How To Get Your Financial Life Together in 2025

We know that Americans everywhere are feeling financially squeezed. People are continuing to feel the impact of increased living costs and inflation, even though rates have returned to normal So as we get 2025 underway, it would make sense that people are looking for practical ways to get their financial lives in order. Jump start your journey with our FREE financial resources Reach your goals faster with our products Take the relationship to the next level: become a client Subscribe on YouTube for early access and go beyond the podcast Connect with us on social media for more content Bring confidence to your wealth building with simplified strategies from The Money Guy. Learn how to apply financial tactics that go beyond common sense and help you reach your money goals faster. Make your assets do the heavy lifting so you can quit worrying and start living a more fulfilled life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Build your front end and back end together on Base44. Describe the product logic with a managed database, authentication, and hosting included. Spend less time assembling infrastructure and more time getting your product live. Go to base44.com.

• 0:15Brian Preston?

  How to get your financial life in order in 2025.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  Brian, I am so excited to talk about this because this is a wonderful time to be thinking about, okay, what are the things that I need to do to make sure that my financial life is in fact in order because we know factually, there are a lot of people who do not have their financial lives in order. We know that in actuality, according to the Fidelity 2025 Resolution Study, they found that more than one-third of Americans, one out of three, actually live paycheck to paycheck. Meaning if that next paycheck does not come in, their financial life goes off the rails.

• 0:59Brian Preston?

  Well, I know a lot of you are feeling squeezed and the world hasn't been doing you any favors with all the inflation and the housing market running away from people. But this can be the year. I want people to realize, I get excited because 2025, whenever we cross into a brand new year, there's a reason everybody has New Year's resolutions is because you're realizing you have an optimism that this is going to be the year that it sticks and you can do better. And we're going to be there. We're going to help you through the struggles because we're going to give you the stats and tell you where inflation's at and other things. But then you can't control that, but you can start making better decisions, making the good habits as easy as possible, the bad habits that much harder and actually build the financial life that you've dreamed about to have your great, big, beautiful tomorrow.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  And if you are someone where finances is going to be, or finances are going to be a priority for you in 2025, you're not alone. Fidelity did a study asking respondents, hey, what are your New Year's resolutions? What are the things that you are thinking about as moving into the new year? And 65% of respondents to the survey said they are considering some sort of financial resolution this year. So this is top of mind for most folks and I imagine if you are... Viewing this, if you are tuning into the Money Guy Show, financial topics are probably top of priority for you as well.

• 2:21Brian Preston?

  Well, I want to make sure everybody sets financial resolutions, but sadly, the majority of people, it falls off.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:28Brian Preston?

  So, let's actually jump into how this is the year you get traction, and let's tell you, how can you actually fix this? And here's the first thing you want to work on: master the mindset.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, people don't realize how powerful that thing between your ears is, and how much it can control the things that happen in your life every single day. And mindset realistically drives a huge portion of whether we will or will not achieve our financial goals, as well as will we or will we not stick to the things that we think we want to stick to when we start the year out.

• 3:03Brian Preston?

  Well, I always think about the fact that if you, Fidelity and they asked this question in their survey, 30% of people describe their relationship with money as stressful.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  And that's sad.

• 3:14Brian Preston?

  Well, but I think, I want to be honest, because I think we all watch the highlight reels of social media, and we're like, well, everybody else has got it figured out, but I'm over here all by myself, being stressed out. No, it's okay. There's a reason we've coined the term, "The Messy Middle."

• 3:28Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 3:28Brian Preston?

  I think the 20s, the 30s, you're going to feel short on money, you're going to feel short on time. There's nothing wrong with it, but that's not your excuse to not still do something. And that's why we want to make sure you don't wallow in the negative, and not try to figure out how you can create those small decisions that will lead to big results, with just a little bit of discipline today.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  And look, our belief is that money doesn't have to be stressful. Personal finance doesn't have to be stressful. Yes, there will be some unknown unknowns that come your way, but if you can prepare yourself, you will be able to weather those unknown unknowns, and actually work towards your great big beautiful tomorrow. So, when it comes to mastering your mindset, let's talk about some steps you can take to move through that. The very first one is just understanding where you are right now today.

• 4:18Brian Preston?

  Yeah, there's not a better time to start the good habit. Talking about good habits, making them as easy as possible, just make Taking an annual tradition that you're going to do a net worth statement every year. You need to know what you own and then offset that with what you owe. So you can actually have a dashboard view. Think about an executive summary of where you are in your financial life. And we can load you up. We have two options for you. We have a free version. If you go to moneyguy.com/resources, we have a template that you can go download. And then if you have graduated beyond just the habit of recording your net worth statement, now you want to know, hey, how are my debt being paid down? Maybe I'm in year three, year four of doing this. How much, how about my assets growing in comparison to my income?

• 5:03Brian Preston?

  How about my three bucket strategy? How much money is in tax free, tax deferred and after tax money? We're going to load you up with all that stuff. If you go to learn.moneyguy.com, we actually have a net worth tool that takes that template to the next level and actually lets you have that dashboard view.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  What I love is not only is it an organizational tool to show you spot and time. Okay, where am I today? Where am I on my financial journey? I love that can actually be a motivational tool. It can be the thing that as you fill out your net worth statement this year, and then you do it next year, in the following year, you can begin to see the fruit of your hard work. You can begin to see the small decisions you're making today pay off in the future. So if you're not tracking this, if you're not doing this annually, you absolutely should start. The best year to have done a net worth statement was last year, which means the second best year to start doing it is right now, this year.

• 5:55Brian Preston?

  Well, we talked to, we were running a financial show. There's a lot of financial mutants. A lot of you probably find yourself in relationships where you think there's a lot more sizzle to financial matters than your significant other does. Let me go ahead and tell you, a great communication tool is doing a net worth statement. Because I've already had that meeting with my wife this year. Cause we eat our own cooking here at the Money Guy Show. And it is fascinating to watch and answer questions so that my wife knows that we're on the same table financially and we're working towards the same goals. This is a great tool. So if you've ever struggled with communication and you're like, how in the world can I have these conversations? Turn it into a Fun night out, you know, bring this, I know this sounds so nerdy, but I'm telling you,

• 6:38Brian Preston?

  if you can go on this journey, talk to your spouse, use this tool, this will become a tradition that actually makes your relationship that much stronger.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  The second thing that you can think about when it comes to MASH and the mindset is know the power of your dollars and what those dollars can do over time, because it's amazing. When we think about getting our financial house in order, when we think about shifting the financial direction we're moving in now to move in the right direction, it doesn't often take cataclysmic changes. Often, it's very small tweaks that can have huge impacts. If you're someone young or early on in your journey and you have a ton of time ahead of you, how powerful those small decisions can be is huge.

• 7:21Brian Preston?

  Well, also, I think this is, this is the, the, the stage, when you're younger, you have a lot of envy in your heart, because we live in this social media world where everybody's posting their highlight reels and you feel like, man, I don't have anything, because everybody's overstating what they have out on social media. I want to give you the, the ability to actually feel really good about your situation, because maybe you're not loaded up with money, but you might be a billionaire of time, meaning all the people you're looking at and you're wishing you had what they had, they're looking at you and going, man, if I just had the time that these people have. And we've actually created a tool that actually will put this to numbers for you. And it's if you go to moneyguy.com/resources, we

• 8:02Brian Preston?

  have our wealth multiplier tool. And let me give you just a flavor on this. For a 20-year-old, every dollar that comes into your possession has the potential to become $88.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 8:14Brian Preston?

  For a 30-year-old, every dollar has the potential to become $23. Old Michael Jordan. For every 40-year-old, it's $7. For every 50-year-old, it's $3. Do you see the degradation of the value of those decisions? So, don't be jealous of people who are older than you who have more. They're looking at you and saying, I'm jealous of that billionaire of time who's that 20-something. Just make sure you're doing something with that abundance and wealth of time, because- This is going to be tool, the tool that gets you excited about that.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  All right. So when it comes to mastering your mindset, moving into this new year, we want you to understand where you are. We want you to understand the power of your dollars and what they can do over time. And the third thing we want to do, especially as it relates to your mindset, is to set firm goals. Make sure you have goals in place that are actually meaningful, that actually matter, that will actually move you in the direction towards your financial outcomes.

• 9:14Brian Preston?

  I like that we use the word firm because the opposite of firm is squishy. Like if you just woke up this morning, you go, hey, it's a new year. I think this is the year I want to be rich. That's a squishy goal because it's like squishy. I want to be rich. A firm goal is, and there's even an acronym out there. What is it? What's the word?

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, you want to set SMART goals.

• 9:35Brian Preston?

  And what does SMART mean?

• 9:36Speaker 02

  They need to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. So when you make a financial goal, it doesn't need to be, I want to be rich. It needs to be, I want to see my savings rate hit X percent by the end of this year. Because that is specific, and it's measurable, and it's achievable, and it's relevant to your ultimate timeline, and it's time-bound. If you can set that goal specifically, you have a much higher likelihood of actually sticking with it throughout the course of the year.

• 10:04Brian Preston?

  Well, this is, this is the differentiation point between dreaming versus actually creating a plan. Because if you're not writing down your, your goals and your plans, if you're actually not making it where it's measurable, so you can actually see if you've reached the point, then you really are just daydreaming. And I think there's so many, everybody daydreams. But very few people actually take the effort to actually put pen to paper, or create a spreadsheet, or just somehow record, maybe it's the Notes app within your phone. Let's actually start recording what your goals are for 2025, so you can come back and have some accountability on that.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  And look, don't just take our word for it. What's wonderful about the study that Fidelity did is they said, okay, for folks who kept their resolutions through 2024, what were some of the secrets? Like what was some of the secret sauce around them actually sticking with it? And this is what Fidelity found. 28% of the respondents that were able to follow through on their New Year's resolution that was financial, had a clear and specific goal. 27% said the goal was realistic. It wasn't some lofty goal that was unattainable. And they were able to maintain, they were able to easily maintain that over the long term. And then 27% said, it felt good to make progress. They had some wins along the way built in.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  And having those achievable wins along the way allowed them to stay the course and actually see it through.

• 11:26Brian Preston?

  So, these are all important because this is mindset. And we often talk about mindset can be up to 80%. But at some point, you have to have action. You actually have to have where you're making these small decisions that start piling on top of each other and they create big results. One of the first things that I think you can do that actually shows some results is optimizing the cash flow. This is where you're going to actually turn some of that discipline of your behavior into actually the margin that turns into dollar bills.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, when it comes to changing our financial situation, our shovel is often the number one thing that we get to use to impact that. And so with that shovel, generally, when it comes to financial goals, there are only two things you can really do. You can either figure out, how do I spend less money? Or how do I make more money? That's the actual method of optimizing that cash flow. Well, a lot of folks have recognized that. Fidelity even have found that when it comes to like top resolutions in 2025, year over year, it tends to repeat. We know that one of the top resolutions is spend less money. In this past survey, it was about 31% of respondents said that was one of their top resolutions. Another 37% said one of their top resolutions was to pay down debt.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Again, that's decreasing expenses. And then the third category was save more money. That was 43% of respondents. So, people have recognized that, okay, optimizing cash flow matters when it comes to achieving financial goals. So, how do I either save more? I mean, how do I either make more? Or how do I either spend less?

• 12:58Brian Preston?

  Yeah, let's talk about how we actually do this. And the first thing we have on optimizing your cash flow, and if you're trying to figure out how you spend less. Money is let's actually let's figure out the low hanging fruit. And I loved one of the things that y'all know Daniel worked with us. He's worked with us forever and he still writes a lot of content for us. He did a beyond basics article that delve right into this. And I loved how it talked about, I'll say the cuss word budgeting. Nobody likes to do budgeting.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  I thought he was gonna say a real cuss word.

• 13:25Brian Preston?

  No, it's a necessary thing because if you, if you haven't mastered that first ingredient of wealth building, which is discipline, you've got to start tracking things. And I loved when, when Daniel did this exercise, he shared that you need to go pull your credit card statements, your bank statements and other things and actually look at your, write down all of your expenses for the last few months. And this is where the, the secret sauce is. He said, for the things that are necessities, highlight them in green.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Color code the green.

• 13:54Brian Preston?

  Go color code them green, things that you're like, okay. This was probably something I can't get away from. Um, but you know, it's, it's in the gray zone. Highlight that as yellow. And then I want you to be honest with yourself. When you look at that spreadsheet and you see things like, what was I thinking? You know, why, why did I spend money on that? I didn't have to go buy that that day or do that behavior, you know, do that activity that day. Put those in red. And I want you to be very honest with yourself. Is there margin in your budget so that you can plan and improve to actually turn that into decisions that turn into money that you can actually turn into wealth for the future?

• 14:36Speaker 02

  And I think what's amazing is if you actually work through this exercise and you cut out all the red things and then maybe you even trim out some of the yellow things and maybe that equates to a couple hundred bucks a month. And you go to moneyguy.com/resources and you plug that couple hundred dollars a month into the wealth multiplier to see what that can turn into. You will recognize that these small decisions, you know, just capitalizing this low hanging fruit can have a huge impact over the long term. These small decisions that seem insignificant today, that, that latte, that, that eating out, that entertainment, that fill in the blank purchase, if it's not a necessity. And you could instead shift those dollars more intentionally.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  There's a really high likelihood that those dollars will be better used somewhere else and those little adjustments are going to have big impacts. So that's how, when you start thinking about optimizing your cash flow, you do want to make sure that you're spending with intention. I think one of the things that this exercise will allow you to do is recognize, okay, was that purchase I made an intentional purchase? Was it something that I should have done or was it just a convenient purchase? We said, you know, how often are you going somewhere and you're running an air like, oh, you know, it'd be great. Cup of coffee. I'm just going to pull over and get a cup of coffee. If you don't recognize that you're doing those things, you might not recognize how your money is ultimately flying away from you on a daily basis.

• 15:58Brian Preston?

  Yeah, I would, if you're going to spend with intention, meaning you're actually going to start tracking this stuff. This is for those who are nibbling around the edges and aren't doing full on budgets. I don't think there's anything wrong with gamifying this in some ways. We were talking about this in the content meeting, some, you know, you can do no spend challenges. Maybe you're only going to spend a few weekends, you choose which weekends you're going to be a little more loose with the money on going out, going out to eat and other things.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Or give something up for a month, give up streaming for a month, give up something like that.

• 16:27Brian Preston?

  I mean, there's a lot of people that do January, Dry January. I mean, that's a money saver right there if you're not buying those drinks from, from, from the restaurants. Um, also the only spend on X day. Now we, maybe this is where we showed our age because the content team came up with this and we're like, yeah, you're only going to buy groceries on Sunday. You're only going to do this. And I was like, well, you know, it's funny you say that because that seems extreme. But I think back to when I was younger in the twenties and thirties and trying to figure out how I make this all work. There were, I would think about it in terms of weekends. It's like this weekend, if I can only spend 125 bucks, you know, and if once I'd get that, I stopped.

• 17:05Brian Preston?

  I think these type of behaviors, it doesn't mean that this is, because you, you made the example in the content meeting, like what if you get in your car and you realize that the gas tank is on E? Does that mean I do some walking? Well, obviously there's a break glass mentality that you have to still go on with life, but it's just more of the, once again, being intentional. You're not going to just let life happen. It's that where things just build on themselves. You know, you give a mouse a cookie. Where you think about you wake up to go meet your friends for brunch. On the way to brunch, you stop by the Starbucks and get your cup of coffee. After the brunch, you and your friends look across, see there's a little lemon. You're like, let's go in there and see what's on sale this month. You see how this stuff just kind of snowballs on top of itself. I'm just saying be intentional.

• 17:48Brian Preston?

  There's nothing wrong with those type of decisions when there's a time and a place. But you don't just go along and spend and consume without a plan to actually build in the background as well.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Now, the reality is you can only cut so far. I mean, you can cut your expenses down, but eventually you're going to cut down to the bone. Where you can't cut anymore. And we recognize that in the world in which we live today, that's a reality. So if you can't cut your expenses, then the only other lever that you get to pull is, how do I increase my income? How do I get the cash flow coming into my household higher? And what's great is now might be a better time than ever, an easier time than ever in history, to figure out ways to do this. It could be something as simple as just advocating for yourself at your place of work. How can I position myself to be so invaluable to the organization? They can't help but move me along or promote me or offer me more opportunities

• 18:44Speaker 02

  that have meaningful impacts to my personal economics? Or maybe it's for how to do a side hustle or a freelancer. I have some unique skill set that I can use on the side that will ultimately increase my income. Or it may be something we recognize, okay, the path that I've been on, this career that I thought I was in was really just a job. And this job does not have the prospects that I would like for my future self. So I'm going to have to think of a change. And I might have to look at a career shift to move into a place to where I could generate more income for myself and my family. These are all things that are possible to do, but you have to take an active role in doing them. These are likely things that aren't just going to happen without you.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Creating action to make them move in that direction.

• 19:31Brian Preston?

  One of the best superpowers when it comes to finances is when in doubt, like you think about stock market investing, you know, we always say when in doubt, zoom out.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Zoom out, yep.

• 19:39Brian Preston?

  You know, I think it's the same thing with your lifestyle and your life and your career is that you have to be honest with yourself. If you, if you feel like you're stuck, when in doubt, zoom out and ask yourself, is this a job? Is this a career? Are there opportunities? Do I need to be making big macro decisions that are going to put me where I am? We deal with that constantly here at our firm where we get career changers. We get other people making decisions. So it is one of those things. Focus on, we've talked about the discipline side, which was the spending, but I also want you to think about where is the shovel of your life? Because there's always, you know, we always, in the beginning, one of the best investments you can make on yourself is choosing the right career.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  That's right, yep.

• 20:20Brian Preston?

  You know, there's a reason in my book, Millionaire Mission, I spent so much time, when I talked about education and student loans, I listed, and look, it's not my list. I made sure I gave the citation for it so you didn't think I was just being biased. But it was the best pay, the jobs that can pay off student loans and create income versus the careers and the majors that people focus on, they just don't have a high propensity to pay back debt and create income. That's why you need to be an active participant in your financial life. Don't just go along to get along and find yourself in a bad situation.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  And then the other thing, when you think about optimizing your cash flows, you have to be prepared to expect the unexpected. There are going to be things in your life that have a financial impact that you were not planning on, that you did not expect, that you did not see coming. A matter of fact, unexpected expenses was the top financial concern for folks entering 2025. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said, hey, my number one concern is that there's going to be an expense I did not see coming and it is going to derail me. But in my opinion, Brian, there are ways to stave that off. I mean, if we know that unexpected things are going to happen, there are ways that we can prepare.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  Prepare ourselves to be ready when those unexpected things happen.

• 21:42Brian Preston?

  Look, emergency funding and making sure you're staying away from those desperate decisions is such a powerful thing that in the financial order of operations, which is nine steps, two of the nine steps is actually giving a nod towards this because step number one, highest deductible covered. Step number four, after you get your free employer money, which because nobody's walking away from 50%, 100% guaranteed money, and nobody wants to be paying your credit card company 25% plus, but you get to step four, emergency reserves, you see very quickly, cash is obviously important because when you find out that the majority of bankruptcies are because people had medical emergencies or they had emergencies that occurred that

• 22:25Brian Preston?

  put them into bad financial situations, you'll quickly realize that there is a dividend to be paid for the preparation of expecting the unexpected.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, when Fidelity did their survey, they actually found that 79%, almost eight out of 10 respondents, said one of their goals was to aim to build their emergency fund, meaning that eight out of 10 folks didn't have the appropriate emergency fund. So we want to make sure that you are equipped to not be in that category because when these unknown, unknown things happen, if you have a fully funded emergency fund, they just become little blips on your radar, not, not bringing your life, financial life to a screeching halt, they just become a little blip that then you're able to move on and move through. It's why we say, okay, step four, your goal should be to have a fully funded emergency fund. Well, the question you're probably likely asking is, all right, what's that

• 23:17Speaker 02

  mean? Is that a thousand dollars? Is it 5,000? Is it 10,000? Well, our view is that when it comes to a fully funded step four emergency fund, we want you to have somewhere between three to six months of your living expenses in liquid, liquid cash. So then the question becomes, Brian, how do I know? Which one, which one do I pick?

• 23:37Brian Preston?

  And this is why I love our content because we actually answer the difficult, squishy, speaking of squishy, squishy questions, nobody actually wants to answer. And one of them is three to six months. Well, we were like, let's put together a list of actually considerations people should, could take into account for their own financial situation. Three months, six months, we have a spectrum here. If you have a job that you could go, has high job security or could be replaced very quickly, that lends itself to three months.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Like nurses or one that Amelia pops to mind.

• 24:07Brian Preston?

  CPAs, nerdy accountants like myself. I mean, there's always gonna be a need for bean counters. So that, you know, you can lean yourself to three months. If you have a low job security or a job that's going to be very hard to replace to get that level of income, definitely go further on the long spectrum with your emergency reserves. Dual income, meaning both spouses work, or single income, but you have a whole household living off of this one person. You can imagine dual income is three months. If you have everybody counting on this one income, we better have extra reserves to cover for that. Multiple income streams, maybe you have, you hear about all these crazy stats about passive income streams. If you have rental property, dividend or portfolio income plus your wages,

• 24:52Brian Preston?

  that's gonna help you go to three months versus one income stream, like your job. You want to make sure you have that covered. I already kind of covered this one, but you can, I'll let you, because I kind of get crazy. I'll let you pick it up from here.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, if it's easy for you to replace your job, you might want to err towards three months. If it's more difficult, you might want to go to six months. If you have children or dependents depending on you, three months. If you're just a lone wolf, single, no one else there, then you might want to think about six months. It all depends on you. If you have a flexible lifestyle where you have expenses that are variable, where you could really cut if you had to, maybe you go down to three months. If your lifestyle is more fixed, you have a mortgage or other high fixed costs, then you may want to err towards six months. And then if you have other resources, maybe you have that step seven, highly funded, large after-tax account that you could get into,

• 25:46Speaker 02

  or maybe you have big Roth IRAs you've been putting money into for years and years and years, and have a lot of basis in there, perhaps you could justify three months. But if your only liquidity, the only dollars you can get access to is your emergency fund, then you might want to err towards six months. So if you can work through these individual items, you'll figure out, okay, what is the best solution for me? You have that fully funded three months, or that fully funded six months, and then that unknown, unknown thing comes your way, you're going to be prepared. You're going to be able to navigate it. It's not going to have to cause you to make a drastic financial decision like racking up high interest credit card debt that is going to immediately start working against you.

• 26:27Brian Preston?

  I love when we get to do these new first of the year shows because we get to throw in content that you guys sometimes don't want to hear. It's the tough love stuff. Because it's not only the unknown stuff like emergency reserves being covered is important, but there are some additional preparations. And don't, don't cut it off. I'm telling you, watch this part because this is just as important and your loved ones need this, is there's nothing wrong with having term life insurance. Because if somebody is counting on your income to provide for financial goals, education, pay off debt, if you're not here, maybe you're early in the park, you have a good income, but you just don't have enough savings and investments in the account for it to stand on its own, don't sleep on term life insurance for your loved ones.

• 27:11Brian Preston?

  How about Bo? What's more risky? The risk of death or the risk of becoming disabled? Which one's more likely while you're in working age?

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, we used to say, you know, your risk of disability is much higher than your risk of death. That's not true. We're all going to die, but premature death, you as a worker are actually much more likely to suffer from a long-term disability than you are from premature death. And yet, most people, I want to say, it's something like one out of five people in the active workforce right now will experience a long-term disability in their working life. And yet, this is one of the most underinsured areas we see. So if you are someone that has other people depending on you, or maybe you just have fixed costs that you have to satisfy, like a mortgage, like rent, you should have disability insurance in place. And it doesn't have to be incredibly expensive, but it doesn't be something that you're at least checking the box on.

• 28:04Brian Preston?

  The other thing, I think a lot of people, you think you're good with your money. So if you're renting a place, you have renters insurance. If you have a car, you have automobile insurance. If you own a house, you have homeowner's insurance. But even if you're being Very active in making sure you have coverage. There's still a lot of gaps. A lot of things and you're like, man, if only there was a solution that wasn't that expensive that could kind of fill in the gaps or the gray zones of my insurance of my life. And that's what actually umbrella insurance is. It sits over top, just like the visual would make you think it does. On top of your homeowner's insurance, on top of your auto policies. And it just gives you some liability protection. So in case those gap areas or gray areas are leaving you exposed.

• 28:47Brian Preston?

  And the good news is you can buy seven figures of coverage for a few hundred bucks every year. It's something that I would encourage you, go talk to your property and casualty insurance agent. It's something they probably would love to have that discussion with you about. By the way, we don't sell insurance, so this isn't something we're trying to do for you. It's just something we're trying to keep you protected.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  And remember, one of the things we're talking about is how do you prepare for the unknown unknowns? Well, one of the great things that you can do to prepare both yourself as well as your loved ones is make sure that you have a state document and proper estate planning in place. And this doesn't have to be difficult. If you have children, you just want to have a document that says, hey, if something were to happen to me and my spouse, this is the person that's going to take care of the kids. Or this is the person that's going to take care of the money. Or if I were not here tomorrow, this is what I would want my assets to do. If you can prepare for a fully funded emergency fund and you can have term life insurance and make sure you're covered for disability and protect your property and then have estate planning in place. Again, when these things happen, we're not saying that they're not going to be difficult,

• 29:50Speaker 02

  but we are saying you're going to be able to make it through it. You're going to be able to see the other side of your financial life without becoming totally disrilled. So as you're thinking through this, all right, you're like, okay, I figured out I had to master my mindset moving into this new year and then I wanted to optimize my cash flow and think about those things. Okay, what's next? Now that I've done those, okay, I feel like I'm in a good space from a headspace wise. What's the next step? Well, the next step is the exciting one. This is when you get to get to work.

• 30:20Brian Preston?

  Yeah, it's funny how, Bo, you don't even realize it. We're doing some show prep for an upcoming show with, I love these. Things where we get to talk about mindset and other things and we were talking about 80 20.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 30:31Brian Preston?

  And one of the things when we were in that content meeting, talking about the 80 20 rule, we were talking about what is achievement and achievement is one of those things if we're thinking about 80 20, it's probably 80% preparation, but then there is 20% of action to actually create the achievement. We like to think here at the Money Guy Show, we are loading you up with that 80% preparation. But there are every now and then somebody climbs out from underneath the bridge and they troll on us a little bit and they say, guys, you say the same things over and over and over again. I'm like, yeah. This is the way good financial management is, is that you're going to notice that there's a theme here that there's consistency. Such a consistency that we can add rules, we can add steps, but there will come a time,

• 31:16Brian Preston?

  if you find yourself that you know everything that we're about to say, you can practically regurgitate my next words. I want to encourage you to lean into that 20% action, get to work. This is the year 2025. Doesn't mean I want you to go away, by the way. I still want you hanging out, getting those affirmations, getting those attaboys. It's fun when you know that you're doing the right things and you get affirmed on all those small decisions you're making. But there is a time where we have to get nudged, to get pushed, to go to that next step to actually start creating action.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  So what do you do? Here's a great one. Track your progress. I mean, obviously, we've already told you, you should be doing an annual net worth statement, where every single year you see where you are when you add everything you own, you take away everything you owed to see where you stand. But that doesn't mean that you can't set up small wins along the way. Maybe you don't have that fully funded emergency fund yet, so you say, you know what I'm going to do? By the middle of this year, I'm going to have six months of living expenses in my emergency fund. And track your progress. Every time your paycheck comes in, check, okay, where's my cash at? Okay, where's my cash at? Okay, where's my cash at? Or maybe this is the year that you're finally going to get to max out your Roth IRA. Okay, how much do I want to have in there by the end of the first quarter? Okay, how much by the end of the second quarter? And give yourself little wins, because it says little wins along the way

• 32:30Speaker 02

  that will keep you motivated to continue moving forward towards some of these longer term financial goals.

• 32:37Brian Preston?

  The next thing I'm going to tell you, because I like tracking your progress, but you also need to stay motivated and accountable. There's a reason, New Year's resolutions. Like, I'm going to the gym this afternoon, and I know I'm going to have to probably reserve my time because

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Everybody's gonna be there.

• 32:50Brian Preston?

  Everybody's gonna be in that class. It's just, that's the way New Year's reso- But I know by the time we get to February, it's gonna be the same thing. When I go to my class in the afternoon, I'm not going to reserve it because nobody's gonna be there. So staying motivated and accountable not only matters for working out and exercising, it also matters for your financial life. And so I want to encourage you to lean into having some accountability, having friends, having community. And that's actually what we've created.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 33:18Brian Preston?

  If you think about, if you go to moneyguy.com, we actually have a lot of people that we give free resources. I think about our live streams when we do YouTube. We have all the live streams every week so that you can stay accountable. And then I'll even go a step further. We have Reddit posts.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:34Brian Preston?

  There's a whole Reddit community that this thing- By the way, it's popping. I'm here, and I'm here. What'd y'all tell me in the comment, me? Top 3%?

• 33:41Speaker 02

  It's up there.

• 33:42Brian Preston?

  We are crushing it. So you guys, if you just need some atta boys, or somebody to hold you accountable, or just to get questions answered. I already, we did a live stream earlier, and I was thanking, thanking our audience because sometimes questions and comments get posted, and we just can't cover it all. But I'm always thankful when my financial mutants in the, in the, the community we have here at the Money Guy Show, you guys fill in the blanks. So if you need that affirmation, if you need that accountability, we have something for you. And by the way, if you're part of the 40% that is not subscribed, please subscribe.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Make sure you subscribe.

• 34:16Brian Preston?

  We would love to get to that, that gold button, that magical gold button of having a million subscribers. And we're not gonna do that. We always forget to ask for that. But we'd love to have more subscribers so we know who you are and can keep you this coming.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  And I'm just, okay, we're talking about getting to work, all right? So all, all great journeys have a starting point. That's where you are today. That's listening to this show, that's starting. But every now and then on a journey, we need to make sure we have a map with us. We want to make sure that we don't get lost, we don't get derailed. So make sure you're also respecting the foo. It is literally- Supposed to be your guide, your roadmap, your atlas to make sure you arrive at your destination. If you've not downloaded your free copy, you can go to moneyguy.com/resources and it will literally serve as an instruction manual for what to do with your next dollar because we believe there is a better way to do money and we have laid it out for you so that you yourself can do it.

• 35:11Brian Preston?

  I think it is worth repeating. We've told you, you can go download your own free copy, moneyguy.com/resources. Of course, my New York Times bestselling book that came out in 2024, Millionaire Mission. This will kind of give you the origin stories. But guys, lean into this stuff. We have created community because we want you to be the best version of yourself financially. And here's what I need people to understand. This is going to be the year that you can get traction because I want you to own your life or it will own you and you will have regrets. So don't sleep on another day. Make those good habits as easy as possible. Make those bad habits that much harder. Just start making

• 35:54Brian Preston?

  those small decisions that will create your great, big, beautiful tomorrow. I'm your host, Brian Preston, Mr. Bo Hanson, Money Guy team, out.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  The Money Guy Show is hosted by Brian Preston and Bo Hanson. Brian and Bo are partners with Abound Wealth Management. Abound Wealth Management is a registered investment advisory firm regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission in accordance and compliance with the securities laws and regulations. Abound Wealth Management does not render or offer to render personalized investment or tax advice through the Money Guy Show. The information provided is for informational purposes only, may not be suitable for all investors, and does not constitute financial, tax, investment, or legal advice. All investments involve a degree of risk, including the risk of loss.