In this episode, we talk to one of our listeners, Hersh, about his personal financial profile and offer up some advice. Full credit to Hersh for this show idea. He found our podcast through an Android app on his phone and became a huge fan. He reached out to us via Facebook and wanted to come on the show to copy a segment from Suze Orman called “How Am I Doing?” We thought it would be cool to bring his own, find out what his financial situation is and do our best to help him improve it.

Hersh is a successful air traffic controller with a wife and newborn son from upstate New York. He owns a home, two cars, has no credit card debt, and paid off his student loans by taking a loan from himself via his TSP fund. He’s now currently paying off that loan.

Hersh has some rental income and gets some overtime at work.  He has a college fund for his baby son.  Hersh is making some good money but essentially living pay check to pay check because all his spare money goes to his loan.

Hersh is not doing much investing and he doesn’t have an emergency fund.  He needs to take some of the money toward the loan and start a rainy day fund. At least one month of expenses, but three to six is the gold standard. Betterment is the perfect place to stash that emergency fund.  You are making crap interest if that money is sitting in your checking account so you might as well be getting those gains.

Overall Hersh is doing well but he has an expensive lifestyle and no emergency fund and those are the things he can improve upon.

Show Notes

Betterment:  The smart way to invest.

Mint:  Track your own expensive lifestyle.

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