How To Change Your Finances in 6 Months

0:00 In the next 15 minutes, I'm going to show you how to completely transform your financial life. No gimmicks, no budgeting apps, just a real strategy, one that I implemented. And now I'm worth millions because I was no different than you were 10 years ago. I did not grow up rich and in fact quite the opposite. And most of my friends who are now financially free, they don't earn six figures either. But what they did do was they lived differently for a short season. They sacrificed comfort for freedom and they officially filed for divorce from consumerism, which is what keeps Americans broke and stuck in the middle class. So, if you are serious about changing your finances, not someday, but in the next 6 months, I'm going to go month by month on how exactly I did this and it completely

0:46 changed my financial future. If you're new here, my name is Sarah Dawn and I achieved early retirement and financial freedom by the age of 40. I now work for fun and help people understand how to optimize their wealth buildinging strategy. So, subscribe if that's what you're here to do as well. So, the first month is what I call auditing your life. Most people treat their personal finances like a business that has never been audited. No budget, no tracking, no idea what's going on behind the scenes or on their balance sheet. Now, if you don't own your numbers, you'll never be in control of your finances. you're just going to be reacting to every paycheck, so you'll never get ahead. Month one is about fixing this. It's about seeing the full picture of your finances and where things are being allocated. Looking at

1:32 how much you're spending on discretionary items, eating out, or potentially just impulse purchases. So, month one is about opening up the proverbial hood of the car. and you're going to take full ownership of your financial reality by getting brutally honest andor these four key numbers. So, the first one is what is your net take-home cash? This is what hits your account after taxes. Not your salary, not your hopeful projections, just the number that shows up on payday. And then two, you're going to break it into keep the lights on money. These are your non-negotiables. your rent, your utilities, your groceries, your gas, your phone bill, the stuff that keeps your life functioning and that you really can't live without. Number three is that you're going to look at what you're putting towards your savings.

2:19 This is called the future stack. This is the type of money that go that is going towards building your freedom and or paying down debt. You need to calculate where that's going. And number four is tracking your lifestyle trip, your streaming services, your Uber Eats, your random takeout, gym memberships or subscriptions that you might have forgot that you had. And our goal here is to look at everything to open up that proverbial hood and track these for 30 days, every single dollar. Whether you love Excel or you can, you know, download it into QuickBooks depending on how crazy you want to get. But this is the audit that most people avoid. But if you do, you're going to separate yourself from 90% of the people who are still winging it with their finances. You see, most people avoid this step for

3:04 reasons that don't really have anything to do with their paycheck or with math. They avoid it because they're afraid of what they're going to find. But looking at the numbers means confronting reality. And reality threatens the story that you've been telling yourself, that you're fine, that you've got time, and it's not that bad. But under the surface, what you're really feeling is shame, overwhelm, and a quiet sense of helplessness. A lot of people think that they should have it figured out by now. But instead of owning it, they bury it or they're in denial of it. And the brain loves that. It trades the discomfort of clarity for the comfort of denial. This is what's called avoidance coping. And it keeps people broke, stuck, and anxious for years about their finances. But not you, and not anymore. Learning to cope with uncomfortable

3:50 feelings around our finances is our way out of debt and out of bad decision-making. Ultimately, if you don't face this reality, you'll be working until you are 70 years old. And my friends, life is too short. So, let's make month one about reclaiming your financial identity and rewriting this chapter. So, month two, once we have calculated potentially what we can put towards a security fund, this is going to start being your ticket to freedom. When you revisit your keep the lights on money, you need to get clear on exactly how much that baseline costs you each month. And here's the part that no one wants to say out loud. You might realize your salary isn't gutting it or that 80% of your take-home pay is already spoken for just to survive. We'll come back to this later in the video. But for now, don't ignore it. This awareness is your

4:35 edge because once you know your number, you'll see that building even a one-mon security fund might take some time, maybe even a few months. And that's where radical honesty comes in. If you need to pick up extra cash with Uber, freelancing, dogsitting, etc. I dog sat for years to pick up extra investing cash all in my 20s and had a blast while doing it. I unfortunately ended up adopting two of them and falling in love with them, but I knew it was for short term. At least the gig was. Now, another mention, because our brains are wired to seek out dopamine, this month might feel harder than the rest. You're pulling back from the little habits that give you those quick hits, right? like ordering food and impulse purchasing and that's going to feel uncomfortable when you just go cold turkey. But how you combat that is learning something new like watching finance videos and seeing

5:21 the potential for a brighter future that replaces your dopamine withdrawal. And also another hack is to get connection outside with others. Having friends hold you accountable, telling others what you're doing will help you not feel so alone in this process. And if they are your true friends or if you're in a relationship and you want your partner to be on board with this, you have to be honest. You're not just changing your spending, you're rewiring how your brain chases reward. But the good news is that discomfort is the signal that change is happening. And if you're not contracting, you're expanding. And every time you resist the urge to spend, you're building mental toughness and redirecting that energy toward actual freedom from working like a dog for the rest of your life. And you are rewriting your story. So go allin. Cancel unnecessary subscriptions. Begin meal

6:06 prepping. Go to Costco. I buy in bulk. This is such a great money-saving hack, by the way. And the faster you build this emergency fund, the closer you are to achieving financial freedom and living, not paycheck to paycheck. So, month three is about starting to pay down your debt. Most people try to save and pay off debt at the same time. But here's the truth. Not all debt is created equal and treating it like it is will keep you spinning your wheels. This is probably the only time that I will quote the father of debt payoff himself, Dave Ramsey, but he was right about this. You need to attack highinterest debt like your hair is on fire. Because if you're carrying debt over 8%, that's not just debt. That is financial obliteration. And every month you let it sit. It eats your freedom, your options, and your future wealth. So in month three, we stop juggling and we prioritize. We focus and we start to

6:53 eliminate bad debt. Good debt helps you grow like a mortgage, student loan, or a business loan. It may carry low interest rate and potentially increase your net worth over time. But bad debt will bleed you dry. Think those highinterest credit cards, payday loans, consumer loans, or highinterest car notes. This is where it gets tactical. Credit card debt sits at the top, often over 20% in interest. Now, that's not just bad, but that's potentially very dangerous for you. It's a compound interest working against you every single day. So, here's what you do. You list all of your debts and you sort them from highest to lowest interest rate and you attack the top one first and you attack it hard. Minimum payment on the rest and everything else goes towards killing the most expensive

7:40 debt that you have. All right, so month four is when we can begin to allocate some money to small investing. Now, this is where the fun begins. And I'm going to say something that might sound contrarian to the typical financial advice out there. If you want to supercharge your savings, you have to become obsessed with learning about investing. A lot of people think that investing is complicated, risky, or something that you only do once you have saved for years, and that's actually just misinformation. The sooner you start, the more wealth that you build. And there are many options to buy fractional shares on Robin Hood or other different platforms. Every day your money sits idle, you are losing time. And time is your greatest asset when it

8:27 comes to the market. So here's how to play this right. Even while you are still building your emergency fund, if your employer offers a retirement match, you take it. That's literally free money. A 100% return on your contribution. And if you're in the US, opening up a Roth IRA or a 401k, a Wroth means your gains grow tax-free. Other countries have their own versions, so learn what applies to you and just Google types of retirement accounts that you could potentially start investing in. Bottom line, these accounts let you keep more of your gains instead of handing them over to the government because every time you sell a stock, you will trigger a tax event. You will have to pay taxes on that. And if it's short-term, it starts to eat away at your profits. Now, I don't worry about this so much because in the wise words of my accountant, if you're paying taxes on your gains, that means you're making

9:13 money. So, it's a good thing. There is no way I would have built what I did by just stashing cash in a savings account. I started putting money into companies I believed in and researched, especially the ones I didn't need to touch for months and or years. And that was like supercharging my savings account. Now, why investing beats just saving is yes, you need to save and that you need to have that fund available for you, but investing builds velocity. It gives your money a job and it's called compounding. You can't cut your way to wealth. At some point you have to grow it. Now I ran two plays at the same time, right? I put my savings on autopilot and I would average $100 to $200 a month into a separate savings account. Out of sight, out of mind. Now I also began to put $200 a month into a brokerage account

9:59 and I would dollar cost average into stocks that I believed in, especially when they dipped. I didn't try to time the market, but when I saw Tesla or Nvidia or Palanteer dip below their average range, I bought more. You can't be passive with money if you want to grow explosively. I will say this in every video. You have to check the market and you have to know what's happening even if it's just for five minutes a day. Also, I do all of my investing on my phone with my Robin Hood app or my good old Erade account. It's not hard. Every stock has an average value over time. And this is what's called its mean. Now, when a stock mean reverts, this is the idea that when a stock drops far below its average, it's likely to bounce back up, reverting to the mean. Now, it doesn't mean it will recover in the next day or two, but statistically, many assets tend to

10:46 return to their long-term average price, especially highquality ones like the ones that I invest in. So, when Tesla dips, I don't panic. I see it as a buying opportunity, potentially at a discount. This is the mindset shift every investor has to have if they want to be successful in the market. You have to stop being afraid of red days and start seeing those days as opportunity. So, we want to keep building your emergency fund. This is when you start to invest even with small fractional shares. 90% of my wealth is concentrated in Bitcoin, Nvidia, Tesla, Salana, and Micro Strategy. But you have to understand what the bare market is and what the bull market is when especially when it comes to crypto. Don't just go buy these things. You need to do your own research. Of course, I will be making more videos on the topics and

11:32 educating you on when those cycles happen. But buying the dip, dollar cost averaging, and hold as long as you can. That is what makes people wealthy. So, month five is evaluating your income sources. Now, this might be the most powerful thing that you can do for your finances because most people stay in jobs where they're bored, unchallenged, and underpaid. They tell themselves it's stable or safe, but what it really is is it's just you're just stuck. This is what I called wage stagnation and it's a silent killer of your financial growth. Once you understand and come to terms with the fact that the system is designed to keep you in this particular pay range, you start to begin to see that this is not going to make you rich. Companies don't reward loyalty. And this is coming from somebody who stayed with a company for 12 years. If you're not

12:19 actively negotiating or exploring higher value roles, your money will get eaten up by inflation year after year. That's why increasing your income is one of the most overlooked wealth-b buildinging strategies out there. Cutting expenses is important, sure, but there's a limit to what you can cut. And I tell you this from experience. The biggest financial jump I ever made wasn't from budgeting harder. It was when I left one job for another. Overnight, I got a $30,000 salary increase. Why? Because I had put in the reps. I had built experience at company A. But after doing my research and digging into salary data, compensation bands, and what similar roles paid, I realized that I was never going to reach financial freedom staying where I was. So, I made the move. Same skill set, marketing, but a different

13:04 completely different industry in a completely different company. This time with a Fortune 500 company that valued those skills at a much higher level. And that one decision shifted everything for me because once your income floor jumps, it never goes back. Now, this might be tough for a lot of people as I know jobs aren't just like falling from the trees. There is a real struggle out there to obtain more wealth and a higher salary, but it can be done. Now, let's talk about a little bit of a side income because for most people, your job alone will never get you free. So, you have to create a side hustle. You get Uber, Lift, you freelance on Upwork, you walk dogs on Rover, which is what I did. I literally picked up dogsitting gigs through this app just to stack some extra cash. And it wasn't until I became an entrepreneur that I finally understood how the wealthy really build wealth. Once I started my online

13:50 business, I saw the game from the other side. I stopped being just a consumer of social media platforms and I became a creator. And that also was huge when it comes to exploding your wealth and creating change that you never imagined was possible. I got on Tik Tok, then reals, then YouTube, and all while still grinding through my 9 to5. And I had personally outgrown corporate America. And I was I was exhausted. I saw where the world was heading and I knew I didn't want to be stuck forever in wage stagnation. And here's what most people don't realize. When you own your own business, your life becomes a write-off. And that's exactly how the wealthy, well, a lot of the times they don't pay taxes. It's financial jiu-jitsu. Meanwhile, W2 employees are stuck in their tax bracket and you can't deduct anything. You can't lower your bracket.

14:36 You're locked in. But when you're a business owner, your laptop, your car, your travel, your home office, all of that can become part of your business expenses. And if you're in your 20s or even 30s, listen to me now. Start learning. This is your time to get online. Build something, even if it's small, because the sooner you do, the faster your money stops working against you and starts working for you. So month six is all about removing the need for discipline and to automate your life. Discipline is unreliable at best, but systems are not. So, this is when you start to set up your life like a machine. Bills and fixed expenses are direct debited or aced. Every single one of them, rent, mortgage, utilities,

15:21 subscriptions. You set it and forget it. This is going to protect you from those nasty letters that you snail mail that you get, late fees, getting caught redhanded. You're going to auto transfer a fixed amount the day after your paycheck hits in your emergency fund and your savings. This is a nonnegotiable. And then you're going to set reoccurring buys with your investment account weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. You're going to dollar cost average into ETFs or stocks you believe in. But the key is consistency. And this is what I would call paying yourself first automatically and on schedule every month. Have you ever tried to eat clean without meal prepping? Works for a day, maybe two, but then life gets busy. You get hungry

16:06 and there's nothing in the fridge and boom, you're ordering takeout. Automation in finances is the same. You're going to be far more consistent when everything is already set up when your money knows where to go before you even think about it. Just like prepped meals keep you on track with your diet, automated transfers, investments, and spending limits keep you on track with building your wealth. You remove the friction. You remove the guesswork. And if it's not in your budget, you just can't spend it. Most importantly, you remove the need for discipline. Because when discipline fails, if you're tired, systems do not. When you hit the six-month mark, this is your checkpoint, a moment to stop, look back, and actually recognize what you've done. You've gone from avoidance to ownership, from paycheck to paycheck to stacking an emergency fund. From blind spending to

16:51 intentional investing in the market. Now, that's the time to re-evaluate and re-calibrate. Maybe you increase your investment contributions. Maybe you've knocked out some highinterest debt and start to shift your focus to buying more shares in the market. Maybe you're finally feeling in control of your money for the first time and it's time to celebrate with a nice meal with your partner, with your girlfriend, whomever it might be. Take full responsibility for where you are and where you're going. This might mean saying no to things in the short term, skipping nights out, taking a break from dating to just focus on yourself and getting that savings account going, putting in extra hours at Uber, learning about investing before bed instead of doom scrolling. It's not punishment. Remember, you're investing in your freedom because this is your time to wake up, get clear on what financial freedom actually means for you, and build the system to get there. And once

17:38 you've done that, then you can start taking your foot off the gas. Not because you're giving up, but because your machine is built and it's running on its own. your money, your habits are in place and your freedom is no longer a wish. It is a strategy that's in motion. So, if you'd like to learn more about financial freedom and how I achieved this at the age of 40, please like and subscribe. And I hope this was helpful. I'll see you on the next video.