5 Signs You’re Overthinking Investing! (Plus Money Q&A!)

16 Sep 2026 · 58 min · 25 chapters

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In short

The episode explains five signs you’re overthinking investing—plus a Money Q&A covering cross-border estate tax planning, budgeting for school-year workers, how a low-income single adult should save/invest, and a brokerage-transfer scam (ACATS fraud). It also includes a “scam of the week” and additional listener Q&A.

Guests

No guests are featured; it’s hosted by Andrew (Personal Finance Podcast / MasterMoney.co).

Guest backgrounds

Not applicable (no guest interviews).

Key claims

  1. Overthinking leads to constant portfolio changes, market timing, excessive research, too many overlapping index funds, and checking portfolios too often.
  2. “No perfect time” to invest; dollar-cost averaging beats waiting.
  3. Owning 15–25 funds often creates overlap; 1–5 diversified funds is usually enough.
  4. ACATS fraud can move holdings in about one business day; credit freezes don’t stop it.

Notable examples

  • Andrew’s early mistakes: a South America mutual fund at 16; a penny stock at 18 that went to zero.
  • Estate Q&A: Japan taxes the heir (not the estate); Oregon starts at $1M with 10–16%; U.S. federal exemption is $15M/person; use a cross-border attorney.
  • Scam steps: enable transfer lock, use 2FA, and monitor accounts monthly; consider data-removal service DeleteMe.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

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Coaching Program Announcement

0:45 to 1:18

An invitation to join a one-on-one coaching program for financial growth.

“than they currently are, and all your friends are getting ahead and you don't really know where to invest your dollars, then I wanted to invite you to apply to work with me with our one-on-one coaching program.”

Introduction to Overthinking Investing

1:18 to 1:35

Discussion about the common tendency to overthink investment strategies.

“Make sure you are liking, subscribing, leaving five-star ratings and reviews on your favorite podcast players.”

Personal Investment Journey

1:35 to 5:20

Andrew shares his personal experiences of overcomplicating investments.

“See, one of the biggest problems that people have is when they start to invest, they think it needs to be extra complicated.”

Focus on Simplicity in Investing

5:20 to 5:57

The importance of simplifying investment strategies for better outcomes.

“See, people who don't have money or people who feel as though they are slogging, they are grinding, they are trying to get ahead, they make good money, but they feel as though they're just not getting ahead.”

Common Investment Pitfalls

5:57 to 6:40

Introduction to the first sign of overthinking investing: constantly changing portfolios.

“This is one of the most common things that I see for new investors or investors who feel as though they're getting ahead when in reality, they are going nowhere.”

Avoiding Timing the Market

6:40 to 7:50

Advice against waiting for the perfect time to invest and the importance of consistency.

“that you are sticking to your long-term plan.”

Investing Consistently

7:50 to 11:20

Emphasizing the benefits of regular investing regardless of market conditions.

“over the course of the last 100 years even.”

Research vs. Actual Investing

11:20 to 13:09

Discussing the danger of spending too much time researching instead of investing.

“If you're nervous, start with small amounts of money, then start to increase it over time every single month.”

Understanding Diversification

13:09 to 14:00

The misconception that owning multiple funds leads to better diversification.

Understanding Fund Overlap

14:00 to 16:34

Learn how to identify overlap in index funds and ETFs to simplify your portfolio.

“Guys, a lot of these funds are holding the same stocks inside the fund.”
Show all 25 chapters

The Dangers of Frequent Portfolio Checks

16:34 to 18:28

Discover how frequent portfolio checks can lead to stress and overthinking in investing.

“Number five is that you check your portfolio way too often.”

Engaging with Your Investment Journey

18:28 to 19:10

Encouragement to share your experiences with overthinking investing.

“already chosen my index funds and ETFs and I have my portfolio on set it and forget it.”

Addressing Estate Planning Complexities

19:10 to 24:07

Explore estate planning issues for international scenarios and important considerations.

“wherever you are watching or listening to this podcast.”

Addressing Estate Planning Complexities

24:14 to 25:26

Explore estate planning issues for international scenarios and important considerations.

“This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.”

Addressing Estate Planning Complexities

25:31 to 26:41

Explore estate planning issues for international scenarios and important considerations.

“When I started the Personal Finance Podcast, I had no idea how big it could become.”

Strategies for Budgeting with Seasonal Income

26:45 to 28:01

Advice on how to manage budgeting when income is seasonal or inconsistent.

“So Brenna says, Hi, I'm looking for ways to make a few extra bucks because every year my husband and I are always drowning with our bills.”

Strategies for Managing Summer Paychecks

28:01 to 34:30

Learn how to effectively manage your summer paycheck through budgeting and saving.

“And so what I would do is a couple of different things.”

Money Management Tips for Young Adults

34:31 to 36:18

Discover essential money management strategies for young adults living at home.

“The rest of your paycheck, I would take at least one of your paychecks and start investing those dollars.”

Identifying and Preventing Financial Scams

36:19 to 42:00

Understand the ACATS fraud scam and learn how to protect your finances.

“So increase your income, start funding that emergency fund and get started investing.”

Investing Strategies for Barry

42:20 to 44:15

Exploration of investment strategies focused on growth and emergency funds.

“So again, watch out for those ACATS transfers.”

Investing Strategies for Barry

46:51 to 47:56

Exploration of investment strategies focused on growth and emergency funds.

“That's 50 % off your first year at monarch.com with code PFP.”

Advice for Jordan on Investing

48:06 to 55:56

Guidance for a newcomer to investing on how to start and build wealth.

“I'm a working class man who is trying his hardest to make up for a lifetime of procrastination.”

Encouragement for Listeners

56:01 to 56:11

Listeners are reassured about their future and encouraged to take action.

“I promise you, you will land on your feet and you will be doing some pretty cool stuff if you lock in and do some of these stuff step by step.”

Engagement with Audience

56:11 to 56:32

The host expresses gratitude and invites audience participation through questions.

“And thank you all for listening to this podcast episode.”

Closing Remarks and Future Events

57:08 to 57:29

The host wraps up the episode and highlights upcoming masterclasses.

“There's so much going on in Master Money Academy.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, five signs you might be overthinking investing plus money Q &A.

0:16What's up, everybody, and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of MasterMoney.co. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be talking through five signs you might be overthinking investing. Plus, we're going to dive into a bunch of your questions. Now, before we get into today's episode, I just have a quick announcement. So if you're making good money and you get to the end of the month and you have no idea where all of that money went, or you feel as though your dollars should be further along than they currently are, and all your friends are getting ahead and you don't really know where to invest your dollars, then I wanted to invite you to apply to work with me with our one-on-one coaching program.

0:59Now we have a coaching program where we're taking a very small group of people through a system where my goal is to get you on track to becoming millionaires and then becoming financially free. So if you're interested in joining and you make over a hundred thousand dollars per year in household income, or you have a hundred thousand dollars to invest, send me an email, Andrew at mastermoney.co. Also, if you're getting value out of these episodes, Make sure you are liking, subscribing, leaving five-star ratings and reviews on your favorite podcast players. Cannot thank you guys enough for leaving those five-star rating and reviews.

1:29They truly mean the world to us. Now, let's talk about five signs that you are overthinking investing. See, one of the biggest problems that people have is when they start to invest, they think it needs to be extra complicated. They think it's one of those areas in life where they really need to dial it in, that every single area of their investment plan needs to be absolutely perfect before they get started. But instead, many people end up overthinking investing early on. This is something that I did. So when I was a new investor, the first investment that I actually made was at 16 years old.

2:02And when I was 16, I decided to do a bunch of different research into all these different mutual funds and stocks and different things. And I ended up landing on a mutual fund that invested exclusively in South America. Now, when I did this, I had no idea why I was doing this, but a lot of smart people were telling me, oh, this is a great mutual fund. You should own this mutual fund. Looking back now, I know that mutual fund had some pretty high fees, but in addition, it wasn't simplified enough for me to understand what I was investing in. So I overcomplicated this situation. Later on down the line, just two years later, I started to invest in other different avenues, things like individual stocks, but also penny stocks.

2:41And there was a time when I was 18 years old where I invested all of my money into one penny stock. I was reading all these different financial newsletters and I was like, wow, this one made a really compelling case for this media company that also is involved in movies and entertainment and all these other things. And they made the case as to why this was going to go up and shoot up to the moon. And I'm 18 years old reading this and I'm like, all right, if I put all of my money I have to my name, which at that time was probably a thousand dollars. And I put it all into this one investment. What is going to happen here?

3:13I put it all into this one specific penny stock. I think I owned over a thousand shares of this thing. And guess what happened? In literally one day that penny stock went down to zero. And a couple of weeks later, that business went completely out of business. And so this lesson taught me that I was trying to overcomplicate investing, which led me to start studying what real investors do. And I wanted to understand what people like Warren Buffett did, what people like Peter Lynch did, what people like Monash Prabhai did, what people like Charlie Munger did. And a lot of my heroes out there are investors who focus on the boring.

3:52They focus on the simplicity to understand how to figure out how to invest for the long term. And so the more and more I studied investors like this, the more I realized I was doing this backwards. I was trying to create these complicated systems with all these different complicated charts that were gonna allow me to find the diamond in the rough. But instead, if I just follow proven strategies that have been those strategies time and time again, I am gonna be able to build wealth. And this is what we teach people inside Master Money Academy is I want you to follow proven investment strategies.

4:25So we have students that'll come through there and we simplify investing for them. That's the goal with Master Money Academy me is to simplify investing for them. And so my goal for you today in this episode is to learn the five signs that you are overthinking investing. And then as we go through these, I want you to think through, does this apply to me? Is this something I am currently doing? Because if you are, if you're overcomplicating investing, let's simplify until we have a solid plan in place. And then you can start to add in complication. But when you're building up that foundation, your first hundred thousand, your first two hundred thousand dollars invested.

5:00We want to make sure that we are simplifying as much as possible and then focusing our time and energy on the thing that matters most, which is income. And if you focus on the income, you can take those extra dollars, put them towards your investments. All of a sudden, your portfolio is going to compound. It's going to grow and it's going to allow you to really stop overcomplicating and have the ability to build real wealth. See, people who don't have money or people who feel as though they are slogging, they are grinding, they are trying to get ahead, they make good money, but they feel as though they're just not getting ahead.

5:29Those folks, typically that happens with investments because they're overcomplicating investments. They don't have a plan in place or they're just spreading all their resources all over the place. They're spraying and praying. They buy a little crypto here. They buy a little index funds here. They buy some ETFs here, but they don't have a real plan to stick to. And so that's why they're just throwing investments all over the place. If that's you, I want you to understand what we're going to be talking about today. So if that's something you're into, let's get into it. Number one is you're constantly changing your portfolio.

6:00This is one of the most common things that I see for new investors or investors who feel as though they're getting ahead when in reality, they are going nowhere. They are just running on a treadmill and they really aren't moving forward. And so if you move your investments around all the time, or you feel as though you're buying and selling throughout the year, you really don't have a strategy in place because you hear a hot stock tip on one podcast, then you read CNBC and you hear another hot stock tip, then you hear that, well, this investment's not doing very well, so you go and sell, and you don't have any plan in place whatsoever, then most likely you're constantly changing your portfolio and you're constantly changing your plan.

6:38What I want you to do is I want you to make sure that you are sticking to your long-term plan. And this is why we wanna develop an investment plan that is long-term, not some short-term thing where you're gonna buy all these different things, but instead you have a long-term investment plan. The same people who asked me about crypto were the same people who asked me about gold just a couple of months ago, were the same people who were asking about silver when that got hot, and they just follow the hot trend over and over again. You can't do this. If you're constantly changing your portfolio, you're making this too complicated.

7:08See, investing is pretty simple. It's pretty simple to understand. You open the correct accounts, You buy low-cost index funds and ETFs or target date retirement funds or individual stocks that you like, and then you do that for decades and decades and decades. Yet many people are overcomplicating this, trying to find the perfect investment that's going to go to the moon. Let me tell you right now, if someone tells you that an investment is going to go to the moon, write that person off immediately. Because instead, you need to have the right principles in place, you need to have the right research plan in place, and you need to understand what you're investing in.

7:44And so don't constantly change your portfolio. Make sure you have a solid plan that's proven throughout time over the course of the last 100 years even. Then do that because that is gonna be much better than you switching plans left and right. The more you switch, the more you're selling, the more you're changing, then you're gonna miss out on the best days in the market. And studies have shown, if you miss out on the 10 best days in the market, you can reduce your returns by two to 3 % just by missing out on the 10 best days in the market over the course of the next 30 years. So I want you to ensure that you are not changing your plan over and over again.

8:21Number two is you wait for the perfect time to invest. Let me just tell you this right now. Newsflash, there is no perfect time to invest. I have people in my DMs right now telling me, I'm waiting until this AI bubble pops before I get started investing. I had people two years ago telling me, I'm waiting until the economy gets better. Well, the market has had historic returns since two years ago. Two years prior to that, I have people telling me, well, I'm waiting for the market to come down because it's too high. Two years before that, they were waiting for COVID or all these different situations that were happening over and over again.

8:56No, you cannot be waiting for the perfect time to invest because there is no perfect time to invest. The best time to start investing is right now. And if you're waiting to invest, you are falling further and further and further. they're behind. I don't care if you have$5. I don't care if you have$10. I don't care if you have$25 a month to invest. You need to start getting those dollars working. And if you have $1 ,000 or$2 ,000 or$5 ,000 and you're hiding it under a mattress or you are stuffing it on the shelf because you are scared that the market is too high, newsflash, my friend, building wealth means you are consistently investing over long periods of time.

9:36You don't try to time the market. You don't wait for the market to be up. You don't wait for the market to be down. Instead, you are consistently investing month in and month out. And the sooner you realize that you need to do this, the easier life is going to become. It's freeing. It's actually freeing to understand that if I just dollar cost average, meaning invest the same amount of money from my paycheck every single month into the market over and over again and increase that amount every single year, every time I get a raise or every time I get a bonus, I'm increasing that amount and I get my employer match and I understand which accounts to invest in.

10:12All of a sudden, everything just opens up and you can breathe. You can take the pressure off of yourself. You don't have to worry as much. And this, my friends, is how you can build wealth on autopilot. And so don't wait for the perfect time to invest because guess what? Waiting is one of the most costly things that you can ever do. The longer you wait, the more money you are losing that could be getting invested. Now, does the market go up forever? No. There's going to be years where the market's going to pull back and it's going to go down. We're going to have recessions. That is very normal.

10:42But go and pull out a stock market chart and put on the longest time horizon that you can. You can pull out your phone right now and do this if you want to. And what direction does that market go? That market goes up. So if you look at the last 50 years, 30 years, 100 years, 10 years, five years, the market goes in one direction. And what I want you to understand here is timing the market is a fool's errand and waiting for the perfect time to invest is a fool's errand. Nobody has a crystal ball. Nobody knows what's going to happen next. Nobody can predict the future and you definitely can't predict the future.

11:16So make sure that you just get started now and you get started investing. If you're nervous, start with small amounts of money, then start to increase it over time every single month. Maybe you start with$25, then it's 35, then it's 50, then it's 100, then it's 150, then it's 200. But you're going to see that if you have the right plan in place, it'll be absolutely amazing what you can do. Number three is you spend more time researching than actually investing. Do you know people like this? And maybe this is you, where they spend all day long digging into charts. They dig into 10Ks. They watch YouTube videos of people digging into charts in 10Ks.

11:54They go and dive into all the different research metrics. They read every single piece of news. A lot of times when I was in the corporate world, there's a lot of folks like this who would tell me every single piece of information about a stock, but they didn't really invest their money. They were just interested in the research. They were interested in looking deeper into some of these stocks and they felt productive because they were doing this. But in reality, what they were doing is hurting their progress because consistently investing every single month instead of waiting for the perfect time, like we just talked about, is the most important thing.

12:26And so if you're spending all of your time researching, but no time actually investing your dollars, this can be a huge problem. If you're one of those folks that's addicted to stock market news or stock market media, or you feel as though every single piece of information is imperative before you make that investment choice, you're never going to get ahead. Now, Warren Buffett, this is true. A lot of people will reference this. Warren Buffett reads six to eight hours a day, which is absolutely true, but that's his full-time job that's what he does. He says for the average investor, buying low cost index funds and calling it a day is going to be the most profitable and the best thing for someone to do.

13:00And so when you start to look at this and when you start to look at how much time you're spending researching, if you're spending way too much time researching, I would do something else. Number four is that you think owning more index funds, ETFs or mutual funds means more diversification. owning 15 20 25 index funds or etfs in one portfolio is typically overkill meaning you are over complicating your portfolio for people who are building up their foundation one to five index funds and etfs is completely perfect to have a well diversified portfolio heck jl collins throughout his entire accumulation phase owned one index fund which was vtsax where there are some people like Warren Buffett, he puts his family's money into two index funds.

13:44And so I think for many people who are overcomplicating their portfolio, they are doing this, A, because they have too much information at their fingertips now, B, because there are so many new options out there and you are looking at the shiny object, but C, they feel as though they're getting more diversified. Guys, a lot of these funds are holding the same stocks inside the fund. I think a lot of people look at the wrapper instead of looking at what's inside. So think of an index fund and ETF like this. Okay. Think of a package of candy and inside that package of candy, maybe it's Sour Patch Kids.

14:18There's orange ones, there's red ones, there's yellow ones, there's blue ones. But if you buy the generic version of Sour Patch Kids, it's going to have the same colors in there, similar flavors, those types of things. But the packaging is different. And for many index funds and ETFs, it's the same as candy. The packaging is going to be very different in terms of what they say this can do or what they say is inside. But in reality, the stocks inside that index fund or ETF are all the same. Why? Because they are mirroring the index. And if they don't mirror the index, then it's really not an S &P 500 index fund, or it's really not a total stock market index fund.

14:57And so you see a lot of new wrappers now where it'll be on the tech sector, for example. So you could see something like a QQQM, you could see something like a VGT, and all of a sudden you're starting to look at all these different investments and seeing what the differences are. Now, some have more holdings than others, some are going to be more concentrated than others, and so that's where you're gonna start to see some differences. But if you know how to research index funds and ETFs, you can tell pretty quickly that there is tons of overlap with these funds. So if you own multiple broad-based index funds, like a VTI, a VOO, plus other broad-based index funds that are covering all the same companies, you probably just have a ton of overlap.

15:34So one way to combat this is you can Google this. You can Google fund overlap tool. And you can go and see, well, how much overlap do my index funds and ETFs have? And the fund overlap tool typically will tell you how much overlap are between these funds. And it's pretty cool to see this. If you have really high overlap, like above 70%, then you're probably just investing in two funds that have pretty much the same objective and they're going towards the same thing. Now, if you like that, if you like having different funds and having more diversification, more power to you, it's not going to hurt you.

16:09But in reality, as long as those funds have low cost, they are not charging you a ton of fees, then you're completely fine. If they're similar. But if you don't want to overcomplicate your situation, then I would suggest getting to one to five funds. Then as you start to build more wealth, you can add more in. I think that's a lot easier to do long-term. So for many of us out there, just owning too many funds is going to be one of the ways that you can overcomplicate your portfolio. The last one is number five. Number five is that you check your portfolio way too often. Many of you out there may be this person, or you may know someone like this.

16:44Every single hour of every day, they're checking their portfolio. They're looking how much the market went up. They're looking how much the market went down. And a lot of times they are getting stressed or they're getting anxious based on the direction that the market is moving. Now, I used to do this when I was young. In fact, I was full-time day trader for six months straight, and I would look at the market constantly. I would look at economic indicators constantly. If the president at that time said something, the market would dip, I would panic. Or if the president or the prime minister somewhere else said something, the market would dip, and I would panic.

17:17And you would see just market shifts based on irrational things that were happening within the world. Because day to day, week to week, month to month, the market is going to be highly volatile. It's going to move up and it's going to go down. But long term, the market goes in one direction, and that is up. And once you realize this, it changes your perspective on everything else. You don't have to worry about day to day, week to week, and month to month. Instead, you can focus on the long term and focus on your long term plan. And that is how you build wealth. Warren Buffett said it best. In the short run, the stock market is a voting machine.

17:55But in the long run, the stock market is a weighing machine. And that's what I want you to take away from thinking through checking your portfolio too often. If it causes you stress and anxiety to check it too often, then there's no need to do it. Now, if you just like looking at it, hey, cool. I think that's great if you like looking at it or enjoy spending some time looking at your portfolio and watching it grow, and that keeps you motivated every day. That's awesome. but if you feel as though this is one of those things that causes you stress and anxiety, you really don't need to look at it very often at all.

18:24In fact, I don't check my portfolio very often. The only time I check it is to make sure my automations are working properly because I've already chosen my index funds and ETFs and I have my portfolio on set it and forget it. The only other time I would is when I'm trading options or things like that. If I'm doing the wheel strategy or if I'm buying covered calls or if I'm buying cash secure puts or covered calls, then I'm checking it just to make sure everything is operating correctly. But outside of that, my long-term investments, my wealth building machine. I'm not checking that much at all.

18:53So these are the five signs that you are overthinking investing. I wanna know down below in the comments, which ones are you doing? Are you overthinking investing in a couple of different areas? Or is this just one of those things where you feel as though you're on track and you are A-OK when it comes to investing? Would love to hear from you down in the comments wherever you are watching or listening to this podcast. Now, let's jump into some of your questions. all right so question number one is from an email listener uh and they came in and asked a question so planning my estate my daughter now lives in tokyo and i live in oregon which starts levying on estates greater than one million dollars and we now find out that the government of japan wishes to levy on an additional 55 tax on our estate holy moly is there any way to avoid this so there's a couple of things that are going to matter here when it comes to this and first of that is a daunting thing.

19:46So let's talk through some of the steps to how to consider this and how to get some help on this too, because this is a very important thing to get some help on. This is half a million dollars we're talking about here. And so we want to make sure that we are taking the right steps when it comes to this. So the Japan piece is going to hand on your daughter's residency status, not yours. So Japan taxes the heir, not the estate. And the 55 % figure is on top of the marginal brackets, not the flat rate on everything. So the number one thing we need to do is we need to make sure that we understand those laws in Japan.

20:19And so I would step one, find out what visa that she currently holds. If she is on a work visa, then Japan is going to generally exempt assets when it comes to this kind of stuff. But if she has lived in Japan over the course of the last 10 to 15 years, or she's on a spouse visa or as a permanent resident, then the likelihood that this is going to get taxed while she's over there is pretty high. So we want to figure out exactly what type of visa she currently holds or what she is currently doing in Japan. And step two is to understand that you're not going to get taxed twice on the same dollar.

20:52The U.S. and Japan have an estate and gift tax treaty. And Japan is going to give a foreign tax credit for estate or inheritance taxes paid abroad, including Oregon. So you're OK there. You're not going to get taxed twice. but we just got to make sure that we understand exactly what's happening. Now, I would look at the Oregon side separately here because Oregon starts at$1 million with rates of 10 % to 16%. And the federal exemption is now$15 million per person. So for most families, the state tax is the bigger domestic issue. So there's going to be a lot of things that you just want to consider when it comes to that.

21:27But Oregon is going to be the bigger deal for you. The federal is going to be less of a big deal, but I would not try to fix a Japan issue with lifetime gift tax, because that's going to be one of those areas that you really want to make sure that you understand they have their own separate laws there. And so what I would do in this situation, I was a hundred percent, not even second guess this, hire a cross-border attorney. If your daughter is going to be staying in Japan, getting someone in your corner who's going to help you through this, I think is super important. This is a very narrow specialty.

21:56And so you need someone who understands all of these different questions, including the visa questions, but in addition, who can help you reduce your tax bill. This is going to pay for itself a ton of times over. And so this is a perfect situation when you, and for anybody listening, when you have complicated situations like this, especially overseas, it can be very difficult to understand both sides. And so it is much better for you to hire someone who understands this than for you to try to figure out it out on your own. This is a great reason to hire someone because they're going to save you a lot more money than what you're going to be spending.

22:28So I think for many of us out there, we need to understand that this is one of the most important things to do is hire people to help you when you need that help. And this is a great instance on when you should do that. So this is a great question. And I let me know what you figure out when you do hire someone, because I would love to hear more. I think for the most part, just understanding that you're not going to get taxed twice, look at the organ taxes first, then start to look at Japan and then start to have that conversation with the attorney. I think that's the most important thing because this is more complicated than it looks even on the surface.

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24:16Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Now, if you watch this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube, you probably noticed the wood slat walls behind us. We wanted this podcast set to look professional, but also not be a project that was overly complicated. And I found these slat walls on Wayfair, and it completely changed the space. And it's now basically the background that you see in every single podcast or piece of content that we record. And that's one of the things that I love about Wayfair. You can shop thousands of products across different styles and budgets, use customer photos and reviews to see how things actually look in real homes, and find something that fits your space.

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25:38Every style, every home. When I started the Personal Finance Podcast, I had no idea how big it could become. I just knew I had something I wanted to share, so I started putting it online. And looking back, I definitely wish I would have started a decade earlier. One of the horror parts about building something online, though, is making it look professional. A website used to mean hiring a developer, figuring out design, and potentially spending thousands of dollars. In fact, on my website, I spent tens of thousands of dollars. That's what impressed me when playing around with Hostinger's AI website builder.

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26:59His job is five to six days a week and year round. My job is five days a week and only 10 months throughout the year because I work for a school. During the two months that I'm not working, I can't collect unemployment because I receive an insurance of employment letter every single year. Applying for some other employment for the time that I'm not working seems to be a yearly battle. Is there anything that I can do so that we aren't fighting every year to keep a roof over our heads, to keep the power on, and to keep a vehicle? Any advice assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much for your time.

27:32First of all, Brenna, I feel you deep down with this. I know this is a very difficult situation to manage money when it comes to this. And you even thinking through this and the way you're thinking through this is really, really important. Now, this is a great time of year to start thinking about it because school just started. And so you can develop a plan over the course of the next year so that you have something for the summertime that's going to allow you to kind of carry through. Now, the core problem with this is a couple of different things. One is you're budgeting as if you have 12 months of paychecks, when in reality, you only have 10 on your side.

28:03And so what I would do is a couple of different things. One is you can ask your district's payroll if they will change your paychecks to a 12-month option. Some districts will do this, some will not. We have teachers in Master Money Academy, for example, that we've kind of chatted about this with them. Some of them have been able to move money to a 12-month system instead of 10. Now, if that's not an option in your district, then we can kind of do some of this ourselves. You can actually set this up in a way that helps yourself. So if they do not allow you to do that, you can do this yourself.

28:33So what I would do is take your monthly summer expenses and figure out what the difference is in the summertime and multiply that by two and then divide it by 10. What this is going to do is this is going to allow you to understand, okay, maybe I need to take a portion of every paycheck and put it towards my summer paycheck fund. And so what I would do is set up a savings bucket and it's something like a high yield savings account. You can use my favorites down below that are linked down below. and what I would do is automatically send money to that high yield savings account with each paycheck because what you can figure out here is, okay, well, over these two months, I'm gonna need to save myself an additional$2 ,500 a month, okay, let's just use that math.

29:14So if you need to save$5 ,000 for your summertime, then you can start to send money over there by dividing that number by 10, sending that money over there, 500 bucks a month, and all of a sudden, by the time summer comes around, you will have that money sitting in that account and it's going to remove the stress and it's going to remove the anxiety out of that situation so this is like if you listen to our episode that we just did with mess jesse meacham this is kind of what we're talking about here is making sure that you set money aside so that money is just there when the time comes and i would do this with all sorts of things i do this with christmas so that christmas doesn't surprise me i do this with car insurance if you have every six months you have a car insurance bill so that doesn't surprise you, you just got to treat this summer paycheck as a bill.

29:59Now, if you're barely getting by as it is, then increasing your income or finding a way to have a side hustle year round that you could do maybe on nights or weekends is going to be very, very helpful to then make sure that you're funding this summer paycheck. Okay. So here's an example of this. Let's say for example, that you said, okay, well, I can't really even do this because I'm barely getting by as it is. we're living paycheck to paycheck currently, then what I would do is maybe find some sort of side hustle. Maybe you deliver groceries. Maybe you have a side hustle that helps you kind of increase your income little by little every single month.

30:31And you take that extra income and put it towards the summer paycheck fund. Then once you get to the point in time during summertime, you can even do it a little more if you wanted to. Secondly, is if you do work for a school and you have capabilities to do things like tutoring, teachers have a lot of really cool capabilities. And so if you have the ability to do things like tutoring or helping people with different things that are in your field, well, you can do that on the side as well. And you can make a lot more money, doing consulting or tutoring or those types of things if you wanted to go that route.

31:02The other thing I would say is to line up summer work before the year ends. So there's things like summer school or extended summer programs. There's district summer camps that could pop up. And if you start to line this stuff up before any of that stuff begins, that would be a great thing. Like working at summer camps is another great side hustle, you know, during the summertime that happened a lot. Or if you are really good at something and you want to host your own summer camp, that's also a great side hustle that you can do. And so what I would do right now is I would run a bill audit. I would look at my bills throughout the entire year and I would say, what, how much is going out and how much is coming in?

31:37Once you understand how much is going out and how much is coming in, then you can decide how much that summer paycheck fund needs to have in it. Or you can decide how much you need to make in the summertime in order to make up the difference there. And then look at the car specifically, because if the car payment is breaking you every single year, then deciding if that payment needs to be stuck around, deciding if you need to keep that car payment is going to be another thing. And one of the things I'll say here is as you start to think through some of this plan, an emergency fund is going to help protect you against this as well.

32:06And so if you want to keep funding this and you build up that emergency fund to, you know, six months of expenses, for example, then the summer months can't surprise you as bad. Now, obviously, you don't want to dip into the emergency fund every single summer, but at the same time, if that's what you need to do, there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. So you can treat this fund as part of your emergency fund. And this is why we talk about, you know, making sure that you save with the 136 method. We want you to save one month of expenses, then three months of expenses, then six months of expenses inside of your emergency fund.

32:35This is the exact reason why, so that you have this cash cushion to allow you to protect against life when life happens just like this. so after this i would set up a high yield savings account even if you can't get enough money in there to fund your summer paychecks just yet even just getting it started is going to get the ball rolling and then start finding ways to earn a little bit of extra money either in the evenings or on the weekends or start lining up those summer jobs because if you line up a summer job that's going to solve the problem immediately and if there's a summer job that you can do every single year that's going to really really help this situation but trying to figure it out as you get closer to your end is probably the problem.

33:13If you start planning right now, then you can do some cool stuff. Even sports leagues, like think about this, for example, okay? There is my kids, for example, they work or they are in sports year round. In the summertime, we're like doubling down on sports just to try to keep them busy. But a lot of these sports programs like flag football or t-ball or baseball or basketball or soccer, they need more people to help them. And a lot of times this happens on the weekends or in the evenings. And so if you can work as an administrator for them, or if you can do things like that, that's another way that you can kind of get involved with your expertise since you already work at a school and still have the ability to kind of make some extra money.

33:50If you can get yourself to make, you know, a few hundred dollars per month and put those few hundred dollars per month towards your summer paycheck fund, it'll solve the problem pretty quickly. So two things, the quickest way to solve this is one, find a way to save those summer paychecks. Two, try to line up summer jobs now. Three, work on building up that emergency fund after you get this all smooth and leveled out so that emergency fund can help you anytime there's emergencies that pop up just like this. I hope that's helpful and I hope it's something that you feel as though it can work. And if you can, if you can spread out your paychecks over the course of 12 months instead of 10 months, that's also going to help you long-term.

34:30All right. The next question is, hi, I'm a male, 31 and single and I make a little over a thousand dollars every two weeks and I don't have to worry about much because I still live at home what should I do with my money we just had an episode on how to save up your first hundred thousand dollars even on low income that's the first episode I would target if you haven't heard that episode yet but the first thing I would do is build up your one month of expenses and so if you want to if your goal is to move out of your parents home at some point in time I would build up one month of expenses then three months and then six months and start putting that money in a high yield savings kind of take at least a portion of your paycheck and start putting it over here.

35:04The rest of your paycheck, I would take at least one of your paychecks and start investing those dollars. I would start growing that money and I would start to really get the ball rolling. So if your job offers a 401k match, I would take advantage of that. This can get you a 50 to a hundred percent rate of return. If you don't have a Roth IRA yet, I would consider opening one of those and looking into that. You could put$7 ,500 per year inside of a Roth IRA and start to grow that with low cost index funds and ETFs, then as you start to do this, I would pay yourself the rent that you would be paying somewhere else.

35:34Start to live a lifestyle like you are on your own. Don't spend all your money while you're living at home because that would defeat the purpose of why you're there. And instead, start to save money, start to put it towards your emergency funds, start to put it towards your investments, and really get the ball rolling. If you are making$2 ,000 a month and you're living at home and you don't have expenses currently, you should be saving and investing 50 to 75 % of your income. Outside of that, it's going to be one of those things where what's the point of living at home? Like what's the point of even doing this?

36:02It's one of those areas where saving more is going to help you dramatically. So put real energy next into your income and growing that income, because that's part of the reason it's pretty hard to live on$24 ,000 per year and move out of your parents' house. And so increasing your income would be the next goal. So if you're going to invest some of these dollars, I would even invest some of those dollars in increasing your income and finding a way to increase your income so that at some point in time, you can start making good money because at 31 years old, that's going to be the most important component for you long-term is increasing that amount.

36:34So increase your income, start funding that emergency fund and get started investing. Those are the three things I would do. And then making sure your savings rate is really, really high. I would at least at a minimum, one of your paychecks should be going to saving and investing. And that's how I would think about that so that you can find a way to get out of their parents' house. So great question. Let me know if you have any other questions on that.

36:56All right. So now we're going to get into the scam of the week. All right. So we love during these Q and a sessions to kind of get into some of the scams of the week also that we have seen happen. And the reason why we do this is because there are so many different scams that are out there. Now, financial scams are happening left and right. And we want to make sure that we are protecting our finances. And so a lot of times I talk about these because I've had my identity stolen in the past and it's not a fun process. And I want you to avoid that at all costs. So there's a new scam called ACATS fraud.

37:27So if you don't know what ACATS is, it is the automated customer account transfer service, the system that brokerages use to move your stocks, your index funds, your ETFs, or your cash from one firm to another. So let's say, for example, you want to move money from Vanguard to Fidelity. ACATS helps you do that. Now, the scam works like this. A criminal is going to use your name, your social security number, your address or date of birth or all whichever ones they have to open a brokerage account in your name at another firm. Now, opening a brokerage account does not require a credit check. So the credit freeze does not stop it.

38:03So if you have your credit frozen, which we talk about all the time on this podcast, and this happens, it's not going to stop it actually. So it's really, it's really a dangerous thing that I want you to know. Then they submit an ACATS request from the new account, pulling your holdings out of your real account, because the names match on both ends and they have your account number, this can go through. The whole thing can validate in one business day. And so the window to even catch this is pretty tiny. So they never have to have your passcode or anything else. They can actually do this as long as they have your account number.

38:36Now, scammers will often flood victims with emails and notices and notifications to kind of bury that this transfer happened. And so they're getting smarter and smarter, which is absolutely wild. And so this money can deliver on this bank account. This became a bigger issue because there are senators in Congress right now that are stating, hey, if you do a transfer, the person who is transferring the money needs to be notified. Right now, it is not a requirement for you to get notified if money is being transferred from one brokerage account to another. So they are saying, basically, we need additional protections.

39:08So places like Webull and Robinhood and interactive brokers are where this has been happening the most. And so if you have those types of accounts, I want you to make sure that you are taking some of these steps that I'm about to talk about here to protect yourself. All right. So step one is to turn on transfer lock at your brokerage. Fidelity calls it money transfer lockdown. There are other places that have a similar name. And what it does is it rejects all outgoing ACATS requests. Vanguard added one called the output transfer lock in July of 2026 under your security profile that allows you to also do this.

39:43And Schwab has a manual account lockdown, but you may need to ask for security or the fraud department to be able to do this. So this is basically similar to like freezing your credit, only it's like freezing your brokerage account from these ACATS transfers. Now, if your brokerage does not offer a lock, you can call and ask them to flag the account to block outgoing transfers with something like a phone verification, for example. And that's going to help you make sure they send alerts before they're being processed but you can call up your brokerage and kind of say hey what are my options here because this seems to be happening more frequently treat your a brokerage account number like a password you want to be careful with this number because this is the one thing that if these scammers get it and they can go and try to find your name and your information this is going to be a bigger problem and always obviously turn on two-factor authentication turn on all the protections when it comes to your brokerage account this is your wealth building machine.

40:32You do not want this getting stolen because it's hard to get it back if it does get stolen and check your accounts monthly. Just put it as part of your monthly routine to check your accounts. Make sure everything's there. Everything looks a-okay. That's going to be really, really important. Now, if a scammer gets a piece of your information, like if they get your account number and they do some research to figure out whose account number this is, or they get a piece of your name, then all of a sudden they can start to look at different data brokers and find the rest to your information because all they have to do is Google your name in quotations, or they can Google your phone number in quotations.

41:03They can Google your address in quotations and all the rest of your information can pop up. And so this is why I use a service called DeleteMe because what DeleteMe does is it goes to those data brokers and it removes all of the personal information from those data brokers that causes this to happen. There's a lot of laws that need to be passed when it comes to data brokers, but data brokers can sell your personal information to all sorts of different people. So if people get a piece of your personal information, Delete.me will remove that information from those data brokers. I get alerts every month from Delete.me that tells me all the places that they have removed my information.

41:39And you can select places like if you don't want to remove from certain websites, then you can also do that. So Delete.me is an awesome, awesome solution to help you with stuff like this, to help you protect your finances online. I think it's super important for every single person to take this seriously because again, it happened to me. It is one of the most daunting tasks to try to figure out how to fix financial fraud. So I would recommend going to join delete me.com slash PFP 20. And there you can get 20 % off of delete me because in reality, you really need to make sure you're getting your personal information removed and they constantly continue to remove it as well.

42:13It is such a cheap service for what they provide. So I highly recommend delete me and we've been using them for years. So again, watch out for those ACATS transfers. It is a serious thing. And it is one of those things that you could lose a ton of money if you have not protected against this. I'm already going into my brokerages and making sure I have these protections in place. And so glad I have DeleteMe to make sure my information is removed. All right, the next question is from Barry. So Barry says, hey, Andrew, I just want to start off and thank you for everything you do. and I always look forward to your podcast every single week.

42:49I have a general question I was hoping you could help. I have four kids, a wife, and when I received my tax return, which is pretty good with the kids, LOL, I was wondering where a good spot to park this money would be rather than just sitting in Fidelity SPACs. I'm looking for growth, and currently SPACs has a seven-day yield of 3.3%. I am fine with growth or dividend, really. I really would overall like to just invest these dollars and would love to hear your opinion. So here's a couple of things I would do. One is if you have an emergency fund in place, then that is fantastic. Then you can start to invest those dollars.

43:21Now, what we say is to first make sure you have one month of an emergency fund, then build up to three months. Once you're at three months emergency fund, that's where investing really can start to heavily begin. Because in reality, before you have that three month emergency fund, that's where, you know, life can happen. It can derail your progress, can derail your investing progress, and then you're just going backwards. So instead, making sure you have at least three months. And then ultimately the goal is to have six months over time here, but having three months is where you're investing can really heavily begin.

43:49So if you have a three month emergency fund, great. If not, you can leave it in SPACs at 3.3 % currently at the time we're recording this, that is a very competitive rate. Then from there, what we want to do is we want to make sure that we are investing our dollars into something that can help us based on our risk tolerance, but also based on what our investment plan is. So for me specifically, I have a very high risk tolerance, meaning I really like growth index funds and ETFs. So like a VLO, a VTI, a QQQM, for example, are some of the investments that I love to invest in because I love the growth.

44:20I love growth, especially when I'm in my accumulation phase. And so for me, I want to allow my money to grow as much as possible. So if you're looking for some index funds and ETFs, what I would do is research, you know, some of the ways to get that ball moving. Now, if you're getting closer retirement, that's when you could add in dividend stocks or ETFs. ETFs or index funds to your portfolio. But before retirement, you want to get maximum growth so you can build that portfolio as large as you possibly can. That's the ultimate goal if you are in the accumulation phase and if it fits your risk tolerance.

44:51So doing some research on that front is really, really important. Then you're going to put it in the right account. So looking at things like the Roth 401k, if your employer has one, the Roth IRA, the HSA, the taxable brokerage, and the 401k are all the accounts that I would look into. And for me specifically, my current order is the Roth 401k, Roth IRA, HSA if you're eligible, but there's less people eligible to the HSA than there has been in the past. Then I would go probably 401k and then taxable brokerage. But the taxable brokerage is one of my favorite accounts. And I have been investing a lot more heavily into it because it is one of those things that allows for flexibility.

45:31And I love that flexibility. And I love the ability to be able to build wealth with that taxable brokerage. So a lot of cool stuff that you can do there. But that's the way I would think about this. And if you have any questions on that, please let me know. My relationship with money has changed a lot over the years. Early on, I thought building wealth was about making more money. Now, I know it's really about having clarity. When you know exactly where your money is going and whether you're on track, you make better decisions. That's one of the reasons I love Monarch. It's the personal finance app that tracks everything from your accounts and investments to your savings goals and spending.

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48:02That's PolicyGenius.com. All right, the next one's from Jordan. Hi, Andrew. I'm Jordan. I am 44 and I am very new to all this. I'm a working class man who is trying his hardest to make up for a lifetime of procrastination. My question is, as a newcomer to investing with little money to start with, what's the best approach? Where exactly do I start long-term gain or create passive income? Hope this makes sense. Absolutely makes sense, Jordan. So first thing I would say is I would love to invite you to Master Money Academy. We teach people step-by-step exactly how to invest. And you can have as little as$5 to your name and we can get you started and get the ball rolling.

48:37So Master Money Academy teaches people how to build wealth and invest. So I would love, for anybody listening, I would love to invite you there because that's the fastest way to get yourself on track, especially if you're just getting started. All right, at 44, you still have a really long time horizon. So you feel as though you may be behind. You still have 20 plus years to get your dollars invested, which is absolutely amazing. So I want you to know, it is never too late to get started investing and you still have plenty of time to get the ball rolling. First is you wanna have your emergency fund in place.

49:05If you don't have that in place yet, building up at least a one month emergency fund and then ultimately trying to get to three months in your emergency fund, like we just talked about with some recent questions is gonna be super important. Second is if your employer offers a 401k match, then you wanna take advantage of that. Sometimes they call it an employer match, but you wanna take advantage of that because it is free money. And having the ability to put money into your 401k and your employer also gives you money to put into your 401k is really, really great. Three is I would look at a Roth IRA somewhere at Vanguard or Fidelity.

49:38That is one of the best things that you can do early on is getting money into the Roth IRA. The way that it works is money goes in that's already been taxed from your paycheck. It grows tax-free and you can pull the money out tax-free after the age of 59 and a half. And so that tax-free growth over the course of 20 plus years is gonna be the majority of this account and the majority of this portfolio. So I would look at that. Now, remember, the biggest mistake people make when it comes to a Roth IRA is they think it's the investment. It is just the account. You still have to invest those dollars once it's in a Roth IRA.

50:08So choosing things like low cost index funds and ETFs are going to be the way that I would look at this. You can look at target date retirement funds as well. If those sound confusing, we have episodes on all of these. So you can check that out. The next thing is to make sure you're automating your money. So once your money comes into your paycheck and hits your checking account, automating it to these investment accounts and automating it to your emergency fund is going to be super, super important. And then any high interest debt that you have, if you have any high interest debt above a 7 % interest rate, like a credit card or a personal loan, you want to make sure you get that paid off prior to a lot of this investing as well, because that is going to have compound interest working against you.

50:46Like for example, a credit card usually has around 20 % interest, whereas the market's going to return about 10 % rate of return historically to investors. And so that delta means that it is much better for you to pay off the credit card than it is to invest those dollars. And then the next thing I would say is to focus on your income. Increasing your income is going to allow you to really accelerate your path to building wealth, allow you to put more dollars towards your investments, allow you to really think about a way to do this. And so if you can get certifications or things in your job, I think it's really, really important to try to increase that income.

51:17But that's the way I would think about this. Really great question. And let me know if you have any other questions. All right. The next question is from Kim. Kim says, hi, Andrew. I was just laid off from Uber. I'm so sorry. Part two of their AI layoffs. And I really thought my job was secure since I was the hardest to reach for driver support. Well, here I am 47 years old and I'm looking for similar work, but definitely want more control of my life now. My fiance suggested we learn about day trading. I am down to learn anything new, especially if we can make some supplemental income or even better make it as a source of actual income.

51:48My question is with so much going on internationally and now with these new laws passing, making crypto more regulated, will this help the crypto market become less attractive since the government's hands are now taking crypto more serious first i want to kind of address the day trading thing uh because this is a lot more important than the crypto one that you're asking here okay day trading is not a job or a side income day trading is the the large majority of retail day traders lose money and if you in fact you look at the statistics it is worse for people because you're going to be burning through your savings as you're learning then you can really most people can afford to lose and so I would really caution you against going into day trading, especially doing it as part of your full-time gig.

52:32Instead, I would A, go and try to find a different job within your career path that you can go out and do. 47 is still really young. You can do a lot of great stuff at the age of 47. And I feel as though people, as they approach the age of 50, feel as though they're starting to get too old to start a new career. It is absolutely not true. You have plenty of time at the age of 47 to do something new. And so I would, A, file for unemployment immediately so that you can start to, or negotiate a severance if you can with Uber. Uber should be giving you a severance. If they haven't yet, I would try to negotiate one.

53:08And I would try to think through my health insurance as well. What am I gonna do? Am I gonna do a whole COBRA plan or whatever else? Those are the two big things to figure out right now. Then I'd build a bare bones budget, making sure you understand how much is going in, how much is coming out, so that you can develop a plan moving forward. and then I would turn the job search into my full-time job. I would not day trade. I would not do any of this other stuff. Your customer support background is going to allow you to do a lot of great things. There's a lot of places who need customer support.

53:36And so that is going to be one of those things that is going to help you long-term. And if you want more control, you know, look at some of the skills that you can have. Maybe you can get some certifications and spend some time getting some certifications that allow you to get different jobs if you want to make a career shift. But those are the four things that I would do first, okay? So focusing on finding the next job, that's the most important thing. Your income is so important, and so finding your next job, number one. Consider what I'm saying here, and I would not try to day trade. Two, on the crypto regulation question.

54:05So the more regulation around crypto makes it more attractive to institutions, not less. So it does not become less attractive to institutions because when there's more regulation around it, banks and brokerages and pension funds can now trust it a little bit more to be able to invest in it a little bit more. This is why we saw a lot more institutions investing into it over the course of the last couple of years was because there was more regulation around it. There was more rules around it. And for this reason, regulation actually reduces risk for these institutions. It reduces fraud. It reduces all the other things that are happening in crypto that were happening left and right.

54:36If you notice, crypto scams, at least around Bitcoin, the main stuff, has reduced a little bit. Now, it's not to say stuff couldn't pop up at any point in time because it absolutely could. and the crypto market seems to attract those types of folks. But it is one of those things that I think short term is positive. Obviously, they want deregulation. They don't want any of these rules and parameters around that. That was the goal with crypto. And so for some people, that's going to be the way they think about it. But you want institutional investment because that's what's going to really get it to the million dollar mark, like in Bitcoin, like what people keep have been saying for years and years that it's going to go to a million dollars.

55:10If you want that to happen, institutions need to be involved. So if you want institutions to invest, you've got to make sure that you have it attractive to them. And so that's where I would think about that. And for anybody looking at crypto, like any alt coins or anything like that, just don't just, this is not financial advice, but there's a lot better places to put your money than into alt coins or anything else outside of most crypto. And in fact, like even Bitcoin and stuff like that, it's so volatile. There's no intrinsic value. You really need to think through before you're even investing in something like that.

55:42So what I would say is for you specifically is to focus your time and energy, finding a job, find a proven investment plan that's going to allow you to retire when you want to retire and start to execute, execute, execute. That's the entire goal. So awesome question. I am so sorry that you have to go through this layoff round. I'm so sorry that you have to deal with this, especially at 47. But you have so much time left. I promise you, you will land on your feet and you will be doing some pretty cool stuff if you lock in and do some of these stuff step by step. Thank you so much for that question.

56:10I truly appreciate it. And thank you all for listening to this podcast episode. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you. If you want to ask a question, feel free to shoot me an email and you may get your question answered on the show. Also, if you're getting value out of this episode, make sure you follow and leave a five-star rating and review. It truly does help us spread this message. Cannot thank you guys enough for leaving those five-star rating and reviews. And if you want to learn how to invest, even if you only have a$5,$10,$25, or if you have thousands and thousands of dollars and you want to learn how to invest master money academy is the place to do this i teach you how to invest how to build a diy portfolio my goal is financial education for you inside master money academy but in addition if you get stuck you get to ask me questions on the weekly coaching calls and you get to talk directly to me i get to know pretty much everybody inside master money academy it's super fun so if you want to talk to me if you want to have conversations with me about your money or your finances or investing master money academy is the place to do that.

57:05And we have the community piece. We have courses. We have lessons. There's so much going on in Master Money Academy. In addition to, we've been doing weekly masterclasses lately that have been absolutely awesome. We have a couple of masterclasses coming up in the next two weeks, all about dividend ETFs and dividend stocks. So that's going to be a really fun thing as well. Well, thank you guys so much for being here. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you. And we will see you on the next episode.

From the publisher

Investing is supposed to be simple: right accounts, low-cost funds, decades of consistency. If yours has become anything more complicated than that, one of these five signs is probably why.

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What You'll Learn in This Episode

Five habits that signal you are overcomplicating your portfolio

Why owning more funds often means less diversification, not more

The free tool that shows how much overlap your holdings actually have

Why waiting for the right entry point keeps costing people years

How often to check your accounts without it working against you

Plus listener questions on cross-border estate taxes, surviving a 10-month school paycheck year, and what to do with money while living at home

Andrew's honest take on day trading after a layoff, and what he would do instead

A new brokerage transfer scam that a credit freeze will not stop

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Join the community built to help you master your money, stay accountable, and reach financial freedom.  

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Resource/s 

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Best HYSA https://secure.money.com/pr/r453ecf4d190 

Stock  Brokerage Accounts https://secure.money.com/pr/v8d06f8de92c  

Best IRAs https://secure.money.com/pr/oe09b73d1952 

Favorite Travel Credit Cards https://milevalue.com/best-credit-cards/?aff=mastermoney 

Tool/s Mentioned 

Coast FIRE Calculator https://visionary-raindrop-1fc22a.netlify.app/ 

Compound Interest Calculator https://expert-hustler-605.kit.com/aefaaad27e 

Episode/s Mentioned 

How to Save $100,000 on a Low Salary https://youtu.be/f8-BWWiDpKc 

How to Never Worry About Money Again with Jesse Mecham https://youtu.be/_Zrin_NvjpY 

The 1-3-6 Method For Building & Managing Your Emergency Fund https://youtu.be/rGdII_Z0hnw 

Why Index Funds Are King (Plus My Favorite Index Funds!) https://www.thepersonalfinancepodcast.com/why-index-funds-are-king-plus-my-favorite-index-funds/ 

15 Reasons Index Funds Are Still My All Time Favorite Investment https://www.thepersonalfinancepodcast.com/15-reasons-index-funds-are-still-my-all-time-favorite-investement/ 

Index Funds VS. ETFs | Which One Is a Better Investment? (THE GREAT SHOWDOWN! https://www.thepersonalfinancepodcast.com/index-funds-vs-etfs-which-one-is-a-better-investment-the-great-showdown/ 

How to Put Together a Bulletproof Investment Plan (Set it and Forget it) https://www.thepersonalfinancepodcast.com/how-to-put-together-a-bulletproof-investment/ 

Watch Next

The 5 Levels of FIRE (Coast, Lean, FI, Chubby, Fat) https://youtu.be/cpZCevuXW1U 

Type A vs. Type B Money Personality: Which one are you? https://youtu.be/ZoyLEwBMQdQ 

The 12 Worst Money Habits (Ranked!) https://youtu.be/VEgX_BT5dA0 

How to Never Worry About Money Again with Jesse Mecham https://youtu.be/_Zrin_NvjpY 

How to Save $100,000 on a Low Salary https://youtu.be/f8-BWWiDpKc 

Connect with Andrew

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Website →⁠ https://mastermoney.co ⁠

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Question for you:

Which of the five are you guilty of? 
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