How to Money

Check out our first ever AMA: an ‘ask me anything’ where we focused on personal questions as opposed to personal finance related content! Typically we’re either interviewing someone in the personal finance space, answering listeners’ money questions, doing a deep dive on a particular topic, or covering the latest personal finance news- but we thought it’d be fun for y’all to get to know us more on a personal level. These are the kinds of topics you might hear us talking about if we were grabbing a bear at a local brewery! So have a listen as we answer questions having to do with how we met, how our faith impacts our finances, other careers we’ve considered, long-term fitness goals, the biggest decisions we’ve ever made, favorite bands or genres, finding work-life balance, where we want to travel, and more!

Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:
Credit card perks: Check out our favorite credit cards that we use to maximize rewards and optimize our spending.
Other money nerds: Find a thriving community of fellow money nerds by joining the HTM Facebook group!
Newsletter: Sign up for the weekly HTM newsletter. It’s fun, free, & practical.
Money Gears: knowing what to do with your money is crucial to your personal finance journey. MG7: and maybe you’re well on your way to financial independence but you’re looking for some financial reassurance, that’s when heading over to HowToMoney.com/Advisor and getting matched with a highly vetted financial advisor makes sense.


During this episode we enjoyed a Double Top by Akademia Brewing! And please help us to spread the word by letting friends and family know about How To Money! Hit the share button, subscribe if you’re not already a regular listener, and give us a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Help us to change the conversation around personal finance and get more people doing smart things with their money!

Best friends out!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The fundamentals of personal finance aren’t all that complicated- there’s a reason why we came up with the Money Gears: 7 straight forward steps to take with your money. We could probably boil it down even more: spend less than you make, and invest the rest! So while the core principles of growing wealth are fairly simple, then why aren’t more Americans handling their money better? One reason is because we, as individuals, are incredibly complex! And that complexity can lead to a disconnect between what we know we should be doing with our money, and what we actually end up doing. Sometimes we need someone to guide us, which is why we’re excited to talk with Aja Evans. Aja is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with over 10 years of experience and she works to help people move toward financial wellness by understanding their relationship with money, their money mindset, and how their feelings impact what they do with their money. And today we discuss confronting our money beliefs, social media’s impact on our finances, financial trauma, setting boundaries, and more!

Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:
Credit card perks: Check out our favorite credit cards that we use to maximize rewards and optimize our spending.
Other money nerds: Find a thriving community of fellow money nerds by joining the HTM Facebook group!
Newsletter: Sign up for the weekly HTM newsletter. It’s fun, free, & practical.
Money Gears: knowing what to do with your money is crucial to your personal finance journey. MG7: and maybe you’re well on your way to financial independence but you’re looking for some financial reassurance, that’s when heading over to HowToMoney.com/Advisor and getting matched with a highly vetted financial advisor makes sense.


During this episode we enjoyed a Quality Time by Inner Voice Brewing! And please help us to spread the word by letting friends and family know about How to Money! Hit the share button, subscribe if you’re not already a regular listener, and give us a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Help us to change the conversation around personal finance and get more people doing smart things with their money!

Best friends out!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’re kicking off the week by answering your listener questions! And if you have a question that you’d like for us to answer on the show, we’d love for you to submit your own via HowToMoney.com/ask , send us your voice memo. Regardless of how random or bizarre you might think it is, we want to hear it!

1 - What are the tax consequences of selling a single stock within my Roth IRA?
2 - How do I shift my mindset from saver to spender as I enter my retirement years?
3 - I’m getting close to making too much money to qualify for a Roth- how can I avoid that income threshold?
4 - Will closing a bank account that I’ve had since my teenage years hurt my credit score?
5 - Are Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) worth the hassle?

Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:
Credit card perks: Check out our favorite credit cards that we use to maximize rewards and optimize our spending.
Other money nerds: Find a thriving community of fellow money nerds by joining the HTM Facebook group!
Newsletter: Sign up for the weekly HTM newsletter. It’s fun, free, & practical.
Money Gears: knowing what to do with your money is crucial to your personal finance journey. MG7: and maybe you’re well on your way to financial independence but you’re looking for some financial reassurance, that’s when heading over to HowToMoney.com/Advisor and getting matched with a highly vetted financial advisor makes sense.


During this episode we enjoyed a Blood Orange Double Wit by Ponderosa Brewing- a big thanks to Bob for donating this one to the pod! And please help us to spread the word by letting friends and family know about How to Money! Hit the share button, subscribe if you’re not already a regular listener, and give us a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Help us to change the conversation around personal finance and get more people doing smart things with their money!

Best friends out!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We love nerdy board games! And one of the things that makes them fun, besides getting to play them with friends and family, is the competition for scarce resources. For instance with the Settlers of Catan, it takes a few rounds of play to get the resources you need to build the settlements, cities, and development cards that help you rack up victory points in Catan. It’s a classic that still holds up, and like most games it's all about tradeoffs. Should you focus on building a road or upgrading to a city? You can’t do it all and you can’t get everything you want all at once. And it turns out that our financial lives are kind of like a game of Catan as we’re always making tradeoffs as well- in particular when it comes to our expenses. We’re torn between the decision of spending big money on an item that we know is going to last, versus an inferior item that will get the job done- at least for a little while, before inevitably breaking. Today we talk about the pros and cons of planned obsolescence, the culture of disposability, the buy it for life movement, as well as changing the way we think to ensure that we’re allocating our dollars to maximize satisfaction!

Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:
Credit card perks: Check out our favorite credit cards that we use to maximize rewards and optimize our spending.
Other money nerds: Find a thriving community of fellow money nerds by joining the HTM Facebook group!
Newsletter: Sign up for the weekly HTM newsletter. It’s fun, free, & practical.
Money Gears: knowing what to do with your money is crucial to your personal finance journey. MG7: and maybe you’re well on your way to financial independence but you’re looking for some financial reassurance, that’s when heading over to HowToMoney.com/Advisor and getting matched with a highly vetted financial advisor makes sense.


During this episode we enjoyed a Song of Winter by Hill Farmstead- a big thanks to Michael and Emily for sending this one our way! And please help us to spread the word by letting friends and family know about How to Money! Hit the share button, subscribe if you’re not already a regular listener, and give us a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Help us to change the conversation around personal finance and get more people doing smart things with their money!

Best friends out!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sure you could simply invest in a target date fund, or even take the more aggressive path by going all-in on equities and investing solely in the S&P 500. But what if that means you’re potentially leaving millions on the table by the time you reach retirement? That’s the question at the center of our conversation today with our guest Paul Merriman. He is the author of eight books, has a regular column at MarketWatch, is a legend in the DIY investing arena, and is an advocate of the Two Funds for Life investing strategy. That strategy outperforms the S&P and we discuss how you’re able to do that with small-cap value stocks! After Paul retired from his wealth management firm he founded the Merriman Financial Education Foundation a little over a decade ago. Of course it’s a non-profit, and is “dedicated to providing comprehensive financial education to investors at all stages of life” which is a mission that really resonates with us- he wants individuals to be informed and to understand how much they might be missing out on. We look at the historical data and it’s convincing enough that we might be changing how it is that we invest for our future!

Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:
Credit card perks: Check out our favorite credit cards that we use to maximize rewards and optimize our spending.
Other money nerds: Find a thriving community of fellow money nerds by joining the HTM Facebook group!
Newsletter: Sign up for the weekly HTM newsletter. It’s fun, free, & practical.
Money Gears: knowing what to do with your money is crucial to your personal finance journey. MG7: and maybe you’re well on your way to financial independence but you’re looking for some financial reassurance, that’s when heading over to HowToMoney.com/Advisor and getting matched with a highly vetted financial advisor makes sense.


During this episode we enjoyed a Discipline Dubbel by Bold Monk! And please help us to spread the word by letting friends and family know about How to Money! Hit the share button, subscribe if you’re not already a regular listener, and give us a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Help us to change the conversation around personal finance and get more people doing smart things with their money!

Best friends out!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.