Listen Money Matters - Free your inner financial badass. This is not your father's boring personal finance show.

On this episode, we discuss our favorite money management and productivity tools, including Mint, Betterment, Lift, Evernote, and more. We believe in making money management as easy as possible.  With all of the apps and software out there, it’s easier than ever.  No need for complicated spreadsheets.  Everything you need can be downloaded right to your phone. Boosting your productivity will enhance your life.  From your health to your money, using the right tools can help you get the most out of your day. Mint is our favorite money managing app but it’s read only so you can’t transfer between accounts or make payments through it.  Most major banks will have an app that allows you to make certain transactions.  My bank is three long cross town blocks away and it’s cold.  I can deposit checks right through my phone as long as they are under $1000. Evernote is like a notebook that can be downloaded across all your devices.  Any information will be uploaded to all of your devices automatically. In Box Zero unifies all your e-mail accounts.  It helps you categorize things, delete, archive, and actionable items for later. Lift helps you build good habits.  Each time you preform the habit, flossing maybe, you “check in.”  After 21 days in a row, boom, you’ve developed a habit. There are plenty of ways to make life easier, take advantage of them. Show Notes Mint App (Free) – Online software and smartphone app that we use to keep an eye on our finances. We highly recommend it. Fidelity App (Free) – This is the online bank where Andrew has his checking account. Level App (Free) – This app didn’t work for Matt, but it seemed pretty cool. They have a really great video you can check out too. Betterment App (Free) – The easy way to invest. 1Password App ($17.99) – Andrew uses this app to keep all his passwords in one place on his phone. Matt’s awesome Boconi physical leather wallet ($30) that I think every man should own. It’s low-profile and totally bad ass! Stop putting paper money in a tri-fold wallet. That’s gotta be annoying. Evernote Software (Free) – The app we can’t exist without. It’s the best note-taking software that works on all devices. If you use Evernote, or just getting started, we recommend reading Evernote Essentials. Mailbox App (Free) – An extremely simple email app that utilizes Inbox Zero. Highly recommended if you use email, and I’m pretty sure that you do. Watch the video! Lift App (Free) – This is one of Matt’s favorites. It allows you to “check-in” to a habit to help you to develop GOOD habits. You gotta try it! He also wrote a post about Lift.

We chat with Omar Zenhom, co-creator of $100 MBA, an online business training community for entrepreneurs, about quitting his job and starting a business. We met Omar through the online community Fizzle.  He and his partner started Business Republic to help local businesses brand themselves more effectively. They have now started The $100 MBA, an online community and video training platform to teach people to run successfully on and offline businesses. Omar was teaching in Dubai, doing well, getting promoted but he always wanted to start his own thing.  He did side hustles while teaching but knew he would need to devote more time to them if he wanted to make one full time. He had about six months in savings when he made the leap but stretched that out to eighteen months by lowering his cost of living.  Although this is the first time I’ve ever heard of anyone lowering their expenses by moving to NYC. If you can work from home, you spend less money.  No lunch out, no dry cleaning, no commuting costs.  If you love the job you’re doing from home, you spend less money because you are fulfilled by the job and don’t have to shop to make yourself feel better. The flip side of all the freedom is the hours.  Chances are, if you start your own thing, you will have to spend more time at it.  But you can work the hours that suit you and not the arbitrary 9-5. Starting your own business isn’t for everyone.  If you have a family, they may not be on board.  If you aren’t really hungry, you likely won’t make it.  If you freak without the security of a regular paycheck, it’s probably not for you.  But for the intrepid among us, starting your own business is very rewarding. Show Notes $100 MBA:  Omar’s training site. Mint:  The easy way to manage money.

How does a currency just materialize, seemingly from thin air? Are they only for people who like buying drugs on the internet?  What is a Bitcoin? Want to know how to invest in Bitcoin? We’ll break down the mystery for you. What is Bitcoin? If you find the concept of cryptocurrency confusing and, well, cryptic – you are certainly not alone. In the last few months, people have been foaming at the mouth over Bitcoin raising its value to never seen before prices. I’m sure every day you hear someone talking about it, but many of us still don’t really understand what it is exactly. Bitcoin is the first decentralized digital cryptocurrency. It’s like a digital token that is made of a hash- a random string of numbers and characters. It has no physical backing and can be sent electronically from one user to another, anywhere in the world. Because there are a finite number of the coins, there is scarcity so the value constantly fluctuates. Bitcoin is not run by a single company or person- it’s run by a decentralized network of computers around the world (owned by regular people) that verify all transactions. Similar to how Wikipedia is maintained by a decentralized network of writers. How to invest in Bitcoin So, how can you get your hands on some of these? The easiest way to buy or sell digital currency is through an online platform like Coinbase, which is the most popular cryptocurrency platform in the world right now. With its super simple interface, it is very easy for first-time buyers to buy Bitcoins. It’s just like using any other online investment marketplace. First, you create an account or “digital currency wallet” where you can safely store your money. It’s not safe to store your cryptocurrency on an exchange wallet since you don’t have an access to your private key. But it’s convenient if you are trading every day. Next, connect your bank account so that you can exchange local currency into a digital currency. Boom, you’re done. You can start buying and selling currencies. Coinbase currently allows its customers to purchase and sell three of the most popular cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. How to use Bitcoins to buy things If you acquired some digital currency you might want to spend it at some point but where can you use it? Who accepts this imaginary currency as payment? What makes it worth anything? Same thing that makes a dollar worth anything.  A bunch of people got together and agreed that it had value. Without that, it’s just a piece of paper.  If you and I agree they have value, I can buy your TV for some magic beans. Silk Road was an anonymous online marketplace for illegal drugs.  They accepted Bitcoins because they are so hard to track and that’s one of the things that helped the currency gain traction. However today more business are accepting Bitcoin as a form of currency. You can buy and sandwich at Subway, sign up for Ok Cupid or buy a new couch on Overstock with Bitcoin but don’t try and buy bananas at your corner deli. Here is a list of other companies that accept Bitcoin as payment. Mining for Bitcoins In 2009 when the Bitcoin algorithm was created by Satoshi Nakamoto (pseudonym), a finite number of bitcoins that will ever exist was set: 21 million. As of today, more than 16 million are in circulation and that number is rising daily.

We interview Rebecca from Stapler Confessions to find out how she is paying off $125,000 of student loan debt and learn how we can pay off our debt too. Rebecca escaped her four year college with zero debt but things changed when she graduated law school. She came out with $125,000 in student loan debt. Rebecca married her law school sweet heart and he had the same amount of debt so all total, they were a quarter of a million dollars in debt.  The couple used the snow ball method and every month threw every extra dollar at the smallest loan payment. Rebecca’s husband works for a non-profit and uses an income based repayment plan.  If he works for the non-profit for 120 months and makes every payment, the rest of the loan will be forgiven.  This option is only available for federal loans, not private. Eventually, he stands to have about $50,000 in loans forgiven. Income based repayment is a good option for a lot of people.  Your monthly payment is based on your income.  It will generally extend the life of your loan but if you’re in a tight spot, it can help. Rebecca has an IRA and will max that out and then start tackling the next loan.  Rebecca does a budget, as we all should.  She keeps it on an Excel spread sheet and tracks the family spending in Mint. When it comes to the question of whether you should pay off low interest rates loans or invest in the market, Rebecca advises going with your gut.  Those loans, even the low interest ones, can be a heavy psychological burden. Student loans are burdensome but there are ways to pay them off faster and even have them partially forgiven.  Good luck to all us borrowers. Show Notes Stapler Confessions:  Rebbeca’s blog about personal finance and her love of Staples office supply stores! Mint:  The easy way to track your spending.

Investing can be scary but it’s a great way to make money.  We’ll explain why investing is nothing to fear. Get ready to open a Betterment account! Most of the scary stories you hear about people losing big in the market are from people who were trying to make a quick buck. We don’t recommend that. Investing is a long term proposition. You don’t have to have a finance degree or even really understand the stock market in order to invest and make money. You also don’t need to hire someone to invest your money for you.  This is the 21st Century, we have the technology to do it ourselves. It’s time you get over the fear of investing. Invest in market index funds that represents a broad swath of the market, like the S&P 500, which is a group of 500 companies which cover many aspects of the overall market.  Betterment is a great  tool for this kind of investing. Have a certain amount of money automatically invested ever month.  The money goes in without you having to do anything.  Set it and forget it.  The market will give you an average return of about 7%. Be greedy when others are fearful. When everyone else is panicking and selling low, that’s when you buy.  When everyone is going crazy buying high, be fearful in the face of their greed.  Works for Warren Buffett. It’s not handing over money to the market that causes mass losses.  It’s handing money over to a person.  Bernie Madoff is the most recent and most grotesque example of this. It wasn’t the market that was doing shady stuff with that money, it was Madoff. The point is, just do it already!  Did you learn how to fly a plane yourself before you took your first flight?  No, you didn’t.  The same with the market.  You don’t have to understand it, you only have to do it. Show Notes Betterment:  The easy way for beginner’s to invest. Mint:  The smart way to track your spending.    

Certified financial planner Jeff Rose of Good Financial Cents joins us to discuss money mistakes he made and how he and we can overcome them. As a new comer to the finance world, it’s comforting to hear stories from professionals about mistakes they’ve made in the past.  It can happen to the best of us! Jeff fell for a 401K swindle.  The program cost X but if he waited (giving him time to ask for advice or do some research) the price suddenly goes up.  So act now!  He did and not only was he out $8,000 but the 401K wasn’t even set up properly and he had to pay someone else to fix it. Jeff got what he thought was a hot tip on a penny stock from a client.  He lost about $5,000 in that little venture.  Don’t buy stocks you don’t know anything about. Andrew invested in Lehman Brothers which doesn’t even exist anymore.  Worse than that, he was working for them at the time so lost his shirt and his job. Jeff is a fan of Betterment and right now Betterment is in the lead of an experiment pitting several different investment platforms against each other.  He also agrees that investing is a long term endevour.  Buy and hold. Motif is another recommendation.  You choose a “motif,” tech for example and you buy that type of stock spread out over thirty companies. Roth IRA’s require a little more research than just shoving money into a 401K and Jeff likes that option because it forces you to do some learning which ultimately will make you a better, more informed investor. Everyone makes money mistakes but if we can learn from them, then it wasn’t a completely wasted experience. Show Notes Good Financial Cents:  Jeff’s site dedicated to guiding your toward financial freedom. Betterment:  The easy way to invest. Money Under 30:  One of Jeff’s recommended sites. Soldier of Finance:  Jeff’s book about taking charge of your money.

Caleb Wojcik, co-founder of Fizzle, joins us to discuss managing small business finances and recommends his favorite tools to make the job easier. Matt and Andrew were excited to talk to Caleb because they met through Fizzle.co. Fizzle is an online resource and forum for entrepreneurs looking to start an online business. Because of what Caleb helped to build, Listen, Money Matters exists. Caleb manages the finances for several small businesses including Fizzle, his website, CalebWojcik.com and his wife’s photography company JenWojcikPhotography.com. Caleb recommends paying small business taxes quarterly.  It saves you getting a big bill at the end of the year that you weren’t expecting.  Managing finances for you business doesn’t mean you have to do it alone.  A skilled accountant can make the process much easier. Xero is a web based program that is a sexier version of QuickBooks.  You can track spending and even create invoices through the program.  For his personal finances, Caleb used a spread sheet for two and a half years, hand entering every transaction. His wife understandably didn’t want to use the spread sheet so they started using Mint.  Eventually they plan to use You Need A Budget.  Caleb still misses his spread sheet though. If you’re thinking about making the leap from working a 9-5 to working for yourself, having six to twelve months of expenses saved is a good rule of thumb. Managing money for your small business is one of the most important aspects of running it but it doesn’t have to be the most time consuming if you partner with a good accountant and use some of the great technology designed to make it easier. Show Notes Fizzle: online resource for those looking to start a small business online and offline.  Check out their podcast too. Xero: Xero is a complete online application to run small business finances.

Having a good credit score makes life easier and cheaper. Even if you’ve tanked your credit, we’ll give you some ways to bring the number back up. You don’t have to wait seven years to start improving your credit score. There are a few tricks to get that number out of the red. Having a good credit score can save you thousands of dollars over a lifetime. It makes you eligible for lower interest rates for car loans and mortgages. Some jobs even require a credit check. The biggest factors in your credit score are: Paying your credit card and loan bills on time. Using less than 20 percent of your total credit line. Avoiding mistakes that result in bad marks to your score (like not paying your bill on time or going into collections). You can lower your utilization by asking for an increase in your limit. Don’t close a credit account. It lowers utilization and reduces the length of your credit history. You don’t have to use the card a lot, just put a recurring payment on it to keep it open. If you have several credit cards, put small, recurring payments on each. More payments across more cards will boost your score. Set them to auto pay so you won’t miss a payment. Paying on time is the biggest factor for your score so even if you can’t pay the entire balance, pay something on time. If you have such bad credit or non-existent credit, you can get a secured credit card to start rebuilding or building your credit. You put down a deposit and that amount is your credit limit. After a time, you can switch over to a regular credit card. A bad credit score isn’t the end of the world but you should do what you can to improve it. By taking intentional steps to build your credit now, you will have an easier time being approved for loans and credit cards in the future. Working on your credit allows you to make an investment in your future that will lead to tangible benefits. Getting Your Credit Under Control Before you can begin to build your credit score, you will need to do a little bit of damage control. If you have bad credit because of late payments, outstanding debts or home liens, you will need to address the root cause of your current score. You must fully assess your situation, re-organize your finances and put yourself on the path to manageable debt. Below you will find some helpful tips when determining how to improve your credit score fast. Assess your score You won’t be able to effectively solve a problem that you don’t fully understand. Many people know that their credit is bad, but they aren’t sure of the scale or scope of the issue. There are several consumer credit reporting agencies that offer free credit reports upon request. For example, Credit Karma is a great tool to get yourself a free credit report. Order a copy and read through it carefully so that you can check your ...

Rich people are different than you and me. How are they different, though? This list of 21 rich habits will teach you how to become rich and put you on the path to wealth. Dave Ramsey published a list of twenty things the rich do every day. Most of these things are habits. My take on this is that rich people have good habits. Habits that make them more successful, healthier, and smarter. And those things can help you accumulate wealth. Once you have achieved a certain level of wealth, you can focus on yourself rather than on money. Discipline seems to be the other thing all of these qualities have in common. It takes more discipline to cook a healthy meal than to order take out. It takes more discipline to save money than to spend it.  Let’s take a look at each of the twenty one habits. 1. Junk Food “70% of wealthy eat less than 300 junk food calories per day. 97% of poor people eat more than 300 junk food calories per day.” If you don’t feed yourself well, you don’t feel well, and you can’t think well. And that makes it hard to have the energy and focus to pursue your goals. Eating well can mean lots of different things, Paleo, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian. Eating poorly is easier to define, and we all know it when we see it. No one thinks a cake is healthier than a carrot. You can drill down into all sorts of minutia when it comes to healthy eating, but the basics are pretty, well, basic! Eat a lot of vegetables, eat a little fruit. Eat plenty of protein and healthy fats. Eliminate refined carbs and keep the slow-burning carbs to a minimum if you’re trying to lose weight. It’s really no more complicated than that. 2. Gambling “23% of wealthy gamble. 52% of poor people gamble.” People making less than $13,000 a year spend 9% of their income on lottery tickets. There is a reason the lottery is called the Fool’s Tax. There is nothing wrong with buying the occasional lottery ticket for fun or setting aside a certain amount of money you can afford to lose on a trip to Vegas, but if you’re spending 9% of your income on gambling, you will never be rich. 3. Singular Goals “80% of wealthy are focused on accomplishing some single goal. Only 12% of the poor do this.” Wealthy people have a goal.  And not just a vague goal but a clearly defined goal and a plan to achieve it. It’s great that you want to quit your job and start your own business, but if you have no plan of action to make that happen, it’s not really a goal. It’s just a daydream. For any goal you have, getting out of debt, saving 50% of your income, losing 50 pounds, there is a world of information out there that will show you the steps you need to take to achieve it. 4. Exercise “76% of wealthy exercise aerobically four days a week. 23% of poor do this.” Exercising goes hand in hand with eating well. Regular exercise helps to boost mood and energy. It helps control weight, makes you sleep better, and makes sex better. Exercise is especially important for those of us who have sedentary jobs. Sitting all day is terrible for you, and while exercise doesn’t offset it entirely, it would be worse if you were doing no exercise. Exercise is like diet; there is no one size fits all.

Peer to peer lending can be a great way to make money for lenders and for borrowers to get help without using a bank.  We’ll explain how it works. Peer to peer lending is basically crowdsourcing loans. Crowdsourcing or crowdfunding, means getting a bunch of people together to create something. Kickstarter  is a crowdfunding site that allows creators to raise money for different projects. In the past, if you wanted a loan for a house, car, home repair, and consolidating credit card debt, you had to go to a bank and apply for a loan.  The bank could approve or deny based on your credit history, how much you make, and what your overall financial situation looked like. Now, sites like Lending Club put the big scary banks aside and allow real humans to lend you money. As a borrower, you can now apply for a loan that could be funded by a bunch of personal investors instead of one big bank.  Just like any loan, you pay it back with interest. For investors, this is very appealing, because they can lend a few borrow small amounts and continuously collect interest as the borrower pays back the debt.  Lending Club has collected tons of data on the borrowers which gives lenders a lot of information when deciding whom to lend to. About 50% of LC loans are people taking loans to pay off their credit card debt at a much lower interest rate. If you are struggling with credit card debt, LC will be a great option for you. LC works with defaulted borrowers to help get them back on track.  Their success rate is better than that of credit card companies.  LC will work with a borrower in default rather than just harassing them with threatening phone calls. Andrew is killing it with LC, he’s averaging 18% returns.  Investing in this type of peer to peer lending is not for beginners.  There is some risk involved.  But if you have a few extra bucks to play with that won’t hurt too much to lose, give it a try. Show Notes Lending Club:  Crowd sourced loans. Andrew’s Article:  Andrew details the success he has had as a LC investor.  

It’s that time of year again, New Year’s Resolutions.  Matt and Andrew discuss their resolutions, all the biggies, money, health, and fitness. Are you making resolutions?  Have you made them for so many years running that they’re more like traditions now?  Yeah, us too.  Let’s see what we can do to get serious this year. The key to creating a good New Year’s Resolution list is to keep it actionable and measurable. For instance, just “getting healthy” or “make more money” isn’t really a good place to start — how will you know if you’re successful, and how do you get started? Be more specific.  Change getting healthy to eating three servings of veg a day.  (You need more but if you’re eating next to none, this is a good place to start.) Change make more money to devoting an hour a day to working on your side business. What you don’t need to accomplish resolutions is motivation.  What you need is discipline.  Discipline leaves no wiggle room when you don’t feel like doing something.  If you rely on motivation, you won’t do anything when it wanes.  Discipline is what carries you through when you don’t feel like it. Surround yourself with things that help you reach your goals.  Like minded friends, books, podcasts, Ted Talks.  It helps to keep your goal in the forefront during your day to day life. Even if you fall off the wagon, it’s not the end of your resolution.  You can re-set things anytime.  You messed up, that’s okay.  Figure out what caused you to get off track and what you can do to avoid it happening again when the same obstacle comes up. We can have this same discussion next year or you can finally resolve your resolution. Show Notes Black Flip Cocktail:  It’s like a frothy chocolate milkshake with alcohol!  Try this recipe. The Simple Dollar and I Will Teach You To Be Rich are two books Matt recommends on personal finance.

  In this episode, we talk to one of our listeners, Hersh, about his personal financial profile and offer up some advice. Full credit to Hersh for this show idea. He found our podcast through an Android app on his phone and became a huge fan. He reached out to us via Facebook and wanted to come on the show to copy a segment from Suze Orman called “How Am I Doing?” We thought it would be cool to bring him own, find out what his financial situation is and do our best to help him improve it. Hersh is a successful air traffic controller with a wife and newborn son from up state New York. He owns a home, two cars, has no credit card debt, and paid off his student loans by taking a loan from himself via his TSP fund. He’s now currently paying off that loan. Hersh has some rental income and gets some overtime at work.  He has a college fund for his baby son.  Hersh is making some good money but essentially living pay check to pay check because all his spare money goes to his loan. Hersh is not doing much investing and he doesn’t have an emergency fund.  He needs to take some of the money toward the loan and start a rainy day fund. At least one month of expenses, but three to six is the gold standard. Betterment is the perfect place to stash that emergency fund.  You are making crap interest if that money is sitting in your checking account so you might as well be getting those gains. Overall Hersh is doing well but he has an expensive lifestyle and no emergency fund and those are the things he can improve upon. Show Notes Betterment:  The smart way to invest. Mint:  Track your own expensive lifestyle.  

What is the 4% rule?  It is the magic formula for early retirement.  Make your money work for you while you no longer have to work. If you want to retire way before 65, listen up.  This is how you can do it. What is the 4% Rule? The 4% rule is a benchmark that can be used to calculate how much money to withdraw from your retirement accounts every year for at least thirty years without depleting those accounts and outliving your money. In 1994 William Bengen, a financial planner published a study showing the results of testing a number of rates of withdrawal based on historical rates of return. Bengen concluded that 4% was the highest rate that could be withdrawn for at least 30 years without running out of money. Keep it Simple Silly The rule has stuck around for so long in part due to its simplicity. A lot of us don’t like math and complicated formulas, and that’s why the 4% rule has been popular. There are no complicated formulas involved. Even the most math or financially unsavvy among us can understand it and use it as the basis of our retirement plan, and we don’t need to pay an expensive advisor to figure it out for us. Work It Here’s how the 4% rule works. You withdraw 4% of your retirement money. If you have $500,000 saved, you would withdraw and live on $20,000. But you need to account for inflation too, so you increase the amount of that first withdraw ($20,000) to reflect the impact inflation has on your buying power. If annual inflation is 2%, the second year of retirement, you take out $20,400. The next year, $20,800, and so on. You continue these 4% withdrawals and the extra amounts to preserve your buying power no matter what the market is doing or how your portfolio is performing. Adding in the amounts to account for inflation will ensure that you have the same purchasing power in your first year of retirement as your last. Allocate those Assets Bengen and subsequent researchers currently recommend an asset allocation between 50-75% stocks, as close to 75% as you can tolerate and still sleep at night. That sounds high for retirement, but researchers who study probability in the stock market are more optimistic that stocks will outperform bonds over the long term and give you real returns. That allocation is a shift from what was recommended in the original study. The initial recommendation was a 50/50 allocation. Twenty years ago the yield on a three-month Treasury bill was 6%. As late as 2002 the five-year US Treasury yield was 4.5%. But those days are gone. Today a three-month Treasury bill is at a paltry 0.4%, and the five-year yield is an anemic 1.67%. Even your crummy checking account pays better than 0.4%! This is why some people feel the 4% rule had its time and place but is no longer relevant. A Variety of Variables The 4% rule is just a rule of thumb and as such, isn’t one size fits all. There are some things to consider if you want to follow the 4% rule for retirement. The most important variable is having enough money saved for retirement. If you only have $10,000 saved for retirement, and you apply the 4% rule, you would be living on $400 a year which is not enough no matter how many frugal life hacks you employ. People are living longer than ever, and our money has to outlive us. At the same time, medical expenses are not getting any cheaper so that will be an important part of calculating how much money you will need in retirement. While none of us can know how long we’ll live or how much we’ll have to spend on healthcare, there are some clues. How long did your parents and grandparents live? Do you have a chronic disease like diabetes or a family history of a chronic disease? If you’re married, look at the same markers for your spouse. What are your yearly expenses and how much could you...

You can let something like Betterment pick your stocks but if you’re ready to dabble on your own, we’ll teach you how to do the job yourself. Andrew researches and buys individual stocks in addition to investing in ETF’s through Vanguard and Betterment.  He’s had some clunkers but the good has vastly outweighed the bad.  We’ll find out what criteria he uses to choose what to buy. Buy only what you know and understand.  If you love Apple products, buy Apple stock.  Matt bought Sirius without knowing anything more than Howard Stern was heading over there.  And he lost money. This criteria alone will considerably shorten your list. Stock price doesn’t have to be such a big factor in your choice.  You don’t even have to buy a full share. Bulls and bears make money and pigs go to the abattoir so don’t get greedy!  Be happy with your 7% and let compounding interest take the strain. Read some news!  And from reputable sources, not whatever Jim Kramer shouted at you.  Not just in the business section either. If you’re just getting your feet wet, things like the Wall Street Journal can seem like they’re in a different language. More general news will be worded in a way that is easier for the average person without a finance degree to understand. Read a few international papers to get a broader perspective, Le Monde, The Guradian, Der Spiegel.  Chrome will translate the pages for you if you don’t speak that language. The American media seems to love violence and sex more than the international media so there will be less Kardashian coverage to wade through. You don’t have to pick individual stocks to be a good investor but it’s not as hard or intimidating as you think either.  Good luck! Show Notes Betterment:  If you don’t want to pick your own, let Betterment do it for you.  

We want you to be sensible with your purchases.  But sometimes you just need a big one!  (Don’t we all). When is a big purchase justifiable? The topic for this episode came from a listener. How and when do you justify buying big ticket items like a laptop, high-tech camera, or new TV? Kristen Sometimes you really do need a new computer, your current one is dead.  Or you need a car that isn’t in the shop every month costing you money.  Those are legit reasons for big cash outlays.  Wanting a big ass TV when you are in credit card debt has no justification. Put anything expensive on a 30 day list.  If at the end of thirty days, you still want it, than it may be a justifiable purchase. If it’s not something you really need, chances are you will have forgotten all about it by the end of the thirty days. If you’re making a large purchase, see if the seller has a 0% APR card you can open and put the purchase on.  You have to be on top of this though and make certain to pay the entire balance off before the 0% term ends or you will be in a world of shit. Just having the cash for something is not enough justification.  You could invest that money.  Would the thing you want to buy or do make you happy (for more than a few hours) or improve your life?  A great experience counts.  In fact, paying for a great, memorable experience has been proven to provide much longer lasting happiness than buying a thing. Once you have justified your purchase, do your research.  Check out But It For Life on Reddit.  There are threads dedicated to the best of anything you could possibly ever want to buy.  And by best, I don’t necessarily mean the most expensive.  Quality isn’t always linked solely to cost. Sometimes we need to buy things.  Just learn to distinguish between a want and a need.   Show Notes Motherf**king Bike: A hilarious YouTube video about riding bikes. Mint:  The easy way to track your spending. (photo by Anders.Bachmann)