9 Ways to Double Your Savings (THIS Month!)

In this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to talk about 9 ways to double your savings this month. How Andrew Can Help You: Don't let another year pass by without making significant strides toward your dreams. "Master Your Money Goals" is your pathway to a future where your aspirations are not just wishes but realities. Enroll now and make this year count! Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Learn to invest by joining Index Fund Pro! This is Andrew’s course teaching you how to invest! Watch The Master Money Youtube Channel! , Ask Andrew a question on Instagram or TikTok. Learn how to get out of Debt by joining our Free Course Leave Feedback or Episode Requests here. Car buying Calculator here Thanks to Our Amazing Sponsors for supporting The Personal Finance Podcast. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/pfp Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/ Thanks to Fundrise for Sponsoring the show! Invest in real estate going to fundrise.com/pfp Thanks to Policy Genius for Sponsoring the show! Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Go to joindeleteme.com/pfp20 for 20% off! Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/personalfinance Turn your business dream into reality! Apply now at www.oneday.org/pfp Go to Acorns.com/pfp and start automating your investments and get a $5 bonus today! Links Mentioned in This Episode: The Bucket Method For Managing Your Savings (Master Multiple Savings Goals) How Much Should You Spend on a Car? (My Answer May Surprise You!) How Much Car Can You Really Afford (By Income!) How to Invest In Yourself and Earn More (THIS YEAR!) Connect With Andrew on Social Media: Instagram TikTok Twitter Master Money Website Master Money Youtube Channel Free Guides: The Stairway to Wealth: The Order of Operations for your Money How to Negotiate Your Salary The 75 Day Money Challenge Get out Of Debt Fast Take the Money Personality Quiz 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?

  Longtime listeners know, one of the best ways to build wealth is to increase your income. And one way to do that is by starting a side hustle. And that's one reason why I absolutely love Whatnot. Now, my son and I, we love collecting sports cards. And we've used Whatnot to buy and sell cards. It's been a really fun way to enjoy something we love together. Now, Whatnot is a live shopping platform where people sell everything from sports cards to clothing, electronics, and collectibles. And what's really cool about it is you can turn something you're passionate about into a business. And you could do it right from your phone. You don't even need a storefront or a website. So whether you're looking to make some extra money or find great deals on your next shopping trip, check out Whatnot.

• 0:44Andrew Giancola?

  Search Whatnot, that's W H A T N O T, in the App Store. Download and start selling right away. 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.

• 1:27Andrew Giancola?

  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. Their AI can help with SEO, website copy, email marketing, and more. Plus, your domain, website, email, and marketing can all live in one account, with plans starting at just $3 every single month. Hostinger builds your vision step by step. Create your website today. Go to hostinger.com/pfp and use code PFP for 10% off now. On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, nine ways to double your savings this month.

• 2:24Andrew Giancola?

  What's crackalackin' 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 nine ways to double your savings this month. 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 Spotify, Apple Podcasts, 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, you can watch us on YouTube. If you just

• 3:09Andrew Giancola?

  search my name, Andrew Giancola, you will be able to find us on YouTube there. Now, today, we're diving into nine ways to double your savings this month. And if you've ever felt like savings and investing is an uphill battle, you are not alone, because so many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck right now. I want to give you actionable tips of what you can do in order to grow your gap. Now, what is the gap? The gap is the difference between your income and your expenses. And when you have a gap there between your income and expenses, you can take those extra dollars that you have left over, and you can put them towards wealth-building activities. And so, this is why we want to go through this exercise,

• 3:51Andrew Giancola?

  is one, we want to make sure that we are spending our dollars on things that we truly value. And so, figuring out what we value, maybe it's vacations, maybe it's fitness, maybe it is doing more of the things that you love, those are going to be things that we want to prioritize. And then, secondly, we also want to make sure that we are prioritizing our future. And so, we want to be putting more dollars towards our future into retirement accounts, into real estate, into other investments. And so, that is why we do this. We want to be buying back our freedom, so that we can do more of the things that we value. And this becomes an amazing cycle over time, because the more freedom that you buy... The more you can do the things that you value and it starts to grow more and more and more. Now, everybody listening to this podcast, I truly believe that each and every single

• 4:34Andrew Giancola?

  one of you can become millionaires and that's what we want you to do. And so doing some of these things, growing your savings every year is going to help you achieve that goal. And so I am ready to jump in this episode. So without further ado, let's get into it. Number one may sound obvious, but it's something a lot of people don't do. And from a psychology standpoint, it is so helpful. And this is to break your savings goals into small chunks. So when we start to plan out how much we want to save, and you may get to a point in time where you're saying, well, I gotta figure out how much I need for retirement. And so you run through the calculation of doing the 25X rule. And so if you've never heard of us talk about that, basically what you want to do is figure

• 5:18Andrew Giancola?

  out, hey, what is my retirement number? What number do I need to have invested in order to be able to retire? And so you're running this calculation, let's say, for example, you need $80,000 per year and that'll cover all your living expenses throughout the year. Well, if it's $80,000, you need $2 million invested if you multiply 80,000 by 25. And that's going to give you the quick and dirty back of the napkin math on what your freedom number is. It's really quick. It's really fast. But then you say to yourself, well, how much do I need to invest over time, over the course of the next 30 years to be able to hit that? Maybe it's 10,000, maybe it's 5,000, it depends on what it is. But if these numbers sound daunting to you, if $10,000 per year sounds daunting, then what I want you to do is I want you to break this out into small chunks. Now, there's a very specific reason on why we are doing this.

• 6:01Andrew Giancola?

  So $10,000 per year, if you broke that down per month, that'd be $833 per month saved. That'd be $192 per week saved. That'd be $27 per day saved. Now, I want you to ask yourself this question because $10,000 for some people, some people have saved and invested on the show, a lot of folks do who listen to the show, some of you though, are just getting started and we have a lot of people at the beginning of their journey and you're saying to yourself, $10,000, how would I ever save that amount of money in one year? But I want you to think through something. $27 per day. It feels like life these days costs $200 per day. Just to get by half the time. And so when you go through this process, I want you to say to yourself, do I waste $27 per day? Do I buy random Amazon things? Do I go to Walmart?

• 6:45Andrew Giancola?

  Do I go into Target and buy random things that I did not intend on purchasing when I walked in that store? If this is you, and if you think that you can find a couple of different smaller things that are going to add up over time, then I want you to be a little more conscious about this because breaking it down into small chunks, what it does is it makes your goals attainable. And that's what I want for each and every single one of you. Let's do it for $25,000 per year. Let's say you are making a good income and you think that you can save $25,000 per year because you are just killing it. Maybe you get a bonus at the end of the year. Maybe you just have a really high salary. Your living expenses are covered. And so your goal is to have a gap of $25,000 per year.

• 7:23Andrew Giancola?

  That's $2,083 per month. That's $480 per week and that is $68 per day. And so this again is broken down into smaller chunks, but let's do a smaller number. Let's say you want to save $5,000 per year. That is only $417 per month. You know how many people overextend themselves on buying a car, for example, and their car payment is $800 when they should have just bought a car where their car payment was $400 and saved the difference? That would be an additional $5,000 per year that you could put towards investments. And you're not just losing out when you do something like that on the $5,000. You're also losing out on the opportunity cost of being able to invest this money and also the growth of that money as well.

• 8:05Andrew Giancola?

  The S and P 500 last year returned 25% to investors. And so you're not only losing out on that $5,000, you're also losing out on whatever the potential growth was that year. $5,000 is also $96 per week. Can you come up with an additional $96 per week? Or can you come up with an additional $14 per day? How many just frivolous purchases do you make that add up to $14 per day? Now, this doesn't mean that you're spending at $14 every single day, but maybe, you know, once a week you go buy that $90 new pair of shoes and then next week you go out and you overspend on a couple of different things that add up. You know, this is where it breaks down to break these small chunks up to make it easier. So what I want you to do is I want you to figure out what your savings goal is this year. And do this, maybe stretch yourself slightly.

• 8:49Andrew Giancola?

  Do it to where you're just slightly uncomfortable with that savings goal. Okay. Then I want you to break that savings goal down, all the way down to small chunks. And when you break it down into small chunks, what you will find is that it is much more attainable than you once thought it was, especially if you're stretching yourself just a little bit. And I want you to tie it to everyday actions. Can you cut out a certain thing every single week to help you attain that goal? Secondly, is you can use something like a savings challenge. So I am not big on like no spend months or things like that. I don't really think that's a healthy way to associate yourself with your money. But sometimes when you're just getting started, if you want to get a jump start and you want to be able to get that rolling, then maybe you do something like that.

• 9:33Andrew Giancola?

  You do something where you spend less in a specific category, or you do a no spend month on eating out. And so you save all those extra dollars that you normally would spend on eating out. You can do things like that, but to do a no spend challenge for a month or two or three months, sure, you can go ahead and do that. It's just, I don't want you to associate money with pain because it's not. Money can be something that is absolutely amazing and can get you the things that you value, and it is a tool that allows you to get to the next step. And so that's why I don't love those no spend challenges for most people. And then automating the process is going to be partially what we talk about here later. So that is number one. Number two, and this is a huge one, is to get your savings buckets set up using the bucket method.

• 10:16Andrew Giancola?

  So we have an entire episode talking about the bucket method. If you have not heard that episode, I highly, highly recommend it. It was one of our most popular episodes last year. And the bucket method is basically a way for you to set up and automate your savings. So once you have the savings goal in place and you start to break it down into small chunks, what I want you to do is start to set up savings buckets. Now you may be saying to yourself, well, where do I put this savings? Great question. So what I want you to do is if you are saving and in the emergency fund phase, we're going to be setting this up and putting it in a high yield savings account. If you don't know what an emergency fund is, all that is, it's a sum of money. That you set up in case life throws monkey wrenches at you.

• 11:00Andrew Giancola?

  Meaning if life throws something in your way, like your car breaking down, or you need a repair at your house, or you need to get a brand new toilet because your toilet broke, or you need to fix an electrical issue in your house, or you need to pay for a bunch of tolls that you forgot about. There's a whole long list of, you know, things that could happen in life. And when those things happen in life, you're going to have cash available and just there. And you know what is powerful about having cash just there and available? Because you set up a plan. What's powerful about that is that now you don't have to stress or worry when a problem arises. I've talked about this before, but the first time I set up my emergency fund and had that cash in place and my car broke down and I had a $2,500 repair with my car.

• 11:43Andrew Giancola?

  And I would not be able to drive my car anymore unless I got this $2,500 repair. And I could not believe how amazing it felt to just have cash available to take care of it. I just took care of it. The money was there. I did not have to worry. And that right there is one of the most powerful feelings that you can have with money. Is being able to just pay for it in cash, not worrying about where the money's going to come from, not worrying about, oh man, do I have to go backwards, back into debt again to pay for this? No, instead you have the cash just there. And once I saw this, this was one of the light bulb moments for me when it came to my money. Because once I saw how this actually really worked in the real world, all of a sudden, everything came together. And so you got to set up an emergency fund first.

• 12:25Andrew Giancola?

  We have something called the 136 method that talks you through how to set up your emergency fund. You can go look that up as well. That was our most popular episode last year was the 136 method. So make sure you set that up. But your emergency fund, bare minimum, I want you to have one month, then three months, then six months. I want you to build it up over time. What else goes in a high yield savings account? Well, you can also set up stuff for your vacation fund, for saving for a new car, for a wedding fund, for home renovations. Those types of things can also be saved into a high yield savings account. Now, for investments, I want you to invest them, obviously, into a brokerage account. So this is going to go into something like Fidelity or Vanguard or Charles Schwab. Those are the three that I would recommend wholly to most people.

• 13:09Andrew Giancola?

  And so when you want to set up your brokerage account or your retirement accounts for long term, that's where you're going to automate your money into those brokerage accounts. And so let's think about this for a second. Every single extra dollar that you want to put towards your financial future, I want you to put it towards investments or your emergency fund. And so as you're starting to build up your emergency fund, what you're going to do is you're going to build up the first month. Then you're going to pay off high interest debt, any debt above a 6% interest rate. Then after that, you're going to go to three months of expenses saved in your high yield savings account. Once you have three months of expenses, then I want you to split it off into half goes towards investing, half goes towards your emergency fund until your emergency fund gets to six months. That's how I want you to think about this.

• 13:50Andrew Giancola?

  And I want you to automate this entire process so that you personally are not relying on your willpower to put it in there. And so the way that you can do this is like, for example, Ally Bank is a great example. Ally Bank, you can set up savings buckets inside of Ally that literally allows you to budget inside of that savings account. And so once you do this, you have these categories available that are going to allow you to automate your money towards the things that you want. You'll have it all organized and it'll all be categorized in there. And it's in a high yield savings account, so it's earning you a couple of percentage points in interest. And so this is a really powerful way to set up your savings. And then for your investing, you just automate money every single month into your investment accounts. And you can automatically invest it as well.

• 14:34Andrew Giancola?

  Fidelity has great tools, for example, on how to automatically invest. And we just did our Investing for Beginners webinar, teaching you how to open a fidelity account and how to actually automate your investments in that account. If you're interested in that, you can go to masterofmoney.co/investingforbeginners. So we have a webinar that we do live that will show you exactly how to do that. So our Investing for Beginners webinar teaches you exactly how that works. And so you have these dedicated buckets for your emergency fund, for your other savings goals, and you also have these dedicated money going towards your investment. So I want you to get your savings bucket set up and utilize that bucket method. It is very important to set up your financial baseline and really get your money working. Let's jump to number three next.

• 15:18Andrew Giancola?

  So number three is my relationship with money has changed a lot over the years. Early on, I thought building wealth was about making more money. Now I know it's really about having clarity. When you know exactly where your money is going and whether you're on track, you make better decisions. That's one of the reasons I love Monarch. It's the personal finance app that tracks everything from your accounts and investments to your savings, goals, and spending. So you can see your entire financial picture in one place. One habit that's made a huge difference for me is my five-minute drill every single morning. I open Monarch, check my spending, investments, cash flow, and net worth, and I'm done in just a few minutes. It gives me confidence that nothing is slipping through the cracks.

• 16:00Andrew Giancola?

  I also love the AI weekly recap because it'll flag spending changes, upcoming expenses, or shifts in my net worth before they become a problem. Instead of reacting after the fact, I can make adjustments early. It really feels like having a financial advisor in your pocket. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code PFP at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code PFP. 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.

• 16:44Andrew Giancola?

  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, 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.

• 17:27Andrew Giancola?

  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 about indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. It's kind of amazing how much can change in just a single year. 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

• 18:11Andrew Giancola?

  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 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

• 18:52Andrew Giancola?

  quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's policygenius.com.

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• 19:27Andrew Giancola?

  To audit your three biggest expenses. So, most people focus on cutting small expenses. Things like lattes, things like cutting back on your coffee. And there was this thing that came out, you know, in the early 2000s called the latte factor. And what the latte factor stated was that, you know, if you go out and have a cup of coffee every single day, just like this, if you're watching on YouTube, I'm holding up my cup of coffee, that's going to cost you $5. That latte will cost you $5. Now, it's probably going to cost you $8, $9. And if you saved this money instead, you can have, you know, half a million to $750,000 over the course of 30 years. Over the course of 40 years, you'd probably become, you know, closer to a millionaire just by saving that money over the course of maybe 40, 50 years.

• 20:08Andrew Giancola?

  And the latte factor is something that honestly, I don't really want you focusing on the small things like that, but sure, it would absolutely work. If you save $5 every single day, let's just do the math on that really quick. If you save $5 every single day and you invested that money into something like the S and P 500 index fund, and let's say the S and P 500 got 10% rate of return. Now, we can argue about that all day long, but just go Google S and P 500 historic returns. Okay? So, let's say we started at zero and you got a 10% rate of return over the course of 50 years, you put it in an S and P 500 index fund and you contributed $150 per month. Okay? That'd be $5 per day over the course of 30 days. All right? Let's just calculate that really quick.

• 20:53Andrew Giancola?

  It's amazing what really does happen here. This is absolutely amazing what you can do. So, over the course of just 30 years, in that account, you'd have $309,000. That's not where it gets amazing though. Okay? That is amazing. $5 per day for $300,000 over the course of 30 years. Over the course of 40 years, you'd have $832,000. This is starting from zero. Okay? If you had 40 years' time, over the course of 50 years though, this is where it becomes amazing, you'd have $2.189 million. This, my friends, is the power of compound interest. Now, I want you to think about that because this is a very small thing. Lattes are a really, really small thing. $5 per day is a small number. Now, what

• 21:37Andrew Giancola?

  If we actually shifted our focus from these lattes every single day and moved our focus to the big ticket items, what are your top three big ticket items that you spend money on? Now, some of you may think you know what the big three items are, and some of you most likely don't know what one of those big three items are. So in the past, historically, I talk about the big three items for most people. What are they? They are housing, which usually most people spend most of their money on their housing, their rent, all those types of things. Actually, in my budget, it is not, which is going to be something I'll talk about in a second. Number two is transportation, meaning your car payments, your insurance payments. We just did an entire episode on how much you should be spending on a car, and it was very detailed.

• 22:21Andrew Giancola?

  We also have a calculator that shows you how much you should be spending on a car in that episode as well. And then number three is food, and those are the big three items that I want you to think about, and I want you to really think through, is this one of my big three items? But for others, it may be something very different. If you are a parent with very young kids, one of the biggest ticket items in your line item, probably if you both work, is daycare. Daycare is a very expensive line item for most people. The costs are continuously rising every single year. They have a bunch of teachers there. There's a lot of people they have to pay in a daycare facility. And so those costs continuously rise every single year. And so for you, it may

• 23:02Andrew Giancola?

  be daycare. For some, it may be restaurant spending. For some, we may have a shopping problem, and it may be shopping. For some, your number one line item, maybe you have two cars or three cars. I've talked to people before who they really value cars. And so maybe their biggest line item is car parts, or putting together cars, or maybe your biggest line item is travel. It depends on the person. But for most people, housing, food, transportation are going to be the big three. But if you're living a normal nine to five life, but it could be daycare as well, if you have young kids. And so if that is you, what I want you to do is I want you to audit your biggest three expenses. I want you to look at the last three months of expenses, figure out what your big three are. Now, you can do this actually now in something like Monarch Money if you want to, or I'll do you one better. If you want to find a free

• 23:47Andrew Giancola?

  Way to do this is you can go to chat GPT and we're going to do an episode on a bunch of chat GPT prompts are going to help you with your finances. So if you're interested in that, make sure you are following this podcast. But you can go to chat GPT and you can do a prompt and upload your last three months of bank statements and just say, hey, what are my three biggest line item expenses over the course of the last three months? And you're going to have to adjust and be more specific on that prompt, but it will spit out your biggest three expenses for the month and you can have it audit your financial statements every single year. But you got to put in, you know, your bank statements and your credit card statements all at once. So it can actually look at all your transactions. Okay. And it's very good at actually doing this. So it is something that you could utilize chat GPT.

• 24:30Andrew Giancola?

  You can utilize any other AI feature and there's some really cool stuff you can do with AI now with your personal finances. We're going to be talking about that in that episode. Then what I want you to do is I want you to decide if you can make changes on this. For your housing, for example, there's a couple of things you got to think through is A, am I spending too much on housing? Am I spending over 30% of my income on housing? If you are, then you're spending too much on housing. And so what we need to do is make adjustments so that we can reduce the amount that we are spending on housing to less than 30%. Okay. Two is you can look at transportation. Am I spending too much on transportation? Am I overextended on transportation? Am I spending more than 12% of my income on transportation? If you are, let's cut it back and let's look for ways to reduce those costs.

• 25:15Andrew Giancola?

  What can we do? A, we can shop car insurance. B, we can see, A, am I just paying too much on this car? Is this just too much car for what I need? Can we sell this car or move on from this car and get a more affordable option? That's two. Three, look at your daycare costs, look at your rent costs, look at all these different things and see if there's ways to reduce those expenses. Now, the easy ones are if you're someone who your biggest line item is eating out. Well, that's a very easy one to make adjustments on. You just reduce the frequency as to which you eat out. Or if your biggest line item is travel and you don't care that your biggest line item is travel. That's where you spend your dollars that bring you value, then more power to you. But if you care that you spend too much on travel, then you just travel a little less. So some of them are easier said than done, some are really easy. Easy to cut back on if you really want to. And so you got to look at what's your biggest three are.

• 26:00Andrew Giancola?

  And I want you to know what that is in the top of your head because most people need to understand what their biggest three are. Mine, for example, is not housing. And for a lot of people it is, but I spend about 15% of my income on housing in total is actually not one of my top three line items. One of my biggest line items, for example, because I own a bunch of businesses is taxes. And so for me specifically, it is very, very important for me to spend a lot of time looking into ways to reduce my tax bill. And so that is something I need to know. If I don't know that, I would never know to hire the right people, to put them into place, to make sure we are getting efficiency when it comes to taxes. Yours, if you're a business owner, may be taxes. So you want you to think through some of this stuff because this is going to help you find money.

• 26:44Andrew Giancola?

  And I want you to find money so you can take those extra dollars and put them towards things that you actually want this money to do. Your vacations, spending it on things that you actually love and/or putting it towards your financial freedom, which is most of you, what you want to prioritize. Most of you are listening to this podcast because you want to achieve financial independence and you want to do it early. You want to do it as fast as you possibly can. You want to do it early. I want you to find money so that you can do that. Number four is if you have high interest debt and you have debt payments that are coming out of the wazoo and you just feel like all your money is going towards debt. Guess what, Houston? We got a problem that we're going to solve right here, right now. And that means that we are going to go and attack that debt. So every extra dollar that comes up after you get to one month of expenses in your emergency fund,

• 27:27Andrew Giancola?

  I want you to take those extra dollars and we are going to get after this debt. So any debt above a 6% interest rate, we want to get after. Now, this is going to exclude your mortgage because I don't want you spending 15 years trying to pay down your mortgage instead of investing. You are going to lose out on some amazing years of being able to grow your money. What we want to do is as mortgage rates start to begin to drop, then we want to just go ahead and refinance that mortgage later on. But if you have something like a car loan that is 10%, if you have something like a personal loan, or the most popular is credit card debt. If you have any of those items, I want you to attack this debt with your extra money. Why? Because once this debt is paid off, you're going to have a lot of extra dollars that you can now. Put towards your freedom in the future. And so we want to get rid of this debt as fast as we possibly can.

• 28:12Andrew Giancola?

  Debt is the enemy of building wealth. It is the one thing that will cause you to go backwards if you do not take care of it. Specifically, high interest debt. Now, is there good debt? Is there bad debt? Sure, there absolutely is. You can utilize debt in order to further your businesses, or you can utilize debt in order to buy a rental property. There are different things that if the debt produces income for you, and it's enough income, the numbers make sense, there's a lot of factors, then there's good and bad debt. But for most people, when it comes to consumer debt, if you have credit card debt, that needs to get paid off right now. That is a pants-on-fire emergency. And it's amazing that I think a lot of people are now doing that. A lot of people who listen to this show are really attacking their debt. And it is so cool to see every single year at the end of the year,

• 28:56Andrew Giancola?

  when you guys talk about how you paid off all this debt in a year or 18 months. It is so powerful to watch that because now you've opened up opportunities for you to be able to do so many amazing things with your money. And I want you to thrive with your money. I want you to be stress-free with your money. I want you to reduce your anxiety with money. And that's what we are working to do. And so list all your debts by interest rate, and then also list them by balance. If you have some with some small balances, let's just attack those first. Let's just get them out of the way. Let's get some quick wins. Let's get the ball rolling, okay? Once we get the ball rolling, then we can start to pay off some of these other debts in the future. Now, one other thing I want you to do is as you start to list all these debts, I want you to look at some of the interest rates. And if the interest rates are really high on some of these,

• 29:37Andrew Giancola?

  I want you to start calling the credit companies and asking for a reduction in the interest rate. And it's their job to say no. It is not your job to think they're going to say no and not ask, okay? Let me say that again. It is not your job to think they're going to say no, but not ask. Too many people in this world do not ask because they made up this story in their head that they're going to say no. Will they say no? I don't know. They might say no, but it's your job to find out if they will or not. And so the only way to find out is to ask. And so I want you to try to negotiate some of those rates, maybe refinance. You can consolidate credit cards into a 0% interest loan for 18 months, if you can figure something out like that. But it's got to make sense for you specifically and your attack plan, okay? So paying off high-interest debt is a big one. Now, we're going to jump into number five next.

• 30:23Andrew Giancola?

  So number five is I want you to ask yourself some key spending questions. Okay, so there are some questions that we need to ask ourselves every single time we make a purchase, specifically when it comes to a big purchase, but it's going to align with a lot of even smaller purchases as you start to think through the way that you spend your dollars and who you give your dollars to, because we vote with our dollars with what we really want. That's the true indication of what we want in life and maybe we just want some quick dopamine hits. And so we buy and spend on Amazon or we do these little quick things that are making us happy in the short run, but in the long run, we forgot we even bought those specific things. And so if that's you, then let's start to ask ourselves some of these questions. Number one, this is the framework to determine what you actually value.

• 31:08Andrew Giancola?

  Okay, because I want you to figure out what your values are. Spending is actually a skill and we want to spend our dollars on our values. So number one, does this purchase align with my goals? Do I value travel? Do I value financial freedom? Do I value experiences over things? Does this purchase align with that? Number two, how often will I use this? I cannot tell you how many times I have purchased things and I purchased expensive things and said to myself, oh, I'm going to use this thing all the time. Here's a great example. I own some pickleball facilities. If you don't know this, one of the businesses we bought is we bought a bunch of indoor pickleball facilities. And one of the things that I did was I was like, you know, I want to get a little better at pickleball. I can't own these pickleball facilities if I'm not good at pickleball because I'm, you

• 31:50Andrew Giancola?

  know, I'm not, I'm like a 4.0 player, if anybody knows pickleball, which is just kind of like, you know, in the middle. So I bought this thing. It's a ball machine. If you want to look it up, it's a Titan ball machine, which is like a $2,000 machine that shoots balls at you. Okay. So then I called up the company and said, hey, I own all these facilities. Can you give me a discount? They gave me a used one at a good discount, but still I spent a lot of money on it. Okay, I ended up spending, you know, something like $1,200 on this ball machine. It's an amazing, top of the line, advanced ball. Hey, man, it does all these cool things. It shoots the ball at you in different angles. You literally don't have to move the machine. It does all these amazing things. And I said to myself, oh, I'm going to use this all the time. First month, use it a lot. Second month, use it a lot. Then, third month, my daughter was born. And the reason why I got it, because I wasn't going to play as much pickleball.

• 32:34Andrew Giancola?

  And so I could use this ball machine and get some time in whenever I want. I haven't used that thing in three months. And so I have this really expensive thing sitting in my house that I have not used in three months. Now, right now, I'm telling myself, as I'm telling you this, oh, I'm going to start using it again a lot. Do I know if that's actually going to happen? I don't know, because if I don't put it in my calendar, it's not going to happen. Now, this is a huge example, and I'm telling you this because how many of you have bought something like a treadmill? When you could just go run outside and you bought a thousand dollar treadmill, never use it. And you could just go run outside. I want you to kind of consistently come up with the habit before you make big purchases like that. And so when you're asking yourself, how often will I use this? You prove it to yourself first, meaning that you go out and for three, four, five, six months, you actually perform the habit over and over and over again.

• 33:17Andrew Giancola?

  So if it is, you know, fitness related, then you do that fitness item over and over and over again for six months. Then you know, well, I got the habit in place. I'm going to be using this item. That's one example. So if you're going to buy a treadmill and you're going to buy a thousand dollar treadmill or a $2,000 Peloton treadmill or something like that, go ahead and start running outside four times a week. Prove to yourself that you have the habit before trying to make the habit by purchasing a new item. If you're trying to make a habit by purchasing a new item, most likely you're not going to do it. I am incredibly guilty of this. And so that's something I think a lot of people need to think through. And then number three is, am I buying this for short-term happiness or long-term fulfillment? Those are some of the questions that you need to ask yourself to figure out if you actually value something. Now, here's the framework to decide if you need something right now.

• 34:01Andrew Giancola?

  A, if it's not essential, wait 24 hours. If it's over a hundred dollars, I want you to wait at least three days. And if it's above $200, I want you to wait a week. If it's above $500, I want you to wait 30 days to make sure that you really, really want that item. And this is going to help you have a cooling off period to decide if you actually want that item or if it's just something that you really were thinking about a lot and you'd like to research the item. Like the value of just researching purchases. There is actually some scientific studies that came out that people enjoy the process of researching purchases more than actually owning the item. And so that is something you gotta be conscious if that's you. If you're someone who loves researching stuff and just looking into it and dreaming about having the thing and going through all that process, you gotta make sure that you know that.

• 34:44Andrew Giancola?

  And so I think for a lot of people, let's try to develop some cooling off period rules with our spending so that we just don't make these big purchases that really do not bring value to our lives. And so I want to think through that more and more as time goes on. All right, number six is a big one. And for most of you, this isn't an action item you can do today. Is I want you to audit your recurring expenses and figure out how to negotiate your bills. So first, we're gonna look through, and I want you to take your bank statements. And I want you to look at those if you use Monarch Money or if you use any of those other budgeting apps, YNAB or whatever else. If you use those apps, I want you to go and look at your recurring expenses. Most of the budgeting apps now will tell you, hey, this is a recurring expense. Here's when it falls, every single month. It is all automated, which is amazing.

• 35:29Andrew Giancola?

  And automation is just gonna get better and better when it comes to your spending. And so I want you to look in whatever app you use and figure out what are my recurring expenses? All of them, every single expense that comes every single month. And I want you to look at those, okay? Now, a couple of things that are gonna happen here is you're gonna see things like all of your subscriptions, which is a really important thing to look at. You're gonna see things like your cable bill, things like your electric bill, maybe your mortgage or rent, maybe your utilities, all these different things are gonna all be listed out, okay? And I want you to think through which one of these can I negotiate with? Your cable bill, for example, is priority number one. Number two is probably your cellphone bill. There is a bunch of different items. Your rent, if you have a landlord, can be one.

• 36:13Andrew Giancola?

  There's a bunch of different items that I want you to start to identify a hit list. And I want you to go through that list. And we're gonna start negotiating, baby. We're gonna start to get on the phone and we are going to put on our smiling faces and we're gonna start to negotiate a little bit because you can find a lot of money by negotiation. I just gave this example recently. My internet and cable bill all of a sudden crept up to 240. $40 per month. When I saw it, I probably picked up the phone faster than anybody has ever picked up the phone in their entire life. And I called the cable company and I said to them, hey, my bill went up. I want to find a way to either reduce the cost of this bill and/or I'm going to go ahead and cancel right now. That's how I worded it, literally. And so they came back and they said to me, well, let's see what we can do.

• 36:57Andrew Giancola?

  They gave me one option and they brought it down from 240 to 160. And I said, okay, that's not good enough. They looked at some other options. They brought it down from 160 to 140. And I said, okay, that's not good enough. Then they brought it down from 140 all the way down to $115. So right then there, I just saved what? Right then there, I saved $140 just by calling them up and going through the process. $140 every single month. And that's a really, really powerful thing to be able to do. You can do the same thing with your cell phone. If your cell phone gets out of hand, if they raise your rates on your cell phone without telling you, then start to call them up and have a conversation. You can leverage other companies. You can start to have real negotiations with these people and save yourself a lot of money.

• 37:41Andrew Giancola?

  And this is just going to be something that you could do. And every time you get a reduction in a bill, I want you to take whatever the difference is, and I want you to start putting it in your investment account and watch how this grows. Cause this is a huge difference. For example, my cable company example, that's well over, you know, 14, $1500 every single year. In addition, that you could start investing over time. $1500 every single year over the course of 50 years is $1.7 million if you invest that money with a 10% rate of return. It is $663,000 over the course of 40 years. And over the course of 30 years, it's $246,000. This is a six to seven figure decision to just learn how to negotiate your bills and then take the difference and invest it. The second step though, is you have to take the difference and invest it.

• 38:22Andrew Giancola?

  Otherwise it's going to get commingled in your checking account and you all know who you are because I am the same person. And then it's just going to disappear every month. So we've got to make sure that we are also reallocating this money when we save it. And so really, really, really important to do that. And then you've got to be polite but firm when you start to have these conversations. But secondly, I want you to look at all your subscriptions and I want you to figure out what am I not? Not using. If there is a streaming subscription that you have not watched over the course of the last 30 days, get rid of it. Now, Amazon's different, obviously, because Amazon delivers packages also. They're all kind of baked in into one. But if there is one that you have not used over the course of the last 30 days, get rid of it. You can always get it back.

• 39:01Andrew Giancola?

  They are month-to-month contracts, but get rid of it. I do this all the time. So one thing I do is if I'm watching a specific show, I'll start to get rid of some of the other subscriptions. The only one that I typically will keep around is the ones that my kids will also watch. So Netflix or Disney or whatever else. But if it's rotating between something like Paramount Plus or HBO or any of those types of things, I will not keep those around every single month. Why? Because you can't watch all of them every month. And so you gotta have a rotation going, and it's gonna save you, you know, 20, 30, 40, $50 every single month. Is it a pain in the butt? Not really. You just log in and say cancel. And so it's really an easy process that will take you two minutes. When you're doing your two-minute drill every single day, just add that to your two-minute drill and it will help you kind of just stay on top of some of this stuff.

• 39:46Andrew Giancola?

  So list all your subscriptions, go through that list and say, which one of these can I cancel? Which one of these can I negotiate is one. Which one of these can I cancel is two? All right. Number seven is to use your windfalls wisely. So those of you who get a raise every single year, or those of you out there who get a bonus every single year, or if those of you who work in sales and you get a really big sales check one month, or for those of you who work in commissions and you get a huge commission check all in one month, or for those of you out there who have any other financial windfalls, maybe you win the lottery, maybe you get an inheritance. I don't know what your financial windfalls would be, but here's the rule for your windfalls, okay? The 50/50 rule. Now, if it's something massive like an inheritance, or if it's like something massive like the lottery,

• 40:31Andrew Giancola?

  all of it needs to go to investments. Why do I say that? Because if it's a big number, the last thing you want to do is start spending that money on depreciating assets. What a lot of people do is the first they'll go out and they'll buy like a new car. I don't want you doing that. I want you taking the money and investing it and figuring out a financial plan for those dollars. So if you get a big financial windfall, that's number one. But if you get raises, get big Bonus checks, you get money coming in from commission checks. Then I want you to follow this rule, the 50 50 rule. So above and beyond whatever your means are, when this money comes in, 50% goes towards future you, emergency fund, investments, those types of things. 50% goes towards the things that you want. Vacations, you want to buy a new TV. You want to spend more on things that you actually want to do day in and out.

• 41:16Andrew Giancola?

  Maybe you want to raise the amount that you spend on eating out every month. Maybe you want to increase your efficiency in your house. Doesn't matter what it is, 50 50, 50% towards emergency fund and investments, 50% towards the things that you love. If you follow the 50 50 rule, you will really make huge financial progress with your money. That's what a wealth builder does is they always give some to their future selves. And then they also take some money and they give some to their present self. This is not about trying to struggle every single month. This is all about managing your money wisely so that you can have balance. Balance is the name of the game when it comes to managing this. Now, if you want to retire in 10 years or less, maybe you're really trying to pursue financial independence. Throw it all in investments if you don't care. But if there's stuff that you want and you know that you want to live it up,

• 41:59Andrew Giancola?

  you want to live your best life, then go ahead, take some of those dollars, put them towards things that you actually love. Number eight is if you are struggling to save and invest enough, I want you to follow the 1% rule and its impact is really, really cool over the course of just a few years. So the 1% rule is a very simple but powerful way to increase your savings without feeling the pain. The key here is I don't want you to have to feel the pain. And so we like to do things gradually when we increase our savings. And we also like to do it gradually when we decrease the amount that we're spending. Everything is gradual with the way that we do it here. Okay. And so the way that we think about this is you can increase your savings rate, for example, by 1% every single month.

• 42:42Andrew Giancola?

  Now, if you need to get to 20% savings rate, which is the minimum that we want you doing towards your investments and towards your emergency fund. But if you need to get to that 20% number, then what I want you to do is start to increase it by 1% every single month over the course of the next 10 to 12 months. So if you're starting to save 10% right now, over the course of the next 10 months, start to increase that savings rate by 1%. Now, obviously, if you You can do more and you know you can do more because you're kind of going through some of these exercises. You cut out some subscriptions, you start to negotiate some of your bills, you found some money. Hey, do all of it. But if you are trying to just get by, then just let's start gradually increasing this and start to gradually decrease somewhere else. Decrease 1%, then increase that 1% over time. And what is going to happen here is over the course of 10 months, now you're going to be saving and investing 20%.

• 43:27Andrew Giancola?

  Now, how powerful is this? Let's say, for example, you make $5,000 per month. That means it's only $50 in month one that you're increasing it, then $100 in month two. So over the course of a year, you're going to save an additional 12%. And if you do that, if you made $5,000 per month, you would save an additional $3,900 extra by the end of one year. If you invest that at 10% annually over the course of 40 years, that extra would be $1.95 million. Amazing, amazing what you can do with your money if you just make gradual changes over time. And so following that 1% rule is a very, very powerful method that I really want you to think through. Number nine is every single person needs to know this, they need to understand this. And this is what I want you to take away from this episode. There's only three ways to save more.

• 44:10Andrew Giancola?

  It is either cut expenses, so eliminating unnecessary spending, lowering your bills through negotiation, and reducing lifestyle inflation, meaning reducing, you know, your lifestyle inflating every time you get a raise. Okay, that's number one, is to cut expenses. And I want you to cut them gradually, again, if you're going to cut them. Number two, optimizing spending, meaning you start to optimize the way that you're spending. You're spending your money. You can buy in bulk to save money. You can get cash back rewards on specific purchases, those types of things. Optimizing spending is probably the least likely to make a huge, huge impact. Okay? So that's number two. Maybe you buy your car insurance six months ahead instead of paying month to month and you get a savings, those types of things. That's number two. Number three is to earn more.

• 44:54Andrew Giancola?

  Now, earning more is going to be the single biggest factor that makes the biggest impact over time on your money. And so if you can learn how to earn more by asking for a raise or making additional income with a side business or a side hustle, you will be in an amazing position. And so earning more will change your life if you learn how. To do it. We have a bunch of episodes on how to earn more. We're going to have another episode coming up here. So make sure you're following the podcast on ways that you can start to build side hustles that could turn into full-time businesses. We had a bunch of those last year. People loved them. So we have more ideas coming up for you, which I'm really, really excited about. And so I want you to pick three of these strategies we talked about today, and I want you to implement them and start to take action on

• 45:37Andrew Giancola?

  them. Maybe it's automating your savings and debt payments. Maybe it is tracking your progress weekly. Maybe it is starting to negotiate your bills. Maybe it is cutting out some of those expenses that you know you don't really value. Maybe it's just going and doing a subscription audit. All of this stuff will have a major impact for you to be able to double your savings this month. And so I really want you to think through how you can do that so that you can get your dollars and start to really make massive financial progress. Listen, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. I hope you got value out of this. Our entire goal is to bring you as much value as possible. And thank you for investing in yourself because it's exactly what you do when you listen to the podcast is you are investing more in yourself. I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your week and we will see you on the next episode.

• 46:35Speaker 02

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