26 Things to Do with Your Money In 2026!

Join the Free Master Your Money Workshop on January 14, 2026 here! Join the community built to help you master your money, stay accountable, and reach financial freedom. 👉 Join Master Money Academy today! In this episode of The Personal Finance Podcast, Andrew shares 26 money moves to transform your finances this year—covering how to rebuild trust in your money, automate your finances, update your net worth, follow the 1-3-6 emergency fund method, increase investments, run a tax-diversification check, ask for a raise that beats inflation, build your skill stack, and create your financial protection plan. Listen to The Business Show here. 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 Indeed.com/personalfinance Get 50% Off Monarch, the all-in-one financial tool at www.monarch.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/ Policy Genius: Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Wayfair: Shop outdoor furniture, grills, lawn games, and WAY more for WAY less DeleteMe: Go to https://joindeleteme.com/PFP20/ and Use Promo Code PFP for 20% off! Resources Mentioned Get the Master Your Money Goals Here! Automate Your Money Checklist Your Net Worth Audit Checklist Empower (PC) Link of the Episodes Mentioned: The 1-3-6 Method For Building & Managing Your Emergency Fund Should I Pay Off Debt or Keep The Money Invested? - Money Q&A How to Automate Your Money - The Set it and Forget it System The Bucket Method For Managing Your Savings (Master Multiple Savings Goals) Book Mentioned: Giving It All Away…and Getting It All Back Again: The Way of Living Generously 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?

  Now, if you watch this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube, you've probably noticed the wood slat walls behind us. We wanted this podcast set to look professional, but also not be a project that was overly complicated. And I found these slat walls on Wayfair, and it completely changed this space. And it's now basically the background that you see in every single podcast or piece of content that we record. And that's one of the things that I love about Wayfair. You can shop thousands of products across different styles and budgets, use customer photos and reviews to see how things actually look in real homes, and find something that fits your space. They also have Wayfair Verified Products that are hand vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection.

• 0:44Andrew Giancola?

  And with more than 20 million verified 5-star reviews, you can feel a lot more confident about what you're ordering. I've used Wayfair for this studio and our home, and I absolutely recommend them for your space. So transform your space with pieces that hold up to real life. Join Wayfair Rewards today and get 5% back on every single purchase. Head to wayfair.com or shop the Wayfair app for all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 1:20Andrew 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.

• 2:04Andrew Giancola?

  Their AI can help with SEO, website copy, email marketing, and more. Your domain, website, email, and marketing can all live in one account with plans starting at just $3 every single month. Hosting or build your vision step by step. Create your website today. Go to hosting.com/pfp and use code PFP for 10% off now. On this episode of the personal finance podcast, 26 things to do with your money in 2026.

• 2:43Andrew 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 going through 26 things to do with your money in 2026. 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 26 things to do with your money in 2026. And this is a

• 3:28Andrew Giancola?

  yearly tradition here at the personal finance podcast, one of our favorite episodes to do at the beginning of every single year, because I'm going to give you a bunch of different ideas to help you master your money in 2026. Our entire goal is I want you to have the best financial year and 2026 is going to be that year. So this is the year that you can make a dramatic change. This is the year you can change your family's financial future. This is the year that you can finally take control of your money. Or if you have been building wealth for a long time, this is the year that you accelerate your income. This is the year that you take the next step overall. And this is the time. The time is now. See, we talk about this all the time, but money is just a tool to get what you want out of life. And if you are thinking through, well, what do I

• 4:13Andrew Giancola?

  want in this life? We're going to talk through 26 different options for you to think about for 2026. We're going to talk about setting goals. We're going to talk about taxes. We're going to talk about how to increase your income. We're going to be thinking through how to put together plans and financial plans that are going to help you master 2026. So I am so incredibly excited for you to be here for this episode. We have an action packed episodes. Without further ado, let's get into it.

• 4:41Andrew Giancola?

  Now, number one is I want to talk a little bit about money psychology here. And for a lot of folks out there who are looking to rebuild their money in 2026, I want you to rebuild your trust around money. I want you to think about money in a very different way because mastering money psychology is the number one thing that most people need to do. It's the number one thing that most people need to understand. In fact, managing your money is about 90% psychology and it's only 10% head knowledge. So I want you to rebuild your trust around money. You are not bad with money if you had a bad year last year. You are not bad with money if you are in debt. Instead, I want you to reframe and rewire your brain to note that this is the year, you're going to draw a line in the sand right now.

• 5:24Andrew Giancola?

  And this is the year that you're going to get it all together. You're going to thrive financially. You are going to make more money. You're going to save more money. You're going to invest more money, but you have to do one thing. You have to be intentional with your money this year. So separate those bad decisions from who you are. Those are not who you are whatsoever. Your bad decisions are outliers now. And instead you are a person who builds wealth. I want you to say that to yourself over and over again. This might sound like rah rah woo woo stuff, but it is very, very intentional in terms of how you are going to think about your dollars. Now, one thing I want you to do is if you have had bad experiences with money in the past, maybe you grew up around poverty. Maybe you grew up with people who just did not know how to handle money.

• 6:08Andrew Giancola?

  And so if you've had bad experiences in the past, the number one thing I want you to do is focus on systems when it comes to money. We're going to talk about a lot of systems in this episode, but I want you to focus on those systems so that you can understand that these systems are going to make sure that no matter what, no matter how you feel, no matter what your discipline is like, those systems are going to take over and they're going to help you automate your finances. Another thing I want you to do is when you are Building trust with money is create quick wins early in the year. Find the quick wins that you can go out and do. Maybe it's reducing an expense. Maybe it is going out and saving just a little bit of money. Getting the ball rolling on your emergency fund. Investing your first $20. But I want you to get quick wins so that you know I can do this. This is something I can do and I am going to continue to do this over time. Those wins are going to be a chain reaction.

• 6:53Andrew Giancola?

  And that chain reaction is going to take you to the outcome that you want. But you have to start early. You have to start now. And I don't want you to be the type of person that gets to January 25th and all of a sudden it fizzles out. Now, this is the year that you're going to do it. This is the year that you're going to make it happen and I know you can do it. And here's the cool thing. Once you get the ball rolling, confidence compounds faster than your returns ever can. So, once you get the ball rolling here, you start to get your dollars invested. You start to jumpstart your emergency fund. You start to really think through and change your money psychology. And listening to this podcast is going to absolutely change your money psychology. Then you'll be able to know that I'm going to be confident moving forward. So, I want you to reframe your relationship with money. Today is the day that you are someone who is good with money.

• 7:38Andrew Giancola?

  Today is the day that you draw that line in the sand and you know, I am going to build wealth this year. You're going to look back at this year and this is going to be the foundation to everything else if you haven't done it so far. Now, if you are someone out there who has been good with money, but maybe you're just not doing it the best you can. Maybe you're just not maximizing your potential. This is also the year I want you to reframe and rewire your brain. Now is the time for you to get motivated, to get your butt in gear and start accelerating your path to financial freedom. Maybe you want to achieve financial independence in 10 years. That is absolutely possible. But you have to make sure that you believe and you have to make sure you have the confidence in place. And then you set up the plan. And so, we're going to talk about that here today. Now, number two is setting and achieving your financial goals this year.

• 8:22Andrew Giancola?

  So, we have a very specific system on how to set and achieve financial goals. I am not the type of person who just says, "Hey, write down your goals and that's going to be good enough for you to achieve them." No, we're going to do a number of different things in order to make sure that you can achieve those goals. And so, what we are going To do is ensure that we have a system in place to achieve those goals. So we have a system called master your money goals that we talk about a lot. People in master money academy are going through the process right now where we are doing live coaching calls on how to master your goals. And so this month in master money academy, one of the biggest things that we are focusing on is our goal. So stay tuned because we're going to have an episode coming up, deep diving into goals and

• 9:05Andrew Giancola?

  what you guys need to be doing, but we're going to talk about a little bit about it here because we set goals in a very specific way. We write down our goals and we are going to set up action plans that allow us to achieve those goals. Let me give you an example. So let's say for an example, over the course of the next three months, you want to make sure that you save $3,000 in your emergency fund. Well, what are we going to do with that? We're going to take that information. We're going to say, well, how much each paycheck do I need to save? Well, let's say if you get paid twice every single month, you need to save $500 every paycheck into your emergency fund to reach that $3,000 goal. And so when we think about this, well, $500 every paycheck means $250 every single week needs to go towards that goal.

• 9:50Andrew Giancola?

  And so we break this down into smaller and smaller chunks in order to achieve that goal. Maybe your goal is to make more money. Well, then one of the things you want to do is start to think through, well, am I going to make more money at my day job? And how do I develop a plan for that? More on that in a second. And/or am I someone who is going to go out and have a side hustle in place? And if you're going to have a side hustle in place, what is that going to be? And how is it going to help you increase your income? Maybe you want to pay off $10,000 worth of debt this year. Well, let's break that down into quarters. Let's break that down into months and how much you need to pay every single week towards that debt. We want to increase the snowball and faster pay down by setting up goals that are actually going to happen. Maybe you want to save up for a vacation this year. Maybe you want to spend more on your health this year.

• 10:34Andrew Giancola?

  Maybe you want to invest more this year and increase your investment contributions. It doesn't matter what your financial goal is, and all these goals, as you're going to see, are going to lead you to a better life. Money helps you because it is a tool that gets you the things you want in life and it's going to Lead to a better life. You want to be a healthier person? Money is going to help you be able to afford healthy foods, supplements, or whatever else you want to be doing. It's going to help you with a coach or a trainer. It's going to help you be able to afford the things that you want to do in life. And that's how I want you to see money. I don't want you to see money as something that is restrictive. I don't want you to see budgets. I don't want you to see all the things that most people are going to teach you. Instead, I want you to see it as something that can help you thrive in life.

• 11:18Andrew Giancola?

  It is not a negative thing. It is not something that is evil. The love of money is evil, but guess what? Money is just a tool to get you what you want in life. And I want you to remember that over and over and over again. And financial goals are going to help you get there. So it's very important that you set up a system for financial goals. Our next episode is going to have that. So make sure you're subscribed to this podcast to get that episode there. And we're also going to be doing master classes throughout the year, talking about financial goals. So if you are interested in that, you could join Master Money Academy. And Master Money Academy, we are doing some very cool stuff there. All right, number three, because this is a very important number to know is we want to find our financial baseline. So if you don't know what your financial baseline is, these are your essential expenses that you need to make sure that you cover every single month.

• 12:01Andrew Giancola?

  Now, this is a very important number to know because you know that if anything were to ever happen in life, you know where you stand when it comes to your financial baseline. And so the way to do this is we're going to go back and look at the last three to six months expenses. Okay. And we're going to take a look at those and we're going to add up how much we spend every single month. Now, I want you to go through those expenses and you can pull out and print off bank statements for your credit cards and your checking accounts and go through and see where did I spend money over the course of the last three months? I want you to cross out anything that is not essential. So what is essential? This can be something like housing, food, transportation, debt payments, healthcare. All of those things are essential. What's not essential? Eating out, going to the movies, getting drinks with friends. Those are non-essential things.

• 12:45Andrew Giancola?

  And so what we want to do is make sure we understand the total amount that we spend every single month on essentials. So the way to do this is to go through the last three to six months of expenses. And then let's say you did the last six months to get more accurate. Okay, you add up the amount of Your essential expenses or your baseline expenses and then you divide that number by six and that is going to be your average. But Andrew, there's a lot of variables that happen throughout those six months. Well, guess what? There's gonna be a lot of variables that happen throughout the next six months. And so this is something where life's gonna happen. Life's gonna throw curve balls at you. You need to use that average. That is the number you need to get to. This is gonna help you with a lot of different decisions like building out your emergency fund and a number of other things, but it's also just gonna make you financially aware of your burn rate.

• 13:28Andrew Giancola?

  Because the other thing that you can do when you do this exercise, you can also add up your total amount of expenses. So you know what your actual burn rate is, even with non-essential expenses or variable expenses. And so this is gonna help you dramatically over the course of the next year is knowing what that burn rate is. So I highly encourage every single person to make sure they find this number. Now, number four is to automate your finances this year. If you have not automated your finances as of yet, I really want you to do it this year. Okay? So if you're interested, we have a money automation checklist that you could check out down below in the show notes. We will link that up for you. But when you go through this, I want you to understand how to automate your finances. So we just had an episode recently on how to automate your money.

• 14:11Andrew Giancola?

  And that is one that is gonna help you through this process. But I just want you to think about it this way. We want to first automate our bills. And so every single bill has a place where it is going to get paid. Maybe it's out of your checking account. Maybe it's through your credit card so you can get points, miles, rewards, whatever else you wanna get. But every single bill in your life needs to be automated. Well, how do I pay my lawn guy who doesn't have an automation system? You can do it automatically through your bank and send checks to them every single month if you wanted to. But there is a way to automate literally everything. And so having an automation system for your bills is number one. Number two is making sure we automate our investments. And this always needs to happen first technically is automating your investments so that you pay yourself first. This removes willpower from the equation.

• 14:56Andrew Giancola?

  I talked to way too many people who will skip months investing because they just forgot or they didn't feel like it, or a lot of other things happened this month. No, if you prioritize investing as a bill, it is the first thing that you do that is going To help you ensure that you actually invest your dollars. So retirement accounts, your 401k, your brokerage accounts, your HSA. All of those are great accounts to make sure that you are investing in. And so prioritizing this first and automatically sending that money over to those accounts is very important. Places like Fidelity and Vanguard, they have the ability now for you to automatically send money over and automatically invest in the investments that you are interested in. And so because of this, this means it is just setting it up once and not having to think about it again.

• 15:41Andrew Giancola?

  Number three is automating our savings. So we are big here in talking about the bucket method. The bucket method is a method that we have talked about a number of different times on the Personal Finance Podcast, and it's just a name I gave a system for you to have a budgeted system within your savings account. There's a bunch of different places, but you can look at like SoFi or Ally, or that's where I keep mine, or Betterment. There's a bunch of different places where you're allowed to budget inside of your high-yield savings account. And so what you could do is start to automatically send money over to specific buckets. So for example, you can set up buckets inside of these accounts where one is for your emergency fund. That is the highest priority and one of the most important. And so every single month, when you start to send money to your emergency fund, it just automatically goes in there.

• 16:24Andrew Giancola?

  Or maybe you're saving up for a vacation, so every single month you start to send money to your vacation fund. Or maybe you're saving up for a new car or a down payment on a house. Every single month you are sending money to those buckets. And this helps you make sure that you're saving for your financial goals. And in addition, you have the ability to watch this grow over time. Because people who automate their finances, they are amazed at how easy their financial life is. Because everything is just happening without them having to lift a finger. And all you're doing is just checking it up every single month to ensure that all the automations happen so that you can make sure that you're building wealth in the direction that you want to go. Every single dollar has a job, every single dollar has a priority,

• 17:05Andrew Giancola?

  and automation just helps you prioritize those dollars before they get lost or commingled in your checking account. And so that's what I want every single person to do out there is make sure you automate your finances. Why? Because you're going to spend way less time on your money if you do it. And that is the place you want to do. Then you can spend more time on Focusing on the things that actually matter like growing your net worth, increasing your income and doing things that you want every single day. I don't want you spending time in spreadsheets. Who really wants to do that? So instead, I want you to automate your money. So you don't have to budget so hard. And that's the big key when it comes to building wealth is money automation frees up your time. And I don't know about you, but time is the most valuable asset that you have. And the more time that you can get, the better off you will be.

• 17:48Andrew Giancola?

  So again, down below in the show notes, check out the automation checklist. It is a tool that we developed for you guys, just so you can go through and know what to automate next. Number five is update your net worth. So for a lot of us, we're going to start to update our net worth every December. That is the timeframe where I am talking more about net worth and talking about our net worth checklist. So we also have a net worth checklist and we did an episode in December, talking through exactly how we think about this, what your net worth is, how to update it, how to make sure you do a net worth audit and how to make goals based on your net worth audit in December. And so the reason why we're doing this in December is so that you can say, hey, I want to improve on some of these different items and I'm going to start to make sure that I set up these goals for January. So for 2026, we can really hit the ground running.

• 18:33Andrew Giancola?

  And so when it comes to your net worth, one of the most important things that you can do is understand what it is. So obviously it's your assets minus your liabilities. And so your assets are things that you own and your liabilities are things that you owe. And so the difference between those two is your net worth. Now you may have a hundred thousand dollars worth of student loan debt and really not own much yet because you're just getting started in the world. That means you most likely would have a negative net worth. Whereas someone who has been building wealth for a long time and they have a bunch of investment accounts, maybe they have some real estate, maybe they own a house, they may have a positive net worth. And so they may have a million dollar, two million dollar, five million dollar net worth, depending on where you are in life. But it's very important to track this. Why? Because your net worth is your financial scorecard.

• 19:18Andrew Giancola?

  And once you understand this, you can make drastically different decisions. So if you haven't heard our episode talking about that, you can check it out down below in the show notes. But in addition, make sure you get our net worth checklist. That is the place where you can go to ensure that you know step by step exactly how to track your net worth and how to set it up. Now, one of my favorite tools to track my net worth is a tool called Empower. We will link that up in the show notes below too. But that's just a free tool that you can link up your accounts and check what your net worth is, and it will automatically check your net worth for you. So we'll link up Empower down below in the show notes as well.

• 19:53Andrew Giancola?

  All right. So number six is to figure out where you are and follow the 136 method. So if you're not familiar with the 136 method, it is our methodology on how to save for an emergency fund, but it also gives you an indication of kind of what to do next with your dollar. And so the way that it works is that you save one month of expenses in a high-yield savings account for your emergency fund. Then you go and pay off high interest debt. So you have this one month of expenses in place to take care of anything that life throws at you. Then you're going to pay off high interest debt. So high interest debt is anything above a 6% interest rate. You want to pay that off and start to pay it down faster. Now, this is anything outside of your mortgage, but if you have high interest debt, maybe it's a personal loan, maybe it's a credit card, you want to make sure that you get rid of that. Okay? Once you have that high interest debt paid off, then we're going to build up our emergency

• 20:38Andrew Giancola?

  fund to three months of expenses. You already have one month done. You just need two more months. So we are going to get to three months of expenses and then we're going to start to invest our money. This is the point in time where three months kind of covers you for most financial situations and allows you to start investing. Then the ultimate goal is to get to six months of expenses. Why do we want to get to six months of expenses? Because if you ever lose your job, it takes a lot longer to find a job than it used to. I don't care if you're in a high demand industry. It's still a better place to be is to have six months of expenses in your emergency fund. That is the absolute minimum that we ultimately want you to get through. Now, if you have to use your emergency fund for any given reason, you just go back through the steps and follow along exactly where you are. So let's say you had to use three months of your emergency fund. You just go back to three months and then start to

• 21:23Andrew Giancola?

  Build back up to six months, or let's say you had to use the entire emergency fund. Then you just start over from the beginning and it allows you to follow this system and have the ability to be able to build wealth and know what to do next. Protecting your financial situation is the most important thing that you can do when you are laying the groundwork. And the 136 method shows you exactly how to do it, even if you need to use your emergency fund. And news flash, you are going to use your emergency fund. You're going to need to use it. There's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. A lot of people like to build up these emergency funds and say, hey, I never used this thing. And they try to figure out ways to get around using it now. It's much better just to use it if you need it because that's what it's there for. It's your rainy day fund. So if your car breaks down, your house has a big issue, then you have the money just there.

• 22:04Andrew Giancola?

  And overall, if you ever lose your job, you will have cash on hand to take care of your living expenses. So the 136 method for sure is one thing that you need to be doing over the course of the next year. It is one of the first things we have people do in Master Money Academy is make sure they get the ball rolling on the 136 method. Number seven is to get a high-yield savings account and bucket your money. So when we talked about money automation, we talked about bucketing your money. So it's finding a high-yield savings account and making sure that you actually open one. Now, why would you open a high-yield savings account? Because the money at your bank, if you have a savings account at your bank, you're making pretty much a 0% interest on that. You're actually losing money to inflation every single year. So instead, opening a high-yield savings account ensures you get 3, 4, 5% interest on your money

• 22:48Andrew Giancola?

  so that you can keep up with inflation. Typically, a high-yield savings account is really just pacing with where inflation is. And so this is a place or a point in time where maybe you are pacing with inflation or getting a little bit of a delta there. And so that is really important to open that high-yield savings account. Now, I prefer them where you can budget inside them so you can create those buckets that we talked about. And that is going to help you just prioritize, compartmentalize. Another thing you could do if you don't have those buckets is you could create sinking funds, but that's opening multiple different accounts. And the more accounts somebody has, the more complicated their financial situation gets. I like to have the one account where you can budget inside. So open up that high-yield savings account, making sure that you are putting dollars like things like your emergency fund in there or any other short-term savings where you're going to need that money within the next five years. That is the place you want to keep.

• 23:33Andrew Giancola?

  Is in that high yield savings account. Number eight is we're going to talk about the system to reduce expenses you don't value. So you went through and figured out, hey, what is my burn rate? How much am I spending on essential expenses? Well, I also want you to think through, well, how much am I spending on other expenses? If there are expenses that you are overspending on that do not bring you value, then I want you to think about, how can I reduce those expenses? Now here is how we reduce expenses here. Let's say, for example, you spend $1,000 every single month eating out. This is a big one for a lot of people. They overspend on eating out because of the convenience factor. And for most people, they feel like they overspend there. And so I'm using this as an example, just to show you what to do is I'm not a big proponent

• 24:16Andrew Giancola?

  of just cutting out your eating out budget from $1,000 all the way down to $400 if that's your goal. Because what really happens here is people feel the pain of that and they don't want to do it anymore. So instead, I am a big proponent of gradually reducing expenses. What does that mean? Well, that means if you spend $1,000 on eating out, maybe in month one, you decide I'm going to spend $900 this month on eating out. Okay, then in month two, you say, I'm going to spend 750 on eating out. But in month three, you had friends come into town and so you ate out a few extra times and you end up spending $1,000 again. That's okay, we have setbacks and this is where a lot of people quit. Whenever they have a setback or a messy month, they begin to quit.

• 25:00Andrew Giancola?

  The same thing goes for budgeting, the same thing goes for everything else. No, instead, you're just going to go back to your plan. So maybe in month four, you end up spending $600 eating out. In month five, $500 and in month six, $400. So develop a plan where over the next six months, you can gradually reduce your expenses in specific categories. And that way it doesn't feel so painful. You get used to it over time and that's going to help you reduce your expenses. So if you've been someone who has struggled to reduce expenses in the past, this is a great tool for you to help you through that process. Now I recommend working on one to two of these at a time. So if you work on your entire budget this way, it's a lot harder. But if you can work on one to two of these at a time, over the next couple of years, you're going to get your expenses.

• 25:43Andrew Giancola?

  Is exactly where you want them and maybe you start to overspend in another category and so you can continue to follow this system but this is going to help you make sure that you actually achieve those goals now for my really high achievers out there and I know there are some of you out there if you really want to just rip the Band-Aid off and reduce those expenses that is fine but the way I'm talking about here of gradually reducing expenses is rooted in psychology it's rooted in money psychology and the way people actually act and behave and so I really want you to consider it if you struggle reducing expenses number nine is to make sure that you look at last year's inflation rate and at the time recording this the inflation rate for the entire year has been 2.7% and make sure that you increase your investments by that amount so

• 26:24Andrew Giancola?

  why would someone do this well to increase your investments by at least the inflation rate means that you are still investing the same purchasing power because inflation erodes away at our purchasing power over time and so I always at least like to increase my investment amount by the inflation rate to ensure that I am investing the same purchasing power every single year if you're the type of person that just invests the same amount maybe you invest a thousand dollars every single month well over the course of 30 years that thousand dollars is going to be worth a lot less than it was when you first started 30 years ago and so making sure that you just at least increase the amount that you're investing by a little bit is going to be very important so you can do this across all of your different accounts and the cool thing is things like the Roth IRA for this year in 2026 are going up so they're going to go up an additional $500

• 27:09Andrew Giancola?

  that helps you make those increased contributions the same thing goes for your 401k it's going to $24,500 is the max if you're under the age of 50 and so that is going to be another great option for folks out there who are looking to increase by the inflation rate but this is just very important to make sure you maintain that purchasing power and it is a hack for a lot of people and so just go back look at the inflation rate it's going to be around 3% and you can go and increase it by that amount now also if you want to increase it by more than that I think that's really really important if you get raises or if you are getting bonuses that's a great reason to start investing some of those dollars and getting them into investment accounts all right number 10 let's talk about some investment accounts and some retirement accounts here for the next couple so number 10 is to run a tax diversification check so what do I mean by that well first I List out all of your different accounts.

• 27:54Andrew Giancola?

  So what your HSA, your 401K, do you have an IRA? Do you have a Roth IRA, a Roth 401K, a 457, a 403B? It doesn't matter what it is. I want you to list out all of the accounts that you have. And we're going to look at the tax diversification between the two, because some people are overexposed to different tax strategies. So I want you to group these into groups. So you can think about your pre-tax first. So that'd be your traditional 401K, your IRA, your 457, your 403B. Then I want you to think about your Roth accounts. So your Roth IRA, your Roth 401K, your Roth 403B, whatever you've got out there, make sure you group together your Roth accounts. And then your taxable accounts, things like your taxable brokerage, maybe some crypto, whatever else you have out there that is taxable. And I want you to group up these three buckets.

• 28:39Andrew Giancola?

  Now, if you're overexposed in one bucket, I just want you to reevaluate and think about, do I want to be overexposed in this bucket? Is this the best possible option? So me and my accountant do this every single year. We do it in December and then we think about it for 2026. And so we just did this actually literally yesterday, because I'm recording this episode at the end of December. And so we literally did this yesterday to ensure that we were still doing the right thing going forward. And so I just highly encourage you to look at those three tax buckets and then look at your personal situation. If you have a CPA, you could say, hey, can you run this scenario for me and figure out what is the best strategy for me? Because here's what I'm contributing to. And I need to figure out if this is the best possible option for me. And so this is a great time to do it at the beginning of the year,

• 29:22Andrew Giancola?

  because then you can go and look and understand, okay, I'm going to start to contribute more in some of these other buckets so that I can make sure that I am diversified within my tax situation. Now, for some of you, you may need to be gung ho for one specific tax strategy. Like if you are looking for that tax-free growth and you just want to put as much as you possibly can into Roth, that may be a great decision. Maybe you need more tax deductions because you made a lot of money. And so you know you're going to make a lot of money this year. Maybe there's some carryover, some bonuses coming to you. You know, you need some tax deductions. So maybe you want to prioritize traditional accounts, like the traditional 401K or traditional IRA. Or maybe you're the type of person that says, hey, I know now I'm going to start to retire early and I want to really get more dollars in my taxable account. And so getting more in your taxable account could be the option too.

• 30:07Andrew Giancola?

  But making sure you prioritize these three buckets is going to be really, really helpful. All right, number one. 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 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.

• 30:52Andrew Giancola?

  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 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.

• 31:36Andrew Giancola?

  That's exactly what today's sponsor, Scribe, helps solve. Scribe is a workflow AI platform trusted by 94% of the Fortune 500. 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

• 32:22Andrew Giancola?

  ...in mind. It only runs across approved business applications. User level data is anonymous by default and sensitive information is automatically redacted and never leaves your firewall. To see, optimize in action, head describe.how/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. 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

• 33:04Andrew Giancola?

  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. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit

• 33:46Andrew Giancola?

  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. 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, cooling 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 Lisa. A great mattress is one of those things that you use every single night and you spend a third of your life

• 34:31Andrew Giancola?

  Sleeping and it can make a huge difference on how you feel the next day. Lisa has mattresses designed for different sleep positions and comfort preferences. 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 lisa.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.

• 35:16Andrew Giancola?

  Lisa.com promo code PFP. Eleven is to reevaluate Roth versus traditional annually. Now I'm going to give you the exact steps on how to do this and why you need to do this. Because this is something that most people don't do enough. And so again, my CPA and I, we went through this yesterday and it's a really, really important exercise. So I wanted to share it with you as well. So one is I want you to look at your current marginal tax bracket and kind of figure out exactly where you land. Because this is going to give you an indication of what you need to do next. Step two is I want you to estimate your future tax bracket. Are you going to be making a lot more money in the future? Are you going to be making less money in the future? Where are you actually going to be standing? That is going to be a very important thing to evaluate. And again, if you have a CPA, I would highly encourage you to do this with them. Number three is think about your flexibility needs in retirement.

• 36:02Andrew Giancola?

  Do you need more flexibility because you plan on retiring in your 40s or 50s? Or are you planning on retiring at traditional retirement age? Now, step four is I want you to factor in things like pensions or required minimum distributions or social security, just to think about your total needs overall. And then step five is just thinking about your tax situation, how much money you are going to be making. And so because of that, then you could decide on which one to contribute for this year only. So we run these scenarios and we run these calculations every single year for me. And it is one of the most important things that I think you can do too. Because sometimes you may have shifts in your income. You may have shifts in your financial situation and you need to contribute more to other. Accounts than you currently are. That is very, very important for a lot of folks out there to run these simulations because if you don't,

• 36:47Andrew Giancola?

  you could be contributing to an account that is just not the most optimal over that timeframe. And so just making sure you look at this is very, very important. Now, number 12, this goes along the same lines when it comes to your tax situation is getting updates on all the new tax strategies. So one big one that's happening right now is the big, beautiful bill. We don't have all the information for the big, beautiful bill, but there are a lot of tax breaks in that bill that should be coming out. And so because of this, we want to make sure that we understand all those different tax breaks and our CPA understands all those different tax breaks. When I talked to my CPA just recently, they were stating that they're going to have a lot of different additional items coming up on the big, beautiful bill that are going to help us with our tax situation. And so if you're a business owner, if you are someone who is a W-2 employee, or if you're someone who is just really looking to optimize your tax situation,

• 37:32Andrew Giancola?

  this is going to be something you want to get updated on. Also, the contribution limits to our retirement accounts changed this year. So we just alluded to that. $24,500 per year into the traditional and Roth 401ks. In addition to some of those other pre-tax accounts, plus the Roth and traditional IRA have moved up to $7,500 per year. So you can get $500 more into those accounts. You need to make sure you're updating yourself on some of those so you can increase and adjust your contributions based on that. If you're dollar cost averaging, just adjust your dollar cost average slightly to those new numbers. Also, look for credits and new deductions that have shifted. So there are a number of different credits and deductions that will shift every single year. You know, any other deductions that you actually go out and take, make sure you're looking at those every single year because they normally will adjust.

• 38:16Andrew Giancola?

  And so here's the call out for you guys is I want you to make sure that you have a conversation about the updates with your CPA, if you have one. And also call out the big, beautiful bill and ask what updates they see are going to impact your finances when it comes to that in 2026. Cause that's going to be some of the biggest changes overall is when that is finalized and when we get all the information for the big, beautiful bill. Number 13 is to contribute to a 401k at least up to a match. So making sure you get a 401k match is the number one thing we want you to do because it's free money. Your employer wants to give you free money and so you need to make sure you're at least getting that match. And so the way to do this is you call up your HR department and say, Hey, what's my 401k match? Or you look in your employee handbook, you go look for employer match. And if there are multiple matches that are offered to you, then getting those matches can be very, very powerful.

• 39:01Andrew Giancola?

  Why? Because let's say your match is 3%. If you put 3% in, your employer also matches up to 3%. Well, that is going to be a very powerful way to double your money, get a 100% rate of return. You can't get that anywhere else, which is why we want you to get your employer match before paying off even high interest debt, or going out and investing in other areas, or saving for a down payment on a house. This is the first thing we want you to do, because it is a 100% rate of return. You can't get that return anywhere else. All right, now let's talk about some career things that you should be doing. I want you to set a meeting with your boss so that you can be involved in bottom line projects. Now, what do I mean by bottom line projects? What your entire goal is, is to make sure that you have a conversation with your boss

• 39:45Andrew Giancola?

  to ensure that you are working on projects that have high impact to the company, meaning they are helping the company either become more profitable or more productive. Between those two things, if you can do those two things, and you say upfront to your boss, hey, I want to be more involved in these projects, and I am doing this to help me make more money, and I want to get a raise, and/or I want to make sure that I am getting promoted. These are some of the areas where then you can ensure that you work on a plan together throughout this entire year. And then every single month or every other month, you're checking in with your boss to make sure you're on track for exactly what you're talking about. Here's the real thing, is visibility is going to matter way more than anything else, especially in the corporate world. Your boss is busy. There's a lot of different things happening, and they're not thinking about exactly what you're doing.

• 40:30Andrew Giancola?

  So you have to keep yourself visible. You have to kind of brag about yourself a little bit and some of the things that you're doing when your boss is around to ensure that they know that you are working towards this common goal. And when you have these conversations with your boss, and you are constantly communicating with them, when it's time for your yearly review, they know what you're going to be asking for, and you have done the things that they asked you to do to ensure that you get that raise. And so if they don't give you that raise, then that is going to be where the back and forth either needs to happen, or you need to go and find a new job. That is going to be a scenario that you can look at. So you can know, am I going to make more money here? And if you Do the things they ask you to do to increase your income. That is very, very important. Now, we have an entire ebook talking about how to go through this process and the systems that we talk about with this.

• 41:12Andrew Giancola?

  So if you are interested in that, just go to mastermoney.co/resources and there we will have that free ebook for you. It is called Finally Get That Raise and that is the place that we talk about that. Also, if you are deciding or thinking that you're going to go to get a new job this year, it also talks about how to negotiate your salary for a new job as well. So that is a fantastic read. It is literally a multimillion dollar decision to decide to make sure that you focus on trying to get a raise. Secondly, is making sure at the bare minimum, you get a raise that beats inflation. Why? Because if you get a raise that's less than inflation, then you just took a pay cut. So let's say, for example, inflation is 5%. If inflation is 5% and you get a standard 2% raise at your company,

• 41:53Andrew Giancola?

  you just lost 3% in buying power, meaning you just literally took a pay cut. And so every single year, at the bare minimum, your boss needs to make sure that they are giving you a raise by at least the inflation rate. Otherwise, you are literally taking a pay cut. So making sure you do that is super, super important. Now, number 16 is I want you to think about ways, and I want you to write this down and put it in your goal list, of ways to design your next income jump intentionally. Because income is the catalyst to building wealth. It is the number one thing we want to focus on growing over time because people who focus on growing their income typically have the highest net worth. Because once you get that income and you understand what to do with it and where to put it, oh boy, you are lighting gas to the fire.

• 42:35Andrew Giancola?

  And so, once you can figure out how to do this, it is going to be the way to change your life forever. So I want you first, if you're the type of person that is just waiting for somebody to give you a raise, you just sit around and wait for somebody to give you a raise and you think it's just going to happen to you. I want you to stop waiting around for raises this year. This is the year where you make that change and you're being intentional. You're going through the process of having conversations with your boss so that you can be working on the projects that matter. Number two is I want you to think about the skills that you can go out and acquire. I want you to pair those skills with opportunity. So whatever industry you are in, think about the skills that are required for people at the next level. Is it sales? Is it communications? Is it?

• 43:11Andrew Giancola?

  Making sure that you are proficient in different softwares. What are the skills that those folks have and what do they possess? And I want you to go out and develop a plan to acquire those skills. Because once you start to prepare, even before opportunities arise, this is going to help you think in jumps and not inches. I don't want you to think small when it comes to your career and making money. I want you to think very big when it comes to making money. Because guess what? Your income potential is infinite. And so the more you can grow that income, the more you can put those dollars towards wealth building or towards the things that you actually value. And that is the entire goal when it comes to building wealth. Number 17 is to build a personal guaranteed income plan. So if you have one income stream, that is going to increase your risk dramatically, especially if you're a W2 employee.

• 43:56Andrew Giancola?

  You are one person's decision away from having zero income streams. So instead, I want you to do a couple of different things. Number one is I want you to develop skills that you can use to earn more. Your skills are something that nobody can ever take away from you. And if you have specific skills that can help you earn more money, that is going to be a dramatic difference long term. It's going to give you a backup plan and give you a personal insurance plan on your income. And so the way to think about this is, let's say, for example, you decide, okay, well, one of the skills I want to build up is becoming very proficient in AI. Well, if you become very proficient in AI, you can utilize those skills to develop a side business that could turn into a full-time income and sell AI call services to small business owners. Maybe you focus in a specific niche.

• 44:40Andrew Giancola?

  So maybe you do dentistry offices. Maybe you're working with doctors' offices or attorneys. But you decide, I am going to learn the skill of developing AI infrastructure within small businesses. If you have that skill, my friend, you are going to make a lot of money over time. And so there are things like this that I want you to have backup plans if you ever lost your job or your current position didn't work out. Secondly, try to develop some side income. Maybe it's a small little business that you work on a couple of hours every single week. Maybe it's something like developing that AI infrastructure. Maybe it is having a side business that you go out and buy. But try to develop a way to earn some extra income and have an additional income stream. It is really important just to protect your downside. And so if there are two people in the household that earn an income, you already have two income streams. Well, maybe you want a third. And so you want to protect that downside.

• 45:24Andrew Giancola?

  That is always, always, always my big thing is always protect your downside. And so for a lot of folks out there, your income is the best place to do that. The cool thing about this is that optionality is also going to help you create peace. So the more options that you have to earn income, the more peace you're going to have, the better you're going to sleep at night, the better overall your life is going to be. Because you can take those extra dollars and maybe all your side hustle income goes towards investments. Well, imagine if you earned an extra $2,000 every single month, how much more you can invest, how much more your investment accounts could grow, how much more you could do with that money. So for a lot of folks out there, I want to encourage you to try to earn some extra money on the side and pay off debt. You can invest, you can take those dollars, put it towards your emergency fund. You could even use it for vacations, for passions, for projects that you're working

• 46:09Andrew Giancola?

  on, but I highly encourage you to increase your income this year. And then number 18, along those same lines is I want you to focus on one skill to build up within your skill stack. So your skill stack are the set of skills that you have in place that help you become marketable, that help you earn more money. And so this for a lot of people is one of the most important things that you can do. So first, I want you to write down your skill stack. What skills do you currently possess that help you become marketable? Are you really good at communication? Are you really good at sales? Are you really good at negotiation? Are you really good at reading contracts? Are you really good at building relationships? Are you really good at developing CRM system? Whatever it is, build up your skill stack and write it all down. Then I want you to be very honest with yourself and say, where are the holes in my skill stack? What do I really need to build up?

• 46:54Andrew Giancola?

  And be very honest. Maybe you're an introvert and you're like, I just am not good at playing the corporate politics game. I'm not good at bragging about myself. I'm not really good at showing people what I'm actually doing. And so that may be the place that you want to think about. You want to go to Toastmasters or you want to go to places where you are going to force yourself to get involved with other people. Maybe you say to yourself, well, I'm not very good at networking. I'm not really good at, you know, building relationships with other people in my industry. I want to get better at that. Or maybe you say, man, I want to get better at sales. I am not the best at sales whatsoever. And so I'm thinking about ways to improve my sales process because every single thing in life is a sale. Or maybe you're saying to yourself, Skills don't really go with what I'm currently doing and I know I can make more money if I go

• 47:36Andrew Giancola?

  out and look for other jobs that fit my skill stack, then that may be something you want to do. But there are so many different things here. I want you to get honest with yourself and talk about some of your weaknesses and how do you strengthen those weaknesses to have a skill stack that is impenetrable, meaning the best possible skill stack that you can possibly have based on your current education, your current qualifications, your current competence, all those different things. What is the best possible skill stack or your dream skill stack to have? And then start working towards that dream skill stack. It's very, very important. We're going to do an entire episode on this because it's very important that you think about this on how to increase your income. Number 19 is to increase your connections. So having relationships and

• 48:18Andrew Giancola?

  having connections with other people is going to help you a lot. In fact, your network is your net worth and that rings truer and truer every single year. Now, in the age of AI where people are spending less time building connections, it becomes increasingly more important for most people to learn how to build these connections. And so I highly, highly encourage you this year to prioritize your network if you don't have a big one whatsoever. And so a couple of ways to do this is to go to industry events. If you are a nurse, if you are a nurse practitioner, go to events where nurse practitioners go. If you're in the construction industry, go to events where other people in the construction industry work. If you're someone who works in aesthetics, going to aesthetic conferences are really important. If you're someone who is in

• 49:03Andrew Giancola?

  finance, going to financial conferences are really important. If you're a project manager, networking with other project managers is really important. If you're an engineer, it doesn't matter what you do, all of these are going to be things that I really think you need to make sure you build out your network. And the reason for this is because if you ever lose a job or you ever have a situation arise where you need help, your network is going to help pull you up. If you're a business owner and you really can't solve a problem, your network of other business owners are going to be able to help you solve that problem. Or if you just need an introduction to someone and you need to have a conversation with someone, your network is going to help you with that. And so it's really just developing and building genuine Connections, helping people within your network so that when you need help one day,

• 49:46Andrew Giancola?

  they'll be able to help you. And so I really think for most of you, this is a very powerful place to spend your time and energy and money, because conferences aren't free, to go out and really try to build relationships. Now, if there are no places for you to network in your area, being the person that starts the network is actually the most powerful position of all. And so I highly encourage you, if you don't have a network in your area that you can actually join, then developing that network and being the host and inviting other people to join is going to be the best way to go. Number 20, and let's get more into spending now and thinking about spending and how to spend our dollars. Number 20 is I want you to replace guilt-based activity with guardrails. So, feeling guilty about your money is exhausting. It's one of the worst possible places to be in. In fact, it is just gonna keep you up at night, it's gonna

• 50:31Andrew Giancola?

  erode away at your mind, it's gonna create a bad relationship with money. I don't want you to feel guilty about money. Instead, I want you to set up guardrails around your spending. So, you can think about this in a way where, let's say you want to go on a vacation. Well, what some people do is they're like, man, I can't afford to go on a vacation. So instead, they work, they grind, they say, you know what, I deserve vacation, even though I can't afford it right now, I'm gonna put it on a credit card. And they go out and they overspend on a credit card and they have this vacation that they are then paying off over the course of the next couple of years. Have you ever seen somebody do that? Or have you done that before? It is very common for a lot of folks. But instead, you can set up spending guardrails where if you love to travel, you love to go on vacations, maybe you love that all-inclusive resort where you can kick your

• 51:16Andrew Giancola?

  feet up and sit on a Mai Tai next to the pool and just hang out for a whole week and do nothing. Oh, that sounds nice right now. That is something that you can absolutely save up for. And so this is something where intentionally thinking about how you're gonna spend your money and where you want to spend your dollars is really, really important. See, spending is a skill. It is not something that you just learn overnight. And most people are bad at spending money because they have not developed that skill yet. But if you set up guardrails around your spending, this will allow you to spend intentionally, this will make your money more supportive, it'll support your life and the life that you want, and it is the way to use money as a tool. So I highly encourage you to go out and Set up guardrails around your spending around each and every single category so that you could spend more on the things that you love and less on the things that you don't enjoy spending money on.

• 52:00Andrew Giancola?

  Number 21 is I want you to schedule money check-ins, not emergency money check-ins. I want you to schedule these check-ins so they are happening enough to where you're staying on top of your money. So if you're in a relationship with someone and you're managing money together, I highly encourage you that you schedule these money check-ins together. And if not, schedule a date with yourself. Go to a nice restaurant. Go to a place that you love to eat and spend some time talking about your finances. Or thinking about your finances if you're single. And the reason for this is because understanding where you are is the most important thing. This is going to help you reduce stress. It's going to help you make adjustments before problems grow and calm is going to beat crisis mode every single time.

• 52:40Andrew Giancola?

  And so just doing check-ins by looking at your spending, looking at your investments, looking at your savings and where you currently stand and even adjusting your net worth can be very, very powerful. Worst case scenario, you can do this quarterly and it's not a big deal whatsoever. Spend an hour, spend 30 minutes and just look through your finances, making sure your automations are going to the right places, making sure your priorities are set. Making sure you're not overspending in areas you don't care about. That is the overall key to doing this. And so doing this once a quarter is really important. So now is a great time to do this. Maybe do one in January, maybe do one in April. You can do another one in June. You could do September and then at the end of the year. Those are the great ways to kind of think about this and set up these meetings where you both are on the same page. And if you're single, it just puts you on the same page where your money is going.

• 53:22Andrew Giancola?

  Number two is build up your swan number. So your swan number is your sleep well at night number. And so for most folks out there, this is not just about financial independence. This is about having peace. And so typically we talk about this with our emergency fund. So a lot of people, we say, okay, your minimum in your emergency fund is six months. But if that's not enough for you and you really can't sleep well at night with six months in your emergency fund, put as much as you feel you need in there to be comfortable. This is your number, your swan number that allows you to sleep well at night. That's why it's called a swan number. This is going to be enough cash to have on hand so that you don't stress about money. It's going to reduce anxiety around money. It's going to make sure you have enough liquid. It's going to make sure that you are thinking about and having financial peace. And overall, we want to reduce your stress.

• 54:07Andrew Giancola?

  We want to reduce your anxiety around money. And way too many people feel those feelings right now. So having that swan number and working towards that swan number is really, really important. For some of you, it's six months. For some of you, it's seven. For some of you, it's nine. For some of you, it's two years of cash. Doesn't matter where you stand. Every person is different, but figuring out what your swan number is, is going to be very helpful. Number 23 is creating your financial protection plan. So in the age of AI, scams are getting more and more advanced. It is one of the most difficult things to detect and one of the most difficult things to protect against. There are more and more people losing money to scams online. And so there's a number of different things that you could do. We have entire episodes talking about financial protection plans that we will link up down below in the show notes.

• 54:50Andrew Giancola?

  But I highly encourage every single person to do a number of different things. One is make sure you don't have the same flipping password on every single website. Making sure you have really unique and difficult passwords to guess is going to be important. Now that may sound like it's obvious advice, but not enough of you do it. And most of you don't do it. And so you're using the same three passwords. It's your dog Fido's name, your dog Waffle's name, and your old address that you used to live on are your passwords with $27 exclamation point 22. That is not what I want you to do. Instead, every single site needs to have a different password. So you can use a password manager. There's a bunch of them out there. One password is a great one. There's a bunch of other ones I've used in the past, but they can develop a unique password for you. And then you save it within those specific platforms.

• 55:35Andrew Giancola?

  So that's one way to do it. Second is making sure you're monitoring your credit and freezing your credit. So if you're not opening a credit card, if you're not going out and getting a mortgage, if you're not opening a student loan, then making sure you freeze your credit is really important. This ensures that nobody can open a loan or credit card or student loan in your name. And so a lot of times, if you freeze your credit, this is a bulletproof way to protect your finances. And one of the best things you can do, you go to the three major credit bureaus. You just tell them, hey, I want to freeze my credit. A lot, it's a lot easier now with a click of a button. You can go in there and freeze your credit. And then you unfreeze your credit when you want to open a credit card or you're buying a car, you're going out and getting a mortgage. Those are Different reasons to unfreeze your credit and then you just freeze it again.

• 56:14Andrew Giancola?

  Once that process is done, you may be saying to yourself, well, how do people get my information to even open up a credit card or a student loan in my name? Well, there's a bunch of different ways, but one of the biggest ways that happens is maybe they get a piece of your information. And then they go out to these data brokers that are out there and they find your information. So if you go your name in quotations, your address in quotations, or your phone number in quotations, you're going to see your information pop up all over the internet. And so one of the most important things that you could do to protect your financial information is get it removed from these websites. So that if a scammer gets a piece of your information, they cannot find the rest of it. And so the key is to get that information removed from these data brokers. There's not a lot of laws stopping data brokers from doing this.

• 56:57Andrew Giancola?

  And so your information could be out there for anybody to go find. And so there is a tool that helps you get this information removed and it is called Delete Me. Now Delete Me will go to these data brokers and get all of that information removed. If you did this yourself, it would take hours and hours and weeks and weeks to even get this done. And you still wouldn't catch it all, where Delete Me is going to go out and do that for you. And so this is one of the most powerful ways to protect your finances online, which is why I absolutely love Delete Me as a service. Because it is something that I have been using for years and years and years now. So if you go to joindelete.me.com/pfp20, you can get 20% off of your Delete Me subscription. And again, it is one of the best services that I've used over the last couple of years because they save you so much time.

• 57:42Andrew Giancola?

  And the cool thing about Delete Me is they continue to remove your information from these other data brokers when they get a hold of your information. So they do checks frequently to make sure that your information is removed. And so if you want to protect your financial information, I highly recommend Delete Me. So check the link down below or just go to joindelete.me.com/pfp20 and that is the best place to do this. Also, another thing you could do is making sure that you're turning on alerts for your accounts. This is a very important thing that most people don't do enough is having the alerts available. So that they can ensure that they know when an account's being opened in their name or something else. So the credit bureaus will give you alerts. There are other places where you can get alerts, where you can get it directly on your phone and you'll be able to see if some sort of. Credit or something else is open in your name. And so then you can go and jump on it and go back and make sure you look at that.

• 58:27Andrew Giancola?

  Also, watch out for phishing attempts. They are getting better and better and better over time. I think this is a very, very important thing that most people need to really be on the lookout for. Is phishing attempts, they are all over the place and they are getting much, much better. All right, number 24 is to create a one-page document of if anything happens to me, here's what to do. And so this document is really good for accounts and passwords or where they are or where they're stored. This is good to put things like your emergency contacts on there. Maybe clear instructions of how you want your money invested or where you want it to go, that type of thing. But this helps reduce chaos for loved ones because they're already going through a tough time. And a lot of times, if you're the person who is the main financial person, and if you're listening to this podcast, you likely are.

• 59:10Andrew Giancola?

  Then this is going to be something that is going to help your loved ones dramatically. And so making sure you have, hey, if I die, here's what happens. You could just do it in a one pager to get the ball rolling. Some people will put together notebooks, some people will put together folders. But this is just a great place to get the ball rolling so that if something were to ever happen to you, people know where to get your information. Number 25 is if you're a charitable person, creating a giving plan. So a giving plan is something where I really prioritize this and I'm prioritizing it even more so this up and coming year. Charity is a big part of what I do. Part of why I want to build wealth is to give money away to causes I believe in. So a big one, for example, that we're going to be giving away even more to this year is the Tim Tebow Foundation.

• 59:53Andrew Giancola?

  So it's a foundation that helps a number of different things, but it's mostly people in need. So they help and fight back against child human trafficking. They help with foster care, they help with special needs kids. And so this is a foundation that really is just focused on helping people who are in need. So that is a big one that we're increasing contributions to. And so I am creating a giving plan to figure out exactly where we want those dollars to go. In fact, I'm having conversations now about Master Money. We're going to develop a little board to put together of people where we can give money to different causes that we believe in. And so this is going to be something that I think can be really, really powerful for people out there. And there's a great book on this. So if you haven't read this book, it is by the founders. Of Hobby Lobby and it is called giving it all away and getting it back again.

• 1:00:36Andrew Giancola?

  And they give away something like over 50% of their revenue. It's a massive portion of their revenue to causes that they believe in. And so when I read this book, it absolutely changed my perspective on this. And I think it's a very, very powerful thought process. If you're charitably inclined, I highly encourage you to put together a giving plan and think about exactly where that's going. I also automate most of my giving and a lot of places you can do that now. So you don't have to think about, oh, did I give money this month or did I not? I just automate it all and it's always based on percentages of my income. And then number 26, this is the last one is I highly encourage you to increase your spending on things that you love. So having a financial expert tell you to increase your spending on things that you love is not typically what happens, but this is something that I really want you to do. Our goal here is for you to spend more on the things that you value and less on the things

• 1:01:21Andrew Giancola?

  that you don't value. And increasing your spending on things that you love can be the best way to do that. And I highly encourage every single person to think about this. So cut out all the low value spending first, get rid of it. And then take that chunk of cash that you cut out and start to allocate that towards things that you actually love. Give those dollars a job. Maybe you want to spend more on health this year and fitness. You want to go do some more workout classes. Maybe you want to spend more on your hobby. Are you into trading cards? Are you into pickleball? Are you into video games? Are you into cars? It doesn't matter what you're into. Try to think through, how can you spend more on that? Maybe you want to spend more on travel this year. Maybe you want to spend more learning a specific skill. Maybe you value that. Maybe you want to increase the amount that you're investing because you value your time

• 1:02:06Andrew Giancola?

  most and you want to get your time back. All of these are great places to spend more on, on things that you love. And I highly encourage you to develop a plan to be able to do that. Planning is everything and this is going to be a huge, huge dramatic change for most people out there. So focus more on spending things you love so you can have the best 2026 yet. Listen, thank you guys so much for being here. I know this was a mega episode. I know there was a lot of talking points here, but I hope this gives you a huge action list for things that you can go out and do. Again, this is going to be your best financial year yet. I know it for each and every single one of you. And our goal is to build a million millionaires. I know that you can do it. Again, if you're interested in getting help from me, consider joining Master Money Academy. Master Money Academy is the place where we are helping people

• 1:02:50Andrew Giancola?

  every single week on their financial goals. And so if you have big financial goals this year, I highly encourage you to join Master Money Academy. We will be able to help you through that process. Well, this is where I'm spending a lot of time with people is in Master Money Academy. Again, we have the step-by-step roadmap at Master Money Academy of exactly what to do with your next dollar. I do weekly coaching calls in there. We have small groups of other people who are working on the same and common goals. And this year in Master Money Academy, we are, every single month, each of us are working on a specific goal. So for January, we were actually working on setting and achieving our goals and putting together our systems. In February, we're going to be working on relationships and how to develop systems in relationships so that you guys are on the same page when it comes to money. Couples and money is a huge, huge topic.

• 1:03:34Andrew Giancola?

  So we're talking about that in February. In March, we're going to be talking about taxes, and the list goes on and on and on, and how to optimize your tax strategies and those types of things. We're going to have experts coming in. So there's so many cool things happening in Master Money Academy, where we are working on these common goals together and making sure we master our finances. So I highly encourage you to join us in Master Money Academy. We'd love to have you there and meet you inside. So thank you guys so much again for being here, and we'll see you on the next episode.