The Best MONEY SAVING Advice I Can Give

So I want to help you learn how to save money, because I think I'm pretty good at it. My overall philosophy that I think is the most helpful thing, here it is. It's not what you can do with the money, it's how comfortable it is to have it. So I don't think about wealth as having a bunch of fancy things, I think about it as having a bunch of money set aside in case I need it. Like, I literally think about it. I imagine situations where I suddenly might need a lot of money. A car wreck, an injury, a sickness, an accidental really big restaurant bill, a friend who has a destination wedding. Come on, friend! And it's such a good peace of mind knowing that I can just take care of it and not have to worry. Like, I think, what if my butt fell off right now? I could afford a butt replacement. Wow, I'm wealthy. That's the mindset that motivates me to save money instead of spend money. Yeah, but who the hell are you to have all that money set aside? Okay, talking about money is tricky because everyone comes from a different place. Let me explain who I am first. Hi, I'm Craig. I'm 44 years old. I've been a full-time, we'll say middle-rung YouTuber for about 15 years. I'm fortunate enough to have a pretty decent savings and I make adequate money. Enough money to not really have to think too much about money. It's a very nice place to be. I'm not independently wealthy. If I stopped working, I would eventually run out of money. Luckily these days, it would take a little while before that happened. I mean, maybe I wouldn't run out. Depends on when I die, I suppose. I am trying to work on my health a lot. That's gonna hurt my bottom line on my deathbed. Well, maybe I'll get lucky at the casino. I'll have to go to the casino a lot. But just because someone gets paid pretty well, it does not mean they're gonna have savings. There are many examples of people who earn millions of dollars who end up broke. I make nowhere near that and yet I feel comfortable knowing that I'm not gonna be completely broke on my deathbed as long as I continue working until a normal retirement age and I don't live to 120 and have to go to the casino. But also I'll probably continue doing this until I die anyways, because how lucky am I to be able to do things like this for a living? Also back in my 20s when I was making very little money waiting tables, I was still able to put together a bit of a savings with the $20 rule, which I talked about in a previous video. Basically putting away $20 every time you get paid and save up enough money to buy a laptop and turn it into this career. I don't know your situation. It might be uniquely difficult and I'm sorry if it is. But the possibility of saving some money might be within your reach even though it doesn't seem like it. And it's probably equally if not more important to learn the skill of how to keep money as opposed to earn more money. But of course it is easier to keep more if you earn more. I get that. I just am trying to help you in the best way that I can and that's just to tell you what I did. So how did I do it when I was broke and how do I do it now? It's the same. First of all, that philosophy. It's not what you can do with the money. It's how comfortable it is to have it. Next on the list. I don't care about appearing wealthy. In other words, status. This is just kind of the way I've always been. I don't really care about my appearance all that much. I don't really care that I'm losing hair. Sometimes I do a video with a really disheveled beard. I didn't even shower before this video. I don't care about clothes. I kind of wish I cared about clothes more. I made a whole video about trying to care about clothes more. It didn't really stick. I mean the clothes. I'm not talking about how the clothes stick to my body. They don't stick. They hang on my body. Never mind. But I really don't care if I appear like I have money at all. Oh, I think that's so stupid. The goal of having money for me is not to prove anything. It is to be free of worry about money. I'm not going to buy a fancy watch or some shirt to show people that I can afford it. If there's a nice thing that I genuinely like, I might buy it as long as I can do that without changing my lifestyle and worrying about money. But I probably won't because I generally don't buy fancy stuff for fancy stuff's sake. This is not me trying to get on a high horse and say that there's anything wrong with it. I just legitimately am not interested in that. And that has helped me save money over the long term. Wait, I did just refer to it as really stupid earlier. Oh, I think that's so stupid. Okay, maybe I think it is stupid. Giving off a perception of wealth is usually a lie. And if it isn't a lie, it's stupid. Showing off a fancy new car you bought isn't saying, Ooh, look how much money I have. It's saying, Ooh, look how much money I no longer have. I just don't care about showing off fancy shiny shirt. It wouldn't make me feel good. It would make me feel gross. What does make me feel good is if I'm eating a meal out with someone, I say, I'll get this. That does make me feel good. Not because I'm like, Ooh, look, I can afford it. But because, you know, I'm just doing a nice thing. Actually, a lot of it is that I just don't want to deal with the hassle of splitting checks because it's annoying to the server because I've been on that side of it before. And I also don't want to go through that rigmarole. Point is, I'm not as good of a person as it appears. We all have selfish reasons for things. I just think this attitude has helped me save money. Another thing that I do in my money mind, have just enough on hand. Similar to the $20 rule, except now that I have more savings, I always just try to make sure that I have enough money in a checking account that's easily accessible. And then I put all the rest in a high yield savings account or stocks and index funds where I don't think about it. I don't even think of it as my money. What money? I can't, I shouldn't even be talking about it. That way I really can't spend a buttload immediately and I still behave as if this is the amount that I am only able to spend. I generally just make sure it's enough to cover about a month of expenses, but I don't get too exact about it. Which brings us to don't get precious. I do set a budget, but I don't get extreme about it. I'm not gonna meticulously look at every number and just destroy myself if I go over budget a little bit. I don't really penny pinch or dime pinch. There was a dime sitting here. That's why I'm using a dime instead of a penny. I just got dime sitting all over the place. That's how much savings I have. I'm amazing. We do still get nice things occasionally. I find if we get too extreme about it, then it's gonna backfire. It'll be like, oh, we can't hit a budget. Well, fine, nothing matters. Debt, debt, debt, debt. Of course, everyone's situation's different. You gotta find the right lifestyle you can comfortably afford, but also make sure it's comfortable. Just as comfortable as you can make it while still saving a little bit of money here and there. I just try to make sure I have a solid perception of the moment. Are all the numbers kind of going in the right direction? Good. Did we have a bad month there? Okay, that's fine. We'll get it next time. If everything goes south, are we gonna starve to death? No? Good. Now, I know what you're thinking. If you set aside enough for a month in your checking account and you accidentally go over, what do you do? Well, fear not, moan frayer. I check my accounts all the time. Yes, I know I said I don't get precious, and I set aside my money and I forget that it exists. Well, that's not entirely true. I am able to mentally consider the money that I put away as not my money to spend, but I also check in on it all the time. On my phone, I have apps for my business account, my savings account, my checking account, and my, um, um, stocks and index funds. I do check in on them pretty often to make sure I'm not gonna run out of money. I don't do mathematical calculations, but occasionally I will move money around if I need to. This might not work for everybody, but I'm able to constantly check in on how my stocks are doing without going, Oh no, it's going down! Sell! Sell! Sell! Eh, eh, eh. Hold the dip. I actually kind of enjoy looking at the money occasionally. It's like gamifying finances, like a really lame game that you don't interact with. So I'm able to set it and forget it and check in on it all the time. I contain multitudes. Speaking of multitudes, I think in multitudes of time. In other words, I think long term. When you're setting aside money to save it, it can be challenging because there's no reward. We do things for rewards. Well, I have a trick that helps me really conceptualize what I'm doing for future cracks. I made a video pretty recently about investing in stocks and index funds and what they are, and I'm going to briefly give you a rundown of that because that's required for this long term game I'm going to show you. In brief, index funds are designed to mimic the entire indexes of the stock market, like the S&P 500. Historically, since the beginning of the S&P 500, it has grown on average about 10% per year. It's had many ups and downs, but if you average it out, 10% growth per year. About that. You can invest in index funds that are designed to mimic the S&P 500, meaning if it continues to behave the same way it behaved in the past, it will continue to grow 10% per year, on average, with ups and downs. Conservatively, we could say 7 to 10%. I've had money in the stock market for over 10 years, and this growth rate has been shown to be true. So here's a little mathematical equation I like to do when I put money in the stock market to show what the money actually will be when I'm, say, 65, which is in 21 years. No. Yeah. 21. So old. Say I put $1,000 in the stock market today. Pull out a calculator. 1,000. Let's say it grows on average 8% per year. You'd multiply 1,000 by 1.08 for 8%. And then what I do is increase my age in my head and hit the equals sign. 45 years old. 46, 47, 48, 49, 50. By the time I'm 50, that 1,000 is 1,600-ish. 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61. So that 1,000 I'm putting in is actually like giving future Craig 5,000 if it grows at 8% and it isn't a really down year when I'm 65, but it is a good educated guess. I'll try it with 7%. I'll try it with 10%. So let's say you're 30 years old and you have $5,000 to put away. So you put 5,000 in an index fund times. Again, let's say it grows at 8%. Now, there are equations that will help you do this quicker, but I like to do the equals sign method because I watch it grow over time. 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65. That's almost $75,000 when you turn 65. Again, that's assuming 8%. It could be higher. It could be lower. You'll also likely be putting in more as the years go on. There's also inflation, which will make the money worth less in the future, but it will still be worth it to put it in there because that's the best option I can think of for getting a 7% to 10% growth rate. The best low-risk option. Also, side note, I had to download a calculator because for some reason, the new calculator app on the iPhone doesn't do the equal function anymore. I mean, it does the equal f***tion, f***tion. I mean, it does the equals function, but you can't repeat the equation by just hitting equal anymore. Why did you do that, Apple? Why did you just made it worse? And you know how hard it was to find a calculator that I didn't have to pay for that wasn't inundated with ads that does the equals function? F***tion. So, thinking long-term is generally something I've always been pretty good at. Always basing my decisions on how future Craig is gonna be. Hence all the exercise, trying to eat healthy, and the saving money. Future Craig is such a stickler. Which brings us to the next thing. I don't buy stuff right away. Okay, I might impulsively buy a candy bar at the grocery store or a copy of Emu Today. I love learning about the latest Emu news. But in general, I wait. I sit and I'm like one of the Ents in Lord of the Rings. We never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say. I don't pay attention to deals and things on sale. If you're buying something because it's on sale, you're probably buying something you wouldn't have bought. You're not saving money. And if there's something I really want, I like to do two things. A bunch of research to make sure I'm getting the exact version of the thing I want. And I also just wait to see if I actually really want it. Often after waiting a while, I discover I didn't actually want the thing to begin with. Much like what the girl who dated me once in high school said, it was a brief lapse in judgment. I'm always skeptical of every product, every deal, every commercial. Even though I make my own commercials for these videos, and I'm gonna make one for this video as well. I'm usually probably annoying in a meeting because I'm always hesitant to pull the trigger, make a decision right then and there. Not just about buying stuff, but about doing stuff. This attitude doesn't make me a good get stuff done businessman. I'm always sitting and thinking and trying to make sure things are going to go in the right direction. I don't want to make a rash decision. This has served me well in life. My career is stuff I want to do. I'm able to save money. But I also take too long on things that probably didn't need to take too long. So all in all, how to save money? Be like me. A boring dude who doesn't buy a lot of things and make sure to have enough money to shield himself from the big scary world out there. I'm super boring. When I see people on game shows and they're asked, what would you do if you won blah diddy blah dollars? And they're like, oh my god, I'm gonna buy my favorite car or whatever. I'm like, that's stupid. I know how I would answer. I would say, I'm gonna invest it all in an index fund and sit on it and be able to pay for my health care until I die and have enough leftover for my family to take care of my remains and, you know, clean out my house or whatever, which probably will have like two things in it. So that's what it means to save money. And you know what else you can do to save money? Make a budget. And a very easy way to do that is with the sponsor of this video, RocketMoney. Thank you, RocketMoney, for sponsoring this video. I know I said I'm skeptical of commercials. Well, I legitimately use RocketMoney and I really like it. It has helped me make a budget better than any software I've ever tried. RocketMoney is the personal finance app that helps you cancel your subscriptions, lower your bills, and manage your money better. Right off the bat, it helped me save $200 a month from subscriptions that I had been meaning to unsubscribe to and maybe thought that I did unsubscribe to. I'm stupid. And they negotiated down some other things I was subscribed to to a cheaper rate. I didn't have to do it. I don't like talking to people. As you know, I'm not good in meetings. I would have been like, can I pay less for this? And they'd be like, we could probably lower it. And I'd be like, wait, hang on, let me think about it. I hate conversations about money, said the guy who made an entire video about money. I contain multitudes. The budgeting is really useful and can get really detailed. See how much you're spending on each category. Like you're spending a little too much on groceries. Maybe get the generic milk next time. Too much on clothes? Get the generic silk next time. Too much on fabric? Get the generic quilts next time. Too much on weapon handles? Get the generic hilts next time. Like I said, I don't like to get too precious, but RocketMoney makes it really easy to just quickly check. And it notifies you when you hit your limits. RocketMoney has helped save its customers up to $740 a year, with over $500 million in canceled subscriptions. To save more and spend less, join the over 5 million members using RocketMoney today. To save less and spend more, make a range. Go to RocketMoney.com slash WheezyWaiter or click the link in the doobly-doo. You can also unlock more features with premium. That's RocketMoney.com slash WheezyWaiter to get started for free. Okay, I genuinely hope this video helped you. Not because I'm a good person, but because I want to feel useful for me. That makes me feel good. I'm selfish. I'm going to link to more helpful videos in the doobly-doo. The one about the $20 rule. The one about investing in stocks and index funds, which I really think more people ought to do because it'll make my stocks go up. No, because I genuinely think it's less risky and easier than a lot of people think it is. My previous video is a very fun video in which China and I pretend to have difficulty talking to each other. YouTube thinks you'll like that video. You can click there to subscribe. And I have a Patreon where you can support me, because it'll make you feel like a good person, which is good and selfish for you.