The 5 Splurges We'd Buy Again (And 5 We Regret)

Your Next Dollar: Money Management for High Earners

In this episode of 'Your Next Dollar,' hosts Andrew Giancola and NerdWallet Wealth Partners CEO Ryan Sterling discuss the most valuable splurges

Key takeaways

• Buying back your time—through hiring help for chores like lawn care or house cleaning—is one of the most valuable financial decisions high earners can make.
• Outsourcing tasks that are stressful, time-consuming, or outside your expertise (like tax filing) is worth paying a premium if it frees up mental bandwidth and increases productivity.

Main topics

• Time as a valuable asset and how to buy it back
• Investing in professional services (accountants, cleaners, etc.)

Notable quotes

"For $75 a month, I get five hours back every single week—most eye-opening thing I've ever done." – Andrew Giancola

"I don't care how long it takes her; I'll pay $100 just to not have to do it myself." – Ryan Sterling

Conclusion

The episode concludes that true financial freedom isn't about saving more, but about making

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) We talk about employee equity all the time on this show, and done right, it can seriously help build your wealth. Done wrong, and you can end up with way too much riding on one stock, or a tax bill that catches you completely off guard. NerdWallet Wealth Partners CEO and Your Next Dollar co-host Ryan Sterling is hosting a free webinar all about employee equity. He is breaking down the top equity topics that they talk about with their clients every single week. like when to sell versus when to hold and expensive mistakes to avoid. Plus, we'll have a live Q &A at the end. So if you've been wanting to ask Ryan a question, this is your shot. Now, this isn't some 90-minute boring webinar. We're condensing this down to 30 minutes so you can get all the information in on your lunch break. The next webinar is on September 24th. Click the link in the description to grab your spot. Speaker 1 (0:53) Today, we're going to talk about spending more on the things that truly matter to you without hurting your financial goals or feeling guilty. NerdWallet Wealth Partners CEO Ryan Sterling and I are going to walk through the expenses that we think are genuinely worth it. As a high earner, we're going to talk about some of our favorite ways to spend our money as you start to get raises and as your income begins to increase. And we're going to talk about our favorite things that we have purchased over the course of the last few years. And by the way, if you're getting value out of these episodes, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast player, whether it's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Speaker 1 (1:36) There are things, Ryan, that I believe are really great to spend money on. And I think there are things that can naturally improve your life, especially when you're thinking about utilizing your money as a tool to get what you want out of life and spend more on your value. So I'm really excited for this one. Speaker 2 (1:50) Yeah, absolutely. I talk all the time about as a financial advisor, a financial planner, I don't love the word. budget because I feel like a lot of times people can kind of recoil and I feel so restrictive. And I say that at the end of the day, you know, your spending should be a reflection of your values. And a lot of times we actually, in our engagement with clients, we actually tell them they can spend more in certain areas. So I'm really excited to dive into this because there is an art to spending money. And if you understand the art, it can increase Speaker 1 (2:22) your happiness fairly significantly. Absolutely. truly believe that. And I have seen that time and time again, when I begin to figure out what I intentionally want to spend my dollars on and put more money towards that. Now, the first one that I believe is one of the best ones that has absolutely transformed my life. And it took me a little while to get here to actually do this was to buy back your time and spending more dollars so that you can buy back your time. So you can spend that time doing what you want with whom you want, when you want is one of my favorite ways to spend money. As I got busier, as I had kids, when I got married, all of a sudden I needed a lot more time back in order so I could spend more time with that family. And so in reality, there's a lot of different things that I did. So one of my favorite ones, and this is one of my favorite stories, Ryan, is lawn care. So I live in Florida. We have a lawn and lawn care is something a lot of people do in the neighborhood that I live in. And so I used to spend five hours every single weekend. maintaining that lawn and it wasn't even that big of a lawn i was mowing the lawn i was trimming the hedges i was pulling all the weeds it rains all the time here so we had to do all those different things And instead, I decided, okay, I'm going to start calling around to a couple of different companies and hiring, you know, a landscaping company to come in, mow the lawn every single week and trim the hedges, all that different kind of stuff. Guess how much it cost me? And I could not believe it. The first time I hired one, $75 per month. That's what it cost me to maintain my lawn. So for $75, I get five hours back every single week, 20 hours every single month just to have that done. And it was the... most eye-opening thing that I've ever had to buy back your time. Because once you start to do this, all of Speaker 2 (3:59) a Speaker 1 (3:59) sudden I had these five hours back. I could spend time doing what I want. I didn't even enjoy mowing a lot. It wasn't something I liked doing. I know there's people out there that love doing that, but it was one of those things that I wanted to remove from the situation. And so a lot of times for many people out there, there's Speaker 2 (4:13) a Speaker 1 (4:13) number of different ways you could buy back your time. Another one is like, I have a pool. Pool care is a big one for me. Ryan, do you have any favorite ways to buy back your time in ways that you think that are really valuable Speaker 2 (4:22) to you? Yeah, so it's funny you say this. So I just bought a house. And one of the first things I did was I went searching for a landscaping company. So I just hired them. They came for the first time yesterday, $55. See, you can't beat that. And I think about everything that allows me to do, even just allows me to do more work. And I think about kind of if I just kind of look at my time as an opportunity cost, you know, being able to do one more meeting, being able to do just a little bit more allows me to be productive. So I think about this, like if I decided to do it myself instead of spending the $55. financially, that's actually in a worse position for me because I have less time to work, to spend time with clients. And then also leisure time is important. You know, it's interesting. Another thing that I like to spend money on is professional services. So, you know, it's funny. I have a story from my accountant where, you know, as a business owner, you get kind of random notices in the mail from the state that you owe, you know, some sort of tax on form X, Y, and Z. And it gets really confusing. There was one time I got a tax notice. And I reached out to my accountant and I said, Hey, I've got this tax notice. Like, can you help me file it? And she goes, Oh, this won't take you long. And she gave me all of these instructions on what to do and, you know, just kind of how to go to the website and pay it. And I said, Hey, like, can I, can I pay you to do this? And she goes, Ryan, it's going to take me five minutes and I'm going to charge you a hundred dollars for it. And I said, done. And the reason. I was fine with that. Even if it takes her five minutes, I don't care how long it takes her so long as I don't have to do it because I know myself and it's worth a hundred dollars to me to outsource it versus me going through it. I'm going to have to switch paths. There's a cost there. I'm going to have to, you know, go through line by line. There's going to be one question that I'm just going to be unclear on. Then I have to reach back out to her, so on and so forth. So I'd rather just get it off my desk, have her do it and. I don't care how long it takes her. It could take her 30 seconds and I'll pay her $100. Again, just so long as I don't have to do it. So I think about those examples where it's like, if I can pay someone to do something and if I can just kind of roughly calculate kind of my hourly rates, it makes those decisions really easy. Speaker 1 (6:43) Absolutely. And for people out there kind of thinking through this, think how much, okay, you get paid and how many hours you work and do the math to find that hourly rate. I think this is a very important number to know because once you know that hourly rate, I make this trade off all the time to understand who to hire and who to pay. Like a good example of this is I was thinking through, okay, well. I have to spend hours a week cleaning my house. My wife and I are kind of all over the place trying to keep up with three kids and all this different stuff. And then all of a sudden I realized, let's just hire a home cleaning service. They come in every two weeks and they clean the house. And so this gave me back so much time. And I figured, hey, they're actually not that expensive when you factor in hourly rates and how much time we would have spent cleaning this house. And so I think in reality for most people, it doesn't matter how long it takes someone else to do it. It matters when it comes to the convenience and it matters when it comes to... your hourly rate. That's the way I love to think about it as well. So that's a really great point. I think for many people out there, if you haven't run that calculation, I highly encourage you to do so because this is going to help you make educated decisions when you're trying to think through hiring some of this stuff. The next one we're talking through is this is one that I absolutely love is books and coaching. So Ryan, I have a rule. Anytime that I see a book that I think I will learn one thing from, I instantly buy it. I have zero budget. I have zero restriction when it comes to books. And the reason for this is because in my first decade of learning, in my 20s, when I first started my career, I would read two books every single week. Now I read a book every single week, but I would read two books every single week. This was before kids. And it absolutely transformed my mindset. It absolutely transformed the way that I run my businesses or the way that I operate every single day. And this was all because I wanted to get an education outside of just traditional schooling. And so I started to read. finance books. I started to read business books. I started to read career books. And I went through all of this process where it absolutely transformed my mind and my mental state. So I have a rule when it comes to books that I literally have an infinite budget that I can spend as much as possible when I want to buy a book. If I think I'm going to get value out of a specific book, I will literally just hit buy now on Amazon. Is there anything that you Speaker 2 (8:50) do along Speaker 1 (8:50) these lines? Speaker 2 (8:51) You know, it's funny you say that I I'm actually the same, um, especially before I started my business. I basically had two years from when I decided I wanted to start my own business to when I actually launched it. And in that two year period, I was the same way. I could not read enough that I was just. going through books, again, on a weekly basis. Like you, I had no budget for it. And again, like education is the path to prosperity. And to think that you can only get education through school or college or graduate school is just kind of ignorant in many respects. So I will say like I learned more probably in those two years between the books as well as a couple seminars and courses, honestly, than I probably did in Speaker 1 (9:32) graduate school and college combined. Same here. And it really did give me that education that kind of propelled forward. And the other thing that I look at is coaching. So if I get stuck on something. I will actually spend money on coaching. And the question that a lot of people ask when they're thinking about, you know, spending money on coaching, like let's say, for example, you want to get in good shape and you want to get really healthy and fit. Well, if you want to hire a fitness coach, many people will ask, okay, well, it's $2,000 to hire this fitness coach for a couple of months. And many people will say, well, is this person worth the $2,000? But I flip that question and I say, am I worth the $2,000? Meaning, is it worth it for me to feel good, you know? feel good every single day, to feel healthy, to feel fit? Is it worth it for me to feel that way for $2,000? And so many times. I have been stuck in situations where maybe I'm stuck in business or I'm stuck with my personal growth or I've been stuck with fitness or health. And I've hired a coach and they've made a couple of minor tweaks. And those tweaks have allowed me to have breakthroughs. And I truly believe in this. Now, I'm not saying, you know, spend $300,000 on some coach for six months. But what I'm saying is if you have problems that you need solved and you know what those problems are, then find a coach that can help you through that process. And really, if you do that, you can. tremendously accelerate your path and accelerate the growth that you were going to have in that area. Yeah, I love how you phrase that, because it's Speaker 2 (10:52) so true. I never thought about it that way. But it's, you know, when you think about hiring a coach, and you think about if you have a blind spot, or if you have something that you just want to improve on, and you look at it and say, am I worth it? Like $2,000 is actually not a lot of money to put yourself in your peak fitness possible to, again, to eliminate some blind spots, to improve your mental health. Like you would take that trade all day long. I think about the coaches that I've hired before. Like for me, it's always been about accountability. Like if I'm going to put dollars to it, like I'm going to show up for it. But again, rephrasing that as like, am I worth it? Like, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm worth spending $2,000 on to improve something in my life. Speaker 1 (11:38) I had a friend who was struggling in his marriage a few years back, and he was kind of trying to figure out, okay, well, what am I supposed to do here? What should I do next? And he looked at and found a marriage counselor coach that was going to help them through this process, and he felt as though they could solve their problem. But it was $5,000. And he was trying to figure out, okay, should I do this? He made really good money. He made about a half a million dollars per year. And he was trying to figure out, should I do this? $5,000 is a lot of money. And I said, is your marriage worth $5,000? flipped the script and absolutely went through the process and it it ended up being the like the best thing he ever did he said which was one of those things where sometimes we can kind of get in our own way when it comes to some of this stuff and just those tweaks unlocking those minor tweaks can really really be powerful you know what one thing that i tell myself too Speaker 2 (12:22) and just one really quick story i i was once traveling from new york to chicago and we were visiting friends and family and my flight was delayed and i had a rental car because again i was going to be driving around a lot on this trip and Before I left, I found this amazing deal on a rental car. Like, I couldn't believe it. It was something like, I'm making this up, but it was something like $15 a day, like something obscenely low. So I was like, oh, great. So like, I picked it up. I think I did it on like one of the travel websites. Anyway, long story short, I get to O'Hare, I go to the rental car facility, and the line is five hours long. There's a news crew there. Everyone's upset. And of course, this rental car company had this massive promotion and Speaker 1 (13:12) people took it up and Speaker 2 (13:14) people were waiting in the line. And I looked and there was another rental car company right next door. There was nobody in line. I went to and I said, hey, like, how much is it? And he was like, it's going to be way more than the one next door. I said, well, just just try me. And it was something like $80 a day. And I was doing the math and I was like, it was gonna like add up to like being a $500 difference over this week. And I'm like, you know what? I was like, I'm already delayed. There are people that I wanna see tonight where tonight's the only time I can see them. And I just think about like, if this were my last week on earth and I had the choice to spend $500 to see some dear friends I don't see that often, like, would I do that? And the answer is yes, all. day long. So I did it. And I didn't think twice about it. I ate the cost of whatever that other rental car company was. I paid the higher