The 5 Levels Of Managing Money (WHERE DO YOU LAND?)

Transcript:

On this episode of the personal finance podcast, the five levels to managing money. What's

up everybody. And welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of master money. com. And today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to be diving into the Five levels of managing money. If you guys have any questions, make sure you hit us up on the master money newsletter by going to master money.

co slash newsletter, and you can respond to any of those newsletters that come out every single week. And don't forget to follow us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and YouTube, whatever your favorite player is to listen to this podcast, make sure you subscribe on your favorite podcast player. And in addition, if you're getting value out of this episode, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player.

Now, today we're going to be diving into the five levels of managing money. And if you're watching on YouTube, we are also going to be showing you basically the outline for this entire episode. I'm going to be walking you through this and talking through the five levels of managing money as we go through this process.

Now, this is something I think most people need to understand. Is you need to know exactly where you are when it comes to your money flow and the way that your money flows in, you need to know how much is going towards your needs, how much is going towards your wants and how much is going towards your savings and investing.

And these percentages are incredibly important. Now the problem with majority of people. Is most people who do not know these numbers can get themselves into financial trouble. And so the key is understanding these are some of the most important metrics that you need to know when it comes to your personal financial situation, because if you do not know these numbers, you have no idea how you're spending your dollars and you cannot make adjustments based on what your values are.

And what we want for you is for you to be able to spend as much as you possibly can on savings and investing. But in addition to the Things that you actually want in life. What are your hobbies? We want you to spend more money on your hobbies. Once you spend more money on the things you enjoy, like traveling or things that you want to do, maybe going to more workout classes or going to cooking classes or doing more of the things that you enjoy in life.

Maybe you want to buy a boat. Maybe you want to buy a golf cart and ghost ride that whip all around town. Any of these things can be achieved, but we have to know where our dollars are going first. And so once we have this plan in place, then we can make some adjustments and figure out exactly where we want to go.

And so the key to managing more money flow is going to be knowing these numbers and knowing where you stand. And so we have these. Five core levels that you can get to that will allow you to kind of figure out, Hey, what do I want out of life? And which level do I want to get to in order to be able to achieve all my financial goals?

And so we are incredibly excited to dive into it in this episode today so that you can see exactly where your money is going. So if that's something you're into without further ado, let's get into it. All right. So as you can see here, we're going to be talking about the five levels of managing money flow.

And this is going to be something I think is really important for a lot of people to understand why we are actually doing this, because we need to understand how money flows. Through your life, because this is the key to financial freedom. And these five levels are going to outline a clear path to take control of your finances.

And as we explore each level, you're going to go from, you know, maybe falling into debt or just trying to survive to actually thriving with your money. And this is what we want for you is we want you to be thriving with your money. We want you to be thriving with your financial life and spending more on those things you love.

Imagine if you could go on all the vacations you wanted this year. Transcribed Or imagine if you had the money to do whatever you wanted with your health or whatever you want it with your day to day life, we want you to get there. And so leveling up to each of these levels is how you're going to be able to do this.

And so it's really important to understand each of these levels. Now, to give a broad overview of the five levels, we start off with the debt cycle and some people start off with a debt cycle when they graduate college. Some people actually never fall into debt, but the debt cycle is where you start for most people.

And the debt cycle could be just barely getting by. Maybe you're falling slowly into debt. Maybe you are deep in debt, and so your situations could change when you're in this debt cycle. Then you jump to the paycheck to paycheck cycle. Now some people start at the paycheck to paycheck cycle, meaning they are just getting by every single paycheck is going out to bills or it's going out to needs or it's going out to once.

And so the paycheck to paycheck cycle is number two. What we want to do first is your first goal is if you fall into this debt cycle. Or if you fall into this paycheck to paycheck cycle, you want to try to get to the stable cycle. And the stable cycle means that you are taking care of all of your bills.

You are getting a little bit of cushion. We're going to talk through all of these, and then you're going to be able to start investing and maybe doing some other things that are going to get you the next level, which is the wealth builder cycle. Now, most people, I want your goal to be going towards that wealth builder cycle.

And that is a place where you can stop the wealth builder cycle. If you want to have this thriving life that can. Build wealth over time that you're going to be able to retire, that you're going to have a really comfortable retirement, that you've actually planned out your retirement. All of these different things will fall into that wealth builder cycle.

And then there's also the freedom cycle. The freedom cycle is something where you are getting to financial independence really quickly and, or you are getting really, really wealthy based on wealth accelerators and a bunch of other things that we will talk about here today. So first we're going to be talking about the debt cycle.

And the debt cycle is something that a lot of Americans fall into. In fact, there's over 70 percent of Americans that are actually in debt currently. And the debt cycle is something I classify being in the debt cycle as being in high interest debt, specifically anything outside of your mortgage. You are significantly in this debt cycle where your needs are taking away 70 to 80 percent of where your money is going.

So your money flows in and 70 to 80 percent of your money goes towards your needs. Now, these needs could be debt. They could be other things, just like trying to cover housing costs, trying to cover food costs, trying to cover daycare costs. All of these can be really expensive stuff that falls under this needs.

Then we have once at 30 to 40%. And so as you can see, These numbers can add up to more than a hundred percent, meaning that you are going into debt every single month and actually spending more than you make. Now, the number one thing in personal finance is we need to make sure that we are spending less than we make.

And now a lot of people fall into this circumstance. Out of necessity, but sometimes it's just because of your spending habits. And so if you are in this debt cycle, then we need to figure out a way to get you out of this. Now, some of the key points here are that if you're in the debt cycle, you are living paycheck to paycheck.

Absolutely. So meeting every dollar that comes in, you are spending it on something else. You are not saving any of your money and you're not, trying to grow your wealth whatsoever because you don't have the gap to be able to grow your wealth. In addition, you may not have a budget yet. And so because you don't have a budget yet, you have no idea where your dollars are going.

Everything is confusing. Everything is just trying to fly by the seat of your pants. You're just trying to get to the next day or the next week with your money. You have no savings, meaning savings is going to protect you against life. Life is going to happen. And if you have no savings, savings set aside, then we're going to need to start to put together a plan so that you can conquer some of this stuff.

And then lastly, you're going to deeper into debt every single month. And that is something we need to avoid at all costs if we can within this debt cycle. So if you are in this debt cycle and you want to get to the next level. Some of the things I want you to think through is how do I get out of this paycheck to paycheck cycle?

I need to figure out a way to make more than I am spending every single month It is incredibly important for you to be able to do that And so if your income is currently low one thing you're going to see ringing true with these first two cycles Is that we need to focus our time and spend our time growing that income income.

It is incredibly important to grow our income because sometimes that's the biggest problem for most people. You could only cut back so much. And so the only other option you have is to grow your income. Now you may be saying, well, no, duh, I know I need to grow my income, but that's easier said than done.

And I understand that. But this is also a situation where somebody is going to have to take care of your income and the only person that can do it Is you, but I know you can do it. And that's why this podcast exists is we want to show you ways that you can increase your income over time. And this is by growing your income at your day job.

This is by starting some side hustles that could turn into full time businesses. This is by focusing our time and energy on. On ourselves so that we can grow our skills and become more marketable to make more money. So how does this work? One, I want you to focus some of your time and some of your dollars on learning more.

Go to the library. Start to check out some of the books that we talk about all the time on the newsletter. We call it the high performance book club, meaning that We have books that we talk about every single week on the master money newsletter. If you go to master money. co slash newsletter or master money.

co slash resources, you'll get all that master money newsletter and be able to see some of the books that we have every single week, but investing some of your time and energy into learning more skills is going to be really important. Learn about Sales skills, learn about negotiation, learn how to build and generate.

Well, these are going to be really important skills that early on. I spent a lot of time learning when I was not making much money so that I could grow my income. And that's what I want for you as well. It takes some work. It takes some time. It takes carving out the time to learn, but if you do it, I guarantee you will start to make more money.

If there was a list of people out there who are reading all the time and there was another list of people who were just trying to get by every single month, I would bet all of my money on the folks that were reading every single day. And the reason why I'm bringing up reading when you're in the debt cycle is because it's free.

You can go to the library, you can check out books and be able to work on yourself. And that's the number one thing I want you to do if you're in this debt cycle. In addition, I want you to look at your spending. And I want you to figure out why am I in debt? Where am I spending too much? And if I can't cut back anymore, then you decide I need to increase my income.

For most people who are in the debt cycle, they are either spending too much or they are in poverty and they cannot cut back more. If you're in poverty and cannot cut back more, we need to grow your income. That is a huge key that we need to put into play when we have this conversation. So that's level one is the debt cycle.

If you are spending 70 to 80 percent of your income on needs, which needs also classify as debt payments, then we need to make an adjustments there. And if your wants are really, really high, sometimes we can cut back these wants for a short time until our income grows so that then we can start to increase our income over time.

So that is the debt cycle. Let's jump into level two, which is the paycheck to paycheck cycle. Now on the paycheck to paycheck cycle, we are going to see somewhat of a difference here in this versus the debt cycle, where you are spending every dollar you make on needs and wants. So your needs are about 70 percent of your income coming in your wants are about 30 percent of your income coming in and your savings is zero, meaning you're saving nothing in your emergency fund.

You are saving nothing towards investments. This is not a location that you want to be whatsoever when it comes to building wealth. People who build wealth, put money into their savings accounts, their high yield savings accounts, and they also put money towards investments. And we need to be doing both of those things.

If you're in that paycheck to paycheck cycle, you are not doing those things. So some key points here is you live paycheck to paycheck. You're toting a fine line with no emergency fund that. Will be something that you could definitely go into debt any day and time. If you had one big emergency, you would go into debt immediately.

You may not have a budget yet. Most people who are in the paycheck to paycheck cycle do not. And you have no savings. Now there's a bunch of different ways to budget. If you absolutely hate budgeting, you could do something called the reverse budget, meaning you save off the top and then you spend on your needs and wants the After you save off the top, and so this is something where it will allow you to pay yourself first and then start to build it up over time.

Now, if you live in this paycheck to paycheck cycling, you're trying to get, say, for example, you spend 70 percent on needs and you're trying to move your wants over to savings or and you're trying to reduce some of your needs and move that over to saving and investing. Then there's a couple of tips I have for you.

Number one is to start by moving 10 percent over to your savings and investing. And when you do that, I want you to increase that by 1 percent every single month for the next 12 months. What's going to happen here is all of a sudden, you're going to go from 0 to 10%. Then from 10 percent savings, then you're going to go to about 22 percent savings in one year.

That's going to be a massive difference to your budgeting. And you're going to take a little bit from needs and a little bit from wants until your needs are still met. But you cannot cut back anymore. And then you're going to look at the ones and say, Hey, can I cut back on some of these ones so that I can increase my savings rate?

Gradually doing this over time is the most powerful methodology to how you're going to be successful with your finances. If you rip off the bandaid really quickly, and you're prone to quitting when it comes to personal finance, it is not going to be a good situation for you. So we want to make sure that we are gradually doing this over time, over the course of a year or even a longer period of time, if you're trying to get to like a 30 percent savings rate or something like that.

at. You can do it over the course of, you know, 20 months. It just depends on exactly how you want to approach the situation. And this rule of 1 percent is what we call it. It's our 1 percent rule for investing. And we also call it the 1 percent rule for saving is something that I think can make a huge impact on your life if you actually start doing this.

So start small savings first and work towards building that emergency fund. Now, how do we do this? If we're in the paycheck to paycheck cycle, we most likely do not have an emergency fund set up yet. So when it comes to your emergency fund, you want to follow our one three, six method, meaning that you are going to start by saving one month of your monthly expenses in a high yield savings account for your emergency fund.

Okay. Once you have one month saved up. And you have that cash in your emergency fund, then you can start paying off debt. If you have high interest debt, any debt above a 6 percent interest rate, that is when you can start to pay off that debt is after those one months of expenses. So you have this going, you have one month of expenses and you're starting to pay off debt.

Then you're going to move to three months. So the three is three months of expenses is going to be saved up during that timeframe. Now, once you get to that three months expenses, then we can start to level up and start investing and doing some of those things. And the ultimate goal, which is the number six in that one, three, six method is to get you six months of expenses saved up in your emergency fund.

That is the bare minimum we want you to have. And we want you to be able to start building wealth. So at three months is when you start investing, then you start to progress towards six months. And that is what we're trying to grow here is our savings. Plus our investing is the key here. Now let's move over.

To the next level, which is the stable cycle. So most people, they think the ultimate goal is to get to this stable cycle and they are trying to get to a point in time where they are stable and they are growing their wealth over time. Now, what I want you to do is get to the wealth builder cycle, which we will talk about next, but this is a great place to start.

For those of you who are in the paycheck to paycheck cycle, your initial goal is to get to this stable cycle. Cause this stable cycle will absolutely change your life. And we're going to talk about it. Next. All right. So the stable cycle is going to be something that we really want to get to. And most people can fall into this range.

You can live a beautiful life in the stable cycle, and you can have some great retirement goals and really retire nicely in the stable cycle. This is where most people probably want to get to. First, and then as time goes on, if they want more than they can get to the wealth builder cycle. So the stable cycle is your needs are going to be 50 to 60 percent of what you are spending every single month.

So you're spending 50 to 60 percent on needs. You're spending 20 to 35 percent on wants, and you're spending 15 to 25 percent on savings and investing. Now, as you are building your emergency fund, what I want you to do is think through a couple of these different things. When you are in your savings goals.

I want you to put the majority of it until you get to that three month goal is going towards that emergency fund. Once you get that three month goal, I want you to split them off into investing and savings in your emergency fund. That's where I want you to split it off. Say, for example, you're saving 25 percent of your income.

I want you to put 10 percent towards that emergency fund after the three months saved up. And I want you to put 15 percent towards investing after that three months, eventually you want to accelerate that emergency fund as fast as possible so that you can get more dollars Transcribed into your investment accounts, because we really want to be investing 20 to 25 percent is our ultimate goal.

And that's the bare minimum I want you to have. And so because of this, we need to make sure that we are trying to accelerate towards that emergency fund first, because the emergency fund protects you against life. Life is going to happen to you. And those who stay in the paycheck to paycheck cycle are those who stay in the debt cycle are those who do not have cash on hand.

It's not If an emergency is going to happen to you, but when will emergency happen in your financial life? You need to be prepared for that, which is why we do the emergency fund first to make sure we have that available. The only time you should be investing before three months is in your 401k match.

If you get a 401k match, that's a 100 percent rate of return on your money. I want you investing in that 401k match first. Then making sure you're prioritizing everything else. Now, people who are in the stable cycle, you can retire very comfortably on this. So you probably have a stable automated system.

If you do not automate your money yet, it is one of the first things I want you to do. It is what we mostly talk about here at the personal finance podcast and master money is how to automate your money. We're coming out with the. Ultimate money automation course here in the next year to show you exactly exactly how to do this step by step.

If you are interested, please let me know. Join that master money newsletter below and you can be able to check that out. But the automated system is the number one thing you need to be doing. Why it removes your willpower from the equation when it comes to managing your dollars. And that's the number one thing we want to be doing is.

Automatically doing this. So we don't have to lift a finger anymore. We can spend 15, 20, 30 minutes per month on our money and not have to worry about this huge grudge that we have to, ah, we have to go out and budget every single month. We got to pay off our cards every single month. No, the automated system will do all this for you.

In addition to investing. And automatically investing in stocks as well. Most people don't know that you could do that. You definitely can. And so putting money in our Roth IRA, putting money in our 401k, putting money in our taxable brokerage, putting it in our HSA, this entire automated system means that you don't lift a finger.

Everything works automatically. And all you do is check it every single month to make sure everything is humming along. Nicely. Next is you are probably contributing to retirement accounts because with that savings of 15 to 25 percent, you are contributing to your 401k. You are contributing to your Roth IRA or your HSA or anything else that you are looking at.

You're most likely in the stable cycle, building wealth in retirement accounts. You also are in either phase three or phase six of your emergency fund and you are looking to build that savings over time and you are Being diligent about saving in a high yield savings account for your emergency fund, which is great.

You're also most likely growing your income because you came out of a different cycle. So most likely you're growing your income over time and stability is the name of the game. As you grow your income, everything else becomes easier. Income is the biggest part of the equation when it comes to building wealth over time.

I'm going to say that over and over again until I beat it into your head. Income will change your life if you can grow your income. And again, if you're saying no, duh, you may not have actually experienced it yet, and it really can make a huge, huge difference. You're probably also enjoying some of your money.

If you have 20 to 35 percent of your once being utilized here, you are most likely Enjoying your money more and more every single month. And so you're spending money on vacations. You're able to spend time with your kids. You're able to go out for drinks with friends. You're able to, you know, spend more money on your hobbies.

That new pickleball paddle. That's 275. You're able to buy that thing. If you want to hit a driver that stripes down the fairway, you're able to buy that. If you want a new Lululemon seat. that you're able to buy that you're able to do some of the things that you want life, feel comfortable, you know, maybe you're shopping for a brand new living room chair.

That's something else you could be doing. So there's, there's all these different things that you could be doing right now, but you're enjoying your money on vacations, on hobbies, on things that you want in life, your house is becoming a home. And so you're enjoying some of those things. And then also the key here is you're focusing on building financial stability and automating savings.

So if you are not automating savings, you could be in this situation. cycle and not automating savings. I would highly, highly, highly recommend putting into play an automated system because an automated system will absolutely change the way that you see money. Next we have the wealth builder cycle. This is where I want most people here to get to.

And this is what I try to get a lot of people towards as they start to advance in their financial situation. Is that you could be, you know, in the stable cycle and you can be completely fine. And if you're happy with that, then more power to you. But I personally want to be in the wealth builder cycle and above.

And the reason for this is that if you are someone who can grow your income and your income grows over time, you can definitely get into this wealth builder cycle and you can do it actually a lot easier than you think you can. Azure income grows. Let's say you go from a hundred grand to 200 grand per year.

You go from 200 grand per year to 300 grand per year. And as time goes on, you get to your thirties and your forties and your money just starts to grow because you're investing in yourself. You're investing your money over time and you're starting to build wealth. Maybe you're buying real estate. Maybe you're out there buying businesses.

Maybe you're buying more stocks or index funds or. ETFs and your income just continues to grow and compound and snowball over time. Well, you can get into this wealth builder cycle and because you earn more money, your needs are a much lower percentage of the amount of money that you're earning. And so because of this, your needs are around the 45 percent range.

Your wants are around the 25 percent range, which your wants, the money that you're spending on your wants is actually going up because your income is going up, but the percentage is actually going down. Down because it is a smaller percentage of your total income is what most people need to look at.

And then your savings is still a huge portion, 30 plus percent of your money goes towards savings. And as this number starts to grow and your income goes up, your needs are going to be a lower percentage. If you are a good steward of your money and your savings is going to be a higher percentage over time where your savings could take up a huge chunk, as you'll see with the next cycle as we go through this.

So most people in this level, we are going to see them having fully automated finances, meaning they have a full money automation system. Their money is set on autopilot and they are just humming right along. They are growing their income steadily. They are progressing in their career. They are starting to buy businesses or real estate, and their income is growing year over year because they are making the right decisions when it comes to investments.

They are balancing spending on once without deprivation. They don't feel deprived when they're spending money on once they're having everything that they need. They are content with those things. They've set up their court values. Of exactly what they value in life and they are content with the amount of money they can spend when it comes to, uh, spending on ones without deprivation, they are growing the income gap every year.

The gap between your income and your expenses is the real key here. Now, if you've never heard me talk about this, your income and your expenses, there is a gap between there. For people in the debt cycle, there is zero gap and it actually goes backwards for people in the paycheck to paycheck cycle. There is no gap and they are not able to save money.

But as you progress past that gap, if you are in the stable cycle, for example, at 15 to 25 percent of your money is actually being invested, you have a gap of 15 to 25%. The more that gap grows, that is where wealth is built. The difference between your income. And your expenses. And if you can grow that gap over time, you can grow a tremendous amount of generational wealth that could be passed down to your kids and possibly even your grandkids, depending on how much generational wealth you build over time.

That's what I want for each and every single one of you. That is our goal with this show is to teach you how to build that generational wealth. And then lastly, as you have a great show. Fully funded emergency fund. Our definition of that is six months or more. And depending on where you are in life. Now, if you're self employed, if you're retired, it's even higher than that.

Uh, but six months or more is a fully funded emergency fund. And that's our definition of it. Now, the takeaway here is you are focusing on maximizing your investments and you're focusing on increasing. That income over time. That's what we want for you. You are growing your income and that's exactly how you get to this wealth builder cycle.

Most people, I want you in this wealth builder cycle. If you listen to this podcast, I want you to be different. I want you to be leveling up and getting to this wealth builder cycle. This is what we want for you. And so I hope each and every single one of you stays with us. You continue listening because that's where we're going to get you to.

Now, level five is the freedom cycle. Now, the freedom cycle actually has two paths. Initially, when we were talking through the freedom cycle is we were thinking through, Hey, this is just really wealthy people. These are people that have really high incomes. They figured out how to build businesses. They figured out how to live their best life.

They're spending tons of money, but there's also a second path that lives this freedom cycle. And it's those who pursue financial independence in a bunch of different various ways. So there could be people That are pursuing early retirement because they have a high income. There could be people who are extremely frugal or a fast track their savings.

And they, you know, you could think of like Mr. Money mustache or those types of folks as well. And so the two paths are the fire movement essentially, and the folks who are just living their best life or a rich life. And so between these two, their needs become a very small percentage. Of how they spend their money.

And so their needs can be anywhere from 15 to 30%. Because their income is so high, those needs start to shrink more and more and more over time, unless they're big spenders and they're buying Lamborghinis, Ferraris, vacation houses, left and right, that needs number is going to shrink down. You can think of someone like a billionaire, their needs number is probably a very small single digit percentage.

And then everything else kind of falls into investing or once. And so then we're looking at, The once percentage, which is 10 to 20 percent because your once goes way, way up, meaning the amount of money that you spend on your once goes way, way up, but your income is so much higher that the percentage that you're spending on that shrinks and then savings is 50 to 75%.

Now, there's a lot of people in the fire movement who save every day. 50 to 75 percent and they retire in 10 years or less. And so because they do that, that's why they're saving so much of their income is your savings rate dictates how soon you can retire. And it dictates how fast you can retire because you're spending less, you need less money over time and you're saving more compounds over time.

And so folks here are either masters of living below their means and maximizing their income and they are pursuing freedom so that they can enjoy life and focus on their passions. That's what folks at level five in the freedom cycle or Going after and most of you once you retire or you hit financial independence, you'll actually be in the freedom cycle and you won't even know it.

It'll be something where, you know, if you are going after this path, you could be spending it that way. And then once you hit freedom, the freedom cycle is just a way to get there really, really fast. And so this means that you're just spending less on. You know, some of your needs, your income is increasing, and you're either super frugal or you have a really high income.

It's one of the two. So there's actually two sides of this spectrum. What I really want for you is to have that really high income so that you can take those dollars, spend them on things that you love, live your best life and be able to maximize everything that you do. So you've built financial independence by mastering income and expenses.

So these are the five levels of managing money. And when we talk about these five levels of managing money, we want to figure out, Hey, where do you stand? Where do you fall right now? And how can you get to those next steps? Because if you weren't interested in getting to those next steps, then you need to really focus on some of the main components that we talk about here.

On this podcast. It always starts with, you know, how can I build up my cash reserves? Then how can I start to invest and grow my money over time and make sure I'm getting out of debt? Those are the three baselines that we want you to look at. And so after you start to master all of those, you can really accelerate your path to wealth.

Once you get those down, listen, I truly appreciate each and every single person listening to this podcast. If you guys have any questions, join the master money newsletter by going to master money. com slash newsletter. Ask your question there to me. I see every single one of them and we'll be able to help you out and you might get your question answered on the show as well.

So really appreciate each and every single one of you listening today. Our goal is to bring you as much value as possible. If we can bring you more value, if you have a specific episode you want us to do, please let us know. Can I thank you guys enough for listening and we will see you on the next episode.