Kiss Your Money Hello!

Kiss Your Money Hello!

(And Financial Stress Goodbye)

Bill Hines, AFC®, Advisor/Planner, Emancipare

Wild Lake Press, Inc

To my lovely wife Lori, whose bright and inquisitive mind has driven much of my learning on these topics.

To my mother Carol, whose love and encouragement guided me toward the first college degree in our family history.

To my children and grandchildren—a code you can live by.

To every honest, hard-working one of you beautiful readers who yearns to breathe financially free.

When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.

Paulo Coelho

The more you learn, the more you earn.

Warren Buffett

I say always follow your passion, no matter what, because even if it’s not the same financial success, it’ll lead you to the money that’ll make you the happiest.

Ellen DeGeneres

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.

Bruce Lee

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret to getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks and then starting on the first one.

Mark Twain

If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up someplace else.

Yogi Berra

Copyright © 2023 by Wild Lake Press, Inc

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

This publication is not to be directly or indirectly interpreted as a solicitation of investment advisory services. The contents of publication are not to be copied, quoted, excerpted or distributed without express written permission of the author. This document is intended to be used in its entirety. Any other use beyond its author’s intent, distribution or copying of the contents of this document is strictly prohibited. Nothing in this document is intended as legal, accounting, or tax advice, and is for informational purposes only.

Contents

Introduction

1.Simple Days, Simple Ways

2.Go With the Flow

Credit Cards

Cash Flow Example

Cash Flow Timing

3.Making More Moolah

On the Job

Easy Money

Side Hustles

Starting a Business

4.Pay Less for Everything

Groceries

Restaurants

Transportation

Home Utilities

Internet

Entertainment

Phones

Medical Costs/Insurance

Pets

Household

Gifts

Clothing

Travel

When To Buy

5.Dealing with Debt

6.Insurances

Life Insurance

Auto Insurance

Health Insurance

Homeowners/Renters Insurance

Disability Insurance

Long-Term Care Insurance

Umbrella Insurance

Annuities

Professional Liability Insurance

More Insurances to Avoid

Other Insurance Topics

7.Buying and Selling Properties

Buying a Home

Buy vs Rent

Curse or Blessing?

Strategic Advice

Selling a Home

To Realtor or Not to Realtor?

Pricing Your Home

Prepping Your Home

Marketing Your Home

Showing Your Home

Open Houses

Closing the Deal

8.Buying and Selling Vehicles

Buying New Vehicles

Buying Used Vehicles

Selling Your Vehicle

9.(Not) Paying for Higher Ed

What Not to Do

Student Debt

Typical Costs

Community College

Sources of Funding

How to Pay Cash

Scholarships/Grants/Aid

529 and Coverdell ESA

529 Contrarian View

Standardized Tests

Timing: 6th Grade Through Diploma

Tax Notes

10.Investing Part 1

Cash

CDs and Laddering

Bonds (Fixed Income)

Stocks (Equities)

Income vs Growth vs Value, Oh My

What’s a Stock Index?

Single Stocks

Fun with Funds

Bond Funds

Alternatives/Commodities/Real Estate

Key Takeaways (So Far)

11.Investing Part 2

Asset Allocation

Evaluating Funds

Investment Advisors

Roboadvisors

Gamified/Appified Investing

Investing Fads and Trends

Investing and Taxes

Investing Summary

12.Advanced Investing/Taxes

Income Taxes

Adjusted Gross Income (AGI and MAGI)

Roth Conversions

Capital Gains Taxes

Harvesting

Dividends

Asset Location

Tax Avoidance vs Tax Evasion

Tax Planning

Final Word on Investing/Taxes

13.Social Security/Medicare

Social Security

When to Claim

Working and Receiving Social Security

Social Security and Taxes

Spousal Benefits

Survivor Benefits

Social Security Disability (SSDI)

How to Optimize Your Benefits

Social Security Myths

Medicare

When to Sign Up

IRMAA

Medigap Coverage

Medicare Advantage

Medicare and Long-Term Care

Medicare Savings Accounts

Limited Income Help

14.(Early?) Retirement Planning

Accumulation vs Enjoyment Phases

Roth vs Traditional Retirement Accounts

Order of Contributions

FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early)

Plan Your Escape

The 4% Rule (of Thumb)

Fixes for Falling Short

Steps to Prep

Risks and Mitigations

Bucket Strategies

High-Fidelity Planning

Reverse Mortgages/HELOC

15.Bye Now! Go Forth and Prosper!

The End

16.Appendix A: Power Tools

17.Appendix B: Best/Worst Practices

Financial Best Practices

Financial Worst Practices (In Almost All Cases)

The Most Important Questions You Should

18.Appendix C: Emancipare Yearly Financial Calendar

About the Author

Also by Bill Hines and Wild Lake LLC

Personal Finance Titles by Bill Hines

Recommended Fiction from Wild Lake LLC

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Well, Hello There!

Why this book? Right now, you may be browsing a few personal finance books in a library, bookstore, or even online. Why this one? Is it worth a couple of dollars and hours of your time?

Here’s why. I’ve read the others. Almost every book was by someone telling their own personal rags to riches tale. That’s admirable and impressive, but the likelihood that it’s even close to you and your personal situation is quite remote. What worked for them will probably not work for you. Everyone is different, every situation is unique. Some assume their readers all want to be mega-rich. In my experience, most people just want to be happy, without money stress, and have a good, fun, comfortable life. It’s much easier once you lower the bar! That said, if you want to be rich, I’ll show you how to do that too. So many people reach that first goal, but add to their stress by constantly wanting more, never being satisfied. Trust me, no matter how much money you have, someone else is going to have more.

So (get to the point, Bill!), why this one? Because this book is based on my experience as a financial counselor, investment advisor, and financial planner. This is a user manual for your money! No matter who you are, there is plenty for you. There’s stuff for broke folks to wealthy folks. This book takes you from zero money to money hero. We cover the Financial Independence/Retire Early (FIRE) movement as well. Young people are wising up about corporate tactics that pit them in a hunger games style survival competition against their friends in the adjoining cubicles. They’re fighting back with tactics like quiet quitting and FIRE. Capitalism is all wonderful and fun until someone loses a tooth. Free yourself!

This book is the way to financial peace, to relieving the number one stressor in our otherwise beautiful lives and relationships. Most relationships end because of money. Most crimes are committed because of money. This book is the guide to living every day on your own terms, and never having to go to a job you no longer love, of never having to miss those important life events because, work. Despite my reputation as a notorious sender of TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) emails, I’m going to keep this short and simple—just the way your personal finances should be! The first word of the title is no coincidence, by the way. KISS also means Keep It Simple Silly! Maybe I’ll even make you laugh once or twice. Your household is a mini-business, only you measure success in ‘happy’, not some corporate financial metric. Each one of these chapters could be a book of its own. My goal is to keep it to just the essential content.

I’m not going to guilt-trip you about buying a latte. I’m going to convince you that doing the right things now, getting over the hump in a short period, means buying all the lattes and new cars you want, with cash, not credit, for the rest of your life. Those lattes will taste so much better, and you’ll enjoy the ride more in a car you own, not the bank. You’ll watch the former car payment money grow like weeds in your investment accounts.

Can you trust me? Yes, you can. This book’s for you. My favorite rock musician, Neil Young, once wrote a song called This Note’s for You. It was a message to his fans that he wouldn’t create music for big, greedy corporations or allow his music to be used in their commercials. His music is for the people. That’s how I feel. That’s why this book costs less than the others. I’ve done well by learning and living through the lessons in these pages. I’ve helped countless people do so, and I want you to do well. I want you to be happy, and enjoy this one life we get (as far as we know!). This book isn’t just for you—this is generational knowledge for your kids and parents. Even if you’re young, read the chapters on Social Security, Medicare, investing, and retirement planning and share them with your parents. Are they making expensive mistakes? They’ll thank you. You owe them. Show them they may actually retire now! It might keep them from having to move into your basement someday.

Who am I? When I was a kid, I was a huge superhero fan. I’d sit in the corner luncheonette and read comic books on my way home from school until the owner would throw me out. I didn’t have the money to buy them, my parents didn’t have the money to give me. Peeking out from my bedroom at night, I’d see my mother stressing out over a kitchen table full of bills, writing out checks and stuffing them in envelopes. Kiss your money goodbye, I heard my father often mutter (hence, my title for this book!). He came home from work exhausted, especially as he got older. I naively begged him to retire—I didn’t find out until he passed away that he had no means to do so. I didn’t want to be the superhero who could fly, be invisible, shoot lasers out of my eyes, or swing from building to building on spider webs. I wanted to be the kind that could help people like my parents. That’s where the title of this book came from. Instead of paying your hard earned money out to everyone under the sun, watching each paycheck or retirement distribution fly away, you’re going to welcome it back, and kiss it hello. Hi there, hard earned money! Let’s have some fun together!

I want to do that for you. Warren Buffett (one of my financial heroes) said, If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is. Your life is a disaster. That’s my goal, too. Mr. Buffett, besides being arguably the greatest financial mind in like, ever, drives used cars and lives in the same house he bought in 1958 for $31,000. That’s interesting, but the goal of this book is not to get you to pass up the things you want and love in your life. It’s showing you how to get them. The goal is not money or wealth, the goal is happiness. For example, I’m now wealthy by the standard of my parents, but certainly not on that of someone like Buffett or Gates. I don’t aspire to that. I’m happy. It sickens me to see billionaires so greedy that it just isn’t ever enough. They have to keep right on screwing people over.

I became that superhero, and I believe I still am. I started a company called Money Coach Group (moneycoachgroup.com) and helped so many people get on their feet. You’ll read about some of them in these pages. That company is now under new management with a like-minded new owner! As I did that work, I found that as the people got to positive cash flow and looked for investment advisors to help them build wealth; they were being rejected for not having half a million dollars, or being accepted and then being subjected to egregious fees or sold horrible insurance products. It really upset me, so I got registered as an investment advisor and financial planner and started Emancipare (emancipare.com), which I run to this day.

Most of the personal finance books I’ve read should be titled, I Will Teach You to Make Me Rich. That’s not a dig at Ramit Sethi. He seems like a great guy and wrote an influential book that’s helped countless people, the same way I want to. His book talks about imagining your Rich Life. My book is about happiness. Most people would rather be happy than rich. Money doesn’t solve all problems, but it sure solves a lot of them. Let’s eliminate one of the biggest obstacles to happiness in most people’s lives—money stress. That said, most of the personal finance gurus load their blog posts, social media posts, and books with things like affiliate links that line their own pockets. Or, their free content and books are simply lead-ins to get you to buy the big-ticket items they push, like expensive classes. I won’t do that (other than offering inexpensive one-on-one personal help for those that need and want it). This book is for you.

This is ridiculous, Bill! We have no extra money! We live in a van down by the river! That skit was funny on Saturday Night Live, but poverty is no joke. I’ve helped clients who came to me with no savings and negative cash flow or no job. Our first steps will be to show you how to increase your income and save money on almost everything. Those two steps, along with monitoring your cash flow, are a big part of changing your life and moving toward building wealth. We’ll start with a basic, simple plan and then present options to tack on that are well-suited to your interests and passions, be they hustling credit card points/miles, building an investment property income, or just taking delight in using every personal finance hack in the book (this book!).

What about YOLO? To that, I say, Exactly. You only get one life. Why spend it stressing about money, slowly but surely digging yourself deeper into a hole? Let’s find ways to make money, instead of (or maybe while!) sitting around in your free time watching other people do things. Then, maybe you can actually go to those events, prime seating, living in the moment’s electricity, instead of your recliner. Maybe following your favorite teams or artist around the country in an RV, seeing and living in its beauty. Living life. Real YOLO.

One more thing about this book. I’m going to resist the temptation and clutter of trying to do screen shots for some tools I discuss. The problem is that they’re typically outdated as soon as they’re printed. Same with hyperlinks—they often move. I’ll keep this book as clean as possible for you, and provide the base domain names and short URLs so you can get to the places I’m talking about with the least hassle possible.

Need more help? We do mentoring, private and employee classes, investment advising, and financial/retirement/FIRE planning at emancipare.com. If you’re digging out of debt, our friends at moneycoachgroup.com have inexpensive, one-on-one coaching to get you where you want to be quick. However, I truly believe everything you need to know is in these very inexpensive pages. When you're through this book, there's a whole new book that shows you how to build your own financial plan! It's Plan Your Money Path: Create Your Own Financial Plan.

Let’s get this party started!

Chapter one

Simple Days, Simple Ways

Take It Easy

Too many people spend money they earned..to buy things they don’t want..to impress people that they don’t like.

Will Rogers

Life sure was simple back in the olden days, just a few generations ago. There were no credit cards, no credit scores. People went to work, got a paycheck, and each month that money went into the bank. Then they used a checkbook or paper and pencil to add it up and pay the bills, being careful not to spend more than they had earned that month. They put the extra money in savings. Monthly expenses comprised a few items; food, rent/mortgage, utilities, clothing, medical, gas and service for the car. No debt except the mortgage. You didn’t buy things until you had saved up for them. Everyone had pensions. There were no 401ks and so forth. You worked until age 65, and then took your pension and social security and enjoyed your golden years. Grandma wasn’t twerking on TikTok and grandpa wasn’t stepping out on Tinder.

Think about that. Sounds kind of nice, doesn’t it (not the oldies twerking and on Tinder)? You really didn’t even need that paper and pencil after a while—your monthly income and expenses (cash flow) were so simple you could keep them in your head. Wow! Compare that to today. We’re coerced, normalized, and brainwashed into a life where most monthly expenses would take pages to list. We carve each precious, hard-earned paycheck into pieces and scatter it to the winds electronically.

When you pay expenses with credit cards, the nice, clear monthly cash flow is now cloudy and obfuscated. If you buy those $200 kicks today, did you spend the money this month or when the credit card bill comes due a few months from now? Dunno. That’s the point. If we’re kept in a state of confusion, doing things because we perceive everyone else is and that’s the way it is now, we yield our happiness, and we invite financial stress. We submit ourselves to the giant machine that profits from these mistakes, and sacrifice our enjoyment of this one grand life we’re given. The machine of soulless corporations doesn’t want you to see clearly that you’re spending more than you’re making. Why? It’s bad for profits. They want us all to be a part of a soylent green, plugged-in matrix of cash flow into their already bulging coffers. Worst of all, we hurt our beloved children by behaving badly with money. They see everything. They feel the stress. Is the instant gratification of being able to so easily buy things before you have the money worth all that?

It doesn’t have to be that way. Imagine you and your partner made your debt (other than the mortgage) disappear. Poof! Now you’re back in those olden times (careful, the whole TikTok/Tinder thing is still a thing though…). Now, instead of spending countless dollars each month on interest in car payments, student loans, personal loans, and credit cards, you have actual money to save and invest. You’re building wealth and are likely already financially independent. That’s take this job and shove it kinda money. As JL Collins says in his wonderful book The Simple Path to Wealth, that’s F-You Money. What’s left to argue about? You guys want a boat or RV? Now you have extra money each month to save until you can pay cash. That means you get a massive discount on those big-ticket items. It means you actually own them, instead of fake-owning them. They’re so much more enjoyable, especially since you won’t have to work late into your 60s and beg your boss for time off to enjoy them!

That’s what this book is all about. How to eliminate your debt quickly and strategically, and build wealth. How to save money on everything you purchase. Finding the perfect, fun side hustle that will probably turn into a lucrative small business (because, like, you actually enjoy doing it). Hacking your financial life in every department imaginable. Winning. Smiling.

How can you tell that you’re doing it right? If something is simple and understandable, you’re likely doing it right. We have this illusion that winning with money has to be complicated. We’re bombarded with messaging about complex financial products or services. People in the business lead you to believe they have some secret sauce to get you to the top quickly. Crypto. Gold. Real estate. Options. Alternatives. Indexed or variable annuities. The old, misleading we do better when you do better or we’ll help you find a trusted advisor pitch. The list goes on and on.

The biggest dirty secret of personal finance (we’ll cover lots of them in this book) is that simpler is better. If something is complex or unclear, run. It means you’re