bills together allows you to make sure that you are on top of your money. But you just got to make sure you got enough cash on hand when you start to pay those bill clusters.

Starting point is 00:22:19 Now, one of the things about these bill clusters is you can start to ensure that you have the cash. If you know how much your bills cost every single month, if my type A folks, shout out to my type A folks, if you are having fun tracking your money and you know how much you spend every single month, or if you're type B and you just calculate this number once so you understand where you are, then you can have the money there cash on hand ready to make those payments. And so automating and making sure that all your bills are on autopay and then understanding just how much your bills are every single month

Starting point is 00:22:48 and then clustering them ensures that you don't have to really budget every single line item if you don't want to. And I know for many of you out there, you may not want to. All right. Next, one of the things that I would do, before we go to the next thing, actually, is one of the things that I would do is also think through a paycheck cushion. So if you can get to a point in time where you are paying this month's bills with last month's money earned, getting one month ahead in terms of how much you have on hand in your checking account, that's going to really help you when it comes to automation so there's no surprises and nothing that really just comes and bites you. So by paying off that credit card every single week and then clustering up those bills, you can see how you can start to manage your money in a way.

Starting point is 00:23:29 That's simple. Listen, this stuff isn't hard, but this stuff's not taught to you. So it's not like you're going to know this stuff unless somebody teaches you. That's why your boy is here. I'm here to teach you this stuff and teach you how to manage your money. So you don't have to just look at spreadsheets all day and just no, no, no, no. Instead, you can make sure that you're living your life and having a little bit of fun to. Now, I know my type A people, you like your spreadsheets, nothing against that.

Starting point is 00:23:51 But for my type B people, I want you to be able to look at this in a way that is helpful. Okay. Next is the emergency fund. So I still, even though I have a fully funded emergency fund, I still like to contribute a little bit more. I like to pour a little bit more pixie dust in my emergency fund. I like to throw a little extra cheddar there. And so a lot of times when I am managing my money now, the fourth thing I will do is make sure money is going to my emergency fund.

Starting point is 00:24:17 Now, I don't actually physically do it. It's automated. Obviously, I have a high yield savings account where my emergency fund is automated. And if you want to see my favorites, by the way, we will link them up at the top of the show notes so that you can check those out. But my favorite high yield savings accounts many times have buckets. So ally is one place I have one. Sofi is another place I have one.

Starting point is 00:24:37 There's a bunch of amazing ones out there. So this is a way for me to start to really be able to get some dollars going. And so I like my emergency fund to progressively grow. Why? Well, there's two reasons. One is my plan long term is to have a much larger emergency fund by the time I hit retirement age. I don't know when that's going to be.

Starting point is 00:24:55 I love this too much. I love helping you guys with your money. And so many times I say to myself, I don't know if I'm ever going to retire. But as we begin to look at some of this stuff, it is really, really important to make sure that I am still growing my emergency fund because in retirement, I want to have a couple years of cash on hand. And so the only way to do that is to slowly fund your emergency fund. I have this big, hairy, audacious goal to have five years of cash on hand just in case that the market pulls back in my first couple of years of retirement. I got the cash just there or anything else happens in retirement. I got cash just there.

Starting point is 00:25:30 And so for me, I continue to sprinkle a little cheddar. every single month into my emergency fund. Think about your emergency fund as a big taco. And you're just throwing a little extra cheese at that taco and that cheese is melting and it's getting all nice and gooey. And I don't know where this example is going to go. I feel like I'm just getting lost in this example here. Throw some extra cheese on that emergency fund,

Starting point is 00:25:50 even when it's fully funded, if you want to save it for retirement. That's enough weird examples for me today. That's one thing I keep doing. So it's automatically transferred and then my goals are there. I review it every single year to say, hey, am I putting too much in here? And sometimes I am. And then sometimes I'm like, no, I'd rather just get these dollars invested as well. So sometimes for the long term dollars, I think to myself, okay, well, why don't we just get more of this in a brokerage? And because it's for the long term. And so many times I will make adjustments like that, I will send it over to my taxable brokerage instead of just keeping it in a high-old savings account. And then at other times, when I have to use my emergency fund, I want to make sure I'm peppering some extra cash there and adjusting that based on, you know,

Starting point is 00:26:32 usage of emergency fund, which guess what? I've used my emergency fund a bunch of times this year because a lot of things have happened throughout the year that I did not anticipate. Like a great example of this was, I think I just talked about this on a recent episode, but we had like a thousand dollar sprinkler bill that just popped up. We had to replace a bunch of things in the house that popped up out of nowhere that were just needing repairs. We had to do some gutter moving and there's just all kinds of stuff that we had to do around the house that were just, you know, stupid stuff that I hate spending money on. But you have to use the emergency fund if you don't have the allocation there. So that is the thing to think through as you start to

Starting point is 00:27:05 begin to do this. Now, what counts as an emergency? Things like job loss or medical expenses or essential home or car repairs. Those are all really important in our emergencies. What's not an emergency is the holidays or a concert or things that are on sale. Those are not emergencies. So make sure you understand what an emergency fund is and what it's not. When I get with people one on one, I make them create an emergency fund document that says exactly what an emergency fund is and their family agrees to this so they don't just spend their emergency fund on something that's ridiculous. Okay. Next. So the next thing I do is I go and set up my savings buckets. Now, my savings buckets, this is for fun stuff, okay? So for enjoyable stuff, for stuff I want to spend

Starting point is 00:27:53 money on. So like this also falls in a play of like spending money, stuff I want to just blow money on that type of thing because I've got my wealth building stuff taken care of. I've got my debt stuff taking care of and my bills are taken care of so now it's time for andrew to have a little bit of fun. Now it's time for Andrew to go out there and maybe he wants to buy himself a brand new driver so that he can you know hit the ball right in the water. Maybe he wants to buy a brand new putter which I recently just bought that I three pot every single time on the grain or maybe he wants to go and you know buy himself a boat. Shout out to Master Money Academy for our boat reference here. But there's a lot of different things that we could be doing. There's a lot of different things that

Starting point is 00:28:29 you could spend money on that you enjoy. Maybe you like to go out there. to eat more often. Maybe you want to buy a new pair of shoes. Maybe you want to buy the new iPhone. And by the way, if you are not debt-free and you go and buy that folding iPhone, I'm going to come through that iPhone and I'm going to tell you bad choice, my friend. So I think that's one of the things that we need to consider as we go through this. So my savings buckets, the way that these work is I have these savings buckets set up for like longer-term fun goals. So one is for vacation. one is for, you know, if my wife and I want to do something cool, like we have all these different savings buckets for things we want to do.

Starting point is 00:29:05 I have one set up in a brokerage account that I talked about recently on an episode for my vacation fund brokerage account that I have set up. I have one for like a boat fund. I have one for a watch fund. I want to get a couple of nice watches that I can hand down to my kids when I pass away as like a keepsake, a family heirloom type thing. So there's a lot of things like that that I've been saving in. And so that's where my savings buckets goes.

Starting point is 00:29:27 is right after I make sure I take care of everything else. Those are some of the things that I do. But this is also the time where I spend money on stuff that I want. If I want to buy the random stuff that I like to buy, this is the timing where I do that as well. And so it's spending money, guilt-free spending, whatever you want to call it, that's exactly where it comes out of.

Starting point is 00:29:46 All right, step six, this is the next thing I do. When it comes to step six, now I set up these savings buckets, these additional savings buckets for repairs. So what I've been doing lately, and I've really enjoyed this, is I have set up, and I've done this for years, not lately, but I've set up these savings buckets for specific repairs that I know we're going to come up all the time. So things, for example, like car repair. I built a car repair fund over the course of a year or two.

Starting point is 00:30:11 I put about $5,000 in a car repair fund just so when any car has an issue, I don't really have to think about it and I don't have to decide, oh, I got to recalculate my emergency fund and do all this stuff. No, it's in the car repair fund. You know, I just send money to that car repair fund every single month so that I have it available. Secondly, is a car replacement fund. That's the other thing that I like to have on hand there where I have this money going into my savings bucket. That's going to allow me to replace a car and pay cash for the next car when the time comes.

Starting point is 00:30:40 Then I have another bucket for home repairs. And that's for, you know, anytime a home repair pops up, this started because of the last couple of months where I've needed more home repair funds. And so I've actually increased the amount needed for that home repair fund because there's just a lot of things that happened over the course of the last year that I feel as though I need. If you're trying to decide how much to put in your home repair fund, look at how much you paid for the home, do one to two percent. That's kind of the easiest route to take there. And then you can kind of adjust based on how much you have in there.

Starting point is 00:31:09 If you get like 10 grand into a home repair fund, that's pretty good unless you feel as though you got a roof coming up or painting or some big Kappex thing, capital expenditure that could be coming up later on down the line. Another one that I like to do is like a medical or deductible bucket that just allows me to have that. that cash on hand too, just sitting there just in case like I need it for if I need to use my whole deductible. At some point in time, I would like to have that whole thing funded where I just have the cash on hand there that I can utilize. You could also put this in your HSA if you're not maxing it out. That's another place that you could put these dollars. If you have pets, that's another great place to have a pet bucket, making sure that you are taking care of that or kids things.

Starting point is 00:31:46 You know, if you have kids, you know, making sure you have a kid's bucket that allows you to kind to get a cushion there because all of these different buckets allow you to make sure you're not just paying a bunch of cash out of pocket that you only anticipate. Christmas bucket is another one, meaning that you take how much you spent on Christmas every single year. You divide it by 12, and that's how much you put in that bucket every single month to make sure that once you get to Christmas time or holiday time, then you just have the money there. And so these are just some of the buckets that I really like to use and really like to think about just to have extra cash on hand. Now I know we're talking about a lot of different things here. Like everyone else is at different

Starting point is 00:32:21 places and time. But if you're really trying to get ahead, this is the, ultimate place you want to get to is doing the things that I'm talking about here so that you have the cash on hand to protect you against anything in life. You have your emergency fund, but you also have these additional buckets that allow you for additional protection if you want it. And so just sprinkle in a little bit more into those buckets. Even if it's 25 bucks, you're going to be amazed at how much these things grow over time. I usually put small amounts of money in these. Like it's not a lot at all. And over time, when I don't use them, they just grow to thousands of dollars. And it's really neat to see the growth. And it's really neat

Starting point is 00:32:52 to see what happens here. Even if you have 300 bucks in there and you have a $500 car repair, you're going to be so happy you had $300 to take care of the car repair. And now you only have to come up with the extra $200. It's not a big deal once you start to see stuff in small amounts of money growing, even in a high-yield savings account, can really start to add up over time. It just helps protect you. Just putting it in these other little places after you have some fun, though.

Starting point is 00:33:15 Like these are luxuries to have. But after you have a little bit of fun, it's great to do that. And you don't have to worry about money anymore once you start to do this kind of stuff. and I think it's really, really important to think about it. Next is kids savings and future goals, okay? So future goals are things that are going to be bigger ticket goals. Let's say you want a vacation home or you want to make sure that you have a future goal when it comes to, you know, stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:33:40 Maybe you want to take a sabbatical or you're saving for a wedding. These types of things you can start to put in future goals, this may be a little higher for you if it's like a high priority thing. Like if you're saving for a wedding and it's over the, it's in nine months and you need to make sure you're prioritizing this, this may be jumping ahead of a lot of these different things. But this is the area where I do it currently is I just start to kind of pepper money to here and add money to these funds when I see fit.

Starting point is 00:34:06 And then kids savings, obviously, I automatically just invest my kids money into our systems that we talk about all the time. And so when I do kids investments or 529 plans or those types of things, we are doing those in a way that makes sense and is automated. We just had multiple master classes that are saved. inside Master Money Academy, if you want to check out how to invest for your kids or how to save for a 529 plan, we have multiple classes talking about that. If you are thinking about that or are interested, make sure you check that out. And then we have step eight. Now step eight's a fun one,

Starting point is 00:34:42 because this is the area, once all of these things are done, and once I've completed all these things, I put this in my invest more category, meaning that, you know, once I've done all the things that I want to do, and then I want to invest more dollars or get more dollars working, if you have extra cash on hand or if you've increased your income and worked really hard to increase your income to make sure you have extra cash on hand, then you can start to invest more. And maybe you can't do all these steps yet. That's okay. But I want you to see ultimately where this can take you and where this can go. Because in my invest more category, I've already hit my retirement goals and like the things I want to do in step one. And so in this

Starting point is 00:35:19 category, you could do stuff like maybe you want to invest in crypto. Maybe you want to buy a little gold. Maybe you want to head on down to Costco and get one of those Kirkland gold bars or maybe those Kirkland silver bars. I'm thinking about doing that with my kids and got to taking them down there and having them each buy a Kirkland Silver Bar. I'm not going to buy them gold, but silver bar because it's like 70 bucks. It would be a good lesson on just seeing commodities, feeling, touching, holding, tasting, you know, those types of things. Not tasting, but we'll get back to that later. But anything else that's out there that could be, you know, of interest to them. So I think there's just cool things that you can do like that.

Starting point is 00:35:53 If you're interested in Pokemon cars, go for it. I don't care. If you're interested in buying more stocks like I am, that's mainly what I do is I buy a lot more stocks and investments. That's something you could do. If you're interested in buying real estate, if you're interested in buying, you know, businesses, if you're interested in all these different things, this is the time to do it, is the invest more time and starting to put cash aside for stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:36:13 Now, this could also fall into the category if you're like thinking about real estate. It could fall into the category of savings and future goals. Absolutely. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. And so I think for this, this could be an area where you think through exactly what your priorities are and then make adjustments based on those. But these are my priorities. These are the ways that I am actually thinking about this and how I'm actually managing this. Now, let me give an example of this.

Starting point is 00:36:37 So I did a walk through and put together an example of someone, let's say someone had a $6,000 paycheck. Well, if you followed my system on how this would work, I want you to kind of think through exactly how you would do this. Okay. So my example is someone with a $6,000 net paycheck. They get it twice a month. They are a dual-income household with $8,000 in credit card debts and no emergency fund yet, okay? So one of the things that you could look at is on day zero, you get your 401k match and you take $300 to your Roth IRA. On day one, $1, $1,200 goes right to the credit card.

Starting point is 00:37:10 Day two, $2, $2,800 goes in auto-pays your bills. Day $500 to the emergency fund until it hits that initial emergency fund goal of having one month of expenses. And then, and then you can start to spread out some of that money once the credit card is paid off. So like, for example, if you have the credit card paid off, then you go to day three, which is $200 across, you know, things like vacations and Christmas buckets or $150 towards your home and car repair buckets or $150 towards your $529 plan bucket. And the remainder of the money can stay in checking or it can add a buffer or you can just spend it on things that you actually enjoy.

Starting point is 00:37:43 And so that's an example of something that you really could think about and how you could set this up in a way that makes sense for a lot of people. And so if you wanted to set this all up in a weekend, like if you wanted to have this system set up in one or two days, it doesn't be a week, it'd be a week day, obviously. What I would do is look at, okay, first, go look at the show notes down below, open a high-yield savings account because this is an important category that you need to think through. Then set the 401k contribution limit with your HR department. Making sure that you're contributing to your 401k is really important, scheduling, transferring money to your IRA or your Roth IRA, making sure you schedule your debt transfers, your savings

Starting point is 00:38:19 bucket transfers, and your payday transfers are all really, really important. Then you can move every single bill you have over to auto pay and then review it once a quarter, making sure that you are on top of this is also important. And when you look at your paycheck routine, when you think about how this is going to work, one of the things that I would do is I would then ensure that this works for you. And if you need to move things around, you can. But spend 10 minutes a month just thinking about, okay, Is this working? Is this working properly? Is everything automated? Is everything working the way that it should?

Starting point is 00:38:50 Or should I adjust a few things? That's where you really need to think through this and reflect. Be introspective when it comes to some of this stuff. And make sure this is hitting your values exactly where it needs to go. Again, we have the automate your money in one weekend. Challenge inside Master Money Academy if you're interested in that. But really, I just want you to work on this so you can really get to the point in time where you feel as though you're comfortable with managing your paycheck. Now, perfect. That is the exact system I use to manage every. paycheck. Again, it's investing first, making sure you're taking care of your retirement and future you, then making sure you're taking care of debts and bills, funding that emergency fund, and then from there getting to the point in time where you can start to spend money on things that you enjoy. So I really hope you enjoyed that breakdown. Now, I'm going to jump into a couple of your questions.

Starting point is 00:39:35 My relationship with money has changed a lot over the years. Early on, I thought building wealth was about making more money. Now, I know it's really about having clarity. When you know exactly where your money is going and whether you're on track, you make better decisions. That's one of the reasons I love Monarch. It's the personal finance app that tracks everything from your accounts and investments to your savings goals and spending so you can see your entire financial picture in one place. One habit that's made a huge difference for me is my five minute drill every single morning. I open Monarch, check my spending, investments, cash flow, and net worth, and I'm done in just a few minutes. It gives me confidence that nothing is slipping through

Starting point is 00:40:15 the cracks. I also love the AI weekly recap because it'll flag spending changes, upcoming expenses, or shifts in my net worth before they become a problem. Instead of reacting after the fact, I can make adjustments early. It really feels like having a financial advisor in your pocket. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code pfp at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at Monarch.com. with code PFP. It's kind of amazing how much can change in just a single year. Every summer, the kids are a little bigger, a little more independent, and life looks a little different than it did the year before. And it reminds me that while we can't predict the future, we can prepare for it.

Starting point is 00:41:03 That's one of the reasons I like PolicyGenius. See, PolicyGenius isn't an insurance company. They're an online marketplace that lets you compare life insurance quotes from some of America's top insurers side by side for free. And their licensed team helps you compare coverage, prices, and terms, answers your questions, and even handles the paperwork so you can get the right policy without the hassle. For me, having life insurance isn't about expecting something to happen. It's about knowing my family is protected so I can actually enjoy these moments together instead of worrying about what comes next. And with policy genius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies, starting at just $276.

Starting point is 00:41:43 a year for $1 million of coverage. Head to PolicyGenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's PolicyGenius.com. All right. So the first question comes up is from Daniel. So Daniel says, Andrew, one thing that I fight myself on is the fact that my emergency fund of six months is just sitting in a high yield savings account getting 3.75%.

Starting point is 00:42:09 I know what you're supposed to do. I understand that. But what I would like to do and what I fight myself, on is that that $45,000, I could put in a taxable brokerage account, invested, and possibly get 7 to 10% a year. Because let's be honest, 3.75%. Yeah, you can see the interest build over the year, but by the time you pay taxes on that money at the end of the year and at an inflation, you're basically just breaking even. That's completely right, Daniel, you are breaking even, for the most part. If I put it in a taxable brokerage account and it makes 7, 10, possibly 17%,

Starting point is 00:42:41 now I feel like I'm getting somewhere. And you know as well as, I know that if I have an emergency, I can still sell some of the stocks, transfer the money into a checking account, and pay for emergencies essentially at the same time and be able to utilize that money. And I have a credit card with the $20,000 limit that I use every month and pay off every month for the points. What emergency am I going to run into that I can't pay with $20,000, paid off with my credit card and sell some stocks and transfer the money to pay off the card at the end of every single month? Now, I know the money invested could go down. And I could have to sell when the market is down. I understand the risk, but we're talking about 16 years before I

Starting point is 00:43:16 retire at $45,000. $454,000 in 16 years at a modest 8%. When I'm 62 and I retire, heck, I could sell all of my investments, leave it in SPACs and use that money for my two and a half three year cash buffer because I also put 25% in my Roth 401K and I max out two Roth IRAs every single year. This is my one dilemma that I do struggle with. Maybe this won't be talked about on your show, but I would like to know what you think about this. Daniel, welcome to the show. It's going to get talked on the show. All right. This is a really good point. And it's a really good question. And it's something that I think all of us wrestle with from time to time. And one of the things that we need to think about here is if we have a fully funded emergency fund and it's sitting at that 3% interest, like right now,

Starting point is 00:44:03 it's like 3.1% interest rate. And we're struggling on what to do with it because money is just sitting there. I get it. You want that money to grow. You put it in. in a compound interest calculator and you're saying to yourself, this could grow to so much more. The potential here is here. And if I have all these other opportunities to protect my wealth, well, what could go wrong? Well, here is the worst case scenario. Here is what could happen. And the reason why we are protecting our finances is I don't like risk. I don't like risk whatsoever. And so when a risk comes up where you need to have your emergency phone on hand, this is some of the things that I want to talk about. Okay, number one.

Starting point is 00:44:42 is, as you stated, in your message here, the market can have a pullback. But let's say, for example, we have a pullback like 2007, 2008, 2009. When that happened, we had a market pullback of 50%. So now your $45,000 is worth $22,500. Okay? So that market pullback happens. You have $22,500 currently sitting in your brokerage account. But also, at the same exact time, what was happening?

Starting point is 00:45:12 during that recessionary event. Massive layoffs. Now, could you get laid off, maybe? Could you not get a laid off, maybe? But your job is going to be an impact on if you want to keep all of this money in your high-yield savings count or not. If you have a job that you feel as though is secure and you want to invest a portion of this, I wouldn't do it.

Starting point is 00:45:34 I'm not telling anybody else to do it. But it could be a consideration if you wanted to go that route, but I would never tell somebody to do this, okay? Secondly, if you have dual incomes, meaning if one, you or your spouse lost a job, then maybe you have a little bit of additional diversification. Or third, if you have like rental properties or things like that that that help diversify your income, then maybe you have some other optionality there. I still am a huge proponent of the six-month emergency fund in cash, even though it's breaking even,

Starting point is 00:46:04 even though it's not really getting you anywhere because of job loss. because of this worst-case scenario recessionary environment. Now, you have to decide for yourself what you're comfortable with and what your risk tolerance is. Because if you are comfortable with taking a portion investing those dollars and growing that money, I see where you're going with this. I understand the appeal. I don't do it.

Starting point is 00:46:28 And the reason why I don't do it is because I want to protect my wealth. And at the expense of long-term, I have seen worst-case scenarios happen to people. I have seen people who have had a ton of issues with their home, for example. their homeowners and a natural disaster happened. They didn't have enough insurance on hand. And so they had to come up with enough cash on hand out of pocket to do this. This just happened to my mother-in-law, for example. We had a hurricane come in.

Starting point is 00:46:50 She had insurance. It didn't cover everything. And so she had to come up with tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket just to replace things to get her house back to normal again. I saw somebody else that we've coached that had a tornado go through their house and they had to figure out a way to get enough cash on hand to make sure they can actually cover all those expenses. or let's say, for example, you get into an accident and, you know, somebody gets hurt and you get sued.

Starting point is 00:47:14 There's all these, and you don't have enough umbrella insurance. Those types of things could happen. And so there's way more emergencies than just like the obvious that could pop up that we are not thinking about. I own businesses. If one of those businesses begins to struggle, I've had this happen in the past before. I've had to take my emergency fund and actually help put it into the business. I've done this at $50,000 at a time before where I've had a business struggling. And to make payroll, I had to take $50,000.

Starting point is 00:47:37 out of my emergency fund and put it into that business. That's not fun. And so there's all these different reasons why you would have an emergency fund with more. Medical emergencies, there's a lot of different things. And so that's why I keep it in cash. But it depends on your risk tolerance. I have a very high risk tolerance for investing. And so every extra dollar I try to invest.

Starting point is 00:47:57 I try to invest every extra dollar I can. But I keep that 6, 7, 8, 9, whatever you want to have on hand. Six months is my minimum for everybody. but I keep that six months on hand for those reasons. So many times I feel as though you are correct. You can do this. There are people out there who have said, hey, why don't you invest some of your emergency fund?

Starting point is 00:48:17 It's going to be okay. You can still pull it out. The worst that could happen is it goes down 50, 60, 70 percent and you still have cash there. And if you're comfortable with that, then you can make a choice based on how comfortable you are with that. But I'm personally just not going to do it. But I think this is a wonderful question.

Starting point is 00:48:35 I'm so glad you brought this up. I think this is a great conversation, and I think it's something that is worth debating. It's worth having the conversation about because long term, the person who invests those dollars most likely will have more money in that account. They most likely will. But we don't have this cash on hand for that purpose. It's not for the opportunity cost. It's for the protection.

Starting point is 00:48:54 It's building the economic moat around our personal finances so that they can't get derailed. Because if they do get derailed, then all of a sudden you're missing out on the opportunity cost of being able to invest every single month. You're missing out on the opportunity cost. of being completely debt-free. You're missing out on the opportunity cost of being stress-free. You're missing out on the opportunity cost of so many different areas. And so that's why I have the emergency fund is for those big pillars.

Starting point is 00:49:18 Those are most important to me. Those are most important to most people. They need to have six months on hand. And I think when you think about your swan number, your sleep well at night number, that's the most important number for most people. But don't get caught, not funding enough in your emergency fund because you don't see some of the risks that could come down. the pipe. Okay? So that's the way I would think about that is thinking through it in that way.

Starting point is 00:49:40 But again, awesome question. I love this conversation and I think this should be talked about more. All right. The next one is from JR. So JR says, truly enjoy the podcast and find a lot of really good interesting points in your work. My question is, what is the budgeting strategy for those of us already in the thick of it with our family lives? We have an established mortgage, student loans, and down to one car payment. Still need room for other parts of life. like gas, bills, etc. I work two jobs so my wife is home with the three kids. One just having started preschool. And every time we drop an expense example, the car payment of $250, then preschool payments starts at $280. This will only go up next year when the second child goes. And then the

Starting point is 00:50:25 second child goes, the other car payment will be gone in the same month. I imagine it will be the full $470 for both of them. We do save about 10% every single year for retirement. That's a plus. And we always want to do more, but the where and the how is the feasibility issue. Our debt is all low interest under 5%. Thanks for all the info and resources you provide. And P.S., why do you never recommend 0% balance transfers on consumer debt? Well, on the PS, we do have a full episode on that on 0% balance transfers on consumer debt as long as someone is going to pay it off. If you have a plan and enough cash on hand and you make enough money and have enough delta to pay it off, I have no issue with that whatsoever. Now, when it comes to managing money on an already established household,

Starting point is 00:51:06 there's a couple of things that need to happen here one is you need to evaluate how much you're spending in the major category so the baseline expenses are one how much are you spending on your baseline expenses your needs if it's more than 60 percent then you may be over leveraged in a couple of different areas one is since you have kids in preschool i know how difficult that can be i have been paying for preschools for the last now how old is for the last eight years and so crazy so i am still paying my youngest now goes preschool. She absolutely loves it. And it's one of those things that I feel as though one of the biggest struggles for young families just like yours. And it's not talked about enough. It's basically like having another mortgage. And it's one of those frustrating things that we have to try to work through. Now here's a couple of things I want to talk about this. This episode today about money management should be very helpful for you. If it's not, shoot me a message. But B, I want you to consider maybe something like the reverse budget, where if you're not going to use a line by line on a budget, which I would use, but if you're a type B person when it comes to managing your money,

Starting point is 00:52:08 then you can use the reverse budget. Now, the way that the reverse budget works, and we will link us up down below if you haven't checked it out, but what we're working on right now is the millionaire blueprint, okay? And in the millionaire blueprint, we're actually going to have a reverse budget calculator in there for you, completely for free. And what it is is basically you save off the top, like we talk about the way I manage my money, and then you spend what is left over. Well, if you get your savings done first or the stuff that you really need to get done, then you can spend whatever is left over on the things and the resources and the stuff that you have on hand.

Starting point is 00:52:41 But if I were you, I would currently sit down and put together my budget of what are my needs and what's the percentage there, what are my wants and then how much are my spending on other things like debt payments, things like that. And that's going to help you really get this nailed down so you know how much extra cash you have on hand. But this comes down to sometimes we have to do a spending and budget audit to understand where we are. then we can automate everything else and make adjustments. But sometimes when you're first starting out, you just got to do this. So when you're living paycheck to paycheck and trying to get by, you can just do this once.

Starting point is 00:53:12 So sometimes this is just like spending an afternoon, like an hour or two, figuring out where you currently stand. Then you can make decisions based on that. Okay? So that's really, really important as you begin this journey. But I really appreciate you sending over this question and I feel the pain of the daycare costs.

Starting point is 00:53:30 It is not easy to get through that part. I am still going to be paying this for another couple of years. So in the end, I will have ended up having a daycare payment for over 10 years. And I think many of you, if you have two kids or three kids, you feel that struggle, you feel that pain of what that feels like. And I think it's really important for us to make sure we budget out for this. We plan our money out for this because that expense is no joke. So awesome, awesome question.

Starting point is 00:53:55 I truly appreciate you sending that in. And for anybody out there who wants to get started investing, even if you're starting from zero. You have $5 to invest, $10 a month to invest, $15, $20 a month to invest, or you have $10,000 a month to invest. I want you to join Master Money Academy. I want to invite you to join Master Money Academy. Master Money Academy, I teach you exactly how to build a portfolio for financial freedom so that you can become financially free one day. You have the ability to invest your dollars, have them grow, work on autopilot while you sleep. And that is the entire goal is to build wealth while you you sleep. And so Master Money Academy teaches you exactly how to invest in exactly how to do that.

Starting point is 00:54:38 So if you're interested in Master Money Academy, there's a seven-day free trial that we are offering right now. It is linked up down below in the show notes. So here's the cool thing. I also am on coaching calls with you on a weekly basis. We do group coaching calls every single week and you can ask me questions when you get stuck. So join Master Money Academy. Would love to see each and every single one of you there. I get to know everybody in there. It's really fun. We've had a ton of different wins that we just went through. We just had a member who just realized she is $9,000 away from being a millionaire.

Starting point is 00:55:09 So shout out Krista. That is absolutely amazing. So there's just so many cool things right now happening inside of Master Money Academy. And I would love, love, love to invite you to join. Also, if you want to do one-on-one coaching with me, shoot me an email, Andrew at mastermoney. Dot co. And let me know that you're interested if you make over $100,000 per year, household income, or if you have $100,000 to invest, we can help you there as well.

Starting point is 00:55:35 All right. Thank you so much for being here. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you, and we will see you on the next episode.

The Personal Finance Podcast - The EXACT System I Use to Manage Every Paycheck

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