Money Milestones That Prove You're Crushing It 💥🥊
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All right, enough of that. Look, when it comes to money, it can feel like the goalpost is always moving. Once you finally hit a goal, it feels like it's not enough. There's always another goal right ahead of you.

But if you've been watching this channel and doing the right things with your money, you've probably hit some money milestones. And I personally want to celebrate those with you. And it's not just finger traps and waffle parties. I'm talking about full-on marching bands. So today I am breaking down 11 financial milestones worth celebrating. And trust me, no matter where you are on your journey to wealth, there are some big wins here you should be proud of. But before we jump in, give those like and subscribe buttons a click and share this video with your friends in optics and design before the macro debt uprising.

Okay, these first three are what I'm calling starter milestones. Once you decide to get your financial act together and you start doing the right things with money, these are some of the first things to celebrate, starting with cutting up a credit card.

Now, that might not seem like a big deal to some of you, but it really is a milestone because cutting up your credit card isn't just a good decision. It's an entire lifestyle change. It means that you've decided to opt out of the system designed to keep you broke. You're ready to stop borrowing money and start building real wealth. And I remember when I cut up my two credit cards back in 2013, I went through this money course called Financial Peace University. And as a group, we had a placectomy.

where we took out scissors to our credit cards and physically cut those bad boys up. Let me tell you, it was weirdly emotional, even a little scary. Those cards had been my security blanket and companion into adulthood, much like Woody was to Andy in Toy Story. And just like Woody, there were strings attached with these cards. And those metal blades slicing through the plastic felt like cutting the strings of a toxic relationship, a one-sided relationship that cost me far more than the 2% it gave in the form of cashback.

And this was a huge turning point in my debt-free journey, and I know it will be for you too. So go ahead and use those little pieces of plastic as confetti because this moment is worth celebrating.

Next milestone, creating your first budget. Now, truth be told, I used to think budgeting was for broke people and Excel lovers. Turns out I was broke until I started doing a monthly budget. When I finally got serious about reversing my financial situation, the biggest and best change I made was making a budget every single month. I realized that budgeting is truly the only way to take control of your money. You're either telling your income where to go or you'll be wondering where it went.

So when you make a zero-based budget, here's what that means. Your income minus expenses equals zero. You're giving every single dollar a job. That way, nothing gets mindlessly spent on horse sculptures at HomeGoods unless it's in the budget. In that case...

Now, the app that I use to create my budget and track my expenses is called EveryDollar. It's a free download. It's super easy to use, and it does the math for you. So if you want to check it out, click the link in the description below or go to everydollar.com slash george to get started. The next milestone we're going to celebrate is saving energy.

This is another one that may not sound significant, but over a third of Americans have zero in savings. None at all. And you don't have to be a CPA to know that is no bueno. So if you've been able to save anything, I'm going to call that a win worth celebrating. A tiny win, but a win nonetheless. You got to work on building that savings muscle and creating a habit of paying yourself first in the form of saving that money instead of spending it.

So if you're just getting started with saving, I recommend having $1,000 in a starter emergency fund. Don't worry about fully funding your emergency fund until you have... Dad, fly! I will end you! Come at me again, bro. Bro, I will slap myself in the face to kill you.

Don't worry about fully funding your emergency fund until you've paid off all your debt, which is the next milestone. Being completely debt free of all your consumer debt. This puts us into some intermediate milestone territory. Okay. These are accomplishments you'll hit when you're a little farther along on your financial journey. And being debt free is a big one because it's the point where you stop paying for the past and you start building for the future. Every dollar you have is finally yours. No more monthly payments, no more interest.

You'll be earning interest from now on instead of paying it. And the best method for paying off debt, bar none, is the debt snowball method, where you list out your debts from smallest to largest balance, ignoring the interest rate, and you attack the smallest one with every extra dollar you can find and make minimum payments on the rest.

What happens here is you knock out debts faster and you free up payments along the way, which gives you psychological momentum to keep going and get through it. Once you're finally debt-free, you'll have way less stress and way more margin for saving, giving, and investing. So even if you can't make it to the Ramsey Show to do your debt-free scream and celebrate with us, make sure that you mark this money milestone with some sort of celebration.

Once your debt is paid off, the next milestone to celebrate is having a fully funded emergency fund. Now this is more than just money in the bank. This is peace of mind.

It means that you're covered when the car breaks down, the tree falls on your roof, or you have an unexpected vet bill because your dog ate an entire sock once again. You've got that buffer, so you can breathe now, you can sleep, you don't have to panic and swipe a credit card to pay for it at 25% APR. And that kind of security is rare, and it's absolutely worth celebrating. Having a fully funded emergency fund ready to protect you changes everything. That's not an exaggeration. This is a huge emotional step for your future.

And the funny thing is, once you get that emergency fund, you sort of stop having emergencies. I mean, they technically happen, but they hardly feel like emergencies. When you're broke, it feels like it's hard to have good luck, right? It's like the adult version of Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Hopefully minus waking up with gum in your hair. But when you're not broke anymore, you seem to have more good luck. But it's really not luck. You're just in a better place financially. You can afford higher quality stuff. You can afford the maintenance on that stuff. And you have the margin in your budget to cashflow most of the emergencies

that come your way without even dipping into that savings. So it takes the drama out of life to have this emergency fund. So make it a priority. It has to matter to you. Keep your foot on the gas. Speaking of gas, the next milestone to celebrate is paying cash for a car. If you're driving off the car lot in a vehicle that is fully paid for, congratulations, you are weird in the best way. I'm sure the salesperson is still confused as to how you did that magic trick. Go ahead and swing by Sonic and treat yourself to a foot-long coney and a dirty Dr. Pepper.

because paying cash for a car is an amazing financial decision. Footlong Kony? Jury's still out on that one. - You have a problem with me and the hot dog guy? I'm trying to watch the damn average hot dog. - I'll smack him in his head. - But here's why this is a smart money move.

When you have an auto loan or worse, auto loans on a brand new car, you end up paying way more. Because you're not just making payments on our depreciating asset that goes down in value every day, you're also paying interest to the lender, which can cost you thousands more over the life of the loan. And yet so many people seem to think this is normal and it's a good idea and there's no other way to do it. And recent data shows that Americans currently have $1.66 trillion in auto loan debt,

which is now right at the spot where student loans are at. So if you think that's a crisis, auto loans are right there with it. And the sad part is delinquency rates are up, which means people can't make their payments on time. So if you're able to save up and pay cash for that used car and you make it a habit to upgrade in cash over time, that is absolutely worth celebrating. Another milestone worth celebrating is...

when you start investing. The moment you start investing is a huge milestone because it means you're not just working for money anymore. Your money is finally starting to work for you. So once you're debt-free with a fully funded emergency fund, I recommend 15% being invested into tax-advantaged retirement accounts like your company 401k or a Roth IRA. Now, there's a lot that goes into this, so I'm going to drop a link to a free investing guide that walks you through it completely in the description below.

All right, now it's time to move on to some more advanced milestones. These are the high-profile S-tier major accomplishments that you'll hit after you've been doing the right things with your money for a long period of time, starting with buying your first home. Now, this one is obviously a BFD, big financial deal. It's a family-friendly show.

show. And it's definitely a moment you want to celebrate because now you don't have to listen to the guy on the other side of your paper-thin apartment walls doing what you can only assume is hot goat yoga. If it's not, call the cops. Finding some calm

But don't forget about the financial perks of home ownership. When you make your mortgage payments, you're building equity, meaning you own more and more of the home as time goes on. And once it's paid off, it is completely yours. And plus, your home will probably increase in value over time, depending on the market and how well you took care of your place.

So what you buy for $300,000 today might sell for 400 or 500,000 down the road, if not more. So if you reach this milestone, congratulations. You are now free to paint your walls hot pink from top to bottom, and there's no landlord to stop you. Just know that I will still be secretly judging you.

And if this is a milestone you're working toward, I am cheering you on. But please hear me out. Do not buy a house before you can actually afford it. Let this house be a blessing in your life, not a burden. So here's how you do that. Wait until you're completely debt-free with a fully funded emergency fund and you have a good down payment saved up. Also, be sure that the PITI, that's principal, interest, taxes, and insurance, is no more than 25% off.

of your monthly after-tax income and that that's on a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage. I know that's difficult in today's market. I'm not crazy. And that might mean you gotta wait to save up a bigger down payment or choosing a more affordable house or moving further out of the area you wanna live in. But it is worth the wait to do this right and not overextend yourself.

If you can do that, then you're ready to buy a house and take the obligatory pick of yourself holding a key for your real estate agent's Instagram. He's got to get more followers somehow. And if you're saving up for a down payment, a great place to keep that cash is a high yield savings account like the one offered by Laurel Road, one of the sponsors of today's video. With Laurel Road, your account balance will earn top tier APY. So all that money you've saved can be making you more money.

And plus, with Laurel Road, there's no minimum balance required to open an account, your deposits are FDIC-insured, and there's no hidden monthly fees. So if your down payment is sitting in a regular old savings account earning dismal interest, it's time for an upgrade. So learn more by going to laurelroad.com slash george or click the link in the description below.

All right, another big financial milestone is when you have reached $100,000 in your investments. That first $100,000 can feel like you're trudging uphill through the mud. But once you hit that six-figure mark, your net worth explodes like Mentos in a Coke bottle, baby. Because that's when compound growth really starts to make a big difference.

Let me walk you through this. Let's say that you've got $10,000 invested and it earns 10% on average. That's a thousand bucks a year. Not bad, right? But if you've got $100,000 invested and you get that same average 10% return, that's $10,000 per year in growth without you lifting a finger. That's 833 bucks a month in your sleep. And the next year, well, that 100,000 becomes 110,000 with compound growth. Now you're earning 10% on that bigger number.

And it keeps going and keeps going like my internal monologue at 2 a.m.

Did I lock the door? How old is John Stamos? What is kombucha? And why does it have a mother? So many questions, so little time. Now, there's nothing magical about $100,000 specifically. It's just a point where you start to see compound growth make a big difference, like five figures of growth per year potentially. So if you've got $100,000 invested, way to go. And if you're working toward that milestone, keep it up. Getting to that 100K, it's a grind. But after that, boom goes the diamond. Boom goes the confetti cannon. I've been rolling my nose.

Next milestone on our S tier list is paying off your home. There are people who will tell you not to worry about paying off your mortgage early because it's cheap debt if you have a low interest rate. But the way I see it, mortgages are like adult braces. They're useful for a time, but you want to get rid of them ASAP.

And here's why. If you pay off your mortgage early, you can save tens of thousands of dollars in interest payments, maybe even six figures. Plus, when you don't have a payment, you can use that extra money for things like investing, giving, saving up for vacations, or buying a Hufflepuff robe for your next Potterhead meetup. You do you, whatever expecto is your patronus, whatever griffin's your door, whatever huffle's your puff, whatever slither's your inn. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

And let's talk about this low interest rate. All right, when you have a paid for home, you don't have the golden handcuffs of a good interest rate because you've got no interest rate. And that means you might be in a position to purchase your next home in cash since you have 100% equity in your home to roll over to the next one.

So if you want to move or you get a new job, you don't have to worry about losing out on your precious interest rate. A paid for home with a 0% rate and no payments is the way to go. On top of all that, no debt means less risk. And for me, less risk equals more peace. My wife and I got a 15 year fixed rate mortgage on our first townhome. We paid it off in a little over two years and it saved us so much money in interest. We paid 10 grand in interest over those two plus years.

If we had gone with a 30-year loan and took 30 years to pay it off, we would have ended up paying over $100,000 in interest on a home that cost $300,000. That's insane. And thanks to a booming housing market in our area, our house went up in value way faster than any of our investments. So

So if you ask me, paying off your home early is a great forced savings plan, and it's one of the best money moves you can make. And it will increase your net worth exponentially as a bonus. Which brings us to our final milestone to celebrate, becoming a net worth millionaire. Now, you might be picturing Ferraris, a couple of mansions, a private jet, but that's not what we're talking about here. By definition, you become a millionaire when your assets minus your liabilities equals $1 million.

So there are plenty of low key stealth wealth millionaires all around living relatively normal lives. Think about it. If you have 50 grand in savings, 50 grand worth of cars, a paid for home worth 400 grand, and in your retirement, you got $500,000, that makes you a net worth millionaire. Now that doesn't mean you're balling out and retiring today, but it's still a huge accomplishment and it's likely the result of decades of hard work and making smart decisions with money. And when we studied over 10,000 millionaires, we found that the average millionaire hit that milestone

at 49 years old. So this is going to take some time. But if you follow the advice on this channel, it is bound to happen. So when you hit that million dollar mark, throw a little party, maybe even a big one. Trust me, you can afford it. Now, I know some of you are in a spot where becoming a millionaire doesn't even sound possible. But if you're doing the right things with money, it's not only possible, it is inevitable. But you need to know the traps to avoid and how to manage your money the right way if you want to celebrate all these financial milestones.

And you can find all of those in my book called Breaking Free From Broke, The Ultimate Guide to More Money and Less Stress. It's also available as an audio book and ebook, and it's read by yours truly. So I'm going to drop a link in the description below if you want to check that out. And if you want to see how I went from broke to millionaire in under 10 years, keep watching this next video or click the link in the description. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. I think we need to add the fly to the credits for this episode. It's really a main player.