5 FREE Ways to Get Better With Money

Hey guys and welcome back to the channel. Today we're going to be discussing five awesome tips that will help you get better with money that are completely free. No fluff! I'm not going to tell you to go fill in surveys for 10 hours. I'm going to tell you to go forage for berries or anything like that. Five genuinely helpful tips that will help you get better with money. So let's go.

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Okay, straight in! Strategy one is all about learning, and a great free way to learn how to be better with money is to take advantage of free audiobooks that you can find on YouTube. Also, there are heaps of classic finance books just in PDF format that you can access freely on the internet. Like literally, some of the most influential books that helped me out are just available on the internet or on YouTube for free.

I looked just did a 15-minute search, and these are some of the books I found. I found "Think and Grow Rich," which is all about learning how to change your mindset to set yourself up for success. I found "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. That's just one of my favorite books ever, full stop! But then, getting more into, say, the personal finance stuff, I found "Rich Dad Poor Dad," the first money-related book I ever read. I found that one just freely available audiobook on YouTube.

"The Richest Man in Babylon" I found that one too. If you wanted to hone in on the stock market investing, I found Monash Prabrai's "The Dondo Investor," in my humble opinion one of the best stock market investing books ever written. I found an audiobook of Ben Graham's original investing bible, "Security Analysis," and I found a PDF of "The Intelligent Investor." So there's all of this amazing content that will really educate you on how to be better with money, and it's completely free.

I've left all the links down in the description of all the content that I found in case you wanted to check it out. But moving along, tip number two: another way, another free way to be better with money. Well, wouldn't it be nice if, you know, every quarter, you just got a list sent to you that's telling you what all the big investors of the world are buying and selling each quarter? Well, there is that list. It's called a 13F filing, and it sounds scary, but really it's just a quarterly document that all the big investors file with the SEC that reveals their current stock portfolio.

Now granted, reading any SEC document can still be pretty tricky. So luckily, there are some websites out there that just simplify these documents and keep track of many different big-name investors' stock portfolios, from Data Roamer to Guru Focus to one I've been using more and more recently, Ticker.com, which also adds international holdings, as well as the U.S. holdings that are filed in the 13F.

So no, you shouldn't obviously go out and just blindly copy the trades of all these great investors, but boy it is a great place to start your research. It is a great place to get investment ideas to then go and research further. So a massive tip, and again, completely free.

Alright, next tip is a controversial one because it actually does cost money, but in most instances, it still ends up being free. So trust me on this one. The tip is to bite the bullet and go and see a tax accountant. Now, this will probably cost you between $150 and $300, so you're right, it's not free. However, usually tax accountants will help you find so many more deductions and will help you structure your tax affairs more effectively that they actually end up covering their cost.

In fact, you might even profit from going to see a tax accountant. For example, for me recently, I bought my Model 3, and honestly, I just bought the Model 3 because I wanted one, and I'm a Tesla fanboy and all that stuff. Anyway, I was talking to Scott, my accountant. He says, "Hold on, Brandon. You drive around all the time on business. You drive to Melbourne a lot. You drive to Sydney a lot. You record podcasts, you make content, you meet with sponsors, etc. Actually, a lot of your kilometers that you drive are business kilometers."

So he sets me up, he gets me doing a logbook, and he gets me to record all my charging expenses, cleaning and maintenance expenses. Now, a fair portion of the costs of the car are just deductible. So that in itself has saved me already hundreds of dollars in tax, and that's just an expense that I didn't even think about.

So you can think about it like this: you know, if you're comfortably sitting in the 32.5 cent tax bracket, then to cover like a $200 accountant's bill, they'll probably need to find about $615 of expenses to cover their cost. So maybe if you're a public servant, you just show up to work every day, and you have no expenses, then perhaps a tax accountant wouldn't cover their cost.

But like if you're in business, or you're a stock market investor, or you own real estate, in my opinion, I think it's highly likely that an accountant will more than cover their costs, and then you're essentially getting them to do your tax return for free. So how good is that? I definitely recommend that one; see if it works for you.

But anyway, moving on into the fourth tip to be better with money while spending nothing in the process. It's to take advantage of free stuff. I mean, you can go out there, find free stuff on Gumtree or Facebook, clean it up, wipe it down, take some better photos, and you can sell it. And you might say, "Hmm, you know, Brandon, that sounds a little bit low. That sounds a little bit scary."

But it absolutely isn't, and here's why: you know, if somebody lists something on Facebook for free, well, first of all, they want it gone. They are trying to get rid of it, so if you take it, you're actually doing them a favor. But then if someone wants to buy that same product off you later, you're also doing them a favor because, say, you sell them a chair for ten dollars.

In their mind, they have a problem that needs solving; in this case, they need a chair, and they haven't got one. So if they enter into a deal with you, then they are acknowledging that they are willing to pay ten dollars to have their problem solved. They are agreeing that that deal works for them; otherwise, they wouldn't have bought it, right?

But having said that, there is one example that comes to mind where I still actually do think this strategy is unethical, and that's when you do something like you take advantage of local buy-nothing Facebook groups. You know, in that instance, those communities work on the principle of, you know, giving what you take; so you definitely don’t want to exploit other people's goodwill to profit from. But having said that, you know, if you saw a lawnmower for free in a buy-nothing group, and you put your hand up and got the lawnmower, then you went and started your own little lawn-mowing side gig, side business, then, you know, more power to you.

But anyway, that is the fourth tip. I would say it's an easy way to make some cash on the side without actually spending anything. You've just obviously got to do it right. Anyway, that's tip number four.

Moving on to the last tip that I have for you guys, that is quite simply to take advantage of free content, particularly through podcasts and YouTube. There is no doubt that you can learn practically anything from podcasts and YouTube these days, so do that! You know, make a habit of listening to a finance podcast or perhaps follow a YouTube channel that will educate you about money in the stock market.

You know, whatever it is: budgeting, money-saving, business strategy, real estate, stock market investing, you name it! There is content out there for free that can educate you. Now, obviously, the only thing I would advise here is to make sure you just watch videos across the board on a certain topic so that you're not skewed one way or another by potential bias with that creator's content.

So make sure you get a variety of videos that kind of help you understand the bigger picture, but there are definitely some great content creators out there that can educate you. I mean, at the like the top, top level, you have people like Monish Prabrai, Phil Town, Ray Dalio, GaryVee, Ark Invest, all of those people or institutions put out regular content.

You know, or you can just follow creators like Graham Stephan, The Plain Bagel, Nate O'Brien, Minority Mindset, Investing with Tom, Hamish Hoter, HyperChange, Sven, Carl, and Daniel Pronk, Solving the Money Problem, etc. There are so many channels these days that put out really good quality personal finance and money-related content. It's obviously completely free because it's here on YouTube!

So I would encourage you to try a few of them, find some you like, and boom! You know, you're learning at the same time. So go down rabbit holes if you want to learn about inflation. Look at a few videos from across the board. Look up Warren Buffett talking about inflation; listen to Ray Dalio talk about inflation and kind of go from there.

So overall, guys, they are my five tips on how you can get better with money without having to pay a single cent. Okay, so I hope you take something out of this video. Just maybe try pick one of those things that I was talking about and just give it a go because hey, worse things worse, you learn something, right? That's the worst thing that's going to happen is you learn something.

So give it a go! It's obviously, you know, 2021 with all that's going on around us. It's, you know, it's the time for financial literacy and for everybody to take it upon themselves to learn about money, investing, finance, budgeting, blah blah blah, the list goes on, and actually set yourself up with that information that you acquire.

So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the video; I hope it helped you first and foremost. Remember, I've left as many links as I can possibly think of about the stuff I was referencing in this video down in the description, so make sure you check that out! Go maybe try one of the audiobooks. I mean, there are some seriously good books that are just completely free in audiobook format on YouTube.

So maybe pick one out that you might like. Maybe try "How to Win Friends and Influence People." I reckon most people really get something out of that book! Or try "The Dondo Investor." They'd probably be my two recommendations out of the bunch I was talking about.

Anyway, guys, I'm starting to ramble. That'll do me for today. Leave a like on the video if you did enjoy it, or if you found it useful. I really appreciate it! If you wanted to support the channel financially, you can check out links down in the description below. They take you over to Profitful, which is my business that I started up, and if you choose to buy one of those courses, you are also supporting the channel financially.

So I appreciate it! But hey, no stress, this video is all about learning stuff for free, right? So no stress if you don't want to. But anyway, guys, thanks very much for watching, and I'll see you all in the next video. Thanks again to Sharesight for sponsoring this video.

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