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Effective tax rates in the United States

written by — published (updated ) 17 Comments

I messed up! Despite trying to make this article as fact-based as possible, I botched it. I've made corrections but if you read the comments, early responses may be confusing in light of my changes.

For the most part, the world of personal finance is calm and collected. There's not a lot of bickering. Writers (and readers) agree on most concepts and most solutions. And when we do disagree, it's generally because we're coming from different places.

Take getting out of debt, for instance. This is one of those topics where people do disagree — but they disagree politely.

Hardcore numbers nerds insist that if you're in debt, you ought to repay high-interest obligations first. The math says this is the smartest path. Other folks, including me, argue that other approaches are valid. You might pay off debts with emotional baggage first. And many people would benefit from repaying debt from smallest balance to highest balance — the Dave Ramsey approach — rather than focusing on interest rates.

That said, some money topics can be very, very contentious.

Any time I write about money and relationships (especially divorce), I know the debate will get lively. Should you rent a home or should you buy? That question gets people fired up too. What's the definition of retirement? Should you give up your car and find another way to get around?

But out of all the topics I've ever covered at Get Rich Slowly, perhaps the most incendiary has been taxes. People have a lot of deeply-held beliefs about taxes, and they don't appreciate when they read info that contradicts these beliefs. Chaos ensues.

Tax Facts

When I do write about taxes — which isn't often — I try to stick to facts and steer clear of opinions. Examples:

  • The U.S. tax burden is relatively low when compared to other countries.
  • The U.S. tax burden is relatively low when compared to U.S. tax burdens in the past.
  • Overall, the U.S. has a progressive tax system. People who earn more pay more. That said, certain taxes are regressive (meaning that, as a percentage of income, low earners pay more).
  • A large number of Americans (roughly one-third) pay no federal income tax at all.
  • Despite fiery rhetoric, no one political party is better with taxing and spending than the other. The only period during the past fifty years in which the U.S. government had a budget surplus was 1998-2001 under President Bill Clinton and a Republican-controlled Congress.

Even when I state these facts, there are people who disagree with me. They don't agree that these are facts. Or they don't agree these facts are relevant.

Also, I sometimes read complaints that the wealthy are taxed too much. To make their argument, writers make statements like, “The top 50% of taxpayers pay 97% of all federal income taxes.” While this statement is true, I don't feel like it's a true measure of where tax burdens fall.

I believe there's a better, more accurate way to analyze tax burdens.

Effective Tax Burden

To me, what matters more than nominal tax dollars paid is each individual's effective tax burden.

Your effective tax burden is usually defined as your total tax paid as a percentage of your income. If you take every tax dollar you pay — federal income tax, state income tax, property tax, sales tax, and so on — then divide this total by how much you've earned, what is that percentage?

This morning, while curating links for Apex Money — my second personal-finance site, which is devoted to sharing top money stories from around the web — I found an interesting infographic from Visual Capitalist. (VC is a great site, by the way. Love it.) They've created a graphic that visualizes effective tax rates by state.

Here's a summary graph (not the main visualization):

State effective tax rates

As you can see, on average the top 1% of income earners in the U.S. have a state effective tax rate of 7.4%. The middle 60% of U.S. workers have a state effective tax rate of around 10%. And the bottom 20% of income earners (which Visual Capitalist incorrectly labels “poorest Americans” — wealth and income are not the same thing) have a state effective tax rate of 11.4%.

Tangent: This conflation of wealth with income continues to grate on my nerves. I'll grant that there's probably a correlation between the two, but they are not the same thing. For the past few years, I've had a low income. I'm in the bottom 20% of income earners. But I am not poor. I have a net worth of $1.5 million. And I know plenty of people — hey, brother! — with high incomes and low net worths.

It's important to note — and this caused me confusion, which meant I had to revise this article — that the Visual Capital numbers are for state and local taxes only. They don't include federal income taxes. (Coincidentally, I made a similar mistake a decade ago when writing about marginal tax rates. I had to make corrections to that article too. Sigh.)

GRS readers quickly helped me remedy my mistake, pointing to the nonprofit Tax Foundation's summary of federal income tax data. With a bit of detective work, I uncovered this graph of federal effective tax rates by income from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. (Come on. What parent names their kid Peter Peterson? That's mean.)

Federal effective tax rates

Let's put this all together! According to the Institute on Taxation on Economic Policy, this graph represents total effective tax rates for folks of various income levels. Note that this graph is explicitly comparing projected numbers in 2018 for a) the existing tax laws (in blue) and b) the previous tax laws (in grey).

TOTAL effective tax rates in the U.S

Total Tax Burden vs. Total Income

Here's one final graph, also from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. This is the graph that I personally find the most interesting. It compares the share of total taxes paid by each income group to their share of the country's total income.

Tax burden vs. total income

Collectively, the bottom 20% of income earners in the United States earned 3.5% of total income. They paid 1.9% of the total tax bill. The top 1% of income earners in the U.S. earned one-fifth of the nation's total personal income. They paid 22.9% of total taxes.

Is the U.S. tax system fair? Should people with high incomes pay more? Do they pay more than their fair share? Should low-income workers pay more? Are we talking about numbers that are so close together that it doesn't matter? I don't know and, truthfully, I don't care. I'm concerned with personal finance not politics. But I do care about facts. And civility.

The problem with discussions about taxation is that people talk about different things. When some folks argue, they're talking about marginal tax rates. Others are talking about effective tax rates. Still others are talking about actual, nominal numbers. When some people talk about wealth, they mean income. Others — correctly — mean net worth. It's all very confusing, even to smart people who mean well.

Final Note

Under the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014, the U.S. Department of the Treasury was required to establish a website — USASpending.gov — to provide the American public with info on how the federal government spends its money. While the usability of the site could use some work, it does provide a lot of information, and I'm sure it'll become one of my go-to tools when writing about taxes. (I intend to update a couple of my older articles this year.)

U.S. federal budget

The USA Spending site has a Data Lab that's currently in public beta-testing. This subsite provides even more ways to explore how the government spends your money. (I also found another simple budget-visualization tool from Brad Flyon at Learn Forever Learn.)

Okay, that's all I have for today. Let the bickering begin!

Spare change: Awesome articles from elsewhere

The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets

Why deep work matters in early retirement (or any other time!)

Wealth is what you DON'T spend

Why you should quit the news [PREACH! I agree with this so much]

The rise of dogvorce [this article is surprisingly good]

Visualizing effective tax burdens across the United States

"How I stopped time by sitting in a forest for 24 hours."

Here's yet another reason to despise U.S. Bank (I pulled my business from them years ago)

Ten-year time-lapse of U.S. weather [two hours long and nothing to do with money]

Good enough is often great

Find an archive of all past spare change links on Pinboard.

Moderators and abstainers

written by — published (updated ) 39 Comments

When I was a boy, I told my father I wanted a fish. I meant that I wanted a little orange goldfish in a small bowl that might live on the kitchen counter, just like other kids have. My dad knew that. But instead of buying me a goldfish, he went to the pet shop and purchased a 20-gallon aquarium with a bunch of expensive tropical fish.

The fish were fun for a day, but I was seven or eight or nine years old. I lost interest quickly. The fish became more of a nuisance than a novelty. And, eventually, one of us three boys — I can't remember which — broke the tank, and then we had no more fish.

Thank you for the goldfish, Dad?

Dad was like this.

If he had an interest (or if he saw that one of us had an interest), he was “all in”. This was a part of his money blueprint. He had an invisible money script that led him to dive deep into whatever interested him, to pour money into passions. No surprise, then, that I too grew up to have a similar money script myself. [Read more…]

The clean slate

written by — published (updated ) 37 Comments

I'm pleased to report that seventeen days into 2020, my mental health seems to be making some marked improvements. I'm happy, engaged, and productive. I'm not ready to claim victory over my anxiety and depression, but the changes I've been making — more exercise, zero alcohol, separating work life from home life — all seem to be helping me get back to normal.

“Let's talk about your anxiety,” my therapist said to start our session a couple of weeks ago. “You say that you've always had depression but that the anxiety is relatively new. Why do you think that is?”

“I'm not sure,” I said. “Kim and I have talked about it. We know it wasn't there when we started dating in 2012. In fact, I didn't have trouble with anxiety until sometime after we returned from our RV trip in June 2016.”

“And after you returned, you made some big life changes.”

“Right,” I said. “We moved from the condo to our current country cottage. I repurchased Get Rich Slowly. My exercise declined and my drinking increased.”

“All of those could contribute to anxiety,” my therapist said. “And taken together as a whole, it's not surprising that you might be struggling.”

“I get that intellectually,” I said, “but it still sucks on a day-to-day level.”

“When do you not feel anxious?” she asked.

“That's a great question,” I said. “I don't feel anxious when it feels like there aren't any expectations on me. I don't feel anxious when I'm in the middle of social situations.” (We've established that although I think I'm an introvert, I'm actually an extrovert. I feel recharged when I get to hang out with people.) “And you know what? I don't feel anxious when life is stripped back to basics.”

“What do you mean?” my therapist asked.

“Take the RV trip, for instance. On that trip, Kim and I lived with the very basics. Before we set out, we had to be very deliberate about the things we brought with us. We just didn't have a lot of room. The RV was a clean slate, and we had to be careful about what we put there. Does that make sense?”

“Of course,” she said.

“When we got home, we were both overwhelmed. We were overwhelmed by how much Stuff we had. We were overwhelmed by how many obligations we had. We were overwhelmed by the sheer pace of life. We tried to figure out how to subtract some of the the things we had around us. That's part of why we moved. We were trying to downsize, trying to simplify.”

“Your new office is like a clean slate too,” she said.

My office at this very moment, as I write this article

“Yes,” I said. “Exactly. And I love it. I've spent the past week setting up my space, trying to make it cozy and productive. It is like a clean slate. I've tried to be intentional about every object I've brought into the room. I'm not just hauling over everything from the house. I'm picking and choosing what I allow in the office, from the big stuff like furniture to the smallest detail.”

“Such as?” she asked.

“Such as paperwork, for example. I have stacks and stacks of papers at home. In the past, I'd simply haul the stacks with me wherever I go. The stacks never get smaller. They only get larger. But the stacks are overwhelming. I told Kim the other night that I want to do things differently this time. This time, I'm bringing over one stack at a time. After you and I finish talking, for instance, I'll drive to the office and I'll tackle the one stack of paper I have there. I'll sort through every single piece of paper — each one — and decide what to do with it. When I'm finished with that stack, I'll bring over another one. I don't want to have any loose ends. The office started as a blank slate; when I'm finished moving in, I want it to be organized, efficient, and useful.”

“And what about the website?” my therapist asked. “You told me that overwhelms you too.”

“It does,” I said. “Get Rich Slowly is like a ginormous house filled with crap and clutter from decades of living. It's a mess. It's intimidating to think about. When I started my second money blog in 2015, I started from scratch. Everything was simple. Again, it was like I had a blank slate. I could be very deliberate about what I added to the site. When I bought back Get Rich Slowly, though, it was as if I'd purchased chaos. There were nearly 5000 articles from over a decade of publishing.”

“Why can't you make Get Rich Slowly a blank slate?” she asked.

That one stumped me.

“Well, I can't just wipe everything out and start over,” I said. “That doesn't make sense.”

“But you're not happy with how things are,” my therapist said. “It's as if you're dating your website but you don't even like it. You don't want to be together with it anymore.”

“Huh,” I said. “I hadn't thought of it like that. But it's true.”

“How can you achieve a clean slate with Get Rich Slowly?”

“I don't know,” I said, sipping my coffee. “I don't know.”

I thought for a moment. “I guess there are a few things I could do. For one, I could finish the goddamn redesign that I've been working on for two years. That'd help. I guess I could consider removing comments from the website. That'd help too, although it'd also have some downsides. And maybe there's a way that Tom and I could manually create the idea of a clean slate by gradually curating which articles we'd like to keep from the archives.”

The more I thought about this, and the more I talked about it, the more excited I got. I could feel myself becoming energized. What if I did somehow approach Get Rich Slowly as a clean slate? How would that work? I don't know for sure, but it's something to explore over the next few days and weeks and months.

Meanwhile, I'm enamored with the idea of The Clean Slate.

I've always loved the excitement and possibility of fresh beginnings: heading to college, moving to a new house, starting a new job, diving into a new year. Whenever I start over, I have an opportunity to iterate, to do things better than I did before.

Over the two weeks since this conversation, I've thought about it a lot. (Perhaps too much!) Why is a clean slate so appealing to me? (And to many other people, as well.) What is it about fresh starts that makes them so invigorating? I think I've found a common thread:

  • When I practice ultra-light packing, spending 20 days on the road with only a 19-liter pack, I feel in complete control.
  • When I set up this office, carefully choosing what I allowed into the space, I felt in complete control.
  • When Kim and I took our RV trip, our entire life was confined to the motorhome. And, you guessed it, I felt in complete control — even when things went wrong!

When I pare my life to essentials, I feel more in control. When I feel in control, I'm happier and more productive. This reminds me of the “locus of control” concept that's a core part of my financial philosophy.

In personality psychology, the term locus of control describes how people view the world around them, and where they place responsibility for the things that happen in their lives. Though this might sound complicated, the concept is actually rather simple.

  • If you have an internal locus of control, you believe that the quality of your life is largely determined by your own choices and actions. You believe that you are responsible for who you are and what you are.
  • If you have an external locus of control, you believe that the quality of your life is largely determined by your environment, by luck, by fate. You believe that others are responsible for who you are and what you are.

This isn't an either-or proposition, obviously. Locus of control exists on a continuum. But many people tend to favor one side of the continuum over the other.

[Circle of Concern vs. Circle of Control]

With a clean slate — or a 19-liter backpack or a new office — I'm able to limit my environment. There are fewer things to keep track of and worry about. I know where everything is. I am in control.

But when I look at my email inbox or think of all the chores to do at Get Rich Slowly or look out at the jungle that is our backyard, I get overwhelmed. There's so much going on and it just won't stop. I feel powerless, as if I have no control.

So, I've had a flash of insight, a look into how I work — and many other people work too. At times, we get overwhelmed. When we get overwhelmed, we feel out of control. Each of us responds to this differently. (I tend to turtle up and practice what my therapist calls “productive procrastination”.)

When I'm able to achieve a blank slate, I feel great. I feel in complete control. I'm happy.

I think this is why I (and so many others) find the simplicity movement so attractive. With simplification comes control and power. This also explains why I've always been drawn to “additive” budgeting rather than “subtractive” budgeting.

  • When many people try to get their finances under control, they start by trying to decide what they can cut from their budget: cut cable, cut dinners out, cut the gym membership. But this approach leads to a feeling of deprivation. This is subtractive budgeting.
  • With additive budgeting, on the other hand, you start with a clean slate. You start from zero. (And, in fact, that's what most people call this: zero-based budgeting.) You start with assumption that you don't need anything and you're not spending on anything. Then, each day and each week as expenses arise, you analyze them: Do I really want to spend money on this?

After one month of subtractive budgeting, most folks feel icky. They feel like they're being restricted. And they don't have a clear idea of what's essential and what isn't. But after one month of additive budgeting, you know what expenses bring value to your life and what expenses can be eliminated. It doesn't feel as frustrating.

In the past, I've told Kim, “I wish we could just erase everything and start over from scratch.” I see now that what I've been wishing for is a clean slate, the ability to gain more control of my life. Now that I have this insight, I just need to figure out what to do with it!

For five years now, I've had the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown in my to-read stack. Maybe it's time for me to read it. The book jacket says: “[Essentialism] is a systemic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can mek the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter. Sounds like “mindful spending” but with time and energy instead of money, doesn't it?

Selling our home was the best financial decision we have ever made

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Hello! My name is Wendy Mays, and I'm super happy to share a bit of my story. In the past couple of years, my husband and I have taken several big steps to change our financial future.

From the outside looking in, it appeared we had it all: a perfect family in a beautiful, Pinterest-worthy home in sunny San Diego, California. We'd reached the pinnacle. We were living the American Dream.

Wendy's dream house

The reality, however, was that we were drowning in debt, burned out, and coming to terms with the fact that if things didn't change, we'd carry our debt to our graves. As we explored changes we could make to improve our financial situation, we realized that the biggest and best move we could make was to sell our dream home.

Turns out that selling our home was the best financial decision we have ever made.

Given the long trail of money mistakes my husband have made in the past, some who know us might be skeptical that this choice was the right one. But if you'll indulge me for a few minutes, I hope to dispel the belief that owning your own home is always best.

The American Dream

Home ownership is part of the American Dream. It’s something most folks look forward to accomplishing. It's a rite of passage. It's how we show the world we've “made it”. We're constantly bombarded by messages that home ownership is something successful people “should” do, the same as going to college, getting married, and having children.

Too, most people have a personal attachment to their homes. We understand this. Emotional investment was a big barrier for us too. My family had put our hearts and souls into our home. On every wall, there was something our hands had touched.

We had planned to make the place into our dream home, to stay there indefinitely. It was the first home we owned in San Diego, the first home we owned after adopting our boys. Our house meant something to us. It was sentimental.

But after attending last year's FI Chautauqua in Greece, my husband and I agreed that becoming financially independent was an important goal for both of us. At age 46, we were late to discover the world of early retirement, but we knew if we implemented a few strategies we could change our lives — and the lives of our children.

We began to envision the legacy we could leave our children, the generational wealth we could begin to build.

The Problem with the American Dream

But there was a problem. We were broke. More than broke. We were in debt, including the house, by almost one million dollars. We didn't discriminate when it came to debt. We had it all! We had a mortgage. We had car loans. We had credit-card debt. We had revolving debt. We had tax bills.

When we crunched the numbers, we decided we had two choices to change our money situation.

  1. Cut expenses, then work our way out of the mess we'd created.
  2. Liquidate the only asset we had access to: our home. (All of our other money was in retirement accounts.) We could use the equity to pay off a good portion of our debt.

While we recognized that we absolutely should work to cut costs and build income, the latter option made the most financial sense. Really, it was a no-brainer. But homeownership isn't a decision we make only with our brains; our hearts have to be considered as well.

It took us about six months to arrive at a decision. For weeks, we wavered back and forth about what to do. We didn’t want to sell our house. We loved the home we had created.

Inside Wendy's dream home

Making the Decision

Ultimately, it was our children that allowed us to align our heads with our hearts. We asked ourselves, “Why do we want to achieve financial independence?” It was for our kids, to change our family tree.

We decided that “home” would be wherever we were. Home was a meal at our dinner table. It was game night. Home was watching the Littles ride their scooters in the front sidewalk and family movie night in the drive-way.

Our home wasn't limited by four walls. It wasn't defined by a specific house.

Once we agreed to sell our house, there was another decision to make. We would capture enough money from the sale to not only pay all of off our consumer debt, but have some left over to put into another home.

We weighed the pros and cons of renting versus purchasing another home. We ran the numbers through several different “buy vs. rent” calculators – and in each one, renting came out ahead. In fact, renting could save us anywhere between $800 and $1200 each month

Not only that, but by not buying another primary residence we'd have a significant amount of money left over that could be used for something else, such as investing in out-of-state rental properties.

We decided to rent.

Soon, we found a nice home in our current neighborhood (which was important for us). We were able to rent the place for $1100 less than our previous mortgage.

Crunching the Numbers

For my family, letting go of the attachment to our home allowed us to do some amazing things.

  • We paid off all of our consumer debt. Gone are two car payments and several credit-card balances. This is a savings of about $1600 a month. ($900 in car payments and the rest in credit-card payments.)
  • By renting — and downsizing slightly — we save about $1100 per month in housing payments.
  • Selling our home provided seed money to begin real-estate investing, which will add $1000 of positive cash flow into our budget per month.

That's a grand total of $3700 per month that we put back into our budget. That equates to about $44,000 each year.

Let that sink in for second. Millions of people live on less than this amount comfortably. (What could you do with an extra $44,000 per year?) It's the equivalent of a modest income in the United States.

In fact, freeing up this money allowed me to quit my career as a lawyer and close my practice. For the first time in our lives, my husband and I can live on one income!

Wendy, Curtis, and the kids

After the Sale

Now, several months after selling our home, we can say without hesitation that it was the best thing we've ever done with our money.

This one move has not only decreased our monthly expenses, but it also allowed us to pay off a lot of debt. Plus, we've start investing in real estate, which has also increased our monthly income.

Last year — 365 days ago — we had almost $1,000,000 in debt. Through this one unconventional move, we've gotten rid of almost $700,000 of that debt.

We still have about $350,000 of student loan debt to go – but we have a plan in place to attack that as well.

Once you allow yourself to think outside the box, give yourself permission to make unconventional moves with money, you can do amazing things. Housing is the biggest expense for most Americans. It almost always makes sense to seek ways to decrease that expense. Doing so can bring about all sorts of opportunities.

I encourage you to do consider the possibilities.

My spending goal for 2020: Spend less on food

written by — published (updated ) 39 Comments

I'm pleased to report that 2020 is off to a fine start. As I mentioned in my year-end review, 2019 sucked for me. I have high hopes that this year will be a vast improvement. So far, it has been.

The biggest change is that I'm not drinking alcohol. While this is meant as a January-only test, it's possible that I'll extend the experiment. It's saving me money and making me more productive. Plus, it may be helping with my anxiety and depression. I like that. (Thanks to the GRS readers who sent me private notes about their own struggles with alcohol. I appreciate it.)

I've made other small changes this year too. While I didn't make any resolutions — I rarely do — I'm using the new year as a prompt to alter some of my habits, to do things differently.

One area that both Kim and I want to focus on in 2020 is our food spending. In 2018, I spent an average of $1038.03 per month on food. While I don't have complete numbers for 2019 (my expense tracking was messy in the latter half of the year), I know that while my food spending declined, it didn't decline by much. I want to change that.

To that end, Kim and I are making a couple of changes. For one, I'm canceling HelloFresh…at least for now. Plus, there's the whole “cut out alcohol” thing. While alcohol isn't included in my food spending, it contributes to my food spending. It leads us to eat out more. We want to reduce our restaurant spending in 2020.

Let's take a closer look at how I hope to spend less on food this year.

Good-bye, HelloFresh

Last year was the year I experimented with HelloFresh, the meal delivery service. Mostly, I like it. Mostly. I like the HelloFresh recipes. I like the convenience. I like the company itself.

That said, there are enough downsides to HelloFresh that starting next week, I'm dropping the service. Part of this is because of me. Part of this is because of HelloFresh itself.

On the me side, I need to walk more. I need to get more exercise, and I need to experience my neighborhood. As part of that, I want to make regular trips to the grocery store — by foot.

Also on the me side, I like greater variety than HelloFresh offers. It's not that HelloFresh doesn't offer different meals and cuisines — because it does. But the recipes themselves have a relentless sameness about them. Yes, you can choose Italian or Korean or American dishes, but the preparation is always always always the same. It's boring.

Those are the problems with me. There are also problems with HelloFresh itself.

For instance, I'm sick of the never-ending push to get me to promote the service to my friends. Get lost. Every week, the HelloFresh package contains a plea to share sign-up codes with friends. Every week when I choose my meals online, there's an additional plea to share sign-up codes with friends. Every week in the follow up e-mails, there's a plea to share sign-up codes with friends. I'm over it.

But the biggest strike against the service is its inability to get produce right.

Most weeks, there's at least one meal with a shitty piece of produce. It's usually (but not always) a tomato. One meal I prepped last week had a rotten lemon. (I've never even seen a rotten lemon before!) It's as if there's no quality control.

And at least once per month, a vegetable is simply missing. Absent. Not in the bag. During Thanksgiving week, for instance, I was prepping a meal with asparagus almandine, which sounded awesome. But the package I received contained no asparagus. I scrambled to find a substitute — Brussels sprouts — but it was a poor replacement.

The Cost of Convenience

Plus, there's the cost. When we first tried HelloFresh in June 2018, I crunched the numbers. Meals from HelloFresh cost about $10 per person. If I were to purchase the ingredients myself, the cost was just over $3 per person. At three meals per person per week, I've been paying an extra $175 per month for groceries that I don't need to pay.

When I signed up for HelloFresh, I did so because I hoped it would save me money. I hoped that it would keep me out of the grocery store (which it does, actually) and that in turn would reduce my grocery spending. I tend to make a lot of impulse purchases at the supermarket, so this seemed like sound reasoning.

The results of this experiment were inconclusive. For the first half of 2019, my home food spending (HelloFresh and groceries combined) dropped from $620.92 per month to $553.45 per month. But during the last two months of the year, I spent $729.38 per month. Was that year-end spike because of the holidays? The huge Costco trip I made in early November? I don't know. Maybe I should dive deeper.

In any event, if I did save money, it isn't nearly as much as I'd hoped I would save.

That said, Kim and I have really enjoyed many of the meals we've ordered from HelloFresh. And we're especially keen on the recipe cards. They're a lot of fun. They make cooking simple — even if they are relentlessly the same.

Because I'm a nerd, I've saved every recipe card from every HelloFresh meal we've ordered. And to get nerdier yet, I've both graded each recipe and taken notes on it. In other words, we have a customized illustrated “cookbook” containing over 100 different recipes. (Plus, all 2500+ of the HelloFresh recipes are available for free from their website.)

Going forward, I intend to use these recipe cards to plan and prep our meals. Instead of ordering from HelloFresh itself, though, I'm going to walk to the grocery store (carrying my backpack) to buy the ingredients. This should prevent me from buying crap we don't need while allowing me to obtain better produce than HelloFresh tends to send.

We'll see how it works.

Here's another way Kim and I have come up with to cut costs on food: batch cooking. It's nothing new, I know, but it's new to us. We won't do once-a-month cooking, but we'll each pick one recipe per week and make a larger version of it.

I'll pick one HelloFresh cards and make three nights of the meal, for example. Last Sunday, Kim prepped a big batch of pork tacos that we've eaten for dinner the past three nights. And so on. We think this'll keep life simple and keep me out of the grocery store.

Rascally Restaurants

Kim and I will also try to cut back on food spending this year by reducing how much we dine out. Left to our own devices, we choose restaurants much of the time. That gets expensive.

  • In 2017, I spent an average of $567.97 per month on restaurants. Kim spent some unknown amount too (but much less).
  • In 2018, I spent an average of $389.63 per month on restaurants. Plus, Kim spent some. So, we made big gains in 2018, but our spending was still high.
  • As I mentioned, my records are incomplete for last year, but I know I spent $288.04 for restaurants during the last two months of 2019.

From 2017 to 2019, we cut our restaurant spending in half. That's great progress! Still, there's room for improvement.

I spent an average of $66.47 per week on restaurants last year. My gut feeling is that this is basically dining out once per week. I know from experience that our typical check is about $55, which includes our two meals plus two beers each. After tip, that's $66. That's our standard meal. (And it's usually on a Thursday night.)

So far in 2020, we've had one restaurant meal and it cost us exactly $34 (including tip). If we'd both had our typical two beers, that check would have been about $58. By not drinking, we saved ourselves more than twenty bucks!

Kim and I do enjoy eating out together, so it's not something we want to eliminate. Instead, we want to be more mindful about how and where we dine out when we do dine out.

We've already shifted our focus from fancier places (which is where we were eating in 2017) to cheap and tasty spots. But now we're interested in finding places that are even less expensive. And, at least for now, we want to be careful to avoid spots that might tempt us to drink. (Our favorite pub has great food and a cozy environment, but we both know it's madness for us to eat there. It'll make us want to drink beer.)

It's far to early to predict how this whole restaurant thing is going to go in 2020. But we've thought of a couple of ways to cut costs (in addition to the “not drinking” thing.) As I said, we can turn our attention to less expensive eateries. Why go to the fancy Mexican place with “gourmet” tacos that cost $8 or $9 when we can go to the cheap place down the hill with $4 tacos? Let's try that new ramen spot.

Plus, we might try take-out this year. Neither one of us has ever been a big proponent of ordering food to go, but I think it makes some sense right now. On my way home from the new office, I can pick up something tasty for dinner from the Thai place or the Italian place, maybe. We can have the restaurant food without restaurant temptation.

The Last Big Win

Food seems to be the last major place that I can trim my budget. My austerity measures in 2019 yielded excellent results, and I'll continue to pursue those in the future. But I've cut most of my discretionary spending as far as I want to cut it at present. Food is the exception.

  • I averaged spending $1176.06 per month on food in 2017.
  • That dropped to $1038.03 in 2018.
  • During the last two months of 2019, I spent an average of $1053.28 per month on food.

As I say, we're making progress, but I feel there's more to be had here. This is the last big win left in my budget. It'd be great if I could trim my food spending to, say, $800 per month (or lower!) in 2020. That'd be a fantastic drop from $1200 each month in 2017, right? I'd call that a victory.

On a food-related note, I should point out that eliminating (or reducing) alcohol could also save me plenty of money. During the past three years, I've reliably spent about $250 per month on alcohol — and that doesn't include alcohol in restaurants. Going dry could help my health and wealth.

My 2019 year in review

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On a cold first of December 2000, my car was totalled during morning rush hour. I was cruising along in the slow lane — I drive like an old man — when a tractor-trailer rig changed lanes into my Geo Storm. According to the guy behind me, the car spun around twice (although that seems unlikely) before slamming into a guardrail and coming to a stop.

The entire accident probably took all of five seconds but it seemed more like five minutes in subjective time. From the moment I felt the first jolt, my mind entered a state of hyper awareness. I could see everything happening around me — the truck looming to my left, the airbag deploying, the chaos as the car whirled about, the traffic in other lanes — but I was powerless to do anything about it.

When my vehicle came to a stop, witnesses pulled over and rushed to see if I was okay. I was stunned, but I was fine.

Over the next couple of hours — and then days — I went about picking up the pieces. The accident itself had been chaos, as I said, and it left a bit of a mess to clean up afterward. I had to have the car towed. The insurance company had to evaluate it. They had to issue me a check. I had to buy a new car. And so on.

Five seconds of chaos, five weeks of picking up the pieces, and then life settled into a new normal.

The left side of my Geo Storm (after accident)

My 2019 felt much the same, my friends. I'm not trying to be overdramatic (or to catastrophize), but for a lot of the past twelve months, I've felt as if I'm stuck in a spinning car, clearly able to see what's happening but powerless to stop it.

This is, of course, a product of my anxiety and depression. Objectively, my life is fine. Great, even. Subjectively, everything's been spinning and the airbag has deployed. I know this is all in my head, but that doesn't make it any better.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that I believe — hope, maybe? — that the wreck has come to a halt. The car that is my life has stopped spinning. Over the past month, I've been “assessing the damage”. Things are messy, sure, but they're not as bad as they might have been. Now, I've slowly begun to pick up the pieces, to work toward a new normal.

Fortunately, nothing's totalled. It's a mess, but there's nothing that cannot be repaired. [Read more…]

When to follow the rules — and when to break them

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Last night's recipe from HelloFresh was Bulgogi Pork Tenderloin. As always, the instructions were clear and easy to follow. As always, it took me about twice as long to prep things as the recipe card said they would.

HelloFresh instructionsI chopped the vegetables, boiled the rice, seared the meat, made the sauce. But when I reached the final step — “finish and serve” — I hit a wall of sorts.

“Ugh,” I said to Kim, who was playing with our three cats and one dog simultaneously. “The recipe calls for a tablespoon of butter in the rice. I hate adding butter to rice. It makes it gummy and gross. But HelloFresh always wants me to do it.”

“I like butter in my rice,” Kim said, throwing a bacon ball for the dog while kicking a catnip toy for the cats. “But if you don't like it, don't add it.”

I sighed. Of course, she was right: Just don't add the butter! Such an obvious solution, right? Yes — and no.

You see, I am fundamentally a Rule Follower. When I'm cooking, I follow the recipe exactly. When I'm building an IKEA desk for my new office, I follow the instructions exactly. On the road, I generally stick to the speed limit (which sometimes drives Kim nuts). I used to take pride that never once did I cheat on my homework or tests in high school and college — and I never helped anyone else cheat either.

As I said: I am, fundamentally, a Rule Follower.

This has been true when it comes to managing my money too. Since beginning my quest to become the CFO of my own life fifteen years ago, I've surrendered to wiser minds than mine. I tend to heed the time-tested “rules of money”, rules like:

  • When average people like me are wondering how to invest, the best answer is usually “set up automatic contributions to an index fund”.
  • When setting up a budget, it's more important to pay attention to the Big Picture than it is to fret over details. Follow the balanced money formula and you should do okay.
  • When you want to get out of debt, use the debt snowball method. If possible, pay high-interest debts first. Many folks (including me) have more success, though, if they pay off low-balance debts first. And still others use a debt snowball approach in which they start by tackling the debts with the greatest emotional weight.
  • If you're going to use them, know how to use credit cards wisely. If you're unable to use credit without digging yourself into debt, then throw away the “shovel”.
  • And so on.

Following these rules has proved profitable. These “rules” are rules for a reason. Because they work. They allow folks to get out of debt and build wealth. Crazy, right?

Here's the thing, though. As effective as these financial rules have been for me, as much as I like strictly following a recipe, I've also come to realize that sometimes it makes sense to (gasp!) break the rules.

The challenge, then, is determining when to follow the rules — and when to break them. [Read more…]

Different strokes for different folks

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A couple of weeks ago, I stopped in to visit Prosperity Pie Shoppe, a local dessert and coffee place co-owned by Luna Jaffe. Jaffe is a sort of wonder woman who blends art, psychotherapy, and financial education into something she calls “wild money”. The space that Luna and her partners own isn't only a source of tasty treats; it's also a studio for money coaching.

Over pie and coffee, I chatted with Luna and one of her money coaches, Dryden Driggers. We shared our backgrounds with each other and talked about the direction we'd like to take our work. I think the three of us have a lot of shared viewpoints and visions. I imagine we'll find ways to work together in the future.

Prosperity Pie Shoppe

Giving Every Dollar a Job

One thing stuck with me from our talk, though. We were discussing how to actually reach people who want financial help. When people come to us ready to dig out of debt and build wealth, what specific ideas are effective “triggers” or “switches” that change how they manage money?

“In my work,” I said, “I've found that getting people to focus on saving rate — the gap between their earning and spending — can make a big difference. In the financial independence community, many people receive this spark of inspiration when they read Mr. Money Mustache's article about the shockingly simple math behind early retirement. It's all about how powerful a high saving rate can be.”

“We're not working with people who are thinking about early retirement,” Dryden said. “Some of the people we coach are well off, it's true, but many are just starting out. They're deep in debt. They're living paycheck to paycheck. They're simply grasping for a lifeline.”

“Right,” said Luna. “And for these folks, budgeting is vital. We've had great success steering folks to You Need a Budget. Even if they don't use the software, we want them to understand the YNAB philosophy because it can be so powerful.”

“Exactly,” said Dryden. “I think the one thing that really helps the people we coach is the idea that you should give every dollar a job. That's the first rule of YNAB.”

For more about the You Need a Budget philosophy, check out my YNAB review and/or my review of the You Need a Budget book.

Growing the Gap

On Saturday, I met with my friends Wally and Jodie again to talk about their financial journey. Since our first meeting in August 2018, this couple has made significant progress toward paying off their debt and establishing a solid financial future. They wanted a check-in to make sure they're still on course.

It was interesting to listen to what Wally and Jodie had to say, to pick up on the financial concepts that seem to have clicked with them.

  • They've bought into the debt snowball and have used that technique to eliminate all but their three largest debts. They have a car loan, a motorcycle loan, and some school debt remaining.
  • They've been trying to keep in mind the balanced money formula, the broad budget framework in which you allocate no more than 50% of your spending to Needs, set aside at least 20% to Saving (and Debt Reduction), then use about 30% for Wants. (In fact, they've been telling people in Jodie's family about this system!)
  • Most of all, they've latched on to the idea of “growing a gap” between earning and spending. Wally and Jodie pay attention to how much this gap is every single month — and their biggest challenge is deciding how to allocate the gap.

“We find that the gap can cause problems,” Jodie said. “When it's especially wide, we get giddy and end up spending too much.”

“But we're glad to have that gap there,” Wally said. “I've never had a gap in my life. It's crazy to think that we've had one for almost a year now.”

“We just need help deciding what to do with it,” Jodie said.

Chatting with Wally and Jodie in the new GRS office

Wally and Jodie, the first guests in the brand-new GRS office space

Our talk on Saturday revolved around their options. They could use this “gap” money to accelerate debt payments. They could set it aside for other savings goals. Or they could mix it up. In the end, I think they decided to use their gap to do two things. First, increase their emergency fund from $1000 to $3000 or $5000. Second, set aside $400 per month into an opportunity fund (although we never used that term).

Their opportunity fund would allow Wally and Jodie to defer making a decision about how to allocate their gap money for a while. If they decide to use it to accelerate debt repayments, they can. If they decide to use it to travel, they can. If they decide to use it to beef up their emergency fund, they can.

Do What Works for You

My conversations with Luna and Dryden and Wally and Jodie — and my recent family meeting with Kim — has reinforced my belief that each person has a unique set of skills and a unique psychological makeup. And because we're different, we'll each be drawn to different aspects of money management.

Kim, for instance hates tracking spending (or anything else). She's never going to build a budget or use a tool like Personal Capital. But Kim comes equipped with built-in frugality. Plus, she's a hard worker who is willing to pick up extra shifts in order to make more money. And if she can automate good behavior — such as funneling IRA contributions into index funds — she'll gladly do so.

I, on the other hand, love tracking my money. I want to manually enter transactions into Quicken. And while I'm not naturally frugal — I'm a natural spendthrift, actually — by tracking my money, I'm able to spot problem areas and make corrections. Plus, I'm good at creating income streams. My income streams are never large, but I have many of them.

It's as if money management is a buffet. There are a wide variety of effective tools available to help you meet your financial goals. It's your responsibility to browse this buffet, then to think about what it is you want to accomplish and consider your own tendencies and inclinations.

Using this info, pick a few techniques to try. Some will work for you. Some won't. Don't get discouraged if some piece of smart advice doesn't suit your situation. That's okay. Simply return to the buffet and pick another option!

For more than thirteen years, the unofficial motto of Get Rich Slowly has been “do what works for you”. There's no one right way to achieve financial success. There are some best practices, sure, but sometimes the “best” way to do something isn't the most effective way for you…or for me.

How to change careers in 12 months (or less)

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After spending a decade as a pastor, I realized in May of 2018 that I was ready to make a drastic career change…into personal finance education.

I’ve always loved to write, so I wanted to first see if I could actually make money writing about personal finance. But I made a commitment to myself. In one year's time, I was going to have a day job where I helped people learn how to handle their money wisely. The question was just in what capacity.

So I set a deadline for myself. If I hadn’t figured out a way by May 2019 to make enough money as a freelance writer to pay the bills, I would get certified as a teacher and apply to be an economics teacher at local high schools.

Fast forward twelve months. This past May I did quit my day job. In one year’s time, I was able to create a full-time income in a career that I previously had no experience in.

How did I do it? More importantly, how can you turn your dream job into a reality as quickly as possible?

Give Yourself Permission to Make Mistakes

When I first decided that I wanted my day job to be in the personal finance space, I honestly had no idea what job I should pursue. Here are just a few of the options that I pondered:

  • Getting my CFP certification so I could become a financial planner
  • Becoming a financial coach
  • Getting certified as an ACF accredited counselor
  • Becoming a high school or college teacher
  • Becoming a financial aid counselor
  • Starting a personal finance blog
  • Starting a podcast
  • Starting a YouTube channel

Does it sound like I was just throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what would stick? Yeah, it felt that way too.

I was so frustrated that I couldn’t just “know” what my path was. There were many days that my head hurt just trying to consider all the options.

So how did I move forward? I just started experimenting with things and I told myself if it was perfectly fine if they didn’t pan out. Remember the financial coaching idea? Yeah, I paid way too much for a “financial coach training” course that ended up being a complete waste of money and time.

The blog idea? I tried that one out for size in May when I launched my website. And I naively thought that it could become my full-time income in no time at all.

I was wrong.

But before I wander too far down the trail of the “greatest hits” of my mistakes, let me get to the point. Believe it or not, I didn't let those mistakes or miscalculations discourage me.

My general passion kept me grounded enough to push through difficulties deciding upon my specific job. I knew that I would eventually find my “niche” and I gave myself permission to choose some wrong doors before finding the right one.

And in the case of my blog, yes it didn't end up being a money-maker for me as quickly as I assumed it could be. But the writing that I did for my own site was instrumental in helping me land writing clients later on.

Meet People

I know the saying is overused, but there's a lot of truth to the saying: “It's not what you know you, but it's who you know.”

In my case, I wanted to break into the personal finance media field. I wanted to meet people who were already in that space.

I wasn’t sure how to do that. But I simply googled “personal finance blogger's conference” and boom, a conference called Fincon popped up first on my search results. I had never heard of FinCon before, but the conference looked legit. So I paid for a ticket and showed up not knowing what to expect.

Little did I know that I'd have a chance to sit down and pitch myself to over 20 different editors of publications large and small. So I sat down and tried my best to sound confident and knowledgeable for a guy who had ZERO paid writing experience.

I smiled, tried to show my passion, and asked them to take a chance on me. I even remember telling some of them that they were lucky because I was a new writer and they could get me at a discount right now.

Yes, I did that.

It would have taken me YEARS of cold email pitches to have made the kind of traction that I was able to make in 15 minutes at Fincon. I followed up on everyone that I met at FinCon and I was able to land my first writing client in November.

And in the next seven months, I was able to build up a full-time writing income, mostly all from referrals. Literally, every client but one that I've landed so far has come as a result of relationships that I built there.

If you are wanting to break into any new field, reading blog posts are great (please read them, because it helps people like me pay the bills), but there's nothing that can quite replace the effect of meeting people who are already doing what you want to do.

  • If you want to start a restaurant, offer to take a local restaurant owner out to dinner.
  • If you want to become a personal trainer, find local meetups or conferences and get to know people who are successful.

Pick their brains. Become part of the “community.” I really believe that is the key to success in nearly every career field.

Prepare for Your “Worst-Case” Scenario

I think one of the biggest reasons that we, as human beings, don't take more risks is that we're simply so afraid of what might go wrong.

“Unknown” problems tend to scare us more than the problems that we’re already aware of in our current situation…whether that’s logical or not. But one way to get past that fear is to just be honest with yourself about what your worst-case scenario would be.

When I first started writing, my worst-case scenario was that I might not make any money at it and may have to become a teacher instead. And, to be honest, once it sunk in that was the worst thing that could happen, I realized that the “worst-case” wasn’t really all that bad.

And that helped me get past my analysis paralysis.

Now that I’m a full-time writer, my “worst-case” scenario would be that a ton of my clients all decided to dump me at the same time and I have a few months where my bills are higher than my income.

But to help alleviate that concern, I saved up every penny of my freelance income until I launched out full-time. By doing this, I was able to save up an emergency fund of almost a year's worth of income.

So again, the “worst-case” really isn't something worth fretting about.

Carefully think through the worst thing that could happen during your own career change and prepare for it. And I promise that it will help you confidently step out and make the bold moves that you need to make to be successful.

First Steps

If you've been dying to explore a new career, you can do it! But to be fair, not every career can be transitioned to as fast as I was able to transition into freelance writing.

Want to become a doctor? Sorry, no advice that I, or anyone else, will give can make that possible in 12 months or less. Some careers come with built-in education and certification requirements that will simply take time to earn.

But what you can do in the next 12 months is to take your first step in the right direction. And, for careers that have lower barriers to entry, here are a few action steps that could get you moving in the right direction:

  • Educate yourself: Are there courses that you could take or certifications you could earn to give you an advantage over others vying for the same job opportunities?
  • Don’t be afraid to reach out to influencers: When I was in college, I took a course that required every student to interview the CEO of a company that would be our “dream job” someday. We we all thought our professor was crazy. But it turned out that everyone of us were able to accomplish the assignment and had the chance to pick the brains of smart and talented people. And some of my classmates even landed management poisitions at great companies like Southwest Airlines and FedEx as a result of the relationships that started with these simple phone calls. Here’s how Tim Ferris teaches his Princeton students to get email responses from powerful people.
  • Work for free: My first writing assignment was an unpaid guest post. No, I didn’t make any money, but it gave me my first byline and valuable experience. You may have similar opportunities. Could you volunteer one day a week for a business that’s in the niche you want to break into? At the very least, it could help you learn more about what the career entails. And, who knows — it could turn into a job opportunity too!
  • Update your resume and LinkedIn profile: Reframe your skills and experiences to highlight the things about you that would be attractive to clients in your targeted career field. And, as you can gain volunteer or paid experience, make sure to update your resumes and profiles to reflect this.
  • Leverage your existing network: Yes, it’s important to meet new people. But you may have existing relationships that could help you along the way. Don’t be afraid to ask friends and family for help!

Don’t let your lack of experience keep you from pursuing a new career. By being proactive and taking action, you may be able to change careers faster than you think.