Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation.

It's April 8th, and tomorrow I attain the level 30 life achievement! (I turn 30 tomorrow)

And tomorrow eight of you win my book giveaway!

How cool is it that you get a gift on someone else's birthday!

If you want to squeeze in a few more entries to improve your odds of winning, you can do so here.

The newsletter has grown by over 500 people in the last week, so a special welcome to the hundreds of you newbies!

This is a weekly email I send out to help us all become wiser, healthier and wealthier. You can find all past issues (including this one) here.

This newsletter aims to be a powerful and quick burst of helpful information to motivate you to take action to improve your life each week.

This weeks issue will cover the following:

• The quote of the week
• Part I of our review of "I Will Teach You To Be Rich"
• My weekly tips in wisdom, health, and wealth
• Your homework this week

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Quote of the week:

This quote is how I view this entire newsletter.

You are going to learn a lot of things reading Wise Owl Wednesday.

Some of the things you learn could 100% make you rich.

Some things will enable you to become a much healthier person.

A LOT of the things in this newsletter will make you think.

But none of that matters if you never take action on what you learn.

I haven't talked about cryptocurrency much in this newsletter because I want to see more engagement from you all before I get into the serious stuff.

We've barely touched on stoic philosophy.

We have a long way to go together, but the most important thing you can do as the reader, is take action on what you learn here.

• Try a few of the tips I share
• Play around with the tools I discuss
• Read some of the books I recommend

You took the first step and subscribed to this newsletter. That's great.

The next step is to start learning, experimenting, and improving yourself through action.

Book Of The Month

Every month I choose a book that can help you improve your life in one of three categories:

• Mind
• Body
• Bank account

Then I break it down over the month, giving my own thoughts in this format:

Week 1 - Introduce new book, talk about why it's great

Week 2 - Review the first third of the book and give takeaways

Week 3 - Review the second third of the book and give takeaways

Week 4 - Review the last third of the book and give takeaways.

This month's book focuses on your bank account.

How to get more $ into your bank account, how to get it to stay in your bank account, and where to put those $ so that you always have plenty of them.

Let's get started.

Book Of The Month for April - I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi (2nd Edition)

Following our outlined schedule below I will be covering the first three chapters today.

Did you do last week's homework and buy the book!? If you haven't it is not too late.

Links to get this book:

• Kindle
• Hardback
• Audio - narrated by the author (hilarious, actually)

** The links above are affiliate links. If you purchase the books with the links above, I receive a super tiny commission, which helps support this newsletter. Thank you! **

This Week: April 8

• Chapter 1 - Optimize Credit Cards
• Chapter 2 - Beat the Banks
• Chapter 3 - Get Ready to Invest

Next Week - April 15

• Chapter 4 - Conscious Spending
• Chapter 5 - Save While Sleeping
• Chapter 6 - The Myth of Financial Expertise

Final Week - April 22

• Chapter 7 - Investing Isn't Only For Rich People
• Chapter 8 - How to Maintain and Grow Your System
• Chapter 9 - A Rich Life

Intro - Key Messages of I will Teach You To Be Rich

Getting started is more important than becoming an expert - like I said above, taking action is the most important thing you can do! Without action there is no progress! If you just read this book, or read what I write about this book, you will never, ever, get rich. The easiest way to manage your money is one step at a time.

It's okay to make mistakes - It's better to make mistakes now, before you are rich, then to make them later when you have more money. Mistakes are how we get experience. This book will help you avoid a lot of mistakes, but it is still okay to make mistakes of your own.

Spend big on the things you love and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't - Ramit and I both hate budgets, because they are the cookie cutter solution prescribed to everyone. Some people thrive on budgets, but many people don't. It's okay if you suck at budgeting, as long as you say "f*ck that" to spending money on things you don't love.

There is a different between being sexy and being rich - Getting rich is boring. It's following a system repeatedly and consistently over time. Anyone that tries to tell you about getting rich quick is just trying to get rich off you.

Don't live in the spreadsheet - Pick a financial system and move on with your life. Obsessing over if your system can be tweaked or slightly improved is not only a waste of your time, it's a waste of your life. Get out of the spreadsheet and live.

Play offense, not defense - So many people are reactive with their money. We just accept bullshit fees. We don't question bad advice because it's coming from a "company." This book teaches you to go on the offensive so you can get ahead and stop worrying about what banks and credit card companies are trying to do to you.

This book is about using money to design your rich life - So like, what's the point? Why do you want to be rich? What does being rich even mean to you? This book will not only help you make money, but will help you define what your ideal life looks like. When we get to this part of the book I will walk through what my ideal life is as well.

Chapter 1 - Optimize Credit Cards

Overview: In modern society your credit rating determines how good of a deal you get on just about everything. Want a new house, car, furniture, laptop? Better have good credit. There are two major components of credit - your credit report and credit score. Your credit score is a number between 300 and 850 and is a way banks and lenders determine how big of a risk you are.

Key takeaways:

• To improve your credit, kill your debt (duh). I wrote an article on how I do this
• (Highly recommended you do this NOW) Call your credit card company and request they waive annual fees, service charges, and reduce your interest rates
• Seek out the best card benefits you can from credit card companies. My credit card right now gives me free DashPass on DoorDash. I save like $6 on average for every delivery.

My thoughts - Right now during the COVID pandemic, this advice works even better. Companies are dying to show they care, and are dying to keep you as a customer. Use that leverage to make them treat you fairly. The book has plenty of scripts you can use to boost your credit score and stop getting owned by fees.

I've used this a LOT to get fees waived, perks added, and payments reduced. This chapter alone can make you money instantly.

The book will walk you step by step through each of the processes outlined above.

Chapter 2 - Beat the Banks

Overview: Old school banks make money by charging you stupid fees. It's bullshit and you should not let them do that to you. Old school banks also don't offer jack shit as far as high interest savings accounts are concerned.

Beat the brick-and-mortar banks by opening up online checking and online savings accounts with an online bank like Ally or Schwab. They don't have the same bullshit fees because they don't have physical bank locations to pay for. Capital One is a decent hybrid approach to this.

Key takeaways:

• Tell your bank to stop charging you fees and ask for refunds on the fees they have charged you. Use the scripts in the book.
• Choose a bank with high-interest savings account so your money can make money on its own. See section below for my recommendation
• Keep your checking and savings accounts in different banks so its hard to spend your savings. This has saved me so many thousands of dollars I dare not even try to calculate it.

My thoughts:

• I use a brick-and-mortar bank like Chase or Wells Fargo to deposit cash
• I use an online bank like Ally or Schwab for checking.
• I use Marcus by Goldman Sachs for my high-interest savings because they offer 1.7% APY on my money. Even now when the Federal Interest rate is 0%. They are amazing.

Chapter 3 - Get Ready to Invest

Overview: You can't get rich putting money into savings accounts. That is how you become financially stable, but now how you become rich.

To become rich you need to invest, and invest in a way that saves you from taxes and fees. In the US the easiest way to invest and avoid taxes is through a tax sheltered investment tool like a 401k or an IRA. Most companies offer 401k's to employees. IRAs or Independent Retirement Accounts are under your control and must be opened by you.

It's recommended to have both. 401ks and IRAs allow you to invest your money into the global stock market every paycheck. This will allow your money to grow with the economy and collect dividends from the companies you are invested in. Those dividends will be reinvested and your investments will grow.

Even if the stock market goes up and down (it will) your overall investements will grow through the dividends you are paid and through your consistent contributions to your 401k and IRAs.

This is the easiest, slowest, but most guaranteed way to become a millionaire.

Key takeaways: Open investment accounts even if you can only put in a few dollars to start. Remember this is about taking action, not getting it perfect. Just start! Get your hands dirty.

• Utilize your company's 401k or International equivalent
• Open an IRA or Roth IRA. Anyone can open one. A 401k and an IRA are both recommended if possible. If not possible, just an IRA is a good start.
• Use tools such as Betterment or Wealthfront to open IRA's with no minimums.
• Or go straight to Vanguard if you want

My thoughts: This section of the book really clarified a lot for me regarding basic investing strategy. It goes like this.

• Build an emergency fund
• Pay off debt
• Put money into your 401k to get company matching
• Put the rest of investable money into Roth IRA until it's maxed out
• Put the rest into your 401k until it is maxed out
• If you have money left over still - It's fun money for high-risk investments (covered in a later newsletter)

My 401ks and IRAs (Roth and norma) are with Vanguard.

Book Homework:

• Buy the damn book if you haven't yet
• Start paying more money toward your debt. Come up with a plan to get rid of it completely. Read my article on this if you want my specific take on it.
• Open a high-interest savings account with Marcus and move your savings over to it
• Use your company's 401k matching if they have it
• Open an IRA or Roth IRA
• Set up automatic payments each month

Tips or Tools of the week: Wisdom, Health or Wealth

Each week I share either three tips or three tools that will help you become wiser, healthier, and wealthier.

Wisdom tip of the week: What can you do with 5 good minutes?

Thanks to James Clear for this inspired thought.

5 good minutes of:

• meditation can reset your mood
• pushups or jumping jacks is a solid workout
• writing can deliver 1 good page
• reading can finish an insightful article (like this one)
• calling a credit card company can save you hundreds of dollars

You don’t need more time— you just a little focused action.

Health tip of the week: Let the sun hit your skin

We are all quarantined. From each other, but not from the sun. Step outside and let the sun hit your skin directly. Research and basically the entirety of human history tells us that the sun is good for us. Vitamin D has been reclassified as a hormone because our bodies produce it naturally when in contact with the sun.

So get outside for a few minutes and enjoy the better mood it gives you.

Wealth tip of the week: Like...this week's entire newsletter?

Buy the damn book. Right. Now.

Do yourself the favor.

Your Homework for the week

This newsletter is useless if you don't take action. So be the boss that we both know you are and do some homework.

• Do the book of the month homework - get I Will Teach You To Be Rich so you can read along and level up your finance game
• Spend 5-focused minutes improving your day
• Let the sun hit your skin
• Fill out this 2-min Cryptocurrency survey if you are curious about crypto (The beginner course is in the works!)

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• Books I should review
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