All Forum Posts by: Patrick Blanchard

@Matthew Grebeta my question would be: what are your goals? What are you trying to achieve? Nobody wakes up in the morning saying “I can’t wait to pay off some debt today!” ... no, you want something on the other side of your debt being paid off. What is it?

Knowing your goals / strong “why” can help you to structure a spending plan (i.e. budget) to help you pay off debt faster than you ever thought possible. I have clients who were able to purchase their first house 9 months earlier than they were expecting. Other clients who were living paycheck-to-paycheck are now making significant progress toward paying down debt. It’s all about being intentional.

If you need an accountability partner, feel free to reach out directly!

@Ivan Melendez Hi! First, big congrats to you on becoming debt free!! That’s awesome! I personally know how good that feels.

In terms of your question,  it’s never a simple, straightforward answer. This is because everyone’s goals and the way people work with money is always different. That said, some general thoughts (not investment advice 😁): having an emergency fund is never a bad thing to have. It opens up options for you to save more money down the road. And it’s there in case the worst happens. Are you sure you’re calculating the ER Fund amount correctly? Be sure to include only those necessary expenses, like shelter, food, and utilities.

If you want to do both, an option could be: set a short term goal of building a “baby” emergency fund of about 3mo of living expenses and then switch to putting some money away in the Roth. After a month or two, you could refocus back on building the ER fund to the 6mo of savings. Whatever you, don’t “split the difference” and put $250 in each per month.. it takes a lot longer to hit goals that way and most people get discouraged unless they have an accountability partner. Congrats again on paying off the debt!!

@Austin Malotke First, let me say: Congrats to you for being so proactive with your finances!! Being able to save 50%+ of your income while in your 20s will serve you throughout your lifetime and is no small feat. GREAT JOB!!!

Your budgeting style is very close to my own and what I recommend to my financial coaching clients, with a few exceptions.

It appears your “budgeting” does not consider expenses that are known but irregular. For instance, how do you account for items like annual car registrations/inspections, Amazon Prime memberships, Christmas, birthdays, or other gift-giving holidays, etc.? I recommend clients setup a Short Term Savings account and save throughout the year for these expenses since it’s usually a lot easier to come up with $17 per month vs the $200 per year for something like vehicle inspections & registrations. Plus, there’s no stress when those expenses do come up because the money is already there.

My other suggestion would be to use CASH envelopes for any discretionary expenses, like groceries, fun money, vices, date nights, clothing, etc. I suspect that if you set a plan for this discretionary bucket, you would get even more traction in your savings.

Finally, knowing your goals / “why” is critical to maximizing your savings. Really defining what your definition of wealth is can (1) provide that continuous motivation to save towards your goals and (2) help prevent you from spending on things that diverge from your goals due to “shiny object syndrome”.

Again, I think your on the right path and kudos to you! Keep it up! If you ever need an unbiased accountability partner to help keep you on the path, feel free to reach out.

@Landon Allen I have not personally used their managed portfolios and I am not Financial Advisor, so there's not much insight I can provide on specific investments. Sorry I couldn't be more help here!

If there's any money management (i.e. income, expenses, budgeting, saving, etc.) questions you have, happy to help where I can. Thanks!

@Andy Pate, first CONGRATS! Graduating flight school is a big achievement! There's some really good advice being offered by others here. I especially agree with @Carl Miller about creating and sticking to a budget / spending plan. My additional suggestion here would be: know your "why". Why are you wanting to house hack? What's the true goal here? With the financial coaching clients that I coach it's fun to see the light bulbs go off when they truly understand their goals / "why" and these decisions become easier.

That said, if I were in your shoes and receiving almost $1,000 per month from a family member here's what I'd do: use the "free" family money to put towards the student loans. If your student loans are like others right now, they should not be accruing interest due to the pandemic, you you'll make more headway on them right now than at any other time. At the same time, set a budget, minimize expenses, and stick to it. Any savings you can squeeze out should go towards the house. Maybe it's a pride thing for me, but I'd want to say that I bought the house with my own blood, sweat, & tears.

If you need an accountability partner in this journey, feel free to reach out. Always here to help.

@Ben Zelenka I haven’t heard of Chime but we do personally use (and love) Ally. There’s some bank rating websites out there that you can use to help make a decision on which bank would work best for you. One thing we really love about Ally is that they have a “buckets” feature within the savings account which allows you to save/track for different goals within 1 account.

In my financial coaching practice, I’ve had some clients discontinue using apps like Acorn and round-up apps. While convenient you essentially give control of your money to these apps.

(P.S. please don’t take any of the above to be financial advice 😊)

@Brian Panasuk creating and sticking to a Spending Plan will go a long way to demolishing your debt. Most of the clients I work with via personal financial coaching see themselves get a “raise” by controlling the outflow / expenses. While, yes, $160k in debt is a lot, you might be surprised at how quickly you could pay it off given your situation.

Always here to help.

@Eric W. Getting to the “next level” is less about deciding which investment vehicle is “best” and more about understanding which vehicles align to your goals & your “why”. Wealth is a subjective term, it doesn’t always mean a pile of debt-free money, and is differs from person to person.

I’d suggest you and your wife spending some time to understand what your “why” is and how different investment vehicles align with that why.

Always here to help.

Oh wow, hi @Whitney Hutten!! Thanks so much for reaching out. I don’t really have a question per se right now, but I remembered listening to your podcast episode specifically. My wife and I really want to get into real estate, but the idea of buying a house to fix up ourselves seems pretty frightening. I wanted to re-listen to your episode to understand your process for evaluating turnkey providers as I think that would be our best first step into real estate ownership. Any starting points you could provide would definitely be helpful! Again, really appreciate you reaching out.

@Kevin Leahy thanks so much!!