4 Ways to Spend Your Money That Will Skyrocket Happiness

On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, four ways to spend your money that will skyrocket your happiness.

What's up everybody and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, the Andrew founder of mastermoney.co and today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to be talking about four ways to spend your money that will skyrocket your happiness. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join us on the master money newsletter by going to mastermoney.co slash newsletter and you can ask your questions there and you may get your questions answered on

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as we go out there. Now, if you want to watch us on YouTube, we give you kind of the outline as I'm talking through some of these subjects. So if some of these feel like they're a little more advanced and you're a visual learner, YouTube is a great place to go. You just search my name, Andrew Giancola, and it will pop up and show you our podcast YouTube videos. And it's a great way to learn more as we progress through some of this. Plus, you get to see me and my hands flailing all over the place. Some of my background is Italian, so I use my hands a lot when I'm talking.

Anyways, today we are going to be going through four ways to spend your money that's going to skyrocket your happiness. Now what I'm going to do is I am going to give you four different ways that are a huge massive improvement for me and something I really prioritize with my goals. These are things that I truly, truly value and I'm going to give you examples on why I do some of this stuff.

Now, for you, I want you to start to build up the skill of spending money because spending money is a skill. Most people do not realize that you have to actually learn how to spend money properly. And if you've never been taught, you may have this feeling where, hey, I go to the grocery store and I spend a ton of money on my groceries. Then I go over to Target to get one thing, but I end up blowing money on a bunch of different things. And then I head on over to TJ Maxx and I spend a bunch of money there. This is how a lot of consumers spend their dollars. They have zero plan, zero intention on what they really value.

And so they spend on whatever they see and then they end up overspinning. This is why credit card debt is at its highest it is ever been because people are overspinning on things and they don't really know what brings them value. But identifying the things that actually bring you value can help you change the way you spend your dollars. There are a lot of different things in life that I would want.

But I prioritize them so that I can allocate dollars towards the things I actually value. My friend Paula Pants says it best. You can afford anything. You just can't afford everything. She literally built an entire brand around that thought. And because of that, I want you to remember this as well.

you can afford anything. You just cannot afford everything in this world. And so when you identify the things that you can afford, this helps you change your mindset when it comes to your values, even how much you earn, how much you want to work, how much time you want to spend working. So you can earn more dollars. This is going to help you tremendously. And so these four things have brought a ton of different value to me. I hope they bring value to you as well. And what I'm going to do.

is when I go through each of these, I'm actually going to talk about a bunch of scientific studies that back up why these will increase your happiness. In addition, I'm going to give you systematic ways if you want to start prioritizing this stuff on how you can do that. And we're going to get practical with it as well. I'll give you some frameworks thinking about that in action plans for each one of these. If you want to change the way that you're spending dollars, you're not

happy with the way that you're spending your money and you really hate the way that your dollars are just flying out of your hands. You have no idea where your money went at the end of every single month. I get it. I was there too. And so we're going to change that mindset for you today by identifying some of the things that you value. So first off, before we dive into this, I want you to think through what are some things I truly, truly value and how do I want to spend more money on those things? Then I'm going to give you the four examples that I have and I want you just to think through that as we go through this episode. Let's get into it.

All right, so number one is experiences. Now you may be saying to yourself, well, all of us want experiences, but there is a ton of data out there that shows why experiences are truly, truly impactful. The first one I'm gonna give you is one that I read recently that actually sparked the entire idea for this episode because it was one that changed the way I even think about family vacation. So there is a research done by the Family Holiday Association in the UK and they research families and ask them

Hey, what was your happiest memory growing up? And 49% of the respondents stated that they can still recall family vacations from their childhood in detail in highlighted this was the most cherished memories that they had growing up, specifically children from

the ages of five to 12 is they remember those family vacations and how impactful they were on their life. They brought them the most joy and they're the happiest memories that they've ever had. And so because of this, this is something I talk about a ton on this podcast. I want you to spend more on things like this that bring you value. Why? Because a, your family is going to remember these memories forever.

And the last thing you want to do is forego these memories because you decided to spend more dollars at Target every month or TJ Maxx or whatever random store that you go into in your local location. And so I want that for you to reallocate and think through your spending priorities so that you can create those memories from people.

Okay. Another study came out and said, researchers asked people to think about things that they spent money on, like gadgets, clothes, trips, and rate, how happy those purchases made them. This one was in 2002. And people responded and said they felt happier for longer when they spent money on experiences like vacations or concerts compared to material things like phones or shoes.

Why does this matter? Because experiences make us feel connected to others. They create lasting memories and they can be part of our personal story. The same group did another study. That first study was from 2003. They did another study in 2014 and they compared how happy people felt

when they were looking forward to a future purchase like a gadget or an upcoming vacation. And people felt more excited and happy when waiting for purchases like a vacation than waiting for stuff like a TV. So sometimes you can get joy out of just the waiting game as well for some of these purchases, specifically when it comes to a vacation. Maybe this you're having a really rough quarter at work. This helps you power through that because you know at the end of this quarter or coming up this summer, you got a big family vacation that you've been dreaming about for a long time and you worked and you saved up for that vacation.

Another study from Howell and Hill came out in 2009, and participants were asked whether their purchases, material or experiential, helped them feel connected to others or more accomplished. And they said experiences made people feel closer to their loved ones and gave them a sense of growth and purpose. Now those of you.

who are out there looking for growth and purpose. This is a big thing that we just talked about on a recent episode. If that is you, this is a massive difference to your family's growth and purpose. You become closer together. You spend more time together. It is something I think that is so incredibly valuable to spend more dollars on experiences.

Another study in 2010 came out and researchers asked people about their purchases. They regret it. They also explored how much people compared their purchases to others and people regret material purchases more than experiences, partly because it's easier to compare material things like a TV and feeling dissatisfied. Experiences are personal and harder to compare negative. So if you've been really down on a lot of your purchase that you've been making.

and you look around your house and you feel like your house is super cluttered. You feel like it's full of a bunch of stuff. If you have kids, you know what I'm talking about. There's crap everywhere at the end of every single Christmas and holiday season. If that's you and you feel like you just have stuff building up, this is something I think you need to look into more is figuring out ways to spend more dollars that are going to increase your happiness. Now, the interesting thing part here is this is the last study I'll go over on this subject is in 2014, there was a study done looking at how different ages approach experiences.

So researchers studied how people at different ages felt about ordinary experiences like a walk in the park versus extraordinary experiences like a safari. Young people value big, extraordinary experiences more, but older people enjoy everyday experiences just as much. So you got to look at that too, where a young adult might love skydiving or whatever else, but an older adult may cherish a quiet, picnic with loved ones or just spending time with loved ones. And with age, a lot of these experiences will change over time.

So this is something I want you to think about. Are you spending enough time, energy, and money on experiences? Now, you may be someone who is looking at this and saying to yourself, well, I can't afford experiences right now. Well, how can you change your earning potential so that you can start affording experiences? You're hearing the data here, and all these studies come back showing that experiences will increase your happiness. If you're down in the dumps on the way that you're spending your dollars, this can significantly help you going forward.

I want you to spend more on things that you love. And the way to do that is to earn more money. B is what you start to earn more money. We have a ton of episodes talking about how to earn more money. I think it is the number one thing that you need to be doing. But B, you also need to make sure that you're allocating dollars towards experiences.

So I'm going to give you a step-by-step guide on how to implement experiential spending, because I think it is very important to make sure that you have a budget in place. So if you're going to set an experienced budget, I want you to have that in place. And you should just put this in a high yield savings account. Why? Because you can get more for your money in a high yield savings account, specifically if you were planning on taking those experiences within the next couple of years. And so what I do is I set up a category in my ally bank account. And I say, hey,

Every single month allocate X amount of dollars towards this ally bank account. Maybe you can only allocate 50. Maybe it's a hundred. Maybe it's a thousand. I don't care what it is, but I want you to allocate dollars automatically every single month into your high yield savings account and do it for experiences. If that's something you value, I have a friend who says, I never want to leave the town that I'm in. I'd rather buy a Rolex than have vacations or experiences.

If that's you, and I think that's a smaller percentage of the population, then maybe you don't take a huge trip, maybe you take a staycation, but you allocate dollars so that you can actually separate time to spend with your loved ones and your family. You decide maybe, hey, who do I want to go on this trip with me? Maybe it's your family.

Maybe it's your extended family. Maybe you want to take your parents and your kids with you. Maybe you want to take all of your family. A lot of people I've talked to in the past who are starting to build wealth, they want to take their entire family on a vacation because they want to spend that time together for some other people. That may sound like hell on earth. And so you got to make sure you know what you want out of the experience so that you can start allocating those dollars there.

Maybe you can take a small amount of your income coming in. Maybe it's 3%, 5%, 10% and do it on that percentage basis. And you can start to move it over there. Now, we have an episode that we did last summer talking about how much you should spend by income on a vacation. And this is going to give you really strict parameters on how to think about this. So I would definitely check that episode out if you haven't yet.

Secondly, is I want you to plan in advance. So think through and use a calendar to schedule monthly or quarterly experiences. I had someone who I just recently talked to and they set up a budget and they plan it on the calendar where him and his wife make sure they do one really unique experience that they would not normally do every single month.

I love that idea because if you can set this up where you do something unique like a cooking class or you can set up a unique experience like you're going to go zip lining in your local location or you set up a unique experience. We're going to have a hiking guy take you around town or you set up a unique experience. We're going to take a hot yoga class. It doesn't have to be anything crazy, but they're just doing new and unique experiences and dates every single month.

That is a really powerful way to spend your dollars on experiences so that you can grow closer. Just think back on your memories. Even if you took a local staycation, you're going to remember that so much more than just staying in the house and doing the same old thing every single month. So allocating dollars towards this can be so powerful. Three is when you start to set up this planning, make sure you engage loved ones, because I think that's a really, really important process that most people leave out.

make sure that you and your family sit down and talk to each person and say, hey, what would you love to do? Set up family bucket lists together and see if you can start to knock some things off that bucket lists. Now, some people in the family may want to go to Egypt and some people in the family may just want to go locally to a place that you guys have never been before.

But you got to make sure that you do this as a family and maybe each person gets to pick one experience a year or one experience a month if they're not really, really high end experiences so that you can have fun with this as well. There's a lot of these adventure books that have come out where you can plan adventures with your family. I think that stuff is so cool because you can spend the time and energy with the ones that you love.

for is invest time and energy in the process. So kind of decide how frequently you want to have some of these experiences, invest time and energy into that process, and don't miss dates. Just kind of have it set up where you know this is exactly when you're going to be doing this and then reflect afterwards, have everybody

kind of talk as you're on your way home. Did you enjoy this experience? Would you like to do more things like this and have conversations about this? Now, if you're single and you are doing these experiences on your own or with friends, do the same exact exercise, but with friends. Maybe you go together and you say, Hey, what's on your bucket list? And then what's on mine? And we could travel together and do some of this cool stuff.

Or if you like to travel solo, that's awesome too. And you can go through your bucket list based on that. But you really want to plan this out specifically, if you have a nine to five, you know, you want to make sure that you have this on the calendar setup so that you can optimize the days every single year so you can get the most out of your time off. A lot of times I used to go through at the very beginning of the year and identify, hey, how can I get the most full weeks off in my schedule?

So that can actually fully recharge. A lot of times, if you take a couple of days off of Christmas, a couple of days off of Thanksgiving, it's really hard to recharge throughout the year. So if you can identify, how do I get the most days off in a row every single year? I used to do that every January and try to ask for that time off as early as possible. So number one is experiences. I want you, if you think you really are going to value experiences, I want you to allocate more dollars towards that.

It's going to increase your happiness and long term. It's going to increase a ton of time with family. Now, the last thing I'll say on experiences is as you start to identify them on the calendar, if you are somebody who loves a travel hack, I would start to set up my travel hacking plan with credit card signups and bonuses and those types of things as early as possible throughout.

Now, if you want to see some of my favorite credit cards that I love travel hacking with, if you go to the personalfinancepodcast.com up top on the menu there, you're going to see top credit cards. That is my list of my favorite credit cards that you can definitely check out and see if there's any up there that you like. A lot of those up top are in my everyday carry and you have a business that spends a decent amount of money. You can get a ton of travel rewards cards too that will give you a ton of points back.

So start planning out your travel rewards cards. And if you guys want me to do a free masterclass teaching you just how to travel hack and or how to learn how to maximize my favorite credit cards this year in 2025, let me know and I'll do a private masterclass or a webinar on exactly how to do that. Just let me know in an email. All right, let's jump to number two.

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Number two is buying back time. But there's a caveat to this because this also falls into line with convenience, but buying back time and spending that time on things that you actually enjoy. Now, what a lot of people do is they buy back time and then they go sit on their couch and they start scrolling on TikTok.

or on Instagram, or they start scrolling on Twitter or X or whatever it's called now. But what I like to do is I like to buy back time and then spend it on things that I actually value. So let me give you a story of how I actually get this. So for years, when I bought my first house, I bought a little three bedroom, two bathroom, 1200 square foot house that was on like a quarter of an acre. Now a quarter of an acre sounds like a lot. It's not anything crazy. We had a little pullback there as well that took up a lot of the area.

And every single week, I would spend five hours on the lawn in landscaping. It was a nightmare. It was kind of hilly. And for Florida, it's pretty rare to have kind of hilly areas. But this was just a very difficult place to mow the lawn. Then you had to keep up on the landscaping and you had to trim the hedges and hedges grow really fast in Florida because we got this warm climate.

and you had to do all of these various things to make sure you're just maintaining the landscaping at the house. So I would spend five hours every single week. And honestly, I wasn't even that good at it. I was just doing it and trying to get through it every week. And it was one of the most frustrating things, but I also had to take care of the pool. And the pool took me about an hour every single week. And some weeks I'm like, man, I'm just so exhausted. I don't want to take care of the pool. The pool would turn green. Then I had to restart this whole process again. I wasn't even very good at taking care of the pool. And so when I had my first kid, I said to myself, listen,

I'm spending all of this time and energy working on the yard when I could be a, working on increasing my income because I now have this child, b, I could be working on some side businesses or doing some other things or see I could be spending it with my kids, which is the most important thing of all. So what did I do? I went out and I found someone first to take care of the lawn.

Now they started to take care of the lawn and this was an amazing thing. All of a sudden I got five hours back per week. Think about the math here. That is 20 hours per month that I got back for someone taking care of the lawn. They would trim the hedges and they take care of some other little things as well outside. It was an amazing difference just to have those five hours back.

Now, they charged me $150 per month in that location. So that was number one. That was step one. Then eventually, I sold that house. And when I sold that house, I decided, hey, I am going to, in my new house, I built my new house and we moved all in. We got a new lawn company. The new lawn company and a bigger house was actually cheaper, $55 a month because they take care of the entire street. It is the best $55 per month I have ever spent. I get 20 hours back per week for $55 per month.

I don't think there's a better investment in the history of time than that. And it's an amazing thing that happens. Secondly though, is we decided to go ahead and build a pool. And when I built a pool, I had flashbacks of the maintenance that I had to do at my old house. I spent an hour every single week, so four hours per month to maintain that pool. So instead this time around, I said, Hey, I'm starting to make more money now. I want to actually hire a pool person. So I hired a pool person. The first one went through, didn't do a very good job. So I hired a second one. The second one charges a little more.

but they do an amazing job and I literally don't even remember how to kind of operate some of the functions of this pool if I wanted to clean up myself because they do such a good job. I don't have to think about it ever, ever, ever. So now I got another four hours of time back. So now I have 24 hours of time back per month that I can spend with my kids because I hired a pool person.

But then I realized, hey, I've got this bigger house now. I've got to make sure I'm keeping it up and keeping it clean. My kids may get messy all the time, and we spend a lot of time cleaning the house. My wife and I. So then, all of a sudden, I started to think through, well, how many hours could I get back if I'm not cleaning the house constantly?

So we got a cleaning company to come and clean our house every other week. So every two weeks a cleaning company comes by and does a deep clean. This in turn saves my wife and I about five hours every single week, five hours every single week, another 20. And so they come and I honestly, I think I have a really great deal going on here. They charge me $140 every two weeks. Okay.

So now, here's what's happening, okay? This is 44 hours per month that I am getting back. 44 hours per month that I'm getting back. And how much am I spending on that? Well, I spend 60, my long guy just raised their price. I'm spending $65 per month. Let's pull out the whole calculator so I don't have to do public math here while I'm talking.

I spend $65 per month on lawn care. I spend 140 on pool care, but they do a lot of stuff. It's a saltwater pool that put the salt. There's a lot of things going on there. And honestly, chemicals alone for this pool would cost me at least 60. And then for the cleaning person, I spend 140 two times per week. So $485 is what I spend on just maintenance stuff, stuff that I would normally be doing.

Oh, in addition, I also got a lawn spray person. So let's add that in there as well because I always killed the lawn with the lawn spray. So $540 is what I spend on monthly maintenance on a house. So for those of you who are going to buy a house and you don't factor these costs in, if you're going to get someone to actually allocate some of these dollars for you, this is why total cost of ownership really, really matters. Because that may sound like a ton of money to you or for somebody else, that may sound like I do that anyway. I actually spend a lot more. So it depends on your specific situation, but I spend

$540 per month to get what did I say? 45 hours back. I forgot about long spring, so 45 hours back. And so let's divide that by 45. That means I am paying $12 an hour to get all that stuff done.

Do I make more than $12 an hour? You bet your bottom dollar I do. And so that is where it is some of the best dollars I will ever spend is buying back my time because I get to spend that time with my family on the weekends because I'd be out there all weekend long if I was doing all this stuff. Secondly though, I get to spend my time on the weekends also when my kids are resting or doing their quiet time. I get to spend time building and working on my businesses or spending time with my wife.

And this is some of the most powerful dollars that I could ever, ever spend is buying back my time. And I encourage all of you to think through this math and this equation. There's a guy named Dan Martell and Dan Martell wrote this book called buy back your time. I need to get him on the podcast. And he wrote this book called buy back your time. If you haven't read it, it's been in our high performance book club a couple of times because I reread it every so often to go through some things on it.

And buyback your time is a fantastic book on this exact concept. What he talks through is figuring out what your buyback number is. And your buyback number is basically a very simple equation. If anything costs you 25% of what you make per hour, you should automatically hire that out if you can find somebody to do it. And that's his theory on your buyback number.

But in that book, he also talks through, hey, how do you train people to do certain things? How do you actually find these people? It is a really, really good book and I highly encourage you to do that. And so this is my story to tell you that I am buying back my time and it brings me so much value. I cannot tell you $12 an hour and really what's raising that up.

Mostly is the pool person because their time spent is only four hours and they cost $140. But I'm still willing to do that because it would take me so long to go through this plus the cost of chemicals. And so overall, I think this is a really, really powerful thing to think through now.

Again, you don't buy back your time and just start scrolling and doing nothing. There's a bunch of studies that came out about this. So in 2017, researchers studied over 6,000 adults across various countries. And what they asked was how they used money. Participants who spent money on time-saving services like house cleaning or meal delivery reported higher life satisfaction than those who didn't. What they found was that outsourcing chores significantly reduced stress and improved well-being, regardless of income level. And this is absolutely true.

When I used to have to load a law on every single weekend and I really couldn't get to it until the end of the weekend, I started to get stressed. I started to have anxiety. What are my neighbors going to think? Oh, my lawn's overgrown. Yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda. When you buy your time, you free yourself from these mundane tasks and you free your mind from these mundane tasks as well. Somebody else is going to do one.

Somebody else is going to take care of him. I literally almost never have to check in on these people and they do a way better job than I ever ever would. They're building amazing businesses on the backs of me as a consumer needing them. This allows you to enjoy your Saturday afternoons or your Saturday mornings. You get those back so you can go to your kids games. You can do the things that you want instead of scrubbing floors or mowing the lawn. That's the last thing you want to be doing.

Another study in 2011 analyzed spending habits and happiness levels and highlighted that money spent on time-saving services often leads to greater happiness than spending on material items. So you may be saying to yourself, well, I don't have the line item there. Well, what if you just took away some of the shopping trips that you have that are frivolous that you really don't even know what you're buying and reduced those trips and instead got your time back so you could spend it doing things that you love with your family?

Time is your most valuable asset. It is so important for you to get it back so that you can use it and allocate it towards other things. Time is also your greatest investment. The areas that you invest that time is so incredibly powerful. So if you invest too much time scrolling, go look at your screen time right now. If you scroll way too much, change it. Change the way that you invest your time because if you change the way you invest your time, you can make more money and you can spend more time with people that you love.

A third study in 2020 came out where Ashley Williams in her book called The Time of Fluence Paradox demonstrates how reallocating resources to save time can improve mental health. It can significantly improve mental health and people who feel time affluent, meaning they have control over the time, are happier and way more productive.

Another study in 2018 examined time-saving products and the impacts on well-being and people with time-saving purchases reduced feelings of time pressure, which is a major source of stress in modern life. How many of you are out there and you're saying, I just haven't?

so much to do I can't even handle it and it stresses you out and it brings anxiety it forces you to make bad decisions in certain situations and really your brain is just tired you are worn down and if that is you I want you to think through how can I invest more dollars in saving time how can I fix this situation because if you can find ways to reduce time stress

It is going to make your life so much better. You can finally breathe again. A lot of parents are feeling this stress. If you're in the messy middle of life, meaning your thirties and forties where your time is just getting sucked in all different directions, you would be amazed at the difference if you could start to allocate dollars towards this now.

I'm going to put a caveat here because for a lot of you, you still need to be hitting those retirement goals. And if you're not hitting those retirement goals, but you're spending too much money on time, you need to get that back so that you can have way more time later on down the line. But we need to make sure that we become time rich because it's going to reduce our stress and anxiety.

Now, one last one is a study track how people felt during different daily activities and identified the least enjoyable tasks such as commuting and household chores. Outsourcing these tasks significantly improved daily happiness levels and avoiding unpleasant tasks frees up energy for meaningful, fulfilling moments. So for example, hiring a lawn care service can turn a dreaded Saturday chore into time spent building memories with your kids. I see all these memes all the time of people saying,

I got this relaxing weekend ahead of me. I got to do all these different chores. I got to run all these different errands and then my weekend's completely over. If that's you, let's find ways where we can reduce the friction there and have somebody help out. People started these businesses and they're looking for customers. They are dying to have more customers out there. There are so many lawn care companies out there. It's not even funny.

And so if you want to go out there, go get five different quotes on your lawn and see how much money you can save per hour just by having somebody else do this. Because a lot of these tests when it comes to lawn care or pool care, or if you have something out there like house cleaning, the supplies to even do some of this stuff is really expensive. If you're doing lawn care and you don't have an electric mower,

You got to repair the mower all the time. You have to put oil in the mower. You have to put gas in the mower all the time. You got to commute over to the gas station to get the gas. You got to bring the gas back. You got to store gas cans in your garage. Now your garage smells like gas. You got to get an edger, which is like a hundred bucks. If you had to put gas and oil in there, that's a different story. If you have an electric one, then the batteries are going to die eventually. Then you got to replace it every couple of years. All that stuff can be avoided by having a lawn care company. That depends on how big your lawn is. A lot of these things are coming into play. But overall, it is some of the best money that I spent.

Now, what are some practical steps if you want to do this? Is one, I want you to create a stress list. Which tasks in your everyday life, and don't say your job, but which tasks in your everyday life are bringing you the biggest amount of stress? Actually, maybe it is your job and you need to try to think through that as well. But make a list of chores and see which ones are really taking the majority of your time and bringing you stress. Now, there are guys and girls out there that I know who love maintaining their lawn. They love lawn care. It's actually relaxing for them.

I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to those of you like me who would go out there and you are not someone who was really into lawn care and there's lawn care influencers now. I mean, there's all these people out there and you want to make sure that you are taking care of your property, but you want somebody else to do it for you. So make a list of that. Maybe it's cleaning, maybe it's yard work. It could even be grocery shopping or meal prep. Think through some of those chores and tasks that take a ton of amount of time and decide how much you're willing to spend monthly to outsource those tasks. So get some quotes from some companies to look at this stuff and start to outsource those tasks.

Now, you can do what I did. One big thing that I did is I chose one task to start with, which was the lawn care, because it was taking me five hours every single month, and you start to get a little bit comfortable with outsourcing. Now, listen, I didn't want to do it for years because I was frugal. I was very frugal. This was in my 20s, and I was very frugal at that time, and I did not want to spend the money at all. So if you're someone listening, I know we got a lot of frugal weirdos out there listening to this podcast. If you were like me a frugal weirdo, then

It's tough. You don't want to spend those dollars, but trust me, it's really, really worth it. Now you can run all these calculations on, you know, what does the opportunity cost? How do I need to think about this? But trust me, it is some money that is well spent overall, at least for me, it was. And then make sure you use that time wisely. So once you choose and identify one of those tasks, then it's time to use that time wisely for something else. So when you are looking to do this, identify what you want to do.

Maybe it's just you're so tired and stressed. Maybe it's just laying on the couch and you actually get time to relax. That may be something that you want to do. Maybe it's spending more time with your kids and you want to take them to the park every morning or you want to teach them a skill during that timeframe. Or maybe it's working on a side hustle or a side business. You want to grow your income during that timeframe. Or maybe it's just going out and hanging out with friends and that's what you want to spend that time doing and you don't really get to do that that much. Maybe it's going to play and pick a ball or golf or just doing things that are relaxing to you.

Maybe it's getting into the gym and actually working on your health because you have no time to do it throughout the week. These are all amazing reasons to buy back your time. And I cannot stress this enough. So this week, I want you to identify one task you can outsource if you're outsourcing nothing, like cleaning, like grocery shopping. And I want you to research affordable services that do this.

Start with the most affordable and see if it's worth it. Now, if they make a bunch of mistakes, like the first lawn care company that I hired was missing spots and they were just doing things that I thought, you know, wasn't worth the price. And so I found another one that did a much better job. You might have to go through a couple of them, but that's okay. And then set a budget to start outsourcing that task. If you want to get a couple of months ahead with cash first before you outsource that task, more power to you. I think that's a great idea and something that you can definitely do.

And then gradually increase time saving things so that you can spend more time on things that you actually value. So that's the second one is saving time and it's spending more on experiences. Number one, number two is spending more on buying back your time and then using that time in useful ways. I think that is a really, really powerful way to increase your happiness by spending money. Now let's get to number three.

Number three is going to be something that may sound obvious to you, but we're going to dive into some of the psychology and the reasons why I'm talking about this. And number three is saving money. So a lot of us are saving money and it is something where we can see progression when we saved our dollars going forward.

And because we can see that progression, it's going to increase our happiness because we as humans want to progress. We want to move forward. That's what makes us happy in a lot of different ways. If you know someone who just sits around all day, they don't spend any time whatsoever working and working on themselves and progressing, a lot of times folks like that are miserable. And so because saving money is actually a metric of progress that you can see numbers going up.

It is going to be something that actually increases your happiness in the long run. A lot of people don't talk about this. Now, if you save too much money, it can decrease your happiness if you're saving more than you need and you're just stressed out and have all these different financial fears. But if you're saving money in a healthy way and you're achieving goals and you're progressing towards goals, it is an amazing feeling. My wife and I just did our financial goals for the year recently.

And we're going through our metrics of progress and we're looking at everything and it just feels good to progress. It feels good year in and year out to make more progress towards something. It is a very, very powerful way to allocate dollars towards specific things. Now you can do this.

in something like a high yield savings account. Maybe you're saving for your emergency fund. You could do this in a Roth IRA or a 401k. You want to see those numbers go up and you want to watch your net worth because your net worth goes up as well. That is fun. I cannot stress enough. Maybe you're in debt right now and you have a negative net worth and maybe you're just trying to make progress towards paying off that debt. But saving money as a metric of progress can be absolutely beneficial.

for you. There's a study done in 2015 that looked at the relationship between saving and happiness. And it analyzed how savings impacted financial well-being and happiness across various income levels. And people with savings reported greater life satisfaction, regardless of their income. Even modest savings reduced stress about future uncertainties. And I think that's the big thing that I think we need to take away here is saving more money significantly reduces your stress and anxiety surrounding money.

And so if we're trying to take away that stress and anxiety around money, we need to make sure that we have some sort of allocation towards savings. My recommendation is always 20% of your income to start with is saving 20% of your income towards your emergency fund and your retirement accounts so that you can begin to really make progress and build wealth. Investing those is going to make it grow way, way faster in the long run.

And so I always tell this story, but you know, the first time I finally built up an emergency fund when I was really stressed about money, I was living paycheck to paycheck. I got to that gas pump that I always talked about where I didn't have enough money to fill up gas. And then I got home and I started to save for an emergency fund and I started to build that thing up over time. Well, eventually that same car I couldn't fill up in gas, it broke down and it needed a brand new oil pan, which was going to cost something like 2,500 bucks. It had

a bunch of stuff actually wrong with it outside just the oil pan, but the whole thing was going to cost 2,500 bucks. And in the past, when that would happen to me, I would get super stressed and I'm like, where's this money going to come from? What am I going to do? And this was the first time in my entire life that I felt peace around my finances. I just got this huge repair bill and I felt complete peace. You know why?

because the money was just there. It was already there for me to take those dollars and put that towards my car repair. I didn't have to worry. I didn't have any stress. And my wife who we were newlyweds was like, this is amazing. There's just money there that we can take and put it towards that repair. If you've never felt this where you're kind of in financial strain and you're stressed out about money and then you figure it all out, all of a sudden that light bulb goes off and you start to save for your emergency fund and you have this freeing feeling of just having the money there,

Oh my goodness, it is amazing. It is calming. Your anxiety around money is gone and your stress around money is gone. Imagine a life for you where your stress anxiety from money is gone and you feel calm. That's what I want for each and every single one of you. That's why this podcast exists. Because if you can feel calm, you can make better financial decisions. You can make better investing decisions. You can make better decisions in life when it comes to your career.

And that's what I want for you because you will have a significantly happier and better life if you can fix your money issues. And so that's what we want. Another study in 2016 looked at how your bank balance impacts happiness and investigated how bank balances actually impact happiness and higher savings correlated with produced anxiety, a greater sense of control in life, which is true regardless of whatever your income is. So that bank balance mattered more than whatever their income was.

is they felt in control of their money. You know what I want you to have with your money? I want you to feel empowered. I want you to feel control. And I want you to have hope. And those are the three things that if you feel those three things without stress, without anxiety, you're going to be so much better off.

Now, another one, explore the role of financial security in the workplace and how you actually performed in the workplace if you had financial security. And employees with personal savings were less stressed, more productive, and happier at work. Savings doesn't just provide security, it boosts confidence, and that's the most powerful thing. It allows people to perform better in every area of life. If you've never done this, you've never saved up money, and all of a sudden you have savings, you don't know how it feels until you start walking around, you're like, man,

I've got some money in my pocket. I've got some money in my account. I'm backed up by something. Something's backing me up. I can actually take care of an issue when it pops up. You don't understand how amazing this is. That's why we talk about your financial foundation so much in the emergency fund and the 136 method because it is so incredibly powerful.

And the last one we'll talk about is there was one done in 1988 that studied how psychological factors influence savings habits on happiness and people who set specific savings goals and tracked progress felt a greater sense of control and fulfillment. A greater sense of control is what I want for everybody here.

So what are practical steps to start saving money? So first is creating that financial baseline. You've heard us talk about the 136 method. It is so incredibly powerful how that can impact your savings long term. We're going to save up one month of expenses and then three months of expenses and then six months of expenses in an emergency fund in a high yield savings account. It is very, very powerful. If you haven't heard our episode talking about the 136 method, it was our most popular episode last year. I would highly, highly recommend you check that one out and then start to track your progress. Secondly,

So tracking your net worth with something free like in power will link up in power down below in the show notes, but it is completely free. And if you utilize something like in power, you can really grow your net worth over time and watch your progress over time. Three is automate your savings, meaning money automation is the number one way to save more money. And if you automate your savings into a high yield savings account or into your investment accounts, you will grow so much more. Why? It reduces your willpower, takes you out of the equation. And so now you can save automatically without lifting a finger.

And then four is celebrate milestones. So when you hit big milestones, make sure you celebrate with people that you love. And honestly, if you do this every single year, it is really fun to kind of see some of your progress, especially if you're working on it. And so this week, start to figure out a way, if you haven't already, to start building up that emergency fund and start to get some financial security, take 20% of your income, find a way to get to 20% and take 20% of your income and start to build up that emergency fund. Then once you're at three months, start investing and then get all the way up to six months.

I think it is really going to change your life once you start doing it. Imagine your stress melting away. Imagine your anxiety melting away. Imagine feeling it in control with your money and imagine being empowered with your money. That is financial hope and I want it for each and every single one of you. Let's jump into the next one.

All right, the last one is one that we're going to do an entire episode on the way to optimize this and the way to do this in the best possible way for your tax situation, but it's giving to causes you believe in. Now, a lot of people will push back when we talk about giving and saying, I'm not giving my money way to anybody. I work so hard for this money and I have these dollars that I want to allocate towards things I want to do. Hey, if that's you, more power to you. But if you are charitably inclined or if you're someone who really wants to make a difference in causes that you believe in, keep listening here.

because this is something that is the biggest impact for me overall in the one that I probably brings me to most joy overall. So those of you who haven't listened for a long time, I gave away 10% of my income minimum every single month towards causes I believe in. I give to my local church. There are big causes I believe in. I really, really want to give more to things like child trafficking, for example.

So something like the Tim Tebow Foundation actually goes in there and they put dollars towards child trafficking and they have teams go in and they go and take children out of child trafficking situations, pull them out when they've been kidnapped, all these different horrible things that have happened. That breaks my heart. And so I want to give more to those causes that I believe in to fight back on some of this stuff.

you may have very specific causes that you believe in. And so because of that, it is a huge, huge difference maker for me to give money away. Let me give you some of the studies on this, because maybe if you're not convinced, there are a ton of different studies out there that kind of talk through this. So in 2008, Don Anken and Norton did a study on spending money on others and why it promotes happiness. And researchers gave participants a small sum of money and asked them to spend it either on themselves or others. And then they measured happiness levels.

Participants who spent money on others reported higher happiness than those who spent it on themselves. Why? Because giving gives a sense of purpose and connection, which are key drivers to well-being. So buying coffee for a friend or donating to a food bank can leave you feeling more fulfilled than treating yourself to a latte. But let's look at another study. In 2007,

the neural responses to taxation and voluntary giving reveal motives for charitable donations, okay? So they use brain imaging to study the effects of giving on participants, both mandatory giving and voluntary giving, and activated reward centers in the brain. Voluntary giving generated even stronger feelings of reward, showing that altruism is deeply ingrained in human nature. Giving activates a brain of feel-good chemicals, making it a natural way to boost happiness.

This is absolutely true. I try to give as much as I possibly can. Specifically, a lot of times doing it to people in need as well. I mean, it is a really, really powerful way to increase happiness over all. Now, there was another one done by Acnan in 2013. It's the spending and well-being cross-cultural evidence, okay? So they studied the relationship between giving and happiness in 120 countries.

asking participants about their giving habits and wellbeing. The happiness boosting effects of giving were consistent across cultures and income levels, even in lower income countries giving increased joy significantly. The benefits of giving are universal and not dependent on wealth is what the conclusion came to. So even a small donation like funding a child's school supplies can bring an immense joy for a lot of people. So if you don't have a lot of money,

And you just want to help in some small different way. You can absolutely do that. It is a massive, massive difference. Now, number four is the health benefits of volunteering that was done in 2012. Explore the health effects of volunteering over time. So participants who gave their time were less likely to experience depression and had lower mortality rates.

So giving time, not just money reduces your stress, promotes emotional resilience and improves physical health. All three of those things, just giving your time. So if you don't have a lot of money, you can also give back time, which is a really powerful way to help with causes you believe in. Now, there are ways to give time that I think are a big waste of time, but if what you are doing is making an impact on someone else, I think it is a massively, massively underrated way to increase happiness as well. And investing your time is obviously one of the most powerful things that you can do.

The last one is about giving to charities. So they explored how people feel about giving to charity. Those who gave for intrinsic reasons because they cared about the cause felt happier than those who gave for external reasons, social recognition. So that's another big one is I want a lot of you to make sure that you're giving aligns with your own personal values and interests.

Because if you want to maximize happiness, you need to make sure that you are giving to causes you genuinely care about, that you actually care about making a difference in those causes. If you're just doing it for people to see what you are doing, that is a very different way to give. I believe in giving honestly, anonymously, if you can, and not doing it in ways that is just going to be a recognition for you.

Now, giving actually increases stewardship of money. It aligns your spending with your values. It helps reduce waste spending and it inspires gratitude in a lot of different ways. And I think there is a lot of practical ways that you can start giving today. But first, if you've never given money before and you don't know what this feels like, a lot of you may be saying to yourself, I'm not giving money. I'm never going to give them money away. I'm going to keep all of my money for myself. And that's completely fine if that's what you want to do.

But just starting out very small and choosing a cause that actually brings you value can be really, really helpful. So identify causes that align with your passions or values can be very, very impactful. And then I would decide how much you want to comfortably allocate to giving each month or a year. It doesn't have to be 10% off the bat like me. It could be something less where you're just saying, hey, I'm going to give 1% of my income away.

Maybe it's just settings cash aside when you come across people in need. Maybe it is starting to give money to a charity that you know is a cause that you believe in. There's so many different charities out there. And you could do your research on some of those to make sure that there are things that can really make a big impact. Maybe you want to just start with small acts, maybe donating $10 to a local charity or buying groceries for a neighbor in need. Those are all great ways to just get started.

Now, you can also automate this process. And when we have money on autopilot come out, there's going to be a portion that is going to be a bonus section that's going to talk about how to automate donations if you want to donate to charity. But that is something that also you can do in a lot of different ways and then reflect on the impact and see if there's a big impact there that you want to think through and you want to make sure that it is actually making a difference in other people's lives.

Now, there are places that you can track and kind of look at effective organizations. And so charity navigator or give well are two great websites if you want to look at how much of their donations they're actually giving to the cause. It needs to be a big, big number because it needs to be the majority of it is what I really care about. So a lot of times I will look at organizations and if it's not the majority of the money that you're giving, it's not worth your time. Some charities do not give

well at all. And so you've got to be cautious of the ones that you are giving to because some of them will keep them and they are honestly corrupt in some ways. And so you got to make sure that you do your research on the charities before you give to them. So master money, for example, in the personal finance podcast, one thing we want to do this year is we're going to start a little board.

to give more money away to causes that we truly believe in. And I think there's going to be a lot of different cool things that you can do from giving clean water to folks who don't have access to clean water. So again, like I said, the child trafficking, there's a lot of different things that we want to do to give more to causes that we truly, truly believe in. So this is something that I know increases my happiness significantly. I hope

you would consider it to, if you are chairbell inclined, not everybody is chairbell inclined, but if you are, that is something to definitely, definitely look into more. If you have questions on any of that, please let me know. Listen, thank you guys so much for listening to this podcast episode. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you. If you can value out of these episodes, please share them with a family member or friend. Can I thank you guys enough for being here and spending your time with me again? Subscribe to the pod if you can. Reach out to me if you want me to do a specific episode on a subject and we will see you on the next episode.