Top 4 Finance Routines Every Women Needs

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1:01With hybrid active noise cancellation, they help tune out the little distractions that can keep you awake, like snoring or street noise while you wind down with sleep sounds or your favourite podcast. Check them out through the link in our show notes for $10 off automatically or use code friends10 at checkout. Welcome to Friends at Invest. You're joined today by your host Simcoe, a financial author and investor. I'm here to help you learn about all things investing and personal finance. Now in today's episode, I am so excited because we're going to be talking about something that's going to help you save time. It's going to help you make sure that you are bitter with your money. And it was actually a podcast request by one of the Investee Bistys that said, hey, Sim, can you share with us some of the financial routines that you do that actually work? And it was a good question because there's so much out there now. I think part of my job is less about even like educating and more about just providing unbiased information of things

2:05that do actually work and saving the time to avoid things that like seem good and theory, but when you actually put them to practice, they are either things that you cannot keep up to date with all the time. They are hard to do or they're just like good on paper, not good in reality because trust me over the last decade, I have tried almost everything to be bitter with money. And so here are actually the things that do work. And if you do these, you're going to be fine. This is what I do in my routine. And it doesn't matter if you have $100,000. It doesn't matter if you have $10,000. It doesn't matter if you have a dollar to your name. Because if you can learn how to manage $100, you will be able to manage $100,000. But if you don't have these skills now, and it doesn't really matter how much money you make, I mean today I was at an interview and the guy ahead of me, it was a TV interview. He was chatting with one of like the junior news staff. And she was like, yeah, like it's less a little bit hard when you're a uni student. You don't have a lot of money. And he was like, even as an adult, you don't have a lot of money. And then my head, I'm like,

3:09this man is really, really, really high up in his company. Like I know he probably makes at least $300,000 a year. But he's probably also spending $300,000 a year. And so to him, it's not a lot of money. But if he was an investor, bestie from the beginning, he would have learned the skills that I'm going to teach you now. So that even as you make more money, you continue to stay good with it. So without further ado, let's get into the episode. Now the first money retain that I do that actually works that doesn't take too long and saves you a lot of time. It's every quarter or so. I put into my calendar review my subscriptions. And this is something that takes me no time at all because what I do is I go into my phone, I go onto settings within my like iPhone, and then I click on subscriptions. And it shows me all the apps that I have downloaded that I am paying a subscription for. And I love using substack and reading substack. So it also shows me the substacks that I have subscribed for on my phone. And I kid you not. The last time I did this,

4:11there was over $2,000 worth of annual subscription revenue that I was paying for that I didn't even realize I was still paying for like I was paying for flow the like period tracking out. I don't know why I have like the plus plan for that. It is not important to me. There are other things that I was paying for like subscriptions that I tried out. I mean, we have all done this. It is part of the human experience in 2026 to like be funding a couple of apps. And you just have no idea when you bought them what you bought them for what you like even have gotten out of it. But you have to like funding these companies. And they have no incentive to reach out to you and be like, hey, Sim, I've noticed you've like not like logged in in a very long time to even want the subscription that they're not they're not asking. They're not like, oh, you don't really read articles anyway. They don't care. And so it is up to me to put in the time and effort to look into it. And you forget that like $19 a month, you're like, what's $19? It's like less than like a mocktail these days.

5:16$19 a month adds up. And then if you do that for like five different subscriptions, that's a $1000 worth of subscriptions that you are forgetting about. So if you take the time today, like just five minutes out of the end of the day, I'll give you like a action plan at the end of this episode. But just five minutes at the end of the day, put into your calendar to repeat once a quarter, like review subscriptions. It just saves you so much money for the amount of time that you put in. And if it takes you five minutes to do, but you save $1000, like that's a pretty good return on your money for a very short amount of time. And if you want to be super serious and like be an A plus student, and you can also go into your bank account, look at your card transactions, and see if there's anything that's coming out of there that you're like, oh, I didn't realize I was spending that. Again, that's a little harder to do. But if you like download your annual statement, throw it into chat GP to your Claude and go, hey, is there anything reoccurring here? Can you like make a list for me? And you can go, damn, I'm like paying for a subscription that I

6:19had no idea as paying for. I'm like, oh my god, I've got a gym subscription and I forgot to cancel my like Pilates subscription. And now I'm paying for two things and I'm definitely not using both. So time to delete that. It is a very simple routine. And again, I'm only going to share things that work. I am not going to tell you to download your like budget and go through it every single week because let's be honest, life happens as much as I like to think finances is the most important thing in your life. You have a job, you might have kids, you might have friends, let's hope you have friends, you might have like other things that are more important to do. So this is going to be like the simple easy things that don't take too long that have the biggest impact. Now, number two, a routine that I do with my money that has helped a lot is I have made on notion a list of all of the big bills that I have to pay. So not subscriptions, but like recurring bills that I pay that I keep forgetting about because in New Zealand, I have like property and my home has,

7:20obviously the mortgage that gets paid automatically, I'm not worried about that. Then you have insurance, you have your bill for the city, like the council rates. And I got this email and it was like you have not paid for your rates in like six months and I was like, oh no, that is not true. I've paid it and like I send a screen shot and I sent it to the email and I was like, I've paid it like I don't know what's wrong with your system, but I am paying my bills. And they were like, hey, ma'am, we're really sorry for the confusion, but you have council rates for Hamilton. You also have regional rates for the region of Waikato. You have two types of rates that you pay, almost like two types of costs for owning a home. The land that you own, you pay rates to the council, which is like the, you know, smaller jurisdiction area city thing. And then you have like a larger, almost like a statewide rate or tax. And I was like, oh, I honestly didn't even realize. And so that was a mistake,

8:20the money mistake on my part. And then that happened for like a couple of other things and I'm like, okay, right, this is embarrassing. So I wrote down like quarter one, two, three, and four, four quarters in a year. We're really simplifying it here today. And I wrote down like every quarter, what do I need to take off and make sure that it has been paid. So I was like regional rates, insurance, car insurance, pet insurance, like council rates, water bill. Those were the things that I kept getting emails about that you haven't paid, you haven't paid, you haven't paid. And I was like, let me figure a route away to just sit down and for my own piece of mind, like clear off a quarter and be like, any money I've owed this quarter has been paid and I am done. And this is so important nowadays, especially because there are so many scams out there. I got an email being like, you haven't paid your Netflix bill like you should put in your card and like pay your Netflix. And I almost clicked on it and I was like, wait, but my Netflix isn't even connected to this email account. It's connected to my other one. And it was a scam. So if I know, I can now

9:27like go to my notion paid, look at all the things that I have already paid the bill for and be like, well, actually, actually, I don't need to pay that because I already had on this date and I paid this amount. And not that this has happened yet, but if anyone genuinely comes back and is like, man, you have not paid or it's like gone to the wrong account or something, I can be like, no, here's like my proof, I have it or documented every quarter. I make sure all my payments that are incoming have been cleared, have been paid. I've noted the amount and I've noted the date. And as someone that has a busy lifestyle and forgets a lot of things, it has been super, super helpful. And it is a great way to manage my money. Now for you, it might not be like property, but it might be school fees. It might be anything that you're paying that's not subscription based, but it's reoccurring or it can add up. Insurance is probably a big one. Health insurance, car insurance, life insurance, home insurance, the insurance market is elucrative. Let me tell you that, but it is so, so, so helpful. And it's nothing special. It's just like, what a one, two,

10:30three, four and tech boxes of all the rates that I have to pay. It's been really good. And I have like a lot less stress about my bills now because of it. Now we're going to take a little break, but I'll be back with more very soon. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Hi, I'm Sean Evans from Hot Ones and I want to tell you about YouTube Premium. It has offline downloads, so you can watch without Wi-Fi, background play, so you can lock your phone and it still plays, baby. Oh, and it is completely ad free. Yes, I said it ad free. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. You've never been one to settle. Stand down or stand still. You're a lifelong learner. Energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you. You can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on and your own high standards to meet. Stop now. Not a chance.

11:32At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive. Now go earn the degree. Capella University, what can't you do? Visit Capella.edu to learn more. And now back to the show. Now my third money routine is again something that I do quarterly, but I'll be completely honest. I have not done it consistently. Every quarter, I at least try to do this once a year. So if you do this every quarter, like every three months, you're again a plus student. But if you're like me and you're a little bit lazy and you get bored and you forget, then at least once a year is worth doing. And it's called rebalancing your investment portfolio. So when you start investing, you might put like, you know, $100 a week or every month, then to an index fund and you might have some individual company stocks as well. And then after a year, let's say you had invested in company A and let's say it was like a AI company. And after 12 months, that AI company, you only wanted to have like 5% of your overall portfolio and individual

12:36companies and like 95% in index funds. But this chip company did really, really, really well. It grew significantly. And now it's like 15% of your overall portfolio 12 months later. And you go, oh, that's not good because now 15% of my portfolio is an individual company. And that is so much higher of a risk than I am comfortable with. So you have to rebalance your portfolio. Some people either choose to sell down some of their investments and go, okay, let me sell down my company A individual stocks so that I'm down to 5%. But what I found has worked a little bit better for me is I go, okay, I'm not going to invest any more money into company A. And I will just increase the amount I'm investing into my index fund. So rebalances. And I go back to that 95% index fund, 5% individual shares. And by doing that every single year, it makes sure that your investments are not out of proportion to your risk tolerance because

13:40you might be the kind of person that's like, I need at least 20% bonds and 80% in stocks and index funds. And then if you don't check your portfolio in a couple years have gone by, you might be really surprised to see that your investments in terms of stocks and index funds skyrocketed. And now they're like 99% of your portfolio. And only one little percent is four bonds. And that is not a very good portfolio for your risk tolerance if you were the kind of person that was like, I like at least 20% bonds. So just adding that into your routine. Again, it's not something you have to monthly. That's way too soon. It's not even something you have to do every quarter that is what is recommended. But just fitting that in when you can adding that to your calendar, just like once a year, check my portfolio rebalance it. I have found that I don't remember doing needing to do these things. So if it's not in my calendar, it does not get done. But just put it into your Google calendar. So so far in our Google calendar, we have once a quarter, look at our subscriptions, once a quarter, look at our bills. And once a quarter, look at our investment portfolio and rebalance.

14:43And we've done like three really important things. And now I have one more for you. This is my final routine for having really good money habits, having really good money routines. And again, simple, not that confusing, not that hard to do. What I like to do when I am feeling a little bit like, oh, my money's a bit out of whack, I like to make a cash flow plan. Again, this is like available as a free resource on friends that invest. If you just go to friends that invest.com. And then I think it's on the homepage. Or if you click on resources, it's the first one because it is our most popular resource. Guys, this has been downloaded like 60,000 times. That is how popular it is. It is a budget plan. But rather than like a weekly budget, it is an annual budget where you put in your annual salary after tax. And then you kind of figure out how much do you spend on every single category in your life. And it is so important because it allows you to have value-based spending. And then it allows you to figure out like, okay, how much do I have left over to save per gear

15:45essentially? And you might go, okay, so I can save $10,000 a year. And per month, that's, you know, X amount. And so that is how much I'm going to put aside every single paycheck. And I know I can live off the rest of that money. And so you're paying yourself first by knowing that you can save $10,000 a year, accounting for everything you're going to spend on. You then put that money every month into a different account as soon as you get paid. And then whatever has left over, that goes to your bills, to your mortgage, or to your rent, to your holidays, to your expenses. And you can spend that guilt free because you know you've figured out how much you're going to spend per year. It also helps you work out your savings rate. And like I said in a previous episode, your savings rate only matters to you. And it matters that your savings rate either stays the same or increases year on year. It's not important to try and compare your savings rate to someone else because they might have family help. They might have different life experiences. They might live in a smaller home or in a

16:51city that costs more or less. So it's just not relevant. It's not helpful. I don't care how much you save as long as I'm doing better than my past self. That is what's important for me. And that is what is important for you. And so essentially if you can just pull over just for a second if you're driving or if you can just put down the task that you're doing, go into your phone. I'm going to get you to make one notification on your phone or one task or reminder of sitting down every single quarter. And in this quarter, you're going to look at your subscriptions. You're going to make a list of the bills that you need and to pay them off. You're going to rebalance your portfolio. And you're going to make a cash flow plan or at least review your cash flow plan. And just make sure that you are saving and allocating as much money as you said you would. And overall, like this entire list might take you an hour, two hours at most every three months.

17:57And it will keep you on track to be really good with your money, to feel on top of your money and to not feel like you're falling behind. And if you can do that, you're going to have so much more confidence. You're going to spend more freely. You're going to know you've got a financial plan. You're going to know that your bills are being paid. That's like really important for me. And you're just going to know that you are like set up for success for the next like 12 months ahead. And what's better than that? So as you can tell, it's a very simple routine. But this is what I do. It's what works for me. And hopefully you try it out and enjoy it as well. And let me know in the next quarter how you found it if anything surprised you or if it was pretty simple. And so with that, if you've enjoyed this episode, please take a screenshot, put on your Instagram story, tag friends that are in there. So there's the best way for us to grow the podcast and reach more people and what more can we ask for than a world where more women are financially literate. And with that, I'll see you next week. Disclaimer. Friends that invest does not provide personalized investing advice for your individual needs. We are not financial advisors.

19:02The advice from friends that invest exists for educational purposes only and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. Advice from friends that invest is general in nature and does not consider individual circumstances. Always do your research in