The Personal Finance Podcast - Type A vs. Type B Money Personality: Which one are you?

Starting point is 00:00:00 On this episode of the personal finance podcast, type A versus type B money personalities, which one are you? What's up, everybody, and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of mastermoney.co, and today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to be talking about your money personality. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the mastermoney newsletter by going to mastermoney.co slash newslet. and don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever your favorite podcast player is. And if you want to hop up the show,

Starting point is 00:00:45 consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. I cannot thank you guys enough for leaving those five-star ratings and reviews. Now, before we start this episode, I just have a quick announcement. We are going to be doing some one-on-one coaching with people. And this is going to be a very specific group of people that we're going to be working with. we have a really cool thing coming up down the line. And so if anybody is interested, feel free to reach out to me,

Starting point is 00:01:14 Andrew at mastermoney.com, and shoot me an email. And I will get you linked up with our team who is working on this project where we want to help people, families who have a household net worth of over $100,000 per year, who are willing to put in the work, willing to put in about an hour every single week. And we want to be able to help you all build wealth. I'm going to give you literally every single week what you should be doing. we're going to give you action plans. And this is going to be one of those things that we can transform your finances over the course of the next six months.

Starting point is 00:01:43 So if you are interested in that, please reach out to me. We may be jumping on a call together to have a conversation, but you have to meet that qualification of the household income over $100,000 or have about $100,000 that you want to get invested in working in the market. So those are two of the qualifications. But please let me know. All right, perfect. Many of you may not know this, but your personality is actually going to be a big deal.

Starting point is 00:02:07 when it comes to how to manage your money. And many people don't think about this. They don't think about aligning some of their financial goals and they don't think about aligning the way that they manage their dollars with their personality type. But in this episode today, what I'm going to be diving into is the two types of money personalities that we see. And I'm going to go through the superpowers that each one of those money personality types have. And we're going to go through some of the fallbacks that you have. Plus, I'm going to show you how to figure out what your money personality is and how to optimize your finances based on that. So this is going to be one of those episodes that I am really, really excited about. Now there are two different types of money personalities.

Starting point is 00:02:46 First, there is the type A person. Now a type A person is going to be something like if you have a type a money personality and you already know that, then you know that you want control and you want full control over everything in your life. Maybe you love all the little details inside of a spreadsheet or you check your accounts pretty frequently. And a lot of times a type A, money personality is the type of person that is looking at their checking account daily, their savings account daily, their brokerage account daily, not out of necessity, not out of making sure that, hey, I have enough money to even make this purchase, but they're looking at it all the time because they want that full control. And there's a lot of psychology that comes into play when it comes

Starting point is 00:03:24 to these different money personalities. But they also want to know where every single dollar went. A lot of times they are with their strict budgets, they're making sure they're on top of it. And they enjoy spreadsheets. They enjoy tracking things. They enjoy looking at all their credit card miles and points and they have a spreadsheet looking at every single dollar and optimizing every single dollar. You optimizers, I love you all, because you typically are taking action, you know where everything is going. And they get satisfaction from optimization. They get satisfaction from making sure that they are hacking their way to the top and getting the point in time where they can really do some cool stuff. And they probably know their net worth down

Starting point is 00:04:00 to the T. They probably know their savings rate down to the T. And if they don't, they're tracking it somewhere and they can go look it up pretty quickly. These folks want a plan for everything. And they want to make sure the plan is in place. They want to make sure they plan for the next five years, the next 10 years, the next 30 years, and they want to know where every dollar is going. And I meet so many different people like this and high achievers typically are like this, but not every high achiever is like this. And this is what I want you to understand. Is a type A money person needs to have specific systems in place in order to, A, feed their personality type, but B also help them stay on top of their money where they know where everything is and they can

Starting point is 00:04:38 really get the most out of their money. So a type A person has a very powerful thing in place because they have the ability to be able to do some really cool things with their dollars and really get some optimization going. But let's talk about the other side of the coin. And as I'm explaining these, I want you to start to think through and be very honest with yourself on which one you actually think you are. Because this is a type B person. Now a type B money person, is someone who wants simplicity. They want everything to be simplified, so money doesn't have to feel like this chore

Starting point is 00:05:09 or this giant burden that they always have to handle. Simplicity is the name of the game for someone who is type B. They don't want to have to worry about money constantly or worry about their investments or where their dollars are going or all those different things. And they absolutely hate. I mean, they loathe detailed budgeting. They don't like spreadsheets.

Starting point is 00:05:29 They don't like a detailed budget. They don't like to think through, oh, I want to make sure I'm logging into my budget every single day and knowing where everything goes. And so they may forget some minor financial tasks, but they want things to happen automatically. They want to set things up automated so they don't have to worry about this stuff anymore. And instead, they can ensure that their dollars are still going where they want them to go, but they don't want to have to think about it. You know, they want to make sure this is automated so they can go out and hang out with some friends

Starting point is 00:05:56 or they can go out and do what they want to do day in and day out. Many times, these are folks who would rather. check their finances periodically just to make sure their finances are on track and they need fewer decisions they don't want to make all these different financial decisions instead they want simplicity and they value convenience over optimization in fact they are willing to forego some optimization just so they can have that convenience in place if a bill got paid last year it's not because of money it's just because they forgot they missed that piece and it's really not a big deal and so for them they want that simplicity and they want to know that they have an operating

Starting point is 00:06:32 system in place that is working on autopilot for them in the background so they don't have to worry as much. And so here's a few questions that I want you to ask yourself, okay? When was the last time you checked your bank balance? If you checked your bank balance this morning, or if you checked your bank balance right before you started this episode, or maybe you checked your bank balance, you know, last week, that's going to tell you a lot. Because if you're someone who checks it on a daily basis and not on a necessity, I mean, you don't need to check it on a daily basis. You have enough money on hand, but you check it all the time because you want to know what the heck is going on. You may be type A. But if you're the type of person that maybe you check it once a week just to make sure you get

Starting point is 00:07:10 paid or maybe you check it once a month just to make sure the balance is going up a little bit, then you may be a type B person. Secondly, is have you ever opened a spreadsheet for fun? Have you ever spent a Friday night, you get yourself up, pour yourself a cold glass of wine, or maybe because you're an optimizer, you poured yourself a cold glass of water and you said, let's get it into the numbers and let's crunch some numbers fam maybe you pull out a slide deck on your TV and you make your spouse sit down and watch your slide deck on how much wealth you're going to build one day if that's you you may be type a where if that sounds like nails on a chalkboard to you looking at a spreadsheet or looking at all these numbers and you're like I don't want to do that at all then you may be type B next does tracking your spending feel like control or does this feel like a chore does this feel like something that you're going to

Starting point is 00:08:01 out and do. And when you go track your spending, you're like, oh my gosh, this is the worst possible thing I could be doing. I hate this. I load this every single time I do it. Or is this kind of fun for you? You like to see the numbers all come together. And every single time you track your spending or you go through your budget, all of a sudden, ooh, that feels really, really good. I really enjoyed that time doing that. And there's people out there like that. Some of you like type B folks out there maybe saying yourselves, who would ever do that? There's a lot of people out there like that. Trust me. And so this is going to be one of those areas where if it makes you feel better, if it makes you feel more in control to be tracking or

Starting point is 00:08:35 spending, you may be type A. But if you feel as though this is the worst possible thing you could ever do, you may be type E. And I'm going to help you on both ends of the spectrum so you guys understand what to do with your money and how to optimize your money no matter if you are type A or if you are type E. Have you ever avoided a financial task simply because it was boring? That's the next question. So if you're like, yeah, and most of us have, even if you're type A, but if you're the type of person that avoids financial tasks all the time because they're boring, because you like to have a little fun, you know, you like to get out there and do your thing and not really have to worry. You're flexible. You're flexible in everyday life. Then you may be type B.

Starting point is 00:09:11 And if you are someone who sounds like, hey, I'm not going to avoid any financial tasks. I've got my to-do list every single day. I knock out my to-do list every single day and it is done. Then you may be type A. And so I want you to think about your real life. Are you the type of person that time blocks? Are you the type of person that is really scheduled and structured. Are you the type of person that operates on goals? Or are you the type of person that's like, nah, I get my stuff done. It gets done in a timely fashion, but I'm not super structured. I'm free flowing. I am okay with not having that structure in place. In fact, I would rather work less than more because these two different personality types are going to be something that I think is really, really important. Now, this is not going to be

Starting point is 00:09:52 exactly like a type A personality type in life or a type B personality type in life. There's personality tests that you could take to go out and do this. But your money personality is going to matter significantly on how to you manage your dollars. And so what we're going to do in this episode is if any of those questions you answered make you feel as though I'm leaning probably more towards type A or I'm leaning more towards type B, this is going to be awesome for you because this is going to bring clarity to you. This is going to bring opportunity to you. And you may be unlocking something right now that you never realized before. You may have been said, what is wrong with me? Why can't I budget? Why can't I do this month in and month out? Or you may be saying to yourself, why can I be a little

Starting point is 00:10:31 more lax on some of this stuff? This is going to open your eyes to this. And this is a system I kind of put together on thinking through what your money personality type is because I saw so many people that we work with in Master Money Academy who have very different money types. And you need to make sure that you understand what that money personality type is before you move forward. Now, some people may be hybrid between the two. Maybe there's some things you like to be optimized on, some things you don't like to be optimized on. And I'm going to talk to you all in this episode as well. And I'm really, really excited to dive deeper into this because I think this is going to be a fun episode. So without further ado, let's get into it. If you've been listening to this show for a while,

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Starting point is 00:13:53 Now, what you're going to see is when I talk about each of these personality types, I'm going to talk about the superpowers of each and every single type of personality. Then I'm going to dive into the money traps that you could fall into if you are not thinking about this and ensuring that you're making the right moves. And then after that, I'm going to talk through how you should think about managing your money, how you should think about a budget, and some other considerations to have, all right? So first, let's talk about type A. Now, type A has a bunch of different money superpowers, and it's not inherently better.

Starting point is 00:14:22 Many people are going to assume that being type A is inherently better when it comes to managing money, but it's not. And if you start to think through what you're good at and what you're not good at, this is going to help you decipher, hey, this is actually probably what I am. So type A money superpowers. Number one is they are really detailed when it comes to budgeting, and they track their spending down to a T. Now, there are people in the personal finance space that only speak to people who are type A.

Starting point is 00:14:46 And so it makes everyone else who is not type A feel as though they are less than. Feels as though they are not doing the right things. But in reality, if you are a type A person, you are most likely very detailed with your budget and you can track your spending in a lot of detail. In fact, type A people don't like waste. They don't like wasting money in certain categories. They know exactly where their categories are. So let's give an example of this.

Starting point is 00:15:12 If you are type A, you may have back in the day had a beautiful color-coded spreadsheet that helped you track all your spending. And maybe you have that right now. Maybe you're still optimizing with a spreadsheet right now. Or you have your Monarch Money Budget Dashboard down to the penny every single day. You know exactly where your dollars are going. You know what your net worth is. You know what your savings rate is. You look at this stuff all the time. And if there's any flux in the market, you're watching it and you're monitoring it and trying to figure out, well, how do I optimize my investments? How do I make sure all of this is in place? Maybe you optimize for taxes and you dive deeper into your tax situation, you go to your CPA or you read books on optimization of taxes,

Starting point is 00:15:51 and you get in there and you're making sure I want to squeeze every dollar out of my tax situation. Or maybe you are, and most of you are like this, you are travel hackers, but you dive deep into travel hacking. I mean, you're maximizing points in miles. My good friend, Chris Hutchins, for example, this is how he is. He has spreadsheets on his points in miles. He knows exactly where every single dollar is going, and he wants to optimize for everything in life.

Starting point is 00:16:14 And so if you're someone who optimizes for everything in life or you're a recovering optimizer, you most likely could be type A. And when they think about their budget, a lot of times they think about their budget where they want to make sure nothing goes to waste. Nothing gets spent on something they don't care about. Instead, they are very, very detailed on every single dollar. Maybe you compare your investment fees. This is a wonderful thing for the type A folks is they know where their fees are.

Starting point is 00:16:39 They know how much they're spending in fees. They ask questions about those fees. so they understand those dollars, and they set very precise goals. So we have a program in Master Money Academy called Master Your Money Goals. And I've noticed there are folks in there who are very type A, and if I give them homework and Master Your Money Goals, they will literally do them all the way down to the T every single thing. And I can identify them pretty quickly. That's a type A person. They're a type A person because they have these goals. They make them very specific. They know how many action steps they need to take in order to achieve these goals. They know how long it's going to

Starting point is 00:17:14 take them to achieve these goals and they do them consistently. They write them down. They know what the next steps are. And I think for anybody, it's actually very important to do this. It's very important to be type A with specific things like goals because if you are on the ball with some of this stuff, it's really, really powerful. But if you are someone who is very far on the spectrum of type B, you most likely are just never going to do it. As hard as you can try, you're never going to be able to to do that. And so setting these precise goals is one of those superpowers that Taipei has. Monitoring progress is another big one. So for many people, they may not monitor their progress as much as they want to, but for us in the personal finance space and in the wealth building space,

Starting point is 00:17:55 how do we monitor our progress? Let me hear it for everybody in the back, yell it out in your car, your net worth statement, your balance sheet. That's how you monitor your progress to see what your assets versus your liabilities are. If you pay down debt, you reduce your liabilities and your net worth is going to go up. If you acquire more assets or buy more investments on a monthly basis or buy stocks or real estate or whatever else, your asset line is going to go up. And so in reality, we monitor our progress through our net worth statement. But we also monitor our progress if we're trying to reduce our spending actively or if we're trying to increase our savings rate actively. And there are things that you just have to do to monitor

Starting point is 00:18:32 your progress. Type A folks are really good at this. They are really good at deciding, okay, this is what I want to do. This is how I'm going to get there and I'm going to monitor this progress on a monthly basis. And you know what else they're really good at? Planning ahead. So they, a lot of times will plan ahead for different things to happen. Typically, they're really good at building their emergency fund, rebuilding that emergency fund, making sure they're tactical about it so they know exactly how much is there. And in fact, if you heard our recent episode with Jesse Beecham, we were talking about tactically, hey, I think you should have a car repair fund and a home repair fund. And these should be individual funds instead of just one big lump sum emergency fund if you're taking

Starting point is 00:19:09 care of some of those expenses. And I tend to agree. But a type A person is going to be much better at doing that than a type B person. Now for type B folks, don't fret, I'm going to show you how to automate this stuff so you don't have to worry about it in a second. But I just want you to understand that these are all really important things that are in place. A type A person is going to notice a 0.75% expense ratio in their index fund or ETF. A type B person probably won't see it for a couple of on hand before someone reminds them like me to go and look at it. And so when it comes to this, I think making sure that you save and have these targets in place and you want to hit these specific goals, you know exactly how much efficiency you can squeeze out of your accounts.

Starting point is 00:19:49 All of those are going to be really, really fun stuff for you type A folks. Now, all of these superpowers, like I just said, detailed budgeting, tracking or spending, optimizing taxes, maximizing credit card points, making sure that you compare investment fees and you, you you compare your progress and you have these shared goals and you're attacking these goals and having this to do to list every single day, those are wonderful superpowers and they can absolutely change anybody's life, even if you're type B and you're like, I want to get better in one of those areas. It's going to help you a lot because you type A folks and you type B folks, even though there's a rift down the line, you can learn a lot from each other, which is why we're doing this episode.

Starting point is 00:20:25 But I want you to realize as well that type A folks, there are some downsides to your strategy. there are some downsides and money traps that you could fall into that I want you to avoid at all costs. I do not want you to fall into a type A money trap that can cause you to go backwards because you can over optimize and you can over optimize in a number of different ways that I do not want you to do. So the same wiring that makes you great at tracking things can also make it hard for you to stop tracking things and it can also make you overdo it and spend way too much time on your finances. I've had to help people many times spend less time on their finances because they really just want to optimize it more and more and more. But there's only so much you can do. And if you keep looking at your accounts for hours and hours on end, it's going to cause stress and anxiety.

Starting point is 00:21:14 That anxiety is going to start to flutter up and you're like, ugh, this stuff's not moving the way I want it to move. People who check their investment accounts really frequently. A lot of times those folks can typically overcompensate or try to over optimize in their investments, meaning you can make the wrong move with your investments by check. checking your account too frequently. And in fact, if you struggle with getting stress or anxious with your investment accounts, I would encourage you to check them less. Because as we know, over time, the market goes in one direction. But it's a long period of time.

Starting point is 00:21:44 And so you want to make sure that you are not checking your investments constantly. Because if you do that, and I'm okay if you do it and you're doing it in a way where like you make good decisions or you just like looking at it, that's fine. But if you're the type of person that's checking constantly to see if it moved 0.1% today to make sure that you are moving in the right direction, eh, not my favorite thing for you to do. Or if you obsess over a $12 purchase, meaning, let's say, for example, you go and you're going out to dinner or drinks with

Starting point is 00:22:12 friends. And all of a sudden, one of your friends forgets their wallet, and you have to pay for their drink for $12. And then all of a sudden, they forget to pay you back on Venmo. And that just drives you up a wall. That just drives you crazy. That they left, they forgot to pay you $12. How could they?

Starting point is 00:22:27 How could they ever forget to pay you? that $12. Well, if it happens a lot, obviously is a pattern that's probably intentional. But if it doesn't happen all the time and it's like a one-off thing, but it drives you crazy, then we need to chill out a little bit. Or let's say you and your friends go out to dinner and each of you ends up spending, you know, one friend spends $50 on their bill, one spends $40 per on their bill, you spend $35 on your bill, and the other one spends $49 on their bill. But you decide to split the check and everybody else wants to split the check. You know I don't want to split this check. I want to get my own check because I spent less than everybody else and I did that intentionally. Why would I split this check? And instead of

Starting point is 00:23:05 causing a fiasco, you decide, okay, I'm going to split this check. But it eats at you. It eats at you deep down inside and you can't let that thing go. Well, you may be a type A person, which is really, really bothering you to have to spend that money. Now, some people, it bothers them because they don't have the extra money on hand to spend, which I get. That's a different thing. But for those of you who have the cash on hand but just bothers you or eats away at you, these small little purchases just really, really bother you, then you may be type A and it may be one of those things that's going to hold you back. Because if you dwell on things that are negative, long term, it's going to cause a negative relationship with money. And the last thing I want

Starting point is 00:23:42 for anybody out there is to develop this negative relationship with money that causes them stress and anxiety. That's not what we want whatsoever. Move on and let's move on to the next thing, especially if you're making decent money. Okay. Type A people can also, create overcomplicated portfolios. They feel as though, okay, well, I'm pretty smart, and I'm really good at this money thing now because I'm optimizing for everything. So I'm going to add in some additional funds. Maybe I'm going to have a 15 fund index fund and ETF portfolio. Or maybe I'm going to add in a bunch of different stocks or some crypto or some other things that are going to be a big portion of my portfolio so that I can beat the market.

Starting point is 00:24:16 I'm going to beat that market. I'm going to be the one that beats the market. And for many of you out there, you could overcomplicate your portfolio because you're overthinking it. You're looking at it too much. Maybe you add in, you know, just a bunch of random sectors, emerging markets, international funds. Then you add in some small cap. You add in some midcap. you add in some large cap on top of all the VTI and the VOO, meaning the total stock market index fund or the S&P 500 index fund. You're just throwing funds at the wall trying to over optimize, over-diversify for what you're actually doing. You can really over-complicate your investing pretty quickly if you do enough stuff like that. Sometimes doing less is way more, especially

Starting point is 00:24:54 when it comes to investing. So I want you to remember that. Doing less is more when it comes to investing. Also, you may spend hours chasing tiny savings. So have you ever seen the extreme couponing show where people on that show are spending 30 hours per week couponing to try to get a free trip to the Dollar General this week? Well, my friends, if you do that and you over-optimized, you may be, or you probably 100% because no type B person would ever do this, you probably are a type A money person. Or if you feel guilty about spending money, you probably could be a type a money person. And that's one of the money traps that you could fall into. Every single time you spend money on yourself, you feel guilty. Every single time you spend money, you know, to go,

Starting point is 00:25:39 maybe you need a new shirt for a wedding. And you go, go buy that new shirt and you just feel guilty for buying that shirt. Or maybe you need a new dress for a wedding or an event. And you go buy that new dress and you just feel guilty about it. You're probably an optimizer. And you're probably just thinking about your money too much, to be honest. And you need to give yourself some relief and some stress relief as you start to think about this. Or maybe you're just trying to find that perfect investment. You're trying to find the perfect place to invest your dollars, which doesn't exist, by the way, and you're just trying to make sure that you could find that perfect investment. Well, let me just tell you right now. That's not the way to do this. So type A people, the last thing I want you to do

Starting point is 00:26:13 is I don't want you to major in the minors. The minor things don't matter. The minor things aren't things that you should be focused on day in and day out all the time. Now, if you like it, I get it. That's fine. That's your personality. I get it. But don't major in the miners without focusing on the real things that actually matter. So what would be the perfect situation or the perfect budget for someone who is type A? What would be the perfect way to develop a spending planner, a way for them to manage their money? Well, a zero based budget is perfect if you are type A, meaning every single dollar that comes in, you give it a job, you give it a place where it needs to go. You give it something that can be assigned somewhere before every single month. Because if you like

Starting point is 00:26:52 the spreadsheets or you like your budgeting apps or you like to make sure that you're in there in the weeds, every single day, a zero-based budget, which I think is great for anybody, by the way, even if you're type B, I think you should be doing a zero-based budget. It is the best overall budget to do. But this is how it works. Let's say, for example, your income comes in and you have $8,000. Well, you decide, okay, well, next month, next week, my mortgage is due. So I'm going to sign some of that money there. And then a week after that my electric bill is due and then I got to have some money for investing I got to have some money for you know my travel fund I got to have some money for you know everything else doesn't matter what it is you know I'm going to sign some money there oh my kids got horseback riding lessons that are going to come

Starting point is 00:27:28 do next in two days I better set up some money aside for that too and so you just kind of compartmentalize all your dollars as they come in and give them a job so here's an example if you have that $8,000 come in you know every dollar gets assigned if your mortgage is $2,500 you put some there If you're investing is $1,500, you put some there. If your groceries, you're $800, you put some there. Travels, 500, fund monies, 400, and everything else gets assigned all the way down until that income, that $8,000 income is down to zero because you assigned it to different categories, meaning you took every dollar and you put it somewhere.

Starting point is 00:28:00 Not because you spent everything, but because every single dollar has a job. It has a place to go and it has a place to compartmentalize. And for type A people, this is not restrictive. This is freeing for them because now they know where that money is going to go. it's not just commingled or sit in their checking account. They know where their dollars are going to go, and it's satisfying for you because you understand now that my money is going to go where it's supposed to go. And that's really what you want. You want your dollars going where they're supposed to go so that you can make sure that it's optimal. It's optimized. You're not having any waste and you can cut that waste out. I love that for you.

Starting point is 00:28:31 I love that for you guys to make sure you have no waste on hand and how you should start to think about this. And so how should someone who is type A focus on optimizing their money? type A people, I'm going to give you a little freedom here. I'm going to give you permission to nerd out. I want you to nerd out. It's part of your personality. In fact, it's going to make you really good at money. You're going to become very, very wealthy if you nerd out with your finances. And if you start to think about this in a way where, hey, if you're going to have some fun in your spreadsheets, you just want to make sure that you set some boundaries around it. Don't be spending 15 hours a week. Don't be spending 20 hours a week on your spreadsheets. Instead, set some boundaries.

Starting point is 00:29:05 Maybe you set some time blocks up where you're working on your money and your finances in a way that makes sense, okay? A lot of type A people are the folks on Reddit, like, here's what I'm doing with my spreadsheets, here's all the things that I need to get done. Here's the da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. No, just chill out and relax a little bit. I'm saying that to help you. I want you to over-optimized, to be honest, because that's what makes, that's what gives you your superpower, is that optimization, but also give yourself a little bit of lack so you're not stressed out all the time. So focusing on the big five, I think, is the area that most of you want to do. It's income, it's housing, it's transportation, it's taxes, and it's

Starting point is 00:29:39 investing. These five areas, if you focus on those five and make sure that you are optimizing for those, you can become very, very wealthy. And these drive the majority of most people's financial decisions. And these are the areas that I think many folks can really benefit from if they focus on those five things. Don't spend three hours trying to save $8 on Netflix when you could be spending that time optimizing with the five. And if you focus on those five, that's where you'll get wealthy. I want you to redirect your superpowers from couponing or finding the cheapest gas. in town or finding, you know, the cheapest way to get subscriptions. And instead, I want you to focus your time and energy on your housing, your transportation, your investing, your taxes, and your income.

Starting point is 00:30:20 Those are the areas I want you to focus on. So, type A, folks, that is what it's like for you. That is what you're saying every single day in life. Now, let's get to type B because I think this is going to be a very different. It's the polar opposite. It's going to be a very different situation for you type B folks. All right, so type B folks, you were going to have these money superpowers that type A does not have whatsoever. And your money superpowers are going to be something that's going to help you live your life and help you enjoy life a little more. You're probably going to be a little less stressed than type A folks will be if you do this right. Now, if you don't do this right, you run the danger of being on a fine line to be extremely financially stressed later on in life if you do not take care of this stuff up front.

Starting point is 00:31:06 all right so often type b folks are less emotionally affected by market fluctuations meaning the market could go down the market could go up and you understand that that's normal that's a very normal thing that's going to happen and you're not worried whatsoever you are less likely to overcomplicate your investments meaning you want the simplest path to get there someone like a j l collins for example who invests in one fund vt i has a investing philosophy that is very very type b dependent. Comfortable with letting just your systems run in place. You set up systems, you let them run and you are a okay with having those systems in place and you are less obsessed with financial perfection. You're like, I don't need to be perfect. I need to be just getting this stuff done.

Starting point is 00:31:51 Done is better than perfect. And I want to make sure that this stuff is moving forward in the right direction and my net worth is growing. My income is increasing. My investments are increasing. That's what you care about is the big ticket number instead of just optimizing for every single penny. You're willing to forego hundreds or thousands of dollars per year so you don't have to spend so much time in the weeds and worrying about some of that stuff. And you're able to enjoy your money without analyzing every single spending decision or every single money decision. Now, here's one thing that you can realize for you type A folks is you could be type A or you could be type B and you could start to develop systems that push you towards the other money personality type. And if you want to be more so like the other money personality type or you want a hybrid methodology, we can talk about that as we start to get through this.

Starting point is 00:32:38 Okay. So type B money traps. These are the things I want you to watch out for. And I want you to focus on because your weakness is over optimization like a type A person. It's neglect. And what I don't want you to do is start neglecting some of these areas of your finances and then a year or two goes by or three years go by. And you realize, oh no, I should have paid more attention to that stuff. So things like missed bills or forgotten subscription.

Starting point is 00:33:01 or not increasing your retirement contributions on a yearly basis because you just don't want to deal with that kind of stuff or think about it. Or you have a bunch of cash piling up that you're really not doing much with. It's just sitting in a savings account. I see that a lot with type B people, interestingly enough, is they just keep saving in a savings account instead of investing their money. And that's a huge problem. Lifestyle creep can be one of those things where you're overly lax about spending and all of a sudden your lifestyle continues to creep up month over month year over a year and all of a sudden you look back and say, oh my goodness, I'm spending three times the amount I was spending just a decade ago. Ignoring things like insurance, like if you didn't evaluate,

Starting point is 00:33:36 if you need umbrella insurance, or if you didn't look at your car insurance and reevaluate, you could save money doing that. And so there's things like that that you could do. Never check in your investment fees, meaning you just do whatever they tell you to do and you don't really care, or avoiding financial decisions because they're boring. That's a big one. And I think for many of you type B folks, sure, money is boring to you or maybe it's a little more boring to you than maybe some type A folks, but you still want to make sure that you're optimizing for some things like that. See, the dangerous phrase for type B people is, I'll deal with it later. And that's not what you want to do. You don't want to deal with things later if you are a type B person. Instead, you want to

Starting point is 00:34:13 make sure that you are just optimizing for this stuff. So what's the perfect way for a type B person to manage their money? Type A, we talked about the zero base budget. Type B people, we want you to reverse budget. The reverse budget means that you save and invest off the top. So you earn money and you save that money off the top. And then you spend what is left over. So let's say, for example, we use the same example as last time where you have $8,000 that you're spending. Okay. You have this $8,000 that you're spending in a given month and you save off the top, whatever percentage you feel as though you need to be saving. So if it's $8,000, you save 20%. That's $1,600 that you put towards your investments. Then all of a sudden everything else, $6,400 that you have left over.

Starting point is 00:34:53 You could spend that on whatever you want. your housing, your food, your transportation, you're eating out, it's all done. You just save it off the top. You spend what is left over. You don't have to spend time in the weeds or optimizing for every transaction or making sure everything is going the right way. I've had people we've coached the reverse budget too who have said to me, this is the best thing I have ever had happened to me in my life. And this is one of those areas that I think for many type B people, this is going to be a light bulb moment for you. You may feel bad inside because you don't budget the way you feel as though you should. And you've tried budgeting all.

Starting point is 00:35:24 over and over and over again. You failed over and over and over again. Well, guess what? The reverse budget is going to solve that problem? Now, is it the most optimized? No, it's not the most optimized, but is it the best overall solution for you to make sure that you're still on top of your money and you're still investing your dollars and you're still saving your dollars? Absolutely. And I think for many type B people, once you realize that the reverse budget is something that you can put into place, it's really, really cool. But here's the other side of this coin is for type B, people. I want you automating every single aspect of your money. And for type A people, I want you to do this as well, but automation will change your life. And for anybody out there listening is going to

Starting point is 00:36:07 change your life. Because think about this for a second. You all of a sudden get paid and payday comes in. Money automatically goes to your 401k. Then money automatically goes to your Roth IRA. Then some money automatically goes to your emergency fund. Well, like, wow, I'm investing. I'm putting money in my emergency fund. I don't have to lift a finger. All of a sudden, your business. You're bills a couple days later are getting auto paid. Your credit card is getting auto paid that was paying your bills. Your sinking funds are getting automatically funded and your remaining money just goes into your spinning account, which is your checking account. All of a sudden everything just kind of works together so you don't have to think about it. That's what money automation does. You set it up once and then

Starting point is 00:36:44 all of a sudden money gets automated over and over and over again. We just did a challenge at Master Money Academy on how to automate your money in one weekend and the people that are doing it are just like, this is amazing. This is the best thing I've ever done. I just checked on my automations. They're all working perfectly. I didn't have to lift a finger. Everything's going where it's supposed to go. This is awesome. And it is because all the sudden you can do things like making sure your dollars are going to the right places that you want them to go without actually having to lift a finger, without having to dive deep into spreadsheets and budgets. But instead, it just goes where you want it to go. So every single person who is interested in automating your money, I mean, check out Master Money Academy

Starting point is 00:37:21 me if you have not already. It'll be linked up down below. But we have a full course in there. We have the live classes in that we just did that you can check out on how to automate your money if you haven't done so already. All right. But type B still need something. Even if you automate your money, even if you do a reverse budget, you still need to check in on your money every now and then. So I would recommend a couple of different things. One is making sure you have a money check in. If you do this with a spouse or if you're married or you have a partner or whatever else, I would make sure that I do this with my spouse or at least have one person be. the person who is identified as the check-in person. And the other person at least is just going to

Starting point is 00:37:56 understand kind of where your money was going. But you want to check things like your account balances for 10 to 20 minutes a month. You want to check your credit cards, your upcoming expenses that are coming up, your savings goals, your investment contributions, and anything else that you want to make sure that's just checking off your list. Just really quickly. It doesn't have to be anything crazy. Do it on the day where you feel like you know you're the most relaxed and you can get in there and check it for 10 minutes every month. Our automations, we usually want to check for about 10 to 20 minutes and kind of go from there. Then on the quarterly basis, you could check your net worth, your savings rate, making sure your

Starting point is 00:38:30 contributions are going where they should go, making sure your subscription and fees aren't crazy, and then just doing an insurance coverage auto where you can save some money there. You do those two blocks of check-ins, all of a sudden everything gets easy for you. You don't have to spend hours and hours every month on your investments or everything else. It should all be going to the place that you want to go. this is what I want you to know for type B people is there's ways that I want you to do the reverse budget and I want you to automate your money. Those are the two things that you can do. Now type A people may be looking down at type B and say, that sounds actually pretty awesome. Well, if you're type A and you want to

Starting point is 00:39:01 try it out, it's worth testing because it's a much better life than spending all of your days and spreadsheets. But for most of my type A people, I know you like your spreadsheets, just like I had for a long time. So I think for many of you, it's just going to depend on your personality type, which is why we're doing this episode. So how should each type of personality invest? We're going to talk about that next. My relationship with money has changed a lot over the years. Early on, I thought building wealth was about making more money. Now, I know it's really about having clarity.

Starting point is 00:39:31 When you know exactly where your money is going and whether you're on track, you make better decisions. That's one of the reasons I love Monarch. It's the personal finance app that tracks everything from your accounts and investments to your savings, goals, and spending. So you can see your entire financial picture in one place. One habit that's made a huge difference for me is my five minute drill every single morning. I open Monarch, check my spending, investments, cash flow, and net worth, and I'm done in just a few minutes.

Starting point is 00:40:00 It gives me confidence that nothing is slipping through the cracks. I also love the AI Weekly Recap because it'll flag spending changes, upcoming expenses, or shifts in my net worth before they become a problem. Instead of reacting after the fact, I can make adjustments early. It really feels like having a financial advisor in your pocket. It's pocket. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code pfp at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code PFP. It's kind of amazing how much can change in just a single year. Every summer, the kids are a little bigger, a little more independent, and life looks a little different than it did the year before.

Starting point is 00:40:44 And it reminds me that while we can't predict the future, we can prepare for it. That's one of the reasons I like PolicyGenius. See, PolicyGenius isn't an insurance company. They're an online marketplace that lets you compare life insurance quotes from some of America's top insurers side by side for free. And their licensed team helps you compare coverage, prices, and terms, answers your questions and even handles the paperwork so you can get the right policy without the hassle. For me, having life insurance.

Starting point is 00:41:14 isn't about expecting something to happen. It's about knowing my family is protected so I can actually enjoy these moments together instead of worrying about what comes next. And with PolicyGenius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies, starting at just $276 a year for $1 million of coverage. Head to PolicyGenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's policygenius.com. All right, first, let's talk about type A. I think type A, your danger when it comes to investing is going to be complexity. You might want to have something like a VOO plus a QQM plus an SCHD plus a AVUA plus 11 individual stocks, which is completely fine if those holdings are rational and they're part of your plan. But here's what I want you to do is I want

Starting point is 00:42:03 you to develop your own personal guardrails when it comes to investing. So I want you to put a portfolio in place and an investing policy in place, meaning you want to have a written investment plan on what you're going to do. And here's the questions I want you to answer type A, folks. What is your target allocation? What are you trying to get to? What's your asset allocation, meaning the mix of stocks and bonds in that portfolio?

Starting point is 00:42:26 What allocation should you have on hand? Should you have 80% stocks, 20% bonds? Should you have 90% stocks, 10% bonds? Should you have 100% stocks? And of those stocks, what types of stocks? Is it going to be a total market fund and an international fund? Are you going to add in some emerging markets?

Starting point is 00:42:43 But you want to answer those questions. Okay. Secondly, is when and how does your portfolio get rebalanced? Because type A, folks, you're going to want to rebalance your portfolio. I know you. I know how your personality is. I know what you like. And you're going to want to rebalance that portfolio to make it sure it's on hand. Third, under what conditions are changes allowed? How do you decide when changes are allowed? And what should they be? I want you to write this out. And then I want you to give a list of things you would never do. One is panic sell. Two, things like chase a high. sector. Three, timing the market. Make a list of things you will never do so that you can stay on track

Starting point is 00:43:22 when it comes to your investment plan. Okay. So it's really, really important. Once you understand this and once you have this written out, then you come up with a rule change only happens to the policy, but it does not happen to your portfolio on a whim. And you want to make sure that you have all of this written out so that you create these guardrails for yourself. So you're not just over optimizing and adding all these additional funds. Okay. Now for type B, people when it comes to investing, I want you to make it as simple as possible. You can potentially look at things like target date with index funds. Those are wonderful for type B people. You can do a simplified investment portfolio. A Warren Buffett portfolio, for example, is a wonderful

Starting point is 00:43:59 portfolio. The simple path to wealth portfolio is wonderful for people who are type B folks. A3 fund portfolio is wonderful for people who are type B folks. And in fact, robo advisors are great for people who are type B or a financial advisor, who is a low-cost financial advisor and a fiduciary. All of those are really, really helpful for type B people so you don't have to think about it. You can automate those contributions and make sure that you are looking at what's going on. And a target date fund can handle those allocations. It can help you through the process. It can help you rebalance.

Starting point is 00:44:30 It could give you a glide path. So you don't have to worry about any of that stuff. It does it all for you. So the best portfolio isn't always mathematically, you know, the perfect portfolio. It's the portfolio that you're going to consistently stick to. and you're going to constantly just automatically be investing every single month. Same amount every single month. That's your goal type B folks.

Starting point is 00:44:47 Same amount every single month in a low cost portfolio, preferably like an index portfolio, an ETF portfolio, something like that where it's low cost and you can decide what works for you. So understanding a couple of different things up front, understanding, hey, what's your investment plan? How are you going to automate it in there? And then understanding also long term that you're just going to invest consistently the same amount every single year.

Starting point is 00:45:09 You're going to increase that amount on a yearly basis for the that you can keep up with inflation and outpace inflation. And every time you get a raise, you're just going to keep increasing the amount. If you do that, you'll become very wealthy without even having to think much about it. But you've got to understand what you're investing in and you've got to have a plan in place before you get started. Now, how should each money personality think about spending money? So that's investing, but how should they think about spending money? Well, type A a lot of times needs permission to spend.

Starting point is 00:45:33 They need to think about their savings goals and everything else. And they need to give themselves permission to spend a little more. So I want type A people to create a couple different categories to get started. First, I want you to create a fund money category. A blow fund is what I like to call it here. And it's the fund that allows you and your spouse and whoever else to spend money and blow it on yourselves. Make sure you compartmentalize or separate it if there's more than one person in the household who is going to be spending. And do that that way.

Starting point is 00:45:59 Secondly, I want you to create a vacation fund. And I want you to start contributing money to that vacation fund and making sure that you're on top of it. three, I want you to create a guilt-free spending as a family, meaning you go out and you could spend guilt-free without worrying, without stress, you don't care how much this money. You should blow that whole entire fund every single month. The whole thing goes for your family. And then number four is plan splurges. So long-term, you probably want to plan out your splurges, and I love that for you.

Starting point is 00:46:25 I love that for me too, where if you want to spend a lot of money on something, you start to plan it out ahead of time and make sure that you are saving for that. And I think everybody should do this, is let's say. say you want to buy a boat. Well, you decide, okay, well, a boat's going to cost me $20,000 or $30,000. And so you start to set aside X amount of dollars over the course the next five years so that you can buy that boat. Awesome. That's what I want for everyone so that you can make sure that you have this in place. Now, for a type B person, if you're trying to figure out how to spend properly, you need some sort of spending planner, need some sort of just restriction parameters, guard rails in place so that

Starting point is 00:47:01 you don't overspend in one different category. So having separate spending accounts from all the rest of your accounts can be helpful. And then you give yourself a weekly discretionary amount so that you can just spend X amount of dollars. And then you just automate all your transfers everywhere and make sure all your bills are on auto pay. Your credit card limits are set and you have these alerts in place. And then give yourself some of the rules like the 24 hour rule, for example, before you make a purchase, because a lot of you will make a purchase on a whim. Make sure you have a cooling off period, like 24 hours before to make sure you really want that item, especially if it's over 100 or 500 bucks, making sure that you are thinking about it before you just buy,

Starting point is 00:47:36 something is really, really important. Now, here's a big question that I think a lot of people are going to have. How can couples with opposite money personalities manage money together? Because this is usually what happens in a lot of relationships. One person is the type A person and the other person is the type B person and they get married because opposites attract and all of a sudden you begin to clash with your partner or clash with your spouse because these different personalities are clashing together. Type A says you don't care about our finance. is I can't believe you won't even talk to me about this or you won't think about this. And type B says, all you ever want to talk about is your money.

Starting point is 00:48:13 All you ever want to talk about is money with me. I want to talk about fun stuff. I want to talk about other things that I want to do on hand. And neither person is necessarily correct. But type B usually does care about the outcomes. I want you type A folks to know this. And type A usually just wants to care about the process that gets them to the outcome. And then they also care about the outcomes.

Starting point is 00:48:33 So here's what I would say is if you have a. hosing personalities in the same household. Type A gets the visibility, meaning they are the person who is working on the visibility of your systems in place. If you're going to a deep budget, they get visibility. And you're the person who creates the dashboards or whatever else. Do it to your heart's extent.

Starting point is 00:48:52 But simplify it for the type B person. Type B gets simplicity to make the system very, very simple for them. You set it all up and they get the simplified version so that you can both agree on things. Now, both of you need to agree on savings rate, you need to agree on spending boundaries. You need to agree on major goals, major life goals. You need to do this together as a team.

Starting point is 00:49:11 You need to agree on large purchases and you need to have a monthly money meeting. But the monthly money meeting for the type B person doesn't have to be this boring thing. Go out and get yourself a glass of wine or get yourself, you know, a nice bowl of ice cream or whatever your, whatever floats your boat. And then get together and make this fun. Type A, let's not bring out the spreadsheets right away. Let's talk about the end goals. Let's talk about, have a conversation about what's going to happen. Talk about the dreams.

Starting point is 00:49:33 Talk about the outcomes. what type B wants to hear, okay? Then you can get into some of the nitty gritty or the numbers as you start to think about the big goals. Don't force type B spouse to maintain a 47 page spreadsheet. Instead, you want to make sure type A that you're making it easy for them and that's how this is going to work. Hey, sometimes in relationships it's 75, 25, 25. It's not 50, 50 almost ever. And so type A, since you are that way and you want this outcome to work out well and type B also wants this outcome to work out well, give a little more. You're just going to have to give a little more.

Starting point is 00:50:05 That's part of the name of the game. And once you feel good about that, and once you release the frustration that you're doing all the work, all of a sudden it's going to get a lot easier for you. I promise you. It's not a big deal. Type B probably does more work in other areas, okay?

Starting point is 00:50:18 Now, what about a hybrid system? What if you're a little bit of both? Type A, manual, type B is automated. That's kind of how we've seen, kind of talk through this as we've gone on here up front. But that's not always right. I think you can automate as a type A person and really get down and optimize all the way down to the penny.

Starting point is 00:50:35 In fact, that's what we do in Master Money Academy. I think you could be someone who kind of enjoys spreadsheets as a type B person and still be a type B person. But you got to figure out what you are doing and how you're thinking about this. So if you are a hybrid methodology, pick out the things that work best for you, but make sure you're covering all the major areas so that you're on top of this stuff. If you are type A with your budget, but type B with your spending, great. if you're type B with your budget, but type A with the way that you want to spend your money and you want to optimize, great.

Starting point is 00:51:06 But identify that for yourself and then create a hybrid system that works for you. So here's what I want to hear from every single person out there is if you are type A, I want you to let me know down below and why. If you say, hey, I'm type A because I love spreadsheets and I love to optimize and I want to squeeze every dollar towards the place. Let me know in the comments down below on Spotify or YouTube or Apple Podcast or wherever else you listen. or if you're type B, tell me that and let me know why. I want to hear from every single one of you. We might read some of these comments on a future episodes. I would love to hear from each and every single one of you, which one you are.

Starting point is 00:51:44 And if you're in Master Money Academy, let me know which one you are. And if you want help on something, please let me know inside Master Money Academy. And I will help you through whatever you need to know because I would really, really appreciate you guys and want to dive deeper into that. We'll probably do some stuff, by the way, Master Money Academy members on this so that you can help identify that money personality, which one you are if you're still struggling with it. So let me know down below which one you are. Listen, I hope you got a ton of value out of this episode. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you. Again, if some of you want to work

Starting point is 00:52:12 with me one on one, let me know, shoot me an email. There will also be a link down below that you can fill out a form. You have to apply to get in. But if you do want to work with me, let me know, shoot me an email and I will get back to you with some more information on that. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you. Thank you so much for being here. I hope this gave you freedom. I hope this was freeing for you so that you understand, oh, that's who I am. I'm a type B person or oh, that feels so much better than I'm type A. And now that I know that, I can make some different decisions because that was freeing for me and it was super helpful for me to understand exactly where I stood. So thank you guys so much for being here. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you

Starting point is 00:52:53 and we will see you on the next episode. And make sure to share this with a family member or friend. Truly appreciate it. Bye.

The Personal Finance Podcast - Type A vs. Type B Money Personality: Which one are you?

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