Hello All of You Great People and Welcome to a new start of the new year and January 2021. Wherever you are on your financial journey I’m glad you are here with me- Steven Donovan aka Even Steven Money!

What’s been going on this month

It’s always fun for me to go back and look at Google photos to see what I did this past month to help me relive my experiences. I highly encourage you to do the same!

I started off the new year sleeping outside in a hammock in my backyard. I’m a little crazy but it was fun to do something different! I took over for the wife's vegetable garden and created a "new and improved" vegetable garden in the backyard with arugula (ready for harvest) and broccoli soon to come in February.

I made January about the gym and healthier eating habits after taking a little holiday siesta in terms of my intensity. I’m happy to report I did workouts 5 times per week in the month of January even going to the actual gym instead of my garage gym later in the month, craziness I tell you!

We also had visitors this month who have been working remotely and traveling during most of 2020. It was great because it forced us to get outside more with biking (Over 100 miles in January, thanks Strava) and visiting new and old places in South Florida. I even golfed for the first time since I moved to Florida (Top Golf aside).

We even finally got back to hanging out with the in-laws! You know family that live close to you become your best friends:) I hope I have this much to share every month moving forward.

✍Writing On the Blog✍

I took off the entire month of January writing on the blog. It felt great! No pressure to add more articles (84 published already).

🗓What’s coming next month🗓

January was important for me to focus on my clients and getting ready for my Reach Your Financial Goals (RYFG) program.

I began the year working with a couple clients that are going to absolutely improve their financial situations by leaps and bounds in 2021. I’m excited for them.

Now that we have goals and an action plan to reach them the rest of the year is going to be about accountability. It’s one thing to have a plan but it’s another thing to make that plan happen. If you need some help to make your plan happen reply to this email and we can talk more.

Very much like my clients and the RYFG I like to attack goals in smaller increments after creating the big picture goals. My plan for February is to work on putting together a free budget workshop with one of the tools I use with my clients. I need to make a few adjustments to make sure everything is working smoothly but my goal is to release this on my website by the end of February.

Coaching Feedback ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The biggest feedback I received this month has been the HUGE improvements in my clients financial situation year over year. One of my first conversations in the RYFG is what have you accomplished this past year.

With one of my clients we were literally counting the number of credit cards that she paid off last year!

It’s conversations like that get me truly excited about working with people as a financial coach.

🧛What I Sucked at This Month🧛

So I could definitely put writing personal finance articles as what I sucked at this month. But honestly it just wasn’t my focus. Overall I’m happy with how January ended up in regards to the clients I worked with as part of the RYFG program. In fact it’s even in my future plans to roll out an online version in the near future.

What's New

🆓Coaching Client Guidance

My suggestion last month was take the month of January and reflect to see how you did last year. Write down what you want to improve on in the year ahead for financial goals and/or goals for the year and start to see what it takes and feels like to reach those goals. Then when February rolls around and you are planning your goals for the year you already have a feel of what you will need to do.

So welcome to February. Now is when you take those plans you have been working on and put them into action. Write down those goals for the rest of the year and figure out how you are going to put them into place this month and the next.

Now you have taken care of the first 12 weeks of the year and you have already:

• Reflected on last year
• Did some trial and error testing on your goals for the year
• Have the the entire 1st quarter or 12 weeks goals and action plan to reach the beginnings of your big year long goals

Plus you should feel refreshed and more energized after catching your breath in January. Maybe you think I’m crazy, but this guy over at Life Hack agrees with me.

📈Stock Market📈

It would be hard not to talk about the stock market without bringing up GameStop (and a few other stocks that were also shorted).

So what happened with GameStop?

Basically the online public (Reddit) said you know what screw hedge funds and screw Wall Street let’s beat them at their own game. The regular retail investors used an online forum to create momentum by encouraging users to keep buying GameStop so the hedge funds would be forced to sell. Because some of the big money in Wall Street was betting on GameStop to lose the rich guy hedge funds were forced to sell because their losses were so big, aka short squeeze, which caused GameStop to go up even higher.

Pretty crazy times we live in that an online social platform basically outsmarted the big guy hedge funds. More crazy things happened after that and they will continue to happen. But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to be the voice of reason.

🎤Voice of Reason🎤

I have been pretty clear that over 90% of our investment portfolio is invested in index funds. I like to keep things simple and I’m happy with getting whatever the stock market is going to return over the next 30 years. That’s me and that’s what I recommend to friends, family, clients, etc.

Now for the other 10 percent (although it’s currently below 10%, but 10% is my maximum). I’m willing to buy and sell individual stocks. Gasp if you are a Boglehead or follow the FIRE movement!

I’m certainly not Warren Buffett but I really enjoy the research, the possibility of beating the market, hitting the home run, and taking a little risk here and there.

Here’s what’s really important in all of this crazy Wall Street/Reddit saga: this money does not put food on the table. It is not part of our retirement accounts. This money is not leveraged or borrowed to potentially make more money faster or lose money faster. I’m not using call or put options, something that I have only a general knowledge of from my finance courses in college.

If I put $1,000 in GameStop (which I did NOT) that is my own money that I’m extremely happy turning into $2,000 and a little salty if I lose money and decide to sell for $500.

I’m not here telling you where to put your investments. What I am highly suggesting is to take care of the important things first like your emergency fund, paying off debt, your long term retirement portfolio, etc. Then if you want to risk a little money, sure buy some “XYZ” stock and see what happens.

Now if you choose to skip my savvy and sage suggestion of taking care of the needs before the gamble of investing in individual stocks. Then at least use your own money. Don’t borrow money to try and strike it rich in the stock market.

Personal Side of Life & What I’ve Been Listening, Reading, & Watching

🎧Here’s what I listened to:

• ​​Robinhood Snacks Daily-If you like learning about individual stocks, market trends, and enjoy the business side of it all. It’s absolutely for you. I listen to it every morning and skim read the email. Thanks Jack and Nick and Rebecca
• ​Choose FI-I listened to episode 290 with Paul Merriman who specifically talked about using small cap value investing to increase your portfolio returns over the long term.
• ​Bigger Pockets Real Estate Rookie-I was interested in learning more about turnkey real estate investing and thought this was a great episode to get some more insight from veterans in the industry.

​​📙Book listening this month:

• ​Invested (Still In progress)
• ​Open an Autobiography​
• ​Wild at Heart (physically reading and meeting with some guys to talk about this book)

Open an Autobiography was quite possibly the longest book I have ever read or listened to in my life, but it was great. I was encouraged to read this book from a friend and fellow reader.

The book is about Andre Agassi and his life. Funny enough I followed tennis a lot during my childhood despite never really playing. I loved watching Agassi, Sampras, Chang, Becker, etc. on the USA network if I remember right. So I really enjoyed the book and the stories that Andre Agassi had to share. I don’t usually read biographies but this book was highly engaging and a great read.

📺What I’m watching this month:

• HBO Max, Netflix, & Sports

Not too much has changed over the last month as we have been watching HBO Max and a little bit of Netflix. I’m still watching my beloved Wisconsin sports teams have roller coaster rides of a season with the Packers ending what I thought surely was a Super Bowl team and my Milwaukee Bucks struggle to figure out if they are the best team in the East.

I’ve been able to dabble a little Syracuse Orange basketball as well because I don’t know how long good old Jimmy Boeheim is going to be on the sidelines as a coach. My prediction is when his son is done playing he will retire, so only 2 more years got to enjoy them.

🥕Looking Ahead🥕

This month will be focused on working on my Budget workshop that I plan putting together and finishing this month. My plan is for it to be the first thing you would see when you come to Even Steven Money. Should be fun to create as I believe my beautiful wife will be helping me with editing the videos.

🏋Health and Fitness🏋​

Health and fitness is always on the mind as I just completed my last days of #DryJanuary for the first time. In past years this may have been difficult but this year it was very easy and hardly even noticed. I will say I did have some refreshing Athletic Brewing Company N/A beer which I’m still a pretty big fan of. I even emailed them earlier in the year asking if I could be an investor. Unfortunately they didn’t respond. Not that I’m mad that JJ Watt was able to invest and not me.

Anyways I’m excited to start attending my local gym on a regular basis and work on some of the goals that I’ve created during January for the rest of the year. I’ll be stepping up my fitness game over the next 8 weeks as I have also recently purchased Mayhem Everyday Athlete programming as an added boost of motivation and guidance.

As I continue ahead this year it's important to remind everyone what I'm all about.

I’m a big believer in spending more time, energy, and money on what you truly love and value! For me that's my beautiful wife and close family members, travel, and health & fitness. I hope you are doing the same.

Until next month and the end of the new year my friends!

Insert Financial Professional Photo;)

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