#61 Structuring Your Finances & Subduing Over-Talkers

Welcome back!

Wanted to take a minute to pull back the curtain a little bit: part of growing a newsletter is figuring out the right way to market it.

We believe our content has been clear regarding our vision and values since Day 1, but we really hadn’t figured out the right way to articulate it until now. Here’s what we’ve come up with:

“On The Fly sources the best sh!t from across the internet to boost your productivity, elevate your brand, and fatten your wallet.”

Those are our three promises to you every week. Our three goals. Every bit of content we share aims to accomplish at least one of those, with all three present in every edition.

We feel like you’ve recognized the value in these goals. We ended 2023 after a full year of publications with 1,000 subscribers; 2024 is only three months old, and we’ve already almost DOUBLED our subs!

As always, thank you for your support along the way. If you know anyone that needs support - to boost their productivity, elevate their brand, or fatten their wallet - please pass along our website. We would love to have them as a part of our growing community.

Thanks again for reading!

Without further ado, our last edition for March 2024:

Here Are the Top 💎 ‘s This Week:

💰️ Why You Should Use the 50/30/20 Budget Rule

🙃 How to Deal With People Who Talk Too Much

👀 Two Pilots Making Major Moves

➕ Much. More.

Making Cents 💰️ 

Why You Should Follow the 50/30/20 Budget Rule

Short and Sweet: The 50/30/20 Budget Rule is a simple yet effective guideline that can transform your unconscious spending into a well-organized financial vehicle.

It ensures you cover your needs, enjoy your wants, and save for your future.

Why It Matters: Because in a world where financial stability often seems like a pipe dream, this 50/30/20 rule gives you both structure and hope.

Ask yourself this: without some sort of structure to your finances, how can you even begin to budget, let alone save?

💡 Let’s Get Specific: Breaking Down The 3 Main Factors to the 50/30/20 Rule.

• 👆️ Needs (50%): These are your must-haves, the non-negotiables to keep your life running. Think rent, groceries, utilities, and insurance. If it's essential for your basic survival and well-being, it falls into this half of your budget.

• ✌️ Wants (30%): This is your fun money, but remember, it's not a free-for-all. Wants include dining out, your Netflix subscription, weekend getaways, and that latte from your favorite coffee shop. It's about enjoying life without going overboard.

• 🤟 Savings (20%): The unsung hero of financial stability. This portion is dedicated to your future self. Emergency fund, retirement savings, or that down payment for a home. Anything earmarked to make your future life better goes here.
  

  Make Sense Cents? Fantastic - now let’s put it into practice…

🎥 Let’s Take Action: 4 Things You Can Do ASAP:

1. Track Your Spending: You. Need. To. Track. Before. You. Budget. Know where your money is going. Take pride in understanding where it goes. Use an app or a good ol' spreadsheet to track every penny for a month. Don’t be lazy, and don’t procrastinate. Start today, and give it your full attention. 

2. Categorize Your Expenses: Once you know where your money is going, divide your expenses into the 50/30/20 categories. Be honest with yourself about what's truly a need versus a want.
   
   We repeat: be honest with yourself about what’s truly a need versus a want.

3. Adjust and Trim: If you're spending 40% on wants and only 10% on savings, it's time to reallocate (you want to fatten your wallet, don’t you? This is a big part of it). Look for areas where you can cut back without feeling deprived. Maybe it's time to trade that premium streaming service for a more basic plan. You may have to make difficult decisions, but future-you will thank you.

4. Automate Your Savings: Make saving the easiest part of your budget by setting up automatic transfers to your savings account. If you don't see it, you're less likely to spend it. Call the bank and automate this. Set a reminder to do it during lunch.

Btw: Embracing the 50/30/20 rule doesn't mean you have to give up all the joys in your life. It's about making smarter choices and being organized with your finances. We recommend getting on this ASAP, before summer (a season of Wants) arrives.

Hustle Hub 📈 

• YOUR SUCCESS: Learn how to use LinkedIn to get noticed for future job opportunities, courtesy of an ex-Amazon recruiter.

• THEIR SUCCESS: The best opportunities aren’t always obvious. You need to look carefully, pay attention, be willing to find them under piles of…beer cans. Read about how four friends bought “Beer Can Island” for 63K and are now selling for more than $14 million.

• YOUR SUCCESS: Hustling is all about maximizing productivity. Here’s an interesting look at what has American productivity soaring in 2024.

Cool Communicator 😎 

🙃 Dealing With People Who Talk Too Much

Everyone knows someone who talks too much, but not everyone knows how to deal with it properly.

Instinctively we may want to avoid that person, or even tell them to shut up (hopefully in more polite terms), but what about when you can’t? What if it’s a colleague, or a supervisor, that you have to interact with on a regular basis?

A 2016 study resulted in six strategies that you can use to manage the most talkative people in your life - three focus on determining the cause of the over-talking, and three focus on damage control. (We don’t like one of the strategies, so the takeaways below focus on five.)

TL;DR Takeaways:

1. Provide emotional support - if you discern that the over-talking is the result of loneliness or trauma, listening to and supporting them can help in the long run.

2. Keep them on topic - some over-talking is the result of poor communication skills. In this scenario, do whatever you can to keep them from digressing. Maybe a question that brings them back to topic, or a contribution of your own that reminds them of what’s relevant.

3. Ease their nerves - nervousness can lead to over-talking, so what can you do to make the person feel more comfortable?

4. Limit without command - resist the urge to tell people to be quiet. How can you limit them without being insulting? Be more thoughtful and assertive with your contributions, redirect the conversation to another participant, or maybe even steer the conversation toward a new topic.
   

5. “Empathic Interruption” - when you must interrupt mid-sentence, make sure you do so in an understanding, non-insulting way. Humor is a great way to pull this off, but it could also be as simple as “I’m sorry, but…”

O.T.F O.F.T = ONE FINAL THOUGHT

If you’re non-confrontational, you might simply want to let the person keep talking, but that will only hurt you in the long run. Your time is valuable, and your patience is finite.

Trying to better understand the culprit and then developing the best strategy for “damage control” can work in tandem to both make your life easier and potentially better your relationship with the over-talker.

And remember: it’s possible they don’t know they’re doing it! If you’re able to bring it to their attention without insulting them, you’ll be the office hero!

Convo Starters 👍️ 

• Self-Interest: Talk about whether or not you would consider microdosing LSD to “expand consciousness” or using ayahuasca to eradicate fear.

• Human Interest: Talk about people in the Blue Zones and their “9 Rules of Longevity.”

• Artificial Interest: Talk about the AI that can predict your life story…including the ending.

Major Moves 🗞️ 

🛒 ALBERTSON’S

The grocery giant’s planned merger with rival Kroger’s is currently being blocked by the FTC. While the stores argue the merger will actually lower prices for consumers, the lawsuit blocking the merger argues otherwise.

Well, that hasn’t stopped either from trying to save their customers money on prescription drugs: “Albertson’s has joined Kroger in offering a new benefit to customers, courtesy of Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs.”

Cost Plus aims to drive down prescription drug prices through ethical and transparent pricing. Kroger’s has accepted the Cost Plus Card in their pharmacies for a while, and now Albertson’s will, too.

💰️ copilot

If you plan on putting this week’s Making Cents to good use, you might wanna visit the app store and download Copilot, a budgeting app primed to take over the hole in the market left by Mint’s demise. “The company grew more in the last four months than in the previous four years [and] was recently able to parlay that growth into a $6 million Series A.”

They plan to use the money to launch an Android app, since they are currently exclusive to iOS.

👀 autopilot

Two apps in a row with the word pilot in them? Even for a publication called On The Fly, this seems like a little much, but we simply couldn’t pass up sharing this particular investment app with you:

“Autopilot pulls trading data filed by members of Congress and allows users to copy their trades.”

SO: if you want to match Nancy Pelosi or Dan Crenshaw’s stock market success - up 45% and 41% respectively last year, they’re amazing investors, definitely no insider info or anything - you can now copy their trades with this app right here. Brilliant!

Before You Go…

What happened to March? I guess it’s true what they say - time flies when you’re making money and growing leaps and bounds with every edition of OTF.

(That is what they say, isn’t it? Anyway…)

Next week, we’ll be back with another edition that features new Expert Advice, some new Workin’ With AI tools, and a 2-DO for April you won’t want to miss. Last-minute tax tips, anyone?

See you then!

You are now On The Fly and In The Know.