Automating Your Finances FTW #161

that would be a bad movie. Yeah, but you you do want to automate to at least a certain extent because it's gonna help your finances out in the long run. I want to say we recently talked about gamification and gamification and automation. It sounds like maybe they're a little similar, but there are some big differences, right, Like, Gamification is one thing. It's about making personal finance a little more fun, treating it a little more game like in order to

get ahead. Automation is kind of the steps that you take in order to get yourself out of the way so that you have to make fewer decisions. And you can still set yourself up for financial success and make it automatic. It's like a little it's like your thermostat and you set out on auto. I don't go in there and change it. It does the work for me. I just know I wanted at a certain temperature. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Matt. Before we get to that topic, though, I wanted to

get your opinion as a professional photographer. What's this note on here about like d I Y engagement shoot? So my friend Faith recently posted she got engaged, So congrats to Faith. Oh is this a business opportunity? I'm going to put that to you right here on the air. Would you like to shoot her wedding? And will you give her a discount? Thanks buddy. So I don't think she's gonna hire you man, based on what she's done already.

So she posted photos of her fiance and her on her Instagram the other day and she said that they did a d I Y engagement shoot session. So they set up her smartphone on a tripod, they pressed the button ten seconds and then you know, they pose and they take the picture and the pictures turned out pretty good. So I just kind of wanted to get your take on whether people should be doing their own engagement photo shoots.

What are your thoughts on that? First, Yeah, you probably think it's a great idea because you see that as a way to save money, right. I do think it's a great idea. I think it's a great idea. And I will say, when Emily and I got married got engaged, my friend Tim's a photographer and I like him so much more than you, and that's why I had him

take the pictures. Now, I'm just kidding. We we didn't really know each other about We didn't know each other at all, so but I know Tim and we've worked together, and Tim took a great some great engagement pictures for us, and because he's a friend, you know, it was all kind of included in this package whatever. But I think if you're shopping him out separately, an engagement session can cost hundreds of dollars and I think to be exact, okay,

at least for me, good to know. And yeah, if someone wants to say five bucks by doing it themselves, I mean, really, when I look back, I'm really glad that we paid good money for professional pictures for our wedding, But then engagement photo session those pictures just don't hold quite the same sentimental value to me. So I think it would have been okay just d I ying that and saving money. Like, I think that's a decent move

for a lot of people to consider. So I will agree with you if you're somebody and you know that you just have a certain application of mind, right, Like if you know you just want a couple of solid shots for your wedding website, because of course you need you want to have some cute pictures of yourselves where you're not like at a brewery. Yeah, that's my life at least. So if you if you have the end in mind and you know that you just want a

few shots, then I think that's perfectly fine. Here is the argument, you know, and this is me representing the wedding photography industry a little bit, but a lot of times, what you're doing when you have an engagement session is that you're actually practicing having your photos taken. So most people they're not used to having their pictures taken professionally, and so when you have an engagement shoot, you're basically getting a feel for what it's like being in front

of the camera, and that's really important. Because if you have that out of the way, then on the wedding day you can be yourself and you're relaxed and you're having fun, and then the photographer can take really good pictures.

So that's the reason. I mean, that's an argument for it. Personally, Like I don't ever try to upsell any of my clients to get engagement photos done because I make less because like you know, yeah it's five bucks, but even still, when you take into account all the time that goes into it, like emailing back and forth about outfits, locations, the time it takes to shoot, the time it takes to edit, there's still some bare minimums that you that you have to do whether you're shooting for seven hours

or whether you're shooting just for an hour two hours for an engagement shoot, and I actually make significantly less on my engagement is hourly rate is way less on engagement sessions, and so I don't try to upsell my clients at all, but obviously if they're you know, they show any interest in that, I'm more than happy to do that because it's a great way for us to

get to know each other prior to the wedding. So if you know, you just want a couple of great shots for something specific, like like a site or maybe for a save of the day. I think it's great. I think what it comes down to is that engagement shoots have become kind of this normal thing, and I don't know that they were normal back in the day.

I don't think they were. I think they've kind of become normal, and I think it's important for all of us to question would have become quote unquote normal expenses things that everyone around he does without thinking about it. Well, you know what, it's stuff that we can think about and we can make a different decision. And the things that everyone around us is doing, we don't have to take the bait. We don't have to go in that direction.

It was refreshing, I think to see her post, to see that they took these cute pictures on their own and it didn't have to be this big thing and it didn't have to cost five bucks. And you know what. The interesting thing too, the stats bear out that people that spend less on their wedding actually typically stay together longer. So sometimes the more you spend, the bigger a production your wedding is, the more likely the relationship is to suffer.

So I don't know what that says about people, but I think questioning these normal expenses, making sure that we're kind of marching to our own beat and not just going in the direction that most of society is going, I think that's just that's just a good thing to think about, right, It's always good to not be a mindless drone. So, and I will say too, if you don't have a professional engagement shoot, you can still have

amazing wedding photos. Like I'm not saying that you must do that in order to have amazing, true, honest, emotion filled wedding photos, but it does help a little bit. So all right, I'm on the fence there because I can. I'm totally with you from on like the frugal, you know, cost saving standpoint, because that's totally something that Kate and I did but way back in the day as well. But then obviously on my side of it, as a professional photographer, I see that side of it as well.

So yeah, all right, well I had to get your little torn here and had to get your opinion on it. All right, let's mention the beer we're having on the show today, Matt. Today we're drinking a Legion day Glow I p A and this was generously donated to us by listener Joe Man. First off, I'll say this is one rad can and look forward to sharing this one with you, and we'll talk about it at the end of this episode. But let's go ahead and get to the topic at hand. I beat you to your line,

automating your finances for the win. Let's talk about it, Matt, all right. And when I first started thinking about this topic, I've really excited to tackle it. It made me think of Henry Ford and he started manufacturing cars at a rapid pace because he pretty much invented the assembly line, and that completely changed the game when it came to car manufacturing. Before he did that, it took twelve hours to make a car and afterwards just two and a half.

And now our good pal Elon musk Man, he's changing the game even more. Yeah, first name based friends, Yeah, his first name, that's what I call him, right of course. And he's nearing his goal of a fully autonomated assembly line process. I think on the Model three, the assembly line is completely automated, no humans involved in the process of creating the car at all. That is actually pretty awesome. Yeah, and it's gonna be interesting to see how that continues

to progress. But automation can aid speed, it can lower costs, and it can create more reliable systems in general, So automating your finances can have a similar effect. Getting good at handling your money won't magically happen. You have to take action and repeatedly making smart money moves. Well, that's kind of hard for all of us. It's easy for us to forget or just get playing lazy when it comes to doing the right thing with our funds. And

that's really where automation comes in, right man. I mean it helps us to engineer money success instead of just kind of hoping and praying that will happen to us or that will continually be able to muster the willpower to make it happen on our own. Yeah. Well, you know you said engineering, and that I think that's the perfect term, right, because what we're doing is we're planning, we're creating, and we're like managing these money systems, and

that's part of what automation is all about. But the reason for automation and the reason that it's so helpful is because we live ever increasingly busy in complex lives, right, and our money. It's no different between the different bank accounts that we have, multiple credit cards, the different debt obligations we have, and even just new payment platforms I'm thinking of like Venmo and cash app, just keeping up with your money and there as well, and who owes

you what for what drinks and what restaurant? Right, all these things combined, it can be difficult for us to take action on a consistent basis that will have a long lasting effect on our personal finances. And the keyword here is consistent, right, Because at the beginning of the year, with the different resolutions we've made, it might be a bit easier to stock away a little more money towards

our savings, towards investing. But guess what, come April or May, a lot of us have lost that enthusiasm and so that consistent action has gone out the window. Automation it's majorly helpful when we lack that motivation. I don't know if you ever thought this map, but sometimes I'll hear like a motivational speaker or something like that, and like,

where do they get this energy? They might they always like that, right exactly and I know that they're not because none of us can be like, none of us can be that pumped up, forn like going through our lives that pumped up, and so all of us are going to lack the motivation at one time or another. And that's where automation kicks in, right, and it has a really big benefit. But automation also has some downsides.

And so before we kind of get into the benefits and then how you should kind of go about implementing automation into your personal finances so that you can succeed with money this year, well we need to at least cover some of those downsides first. It's really it's just not a magic pill. It's not a cure all. So, like a lot of different things we talked about on the podcast, automation is this tool that we want to implement and use in a way that will benefit our money.

But but the biggest benefit of automation is actually also its biggest downfall. When we automate our personal finances, we tend not to think about those things anymore, and putting that distance between our mind and our money can be a bad thing because we've essentially removed it from our minds would we automate. We tend to say that's done, and I don't have to even worry about it anymore.

And that's just not the case right there. There's still a lot of intentionality and thought that needs to go into how we handle our money, even if we're doing well at automating. Yeah, exactly, I mean, well, that's exactly what happens. Like when you automate something, you don't think about it nearly as much. That makes me think of the cruise control, like setting the cruise control on your car. You set it and you forget it, Like it's not something I continually think about how fast am I going?

Because I know I can trust the cruise control that allows me to listen to podcasts or talk to my wife. Your speed is not gonna change. You can count on your cruise control. But the same thing isn't exactly true when we automate our money. When it comes to our personal finances, auto nation doesn't mean ignoring it right, not looking at your bills and statements. Some people treat automation this way. But automation won't keep you from these recurring

monthly expenses in your credit card. You still need to look at your statements, or you need to check mint so that you can keep tabs on where your finances are and slash spending where it's needed. Especially considering this day and age that we live in, with I D theft and with your credit card numbers floating out there, you need to know what your expenses are. You need to be able to keep tabs on your incoming and

outgoing money. Yeah, just because you've got your credit card set up on auto pay, you know, for for the full balance, Well, that doesn't mean that you don't have to pay attention to what you're putting on that credit card, right to the spending that you're actually making. And automation can be really big for in particular saving and investing. But let's talk about our expenses. Do we really want

our expenses to be automated? And we'll get into more of this a little bit later in the show too, but I just want to pull this example out, Matt. My utility bills every single month, I'm really intentional about opening up the email with how much I've spent on water usage or natural gas usage or electricity usage. I want to know exactly how much I'm spending every month, I like to look those utility bills in the face

and then I pay that bill. I think it's okay to automate some of these bill payments, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't look at them before you pay. I think looking at your bills in the face is a powerful thing that can actually be a challenge for us to use less or to spend less. And and I think sometimes when we automate, like you said, it feels like hitting the cruise control button and we decide not to pay attention in the way that we used to.

But I think we still have to pay particular attention to our expenditures and how much the bills are that are coming in every month, because that can help us make necessary changes to be able to save more and automate more of that money away towards our investments and savings. Yeah, man, well so far right. We're talking about expenses and and bill pay things like that. But you just mentioned being able to save more money, and that's so true, because

that's something we need to consider saving and investing. I think when it comes to automation that it also cause you to forget to increase your four oh one K contribution when it comes to the amount of money that you're investing in your retirement. Right, just like with our other with our different monthly utility bills, when we set it and forget it, we might fail to challenge ourselves

to do better to increase the amount that we're setting. Aside, Joel, you recently talked about with gamification, when you go in there and you increase that percentage, the confetti flies, the banner goes across the screen. Not only are you missing out on that little, small, tangible reward, but but we're missing out on lots of money down the road when we fail to sit down and look at our money and to see what kind of shape our personal finances

are in. Well, I will say a beautiful thing. More and more employers are offering four oh one K accounts that automatically increase your contribution level every year when you get a raised and so I think that's really really nice. That's another thing that we don't have to think about.

But it is happening, right. But if your employer isn't doing that, I agree your automation maybe setting it and forgetting it, getting that employer match you're putting in six and your employers putting in three you know, whatever your

employer matches. If you're hitting that, you might just forget every year to add a little bit more So having that automated six percent withdraw from your paycheck, that's great, but you do want to challenge yourself to step that up over the years, and automation can actually be that kind of detractor because you're not thinking about it. So I think the key to not letting automation turn into

something like apathy is to help set calendar reminders. For instance, like maybe twice a year, you can look at the automation choices you've made and you can see if those

allocations need to change or improof. If you find that you have this tendency to set it and forget it, well, now is a great time to kind of populate a couple of these times in your calendar for you know, the next twelve months where you are going to revisit the savings and investing choices that you have currently automated so that you can potentially increase or improve you know,

those financial choices that you're making. All right, man, so so far, it sounds like we're kind of down on automation, but we're not, but we're not exactly, and we're gonna get to that right after the break. We're gonna talk about some of the actual benefits of automation, some of the mob us but some of them not so obvious.

All right, Matt, we're back from the break. We're talking about automation, how it can be a big win for your finances and especially you know New Year resolutions, you know what, are resolved to increase your automation skills and to make it we'll make it a whole lot easier for you to save money for the future. Right, and so let's talk about some of those benefits. Because we were not down on automation, we really love it. The biggest benefits that you're going to receive from automating your

finances our behavioral in nature. Automation's main goal is in getting us out of our own way. So if we see money hanging out in our account, it's really easy for us to spend it, and automation can be one of the main keys to help prevent us from messing ourselves up. Right, Matt, Dude, we're not perfect, right like you. You're talking about the motivational speaker there earlier how they

have like boundless energy. I think sometimes folks my falsely think that we make all the perfect decisions when it comes to our money. But like you said, sometimes when I see money in my account, I want to spend it because, like, I worked hard for that money, and I think I deserve something completely man easy to justify. I have those treat myself days that where I think

I deserve something and sometimes I act. And that's why I need automation in my life to help me make sure I'm funneling money in the proper directions for my greater goals exactly so because of that, automation can be fantastic. One of the biggest benefits that I think everybody can easily relate to is the fact that automation will say of us time, right, like, who likes spending nights and

weekends budgeting? Not this guy? Sometimes I do, though I'm going to confess I am I am, I love excel I like I like to see that zero at the end where it's all balanced out. But we have to spend some time working on our money and deciding where it goes. But the more that we and I'll you know, I'll say I as well that I can automatically funnel that money into the desired places. The more time we'll have to do other more fun things like more are

meaningful things as well. You're talking about discolf, right yeah, or like more admirable things that was on the podcast, like spend with my family. I'm gonna go with discolf do it for the kids, so yeah, I think. Yeah, automating that's one of the biggest benefits, right, more time to do the things that you actually want to do, like spend time with your family or play discoff And then another thing. Automation truly does help increase your mental bandwidth.

We live these complicated lives right and in general and just overall, and then financially too. I feel like our financial system has gotten so complex, there's so much intricacy to it. And not only does automating save you that time, but it means that less of your mental faculties are tied up thinking about money on the leg, so crushing your money game while thinking about it less that's say,

plus that's what you want. You don't want that your brain resources tied up, you know, thinking about money all the time in the background, sucking up that energy. Do you want to know that you've made the right choices and you've automated them so that you can spend less of your mental resources thinking about where that money has to go. Yeah, it makes me think of so our interview recently with Vincent right, he talked about how when

you have money freedom, you have mental freedom. And when you have mental freedom and you have a little bit of space for your mind to like daydream and wander a little bit, like, that's when we get creative. And sometimes that's when we have the best money saving or even the money making ideas. And if all that mental bandwidth is tied up in making sure that bill is paid on time or thinking about whether or not we're

investing properly, that can be hugely detrimental. Yeah, man, And automation ultimately, like I think probably considering our shows how the money the biggest thing is automation will help you save more of your money. Well, that sounds nice, yeah, right, I mean it's a huge benefit and it's so much easier than willpower. Right. If I personally actually had to set aside a big chunk of my pay towards investments every two weeks, I probably wouldn't do nearly as good

a job at it. But automating that decision means it gets done and I don't have to be super disciplined. Being disciplined in that initial decision. Making that one hard choice at the beginning means that I'm gonna save a whole lot more and I don't have to continually muster up the willpower to make sure it happens. Yeah, dude,

it makes me. It takes me back to that statement when we're talking about engineering these systems right like at the beginning there, because yeah, you've made that one hard decision, you've done the research, you've done all this upfront. You don't have to do that every single time. You don't need to be constantly reinventing the wheel. You know it works. You have decided what you're gonna do. Basically from here moving forward, what we're doing, we're monitoring and we're managing

our money. We're not going through the steps that require that you know, all that willpower. Just like you said, and Jo, you're talking about how automation can help us to save more money and when it comes to investing, right, but as far as our expenses go, automation can also help us to save a lot of money as well. I'm thinking about if you forget to pay, say a certain bill, like we hate paying fees and interest as well, right, so any tool that keeps more of our money in

our pocket, we're going to be all about that. Yeah, automation auto pay is so helpful because forgetting to pay not good, you know with that. No, and automation also is this easy route I think to helping us develop strong financial habits. The more we automatically do something, the more it kind of becomes this ingrained part of us. If you ended up saving ten percent of your income last year because of your automation brilliance, well, now you begin to kind of see yourself as a great saver,

and that's really motivating, right. It kind of changes how you view yourself as you make better decisions and you start to see progress. It's it's really motivating and it informs how you view yourself. And so yeah, I think that's a really important thing to mention. Automating your finance as well and succeeding helps you see yourself at a new light. Helps you see yourself as somebody who is good with money, because you know what now you are Yeah,

positive reinforcement, dude, it's so valuable. Uh. And then lastly, I want to mention to how you can achieve your goals faster when your money is automated. Right. Of course, automation will help us to get where we want to get at a more rapid clip. Automatic saving and automatic investing will allow us to actually achieve what we want without burning out or changing our mind. Again, we are human beings, were a tempted to spend money that we shouldn't.

An automation will help those goals that we've identified and set out to achieve. It can make those goals a reality. Yeah. I mean, we talked about Henry Ford's assembly line and how it took the production down from twelve hours to two and a half, and I'm really interested. I don't know how long it takes a Model three to be built, but I have to imagine that once that car production process becomes fully automated, and then Elon can start tinkering

with how long it takes it to be built. Maybe he can build a Model three in like twenty minutes. I don't know, but like that's that's possible. That's possible. Automation you can have these abilities obmostly you didn't foresee and I think, yeah, I really will help us to achieve our goals much much faster because we're not constantly changing our mind and stumbling over our own poor decisions and did our own behavior has so much of an impact on the amount of money that we're able to

save and invest. So much of the knowledge we know, right, Like, we know the things that we're supposed to do. The problem is is that we are often bad at doing the things that we know that we need to do. That's why automation is great. So how do we then actually start automating our finances making sure that we do it well. Well, let's get into some of the specifics of how to go about it, and we'll get to that right after the break. All right, you know what

I think we should do? Now, jel get back to talking about automation. Let the show go on. Yeah, so let's discuss now how to go about automating our money. Now you know the potential pitfalls and have become convinced of the benefits of automation, let's talk now about how you can actually implement automation into your personal finance life. First, off, let's talk about a cushion, or maybe some folks call it a slush fund. Having the right accounts is really

helpful when it comes to automating your money. Having the right accounts and then having the right amount of money in those accounts and emerge as he fund or a cash cushion can make automation much less stressful. If you aren't sure whether or not you can pay your credit card and full as a statement draws near like that can be really difficult and put you in a stressful position. Automating without a proper cushion can cause you to overdraft your account or have a payment denied, causing you to

pay more interest and fees. So if you are keen to take advantage of automation, make sure that you have a solid savings built up. We recently talked about margin and Our Lives Sold Episode one two three is the first one of the year. Yeah, yeah, and that was

really kind of twofold. We talked about margin in a financial sense and then margin kind of in a time sense and kind of how we live our lives, and we're trying to build both of those in our lives more and more, and on the financial side, the more of a cash cushion that you have, the more automation feels good, because, yeah, if you don't have to worry about it, if you've automated everything, but you're not sure that you have the money to to actually to follow

through on what you've automated, then that that that can be a scary place to be. And so yeah, you do need to prioritize building up some savings as you get into automating your finances more and more. If you don't have a cash cushion there, that kind of feels like having your cruise control on through like a work zone. It's like you have your like dodging traffic. You're thinking,

I really shouldn't be doing this, but it's it's an autopilot. Yeah, Like that's not the kind of position that you want to be in. Yeah, completely, buddy. And another thing we need to talk about when we're talking about implementing automation into our lives is auto bill pay. Like we mentioned earlier in the episode, we don't want automatic bill pay to keep us completely ignorant to what our expenses are.

And I think sometimes that can be the case, but you can save a lot of time by setting up auto pay if a utility or service provider has that as an option, every bill or payment that we can automate. Man, we're setting it up because we don't want to forget, and honestly, it's just a hassle to go in there, log in and make the payment most of the time. Taking that off my mental plate is just huge. But like we mentioned earlier, that doesn't take away your responsibility

to kind of manually budget for those things. Automating those payments is great. Just make sure you're still paying attention to what you're ending. Yeah, Joe, you just briefly mentioned this earlier, But just having that email show up in your inbox and actually looking at that email right when you get that new statement, and I think that can be really helpful for folks because in that case, you're not having to say manually enter that amount into how

much you're gonna pay, it's gonna automatically pay. But just to see it and be presented with that information that alone right there, it can be enough to kind of nudge you in the right direction if you are overspending. Another practice that we can take when it comes to automating some of our money is setting up direct deposits and not only doing that, but preferably doing this in two different accounts to aid in savings. Right, investing, it's

really important. We talked about investing all the time, but so is having money and a savings account. You know, Joe, I think we're gonna do a show coming up soon about liquidity and when it makes sense to have money in savings, Like we don't want all of our money going towards investing, but if you can have your money auto deposited into an account that you don't touch, that can make a major difference in your ability to save. Yeah, and Acorns, by the way, is one of those eight

apps for helping you automate your savings. So yeah, it's worth potentially signing up there. And you you mentioned at one point your buddy who is able to save up for an international golf trip through Acorns over a couple of years time. And so yeah, I think people that are having trouble maybe they don't want to do a too account direct deposit for savings. Acorns can be this other method of automation that can really help spur people

on towards saving money when they otherwise wouldn't have. But let's get into another aspect of automation that you really need to consider, and that's paying yourself first. And we hear this term used often in personal finance, but let's get practical. If you work for an employer that offers a retirement plan, you can enroll and set a percentage of your paycheck to be automatically with drawn so that

you're not even tempted to not save that money. And this is particularly important if you have access to an employer match. When we're talking about automating, of course, we don't want to forget to pay a bill. That's really helpful, but more than anything, we want to be able to increase our savings, right We want to do better, save more, and have more control over our financial lives. And that's ultimately what automation can bring. So this is so important

in automation. Make sure that, in particular, if you have an employer match, you bump up the amount that you're investing to at least take full advantage of that. Right there, that's automation success number one that you should be striving for. Or on the other angel, if if you don't have a work sponsored retirement plan like me, right. You can even just have an automatic withdrawal set to your savings

or your WROTH accounts. What's a month. What is key here, though, is that you are removing the option to not save or invest your money because it's automatic. However, if your income is variable and it fluctuates wildly to where there are some months maybe that you don't even get paid, then this is gonna be tougher to implement, right, But you can still set up a process and a system where you prioritize saving and investing first before you do

anything else. So, for example, let's say you don't get paid for two months, and then when you do get paid in that third month, right, maybe at the end of the quarter, you know that the first thing you do is that you work towards maxing out your wrath ira A. What's key here is that it is an automatic action, right, It's not this painful deliberation Every single time that money gets deposited into your account. You can work towards that rath r A or maybe you're just

setting aside a predecided percentage. Again, this is something that is predecided upon. It's not something that in the moment you're having to make that call. Maybe it's not quite as automatic right as a work sponsored retirement plan, but again, the process is what's automatic here, and that's what you're going to make sure that you have in place before

the checks that even arrive. Yeah, the more deliberation that you have to involve in the process, the less likely you are to do a good job at taking that money and and setting it aside for the future. Matt. The other thing, and we mentioned it earlier in the show briefly, was the automatic increases. And a lot of

employers are making this standard. Other employers are just giving you this ability, you know, And I have this through my employer, Like, it's not automatic, but I can choose, you know that every year when I do get a raise, I can bump up what I contribute one or two sent or more, right, if I want to get super boller with it. I think for folks whose employers are basically auto enrolling them in those automatic increases, make sure

to leave those put. And if you have the ability to go inside your plan and create those automatic increases on your own, behalf. That's something you should be doing too. Yeah, and Juel, you know, we were talking about automating the amounts of money that goes towards retirement. But it's also going to talk about where the money is going within

those retirement accounts. Right, for a lot of folks, if they had to keep up with where their money was being invested, they had to monitor the performance of different companies and different funds. That process and just those steps can not only be a hurdle, but I think it could actually become an impassable barrier that keeps folks from investing properly and investing the amount of money that they should.

And so a way to get around that and to automate your retirement fund allocation is to look at target day retirement funds. These funds are basically automatically reallocating their selling funds. They're they're buying other funds based on the priests standard that changes as you draw closer towards your target retirement date. Yeah, normally you're gonna have to fool around with that stuff yourself. Right, You're gonna have to

reallocate your money. And Matt, we like index funds that track you know, the American stock market as a whole, or even the world stock market as a whole. And yeah, but a target retirement fund is another great option for people in particular if they don't want to have to ever think you don't have to mess with it at all.

You pick it once, never change it again, and that's that's cool, And it's especially cool if you're one of with one of the super low cost providers that charges next to nothing to manage those funds, like Vanguard Fidelity. Both are great. Yeah. Man. Also, I think it's fascinating to think about the future of automation. I think there are gonna be changes, but we've already seen in the past few years companies creating amazing automation systems that are

helping consumers navigate the complexities of the financial world. We mentioned Acorns, that's one of them. Better met in Wealth Front. They kind of did that for investing, and then other companies have kind of even improved on that, like in one I think. But it's gonna be really interesting to

see how software has this role to play. We're already using it and it's already benefiting us, but I think the benefits are only going to increase in the upcoming years, and the things that the software can do to help us do better with our money automate more of our finances, put our money in the right locations so that we don't have to worry nearly as much. I think it's gonna happen. I'm just interested to see how that plays out and what companies end up creating the best products

for us to use. Yeah, Juel, you know, it's fascinating right to think about what artificial intelligence, what that's gonna look like for us, and what it's gonna look like for our money. There's an article about artificial intelligence and our money and how at some point, you know, it might even be like Google Maps. Like there used to be a day and age where everybody knew the names of all the streets, and because you knew the names of the streets, that's how you got to your destination.

But this article is equating the technology that we're gonna have access to, how it's gonna be like Google Maps, and essentially you just punch in your destination. You just say this is where I want to be financially in ten years or twenty years or thirty years, and these are the steps you follow. And so we're not at that point right now, though, right like we have to be informed there are certain things we need to know

how to do. We need to know how to modify our behavior and do those things right, because in the end, nothing is going to actually make us do the things that we say we want to do other than ourselves. But it's crazy to think that. And maybe an app on our phone that we can just puns in our financial destination and arrive there if we do what that

app tells us to do. Yeah, it's called predictive financial software, and it's just it's fascinating to think what that could do, how that could be implemented into our lives via potentially

an app on your phone. Right, But ultimately, there are some current steps we can take and some apps out there to help us along the way towards automating our finance as well, so that our money situation looks brighter six months from now, a year from now, and it kind of takes that wild card, which is our tendencies towards handling money poorly out of the equation. Yeah, So hopefully you can take some of the steps we just

mentioned and automate your finances. The steps you haven't taken, we'd encourage you to jump on them, because we really do think it's gonna have a major or impact on how much you're able to save and the financial freedom you're able to create in your life. Yeah, buddy, that's right, man. So let's go ahead now and swing it back towards the beer. On this episode, we enjoyed a Daglo I p a by Allegion. This one was sent to us by Joe from up there in Minnesota. He said these

were some of his favorites. So, Joe, thank you for sharing one of your favorite I p a s with us. Joel, what were your thoughts? And this was an interesting I PA. I feel like it's different than a lot of the ones we drink. This one had a lot more floral notes to it, and I had some fruit mixed into that.

So yeah, I pas can take on all these different notes depending on kind of how it's brewed and the hops that are used, and this particular one had this real flaoral bouquet going on in the nose and on my taste, Budds, It's funny I pas never get old to me because they are also unique and distinct, and they're all beautiful snowflakes. Yeah, they really, they really are. Yeah. So this one was good Man. I really appreciated the allegian Daelo I p A so big. Thanks to Joe

for sending this one are away. Yeah, Budy, I thought this was a really tasty I p A. The best way I think I can describe it was that it was it was fruity, but it's also like juicy and wet. I think with a lot of the recent I p as we've had that are dry hopped, in my mind, they taste dryer. They kind of have that dry hot bitterness, and so if you have a more traditional ip like this, it's easy for my mind to go towards the fact that these are kind of like juicy wet. It makes

me think of like a lemon pepper wet. Did you ever get lemon pepper wings? I always go lemon pepper dry, though lemon pepper wets the way to go. Is it really? Okay, I'll give it a shot. This is a weird tangent, but anyway, I want to describe this beer as fruity juicy wet because that's just warm my heads. That tonight? Cool? All right, buddy, that's gonna do it for this episode. Thanks again to Joe for sending this beer are away.

And for folks that want to check out the show notes or listening on our website, or check out the other articles that we've got up on our website, just go to how to money dot com. And if you're listening to this episode and you have found something of value, right like you, you you heard something that you know you can implement into your life that's gonna make a positive impact on your money. We would love for you to head over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review.

If you haven't done that already, you can do that there. And wherever it is that you listen to your podcast, make sure that you are subscribed, because that makes sure that you don't miss out on any new future content that we release that can provide more value for you. All Right, buddy, that's it until next time. Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.