Frugality is a muscle but luckily it’s a muscle that fills your life with meaning and purpose. By choosing to focus on things that make you happy and only adding items to your life that bring meaning you reduce the amount of money you spend while increasing your overall happiness. It takes a while to change your mindset but once you do it’s a really powerful lesson that continue to reap benefits for years to come.
Episode 105 - Fear of Taking the First Step
On today’s episode we chat about how to get started with personal finance. It can be intimidating to take an inventory of where you currently stand and compare it against where you want to go but as they say “A Journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step” - today we talk about how to take the first step.and begin learning about personal finances.
A couple good books I would recommend for those interested in reading more about personal finance:
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter
The Simple Path to Wealth by by JL Collins
Episode 104 - Decoding Mutual Fund Information
Most of us that have 401k’s or IRA’s or even a taxable account will have something called a mutual fund. This is essentially just a collection of stock, which takes the guess work out of picking choosing stocks and sets us up on a path to success. However, if you ever take a step back and click on your 5-character ticker symbol your head might start spinning as you try to make sense of it all. On this weeks episode we open up a Fidelity fund and walk through what all the different information means - you’ll find similar information no matter who your service provider is, but if you want to follow along with us, here’s the fund we were looking at: https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/analysis/315911693?documentType=QFR
Episode 103 - Sinking Fund Strategy
What do you do when you have a large expense in a month? For most people this might have to go on a credit card - but today we chat about sinking funds and how setting them up can help absorb large expenses. While emergency funds help to cover unplanned expenses, sinking funds are a great idea for semi-annual tax bills, annual insurance payments, and things that you might not know the exact dollar amount of but can save for anyway like car repair. Tune in to hear how we’ve used sinking funds and how they might benefit you.
Episode 102 - Emotions of Spending Money
We chat through the various emotions of budgeting and prioritizing savings goals. So much of how we manage our finances becomes emotional but if we step back and think about things logically it's typically easier to find a solution.