Let's talk money. I want to help you take control of your finances this year, and
one of the best places to start is by saving your money. Towards the end of
this video, I'll talk a little bit more about my current money mindset and I'll
share a little bit more about what money means to me... BUT, spoiler alert: All that
money means to me is a life energy. It's a currency. And the more life energy that
we conserve for the things that mean the most to us in life, the better off we'll
be. There are literally millions of articles out there in the world about
how to save money, so I did a little bit of due diligence for you and I read
through about half a million articles... and I came to the conclusion that some
of the suggestions out there are just a little bit too intense and these
articles are trying to persuade me to do things that I just would never, ever do...
like turn the heat off the entire winter, or build your own bed from scratch using
plywood... I'm sorry, but I'm not a bed architect. So I decided to put together a
list for all of you of the 33 ways to save money that are actually doable
things that you can start doing today, or tomorrow, or honestly whenever you're
ready to finally commit. A huge thank you to Stash for sponsoring today's video.
Stash is an app that's helping to empower and educate people when it comes
to their personal finances. Their goal is to make investing and banking simple and
accessible for everyone... honestly, as it should be. Over the course of my
honeymoon I read a book called Your Money Or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin.
I found the book to be relevant to people in any financial situation,
whether you're in hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt or if
you're a wealthy, retired millionaire. I honestly think it's relevant to everyone
and can be helpful to everyone so I'm gonna talk a little bit about that book
and what I learned from it towards the end of this video. So I've broken my
money saving suggestions into three levels. LEVEL ONE are the simplest shifts
that you can make immediately... LEVEL TWO: Actions that you can take and new habits
that you can start to form over time... and LEVEL THREE: the big moves... So this is the
level for people who are truly committed to overhauling their finances, right now.
I make money moves!
Stay tuned until the end because I know that some of the items in level three might sound a little bit complex,
but I'll give you some more detail at the end as well as a special promo from
Stash. So let's start building this list! Let's save your cash!
LEVEL1
Prepare your grocery list before you walk down the aisles, drink tap water at home (just get a good filter),
freeze food that's on the verge of going bad, buy produce that's in season,
use your dishwasher and washing machine less frequently, take shorter showers,
pack your lunch, check out books from your local library, share a media streaming service with your friends or family members,
if you're taking an Uber or a Lyft and you aren't in too much of a rush, select the pool option and make a new friend,
use cash more often, watch free workout videos on YouTube (like mine),
if your destination is close by, choose to walk somewhere. On to LEVEL 2.
Become a coupon-er, build a full-fledged spending budget (Stash recommends the 50-30-20 budget which is linked below for anyone interested),
grow your own food,
start shopping secondhand, sell your old clothing to shops that can resell it (I've done this and I've made hundreds of dollars at once),
split the cost of living and get a roommate, learn to sew, trim your own hair, (be very careful with this one...)
clear all the saved credit card information from your computer (this will make checking out a little bit more difficult),
sell your clutter, try a no-spend challenge for a week where you only spend on necessities,
use cashback apps for purchases that you are going to make anyway, start cooking in bulk,
and last but not least, LEVEL 3:
build your investment portfolio, start investing in stocks, if you don't already
have one... open a retirement account today, put a fixed amount of money aside
each month and funnel it into a portfolio, auto-stash, maximize your tax savings,
if you have a child... open a custodial account for him or her (I currently have a pillow),
get your paycheck early, get a registered financial advisor
to walk side by side with you throughout this entire process.
So, as you can see, nothing on this list is a ridiculous ask. These are just small
changes and actions that all of us can start to do immediately and will
instantly see results. If level 3 seemed a little bit intimidating for you, try
getting a subscription to an online banking service like Stash where you
don't have to do these things by yourself. I do think that traditional
banking can often fail people and that's because it can be just very complex and
convoluted... Sometimes you just need one platform where you can do everything
that you need to do in one place and have an expert's advise guiding you the
entire time. So if this is something that you've been considering, definitely look
into Stash and start doing some digging to see if it's right for what you need.
And Stash is giving new users (AKA you guys!) $15 to use on Stash when you
complete and fund your investment account! So, going back to the book I
loved, (Your Money Or Your Life) one of the most interesting parts of the book to me
was its discussion about what it actually means to be frugal. I think a
lot of people tend to associate frugality with our grandparents'
generation, or the idea of being cheap or not actually buying things that we need...
but what I learned from the book is that if you look at the roots of the word "frugal",
it proves that the word actually means getting the most amount of enjoyment
from the least amount of energy spent. When you look at it that way,
you realize that money is just a life energy. It's just a form of currency,
and saving it or spending it wisely doesn't have to be associated with being
cheap. It actually just means you're using the energy properly for things
that are actually going to bring you more energy in return.
If you're into sustainability or being environmentally friendly at all,
this mindset about frugality actually fits into that picture kind of perfectly.
It's all about using up your resources to their maximum potential and then not
being wasteful and not spending in excess of what you actually need.
When is the last time you used something so many times that it broke and fell apart?
I love the idea of maximizing our resources and really using everything to
its full potential, and then once something wears out or breaks... actually
trying to FIX IT instead of just going out to the market to buy a new product.
But what is important to keep in mind is that sometimes if an object is actually
broken, sometimes the most frugal option is just buying a new one to conserve
your life energy that you would need to put in to try to fix it. Anyway... I could
go on about money mindset and this energy currency thing for years... so just
comment below if you want me to talk more about money mindset in a future
video... But I hope that this video really did give you a little bit of inspiration
and insight into how you can start saving your money today and conserving
your life energy to use it to your maximum potential. Thank you so much for coming back to my channel,
and I'll see you next time, right here. Bye, everyone!