How to Start Investing Money as a College Student With Special Guest Enrique

Crown coins casino winning never sounded so good. What would you do if you want big at Crown coins casino real people win real prizes every single day? Hi, this is Chelsea from Dallas. I just hit the jackpot. 1 over 1,500 K visit crowncoins.com Sign up in seconds, intercode crown and get a free lucky wheel bonus. You may win up to 10,000 sweeps coins crowncoins.com That's C-R-O-W and coins.com. No purchase needed. Code ballot for new users on board were prohibited by law 18 plus terms and conditions apply. Crown coins casino. Welcome to another edition of the Mechanalty Method, where we try to help young adults live better financial lives. Join the United as always by financial expert Frank Mechanalty. Frank, how you doing? Great job. How are you? I'm good. And we're also joined by special guest and reekay. Thanks for coming on. Yes, nothing. Well, thank you for having me. Yeah, no. We love, uh, always say it every time we have somebody on, that was always the goal. Have people come on and ask, uh, kind of whatever's on their mind. So Enrique, I'll just, I'll let you go ask Frank, Frank your questions and then, uh, Frank, it's your show. Yeah. I mean, like the first, like, really big question I had was like, what's one thing that you see, like, in like a lot of college students that you'd say, like, well, like, they're just like wasting money on this. Like, this is like, like, like, like some type of spending that you see that you really think is very unessential for the college students. Coffee. Coffee. We've got two Starbucks on campus. Buying expensive coffee, buying expensive drinks. Um, it, you know, it's like, okay, I don't know what the Starbucks goes, but let's say it's seven bucks. Yeah, it's like seven dollars. Seven dollars. So, okay, seven bucks. Don't be guilty. Okay, seven bucks, five days a week. That's 35 that do one every day a week. That's 50 bucks a week. And then you, you go to a year, now you're up to 2500 bucks that you spent on this thing. And so my, my theory always, yes, if you really like your Starbucks, it's not special if you do it every day. So then do it like pick a day of the week and say, I'm going to get my Starbucks. Now it's a big deal. And so now it's seven bucks instead of 50 bucks a week. And just it adds up, you know, look, 2500 bucks versus you did it once, once a week versus 350 bucks, you saved $2,000. But you really don't need to spend, you know, it, it, it's things like that. It's a little things that add up a lot. I mean, you probably have an idea of what, what's your fellow students do that you're like, what do you just waste and money on that part? No, I agree. I see like, I see like, there's like, these like specific used students, like, they always have like their property now in class, and it's like, those are like 10 bucks. No. Yeah. And that, that's just it. It's, it's a habit. So really, it's not even the Starbucks or the coffee bean and tea leaf for her or Bob's house, a coffee or whatever. That's not, it's, it's developing the bad habit of just spending that money and not thinking about it. Nothing you have to agonize or everything you spend, but it's like, okay, do I really need to spend this money every day? Because they said, well, it's my special thing. It's not special if it's every day, not every week. But that's, that's really yet. So it's just not thinking about how it adds up or, you know, of course, you really can't buy lunch here on campus anymore because the student unions are under construction. But when you could, you know, go into Charles Jr. every day and, or subway and, you know, spend in 20 bucks a day on food. When, okay, so now we're 20 bucks a day. That's a hundred bucks a week. That's five thousand dollars a year. So when you could, you could bring a lunch, unless you're an entire Roth IRA contribution right here. And so you could bring a lunch and it's just, so look, so let's see, we've cut out, we've cut out Starbucks and we've cut out, we've cut out lunch. We've cut out lunch, so we've now saved like colleges that seven thousand dollars a year. And we can fully fund our Roth IRA for the year without changing anything. Oh yeah. That's actually like crazy to think about, like, you made me realize there's like one spending that I would say I do have to cut back on. And that would for sure be like, it's similar to coffee, but I'm addicted to like, I want to say, well, I would have to say I'm addicted because I don't have it in the morning. Not full of really sick, but energy drinks like right now I'm spending. So I actually buy it in bulk. So I already calculated, I spend the dollar and 83 cents per can. I drink two cans a day, but still like, I think that's like four dollars that could, that I could say, well, I mean, I wouldn't say to the fact it's a seven dollar Starbucks. But, but that stuff's just bad for you. I mean, that, that stuff's just bad for you. And yes, you will, you didn't ask it could be like, it could be one of the healthy ones. No, it's not. I'm sure. What is it? Red Bull or month? Monster. Yeah. And I'm not a nutritionist. But I've heard rumors. That's really not good for you. Okay. So I don't want you to give it up until the semester. So you will go through withdrawals. Yeah. It's going to take you a couple three weeks or even a month to say, okay, I got this craving beat down. Because people, you get addicted, you know, I was reading an article the other day about, you know, there's people that drink soda all the time. You know, they drink coke every day. You know, they get up in the morning, they have coke, they have lunch, they have coke or, you know, whatever. Dr. Pepper, I have a sister in law. She, and she literally she wake up in the morning. She's roll over and on the night side, stand and be diet. Dr. Pepper and she started, you know, drinking that. And she drink it all day long. And it was like this guy talking about, you know, he grew up drinking coke and I'm not picking on coke. But that's what the article is talking about. Yeah. And it was like, you know, he was addicted. You know, I kind of, I kind of have the coke. And it took him well over a month to get rid of it. Even then, it's like, oh, you know, just one. It's not going to hurt anything type of thing. It was really funny is, you know, he's talking about, you know, having a coke like a drug addict. And you probably feel somewhat the same way about your, your monster. I do, there was, I tried to cut back one time, but like that, that, that week I cut back, like my productivity and both the work in school, like, was slashed, like, almost in half. So I had to, like, hop back on it. But I have to wait till, like, summer probably to cut it, cut it out. I'm saying, do you really want to be, be holding to a product like that? It says, well, I got to buy it or I'm going to be horrible. I'm going to do horrible. It's like it owns you. No, yeah. It's. Do you drink coffee? No. No. No, because I grew up in a household where we didn't drink coffee. Was it, wasn't, you know, we're not, we weren't more than anything. We just, no one drink coffee. I don't, I don't know why. And so, never getting the habit. So yeah, people go, how do you wake up in the morning? I say, get up and take a shower. I don't know why. It's, and I get on the, and I get on the roads of Southern California. If that doesn't wake you up, nothing's going to wake you up. Right. I don't know if it was the wake you up in the morning. It's actually going to wake you up. Yeah. So, no, I've, I've never drank coffee. But I, do I have, I don't know if I have an addictive personality or not. Because there is a certain personality type that you become more easily addicted to stuff than you can't quit doing it. I haven't heard much about it. Well, I've heard about it. I think the personalities, but I don't, I don't recognize that in you. Okay, that's good. Okay. Let me see. I have some other good questions. Don't look across table over here. I used to take my paychecks in high school to the casino and double them at the black check table. So you always won? Average. Some of the good days, bad days, but I came out of head. They're good. Came out of head. Would you say, like, even as a college student with like a part-time job, would you say it's very important for us to have some kind of like budgeting routine with our money? Like, should we have like a certain amount that we do try to save, certain amount for percent, like certain amount for like our bills or like. I mean, I bet we would start off with paying the bills and then with what's left, like how would you recommend splitting that between like savings and also like still having fun like as a college kid? Well, here's the easiest way. You go, when you get paid, you say, I don't have to discuss where you work, but where you work, can you. Do you get automatic deposit for your paycheck? Yes, yes. Yes, so they would probably let you have part of your paycheck be automatically deposited to an investment account. A lot of times, they have automatic deposits, so let you put it into different accounts for your paycheck. So my suggestion would be you take whatever you think you can afford to save, you know, recommended, recommended it is 10% of your paycheck, but that may-- yeah, I don't know, that may be tough. But you just have it go straight into the investment account. You never touch it. Yeah. Because then you don't have to do anything. It just happens. That, to me, is the best way. And it gets you in the habit of, OK, automatically goes in. This is how much money I now have to spend every two weeks, every month, whatever. I think that seems to work really well for most people. Yeah. Because you learn to live, you know, if you-- Yeah, you learn to live on less. You learn to live with what you're getting, rather than saying, OK, well, I got it. I have to spend less so I can save this sort of different. OK, I'm saving this. Now this is what I have to spend. It doesn't seem as draconian. No, yeah, I agree. And, like, talking about, like-- because you said, like, put in a retirement account. Like, I've heard of, like, so many, like, different types of accounts. Like, I'm not really too sure. Like, I've heard of, like, 401Ks, IRAs, and, like, health accounts. Like, what's the difference between your own business? So, the 401K is an employer-sponsored account. So you get it through your employer. And-- [MUSIC PLAYING] Winning never sounded so good. 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And so rule number one, if your employer has a 401K, you put in whatever they will match. You take 100% of their match, OK? So that's one thing. Now, you can also get your own Roth IRA, which is another retirement account. And there's a difference. So if it's a normal 401K, when you start to take money, so everything in there grows tax free. So you can trade in the account. You can buy one thing, sell another thing. You don't pay taxes on it until you get around to retirement. Have one. Can I actively trade on a 401K account? 401K probably not, because they'll let you invest in certain-- They let you invest in different funds. Now, you can trade funds back and forth. But we're going to talk about the actively investing thing here in a minute. So OK, so yeah, that's the ultimate. This is what you can do. This is-- but you get there free money, OK? You get that money from it. So you still have money doing best. Well, then you get a Roth IRA. Roth IRA is different from a regular IRA, and that you don't get any tax deduction for the money you put into the Roth. But what the Roth has going for is that you never have to pay tax on that money when you take it out. It grows tax-free. So let's say you've put $100,000 into a Roth IRA, and over time, it's now $1,000,000. You can take that-- once you hit a certain age, you can start taking that money out tax-free. Oh, well, yeah. No, that is pretty good. It is pretty good. And so those are the two main ones. Now, you brought up the Health Savings Account. Health Savings Account-- we actually talked about this a couple of weeks ago. It's your new favorite. It's a good thing. So if you can, open a Health Savings Account. Put some money in, and never use it. Let it grow tax-free forever, OK? And then when you hit 65, you can use it for whatever you want. It's sort of like a secondary return sharing-- in this case, you already got 401, you got the Roth, and you got a third tier of retirement savings. Now, if you get sick along the way, and you need to use it, great use it. But only if you need to. So what I mean by this is say you've got $50,000 in your Health Savings Account. It's been sitting there for 20 years growing along the way. Put a little more in every now and then. And you have a medical bill of $1,000. You just pay that. You don't pull one out of the Health Savings Account. You leave that money where it is, because it's tax advantage. And it's going to be a lot more value to you later in life. And so that's a Health Savings Account. Then the other one is the Flexible Spending Account. I don't think those-- I don't see a real use of those for somebody year age, because those have to, more or less, be spent every year. You don't have any medical bills. No. Now, if you had a chronic disease or something where you knew you were going to spend so much money every year, then yeah, you get the Flexible Spending Account. You put it in with pre-tax dollars. And then you just spend it. But yeah, so in order of important, as I would say, the 401K match, the Roth IRA, and then the Health Savings Account. Now, well, we've talked about as retirement accounts. OK, you can't do everything for retirement. All right, you've got to have money to do things. You're going to want to do, like, buy a house someday. So then you need the other investment account where you also put money in there to have it grow. And that changes over time. You decide what you're going to do, how you're going to do it, how much money you have. But with all of them, the key is you put that money in first every time you get paid. And then you don't have to worry about it. Yeah. Well, if you don't see it, you can't spend it. You don't see it. It happens to be almost every month. Because I put a big hunk on my pay from the college here in their 403B. That's a nonprofit governmental agency savings plan. And every time I get paid, because I pay us monthly here, I'm like, man, I don't get paid much. And I have to remember, oh, yeah, I put a whole bunch into the savings plan. Yeah. So that makes all the difference in the world. No, yeah, it does. And to go back to 401K, let's say I do get fired from that job or I leave that job. What happens with that account I have with them? OK, so there's a couple things. One, every dime you put in and the growth on that money belongs to you. OK. 100% you take it to another company, you can move it into another retirement account, whatever. It's your money. They can't touch your money. Now, the match. The match usually has a vesting period, which means they're going to give you this money, but you got to work that for a while. OK, so one group I do, I do some work with. I think they're vesting periods five years. So every every year, 20% of what they put in belongs to you and the growth. So after five years, 100% of what they put in belongs to you. So yeah, they're going to give you money. They don't want to just give you money and you have audios. So yeah, in a lot of ways, yes, 401Ks are best if you work for a place for a while. Because it's that vesting of their contributions that really supercharges the account versus a rock. off to your money. It doesn't matter where you work, what you're doing. It's all yours. Yeah. I remember reading one of those accounts. When you put the money in, you get that they don't tax it, right? None of them are taxed. What do you mean? So they're not taxed that way? When you put it in, you get to deduct it from your tax return? Or it was something like that where it's like you could put money in and that money that you throw into that account doesn't get taxed that period. Yes, and that's what they regular 401k. With the Roth, you get taxed because you're not going to get tax later. Okay. With the 401k, you get to save on taxes now, but they tax you later when you take it out. Everything I've read, all the experts tend to lean towards the Roth being better. Yeah. Because it's your money. You can invest in whatever you want and you get it tax-free. Everything in there is tax-free later. So you're saying kind of like the best strategy would be just to have the 401k and only do the match and then maybe the rest of the money I put in the Roth. I think so. Yeah. Now, there are limits as to what you, when you can, so like if you, if 20 years down the road, you're making really good money. Well, you may not be able to put money into the Roth anymore because there's income limits. If you're over a certain income level, you can't put money in. You know, they're trying not to let you take. I think Max in general is what? Seven. It is, but into a Roth, but if you're, if you make too much money, they just say you can't have any money in there. Where the 401k, you can always put the money up to the, up to the max at the time. And you can put more money into 401k's. I, you can put in more than the match. Yeah, you can put in more than they'll match. You can put in a lot of money because that's, that's a big thing nowadays. 401k millionaires. People that have had a 401k plan for 20, 30 years and it's now worth more than a million dollars because they, instead of putting 7,000, they put 10,000 a year. They put a thousand a month. They, you know, it's a lot of aerospace companies in that where they, you know, they've got highly paid engineers in that. They go, okay, I'm going to put in a good amount every month and just let it grow. Yeah. And I'm never leaving, I'm never leaving Lockheed Martin anyway, so what difference does it make? Oh, yeah. There is a limit. But it's, it's a lot higher than the Roth. Yeah, what's 23, the 23 and a half? Yeah, I didn't know exactly what it was. For just the employee, 70 combined employee and employer. Yeah, so you could put 23 and a half of your own money into the 401k. It's supposed to a Roth is usually about 70. It's 70,000. It's 70,000 right now. It's 70,000, yeah. Because we've been looking it up in class. So, you know, when you start making real money, you can worry about, you can worry about those things. Yeah. But the key is, but here's the most important thing. Yeah, I said, when you start making real money, you worry about it. Crown coins casino. Winning never sounded so good. What would you do if you won big? Add Crown coins casino. One over 1,500 K. Sign up in seconds. Intercode Crown and get a free lucky wheel bonus. You may win up to 10,000 sweeps coins. Crowncoins.com. That's C-R-O-W and coins.com. No purchase needed. Crown coins casino. The most important thing is saving as much as you can now. So that it has the most time to get compound interest. If you take, if you get, take $7,000 a year and fully fund your, your Roth for the next 10 years. And that's all you do. Over the next 30, 40 years, that money will equal a certain amount. Versus if you don't save anything for the next 10 years. And then 10 years from now, you save for the next 30, 40 years. You'll end up with almost the same amount of money. Because of the compounding effect that I'm doing it earlier. Yeah. And I know it's hard. You're coming out of school. You've been broke. You're getting paid money. My comma always says, "Stay broke." Yeah. Get that money saved up. Leave it alone and then don't worry about it. Yeah. When you say there's a lot of people that heavily inflate their lifestyle. Like once they-- No, horribly inflate their lifestyle. Yeah. They get out of school. They get it. They get that job. It's paying them $60,000 to $80,000 a year. Well, they got to buy a fancy car, right? Yeah. They got to buy a car. There was 800 bucks a month. Well, you know, cars are expensive there. That's a lot. 800 a month. Well, they're $50,000, $60,000 down days. Sure. And your car? For that fancy car. Yeah. Yeah. It's just a car. When you're stuck on the 405 freeway. Where you can go. You're going to be going nowhere. And I remember having this thought a long time ago. This was-- you know, I wasn't much older than you. I worked downtown LA. And I had this folks wagon that ran great. I never had a problem. But it was a piece of garbage. Yeah. There was no paint on this car. The paint had all worn off. I could see the road through the floorboard in the back seat. And I'm-- I still remember this. I was parked on the 110 freeway, going north. Stuck in traffic. And I'm in my really cheap Volkswagen. And I look over. There's a guy in a Rolls-Royce. Like, he got a Rolls-Royce. You can't go any faster than I can. You know, it's like, OK. I don't need an expensive car to sit here on the freeway. It's just going to get torn up and fall apart. Now, granted, I don't recommend that you get a Volkswagen. You can see the road up through the floorboard in the back seat. That might show, you know. But you get a Toyota Corolla with 50,000 miles on it. And you can drive it for the next 10 years. That's fine. So, yeah, that going out to eat-- I mean, you can't go out to eat anymore without spending a hundred bucks with two. It seems like-- Yeah. I agree. And that's something my wife and I do probably at least once a week. So, OK. You can do the math with a hundred bucks times 50. I spend $5,000 a year going out to eat once a week. It's a lot of money. You have it. I've been around a little longer. But you don't need to go out every day. Oh, here's the other thing. OK. I just thought of the other thing that people really waste money on. Well, we'll back off on my coffee runs for a while. Door dash. Oh, yeah. I know about that. I would never door that. Why can't-- are you so crippled that you can't get up and get some food? Because I've never used it. I assume you have to pay for that. There's a fee. Yeah, OK. Yeah. So, it's a couple bucks. And what's the other thing that I've reading about that's really bad? Buy now, pay later. Oh, I've seen people that have so much money that they owe on those buy now, pay later. Oh, that's my friend's. Have you heard of Clarner or anything? I'll look. And they'll have months of clothes that they're still paying off. It's gnarly. And the interest rates on that are not cheap. You're not paying 5% interest. You're paying 15, 20, 25% interest. No, yeah. So, in all those little things, add up. At the end of the month, I've had those same friends go, I broke. Right? Yeah, yeah. As the NFL and the NBA prove every year, no matter how much you get paid, you could spend it. Right? Yeah. I always get the stories of, like, I had the guy earned $100 million playing sports. And he's broken. Yeah. It's like, and it's because they just do a lot of dumb things that just waste money. But yeah, I forgot about the door dash thing. I think it's going to become my new. It's going to be your new one. because we had neighbors in our neighborhood. And they probably got door dash. At least three times a day. So we try to door dash something right now. See what we could totally do. - No, I don't wanna know. It's me, it's, I'm not crippled, I'm not housebound. If I need a milkshake, I can go get a milkshake. I don't need to have somebody deliver it to me. It's kinda like the food version of the seven day rule. Can't be bothered to get up and get it. - Yeah. - You don't need it. - You don't need it. - Yeah. - You checking our door dash charges? - I wanna see, I'm gonna get a 10 piece, 10 piece wing combo. - It's probably three or four bucks. - Okay, so 10 piece wing combo. Just 10 wings with a wrench. I'm not even gonna try to throw a drink in there. Yeah, I think so. - Oh, well, of course, we're not gonna. - Yeah, we gotta try to chip it down without a drink. - Okay, do we want fries or just a drink in wings? - Oh, well, what we're going for? Let's get the fries. - Okay, we'll get the season fries. - Oh, of course. - Oh, it's only like 10 cents extra. - There you go, just 10 cents. Okay, let's see, do not order to this, okay. - I'm not gonna order to this. 36 dollars. - Oh. - And that's without tip, we need to give him a tip too. - So, okay, this is great. So, where did you buy this from? - Just wing stock. This is a normal wing stock. - 10 wings and a drink. No, 10 wings or 17 bucks. - Yeah. I think DoorDash also inflates their price. It's like, they don't charge you with that. - Okay, so, okay, so we paid 26 bucks for the food. We got a $4 delivery fee. We got a $4 service fee. - What's your tip? We got to give him a tip. - I give a tip, so we got another $2.50 and a taxes tax. Yeah, the time we're done. - We're $40 bucks. - Yeah, about $40. - For 10 wings. Of course, you're delivering it from. - Oh, that's my girlfriend's house. - Oh, yeah, but maybe we gotta put a long beach. Just throw a long beach address. - Well, no, even they know they're not gonna do it. - Whoa! - Oh, wait, but this is from. 'Cause, wait, we're ordering a week stuff from somewhere else. But there's some reason the delivery fee was $10 down here. I think, like, depending on. - Depending on time and everything. - Yeah. - Yeah, so we're gonna deliver. We're gonna deliver in long beach. We're gonna cost us 10 bucks delivery fee. - Yeah, I think you're like. - I think it's the area we are. - These wings just became almost 50 bucks. - They were fries and a drink. - I don't care. - So, that's very interesting. I had died. - That's a Dordash did not gain a customer today. - No, no. - No, Dordash will get in a customer when I'm crippled and can't get out of the house. - So. - That's more than a coffee. - That's crazy. - No, yeah. - Okay, what we're doing in sticker for the groceries and. - Yeah. All this convenience when. What are they doing with all their time? I don't understand it, you know? - Are you gonna say like Amazon and all that? - You know what they're doing all their time? They're on TikTok and YouTube and everything for hours on end. When all I gotta do is drive to the store. - No, I agree. - I mean, if you don't, if you don't want to spend a lot of time on the grocery store, just put your order in. Drive up, they'll put it in your car, and drive home. Man, I know there's a rouse, literally three minutes from my house. - No, yeah. - So I can't spend six minutes to get food. I have bigger problems. Okay, what's next? What do you got? - Oh, this is a good one. 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You can stop spending what you were spending when you were working, like you're not working, don't go out to eat. You're not working, don't order wings from wings top and have a door to ask deliver. You cut back on expenses. It's funny, I was listening, and I don't know the exact number, but it was like these economists got together and they calculated the number, and it was like, I don't know, it was like 400 bucks or 700 bucks, that's what you need it. Because that would be the expense of something bad happening to your car or something that could cover it. And then they've adjusted it for inflation, so now it's $746 and 33 cents. So now, you don't need to have, you're making $60,000 a year. You don't need to have $30,000 sitting in a bank account. Okay, it's not necessary. You should have it invested, because do you want to earn 1% on that money? Or do you want to earn 10% to 12% on that money? And yes, I know market goes down, market goes up. Yesterday it went way down. Today it went way up. So we're about back where we started two days ago. Yeah, but in some ways, that really comes down to you. You and your partner when you get married. What makes you feel comfortable? Oh, you know, it's nice to have $5,000 in the bank. Okay, then have $5,000. You can also have your investment fund, you know. You've got two, $300,000 in your regular investment fund. We don't need it emergency fund. Yeah, because you can sell a stock in three seconds, pull the money out and you're covered, right? Yeah, great. I mean, I like having some cash in the house, but I saw headlines that how much does that $1,000 you keep at home cost you a year? I don't care. I like having some cash around the house. Yeah, it's just, and that's what it really comes down to a lot of these things is you have to do what makes you feel comfortable. All the experts in the world, look, what's my favorite word in finance? It depends. It depends. It depends on you, your circumstances, how you feel about things. Finance is not, finance is squishy. Accounting's concrete, finance is squishy. And so that's, you know, that's, so yeah. How much, how much should somebody your age have that in savings just available? Maybe enough, just the, that's my card. Yeah, $500,000, $1,000, you're golden, you know. And put the rest of the investment account where it can actually grow. And then hopefully nothing bad happens. And in five years, you got a whole lot more. Yeah, hopefully going back to like the emergency fund thing. Like this also goes back to like our topic of like 401K's and like Roth IRA's. Let's say like there's like a massive like situation in my life. Can I pull from that one of those accounts early? Would it be worth it if I really need the cash? Well, if you really need the cash, yes, you'll pay a penalty, 10% penalty. And, but there are, there are some things now where you can pull the money without penalty. I think some of it is medical medical. And possibly buying a new, buying your first home. Oh, there's, there's something, they're always changing the rules. Yeah. And so, yeah, look, if you got, you got a medical issue and you're going to die or your leg's going to fall off. You take the money out and use it. That's, you don't say, well, I don't want to pay the tax, you know, I can live without a leg. No, okay, that doesn't, that doesn't make sense. Stuff happens, but it doesn't happen that often to that, to that many people. You know, you get what I found is that people who sort of live in fear, Well, this could happen, this could happen, this could happen, this could happen. They end up being much worse off than the people that go, "Okay, yeah, that's not the bad could happen." But we'll deal with it when it happens. I've got this money over here, if I need to use it, I can use it. I don't want to use it, but it's growing nicely, it's becoming more and more and more. We're good. Yeah. Because it's really easy to be worried about everything nowadays, isn't it? Very easy. No matter who you listen to, the world's coming to it. The Republicans are going to destroy the country, the Democrats are going to destroy the country. The Chinese are going to destroy the country, you know? Now they're not. They're just all idiots in there, you know? No, yeah, like, me personally, like, I've been scared to, like, invest in the stock market because, like, exactly what you're saying, like, they're talking about, like, this bubble and, like, it's going to pop and, like, everyone's going to lose a lot of money and, like, pull out now. Okay, so here's the deal. You made a comment about investing in stocks earlier. I don't want you to invest in stocks. I want you to invest in stock funds. Unless you're in the business of analyzing stocks and picking stocks to determine which are the good ones, you have no business buying many individual stocks. Now you can say, "Oh, okay, Nvidia's greatest company on earth, I'm going to buy some." Okay? By a large cap growth fund, and here's what you'll get in the top 10 holdings, Nvidia, Broadcom, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, probably two different versions of Google. So you'll get them all, okay? And you just let it grow. And yes, okay, so you have my luck, you'll buy that fund. The next day, the stock market will go down 10 percent, okay? So you put $5,000 in there and now it's worth $4,500. Who cares? You weren't going to touch the money for 40, 50 years, right? So what's going to happen in a month? Probably go right back up. Or it takes a year to go back up, but eventually it goes past and then, but that whole entire time, you're buying more. So instead of buying $5,000 at $5,000, you're now buying at $4,500. It goes down to $4,000. Now you're buying at $4,000. It's going to turn around. You're basically betting on the economy of the United States. So yes, if you believe the United States is going to collapse, then yes, you should probably invest in European, large growth funds. But until then, the world's going to keep expanding, inflation's going to keep happening, things are going to keep growing. The people who really got hurt, I think it was when Trump got elected, didn't the stock markets go way down or something? Oh, this past time? Yeah, this past time. Yeah. Yeah, way down. And I know people that sold because they just couldn't take it. It's going to keep going down. So they sold, basically at the bottom, then it went up. And so what happens is you, oh, it's not real, it's not going to keep going up. What's going on? For last nine months, constantly. So they sold down here, and now to get back in, they got to get back in past where they higher than they ever were, they didn't need the money, they were in their forties. It's like calm down. Yeah. Let it grow. You know, that's the key. That's what you're looking for, long-term growth. Yes, if you wait until, so here's what usually happens, you're going to wait until it goes down. Okay. It's going to go up another 5%, then it's going to climb. Then it's going to go down 10%. Okay, now it's going down 5% or from rear-wading. So you're, oh, okay. What would you do if you won big at Crown Coins Casino, real people win real prizes every single day? Hi, this is Michael from Georgia, I won 40K and finally renovated my home. Go to CrownCoins.com, sign up in seconds, enter code Crown and get a free lucky wheel bonus. CrownCoins.com, that's C-R-O-W-N Coins.com, no purchase needed, code valid for new users only. We're hit by law. Crown Coins Casino. It's going to go down more. I got to wait, I got to wait longer. It's just this psychologist saying there's so many times with people and they just wait and wait until they're, okay, I got to get back in. It's too late, and it's, so your age, your goal invests every month in a nice large cap growth fund, like we're running out of time, so we won't get into specifics, but I can talk to you about that later. I can show them to you. The ones I know, there's lots of them. I'm in a different situation than you. I'm quite a bit older, I'm probably three times your age, okay, but, okay, so the other day thinking what you're thinking, things are getting high, I took some money out of my large cap growth fund and said, okay, I'm going to move it into a basically large cap utility fund because utilities tend not to be as volatile, even when people always need electricity, right? No, yeah. Electricity and heat, so utility companies, even when the economy is going down, sure they don't do as well, but everybody pays their electric bill, they pay their eating bill. So that type of fund, when things go down, usually it doesn't go down as much as the other one. So, but that's me, I'm, you know, I'm pushing 70. So I can't worry about the next 40 years, it's not going to take 40 years to recover, but I just thought it would make sense, it made me feel better. No, yeah. It could, two years from now, because what an idiot, the market was fine, the money would have grown much more, and this other fund doesn't matter, I feel better. It's really what it comes down to in the end. Now, if you say what makes you feel comfortable is keeping the bank at 1%, we can art, we'll argue about that. And that's good when you're, when you're my age, if that's what makes you feel comfortable. You do it, but not now. What are the questions you got? This one is like a really, credit cards, what do you think about them and how, how can I like use them like to my advantage, would you say? Okay, so, you got to get one, because you need one, just for that emergency, it's very, very handy tool, okay? So how do you use them? So people don't understand is how credit cards work with the credit rating agencies. So it's really the best way for you to start to establish credit. So once again, we'll use nice round numbers, but I'm going to use 1000, okay? So you get a credit card that gives you a thousand dollar limit. Now, the, what everybody thinks, is that, okay, I can use it for a thousand bucks and I pay it off, and that'll make me look good. Unfortunately, no, it does it, because one of the things that credit rating agencies do is they say, how much of your available credit have you used, it gets a little wonky. So you're a thousand dollars, if you've used a thousand, even if you pay it off, you used a hundred percent, that's bad, okay? And here's the other weird thing. So say your credit cards do on the 15th, and you pay it every month, but the credit rating agency checks on the 8th, so they go, well, these credit cards maxed out every month. This is bad. They don't know that you pay it off a week later, yeah. So the key is with credit cards is, on your thousand dollar credit card, in normal daily life. First of all, you only use it for things you could pay for anyways. You run it up to about 300 bucks a month, and you pay it off every month. So 30 percent? 30 percent. So if I had 10,000, I could use 3000. Right. Okay. Well, you got 10,000. 3000 gets to be a lot, I don't know what you can put on your credit card, 3000, but yeah, that's what you do. Yeah. what you want to be known by in the credit card world is a deadbeat. It sounds like a bad thing, doesn't it? To the credit card company, a deadbeat. I'm a deadbeat because I always pay my cards off and they never make any interest off me. Okay, yeah, I am not their favorite customer. Please. Yeah. So, but credit cards are the best way to start establishing credit. They're also the best way to get in trouble. Yeah, I read like, I know I read like like recently, just like an article that said like most Americans have own who are like $5,000 that they can't even pay off. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they do. That's crazy. I have four different credit cards because I use them for different things. And between the four of them, I could probably I could probably charge $80,000 on them. I never have, never will, but and I pay it off every month. I get the bill, I pay it. I don't want to pay interest. Yeah, because even with my credit, and I've got a credit score about 850, which is as high as it goes, they still charge me 15, 18% interest because that's just, that's like a good interest rate on credit cards. Oh, yeah. I think mine's like 30. Right. Because you're the student and you haven't you got a lower credit score. Yeah, I'm impressed that you know what you're, do you have an idea what your interest rate is? Because most people have no idea. Oh, yeah. I usually like try to read through that because truthfully, I've opened up like, throughout my lifetime, like 10 credit cards, just like the take the, you know, like the welcome bonus. So I'll like get the welcome bonus and I'll like, and then like, I'll just not use the card anymore, but just for all the welcome bonus. Well, so you don't cancel them. I don't, because I like them running up. I read something about like, have you like credit age? Yeah, you don't, you don't necessarily want to cancel them because that, then they wonder why your credit, you're available credits going down. Yeah. But what you do want to use, you want to try it, because the companies will start pulling the cards from you, they'll start canceling you. If it sits out there and you don't use it, you want to like use them once, once every six months. Yeah. But then you got a 10, that's too many, man, because then you got to worry about, okay, I've got to remember to pay all these things. I'd, I'd winnow it down or over time, let it winnow itself down. Okay. Because you don't need a perfect credits score. Now all the things I've read in that say, once you get to 780, 770 or 780 out of 850, you're as good as you need to be, because it, it goes on stradders once, once you're over that top stradders like that, you're getting everybody's best grade. Yeah, we don't care anymore. So, yeah, no, you, you got the credit cards, you know, what's your credit scores? I checked yesterday, it was 741 and then like the other one, like Equifax was 729. Okay. So you're doing it, you're, you're in the next to best level. Okay. Just keep paying the credit cards. Here's, here's the problem. You make, you miss one payment, you forget to pay. They hammer you. It's just, it's 10, 20 points. It's like the stock market, right? When the stock market goes down, it doesn't go down gently. It falls off a cliff. Yeah. Right? And then how does it go up? Oh, it's got to walk, well, but it's got to walk back up the mountain. Yeah. So, it's always slower. It's always harder. No, yeah. Same with your credit score. I've actually, I noticed like, I actually forgot to pay one card once. And it was only, it was actually just a bill for $5. It was like some weird thing that went through on the card I never saw. And like the next day, like I opened, like, like, I just randomly checked my credit score. I think I lost like 29 points just from that one, like, miss payment. Oh, shock. Oh, shock. Oh, no, they punish you horribly for any mistake. No, yeah. One mistake took like a year that you've been getting, like, touching 700. That's what it takes. It's, it's, it's, but, you know, sounds like, sounds like you're moving in the right direction. You're going to, and here's the other thing. Credit score is very important when you're looking for a job. Employers run your credit. Well, I never, I never actually did not hear that one. 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