I’m not engaged anymore.. #Finance

so first of all if it wasn’t obvious from the title this is not going to be my normal personal Finance market update Style CashNews.co like I usually do

don’t worry those are coming back soon but from now on they’re going to be a little bit different moving forward as I’ll explain shortly anyway with this one I want to take a moment and talk about a few recent changes in my life and hopefully you’ll find these experiences

helpful or at the very least maybe you’ll find it interesting in terms of what’s going on otherwise like I said if you’re here for the normal what’s going on with stocks and housing and the overall economy like I said that will be coming back next week it’s just not

going to be in this week’s CashNews.co so just you could skip past this if you don’t care but if you do care just I guess keep watching all right so now that we got that out of the way you might have noticed or maybe not that I haven’t posted a CashNews.co here in the last 3 weeks

on the channel which is the longest break I have ever taken by far in the last 7 and 1 half years like without exaggeration since early 17 I made up my mission to post three CashNews.cos here a week every single Monday Wednesday and Friday no matter what except if it fell on a major holiday in

which case it would just post the next day now even though I absolutely love making these CashNews.cos the reality is that it was all I could ever think about it’s all I ever focused on and as soon as I was done making one CashNews.co I might have a few hours of mental downtime before

I’d have to immediately start thinking about the next one which created a few unique problems that I’ll talk about a little later on but I digress as I alluded to in my previous CashNews.co after 2 years of being engaged we just got married and since this was the first time in my entire

life that we’ve had everyone that I care about in the same place at the same time I decided to completely disconnect from work and my phone and just spend time with people I care about and be in the moment and as much as people said your wedding day would fly by in the blink of an eye they

were completely right like admittedly s tanging here but I always thought that weddings were the biggest Financial upsell on the planet like when we started looking at venue options flower options food options andery Services anything you could think of there’s definitely a premium that gets

tacked onto everything that triples the cost from any other event and yeah I know I know everyone says you can’t put a price on your wedding day I get that you know what after going through it I have to say you’re right at the end of the day after almost two years of planning even

though it came in slightly above where we initially thought it would cost it was an unforgettable day and it was something that was so much more impactful than I ever expected it to be I think in the back of my mind I just always thought about the simplest option of going to the courthouse to sign

the papers renting out an Airbnb catering trotle for the food going to Costco for the drinks and just keeping things easy but I’m so glad we didn’t do that and I absolutely would have done the entire day over if I could you know someone said to me a few months ago that a wedding is

going to be the only time in your entire life that you’re going to have all the people who care about you in the same room at the same time that’s not a funeral and the more I thought about that the more that’s absolutely true I think for most people it’s probably going to

be the only time while they’re alive that they’ll have this sort of turnout for for something that’s positive so being able to be mentally present the entire time was Unforgettable oh side note fun fact but I actually had my podcast co-host Jack officiate the wedding because why

not and apparently it’s really easy to get certified online for that sort of thing so we decided to do it plus he could now say in a YouTube title I married Graham Stefan and it’s technically true anyway I also thought it was incredibly special that Macy and I were able to make our own

wedding rings when we visited Japan to me this means so much more than anything else that money could buy because we did this together and we designed it ourselves it just makes it that much more unique of course in hindsight Haven been through all of this if I could have done anything differently

there’s really not much but if there’s anything it would have been that I wished I invited more people like we purposely tried to keep it really small to immediate family and really close friends but there were just so many other people that we would have loved to have shared the day

with so I would say if anyone’s getting married if the budget supports it and the venue allows for slightly more people it’s probably better to invite slightly more than slightly less All Things Considered because the cost doesn’t really go up that much per person Beyond a certain

amount it’s negligible but if you could make it work I’d recommend more than less beyond that though as far as being able to spend some time with family I guess I never truly understood just how glued to my phone I was until I spent a few days without it while everyone was in town like

I’ve always heard about phone addiction and the problem with constantly checking notifications but I was able to rationalize it because in a way it’s my job and I need to be kept up to date with what’s going on in the color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Markets to be able to create content around it but yeah that habit is extremely hard to break for instance if you want to hear something scary apparently 99% of the smartphone users feel scared and anxious if their phones are accidentally left behind the

average person unlocks their phone 150 times a day more than half never switch it off and several study show a direct link between cell phone usage and a person’s ability to concentrate and thankfully being able to concentrate on a single task has never been an issue for me I think it’s

the only reason why I was able to ever get out so many uploads without ever missing a CashNews.co but being mentally present on the other hand has been an issue and just having my phone on me makes it way too easy to constantly check even if there’s nothing new to look at I suppose it’s

been one of these areas where I acknowledge I lack self-control so I’ve made more of a conscious effort to put some distance between myself and my phone when I don’t absolutely need it and I will say firsthand my gosh makes such a big difference I don’t know it just seems more and

more common that people are just heads down to their phone glued to the algorithms of social media that are designed to keep you engaged as long as possible that we lose out on the chance to create and Foster Real Connections in places that matter the most the second I’d like to take a moment

and address another double-edged swort of social media and that’s content or more specifically put the Finance space I’m going to level with everybody I’ve

said it a few dozen times in the past and I’m going to repeat it again here too when it comes to personal Finance and the basics they don’t change and after a

while it’s going to start sounding repetitive like for the most part a few basic principles form just about 99% of everything you would ever need to know when it comes to saving money Building Wealth and investing beyond that unless you’re interested in macroeconomics or picking

individual stocks you just end up repeating the same things over and over and over again until eventually you have enough money that you could reti Tire or buy a Lamborghini or do whatever you want with the money I don’t care the point is you have the money to be able to do what you want as

an example of that for anybody wondering here’s how you can manage your money like the 1% It really just comes down to this and we could cover it all in like under a minute here we go track your expenses create a budget where you spend less money than you make save a 3 to six- Monon emergency

fund pay down all high interest rate Debt always pay off your Credit cards in full take advantage of your retirement accounts including your employer match in a 401K Roth IRA HSA a taxable account and then maximize those options as much as you can from there you

could expand your skills to eventually make more money preferably save 20% or more of your Income and then repeat those exact same steps for the next 20 or 30 years if you could just do that most likely you’re going to retire a multi multi millionaire or how about this one

when it comes to investing it really just comes down to this it could really be this simple Diversified index funds outperform individual stock picking over the long run for most people studies show that a Buy and Hold investment strategy beats timing the market dollar cost average on a regular

basis regardless of what prices are make sure you diversify your Holdings across a wide spectrum of Markets and if you’re young in some cases just one or two index funds would be able

to accomplish all of this I’d probably venture to say that for most of you watching if you just followed this and anything you had a question on you just used Google or YouTube that’s all you need to be financially independent and I could stop there all my CashNews.cos from here on out

could just be that but you know what I’ll tell you what typically ends up happening someone will stumble upon one of my CashNews.cos for the very first time get very excited about the possibility of one day retiring with hopefully a lot of money they get started and then eventually they move

on to something else because they realize it’s just 20 to3 years or more of repeating the exact same things every single day and Beyond the basics there’s really not much more to do that’s why with a channel like mine there’s only so many ways I could say to track your

expenses live below your means find a lowcost Index Fund to dollar cost average into on a regular basis and then let compound interest do its thing done of course I know there’s also a lot of people out there that love the fact that I just repeat the same consistent Foundation no matter what

on a regular basis because it helps keep them on track I think it’s the same reason why I watch a lot of Fitness influencers because it keeps me motivated to like keep going to the gym and eat healthy and like to stay on track and sometimes that ends up helping I acknowledge this is the case

and why I’ve also made an effort to switch it up from time to time but it’s also why the general philosophies of the CashNews.cos are going to be pretty much consistent no matter if you watch today or if you watch seven years ago on top of that I just think I’d go mentally berserk

if every CashNews.co every single week said the exact same thing without any variance whatsoever so I try to talk about topics as well that I personally find interesting or just feel like discussing or diving into and then from there I could sprinkle back in the basics for people who haven’t

seen my previous CashNews.cos and aren’t familiar with it for example the unfortunate reality with YouTube is that it’s extremely rare that anyone will ever go back to watch my old CashNews.cos even though a lot of the information back then is just as relevant today this means that

unless a CashNews.co is posted in the last month is a very high likelihood that no new viewers are ever going to see that CashNews.co and on YouTube yoube it’s a constant revolving door of new and old subscribers not to mention somebody’s got to say it but the YouTube search feature is

absolutely horrible for finding and searching through CashNews.cos so you’re somewhat up to the algorithm’s whims in terms of whether or not you’ll come across something of value like let’s use the example of my old Roth IRA CashNews.co this is an account that most young

people don’t even know about and unless they come across it on their own they’re unlikely to ever find it which is one of the reasons why I like to post an updated version of these CashNews.cos every every year or so as new policies and limits change from this perspective I am

definitely a part of the problem in terms of why the core message of my CashNews.cos gets repeated so often I suppose when you really get down to it it’s probably a good thing but it doesn’t make for engaging round-the-clock content that YouTube really rewards and that people want more

of and so I acknowledge that that’s definitely something that I’ve had to somewhat combat here on YouTube it’s also been a relatively new change on my channel not to force a CashNews.co when there’s nothing to talk about because for the longest time that was the only way to

stay on top of the YouTube algorithm and if you didn’t do that YouTube would deprioritize your content and not show it as much because you’re not posting as frequently I say all of this because when you’re making three CashNews.cos a week on a personal

href="https://cashnews.co/finance" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance Channel where oftentimes there’s nothing new to talk about I found myself very often just creating CashNews.cos for the sake of creating CashNews.cos and that’s

clearly not a sustainable path long term like sure there are plenty of topics out there that I can’t wait to make a CashNews.co on I get so exced decided to plan it out and film it I get so pumped over posting it but there’s other CashNews.cos that I do because I just know people enjoy

them and I have a sense of obligation to the people who keep coming back who like the information and maybe it helps them stay on track or it’s something for them to listen to while they’re driving or they cook or they’re at the gym anything else like this like if I could provide

any sort of help to anybody watching that makes it worth it for me but I will admit it’ll be eight years of posting CashNews.cos here on YouTube this December and with over over 2,300 uploads across three channels and in additional 1350 CashNews.cos clipped from that content my goal is to

only post when there’s something new I could share or with a topic that I’m just personally excited to talk about this means the CashNews.cos You’ll see might be a little more nuanced they might be a little bit more in-depth than what you’re previously accustomed to or they

could just be topics that I find interesting and I want to discuss now separate from that though I’m still posting normally on my podcast channel the iced coffee hour I’m really excited that we’ve lined up some incredible guests over the next month we’ve pre-recorded some

really great episodes so like I’m actually really excited for some of these to post you got to stay tuned go and subscribe there to see some of these guests because we got a few big ones that are coming up and uh surprised even me oh and lastly I just want to say that I’ve much

preferred lately making these sort of CashNews.cos that tend to be a lot more laidback more casual less scripted and it seems overall that you guys enjoy these sorts of CashNews.cos too as opposed to like the information dense CashNews.cos at my other desk sometimes I enjoy those but for more

casual discussions I tend to prefer this so let me know what you think as well Down Below in the comment section perhaps what I could end up doing is just blending some of those like information dense CashNews.cos with like a podcast style here with less of like the moving hands for audience

retention I get it move the hands a lot but you know what it does help when people are watching a CashNews.co I do see an uptick and retention but anyway maybe I blend the two and I try something here that’s more casual so again again let me know what you think so that’s the update on

my end I’m excited to get back to posting and continuing to bring you more information and just for the sake of staying consistent make sure to track your expenses save as much money as possible lip below your means dollar cost average into an index fund on a regular basis for decades no

matter what hit the like button and subscribe if you haven’t done that already thanks until next time