70: Finding an Extra $2,000 / Year to Invest

0:00Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Rich Habits Podcast, a top 5 business podcast on Spotify. My name is Austin Hankwitz, and I'm joined by my co-host Robert Croak. Robert is a seasoned entrepreneur in his 50s with lifetime revenues of over$300 million, and I'm an entrepreneur in my late 20s with a background in finance and economics. Since quitting my full-time job in corporate finance a few years ago, I've built a seven-figure media business and actively advise some of the most well-known fintech companies around the world. As the show name might suggest every episode, We talk about rich habits as they relate to business, finance, and mindset.

0:37However, we try and bring you two unique perspectives. One from an industry veteran, which is Robert, and the other myself, someone who's still in the process of building wealth and figuring it all out. So, Robert, what are we going to be talking about in today's episode? Yes, in this episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, we are going to flip the script. And instead of talking about the secrets of the wealthy and how to optimize your annual taxes, we're going to focus on our listeners that are just scraping by. We want this podcast to not only be a way to teach Americans how to set their families up for generational wealth, but also how to get started investing in the first place.

1:13And the biggest pushback we hear on a daily basis from our listeners and in Instagram DMs is I don't have the money to invest. Between groceries, daycare, summer camp, car payments, and everything in between, I just don't have that$200 a month to get started towards investing for retirement. So if this is you, listen up. This is the episode just for you because look, life gets in the way and we just have to figure it out. And we are here to provide you a plethora of ideas to help you find that extra$100 or$200 a month in your budget, allowing you to begin saving and investing towards retirement in a really, really meaningful way.

1:58You know, Robert, before we started recording, I was telling you a little bit about what sort of sparked this idea for the episode. Last night, I did a late night run to my local 7-Eleven for some ramen. And the guy behind the counter was super nice, really nice guy. He was listening to some sports podcasts and I told him about rich habits and stuff. And then I was thinking like, I wonder what other listeners we have that are working the late nights at the gas stations or the 7-Elevens or wherever, you know, and they're just scraping by, right? They're really trying to get ahead. They're trying their hardest, but they just can't find that extra$100,$200,$300 a month to move the needle for them in retirement investing.

2:36And so that's what got me excited to want to have an episode where we don't just talk about, to your point, the secrets of the wealthy and how to build your$100 ,000 and do this and do that, right? That's really daunting for a lot of people. And there's a lot of people out there listening right now that are on the complete other side of the spectrum. That's who we're talking to in this episode. Yes, this episode is very, very cool and meaningful for me as well because Elizabeth and I just had a conversation. I think it was a week or two ago, and she was going through TikTok one evening talking about how we need to discuss the topic of the everyday person and their situation because of inflation, because of groceries and gas prices and all of this, that there are so many people out there that feel they can't get started on their journey to investing because they're living paycheck to paycheck and scraping by.

3:27And so this is very, very important because I think one of the biggest mindset shifts people need to understand is they feel like they can't get started until they have a massive sum of money. And this episode is going to clarify and debunk that because I think one of the best things people can do is draw that line in the sand and get started regardless if they're thriving or not, because then those two paths will cross each other at some point as you're digging out and your investments are doing better and you're making money while you sleep, it's just such a great place to be. So I love this episode from that standpoint to let everyone know, don't listen to the fake gurus.

4:10You can start with as little as$100 a month. And I promise you down the road, it will become meaningful and life-changing for your journey. Robert, I love that inspiration. So let's jump right into it, right? We want to help people find an extra, let's call it$2 ,000 a year to invest with, right? That might be saving, investing, paying off high interest debt, right? But finding that extra two, maybe$3 ,000 a year to start making some money moves, okay? And so the first way that Robert and I thought would be a cool tip for people to think about how to start that is by switching your wireless phone plan, okay?

4:45I am victim to paying$100 a month to AT &T for my unlimited talk, text, and data, right? Just like how I thought everyone else in their 20s is supposed to do it. But turns out there is visible wireless, which is as cheap as$25 a month. I actually shared this with my dad, and he's on it, right? We used to have this little family plan going with AT &T. We're$200 between the two of us. He's like, see you later, Austin. I don't need to do this anymore. I'm going to go save$75 a month, switch to visible wireless, and he's loving it, right? It's all the same towers as Verizon. He's got his data, his talk, his text, everything he needs.

5:21He's never disconnected. He's always right there. I got him a little find my iPhone, right? So I always got him in my pocket. But I just want people to know that like, not all the time is finding margin in your budget cutting back. Sometimes it's just finding alternatives that are checking the boxes, but just in a cheaper manner, right? The alternative to this AT &T could be a visible wireless or a Mint Mobile, right? But just like knowing that you don't always have to think about cutting back and not spending. It's just, how can I reinvent what I'm doing in a way that's going to help me find that extra 20, 30, 50, a hundred dollars a month in my budget with the same value every single month, but I'm just doing it in a different way.

6:00Yeah. And I think this speaks a lot to us always preaching to everyone of doing the honest budget because we see people every single day that have a very high debt to income ratio and then say, I don't have any money left over to invest. And this really speaks to, yes, it'd be great if you could just go out and make more money and have that extra money to invest. But in the instances where you can't, then you have to look from within and find those little leaks in your monthly expenses to be able to plug those leaks like you did with your father and getting the less expensive wireless plan. I'm on Verizon and I know my plan was like$175 a month.

6:42So I went in last year and I was like, this is getting ridiculous. What can I do here? They went through the bill. They said, well, hey, you already have a business account. We have this new special. You can get two phones because I was getting a new phone last year. You can get two phones, this plan, more data for$45 a month less. So it was a no brainer for me. And that just speaks to the fact that even people at my financial level should keep their eye on the prize and watch their monthly budgets and pay attention because there's always ways, whether you're scraping by or you're thriving, to find ways to cut costs to give you that extra money for whatever you might need it to be.

7:24So I really love this point. And it's so important to illustrate many, many ways of how we can find this money that we need to get towards our investing. So I love it. A hundred percent. So if you've not yet checked out Visible Wireless, Mint Mobile, I know there's like a bunch of other of these sort of budgets. Actually, Visible Wireless, like it's straight up Verizon, right? So it's like not even budget, it's just cheaper. But go check some of this stuff out, right? If you are that person who's trying to find that$50,$75,$100 a month extra in your budget, you're scraping by, you need some wiggle room, maybe it's time to switch wireless phone providers.

7:56Now, speaking of switching and kind of finagling the budget here, Robert, the next one I want to talk about is optimizing your subscriptions. Because we mentioned this at the beginning of the year where I went and I had a apocalypse, right? I went and I cut all these random subscriptions that I just didn't know I had anymore. I got rid of the Peacock. I was paying for two Peacock subscriptions, Robert. It was crazy. I got rid of the DoorDash. I got rid of the Uber. I got rid of every dang company that offers a subscription today. I cut it out and I found an extra 30, 40, 50 bucks a month in my budget because of that.

8:27And for people that are listening right now, and you say, no, I've already got it figured out. I'm good. You know, whatever. That's cool. But just like take the 5, 10, 15 minutes to make sure that you find them all, write them down in your notes app with a little dash that tells you how much per month you're paying for it. Because Robert, as someone that might see, you know, Uber one, 10 bucks a month or DoorDash, 10 bucks. Like, that's cool. I got 10 bucks. But then once you look in your notes app and you see that you're paying$142 a month across 19 different subscriptions and you haven't bought a DoorDash in two months.

9:02You haven't gotten an Uber in the last three weeks. So you know what I'm saying? That's when you can take a step back, have that bird's eye view and say, okay, do I need Peacock, Netflix, HBO Max, and Spotify, all four of them? Maybe not, right? So just do yourself the favor. I know you think you might have it figured out, but just go in there, take the 10, 15 minutes, write every single one of those out, how much they cost, and just give yourself the opportunity to make some cuts. Yes. And for all of the people out there, you know who you are, some of the fake gurus and some of the other people that say, well, this is all lack mentality thinking because you should just make more money and not worry about the 20, 30, 40,$50 a month things.

9:42Well, guess what? Little leaks do sink ships. And I have two instances recently that I realized when we were talking about this months ago, So one was a software that we have not used in almost three years for one of my companies that was still being taken out of my debit card from that company's account. $89 a month. $89 a month. So I got rid of that finally. And then also I had a poker subscription for a poker site where I could watch the replays of these tournaments. I have not played any live poker in over two years. And that subscription was$10 a month. So$120 a year. That's gone now. and I looked up, I hadn't opened it since like September of 2022.

10:26So this really illustrates what we're talking about. Yes, it would be great if you could just make more and more and more money and not worry about your expenses, but that's not reality and that's not how people build wealth. So when these fake gurus tell you, we'll just go make more money because saving$20 a week by not going to Starbucks or$50 a month by cutting your subscriptions back is not gonna make a difference, they're just wrong and you should block them and not listen to them because not everyone has the opportunity to just go make more money. If it were that simple, everyone would be rich.

10:59But what you can do is look from within your current life and your current finances and find that 100, 200,$300 of savings to then get you started in investing. And this is so, so important for everyone to understand. And speaking of finding that, looking in and finding that, Robert, I actually made this big move. I think it was like beginning of last year, like January, February. M1 Finance has a credit card. They call it the owner's rewards card. And you get like 10 % cash back on subscriptions like Netflix and Spotify and like 5 % cash back on like Chipotle, McDonald's, and like some airlines, right?

11:39And two and a half percent cash back on all these gas stations. And so I was very conscious about if I'm spending money, I want to make sure that I'm always cross-referencing, right? I've got the Netflix, it's on this card. Spotify, on the card. Every time I go get gas, I'd use the card, right? And so just by being conscious enough to sort of optimize how I'm spending the money and how I'm sort of paying on these monthly subscriptions through this specific credit card, and there's a ton of credit cards that are out there, go do some research, find the one that works best for you, groceries, like whatever else, I don't know.

12:08But this saved me by getting cash back$1 ,000 over the last 18 months, right? I did the math, It was like$997 over 18 months. And you're like, oh, that's not that much money, Austin. Like, yeah, it is. That's like 70 bucks a month, dude. It's like if you're scraping by and you have to pay these things anyway, you have to go buy the groceries, you have to go shop here and do these things anyway. By just using a different card for the transaction can find you that extra$25,$50,$75 a month in cash back. That is then that extra margin to begin investing, paying off the debt, saving, things that we talk about.

12:42Yeah. One of the things that was kind of a favorite moment of mine in 2023, earlier on in Rich Habits history, was when we talked about a rule that I implemented in my life about eight years ago. And this is similar to what we're talking about in this. So I do want to mention it. And that is look around your house because everyone has that set of golf clubs they haven't used in three years. They have that exercise bike they haven't used in two years. They have some camera from five years ago that still has value. All of those things, cleanse yourself. Take those things. Get them on Facebook Marketplace.

13:19Get them on OfferUp. Get those things out of your house as well because that is another good practice that if something hasn't been used in a year, get rid of it. Use that money towards paying down a credit card or putting towards investing. These are just small steps that you can do an hour here and an hour there that will get you on your way towards financial freedom and so important to take seriously and implement into your daily lives. I love it. Now, as you guys listening know, Robert and I think it's really important to invest, right? We're investors ourselves. I've been an investor for a decade now, and Robert's been an investor for several decades.

13:57And this episode's sponsor, Blossom, allows us to not only invest, but share those investments with other people. Yes, and Blossom is a social investing app built around transparency. So you simply sign up for a free account, connect your existing online brokerage accounts like Fidelity, Robinhood, Vanguard, Charles Schwab, and get started. Unlike anonymous platforms like Reddit and Twitter, Blossom users link their existing brokerage accounts to the app so that all of the holdings and portfolios shared within the feed are verified by actual data, leading to richer discussions and decisions. It's never been easier to join a community of like-minded investors focused on building long-term wealth together.

14:41And you guys are probably like, Austin, what are you talking about, man? I got on Blossom. I don't see anything. Well, no, let me tell you, because when you signed up, I promise you, you were prompted with different subjects that you wanted to see on your feed. I was prompted and I chose dividends, I chose passive income, and I chose options. And so those are the communities I now see on my Blossom feed. They also offer a one-stop shop dashboard for tracking all of your investments. So if you're someone who has a Robinhood account and M1 Finance, a Public, a Schwab, you can sync all of those into Blossom and track the performance of all those holdings in one app.

15:16They also have a dividend tracker, which is cool, a dividend forecaster, letting you know when you could expect to get paid some of that passive income from your stocks. They've got sector breakdowns and just so much more. And remember, Blossom is not an online broker. You're not investing into stocks on Blossom. They're simply a social app network for investors that want to connect with other investors. And did we mention they have 120 ,000 active users across both Canada and the US currently. So go sign up for Blossom using the link in the description of the show notes and we'll see you there.

15:47Now, Robert, the last point, I think a lot of people, including myself, right? This was something that I took for granted. I heard people say this a lot as a way to save money, but I never really did it until I had to do it. And that was shopping my insurance, specifically my auto insurance and my homeowner's insurance, right? So sort of what happened here to me is I woke up one day, I got my state farm, I think who it was, sent me a bill for$1 ,600 because I pay for my homeowner's insurance like in a lump fee, right? Just once there. And I got this$1 ,600 homeowners insurance bill. And I was like, wait a second, that's not right.

16:25So I called him. I said, Hey guys, my homeowners insurance bill last year was 1100. Why is it now 1600 one year later? Oh, inflation, man. You know, it's just the, it's, it's inflation. And I'm like 60%, 50 % inflation. Like that doesn't seem right. So I shopped around, right? I called all state. I called a bunch of these other ones. I ended up going with all state and I actually got a cheaper bill, same coverage, everything's the same, cheaper than what I was paying to begin with, which was really cool. So now I'm paying like under$900,$800,$900 a year for my homeowner's insurance with Allstate.

16:57And then I was able to bundle my auto with them as well. This isn't an ad for Allstate, but it's like I was able to meaningfully save hundreds of dollars a year across my homeowners and my auto insurance by just switching my insurance provider. And so after I saw how much money I was saving, I told my girlfriend that she should go talk to the guy, the same Allstate guy that I found. And she's like, all right, sweet. Talk to him. Now she's saving$40 a month on her auto insurance because she switched, right? And again, not a thing for Allstate. You could go find somewhere else, whatever works for you, but just shop your insurance.

17:25I think a lot of people make the mistake of like, oh, I'm going to stick with them. They've been a family friend. I love Bill over here at whatever. And he always gives me a good price. Yeah. Shout out to Jim Klein from Armors or whatever it is in Kingsport, Tennessee. He was our family friend for a long time too, until he raised 50 % prices on us. So sorry, Jim had to go somewhere else. But yeah, man, it's just you guys got to shop your insurances. You know, this really comes back to, again, another point we've talked about in the past. And I agree how I do things like this, because I obviously have a lot of insurance policies and a lot of things to take care of every year and every month is I try to do it quarterly where I face the bear.

18:05You know, I go and I go, OK, today's the day where I'm going to go through everything and I'm gonna look at everything and see where we can carve out some savings and find some free money. So I do it quarterly just because I have so many things going on with all the businesses and looking at what is our credit card processing cost, what is our building insurance, what is our business insurance, all of these things. But it also speaks to another little hack that I like, and a lot of people don't do this, is when you're buying the higher ticket items online and you're going shopping just like you would for insurance, leave it in the cart.

18:36A lot of people don't realize most well-done websites nowadays for high-ticket items, if you put that item in the cart and you leave within a few days, usually within a few hours, a few days, you're going to get a retargeted email that says, hey, we'd love to have you back. If you come back, you can get that item for 10, 20, 30 % off. That's just another simple hack people can do to find free money on the things they have to buy anyway. So don't be afraid to shop and make sure you're shopping around and comparing apples to apples when you are shopping. So have your current policies in front of you so you can make sure the deductibles and everything are the same and find those ways to get that extra money out of your current income and out of your current budgets.

19:22And you'll thank us later because you'll be shocked at how much money you'll find throughout the year. I love it. You know, Robert, between the$50,$75 a month of switching your phone plan, we're talking about$600,$700 a year, optimizing your subscriptions by either getting the cash back $20,$30,$50 a month, right? That's another$500,$600 a year, or even canceling subscriptions that you don't use anymore. Maybe that's another$100,$200 a year. And then even shopping the insurances, right? That saved me$600. It's saving Ireland, my girlfriend,$500 a year, right? There's all these different ways that our listeners right now who are scraping by, who think the world's against them, groceries are expensive, inflation, childcare, car payment, everything under the sun is beating against them.

20:04These are the ways that they can find$1 ,000, $2 ,000, maybe$3 ,000 of margin in their annual budget to use to pay off that high interest credit card debt that's been around their neck for a couple months or start investing toward their retirement for the first time inside of a Roth IRA. They buy the VOOs and the QQQs of the world for the first time. And they see their account balance now going from zero to a hundred to a thousand, right? How cool was it, Robert? I'm sure you remember when you first started investing, seeing your brokerage account, have that first 1000, that first$10 ,000 inside of it.

20:36I mean, I felt like I was on top of the world, dude. Yeah. Back then. And I remember vividly when I first set it up, my cousin Tim got me started and it was mass financial. And I was taking$20 a week out of every paycheck. Back then I was a W-2 employee,$20 a week out of every paycheck. And when I was ready to buy my first piece of real estate, it was a fourplex. I had all the money I needed in that account for the down payment, the closing costs, and some of the renovation costs, all starting from$20 a week. Yet every single day we have people out there that tell us, you know, oh, if you don't have tens of thousands of dollars, don't even bother getting started with investing.

21:17Don't listen to those people. I promise you they may be wealthy and they may have done well for themselves, but they're not looking out for your best interest. And they're just gonna try and sell you on a$10 ,000 course rather than help you actually find your way financially. And then one more thing I wanna add to this point when we're talking about shopping your insurance, don't forget, shop everything. Shop your lawyer, shop your accountant. Because let's say you own a small business. If I took a hundred of you or a thousand of you listening right now, and I sat down and I went through your write-offs yearly of what you're writing off and what you're claiming out of your business, I bet I would find a lot of missing write-offs where you're not writing off the portion of your home that you work out of for your home office, or you're not writing off your gas mileage that you use for work, or you could be transferring your cell phone bill like we talked about into the business name and then using that That is a write-off.

22:13So shop everything to find out what's best for you. And don't just believe in what Uncle Bill says because he set you up with the insurance guy or the CPA years ago and it's a family friend. You have to do what's best for you and your financial journey because they're not gonna be there to pick up the pieces as you get out of scraping by. And it starts today. Listen, Robert, we are halfway through summertime. July is right around the corner. A lot of people are getting some FOMO because they're seeing the vacations. They're seeing all the fun new toys, the boats, the jet skis people are buying.

22:47And for those people listening right now that are grinding it out, they're working the long hours at the 7-Eleven at night. They're working the long hours at the hospital as a nurse or whatever they're doing to grind it out, to get themselves out of debt, to finally start investing. I just want you all to know that we are proud of you. We are so excited for you and we are rooting for you every single day. And we hope this podcast can serve as motivation for you guys to hit those financial goals. And we want to hear about those financial goals after they get hit. Send us a DM on Instagram, you know, at Rich Habits Podcast.

23:15Be aware of scammers. Hey, guys, I just, you know, paid off this credit card at$2 ,000. I'm so excited about it. Hey, guys, I finally started investing in my Roth IRA because of you. I'm so excited. We love those emails. We love those DMs. So keep them coming. We can't wait to see you guys all succeed. And what a fun episode this was, Robert. Yeah, I love it. And I want to make sure and we should talk about how could we build something that's like a leaderboard where it's like for the year, we have people write in with their wins and then we tally their wins in the leaderboard and kind of share it.

23:46Maybe we do a whole episode at the end of the year where we share everyone's wins and everyone that is engaged with us because it would just be so cool. I get letters every single week. I get DMs, I get emails of someone that says, you've changed my life and my family's life. Here's what I've done different this year because of you and the difference that it has made. And that is so rewarding for me. And I'd like to integrate that in a more visual manner for Rich Habits. So we got to figure that out. That would be fun. That would be really fun. And maybe whoever hits number one, the leaderboard gets like a massive prize, like a vacation or a new car.

24:21Yeah, I mean something because it all comes down to one phrase that I've been saying for many, many years. And now we've adapted it through Rich Habits is that is take notes and take action. So many people out there will follow the podcast. They'll follow our lives. They'll join our private communities. And they get all of this incredible information to change their lives with, but they don't take action. Taking action is the most important thing you can do, even if it's in small steps. This whole episode is about getting you out of scraping by. And so it's very important that no matter how you do it, you need to do it early and often and get some money put aside to be able to invest and grow so you have money working for you over the years.