Improving Your Financial Game with Lucas Casarez

If you are working at all, it’s almost certainly worthwhile to be thinking about your finances. Not only do your finances determine when you can retire, but they also determine where you are going to live, how resilient you are to economic shocks (hello 2020), and can even have a hand in your grandchildren’s quality of life. While finances are often considered a taboo subject to discuss in polite company, the fact is that you really need to have your financials in order if you want to have a good life. Your finances are more complicated that you might initially realize. While something as simple as regularly contributing to your retirement accounts and savings is a good idea, that really isn’t sufficient to guarantee a good (or early) retirement. Financial markets, regulations, and opportunities are always changing and ideas that worked in the 80s don’t necessarily work now. Further, as you Level Up your financial game, the things that previously worked well for you may no longer be the best choice. Additionally, your risk tolerance is going to change over time, probably by a lot. Your lifestyle is very different as a single person in their twenties living in a one bedroom apartment than your life when you are in your forties with a couple of kids looking to go to college in the next few years. And things are different again when you are sixty and hurtling towards retirement. Your situation could change at any time due to major life events, including marriage, birth of children, job losses, career changes, or simply moving to a more (or less) expensive neighborhood. Talking about this stuff to a financial advisor is smart not because you aren’t smart, but because there are so many variables that need to be examined in order to get to an optimal result. Finances are not simple, but there are some reasonable things you can do right now that will drastically improve your long-term financial situation while making you more resilient to whatever craziness is going on in the market right now. Best of all, once you get a solid financial advisor helping you with your decisions, a lot of the anxiety around finances that we often feel can be alleviated. Tricks of the Trade Just like having a financial plan is important, it’s important to plan out your code. This becomes more important with larger applications or when working on a team. However, just like starting your financial plan young will help you when you are older, planning out even your simpler applications will set you up for doing so on larger ones. It also gives you a place to make mistakes when they are less detrimental so you can learn how to plan on simpler smaller things and then apply those lessons to the larger applications. Links Join Us On Patreon Level Up Financial Planning Donate to Beej’s Mission Fund Memo: Put “BJ Burns” in Memo