5 things everyone should do with their money

In the midst of a busy season in my life, I've been juggling multiple responsibilities: Managing our Airbnb rentals, taking care of our expanding animal farm, preparing for a hundred-mile run, attending a friend's wedding, and expecting a baby have all contributed to the excitement and growth in our lives. While it comes with challenges, I embrace these opportunities as fun problems to solve. Today's episode focuses on five simple and effective ways to optimize your finances. These strategies will help you save time, make more money, and enhance your wealth-building journey. They are easy steps that yield quick wins, boosting your financial progress. Let's dive in and make your wealth-building process more efficient.

Key Highlights

[00:00:00] Holistic Money Podcast intro

[00:00:57] Update on what’s happening in my life

[00:03:28] Introduction to today’s topic: 5 things everyone should do with their money

[00:04:20] #1: Using a high-interest savings account

[00:06:35] #2: Stop banking at large national banks

[00:09:16] Great online banks to consider

[00:09:44] #3: Have a quarterly money date

[00:10:50] My Live Money Date on June 1st, 2023

[00:11:44] #4: Automate your savings and your investing contributions

[00:13:40] #5: Be mindful of the way that you talk about yourself with money and the way that you talk about money in general

[00:16:32] Holistic Money Podcast outro

Notable Quotes

• High-interest savings accounts are the only great thing about inflation because interest rates are much higher than they used to be. So now banks are paying you much more to keep your money in a savings account.
• For those of you that don't use savings accounts because you like to pad your checking account with a lot of money, or perhaps you do have a savings account, but it's at a large national bank, I highly consider you make a move to a high-interest savings account because you were losing out on free money.
• The golden rule of subscriptions is to make sure if you last used it for at least the past three months; it is time to cancel it, no questions asked.
• A lot of mindset drama tends to stand between most of you automating your savings and your investing contributions because you're afraid you don't have enough money to do this monthly or you'll overdraw your account. But I just want you to step back and question this thought process. The reason why is that automating your money will ensure that you are consistently investing and saving monthly, even if it is a small amount.
• Investing and saving consistently is like a muscle you strengthen and build up, similar to going to the gym. As your investment accounts grow in your savings accounts, you feel more secure, safer, and more motivated with your money.
• There's so much power in your words, language, and how you perceive yourself. I want you all to be mindful of how you describe yourself with money, even if you may not believe that you’re amazing with money, and you’re strategic and understand everything happening. You can start making small shifts in how you've perceived yourself with money simply b

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Transcript

0:01

Hello and welcome to the Holistic Money Podcast. I'm your host, certified financial planner and money mindset coach Whitney Morrison. Over the past seven years, I've taken myself from credit card debt and no savings to a seven figure net worth. I did this without a budget or a restrictive money plan, but instead, smart, sustainable wealth building strategies combined with changing my relationship with money. In this podcast, you'll learn the ins and outs of my no budget philosophy, practical wealth building strategies and key mindset shifts to make it happen. There is no shortage of information out there to tell you what to do with money, but teaching you how to think and feel about money. That's my secret sauce. If you've been waiting for a podcast that gives you actionable strategies to not only build wealth, but also feel really good while you're doing it, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to the Holistic Money Podcast. I am going through a season in my life right now where everything feels so busy. Craig and I finished our year that we've been working on for over six months, and we finally put it on Airbnb a couple weeks ago. So now instead of managing just one rental on our property, we're managing two. Not to mention we are getting another. Lama, we just got two llamas about a month ago, top of that, Craig has a hundred mile run coming up with a lot of traveling and training camps. My good friend Dana's getting married. plus we're about to have a baby And as you can see as I'm listing off all of these things, it just feels like there's so much going on right now. So I'm just really starting to examine our lives and how we spend our time and how we could be more efficient with our time and who we need to hire in order to make our lives work. So this brings me to today's episode where I want to talk about five quick, easy. No brainer things that you can do with your money to either. I make more money with less of your time to save you money, or just generally be more efficient on your wealth building, dirty. Everything that I'm listening in this episode is going to be simple and straightforward. And an easy step that you can take in order to make your wealth building process. Like I said, more efficient, what I mean by more efficient. It's either going to save you money, make you money faster, or make you money with less of your time and energy. Whenever I'm working with my clients. These tend to be the first things that I'll look for in things that I suggest. Just to get these quick wins with their money because they feel really good. And because they simply and easily help you accelerate your wealth building journey so let's get started. The first no brainer thing that all of you should be doing with your money is using a high interest savings account. A high interest savings account is exactly what it sounds like. It is a savings account that pays you a higher interest rate than large national bank. So for example, if you're banking at a Wells Fargo or a chase or bank of America, it is very unlikely that you have a high interest savings account. You traditionally find high interest savings account at online banks and a big reason why online banks offer these high interest savings accounts is because they don't have the same cost that national banks have. So they don't have branches and big buildings that they've invested in. For you to be able to go in and talk to someone about their money. However, they tend to invest a lot of money in their customer service and their online frameworks and online portals. So that you can have just as good of an experience with an online bank as you would with a bank that you can actually walk in. High interest savings accounts are pretty much the only great thing about inflation. Because interest rates are so much higher than they used to be. So now banks are actually paying you a lot more money to keep your money in a savings accounts. So today is May 23rd, 2023. And the interest rate that high interest savings accounts are paying is somewhere between three and a half to four and a half percent. So let's say you kept$20,000 in your savings account. This would be about$900 a year that you get in free money simply because you have your money invested in a high interest savings account. This truly is a no-brainer for you to make more money on your savings. You don't have to go to work for it. You don't have to trade your precious time. And energy. This is just free money that comes into your bank accounts simply because you're using a high interest savings account. For those of you that don't use savings accounts because you like to pad your checking account with a lot of money, or perhaps you do have a savings account, but it's at a large national bank. I highly highly consider you make the move to a high interest savings account because you were losing out on free money. And this brings me to the number two thing that all of you should consider doing with your money. And that is to stop banking at large national banks, simply because. Number one, they don't offer high interest savings account. And number two, because they nickel and dime you for all different kinds of fees. I actually just went through and Googled. What are all the fees that you pay at large national banks? And there are maintenance fees, account maintenance fees, overdraft fees, foreign transaction fees, stopped payment fees. ATM fees, replacing your debit card fees and all of these things. Eat away at your money. When you move to an online bank, you are not going to be presented with the same amount of fees that you have to pay at these large national banks. Simply because like I mentioned, the overhead for an online bank is much less than these large national banks and they're able to be more efficient in their business operations. And how they charge whenever you're banking at a Wells Fargo or bank of America, you have to have a minimum account balance in order to waive fees. And you have to play their game in order for you to avoid paying them more money. For frankly, you lending them money to be able to lend out at a higher interest rate because that's what banks do. We give them money and savings accounts, and then they turn around. And lend that money out and make money off of our money. So, not only are you giving them money. But they're also targeting you so they can turn around and make more money on your money. When you really sit down and think about that, it just doesn't make sense to continue using. These banks when they cost so much money and there are great alternatives. That towards you.$0 and account fees, ATM fees. Wire fees that you can very simply and easily move your money to. Most online banks allow you to do the exact same things that you can do at large national banks. However, you just aren't able to walk into a branch location. The only issue that I have found. At the bank that I bank at, which is ally bank, it's an online bank is if I ever want to deposit cash into my accounts, which is very rare these days. I will have to send a money order to the bank for them to actually deposit the money. And I have to send that in the mail. Other than that I can use other banks ATM's to pull money out of my accounts. They waived the ATM fees. I can do wire transfers, online banking, and they are FDI CE insured, just like large national banks, some great online banks to consider. R, like I said, ally bank is one where I bank. Betterment also has some savings accounts that pay pretty good interest rates. That could be a place for you to check out if you have your investment portfolio there just Google best online national banks. And you can find articles that go through and tell you the pros and cons of all of these banks, but it is a no brainer. Move to start moving your banking to an online bank. The third no-brainer thing that all of you need to do with your money is to have a quarterly money date and an your money date. You need to go through your reoccurring subscriptions and cancel anything that you have not used in the past three months. Whenever Craig and I have our money dates. We review our bills and we look at our subscriptions and inevitably, we ended up saving ourselves like a hundred to$200 a month, canceling subscriptions. I remember looking and seeing one time we were subscribed to Disney plus two times. That we had hulu but we weren't using it that often or there was a subscription that i had signed up through my phone And i didn't even realize i was paying a monthly payment for or an annual payment for this is something you want to check at least once a quarter and i promise you you're going to save yourself at least a hundred to$200 a month if you just regularly get in the practice of doing this And the golden rule is to make sure if you haven't used it for at least the past three months it is time to cancel it no questions asked. By the way, if you don't have a quarterly practice to have a money date with you and your honey and your money, then I invite you to join me live actually tonight. June 1st, I am holding my first live money date. This is something that I'm going to be doing every single quarter. Because it's been such a transformative practice in my life, and now I want to bring it to you all in money dates. In these money dates, I'm going to take you through a simple four step process. That i use in my personal money dates to help me make sure i am intentional and clear on exactly what i'm doing with my money for the next 90 days you do not want to miss this i promise you this is going to be the most profitable date that you've ever been on You can register for these money dates@wwwdotholisticmoneycourse.com. Forward slash money date it is$25. And believe me friend it is well worth the time and money investment The fourth no-brainer thing that all of you should be doing with your money is to automate your savings and your investing contributions. There's a lot of mindset drama that tends to sand in between most of you actually doing this because you're afraid that you don't have enough money to do this on a monthly basis, or you're going to overdraw your account. But I just want you to step back and start to question this thought process. The reason why is because automating your money will actually ensure that you are consistently investing and saving on a monthly basis, even if it is a small amount. So I want you to look at what is it that you are choosing to spend money on that you don't question at all? Like, what are your thoughts about paying your rent or your activities or. Your mortgage payment or going out to eat. Those are things that you don't necessarily tell yourself over and over again. Oh, I'll just do this. If I have enough money, these are just things that you automatically take care of every single month without actually questioning them. What would change in your life? If you started to integrate even a small amount of money. Into the same thought process for automatic savings and automatic investing. Investing in saving consistently is like a muscle that you start to strengthen and build up similar to going to the gym. And as you see your investment accounts growing in your savings accounts, growing. You start to feel more secure and more safe and more motivated with your money. So even if it is just a small amount that you are consistently contributing to these accounts every single month, I want you all to automate it. So you don't have to use your precious time and energy to make the decision of whether you should or should not do it every month. It's something that just automatically happens. It will help you be more consistent on your wealth building journey and build wealth without using your time and your energy. The fifth and final no-brainer thing that all of you should be doing with your money is to be mindful the way that you talk about yourself with money and the way that you talk about money in general. Language is a reflection of your thoughts and your thoughts have a lot of power over your life and the way that you choose to show up to your money and choose to show up to your life in general. So if you were someone who's consistently saying, oh, I'm just not a money person, or I'm just not that good with money, or I'm just not a math person. I've never been good with money. I want you to pause. And sir, to reframe the way that you are actually talking about yourself with money, because there's so much power in your words and your language and the way that you perceive yourself. I want you all to be mindful. In the way that you describe yourself with money, even if you may not believe that your amazing with money in your strategic and you understand everything that's going on. You can start to make small shifts. In the way that you've been perceiving yourself with money, simply by talking differently about yourself. So, instead of saying I'm bad with money, you can say I'm learning how to get better with my money. And I want you to notice how differently that feels in your body than continuously just telling yourself, oh, I'm not a money person, because guess what being a money person is just a thought that you have about yourself. It's not like you come out of the womb, being a money person or not a money person. It's just an identity that you get to claim and start believing for yourself. And I want you to really consider the impact of believing that you're just not a money person or you're not good with money or that you're not good at math or any other low value thought that you have about yourself or that you have about money. And slowly just be mindful of the words that come out of your mouth, how you speak about money in general, how you speak about yourself with money in general. Because, like I said, they're a reflection of your thoughts and your thoughts create the way that you feel act in the results that you actually get with your money. So be mindful of the way that you speak about your money and start to look for small. Shifts in the way that you are good with money and you are growing with money and you are getting better every single day. And all of the mistakes that you actually made with money are just simply lessons for you to learn from. And continue to grow over time. All right. Y'all. Thank you so much for listening to this episode today. If you liked it, please give me a review. Tell me what you liked. I love hearing from you, and if you have a friend that you think could benefit from the holistic money podcast, then send it over to them. I will see you next week in our episode. And I hope you have a wonderful week. Have you ever built a budget but within weeks felt exhausted by the spreadsheets, the upkeep, or the restrictive spending categories? If so, you are not alone. Budgeting has never worked for me, so I created a new way, money mapping. Money mapping has all of the things you need to be successful in your wealth building journey. It's simple, organized and automated, but most importantly, it offers a completely new way to relate to money and manage it in your life. If you're ready to kick off your no budget strategy for building wealth, sign up for my Free Money Map training at www.holisticmoney.com/money map. Here's to building wealth with ease.