🧧 New Year, 6 Money Moves 🧧

🧧 Happy Lunar New Year! We hope you received (and gave) lots of red packets. By the way, what do you plan to do with them 👀?

💸 As is custom with the new year, now’s the time to clean up. When it comes to finances, yumi has tips for your refresh. Read on to make sure you secure that hongbao 🧧 ! 

Note we added links to tools we use everyday. If you’re interested, sign up directly via those links since you’ll get a bonus! Usually it’s free money. Plus, it’ll also reward us for our work ;)

1. Debts 

   • There’s good debt and bad debt. Get rid of that bad debt. The general rule is to first pay off those with the highest interest, which is usually credit card debt.

   • On the other hand, if you’re borrowing money to go to school or buy a house then this can be an example of good debt!

   • Tools:

     • Sofi is one of the newer online banks that offer extremely competitive rates: 

       • Personal loans

       • Student loan refi

2. Recheck budget

   • I used to have a $2500/month budget. Then Covid happened. So I started staying home. Costs went down. THEN I started nomading and traveling full-time. Oops…

   • Point is, make sure to revisit your budget! Allow for it to adjust for changes in your life!

     1. For me (no more leases, but many many flights) I had to figure exactly where my money was going.

   • Tools:

     • I use Mint!

     • Also, thank you mom for letting me reclaim my childhood room 😄

3. Savings: total it up and automate 

   1. Stashing away some money every month shouldn’t be a goal, it should be a default. Putting more than the default-- now that is a goal. And if you’re not consistently able to save, hopefully we can help you get there. 

   2. Tools: 

      1. Sofi

      2. Marcus

4. Investing

   • Now we don’t want to put all that 🧧 to just savings because then you’d be missing out on more potential money.

   • Next thing is to consider investing in the market.

   • It’s okay if you’re not sure how to start or what stocks to buy. Thankfully there are robots that can probably do it better than humans. Backed by companies that have poured millions into optimizing their algorithms, they do the work and we save the time and headache.

   • Tools (btw, lots of these are considered super-apps, meaning they offer services like savings and lending on top of investing). Check here for more details about each one.

     • Robots

       • Wealthfront

       • Betterment

       • M1 Finance

     • DIY

       • Stash (get $20)

         • Note that you can buy individual stocks but also their own funds. These represent a bundle of stocks that they have selected for you, kinda like a robot.

       • Robinhood (get free stock)

       • Sofi ( get $25)

5. Calculate your net worth

   • Essentially your assets - liabilities. Did you reach your goal last year? Come up short? Which leads to our final... 

6. Reflect over last year

   • Note down your financial experiences from this year.

   • 👍If you found something that works!

   • 👎And if you made a mistake, just let that be a lesson for the future. 

   • For me, in 2022 I’ll admit I was less disciplined than I’d liked. I focused on traveling and new experiences, so I didn’t reach my net worth goal. Feel free to check out my reflections from 2022 and lessons learned that you can apply.
     

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Optional additional step

• The Facebook group has grown explosively this past year. 23,000 members! For us in the background, it takes a lot of time to make sure the right content gets to you. The work to manage that has also increased as a result of the volume. If you’ve benefited from the group or blog, feel free to send some  🧧 to support! Thanks and HAPPY NEW YEARRRRR!