The Personal Finance Podcast - The Truth About Building Wealth in Your 30s!

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

Join the community built to help you master your money, stay accountable, and reach financial freedom.  👉 Join Master Money Academy today! In this episode of The Personal Finance Podcast, Andre...w reveals why your 30s are the hardest financial decade,higher income collides with childcare costs, lifestyle creep disguised as progress, and juggling too many goals at once, exposing the biggest money traps like becoming house poor and carrying high-interest debt, teaching core principles like automating before optimizing and protecting your downside first, plus the exact 10-step blueprint to survive and thrive including stabilizing cash flow, raising your savings rate to 20-25%, building your safety net, eliminating toxic debt, and growing income aggressively. Listen to The Business Show here. Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Partner Deals Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at http://Indeed.com/personalfinance Join the loyalty program for renters at joinbilt.com/PFP  Go to http://policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Thanks to Fundrise for Sponsoring the show! Invest in real estate going to http://fundrise.com/pfp   Get 50% Off Monarch, the all-in-one financial tool at http://www.monarch.com/PFP  Find your next dream home, start searching now. Download the http://Realtor.com app today DeleteMe: Go to https://joindeleteme.com/PFP20/ and Use Promo Code PFP for 20% off!   Links of the Episode Mentioned: The Insane Cost Of Childcare and Ways to Help Reduce That Cost! The 1-3-6 Method For Building & Managing Your Emergency Fund How to Negotiate Your Salary and Get a Raise (The Step-By-Step System!) Resources Mentioned Car Insurance Money on Autopilot The Budget Spreadsheet Connect With Andrew on Social Media: Instagram TikTok Twitter Master Money Website Master Money Youtube Channel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:30 on this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, the truth about building wealth in your 30s. Oh, what's up, everybody, and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of MasterMoney.com. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be diving into the truth about building wealth in your 30s. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money newsletter by going to Mastermoney.com
Starting point is 00:01:06 slash newsletter. And don't forget to follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or whatever podcast player, you love listening to this podcast on it. If you want to hop out the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now today, we're going to be diving into the truth about building wealth in your 30s. And I want you to know that your 30s is probably one of the most important decades when it comes to wealth building. Your 20s is the time where I want you to get the ball rolling. I want you to get started and I want you to start to get your financial foundation in place. Your 30s is the time that if you did not do any of that in your 20s, now is the time to get everything together. And if you did set up that financial
Starting point is 00:01:50 foundation, now you can take time to accelerate your path to wealth. This is a time frame where everything gets messy. And if you're in your 30s right now, you know how messy life can get. It gets busier and busier and busier as time goes on. Maybe you're a time. Maybe you're in your 30s right. you're advancing in your career and you have never been busier within your career. You're making more money, but you've never been busier than you are right now. Maybe you just got married. And because you just got married, you're having more obligations or more things that you have to do to spend time with your spouse or spend time with your significant other. Or maybe you and your spouse are having kids. And when you have kids, a lot of my friends in their 30s have kids now, just like I do. And when you have kids,
Starting point is 00:02:32 life gets extremely busy. And so it's very important that we think about our 30s as a time frame where we could see just a drastic change in our entire lifestyle. Another thing that could be happening is maybe your parents are aging and you're having to take care of your parents or spend time thinking about that as well. There will never be a time in your entire life where life is crazier. Because when you have young kids, they take a lot of your attention
Starting point is 00:02:55 or when you're newly married, that will take a lot of your attention or when you're advancing in your career, that will take a lot of your attention. your parents get older, that is going to take a lot of your attention. And guess what? When you have all of them combined together in one big melting pot, you're getting pulled in every single direction. So into this episode, what we're going to talk about first is some of the biggest struggles for people in their 30s, some of the wealth traps that you can fall into in your 30s if you do not pay attention. Then I'm going to go through solutions for each of those problems and the
Starting point is 00:03:26 step-by-step guide to building wealth in your 30s. This decade doesn't have to be hard. And If you set up the right systems and put the right systems in place, you'll be able to build wealth automatically and get through this decade without really having to worry about your finances. This is such an important decade because it sets you up. You still have a ton of time for compound interest to work. You still have a ton of time for your money and your dollars to compound over time. And so what we want is to make sure we take advantage of that. So I'm super excited to dive into this episode.
Starting point is 00:03:56 So without further ado, let's get into it. So first, I want to talk about some of the real challenge. in your 30s. Some of the real challenges that you're going to be going through when you hit the age of 30, all the way up to 39 and 40s, and a lot of these will carry over to your 40s as well. And if you're someone in your 20s listening to this episode, I want you to listen through to this entire episode, because you are going to have to prepare for some of this stuff. You're going to have to get ready, and you're going to be so much wiser with that situation by listening through this episode. And if you're in your 40s, I want you to listen through as well, because a lot of this is going to translate over to
Starting point is 00:04:31 folks in their 40s. And so this is very, very important. to think through. Number one is higher income, but more fragile income. So your income is going to rise in your 30s. And this is a very, very powerful thing that can happen to. Your income is the ultimate lever when it comes to building wealth in your 30s. And you want to make sure that you maximize it as much as possible. Because if you can take the difference between your income and expenses and put those
Starting point is 00:04:55 towards wealth building activities, it'll change your life forever. But for a lot of folks in their 30s, rising income also. means that job changes are going to be something that is more common, whereas people who are at the top are going to get cut faster than people who are lower down in the company. This is just when cost cuts happen. This is usually who takes the hit first is a lot of folks who are middle or high level managers. And this is because that is the most efficient way for a lot of companies to cut costs. But another thing is that layoffs are going to hit a lot harder than you initially expected because you make more money now. And maybe if your lifestyle increases, this is going to be something
Starting point is 00:05:33 that is much more difficult. Now, one big thing to note is also when it comes to your career is family circumstances are going to dictate how much flexibility that you have. And so you don't have the opportunity to go out and take more risk when it comes to your income because you have a family to support. And if you are someone who is still single in your 30s, then you still have a great opportunity. But if you are someone out there who has a family or a spouse, you can't take as much risk because you have people who depend on you.
Starting point is 00:06:00 And so your flexibility becomes limited. when it comes to your income. Now, for folks in their 30s who are looking at this, and they're saying to themselves, well, I feel like in my industry, my income is fragile. I am one person's decision away from having $0 or zero income coming in whatsoever.
Starting point is 00:06:18 Then I would highly encourage you to find ways to make sure that your income is more secure, whether that is coming up with side hustle or side business's idea to have a second stream of income. Maybe your spouse, if they're not currently working, can earn a second income. or a second stream of income and or you can enter an industry or a company that makes more sense so that you have that steady income coming in and you have opportunity to increase that income over
Starting point is 00:06:44 time. That is the ultimate goal as we go forward here, especially when you have people to depend on you, when you have younger family members who depend on you, that is very, very important. Now, another thing that I want you to do is if you feel this way, having an emergency fund is very important in your 30s, and we'll talk more about that, but at least having six months of expenses in place is going to ensure that if you do lose your job or if something ever happened to your financial situation, you are covered. The money is just there to take care of that situation. And there is power in having that money there so you don't have to worry about your finances as much. Number two, and this is a big thing for folks in their 30s, is childcare becomes like a second
Starting point is 00:07:22 mortgage. This is the thing that I think most people don't talk enough about. And if you've never thought through this or you don't have kids, you don't understand how expensive child care can become. Most families in this country are paying anywhere. If you have one child in daycare, you can pay anywhere from $800 all the way up to $2,000 every single month. And the average family right now is paying between $1,200 and $2,500 per month on child care. Now, factor in multiple kids in child care, especially if you have a few toddlers early on in life. And you could be paying anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 in child care. This is a huge problem in a big area where a lot of folks in their 30s are struggling.
Starting point is 00:08:04 They're struggling to get by because they have to pay for higher housing costs, in addition to paying for child care, in addition to lower incomes and higher costs of living right now. It is a very difficult time to manage all of these different things. And when you have a very big expense, like child care coming into play, boy, oh boy, does that cause a huge rift in your budget? want to make sure that you are looking at every single dollar when you are in a season like this. Because seasons where you have elevated expenses, that is the time frame where you really want
Starting point is 00:08:35 to nail down your budget and nail down how much you're spending. Now, if your income is really high and you don't really have to worry about that, that is completely fine. You could do something called the reverse budget. Now, the way the reverse budget works is that you save off the top. So you save for your savings, your investments, your debt pay down. You save all of that off the top. And then you spend what is left over. That is for high income individuals or folks who do not have a lot of expenses.
Starting point is 00:08:59 But if you have high expenses and it's eating into your budget and you really can't find ways to save money, then it is very important for you during this season of life to spend more time in your day-to-day budget. And the reason for this is so that we can actually be aware of where our dollars are going. The number one thing is once you get a hold of where your money is going at the end of every single month, you can absolutely change your financial trajectory. I remember early on, I wasn't making much money in my first job. I was living paycheck to paycheck, and I realized pretty quickly, I did not know where my money was going by the end of every single month. That is not a fun place to be, and I got frustrated, I got angry, and I vowed to change that. And so once I got a hold of my spending, I spent a season deciding that I am going to make sure I know where every single dollar goes.
Starting point is 00:09:47 And for the first few years, I made sure I tracked every single dollar down to the penny. And it changed my financial life forever because then I could take some of those extra dollars and put them towards investments. And so for those out there right now who are dealing with high child care costs, the last thing you want to do is try to find a cost savings method and put your child in a daycare where you don't trust the people that are in there. We don't want to just cost save in this area just because it is going to save us some money. We want to make sure that our children are safe.
Starting point is 00:10:19 They're in a place that we trust. They're in a place where we truly believe they can actually grow. And so this is not something to just cost cut just because you want to. Instead, we need to have the reassurance and the security to know our children are safe. And so instead, what I would highly encourage is to track every dollar, find the best possible place that you can afford, and ensure also that we can find some extra dollars to make sure that we are putting towards our emergency fund or putting them towards our investments and putting towards future. you. We have also done an entire episode kind of thinking about how to evaluate if it even makes sense for one or both spouses to be working when it comes to high child care costs. So we will link
Starting point is 00:10:57 that up in the show notes down below this so you can check that episode out because I highly, highly encourage you. That's a episode that we kind of dove really, really deep into that. Now, the expense alone causes a lot of people to have to pause retirement contributions. It causes a lot of people to really not be able to save very much over time. And so tracking that spending, making sure you cut out all the excess is going to be a great way to start. But then increasing your income is also a great way to think about this. The majority of your time spent, if you have high expenses like this, I would love for you to focus on increasing your income so that you can live the life that you want and do everything you want in this life. I know that's easier said than done,
Starting point is 00:11:34 and we'll talk more about in this episode how you can increase your income. Now number three is for folks in their 30s, a lot of them struggle because lifestyle creep is happening. Lifestyle creep. Lifestall creep is when your lifestyle inflates at the rate of your income. So let's say, for example, in your 20s, you were making $60,000 per year. Some of you in your 20s may be saying, I've never even made close to that. And some of you are saying, well, actually, I made more than that. But let's just use a nice round, average number at $60,000 per year. And let's say that, oh, in your early 30s, all of a sudden now you're making $85,000 per year. And so since you're making $85,000 per year, you raise your expenses and your lifestyle to the same amount as your income. I see people do this
Starting point is 00:12:18 over and over again where they'll take on the new car payment and oh it's just a thousand dollar car payment. I'm not really worried about this. I'm going to increase my lifestyle. Then they go out and get the nicer apartment. And so they're spending another $2,000 on the nicer apartment every single month and all of a sudden they raise their entire lifestyle to the same level as their income. They're saving nothing. They're not investing in their future. They're not investing in their 401k. They're not saving in their emergency fund, and instead, they just raise their entire lifestyle. This, my friends, will absolutely destroy your wealth building ability if you do not monitor this. Now, guess what?
Starting point is 00:12:52 Some lifestyle creep is fantastic. I want you to spend more on the things that you love. If you love to go out and spend time with your friends out having more drinks, or you want to go out and spend more time eating out, or you want to go out and do more workout classes, or you want to go out and spend more time golfing, I don't care what it is. I love for you to be able to do that. Money is a tool so that you can get what you want out of life. What I don't want you to do is raise your entire lifestyle to the rate of your income increases
Starting point is 00:13:20 because you decided that this is the time frame where you're just going to ball out, but you're not saving anything for your future. Your future, you will not be happy if you do that. So we want to make sure that we are saving for our future. And let's say that maybe by the time you turn age 35 or 40, then you get another raise and you're getting closer to $100,000 or $150,000 per year. and you increase your lifestyle to that. That, my friends, is a problem.
Starting point is 00:13:43 So we have a rule called the 50-50 rule. Every time you get a raise, let's say you get a $10,000 raise, save 50% every year, and then spend the other 50% that's going to create a balance so that you have balanced increases over time in both different categories.
Starting point is 00:13:58 And it's the best way to think about your money and increase that over time. Number four, and this is a big one that a lot of folks in their 30s are struggling with, and I know a lot of people in their 20s that are struggling with this as well, in addition to folks in their 40s. And this is having too many goals at the same time.
Starting point is 00:14:13 We all want to do it all at the same time. Maybe you're in debt and you're trying to get that debt paid down, but you also want to make sure that you're investing because you know time is what powers compound interest, but you also want to make sure that you get that emergency fund saved up. Listen, I know getting pulled in all these different directions feels stressful. And you feel anxiety around this. You feel like this is one of the most difficult things overall
Starting point is 00:14:37 is to balance all these different financial goals. Well, part of the reason why we created Master Money Academy is to help you through that process so that you understand what do I need to do next? What should my next goal be based on how I want to use money as a tool for my life? So one thing I would invite each and every single one of you to do is if you struggle with these multiple goals,
Starting point is 00:14:56 would love to have you in Master Money Academy. We actually have a really special intro offer right now in Master Money Academy. So we'll link that up down below so you can check it out. But would love to have you in there because we help you step by step to know exactly what you need to do next with your next dollar. We help you with your goals. We walk you through those steps. And we have something called the wealth builders journey that shows the exact order that you need to allocate for your next dollar.
Starting point is 00:15:19 So that's the way to think about this. But if you're juggling these multiple goals, here's what I would say to you first is take out a sheet of paper and think about this. I want you to prioritize your goals from the most important to the least important. Maybe to you, the most important is going to be to save in your emergency fund. because you want to have that security first before you do anything else. Well, let's set up automatic contributions to your high-yield savings gown so we can save in your emergency fund. Maybe for you, it is to max out retirement contributions so that you can ensure that you're going to retire one day, that one day you're not going to get to the end of your life
Starting point is 00:15:53 and you're going to living off rice and beans. So instead, we want to start to send some money over to those retirement accounts. Or maybe for you, you're in high interest debt. You have a little credit card debt left over from your spending days and you want to make sure that you pay that off. Well, for you, paying off that credit card debt this year can be your number one goal. Juggling multiple goals at the same time can be done, but you need to know the exact order and how to prioritize those goals. And so I would write them down in order of priority and focus on one to two at a time if you can afford it. If you can't afford to focus on multiple at one time, then just focus on the most important one to you during that time frame so you know what to do next. But for most of us, we're trying to raise kids.
Starting point is 00:16:33 we're trying to invest consistently. We're trying to contribute to our retirement accounts. We're trying to make sure that we're funding that emergency fund. It is hard. I get it. It is hard to juggle all of these different things. And so we need to prioritize and attack each and every single one of them. That is why when we talk about your money goals and mastering those money goals,
Starting point is 00:16:51 it is one of the most powerful things that you could do is once you have that system in place, you can attack some of these goals and ensure that you're actually going to accomplish it. Now, number five is debt and being house poor. So in the current year that I am recording this episode, 2006, there are a lot of people out there who are taking on additional debt. And there are a lot of people out there where some of their biggest expenses overall are eating in to their ability to even be able to build wealth. Now, let me explain what I mean by that. Number one is housing. Housing is a huge, huge expense for most people.
Starting point is 00:17:25 And most people in their 30s, if they don't have a financial education yet, they overspend on their housing. You're not going to like what I say when I say this. you should not be spending more than 30% of your gross income in total on housing costs. So that is your mortgage and all the maintenance, all the repairs associated with that. If you are spending more than 30% of your income, I know exactly what's probably happening in your life. Maybe if you're spending 35 to 40% of your income, you're feeling the pain. You're feeling the pressure because the amount of your fixed expenses, those expenses that you really cannot get rid of, those are really, really high.
Starting point is 00:18:04 And the pressure on you is getting greater and greater. And maybe you're arguing with your spouse about money. But really, the real reason why you're arguing a lot is because your housing costs are just too high. And so instead, you want to find ways to reduce those housing costs. And so that is something that happens really when you go into buying that property. Now, housing costs are at an all-time high. It is very difficult to buy a house. And so for some of you, it may make more sense financially currently to rent than it does to buy.
Starting point is 00:18:30 And so hopefully we can build more housing here in the near future so that we can reduce housing costs over time. But that is going to take time. And so we need to make sure that we are running the numbers on the biggest cost that we take on, which is housing. Number two is car payments, liabilities, those types of things. If you are out there and you have a $1,000 car payment, let's just get real for a second. If you're out there and you have a $1,000 car payment or a $1,200 car payment and you were complaining about the cost, of living, the problem is probably your car. Because that is way too high. And let me just explain this right now. Having a $1,200 car payment is not normal. I don't care what your friends say.
Starting point is 00:19:13 I don't care what your Uncle Rico says. I don't care what your family members say. Having a $1,200 car payment is too high for most incomes. The average income in this country cannot afford a $1,200 car payment. So if you took on the brand new truck or you took on the brand new SUV because you have two kids and you got to make sure that they're safe, guess what? Having a cheaper car, a cheaper liability, something that goes down in value every single year is the way to go because that vehicle is losing money every single year. I'm sorry, we got to get real today on this episode because there are way too many people out there who think it is a wise decision to go out and buy a brand new car and take on these massive payments.
Starting point is 00:19:53 Those payments are a liability to you. The moment you drive that car off the lot, it goes down in value by 20%? Then guess what? Now, we are underwater immediately on our brand new vehicle. And so if we don't put anything down, if we don't put enough down or roll an old car into that vehicle, then we don't have 20% down. So you need to at least, when you buy a new vehicle, have 20% equity in some way, shape, or form on that vehicle so that you can ensure that you are not underwater when you drive it off the lot. Now, sure, there's gap insurance and things like that that we can consider, but overall, we need to have that 20% equity. Then most people stretch out those payments for long periods of time. Maybe it's four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
Starting point is 00:20:31 twelve years, whatever you are looking at right now. Stretching those payments out beyond four years is a big no-no for the way that we look at this because we don't want you making payments on cars for years and years and years or having never-ending payment cycles where you're always making payments on cars. So we like four years or less on your car payments. Why? Because just like I said, then you don't make payments forever. Then your car payment should not be more than 7% of your income, because if it's anything higher, and I really would like it less than that, but if it's anything higher than that, then we are overspitting on our car payments, and it needs to be less than 5% in maintenance.
Starting point is 00:21:10 So this can eliminate a lot of luxury vehicles because the maintenance is so high. For example, my wife used to have a car that rhymed with Mercedes. And that shmercedes car was a car that would cost $1,200 for a yearly oil change. I was so mad. time I saw that, my jaw hit the floor. I should have known ahead of time, but the first time I saw that my jaw hit the floor. We got rid of that car pretty quickly and so happy we did because everything cost more to get new brake pads. It was triple the price of just standard brake pads on my Ford truck that I have. And so for this, this is something I think most people need to
Starting point is 00:21:48 understand that 5% maintenance right there means that you can afford a luxury vehicle if you can afford the maintenance and the 7%. But outside of that, you most likely cannot afford a luxury vehicle. And the last number that we talk about a lot is 10. I want you to drive that car for 10 years or longer. Now, some of you out there may be saying to yourself, what, 10 years? How am I going to be able to do that? Ten years or longer is the way that we want to go because that means you'll at least have six years of no payments where you can take those payments and either save them up for cash for your next vehicle. You could take those payments and put them towards investments. And you could do so much more with your dollars than throwing it away on a liability that goes down in value every single year. So I'm on
Starting point is 00:22:27 soapbox about cars here, but I see these payments so much that we want to make sure that we are thinking through this and ensuring that we are not getting taken advantage of that. Number six is opportunity cost anxiety. So at some point in your 30s, the math becomes clear. Every single dollar is going to matter more. And every year that goes by, the opportunity cost that you have is starting to get lower and lower and lower. So we need to make sure that we are investing our dollars as much as possible. Now, the beautiful thing about being in your 30s, everybody in your 30s listening right now is time is still on your side. It is never too late and it is definitely not too late in your 30s. You have so much time left. You have so much time and
Starting point is 00:23:06 opportunity to be able to build wealth. And I want that for you. I think that is one of the most amazing things about what you're doing right now is you can build wealth and you can still do it. You have this time. But the realization that time is now, you need to make sure that you are taking advantage of this now. That is what is most important. So each and every single one, of you, I want you to make sure that you start investing something now if you haven't yet. I don't care if it's $100. I don't care if it's $200. I don't care if it's $10, but you need to invest every single month and you need to get the ball rolling. Number seven is comparison is distorting your reality. Meaning if you're comparing yourself to other people out there, if you're
Starting point is 00:23:47 comparing yourself to folks on social media, that is going to distort your reality of what is really happening. And the more you compare yourself to other people, the less happy. you are going to become, especially when it comes to money. There's always, always, always got to be somebody out there who has nicer stuff than you. There's always going to be somebody out there who has the better car than you. There's always going to be somebody out there who has a nicer house than you. And guess what? That's okay because you need to focus on the things that you can get troll and focus on your family
Starting point is 00:24:16 and building wealth for your family. Let me ask you a question right now. If you were going to go buy a car and you went out and there was nobody else in the world, nobody else in the world to see what logo was on that car or to see what was in that car, but you had to make a financial decision based on how much you make right now, would you buy the same car that you currently drive? Would you buy the car that you're driving right now if nobody else could see it? Because here's the thing.
Starting point is 00:24:42 And Morgan Housel talks about this in the psychology of money. He says, for most people, when they see a guy or a girl driving a Ferrari, they don't think, man, that person looks so cool in that Ferrari. No, instead, what they think is, man, I would look so cool in that Ferrari. They don't think of you as a cooler person. They think of themselves in that vehicle. And overall, money psychology is one of those areas where you need to macerate it. And once you understand this, it'll make a big difference in how you compare yourself to other people.
Starting point is 00:25:13 So don't look at what social media is talking about. Don't look at what your friends are doing. They're going on these marvelous vacations. They're buying these fancy cars. They're buying these fancy houses. A lot of times when I see that and people doing it over and over, and over and over again, I think most likely they're living paycheck to paycheck or they're broke. People who have high incomes can still live paycheck to paycheck, and a lot of them do.
Starting point is 00:25:33 And the number eight is a lot of people in their 30s who did not start investing. They feel the pressure to catch up. They feel pressure. They feel anxiety around their money. And a lot of them just don't know. They freeze and they don't know when to take action. And so again, that is a big area that I think once you master this psychology, you know what to do next, which is why Master Money Academy exists.
Starting point is 00:25:50 Again, I would love for every single person in here to try Master Money Academy. Academy, which is why we have this huge discounted rate that'll be linked up down below, because I know once you try it, you will absolutely love it. And so we're offering that there. But if you have that pressure to catch up, I really, really would love to see you understand what you need to be doing next and not really worrying. You're going to overcome it. You can do this. I know you can do this. And just don't take these unnecessary risks that you don't need to to try to catch up. Don't feel like you got to make the big leap or invest in the perfect stock or find the perfect business in order to catch up. No, you've got time, my friend. and we're going to help you through that process as time goes on. So next, I want to dive into some of the biggest money traps that you could fall into in your 30s if you're not careful. So we're going to talk through those next. So the first money trap that I do not want you to fall into in your 30s is the lifestyle creep disguised as progress.
Starting point is 00:26:44 So a lot of us in our 30s, we're going to start to make more money in your 30s and you're going to see this as, hey, this is fantastic. I'm really making progress. Your lifestyle expands and you feel like you're making progress. You say to yourself, we deserve this nicer place. We deserve this fancier car. We deserve to have these vacations every year. And instead, what is happening is you overspend on some of these areas, maybe even go a little bit into debt. I have talked to really high earners in the past who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. And I'm talking close to a million dollars per year,
Starting point is 00:27:15 and they still live paycheck to paycheck. I know doctors. I know attorneys. I know folks who are really high earners who live paycheck to paycheck because they don't have a financial education. And this might friends is one of the saddest things you will ever see because they have the biggest opportunity of all. And if you are a high earner, you have a huge opportunity to take advantage of wealth building and a lot of people don't. It is unbelievable how many people don't. And so listening to this podcast and spending time reading or spending time understanding and getting a financial education is the number one thing I want you to be doing if you feel like you're in that situation. A high income with a low savings rate is going to mean that you
Starting point is 00:27:52 are constantly going to be stressed. And so what I want you to be. to do instead is increase your savings rate so that you can ensure that you have financial freedom later on down down the line. Number two is carrying high interest consumer debt. So if you take on credit card debt in your 30s because you want to inflate your lifestyle, you want to compare yourself to the Joneses, or you take on a car loan with a high interest rate or you take on the buy now, pay later, personal loan and it has an interest rate. All of these different things are going to cause problems. Debt is a wealth killer. Debt is a pants on fire emergency, especially any debt above a 6% interest rate outside of your mortgage. Any debt above of a 6% interest rate,
Starting point is 00:28:30 that is going to be a huge, huge, huge problem when it comes to wealth building. So we want to make sure that we get rid of that debt as fast as possible, and there are way too many people dealing with this. Number four is becoming house poor again. If you're spending more than 30% of your income on housing, you are in the red zone. You are in the house poor zone. And that is something that is hard to hear, especially in today's day and age when housing is so expensive. If you live in a high cost of living area, this gets harder and harder and harder. So instead, what needs to happen is if you do live in a high cost of living area, we need to adjust some of the fixed expenses in other areas.
Starting point is 00:29:01 Maybe it's transportation, maybe it's food, but some of those other fixed expenses need to be adjusted in order to accommodate the difference. Number five is skipping the safety net or not saving in your emergency fund. Listen, your emergency fund is going to reduce your stress. It's going to reduce your anxiety. And it's going to protect you against life. And once you are protected against life, there is nothing. that can stop you here. And so building up that emergency fund and making sure you have that in place
Starting point is 00:29:26 ensures that if your water heater breaks, you have the money just there. If you lose your job, you have six months of expenses there to cover you until you find your next job. If you go and your car breaks down, you have the money there to go and fix your car. The first time I ever experienced having to use my emergency fund was the most freeing feeling ever. Why? Because I had a $2,500 engine repair on my old vehicle. My engine was leaking and if I left it any longer, the entire engine would blow and it would diffuse. And so I had this $2,500 expense that popped up out of nowhere. Now in the past, before I had built that emergency fund, that would have stressed me out completely. In fact, I wouldn't know what I would do or even
Starting point is 00:30:06 find the money. And what a lot of people do is when they don't have an emergency fund, they pull out the old trusty credit card and they decide, okay, you know what? I'm just going to put on the credit card and I'll figure it out later. But folks with an emergency fund, they know that they can take care of this and not have to stress at all. So when I had that $2,500 expense in my mid-20s, I didn't even worry whatsoever. It was the most amazing feeling. And all of a sudden, it unlocked this light bulb in my mind where I said, this is it. This is the feeling I want every single person out there to feel where they don't have to worry about their finances anymore because the money is just there. And having confidence with having the money there, there is no better feeling
Starting point is 00:30:46 in this world. Now we have a ton of people in Master Money Academy who are over and over sharing their wins there and a lot of them are talking through, hey, I had the emergency fund set up and I didn't have one set up before I joined here. Now I have it set up and stuff happens in life and I don't even stress about it anymore. And it's the most amazing and freeing thing that I see from some of our members in there and I think it is just so incredibly powerful. So again, that is an amazing thing to having an emergency fund. Do not skip that safety net. Number six is overcomplicating their investing out of anxiety. So a lot of people think investing is a very complicated thing. Wall Street wants you to think it's complicated. CNBC wants you to think it's complicated. Guess what? It's actually
Starting point is 00:31:24 not that complicated. And once you learn the steps to take when it comes to investing, I automate all my investments. I hardly look at them throughout the year. I buy some individual stocks because it's fun for me. I like to buy individual stocks. But for the most part, 95% of my portfolio is index funds and ETFs. Why? Because passive investments over time outperform active investments. And so we know, and I know that over time I am just going to continue to buy the market and continue to invest in index funds and ETFs and continue to contribute to my portfolio month in and month out every single month. I am consistent and I am a long-term investor. That is the way I think about money. That is the way I think about investing in the fastest way I know to build wealth. Where way too many people,
Starting point is 00:32:05 they're saying to themselves, I got to find the hot stock or I got to start trading options or I got to start investing in crypto. I'm way behind on that. No, develop your investment plan and stick to that investment plan. That's what I want you to do and think through. Number nine, and this is for some of you out there who are my frugal weirdos, and you know who you are, if you're overly frugal out there and you spend way too much time thinking about saving money, maybe you're an extreme couponer or you drive across town just to say five cents on gas. This is for you. Okay? If you ignore income growth while obsessing over savings, you're doing it backwards. Income is the catalyst. Income is the way to build a tremendous amount of wealth. And if you can grow your income,
Starting point is 00:32:43 that gap is infinite. You can only save so much and you can only cut back so much. And so this is an exercise that when you're focused so much of your time and energy on cutting back, it really is not productive. If you focus that same exact time and energy on increasing your income, guess what? Your earning potential is literally infinite. You can earn more from side hustles. You can earn more from small businesses. You can earn more from doing so many different things. And it makes a massive, massive difference. Getting a 10% raise means that you earn 10% more every single year for the rest of your life as long as you're employed there. Doing a strategic job move and making 20% more means that you're going to earn 20% more every single year. Upgrading one of your skills or
Starting point is 00:33:26 upgrading your skill stack, that means you have that skill in your arsenal forever and nobody can take that away from you and nobody can take that earning potential away from you. These are the types of things that I want you to focus on so that you can make more money. Now we have an episode coming up on skill stacking and how to develop some of those skill stacks. Really excited for that episode. So make sure you're subscribed to this podcast if you're not already so that when we release that, you're one of the first ones there. So those are some of the money traps that I do not want a lot of you to fall into. Very important that we make sure that we realize these are happening. And things like living someone else's highlight real or thinking through child care is something
Starting point is 00:34:01 that will not allow you to build wealth. Those are all just other things that you have to deal with. And so we got to make sure that as we progress here, we know exactly what to do next. Next, we're going to talk about the core principles of building wealth in your 30s, and then we're going to talk about step by step what you need to do. I remember when I needed to hire someone fast, but finding the right person quickly felt impossible. And if you've ever been there, you know how stressful this can be. That's where Indeed comes in.
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Starting point is 00:37:24 All right, so let's talk about some of these core principles to building wealth in our 30s. And one of the big things that I want you to note is these are the core principles that if you do these things, you can't help but build wealth. And number one is to spend less than you earn. Now, this sounds simple. Everybody knows this. Everybody knows the need to spend less than they earn currently. But guess what? If you actually do it, you spend less than you make and you invest to the difference, you can't help but start to build wealth. Anybody who does this, even if it's $100 every single month, will be able to build wealth. And I want you to know that you really need to take this to heart because people who do not take this to heart, people who decide that they are just
Starting point is 00:38:06 not going to listen to this or they decide, well, I'm not going to track my spending or I'm not going to track where my dollars are going. And instead, I just like to live my life. I just like to have a little bit of fun. If that's you, then guess what? We need to shift that mindset because if you don't, your investing is going to stall and you are not going to be taking advantage of compound interest and time, which is your most valuable asset. Your debt is going to grow. And if your debt grows, that is working backwards against you when it comes to wealth building, and your stress is going to compound. And when your stress compounds, this is an area that I want every single person to understand. Money stress is the worst stress of all. It is one of the most stressful things that you can deal with.
Starting point is 00:38:44 I remember when I first started, I had money stress. And once I got my finances together, that stress melted away. Do you know how good life is when money stress melts away? Sure, you're going to have stress in relationships. Sure, you're going to have stress in business or your career. But when the money stress goes away, you make better financial decisions. You make better overall decisions in life because you're not worried about the finances. Instead, you're worried about how to protect your children, how to protect your family, how to make sure that you guys are doing exactly what you want to do in life, how to make sure you create those core memories.
Starting point is 00:39:17 That's what you care about. That's what you want to be spending time doing. And instead, if you're worrying about money or the finances all the time, that is not a place to be. How many of you are feeling that right now? every decision you make you're making because of financial reasons. I don't want that for you anymore. I want you to make decisions in a position of strength, not in a position of weakness. And if you feel like you're making decisions in a position of weakness because you've got
Starting point is 00:39:39 to think about the next dollar and you've got to think about your budget and you've got to think about where each of these dollars are even going to fit into taking a family vacation or being able to do just a very specific certain things, that my friends is not a place you want to be in. I want that money stressed to go away and it starts with spending less than you make. Number two, automate your money before you optimize your money. We have a lot of optimizers that listen to this podcast. Obviously, we talk about frameworks. We talked about optimization all the time on this podcast.
Starting point is 00:40:06 So naturally, a lot of you are optimizers. But when we think about optimizing our money, we want to make sure that we are automating our money first. And so money automation is a really core thing that we talk about a lot here on the personal finance podcast and at Master Money and in Master Money Academy that we really would invite you to learn how to do. Now, we have a little mini course called Automate Your Money in One Weekend, if you're interested in that, Master Money Academy members get it for free.
Starting point is 00:40:30 But that is a way where you can learn how to automate your money over the course of a weekend. But I'll show you how to automate your money right now. So the first thing I want you to do is I want you to, when money hits your checking account, figure out where it needs to go next. So one, we need to make sure we are saving first. We need to pay ourselves first. And that's very important. Two, then we need to make sure that we are paying our bills automatically.
Starting point is 00:40:50 And three, then we need to make sure we are saving for future goals and future. future things that we want to be doing. And so to do this, we set up something like a high yield savings account and automatically send money in different savings buckets. That's how simple it actually is when you break it down. But we want to make sure that we are doing this every single month. And once you set up your money automation, you can do a set it and forget it system. And it will absolutely change the way you think about this. We also have full episodes on exactly how to do it step by step, but you need to make sure that you are actually automating your money. This means your money actually gets invested. This means your bills actually get paid. This means
Starting point is 00:41:23 your money actually gets saved and you're not relying on your willpower. You are the big stop loss here. You're the person who is the problem. Whether you like it or not, you're the problem. And if you don't move that money, then it'll never get moved. So automating it and making sure it moves automatically is the big key overall. Number three is to pay yourself first. This is a core principle that we talk about a lot, but making sure you pay yourself first and then spending what is left over is the key. Warren Buffett said it best. It is the number one principle he had when it came to building wealth was to pay yourself first. And I want each and every single one of you to take that to heart and make sure that you are doing this. So route money to your savings account
Starting point is 00:42:01 and your investment accounts first and then you spend whatever is left over. You do not pay somebody else first. Instead, pay yourself first. Number four is to protect the downside. Always, always, always, always protect the downside. And so what we want to do is first have that emergency fund in place. That's protection number one. Two, having the proper insurance is in place from auto to liability to whatever else that you, homeowners insurance, renters insurance, life insurance. Those are the types of things. We want to make sure that we are protecting
Starting point is 00:42:31 and ensure that we have in place. Always, always, always protect the downside. We have this free tool, by the way, that we just partnered with money on, and this tool actually helps you save on your car insurance. I know insurance prices are, oh my goodness, they are off the charts right now. And so if you are looking for ways to save on that,
Starting point is 00:42:49 that car insurance tool is actually very, very cool. We'll link it up down the show notes below. Number five is to make time your biggest advantage. So guess what? You have so much time left if you're in your 30s. It may feel like you don't. You have decade after decade left to build wealth. And so we want to make sure that we are investing our money.
Starting point is 00:43:07 In your 30s, time is still your greatest asset. You may think it's not, but I'm here to be the guy to tell you. It is your greatest asset. You can change your exact financial life if you actually stick to this stuff. It reduces how much you need to save later, and it turns average returns into extraordinary results. We are long-term investors here. We're not flashy.
Starting point is 00:43:26 We're boring. We are the boring folks here. Wealth builders are boring. But you've got to be boring if you want results. And that is exactly where we are going to land. Number six is we avoid high interest debt. We avoid anything above a 6% interest rate outside of our mortgage. Sometimes mortgage rates just dictate when you buy a house.
Starting point is 00:43:45 You may have to pay a little bit more. But if you're going much higher than 7% on a mortgage, I really would not consider that. And overall, we are trying to make sure that we are avoiding debt at all cost. Debt is a wealth killer. The older I get, the less I really like any type of debt whatsoever. Now, let me give you an example. I have a 2.5% mortgage.
Starting point is 00:44:05 I'm not going to pay that off anytime soon. I got my house in 2020. I just got lucky. It wasn't like I timed it or anything like that. I'm not some genius who figured all this out. Now, instead, I just got lucky, built my house in 2020. and when I built my house, the mortgage rates were low. You may be getting unlucky, and you bought a house when mortgage rates were at 7 or 8%.
Starting point is 00:44:25 The goal is to reduce that debt over time. But if you are someone out there who took on consumer debt or you took on personal loans, or you are the buy now, pay later, king or queen, then guess what? We need to make sure that we stop doing that. We need to make sure that we stop taking on these high interest loans because they are wealth killers. And so getting those paid down is very, very important. You want to make sure that debt is.
Starting point is 00:44:47 robbing you with credit card interest or compound interest is working against you. Instead, you want it always, always working for you. Proverbs says the borrower is the slave to the lender. And it's very true because what happens is you wake up every single day. You drive through traffic to work or maybe you work from home. You go to work all day. You grind through the corporate politics. You grind through pleasing your boss. You drive all the way home. And it's just so you have enough money to make your debt payments. And that is not a great position to be. You are a slave to your lenders. You are a slave to the folks who you need to go out and pay. And instead, we want to make sure that we have the opportunity to not have to do that. And so debt, debt freedom is one of our
Starting point is 00:45:31 ultimate goals. Number seven is to use the tax code to your advantage. As you start to make more money, the tax code is your friend. And so there's a bunch of things that you want to make sure that you are doing. But one is you need to ensure that taxes are going to be one of those areas that you're decide I am going to reduce some of the spend in this area. The less you give to Uncle Sam, the better off it is for you because you have more opportunity costs to take those dollars and put them towards wealth building activities. And so one is hiring a CPA is a great option overall. So in Master Money Academy, we have this document that we show everyone where it's questions to ask CPAs when you want to interview them to see if you want to bring them on board. And when we go through those questions
Starting point is 00:46:09 to ask a CPA, some of the cool stuff that is in there is like, hey, how can I ensure that you're going to save me more than what I do like on TurboTax or anything else right now. And it goes through detailed questions. We have like 20 or 25 questions on that document to ask and interview CPAs. So you could find one that actually fits exactly what you want to do. Two, though, it is also your responsibility to understand some of the new tax code changes that could really help you when it comes to your finances. And so there have been things that I brought my CPA multiple different times so that he could figure out, okay, well, how does this fit into Andrew's financial situation? And so you need to bring those things to your CPA and stay on top of some of those various tax
Starting point is 00:46:49 changes that could be happening, especially in this specific given year. There are a lot of tax changes in this given year, and we'll be doing episodes on them that are going to help benefits you financially. And so you need to know about those so that you can take advantage of them. Number eight is to keep investing simple. That is a core principle that we talk about here. Index funds and ETFs are my go-to. You may like dividend stocks, but I like passive, easy investments automating into those
Starting point is 00:47:13 every single month. And so we keep investing as simple as possible. Simple makes you rich. I'm going to say this again. Simple makes you rich. So understanding, just putting a simple process together and making sure that you put it into play is very, very important. Number nine is to grow your income without over-inflating your lifestyle. So increasing your lifestyle by 50% of your income growth, that's a-okay. But increasing your lifestyle by 100% of your income growth, that's not okay. And so we've talked about that at the top of the show, but just want to make sure that you know that is one of the core principles of building wealth in your 30s. And then build systems that survive busy seasons. You are the busiest you were the busiest. You are busier than you will ever be in your entire life. And we want to make sure that we are building systems and putting automated systems in place so that we can build wealth even when we get to our busiest.
Starting point is 00:48:06 Even when we don't have a single second in the day to even think about this stuff, we have systems in place that are going to help us do that. And so automation helps you do that, making sure that you set up savings to your retirement accounts and set up savings to your investment accounts and set up savings to your emergency fund automatically and setting up savings to your high yield savings accounts. Those are all the things that you need to be doing in order to make sure that you are building wealth on autopilot. Because the busier you get, the harder this gets. And we want to ensure that we are on top of our money this entire time.
Starting point is 00:48:38 When emotions are high, you're not paying attention. and when emotions are all over the place, you need a system that just helps you build wealth in the background. So that's why we call it money on autopilot because once you set up your automated system, you don't have to worry. Boop, you push a button and it runs on autopilot. So now what I want to do is I'm going to give you
Starting point is 00:48:55 the step-by-step blueprint to building wealth in your 30s. All right, let's talk about these step-by-step blueprint to building wealth in your 30s. I'm going to give you some exact steps here that are going to help you get started and get the ball rolling if you've never thought about this stuff before. Number one is let's state, that cash flow, baby. So your first few 30 to 60 days here, I want you to figure out exactly
Starting point is 00:49:18 where your money is going. So we actually have a budgeting spreadsheet that I will link up down below. It is a simple budgeting spreadsheet to make this as easy as possible for you if you're interested in it. So I will link that up in the show notes down below so that you have that available. But I want you to stabilize your cash flow and understand how much you're first spending every single month. What is your burn rate? How much do you spend on food? How much do you spend on clothes, how much do you spend on transportation and housing and health care and bills and debt? How much are you spending in every single category? We need to understand that.
Starting point is 00:49:47 So the way to do this is to go back and pull three to six months of your expenses or your bank statements. I like to go back as far as I possibly can. You can go back 12 months if you want to and pull those bank statements and understand how much you're spending in each and every single category. This is going to help you know on average what you spend. Well, you may be saying to yourself, well, some of these months I was buying birthday presents for my uncle or we were giving money to a different organization. Well, that's okay.
Starting point is 00:50:12 It still is part of your monthly spending cadence and pull out the average. Even if there's higher months, there's going to be lower months, but that's how life is. Life is going to be that way. So you want to keep those in and get the average going. And you want to know exactly how much margin exists between your income and how much you have left over so that you can invest the difference and figure out what we need to do with the amount of money that is left over. Now the next few months, over the course the next six months, our goal is to figure out and cap our lifestyle at a certain number. So once you kind of know average how much you spend, we want to cap our lifestyle during that time frame for at least the next six months so that we can take some of the excess
Starting point is 00:50:47 money and start to decide where we want to put these dollars. Now spending, my friends, is a massive skill that you need to learn. And so what we're trying to do is capping how much we spend every month so that we can learn the skill of spending with this extra money that we have left. And so our ultimate goal is to take our extra dollars and put them towards wealth-building activities, and then also towards things that we actually value. So let's say, for example, that you value your financial freedom, you value retirement, you want to make sure you're saving for that, you want to make sure that you're saving for your emergency fund, you want to make sure that you're putting some money aside so that you can go
Starting point is 00:51:20 on a family vacation this year. And you want to spend a little more money on fitness. You want to get really healthy this year. And that's your entire goal is to do those four things. Well, let's figure out how to make sure that we're accomplishing each and every single one of those goals with this extra money. So making sure that you cap the difference of the average of the amount that you spend every single month. Don't increase or inflate your lifestyle during this period. We want to understand what we need to do next with our dollars. Now, step three is let's build in that safety net. So when you get your high yield savings account set up, we want to make sure that we are automating money from our checking account every time we get money, every time we get paid into our high yield savings account, especially
Starting point is 00:51:58 when it comes to our emergency fund. And so start building up that emergency fund with what we call the 136 method. Now here's how the 136 method works. I'll give you a quick rundown. We have an entire episode on this and it's actually one of our most popular on YouTube if you want to check that out. But in the 136 method, that means you save one month of expenses first. That's your first goal. Once you save one month of expenses, then you pay off high interest debt. When you have high interest debt paid off, then you get to three months of expenses. So you need two more months of expenses to get to three months. And so we have the three months of expenses. That's the three. Then you can start to invest. And while you're investing and saving in three months of expenses,
Starting point is 00:52:32 then we get to six months of expenses. And that is the way to think about your emergency fund and building up towards that six months. It's a process. It's a grind. It's a slog. But once you get there, then you know that you can do this over and over and over again when you need to use your emergency fund. So stop waiting for financial disasters to happen and then reacting.
Starting point is 00:52:51 Instead, make sure that you are ready for those financial disasters so you can catch them softly and be able to go on with your life. Step four is I want you to eliminate that toxic debt. When you have that toxic debt like credit, credit cards with high interest or personal loans with high interest or high interest rate car loans, all of those are detrimental to your finances. And we need to get rid of those as fast as we possibly can. So what I want you to do is I want you to order them from smallest balance to greatest balance. And I want you to order them. And then I want you to look at those interest rates.
Starting point is 00:53:24 If you have some of those small balanced debts that you could pay off pretty quickly, I want you to attack those very quickly and get rid of those and make minimum payments on everything else. and then roll those payments that you were making towards those small balances towards the next largest, then the next largest, then the next largest. And as you get those paid off, you're going to see a snowball effect happening. This is why Dave Ramsey calls this the snowball method, because once you start to pay some of this debt off, you're going to see it just grows. You can pay it off faster and faster and faster as these debts get paid off. And so that is one way to do it. The other way to do it is something called the avalanche method, or we call it the wrecking ball method, because like Miley Cyrus, you're going to come in like a wrecking ball on your debt,
Starting point is 00:53:59 and you're going to order those debts from highest interest rate to the lowest interest rate and pay them off. The snowball method has been shown by numerous studies to be the method that most people actually pay off their debt with. Why? Because it's motivating. You're getting the small ones done first and then going towards the largest. And so I would highly encourage you to look at the snowball method. I think that's the way to go long term. But if you want the most efficient or fastest method, the debt wrecking ball is a little bit faster. But again, it's harder to stick to if you have high debt with high interest rates. step five is I want you to lock in retirement investing you need to make sure that you're looking at your hsa your roth IRA your 401k and looking at those different accounts and starting to contribute to those based on your financial situation and so getting the full employer matches number one you want to always get your 401k match or roth 401k match or whatever other employer matches you have that is free money it's 100% rate of return and i love free money i don't know about you but free is my favorite number and so that is why we are trying to get that number two is we want to gradually increase contributions at least around 3% every year because of the rate of
Starting point is 00:55:02 inflation. We want to increase our contributions by the rate of inflation of the previous given year. So usually that's right around 2 to 3%. And so I always, always, always want to make sure that you are increasing those contributions. And then aiming for 20% plus retirement contributions is the ultimate goal. And adding IRAs and HSAs when necessary is very, very important. So that is the way I would think about that. And then always, always, always reinvesting dividends and always looking at some of those investments. We invest in index funds in ETS. Step six is we need to automate our investments, meaning we need to take our dollars when they hit our checking account, and we need to make sure that we automatically, every single month, send it to our investment accounts, and it automatically
Starting point is 00:55:40 invests. Vanguard and Fidelity, both can do this now, where you can send money automatically and it will auto-invest in the funds that you were looking at. And so we want to make sure that we do that every single month, so we don't have to think about it. We don't have to rely on our willpower. Step seven is we want to make smart housing decisions. We want to avoid being house poor, keeping those expenses below 30% of our income. If they are way above that, we need to make a housing change. I'm sorry to say it, but it is a drastic move that you're going to have to make sure that you get your finances together. If you really care about your finances, you will make sure that you are spending less than that or adjusting some other area of your
Starting point is 00:56:15 finances, especially if you are way above that 30% number. If you're like 32 or 33%, you don't have to do anything drastic, you don't have to worry. You're just going to have to adjust some other categories. but if you are way above that 30% number, you really need to make that adjustment and you really need to make a shift. That is going to be very, very important. Number eight is we want to grow our income aggressively. And so I want you to do a number of different things.
Starting point is 00:56:38 There are different levels that you can pull, but one is skill acquisition. So acquiring skills are going to help you earn more money. This could be sales, this could be marketing, this could be getting additional certifications, this could be a bunch of other things. Two, salary negotiation. We have an entire system on how to negotiate your salary,
Starting point is 00:56:55 and how to earn more money. And I want each and every single one of you to learn how to do this. Three is strategic job changes. So when you have strategic job changes, I want to see that that is making a drastic difference for you. And so if you go from your current job where you are not making enough money, they will not give you a promotion, you've gone through some of the salary negotiation stuff that we talk about on this podcast and they still will not give you a raise, then it's time to strategically move jobs where you can make 15 to 20% more just by job, Hopping. Loyalty doesn't pay anymore, but that's okay because if you can strategically hop jobs, that is the way to go. And then also side income or side businesses. We have episodes
Starting point is 00:57:34 where we talk about the best side businesses that could turn into a full-time income. That's my favorite series. We have another one coming out soon. Really, really excited for you guys to hear that one. And we talk about these ideas all the time. We'd love for you to start one of those. I think that is a huge opportunity right now as we go through this. And then ownership opportunities. If you have opportunities to own a part of a business where you don't have to run the day to day, but you can own part of that stuff and increase your income by getting cash flow from that business year in and you're out. That is another great opportunity if you can find some of those. Now, step nine is I want you to, if you don't have kids yet, I want you to plan for child care
Starting point is 00:58:10 and expensive seasons. I want you to start to think about that now. If you're planning on having kids, start to set up a savings account for that. Maybe you get yourself a year cushion every single year so that if something happens and the season becomes very difficult or you lose an income at some point in time, you have a great cushion so you can take care of childcare and not have to worry about it. It doesn't have to be such a big stressor. Now, if you already have kids and you're in this season of child care, acknowledge there are going to be high cost years up front, acknowledge that if you can keep investing, even if it's at reduced levels, even if you have to invest a little bit less, but you are still investing, that is the big key overall. Just finding ways to
Starting point is 00:58:46 invest more is the huge key. And then avoid debt. to smooth out that cash flow. Avoid getting the new car during those years. Avoid the extra debt payments that are coming on if it's going to hurt or dip into your investments. That's what you want to do as much as possible. So for most in your 30s, you'd be driving those cars longer unless it's not going to make you struggle to hit your investment goals. And the number 10 is to review and adjust annually. Always be looking at this. Always be adjusting your plan. Always be meeting with your spouse and talking about money. We have episodes coming up very soon on that too. So really, really excited for that and make sure that you check your net worth, check your review your savings, look at our year-in
Starting point is 00:59:23 money checklist, and you'll be doing those throughout the year if you're not already. So listen, for folks in their 30s, this was an ultimate episode. We dove into a lot of information in this episode. Hope this was super, super helpful for each and every single one of you. And I'm going to send you an invite right now. I would love to meet you inside Master Money Academy. Master Money Academy is not a course. It is not a place where you're going to just go there and we just throw you in there. No, we have all of our courses in there, sure. But what it is, it's a a place where you are going to transform your life and your finances. When you join Master Money Academy, we do weekly group coaching calls inside Master Money Academy.
Starting point is 00:59:57 We give you the exact framework on what you need to do with your next dollar. And then if you have questions on that, you can ask me every single week live on Master Money Academy. We have small groups where people are meeting up with common goals every single week and looking towards accomplishing that specific goal. We have a goals group that's meeting right now that I'm really excited about where they are working on their specific financial goals and they're keeping each other. they're accountable. I mean, there are so many different things that are happening inside
Starting point is 01:00:21 Master Money Academy. People are recommending ways that they save on car insurance. People are recommending different products that they are using. It is just so cool to see the growth and progress of everybody in Master Money Academy. And the best part is people sharing their wins and we celebrate those wins together. Money is something that a lot of friends, a lot of family members don't like talking about. But inside Master Money Academy, we talk about it all the time because that is how you win with money. Would highly recommend that you join if you're interested. And again, we're doing a huge, huge deal right now if you join Master Money Academy because I know if you try it, you're going to absolutely love it. So listen, thank you so much for listening to this episode of
Starting point is 01:01:00 the Personal Finance Podcast. Make sure you're subscribed if you're not already and leave a five-star rating review if you got a value out of this episode. It helps us share this message that we believe anybody in this world can build wealth. And our goal is to create a million, millionaire. So thank you so much for being here and we will see you on the next episode.

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