Financial Panther

We get bombarded with things that make us think investing is a game where you need to outsmart the competition and hit that big home run. And maybe they have figured out the secret to making money investing in stocks and weird investments. That means enough money invested, enough time to let our money grow, and enough consistency so that we have more money working for us. And I don’t have to be smart to save money, invest for the long term, and end up with a lot of money later on.

To figure out your real hourly wage, simply take what you earn, then add up all the time you spend working, as well as the time you spend commuting, getting ready for work in the morning, and everything else you have to do for your job. If you’re trading your time for money, figure out what you can do to reduce the amount of time you spend doing work-related activities outside of work. Unfortunately, if you’re in a job that has set working hours, there’s not much you can do here to increase your real hourly wage other than what I mentioned previously – reducing the amount of time you spend on work outside of work. Your real hourly wage tells you a lot about what you’re trading your time for.

Your money system consists of all of the financial accounts and tools you use to keep your financial life in order – things like your checking accounts, savings accounts, and any fintech apps you might use. Because my checking account is the starting point of my money system, it’s super important that I use a good one. Plus, it’s where I have my checking account, so it’s easy for me to also have an Ally savings account for this purpose. If you’re in a state that offers a tax deduction for your state’s specific plan, then you should use your state’s 529 plan.

Like with the mega high-yield savings accounts, bank bonuses are far too big of a topic to cover here, but you can read all about how bank bonuses work in my Ultimate Guide to Bank Account Bonuses. To earn $13,000 worth of interest in a year, you’d need to save $2.6 million in a typical high-yield savings account. Second, and perhaps more importantly, taking advantage of all of these different high-yield bank accounts and bank account bonuses forces me to save more money than I otherwise might. Add in $1,000 worth of bank account bonuses in a year (something attainable for most people) and you’re now generating the same amount of interest income as if you had $230,000 in a regular savings account.