I Have Too Many Financial Goals How do I Prioritize Them?! – Money Q&A

Transcript:

On this episode of the personal finance podcast. I have way too many money goals. How do I prioritize them? Welcome to money. Q and a 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 through your questions on this money. Q and a, if you guys have any questions, make sure to hit us up on Instagram. Talk 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. Can I thank you guys enough for leaving those five star ratings and reviews. Now, today we're going to be diving into your questions. We have. Five great questions today that we are going to be going into.

And the first one is talking about how do I manage multiple financial goals when I have way too many goals and I don't even know where to start. The second one we're going to be talking through is should I spend my HSA money on medical bills or should I let that money grow over time? And I'll give you my thoughts on that and how to actually approach that.

The next one is should savings targets be net or gross pay. And then next we have the best way to pass on passwords. If you pass away, or what is the best way to keep your information safe? And then lastly, why is my credit score different when I check it on various websites? So we're going to dive into each of these questions without further ado.

Let's get into it. All right. So the first question is I am a regular listener to your podcast. Thank you for putting in all the effort and sharing your wisdom on personal finance. I have a question, any wealth manager or personal finance book starts with a question. What is your financial goal? And I'm not sure how to answer this question.

I have multiple financial goals, kids, education, being debt free before retirement, financial independence, et cetera. Can you please help me how to think about this question? So this is a great question and this is really, really important for a lot of people, and I know a lot of. Folks struggle with this question.

In fact, even most people who are advanced with their personal finances will struggle with this question because it is very tailored to what you want in life. So the first thing I want you to think through is what do you actually want in life? And what do you value most? Because what's going to happen when it comes to financial goals.

Is that you only have so much money coming in every single month. And that's what most of us need to realize. You can't do it all at once. And I think so many of us want to do it all at once. And you just can't, you only have so much extra money left over. So you have to take specific steps in order to reach your goals.

This is part of the intent of why we have things like. The stairway to wealth or the investing order is because of these, we're trying to give you what I think you should do in what order. Now, when it comes to this, I think through it this way. One, I think you need to a take care of very specific goals first.

So I want you to list out your goals and I want you to put them actually on paper and list all of the goals that you have available. Then I want you to rank those and prioritize those from one to however many you have. Because like we said, only so much money is coming in. So we've got to rank these. So we know which one is the most important.

Now, if you have a couple that are tied, then we can maybe work on a couple at the same time, but you cannot work on more than just a few at the same time in our course, master your money goals, which we only put out once a year in the new year. We kind of talk through how to prioritize some of these things.

So it's really, really important to make sure that you have this list set up in order of exactly what you want. Now I'm going to give you a hint of the order that I think through this is I think through this first as making sure that you get that high interest debt pay down. That is one of the first things I think you need to do.

And you need to have that emergency fund built up. If you don't have those two things done first, then I wouldn't move on to any other financial goals because those two things need to be done first. Now, if you're asking yourself, well, what is high interest debt? We classify it as any debt above a 6 percent interest rate outside of your mortgage.

If you've got a mortgage at a 7 percent interest rate over the course. The last year, then we're just going to consider refinancing that down the line when rates drop. But right now, what I want you to think through is if I have any debt, specifically credit card debt or personal loans, or if you've got a student loan, would they really high interest rate?

All of those need to be prioritized first, before you move on to some of these next steps. So if your goals are situated where you have to build out your emergency fund. And, or you have to get that set up where you are paying down high interest debt. Those come first. Then what comes after that is your investing goals.

Why? Because if you do not invest your money, you'll never be able to be financially free. You'll never be able to retire. So you have to invest your money and you have to start today. The sooner you start, the faster your money can compound. And it is so incredibly powerful what your money can do. If you just let it compound you.

Contribute your money every single month. And you watch that money grow over time. Time is your greatest asset when it comes to your investments. And so the sooner you start those, the better off you will be. So if you have some other investments, you want to take care of your retirement. First, your retirement comes before your kids, college goals, and anything else that comes first, you have to take care of your retirement.

So you have your high interest debt paid off. You've got that emergency fund funded. Now you're going to go in and you're going to start investing your dollars. Now, which order should you invest? Well, we've got a bunch of stuff that we talked through, but I like getting your 401k match, always get your 401k match.

Then I like the Roth IRA and the HSA to start first. Then I like going back to the 401k. Or IRA or TSP or four 57, whatever you have, then you can go to a taxable brokerage account, or you can invest in real estate. And then after that, you can go to wealth accelerators, things like that. But you really need to make sure that you automate these investments over time.

It's really, really important to do that. Now, when we set up these goals, one thing I want you to do is when you prioritize these goals and you start working towards these goals. You want to make sure that you set up a time limit. So for example, I wanted to beef up my emergency fund more this year. So what I did is I set a time limit as to when I wanted to have that done.

In fact, I wanted to add another about a hundred percent to my emergency fund. I'm adding cash every single year. And the reason why I'm doing that is just for additional safety and security. But in addition, I want to have a large emergency fund when I actually decide to retire. And so having that available is going to be really, really important to me.

So I decided I wanted to add cash to my emergency fund this year. And so when I'm doing that, I set this timeline that I want it done by the end of the year, I want to make sure I have enough cash in there by the end of the year, if you don't set a timeline for some of these goals, you will never accomplish these goals.

So I need you to set up realistic timelines that are going to make sense. They should be realistic, but make you slightly uncomfortable. If that makes sense. So when you're setting up these goals, just make sure they're slightly uncomfortable. And then as you go through this, I want you to review and adjust regularly.

Now in master your money goals, we give you a real detailed way of exactly how to do this. And I think it's a really, really powerful methodology for most people to follow. It's going to show you the map on how to do that. So next year, when that comes out, make sure you check it out. Uh, it is a really, really cool way to build this out as well, but all encompassing what you want to do is you want to get your financial house in order first.

So that is your emergency fund. That is. Paying off that high interest debt. That's getting your financial house in order. And that's why the stairway to wealth, we call that flight one, which is getting your financial house in order. Then flight two is going to be building out your wealth with investments.

And then we have flight three, which is building that generational wealth out. So your kids, college savings, those types of things should come at the end. All your other financial goals should come up first so that you can take care of your retirement. You can get your financial house in order first. And that's how I want you to frame this and think about this, but.

Always remember, there's only so much extra money to go around. So you've got to attack one goal at a time so that you can begin to build wealth over time. And this is a really, really powerful way to think about your money. So I'm so glad you asked this question. We have another podcast episode called how to save for multiple savings goals.

So if that's something that you're interested as well. We will link it up down in the show notes below. Let's jump to the next question. All right. The next question, I am 31 years old and I have a few thousand saved up my HSA, which is invested since it's in my HSA, it's not taxed. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to just pay any medical bills with my non HSA money so that my HSA money can grow over the next 20 to 30 years tax free.

And I can use it when the bigger bills inevitably start popping up. This is a fantastic question. And I know this is a very important thing to think through when you set up your HSA. So if you're listening to this podcast and you'd never heard of an HSA, it stands for health savings account. And we here at the personal finance podcast like to call this the super retirement account.

Why? Because it has triple tax benefits. And so what you can do with an HSA is you can contribute money to your HSA tax free. The money will grow tax free because you can invest those dollars inside of the HSA and you can pull the money. Out tax free as long as you have a qualified medical expense and the qualified medical expense list is very, very long.

So what you do is you go pay for cough medicine at the store or you have a doctor's visit. You save that receipt and you take that receipt and you just put it in a Google drive folder or a Dropbox folder labeled HSA and you put those receipts inside of there. And then what you can do going forward is you're just tracking those expenses and then you can reimburse yourself later on down the line.

Now, the cool thing about these reimbursements is the IRS has no time limit for these reimbursements, so you could go to the doctor when you're 25 years old and reimburse yourself completely tax free when you're 55 years old. It does not matter how long it has been since you actually had that medical transaction.

And so this is something where I love to save those receipts. And then I also keep a little spreadsheet as well, just to track those HSA transactions, just so I know how much I actually have in receipts over time. Cause I think it's going to get really complicated to remember how much you've spent in receipts over time.

So I think this is a really powerful way just to track that. Now, one caveat to the HSA is you cannot open an HSA unless you have a high deductible health plan and a high deductible health plan is a very specific plan for folks who are usually typically healthy, meaning that you don't think you're gonna have a lot of doctors visits.

And so you have a high deductible health plan because You'll pay less than insurance on a monthly basis. But if something does happen, then you pay more with your deductible. So that's the gist of the HSA, but it has those triple tax benefits where you can really get a massive amount of tax free money in these accounts because you can invest this money and they can grow over time.

Now, the question then becomes, Hey, I'm investing these dollars. Should I actually reimburse myself for medical expenses earlier? Or should I just let this money grow over time? And so here is exactly how I would think about it. If you have the disposable income or you have the money in your emergency fund to be able to pay for medical expenses, I would cover the cost out of pocket, meaning I would take that money, not in your HSA, the money you earn every single month, I take it out of my checking account or my emergency fund or whatever else you have.

And I would use that money to pay for medical expenses. Now the HSA is a great backup plan. If you don't have enough money in your emergency fund, meaning that at least you have the money somewhere where it's. Forced savings to allow you to pay for medical bills. If something big comes up, for example, just a couple of months ago, my five year old son had to go to the emergency room.

He's completely fine now, no worries, but we had to take him to the emergency room. And so, because we have a high deductible health plan, because we love the HSA so much, we got the bill. And the emergency room visit was about 3, 500 after insurance paid their part. And so. If we did not have an emergency fund for this unexpected visit, then we would have to pay that completely outta pocket and try to scramble to figure out, Hey, where's that money coming from?

But instead, we have the emergency fund in place, and so the money is just there, worry free. So we just pay that medical bill. And so if you're in a situation where you have the emergency funds available, then you can go ahead and do the same thing. But if you're scrambling and you have no idea where the money is going to come from, just use your HSA.

I know it's going to interrupt compound interest, but you have the money there and it's available. Now, if you can develop a plan going forward where you don't have to utilize that HSA, that's going to be the most powerful thing because it can grow over time and you can save those medical bills that you are paying for out of pocket.

And you can reimburse yourself tax free when it comes time to actually. Draw those down in retirement. So that's the cool thing about this is that you can start to draw down some of those medical bills and you'll be able to withdraw those in retirement. So very, very powerful way to think about retirement and have those triple tax benefits.

So that's how I would think about it is consider that over time. Now, where do you open an HSA if it's not through your employer? So if your employer offers an HSA. Then I would check that out. But a lot of times the best and highest rated HSA provider, and I have no affiliation with them, except for that.

I have mine there is Fidelity and Fidelity has the lowest fees and they have some of the best investment options. Out there. So I love Fidelity for the HSA because you can invest in those Fidelity index funds. You have access to some of those fantastic funds that they have at Fidelity. And it's a brokerage that I have been using.

It was actually my very first brokerage I ever opened when I was 16 years old was at Fidelity. So I've been with them for a very, very long time. Uh, but I've Again, no affiliation to them. I just like their platform. So that's another great one just to think through, but the HSA is a great retirement vehicle to utilize.

It's not a retirement account, but you can use it as a retirement account. As long as you have those qualified medical expenses that you are saving up. So really important to stay organized with those qualified medical expenses as well, because it's going to make it so much easier over time, which is why I just say, Hey.

Have that folder, make sure every year is labeled in that folder, have that spreadsheet so you can add that number up at the end and you'll be able to be really organized and understand what's going on with your financial plan once you hit that retirement age. So really, really powerful account. Great question and great way to think about the HSA is to actually consider, Hey, should I even use this for medical bills?

If you have the funds, I would try not to the next question. Should savings targets be based on net or gross pay? And if they're based on gross, how should taxes be accounted for in the 50, 30, 20 budget? Now, this is a fantastic question as well. And this is one where I want you to really consider how you're investing your dollars prior to considering gross or net pay.

Because a lot of times if you're contributing to a 401k, they're going to want to factor in gross pay because your investment contributions actually come out of your gross pay. And so this is one if a lot of you contribute to your 401k, then gross pay is probably the metric you want to factor in because of those 401k contributions.

So really, really important caveat there as you think through this. Now, the second part of this question is if based on gross, how should taxes be accounted for in the 50 30 20 budget? So this is part of the problem with having hard stop numbers when it comes to budgeting percentages is I like to have ranges instead of hard stop numbers.

Now I understand the 50, 30, 20 budget is there just to try to set up some guardrails, but I think you have to have some bumpers in between. Meaning I think you have to have ranges because a lot of times taxes are going to need to be factored in to that 50 percent because it's a necessary expense that you're going to come up.

Debt is also another problem when it comes to the 50, 30, 20 budget, because there's nowhere to pay down debt in a 50, 30, 20 budget. And if you don't know what a 50 30 20 budget is, it means that 50 percent of your income goes towards your needs. 30 percent towards your wants and 20 percent towards your savings.

But the downside is that there's nothing for debt payment. And if you pay taxes out of your income, if you're self employed or whatever else, then there's no spot for taxes. And so you got to think through this as debt payment and taxes need to come out of that 50%. So there needs to be adjustments made.

So I like ranges when it comes to the 50, 30, 20 budget. If that's what you're going to follow, I like 50 to 60 percent going towards necessities and needs. Including taxes and debt payments, then I like 20 to 30 percent towards once and 20 to 30 percent towards wealth because the wealth number is really, really important as well.

And, you know, I like to have at least a minimum of 20 percent savings rate going towards your wealth, trying to bump that up towards 30 and even higher. If you're trying to retire early, so it really depends on your financial goals when it comes to a lot of this stuff, but 50 to 60 percent towards your necessities should be able to cover a large portion of your necessities.

Because you can think about this housing is in there. Your car payments are in there. You also are going to have those debt payments. You're going to have taxes. You're going to have, you know, electric bills, food, all of those different things are going to fall under there. Now, eating out is going to fall under once.

So you got to kind of categorize those in two different ways. Groceries, necessities, eating out, okay. Once. And so there's some things that you have to split down the middle, but I want you to have that once number as high as you possibly can. I want you to ball out on those vacations. I want you to be able to spend money on the things that you love.

I want you to spend money on your hobbies. And so this is really, really important is to make sure that you have some money in that once category. A lot of people, when they first start out and they get really, really frugal and they start to really get their finances together, they don't give themselves enough room for their wants.

And I want you to have room for your wants because that is what money is there to do is to bring you value. So making sure you have enough within that range is going to be really, really powerful overall. And then making sure you have enough going to wealth is also really important. So this should shift as a range.

And if you need more for specific categories, then just think through, well, what needs to give in order for me to change up that category as well. But taxes should fall under that 50 percent range because you have to pay them. They are necessities because you absolutely have to pay them. Same thing with your debt payments.

Both of those need to fall under the 50%, but that's why I like 50 to 60, depending on what your financial situation is. The next one, what is the best way to save all account info and passwords for family and friends in case of death? So. We're going to have to do an entire episode on this and how to put together some of your estate documents, especially if you need to make sure that everything is in one place.

So if one person is handling the finances in your family and the other person really isn't doing much with it, you really need to have a plan in place in order to make sure that if anything ever happened to you, they know how to get into your accounts, they know where life insurance is. They know where all of your passwords are.

They know where everything is. So we'll do an entire episode on that. I'll put that on our list, but overall, the real quick answer to this. Is just get a password manager because for a long, long period of time, I didn't want to pay for the password manager. They're like a hundred bucks a year. And I was thinking through like, man, I could put this on a spreadsheet.

I could put it in a secure document, a password protected document, but it just gets way too messy. And a password manager allows you to put each and every single website. Securely inside the password manager. You can access it wherever you are and you're able to actually have all your passwords and all the websites where everything is all in one location.

So there's two that I have used in the past. One is last pass and last pass is. A great feature that offers an emergency access feature where you can add one or more emergency contacts in case anything ever happened to you. And so that's a great way to do that. And then one password is another one which allows you to designate a recovery option for family members or trusted individuals.

So that's the easiest way to do this. Now, some people Are weary about password managers because they don't want all of their information in one location online. And so I get it if that's you and you don't want all of your information inside of one location, in case that got hacked or something happened there, then really, really important for you to.

Keep it offline. So what is a way for you to keep it offline is a, you can put it in something like a binder in your house and put it in the safe. That is one way. I know people who do that. They have these giant binders, or you can put it in your will and estate plan. Meaning you can put instructions in your will and estate plan that will allow you to protect that as well.

And it can give you instructions on where you can. Find your passwords because you don't really want that to include passwords themselves because wheels can become public record through probate. So you got to make sure that you have it in some sort of secure system still, but you can give instructions on where to find that stuff in your wheel as well.

If you want to keep it offline. Now you can also use secure document storage with encrypted files. And you can keep that in, you know, a physical location, like a safe, if you're worried about that as well. And so that's a third way to really, if you want it offline, then you can do it that way as well. But honestly, the easiest way is password managers, but your risk is slightly higher in case those ever got hacked or you ever had an issue there.

But I use password managers myself. I think that is the easiest way we have one for business and we have one for personal stuff. And I think that is the easiest way to just keep track of all this stuff and just make sure that it gets to the right person if need be so. That is my recommendation is to use a password manager and or give instructions via your will.

If you want it offline and then wherever you decide to put that information is going to be up to you, wherever you think is the safest. All right. The next question is happy to hear more Q and a's. I'm glad you're happy to hear it. And by the way, if you guys want more Q and A's, we are doing more of them because we did a poll and a lot of you said you wanted more Q and A's.

So if you like this format, let me know, shoot me an email and or at mastermoney. co and we'll keep doing them. But how do you handle different credit scores at different places? My checking accounts bank app shows 786. It has been growing for a while, which I love. Well, at other places like Chase, where I have my Sapphire or Credit Karma, my score barely ever moves and stays around.

750 to 751. What's that all about? So this is actually very, very common. And when you check your credit score at different locations, it depends on the credit score models that they use. So there are several credit score models out there. Now, two of the most popular are FICO and Vantage score. So FICO score is used by the majority of lenders.

That's what a lot of lenders will use is your FICO score. And there's variations tailored to different types of credits, such as auto loans and credit cards. So that is one type of score that is out there. There's also the vantage score and vantage score was developed as a joint venture by Equifax Experian and TransUnion, which are the three major credit bureaus.

If you've ever checked your credit score, those are the three major credit bureaus, and they tried to make an alternative to FICO. And so a lot of consumer websites and some websites will actually use that vantage score. And so your bank, for example, may use one model like the The FICO score, whereas if you're checking credit karma, that may be using the vantage score.

And so this is why the score, it has some variation to it when you're checking it in different places. Now, a second reason for this is because they could be using different credit bureaus, meaning that there are three major credit bureaus, which I just talked about Equifax. Experian and TransUnion, and between those three, they might have slightly different information.

Like if you've checked all three of them at the same time before, you'll see your score is slightly different on each one. And so sometimes if they're only using one or two, that is why there's a variation. And then lastly, is the update frequencies is sometimes the frequency that they update. Some of these just isn't as quick as some other websites.

And so you just got to think through that as well. Now your scores are close enough that it really doesn't matter with a 750 or above, you're able to. Basically apply for most credit cards and you're basically able to do anything. That is an excellent credit score. And so you're basically able to do most things with this.

So I wouldn't really worry about minor differences, simplify your finances overall, when it comes to this kind of stuff, and don't really worry about. 10 to 20 points. Instead, worry about the big picture. Are you in that excellent range? Well, if you're in that range, that's really important. Now, if you had a credit score on one website that was 800, your bank's website was 700 and another website was six 50.

Then we got ourselves a problem. That is a major issue there, but when it's this close, when it's 10, 20, 30 points, it's not a huge, huge issue overall because you can do the same exact things with that credit score. And that's. All you really want to utilize your credit score for is a tool to be able to maximize and reduce your rates on specific things.

That's a multimillion dollar decision. When we talk about those million dollar money decisions, making sure your credit score is high enough. If you're going to ever borrow money for a mortgage or things like that. Making sure that credit score is high enough is going to reduce that rate, which can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of your lifetime.

So as long as you could do the same exact things, if you're in the same range with that excellent credit score, that's going to be the most powerful thing for your personal finances. But I love that you're thinking about this and congratulations on having such a great credit score and taking care of some of your things.

Obviously, if you want to make sure that you improve your credit score as well, we talked about the 80 20 rule, meaning that making sure your bills are paid on time. And making sure your credit utilization rate is low. Those two things have the majority of the impact when it comes to improving your credit score.

So those two things are something that can really, really help you improve your credit score over time, but you can also check it for free at annual credit report. com. And you're entitled to a free annual credit report. So if you want to run it once every single year, I would just run it in that one location, annual credit report.

com. And it's a really easy way for you to be able to run these reports for accuracy, dispute any errors, those types of things. If there are errors on your credit report, just double check that. And if there are errors on your credit report, you can dispute those errors so that you can improve your credit score as well.

So making sure that you go through that report and ensure. That there are no errors is also really important. So just doing that once a year, put that on your personal finance checklist for once every single year. Uh, that's a great thing to check on the year end money checklist. Actually, we should probably add that on our year end money checklist to dispute errors is one of the big things.

And so I think that's going to be really, really helpful as well. So hopefully this was helpful and appreciate the question. Now, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. We truly appreciate you listening to this episode and what you did today was you invested in yourself because when you listen to this podcast, you are investing in yourself and your financial education, that is the most powerful way that you can invest your time and your energy.

If you got value out of this episode, consider sharing it with a friend and don't forget to leave a five star rating review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Can I thank you guys enough for listening to this podcast episode, and we will see you on the next episode.