{"id":16886,"date":"2024-12-31T12:02:21","date_gmt":"2024-12-31T20:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=16886"},"modified":"2025-11-13T14:04:48","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T22:04:48","slug":"money-month-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/31\/money-month-end\/","title":{"rendered":"Money &#8211; Month-End Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m now rounding out the third month in my year-long project to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/myprojects\/foundations-project\/\">improve my foundations<\/a>.<span id='easy-footnote-1-16886' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/31\/money-month-end\/#easy-footnote-bottom-1-16886' title='This post was written on September 30th, 2024. I\u2019m working three months ahead of the publication of these posts to make it easier to produce all the content for my Foundations course.'><sup>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u2028This month\u2019s focus was money. In particular, the keystone habit I asked students of <a href=\"https:\/\/join.ingeniumcourses.com\/foundations\/\">my course<\/a> to work on this month was setting up a system to track their expenses and reviewing it at least monthly.<\/p>\n<p>Monthly expense tracking has been a habit of mine for almost two decades, so my personal challenge this month was to:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Improve my tracking. <\/strong>Prior to this month, my wife and I tracked dozens of different spending categories. We reorganized our system so we have main categories and subcategories, making it easy to see how much we spend on \u201cbig picture\u201d items while also having enough detail that we can get specific in any particular area (for instance, how much of our food costs is due to eating out versus groceries?)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Get term life insurance. <\/strong>I applied for term life insurance for myself. I decided to get a policy that would cover our outstanding mortgage balance, since the other financial assets I have should be enough to cover any other expenses.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Rebalance my assets. <\/strong>This was a concern of mine as I don\u2019t feel my asset allocation so far has been done in a particularly principled way. However, reading dozens of books (including the better part of a 1000-page textbook on investing) didn\u2019t really persuade me to change my strategy much. I probably want to start shifting some of my assets into a bond index, but I\u2019d rather do that with newer savings rather than rebalancing the investments I already have. I still think, given my age and work flexibility, an 80-90 percent equity portfolio is the way to go.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Foundations Conversation: Month 3 Update - Money\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bbJPBlC9cpg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Overall, my money foundation month was more about deepening my knowledge base rather than radically changing my habits. Going in, I felt pretty good about my overall savings levels, investment strategy and money management in general, but it was nice to dig a bit deeper into this topic and affirm some of my long-standing commitments.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Planning for My Financial Future<\/h2>\n<p>Another step I took this month was to do some explicit calculations of my financial goals. I ran a few scenarios looking at what I can expect long-term under different future conditions based on my current assets.<\/p>\n<p>This exercise helped me see what my financial position would be if I tried to retire immediately, in ten years, or not until I\u2019m in my seventies. I don\u2019t plan on stopping work anytime soon, but sometimes misfortune strikes and we&#8217;re not given that choice. It was a useful exercise for seeing how my financial foundation could support my family in the case that my business failed or I somehow became incapable of earning a similar income.<\/p>\n<p>This kind of analysis of net worth and retirement goals is not complicated to do, but I had never actually done it before.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Feeling Good About Money<\/h2>\n<p>Another thing this month helped me with was with feeling better about my money, in general. For years, I have been comfortably saving more than I was spending, so I didn\u2019t think much about money at all. But my wife and I bought a house two years ago, and the combined pressure of watching the investments we had for the down payment take a tumble, having a mortgage, and seeing interest rates rise<span id='easy-footnote-2-16886' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/31\/money-month-end\/#easy-footnote-bottom-2-16886' title='To the confused Americans, we got a 5-year variable-rate mortgage. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is the default in the US, but it isn\u2019t common here in Canada.'><sup>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> added some financial stress.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t say this as a complaint\u2014I\u2019m acutely aware of how fortunate we are. But it was stressful, nonetheless.<\/p>\n<p>Doing the work of comparing our actual spending to our current financial picture, including the variety of possible future scenarios for investment return, interest rates, and even my ability to work and continue this business, made me a lot more comfortable about our plans going forward.\u2028While there\u2019s a stereotype of the person who doesn\u2019t look at their bank accounts to avoid financial anxiety, I think I tend to be the opposite. If I can\u2019t see what my goals are and whether or not I\u2019m reaching them, I get more anxious about spending, especially when things like my mortgage payments jump up considerably.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Being Committed to the Strategy<\/h2>\n<p>The other lesson I took from my extensive reading this month was the importance of emotional resolve in one\u2019s financial plan. It\u2019s relatively easy to describe an investing strategy, but it seems it\u2019s much harder to commit to a plan when it\u2019s losing money in the short-term, even if it is a good strategy in the long-term.<\/p>\n<p>I decided not to alter my asset allocation considerably, despite all my reading. One reason for this was simply that I feel like the informational bar for making changes to your investing strategy needs to be relatively high, otherwise there\u2019s a temptation to panic when the market crashes, or chase winners when the market is irrationally high. In this sense, I feel like a relatively simple strategy with fewer funds and choices is probably better for me, even if it isn\u2019t completely optimal from a theoretical perspective. Simplicity is easier to commit to intellectually and stick to in practice even when it doesn\u2019t look like it\u2019s paying off. It\u2019s hard to have the discipline to rebalance your portfolio *into* the \u201closers\u201d year after year to stay consistent with a strategy, so having fewer items to rebalance seems valuable&nbsp; from a behavioral standpoint.<\/p>\n<p>Time will tell whether my particular choices were correct, but I have become more convinced that commitment matters more than cleverness when it comes to managing investments.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Updates to Fitness and Productivity<\/h2>\n<p>In addition to working on my money this month, I also sustained my previous two foundations, fitness and productivity.<\/p>\n<p>Fitness continued to go well. I\u2019ve now had my third month where I haven\u2019t missed a daily workout, although a couple of those defaulted to a low-intensity stretch. I now feel like my cardiovascular fitness is about as good as it\u2019s ever been. I\u2019m still rebuilding my strength to get to my past peak of about 5 years ago, but I haven\u2019t plateaued yet.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m also about 10 lbs. lighter than when I began three months ago. Losing weight wasn\u2019t an initial goal, but it\u2019s been a nice perk.<\/p>\n<p>The productivity system I initially set up continues, although I still feel like there are a few kinks that need ironing out. I think being more consistent about the weekly and daily reviews, especially the collaborative ones with my wife at the end of the week, are essential for getting the system to work smoothly.<\/p>\n<p>Still, I feel like productivity was already a solid foundation for me, so this is more of an effort to smooth off some remaining rough edges.<\/p>\n<p>_ _ _<\/p>\n<p>With the first quarter of the year-long project concluding, I\u2019m feeling good about going into the next nine months. Next month focuses on food\u2014I\u2019ll share my opening update for that one next week!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m now rounding out the third month in my year-long project to improve my foundations. \u2028This month\u2019s focus was money. In particular, the keystone habit I asked students of my course to work on this month was setting up a system to track their expenses and reviewing it at least monthly. Monthly expense tracking has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-personal-development","7":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Money - Month-End Update - Scott H Young<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/31\/money-month-end\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Money - Month-End Update - Scott H Young\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019m now rounding out the third month in my year-long project to improve my foundations. \u2028This month\u2019s focus was money. 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