How to Grow Your Wealth (By Age!)

Join Andrew’s FREE Investing for Beginner’s Masterclass. Click the Link Here 👈 Join the community built to help you master your money, stay accountable, and reach financial freedom. 👉 Try Master Money Academy free for 7 days today! In this episode of The Personal Finance Podcast, Andrew reveals the exact financial priorities for every decade of your life, breaking down why most people ask the wrong money question, showing why your 20s are about building cash flow and killing toxic debt, explaining how your 30s are the decade to automate systems and lock in a high savings rate, detailing how your 40s are your highest-leverage years to maximize accumulation and contain lifestyle creep, and walking through how your 50s are about protecting what you built, de-risking intelligently, and turning decades of hard work into lasting financial freedom. Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Partner Deals Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at http://Indeed.com/personalfinance Join the loyalty program for renters at joinbilt.com/PFP Go to http://policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Thanks to Fundrise for Sponsoring the show! Invest in real estate going to http://fundrise.com/pfp Get 50% Off Monarch, the all-in-one financial tool at http://www.monarch.com/PFP Find your next dream home, start searching now. Download the http://Realtor.com app today DeleteMe: Go to https://joindeleteme.com/PFP20/ and Use Promo Code PFP for 20% off! Links of the Episode Mentioned: The 1-3-6 Method For Building & Managing Your Emergency Fund How to Negotiate Your Salary and Get a Raise (The Step-By-Step System!) Resources Mentioned: Best High Yield Savings Account: https://bit.ly/3HpPjAr Connect With Andrew on Social Media: Instagram TikTok Twitter Master Money Website Master Money Youtube Channel 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.

• 0:00Andrew Giancola?

  When I started the Personal Finance Podcast, I had no idea how big it could become. I just knew I had something I wanted to share, so I started putting it online. And looking back, I definitely wish I would have started a decade earlier. One of the horror parts about building something online, though, is making it look professional. A website used to mean hiring a developer, figuring out design, and potentially spending thousands of dollars. In fact, on my website, I spent tens of thousands of dollars. That's what impressed me when playing around with Hostinger's AI Website Builder. I told it what kind of website I wanted, and I built the first version in minutes. No coding, no designer, or developer needed. And Hostinger doesn't stop at launch.

• 0:44Andrew Giancola?

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• 1:29Andrew Giancola?

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• 2:14Andrew Giancola?

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• 2:28Andrew Giancola?

  On this episode of the personal finance podcast, how to build and grow wealth by age.

• 2:41Andrew Giancola?

  What's up everybody and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host Andrew, founder of mastermoney.co. And today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to be talking through how to build wealth by age. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the master money newsletter by going to mastermoney.co/newsletter. And don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now today, we're going to be diving into how to build wealth by age, because most people

• 3:23Andrew Giancola?

  ask the wrong question when it comes to money. Most people say to themselves, what do I do with my money? Instead of saying something like, what should I be focusing on right now? Because every single decade brings on new challenges when it comes to your finances. And I want to help you master each and every single one of those challenges. Sure, you can miss a decade and you can still build wealth, but the most important thing to understand is what should I be focusing on right now? Because once you start to focus on the right things, you're going to make your financial life so much easier. We're going to talk about things like your income and your savings and investing and how to build each and every single one of those. But if you're someone who spends when you're age 25, like you're 55, then you could get yourself in a sticky situation. And the reverse is also true.

• 4:08Andrew Giancola?

  If you're investing your money like you're 25, when you're 55, this could also be a situation that is not the best possible option for you. And so this episode, my goal is to show you that in each and every single decade, we have different challenges that we need to overcome. We have different things that we need to make sure that we master. And so we're going to go through each and every single one of those throughout these decades. Now, when we do these episodes, a lot of times I want you to remember that some of the foundational stuff that we talked about in the 20s and 30s, if you're in your 40s or 50s, make sure you're mastering some of those from the earlier decades as well, because This stuff compounds on top of each other. And so it's very important to understand and to note that all of these things are truly put together what helps you build wealth. So today, we're going to go through each of the decades. We're going to go through the twenties. We're going to go through the thirties.

• 4:52Andrew Giancola?

  We're going to go through the forties and the fifties to tell you what the most important things are for each of those decades and why this is such a powerful thing. Now, my entire goal, if you are new to this podcast, is to bring you as much value as possible, and we want to create as many millionaires as we possibly can. And so what we're going to do is walk you through these steps today to make sure that you understand what you should be doing next. And one cool thing about this is we're going to go through five different areas within each decade. You can master each of these over the course of the next couple of years and really make a huge impact to your money. So use this episode as a guide. Use this as a guide to help you through each decade so that you can know what do I need to do next? And how do I master each of these topics?

• 5:34Andrew Giancola?

  So our entire goal is for you to achieve financial freedom, to make work optional, to reduce your stress around money, to reduce your anxiety around money, and also to give you the confidence that you absolutely need. So if that's something you're into, then without further ado, let's get into it.

• 5:51Andrew Giancola?

  All right, so let's start off with the twenties. See, your twenties aren't about being perfect. They're about setting up a plan and the rules that your money is going to follow for the next forty to fifty to sixty years. And so, setting up your financial foundation in your twenties can change your life forever. It can change the trajectory of your life, and it can really, really, really make a huge difference. There are a lot of people in their thirties who are going to wish they did some of the stuff that we're going to be talking about here in their twenties. So use this as an eye opener. Use this as an awakening to know, I need to make sure I get some of this stuff done in my twenties so that I can move forward when it comes to building wealth. Now, folks in your twenties, you may not have all the money in your world. You may not have everything that you want currently, but you have the most valuable asset of all, which is time.

• 6:35Andrew Giancola?

  And the most powerful thing that you can do is change your financial life in your twenties so that when you reach your thirties, forties, and fifties, you can reap the benefits of what we call compound interest. And compound interest will change your life forever. So the first thing I want you to do in your twenties is I want you to aggressively get cash flow positive. Now, most people don't have a money problem. They have a cash flow problem. And what you don't need right now is you don't need some complex budget put into place. Instead, you need to know what comes in versus what is going out. And what we need to create when we do this is we need to create a gap. The gap is the difference between your income and your expenses. The gap is where wealth is built. The gap is where you can pursue financial freedom.

• 7:20Andrew Giancola?

  The gap is what is going to get your time back. And so the difference between your income and expenses, if you can take those extra dollars and put them towards wealth building activities, this can absolutely change your life. Because the goal overall is we want to make sure that we have a monthly surplus so that we can take those dollars and start to reap the benefits of compound interest, putting them into assets that will appreciate over time. And this is why we want to make sure we know what is coming in versus what is going out. Now, one of the biggest killers of folks in their twenties is something called lifestyle creep, where you're going to start to make a little bit of money. And maybe you graduated from college, or maybe you graduated from the trades and you start to make some money and upfront, you're saying to yourself, wow, I got a little bit of cash on hand. I am going to start to spend this on a new car.

• 8:04Andrew Giancola?

  Or maybe you upgrade to the new house, or maybe you get the brand new designer watch or purse. Well, these are going to be things that once you start to upgrade these and you start to upgrade your lifestyle to your income, this is where people get stuck. This is where they get stuck in the paycheck to paycheck cycle. What you do not want to be doing is upgrading your lifestyle all the way up to the same exact level as your income. So let's say you start your first entry level job and you're making $50,000 per year. Well, if you're making $50,000 per year and then four years later, you get a raise and you're going to make $65,000 per year, what you don't want to do is inflate your lifestyle up to that $65,000 per year lifestyle. Instead, you want to live the same exact way and invest the difference.

• 8:46Andrew Giancola?

  Or do what we call the 50 50 rule, meaning you save 50% and you spend 50%. This creates balance within your life, allows you to enjoy life today, but also spend a little bit more tomorrow. Now, folks in your twenties, I want you to realize a couple of different things. If you cannot control your spending on a lower income, you're not going to be able to control it when more money starts to come in. So you have to develop these lifestyles now and make sure that you have the right plan in place. And so I want you to do everything in your power to get cash flow positive. Now, for me, in my twenties, I was very frugal and that was the way I got myself to cash flow positive. Is I would cut back and then I focused on increasing my income over time, which we will talk about a little bit more in this decade. But I want you to make sure that you are doing the same thing.

• 9:28Andrew Giancola?

  Do whatever you can to make sure that your income is greater than your expenses. Because the difference in that income and expenses means that we can build up an emergency fund, means that we can start to invest our money, means that we can reduce our stress and anxiety around money. Cause it starts in your twenties. You have to work way less hard than someone in their thirties or forties, who is just getting started, if you set up your financial foundation now. Now, the second thing I want folks to do in their twenties is I want you to get rid of toxic debt as soon as you possibly can. First, I want you to avoid toxic debt as much as possible. So any debt that has a high interest rate, and what we classify as a high interest rate is anything above a 6% interest rate, we want you to avoid. And if you already have something with an above 6% interest rate, we want you to pay that off as fast as you possibly can.

• 10:14Andrew Giancola?

  Because high interest debt is a true wealth killer. Anything outside of your mortgage. If you have a mortgage, we can look at refinancing that down the line. But if you are someone who has a car loan with a 9% interest rate, if you have credit card debt with a 25% interest rate, if you have a personal loan with 15% interest rate, all those types of examples are going to be things we want to pay down as fast as we possibly can. Because high interest debt is going to rob you of financial freedom. It's going to rob you of your future. You're not going to be able to do the things that you want in life because you took on this debt. Now, I understand, you gotta get from point A to point B. And so sometimes taking out a car loan is necessary. I understand that sometimes you need to make sure that you get the bills paid. And so you have made some mistakes in the past.

• 10:58Andrew Giancola?

  And so you had to get the bills paid in order to make sure that you took on that personal loan. I get it. But now, we're going to get ourselves out of that situation so that we can enter our thirties with zero. Zero debt whatsoever, at least any high interest debt and get that stuff paid off. There's good debt and there's bad debt. There's nothing wrong with taking on a mortgage. There's nothing wrong with certain pieces of debt, but at the same time, I want you to be realistic about what you're taking on and understand the impact of that money. Now, credit cards and personal loans are the ultimate enemy. Those need to go away as fast as possible and you should not have any credit card debt whatsoever. Credit card debt is the thief in the night that comes and robs you of your time and energy and money. It is going to take that money away from you. You're hard earned dollars. In fact, think about it this way. You wake up every single day, drive all the way to work and then

• 11:43Andrew Giancola?

  come all the way home through traffic just so you could pay the credit card company to make sure that you cover that credit card debt that you have. See, credit card interest is compounding against you. The interest rates are so high that it is compounding against you. So you need to make sure that you avoid it at all cost. Every single dollar of bad debt that you start putting towards that bad debt is a dollar that is being removed from you being able to put it towards your investments or being able to put it towards future you. And so I want you to make sure that you're avoiding bad debt as fast as you possibly can because the faster you can clear this, the more clean and clear your twenties and thirties are going to be as you start to approach that level. Now, third is for most of you out there who are in your twenties, if you can build your safety net,

• 12:26Andrew Giancola?

  which is your emergency fund, if you can build this early and start to build it up, it will change your life forever. You will be less stressed around money. You will be less anxious around money and you will not have to worry about finances as much. Now, if you don't know what an emergency fund is, all it is, is a set of money that you put aside in a high yield savings account. You can put it in a CD. I prefer the high yield savings account and we will link up our favorite high yield savings account down below, by the way, because we have a great list that are available for you guys. So we will link up those up down below. But if you are looking to build up your emergency fund, I recommend following our 136 method. Now, we have an entire episode on the 136 method, but the way that it works is that first you save up one month of expenses in a high yield

• 13:11Andrew Giancola?

  savings account. What do I mean by one month of expenses? This means you add up how much money you spend every single month and you save up That exact amount. So if you spend $5,000 per month, then you're going to save up 5,000. If you spend $10,000 per month, then you're going to save up 10,000, but you're going to have one month in place before you start to pay off any high interest debt. So high interest debt, like we talked about before, was anything above a 6% interest rate. Then secondly, once you have that high interest debt paid off, now we're going to move to the three, which is to get to three months of expenses. And so, once we start to focus our time and energy on getting to three months of expenses, which is two months more from the one month, then we're going to be able to have three months on hand. This is going to protect us against a lot of things in life.

• 13:53Andrew Giancola?

  You know, if your car breaks down, you'll be able to cover it. If you have a medical emergency, most likely you'll be able to cover it. If you fall behind on rent, you'll most likely be able to cover it. If you have something that breaks in your house, you'll most likely be able to cover it. So all of these different things are typically covered with a three-month emergency fund. But we don't stop at a three-month emergency fund. You're going to hear a lot of financial gurus out there say to you, "Oh, all you need is a three-month emergency fund." I don't believe that at all. Why? Because it doesn't protect you against the greatest risk you have of all, which is job loss. You are one person's decision away from having zero income whatsoever, and that is your boss. And so, you want to make sure that you have enough cash on hand that if your boss calls you in on a Friday afternoon and says, "Hey, we don't need your services

• 14:37Andrew Giancola?

  here anymore," you have cash on hand to protect you against that. That is the most powerful, powerful thing that you can have on hand and why you will not be stressed around money. And so, we want you to get to six months of expenses. I want you to think about this for a second. When you get to six months of expenses ultimately, and that may sound daunting to you right now in your twenties, you're like, "I can only put 100 bucks a month into my emergency fund. How am I ever going to get there?" This is a long game. This is the long-term game that we want to continue to build towards. And so, we want to make sure that we get to the point in time where we can get there. Now, if you're making a high income and you're in your twenties, start funneling cash into this emergency fund and build it up now. But if you are not making a high income, then we want to just take what we can every month and start to funnel it towards our emergency fund to ultimately get to six months of expenses in that emergency fund.

• 15:21Andrew Giancola?

  And so, here's how I want you to think about this, is this is the long game, and in your twenties, this is the time that you could build up this emergency fund. So that if anything were to ever happen to you in life later on down the line, then you have the money just there. Your car breaks down, the money's just there. You have to go to the ER, the money's just there to cover the deductible. You have an issue with your water heater and it explodes all of a sudden? You have the money just there. You have to call a plumber to fix a toilet? You have the money just there. All of this is really, really important because there is power in having the money just there. And I want you to make sure that you have that in place. Your emergency fund protects you against life. Very important to do early and often.

• 16:02Andrew Giancola?

  Next is you need to start investing as early as you possibly can. So we have this thing called the Wealth Builders Matrix. We're going to link it up down in the show notes below. But the Wealth Builders Matrix is a tool that allows you to see, well, if I'm age 25 and I started to invest my money right now, what is every single dollar that I invest? What is that worth? How much is it worth? Well, let's say, for example, you're 20 years old. Well, a 20-year-old, every single dollar they invest is going to be worth so much more than someone who is in their 30s. And so the Wealth Builders Matrix actually walks you through and shows you exactly how much each dollar is worth. But what I want you to do is when you look at this, you have the most powerful decade of all, meaning you have the ability to compound wealth way faster than anybody else in these

• 16:47Andrew Giancola?

  future decades that we're going to talk about. And so because of this, you have the ability right now to invest small amounts of money. And those small amounts of money can turn into very large amounts of money. So I want you to get started investing now. I don't care how small of amount of money it is, it will compound and you will not regret it overall. Guess what? Doing some of the extra stuff that you do, that you don't really care about, instead of investing your money, it is going to be so much more valuable to make sure that you invest those dollars. And so really, this is the time where you can go and start to get your 401k match. Start looking into an HSA if you have a high deductible health plan. Start looking into your Roth IRA. Start looking at your company's 401k. If you want to retire early, maybe you want to retire in your 30s or 40s or 50s. You can even look at a taxable brokerage account.

• 17:32Andrew Giancola?

  All of these are tremendous tools. They're going to help you invest long-term. We have entire episodes on each of those. But each one of those is a very, very powerful tool that is going to help you over the course of the long term. Now, number five, and this is something I think that you really, really need to listen to me on right now, okay? Because this is going to change your life forever if you focus your time and energy on this. When you are in your twenties, you need to build your skill stack. You need to build your human capital, especially in the day and age of AI. You need to have skills that are going to help you market yourself. If you don't build these up in your twenties, your thirties, forties, and fifties will be so much more difficult.

• 18:13Andrew Giancola?

  And what I want you to do is understand that your income is the overall biggest lever you can pull when it comes to wealth building. And if you have your skills, nobody can take those skills away from you, especially if they are income-producing skills. Skills compound just like money. They compound just like fitness and health. They compound just like anything else in this life. And so, starting to develop those skills can be really, really important. So, I want you to make sure that you're focusing your time and energy on things that are going to really matter. Networking, making sure you are meeting new people, people who can help you, people who can go up to bat for you. You're spending your time focused on sales skills because every situation in this life is a sales opportunity.

• 18:55Andrew Giancola?

  You're focusing your time and energy on things that will help you get promoted at your job, things that will help you in every single day life. Negotiation is another big one. But make a list of things that you want to master, and I want you to do this in your twenties, and master one every single year. So, maybe one year is sales, maybe one of yours is negotiation, maybe one year is AI. AI is a great opportunity right now, and understanding how that works and understanding how to market this could make you a very, very rich person. And so, all of these skills, I want you to map out 10, and I want you to focus on one every single year. If one becomes obsolete and you feel like five years down the line, you don't want to focus on that one anymore, then go ahead and remove that one and put another one in its place. Also, understanding that job hopping can also help you make more money.

• 19:38Andrew Giancola?

  Every single time I switch jobs in the corporate world, I made more money every single time. And my old job typically would make me a much bigger offer than what I was originally anticipating. Understand that if your job isn't paying you enough right now, look to Job Hop and see if you can get a 15 to 20% increase. Then learn to negotiate your salary. We have an ebook on that that's completely free if you go to mastermoney.co/resources, but we have a step-by-step six-month system on how to negotiate your salary so that you can make more money even at your current job. And the returns from this step alone are a multimillion-dollar decision. If you're in your twenties right now, this is a multimillion-dollar decision to learn these skills and you will make millions more throughout your career just by listening to this right now. This is a multimillion-dollar episode.

• 20:22Andrew Giancola?

  This episode could change your life and be a seven-figure difference to what you do if you actually listen to these tips and the advice that I am giving you right now. And so making sure that you take these steps and think about making more money is going to be the most important thing that you can do. So, big takeaways for your twenties. One, don't try to look rich when you're not yet. If you're rich, fine, you can look rich. You can get yourself whatever you want, but don't try to look rich if you're not. Two, is you want to build the systems, the habits and the skills that are going to benefit you for the rest of your life. That is your ultimate goal in this decade. Three, if you win in your twenties, your thirties are going to feel easy because if you set this foundation up, your thirties are going to feel like a breeze. It's going to feel like you're just riding downhill the rest of the way.

• 21:06Andrew Giancola?

  And number four, if you ignore this in your twenties, your thirties are going to feel stressful. And a lot of folks in their thirties right now who may have ignored this in their twenties, even though they feel like they made a mistake, they still have tons of hope, but they are saying to themselves and they would tell you right now, "I wish I started in my twenties." And so that will wrap up the twenties. Next, let's jump into the thirties.

• 21:28Andrew Giancola?

  All right, so folks in your thirties, if you are listening to this right now, you heard my pitch in the twenties and you know exactly what the twenties should be doing. If you are missing any of those components, make sure that you go back and you start to add those into some of the things that you are working on right now. Because when we talk about these decades, these build upon each other. And so if you don't have the financial foundations, like we talked about in the twenties, I want you to make sure that you are working on those things in addition to what we're going to be talking about right here. And so in your thirties, this is where you're going to see your income start to Increase. This is where we're going to see your income start to accelerate. But guess what else happens? Life throws so much more at you, especially if you get married, or you have kids, or you have aging parents. Those are the three areas where life is gonna throw you a monkey wrench left and right.

• 22:12Andrew Giancola?

  And you're gonna have to figure out financially how to deal with each and every single one of those things while trying to focus and grow your career. This is a messy portion of our life, our 40s, it gets even harder. And so we want to make sure that we set up these financial foundations that are going to help us propel the next couple of decades, which become so increasingly important as we think about building wealth and building up that money. So the first thing I want you to do is I want you to lock in that high savings rate. Your savings rate is going to dictate how long it's going to take you before you need to retire. And locking it in your 20s and getting the ball rolling and getting that habit started is very important, but I want you to lock in that high savings rate. So a 10% savings rate is not going to cut it here.

• 22:54Andrew Giancola?

  Here at Master Money and the Personal Finance Podcast, a 10% savings rate is what we want to get you out of. You need to be saving more than just 10%. Now, you may be saying to yourself, what does he mean by savings rate? Savings rate is any dollars that are directed towards your emergency fund or directed towards investments. That's what I mean by savings rate. This is not saving for your next car. This is not saving for your house. This is not saving for your wedding. This is not saving for your vacation. No, all I mean by this is things that are going to go towards wealth building activities and things that are going to grow your wealth. And so sure, a house could be argued with that, but we've talked about buy versus rent, and we'll have some more episodes coming out on that very, very soon. All right. So this is the decade where we need to increase our savings rate. And by the minimum, here on the Personal Finance Podcast and at Master Money, at a

• 23:38Andrew Giancola?

  minimum, we want you saving at least 20% of your income. Once you get to your 30s, I would love for you to bump that up to 25% because this is going to make the timeline to when you can retire that much faster. And if you could bump it even to 30%, I would love for anybody listening right now, you know, on YouTube or on Spotify, leave a comment down below and let me know what your savings rate is. I would love to hear what your savings rate is. And if it is above 20%, let me know. I want to celebrate that with you because that is a huge, huge accomplishment. And if you can get those dollars Rolling and you have that higher savings rate, it will change your life forever. Okay. So your savings rate is going to dictate how soon you can retire and you've got to make sure that you get it above 20% if you can, or at least at 20% at the bare minimum.

• 24:21Andrew Giancola?

  If you are at a lower savings rate, doing as much as you possibly can, then two things we need to think about is one, increasing our income and finding a way to do that. And two, we need to think through, well, can we cut back something? And if we cut back something that could help increase that savings rate where I would want you to gradually build your savings rate up. If you are at a 5%, for example, let's take the next year or year and a half, and let's increase it by 1% a month, finding ways to increase our income during that timeframe, where each month we're increasing and just increasing the dial a little bit, turning up the heat a little bit, let's boil that frog slowly. And then, once we get to the point in time where we're at 20%, now we can either decide, hey, do I want to keep going and/or do I feel comfortable at this 20% savings rate? So any raises coming in, those should be going towards your savings rate.

• 25:06Andrew Giancola?

  You can use the 50/50 rule, meaning 50% towards yourself and 50% towards raises until you get to 20%. Or if you get tax returns this time of year, that's another great thing that you can do is take that tax return and put it towards your savings investment. That'll boom, jolt your savings rate pretty quickly. The goal is to make saving boring, and I would just highly, highly recommend to automate into your high-yield savings account and automate into your investment accounts. Those are the two areas that I want you to automate into. Number two is in your 30s, I want you to try to wipe out any non-mortgage debt. Any non-mortgage debt that you are dealing with right now, I want you to try and get rid of it as fast as you possibly can. So this is anything outside of your mortgage, your car notes.

• 25:51Andrew Giancola?

  Well, let's get rid of our car notes and let's see if we can save on the side to pay cash for a car next time, or put a bigger down payment, or to just get rid of car payments altogether for the rest of our lives. How cool would that be? You don't have a car payment for the rest of your life. Now, some of you may be saying to yourself right now, because you have some preconceived notion that you need to have a car payment in order to drive a car, and it's impossible to drive a car without a car payment. Some of you may be saying to yourself right now, well, that's impossible. How can I? Ask yourself this question. How can it be possible? Well, what if I started to pay off my car right now? And then I took those payments and I started to put them in my high-yield savings account? Or if it's further out, maybe a taxable brokerage account? And I started to grow my money? And instead, when it's time to buy a car next time, I may have enough cash on hand to buy a car in cash. What if you did that?

• 26:35Andrew Giancola?

  Could you save up enough? Or is this a situation? Or is this a situation where you have these preconceived notions? And you feel as though, since you've seen everybody else do it a certain way, you also have to do it a certain way? You don't have to do it what everybody else is doing. And in fact, most people are doing it wrong. Most people are in debt up to their eyeballs. They're stressed out about money every month. They're anxious about money every month. But what if you did it differently? I challenge you to challenge your preconceived notions to see how you feel about these certain things. Any student loans? Let's try to get rid of those as fast as we possibly can. For most of you out there, trying to get those paid down is very, very important. So for most of you out there, getting those paid down is very, very important. And in fact, next week, we have an episode coming out with Robert Farrington, talking about all the student loan changes.

• 27:19Andrew Giancola?

  But in addition, how you can pay off those student loans? And ways to reduce the costs of student loans? And so I want you to make sure you are ready for that. Clearing out any credit cards or personal debt? That stuff needs to be gone. It should be gone in your twenties, but it also should be gone and not be coming back at any point in time, anytime soon. Now, avoid upgrading cars or homes or lifestyles with borrowed money if you can. I want you to make sure that you are trying to think through, well, okay, if I want to go get a nicer house because my family has expanded, I completely get it. If you want to go to a nicer neighborhood, take on a mortgage, I completely get that. That is something you can do, but you need to make sure that you are running total cost of ownership or running the numbers. Now, we have a free calculator where you can run total cost of ownership. If you want to do that, just go to mastermoney.co/resources. And we have that there.

• 28:03Andrew Giancola?

  But making sure you're avoiding upgrading on some lifestyle changes if you cannot afford them. If you are stretching your income too far, you want to avoid that because debt freedom is the best future decision that you can make. Number three is I want you to align wealth with life goals without pausing investing. And so what I want you to do is this is where the homes, the kids, the business. Businesses, all that stuff are going to enter the picture and you're going to have a lot of mess happening. A lot of different things are going to be changing, but I want you to make sure that your retirement contributions are not sacrificed because of all these changes. You built up this foundation in your twenties and thirties. I don't want that to go away. I don't want you to think about, okay, well now I need to shift gears here and this is going to go away. No, instead, that needs to be prioritized. You need to pay yourself first and then spend what is left over.

• 28:48Andrew Giancola?

  Always, always, always make sure you can pay yourself first. You can always buy a home later on in the line, but you can not invest your money in your thirties. And so I want you to make sure that you have this set up so that you are on track. The goal is balance, not perfection. And that's where I think most people get this wrong is they think they need to be perfect. And then if they're not perfect, they quit. No, instead, I want you to be balanced. I want you to feel like you're enjoying life, but also spending money on future you. And that is where we want to make sure that we have that balance in place. And we are trying to find what that balance is for each and every single person. And so really, really important to make sure you do that. Also, number four is in your thirties, you need to have your money systematized completely. Let's grow up here for a second. We're going to become financial grownups here in our thirties.

• 29:31Andrew Giancola?

  We've been doing this for a while now. We've got our own job going. And if you started to work, let's say at 20, 21, 22, 23, then you have been doing this for 15 years plus, most likely. And so because of that, we need to grow up financially and we have put in the hours, we have had the time, we've gotten the paychecks coming in. We need to learn how to systematize and handle our money correctly. Now, number one is to automate your money. If you don't know how to automate your money, we have an automation checklist that you can check out below, down below in the show notes. We also have a course called Automate Your Money in One Weekend, which is 27 bucks and teaches you how to automate your money, literally in one weekend. So I highly recommend you check those out down below if you're interested. But and if you are trying to think through my systems and how to automate my money and how to do all this, you need to automate your bills, you need to automate your investments, you need to automate your savings,

• 30:16Andrew Giancola?

  so you can remove willpower out of the equation. Your willpower is a detriment to your finances. Your willpower is something that is really, really fickle. And so you want to make sure that you are removing your willpower from the equation. Very important to do that. And I think for most people, We want to make sure that we have a clear purpose on which accounts we are using, where our money is going, how we're spending our money, how we think about money, what our ultimate money goals are, what our retirement number is. All of those need to be very, very clear. We have lots of episodes to teach you how to do that. Your finances should be running on autopilot even when life is chaotic. So you should still be building wealth even when life is chaotic, even when life is throwing so many different things at you. You got your kids' sports, you got daycare, you got aging parents,

• 30:59Andrew Giancola?

  you got all this stuff happening. I know how hard it is. On top of that, we have student loans and affordability is at an all time low. I get it. I get how hard it can be right now. But if we set it up on autopilot, we have the right systems in place and we are earning enough, we can make sure that we are building wealth going forward. And so I want each and every single one of you to focus your time and energy on that. The last thing is to protect the machine. This means getting the proper insurances set up and ensuring that you have life insurance if people depend on you, term life insurance, not anything else, but term life insurance if people are depending on you. Looking into making sure you have the right auto insurance. Do you need disability insurance? Do you need other insurances in place? Umbrella insurance if you are really wealthy.

• 31:44Andrew Giancola?

  Those are all things that you want to make sure that you have in place because you need to protect your income. Also, we should have that six month emergency fund in our 30s. Even if you have to use it, then rebuild it. If you have to use it, rebuild it again, but it's very, very important that we have that. Getting a will or estate documents in place is going to be super important. I just finished up my trust and my trust is something that's pretty cool. Some of the stuff that I have done, we're going to actually introduce all the steps of exactly what I've done inside Master Money Academy to our members. And it's a very cool thing to kind of finally get that done and have it customized the way I wanted. And there's some cool stuff that you can do with the trust. So if you are someone who has a higher net worth and you can also build out a trust or if you have businesses or people who depend on you, then just, you know, look into that as well.

• 32:26Andrew Giancola?

  And then making sure your credit is actually decent and having a decent credit score above a 700 is the ultimate goal. And so each and every single person here needs to make sure you built up your credit because it helps you save a lot more money in the near future. So the big takeaway for your 30s is that this is the decade where most people Drift financially. Their lifestyle inflates. They get the bigger house because they have kids. They get the nicer cars because they have kids. Maybe get the brand new minivan so you can ghost ride the whip when you take your kids to school. All of these are things that you are most likely doing, but don't fall into the drift. Don't drift too far. Make sure that you take care of your retirement first because there's no loans for your retirement and then you can spend on what is left over. If you automate aggressively now, it'll take care of the rest of your life

• 33:11Andrew Giancola?

  forever. And so I want to make sure that you do that. And again, check out the automation checklist down below. I literally walk you through step by step for free exactly how to do it. So if you want to check that out, I would highly, highly recommend it. Now let's go to break and we'll jump into the 40s. If you've been listening to this show for a while, you know, it's not just me anymore. It takes a great team behind the scenes to make everything happen. And if I had to hire someone tomorrow, I'd want someone who could jump right in and make an impact. That's why I'd use Indeed sponsored jobs. When workplace chaos hits, Indeed sponsored jobs helps you reach qualified candidates faster. Your job gets boosted in search results, so you're spending less time searching and more time interviewing the right people. Plus, you only pay for results,

• 33:55Andrew Giancola?

  which I absolutely love. Sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored posts. That's a huge advantage when you're trying to grow your business. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all of your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is the job for Indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard

• 34:35Andrew Giancola?

  about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. If you've heard any recent episode of Health Corner, you know that I have spent the last few years trying to optimize my sleep. I've tried sleep trackers, My room, changing my nighttime routine, all the different things. But nothing really matters as much as having the right mattress. And that's one of the reasons I love Leesa. A great mattress is one of those things that you use every single night and you spend a third of your life sleeping. And it can make a huge difference on how you feel the next day. Leesa has mattresses designed for different sleep positions and comfort preferences.

• 35:19Andrew Giancola?

  And their sleep quiz can help you get matched in less than two minutes. Plus, they're designed and they're assembled in the USA and they come with free shipping, easy returns and a 120 night free sleep trial. So go to leesa.com for up to 30% off mattress plus and get an extra $50 off with promo code PFP. Exclusive for my listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A dot com, promo code PFP for 30% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Leesa.com promo code PFP. It's kind of amazing how much can change in just a single year.

• 36:01Andrew Giancola?

  Every summer, the kids are a little bigger, a little more independent, and life looks a little different than it did the year before. And it reminds me that while we can't predict the future, we can prepare for it. That's one of the reasons I like PolicyGenius. See, PolicyGenius isn't an insurance company. They're an online marketplace that lets you compare life insurance quotes from some of America's top insurers, side by side, for free. And their licensed team helps you compare coverage, prices and terms, answers your questions and even handles the paperwork so you can get the right policy without the hassle. For me, having life insurance isn't about expecting something to happen. It's about knowing my family is protected so I can actually enjoy these moments together

• 36:45Andrew Giancola?

  instead of worrying about what comes next. And with PolicyGenius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1 million of coverage. Head to policygenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's policygenius.com. One thing I've learned from running multiple businesses is there's usually a gap between how you think work is getting done and how it's actually getting done. And we've had times where we thought we knew the bottleneck, only to realize later, the real issue was somewhere completely different. That's exactly what today's sponsor, Scribe, helps solve. Scribe is a workflow AI platform trusted by 94% of the Fortune 500.

• 37:30Andrew Giancola?

  And Scribe Optimize turns real workflow data into decisions your AI strategy actually needs, automatically capturing how work happens across approved apps, surfacing inefficiency and opportunities with no interviews and no manual discovery and no extra work from your team, which is the key. And the live dashboard shows where work is happening, how much time it's taking, and where the biggest opportunities are right now. It automatically discovers workflows across multiple tools, then highlights your biggest inefficiencies and gives AI-powered recommendations with estimated time-saving. You know I love saving time. It's also built with privacy in mind. It only runs across approved business applications, user-level data is anonymous by default,

• 38:12Andrew Giancola?

  and sensitive information is automatically redacted and never leaves your firewall. To see optimization action, head describe how slash PFP and mention PFP for a 30-day risk-free trial. That's S C R I B E dot H O W slash P F P. Now, I'm going to say something, and I don't take this lightly. Your 40s is your highest leverage decade, meaning these are the years where you are earning the most. And so, we're going to do some pretty drastic things in our 40s to make sure that we are accelerating our wealth. This is your acceleration phase, and this is where we are going to pull every single lever we can in order to accelerate our path to wealth. Now, some of you, if you set yourself up correctly in the 20s and 30s, you'll be able to retire in your 40s.

• 38:56Andrew Giancola?

  And that is a really powerful lesson that you need to understand that it is possible to retire in your 40s if you want to. And so, I highly encourage each and every single person to think about this. Number one is we want to crank up investing during our peak income years. So, this is usually your highest earning decade. This is the decade where Either you got promoted to manager or executive or CEO, whatever you are. This is the decade where you're going to be earning more money than you ever have before. And so I want you to treat investing like an expense because that's what it is. It is not something that is optional. It is not something that you maybe can do whenever you feel like it or whenever you have an extra cash. No, investing is your number one expense. It should be your biggest bill in your budget line item.

• 39:37Andrew Giancola?

  I want you to invest as much as you possibly can during this decade because this is going to help you in the future. Max out retirement accounts in your 40s. If you're listening to this in your 20s or you're listening to this in your 30s. We need to get to max level in our 40s to make sure that we are getting those dollars invested. Hey, we're talking about building wealth here. We're getting aggressive and we're going to make sure that we get to that point in time. We want to make large, boring, consistent contributions into these investment accounts. Why? Because the bigger the shovel that you have of money that you're shoveling into the fire, the greater and the bigger that fire can grow. This is like rolling a snowball downhill and the snowball gets larger and larger and larger. Well, if you have a bulldozer throwing more snow on top of that snowball, you'll have a much bigger snowball than you originally anticipated.

• 40:21Andrew Giancola?

  The goal is to move from saving to serious accumulation. The goal is to really accelerate your path here. And so I want you to do this in your 40s so that you can ruthlessly get your dollars working. Now, secondly, is I want you to ruthlessly get rid of lifestyle creep. Meaning lifestyle creep, you should have your financial house in order. You should have it established. And so lifestyle creep should not be something that you are just deciding to increase the creep all the way up to the level of income. I think some lifestyle creep is good. Why? Because that means you're balanced. That means you're enjoying life. So if you make more money and you decide, okay, well, I'm going to make a hundred thousand dollars more this year. And you take part of that and you start, go out and buy a new car because you've always wanted this car and you really have been thinking about this car and you love this car. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

• 41:04Andrew Giancola?

  But what I'm saying is that every single time you make more money, you also increase your expenses to that same level. That's a huge problem. And so we want to make sure that we are not doing that when it comes to lifestyle inflation or a lifestyle creep. And so every new fixed expense is going to slow down your progress towards financial independence. And so if you keep taking on way too many fixed expenses, you're never going to be. Able to grow your wealth and instead your savings rate will start to dwindle down and/or be nonexistent like a lot of people right now. So making sure that we get those dollars working is very important. Bonuses and raises, all of those, follow the 50/50 rule and then adjust based on what you currently want to do because wealth is created with that gap. The difference when your income and your expenses, that is where wealth is created and we're trying to make

• 41:47Andrew Giancola?

  that gap as big as we possibly can. Next is we want to make sure that we are optimizing our taxes relentlessly, especially in our 40s. In our 20s and 30s, we want to make sure we're starting to understand taxes and making those shifts in our 20s and 30s. In our 40s, they should be optimized relentlessly. So at higher incomes, taxes become way more important. It becomes a big thing that you need to think about and a big thing that you need to have when it comes to your conversations. And so, one is using something like tax advantage accounts. Use every tax advantage account you can that is at your disposal and try to funnel money into those tax advantage accounts. Two is think about where your assets live, not just what you invest in. There are things that you can invest in that are much more tax efficient. Opening an LLC so you can have rental properties or making

• 42:31Andrew Giancola?

  sure that you invest in businesses. Those types of things, if you have a lot of extra money, are the wealth accelerators that are going to get you to your goal even faster. Explore big strategies if you're making too much, like the backdoor Roth IRA, doing Roth conversions whenever it's appropriate. So you want to run the numbers and make sure you have that on hand and even a small tax improvement can compound for decades. So we're going to be doing an entire episode on some of the tax strategies you need to be following coming up. And so I want to make sure that you're subscribed to this podcast if not already because I'm going to go through 10 different tax strategies. They're going to help you tremendously. And so making sure that you're subscribed here is going to benefit you because that episode alone could save you tens of thousands of dollars depending on how much money you're making this year. So making sure you subscribe is going to be really,

• 43:13Andrew Giancola?

  really important. Making those tweaks though, having a CPA in your corner is always very important in my book. And so this is going to be really, really important. So the next one, number four, is to stay growth focused but optimize for risk. All of us have different risk tolerance. All of us know how much risk we can take on. And so you still want to make sure that you have growth within your portfolio and the biggest risks overall for For you is making sure that A inflation doesn't eat into your portfolio. If your portfolio is too bond heavy in your 40s because someone told you to move your portfolio in that direction, inflation is going to start to eat in to your buying power. And if you're overly conservative too early, that is a hidden risk that most people don't see. Your asset allocation is a six-figure decision, meaning the mix of stocks and bonds that you have in your portfolio is a huge decision.

• 43:58Andrew Giancola?

  And so you want to make sure that you have enough stocks in your portfolio that allows it to grow and bonds to weather the storm, if that is something you're interested in. For me, in my 40s, I'm pretty much not going to have much bond still because I want to compound for decades. And so for you though, maybe you're going to retire soon or you're going into that from that accumulation stage into that preservation stage. And if you are doing that in your 40s, then make sure you're retiring pretty soon. If not, continue the growth phase because that's really, really important. But you know your risk tolerance. It's up to you to figure out what that is. It's not up to me to tell you what your risk tolerance is so you know how you feel about that. Now, diversification is also a big thing in your 40s. Making sure you have enough diversification so you can get your assets to grow. This is going to be really, really important. And then risk is about time horizon. So how much time do you have left?

• 44:43Andrew Giancola?

  You can understand your risk tolerance just based on how much time you have before retirement because the goal is to be intentional about risk, not to be emotional about this. And so you want to make sure you have a plan in place when it comes to your investments. Next is to start pre-planning retirement early. Now, in your 40s, it becomes even more increasingly important. And in your 50s, it is very important to know what your retirement number is, meaning you figure out, well, how much do I want to spend in retirement? And what is that number multiplied by 25? That is going to give you your retirement number. And I highly recommend that people do this once a year and figure out what their retirement number is. And so in doing that, this makes sure that you don't get off track with your retirement goals year over year. I've seen way too many people get a decade down the line and all of a sudden they get to like age 52, for example, and they haven't tracked their retirement number in a while.

• 45:28Andrew Giancola?

  And all of a sudden, a lot of things have changed and a lot of expenses have changed and they needed to increase their income. And all of a sudden, they're way further behind than they currently thought they would be. So track this yearly. I don't want you to fall behind. So big takeaway for your 40s. This is the decade where consistency is going to matter. This is the bridge between your 30s and your 50s. This is the decade that is so incredibly important to make sure you just don't screw something big up. Don't screw big stuff up and try to take on too much risk or try to take on something crazy that you don't need to. Instead, you want to be consistently building wealth, consistently showing up, making sure you're investing those dollars. The margin you build now is going to pay you dividends for the rest of your life. And so you really want to make sure that as your income increases, you're taking big portions of that income and putting them towards asset.

• 46:12Andrew Giancola?

  This is all about execution. This is not about perfection. Don't try to be perfect. Instead, just execute, execute, execute. And your automations that you built in your 30s, those are going to help you tremendously in your 40s. Just making sure that you're executing no matter what's going on. You may have aging parents, you may have kids that are getting older, but at the same time, once those two collide, you got to make sure that you are still moving the needle forward. And that's very, very important and a very powerful thing going forward. Now let's jump into the 50s.

• 46:41Andrew Giancola?

  So let's talk about the 50s. The 50s have a number of different purposes. One is if you have been building wealth for the last couple of decades, this is where you're going to fine tune and you're going to put your, your wealth into preservation mode. But two, if you are playing catch up, we're also going to work on catching up. And there's some things that we can do in our 50s that help us accelerate our path to catching up to retirement. You know, it's now or never. You know, this is the decade where it's time to get to work. And sometimes in your 50s, you're going to realize and figure out exactly what your retirement plan is. But guess what? If you're age 50, 51, 52, you still have a lot of time left. You could even continue to work and continue to compound that money into your 60s. And it's going to be a great benefit to you long term. So even if you started late, it's okay. It is never too late to start building wealth.

• 47:25Andrew Giancola?

  We're going to help you through that process. So first is if you did start early, I want you to finish up the heavy lifting that you already started. Meaning this is the decade where you don't want to stop. You want to make sure you're continuously investing and getting the ball rolling. These are your final high income years. These are the years that you want to make sure that you are putting high contributions into your accounts. So max out those retirement accounts and use things like catch up contributions. So catch up contributions are when you are over the age of 50, you can actually put additional money into those retirement accounts. Look up what each one of those are. And make sure you're getting those dollars into those retirement accounts. I want you to aim to enter your 60s, having at least six to eight times what your annual earnings are. But really, having more than that invested is the key. Because really, this is about consistency and not swinging for the fences.

• 48:08Andrew Giancola?

  Your goal is to try to now just get this wealth consistently built. 10% a year, 8% a year, 7% a year. That is your ultimate goal, so that you can get to the finish line and do it in a way where you are not taking on too much risks. Because that's number two, is reduce your financial risks overall. So having that emergency fund in place is really important. And if you are approaching retirement age, I like you to have one to two years and really try to make sure that you have that cash on hand. Second, if you can, try to pay off your mortgage before you get to retirement age. Is have that paid off, so you don't have to worry about that payment anymore. Instead, all you gotta worry about is the taxes and insurance. And those are going to be the two areas that you think about. Avoid any new car loans or lifestyle debt, those types of things, unless you are making really good money.

• 48:52Andrew Giancola?

  Avoid that stuff, short term, as you approach retirement age. But if you really value that stuff, I have no problem with you doing that as long as you planned it out and you have the money in place. Have solid cash reserves like we talked about and making sure that you are comfortable with sequence of returns risk. What I mean by that is when you are retired and your portfolio is something that you're living off of. If you're living off your portfolio and the market goes down and you have to pull money out of your portfolio when the market is down, say 20 to 40 to 50%, well, that is sequence of return risk and it really does increase your risk of your money running out. So having cash on hand, one, two, three years of cash on hand is going to help you. When the market is down, you can utilize and pull some of that cash. That's going to be very helpful for most people.

• 49:36Andrew Giancola?

  Stability here in this decade matters more than optimization. We're not trying to be perfectly optimized. We're just trying to make sure that we can get the ball over the finish line, accomplish the result that we want, which is having our retirement, if that's something you do. Some people I know are in their 60s and 70s and they're never going to retire. But for you, if that's what you're looking for, you still have lots and lots of time. Next, I want you to gradually de-risk intelligently. So this is not an all bonds moment. This is not a timeframe where you're just going to go into bonds and that's what you have. But starting to de-risk quickly. Would be something you're interested in because you're starting to take your portfolio from the growth phase into the preservation phase. And the preservation phase is where you're going to live off your money for the rest of your life. The growth phase is when you're trying to accumulate enough wealth to live off of.

• 50:17Andrew Giancola?

  And so when we think about these two cycles, we want to make sure, well, when we get to preservation phase, we're just increasing the amount of bonds we have. I just worked with my parents who are in their 60s on their portfolio in retirement as they just retired. And we don't have as much bonds as I think a lot of people would when they are building out this portfolio. But we still have some bond exposure for them to make sure they are protected when it comes to downturns. And so you can figure out what your current risk tolerance is and then go from there. That is the big key is figuring out what your risk tolerance is. You can go 60 40, you can go 50 50, you can go 40 60, you can go 70 30. It just depends on what you want to do with your portfolio and what your risk is. So that's very, very important. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, when I say some of those ratios, like I say 70 30,

• 51:01Andrew Giancola?

  that means 70% stocks, 30% bonds. When I say 60 40, that means 60% stocks, 40% bonds. When I say 40 60, that means 40% stocks, 60% bonds. Those are just some of the quick ratios we can talk through and think through to see how you want to build out your portfolio. You always want to shift the risk with portfolios intentionally and not emotionally. Just because the market is fluttering in one direction doesn't mean you want to shift your portfolio in that direction. It's all about your plan and having a plan in place because the goal is resilience. The goal is to make sure this portfolio can weather any storm because there will be a recession during your retirement. We know statistically that every 10 years, there is some sort of recession. And sometimes we have multiple recessions in a decade. And so because of that, your retirement portfolio needs to be able to weather storms

• 51:45Andrew Giancola?

  and you need to have the plan in place in order to weather those storms. That's what I want you to do in your 50s. Now, as you get closer to retirement, we need to make sure that we are dialing in our retirement blueprint. So let's talk about this because your retirement blueprint is very important, especially as you get five years out. Once you're five years out, this needs to be set in stone. This needs to be solidified and you need to understand where you will stand in retirement. And so let's talk about this. Let's talk about first, you got to figure out what is not optional. What is optional in retirement? If you don't have enough cash on hand to travel every single month like you wanted to, then that could be an optional thing, or you're going to have to work longer in order to achieve that. Two, is the location that you're living in, is that where you want to live?

• 52:29Andrew Giancola?

  Do you want to move to a cheaper location? That's number two. Let's think about the home. Do you want to downsize your home? Or do you want to keep the current home that you're living in? You gotta just make those decisions too, because you could retire a little faster if you downsize and get some extra cash on hand. A lot of you out there have owned homes for a long time in your 50s. And if you have, you've probably built up some equity over the course of the last couple of decades, which can help you a lot when it comes to retirement. You need to understand where you're going to withdraw from and which accounts you're going to withdraw from. What order are you going to withdraw from your accounts? It's going to depend on your tax situation. It's going to depend on your own personal financial situation. Whereas you're going to have RMDs coming down in your 70s from your 401ks and IRAs. And so you want to make sure that you are thinking about those as well.

• 53:12Andrew Giancola?

  And just drafting from these accounts and drawing from these accounts intelligently. We want to plan for healthcare and make sure we have the healthcare in place. Things like Medicare. When are you going to take that on? And what are you going to do to gap between Medicare and your healthcare years? Those are very important to make sure that you note. And retirement income planning matters a lot more than even some of these balances to look at that. Then I want you to go to ssa.gov. And I want you to figure out what your social security is going to be and how much that will help you in retirement and what you're going to be getting every single month. Because as you approach that retirement age, you can get a very accurate number and an accurate depiction on where you are going to land with that. So very, very important stuff here as we start to think about this. Next is I want you to lock in estate planning.

• 53:55Andrew Giancola?

  I want you to lock in where you're going to be with your estate planning. You need to have a will in place. If you have a lot of complexities, then having a trust in place as well is very important. Now, there are places that you can go, which we will link it up down below in the show notes today. There are places like trust and will that make this very easy for you. It's a cheap alternative to going and getting a trust. I got mine through an attorney because I did a lot of customization. But trust and will, I've had a will there before. My parents got a will there and it is a very easy way to set this up. Two. Make the decisions easy for your family. Meaning when you're setting up your estate, have these conversations with your kids on where you want your money to go, what you want your money to do. Make this easier for your family and actually open up and have a conversation about money. Money is not a taboo subject. Start to talk about it a little bit more within your family.

• 54:40Andrew Giancola?

  It's going to make way better family dynamics going forward. Now, also thinking about your long-term care and establishing that with your family is something you need to be open about. Because one event should not erase decades of work. And so you want to make sure that you're de-risking and protecting your finances, having the proper insurances in place, figuring out how much money you're spending, how much money you're saving, and getting that all lined up. Because wealth without planning creates stress instead of security. Let me say that again. Wealth without planning creates stress, not security. And I want you to feel secure throughout your entire retirement. I don't want you to be stressed. And so you've got to start to do this stuff right now. So here's the big shift is in your 50s, I want you to shift from accumulation to confidence. You're confident in your asset allocation.

• 55:25Andrew Giancola?

  You're confident in your retirement plan. You're confident in what you're doing. And if you are behind, you can catch up. You have the time to catch up and you're confident knowing that you can catch up. Two is understand you're turning money into flexibility. You're turning it into time and peace of mind. You've worked all these years. You've worked so hard for those hard-earned dollars. You want to make sure that you turn it into time, energy, flexibility, and being able to do what you want to do. If done well, this decade can make the rest of your life feel lighter because you actually pushed the envelope, you actually saved enough cash, you actually did the things you were supposed to do and planned out your retirement. So you don't end up like every other retiree out there who gets one year out from retirement and they have no idea what their plan is. It is a sad reality, but that is what happens to most retirees.

• 56:09Andrew Giancola?

  And wealth is finally going to serve you. So you're building this up so that wealth can finally serve you in your 60s, your 70s, your 80s. Now, if you are behind, there's nothing wrong with extending how long you're working. Work a little longer, work to 65 if you can, work to 67 if you can. A, your social security will compound and you'll get an 8% guaranteed rate of return when that happens. But in addition, you'll also be able to make sure that you're thinking through this. But each person's plan is individual. Person's plan is different. And so we want to make sure that we are on top of this stuff as we start to think through this. Well, listen, I want to thank you guys so much for being a part of this episode. And again, if you guys want the step by step roadmap, if you want to know exactly what to do with your next dollar, if you want to understand how to reduce your stress and anxiety

• 56:51Andrew Giancola?

  around money, if you want to know what to do by decade and how to think about money by decade, I want you and invite you to join Master Money Academy. Master Money Academy is where we will literally change your financial life and we will do it step by step. It is where I spend a lot of my time and attention now because I want to help as many people as I possibly can. And so Master Money Academy is what I created in order to help you do just that. If you're stressed about money, if you're anxious about money, if you don't know what to do next, and you are tired of sleepless nights of worrying about your finances and worrying about your financial future, Master Money Academy is going to get you there. Now, I'm going to give you something special here for podcast listeners only. I want to give you a free trial so you can see behind the curtain,

• 57:32Andrew Giancola?

  what is inside Master Money Academy. So if you click the link below, it's going to give you a link that's going to give you a free trial to see what Master Money Academy is like. And once you try it, I know that you're going to absolutely love it because we have the wealth butler's journey in there, which is step by step exactly what to do. We have all of our courses in there. But in addition, when you get stuck on something, we have weekly coaching calls with me live where you can ask me questions and I will answer those questions for you every single week. And so Master Money Academy is one of those places where I am so passionate about what we're doing there and the lives that we're changing and the people that are in there that are working together to keep each other accountable, that this is the place, if you want to get serious about your money, then I would highly encourage you to join Master Money Academy. Again,

• 58:16Andrew Giancola?

  you're going to get some big bonuses when you join. You get the bonus of index fund pro, which is usually $150. You get coaching with me, which I charge over $500 per coaching, if you don't know that. You're going to be able to get automate your money in a weekend. You're going to get master your money goals. You're going to get master classes that we do every single month. All of these bonuses are also included inside Master Money Academy. I'll tell you what, you're going to get thousands of dollars worth of value, but don't take my word for it. Join down below and check it out for yourself. Go check it out with that free trial. And I would love to see you inside and meet you because I get to know every single person in there. And I would love to meet you inside and really, really excited to have you join Master Money Listen, thank you guys so much for being here on this episode. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you. If you guys are getting value out of this episode, again,

• 59:01Andrew Giancola?

  consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. If you're watching on YouTube, give us the old thumbs up and make sure you're subscribed on YouTube. A lot of you are not subscribed, but watch the show. And really, really appreciate each and every single one of you. Share this with someone who could find value in this message and we'll see you on the next episode.

• 59:19Speaker 01

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