Today, we’re unveiling the 2025 Method to transform your money mindset. Whether you’re overwhelmed by debt, stuck in a savings rut, or simply stressed about money, this episode is packed with actionable strategies to help you think differently and achieve financial comfort.
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Transcript:
Speaker 1:
Today we're going to tackle the money mindset transformation method. Hopefully to get us on the right path for thinking in 2025, some positive thoughts and some resolutions maybe, if you will, here on Plan With The Tax Man.
What's going on everybody? Welcome into the final episode of the 2024 calendar year of Tony and myself's podcast here. Plan With The Tax Man. Of course, Tony is the tax man, Tony Mauro. He is Des Moines professional alternative at Tax Doctor Inc., of course, he serves clients all over. So if you've got some questions, need some help, reach out to Tony and his team at Tax Doctor Inc., online at yourplanningpros.com. That's your planningpros.com. He's a CPA, a CFP and an EA of 30 plus years experience in the industry. So great resource for you to tap into.
And Tony, you and I were talking about trying to eat better and get healthy and so on and so forth. And it is that time of the year, right? The end of the year going into the new season where we all want to do some sort of resolution or mindset change. And so we thought it'd be a good idea to maybe talk about that from a money standpoint. How to take some of the negative thoughts that kind of permeate our brains and find a positive better way to spend those. And so I thought that'd be fun this last episode. How you doing?
Tony Mauro:
I'm doing good. Coming off Christmas and yeah, everybody's thinking about the old New Year's resolution, so this is perfect timing.
Speaker 1:
Do you consider yourself a glass half empty or glass half full kind of person?
Tony Mauro:
I'm the glass half full for sure.
Speaker 1:
Okay, good.
Tony Mauro:
And I do spend some time every year just kind of going through what I want to do for the upcoming year, both my wife and I, even on a personal level, whether it's vacations or just stuff needed around the house to financial moves. It's a time of year to put them down and see what happens.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so if you've got any tips on how to change your mindset along the way and building new habits, well obviously it's a great time to share them. So what I'll do, Tony, is I'll give you kind of the negative thought that we tend to hear in the industry and then you give us maybe the more positive upbeat way of thinking about it, try to change that mindset. Okay?
Tony Mauro:
Okay.
Speaker 1:
All right. So we'll just jump around on my list here because Lord knows there's plenty of them. So let's start with a negative thought that's certainly been bothering people this past year with inflation being so high and the cost of living going up and credit card debt got a little out of control. People will say, "Hey, debt, it's ruining my life." They can't see past some of the charges they've ran up. What's a way to reframe those negative thoughts, if debt is ruining your life or you feel like it is?
Tony Mauro:
You feel like it is, yeah. Well, and you hear that a lot and most of the time people say that because they look at their credit card statements because that type of debt can be ugly to start looking at. Certain types of debt really aren't as bad as people think. Mortgages are something most of us need. We can't buy our houses for cash. Student loans with low interest rates allow us to get further ahead and make more money with our educations. And so both of these generally are paying for assets that you can use in the future to hopefully help you increase your wealth and get to your goals. Now, the happy-
Speaker 1:
It's an investment in yourself, right? Yeah.
Tony Mauro:
It's an investment in yourself. If you do have the bad debt though, you need to work with somebody, even if it's bad, there are ways that you can tackle that bad debt. So eventually you're not going to be having that bad thought of it's ruining your life. You got to take action and do something about it.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it's true. So looking at the other types of debt and saying, "Hey, these are an investment in me," that's a positive way of doing that. And maybe that flows right along with this one too, which is the negative thought is, well, because it's so expensive right now, I don't earn enough to save, let alone invest. I'd like to, right? I'd like to save more. I'd like to invest, but God, I'm just living paycheck to paycheck. I don't earn enough to do so. And that's a tough one, especially when we're younger, so when we're in our twenties or even thirties, but we've got to find a way to turn that negative positive.
Tony Mauro:
You do. And really the easiest way is to start very small. Well, I should back up a minute. The easiest way is you need to work with somebody I think, to figure out what you've got coming in and what you've got going out every month and literally detail it out. Because there are some small, small cuts that we all can make on things we blow money on to at least divert into some savings. I mean, if it's 20, 30 bucks a month-
Speaker 1:
Exactly.
Tony Mauro:
... or 50 bucks a month, it gets you on the road to saying, okay, I can do this. And for most of us, whether it's a pack of cigarettes, a case of beer or Starbucks, whatever, once you start itemizing some of that out, you're thinking, oh gosh, we spend a lot of money on that.
Speaker 1:
Amazon orders, right?
Tony Mauro:
Amazon's another one. And so I think you got to take that mindset of surely you can find a couple of bucks, especially if you sit down and analyze it. Because if you start young enough, even small amounts can add up to big numbers over 20, 30, 40 years.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah, well think about something, I don't know, let me go with something as simple as like Netflix. It's a $30 a month subscription. So do you really need it? How much do you actually watch it? Now, I'm not saying that budgets are fun, but if you find yourself in that negative thought, out of that, I can't put anything away, $30 a month. If you're younger, well even if you're a little bit older, that adds up. 30 times 12. And putting in that something that's growing a little money, well then that's even better. So that's how you get that way.
And actually I'll use that one to jump to the next one. I'm going to jump around on my list here, Tony. But budgets, right? People are like, oh, budgets suck. They're restrictive. I don't want to have to live that way. And you could look at this whether you're a pre-retiree, which is a lot of our demographic, or retiree or even a little bit younger, you've probably lived on a budget throughout every stage of your life, but for some reason, retirees, they hate this word. They feel like, oh, I've worked really hard. I want to be able to enjoy myself in retirement. A budget doesn't mean necessarily that you can't enjoy yourself.
Tony Mauro:
That's right. And everybody thinks that. If I create a budget and actually detail it out, that I can't go over this budget. That is so far from the-
Speaker 1:
It's restrictive.
Tony Mauro:
... truth.
Speaker 1:
I don't want to have to live on a plan. But you've always lived on a plan.
Tony Mauro:
Whether you wrote it down or not, you've always had a plan. It may have been a bad plan, but if you ask anybody, in my opinion, what they.... They can kind of give you, "Well, I take in this much roughly, and I spend this much, and I don't know what I spend it on, but I know I do." That's kind of a half budget there. But if you can detail it out, all it is it points out things to help you make decisions. Do I still want to keep spending money on that or maybe I don't and want to divert it somewhere else? I have a budget. I mean, if you're really ultra into it, you need to use some financial software, in other words, Quicken, Mint, or some other ones, and have every transaction that comes in your household, every transaction goes out, detailed out in a little mini P&L or monthly saving or earning and spending report, so you can see.
For us, where we tend to spend a lot of money for example, is dining out. And sometimes we look at our thing and say, "Well, we spent a lot of money last month dining out, that's kind of over where we want to be. Maybe let's try to fix that."
Speaker 1:
Reigning that in a little bit.
Tony Mauro:
That's all budget is, is just reigning it in.
Speaker 1:
Take that negative thought of it being restrictive and switch it to a budget is a tool for freedom. It gives me the freedom to go out to dinner, to your point you just made, because I know what my limits are. So we can go out and have ourselves a good time, but it also keeps me from getting myself into trouble. So again, taking the negative thoughts and reframing them in a positive manner. And look, you can play word association games if you want. A lot of people, instead of calling it a budget, they call it a spending plan, right? It's like, okay, fine, call it whatever you want. Call it hopscotch for all I care. But just realize that it can be a useful tool so that you don't get yourself into bad shape.
Okay, good. Good stuff. Let's see, what else could we talk about? Let's jump around different things. Taxes. So one of your favorite topics. So look, the negative thought is taxes suck. They're complicated, right? I don't get it. They eat up my income. They're taking so much of my money, right? Yes, it's hard to argue this one, Tony. It's frustrating, but how can we be a little bit more positive, at least as far as dealing with the fact that we don't have a whole lot of choice. We have to play this game.
Tony Mauro:
You have to play the game. And taxes, you're exactly right, they're complicated. They are one of our biggest expenses. However, as bad, and sometimes I get on the government and everything, it's not like the old English where they just come around and say, pay us X, like to a king type of thing. They give us all kinds of laws that a lot of times, especially if you're trying to do things on your own, you don't take advantage of. Because there is some opportunities that they give you to save for retirement. They give you opportunities for deductions if you're out spending on a new house with a mortgage, student loan interest, some of that stuff we all talked about with the debt. So you've got to be able to take advantage of some of that because that is tax efficient investing and also spending. So while it's a bad thing, you got to use it to whatever laws are on the books at the time to the best of your advantage and to try to grow your wealth using that part of the game.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, exactly.
Tony Mauro:
It's part of it.
Speaker 1:
And right along with that is the structure of the system that we have is investing. The negative thought being, man investing is so risky, it's so complicated. Same kind of feeling. A lot of people are like, I want to do it, but I don't understand it enough or it intimidates me. So we've got to be able to be positive because it's still a great way for you to grow your wealth and obviously outpace inflation. So what's the positive spin?
Tony Mauro:
I think the positive spin on that is your best bet is to work with an advisor of some kind so that they can explain how over the long term, it reduces your risk over time, especially with diversification.
Speaker 1:
With a strategy, right?
Tony Mauro:
With a good strategy. It's one of the only ways you're going to be able to grow your wealth for the future. There are other ways. You can have your own business, you can get into rentals. There's all kinds of ways to make money, but you got to be able to save some of that money for the future. And I think that's where some people get a little intimidated, especially with the 24/7 information we have coming at us all the time. I mean, whether it's TV, internet, everything else, it's really not that complicated, especially if you have a long-term goal.
Speaker 1:
I was going to say, the key I think I took from you there was the long-term approach. If you've got a straightforward long-term approach, you don't have to be trying to day-trade or be some sort of Wall Street whiz kid, but a simple longterm approach can significantly reduce the risk concerns that you have. Now, you're still going to have money at risk. That's the point. So that you can kind of grow and outpace inflation. But I think it doesn't have to be nearly as intimidating as many of us initially make it out to be. My wife says the same thing. She's like, "Oh, I don't want to mess with that stuff. It just scares me too much." So I started showing her some simpler things and she's like, "Oh, this is not so bad." So it's just a matter of coaching.
Tony Mauro:
Training. It is. And really with today's, especially in the funds area, mutual funds, they make it pretty easy, and they have great portfolios, many of them, and make it very easy for a small investor to just get started and it's pretty set it and forget it. You got to have a plan in place, but you definitely want to keep a long-term approach. And I wouldn't let that get you too down about it.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. All right, well I'm going to do one last one, negative thought. I'm going to combine two because they kind of work together to me. But the negative thought people have is just around money in general. I'm terrible with it. It's stressful. I make bad decisions with it. Whatever. Whatever you kind of find yourself feeling about money. Like, "This thing, I stink at it. It just stresses me out." Well, there's a simple way to think, you've got to change your mindset about money because it's obviously something that we have to use in society. So what's the positive thought about it?
Tony Mauro:
I think the most positive thought that I always think about, and I tell my son this too, everybody wants to achieve whatever level of wealth that they can. But it really just is a tool, I call it a tool to use for experiences that I want to do while I'm on this planet and give me the time that I can go out and do them while I still have-
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it's a tool. Exactly.
Tony Mauro:
... some decent health.
Speaker 1:
It's no different than a hammer. If you're trying to build a house, you need a hammer. If you're trying to build a life, you need money. It's a tool.
Tony Mauro:
It's a tool. I mean, it would be great if we all could do whatever we want and there was no money and we just did whatever we wanted and we could do it. Well, that's not the way the world works.
Speaker 1:
You just showed up at Disney World and they let you go around and do whatever you want. Unfortunately, somebody has to pay for the maintenance, right?
Tony Mauro:
Somebody has to pay for all that. So it shouldn't be stressful for you. It shouldn't be the root of your problems. But I think this is where some of the stuff we've talked about in the past and even today, about staying on track and having a plan and having someone help you so that you don't feel stressed out about this money stuff because it really shouldn't be stressing you out.
Speaker 1:
Well, as we go into the new year, making resolutions is something we all do. So start trying to be more positive, I think, in not just necessarily making a resolution or a wish, because is it a reality if you don't act on it? Maybe write some things down. That goes a long way for people, have success doing that. Maybe write down some goals that you want to attain and then take some action steps on how to do that. And maybe for many people, the money side of things is just finally working with someone who can shine the light on the stuff that we're just not used to doing day in and day out because we're so busy living our lives. But we do need that tool, that tool called money.
So get yourself on the calendar, reach out to Tony and his team at yourplanningpros.com. Get some time to talk with them in the New Year at yourplanningpros.com. And don't forget to subscribe to us on Apple or Spotify or YouTube, whatever platform you like listening to podcasts on, and that way you catch new episodes when they come out. Tony, thanks for hanging out my friend. Have a great New Year and I'll see you in the New Year.
Tony Mauro:
We'll see you in the New Year and everybody else have a great New Year as well. Stay safe.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely. We'll catch you next time here on Plan With The Tax Man with Tony Mauro from Tax Doctor Inc.
Securities offered through Avantax Investment Services SM, member FINRA, SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through Avantax Advisory Services. Insurance services offered through an Avantax affiliated insurance agency. Investment strategies discussed in this episode may not be suitable for all investors. Please consult with a financial professional.
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