The Real Financial Order of Operations - Part 2 of 2

Tyler Gardner (0:00)

This framework is by no means revolutionary. It's certainly not going to make you rich overnight. It's not going to be featured on a Netflix documentary about the next big thing in personal finance. But what it will do is give you a clear logical path from wherever you are today to financial security and eventual wealth in the years to come.

Hello, friends. This is Tyler Gardner welcoming you to another episode of Your Money Guide on the Side, where it is my job to simplify what seems complex, add nuance to what seems simple, and learn from and alongside some of the brightest minds in money, finance, and investing. So let's get started and get you one step closer to where you need to be. Welcome back to Your Money Guide on the Side. I'm Tyler Gardner and this is part two of our financial order of operation series. Last episode, we covered the foundational steps, the non-negotiables that come before anything else. If you haven't checked it out, good time to do it, and probably worth doing before listening to this part two as it really does cover the basics. But for those who missed it or don't care or already have the basics under control, we talked about putting your own financial oxygen mask on first, obliterating credit card debt, getting proper insurance, maxing out your Roth IRA if you can, grabbing the 401k match if you can and you have one, and taking advantage of a health savings account if you have access to one and are on a high deductible health plan. So if you missed part one, I'd certainly encourage you to go back and listen to it. I'll wait. Okay, today we're getting into the nuanced stuff. The decisions where the conventional wisdom is not just wrong, but kind of expensive. Additionally, we'll get into the stuff that almost nobody agrees on, and that's a good thing, because the last thing I would ever want us to do in our lives is value living in an echo chamber. If you already believe it, awesome. And yes, we feel so good when we hear someone we respect affirm our own decisions or values or choices. But for the love of academic and intellectual pride and just human connection, let's challenge ourselves daily to listen to people's opinions that really do challenge our own. Like, set our paradigms adrift type of thinking, and good news, just because you listened doesn't mean you have to agree. It just means that in a world where there are competing viewpoints, at the very least, it's worth hearing those viewpoints so you can make your own side slightly more logically sound. And in case this digression wasn't long enough, I also used to tell students that when it was a debate day, the goal of a good debate was not for one team to win, but for both teams to win. No, I'm not talking about an everybody gets a participation trophy type of thinking. I'm talking about the fact that if both sides present their positions well, we all will have benefited and found more ways to bolster our own sides or reposition our own thinking in the face of new information. So today, you might not agree with some things, but hear me out. We're talking about emergency funds, taxable brokerage accounts, and how to think about student loans and other types of debt. And to start off as bluntly as I can, a lot of what you've been told and taught about these topics, or personal finance in general, is designed to make you feel safe, not necessarily to optimize your wealth. But before we dive in, as always, a quick reminder, request, if the show has been helpful to you, the best way to support it is by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or sharing it with a friend who still believes high-yield savings means your money gets a 5% return for the rest of your life. Additionally, remember that as I promised last episode, if you've ever sat here listening to any of my ramblings and thought, this all sounds great, but where do I actually find the money to do any of this? Hang with me until the end of this episode because today I will share one quick modern trick that can free up hundreds to thousands of real dollars in under 20 minutes without giving up your coffee or giving up that leased car. So we're going to start part two where we left off in part one continuing to explore the emergency fund, or as I like to call it, the emergency fund myth. Specifically, why the conventional wisdom around emergency funds, to me, is outdated, expensive, and rooted far more in fear than in basic math.