How To Budget Your Finances and Invest Like a Boss — Zoomer Edition

Financial freedom is the goal. Here’s a step-by-step guide with tools/strategies you can use to own your finances.

Note — I am not a registered Financial Advisor/Planner, these are just things that I use/have worked for me over the last few years.

Feel free to scroll through the bold headings to find the section that best applies to you. I will begin with a brief lesson on financial literacy, then some high-level steps to take to achieve financial goals, then some tools you can use, and lastly some investment strategies you can consider.

Don’t Know Where to Begin? Lost With All The Finance Jargon? Start Here

I’m gonna break down a few basic financial concepts and explain to them as I would to a 5-year-old. You need to understand the building blocks before you can make buildings :)

Budgeting — (Ideally) making sure you make more money than you spend.

Debt — How much money you owe someone (or someone owes you), which is almost always accompanies by interest.

Interest Rate — How much money is made from an investment. AKA ‘money working for you.’ You invest $100 and have a 1% interest rate per year, you will have $101 in 1 year.

Compound Interest — Derived from a ‘compounding formula’ where previous money is reinvested. Given enough time, a small sum of money turns into ridiculous sums of money. Like the previous example, your $101 at 1% interest becomes $102.10 next year, and so forth.

Checking Account — Normal bank account to deposit and withdraw money. Has little to no interest rate.

Savings Account — Similar to a checking account, just a slightly slower rate of depositing and withdrawing money (2–3 business days). Has a low-interest rate (usually below 1%).

Inflation Rate—Economic concept that prices of goods and services increase every year, so the cost of living increases over time (at about 2% in the US). Ideally, you want your investments to be greater than 2% so your money doesn’t lose value over time. Ex. $100 in cash today will be worth $98 in 1 year in terms of ‘buying power.’

Brokerage Account — A place to buy and sell things on the stock market, bonds market, crypto market

Individual Retirement Account — Also known as an IRA, is a retirement account that is super useful. There are two types: Roth and Traditional IRA. ROTH, you pay taxes upfront, and get tax free growth. A normal IRA, you pay taxes when you pull your money out. Read more here

Stock Market — A marketplace to buy and sell ownership of companies.

Options Market — Also known as a ‘derivative’ market, where Option Contracts are ‘derived’ from the Stock Market or Futures Market. This is leveraging money to (ideally) make more money in a shorter period of time.

Futures Market — A marketplace to buy and sell commodities and futures for a future date. Such as buying Gold or Oil.

Bond Market — A marketplace to buy and sell ownership of countries’ debt and or companies’ debt

Cryptocurrency Market — A marketplace to exchange currencies (like Dollars or Pounds — like in Foreign Exchange Markets) into cryptocurrencies (digital money, usually not backed by a country)

High-Level Steps on Achieving Financial Freedom

I started with these steps, courtesy of Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps, but tailored to younger generations (Millenials, Gen Z, etc). Also, Pricelesstay is a solid Gen Z resource on Instagram

1. Start by saving money for your emergency fund, Dave Ramsey suggests $1,000. The section below shows a high-yield savings account I recommend for this.
2. Keep your cost of living low. Got an extra Hulu subscription or old gym membership still active that you don’t use? ‘It’s only $10!’ Let those subscriptions pile up and it surmounts to quite a bit. Have high bills from companies like for your internet bill? Try calling and negotiating that you’ll leave if they don’t lower prices. I’ve done it with AT&T, you’d be surprised that it works sometimes!
3. Pay off all debt besides your home (if you own one). Look to pay off debts from highest interest rates to lowest interest rates. In this case, a huge emphasis on paying off your credit card debt and student loans since these have ridiculous interest rates; 15–30% on credit cards and if you default on student loans, you won’t qualify for business loans, home loans, etc and your future credit-worthiness will be shot down.
4. Invest. Look for investments that yield over 2% to surpass inflation rates. However, I definitely recommend finding strategies that yield double or even triple-digit returns. Whether it’s through a hedge fund (section below), investing in real estate, option trading, buying and holding high growth stocks or bonds, it’s up to you! Also ideally, automate your investment strategy so that a portion of your paycheck/bank account automatically gets invested so you don’t need to think twice about it. I go over more details below.

Concrete Tools and Investment Strategies

Dave Ramsey and other financial gurus are great, but I like easy to implement tools. So here are all the things I use to manage my finances all from my phone

1. Wealthfront to visualize my net worth (assets and liabilities like brokerage accts, checking accounts, saving accounts, and credit cards). I found that being able to see my net worth, along with it changing over time is incredibly motivating and it makes ‘getting wealthy’ much more attainable. It helps you go from ‘I wanna be a millionaire,’ to ‘I want to make $1.5 million over the next 5 years.’
2. Titanvest as my hedge fund/retirement accounts— I have my Roth IRA and an individual account set up. Mine are up ~28% and ~32% for the year — rated best Robo advisor by US News, went through Y Combinator, Stanford and UPenn founders, the list goes on. Not to mention, only $100 needed to invest upfront (as opposed to hundreds if not thousands on other platforms). For me, having my investing automated with little to no fees is ideal (1% fee, minus .25% for every friend you refer for both of you for life. Here’s my link).
3. Credit Karma for everything related to credit. From seeing my car value (depreciate month over month,) to applying to credit cards and getting entry rewards (a side hustle known as credit card churning) along with knowing your approval odds before applying to a credit card or loan. I 10/10 recommend Credit Karma. Not to mention, Credit Karma is having monthly $20K giveaways if you invest $1 or more into their Credit Karma Savings Account. Not a bad ROI if it pans out!
4. Robinhood for personal investments. Now there’s a couple of brokerage accounts you can use: TastyTrade, Think or Swim, Webull, you name it. I just happen to like the UI/UX of Robinhood. Now if you want to get serious into day trading, Think or Swim and Tasty Trades might be ideal with Options trading especially. But if you’re like me, I’m pretty hands-off and prefer my stuff managed. You can buy ETFs (diversified goodies) and some stocks or cryptocurrencies on Robinhood. I’ll put a list of stocks and ETFs that I personally would recommend at the bottom of this article
5. Marcus by Goldman Sachs is my ‘high yield savings acct,’ although that went from ~1.8% to ~0.5% annual returns because of rate cuts from the Federal Reserve, so it’s more of an emergency fund for me. Although, definitely not ideal for long term investing. This is where my ‘3–6 months of runway’ from Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps is stored for me. However, I like the app, it’s easy to use, there’s no minimum balance for APY, and it’s backed by a big company (Goldman Sachs).
6. Coinbase for Cryptocurrency. While Robinhood is great for Bitcoin, Coinbase is ideal for investing in smaller, less popular currencies. If you think other cryptocurrencies are going to boom in the future, this is definitely a solid app to buy, sell, and learn (you get paid to learn through in-app videos)!

Now before going into the final section let me reiterate; I am not a registered financial advisor. Anything you invest in is under your decision. These just happen to be part of my investment philosophy and are entirely my opinions. I am not responsible for any of your financial decisions.

List of stocks recommendations

Value stocks that are here to stay (in order)

1. Amazon — Shoutout to Professor G from NYU and his approach from this book. TLDR: Amazon is everywhere. Healthcare, retail, AWS servers, you name it. Amazon is the goliath with vertical mergers, dominating every aspect of the market. I don’t see Amazon going away any time soon.
2. Google — 90% market share with all internet searches. The second biggest search engine is YouTube, owned by Alphabet (Alphabet also owns Google). Don’t believe me? Just Google it ;) Plus when a company becomes a ‘verb,’ chances are it’s not going anywhere.
3. Apple — The ecosystem with Apple hardware is entirely unique to Apple. iPhones, Macs, iWatches, you name it. Apple has such a strong brand image and ‘Why’ behind the company, it is unmatched; and the reason that Apple can charge so much for products and people happily wait in lines to get them.
4. Facebook — The data king of social media. With an ever-growing portfolio by buying out every new social media platform that grows on the market, I don’t see Facebook dying out soon.
5. Disney — This is the only non ‘big tech’ company here, but the market dominance Disney has over the entertainment industry is immaculate. While margins may be lower than big tech, I’d still argue it’s a company that is here to stay.
6. Tesla —A lot of people may disagree with me here, but given the ridiculous growth of Tesla, the hilarious clout and leadership Elon Musk brings, and most importantly the development towards Stage 5 Autonomous Vehicles, it’s definitely a Buy from me. Also, I have tons of FOMO from not buying in years earlier, so if/when Tesla dips, I’ll definitely be buying some shares.

Disclosure: Through Titanvest’s Flagship, I own shares of Amazon, Apple, Disney, Facebook, and Google.

List of ETF recommendations

Now going back to understanding my investment thesis and risk tolerance, I’m 21 years old and only invest the money I know for a fact I can live without (at least for a few years). Thus, I am fairly aggressive with my strategies and don’t invest in ETFs much. But if you are risk-averse and want to have a less volatile investment (without the fees of a mutual fund), then here are some recommendations.

1. SPYD — S&P 500 ETF. Follows the 500 biggest companies in the US.
2. BND — Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF
3. SPYG — SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 Growth ETF
4. IWM — Russel 2000 ETF. I actually prefer using Titanvest’s Opportunities section, which is similar to Russel, but with 20 stocks and a more likely probability of higher returns.
5. VYM — Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF. Getting paid dividends are nice, especially if you’re risk-averse and or close to retirement/at retirement.

Disclosure: I own shares of SPYD and am invested in Titanvest’s Opportunities portfolio.

List of companies I have credit cards with and ranking them

Through Credit Karma, I have been able to open up credit cards with various companies. However, some are a hassle to work with. From having a wonky app to not being able to redeem rewards points up to a certain point. Here are the companies that I like (greatest to least). I picked credit cards that have ‘cashback’ rewards and no annual fees.

1. American Express — High credit limit, easy to use app, able to redeem rewards at any point. Absolutely love them.
2. Capital One — Decent credit limit, somewhat wonky app, able to redeem rewards at any point.
3. Discover — High percent back on some purchases (5%) but only on a tiny fraction of your credit limit ($75 at 5% back, then 1% only). A bit awkward of an app to use. Able to redeem rewards at any point.
4. Wells Fargo — Highest credit limit is given to me (granted I also have my Checking Account with them). Downsides: Can only withdraw cashback rewards once you hit $25. Great customer service.
5. Bank of America — Annoying application, absolutely tiny credit limit given, issues with double paying, and having to hassle on the phone to get my payment back. Maybe I just had a bad experience, but I didn’t like using their credit card one bit.

Resources to continue learning from

You could go with the traditional Wall St Journal, Seeking Alpha, CNBC, you name it. But if you want an easy to understand email letter, here are the ones I personally enjoy:

Robinhood Snacks

Chartr Daily

The Hustle

Phew. This took me quite some time to write! I hope this helps you on your financial journey.

Make sure to ‘like’ this post, ‘follow’ my LinkedIn and Medium accounts, and if you want to reach out to me — hit me up on LinkedIn and tell me you’re coming from this article.

Cheers!