Should You Take Vacations While Building Wealth? – Money Q&A

Transcript:

On this episode of the personal finance podcast, should you take vacations while building wealth? Welcome to money Q and a.

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, should you take vacations while building wealth on this money? Q and a, if you guys have any questions, you can hit us up on Instagram, tick.

Talk Twitter at master money co and follow us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or whatever podcast player you love to listen 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.

They truly mean the world to me. Now, today we're going to be diving into four different questions on this money Q and a. The first one is going to be what's your view on taking vacations while also building wealth. I'm going to give you some considerations to think through on that one. Number two is why should you do your online shopping this holiday season with credit cards and not debit cards?

And we're going to talk through some of those options there. Just some things to Think through that's not for everybody, but we'll talk through that process. Then how long do you keep money in index funds? And when do you practically take money out? We're going to talk through that process. And then lastly, any tips to stop obsessively checking your finances?

That's going to be question number four. And then obviously we're going to add in health corner as well. At the end of this show, health corner is just a bonus. Some health things that I am doing from exercise to nutrition, to diet, all those different things. So this is an action packed episodes without further ado.

Let's get into it. What's your view on taking vacations while also building wealth? As a family, we LOVE, in all caps, to travel. It's a non negotiable. And some wealth advisors, cough, Dave Ramsey, hate vacations. Okay, this is a fantastic question, and honestly, I could probably do an entire episode on this question, but I think this is a really, really important thing to think through.

A lot of people out there are looking to build wealth and they may say to themselves, Hey, I want to also be able to take vacations. How can I do that? I really, really value vacations. There are other people out there who say you shouldn't take any vacations until you've made it. And for that second camp that you shouldn't take any vacations until you made it.

I could not disagree more, especially if vacations are something you value. Now, my philosophy with money, if you've never listened to this podcast, or you're very new to this podcast, my entire philosophy around money is that you should utilize money to spend on. Things that you absolutely value and you should cut out everything else that you do not value.

Money is there as a tool to be utilized for the things that you love in life. And this is the problem with a lot of people in their upbringing is they were taught that money is restrictive. You don't have enough money to keep the lights on during the day in the house. You don't have enough money to go do this thing.

You don't have enough money to go to Disney world. You don't have enough money to go and take a vacation. Now, hear me say this very quickly, what you value is going to be very different for every single person. But for most of us, a lot of us love to take vacations. And so I truly, truly believe even while you're on your wealth building journey, you're going to need a break at some point in time and you need to take vacations.

A Vacations are a fantastic way to take a break to unplug and have that time to yourself and with your family. B They are the memories that you are going to remember forever. If you have young kids or if you have kids who are in your life, you're going to remember those memories. You're not gonna remember saving the extra dollars to pay down debt or saving those extra dollars in order to put them towards different various things.

Now, that is a huge, huge caveat. Number three is vacations allow you to see new things. You have new experiences, especially if you travel internationally. You're going to see all these various things. I have made a bunch of different business decisions while taking vacations because I see how people operate differently.

So just those three caveats alone are things that, Hey, I know that I truly, truly personally value vacations. And so this is the biggest thing. Now, one question to ask yourself is if I take this vacation, what is the trade off? For example, if I take a 3, 000 vacation and take my entire family somewhere, what is the trade off if I'm in really, really high interest debt?

That is one big thing. Number two, are you going to go into debt to go on vacation now on that number two, if you're going to go into more debt to go on vacation, it's probably not the wisest decision in order to plan out that vacation. Maybe you can do some fun local things with your family or spend time with your family in a bunch of different ways, but If you're not going to go into debt or credit card debt or anything like that, there is nothing wrong with taking a vacation.

You got to prioritize what you value in life. And I'm going to kind of talk through this so that you can understand, hey, it doesn't even have to be a vacation on a budget. A lot of people will say, hey, yeah, go on vacation, but it's got to be a vacation on a budget. I want you to ball out, my friends. I want you to have the vacation that you want to have, and I'm going to show you exactly how to plan for that today in this money Q& A.

And obviously, if you guys love this stuff and you want me to go deeper into this, because I think a lot of you do, as we've done some of our travel hacking episodes in the past, let me know and we will dive deeper into this topic because I think it's something that's really, really important. Now, first of all, when it comes to vacations, I want you to be able to spend money on the vacations that you love.

So planning ahead is going to be a really, really important thing. You gotta figure out A, when you can have the time off, B, when you can actually have enough money to afford paying in cash for this vacation, and then C, blocking off that time considering weather, all that kind of different kind of stuff.

So, planning ahead is really, really important. I like to usually plan ahead like 12 to 15 months if it's international. If it's local or it's in the country, I like to plan 3 to 6 months ahead and make sure I have all of those things in place. But internationally, it's really, really important to do this ahead.

Say, for example, you want to go to Africa and you want to go on a safari. A lot of times those safaris get booked out a year in advance, so you've got to make sure that you are planning ahead so that you can have an optimal time when you do some of this stuff. But in addition, making sure you plan ahead also allows you to start acquiring credit card points for travel hacking.

It allows you to save cash so that you can pay for this vacation and cash because in no way, shape or form should you Ever go on vacation and go into debt. That is not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about is making sure that you have the cash in place. Now, the next thing you want to do is obviously choose that destination.

Now, when you choose your destination, you want to select a location that you've always either wanted to go to, but part of the fun for me. It's kind of going through the geography and said, Hey, where exactly do we want to go across the country? Let's think through this for a second. What are some places that are our dream experiences?

And then you can work backwards from there to find some of those locations. Now, if you want to have a top of the line experience using people like travel advisors or People who have been to that location before is another great option. Now, if you want to plan it yourself, if you're a type a person, my wife is very type a when it comes to vacation, she blocks out every single hour when we go on a vacation, I'm more of the person who just likes to show up and wander around for a while, but she is very type a.

So our entire day is mapped out. She is that person in the relationship. So if that is who you are making sure you utilize either travel advisors to help you out with that, or if you just like doing that stuff, then going through that process is going to really help you. And that is why it's really, really important to have.

And then budgeting out for these experiences. This is the really the key point that I want to make sure that you note here is a you want to make sure you look far out ahead so that you have to travel in place in cash or you have the points available for that travel. And in addition, you want to look at the experiences because what happens is a lot of people get there and they get the stay and they have the cash for that.

And then they go through the experiences and all of a sudden they didn't see it. Save enough money for those experiences because once you get there, it's still very expensive depending on where you're going. For example, if you go to Disney, you know, that's the most expensive place in the world, but Disney also has an amazing experience for your kids.

And so when you go through that process, you got to make sure that you have enough money walking around cash, as they used to call it when you get to that location at that point in time. So budgeting out for that is also very, very important. And I would over. estimate that. Typically, you usually will end up spending more.

And if you do spend less than you can roll it over to the next vacation. So here's how I kind of set up for that is I think through all of these different things, flights, hotels, and how much I'm going to spend on experiences and how much I'm going to spend on dining. Those four different things. Then I set up a automation for saving for this.

And automation is key when it comes to this. So a lot of times I'll set up a Savings bucket in like an ally account or something that says vacation. And I will automate my money into that savings bucket every single month. And so when I'm doing this, this is just automatically boom into vacations every single month.

So if I know my trip is 12 months out, I'll divide that number by 12, whatever I added up for dining, for the hotels, for the flights and for the experiences, I'll figure out what that number is. And then I'll divide that number by 12. Okay. So an example of this is say I want to take a 4, 000 vacation. Your boy wants to ball out a little bit.

And so we're going to go down and we're going to take this 4, 000 vacation, but it's going to be in 12 months from now. I'm not going to do it right away. I'm going to start booking it in 12 months and we'll take the vacation in 14 months. So when we go ahead and we do that, what I do is I automatically transfer 250 every single month from my checking account when the money hits my checking account into that specific account for vacations.

And so this is going to really, really help you just automate this process. You don't even have to think about it. You don't have to have your willpower in play. This is the power of automation. Then 12 months down the line, you're going to be doing that and all of a sudden, boom. The money's just there and there is power in having the money just there.

Now there's one obvious caveat to this is when you're planning this process, what type of hotel do you want to stay in? What type of airline do you want to take? Do you want business class? Do you want first class for all my ballers out there? Do you want to stay in a really nice hotel? Or are you okay with the mid tier Hampton Inn like I am?

So just to kind of depends on what you really, really like and what you're really, really interested in and making sure you budgeted that out correctly. Now I'm going to tell you this right now. There is nothing wrong. With not trying to save money on these experiences, trying to find a budget hotel. If you love luxury hotels, stay in the luxury hotel, but budget the cash so that you can stay in the luxury hotel.

If you like to have more room on your flights, like I do, I'm six foot four. I like to have more room in my flights. The other day I took a flight and the guy reclined his seat into my knees and I could not move for the entire flight. So your boy likes to have business class or he likes to have more room when I'm sitting on these flights.

So this is really, really important to me. To have more room so that I'm comfortable, especially when we're traveling internationally, a 15 hour flight is no fun. If you're crammed into that seat, so figure out what you like. There is nothing wrong with spending more dollars. In fact, I want you to spend more money on the things that you love when it comes to travel, spend more.

That is what money is there to do is to. Put it towards things that you value. This is why we focus so much on earning more and finding those dollars so that we can do things like this so that we can have these experiences, because this is going to be an amazing thing that you're going to look back on life.

And at the end of the line, you're going to say to yourself, I wish I had more experiences. And if you do this the right way, I truly, truly believe that you will not have regrets when it comes to having those experiences. You're going to love looking back at those pictures of your family vacations with your kids.

As they get older, you're going to love thinking about those experiences. This is. Something that I think is truly, truly fulfilling. And it is one of the best things that you can do. Now let's talk about travel hacking for a second, because we're talking about paying for this thing in cash, but we also can utilize other tools that we have in place, which is like travel hacking, credit card reward points.

So if you've ever had trouble with credit cards in the past, this is not for you. And if you're in credit card debt, then this is also not for you or any other high interest debt. But if you're someone who wants to actually reduce the cost of some of these vacations, you could very much do so then credit card rewards are a.

Great way to do that. And the way that this works is you put all of your bills on one of these credit cards. And what happens is you get a bonus when you spend X amount of dollars. So typically it's like you spend 4, 000 in the first three months, then you're going to get a 50, 000 point bonus. Then your spouse can also open a card and do the same thing all over again.

Now you have a hundred thousand points that you can spend towards your next travel or vacation. Well, a hundred thousand points, depending on who it's with can be worth all the way up to like 2, 400 if you do this right. And so having this in place that reduces significantly your travel and your vacation.

So understanding how to travel hack can get you a ton of free trips. My wife have traveled for free. All over the country. We have two episodes on travel hacking. One is a solo episode with me explaining how it works. We also have a second episode with Chris Hutchins from the, all the hacks podcast, a very good friend of mine who also kind of explains through some of this, some of his favorite cards, some of the trips that he took.

So we have a bunch of different episodes on that. If you want to learn how to travel hack and you want to hear more about that, check out those episodes, or I also have a five day. Email course that drips out a different email every single day. Just teaching the basics of travel hacking. And I also give you my favorite credit cards.

If you want to see my favorite credit cards, I will link them up down below as well. It actually helps support the show. If you book your credit cards through our link, it helps you support the show there. So really, really appreciate it. If you guys are looking for credit cards, you know, reach out to me and ask me about credit cards.

I've had some people do that via email. In the past, and we can talk through anything you think and the cards that I like as well. So travel hacking is really, really cool. I think it is one thing that if you have never heard of, you're not taking advantage of it. Utilizing those credit card points can save you thousands of dollars every single year and thousands of dollars on trips.

So really, really cool stuff there. If you want to check them out, though, we'll link them up down below. So this is my philosophy on vacations is I think you should, if you value vacations, you should spend as much money as you possibly can on these vacations. As long as it makes sense for your life. If you are really, really deep in credit card debt, and that thing is piling up every single month, then maybe you lessen the amount of vacations that you take.

But if you are completely high interest debt free, I don't care if you have a mortgage or something, that's a really low interest debt, but if you're high interest debt free and you love vacations. And you want to travel the world, you're young. You don't have kids yet because the kids are a big difference maker.

When it comes to traveling the world, then I think you need to take advantage of it. I think you need to go forward, especially if you truly, truly value traveling. Now, as your kids get older, you can take them more places. A lot of folks who are listening, have kids who are in middle school or high school, and that is really easy to take them all over the place.

I have a two year old and a five year old at the time recording this. So the two year old is a little bit difficult to travel with. The five year old is actually much easier to travel with. And so we take. You know, vacations where we can either drive with them or maybe have just shorter trips. And so that's the phase of life that we are in now, but as they grow older, we are going to take them all over the world and that's the entire plan for us.

So I hope this answer helps. And I think we may have to make an entire episode on this because I could go on this forever. Next one is love your episodes on protecting your finances. Why? Should you do your online shopping with credit cards and not debit cards, especially when you're shopping online during the holiday season when fraud is higher?

Okay, this is a great question. And when we go through this, one big thing I want to caveat here is there is a difference between a debit card and credit card in terms of protection. Now, Debit cards have become significantly better when it comes to protecting you against fraud, but credit cards are still significantly better and making sure you 100 percent get that money back, specifically if that is what their guarantee is.

So a credit cards have better fraud protection. Okay, so credit cards often offer that better fraud protection, even though debit cards do have fraud protection. So if your credit card information is stolen, or it is used fraudulently, You are typically not responsible for unauthorized charges, but with debit cards, a lot of times your liability on those charges can be higher.

So say, for example, you go out there and you have a debit card and you have a credit card and both of them get stolen. And the person who stole each of them. Spent 5, 000 on a credit card. Typically you're going to get that 5, 000 back on a debit card. Maybe you'll get 3, 000 back, however much they can kind of recover plus some, and then 2, 000 is still kind of sitting out there waiting until they figure it all out before they give it back, which is number two, meaning that they're holding your own money hostage.

So a lot of times, even when there's these disputes going on and your money gets stolen out of a debit card. In cases of fraud or disputes, your money is tied up until the issue is resolved. Whereas with credit cards, you get your money right back. Cause it's not your money you spent. You're going to pay off that card over that timeframe.

But when it comes to debit cards, they're actually pulling money out of your checking account. So your money is held hostage and it's just sitting there until you actually get that money back. So it's really, really important to kind of consider those two things. Now, even with some of these caveats, if you've had problems with credit cards in the past, I don't think you should have a credit card if you have been in credit card debt and you just cannot control yourself.

A debit card is still better for you to pay for things online because you still get some fraud protection and it's enough to at least get resolved for the majority over time. It just might take you longer to get your money back over that time frame. Another thing is building up your credit history.

You know, having your credit cards in place helps you build up your credit history. You get rewards programs. And when you have a debit card, you have overdraft risk. So if you're a person who has had a ton of overdraft over time and you've paid a ton of overdraft fees, a lot of people are like, well, that's not me.

But there is billions and billions of dollars spent every single year on overdraft fees. That number goes up every single year, surprisingly. And so making sure that you don't have that overdraft issue is going to be really important. But if you do have that overdraft issue, that means you don't have the money in the account.

I don't advise you to have a credit card. I'm just saying you got to really, really think about that and consider that over that time frame. And then speed of resolution is the other big one. So speed of resolution means that if my money is just hanging out out there, you know, how fast can I actually get it back with a debit card?

Like we said, it's going to take a little bit of time, but with a credit card, you can really get this resolved really quick. So especially during the holiday time, if you have the option to go with credit card or debit card, I go with credit card as almost with every single online purchase, just because of that extra ounce of protection.

And so I think that's really, really important. Now, one of the best ways to protect yourself online, if you've ever listened to this podcast or heard me talk about this, is removing your personal information online. And you know, I love this service. If you listen to this podcast for a long time, delete me as a service that will actually remove your personal information online.

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And that will actually save you some money on the delete me service. And it is honestly, one of the best ways to protect yourself online is removing that personal information. And you can also check the link up down in the show notes as well. And you can use the promo code there in that link. The next one is how long do you keep money in index funds?

And when do you practically take money out? So this is a fantastic question. And one big thing I want you to understand is here at the personal finance podcast, anybody who's been listening for a long time knows that we are long term investors and long term investors are folks who typically buy something to hold it for a very, very long period of time.

Now, for me specifically, I don't buy a single thing unless I plan on holding that investment for at least 10 years or longer. Warren Buffett said it best. If you're not willing to hold a stock for 10 years, don't even think about holding that stock for 10 minutes. And that is exactly how we think here as well.

I think it is really, really important to, if you're going to buy an index fund, you want to hold it for the longterm. And when do I practically take it out? Is here's the answer. That question is. I have never sold an index fund, specifically if I bought that index fund in order to have in retirement. So I start to practically take that money out when I hit retirement age, and I'm ready to actually draw down on that index fund for my income.

Now, how much money do you have to have in an index fund in order to be able to start drawing it down? It depends on what your goals are. So your goals are set up where you got to figure out what's your retirement number is. What is that number that you need to hit? In order for your index funds to be able to fund your typical lifestyle.

Now, typically the number for this is you're going to figure out how much you want to spend in retirement. So say for example, you want to spend 60, 000 per year in retirement. Well, if you want to spend 60, 000 per year in retirement, multiply 60, 000 by 25, and what that's going to give you is. Actually, your freedom number, the amount of money that you need in that brokerage account invested in index funds or whatever else you're invested in in order to become financially free.

And so 60, 000 per year multiplied by 25 is 1. 5 million. So if you have 1. 5 million invested, that means that you can draw down. 4 percent every single year, which equals 60, 000. And so when you get to that number, you have that number in place of 60, 000 per year, and you hit that 1. 5 million mark, you are financially independent, my friend.

And that is when I would practically start taking money out. If I wanted to be financially free and did not want to work anymore, that is how I would do it. And I would take it out, you know, 4 percent every single year. And then you adjust for inflation every year thereafter after year one. So year one is 4%.

Then you adjust by the inflation rate in year two, and then you adjust by the inflation rate again in year three and so on and so forth. So that is how it works. And that is how you set up. Yeah. How long you practically take it out. I'm going to be holding index. Funds for the next 30 to 40 years, because I like what I do, and I like the businesses that we own.

And so when it comes to this, I'll be doing this for a longer period of time, most likely than most people. But for folks who are in the corporate world, for example, if you want to retire in 10 years or less, you hold your index funds until you have enough money in there with your freedom number. And then you start drawing it down over that timeframe.

If you draw it down early, you are interrupting compound interest unnecessarily, and that's the last thing you want to do. You do not want to interrupt compound interest. Unnecessarily. You want to make sure that you keep those dollars invested so they can start working for you, spitting off more cash, growing that portfolio.

So you can reach financial independence as fast as you possibly can. This is the key when it comes to investing and building wealth is holding for the longterm. The best investors hold for the longterm. So that is exactly my philosophy when it comes to how long do I hold my index funds. Do you have any tips to stop obsessively checking your finances?

So this is one thing that I know a lot of people, especially early on when you were trying to figure out, Hey, how do I get my money right? And then you start to see your money grow and, or you start to see your money grow and, or you maybe Have a big light bulb moment. And I had this light bulb moment as well, where all of a sudden, boom, you realize, Hey, I got to get this stuff together.

Otherwise I'm never going to be able to retire. And so when you get to that point in time, you start to want to check your finances all the time. You constantly are thinking about your finances, especially if you're someone who maybe hates your job out there, or it's maybe you don't want to work for a very long time.

You're like, how can I optimize this in order to make sure that I get every single dollar. Working optimally. I know how you feel. I used to be that way as well. And now I am someone who checks my finances very infrequently, and I'm gonna show you exactly kind of the things that I did. One of the main things I did, though, is gonna be really, really important.

So if you do this all the time, maybe you just make it a rule Where you don't check your finances unless it's on a set schedule. So, one thing I used to do is I would start to check them every Friday instead of daily. And so Friday, I would kind of do a wrap up of all of my finances. Kind of see where it all is.

See where everything's looking. I would pay off my credit card for the week. Because I like to pay off my credit cards weekly just to stay on top of them. It's just a thing that I do. You don't have to do that. Uh, you have to pay them off monthly. But, you know, if you want to pay them off weekly, you can.

But that's just what I do. I just like doing it that way. And I've always done it that way. So you could set the schedule, you know, once a week where you are checking your finances and just be like, I'm not checking this unless it is once a week, every single week and you just make and take actions towards building wealth.

But at the same time, you were just checking it once a week and that's how you kind of stay on top of it. But number two, and this is the bigger one. This is the one that really changed everything for me is I automated everything. I automated my finances, so I really don't have to check it really at all.

And everything just kind of flows naturally. And automation, what it does is it removes your willpower from the equation. So a lot of times what people have to do is like, okay, I got to go pay my credit card. So I'm going to manually go in there. I'm going to pay off my card. And now it's finally paid off.

What automation does is. I don't have to think about that credit card anymore. I don't have to think about my budget anymore because it's all automated. Everything is automated and put into place. I don't have to think about my savings anymore. I don't have to think about my investing anymore. Instead, I just have to do a quick check of two minutes every month or every quarter, just to make sure everything is running seamlessly.

That is what automation does for your life. And it takes you out of the equation, removes your willpower out of the equation, and allows your money just to work for you. If you don't automate your money yet, if you don't know how to automate your money yet, this is one of the most powerful things that you can do.

We are actually going to build out a course on how to automate your money to teach every single one of you, how to do it. We're going to do it from investing to saving to everything else, all the way down the line on how to pay down even your mortgage faster with automation. So really, really excited about that.

That's going to come out early next year. To show you exactly how to do this, because a lot of people do not do this. And the future of personal finance is full automation. And that's how I run my finances. Now I was tired of sticking and looking at my budget every single day. I was tired of checking my net worth all the time.

I was tired of just looking at my bank accounts at the time. So I figured out, Hey, there's gotta be a better way. And full automation is exactly how you do that. So money automation is number two, but number three is focusing on your long term goals. So short term fluctuations in the market or short term fluctuations in your personal finances.

Really do not matter in the longterm. What matters that you have the habits in place and you are taking the necessary steps every single day in order to get 1 percent better every single day or half a percent better every single day with your finances. Because if you do that, I can guarantee that these build up like building blocks and over time, you're going to see your finances grow.

You're going to see your money grow over that timeframe. And it's going to be really, really powerful to see that in your life. So focusing on long term goals, setting your long term goals, and focusing on that more so than your day to day finances is another great thing to do. And then just be mindful and educate yourself on the daily fluctuations of markets moving.

So one thing a lot of new investors do, for example, is, and I'm not sure what you're checking day in and day out, but what a lot of new investors do is they will just check their portfolio every single day. That is the wrong thing to do, especially if you're brand new. What you really want to do is... Set it and forget it.

Automate your money into those brokerage accounts, make sure that money is getting invested every single month and then just sitting back relaxing and then seeing what happened throughout the year because even year in and year out, what happened over the course of a year is not really that big deal.

What happened over the course of 30 years is what the big deal is. So making sure that you just understand day to day fluctuations, month to month fluctuations, year over year fluctuations. All of these really don't matter in the short term, but what matters is the long term and the actions and the habits that you have in place and having the habit of investing your money every single month, having the habit of making sure you avoid that debt every single month, having the habit of paying down anything that has high interest.

All of those are going to be so much more powerful for your finances in the long run. And that is what I believe helped me stop obsessively checking my finances net worth. It should be a goal where like, if you're going to check your net worth, you're just going to do it every twice a year. And so then you're not like in there all the time checking it, you just set some dates.

Maybe I'll check it in June and I'll check it in the end of the year, you know, December 31st, something like that. And then you have that available where you go through your year in money checklist, which we will go through that episode coming up soon. And we will talk through that so you can go through your year in money checklist and have that, but kind of extending out the timeline of when you check this stuff is one of the most important things.

Number two, though. Automation will change it all for you. All right. And then lastly, we are going to go through health corner. So typically when we have these episodes, they would end right there. This is just a little bonus content for you guys. If you're interested in health and stuff, if you're just interested in getting your money right, you don't have to stick around, but this is going to be just talking about a short, you know, three to five minutes.

talk about some of the health things I did. So last time we talked about some of the supplements I'm taking, specifically when it comes to vitamins and how it's really, really helped when it came to my immune system. And I think that is one where it really, really changed the way that I approached my health.

Just seeing that I did not get those micronutrients in this time around. I'm going to talk about some something when it comes to workouts and the physical side of it. So we talked about nutrition last time, but talk about some of the physical side of it as well. And we're going to go through some of this so that we can talk through it now.

Health corner is actually presented by the plunge. And if you've never heard of the plunge, the plunge is a cold plunge. They sent me one. This is like a God sent to me where I get in this thing every single day when I am crashing and I get in the cold plunge for 2 to 3 minutes. The longest I ever did was 20 minutes and honestly, I felt it in my muscles when I did it for 20 minutes, but I get in this thing for like 2 to 3 minutes every afternoon and it just.

Boom wakes me up instantly. Now in the morning a lot of times what I'm doing now is I'm sticking my head in that thing too when I first wake up and it just gives me that jolt of cold where it also wakes me up. So I'm using it for a bunch of different things and we have friends come over and we get in the cold plunge.

We had our fantasy football draft party recently at my house and all the every single person who was in the league got in the cold plunge and it was pretty fun to kind of go through that. It has so many different benefits including like I said it has benefits for sleep. It has benefits for mood for energy, and there's so many different things out there.

So if you're interested in ever getting a cold plunge, we got a promo code that is PFP. If you want to get a discount on the cold plunge, we have it linked up down below as well. If you want to check it out, honestly, it is one of the best things that I do every single day. And it is joy through suffering is what I like to call it.

I put mine down to about 50 degrees, get in there for about two to three minutes a day. And it is one of the best things I do. Now, one big thing on health corner today though, is I also want to talk about the sled that I have been using. So One issue that I've had over the time is as I've gotten older, I've had bad knees.

And if you've ever heard of the guy named knees over toes guy, if you've never heard of him, his name is Ben Patrick. I think he actually lives pretty close to where I live in the Tampa area. And he's someone who, if you ever have bad knees, you're going to realize even as you get older, you need to start to bulletproof your knees.

You need to protect those joints because even as you age, maybe you don't have bad knees yet. But once you get to your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, everybody starts to have knee pain. And there's exercises that you can do to prevent that knee pain. And one of the best things I did, I tried a bunch of different stuff to try to prevent knee pain and my knees were hurting so incredibly bad.

I played basketball for years and years and years in football. And so I just had knee pain from playing those two sports. And so once I got to this point. Where my knees were just killing me. I couldn't even do squats anymore at the gym. Then I said, I got to do something about this. So I tried everything out there in the book and then I landed on actually sledding backwards.

Now, if you don't know what a sled is, you can get them flat, like a cheap version where you can get them at like Titan fitness. For example, they have flat sleds where you just put weights on top. And you have a strap around your body and you can walk forwards or backwards. You see a lot of NFL players using these are a lot of different athletes using these, where they're pushing them or pulling them.

And so walking backwards actually helps bulletproof your knees. And let me tell you, I first bought the cheap sled to make sure this works. I bought a Titan sled. I think it was like a hundred bucks and it has a pole going up the middle. And then on the pole, you stick your weights on there and you can walk backwards or you can pull it forward.

So I was doing it to walk. backwards every single day and I started to notice a little bit of difference and I started to notice that my knees hurt less and over time it started to kind of strengthen those knees over time. Then I got a torque tank and if you don't know what a torque tank is, it is a sled that is on wheels and it has rubber wheels.

And it is a sled that is completely silent. And the way that it works is with magnetic resistance. So it already has resistance inside the sled. You don't have to put weights on it. You can put weights on it to hold it down, but it already has the resistance inside the sled. And it is a really, really nice piece of machinery.

And I started doing this thing every single day. And let me tell you walking backwards. If you have knee pain, this is the reason why I'm kind of doing this, because if you have knee pain out there, this solved my problem and nothing else would is I walk backwards every single day with this sled. Now the sleds are not cheap.

There are hundreds of dollars in order to buy this sled, but at the same time, if it's going to solve your knee pain, it is worth every single penny. And this is a great example of utilizing money to bring you value. Because this brought me so much value. I put it off for so long because those sleds are so expensive.

But now I am so incredibly happy that we did this because now my knees don't hurt. I can squat again. I can do leg day again. I can go out and play pickleball whenever I want. I can go play basketball with friends or whatever else. And these are things that truly change the way that I operate my day.

Even like just getting up and playing with my kids. Now it's actually much easier. This sounds, sounds like an ad for a Torque Sled, but honestly, it's just a product that I love. So this is something I've been doing a lot is utilizing the sled, walking backwards. So if you have knee pain or anything like that, it is a great, great option for you to use.

Listen, hope you guys enjoyed this episode of Money Q& A. If you guys have any questions, please make sure to reach out to me. My entire goal is to bring as much value to you as possible and to solve your financial problems for you. I want to Help you through this journey, help you through your personal finance and financial independence journey.

My entire goal is to help you. That is what I want to do. So if you have questions, please reach out to me. We can either make videos on this or we can do it, put them on these money Q and a's and make sure that we are helping you solve your problems. Or if it's a really quick answer, I'll just answer you right there on Instagram, on email or anything else.

So thank you guys so much for listening to this. Thank you for investing in yourself because that's exactly what you're doing. When you're listening to this podcast is you're investing in your future self. And it is amazing that you took the time to do so. Thank you guys again. I hope you have a great week and we will see you on the next episode.