🧠 Goat Quote

🪙 Two Cents

Typically, I share tangible advice in the ‘two cents’ section about personal finance. This time, I want to share a story. A story that shocked me to my core and what ultimately led me to write my book, From Ramen Noodles to Riches.

Co-worker’s persona: mid 30s, single, working a corporate job for 8+ years, living in a high cost of living area.

They once told me they had over $70,000 sitting in their checkings account because they didn’t know what to do with their money and didn’t know how to get started in investing. 🤯 🤯 🤯 

$70,000 in 2016 is equivalent to $90,509 today…

A checkings account typically has a 0% interest rate, meanwhile the average inflation rate in the last 8 years was 3.26%. That means my coworker literally lost more than $20,000 by letting their money sit in their checkings account.

This hurts my soul. If you have even more than $10,000 sitting in your checkings account, you’re doing something wrong (some hardship situations don’t apply).

At the very least, as a Level 1: put your money in a high-yields savings account.

Level 2 is investing your money in the S&P 500 through a brokerage account.

Level 3 is diversifying your money into the high yields savings account, stock market, real estate, and retirement accounts.

Also, if you have more than $10,000 in your checkings account, I’d be very curious to know why (if you don’t mind sharing of course!)

As always, reach out to me with any questions and if you’re confused about this topic, my book covers this in much more detail!

💡Career Corner

This month, let’s focus on how to navigate your regular syncs with your managers. I’ve worked with a lot of different types of managers (both good and bad) and here’s what I’ve learned:

The good managers make sure to set 1:1 time with each one of their team members either weekly or bi-weekly. If your manager isn’t setting this for you, take this opportunity to be proactive and put this recurring invite on the calendar for the both of you.

During your 1:1, take the time to discuss this:

1. Some wins you’re having (both personally and professionally)

   1. Dive deeper into the progress on your professional goals.

2. Talk about obstacles that have come your way

   1. Share what’s working to get past them or

   2. Ask for help!! Don’t be afraid to do so, the best leaders aren’t afraid to ask for help.

3. Depending on your situation, ask for a few things:

   1. Advice on how to deal with a certain project, situation, etc.

   2. Opportunity to work on a larger project, a new initiative, something to grow towards (shows your capacity, your interest, and your proactiveness)

   3. Feedback and their thoughts on your progress. Make sure to do this regularly so you have a good gauge on how your aligning with your manager’s expectation.

❗Lessons Learned

Distraction seems to have been the theme of my life for the past few weeks. It feels like it's becoming harder to figure out what's truly important and what's a distraction. As most of you know, I started a new job about a month ago.

With this transition and moving to a new city, a flood of information has come my way. I've been sitting in on 8-10 meetings a day, doing my best to understand the current state of the business. Luckily, one of my mentors offered me some great advice on this situation:

'This large initiative in front of you is actually a distraction. I know everyone's talking about it and this is where your attention is automatically going, but the reason we hired you is to look at things from a new lens'.

This made me rethink how I was spending my time and what I was focusing on. Now, I'm constantly asking myself: ‘Is this really important, or is this just a distraction from the bigger picture?’

What I’m learning as I do this is that most things are a distraction. Obviously we all know about social media being a distraction, but also what about those extra meetings, that new project you thought you wanted to work on, the outfit you wanted to buy, the trip you’re being influenced into taking…What if these are all distractions from the core, important things to you?

📝Featured Resource

This is one of my all-time favorite poems. It’s called the “To this Day Project” by Shane Koyczan.

It’s a beautiful story with lessons on bullying, growing in life, and empathy written by a Canadian activist and artist. If you’re looking for a video to move you, check it out here.

warning: you may tear up 🥹 

P.S: I work hard to keep all the content on my website and my newsletters free so that it's accessible for everyone, but if you want to help support my writing endeavors, you can buy me a coffee.

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