Starting at 40? Here’s the Exact Investing Plan I’d Use

You ever feel like you totally miss the investing boat? Like you see these 25 year olds retiring early. Meanwhile, you're just trying to figure out where your money should go. Well, I've got news for you. It is not too late. But if you are getting a late start, you do need a different approach. So today, I'm going to give you the exact roadmap to build real wealth. Starting right now. No fluff, just results. Step one, face the numbers. No more avoiding it. If you've been avoiding your finances because you think it's too late, or you've missed your chance to build wealth, I get it. I understand. But I gotta tell you, the worst investment strategy is waiting for the perfect time. Because while you're waiting, you're getting older anyway. And regret is not helping you. So today, we stop avoiding and start taking control and facing your finances. Fully embracing them might be scary, but avoiding it's not going to change reality. See, most people, when they finally look at their numbers, they actually realize that they're in a better position than they thought. So let's do this together. Now, before you start investing, you need to know exactly where you stand. This is not about judgment, it's about clarity. And once you know your starting point, you can create a realistic investment plan that, that fits your life. So here's what I want you to do. Number one, write down your assets. That's everything you own. Your car, maybe a house. You don't need to write down that belt you got from Shein. Nobody cares. But write down a few key assets that you own. Next, write down your debts. That's everything you owe. Keep in mind that 90% of people who are in debt don't even know how much they owe. So if you do justice, step you're so far ahead. And finally, subtract your debts from your assets and that will get you your net worth. Now take a look at that number. If the number's negative, don't freak out. That's just your starting point, it's not your ending point. Your net worth is a helpful number to know where you are today. It's a snapshot in time, but it still needs something else to give you the full picture. Next, let's get crystal clear on your spending. See, a lot of people think that they don't have enough to invest. But once they actually take a candid look at their spending, they realize money has been slipping through their fingers for years. So here's how to find it. First, pull out the last three months of your spending. You can just log on to your credit card website, download the transactions right there. Next, categorize your spending into three categories. Essentials like rent, groceries and bills. Things you need to keep the lights on. Next, non essentials like shopping, entertainment, eating out. And finally, put on your detective hat and find that third category of hidden leaks. You know what I'm talking about. Those subscriptions you forgot about, you signed up for 18 months ago. Those impulse purchases because it's Friday night. Oh, I'm not sure. What should I do? That's what I'm talking about. Find the hidden leaks. Then identify the unnecessary expenses and make a note of them. We're going to get to them in step two. When you become aware of where your money is going, it is incredibly powerful. It doesn't mean you're judging yourself. You're not beating yourself up. I'm a horrible person. No, you're just looking at the money like a scientist. What is that? Why is that person behaving that way? Except the person is me. And then we're going to redirect that money to where you want it to go. Step two, Create a realistic spending plan. Now listen up you freaks. I know you're about to click off this video. Ramit Sethi's gonna tell us how to budget. I hate budgets. I don't want to have to track the price of turnips. No, you don't have to do that. In fact, if you're keeping a budget that has 65 lines, you're wasting your time. However, we are going to create a spending plan. This is not about punishment. It's actually about freeing up money so that you can invest more without ruining your quality of life. Introducing the conscious spending plan. It's not a restrictive budget. It's actually a forward looking system that lets you spend more on the things you love while cutting out the things you don't care about. And the best part is you only need to track four numbers. Here they are. Fixed costs. These should be 50 to 60% of your take home pay. This includes mortgage and rent, utilities, groceries, transportation, debt. All the things you need for essentials. Next up, investments. This should be 10% of your take home pay minimum. And this is non negotiable. This is your future. This number matters more than anything else. Savings. 5 to 10% of your take home pay. This is your emergency fund. Future goals like potentially a down payment on a house. And finally, my favorite, guilt free spending. 20 to 35% of your take home pay. Yes, you can still enjoy life. The real goal, free up money to invest. Now let's get honest. If you feel behind, the biggest advantage you can have is taking action today. Now, this doesn't mean you have to overhaul your entire lifestyle. Throw everything away. No. Sometimes minor adjustments can actually make a really big impact. So let me give you three small tweaks that add up. Renegotiate your bills. Call up your Internet company. Call up your cable company. Call up your phone provider. Ask for a cheaper plan. Did you know that you can even sometimes negotiate the APR on your credit card debt? No, you didn't know that. You. You were busy reading a bunch of frugality forums telling you, hey everybody, did you know that if you plant your own cauliflower, then over six years it will actually develop into something that you can put in the sound? Stop wasting your time. Call up and negotiate the big wins. Next up, automate your savings and investments. Even small automatic transfers can help you build wealth when done consistently. Finally, get honest and get creative. Identify any weaknesses you have in spending. For a lot of people, it's ordering delivery after 10pm if that's you, don't beat yourself up. But get honest. Why do I do that? Ask yourself the five whys. I do it because I'm hungry. Why am I hungry after 10pm? And then come up with a solution. Remember, nobody's going to solve this for you. It's up to you. So here's what I want you to do. Now, today, I want you to open up your bank statement and your credit card statement. And I want you to find two things you can cut that are just not adding much value to your life. For example, let's take a look at Nenya's spending. She opens her credit card statement. She realizes she spent $500 last month on shopping and $400 eating out. Now, if you ask her, she will admit these two categories are not really part of her rich life. They were just something she did impulsively. So instead, she sets up an automatic monthly transfer for $900 into her investment account. Now if you don't want to go completely cold turkey, that's fine. Set the transfer up for $500 into your investment account and create a constraint for yourself to spend less on the things that are not important. Now it's time for you to do it. Find two things you can cut back on and redirect that money straight into your investments. This is how wealth is built. One smart decision at a time. So pat yourself on the back. I followed Ramit Sethi's video. Hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications. Because when you make these healthy habits automatic and you watch each of these new videos, you make hitting your goals easier and far more likely. Now tax day is coming up. If you're working with somebody who's helping you with your taxes, you want to make sure they know what they're doing. What? One of my colleagues recently told me she'd been using her family's CPA for years, until one year she asked him a tax question about a backdoor Roth and he basically sent her back a Wikipedia description of a Roth ira. And in that moment she realized this guy doesn't even know what a backdoor Roth is. How can he be advising me on my taxes? So it's important when you're working with an expert to make sure that they are actually good, especially with your taxes and especially as your income grows. Because one small mistake can cost you thousands. So as tax day approaches and you want to make sure you're doing it right, I recommend you check out this video's sponsor, Gilt. Gilt can help you with your business and personal taxes, so you can make sure you're getting proactive expert advice through the power of AI technology and expert CPAs. A colleague of mine works with them and he told me he's saving more than he spends on tax prep now that he works with Gilt and and think of them as the ultimate modern CPA. They have an in house team of expert CPAs to work with who can help you determine the most effective tax strategies to minimize risk and grow your wealth. They also have a tech platform that gives you personalized advice to maximize deductions, tax credits and savings. Plus a document vault where you can just upload all your files, tag them with the relevant years, and even see when your tax team has reviewed each file. No more back and forth emails. As a client, you also get their tax library which is full of in depth guides on things like choosing your retirement plans, taxes for new parents, qualified business income, or qbi, and so much more. So if you're ready for a more premium proactive tax strategy to optimize and file your taxes, you have to check out gelt@joing.com Ramit as a member of my community, you can skip the waitlist. Again, that's joing.com ramit now that we've talked about conscious spending, let's get into one of the most powerful ways to accelerate your wealth. Step 3 the simplest investment strategy for Late Starters now listen up y'. All. You gotta stop turning down free Money. If your job offers a 401k match and you're not maxing it out, you are literally turning down free money. Let me show you how it works. Let's say that you contribute a dollar to your 401k and let's just say your employer matches it for a dollar. That is an instant 100% return. Where else are you going to find that kind of money? This is one of the best ways you can build real wealth. It is to set up automatic investing, especially if you have a 401k match. How to catch up. Even if you started late, you might be thinking, I don't have enough money to invest. Only rich people invest. Wrong. Let's reframe it. The way people become rich is by investing. See, if you have a paycheck, you have an opportunity to build real wealth, especially with tax advantaged accounts. And the best way to do that is to have the money automatically sent to your retirement accounts. Because if you don't see it, you're not going to spend it. And by maxing out your 401k employer match, you are basically adding a turbocharge to how much you can invest. Now here's how much you can contribute in 2025. In your 401k, you can contribute up to $23,500 per year, not including the employer match. And in your traditional and Roth IRAs you can contribute up to $7,000 per year. But if you're over 50, you get a huge advantage. You can invest more than younger investors to make up for lost time. Here's how much extra you can contribute in your 401k. An extra $7,500. That's a total of 31k per year, not including employer match and your traditional and Roths an extra thousand dollars for a total of $8,000 per year. Do you all understand what I just said? I know that was a lot of numbers. Let me tell you what it means. It means you can put a lot of money in your tax advantaged accounts and grow it. And because it's not sitting in your freaking checking account where you're withdrawing it to spend it at Sweet Green, it's actually going to grow and compound. This is how real wealth is created. Now let's talk strategy. How to strategically increase your contributions over time. Stop beating yourself up and telling yourself I'm bad, I'm so bad, I'm so. Stop the puritanical bull. Instead of panicking about how much you should invest, let's actually just start investing today. What do you say, if you've been under saving or under investing, I don't want you to panic and go, ah, I need to invest $20,000 this year. That's probably not realistic to go from zero to 20,000 in a year. But you can pick a number that allows you to build the habit, build the skill, and then at the end of every year, you can increase that contribution by 1 to 2% of your income. That can actually make a big difference if you do it every year. And if you come into unexpected money like a bonus, a tax refund or side income, you can channel that into your investments. Remember, the goal is not to overwhelm yourself. The goal is to take advantage of every opportunity to boost your retirement funds. And this is a marathon. It's about using your time wisely starting now, even if you started late. So here's what you need to do. Log into your 401k or IRA right now and increase your contribution by 1%. That's it. Just one. Trust me, your future self will thank you. And now that you've built a solid foundation with conscious spending, cutting unnecessary expenses and maximizing your contributions, it's time to put your money to work. A lot of people think that putting money into a 401k or IRA means they're investing. No, that money just sits there until you tell the money where to be invested. And this is where late starters often make a big mistake. See, because they're starting late, they think they need to take on big risks to catch up. Once you use the phrase catch up, you're screwed. That's because they start chasing individual stocks. Crypto trying to time the market. Guys, this is a losing game. I want you to instead use the set it and forget it strategy. This is simple, proven investment strategy. It builds wealth consistently over time. Instead of stressing over which investment to pick and manually rebalancing your portfolio. You don't even know what rebalancing is. One option is to use a target date fund for an easy, low maintenance way to grow your money. Let me explain what a target date fund is. As opposed to having to pick individual stocks, a target date fund is one fund. And it automatically adjusts your investments over time. That means as you get older, it becomes more conservative. It does it for you. It's automatically diversified, so it reduces risk over time and it includes lots of different stocks. You're not sitting there picking individual stocks and it requires almost zero effort. You pick a fund, the fund is named based on the year you're going to retire. You're going to retire in 2050. There's a Vanguard 2050 fund, Fidelity 2050 fund, Schwab 2050 fund. Pick a fund, set it up to automatically invest, and then forget about it. Go back to watching White Lotus. Here's how to set it up. Log into your 401k or your IRA account. Find the target date fund that matches your planned retirement year, for example, 2050. Then set up automatic contributions and make sure that money is being invested. That's it. Even investing a few hundred dollars a month will add up faster than you think. Step 4 Earn more to Invest more. This step is one of the most powerful ways to accelerate your wealth, so I want you to listen carefully. A lot of late starters make another huge mistake. They focus all of their energy on cutting every last expense. Hey, if I dice these onions extra fine, then I can stretch it out. And if I put water in my toothpaste, that will help me stretch the toothpaste out. By the way, I'm telling on myself because my family did all these things. However, I think there are probably more powerful ways. All right, saving money is great, but there is a limit to how much you can cut. On the other hand, there is no limit to how much you can earn. Have you ever thought about increasing your income? I don't mean, oh, I would sure be nice. I mean actually building a plan to increase your income, which would allow you to invest more, build wealth faster, and create a big, comfortable financial cushion for your future. This is especially important if you're starting later in life. Here's how to do it. Number one Negotiate a raise. If you have a job, negotiating a raise is one of the fastest ways to boost your income. But guess what? Most people never ask for a raise. They feel awkward. They don't know how to approach it. They assume their boss will just notice their hard work. That's a mistake. Employers expect you to negotiate. If you don't ask, you're often leaving money on the table. Now you don't just walk in the room and say, hey, can you give me some more money? Instead of just asking for a raise. Come prepared. Walk into the conversation ready to prove your value. Gather data on how you've improved the company, show specific contributions and responsibilities you've taken on, and then confidently present the salary range that you have identified for someone like you. Now, let's say you're able to negotiate a 2,000, a 5,000, a $7,000 raise. This happens for my readers routinely. That money means a lot more money for investing next start a side hustle. Let me say something controversial. Cutting out your daily coffee is not going to make you rich, but making more money very likely will. The good news is you don't need to reinvent the wheel to make more money on the side. Ask yourself Can I freelance my expertise, whether it be copywriting, graphic design, marketing, tech skills, AI? Can I monetize my knowledge by teaching an online course, consulting, creating a digital product? Can I take on gig work? Whether it be TaskRabbit, Upwork, Fiverr lots of different ways? An extra thousand dollars a month, which you invest consistently, can make a massive decision difference over time. Take a look at these numbers and if you want to fast track this, check out my earn 1k program. I will show you exactly how to make $1000 per month using skills you already have. You can check it out in the description below. The final takeaway it is not Too late. Yes, the best time to start investing was in your 20s. The second best time is today. Now. If you've been telling yourself it's too late, I want you to drop a comment with your age and the words I'm starting today. Let's prove that wealth is possible at any age. And the best part? Once you hit $100,000, your investments actually skyrocket. I'll show you exactly how in this video.