25 Things to Do With Your Money In 2025 Part 2

Transcript:

25 things that you should do with your money in 2025, part two.

What's up everybody. And welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew founder of master money. co and today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to dive into the second part of 25 things that you need to be doing with your money. In 2025, if you guys have any questions, make sure you join the master money newsletter by going to master money.

com slash newsletter. And you can ask your question there and follow the show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're getting value out of the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and, or. Subscribing on YouTube. Can I thank you guys enough for leaving those five star ratings and reviews?

They truly mean the world to us. Now, today I'm going to dive into 25 things to do with your money in 2025. We're going to be going into part two. If you missed part one, go back and listen to part one, because we gave you 13 big things that you should be considering in 2025. Now, in this video, We're going to be talking through the next 12 things that you should be doing in 2025.

I'm really, really excited for this episode because we have a lot of different actionable tips for you in this episode. Now, if you're listening to some of these podcasts and you're saying to yourself, well, this is a lot of different things. I need to be doing. Just remember that you do not have to do every single one of these things, but you want to try to make.

Progress towards some of these so that you can improve your financial life. Some of these, I will tell you, Hey, every single person should be doing these. Those are the ones you should definitely be doing. And some of these you may not have to do every single time, depending on what your personal situation is, things like adjusting your asset allocation or tax withholdings, those types of things can be situation by situation.

So as we dive into this episode, really, really excited for you to go through this. We got a ton of things to cover here. So without further ado, let's get into it. So number 14 is to do a lifestyle creep assessment. Now, one thing I want a lot of people to note is how their lifestyle is creeping up over time.

Now, for me, for example, when I was in my early twenties, I did not spend a lot of money. I was trying to be as frugal as possible. And I was taking as many of my extra dollars as I possibly could and trying to invest that money because I wanted to grow my wealth snowball and I started to push it downhill a little bit.

It would grow a little more and a little more and a little more over time. And so as time has gone on, I got married. And when I got married, my lifestyle creeped up a little bit. There's two people in the household. And so we got to make sure that we are covering all our bases and enjoying life together.

Then when I started to have kids, my lifestyle really started to creep up a little bit. And so for those of you who are in the stage of life where you have kids, you know, your dollars are going to be spent on very different things than prior to having kids. And so you got to make sure that you were accounting for that and just understanding what is going on here.

Because what happens is some people will start to allow their lifestyle to creep up too quickly. And when you allow your lifestyle to creep up too rapidly, then what's going to happen is that you're going to start to live in a paycheck to paycheck cycle. And that is the last thing you want to be doing.

So we just need to understand over time how much our lifestyle is creeping up. Now, I think some lifestyle creep is good, meaning that as your income increases, you should also increase your lifestyle. You should be enjoying your money. You should go on more vacations. You should spend more dollars on your health and fitness.

You should be spending more dollars on the things that you love in life, the things that bring you value. In fact, I want you to spend as much as you possibly can. On those things. But we also want to make sure we are hitting our retirement goals. And if we are not hitting our retirement goals and our lifestyle creep is still increasing, then we need to reevaluate what we are doing with our dollars.

And so I want you to try to do a lifestyle creep assessment, if you can, to figure out exactly where you land. Now we'll do a deeper dive episode on this exact topic. So that if you want a worksheet that helps you kind of go through this, we'll provide that for you during that time. But one. As I want you to review your growth of income over the course of the last five years, has your income grown?

And if it has not grown, ask yourself, why has it not grown? If you get a 3 percent raise and inflation is 8%, then you actually took a pay cut during that specific year. So you got to make sure you understand the inflation rate and how much your income has grown. If you're the person who just accepts the 3 percent raise every single year, I want you to change that.

Okay. In 2025 and try to be proactive to being involved in projects that actually matter. You heard that on the last episode, we were talking through how to negotiate your salary. Make sure you understand how to work the process. It is very important to be able to do that. So review that income growth, make sure it is growing year over year.

If it's not, why is it not growing? Don't blame somebody else. Instead of look internally and see why is my income not growing to compare spending verse income growth. So as you start to look at this, you can even do this on your bank statements. You can pull up 12 month bank statements on a spreadsheet.

If you don't use any sort of budgeting app. Now, if you use a budgeting app, you can do this really easily and quickly, but compare your spending year over year and see if that spending is going up. Inflation is going to cause your spending to definitely go up. Now in the inflation rate is not going to be lifestyle creep.

It's just the cost of living. And so that's going to be something that's very important to differentiate, but make sure that you are looking at the difference between your spending and your income growth. Did you take on new car payments? Well, that is going to be lifestyle creep. And that's going to increase the amount that you're spending every single month.

Did you get a new mortgage? Well, your lifestyle creeped up again, and that's going to increase the amount that you're spending. Did you switch from shopping at Aldi to shopping at whole foods and you're only eating organic foods? Well, your lifestyle just creeped up again, and that's going to make a big difference in your lifestyle.

There's a bunch of different ways on how your lifestyle can creep up. And sometimes it's subtle and you have no idea. Maybe you take more shopping trips at target and you go in for two things and you walk out with 15 things. Maybe your trigger button on that buy now on Amazon is a little too quick to hit by now.

Or maybe you are someone who is just trying to get by and you have more lifestyle things that are happening where you're having more kids, maybe you got married, and then all of a sudden you realize, hey, my lifestyle has creeped up very rapidly without me even knowing. So just kind of track the difference between your spending and your income growth.

And then you're going to look at your spending categories. Are there anything in there that does not bring you value? Just make sure you are analyzing that. Now, one big thing to note is when you're looking at lifestyle creep, you need to know your savings rate. And if you don't know your savings rate in 2025, that is one of the metrics you absolutely have to know.

We have an episode that we had late last year where we talked about the metrics that you need to know in your financial scorecard and how you need to track your savings rate. You need to track your income. You need to track all of these different metrics. And I would highly recommend that episode if you haven't heard it.

To make sure that you are on track and understanding your finances. There are six different numbers that you need to know to track your finances. If you don't know these six numbers, you're not being responsible with your money. I want you to know those six numbers. So making sure you have those is going to be really, really important.

So check out that episode if you have not yet. And then try to identify why your lifestyle is creeping up. If you don't know why your lifestyle is creeping up, do an evaluation of maybe some of your spending habits and some of the things that may have shifted over time. Are you going to lunch every single day during work or before you didn't do that?

Are you eating out way more with your family in the evenings? Are you spending more dollars on just other random things? You just gotta figure out exactly where that creep is happening. And then, once you identify that, then you can just monitor it and revisit this regularly. I would do this yearly. I would do a lifestyle creep audit every single year to figure out exactly what's going on.

Now, at times, this can also be a very positive message because your lifestyle hasn't creeped up enough. Again, I think lifestyle creep is healthy in some way, shape, or form. It should not be the same amount as your raise every single year, though. So if you get a raise, maybe 50 percent goes towards your lifestyle changes and 50 percent goes towards wealth building every single year until you get to the point in time where you are really fast track approaching financial independence or you know that your coast fire, meaning that you have enough money saved right now that if you kind of worked until your retirement age that you would be able to retire, then you'd be able to Increase that lifestyle creep significantly.

We have episodes on coast by two. If you haven't heard that, that teaches you exactly how to think about that. Now, if your lifestyle is creeped up too much and now you're living in the paycheck to paycheck cycle, then we need to reassess exactly where that's happening. Cut back on some of that stuff. If we can, and then increase our income, if we cannot cut back any more.

So making sure we do that lifestyle creep assessment every year is, I think something every single person should be doing, just understanding your money. You want to really be able to understand your money and that lifestyle creep assessment can help you. Number 15 is to take advantage of three paycheck months.

Now, this is one of my favorite things to talk about. Every single year is when the three paycheck months happen. Now, for some of you that are listening here in January and 2025, your three paycheck month is actually January of 2025. So if your first paycheck is January 3rd. Of 2025, meaning you are, which at the time recording this, it's January 3rd right now.

So you're getting paid right now. If that's your first paycheck, then that is going to mean that your three paycheck months are January and August. Now, if your first paycheck is January 10th, then your three paycheck months are going to be May and October. So you have a little more time to plan this out.

Now, here's what I want you to understand about three paycheck months, because we do videos on this on social media and we start to get a million comments of people saying, I have no idea how this even helps me to understand my three paycheck months. I feel like it all goes to bills or some people are like, it does not matter whatsoever.

And they are convinced that it does not matter if you have a three paycheck month. And now let me explain this to you really quick. If you live on the same exact amount of money every single month, meaning you lived on fixed expenses every single month, where when you get two paychecks in February, you can live on those fixed expenses where you get two paychecks in March.

You can live on those fixed expenses and you get two paychecks in April. You can live on those fixed expenses, but you get three paychecks in January. Even though it's the second, the third paycheck is very close to the first, you will be able to keep one of those paychecks if you budget this accordingly.

And for those of you out there who do not live on fixed expenses because you're not tracking your spending, the reason why it all goes to bills is you're not tracking your spending. And a lot of times if you're living paycheck to paycheck, you're just using this money to catch up. But if you can figure out how to live on two paychecks every single month, three paycheck months will give you a bonus paycheck that you could put towards wealth building activities.

Now, what do I mean by wealth building activities? That means going towards your retirement accounts, things like your HSA, your Roth IRA, your 401k, you can take these extra dollars and put them towards investments. And imagine having two extra paychecks every single month. Maybe you're hitting those retirement goals.

You can put that extra paycheck towards debt. If you really want to get some of your debt paid down, if you have a high interest debt, that's where it should go. If you have low interest debt and you just don't like it, you want to get rid of your car payment, or you want to start to pay down your mortgage a little more, it can go towards those types of things.

You can invest it towards your savings goals. Meaning you could put it towards your vacation fund. You could put it towards your emergency fund. You could put it towards. Your wedding fund your kids college fund. There's so many different things that you could do with these three paycheck months Knowing when they are and planning for them is the key to making sure you can save these Dollars, okay.

It all comes down to planning Which is why I talk about it. And this year, if you're paid on January 3rd, you got to plan it out right now. And if you haven't started planning and you're spending left and right, and you haven't even thought through this, you may lose that first three paycheck month. But guess what?

The second one is in August. You have plenty of time to plan that out where you can get that paycheck and then utilize that for wealth building activities. Now, again, if your income is very close to the amount that you spend every single month, this is going to be a tight, fine line for you. But you got to make sure that if you plan this out and you live on Pooh Paychecks every other month and you get paid bi weekly, then this works out for you.

Now, if you get paid weekly, the numbers are going to change. And think about this if you get paid weekly too, because you're going to have multiple months that will have five paycheck months. I saw a bunch of people when I posted this on social media say that they get paid bi monthly, which I've never even Heard of before, but I guess that is possible.

Maybe your commission basis or something else. Uh, that is another situation where you're not going to get those three paycheck months, but depending on your frequency of pay bi weekly is what we're talking about here. You may be able to take advantage of those three paycheck months. Now, if you're hitting all your retirement goals.

Take that extra paycheck and blow it on stuff you love. I don't care. That is going to be absolutely amazing place to do it. Uh, I want you to enjoy your money and spend time doing things that you love. And so that is absolutely fantastic. If you're hitting all your retirement goals, you're hitting all your college savings goals.

You are not worried about specific debt payments. If you do have debt, I would pay that down first. Uh, but if not, then more power to you. Fall out if you want to. If you wanna make it rain, go ahead and do it. That is one of the best things that you can do with your money is enjoy it, and that's what we want you to do here.

And so learning how to manage your money allows you to enjoy your money so much more. Number 16 is, I'm talking to you. I know there's some of you out here who are struggling with holiday debt, meaning that there's a huge portion of Americans that go into debt every single year. When the holidays come around, they either spend it on presents, they spend it on holiday.

Food. They're hosting and all of a sudden it kind of gets out of control and it spirals out of control. You know that feeling it starts to feel if you buy a lot of presents for people, you start to kind of feel icky towards the end of December when you're still like buying more presents and you feel like you're just getting deeper and deeper and deeper into the hole.

I understand how that feels, but if you went into debt for the holidays. You went backwards for 2025, meaning you put yourself into a hole in 2025, and your boy's goal is to get you out of that hole. And so we want to make sure that we get you out of that holiday hole. And then secondly, we also want to make sure that we start saving for the holidays now.

So anybody listening, That was a close call. I almost went into debt in 2024 for the holidays because I did not plan this out. Well, in 2025, I want you to treat the holidays like a bill, meaning that you're going to set up a category in your high yield savings account in a bucket, and you're going to start saving for the holidays.

Now. The holidays. In January, I cannot tell you how important this can be. So here's how you do that. First, you're going to look at how much you spent in 2024, and you're going to say to yourself, well, last year I spent 2, 400. I'm using that for easy math. You may have spent way less. I don't care how much you spent.

This is an example, people. This is an example. Every time I use an example, people just freak out every single time. This is an example. So let's say you spent 2, 400 last year during the holidays. If you spent 2, 400 last year, you divide that number by 12. And guess what? You got to save 200 per month. But what does this do?

This does a number of different things. One is if you see things that you know, someone's going to like, maybe you take notes and you hear people talk about, Oh, I wish I had this, or I wish I had that. You see things on sale throughout the entire year, you can start to buy things for people. Now, if you have the type of family where everybody tells each other what they want and they don't tell each other until November, you may have to wait, but if you're the type of person who everybody just likes to surprise each other, then you can go out there and start to buy gifts throughout the year and start to check boxes off because you have the cash on hand already.

We pay for the holidays in cash. Here at the personal finance podcast and master money. That's how we do things when it comes to consuming stuff. Okay. And so when it comes to consuming stuff, you need to pay for this in cash. And if you already have the cash on hand, cause you're saving 200 per month, because the holidays are a bill.

You're going to spend the money no matter what. And so making sure you are already saving for that is really important. And you can take advantage of deals early and you could probably spend less money over time. Then imagine getting to the holidays. Okay. And you may have never ever felt this feeling in your life and your stress around money is lifted.

Your stress around money is lifted during the holidays and you can just relax. You can buy the stuff you need to buy. You can buy the groceries you need to buy. You can finally afford that gigantic prime rib because you saved up the money. throughout the entire year. Speaking of which, a great prime rib hack around the holidays, remember this for next year because I did this this year, side note, is if you're like me and you eat a really high protein diet, then you could take a prime rib, you could slice that bad boy up, you could do it as thick as you want, and you got yourself rib eyes for like six dollars a steak when they're usually 20.

Amazing hack, did it this year, I have like 20 rib eyes in my freezer right now. Anyways, so that is something that you need to be doing. Is saving for the holidays now is going to be something that will reduce your stress in your life. Now, if you have holiday debt, let's get into this because we've got to assess how much holiday debts you have.

And then I want you to prioritize the high interest at first. So if you went into credit card debt, if you took a personal loan, make sure you prioritize that high interest debt first, if you did buy now, pay later. Don't do that again. A B once you get that paid off, we want to make sure that we are now moving into the next year and ensuring that we are saving up cash overall buy now, pay later is my enemy.

I hate it more than anything, but it's better than going into debt on a credit card. If you're paying 0 percent interest on a buy now pay later, it just depends on what you're paying there. And then create this repayment plan. See how much extra cash you have on hand? That high interest debt needs to be attacked immediately.

That is a pants on fire emergency. Specifically, when it comes to your finances, you want to make sure that you are paying off that high interest debt as fast as you possibly can. If you get windfalls, meaning if you have a bonus coming to you in March, some people get bonuses in January, February, March, earlier in the year, take that financial windfall, put it.

Towards these different things to make sure that you are paying off some of this stuff. Also, if you have unused items, sell those things as fast as you possibly can. We talked about this in the paycheck to paycheck cycle episode, but if you're in debt, you need to sell unused items, every single one of them and put them towards your debt and try to get rid of that debt and set up automatic payments.

Towards your debt so that you never miss a payment and ensure that you are paying this down every single month and then pause any other non essential spending if you can to get rid of that debt. We want to attack this aggressively in 2025. So if you went into debt, we need to attack this. We need to get rid of it as fast as we possibly can.

That is your goal. I don't want you to go into consumer debt ever again, but number one, we need to make sure that we are taking care of this. Now, if you are in debt, if you went into debt, we have a free course for anybody who went into debt. If you go to master money. co slash courses, we have a free debt course.

I'm never going to charge somebody for a course who is in debt. And I want you to take that course and go through the process. Uh, it's takes you about an hour, pretty simple. Thousands of people have already taken it. And it is one that I think can really, really help you significantly if you are in debt.

All right, number 17 is to create your financial protection plan. Now, your financial protection plan is going to be one of the most important things that you do, especially in the next coming years, because AI is advancing and scams are getting better and better every single year. And so you need to have a financial protection plan in place.

We have multiple episodes on how to do this. We have some that encompass the entire way that I do this. I'm going to talk about some ways here too. But you need to make sure that you are protecting your financial information online. If you don't, someone will be able to get a hold of it at some point in time, and they will be able to use it against you.

And the last thing I want them to be able to do is have a catastrophic thing happen to you because you did not protect yourself. So one, Obviously use strong passwords. Every time I talk about this, people make fun of me, but it is very important to use strong, unique passwords. If you use your dog waffles name and every single password and the number 74 exclamation point, someone's going to eventually figure that out and they're going to use that against you.

So making sure that you have strong, unique passwords is really powerful. One password is a great place to store all your passwords, but it also offers you unique password ideas. And I really like that as a storage option. Another one is Google Chrome has its own tool that also gives you unique storage ideas for your passwords.

And it just jumbles a bunch of letters and numbers and figures together to give you passwords, and then it just saves them for you. That's what you need to be doing. For all of your passwords, and I am even guilty of this on some things. I'm like, I want to remember this. I want to remember what the password is.

I don't want to jumble this up, but I'm changing that in 2025. Only because I need to be more disciplined. Even me who talks about this all the time, who thinks about this all the time. I needed more discipline on those passwords. So making sure this is just a reminder. I know it's basic, but it's a reminder to make sure you fix up those passwords.

Always enable two factor authentication on all of your stuff. Monitor your accounts regularly. So if you are someone who stresses out about money, I want you to monitor your accounts less than the normal person. But if you're someone who is really thinking about this, at least be monitoring your accounts on a monthly basis to make sure nothing has happened.

Also, if you have devices that need antivirus software, shout out to Mac, I don't have any on mine because you don't need it. But if you do need it, Install that antivirus software to make sure your devices are safe. Be cautious with any email or links. So emails and links are getting a lot better now. It used to be where they would scam, you know, elderly people.

They'd click on anything that you're looking at. Listen, I get it. You know, your parents, my parents, some generations will click on any link that they are sent and believe it. But at the same time, now they are getting a lot better where I have seen them disguised as some of your favorite brands. And they look exactly like that brand and they say they have a slightly higher sale than they normally would have you click on that thing and all of a sudden you have a spam link.

I have also seen it where you Google a phone number and you're trying to find a phone number to call customer service for a company and the number one Google listing is actually a spam phone number and all of a sudden you're starting to realize, Oh, When they're asking you some weird questions, you're starting to realize that this may not be the company that you're working with.

There are a bunch of emails, links, and suspicious items now that sound very real. And with AI, they can use voice assistants that sound literally exactly like a real person. And probably better than a real person would actually handle specific situations. So making sure that you are very cautious is important using secure networks.

Utilizing a VPN, especially in public areas, is also very important freezing your credit. So we've had, um, some episodes talking about freezing your credit. It is something now that I think you could do a lot faster. And making sure that you freeze your credit and have a system in place is going to be really important.

So what you do is you go to Experian, you go to Equifax, and you go to TransUnion, and you freeze your credit when you are not going to use it. When you're not going to open a credit card, when you're not going to open a student loan, and then you unfreeze your credit when you are free. Going to open up a mortgage or go for a car loan, and it really doesn't take as much time as it used to now.

So save up just some favorites within your bookmarks, and you can kind of get in there and freeze and unfreeze your credit pretty quickly. They make it a lot easier than it used to be, and I'm so glad they do also enable alerts on your financial accounts. If you don't have alerts on your financial accounts because you don't want to deal with the notifications, I get it, but you need to enable those alerts really, really important stuff.

Limit personal sharing is gonna be a big one. So. If websites are asking you for things like your social security number or they're asking you for very specific items, really be cautious about that, because if somebody gets a hold of that information, you got yourself into a bigger pickle than you need to have also removing your personal information online.

Now, my favorite way to remove my personal information online is using a service called Delete Me. And delete me. What they do is they go to online data brokers and they go and remove your personal information from these data brokers. If you Google your name or you Google your phone number, you will see that your information is all over the Internet.

You can even Google your address in quotations and you'll see your information is all over the Internet. I just had this happen recently. Somebody was trying to find me and they were trying to find my information. It was a friend that I had a long time ago, and they were trying to look me up and find my phone number or my name or my information.

They couldn't find me, and they were looking all over the place. They actually found someone close to me, their information and tried to get a hold of them to try to find me. But they could not find me because I've been using delete me for years and years and years. Whereas it used to be before I started using delete me, you could find my information pretty quickly and now thankfully with delete me, they have removed my personal information and so I'm getting a subscription for my family members now and just trying to help them remove their personal information online because if somebody like a scammer get your personal information and just get a piece of it, yeah, All they need is a piece of it.

They can go look up the rest of your information and be able to fill out student loans or different things in your name that you have no idea about. So just make sure you remove your personal information online. If you go to join delete me dot com slash pfp, that's actually a place where you can get 20 percent off any of those subscriptions there.

One of my favorite services absolutely love delete me, uh, and they have been a partner with this show for a very long time now. Also, you want to make sure that you are using secure payment methods. There is a case and we may do an entire episode on this. There is a case to be using apple pay and electronic payments more so than any other type of payments, even pulling out your credit card and tapping all of those different new ways to utilize a credit card.

Mhm. There is now more encryption on Apple pay, Google pay, those types of things. And this may be a year where I'm going to be talking more about, you know, utilizing payments that are all electronic. I don't do it now. And so I'm actually going through testing and looking and reading some of the data and the information on this, that I may be switching completely to Apple pay, Google pay.

I think there was a great episode that just came out on another podcast that I'll link up down below that was actually talking about this. And it triggered me to kind of think through this. Also, beware of phishing scams. They're happening more and more and more through text messages, uh, in a bunch of different other ways.

And just make sure you're aware of that. It's the same thing with suspicious links. Uh, backup important data is going to be really important. So when you have important data, maybe you have a will or a trust, or maybe you have important account information. I want you to back that up on an external hard drive if you can, and make sure it's password protected, encrypted, whatever else you need to do, but have that external hard drive.

It's worth the investment, uh, to back up some of that really important data. Maybe life insurance, like term life insurance with policy genius, something like that. All that stuff needs to be backed up so everybody knows where to get that information. Also, secure your social media accounts. I mean, there's no reason for you, unless you are trying to run a business through your social media, uh, make sure you secure those social media accounts so that It's not just open to anyone being able to look at you and find you because when they can find your personal information, they can find you, they can use your pictures against you.

There's a lot of things that can happen there that you don't want to do. And then make sure you're helping educate your family members. This is a big one that I think most people don't do enough is. Please try to educate your family members and try to help them with protecting their information. They are most likely, especially your elderly family members, they are targeted more.

And so making sure that you teach them more about phishing scams, how those types of things work, so that they are aware of this kind of stuff. Even if you can make a little sign by their computer that says, Hey, Make sure you double check the link just to remind them double check links before you're actually clicking on links to be very cautious of clicking on links so that they don't get scammed.

I have seen some really bad cases where family members have gotten scammed out of their entire savings, and this is not what I want for you and your family. We need to try to help and educate our family members as much as possible. Grandparents or elderly parents making sure you're talking through this stuff with them.

They were not born with the Internet, and so this is not natural to them. So just making sure that you have these conversations can be really, really helpful. Number 18, and I am excited about this one because I want you to increase your spending on stuff that you love as long as you've hit your retirement goals, meaning that if you are someone who loves to hoard money and you love to hoard cash and you do not actually spend any money whatsoever on yourself, I want you to increase that spending on yourself a little bit.

Let's say, for example, you're someone who loves golf. And you have the same old clubs that you've been playing with for the last 12 years because you think, eh, they're probably the same as the new ones. And you've said to yourself, man, I wish I could get some new clubs. Uh, I just don't want to spend the money on myself.

You want to spend the money on other things, or you want to make sure that you hoard that cash just in case, even though you've already got a fully funded two year emergency fund, you're hitting your retirement goals. You're doing all these different things. If you're that type of person, where you're just overly frugal, I want you to try Just try it, and maybe it won't make you happier.

Maybe it makes you happier to hoard your cash. But just try to spend a little more on things that you love. Now here's how you do this, because some people need to understand that spending is actually a skill, and you need to do it cautiously, but you also want to make sure that you are doing it on things that you love.

So identify what brings you joy. I want you to kind of write out a list of things that bring you complete joy when it comes to spending money. For me and spending money on vacations and specifically, I want you to get really specific when I spend money on vacations. I want to stay in a nicer hotel. I want travel accommodations to be a little more comfortable and I want to be able to take my entire family and that's one big thing for me where we have a bunch of activities that we can do throughout that vacation and we are having a really good time.

That's one. I want to also on vacation be able to spend as much as I want on food or drinks or anything else that I want on that vacation. In addition, I want to be able to not have to think twice about any excursion I want to take or anything like that. So this is how you get really specific on something that you love.

Another example for me is The golf example. So I like to play golf a lot. I want to be able to play at any course that I want to. I want to be able to upgrade any club that I want to. And so to be able to do this, you got to plan around it a little bit. You got to make sure that you are planning and thinking through what you need to be doing what you are interested in.

Maybe you love pickleball and you want to get a membership to an indoor pickleball facility. Wink wink. Uh, that's going to be another thing that you could enjoy. Or maybe You are someone who loves fitness, and you want to spend more money on healthy foods, and you don't want to think about your budget on healthy foods, and so you try to make more money so that you can do that.

In addition, you also want to have any gym membership in the world. Maybe you want a CrossFit membership, and you want a traditional gym membership, and maybe you also want a membership. To orange theory, you just want to have different fitness experiences. And if that's the case, that is amazing. I love that more power to you.

Let's spend a little more on the things we love. If we're hitting our retirement goals. Now, if you aren't at the point in time where you're hitting your retirement goals yet, that's okay, but this is your goal. Is to be able to have more freedom to spend on the things that you love. And I still want you spending on things that you love, but we want to try to get closer to those retirement goals before we start doing that.

Now, making sure when you spend on things that you love, we only want to be using discretionary money. We don't want to be using some of our fixed expenses. We don't want to be using some of our retirement savings. Only that discretionary money, but if you can just grow that discretionary income, it's going to be really, really cool to see what you can do there.

So planning ahead for some of those big purchases and making sure that you think through what actually brings you joy can be really, really valuable. All right, up next is to make a will or a trust. Now, deciding between the two is going to be a really important thing. Now, most people out there, even if you're a 20 year old and you just moved into your first apartment, most people out there need at least a will.

A will is something where it just identifies all the stuff that you own, even if you don't own a ton of stuff. It just outlines where your assets need to be distributed. Whereas a trust is actually more so a legal entity that holds your assets during your lifetime and distributes them per your instructions, avoiding probate.

And so what you really want to do is avoid probate so your family members don't have to go through this long, lengthy process. And so if you are someone who has over a million dollars worth of assets, meaning that you are someone who maybe you own your house and you own a bunch of different real estate or you own a business or some of those types of things, that a trust is probably a great idea.

And you can kind of evaluate that and talk to attorney if you want you to look into it. I use trust and will, which is not associated with me, but I use trust and will. It's a really fast easy And if you have less than a million dollars in assets, that's kind of where I say, Hey, you could probably get away with a will.

You gotta have a will if you have kids and if you're married and all that kind of stuff, making sure your stuff goes to the right people that you want it to do. In addition, a will is going to also help making sure your children, if you and your spouse both pass away, maybe something tragic happens. Um, then it makes sure that your children go to the people that you want them to go to as legal guardians.

So this is going to be something I think it's really important. And if you haven't done it yet, uh, I would check it. I mean, trust and will is pretty quick, but also you can talk to attorney uh, and making sure you have that set up in 2025. Every single person needs to at least have a will and depending on your financial situation, you also may need a trust.

And that's going to be really, really helpful to kind of go through this process and make sure you have that in place. So think about that for 2025. I go into detail, but we do have an entire episode on this. Make sure you check out that episode if you have not, uh, about trusts and wills. We go into detail on that episode.

Next, we have the 401k. I want you to contribute money to your 401k. If you can now, this is also your 457 or your 403b or whatever is offered to you. Maybe it's a simple IRA, those types of things. Solo 401k, all of these classify into your 401k, but your pre tax account, your pre tax account is really powerful because what happens is you contribute money pre tax, then once your money is in that account.

You can invest those dollars and can grow. And then once that money grows and you decide you want to pull that money out after the age of 59 and a half, then you get taxed on that money then. But why these are really powerful and one of the best things to use them for is a, you get the tax deduction in that year, but B, you also are able to get an employer match and the employer match we already talked about, but this allows you to have that employer match and grow your money over time.

Like we said, if you make 100, 000 per year, you get a 6 percent employer match. You're going to have 566, 000 extra dollars in that account with just a 7 percent rate of return. And so I want you to think through that. Also, 401ks allow you for automatic contributions. They are an automatic way to save your money.

How many of you out there have a job and you signed up for the 401k and you didn't look at it again? You just put it in whatever they had you automatically in, which is probably a target date retirement fund. And they started investing your money. And then three years later, you're like, Oh, I forgot about that 401k.

Let me go check on that thing. Oh my gosh, I have 20, 000 in this 401k. That's what automation does. Automation allows you forced savings so that you're able to see amazing results just by automating your money. And your 401k is an amazing way to do that. You've got to find ways to find four savings within your life.

It is hard enough for us to hold onto our dollars. We are getting advertised left and right with people just throwing different things at us. You're on social media and people want to get your money. You're watching TV. People want to get your money. You're just thinking about and looking at stuff. That is symbols in your neighborhood and people are trying to advertise to you.

That way, there's just so many different ways that we are targeted day in and day out. And so you got to find four savings. A 401k is a way that you can force your savings. Automation is another way to force your savings. Using rounding up apps like acorns is another way to force your savings. You got to find four savings as much as you possibly can.

It is really important. Uh, the contribution limits. In 2025 for the 401k is $23,500. It is up $500 from last year. We'll talk a little bit more about that when we get to some of the changes in 2025, uh, but that is gonna be something that definitely wanna make sure that you can think through. Now, if you didn't know this, 401ks are also funds.

Another pro of them is they are protected from creditors, meaning that if funds are 401k are generally protected from creditors, in case of bankruptcy or lawsuits, you can actually have that money protected inside of your 401k, which is really cool. And then you can automatically increase those dollars as you start to earn more money.

So as you earn more money in your 401k, The amount that you're contributing actually increases because it's based on a percentage of your income. And so you want to try to make sure that you are investing more in that 401k. If you can, it just forces you to save. And that's what I love about it. It forces you to save, you get a tax deduction, you can invest the money.

It compounds over time. There's some great benefits to a 401k that I absolutely love. And it helps you support your long term goals. Now, Ramsey solutions, Dave Ramsey's company did a study and they studied 10, 000 millionaires, 78 percent of those millionaires. In that study became millionaires with their 401k.

It's all about automation and it really is the most powerful thing that you can utilize is automating your money into investments. Number 21. Now this is going to be something that by doing this, it actually is going to allow you to make more money in 2025. I want you to take more action and scroll less.

Now, what do I mean by that? What I mean by that is there are a lot of people out there that are sitting here right now and they know their screen time is completely out of control. Meaning that you look at your screen time and you have five. Six, seven, eight hours of screen time that you have every single day.

And then you complain to yourself that you don't have enough time to work out. You don't have enough time to start a business. You don't have enough time to budget. You don't have enough time to save and invest your dollars. But then you look at your phone and you see you're voting with your time. To just scroll aimlessly.

This is something that I really want you to focus on in 2025. I am focusing on it in 2025. We all need to be more conscious about how much we are scrolling. Because if you scroll less, imagine how much more time you're going to get back that you can put towards A, wealth building activities, B, spending more time with people that you love, C, picking up new hobbies, and doing things that actually bring value to your life.

And I'm going to give you some tips and tricks on how I've actually started to really control this late in 2024. And I'm going to talk about how you can in 2025, because I consciously wanted to get better at this every single day. Now, why did I want to get better at this? Specifically, when I need to be working, when I need to be in deep work, and I need to be making sure I'm paying attention to what is going on.

The last thing I need to be doing is scrolling aimlessly on my phone and not really paying attention to what is going on around me. This is so important for you to understand. I cannot stress this enough. I feel like in the next 50 years, we're going to be looking back at scrolling. Like we look at people who smoke cigarettes right now, meaning that it was just so terrible for our health and our brain that we look at it in a different way when all the science comes out about this now, you know, Every single social media company is trying to get you to pull that slot machine.

They want you to keep on scrolling, pull that slot machine, and they treat it in a way that makes you get dopamine as you start to scroll on your phone. And what I want you to do is instead, we're going to block that dopamine in any way, shape, or form possible. Now, the first thing I did, Is I got an app blocker and the one I use is called Opal Opal is I have no affiliation with them, but they are absolutely great so far and what you can do is you can select different apps that you do not want to be scrolling on and you can select certain times that you don't want to be scrolling on that app.

So, for example, during working hours, what I will do is I will have Opal. Block all social media apps. We have a team who posts social media for us now. So I have Opal who blocks social media apps for me. And in addition, they'll block any other apps that I know are distracting. Now, sometimes if you need to unlock a social media app because you got to do something on there, like for example, for me, I will unlock it sometimes to start to answer some of the comments that come in when they post social media videos.

That's part of my job and what I need to be doing. And so when that happens, you can unblock it for five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes and be able to then just go back in, lock back in. And what you're going to realize is pretty quickly when you download one of these apps, you're going to be opening your phone constantly, not even realizing that you're going to go into social media and start scrolling.

Whether it's X, whether it's YouTube, I don't care what it is. You know what's distracting for you, maybe it's Reddit, you need to make sure that you are getting those blocked during certain times that you need to be productive. Now if it's the evening, you know, you're just chilling, you're hanging out, nothing wrong with scrolling around if you've gotten your stuff done for the day.

But if you haven't got your stuff done, I want you to take more action. Now I want you to also Think about time blocking and I want you to create an action plan every single day. What are the big action items that I need every single day? Because now that you're going to have more time, you need to fill that time with something.

And I want it to be income producing activities. And I want it to be activities that can help you earn more so that you can pursue financial freedom. I guarantee if we all just cut back our screen time in half and took those hours and put them towards things that were going to actually help us achieve financial freedom, we would all be able to do it.

Way, way faster technology now is advanced so much that you're going to be able to do so many cool things by yourself. You can have solo businesses and you'll be able to really make huge, productive leaps and bounds in the next couple of years. I was just playing with a new tool, for example, called replicates and replicates can actually literally create you an app by you just utilizing and talking to AI.

And it's so cool how all this stuff is going to be advancing in the next couple of years, but making sure that we spend time and do not fall behind by scrolling. Scrolling is going to make you fall behind. I absolutely promise you that. It's going to be bad for your health. It's bad for your brain. And if you do it as much as most people do, you're going to get addicted to it.

And if you are addicted to it, I was getting addicted to it. And if you are addicted to it, making sure that you block it is a big, big factor. Along those same lines, number 22 is I want you to invest more in your health in 2025. In 2024, what I did was I experimented with a bunch of different things to see what works for me.

And I found what works for me and I've been really hammering away at that. Uh, even early here in 2025 where I had the plan set in place. I'm investing more dollars in my health, making sure that my health is looking good. Now, how do you invest more dollars in your health? There's a number of different things you could do.

One is I'm spending a lot more time analyzing things like blood work. I get blood work twice a year. I could probably do it quarterly, but right now I'm just doing it twice a year to kind of see where I land. And when I got my first initial results from blood work, there was a lot of things I needed to help fix.

So there was things that I needed to go in there and adjust like high blood pressure, those types of things. And so I changed up my supplements. I changed up my diet. I changed up every single thing that I was doing outside of exercise because I exercise a ton. I exercise and lift weights six days a week.

I have a gym. I built a home gym in my house. I play pickleball a lot and now I'm even running more and stuff like that too. I used to run before I've run the New York marathon in the past. There's a lot of Different. I've done a bunch of triathlons, that kind of stuff, but I'm running again and just trying to bring that into the play, even though pickleball is probably enough cardio for me.

And I want you to invest more in your health and your longevity as well. Healthcare is rising at a crazy rate. It is one of the biggest problems that we have in the U. S. and probably even other countries. Healthcare is going to cost you a ton of money. And You doing your part to reduce that cost right now by investing more in your health is going to be one of the best investments that you can make, which is why I really classify health as a need, not a want.

You need to make sure that you are investing more in your health. This means more high quality foods. This is the biggest thing I figured out in 2024 was how to eat in a way that fit for me. So I hired a dietician. And it was absolutely free through my insurance. It's through this app called Nourish. N O U R I S H.

And your insurance will actually pay for this. Most insurance will pay for this. And so mine paid for it. And I hired this dietician. We started talking through different scenarios and what I need to be doing. It only took me like four or five times to kind of figure out exactly what was going on. She educated me on very specific things that I always thought I knew dieting and how to understand diet.

But she educated me on very specific things that were very helpful to me. I've always eaten a high protein diet, but now I'm eating a very high protein diet with a lot of lean meats, a lot of steak, a lot of chicken, a lot of fish, a lot of eggs, a lot of actual good fats, a lot of natural carbohydrates. So I'm talking about potatoes, I'm talking about legumes.

Those types of things are more so what I eat and cutting out mostly all the breads and the rice and that kind of stuff. And that's worked really, really well for me. Now, will I eat bread? Will I eat rice? Sure, I'll eat sourdough sometimes and I'll have rice here and there. That's not a big problem for me.

And then a lot of my carbohydrates come from fruits and vegetables too. So fruits are one of the carbohydrates sources that I utilize and all I'm trying to do. This is all to say all I'm trying to do is eat a lot more whole foods, and this is absolutely changing my life day in and day out. If you start investing in your health with your time, your energy and your thoughts, I promise you, your life will improve forever.

But you have to invest more in your health. I challenge you in 2025 to just do it. Every single year, it gets harder. You know, you got the cravings coming up. It gets harder and harder and harder. One big craving for me, and if this is not helpful, sorry, but I'm just talking about healthier, but one big craving for me is sugar.

I love myself a sour patch kid. Okay. And so I'm the guy who likes sour candy, even though I'm a mid thirties guy who likes sour candy, whatever, you know, I don't reach for the cake or the cookies. I reach for the sour candy. If it's in my house, I'll eat the whole thing. And I've curved that. Really easily by just changing up my diet, eating more fruit in the evenings at the time when I used to want to grab the sour candy.

And so there's things like that. You could just kind of shaped and shift nourishes a great, honestly, a great resource. I cannot say enough good things about at least my experience there, and it was something that really, really was great for me. And when you invest more in your health, it's going to boost your productivity.

It's going to enhance your quality of life. It is going to help you actually prepare for health care costs. It's either something where. Your body is going to wear down and it's going to be because of you over time. But if you do everything in your power to make sure that your body is in tip top shape, you're gonna spend way less on healthcare than someone who does not take care of their body.

So it sets a positive example for your family, your friends, all that kind of stuff. So just making sure you're investing more in healthcare in 2025 can be really, really important. Number 23 is to get updated on all the 2025 changes. So there are a lot of them, and we've talked about them in an episode late in 2024, but some of them are things like your 401k contributions rose, where you could increase them now another 500 a year from 20.

3, 000 in 2024 to 23, 500 in 2025. The catch up contribution is the same. And then if you're between ages 60 to 63, you're eligible to contribute the greater of 10, 000 or 150 percent of the catch up amount, resulting in a limit of 11, 250 for 2025. Also, for IRAs, they did not change, so it's still 7, 000 to max out the IRAs.

For simple retirement accounts, that also remains at 17, 600. And for catch up contributions, that's also still 3, 500 for simple retirement accounts. There's a lot of tax changes, so the standard deduction has increased to 15, 000 for single filers, it's 30, 000 for married filing jointly, and it's 22, 500 for heads of household.

And tax brackets have adjusted some new income tax credits have adjusted estate and gift tax exemptions have adjusted. So making sure you kind of get up to date. All of this stuff is really, really important to our episode kind of goes through all of this so that you can have the details. Definitely make sure that you just get up to date on so you can make your own adjustments in your own personal finances.

That's one thing you need to be doing every year is knowing what those adjustments are going to be specifically with retirement accounts and taxes, and then make sure you talk to your CPA about some of this stuff to to stay informed. Number 24 is if you are the type of person who is a big scroller and you got that screen time, that's 567 hours a day and you don't know what to do with your time right away.

I want you to increase your connections, your real connections with people. Now your network. Is your net worth? This is something that maybe a cheesy saying, but it's also very, very true. And I want you in 2025 to increase your network. This is one of the things that I have a goal for in 2025. I am in a new industry in some of my businesses.

I have no network in that industry. And I need to make sure I increase that network in that industry. And so there's a bunch of things that you can do is one. You can leverage social media platforms to kind of have conversations with people in that network. You can use LinkedIn. You can use Twitter.

There is a bunch of different industry specific platforms that can help you collaborate. Those first two are good for collaboration. Um, but there are other, I mean, you could use Instagram and TikTok, probably, if you wanted to, uh, to try to figure that out. Two is attend networking events. So you can do this by going to conferences, you can go to seminars, you can go to workshops, but attend networking events so that you are able to To start to meet more people that are in the same industry with the same interests, three is join professional organizations.

So if you really don't know where to start, there are member organizations out there that you can start to join and learn and meet other people there. You can also volunteer or serve on committees. Um, that's a great way to meet people and really kind of engage in the community. If you have, you know, A committee at your church, if you have a committee at your local chamber of commerce, if you have a committee, you know, there's different things that you could do, um, to really start to help you network.

Now, as you start to expand your circle, one thing I want you to do is do this in a way where you can help other people, because if you're really helpful to other people and all your entire goal is just to give, give, give, give, give, this is going to really help you in the long run when you need to ask for say, for example, you are in an industry and in that industry, You know, right now you're not looking for a job.

You enjoy the job that you're at. And so you're just looking to help people. You're trying to connect different people in that industry who are looking for specific things. Say, for example, your friend is looking for a new job and you know somebody who is in that industry. You connect to those two.

They're going to be forever grateful for you for making that connection, especially if they land that job. But you just start to do things to help other people. If somebody is working on a problem and they don't know how to solve that problem, you know how to solve that problem. Help them solve that problem for free.

And they're gonna remember that forever and they're gonna be able to help you in times of need when you need help. And I want you to kind of think through how can I serve more people now? It's not with the intent of getting something back. It's being genuine about this and making sure that if you serve more people, you'll be able to get all of that back.

So try to network as much as possible. Host meetups host events if you can. If there's no meetups for you, Follow up with people consistently. There is an episode that we did with Jordan Harbinger. If you haven't heard that episode, he talks about how he networks. And it is honestly one of my favorite interviews we did.

I think it was the first interview. It was either the first or the second interview I ever did on this podcast. And it's still one of my favorites because he's just a pro at podcasting. But he talks about how to network and how to network really well. So that's another great one that you can definitely look at.

I did number 25, the last one of this episode, this two parter. And I know this is a long one, but number 25 is follow the steps in the one three, six method. If you do not have an emergency fund yet, then you need to look into our one three, six method, the way that it works. And we have an entire episode on this that I want you to listen to.

If you do not have an emergency fund, this is building your financial baseline is you want to save up one month expenses first, and then Then pay off high interest debt. Then save up three months expenses. Then you can start investing. And then I want you to save six months expenses in a high yield savings account, uh, so that you can protect yourself against anything in life.

And the 136 method is by far my favorite thing that we talked about in 2024 because it helps so many different people just clarify their financial foundation and have clarity on the steps they need to be taking. And so if you can, please follow the 136 method. Take action on that in 2025. If you don't have an emergency fund yet, you've got to have one.

Our minimum goal is six months in emergency fund. Uh, and the one, three, six method explains that exactly. So if you haven't heard that, just type in one, three, six method, personal finance podcast. It will pop up. Uh, it was actually our most popular YouTube video last year, I think for the podcast. And it was one that I think can really Really help you again.

Thank you guys so much for being here. We are so excited for what 2025 is going to bring for each and every single one of you. I have some amazing content planned for you. We're working really hard on this content. So really, really excited for you guys to be here. If you haven't subscribed yet, please subscribe to this podcast, leave a five star rating and review.

If you have not, and share this with a friend, share this with as many friends as you can, who know can get value out of building wealth over time. Thank you again so much. For being here and we will see you on the next episode.