This will be our last video about our trip to Norway. Since we share all of our financials in our monthly newsletter, we wanted to break down the costs of gear and travel in this video.
If you’re thinking about going to Norway, our number one tip is to avoid restaurants. Everything else is actually pretty reasonable. (Note: A lot of that has to do with the current exchange rate being more favorable than in the past.)
I want to talk about starting a YouTube channel with zero subscribers. In the video I discuss how we got our first thousand subscribers and how it’s taken off exponentially since then. We’ll take a look at our analytics and see how much money you can make on YouTube, how to get views in the very beginning, and how become suggested more often on the “what to watch” page.
The growth of our channel has been incredible, but it’s neither the fastest nor the slowest I’ve witnessed. I think our results are very repeatable if you’re just starting on YouTube. We would love to go full time, and we have a very loose plan to do that. But even if that never happens, we’ve consider everything so far a huge success.
Once you get out of debt, it’s time to build an emergency fund of 3-6 month’s expenses. How much to keep in your emergency fund depends on things like your job security, insurance, income sources, how many people you’re supporting, and much more.
In the video, we talk about how we don’t really have an emergency fund, but more of an “opportunity fund.” Normally, you should never spend your rainy day savings on anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. We tend to break the rules 🙂
What’s your emergency fund story?
People often assume we obsess over money. That’s actually pretty far from the truth. In fact, we propose you might think about money more than we do.
What’s more important is that you approach every financial decision from a place of strength and control, not weakness. In the video, we discuss a few reasons why our lifestyle lends itself to that mindset.
Mike is still feeling under the weather today, so it?s my first solo video!
I wanted to talk about, well, that I don?t really know what I?m talking about.
Mike has always been financially minded? me, not so much. I?ve always trusted Mike completely, and that led me to not always ask about what was going on with our money.
When we started making our YouTube channel about finance, I was a little nervous since I didn?t know what I would be talking about. So I started researching and reading and asking Mike the questions I might have been too embarrassed to ask before.
This brought up the question of whether it’s OK for one spouse to be in control of the finances?
For us, Mike enjoys all the personal finance stuff, so why not let him take care of it?
I think it?s OK for one spouse to be in control, but it?s important for the other person to still know what?s going on. (We talked about this in our Joint vs. Separate Bank Accounts video)
I came up with a few questions to ask to get started:
How much money do we save a month?
Are we in debt?
Do we have an emergency fund?
Where are our bank accounts?
In the video I answer those questions, and throw in a few more in depth questions. Asking these helped me to know exactly how much we save and why.
I swear Alex is able to compound, buff, polish, and wax some of the crappiest cars back to life. He recently bought a 1995 Honda Civic for $900 and I thought it would be the perfect time for him to teach me (and you) how to do it.
The results were a bit underwhelming…We still had a lot of fun, and the information is still accurate. If you’re thinking about getting your own car detailing kit together, you can do it for under $100 bucks.
The car really did look a lot better in person and he probably added $500 dollars of value to the car, just by cleaning it up. It just wasn’t the extreme transformation I was hoping for in the video.
Looking for the ultimate car buying guide? This probably isn’t it. This is just our opinion about the best used car you can buy and how much you should pay for it. Are all dealers scams? What about the craigslist killer?
We quickly review consumer report’s most reliable cars and then talk about where to buy one. We include 4 tips and tricks for buying a used car from a dealer without getting ripped off.
BONUS INFO:
We want to start adding more information about each video in our blog posts, so this video will be our first attempt at that.
Are the best deals really on craigslist?
Something that didn’t make the video was the fact that I actually have my dealers license in the state of Florida. We got it when we were buying and selling motorcycles last year, but never used it for cars. But, it did give me access to the auctions that all the car dealers buy their cars from. And I actually bought Lauren a Honda Insight when we got back from Europe to see what the process was like.
You can imagine the excitement and chaos on the auction floor as 5 rows with hundreds of cars crept through the building all at once. Each lane had an auctioneer just like you hear on TV, all competing with each other over the loudspeaker.
To my disappointment, all of the cars were being sold for just about exactly their KBB trade in value. Not only that, but most of the cars “sent to auction” were the junkers that dealers had a hard time selling on their lot.
Fortunately, the auction I went to had a “lane” for off-lease Hondas. They were mostly late model civics and accords in excellent shape. We paid $12,000 for our Insight, and then an additional “fee” of $475 on top of it. The trade in value was $12,000. I went inside and paid cash on the spot.
Lauren drove the car for a few months and then we sold it for $12,000 and bought the Prius for $6,000 off craigslist. Comparing those 2 cars, it’s easy to see which was the better deal. At the auction we spent $475 over trade-in, on craigslist we spent $3,000 UNDER trade-in value.
Yes it’s convenient to have a stream of hundreds of cars all in one place for you to choose from. But, if I couldn’t beat a craigslist deal at a dealer auction, there’s no way you’ll beat it once a dealer tacks on all the profit and fees.
New York City is an amazing place with lots to see and do. After visiting all of the usual tourist attractions, try one of these 3 free stops that aren’t as well known.
We lived in midtown east for 3 years, right in the heart of Manhattan. After showing our friends around for the past week on our trip to NYC, we thought we’d share a few of our favorite “off the beaten path” spots.
If you’re just getting started budgeting, here are 9 simple ways you can get started saving money.
1. Make coffee at home (we cold brew).
2. Buy generic medicine and food.
3. Borrow eBooks from the library.
4. Downgrade your internet speed.
5. “Pre-game” before going out to bars.
6. Sell one item on craigslist, right this minute.
7. Don’t speed (fuel economy and tickets)
8. Make your own household cleaners.
9. Shop the perimeter of the grocery store.
Have any more tips to share? Leave a comment below!