Good morning, HTM fam!

Do you know what the average human attention span is?…

8 seconds.

Yep. We humans have the same attention span as goldfish.

So here are 2 things to consider as you go about your day today (assuming we haven’t already lost your attention in this email)…

1) Get to the point when speaking to others today. If you drift off on stories and tangents, your friends and co-workers will drift off listening to you. Slim down your emails, focus on the main talking points, and help people pay attention to you longer than 8 seconds.

2) Listen better to others. Leave your phone in another room, or put it on DND mode when chatting with others or in meetings. Distractions and interruptions are counterproductive, not to mention they can sometimes be a little rude 🙁

Good luck today! It’s gonna be a productive week!

OK, onto the money stuff! 👇👇👇

TO DO

No Complaining Until Sep 1st! 😭

Got a little challenge for you: Stop complaining for the rest of the month!

Instead, when something bad or annoying happens, write it down on a piece of paper… Store up all your complaints into a big complainy-list, and then on September 1st you can unload them all at once. Just go nuts.

This exercise should result in two things… a) you’ll realize more happiness in your days by creating a habit of complaining less. And b) when Sept 1st rolls around you’ll probably look at your complainy list and realize 95% of the things on it are insignificant and not really worth wasting more time over.

Think you can do it? No complaining for the next 16 days? I dare you 🫵

SAVING

Fun Money Challenges 🕹️

You might have heard of the envelope money challenge, but have you ever heard of the dart board savings challenge?

Here’s how it works: Grab a dart board, and throw 1 dart at it every morning. Whatever number you hit on the board, you need to transfer that many dollars into your savings/investment account. $1 for 1, $2 for 2, etc…

If you repeat this every day for 30 days, the minimum savings you’ll have is $30 (assuming you hit the number 1 every day). But the maximum you’ll have is $1800 (if you hit triple 20 every day).

Fun, ey? That’s the point! Money challenges make boring activities like saving and investing more FUN!

Here are a few other money challenges to try:

• No Spending on Category X: Pick a category in your budget and completely halt your spending on it for 1 month. Eg. clothing, entertainment, dining out, etc. Repeat with different categories each month.

• Cancel ALL your subscriptions: Try living without them for as long as possible. If you really really miss any of them, you can always resubscribe. Trust me, the companies won’t have any qualms about taking you back.

• Pantry Challenge: Can you skip going to the grocery store for an entire week by eating up the food at the back of your pantry and freezer? Doing this for just one week can help you easily save about $224!

• 52-Week Savings Challenge: Start out by saving $1 this week, $2 next week, and so on until you’re saving $52 on week 52. After a year, you’ll have an extra $1,378 to put toward your savings goals.

• Ask for a Discount Challenge: Asking for a discount can be a little nerve-racking, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. Ask for a discount (or for free shipping, or for a price match) this week to start working that muscle! 💪

• Roll the Dice Challenge: It’s just like the dart board one, except every day you roll the dice and save dollars equal to whatever number you roll. Repeat for 30 days and you’ll have saved around ~$105!!

Building wealth and saving money can sometimes be boring. So spice it up with some challenges that will get you quick wins under your belt. And for extra motivation, invite a friend to join you and compare results 😉.

Related stuff:

• 💻 More Challenges: 14 Money Challenges to Try This Year

• 👩‍💻 New HTM Blog: How to Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck

TOGETHER WITH CAPITALIZE**

Rollover your old 401k already 🫵

Did you know... 2 out of 3 Americans don't know how much they're paying in 401k fees!?!?

Nearly half of all people "estimate" they are paying less than 0.5% in fees... BUT, in reality, only 10% of all plans charge less than 0.4%!!!

Long story short: 401k plans (and 403b plans) are great *while you are employed* -- but once you leave your employer it usually makes sense to roll over your retirement funds ASAP into an IRA.

We partner with and recommend Capitalize to help with the process. Because they're FREE, and they work with all the low-cost IRA companies we love like Fidelity, Schwab, & Vanguard.

So if you have an old 401k and you're not 100% sure what your fees are, do your future self a favor and talk to Capitalize, ASAP.

REAL ESTATE

Home Equity Boom — What Now? 🏘️

If you’re a homeowner in the US, you’ve probably checked Zillow recently and thought “Woohoo! My house is worth waaay more than I paid for it! I’m crushing it! It might be time to “cash in” on all this equity and goodness…”

Most homeowners have seen a big rise in value over the past few years. Here’s a chart showing home equity vs. mortgage debt over the last 30 years. This means that a lot of folks are sitting on a mini-fortune in equity! 👇👇👇

BUT…. Just because you have killer house equity, that doesn’t mean there’s an easy option to cash in or borrow against it. In fact, it’s in most people’s best interest to just stay put and do nothing with their house.

If you’re sitting on a lot of equity, you might be thinking…

• Maybe I should sell my house to lock in profits? Well… The problem with this is you then need to find another place to live. And that means buying another place at a high price. You could certainly go back to renting, but what are you going to do with all the sale proceeds?

• Maybe I should do a cash-out refinance? That’s usually a great way to tap into equity, but, today’s mortgage rates are likely higher than your current one, so you would almost inevitably end up paying more. Plus, there’s no guarantee that investing your new money would yield a higher return than the rate you’ll be borrowing at.

• Maybe I can get a HELOC? Well… If you did this, what are you going to do with the new loan money? Most folks borrow equity to do home improvements, thinking they will also increase the value of their home. But if successful, all this does is inflate the house value even more so the initial problem still stands of being stuck with a lot of home equity and a bigger loan.

• Maybe I should “just leave it be”…. This is actually the best option for most folks. The hardest part of long-term investing is waiting and “doing nothing”. Markets go up, markets go down… The more you touch investments/assets and make transactions, the more it eats away at overall growth.

All in all, having a chunk of home equity is a good problem to have. But given today’s RE landscape, there aren’t many appealing options that allow you to tap into that equity and come out financially ahead.

The key for most folks is to sock more money away into index funds via tax-advantaged accounts in order to be more diversified. Housing booms are great for owners, but it can also throw their allocation out of whack.

Related stuff:

• 🎧 HTM Ep #506: Cashing in on the home equity explosion

• 🤷‍♂️ Home Equity: Do’s and Don’ts of using home equity

ICYMI

In other news…

Walkability 🏡
An interesting study by Pew Research shows most Americans prefer big houses in spread-out neighborhoods, even if it means no local amenities are further away. (Seems weird to me… Frugal folks prioritize walkability, not house size 🤷‍♂️)

“Girly” Expenses 💅
Here’s an awesome podcast and blog post from Money with Katie talking about “the expensive maintenance that “traditional female beauty ideals” prescribe: haircuts, manis/pedis, spray tans...the list goes on. Why is this never covered in the personal finance sector, despite how much these costs add up?”

Job Opps 🧑‍💻
Which US States are best for job seekers?… Visual Capitalists has mapped it all out here, comparing job openings vs. available workers. **Spoiler alert: North Dakota comes in first place with 30,000 open jobs but only 8,500 workers to fill them.

Up-zoning 🚧
Interesting post via Business Insider: How can the US lower rents and house prices?… “Experts have looked abroad for solutions. New Zealand stands out as an exceptional example of how to successfully boost housing supply through zoning reform.”

Jackpot Fantasy 🎧
Last week we jumped on an episode of the Earn & Invest Podcast to talk about the exciting idea of “sudden wealth”. Fun episode with an awesome host, Doc G! Give it a listen!

COMMUNITY

Picking Up Spare Change 🪙

Big shout out to Shannon S. who posted this in our HTM Facebook Group last week… 👇👇👇

“I noticed the discussion during the "What if You Won the Lottery?" episode regarding picking up change on the street if you saw it. My husband and I lived in Chicago for several years and always walked or used the CTA public transit system. We noticed how much change was lying all over the sidewalks/train & bus stops/etc. so in 2015 we started picking it up and keeping track. We keep track in a spreadsheet, but Facebook doesn't allow posting excel documents, so I screenshot the summary page. Each tab at the bottom breaks down the year by day, so we can also see each day's individual total. We moved to Florida in 2021, so that is the reason for the decrease in the past few years (less dense population on foot = less people dropping money). That change does add up!”

What a cool story — Thanks for sharing, Shannon!

Pick up that spare change, peeps! Celebrate any form of money coming into your life. 🪙💰

Welp, that’s it for now! Have an awesome week, and remember NO COMPLAINING! 😉

Best friends out 🍻