Hope you all enjoy this one! NOTE: Since this is a money video, it's almost guaranteed that spammers will impersonate me in the comments. Please be careful about what you click. Some more stuff you may find helpful: - My free budgeting spreadsheet template: thomasjfrank.com/free-budgeting-spreadsheet-template/ - Personal Finance Tech Tree: thomasjfrank.com/techtree I'm a nerd about this stuff, so I'm excited to do more detailed videos this year. Already got ones planned for credit cards, IRAs, buying a house, and investing. Also, a small correction that Christopher pointed out below - dividends technically aren't capital gains. However, most dividends that are paid out from U.S. stocks are "qualified", so they're taxed as if they were capital gains. I'll cover that in more detail in the future, but here's a great article explaining it in the mean time: www.kiplinger.com/investing/stocks/dividend-stocks/601396/qualified-dividends-vs-ordinary-dividends If you have questions or topics you think I should cover, let me know!
This comment should really go into your Thomas Frank explains video but oh well. Have you thought about a decision making tool in notion? Helping people figure out principles that they need to live by in life and then generating a decision trees from those principles. Following the methodology of Ray dalio
I'm a big fan of your work and your videos have great information and wonderful production value. I know you wouldn't purposely give out incorrect information and I'm am not a finical advisor. There are two issues within the investment information section. Capital gains tax is a tax an investor pays when they sell an asset. Dividends and capital gains are not the same thing and are taxed differently based on the investors' income. Capital gains are also taxed differently based on the length an asset has been held before realizing gains (aka selling the stock, bond, ETF, etc). You have a great brand, amazing videos, audio and editing. Keep up the good work and I look forward to your next video.
Can you make a video dedicated to your finance tech tree? You reference it here and there a lot but I would love a whole spiel about how you allocate all your funds! Thanks for being awesome and creating this space!
When I started watching Thomas, I was in my second year at uni and looking for that academic + productivity content. Now that I am working and making money, I am looking for these financial videos. It's great to see Thomas grow his content with his audience ge/life. :)
you are right, just sitting at home doing nothing, waiting for monthly pay and relief fund without investment because investing over here is frustrating😭
Absolutely amazing chart for the War Chest, congratulations on it Tom! I'm impressed. As always, thanks for the golden content, and have a Happy & Productive New Year, buddy! Cheers!
The idea of always having enough money to pay for this AND next months expenses is a REALLY good tip. Along side that, I recommend only buying stuff if you can reasonably afford to buy it twice. If you're in a fortunate position that you're quitting your job to chase your dreams, I recommend having a years worth of financial run way so that you have a solid year to make your dreams come true.
This was a solid base of financial advice, my job just added the benefit of matching our retirement funds which is very exciting! Right now I'm trying to work out if I want to prioritize putting more money into my retirement account or trying to pay down more of my student loans
That's definitely a dilemma! I can't give a concrete answer to that, but here are some considerations: - Every dollar you contribute to a 401k up to the matching limit gets an immediate return on investment. You can also think of it as a way to get an instant raise - i.e. if they match 50% of contributions up to 6% of your salary (a very common scheme) and you make $50k normally, then contributing to that matching limit essentially bumps your salary to $51,500 (while also reducing your taxable income). So contributing up to the matching limit beats out accelerating debt payments from a pure ROI perspective unless the interest rate is extremely high. - It's also good to factor in how comfortable you are with debt. Some people absolutely hate being in debt and I think that's a perfectly valid way of thinking! When I was in my senior year of college, I did everything I could to pay down all of my debt before prioritizing anything else. I only had around $15k, but it felt really good to pay it all off and know I was debt-free.
Helpful 3 rules to structure your approach to finance and managing your money. Underlying it is a live within your means principle and add financial margin to your life. As ever love how you have put this all together. Thanks
Money doesn't solve all of your problems, but it does solve all of your money problems. Here are rules for a happy financial life. 1) Reduce your expenses to ONLY the things that actually make you happy 2) Build multiple income streams (ideally from things that you enjoy) until you consistently make more money than you spend each month If you're income is not directly tied to your time, you will have financial freedom. Good luck soldier.
This is fantastic! I like the new direction in which you plan to propel your channel, and I support it entirely. Glad to know you're working on other videos in the works, as the way in which you explained tax drag (which was something I didn't understand) was straightforward, and simple. Hope you can explain more terms/gimmicks of the financial world in a similar fashion while always providing valuable insight. Great direction to begin taking, and I'm eager to watch the next set of videos!
Everyone should understand the Behind the Scene of CREDIT CARDS. Personally I think we should question us multiple times, whether the thing ( anything ) is really going to provide a value in our life ??? I do think CREDIT SCORE and HUGE DISCOUNTs does make sense….haha Always looking forward for your new video. Really the greatest feeling ever :)
Got a whole series on credit cards in the works! Was going to be one video but the script is up to 10,000 words so..... 😅 The TLDR is that responsible credit card use is a great habit to have solely due to how well it builds your credit score. Now that I have experience buying a house, I've learned just how much of an impact credit score makes on things like your interest rate. And a credit card lets you build it for free as long as you're responsible!
@@Thomasfrank I totally agree 😊 I’m freelancer & high-school student and 17 y.o. right now so I don’t own any credit card. I’m grateful to get that perspective towards spending money. Thanks a lot 🙏 For such high quality videos I really appreciate that you put everything to create great video and maintain the standards. Lastly, I do listen SUNDAY STUDY Playlist while having 25 min Pomodoro sessions. Thanks for that collection too :) 👍🏻
@@douloureux. not sure about every country, but they're also used in Canada (along with a separate credit rating that we don't have here in the US) Ultimately, as someone who lives in the US, most of the technical money content I can create will primarily apply to people living in the US. Some of the overall philosophies will likely be applicable globally though.
Great video. I will mention that that the 30% use is more of a total limit to contribute positively to your credit score while keeping your use less than 10% gives the greatest improvement per month.
This is what I actually needed ❤ I have asked almost all people around my age how they manage their chest war and answers are always not what I was looking for. But I had to admit this one is a gem 💎👌 Great video!
Thank you for the great content. Getting my personal finances under control is one of my main goals this year. Can’t wait for the IRA bs Roth IRA video!
I'm looking forward to more finance content from Thomas! His videos are always organized and well made. He probably saw how high the CPM rate is for finance content haha
Hey Thomas! Thanks so much for this video. While I'm familiar with most of the finance ideas you mention, investing in stocks is something that has always seemed cloudy to me. Any videos from you (or resources otherwise) that you'd recommend to learn HOW to invest for an absolute noob? Thanks so much for the content you bring!
Great tips Thomas and it definitely came at the right time. I'm actually in the negatives right now because I had to fork out a lot to cover medical expenses for my family. I even had to use my dividend and my pay is not until another 2 weeks so I don't know how am I gonna survive lol. Judging from the debt that I had to pay and my current situation, it looks like it's gonna me take me a long time to get to the point where I can actually build my war chest. Wish me luck! Btw, I was wondering, when you get your credit card bills, do you pay the balance statement stated in the bill on the due date or do you also pay the amount that you used before the due date along with your balance statement? For e.g: Bill statement: 1st Jan Due date: $345 17th Jan Usage: $200 1-16 Jan So, on the due date do you pay just $345 or do you pay $545?
I like to do a budget. I cannot spend more than __ on me and personal things (fun money). This is the money that is remaining AFTER the bills that need to be paid are taken care of
As my income increased after I cobbled together multiple gigs as sort of a freelancer academic with a full time faculty job (with tenure) I ended up owing taxes for the first time in my career. and this was even as a first time homeowner. I have a 401 k but I think an IRA is the way to go to reduce my taxable gross. and I guess I've been a deadbeat for a long time! I always wondered about the exact relationship between the credit score and paying in full-this was one of the most informative videos ever.
Glad you found it helpful! I’ll have more detail on this in my credit card series, but paying in full is just as good for your score as carrying a balance and possibly better. The only small caveat to that is that fully paying off an installment loan (like a car loan) may temporarily decrease your score by a small amount, but it’ll bounce back quickly. This can happen because open accounts count slightly more toward your “credit mix” than closed ones, and sometimes paying off a loan means taking a low-balance loan off your report, leaving you only with high-balance ones. But typically these aren’t huge issues and won’t affect score much. As for credit cards, paying in full has no downside credit score-wise! As for 401(k) and (traditional) IRA, both reduce your taxable income. Be aware that at a certain income level, having a 401k at all limits how much of your IRA contribution will be tax deductible. Phase out starts at $68k and after $78k nothing is deductible. So assuming you have control over your 401k investment selections to limit fees, maxing the 401k is smarter in that scenario. (You can still contribute to a Roth in this scenario - income limit for that is a lot higher). Hope this helps!
I would love some videos from you on investing in brokerage accounts like Fidelity! I'd like to know what you invest in such as mutual or index funds, stocks, etc. Thanks Thomas!
Haha maybe! Nintendo's stock is way down since 2020, but you could view that as it being on sale 😛 I primarily just invest in index funds, but I like and believe in Nintendo so it's the one individual stock I buy.
Tip 2 is a little aspirational (I want to strike a balance with that on this channel), but I think 1 and 3 are pretty universal! Everyone should be striving to build an emergency fund if they don't have one
The price of something is how long in hours you should wait before you buy it, that gives you enough time to think about whether you actually need it and will use it, or you just *wanted* it.
I just turned fifteen and it's almost as if people are just pushing me into being an "adult" It's scary But I'm really glad I won't be going into it completely clueless in a few years, thanks a lot
This comment should really go into your Thomas Frank explains video but oh well. Have you thought about a decision making tool in notion? Helping people figure out principles that they need to live by in life and then generating a decision trees from those principles. Following the methodology of Ray dalio?
As a EUIV player my idea of the war chest is: - taking as many loans as possible - debasing currency - exploiting development and making a controlled bankruptcy at the end.
Do you tend to focus more on growth or dividend investing? I suppose dividend by the video, and i guess it would be less risky as those companies tend to be established already. Just looking for your thoughts, or a whole video on what strategy you think is best or easiest would be awesome
Definitely skew towards growth! Nintendo is the only individual stock I buy, and that’s just because I really like Nintendo. Otherwise I invest primarily in a blend of Vanguard ETFs that more or less replicate VTI with a slight bias towards small-cap and a bit of international thrown in for good measure. Here’s my actual split (full disclosure: this is also an M1 affiliate link, so vested interest warning): thomasjfrank.com/m1-tjf-portfolio I also get a bit of real estate exposure through FundRise and their REITs. As always, there’s no way to predict outcomes, but my strategy here is to leverage the fact that I’m only 30 to weather short term volatility and get exposure to higher reward stuff, which is classically in the small cap sector. Still, I’m diversifying somewhat. And to be clear, I highly recommend doing your own research! My split is based on a lot of research, analyzing my own risk tolerance, and understanding my situation personally. Hope that helps!
I'll note that as a video idea for the future! A couple things now: 1. Most of the feedback I've seen on places like r/personalfinance (a generally great resource) count YNAB as the best overall budgeting tool. My team created a review of it here: collegeinfogeek.com/ynab-review/ef 2. I don't do active budgeting, but I do use this "budgeting" spreadsheet as a way to gauge average income, spending, and savings: thomasjfrank.com/free-budgeting-spreadsheet-template/ Hope these help!
Great Video, Thanks Thomas - just being from the UK do you (or anyone seeing this note) know of content/creator that covers the savings/ investing from a UK point of view :) Thanks
In my humble opinion, the Roth IRA is the BEST tax advantaged vehicle. Pay taxes up front, never pay taxes on that money or profits - EVER again. (unless they change the rules)
I’m not living on my own. But I’m one of the people spending their money until next paycheck. I do have some savings but I can’t help dipping into them sometimes :/ I feel credit cards can be a risky business
The ONLY thing this video has done is made me hate the tax system even more. Excellent video, thanks for the upload! just infuriating to have big brother sticking his hand in my wallet every chance he gets
Extraordinary person reading this, you are not define by your circumstance or your past. It’s not what happened to you that determines your success in life; it is how you deal with those circumstances that determines your success in life! You are strong, you are capable and practice forgiveness (Forgiveness is for you) and gratitude everyday. This will change the course of your life forever! Love you always and I believe in you wholeheartedly ✨❤️ - Nat
