We Do THIS When We Get Paid 🤑

Good morning, and happy October 1st! There’s officially three months left of 2024, and we’re easing into the end of the year. We hope that you’re ready to have a great Q4! 

To help make sure it starts off right, we have a fun new issue of Money Convos with Steph & Den for you. This month, we’re covering a few different financial topics, and we have some money tips for you. 

Here’s what’s up in this copy 🤑🗞 

• If you’re not investing yet… why not? 🤔

• 9 months, 0 UberEats orders 🍕

• How you can make more money 🫵🏿🫵🏻

• The ideal pay day routine 💰

Money Convo Of The Month

How To Invest Your First $1,000 In The Stock Market

It’s time to go back to the basics this month, and talk about how important long-term investing is, and how you can go about it from start to finish. 

Steph and I have been investing for a number of years now, and I can’t even tell you just how much we’ve picked up and learned in a pretty short period of time. In case you aren’t tapped into our YouTube channel (which you should be!), we’ve invested a combined $200,000+ (we’ll be giving you a full breakdown in a future issue of Money Convos). To put that in context, you might remember that, a few issues back, I talked about my debt free journey prior to me starting to invest, and Steph’s process of going from investing a few hundred dollars in mutual funds to becoming a confident DIY investor. 

When it comes to long-term investing in the stock market specifically, there are two key concepts that you need to know - 

• Retirement isn’t an age, it’s a number; and 

• You likely can’t save your way to retirement, you have to invest for retirement! 

Retirement being a number means that you can’t just retire because you hit a certain age - you actually need to have enough money put aside to fund your expenses in retirement. You’ll likely receive some money from the government, but, unless you have an additional pension from your job, that money isn’t designed to be enough to cover all of your expenses for several decades. So, that means you can’t actually retire until you have enough money to retire. 

Not being able to save your way to retirement means that your money won’t grow enough if you’re just saving it. The interest you earn with a savings account barely keeps up with inflation, whereas if you invest for the long-term, your money should grow and provide you with a solid return (again, over the long-term, not on an annual basis!). 

When it comes to how to invest, and what to invest in, it’s important to think about active vs passive investing. Active investing = either 1) paying a financial advisor to invest for you, and attempt to beat the market by selecting investments (likely via mutual funds), or 2) selecting single stocks on your own in an attempt to beat the market. The problem with active investing? According to many studies, it leads to a worse performance over the long-term than passive investing about 90% of the time. 

On the other hand, passive investing = investing in funds that track the market, so that you match the market. This method leads to solid returns (again, over the long-term!), and allows you to simplify your portfolio, while also paying lower fees. Keep in mind that this is a simplified explanation to a big topic, so make sure you check out this YouTube video for more details and information. 

So… how do you actually start investing? Here are the four steps you need to know! 

1. Step #1 - Pick An Investment Platform Or Method: You need to select an investment method (either DIY or a robo-advisor), and then select a platform that allows you to invest according to that method. If you’re taking a DIY approach, then you need a self-directed investment platform that ideally has low fees. 

2. Step #2 - Pick An Investment Account: An investment account is what holds your investments; think of it like the wallet that your credit cards (aka your investments) sit in. There are registered investment accounts (aka tax-advantaged accounts) and non-registered investment accounts (aka taxable accounts). Look into using your registered accounts first! 

3. Step #3 - Pick And Purchase Investment Options: If you’re a DIY investor, then you need to select the investment options (for example, ETFs) that you’re going to purchase. If you’re using a robo-advisor, then the platform will do that selecting for you. 

4. Step #4 - Stay Consistent Over Time: The key to long-term, passive investing is staying consistent over the long-term. The goal is to get started now, grow your knowledge and confidence over time, and change things up if needed as you learn more.

$0 UberEats Challenge - Steph’s Monthly Update

Okay… brace yourself… I definitely overdid it on my food spending this month. 

The good news? I didn’t order any takeout for the ninth month in a row! The bad news? I spent $200+ too much, based on what I budget for food each month. 

Here’s how it went down. In September, my half of the groceries came out to $346.61, which is $46.61 above my monthly grocery budget. This category isn’t too big of a deal, considering that we grocery shop every Sunday, and there were five Sundays in September instead of the typical four. So, really I only overspent because of the ‘extra’ Sunday this month, not because our actual grocery spending went up. 

I was also under budget for coffee shops last month - I only spent $26.97 on two coffee shop trips. We tried a new spot that opened up down the street from us, and we bought some coffees and juices from a local farmer’s market, too! 

So, clearly, the overspending culprit was restaurants… I spent a whopping $333.82 on restaurants this month, which is way above my $150/month budget. I’ve been really good at sticking to my restaurant budget this year, but the last two months? Not so much! I’m not going to be too hard on myself though, because I had a great month - my biggest restaurant bill was for a dinner that I treated Dennis and my brother to when he visited us in Toronto. Then, I paid for pizza twice and we took two trips to our local bakery for sandwiches and croissants. 

So, even though all of that was great, next month I’ll be reigning it back in - mark my words (for real this time)! Also, I already have several new recipes that I plan on making at home over the next few weeks, so I should be eating out less and have some new meals to share with you next time. Stay tuned!

You Want To Make More Money, But… How? 👀

Last month, we were interviewed for a feature about side hustles (it hasn’t come out yet, but you’ll see us share it on our YouTube channel soon!), and it got us thinking… are side hustles a viable way to increase your income? 

Keep in mind that we’re very familiar with side hustles - we started working on the Steph & Den YouTube channel back in 2019 as a side hustle. At the time, we were working full-time corporate jobs, and we were spending as much time as possible at night and on weekends working on our channel. 

As much as our side hustle did turn into our main hustle, it took a while! We didn’t make any money from our YouTube channel for at least a year, and in our second year we didn’t make anywhere near the salaries that we were making from our full-time jobs. So, it took one year for our side hustle to actually make any money, and several more years for it to make as much money as our full-time jobs did. Now, not every side hustle needs to turn into a main hustle, but most people do want their side hustle to make money as soon as possible. 

So, what should you do if you want to make more money as soon as possible? We have a few ideas! 

First of all, evaluate your current situation. How much money do you make, and where does it go? How much are you spending (and on what), and how much are you saving (or investing)? Have you started to lifestyle creep?

Lifestyle creep = when you spend more money every time you make more money, specifically on useless expenses. If you do this, then even if you make more money, it won’t have a meaningful impact on your life, because you’ll probably just spend it on useless expenses again (useless expenses are relative to you and your life, but think of anything that you wouldn’t even remember that you bought a few weeks later). So, you need to stop this habit before you start to work on actually making more money. 

The next thing you can do is try to increase your income at your primary job. It’s a misconception that raises and promotions will just come to you (they might, but it definitely helps to ask, and to consistently have these conversations with your boss!). Salary negotiation is an important skill that's not only relevant when you’re interviewing for a new job, but in order to increase the salary you make in your current job.

After that, making additional income on the side of your main job can make a big impact over time, especially if you’re either saving (or investing) that money, or using it to impact your life in a meaningful way. If you’re going to pursue a side hustle, make sure it’s an impactful side hustle, not a gimmicky side hustle. 

Gimmicky side hustles are the ones where you’re not providing any real value to anyone, they aren’t sustainable, and they take more work than you get back in reward. Impactful side hustles are the ones where you use a skill or resource that you have to serve a real purpose, that you can maintain over time, and they actually make you enough money where it’s worth your time. 

Here are a few side hustle ideas that we think you could explore further:

• Client-Based Work - Having people pay you for a skill you have; some examples include photography, interior design, tutoring, copywriting, video editing, and review services. 

• Online Shop - Creating an online store and selling digital products; some examples include meal planning templates, or resume templates.

• Get A Side Job - Working at a second job, but only for part-time hours; one example is being a fitness instructor, where, if you already have the skill, you could teach a few classes per week at night or on weekends. 

• Social Media - Keep in mind that this one comes with a big asterisk beside it! You won’t just magically make money from social media; like we mentioned, it takes time to build this one.

The Ideal Pay Day Routine 💰

It’s October 1st, and that probably means that you just got paid (don’t worry, even if you didn’t because you have a different pay schedule, this is still going to be relevant to you!). 

Now, I want you to think for a second - What’s your typical pay day routine? What do you do after your pay gets deposited into your account? 

For a lot of people, the answer is probably… I don’t know! A lot of people might even have a pay day routine, but they don’t realize it. Well, this month, we want you to re-evaluate and optimize your pay day routine, and here’s how. 

• Make sure that your paycheque gets deposited into an account that 1) is fee free, and 2) allows you to move your money around easily. This is likely going to be a chequing account (if you’re in the US, chequing = checking), and in past issues of Money Convos we’ve talked about how important no-fee chequing accounts are! 

• Once your money is in this account, look at all of your account balances. Our free budget template comes with a Bank Account Tracker tab, where we input the current amount of money that’s sitting in our chequing, savings and investment accounts - now, you don’t have to actually track it, but at least take a look at what’s going on with your money. 

• Then, see if your credit cards need to be paid off - if they do, go ahead and pay them. 

• After that, review your budget and your expected expenses for the upcoming month, especially the one time (aka not recurring) expenses that you need to keep in mind. 

• Once you know what your money’s going to be going towards throughout the month, make sure that you’re keeping enough money in your account to pay for those expenses, including your rent, recurring bills, groceries and those other one time expenses. 

• Finally, once you know what’s going on in your various accounts, you’ve paid off your credit cards (if applicable), and you know what you’re planning on spending throughout the month, you can transfer money to your savings and/or investment accounts! 

• Ideally, you’ll transfer a set amount of money every single month (based on your budget) to either your savings account (if you’re working on building your emergency fund or are saving up for a specific purpose), or your investment account. 

Does your typical payday routine look something like that? If not, are there changes you can make to your routine moving forward? 

We also shared a behind-the-scenes look at our personal payday routine earlier this year if you want a real life example. Happy pay day!