How To Spend Your Money To Maximize Happiness (By Age!)

Transcript:

 

On this episode of the personal finance podcast, how to spend money to maximize happiness by age. 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 be talking about how to. Spend money to maximize your happiness by age. If you guys have any questions, make sure to hit us up on Instagram, tick tock Twitter at master money co and follow us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on.

And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now, today we are going to be doing something a little bit different. We're going to talk about how to spend money. In order to maximize your happiness by age.

Now, do I think that money can bring you happiness? I think at a certain point, money can increase your happiness. Why do I believe that? Because you hear people all the time say money will not bring you happiness, but let's think about this for a second. Say, for example, you are struggling and you're living paycheck to paycheck and you're just trying to get by.

Well, if you start to earn more money, all of a sudden you have relief and as you start to increase your income over time, you can reduce your stress and your anxiety. This is a really, really important caveat to understanding that money is a tool that can help you reduce your stress and reduce your anxiety is one of the most important things that money can do in your life as long as you know how to handle that money.

Someone can make six to seven figures per year, but spend everything that comes in and they're going to be more stressed than a person that makes 50, 000 per year, but saves 20 percent of their income. So this is a very important factor to understand upfront. Now, what we're going to be talking about today is I am all about spending your money on things that bring you value and things that bring you value are really, really important.

And I've talked to a lot of different people who struggle with this, especially if you are naturally frugal, you struggle with learning how to spend money because spending money is a skill. I want to say that again, cause it's really important for people to understand this spending money is a skill learning how to not.

Overspend money and learning how to not underspend money and just hoard all this cash. The last thing I want you to do is hoard a ton of cash and never enjoy your money whatsoever because I want you to enjoy your money. I want your money to bring you experiences that you love. I want you to spend money on the things that you love day in and day out.

And so this is a really powerful way to shift your mindset. If you've never thought this way so that you can have a balance here, financial balance is so important and figuring out what you want in life. Is going to be the best thing that you ever do. So today we're going to be diving into how to do this by age, because I'm going to show you some of the cool stuff that I've experienced in my twenties and thirties, and I'm also going to talk about some of the plans for forties and fifties so that you can see and get some ideas on maybe how you'd want to think through this as well.

And before we dive in, I'm going to give you some of these quick lessons that I've learned along the way. So the first one is if you're someone who doesn't have a ton of runway, a ton of extra cash to spend on the things that truly, truly bring you value, then buying many pleasures instead of just one giant, large one, every single year can be more rewarding if you need to have some additional rewards over time.

So if you save up all year to buy just one giant colossal thing, maybe you should shift those gears to buying many smaller pleasures instead. Secondly is by experiences instead of stuff. A lot of times the most valuable things that I have ever purchased over time are experiences. And so this is one of the things that I really try to prioritize when it comes to spending on my values.

I really never regret spending money on experiences and I typically will regret spending money on stuff. Delaying consumption to increase that anticipation is the third one. So delaying consumption is one where there was a guy I used to work with in the corporate world and he was really, really into golf.

And so he would look at every single type of club. He would look at every single type of driver and he would read into them and he would research for months and months and months. And then down the line, he would eventually go get that club that he wanted. And every single time he would tell me, honestly, It's just another club and I just enjoyed researching this thing.

And so if you're like that, I know a lot of people out there are like that. Delay some of that consumption so that you can look forward to that thing, especially if you don't have a bunch of extra cash left over. The next one is consider the full effects of your purchases. Considering the actual entire spectrum of your purchase is going to be really, really important.

So I can give you this on a big scale, for example. So say, for example, you go from just a regular old car and you upgrade up to a fancy luxury car. Say you get a Mercedes or a BMW. Well, if you go buy that Mercedes and BMW, that cost does not end at your monthly payment and your insurance and all those other things, that cost is also going to end on the maintenance.

How are you going to maintain that vehicle? Cause you can't have a luxury vehicle and not have that thing maintained specifically when it comes to cleaning it, you're going to have to spend time every. Single weekend going to the car wash or hiring somebody to come in and clean it. And so you gotta consider the full effects of that purchase.

The same thing goes on the lines where I just talked to someone who bought their dream house. They bought a $15 million house, this massive house. They own all these businesses and they work so hard to buy this $15 million. And a year later, somebody told me they're already looking to sell that house.

Why? Because the maintenance on that house just was not worth it for them. They had to manage all the people to clean the house, to maintain the pool. The pool person alone was costing them 2, 500 per month. They had to pay people to maintain the acreage of landscape that they had. And that was costing them.

Thousands and thousands of dollars a month. And so you really got to think through the entire purchase before you buy this. This goes for smaller things as well. So you got to really think through the full effects of your purchases. Another one. And this is a big one for me is you will never regret buying back your time.

Meaning you can buy back your time and be able. To really have that extra time to spend on things that you love. As long as you buy back your time and it is really helpful in your everyday life. That is going to be one of the most powerful things that you can do. And so I think those are some of the rules that I really would think through as I go through this.

Now let's jump into the twenties. All right. So if you are in your twenties, these are some of the things that I did in my twenties that really did help increase my happiness overall, going forward. As I started to build wealth. And this is going to be something that I think some of these will actually help you build wealth.

And then some of these will be things that will help you have all these memories and experiences. So this is a really, really cool way to kind of think through this. Number one is education and skill development. If you want to make a lot more money in your life. If you want to earn a higher income and income, as we've talked about, is the catalyst to building wealth is the fast track to building wealth.

You can't become a millionaire before age of 30 without at least having a high income and or some large financial event that happens to you. But most people who become millionaires by 30 become millionaires because they have a very, very high income. And so if you want to have that high income, you have to develop your skills and you have to invest your dollars in skill development.

This is going to increase your happiness because it's going to reduce your stress later on down the line and you're going to be more fulfilled and you're going to have all these additional skills where you can go market yourself in a bunch of different ways. I did this and I attribute really solely this.

To me becoming a millionaire in my very early thirties. And I think this is really, really important to understand. So number one is reading books and books are a fantastic investment. That is one thing where Ramit Sethi said this first. And I think this is one of the most powerful things is he says, I don't even think twice about buying a book.

If I'm going to learn one thing in that book, I will buy that immediately. And I would go out and make sure that I have that book. Purchase, but you can also do this for free. So you can rent books for free at your local library. And when you go through there, there's a bunch of other free options out there as well.

And so investing your dollars into books is one of the most powerful things that you can do. Warren Buffett reads 500 pages a day. And so did Charlie Munger, the statistics out there talk about this, that fortune 500 CEOs. On average, read about 55 books per year. Reading is what is going to get you to the next level, because all of a sudden you're going to see opportunities open up specifically nonfiction books.

I'm not talking about fiction books here. Sure. There's value in fiction books. I am not a fiction reader, but I target nonfiction books. If you want to see the books that I read, join the master money newsletter, and every single week, we show you the book that I'm actively reading at that point in time.

So the mastermind newsletter is actually linked up down below in the show notes. So books are number one. I like to try to read one book every single week, 52 books per. Year is always my goal because I know how powerful this is. And you got to carve out the time for this. You're never going to accomplish something like that unless you carve out the time in your day to be able to do it.

Number two is your skills is developing those skills. So books are going to help you develop skills and give you the information. Then you've got to take action on some of those skills. So what skills can you develop? First of all, things in your day job, maybe you can get certifications or add some certifications there.

But in addition, things like marketing skills, like sales skills. One of the most powerful things you can do is develop your sales skills because everything you do in life is sales. Whether you're trying to get a promotion, whether you're trying to convince a vendor to buy into your company, whatever you're trying to do, sales is involved every single day.

Negotiation is the next one. And if you have sales and negotiation paired together, you're going to be one of the most powerful. There are really high income producing skills that you need to learn. We're going to do an entire episode on this. So if you're interested in that episode, shoot me an email or shoot me a DM because we're going to do this episode and I'm going to make sure that we really map out a ton of really, really high income skills.

Another one is learning online, taking online courses. I take a lot of online courses, and I do this because it really has helped me. Even if I can learn one, two, three things in those online courses, I will take these massive courses. For example, right now, I'm taking a really in depth course on how to protect yourself online and some of these privacy concerns that we have because Scams are at an all time high.

And so that is one where I am taking right now. Some of you may be saying, well, I just want to develop my Excel skills, or I just want to develop my communication skills with other people. And so all of these are different ways that you can really develop and learn online. There are so many great ways to do this and free courses out there that you can utilize.

And even some of the Ivy league schools like Harvard or Yale, they have free online courses where you can develop some of these skills and their business programs and all that kind of stuff. You don't even have to go to Harvard. You can go take these courses for free. And so there's powerful things that you can do there as well.

So number one, again, is education and skill development. Number two, this is experiential related is travel. This is going to help you increase your happiness in a number of different ways. Most people who travel. Are changed over time because of these new cultures and these new things they are experiencing.

And this is something I really prioritized in my twenties. And honestly, I wish I had even more money to prioritize to this because once I had kids, it was a little bit harder to travel when they're young. Right now. Now we plan on traveling a lot with them as they grow older. But it's a little harder right now for me to travel with them, but exploring new cultures, exploring new destinations and experiences can broaden your perspectives.

Now, if you're married, this is a great time to do this in your twenties, if you get married in your twenties, because that's going to be time that you can spend with your spouse one on one and you're never going to forget those. So that is one big caveat to talk about here. Also, a lot of us in our twenties don't have a lot of extra money.

No matter what Tik TOK or Instagram are going to tell you, you don't make a lot of money yet in your twenties. So how can you actually travel? If you don't have a ton of extra income coming in, here's how travel hacking. Now we have an entire episode on travel hacking. I always have my favorite travel hacking cards linked up in the show notes.

And so this is one that I really think is going to help you overall. What I did. And what I still do is I put all of my bills on a travel rewards credit card. And so all of my bills go on a travel rewards credit card money. I was already going to spend anyway. I put things like, you know, all my subscriptions on there.

I put any other bill that comes in on this travel rewards credit card that I can put on a credit card. Then I pay it off every single month. I actually do it weekly just because I like to stay on top of it. But I pay that card off every single month. And then I get rewards points from the credit card company that I can utilize for free flights, free hotel, free travel, free rental cars, all those different things.

And so we traveled all over the world. We went to Greece for completely free. We went to Italy completely free. We went to Puerto Rico completely free. We went to Mexico completely free. The list goes on and on and on. And you can do the same exact thing with travel rewards points. As long as you're responsible with credit cards, if you've ever had credit card debt, this is probably not something for you.

I don't advise anybody who's ever had credit card debt, who is irresponsible with credit cards to even take on a card. But if you are responsible with cards and you are willing to pay it off in cash, you have the cash in your bank account, but you're just putting on the card for the points. That's the way to go to allow you to travel a hack over time.

You're going to enjoy this. I love travel. It is one of my things that really, really brings me value. And so this is one where if you do it in your twenties, you can do it cheaper in your twenties if you don't have a lot of money. And as you start to build more wealth, then you can get more luxurious as time goes on.

I love spending money on luxury specifically with travel. And so this is one where. I think you can make a big difference in your happiness overall. Number three, health and fitness, starting the baseline for your health and fitness now in your twenties. If you have not yet, it's really, really important, but I also like to invest my dollars early on health and fitness so that you.

Start that habit really, really important to do this. So gyms, sports clubs, wellness programs, all of these are really important to increase your health early so that you can live longer and have a better lifespan and a better health span. So making the habit now is really, really important and investing your dollars in things that make you feel good.

So this is going to be really, really powerful for a lot of people. Also start to shy away from harmful things. Things like alcohol, alcohol is poison that goes in your body. Sure. I still drink. You know, beer and wine on the weekends, those types of things, but start to shy away from that stuff. Especially if you were in college and you're still drinking like you were in college, shy away from that stuff and start to really, really take that down.

And obviously shy away from drugs as well. That is just going to harm you as well. So make sure all of those things are things that you are starting to really phase out of your life, or if you have a problem with them, completely remove them. It's not one of those things where you can kind of balance it out.

Just get rid of it. It's not something that you really need in your life. There's so many amazing things in this life that you can do without that stuff. So just think through that as you go through this process. Number four is investing your time and your money in social connections. So social connections typically take money to invest in.

Why? Because you got to go do something. A lot of times you're not just going to hang out at your house and watch Netflix. And so making sure that you stay. Connected with friends that you want to stay connected with in your twenties. A lot of people lose connections with people. They really want to stay connected with.

And so investing your time and your energy in that is going to be really, really important. Also spend money to build a network. And one way you could do that as go to things like conferences, because as you start to build out this network, you're going to make a lot more money. If you have a big network.

You hear people say your network is your net worth, and honestly, that's a cheesy line to say, but it is so incredibly true. The more people, you know, the more people you network with, it is one of the best ways to earn more dollars because opportunities just happen. And so I want you to know how this works over time.

Now, spend time meeting as many people as possible is another thing. So. If you are in an industry, say, for example, you're in an industry in real estate, or you're in an industry in the healthcare space, or you're in sales, start to meet people within that community so that you can build each other up and help each other over time.

So for me, for example, right now I'm doing a personal finance podcast. I do a lot of personal finance content. So I go to a conference called FinCon every single year. And FinCon has a bunch of different people in this space. If you listen to other podcasts, most of those other podcasts are probably there.

And so. We all meet up at this one location every single year. And this is something where we all connect and network. And it just really helps build those relationships within your industry. Same thing. When I was really heavily into real estate investing, I'd go to all these different real estate meetups and meet all these different people so that I could make more deals.

And it really did truly, truly help. If you own your own business, go to your local business meetups and meet other business owners and see how you can help each other. And so those are really, really important as well. And then number five, and you know, this wasn't was common is invest. In your financial future.

So this is savings and investments, and you know how powerful this is. We talk about this exclusively on this podcast, starting now, if you start investing your dollars now, these are the most powerful dollars you will ever have when you are in your twenties, because they have so much more time to compound over time.

Even if you have a small amount of money that can grow to a very large amount of money. And I'm talking millions here. If you are starting in your twenties, because you have time on your side. Time is your most powerful asset. It will change your financial trajectory. If you start investing now, please, for the love of God, if you are in your twenties and you are listening to this podcast, listen, if you don't take anything else away from this podcast, start investing your dollars.

Now, this will change your life and you have no idea how powerful compounding is. Also, when you invest your dollars, you'll actually be able to retire. A lot of baby boomers are getting to the end of their life right now. And the ones that did not invest their money, they are now realizing that they are not going to be able to retire.

So if you want to be able to retire, you got to invest your dollars, not put it in a high yield savings account. Only that is for your emergency fund. That is for your short term savings. I'm talking about putting your money into assets, assets that produce more income for you. Things like stocks, things like real estate.

Those are going to help you over time, build a tremendous amount of wealth. You beat inflation, you're able to actually outpace inflation. So the value of your dollar is not eroding. And so this is what you have to do in your twenties. And then you can live stress free financially. So you're investing in your mental health as well.

Those are so incredibly powerful. So I want you to make sure that you continue to invest in yourself when it comes to these five areas. And now. Let's jump in to the thirties. All right. So I am in my thirties now. And when it comes to getting to your thirties, I think there is a number of really interesting ways to invest your dollars, to increase your happiness and improve your happiness.

Now, anything in your twenties, you can absolutely do. And I think that is something that's really, really powerful. So these kind of compound on each other is why we do them in these order by age, but also in your thirties, there are additional things because your life shifts. In your thirties and a lot of times it gets a lot more busy where you think in your twenties, you're busy and you don't realize how much free time you actually have once you get to your thirties because it gets messy, it gets wild and it gets crazy.

And so in your thirties, what you're going to see is that there is. A lot less time that you have. So specifically number one is I like investing in convenience in my thirties. I did not invest at all in convenience in my twenties cause I thought it was a waste of money. I was throwing money out the window, but I also made less money in my twenties as well.

So if you start to see that income going up a little bit and you're hitting your investment goals, then convenience. Maybe a great place to look. So let me give you a couple of examples here. One of which is I used to mow my own lawn every single weekend and I would go out there with my lawnmower. I'd push it around my super hilly yard and I would mow my lawn every single weekend.

This took me about five hours because I'd have to mow the lawn. I'd have to edge the lawn and have to blow the lawn and have to rake up leaves that I had to trim up hedges. I'd have to make sure that. You know, all the landscaping looks good. I'd have to replant landscaping when it didn't look good. And so all this stuff for me took me so much time and I didn't have a massive yard.

I mean, this was like a normal size yard that I was doing this in. And so one day I decided after I had my first son, I'm going to get a lawn care team to come out here and mow the lawn. They did the same thing that took me five hours and about 20 minutes, and it was the most valuable dollars I spent every single week because I got five hours of my weekend back every single week.

And this is a powerful example of how convenience are dollars well spent. Why? Because I got my time. Back in my time at that time was worth well over what I was spending every single month on that lawn care. Same thing. If you have a pool, I was also spending a ton of time cause I'm in Florida. A lot of our houses here have pools.

And so I was spending a ton of time cleaning out the pool. It was taking me, you know, one to two hours every single weekend because I had a pool without a screen. And so leaves were just flying into this thing. And every day I was out there pulling leaves out and doing all this different stuff. It took so much time.

And so then eventually we finally. Got a pool service, and I got all that time back. And so it's a really, really powerful way to figure all that stuff out. Plus, I actually figured out that the pool service cost me like 20 bucks a month after all the chemicals and all that stuff were paid for. Because I would go to the store, pay for all these chemicals, then come back.

So doing some of the math on some of this stuff is really, really cool. You could do stuff like have a housekeeper. So now we have a person who comes and cleans our house every two weeks at my house. It is some of my favorite dollars that I spend every single week. And so these are some of the things that you can pay for for convenience.

Delivery services are one delivery services are something I don't truly, truly value, but for groceries, things like that, I do value for things like just getting a one off meal. I'd rather just go get it because I don't want to pay triple the price of what I'm buying on some of those things. So it's gotta be what you want.

Maybe you want to pay triple the price because you don't want to get off your couch. Well, that is completely up to you. Nothing wrong with that at all. And so thinking of things, what would reduce your daily stress and what would give you your time back? What are those things that would give you your time back?

Maybe it's hiring a virtual assistant. You can go on upwork. com. You can go hire a virtual assistant, and maybe that is the way to get some of your time back that can help you with some of your daily tasks or things that you just don't want to do, or to help you organize your files or help you organize some different things.

Those are going to be little things and convenience that can really go a long, long way. Get your time back. You will never regret getting your time back. Number two is family and kids experiences. Meaning if you have kids or you have a spouse. Spending more time with them and investing money into time with them is something you will never ever regret.

The number one regret for people on their deathbed is they didn't spend enough time with their family. And so you want to make sure you are investing your time and you are investing your dollars to increase happiness over time by investing in your family and kids experiences. So this can be things like vacations is one.

If you're on the fence about taking a family vacation and you're like, I'm hitting my investment goals, but then I don't want to spend the three, four or 5, 000 on a family vacation every single year. Will you ever regret that? Think about this for a second. If you get to the end of the line and you're hitting those investment goals, meaning that you are making sure that you are at least investing enough for you to be able to retire, are you really going to regret going on that vacation and spending more time with your family and making those memories?

I don't think so. Maybe you will, but I don't think so. But also there are cheaper ways to do this. You can go, you know, do things like classes together with your family. You can go do family bonding, go take a pickleball class, go take a cooking class, go take some sort of class together so that you can learn how to do some of this stuff.

And you can create meaningful family memories. All of us know how powerful this can be. And so this is something you definitely should be doing. Number three, You can increase your happiness, especially if you own a home. Obviously, you can't do this if you're renting, but if you own a home, you can invest your dollars into home improvement projects, things like creating comfortable and functional living spaces.

If you don't like your living space, it will decrease your happiness over time. Now, you don't want to overspend. We know that there is a limit to how much you can spend on housing, but at the same time, if you want to increase that functionality. Of your house, or you want to increase the aesthetics of your house to increase your happiness.

That is a powerful way to spend your dollars. And just know a lot of times you're not going to get the full value back of what you spent. This is not an investment whatsoever. A lot of people think improving their houses is going to be a huge investment where they're going to get their money back, where if you look at the studies and the statistics, that really is not the case.

A lot of times you may. Get some money back from doing that, but it's going to not get your entire amount back, no matter what you do. Even if you're doing kitchens, those types of things, you've got to really look at the statistics when it comes to that, unless you're selling within the next 12 months or something like that.

Um, that is where it may make a difference overall. Number four is a peace of mind fund, also called an emergency fund. Now we talk about the emergency fund all the time in this podcast, but making sure you have this and you should have this in your twenties too, but making sure you have an emergency fund in place that is fully funded in your thirties is really, really important.

Fully funded means six months of expenses. Or more having that emergency fund in place is going to be very, very important in order for your peace of mind, your mental health. And if anything happens in life, you don't interrupt your financial and wealth building overall. Number five is prioritizing that retirement savings.

And so making sure that you are investing dollars for your retirement. It is imperative. Now in your thirties, you have to be doing it in your thirties because you have a ton of time for compound interest over time. So I want to make sure that you are really ramping this up. Make sure you try to max out some of these retirement accounts, specifically when it comes to like the Roth IRA, for example, max that thing out, tried to get more dollars in your 401k and try to max out that 401k if you can as well and start to really get these ramped up because this is going to help you retire over time.

You really need to be doing this and make sure that you are really funding those accounts. So that is the five things in the thirties. And these are things that really, really are going to help you overall and really help with your peace of mind and what you really want to do over time. So now let's jump to the forties.

All right. So in your forties, here are some things that I'm thinking through now that would really, really help you overall increasing your happiness over your forties, number one. So we talked about health and fitness in your twenties. And obviously that carries over to your thirties. And obviously that also carries over your forties.

You need to be always investing in health and fitness. That is something I would never think twice about. That is one of the most powerful things that you have is your health. And so it's really, really important to make sure you invest in your health and your fitness, but also healthcare. So healthcare is a little bit different for me.

Then health and fitness. And what do I mean by that? What I mean by that is thinking through having comprehensive health insurance, especially as you get to your late forties and making sure you do preventative checkups and checking for future health issues, things like full body scans. There are some expensive.

things out there where you can go out and get full body scans, you know, every couple of years, for example, to catch things that are very early. One of the things that I want to catch early, if there's any cancers in my body or anything like that, I want to make sure that I am really checking up on this.

Maybe you're doubling up your checkups. You're getting more blood work done. You're doing all these different things to. Ensure that you are on the right path. You want to catch everything early, especially in your forties, because your body is less likely to be able to recover as you start to age. I want you to make sure that you have peace of mind on the health side.

We want to take care of our health as much as possible. Exercising three, four, five times a week or more is going to be really beneficial to your health. And there's a bunch of ways to do that as well, but making sure you're investing in your healthcare and your health and fitness in your forties. Super, super important.

Another way to do that as supplements, trainers, all that kind of stuff as well. Number two life experiences. So by the time you hit your forties, you're gonna have a number of different things on your bucket list that you definitely need to prioritize because you want to experience those things. It's going to increase your happiness.

Maybe you've always wanted to travel the country and go to all the different baseball stadiums. I know a lot of people do things like that. Maybe you've always wanted to go to the Superbowl. Maybe you've always wanted to do specific vacations. Maybe you've always wanted to go on a hot air balloon ride.

I don't know what your bucket list items are. Maybe you've always wanted to go to Egypt. Maybe you've always wanted to go and travel to every single continent. We'll start to plan some of these things out. Even if you don't have a ton of extra cash in your forties, what you can do is start to save for some of your bucket list items in every single month.

You put it in that bucket list fund and all of a sudden what you're going to realize is in the course of like three, four or five years, boom. You got the money there to start doing some of these things. And so no matter what, always try to save towards that kind of stuff, because you're never going to forget those experiences.

And I want you to experience those. I want you to spend money on those. I want you to utilize money as a tool to get the things you want in life. That's the entire goal of this episode. So start to put dollars towards those things, because if you never put dollars towards those things, You're never going to go.

And so making sure that you just start small amounts over time, it's going to grow, just allow that money to go into those accounts and put it towards those types of things. Setting funds aside. Number three, setting funds aside for your education, for your children, those types of things. If you're taking care of your retirement first, and you have that taken care of where you are.

Funding those accounts and you have enough money left over, consider, you know, funding money in your kids, brokerage accounts, or your five 29 accounts, those types of things are going to be really, really powerful overall. And they can also help increase your happiness and be rewarding because you have the money there for them and you can be there for them.

And also, you know, investing in some things for them. Like we said, you know, all the family experiences, all of those are going to be really powerful as well. Those obviously carry over to the forties. Number four is thinking about your debt situation. This is one that I think if debt stresses you out and you are really, really worried about that, maybe starting to get completely debt free in your forties is not a real bad idea because if you can erase all this debt in your forties, that is a great investment in your future because you can really take down some of these debt instruments that really can be detrimental to your finances if they roll into the fifties and six.

And so thinking about, Hey, can I pay down some of this debt? Maybe getting rid of any auto loan payments or maybe getting rid of any student loan payments that those are carrying over, or maybe getting rid of even your mortgage, if that stresses you out, all of those are great investments, as long as you're hitting those investment goals.

And if you have high interest debt, that is a. Priority number one, obviously, if you've never heard our stairway to wealth, make sure that you check that out and it'll be linked up down below, but you can also go to master money. com slash resources. And the stairway to wealth is there. And that's kind of the hierarchy on how to allocate your dollars.

And high interest debt is one of the most powerful things. If you have credit card debt or anything like that, make sure you take care of that first, but looking at other things can be really, really powerful. And the number five is personal development. So things like pursuing your hobbies and making sure you put extra dollars towards those hobbies.

You do not want to lose interest in things as. You start to age, you want to increase your interest in some of these things as you start to age. Keep your brain active. Keep your body active over time. This is going to be really, really powerful personal interests. Or even if you want to think through this, maybe here's a great one when it comes to personal development.

Maybe you've been in a job for a long time and you really don't like that job and you've been in that career for a very, very long period of time. What if. If you've already been hitting your investment goals, maybe you are coast fire already, where if you stopped investing now, you'd be able to retire by retirement age, and this would really help your mental health.

What if you had a career change? I know that is weird thing to say for somebody in their forties, but if you are already hitting your investment goals and you are already hitting your retirement goals. What if you took that stress out of your life and all of a sudden, you could live a happier life because you had that career change.

That's another great option. You can also think through if you're really stressed out things like barista fire. We have an entire episode on that as well. And you can really think through, you know, coast fire. Barista fire, all of those are really cool options for you. Uh, and your money, money is very flexible and a lot of people don't realize how flexible money can be, and you don't have to do the traditional route always.

And so I want you to think through that kind of stuff, especially in your forties, if you're really, really unhappy, uh, with some of your day to day life. Now let's jump to the fifties. All right. So if you are in your fifties, here are some ideas just for you to go through and some things that I would make sure to do as well to increase my happiness over this timeframe.

So I think this is really, really, really powerful as well. Number one is going through, obviously we talked about travel in your twenties. We talked about experiential travel with your family in your thirties. We talked about bucket list items in your forties, but when it comes to experiences, making sure that you have more time and more resources on hand.

To go and travel and do what you want to do is going to be one of the best things that you can do. Now is the time to do it. Now is the time to make sure that you invest those dollars into travel in places that you've never been. But also I want you to think about traveling another way as well. What about personal significance?

Maybe you have a family member who grew up in another country and you want to go visit the town that they lived in. What is the personal significance of that? That would be absolutely amazing to do. For example, my family just. All went to Italy where my grandfather grew up and they went to his town with him.

He's in his eighties. And so they knew, you know, Hey, we want to make sure we go with him. And he showed him around his little town that he lived in. He was very poor growing up in this very small town in Italy. And they went to that town with him and they stayed there and they ate there and they saw all the buildings where, of where he grew up.

And so this is a really cool, significant way that you can spend time traveling. Also, if you're in your fifties and you're traveling and you have a lot of extra money, maybe you earned a ton of income or you took care of your retirement. This is the time. Hey, spend some dollars on luxury hotels. Spend some dollars on first class flights overseas.

You deserve it. You've been working your butt off your entire life. You deserve to do that kind of stuff. And you deserve to do that on any age. That's not just in the fifties. But I'm saying for you now. You've worked your butt off. I want you to have that. It can be deeply rewarding to travel and do it the right way, the fun way and the luxurious way.

If you have the extra dollars, if you don't no worries at all, you can still work on travel, hacking, all that kind of stuff. And I would travel hack as long as you can. Cause Hey, it's free money, my friends. And so I would definitely be looking at that. And the same thing goes along the lines of if you've always wanted some luxury item.

You know, luxury can always be purchased at every age level as well. I have nothing against luxury whatsoever. Um, but if you've always been thinking about that, saving up for luxury purchases in your fifties is going to be probably economical for some people out there who are in their fifties, who have been saving your dollars over time.

So that's a really powerful way to be able to do that. If you took care of some of your things early on. Health and wellness retreats is number three. So this is one that I think can be really powerful for a lot of people is going on some of these health and wellness retreats. So how do these work?

There's a bunch of different ones out there. There's, you know, it depends on what you're interested in and some of those types of things as well, but health programs to improve your quality of life and longevity. Is going to be really, really important if you invest your dollars in longevity, that is the biggest return you'll ever have because you'll have more time on this earth.

And so there's no reason not to invest your dollars in some of those health and wellness retreats. Some of those other things that you can do. And along those same lines, if you're interested in stuff out there, you know, that is health related, maybe you're interested in paddleboarding and you're interested in, you know, workouts, or you're interested in doing all these different things, maybe triathlons or whatever else you want to do out there.

Those are great things to invest in as well in your fifties. And that carries over from all these other ages. Number four is legacy planning. And so legacy planning is something where spending more dollars to make sure that you have your legacy planning in place is going to be really, really important.

Maybe you go to an attorney and get your state plan set up and make sure that you have the right things in place in order to have that estate plan set up. Maybe you go to. You know, trust and will. com is another great place to go to where you can set up that estate plan, have your will in place, but have that legacy planning in place, understanding how you're going to divvy up your assets and starting to have that conversation in your fifties.

Very, very important in a great investment for your peace of mind. So do you know your assets are going exactly where you want? If you don't estate plan, it's going to go to probate and probate is going to try to figure out what's going on here. And they're going to give it maybe to the wrong person that you don't want that stuff to go to.

And so making sure you have this investment in estate planning and spending your dollars in that is going to be really, really powerful. Obviously paying down debt, like in your forties is one to definitely be doing in your fifties. All the other things in the twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties are great.

And then lastly is maybe you want to even consider making some extra money by downsizing or relocating, because if you downsize or relocate, that's an investment in your time to figure out what you want to do there, but that may increase your overall happiness as well. If you relocate from say a really cold winter area and you become a snowbird and you get the downsize down to Florida or California or.

Texas or wherever else you want to go, all those places are fantastic, Arizona. And so maybe you want to do something like that, where you have a warmer climate you want to be around, or maybe you've been in a warmer climate all your life. I get him so sick of the Florida heat, uh, in the summertime that I want to be a reverse snowbird.

I want to go up North and have a little more cold in my life. And so if you're like that, if you're like me, maybe you want to do something like that as well. So. You know, having some of those options is going to be really cool way to increase overall happiness. So listen, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode because I want you to realize that money is a tool that you can utilize in order to increase your happiness over time.

I do believe that money can increase your happiness. Is it everything to your happiness? Absolutely not. But will it reduce your stress and anxiety and can you use money as a tool for all your amazing memories that you're going to have over time? Absolutely. And you can spend those dollars on experiences with your family or things that you want to do in life or your health to increase your longevity.

All of these matter when it comes to building a life that you want. And so making sure that you have the financial security in place. And in addition, making sure that you're also having that balance of spending money on things that you love is the Best way to have a balance of spending money. So thank you guys so much for listening to this episode and thank you for investing in yourself because that's exactly what you did by listening to this episode.

If you guys have any questions, please reach out to me and I will get to them, uh, over time here. And we will really, really want to make this a podcast that brings you value. That's the entire goal. This podcast is to bring you as much value as we possibly can. And so I want you to sit in those questions so that we can bring you that value.

Thank you guys again so much for listening to this episode and we will see you on the next episode.