Listen Money Matters - Free Your Inner Financial Badass. All The Stuff You Should Know About Personal Finance.

Don’t manage your money like an old white dude.  Manage your money like a gansta!  Learn how via our rap video and new book, Mastering Mint.  1. The Personal Finance Rap Video - We are very excited! Tomorrow (February 18th 2014) we debut our first personal finance rap video called “All My Money.” We spent over two months working on this project. Matt wrote and recorded the song in December, and after another month of planning, drove up to New York for a weekend with Andrew to film the video.   We are very proud and hope that people really enjoy the video. If early feedback is any indication, we are banking on a real success.   Check out the “The Making of All My Money” video to see how we created it.    2. Mastering Mint - Andrew has been working hard for the past two months writing this epic guide to using Mint.com. When I first got to look at his final draft, I was blown away by the things that Mint can do. It was Matt’s job to take Andrew’s words and turn them into a pretty PDF that will be available to

We interview Mark Deal who founded a company that connects overseas investors with Americans who want to start businesses and create new jobs.   Marks is a former Navy nuke with an MBA.  He founded Foreign Investor Resource Group to facilitate relationships with international investors and American entrepreneurs.   Investing a certain amount of money in a US company will buy you American citizenship.  So like everything else in America, citizenship is up for sale too.  Investors must bring over $1 million and create ten US jobs.   Twenty-one months after the investment, Mark’s company has to show proof that ten US jobs have been created through foreign investment.  You could be an existing business looking for new investors as well, it doesn’t have to be a startup.   Mark went from a six figure salary with benefits to starting his own company which was a big leap.  From his clients, he has learned to look at money strategically, not tactically.  And he uses Mint!  He gave up Excel for Mint.  There is hope for

On this episode, we discuss our favorite money management and productivity tools, including Mint, Betterment, Lift, Evernote, and more.   We believe in making money management as easy as possible.  With all of the apps and software out there, it’s easier than ever.  No need for complicated spreadsheets.  Everything you need can be downloaded right to your phone. Boosting your productivity will enhance your life.  From your health to your money, using the right tools can help you get the most out of your day.   Mint is our favorite money managing app but it’s read-only so you can’t transfer between accounts or make payments through it.  Most major banks will have an app that allows you to make certain transactions.  My bank is three long cross town blocks away and it’s cold.  I can deposit checks right through my phone as long as they are under $1000.   Evernote is like a notebook that can be downloaded across all your devices.  Any information will be uploaded to all of your devices automatically.   In Box Ze

We chat with Omar Zenhom, co-creator of $100 MBA, an online business training community for entrepreneurs, about quitting his job and starting a business.   We met Omar through the online community Fizzle.  He and his partner started Business Republic to help local businesses brand themselves more effectively. They have now started The $100 MBA, an online community and video training platform to teach people to run successfully on and offline businesses. Omar was teaching in Dubai, doing well, getting promoted but he always wanted to start his own thing.  He did side hustles while teaching but knew he would need to devote more time to them if he wanted to make one full time. He had about six months in savings when he made the leap but stretched that out to eighteen months by lowering his cost of living.  Although this is the first time I’ve ever heard of anyone lowering their expenses by moving to NYC. If you can work from home, you spend less money.  No lunch out, no dry cleaning, no commuting costs.  If y

How does a currency just materialize, seemingly from thin air? Are they only for people who like buying drugs on the internet?  What is a Bitcoin? Want to know how to invest in Bitcoin? We'll break down the mystery for you. If you find the concept of cryptocurrency confusing and, well, cryptic - you are certainly not alone. In the last few months, people have been foaming at the mouth over Bitcoin raising its value to never seen before prices. I'm sure every day you hear someone talking about it, but many of us still don't really understand what it is exactly. Bitcoin is the first decentralized digital cryptocurrency. It's like a digital token that is made of a hash- a random string of numbers and characters. It has no physical backing and can be sent electronically from one user to another, anywhere in the world. Because there are a finite number of the coins, there is scarcity so the value constantly fluctuates. Bitcoin is not run by a single company or person- it's run by a decentralized network of compute

We interview Rebecca from Stapler Confessions to find out how she is paying off $125,000 of student loan debt and learn how we can pay off our debt too.   Rebecca escaped her four-year college with zero debt but things changed when she graduated law school. She came out with $125,000 in student loan debt. She married her law school sweetheart and he had the same amount of debt so all total, they were a quarter of a million dollars in debt.  The couple used the snowball method and every month threw every extra dollar at the smallest loan payment.   Rebecca’s husband works for a non-profit and uses an income-based repayment plan.  If he works for the non-profit for 120 months and makes every payment, the rest of the loan will be forgiven.  This option is only available for federal loans, not private. Eventually, he stands to have about $50,000 in loans forgiven.   Income-Based Repayment is a good option for a lot of people.  Your monthly payment is based on your income.  It will generally extend the life of you

Most of the scary stories you hear about people losing big in the market are from people who were trying to make a quick buck. We don’t recommend that. Investing is a long term proposition.   You don’t have to have a finance degree or even really understand the stock market in order to invest and make money. You also don’t need to hire someone to invest your money for you.  This is the 21st Century, we have the technology to do it ourselves. It’s time you get over the fear of investing.   Invest in market index funds that represent a broad swath of the market, like the S&P 500, which is a group of 500 companies which cover many aspects of the overall market.  Betterment is a great tool for this kind of investing.   Have a certain amount of money automatically invested every month.  The money goes in without you having to do anything.  Set it and forget it.  The market will give you an average return of about 7%.   Be greedy when others are fearful. When everyone else is panicking and selling low, that’s when

Matt and Andrew were excited to talk to Caleb because they met through Fizzle.co. Fizzle is an online resource and forum for entrepreneurs looking to start an online business. Because of what Caleb helped to build, Listen, Money Matters exists. Caleb manages the finances for several small businesses including Fizzle, his website, CalebWojcik.com and his wife’s photography company JenWojcikPhotography.com. Caleb recommends paying small business taxes quarterly.  It saves you getting a big bill at the end of the year that you weren’t expecting.  Managing finances for your business doesn’t mean you have to do it alone.  A skilled accountant can make the process much easier. Xero is a web-based program that is a sexier version of QuickBooks.  You can track spending and even create invoices through the program.  For his personal finances, Caleb used a spreadsheet for two and a half years, hand entering every transaction. His wife understandably didn’t want to use the spreadsheet so they started using Mint.

Having a good credit score makes life easier and cheaper. Even if you’ve tanked your credit, we’ll give you some ways to bring the number back up. You don’t have to wait seven years to start improving your credit score. There are a few tricks to get that number out of the red. Having a good credit score can save you thousands of dollars over a lifetime. It makes you eligible for lower interest rates for car loans and mortgages. Some jobs even require a credit check. Full Article Here Show Notes: Credit Karma: A free, ballpark credit score.  A soft check so it won't ding your score. Mint:  Track your spending. What Makes Up Your Credit Score:  Read more in-depth about what goes into a credit score. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rich people are different than you and me. How are they different, though? This list of 21 rich habits will teach you how to become rich and put you on the path to wealth.  Dave Ramsey published a list of twenty things the rich do every day. Most of these things are habits. My take on this is that rich people have good habits. Habits that make them more successful, healthier, and smarter. And those things can help you accumulate wealth. Once you have achieved a certain level of wealth, you can focus on yourself rather than on money. Discipline seems to be the other thing all of these qualities have in common. It takes more discipline to cook a healthy meal than to order take out. It takes more discipline to save money than to spend it. Let’s take a look at each of the twenty-one habits. Full Article Here Show Notes Dave Ramsey: The list of twenty things. Betterment: Rich people invest. LMM Community: Join the money revolution.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peer to peer lending isn’t a new concept, but with the advent of the internet, it’s become much more mainstream than it was in the past. Just as robo investors like Betterment made investing more widely available, peer lenders made two things available to a broader audience. Banks make money, lots of it. What is their primary source of revenue? For most banks, loans are the primary use of their funds and the principal way in which they earn income. Consumer lending makes up the bulk of North American bank lending, and of this, residential mortgages make up by far the largest share. Peer to Peer lending lets us little people get in on this very lucrative business. The second thing peer to peer lending allows for consumers to have an alternate place to borrow money than a bank. This has been especially important for consumers whom banks won’t touch for one reason or another. Banks don’t make money by taking risks when it comes to loaning money, but a risky borrower is not necessarily a dead beat borrower. If

It’s that time of year again, New Year’s Resolutions.  Matt and Andrew discuss their resolutions, all the biggies, money, health, and fitness. Are you making resolutions?  Have you made them for so many years running that they’re more like traditions now?  Yeah, us too.  Let’s see what we can do to get serious this year. The key to creating a good New Year’s Resolution list is to keep it actionable and measurable. For instance, just “getting healthy” or “make more money” isn’t really a good place to start — how will you know if you’re successful, and how do you get started? Be more specific.  Change getting healthy to eating three servings of veg a day.  (You need more but if you’re eating next to none, this is a good place to start.) Change make more money to devoting an hour a day to working on your side business. What you don’t need to accomplish resolutions is motivation.  What you need is discipline.  Discipline leaves no wiggle room when you don’t feel like doing something.  If you rely on motivatio

In this episode, we talk to one of our listeners, Hersh, about his personal financial profile and offer up some advice. Full credit to Hersh for this show idea. He found our podcast through an Android app on his phone and became a huge fan. He reached out to us via Facebook and wanted to come on the show to copy a segment from Suze Orman called “How Am I Doing?” We thought it would be cool to bring his own, find out what his financial situation is and do our best to help him improve it. Hersh is a successful air traffic controller with a wife and newborn son from upstate New York. He owns a home, two cars, has no credit card debt, and paid off his student loans by taking a loan from himself via his TSP fund. He’s now currently paying off that loan. Hersh has some rental income and gets some overtime at work.  He has a college fund for his baby son.  Hersh is making some good money but essentially living pay check to pay check because all his spare money goes to his loan. Hersh is not doing much investin

What is the 4% rule?  It is the magic formula for early retirement.  Make your money work for you while you no longer have to work. If you want to retire way before 65, listen up.  This is how you can do it.   The 4% rule is a benchmark that can be used to calculate how much money to withdraw from your retirement accounts every year for at least thirty years without depleting those accounts and outliving your money. In 1994 William Bengen, a financial planner published a study showing the results of testing a number of rates of withdrawal based on historical rates of return. Bengen concluded that 4% was the highest rate that could be withdrawn for at least 30 years without running out of money. Full Article Here Show Notes The Four Percent Rule:  Calculate how much you need to apply the rule. Betterment:  Start investing today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Investing is a cornerstone of wealth building. No, we are not going to win the lottery, and most of us are not going to inherit a fortune from our parents. So we need to jump into the stock market and the earlier we start investing, the better because time is what really matters when it comes to building our nest eggs. But investing can be intimidating. Even the vocabulary around it sounds like a foreign language, mutual funds, market price, share price, robo-advisor. Don’t worry. Investing is not as complicated as it seems to the uninitiated. In fact, by the time you finish reading this, you will have all of the knowledge you need to start buying stocks, one way or another. So if you’re not sure how to buy stocks, our beginners guide to start investing is just for you. Full Article Here  Show Notes Betterment: If you don’t want to pick your own, let Betterment do it for you.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We want you to be sensible with your purchases.  But sometimes you just need a big one!  (Don’t we all). When is a big purchase justifiable?   The topic for this episode came from a listener  Kristen. She wanted to know "How and when do you justify buying big ticket items like a laptop, high-tech camera, or new TV?" Sometimes you really do need a new computer, your current one is dead.  Or you need a car that isn’t in the shop every month costing you money.  Those are legit reasons for big cash outlays.  Wanting a big ass TV when you are in credit card debt has no justification.   Put anything expensive on a 30 day list.  If at the end of thirty days, you still want it, than it may be a justifiable purchase. If it’s not something you really need, chances are you will have forgotten all about it by the end of the thirty days.  If you’re making a large purchase, see if the seller has a 0% APR card you can open and put the purchase on.  You have to be on top of this though and make certain to pay the entire bala

Is your bank nickel and diming you with their bullshit fees?  Learn how to avoid them and dispute the ones you may have already been charged.   Banks have enough of your money that they use to make more money for themselves.  Don’t let them steal more with tacked on fees.   Maintenance fee, minimum balance fee, foreign transaction fee, paper statement fee.  Those are just a sampling of the fees that some banks charge.   Banks rake in a ton of cash on these fees because they know a lot of people either won’t notice them at all or if they do notice them, can’t be bothered to dispute them because calling the bank is a hassle.   It just takes some research.  There are banks that don’t charge fees and various types of accounts that don’t come with fees.  There is usually some kind of catch, you need to have direct deposit, pay a bill via the bank’s auto-pay system, or maintain a certain balance.  Banks offer new accounts that are fee free but check the fine print.  The fee-free period may only last a certain lengt

You know you should be investing your money but where, how? Investing can be intimidating but it doesn’t have to be.  We’ll help you get started.   Anyone can invest and everyone should.  We’ll walk you through the process so you can start making your money work for you.   Money sitting in your checking or savings account is losing you money because the crummy interest the bank pays is less than inflation.  You have to put that money where it can earn you something.  That’s why investing is so important.  Betterment is very easy to use.  You slide the scale to the amount of risk you want, more stocks is riskier, more bonds is safer.  The fee is .35% which is pretty low.  There is no minimum investment but wait until you have $100 to start your account.   If you need the money in Betterment, you can pull it out and there is no fee. You can set an auto deposit so each month, the money will be invested.  You never have to think about it, Betterment handles everything for you.   If you’re a bit sophisticated and

In this episode, we answer another listener question about whether he should invest in a Traditional 401k, a Roth 401k, or both.   If you’re employed, chances are your employer offers a 401k. Normally, this would be a Traditional 401k, but check with HR to see if they offer both a Traditional and a Roth. 401ks allow you to invest your pre-taxed income, and sometimes employers will match up to a certain percent. If they do, take it — it’s free money. However, Traditional 401ks have a yearly limit as to what you can invest. Therefore, some employers will also offer a Roth 401k which allows you to invest after-taxed money from your check — there is also a limit too.   If you can afford to max out both, go for it. If not, go with a Traditional 401k, and anything over the limit to which you can invest, through that in the Roth — hopefully, your employer will do some matching there too.   Show Notes Health Savings Account (HSA) — This is a savings account you can open to use for health-related costs. Learn more a

Are you stuck with a mortgage that is underwater?  We’ll craft an escape plan so you can save money and move on. An underwater mortgage means the balance remaining on the mortgage is higher than the fair market value of your home.  In other words, you owe the bank more money than your home is worth. A lot of people found themselves in this situation when the economy crashed in 2008.  Even at that time, interest rates were lower than you will generally average in the market.  And mortgage interest is tax deductible.  Money tied up in a house is inaccessible.  You can pull money out of the market and have cash in hand within a few days.   If you’re underwater, don’t overpay on your mortgage.  You’re only tying up more money.  Invest that money and get your average 7%.   Give some thought to doing what Matt did when he found himself underwater.  He moved in with his brother, paying a very low amount of rent and rented out his condo.  In some cases, you can get more in rent than what you are paying for your mort