151: Our 2026 "Money Calendar"

0:00Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Rich Habits Podcast, a top 10 business podcast on Spotify brought to you by public.com. By the end of this episode, you'll have a complete month-by-month financial roadmap for 2026 so you never miss another important money task again. My name is Austin Hankwitz and I'm joined by my co-host Robert Croak. Robert is a seasoned entrepreneur with lifetime revenues of over 300 million and I'm a multi-millionaire in my late 20s with a background in finance and economics. As the show name might suggest, every episode, We talk about rich habits as they relate to business, finance, and mindset.

0:37So Robert, what are we going to be talking about in today's episode? Well, first off, welcome to the first Monday of 2026. We're so excited to have all of you joining us again in 2026, and we promise this year of the show is going to be better than ever. Let's now talk about something that happens to almost everyone. January hits, you make a bunch of ambitious financial goals, and by March, you've completely forgotten about them. You tell yourself you're going to review your insurance, rebalance your portfolio, max out your retirement accounts, finally build your emergency fund and fix your budget.

1:10And then nothing happens and you fall off the proverbial wagon. And it's not because you're lazy or bad with money. It's because you're trying to do everything at once all in January. You get overwhelmed and then do next to nothing for the other 11 months of the year. So today, Austin and I are going over a complete 2026 money calendar. Every month, we'll share one or two specific tasks so you can start out 2026 with a clear roadmap of what to do and when to do it month by month so nothing is overwhelming or slips through the cracks. I think that's the name of the game, Robert. Laying things out in bite-sized pieces so people can really figure it out, take control of their money, and take those small action steps and really begin to inch toward their financial goals.

1:56This episode is going to be a blast because, yes, we've got a whole catalog of information for you, especially if you're new around here to go review. But if you're really just looking for the quick and dirty, what do I do month to month? This episode is going to really walk you through exactly what to focus on every month of 2026. And Robert, every month is going to have a theme. So what I want you to do is kick us off with January and what January's theme is. January is knowing your numbers. The first thing you're going to do in January is calculate your current net worth. Most people have no idea what their net worth is.

2:30They might know their salary, what's in their checking and savings. They might even have a rough idea of where they're at in their 401k, but they don't know their actual net worth, and that is a huge problem. Calculating your net worth is simple, though. It's everything you own minus everything you owe. Your bank accounts, investment accounts, retirement accounts, the value of your car, your home equity. Those are your assets, what you own. Your credit card debt, student loans, car loans, mortgage balance, those are your liabilities or what you owe. So assets minus liabilities equals net worth.

3:05I love that. I personally track my net worth on a quarterly basis. I think tracking your net worth is an incredible way to keep tabs on if you're actually trending in the right direction financially. So good call out, Robert. Another thing you should be doing in January is going back to last week's episode and learning about our anti-budget, assuming you're not living paycheck to paycheck. If you are, we've got other episodes to support that as well. Additionally, maybe you want to join me here in a no-spend January where I'm kicking off the new year here Monday, January 5, doing a no-spend January where I only spend money on the necessities.

3:40I'm not eating out. I'm not buying that cool impulse thing on the TikTok shop. It is the no spend January. Or if you have no idea where to start when it comes to spending, just go download the Rich Habits Honest Budget in the show notes below. All right, Robert, February's theme is credit and debt. February, you're going to focus on your credit health. What I want you to do is pull your credit report. You can do this from all three bureaus at annualcreditreport.com completely for free. I've actually done this myself. It's super simple. Make sure you go in and you check for errors, maybe accounts that you don't recognize or late payments that should not be there, and make sure you dispute anything that's wrong immediately.

4:19I said credit and debt, so let's talk about debt. If you're carrying high interest debt, choose a plan to pay it off and then commit to that plan. There's plenty of debt repayment strategies to choose from, many of which we've covered on the show here before. My favorite is the debt avalanche method. This is when you identify and pay off your debt from highest interest rate to lowest interest rate. So you pay the least amount of interest during that period of the loan. But other people like the debt snowball where you're tackling the smallest balance first, doesn't matter what you do. What matters is you're paying off your high interest debt and you're not collecting more and more of it.

4:55And here's a pro tip for those of you who might have already received a tax refund. If you did, go and use that money to pay off your high interest debt. kickstart your payoff process with a couple hundred, maybe a thousand dollars or so, it's going to really help move you in the right direction. I love this one. And I'm always shocked at how many people don't get credit alerts or keep an eye on their credit. And here's why. I had this situation happen just three years ago. I traded in my Lincoln for the new Lincoln and it was a seamless thing, signed a couple of papers and I was out the door.

5:26Three months later, I get a credit alert that my credit went down 80 points because I missed three payments on a car, which would never ever in a million years happen. So I found out that the dealership traded in the old car, sold it off, but never paid off my old loan. And it was their fault. And it took me like two months to get it fixed. So I strongly suggest people keep an eye on their credit and get alerts set up because I was able to nip this in the bud really quickly and get my credit right back up where it belongs. So just a quick little tip that I wanted to add in there. So next, our next theme is for March Insurance Audit.

6:02Call your current insurance providers and price check every policy you have. Auto insurance alone can drop by hundreds a year just by shopping around. So think homeowners insurance, umbrella coverage, boat insurance, renters insurance, any of these policies you have. If you don't have term life or disability insurance and someone relies on you for your income, this is the month to fix that. Term life is cheap, and a healthy 30-year-old can get$500 ,000 of coverage for around only$30 a month. And don't forget your HSA. If you have a high-deductible health plan and you're not planning on maxing it out, you're leaving tax money on the table.

6:40And we love that free tax money, so make sure you check that out as well. We've gotten through the first quarter of 2026. We calculated our net worth. We're looking through our credit and our debts, and we're also making sure that we're auditing our insurance. Now we're going to kick off Q2 in April with taxes and retirement. April is tax season. We all know that. So be sure to go file your taxes, but also think about it strategically. If you got a huge tax refund last year, adjust your W-4 withholdings. Otherwise, you're essentially giving the government an interest-free loan. You should be keeping that money in your own paycheck and then investing it in the S &P 500 throughout the year.

7:17You should also review your retirement contributions. Are you on track to max out that Roth IRA or that 401k? The 2026 401k limit is around$23 ,500. So if you do have autonomy and that's something you want to do and you are working toward that, maybe bump up your contributions by a couple percentage points so you can achieve that goal. And if you're self-employed like me, make sure you're setting aside those Q1 estimated taxes now. Do not wait for a year-end surprise. And that brings us to our next month, May, and this is the mid-year check-in. May is your mid-year review. You're almost halfway through 2026.

7:54So we're going to go back to that January budget. Are you sticking with it? Where are you overspending? If you wanted to save$10 ,000 this year, you should be at about$2 ,500 right now. And if you're at$1 ,500, you need to set a plan to course correct. Check your emergency fund. Do you have three to six months of expenses saved? If not, make it a priority in your yearly plan. Without it, one unexpected expense sends you into debt. And look at your income as well. Did you receive any bonuses or raises? Did you capture that increase? Or did you let lifestyle creep get in the way and absorb all that new capital?

8:29You know, Robert, speaking of lifestyle creep, I think it's episode 142 published on November 3rd. Really, really great episode about lifestyle creep and ensuring that more of the money that you just got through a raise actually comes home with you and gets invested and grows for you over time. Now, the next month, of course, is June. We are now officially halfway through 2026, which means it's time to do a little bit of a deep dive into our investment portfolio. We've had six months of performance now. it's time to check in and benchmark our own investment performance against other indices in ETFs we believe in, like the S &P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the NASDAQ 100, all the big popular indices that we should be benchmarking against.

9:14And here's a call out to Robert, and I think this is very important because I like to rebalance about every six months as well. If you had a really successful investment, let's say something popped off like crazy here in the first six months of 2026, and it grew dramatically to make up a large portion of your portfolio, don't forget to rebalance that. Redistribute those profits elsewhere inside of your portfolio so you're not concentrated into a very specific stock or sector of the market. Another thing to consider is looking at the fees. A lot of these ETFs and mutual funds that people talk about or might be in the headlines seem sexy, but they can come with high fees.

9:50Let's make sure we're not paying high fees when it comes to investing. Or if you're brand new to investing and you have no idea what I'm talking about, open up a Roth IRA on public.com and start contributing 50, 100 bucks a month. Put it in VOO, which is the S &P 500, and you're going to start compounding for decades to come. So that brings us to July, where we're going to do a spending audit. July is the month where we audit our spending category by category. So you're going to pull your last three months of statements, categorize every transaction, transportation, insurance, subscriptions, groceries, eating out, miscellaneous.

10:25Don't forget the dog treats. Don't forget the makeup, the haircuts, all of those things. And once you have the real numbers, you're going to make real decisions. Maybe you're fine right now with$400 on restaurants a month, but then cut somewhere else. The point is having accurate data so you can be intentional with how you spend your money. And if you're taking a summer vacation, budget properly. Flights, hotels, food, activities. And I like to say add up to 20 % for the stuff you didn't think of. Don't just count on your credit cards to handle that because we don't want to see you go into further or any credit card debt to pay for a vacation.

11:03We sure don't. And we hope you guys are taking these summer vacations and spending time with your family, but you're doing it in a way that is financially responsible and not setting you backwards from a net worth perspective. Now, something that's going to help set you forward is the month of August, where the theme is income optimization. August is all about making more money. So you have a traditional job, research your market value, go to Glassdoor, PayScale, Levels.fyi. If you find yourself 10, 15, 20 % below market value for compensation, go and build a case for you to get a raise. Document your biggest wins.

11:38Show where your value is at this company and start building a case for October, November, December, January, February, whenever those raises come in the new year so that when the new year does come back around, you're like, listen, I'm making 5, 10, 15, 20 % more. I'm back to where the market value is or above it. This is also a great time to think about side income. Obviously, it's the dead of summer. We're over here trying to walk some extra dogs, do some grocery delivery. Maybe you're doing some Uber or DoorDash or whatever's going on, right? But also think a little bit beyond that. Think about consulting, think about teaching, think about freelance work, how you can find an extra three, four,$500 a month.

12:14You know, you do that for a couple of years here, Robert, we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars, which if deployed correctly in the markets, that grows into hundreds of thousands in retirement. So what feels maybe like a chore now can turn into a prosperous retirement if you play your cards right, but you have to be strategic. And a big mistake people fall for is they say, oh, I've got to go spend all this money to buy supplies for this side hustle I'm trying to do. Don't go do all that stuff. What you need to focus on is what do I have around me? Is it a skill? Is it something in the garage?

12:47Is it like, what do I already have to help me make money? You don't need to go buy a$2 ,000 pressure washer because you saw some ASMR video on your Facebook reels. I love this theme and I really would like to see everyone that listens and watches this podcast to take the chance, take a few minutes, go to chat GPT, whatever it is you use and type in how much you would have in retirement. If you put away an extra two, three, four, $500 a month with an 8 % annual return, how much that would turn in over time? Because I think it would blow people's minds because so many people and so many fake gurus out there are always talking about, oh, that extra couple hundred bucks saved and invested won't make a difference in your life.

13:29I promise you it'll make maximum, maximum difference over time by letting it compound. So I would like it if everyone would do that exercise for me and really see what those compounding of that three, four,$500 a month would turn into over time. So that brings us to September. And the theme is education and skill development. If you have kids, Review your 529 plan. Are you contributing? The money grows tax-free and withdrawals for education are tax-free as well. So even$100 or$200 a month compounds significantly over 15 years. So for yourself, think about professional development. What courses or certification could boost your income?

14:12If a$2 ,000 certification leads to a$10 ,000 raise, that's a 5x return in one year. So consider that and just do some research. There are a ton of AI certifications, Google certifications, all these out there that are really cost effective and can make you way more valuable in your current job role. And check if your employer offers tuition reimbursement or professional development funds. Most companies have these benefits and they go unused and it's free money and a way for you to level up without any out of pocket. Yeah, and don't get too fancy with these certifications. I mean, at the end of the day, maybe it's a cybersecurity thing.

14:50Maybe it's a little bit of AI. Maybe it's a little something about just Excel or PowerPoint. Who knows, right? But there's like all these certifications that you can go get that will, one, build that case for either a promotion or some other raise that you can get in the future. Get creative with some things here, but also like don't overthink it. Robert, that brings us to October, which I think is everyone's favorite month for year end tax planning. You've got two months left now to reduce your 2026 tax bill. So, you know, I have to ask yourself, can I max out my 401k in the last two months? if I want to do those pre-tax contributions.

15:22Same deal with your health savings account. Or if you're like me and you like to donate to causes you believe in, you can open up a donor advised fund and really turbocharge your tax savings by donating appreciated assets. For example, I just donated$80 ,000 of appreciated cryptocurrency and I'll be able to save about$30 ,000 on my taxes by doing so. And I got to donate to a cause that I really believe in. Also, if you have taxable investments, look at tax loss harvesting, sell losing positions to offset gains elsewhere inside your portfolio, and then buy a similar investment to maintain exposure to that general theme.

16:00And finally, if you're like me and you're self-employed, go meet with your CPA now in October so you guys can talk about year-end deductions and estimated taxes. Don't do this three weeks before the end of the year. Don't go do this in January. Do it September even, really. But like October, you really need to be talking about this and having these conversations so you have time to make the decisions. And if you do them right, you're saving thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars on your taxes, depending on how large your small business, solopreneur business is. So, so good. And that brings us to November, holiday budgeting.

16:36I think this is the month that kills everyone for the year because they're not ready to budget for the holidays. and it's a perfect time to set yourself up, set your budget before you start spending and make a list for everyone you're buying for and assign dollar amounts. That's not a Scrooge move. It is just really smart because most people wing the holidays and go into January stressed and broke. Don't be that person. Before buying something on Black Friday, ask, would I buy this at full price? If the answer is no, you probably don't actually want it. Also, and I know Austin did this really well this year, do all of your Christmas shopping on Black Friday.

17:16It's free discounts on money you had earmarked to spend anyway. And if you're not going to do that, always remember the hack I talk about. If you have some high ticket items you're buying online, put them in the cart, wait a couple days, wait for that discount code to come in because I think it's 55 % of all of these shopping carts have a drip campaign discount that comes in a couple days after you leave it in the cart. So that is another way to set yourself up properly for your holiday giving and budgeting. All right, Robert, let's now wrap up 2026 with the final month, which is December. It's all about finishing strong and planning for 2027.

17:54Review your full year and ask yourself, did you hit your goals? Where did you succeed and where did you fall short? Calculate your net worth again. Compare it to your January net worth. It should be much higher. Your debt should be lower. your investments. Fingers crossed the stock market does well this year and continues to trend up until the right. But if not, figure out why and fix it for 2027. Maybe you should max out any remaining retirement contributions. If you still haven't maxed out that Roth IRA or you haven't gotten into that 401k like you wanted to, do that before the year ends. If you have an FSA at work or it's use it or lose it, don't leave money on the table.

18:31Go use and spend that money. Start thinking about 2027. What are those financial priorities? Is it buying a house? Is it helping your kids with college? Is it going on that dream vacation? Is it finally building your base? Like what is your big priority for the year? What did you learn from this year and how can you apply it to achieving those new goals? My closing thoughts are this. Most people spend more time planning their vacations than planning their financial future. That's insane to me because your financial life determines your stress level, your options, your freedom, your security, and it deserves a plan.

19:06So commit to at least three of these benchmarks, print the calendar, put it on your fridge, put it above your office desk, whatever it is you need to do, set phone reminders, share it with a spouse, do whatever you need to do to make sure you follow through completely throughout the year. Start with January, calculate your net worth, set up your budget. That's your immediate homework. Then one month at a time, tackle these key objectives. This is your year to crush financial goals, and we're here to help you every step of the way. I am inspired, Robert. I'm ready to run through a brick wall for these people.

19:40I could not be more excited for them. And it's a lot easier when you break it down month by month, right? You're going like, okay, well, what is your net worth? Where are we starting here? How do we make sure that we're being effective by paying off of our debt? We're making sure that we're not overpaying on insurance and we're getting into the taxes and the retirement. And then we've got a little bit of an investment review. We're optimizing for our income. We're making sure we're saving for kids college. And then we're doing that year end tax planning. This is really a, if you think about it, it's a very big episode, but it's broken down in a way that a lot of people will be able to get a lot of tactical advice from.

20:15And that's what just gets me excited. Yeah. I think the big takeaway for me is you spelled it out early in the episode is that so many people make big plans for January, you know, new year, new me. And then when they don't do it, then they just give up on the year and go right back to the old habits. That stops today with this episode. I don't want anyone to give up. Even if you don't fully knock it out of the park in January or February, guess what? You can stay with it and still finish the year strong. So I hope this really helps all of you along the way in 2026 and beyond because we wanted to make this episode to understand every month is important and you can continually compound on your wins to build a better financial life for yourself in the future.

20:56All right, Robert, let's now jump to our Q &A section of the episode. If you're new around here, every Monday we come at you with an awesome, cool lesson, and then we answer three questions from our audience. If you have a question to ask us, you can email us at richhabitspodcast at gmail.com or you can DM us on Instagram at richhabitspodcast. But before we answer that first question coming from Christian, we've got to give a shout out to Public because Public is the investing platform for those who take it seriously. And I think all of y 'all should take investing seriously here in 2026. On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, crypto, option contracts, and more now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI, which I think is awesome.

21:43It is awesome. And it all starts with your prompt from renewable energy companies with high free cashflow to semiconductor suppliers, growing revenue over 20 % year over year. You can literally type any prompt and let AI do the work. And it screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S &P 500, all with just a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. So go to public.com slash rich habits and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio.

22:20That's public.com forward slash rich habits. Paid for by public investing. Full disclosures in the podcast description. Oh, wow. This is a funny question. Okay, so this is going to be good. Christian emailed us and said, hi Austin and Robert, thank you all for what you do. You've helped me change my mindset about money and living frugal in my 20s. I'm 26 and I started investing when I was 24. I started putting away$5 a day, so about a hundred bucks a month. But now after I came across your podcast, I've shifted away from the consumer mindset to the investor mindset. And now I'm putting$600 a month and maxing out my Roth IRA.

22:54But here's my question. is it better to transfer my investments from robin hood to public or should i just keep using robin hood if you suggest i do transfer would i be able to get some help to transfer it to public i really appreciate it your podcast is the bomb yeah so shout out public we love public i've been using public for about half a decade now and i think they are the best platform for building a portfolio a multi-asset portfolio from scratch their ui is amazing the customer support it's awesome right they're also a sponsor of the show and the reason they do sponsor the show is because I've loved using them for the last five years before the show even existed, right?

23:27So shout out to public. But here's what we always say. We don't care what platform you use. If you want to use public, that's great. If you want to use Robinhood or Schwab or Fidelity or E-Trade, does even E-Trade exist anymore? I don't know. It does. It does. Okay. We don't care what platform you use to invest. What we care about is that you invest. That's all that matters. Are you putting money in your retirement accounts? Are you investing every single month consistently in the S &P and the NASDAQ and the Dow Jones or whatever other index funds and ETFs that you believe in long term. That is what matters more than the platform you use.

23:59Now, of course, I'm going to tell you to go put it on public because I prefer public personally. But if you want to keep it on Robinhood and rock and roll, that is totally fine. I think that's a great takeaway, Austin. And just for everyone listening, transferring is a lot easier than you think. As long as you have stocks and ETFs that are pretty generalized, they can transfer from, say public to Robinhood or Robinhood to public or Fidelity or whatever it is, it works out just fine. It's not a taxable event. You don't have to sell anything. You just transfer it. And there are some mutual funds that are platform specific and are not transferable, but that's not the case with a lot of the things we're talking about here.