That thrilling moment when your money finally hits in your bank account can be both exciting and overwhelming. But what should you do next to make the most of it?

Let’s dive into a strategic approach to managing your finances effectively—from crafting a budget to tracking your spending habits.

1. Budgeting: Master the Skill of Creating a Budget That Works for You

Think of budgeting as your financial compass. It guides you to where you want to go financially. But how do you create a budget that truly works for you?

• Assess Your Income and Expenses: Begin by understanding all your income sources and fixed expenses. This will give you a clear view of your financial standing.
• Set Clear Goals: Whether it’s saving for a house, a vacation, or retirement, having specific goals can drive your budgeting efforts.
• Leverage Budgeting Apps: Tools like Mint, YNAB, or PocketGuard can make budgeting simple and intuitive, helping you stay on track in real-time.

Budgeting isn’t about limiting joy; it’s about opening up opportunities to achieve what truly matters to you.

2. Saving: Learn Strategies to Build a Robust Savings Plan

Savings are the cornerstone of financial security. But how can you ensure your savings plan is rock solid?

• Prioritize Savings: Treat saving as a mandatory expense. Allocate a portion of your income to savings before covering other costs.
• Automate the Process: Set up automatic transfers to your savings account, making saving a seamless habit.
• Build an Emergency Fund: Aim to save three to six months’ worth of expenses to cushion against life’s uncertainties.

Every dollar saved is a step closer to your financial goals.

3. Investing: Discover Ways to Grow Your Wealth Strategically

Investing is a powerful way to make your money work for you. Here’s how you can start:

• Know Your Risk Appetite: Understanding whether you’re risk-averse or risk-seeking can guide your investment choices.
• Diversify Investments: Spread your investments across different asset classes to balance potential risks and rewards.
• Seek Knowledge: Utilize resources such as financial advisors or online courses to enhance your investment acumen.

Investing isn’t just for the wealthy; it’s for anyone ready to plan for the future.

4. Paying Off Debt: Get Effective Tips on Reducing Your Debt Burden

Debt can feel like a heavy burden, but with the right tactics, it’s manageable:

• Catalog Your Debts: List everything you owe, including interest rates and minimum payments to prioritize repayments.
• Focus on High-Interest Debt: Tackle debts with the highest interest rates first to save on interest costs.
• Consider Debt Consolidation: Consolidating debts into one payment can simplify management and potentially lower interest rates.

Every payment reduces the weight of debt, bringing financial freedom closer.

5. Tracking Your Spending: Understand How to Monitor Your Spending Habits Effectively

Keeping tabs on where your money goes is essential for financial discipline. Here’s how to do it:

• Use Digital Tools: Apps like Expensify or Goodbudget can categorize and track your spending effortlessly.
• Monthly Reviews: Regularly review your spending habits to identify patterns and adjust your budget accordingly.
• Spot Areas for Improvement: Look for unnecessary expenses you can cut to better align with your financial goals.

Tracking spending is about gaining control and making informed choices.

By budgeting effectively, saving diligently, investing wisely, reducing debt, and tracking spending, you lay the foundation for a secure and prosperous financial future.

So, what steps will you take when your money hits your bank account? Remember, each decision holds the potential to unlock endless possibilities.

Take our free quiz and uncover whether you’re a Budget Boss, Freshman Investor, or Wealth Designer. It’s a great way to get personalized insights that can really help you on your financial journey!

Start the Quiz Now.

I’ve been fascinated with the stock market from as young as I can remember. Every bit of knowledge, know-how and strategy about investing, financial literacy and the stock market I soaked up like a sponge. 

My love of it took me to college and grad school, then to my dream job working with high net worth individuals and I loved it. But I started to question why I could only work with people who were already rich. 

I wanted to help the people who wanted to better their life, fund their dreams, pay off debt and didn’t know where to start.

So, I started Finances Demystified to do just that. Ever since then I’ve been teaching anyone and everyone with a desire to better their financial future knock those goals out of the park. 

After several years spent teaching thousands and thousands of students about the stock market, investing and actionable ways they can use it to better their lives, I’ve noticed a lot of myths coming up over and over. 

Read on for the most common stock market myths I’ve heard and the real truth behind them! 

Investing is just gambling. 

FALSE! 

First of all I would NEVER build my family’s financial plan on something as risky as gambling. Investing and the stock market often get looped in with this Las Vegas past time, but that’s just simply not accurate. 

Gambling is based purely on luck. Sure, some people take the time to calculate their sports bets, but at the end of the day it’s still luck. Also, gambling doesn’t serve a greater purpose or provide the economy much other than local jobs. 

Investing on the other hand is not guaranteed, but it’s not based on luck. Do people get lucky? Of course. 

Is luck the strategy of savvy investors? Absolutely not. 

If you download an investing app and blindly throw money in without an understanding of what you are doing, then yes, it’s a little more like gambling. 

Take a class (like my FREE investing master class 😉) and investing is even less like gambling when you are armed with know-how! 

You need to be rich. 

FALSE! 

Whether you have $1, $1,000 or $100,000 to invest the amount does not matter! Here’s what matters:

💥 Just start – somewhere, anywhere, any amount 

💥 Have a plan! Every dollar goes further when it has a purpose from planning what stocks will pay dividends to which ones you want to hold long-term, a plan will get you anywhere.

💥 Always be learning, reading, growing…do that and stock market success will snowball more and more. 

If a stock is in the news, you should buy it. 

FALSE!

This myth made a big splash not too long ago with the famous Game Stop fiasco, but the truth is, just because something is hot or newsworthy does not mean you should buy it. 

There are SOOOOO many cases where this strategy is just plain bad. For one, the increased visibility from being in the news can wind up inflating prices and those people with bad cases of FOMO buy anyway, even when the price reaches a level that feels too high. 

Instead, be strategic about what news items you allow to affect your decisions. If it’s skyrocketing prices on a stock, the odds are you missed the boat. The investors who had the insight to anticipate the rise before it happened and everyone knew about it – those are the big winners. 

Not the people who followed suit. 

You should trust someone more advanced with your money (like a dude on Wall Street) 

FALSE. 

And I only need to drop one name to prove it. 

Bernie Madoff. 

He was a trusted investor. One time chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange. 

But the people who trusted him lost everything. 

That’s not to say advisors and brokers are all stealing – most of them are not. However, YOU should at least have an understanding of where your money is going and what your returns are. 

You can invest for yourself and rock it. You can call in help (I’m an advisor for some of my clients and students!) and also rock it. 

The point is, don’t blindly hand your money over to someone. Know who they are, but most importantly, make sure they are transparent with you about where your money is going. 

Everyone should have a general understanding of investing either way. 

If you want to learn more about the stock market and how you can learn to dominate it, check out my free investing masterclass! Within one hour, you’ll learn my top strategies that I use to build wealth for myself and my family and how you can get started doing the same! 

Sign up for the free masterclass today! 

Risk is all around us. 

Falling in love – risky. 

Starting a business – risky. 

Taking a step into a casino – yep, risky. 

Our current culture acknowledges risk and encourages people to forge through despite it. 

We all want our voices heard, we all want to quit working jobs that don’t recognize our brilliance and we all want to stand up for what we believe is right – all actions that require some amount of risk. 

But, we know the risk is worth the reward. 

Why then, does risk ALWAYS come up as a reason someone isn’t ready to start investing? 

Because we are trained that money is not something to gamble with, and if you don’t understand investing then it can feel like gambling. 

As a financial planner, financial literacy advocate and founder of Finances Demystified, I spend a lot of my time showing people the exact strategies that reduce risk from investing and make it accessible to anyone, regardless of whether they have $10 or $10,000,000 in the bank. 

With a little training, anyone can easily see that investing is just as exciting and life-changing as falling in love or starting a business. A risk that is undoubtedly worth the final reward – financial freedom. 

So, how exactly do you manage risk when investing? Read on for some of my top tips! You can also take my free investing masterclass to learn more about the exact strategies I use in my everyday life.

Managing Risk When Investing

1. Diversify, diversify, diversify

The best way to mitigate risk when investing is to ensure you diversify! If you invest every available dollar into a single company; if that company dips, your entire net worth dips right along with it. 

Keep all your eggs spread amongst several baskets. 

Diversifying your investing goes beyond simply investing in multiple companies. It also means that you should diversify the types of investments you make; from long-term stock buying to options, mutuals, investment accounts specific for your children and more! 

If you want a run down of the main investing types I use, check out this free masterclass on everything you need to know to get started with investing.

2. Choose Companies You Believe In 

If you have an iPhone in your hand right now, it’s highly-likely you don’t believe Apple will ever fail as a company. In fact, you’ve entrusted them to be in business for long enough to be the sole holder of a lot of things you attach value to, like your photos, contacts and more. 

So, wouldn’t Apple be a good company to invest in?

When you choose companies you believe in and already follow, you’ll be a savvier investor than trying to understand what might increase or decrease the value of an oil and gas company. 

Look at a list of publicly traded companies, then look around your house. You’ll be surprised how many companies and products you use, love and financially support by buying their products you could actually own a piece of. 

3. Consistency Matters the Most 

 Some people wait to invest until they believe they are financially ready to invest, which typically means they are sitting on enough excess money that not having immediate access to it with their debit card wouldn’t be a big deal. 

Unfortunately, all that waiting for the right moment is losing money. Thanks to long-time growth and compound interest, the sooner you start, the more you’ll make. 

Anyone can start investing with as little as $5, so the amount you invest doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you are investing. This is not only a smart decision, but a way for investing to be more risk-free because you may not be as attached to $5 every week as you are to thousands of dollars. 

If you want to reap the rewards of investing, you have to start somewhere and you have to accept that risk is an inherent part of it, but not something to fear. 

Invest wisely, LEARN before you jump and you’ll soon forget that risk was ever a factor holding you back from a life that benefits from investing. 

Take my free investing masterclass for a run down on the whys, hows and don’t lose it all strategies that I use in my everyday life to support myself and my family.

Have you ever Googled a celebrity’s net worth? 

Like just browsing the internet, or watching Real Housewives and wondering, “How much money do those people have?” 

I’ll admit I’m guilty of doing this occasionally, even though I know it is hilariously inaccurate. And, as a business owner and public figure who speaks on financial literacy topics, I imagine some people even Google my name and my net worth, so, I’m going to share what my net worth is here and now. 

My net worth is…

GROWING. 

That’s right. It’s not a number, because everyone’s financial situation, mine included, changes ALL. THE. DAMN. TIME. 

Net worth is a fairly straight-forward calculation: 

Assets (like the money you have in the bank and the things you own) – Liabilities (like the amount left to pay on your mortgage, auto loan or other debts) = Net Worth 

So, if you are working everyday or having your money work for you, while not taking on liabilities, your net worth grows constantly! Or if something you have suddenly gains or loses value, guess what – your net worth just changed.

These changes can be drastic, especially when there’s a lot of eggs in one basket. For example, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos net worth grew more than $67 billion over the course of one year, because Amazon stock soared and as a major shareholder, his worth soared along with the company. 

But, this is a topic we need to cover because unfortunately the typical 40-year-old millennial has more debt and a lower net worth than their parents. A statistic that I think is incredibly important to address. Many of us are worried about how much money is in the bank, but truly wealthy people aren’t focused on the liquid dollars sitting in a bank, they are focused on growing their wealth, not bank account. 

For me, that often means re-investing the income that I generate into things that will keep the growth moving. For example, if I receive dividends from the shares that I own of Apple I could do one of two things:

1. Spend those dividends on something fleeting; like getting my nails done or the cutest baby clothes I can find. These purchases add absolutely nothing to my net worth. 

Are they nice-to-have things that sometimes deserve to be splurged on? Absolutely.

Should they be where all my income goes? Absolutely not.

2. Reinvest those dividends; like right back into the same performing investment that earned me the dividend in the first place. This decision buys me more shares, which is an asset that DOES increase my net worth. 

So, as often as possible I try to look at the money I earn through the lens of – will this go towards expenses, like the costs associated with just living (looking at you groceries), or will this go towards something that increases my assets. 

Grow Your Net Worth 

The path towards increasing your net worth is aligned with the formula to calculate it (assets – liabilities) so by focusing on increasing your assets while eliminating your liabilities (AKA DEBT!) you’ll be working towards growing your net worth constantly.

Increase your assets!

I know that increasing your assets is easier said than done. Some tips for increasing your assets include:

• Start earning more money through a side hustle! Sometimes side hustles can even replace or double the income from a full-time job!
• Find ways to detach your income from time, like hourly jobs. By making your money work for you, like investing, you don’t have to be physically working to be earning.
• Take a free investing masterclass to learn to make money work for you! Head over to this link and take my most popular class for free, anytime. [need link to evergreen webinar here]
• Don’t burn money on stupid stuff – those trips to Starbucks may not cause debt but they also don’t increase your net worth – compound and invest that money to see your financial worth skyrocket. 

Eliminate your debt! 

If you’ve ever experienced the rush of paying off a loan or credit card, you know that eliminating debt is a wonderful feeling. Not only does it feel good, but every dollar of debt you eliminate is another dollar not deducted from your assets to calculate your net worth. 

Some of my top tips for eliminating debt include: 

• Get comfy with what you owe. Yes, it sucks to sit down and look at the cumulative amount you may owe to multiple creditors, from credit cards to loans for homes, cars, college and more. But, you have to look at everything together and focus on paying off the things with the highest interest rate first while maintaining minimums on the others.
• Pay what you can, not the minimums. If you can afford to pay more than your minimums – DO IT! This prevents additional interest from compounding and helps you reach your goals faster.
• Avoid taking on more debt. I get it – life happens and sometimes that means having to resort to paying living expenses with credit cards or taking out a line of credit to fix your roof. Sometimes, debt is unavoidable. But, so often it is completely avoidable. Don’t use these emergency moments as an excuse though. If you have to go into debt for something, first see if you can find another option, avoid the expense or find more affordable options. 

Always remember that net worth isn’t a number to obsess over, but you should have an understanding of what yours is at any moment. To learn more about net worth and the ways in which you can increase yours, join me on my next free, live investing masterclass!

Do you remember the feeling when you got your first paycheck? 

The excitement that came from seeing your hard work pay off in the form of actual money. 

The anticipation of ripping open the envelope, seeing all those numbers and deciding how you’ll spend your new fortune. 

Then…

Taxes. 

Simply put, they suck. 

Yes, they fund our public education system, roads and more, but it’s not fun to see that money leave before it even hits your bank account. Or for self employed people, it’s even harder to write that check and send it off to the IRS. 

As an employee, taxes are fairly simple. They come out of your check and every tax season you complete some paperwork and probably receive a refund. For anyone whose income is non-traditional though, things get more complicated. 

Self-employed individuals and people who earn money from investments need to be educated on their tax requirements, how they can save on taxes and more. 

Read on for the low-down, easy-to-understand details on everything investors need to know about taxes! 

Taxable Income 

While we often default to thinking about our income being taxed, the number one thing that investors need to know is so much more than that is subject to the government taking a percentage. 

Income can come in the form of dividends, interest, or even rent on real estate. Yep – you’ve got to pay taxes on all of those. 

But your capital gains (AKA profits from selling assets, like stocks!) are also subject to being taxed by the feds. 

Capital Gains Tax Implications 

The good news: Capital gains taxes aren’t paid until you sell the asset and make a profit, so you could be increasing your overall net worth by holding onto stocks and watching them grow. 

The bad news: the percentage you are taxed when you decide to sell and liquidate your profit is a complicated calculation with several contributing factors. Things such as how long you held the asset (short-term is taxed higher than long term), your tax bracket and additional income all factor into the percentage you’ll pay on any capital gains. 

Tax Tips for Investors 

While taxes are unavoidable, there are some tips that all investors should consider! 

1. Reinvest!

If you get paid dividends on any of your investments, it’s wise to reinvest that money because if the money goes back into the investment, it’s a capital loss, not gain and of course, losses are not taxed.

2. Keep Accurate Records

Trust me, I’d rather be jetting around the world than keeping records, but when you proactively keep accurate records (like how much in dividends you reinvested) you ensure you aren’t overpaying taxes or making an error that will cost you in the long run.

Pro Tip: don’t forget to track any broker costs you incur from investing. These commissions or brokerage fees should always be calculated into the overall amount you paid for a stock, which affects the eventual capital gain or loss associated with the stock. 

3. Invest in small business or being self-employed

There are sooooo many write offs for small business owners and self-employed individuals. Everything from a percentage of the cost of your vehicle to travel expenses can be written off as long as they are a part of doing business for you.

4. Look into Tax Free Investments

There are several ways that you can invest money in ways that are tax-free. Options such as 401(k)/403(b) Employer sponsored retirement programs, IRAs, health savings (HSA), exchange traded funds (ETF), municipal bonds, 529 education funds, U.S. savings bonds, 1031 exchanges, universal life insurance and charity are some of the main ones. 

Filing Your Taxes

There’s no right or wrong answer to the question of who should file your taxes. Thankfully, there’s enough options that you can pick the perfect one for your situation. 

If you feel comfortable filing your own taxes, then I say go for it. If you aren’t, don’t hesitate to seek professional help, whether that’s online or in-person. 

Check out our free, upcoming webinar to kick your financial and investing knowledge up a notch >>>