New Year, Who Dis? 5 Fresh (and Fabulous) Ways to Level Up Your Money Game

In this episode, we’re tossing out the crusty old budgeting rules that make you feel like a broke Puritan and serving up five fierce ways to build wealth that actually feel good. 💅

First up: Forget that budget that makes you cry into your cold brew. We’re all about the "no budget budget"—a sexy little system where you pay your musts first (like rent, debt, and saving for Future You), then guiltlessly spend the rest on what actually brings you joy (hello Beyoncé tickets and Trader Joe’s frozen croissants).

Tip two is all about putting your dollars where your happiness is. If your spending doesn’t make your life better, what are we even doing here? Say yes to intentional spending and a big gay no thanks to money guilt.

Then we get into the goods: a Roth IRA that moonlights as your tax-free emergency fund. She’s flexible, she’s smart, she’s basically your financial BFF with benefits.

We also break down why one income stream is soooo last season. It’s time to diversify, darling—side gigs, passive income, OnlyFans? (Kidding… unless?)—whatever helps you build that money stack.

Finally, we talk about finding your financial rhythm. Think of it like choreography for your bank account. Consistent, intentional moves that keep you dancing toward your goals—without the drama.

Bottom line: this episode is your glam guide to making smarter, happier money moves all year long. Your wallet deserves a glow-up—and so do you.

Episode Takeaways That Slay:

• 💸 Bye, Budgeting Trauma! - We’re ditching dusty budgeting rules and embracing the no-budget budget—a freeing, fab approach that makes space for both smart choices and spontaneous splurges.
• 🌈 Spend on What Sparks Joy (Not Just What Looks Good on Instagram) - Your money should make you happy, not just keep up appearances. Spend on what truly brings you joy—and say "boy, bye" to money guilt.
• 🏳️‍🌈 Roth IRA = Your Financial Safety Net in Heels - Think of it as your emergency fund with extra flair—Roth IRAs give you tax-free access when life gets messy (and we know it will).
• 💼 More Than Just a 9–5, Honey - Relying on a W-2 alone? That’s so 1997. We’re talking multiple streams of income—because you deserve more than just a paycheck and a pat on the back.
• 📆 Find Your Money Groove - Structure = freedom. When your money moves have rhythm, you build wealth without burnout. Think of it like a fierce financial choreography.

Topics Covered:

• 00:14 - Rock Your Finances This Year
• 04:30 - Focusing on Happiness in Financial Decisions
• 08:00 - Financial Happiness and Living Standards
• 17:04 - Pursuing a Multi-Pronged Approach to Wealth Building
• 25:37 - Creating a Financial Plan: Steps to Achieve Your Goals

It's the new year, new queer time of year, and you know what that means.

Endless listicles of basic.

And nobody loves basic money tips.

If that's what you've come for, you've come to the wrong place.

If you're looking for the 200, 300 level coursework to rock your finances this year, well, then welcome.

You're listening to Queer Money, episode 468.

And today we're sharing five unique tips for winning the game of money starting this year.

Now on with the show.

You'Re listening to the Queer Money podcast, personal finance with a rainbow twist.

Queer Money is dedicated to financial independence, financial well being, investing knowledge, and the intersection of all things money as an LGBTQ person.

Happy New Year to all the queers.

It's good to see you all your new queer.

I love when things rhyme.

Yes, more so than I love.

What's that?

When?

Alliteration.

I love alliteration too.

Okay, so we're following up on Queer Money Episode number 483 from long ago last year when we talked with Adam Davis from Capital One about doing a financial look back and a look ahead.

We told you in that episode one.

Week ago, folks, we told you in.

That episode that we were going to sort of double down on the strategy for increasing or improving your wealth.

We're trying to go to those 300 level, you know, coursework to really, really improve your financial security and pursue wealth, which is what we're all kind of looking for, right?

Because basically, as we talked about a couple episodes back, that that's what, what we're all looking for, right?

We're all looking for true freedom or true wealth, which is gives you the autonomy of time, relationships, location.

And what's the fourth one?

I just drew a blank.

David, help me out.

Time, relationship, money.

Oh, money.

Finances, what this show is all about.

So we're going to cover some not so typical financial advice that you're probably not going to get anywhere else.

So we're not going to cover.

Even though they're important.

We totally agree with them.

We're not going to talk about how make this the year that you pay off your debt or this year that you, you rock your emergency savings and start building your emergency savings.

We're not even going to tell you to budget.

We might even tell you to do the opposite of budgeting.

Hey, you're stealing my thunder.

Well, then, David, let's get into it.

Let's get right into it.

Yeah.

All right, number one is we're going to tell you to stop budgeting don't do it.

Now, that doesn't mean you can give the middle finger to all sorts of financial planning and thinking about your money.

That's definitely not what we're saying here.

Budgeting, for many people, has become such a burden.

It induces stress and anxiety.

Most of us, what we really want in life, when we think about financial security.

And actually there was a survey that asked people what true financial security means to them.

They basically said, I can spend my money on whatever I want, how I want to, when I want to.

And so what we're going to encourage you to do is to do a no budget budget, which basically says, spend your money on the things you want to spend it on, as long as you do two things.

First, one, set aside the money that is going to pay yourself in the future.

So making sure you're saving money, setting aside emergency savings and retirement money so you have that cushion for emergencies and for the future.

The second thing is making sure that you're paying for all of the things you already said you're going to pay for.

We're not telling you to stop making your car payment or your insurance payment or your mortgage or rent payment.

You have to set aside the money for all of that.

What we're saying is that other piece of money, the money that's left over after you cover those essentials, spend it on whatever you want to spend it on.

It's not up to somebody to tell you what you can and cannot spend money on.

It's up to you to decide what you want to spend your money on.

Now, obviously, you want to spend it on things that matter, right?

And if the things that matter to you are avocado lattes, then get the avocado lattes.

Avocado lattes.

What's an avocado lot?

Please tell me there isn't.

I'm sure somebody has tried to make an avocado latte.

That just sounds kind of gross.

It does.

It does sound gross.

But it's probably really just a smoothie.

Yeah, exactly.

So tip number two, as David was alluding to, is focus on happiness.

This is something that he and I, David and I have doubled down into in our own lives.

And we realized as we look back that that's kind of what we've been trying to build all along, was a happy life.

We've been complicating it with a myriad things, trying to live up to other people's expectations.

Even today, despite having said we threw that sort of thinking out a long time ago, feeling like we had to achieve certain things or have a certain income or live in a certain place because society or culture says that's what we need to do, when in fact that wasn't necessarily what we want.

And we're just trying to.

After doing these last couple years of the Financial Wellbeing series, we've realized that's not what any of us want.

We.

We just want that.

This sort of freedom we're looking for, for.

For freedom and reduced anxiety, which is why we're now saying, don't do a budget and stress yourself out.

Dana Miranda talked about that last year in our podcast.

I know Tori Dunlap talked about that in her book, who we interviewed last year as well.

Getting rid of the budget, if that's one thing that creates anxiety in your life, get rid of that.

So with regard to number two, in terms of focusing on happiness, this is where what we want you to do, the things that you do spend your money on, the things that do fall into your budget, are those things really making you happy?

We've talked a lot about Hedonic Treadmill and this consumer society that we live in, and we're just coming off of the holidays.

Right.

You probably spent an inordinate amount of money on things that.

And people.

And people that maybe didn't really matter on much.

Right.

Some of the people we spend money on don't matter.

Right.

It's the obligation.

It's the obligation.

Right.

You know, there was.

I didn't get a chance to read the article, but there was an article during the holidays that came out that talked about how actually declining RSVPs to holiday parties can actually help your mental health.

Right.

So.

And I think all these expectations that we feel like that, that is all these false expectations that are making us feel anxious and unhappy.

So what we're asking you to do when you're doing your budget, what are you spending your money on?

And are you truly getting happiness from it?

We talked about this on episode 456, a little bit about your return on happiness.

And we, we define that as the measure of one's quality of life affected by autonomy over time, relationships and the environment and their finances, the four financial freedoms.

And so, you know, if, like we said, if getting the latte makes you happy, get the latte.

Don't let Dave Ramsey tell you that you can't get the latte.

If you want the avocado toast, by all means get the avocado toast because it's fucking delicious.

It's enjoyable.

But just make sure you're getting the true happiness out of it.

You're not spending your money in such a way that you regret it or you're not actually truly enjoying it.

If therapy is a high priority item for you, we've talked about this several times on the show.

Make sure that you spend your money and invest in therapy.

It's an important thing for you.

And if that yields a lot of positive results in your life, then by all means, do it.

But we do need to touch on a little something that we talked about with Coach Fletch on episode 280, is that you know when you're doing this analysis and you're trying to figure out what's truly making you happy and what's helping you create best life, whatever that looks like to you, we do need to sort of differentiate what our our values are versus our standards.

And Coach Fletch talked about a brilliant example that so many of us say we have a.

We put a lot of value in friends and family, but what are we actually doing?

Are we actually making our time for our friends and family, or are we spending more time at work or doing things that sort of distract us from our friends and family?

In particular, I think your spouse and maybe even your kids.

So many of us say we, we love our family.

That's one of the things in our lives, but we just don't invest our time with those people.

And as we talked about the four financial freedoms, relationship freedom and time are two of the big critical parts of the four financial freedoms because those resources are finite.

Right?

You only have so much time and you're only going to have so much time to be able to spend with people that you love.

So that's just an example of differentiating what you truly value and what your standards are.

The two don't always align.

Yeah, I, I think that it's kind of funny.

This is a great spot to drop in that saying.

I'm going to change, change it up a little bit.

But happy spouse, happy house, right?

If and for those of you who are single, you are married to yourself, right?

You are your spouse.

You're the person you need to satiate the most to make the most happy, right?

And so if you're spending money or you're doing activities or you're spending time, especially time, if you're doing these things out of obligation or to be seen by others or to impress others, you're not actually making yourself happy.

You're most likely making other people happy.

So what does it take for you and your spouse or your family to be happy.

And more often than not, we have this kind of quota that the consumerism, capitalistic society has told us.

You need to make sure you do all these different things before you think of yourself.

And I think we need to figure out how to ditch that and focus on our own happiness in a positive, selfish way.

Right.

It doesn't mean ignoring everyone else.

It means making sure that you're happy.

Because if you're not happy, that's going to spill over into the relationships you have with other people and will spill over into how you spend your money.

Because we've talked about this before, the whole debt depression spiral will just continue to keep you in a.

In a financial trap.

Yeah, exactly.

I think maybe even a more poignant example for right now and for this show is the snarky comments we've gotten on the Queer City series that we've been doing where people are saying, gays don't live there, gays can't live there.

We're not, you know, we stop lying.

Nobody let no LGBTQ plus people live in Utah.

I think that's a really poignant example because as we're learning from the CDC and the Williams Institute studies, Right.

There are a lot of LGBTQ plus people who live in, you know, for, you know, a broad term, lack of a better term, is the red in red states.

Yeah.

Even in Florida and Texas.

Right.

36% of the LGBT population in this country lives in the South.

Adults.

36% of LGBTQ plus adults.

Right.

And that does include over a million people, LGBT adults in Texas and nearly a million in Florida.

And I think that the important point here is that one person said to us, I don't know why anybody would live in Texas or Florida.

Clearly there are some people who find a way that they are being.

They enjoy life or are happy there.

So don't poo poo where somebody else chooses to live if they're finding happiness there.

Right.

And if you're finding happiness there, then by all means stay there.

Don't let somebody snarky, elitist, elitist person on TikTok or Instagram tell you that you can't live there and that you have to move to San Francisco or New York.

Right.

Anyway, so, David, number three.

Now, this is a little complicated, but it's a Multi pronged approach here, we know that the goal is to have anywhere between three and six months worth of emergency savings set aside so that if something does happen, a tire goes flat all the way up into losing your job, anywhere in between, you have money to try to take care of yourself for that time period.

So what we are encouraging folks to do when they're ready to take this kind of step is to make sure that you have a minimum of one month set aside in a high yield savings account.

One month of living expenses.

Yeah, sorry, one month worth of living expenses set aside in a high yield savings account.

That's your quick access cash.

That means that's the cash where I can go to the bank.

You know, we definitely recommend on your high yield emergency savings accounts, you don't have access to a check or debit card because then we end end up using it.

But maybe it's contacting the bank to transfer the money into another account where you do have easy access to it.

Make sure you keep that money, one month's living expenses in that account.

So that's your first step, is to make sure you have that money set aside.

The next step is anything above that, one month's worth of living expenses.

If you have that saved, peel off $7,000.

If you're below the age of 50, $8,000 if you're above the age of 50 and put that into a Roth IRA.

That's up to.

You don't have to peel that.

That's not the minimum, that's the maximum you can put in.

Right.

So if you have that amount, peel that off and put it into a Roth ira.

And the reason why we're recommending that is because one, you can put the money in and at any time throughout the year, if you need to withdraw that money, you can take out the contributions that you put in and not have to pay a penalty and not have to pay any taxes.

So if you move $7,000 in, you can move $7,000 out.

Now why put it into a Roth?

Well, one, you're moving it into a tax deferred account.

A tax deferred account basically means here that it's going to grow and you're not going to have to pay taxes the other on the growth.

The other thing is, is you're not going to have to pay taxes if you take the money out.

So it's different from a regular ira.

You definitely want to use a Roth IRA with this.

But the other nice thing is, is that when you move money into a Roth ira, you can put it into a high yielding money market.

Money market accounts at most mutual fund or brokerage accounts are actually earning higher, more than high yield savings accounts.

Right now we're seeing rates anywhere between 5 and 6%, which is about 1 to 1 and a half percent what we're seeing for high yield savings accounts.

Higher than, higher than.

Right.

So that means that when this growth happens, you're going to earn maybe 3 to $400 this year.

You don't have to put that on your taxes, you don't have to claim that.

So the benefit here is you're not having to pay taxes on that growth and you still have access to pull the money out when you need it.

And putting it into a money market basically means you have pretty quick access.

It's much easier to get out of that money market than it is to say, for example, sell a stock or a mutual fund and have to worry about growth or losses on that.

The nice thing is the money market should be able to hold your cash and get you that little bit higher growth.

So you want to earmark the seven to $8,000 that you contribute to the Roth for emergency savings.

So the most risky investment you put that into is a high yielding money market account.

And then any of the growth from that stays in the Roth ira.

That will go towards your future financial security for retirement.

Right.

And the nice part about this is, let's say a year goes by and you haven't had to use that money.

And then that money, the growth then will start to compound on itself and over time really yield some kind of.

Really help you pound the compound.

Yeah, exactly.

As long as interest rates stay high.

We know that you're going to be getting a higher amount of compounding.

Right.

Your compound grows much faster the higher the interest rate is.

If interest rates drop, we'll talk about another strategy.

Exactly.

And it's, it's my conspiracy Theorist prediction that closer to the election rates might start to drop a little bit.

All right, number four is pursue a multi pronged approach to wealth.

This is something that Dave and I have been talking a little bit more about over the last couple of years.

Maybe not necessarily on this show, but in this new economy where it just seems like it's perpetual inflation and stagnant wages, that the idea of just working for a W2 and having that be your financial security through life and then through retirement just no longer really works anymore.

We think that you got to sort of put more irons in the fire to actually make something work for yourself.

And I will say, yeah, it would be.

It's not fair.

It is 100% not fair that having a 40 hour a week job does not cover your living expenses or growth and makes you feel comfortable.

It's not fair.

And we would love to change it.

A lot of us would love to change it.

But for whatever reason, corporations and the government and the people who control those two are making sure that it sucks for the rest of us.

Again, conspiracy theory.

We're going to, we could go down a rabbit, rabbit hole there, but the reality is, is that if it's not working, you got to find what is working.

And this is what we're suggesting.

Yeah, exactly right.

It's not fair.

But to try to continue to follow the old model in hopes of pursuing the old model's results.

When you, when the old model's not working anymore, it's just an exercise in futility.

So those people would be called Luddites, right?

People that want things to stay the same even though technology is moving forward.

Right, exactly.

So we've got to figure out, okay, what, what can we do in this new economy to still achieve financial security, achieve those four financial freedoms that we talked about.

And again, we've shared this on the show.

We get so many.

Even, even recently we've gotten the question, I'm about retirement age and I have nothing saved for retirement.

What can I do?

Well, okay.

Well, fortunately, there's not an easy answer, but there is an answer, and the answer is for all of us, regardless of our age, is to create this multi pronged approach that includes investing in the stock market, investing in real estate like we're doing with house hacking, and having your own small business of some sort, whatever that looks like to you, whether you're a notary public or you, you're selling products on Etsy, whatever the case may be, have some sort of a business for yourself.

And it's sort Reason that that's what we call the wealth builders pyramid.

The reason that we're suggesting that is because all those markets don't necessarily move in tandem.

So if the stock market is down, you'll still be able to yield returns from your real estate investment as well as your small business.

So what we're encourage you to do is to the degree that it's available to you to start investing time in growing your wealth builder's pyramid to cover to help you get started with some of that.

We have talked about each of these ad nauseams.

So there's a lot of resources for these.

On the cribcast for stock market investing, check out how to optimize your 401k by listening to episode 166 where we talked about the differences between 401ks and 403bs.

And then listen to a more recent episode 460 where we talked about maximizing or why you want to max out your 401 contributions each year.

For real estate investing, Check out episode 253 where we talked about how to become a real estate investor.

And 112 where we talked about how to get into house hacking.

We have a couple other episodes that you can look for for real estate investing, but maybe those are the first two to start out with.

And then for small business, check out our interview.

Very popular interview with Danielle Flores of I Like to Dabble on how to make more money with a side hustle.

We did an amazing interview with a woman by the name of Lena Francis on how to get into the vending machine business.

Check out that.

That's pretty.

Episode 257.

And then we had Tom Brickman on for the second time on episode 303 where he talked about flipping products and how he used flipping products, particularly reselling bras, which is what he used to get into his real estate business.

And now he's got multiple, you know, 10 properties in Dallas, 10 properties in Toledo.

It was bras and purses that he sold that helped him pay for college and start investing in real estate.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

So.

So those are just some examples of resources that you can use if you're looking for More resources definitely reach out to us through social media or@questionsbtfreeguys.com yeah.

And ladies, all the ladies, all the ladies from both sides or all the in betweens.

If you love to shop, and we know that plenty of you do, learning how to flip products is a great way to satiate your desire to shop as well as make some money hunting and gathering.

It is a great way to shop and sell and be able to actually, you can then go buy the coach purse where you actually have some money in it rather than just an empty coach purse.

Exactly how heavy is your coach purse?

All right, number five here is to get into a rhythm.

Just like John and I on the podcast like to get into a rhythm.

When we go back and forth with our banter or our conversation, it's important to get into a financial rhythm.

And one of the things that we recommend is getting into a 12 week year rhythm, which is actually a book by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington.

And really what it talks about, the book talks about breaking your year down into four chunks, four quarters basically, but taking the 12 weeks out of the 13 weeks of a quarter and use that to plan your year.

Plan a whole year's worth of life in one quarter.

More often than not, we minimize what we can get done in the short term.

And so we, if we, as long as we have a plan, then we can execute on that plan and actually accomplish things.

So get into that rhythm of what you want to do in the quarter.

So what we would recommend, of course, is having some sort of annual plan first so you know what you want to achieve in the whole year.

But then look at how you can break that down.

And one of the things we did talk about with Adam Davis on last Tuesday's episode last year, all the way back last year was to do the look back and look ahead.

So this is your kind of opportunity to say, how did I do last year?

What do I want to do this year?

And put that into your plan.

Of course, then you want to break that down into your quarters.

And in your quarters you can have your most important goals.

What are the five big things I want to do?

It was in Gary Keeler and Jay Papasan's book the one thing where they talk about how having one important goal, that if you achieve that one goal, it makes a lot of other things unnecessary.

So for example, if you started a small business and it started to rock, then maybe you don't have to have a side hustle and a job.

Maybe you just have a small business that takes care of all of your living expenses.

The other thing is, is to make sure you break things down into really simple steps.

Like, do I know why I want to do this?

How do I handle the obstacles that might come up and what is some sort of reward I'm going to give myself if I do this?

So that's what you want to do at the quarter level and then finally at the weekly level.

This is something that we do every Friday.

Most.

Most Fridays.

Sometimes it's Saturday morning events, sometimes it's also Monday morning.

Right.

It depends on what happened on Thursday night.

Is to do some sort of weekly planning.

So we do a brain dump of all the things that we want to achieve.

What are the important things that we need to achieve?

Then we break them, we prioritize those, giving them an A, B or C level.

And then we map out which is what are the ones that we absolutely, definitely want to achieve, Focusing on our A's and B's more often than not.

And then block off some time to do that.

Yeah, exactly.

So if you know, we talked about building that wealth builder's pyramid, how do you find time to understand investing and to start investing or maximize your investing?

How do you start a small business?

How do you grow that?

How do you find time to do that?

And then estate investing, how do you learn about that?

How do you start to get into that market?

What we're suggesting to you is using this fifth step is to create a plan.

And if you can just achieve one thing every quarter that slow, even if that just slowly moves the needle, at least you've got that forward progress.

Football, you've got that four, you've got that forward progress.

So you're always getting one step closer to your goal.

It can, especially if you have a W2, it can feel really daunting to try to do all these other things on top of your actual job and being good at your job.

But this is kind of our strategy to say, okay, let's figure out what the most important things are that I need to do to move towards my goal.

And then make sure you block out time on your calendar to do that work and then treat those appointments on your calendar to yourself.

As important as you would to say, attending going to the dentist or the doctors or meeting a friend for coffee.

That needs to be as important as anything else in your life.

So you're always moving that towards your goals.

Just even just a little bit.

Yeah.

How are you going to rock your finances 1.

Stop budgeting.

2.

Focus on happiness spending on what truly makes you happy.

3.

Put extra money into your high Yield savings account and then move what you can into a Roth ira.

Using that strategy to reduce your taxes, squeeze every last dollar out of the money, the cash that you have.

Number four Pursue a multi pronged approach to creating wealth.

And five get into some sort of financial rhythm.

I think there's a 90s song about rhythm, right?

It's a dancer.

That's right.

Rhythm is a dancer.

Now stay tuned for your Crib Money takeaway from this episode.

Thanks again folks for joining us for another episode.

Remember to subscribe to the Queer Money newsletter in your podcast player or in the description of this YouTube video below so that you can get the Queer Money takeaway for this week as well as your tip to reach financial independence faster.

Then join us this Thursday when we cover the most affordable LGBTQ plus friendly city to live in in Delaware.

And then next Tuesday when we kick off our Gay Retirement 101 series that'll happen each month.

Next week we're going to start with our Favorite list of LGBT+ retirement communities around the world.

So if you're looking for an LGBTQ plus place to retire, don't miss this episode.

Have a great weekend.