Hey there. Welcome to issue #3 of The Frugal Rich Newsletter. 

My only goal here is to help you build real wealth without sacrificing the things that make life enjoyable. 

In this email, you’ll find: 

But first–

Sooo we just had another anniversary trip. And we like to go big!

Last year, we did a week-long trip to Greece, where we visited Santorini and Athens. 

This year, we went to South Florida to explore the Everglades, beaches, and excursions for 5 days.

Now, this was not just a spur-of-the-moment decision we made one day and booked our tickets. 

These were trips we’ve been saving for consistently throughout the year. 

In fact, we have a sinking fund that is DEDICATED to travel. 

And every month, we are contributing $350 to that fund, because we want to always be building up a travel reserve!

Which brings me to–

If I were sitting across from you today and you wanted to talk about your finances, before we pull up a crazy spreadsheet or go into your retirement plan, I would want to make sure the foundation is in place. 

Think of these “3 core funds” as your sturdy foundation: 

1. Emergency Fund — Your financial seatbelt. 3–6 months of living expenses in a HYSA, untouched unless something actually goes wrong.

2. Investing Fund — Automate a monthly contribution into your Roth IRA or brokerage. This, of course, is different from saving. When you invest your money, you’re buying stocks or other assets that will likely grow in value over time. This “fund” will make future-you incredibly grateful.

3. Sinking Funds — If you have any big (expected) purchases coming up, sinking funds will be your best friend. Whether it’s a necessity like your next car or a big insurance premium, or a fun purchase like travel, holidays, and gifts, you can make a sinking fund for it! We put $350/month into ours, and it paid for Greece and South Florida.

If this foundation is solid, everything else will be a lot easier to build. 

PS– if you want one HYSA that has “buckets” like this so you can organize your money, I like SoFi or Ally. 

Question: How do you stick to your monthly budget? 

Answer: Have a weekly money meeting. 

When I hear “tracking every single dollar every day,” that sounds like a recipe for guilt.

Even in my world of health and fitness, I committed to tracking my food/macros every single day... And guess what, life happened, and I would find myself forgetting 2-3 days out of the week and feeling guilty about it. 

Thankfully, in the world of finance, we have great apps and systems that allow us to track our expenses and categorise them effortlessly. 

I totally understand the desire to track every dollar and not go a cent over your monthly budget. 

But in real-life, cracking open your budget spreadsheet and your bank statements every single day would suuuck.

That’s why for me, a weekly money meeting is the key. For my wife and me, it’s 30 minutes on Sunday to review our budget, update and categorize our week’s worth of expenses, and to see if we are on pace to stick to our budget.

Over time, this meeting has shortened as we’ve become faster at our process. In fact, this on average only takes us 15 minutes a week to review our budget.

And just looking at our progress throughout the month keeps our spending in check.

“Oh snap, we already spent $200 out of our $250 dining out budget and it’s only the 2nd week of April? Let’s dial it back for the next 2 weeks.”

“Oh wow we only spent $50 out of our $150 entertainment budget, and it’s already the 4th week of April? Let’s do something fun!”

Automate the important stuff.

And give yourself some grace with the other stuff.

I'm doing something I've never done before:

I’m opening up a handful of free 15-minute financial check-ins to newsletter readers. 

I only have a few spots. 

If you've ever wanted to pick my brain about your finances, I’m happy to offer this for you. :) 

Grab a spot now.