The Personal Finance Podcast - The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Your Financial Education Plan

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

In this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to give you the ultimate guide. To crafting your financial education plan.  How Andrew Can Help You:  Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Learn to invest by joining  Index Fund Pro! This is Andrew’s course teaching you how to invest!  Watch The Master Money Youtube Channel!  Ask Andrew a question on Instagram or TikTok.  Learn how to get out of Debt by joining our Free Course  Leave Feedback or Episode Requests here.  Thanks to Our Amazing Sponsors for supporting The Personal Finance Podcast. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at  shopify.com/pfp Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/ Listen to Planet Money wherever you get your podcasts. Policygenius: This is where I got my term life insurance. Policygenius is made so easy. To get your term policy go to policygenius.com and make sure your loved ones are safe.  Links Mentioned in This Episode:  Should You Buy The Dip? (Just Keep Buying) with Nick Maggiulli How to Run the Numbers When You Buy a House! (Total Cost of Ownership!) Connect With Andrew on Social Media:  Instagram  TikTok Twitter  Master Money Website  Master Money Youtube Channel   Free Guides:   The Stairway to Wealth: The Order of Operations for your Money  How to Negotiate Your Salary  The 75 Day Money Challenge  Get out Of Debt Fast  Take the Money Personality Quiz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. On this episode of the personal finance podcast, we're going to give you the ultimate guide to crafting your financial education plan. 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 giving you the ultimate guide to crafting your financial education plan. If you guys have any questions, make sure you hit us up on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter,

at Master Money Co and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever podcast player, you love listen to this podcast on it. If you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on your favorite podcast player. I cannot thank you guys enough for leaving those five-star ratings and reviews. They truly mean the world to me. Now, today, what we're going to be talking about is how to craft your financial education plan.

And a lot of people go through their financial education plan by just picking up some random things to read and trying to learn certain things on the way. What I'm going to do today is I'm going to give you the framework and I'm going to give you a systematic way to be bulletproof financially when it comes to your knowledge because there are so many different reasons as to why you want to do this and put this plan into place. We're going to talk about a bunch of those reasons today. We're going to talk about that why. And then we're going to be talking about some of the tools that you need to be using in order to maximize your learning potential. And I'm going to show you the 15 different areas that if I were you, if you're brand new to finance, I would study.

If you're not brand new to finance, a lot of these areas are going to be really advanced for you as well, and it will really help you get to that next level. So I am really, really excited for this episode. I think it is one that everybody listening can benefit from. So without further ado, let's get into it. All right. Now, before we dive in, one thing that you'll see that we're going to be talking about is one way to learn stuff is obviously books. Now, if you want to see the books that I read every single, you know, before. single week. The book that I am reading every single week, we actually have that in the master money newsletter. So every single week, I send a newsletter on Thursday. And in the master money newsletter,

we have something called the high performance book club. And inside the high performance book club, you'll see all the books that I have read over the course of the last year. And in addition, the book I am currently reading that week. So there is a bunch of benefits to being on the master money newsletter. And that is just another one is every single week, I send you the book that I am reading. So as you go through this, if you don't know which books to pick or how to pick out your financial plan, that's a great place to start is joining that Master Money newsletter. It is linked up in the show notes down below so that you can check that out as well. Now, first, I want to dive into the why on why you actually want to put together a financial education plan.

Because this is a really, really important thing to do. There's a bunch of different reasons as to why. But you definitely need to know the why and the how, how you can actually do this and why you need to be doing this. And the first reason, it reduces your emotions when it comes to financial situations. Now, emotions can absolutely destroy your wealth building ability. If you're an investor and all of a sudden the market dips and you just freak out and you panic because you have no financial knowledge, that is a situation where you're going to lose a lot more money than you're going to make because you don't have that financial education.

So it is essential to make sure that you have that financial education to control your emotions. In addition, as you start to learn this stuff, I want you to think about learning in the form of application. When you learn stuff, you need to think about this. How can I apply this to my life? What are the applications that I need to have in order to apply this to my life? We'll talk about some tools and how you can utilize that as well as we go through this. So here is kind of what the steps I would take to actually plan this out first are, is that you want to figure out in what your current knowledge is. If you are brand new to finance or you're brand new to having a financial education, you want to start with some of the basics. And some of the basics are going

to help you along that way. So I would start reading books. I would start listening to podcasts. I would do some of those different things so that you can get to the next step and just learn the core basics. Then I would set some clear goals. So your goals are going to dictate what types of things that you need to chase after and what types of things you need to go after. If you're the type of person who just wants to learn about personal finance, how to manage their own money and you don't have any interest in business, you have zero interest in learning how financial markets work. You don't have any interest in learning about accounting because you have an accountant or any of those different things. Then I would try to set out some goals of what you actually want to learn.

Put this in your goal setting plan that we will have an episode coming up on talking about exactly how to do that. I'm going to give you an entire plan. And we're going to talk about how to set those goals. And then you want to make sure that you have those goals clear on what you were actually going to do and how you were going to accomplish each and every single one of those goals. I want you to be very specific when you do that. Now, the next thing we want to do is choose reliable sources. Now, I'm going to try to guide you through this on some reliable sources so that you understand,

you know, who should I be listening to? Who should I not be listening to when it comes to personal finance? There are some people out there who are giving advice that can be very harmful to other people, wink, wink, life insurance people. And there is a lot of things out there that really could damage your finances. So I need you to make sure that you understand what you're doing. Now, creating a study schedule. So for me specifically, here's an example of a study schedule,

is that I read a book every single week. And that is a very important thing to me. It is one thing that I've been doing for a very long time. But I set a specific time each and every day to accomplish this. If I don't set that specific time every single day, I will never accomplish reading a book every single week because you have to read 30 to 50 to 60 pages a day to be able to do that. So when I do this, I either have a set time early in the morning or it's later on in the evening when my kids go to bed. That's the only time I can squeeze it in at this point in time.

And so that is when I am usually doing my reading. So you just want to create a schedule of time frame. maybe it's 30 minutes, maybe it's only 20 minutes. Listen, 15 minutes or more is going to get you so much further than anybody else. There was a study done that people who actually spend time learning nonfiction things for 30 minutes a week or less are much more likely to be wealthy than people who do not do that. So just taking these steps is going to be really, really important. And then obviously engaging in practical application. So each time you go through something, maybe you read an article, maybe you listen to this podcast, maybe you go out there and you take,

a course, maybe you take a webinar, you're going to write down some things that you can practically apply every single time that you do this. I do it in a Google Doc. I have this application doc that I utilize and I say, hey, here are some of the things that I learned and here is how I'm going to apply them. And we'll talk about some really cool ways and how I read and how I actually pull the information out of books later on as we talk about some of the tools that you need to be using. And then another big piece to learning is making sure that you're staying updated. So I don't mean go and watch CNN all day long. what I mean is get a couple of different resources that actually inform you on what's going on in the economy, what's going on in the financial markets, so that you just understand what's going on, and you can apply those things to what you're learning because everything is shifting all the time.

Now, let me give an example of this. Every single year, if you're learning about retirement accounts, for example, every single year, the maximum amount that you can put inside of retirement accounts changes. And you need to know that number so that when you're learning about a 401K, for example, and it jumps from $19,500 per year that you can put in to this year, where it's $22,500 this year that you can put in. You know that difference of application and you can adjust the numbers and some of your financial goals because of that. So you want to stay informed when it comes to that. The Master Money newsletter also does that.

I give you articles every single week of some stuff that it's going on. So just making sure that you understand that and understand some of the practical things each and every single week. I'm not saying read every single article that comes out, but check in once a week. Just make sure that you understand that stuff. I think it is actually negative to spend too much time reading news and things like that, but there are some practical applications that I definitely think that you need to be checking into. And then as you go through this process, as you're putting together this plan, I want you to evaluate and adjust. So what do I mean by that?

What I mean by this is say, for example, that you start reading books and you're saying to yourself, I really dread going out there and reading books every single week. I hate reading. I don't want to read anymore. This is something I definitely don't want to do. Well, maybe you need to adjust to audiobooks. Maybe you need to adjust to more podcasts that are specific to what you're trying to learn. Maybe you need to adjust to YouTube channels that are more specific to what you were trying to learn. Maybe you need to adjust to articles.

Maybe you like articles more so than you like some of these other things. You need to figure out what actually suits your personality so that you can learn some of this stuff. Now, there are going to be days that you don't want to do this. There's going to be days that you don't really want to go out there and read or learn or do some of these things. And you can take days off, but just don't take too many days off in a row. A lot of things that I do in life are based on the chain reaction quote from Jerry Seinfeld. So Jerry Seinfeld used to write a joke every single day. And when he would write one joke, he would put an X on the calendar.

And when he put that X on the calendar, the next day he would write another joke. And he'd put another X on the calendar. And what this did was it visually showed him that every single day I've been writing a joke, I don't want to break the chain. I don't want this chain to break. So I'm going to continue to just write a joke even when I don't want to. See, when somebody does things that they don't want to do, that's discipline. That is not motivation. You don't have to be motivated anymore. You're disciplined

to do that thing. And so when it comes to your financial education, being disciplined is very, very important. Like I said, it does not have to be hours and hours and hours a day. Warren Buffett reads 500 pages a day. Pretty much none of us can do that. But what we can do is spend 15, 20, 25, 30 minutes per day, understanding how our finances work. And then once you master all of this stuff, once you master your money, then you can move on to even more advanced things. And there's some really cool stuff that you can do based on the knowledge that you have. So this is going to be a really, really important part. So make sure you kind of map out your plan on what you want to do. And I'm going to show you next on what you need to be using to learn. All right. So next,

we're going to be talking about what you need to be using to learn. And the first one is the obvious one that we've already talked about, which is books. But I'm going to kind of give you my system when it comes to books so that you can have an understanding of, you know, exactly what I do. So like I said, I try to read one book every single week. Now, what I used to do was my very simple system that I've talked about a lot of times on here. I used to take physical books and I would read the entire physical book per week. And how I would do that is I would look at the number of pages inside of that book. I would divide that number by seven. And that's how many pages I would read every single day. Very simple system. Extremely simple system. Now, over the course about the last couple of months,

I've actually switched over to something I thought I would never do because I love physical books so much. But I bought a Kindle Paperwhite. And with that Kindle Paperwhite, what I do is I put a Kindle book inside the paperwhite so I don't have the clutter of having a bunch of books in my office. And instead, what I have is this Kindle PaperWite. I can take it anywhere I want. It stays charged for like two weeks at a time. It's amazing. But the power with the Kindle Paper White is the technology it provides to actually make sure that you are remembering what you're reading.

So first of all, what it does is it has a percentage bar at the bottom that shows you how fast you're progressing over time. So you no longer have to divide the number of pages. You can just read 15% a day, 20% a day, however fast you want to get through that book. and so it shows you that percentage over that time frame. But in addition, I pair it with an app or a tool called Readwise. And what you can do is inside the Kindle, you can highlight things that are really important that you think you need to remember.

And then what happens is those highlights go into the app Readwise, and it categorizes them by book so that all of your highlights are saved in one place. So say, for example, you read an entire book, and it was two years ago and you don't really remember much from that book. You can go back to your highlights inside of Readwise and read through all of those highlights of the important parts in that book. This, my friends, has absolutely changed the game for me. Because now I can go back and read through those highlights and have a better understanding.

And really, for most people, they say 95% of the books that you read, you do not remember. So I need to go back, read the highlights, make sure I'm using practical applications so I read it and teaching it to others as well so that you have that full understanding of each and every single concept. This is how you can learn more. This is how you can really train your brain to understand this stuff more. And as you go through this, maybe at the beginning you don't really know what to highlight, you don't understand it. But as you progress and go through some of these books, you're going to see the things that are

really going to be important to remember and you're going to see some of the fluff that maybe you don't need to highlight. So you become better at this. It's a skill that you develop over time. And so this is my favorite system that I'm using right now in order to read more books. So books are the foundation. Now you may be saying to yourself, hey, I'm new to finance. I don't know what books to read.

You boy's going to give you a couple of books right now. So if you're bringing into personal finance, you're trying to gain knowledge in the personal finance space. I'll give you the personal finance books that I love and some of them that are my favorite. So number one, and these are in no particular order, but I'm just going to give you a bunch of them, is the millionaire next door. If you've never read the millionaire next door, it is a book that will change your mindset when it comes to money and it will teach you how to think differently about money.

Highly, highly recommend the millionaire next door. Number two is I will teach you to be rich by Ramit Sethi. Ramit has a lot of influence on the way that I think about money, and I read his book when I was in college. And I think it's a very, very powerful way to think about money. And he goes through an entire money system in that book that I think each and every person can benefit from. So number two is I will teach you to be rich. Number three is a newer one. I'm going to give you newer ones and older ones, is just keep buying by Nick Majuli. Nick was on this podcast talking about that book. So if you want to check out that episode, we will link it up down below. That book is a fantastic

personal finance and money book. You definitely want to check that one out. I think it's absolutely amazing. Number four is Get Good with Money by Tiffany Aliche. And Tiffany has also been on this podcast talking about that book. That is an amazing book. And she goes through the 10 steps on how to become financially whole. And if you read that book, you're going to be so much farther ahead. Number five, the simple path to wealth. The simple path to wealth is one of the best personal finance books. I have read in a very long time, still one of my favorite personal finance books. I still need to get J.L. Collins on this podcast. It is an amazing book that you definitely want to read. Number six is stacked by our friend Joel Seahy. It has also been on this podcast. And if you want to read

about personal finance and it's got some jokes in there that I think are really good. That is another great book. Now, if you're branded to stock investing, why does the stock at market go up by Brian Feraldi is another fantastic book that you can check out. Number eight is the wealthy barber. That is a great book that you definitely want to go through. It is an older book. but one that really had a huge influence on me early on in my life as well. Number nine is if you just want to get your mindset right, and part of this book is actually fiction, and this is probably one of the only pieces of literature that I love by Robert Kiyosaki, but it is rich dad, poor dad, and the cash flow quadrant actually can go together with

that if you want to read both of those. But both of those books are really, really good. If you want to change your mindset, especially if you're interested in different things like real estate or maybe buying businesses, those types of things. Now, those are some of the personal finance books that I would consider reading. These are just going off the top of the dome. I'm sure I'm missing a couple of others out there as well. But these are fantastic books just to get your finances right. If you read five of these books, you're going to be 10 times farther ahead than most people out there. So you definitely want to make sure that you are looking at some of those books. They are some fantastic resources. You can also go to audiobooks. So audiobooks are something that I like

to do when I go on walks or if I'm working out. And so audiobooks, more so when I'm walking out, I like to pump up the jams. But that I just sounded like a boomer there. But anyway, when it comes to audiobooks, that is one thing I love to add in as well. Podcasts, obviously, you're listening to this podcast. You are investing in yourself. I say that at the end of every episode now because that is exactly what you're doing. There's a bunch of other great podcasts out there. If you're trying to figure out which personal finance podcasts to listen to or which ones are the ones that you need to follow,

make sure that you just check out some of the guests that are on this show. I only bring guests on this show that I want to have on this show who I think are teaching the right stuff to people. I'm not going to have anybody on this podcast to just debate. them or go back and forth with them. The only people I want to give a platform to be on this podcast are people that I believe in what their message is and I believe what they're saying. So if you hear somebody on this podcast, that means that you can definitely go and check out their podcast as well because it is a great resource to happen. We've had dozens and dozens of interviews on this podcast. We have a ton more lined up and some amazing ones coming up. So make sure that you check out

some of those if you're interested in other podcasts in addition to this one. YouTube is another great one. And there's a bunch of great YouTubers out there where you can visually see this stuff. And sometimes you get some quick tips, quick actionable stuff where you can watch on YouTube. Courses. Courses are one where, like I said, I've said this a couple times now. I've taken over 10 courses this year alone. It is a way to fast track yourself to learning a specific subject so that you can get from point A to point Z as fast as possible. So that is one reason why we have courses here is we want you to fast track you so you don't have to dive into 15 to 20 different resources just to figure out one thing.

thing, we can give you that thing plus a bunch of other stuff all in one pre-packaged course that just allows you to go through the entire process and understand that. We're working on one based on automation next. We're going to show you how to completely automate your money and exactly how I do that, where I don't even have to lift a finger and all my money just goes exactly where I want it to. So that automation course is coming up next. Really, really excited about that. If you want to check that out or if you want to get on the waiting list, let me know and I will get you on that waiting list. Next, webinars. So there are a bunch of free webinars out there. And sometimes webinars are just there to sell you something else at the back end, but you can also

learn some great stuff on webinars. So make sure you check out webinars. Seminars are another great one, especially in like the real estate space. If you're trying to learn more about real estate, just make sure you watch out for the salesy stuff, but there are some great seminars out there that are really going to help you. And another one is reliable social media accounts. Now, this is the one that you really, really got to be careful about and make sure you are following reliable sources. Do not fall for devils and sheep's clothing. And there's a lot of them out there in the financial space. So you got to make sure that you understand who is a good source and who is a bad source. Some people are looking out for your best interest, but and some people are not looking out

for your best interest. So just make sure that you're cautious and make sure that you are being careful when it comes to this stuff. So those are some of the tools that I would use. Those are some of the tools that I use each and every single day. Pretty much actually, every single one of those are things that I use on a weekly basis to learn more stuff. If I want to learn about something, I go to some of those sources and try to find some of those If I want a really deep dive, I'll buy the course or if I'm looking for a really, really quick answer. I'll go to YouTube or read an article or just find those reliable sources that I can find that stuff. So this is some of the things that I definitely use. And if you have any questions

on that stuff or if you know some other great creators out there that I should look into, just let me know. And we'll add it to some of our lists here at Master Money in the Personal Finance Podcast. Now, we're going to talk through what you need to be studying and what are the things that you need to learn if you want to become completely financially whole. So lately, I've been noticing how fast things are changing. at home. The kids are growing like crazy. Clothes don't fit anymore and routines are changing. And it just hits you. Life is expanding. And when your life grows, your responsibility grows with it. That's something I've been thinking about more this spring, making sure the safety net we have in place actually matches

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financial education journey outside of college. So this is the stuff that I think that you need to be looking into more when it comes to learning some of this stuff outside of college. And this is in no particular order, but I think all of this stuff is really, really important. And I started learning this stuff in my 20s. And over time, I am still learning every single day when it's. it comes to this stuff. So really, really excited to show you like what to study. And I have 15 different subjects here so that you can understand this stuff. Number one is accounting. Accounting is

the language of business. This is exactly how you figure out what things are worth when it comes to buying a business or understanding your own business or understanding how to invest in another company if you want to invest in individual stocks. If you just heard our recent episode with Brian Feraldi, we talked about accounting. We talked about balance sheets. We talked about P&Ls. We went through that kind of stuff so that you kind of understand what the basics of that are. But accounting is the language of business. Now, what this is going to help you do is first of all, it's going to help you with decision making, meaning it's going to help in making informed decisions based on financial statements because typically, for example, when you're going to invest in a rental property,

you need to make an informed decision based on the numbers. You always hear me talk about you got around the numbers. If you're going to go out and buy a business, you have to make an informed decision based on the numbers. This helps you tremendously with decision making when it comes to buying anything that's worthwhile investment. Then it also is going to teach you how to read a profit and loss statement. This is one of the most valuable skills that you can ever have is how to read a P&L. And once you get this down and understand a P&L, maybe the first time it's going to like, what are all these numbers here? But now I can take a P&L and I can read 15 of them in a couple of minutes because I've read so many different P&Ls over the course of my lifetime. And so this is one thing

we're getting more reps and grasping how this. this works is going to be really, really important. So what a P&L is, it's basically how money is made within a business and it's profit and loss and how money is made within a business. So this is actually showing how much money you have left over at the end of every single month. Asset management is another piece of accounting that you want to learn and understanding the value of depreciating assets and depreciation and all that different stuff. And then liabilities and recognizing the difference between assets and liabilities and managing those debt obligations is the other piece of accounting that I think you definitely want to know. Now, next subject is biographies. Now, biographies are something

that I started to study after hearing a quote from Warren Buffett. And the quote went something like this. I'm probably going to butcher it. But basically, he said, you should learn from mistakes. They just don't have to be your mistakes. And so all of a sudden, the light bulb went off. And he reads about different people in business and their entire story and what they did right and what they did wrong. And you can learn from so many different mistakes. If you start to read these biographies, all of a sudden, you're going to see their mistakes and say, hey, I don't want to make that mistake again. Let me make a note of this. You'll see another one. I don't want to make that mistake that they made. Let me make a note of this. And so this really started for me when I started to listen to podcasts and read biographies of folks who were

real estate investors. So early on in my 20s, when I was trying to learn about real estate, I would listen to all these different people's mistakes, the mistakes they made on managing tenants, the mistakes they made on rehabbing properties, the mistakes they made when they were going through each and every single part of the process. And this was so helpful for me because all of a sudden, those situations arose in my own real estate business. And I could actually handle those situations because I've heard all these different stories about how this happened. So that's one example. Another example is I read all these different biographies of folks who have these massive businesses. And it's not because I want to own some billion dollar company. That's not something that is of interest to me whatsoever. But what happens

is I can see all the mistakes that they make, and I can say, hey, in my businesses, I don't want to make those same mistakes. And so this is something where I think the real world lessons, there's historical context. There's also inspiration. I just read a book by David Green, the founder of Hobby Lobby, where he gives away a massive amount of his company's profits to charities that he believes in. This was so inspiring for me that I am now implementing, and I'm already in the process of talking to my account now on how I can give away more of my nonprofits to companies and charities that I believe in who are changing lives of other people. And so there's so many different things that you can learn about. And you also get that personal

growth side beyond finance. They offer life lessons and insights, things like that. So there are so many different cool things that you can learn in biographies. And at first, I was like, I'm not going to read these biographies. Why would I ever do that? And then I started to read through some of them, especially ones that you can read up on on websites like Goodreads, for example. You can go through and see some of the best biographies out there of business tycoons or people in finance or anything like that. And you can, could say, hey, I'm going to pick some of the top ones here so that I can learn more about each and every one of these individuals. All right, so the next thing is budgeting. And budgeting is something

that you have to master. You have to learn. One of the biggest questions that we get here at the personal finance podcast when people send me emails is I don't know how to budget. And I don't know what I need to do when I budget. I don't know what percentage of allocation I need to put towards each and every single one of my goals. And all of these things are really big questions that a lot of people have. So learning budgeting can be really, really important. So it's learning how to take control of your finances. It's learning how to actually set goals. It's learning how to set up your spending categories. It's learning how to automate the entire process, which I think is the most important part. It's learning how to save extra money and having that financial awareness. So learning

that skill is really, really important. Some great tools that you can use to learn that stuff is using YNAB. Wineab is a great place if you want a line by line on a budget. Or if you want to automate this process, you can do something like a reverse budget where you save first and then you spend what is left over. So there's a lot of cool things that you can do there. But I think Wynab has free classes on how to learn some of their stuff and just some of the basics budgeting. I think that's a really great place to start if you are brand new budgeting. Financial Independence is another great one. So that's the next subject that I would definitely encourage you to try to learn. And we talk about financial independence a lot on this podcast.

So make sure you're subscribed if you're not because we talk about it all the time here. But this is learning about financial freedom, learning about your retirement, your retirement, accounts, learning about wealth building, learning the philosophy of financial independence and learning your why. Because the why, is the most important driver when it comes to financial independence. And you can learn how to figure out how to make passive income, your security, all these different things are coming to play when it comes to financial independence. I think it's a very important skill to learn and then take action on, especially if you're interested in finance and getting your money right,

financial independence is huge and learning your retirement number. All that stuff is going to be massive for you. So the next one is history. And history is one that I don't think you need to spend a tremendous amount of time on and biographies can kind of double whammy this and hit both for you. But when it comes to history, you want the same thing. You want to learn some lessons from mistakes from people, and you want to learn how they got their wins and what motivated them. Because this is really, really important to think about. You saw the, probably the viral TikTok trend as of recent women asking their significant

others, you know, how often do you think about the Roman Empire? But there was a ton of different cool things about the Roman Empire, for example, that are going to really, really resonate with a lot of people that you can learn lessons from. And there are so many cool things that came out of that development. And there's just things in history that can really, really help you in your everyday life. and I know that sounds weird, but you can think for example of Ryan Holiday. Ryan Holiday is one of my favorite authors out there, and he takes principles from the Roman Empire and from the Stoics, and he has written multiple books on this and create a whole business around

just the wisdom from the Stoics. There's a lot of cool things that you can learn from there. The book of Proverbs in the Bible is written by King Solomon, and King Solomon is known as one of the wisest individuals that ever lived. If you read the book of Proverbs, all 31 chapters in the book of Proverbs, it is one of the most powerful life lessons that you can ever learn. If you've never read the Bible for, even just going through that book alone will give you a tremendous amount of wisdom when it comes to life. There is a lot of folks in history who have a ton of wisdom. So it's definitely worth looking into and seeing how people handle different situations historically because a lot of times problems

evolve and they come up and maybe we have more technology now, but a lot of problems can be very similar historically as they are now. Investing. Now investing is the next subject. Investing is a huge one that you need to understand. It's why we create an index fund pro to give you that jumpstart to and how to invest in index funds in ETFs. If you don't know what index fund pro is, it is our investing course. It is our investing for beginners course basically teaches you exactly how to invest in index funds and ETFs, how I do it myself. And it is one of the core things that we have there. But in addition to investing, there's a ton of different investing books out there that I would encourage you to go out and read. I think there are some great ones. Like John Bogle's book is

fantastic. He talks about index funds and ETFs. Paul. Merriman's book is really, really good. And Paul Merriman's coming on in a couple of weeks. That's a great investing book. Beating the street, if you're investing in individual stocks, is another great one. If you're interested in dividend investing, the number one book, and I think this is the only book you need to read, is called The Single Best Investment. That is one of my favorite dividend investing books and really change my perspective on dividend investing. But there's a ton of other great investing books out there. If you subscribe to Master Money Newsletter, we have investing books that come up on that high performance book club as well. That is a huge one that you definitely need

to understand. Now, also when it comes to courses, other things like that, that. If you are interested in individual stocks, there are some great courses out there like Brian Ferraldi has a great one that you can check out. And I think it is really important to understand wealth growth and how compound interest works, risk management and managing that risk when it comes to investing. You need to understand assets. You need to understand how markets work. You need to understand compound interest. All this stuff is really, really, really important. Next is insurance. And you need to be educated on insurance so that you get scammed by certain people who are trying to sell you insurance that you don't need. But in addition, you need to

understand how it protects you and protects you against specific risks, and it also gives you that peace of mind that you understand what is going on and you understand how to financially plan for your specific situation. So insurance is really, really important. We have not done any episodes on insurance yet. They are coming. I just don't know how much you guys want to hear about insurance. So that's why we haven't done a ton of episodes yet, but we will do some all-encompassing insurance episodes because there is insurance that you need, some insurance that you might need, and there's insurance that you don't need at all. And if you look in the stairway to wealth printable that we have now, we actually have the 3.0 version ready to go. We haven't done the

podcast episode on it yet, but we have the 3.0 version ready to go. So if you want to check out the stairway to wealth 3.0, it is linked up down below in the show notes. You can check that out also. But we show you the insurances that you need in the stairway to wealth 3.0 printable. The law, the law when it comes to business and it comes to finance is really, really important. Now, you need to rely on some of your advisors when this gets really, really heavy. But you need to understand some of the basic principles. Say, for example, you want to start a company. You need to understand trademarks. You need to understand how contracts work. You need to understand some of these different various things. And contract stuff is probably the biggest one that I would talk about here.

When it comes to contracts, you're going to get a number of different contracts in your life. Sometimes it's going to be from the credit card and there's nothing you can really do. You want to sign up for that credit card so you don't read the whole thing. I get it. I don't read the whole thing on that either. Sometimes you're getting a lease in or you're getting a new mortgage document or you're trying to buy a business or you're going through all these different processes and you're you need to read every single word of that contract. Now, this is something that a lot of people say, but most people don't do. And I am telling you, one of my mentors taught me this to read every single word of that contract. And the longer the contract is, the more bad news that is for you.

So you need to understand how to read that stuff. I think that is one of the most important things when it comes to law is protections, estate planning is another big one when it comes to law. Trust and will is the resource I use for estate planning. But you can look at some other things. and then disputes. So navigating financial disputes, litigation, all that kind of stuff is also really, really important when it comes to law. Now, negotiating. This is one of the most powerful skills that you can have, and learning how to negotiate is

going to earn you more money than almost any other skill out there. So learning how to negotiate when it comes to value, conflict resolution, opportunities, relationships, skills. Chris Voss is one of my favorite folks when it comes to negotiating, and he wrote the book, Never Split the Difference. He is a master when it comes to negotiating. I think he's got some great resources. out there as well. Now, we're going to be talking about negotiation a lot on this podcast.

You've heard us talk about how to negotiate your bills. We had Nicole Lapin on. She talked about how to negotiate your bills. I've talked about how to negotiate your salary. If you're ever interested in learning how to negotiate your salary, you have a free e-book that actually shows you how to do this. There's your first education right there. It's completely free. So we'll link it up down the show notes so that you can check that out if you're interested in negotiating your salary. That is the most powerful negotiation tool that you can have is learning how to negotiate your salary. Next is psychology. I cannot explain how important psychology is and how much this has helped me in my everyday life.

A, behavioral finance is going to be huge. You can understand how people actually behave. And we have some psychology episodes set up or we're going to be talking about this. Emotions and bias and consumer behavior and decision making, all of these things are going to really, really matter when it comes to your life. Real estate. So when it comes to real estate, if you're interested in investing in real estate or if you just want to buy your own house, you need to have that financial education when it comes to real

estate. You know, if you're going to buy your own house, we talk about total cost of ownership all the time. We have a total cost of ownership calculator for you. If you want to check that out completely free, we'll link that up down below. But all of this stuff is really important. If you're interested in real estate investing, there are some great books out there that I will recommend now. First of all, is Coach Carson's small and mighty real estate investor. We just had that interview recently. And that is one of my favorite real estate books that I've read a long time. Another great person to read is Brandon Turner's books. So Brandon Turner now owns a billion dollars of real estate and a syndicate. And he, he,

has some of the best books that I used to read in my 20s that really, really helped me learn how to invest in real estate. If you're interested in single family houses, John Schaubb's book, Building Wealth One House at a Time, is a fantastic book. If you're interested in Airbnb's, Avery Carl's book is awesome. It was produced by Baker Pockets. I can't remember the exact name of that book, but that was a really, really good book for Airbnb investing, and she kind of gives you all the tactics and all those different pieces that you need to understand. So if you're interested in real estate investing, understanding the investment side, the wealth building side, cash flow, the tax benefits, diversification, how to run your numbers are all really, really important

stuff. Books will help you get started. Listening to other podcasts out there are going to be really important as well. Stats, statistics. You need to understand how to read statistics and how to implement them. You hear me talk about statistics a lot on this podcast, and the reason for that is they really, really matter when it comes to human behavior and understanding why things are the way that they are. So data analysis, market trends, risk, decision making, research, all of this stuff is really important for you to note. Now, the next one is taxes. Your biggest bill is your tax bill.

And when it comes to taxes, sure, you can lean on your accountant, which I obviously do. But at the same time, you also need to understand some of this stuff so that you can make sure that you implement it in your day-to-day life. So compliance and savings and tax planning and having a tax plan in place and liabilities and updates, all of these are really, really important so that you stay in the know because you want to reduce your tax bill as much as possible. The more you know, the better it will be for you. And then valuation, just understanding how to evaluate things like companies and investments and

businesses, all these different things, this is a great spot to learn how to do some of that stuff as well. So these are 15 different areas that I would start to focus on first. And some of these things, what you're going to notice is as you start to learn one, all of them are going to start to overlap over each other. And all of a sudden, all of this becomes a much clearer picture. And like I said, I'm learning every single day, but these are the areas that I focus very, very heavily on on how to learn and what I'm learning. So check out of the the high performance book club on the Master and Money newsletter. If you have not checked that out yet, you'll see the books that I'm reading every single week so that you can help further your knowledge.

And if you're interested in some of the courses that I like or things like that, just let me know. Shoot me an email when you join the newsletter. And I'll reply back with some of the stuff that I love as well. So if you guys have any questions, make sure to reach out to me. And if you got value out of this episode, consider sharing it with a friend. I cannot thank you guys enough for sharing it with friends and family. And consider leaving that five-star rating and review if you could. Now, thank you so much for listening to this episode. It truly means the world to me that you showed up, listen to this episode here, and really, really invested in yourself because that's what you're doing when you're listening to this podcast is you are investing in yourself and investing in your education.

So thank you so much for doing that. I truly, truly appreciate each and every single one of you, and we will see you on the next episode. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time. Let's play. Feel the fun with Playojo. The online casino with all the latest slot and live casino. games. What you win is yours to keep with no wagering requirements, instant payouts, and no minimum withdraws. Hey, I just won. Woohoo! Do the fun! Play-Ojo! Honey, forget about the lasagna. Let's celebrate! 19 plus Ontario only. Please play responsibly. Concerned about your gambling or that of someone close to you. Call 1866-531-2600 or visit connexonterio.ca.ca.