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On this episode of the Personal Finance podcast, is a $100,000 income still enough in 2026? What's up everybody and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host Andrew, founder of MasterMoney.co and today on the Personal Finance podcast we're going to be diving into is a 100,000 doll become enough in 2026. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money newsletter by going to MasterMoney co/newsletter. And don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast player. Now today we're going to be diving in to the question is a $100,000 income in 2026? Where we have seen so many people talking about how they are living paycheck to paycheck while having a $100,000 income. So in this episode we're going to be talking through a number of different things. First, I'm going to be diving into some of the statistics. This is going to be a stats heavy episode of what is going on with incomes right now. We're going to talk about the rise in cost of living over the course of the last couple of years. We're going to be talking about what a $100,000 income is in comparison to the rest of the many people actually make a $100,000 income. Plus I'm going to give some examples and break down what this actually looks like. What is a $100,000 income after taxes? We're going to go into location and how your location matters with this. And in addition, I'm going to tell high earners or anybody who makes over $100,000 per year, I'm going to tell you exactly what to do with those dollars and how to break the paycheck to paycheck cycle. If you are a high earner but still living paycheck to paycheck, this is one of those episodes that I think can bring tremendous value to most of you out there, even if you don hundred thousand dollars per year. Yet I want you to hear these stats because there's gonna be a ton of takeaways that you are going to have. As we talk through this episode and before we dive in, one of the questions that I think a lot of people have is why do I feel so broke if I make a hundred thousand dollars per year? Why do I feel Like I am not earning enough in absolute terms. Well, the cost of living has been rising faster than it has in any other decade so far. And so this is one of those areas that I think most people need to focus on. A lot of the pressures that are happening in the rising cost. So when we look at rents and home prices, they are growing faster than they have in a very long period of time. From 1985 to 2025, we have seen prices climb about 415%, while incomes only rose about 255%. So some people are feeling squeezed. They're feeling the pressure because their income is not rising at the same pace as the cost of housing. And from 2019 to 2025, we have seen rent inflation in many markets rising more than 6% per year compared to this slower wage growth that we're having. And median monthly costs for homeowners with a mortgage rose about $2,035 in 2025, which is up from $1,960 just a year before. Now also, we're seeing other things that we will dive deeper into. Like childcare is a big shock to a lot of people's budgets. And everyday essentials have been rising as well. Where we see food costs every single year, it seems like every time you go to the grocery store, the main essentials that you usually need are costing way more than they have in the previous years. And so for you out there who have a household income of $100,000 per year, that's who we are talking to. Maybe if you are single and you earn $100,000, or if you're married and earn $100,000, is this the place you want to be? See, when I was first starting out, $100,000 meant you made it. I remember thinking to myself, If I make $100,000 per year, I will never have to worry about money again. This, that I remember saying over and over and over again, this was the pinnacle of income for me because I was starting off making $30,000 per year. And I thought to myself, wow, $100,000 per year, that's going to get me whatever I want in life. But instead, because the rise of cost of living, because we're seeing a shift in these areas, it still can feel like you're getting squeezed. But I have news for you. I have hope for every single person out there who is making $100,000 or even less than $100,000 per year. You need to understand that this of money. And there are things that you can do while making this amount of money that can build a tremendous amount of wealth. In fact, in Master Money Academy, we have people making a lot less than $100,000 per year and building a tremendous amount of wealth. And we have people making more than $100,000 a year who are absolutely crushing it as well. And so I want you to note that there is hope for you, that there is a future in financial freedom. I want you to know that anybody in this world can build wealth, but you have to know the steps that you need to take in order to do this. So if you've been sitting there and saying to yourself, I don't know, do next, this episode is for you. We're going to help you through this process, and I'm going to give you some helpful stats. I want you to understand some of the stats that we're going to go through in this episode. The details matter, and these details matter because you need to know which areas of your budgets are rising the fastest so that you can make adjustments based on that, because every single person here needs to be tracking what their burn rate is on a yearly basis so you can understand what the difference is year over year. And so we're going to be talking about that in this episode and why this is really, really important. Inflation is the silent killer of wealth building, and we see inflation rising at some really rapid rates over the course of the last five years. Ever since COVID 19, we have seen inflation shifting the way that we think about our dollars and the way that we think about money. And so, as we begin, I want you to note all of these different areas and why this is so important of an episode to understand. So if that's something you're into and you're ready to dive deeper into this without further ado, let's get into it. So you've heard me talk about BILT as the loyalty program that allows you to earn points on rent wherever you live. And they just leveled up even more. As of 2026, homeowners can also earn up to 1.25x points on their mortgage payments. This is thanks to Bilt's three new credit cards, the Palladium card, the Obsidian card, and the Blue card. 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All right, so first, what we're going to be talking about is how valuable is $100,000 actually? Like, what is the average salary in the US currently right now and what does that look like in comparison to the median income? So over the course of the last year, the median U.S. household income was about $83,600, meaning half of households earned more than $83,600 and half of households earned less than $83,600. So earning $100,000 per year puts you roughly above the 57th percentile of households overall. Not the top, but you're also not the average. Now, for individual earners, a salary of $100,000 is, well, individual income, which is about $53,010 over the course of the last year, but still far from the top of the 1% threshold. So what does a comfortable income look like? This is the big question I think a lot of us have that we want to understand. Well A study was done in 2025 that found that to live comfortably as a single adult, you often need more than $124,000 in a given year. Now, there's going to be a number of different factors that matter about this. I disagree with this number in most locations. But this is what the data is coming back and saying. And for a family of four, I think this is outrageous. Is $295,000 in a given year, which is well above this hundred thousand dollar per year number. But is this actually true? Is this a number that actually makes sense, or is this a number that really is just a location dependent? I mean, if you live in the middle of New York City, is that where that number needs to be? Or is this something that is across the board? Most people need to earn more money. I'm going to tell you right now, you don't need $300,000 per year. As a family of four, you can get by and you can do a lot with a lot less. Now, the purchasing power of $100,000 has eroded over the course of the last couple of years. Adjusted for inflation, analysts point out that $100,000 today buys roughly the same as $54,000 did back in the year 2000. And so this is something that we need to note because the real value of a salary has shrunk over time. And so we need to note exactly where we are now. Other calculations are showing that if you made $100,000 in 2020, this is the same purchasing power is about $125,000 in 2026. And so we are seeing that this is where inflation is eating away at your buying power. So why does this matter? Why is this making you feel uncomfortable in terms of how much you are making and how it's not translating to your bottom line and you having extra money over time? Well, you first need to have enough after taxes for your essentials. You need to make sure that you can cover your baseline costs. Your needs need to be covered in order for you to get to a point in time where you feel a little bit more comfortable with your money. Your psychology behind all of this is very, very important. And for you to feel comfortable with your money, all those essentials need to be taken care of. Enough margin for savings and emergency funds is going to be the second thing that you need. So you need to have a little cash left over so you can build in that protection and reduce your stress around money, reduce your anx anxiety around money. For those of you out there right now, we're making $100,000 per year or making maybe you're even making less than that if you feel stressed or anxious about money. A lot of times this happens due to you not having enough cash on hand. And so we need to focus our time and energy to make sure we have enough cash on hand, but also we need to have enough income coming in to cover the rising cost of living as we see this going up every single day year. And so this is one of those areas where a hundred thousand dollars may not buy as much as it did over two decades ago, but this is something that we can make sure that we take some of the excess and we start to invest some of those extra dollars. Now, I want you to remember this throughout this episode because wealth building is a very, very simple formula. It means you spend less than you make and you invest the difference. That's all you have to do in order to be able to build wealth. And so we all need to get on the same page when it comes to this. But really, I want to dive deeper. 100k isn't what it used to be. Why is that? And what is the rising cost of living? What are some of those areas that we need to make sure that we understand the rising cost of living and what is happening here? Number one is housing. This is the biggest overall pressure that most people are feeling when it comes to their budget, is they are feeling the pressure of housing and need to understand that US Home prices have risen about three to four times faster than median incomes. And so this is a very important metric that we need to know, because a 4 affordability is at an all time low for most people. This is why Gen Z and the millennial generation are feeling this pressure when it comes to housing, where baby boomers did not have the same exact pressure as some of the younger generations do. Now, baby boomers out there saying that, yeah, we had a lot of things happen to us as well. Sure, that is completely fine that you did. But this is the rising rate of housing is absolutely astronomical in comparison to what those income levels were. Well, how do we fix this as a country? How do we make sure that housing prices go down? Well, the biggest thing that we can do is we can build more housing because we have a supply problem and we have a really high demand, but really low supply. We need to make sure that we build more housing. If you build more housing, this is gonna reduce the cost of housing over time and create a really, really helpful impact for most people. But the rising cost and interest rates is another Big thing. If you have the same exact mortgage at a 2 1/2% interest rate versus 1 at a 7% interest rate, you're paying thousands and thousands more every single year for the same exact house. And so these interest rates are a big, big impact as we see them come down here in 2026. We saw those interest rates getting reduced in late 2025. And in 2026, we are anticipating a few more cuts coming. This is going to be something that could be helpful for some people as well. But let's talk about rent costs, because that's going and buying a house. But what about the folks who can't buy a house yet because the rising cost. Well, what is the cost of rent look like? Well, rental costs surge in the early 2000 and twenties, with some markets seeing double digit percentage rent increases year over year. Now, here's the interesting thing. There are markets like Austin, Texas, for example, that are actually seeing the rent prices go down over the course of the last couple of months. And we are seeing a shift in the market when it comes to rents. So some people out there will say, oh, you need to invest in real estate because rents go up forever. That is not always the case. And you need to understand that, sure, over long periods of time, over big decade chunks, typically rents will go up for real estate investors, but in the short run, they could go up and come back down. And when we see them come back down and normalize because of competition or because there are less people and less demand in a specific area, that is where you will maybe see a shift. And so we are starting to see that shift in some of these markets that were completely overpriced. And it's going to be interesting to watch over the course of the next year to see if rents do come down. Because in most markets, if you run total cost of ownership, meaning if you have an understanding of how much it costs to live in that house outside of just your rent or your mortgage payment. But in addition, if you have a mortgage payment, what does it cost for the maintenance? What does insurance cost? What are the costs associated with repairs? All of those different things added up is actually your total cost of ownership. And once you understand that, then you could do a buy versus rent calculation to see which one is going to be the best overall solution solution for you. You also need to make sure that you factor in opportunity, cost of owning that home, and some of those other metrics that we need to be looking at. Now, if you're looking for a free total cost of ownership, Calculator, just go to MasterMoney Co Resources and we have that resource for you there if you are looking for this. But even as we look at all this, rents are still way higher than pre pandemic levels. And so we need to make sure that we understand that housing is not just more expensive, it consumes a huge portion of people's budgets. And if you live in a big city or you live in an area with high cost of living and really high rents, this can be something that can be detrimental to your finances. Because if you're spending more than 30% of your income on housing, you are going to feel house poor. You are not going to feel like you have much money left over every single month. And so your location does depend on that. Number two is childcare. So childcare is a major part, part of people's budgets. If you have young kids and you have them in this season of being in childcare, it can be a huge, huge expense for you. Now people may be saying, well if have kids, maybe you're only going to have them in child care for a couple of years, sure, that is completely fine. But if you have multiple kids, you are paying for child care for up to a decade. So I have three kids, for example. Now let me give you this example here. As my first son, my oldest son is 7 years old, he is in second grade now. My middle child is going to go to kindergarten and then our youngest is going to be starting preschool again. So we have this continuous cycle that we are paying for childcare during this time frame. And so this can last all the way up to a decade, even more depending on how many kids you have. And so this is one of those areas where a lot of folks are paying low to mid five figures on child care every single year. For those of you out there listening right now who have to pay child care, you are saying, hey man, nobody ever talks about this expense, but this could be one of your largest expenses and largest line items in your budget every single year. This is one of those things that as the cost of daycare goes up, up, because they have to pay the employees more, because the cost of insurance is rising, because the cost of rent is rising, all of these things are causing everything else to come up as well. And so the cost of daycare is going up and we have to try to keep up with this year in and year out. And this is one of those areas that is really, really important to make sure that you're not frugal on. Don't just go out and pick the cheapest daycare you want to make sure your kids have the best possible care and are under the best, best supervision overall. Number three, this is a big one is health care. Health care is a huge portion of GDP. In fact, right now healthcare is about 20% of the US GDP and that spending is continuously rising every single year. I just got back a quote for my family's healthcare as a business owner and my jaw dropped at how expensive it is getting right now. If I told you how much that I am paying in healthcare, I am paying more on a monthly basis than I made in my entry level job every single month. Month. This is one of those areas where the cost of healthcare is rising and it is rising at a 5 to 7% rate every single year. And if we don't get a hold of this or get a grasp on this, this could become a huge, huge problem. And so we got to make sure that we understand which direction healthcare is going. Now. How do you combat against some of these high costs? It's not real easy to do. There's not much that is in your control currently. And so we have to make sure that we are doing things like contributing to an HSA if we have a high deductible health plan or making sure we have enough coverage so that in those seasons of life where we know we are going to need more health care, we have enough coverage in place. But health cost inflation is a really, really big thing that we need to monitor. And especially for folks out there who are retirees who know that they're going to be spending more on healthcare in their golden years, we just have to make sure that we are looking at this more and more over time. Groceries and food. This is one that every time you go to the grocery store, every single week, you're reminded at the cost of and the increase of costs at the grocery store. And this is one that is pretty frustrating for most people. But since 2020 we have seen a 20 to 25% increase in the cost of groceries. So let's just think about this for a second. We're looking at this. Things like meat and dairy and fruits and vegetables have all seen above average price increases over the same exact period. And unlike rent or mortgage, you can't just skip groceries. This isn't something that where you can make a skip on. So all of these we're talking about here are the essentials. These are your baseline cost that need to be covered in the price of each and every single one is increasing. So if you feel like $100,000 just isn't going as far as it used to. It's because you're being squeezed at every single angle. And this is where I want you to understand there is still hope here. But we just need to note where all of this is happening now. Energy and utilities. A lot of you out there might realize, oh, my goodness, my power bill is going up every single month, and I have no idea why. Energy and utilities are getting more and more expensive, and there are seasonal spikes in electricity for us in Florida, we get these huge spikes in electricity in the summertime, where we're seeing a big difference. Or if you're somewhere where it gets really cold in the winter, you're seeing a big spike during those winter months because you're trying to heat. And all of this stuff has continuously gone up. AI data centers are causing this to go up. And there's a number of other factors where we have done videos on social media and those videos have gone completely viral just talking about the increased cost of what we are seeing when it comes to electricity and what we are seeing with the cost of electricity. You can do all these different things to help try to reduce those costs, but really, these costs have been rising every single year for people. College and tuition. This is another big area where we have seen a rise in college and tuition over the course of the last couple of years. And from 2000 to 2022, the cost of college and tuition rose steady 60% during that time frame. 60% where, guess what? We're looking at a situation where if the cost of college keeps rising, the ROI of how much you can make right out of college will not be worth the cost of entry to get into college. And so we have to rethink and be strategic about why and when we go to college and where we go to college. If you're going to a private university and you're not getting grants and scholarships and you're paying $70,000 per year, well, you better make sure that the job you get has a high enough ROI to pay off those student loans, or you could be paying them off for the rest of your life. Whereas if you go to community college for two years, or you do AP classes in high school, or you make sure that you get enough covered, this can be an area that can be truly, truly beneficial for a lot of people. Because this rising cost of college is now rising at a 5 to 6% rate every single year, year over year. And so we have to question this now. Now is the cost of entry of Getting into college worth what you actually earn after college, for some it's not gonna be worth it. For others it could be worth it. And you have to think about that as we go through this. So this is one of those areas to also watch out for as we go through this. So what does all this mean? We're talking about these rising costs, but what does all this stuff mean? That means more money is going to housing, more money is going to essentials, more money is going to mandatory costs like taxes and healthcare, and less is left for savings or discretionary spending or even margin to help you build wealth. And so when we look at these rising costs, we need to figure out what a hundred thousand dollars looks like. So let's look at an example of $100,000. Let's see what a concrete example of someone making $100,000 per year looks like so that we can see really what the take home pay is. Now your take home pay is going to depend on where you live and what state you live in. But I want to give you this example that a single earner with a standard tax withholding can expect if they make $100,000 per year to land somewhere between having 70,000 to $75,000 after taxes. And so let's give an example right here. Let's say you make $100,000 per year and you live in an urban area, an urban metro area, and your net take home pay is $72,000 per year. And let's say you rent a one bedroom apartment, you're single, you rent this one bedroom apartment and it's $1,800 per month. Your utilities are $170 per month. Your groceries come out to $450 per month, month. And you can see on the screen here we have transportation at 450, we have health care at 300. Taxes and payroll costs are withheld already. And then we have entertainment and eating out at 300, savings and retirement at 600, emergency fund at 300 and miscellaneous phone, gym and clothes at $230. Every single month left over, you're going to have about a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars per month that you can utilize to build savings. But you can have some other discretionary margin as well. Now for those of you out there who are like, well, my budget's way higher than that. This is just an example, but I'm showing you an example of your net take home pay at $72,000. This is not really a ton left over every single month that you have to cover all the other expenses that could be popping up. Now let's look at a family of four, for example. Let's say a family of four, their household income is a hundred thousand dollars and so their net take home pay comes out to $75,000. And they have a mortgage or they rent, rent for $2,400 per month. That's pretty much a standard mortgage rate in a lot of different areas across the country. And so maybe you live in New York City and it's way more than that. That's not for you. I'm just giving an example of a family of four living in a moderate cost area. Childcare with two kids could be 1200 bucks a month, which is right around the standard rate. If you have two kids, you could be paying a lot more than that. In your area you could be paying a lot less. But with two kids, we're being conservative here and looking at 1200 bucks a month. Month utilities at 300, groceries at 800. I think that's low. Car insurance and gas at 700 and health care premiums out of pocket at $500 per month. Retirement savings at 800 bucks in emergency buffer at $300. So leftover in this scenario right here is negative 300 to $200 per month. I mean, you have a really fine line. Sure they're covering some of the retirement savings, they're covering their emergency fund fund, but you have a fine line of how much is left over for you to do. Watch out, let's go on a vacation, do something else. And so this is one of those things where you got to see this family is either breaking even or they're even slightly negative when we look at this. Now let's look at somebody in an expensive area and let's look at someone who has higher cost of living because this is where $100,000 doesn't stretch as far. Let's say you make $100,000 per year, your net take home pay is $75,000 and you have a mortgage in a high cost region which is $3200 per month. Your childcare or after school care is $1400 per month and your utilities and Internet is about $350 per month. Let's say you have car plus insurance plus commuting costs is about $800 per month and your groceries are right around $850 per month. You got healthcare at 600, savings at 800 and miscellaneous expenses at $400. Now this is the example I want you to see. Leftover you could have anywhere from negative $1,000 to $1,200 per month. This, my friends, is why people in high cost of living areas really are going to feel strapped or stretched when it comes to making $100,000 per year. Because if you live in a high cost of living area, it's really not going to get you far enough compared to a lower cost of living area. So it's very, very important that we make sure that we are on top of our wealth, we are on top of our dollars and on top of our money. So we're going to talk about that next. We're going to talk about your location, some of the areas where a hundred thousand dollars won't stretch very far based on data, and we're going to the areas where it will stretch the farthest based on data as well. We're going to dive into that next Billion dollar investors don't typically park their cash in high yield savings accounts. 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The Pro's most trusted app based on the August 2025 proprietary survey. Over 500k new listings every month based on average new for sale and rental listings from July 2004 to June 2025. So depending on where you live, you can see high cost of living really eating into your salary. And for a lot of folks out there, a hundred thousand dollars in New York City is really not going to stretch you that far. Or a hundred thousand dollars in San Francisco is really not going to get you that much. Where you're going to have to earn more, especially if you have a family that you have to support. So housing and rent is going to eat up a huge portion of this. And property taxes and insurance could also be higher. Plus daycare, school options. All of those different things are going to be way more expensive. In addition, a lot of these high cost of living areas are also going to have higher income taxes. You're going to be paying more income taxes. When we're looking at New York or California or some of these other areas, we need to understand that taxes play a huge role in how far we can stretch our dollars. So this is a study done by LendingTree, but this is six figures in broke, where it's least common to see someone making six figures and feel broke. So number one is McAllister, Texas. Number two is Little Rock, Arkansas. Three is El Paso, Texas. Four is Jackson, Mississippi. You can see five is Toledo, Ohio. And you can go down this list and see the rest of those are going to be just really low cost of living states where conversely, if we look at six figures in broke, where it's most common to feel broke and make six figures, you see San Jose, California, San Francisco, California, Boston, Massachusetts, Honolulu, Hawaii, Oakland, California, Washington, D.C. louisiana, San Diego, Seattle and New York. So these are the areas where we know the cost of living is significantly higher and $100,000 is not going to stretch as far. Now, ironically, these states also have higher taxes. Those taxes are going to eat into your amount of earning power and how far those dollars will stretch. Stretch. And so this is where it really is important to think through. Well, is my location. Okay, the first thing I want you to think through is if you're in a high cost of living area and you're trying to decide, should I stay here, should I go? There's a bunch of questions I want you to ask yourself. First is lower cost locations are going to buy you a couple different things. First is lower housing costs. Your housing costs will go down if you move locations and especially if you could do something like GEO arbitrage, which we will talk about a second. Second, you will have lower child care costs in some of these different areas. You will have lower taxes in some specific states like taxes in Florida in comparison to taxes in New York. Big, big difference. You could have shorter commutes depending on where you are commuting right now, which means you have more time back that you could spend on increasing your income. Now, GEO arbitrage is something that you could do because it doesn't mean that you always have to move long distance. Sometimes you could just move to the suburbs inside of the city and your cost of living could go down, meaning your at least your housing cost goes down. And your commuting costs could be a bit different depending on how you set up your situation. Secondly is there could be a nearby town that just has lower rent prices and can reduce some of those overall costs. You could also do remote work in a lower cost region. So if you're coming from a higher cost region and they're allowing you to do remote work, you can move to a lower cost region and do some geo arbitrage that way. And you can do some seasonal relocation if that makes sense for your specific situation. Now, when does relocation make sense? One, if you have no ties to that area and you are really struggling to get by in that area. That is number one. One. Number two is if housing is eating above 35% of your income, you need to keep all of your housing costs below 30% of your income. But if it's rising above 35% of your income, that's where we're going to have to rethink how we're thinking about this. If child care and housing both are eating over 50% of your income, that is another reason that we need to consider this. If health care or insurance costs are just way too high for you to be able to afford it, or if you're saving too little despite a solid income, this could be another reason that you want to leave that location. Now, let me tell you this right now. Now, there is not any reason in this world, if your family is there and your roots are in a specific location, for you to leave that location. If you try to figure it out, you just need to figure it out. Because if your family is there, it's not worth sacrificing time with your family for money. It really is not. But you also need to make sure you have the ability to build wealth. So maybe we need to focus on increasing our income or developing some of those skills that are going to help us do this. And the other thing I want you to note is that moving isn't the silver bullet. This isn't something that is just going to help you automatically. You still have to have systems in place, place when you do move for saving or investing or automating your finances. All of these need to happen in order for this to make sense. Because if you move and it doesn't make any sense, well, what is the point of even doing that? You have to have a system in place for all of this to make sense. Now here is something we're seeing, is that the middle class dream is starting to disappear for some people where median U. S Household net worth is lower for most people than expected, about $135,000 in some of the most recent estimates, Estimates based on the federal reserve consumer survey. And the wealth gap between the top earners and the middle class is continuing to become greater. And so this is causing more people to feel like 100k isn't enough and there's a fear of falling behind. I think a lot of people out there need to understand that they have this thing where they are doing what is called the comparison trap, where there's always going to be somebody making more than you. There's always going to be somebody doing better than you. There is always going to be someone who has the nicer quality car or the nicer house. And so we see people, peers who have the bigger house or peers who have the nicer car or social media highlight reels of people who are just doing things, going on these grand vacations that we are not going on. That is one of those areas where if you start to compare yourself to other people, it is going to cause your lifestyle to inflate. You will spend more of your hard earned dollars on things you don't truly care about just to impress people you don't care about. And instead, what I want you to do is make make sure that you understand that this is happening. Because comparison is something that is a trap. It is going to trap you in certain situations that I do not want you to get trapped in. Instead, we need to make sure that we are focused on wealth building. If financial freedom is your ultimate goal, we need to avoid that comparison trap if at all possible. But here's the good news, because there is hope for us all. And I think most people are just so stressed out that they don't know what to do next. They don't know how to get themselves out of this situation. What you don't need is you don't need to earn double the amount you're earning right now. Sure, increasing your income, that's going to make a big, big difference. And if we can focus our time and energy on that, which we'll talk about in a second, we can really make a big dent. But number two is you don't need to hit it on some single stock and you don't need to catch up overnight. What actually works is building margin control and systems and putting these different things into place. And so people who feel financially secure today, they have systems in place that allow them to automate their money. They have control over exactly what's happening with their next dollar. They measure their progress by their net worth and understand what their savings rate is and understand where their dollars are going. And they're intentional about where their money goes before it even shows up into their bank account. And so what I'm going to talk about right now is for each and every person to understand exactly what to do next. What you need to do, if you feel this stress, if you feel this pain, pain, if you feel this anxiety, you need to understand what is most important as we go through this process. Right. Number one is you need to lock in the foundation, you need to lock in the Basics of what you need to be doing before you do anything fancy. And we need to first make sure that we focus on saving towards our emergency fund. Now, if you don't have an emergency fund in place, you need to have six months of expenses, ultimately is where we're going to land. So we have something called the 1, 3, 6 method, meaning you save one month of expenses, then you pay off high interest debt, then you save three months of expenses, then you start investing and saving more, and then you save six months of expenses all the way up to that timeframe where if you have six months of expenses saved up, you can protect yourself against a number of different things. But the biggest one and the biggest reason why we have six months is in case you lose your job. If you lose your job, you want to make sure that you still have enough cash on hand to cover you until you find the job that fits your lifestyle. So really, really important to make sure you do that. Number two is we want to make sure that we are automatically investing in our retirement accounts. So your 401k match is very, very important. And if your employer offers that 401k match, that is free money, we need to make sure that we are taking advantage of those employer matches. But also looking at things like a health savings account or an hsa, which is one of the best retirement accounts out there. We have an entire episode talking about the hsa. We want to look at the Roth ira that is going to be tax free growth, that is going to help you tremendously over the long run. We want to look at our 401k that is going to help us reduce our taxable income in that given year. And if you live in a state that has high income taxes, a 401k is a huge, huge benefit for you. And if you live in a state with high taxes, a 401k is a big, big deal. And so we want to make sure that we are looking and automatically saving and investing our dollars before anything else happens. Now, you can send this money automatically into your brokerage account account or your retirement accounts or your savings accounts to make sure that this is happening automatically before you spend everything else and then cap expenses where possible. So you can only cut back so much. But folks who are making a hundred thousand dollars per year, they probably have some room to cut back if you are living in a normal location. And so there's probably something where if you are spending as much as you're making, you can probably cut back in some different areas in order to reduce your Overall costs. Now, another thing that's becoming increasingly important that most people need to note is you need to, that you need to protect your financial life. Now, one of the ways to do this, and this is becoming even more important in 2026, is to do something like freeze your credit. But another big thing that you need to do is you need to remove your personal information from data brokers. Because there are data brokers out there who are taking your personal information and they are selling it to scammers, and they are selling it to people who you do not want to have your personal information. So if you Google your name, you Google your address, Google any of those different things, and you see your information pop up, that is a data broker website. And on that data broker website, you need to get that information removed as fast as you possibly can. Why? Because if someone gets a piece of your information, but they don't have the entire financial picture, then they can go and buy your information from these data brokers and get the entire picture. So we want to make sure that we get that information removed. And the best way to do this is with a service called Deletement. Now, Delete Me, I have been using for years and years now, and they have been one of the most amazing services that I have used over the course of the last couple of years because they go to these data brokers and get your personal information removed, and they follow up and make sure that information is continuously removed. And so this is one of those things that I have bought this for my entire family now. And it is one of those services that I truly, truly believe in. And we have been working with Deleteme for a very long time. So if you want 20, 20% off of Delete Me, just go to JoinDeleteMe.com Pfp20 and there you will find 20% off. And I cannot tell you or recommend this service enough. When you are looking to remove your personal information, please take your data seriously and take everything you do when it comes to your finances online very, very seriously. Delete Me is by far one of the best things to do. We need to avoid financial fraud. I have seen so many people now that have lost a lot of their money to crypto scams to do phishing scams. This is happening over and over again where I'm getting emails on a weekly basis now this happening. And so this is why we talk about this stuff so much, is because we want you to make sure that you are protected. So we talked about some of the things that you need to do up front, building that foundation with your emergency fund, building your foundation when it comes to your investments, building your financial protection plan, we also need to make sure that we're measuring the right things. We need to understand what our net worth is, and we need to measure that over time. Seeing that net worth go up over time is going to be very, very important, especially for the high earnings earner. So you need to see that net worth tick up year over year. And tracking it, at least on a yearly basis, if not a quarterly basis, can be very, very beneficial to anyone who is making over a hundred thousand dollars per year. Secondly is your savings rate. You need to make sure that you're tracking your savings rate and how much you're saving every single month. This is the catapult to helping you build wealth. The difference between your income and your expenses is how much you can save. And as that number grows, and as your income grows, you can save more, more and more of that income, which will be the way that you get to financial freedom. Next, let's talk about some of the areas to cut back. Because if you feel deprived and you feel like there are some areas that you really need to focus on, I'm going to give you some of the biggest levers that you can pull in order to make sure that you have some additional margin. So number one is housing. Housing is the biggest expense for most people out there. And so you have a couple of options here. If you realized, oh, shoot, I'm paying way more for housing than I should be, and this is one of those areas where I need to focus on, then there's a couple of things you could do. Number one is you could downsize. Now, this is easier said than done, but you could go and reduce your housing costs by downsizing or moving to a cheaper location. Number two is you could delay upgrades. So if you're spending a lot on your housing costs because you keep upgrading your house over and over again, you could delay some of those upgrades. Make sure you're saving in cash, and then doing that. Number three is you can look at refinancing your mortgage. If you got one of those mortgages at a 7 or 8% interest rate and you decide to refinance that mortgage, you can reduce your overall monthly payment significantly. You just have to run the numbers and make sure that the closing costs make sense in comparison to what the cost would be of what you're saving. And then obviously, like we talked about earlier in the show, you can move to a cheaper location which can dramatically lower your housing costs. So if you can lower your housing costs, you could save yourself anywhere from a few hundred dollars per month to a few thousand dollars per month, depending on how much you were spending. Spending number two is transportation. The ultimate wealth killer out there. If you're a person who went out and bought a brand new car and didn't realize that it depreciates at a 20 rate when you drive off the lot and about 30 to 40% in the first five years, and now you're realizing, oh, shoot, I got this huge car payment and I weigh overspent on a car. This is another one of those areas where we want to make sure that a, we're following the rules that we need to follow when it comes to cars. So we have a rule called the 12, 24, 12, 10 rule. And the way that this works is that you put 20 down on a car. This is for new cars, okay? And the reason why you do that is when you drive it off the lot, if you get in an accident or you total that car, you can either get gap insurance or put this 20 down. But if you total that car, you'd be underwater on that car. If you don't have 20 down, number two, four years or less on your auto loan, that's what we want you to have is four years or less. I don't want you making payments every single year for the rest of your life. Instead, I want you to have a shortened auto loan timeframe that helps you reduce the amount of time that you have a car payment number three. As you hear that 12 number. Now this is broken up into two parts. It is actually 7% goes towards your car payment. Nothing more than 7% of your income. And the other 5% goes towards repairs and maintenance. That's how we break that number up into 12%. And the last number is 10, meaning driving your car for 10 years or longer is what I want to see most people do. I have driven every single car that I've ever had had for over 10 years and I'm not going to ever stop doing that. That is one of the best ways to make sure that you have six years of no payments or longer, just by following these specific rules. And if you have six years of no payments, you can take those extra dollars and put them towards things that actually matter. But you want to make sure that you are not spending too much on transportation. That's the second area that most people spend too much on. Number three is insurance. So I want you to reshop your insurance annually. Especially right now, the Rising cost of insurance is absolutely crazy. Your car insurance you should be having or going to an independent broker to get that car insurance cost reduced. And every single year you need to position these independent brokers against each other to see who can find you the best rate. That is your ultimate goal. The same goes for your health insurance. The same goes for any other insurance that is out there. You need to reevaluate it on a yearly basis. Four is subscription making sure we reduce the cost of some of those subscriptions. Cut out the ones that you're not using. This should be logical, but most people just don't do it. And they have about a hundred dollars extra a month they're spending on subscriptions. Make sure you cut those off as much as possible. Especially my folks who are earning a hundred thousand dollars per year. Spending 20 bucks on a subscription feels like it's nothing. And it feels like it's more laborious to go cancel than it is to kind of keep this subscription. No, we need to make sure that we get rid of those as much as we possibly can. Can. Just doing these four things we just talked about here could reduce your overall expenses by 3 to $500 every single month. Let's talk about the other one though. The other big one is food. Food is one of the big areas that most people do not look at. And if you don't track how much you spend on food, you could be spending way more than you actually think. So this is eating out. And groceries where I have had most people look at their groceries and look at their grocery bill and say to themselves, I don't spend that much on groceries. And then they start to track and they're like, oh my goodness, I cannot believe how much I spend on groceries. It's one of those silent expenses that can creep up on you if you do not actually track it. And so those are some of the areas that I want you to focus on when you are looking to cut back. Cutting back on some of the small stuff doesn't matter. It doesn't matter as much as the big ticket items that we need to make sure that we are focusing on. Now if you do all this stuff and you still feel strapped when it comes to making $100,000 per year, then we need to do the big, big thing thing, which is increasing our income. When you increase your income, you have infinite potential to make more. You can only cut back so much. But when you increase your income, you can make a lot more money over time. And so we want to make sure that we Take the highest leverage path. Which is why we want to look at a bunch of different things. Number one is your day job. So your day job is the number one place that you should try to earn more money. What can you do in order to increase the amount that you're earning at your day job? So we have a number of different episodes talking about how to negotiate your salary that we will link down below in the show notes. But this is going to be one of those different areas that I want as many of you as possible to try to negotiate your salary or build a system in order to increase your income at your day job. This is going to make a dramatic difference. This is a multi million dollar decision is to decide to learn how to negotiate. And so I want you to make sure that you do that. Now if you want our ebook or our guide on how to negotiate your salary, just go to MasterMoney Co Resources and we have a guide there for you. Secondly is if your job is not willing to pay you more and you've put in the time, you've put in the energy, you've communicated to them that you want to get promoted or that you want to earn more and they still have not done it over the course of the last couple of years, well then switching or job hopping is going to be the next thing that you need to do. So on average, folks who transfer companies or move on to a new company earn between 15 to 20% more just by making that move. And so I want you to start to make sure that you build relationships with other companies before you need them. When you build relationships with other folks before you need them, this is going to dramatically increase the likelihood that you can get another job pretty quickly if you need to and you'll make a lot more money. You need people to go up to bat for you and that's really important. Number three is to build in demand skills. So we are going into a time time where AI is taking over a lot of jobs and AI is going to be able to take over a lot of those low hanging fruit skills. What are skills that you could build that AI cannot replicate? These can be skills like sales, These could be sales like communications, networking. Those types of things are going to be very, very important as we start to get into the next couple of decades. And so you need to focus and learn some of those skills that AI can not take over or will not take over over the course of the next couple decades if you want to make more money. Also, if you're in the corporate game Master corporate politics. It's just one of those things that I hate. You hate, we all hate. But you got to master the corporate politics game otherwise you will start to fall behind. And so that is another big one that I think you need to look at now. We have a series on this podcast called Side Hustles that you could turn into a full time income and that is the next thing I want you to think about. I have tried side hustle, I after side Hustle, a lot of them have failed and some of them that started to succeed, we started to double down on and turn them into full time businesses. And that's the way I want you to think about your side hustles as well. If you need more money and you need more income, you can look at side hustles and think of ways where you can do that. Our series shows you exactly how you can think about that and what you need to do in order to make sure that you set those up correctly. All right, so these are just some of the things that you could be doing in order to fix the situation that you're in with a hundred thousand dollars per year. But continuing to listen to this podcast, we are going to give you the tools, we going to give you the tips and tricks to ensure that you are successful when it comes to your money and building well. So if you're new here, make sure you give us a follow. If you're getting value out of this podcast, make sure you leave a five star rating review. Cannot thank you guys enough for that. Now if you guys are still stressed about money, if you are still stressed about where your finances are going and you have no idea truly what to do next, then I want to invite you to join Master Money Academy. In Master Money Academy, my entire goal is I get you the step by step roadmap on exactly how to build wealth. And in Master Money Academy we teach you about how to manage your dollars, we teach you how to invest your dollars, we teach you what the next step is, no matter where you get started. But in addition, you get to join live coaching calls with me every single week asking your questions. We have something called the Wealth Builder's Journey there and this is going to allow you to accelerate your path to wealth and get there so much faster by just understanding the wealth Builder's journey journey and what you need to do next with every next dollar. So I encourage every single person here to check the link down below in the podcast show notes for podcast listeners who have made it this far, who have made it to the end of the episode, I'm going to give you a special offer down below. And so I want you to check that out, because you can't really figure out if Master Money Academy is for you until you get inside. So I want you to have access inside first to see what it's all about, to see what it's like, like. And then once you're inside, I know that you will stay. The majority of people who join Master Money Academy, they stay. In fact, I've talked to other peers who have communities just like this, and they cannot believe how many people actually stay inside the community. It's because we bring way more value than what we're actually charging for Master Money Academy. And so this is one of those areas where I want to see as many people as possible build wealth. My goal is to create a million millionaires, and Master Money Academy is my way that I am doing this, this. So if you are someone who is making $100,000 per year right now and you listen to this episode and you're saying to yourself, man, I really feel like I'm still living in this paycheck to paycheck cycle. I need some sort of solution. I need something that I can do in order to make sure I get myself out of this cycle. Then Master Money Academy is going to be the place for you, and I want to see you inside. So check the link down below. It's going to be a special link just for podcast listeners, and I really, really am excited to see each and every single one of you join me there. I'm excited to meet you inside there because every week when we do those coaching calls, I get to know you. And this is one of those areas in life where I cannot wait, wait, wait to help you. My passion is to help as many people as possible learn how to manage their finances so they can have peace and zero stress when it comes to their money. There is power in having zero stress with your money, and you deserve to not have stress around your finances. All you need is a system. I will provide you that system. So would love for you to join Master Money Academy. Love to see you inside. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast episode and we will see you on the next episode.