3 Easy ways for Dad to win with money

Alright, so this is the blog, 3 Things Dads Can Do to Win with Money. 3 very simple things every dad can do to win with money. And let's clarify a few things. Money is not everything. That's the absolute truth. There are a lot of dads out there with plenty of money that are just absolutely miserable. Money is the root of all evil. That's what we hear, right? It's absolutely false. It's a misquote. The love of money is the issue. The obsession with it. The making it your only goal. The love of money. Not money is the root of all evil. The love of money is the root of all evil. Making it your only goal, sacrificing your family for money, that is the problem. It's not money, it's how you think about money. The truth is, it's hard to be a good dad when you're broke. It's not impossible, but it is harder. Money will give you more time with your family. It'll give you less stress when you're around them and more opportunities to enhance your kids' lives, be it education or experiences or just your general living conditions. This is my simple guide that's failproof, meaning anyone can do it. Zero risk. It's 100% effective regardless of your intelligence, your talent, or even your income. Many people find fault in it because it leaves some opportunities off the table, but those opportunities involve risk that require talent, skill, intelligence, and more often than not, a lot of luck with outside factors. To define winning means having contentment when it comes to money. That's winning— being content with your financial situation, not panicking or struggling, prepared for difficulty but building for the future. Most importantly, it's the perspective of growing your net worth. That is the goal in finance. Make your finance decisions to grow your net worth. Net worth is all the things you own— your cash, these are called assets— your cash, your house, your cars, your investment, your furniture, all that kind of stuff, minus all the things you owe. Those are your debts. When you start making decisions based on growing your net worth, you stop buying new cars because new cars go down in value. You quit wasting your money on stupid stuff because investments are better. You make your debts disappear because your net worth skyrockets when the debts are gone. You buy things based on what they will be worth in 10 years, not because they're cool and impress people. So number 1, cash means less stress. Always have a pile of cash. It's called an emergency fund. Keep it in a bank savings account, that's fine. Just very liquid, means you can get it same day. So if you need it, it's there for you. It needs to be enough to cover at minimum a few weeks of living and most repairs on your car or house. $1,000 is a solid amount to start with. That relieves most immediate and urgent problems and stressors, and it's more than most people have. The emergency fund is one of the most comforting aspects of life. Because having it makes life less scary. It's less stressful and often gives you a lot of options. So once your budget is made and you're sticking to it and you're debt-free, then we put more money in that emergency fund, meaning anything can happen and you're fine. If you have to replace your car, no worries. If your roof needs to be replaced, no worries. You lose your job, no worries. 6 months' worth of expenses should be more than enough, but the final number is whatever is comfortable. For you. This means you can lose your job and pay for everything with no changes in your lifestyle for 6 months, which in reality means if you lose your job, you could probably go for a year because you would cut back on what you're spending. This gives you freedom and options. You don't have to rush final decisions. You can pick the right job instead of the first job. You can find the right car instead of the first car with zero down and no payments for 90 days. You can pick the right roofer instead of the first one that offers you payments. So step 1 is having cash, building cash, keeping cash, and sticking to your budget. Number 2: hate payments. You want to win with money? Learn how to hate payments. Pay off all your debt and stop getting more debt. Stop getting payments. Payments kill you. Payments hold you back in life. Payments are stupid. So no more payments. A lot of dads are getting into debt because they're panicking. They're making a bad emotional decision and then they regret it later. The emergency fund prevents this. That's why it's number 1. It gives you the level head to make sound decisions. Another group of dads have payments simply because they genuinely think that is how life is supposed to be. You just, you always have payments. It's part of life. Furniture, cars, bills, anything you buy, you make payments on it. Payments make you broke. Let's be clear about that. Payments steal your future. It consumes your income. If someone offers you payments, that's an insult. That— it's an absolute insult. You should be offended with every time someone offers you payments. Just offended. You hate it. It's stupid. If someone offers you payments, accept that as an insult to you. They're stealing your future. Learn to hate it when people offer payments. They're ripping you off. They're charging you more than if you paid in cash. They're crushing you with interest. Stealing your future choices because they staked a claim on all of your paychecks in the future. Having a budget is going to keep you from getting in debt. You can see your traction you're making, and you can understand what's going on. You understand how long it takes for you to pay for something. You can see how it affects your net worth. So there is an argument to be made for using debt as leverage for investment, and if you're, if you're debt-free with fantastic money management skills, then by all means do what you want. You open yourself up for risk. Sometimes it works really well, but a lot of smart people have gone broke that way because you are susceptible to things outside of your control. Legislation from the government has ruined many, many smart men. The 2008 housing crisis ruined a lot of leveraged people. COVID-19 ruined a lot of leveraged people. Buying everything with cash and saying no to opportunities you can't pay for keeps you safe. It's a 100% effective. It's also a slower path to success. Buying everything with cash and saying no to the opportunities you cannot pay for keeps you safe. It's 100% effective. It's also a slow path to success, which is why so many people don't like it and they want to use leverage so they can get there faster. In our family, we made the decision to not put our family at risk. I started my career in '07, right before the crash of '08, '09, '10. O-ten. Who calls it O-ten? 2010. I saw smart businessmen brought to their knees because of things outside their control. They had a successful growing business, so they bought new buildings and new trucks and equipment, and it was working great until '08 happened. Then their customers disappeared and they still had those payments. They had made smart decisions, they had sound leveraged investments, They had good marketing, they had good business practices, but they still failed because of that debt and a little bit of bad luck. So in our business, we grew slower. We paid cash as we could, and other people got bigger than us. We lost accounts because we couldn't buy all the equipment. We missed opportunities because I wouldn't borrow to make it happen. And yet I still retired at age 33. It sucks to grow slow. It sucks to watch other businesses borrow. Explode with growth. Those are the businesses that struggle to make their payments as soon as something bad happens, like a COVID, like an '08, or any other unexpected situation. Write down a budget. That's number 3: budget for a profit. Write down your budget. In the beginning, forget apps and programs, just a piece of paper. It's not fun, it's not sexy, but it is important. Write down how much you make at the top, Then in order of importance, write down how much you spend on each aspect of life. Start with your rent or mortgage, your water, your electric, your food, your insurances, your car fuel, etc. Then you can write the less important things like your phone, TV, internet, clothes, eating out, gifts, fun things, boring things, you're getting the point I hope. Now you can look at that paper and find ways to spend less. You know how much you spend and how often. And if you need to, you can start cutting down on some of these expenses or start looking for ways to pick up more income. You start picking up some overtime or a second job, a side gig. There are always options. Mowing grass, shoveling snow, drawing logos, taking pictures, babysitting, fixing people's stuff, doing a car— washing people's cars, writing social media posts for people. There's so many opportunities out there. Now the first few months are the hardest in budgeting. You forget categories, things come up that were unexpected. That's normal. The important thing is that you push through and try your best to end every single month with extra money. I call it profit. You can call it savings. Just make sure every single month you're making more money than you're spending. This is the key to winning with money, knowing how much you're making, how much you're spending, and then finding ways to make sure every month has extra cash. What you do with that extra cash is easy at first. Save it till you have that huge cash emergency fund. Once you have that big cash emergency fund, then you can start to look to the future, investing your extra money for retirement or college funds. That's when the fun really starts. But not until you have extra money every month and a big emergency fund and No debts, but not until you have extra money every month and a big emergency fund and no debts. This is 100% Dad. Find our current tour schedule on 100dad.com, 100dad.com, on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and more @100dad, 100dad. Email Townsend at 100dad.com.