I’m not engaged anymore..

So first of all, if it wasn't obvious from the title, this is not going to be my normal personal finance market update style video like I usually do. Don't worry, those are coming back soon, but from now on, they're going to be a little bit different moving forward, as I'll explain shortly.

Anyway, with this one, I want to take a moment and talk about a few recent changes in my life, and hopefully, you'll find these experiences helpful, or at the very least, maybe you'll find it interesting in terms of what's going on. Otherwise, like I said, if you're here for the normal what's going on with stocks and housing and the overall economy, like I said, that will be coming back next week; it's just not going to be in this week's video. So just you could skip past this if you don't care, but if you do care, just I guess keep watching.

All right, so now that we got that out of the way, you might have noticed—or maybe not—that I haven't posted a video here in the last 3 weeks on the channel, which is the longest break I have ever taken, by far, in the last 7 and a half years. Like, without exaggeration, since early '17, I made up my mission to post three videos here a week, every single Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, no matter what, except if it fell on a major holiday, in which case it would just post the next day.

Now even though I absolutely love making these videos, the reality is that it was all I could ever think about. It's all I ever focused on, and as soon as I was done making one video, I might have a few hours of mental downtime before I'd have to immediately start thinking about the next one, which created a few unique problems that I'll talk about a little later on. But I digress.

As I alluded to in my previous video, after 2 years of being engaged, we just got married. And since this was the first time in my entire life that we've had everyone that I care about in the same place at the same time, I decided to completely disconnect from work and my phone and just spend time with people I care about and be in the moment.

As much as people said your wedding day would fly by in the blink of an eye, they were completely right. Like admittedly, I'm standing here, but I always thought that weddings were the biggest financial upsell on the planet. Like when we started looking at venue options, flower options, food options, and every service—anything you could think of—there's definitely a premium that gets tacked onto everything that triples the cost from any other event.

And yeah, I know, I know, everyone says you can't put a price on your wedding day. I get that. You know what? After going through it, I have to say you're right. At the end of the day, after almost two years of planning, even though it came in slightly above where we initially thought it would cost, it was an unforgettable day, and it was something that was so much more impactful than I ever expected it to be.

I think in the back of my mind, I just always thought about the simplest option of going to the courthouse to sign the papers, renting out an Airbnb, catering for the food, going to Costco for the drinks, and just keeping things easy. But I'm so glad we didn't do that, and I absolutely would have done the entire day over if I could.

You know, someone said to me a few months ago that a wedding is going to be the only time in your entire life that you're going to have all the people who care about you in the same room at the same time that's not a funeral. And the more I thought about that, the more that's absolutely true. I think for most people, it's probably going to be the only time while they're alive that they'll have this sort of turnout for something that's positive. So being able to be mentally present the entire time was unforgettable.

Oh, side note, fun fact, but I actually had my podcast co-host, Jack, officiate the wedding because why not? And apparently, it's really easy to get certified online for that sort of thing, so we decided to do it. Plus, he could now say in a YouTube title, "I married Graham Stefan," and it's technically true.

Anyway, I also thought it was incredibly special that Macy and I were able to make our own wedding rings when we visited Japan. To me, this means so much more than anything else that money could buy because we did this together, and we designed it ourselves. It just makes it that much more unique.

Of course, in hindsight, having been through all of this, if I could have done anything differently, there's really not much, but if there's anything, it would have been that I wished I invited more people. Like we purposely tried to keep it really small to immediate family and really close friends, but there were just so many other people that we would have loved to have shared the day with. So I would say if anyone's getting married, if the budget supports it and the venue allows for slightly more people, it's probably better to invite slightly more than slightly less, all things considered, because the cost doesn't really go up that much per person. Beyond a certain amount, it's negligible.

But if you could make it work, I'd recommend more than less. Beyond that, though, as far as being able to spend some time with family, I guess I never truly understood just how glued to my phone I was until I spent a few days without it while everyone was in town.

Like I've always heard about phone addiction and the problem with constantly checking notifications, but I was able to rationalize it because in a way it's my job, and I need to be kept up to date with what's going on in the markets to be able to create content around it. But yeah, that habit is extremely hard to break.

For instance, if you want to hear something scary, apparently 99% of the smartphone users feel scared and anxious if their phones are accidentally left behind. The average person unlocks their phone 150 times a day. More than half never switch it off, and several studies show a direct link between cell phone usage and a person's ability to concentrate.

Thankfully, being able to concentrate on a single task has never been an issue for me. I think it's the only reason why I was able to ever get out so many uploads without ever missing a video. But being mentally present, on the other hand, has been an issue, and just having my phone on me makes it way too easy to constantly check, even if there's nothing new to look at.

I suppose it's been one of these areas where I acknowledge I lack self-control, so I've made more of a conscious effort to put some distance between myself and my phone when I don't absolutely need it, and I will say firsthand, my gosh, it makes such a big difference.

I don't know, it just seems more and more common that people are just heads down to their phone, glued to the algorithms of social media that are designed to keep you engaged as long as possible, that we lose out on the chance to create and foster real connections in places that matter the most.

The second I'd like to take a moment and address another double-edged sword of social media, and that's content, or more specifically, the finance space. I'm going to level with everybody; I've said it a few dozen times in the past, and I'm going to repeat it again here too. When it comes to personal finance and the basics, they don't change. And after a while, it's going to start sounding repetitive.

Like for the most part, a few basic principles form just about 99% of everything you would ever need to know when it comes to saving money, building wealth, and investing. Beyond that, unless you're interested in macroeconomics or picking individual stocks, you just end up repeating the same things over and over and over again until eventually, you have enough money that you could retire or buy a Lamborghini or do whatever you want with the money.

I don't care. The point is, you have the money to be able to do what you want. As an example of that for anybody wondering, here's how you can manage your money like the 1%. It really just comes down to this, and we could cover it all in like under a minute. Here we go: track your expenses, create a budget where you spend less money than you make, save a 3 to 6-month emergency fund, pay down all high-interest rate debt, always pay off your credit cards in full, take advantage of your retirement accounts—including your employer match in a 401K, Roth IRA, HSA, a taxable account—and then maximize those options as much as you can.

From there, you could expand your skills to eventually make more money, preferably save 20% or more of your income, and then repeat those exact same steps for the next 20 or 30 years. If you could just do that, most likely you're going to retire a multi, multi-millionaire.

Or how about this one? When it comes to investing, it really just comes down to this. It could really be this simple: diversified index funds outperform individual stock picking over the long run for most people. Studies show that a buy-and-hold investment strategy beats timing the market. Dollar-cost average on a regular basis, regardless of what prices are, and make sure you diversify your holdings across a wide spectrum of markets.

If you're young, in some cases, just one or two index funds would be able to accomplish all of this. I'd probably venture to say that for most of you watching, if you just followed this and anything you had a question on, you just used Google or YouTube. That's all you need to be financially independent, and I could stop there.

All my videos from here on out could just be that. But you know what? I'll tell you what typically ends up happening: someone will stumble upon one of my videos for the very first time, get very excited about the possibility of one day retiring with hopefully a lot of money, they get started, and then eventually they move on to something else because they realize it's just 20 to 30 years or more of repeating the exact same things every single day.

And beyond the basics, there's really not much more to do. That's why with a channel like mine, there's only so many ways I could say to track your expenses, live below your means, find a low-cost index fund to dollar-cost average into on a regular basis, and then let compound interest do its thing. Done.

Of course, I know there's also a lot of people out there that love the fact that I just repeat the same consistent foundation, no matter what, on a regular basis because it helps keep them on track. I think it's the same reason why I watch a lot of fitness influencers because it keeps me motivated to keep going to the gym and eat healthy and like to stay on track, and sometimes that ends up helping.

I acknowledge this is the case, and why I've also made an effort to switch it up from time to time. But it's also why the general philosophies of the videos are going to be pretty much consistent no matter if you watch today or if you watch seven years ago.

On top of that, I just think I'd go mentally berserk if every video every single week said the exact same thing without any variance whatsoever. So I try to talk about topics as well that I personally find interesting or just feel like discussing or diving into, and then from there, I could sprinkle back in the basics for people who haven't seen my previous videos and aren't familiar with it.

For example, the unfortunate reality with YouTube is that it's extremely rare that anyone will ever go back to watch my old videos, even though a lot of the information back then is just as relevant today. This means that unless a video is posted in the last month, there's a very high likelihood that no new viewers are ever going to see that video.

And on YouTube, it's a constant revolving door of new and old subscribers. Not to mention somebody's got to say it, but the YouTube search feature is absolutely horrible for finding and searching through videos, so you're somewhat up to the algorithm's whims in terms of whether or not you'll come across something of value.

Like let's use the example of my old Roth IRA video; this is an account that most young people don't even know about, and unless they come across it on their own, they're unlikely to ever find it, which is one of the reasons why I like to post an updated version of these videos every year or so as new policies and limits change.

From this perspective, I am definitely a part of the problem in terms of why the core message of my videos gets repeated so often. I suppose when you really get down to it, it's probably a good thing, but it doesn't make for engaging round-the-clock content that YouTube really rewards and that people want more of.

And so I acknowledge that that's definitely something that I've had to somewhat combat here on YouTube. It's also been a relatively new change on my channel not to force a video when there's nothing to talk about because for the longest time, that was the only way to stay on top of the YouTube algorithm, and if you didn't do that, YouTube would deprioritize your content and not show it as much because you're not posting as frequently.

I say all of this because when you're making three videos a week on a personal finance channel where oftentimes there's nothing new to talk about, I found myself very often just creating videos for the sake of creating videos, and that's clearly not a sustainable path long term. Like sure, there are plenty of topics out there that I can't wait to make a video on; I get so excited to plan it out and film it. I get so pumped over posting it.

But there's other videos that I do because I just know people enjoy them, and I have a sense of obligation to the people who keep coming back, who like the information and maybe it helps them stay on track, or it's something for them to listen to while they're driving or they cook or they're at the gym, anything else like this.

Like if I could provide any sort of help to anybody watching, that makes it worth it for me. But I will admit it'll be eight years of posting videos here on YouTube this December, and with over 2,300 uploads across three channels, and an additional 1350 videos clipped from that content, my goal is to only post when there's something new I could share or with a topic that I'm just personally excited to talk about.

This means the videos you'll see might be a little more nuanced; they might be a little bit more in-depth than what you're previously accustomed to, or they could just be topics that I find interesting and I want to discuss. Now separate from that, though, I'm still posting normally on my podcast channel, The Iced Coffee Hour. I'm really excited that we've lined up some incredible guests over the next month.

We've pre-recorded some really great episodes, so like I'm actually really excited for some of these to post. You've got to stay tuned; go and subscribe there to see some of these guests because we've got a few big ones that are coming up and surprised even me.

Oh, and lastly, I just want to say that I've much preferred lately making these sorts of videos that tend to be a lot more laid back, more casual, less scripted, and it seems overall that you guys enjoy these sorts of videos too as opposed to like the information-dense videos at my other desk. Sometimes I enjoy those, but for more casual discussions, I tend to prefer this.

So let me know what you think as well down below in the comment section. Perhaps what I could end up doing is just blending some of those information-dense videos with like a podcast style here, with less of like the moving hands for audience retention. I get it; move the hands a lot. But you know what? It does help when people are watching a video; I do see an uptick in retention.

But anyway, maybe I blend the two and I try something here that's more casual. So again, let me know what you think. So that's the update on my end. I'm excited to get back to posting and continuing to bring you more information, and just for the sake of staying consistent, make sure to track your expenses, save as much money as possible, live below your means, dollar-cost average into an index fund on a regular basis for decades no matter what.

Hit the like button and subscribe if you haven't done that already. Thanks! Until next time.