Jesse Lin 0:15
Yes, this week we are talking about money, honey, because personal finance and financial literacy is super confusing. I’m sure many of you have talked to your friends about saving and investing and like retirement and all that. And probably the consensus that everybody’s come to is that we don’t really know generally, what is going on? So first off, like why is financial literacy confusing? I think the main thing is that nobody’s actually taught how to manage your personal finances like from elementary school to high school to even college to I’m sure you have some experiences to add Angela regarding business school, but like it’s just not a thing. Like people don’t tell you how to invest your own money and make money for yourself.
Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)
Angela Lin 1:02
If you think about how important it is to understand how money works and what you need to do to manage your finances properly to like live a good life, it’s crazy that no one teaches you that and yet you learn about like things that may not be applicable to your daily life in school, but you would never learn how to like manage your money and I went to business school twice, I did undergrad, business school and I got my MBA, and they don’t teach personal finance in business school. If you think about it, there are just so many basic concepts that everyone should know if you are going to become an adult. But like no one teaches you and then suddenly, when you’re like 18 and older, you’re just like, slapped with a bunch of terms on anything you try to sign up for and it has words like principal, interest rate, like terms and conditions and you’re like, I don’t know sure sign and like you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, because no one explains to you just these, like, basic building block concepts that everyone needs to know generally, if you’re gonna do anything, get a car, get a house, card, like anything.
Jesse Lin 2:17
Well, I also think when you’re younger, like you’re not as stressed about how you might need to save for larger life things later on in life. So I definitely feel like when I first graduated, I had basically one major financial goal, which was to pay off my student loans, but then everything else I was kind of just like, I’m just gonna put it off, you know, I’m young, and basically most of my paycheck goes to like paying off all my necessary expenses and then the loan. So for a lot of us, we didn’t even think about spending time in our early 20s like investing in growing our understanding of personal finance just because you’re so stuck in like the mill trying to like make your way out of this like, money in and money out kind of situation.
Angela Lin 3:02
Yeah, I also feel like there’s definitely the like more responsible half of that, which is what you said. I also feel like our generation is pretty obsessed with lifestyle, right like so even if you make like $30,000 or whatever you like, want to be able to have bougie brunches, and like, go on a trip now and then somewhere and so there’s also this emphasis on like short term desires versus like planning for your future. So I think that also plays into it. Because definitely, like my first job living in New York, making literally $40,000 like paying off my student, I still was like, I want to go to like, unlimited Mimosa brunch every weekend, and I wanna like, go to Cabo. And like, I still made those things work somehow, but like, I had no savings. I didn’t have a savings account didn’t exist.
Jesse Lin 3:52
Wow. I think it’s funny. You mentioned that it’s easy for young people to sign up for some major financial decisions early on in life, such as signing up for a huge loan for school. You also have all these services from your bank, financial institutions that make it rather easy for you to get money. But don’t explain very clearly what the consequences of accessing that line of funds means, right? I mean, if you look at student loan terms and conditions and credit card, that pamphlet the insert that comes with your credit card, I’m like looking at it like, I need those like old people glasses just to like read like tiny fine print. Yeah. And it’s like, it’s confusing, right? So you think it’s really easy to get access to credit and suddenly have all this money and then you spend all of it but then on the flip side, you don’t understand the consequences of how much you have to pay back later on.
Angela Lin 4:49
Beyond like not understanding the way that these terms are laid out by companies and also being more like short sighted sometimes with the things you want to spend money on. I also feel like once people start going into the workforce, and they have some disposable income, you know, ready to be put to whatever they want to do with it, most people don’t know where to put it. So you are like losing out on a lot of opportunity to make more money with your current money through like investing or other means, because all you know how to do is like put it into a bank account, which you’ll just earn nothing. So people just don’t know what to do with their money even if they have that like I should save mindset.
Jesse Lin 5:34
So before we get into tips, you guys might be wondering, but you’re Asian. Aren’t you guys good with money? So we asked ourselves this question too, because we were like, wait a second, we don’t have any financial literacy skills. But our parents really focused us to try and get that cash monies right so there’s definitely an obsession with money, particularly the country. status and bragging that comes along with a larger disposable income. Our parents are in some way shape or form very competitive. So they love comparing deals that they’ve gained or like a really great bargain that they found. So there’s a lot of that kind of obsession with money and finding really great deals.
Angela Lin 6:25
Yeah, I think there’s also there are a couple sides so the obsession with money so like definitely there’s the bragging rights part of it or like everyone Asian parent wants to be like, absurdly rich so that they can like show off their giant house and their like, flashy car to their friends. Also, that their kids make a shit ton of money because their doctors or whatever, so that they can, like openly brag about their salaries because that’s definitely a very Asian thing. It’s like, there’s no taboo around talking about how much money you make, but like flipside of this, like luxurious image is that then like you said, they’re obsessed with like finding good deals. And I think that has a lot to do with the immigrant mentality, this mentality of like, I have to like, penny pinch and like coupon clip and like, make sure that I’m saving where I can because I can’t afford much. And like, I also moved to this more expensive country where even if I’m making more money, I’m spending more money. So like, I need to, like, find these deals where I can. So there’s this practicality of it. But for sure, there’s that weird, like very Asian bragging thing where it’s like, hey, like, you know, this used to cost $1,000 and I got it for 300 like, they love to brag about that shit, even if they’re rich, like they could afford 1000 they’re like I got it for 300, it’s pretty funny.
Jesse Lin 7:47
Yeah, I love that. You mentioned that it’s an immigrant mentality because we’re talking about financial literacy and managing finances and the whole coupon clipping like, deal hunting kind of situation is a very kind of like poor man’s way to manage your money, right? You’re very, very in the weeds in terms of every cent that you spend. But for us, we’re kind of talking about how you can take money that you have and turn it into more money rather than how you can save in its expenditure. So that is where I think our parents, as you mentioned, since they didn’t grow up with a lot, don’t have much experience to share with us on how to do that.
Angela Lin 8:28
I feel like we should give credit where credit’s due. I feel like our parents understood that you should invest your money like there is the potential to make more money if you have your money work for you a little bit through investments. But I don’t think they had the like, solid foundational knowledge around how to make the right investment choices and because of that, they didn’t teach much to us because there wasn’t like a solid base to go off of. So even though I passively saw and understood that they were investing money to try to earn more money, I was not taught any like this is exactly the method. This is the type of research you should do. And like this is what it will happen if you take these steps because I don’t think they have those steps.
Now, what we wanted to transition into was giving you some financial advice, and we want to start this section off with a huge glaring in your face emergency lights everywhere disclaimer that Jesse and I are not financial experts by any means. But we wanted to pass on some advice that has worked well for us. To be totally fair some of you might be listening and probably a lot of what we’re going to say you’re gonna be like I’ve known this for years. I think we’re thinking of broader population. There are a lot of basic building blocks of personal finance that a lot of people don’t know that we wanted to surface some of those things to make sure that everyone is at least covered from like the baseline level of things that can help you in your own personal finance. And for those who already know all this stuff – good for you, you probably know more than we do. Write us in tell us what you know. The first piece that we think is really important to cover is how loans work. And we’re not going to go deep dive here, but I think I mentioned this already up top, like there are just some building block terms that everyone needs to understand because loans are part of everything you want to do in your life. So Jesse already mentioned student loans. So as early as when you’re 18 years old, and you start going to college, you already have to sign like a crazy loan or multiple loans to be able to afford your college tuition. Then as you like progress into your adult life. There are a lot of big milestones that require loans as well home ownership when you think of like mortgage payments, those are loan payments that you’re essentially making against the value of that house. So like the basic building blocks of a loan are the principal, which is the amount of money that you have agreed to take out to borrow. So let’s say you want to borrow like $10,000, right? That’s your principal, then there’s the interest and the interest rate. So this is how the people who lend you that money, make money, they are not lending you money out of the kindness of their heart, they’re trying to hustle and make their own money. So when you sign up for a $10,000 loan, let’s say you sign up for a terrible interest rate, a 10% interest rate. That means that depending on what the terms are of your loan, you’re going to have to pay 10% of $10,000, every few whatever of your term. What people don’t understand is that when you take out $10,000, depending on how long it takes you to pay back that loan, you probably ended up paying a lot more than $10,000 at the end of it when you actually pay it back. Because when you start making loan payments, you first pay the interest part. So like if you’ve already accrued $2,000 of interest, even though you’re making like a $100 payment a month on this loan, you would be paying 20 months of interest payment first, just to pay off what that person is making and money off of your loan before you even chip away at your principal. So it’s really important to understand what exactly the terms are in terms of like how long you have to pay back that loan, how frequently you’re expected to make interest payments, what those interest payments are, and when interest starts accruing, because one thing that totally screwed me and I’m sure Jesse as well is with student loans in particular, some government loans are more generous, and they have interest terms where when you’re in school, you don’t have to pay any interest like interest doesn’t accrue while you’re still in school. When you graduate that’s like the first day that interest starts accruing. Unfortunately, there are also other loans. None of those loans have this like generous term. So the day you sign the contract to take out the loan, you start accruing interest. So like I took out my loans, two weeks or whatever, before I started business school in 2015. And I started accruing interest then so it was accruing every month for two years, and the day graduated and I made my first loan payment back it was all going towards interest not at all towards the principal yet. It is pretty important to understand the difference between these things and like the details of the loan contract that you’re getting yourself into, because if you don’t pay back your loan, where you like, you start defaulting, you’re not making your payments and you’re not clear what those details are like the fine print, you’re probably pretty screwed because most of these payment terms and the like fine print on if you start defaulting are like pretty harsh towards people who take out loans. So please please, please understand at least what principal, interest, and your contract terms are, and you should at least be like 60 to 70% set on being on a good path for taking out a loan on anything.
Jesse Lin 14:22
So now that we know how to avoid terrible debt, we want to talk about how to save for when you’re a granny which is retirement accounts. It’s really just important to have some money saved for the future because you don’t want to be working forever and you do want to be chillin in Ibiza on the beach at some point when you’re old. There’s also this weird idea that once you contribute to a retirement account that money is locked up forever until you retire. This is not always true with some retirement vehicles allow you to withdraw the money early without any penalties for big life events like a down payment for a home or if you have some like serious emergency events where you really need the money like a surgery or accident or something like that you can borrow from those accounts as well. So it’s not like the money is locked up forever. I think the first thing we’re going to talk about which is the most common is a 401k because most people will receive some form of it through their employment. What is a 401? k? I have no idea what it stands for. So I can’t describe that for you. But I can tell you it’s not a pension. I thought it was a pension when I was younger, where you just like pay into it and you get like magic money out when you’re old and retired. All of the money that you pay into a 401k is indeed invested in quote unquote, the market, which includes stocks, bonds, and other financial vehicles. And this is super important because people think that their contributions in 401k are somehow like holy or safe, and they’re just gonna be there forever. It’s not true. Your money is invested in the market, which means as the market goes up and down, your investment also goes up and down. So there’s this idea that you can kind of just like set it and forget it. And for the most part, this is true within retirement investment things. You don’t really want to be moving stuff around a lot, but you should be cognizant of what you have invested the money in so that you aren’t hit like with a huge shock later down the line when you find out that the market has crashed and all of your retirement savings are gone.
Angela Lin 16:24
And that happened in like 2008 even during the quarantine like when quarantine first happened shelter in place first got put into place in the market was fucked and like my 401k took a huge dip and I was so sad. That understanding is critical that people know that that money is not just money that’s in a bank account, it is in the market and also when you first enroll in a 401k I think it is important to like just know what you’re getting yourself into, at least at the high level, like when you are forced by your employer to open up a Vanguard account or Fidelity or like whatever their retirement partner is it will show you which fund you are invested in, and they usually do it by your age bracket. Typically the rule of thumb is that if you’re on the younger end, the mix that they decide to put you in is like more heavily skewed towards stocks because when you’re younger, you are able to withstand higher risk of like, you know, the market goes up and down. So like if the market drops 1,000,000% tomorrow, like you might be fucked, but then it could also go up like a ton. And the rule of thumb with the stock market is that over a long period of time, like 10 plus years, it usually way outperformed bonds or like safer assets. So that’s why if you’re younger, the mix is pretty high in stocks, like mine is 80% or more stock. Yeah, like 20% bonds and like other safer things, but as you age, they naturally start then like shifting you into different funds based on your age bracket. So if you are like 60 it’s like the opposite. Like it’s very much all bonds. So like just know what you’re getting yourself into at the high level just like know, click into your little account, look at what that fund is made up of. So you know, and then you can watch the market. And if you feel like things are moving not in the way you want it to with stocks or whatever, you have at least the knowledge that you can do something about it versus just letting it like all go to shit.
Jesse Lin 18:22
So how should you nurture your relationship with your 401k. The first is you should contribute up to the match that your employer gives you if you can, because the match is basically free money for you. The second thing is once you have factored in all of your necessary expenses and you find you have kind of money leftover and you’ve contributed up to the match, it still might be a good idea to contribute more, especially if you’re not really doing anything with that money because the more you contribute, the less you’re taxed, so there’s some short term benefits there as well. So then the next investment vehicle that there is is an IRA account, which you can also have along with a 401k, or it can be your primary retirement account, if you don’t have a 401k. There’s two types. Basically, one is tax exempt until you withdraw the money, and one is the opposite, you’re taxed already so when you withdraw the money, you’re not taxed again. The real benefit here, I think, if you’re younger and your income is lower, basically is your contribution to an IRA account is tax deductible also, which means that up to a certain income bracket, whatever money you’re able to contribute, you can deduct from your taxes. So it’s just another way to save for the future. And also make sure you get a little bit cash back from now from the government.
Angela Lin 19:37
If you are trying to level up like I’m trying to level up but full disclosure, I’m still learning about this one. There’s an advanced type of retirement account that’s called a solo 401k. And I’m learning more about it right now so if I misspeak, forgive me. Basically this account is for anyone who can consider themselves self employed. So this could mean you’re literally your own boss and you have your own business. And that’s like your main gig or it could mean that you have like a side gig. You could even be like a Lyft driver or whatever. Like, as long as you have some side income that is paid to you as an individual, maybe you’re a freelancer or contractor or whatever it may be, you are eligible to create a solo 401k because it’s kind of like if you think about you are your company, you are like sponsoring an employer 401k for yourself. But the benefit of this and why I’m interested in it is that you have way more control over the type of things you can invest in with your retirement money. 401k and IRAs, these are more traditional retirement accounts and the things that the financial institutions that hold these retirement accounts invest in for you are like the stocks and bonds, these more traditional type of investment vehicles. The solo 401k, you are the one that decides what you invest in. You can still invest in stocks and bonds and all these more typical things, but if you want to invest in riskier things because you like have a little bit more knowledge on what it takes to be actively investing and things like Bitcoin even or like real estate investments, or gold or like anything that you want to invest in, you basically can. Versus if you wanted to invest in those things with a traditional 401k or IRA accounts, you can’t do that.
Jesse Lin 21:22
So the next thing I want to talk about is budgeting. Budgeting is so important. It’s one of these basic financial literacy things that nobody tells you how to do. Why is budgeting important, you cannot figure out how much money you’re going to save if you don’t know where you spend your money. So tracking what you’re spending is super important. You don’t need any fancy tools to do this. If you have Excel or a spreadsheet or like a basic whatever you can start tracking your money. If you want to understand more in depth like where all your money is how much money you’re earning, you can also use a budgeting tool. There are free budgeting tools like mint.com there are paid budgeting tools like YNAB which stands for you need a budget what it all it comes down to is just start figuring out where you’re spending your money right now. Once you know then you need to decide if what you’re spending your money on is absolutely necessary things like rent, utilities, your phone bill, your groceries. So once you account for all of that, then it’s trying to think about like what you want to do long term. Do you want to go on a vacation for two weeks in Asia in two years? Do you want to be buying a house in five years? Do you want to buy a boat for when you retire? These are all things that you should probably just have a think about what you want to do, and then figure out how much money you have to save every month to reach that goal. Then it’s time to start thinking about budgeting for discretionary spending. So things that you do now that are fun, like going out, restaurants, and that way your budget considers everything important and fun in your life, both now and long term. Something really important that I want to impart when I was setting my budget that I didn’t do do a great job of at first is you should set realistic budgets, meaning that if you start tracking your spending, and you’re spending $400 a month on restaurants, you’re not going to be able to meet $100 budget for restaurants, it’s just not gonna happen. You’re never going to meet that budget, it’s going to make you really discouraged from trying to budget and then you will fall off your budgeting plan. So it’s really important when you set your budget to be realistic with it, even if it is a little bit crazy. Like if you’re spending $400 a month on restaurants, it’s really not going to go down to 100. But maybe you can make it down to 300. And so you have to balance what you want to do long term with the realities of how you’re spending now.
Angela Lin 23:35
Now that you have an understanding of what you want to save for how much you need to save and for how long to save up for that thing. We also want to bring up that there are some really easy ways to save your money without even thinking about it because I think one of the barriers people have is thinking about like, Oh, now I have to like be more disciplined. I have to like save X amount of money and like put it away physically somewhere and like think about doing that every month. But there are ways that you can do it kind of what you said before the set it and forget it type things. And I do want to preface this as for the people who like don’t want to actively invest in stuff and like play the game. But if you just want to save money so one thing that’s really easy is when you think about your direct deposit from your employer, I don’t think everyone knows this, but like your direct deposit doesn’t have to go 100% of your paycheck into one account. Most people do it that way because they’re just like, just give me all my money. But if you are have already set this budget where you’re like, okay, I want to save $100 a month then you can set up a different account and automatically set your check payment every month to have $100 of your monthly salary go into your other account. You will never miss it because you literally will never see that money so you probably won’t even notice that that’s going there every month. But after you check in after a few months, you’re like oh my god, there’s like $1,000 in here. Or, if you are willing to be a little bit more of an active player in managing your money, you could just carve out that hundred dollars or whatever you want to carve out every month and invest it yourself in other things. So I think that leads us into our final topic, which is investing. I did want to start this section off with two books that like kind of changed my entire outlook on investing and what that could mean and how easy it could be and what kind of impact that could have on your life and like the choices you have. So one of them is called The Richest Man in Babylon. This book was written like a long time ago, the late 1900s or something. It’s a fiction novel font size, like 16 less than 100 pages, like please just pick up this damn book and read it. It’s just the easiest analogies to understand even like set in Babylon a long ass time ago when they’re talking about like gold coins and like silver coins like that’s the currency they’re talking about, but its super easy to grasp. It’s similar to what Jesse was talking about before understanding how much money you’re making and like carving out a bit of it for yourself every month. But the main thesis of this book is paying yourself first. So it’s actually going in a slightly different order than what Jesse laid out in the budget making section which is like if you make $1,000 a month, the first hundred dollars you keep for yourself before you even think about the rent and the like other things you owe money on because then you’re prioritizing you and why you want to do for yourself with that money. And then from there, you invest that money in other things so that that hundred dollars becomes $200 and $1,000. That’s a basic concept of that book. But it’s so simple that by chapter two, I was like, Damn, why don’t I do this? So I would highly recommend that book and then a natural step for a lot of people who like start this kind of journey is then the next book is Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and this book came out like 20 to 30 years ago. I think like Jesse you and I, like both our parents read it when it first came out. I think they read it because it’s written by an Asian dude, but very much similarly like builds on those foundational concepts of like, why should you be shackled to certain restraints, you can find more flexibility and control for yourself by learning a little bit about like how money works and what you can invest in to, like, make the money work for you. So these are two books, I would highly, highly recommend everyone to read.
Jesse Lin 27:29
When we’re talking about investing, which I’m not a super expert in, everybody’s different and your appetite for risk is different. I don’t like things that are super risky. Things that are generally not risky: putting your money in a savings account. Most people will not have enough money in the bank where if the bank goes bankrupt, you will not get your money back – it’s insured up to a specific amount. Past that you can invest in things that are like low risk financial investments, which I personally really enjoy because they’re the more I set it and forget it financial vehicles. There are things like index funds, which are type of ETF or mutual fund, there are also bonds, gold and precious metals, you’re not going to get a ton of return investing in them, but you get kind of a sense of security that your money will grow, albeit at a slower rate.
Angela Lin 28:16
Do you want to explain to the listeners what an index fund is?
Jesse Lin 28:20
So an index fund basically is a portfolio of stocks that mimics the composition of the stock market itself. So instead of being invested in like 30, stocks of Tesla 40, stocks of Apple or whatever you’re invested in this fund, which has some investments in all of those things, as well.
Angela Lin 28:39
So the name of the game with investing is diversification. So that’s another like basic concept everyone should understand. And that basically means that you spread out your money into many different types of things so that if your money tanks in one area, it’s kind of like set off by a different area. So you’re not just like losing everything. So that’s why index funds are pretty popular with like the more risk averse type investor because you’re still getting some of the benefits of volatility of the stock market, how it could go pretty high up but you are inherently diversified because you’re not invested in like one stock or like one industry openly. So then moving into riskier types of assets, there’s kind of like medium level risk, and then higher level risk assets. Medium level, I would say stocks are definitely they definitely fall into this bucket. They’re also like different kinds of stocks. So there are stocks that pay dividends, which means that every quarter however frequently they tell you, they will do it, they give you some money back depending on how many shares you own. So my mom loves these because she’s like, I get guaranteed money, but there are tons of stocks that don’t do that and you’re just banking on them kind of growing in value over time. And so you can sell it at a higher price than you bought it. That’s the basic concept behind a stock and what you were hoping to gain from that. I’m sure there are many other investment vehicles within this kind of like medium level. And then the higher level, I definitely would not recommend that you even touch any of these unless you feel like you know a bit more about what it takes to invest and like are doing a bit more research into the companies that you’re buying these types of investment vehicles from, but there are derivatives and basically what these are or things that you can invest in that are derived from another asset. So an option is not a share of a company, it is the option to buy or to sell a share or many shares of a company. So you can see that it’s like one step or many steps removed from the underlying asset. So there are a ton of crazy types of derivatives that like I have no idea about, but the draw of these types of assets are that you can earn a lot of money by doing these because it’s like, it’s so far removed that like you can kind of gamble on like bigger pieces of the pie, but you can lose a shit ton more money as well. So for frame of reference, the like 2008 crisis happened because of really crazy shit happening with derivatives where the underlying asset was mortgage payments on houses, but these derivatives became other derivatives and like it just like cycles into these crazy things where you were like 20 steps removed from the underlying asset and then like, it all just like blew up and like went to shit. So I really would not recommend higher level risk types of investments unless you already know a thing or two about investing in are like actively kind of keeping up with the research and like have some justification for why, why you’re investing these things.
Jesse Lin 31:48
So can you explain to our listeners why currently the stock market seems to be doing well, but we also see reports of record unemployment and things that seemed to indicate that the economy is not in a good situation.
Angela Lin 32:04
Well, the easy answer is that the stock market is not the economy. So I think people often conflate these two things because they’re like, oh, well, you can like buy shares of a company and like a bunch of companies are listed in the stock market. So that must be the economy. But actually, the stock market is overly skewed into certain types of industries and certain types of companies. So for example, if you look at the top three biggest market cap, so like the highest valued companies on the US stock market, they’re all tech companies. So like these companies don’t produce anything like Google produces like services, right? Like they have search and like there’s like the cloud, like you know, things that are not tangible. The economy, you see all this unemployment because it’s based on a lot of physical things like you need retail, you need farmers, you need physical labor in certain things. These people have lost their jobs because of the pandemic, but they are not Google so like that’s not being reflected necessarily in the stock market. The second piece is that what people also don’t often understand is that the stock market is based on perceptions versus necessarily reality. So the reason why people can make a lot of money sometimes on the stock market is that they are taking advantage of short term miscalculating of the value of things so the reason why a stock markets really high right now is that people have this perception that oh, we’re on the up, well before the most recent news of COVID, right? Like there was this idea of, okay, we’re like past the worst the economy is going to pick back up and like I can go back to work soon I can like spend my money and like do these things. So then people have more confidence in companies doing better. So then because they have this confidence, they’re like buying more shares of stuff. So then they’re inflating the value of all these companies. But then the other rule of besides like diversification is that the stock market always corrects itself. Companies are valued at a certain value for a reason. And so when they’re overinflated because you’re like overly thinking that this company is gonna, like grow at a higher rate or like come back at a higher pace than it actually is going to when it doesn’t meet that performance, then the price drops a lot because then it’s the market being like, alright, that was incorrect, let me like, bring it back down. That is the main difference is that I think people don’t understand it’s not reality based. It’s perception based and it’s cyclical. So I think that’s part of why we talked about like, please even just have like a basic understanding of the market when you have a retirement account, because even if you don’t want to invest actively in stocks, or an options or like anything crazy, again, your retirement account already is exposing you to the market understand that the market is cyclical, it has ups and downs and like we might be coming up onto a recession soon. Who knows. So like, just be you aware that like that will happen and either be willing to like take the punches of we’re going to take a dip for many years and your money might not come back for many years or be a little bit more active in that decision and like, take that money out for now and like put it somewhere else, or shift your mix into bonds or whatever so that you’re not losing all that money when we do.
Jesse Lin 35:25
Alright guys, welcome back to the closing section of our podcast, the fortune cookie. As always, if you like this week’s episode, if you have questions about the tips we shared, if you have better tips to share with us, feel free to email us at telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com, that’s Y-O-U-R-E, or you can DM us on Instagram. Alright, so this week’s sweet treat topic to encourage you guys to make good financial decisions is we’re going to talk about what are our biggest financial achievements so far?
Angela Lin 35:57
Hashtag humble brag. So my biggest financial achievement was paying off my student loans. And I definitely, yes, I will say I did it twice because I had undergrad and then I had masters, the same month that I paid off my undergrad loans. I signed my contract to take on my masters loans. So I have like one day of celebration of freedom before that, and I’m so happy to say that as of last year, I paid off my six figure debt.
Jesse Lin 36:36
So paying off student loans was also a big achievement for me, in part because it showed me that the whole budgeting process and not indulging in everything now does have some kind of rewards in the future. And when the process of paying off the student loans was done, I was like really proud about it because it was just a way to validate the fact that you can basically budget and there is like a light at the end of the tunnel. And it was just like my first adult achievement. You know, it’s like the first thing that I was able to say that yes, like I accomplished other than the fact that I’m employed.
Angela Lin 37:14
Cool. Okay, well, so if you enjoyed this episode, please write us in again, like Jesse said, but also rate us five stars on Apple podcasts, thank you, but also in all seriousness, this is the first episode where we gave kind of like advice. So if you enjoyed this format, please do write us in because we’re experimenting with what’s interesting and what’s helpful to you guys. As always, come back next week, where we’ll have a fresh new episode for you then.