52 Tiny Improvements in 2026 [GREATEST HITS]

29:02It's a dedicated account for guilt-free spending because you know who you are. Many of you who are listening to this have pendulum swung a little too hard in the opposite direction where you're so into savings that it's hard for you to part with money and making sure you set aside money in a savings account that is specifically for enjoying now. That's what's going to keep you going long-term. Week 16, you're going to put together a charitable giving strategy because if you're randomly giving here and there, that can either lead to overspending or missing opportunities to support causes that you care about.

29:41Sitting down and creating a thoughtful giving strategy will make sure that your donations align with your values and align with your capacity to give. So here's where you're going to decide. Are you going to make monthly donations? Are you going to do a lump sum at the end of the year? What percentage of your income are you going to give? Is it going to be a percentage or is it going to be a raw dollar number? which specific organizations do you want to give to. You're going to make all of those decisions in week 16. Week 17, you're going to decide how you want to invest in professional development.

30:15One of the highest return investments that you can make is building out your skill set. And so sitting down and writing out a comprehensive plan for the year, it doesn't have to be as serious as I'm making it sound. This can be one page in a notebook that you jot down of courses that you want to take, workshops that you want to go to, trainings you want to attend, conferences you want to go to. But sit down, make a plan, make it thoughtful, write it out. Be conscious about it. That's your week 17 task. Week 18 is to create an emergency medical expense plan. Do you have enough money set aside to meet your deductible and your co-pays?

30:54Like if you had to pay your entire or out-of-pocket maximum, could you do it? Is there enough in your HSA for that to happen if you have an HSA? Or do you have enough in an emergency fund or in some type of liquid savings that you would be able to hit that annual out-of-pocket maximum? Do you even know what your annual out-of-pocket maximum is? These are the questions that we're gonna cover in week 18. This entire guide, just as a reminder, you can download at affordanything.com slash financialgoals. It's completely free. every single one of these weeks is mapped out. And I'm giving a high-level overview in this episode, but if you download the guide, there's a lot more detail, including bullet points for specifically the things you should be checking.

31:41All of that is available at our free guide, affordanything.com slash financial goals. All right, week 19. We've been very practical for the last five weeks. So now week 19, we're switching into your financial mindset. This is the week where you're replacing I can't with I choose not to. It's a shift in mindset where you rephrase limiting language into empowering choices. So it's not I can't afford that. It's I choose not to spend money on that. Week 20, we're going practical again. You're reviewing your tax withholding. How much tax are you having withheld from your paycheck? Does that need to be adjusted?

32:20We've linked in the guide to the IRS tax withholding estimator tool, which you can use to check to see if you're on track. Week 21, you're boosting your savings again. Remember how earlier you boosted your savings by 1%, which is$10 per every$1 ,000 of monthly income? Week 21, you're going to do it again. And by the way, in this context, when I say savings, I'm referring to anything that improves your net worth. So this could be additional payments that you're making towards a debt. This could be money you're putting into a retirement account. It could be literal savings in a savings account, any net worth improvement is what I mean when I say save or savings in this context.

33:02So you already increased it by 1 % earlier. Now you're doing one more percent on top of that. Week 22, you're drafting an estate plan. This is one of the more time-consuming ones. And of course, you don't have to finish the whole thing this week, but take the first step towards creating an estate plan, whether that's through an online service or through a consultation with an estate attorney. Week 23. Here's where you think critically about the question of the side hustle. If you do not have a side hustle, is it worth your time to start one or is it a better use of your time to focus on your primary occupation?

33:41Remember, there are three types of side hustles. First, there's gig work like driving for DoorDash. It offers immediate income, but it's capped in terms of its upside. I don't recommend that most people go this route, at least not long-term. If you're a student, fine, but don't stay at this stage forever. The second type of side hustle revolves around skill-based services where you leverage existing expertise like programming, design, copywriting. You're trading your time for money, but you're doing so in a manner that gives you a healthy hourly rate because you are leveraging some skill or expertise that you have.

34:20And then the third type of side hustle is the one in which you sell some type of scalable product. So you're not directly trading your time for money. You're selling a product, whether that product is digital or physical. And therefore, this is a side hustle that is infinitely scalable. So if you don't have a side hustle yet, your first question is, is it worth your time to start one or are you better off focusing on your primary occupation? That's going to depend on the type of career that you've chosen. The second question is, if you do have a side hustle, which of these three is it? The three types that I described, is it gig work?

34:55Is it skills-based or is it a scalable product? And how do you ascend up that ladder such that you can make your side hustle scalable? That evaluation is your week 23 focus. In week 24, you're planning some financial self-care, some budget-friendly self-care habit. It could be taking an Epsom salt bath. It could be spending an hour at the library. It could be taking a long walk. It could be spending five minutes every morning doing stretching and mobility work on the floor of your bedroom. It doesn't need to be expensive. This type of healthy activity, building that into your routine, has huge ramifications, not just on your health, but also on your wealth.

35:38So pick something that's either free or under 10 bucks and schedule it as a weekly or monthly or daily commitment. Week 25, you're going to learn one new financial term. You know, the world of finance has a lot of jargon. You're going to learn one new word this week. By the way, this is where community comes in. So inside of the Afford Anything community in the One Tweak a Week community, I'm excited for us to get to week 25 because I'm hoping this is where the forums blow up and everyone starts sharing their most obscure financial words. Because it's fun, but also when you give a word to something, you develop a more firm concept of it in your mind.

36:17So for example, point-in-time analysis. I don't even have to explain what that means. You probably contextually can pick up what that means just based on what it's called. But unless you have that phrase, unless you know the the phrase of running a point-in-time analysis, you might not crystallize the concept in your mind. That's why these learning financial terminology or financial phrases, that's why it matters because the act of doing so crystallizes concepts. Okay, week 26, we're midway through the year at this point, and we're going to create a price tracking system, an organized system to monitor price variations.

36:57Because many of the things we buy have fluctuating prices. I mean, the grocery store being the most obvious example. Tracking these prices can be as simple as taking a picture or a screenshot and then using on iPhone the add to album feature, or if you're Android, Google Photos album feature, to just assemble a folder where you're tracking through photos and screenshots the prices of certain grocery staples. Do that for a while and then you can look back and get a sense of, wait a second, so is this a good price or a bad price or a normal price relative to what I usually see? It's hard to store that stuff in your head, but by saving screenshots, you can use the system to identify the best stores or the best times to shop.

37:44Week 27, you're going to do the same thing, but now you're going to expand it to monitor the difference between delivery versus in-store pricing. You're also going to calculate the real savings of bulk purchases, worth it or not. Especially if you live in kind of a smaller footprint where square footage is at a premium, there comes a point where you have to decide. You know, you can't simultaneously live in a smaller footprint and buy in bulk, right? Sometimes frugal advice contradicts each other. Like, oh, live in a tiny home and shop at Costco, right? Like you hear that on the frugal threads all the time.

38:19And those two items are just not compatible. You can't live in postage stamp square footage while also buying in bulk. So let's actually run a spreadsheet on these things and see how much one comparison tracks to another. Same thing with delivery versus in-store pricing. This can go either way. It might be that you calculate the cost of delivery because remember, it isn't just the delivery cost. It's also that individual items that you purchase cost more. Eggs, milk, these things sometimes have a higher cost if you're getting them delivered in addition to the delivery fee. But maybe you run the numbers and you figure out exactly how much more it costs and your conclusion is, yeah, that's absolutely worth the time savings.

39:05I am going to pay that amount because it is worth my time to pay somebody else to do that. So I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying run the numbers so you know exactly how much it costs so that you can make an informed decision by looking at that delta in cost and asking yourself based on what you earn, is it worth it or not? This is also why we're evaluating our side hustle because we want to know what's the opportunity cost. How much are we pulling in from that side hustle? What is the cost of spending that hour buying groceries instead of growing something scalable? Here's how we apply a layer of math, of just basic math, to this decision making.

39:49Week 28, we're checking our tire pressure. Why? Because it improves fuel efficiency, plus it extends the tire life, plus it's safer. Week 29, we're raising the thermostat again, especially if you didn't do this in the spring. because week 29, we're now in the heat of summer. So you're going to optimize your cooling costs by slightly increasing that thermostat setting. According to the Department of Energy, you'll save about 3 % on your cooling bill for each degree that you raise your thermostat. Week 30, if you work from home, even if you hybrid work from home a few days a week, calculate how much money you're saving by virtue of working from home in terms of the savings on transportation costs, gas, parking, vehicle wear and tear, the savings on not buying lunch out, the savings on needing fewer office clothes, less dry cleaning.

40:41Try to get some sort of framework, some set of numbers around this. Even if it's a rough guesstimate, just make a reasonable estimate of what this number is and then siphon it into a savings account. Now, be intentional with what the alternate use of that money is going to be. That's week 30. Week 31. Plan for your annual and seasonal expenses, meaning your irregular expenses, because there are certain things that happen either annually or semi-annually, but they're not monthly bills and so often people don't plan for them. This could be holiday gifts, annual subscriptions, seasonal clothing purchases, insurance premiums that are paid annually, travel funds, birthday gifts.

41:29Make a list of these annual or semi-annual expenses and then divide by 12 to figure out what this is costing you every month and then set up automatic monthly transfers to a dedicated account that proactively plans for these expenses, these predictable but irregular expenses. Week 32, build a price shock fund. And there are those moments when prices just spike. Remember, you've seen the volatility in food. I think groceries, again, are the most obvious example where suddenly the price of eggs or the price of beef or the price of gas going away from food, there are times when these prices just spike.

42:13So take a look at the last few months worth of bills. Look at the difference in what you spent on groceries over the last, you know, January through now. What was your monthly grocery bill in January, in February, in March, in April? Look at that variation. Take the highest number. Compare that highest number to whatever you're spending right now. And whatever that difference is, put it into your price shock fund and do this for those variable necessities, right? In fact, if you did this for just groceries and gas, just those two items alone, if you always planned to spend whatever that highest threshold is, and then in the months that it goes lower, you siphon off the difference, you now have a buffer to accommodate for those higher priced months.

42:59That's week 32. Week 33, you're going to automate your financial goals. Automation isn't just for paying bills. It's also for making progress towards your financial priorities, Savings, debt payoff, retirement. So set up automatic transfers into these, or if you've already done so, which I hope you have, adjust your automation to align with any changes, either in your priorities or changes in your budget, right? Automation is not set it and forget it forever. Automation is set it and forget it until it's time to do a periodic check-in, you know, a routine maintenance check-in. Week 34. Remember that 1 % challenge we talked about in which you increase your savings by$10 per every$1 ,000 that you make?

43:45Week 34, you're boosting it by one additional percent. So let's say that you make$8 ,000 a month, right? The first time you did this, you began routinely saving an extra$80 a month. Second time, now you're up to$120. Third time, now you're up to$240. but you did it in 1 % increments spread out over the span of a total of 34 weeks. So you had time to adjust to it. You had time to get used to missing that money. And this is how incremental changes add up. If for the people who make$8 ,000 a month, if I had said at the beginning, save an extra$240 a month, many of you would have been like, man, I don't know where that's going to come from.

44:29But if you do it in stages, if you do it in 1 % increments over time, it doesn't feel quite so taxing. Week 35, you're going to clean up your financial digital footprint. How many financial apps do you have on your phone? Let's clean that up because I bet you've got some apps that you're not using. How many subscriptions do you have to various financial services or really to anything? Let's clean that up because I bet there's a few you're not using there. You also have accounts not just that might be costing you money, but also that might be creating security vulnerabilities. So let's review and update authorized users on all of your accounts.

45:08Let's create a master spreadsheet for all your digital financial tools. Let's use a secure password manager for all of your login information and make sure that you have a different password on every account. That's what you're going to review in week 35. Next up is week 36. you're going to create a financial self-care day. We already talked about self-care for your own mental well-being, that five minutes of stretching that you do every morning. Now we're switching focus to your financial well-being. So choose a consistent time, maybe every Friday morning over coffee. This is financial Friday.

45:45You're gonna use this time to review your accounts, to track your goals, to plan for upcoming expenses. you're going to create a weekly habit for a money check-in. This is going to become part of your routine. Financial Fridays I like because it has a nice ring to it. Paula, pant, afford anything. I'm obviously into alliteration. Financial Friday. It's going to be the one day a week, the dedicated day of the week, where you make sure that no matter what else is going on in your life, Financial Friday, you hit pause, you review your accounts, you take stock of what's going on, you review the week that just passed, you plan for the week ahead.

46:25This is now a part of your weekly routine. Week 37, you're going to replace another disposable product with a reusable one. Remember we did this earlier in the year, and we're now going to build on that earlier switch. Find one thing, one item, something that fits naturally into your routine, where you can swap out disposable for reusable. Maybe you start using a mesh coffee filter instead of the paper ones. It's such a small thing, but that's a recurring expense that you now no longer have to pay. Week 38, you're going to safeguard your career. Job markets evolve quickly, and it's your responsibility to look five years ahead in your industry and be proactive about staying on top of changes.

47:16What are the ways in which emerging technologies are affecting your field? Where is the industry headed? What skills do you need to have? What relationships do you need to have? This is a week where you're going to shift your focus onto being proactive about skills, certifications, courses, relationships, professional organizations, about what is it that you need in order to stay ahead of the curve in your career. What's nice about the one tweak a week framework is when I say something, you know, okay, stay ahead of the curve. That's a lifelong practice. It's not a checkbox one and done deal. But by virtue of having the structure of one thing that we do each week, one thing that we just check in on, it provides us with a reminder.

48:07Staying sharp in your career, staying current in your career, it's a lifetime practice, but it's nice to have a little check-in, a little reminder that says, hey, I know life is busy. I know you're thinking about a thousand things right now, but let me give you a little reminder. Are you thinking about this? We do this, you know, week 38, that reminder is about staying current in your career, but in a different week, that reminder is about cybersecurity. and how protected is your digital footprint. And in a different week, that reminder is about estate planning. And in a different week, that reminder is about making sure you can meet your medical deductible, your health insurance deductible.

48:49There are so many things that we need to monitor in our adult life. It's nice to just have a framework that gives us a reminder that in the cacophony of life, Let's not forget about these things that are important, even in the moments when those important things are not urgent. That's part of the beauty of One Tweak a Week. Up next, we're going to share the final 14 tips. But before we do, remember, you can download a comprehensive explainer of all of these with much more detail and bullet points and checklists. You can keep this to refer back to it by going to affordanything.com slash financial goals.

49:35You can download this for free and follow along all year long. Join the community. Chat with other people in the community about how to incorporate these tweaks into your life. Which of these are the most helpful? Which of these are not? Because not everyone is going to be equally helpful. Which of these do you have added questions about? which of these are really easy and which of these are a little bit more daunting. You can chat with the community. You can get a guide to walk you through all of this, and it's all completely free. Affordanything.com slash financial goals. Up next, let's talk about the final 14 tweaks.

50:25Welcome to week 39. It's now late September and in most parts of the country, the weather is starting to get cool. So now, as winter approaches, it's time to adjust your thermostat down one degree from your usual setting. Start with a small change. At night when you're sleeping under blankets, during the day keep warm with layers, and plus it's September so it's not, for most of you, not that cold just yet. which makes this a perfect time to start adjusting to keeping a slightly cooler home. Week 40. Calculate your true transportation costs. What is the actual cost of owning and using your vehicle?

51:05What are the monthly payments? What's the insurance? What are your average fuel costs? What about maintenance, repairs, parking fees, tolls? And once you calculate this number, compare it against alternatives. like electric vehicles, car sharing services, public transit. Obviously, the viability of these options is going to vary wildly depending on what part of the country you live in. A lot of places are totally car dependent. I grew up in Cincinnati. It's an enormously car dependent city. You really reasonably don't have any other option. But if you live in a city in which you do have other options, then why not math out the delta in prices?

51:49Because here's the thing, if you live in a city with other options, then you probably live in a high cost of living city. And one of the major complaints about high cost of living cities is, obviously, the rent is high, slash mortgages are high. But one of the ways that you can offset that is by keeping your transportation costs low. Because in high cost cities, you often are less car dependent. So the way I think about the cost of living is not what is the rent or mortgage in a vacuum, but rather what's the rent or mortgage combined with necessary or mandatory transportation costs. When I lived in Las Vegas, I needed a car.

52:27Now that I live in New York, I walk or bike or take the subway pretty much everywhere. The exception is if it's very late at night, I will take an Uber or Lyft, but it's rare that I'm out that late. The other exception is if I'm carrying some type of cargo, I'll take an Uber or Lyft for that. But otherwise, getting from point A to point B is either free because I'm walking or it's less than three bucks because I'm renting a bike or taking the subway, which means my transportation costs are usually less than$100 a month in total. that's with everything combined. And if you compare that to the cost of owning a car, plus insurance, plus fuel, plus depreciation, plus repairs and maintenance, parking fees, tolls, I mean, the savings are substantial.

53:21And it dramatically helps offset some of the other increased costs. So get clear on what your transportation is costing you. That is week 40. Week 41. Map out your big ticket items for the next five years. And you're going to break this down into three clear categories. First, list your definite big ticket expenses. You know that at some point in the next five years, you're going to replace your phone. Heck, you might even do that two or three times in the next five years. Replacing your phone somewhere between one to three times over the span of the next five years, that's not a question. That's a certainty.

54:06Map that out. That's one category, the absolute certainties of the next five years. Then you've got the second category, which are highly likely expenses. If you own your home and you know that that roof is 25 years old, it's likely that in the next five years you're going to have to replace it. You might, if you're lucky, get to eek a couple extra years out of it, but there's a decent chance that bill is coming due soon. If you drive a car, how soon do you think you'll need to replace it? Will that be in the next five years? What about your dishwasher? What about your fridge, washer, dryer? What about all your major appliances?

54:47When are they going to need to be replaced? How about your laptop? So that's the second category. And then the third category of big ticket items are potential expenses like moving to a new city. Maybe there's a goal like that, something like moving to a new city that's in the back of your mind. You think that you might want to do it in the medium term future. It's not something that you want to do imminently, but you can see the potential that it might happen in the next five years. So mapping out your major expenses over the next five years, it's a forward-looking approach that helps prevent financial surprises.

55:28If you have that timeline, you can prepare in advance. Week 42, review the expense ratios on your investment funds. High fees eat into your returns over time. And if you're in the financial independence community, you know this. And you probably, if you invest in passively managed index funds, You probably have very reasonable fees on your funds. But if you're new to this arena or if you used to have high fee actively managed mutual funds before you found the financial independence space, well, take a look at what you've got. Take a look at what you're paying and make sure that you're not paying excessively high fees.

56:10Week 43, make sure you're maximizing all your workplace benefits. Obviously, as we all know, you should be getting your full retirement match, a 401k match, for example. But you probably have other benefits that you might not even know about. Maybe your workplace offers technology allowances or a home office setup fund or mental health benefits or remote work stipends. Take a look at what your workplace offers because there might be benefits that you're not even aware of. Also, set calendar reminders for any benefits that have deadlines, like FSA contributions. FSAs, remember, are use it or lose it, as opposed to HSAs, which are not.

56:53Week 44. Take inventory of all of your interest-bearing accounts. You probably have multiple high-yield savings accounts. What are they paying? I mean, this is variable, right? These things change constantly. So even if you had a great grasp of it a few months ago, things have changed. What are all of your savings accounts paying and where should you be consolidating your savings? Now, I'm not saying that you should waste your Saturday chasing yield, but for one hour a year, it's not a bad idea to sit down and take a look at the yield on all of your savings accounts to make sure that your funds are living in higher earning accounts where possible.

57:36Week 45, run the numbers on your housing options. Housing is, for most people, their single biggest expense. So it's worth building into your routine, again, one hour per year, just one hour per year of taking stock, having a heart-to-heart with your spouse or partner, and asking yourselves, are we satisfied with where we live? Do we want to downgrade? Do we want to house hack? Let's take one hour a year to question our assumptions and just check back in with ourselves about this. Is the juice worth the squeeze? Are we happy with what we're getting for what we're paying? Is this aligned with our priorities?

58:24So that's week 45. And in week 46, we're going to boost our savings rate for the fourth and final time. That's another$10 per every thousand dollars that we make. You'll notice that we've now done this quarterly. The 1 % challenge in which we increase our savings rate by 1 % a year. We've built this in to one tweak a week such that quarterly, there's another boost. That means that over the span of the year, we've now increased our savings rate by an additional 4%, but we've done it in quarterly increments. So it doesn't feel that bad. We have a few months to get used to it before we make the next shift.

59:06Let's say that your take-home pay is$96 ,000 a year. That means you're taking home $8 ,000 a month. If you've taken this challenge, you've increased your savings by$80, then$160, then$240, and now$320. So at this stage of the game, you're saving an extra$320 a month above and beyond what you were saving at the beginning of 2025. And because you made the adjustment in quarterly increments, you had time to get used to it. And if you just freeze here, Let's say that you don't increase your savings rate anymore. You just keep up with this. You're now saving an extra$38.40 per year. Extra above and beyond what you were already saving.

59:55Those types of adjustments, particularly if you're putting that money into accounts that are invested and compound, make a massive difference. And so that is the beauty of week number 46. Week 47. I want you to go revisit that variable food cost system. Remember the three biggest expenses that a person has are housing, transportation, and food. And of those big three items, food is the most variable. That's why we spend so much time focusing on the price of food, focusing on how to manage the price shocks that come with groceries, which is something we've experienced quite a lot of, particularly in recent years.

1:00:37If you know how food prices fluctuate in the places where you typically shop, you can maintain a stock-up list for shelf-stable items that frequently go on sale. And remember, anytime that you're spending less than your highest spending month, you're still transferring that difference to your price shock fund. So checking back in with that grocery store volatility so that you can manage the most variable of the big three items, that's week 47. Week 48, I want you to set a challenge for yourself. And this is going to be a micro savings challenge. Choose something small but meaningful. A small amount over a small period of time.

1:01:19Maybe you take a 30-day break from buying lunch out while you're at work. I'm not saying forever. I'm saying just take a 30-day break. It's a detox. After a month, you can go back to it. But just for a month, take that little detox, break the unconscious habit of doing it without thinking, and then bank the savings that come with it. So this little 30-day micro-savings goal, that's what you're going to put in place in week 48. Week 49, you're going to take another look at your home, particularly in your kitchen and bathroom, and find another disposable item that you can replace. At this stage, you've already made two sustainable switches.

1:02:02It's time for just one more. So you see what we're doing here is over the span of a year, we're swapping out three items. So a reasonable number of items. We're taking our time. We're pacing ourselves, right? We're incorporating sustainability into our lives at a sustainable pace. but by virtue of no longer having the recurring cost of using these disposable items, we're building bigger savings into our lifestyle. And we're doing so just one step at a time, one tweak at a time, one swap out at a time. Week 50, create a plan for handling market uncertainty. One of the major ways that people mess up their own investments is by panic selling.

1:02:54So set clear rules for when you'll invest, when you'll make changes. Set that investor policy statement for yourself. Write it down. Have it written somewhere so that when you're in a highly charged emotional moment, when you're starting to worry about what's happening in the markets, you'll be able to look back on what you wrote in these calmer, more clear-headed moments and just know your plan, stick to your plan, trust the process. So writing that out, that's what you're doing in week 50. Week 51, repeat your favorite tweak from a previous week. This is another week in which I think the community will have some really fun stories, I hope, in the forums where I want to hear from you what's been your favorite tweak.

1:03:47What made the biggest impact? What felt the most satisfying to complete? What worked best for you? Because the most effective financial habits come from repeating simple actions that align with your goals. And week 52, you're going to celebrate all of the financial progress that you've made in the past year. reflect on your achievements, and set intentions for the year ahead because celebration fosters motivation. So pull out your numbers from January and compare them to December. Look at your automated savings. Look at your debt paydown. Look at your net worth, whatever metrics you've been tracking.

1:04:26And by the way, I say this, I'm recording this obviously in January, 2025. I have no idea what the market is going to do in 2025. Maybe, maybe the market tanked And by December of 2025, your net worth is down. All of our net worths are down, right? That's entirely possible. But if your contributions went up, then that's what you celebrate. Because you can't control the output. You can't control the outcome. You can control the input. The input is within your locus of control. So celebrate the progress that you made on the effort, on the input, on the things that are directly inside of your locus of control.

1:05:10Well, hello and welcome back to 2026, Paula. What you've just heard came from our greatest hits vault. That was a rerun of our most popular episode from last year, from 2025. 52 tweaks that you can make in 52 weeks. And you just heard me say that I was recording that original version in January of 2025. And you just heard me say, we don't know what the market will do this year. And who knows, maybe there's a possibility that the market might be down by December of 2025. Well, obviously now it's currently January, 2026. And we do know what that answer is. We do know that if you'd followed 52 tweaks a week last year, your net worth would have been up significantly, right?

1:05:56You would have been making contributions into a market that had double-digit returns. The S &P 500 over the last three consecutive years now has produced double-digit returns every year for the last three consecutive years. That's incredible. Again, I will reiterate, what we can control are our inputs. What we cannot control is the performance of the S &P 500. We can control the contributions. And my role here is to encourage you to make those contributions. And that's what this 52-week exercise is all about. Download the guide. It's totally free, affordanything.com slash financialgoals. And join us as we make one tweak every week.

1:06:46Join our community. You can go through one tweak a week with us throughout the year. Talk to the community. So affordanything.com slash financial goals. Use this as your motivation to increase your contributions, to increase your savings, and to take the small, consistent actions every week that individually in a vacuum don't seem like much, but that aggregate into big changes, the type of changes that turn a British cycling team that lost for 76 consecutive years into champions, right? These changes work. We know that they work for athletes. We know that they work in business. And we know that they can work in our personal lives as we strive to pay off debt, to save for retirement, to send our kids to college, to feel financially secure, to buy our first homes, to be the first member of our family to become a millionaire.

1:07:41Whatever your financial goal is, these small tweaks help you get there, right? That's the beauty of the aggregation of marginal gains. Thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to download the free guide, affordanything.com slash financial goals. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything Podcast, and I'll meet you in the next episode.