By Dollars and Hops
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The podcast currently has 49 episodes available.
We’re back!!!
Today going to do a deep dive into Bitcoin ETFs
Money Hack of the Week: Cancel unused subscriptions.
Go to settings on iphone, click your name, tap subscriptions to review active subs
Amazon: Accounts and lists: Other subscriptions
Check your credit card statements
Main Topic: The Bitcoin ETF
What is it?
A way to buy into BITCOIN without opening a crypto wallet.
Nice thing about an ETF is that it’s like owning a security
Will get 1099 tax statements - don’t need to track on your own
Also - very secure. REGULATED
Essentially you’re buying into a fund that owns the bitcoin. The price of the ETF fluctuates just like the price of bitcoin.
What are some of the best Bitcoin ETF funds?
Is it safe?
Do we think Bitcoin will go up in value?
Will institutional investors drive the price up?
Range in cost (expense ratio) from .19% to 1.5%
Franklin Bitcoin ETF EZBC - .19% E.R.
Bitwise Bitcoing ETF - BITB -.2% E.R.
These funds essentially just hold Bitcoin in a coinbase account
Questions that need answers
-PLEASE WRITE US AT [email protected]
What are some strategies for listeners to build and pass on generational wealth, ensuring financial stability for future generations?
I have a 401k at work - what should I invest in to stay diversified- what’s best?
Money Hack of the Week: Diversify your assets
Is your net worth all in stocks? All in real estate? All in your company’s stock? Do you own bonds?
If you’re all in stocks - do you own all US based investments or do you also have international investments?
Take a hard look at your net worth - see if it may make sense to diversify your assets a bit.
While we love real estate, I don’t have all of my assets in real estate, we also own stocks, both domestic and international.
Main Topic - Net worth by Age
What is net worth? Assets - Liabilities
Why is this important - helps you determine if you’re on track for retirement
How to track Net Worth - episode 1 - show notes
Net worth is not your personal worth
Average Net Worth By Age
Age -- Average net worth -- 4% Rule
Under 35 - $76,300 - $3,052.00
35–44 - $436,200 - $17,448.00
45–54 - $833,200 - $33,328.00
55–64 - $1,175,900 - $47,036.00
65–74 - $1,217,700- $48,708.00
75+ - $977,600 - $39,104.00
Median Net Worth by Age
Age -- Median net worth
Under 35 - $13,900
35–44 - $91,300
45–54 - $168,600
55–64 - $212,500
65–74 - $266,400
75+ - $254,800
Action Step: Do you know your net worth? If not, download a copy of the net worth tracker on our website under the show notes - episode 1 - track your net worth and make sure you’re making progress toward your financial goals.
Money Hack of the Week: Automate savings and investments
Did you know most millionaires automate savings and investments?
Did you know you can set up multiple direct deposit accounts with your employer to “force savings” for yourself?
You can also have multiple savings accounts with companies like ally bank and set up automatic transfers on a weekly/monthly basis
Main Topic
Getting out of debt!
1st - need to analyze how we got here in the 1st place
Can you increase your income?
Look for opportunities to grow inside your organization - or if you’re a business owner, are there additional products/services you can offer to increase your cash flow?
Monthly budget is key - need to free up $$ to be able to live below your means.
Consider a side gig - temporarily to help you get out of debt
Drive for uber, make arts and crafts, shop for instacart, do doordash. Do something that will generate a little extra money if you’re unable to come up with extra money within your monthly budget.
Other things to note:
Debt consolidation (personal loan to decrease credit card debt)
Credit card transfers
2 main concepts to getting out of debt: Debt snowball, debt avalanche
Here's how the Debt Snowball works:
1. List Your Debts: Begin by making a comprehensive list of all your debts, including credit cards, personal loans, student loans, and any other outstanding balances. Arrange them from the smallest balance to the largest.
2. Minimum Payments: Continue making minimum payments on all your debts to avoid penalties and late fees.
3. Focus on the Smallest Debt: Allocate any extra money or funds you can towards the smallest debt on your list while maintaining minimum payments on the others.
4. Pay Off Smallest Debt: Once you've paid off the smallest debt, celebrate this accomplishment! The key to the Debt Snowball method is the psychological boost you get from achieving these small victories.
5. Roll Over Payments: Now that the smallest debt is paid off, take the money you were using to pay it off and add it to the minimum payment of the next smallest debt on your list.
6. Repeat and Build Momentum: Continue this process, "snowballing" your payments from one debt to the next as each one is paid off. As you progress, your ability to pay off larger debts increases, creating a momentum that keeps you motivated throughout the debt repayment journey.
The Debt Snowball method emphasizes the importance of behavior and motivation in paying
off debt. While it may not be the most mathematically optimal strategy in terms
of interest savings (compared to the Debt Avalanche method), its psychological
benefits can be highly effective in helping individuals stay committed and focused on their debt repayment goals.
Here's how the Debt Avalanche works:
1. List Your Debts: Start by making a list of all your debts, including credit cards, personal loans, student loans, and any other outstanding balances. Arrange them from the highest interest rate to the lowest.
2. Minimum Payments: As with any debt repayment plan, continue making minimum payments on all your debts to avoid penalties and late fees.
3. Focus on the Highest Interest Debt: Allocate any extra money or funds you can towards the debt with the highest interest rate while maintaining minimum payments on the others.
4. Pay Off Highest Interest Debt: Once you've paid off the debt with the highest interest rate, take the money you were using to pay it off and add it to the minimum payment of the next debt on your list with the next highest interest rate.
5. Repeat and Save on Interest: Continue this process, "avalanching" your payments from one debt to the next based on their interest rates. By targeting the high-interest debts first, you reduce the overall amount of interest you'll pay over time.
-PLEASE WRITE US AT [email protected]
Money Hack of the Week: Sim Swapping
https://clark.com/cell-phones/sim-card-swapping/
SIM swapping, or a SIM swap scam, happens when a crook is able to take control of the personal information stored on your SIM card by using it on another phone.
According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a successful SIM swap can occur if a scammer impersonates you and contacts your phone service provider with a bogus story.
According to the FTC’s website, “They may call your cell phone service provider and say your phone was lost or damaged. Then they ask the provider to activate a new SIM card connected to your phone number on a new phone — a phone they own.”
Once scammers successfully take over your phone, they can access your bank account, social media accounts, email account and more. How? While two-factor authentication is typically a decent form of protection, the scammer now has access to your phone number and email. That means they have access to any codes sent through an email or text message.
What can you do?
Depending on which carrier you have - you can essentially lock down your SIM.
Head to Clark Howards website via the show notes link we have in the show notes to read how to lock down your SIM.
I am with T-Mobile - they have a process known as SIM Locking in which I have enabled to ensure nobody can get access to my SIM without me knowing.
Main Topic
Should you buy a house with today’s interest rates, or is it better to just wait?
What is the current rate: Somewhere between 7.2 and 7.9% depending on if you go VA, conventional or FHA
What is the historical 30 year rate?
7.75% - as of right now we sit at 7.25% as of this recording
First off - Let’s talk about why rates are higher
Inflation
Federal reserve raising rates to cool buying and help strengthen the dollar
When rates go up, it's more expensive to borrow and people are incentivized to save because savings rates increase.
If you are thinking of buying a house, you are probably well aware that interest rates have a direct correlation with how much home you can afford.
A 500,000 loan at a 3.25 interest rate - which you could get about a year ago would be a $2,175 P&I Payment
A 500,000 loan at a 7.25 interest rate is $3,411 = 1,200 more for the same priced house per month.
So with a $1,200 difference on a 500k house - what are the pros and cons to buying now?
Pros:
If you can afford the house and the payment fits with your monthly budget, it allows you to purchase a home at today’s prices
Prices could go up or down - but real estate tends to increase in price by at least the rate of inflation on an annual basis.
You get to start paying down the loan immediately
If you wait - you are paying someone else’s principle payment for them.
If you plan on staying the home a long time - even if values decrease in the short term, it likely won’t matter by the time you go to sell.
We have a supply of housing problem still in the USA.
If interest rates decrease - you can always refinance and pay less of a monthly payment.
Cons:
You are locking in a “high” rate relative to what rates have looked like in the last few years.
Can’t predict if rates will go up or down.
Property values are up in many parts of the country.
Nobody can predict where property values in the future
Loans are not where they were in 08 and 09 when banks were loaning people money with “stated” income and interest only loans.
People feel like we could be sliding into a recession which could decrease housing prices
This is speculation
So would we buy a house right now if we were in the market - or would we wait?
Solid credit score = 720 or more
You have a monthly budget and you’re living and giving on less than you make
You have money in an emergency fund - for maintenance costs
Your debt is manageable
You have the money for a down payment.
You’re steady in your career and relationship
You know what you want
Then it’s probably time to go ahead and buy that house!
Money Hack of the Week: 30 Day financial audit / challenge - put in spreadsheet/categorize it
What type of investor are you?
General:
Evaluating an investment property:
Intro: Lance and I have both dipped our toes into the water when it comes to Airbnb investing. We are excited to share some tips/tricks we have learned as we have launched our first couple properties. We will also explore the ROI you can earn by investing in Airbnb and what sort of work it takes to get started with AirBNB Investing.
Money Hack of the Week: Turo
What is Airbnb?
Lance’s Limiting Beliefs
Technology
-Build Your Dream Team: Self management can happen from a-far.
Who is Airbnb investing right for?
STAY TUNED FOR PART 2
Questions that need answers
-PLEASE WRITE US AT [email protected]
Money Hack of the Week: Libby App - Free audio books and e-books through your existing library subscription - everything is free
Main Topic
Core principles we live by:
2. Get rid of any high interest debt. Anything higher than 5-6% - get rid of it from your life. If it’s low interest rate debt - keep it and pay as agreed on it.
3. Automate your savings
4. Invest in low cost mutual funds and ETF’s OR Buy assets that will make you money.
Episode # 5 gives you our favorite ETF’s
5. Track your spending
6. Know your net worth
Episode # 1 - net worth tracker, Mint.com.
7. Set big goals so you know if you’re on track - episode 13
Questions that need answers
-PLEASE WRITE US AT [email protected]
*This not official legal or investment advice, and this is for entertainment purposes only. All investments involve risk. Do your own research before making any investments for yourself*
Money Hack of the Week:
Look at your 401k, your old IRA’s, and investment accounts - figure out what funds you’re invested in and look up their expense ratios. If you are in high-fee funds inside of your 401K, change to investment options that are low fee.
How do you do this? Go to your 401k or IRA online, look at the positions, you will see a symbol - usually 3 to 5 letters long, pop that into google, look at the expense ratio. What’s high? Anything over .25% is pretty high. Some of you may be looking at expense ratios of around 1% which is entirely too high.
If that’s the case - I want you to look at your plan and the investments offered. Some good options may be: s&p 500 fund, target retirement fund, etc…
What’s a good expense ratio? Below .10%
This 1 change can literally save you tens of thousands of dollars by retirement. If you have listened to our old podcasts - we have found that the higher the fee the fund doesn’t necessarily get you more money in retirement. It often costs you money in retirement.
If you’re someone who invests 15k annually in your 401k, a 1 % difference in expense ratio between investment options can mean a 400k difference when you get to retirement (over 30 years)
Main Topic
We’re talking recession now - It doesn’t really matter what news source you turn on right now - everyone is talking about whether or not we’re in a recession.
Here are the latest worries:
So, how do we invest if we’re in a recession?
BEAR MARKET GRAPHIC
https://www.investopedia.com/a-history-of-bear-markets-4582652
Ashley wrote a question for the pod and I decided it was important enough to make a whole show out of this topic. Question is: My employer is going to be allowing us to invest in digital assets including Bitcoin within my 401k coming soon. Is it a good idea to be investing in bitcoin within my 401k?
Pro’s:
Con’s:
Money Hack of the Week:
Spray and forget: Do you powerwash your house or deck every year?
Rant - Get upside
Main Topic
What is house hacking?
How to rent out the other units:
Ways to house hack:
House hacking as an investment strategy: Scott Trench (Set for life) and David Greene
Why house hack?
Who is house hacking for?
Questions that need answers
-PLEASE WRITE US AT [email protected]
The podcast currently has 49 episodes available.