9 Tiny Habits to Become Financially Literate in 2026

[00:01] financial literacy, the truth is is that you don't need a job in finance, nor do some actionable habits that you can stick to. In this video, I'm sharing with you nine easy tiny habits that you can start today. And most of these, if

[00:13] not all of these, will take less than 5 minutes per week. And if you're able to help you become more financially literate. Starting with tiny habit number one today, which is to figure out your true cost of time. So, I want you

[00:25] to take 5 minutes this week and understand what your actual hourly rate appears on your paycheck. In my 20s, I had a job in gaming pay me $60,000 per year and I was working 40-hour weeks. And since I would take 2 weeks of

[00:38] come out to about 50 weeks of working per year. When I calculated my hourly rate with these parameters, it was about $30 per hour. However, I also had to spent 10 minutes in the morning preparing for work at home. So, I think

[00:51] that adds about an extra hour per day. Not only that, my 60k per year was paid in terms of gross income. So, if I were to factor in my taxes, my true hourly rate after accounting for the commute and taxes came out to $20.88 per hour.

[01:04] That was my true hourly rate. Once you know your real rate, you want to use it differently. That $200 dinner I spent money on wasn't just $200. It was actually a representation of 9 to 10 hours of my actual working time. A

[01:18] $40,000 car in this case would be the equivalent of an entire year's worth of understand that time is the only finite constantly asking themselves, hey, is the following that I'm about to buy

[01:30] worth the x hours of my life? If you can reframe your spending this way and focus on your way to mastering financial start to understand the relationship between your time and money. So, if you

[01:43] First, calculate your after tax take-home pay. Then, add up all of your work hours. So, if you work 50 weeks a year at 40 hours per week, that's about overtime hours, time you spend

[01:56] take-home pay by your total work hours. For me, that equation was $47,000 as the numerator, which was my $60,000 after tax, divided by $2250, which came out to $20.88 per hour. If you're comfortable with sharing your true cost of time, let

[02:11] hear from you. Tiny habit number two today is to automate your savings before shown that those who are automatic savers usually hit or exceed their manual savers. So those that don't automate their savings. And from a

[02:26] even more sense. Like if and when you get paid, a small percentage gets savings goals, you won't be tempted to spend that money. This tiny habit will take 5 to 10 minutes at most to set up for the entire year. And you can either

[02:40] employer or you can simply set up an automatic transfer in your own online get paid once a month on the 21st. And when that happens, the money gets deposited to my checking account. All of my usual spending for that month will

[02:53] that includes bills, necessities, and discretionary spending. But a small investment account automatically for the future. If you can automate at least 10% of your take-home pay into your savings or investment accounts, you're going to

[03:07] be way ahead of most Americans. I think it's even better and more beneficial for you if you can increase your savings rate to 15% or even 20%. The third tiny habit you need to start implementing as soon as possible is what I call the

[03:19] same day every month for your check-in. And I do this at the end of every month for me, but you can do it on the 15th, the 22nd, the 3rd, whichever day you check-in, this is where you're going to review all of your spending and income

[03:33] from the previous month. And you want to categorize your expenses by needs, graphic here that your needs should make up roughly 50% of your budget. Things transportation, and insurance. There's 30% that should be your fun bucket. So,

[03:48] this will be your entertainment, your shopping, dining out, etc. And then the last remaining 20% should be for your financial goals. This is known as the 5030 20 rule. And we basically want to figure out if our expenses are fitting

[04:00] within this budgeting guideline. Now, here's an example. You actually might find that your needs make up 58% of your budget. Your savings is around 15% and the wants is 26%. So what happens when your percentages are a little bit off

[04:13] little bit too much on the needs category and not saving enough. So what needs that we can decrease to shift it line item is rent, which is going to be really hard to change, especially if

[04:26] lease. So, I don't think you can change that too quickly, but that is something even changing in the future. I also think that the car payment is pretty rigid and not negotiable because you're usually locked into a pretty long term.

[04:39] However, if we look at your insurance, utilities, groceries, cell phone, and negotiated with a quick call. If you can make a call and ask a utility provider, for example, hey, the current service I'm using is not really within my

[04:51] More often than not, you can actually lower your bill, even if it's just 10 or maybe even $20 per month. And for example, even $10 a month in savings on a utility bill will still amount to over $120 per year. So you can stack up these

[05:05] that. Now, if you are in a higher cost of living area, so let's say you live in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Miami, something like that, then maybe your little bit higher than the prescribed 50 3020 at all times. I think that's okay,

[05:19] that if you are spending more on your needs, you're just not sacrificing a would say do this monthly check-in, make a sheet like the one that I just showed you as an example, and you will be a lot more financially literate in just a few

[05:32] number four is to learn the difference between assets and liabilities in your life. Every single thing you spend money on falls into two categories. It either puts money into your pocket over time or it takes money out of your pocket over

[05:45] time. So, let me give you a perfect example. A car is a liability. Every terms of insurance, gas, maintenance, and even depreciation. It's a 10, 30, 50, 70, even upwards of $100,000 investment that really just isn't an

[05:59] investment. It takes money out of your pocket like it's its job because 99% of cars depreciate over time. Another liability is something as simple as a obligation for you to pay your money to another party. Now, instead, let's think

[06:12] property. Those generate rental income every single month and money flows into investment. That's what's known as an asset. So, another example of an asset could be a dividend paying stock. Not only should it appreciate over time, it

[06:26] for owning it. So, here's what you can do before any major purchase. I would ask yourself the simple question, will this put money into my pocket or will it money out, you want to ask yourself if it's still within your budget. And if it

[06:40] good use of your money overall. Just doing this exercise over the course of a everything. your phone, your clothes, your house, everything becomes a building wealth or just spending money. Number five is to track your net worth

[06:55] time. Just like dieting or going to the gym, if you start tracking what you are every day, you have a natural awareness about you that will help you in the long finance. So, you want to calculate your net worth because you'll have this

[07:09] awareness about you. So, to calculate that, you want to add up all of your liabilities. And that's your net worth. So, if you had a house worth 100K investing in bank balances worth 25K, but you owe 30K on your car, then your

[07:23] net worth is technically 100K for the house plus 25K for the balances minus 30K for the car for a total of $95,000. I personally used to enjoy tracking my net worth on a month-to-month basis. But what I found recently was that because a

[07:36] stocks, that when the stock market is down 10%, for example, my net worth would tank. And I don't think that's an accurate representation of how well I tracking it once a quarter is probably the healthier thing to do and a

[07:49] longerterm view of how you should look at your net worth. Here's a table of median net worth in America by age by empower. And these are a bit low in my double these numbers on this channel. I've also created this free net worth

[08:02] right here. And you can adjust the columns as you see fit. This tracker you just input all of your assets and your liabilities, it will calculate your description down below for that so you can start tracking your net worth for

[08:17] number six today is really easy. It's to negotiate one bill or service fee every single quarter. I'm assuming one call will take you about 60 minutes. So, if quarter, we're still coming in just under 5 minutes per week on average. To

[08:32] that feel too high. Now, this is a little bit subjective. You're going to There's got to be at least one bill that gives you the feeling that you're want to do is simply call them during business hours and use the simple

[08:46] been a loyal customer for 5 years, but outside of my budget." Then perhaps mention that you've been looking at for a little bit cheaper. And ask them if they have any options to lower your

[08:59] I shared with you, this generally does lead to at least a little bit of a threaten to cancel immediately. You want to give them a chance to solve your first no for an answer. If you do get a no, you might want to call back one or

[09:14] representative because different representatives can do different things. Or you can just try to get transferred to a retention or loyalty department. companies would rather keep you as a customer even if it's just for a little

[09:27] customer entirely outright because that's the economics of business. It's customer. So, I would use that to your advantage. Tiny habit number seven today that you can work on is to spend money investing in yourself and in your own

[09:40] skills. You are the most valuable financial assets, not stocks, not real even though he will say at every Christmas dinner that it's worth more that credit. The average American will earn somewhere between $2 to $3 million

[09:54] lifetime. So, if you can just increase your earning potential by 10% through your skills, that's an extra $200 to $300,000 over your career. That could be comfortably and just getting by. The best part about learning and improving

[10:08] any job in the future. Even if the economy crashes and everyone's out of a job, you still have that skill and that knowledge. I personally myself did not enjoy spending money on courses and continuing education when I was in my

[10:21] of money. Like why would I pay someone a bunch of money to learn something that I sometimes that might be the case. It might be better for you to learn things through it yourself. But I assume if you're working a full-time job or if you

[10:35] worth your time to just buy the education, learn the skills, and then number eight today is to start to invest as early as possible. There's a really good article by financial blogger of Dollars and Data, and it's titled Go Big

[10:49] and Stop. In this article, you will find this simple graph, and there's a lot of beauty in the simplicity of this. The blue line represents someone who starts their career, and then never saves again. while the other person, the black

[11:01] line, they wait 10 years, but then they save every single year for the next 30 years after that. Assuming that they both save $10,000 a year and earn 7% on their money, the person in blue still ends up with more money overall at the

[11:14] end of 40 years. The start early person contributes $100,000 total compared to $300,000 for the person who starts later. So immediately right there, $200,000 less invested overall for the person who starts early. the early

[11:26] starters ending balance is going to be over $1.125 million and the person who started later still ends up with less money even though they contributed way early, just start small with whatever you have. If you're at a point in life

[11:40] you didn't start earlier, just remember that the best time to start investing and saving, of course, is yes, the age of 18, but the next best time is right now. Even if it's just $50 a month or $100 a month, if you're able to set

[11:53] better to get the ball rolling now rather than later. You can just invest overall market. Those typically average about 8 to 10% per year. And you don't try to time the market. You just want to buy, hold, and let compound interest

[12:08] education on this, I have another video I will link down below and at the end screen of this video. All right, habit can easily implement into your life, is to actually celebrate your financial

[12:21] wins, no matter how big or small they are. If you don't celebrate your wins sometimes you might actually give up on the entire journey altogether. It's kind of like playing a video game with like no save points, no achievements, no new

[12:34] eventually ends and is a constant grind. If that was a game that I was playing, I There would be no feedback on how well I'm doing or that I'm making any like I'm making progress, I might just quit the game altogether. So, for your

[12:48] is to create specific rewards celebrating different milestones. Let's say you want to celebrate your first $1,000 saved or $5,000 saved, or maybe it's $100,000 saved, or you hit a savings goal of 20% for that month. At

[13:01] something that you think you deserve. So, perhaps it's a sushi dinner where you don't look at the menu prices, or it's a nice bag, or maybe a new watch. effort because doing so will wire your brain in a way where it's more fun to

[13:14] self. Financial literacy is kind of like, forgive my running analogy here, for a long time. You need to fuel properly and you need to celebrate those long run milestones. I remember the first time I ran 10 miles, then 12, then

[13:28] 15, and finally 20 miles in practice. I celebrated those with a really big meal at the end of every single one of them. All those runs gave me the confidence to it came to race day. I wasn't expecting to be able to run a marathon from day

[13:40] financial journey with that marathon mindset of just knowing that you're not when you're actually going to build lasting wealth and financial literacy. in the comments and please check out my next video here on how to invest in

[13:54] 2026, especially if you're a beginner. As always, thank you for being here for another video. I'll see you guys in that video or a future one on the channel. All right, peace. [Music]