10 Steps to Get Ahead of 99% Of People Financially (In the Next 6-12 Months)

21:24You can take care of a lot of different things. And then number three, it also just allows you to have flexibility and freedom to take advantage of opportunities when they arise. So three months of expenses is the middle ground. And then when you have three months of expenses, we're trying to get you to get started investing because we really want you to get your money working as soon as we possibly can. We do not want to just sit there at three months and just work our way up all the way to six months because that's going to take a lot of time. Instead, we want to get our dollars working. So we're going to go through our investment order to make sure that we are starting to invest our money and get those dollars to grow.

21:56Then over time, you start to split off 50-50, half two emergency fund, half two investments. And over time, we're going to build it up to six months emergency fund. Why is six months the minimum here at Master Money in the Personal Finance Podcast? Why do we say six months in your emergency fund? Because if you lose your job, you need six months on hand. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Let's say you lose your job. Okay, now you got to dust off the old resume. Got to get that resume together. Got to get that LinkedIn put together. Now you're going to start to apply for jobs. I don't know if you've applied to jobs lately, but it's not a very quick process.

22:29And for a lot of people, they have been looking for jobs for long periods of time. In fact, always be looking as ABL is what I like to say. Always be looking just to see if there's better opportunities out there. But this is something that you need to be doing is thinking through, okay, well, if I lose my job, it's going to take me a little time to even start to find people who are looking in my industry. Okay. Maybe it takes me a month and I start to send about a bunch of different resumes. I'm sending hundreds of resumes out a day. Okay. Now finally I'm landing interviews in month two or three.

22:59Okay. Now I go through the interview process and now I'm having, you know, my first round of interviews. Well, now I got to go to the second round of interviews next week and the third round of interviews the following week. Okay. Now we're in month four. Is three months emergency fund enough? If you're going to take four months to go through all these interviews and sending out your resumes, no, then maybe you don't land some of these interviews and you got to do more rounds of interviews and send out more resumes. We're looking at six months before you actually can land another job. Now that's not to scare you.

23:25That's to say this is the reality. And we need to make sure that we are prepared for this. Anybody at any given time can lose a job and it can take you a long time, no matter how popular your industry is, no matter how big of a shortage there is in what you do, that can still absolutely happen. Just look at the great recession of 2008 and 2009. We need to make sure that we bulletproof far finances. And the way to do this is with a six month emergency fund. So that is step three, okay, is making sure that you have that safety net build up. Step four is let's start investing immediately, even if it's small.

23:57So first you go through the one, three, six method. You got your one month of expenses saved up. You got your three months of expenses saved up. Now let's talk about investments. We're going to do that next. One thing I've learned from running multiple businesses is there's usually a gap between how you think work is getting done and how it's actually getting done. And we've had times where we thought we knew the bottleneck, only to realize later the real issue was somewhere completely different. That's exactly what today's sponsor Scribe helps solve. Scribe is a workflow AI platform trusted by 94 % of the Fortune 500.

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26:24Chime is not just smarter banking. It is the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee-free today. Head to chime.com slash PFP. That's chime.com slash PFP. It only takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services for MyPay and Chime Card provided by Chime Bank Partners. Optional products and services may have fees or charges. For more information on APY rates, MyPay, SpotMe, and travel perks, go to chime.com slash disclosures. Well, Dan, I don't know if you know this about me, but for most of my life, I practiced a financial plan known as chaos.

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27:38Monarch really brings all of it together in a very intuitive, easy to understand app. I really appreciate the diagrams. I am what people used to call a visual learner. I like to see where things are going. I like it to be coded so I know exactly what I'm looking at. It makes it easier for someone like me who does not like paying attention to finances to understand. And it doesn't just tell you what you have spent. It helps you be able to plan for things, to set and then meet goals, to check off milestones. It can help you anticipate when some kind of spending spike is coming up, when maybe some of these recurring expenses are all going to accumulate on a single day or where your spending habits might be changing.

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29:06Every summer, the kids are a little bigger, a little more independent, and life looks a little different than it did the year before. 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.

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30:18Number one is you want to get your employer match. Always, always, always get that employer match. It is one of the most important things you can do. Why? Because it's free money. And so there's a lot of different variables to an employer match. If you haven't heard our entire episode on employer matches, we did one on there because there's a bunch of different things that you want to consider. And so I would highly recommend you checking out our employer match episode if you have not. But when it comes to your employer match, you want to make sure that you are at least getting up to the match.

30:43So if you have a 401k with your employer and they match all the way up to 3%, then you want to get that 3 % match. If they match up to 6%, you want to at least be putting 6 % in there because it's a 100 % rate of return. It is free money. And free is my favorite number. I don't know if you like free money, but I love free money. And so that's something you definitely always want to do. Step two is now we want to go to phase two, which is the HSA and Roth level. So the HSA is going to be the level where it's a health savings account. You've never heard of a health savings account? This is where money goes in tax-free.

31:15You can invest the money and grows tax-free and you can pull the money out tax-free as long as you have a qualified medical expense. But a caveat with an HSA is you need to have a high deductible health plan. Well, everyone doesn't have a high deductible health plan. So then we move to the next one, which is the Roth IRA. Now the Roth IRA or Roth 401k is a level that is really powerful. Why? Because money goes in that has already been taxed. The money can grow tax-free and you can pull the money out tax-free. So you pay taxes upfront and then you never pay taxes again, even on the growth of that money.

31:46Now, why is this powerful? This is powerful because if you are maxing out a Roth IRA every single year, for example, and you put$7 ,000 per year into a Roth IRA, let's do the math right now. If you put$7 ,000 in that Roth IRA every single year over the course of 30 years and you got a 10 % rate of return, which is the S &P 500, go look at historic rate of returns, you would have$1 ,151 ,000 inside of that Roth IRA. Now guess how much of that would be your contributions? You would have contributed$210 ,000 in the Roth IRA. So that's it. You would have over$1.1 million. Compound interest is amazing.

32:21And you would have only put in$210 ,000. Guess how much of that is completely tax-free? You would have made$941 ,000 that is completely tax-free. Conversely, let's look at the Roth 401k. I'm gonna do the same calculation. Let's say, because we don't do this enough. Let's say that the Roth 401k gets maxed out every single year. Holy cow, this is unbelievable. If you have a Roth 401k or access to one, okay? 10 % rate of return over the course of 30 years. That means you're putting$23 ,500 per year, the current amount that you can max it out at. You would have$3.865 million in that Roth 401k. And guess how much your total contributions would be?

33:03$705 ,000. That means you'd have$3.1 million that is completely tax-free. You can pull that money out after the age of 59 and a half, and it is completely tax-free. Also, the Roth 401k does not have RMDs, meaning they don't force you to pull it out of that Roth 401k. This, my friends, is absolutely incredible what you can do with the Roth 401k. That's over the course of 30 years. Let's say that you're young and you're making good money. You're maxing out that Roth 401k because these numbers are wild, okay? You would have put over the course of 40 years, $940 ,000 in that Roth 401k. And guess how much money you would have?

33:3810 ,400 ,000, which of 9.4 million would be completely tax-free. This is why we talk about the Roth IRA so much. And this is why it is so powerful. And if you're watching on YouTube, I'm doing my Italian hands right now because I'm so fired up about this. You would have$10.4 million in a raw 401k over the course of 40 years and 9.4 million of it is completely tax-free. You can't get that anywhere else, folks. And so that's something I think a lot of people need to make sure that they are considering. Also, in addition though, when we are looking at this, we also then want to go to our traditional or pre-tax accounts.

34:13So if you're a high earner, you may want to look at pre-tax anyway. But when you look at these pre-tax accounts, this is going to be your 401k or your traditional IRA or your 403b. all of those different accounts would come, you come back to those again. Okay. Then after that, we'd be looking at a taxable brokerage account. So for those who want to be financially independent, a lot of you listening do, you want to retire early. If that's you, and if that's the case, then we want to make sure that we are looking at this taxable account for flexibility. This is going to help us retire early, especially if you're going to want to retire in your thirties, forties, or fifties, this is going to help us tremendously to be able to do that.

34:46Now, what are we investing? I like low cost index funds and ETFs inside master money Academy. I mean, we have Index Fund Pro there for our members so that they can go through and learn about index funds and ETFs if they want to. And when it comes to this, I think it's really, really important to make sure that we understand that fees matter and index funds and ETFs are gonna help us have that low cost. And then reinvesting those dividends over and over is really, really important. So that's where we get started investing. But let's say we're not investing enough. We feel like we're still not getting 20 % into these investments, but what do we do next?

35:17Well, step five is to slash some of the major money leaks. So I want you to audit your top five expenses. And I want you to think about this for a second. What are the top five areas that I spend money on? For most people, it's going to be housing, food, transportation. Maybe it's insurance or subscriptions. Maybe it's daycare. It depends on what these different areas are. Maybe it's youth sports. Maybe it's something crazy. You got a shopping addiction. It doesn't matter what it is. Look at those top five different areas. And if you're not investing enough money, I want you to focus on the top five areas and say, how can I reduce these costs?

35:49Okay. Now there's a number of ways to reduce your costs in these areas. The big three always are housing, food, transportation. Those are the big three. Most people spend the most money on. If you can control those three, everything else is gravy around you. You could be able to really spend less. So 30 % or less on housing costs, 12 % or less on transportation costs is what you should be spending. And then when it comes to food, it's going to fill in the gaps based on what your needs are. So 50 to 60 % on baseline needs is the big key that I want you to think about here. Also, look at your subscriptions.

36:19That's easy pickings, my friends. We just had people in Master Money Academy who went through some of their subscriptions and looked at them. They're reporting wealth wins of being able to save hundreds of dollars per month and thousands of dollars per year just by cutting back some of their subscriptions. I've done the same thing in the past. I've saved a couple hundred dollars a month just by cutting back those subscriptions. And I encourage you to audit your subscriptions. And we talk about this also in the Academy, but I encourage you to audit your subscriptions every six months. Why? Because things just kind of trickle back in and you have all these extra subscriptions.

36:47And so you need to make sure that you stay on top of those because even a$10 subscription is$120 per year. A$20 subscription is$240 per year. A$30 subscription, you get the math,$360 per year. It all adds up and it's a really big deal. Your insurance is another big place. Negotiate your insurance every single year, specifically your car insurance, homeowners, all those different policies need to be negotiated yearly and looking for ways to reduce those. And make sure you're negotiating your bills. You can negotiate your internet bill. You can negotiate your phone bill. You can negotiate your cable bill.

37:17Look for the best, lowest prices. This isn't just being frugal. This is being prudent with your money. This is being someone who is going to save themselves a couple thousand dollars extra per year than the person who is not doing this. You need to learn to negotiate your bills. It is very, very important. And you could take those extra few thousand dollars. You could take that vacation you want, or you could put it towards your Roth IRA, or you You could put it towards something that you actually value. This is why we do this stuff. Now, let's talk about housing for a second, because for a lot of people, a big portion of their income is going towards housing.

37:47And so we want to think through, well, how can we reduce housing costs? One is if you are thinking about buying a house, I want you to run the numbers first. Total cost of ownership. So we have a total cost of ownership house calculator. If you want to check that out, it's at mastermoney.co slash resources. It's free that you can go and use this spreadsheet in order to figure out, should I buy or should I rent? Which one is actually cheaper? In a lot of scenarios right now, renting is cheaper. Even though most people don't like it when I say that, it is. So run the numbers and then come back to me if you wanna argue with me on that.

38:19Also, your car. Your car is another huge factor. So let's talk about that. There are way too many people in this country who are spending way too much on their car. Driving your car for longer is the real key to getting the most value out of it. We talk about this all the time. 20 % down, four years or less on your loan because I don't want you having car payments your entire life. 7 % or less spent on the car payment and the remaining 5 % should be spent on maintenance, upkeep, all that different stuff, totaling 12 % and then you drive the car for 10 years or longer. That's how we buy cars here.

38:56And I like to buy cars two to three years used, try to drive them 10 years or more. And that has worked out for me every single time because I buy them used so that they can take that depreciation hit and then it works out every time. So that is something for sure that I think is gonna be really, really helpful. In Master Money Academy, eventually we're gonna have a car buying course in there that will take you through all the different parameters and some of the things that you need to do. All right, number six is we want to track and optimize our money. So there's a couple of things, especially if you wanna change your life over the course of the next six to 12 months.

39:27The first thing I want you to do is I want you to track your net worth more frequently. Now, looking at your net worth all the time is not always productive because the market goes up, the market goes down, and it's going to shift your net worth dramatically. But looking at your net worth month over month, if you're trying to get out of debt, or if you are someone who has a negative net worth and you're trying to get to a positive net worth, can be something that I want you to do. Now, if you have a huge portion of your net worth in the market, looking at it less frequently, probably every 3, 6, 12 months is going to be much better.

39:54But if you are someone who is trying to work your way up to get to a positive net worth, or you're just getting started and working on your first 100K, Then looking at your net worth more frequently can be helpful, and it's a great motivator. Why? This is your scoreboard. Your net worth is what matters most, and that is your big scoreboard that we want to look at. Also, if you are working on getting your spending under control, doing something like the five-minute drill with your budget can be very powerful. The way the five-minute drill works is that you look at your budget, and you say, okay, every single day for five minutes, I'm going to categorize all my expenses and ensure I know where these dollars are going.

40:26And what this does is it ensures that you are on top of your money. And that's what I really, really want you to do is ensure that you're on top of your money. You can use a simple dashboard like a spreadsheet or an app. There's a bunch of different things that you can do there. Monarch money is great. There's a bunch of great options out there if you want to look through and figure out ways to actually follow the five-minute drill. And then just tracking and optimizing is really, really important. So net worth, you need to know. Tracking that spending and that budget is really, really important.

40:52But you also need to know what your savings rate is. I want you to know what your savings rate is. I want you to know what your income is. You'd be amazed at how many people I ask, how much do you make? And they have no idea. Maybe they know their gross income, but they have no idea what their net income is. It is astounding. And so making sure you know what your income is, is very, very important. Also, as we start to progress through here, I need you to know what your debt number is. How much debt do you actually have? That is going to be very important to also know is to track to optimize, tracking and optimize your money.

41:23Number seven is next, we want to focus on supercharging our income. So how do we supercharge our income? Your income is one of the most important factors that are out there for you to build wealth. So in order to build wealth, you need to make sure that you have enough income coming in so that you have a gap. What is the gap? It's the difference between your income and your expenses. And to grow that gap, you need to increase your income. You're either going to have to cut back or increase your income. It's a lot easier, my friends, to increase your income if you know what you're doing. So how do you do this?

41:51There's a couple of different ways. Number one is I want you to focus on skill stacking, meaning the skills that you possess currently right now are going to dictate how much money you can actually make. Again, the skills you possess right now are going to dictate how much money you can actually make. And so I want you to focus on, and put this in your goals if you have to for the next quarter, one to two different skills that you can actually learn that are gonna help increase your income. Now, this could be a number of different things. If you work in finance, It could be learning how to create different reports for your boss.

42:24If you work in project management, it's figuring out systems to increase productivity or systems to increase production within your company. If you work in construction, maybe it's getting additional certifications that are going to help you become the go-to person for very specific things. If you're a nurse, maybe it's getting the ball rolling on becoming a nurse practitioner so that you can go and make more money in the future. It doesn't matter what it is. we need to focus on stacking up these skills or stacking up these certifications that are going to help us make more money, okay? That's number one, is learning those skills.

42:55That is a very valuable place to spend money because nobody can take those skills away from you. You'll have those skills forever. And so really, really important to do that. Two is a great place to start is to ask for a raise at your day job. So we have a free ebook that you can check out in mastermoney.co slash resources that teaches you how to increase your income at your day job and negotiate your salary and get a raise. And so check that out if you haven't already. But this is going to be something that I think is really, really important and a lot of people need to note is learning how to increase your salary at your day job by learning how to negotiate and learning how to work with your boss is one of the most valuable skills you could ever have.

43:30If you start to learn how to get 10, 20 and 30 percent raises pretty frequently, that is a multimillion dollar decision. And in fact, most people make minor mistakes, but if they tweak some different things, they will have a tremendous outcome when it comes to increasing their income. And so what we teach here is to collaborate with your boss. So you're going to go meet with your boss and you're going to talk to him and say, hey, I want to make more money. I want to make more money here. And so what are some of the things that I need to do in order to either get a promotion or earn more over time?

43:58And they're going to tell you some of these things. You're going to have a conversation. And then you're going to continue to meet with them over and over again until you get to your yearly review. And when you get to your yearly review, you're both going to be on the same page because you were continuously meeting and collaborating with them. They knew you were doing this so that you can earn more money. and if they don't give you more money based on you doing everything they told you to do, well, maybe it's time to get a new job. And so that's where we're gonna look at this and we will analyze this.

44:22In fact, in Master Money Academy, the next course that we are creating is all about this, how to negotiate your salary, how to ask for a raise, how to collaborate with your boss. We're gonna actually go step-by-step through all these steps because I think it is a multimillion dollar decision to learn this skill and is so, so important. And then when you start to earn more money, deciding where that money is gonna go. So as your income increases, the big mistake a lot of people make is they take this increase in income and they throw it towards things that don't actually bring them value. Instead, what I want you to do is the 50-50 rule.

44:53Take 50%, put it to your future self, your emergency fund, your investments, the other 50%. You can spend on things that you actually love. And that's going to be a balanced way to have some lifestyle inflation. But that's okay because that is something that I think you have earned and you deserve to spend more dollars on things that you love. So that's what we want you to do here as much as possible. Number eight is I want you to build a wealth mindset. What do I mean by a wealth mindset? Well, I want you to make sure that you keep that fire in your gut when you are starting to build wealth. So number one is reading at least one finance or investing book per month.

45:27Now, we have something called the High Performance Book Club. We have a book club inside Master Money Academy, too. I forgot to mention that. But we have something called the High Performance Book Club also in our newsletter. That is some of the books that I'm reading. I try to read a book every single week. and it is one of those things that really does make a tremendous difference when it comes to your mindset and when it comes to your knowledge about finance. And the more knowledge you have, the more calm you become around money. So if you find yourself stressed or you find yourself anxious or worried about money, start to invest more time and energy in learning more because the more you learn, the more you just become calm and you have an understanding, okay, this is happening because of this or the market is going down because that's very normal.

46:08And so these are different things that I think are going to help you tremendously. Number two, joining a community like Master Money Academy is going to help you tremendously with your mindset. You should see the changes that we are having in people when it comes to their mindset and how they think about money. Why? Because we are all supporting each other. It is basically one giant group of people supporting each other, and each person is working on their financial transformation. But in addition, it's also people learning from each other. They are teaching each other different things where people will post questions in our Q &A section inside Master Money Academy, and they will get tons of comments from members of how they tackle the same exact situation.

46:43So it's support, it's help, it's coaching. There's so much involved, and we're really excited for it. Also, adopting a long-term mindset is a big shift for most people because you got to understand building wealth takes time. This is a long-term thing. This is not going to happen over the course of just one quarter. Instead, you're working on transforming your finances over the course of the next 6 to 12 months. And once you plant this seed over the course of the next 6 to 12 months, it'll absolutely change your financial life forever. And so that long-term mindset is really, really important.

47:13Another thing I'll say is when it comes to mindset is making sure that you consume content that actually is going to help you and not hurt you. So there's people out there, for example, complaining. And they're complaining, none of us can ever get ahead financially. We're all just screwed by the government or whatever else is going on right now. Stop listening to those people because you can absolutely do this. I guarantee you can do this. And it's all about focusing on the things that you can control. So cut out all the noise, buckle down, and we're going to do this over the course of the next 6 to 12 months.

47:43Next is I want you to think through and eliminate any high interest debt. So we talked about this briefly when it talked about the emergency fund and the 136 method, but high interest debt is a wealth killer. It is going to absolutely destroy your wealth building ability if you do not get a hold of it as fast as you possibly can. And so when it comes to high interest debt, I want you to focus on any debt above a 6 % interest rate. That is not your mortgage. I want you to focus on paying that down and attacking it aggressively. You can use the avalanche method. You can use the snowball method. Either one can work, but you want to get a debt pay down plan as fast as you possibly can.

48:17And so once you clear out those debts, then you can redirect those payments and start investing. And so that I think is something that is really, really important, Really, really powerful. We get people debt paid on plans all the time in Master Money Academy. I send them a spreadsheet and then I give them a loom video back on how I think the order of operations of how they should actually pay down this debt. And so having that plan in place and being able to just attack that debt is really, really important. Lastly, number 10 is we want to make sure that we are protecting our wealth over the course of the next six to 12 months.

48:47So we need to get the proper insurances. So term life insurance from Policy Genius is one. Health insurance, disability insurance, if you need it. renters or homeowners insurance, all of those need to be in place and they need to be the proper policies. That's one. We also need to make sure that we have an estate plan or a will in place. Maybe you need a trust because you have a lot of assets. Maybe you just need a will, but we need to make sure we have those in place. And also we need to make sure that we are also protecting our wealth a third way, which is protecting our wealth by making sure we have an online protection plan.

49:18You need to be bulletproof online, meaning that you freeze your credit when you need to and you use services like DeleteMe to remove your personal information. So if you've never heard of Delete Me, it is a service that goes out and removes your personal information from data brokers that are out there. So there are tons of data brokers out there right now that have your personal information. If you Google your name or your address in quotations, you'll see your name pop up on all these different websites, all these info websites and all these different places. Well, what Delete Me does is they go to those websites and they remove your personal information so that if some scammer gets a part of your information, they can't find the rest of it.

49:51And that's the key. So they don't open student loans in your name or they don't open credit cards in your name. Like that's happened to me. That happened to me in the past before I had this in place. And so if someone who you do not want to get your information, gets your information and they have a part of it, they can go look up the rest of it online. And so that is the big, big problem, which is why a service like Delete Me is so incredibly powerful because they are going to help you remove that personal information from the internet. So if you want 20 % off of Delete Me, just go to joindeliteme.com slash PFP20 and you can get 20 % off at Delete Me.

50:24It is the best service that I've ever used for this kind of stuff. And so you need to have that financial protection plan in place. And in addition, we also have full entire episodes on how to put together a financial protection plan. And this is why I'm so passionate about it though, is because it's happened to me. I've had it happen to me. There was a whole story that I've told in the past of what happened to me, but you need to protect your finances online or somebody can come after them. And so making sure you have that plan in place is really important. So when it comes to insurance, when it comes to a will or trust, We were talking about those in Master Money Academy too.

50:54But those are all really important just to make sure that you have at least term life, looking at health insurance, looking at if you need disability or not, trying to figure out if you need umbrella or not, trying to figure out renters or homeowners are all important. And then from there, you can go and add some additional protections. Okay? So protecting your money is very, very important. Insurance is there to protect you when life throws crazy monkey wrenches at you. So really, really important. All right. So even if you do 70 % of this list in the next six to 12 months, you're gonna get way ahead of most people.

51:27Most people don't even have$1 ,000 saved up in their emergency fund. I just gave you 10 steps that could absolutely change your life in the next six to 12 months if you actually follow through. Even if you focus on one a month and you start to set up systems for each one of these, one every single month, it could absolutely change your life if you let it. And so this is something for most people out there. I want you to focus your time and energy on learning how to get ahead of 99 % of people. I want you to be in the top 1 % when it comes to your finances. And this is how you do it, is following each and every single one of these steps.

52:01Listen, I hope you got a tremendous amount of value from this episode. Cannot thank you enough for being here. Again, join Master Money Academy. We would love to have you. I would love to meet you in there and be part of this community that can absolutely transform your finances. Thank you guys so much for being here and we'll see you on the next episode.

52:48Transcription by CastingWords safe.com slash Spotify or with promo code Spotify. Outdoor deterrence requires a simply safe active guard outdoor protection plan starting at$49.99 a month. Visit simply safe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. Tennessee two zero one two.